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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
U.S. Steel Corp. will spend about $3 billion to build a new mill, the latest sign that steelmakers are growing more comfortable that higher prices will last. The so-called mini-mill will combine two electric arc furnaces, which primarily use steel scrap and are far more energy-efficient than traditional integrated plants that are fed by coal. The company expects to begin construction in the first half of 2022 and start producing in 2024.
.S. consumer sentiment rose slightly in early September but remained close to a near-decade low, while buying conditions for household durables deteriorated to their worst since 1980 because of high prices. The University of Michigan’s preliminary sentiment index edged up to 71 from 70.3 in August, data released Friday showed.
Jack Dwyer pursued a dream of getting back to the land by moving in 1972 to an idyllic, tree-studded parcel in Oregon with a creek running through it. “We were going to grow our own food. We were going to live righteously. We were going to grow organic,” Dwyer said. Over the decades that followed, he and his family did just that. But now, Deer Creek has run dry after several illegal marijuana grows cropped up in the neighborhood last spring, stealing water from both the stream and nearby aquifers and throwing Dwyer’s future in doubt. From dusty towns to forests in the U.S. West, illegal marijuana growers are taking water in uncontrolled amounts when there often isn’t enough to go around for even licensed users.
A new report shows the world is on a “catastrophic pathway” toward a hotter future unless governments make more ambitious pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the head of the United Nations said Friday. The U.N. report, reviewing all the national commitments submitted by signatories of the Paris climate accord until July 30, found that they would result in emissions rising nearly 16% by 2030, compared with 2010 levels. ... “We need a 45% cut in emissions by 2030 to reach carbon neutrality by mid-century,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a virtual meeting of leaders from major economies hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden.
As Union Pacific’s CEO, Lance Fritz has had to find ways to keep the freight moving during the coronavirus pandemic as the economy nearly ground to a halt and then roared back to life. Now he is working to help clear up a major backlog in imported shipments. In the spring of 2020 – at the height of the restrictions related to the pandemic – shipping volume fell more than 20% before rebounding sharply later that year. Railroads had to cut staff quickly while still making sure they had enough people to cover virus-related illnesses and quarantines before rehiring at a fast pace to handle the return in volume. Current shipping volumes are nearly even with 2019 signaling that demand is back at pre-pandemic levels and the economy is strong, although it has weakened a bit recently as virus cases surged. The Associated Press interviewed the 58-year-old Fritz, who also serves as the Omaha, Nebraska-based railroad’s chairman and president.
Jim Risch, if you recall, fell asleep for about 15 minutes during the first impeachment trial of the last president. It’s hard to imagine more of a doddering-grandpa move than the one presented in January 2020 by the 78-year-old Idaho senator, as captured by the Washington Post’s sketch artist: slumped in his chair, head in his hand, while the senators on either side of him, Idaho’s Mike Crapo and Missouri’s Roy Blunt, appeared to be actually listening.
Fewer students. Worse outcomes. Higher spending. When the board of directors for Spokane Public Schools approved its latest budget in August, it made history. SPS now spends more than a half-billion dollars. The latest SPS budget, in fact, allocates $534 million. That’s 44% higher than just six years ago. The higher spending isn’t because SPS is educating more students. In fact, last year’s enrollment was down more than 1,500 students from the prior year. This year’s enrollment is also likely to be down, as some parents resist mask restrictions and divisive critical race theory lessons. But even if student numbers stay the same, SPS will be spending nearly $19,000 per student, per year. For a classroom of 20 students, that is more than $374,000. The higher spending isn’t because SPS is increasing student outcomes. In fact, the state’s latest report card shows less than half of SPS students are meeting learning goals in math and science.
Law enforcement agencies in the Inland Northwest aren’t requiring COVID-19 vaccines or tracking how many of their officers have received the shot, despite local hospitals being overwhelmed by increased hospitalizations and deaths among unvaccinated people. Washington state and federal employees are required to get the shot or apply for an exemption, but neither the city of Spokane nor Spokane County have an employee mandate. Law enforcement agencies cite that decision as why they aren’t mandating the shot. Police unions have expressed fears that vaccine mandates in place in other parts of the state will lead to transfers or resignations among their officers.
The fifth wave of COVID cases, largely preventable, has sent shock waves through the entire health care system. Some patients are told there is no way for them to be operated on because there is no hospital bed for them to recover in after (for one patient, this meant being in an operating room, then being told to go home). Others receive devastating calls with medical news no one wants to hear, only to be followed by the crushing reality that they might not get necessary treatment for weeks.
From Spokane to Coeur d’Alene and every school district in between, COVID-19 is running rampant. As of Friday afternoon, at least 800 students and staff had tested positive this month for coronavirus in Spokane and Kootenai counties. The numbers are certainly higher, as many districts have opted not to update information more than weekly, while others have yet to publish them at all.
The school bus driver shortage hit home Thursday afternoon in Spokane. Ten minutes before the final bell at Linwood Elementary School, the intercom blared the news that Bus 152 wouldn’t be showing up – at all. Dozens of affected kids were reassigned to different buses, but many were still stuck at Linwood for another half hour. Speculation in the hallway was that the driver had simply quit – a reasonable conclusion these days. The wheels on the school bus are turning slowly this fall because of a critical shortage of drivers.
America’s oldest ally, France, recalled its ambassador to the United States on Friday in an unprecedented show of anger that dwarfed decades of previous rifts. The relationship conceived in 18th century revolutions appeared at a tipping point after the U.S., Australia and Britain shunned France in creating a new Indo-Pacific security arrangement. It was the first time ever France has recalled its ambassador to the U.S., according to the French foreign ministry. Paris also recalled its envoy to Australia.
The Pentagon retreated from its defense of a drone strike that killed multiple civilians in Afghanistan last month, announcing Friday that a review revealed that only civilians were killed in the attack, not an Islamic State extremist as first believed. “The strike was a tragic mistake,” Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told a Pentagon news conference.
The top U.S. military officer said Friday that calls he made to his Chinese counterpart in the final stormy months of Donald Trump’s presidency were “perfectly within the duties and responsibilities” of his job. In his first public comments on the conversations, Gen. Mark Milley said such calls are “routine” and were done “to reassure both allies and adversaries in this case in order to ensure strategic stability.” The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff spoke to The Associated Press and another reporter traveling with him to Europe.
Kids across the U.S. are posting TikTok videos of themselves vandalizing school bathrooms and stealing soap dispensers and even turf from football fields, bedeviling school administrators seeking to contain the viral internet trend. The “devious licks” challenge that swept social media this week is plaguing principals and school district administrators who already must navigate a bitter debate over requiring masks to keep COVID-19 in check. Some schools have had to more closely monitor or even shut down bathrooms, where much of the damage is occurring.
Cooler weather on Friday helped crews trying to keep California wildfires away from a grove of gigantic ancient sequoias, including the world’s largest tree, the base of which had been wrapped in a fire-resistant material in case the flames reached it. Unlike raging wildfires that have burned vast swaths of the drought-stricken U.S. West this summer, the blazes in Sequoia National Park were not explosive. Flames were about a mile from the famous Giant Forest, a grove of some 2,000 massive sequoias on a plateau high in the Sierra Nevada.
As significant numbers of Americans seek religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccine mandates, many faith leaders are saying: Not with our endorsement.
The architect of a Washington protest planned for Saturday that aims to rewrite history about the violent January assault on the U.S. Capitol is hardly a household name. Matt Braynard worked as an analyst for the Republican Party, crunched data for a small election firm and later started a consulting business that attracted few federal clients, records show. He started a nonprofit after he was dismissed by Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign following several months on the job, but struggled to raise money. The group’s tax-exempt status was revoked last year. But Braynard’s fortunes changed abruptly after Trump’s 2020 election loss. He joined an aggrieved group of Trump allies seeking to overturn the election — and in the process reaped recognition, lucrative fees and a fundraising windfall that enabled him to rekindle his nonprofit. Now, Braynard and his group, Look Ahead America, are using his newfound platform and resources to present an alternate history of the Jan. 6 attack that was meant to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory, rebranding those who were charged as “political prisoners.”
A prominent cybersecurity lawyer on Friday pleaded not guilty to making a false statement to the FBI in a charge stemming from a probe of the U.S. government’s investigation into Russian election interference. Michael Sussman appeared Friday in D.C. federal court before Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui. He is just the second person to be prosecuted by special counsel John Durham in two-and-a-half years of work.
The Biden administration plans the widescale expulsion of Haitian migrants from a small Texas border city by putting them on on flights to Haiti starting Sunday, an official said Friday, representing a swift and dramatic response to thousands who suddenly crossed the border from Mexico and gathered under and around a bridge.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is moving the national headquarters of the Bureau of Land Management back to the nation’s capital after two years in Colorado, reversing a decision by former President Donald Trump’s administration to move the agency closer to the region it serves. The land management bureau, which oversees nearly one-fifth of the nation’s public lands, lost nearly 300 employees to retirement or resignation after its headquarters was moved to Grand Junction, Colorado, in 2019. Grand Junction will be rechristened the agency’s “western headquarters,” Haaland said in a news release, and “have an important role to play in the bureau’s clean energy, outdoor recreation, conservation, and scientific missions.”
Dealing the White House a stinging setback, a government advisory panel overwhelmingly rejected a plan Friday to give Pfizer COVID-19 booster shots across the board, and instead endorsed the extra vaccine dose only for those who are 65 or older or run a high risk of severe disease.
A Qatar Airways flight on Friday took more Americans out of Afghanistan, according to Washington’s peace envoy, the third such airlift by the Mideast carrier since the Taliban takeover and the frantic U.S. troop pullout from the country. The development came amid rising concerns over the future of Afghanistan under the Taliban. The country’s new Islamic rulers on Friday ordered that boys but not girls from grades six to 12, and male teachers but no women teachers return to school and resume classes, starting Saturday.
COVID-19 vaccine refusal rates may be high among white evangelical Christians, but the International Mission Board – which deploys thousands of missionaries – is not hesitant about the shot. The global agency of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical Protestant denomination in the U.S., announced this month it is requiring vaccinations for missionaries they’re sending into the field amid the pandemic.
House Democrats said Friday they planned to take action next week to suspend the cap on the government’s borrowing authority, and the White House ratcheted up pressure on Republicans by warning state and local governments that severe cuts lie ahead if the measure fails in the Senate. Disaster relief, Medicaid, infrastructure grants, school money and other programs face drastic cuts if the debt limit stays in place, the White House warned in a fact sheet to local governments aimed at putting pressure on Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who has vowed to block an increase.
Burned before, Capitol Police say they are taking no chances as they prepare for a Saturday rally at the U.S. Capitol in support of rioters imprisoned after the violent Jan. 6 insurrection. Though it is unclear how big the rally will be, the Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department are fully activating in an effort to avoid a repeat of the pre-inauguration attack. Under-prepared police were overwhelmed as hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters broke into the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
A trio of Chinese astronauts returned to Earth on Friday after a 90-day stay aboard their nation’s first space station in China’s longest mission yet. Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo landed in the Shenzhou-12 spaceship just after 1:30 p.m. after having undocked from the space station Thursday morning. ... China’s space program has advanced at a measured pace and has largely avoided many of the problems that marked the U.S. and Russian programs that were locked in intense competition during the heady early days of spaceflight. ... China embarked on its own space station program in the 1990s after being excluded from the International Space Station, largely due to U.S. objections to the Chinese space program’s secrecy and military backing.
A five-fold increase in calls to the Washington Poison Center regarding ivermectin, a medication most commonly used to deworm horses and other livestock, but recently viewed as an alternative elixir for COVID-19, has health experts worried.
Spokane County’s Environmental Programs issued a harmful algae bloom alert for Newman Lake after test results taken this week revealed potentially harmful toxicity levels for cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae.
A judge ruled Friday that prosecutors can’t argue that a man who shot three people during a protest against police brutality in Wisconsin is affiliated with the Proud Boys or that he attacked a woman months before the shootings, bolstering his position as he prepares for a politically charged trial.
Scientists at Washington State University’s Elk Hoof Disease Research team have discovered healthy elk can contract the debilitating ailment by contact with contaminated soil. The disease first surfaced in Western Washington several years ago and has been detected throughout the state, north-central Idaho, Oregon and California. Officially known as Treponeme-associated hoof disease, or TAHD, it causes lesions on elks’ hooves that can progress to abnormal growths. It is not always fatal, but impairs afflicted elk, making it harder for them to move, find food and escape predators.
It may be recalled that one of the chief GOP arguments against the Affordable Care Act in 2010 was that it would institute bureaucratic “death panels” to determine, in the words of former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, whether someone was “worthy of health care.” The claim was always pure fabrication. But it’s coming true now, specifically in COVID-stricken, and deep red, Idaho. Hospitals there have become so overwhelmed by COVID patients, almost all of them unvaccinated, that the state has activated its “crisis standards of care.” What that means, according to the state Department of Health and Welfare, is that the normal triage standards, in which the more seriously sick or injured are prioritized, are thrown out. Instead, “someone who is otherwise healthy and would recover more rapidly may get treated or have access to a ventilator before someone who is not likely to recover.”
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