Light News Dump

Massive power cut hits all of Argentina and Uruguay - 50 million people without electricity
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48652686

Man arrested for trespassing into Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's New York office
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/man-arrested-trespassing-alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-york-office/story?id=63740297

Chao sells off stock as attention on corruption allegations grows
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/chao-sells-off-stock-as-attention-on-corruption-allegations-grows-61900869673

Suphttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/flint-water-crisis-supreme-court-lawsuit-shari-guertin-sonya-sotomayor-a8960471.htmlreme Court allows Flint resident to sue officials involved in water crisis

Hong Kong citizens marched for hours Sunday in a massive protest that drew a late-in-the-day apology from the city’s top leader for her handling of legislation that has stoked fears of expanding control from Beijing in this former British colony. Nearly 2 million of the city’s 7 million people turned out, according to estimates by protest organizers. Police said 338,000 were counted on the designated protest route in the “peak period” of the march. A week earlier as many as 1 million people demonstrated to voice their concern over Hong Kong’s relations with mainland China in one of the toughest tests of the territory’s special status since Beijing took control in a 1997 handover. Well after dark, crowds gathered outside the police headquarters and Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s office. On Saturday Lam suspended her effort to force passage of the bill, which would allow some suspects to be sent for trial in mainland China. The move did not appease Hong Kong residents who see it as one of many steps chipping away at Hong Kong’s freedoms and legal autonomy. Opponents worry the law could be used to send criminal suspects to China to potentially face vague political charges, possible torture and unfair trials. Protesters are also angered over the forceful tactics by police in quelling unrest at a demonstration on Wednesday. Periodically, the shouts of the protesters standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the police headquarters would crescendo into a roar that reverberated through the narrow concrete canyons of the red-light district of Wanchai. Smaller crowds stood chanting outside Lam’s office building. In a statement issued late Sunday, Lam noted the demonstrations and said the government “understands that these views have been made out of love and care for Hong Kong.” “The chief executive apologizes to the people of Hong Kong for this and pledges to adopt a most sincere and humble attitude to accept criticisms and make improvements in serving the public,” it said.
https://apnews.com/c19a52474a1343858ad86de126a3078f
https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/d57205e35b3d415f9a7abf2ad384b8d9/2000.jpeg

Russia and China are waging a “shadow war” against the US, and the battlefields will be AI and space, CNN’s Jim Sciutto says
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/6/11/18659132/jim-sciutto-shadow-war-russia-china-usa-book-space-ai-kara-swisher-recode-decode-podcast-interview

Beto O'Rourke on inaction by Congress for not impeaching Trump: "It is now time for the House of Representatives to act … and look to the future of this country and the generations that follow that are counting on us to do the right thing."
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1140292968601006081

Workers see job promises vanish as bosses pocket Trump tax windfall
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/15/job-losses-trump-tax-cut-at-t-general-motors-wells-fargo

Pentagon Keeps Trump in the Dark About its Cyber Attacks on Russia: “Intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with [the president] about operations,” the report said
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/pentagon-trump-cyber-attacks-on-russia-848695/

The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said. In interviews over the past three months, the officials described the previously unreported deployment of American computer code inside Russia’s grid and other targets as a classified companion to more publicly discussed action directed at Moscow’s disinformation and hacking units around the 2018 midterm elections. Advocates of the more aggressive strategy said it was long overdue, after years of public warnings from the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. that Russia has inserted malware that could sabotage American power plants, oil and gas pipelines, or water supplies in any future conflict with the United States. But it also carries significant risk of escalating the daily digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/15/us/politics/trump-cyber-russia-grid.html

Hongkongers march in their thousands against extradition bill again, calling for leader to resign
https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/06/16/breaking-hongkongers-march-thousands-extradition-bill-calling-leader-resign/

Bernie Sanders didn't financially support his newborn son who lived in poverty with a single mom on welfare. He had a UChicago degree and chose to run for office 4x instead of working. So, of course, he thinks the government should have paid to support his child since he didn't.
https://twitter.com/mgranville1/status/1140041442724913153?s=21

Nevada Passes Bill Banning Animal Testing For Cosmetics
https://www.plantbasednews.org/post/nevada-animal-tested-cosmetics-china

O'Rourke: Democrats enable Trump by not impeaching him
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/448771-orourke-dems-enable-trump-by-not-impeaching-him

Beto ups his attacks on Biden. Hits him for Hyde flip-flop and now his views in China. “He's dismissed China as not a real threat to the United States of America” full exchange w/ @jaketapper
https://twitter.com/AlxThomp/status/1140288983563476994
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D9MeyPbWsAIIH3m.jpg

Paul Fernando Schreiner: "I'm an American," 36-year-old man adopted by American parents deported to Brazil from U.S. | He was legally adopted at age 5, had a Nebraska birth certificate, a Social Security number and paid taxes. U.S. adoption groups estimate that between 35,000 and 75,000 adoptees in the United States could be in such a situation today, many incorrectly believing they are already citizens. The Child Citizenship Act of 2000, signed by President Bill Clinton, aimed at streamlining the process by making citizenship automatic for children adopted from overseas. But there was an exception: For children already in America, only those under 18 when the law went into effect qualified. Six weeks too old, the law didn't apply to Schreiner.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/im-an-american-man-adopted-by-u-s-parents-deported-to-brazil/

America's coal industry has already been left in the dust by natural gas. Now it's under immense pressure from the renewable energy boom. The renewable energy sector had slightly more installed capacity than coal in April, according to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission report. That means US power plants can produce more energy from clean sources than coal for the first time in history, according to the SUN DAY Campaign, a nonprofit research group supporting sustainable energy. The breakthrough reflects the plunging cost of solar and wind as well as heightened environmental concern about coal.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/11/business/renewable-energy-coal-capacity/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/29/business/renewable-energy-coal-solar/index.html
https://www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2019/apr-energy-infrastructure.pdf
https://electricenergyonline.com/article/energy/category/generation/52/772999/u-s-renewable-energy-generating-capacity-has-now-surpassed-coal.html

Nearly 43% of the new members of the India's lower house of Parliament won despite facing criminal charges. More than a quarter of those relate to rape, murder or attempted murder, according to a report by the civic group Association of Democratic Reforms
https://apnews.com/1678c2a6c0004b799a34cb0ff9434a90

Germany exports weapons to Saudi-led alliance in 2019 - The German government has given the green light for arms shipments worth over €1 billion so far this year to the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen. The approval comes despite export restrictions being in place.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-exports-weapons-to-saudi-led-alliance-in-2019/a-49224987

Air Force diverted $66M to cover growing chemical cleanup costs
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/448420-air-force-diverted-66m-to-cover-growing-chemical-cleanup-costs

A former Southern Baptist pastor who supported legislation in Texas that would have criminalized abortions has been arrested on charges of child sex abuse, accused of repeatedly molesting a teenage relative over the course of two years. Stephen Bratton is accused of subjecting the relative to inappropriate touching that escalated to “sexual intercourse multiple times a day or several times a week” from 2013 to 2015, according to Thomas Gilliland, a spokesman with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Court records show Bratton, 43, posted a $50,000 bond Saturday, The Houston Chronicle reported. Bratton told his wife about the abuse in May, and admitted to his co-pastors at Grace Family Baptist Church that same day that he had “sinned in grievous ways,” according to court documents.
https://apnews.com/f89cd9682c3b4fa6abf56aa1a496f2b3

When permafrost thaws, it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, causing temperatures to rise and create a perpetual cycle where more permafrost melts.
https://twitter.com/JohnBird001/status/1140366157033213952

Permafrost hs begun thawing in the Canadian Arctic more than 70 years early because of climate change, according to new research. A "series of anomalously warm summers” has dramatically accelerated melting rates at three sites despite average annual ground temperatures remaining low. Ponds and hillocks have formed as a result.  It had been thought that the permafrost - ground that remains frozen for at least two years - would remain until at least 2090. But the study found thawing levels were above 150 to 240 per cent above historic levels.  Researchers called this a “truly remarkable amount".
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/climate-change-breakdown-arctic-frost-thawing-canada-environment-a8959056.html

McConnell dismisses outrage over Trump's comments about accepting foreign dirt on opponents
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/14/politics/mitch-mcconnell-donald-trump-foreign-influence/index.html

Plant-based replacements for beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and egg can produce 2-fold to 20-fold more food per unit cropland, which is nutritionally comparable. The opportunity cost of animal based diets exceeds all food losses. With a third of all food production lost via leaky supply chains or spoilage, food loss is a key contributor to global food insecurity. Demand for resource-intensive animal-based food further limits food availability. In this paper, we show that plant-based replacements for each of the major animal categories in the United States (beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs) can produce twofold to 20-fold more nutritionally similar food per unit cropland. Replacing all animal-based items with plant-based replacement diets can add enough food to feed 350 million additional people, more than the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food loss. Food loss is widely recognized as undermining food security and environmental sustainability. However, consumption of resource-intensive food items instead of more efficient, equally nutritious alternatives can also be considered as an effective food loss. Here we define and quantify these opportunity food losses as the food loss associated with consuming resource-intensive animal-based items instead of plant-based alternatives which are nutritionally comparable, e.g., in terms of protein content. We consider replacements that minimize cropland use for each of the main US animal-based food categories. We find that although the characteristic conventional retail-to-consumer food losses are ≈30% for plant and animal products, the opportunity food losses of beef, pork, dairy, poultry, and eggs are 96%, 90%, 75%, 50%, and 40%, respectively. This arises because plant-based replacement diets can produce 20-fold and twofold more nutritionally similar food per cropland than beef and eggs, the most and least resource-intensive animal categories, respectively. Although conventional and opportunity food losses are both targets for improvement, the high opportunity food losses highlight the large potential savings beyond conventionally defined food losses. Concurrently replacing all animal-based items in the US diet with plant-based alternatives will add enough food to feed, in full, 350 million additional people, well above the expected benefits of eliminating all supply chain food waste. These results highlight the importance of dietary shifts to improving food availability and security. The environmental costs of the current food system and the disproportionate contribution of animal-based food items to these costs are by now firmly established (1⇓⇓⇓–5). To meet the food demand of predicted population increases on resource-intensive diets (such as those characterizing most developed nations), future food supply will need to roughly double in the coming decades (6). Proposed strategies for enhancing food production while alleviating environmental burdens include reducing food loss (7), increasing agricultural productivity (8⇓–10), producing animal-based foods on marginal lands and byproducts (11⇓–13), and shifting toward plant-based diets (1, 2, 8, 14⇓⇓⇓–18).
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/15/3804

633 divers collected more than 1,500 pounds of trash at a Florida beach—and set a world record. The Guinness World Record-setting 633 divers retrieved at least 1,626 pounds of trash and 60 pounds of fishing line at the Deerfield Beach International Fishing Pier in Florida. The official weight of the trash recovered is still being tallied, and the number is likely to grow, said Tyler Bourgoine, who participated in and helped organize the cleanup. Ocean conservation group Project AWARE estimates that the cleanup might have removed as much as 3,200 pounds of marine debris. "There were countless lead sinkers ... everything from a boat ladder to a barbell," Bourgoine told CNN.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/16/us/divers-largest-underwater-cleanup-record-trnd/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/08/world/world-oceans-day-2019-pollution-facts-trnd/index.html