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A view of the business tower Lakhta Centre, the headquarters of Russian gas monopoly Gazprom in St. Petersburg, Russia, on April 27. Russia has halted natural gas exports to neighboring Finland.
Dmitri Lovetsky/AP
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Dmitri Lovetsky/AP
A view of the business tower Lakhta Centre, the headquarters of Russian gas monopoly Gazprom in St. Petersburg, Russia, on April 27. Russia has halted natural gas exports to neighboring Finland.
Dmitri Lovetsky/AP
HELSINKI — Russia halted gas exports to neighboring Finland on Saturday, a highly symbolic move that came just days after the Nordic country announced it wanted to join NATO and marked a likely end to Finland’s nearly 50 years of importing natural gas from Russia.
The measure taken by the Russian energy giant Gazprom was in line with an earlier announcement following Helsinki’s refusal to pay for the gas in rubles as Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded European countries do since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.
The Finnish state-owned gas company Gasum said that “natural gas supplies to Finland under Gasum’s supply contract have been cut off” by Russia on Saturday morning at 7 a.m. local time (0400 GMT).
The announcement follows Moscow’s decision to cut off electricity exports to Finland earlier this month and an earlier decision by the Finnish state-controlled oil company Neste to replace imports of Russian crude oil with crude oil from elsewhere.
After decades of energy cooperation that was seen beneficial for both Helsinki — particularly in the case of inexpensive Russian crude oil — and Moscow, Finland’s energy ties with Russia are now all but gone.
Such a break was easier for Finland than it will be for other European Union nations. Natural gas accounts for just some 5% of total energy consumption in Finland, a country of 5.5 million. Almost all of that gas comes from Russia, and is used mainly by industrial and other companies with only an estimated 4,000 households relying on gas heating.
Finland’s state-owned gas company says it will now use other gas sources
Gasum said it would now supply natural gas to its customers from other sources through the undersea Balticconnector gas pipeline running between Finland and Estonia and connecting the Finnish and Baltic gas grids.
Matti Vanhanen, the former Finnish prime minister and current speaker of Parliament, said the effect of Moscow’s decision to cut off gas after nearly 50 years since the first deliveries from the Soviet Union began is above all symbolic.
In an interview Saturday with the Finnish public broadcaster YLE, Vanhanen said the decision marks an end of “a hugely important period between Finland, the Soviet Union and Russia, not only in energy terms but symbolically.”
“That pipeline is unlikely to ever open again,” Vanhanen told YLE, referring to the two parallel Russia-Finland natural gas pipelines that were launched in 1974.
The first connections from Finland’s power grid to the Soviet transmission system were also constructed in the 1970s, allowing electricity imports to Finland in case additional capacity was needed.
The speaker of Finland’s Parliament says Moscow is retaliating for sanctions
Vanhanen didn’t see Moscow’s gas stoppage as a retaliatory step from Russia to Finland’s bid to join NATO but rather a countermove to Western sanctions imposed on Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine.
“Russia did the same thing with Finland it has done earlier with some other countries to maintain its own credibility,” Vanhanen said, referring to the Kremlin’s demands to buy its gas in rubles.
Finland shares a 1,340-kilometer (830-mile) with Russia, the longest of any of the EU’s 27 members, and has a conflict-ridden history with its huge eastern neighbor.
After losing two wars to Soviet Union, in World War II, Finland opted for neutrality with stable and pragmatic political and economic ties with Moscow. Large-scale energy cooperation, also including nuclear power, between the two countries was one of the most visible signs of friendly bilateral ties between former enemies.
Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2022/05/21/1100547908/russia-ends-natural-gas-exports-to-finland
In November, Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Virginia, was one of 205 House Republicans to vote against the bipartisan, $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill, calling it irresponsible and the “Green New Deal in disguise.”
On Friday, he took to Twitter to tout funding from the bill he voted against — highlighting a $70 million expansion of the Port of Virginia in Norfolk — one of the busiest and deepest ports in the United States.
Wittman, who deleted the tweet Friday shortly after ABC News reached out to his office for comment, is the latest member of a growing group of Republicans celebrating new initiatives they originally opposed on the floor.
Shortly after voting against the measure last fall, Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Alabama, celebrated its hundreds of millions in funding for a stalled highway project in Birmingham.
Last week, Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, touted new funding for a flood control project from the package, which she opposed last year, decrying it at the time as a “so-called infrastructure bill.”
Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, a freshman lawmaker who also voted against the infrastructure bill, celebrating new “game-changing” funding to upgrade locks along the Upper Mississippi River.
Thirteen House Republicans and 19 Senate Republicans — including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky — voted with Democrats to approve the package, with many working with Democrats and the Biden White House on the details and legislative language.
“When I voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, I was voting for exactly this type of federal support for critical infrastructure that Iowans depend on,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement about the new lock and dam funding that Hinson also recognized.
Democrats have been quick to call out Republicans who voted against the infrastructure deal and recent COVID-19 relief package while praising elements of the legislation, criticizing them for “voting no and taking the dough.”
“When these Republicans had the chance to actually do something good for their constituents, they refused,” Nebeyatt Betre, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement. “We’re not going to let them get away with this blatant attempt to rewrite history.”
Republicans have pushed back on the characterizations of their votes, arguing that they had issues with Democrats’ larger agenda that included the bipartisan package, called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
“Congresswoman Hinson opposed the infrastructure package because it was tied to trillions of other spending in the House. Since the bill was signed into law, this money was going to be spent regardless. If there’s federal money on the table she is, of course, going to do everything she can to make sure it is reinvested in Iowa,” a spokesperson for Hinson told ABC News.
A spokesperson for Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican who touted a $1 billion investment in flood protection and hurricane repairs in his home state funded by the package he opposed, told ABC News that the GOP whip has “consistently supported these flood protection projects” and approved earlier legislation to pave the way for them.
“What he did not support is tying necessary infrastructure needs to unrelated, Green New Deal policies Democrats put in their $1.2 trillion dollar bill — very little of which was dedicated to traditional infrastructure — that would cripple Louisiana’s energy economy and hurt workers and families in his state,” the spokesperson said.
“You can see why the Obama administration insisted on signage” for projects funded by the American Recovery Act, Jeff Davis, a senior fellow with the Eno Center for Transportation, told ABC News.
“People will be claiming these things for years, and it’s going to be hard to tell five years from now which projects were funded mostly or entirely with IIJA money or money out of the annual budget, he said.
Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/house-republicans-tout-infrastructure-funding-voted/story?id=82429064
Paul Pelosi, right, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of California, follows his wife as she arrives for her weekly news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington in March. Authorities say Paul Pelosi was arrested on suspicion of DUI in Northern California, late Saturday.
Andrew Harnik/AP
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Paul Pelosi, right, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, of California, follows his wife as she arrives for her weekly news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington in March. Authorities say Paul Pelosi was arrested on suspicion of DUI in Northern California, late Saturday.
Andrew Harnik/AP
NAPA, Calif. — Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, was arrested this weekend on suspicion of DUI in Northern California, police records showed Sunday.
Paul Pelosi was taken into custody late Saturday in Napa County north of San Francisco, according to a sheriff’s office online booking report.
He could face charges including driving under the influence and driving with a blood alcohol content level of 0.08 or higher, the report said.
Pelosi’s bail was set for $5,000 for the two misdemeanors, records showed.
No other details were immediately available. California Highway Patrol Officer Andrew Barclay said more information would be released later Sunday.
Drew Hammill, spokesperson for Nancy Pelosi, told The Associated Press: “The Speaker will not be commenting on this private matter which occurred while she was on the East Coast.”
The House speaker was in Providence, Rhode Island, on Sunday, where she delivered the commencement address at Brown University.
Pelosi’s arrest was first reported by TMZ.
Paul and Nancy Pelosi have been married since 1963.
Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2022/05/30/1102036672/paul-pelosi-husband-arrest-dui