Tag: Animals

2 tigers recaptured after escaping Georgia safari park during tornado warning | CNN

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Two tigers have been recaptured after escaping a Georgia safari park during a tornado warning Sunday morning, according to the park.

In a Facebook post, the Wild Animal Safari park in Pine Mountain wrote that it sustained “extensive tornado damage.”

No staff or animals were injured but “several animal enclosures” were breached and “two tigers briefly escaped,” said the park.

Since then, both big cats have been “found, tranquilized, and safely returned to a safe enclosure.”

Wild Animal Safari, a drive-through park, is home to over 75 species of animals housed on 250 acres of land, its website says. Tigers are included in the park’s “walkabout” section, where guests can observe animals in a more zoo-like environment, the website says.

In a Sunday morning Facebook post, the Troup County Sheriff’s Office said it received a report of a tiger “unaccounted” for inside the park in Pine Mountain, Georgia.

The park announced that it was closed for Sunday on Facebook. “We have sustained damage at the park and will not be open today,” the post said. “We are working diligently to keep our team and animals safe and will update with more news as it is available.”

The storm came after a tornado warning was issued for parts of Georgia, including southeastern Troup County.

Troup County authorities received reports of trees and power lines down after severe weather hit the area, the sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post Sunday morning.

“We are receiving MULTIPLE reports of trees down, damage on houses and power lines down,” the agency wrote. “If you do not have to get on the roads this morning please do not travel.”

The county is located about 70 miles southwest of Atlanta.

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March 26, 2023
Much of drought-plagued West Coast faces salmon fishing ban

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SAN DIEGO — As drought dried up rivers that carry California’s newly hatched Chinook salmon to the ocean, state officials in recent years resorted to loading up the fish by the millions onto trucks and barges to take them to the Pacific.

The surreal and desperate scramble boosted the survival rate of the hatchery-raised fish, but still it was not enough to reverse the declining stocks in the face of added challenges. River water temperatures rose with warm weather, and a Trump-era rollback of federal protections for waterways allowed more water to be diverted to farms. Climate change, meanwhile, threatens food sources for the young Chinook maturing in the Pacific.

Now, ocean salmon fishing season is set to be prohibited this year off California and much of Oregon for the second time in 15 years after adult fall-run Chinook, often known as king salmon, returned to California’s rivers in near record-low numbers in 2022.

“There will be no wild-caught California salmon to eat unless someone has still got some vacuum sealed last year in their freezer,” said John McManus of the Golden State Salmon Association.

Experts fear native California salmon, which make up a significant portion of the Pacific Northwest’s fishing industry, are in a spiral toward extinction. Much of the salmon caught off Oregon originate in California’s Klamath and Sacramento rivers. After hatching in freshwater, they spend three years on average maturing in the Pacific, where many are snagged by commercial fishermen, before migrating back to their spawning grounds, where conditions are more ideal to give birth. After laying eggs, they die.

Already California’s spring-run Chinook are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, while winter-run Chinook are endangered along with the Central California Coast coho salmon, which has been off-limits to California commercial fishers since the 1990s.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council, the authority responsible for setting ocean salmon seasons off the Pacific coast, is expected in early April to formally approve its proposed closure of Chinook fishing along the coast from Cape Falcon in northern Oregon to the California-Mexico border. Salmon season is expected to open as usual north of Cape Falcon, including in the Columbia River and off Washington’s coast.

Though the closure will deal a blow to the industry that supports tens of thousands of jobs, few are disputing it.

“We want to make sure they are here for the future,” said third-generation fisherman Garin McCarthy, who described catching a Chinook as “magical.”

McCarthy, whose entire income last year came from salmon fishing off both California and Oregon, has had to invest thousands of dollars in equipment to fish other species like rockfish, halibut and black cod.

“We’re all scrambling to try to make our boats do something different,” he said. “We’re all salmon trollers. That’s what we do. That’s what we live for.”

Glen Spain, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, said he believes the ban might need to be in place for two or three years to bring back sustainable stocks after many fish died in 2020, the start of a record-dry period.

The Chinook already faced challenges, with dams blocking their historic retreats to the chilly upper reaches of Northern California’s Sacramento River and the Klamath River along the California-Oregon border. Decades of development have disrupted the natural flow of rivers and polluted waters.

In 2020, the Trump administration ended federal protections for millions of waterways, allowing for more water to be pumped out of the Sacramento River Basin for farming despite warnings from biologists that it could harm salmon runs in the future.

Fishers say river water temperatures increased with the diversions for irrigation, killing more eggs and hatchlings and preventing the stocks from bouncing back amid the drought.

“This one ain’t on us,” said Bob Maharry, 68, a lifelong San Francisco-based fisherman. “This has nothing to do with overfishing. This is poor management of water.”

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife said the estimated number of adult fall Chinook expected to return to spawn in the Sacramento River this year is less than 170,000, one of the lowest forecasts since the current assessment method began in 2008. Fewer than 104,000 fall Chinook are likely to return to the Klamath River, the second lowest estimate since 1997.

In 2021, a judge determined the Trump administration improperly limited federal protections and restored them to a narrower 1986 standard. The Biden administration is expected to expand the protections in 2024.

Some are banking on the unusually wet winter to bring relief. Record rain and snowfall since late last year have freed two-thirds of California from drought. But too much water could also flush out eggs and hatchlings.

Businesses tied to salmon want the government to declare the situation a federal disaster so they may receive aid. As the market shrinks, more restaurants turn to farm-raised salmon, while gear suppliers stop stocking the proper equipment to fish Chinook.

“Not everybody is going to make it out of this type of a closure unfortunately,” said Andy Giuliano, who owns Fish Emeryville, a bait-and-tackle shop and booking service for 16 charter boats that offer salmon fishing trips to tourists in the San Francisco Bay area. “It’s a real stress test on the industry.”

Eric Schindler, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s ocean salmon project leader, said he “was not expecting it to be this drastic,” assuming the year would bring restrictions but not a full closure for most of Oregon.

Jeff Reeves, who has been salmon fishing from the Coos Bay, Oregon, area since the 1970s and is also a member of the Oregon Salmon Commission, said he plans to fish rockfish, black cod and maybe tuna. Later this year he plans to target coho salmon from Oregon, which is doing well enough to be fished unlike the coho in California. But it won’t make up for the loss of the Chinook, which are bigger, fattier fish that are in higher demand.

“It’s devastating,” he said. “The Oregon fleet is already on life support,” which dropped from a height of about 4,500 boats to about 180 today, he added.

On a stretch of the Klamath River in Northern California, the Yurok tribe has watched for years the decimation of the culturally significant salmon population. Barry McCovey Jr., director of the tribe’s fisheries department, said the tribe’s Chinook allotment is likely to be very small this year.

Still, he is hopeful the planned removal of four dams on the Klamath River will improve the fish’s future.

“It’s not a silver bullet, but a big step in right direction,” McCovey said. “There’s still a lot of battles to fight if we want to have coho and Chinook.”

__

Baumann reported from Seattle.

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March 24, 2023
Supreme Court humors itself as it considers whether Jack Daniel’s can stop a dog toy company from parodying its brand | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday delved into the complexities of federal trademark law in a case concerning a poop-themed dog toy that resembles a Jack Daniel’s bottle, at times erupting into laughter as the justices explored how much protection should be given to parodists that rip off trademarks they don’t own.

At the center of the case is a “Bad Spaniels Silly Squeaker” toy created by VIP Products that is strikingly similar to Jack Daniel’s bottles. The distiller sued the company over the toy – which is replete with scatological humor – claiming it violated federal trademark law, which usually centers around how likely a consumer is to confuse an alleged infringement with something produced by the true owner of the mark.

But at oral arguments, at least one justice admitted she didn’t understand the joke being sold by VIP Products.

“What is there to it? What is the parody here?” Justice Elena Kagan asked an attorney for the toy company, leading the courtroom to burst into laughter. “Because maybe I just have no sense of humor. But what’s the parody?”

Kagan went on to list a number of different marks the company pokes fun at, drawing laughter from Justice Clarence Thomas: “Doggie Walker, Dos Perros, Smella Arpaw, Canine Cola, Mountain Drool. Are all of these companies taking themselves too seriously?”

And a misunderstanding by Lisa Blatt, an attorney representing Jack Daniel’s, over a hypothetical posed by Justice Samuel Alito led to another round of giggles.

Alito was trying to ask how likely it was that a reasonable person would believe Jack Daniel’s approved the toy at hand or a similar theoretical toy that joked it contained “dog urine.”

“So a reasonable person would not believe Jack Daniel’s had approved this?” he asked Blatt.

“I think if you’re selling urine you’re probably going to win on a motion to (dismiss), but you’re probably also violating some state law,” she replied.

“Oh no, you’re not selling urine. It’s exactly this toy, which purportedly contains some sort of dog excrement or urine,” Alito said, humoring the courtroom as he attempted to clarify his hypothetical.

“Well, just showing how confused I was suggests that I would be your perfect consumer,” Blatt said.

Jokes – intentional or not – aside, some of the justices were skeptical of the distillery, whose attorneys want the court to toss out a heightened standard of review an appeals court used when it ruled in favor of the toy maker.

“I have some hesitation doing away with the Rogers Test,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in part, referring to a court-created test used to determine whether a potential trademark infringement in non-commercial instances enjoys constitutional protection.

Alito seemed to agree.

“Well, I’m concerned about the First Amendment implications of your position and you began by saying, by stressing that Rogers is atextual, it was made up.”

“You know, there is a text that says that Congress shall make no law infringing the freedom of speech. That’s a text that takes precedence over the Lanham Act and you said there are no constitutional issues,” he added, referring to the trademark law at the center of the dispute.

Joining the dog pile, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she was “concerned about impairing artists” if the court sided with Jack Daniel’s and issued a decision that effectively prevents the unauthorized use of marks in artistic works.

The case pits the rights of a famous trademark holder against the First Amendment rights of a company that wants to use those marks to sell a humorous product.

VIP’s “Bad Spaniels Silly Squeaker” toy has the same general shape of a Jack Daniel’s bottle. The plastic bottle, like its glass counterpart, has a similar font style and uses a black label.

VIP borrows Jack Daniel’s “Old No. 7 Brand Tennessee Sour Mash Whiskey” to sell “The Old No. 2 On Your Tennessee Carpet,” a reference to dog excrement. And it changes the liquor bottle’s “40% ALC. BY VOL. (80 PROOF)” with “43% POO BY VOL.” and “100% SMELLY.”

A tag affixed to the toy notes that it’s “not affiliated with Jack Daniel Distillery.”

That, however, was not enough to keep Jack Daniel’s from suing the company to take the toy off the market. The distiller argues VIP violates federal trademark law and that the toy, especially the references to dog excrement, damage its reputation because it could confuse consumers into thinking the product belongs to the “oldest registered distillery in the United States.”

“To be sure, everyone likes a good joke,” lawyers for Jack Daniel’s wrote in court papers. “But VIP’s profit-motivated ‘joke’ confuses consumers by taking advantage of Jack Daniel’s hard-earned goodwill.”

Depending on how they rule, the justices could strip away some trademark protections by giving entities cover to legally use registered marks not belonging to them so long as they do so in a way that expresses humor.

A district court ruled in favor of Jack Daniel’s, finding that the toy infringed on the distiller’s trademark. But an appeals court later sided with VIP Products, invoking the so-called Rogers Test.

The court said VIP’s use of Jack Daniel’s trademark was non-commercial and that because it was done humorously for an “expressive work,” it’s protected by the First Amendment.

The case “deals with a very common thing of pitting somebody who has trademark rights … against another who is saying, ‘I’m entitled to (use those marks) under the First Amendment because it is parody. And I need to take enough of the mark in order to make it funny. People have to get the joke,’” said Mark Sommers, a trademark attorney based in Washington, DC.

Sommers added that the justices’ decision in the matter has the potential to be a landmark ruling if they “help define that line that exists between the First Amendment right of expression – be that parody, be that art, whatever you want to express – versus the important trademark issues that are here where brand owners who have invested a tremendous amount of goodwill don’t want their trademarks used in a manner which could result in potential confusion among the consuming public.”

Attorneys for Jack Daniel’s told the justices in court papers that the appeals court ruling “gives copycats free license to prey on unsuspecting consumers and mark holders,” and warned that if it wasn’t reversed, companies could use trademarks they don’t own to flood the markets with allegedly unserious products.

Santa Claus, the KKK, and other bizarre hypotheticals raised by Supreme Court in LGBTQ rights case

“No one disputes that VIP is trying to be funny. But alcohol and toys don’t mix well, and the same is true for beverages and excrement,” they wrote. “The next case could involve more troubling combinations – food and poison, cartoon characters and pornography, children’s toys and illegal drugs, and so on.”

VIP argues consumers can easily distinguish between the two products, with lawyers for the Arizona-based company writing in court papers that it “has never sold whiskey or other comestibles, nor has it used ‘Jack Daniel’s’ in any way (humorously or not). It merely mimicked enough of the iconic bottle that people would get the joke.”

“This is a case about speech, and a popular brand’s attempts to control that speech by weaponizing the Lanham Act,” they wrote, referring to the federal trademark law at the center of the dispute.

“It is ironic that America’s leading distiller of whiskey both lacks a sense of humor and does not recognize when it – and everyone else – has had enough,” the toy company told the court.

The Biden administration had urged the justices to take the case, with the Justice Department siding with Jack Daniel’s in the dispute.

“The First Amendment does not confer any right to use another person’s trademark, or a confusingly similar mark, as a source identifier for goods sold in commerce,” the department wrote in court papers. “Indeed, the absence of any such right is a basic animating premise of trademark-infringement law. If such a right existed, states and the federal government might lack authority to prohibit trademark infringement.”

Several major companies also filed briefs to the court in support of Jack Daniel’s, including Nike and Levi Strauss & Co.

“Though defendants will often have an incentive to label it as such, not every humorous use of another’s trademark is a parody,” Nike wrote in its brief. “Courts therefore should take a disciplined approach to this important classification in cases where ‘parody’ is claimed.”

The Supreme Court is expected to rule later this term in another high-profile intellectual property law case, with the justices having heard arguments last year in a copyright infringement case concerning the late Andy Warhol and the late musician Prince. During those arguments, the justices attempted to determine when a new work based on a prior piece is substantially transformative, and when it simply amounts to a copycat version of an existing work subject to copyright rules.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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March 23, 2023
Man swims to safety after being attacked by shark off Hawaii’s Big Island | CNN

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CNN
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A 60-year-old man was swimming in Hawaii’s Anaehoomalu Bay Sunday when he was attacked by a shark, local officials say.

The man was about 200 yards offshore when a shark attacked him around 12:40 p.m. HST, according to a news release from the Hawaii Fire Rescue Department.

The man was able to swim to a catamaran, whose crew helped him out of the water, the release said.

Crew members helped control the man’s bleeding until rescuers arrived on the scene, according to officials. A first responder on a personal watercraft “transported the patient from the catamaran to the beach where HFD personnel were waiting,” the release said.

The man was taken to North Hawaii Hospital with bites to his left hand and the back of his leg, said the fire rescue department. His current condition is unknown.

Anaehoomalu Bay – also known as A-Bay – is located on the west shore of the Big Island. The scenic area is a popular spot for recreational activities like snorkeling.

Authorities said they do not know the size or species of the shark involved in Sunday’s attack.

Overall, the risk of being attacked by sharks remains low. Worldwide, there were a total of 73 confirmed, unprovoked shark bites on people and 39 confirmed, provoked bites in 2021, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s International Shark Attack File.

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March 21, 2023
Opinion: America’s taste in family pets is changing — for the better, in my view | CNN

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Editor’s Note: Urmee Khan is a London-based journalist with more than two decades of experience in TV, print and online media. She is founder of Rakhana, a media consultancy. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.

CNN
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It would be easy to dismiss French bulldogs, with their squidgy, cartoon faces and small squat bodies, as little more than a handbag accessory. Some people might even see them as little more than a conversation piece affording the pretext to gossip about a favorite music star or actor. And no one can deny the trend: Celebrities everywhere are photographed toting a baby Frenchie in a shoulder bag, or holding one at the end of an expensive designer leash.

But while it’s true that these dogs have become a runaway favorite among celebrities, the breed has lot more than that to recommend it. I don’t claim to be impartial, however. I have been sharing my London living quarters for the past decade with a brindle-coated French bulldog who is the joy of my life.

It comes as no surprise to me that the French bulldog has supplanted the Labrador retriever as America’s most popular dog, ending the sporting dog’s 31-year reign. Many people might be wondering how a country that for decades has preferred the outgoing, high-energy Labrador would swap it out for a pint-sized, sedentary, furry gargoyle.

Even where I live in Britain, one could read the tea leaves: America’s tastemakers and trendsetters have been making French Bulldogs their canine of choice for years. Music stars from Lady Gaga to 2 Chainz, Megan Thee Stallion and Snoop Dogg have one, as do some of Hollywood’s most famous celebrities, including Hugh Jackman, The Rock and Reese Witherspoon.

The French bulldog’s popularity is not just a reflection of a desire to imitate the habits and predilections of the rich and famous, however. My personal theory is that it reflects the changing nature of what many Americans are looking for in a family pet. In the post-Covid era, these more inward-looking times call for a pup that is less demanding, a pet whose company you can enjoy within the quiet and solace of your four walls.

You didn’t need to be a psychic to see the change coming. Last year, the ever-popular National Dog Show – America’s premier competition for purebred dogs and something of an arbiter in trends about which breeds will be up-and-comers – saw a French bulldog by the name of Winston emerge victorious, beating out hundreds of other canines.

The show’s host sized up the breed pretty well, and got to the root of what makes Frenchies so appealing, in saying that Winston (as well as his handler) “have cornered the market on energy, enthusiasm and just pure spunk.”

“Spunk” is what Frenchies have no shortage of. They are, in short, total clowns. These pint-sized gremlins are about the most entertaining companions one can ever wish to have. My delightful Bertie (also known as “Berts” and “Bertle”) snacks on cooked carrots, Bonios – his favorite brand of dog treat – and sardines. He has his own Instagram account: @bertie_french_bulldog. Bernie abhors walking in the rain, the washing machine and horror films. (The scary music soundtracks send him racing to hide in the bath.)

Frenchies are very stubborn little beings; they are fiercely independent and they have a charming and pugnacious personality. They also possess, in no small measure, qualities that some people would consider drawbacks in a human companion: They sulk, emit noxious fumes, snore, grunt and regularly give you very judgmental side-eyes. But in a furry friend that fits in the crook of your arm, what could be more appealing?

These dogs are quite sociable, which is unsurprising given they were originally bred in the early 1800s as companion dogs to lace workers in Nottingham, England, according to the American Kennel Club.

“Perhaps these miniaturized bulldogs ate less food and took up less room in the tight quarters that were all the women could afford with their meager wages. Maybe they fit snugly on a lap, where they made an attractive detour for fleas that were otherwise human-bound,” the AKC said on its site.

“What we do know is that the lace workers were so smitten by their funny little bulldogs that when the Industrial Revolution eliminated their jobs completely, they took the dogs with them across the English Channel to the Normandy area in northern France.”

In short, these darling toy bulldogs emigrated from Britain some 200 years ago and were repatriated as “French.” And who could blame the French for claiming them as their own?

If there is any drawback to the breed, it’s that some have been found to have breathing problems: those adorable squished-flat faces can be cute, but respiratory difficulties have been know to be an issue for some of them.

You have to be mindful not to over-exercise them, and hot climates can be a no-go for the same reason. Luckily, I’ve not had any issues with Bertie in this regard. His breathing has always been fine. He once overheated, but a cold tea towel and a Bonio set things right.

There is one other concern: Their portability and desirability make them the target of dognappers. The violent armed robbery of Gaga’s French bulldogs made headlines a couple of years back, but even dogs belonging to owners with a far more modest profile have been known to be nabbed. Some owners of Frenchies have learned the trick of tightly wrapping their dog’s leash around their hand at all times and never letting their pooch out of their sight.

No offense to other breeds, but I somehow suspect that, even after the mighty Labrador’s impressive run, it might take more than 30 years for French bulldogs to be dethroned from the top spot in Americans’ hearts.

Bertie keeps our friends and the community entertained with his daily refusal to walk, his daft antics – his zoomies and spins – and an assortment of neat party tricks: He can walk on his hind legs like a pocket-sized dinosaur, plays dead when he gets “shot” and liberally gives high fives and “fist bumps.”

But he’s also a gentle soul. Bertie has been invited to many children’s tea parties and sleepovers and has endured wearing a dress, a fez and being a unicorn. He has even won over my traditional Muslim parents and siblings, who agree he’s a “good boy” and are amused by his comic personality.

Can a Labrador do those things? Maybe. Probably, even. Can they do them as adorably as a French bulldog? I have a hard time imagining that that could ever be the case.

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March 21, 2023
New Mexico is Hiring ‘Professional Bear Huggers’ | Entrepreneur

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Bears may not be considered the most cuddly of animals, but a new job posted by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish is searching for people brave enough to spend their days cuddling the cubs.

The job listing is looking for “professional bear huggers,” a.k.a. Conservation Officers, who will be required to “hike in strenuous conditions, have the courage to crawl into a bear den, and have the trust in your coworkers to keep you safe during the process.”

The posting on Facebook, which has received over 2,700 reactions, displays adorable photos of current Conversation Officers cuddling the tiniest of bears that were taken out of a den in Northern New Mexico as part of a research project.

The role will also require a Bachelor of Science in a related field to wildlife conservation and sciences, including “biological sciences, political science or law enforcement, natural resources conservation, ecology, or [other] related fields.”

Those selected for the position will be put through the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish Recruit Training Program and complete training through the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy. There’s also a physical fitness test.

“Not all law enforcement field work is this glamorous, but we would love for you to join the team where you can have the experience of a lifetime,” the Department wrote in its social media post.

Other duties for the job include educating the public about wildlife in the area, participating in research, helping capture “problem animals,” and investigating damages, among other responsibilities.

Those who feel up for the challenge are encouraged to apply through March 30.

According to New Mexico’s official state website, the American Black Bear was chosen as the state’s official animal on February 8, 1963.

It’s estimated there are 850,000 to 900,000 black bears in North America.

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Emily Rella

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March 20, 2023
New COVID origins data point to raccoon dogs in China market

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BEIJING — Genetic material collected at a Chinese market near where the first human cases of COVID-19 were identified show raccoon dog DNA comingled with the virus, adding evidence to the theory that the virus originated from animals, not from a lab, international experts say.

“These data do not provide a definitive answer to how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important to moving us closer to that answer,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday.

How the coronavirus emerged remains unclear. Many scientists believe it most likely jumped from animals to people, as many other viruses have in the past, at a wildlife market in Wuhan, China. But Wuhan is home to several labs involved in collecting and studying coronaviruses, fueling theories scientists say are plausible that the virus may have leaked from one.

The new findings do not settle the question, and they have not been formally reviewed by other experts or published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Tedros criticized China for not sharing the genetic information earlier, telling a press briefing that “this data could have and should have been shared three years ago.”

The samples were collected from surfaces at the Huanan seafood market in early 2020 in Wuhan, where the first human cases of COVID-19 were found in late 2019.

Tedros said the genetic sequences were recently uploaded to the world’s biggest public virus database by scientists at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

They were then removed, but not before a French biologist spotted the information by chance and shared it with a group of scientists based outside China that’s looking into the origins of the coronavirus.

The data show that some of the COVID-positive samples collected from a stall known to be involved in the wildlife trade also contained raccoon dog genes, indicating the animals may have been infected by the virus, according to the scientists. Their analysis was first reported in The Atlantic.

“There’s a good chance that the animals that deposited that DNA also deposited the virus,” said Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah who was involved in analyzing the data. “If you were to go and do environmental sampling in the aftermath of a zoonotic spillover event … this is basically exactly what you would expect to find.”

The canines, named for their raccoon-like faces, are often bred for their fur and sold for meat in animal markets across China.

Ray Yip, an epidemiologist and founding member of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control office in China, said the findings are significant, even though they aren’t definitive.

“The market environmental sampling data published by China CDC is by far the strongest evidence to support animal origins,” Yip told the AP in an email. He was not connected to the new analysis.

WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, cautioned that the analysis did not find the virus within any animal, nor did it find any hard evidence that any animals infected humans.

“What this does provide is clues to help us understand what may have happened,” she said. The international group also told WHO they found DNA from other animals as well as raccoon dogs in the samples from the seafood market, she added.

The coronavirus’ genetic code is strikingly similar to that of bat coronaviruses, and many scientists suspect COVID-19 jumped into humans either directly from a bat or via an intermediary animal like pangolins, ferrets or racoon dogs.

Efforts to determine the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic have been complicated by factors including the massive surge of human infections in the pandemic’s first two years and an increasingly bitter political dispute.

It took virus experts more than a dozen years to pinpoint the animal origin of SARS, a related virus.

Goldstein and his colleagues say their analysis is the first solid indication that there may have been wildlife infected with the coronavirus at the market. But it is also possible that humans brought the virus to the market and infected the raccoon dogs, or that infected humans simply happened to leave traces of the virus near the animals.

After scientists in the group contacted the China CDC, they say, the sequences were removed from the global virus database. Researchers are puzzled as to why data on the samples collected over three years ago wasn’t made public sooner. Tedros has pleaded with China to share more of its COVID-19 research data.

Gao Fu, the former head of the Chinese CDC and lead author of the Chinese paper, didn’t immediately respond to an Associated Press email requesting comment. But he told Science magazine the sequences are “nothing new. It had been known there was illegal animal dealing and this is why the market was immediately shut down.”

Goldstein said his group presented its findings this week to a WHO advisory panel investigating COVID-19’s origins.

Michael Imperiale of the University of Michigan, a microbiology and immunology expert who was not involved in the data analysis, said finding a sample with sequences from the virus and a raccoon dog “places the virus and the dog in very close proximity. But it doesn’t necessarily say that the dog was infected with the virus; it just says that they were in the same very small area.”

He said the bulk of the scientific evidence at this point supports a natural exposure at the market, and pointed to research published last summer showing the market was likely the early epicenter of the scourge and concluding that the virus spilled from animals into people two separate times. “What’s the chance that there were two different lab leaks?” he asked.

Mark Woolhouse, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Edinburgh, said it will be crucial to see how the raccoon dogs’ genetic sequences match up to what’s known about the historic evolution of the COVID-19 virus. If the dogs are shown to have COVID and those viruses prove to have earlier origins than the ones that infected people, “that’s probably as good evidence as we can expect to get that this was a spillover event in the market.”

After a weeks-long visit to China to study the pandemic’s origins, WHO released a report in 2021 concluding that COVID-19 most probably jumped into humans from animals, dismissing the possibility of a lab origin as “extremely unlikely.”

But the U.N. health agency backtracked the following year, saying “key pieces of data” were still missing. And Tedros has said all hypotheses remain on the table.

The China CDC scientists who previously analyzed the Huanan market samples published a paper as a preprint in February suggesting that humans brought the virus to the market, not animals, implying that the virus originated elsewhere. Their paper didn’t mention that animal genes were found in the samples that tested positive.

In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Energy had assessed “with low confidence” that the virus had leaked from a lab. But others in the U.S. intelligence community disagree, believing it more likely it first came from animals.

Experts say the true origin of the pandemic may not be known for many years — if ever.

___

Cheng reported from London. AP Science Writer Laura Ungar contributed to this story from Louisville.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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March 19, 2023
New Mexico Game and Fish is now hiring ‘professional bear huggers’ | CNN

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CNN
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Bear lovers rejoice: The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish is hiring for “professional bear huggers.”

The department posted an adorable job listing on Facebook on Monday, featuring precious snaps of conservation officers cuddling baby bears.

Unfortunately, a love of bears is not the only qualification you’ll need to become a conservation officer. The job listing with the formal title of the position specifies candidates should have a bachelor’s degree in “biological sciences, police science or law enforcement, natural resources conservation, ecology, or related fields.”

Interested applicants “must have ability to hike in strenuous conditions, have the courage to crawl into a bear den, and have the trust in your coworkers to keep you safe during the process,” wrote the department.

The photos are from a research project in Northern New Mexico, according to the Facebook post. They added they “do not recommend crawling into bear dens” and “all bears were handled safely under supervision.”

“Not all law enforcement field work is this glamorous, but we would love for you to join the team where you can have the experience of a lifetime,” added the department.

Applications for the next class of conservation officer trainees are open until March 30, according to the post.

The job duties include a lot more than just bear-hugging, according to the job listing. Each conservation officer is responsible for “enforcing the game and fish laws” and also “educates the public about wildlife and wildlife management, conducts wildlife surveys, captures ‘problem animals,’ investigates wildlife damage to crops and property, assists in wildlife relocations and helps to develop new regulations.”

Black bears are New Mexico’s state animal. Estimates place the population at around 6,000 bears, according to a publication from the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish.

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March 19, 2023
Price hikes are double whammy for pet owners who are crushed by inflation | CNN Business
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Minneapolis
CNN
—

As head of PAWS Atlanta, Joe Labriola can get a good sense of the region’s economic well-being from the day-to-day activity of the city’s oldest no-kill animal shelter.

Through the course of the past year, it’s become increasingly clear to him that people in the area are struggling under the weight of inflation and economic uncertainty.

Practically the entirety of the daily call volume consists of requests to rehome pets. The shelter’s “surrender queue” is full, awaiting adoptions to free up space in the main shelter. And the shelves at PAWS Atlanta’s Pet Food Pantry quickly go bare.

But perhaps the most heartbreaking indicator is something this particular shelter never had to track before 2022. Last year, 166 pets were found abandoned at the shelter’s front gate.

“A number of animals are being abandoned that have serious medical issues,” Labriola told CNN. “The only thing we can guess is that people just can’t afford those expenses, and they’re hoping by dropping off [their pets] at our facility that we’re going to be able to pick up the slack. And we do as best we can, but it’s really putting a strain on our resources.”

Overall inflation remains high across the United States, but has slowly and methodically stepped down since setting a fresh 40-year record of 9.1% in June 2022, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. However, during the past eight months, inflation in pet-related products and services has only worsened, rising in some cases to record-setting levels.

In February, when annual CPI declined to 6%, the catch-all “pets, pet products and services” index rose to 10.9%, veterinary services jumped nearly 2 percentage points to 10.3% and pet food increased to 15.2%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Those price increases are a double whammy for pet owners whose household finances have been weakened by persistently high inflation and for those who fear for rising instances of “economic euthanasia,” when animals are humanely put to death for financial reasons.

The recent pet-specific price spikes also are compounding pressures facing organizations tasked with providing a safety net for animals in need.

Nationwide, shelters are not seeing increases in pets being surrendered, said Kitty Block, chief executive officer and president of the Humane Society of the United States. However, when there are certain communities seeing spikes in abandoned or surrendered pets, that’s a sign of broader societal hardship, she said.

“When people are having to surrender their animals for economic reasons or because they’re in the middle of a horrible disaster or war zone area, that’s a people problem; this is not some issue that is not relevant to people,” Block said. “This is bigger than dogs or cats in shelters. It’s about the people who love them.”

At the store level, many pet products saw double-digit average unit price increases during the past year, with several items — including pet food, non-clumping cat litter and bird grooming items — seeing year-over-year price hikes north of 20%, according to Nielsen IQ data for the 52-week period ended January 28, 2023.

“Throughout 2022, price increases were pretty extensive — all the way up to 20% and almost 30% price hikes versus the year prior — across the pet department,” said Andrea Binder, vice president of NielsenIQ North America. “In early 2023, we have started to see those start to taper off a little bit. Prices are still increasing but at a lower rate than they were in 2022.”

The price hikes have been attributed to rising input and ingredient costs, she added.

“The cost of chicken, the cost of beef, the cost of aluminum to make a wet cat food can … a lot of those commodity prices have been rising pretty dramatically throughout 2021 and 2022, which has caused manufacturers to increase their costs, and then therefore a lot of retailers follow suit,” she said.

Pet products, services and food have become “exponentially” more expensive, said Linda Harding, who lives in San Diego with two dogs. She said her pet food costs for Lola, her Australian Shepherd mix, and for Phoebe, her Golden Retriever, have doubled to $250 per month.

Harding has cut back on her own expenses. She hasn’t turned on the heat much all winter, she’s limited electricity use and she has stopped buying items like clothes and eggs.

“When you take on a pet, you take on a big responsibility,” she said. “It’s almost like when you buy a car, you’re going to have a lot of responsibility with that car. That car is going to break down, that car’s going to need repairs. It’s an investment.”

She added: “And they’re our furbabies. We love them to pieces. So it’s not really even a question. I need to find the money to keep them as healthy as possible so we can love them as long as possible.”

Mary Avila, a disabled veteran who lives on a fixed income, keeps things simple.

She doesn’t go clothes shopping anymore, she buys cheaper cuts of meat, and she does try to sock away money in case her pets need a small medical procedure.

“They always give,” said Avila, who lives in Bakersfield, California, with her cat, Jack, and two dogs, Domino and Squirt. “The cat doesn’t give as much, because cats. But the dogs, they always give, they’re always happy, they always want you around. They always are there for you.”

Patricia Kelvin of Poland, Ohio, said her Social Security benefits and pension can only go so far, so when the cost of utilities, food or trash collection go up, she has to cut back.

But not for her cat, Jesse.

“If he had some major medical concern, there are a lot of things I would give up so he would get care,” she said. “There’s just no question in my mind. If my diet was going to be more beans than something else, I wouldn’t hesitate. If I had to sell my sterling silver, which I’ve had for 60 years, that would go before my little ‘Whiskers’ would be deprived.”

The Animal Rescue League of Iowa is the largest nonprofit rescue organization in the Hawkeye State and adopted out 8,400 dogs, cats and small farm animals throughout last year.

As pet support services manager, Josh Fiala’s role at ARL is to help keep animals out of the shelter by offering programs — such as a pet food pantry, vaccine clinics, veterinary assistance and crisis care — to help keep pets with their people.

“We definitely, without question, have seen a dramatic increase in pretty much every one of those services,” he said, noting that the pet food pantry in particular has seen spikes in demand.

ARL gave out about 40,000 pounds of pet food in both 2020 and 2021. Last year, it distributed 146,000 pounds of food.

Waggle, a pet-dedicated crowdfunding platform for medical expenses and emergencies, has seen recent spikes in the volume of postings on its website — with some of the biggest increases coming from pet owners in rural communities and areas with high costs of living, said Steven Mornelli, chief executive officer and founder. Additionally, Waggle has also seen a 30% increase in posting for help with medical bills $250 and under, he told CNN.

“We have taken that as a correlation with the stresses of inflation,” he said.

In 2022, 4% more animals entered shelters than left, according to Shelter Animals Count, a national database of animal shelter statistics launched by some of the largest animal welfare organizations in the United States.

That’s the largest gap seen in the past four years and is the result of fewer pets leaving shelters, not increases in surrenders, said Christa Chadwick, vice president of shelter services at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Adoption levels have remained essentially flat, but there has been a large decline in animals being transferred to other shelters because of staffing and driver shortages, she added.

But she also highlighted the economic pressures affecting current and prospective pet owners.

“It’s heartbreaking to know that there are situations where pet owners are being put in a position where they are making a decision about their pet, whether it’s to surrender that pet to an animal shelter or they have to make a decision about euthanasia because they can’t afford care, she said.

“People tend to get angry at the pet owner when they [abandon or surrender their pet] but our experience has shown that when pet owners get to that point, it’s the only option they see available to them,” Chadwick. “And that’s real, and that’s hard for everybody involved, and that’s really hard for the animal who’s at the center of that.”

Chadwick sees a role for shelters and other organizations to provide a safe and welcoming place for owners who may feel like they have no other option.

Despite the broader economic challenges occurring within the US, PAWS Atlanta’s Labriola has had its share of feel-good success stories this year.

Donations have remained strong as has the volunteer program, he said. The low-cost public vaccination and spay and neuter clinics are sold out, indicating that people are taking advantage of inexpensive ways to care for their pets, he added.

And just recently, the shelter’s focus of working with dogs who have been there for more than a year, or “long-term guests,” is starting to pay off, he said.

“We’ve been able to place three long-termers into forever homes recently, freeing up space to rescue more homeless dogs,” he said.
Shelters, veterinarians and local rescue groups can serve as first points of contact.

The Humane Society of the United States’ website has a variety of resources for people facing financial challenges and need vet care, food, boarding, supplies and information to help keep pets with their families. The website has a list of national, state and local organizations.

Inquire if veterinarians accept Care Credit, ScratchPay or a similar service but be sure to carefully review the terms of repayment and how interest rates would be applied.

Ask if your veterinarian has a client-driven donation fund to help other clients in need; consider fundraising platforms such as Waggle and GoFundMe

Consider purchasing pet health insurance.
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March 19, 2023
Millions of dead fish have washed up in a river near an Australian town | CNN

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CNN
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Millions of dead fish have washed up in a river near a small Australian town, in a phenomenon state officials say is related to the “heatwave conditions” that are sweeping the country.

Video emerged this week showing masses of dead fish floating at the Menindee Weir pool near Broken Hill, CNN affiliate 9News Australia reported.

“Significant volumes” of fish, including carp and bony herring, along with nutrients and organic matter from the flood plain, have been forced back up the river due to the hot weather, according to the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) in New South Wales.

“These fish deaths are related to low oxygen levels in the water (hypoxia) as flood waters recede,” it explained in a statement this week.

“This event is ongoing as a heatwave… continues to put further stress on a system that has experienced extreme conditions from wide-scale flooding,” the DPI said.

“The current hot weather in the region is also exacerbating hypoxia, as warmer water holds less oxygen than cold water and fish have higher oxygen needs at warmer temperatures,” it added.

Heatwaves across Australia have become more frequent and intense as climate change worsens and global temperatures continue to rise.

Experts and government agencies have warned that Australia will continue to see spikes in extreme rainfall and heat, as well as more dangerous fires.

Menindee, a rural town in the far west of New South Wales state, has a population of around 500 residents, according to census figures.

Dead fish sightings were also reported this week in the Macquarie Valley, where there are both suburbs and a national park.

This wasn’t the first time Menindee residents have witnessed mass fish deaths.

Thousands of dead fish were reported in the area in February and a similar event occurred in the region in 2019.

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March 18, 2023
Scientists parse another clue to possible origins of Covid-19 as WHO says all possibilities ‘remain on the table’ | CNN

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CNN
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There’s a tantalizing new clue in the hunt for the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

A new analysis of genetic material collected from January to March 2020 at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China, has uncovered animal DNA in samples already known to be positive for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. A significant amount of that DNA appears to belong to animals known as raccoon dogs, which were known to be traded at the market, according to officials with the World Health Organization, who addressed the new evidence in a news briefing on Friday.

The connection to raccoon dogs came to light after Chinese researchers shared raw genetic sequences taken from swabbed specimens collected at the market early in the pandemic. The sequences were uploaded in late January 2023, to the data sharing site GISAID, but have recently been removed.

An international team of researchers noticed them and downloaded them for further study, the WHO officials said Friday.

The new findings – which have not yet been publicly posted – do not settle the question of how the pandemic started. They do not prove that raccoon dogs were infected with SARS-CoV-2, nor do they prove that raccoon dogs were the animals that first infected people.

But because viruses don’t survive in the environment outside of their hosts for long, finding so much of the genetic material from the virus intermingled with genetic material from raccoon dogs is highly suggestive that they could have been carriers, according to scientists who worked on the analysis. The analysis was led by Kristian Andersen, an immunologist and microbiologist at Scripps Research; Edward Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney; Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona. These three scientists, who have been digging into the origins of the pandemic, were interviewed by reporters for The Atlantic magazine. CNN has reached out to Andersen, Holmes and Worobey for comment.

The details of the international analysis were first reported Thursday by The Atlantic.

The new data is emerging as Republicans in Congress have opened investigations into the pandemic’s origin. Previous studies provided evidence that the virus likely emerged naturally in market, but could not point to a specific origin. Some US agencies, including a recent US Department of Energy assessment, say the pandemic likely resulted from a lab leak in Wuhan.

In the news briefing on Friday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the organization was first made aware of the sequences on Sunday.

“As soon as we became aware of this data, we contacted the Chinese CDC and urged them to share it with WHO and the international scientific community so it can be analyzed,” Tedros said.

WHO also convened its Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of the Novel Pathogens, known as SAGO, which has been investigating the roots of the pandemic, to discuss the data on Tuesday. The group heard from Chinese scientists who had originally studied the sequences, as well as the group of international scientists taking a fresh look at them.

WHO experts said in the Friday briefing that the data are not conclusive. They still can’t say whether the virus leaked from a lab, or if it spilled over naturally from animals to humans.

“These data do not provide a definitive answer to the question of how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important in moving us closer to that answer,” Tedros said.

What the sequences do prove, WHO officials said, is that China has more data that might relate to the origins of the pandemic that it has not yet shared with the rest of the world.

“This data could have, and should have, been shared three years ago,” Tedros said. “We continue to call on China to be transparent in sharing data and to conduct the necessary investigations and share results.

“Understanding how the pandemic began remains a moral and scientific imperative.”

CNN has reached out to the Chinese scientists who first analyzed and shared the data, but has not received a reply.

The Chinese researchers, who are affiliated with that country’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, had shared their own analysis of the samples in 2022. In that preprint study posted last year, they concluded that “no animal host of SARS-CoV2 can be deduced.”

The research looked at 923 environmental samples taken from within the seafood market and 457 samples taken from animals, and found 63 environmental samples that were positive for the virus that causes Covid-19. Most were taken from the western end of the market. None of the animal samples, which were taken from refrigerated and frozen products for sale, and from live, stray animals roaming the market, were positive, the Chinese authors wrote in 2022.

When they looked at the different species of DNA represented in the environmental samples, the Chinese authors only saw a link to humans, but not other animals.

When an international team of researchers recently took at fresh look at the genetic material in the samples – which were swabbed in and around the stalls of the market – using an advanced genetic technique called metagenomics, scientists said they were surprised to find a significant amount of DNA belonging to raccoon dogs, a small animal related to foxes. Raccoon dogs can be infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 and have been high on the list of suspected animal hosts for the virus.

“What they found is molecular evidence that animals were sold at that market. That was suspected, but they found molecular evidence of that. And also that some of the animals that were there were susceptible to SARS-CoV2 infection, and some of those animals include raccoon dogs,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for Covid-19, in Friday’s briefing.

“This doesn’t change our approach to studying the origins of Covid-19. It just tells us that more data exists, and that data needs to be shared in full,” she said.

Van Kerkhove said that until the international scientific community is able to review more evidence, “all hypotheses remain on the table.”

Some experts found the new evidence persuasive, if not completely convincing, of an origin in the market.

“The data does point even further to a market origin,” Andersen, the Scripps Research evolutionary biologist who attended the WHO meeting and is one of the scientists analyzing the new data, told the magazine Science.

The assertions made over the new data quickly sparked debate in the scientific community.

Francois Balloux, director of the Genetics Institute at University College London, said the fact that the new analysis had not yet been publicly posted for scientists to scrutinize, but had come to light in news reports, warranted caution.

“Such articles really don’t help as they only polarise the debate further,” Balloux posted in a thread on Twitter. “Those convinced by a zoonotic origin will read it as final proof for their conviction, and those convinced it was a lab leak will interpret the weakness of the evidence as attempts of a cover-up.”

Other experts, who were not involved in the analysis, said the data could be key to showing the virus had a natural origin.

Felicia Goodrum is an immunobiologist at the University of Arizona, who recently published a review of all available data for the various theories behind the pandemic’s origin.

Goodrum says the strongest proof for a natural spillover would be to isolate the virus that causes Covid-19 from an animal that was present in the market in 2019.

“Clearly, that is impossible, as we cannot go back in time any more than we have through sequencing, and no animals were present at the time sequences could be collected. To me, this is the next best thing,” Goodrum said in an email to CNN.

In the WHO briefing, Van Kerkhove said that the Chinese CDC researchers had uploaded the sequences to GISAID as they were updating their original research. She said their first paper is in the process of being updated and resubmitted for publication.

“We have been told by GISAID that the data from China’s CDC is being updated and expanded,” she said.

Van Kerkhove said on Friday that what WHO would like to be able to do is to find the source of where the animals came from. Were they wild? Were they farmed?

She said in the course of its investigation into the pandemic’s origins, WHO had repeatedly asked China for studies to trace the animals back to their source farms. She said WHO had also asked for blood tests on people who worked in the market, as well as tests on animals that may have come from the farms.

“Share the data,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, said Friday, addressing scientists around the world who might have relevant information. “Let science do the work, and we will get the answers.”

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March 17, 2023
Major oil project approval intensifies Alaska Natives’ rift

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Biden administration’s approval this week of the biggest oil drilling project in Alaska in decades promises to widen a rift among Alaska Natives, with some saying that oil money can’t counter the damages caused by climate change and others defending the project as economically vital.

Two lawsuits filed almost immediately by environmentalists and one Alaska Native group are likely to exacerbate tensions that have built up over years of debate about ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project.

Many communities on Alaska’s North Slope celebrated the project’s approval, citing new jobs and the influx of money that will help support schools, other public services and infrastructure investments in their isolated villages. Just a few decades ago, many villages had no running water, said Doreen Leavitt, director of natural resources for the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope. Housing shortages continues to be a problem, with multiple generations often living together, she said.

“We still have a long ways to go. We don’t want to go backwards,” Leavitt said.

She said 50 years of oil production on the petroleum-rich North Slope has shown that development can coexist with wildlife and the traditional, subsistence way of life.

But some Alaska Natives blasted the decision to greenlight the project, and they are supported by environmental groups challenging the approval in federal court.

The acrimony toward the project was underscored in a letter dated earlier this month written by three leaders in the Nuiqsut community, who described their remote village as “ground zero for industrialization of the Arctic.” They addressed the letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo and the first Native American to lead a Cabinet department.

They cited the threat that climate change poses to caribou migrations and to their ability to travel across once-frozen areas. Money from the ConocoPhillips project won’t be enough to mitigate those threats, they said. The community is about 36 miles (58 kilometers) from the Willow project.

“They are payoffs for the loss of our health and culture,” the Nuiqsut leaders wrote. “No dollar can replace what we risk….It is a matter of our survival.”

But Asisaun Toovak, the mayor of Utqiaġvik, the nation’s northernmost community on the Arctic Ocean, told the AP that she jumped for joy when she heard the Biden administration approved the Willow project.

“I could say that the majority of the people, the majority of our community and the majority of the people were excited about the Willow Project,” she said.

Willow is in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a vast region on Alaska’s resource-rich North Slope that is roughly the size of Maine. It would produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, the use of which would result in at least 263 million tons (239 million metric tons) of greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years, according to a federal environmental review.

The Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Sierra Club and other groups that sued Tuesday said Interior officials ignored the fact that every ton of greenhouse gas emitted by the project would contribute to sea ice melt, which endangers polar bears and Alaska villages. A second lawsuit seeking to block the project was filed Wednesday by Greenpeace and other environmental groups.

For Alaska Natives to reconcile their points of view with one another, it will take discussions. “We just continue to try to sit at the table together, break bread and meet as a region,” said Leavitt, who also is the secretary for the tribal council representing eight North Slope villages.

“I will say the majority of the voices that we heard against Willow were from the Lower 48,” she said of the contiguous U.S. states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.

ConocoPhillips Alaska said the $8 billion project would create up to 2,500 jobs during construction and 300 long-term jobs, and generate billions of dollars in royalties and other revenues to be split between the federal and state governments.

The project has had widespread support among lawmakers in the state. Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with Biden and his advisers in early March to plead their case for the project, and Alaska Native lawmakers also met with Haaland to urge support.

Haaland visited the North Slope last fall, just hours after state Rep. Josiah Aullaqsruaq Patkotak, a whaling captain along with his brother on their father’s whaling crew, harvested a roughly 40-ton (36-metric tons) bowhead whale and spent hours pulling it on the ice from the Arctic Ocean at Utqiaġvik. He left the ice around 7 a.m. to be ready to meet with Haaland just two hours later.

For him, the juxtaposition of those activities on the same day underscored the dual life led by Alaska Natives on the North Slope and highlights the choices that communities make every day for their survival.

“That’s the walk our leaders have to walk,” said Patkotak, an independent who supported Willow. “We maintain our culture and our lifestyle and our subsistence aspect where we’re one with the land and animals, and the very next hour you may be having to conduct yourself, you know, in a manner that you’re playing the Western world’s game.”

He invited Haaland to view the bowhead whale that they harvested, but when Patkotak couldn’t provide a street name of where she would go, her security didn’t allow it. “Well, it’s on the ice, there are no street names,” he said.

Patkotak met again with Haaland this month in Washington, D.C., where he extended an invitation to leaders in the White House to visit Utqiagvik, “because it’s our duty to tell our story so that we’re able to strike that balance of both worlds.

“That’s a reality for us,” he said.

___

Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

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March 16, 2023
Major oil project approval intensifies Alaska Natives’ rift

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Biden administration’s approval this week of the biggest oil drilling project in Alaska in decades promises to widen a rift among Alaska Natives, with some saying that oil money can’t counter the damages caused by climate change and others defending the project as economically vital.

Two lawsuits filed almost immediately by environmentalists and one Alaska Native group are likely to exacerbate tensions that have built up over years of debate about ConocoPhillips Alaska’s Willow project.

Many communities on Alaska’s North Slope celebrated the project’s approval, citing new jobs and the influx of money that will help support schools, other public services and infrastructure investments in their isolated villages. Just a few decades ago, many villages had no running water, said Doreen Leavitt, director of natural resources for the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope. Housing shortages continues to be a problem, with multiple generations often living together, she said.

“We still have a long ways to go. We don’t want to go backwards,” Leavitt said.

She said 50 years of oil production on the petroleum-rich North Slope has shown that development can coexist with wildlife and the traditional, subsistence way of life.

But some Alaska Natives blasted the decision to greenlight the project, and they are supported by environmental groups challenging the approval in federal court.

The acrimony toward the project was underscored in a letter dated earlier this month written by three leaders in the Nuiqsut community, who described their remote village as “ground zero for industrialization of the Arctic.” They addressed the letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of New Mexico’s Laguna Pueblo and the first Native American to lead a Cabinet department.

They cited the threat that climate change poses to caribou migrations and to their ability to travel across once-frozen areas. Money from the ConocoPhillips project won’t be enough to mitigate those threats, they said. The community is about 36 miles (58 kilometers) from the Willow project.

“They are payoffs for the loss of our health and culture,” the Nuiqsut leaders wrote. “No dollar can replace what we risk….It is a matter of our survival.”

But Asisaun Toovak, the mayor of Utqiaġvik, the nation’s northernmost community on the Arctic Ocean, told the AP that she jumped for joy when she heard the Biden administration approved the Willow project.

“I could say that the majority of the people, the majority of our community and the majority of the people were excited about the Willow Project,” she said.

Willow is in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a vast region on Alaska’s resource-rich North Slope that is roughly the size of Maine. It would produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, the use of which would result in at least 263 million tons (239 million metric tons) of greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years, according to a federal environmental review.

The Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic, Sierra Club and other groups that sued Tuesday said Interior officials ignored the fact that every ton of greenhouse gas emitted by the project would contribute to sea ice melt, which endangers polar bears and Alaska villages. A second lawsuit seeking to block the project was filed Wednesday by Greenpeace and other environmental groups.

For Alaska Natives to reconcile their points of view with one another, it will take discussions. “We just continue to try to sit at the table together, break bread and meet as a region,” said Leavitt, who also is the secretary for the tribal council representing eight North Slope villages.

“I will say the majority of the voices that we heard against Willow were from the Lower 48,” she said of the contiguous U.S. states, excluding Alaska and Hawaii.

ConocoPhillips Alaska said the $8 billion project would create up to 2,500 jobs during construction and 300 long-term jobs, and generate billions of dollars in royalties and other revenues to be split between the federal and state governments.

The project has had widespread support among lawmakers in the state. Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with Biden and his advisers in early March to plead their case for the project, and Alaska Native lawmakers also met with Haaland to urge support.

Haaland visited the North Slope last fall, just hours after state Rep. Josiah Aullaqsruaq Patkotak, a whaling captain along with his brother on their father’s whaling crew, harvested a roughly 40-ton (36-metric tons) bowhead whale and spent hours pulling it on the ice from the Arctic Ocean at Utqiaġvik. He left the ice around 7 a.m. to be ready to meet with Haaland just two hours later.

For him, the juxtaposition of those activities on the same day underscored the dual life led by Alaska Natives on the North Slope and highlights the choices that communities make every day for their survival.

“That’s the walk our leaders have to walk,” said Patkotak, an independent who supported Willow. “We maintain our culture and our lifestyle and our subsistence aspect where we’re one with the land and animals, and the very next hour you may be having to conduct yourself, you know, in a manner that you’re playing the Western world’s game.”

He invited Haaland to view the bowhead whale that they harvested, but when Patkotak couldn’t provide a street name of where she would go, her security didn’t allow it. “Well, it’s on the ice, there are no street names,” he said.

Patkotak met again with Haaland this month in Washington, D.C., where he extended an invitation to leaders in the White House to visit Utqiagvik, “because it’s our duty to tell our story so that we’re able to strike that balance of both worlds.

“That’s a reality for us,” he said.

___

Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

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March 15, 2023
Biden OKs Alaska oil project, draws ire of environmentalists

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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said Monday it is approving the huge Willow oil-drilling project on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope, a major environmental decision by President Joe Biden that drew quick condemnation that it flies in the face of the Democratic president’s pledges to slow climate change.

The announcement came a day after the administration, in a move in the other direction toward conservation, said it would bar or limit drilling in some other areas of Alaska and the Arctic Ocean.

The Willow approval by the Bureau of Land Management would allow three drill sites, which would include up to 199 total wells. Two other drill sites proposed for the project would be denied. Project developer ConocoPhillips has said it considers the three-site option workable, and company chairman and CEO Ryan Lance called the order “the right decision for Alaska and our nation.”

Houston-based ConocoPhillips will relinquish rights to about 68,000 acres of existing leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

The order, one of the most significant of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s tenure, was not signed by her but rather by her deputy, Tommy Beaudreau, who grew up in Alaska and has a close relationship with state lawmakers. She was notably silent on the project, which she had opposed as a New Mexico congresswoman before becoming Interior secretary two years ago.

Climate activists were outraged that Biden approved the project, which they say put his climate legacy at risk. Allowing the drilling plan to go forward would be a major breach of Biden’s campaign promise to stop new oil drilling on federal lands, they say.

However, administration officials were concerned that ConocoPhillips’ decades-old leases limited the government’s legal ability to block the project and that courts might have ruled in the company’s favor.

Monday’s announcement is not likely to be the last word, with litigation expected from environmental groups.

The Willow project could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, create up to 2,500 jobs during construction and 300 long-term jobs, and generate billions of dollars in royalties and tax revenues for the federal, state and local governments, the company said.

The project, located in the federally designated National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, enjoys widespread political support in the state. Alaska Native state lawmakers recently met with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to urge support for Willow.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Monday the decision was “very good news for the country.”

“Not only will this mean jobs and revenue for Alaska, it will be resources that are needed for the country and for our friends and allies,” Murkowski said. “The administration listened to Alaska voices. They listed to the delegation as we pressed the case for energy security and national security.”

Fellow Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan said conditions attached to the project should not reduce Willow’s ability to produce up to 180,000 barrels of crude a day. But he said it was “infuriating” that Biden also moved to prevent or limit oil drilling elsewhere in Alaska.

Environmental activists who have promoted a #StopWillow campaign on social media were fuming at the approval, which they called a betrayal.

“This decision greenlights 92% of proposed oil drilling (by ConocoPhllips) and hands over one the most fragile, intact ecosystems in the world to” the oil giant, said Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen. “This is not climate leadership.”

Biden understands the existential threat of climate change, “but he is approving a project that derails his own climate goals,” said Dillen, whose group vowed legal action to block the project.

Christy Goldfuss, a former Obama White House official who now is a policy chief at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said she was “deeply disappointed” at Biden’s decision to approve Willow, which would produce more than 239 million metric tons of greenhouse gases over the project’s 30-year life, roughly equal to the combined emissions from 1.7 million passenger cars.

“This decision is bad for the climate, bad for the environment and bad for the Native Alaska communities who oppose this and feel their voices were not heard,” Goldfuss said.

Anticipating that reaction among environmental groups, the White House announced on Sunday that Biden will prevent or limit oil drilling in 16 million acres in Alaska and the Arctic Ocean. The plan would bar drilling in nearly 3 million acres of the Beaufort Sea — closing it off from oil exploration — and limit drilling in more than 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve.

The withdrawal of the offshore area ensures that important habitat for whales, seals, polar bears and other wildlife “will be protected in perpetuity from extractive development,″ the White House said in a statement.

The conservation announcement did little to mollify activists.

“It’s a performative action to make the Willow project not look as bad,” said Elise Joshi, the acting executive director of Gen-Z for Change, an advocacy organization.

Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with Biden and his advisers in early March to plead their case for the project, while environmental groups rallied opposition and urged project opponents to place pressure on the administration.

City of Nuiqsut Mayor Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, whose community of about 525 people is closest to the proposed development, has been outspoken in her opposition, worried about impacts to caribou and her residents’ subsistence lifestyles. The Naqsragmiut Tribal Council, in another North Slope community, also raised concerns with the project.

But there is “majority consensus” in the North Slope region supporting the project, said Nagruk Harcharek, president of the group Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, whose members include leaders from across much of that region.

The conservation actions announced Sunday complete protections for the entire Beaufort Sea Planning Area, building upon President Barack Obama’s 2016 action on the Chukchi Sea Planning Area and the majority of the Beaufort Sea, the White House said.

Separately, the administration moved to protect more than 13 million acres within the petroleum reserve, a 23-million acre chunk of land on Alaska’s North Slope set aside a century ago for future oil production.

The Willow project is within the reserve, and ConocoPhillips has long held leases for the site. About half the reserve is off limits to oil and gas leasing under an Obama-era rule reinstated by the Biden administration last year.

Areas to be protected include the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay Special Areas, collectively known for their globally significant habitat for grizzly and polar bears, caribou and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds.

___

Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska and Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana contributed to this story.

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March 13, 2023
From Wile E. Coyote to edibles: Recession forecasts are getting weird | CNN Business

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A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.

New York
CNN
—

Understanding the economy is a complicated task, and even the experts are struggling to answer seemingly simple questions like “Are we on the brink of a recession?” or “Why isn’t inflation falling faster?”

Many have resorted to the use of metaphor to convey the current complexity of the economy.

It’s a communications tactic that some Federal Reserve officials have long favored. In the early 1980s, Nancy Teeters, the first woman appointed to the Federal Reserve Board, came up with an apt metaphor to explain why she disagreed with steep rate hikes implemented by then-Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.

Her colleagues were “pulling the financial fabric of this country so tight that it’s going to rip,” she said. “Once you tear a piece of fabric, it’s very difficult, almost impossible, to put it back together again,” she added, before remarking that “none of these guys has ever sewn anything in his life.”

These days, economists and analysts are turning to increasingly outlandish metaphors to help translate their thoughts.

Here are some of the most interesting descriptors used recently and what they mean:

Wile E. Coyote

If you think back to Saturday morning cartoons, you may remember the never-ending, and mostly futile, chase between Wile E. Coyote and his nemesis, Road Runner. That pursuit often ended with Wile E. running off a cliff and into mid-air.

The toons were fun sources of entertainment in our salad years, but former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers says they now double as a case study for the Fed and the economy.

“The [Federal Reserve’s] process of bringing down inflation will bring on a recession at some stage, as it almost always has in the past,” Summers told CNN last week.

And for the US economy, it could likely mean a “Wile E. Coyote moment,” Summers said — if we run off the cliff, gravity will eventually win out.

“The economy could hit an air pocket in a few months,” he said.

Antibiotics

When describing the state of the economy, Summers doesn’t just rely on Looney Tunes. He also borrows from the medical community.

While describing why the Fed can’t end its rate hike regimen when inflation shows signs of showing, Summers has compared higher interest rates to medicine for a country sick with high inflation. The entire dose must be taken for the treatment to fully work, he says.

“We’ve all had the experience of taking a course of drugs and giving up, stopping the drugs, before the course was exhausted, simply because we felt better. And then, whatever infection we had came back and it was harder to fight the second time,” Summers told Boston’s NPR news station WBUR in February.

For what it’s worth, Before the Bell is also guilty of using this one.

Fog report

We may be driving in the fog, landing a plane in the fog or even just walking in it.

What’s important in this oft-used scenario is that it’s hard to see and we’re doing something that typically requires clear visibility.

Clients “facing the fog of uncertainty in financial markets, economic growth and geopolitics,” should “avoid unnecessary lane changes,” and “allow extra time to reach your destination,” advised Goldman Sachs analysts earlier this year.

It’s essentially a fancy way of saying that no one really knows what’s going on in this economy. Instead of attempting to find a way out of the chaos, investors should slow down, stay the course and wait for recovery.

Edibles

Late last year, investment analyst Peter Boockvar used a semi-illicit metaphor to explain why he thought the Fed might be over-tightening the economy into recession. He compared the Fed to an inexperienced consumer of weed gummies, which can take a long time to kick in.

During that waiting period, an eager consumer may think the drugs aren’t working and eat more before the effects of the first dose even set in. They then inevitably find themselves way too stoned and feeling not-so-great.

Boockvar was careful to note that he himself does not indulge in this practice, by the way.

Storm chasing

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon should receive an honorary degree in meteorology for his recessionary weather predictions.

The Big Bank exec has repeatedly referred to economic recession as a storm gathering on the horizon — occasionally he’ll update the public on how far away and how bad that storm is.

Last summer Dimon spooked markets when he compared a possible upcoming recession to a “hurricane.” In November, he downgraded it to a “storm.”

By January, his forecast was simply “storm clouds,” adding that he probably should never have used the term “hurricane.”

Polyurethane

Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income, has likened the economy to a bendable piece of plastic. Much like the economy, he wrote, polyurethane, “displays flexibility and adaptability, but also durability and strength.”

He added that “the material’s ability to be stretched, bent, stressed and flexed without breaking, while in fact returning to its original condition, is what makes it so chemically unique. In recent years the US economy has displayed a remarkable resilience to stresses and an extraordinary ability to adapt to changing conditions.”

Last week Senator Elizabeth Warren grilled Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell about American job losses being potential casualties of the central bank’s battle against high inflation.

Warren, a frequent critic of the Fed’s leader, noted that an additional 2 million people would have to lose their jobs if the unemployment rate rises from its current 3.6% rate to reach the Fed’s projections of 4.6% by the end of the year.

“If you could speak directly to the two million hardworking people who have decent jobs today, who you’re planning to get fired over the next year, what would you say to them?” Warren asked.

Powell argued that all Americans, not just two million, are suffering under high inflation.

“Will working people be better off if we just walk away from our jobs and inflation remains 5% or 6%?” Powell replied.

Warren cautioned Powell that he was “gambling with people’s lives.”

The discussion was part of a larger cost-benefit conversation that keeps popping up around the jobs market: Which is worse — widespread job loss or elevated inflation?

CNN spoke with two top economic analysts with different perspectives to gain a deeper understanding of the debate.

Below is our interview with Johns Hopkins economist Laurence Ball.

Yesterday we published our interview with Roosevelt Institute director Michael Konczal, you can read that here.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Before the Bell: Is it necessary to increase the unemployment rate to successfully fight inflation?

Laurence Ball: There’s a trade off between inflation and unemployment. When the economy is very strong and unemployment is pushed down, inflation tends to be higher. Right now there are almost two job openings per unemployed worker, the supply of workers looking for jobs and the demand for firms to hire is out of whack. That’s leading to faster wage increases, which sounds good except that gets passed through to faster price increases and more inflation. So somehow the labor market has to be brought back towards a normal balance of workers and jobs and that means slowing down the economy, and that probably means raising unemployment.

Can you explain the cost-benefit analysis of two million jobs lost to get down to 2% inflation?

If we assume we have to get inflation down to 2%, then it’s just an unhappy fact of life that that’s going to require higher unemployment. But a lot of people, including me, think that if the Fed gets it down to 4% or 3%, that’s the time to declare victory or say, ‘close enough for government work.’

It gets more and more expensive in terms of how much unemployment it costs to go from 3% to 2% inflation. Those last few points will have disproportionately large costs, and it’s very dubious if that’s really worth it.

Now, the Fed has the political problem that they’ve been insisting on a 2% target rate for years. If they say right at this moment that 3% or 4% is okay that would be seen as surrendering or moving the goalposts. I think a likely outcome is that inflation gets down to 3% or 4% and the Fed continues to say their target is a 2% inflation rate but never does what has to be done to get it there.

If you examine Fed history you see that 5% appears to be a magic number. When inflation is above 5% it becomes this big political issue. When it goes below 5% it disappears from the headlines.

What do you think is important for our readers to know about this back-and-forth between Powell and Warren?

Behind all of this, in a market economy there’s sort of a basic glitch. We have this thing called unemployment, we sort of chronically have not enough jobs for everybody and that’s a big problem. The problem can be reduced somewhat in the short run if you get the economy going very fast. But then that leads to inflation. Accepting that unemployment has to go back up is just recognizing that there’s this glitch in the market economy or capitalism. It’s not clear how we can get around that.

CNN Business’ David Goldman reports:

In an extraordinary action to restore confidence in America’s banking system, the Biden administration on Sunday guaranteed that customers of the failed Silicon Valley Bank will have access to all their money starting Monday.

In a related action, the government shut down Signature Bank, a regional bank that was teetering on the brink of collapse in recent days. Signature’s customers will receive a similar deal, ensuring that even uninsured deposits will be returned to them Monday.

SVB collapse: live updates

In a joint statement Sunday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg said the FDIC will make SVB and Signature’s customers whole. By guaranteeing all deposits — even the uninsured money that customers kept with the failed banks — the government aimed to prevent more bank runs and to help companies that deposited large sums with the banks to continue to make payroll and fund their operations.

The Fed will also make additional funding available for eligible financial institutions to prevent runs on similar banks in the future.

Wall Street investors were relieved that the government intervened as stock futures rebounded on Sunday evening, although the rally is fading Monday morning. Markets had tumbled more than 3% Thursday and Friday as investors feared more bank failures and systemic risk for the tech sector.

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March 13, 2023
What’s going on with all the runway close calls | CNN Politics

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A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

CNN
—

There have been six close calls on US runways this year, which has led to a fair amount of news coverage, some alarm among the flying public and a lot of calls for answers – including from the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration Billy Nolen, who testified on Capitol Hill this week.

Unable to explain the spike, Nolen told lawmakers the agency wants to get to the bottom of things at a safety summit planned for next week. There are also specific investigations into each incident in Boston; Burbank, California; Austin, Texas; Honolulu; New York; and Sarasota, Florida.

I talked to CNN’s Pete Muntean, who not only covers aviation but is also a pilot and flight instructor, for his perspective on what the heck is going on.

Our conversation, conducted by phone, is below. Stick with it for an interesting bonus story on how low-flying planes are used to find poachers in Africa.

WOLF: Six close calls in recent weeks. Are these all distinct events? Or should we view them as one larger issue?

MUNTEAN: There’s definitely a constant theme because they’re the same type of event, which is officially known as a runway incursion. It is where two airplanes essentially get in the way of one another on or near the runway.

These types of events can range from really minor to more egregious. What we saw at JFK in New York in January, that had to be one of the more egregious ones. The air traffic controller had to swoop in and stop a flight that was barreling down the runway toward a crossing, taxiing (Boeing) triple seven from taking off.

That is a more extreme, severe example. There have been some examples where the airplanes get within a few hundred feet of one another, maybe as close as 100 feet. One of the cases like in Austin.

But they’re not really caused, necessarily, by the same thing. That’s, of course, something that investigators will look at.

(On Wednesday) the acting head of the FAA on Capitol Hill said that if there are dots to connect, they’ll connect them in this safety summit next week, although it doesn’t seem like there was any real common trigger. No common cause.

RELATED: FAA to conduct sweeping safety review after multiple incidents

WOLF: Who is supposed to keep these from happening? Is it the air traffic controllers? Is it the pilots? How is it supposed to work?

MUNTEAN: There are multiple different layers of safeguards in place in the air traffic system, especially at these busy airports where there are a lot of airliners coming in and out in a lot of varying conditions, a lot of different times of day.

Some of the responsibility falls on air traffic control. Of course, it’s their job to keep airplanes from running into one another. Some of the responsibility falls on the flight crew to keep it so that they follow the instructions of air traffic control, that they remain vigilant all the time, if they’re taxiing across runways or taking off from a runway that’s crisscrossing with another one as they’re about to land.

The good news is that in commercial aviation in the US – which has a stellar track record, by the way – there are two trained pilots at all times. And there are a lot of eyeballs essentially making it so that these things don’t happen.

The pilots can intercede at any point, and in some cases they have. They’ve just essentially called their own go-arounds to make it so that they don’t come in contact with an airplane. In some cases, the air traffic controllers will call it. The onus is on a few different layers here.

I’m a pilot, but I just did a demonstration with a former NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigator at a busy airport, Dulles (in Virginia), and it begs pointing out that some of the safeguards are as simple as paint on the runway and taxiways to remind pilots not to taxi too close to the runway. Some of it is in the phraseology that’s used on the radio. Some of it is in the procedures and training the pilots get.

I think every pilot that’s out there now – and if you talk to professional pilots this is something that weighs on them – this has been a chronic problem for aviation for a while. But now, because of these headlines, it’s especially top of mind for pilots and air traffic controllers and regulators and safety advocates.

WOLF: You said it’s a chronic problem. Is there any indication or any data to suggest this is happening more often? Or are we in the media just paying attention to it?

MUNTEAN: I think these events are getting more attention. No doubt that these six that we have seen so far this year are extreme. Usually they don’t happen with such severity, with such frequency.

But the FAA, at every layer of aviation from commercial aviation on down to small airplanes and private airports, they’re always trying to remind pilots to remain vigilant. Something that pilots really train for in their first flying lesson is how to behave in and respect the environment around an airport.

In some ways, it’s like flying with a loaded gun. You have to be really, really careful.

The reason why these are happening, one pilot told me – who’s the representative for a large union of airline pilots and a major airline – he said the system is just under so much pressure right now. There’s a lot of corporate pressure for airlines to get back on their feet after the pandemic.

There’s a lot of new pilots flying right now, who may have matriculated from regional airlines to larger airlines. A lot of the old guard have retired. Pilots have left just because they were given voluntary leave packages as a result of the downturn of the pandemic.

There are a ton of different factors at play.

The fact that we’re sort of paying attention to these more just sort of highlights that nobody can ever let their guard down.

WOLF: Is the current air traffic system that we’re using technologically up to snuff?

MUNTEAN: I think it is. And I think the FAA would say that it is, because they have added in so many layers of technology to make it so that these incidents are avoided.

They have technology that can sense, at some larger airports, whether or not a pilot is lined up with the wrong thing, if they were aiming for a runway but instead aimed for a taxiway to land on – which has happened before.

They have more lighting on the pavement that warns pilots, essentially like a stoplight, to make it so they don’t go rolling across a runway as they are taxiing across one.

There are even systems that make it so that they can sense, using radar and other technologies, where airplanes are on the ground and not just in the air. Some of these runway incursions are caused simply by airplanes being in the wrong place as they are taxiing and not necessarily in the air.

I think the system is up to snuff. I think the FAA would say the system is up to snuff. But they’re also using this as a moment to sort of reinspect and have some introspection on the matter and whether or not they could be doing more to make it so that these problems can be avoided.

WOLF: You already pointed out that commercial aviation in the US is incredibly safe.

MUNTEAN: The last time there was a fatality was 2018, which was kind of a freak accident, where a person got hit on a Southwest flight by a fan blade that broke up in a jet engine.

We’re reporting on crashes that don’t happen. These are close calls, sure, but nobody’s been hurt. Nobody’s been killed. So it kind of shows, in a way, how safe the system is.

WOLF: Is there a spot in the system that is particularly weak? Is it takeoff or landing? What is the thing that makes pilots most nervous?

MUNTEAN: The common theme is having so many airplanes close together. That’s sort of the inherent flaw of an airport, right? You bring in airplanes and take off and land. You may be using multiple different runways at the same time. There’s a lot of demand in the air traffic right now.

Every airport is different, right?

Some airports may have a lot of runways that are parallel and a lot of taxiways that are parallel to one another, like at Dulles the other day, where we went. There are three runways lined up: one left, one center and one right. They’re all headed the same direction to the north. You have to be really careful that you’re lined up with the right one.

There are a few different things that you can do in the airplane to mitigate that and make sure that you have a safeguard of your own. But I think it really varies by the airport. In some places, there are intersecting runways. There are taxiways that have confusing turns.

The FAA does granular looks at things like this, where they say something like this taxiway design isn’t all that great, there may be a blind spot here, as you’re taxiing you may approach this at a 45-degree angle or it could be a 90-degree angle where somebody in the cockpit can see more.

Also when conditions are changing – we saw in the Austin incident the weather was abysmal at that time. It was very low cloud ceilings and very low visibility where the pilots were able to get an indication that there was somebody on the runway, an approaching FedEx flight and a Southwest flight that was still on the runway that hadn’t taken off yet.

They weren’t necessarily able to see that (Southwest flight), so far as we know, by their eyeball.

There are a lot of things at play. You can’t just say it’s any one different thing. And remember, these pilots are often going in and out of different places multiple times a day. The responsibility is on everybody.

WOLF: Do pilots face the same sort of difficult lifestyle we’ve been hearing about for train operators?

MUNTEAN: There’s a ton of regulation that protects pilots. We see that occasionally getting better. Even flight attendants have gotten longer rest rules recently, where they’re able to rest between trips for a longer period of time.

There’s always friction between organized labor, work groups and the companies that they work for. A lot of times it comes down to regulators and what they are able to do for workers. Pretty much every major airline right now – their pilot groups, as well as a lot of major flight attendant groups – are going through contract negotiations with their companies.

Some of the safety and protection, unions would say, comes from a good deal that protects not only their ability to work but also keeps pilots and passengers safe. Organized labor and unions have a lot to say about this, and they want to make sure that they are treated fairly to make it so that these incidents don’t happen.

I just talked to Dennis Tajer, who’s the representative of the Allied Pilots Association, which represents all the American Airlines pilots, and he said this is something that we’ve kind of been pounding our fists on the podium about, we’ve said for about a year that the air traffic system and the aviation system and the airline system are just under too much pressure, and now you’re seeing the result of that.

It’s on not only regulators like the FAA, the Department of Transportation but also companies to make sure that these major airlines – which are huge corporations – to make sure that their pilots are safe and doing the job properly with the proper amount of rest, with the proper amount of resources.

WOLF: Right. It’s in nobody’s interest for there to be an incident.

MUNTEAN: Everyone says safety is a top priority, of course.

But depending on your viewpoint, safety can have a lot of different meanings.

WOLF: It’s always been my sense that air traffic is one of the most, if not the most, government-regulated systems in the country. Unlike other areas where there might be a move toward deregulation, this is something the government controls and is going to continue to control.

MUNTEAN: It’s super regulated because a lot of the rules are, frankly, written in blood.

When you talk about this runway incursion issue, the landmark case is the Tenerife accident (in 1977), where KLM and Pan Am 747s that both diverted to Tenerife, an island near Spain, ran into one another and killed a bunch of people. There were some survivors, but it was a classic runway incursion incident.

One of the airplanes was back taxiing down the runway, as the KLM crew essentially blasted off without regard for where the other airplane was. They couldn’t see it because the weather was poor.

These regulations are often born out of horrible disasters. And I think the thing to point out here is that we have avoided disaster in these six cases, but in some cases came pretty close. It underscores why things were so regulated and also why the regulators are taking this so seriously.

WOLF: What are you looking out for?

MUNTEAN: I would point out these things are still under investigation. And the National Transportation Safety Board has tried to shed a lot of light on this issue. I asked Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the NTSB, why do you think these things are happening more?

She said, well, it’s possible that these things are happening more. It’s also possible that these things are getting more attention. It doesn’t matter; it’s good that these things are being brought to the spotlight.

That could ultimately have a huge impact on safety. Aviation is not waiting for another Tenerife. They’re taking these one-off scares and really trying to learn from them.

WOLF: You sound very passionate about all of this.

MUNTEAN: I love flying more than anything. The cool part of my job is I get to talk about aviation for a living, and it’s something I’m so passionate about.

I also instruct and teach people. I just came back from this incredible trip in Kenya where I got to instruct for the Kenya Wildlife Service Airwing, flying with essentially rangers, who are also pilots, with an anti-poaching air force.

And that was just incredibly cool, but the focus is safety. Maybe I’m a little biased, but aviation is just like something I always geek out on. It’s fun to talk about. …

I was invited with a group of instructors to go there, and we were in a national park south of Nairobi, called Tsavo West. We flew with 19 different pilots. Three instructors from the States essentially go down and audit their flying ability and safety.

They’re very, very good pilots. Because they fly at a few hundred feet, guarding against poachers and spotting wildlife, they don’t have a ton of margin for error. We did a lot of brush-up things with them, and they were all very appreciative, and it was a very cool and rewarding experience flying smaller airplanes.

Those are the type of airplanes that are best suited for that mission, because they can fly low and slow and have a lot of visibility. You can’t do that in a jet.

It’s sort of like flying into Jurassic Park, because you see elephants all the time, and we saw rhinos and more zebras than I can ever count, and giraffes. But these pilots do a really important job, and (it) was really cool to be a part of it.

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March 12, 2023
When China shot down five U-2 spy planes at the height of the Cold War | CNN

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Seoul, South Korea
CNN
—

When a Chinese high-altitude balloon suspected of spying was spotted over the United States recently, the US Air Force responded by sending up a high-flying espionage asset of its own: the U-2 reconnaissance jet.

It was the Cold-War era spy plane that took the high-resolution photographs – not to mention its pilot’s selfie – that reportedly convinced Washington the Chinese balloon was gathering intelligence and not, as Beijing continues to insist, studying the weather.

In doing so, the plane played a key role in an event that sent tensions between the world’s two largest economies soaring, and shone an international spotlight on the methods the two governments use to keep tabs on each other.

Until now, most of the media’s focus has been on the balloon – specifically, how a vessel popularly seen as a relic of a bygone era of espionage could possibly remain relevant in the modern spy’s playbook. Yet to many military historians, it is the involvement of that other symbol of a bygone time, the U-2, that is far more telling.

The U-2 has a long and storied history when it comes to espionage battles between the US and China. In the 1960s and 1970s, at least five of them were shot down while on surveillance missions over China.

Those losses haven’t been as widely reported as might be expected – and for good reason. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was responsible for all of America’s U-2s at the time the planes were shot down, has never officially explained what they were doing there.

Adding to the mystery was that the planes were being flown not by US pilots nor under a US flag, but by pilots from Taiwan who, in a striking parallel to today’s balloon saga, claimed to be involved in a weather research initiative.

That the CIA would be tight-lipped over what these American-built spy planes were doing is hardly surprising.

But the agency’s continued silence more than 50 years later – it did not respond to a CNN request for comment on this article – speaks volumes about just how sensitive the issue was both at the time and remains today.

The US government has a general rule of 25 years for automatic declassification of sensitive material. However, one of its often-cited reasons for ignoring this rule is in those cases where revealing the information would “cause serious harm to relations between the US and a foreign government, or to ongoing diplomatic activities of the US.”

Contemporary accounts of what the planes were doing – by the Taiwan pilots who were shot down, retired US Air Force officers and military historians among them – leave little doubt as to why it would have caused a stir.

The planes – according to accounts by the pilots in a Taiwan-made documentary film and histories published on US government websites – had been transferred to Taiwan as part of a top-secret mission to snoop on Communist China’s growing military capabilities, including its nascent nuclear program, which was receiving help from the Soviet Union.

The newly developed U-2, nicknamed the Dragon Lady, appeared to offer the perfect vessel. The US had already used it to spy on the Soviet’s domestic nuclear program as its high-altitude capabilities – it was designed in the 1950s to reach “a staggering and unprecedented altitude of 70,000 feet,” in the words of its developer Lockheed – put it out of the range of antiaircraft missiles.

Or so the US had thought. In 1960, the Soviets shot down a CIA-operated U-2 and put its pilot Gary Powers on trial. Washington was forced to abandon its cover story (that Powers had been on a weather reconnaissance mission and had drifted into Soviet airspace after blacking out from oxygen depletion), admit the spy plane program, and barter for Powers to be returned in a prisoner swap.

“Since America didn’t want to have its own pilots shot down in a U-2 the way Gary Powers had been over the Soviet Union in 1960, which caused a major diplomatic incident, they turned to Taiwan, and Taiwan was all too willing to allow its pilots to be trained and to do a long series of overflights over mainland China,” Chris Pocock, author of “50 Years of the U-2,” explained in the 2018 documentary film “Lost Black Cats 35th Squadron.”

Like the U-2, Taiwan – also known as the Republic of China (ROC) – seemed a perfect choice for the mission. The self-governing island to the east of the Chinese mainland was at odds with the Communist leadership in Beijing – as it remains today – and at that time in history had a mutual defense treaty with Washington.

That treaty has long since lapsed, but Taiwan remains a point of major tensions between China and the United States, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping vowing to bring it under the Communist Party’s control and Washington still obligated to provide it with the means to defend itself.

Today, the US sells F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan as part of that obligation. In the 1960s, Taiwan got the US-made U-2s.

The island’s military set up a squadron that would officially be known as the “Weather Reconnaissance and Research Section.”

But its members – pilots from Taiwan who had been trained in the US to fly U-2s – knew it by a different name: the “Black Cats.”

The author Pocock and Gary Powers Jr., the son of the pilot shot down by the Soviets and the co-founder of the Cold War Museum in Washington, DC, explained the thinking behind the squadron and its mission in the 2018 documentary film.

The other CIA unit in Taiwan
Coinciding with the Black Cat Squadron, the Black Bat Squadron was formed under the cooperation of the Central Intelligence Agency and Taiwan’s air force, according to a Taiwan Defense Ministry website.
While the Black Cats were in charge of high-altitude reconnaissance missions, the Black Bats conducted low-altitude reconnaissance and electronic intelligence gathering missions over mainland China from May 1956. It also operated in Vietnam in tandem with the US during the Vietnam War.
Between 1952 to 1972, the Black Bats lost 15 aircraft and 148 lives, according to the website.

“The Black Cats program was implemented because the American government needed to find out information over mainland China – what were their strengths and weaknesses, where were their military installations located, where were their submarine bases, what type of aircraft were they developing,” said Powers Jr.

Lloyd Leavitt, a retired US Air Force lieutenant general, described the mission as “a joint intelligence operation by the United States and the Republic of China.”

“American U-2s were painted with ROC insignia, ROC pilots were under the command of a ROC (Air Force) colonel, overflight missions were planned by Washington, and both countries were recipients of the intelligence gathered over the mainland,” Leavitt wrote in a 2010 personal history of the Cold War published by the Air Force Research Institute in Alabama.

One of the first men to fly the U-2 for Taiwan was Mike Hua, who was there when the first of the planes arrived at Taoyuan Air Base in Taiwan in early 1961.

“The cover story was that the ROC (air force) had purchased the aircraft, that bore the (Taiwanese) national insignia. … To avoid being confused with other air force organizations stationed in Taoyuan, the section became the 35th Squadron with the Black Cat as its insignia,” Hua wrote in a 2002 history of the unit for the magazine Air Force Historical Foundation.

At the Taiwan airbase, Americans worked with the Taiwan pilots, helping to maintain the aircraft and process the information. They were know as Detachment H, according to Hua.

“All US personnel were ostensibly employees of the Lockheed Aircraft Company,” Hua wrote.

The ROC air force and US representatives inked an agreement on the operation, giving it the code name “Razor,” Hua wrote.

He described the intelligence gained by the flights as “tremendous” and said it was shared between Taipei and Washington.

“The missions covered the vast interior of the Chinese mainland, where almost no aerial photographs had ever been taken,” he wrote. “Each mission brought back an aerial photographic map of roughly 100 miles wide by 2,000 miles long, which revealed not only the precise location of a target, but also the activities on the ground.”

Other sensors on the spy planes gathered information on Chinese radar capabilities and more, he said.

Between January 1962 and May 1974, according to a history on Taiwan’s Defense Ministry’s website, the Black Cats flew 220 reconnaissance missions covering “more than 10 million square kilometers over 30 provinces in the Chinese mainland.”

When asked for further comment on the Black Cats, the ministry referred CNN to the published materials.

“The idea was that black cats go out at night, and the U-2 would usually launch in the darkness. Their cameras were the eyes, and it was very stealthy, quiet, and hard to get. And so combining the two stories, they became known as the Black Cats,” the author Pocock said in the documentary.

The squadron even had its own patch, reputedly drawn by one of its members, Lt. Col. Chen Huai-sheng, and inspired by a local establishment frequented by the pilots.

But the Black Cats, like Powers Sr. two years before, were about to find out their U-2s were not impervious to antiaircraft fire.

On September 9, 1962, Chen became the first U-2 pilot to be shot down by a People’s Liberation Army antiaircraft missile. His plane went down while on a mission over Nanchang, China.

Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Feb. 5, 2023. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson)

See photos showing US Navy recovering spy balloon from water

In the following years, three more Black Cat U-2 pilots were killed on missions over China as the PLA figured out how to counter the U-2 missions.

“The mainland Chinese learned from their radars where these flights were going, what their targets were, and they began to build sites for the missiles but move them around,” Pocock said.

“So they would build a site here, occupy that site for a while but if they thought the next flight would be going over here, they would move the missiles. It was a cat-and-mouse game, literally a black cat and mouse game between the routines from the flights from Taiwan and those air defense troops of the (Chinese) mainland, working out where the next flight would go.”

In July 1964, Lt. Col. Lee Nan-ping’s U-2 was shot down by a PLA SA-2 missile over Chenghai, China. According to the Taiwan Defense Ministry he was flying out of a US naval air station in the Philippines and trying to gain information on China’s supply routes to North Vietnam.

In September 1967, a PLA missile hit the U-2 being flown by Capt. Hwang Rung-pei over Jiaxin, China, and in May 1969, Maj. Chang Hsieh suffered a “flight control failure” over the Yellow Sea while reconnoitering the coast of Hebei province, China. No trace of his U-2 was ever found, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry.

A U-2 Dragon Lady, from Beale Air Force Base, lands at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, in 2017.

Two other Taiwanese U-2 pilots were shot down but survived, only to spend years in Communist captivity.

Maj. Robin Yeh was shot down in November 1963 over Jiujiang, Jiangxi province.

“The plane lost control when the explosion of the missile took out part of the left wing. The plane spiraled down. Lots of shrapnel flew into the plane and hit both of my legs,” Yeh, who died in 2016, recalled in “The Brave in the Upper Air: An Oral History of The Black Cat Squadron” published by Taiwan’s Defense Ministry.

He said that following his capture Chinese doctors removed 59 pieces of shrapnel from his legs, but couldn’t take it all out.

“It didn’t really affect my daily life, but during winter my legs would hurt, which affected my mobility. I guess this would be my lifelong memory,” Yeh said.

Maj. Jack Chang’s U-2 was hit by a missile over Inner Mongolia in 1965. He, too, suffered dozens of shrapnel injuries and bailed out, landing on a snowy landscape.

“It was dark at the time, preventing me from seeking help anyway, so I had to wrap myself up tightly with the parachute to keep myself warm … After ten hours when dawn broke, I saw a village of yurts afar, so I dragged myself and sought help there. I collapsed as soon as I reached a bed,” he recalled in the oral history.

Neither Yeh nor Chang, who were assumed killed in action, would see Taiwan again for decades. The pilots were eventually released in 1982 into Hong Kong, which at the time was still a British colony.

However, the world into which they emerged had changed greatly in the intervening years. The US no longer had a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan and had formally switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.

Though the Cold War US-Taiwan alliance was no longer, the CIA brought the two pilots to the US to live until they were finally allowed to return to Taiwan in 1990.

Members of the 5th Reconnaissance Squadron

Indeed, by the time of their release CIA control of the U-2 program had long since ceased. It had turned the planes over to the US Air Force in 1974, according to a US Air Force history.

Two years later, the Air Force’s 99th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron and its U-2s moved into Osan Air Base in South Korea. Commander Lt. Col. David Young gave the location the “Black Cat” moniker.

Today, the unit is known as the 5th Reconnaissance Squadron.

But US U-2s continue to be involved in what might be characterized as “cat-and-mouse” activities and their activities continue to make waves occasionally in China. In 2020, Beijing accused the US of sending a U-2 into a no-fly zone to “trespass” on live-fire exercises being conducted by China below.

The US Pacific Air Forces confirmed to CNN at the time that the flight had taken place, but said it did not violate any rules.

Meanwhile, for those involved in the original Black Cats, there are few regrets – even for those who were captured.

Yeh told the documentary makers he had fond memories of life at 70,000 feet.

“We were literally up in the air. The view we had was also different; we had the bird’s eye view. Everything we saw was vast,” he said.

Chang too felt no bitterness.

“I love flying,” he said. “I didn’t die, so I have no regrets.”