Adina Miles-Sash was midway through an Instagram Live discussion about unplanned pregnancies when her friend Riki Rose said she had an important question and asked to share her screen. 

At least, Miles-Sash thought that the user, whose Instagram handle included her friend’s first and last name, was Riki. But the image that appeared on the screen was that of a man — exposing his genitals to hundreds of viewers.

Miles-Sash — who uses the Instagram handle @flatbushgirl — is an influencer and activist in the Orthodox community. She’s best known for her outspoken posts advocating for women in the frum, or Jewishly observant, world. She has criticized the erasure of women’s faces from Orthodox publications with the hashtag #frumwomenhavefaces, after attempting to place an ad in the Flatbush Jewish Journal and being told that neither her face nor the word “girl” would be printed. She speaks out about agunot, or “chained women,” whose husbands will not give them a get, the document required for religiously valid divorce. She even ran for local office in Brooklyn, where she lives, in part to “create an exhibit out of what happens when an Orthodox Jewish woman runs for office,” she said in a phone call. “My whole mission statement is about exposing examples of the misogyny and the discrimination and the sexism that exists in our midst.”

Not all of her posts are so edgy — Miles-Sash also posts comedy videos about cleaning for Shabbat or fun activities in Borough Park. But her activism has made Miles-Sash a controversial figure in the frum world, and commenters on her posts, as well as on forums frequented by Orthodox Jews, often accuse her of hating or betraying the Hasidic world.

Miles-Sash was hosting the Instagram Live event with Shifra, a Jewish organization that helps women find resources to deal with unplanned pregnancies. (Critics have said Shifra is a crisis pregnancy center, an organization which poses as a neutral health center but has an anti-abortion mission; Shifra’s site says it’s composed of a “diverse group of Jews” including both pro-choice and anti-abortion.) 

During the event, one of the viewers asked to join the live, to share her perspective and ask a question. Miles-Sash allowed her to broadcast her own video.

Then, a naked man appeared on screen, standing in front of a bed, his head out of the shot.

“It was a strategic attempt to get me to trust the person,” said Miles-Sash, who realized only after the event that the perpetrator had created a username to mimic her friend’s, subtly adding an underscore to the original. “There’s a certain intimate knowledge that he had to have in order to select her as the perfect person to bait me.”

Miles-Sash doesn’t know the perpetrator’s identity However, she believes he has done this before, even hypothesizing that the man who crashed her event was the same one who exposed himself on an Instagram Live hosted by former contestants on The Bachelor; the bed and fabric in the background of both videos looked the same, she said. 

“I think this person is at risk of involving other people,” she said. “I’m in the process of opening an investigation with the FBI.”

Playing the blame game

After the incident, Miles-Sash leapt into action, posting videos condemning the man for digital sexual assault, and criticizing the lack of resources available to identify or prosecute people for online indecent exposure. Meanwhile, screen recordings of the incident began to go viral, circulating in Hasidic WhatsApp groups.

Many viewers from the event messaged her with sympathetic anger.. Rabbis and other influencers chimed in on Instagram and Twitter to offer support and to condemn the man’s action.

But many people also messaged Miles-Sash with condemnation. Some blamed her for the videos of the incident circulating, continuing to spread the exposure to more viewers. Others said she deserved the harassment due to her previous criticism of the Orthodox community and her discussion of topics some in the frum world consider inappropriate, such as abortion or even female anatomy. 

“You sound like an angry liberal,” a user named Tuvy Lemberg wrote to Miles-Sash in a private message she screenshotted and posted to her profile. When she messaged back that she in fact is “an angry feminist liberal,” he replied, “So maybe tonight you got what you deserve.”

Laibel Weiner, a frum man who runs the podcast Mislaibeled, laughed at the incident on his podcast’s Instagram page, bantering about the size of the man’s penis, and accused Miles-Sash of being unable to take a joke. In a thread on a frum women’s parenting forum called Imamother, women even hypothesized that Miles-Sash had planned the incident for attention, a conspiracy theory that rapidly gained traction.

Miles-Sash said her detractors all have one thing in common: “their perspective on the community, their allegiance to upholding the patriarchy,” Miles-Sash said. “It sounds so cliché, but literally.”

The backlash has sparked a larger conversation about double standards applied to men and women in the frum community. 

“So according to them, women can’t show their faces in public but it’s OK for men to show their private parts in public?!” one woman wrote indignantly in a message to Miles-Sash that she posted to her public profile. “Make it make sense.”

After the Mislaibeled podcast joked about the indecent exposure, another woman messaged Miles-Sash with her frustration: “This is appropriate Jewish behavior but gd forbid you don’t wear tights,” she wrote, adding an eye-roll emoji.

For her part, Miles-Sash said the raging debate doesn’t surprise her. Rather, it exemplifies exactly the issues at the heart of her activism. She’s meticulously documenting both the support and criticism, posting screenshots of texts and messages to her profile. But mostly, she’s persevering in her offline projects: Miles-Sash currently works as an EMT and a doula, and is training to become a kallah, the woman who teaches brides about their bodies and religious rights. “For me, it behooves this community that I love and care about so much not to forget about centering and equalizing the divide that exists within its own midst,” she said.

“The more I see this pushback on women’s independence or self-sufficiency,” she said, “I try to rise to the occasion. I’m not just an influencer behind the screen.”

The post An indecent exposure online exposes controversy in the Orthodox world appeared first on The Forward.

Editor’s Observe: Michael Bociurkiw (@WorldAffairsPro) is a worldwide affairs analyst at this time based mostly in Odesa. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former spokesperson for the Firm for Protection and Cooperation in Europe. He is a frequent contributor to CNN Feeling. The viewpoints expressed in this commentary are his personal. Watch more viewpoint at CNN.

Odesa

CNN

 — 

As Russia’s whole-scale invasion of Ukraine ways the a person 12 months mark, the bombing of a household making in Dnipro on Saturday ought to not be found as just a further red line crossed by the Kremlin.

What will make the Dnipro attack significantly repulsive is that it struck in the heart of a city that experienced been regarded as a safe haven for internally displaced folks (IDPs) because the outbreak of hostilities concerning Ukraine and Russia back in 2014.

With a warhead of almost just one metric ton, it established a scene of destruction explained by some in Dnipro as “hell.” It killed at least 45 people today, which includes 5 youngsters, with dozens far more lacking.

The shock from this strike could pretty perfectly create a second technology of IDPs. Which could, in turn, area further pressure on previously congested risk-free havens these as Lviv in western Ukraine.

Previously, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has named the assault a “war crime.” It is not tricky to see why.

The cruise missile that hit the Dnipro condominium constructing, Ukrainian officers say, was created to sink ships. Certainly it was the same style of missile employed to strike a hectic buying heart in central Ukraine past summertime.

Shortly just after this assault on a residential multi-story constructing, European Union spokesman Peter Stano mentioned Russia’s expanding focusing on of civilians in their properties was a “sign of escalation” on the element of the Kremlin. He included that the EU was talking about how to respond.

Of class, it is not just inhabitants in Dnipro bearing the onslaught of Russian aggression. On the similar working day, waves of missiles struck significant towns across Ukraine. In the capital Kyiv, residents didn’t have a likelihood to seek secure haven in bomb shelters as the kind of missile utilized, as properly as its trajectory, unsuccessful to trigger air protection programs or the now-popular air raid sirens.

Around the training course of a year, time and all over again, we have noticed horrific Russian attacks on sites where civilians ought to have been secure. The bombing of a Mariupol maternity healthcare facility in March, a missile strike on a chaotic buying shopping mall in Kremenchuk in June, the immediate strike on a Kyiv shopping centre in March.

As quickly as we’d assumed we’d witnessed the base of Russia’s inhumanity, the Kremlin commits an additional mass atrocity. And as the checklist of barbaric atrocities mature – let us not forget about the hundreds of bodies, some with their palms tied powering their backs, identified in the after up-and-coming Kyiv suburb of Bucha – the Kremlin’s explanations get flimsier by the day.

Following a Russian missile strike on a four-star resort in central Kyiv on New Year’s Eve working day, Russia claimed a NATO office was found there.

And just this past weekend, Sergei Markov, a former close adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin parroted the statements of Russian diplomats when he instructed Al Jazeera’s Inside Story that “Russia under no circumstances focused civilian neighborhoods.” Without having giving evidence, Markov also advised that Ukrainian air protection was to blame for missiles on household parts.

As the war grinds on into its second calendar 12 months, there are fears that Russia is gearing up for a refreshing mass invasion, with the Institute for the Review of War predicting an attempt to seize Kyiv and Odesa.

It believes Russia will get “a decisive strategic motion in the next 6 months meant to get back the initiative.”

Putin’s shuffling of the deck chairs of the senior ranks of the war command and the appointment of Russia’s senior-most uniformed officer, Chief of the Normal Personnel Valery Gerasimov, to lead the invasion also appears to be section of an work to regain the initiative on the battlefield immediately after a string of humiliating losses – together with the slide of the regional heart, Kherson.

Although all this could not be specifically superior news for the Ukrainian aspect, what could enable convert the war decisively in Ukraine’s favor is the arrival of NATO-created primary battle tanks from the United Kingdom and European nations.

About the weekend, British isles Primary Minister Rishi Sunk declared that Ukraine will be provided 14 post-Chilly War, fourth technology Challenger 2 tanks, which represents a squadron size. Armored combating automobiles are also portion of the bundle.

But as the clock ticks and the window of opportunity is closing to provide Ukraine with the package to strike a decisive blow against Russia, European governments are even now debating regardless of whether to comply with London’s lead and mail primary fight tanks to Ukraine.

The important participant here is Germany as it requires to environmentally friendly mild the sending of any of its advanced Leopard tanks at present stationed in 13 European nations, together with Poland and Finland.

Why the delay is anyone’s guess but what confounds me is why it has not yet gotten by way of to western leaders that if they never assist Ukraine now to push back again Putin, this war will extremely much come to be far more of their issue – with further more weaponization of foodstuff, electrical power and migration.

Already the war has spilled above Ukraine’s borders – from tens of millions of asylum seekers straining sources in European nations to power outages in neighboring Moldova.

In a immediate response to the attack in Dnipro and the heinous crimes which preceded it, isn’t it significant time the Biden administration eventually declared Russia a point out sponsor of terrorism?

This, explained political analyst Jessica Berlin, would tighten the sanctions noose to the point in which “they would increase further more to any other firms all over the globe performing business enterprise with Russian entities.”

Permitting this diploma of barbarism from Russia to keep on not only encourages other autocratic-led nations to abide by go well with, but will final result in more civilian deaths in Ukraine.

Just about anything a lot less than a strong, unified western response to Russia’s war on Ukraine could see cities such as Dnipro remodeled into a large sea of obliterated Aleppos.

Resource link

The post Opinion: Even by Russia’s standards, this was a particularly repulsive attack appeared first on Ukraine Intelligence.

A prosecutor urged a jury on Wednesday to convict four members of the far-right Oath Keepers of seditious conspiracy, saying they plotted to stop the U.S. Congress from certifying the 2020 election because they could not accept President Joe Biden’s victory.

“The defendants could not let the election stand. They could not let Biden come to power,” federal prosecutor Louis Manzo told the jury.

Thousands of supporters of Republican then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn Democrat Biden’s victory.

In closing arguments, Manzo pointed across the room to defendants Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel and Edward Vallejo, and accused the men of upending America’s two-century record of “the routine peaceful transfer of power.”

“Our democracy was under attack, but for these defendants, it was everything they trained for,” he said.

Defense attorneys for the four deny that their clients hatched a plot to block the certification of the 2020 election, and have accused prosecutors of cherry-picking evidence to present what they called a misleading narrative.

The closing arguments on Wednesday marked the end of the second major seditious conspiracy trial stemming from the attack. Four people died during the chaos and five police officers died afterwards, while about 140 officers were injured and the Capitol sustained millions of dollars in damage.

The Oath Keeper members are accused of conspiring to block Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory.

Seditious conspiracy is a rarely prosecuted Civil War-era statute that carries up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

In November, a jury convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and a Florida chapter leader of seditious conspiracy, but acquitted three other Oath Keeper defendants of the charge.

All five Oath Keepers in that case, however, were convicted of obstructing Congress from certifying the electoral votes – a charge that can also carry up to 20 years.

A third seditious conspiracy trial against five members of the far-right Proud Boys group, including its former chairman Henry “Enrique” Tarrio – is underway in the same courthouse.

In both Oath Keepers’ trials, Rhodes’ fiery rhetoric and inflammatory statements about “civil war” and “bloody war” took center stage, with prosecutors saying the other members were inspired to carry out his vision.

Through his leadership, prosecutors said, some members of the group breached the Capitol clad in tactical gear, while others stood back with a stockpile of firearms stashed at a hotel in nearby Arlington, Virginia.

Hackett, Minuta and Moerschel were among the members who physically entered the Capitol, while Vallejo is accused of helping to organize the Virginia weapons stockpile.

None of the four held leadership roles in the group, though Minuta gained some attention for his role in providing security to Trump ally and Republican political operative Roger Stone.

Prosecutors highlighted numerous inflammatory videos Minuta streamed of himself on social media on the day of the attack, including one in which he said: “You know what? Millions will die. So what? Get your fucking soul ready. Get right with God.”

Minuta’s attorney William Shipley, in his closing arguments on Wednesday, acknowledged his client was acting “crazy” in the videos, but said they had nothing to do with Rhodes, and he accused the government of taking the evidence out of context.

“This case is about a narrative in a sea of evidence,” he said. “But the evidence isn’t there.”

A New York synagogue is pushing back against plans for a “glamping” site, saying that as it stands, it would ruin a pond the congregation uses as a mikvah. 

The Woodstock Jewish Congregation, which serves roughly 350 households, has been in its current location since 2006. During that time, executive director Rahel Gruenberg said the congregation has used the pond a handful of times as part of the rituals involved in converting to Judaism and also for the Rosh Hashanah ritual of tashlich, in which breadcrumbs are thrown into a body of water to symbolize the casting off of sins. 

According to Judaic law, a naturally occurring body of water, such as a pond, lake or ocean, can serve as a mikvah. But two weeks ago, Gruenberg said the synagogue was contacted by the area’s planning board to inform them of plans to develop a nearby 77-acre tract of land into a high-end camping site that would house 75 tents, swimming pool and other accommodations. The site is currently untouched forest. 

On its website, the developer of the proposed project, Terramor, describes a site it runs in Bar Harbor, Maine, as having the “romance of a camping adventure blended with the amenities of a resort.”

But Gruenberg said that while guests may get treated to a high-end experience, the site will cause nothing but problems for locals. At a planning board meeting on Tuesday night, she said it was revealed that Terramor’s plan involved treating sewage from the facility’s septic tank onsite and then draining it into the pond. During the meeting, a request was made to have a state environmental quality review conducted into the issue.

“As of now, what I learned last night is either their effluent is going to go into our stream and our pond, or into another neighbor’s,” said Gruenberg. 

She added that the synagogue’s board is still collecting and evaluating information but “we feel confident they should do a full environmental impact study, including the impact on local traffic. She added: “We just need to know a little more about what’s going on.”

The synagogue’s congregants are not the only locals concerned about the site. A group calling itself Citizens Against Terramor has popped up in opposition. “A resort does not belong in a community,” they say on their website, which lays out a number of grievances including potential hazards related to traffic intersections, air quality, fire risk, wetland and wildlife habitat loss and other quality of life concerns. 

A spokesperson for Terramor did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The post Woodstock synagogue says planned ‘glamping’ site would dirty a pond used as a mikvah appeared first on The Forward.

Connecticut Democrats are working to lower the physical fitness requirements for female firefighters, saying that less onerous standards will make fire departments “more diverse.”

A law introduced earlier this month in the Connecticut State Assembly would let women skip the Candidate Physical Ability Test, a timed gauntlet used by fire departments across the country. The test, which only 10 to 15 percent of women pass, requires candidates to complete intense physical tasks while wearing a 50 pound vest. It’s designed to simulate the experience of navigating a fire in heavy gear—and to weed out those unable to do so.

The law, introduced by five Democratic lawmakers, would offer women an alternative test based on “revised physical standards,” with the goal of ensuring that “additional female candidates” qualify for firefighter positions, text from the bill states.

But some firefighters, including women, who have climbed the ranks of their departments without workarounds, say the bill will set merit-based hiring ablaze and potentially endanger Connecticut residents. “If you can’t handle a 50 pound vest, you’re not going to be able to rescue a child from a burning building,” said Leah DiNapoli, a retired firefighter in New Haven, Conn.

“A citizen in need of rescue doesn’t care if a firefighter is white, black, Hispanic, male, or female,” said Frank Ricci, a retired firefighter who served as the president of the New Haven firefighters union. “They care that they can do the job. This attempt to socially engineer public safety positions will only serve to endanger the public.”

Unlike in the military, where uniforms and equipment vary by gender, all firefighters wear the same gear, which weighs at least 59 pounds—9 more than the vest used for the physical assessment. That’s not including the weight of ladders, hoses, or other firemen, who must sometimes carry incapacitated colleagues on their shoulders. While a few pieces of protective gear now come tailored for women, most of the essential tools do not.

“They don’t make lighter saws or ladders,” DiNapoli said. “When I was there, they didn’t even make female-sized boots.”

The law, she added, is “absolutely insane. Either you can do the job or you can’t.”

The bill has been referred to the state legislature’s “committee on public safety,” which has not yet scheduled hearings on the law. Neither the bill’s sponsors nor Connecticut governor Ned Lamont responded to requests for comment.

Beyond putting lives at risk, critics say the law will exacerbate the suspicion, common among male firefighters, that women simply aren’t up for the job. Fire departments have always been an “old boys club,” DiNapoli said, and around 91 percent of firefighters are men. In this testosterone-fueled environment, sex-blind tests often serve as a stopgap against stereotypes, providing an objective assurance of physical competence.

“It’s already tough for women in the fire service, because you constantly have to prove your worth,” a retired female firefighter from Chicago said. “How are you going to prove yourself if you don’t take the same test as the men?”

Danny Stratton, a recently retired fire captain from Camden, New Jersey, drew a parallel to affirmative action. “When you lower standards for minorities, people assume they got the job because of the color of their skin,” Stratton said. “Lowering standards for women creates the same kind of stereotypes.”

Such suspicions are especially dangerous in the fire service, where trust and teamwork can mean the difference between life and death. “The guys I’m working with need to know that I can get them out of a bad situation,” DiNapoli said. “If a woman can’t pass the test, men won’t want her on their shift.”

This is not the first culture war between firefighters and government officials in Connecticut, where fire stations have been ground zero for diversity-related feuds. In 2003, the New Haven fire department threw out the results of a written exam after none of the African Americans who took it scored high enough for a promotion. Ricci, the former union president, who would have been promoted based on his results, sued the department, arguing that he and other non-black firefighters had been denied professional opportunities because of their race. The Supreme Court agreed, ruling 5-4 that New Haven had violated anti-discrimination law.

Fire departments have nonetheless faced pressure to axe both written and physical tests—especially when women do poorly on them. In 2011, the Chicago Fire Department was hit with a class action lawsuit over its physical abilities test, which was even more difficult than the Candidate Physical Ability Test used in Connecticut and other states.

The complaint argued that Chicago’s test discriminated against women because so few of them could pass it. The department eventually settled, offering jobs to many of the women who were rejected under the old standard.

“A lot of men ridiculed those women,” recalled the Chicago firefighter, who had passed the original test.

Though some fire service tests have been struck down on disparate impact grounds, the Candidate Physical Ability Test is not one of them. Developed and validated by the International Association of Firefighters, it has survived multiple discrimination lawsuits, mostly from women, and has received the blessing of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency that enforces civil rights laws in the workplace.

“The idea of the test was to keep politics out of fire service hiring,” Stratton said. “Now they’re trying to add politics back in.”

The post ‘Absolutely Insane’: Connecticut Law Would Axe Fitness Requirements for Female Firefighters appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

What happened?

Seven dead whales have washed up on the New York-New Jersey coastline since December, prompting calls for Gov. Phil Murphy (D., N.J.) to halt development on a number of offshore wind farms in the area. He refused.

“No, I don’t think so,” Murphy said last week when asked if developers should stop pre-construction of wind turbines, which some whale-lovers have blamed for the spate of deaths.

How did they die?

We don’t know. State and federal agencies are investigating the deaths, but pro-whale organizations have expressed concern that pre-construction activity, specifically use of sonar to map the ocean floor, is traumatizing the whales and other marine life in the area.

What they’re saying:

“Stop all of the sonar, stop all of the pre-construction activity offshore right now, until we can determine whether or not that has had any impact or any part of the cause for all these whales washing up,” said Cindy Zipf, executive director of the environmentalist group Clean Ocean Action.

Context:

Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive, signed an executive order in September boosting the state’s goal for offshore wind production by nearly 50 percent to 11,000 megawatts by 2040. He wants to run for president, but he’ll never win.

Big picture:

Following the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, the Democratic Party declared war on innocent animals that stood in the way of their radical green energy agenda. Obama presided over the brutal murder of millions of majestic birds, including bald and golden eagles. Some were shredded to death by turbine blades, while others were incinerated while flying over massive solar farms that produced rays of reflected light that can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Obama administration routinely granted waivers to renewable energy firms to exempt them from the legal consequences of killing bald eagles and other protected species. Murphy’s refusal to let a few dead whales derail his efforts to turn the New Jersey coastline into a bird graveyard by constructing massive wind farms is in keeping with his party’s antagonistic stance toward the animal kingdom.

In loving memory:

• Infant sperm whale (Keansburg, Dec. 5)

• Humpback whale (Amagansett, Dec. 6)

• Juvenile humpback (Strathmere Beach, Dec. 10)

• Female sperm whale (Rockaway Beach, Dec. 12)

• Female humpback whale (Atlantic City, Dec. 23)

• Female humpback whale (Atlantic City, Jan. 7)

• Sub-adult humpback whale (Brigantine, Jan. 13)

The post Democrats Are ‘Saving the Environment’ by Killing Whales appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it will eliminate or reduce charges against corporations if they self-report crimes.

The Department of Justice is offering companies “additional incentives” to come forward about wrongdoing so that “companies that do the right thing when learning about possible misconduct” can be rewarded. Corporations can expect repercussions if they do not fully cooperate, the agency said.

“Failing to self-report, failing to fully cooperate, failing to remediate, can lead to dire consequences,” Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite said in the policy announcement.

The change comes as Democratic megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried faces charges including money laundering and securities fraud during his time as CEO of cryptocurrency firm FTX. Bankman-Fried last year visited the White House on multiple occasions, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

The change shows an easing of pressure on big corporations by the Biden administration, which last year levied a tax on stock buybacks and imposed a minimum tax rate of 15 percent on companies making more than $1 billion a year.

Companies must come forward immediately, already have internal accounting systems in place, and engage in “extraordinary” cooperation with the investigation to lessen or avoid punishments.

Polite added that even if fines or jail time are still pursued, cooperating companies can receive 50 to 75 percent off the lowest suggested sentencing guidelines.

“The policy is sending an undeniable message: come forward, cooperate, and remediate,” Polite said.

Companies that fail to come forward may see increased “criminal exposure and monetary penalties,” the department said.

The post Soft on Crime: Biden Admin To Eliminate Charges for Corporations That Self-Report Misconduct appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Claim: California storms are “proof that the climate crisis is real and we have to take it seriously.”

Who said it: California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom, whose claims about California’s weather were echoed by Ellen DeGeneres, academics, and the Washington Post‘s Philip Bump.

Why it matters: Democrats across the country, and especially in California, use climate change as an excuse to ban gas cars, leaf blowers, propane heaters, and many other common household items that families will struggle financially to replace. By connecting major weather events such as the recent storms in California to climate change, politicians can convince people that sacrifices to their wallets and lifestyle are worth it.

Context: While Newsom and others are treating the string of storms as unprecedented, California has a long recorded history of extreme droughts, rains, floods, fires, and mudslides. The push to blame climate change for every twist and turn in the weather ignores the state’s history.

The state has seen its fair share of massive storms, flooding, and erosion. In 1972, Albert Hammond sang that while it seems like “it never rains in California,” in reality “it pours, man, it pours.” Any Californian who lived through the 1990s is bound to remember the 1997 El Niño, which stretched into 1998 and was described by the Los Angeles Times as a “relentless string of storms” that overwhelmed flood control channels and washed away roads and railroad tracks. In 1861, a stretch of intense rains that began on Christmas Eve didn’t stop for more than a month, according to Scientific American, and some of the state’s waterways were permanently altered by the epic floods. California’s entire Central Valley was turned into a 300-mile-long and 20-mile-wide sea. For a time after the flood, Sacramento could only be traversed by canoe.

The same is true for droughts. Immediately after the stretch of rain that flooded the state from 1861 to 1862, California was hit by a devastating drought that stretched two years. As the U.S. government has pointed out, California has chronicled major droughts since before climate experts even started experting. A Wikipedia catalogue reveals that the following stretches of “dry years” in California:

• 1841

• 1863–1864

• 1917–1921

• 1922–1926

• 1928–1937

• 1943–1951

• 1959–1962

• 1976–1977

• 1987–1992

• 1999-2004

• 2006–2009

• 2011-2017

• 2018

• 2020-2022

Wikipedia now has a note at the top of its catalogue of droughts warning readers that the page “needs attention from an expert in Climate Change” to address “insufficient documentation of the causes of the droughts.” It is unclear whether climate scientists attribute the 19th-century extreme weather events to climate change.

Snow patterns have also inspired climate change scientists to make gloomy predictions that haven’t turned out as expected. In 2019, as rainstorms pounded the state, the Sierra Mountains saw the fifth-highest snow levels on record—news that most Californians cheered, since agriculture and more than half the population rely on the snowmelt for fresh water.

Just a year later, in the middle of drought, the snowpack dwindled to half its usual levels, driving Discover magazine to warn of a parched future and urge new policies “to rein in emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.” By 2021, the snow levels were above average again, and thanks to the latest spate of storms, the state now has the highest levels recorded for January.

Analysis:

As another California troubadour tells us, “The seasons, they go round and round.” The climate is constantly changing. Climate opportunists tweak their talking points with the weather, wailing about droughts one day, only to turn on a dime and moan about the rain replenishing the parched California reservoirs that once concerned them.

There is no evidence that climate change is to blame for weeks of rainstorms in California, which has long suffered from extreme weather.

Of course, none of this is actually about the weather. Climate change is just a way for Democrats to justify their push for flooding green energy projects with government money while bleeding taxpayers dry. California Democrats in particular use climate change as an excuse for their failure to follow through on pledges to better prepare the state for disasters through effective wildfire mitigation and other measures.

The post FACT CHECK: Gavin Newsom Says California’s Rainstorms Are ‘Proof That the Climate Crisis Is Real’ appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) on Wednesday said it would eliminate 10,000 jobs and take a $1.2 billion charge to earnings, as its cloud-computing customers reassess their spending and the company braces for potential recession.

The layoffs add to the tens of thousands announced in recent months across the technology sector, which has downshifted following a strong growth period during the pandemic.

The news comes even as the software maker is set to ramp up spending in generative artificial intelligence that the industry sees as the new bright spot.

In a note to employees, CEO Satya Nadella attempted to address the divergent outlook for different parts of the business.

Customers wanted to “optimize their digital spend to do more with less” and “exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one,” he said. “At the same time, the next major wave of computing is being born with advances in AI.”

Nadella said the layoffs, affecting less than 5% of Microsoft’s workforce, would conclude by the end of March, with notifications beginning Wednesday.

However, Microsoft would keep hiring in “strategic areas,” he said. AI is likely to be one of those areas. Nadella this week touted AI to world leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland, claiming the technology would transform its products and touch people around the globe.

Microsoft has looked at adding to its $1-billion stake in OpenAI, the startup behind the Silicon Valley chatbot sensation known as ChatGPT, which Microsoft plans to soon market through its cloud service.

Shares of the Redmond, Washington-based company fell about 1%.

The announcement corresponds with the start of layoffs at its retail and cloud-computing rival Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) which started notifying employees Wednesday of its own 18,000-person job cuts.

In an internal memo seen by Reuters, Amazon said that affected workers in the United States, Canada and Costa Rica would be informed by the end of the day. Employees in China will be notified after the Chinese New Year.

Along with Amazon, Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) announced cuts of 11,000 jobs, while cloud-based software company Salesforce Inc (CRM.N) said it would cut 10% of its 80,000-member workforce.

Overall, in 2022, more than 97,000 job cuts in tech were announced, highest for the sector since 2002, when 131,000 cuts were announced, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

“We haven’t seen this activity since the dot-com bust,” said Andrew Challenger, the company’s senior vice president.

The company is terminating 878 full-time workers at its Redmond headquarters, according to an update on Washington State’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) page. Under U.S. law, most employers are required to report staff cuts affecting 50 or more workers at a single location.

Microsoft’s billion-dollar charge will cut profit by 12 cents a share in Microsoft’s second fiscal quarter this year, and could resonate beyond the tech sector, some analysts said.

“Here’s one of the marquee growth companies with a very distinct user base saying that perhaps economic conditions aren’t nearly as good as we thought they were,” said Brian Frank, a portfolio manager at Frank Funds who has owned Microsoft stock on and off over the last several years.

The charge is attributable to severance costs as well as adjustments to Microsoft’s hardware lineup and lease consolidation to build higher-density workspaces, Nadella said.

Microsoft declined to detail the hardware changes or say if it would stop developing any product line.

Microsoft’s cloud revenues soared in recent years from an explosion in corporate demand to host data online and handle computing in the so-called cloud. But growth dropped to 35% in the first fiscal quarter of 2023, and the company projects more declines to come. In July last year, it said a small number of roles had been eliminated.

U.S. airlines on the back of strong financial results remain upbeat about travel demand, even as economists and analysts say the risk of an economic recession has gone up.

United Airlines (UAL.O) and Delta Air Lines (DAL.N) reported higher-than-expected quarterly earnings on resilient consumer demand, while American Airlines (AAL.O) lifted its profit outlook.

Carriers are enjoying the strongest travel demand since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, boosted by reopening of closed borders, a strong U.S. dollar and rising corporate travel.

While recession fears have sparked concerns about consumer spending, airline executives say travel demand is not likely to wane any time soon.

They also point to staffing and aircraft shortages across the industry, which are expected to persist and limit capacity growth, underpinning pricing power carriers currently enjoy.

“The supply-demand dynamics are different than they’ve ever been in my career,” United Chief Executive Scott Kirby said on a call to discuss fourth-quarter results released on Tuesday.

“I realize there’s a lot of investor skepticism on that, but every data point keeps demonstrating it over and over again.”

United forecast at least a quadrupling in profit for 2023, while Delta expects to nearly double its full-year earnings.

Booming demand has helped airlines mitigate higher fuel and labor costs through ticket price increases. Any slowdown in consumer spending would make it harder for carriers to hit their forecast targets.

Goldman Sachs called United’s outlook “optimistic”, while Jefferies said it faces a “steep ramp” in hitting its full-year profit goal.

United shares were down 3.8%, while the NYSE Arca Airline index (.XAL) was off 1%.

Airline executives are downplaying the risk of a demand slowdown, saying the urge to travel remains strong and that the relationship between passenger revenue and the broader economy is returning to pre-pandemic trend.

United estimates domestic passenger revenue previously accounted for about 0.5% of the country’s gross domestic product. It expects the trend to be restored this year, resulting in 15% higher revenue for the industry.

Delta sees consumers spending $30 billion on travel in 2023.

“We know… the public wants to travel in outsized amounts,” Delta Chief Executive Ed Bastian said on Friday.

The first quarter, after the holiday travel season, tends to be the weakest for the industry.

But Delta last week said advanced bookings for each month of the current quarter is “significantly” ahead both in passenger revenue and volume versus 2019.

Demand for flights to Europe is also robust and expected to generate record spring and summer revenue, it said.

United called its spring and summer bookings “really strong.”

But the sharp rebound in demand has exposed the fragility of the aviation system. The Federal Aviation Administration had to halt flights nationwide last week due to a systems outage, just weeks after an operational meltdown at Southwest Airlines (LUV.N) left thousands stranded.

United CEO Kirby said the industry needs higher staffing, including 10% more pilots, and 5% more aircraft to operate at pre-pandemic capacity.

“Our industry has been changed profoundly by the pandemic and you can’t run your airline like it’s 2019 or you will fail,” he said.