March 31, 2017


News and Views


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-probing-whether-trump-aides-helped-russian-intel-in-early-2016/
FBI probing whether Trump aides helped Russian intel in early 2016
By JEFF PEGUES CBS NEWS March 31, 2017, 7:23 PM

Video – Scott Pelly CBS Evening News

CBS News has learned that U.S. investigators are looking into whether Trump campaign representatives had a role in helping Russian intelligence as it carried out cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee and other political targets in March 2016.

This new information suggests that the FBI is going back further than originally reported to determine the extent of possible coordination. Sources say investigators are probing whether an individual or individuals connected to the campaign intentionally or unwittingly helped the Russians breach Democratic Party targets.

In March 2016, both Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton had emerged as their parties’ most likely nominees.

What we know in the FBI probe of Trump campaign’s Russia ties

According to a declassified intelligence assessment, it was in March when Russian hackers “began cyber operations aimed at the U.S. election.” In May, U.S. officials say the Russians had stolen “large volumes of data from the DNC.”

Photograph -- pegues-russia-hacking-investigation-2-2017-3-31.jpg, Donald Trump, U.S. investigators are looking into whether Trump campaign representatives had a role in helping Russian intelligence as it carried out cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee and other political targets in March 2016. CBS NEWS

Starting in June, websites like Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks began posting the hacked documents.

In August, Trump confidant Roger Stone tweeted about Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

“Trust me, it will soon the Podesta’s time in the barrel,” Stone tweeted.

Follow
Roger Stone @RogerJStoneJr
Trust me, it will soon the Podesta's time in the barrel. #CrookedHillary
10:24 AM - 21 Aug 2016
408 408 Retweets 497 497 likes

Then on Oct 7, WikiLeaks began publishing Podesta’s personal emails. It was the same day the Department of Homeland Security and director of national intelligence publicly accused Russia of carrying out the cyberattacks.

Now, one year after the Russian operation began, sources say the FBI’s investigation is nowhere near over. It involves dozens of agents in Washington, New York and London. The NSA and CIA are also gathering intelligence from inside Russia.

Photograph -- pegues-russia-hacking-investigation-2017-3-31.jpg,
The NSA and CIA are gathering intelligence from inside Russia in their investigation into election hacking. CBS NEWS

Despite his denials, investigators believe the operation was authorized by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself and it involved both cyberattacks and information warfare.

According to testimony on Friday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, 15,000 operatives worldwide participated in spreading false news stories and conspiracy theories online. Those activities are also part of the FBI’s investigation - including who paid for them.

Law enforcement sources say one theory is that Trump associates could have been motivated by money. But sources tell us the FBI wants to get the investigation absolutely right so that the public will trust the result, whatever that turns out to be.


I FULLY UNDERSTAND FLYNN'S ASKING FOR PROTECTION AGAINST PROSECUTION, AND EVEN FOR PROTECTIVE CUSTODY AS WELL AFTER HE TESTIFIES, IF HE DOESN'T GIVE A CAREFULLY SANITIZED VERSION OF WHAT HAPPENED. I DISAGREE WITH SPICER THAT PROSECUTING HIM WOULD BE "UNFAIR, HOWEVER. IF MEMBERS OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DID COMMIT PERJURY, AID A LONGSTANDING FOREIGN ENEMY IN DESTABILIZING OUR GOVERNMENT, THEY SHOULD BE ARRESTED, AND TRUMP, IF HE WASN'T INNOCENT, SHOULD TAKE HIS FAIR SHARE OF THE BLAME. OF COURSE THE VERY WEALTHY RARELY DO.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/michael-flynn-former-trump-national-security-adviser-seeking-protection-russia-investigation/
Flynn seeking protection before possible testimony on Russia meddling
CBS NEWS March 31, 2017, 7:08 AM

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is seeking protection against possible prosecution relating to investigations into Russian meddling in the U.S. election. In a statement Thursday night, Flynn’s lawyer said “General Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit.”

The White House is playing defense again as news surfaced that Flynn is seeking legal protection before answering questions. It happened after news broke showing White House staffers were selectively leaking information to justify the president’s claims that he was unfairly surveilled.

Follow
Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump
Mike Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!
7:04 AM - 31 Mar 2017
11,084 11,084 Retweets 42,439 42,439 likes

Arriving back in his California district Thursday, Nunes refused to comment on news that Flynn requested immunity from FBI prosecution in exchange for testimony about potential Russian contacts with the Trump campaign, reports CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan.

During the election, Flynn condemned Hillary Clinton campaign aides for seeking immunity during the probe into Clinton’s private email servers.

“When you are given immunity, that means you’ve probably committed a crime,” Flynn had said on NBC.

Nunes, who previously served as a Trump transition official, is leading the House investigation into those Russian contacts.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer deflected questions about whether the administration is trying to influence that inquiry by leaking selective information, even after Nunes admitted he was given key evidence while at the White House.

“I cannot get into who those individuals were,” Spicer said.

The New York Times identified Nunes’ sources as NSC staffer Ezra Cohen-Watnick, a friend of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Michael Ellis, a White House lawyer who previously worked for the congressman.

Their bosses, NSC legal adviser John Eisenberg and White House counsel Don McGahn, were likely also aware.

House Speaker Paul Ryan on Russia probe, health care bill's future
Play VIDEO
House Speaker Paul Ryan on Russia probe, health care bill's future

Nunes’ refusal to share information with fellow investigators has raised eyebrows, yet House Speaker Paul Ryan told “CBS This Morning” that he had full confidence in him.

“He had told me that – like, a whistleblower type person had given him some information that was new,” Ryan said.


The White House invited Senate and House Intelligence Committee leaders to privately view the documents “relevant” to the investigations. Congressman Adam Schiff said the secrecy surrounding their actions was perplexing.

“They can present it to the White House staff or the president himself at any time, so why all the cloak and dagger stuff?” Schiff said.

Flynn’s lawyer said: “No reasonable person would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution.”



TRAVELERS TAKE CARE

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/body-missing-us-businessman-found-buried-under-house-ecuador/
Body of missing U.S. businessman found buried under house in Ecuador
AP March 31, 2017, 3:43 PM

Photograph -- This July 2002 photo shows a view of the seaport of Guayaquil, Ecuador AP

QUITO, Ecuador -- Ecuadorean officials say they’ve found the body of a U.S. businessmen buried beneath a house.

The prosecutor’s office says a woman under investigation in the January disappearance of Jonathan Charles Gilchrist led them to the body of the 65-year-old, which was found beneath concrete about 6 feet deep at a house in the city of Guayaquil.

Prosecutor Santiago Rivadeneira said Friday that two residents of the house have been detained.

He says Gilchrist was a well-do-do man with properties in several parts of Ecuador.

He’d been living in the beach resort of Salinas, about 80 miles west of Guayaquil and 215 miles southwest of Quito, the capital.



http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mylan-announces-nationwide-epipen-recall-over-potential-defect/
Mylan announces nationwide EpiPen recall over potential defect
CBS NEWS March 31, 2017, 6:40 PM

File photo. Certain lots of EpiPen injectors are being recalled. RICH PEDRONCELLI, AP

Meridian Medical Technologies, makers of Mylan’s EpiPen injector, issued a nationwide, voluntary recall of EpiPen and EpiPen Jr.

According to the company, some of the devices may have a defective part that does not allow for the activation of the injector in case of allergic reaction.

“While the number of reported failures is small, EpiPen products that potentially contain a defective part are being recalled because of the potential for life-threatening risk if a severe allergic reaction goes untreated,” the company said in a statement.

The recall affects 13 lots of EpiPen and EpiPen Jr. devices distributed between Dec. 17, 2015, and July 1, 2016. Mylan will replacing any of the affected devices free of charge.

Mylan advised consumers to keep and use their current EpiPens if needed until they get a replacement. Consumers should contact Mylan at 800-796-9526 or customer.service@mylan.com with any questions.

The list of lots under recall follows:

epipen-list.png
© 2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.



IF YOU OFTEN THINK I’M EXTREMELY UNFAIR TO THE RIGHT LEANING PART OF OUR POPULATION, DON’T READ THIS ONE. HE SAYS SO MANY OF THE THINGS THAT I THINK ARE THE REAL PROBLEMS THESE DAYS, HOWEVER, THAT I JUST CAN’T RESTRAIN MYSELF. THIS IS LONG, BUT IT'S THE LAST ARTICLE FOR TODAY.

https://www.laprogressive.com/crony-capitalism/
We Can No Longer Have Nice Things. Here’s Why
BY JAIME O'NEILL
POSTED ON MARCH 19, 2017

Though we are told routinely by politicians and pundits that we are the richest nation in the world, it appears we no longer can have nice things. Unlike other countries that are not so rich, we can’t have good roads, sound bridges, affordable health care for all, clean drinking water, a convenient and inexpensive system of public transportation, Meals on Wheels for poorer old people and others, drug prices competitive with what customers pay to the north and to the south of us, public schools with adequate resources, good teachers, and sensible teacher-to-student ratios, public money to support the arts Planned Parenthood, far fewer guns deaths, and a wide range of other nice things routinely found in places like France, Denmark, Iceland, or Australia.

There was a time, of course, when the United States, in particular, was known for having nice things. Such a time was later designated in popular culture as “happy days,” and they were anchored in the 1950s during a time of post-war prosperity. Hardly perfect in all ways even then, we did have high taxes on the richest Americans, lots of infrastructure projects, a strong labor movement, a commitment to education (hell, there was even a TV program called “The College Bowl” that extolled the value of knowing stuff), and a flood of American vets who energized education by taking advantage of the GI Bill that allowed lots of working class people to go to college who would never have had such a shot at advanced learning in earlier times. Back in those days, the “nice things” we liked tended to be generated from an educated and informed electorate and a truly progressive tax code. We were also less enamored of those “low-information voters” now so loved and revered by the American right, and always preferred by fascist regimes everywhere.

Add to all that the fact that the disparity in wealth between the richest and everyone else has widened grotesquely since those days when we had nice thingss, back when we had shared dreams of even nicer things in days to come, before we dumped a few trillion dollars into Vietnam, before Nixon, before Reagan, before Bush, and before Trump, a list of names that all by itself explains a great deal about our long slide away from being a place where we could have nice things.

Why can’t we have nice things here in the United States of America? How do we resolve the contradiction between these vast riches we are said to have and the fact that we are increasingly living in a country that looks like more and more like a dump most anywhere one might cast an eye.

Unless, of course, that eye resides in a gated community reserved for tech gazillionaires, unless that eye seldom strays from the haunts of the rich and famous, unless that eye is largely confined to those places reserved for very rich people, served by “lesser” people with far less money who ride the subway home, or sit in bumper-to-bumper commute traffic after their services have been rendered, staring out at the bleak landscape they drive through on pothole-pocked roads, past ugly billboards, blighted strip malls, graffiti-smeared buildings, railway cars, and the panorama of scenes so familiar to all those who don’t live in golden towers or baronial enclaves of wealth and privilege, the preserves that shield the 1% from the riff raff, the 21st century peasants those remote rich folks so commonly disdain or disregard. Republicans, in other words, or rich pricks and jackasses, words that have become synonymous with Republicans.

That old rhetorical question about why people couldn’t have nice things carried an implied answer: the kids break everything, or the old man is drinking up his salary with his n’er-do-well pals down at the tavern. At least those were the the culprits my mom seemed to be calling out back in my working class household when I was a boy.

Lots of the reasons we can’t have nice things are contained in words that begin with the letter C, words like corruption, crony capitalism, con men, corporate tax machinations, corporate lobbyists…

But considering that old rhetorical question in the context of a nation where a lot of people are behaving like spoiled brats, and where the man in charge and his cronies seem like a bunch of reckless and irresponsible drunks, I found that lots of the reasons we can’t have nice things are contained in words that begin with the letter C, words like corruption, crony capitalism, con men, corporate tax machinations, corporate lobbyists, corporate lawyers, criminals, criminality, callous indifference to things like the environment, the planet, or our fellow human beings. Oh, and let’s not forget the word “conservatives,” or what passes for conservatives these days, when the word is just a synonym for crooks who aren’t conserving a thing, least of all taxpayer money. If there’s anything at all about contemporary conservatives that conserves anything but the perks and privileges of the wealthy, I can’t think of what that might be, except perhaps ignorance, poverty, pollution, and plutocracy.

Another “c” word that could be added to the list of reasons we can’t have nice things would be “colonels.” We’ve got a lot of them, and we’re likely to have more now that the budget for “defense” spending is being ramped up even more obscenely. The average colonel in the American military makes something like $150,000 a year in salary, though most are eligible for additional compensation. There are 40,000 Americans who hold the rank of colonel or above, but what we pay the colonels alone amounts to around a half a billion bucks a year in salary alone, and that figure doesn’t factor in the “additional compensation” they earn, or scam the system to get.

Colonels and Lieutenant Colonels are only a tiny slice of the well over 50% of our annual budget spent on the military, and the half a billion in salaries spent on those colonels who are actively serving doesn’t include the handsome retirement benefits paid to so many of their brethren who often retire early and draw their retirement pay for decades while finding their way into well-paid post-retirement slots in the offices of lobbyists and defense contractors who once relied upon them for help in getting boondoggles approved by the Pentagon brass. There’s a whole bunch of these overpaid paper shufflers in the Pentagon, most of them spending their military careers far from danger, dining with those aforementioned defense contractors, wined and dined and shown a good time in exchange for shuffling those papers forward that benefit outfits like Halliburton, or Trumpsters of one stripe or another.

Let the colonels be emblematic, then, of why we can’t have nice things, unless you consider nice things to be all those expensive gadgets produced at such great expense by the military-industrial-tech and corporation complex–those airplanes that don’t work, those subs we build to fight desert-bound terrorists, those aircraft carriers that cost more than the entire GDP of some less affluent countries, or all that waste, fraud, and theft that include actual pallets of cash that just disappear in places like Iraq.

jaime oneillIn short, to state the obvious, we can’t have nice things because, in the most time-honored fashion, the avaricious, the swinish,the pampered, and the cloistered few have commandeered all the engines of power to keep the nice things entirely to themselves. They are, apparently, indifferent to the fact that a habitable planet may be the ultimate nice thing their machinations cannot reserve for themselves alone.

Jaime O’Neill
POSTED ON MARCH 19, 2017

March 30, 2017


News and Views

There are few comments today due to the high level of interesting news stories. Those which seemed most important to me are placed first.
See below.


http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/03/29/ceo-general-electric-just-called-us-companies-defy-trump/
The CEO Of General Electric Just Called On US Companies To Defy Trump
BY COLIN TAYLOR
PUBLISHED ON MARCH 29, 2017

One of America’s most influential CEOs, Jeff Immelt of General Electric, just took President Trump to task for his dangerous anti-climate and anti-science agenda.

POLITICO just revealed that “Immelt is calling on other companies to step up to fill the void that the administration is leaving behind,” as per an internal memo obtained by the news outlet.

In the missive, Immelt politely questions Trump’s mental faculties by saying his “imagination is at work” and calls on other American companies to pick up the baton that the White House has so carelessly discarded.

“Companies must be resilient and learn to adjust to political volatility all over the world. Companies must have their own ‘foreign policy’ and create technology and solutions that address local needs for our customers and society.

We believe climate change should be addressed on a global basis through multi-national agreements, such as the Paris Agreement. We hope that the United States continues to play a constructive role in furthering solutions to these challenges, and at GE, we will continue to lead with our technology and actions.”
Immelt went on to point out that innovation and investment into green technology is not only both environmentally prudent and profitable, but also a necessary evolution in today’s rapidly changing global economy.

The rest of the world, recognizing both the opportunities to be found and the urgent need to adapt to green technology, is moving on to bigger and better things as the United States curls up in a dirty room with the windows shut and the door locked as our President obsesses over coal like an addict does rocks in a crack pipe and wages an all-out war on science and regulations that protect both the environment and the public.

China is investing $360 billion over the next three years in environmentally-friendly technologies; countries as varied as Sweden, Costa Rica, and Kenya are all leading the charge in developing renewable energy and other green technologies. President Trump, on the other hand, just repealed the Clean Power Act and banned the use of “emissons reduction” in the Department of Energy memos.

If the White House and Congress won’t face reality, it’s up to the Immelt and the free market that Republicans worship so devoutly to take the charge and do what’s right for the American people and the future of our world as we know it.


COLIN TAYLOR
COLIN TAYLOR IS THE MANAGING EDITOR OF OCCUPY DEMOCRATS. HE GRADUATED FROM BENNINGTON COLLEGE WITH A BACHELOR'S DEGREE IN HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE. HE NOW FOCUSES ON ADVANCING THE CAUSE OF SOCIAL JUSTICE AND EQUALITY IN AMERICA.



http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/03/30/todays-senate-witness-just-revealed-trumps-allegiances-lie/
Today’s Senate Witness Just Revealed Where Trump’s Allegiances Lie
BY PETER MELLADO
PUBLISHED ON MARCH 30, 2017

After testifying under oath before the Senate Intelligence Committee at hearings into President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia earlier in the day, counter-terrorism expert and former FBI agent Clint Watts hit the cable news circuit Thursday evening where he challenged the President’s loyalties.

In a riveting interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Watts expressed his fear that the President no longer had America’s best interests in mind.

Watts said:

“…If I say things that the Trump administration doesn’t like or that counter to Putin, I’m not sure it’s not Trump first, Russia second and the rest of America third,”

Watts delivered gripping testimony earlier in the day at the Senate Intelligence Committee’s first open hearings on Trump’s ties to Russia.

Senator James Lankford (R-OK) asked Mr. Watts why he thought Vladimir Putin intervened in the 2016 presidential election at a significantly deeper level than any previous election. His answer silenced the Senate chamber.

“The answer is very simple, and it’s what nobody is really saying in this room. Part of the reason active measures have worked in this U.S. election is because the Commander-in-Chief has used Russian active measures at times, against his opponents.”

In other words, Russia hasn’t successfully sabotaged an American election before because no presidential candidate had been willing to embrace their tactics or serve as a mouthpiece for their massive misinformation campaign.

No candidate, that is, until the 2016 Republican nominee for President, Donald Trump.

Mr. Watts fears he may pay a price for his testimony, and he’s not just referring to Russia.

“I’m not confident right now that the U.S. government would actually come to bat for me. I’ve seen President Trump call for Russia to leak emails against a political opponent, I’ve seen him discredit the U.S. intelligence community to cite conspiracies that he’s seen on his Twitter feed.”

When an expert witness, testifying to expose a foreign adversary’s plot to undermine our democratic institutions, is uncertain he has the protection of the leader of those institutions he’s trying to protect, you know that leader is morally bankrupt.

You can see Mr. Watts’ full interview below.

WATCH VIDEO INTERVIEW OF WATTS WITH WOLF BLITZER.



http://www.realfarmacy.com/plu-code-fruit/
If You See THIS Label On the Fruit Do Not Buy It at Any Cost!
by ANYA V

Most of us don’t know that the stickers attached to the fruits and vegetables are there for more than just scanning the price.

The PLU code, or the price lookup number on the sticker can help you determine if the product is genetically modified, organic or produced with chemical fertilizers, fungicides or herbicides.

1. A four-digit code beginning with a 3 or a 4 means the produce is probably conventionally grown. The last digits of the code represent the kind of the fruit or vegetable you are buying. For example, bananas are always labeled with the code of 4011.

2. If there are five numbers, and the first is “8″, then the product is genetically modified. The label on genetically modified banana (GE-genetically engineered of GMO) would contain the numbers 84011.

3. A five-digit number that starts with a 9 means the item is organic. Organic bananas are labeled with 94011.

EWG ( The Environmental Working Group) analyzed pesticide residue testing data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration to come up with rankings for these popular fresh produce items.



Watch this Robert Reich video on the anti-nepotism laws and Trump’s heavy reliance on family.

Lyndon Miller shared Robert Reich's live video.
March 30, 2017 2 hrs ·

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Robert Reich was live.
Yesterday at 5:03pm ·
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The Resistance Report, March 29, 2017


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Resistance Report. 199,768 likes · 1,371,657 talking about this. News from the front lines of the movement to topple Trump's regime.




http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39440795
North Carolina 'bathroom' law: Lawmakers pass repeal bill
March 30, 2017 1 hour ago
From the section US & Canada

Photograph -- Forcing transgender people into specific bathrooms was the best-known effect of HB2

North Carolina lawmakers have approved the repeal of a controversial law that limits protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.

A key element banned transgender people from using toilets in accordance with their chosen gender, earning the measure the "bathroom law" tag.

The state House of Representatives and the Senate cleared the repeal bill after reaching a late-night deal.

The deal came hours before the state was to lose key basketball fixtures.

The measure now heads to Democratic Governor Roy Cooper's desk. He is expected to sign it into law.

The deal was announced late on Wednesday by Mr Cooper and Republican state lawmakers.

Mr Cooper, who ran for office on a platform of repealing the measure, known as House Bill 2, said: "It's not a perfect deal, but it repeals HB2 and begins to repair our reputation."

Majority Republican leaders Tim Moore and Phil Berger said in a joint statement: "Compromise requires give and take from all sides, and we are pleased this proposal fully protects bathroom safety and privacy."

But the terms of the deal have angered LGBT activists and some of the state's most conservative lawmakers.

'Train wreck'

The law had required transgender people to use toilets in schools and government buildings that correspond to the sex listed on their birth certificates.

Although the deal repeals the law, state legislators will remain in charge of policy on multi-occupancy restrooms.

Photograph -- State Congress Republicans Moore (L) and Berger said the deal was a compromise Image copyrightAP
Image caption

Photograph -- State Congress Republicans Moore (L) and Berger said the deal was a compromise

It creates a moratorium so that local government, state colleges and universities cannot pass measures extending non-discrimination on sexual orientation and gender identity until December 2020.

The compromise angered LGBT activists.

Equality NC executive director Chris Sgro said before the proposal was agreed that it was "a train wreck that would double down on anti-LGBTQ discrimination. North Carolinians want a clean repeal of HB2, and we urge our allies not to sell us out".

Mr Sgro added on Thursday that legal challenges could follow if lawmakers approved the measure.

Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin said: "At its core, it's a state-wide prohibition on equality."

Businesses, entertainers and sports teams had boycotted North Carolina in the wake of the law's passage last year.

Its largest city, Charlotte, lost the National Basketball Association (NBA) All-Star game, which was moved to another state.

"Basketball is important to North Carolina; nobody is going to deny that," Senator Ralph Hise told the Charlotte Observer.

"But we've been threatened as a state and we took the coward's act and we're backing down. I can't stand for that," he said.

Republican Sen Dan Bishop, an author of HB2, called the compromise "at best a punt, at worst it is a betrayal of principle".

Who and what have boycotted North Carolina?

Paypal
Deutsche Bank
Bruce Springsteen
Pearl Jam
The band Boston
Demi Lovato
Nick Jonas
Cirque de Soleil
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball, golf and swimming
ACC Swimming and Diving Championships

North Carolina was on Thursday set to lose its ability to host any college (NCAA) basketball championships from 2018 to 2022 "absent any change" in the House Bill 2.

The controversial bill will cost the state more than $3.67bn in lost business over 12 years, according to a recent Associated Press analysis.

Mr Cooper beat Republican Pat McCrory, who had signed the law, in an election in December.

The then-governor-elect attempted to reach a compromise over the law during a special session in December, but failed.

Critics of the bill say it has encouraged lawmakers in other states to put forward their own version of House Bill 2.

As of March, 16 states were considering bathroom bills, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Among those states are Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Illinois and Minnesota.




http://www.cbsnews.com/news/venice-italy-police-raids-bust-alleged-terrorist-cell-arrests/
Cops bust alleged terror cell that discussed bombing tourist hotspot
CBS/AP March 30, 2017, 4:44 AM

Photograph -- Italian police take a man into custody during a raid in Venice, early on March 30, 2017. Officials say three men and a minor were taken into custody, suspected of being a jihadist terror cell. ITALIAN POLICE HANDOUT
Photograph -- The Rialto Bridge in Venice, Italy. AP

Italian police said Thursday that they had dismantled terrorist cell in operating out of the historical center of Venice, arresting three men in raids on 12 homes in the city.

A statement released by the police said the raids disrupted a jihadist organization and that investigators had “identified individuals, relationships, religious radicalization, and places where they met.”

A fourth person, a minor, was also detained in the overnight raids. All of those in custody were nationals of Kosovo with Italian residence permits.

At a news conference later Thursday, the proseuctor [sic] for Venice said one of the men was caught on a phone intercept proposing the group bomb the famous Rialto bridge.

Venice prosecutor Adelchi d’Ippolito said a search of a Venice apartment showed the suspects were getting in physical shape and watching videos of Islamic extremists on how to carry out knife attacks.

A phone intercept caught one saying: “You’ll go straight to paradise because of all the infidels in Venice. Put a bomb on the Rialto.” It wasn’t clear if the reference was bluster or indicated an imminent threat.

Venice hosts an estimated 20 million international tourists every year, including thousands of Americans. The 16th century Rialto is one of Venice’s iconic tourist draws, spanning the Grand Canal and featuring small shops on either side of the steps of the arched bridge.

Italian police have made several arrests in recent years of suspected Islamic extremists, on allegations they were recruiting fighters for jihad in Syria and Iraq, were radicalizing others or were plotting attacks domestically.


HOW LIKE REPUBLICANS TO NULLIFY A RULE ALLOWING COMMUNITIES TO BE NOTIFIED ABOUT HOW TO PREVENT SURFACE WATER POLLUTION FROM COAL MINING REFUSE

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-obscure-law-republicans-are-using-to-nix-obama-era-regulations/
The obscure law Republicans are using to nix Obama-era regulations
By REBECCA SHABAD CBS NEWS March 30, 2017, 6:00 AM

Photograph -- United States President Donald Trump speaks during a bill signing ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Monday, March 27, 2017. Trump signed four bills, H.J. Res 37, H.J. Res 44, H.J. Res. 57 and H.J. Res. 58, that nullify measures put in place during former President Barack Obama’s administration. ANDREW HARRER/PICTURE-ALLIANCE/DPA/AP IMAGES

Congressional Republicans have been using an obscure law from 1996 to take an ax to rules finalized by federal agencies toward the end of the Obama administration -- and their elimination could have long-lasting effects.

They’ve been relying on the power of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to nullify regulations that, for example, would have provided communities with information about how to protect surface water from coal mining operations -- or one that would have directed the Social Security Administration to report the records of people with severe mental illnesses to the background check system used by licensed firearms dealers.

So far, President Donald Trump has signed into law “resolutions of disapproval” that have now overturned seven Obama-era rules.

President Trump signs bills overturning regulations
Play VIDEO
President Trump signs bills overturning regulations

Lawmakers have aggressively used the CRA to target these new regulations because they only have 60 days in session, from the start of the new Congress, to take advantage of the law’s authority to expedite the reversal process. That means Congress has until about mid-May to use this law to reverse agency-issued rules that they oppose.

Any rules that were issued from mid-June 2016 to when President Obama left office in January are eligible to be targeted. During that period, more than 450 rules were finalized, according to Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at American Action Forum, who has closely tracked these regulations.

“We’re seeing it used now in particular because I think President Trump has been very clear since the campaign that he would like to see fewer regulations,” said Susan Dudley, director of George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center. “I think that has been an invitation to Congress to look at regulations they’d like to disapprove.”

The GOP has also focused on this tool, Dudley said, because the end of a president’s term is always marked by “an uptick in regulatory activity.”

“It means it’s a target-rich environment because there are more regulations issued during the last six to eight months of a president’s term generally than otherwise,” she said.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have already set a new record with their CRA-related activity. Until now, using the CRA to reverse a rule had only been done once before -- by President George W. Bush -- for a rule issued under the Clinton administration. It was issued by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration on standards for ergonomics in November 2000. The following March, the new Congress passed a CRA resolution to reverse the rule and Bush signed it into law.

Resolutions of disapproval through the CRA only require a simple majority in both chambers to pass and is not subject to the filibuster. Beyond just the cancellation of the rule, there are consequences to consider. Once the rule is reversed, such a rule “may not be reissued in substantially the same form” ever unless Congress were to authorize it in the future.

One of the seven rules reversed by Mr. Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress was part of the implementation of a 2007 law passed in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech mass shooting. It would have allowed the Social Security Administration to provide information to the gun background check system of people who have so severe a mental disability that they can’t perform any kind of work -- even part-time work -- and who were determined not to be able to manage their own benefits.

“It was important because there is a significant lack of information about people who shouldn’t be able to just walk into a gun store and just pass a background check,” said Lindsay Nichols, senior attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “The Social Security Administration is essentially now barred from looking at this issue anymore. They can’t rethink it, there’s no chance to amend it. The only opportunity to fix the problem depends on Congress.”

In defense of Congress eliminating the rule, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s, R-California, office argued that “being disabled and needing help managing finances certainly shouldn’t limit a person’s Second Amendment rights.”

Congress also overturned a rule, that has not yet been signed by the president, that was issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that was meant to protect bears, wolves and other carnivores on federal public lands from Alaska’s aggressive “predator control” policy on federal refuges.

Another rule that has been nullified, that’s awaiting Mr. Trump’s signature, had been issued by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that would have prevented internet service providers from tracking their customers’ online behavior without their permission.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, spoke about the GOP effort to reverse the rule under the CRA on the House floor Tuesday. She argued that Republicans who disagreed with it could have gone back and tweaked it or have had it sent back to the FCC to be revised instead of using the CRA to destroy it.

“This is about profit from America’s most intimate, personal information without our knowledge or our consent,” she said. “Republicans’ use of the Congressional Review Act will do permanent damage to the FCC to keep America’s personal information safe.”

Carol Andress, director of legislative operations, climate and air at the Environmental Defense Fund, described the CRA as an “extraordinarily blunt instrument.”

“The CRA has consequences far beyond that particular rule-making. It really does have a very dramatic effect,” Andress said. “The CRA has more to do with Congress wanting to, in my opinion, use a meat ax or a sledgehammer, rather than a scalpel, and to try to accelerate and instead of doing it thoughtfully.”

Some of the other rules nullified by the president and Congress include two issued by the Department of Education that were related to teacher preparation and student aid funding as well as accountability regulations. Another rule that was reversed had been issued by the Defense Department, NASA and the General Services Administration which was designed to increase efficiency and cost savings in federal contracting by improving contractor compliance with labor laws.

Trump's executive order dismantles Obama's environmental protection effort
Play VIDEO
Trump's executive order dismantles Obama's environmental protection effort

Surprisingly, Batkins, at the American Action Forum, noticed that Republicans have not used the CRA to target Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules.

“We haven’t had a single EPA rule under the CRA yet,” he said. “Obviously, there are different ways to address past regulations, but I think after Election Day when the CRA became alive again after its 16-year dormancy period, if you told most people two education rules will be struck down, but zero EPA rules will be examined, I think that would have surprised a lot of people.”

One of the hurdles, however, to reversing EPA regulations might just be securing enough votes in the Senate. The one concerning gun limits for the severely mentally ill received some bipartisan support in the Senate, passing with 57 votes in favor of reversing it.

“Otherwise, it’s been fairly partisan and I think that’s sort of the big limiting factor to a lot of these CRA resolutions -- just getting 51 votes in the Senate,” he said.

The administration has been using other tools to roll back EPA rules. On Tuesday, the president signed a sweeping executive order to initiate the process of dismantling environmental regulations implemented under Obama that were intended to aggressively combat climate change.

In an interview with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, was asked if he would ever been [sic] in favor of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price purposely issuing regulations that would normally be issued by a Democratic administration so that Congress could nullify them and prevent the department from ever revisiting them.

“Yeah, you know, no one’s ever pitched that idea,” Ryan said. “I’ve never thought about that. That’s pretty clever.”



http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/report-white-house-officials-aided-nunes-getting-intel-reports-n740631
POLITICS MAR 30 2017, 2:46 PM ET
White House Officials Aided Nunes in Getting Intel: Report
by ALI VITALI

Video -- Could House Intel Chairman Nunes be subject to investigation? 12:22

Two White House official [sic] were involved in giving House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes access to intelligence reports that seemed to show that President Donald Trump and his associates were incidentally included in surveillance efforts, the New York Times reported Thursday.

Nunes went on to tell reporters that the president was surveilled in some capacity. He later went to the White House to brief them on his findings, ushering in a wave of criticism from Democrats, including ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff.

Play -- Could House Intel Chairman Nunes be subject to investigation? 12:22

The New York Times, citing several current American officials, named Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel's Office, as the officials involved in liaising with Nunes.

NBC News has not independently confirmed the New York Times report.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer dismissed questions about the New York Times report saying the press is assuming those reports are correct. Despite repeatedly being asked about the veracity of the reports, and the names cited, Spicer said the White House would not be commenting "on one-off anonymous sources that publications" publish.

He again chided reporters for an "obsession with who talked to whom and when" as opposed to focusing on the "substance" of what the investigation was finding.

Spicer also said he was "not aware of anything directly" when asked if the president directed the White House staffers to find proof of his wiretapping claims.

Spicer announced Thursday that it had sent a letter to ranking members on the House and Senate intelligence committees to view materials previously requested by members of Congress. These documents, the White House said were deemed "necessary to determine whether information collected on U.S. persons was mishandled and leaked."

Spicer would not confirm, however, that the information that would be shared was what Nunes was privy to last week.

Nunes and Schiff have both received letters from the White House, congressional sources told NBC News.

Spicer previously refused to rule out that Nunes' source, who has remained anonymous, was a White House official.

One week ago Spicer told reporters he didn't know why Nunes would brief the White House on something that they had previously briefed him on.

"I don't know why he would brief the Speaker and then come down here to brief us on something that we would have briefed him on," Spicer said last Thursday. "It doesn't really seem to make a ton of sense. So I'm not aware of it, but it doesn't really pass the smell test.

Trump has used Nunes claims as validation of his still-unsubstantiated allegation that former President Barack Obama wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower. Trump also expressed appreciation to Nunes for bringing the information to the attention of the White House.

"I somewhat do — I appreciate him coming over," Trump said last week.

Nunes, for his part, still maintains there is no evidence of Obama had Trump Tower wiretapped.




http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dems-red-flags-kushner-sit-russian-banker/story?id=46461651&cid=clicksource_4380645_1_hero_headlines_bsq_related
Dems: Red flags from Kushner sit-down with Russian banker
By MATTHEW MOSK Mar 30, 2017, 6:22 AM ET

WATCH -- Senate to hold 1st public hearing on alleged Russia election meddling

New red flags about Jared Kushner's business dealings have emerged with his recent disclosure of a December meeting he held with the chief of a Russian development bank, leading Democratic lawmakers told ABC News.

"Mr. Kushner needs to come clean and be fully transparent with the public — immediately — about all of the businesses that he continues to profit from while he serves in the White House," Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told ABC News.

Kushner, 36, who is married to Ivanka Trump, played a central role in his father-in-law's 2016 campaign and has since taken a job as one of President Trump's senior advisers. Kushner was already facing questions about a December meeting he held with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. when reports surfaced this week about a second contact. The White House confirmed that Kushner met in December with Sergei Gorkov of VneshEconomBank, or VEB, at the suggestion of the Russian ambassador. But the substance of the previously undisclosed meeting remains something of a mystery.

A senior White House official said that the conversation was "general and inconsequential" and that Kushner took the meeting as part of his campaign role of interfacing with foreign dignitaries. But the bank described the discussion to ABC News as a "negotiation" in which "the parties discussed the business practices applied by foreign development banks, as well as most promising business lines and sectors."

The December meeting came as the Kushner Companies, the family's real estate firm, was in the midst of what it has described in public statements as "active, advanced negotiations ... with a number of potential investors" about the redevelopment of the skyscraper it owns at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

On Nov. 16, Kushner dined with executives from the China-based Anbang Insurance Group to discuss a possible $4 billion redevelopment of the New York tower — a deal that reportedly fell apart this week, according to published reports. The rumored venture prompted a letter on March 24 from congressional Democrats who expressed concern about the company's entanglements with the Chinese government and about continued uncertainty about the extent to which Kushner has separated himself from the family real estate business, which he oversaw until recently.

"Even if Mr. Kushner has in fact divested from 666 Fifth Avenue, it appears his immediate family stands to benefit from a deal with Anbang, potentially violating federal ethics laws that bar 'an employee [from using] his public office for his own private gain ... or for the private gain of friends, relatives or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity,'" reads the letter, signed by Cummings and Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Tom Carper of Delaware, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Gary Peters of Michigan.

To date, neither Kushner nor the family real estate firm has explained the nature of the meeting with VEB. An official representing the Kushner firm responded to ABC News' questions Wednesday evening, saying Kushner was the only executive from his family's real estate firm to attend.

"VEB is not providing financing, lending or any other services to Kushner Companies," the official said.

The bank would not make a conventional choice as a business partner, as it is operating under the shroud of U.S. sanctions imposed after Russian incursions into Ukraine. Adding to the troubling optics of the meeting, Democrats said, was the recent involvement of a senior VEB executive, Evgeny Buryakov, in a bungled Russian spy ring in New York. In May he was sentenced to 30 months in prison for gathering intelligence for the Russian Federation as an agent under nonofficial cover, known as NOC.

Senators overseeing the Russia investigation have said they expect to ask Kushner about the meeting when he appears before the Intelligence Committee. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told ABC News he wants Kushner to share more details about the meeting so the public can understand its nature and purpose.

"Mounting evidence implicates the Trump inner circle in possible collusion with Russian meddling," Blumenthal said. "The Trump White House seems increasingly to be an ethically flawed mix of family businesses, special interests and foreign interference, putting private gain over public interest."

March 29, 2017


News and Views


SACRILEGE? NOT IN MY VIEW, BUT A HEALTHY EXERCISE OF OUR BRAINS, ONE OF GOD’S GREATEST GIFTS TO MANKIND. HE CLEARLY MEANT FOR US TO THINK, EXPLORE AND LEARN. TAKE A LOOK AT THIS ARTICLE ABOUT A CLEARLY PRIMITIVE AND TINY WORM-LIKE CRITTER THAT LIVED ON THE OCEAN BOTTOM BETWEEN SAND GRAINS. SOMEHOW, I DON’T RECOGNIZE MYSELF IN THIS, BUT IT IS SIMPLER THAN A JELLYFISH AND MORE COMPLEX THAN PROTOZOANS SUCH AS THE AMOEBA.

THE AMOEBA IS THAT LITTLE GUY THAT WAS THE ARTISTIC ORIGIN OF “THE BLOB,” A GREAT OLD UNLIKELY, BUT VERY FRIGHTENING, HORROR/SCI FI MOVIE FROM 1958 WHICH STARRED ONE OF THE GREATS, STEVE MCQUEEN. AS I REMEMBER, AN OLD MAN WAS OUTSIDE HIS HOUSE WHEN A SPACE SHIP CRASHED, AND AS HE WENT TO EXAMINE IT HE SAW A JELLYLIKE “BLOB” ON THE GROUND. UNFORTUNATELY FOR HIM HE PICKED UP A STICK AND POKED IT. ANNOYED, IT FLOWED IN A SLOW BLOBBY WAY UP THE STICK AND ONTO THE POOR GUY’S HAND, FROM WHICH POINT IT PROCEEDED TO EAT HIM. AS IT ATE, IT GREW, FINALLY ENGULFING AMAZING THINGS. WIKIPEDIA DIDN’T SAY A WORD ABOUT ANY OF THAT, OF COURSE. SEE HOW INTERESTING SCIENCE CAN BE??

BE SURE TO GO TO THIS BBC WEBSITE FOR THE IMAGES.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-38800987
Scientists find 'oldest human ancestor'
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
30 January 2017
From the section Science & Environment

Photo of reconstruction -- Artist’s reconstruction of Saccorhytus coronarius, based on the original fossil finds. The actual creature was probably no more than a millimetre in size
Oldest Ancestor Image copyright Jian Han, Northwest University, China -- Image caption -- Saccorhytus was also covered with a thin, relatively flexible skin and muscles. It probably moved around by wriggling


Researchers have discovered the earliest known ancestor of humans - along with a vast range of other species.

They say that fossilised traces of the 540-million-year-old creature are "exquisitely well preserved".

The microscopic sea animal is the earliest known step on the evolutionary path that led to fish and - eventually - to humans.

Details of the discovery from central China appear in Nature journal.

The research team says that Saccorhytus is the most primitive example of a category of animals called "deuterostomes"* which are common ancestors of a broad range of species, including vertebrates (backboned animals).

The researchers were unable to find any evidence that the animal had an anus, which suggests that it consumed food and excreted from the same orifice.

The study was carried out by an international team of researchers, from the UK, China and Germany. Among them was Prof Simon Conway Morris, from the University of Cambridge.

He told BBC News: "To the naked eye, the fossils we studied look like tiny black grains, but under the microscope the level of detail was jaw-dropping.

"We think that as an early deuterostome this may represent the primitive beginnings of a very diverse range of species, including ourselves. All deuterostomes had a common ancestor, and we think that is what we are looking at here."

Degan Shu, from Northwest University in Xi'An, Shaanxi Province, where the fossils were found, said: "Saccorhytus now gives us remarkable insights into the very first stages of the evolution of a group that led to the fish, and ultimately, to us."

Until now, the deuterostome groups discovered were from between 510 to 520 million years ago. These had already begun to diversify into not just the vertebrates, the group to which we and our ancestors belong and animals such as starfish and sea urchins.

Because they looked so different from one another, it was difficult for the scientists to determine what an earlier, common ancestor might have looked like.

The study suggests that its body was symmetrical, which is a characteristic inherited by many of its evolutionary descendants, including humans.

Saccorhytus was also covered with a thin, relatively flexible skin and muscles, leading the researchers to conclude that it moved by contracting its muscles and got around by wriggling.

The researchers say that its most striking feature is its large mouth, relative to the rest of its body. They say that it probably ate by engulfing food particles, or even other creatures.

Also interesting are the conical structures on its body. These, the scientists suggest, might have allowed the water that it swallowed to escape and so might have been a very early version of gills.



HERE IS A NEW AND FRIGHTENING PATTERN THAT IS DEVELOPING NOT ONLY IN SIBERIA, BUT IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN AND ALMOST CERTAINLY OTHER LOCATIONS ALSO. THE FIRST ARTICLE I SAW ABOUT THIS METHANE ICE COMPOUND WAS IN ANOTHER NEWS STORY, MAYBE THREE YEARS AGO, WHICH WAS FOUND IN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN OFF SHORE FROM OUR LARGEST AMERICAN CITIES. AGAIN, IT WAS LINKED TO GLOBAL WARMING, AND A RISK OF HARMING THE METHANE ICE LAYER BY DRILLING THERE FOR OIL SO THAT IT MIGHT START TO GIVE OFF METHANE GAS INTO THE WATER AND FROM THERE INTO THE AIR. THAT ARTICLE ALSO MENTIONED THE DANGER OF EXPLOSIONS SUFFICIENTLY STRONG TO TRIGGER TSUNAMIS. AS LONG AS METHANE ICE IS FROZEN IT IS STABLE, BUT WHEN IT MELTS IT BECOMES A GAS AND RISES INTO THE ATMOSPHERE TO CAUSE MORE GLOBAL WARMING. THAT’S REALLY A “VICIOUS CYCLE.”

THIS ARTICLE HAS A NUMBER OF SCIENTIFIC TERMS IN IT, BUT THEY ARE USUALLY EXPLAINED IN THE TEXT, BUT IF NOT, GO TO DEAR OLD WIKIPEDIA. I DO LOVE WIKIPEDIA. THEY ARE NONPROFIT, AND THEY DO ASK FOR DONATIONS SOMETIMES, SO I GIVE THEM $5.00 OR SO. IF EVERYONE DOES THAT IT WILL HELP THEM. IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE GLOBAL WARMING IS BOTH REAL AND A VERY SERIOUS PROBLEM, JUST DO MORE READING ON THE SUBJECT. P.S., DON’T GET YOUR INFORMATION FROM BREITBART OR DONALD TRUMP.

IT SEEMS THAT ALL THE CONSERVATIVES IN AND OUT OF THE LEGISLATURES, STATE AND FEDERAL, WANT TO DO IS WRING THEIR HANDS AND SAY, OH WOE IS ME. CHANGE THEIR POLICY? NEVER. OF COURSE, THE REPUBLICANS WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT ANY KIND OF GOVERNMENT RESTRAINT ON THE CARBON FUELS INDUSTRY, NO MATTER HOW MANY OF THESE DANGER SIGNS APPEAR, BECAUSE THEIR ONLY GOAL IS MAKING MONEY, AND IF THEY’RE RICH ENOUGH THEY CAN BUY A ONE-WAY TICKET TO OUR PLANNED ARTIFICIAL HUMAN HABITATS IN OUTER SPACE. BOTH THE MOON AND MARS HAVE SOME DETECTABLE WATER ICE. “WHAT? ME WORRY?”

READ THE FIVE ARTICLES BELOW.


https://weather.com/news/climate/news/siberia-crater-climate-change-gateway-to-underworld
Siberia's Massive Crater Could Reveal 200,000 Years of Earth's Climate History
By Ada Carr
Feb 28 2017 12:15 PM EST
weather.com

Photograph -- Huge Siberian Crater Keeps Growing
A huge crater in Siberia caused by damage to the permafrost and global warming has been growing for years and now is a mile across.
MORE ON WEATHER.COM: Mysterious Giant Hole in Siberia
Photographs -- 1 of 17
Photograph -- A view of the giant hole in Siberia, Russia. (Marya Zulinova, press service of the Governor YaNAO)

Story Highlights:
A gaping crater in Siberia could answer researchers' questions about Earth's climactic history.
The crater poses what some researchers have referred to as a “climate time bomb.”

With the ominous nickname of the "gateway to the underworld," the gargantuan Batagaika crater that continues to grow in Siberia could disclose centuries of the Earth's climactic [sic] history.

Over the last 200,000 years, our planet's climate has alternated between "interglacial" periods of relative warmth and chillier "glacial" periods that allowed ice sheets to expand. According to a recent study, the sediment layers in the crater have the potential to answer "key questions about Quarternary environmental and climactic change in northeast Siberia."

Researcher Julian Murton told BBC.com that the layers provide a "continuous record of geological history, which is fairly unusual." He added that scientists should be able to interpret the climate and environmental history there by analyzing the layers.

Siberia's climatic history is not well understood and researchers hope that by reconstructing past environmental changes they can forecast similar changes in the future.

"Ultimately, we're trying to see if climate change during the last Ice Age [in Siberia] was characterized by a lot of variability," said Murton. "Warming and cooling, warming and cooling as occurred in the North Atlantic region."

(MORE: Massive Michigan Sinkhole Swallows Home)

The Batagaika crater has sunk to a depth of nearly 400 feet and has grown at a rate of more than 60 feet per year, according to Motherboard. Since its creation in the early 1990s, climate change has worsened and caused heat waves that melted layers of glacial ice.

This melting caused the land underneath to collapse, creating the gaping depression.

Scientists are calling the Batagaika crater a "megaslump," which is an enormous void. When permafrost rapidly thaws, it creates rifts and causes "scar zones" that sink into the saturated land.

"I expect that the Batagaika megaslump will continue to grow until it runs out of ice or becomes buried by slumped sediment," Dr. Julian Murton told Motherboard. "It’s quite likely that other megaslumps will develop in Siberia if the climate continues to warm or get wetter."

These craters pose what some researchers have referred to as a "climate time bomb."

The Arctic’s permafrost contains both methane and carbon dioxide, which could be hazardous to our environment if released.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, methane could have 25 times the impact of carbon dioxide over the next century. An increase in methane emissions would have a disastrous effect on the planet’s already-troubled atmosphere, as the greenhouse gas is 21 times better at trapping heat.

According to Murton, the last time Siberia saw a slump of this magnitude was 10,000 years ago. Today’s greenhouse gas emissions, which have climbed to 400 parts per million, have surpassed the carbon dioxide levels of that time, which reached levels of 280 parts per million.



ALL YOU COULD POSSIBLY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT YET ANOTHER SCIENTIFIC TERM, "METHANE CLATHRATE"

Methane clathrate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

MAP -- Worldwide distribution of confirmed or inferred offshore gas hydrate-bearing sediments, 1996. Source: USGS
Photograph -- Gas hydrate-bearing sediment, from the subduction zone off Oregon

Methane clathrate (CH4·5.75H2O) or (4CH4·23H2O), also called methane hydrate, hydromethane, methane ice, fire ice, natural gas hydrate, or gas hydrate, is a solid clathrate compound (more specifically, a clathrate hydrate) in which a large amount of methane is trapped within a crystal structure of water, forming a solid similar to ice.[1] Originally thought to occur only in the outer regions of the Solar System, where temperatures are low and water ice is common, significant deposits of methane clathrate have been found under sediments on the ocean floors of the Earth.[2]

Methane clathrates are common constituents of the shallow marine geosphere and they occur in deep sedimentary structures and form outcrops on the ocean floor. Methane hydrates are believed to form by migration of gas from deep along geological faults, followed by precipitation or crystallization, on contact of the rising gas stream with cold sea water. In 2008, research on Antarctic Vostok and EPICA Dome C ice cores revealed that methane clathrates were also present in deep Antarctic ice cores and record a history of atmospheric methane concentrations, dating to 800,000 years ago.[3] The ice-core methane clathrate record is a primary source of data for global warming research, along with oxygen and carbon dioxide.

Structure and composition[edit]

The nominal methane clathrate hydrate composition is (CH4)4(H2O)23, or 1 mole of methane for every 5.75 moles of water, corresponding to 13.4% methane by mass, although the actual composition is dependent on how many methane molecules fit into the various cage structures of the water lattice. The observed density is around 0.9 g/cm3, which means that methane hydrate will float to the surface of the sea or of a lake unless it is bound in place by being formed in or anchored to sediment.[4] One litre of fully saturated methane clathrate solid would therefore contain about 120 grams of methane (or around 169 litres of methane gas at 0 °C and 1 atm).[nb 1]

Methane forms a structure I hydrate with two dodecahedral (12 vertices, thus 12 water molecules) and six tetradecahedral (14 water molecules) water cages per unit cell. (Because of sharing of water molecules between cages, there are only 46 water molecules per unit cell.) This compares with a hydration number of 20 for methane in aqueous solution.[5] A methane clathrate MAS NMR spectrum recorded at 275 K and 3.1 MPa shows a peak for each cage type and a separate peak for gas phase methane.[citation needed] In 2003, a clay-methane hydrate intercalate was synthesized in which a methane hydrate complex was introduced at the interlayer of a sodium-rich montmorillonite clay. The upper temperature stability of this phase is similar to that of structure I hydrate.[6]

Natural deposits[edit]

Specific structure of a gas hydrate piece, from the subduction zone off Oregon
Methane clathrates are restricted to the shallow lithosphere (i.e. < 2,000 m depth). Furthermore, necessary conditions are found only in either continental sedimentary rocks in polar regions where average surface temperatures are less than 0 °C; or in oceanic sediment at water depths greater than 300 m where the bottom water temperature is around 2 °C. In addition, deep fresh water lakes may host gas hydrates as well, e.g. the fresh water Lake Baikal, Siberia.[7] Continental deposits have been located in Siberia and Alaska in sandstone and siltstone beds at less than 800 m depth. Oceanic deposits seem to be widespread in the continental shelf (see Fig.) and can occur within the sediments at depth or close to the sediment-water interface. They may cap even larger deposits of gaseous methane.[8] Oceanic[edit] There are two distinct types of oceanic deposit. The most common is dominated (> 99%) by methane contained in a structure I clathrate and generally found at depth in the sediment. Here, the methane is isotopically light (δ13C < −60‰), which indicates that it is derived from the microbial reduction of CO2. The clathrates in these deep deposits are thought to have formed in situ from the microbially produced methane, since the δ13C values of clathrate and surrounding dissolved methane are similar.[8] However, it is also thought that fresh water used in the pressurization of oil and gas wells in permafrost and along the continental shelves worldwide combines with natural methane to form clathrate at depth and pressure, since methane hydrates are more stable in fresh water than in salt water. Local variations may be very common, since the act of forming hydrate, which extracts pure water from saline formation waters, can often lead to local, and potentially significant, increases in formation water salinity. Hydrates normally exclude the salt in the pore fluid from which it forms, thus they comprise high electric resistivity just like ice, and sediments containing hydrates have a higher resistivity compared to sediments without gas hydrates (Judge [67]).[9]:9 These deposits are located within a mid-depth zone around 300–500 m thick in the sediments (the gas hydrate stability zone, or GHSZ) where they coexist with methane dissolved in the fresh, not salt, pore-waters. Above this zone methane is only present in its dissolved form at concentrations that decrease towards the sediment surface. Below it, methane is gaseous. At Blake Ridge on the Atlantic continental rise, the GHSZ started at 190 m depth and continued to 450 m, where it reached equilibrium with the gaseous phase. Measurements indicated that methane occupied 0-9% by volume in the GHSZ, and ~12% in the gaseous zone.[10][11] In the less common second type found near the sediment surface some samples have a higher proportion of longer-chain hydrocarbons (< 99% methane) contained in a structure II clathrate. Carbon from this type of clathrate is isotopically heavier (δ13C is −29 to −57 ‰) and is thought to have migrated upwards from deep sediments, where methane was formed by thermal decomposition of organic matter. Examples of this type of deposit have been found in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caspian Sea.[8] Some deposits have characteristics intermediate between the microbially and thermally sourced types and are considered to be formed from a mixture of the two. The methane in gas hydrates is dominantly generated by microbial consortia degrading organic matter in low oxygen environments, with the methane itself produced by methanogenic archaea. Organic matter in the uppermost few centimetres of sediments is first attacked by aerobic bacteria, generating CO2, which escapes from the sediments into the water column. Below this region of aerobic activity, anaerobic processes take over, including, successively with depth, the microbial reduction of nitrite/nitrate, metal oxides, and then sulfates are reduced to sulfides. Finally, once sulfate is used up, methanogenesis becomes a dominant pathway for organic carbon remineralization. If the sedimentation rate is low (about 1 cm/yr), the organic carbon content is low (about 1% ), and oxygen is abundant, aerobic bacteria can use up all the organic matter in the sediments faster than oxygen is depleted, so lower-energy electron acceptors are not used. But where sedimentation rates and the organic carbon content are high, which is typically the case on continental shelves and beneath western boundary current upwelling zones, the pore water in the sediments becomes anoxic at depths of only a few centimeters or less. In such organic-rich marine sediments, sulfate then becomes the most important terminal electron acceptor due to its high concentration in seawater, although it too is depleted by a depth of centimeters to meters. Below this, methane is produced. This production of methane is a rather complicated process, requiring a highly reducing environment (Eh −350 to −450 mV) and a pH between 6 and 8, as well as a complex syntrophic consortia of different varieties of archaea and bacteria, although it is only archaea that actually emit methane. In some regions (e.g., Gulf of Mexico) methane in clathrates may be at least partially derived from thermal degradation of organic matter, dominantly in petroleum.[12][citation needed] The methane in clathrates typically has a biogenic isotopic signature and highly variable δ13C (−40 to −100‰), with an approximate average of about −65‰ .[13][citation needed][14][citation needed][15] Below the zone of solid clathrates, large volumes of methane may form bubbles of free gas in the sediments.[10][16][17] The presence of clathrates at a given site can often be determined by observation of a "bottom simulating reflector" (BSR), which is a seismic reflection at the sediment to clathrate stability zone interface caused by the unequal densities of normal sediments and those laced with clathrates. Reservoir size[edit] The size of the oceanic methane clathrate reservoir is poorly known, and estimates of its size decreased by roughly an order of magnitude per decade since it was first recognized that clathrates could exist in the oceans during the 1960s and 1970s.[18] The highest estimates (e.g. 3×1018 m³)[19] were based on the assumption that fully dense clathrates could litter the entire floor of the deep ocean. Improvements in our understanding of clathrate chemistry and sedimentology have revealed that hydrates form in only a narrow range of depths (continental shelves), at only some locations in the range of depths where they could occur (10-30% of the Gas hydrate stability zone), and typically are found at low concentrations (0.9–1.5% by volume) at sites where they do occur. Recent estimates constrained by direct sampling suggest the global inventory occupies between 1×1015and 5×1015 m³ (0.24 to 1.2 million cubic miles).[18] This estimate, corresponding to 500–2500 gigatonnes carbon (Gt C), is smaller than the 5000 Gt C estimated for all other geo-organic fuel reserves but substantially larger than the ~230 Gt C estimated for other natural gas sources.[18][20] The permafrost reservoir has been estimated at about 400 Gt C in the Arctic,[21][citation needed] but no estimates have been made of possible Antarctic reservoirs. These are large amounts. In comparison, the total carbon in the atmosphere is around 800 gigatons (see Carbon: Occurrence). These modern estimates are notably smaller than the 10,000 to 11,000 Gt C (2×1016 m³) proposed[22] by previous researchers as a reason to consider clathrates to be a geo-organic fuel resource (MacDonald 1990, Kvenvolden 1998). Lower abundances of clathrates do not rule out their economic potential, but a lower total volume and apparently low concentration at most sites[18] does suggest that only a limited percentage of clathrates deposits may provide an economically viable resource. Continental[edit] Methane clathrates in continental rocks are trapped in beds of sandstone or siltstone at depths of less than 800 m. Sampling indicates they are formed from a mix of thermally and microbially derived gas from which the heavier hydrocarbons were later selectively removed. These occur in Alaska, Siberia, and Northern Canada. In 2008, Canadian and Japanese researchers extracted a constant stream of natural gas from a test project at the Mallik gas hydrate site in the Mackenzie River delta. This was the second such drilling at Mallik: the first took place in 2002 and used heat to release methane. In the 2008 experiment, researchers were able to extract gas by lowering the pressure, without heating, requiring significantly less energy.[23] The Mallik gas hydrate field was first discovered by Imperial Oil in 1971-1972.[24] Commercial use[edit] Economic deposits of hydrate are termed Natural Gas Hydrate (NGH) and are unique in that they store 164 m3 of methane, 0.8 m3 water in 1 m3 hydrate.[25] Most NGH is found beneath the seafloor (95%) where it exists in thermodynamic equilibrium. The sedimentary methane hydrate reservoir probably contains 2–10 times the currently known reserves of conventional natural gas, as of 2013.[26] This represents a potentially important future source of hydrocarbon fuel. However, in the majority of sites deposits are thought to be too dispersed for economic extraction.[18] Other problems facing commercial exploitation are detection of viable reserves and development of the technology for extracting methane gas from the hydrate deposits. In August 2006, China announced plans to spend 800 million yuan (US$100 million) over the next 10 years to study natural gas hydrates.[27] A potentially economic reserve in the Gulf of Mexico may contain approximately 100 billion cubic metres (3.5×1012 cu ft) of gas.[18] Bjørn Kvamme and Arne Graue at the Institute for Physics and technology at the University of Bergen have developed a method for injecting CO2 into hydrates and reversing the process; thereby extracting CH4 by direct exchange.[28] The University of Bergen's method is being field tested by ConocoPhillips and state-owned Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC), and partially funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The project has already reached injection phase and was analyzing resulting data by March 12, 2012.[29] On March 12, 2013, JOGMEC researchers announced that they had successfully extracted natural gas from frozen methane hydrate.[30] In order to extract the gas, specialized equipment was used to drill into and depressurize the hydrate deposits, causing the methane to separate from the ice. The gas was then collected and piped to surface where it was ignited to prove its presence.[31] According to an industry spokesperson, "It [was] the world's first offshore experiment producing gas from methane hydrate".[30] Previously, gas had been extracted from onshore deposits, but never from offshore deposits which are much more common.[31] The hydrate field from which the gas was extracted is located 50 kilometres (31 mi) from central Japan in the Nankai Trough, 300 metres (980 ft) under the sea.[30][31] A spokesperson for JOGMEC remarked "Japan could finally have an energy source to call its own".[31] The experiment will continue for two weeks before it is determined how efficient the gas extraction process has been.[31] Marine geologist Mikio Satoh remarked "Now we know that extraction is possible. The next step is to see how far Japan can get costs down to make the technology economically viable."[31] Japan estimates that there are at least 1.1 trillion cubic meters of methane trapped in the Nankai Trough, enough to meet the country's needs for more than ten years.[31] . . . . FOR MORE OF THIS ARTICLE, GO TO WEBSITE ABOVE.



OTHER DISCOURAGING ARTICLES ON THIS SUBJECT:

https://weather.com/news/climate/news/siberia-methane-leak-yamal-peninsula-bely-island-grass
Climate Change May Be to Blame for These Bouncy Patches in Siberia
By Ada Carr
Jul 27 2016 12:00 AM EDT

Video -- Methane Leak Gives Bounce to Grass
Trapped methane makes grassy field bounce in Russia.

In a remote area of Siberia’s tundra, patches of grass-covered ground act more like a bouncy house than land.

While walking through Bely Island off the Yamal Peninsula, researchers Alexander Sokolov and Dorothee Ehrich spotted 15 patches of trembling ground in a field, The Siberian Times reports. When they punctured one of the patches, the ground emitted methane and carbon dioxide.

It is still unclear what is causing this phenomenon, but researchers believe that abnormal heat caused the permafrost in the tundra to thaw and release gases.

A 2014 study forecasted this kind of event. After examining 71 wetlands across the globe, researchers discovered that melting permafrost has been creating wetlands that are emitting large amounts of methane.

(MORE: Rare Sight in Siberia: Two Tornadoes Form)

Methane gas is twice as potent as carbon dioxide when it comes to warming the Earth’s atmosphere.

“Methane emissions are one example of a positive feedback between ecosystems and the climate system,” University of Guelph biology professor Merritt Turetsky told Climate Central. “The permafrost carbon feedback is one of the important and likely consequences of climate change, and it is certain to trigger additional warming.”

Warming and thawing permafrost stimulate methane release, which enhances the greenhouse effect, creating a feedback loop, she said.

Researchers believe methane is also to blame for massive craters that have been popping up in parts of Siberia.

(MORE: Arctic Sea Ice Breaks May Record ... By a Lot)

In 2014, a giant crater formed in the Yamal Peninsula, spanning more than 100 feet wide. The following year, dozens more of the mystery holes were spotted nearby. The leading theory is that the craters were formed by underground methane explosions or by the freezing and melting of the landscapes.

Both events are believed to be caused by warming Arctic temperatures. According to Sokolov, this summer is unusually hot on the Arctic island.

Scientists are still researching these phenomena and what they mean for our planet’s future.

ON THE SUBJECT OF THE “PERMAFROST CARBON” FEEDBACK AND THAT OF METHANE, SEE:
“https://www.decodedscience.org/melting-permafrost-arctic-tale-two-feedbacks/57919; Melting Permafrost in the Arctic: A Tale of Two Feedbacks; March 11, 2016 by Elizabeth Klusinske 4 Comments”


WHAT IS A FEEDBACK LOOP? A PROCESS THAT INCREASES OR DECREASES THE EFFECT OF ANOTHER. SOME OTHER FEEDBACK LOOPS – THE THAWING OF THE PERMAFROST IS DAILY RELEASING METHANE FROM THE FROZEN SOIL AND IT THEN ACCUMULATES IN THE ATMOSPHERE TO INCREASE THE RATE OF GLOBAL WARMING. THE LOSS OF ICE AND SNOW IS ANOTHER PROBLEM AS IT REMOVES THE WHITENESS THAT CONSTANTLY REFLECTS THE SUN’S RAYS BACK UP INTO THE SKY AND AWAY FROM EARTH. THAT ICE IS BEING MELTED RAPIDLY AND CAUSING EVEN GREATER GLOBAL WARMING. SOIL AND WATER, ON THE OTHER HAND, ALWAYS HEAT UP UNDER THE SUN’S RAYS.

ANOTHER LESS WELL-KNOWN CAUSE IS THE CUTTING OF FORESTS ALL OVER THE WORLD, WHICH REDUCES THE OXYGEN VERSUS CARBON DIOXIDE IN OUR ATMOSPHERE. THIS IS THE MOST CRUCIAL REASON WHY ECOLOGISTS AND EARTH SCIENTISTS TALK SO MUCH ABOUT THE CUTTING OF RAIN FORESTS, WHOSE PURPOSE IS JUST TO GET ANOTHER TRILLION OR SO DOLLARS INTO INDUSTRY COFFERS.

AND YET, OUR GOVERNMENT GIVES THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY MONEY TO IMPROVE ITS’ BUSINESSES AND TAKES AWAY WHATEVER MONEY THE SOLAR AND OTHER RENEWABLE ENERGY OPERATIONS HAPPEN TO HAVE ALLOCATED TO THEM. WHY? BECAUSE THE PROFIT MARGIN OF OIL AND COAL COMPANIES IS BEING DIMINISHED BY SOLAR ENERGY, WHICH HAS TURNED OUT TO BE SURPRISINGLY SUCCESSFUL IN MANY PLACES, EVEN TO THE POINT THAT ELECTRICAL COMPANIES HAVE HAD TO FIGURE OUT NEW WAYS TO BILL CITIZENS WHO HAVE THOSE FUNNY LOOKING SOLAR PANELS ON THEIR ROOFS.

THE SOLAR HOUSES MAKE MORE ELECTRICAL ENERGY THAN THEY USE IN MANY CASES, WHICH CAN CAUSE THE POWER PLANT TO LOSE MONEY ON ITS’ PROVIDING POWER TO ALL, AS MOST MODERN CITIES AND COUNTIES NOW ARE REQUIRED TO DO. IF MY MEMORY OF MY ANCIENT ECONOMICS COURSE IS CORRECT, THE TERM FOR THAT IS “ECONOMIES OF SCALE.” A SOLAR HOUSE DOES NOT, CONSTANTLY AND EVERY DAY, PRODUCE ENOUGH ELECTRICITY TO MEETS ITS’ NEEDS, BUT SOMETIMES PRODUCES A SURPLUS. THE RESULT IS THAT THE ELECTRICAL COMPANY HAS TO WORK OUT A WAY OF DEALING WITH IT, PERHAPS BY ALLOWING THEM TO GO OFF THE POWER GRID, SUBSCRIBE AT AN INDIVIDUAL PRICE, OR EVEN BY BUYING ELECTRICITY FROM HOMEOWNERS OR GIVING THEM A REBATE. BUYING POWER FROM THEM WOULD REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF CO2 THAT WOULD BE PRODUCED, WHICH SOUNDS LIKE A “WIN-WIN” TO ME.

FOR THESE REASONS, THE CARBON FUEL INDUSTRY HAS FOUGHT THE RENEWABLE ENERGY INTERESTS FOR DECADES. THEY HAVE ALSO PUBLISHED REPORTS THAT SOLAR ENERGY JUST ISN’T PRACTICAL, BUT ITS’ SUCCESS HAS BEEN IN THE NEWS A NUMBER OF TIMES THIS LAST DECADE OR SO. I’M NO LEGAL SCHOLAR, BUT THAT SOUNDS LIKE THE ACTIVITY OF A MONOPOLY “IN RESTRAINT OF TRADE,” SPECIFICALLY AGAINST THE SOLAR INDUSTRY, WHICH IS GROWING FOR THE SAME REASON THAT BERNIE SANDERS ATTRACTS LOTS OF BELIEVERS. HE SPEAKS GOOD SENSE AND FAIRNESS WITH A SIMPLE ELOQUENCE. THE BIG BOYS ARE FAT ENOUGH NOW. THEY NEED TO MOVE OVER AND GIVE OTHERS A PLACE AT THE TABLE.

THE THING THAT UPSETS ME MOST ABOUT THE MASSIVE DEFORESTATION THAT IS GOING ON, BEYOND THE LOSS OF HABITAT FOR COUNTLESS ANIMAL AND PLANT SPECIES -- ESPECIALLY THE WONDERFUL MONARCH BUTTERFLY – IS THE FACT THAT ENCOURAGING RATHER THAN DISCOURAGING THE GROWTH OF TREES AND OTHER PLANTS IS CRUCIAL TO A BALANCED ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH NOT ONLY LESSER ANIMALS WILL SURVIVE, BUT WE HUMANS WILL, TOO. IN THE LIFE CYCLE PROCESS OF PLANTS, WHICH IS CALLED PHOTOSYNTHESIS, THEY CONSUME CO2 AND GIVE OFF OXYGEN, WHEREAS ANIMALS GIVE OFF CO2 AND CONSUME OXYGEN. WE NEED MORE OXYGEN AND LESS CO2 IF WE ARE TO SURVIVE. WAKE UP, HUMANITY, AND SMELL THE SKUNK CABBAGE.



I AM NOT PUTTING THE FOLLOWING STORY IN WITH THE OTHERS BECAUSE I THINK IT IS JUST ANOTHER CYNICAL “CONSERVATIVE” OPINION MADE UP TO KEEP THE GOVERNMENTS, FEDERAL STATE AND LOCAL, FROM MANDATING CHANGES IN WHAT BIG BIZ DOES. IT IS, HOWEVER, ILLUSTRATIVE. AS THEY SAY, “CONSIDER THE SOURCE.”


http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/17/murray-energy-ceo-claims-global-warming-is-a-hoax.html
Murray Energy CEO claims global warming is a hoax, says 4,000 scientists tell him so
Tom DiChristopher | @tdichristopher
Friday, 17 Feb 2017 | 2:06 PM ET

PLAY CNBC VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH MURRAY

Murray Energy Chairman and CEO Robert Murray on Friday claimed global warming is a hoax and repeated a debunked claim that the phenomenon cannot exist because the Earth's surface is cooling.

Murray appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box" to discuss Republicans' rollback of an Obama-era rule that would have restricted coal mining near waterways. President Donald Trump signed the measure on Thursday in front of Murray and a group of Murray Energy workers.

Murray Energy is the country's largest coal miner. Many of its mines are in Appalachia, a region that would suffer some of the biggest impacts of the rule. Murray also successfully sued to delay implementation of the Clean Power Plan, which would regulate planet-warming carbon emissions from power plants.

Asked about the economic analysis behind President Barack Obama's energy regulations, Murray said, "There's no scientific analysis either. I have 4,000 scientists that tell me global warming is a hoax. The Earth has cooled for 20 years."

It was not immediately clear who the 4,000 scientists Murray referenced are.

Asked for clarification, a spokesperson for Murray Energy sent links to the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change, which says "human-caused climate change is not a global crisis," and the Global Warming Petition Project, a list of science degree holders who don't think humans cause climate change.

Murray's claim that there is no scientific analysis behind climate change is not true.

A landmark 2013 study assessed 4,000 peer-reviewed papers by 10,000 climate scientists that gave an opinion on the cause of climate change. It showed 97 percent of the authors attributed climate change to manmade causes.

His second claim that Earth is cooling is also false.

Temperatures were the warmest on record last year, according to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was the third year in a row global average temperatures set a record.

"The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere," NASA and NOAA said.

Climate change skeptics sometimes point to cool land temperatures to dispute global warming. Scientists have repeatedly noted that water covers 70 percent of the Earth's surface, so it is highly misleading to cast temperatures on land as a representation of global-scale temperatures.

Land also heats and cools more quickly than the ocean, The Weather Channel noted while debunking a recent Breitbart News article that was widely found to have cherry-picked data to cast doubt on climate change.

The stacks from the Gavin coal burning power plant tower in Cheshire, Ohio.

SEE ALSO:
Donald Trump -- President Trump 'dangerously wrong' on climate change: Jeffrey Sachs
Tuesday, 7 Feb 2017 | 8:35 AM ET | 03:51
Trump repeals rule that prevented coal waste from being dumped in streams
Thursday, 16 Feb 2017 | 4:12 PM ET | 01:17

Tom DiChristopher
Energy Reporter


OTHER TIMELY SUBJECTS --

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/richard-burr-senate-russia-probe-has-seven-full-time-staffers/
By EMILY SCHULTHEIS CBS NEWS March 29, 2017, 4:46 PM
Richard Burr: Senate Russia probe has seven full-time staffers

Video – WH denies blocking Russia testimony

The Senate Intelligence Committee has seven full-time professional staff members working to evaluate intelligence and documents related to the committee’s investigation on Russian election interference, Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said Wednesday.

“This investigation’s scope will go wherever the intelligence leads it,” he said at a press conference at the Capitol Wednesday afternoon. “So it is absolutely crucial that every day we spend trying to separate fact from fiction and to find some intelligence thread that sends us to the factual side of all the names and all the places that you in this room have written about.”

Burr, appearing with vice chairman Mark Warner (D-Virginia), said the committee has received an “unprecedented amount of documents” relating to the investigation, noting that the staffers dedicated to reviewing them -- who are full-time staffers who previously had the necessary security clearance -- are sifting through “thousands” of documents.

Play VIDEO
Sen. McCain says scandalous revelations about Trump team won't end soon

The committee is “weeks away” from finishing its review of the related documents, Burr said, and it has requested interviews with 20 people, including White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law.

Congressional investigations into Russia -- particularly the question of whether any Trump campaign associates were in touch with Russian officials -- has been at the center of the political conversation in Washington this week, as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., comes under fire over a secretive visit to White House grounds, where he examined alleged surveillance information he relayed to the president, but not to the Intelligence Committee. Since then, he and ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., have been at odds.

Neither Burr nor Warner took questions about Nunes or the House investigation. Instead, standing side by side, the two spoke about their shared commitment to a fair and independent investigation, and noted that it may not happen as quickly as some people would like.

“We need to get this right,” Warner said. “...Getting it right is more important than getting it done quickly.”

Warner noted that Russia may have attempted to influence the 2016 election indirectly by having Russia-linked bots direct “fake news” stories at key swing states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

He said that “for the most part” the intelligence community is being cooperative in providing the necessary information, and said the committee’s investigation has made great strides since the intelligence community released its report on Russian activity in early January.

“What we know today is a lot more than they knew in December when they went through this process,” Warner said.



THIS WHOLE GULEN STORY IS BEYOND STRANGE. WE NEED GOOD WELL-RUN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, NOT THESE EXPERIMENTAL THINGS THAT ARE OFTEN JUST AN EXCUSE TO KEEP BLACK AND HISPANIC KIDS OUT. AND ABOVE ALL, NO PUBLIC MONEY SHOULD BE GOING TO A RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION OF ANY KIND. AND THEN THERE IS THE TRULY SHOCKING DEMAND THAT EMPLOYEES PAY MONEY INTO THE GULEN FUND OUT OF THEIR HARD EARNED SALARIES.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-turkish-religious-scholar-fethullah-gulen-funding-movement-abroad-through-us-charter-schools/
Are some U.S. charter schools helping fund controversial Turkish cleric's movement?
By MARGARET BRENNAN, JENNIFER JANISCH
CBS NEWS March 29, 2017, 7:00 AM

Video – CBS this morning news investigation interview 5.00 minutes

As Secretary of State Rex Tillerson travels to Turkey on Thursday, he’ll want to talk about the fight against ISIS. But the Turks want to talk about a controversial Turkish religious scholar: Fethullah Gulen.

Turkish President Recep Erdogan accuses Gulen of being behind a bloody coup attempt in the country last July. Gulen, who lives in the United States, denies he was involved. Now the Turkish government is also lobbying the Trump administration to extradite Gulen back to Turkey.

Photograph -- fethullah-gulen-ap-987233294224.jpg, In this March 15, 2014 photo, Turkish Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen is pictured at his residence in Saylorsburg, Pa. AP PHOTO/SELAHATTIN SEVI

Over the past two decades, Gulen’s Turkish followers have opened up taxpayer-funded charter schools in the U.S. Some parents have expressed concern about the connection to the Gulen movement, while others don’t seem to mind. But CBS News has learned the FBI is investigating whether Gulen’s followers have skimmed money from those schools in order to fund his movement in Turkey. A senior State Department official believes Gulen-linked charities and educational institutions in the U.S. look “a lot like the ways in which organized crime sets itself up...to hide money for money laundering.”

During the violent coup attempt that shook Turkey last July, hundreds were killed as rogue military tanks rolled into the streets of Istanbul. But Gulen, who the Turkish government blames for inciting it, has lived in a Pennsylvania compound for 16 years.

Play VIDEO -- Who is Fethullah Gulen?

Gulen’s followers run publicly-funded science and math-focus charter schools in the United States. By our count, they’ve opened 136 charter schools in 28 states, operating on more than $2.1 billion taxpayer dollars since 2010.

But former teachers at those schools have told CBS News there is a scheme by Gulen’s followers in the U.S. to take advantage of the American charter school system and fund Gulen’s movement.

Ersin Konkur was once a follower of Gulen. He worked as a math teacher at schools founded by Gulen supporters in New York and Texas. But he said school officials made a special demand of the Turkish teachers who worked there: a kick-back from their taxpayer-funded salary.

“They’d force you to give some of that money back to them?” CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan asked.

“Yes,” Konkur responded.

“Were you writing checks?”

“They were asking cash. But in my last two years, I paid some of them in check,” Konkur said, adding that he’s paid “maybe a lot more than $20,000” in total to the movement.

Photograph -- ctm-0329-gulen-charter-schools-former-teachers.jpg, Mustafa Emanet (left) and Ersin Konkur CBS NEWS

Mustafa Emanet was an IT administrator at a Gulen-inspired charter school in Ohio.

“How much money do you think you gave?” Brennan asked him.

“I was paying around 40 percent of my salary,” Emanet said.

Based on information provided by Emanet, federal investigators believe former officials at his Ohio school illegally paid themselves about $5 million in federal contracts and then sent those U.S. tax dollars to Bank Asya, a bank in Turkey linked to Gulen’s followers.

The school says it is cooperating with the probe.

“They’re a threat to our relationship with Turkey and thus to the stability of the Middle East,” former U.S. ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey said.

Jeffrey told CBS News that Gulen’s followers are a powerful force in Turkey, with public good works, but more private political aims.

“We need to investigate this movement again first and foremost for what it has attempted to do in Turkey. Secondly, what it is trying to do here in the United States and what laws it may be breaking in the process of doing so,” Jeffrey said.

Photograph -- ctm-0329-alp-aslandogan.jpg, Alp Aslandogan CBS NEWS

Gulen repeatedly declined to speak with us, but we spoke with his closest adviser, Alp Aslandogan.

“If there’s a proven charge that somebody illegally channeled money from public funds into some private purposes, he will be first to condemn it,” Aslandogan said.

“The Turkish teachers said that they were then forced to hand over part of their salary back to the movement,” Brennan responded.

“Yeah, forced donations is absolutely unethical. … It is disgusting. I would be first to condemn something like that,” Aslandogan said.

The charter schools that employed Turkish teachers Konkur and Emanet strongly deny any official links to Gulen himself, but we found nearly all Gulen schools have ties to a network of non-profits, many of which lead back to Gulen or his top associates.

Court records related to Gulen’s immigration to the U.S. show that his lawyers said he had “overseen the establishment of a conglomeration of schools... [including in]... the United States.”

“What do you think they’re really trying to do?” Brennan asked Emanet.

“They try to gain more power. And they want to make more money. And then after that, they use the money to gain more power,” Emanet said.

Konkur’s former employers deny his allegations, call him a disgruntled former employee, and accuse him – without providing evidence – of being an agent of the Turkish government. He denies that, although he has given testimony to a U.S. lawyer hired by the government of Turkey.

Last week, Turkey’s foreign minister said U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions assured him that he’d carefully examine the Turkish request for Gulen’s extradition.



VERDICT ON BRIDGEGATE MATTER

NEWS CHRISTIE BRIDGE SCANDAL MAR 29 2017, 4:05 PM ET
Bridgegate Scandal: Ex Christie Allies Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly Get Prison
by JON SCHUPPE and BRIAN THOMPSON


Former allies of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie were sentenced to prison Wednesday for engineering lane closures at the George Washington Bridge as alleged retaliation against a Democratic mayor who didn't endorse the governor.

Bill Baroni, who served as deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, will spend two years behind bars and must do 500 hours of community service. His co-conspirator, Bridget Anne Kelly, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, plus a year of probation. Both said they'll file appeals

"I regret more than anything that I allowed myself to get caught up in this," Baroni told U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton. "I failed."

Play -- Bridgegate: Guilty On All Counts 1:23

Baroni's defense lawyers argued for leniency, noting his longtime work as an FBI informant when he was a state lawmaker.

Related: Bridgegate: Two Former Aides to Chris Christie Convicted in Lane-Closure Scandal

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee Cortes responded that Baroni should have known better, and should have gone to authorities when he learned of the plot, but instead tried to cover it up.

Baroni "corrupted his office to send a petty, vindictive political message," Cortes said. He called Baroni's behavior "out of the playbook of some dictator in a banana republic."

Before imposing the sentence, Wigenton told Baroni, "This is a sad day for the state of New Jersey, and in particular for you."

She added: "You have lived a life of service...that makes the offense that much more perplexing."

When her turn came, Kelly apologized for "disrespectful" emails and texts she sent about the lane closures ─ which included the infamous "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

Crying, Kelly told the judge, "I never intended to harm anyone."

But the divorced mother of four also maintained her innocence, telling reporters afterwards: "I will not allow myself to be the scapegoat in this case and I look forward to the appeal."

Wigenton told Kelly she was guilty of using her position "to exact revenge" and said the traffic study excuse was not believable.

"I don't believe you're a victim," Wigenton said.

Play -- Bridgegate Conspirators Sentenced to Prison 1:39

Wednesday's courtroom appearances closes a chapter on the more than three-year-old scandal known as Bridgegate, which brought down members of Christie's inner circle and damaged his attempt to run for president. Witnesses at a fall trial alleged Christie knew about the plan beforehand. But Christie was never charged, and he maintains that he knew nothing about it until after it broke as a news story.

Baroni and Kelly have said they believed the lane closures were for a traffic study and not a political retribution plot. They were seeking sentences of probation.

Related: Ex Christie Aide: I Told Gov. About 'Bridgegate' Lane Closures

Another Christie operative, David Wildstein, has admitted to cooking up the plot and testified that Kelly and Baroni helped him carry it out. He has alleged that he and Baroni spoke to Christie about the closures as they were happening. Wildstein, who cooperated with the feds as part of a plea deal, has not yet been sentenced.

The scandal stems from the September 2013 lane closures in Fort Lee, on the New Jersey end of the George Washington Bridge, and where a Democrat, Mark Sokolich, was mayor. Christie was running for re-election that year on a platform as a bipartisan consensus-builder, and was aggressively seeking Democratic endorsements. Sokolich was a holdout.

Image: Bridget Kelly arrives for sentencing at federal court in Newark, New Jersey, on March 29. Seth Wenig / AP

That August, Kelly emailed Wildstein calling for "traffic problems." He replied, "Got it." Later emails captured them discussing the closures, which began Sept. 9 and caused massive jams on Fort Lee roads.

The lanes were reopened on Sept. 13.

Kelly and Baroni were convicted on Nov. 4 of conspiracy, wire fraud and other charges.

Prosecutors asked for three to four years for each, accusing them in a court filing this week of lying during their trial last fall.



For Bernie Sanders Photographs (Many pages), GO TO -- https://www.facebook.com/798718760248759/photos/rpp.798718760248759/1239303099523654/?type=3&theater