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$263 million offered for Gulf oil under climate compromise

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:55:16 GMT

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Oil companies offered a combined $264 million for drilling rights in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday in a sale mandated by last year’s climate bill compromise.The auction was the first in the Gulf in more than a year and drew interest from industry giants including ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron. It could further test the loyalty of environmentalists and young voters who backed President Joe Biden in 2020 but were frustrated by this month’s approval of the huge Willow drilling project in northern Alaska.Developing the leases for sale in public waters in the Gulf of Mexico could produce more than 1 billion barrels of oil and more than 4 trillion cubic feet (113 billion cubic meters) of natural gas over 50 years, according to a government analysis. Burning that oil would increase planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions by tens of millions of tons, the analysis found.Oil prices have fallen sharply over the past year and it was uncertain how much companies would ...

Founding member of pope’s child protection board resigns

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:55:16 GMT

VATICAN CITY (AP) — A founding member of Pope Francis’ child protection advisory board resigned Wednesday, citing a host of problems inside the commission and in its relationship with the Vatican bureaucracy.In an unusually frank resignation note, the Rev. Hans Zollner cited inadequate financial accountability, insufficient transparency about decision-making and a lack of clarity about staff hiring and the board’s relationship with the Holy See’s sex abuse office.Francis announced the creation of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Miners in 2013 to advise the Vatican on best practices to prevent clergy sexual abuse. He named Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley as the commission’s head. The board has gone through several iterations since then, most significantly when another founding member, Irish abuse survivor and advocate Marie Collins, resigned in frustration in 2017 over Vatican stonewalling on the commission’s proposals.Zollner’s departure suggested a similar, but ...

Budget 2023 unlikely to be enough to spur major carbon capture investments: Experts

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:55:16 GMT

CALGARY — Industry watchers say Tuesday’s federal budget likely won’t be enough to convince Canadian oil and gas companies to pull the trigger on expensive, emissions-reducing carbon capture and storage projects.The oil and gas industry believes carbon capture and storage technology is the key to meeting its greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.Companies have proposed ambitious projects, such as a $16.5-billion carbon capture and storage transportation line that a group of Canadian oilsands firms wants to build in northern Alberta.But James Millar, head of a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing carbon capture technology, says Tuesday’s budget didn’t provide the certainty companies need in order to start construction. He says the industry is looking to the government to remove the risk of investing in pricey emissions-reduction projects by essentially guaranteeing the future price of carbon.  While the government pledged Tuesday to implement a ...

St. Louis prosecutor to seek reelection despite ouster bid

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:55:16 GMT

ST. LOUIS (AP) — St. Louis’ elected prosecutor has said she will run for reelection in 2024, even as she tries to fend off an effort by Missouri’s attorney general to force her out of office.Democratic Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner spoke Tuesday night at an often-raucous public forum and made it clear that not only will she not resign, but that she plans to run again.Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey last month filed a lawsuit asking a judge to remove Gardner from office, accusing her of incompetence. Bailey cited a low rate of convictions in homicide cases, accused Gardner of failing to keep crime victims and their families updated, and said her office is too slow to take up cases brought by police.In addition to the lawsuit, a Republican-led bill in the statehouse would give the governor authority to appoint a special prosecutor to take on violent crimes in jurisdictions with a homicide rate over a certain threshold — a measure drafted with St. Louis in mind.Gar...

UN seeks court opinion on climate in ‘win’ for island states

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:55:16 GMT

The countries of the United Nations led by the island nation of Vanuatu adopted what they called a historic resolution Wednesday calling for the U.N.’s highest court to strengthen countries’ obligations to curb warming and protect communities from climate disaster.The resolution was adopted by consensus and Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau called it “a win for climate justice of epic proportions.” He reeled off a string of recent disasters including back-to-back Category 4 cyclones in his own country and record-breaking Cyclone Freddy that refused to leave southeastern Africa in recent weeks. “Catastrophic and compound effects like this are growing in number,” he said. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said Wednesday he hoped the opinion, when issued, would encourage nations “to take the bolder and stronger climate action that our world so desperately needs.”Saudi Arabia and Iraq sought to soften the resolution saying it would increase the workload of ...

Russia puts Pussy Riot member on wanted list

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:55:16 GMT

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian authorities have put a member of the Pussy Riot punk group on a wanted list for criminal suspects as the Kremlin works to stifle political dissent. Russian news outlet Mediazona discovered an entry for Nadezhda Tolokonnikova in the Russian Interior Ministry’s database of wanted individuals on Wednesday. The entry, also reviewed by The Associated Press, said Tolokonnikova faces criminal charges, but it didn’t specify what the charges are. Tolokonnikova became widely known for taking part in a 2012 Pussy Riot protest inside Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral. She spent nearly two years in prison.Earlier this month Russia’s top human rights lawyer, Pavel Chikov, said a criminal case had been launched against Tolokonnikova on the charge of offending religious believers’ feelings, which became a criminal offense in Russia after the 2012 Pussy Riot protest. Tolokonnikova left Russia and reportedly lives in the U.S. In 2021, the Russian gover...

Dem senators from 4 states ask NOAA to address whale deaths

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:55:16 GMT

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — Democratic U.S. Senators from four states want federal environmental officials to address a spate of whale deaths on both coasts, urging “transparency and timeliness” in releasing information about whale deaths and their causes.The call late Tuesday by New Jersey Sens. Robert Menendez and Cory Booker; Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, and Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse for action by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration marked the first large-scale request for action by Democratic federal lawmakers on an issue that has rapidly become politicized.Thus far, mostly Republican lawmakers have called for a pause or an outright halt to offshore wind farm preparation work, which they blame for the deaths of whales along the U.S. East Coast since December.But in their letter to a NOAA administrator, the Democratic senators conspicuously did not blame — or even mention — offshore wind as a potential cause of the death...

Congress to consider new no-fly list for unruly passengers

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:55:16 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Senate and House members proposed a new no-fly list for unruly passengers on Wednesday, an idea that was pushed by airline unions but failed to gain traction last year.The legislation would let the Transportation Security Administration ban people convicted or fined for assaulting or interfering with airline crew members. It would be separate from the current FBI-run no-fly list, which is intended to prevent people suspected of terrorism ties from boarding planes.The number of incidents involving unruly passengers dropped sharply last year after a judge struck down a federal requirement to wear masks on planes. However, incidents serious enough to be investigated by federal officials remained more than five times higher than before the pandemic.“The violent incidents have not stopped,” Cher Taylor, a Frontier Airlines flight attendant who said she witnessed a passenger attack another in 2021 in Miami and walk away before police arrived, said during a news conf...

$3.8 billion, 100-acre 'megadevelopment' breaks ground in Bronzeville

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:55:16 GMT

CHICAGO — The "largest mixed-use project ever undertaken in Chicago" broke ground Wednesday thanks to $60 million in city funding.According to a press release from public relations firm Purpose Brand, LLC, the 100-acre megadevelopment dubbed Bronzeville Lakefront will be constructed on the site of the former Michael Reese Medical Campus and is "the nation’s first megadevelopment to have a 50% Black development team," with "a 98% diverse or minority supplier team for the infrastructure portion of the project." See the day-by-day lineup for Lollapalooza 2023 The project is expected to create 45,000 construction jobs, 31,000 long-term, full-time jobs, and have an overall economic impact of $8.2 billion, according to the project's website.This story will be updated, check back later for additional details.

How could the US ban TikTok?

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:55:16 GMT

(The Hill) - Lawmakers are sounding alarms over TikTok and putting forward proposals that aim to ban the video-sharing app, but there’s no clear consensus over what path forward the U.S. government may pursue. In addition to a litany of technical issues over how to enforce a ban on a social media platform, the unprecedented nature of the situation poses obstacles that complicate attempts to block the app, which is owned by China-based parent company ByteDance. The nitty-gritty: How could a TikTok ban be enforced?The growing political pressure, with calls to ban the app on both sides of the aisle but more broadly from Republicans, is rooted in allegations that TikTok poses national security threats. The company has strongly pushed back on the allegations. Can the president do it himself?Former President Donald Trump, left, and President Joe Biden, right. (AP Photo/File)To ban the app in the U.S., the president could try to do so through an executive order — which is the cou...