"Michelle Wu says Boston is ready for change. But is Boston ready for Michelle Wu?" by Milton J. Valencia Globe Staff, June 30, 2019
During the Monday morning commute, hundreds of volunteers are expected to fan out on trains and at stations across Greater Boston to protest the MBTA fare hikes — part of a grass-roots mobilization that includes activists, candidates, and several elected officials.
Their lead organizer? City Councilor Michelle Wu, of Roslindale, a 34-year-old transplant from Chicago by way of Harvard who has emerged as one of the fiercest critics of the management of the MBTA.
Then it isn't grass roots!
“This is one example of many deep issues that are in crisis state, or approaching crisis state, that are entirely fixable if we just marshal the urgency and political will,” Wu said last week in an interview ahead of
WU, Page B5.
Thank God she got off.
[flip to below fold]
Trump steps into North Korea and agrees with Kim Jong Un to resume talks
The sub headline says a visit heavy in symbolism with a vow to restart talks, and as soon as I saw the byline, well, you know, and I think they are all friends now because "a showman by nature and past profession, Trump delighted in the drama of the moment" -- so freeze that!
You can chew on this snack as we ride along, reader:
"Whole Foods courts local food makers" by Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, June 30, 2019
Whole Foods summoned 250 food entrepreneurs from across the Northeast to the Seaport on June 20 for a major networking event in an effort to restore the grocery store’s strained relationship with local food makers. For veterans of the farmer’s market and the natural food store, it was a chance to break into the big time.
The summit represented an important moment for Whole Foods, too. For decades, the company cultivated small mom-and-pop brands, helping them grow and ex-
Okay, that's enough. I'm wrapping it up and saving more for later.
Already late for school.
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The A2 National lead:
"Reefer madness or pot paradise? The surprising legacy of the place where legal weed began" by Jack Healy New York Times, June 30, 2019
DENVER — Serenity Christensen, 14, is too young to set foot in one of Colorado’s many marijuana shops, but she was able to spot a business opportunity in legal weed. She is a Girl Scout, and this year, she and her mother decided to sell their cookies outside a dispensary. “Good business,” Serenity said, but on the other side of Denver, legalization has turned another high school student, David Perez, against the warehouselike marijuana cultivations clustered around his neighborhood. He said their skunky aroma often smacks him in the face when he walks out his front door.
These are the ripples of five years of legal marijuana. Colorado’s first-in-the-nation experiment has reshaped health, politics, rural culture, and criminal justice in surprising ways that often defy both the worst warnings of critics and blue-sky rhetoric of the marijuana industry, giving a glimpse of what the future may hold as more and more states adopt and debate full legalization.
Can't see it through the smoke.
Since recreational sales began in 2014, more people here are visiting emergency rooms for marijuana-related problems, and hospitals report higher rates of mental health cases tied to marijuana. At the same time, thousands of others make uneventful stops at dispensaries every day, like the hiking guide in the college town of Boulder who keeps a few marijuana gummies in a locked bag to help her relax before bed.
Okay, we get it, NYT.
Close 'em down.
Some families rattled by their children’s marijuana problems have moved, seeking refuge in less permissive states, but overall, state surveys do not show an increase in young people smoking pot, and although low-level marijuana charges have plummeted, the racial divide in drug arrests has persisted. State numbers show that African Americans in Colorado were still being arrested on marijuana charges at nearly twice the rate of white people.
“You don’t see drug-addled people roaming the streets, but we haven’t created a utopia,” said Jonathan Singer, who was one of just two state legislators who endorsed the Colorado ballot measure that made it legal for adults 21 and over to buy, consume, and grow recreational marijuana.
You mean the potheads aren't shitting the streets like in the safe-injection cities?
Singer nodded to his 3-year-old, who sat in the back seat one afternoon as they headed to a picnic. “The fact that I’m willing to have this conversation in front of my daughter,” he said, “shows how much we’ve destigmatized this.”
She's 3. Doesn't even understand what you are talking about!
This is the world reconfigured by legalization — the world that 18-year-old Ethan Pierson grew up in. He was born the same year that Colorado’s first medical marijuana law took effect. He watched dispensaries bloom along the commercial streets leading to his high school in suburban Lakewood.
“If you live in Colorado, it feels like somebody’s always smoking next to you,” said Pierson, who abstains.
Doctors, educators, and state officials have been particularly worried about the effects of legalization on Colorado’s youth. Would a proliferation of recreational pot shops make marijuana seem innocuous to teenagers, despite studies showing that it is harmful to their developing minds? Would teenage pot use spike? How would it affect graduation rates and school discipline?
Now roll up your sleeve so we can inject 37 different vaccines into you, thank you.
Five years in, surveys show that most Colorado teenagers are like Pierson: They may have tried it, but 80% are not current marijuana users. State surveys show that teenage marijuana use has fallen slightly since medical marijuana sales ramped up in 2009, and has been basically flat since full legalization, but Pierson and other students and parents said that legalization had changed marijuana’s image and availability.
Because it is no longer illegal and cool. Now it is something your uncool parents do!
Older siblings or even parents can now buy it legally and pass it along. Classmates take Snapchat videos of one another smoking on the edges of school. Instead of dime bags, there is now a buffet of concentrates, tinctures, and edibles — still illegal for young people, but easy to come by.
Did the New York Times just infer that parents are buying it for their kids?
Maybe it is time to tell the bus driver someone is smoking back here.
“It’s easy to conceal,” Pierson said. “They carry it around in their purse or pencil bag.”
Some school administrators say they are catching more students using marijuana and fewer drinking alcohol. School disciplinary numbers show that marijuana is a leading reason that students are punished or handed over to the police, but the overall number of students being expelled for drug infractions has actually fallen since legalization, in part because Colorado lawmakers sought to get rid of “zero tolerance” policies at schools around the same time pot was legalized.
No offense, but I no longer believe $elf-$erving $chool admini$trators, sorry.
In a fourth-floor juvenile courtroom in Denver, where children stand in front of a magistrate on charges including curfew violations and fighting, the number of marijuana possession cases is thinning out. The share of teenagers arrested for marijuana offenses has fallen by about 20% since Colorado voted to legalize, but black youths and adults are still getting arrested at much higher rates than white or Hispanic Coloradans, according to a state report. In 2017, black people in the state were arrested on marijuana charges at double the rate of white ones, according to the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice.
Why do they always have to turn the issue into a race thing?
That's where my print paper but the joint down, but the web version picked it up and kept on smoking:
Some parents said that marijuana was becoming too normal, another legally permissible health risk with slick marketing, like alcohol or cigarettes, but marijuana shops cannot advertise on billboards. They are required to check identification at the door. They are supposed to be located at least 1,000 feet from schools. Edibles can no longer look like gummy bears or fruit or be called “candies.”
To some parents, this is not enough. They say their children smell marijuana on hikes, and count dispensaries on their rides home from school. Before play dates, Ben Cort now asks other parents whether they keep marijuana in the house before his daughter visits a new friend’s home. Sujata Fretz, a physician in Denver, said she found herself having a conversation with her 13-year-old son about marijuana that was shaped by the proliferation of the industry.
“I’m forced to have a conversation with my kids because it’s more public and out there,” Fretz said. “I can’t just say, ‘Hey drugs are bad’ when it’s legal and there are stores that sell it. My goal is to get them to not use marijuana.”
Yeah, God forbid you would be forced to converse with your kids.
The numbers seem clear: Nearly twice as many Coloradans smoke pot as the rest of America. The number of adults who use has edged up since legalization.
Now, the battle between legalization’s supporters and foes is focused on whether heavier pot use is hurting people’s health. It is a high-stakes question, and Andrew Monte, an emergency and medical toxicology physician and researcher at the University of Colorado Hospital, is on the front lines, trying to decipher what the numbers are saying.
Hospital data analyzed by Monte and others indicate that more people are arriving at emergency rooms for marijuana-related reasons. He has treated many of them. Some are heavy marijuana users with severe vomiting. Others are children who have eaten edibles, accidentally or not. They come to the ER disoriented, dehydrated, or hallucinating after consuming too much marijuana.
“There’s a disconnect between what was proposed as a completely safe drug,” Monte said. “Nothing is completely safe,” but none of the emergency-room visits tracked by researchers in recent studies ended with a patient’s death, and Monte, who has treated and studied so many cannabis cases, said that thousands of Coloradans every day safely use marijuana.
Now write that pre$cription for a pill from the pharmaceutical conglomerates and make $ure the patient gets it filled.
A retired farmer in Southern Colorado takes it as a balm for his aching feet. It was how a woman in Denver surmounted the nausea and pain after a double mastectomy and chemotherapy. Veterans fought to use it for post-traumatic stress. Children use it for severe seizure disorders. It is how Alli Fronzaglia, who runs a women’s hiking group, relaxes before bed.
“It’s not wreaking havoc,” she said. “There are people using responsibly in Colorado.”
Not good enough. Your suffering means nothing when it comes to the kids, you know, the ones that will later be sent into wars based on lies.
Stephanie Angell, 63, used to think she was one of them. Then she began smoking heavily every day, after she learned she had multiple sclerosis in 2014. She started smoking after waking up, and then gravitated to the thick, amberlike extractions that offer higher concentrations of psychoactive THC. Dispensaries offered specials, she said, like Edible Wednesdays.
“I began to smoke morning, noon, and night,” she said.
Compared with the 72,000 drug overdose deaths in America in 2017, with the crimes and loss spawned by the opioid crisis, marijuana addiction, users say, can seem too innocuous to even merit attention. State health data have not shown a surge of patients seeking addiction treatment, but Angell said her habit had left her life dull, like a worn pencil. She lost interest in cross-stitching and other hobbies and felt like she had to smoke before going to the movies or to dinner.
You know, I agree. Just because she has a problem, the whole ball of wax should be shut down.
Angell still supports legalization, but she and other heavy users say the risks of marijuana dependence are real, and are being overlooked as medical and recreational marijuana spread to 34 states. Although legalization efforts failed this year in states including New Jersey and New York, Illinois last week became the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana.
“There’s a real denial,” Angell said. “It’s a very subtle, subtle addiction.”
Yeah, you are better off hoisting a four-pack of brewskis as my C1 front-page advises.
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[Interestingly enough, the full-page A4 advertisement opposite that article is JUUL's attempt to prohibit underaged smoking!]
The co-lead, located to the left and below:
NYC pride parade is one of largest in movement’s history
Wow, look at all the bright colors!
The Daily Briefing, from the bottom up:
Illinois city seeks to help finance women’s baseball museum
What are they smoking over there?
Racist, antigay student fliers challenge Wyoming district
1 child dies, 3 sickened by E. coli linked to San Diego fair
Officials warn of wasp ‘super nests’ in Alabama
The next two items were what I call Invisible Inks, meaning they did not appear in print but did appear in the web version of the paper:
10 dead in Dallas-area small plane crash
Wasps took it down?
Navy SEAL trial exposes divide in normally secretive force
Must have been a closed hearing.
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My page A4 World lead was the goings on in Sudan, and after having reserved judgement it appears that what we are seeing there is another color-coded coup attempt after the military thought dumping Bashir would be enough. It's not lost on me that Sudan was one of the Palestinians most steadfast allies, and now the globalists have double-crossed the fellows who helped them in Yemen. The Globe telling us on page B2 that Sudan reminds immigrants why they’re fighting to stay here is a de facto confirmation.
The co-lead below:
"Dozens killed as Taliban bombs in 4 Humvees rip through Afghan district" by Taimoor Shah and Fahim Abed New York Times, June 30, 2019
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — When the Taliban overran the district center of Maruf in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar this year, the government resorted to a familiar tactic: simply relocate the district office 25 miles to the south to say it had not fallen.
From its new location, the government tried to offer basic services and even sent a team of election workers to register voters before presidential elections scheduled for September, but in the predawn hours Sunday, the Taliban, whose fighters had encircled the old center of Maruf for nearly two years, came for the new location — ramming as many as four vehicles packed with explosives into the government compound, leaving a trail of death and carnage.
Or someone purporting to be Taliban so that the U.S. forces won't leave.
The casualty toll was not immediately clear, as local authorities were characteristically reluctant to acknowledge the extent of the attack, but security officials in the province, as well as in the country’s capital, Kabul, put the number of dead, mostly police officers, at 34 to 50.
The country’s election commission said that eight of its workers who had been staying at the district center were among the dead.
Aziz Ahmad Azizi, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar, said that the attack had been heavy and that the toll looked high. “A delegation was appointed to investigate the casualties and the damages,” he said.
Muhammad Yuosuf Yunasi, a member of the provincial council in Kandahar, said, “I don’t understand why the election commission decided to send its employees to a district which is insecure and on the verge of collapse.” Yunasi said that most of the residents had abandoned their homes as fighting in the district had persisted during the past couple of years. “I am wondering who they were going to register for upcoming elections,” he added, referring to the commission employees.
I hate to say it, but this now looks like a complete non event. It's made-up propaganda.
I mean, I was already wondering why the New York Times and Bo$ton Globe suddenly took interest when I saw the headline.
The Afghan Interior Ministry said in a statement that four Humvees laden with explosives had been involved in the attack and that the offensive had been pushed back by Afghan forces. The ministry said that 25 Taliban fighters had been killed.
The Interior Ministry and the Defense Ministry said the district center remained under government control, but neither provided any details about how many of the roughly 70 security officials believed to be at the district center had survived the back-to-back blasts.
Where did they move it to this time?
The number of deadly attacks in Afghanistan has increased as talks between Taliban officials and American diplomats continue in Qatar. The assaults suggest that there is unlikely to be a reprieve in violence anytime soon, following a couple of years of record casualties. Both the Taliban and government forces seem determined to turn battlefield gains into negotiating leverage.
Don't worry, after 13 years of peace talks being reported in my war pre$$, I wasn't taking them seriously at all. It's more stalling tactics and public perception management.
Deadly attacks were also reported in other parts of the country, with bodies piling up on both sides.
And all of a sudden, my lying, war-promoting pre$$ cares!
In eastern Paktia province, the Taliban early Sunday attacked a police unit tasked with protecting a dam. Taj Mohammad Mangal, a member of the Paktia provincial council, said at least 21 Afghan forces and 30 Taliban were killed in the clashes that lasted several hours.
In an attack in the northern province of Kunduz Sunday, at least 13 members of the security forces were killed when the Taliban targeted a military base and two security outposts in the district of Imam Sahib, local officials said, and in Balkh province, also in the north, the Defense Ministry said it had killed 45 Taliban fighters, including nine commanders, in airstrikes.
Despite the violence, expectations are high that the latest round of peace talks in Doha, the capital of Qatar, will finalize agreements on a provisional schedule for the withdrawal of US troops and on Taliban guarantees that Afghan soil will not be used for attacks against the United States or its allies.
Whose expectations?
Agreement on those issues is seen as the key to unlocking negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government on the political future of the country and on a cease-fire.
“We have had six rounds of talks before, and in this round we are hoping to finalize the results of those talks into an agreement,” said Suhail Shaheen, a spokesman for the Taliban’s negotiating team. “We are still discussing the text. But so far, it has been smooth.”
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Now the Daily Briefing at the bottom third of the page, going left to right:
"A Venezuelan Navy captain accused by the government of plotting a rebellion has died in custody a week after his arrest, underlining President Nicolás Maduro’s increasingly ferocious repression campaign amid a spiraling economic crisis. The captain, Rafael Acosta, is the first of more than 100 active and retired Venezuelan officers jailed by the government on treason charges to die in custody after allegations of torture. His lawyer, Alonso Medina Roa, said the captain had been detained in good health but was in a wheelchair when he was brought into a courthouse Friday. The lawyer said his client was struggling to speak or move, showed visible signs of beatings, and kept repeating the word “help” to his legal team. He was taken to a hospital from the courthouse and died hours later, the lawyer said. Venezuela’s information minister, Jorge Rodríguez, a close adviser to Maduro, confirmed Acosta’s death on Saturday night and asked the country’s attorney general to investigate the “unfortunate event,” without providing details. The head of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, condemned the captain’s death, adding in a message on Twitter that “the crimes of Nicolás Maduro won’t be left unpunished.” Acosta was one of half a dozen former and active officers detained in recent days over allegations of plotting to overthrow Maduro. On Wednesday, Rodríguez presented a video purporting to show Acosta discussing coup plans on a conference call. The video could not be independently confirmed. Maduro has survived one coup and one assassination attempt in the past two years, as the country’s economic collapse has weakened his grip on power. His government, however, has also repeatedly used unconfirmed coup accusations to jail and repress political opponents and instill fear in the armed forces.
That's where the New York Times print slop ended and where the web version continued:
Last year, a detained Caracas politician, Fernando Albán Salazar, fell to his death from a window during his interrogation by intelligence officers. The government claimed it was a suicide. Acosta was detained the day that Maduro met with Michelle Bachelet, the UN human rights commissioner, in Caracas. After the meeting, Bachelet said she had agreed with the government to evaluate its anti-torture policies. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment following news of Acosta’s death. His wife, Waleswka Pérez, told local reporters that her husband had done nothing beyond discussing in family circles Venezuela’s economic crisis and chronic corruption. She said she had not seen or heard from her husband since his detention....."
I'm thinking how Morsi came and went, no problem, so why should this be? It's not like he was waterboarded or is going to be kept without charges forever like at Gitmo.
To be honest with you, the hypocritical New York Times flogging this pos is just downright offensive, "unconfirmed coup" and all -- as if they would admit it.
I mean, it is not like it hasn't happened before. Chavez was the victim in 2002, and was then promptly reinstalled after the masses rose up. New York Times must have forgot that!
"A soccer referee in Norway who pretended to be a teenage girl to meet hundreds of boys and young men online, some of whom he later raped, was sentenced to 16 years in prison last week, a lawyer for some of the victims said Sunday. The referee, identified only as Henrik, was also ordered to pay more than 200 of his victims compensation totaling about $2 million, said Christian Lundin, the main lawyer representing victims in the case, in an e-mail. “This is the highest compensation in Norwegian history so far” for a case like this, Lundin added. Henrik, now 27, called himself Sandra or Henriette online to meet boys from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, asking them to send explicit images and videos, prosecutors said in November. Such behavior is known as catfishing. He contacted his victims on messaging applications, and when they complied with his requests, he threatened to publish what they had sent him on YouTube unless they kept providing material. He talked a few into meeting in person and then raped them. The online abuse started in 2011, but most of the offenses in the indictment were committed from 2014 to 2016, said Guro Hansson Bull, one of the three prosecutors who handled the case, in a telephone interview in November. During that period, 470 boys and young men, ages 9 to 18, were abused. Of those, 300 — “the most severe cases,” she said — were included in the indictment. Lundin said 228 were entitled to compensation for their ordeals. Authorities found more than 16,000 sexually explicit films of victims on the suspect’s computer. Besides sexual assault, the defendant was accused of paying some of the boys for sexual acts, which took place in his home in Fetsund, a riverside town about 18 miles east of Oslo, and in other places nearby. Gunhild Laerum, one of his lawyers, said that her client had cried throughout the trial. “He has realized what he has done to his victims and what a burden he has been to society,” she said. Laerum said any appeal, which has to be lodged within two weeks, would be based on the length of the sentence (New York Times)."
Yeah, the poor soccer perv.
You would think he was the victim -- and maybe he is!
If not, treat him like the pig he is:
"Millions of pigs are being culled in China and Vietnam in an effort to stop the spread of African swine fever, with cases of the disease already reported in six Asian countries. Some 2.8 million pigs, representing about 10 percent of Vietnam’s herd, have been culled in the Southeast Asian nation, state media reported this week. According to officials, the disease has spread to larger-scale farming facilities. In China, the world’s top pork producer, about 1.1 million pigs have been culled, with authorities saying cases have been found in 32 areas. Calculating the total impact of the outbreak on China’s herd is difficult, an analyst with the Netherlands’ Rabobank wrote this month, noting that ‘‘estimated losses range from 20 percent to 70 percent.’’ The bank, which late last year put China’s herd at an estimated 360 million animals, projected in April that between 150 million and 200 million of them will die, either after contracting African swine fever or from culling. The severe viral disease, which has no known vaccine or cure, affects domestic and wild pigs but is harmless to humans. Since first being reported in August 2018 in China’s northeastern Liaoning province, it has been found in animals in Laos, Mongolia, Cambodia, and North Korea, in addition to Vietnam, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Mongolia and Cambodia have reportedly destroyed several thousand pigs in efforts to contain it. The issue should be ‘‘prioritized within the highest levels of governments,’’ the FAO said. Curbing the outbreak won’t be easy, however, according to Dirk Pfeiffer, a veterinary epidemiologist at City University of Hong Kong. ‘‘If you haven’t got a vaccine and have a virus that survives so well in the environment, combined with that enormous density of pigs mostly kept under low biosecurity conditions,’’ he said, ‘‘stopping the spread of the virus is an enormous challenge.’’ (Washington Post)."
Related: Japan resumes commercial whaling, seen as face-saving end
It's largely lost cause, nothing new for the Japanese, but they have to eat something.
Maybe they could invade China again:
"More than 50,000 people rallied in support of the Hong Kong police on Sunday as the semi-autonomous territory braced for another day of protests on the anniversary of the former British colony’s return to China. The crowd filled a park in front of the Legislature and chanted ‘‘Thank you’’ to the police, who have been criticized for using tear gas and rubber bullets during clashes with demonstrators that left dozens injured on June 12. Some carried Chinese flags. Police estimated the turnout at 53,000. A protest march has been called for Monday, the third in three weeks, this one on the 22nd anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997. Activists have also said they will try to disrupt an annual flag-raising ceremony attended by senior Hong Kong and mainland Chinese officials in the morning. Police have erected tall barriers and shut off access to Golden Bauhinia Square, where the flag-raising will be held, to prevent protesters from massing there overnight. The anniversary always draws protests, but this year’s is expected to be larger than usual because of widespread opposition to a government proposal to allow suspects to be extradited to mainland China to face charges. More than a million people took to the streets in two previous marches in June, organizers estimate. The proposal has awakened broader fears that China is eroding the freedoms and rights that Hong Kong is guaranteed for 50 years after the handover under a ‘‘one country, two systems’’ framework. The government has already postponed debate on the extradition bill indefinitely, leaving it to die, but protest leaders want the legislation formally withdrawn and the resignation of Hong Kong’s leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam. They also are demanding an independent inquiry into police actions on June 12. Hundreds of people gathered Sunday at the Education University of Hong Kong to hold a moment of silence and lay flowers for a 21-year-old student who fell to her death the previous day in an apparent suicide. Hong Kong media reports said she wrote a message on a wall stating the protesters’ demands and asking others to persist. ‘‘It’s reminding us we need to keep going on the process of fighting with the, I wouldn’t say fighting with the government, but we need to keep going on fighting not to have the extradition law,’’ said student Gabriel Lau (Associated Press)."
I guess they are implying that the Chinese authorities killed her, huh?
I must say, my pre$$ focus on the Hong Kong protests call into question their authenticity and leave me with the feeling that is is simply another destabilization attempt against China.
Page A5:
Speaking of a recent pre$$ focus:
"Rescue ship captain held in Italy attracts donors, criticism" by Frank Jordans Associated Press, June 30, 2019
BERLIN — High-level support and almost three-quarters of a million dollars in donations poured in Sunday for the German captain of a migrant rescue ship who was arrested after she defied repeated orders to stay out of Italy and struck a police boat while bringing 40 people to port.
Carola Rackete remained under house arrest a day after her ship, the Sea-Watch 3, rammed the Italian border police motorboat that was blocking the entry to the port at Italy’s Lampedusa island.
Rackete, 31, ‘‘had no intention of hurting anyone’’ and only wanted to get her passengers to land, Italian lawyer Salvatore Tesoriero said.
The Sea-Watch 3 picked up the migrants adrift in the Mediterranean Sea off Libya on June 12 and had been in a standoff with Italian authorities for weeks before the captain decided to force the issue, reportedly saying she feared some of her passengers might harm themselves.
Oh, so what we are looking at here was a planned provocation!
‘‘Whoever saves lives isn’t a criminal,’’ two German TV personalities wrote in an appeal for contributions to help support Rackete and Sea-Watch, the German nonprofit group that owns the rescue ship. More than 24,000 donors responded, giving over $745,390 as of Sunday evening.
Maybe she could try getting into Gaza next time, huh?
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier questioned Italy’s handling of the situation.
‘‘Italy is at the heart of the European Union, a founding state of the European Union,’’ Steinmeier told German public broadcaster ZDF in an interview late Sunday. ‘‘And that’s why we can expect a country like Italy to deal with such a case differently.’’
His comments were met with a swift retort from Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who earlier called the Sea-Watch 3 captain a ‘‘criminal’’ who committed an ‘‘act of war’’ by ignoring orders to keep out of Italy’s waters.
‘‘We ask the German president to keep busy with what’s happening in Germany and possibly invite his fellow citizens to avoid breaking Italian laws, risking the killing of Italy’s law enforcement forces,’’ Salvini said in a tweet Sunday evening.
How nice is it to see Germany and Italy fighting rather than aligned in an axis, huh?
No one was injured when Sea-Watch 3 struck the border police vessel, but Italian authorities said the motorboat’s side was damaged.
Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte said Rackete could have sailed to many other ports in the Mediterranean to seek permission to dock. He accused the captain of carrying out ‘‘political blackmail . . . using 40 people.’’
Some in Germany agreed.
Petr Bystron, a foreign policy spokesman for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, said Rackete was ‘‘a common criminal.’’
My print paper then put to port while the web version kept sailing:
Speaking to German daily newspaper Welt, Bystron said she should have taken the rescued migrants to Africa or the Netherlands, since the ship sailed under the Dutch flag.
At Italy’s insistence, five fellow European Union nations including Germany said they would take the remaining 40 migrants who landed on Lampedusa.
On Sunday, another Italian coast guard boat was escorting 40 severely dehydrated migrants to tiny Lampedusa after the rescue ship of a Spanish humanitarian group spotted the migrants’ boat at sea, according to the group.
Proactiva Open Arms spokeswoman Laura Lanuza told The Associated Press that three pregnant women and four children are among the people on the migrant boat that departed Libya three days ago.
Lanuza says Malta’s coast guard was contacted but an Italian coast guard vessel arrived to escort the migrants because their boat was closer to Lampedusa than to Malta.
The governments of both Italy and Malta have repeatedly denied the rescue ships of nonprofit groups permission to port. However, the coast guards of the two countries also carry out rescues of migrants on the often unseaworthy vessels people smugglers launch from Libya.....
You know, Libya. The country Obama wrecked with his regime change operation.
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Related:
Our communities are safe — don’t let ICE tell you otherwise
In Britain, the old politics and the new
Kamala Harris owns the night
It was more a circus, than a debate.
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Page A10, and time to get that snack out again:
WHOLE FOODS, Continued from Page A1 (sic)
pand their distribution through its national network, but in the two years since Amazon announced it would acquire the grocery store, the relationship between Whole Foods and its local partners has frayed.
Amazon injected its data-driven insights into Whole Foods, streamlining its supply chain and placing a greater emphasis on larger brands. As it attempted to bring down prices, the parent company also placed limits on what could be sold and demoed in stores, and introduced new stocking fees for its suppliers. Many felt squeezed out.
As a result, it’s been a stressful, uncertain time for small food suppliers, many of whom relied heavily on their Whole Foods relationships, said Phil Kafarakis, president of the Specialty Food Association, a major trade group of artisans, importers, and purveyors that hosted its Fancy Food show in New York City in late June, but now the luxury grocer is rebuilding relationships with local food makers as it hastens to reposition itself in a rapidly shifting supermarket industry — and to recover from last year’s distribution disruptions that resulted in empty shelves and outraged customers. The company recognizes that selling organics no longer distinguishes it from its competitors in kale — Walmart and Costco now sell millions worth of organic products a year — and Whole Foods is hoping to harness the fact that consumers increasingly value local products over ones with the organic label.
So the Local Supplier Summit was a chance for the grocer to repair some of the damage and cozy up to local purveyors. All day, Whole Foods executives lavished attention on 250 local suppliers and would-be suppliers from throughout the North Atlantic region, which stretches from Maine to northern Connecticut, stressing their plans to reinvigorate their commitment to local products.....
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What do you mean Amazon is not “customer-centric?”
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Boston’s new superintendent starts Monday
The Globe tells you what to expect.
"Former Probation Department officials sue retired judge for $2.85 million" by Jeremy C. Fox Globe Correspondent, June 30, 2019
Two former top state Probation Department officials who resigned more than eight years ago amid a political patronage hiring scandal have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the former chief of the state Trial Court system, seeking damages of $2.85 million.
Makes you want to hit a wall over the charges of conspiracy, and fortunately it is nothing like that today (so where are they sticking them now, MBTA and DCF).
Former probation commissioner John J. “Jack” O’Brien and Elizabeth V. Tavares, who was O’Brien’s top deputy, filed suit Friday against retired judge Robert A. Mulligan, who they say targeted them for termination partly out of a personal dislike for O’Brien.
O’Brien and Tavares claim Mulligan “knowingly deprived” them of their due process rights and “has shown a reckless or callous indifference to the federally protected rights” of both plaintiffs, according to the civil complaint filed in the case.
Mulligan could not be reached for comment on Sunday, and it was unclear whether he had hired an attorney in the case.
Martin W. Healy, chief legal counsel and chief operating officer of the Massachusetts Bar Association, said the case was “extraordinary” — the first time in his three decades with the bar association that a former chief justice of administration and management for the Trial Court has been sued.
Paul K. Flavin, the Milton attorney representing O’Brien and Tavares, said
LAWSUIT, Page B3
[Below fold]
Greasy pole champions compete for the glory
I don't want to know about the Globe's greasy pole, although you should be thankful they lubricated it before shoving it up your a.....
Oh, here's my bus:
"Sick of the subway? Try one of the MBTA’s new electric buses, coming this summer" by Kellen Browning Globe Correspondent, June 30, 2019
As the MBTA works to stay on top of Boston’s transit and commuter needs — a challenge made more difficult given a recent spate of train derailments — the transportation agency is making major investments to upgrade its aging vehicles and infrastructure.
This route looks familiar, doesn't it?
Part of the MBTA’s plan? New energy-efficient buses, some fully battery powered and others hybrids.
It's called advancing the agenda while the Globe puts a PR shine on it!
Officials plan to add nearly 200 of the buses to the MBTA’s fleet this summer, part of an ongoing effort to prioritize sustainable options. The buses are in addition to the authority’s plan to spend $2 billion on improvements to its subway system.
Meanwhile, you are either stuck in traffic or the subway is running late.
Five battery-powered electric buses will serve the Silver Line, which includes South and East Boston, Logan Airport, and Chelsea, while 194 hybrids will be in use all around Boston. Jeff Gonneville, MBTA deputy general manager, said he hopes at least one or two of the electric buses will be ready for service by late July.
Ah, the richers are getting them first!
Unlike the MBTA’s current fleet of hybrid buses, the five 60-foot electric prototypes, purchased through a $10 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration, do not use diesel fuel.
T workers are testing their electric charging capabilities to see how far they can travel before needing to be returned to the bus garage on Southampton Street to be plugged in; the estimate is 130 miles, Gonneville said.
“The agency has really worked hard to be responsible in our evolution of our bus fleets,” Gonneville said, noting that the MBTA has been shifting toward energy-efficient transit options since the early 2000s.
And neglecting the rest of the service.
What a wax job by the Globe, huh?
The battery-powered buses are just the latest step in that process, and are helping the T “think about the challenges and the advantages” of electric vehicles, he said. “Those are the future.”
Members of the MBTA’s testing team recently took an electric bus out of the garage for a spin. The ride, a modified version of the SL-2 route, took the vehicle about 25 minutes. The interior of the electric bus looked essentially
MBTA BUS, Page B5
Have to drop you off at the page B3 airport first:
"Heavy rain and storms strike Boston area" by Amanda Kaufman, Lucas Phillips, Shafaq Patel and Sophia Eppolito Globe Correspondents, June 30, 2019
Amid teases of sun came torrential downpours, thunder, and even hail in parts of Massachusetts, leading to power outages, lightning strikes, and dozens of passengers stranded at Logan International Airport.
Hail?
In July?
Lon Weber, 52, and his wife, Kris, 50, left their hometown of Roanoke, Va., Saturday afternoon for an 11-day biking trip in Spain, but because of the thunderstorms, they said, their connecting flight to LaGuardia Airport in New York circled in the air for more than 45 minutes before it was diverted to Connecticut. After landing, they waited on the tarmac for more than two hours, Lon Weber said.
The couple then took an Uber to Springfield, Mass., where they spent the night before taking a cab to the airport Sunday morning, he said. They were sitting next to their suitcases in Logan’s international terminal Sunday afternoon waiting to board a flight to London, where they’ll have a nine-hour layover before departing for Spain.....
Be prepared to wait at Logan, too.
--more--"
And give these guys the first flight out of here, will ya'?
LAWSUIT, Continued from Page B1 (sic)
B3:
in a phone interview Sunday that he takes no position on the ethics or appropriateness of patronage hiring, but that his clients shouldn’t have been punished for acts many others carried out with impunity.
“It’s a travesty that patronage is widespread within state government and the trial court, and these two people are singled out,” Flavin said. “The disruptive effect on their lives is long lasting, and it’s devastating, and it’s going to haunt them for the rest of their lives, professionally and personally.”
Yeah, they were just doing what everyone else was doing in the corrupt $y$tem of state government where the well-connected take care of their families and friends. How could that be a crime?
The judge, who by then had retired, later testified in a public corruption trial that led to the 2014 federal convictions of O’Brien, Tavares, and another of O’Brien’s top deputies, William Burke III.
In late 2016, a federal appeals court in Boston overturned those convictions, saying that while the officials’ actions may be distasteful, they were not a federal crime.
The overturning brought it all to an end -- or so they thought.
The complaint filed Friday further claims that “Judge Mulligan, himself engaged in the same patronage hiring as Mr. O’Brien, but only Mr. O’Brien and his deputies were targeted for suspension and termination.”
I guess you will have to judge for yourself whether some must obey the law or not.
O’Brien and Tavares say Mulligan’s behavior “was arbitrary and capricious and a shocking abuse of government power that was not keyed to any legitimate government interest” but intended only to get rid of them.
Healy, the bar association attorney, said, “It’s too early to really tell whether or not this suit would be successful, but I think as the case proceeds, there’s a lot that will be revealed in the process of discovery.”
Wanna $ettle?
--more--"
This day in history saw the establish the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank at Bretton Woods in 1944.
Finally catching back up with the bus on page B5:
MBTA BUS, Continued from Page B1 (sic)
identical to any other bus, and the ride was similar as well, with one major change: It was eerily quiet, without the roar of the engine that passengers have come to expect, bus instructor Lorraine Landsburg, who’s been with the T for nearly 25 years and was driving the test bus, said the engine is so quiet that you “barely know when it’s on.”
“This bus is great,” said Landsburg, while navigating through traffic. “You feel the difference between this” and the diesel ones.
Landsburg said testing has been “pretty much smooth sailing,” but acknowledged the electric bus takes a bit of getting used to. “It’s sort of like a learning curve,” she said, likening the process to the adjustment period when driving a friend’s car for the first time.
One of the passengers on the test ride was William Wolfgang, the T’s director of vehicle engineering.
“This is our first introduction into batteries, so we’re going to learn a lot from this,” Wolfgang said. “I’m extremely excited about the capabilities and what it can do.”
The new bus was spotted on a test run along Washington Street earlier in June by 19-year-old transportation enthusiast Jordan King, who noticed that it was “very quiet, very smooth . . . you can barely hear it coming down the street.”
You kids with the earbuds better look both ways before stepping out into the street!
Though the vehicles the T is testing are prototypes, they’re far from the first battery-powered buses in use around the country — or the world.
Nearly 425,000 electric buses were used around the globe last year, with 421,000 of those employed by China, according to a report from BloombergNEF, an energy research organization.
Related:
"And if you want to see what really can be, go to Logan Airport and get on Cathay Pacific’s 15-hour nonstop flight to Hong Kong. When you land, you’ll board an automated train connecting the airport to Kowloon in 24 minutes. You can then fly on, as my wife and I did in March, to Beijing and tour a city with over 30 times more people than Boston that still moves its masses with a dated-but-functional subway system, and connects them to the rest of the country with new 200 mile-per-hour trains....."
See what you can do when not looting and warring, according to that otherwise superficial, shallow, and unsubstantial analysis regarding state government woes by the former Globe political reporter who has a new book coming out on July 9!!
The United States, by contrast, had a meager 300 buses in 2018. Nearly 50 percent of that fleet is based in California, according to Nick Albanese, a research associate at BloombergNEF. The state has been a leader in the push toward electric vehicles; last December, California’s clean air agency mandated that all new public transit buses must be fully electric starting in 2029.
Some US cities zeroing in on zero-emission vehicles include Seattle, Honolulu, and New York City, and now, Boston has joined them.
Will they remove the smell of feces from the streets?
“I think it makes sense,” Albanese said of the MBTA adding battery-powered buses. Electric buses have lower operational costs, he said, and besides, “diesel buses are loud, and they have high particulate emissions.”
If it makes sense why do we need an and besides?
As recent as five years ago, Albanese said, the United States had next to no electric buses, due to high production costs and short battery life spans, but costs are coming down, and battery lives are going up. So get ready for a surge in electric buses — up to nearly 5,000 by the end of 2025, if BloombergNEF’s forecasts are right.
The MBTA will also introduce 194 hybrid buses over a one-year period starting in August, allowing the agency to phase out nearly 200 diesel buses that were purchased in 2004. The hybrids, which cost nearly $143 million combined, can switch between diesel and electric power, Gonneville said.
When a hybrid bus is idling at a red light or driving at under 5 miles per hour, it uses electric power, then switches to diesel fuel for faster speeds, he said.
Oh, they waited this long into the trip to step on the gas pedal?!!
“We are seeing right now that almost 40 percent of the time . . . the engine is not running, and that’s substantial” for reducing emissions, Gonneville said.
Related:
"From 2001 to 2017, the Pentagon’s emissions totaled 766 million metric tons, according to a new Brown University report. That makes the U.S. military by far the world’s largest single source of CO2 emissions....." -- source
That makes your bus emissions seem like piss in the ocean.
Compared to traditional diesel vehicles, the new hybrid buses are expected to save 2.8 million gallons of fuel and emit 41,000 fewer tons of greenhouse gases over their lifetimes, according to a 2018 MBTA presentation.
“You can’t have diesel buses anymore, you’ve got to start looking at sustainability and what’s better for the environment,” King said. “It’s starting to look like a really good future.”
Just don't hire a bunch of scabs that the Globe picked at the bottom of page C4.
--more--"
Right below that is
WU, Continued from Page A1 (sic)
the protests.....
That would get you back to page B1, right next to the bus stop, and why bother?
“It’s starting to look like a really good future,” or hadn't you heard?
--more--"
Just don't let it ruin your Fourth of July.
Related: Scholar Athletes gala raises $3.6 million for youth programs
Now the future is looking really good for youth $ports!
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Time to gas up:
"US oil companies find energy independence isn’t so profitable" by Clifford Krauss New York Times, June 30, 2019
HOUSTON — For decades, elected leaders and corporate executives have chased a dream of independence from unstable or unfriendly foreign oil producers.
I'm thinking Russia, Venezuela, Iran.
Thanks, New York Times.
Mission accomplished: Oil companies are producing record amounts of crude oil and natural gas in the United States and have become major exporters, yet the companies themselves are finding little to love about this seeming bonanza. With a global glut driving down prices, many are losing money and are staying afloat by selling assets and taking on debt.
Some people are never happy!
“It’s really a psychological punch in the gut,” said Matt Gallagher, chief executive of Parsley Energy, which has productive shale fields in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico and has tripled output over the past three years. His company’s shares have tumbled to about $19 a share, from $38 in late 2016. “There’s a lot of risk in this industry, people are working very hard, and we feel we have made the right moves and it doesn’t show up in the share price.”
Poor oil and gas indu$try!
All when Bo$ton is going electric (where do they get the electricity from, btw?)!
Domestic oil production has increased more than 60% since 2013, to over 12 million barrels a day, making the United States the biggest producer of oil and natural gas in the world and slashing imports. That growth has also reduced the clout and profits of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia, enabling President Trump to impose sanctions on Iran and Venezuela without risking higher gasoline prices or shortages.
Now things all start to make sense, and can you drink the stuff?
Rising tensions with Iran after attacks on two oil tankers and a US surveillance drone have lifted oil prices, but there has been little impact on the supply outlook.
I was wondering when my war pre$$ would get around to Iran today.
Oil executives say the United States is set to become an even bigger factor because a further 5 million or so barrels of daily crude oil production are on the way in the next few years. Russia would have to drill deep into the Arctic to keep up, a prohibitively expensive proposition, and experts don’t think Saudi Arabia can increase production significantly, but the share price of Exxon Mobil, the largest American oil company, is barely above where it was a decade ago. In years past, investors might have celebrated Occidental Petroleum’s proposed acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum, which has some of the most lucrative oil fields in the country. Instead, Occidental’s shares have fallen about 10% since that deal in early May.
Makes you wanna cry in your can of oil, doesn't it?
In the past four years, roughly 175 oil and gas companies in the United States and Canada with debts totaling about $100 billion have filed for bankruptcy protection. Many borrowed heavily when oil and gas prices were far higher, only to collectively overproduce and undercut their commodity prices. At least six companies have gone bankrupt this year, and Weatherford International, the fourth-leading oil services company, which owes investors $7.7 billion, is expected to file for bankruptcy protection Monday.
In a February call with analysts, Weatherford’s chief executive, Mark A. McCollum, seemed exasperated. “I don’t waste a lot of time thinking or planning how to fail,” he said. “The elephant in the room for the entire sector is we’re not generating returns that our investors expect.”
One concern is that the industry will be forced to leave oil and gas in the ground as climate change prompts environmental restrictions on drilling or a shift to alternative fuels.
Oh, NOW the environment concern comes up, more than halfway through the article!
“The psychology has turned,” said David Katz, president of Matrix Asset Advisors, a New York investment firm that owns Occidental shares. “When you talk to investors they are concerned about oil companies spending money on something that will be in decline. There are more concerns that electric cars and hybrid cars are going to get more and more popular.”
That is a tectonic shift from just a few years ago.
In the early 2000s, experts like T. Boone Pickens warned that world demand for oil would outstrip production and that American output was in a long decline. Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP drilled in deeper waters in the Gulf of Mexico, invested in Canadian oil sands and sent teams to explore in places as far-flung as the Arctic Circle, Azerbaijan, and Equatorial Guinea.
Obama's negligence and the Gulf Gusher are no longer an obsession.
Investors assumed that fossil-fuel reserves could only become more valuable over time. With energy demand rising in China, India, and other developing countries, oil prices rose to over $140 a barrel, and oil stocks soared.
That all changed when companies like Mitchell Energy, EOG Resources, and Chesapeake Energy began experimenting with drilling for oil and gas in shale fields. Not only did that reverse the production decline in the United States, but it also encouraged Wall Street investors to shower money on the industry. In 2014 alone, investors loaned North American exploration and production companies more than $17 billion, according to IHS Markit, a consultant.
They make it sound like it is something new!
Shale production upended the global oil market once dominated by OPEC, and oil prices fell sharply.
Energy experts say annual global oil demand is growing about 1.2%, which is not enough for American oil companies to produce more oil profitably. Demand was growing roughly three times as fast in the early 2000s, but greater fuel efficiency and an economic slowdown in China have reduced the world’s thirst for oil.
That slowdown has been particularly hard for smaller companies not lucky or smart enough to invest in the most productive fields. Because shale wells decline rapidly, executives also liken this business to running on a treadmill that never stops: They need to drill new wells constantly to maintain production and continue to generate revenue.
What one notices now is never is the word fracking used, and now we find they need to constantly befoul groundwater so we can have gas!
“It’s a race,” said Raoul LeBlanc, director for energy at IHS Markit. “But there’s not enough money to grow aggressively and give money back to shareholders at the same time.”
The race is all the more arduous with oil prices hovering around $60 a barrel after rising above $75 last year.
Rystad Energy, a consulting firm, found that 36 of the 40 shale oil companies it looked at in the first quarter of this year could not generate enough revenue to sustain their businesses, reduce debt, and reward their investors with dividends or share buybacks.
Energy experts say oil companies could make a comeback in the next few years, even if it is only a temporary one. Advanced technologies could bring down costs of production while increasing output. Production in countries like Venezuela and Mexico could continue declining, allowing American companies to gain market share, but the industry faces a long-term challenge from climate change.
Actually, they are moving on it now and have joined the fight as the web version keeps spewing:
Chevron and other large American oil companies are investing in carbon capture and sequestration to bury greenhouse gases or produce new fuels, though such technologies are expensive and unproved on a large scale.
They can learn from Indigo!
Large oil companies, which generate a lot of cash and still pay investors healthy dividends, can afford such investments, but many smaller businesses, including those that pioneered shale drilling, don’t have the money or technical expertise to make similar changes.
Since last year, investors have called on companies to cut expenses, reduce debt, and pay higher dividends or buy back more shares. In response, the industry has dropped the number of rigs it commissions to drill new wells in recent weeks.
The $hare buybacks create a fal$e economy, but at least $ome get rich.
Scott Sheffield, chief executive of Pioneer Natural Resources, a major producer in the Permian Basin, says a major industry consolidation may be coming.
Otherwise known as Cannibalistic Capitalism and its death throes.
“Most of the companies,” he said, “can’t deliver what the investors are asking for.”
Maybe they could tweak the price cap on offshore wind.
--more--"
Related:
"The European Union signed a trade deal with Vietnam on Sunday, underscoring the bloc’s commitment to opening up its market and trading freely in the face of rising protectionism and trade tensions around the world. The signing ceremony in Hanoi came just two days after the European Union had agreed to another, much bigger, free trade deal with four South American countries. After trade talks between the United States and the European Union broke down in late 2016, a newly elected President Trump vowed to protect American workers and goods. In reaction, the EU decided to become more assertive in reaching free trade agreements around the world, EU officials have said....."
Except when it comes to Iran (pfffffft)!
Or China:
"White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow insisted Sunday that President Trump won’t back off national security concerns after agreeing to allow US companies to sell some components to Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei. Kudlow told ‘‘Fox News Sunday’’ and CBS’ ‘‘Face the Nation’’ that Huawei will remain on an American blacklist as a potential security threat. Trump made the announcement Saturday after meeting with China’s Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 summit in Japan. Trump said US companies could make the sales if the transactions don’t present a ‘‘great, national emergency problem.’’ Several Republican senators immediately expressed concerns. In a tweet Saturday, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida called the decision a ‘‘catastrophic mistake.” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told CBS that Trump’s agreement was ‘‘clearly a concession,’’ and also said it would be a mistake if sales to Huawei involved ‘‘major technology.’’
He does it all the time, but I'm glad they were able to hash things out and the deal wasn't dead on arrival (like Kushner's plan that was put on ice).
