New SEC rule would require corporations to reveal local weather change dangers
A proposed rule by the Securities and Change Fee would require U.S. corporations disclose the dangers they face from local weather change.
The rule would enable buyers to evaluate how nicely an organization is ready for the long run prices of a warming planet.
The monetary dangers posed by a altering local weather are actual and costly. Final yr climate and hearth disasters within the U.S. brought on greater than $145 billion in damages.
Would you spend money on a vineyard whose vineyards may not be capable of develop grapes in a decade? Take a job at a manufacturing facility that could be underwater in 15 years? Purchase hamburger from an organization that’s burning the Brazilian savanna to develop soybeans to feed cattle?
Groundbreaking federal regulation anticipated to be unveiled Monday might change how Individuals – and American corporations – take into consideration local weather change. The Securities and Change Fee will meet to debate whether or not public corporations should disclose the dangers they face from international warming.
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Robert F Kennedy Jr says he will keep his share of any windfall from litigation against pharmaceutical company Merck even if he becomes Donald Trump’s top US health official, ethics records show.
In an ethics agreement published on Wednesday, Kennedy said he would keep his share of potential winnings from the case brought by law firm Wisner Baum against Merck’s Gardasil vaccine, which prevents human papillomavirus, known as HPV.
“I am entitled to receive 10 per cent of fees awarded in contingency fee cases referred to the firm,” said Kennedy, a co-counsel at Wisner Baum, in a letter to the top ethics tsar at the US Department of Health and Human Services.
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Kennedy, a vaccine sceptic who Trump picked to be health secretary in November, said he was entitled to keep interests in cases that did not involve the US or in which the state did not have a “direct and substantial interest”.
The ethics records were published on Wednesday as Mike Crapo, the chair of the Senate finance committee, announced that Kennedy’s confirmation hearings would be held next Wednesday.
Kennedy, a scion of the famous Democratic political family, stressed that he was playing no direct role in the Merck case and pledged to avoid doing anything to sway the outcome if appointed as health and human services secretary.
The first in a series of cases alleging that young people were injured by Merck’s vaccine is being heard this week in a court in Los Angeles. Kennedy first got involved with the legal effort against Gardasil in 2018.
The former Democrat, who endorsed Trump last year after mounting his own independent run for the White House, also said he would resign from his consulting role at Wisner Baum.
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In separate financial records filed on Wednesday with the US Office of Government Ethics, Kennedy revealed $11.6mn in disclosed income over the past two years, including $8.8mn from his work as an environmental attorney at Kennedy & Madonna. He pledged to terminate his role at the firm.
Kennedy was also paid $856,559 by Wisner Baum over the same period, records show. He also held small stakes in biotechs Crispr Therapeutics and Dragonfly Therapeutics, according to the financial disclosures.
The disclosures highlight the controversy around Trump’s decision to pick a vocal vaccine sceptic and campaigner to oversee the US health department — including its 13 divisions and agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health, which have sweeping influence over medicine regulation in the US.
The delay in Kennedy’s congressional hearing, which was originally planned for this week, has been taken by some in his camp as a sign that he could struggle to win approval from the crucial health and finance committees, whose endorsement he will need before a full vote in the Senate.
Some senators have raised questions about his record on vaccines and abortion, among other issues.
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The litigation against Merck over Gardasil is among several high-profile anti-vaccine lawsuits Kennedy has been involved in. Gardasil is recommended as a routine jab for 11- and 12-year-olds by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with 160mn having been distributed by the end of 2022, according to official statistics. Certain high-risk types of HPV can cause cervical cancer.
Kennedy did not respond to requests for comment. Merck said: “The plaintiff’s allegations have no merit, and we remain committed to vigorously defending against these claims.”
Within a half-hour of a fire igniting on an Eaton Canyon hillside in the afternoon of Jan. 7, thousands of residents’ phones buzzed in eastern Altadena with a warning from Los Angeles County: “BE AWARE.” Within 40 minutes, a dire alert: “LEAVE NOW.”
But neighborhoods in western Altadena did not see the same urgency, as evacuation orders didn’t arrive until early the following morning — more than nine hours after the Eaton Fire began.
By then, it was too late.
All 17 people who died in the wind-fueled fire were west of Lake Avenue, a major corridor that runs north-south through Altadena. They included an 83-year-old retired Lockheed Martin project manager, a 95-year-old who was an actress in old Black Hollywood, and a 67-year-old amputee who used a wheelchair and died with his adult son, who had cerebral palsy.
Fifteen of the deaths occurred in an area where the first evacuation order wasn’t sent until 3:25 a.m. on Jan. 8; the other two occurred in an area where the order came at 5:42 a.m., according to a review of the alerts as well as data compiled by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office.
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The discrepancy between west and east Altadena is spurring questions among local officials and residents about the timing of the emergency alerts and whether earlier warnings might have saved lives.
“There was not a lot of time to do anything, but our notification system should have been going off long before they were,” Altadena Town Councilmember Connor Cipolla told NBC News on Wednesday. “It’s obvious by the destruction. It failed half our town.”
On Tuesday, two Los Angeles County supervisors introduced a motion calling for an independent review of the emergency notification systems.
While the county evaluates its response following any disaster, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger said Wednesday that she wants to accelerate an analysis for the wildfires that have killed more than two dozen people and destroyed over 15,000 structures across the region.
“I know that on the west side, the older part of Altadena, it’s far more concentrated, a lot of homes,” Barger told NBC Los Angeles. “We need to find out what happened, but I do know the fire was traveling fast.”
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She cautioned that additional notifications may not have saved lives, but said “the victims of this disaster deserve our transparency and accountability.”
Her motion, which will be voted on at the county supervisors’ meeting next Tuesday, followed a Los Angeles Times report on the delayed evacuation notices in the Eaton Fire.
In a statement, the county’s Coordinated Joint Information Center said it could not immediately comment on the factors that may have led to the deaths in the fires, and that a comprehensive review will “take months because it will require combing through and validating the call histories of the fire, interviewing first responders on the scene, interviewing incident commanders, and searching and reviewing our 911 records, among other essential steps, including obtaining feedback from all relevant sources. That work may also require a third-party entity to ensure integrity of the investigation.”
Electronic alerts are one method for warning residents, but the county added that it also uses door knocks, patrols with loudspeakers driving through neighborhoods and media coordination.
Jill Fogel said none of that happened in her part of west Altadena.
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She was hunkered down with her two young children and their father on Olive Avenue on Jan. 8 when she got a text after 3 a.m. from a nearby friend north of Altadena saying there were flames in her backyard. Fogel, 43, said she checked the Watch Duty app, which offers real-time updates taken from first responders radio broadcasts, but there were no warnings that her neighborhood might have to evacuate.
Then she looked outside her rental home and saw flames. A few minutes later, she got an alert ordering an evacuation, she said. She told her landlord and then her family scrambled into a car and left. As they made their way out of the neighborhood, joining a stream of cars, Fogel said she saw no firefighting vehicles or police cars and heard no sirens.
Fogel said she realized that the fire was moving very fast in the hours before the evacuation order. But she thinks authorities should have sent alerts much earlier.
“I thought it was strange that the flames were so close and we hadn’t gotten a warning,” Fogel said. “I thought they would have let us know a lot sooner.”
Ari Rivera, rear, and Anderson Hao hold each other in front of their destroyed home in Altadena, Calif., on Jan. 9.John Locher / AP file
More than two weeks after it began, the Eaton Fire is 91% contained, fire officials said Wednesday. The cause remains under investigation.
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Investigators have focused on a high-voltage electrical tower in Eaton Canyon as the potential origin, as fierce Santa Ana winds approaching 100 mph drove the flames into Altadena and Pasadena.
The fire started at about 6:18 p.m. on Jan. 7. The first emergency alert was sent to Altadena residents east of Lake Avenue at about 6:48 p.m., according to the PBS Warning, Alert and Response Network, which tracks public alert system messages. A more urgent message to evacuate was sent to residents in parts of eastern Altadena closer to the fire at 7:26 p.m.
The Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management described the scenario at the time as a “fast moving wildfire in your area.”
Joe Ten Eyck, a former chief at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said it can be difficult to get the timing of fire evacuation alerts right: Issue them too soon, and you risk mass panic, jammed roadways and more danger, but issue them too late, and you risk people getting stuck in burning neighborhoods.
Those decisions often must be made in an instant, Ten Eyck said, based on rapidly evolving conditions.
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Ten Eyck, who has visited the scenes of devastation wrought by the Eaton and Palisades fires, also cautioned against rushing to judgment in Los Angeles without knowing why some areas did not get evacuation orders earlier.
“I can certainly understand why everybody is upset,” said Ten Eyck, who now runs wildfire training programs for the International Association of Fire Fighters. “But there are a lot of factors involved in this.”
Those can include flames that were advancing extraordinarily fast under hurricane-force winds, limited nighttime visibility and damaged communications equipment, Ten Eyck said. He noted that authorities typically issue evacuations in areas closest to the front of a fire, but they may not immediately recognize when wind-driven embers are sparking catastrophic new fires.
Firefighters extinguish burning embers at a house in Altadena, Calif., on Jan. 9. Chris Pizzello / AP file
Salomón Huerta, an Altadena artist, was at his studio while his wife, Ana, was at their home on the west side when the Eaton Fire erupted. She never got any alerts, he said, but by the time he returned home, he could see the fires in the distance, and the couple decided to evacuate around 9 p.m.
“It was bad already,” Huerta, 59, said.
He later learned a neighbor was killed. Dalyce Curry, 95, was dropped off at her home around midnight by her granddaughter who thought she would be safe. Her granddaughter, Dalyce Kelley, previously told NBC News that it was possible her grandmother didn’t receive emergency alerts and was unaware of the middle-of-the-night evacuation order.
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“Elderly people, they just don’t get into cellphones,” Kelley said. “Not her.”
Many of the victims of the Eaton Fire were elderly and likely unable to evacuate quickly, Cipolla, the town councilmember, added.
“In everyone’s defense, it was a rapidly moving fire and a very fluid situation,” he said. “But when you take into account 17 people lost their lives, a lot of them disabled and elderly, it feels like something failed.”
The Supreme Court seemed poised on Wednesday to reject a legal theory that puts tight limits on lawsuits seeking to hold police officers accountable for using deadly force.
The case arose, an appeals court judge wrote, from a commonplace occurrence. “A routine traffic stop,” the judge wrote, “has again ended in the death of an unarmed Black man.”
The question for the justices was how closely courts should confine their consideration to “the moment of threat” rather than the larger context of the encounter.
There was something like consensus that the theory was focused too narrowly on the seconds preceding a shooting.
“Everybody agrees it’s wrong,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said. “What’s the harm of saying that?”
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The case started on an April afternoon in 2016, when Ashtian Barnes, 24, was driving on a highway outside Houston in a car his girlfriend had rented. He was on his way to pick up her daughter from day care.
Though Mr. Barnes did not know it, the car’s license plate was linked to unpaid tolls that had been incurred by another driver. Office Roberto Felix Jr. of the Harris County Constable’s Office pulled the car over based on those unpaid tolls.
When Mr. Barnes could not immediately locate his license and the car’s registration, the officer asked him to step out of the car. Instead, Mr. Barnes began to pull away, with the car door still open. Officer Felix drew his gun, jumped onto the moving car’s door sill and twice shot Mr. Barnes, as recorded on dash cam footage.
Ashtian Barnes was killed in a police shooting in 2016. He was unarmed.Credit…Adam Fomby, via Reuters
Mr. Barnes’s mother, Janice Hughes Barnes, sued, saying the officer’s use of force was unreasonable, violating the Fourth Amendment.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled last year in favor of the officer on what it said was a narrow question. “We may only ask whether Officer Felix was in danger ‘at the moment of the threat’ that caused him to use deadly force against Barnes,” Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham wrote.
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Judge Higginbotham added a concurring opinion, writing only for himself. Had he been allowed to consider all of the circumstances surrounding the stop, he wrote, he could have ruled the other way.
“Given the rapid sequence of events and Officer Felix’s role in drawing his weapon and jumping on the running board,” the judge wrote, “the totality of the circumstances merits finding that Officer Felix violated Barnes’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from excessive force.”
At Wednesday’s argument in the case, Barnes v. Felix, No. 23-1239, some justices expressed concerns about second-guessing police officers’ split-second judgments. “An officer does not get the time we’ve spent here today to make the decision,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said.
But most of the justices seemed inclined to allow the court to consider more than the seconds before the shooting.
“Would you be satisfied,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked a lawyer for Ms. Barnes, “with a narrow holding that it is wrong for a court to look just at the moment of the threat?”
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The lawyer, Nathaniel A.G. Zelinsky, said he would, though he added that “it would be helpful if the court makes clear that that means that you can look at the jump in addition to the shoot.”
Charles L. McCloud, a lawyer for Officer Felix, said the court should narrow its focus to the moment he used force. “He was clinging to the side of a fleeing suspect’s car, and Felix reasonably believed that his life was in imminent danger,” Mr. McCloud said. “That conclusion should end this case.”
In rebuttal, Mr. Zelinsky disagreed. “You have to look at the whole picture,” he said, “and here that’s more than just two seconds.”
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