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Putin thrusts global food markets into Russian politics

InternationalJan 31. 2021A worker monitors as harvested wheat grain is unloaded into a truck during the summer harvest on a farm operated by Progress Agroin Ust-Labinsk, Krasnodar, Russia, on July 3, 2020. MUST CREDIT; Bloomberg photo by Andreyi Rudakov.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Megan Durisin, Yuliya Fedorinova

Dmitry Bravkov is the kind of farmer that makes Vladimir Putin proud. The Russian president regularly touts his country’s rise to the top of the world’s agricultural exporters as another sign of its global power.

But after 14 years of running a dairy and grain farm 300 miles southwest of Moscow, Bravkov has suddenly found himself on the wrong end of Kremlin policy. In three weeks, he’ll get less for his wheat because of new tariffs and quotas designed to curb exports and drive domestic prices lower.

With Putin’s popularity barely back from record lows, the policy is an attempt to mollify a public battered by falling incomes and rising food costs. Protests demanding the release of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny now give Putin another reason to try to shore up support.

Russia’s position as the world’s biggest wheat exporter means the move is already reverberating through global markets, and a short-term domestic advantage could lead to longer-term damage to faith in the country as a reliable supplier.

“The introduction of the duty is an attempt to cash in on the farmers,” said Bravkov, 47, who employs 60 people in a village in the Bryansk region. “There’s plenty of wheat in the world. If Russia doesn’t supply it, someone else will.”

World grain prices have soared to the highest level in six years after poor weather hampered harvests in some key producers and China embarked on an agricultural buying spree. The knock-on effect is particularly acute for developing nations because food is a bigger share of household spending.

Uncertainty over Russia’s restrictions has already hurt some buyers, with top wheat importer Egypt canceling a tender on Jan. 12-a rare occurrence-after supply offers dried up.

“Russia wants to have it both ways,” said Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization in Rome. “It wants to have a big chunk of the export market, and at the same time, not be exposed to problems within the global food sector. Usually such plans aren’t successful in the long-run.”

Vladimir Putin on Dec. 17., 2020. MUST CREDIT; Bloomberg photo by Andrey Rudakov.

While Putin was boasting of a record harvest last year, ordinary Russians had to shell out 20% more for bread and 65% more for sugar than in 2019. Memories of food shortages in the Soviet Union and soaring inflation after its collapse have made prices a politically sensitive issue in Russia.

Russia’s history wasn’t lost on Putin as he scolded ministers on national television last month for not doing enough to stop rising prices, even as he boasted about huge grain exports. Russia’s wheat output has nearly doubled in the past two decades.

“Back then, they said that everything is available in the Soviet Union, just not enough for everyone, but there wasn’t enough because there were shortages,” he said. “Now there might not be enough because people don’t have enough money to buy certain products at the prices we see on the market.”

One day after the comments were aired-and three days before Putin was due to address the nation in his annual televised press conference-the government proposed a levy on wheat from mid-February though the end of June. The duty will start at 25 euros ($30.40) a ton before doubling from March 1. Wheat-export prices in Russia have climbed 43% in the past six months to $297 as of Jan. 20, data from consultancy IKAR show.

The government is also pressing ahead with a previously announced grain-export quota for the same period. Price curbs were looked at for other food products such as pasta, eggs and potatoes, though Russia’s Agriculture Ministry said on Monday it sees no need for further limits.

Russia has a history of disrupting the wheat market with restrictions and duties. The country imposed an export tax in 2007 to combat rising food costs, helping push global wheat prices to a record, and some researchers see an export ban in 2010 as an indirect contributor to the Arab Spring uprisings.

Indeed, few other exporters have dared to go down the protectionist route because the results can be counterproductive. The strategy is particularly risky because the Kremlin has worked so hard to overtake the U.S. and European Union and become the dominant global supplier of wheat.

The measures will cost wheat farmers as much as 135 billion rubles ($1.8 billion) in potential revenue losses, and more if export duties are extended to other foodstuffs, according to Andrey Sizov Jr., managing director at consultant SovEcon in Moscow.

Importers are already turning toward other suppliers such as Australia and even India, according to Evgeniya Dudinova, a member of the International Association of Operative Millers Eurasia leadership council. In the United Arab Emirates, where she’s based, purchases from Russia have totaled about 330,000 tons so far this season, a third of last year’s volume.

Key importers will try to avoid Russian wheat when the taxes kick in, said Muzzammil R. Chappal, chairman of the Cereal Association of Pakistan. The country is the fifth-largest importer of Russian wheat this season.

At his farm, Bravkov said he hasn’t received any help from the government in the past. He’s in the process of switching from dairy to grain farming after milk prices stagnated, which will force him to lay off workers to stay profitable. “With such measures our government just helps protect our European competitors,” Bravkov said.

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From Cancun to Aruba, U.S. getaways rush to offer traveler tests

InternationalJan 31. 2021Grupo Aeromexico aircraft at Benito Juarez International Airport in Mexico City on Oct. 7, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Cesar Rodriguez.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Andrea Navarro, Patrick Clark

Hotels, airports and airlines across Mexico and the Caribbean are rushing to set up covid-19 testing sites to meet new U.S. entry rules and salvage demand for the pandemic-hit travel industry.

In Mexico, tourist magnets like Cancun have set up multiple testing sites inside airports to accommodate travelers to the U.S., which on Tuesday started requiring proof of negative Covid results before allowing visitors to fly in from other nations. Hyatt Hotels Corp. is offering complimentary testing at its 19 Latin America resorts, while Marriott International Inc. is providing a mix of on-site testing and assistance coordinating with local facilities.

The U.S. requirements are meant to help airlines regain at least some of their lucrative international business by helping to assuage fears of contracting the virus. Yet any difficulty in obtaining tests also stands to dent demand from Americans fleeing to vacation spots who would potentially face trouble returning home. In places like Mexico, tests are hard to come by, can cost as much as $200 and results can take days — leading travel companies to step in.

“In an environment for hotels where demand is down dramatically, anything they can do to make travel feel safer is a win in their eyes,” said Michael Bellisario, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. “There’s a lot of uncertainty and anything to expedite the process and make traveling simpler and safer is helpful for all parties.”

The new rules require that travelers receive a test within three days before leaving for the U.S. and provide written documentation of a negative result. Both PCR and rapid antigen tests are accepted, and passengers who have already had the virus can also show proof of recovery instead.

Beyond Cancun, the state of Guanajuato, home to San Miguel de Allende, is also offering airport tests and is working with hotels so they can do it too. Yucatan is doing the same.

Among hotels, testing sites are most prominent at luxury resorts, where wealthier travelers can secure results ahead of their departure without having to leave the premises. Marriott’s locations with on-property testing include the Ritz-Carlton Cancun, the JW Marriott Los Cabos Beach Resort & Spa and the Dominican Republic’s Westin Puntacana Resort & Club, according to a spokeswoman.

For Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., on-site testing is available at properties such as the Hilton Aruba Caribbean Resort & Casino and the Conrad Punta de Mita. Others are providing access to a local testing provider.

In the two days since the requirement took effect, local media showed a chaotic scene at the Mexico City airport, where many passengers had no idea they needed a test. Some of them were able to get a rapid one there, while others missed their flight, according to a report on Imagen TV.

In Cancun, 120 Cuban travelers had tests that were done more than three days before their flights and weren’t allowed to board, according to newspaper and TV station Milenio Noticias. At the Dominican Republic’s Las Americas airport, hundreds of passengers missed their flights on Tuesday and Wednesday because they didn’t have tests, radio station NotiUno reported.

Volaris, Mexico’s biggest airline, set up a testing site at the Marriott hotel inside the Mexico City airport. The low-cost airline has managed to bounce back to pre-pandemic traffic yet has seen its shares fall 12% this year as the new U.S. rules were announced.

The company didn’t yet have statistics on how many tests it has administered, but a spokeswoman said they have conducted more than they expected since passengers from other airlines have taken advantage of the offer.

For its part, Grupo Aeromexico is offering discounts with certain labs for people to get tested days before heading to the airport. The carrier also is working to set up sites across the terminals where it operates, a spokesman said.

The costs for tests vary by location and company. At Marriott’s JW Marriott Cancun Resort & Spa and Marriott Cancun Resort, it’s included in the room rate, while for others it’s not, said spokeswoman Kerstin Sachl. Hilton’s Aruba resort offers PCR tests for $125 and antigen tests for $50, according to its website.

“It makes you feel more comfortable as a traveler,” Bellisario said. “And from the hotels’ perspective, it brings in incremental demand and limits cancellations.”

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Ukraine stayed quiet during Trump-era pressures. Now it’s sharing some Giuliani tales.

InternationalJan 31. 2021Rudy Giuliani listens as then-President Trump held a news briefing at the White House on Sept. 27, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Salwan Georges.

By The Washington Post · David L. Stern

KYIV, Ukraine – There was a consistent message from Ukraine’s leadership over everything from the Trump campaign’s dirt digging to Ukraine’s central role in the first impeachment proceedings: No comment.

But now, as the Biden administration settles in, some close allies of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky are opening up about one of the longest-running dramas from the Trump era – the blitz of meetings, messages and public statements in Ukraine by former president Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

Among the accounts emerging from Ukrainian officials is a July 2019 phone call between Giuliani and Andriy Yermak, formerly one of Zelensky’s top aides and now his chief of staff. Yermak said the conversation was the first direct contact between Giuliani and the Zelensky administration and, until now, was only discussed in general terms.

The new disclosures from Ukraine do not offer any bombshell revelations about Giuliani’s dealings. But they help fill in some blanks on his frantic – and unsuccessful – quest to press Ukraine to make statements seen as potentially helpful to the Trump reelection bid.

Giuliani’s overall goal, according to the accounts, was to have Zelensky’s government validate the Trump campaign’s unsupported claims – including that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine and that then vice president Biden attempted to cover it up.

Giuliani, saying he was acting on President Donald Trump’s behalf, also was promoting a false narrative that the Ukrainian government colluded to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections against Trump – an unproven claim that sought to deflect attention from Russia’s interference in the campaign.

Ukraine’s willingness to discuss Giuliani’s forays also lands at a difficult time for the former New York mayor as he faces mounting personal battles, including a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems over alleged false claims about ballot rigging in the 2020 election.

Giuliani did not respond to a list of questions sent to him, and also through his lawyer. Kurt Volker, the former State Department’s special envoy to Ukraine for peace negotiations, who was also on the call with Yermak, declined to comment.

Rudy Giuliani greets supporters before then-President Donald Trump’s arrival at a rally at Southern New Hampshire University Arena on Aug 15, 2019 in Manchester, N.H. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford.

The Zelensky team’s decision to talk about Giuliani’s tactics coincides with efforts for a reset in relations with President Biden, who dealt closely with Ukraine during his eight years as vice president.

“We’ve gotten through all these trials, despite criticism at home and abroad,” said Yermak. “And today, this feeling that Ukraine – the mention of Ukraine – is associated with various scandals should disappear.”

Giuliani’s tone and actions during his dealings with the Ukrainians were “aggressive and threatening,” said one Zelensky insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

But the Ukrainians, he said, steadfastly refused to “play ball.”

The accusations against Biden centered on his son, Hunter, and his previous position on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which is under investigation for alleged corrupt dealings. Trump and his allies claimed, without evidence, that Joe Biden, then vice president, used his clout to end the investigations.

Ukrainian investigations into Burisma and its founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, are ongoing. But authorities say that none of the cases involve Hunter Biden. A Senate report in September described the younger Biden’s position at the company as “problematic” but found no wrongdoing by Joe Biden.

Giuliani’s pressure began almost from the moment of Zelensky’s election in April 2019. The former New York mayor planned to travel to Ukraine the following month.

But Giuliani canceled at the last moment, claiming that Zelensky was surrounded by “enemies” of Trump. This set off concerns in Zelensky’s inner circle that Giuliani would poison Zelensky’s relations with the White House.

In July 2019, Yermak asked Volker to introduce him to Giuliani in an effort to clear the air.

Ukrainians needed U.S. diplomatic and financial muscle to bolster them in their ongoing battles with Kremlin-backed insurgents in eastern Ukraine, a conflict that has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014.

Former envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, departs the Capitol on Oct. 3, 2019 after meeting with the House Intelligence Committee as part of investigations into the then President Donald Trump’s dealings with that country. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Bill O’Leary.

“Until we were 100% certain that Rudy was the go-to guy, and nothing would happen without him, we were trying to avoid him as much as possible,” said Igor Novikov, who served an adviser to Zelensky until August and was a member of the team tasked with responding to U.S. overtures during the Trump administration.

“But then toward the end of June, we realized that we couldn’t achieve anything with Trump without talking to Rudy first,” Novikov said.

To this end, Volker set up an introductory phone call on July 22, 2019 between himself, Yermak and Giuliani, according to Volker’s testimony during the impeachment proceedings. Novikov, unknown to Giuliani and Volker, sat next to Yermak and took notes.

Volker mentioned the phone call briefly in his testimony, saying that it was short and that he did not remember any discussion of Ukraine opening investigations.

Novikov, however, said the call lasted more than 40 minutes, during which Giuliani spelled out what he wanted.

The Giuliani wish list, according to Novikov: Zelensky would publicly announce the launch of investigations into Burisma and allegations that Ukrainian officials conspired to interfere in the 2016 presidential elections.

“Just let these investigations go forward, get someone to investigate them,” Novikov recalled Giuliani saying. Furthermore, Giuliani wanted a public statement from Zelensky “at the right time” saying that he supports the investigations. It would “clear the air really well,” Giuliani said, according to Novikov’s notes.

According to Novikov, Giuliani told the Ukrainians that Zelensky should “be careful” of the people surrounding him or he could find himself “in trouble.”

Ukrainian officials believe Giuliani later played a key role in setting up the July 25, 2019 call in which Trump asked Zelensky to “do us a favor.” The call became the centerpiece of the House impeachment later that year. Trump later was acquitted by the Senate.

“Trump took the phone call because Rudy said Zelensky would say the right things,” said the official involved in the Ukrainian discussions. “But the Americans’ tone changed after the call. Trump apparently didn’t hear what he wanted to hear.”

After the phone call, Giuliani ratcheted up his efforts for the Ukrainians to open investigations.

In early August 2019, Giuliani and Yermak met in Madrid, according to testimony during the impeachment hearing. Also present was Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani’s who is now under federal indictment for campaign finance violations and wire fraud. He has pleaded not guilty.

“In Madrid, Rudy was like a confident mobster, with a smirk and a smile,” Parnas said in an interview. “He was like, ‘We don’t care, you need this more than we do.’ “

Yermak, however, said that Giuliani did not pressure him in Madrid and that Burisma was mentioned only briefly.

In the meantime, the Ukrainians found out from American media that $250 million in U.S. military aid had been put on hold.

Members of Zelensky’s team contemplated giving Giuliani and Trump what they desired, and considered having Zelensky announce the investigations during a planned interview with CNN. Some advisers objected strongly to this, however, and the announcement was canceled.

“Can you imagine what would have been the reaction one second after that interview?” said Oleksandr Danyliuk, the former head of Zelensky’s security council. “Zelensky would be looked upon as a toy, as a soft toy – not as a president. Nobody would have respected him.”

Some Zelensky aides now say it was a mistake to open channels with Giuliani. But Ukraine’s rebuff of the demands, said Novikov, was a victory in keeping the country out of U.S. affairs.

“Without our actions,” he asserted, “the U.S. presidential race would have been very different.”

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Transgender girls are at the center of America’s culture wars, yet again

InternationalJan 30. 2021

A group of LGBTQ advocates gathered outside the South Dakota Capitol in Pierre on Tuesday, to protest a bill that would have banned people from updating the sex on their birth certificates. (Stephen Groves/ AP)

By The Washington Post, Emily Wax-Thibodeaux, Samantha Schmidt

WASHINGTON – On the day that President Joe Biden signed an executive order allowing transgender people to serve in the military, Republican lawmakers 2,100 miles away in Montana’s capital advanced a law to ban transgender youth from competing in girls’ sports.

Less than a month into their 2021 sessions, GOP state legislators across the United States are relaunching campaigns to restrict transgender people’s access to medical care and school athletics. But this time, their efforts are clashing with the agenda of a Democratic president who has been called the most pro-transgender in history.

Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office to reinstate protections for gender identity that were curbed by the Trump administration. Meanwhile, lawmakers in at least a dozen states have proposed bills in recent weeks that challenge such protections. Some were carried over from 2020 sessions, when a record number of anti-trans bills were filed in state legislatures, according to the ACLU.

Many of those bills target youth and collegiate sports, with supporters arguing that transgender girls have an unfair physiological advantage in girls’ sports, an edge that can affect access to scholarships.

State Rep. Bruce Griffey, a Republican, who has a cisgender daughter on a school golf team, is backing/sponsoring a bill in Tennessee that would only allow school competition based on the gender listed on one’s birth certificate.

“What if one of the boys is not doing well, so he pretends to be transgender to win?” he asked. “I’m protecting a discriminated class: that’s girls and women in sports.”

But detractors say arguments about biological advantages among transgender athletes are based on limited research and put an outsize focus on a tiny fraction of young competitors. About 2% of high school students in the United States identify as transgender, according to data published in 2019 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

While studies on the issue are limited, advocates say young transgender athletes also face hurdles that affect their athletic performance, including discrimination, trauma and gender dysphoria.

Bills targeting transgender rights have a history of failing in state legislatures or getting tied up in legal battles. They often elicit protests and boycotts from LGBTQ activists and their supporters or create legal issues around discrimination and privacy.

The Montana House on Tuesday narrowly voted down a bill that would have punished doctors who provided certain medical treatments to transgender minors. Some Republican opponents were critical of bringing government into doctors’ offices and worried it would risk the state’s economy by attracting the kind of boycotts that North Carolina experienced after passing a “bathroom bill” in 2016 that banned transgender people from using public facilities that match their gender identity.

The Montana youth athlete bill has passed the state House on a 61-to-38 vote. It will now move to the state Senate.

Democratic opponents of these bills and some political experts charge that the legislative efforts amount to a political power play to rally the conservative base around an issue they see as threatening traditional gender roles.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal advocacy group for socially conservative causes, published a blog post this week that charges transgender athletes with hijacking competitive opportunities and calls Biden’s executive order a threat to “gut legal protections for women and girls.”

“Alliance Defending Freedom will stand against any attempt by the Biden administration to advance an unconstitutional agenda,” the post reads.

“They just see it as an easy win,” said Don Haider-Markel, chair of political science at the University of Kansas and an expert on public opinion on LGBTQ issues. “It’s an easy way for them to show that Democrats have just gone over the edge, that there is no limit to how far they will push these radical ideas.”

But some Republican lawmakers say the issue is deeper than that. After seeing similar legislation pursued in other states, South Carolina Rep. Ashley Trantham, a Republican, and 18 other state lawmakers sponsored the Save Women’s Sports Act, which would restrict middle- and high school students to sports that correspond to their assigned sex at birth. The bill, pre-filed in December, has been referred to a committee.

School athletics are “an extremely competitive environment,” said Trantham, whose daughter was a high school basketball player. “If it was my daughter and she needed that scholarship to go to college, it would be very important to me that she was playing on an even playing field.”

Trantham said one of the first people she notified when she decided to file the bill was the head of the LGBTQ advocacy group South Carolina Equality.

“I want to make sure you guys understand this is not me trying to hurt the transgender community,” Trantham said she told him. “This is me trying to protect girls in women’s sports.”

LGBTQ activists and many pediatricians say that the medical treatments transgender youth receive to align their bodies with their gender identity mitigate the physical disparities in athletics. They note that those same treatments – including hormones and puberty blockers – also have also been targets of Republican lawmakers, with about a dozen bills introduced this month seeking to restrict transgender minors’ access to them.

While bills limiting transgender athletes are spreading, more than 16 states already have instituted laws and guidance that support full inclusion of transgender youth in sports that correspond to their identities, according to GLSEN, an advocacy group for LGBTQ youth.

“I’ve seen arguments that this will be the end of women’s sports,” said Katrina Karkazis, a cultural anthropologist and bioethicist. “If so, it should have ended already.”

Since the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in 2015, statehouses have launched more than 300 bills seeking to restrict LGBTQ rights, many targeting transgender issues as well as conversion therapy and same-sex adoption, according to the Equality Federation, a national advocacy organization. Some have attempted to criminalize doctors who provide hormone treatment to transgender youth and others mandate written parental approval for teens who want to use a pronoun different from their sex at birth.

Many of the bills use the same language and are written by conservative advocacy groups. Almost all of them have failed in statehouses or are stuck in court litigation.

After Idaho became the first state to institute restrictions on transgender youth athletes and order “sex examinations” before they could play, a federal judge in August granted a preliminary injunction. Judge David Nye wrote: “The state has not identified a legitimate interest served by the Act . . . other than an invalid interest of excluding transgender women and girls from women’s sports entirely, regardless of their physiological characteristics.”

He wrote that being subjected to physical examinations of their gender “is itself humiliating.”

In South Dakota, which has been at the forefront of legislation that limits transgender rights, state Rep. Fred Deutsch, a Republican, sponsored a bill last February that sought to criminalize medical professionals for treating transgender youths with hormone blockers or surgery. Despite the state having a majority-Republican legislature, the bill failed after hundreds of people protested.

In a November interview, Deutsch said he would not pursue any transgender bills this year, and instead would focus on the state’s high coronavirus infection rates. “My focus is on pandemic related issues for 2021. It’s a more urgent need.”

But he later changed his mind, putting forward a bill that would ban people from changing the sex designation on their birth certificates, unless there was a clerical error or a person has ambiguous genitalia.

“Values always matter and there’s a divide in our country over values,” Deutsch said in a phone interview Thursday. “I stood up and said this is not a hate bill. It’s about biology. It’s science. You can’t change your sex. You can look like a boy, you can take hormones and sex operations but it doesn’t make you a boy. Your gender can be a boy, but you can never change your sex.”

Deutsch’s bill has passed the House and is moving to a Senate committee.

South Dakota state Rep. Linda Duba, a Democrat, who has consistently voted against legislation that restricts transgender rights, said she was taken aback by Deutsch’s about-face.

“Again? What a waste of time. We need to focus on legislation to help those who are impacted by covid,” said Duba, who said she worries about the stakes of such legislation for a population with a disproportionately high rate of suicide and homelessness. “Why discriminate and focus on a group of people who already feel marginalized? We have so many other problems.”

These state-level legislative efforts come as more than 8 in 10 Americans say they favor laws that would protect LGBTQ people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodations and housing, according to a Public Religion Research Institute 2020 American Values Survey.

But while public opinion polls across the board show support for transgender military service and other transgender rights, support softens when it comes to public accommodations and sports, Haider-Markel said.

“These things make people feel uncomfortable,” Haider-Markel said. “When you combine that with close contact . . . whether it be in bathrooms or in sports, that disgust becomes more threatening.”

But transgender athlete Juniper Eastwood, 23, a cross-country runner, said she hopes public sentiments will soon shift, just as many conservatives have come to accept the gay community.

“It’s just going to take a long time,” she said. “It won’t happen this year.”

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Paul Crutzen, Nobel laureate who studied ozone and named new ‘Anthropocene’ era, dies at 87

InternationalJan 30. 2021

Dutch atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen, left, receives the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf. (Eric Roxfelt/ AP)

By The Washington Post, Harrison Smith

Paul Crutzen, a Nobel-winning chemist who revealed threats to the ozone layer, developed the concept of “nuclear winter” and concluded that humans were having such a profound impact on the planet that it was time to recognize a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – died Jan. 28 at a hospital in Mainz, Germany. He was 87.

His death was announced by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, where Dr. Crutzen directed the atmospheric chemistry department from 1980 until retiring in 2000. A spokeswoman for the institute, Susanne Benner, said he “suffered from several years of illness” but did not specify the cause.

Crutzen was raised in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands and initially worked as an engineer, not a scientist. Though he dreamed of an academic career, he enrolled at a technical school to spare his parents the cost of a university education, and built bridges in Amsterdam before starting a new life for himself in Sweden.

When he spotted a newspaper ad for a computer programming job at Stockholm College, he saw an opportunity. Despite lacking any experience, he applied for the position and got the job – and was soon sitting in on college classes, accumulating enough credits to get a master’s degree and apply for a doctorate program in meteorology.

Crutzen went on to spend decades investigating the interplay between humans and the atmosphere, studying the causes of air pollution, the impact of wildfires, the consequences of nuclear war and the depletion of the ozone layer, which earned him a share of the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry. For all his accomplishments, he was perhaps best known in recent years for popularizing “the Anthropocene,” a poetic new term that he first used in 2000.

“I was at a conference where someone said something about the Holocene, the long period of relatively stable climate since the end of the last ice age,” he told Fred Pearce, author of the climate-change book “With Speed and Violence” (2007). “I suddenly thought that this was wrong. The world has changed too much. So I said: ‘No, we are in the Anthropocene.’ I just made up the word on the spur of the moment. Everyone was shocked.”

He later learned that he was not the first to use the term “Anthropocene,” which biologist Eugene Stoermer had employed in the 1980s. Nor was he the first to offer a name for this human-dominated epoch of shrinking forests, rising temperatures and soaring population, which journalist Andrew Revkin once suggested calling the Anthrocene.

But Crutzen’s proposal, formalized in a 2002 Nature article titled “Geology of Mankind,” quickly took off, spurring an ongoing debate over whether it is time to rewrite geology textbooks and add a new epoch to the planet’s timetable, one that emphasizes the powerful role that humans play in shaping the Earth.

“Paul was very good at launching ideas that resonate with a lot of people, and that start to become a central theme of something,” said Guy Brasseur, a distinguished scholar at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. In a phone interview, he called Crutzen a master of developing “simple ideas, simple models, that show the essence of a process.”

Crutzen was initially known for his work on the ozone layer, the thin atmospheric shield that protects plants and animals from ultraviolet radiation. In 1970, he demonstrated that compounds known as nitrogen oxides – spewed out by microbes in the soil – play a central role in controlling the level of ozone in the stratosphere.

His discovery marked a fundamental breakthrough in understanding the chemistry of the ozone layer, and shook up the debate over manufacturing supersonic transport planes such as the Concorde. Drawing on Crutzen’s research, some scientists feared that fleets of supersonic aircraft would pose a threat to the ozone layer by releasing nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere. (The transport planes were never built in large numbers.)

Inspired by his research, chemists Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland published a 1974 article that identified a threat to the ozone layer from chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which were used in everything from air conditioners and refrigerators to hair spray and deodorant. British researchers later discovered a vast “ozone hole” over the South Pole, which Crutzen and other scientists linked to the CFCs.

Their findings paved the way for the Montreal Protocol, a landmark 1987 treaty that phased out the use of ozone-destroying gases. In awarding the Nobel Prize to Crutzen, Rowland and Molina, who died in October, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said that “the three researchers have contributed to our salvation from a global environmental problem that could have catastrophic consequences.”

The loss of the ozone was far from the only environmental catastrophe that Crutzen studied. In a 1982 article memorably subtitled “Twilight at Noon,” he and chemist John Birks warned of a climate disaster caused by a nuclear war, in which fires rage through cities, forests and oil fields. The resulting smoke would blot out the sun, they concluded, cooling the surface of the planet and jeopardizing agricultural production.

Their theory gained further traction when five others, including astronomer Carl Sagan, co-authored a 1983 Science paper titled “Nuclear Winter.” Sagan later discussed the concept on television and campaigned against nuclear weapons, along with researchers such as Crutzen.

“Although I do not count the ‘nuclear winter’ idea among my greatest scientific achievements . . . I am convinced that, from a political point of view, it is by far the most important,” Crutzen said in his Nobel Prize lecture. The theory, he added, “magnifies and highlights the dangers of a nuclear war and convinces me that in the long run mankind can only escape such horrific consequences if nuclear weapons are totally abolished by international agreement.”

Paul Jozef Crutzen was born in Amsterdam on Dec. 3, 1933. His mother worked in a hospital kitchen, and his father waited tables but was often unemployed. The family later struggled to find food and fuel during the German occupation, amid a nationwide famine that became known as the “hunger winter.”

Several of Crutzen’s classmates died before the Swedish Red Cross began dropping packages of food by parachute, and nearly all his classmates lost a year of schooling because they had only a few hours of instruction each week. With special help from a teacher, Crutzen carried on.

In his telling, he excelled in math and physics but, “because of a heavy fever,” struggled in his high school final exam. His grades kept him from receiving a university stipend, setting him on a path to join the Amsterdam bridge construction bureau.

In 1958 he married Terttu Soininen, a Finn, and moved to northern Sweden. He joined the meteorology department at Stockholm College (now a university) the next year, and soon learned machine code that he used to program weather prediction models. He received a master’s degree in 1963, a PhD in 1968 and a doctor of science degree in 1973.

Crutzen was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford and worked at the National Center for Atmospheric Research before joining the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, where he mentored younger researchers such as Birks, his collaborator on the “nuclear winter” paper.

“Paul Crutzen mentored at least hundreds and promoted the careers of thousands of scientists around the world,” Birks said in an email. “Besides being a brilliant scientist, he one of the most caring and generous people I have ever known.”

Survivors include his wife, two daughters and three grandchildren.

Long after he helped keep pollutants out of the atmosphere through his ozone research, Crutzen made a bold proposal to flood the air with sulfur in an effort to combat global warming. Such “geoengineering” efforts were worth further study, Crutzen argued, especially if humanity did not act quickly to stem emissions and alter consumption habits.

“Imagine our descendants in the year 2200 or 2500. They might liken us to aliens who have treated the Earth as if it were a mere stopover for refueling, or even worse, characterize us as barbarians who would ransack their own home,” he wrote in a 2011 essay with journalist Christian Schwägerl. “Living up to the Anthropocene means building a culture that grows with Earth’s biological wealth instead of depleting it. Remember, in this new era, nature is us.”

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Biden’s national security adviser suggests a fast timeline to rejoin Iran deal

InternationalJan 30. 2021

Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s new national security adviser, helped shape the Iran nuclear deal struck in 2015. (Demetrius Freeman/ The Washington Post)

By The Washington Post, Anne Gearan

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden is eyeing an urgent restoration of the international nuclear deal with Iran as a first step to deal with a range of threats from that country, new national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday, suggesting a faster timeline than the administration has previously outlined.

Sullivan did not mention Biden’s oft-stated precondition that Iran make the first move by rolling back nuclear activities to come back into compliance with terms of the 2015 deal. Iran is closer to building a bomb now than it was when President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the deal, and putting the nuclear program “in a box” is the first imperative, Sullivan said.

“We are going to have to address Iran’s other bad behavior, malign behavior across the region, but from our perspective, a critical early priority has to be to deal with what is an escalating nuclear crisis as they move closer to having enough fissile material for a weapon,” Sullivan said. “And we would like to make sure that we reestablish some of the parameters and constraints around the program that have fallen away over the course of the past two years.”

Containing Iran’s ability to produce bombmaking nuclear material was the central rationale the Obama administration applied in seeking the deal that Sullivan helped to shape.

The timing of a U.S. return to the deal, as well as new concessions or promises made to Iran and the scope of a potential follow-on agreement, is one of the first major foreign policy tests for the Biden administration.

Sullivan did not spell out a preferred timeline, and the issue is now being debated among White House and State Department advisers. But Sullivan’s emphasis on a pressing need to contain Iran suggests he may push for an accelerated response.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has adopted a skeptical tone about any fast action, saying on his first full day in office Wednesday that a U.S. return to the deal is still far off.

“Iran is out of compliance on a number of fronts. And it would take some time, should it make the decision to do so, for it to come back into compliance and time for us then to assess whether it was meeting its obligations,” Blinken said during a news conference at the State Department. “We’re not there yet, to say the least.”

As a 2020 presidential candidate, Biden committed to returning to the international compact that Trump had run in 2016 on reversing. After Trump pulled the United States out in 2018, Iran began breaking its obligations under the agreement.

Biden set the condition that Iran would have to return to complying with the agreement first, and said a restored deal would then be a starting point for negotiation of a larger agreement that addresses long-standing concerns over Iran’s ballistic missile capability, its support for terrorism, and aggressions toward Israel and Persian Gulf neighbors.

Sullivan mentioned those concerns in remarks to the United States Institute of Peace, and said the threats have only gotten worse because of Trump’s decision.

“Our view is that if we can get back to diplomacy and can put Iran’s nuclear program in a box, that will create a platform upon which to build a global effort, including partners and allies in the region and in Europe and elsewhere, to take on the other significant threats Iran poses, including on the ballistic missile issue,” Sullivan said.

With key decisions about the pace and scope of U.S. outreach on hold, the administration on Friday named former Obama administration Middle East adviser and veteran diplomat Robert Malley to be a special envoy on Iran.

Conservatives including Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., criticized the pick before it was announced, calling Malley too soft on Tehran. Other opponents of the 2015 deal said Malley has been too critical of Israel, whose leaders opposed the deal reached when Biden was vice president.

“As the President and Secretary Blinken have said, if Iran comes back into full compliance with its obligations under the JCPOA, the United States would do the same and then use that as a platform to build a longer and stronger agreement that also addresses other areas of concern,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement Friday.

The 2015 deal is formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

“But we are a long way from that point as Iran is out of compliance on a number of fronts, and there are many steps in the process that we will need to evaluate,” Price said, promising coordination with allies and with Congress, where skepticism about a return to the deal is widespread.

Malley will lead a team of “clear-eyed experts with a diversity of views,” as the new administration decides what to do, Price said.

Iran has said the United States must make the first move.

Iran’s parliament has tried to raise pressure on the new administration, threatening to suspend some U.N. nuclear inspections unless the United States lifts sanctions by Feb. 21.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif responded to Blinken’s remarks with a tweet in English.

“Reality check for @SecBlinken: The US violated (the) JCPOA,” Zarif tweeted.

Sullivan spoke during an event that also featured his predecessor, Trump national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien. Sullivan and O’Brien agreed on other major priorities, including confronting China and Russia and extending Trump’s effort to forge diplomatic and economic agreements between Israel and Arab neighbors.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu objected to the 2015 agreement and tried to derail it. Sullivan did not mention Israel in his remarks Friday but did say Iran’s threats against other nations in the Middle East are rising.

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11 soldiers injured after drinking what officials say may have been antifreeze

InternationalJan 30. 2021

By The Washington Post, Alex Horton

Eleven soldiers were hospitalized at Fort Bliss in Texas after they drank antifreeze mistaken for alcohol, Army officials said Friday, as two service members remained in critical condition.

The soldiers were on the last day of a 10-day field training exercise when the incident occurred Thursday, Lt. Col. Allie Payne, a spokesperson for the 1st Armored Division and Fort Bliss, said during a news conference. Some soldiers may be released from the hospital later Friday, she said, noting that the two most serious cases required intensive care.

The substance detected in lab results – ethylene glycol – is commonly referred to as antifreeze, Payne said.

“The soldiers fell ill after consuming a substance acquired outside of authorized food supply distribution channels,” she said in an earlier statement. All but one of the soldiers were enlisted personnel, with one warrant officer among those injured.

Law enforcement is investigating the incident, Payne said.

Ingesting antifreeze can cause kidney damage, which could lead to organ failure, Col. Shawna Scully, deputy commander for medical services at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss, said during the news conference.

Army regulations prohibit soldiers from drinking alcohol while in the field. Payne did not indicate whether the soldiers confused the antifreeze with alcohol, or if it was deliberately mixed together to form a toxic cocktail. Bowls of alcohol with several spirits mixed together, known as grog, are mainstays at military social functions and sometimes include less-than-appetizing ingredients, such as hot sauce.

The soldiers all belonged to the 11th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, Payne said, which uses air artillery like the Patriot system to shoot down enemy rockets and missiles.

Fort Bliss has been scrutinized in recent weeks after the death of Pfc. Asia Graham, who was found unresponsive in a barracks on New Year’s Eve. She had previously reported another soldier for sexual assault. That soldier is facing a court-martial on the sex assault charge, CNN reported.

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Woman charged in Capitol riot said she wanted to shoot Pelosi ‘in the friggin’ brain,’ FBI says

InternationalJan 30. 2021

smoke flls the walkway outside the Senate chamber of the Capitol as supporters of President Donald Trump are confronted by U.S. Capitol Police officers on Jan. 6. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/ AP)

By The Washington Post, Meryl Kornfield

WASHINGTON – Federal authorities arrested two women in Pennsylvania on Friday on charges related to the storming of the U.S. Capitol building after the FBI said one of the women expressed an intent to shoot House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Dawn Bancroft and Diana Santos-Smith were identified by law enforcement after the FBI said it received a tip on Jan. 12 with a video purportedly capturing the two women as they left the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 amid a large mob of people, according to a criminal complaint.

“We broke into the Capitol. . . . We got inside, we did our part,” Bancroft said in the video she sent to her children, according to the FBI. “We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain, but we didn’t find her.”

The women – who the FBI said initially lied to authorities – face three federal charges, including knowingly entering a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and impeding in government business by engaging in disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds.

Information about their initial appearances in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania was not immediately available. The women could not be reached Friday evening.

News of their arrest and alleged threats come amid heightened security for U.S. lawmakers. Capitol Police asked members of Congress to report travel plans, while the agency beefed up protection for traveling lawmakers in major airports in the region, as well as Washington’s Union Station, The Post reported Friday. Pelosi said on Thursday that part of the threat is an “enemy” within the chamber, referencing colleagues who “want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence on other members of Congress.”

Rep. Cori Bush, a freshman Democrat from Missouri, said Friday she requested to move her Capitol office away from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, claiming the Georgia Republican “berated” her in the hallway without a mask.

Bancroft and Santos-Smith, both donning red Make America Great Again hats, were among countless Trump supporters who entered the Capitol in a violent, chaotic scene meant to halt election certification proceedings, according to prosecutors. At least 160 people have been charged in federal court with crimes related to the riot.

Around Inauguration Day, Santos-Smith first told the FBI she attended Trump’s rally but did not enter the Capitol building, according to the complaint. When FBI agents showed her the video in which Bancroft remarks about Pelosi, Santos-Smith admitted she lied and said she was in the Capitol to protest but had not planned it, the FBI said.

Santos-Smith told the FBI that, before entering the building, she heard people in the crowd saying “they’re letting us in” to the Capitol. She then admitted to climbing over a wall, going under or through scaffolding and entering the building through a broken window, according to the FBI.

Both Bancroft and Santos-Smith told authorities that they were in the building for no more than a minute and denied entering offices. They said they deleted the videos they took from inside the Capitol, according to authorities, and Bancroft, who sent the footage to her children, instructed them to also delete what she shared.

Santos-Smith told the FBI she tried to get rid of the videos she took to prevent law enforcement from discovering it.

Videos and photos captured by those in the Capitol, as well as their own cellular data, have been used against them in criminal cases stemming from the attack.

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Taiwan’s GDP growth outpaces China’s for first time in 30 years

InternationalJan 30. 2021

With a few exceptions, Taiwanese businesses, offices and schools stayed open throughout the year.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Samson Ellis

Taiwan’s economic growth outpaced that of China’s for the first time in 30 years, helped by its early control of the virus and stellar export performance.

Gross domestic product expanded 2.98% last year, official data showed Friday, compared with China’s 2.3% rise. Growth was also faster than the 2.55% median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists.

In 1990, Taiwan was a $166 billion economy dominated by exports of consumer electronics and plastic goods, while China had just opened its first McDonald’s restaurant, an early milestone in its reform and opening up that led to a generational shift in global economic power. That was also the last year that Taiwan’s economic growth outpaced that of its giant neighbor.

Taiwan was able to avoid the strict lockdowns last year that brought most other economies to a halt. With a few exceptions, Taiwanese businesses, offices and schools stayed open throughout the year and there was something of a boom in domestic travel as people opted to vacation at home rather than head overseas.

The island’s largest technology companies, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., have also soared alongside a global demand boom for semiconductors, 5G smartphones, electric vehicles and high-performance server equipment. Taiwan’s eight largest tech companies are on track to announce record or near-record earnings for last year.

Exports contributed about 60% of GDP growth in 2020, according to Natixis SA Economist Gary Ng in Hong Kong. And judging from TSMC’s ambitious capital expenditure plans, there’s little sign of a slowdown any time soon.

“There will always be demand for semiconductors and no-one can replace TSMC,” he said in a recent interview before the data was released.

The expansion in overseas shipments came despite the currency strengthening more than 5% against the U.S. dollar last year, its biggest gain since 2017.

Still, Taiwan’s out-performance of China is likely to be short-lived. Growth in the world’s second-largest economy roared back to pre-pandemic levels in the fourth quarter after Beijing managed to get Covid-19 under control and deployed fiscal and monetary stimulus to boost investment.

Taiwan’s GDP growth also sped up in the fourth quarter, growing 4.94% compared to a year ago, the fastest pace of expansion since 2011.

China’s GDP will likely rebound to 8.4% this year, according to a survey of economists, its fastest rate of growth since 2011. Taiwan’s is forecast to grow 3.7%.

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Weak diesel demand signals a slow rebound for industrial India

InternationalJan 30. 2021Trucks are parked near a wholesale market in Delhi, India, on Sept. 4, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Anindito Mukherjee.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Saket Sundria, Debjit Chakraborty

It’s set to be a slow crawl back to pre-virus levels for Indian energy demand with diesel, the most-used fuel, holding back the recovery.

While demand for diesel, which accounts for around 40% of Indian fuel use in a normal year, rebounded quickly after the the world’s biggest lockdown was imposed in March, the recovery has since slowed. The annual growth rate for diesel consumption won’t get back to pre-virus levels until the year ended March 2022, said Mukesh Kumar Surana, chairman of Hindustan Petroleum Corp.

Used in factories, construction and agriculture as well as powering the truck and bus fleets, diesel is a bellwether of industrial activity in India and its tepid recovery reflects an economy still struggling to shake off the crippling effects of the pandemic. Gasoline demand, by contrast, is being buoyed by people opting to use private cars and motorcycles to avoid being exposed to covid-19.

“The recovery in diesel demand is lagging behind gasoline, and the trend is likely to persist through most of the first half of 2021,” said Senthil Kumaran, head of South Asia oil at industry consultant FGE. “Demand for diesel will average about 5% lower than year-ago levels in the coming months.”

Consumption of diesel in the first quarter will be only 3.9% higher from a year earlier, when the national lockdown was imposed, according to FGE. Motor fuel demand will climb 12.5% over the same period.

The year got off to a shaky start with fuel sales falling in the first two weeks of January from a month earlier and diesel showing the biggest drop. Farmer protests have affected the movement of vehicles in some states and damped consumption, while record high fuel prices have also dented demand.

Only around three-quarters of India’s trucking fleet is operational, according to Naveen Gupta, secretary general of the All India Motor Transport Congress that represents about 10 million truckers. “Operating costs are at an all-time high because of high diesel prices, but freight has not increased,” he said.

There are signs, however, that the economy of India — the world’s third-biggest oil importer — is starting to perk up after shrinking by a forecast 7.7% last year. Seven of the eight high-frequency indicators tracked by Bloomberg News held steady in December and one deteriorated.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to announce generous public spending and measures to put more money into the hands of average Indians when she unveils the federal budget on Monday. Diesel demand should also improve a bit during crop harvesting in March and April, HPCL’s Surana said.

After slumping around 15% last year, full-year diesel consumption will exceed that of 2019 by 3.3%, according to Bloomberg calculations based on figures from FGE and the oil ministry. Gasoline demand, meanwhile, will be about 11% higher this year than in 2019.

Oil consumption is already close to pre-virus levels and should be higher this quarter than the same period last year, Indian Oil Corp. Chairman Shrikant Madhav Vaidya said on Friday. Overall, demand for major fuels — diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, liquefied petroleum gas, naphtha and fuel oil — should rise by around 14% this year from 2020, FGE’s Kumaran said. Oil demand will “definitely”recover to 2019 levels by the fourth quarter, he said.

However, R. Ramachandran, the former refineries director at Bharat Petroleum Corp., said that greater use of fuels like liquefied natural gas and compressed natural gas in transport means diesel is unlikely to be as dominant in the Indian energy mix as it was before Covid-19.

“We are witnessing exceptionally good demand for gasoline,” said Ramachandran, who has almost four decades of experience in the Indian oil industry. “But don’t expect diesel to recover to the growth rates of the past.”