To slow global warming within the decade, the fastest (and perhaps only) way is to curb emissions of methane—one of the most potent of greenhouse gases with more than 80 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. The Global Methane Pledge, launched in 2021, set a target to reduce global methane emissions 30% by 2030, relative to 2020 levels, while enhancing public health and agricultural productivity. It is a goal that can’t be achieved without urgent and widespread reductions in livestock methane emissions.

Agriculture contributes about 40% of total global methane emissions—the bulk of which is belched from grazing livestock due to digestion of dietary carbohydrates. This methane from livestock is part of a natural carbon cycle, but reducing livestock methane using feed additives is key to lowering global methane emissions, as well as enhancing the conversion of dietary energy to meat or milk production without compromising the animal’s health.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Read More: Researchers Reveal the Worst Methane Super-Emitters in the U.S.

In support of the Global Methane Hub’s work to develop a global research accelerator to reduce livestock methane, I engaged in discussions with 20 animal scientists in 11 countries to identify barriers for the acceleration of the discovery and adoption of methane-reducing feed additives. Here are the biggest challenges we identified:

No silver bullet for farm systems, and too much uncertainty

Currently, there is no scalable technology today that provides robust and consistent reductions in enteric methane emissions from the wide array of farm systems that exist in the world. We cannot ask farmers to lower methane emissions without providing them effective, safe, and profitable solutions.

Studies of feed additive supplementation in cattle that span months—even years—are needed to confirm the persistency of methane reduction and animal safety. Diet, environment, management, animal genetics, and their microbiome are expected to uniquely influence the degree of methane reduction for feed additives. However, we have a limited understanding of how these factors impact the short and long-term efficacy of feed additives to inhibit methane production by cows.

Feeding cows seaweed is one solution being discussed, but it has not been properly evaluated by scientists and is plagued by cultivation requirements for broad adoption. Feeding bromoform, the active ingredient in seaweed, could be a potential solution but we must carefully examine its efficacy over time, as well as its toxicity.

Little consideration has also been given to alternative ways of actually delivering methane-reducing feed additives to cattle. Although the common approach in conventional cattle systems is to provide a feed additive in a cow’s diet, this approach may not be suitable for ruminants that graze pasture. Providing the feed additive in water or as slow release capsule provided directly to the cow’s stomach may be more suitable for this farming practice. What’s more, we must also adequately explore early life interventions for cattle, such as dietary feeding strategies or vaccines, which lower cattle’s methane production into adulthood and can minimize the need to provide feed additives daily throughout life.

We also cannot underemphasize the importance for research that evaluates the net impact of feed additives on greenhouse gas emissions, nitrogen, and phosphorus excretion in the environment, efficiency of production, as well as the presence of any residues in meat or milk that are of a potential concern to human health.

Farmers in developing nations face high barriers to adopting methane mitigating tech

We cannot achieve a 30% reduction in global methane emissions by 2030 if we ignore subsistence and smallholder farmers in developing nations. They are integral to the agricultural landscape because they provide nutrition, traction, fertilizer, and prosperity to low socioeconomic communities.

Without incentives or government mandates, the cost for purchasing a feed additive, as well as the lack of distribution and absence of prioritizing the adoption of methane-mitigating technologies, are bottlenecks to wide adoption in these farming systems.

In addition, the efficiency of animal production in developing countries, such as those in South Asia or sub-Saharan Africa, is drastically lower than that of the United States or Europe. The cause is poor animal genetics and management, and inadequate animal nutrition to meet the requirements for meat or milk production. Therefore, methane intensity per unit of animal-sourced food is far greater.

In a 2011 study in Environmental Science and Pollution Research, the emission rate was 0.92 and 1.98 in the USA and India, respectively. It is was also estimated that India contributed the highest percentage of global dairy-related CO2-equivalent emissions because milk per animal is low and the population of cattle and buffaloes is high.

To achieve the 30% reduction in global methane emissions by 2030, we must enhance the efficiency of meat and milk production in developing nations but do so without compromising the livelihoods of farmers or their communities. Such possibilities include enhanced nutrient balancing, improved fodder crop production and quality, accelerated use of crossbreeding and reproductive technologies such as in vitro-fertilization and sexed semen, improved veterinary medicine to reduce disease, and enhanced farmer education.

There is a massive investment gap in methane mitigation solutions

Speaking at COP27 in Nov. 2022, U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Climate, Rick Duke, said that less than 2% of current climate finance is used to develop methane mitigation solutions. Because of this poor investment, he emphasized that methane emissions are expected to increase, not decrease, by 2030 under a status-quo scenario.

Investment and reform are needed for the regulatory registration of feed additives that reduce methane production. In the U.S., there is no pipeline to accelerate the approval of methane-reducing feed additives proven safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration. The current approach is that products seek approval from the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine via the New Animal Drug Application (NADA) process, which is oftentimes intensive and lengthy due to its stringent clinical trial requirements. Teams at Cornell University, UC Davis, Environmental Defense Fund, and Global Research Alliance are working to develop standards that define efficacy of feed additives as means to improve the regulatory process and accelerate entry of these technologies onto the marketplace using a streamlined approach.

At the same time, many university facilities in the U.S. that study cattle have been decommissioned or scaled down. Equipment for absolute quantification of greenhouse gasses is limited. Analytical tools to study feed chemistry and metabolism of the animal are defunct or underdeveloped. University faculty positions have gone unfilled to weaken expertise. Not to mention, federal funding for feed additive research is dramatically insufficient considering the strict requirement for intensive studies that confirm consistent methane reduction and safety. The issue is worse in developing countries.

Collectively, these barriers need to be addressed if we have any hope of lowering global methane emissions by 2030. International engagement for the discovery, approval, and adoption of regional solutions that reduce methane from livestock—while also improving human health, food security, and farmer prosperity—must be prioritized.

In the new documentary Guerrilla Habeas, filmmakers Emma Wall and Betsy Hershey advance an urgent argument about immigration courts: they function differently and apart from the American judicial system, often to the detriment of immigrants themselves.

The documentary centers on the lives of two lawyers, Sarah Gillman and Gregory Copeland, who founded the Rapid Defense Network, an organization that provided legal representation to undocumented immigrants who faced deportation. The documentary follows Gillman and Copeland from 2019 to 2021 during the Trump Administration and into COVID-19, as they employed an unusual legal strategy to defend their clients within the flawed immigration court system.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Unlike defendants in the federal court system, undocumented immigrants in immigration court proceedings are not entitled to legal representation, and there are no limitations on how much time they can be held in custody. The judges who preside over immigration court cases are an extension of the Department of Justice—they are not a part of the judicial branch of government, they are a part of the executive branch, which sets the immigration enforcement rules. Immigrant advocates interviewed by Wall and Hershey argue that structure prevents the judges from being impartial.

“Everything gets sucked into the executive branch,” Sarah Rogerson, a professor at Albany Law School, says in the film. “You have the Department of Homeland Security handling visas and immigration enforcement, but immigration judges are within the Department of Justice, they are part of the deportation mechanism, they are not independent.”

In order to get around this structural barrier and save their clients from deportation, lawyers Gillman and Copeland use the rule of habeas corpus, the constitutional right to have a case heard before a judge, to move their clients’ cases into federal court where a judge may decide to halt a deportation.

Guerrilla Habeas, the latest installment of the documentary series The Turning Point, co-produced by TIME Studios, airs Sunday, Feb. 5th at 10 pm ET on MSNBC, and streaming on Peacock.

Ahead of the documentary’s release, TIME talked with filmmakers Wall and Hershey about what inspired them to create the film and what they learned about U.S. immigration enforcement.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

TIME: What led to immigration courts becoming the subject of your documentary?

Wall: In that moment of 2018-2019, we’d had the Muslim ban, we had the zero tolerance policy separating children at the border. The problems in the immigration system, and at that moment, felt so big that it was like—I think like so many people—I think we felt outraged, heartbroken, and just kind of helpless. And then I saw on social media this friend of mine [Copeland] who was posting this work that he was doing and the success that he was having. And I just thought, okay, you know, let’s go talk to him.

I felt like we were kind of piggybacking on these two lawyers who weren’t helpless, who weren’t hopeless, who had found this way to fight against the system that was really effective. They found a way to move these cases from the immigration court system into the federal court system. And we were by no means immigration experts, and it was so shocking to us what we were learning along the way.

Hershey: The film kind of swept us away into the story. We felt so shocked to find out about so many of the harsh realities of the system, and we felt like people needed to know.

What was it about these two lawyers in particular that set them apart to you?

Wall: They found this way to kind of prevent deportations at the very last moment and buy time by using these founding principles of habeas corpus. And they were winning cases in circumstances where a lot of other lawyers that we spoke to were like, these are hopeless cases. So it felt really inspiring to see people who were like, No, we’re not going to give up because the stakes are too high.

Hershey: It was like guerrilla warfare-style tactics, like throwing anything that they could at these cases. They were willing to stop at nothing. They were just coming up with every creative solution they could.

The lawyers also seem to struggle a lot personally. Can you describe what they go through?

Hershey: [It was] shocking to see two people work tirelessly. They didn’t have the support that they needed, they didn’t have funding, they had to spend all this time trying to just get reimbursed for what they were spending. During making the film we realized how important it is in our society to help the people that are helping others.

Since you started this reporting in 2019, so much has changed in immigration enforcement and border policy. What are your takeaways having this front row seat to seeing how it’s done?

Hershey: I think one of the key takeaways for me is that it doesn’t matter who is in charge, who is our president, if this system that we have is broken the way it is. One of our key messages is that the system is broken. And until we fix that, then it doesn’t matter who is in charge of government.

Wall: One of the journalists says in our film that the silver lining of the Trump Administration is people have started realizing, learning this system has been here. My takeaway is we need to chisel away at these individual infringements and just be relentlessly working towards a more just system, especially as we look ahead. This is a global issue, this is not an American story. For us, it’s like a case study of things we’re seeing all over the world.

Folks around NASA don’t much care for this time of year. It was 56 years ago last week—January 27, 1967—that astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee lost their lives in a launch pad fire inside their Apollo 1 spacecraft as they were running a dress rehearsal for countdown. It was 37 years ago—on January 28, 1986—that the shuttle Challenger exploded during launch due to a faulty seal that caused one of the solid rocket boosters to ignite the external fuel tank. The pair of solid boosters flew on heedlessly, leaving a gruesome, two fingered fireball in the sky as seven astronauts perished, including New Hampshire school teacher Christa McAuliffe.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Seventeen years later, on January 28, 2003, astronaut Rick Husband, commander of the shuttle Columbia, which was then in orbit, marked the anniversaries. “They made the ultimate sacrifice,” he said, “giving their lives for their country and mankind. Their dedication was an inspiration to each of us.”

America would have to find a similar kind of grim inspiration just four days later, when, on February 1—20 years ago today—Columbia met an end similar to Challenger’s, breaking apart during reentry, when hot plasma tore through the spacecraft from a breach in the leading edge of the left wing. Husband and his crew of six were killed, as the shuttle, on its way to a landing at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, left a debris trail that stretched from eastern Texas to Louisiana.

“A poisonous rain of broken shuttle pieces fell onto backyards and roadsides and parking lots, through the roof of a dentist’s office, bits of machinery in Nacogdoches, a hand and leg in San Augustine,” wrote TIME’s Nancy Gibbs, as part of the magazine’s cover package that week.

Then-President George W. Bush scheduled a call with the family members of the lost crew for later that day and spent part of his morning studying crew biographies to see which astronauts had spouses and children.

“Tough day, tough day,” was all Bush could mutter to himself as he prepared to place the call.

It was that, indeed. NASA reacted as NASA does in such circumstances, first with a certain minimalism and stoicism. As I reported in a piece that accompanied Nancy’s: “‘A space-shuttle contingency has been declared,’ the voice of Mission Control intoned in the arid argot of the space agency. It was an echo of the understated announcement 17 years ago, when the shuttle Challenger consumed itself in an awful fireball, and the stunned NASA narrator was left to declare, ‘Obviously a major malfunction.’”

But NASA has done other things too when faced with tragedy. It has searched for the cause of the problem and fixed it. In the case of the Apollo 1 fire, that meant redesigning the spacecraft from top to bottom to avoid the kind of errant spark that set off the blaze, as well as replacing the cockpit’s pure-oxygen atmosphere—which burns like gasoline—with an oxygen-nitrogen mix when the spacecraft was at high internal pressure on the ground. (In space, where the internal pressure is much lower due to the vacuum outside, the spacecraft could safely be filled with pure oxygen.) NASA also changed all of the fabric in the spacecraft, including the astronauts’ suits, to a burn-resistant beta cloth. In the case of Challenger, fixing what went wrong meant redesigning the solid fuel boosters and changing the launch rules, to prevent a liftoff in the uncharacteristic Florida freeze that January morning that had left the engine seals brittle.

In the case of Columbia, the job meant first pinpointing the cause of the breach in the shuttle that allowed the hot plasma to infiltrate the spacecraft. It was ultimately traced via liftoff footage to a suitcase-sized piece of hard insulating foam that fell off the external tank and struck the wing in the first moments of the spacecraft’s flight. That meant doing away with the insulating foam at the spot where the tank joins the shuttle—the region from which the deadly fragment fell—and replacing it with heaters. It also meant that on future flights to the International Space Station, shuttle pilots would do a sort of pirouette of their vehicle so that station astronauts could give it a visual inspection. NASA also kept another shuttle at the ready in case a mission had to be launched to rescue a crew aboard a ship that could not reenter safely.

But both Columbia and Challenger led to another kind of change too—a sort of back to the future reversal in spacecraft design. The rocketry revolution that the shuttle program sought to herald was intended to be the end of the old model of putting humans at the top of a booster, firing them into space, and throwing away the launch vehicle after a single use. The new shuttle would be reusable, with the spacecraft itself gliding gracefully back to Earth, the spent solid boosters dropping by parachute into the ocean and being recovered, and only the external tank—little more than a huge shell of metal and plumbing—being discarded.

But there was a lifesaving advantage in the old design that NASA was eschewing with the shuttles: that business of the crew being perched atop the pyrotechnics. Ever since the days of NASA’s first crewed flights, spacecraft-and-booster stacks were designed so that sensors would detect any impending problem in the rocket and either blast the crew-carrying capsule away from it by escape engines or, in the case of the 1960s’ two-man Gemini program, signal the commander to pull a D-shaped ring that would activate parachute-equipped ejection seats.

In the newer shuttle design, the crew was placed directly next to the pyrotechnics. Challenger’s tank explosion happened with the shuttle riding atop it like a human on a horse. Columbia’s wing could never have been damaged if it hadn’t been located below the spot on the tank from which foam fell. Even before the remaining three shuttles were retired in 2011, NASA vowed that in the future it would keep fuel and humans separate, returning to the old model of crew riding at the top of the missile—a model adopted by NASA’s new moon rocket, the Space Launch System; SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Starship rockets; and Boeing’s crew-carrying Starliner spacecraft. And in the case of SpaceX, most of the throwaway problem has been addressed, with the first stage of the Falcon 9, and both stages of the planned Starship rocket returning for upright landings, allowing them to be used again.

Now, two decades on from the most recent loss, and generations removed from the earlier ones, NASA does not let the memories of the missing men and women—or the sacrifice they made—fade. Each year, on the last Thursday of January, the space agency holds a NASA Day of Remembrance to celebrate their lives—and mourn their loss. We take space travel as a fixed fact of 20th and 21st century life. But crews take a big gamble—on physics, fate, and engineering—when they climb aboard a spacecraft. We all benefit from the fact that they do—and all are made poorer, more sorrowing, by the mercifully few times that gamble does not pay off.

This article is part of our morning briefing. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox each weekday. Poland and Germany have long taken opposing approaches to Holocaust remembrance. Touring both with the second gentleman, the difference was stark.   Our opinion editor, Laura E. Adkins, landed in D.C. just before midnight after six days traveling with Doug Emhoff on a pilgrimage through Holocaust memorials and Jewish heritage sites aimed at combating antisemitism.    Living history: Reflecting on the whirlwind trip, Laura said she “witnessed two dramatically different ways” to remember the Shoah. “German authorities have worked to be painstakingly honest about how their society arrived at a point at which the Holocaust was possible,” she wrote in a new essay. “This was no accidental genocide” and “in Germany, the horrors of the past are an inescapable part of the present.” Mourning history: But if in Germany “you feel as if you’re standing in the clearly defined and omnipresent shadow of those who came before you,” Laura said, “in Poland, you’re constantly chased by ghosts.” Everywhere, she added, there are “markers of the country’s dark past — well-preserved concentration camp sites, Holocaust museums, buildings bearing Hebrew writing yet lacking any Jews.”  Berlin’s New Synagogue, originally built in 1866 was partially destroyed by Allied bombing, and has not been fully rebuilt. (Laura E. Adkins) Perpetual ruin: Germany’s approach is perhaps best exemplified in Berlin’s New Synagogue, which Emhoff visited on Tuesday. The once-opulent sanctuary is a shell of its former self, Laura said, reminding visitors of the devastation of the Holocaust: “There are supposed to be so, so many more of us,” she wrote. “Seeing the shul, once a seat of vibrant Jewish culture and life, now preserved in a perpetual state of violent incompleteness, made me want to weep.”   Read the essay ➤   ICYMI: Read Laura’s interview with the second gentleman, who talked about that time he didn’t speak up when colleagues were telling antisemitic jokes, see Emhoff’s response to last week’s massacre at a synagogue in Jerusalem, and view photos from the Poland leg of the trip. ALSO FROM THE FORWARD (Getty) What does the Torah have to say about the Alec Baldwin case? The actor was charged on Tuesday with involuntary manslaughter for shooting a gun he did not know was loaded and killing a cinematographer on a movie set. What does Jewish law say about unintentional killings? The Book of Exodus introduces the concept of “sanctuary cities” for perpetrators of such crimes, but those haven’t existed for thousands of years. Our Louis Keene consulted the Talmud for more relevant details. Read the story ➤ Opinion | I have loved ones in Neve Yaakov. The synagogue attack is a reminder that the road to peace is long: Laura Ben-David, a photographer based in Israel, spent last Shabbat wondering whether her friends and family in Neve Yaakov — where a terrorist killed seven on Friday — were OK. They were, but the synagogue attack still felt like an intimate violation. “Israel is a small place, and something about an attack like this — on people in a sacred space — always feels so personal,” she wrote. Read her essay ➤ (Getty) 94% of Jews in George Santos’ district want him to resign: The freshman Republican congressman from New Y0rk is under fire for lying about his professional and personal background – including that his family fled the Nazis. On Tuesday, Santos said he would temporarily recuse himself from his committee assignments. Read the story ➤   Black History Month: In 2009, Alysa Stanton became the first Black woman ordained as a rabbi. A convert who was raised in the Church of God in Christ, Stanton, who is Reform, has said she was “born Jewish — just not to a Jewish womb.” She’s part of our “Forward 125” list of American Jews who have shaped headlines and history since our founding in 1897.   But wait, there’s more… Rep. Max Miller, a Jewish Republican from Ohio, introduced a resolution on Tuesday to remove Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Miller cited Omar’s repeated criticism of Israel and her past comments that were perceived as antisemitic. Every student in France will be given the opportunity to visit historical or memorial sites linked to antisemitism or racism as part of a new plan to combat hatred. The leader of an advocacy group for Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews is worried that a major change to how the United States gathers demographic data does not address concerns of Jews who don’t fit neatly into most categories. Spread the word! Invite someone to sign up for this newsletter.👇 Share with a friend ➤ WHAT ELSE YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY (CNN) 🇮🇱  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on CNN Tuesday that he is ready to “hear counter offers” to his contentious plan to radically overhaul Israel’s independent judiciary, while still defending the proposed legal shake-up. Meanwhile, more than 70 law professors at American universities – including former deans of Harvard and Yale law schools – signed onto a statement urging the Israeli government to rethink these very plans. (Times of Israel, Haaretz)   🤝  U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrapped up a two-day trip to Israel and the occupied West Bank after a Tuesday meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Blinken said members of his team would stay on in the region to promote “practical steps” toward peace. (Haaretz)   ✈️  Yoel Levy escaped a fringe Jewish sect accused of child abuse when he was 16. Five years later, he’s working with a team of lawyers and former Israeli intelligence officers to rescue his family, break up the group and bring its leaders to justice. (Los Angeles Times)   👩‍❤️‍👨  Hebrew College will begin admitting and ordaining rabbinical students in interfaith relationships, according to new admissions standards revealed on Tuesday. The decision makes the pluralistic seminary outside of Boston the second major rabbinical school in the U.S. to do away with rules barring their students from relationships with  non-Jews. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Seminary was the first, in 2015. (JTA)   🏫  An anti-Israel display at at a Missouri elementary school’s International Night sparked outrage. The display included a poster with a picture of a spray bottle labeled “ethnic cleansing” and another saying: “The only peace Israel wants is another piece of Palestine.” The school principal said the material was created by an adult, so no student would be punished. (St. Louis Jewish Light)   👮  A British teenager was sentenced to 11-and-a-half years in jail for creating racist content that inspired the neo-Nazi who live-streamed himself murdering 10 Black people in a Buffalo grocery store in 2022. (Vice)   ⛪   A retired clergyman who once claimed Jews and Israel were behind 9/11 was banned from the Church of England through 2030. The president of the board of deputies of British Jews said he had “caused grievous offense to the Jewish community” and proclaimed it, “ the correct decision.” (JTA)   🏀  Meyers Leonard, the NBA player who was caught using an antisemitic slur on a video game platform, said he contemplated suicide in the aftermath of the incident in a new interview with Jewish ESPN reporter Jeremy Schaap. (JTA)   Mazel tov ➤  To Lily Ebert, a 99-year-old Holocaust survivor, who became on Tuesday a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (that’s three rungs below a knight or a dame) at a ceremony officiated by King Charles. “I was in hell, Auschwitz,” she said. “How special it is to be here today, with the king, in the palace.”   Shiva call ➤  Bob Born, known as the “Father of Peeps” for mechanizing the process to produce the popular Easter candy, died at 98. Read the secret Jewish history of Peeps ➤ ON THE CALENDAR Lincoln wrote the word ‘Approved’ and added his signature to the joint resolution on Feb. 1, 1865. (Wikimedia) On this day in history (1865): President Abraham Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery in the United States. In a 2015 article on the amendment’s 150th anniversary, Forward contributor Richard Kreiter remembered the Jewish abolitionists who helped pave the way. “Nobody can argue that the balance of the Jewish record on the question of American slavery and the Civil War is anything but regrettable,” he wrote, noting “the overwhelming complacency of the antebellum Jewish community, even in the North.” But there were Jews “who risked everything to fight the South’s ‘peculiar institution,’” he added. “Familiar with the story of Exodus, they knew it was not actually all that peculiar.”    Last year on this day, we were reporting on Whoopi Goldberg’s apology over her comments on The View that “the Holocaust isn’t about race.”   It’s the 21st anniversary of the death of Daniel Pearl, a Jewish journalist who was murdered in Pakistan. Pearl’s father, Judea, penned this poem in his memory.   In honor of National Texas Day, read about the kippah-wearing running back on the Texas A&M football team. Today at 3 p.m. ET: Our editor-at-large, Robin Washington, will be on a panel hosted by the Jewish Federations of North America to kick off Black History Month. Register for the virtual event ➤ PHOTO OF THE DAY (Laura E. Adkins) How’s this for a premise for a TV sitcom: An Orthodox 20-something from Brooklyn moves to Jerusalem to flee a fiance she barely knows. Questioning her decision and a life of repressed sexuality, she decides to sow her wild oats with swarthy Israeli men. Henry Winkler plays her black-hatted dad and Caroline Aaron from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel her mom. The series, Chanshi, screened at Sundance last week. It’s now airing in Israel and being shopped to U.S. networks and streamers. Watch the trailer ➤ and read more about the show ➤   — Thanks to Laura E. Adkins, Beth Harpaz, Sarah Nachimson and Talya Zax for contributing to today’s newsletter. You can reach the “Forwarding” team at editorial@forward.com.

The post What the Talmud says about the Alec Baldwin case appeared first on The Forward.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

(Photo by Hannibal Hanschke-Pool/Getty Images)

• SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said Starlink was the “connectivity backbone” for Ukraine in the war.
• But SpaceX has banned Starlink from being used in long-range drone strikes, he said.
• He was responding to critical comments by the host of a Russian state TV channel.

Elon Musk on Tuesday said SpaceX’s satellite internet service was the “connectivity backbone” for Ukraine during its war with Russia, although it’s not used for long-range drone strikes.

His comments came in response to Vladimir Solovyov, a host on state-controlled television channel Russia-1, who was critical of Elon Musk.

The host accused Musk of supplying technology and satellites for drone attacks and being “in principle, a war criminal.” A clip was shared on Twitter by Anton Gerashchenko, advisor to Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs.

Solovyov could not be reached for comment by Insider.

In response, Musk tweeted: “SpaceX Starlink has become the connectivity backbone of Ukraine all the way up to the front lines. This is the damned if you do part.”

“However, we are not allowing Starlink to be used for long-range drone strikes. This is the damned if you don’t part,” Musk added, without detailing why SpaceX had banned the use of Starlink for these types of strikes.

Long-range drones are able to fly a further distance than other drones. Ukraine is testing some that have a range of more than 1,000 kilometers and a payload of up to 75 kilograms, the Kyiv Independent reported on January 23.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2021, Musk’s aerospace manufacturer has provided thousands of Starlink internet dishes to Ukraine and its troops.

At the request of Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s vice-prime minister, Musk activated Starlink at the start of the war. By June, SpaceX had delivered 15,000 Starlink terminals to Ukraine, and Musk said in October that figure had jumped to around 25,000.

Operating Starlink in Ukraine has proved to be a challenging endeavor for SpaceX.

Musk had previously accused Moscow of initially trying to hack Starlink. The technology has so far been able to resist the hacking attempts, Musk said at the time.

Secondly, the cost of running Starlink is expected to amount to nearly $400 million in one year, CNN reported in October, citing documents. SpaceX asked the Pentagon to fund Starlink in Ukraine because the company couldn’t afford it, per the report.

SpaceX on Tuesday announced it successfully launched 49 Starlink satellites into orbit on a Falcon 9 rocket.

Musk did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. 

Dangerous heat inside delivery vans has been a focus for the Teamsters since a 24-year-old driver died of heat stroke in June.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

• UPS reported slower revenue but solid profits in a Tuesday earnings release.
• Upcoming negotiations with the Teamsters and a possible driver strike make for cautious forecasts.
• A strike could strand millions of deliveries and raise shipping prices.

More than the perplexing economy, more than the future of e-commerce, the questions on the minds of UPS employees, customers, and Wall Street analysts center on the July 31 expiration of the company’s contract with the Teamsters union that represents the company’s 350,000 drivers and package handlers. 

The union has been preparing to strike for months, but UPS CEO Carol Tomé has said she wants a contract that’s good for the Teamsters, UPS employees at large, and the company. 

“I would submit that a win-win-win is very achievable because we are not far apart on the issues,” Tomé said on the company’s Tuesday earnings call. 

And on two key issues, she said, UPS and the Teamsters are more aligned than not. 

Weekend warriors

Weekend deliveries have been a point of tension between UPS and the union for years. 

At the heart of UPS’s Saturday service is the “22.4” driver, named for the section of the contract that created the position. These drivers work Tuesday through Saturday and top out at $30.64, while regular drivers can reach $40. The Teamsters see these drivers as “second class” and now regret that the position was approved in the controversial 2018 contract.

Because the contract restricts how many 22.4s the company can hire, UPS often pays weekday drivers overtime to work Saturdays. 

Tomé called weekend delivery service “table stakes.” 

“We’re open to finding a solution to the seven-day week delivery because that’s what the competition is doing,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien told Insider last year, but the existing staffing solution is not working in his view.

“We share the same concerns. I don’t want people working six days a week unless they want to,” said Tomé, also mentioning 22.4 drivers. “We just need to get to the bargaining table and work it out,” she said.

Heat and safety 

Tomé also brought up the growing problem of dangerous heat inside delivery vans, which has been at the front of the Teamsters’ priority list since a 24-year-old driver died of heat stroke in June. 

“We’re not apart on this issue. In fact, we’re not waiting for the bargaining table,” Tomé said. “We’ve already kicked off a total revamp of our safety program, bringing in new technology, hydration, cooling systems, and a whole lot more to address it.”

Other issues O’Brien told Insider he would raise when negotiations begin in April include pay raises, especially for part-timers; seasonal workers who deliver packages in their own cars; and driver-facing cameras. 

The elephant in the room 

UPS stock was up 4% four hours following the Tuesday call in which revenue was down 2.7% year over year and UPS forecasted uncertain times ahead in terms of delivery demand. Revenue per package, however, was up 7.2% and the company announced a 6.6% bump in the dividend it pays out to investors along with $5 billion in shareholder buybacks. Tomé’s success protecting profits and investors in ever-changing circumstances could sustain the tension at the negotiating table since the union has argued that UPS demonstratively has the cash to raise wages and more. 

“It’s not going to be a cost-neutral contract. We’re going to take from them what our members deserve,” said Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman earlier this month, according to a statement.

Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note on Tuesday that a key question going forward is how much more the company will need to pay in driver wages. A Teamsters spokesperson referred Insider to O’Brien’s tweets for comment on UPS earnings. 

“UPS Management talks about return on invested capital but UPS #Teamsters are the capital…Time to invest in them & spread the wealth,” O’Brien tweeted. “Don’t be fooled by their ‘cloudy predictions for 2023’ …This company is still going to make a boatload of money. If they want a ‘win, win, win’ scenario, they need to prove it during negotiations.”

On Tuesday, Tomé emphasized that a healthy and growing UPS is good for everyone involved. 

This pendant is thought to be associated with Henry VIII. An amateur detectorist discovered the locket by chance in a field in England.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

• An amateur metal detectorist found a gold necklace linked to Henry VIII and his first wife.
• The locket is engraved with “H” and “K”, the initials of the Tudor king and Katherine of Aragon.
• A nonsensical engraving, “Tous Iors,” could have been a pun between the king and his wife.

An intricate 500-year-old gold pendant, recently unearthed on an English farm, may provide evidence of King Henry VIII’s romantic side. 

The heart-shaped locket is engraved with “H” and “K”, the initials of the Tudor king and his first wife Katherine of Aragon.

It’s also decorated with enamelled motifs, including a Tudor rose and a pomegranate bush, which was the the badge of Katherine of Aragon.

It bears the inscription “Tous Iors.” While these words are nonsensical, they could be a pun, a mix between the French word “Toujours,” meaning “always” and the English “all yours.”

The initials H and K are engraved on the pendant.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Charlie Clarke, a 34-year-old amateur metal detectorist, said he had almost given up for the day when he came across the pendant next to a pond in Warwickshire farmland, in England’s West Midlands. 

“I’d had enough of digging, to be honest,” he told The Financial Times. “But I had a few more swings and the noise was so high pitched, I knew it was going to be something worth digging up. Then I saw it was gold.” 

When Clarke discovered the 16th-Century locket, he told the Guardian that he screamed “like a little schoolgirl, to be honest. My voice went pretty high-pitched.”

The pendant could be opened to reveal a secret compartment.

British Museum

The object, found in 2019, made its way to the British Museum for authentication, where the curators were skeptical at first. 

“The majority of people who saw this at the museum felt it was almost too good to be true,” said Rachel King, curator for European Renaissance at the British Museum, according to the FT. 

Henri VIII is famous for his series of marriages. The first of his six marriages was his longest, lasting from 1509 to 1533.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Henry_VIII_Chatsworth.jpg

Further analysis, however, revealed the necklace, which includes a heavy chain made up of 75 interlocking links of 24-carat gold, was genuine.

It is not known if the pendant belonged to Henry VIII, Katherine, or a courtier. Experts believe that such objects may have been worn by the court to signify closeness to the royal couple.

The initials H and K are engraved on the pendant.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Another hypothesis is that the locket was given as a prize during tournaments organized by the King, per The Guardian.

It is known that Henry VIII commissioned other metalwork to celebrate his marriage, including items featuring “H” and “K” and other royal emblems to adorn the clothing of more than 100 guests at a jousting competition in 1517, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

Henry VIII is famous for his six marriages. The first, to Katherine, was his longest, lasting from 1509 to 1533. 

Frustrated by her apparent inability to provide him with a son, Henry had the marriage annulled.  

Katherine was among the more fortunate of the monarch’s wives, as many of the others notoriously met more brutal ends, from executions to death in childbirth.

British submarine HMS Vanguard in 2009.

LA(P) Ritchie Harvey/AFP via Getty Images

• The British Navy launched a probe after finding a “defect” in a nuclear submarine, The Sun reported.
• Broken bolts on HMS Vanguard’s reactor chamber were glued on instead of replaced, the report said.
• A Royal Navy source told The Sun that the discovery was a “disgrace.”

The British Navy ordered an urgent investigation this week after finding that the broken bolts in a nuclear submarine were fixed with superglue, The Sun newspaper reported.

Inspectors said they found a “defect” on the HMS Vanguard during a recent maintenance check at Devonport Dockyard in Plymouth, England, according to The Sun.

At least seven broken bolts on the submarine’s reactor chamber were glued on instead of replaced, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) told the newspaper. They originally broke due to overtightening, The Sun reported.

The bolts were found just as workers were set to fire up the reactor to full power for the first time, the newspaper said.

The MoD said the fault was “promptly reported and fixed,” while contractor Babcock told The Sun there were no nuclear safety issues and the reactor would not have exploded had the damage not been found.

Former submarine captain Cdr. Ryan Ramsay told The Sun: “This is a massive trust issue for Babcock and the Royal Navy to resolve. It makes you wonder what else has been done poorly.”

Another Navy source, who was not named, told the newspaper: “It’s a disgrace. You can’t cut corners with nuclear. Standards are standards. Nuclear standards are never compromised.”

The submarine carries Trident ballistic missiles and is one of the country’s four nuclear-powered nuclear submarines.

A spokesperson for both the Royal Navy and Babcock did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin (l) and Russian Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, January 31, 2023.

Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

• Russia’s prosecutor general told Putin more than 9,000 mobilized troops were called up illegally.
• In a face-to-face meeting, he said their health was why many shouldn’t have been sent to fight in Ukraine.
• Reports last year said Russia had called up students, elderly people, and those with health issues.

In a sitdown meeting with Russia’s president, the country’s prosecutor general said that thousands of troops who were mobilized to fight in Ukraine last year were conscripted illegally.

Igor Krasnov told Russian President Vladimir Putin that almost 9,000 reservists were mobilized illegally, according to a transcript of their conversation released by the Kremlin on Tuesday. He said that many of them should not have been sent in the first place because of ill health, and were later returned to Russia.

Krasnov also said there had been issues with paying the troops.

In his conversation with Putin, Krasnov said that the mobilization “revealed a lot of significant problems.”

In September, Russia announced a partial mobilization of 300,000 troops, which it said was completed in October. This came after major battlefield setbacks for Russian forces, which had expected a quick victory following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Putin said in December that 150,000 of those troops had been sent to serve in Ukraine, with the rest still in training in Russia.

The military call up resulted in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of young Russians leaving the country by plane and over its land borders in the weeks that proceeded it.

Putin admitted last September that Russia had made “mistakes” in its mobilization, after reports that students, people without combat experience, the elderly, and those with health issues were among those who had been called up to fight, when only reservists were supposed to have been drafted.

Krasnov told Putin that Russia had been forced to “reconsider approaches to the organization of military registration,” and had created databases of available military personnel.

Widespread issues related to Russia’s mass mobilization have long been reported, including a lack of training and equipment. Some soldiers were drafted, trained, sent to Ukraine, killed, and returned home in body bags within a month of the announcement — a rapid timeline that would be unheard of in a Western army.

Experts and defectors also say that Russian generals used the troops like cannon fodder.

In the transcript of the conversation released by the Kremlin, Putin praised Krasnov’s work, and asked him to keep monitoring the “rights” of mobilized Russians. 

This comes as Russia is expected to announce another round of mobilizations, though the numbers are unclear.

Ukraine and its allies say they expect a fresh Russian offensive in the spring, with Ukrainian intelligence warning earlier this month that Russia plans to mobilize 500,000 additional troops.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday that Russia is preparing to mobilize more than 200,000 troops, while the UK ministry of defense said in December that Putin had been presented with plans to expand Russia’s military by around 30%, to 1.5 million active personnel.

The release of the transcript between Putin and Krasnov is likely an effort by the Kremlin to reduce concerns in Russia that any future mobilizations will be as ill-prepared as the last one.

Signup to receive the Early Edition in your inbox here.

A curated weekday guide to major national security news and developments over the past 24 hours. Here’s today’s news.

JAN. 6 ATTACK AND 2020 ELECTION PROBES

The Jan. 6 committee concluded that federal security agencies could have prevented the Jan. 6 attack had they acted on intel collected beforehand, the committee’s chief investigator has revealed. Former federal prosecutor Tim Heaphy said that his probe found that whilst former President Trump was the “proximate cause,” of the attack law enforcement failures were also a significant contributory factor. This conclusion was not presented in any of the committee’s televised hearings, and an abbreviated version was included in an appendix to the written report, which ultimately said that law enforcement could not have anticipated the attack. Ken Dilanian and Ryan J. Reilly report for NBC News. 

Bias and human error played a role in the FBI’s failure to anticipate the Jan. 6 attack, a draft document written by the Jan. 6 committee and reviewed by the New York Times suggests. The document, which was never published, suggests that when attempting to analyze the potential outcomes of a disputed election the FBI appeared to be blinded by a narrow focus on “lone wolf” offenders and a misguided belief that the threat from the far left was as great as that from the far right. Adam Goldman and Alan Feuer report for the New York Times. 

A federal appeals court panel has put a hold on the Justice Department’s effort to access the phone of Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA). The Justice Department sought the phone records as part of a broader investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to subvert the 2020 election. However, in a sealed order issued earlier this month, the three-judge panel temporarily blocked a lower-court ruling that granted prosecutors access to Perry’s communications. Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein report for POLITICO.

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS PROBES

Two people who found classified documents in former President Trump’s Florida storage facility testified before a federal grand jury in Washington last week, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The two individuals were each interviewed for about three hours in separate appearances. The grand jury is investigating the former president’s handling of national security records at his properties. Kaitlin Collins and Katelyn Polantz report for CNN. 

The FBI searched President Biden’s former private office for classified documents in November, shortly after his aids found such materials and surrendered them to the National Archives. The search came after Biden’s lawyers agreed to let agents search his former office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, where aides discovered roughly a dozen documents marked classified. It couldn’t be determined whether investigators found any additional items in the search. Adriana Diaz and Arden Farhi report for CBS News. 

U.S. RELATIONS 

The State Department has declared Russia in non-compliance with the only nuclear arms control treaty remaining between Russia and the U.S.. The agency told Congress yesterday that Russia has refused to allow American inspectors into nuclear weapons facilities, an obligation under the treaty known as New START. Russia’s refusal to facilitate the inspections “threatens the viability of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control” the department said in a statement. Edward Wong reports for the New York Times. 

Three Haitian Americans and a Colombia national have been charged in the U.S. for their role in the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. The decision to charge the four men, who are considered to be some of the ringleaders in the assassination plot, in the U.S. is an indication of the chronic dysfunction of the Haitian justice system. The defendants will make their first appearance in court in Miami today, after being transferred into U.S. custody yesterday. Chris Cameron reports for the New York Times. 

The U.S. and its allies in the Middle East and North Africa have announced that they are broadening the Abraham Accords to include cybersecurity. The expansion of the 2020 agreement to normalize diplomatic relations between Israel and other countries in the region will involve, among other things, increased sharing of information on cybersecurity threats. Tim Starks and Ellen Nakashima report for the Washington Post. 

A plan to build of Chinese-owned corn mill in North Dakota “presents a significant threat to national security,” an assistant secretary of the Air Force has said. The letter from Assistant Secretary Andrew Hunter, released publicly yesterday by North Dakota’s senators, noted the proximity of Grand Forks Air Force Base to the proposed mill and said the project raised “near- and long-term risks of significant impacts to our operations in the area.” His comments follow more than a year of debate about whether the plan was an economic boon or a geopolitical risk. Mitch Smith reports for the New York Times. 

RUSSIA, UKRAINE

The three lead officials carrying out oversight of U.S. military and economic assistance to Ukraine concluded a joint trip to Kyiv last week, according to a joint statement. The leaders from the offices of inspector general for the department of Defense and State and the U.S. Agency for International Development met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top officials as part of oversight efforts on billions of dollars of U.S. assistance. The visit came as lawmakers from both sides expressed the need to be vigilant in tracking American tax dollars going to Ukraine. Laura Kelly reports for The Hill. 

Zelenskyy said that his administration is preparing to introduce changes ahead of talks between Kyiv and the E.U. scheduled for Friday. The reforms would “change the social, legal and political reality in many ways, making it more human, transparency and effective,” he added. Hours after this announcement Ukrainian authorities conducted a series of anti-corruption searches across the country, according to the country’s parliamentary majority leader. Yulia Kesaieva reports for CNN. 

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said yesterday that China is “watching closely” and “learning lessons” from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Beijing and Moscow are leading an authoritarian pushback against the international rules-based order,” Stoltenberg said at a news conference alongside Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, adding that “if [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin wins in Ukraine, this would send a message that authoritarian regimes can achieve their goals through brute force.” Olafimihan Oshin reports for The Hill. 

OTHER GLOBAL DEVELOPMENTS

Mercenaries from the Russian-linked paramilitary organization Wagner Group may have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Mali along with the country’s military, U.N. experts have said. Calling for an independent investigation, the group of experts enlisted by the U.N. Human Rights Council said that since 2021 they had “received persistence and alarming accounts” of atrocities being committed by Malian armed forces and the group. Elian Peltier reports for the New York Times. 

Several suspects have been arrested in connection with Monday’s suicide bombing at a mosque in northwestern Pakistan. More arrests should be expected as the police continue to investigate the attack that killed over 100 people, Police Chief Mohammad Aijaz Khan said. Sophia Saifi reports for CNN. 

French special forces have seized a boatload of Iranian-supplied weapons and ammunition bound for militants in Yemen, according to officials familiar with the operation. The French operation, which was coordinated with the U.S. military, is the latest in a series of seizures that suggest Iran continues to supply its Houthi allies in Yemen with firepower, despite an unofficial nine-month-old cease-fire. Dion Nissenbaum and Benoit Faucon report for the Wall Street Journal. 

COVID-19

COVID-19 has infected over 102.347 million people and has now killed over 1.11 million people in the United States, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Globally, there have been over 670.817 million confirmed coronavirus cases and over 6.83 million deaths. Sergio Hernandez, Sean O’Key, Amanda Watts, Byron Manley and Henrik Pettersson report for CNN.

A map and analysis of all confirmed cases of the virus in the U.S. is available at the New York Times.

U.S. and worldwide maps tracking the spread of the pandemic are available at the Washington Post. 

The post Early Edition: February 1, 2023 appeared first on Just Security.