The pipeline breach released more than 140,000 gallons of oil.
An anchor is “one of the distinct possibilities” behind the leak.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency.
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. – Authorities could determine as soon as Tuesday the cause of the pipeline breach that spilled up to 144,000 gallons of oil off the Southern California coast, fouling waters and beaches for miles.
A ship’s anchor striking a pipeline on the ocean floor is “one of the distinct possibilities” behind the leak, Amplify Energy CEO Martyn Willsher said.
Dozens of massive ships are often anchored offshore while awaiting access to local ports plagued by backlogs as COVID-19 and other issues slow the global supply chain.
“We’re looking into if it could have been an anchor from a ship, but that’s in the assessment phase right now,” Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jeannie Shaye said.
Cleanup boats floated a mile long chain of booms to help slow the spread of the shimmering spill that left black ribbons and gobs of oil along the shoreline. Dwayne Brady and his small dog, Killer, watched crews along the beach combat the spread of oil.
“You’d think in this day and age a spill that’s this large would have immediately been detected and stopped,” he said, shaking his head. “This shouldn’t have been this bad. No way.”
The pipeline was supposed to be monitored by an automated leak detection system and control room staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The system, part of Amplify’s spill response plan, was designed to trigger an alarm whenever a change in the flow of oil is detected. But how fast it can pick up on those changes can vary according to the size of the leak.
When 10% or more of the amount of oil flowing through the pipeline is leaking, the detection time was estimated at 5 minutes. Smaller leaks were expected to take up to 50 minutes to detect, according to the plan.
The first emergency call came in Friday at 6:13 p.m., and it wasn’t from Amplify. A ship had noticed a sheen in the water, according to a federal report on the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services spill report website.
Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration then notified the federal response center twice that night of a possible oil spill less than five miles off Huntington Beach, according to updates on the California emergency services website.
Brijesh “Jay” Shesat, a general manager of the Hotel Solarena along the Pacific Coast Highway, said the strong smell of fuel filled the air Friday afternoon. He and others had watched jets practicing and some of Huntington Beach’s annual air show from the roof of the three-story hotel.
“I said that afternoon that something smelled strange,” Shesat said. “I don’t think any of us could have predicted it was this. We all thought it had to be the jets.”
Natalie Simpson, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo specializing in disaster response and supply chain risk, says the company’s own spill response plan says it should be able to detect a leak that amounts to 1% of the pipeline flow within about 50 minutes.
“If what people were smelling on Friday in Huntington Beach was in fact this oil, than more than that would have already been leaked,” Simpson said.
Amplify Energy, however, said in a statement that its subsidiary, Beta Offshore, first observed and notified the Coast Guard of an oil sheen Saturday morning.
Amplify’s spill plan warned that a break in the pipeline could cause “substantial harm to the environment” and that in a worst-case scenario 131,000 gallons of oil could be released from the pipeline. Maximum leakage would occur if a “full guillotine cut” occurred, the plan said.
“I’m just eyeballing a map,” Simpson said. “But it does look that’s about where some are speculating a cargo ship dragged an anchor across” the pipeline.
On Tuesday, city officials said the first oiled birds were being rescued and stabilized at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center. The center was declining donations, saying they might slow down the response.
“All necessary supplies and equipment to support the cleanup effort are being … paid for by the responsible party,” the center said in a statement. “Please be assured we are doing all we can to help the wildlife and environment.”
Shesat said about 10 guests canceled their hotel reservations by Monday afternoon because of the spill.
“We’ve been suffering like other businesses for so long and things were starting to really improve. We thought this was going to be a busy October,” he said. “This is like another round of COVID.”
Leslie Speyer-Ofenberg couldn’t help but feel a sense of rage walking around his beach community just across the highway from where oil was washing up on shore.
“This is what happens when we let energy companies just police themselves,” he said. “This is our mess, all of ours. … This issue doesn’t seem to bother us until something like this happens.”
Congress could step in. The House Natural Resources Committee will review a pair of bills next week aimed at strengthening regulation and oversight of offshore oil drilling.
Some of the provisions include mandating frequent inspections and requiring pipelines to be equipped with a leak detection system as well as requiring offshore drilling operators to report failures of critical safety systems directly to the secretary of the Interior, who would then be required to publicly disclose these incident reports.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who declared a state of emergency, hopes to phase out drilling by 2045.
“California continues to lead the nation in phasing out fossil fuels and combating the climate crisis,” Newsom said. “This incident serves as a reminder of the enormous cost fossil fuels have on our communities and the environment.”
Contributing: Janet Wilson, The Desert Sun; The Associated Press
Fox News contributor Bill Bennett blasts Biden administration over controversial decision
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday vowed to fight an order by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland directing the FBI to address threats of violence against school officials and teachers across the country.
“Attorney General Garland is weaponizing the DOJ by using the FBI to pursue concerned parents and silence them through intimidation,” the Republican governor tweeted. “Florida will defend the free speech rights of its citizens and will not allow federal agents to squelch dissent.”
DeSantis’ tweet comes a day after Garland directed the FBI and U.S. attorney offices to hold meetings with federal, state and local law enforcement leaders within 30 days to discuss ways to combat what the DOJ described as an “increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against school board members, teachers and workers in our nation’s public schools.”
“Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values,” Garland said in a statement Monday. “Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”
The Justice Department did not respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
Critics of Garland’s order complained that threats of violence are already illegal and that it’s parental rights that are under attack.
Videos of angry parents protesting against school board members over coronavirus-related policies have become a regular occurrence over the course of the pandemic. DeSantis has routinely sided with the rights of parents when it comes to instituting those policies, saying they should ultimately have the right to decide whether their child wears a mask in school or has to be quarantined after being exposed to COVID-19.
In July, the governor ushered in Florida’s Parents Bill of Rights, which says the government “may not infringe upon the fundamental rights of a parent to direct the upbringing, education, health care and mental health of a minor child.”
DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw told Fox News in a statement that it was too early to tell what steps the governor would take in response to the DOJ’s order but that he was closely monitoring the situation “to protect the rights of Floridians from government overreach and the inappropriate politicization of federal law enforcement.”
“Several Florida school board members, including Democrats and Republicans, have reported receiving threats and harassment from activists on both ends of the political spectrum,” the statement said, in part. “This is wrong, and anyone who is a victim of a crime should report it to their local police department. Florida law enforcement is perfectly capable of responding to crimes in Florida, and we have never heard the FBI suggest otherwise.”
“However, disagreement is not harassment. Protest is not terrorism, unless it involves rioting, looting, and assault, like some of the left-wing protests of summer 2020. Again, all of those actions are crimes in Florida and will be prosecuted, regardless of political context,” the statement continued. “Governor DeSantis condemns any attempt by the federal government to silence free speech. It is despicable and anti-American.”
Inaction could also tempt some countries to hold fewer Treasury bonds and weaken demand for the dollar, possibly giving China an upper hand in its bid to replace the greenback as the globe’s preferred currency.
“U.S. Treasury securities have long been viewed as the safest asset on the planet,” Yellen said. “That partly accounts for the reserve status of the dollar. And placing that in question by failing to pay any of our bills that come due would really be a catastrophic outcome.”
Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle recognize that the debt ceiling must be increased or risk economic upheaval. But the two sides appeared far from a compromise as of Tuesday morning.
Where Republicans and Democrats disagree is on how to lift the borrowing cap, with each using the issue as a political bludgeon.
Republicans, who are fed up by what they view as Democrats’ excessive spending plans, say Biden, Pelosi and Schumer should single-handedly fix the problem by putting a suspension in their multitrillion-dollar social policy and climate reconciliation bill.
Reconciliation allows a party to pass certain bills with a simple majority in the Senate versus the usual 60-vote requirement, making it immune to the GOP filibuster. McConnell has made it clear no member of his caucus will support efforts to raise the ceiling ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
“Since mid-July, Republicans have clearly stated that Democrats will need to raise the debt limit on their own,” McConnell wrote to Biden on Monday. “Bipartisanship is not a light switch that Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer may flip on to borrow money and flip off to spend it.”
“For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well,” he added, in reference to the reconciliation effort.
If Republicans stand by their threat, Democrats may ultimately be forced to include a ceiling suspension in their reconciliation bill.
That would be a tall order since many in the party say the massive piece of legislation is still weeks from being ready and amid efforts to cut back the plan to appease moderates Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz.
Undermining that argument is the fact that Democrats could also opt to pass a standalone piece of legislation to raise the borrowing limit with a separate reconciliation bill. That route would not require any Republican votes and allow moderate and progressive Democrats to work on their safety net package on the side.
Democrats may not like that option since addressing the ceiling via reconciliation would force the party to raise the limit instead of merely suspending it. Suspensions allow the government to float new debt for a certain period of time instead of capping it at a certain dollar figure.
After suspensions expire, the new ceiling sets at whatever level the outstanding debt has grown to by that date.
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., wrote on Twitter Tuesday that he believes Democrats are worried about being linked to a debt limit figure around or above $30 trillion.
Linking the Democrats to such a massive figure — while the product of spending and tax cuts approved by both parties — would make for bad optics for the party during the 2022 midterm elections.
The Powerball jackpot climbed to $699.8 million — the seventh-largest in U.S. lottery history. No one had won the game’s grand prize since June 5.
Charlie Neibergall/AP
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Charlie Neibergall/AP
The Powerball jackpot climbed to $699.8 million — the seventh-largest in U.S. lottery history. No one had won the game’s grand prize since June 5.
Charlie Neibergall/AP
DES MOINES, Iowa — After 40 drawings without a big Powerball winner, a single ticket sold in California matched all six numbers and was the lucky winner of the nearly $700 million jackpot prize, officials said.
The winning numbers drawn Monday night were 12, 22, 54, 66 and 69. The Powerball was 15.
Thanks to nearly four months of futility and final ticket sales, the Powerball jackpot climbed to $699.8 million, making it the seventh largest in U.S. lottery history. No one had won the game’s grand prize since June 5.
This was the first jackpot won on a Monday night since Aug. 23, when the game launched a third weekly drawing, officials said.
According to the California Lottery, the winning ticket was sold at a grocery store in Morro Bay, located along the state’s central coast. The winner will be able to choose between the annuity option paid over 29 years or the cash option of $496 million. Both prize options are subject to taxes.
The name of the winner isn’t known yet
Lottery officials won’t know the identity of the holder of the winning ticket until a claim form is filed, the California Lottery said.
There were five $1 million-winning tickets sold; two in Massachusetts and one each in Virginia, Florida and Arizona.
The 41st drawing set a record, topping the previous mark of 36 drawings that ended in January 2021. The longer the game goes without a grand prize winner, the larger the payout grows.
The jackpot drought was by design, as the game’s long odds of 292.2 million to one are intended to generate massive prizes that draw more players.
Lottery officials have noted that despite the long wait for a winning jackpot ticket, plenty of people have won smaller prizes, including 2.8 million players in Saturday’s drawing alone. Those winnings ranged from $1 million to $4.
Powerball is played in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, who leaked internal company investigations to both The Wall Street Journal and U.S. Congress, will testify before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.
Recent investigations from the Journal revealed that the company’s executives understood the negative impacts of Instagram among younger users, including increased suicidal thoughts. Documents also revealed that 6% of American users traced the urge to kill themselves to Instagram, the Journal first reported.
Haugen unmasked herself on Sunday, ahead of an interview with her that aired on “60 Minutes.”
Last week, Facebook’s global head of safety Antigone Davis testified before members of the Senate, where lawmakers concluded that Instagram should not create an app for children.
Commission president Jean-Marc Sauve (left) hands copies of the report to Catholic Bishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Bishops’ Conference of France (CEF), during the publishing of a report by an independent commission on Tuesday in Paris.
Thomas Coex/AP
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Commission president Jean-Marc Sauve (left) hands copies of the report to Catholic Bishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Bishops’ Conference of France (CEF), during the publishing of a report by an independent commission on Tuesday in Paris.
Thomas Coex/AP
PARIS — An estimated 330,000 children were victims of sex abuse within France’s Catholic Church over the past 70 years, according to a report released Tuesday that represents the country’s first major accounting of the worldwide phenomenon.
The figure includes abuses committed by some 3,000 priests and other people involved in the church — wrongdoing that Catholic authorities covered up over decades in a “systemic manner,” according to the president of the commission that issued the report, Jean-Marc Sauvé.
The head of the French bishops’ conference asked for forgiveness from the victims, about 80% of whom were boys, according to the report. The bishops are meeting Tuesday to discuss next steps.
The independent commission urged the church to take strong action, denouncing “faults” and “silence.” It also called on the Catholic Church to help compensate the victims, notably in cases that are too old to prosecute via the courts.
“The consequences are very serious,” Sauvé said. “About 60% of men and women who were sexually abused encounter major problems in their emotional or sexual life.”
“We consider the church has a debt towards victims,” he added.
The 2,500-page document was issued as the Catholic Church in France, like in other countries, seeks to face up to shameful secrets that were long covered up.
Victims welcomed the report as long overdue.
Francois Devaux, head of the victims’ group La Parole Libérée (The Liberated Word), said it was “a turning point in our history.”
He denounced the coverups that permitted “mass crimes for decades.”
“But even worse, there was a betrayal: betrayal of trust, betrayal of morality, betrayal of children, betrayal of innocence,” he said, calling on the church for compensation.
Olivier Savignac, the head of victims association Parler et Revivre (Speak Out and Live Again), contributed to the investigation. He told The Associated Press that the high ratio of victims per abuser was particularly “terrifying for French society, for the Catholic Church.”
Savignac assailed the church for treating such cases as individual anomalies instead of as a collective horror. He described being abused at age 13 by the director of a Catholic vacation camp in the south of France who was accused of assaulting several other boys.
“I perceived this priest as someone who was good, a caring person who would not harm me,” Savignac said. “But it was when I found myself on that bed half-naked and he was touching me that I realized something was wrong….And we keep this, it’s like a growing cyst. It’s like gangrene inside the victim’s body and the victim’s psyche.”
The priest eventually was found guilty of child sexual abuse and sentenced in 2018 to two years in prison, with one year suspended.
The commission worked for 2 1/2 years, listening to victims and witnesses and studying church, court, police and news archives starting from the 1950s. A hotline launched at the beginning of the review received 6,500 calls from alleged victims or people who said they knew a victim.
Sauvé denounced the church’s attitude until the beginning of the 2000s as “a deep, cruel indifference toward victims.”
The report says an estimated 3,000 child abusers – two-thirds of them priests – worked in the church during the seven-decade period. That figure is likely to be an underestimate, Sauvé said. The tally of victims includes an estimated 216,000 people abused by priests and other clerics, he said.
The estimates are based on research led by France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research into sexual abuse of children in the French population.
“Sometimes church officials did not denounce (sex abuses) and even exposed children to risks by putting them in contact with predators,” Sauvé said. “We consider … the church has a debt toward victims.”
The president of the Conference of Bishops of France, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, said the bishops “are appalled” at the conclusions of the report.
“I wish on that day to ask for pardon, pardon to each of you,” he told the victims.
Sauvé said 22 alleged crimes that can be pursued have been forwarded to prosecutors. More than 40 cases that are too old to be prosecuted but involve alleged perpetrators who are still alive have been forwarded to church officials.
The commission issued 45 recommendations about how to prevent abuse. These included training priests and other clerics, revising Canon Law — the legal code the Vatican uses to govern the church — and fostering policies to recognize and compensate victims.
The report comes after a scandal surrounding now-defrocked priest Bernard Preynat rocked the French Catholic Church. Last year, Preynat was convicted of sexually abusing minors and given a five-year prison sentence. He admitted abusing more than 75 boys for decades.
The Preynat case led to the resignation last year of the former archbishop of Lyon, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, who has been accused of failing to report the abuses to civil authorities when he learned about them in the 2010s. France’s highest court ruled earlier this year that Barbarin did not cover up the case.
French archbishops, in a message to parishioners read during Sunday Mass across the country, said the publication of the report is “a test of truth and a tough and serious moment.”
Pope Francis issued in May 2019 a groundbreaking new church law requiring all Catholic priests and nuns around the world to report clergy sexual abuse and cover-ups by their superiors to church authorities.
In June, Francis swiftly rejected an offer from Cardinal Reinhard Marx, one of Germany’s most prominent clerics and a close papal adviser, to resign as archbishop of Munich and Freising over the church’s mishandling of abuse cases. But he said a process of reform was necessary and every bishop must take responsibility for the “catastrophe” of the crisis.
The pipeline breach released more than 140,000 gallons of oil.
An anchor is “one of the distinct possibilities” behind the leak.
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency.
HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. – Authorities could determine as soon as Tuesday the cause of the pipeline breach that spilled up to 144,000 gallons of oil off the Southern California coast, fouling waters and beaches for miles.
Investigators are looking into whether a ship’s anchor may have struck a pipeline on the ocean floor. An anchor is “one of the distinct possibilities” behind the leak, Amplify Energy CEO Martyn Willsher told a news conference. Willsher said he expected that authorities would have a better idea of what caused the damage Tuesday.
Backlogs have plagued the ports in recent months, and dozens of massive ships are often anchored while waiting their turn to unload.
“We’re looking into if it could have been an anchor from a ship, but that’s in the assessment phase right now,” Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Jeannie Shaye said.
Cleanup boats floated a mile long chain of booms to help slow the spread of the simmering spill that left black ribbons and gobs of oil along the shoreline. Dwayne Brady and his small dog, Killer, watched crews along beach battle to stop the oil from spreading.
“You’d think in this day and age a spill that’s this large would have immediately been detected and stopped,” he said, shaking his head. “This shouldn’t have been this bad. No way.”
The pipeline was supposed to be monitored by an automated leak detection system and control room staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Along with the cause of the leak, the criminal and civil investigations will try to determine why it took so long for Amplify to learn of and report the unfolding disaster.
The first emergency call came in Friday at 6:13 p.m., and it wasn’t from Amplify. A ship had noticed a sheen in the water, according to a federal report on the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services spill report website. Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration then notified the federal response center twice that night of a possible oil spill less than five miles off Huntington Beach, according to updates on the California emergency services website.
Brijesh “Jay” Shesat, a general manager of the Hotel Solarena along the Pacific Coast Highway, said strong the strong smell of fuel filled the air Friday afternoon. He and others had watched jets practicing and some of Huntington Beach’s annual air show from the roof of the three-story hotel.
“I said that afternoon that something smelled strange,” Shesat said. “I don’t think any of us could have predicted it was this. We all thought it had to be the jets.”
Yet Amplify Energy said in a statement that it’s subsidiary Beta Offshore first observed and notified the Coast Guard of an oil sheen Saturday morning.
The leak detection system, part of Amplify’s spill reaction plan, was designed to trigger an alarm whenever a change in the flow of oil is detected, the Associated Press reported. But how fast it can pick up on those changes can vary according to the size of the leak. For a large leak – 10% or more of the amount of oil flowing through the pipeline – the detection time was estimated at 5 minutes. Smaller leaks were expected to take up to 50 minutes to detect, according to the response plan.
Amplify’s spill plan warned that a break in the pipeline could cause “substantial harm to the environment” and that in a worst-case scenario 131,000 gallons of oil could be released from the pipeline. This leak surpassed that amount.
Shesat said about 10 guests cancel their reservations by Monday afternoon due to the spill.
“We’ve been suffering like other businesses for so long and things were starting to really improve. We thought this was going to be a busy October,” he said. “This is like another round of COVID.”
Leslie Speyer-Ofenberg couldn’t help but feel a sense of rage walking around his beach community just across the highway from where oil was washing up on shore.
“This is what happens when we let energy companies just police themselves,” he said. “This is our mess, all of ours. … This issue doesn’t seem to bother us until something like this happens,”
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who declared a state of emergency, hopes to phase out drilling by 2045.
“California continues to lead the nation in phasing out fossil fuels and combating the climate crisis,” Newsom said. “This incident serves as a reminder of the enormous cost fossil fuels have on our communities and the environment.”
Contributing: Janet Wilson, The Desert Sun; The Associated Press
“To me this is insanity that Republicans who talk like they are so pro-business are screwing around with the full faith and credit of the U.S. government,” Robert Wolf, the former chief executive of UBS Americas and Obama economic adviser, said in an interview. “This shouldn’t be the polarizing issue that everyone is talking about and working on. You want to have a fight over policy — infrastructure and climate action and healthcare benefits — then have that fight. But I don’t think you want to have a fight over the debt ceiling.”
The White House’s new, more combative posture in the debt ceiling standoff is a concession of sorts that their earlier approach has not yielded the desired results. The administration had resisted dealing with the issue through earlier legislative vehicles out of hope that at least 10 Senate Republicans could be pressured by the business community and Wall Street to vote to lift or suspend the debt ceiling to avert a fiscal catastrophe. When that began to look improbable, Democrats tried to do it by majority vote, only to encounter GOP resistance. Now, with the deadline for default less than two weeks away, there is little private or public optimism inside the administration that the resolution will be anything but a nail-biter.
While acknowledging they would far prefer using other avenues, White House officials said Monday that theyaren’t ruling out the possibility of raising the debt ceiling though the budget process known as reconciliation, which McConnell has been urging them to do for months. But they’re worried that Republicans, who themselves voted to raise the debt limit by trillions under Trump, will use that opportunity to burn precious floor time in the Senate,and Biden himself described that path as risky, complicated, and cumbersome.
“If you don’t want to help save the country, get out of the way so you don’t destroy it,” he said Monday, wading into the debate after administration officials had strategically deployed several other key officials to drive home the urgency — all to no measurable avail.
The White House and Republican leaders have both said there’s no negotiation to be had over the limit, leaving only a few potential resolutions. Republicans could cave. Democrats could reverse course and change the rules of the Senate to pass a debt ceiling hike with just 50 votes. Or, if Democrats conclude that they’ll have to pass it via reconciliation, as many suspect will happen, Republicans could agree to throw up fewer time-sucking barriers to gum up the process.
Though he has said the debt ceiling will be — and should be — raised, McConnell has made it clear he wants no part in helping Biden, and insists Democrats must go it alone after he gave them “nearly three months’ notice to do their job.”
Wolf isn’t surprised that Wall Street and industry pressure has yet to move with Republicans, he said, in part because business titans themselves believe there will be a resolution. But what’s troubled him beyond white-hot rhetoric and lack of bipartisanship, even on handling past debt, is the lack of deference shown to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who has repeatedly warned that the country could suffer from an accidental default if the limit isn’t addressed, and soon.
“The idea that they are ignoring her calls seems just totally off base,” Wolf said, calling Yellen experienced and level-headed and not someone who would “cry wolf.”
On Monday, Biden joined Yellen in talking up the kitchen table repercussions of a default: Sending the economy over a cliff, he said, risks jobs and retirement savings, Social Security benefits, salaries for service members and benefits for veterans, among other items.
Despite going nowhere with Republicans, administration officials and their close allies believe they’re making a mark with the public. As evidence, Democratic Party officials pointed to a long list of editorials and opinion pieces from key swing states that blame Republicans for the standoff. Their belief is that a fight long viewed as a Beltway obsession with disastrous consequences for the economy is now resonating with ordinary Americans.
Republicans, meanwhile, are making two bets of their own. The first is that the public won’t be able to differentiate between traditional debt and the arcane rules around the little-understood debt ceiling. The second is that if the economy were to suffer, voters will blame the party in power.
Faced with these prospects, some progressives are wishing the White House would go much further — and think more creatively — than it is currently doing. Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, said he’s come to prefer a route specified by some Democrats that would punt the debt limit years and years into the future.
“Just raise it to an absurd number,” he said, “and tell people ‘Yeah, we effectively abolished it, and now we’re like every other rich nation on earth in that we’re not afflicted by this dumb law anymore.’”
Bivens said he understands that Biden and the White House aretaking as tough a stance as possible to make Republicans take some of the political hit for raising the debt limit. But he warned that the administration had better be ready to unilaterally neutralize the threat, either by minting platinum coins or just ignoring the limit and continuing to issue debt and daring somebody to stop them. Both are options White House officials have said they won’t, or can’t, do.
“In the end, I think everybody is frantic about avoiding a political ‘hit’ from this that is not even a love tap,” Bivensconcluded. “I just don’t think that people care about the debt limit. They care about the economy and how their lives are going.”
In August, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, a body of scientists convened by the United Nations, released a report showing that the nations of the world can no longer stop global warming from intensifying. The global average temperature will rise 2.7 degrees Celsius by century’s end even if all countries meet their promised emissions cuts under the Paris Agreement. That temperature rise is likely to bring more extreme wildfires, droughts and floods, according to a United Nations report released in September.
But that they have a short window in which to curb fossil-fuel emissions and prevent the worst future outcomes, and the IPCC report builds directly on the models pioneered by Dr. Manabe.
“The climate scientists of today stand on the shoulders of these giants, who laid the foundations for our understanding of the climate system,” said Ko Barrett, senior adviser for climate at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who is also vice-chair of the IPCC.
Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University who also worked on the IPCC report, called Dr. Manabe a critical figure in the rise of climate science in the mid-1960s.
“He took the weather models that were beginning to emerge in the period after World World II and turned them into the first climate models,” he said.
Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds in England, called Dr. Manabe’s 1967 paper detailing these models “arguably the greatest climate-science paper of all time.”
Dr. Barrett also hailed Dr. Hasselmann and Dr. Parisi for expanding on this work and praised the Nobel Committee for showing the world that today’s climate studies are grounded in decades of scientific work. “It is important to understand that climate science is built on basic foundations of physics,” she said.
One winning ticket was sold for Monday night’s gargantuan Powerball jackpot that kept climbing until it brushed up against the $700 million mark — $699.8 million, to be precise. Lottery officials said the lucky buy was made in an Albertsons in Morro Bay, a city on the coast about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco:
That outlet will get up to $1 million for selling the winning ticket.
It wasn’t clear whether one person would get the entire jackpot once the purchase is verified or if numerous parties had a hand in its acquisition in a pool.
The six numbers the ticket matched were white balls of 12, 22, 54, 66, and 69 and the Powerball number of 15.
It was the 5th largest jackpot in Powerball history and 7th biggest in U.S. lottery history.
Late ticket sales pushed it over earlier estimates of $670 million.
It was a history maker of sorts — the first Powerball jackpot won on a Monday night since officials instituted a third weekly drawing on August 23. Drawings are also held on Wednesday and Saturday nights.
It also went into the record books because it came in the 41st drawing in the run – the highest number without a grand prize winner.
Powerball holds the world mark for largest jackpot, set in 2016 – a $1.586 prize shared by winners in California, Florida and Tennessee.
The prior Powerball jackpot win came in the June 5, 2021 drawing, for $285.6 million. It was sold in Florida.
The latest winning ticket holder or holders can get an annuity of roughly $699.8 million in 30 payments over 29 years or a lump sum cash option payment of $496 million. Both are before taxes.
Monday’s drawing had more than 2.2 million winning tickets in all, with prizes ranging from $4 to $2 million.
Five tickets were $1 million winners – they matched all five white balls but missed hitting the red Powerball number. They were sold in Arizona, Florida, Virginian and Massachusetts, which had two. One buyer, in Tennessee, matched the five white balls and doubled the prize to $2 million by opting for the Power Play feature. That cost an additional dollar.
Powerball tickets are $2 per play. Tickets are sold in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The overall odds of winning a prize are 1 in 24.9. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million.
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Justice Samuel Alito said critics were undertaking “unprecedented efforts to intimidate the court”. Amy Coney Barrett, who replaced liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg after her death last October, pushed back against those who say the justices are “a bunch of partisan hacks”. Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving justice on the court, blamed the media for making it seem like judges were like politicians who rule based on their “personal preferences”.
In this photo illustration, the Facebook and Instagram apps are seen on the screen of an iPhone. A whistleblower is accusing the social media giant of putting profits over people.
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In this photo illustration, the Facebook and Instagram apps are seen on the screen of an iPhone. A whistleblower is accusing the social media giant of putting profits over people.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Facebook’s products “harm children, stoke division, weaken our democracy and much more,” Frances Haugen, the former Facebook employee who leaked tens of thousands of pages of internal documents, will tell lawmakers on Tuesday.
“When we realized tobacco companies were hiding the harms [they] caused, the government took action. When we figured out cars were safer with seat belts, the government took action,” she will say, according to her prepared testimony. “I implore you to do the same here.”
Haugen will urge lawmakers to take action to rein in Facebook, because, she says, it won’t do so on its own. “The company’s leadership knows ways to make Facebook and Instagram safer and won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their immense profits before people,” she will say.
Haugen is set to appear before the Senate commerce consumer protection subcommittee, which has been examining Facebook and Instagram’s impact on users, especially teenagers and children.
The internal research Haugen shared with the press, members of Congress and federal regulators has plunged Facebook into its biggest crisis in years. She leaked a trove of internal research and communications showing the company was aware of the ills of its platforms, including the toxic risks of Instagram on some teenage girls’ mental health and the prevalence of drug cartels and human traffickers on its apps. They formed the basis of a blockbuster investigative series by the Wall Street Journal and have fueled anger and investigations in Washington.
On Sunday, Haugen gave a damning interview to CBS’s 60 Minutes, in which she accused Facebook of lying to the public and its own investors about the impacts of its platforms.
Her lawyer says she has filed at least eight complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging Facebook misled its shareholders with its public statements about problems including the prevalence of hate speech, how the social network was used leading up to and during the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, and how its algorithms amplify misinformation.
Haugen spent two years at Facebook for two years working a team combating political misinformation, but has said she grew disillusioned with the company for failing to act on changes to make its platforms safer if those changes risked its growth.
“As long as Facebook is operating in the dark, it is accountable to no one. And it will continue to make choices that go against the common good,” she will tell Congress.
Facebook disputes Haugen’s accusations and has said the reporting on its internal research has mischaracterized its work.
On Monday, Neil Potts, Facebook’s vice president of trust and safety policy told NPR’s All Things Considered that he “would categorically deny” Haugen’s claim that Facebook profits from promoting polarizing and emotionally inflammatory content.
“I think that accusation is just a bit unfounded,” Potts said. “At Facebook, what we are designing our products to do is to increase meaningful experiences, so whether those are meaningful social interactions…or having just positive social experience on a platform, that is what we want the product ultimately to provide. That makes an environment where people will come to Facebook, where they will come to Instagram, and have a better time, and that’s really our bottom line.”
But Haugen’s claims and the extensive set of documents she copied before leaving Facebook have caught the attention of the public — and of powerful critics in Washington.
Last week, the same Senate panel grilled a Facebook official about what her whistleblowing revealed. They accused the company of hiding what it knew about how its products can hurt people, particularly children.
“Facebook is running scared,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., the subcommittee’s ranking member, plans to say in her opening remarks at Tuesday’s hearing. “They know that – in their words – ‘young adults are less active and less engaged on Facebook’ and that they are running out of teens to add to Instagram…They are also studying younger and younger kids so they can market to them.”
Congress’s role, she will say, is to provide the oversight Haugen says the company and CEO Mark Zuckerberg need.
“By shining a light on Mr. Zuckerberg and company’s conduct, we will help hold them accountable,” Blackburn will say.
Editor’s note: Facebook is among NPR’s financial supporters
(CNN)A stretch of Southern California’s coast has been transformed by a leak at an oil pipe that released more than 100,000 gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean.
CNN’s Joe Sutton, Susannah Cullinane, Eric levenson, Amir Vera, Alta Spells, Stella Chan, Claudia Dominguez, Chris Isidore, Cheri Mossburg and Sonnet Swire contributed to this report.
In its place, the company has deployed a slate of executives to mount a public defense while quibbling with the details of allegations from Frances Haugen, the former project manager who left Facebook with tens of thousands of documents. Those documents detail the company’s research into how it spreads hate, incites violence, and, through its Instagram subsidiary, contributes to teenage girls’ negative body images and suicidal thoughts.
Amplify has had a tumultuous history in recent years. It was formed out of the bankruptcy of Memorial Production Partners in 2017, and in 2019 merged with Midstates Petroleum, which had filed for bankruptcy protection in 2016. Amplify shares, which had steadily climbed for most of the past year, closed down by 44 percent on Monday.
Many lawmakers from the state, a liberal stronghold, said the spill was a fresh reminder of the dangers of oil production.
Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat from Southern California, said it was past time to end offshore oil production, as the devastation from a single spill affects a wide range of coastal lands and sensitive environmental areas. Mr. Lieu said the effects of the last spill in Refugio could be felt 125 miles south, in his congressional district, which includes coastal areas in the Los Angeles area.
“Tar balls started showing up in my district in Manhattan Beach,” Mr. Lieu said. “My view is that from what we’ve already seen along the California coast, we need to shut down all offshore drilling because it’s too dangerous.”
Paul Blank, harbor master for the city of Newport Beach, steered among moored yachts and kayakers on Monday, inspecting the beaches surrounding the waterway. The Coast Guard had ordered the entrance of Newport Harbor closed, and workers had blocked it off with booms to prevent oil from floating in.
At one cove, he pointed out flourishing sea grass and the lack of oil. Near another beach, he spotted a tern on a rock. He looked down into the clear water. He pointed out oysters that have reappeared in the harbor in recent years — a sign that the harbor water and ecosystem is as healthy as it has been in decades.
Mr. Blank was relieved the spill had been relatively contained — this time.
“I live in fear of something like this happening,” he said.
Stephanie Grisham, one of former President Donald Trump’s most senior and longest-serving advisers, says she is “terrified” that her former boss may run for office again.
“I am terrified of him running in 2024,” Grisham, who served as both Trump’s press secretary and first lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff, told “Nightline” co-anchor Juju Chang in a wide-ranging exclusive interview on the eve of the publication of Grisham’s new book.
“I don’t think he is fit for the job,” Grisham said. “I think that he is erratic. I think that he can be delusional. I think that he is a narcissist and cares about himself first and foremost. And I do not want him to be our president again.”
Asked by Chang what scares her the most, Grisham painted a grim picture of what could happen if Trump ends up running again in 2024.
“I think he would foment more violence,” she said. “He won’t have consequences. He won’t need to be reelected again.”
“I think he will line his pockets,” she added. “I think his family will line their pockets. I believe that he wanted to help the country in the beginning; I believe he wants to help himself now.”
In her new book, titled “I’ll Take Your Questions Now,” out this Tuesday, Grisham describes a White House in perpetual chaos, where she says “casual dishonesty” flowed through the air “as if it were in the air conditioning system.” The book is filled with accusations about the former president, and includes a host of alleged wrongdoings that range from downplaying the seriousness of the coronavirus to making sexual comments about a young female White House staffer.
But amid all the turmoil laid out in the book, Grisham remained by the former president’s side for nearly his entire four-year term in the White House, before resigning after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
“How did you go from one of the loyalist loyals to one of their fiercest critics, seemingly overnight?” Chang asked Grisham, who responded, “Definitely not overnight. It’s kind of a journey.”
Grisham, who is perhaps best known for never holding a televised press briefing during her time as White House press secretary, has faced a barrage of criticism for speaking out now, nearly a year after leaving the White House.
The former president and his family have forcefully responded to the latest tell-all book by a former close ally, with Melania Trump’s office saying in a statement, “The author is desperately trying to rehabilitate her tarnished reputation by manipulating and distorting the truth about Mrs. Trump. Ms. Grisham is a deceitful and troubled individual who doesn’t deserve anyone’s trust.
“Stephanie didn’t have what it takes and that was obvious from the beginning,” former President Trump said in a statement. “Now, like everyone else, she gets paid by a radical left-leaning publisher to say bad and untrue things.”
Grisham has also received harsh pushback from some former colleagues, including former Trump White House Director of Communications Alyssa Farah, who responded to the book live during her guest-host appearance on “The View” Monday.
“First and foremost, I don’t believe in profiting off of public service. I had a chance to write my White House tell-all and declined. The American people, the taxpayers, paid my salary. I’m not going to go write a book and cash in,” said Farah, who resigned from the White House in December following the election.
“Reading some of the reviews, some of the critics are saying, you know, if you’re admitting to lying then, what makes us think that you’re not lying now?” Chang asked Grisham about her role as press secretary.
“Well, I don’t think I’m admitting to lying at all,” Grisham responded. “I tried to give the press the most honest answers I could, and there were oftentimes I was given information that I knew to be true that perhaps wasn’t true.”
But Chang pushed back, pointing out that Grisham had already admitted that a 2019 tweet she posted targeting former Chief of Staff John Kelly had been untrue.
“To be fair, you did say that the John Kelly tweet was not sincere,” Chang said to Grisham, who acknowledged, “That was not sincere,” and added, “And I regret and apologize for so much.”
“But you said that, ‘I never lied?'” Chang followed up. “Oh no,” Grisham said. “I would s– I– I just would say I– I tried my best.”
Beyond not holding a press briefing, Grisham writes in the book that she was once tasked by the former president with figuring out how to completely ban members of the media from the White House grounds. “I researched different places we could put them other than the press briefing room. Each time the president asked me about my progress on the matter, I let him know I was still working on options,” she writes.
“Should the American public believe what you’re saying now when you, in many ways, were nonresponsive and not communicating transparently or honestly during — by your own admission?” Chang asked.
“Fair question — the fact is, the president never wanted me to do a briefing,” said Grisham who added that “I was glad that that was something he didn’t want from me, because I didn’t want to have to go out there and say something dishonest.”
Farah, however, pushed back on Grisham’s claim that Trump told her not to hold press briefings.
“That would surprise me,” Farah said. “When I worked for him, it was, ‘Go get out on TV, Alyssa. Kayleigh, go give a briefing.’ He wanted people out.”
“She could have done backgrounders in her office,” Farah said of Grisham. “But it seemed like she was largely MIA on the job.”
Grisham also claims in the book that she observed the former president, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 18 women, develop an “unusual interest” and behave “inappropriately” toward a young female staffer during his time as president, including during one trip where he summoned the unnamed aide to his cabin on Air Force One, allegedly telling other staffers, “Let’s bring her up here and look at her ass.”
“What I do know is that he behaved inappropriately. And since the woman worked for me, I tried to protect her and keep his unusual interest in her under wraps,” Grisham writes. “If the president didn’t see her with the press corps, he would ask me where she was. He would ask me if she were coming with us on foreign trips. When she did come along on trips, he often asked me to bring her to his office cabin in the aircraft, which he’d rarely done with anyone else.”
“I wouldn’t leave her in the cabin with him. I always sat there,” Grisham told Chang. “And he would just talk to her about, you know, ‘Did you see my speech? What did you think?’ You know, I think have her compliment him.”
But Chang challenged Grisham, asking, “And yet in many ways were you helping in some ways normalizing his other inappropriate behavior and enabling in some way this behavior?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot,” Grisham replied. “At the White House, it’s not like there’s a human resources office that you can go to say, ‘Hey, the president of the United States is acting inappropriately.'”
Grisham’s claims about the staffer were corroborated by Farah, who said on “The View” that “I was aware of the situation and of the female and I did report it to the chief of staff.”
“It was a challenging situation I don’t know if anything was done,” she said.
“What were you worried that might happen?” Chang asked Grisham.
“I was worried that a young, impressionable girl would be put into a situation that made her uncomfortable,” said Grisham, who also admitted that she now believes “most” of the women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, including former porn star Stormy Daniels. “I was worried he would sexually harass her.”
As the first lady’s chief of staff, Grisham had an up-close look at the woman she says Secret Service agents referred to as “Rapunzel.” Regarding the #FreeMelania hashtag that became a rallying cry for those who theorized online that the first lady didn’t want to be in the White House, Grisham said that idea was misguided.
“The #FreeMelania hashtag I think was people hoping that she wanted to leave,” Grisham said. “The truth is, she liked it there. I think there was a rumor for years that she had a whole separate house somewhere, which was not true. We would laugh about the #FreeMelania hashtag all the time.”
Grisham also described what it was like to be the person to inform the first lady that her husband was being accused of an extramarital affair and was being sued by Daniels.
“That was tough. As a woman, I’ve been cheated on before, so that was painful for me,” Grisham recalled. “It was very, very awkward. I’ve never had to do anything like that before.”
Grisham also claimed that staffers had a secret nickname for the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who both held senior positions in the White House, referring to the pair as “the interns.”
“We called them the interns because as interns usually are, they come into places and think they know everything,” Grisham said.
In the book, which publisher HarperCollins calls “the most frank and intimate portrait of the Trump White House yet,” Grisham also claims Trump had an infatuation with dictators and writes how the former president allegedly sought to cozy up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin during an overseas trip for the Group of 20 summit in Osaka in 2019. Grisham alleges that during a private meeting before the press was brought into the room, Trump told Putin, “Okay, I’m going to act a little tougher with you for a few minutes. But it’s for the cameras, and after they leave we’ll talk. You understand.”
“Putin was coughing. He kept coughing, kept clearing his throat, and I did find it odd that he wouldn’t just take a drink of water … and he knows ways to get in someone’s head,” Grisham told Chang.
As one of Trump’s longest-serving political aides, Grisham’s time working for the former president dates back to his 2016 campaign when she served as a press wrangler before moving deeper into the Trumps’ inner circle. As other top aides resigned or were forced out — with some even speaking out against Trump while he was still in office — Grisham continued to stand by the president.
Grisham told Chang that one of her biggest regrets was not doing more from inside the White House during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when, as she alleges, Trump was thinking more about getting reelected than how to get the virus under control.
“It was about having him look presidential for reelection. I wish I would have told him he needs to wear a mask. I wish I could’ve been louder with that,” she said.
“Do you think that misinformation or dishonesty cost lives?” Chang asked about the White House’s response to the pandemic.
“Yes,” Grisham replied. “I will always think that, and I don’t know that I — you can ever forgive yourself fully for being a part of that.”
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — It’s been nearly three weeks now since Gabby Petito’s fiancé Brian Laundrie was allegedly last seen leaving home to go hiking in the Carlton Reserve in Sarasota County.
Law enforcement and others have pulled out all the stops, searching countless hours for him in the Sarasota County area. But in a newly-released 911 call, an Appalachian Trail hiker claims he saw Laundrie hundreds of miles away – near the border of North Carolina and Tennessee.
The Haywood County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina says it has had 10 recent calls about Laundrie. The office on Monday released one of the 911 calls about a possible sighting.
“I’m on the highway right now but um, I ran into Brian Lauer just a little while ago,” the caller said.
The caller was on the phone with dispatch for more than four minutes. He said he believed he spotted Laundrie in a white truck.
“As I turned around, and I’m coming back by him, he’s waving his arm out of his truck like for me to slow down,” the caller said. “He was talking wild. He said that his girlfriend [unintelligible] and he had to go out to California to see her and he was asking me how to get to California.”
“I went and parked and pulled up the photographs of him and I’m 99.99% sure that was him,” the caller added.
According to the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office, the call came in around 2:40 a.m. Saturday. Two deputies were immediately dispatched to the North Carolina-Tennessee border and encountered one person who was not Laundrie.
In a statement, the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office says, in part, “We will continue to respond and fully investigate all calls for service related to the nationwide search for Mr. Laundrie.”
While there have been many alleged Laundrie sightings; to date, law enforcement has not deemed any of the sightings to be credible.
The FBI is leading the search, but North Port police told 8 On Your Side Monday, “we have consistently been providing support in small groups.”
A very small group was spotted by Eagle 8 HD at the swamp on Monday. Photojournalist Paul Lamison spotted three men on an airboat with a canine in a wet area, deep in the reserve.
To date, federal and local authorities have revealed no sign, clue or evidence of Laundrie’s alleged stop at the swamp.
Northwell Health — the state’s largest hospitals and clinical network — has fired 1,400 employees for refusing to receive the coronavirus vaccine, it was revealed Monday.
Northwell Health has over 76,000 employees and is now filling the positions left vacant by workers who refused to comply with the state mandate for health workers to get vaccinated, a spokesman said.
Service for patients has not been affected, the rep said.
In New York City, Northwell Health operates Lenox Hill hospital in Manhattan, Long Island Jewish and LIJ Forest Hills in Queens, and Staten Island University hospital.
“Northwell Health is proud to announce that our workforce – the largest in New York State – is 100 percent vaccinated. This allows us to continue to provide exceptional care at all of our facilities, without interruption and remain open and fully operational,” the hospital network said in a statement.
“Northwell has taken a rapid, aggressive approach to move successfully toward full vaccination compliance while maintaining continuity of care and ensuring that our high standard of patient safety is not compromised in any way. We thank the vast majority of our employees who did the right thing and got vaccinated.”
The company is now filling the vacancies left by the 1,400 former employees.Eduardo Munoz/Pool Photo via AP, File
A Northwell Health spokesman confirmed that 1,400 workers were let go.
“Northwell believes that having a fully vaccinated workforce is an important measure in our duty to protect the health and safety of our staff, our patients and the communities we serve.
“Northwell regrets losing any employee under such circumstances, but as health care professionals and members of the largest health care provider in the state, we understand our unique responsibility to protect the health of our patients and each other. We owe it to our staff, our patients and the communities we serve to be 100 percent vaccinated against COVID-19.
Northwell Health is New York’s largest hospital and clinic network and has over 76,000 employees.Photo by Mark Lennihan – Pool/Getty Images
A spokesman said, “We are backfilling through recruitment. But nothing has caused any impact on patient care.”
Other hospitals have also suspended or fired workers who’ve refused to comply with the state vaccine mandate for health care workers, put in place to curb COVID-19 in patient settings. The mandate has been subject to multiple lawsuits.
The Pandora Papers cite a number of leaders from lower-income countries or nations with great levels of inequality, among them Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (from left), Chilean President Sebastián Piñera and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Anadolu Agency via Getty Images, Bloomberg, Ludovic Marin/Getty Images
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Anadolu Agency via Getty Images, Bloomberg, Ludovic Marin/Getty Images
The Pandora Papers cite a number of leaders from lower-income countries or nations with great levels of inequality, among them Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev (from left), Chilean President Sebastián Piñera and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Anadolu Agency via Getty Images, Bloomberg, Ludovic Marin/Getty Images
A huge trove of leaked financial documents called the Pandora Papers has exposed the offshore financial dealings of hundreds of the world’s global elites, including more than 330 politicians from nearly 100 countries.
“We’re not looking at a couple of million dollars, here,” says Gerard Ryle, director of the ICIJ, in a video accompanying the release. “We are looking at trillions of dollars.”
The massive leak shows wealthy individuals from all over the world parking money in Caribbean tax havens, hiding assets in foreign trusts and shielding their wealth in opaque Panamanian corporations. Of 12 sitting heads of state implicated in the Pandora Papers, most are from low- or middle-income countries, as are many other politicians and other figures. Brazil, Ivory Coast, Gabon, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are among the countries on the list.
“We literally have countries where people are starving, queuing for food, while their leaders are living lavish lifestyles abroad,” says Maíra Martini, a money laundering expert with Transparency International who’s based in Berlin. Martini and Transparency International were not part of the investigative team that released the Pandora Papers.
“The impact is devastating,” she says. “You have money that should be used to finance public service such as health, education and housing that ends up financing luxury homes and yachts and other luxury goods abroad. That’s very, very concerning.”
The financial records come from 14 law firms. ICIJ isn’t disclosing the exact origins of the leaks to protect its sources. The documents include bank statements and ownership records of assets held in the British Virgin Islands, Belize, Panama, South Dakota, Samoa, the Seychelles and other jurisdictions that actively cater to investors seeking secrecy.
Among the current heads of state implicated in the Pandora Papers is Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, along with six members of his family. The papers allege that they control a network of offshore companies and foundations in Panama and the British Virgin Islands worth more than $30 million.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s family is alleged to have been involved in property deals in Britain worth hundreds of millions of dollars. His son, Heydar Aliyev, now a young adult, was just 11 years old when he became the shareholder in a company based in the British Virgin Islands that purchased a building in the upscale London neighborhood of Mayfair for $49 million.
“If you look at the individuals on the list, most come from countries that have the highest inequality levels,” says Martini of Transparency International.
One example is Chile. The documents link Chilean President Sebastián Piñera (who made a fortune in the credit card business before entering politics) to more than $100 million parked in shell companies in the British Virgin Islands.
The former head of the Philippines’ Presidential Commission on Good Government is on the list as well.
Most individuals accused of hiding assets in the Pandora Papers either declined to discuss the matters with ICIJ or stated that their offshore accounts were legal.
Within hours of the publication of the Pandora Papers, several countries’ tax authorities, including in India, said they plan to investigate any potential criminal activity.
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