Tehran: Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator said on Tuesday that the United States dealt a “fatal blow” to the rule of law at the international level by its “unlawful” withdrawal from a 2015 nuclear deal five years ago.
Ali Bagheri Kani, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, made the remarks in a post on his Twitter page one day after the fifth anniversary of the US unilateral pullout from the nuclear deal in 2018, Xinhua news agency reported.
Ever since its withdrawal, the US has failed to reverse its “wrongful” deeds, said the Iranian official, stressing that Iran will continue its “legitimate” remedial measures under the nuclear pact.
The full implementation of the nuclear deal, the main precondition for which is the “effective and lasting” removal of the sanctions, could be resumed should “the reneging party”, the European Union, and E3 group of France, Britain and Germany demonstrate “credible” political will to that effect, he said.
Kani said the opportunity to resume the full implementation of the nuclear deal would not be available forever.
Iran signed the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), with world powers in July 2015, agreeing to put some curbs on its nuclear programme in return for the removal of the sanctions on the country.
The US, however, pulled out of the deal on May 8, 2018 and reimposed its unilateral sanctions on Tehran, prompting the latter to reduce some of its nuclear commitments under the deal.
The talks on the JCPOA’s revival began in April 2021 in Vienna. However, no breakthrough has been achieved after the latest round of talks in August 2022.
So the Black Caucus, joined by a coalition of progressive groups, is turning up the heat on Senate Democrats in what’s becoming the most consequential battle over chamber rules since Democrats tried last year to weaken the filibuster.
“I don’t know why anyone, let alone Senate Democrats, would hold up a Jim Crow practice,” Black Caucus Chair Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) said in an interview on Wednesday, describing the GOP’s use of blue slips against judicial nominees as a civil rights issue.
“It is literally about the fundamental survival of the people we represent,” Horsford added. “And we expressed that history, that context and that necessity to Chairman Durbin. I respect the chairman. He understands the dilemma.”
The dispute has huge implications for the future of the federal judiciary, the Senate and the White House. With the House run by Republicans until 2024 at least, Senate Democrats still can confirm judges for lifetime appointments without a single GOP vote — but Republicans can block some of those nominees from ever getting to the chamber floor by denying blue slips.
The acrimony is particularly acute among House members from blue districts in red states. They’re chafing at their Republican senators’ unwillingness to let nominees through and looking to Senate Democrats to help — even though during the Trump era the CBC urged the GOP to keep the blue slip to give Democrats some say in lifetime nominees.
So Durbin isn’t ready to get rid of the tradition for federal district court nominees. And both Black Caucus members from the Senate, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Raphael Warnock, share his reluctance to change the practice.
In an interview, Durbin said he and GOP senators are negotiating over new Biden nominees that will become public soon. And several GOP senators said in interviews that they are working closely with the White House to address nominees for district court judgeships, U.S. attorney posts and U.S. marshals posts, all of which are subject to the blue slip.
The Senate Judiciary Committee previously abandoned the blue slip for appellate court nominees who cover multiple states. If Durbin wanted to nix the practice for district courts, it would not require a Senate rules change.
Durbin is still receptive to the Black Caucus’ entreaties, saying that he needs a “higher level of cooperation” from the GOP. He estimated that fewer than 20 of Biden’s nominees have received green lights from the GOP, while Democrats provided more than 110 for former President Donald Trump’s judicial picks during his time in office.
“I tried to explain to them the arcane Senate rules. And how difficult it would be to do business. So I don’t know if I convinced them, because a lot of them are frustrated with the lack of cooperation,” Durbin said of his meeting with the Black Caucus.
Republicans have used their blue-slip power recently against two Biden nominees, in addition to last year’s rejection by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) of William Pocan — the brother of Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) — as a district judge. Democrats’ big fear, however, is that Republicans will start using the practice more.
In a letter to Durbin this week, a coalition of progressive groups warned that “39 of the 43 district court vacancies subject to Republican blue slips — 91% — still do not have nominees.” The letter’s signatories ranged from Demand Justice to the League of Conservation Voters to End Citizens United.
“The blue slip policy should be reformed or discontinued to ensure a fair process and stop Republicans from blocking highly-qualified Biden judicial nominees,” the progressive groups wrote. Their ideas: ignore blue slip blockades, force a firm timeline for senators to register their objections and require public explanations for blue slip denials.
Republicans are holding their ground. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the party’s top member on the Judiciary Committee, said that scrapping the blue slip makes the Senate “irrelevant” and criticized the White House for not conducting sufficient outreach to the GOP.
The White House is “turning to the red states because they’ve filled all the blue states, and it takes consulting. They didn’t even talk to people in Florida for six months. I made them talk to them. So this is a manufactured issue,” Graham said.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates responded that “the White House has done outreach to every single Republican Senate office that represents a state with a judicial vacancy. In many instances, that outreach dates back to the previous Congress.”
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) accelerated the blue slip clash after she announced she would stop Scott Colom from taking a Mississippi judgeship. It’s likely that Biden may need to find a new nominee; “Sen. Hyde Smith will not budge,” said one person with direct knowledge of the negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity.
There are currently more than 65 federal district court vacancies, and 38 of those do not have nominees — many of them in states where Republican senators have veto power. The lower-level courts are the Democrats’ primary focus after prioritizing appellate courts over the last two years.
In addition, Kansas GOP Sens. Roger Marshall and Jerry Moran are slowing the nomination of Jabari Wamble to fill a district court seat while they await Biden’s choice to fill an appellate court vacancy covering their states. In an interview, Marshall said he’s simply being “cautious” and didn’t indicate where they would fall on a blue slip for Wamble.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a Judiciary Committee member, said he is having “a lot of good conversations” with the White House; as many as three Missouri seats could be open by the fall.
Horsford said Black Caucus members want every Republican withholding a blue slip to disclose their reasoning. He was joined in the Durbin meeting by Black Caucus members Reps. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), Troy Carter (D-La.), Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), Al Green (D-Texas), and Booker.
Horsford said the lawmakers emphasized to Durbin that blue slips are not a Senate rule but a custom. For many of his members, Horsford added, “it’s hard for them as the sole Democrat in some of their southern states to defend a policy where one or two Senate Republicans can hold up those nominees.”
Notably, the practice has yielded some success stories. The all-GOP Senate delegations in Idaho and Louisiana worked with the White House to hatch bipartisan agreements, and Indiana’s two Republican senators worked to confirm a home-state judge by a rare voice vote this year.
And Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) said she’s willing to give it another go with Johnson, even after he stopped William Pocan.
As Booker recalled in an interview, he used blue slips to stifle Trump’s judicial picks — underscoring that the power to stop judicial nominees can also help Democrats during GOP presidencies.
Still, Booker is clearly torn: “Anytime you tear up a Senate tradition, you should be really thoughtful about it.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir’s Director General of Police (DGP) Dilbagh Singh Friday said that the April 21 attack in Bhata Durian area of Poonch in which five soldiers were killed was carried out with active local support and militants had used steel-coated armour-piercing bullets and IEDs to target army vehicle to inflict maximum damage.
He said intense search to track the natural hide-outs used by militants is being launched and initial investigations suggest that nine to 12 foreign militants may be active in Rajouri-Poonch area, who may have infiltrated recently.
Talking to reporters after taking stock of the ongoing search operations in Darhal area of Rajouri district, DGP Singh said that the Poonch attack was carried out with active support of locals.
“Such attacks can’t be carried out without local support. The militants were provided shelter at one place and then provided transport to carry out the attack at another place. They had done proper recee of the area and despite rain they succeeded to target the army vehicle that was plying with almost zero speed due to blind turn,” the DGP said, adding that “the attackers knew the spot and speed of the vehicle.”
The DGP said that the terrorist used steel-coated armour-piercing bullets and IEDs to blow the army vehicle in a bid to inflict maximum damage. “Same bullets were used in the Dhangri, Rajouri attack. The Poonch attack was carried out near a forest area. Initial investigations suggest that the terrorists may have used natural hideouts. We are identifying the natural hide-outs that may have been used by the attackers before the attack and intense search operation is on to nab the attackers,” he said.
Replying to a query, he said that the group of terrorists involved in the recent attack may be divided into two and their number seems to be between nine to twelve.
About the local support, he said that the local Nisar Ahmed, a resident of Gursai village, was already in the suspect list of police. “He has been an active OGW of terrorists since 1990. He was questioned several times in the past. This time, after corroborating the evidence, he was found involved in providing logistic and other support to terrorists who carried out the Poonch attack,” the DGP said, adding that Nisar’s family is also involved in providing support to terrorists.
On whether terrorists had got weapons through drones, the DGP said that weapons, grenades and cash was air-dropped by drone and the same was collected by Nisar and his family members.
“We are identifying the spot where the drone had dropped the weapons and cash,” he said. He said so far, 200 people were questioned and 12 suspects have been detained. He said with the arrest of Nisar, the investigation has got a direction and vital leads have been received so far. (KNO)
There’s a fundamental principle that should apply to every conflict. Don’t urge others to do what you are not prepared to do yourself. How many wars would be fought if the presidents or prime ministers who declared them were obliged to lead their troops into battle?
I can see why How to Blow Up a Pipeline, the book by Andreas Malm which has inspired a new film with the same title, has captured imaginations. It offers a lively and persuasive retelling of the history of popular protest, showing how violence and sabotage have been essential components of most large and successful transformations, many of which have been mischaracterised by modern campaigners as entirely peaceful.
Malm shows how violence was a crucial component of the campaigns against slavery, imperial rule in India, apartheid and Britain’s poll tax, of the demand for women’s suffrage and even of the famously “peaceful” revolutions in Iran and Egypt. He argues that by ruling out violence and sabotage, those of us who seek to defend the habitable planet are fighting with our hands tied behind our backs. He urges us to develop a “radical flank”, prepared to demolish, burn, blow up or use “any other means necessary” against “CO2-emitting property”.
Just Stop Oil protesters in London in October. Photograph: Guy Smallman/Getty Images
It’s essential that we know these histories. Malm forces us to confront questions of strategy and to justify or reject those we have chosen. No one can deny that current campaigns have failed: capital’s assaults on the living planet have only accelerated. Nor can we deny that, as he says, we have been too “placid and composed” or that the climate crisis is insufficiently politicised. Should we, as he urges, begin a campaign of violent attacks on the industrial economy? While his case is compelling, I feel something is missing.
Malm’s strongest comparisons are with the heroic struggles of women’s rights and civil rights activists, anti-slavery, independence, anti-apartheid and economic justice campaigners. These movements directly confronted massive powers. Their outcomes were, in most cases, binary. Either the British Raj persisted or it didn’t. Either women would get the vote or they wouldn’t. Either there was a poll tax or there wasn’t.
But the revolt against environmental collapse is a revolt against the entire system. To prevent the destruction of the habitable planet, every aspect of our economic lives has to change.
Malm reduces our task to “the struggle against fossil fuels”. But fossil fuels are just one of the drivers of climate breakdown, albeit the largest, and climate breakdown is just one aspect of Earth systems breakdown. You could take out all the obvious targets –pipelines, refineries, coalmines, planes, SUVs – and discover that we are still committed to extinction. For example, even if greenhouse gases from every other sector were eliminated today, by 2100 current models of food production alone would bust the entire carbon budget two or three times over, if we want to avoid more than 1.5C of global heating.
Soil degradation, freshwater depletion, ocean dysbiosis, habitat destruction, pesticides and other synthetic chemicals might each be comparable in scale and impact to climate breakdown. Only one Earth system may need to go down to take others with it, causing cascading collapse. In other words, in this struggle we are contesting not only fossil capital and the governments that support it. We are fighting against all capital and, perhaps, most of the people it employs.
Anti-apartheid demonstrators run away from a police charge in Cape Town, South Africa, during clashes in 1976. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
Our demands are – and have to be – more complex than any that have gone before. While I believe that taking out pipelines, refineries, abattoirs, coal plants and SUVs is morally justified, do we really imagine we can bring down the Earth-eating machine this way? Can we really hope that government, industry, oligarchs and those they employ or influence will conclude, “Because we cannot tolerate the sabotage, we will surrender the economic system?” If you are holding a virtual gun to someone’s head, you need to know exactly what you are demanding and whether they can deliver it.
The world has not stood still while we ponder these questions. Governments and corporations are now equipped with greatly increased surveillance and detection powers. If sabotage escalates beyond the mild actions Malm has taken (letting down the tyres of SUVs with mung beans, helping to breach two fences), not many people will get away with it. Some will face decades in prison. Just last week, two climate campaigners in the UK were jailed for between two and three years merely for occupying a bridge. Are we comfortable with goading other people – mostly young people – to step over the brink?
In the US, we see the growing paramilitarisation of politics. It cannot be long before far-right militias there, already committed to armed vigilantism, evolve into death squads on the Colombian model. As soon as they perceive a violent threat to the capital they defend, they will respond with greater violence of their own. Fascism has been famously described as “a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place”. You don’t have to succeed in generating a new movement committed to a campaign of violence to create a monster much bigger than you are: a monster that will close down the last chance of saving Earth systems. If you are going to take a physical shot at capitalism, you had better not miss.
I cannot say that Malm is wrong, and that non-violent action is more likely to succeed. After all, none of us have been here before. But if you are pushing other people towards decades in prison while risking a backlash that would close down the last possibility of success, you need to be pretty confident that the strategy will work. I have no such confidence.
My own belief is that our best hope is to precipitate a social tipping: widening the concentric circles of those committed to systemic change until a critical threshold is reached, that flips the status quo. Observational and experimental evidence suggests the threshold is roughly 25% of the population. I find it hard to see how this could happen if we simultaneously engage in violent conflict with those we seek to swing. But I concede that our chances are diminishing, regardless of strategy.
In the meantime, I will support people who have already committed coherent and targeted acts of sabotage in defence of the living planet that do not endanger human life. But I won’t encourage anyone to do so, because I’m not prepared to do it myself. This, at least, is one clear line in a world where everything is blurred.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Rajouri, Apr 28: Jammu and Kashmir’s Director General of Police (DGP) Dilbagh Singh Friday said that the April 21 attack in Bhata Durian area of Poonch in which five soldiers were killed was carried out with active local support and terrorists had used steel-coated armour-piercing bullets and IEDs to target army vehicle to inflict maximum damage. He said intense search to track the natural hide-outs used by terrorists is being launched and initial investigations suggest that nine to 12 foreign militants may be active in Rajouri-Poonch area, who may have infiltrated recently.
Talking to reporters after taking stock of the ongoing search operations in Darhal area of Rajouri district, DGP Singh, as per news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO), said that the Poonch attack was carried out with active support of locals. “Such attacks can’t be carried out without local support. The terrorists were provided shelter at one place and then provided transport to carry out the attack at another place. They had done proper recee of the area and despite rain they succeeded to target the army vehicle that was plying with almost zero speed due to blind turn,” the DGP said, adding that “the attackers were knowing the spot and speed of the vehicle.”
The DGP said that the terrorist used steel-coated armour-piercing bullets and IEDs to blow the army vehicle in a bid to inflict maximum damage. “ Same bullets were used in the Dhangri, Rajouri attack. The Pooonch attack was carried out near a forest area. Initial investigations suggest that the terrorists may have used natural hideouts. We are identifying the natural hide-outs that may have been used by the attackers before the attack and intense search operation is on to nab the attackers,” he said. Replying to a query, he said that the group of terrorists involved in the recent attack may be divided into two and their number seems between nine to twelve.
About the local support, he said that the local Nisar Ahmed, a resident of Gursai village, was already in the suspect list of police. “He has been an active OGW of terrorists since 1990. He was questioned several times in the past. This time, after corroborating the evidence, he was found involved in providing logistic and other support to terrorists who carried out the Poonch attack,” the DGP said, adding that Nisar’s family is also involved in providing support to terrorists.
On whether terrorists had got weapons through drones, the DGP said that weapons, grenades and cash was air-dropped by drone and the same was collected by Nisar and his family members. “We are identifying the spot where the drone had dropped the weapons and cash,” he said. He said so far, 200 people were questioned and 12 suspects have been detained. He said with the arrest of Nisar, the investigation has got a direction and vital leads have been received so far—(KNO)
Heat waves in Summers. Cold waves in Winters. It’s quite normal and not much of a News, isn’t it?
Wait, climate experts have just found that in India the weather patterns are fast changing and we are suffering more heat waves in Summers and less cold waves in Winters in the past decade.
Now, this is not welcome news both for people and agriculture.
With summer already sizzling with heat and temperatures shooting up all over the country, the findings of the study carried out by the University of Hyderabad (UoH), attain significance. The research paper was published in the Journal of Earth Sciences System.
The study led by Aninda Bhattacharya of the Department of Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences has analysed data of daily (max & min) temperatures from 1970-2019. The idea was to investigate the trend in the frequency of occurrence of days with anomalously high temperatures (referred to as heat waves) and days with anomalously low temperature (referred to as cold waves) over different climatic regions of India.
Their conclusion was that heat waves have become more common in summer while cold waves have less so common in winter in the recent decade in India. Heat waves and cold waves have severe adverse impacts on agriculture, human health and industrial production, they said in their publication.
Human influence on the climate system is predominant and proven. Human-caused (anthropogenic) climate change has caused roughly one degrees Celsius increase in global average surface temperature since the pre-industrial era. Climate change has worsened the frequency, intensity, and impacts of some of the weather events such as heat waves and cold waves, the researchers from the UoH say.
The Indian scenario
India is broadly divided into four major climatic zones:
Montane (climate is harsher, with lower temperatures in mountainous regions)
Subtropical humid climate
Arid and semi-arid climate
Dry and wet tropical climate
Now, a heat wave is defined as the occurrence of anomalously higher temperatures for consecutive three days or more. The authors found that heat wave events are increasing at the rate of 0.6 events per decade.
New Delhi: Children bathe in a reservoir to get relief from the ongoing heatwave, during a hot summer day, on the banks of river Yamuna in New Delhi, Thursday, July 1, 2021. (PTI Photo/Ravi Choudhary)
Similarly, a cold wave is defined as the occurrence of anomalously lower temperatures for consecutive three days or more. The authors found that cold wave events are decreasing at the rate of 0.4 events per decade.
Their overall observations based on nearly 40 years of data points to days with anomalously higher temperatures increasing during summer every year while the days with anomalously lower temperatures are decreasing during winter every year.
The authors also deduced the opposite trends in heat waves and cold waves. For instance, heat waves are more common over the arid and semi-arid climatic region while cold waves are less so common over the same region.
To facilitate the complicated observational and analytical study, the researchers compared the current generation computer models used to predict future climate with India Meteorological Department (IMD) observations.
The Authors found that the models fail to capture the observed spatial features in the trend in the frequency of occurrence of heat waves and cold waves in toto over India. This underlines the need for a better process-level understanding of the factors governing these extreme events and their representations in the models over the Indian region.
This study was led by Aninda Bhattacharya, Dr. Abin Thomas, and Dr Vijay Kanawade from the Centre of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, School of Physics at the University of Hyderabad, in collaboration with Prof Chandan Sarangi from IIT Madras, Dr P. S. Roy from World Resources Institute (WRI) and Dr Vijay K. Soni from India Meteorological Department, Ministry of Earth Sciences, New Delhi.
The weather department has already forecast a severe month of April heat across most parts of the country. Other climate studies have also shown an increasing trend of cyclones (pre monsoon) period in the Arabian Sea, which is leading to an increase in temperatures and overall climate situation over the country in the last few years. They also linked it to unusually heavy rainfall episodes.
The IMD forecast for monsoon
Meanwhile, India is expected to get normal rainfall during the southwest monsoon season despite the evolving El Nino conditions, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said.
The IMD prediction is in variance with the forecast of Skymet Weather, a private forecasting agency which has predicted “below-normal” monsoon rains in the country. Skymet also does an annual monsoon forecast.
El Nino, which is the warming of the waters in the Pacific Ocean near South America, is generally associated with the weakening of monsoon winds and dry weather in India. It is one of the key parameters of the 15 plus parameter model employed by the IMD to make its annual long term mo soon forecast that is critical for the planning of agriculture and water resources management.
Their projection was for “a mild recession starting later this year, with a recovery over the subsequent two years,” according to the minutes, released Wednesday. That would spark a jump in unemployment. They estimated the economy would fully recover by 2025.
The economic outlook is always difficult to foretell with any confidence, and staff members underscored their uncertainty at the meeting. If banks don’t pull back on lending as much as they expect, then the economy might not suffer as much. But if the financial system were to face even more stress, then the prognosis could be much worse.
“Historical recessions related to financial market problems tend to be more severe and persistent than average recessions,” staff noted, according to the minutes.
For their part, officials with an actual say in rate policy aren’t quite forecasting a recession. At the March meeting, their median projection was for the U.S. economy to grow 0.4 percent — a rate so slow that it could easily dip negative. Meanwhile, they expect unemployment to rise roughly a percentage point, conditions that would be consistent with an economic contraction.
Fed officials expect the recent string of bank failures to lead cash to flow less freely through the economy as lenders are less willing to part with it, something Chair Jerome Powell has noted could act as essentially another rate hike.
Central bank policymakers are considering whether another rate hike will be needed when they meet next in May, or if borrowing costs are high enough for now to bring inflation down over time.
Members of the Fed’s rate-setting committee said in March “that it was too early to assess with confidence the magnitude of the effect of a credit tightening on economic activity and inflation, and that it was important to continue to closely monitor developments,” according to the minutes.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
BRUSSELS — The next big transatlantic trade fight is primed to explode.
Negotiators from Brussels and Washington are scrambling to solve a five-year dispute over steel and aluminum dating back to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to slap tariffs on European imports. They have until October to get a deal but are still so far apart that European officials now fear the chances of an agreement are slim.
Without a deal, both sides could reimpose billions of dollars worth of trade tariffs on each other’s goods — potentially spreading well beyond steel to hit products including French wines, U.S. rum, vodka and denim jeans.
While U.S. negotiators are still hopeful that an agreement can be reached in time, the political fallout of failure for President Joe Biden would be serious, with U.S. exports facing a hit just ahead of his potential re-election battle in 2024. More broadly, another breakdown in trade relations between Europe and the United States would heap further pressure on a relationship that is already under strain from Biden’s green subsidies package for American industries.
With a more assertive China threatening to disrupt supply lines, and Russia’s war in Ukraine straining global commerce, the last thing world trade needs is a new crisis between major Western allies. Six EU officials briefed on the talks worry that’s exactly what will happen.
“The start positions are just too far away,” said one of the officials, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss sensitive matters. “The huge concessions that would have to be made are politically not realistic in that timeframe.”
The transatlantic disagreement is a hangover from the days of Trump, who imposed tariffs on €6.4 billion worth of European steel and exports in 2018. The tariffs were extra sensitive because Trump had imposed them on grounds of national security.
After he came to power, Biden agreed to a temporary cessation of hostilities rather than a complete end to the dispute. His aim was for negotiators to work jointly on making steel production greener and fighting global overcapacity. The unofficial U.S. goal is also to squeeze Beijing’s dumping of Chinese steel, which is made with far more coal-fired power.
But unless a new deal is struck by October, the risk is that tariffs return. A summit between Biden and EU leaders has now been penciled in for October, potentially to coincide with the final leg of talks on the dispute.
China hawks
Officials in Brussels see the ongoing negotiations as just another push from the U.S. to force them into taking a harder line against China. “The language just seems written to tackle one country specifically,” said one of the European officials.
Discussions only recently picked up pace through the exchange of a U.S. concept paper and then an EU response. Those texts showed how far apart the two sides are on key issues, the officials said.
Washington wants to impose tariffs on imported steel or aluminum products, which would increase progressively based on how carbon-intensive the manufacturing process is, according to the proposal seen by POLITICO. Countries that join the agreement, which would be open to nations outside the EU, would face lower tariffs, or none at all, compared to those that do not.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump at a rally at Waco airport | Brandon Bell/Getty Images
The EU’s response — also seen by POLITICO — does not include any form of tariffs, according to the officials. Brussels fears the American plan for tariffs goes against the rules of the World Trade Organization, which is a no-go for the EU.
But a senior Biden administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations, told POLITICO that tariffs should not be off the table.
“That’s a pretty powerful tool for driving the market both to reduce carbon intensity as well as to reset the playing field to counteract non-market practices and excess capacity,” the U.S. official said. “What we’ve been trying to understand and respond to, in part, is what are those reasons that the EU has to have concerns about a tariff-type structure.”
Karl Tachelet, deputy director general of European steel association Eurofer, said: “We haven’t seen any real ambition or vision to use this as an opportunity to tackle excess capacity or decarbonization. So it can only lead to a clash of views.”
Americans don’t see it that way.
“The U.S. and the EU share a commitment to tackling the dual threat of non-market excess capacity and the climate crisis, and the Biden administration is committed to developing a high-ambition framework that accomplishes those objectives for our workers and these critical industries,” said Adam Hodge, spokesperson for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.
A student does steel work in Dayton, Ohio | Megan Jelinger/AFP via Getty Images
But the senior Biden administration official argued that the EU proposal lacks ambition. It makes “tweaks around the margin” without actually attacking “the fundamental problem” that the two sides agreed to address when they called their truce.
“Our concern with the EU’s paper is that it doesn’t really change the dynamic of trade,” the U.S. official said.
“If we’re going to change the course of the impact of non-market excess capacity on market economies like the U.S. and EU, as well as really thinking about how can we use trade as a tool to drive decarbonization, we need to produce something that’s different and more ambitious,” the official added.
Several officials said Washington is also seeking an exemption from the EU’s carbon border tax, which imposes a tax on some imported goods to make sure European businesses are not undercut by cheaper products made in countries with weaker environmental rules.
Such an exemption for the U.S. is another no-go for Brussels. A European Commission spokesperson said giving the U.S. a pass on the carbon border tax would constitute a breach of WTO rules and “cannot be compared with” the U.S. steel and aluminum measures.
Workers at LB Steel LLC in Illinois manufacture wheel assemblies for high-speed trains | Scott Olson/Getty Images
Another European concern is that the U.S. wouldn’t scrap the possibility of re-imposing tariffs on the EU, even though the WTO branded them as illegal. Under Trump, Brussels argued only a complete withdrawal of the tariffs would satisfy the EU, contending the duties were an illegal slap in the face of an ally.
The senior U.S. official said that using national security to justify the tariffs — a rationale that would surely draw opposition in Brussels — “hasn’t been a part of our conversation with the EU to date.” But the Biden administration’s concept paper wasn’t written with WTO compliance top of mind, the official added.
Landing zone
Brussels and Washington are now negotiating to find a landing zone.
“Both sides are coming from two different positions on this,” said one of the European officials, while stressing that “there is a mutual interest to find a solution.”
Others were more pessimistic. Either way, a Plan B is taking shape in the background. Several of the European officials stressed the EU and the U.S. can also buy more time by prolonging the current ceasefire. “The deadline is always flexible,” said Uri Dadush, a Washington-based fellow at the Bruegel think tank. “Both sides can easily agree to extend.”
Steven Overly reported from Washington. Sarah Anne Aarup and Camille Gijs contributed reporting from Brussels.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Biden pledged to halt new oil and gas development on federal land during his 2020 campaign, and he and Democrats in Congress passed landmark climate legislation last summer aimed at weaning huge swaths of the economy off of fossil fuels. But the surge in oil prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced the administration into an awkward embrace of the oil industry, as Biden countered Republican accusations that his policies were to blame for the skyrocketing price at the gas pump that was stoking inflation.
Approving Willow would be just the latest shift by Biden toward the political center as he moves toward a potential reelection bid. He similarly dismayed liberals last week by saying he would not veto a GOP-led repeal of changes to D.C.’s criminal code.
The White House defended Biden’s environmental record Saturday in comments to POLITICO, saying Biden’s policies have made the U.S. “a magnet for clean energy manufacturing and jobs” with policies that help the U.S. come closer to meeting climate goals. A White House official said that using oil and gas is still consistent with Biden’s near- and long-term emissions targets, which the official said the U.S. is on track to meet.
“This approach has not changed — nor will it. Our climate goals are cutting emissions in half by 2030 and reaching net-zero by 2050 — not 2023,” the official said. “That has always meant that oil will continue to be a part of the energy mix in the short-term while we shore up domestic clean energy production for the long-term.”
Environmental groups acknowledged Saturday that they were largely in the dark about the White House’s plans, but said they believed that the current discussions inside the administration were largely over whether to limit the number of drilling sites at the Willow project to two rather than three. Conoco had proposed building five well pads.
“It sounds like different groups in the White House are still discussing” the potential size of the project, said one environmental advocate who had been in contact with the administration late Friday.
“They told us they had nothing to offer” on the state of project deliberations, added the person, who was granted anonymity to describe internal White House deliberations.
But if the reports of the approval are true, Biden’s shift to the center on oil would threaten to demoralize the climate activists he needs to support him in 2024, said Jamal Raad, co-founder and senior adviser of the group Evergreen Action.
“It will be harder for us and climate activists to rally around this president come next year,” Raad said, explaining the action would detract from his many accomplishments, such as the $370 billion in climate and clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, while putting the onus on Biden to issue tougher environmental rules on cars and power plants.
Conoco declined to comment until it hears a decision directly from the administration.
Conoco Chief Executive Ryan Lance last week urged the administration to approve Willow, saying the project was in line with the Biden administration’s recent exhortations to the industry to increase oil production to help batten down prices.
“This is exactly what this administration has been asking our industry to do over the last couple of years,” Lance told an energy conference in Houston.
Regardless of the size, any plan would call for drilling oil and building miles of pipelines and roads, a gravel pit, an air strip and other infrastructure in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 36,875-square-mile patch of federal land in the relatively undeveloped Arctic wilderness. It would produce as much as 600,000 barrels of oil over its three-decade lifetime.
The project would also add nearly 280 million tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere over that period, according to the Interior Department’s environmental analysis. That would be the equivalent of adding two new coal-fired power plants to the U.S. electricity system every year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s emissions calculator.
The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, originally set aside by the Harding administration for potential oil drilling in 1923, is outside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, another swath of northern Alaska that Biden has declared off-limits for oil development.
Environmentalists said they were still holding onto hope based on the administration’s denial that it made a final decision to OK the project, despite multiple news reports saying that an announcement of the approval would be made in the coming days. (Bloomberg News first reported Friday night that the administration had decided to greenlight it.)
“Great! Then there is still time to turn this all around!!!” Natural Resources Defense Council spokesperson Anne Hawke posted on Twitter after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denied on Friday that a final decision had been made.
Hawke also reached out to Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg for help persuading Biden, tweeting at the young advocate: “In just days, the US will approve a massive oil project in Alaska. Can you help us tell US @POTUS to #StopWillowProject?”
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a longtime climate advocate, expressed dismay at the news.
“We cannot allow the Willow Project to move forward,” he tweeted late Friday. “We must build a clean energy future — not return to a dark, fossil-fueled past.”
An approval, if it comes, would infuriate environmental groups and continue a year-long strengthening of the administration’s relationship with the oil industry. But it would also come as market analysts are forecasting that oil prices will remain volatile for the next several years, which would make killing the project politically tricky.
Biden himself has softened his rhetoric on transitioning the country away from fossil fuels, and he has repeatedly pressed the oil and gas industry to increase production in the short term to keep prices lower.
“We are still going to need oil and gas for a while.” he said during his State of the Union speech last month.
The Willow development is the rare large-scale oil project to be announced in recent years in the United States, where the industry has instead shifted its focus to drilling smaller, cheaper and faster projects using fracking to tap into shale fields in the Southwest. If approved, construction could start soon, and additional construction in Alaska’s North Slope for Willow will occur throughout the summer and fall, the company has said.
Alaskan native tribes have expressed split opinions on the project, with some warning it would degrade their environment and others welcoming its potential economic gains.
“The Willow Project is a new opportunity to ensure a viable future for our communities, creating generational economic stability for our people and advancing our self-determination,” said Nagruk Harcharek, president of the nonprofit Voice of Arctic Iñupiat, in a statement Saturday. “North Slope Iñupiat communities have waited nearly a generation for Willow to advance.”
Yet that urgency to develop the project, and the signals from the White House, were disheartening to environmental groups.
“To us, it all sucks because it flies in the face of meeting our climate goals. So we’re going to keep fighting until there is a final record of decision,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs with the League of Conservation Voters.
Some of Biden’s green allies suggested the move could have repercussions for Democrats in 2024. Along with the long-debated Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, which Biden effectively killed in one of his first acts as president, Willow has joined the ranks of fossil fuel projects that in earlier decades would have flown under radar but have now taken on outsized political significance.
The Biden administration is caught in the middle, hyping the Inflation Reduction Act it signed into law as the biggest climate-related legislation ever but also asking companies to keep pumping barrels to keep fuel prices low in the here-and-now. That law has also won praise from the oil and gas sector for its incentives for carbon capture and storage and clean hydrogen – technologies the fossil fuel producers are pursuing.
Raad, from Evergreen Action, said the Willow project “was something that really took the internet and social media by storm the last few weeks – because it is a physical thing and a physical place that feels real.” And that has implications for Biden’s hopes for reelection, he added.
“There’s just no escaping the fact that we’re going to need to rally young folks and folks interested in climate next year to win,” Raad said. “And this does not help in any shape or form.”
As of March 2, environmental advocates were citing 9,000 videos protesting Willow on the social media platform TikTok. Former Vice President Al Gore earlier this week weighed in to say it would be “recklessly irresponsible” to approve Willow.
Deirdre Shelly, campaigns director with the youth environmental group Sunrise Movement, said her organization is already strategizing for the next election and that approving Willow would make organizers’ jobs more difficult.
“This is just a huge disappointment. … It does feel like an about-face,” she said. “It makes it even harder for us to convince young people that they need to vote, that the Democratic Party leaders will act on climate.”
But the administration also felt heavy pressure from the oil industry and the state’s politically powerful Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Murkowski has long championed Willow as a needed boost to the Alaskan economy, which has been troubled for years as the overall oil industry has picked up stakes to move to the cheaper opportunities in the Lower 48.
Oil and gas companies and energy-state lawmakers would have been ready to blame the rejection of Willow for any subsequent rise in energy costs, even though the Biden Interior Department has approved new permits to drill on public land at a faster rate than his predecessors.
Murkowski, speaking Friday in Houston before the announcement, said she had met with the White House last week to warn that the administration was legally bound to approve the project, given that Conoco held oil leases on federal land.
“The fact of the matter is these are valid existing leases that Conoco holds,” Murkowski told reporters. “If the administration [had] basically not allowed them to be able to access those leases, what follows then? … Alaska litigation is always something that we have to reckon with.”
Catherine Morehouse contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Hyderabad: Tollywood‘s Power Star Pawan Kalyan’s remuneration for his upcoming film has once again caught fans attention. The actor is set to star in a remake of the Tamil film Vinodhaya Sitham and it has created quite a stir in the Telugu film industry.
The film, which also stars Sai Dharam Tej, has gotten a lot of attention because of Pawan Kalyan’s reported salary, which is a whopping Rs 75 crores for just ’30 days of shooting’. This works out to Rs 2.5 crores per day, making him the highest-paid Tollywood actor ever.
The film’s producers anticipate big business and are willing to pay such a high price to secure Pawan Kalyan’s presence. The remake is being directed by Samuthirakani, and fans are eagerly awaiting its release.
Pawan Kalyan’s popularity has skyrocketed in recent years, thanks to his political forays and ongoing success in the film industry.
He is also working on OG, a two-part film for which he is being paid Rs 79 crores, according to multiple reports. He is expected to earn between Rs 150 and Rs 160 crore from both films.
Pawan Kalyan is also active in his political party, Jana Sena, in addition to his professional activities. He has been actively campaigning for the party and using his earnings to help it grow.
