Categories
Audio Sources - Full Text Articles

US plans for more migrant releases when asylum limits end

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Homeland Security said more migrants may be released into the United States to pursue immigration cases when Trump-era asylum restrictions end next week in one of its most detailed assessments ahead of the major policy shift.

The department reported faster processing for migrants in custody on the border, more temporary detention tents, staffing surges and increased criminal prosecutions of smugglers, noting progress on a plan announced in April.

But the seven-page document dated Tuesday included no major structural changes amid unusually large numbers of migrants entering the country. More are expected with the end of Title 42 authority, under which migrants have been denied rights to seek asylum more than 2.5 million times on grounds of preventing spread of COVID-19.

A federal judge in Washington ordered Title 42 to end Dec. 21 but Republican-led states asked an appeals court to keep it in place. The Biden administration has also challenged some aspects of the ruling, though it doesn’t oppose letting the rule lapse next week. The legal back-and-forth could go down to the wire.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas traveled this week to El Paso, Texas, which witnessed a large influx Sunday after becoming the busiest corridor for illegal crossings in October. El Paso has been a magnet for Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Cubans, Colombians, Ecuadoreans and other nationalities.

The geographic shift to Texas’ westernmost reaches was likely a result of smugglers’ calculations on the best route, said Nicolas Palazzo, an attorney at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso.

Like other advocacy groups that work directly with directly with Homeland Security, Palazzo said he has had no conversations with the department about post-Title 42 planning. One key question: How will authorities process migrants who have long been waiting to seek asylum?

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, said Customs and Border Protection officials told him Wednesday that about 50,000 migrants are believed to be waiting to cross once Title 42 is lifted.

Authorities plan to admit those seeking asylum who go through ports of entry but return to Mexico those who cross illegally between official crossings, Cuellar said in an interview. It was unclear how they will return nationalities that Mexico won’t accept — like Cubans and Nicaraguans — and are difficult to send home due to strained diplomatic relations and other challenges.

Administration officials are developing additional measures, which Cuellar said they would not disclose.

“I think the first week is going to be a little bit of chaos,” he said.

U.S. officials in El Paso are currently exempting 70 migrants daily from Title 42, said Palazzo, who questioned how officials will handle more people.

Unless they raise processing capacity significantly, migrants who go through official crossings may be told to wait a year or so for an appointment, said Palazzo. “Realistically can they tell me with a straight face that they expect people to wait that long?”

In its latest assessment, CBP said government agencies “have been managing levels well beyond the capacity for which their infrastructure was designed and resourced, meaning additional increases will create further pressure and potential overcrowding in specific locations along the border.”

More single adults and families with young children may be released into communities with instructions to appear in immigration court without help of nongovernmental groups or financial sponsors, the department said.

The department didn’t indicate how many migrants may cross the border when Title 42 ends. Earlier this year, they expected as many as 18,000 a day, a staggering number. In May, migrants were stopped an average of 7,800 times a day, the peak month of Joe Biden’s presidency.

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, migrants were stopped 2.38 million times, up 37% from 1.73 million times the year before. The annual total surpassed 2 million for the first time.

The numbers reflect deteriorating economic and political conditions in some countries, relative strength of the U.S. economy and uneven enforcement of Trump-era asylum restrictions.

___

Spagat reported from San Diego.

Categories
Audio Sources - Full Text Articles

Kevin McCarthy is now taking heat from all sides

19121c5c768fb6ee35d5576afe2d9a7f?s=100&d

Help support Palmer Report! Our articles are all 100% free to read, with no forced subscriptions and nothing hidden behind paywalls. If you value our content, you’re welcome to pay for it:

Pay $5 to Palmer Report:

Pay $25 to Palmer Report:

Pay $75 to Palmer Report:


Sign up for the Palmer Report mailing list

Help support Palmer Report! Our articles are all 100% free to read, with no forced subscriptions and nothing hidden behind paywalls. If you value our content, you’re welcome to pay for it:

Pay $5 to Palmer Report:

Pay $25 to Palmer Report:

Pay $75 to Palmer Report:

Sign up for the Palmer Report Mailing List.


As if Kevin McCarthy isn’t in enough trouble! McCarthy, in recent days, has been taking incoming from all sides. That, of course, hasn’t stopped his desperation for the House Speaker position one bit. McCarthy wants it, he craves it, and he’s not slowing down in his craven desire to get it.

But new troubles have emerged for McCarthy. These troubles are in the form of Jewish groups who are eviscerating him for his promise to remove Ilhan Omar from her committee. A group of Jewish non-profits blasted him in a statement, hinting that it is McCarthy — not Omar — who is the real racist. Some of the groups that signed the statement include:

The Reform movement

Americans for peace now.

J Street and Ameinu

The new Israel fund

T’ruah

Here is some of what they said:

“As Jewish American Organizations, we oppose House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s pledge to strip Representative Ilhan Omar of her house foreign affairs committee seat based on false accusations that she is anti-semitic.”

The statement also went on to accuse McCarthy of deliberately targeting Omar as well as Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell to “distract from anti-semitic expression in his own party.”

Yikes. Kevin McCarthy, who has yet to condemn the hate speech of Marjorie Taylor Greene, is definitely a man on the edge – on the edge of complete failure. The man has not even been elected speaker yet, and still, everybody hates him. This, of course, has not stopped McCarthy from putting this on his Twitter profile:

“Republican leader.”

And believe me, people have noticed. In the meantime, Kev keeps making promise after promise after promise. He’s giving away his very soul at this point — all for a job most do not want and which promises to suck the soul out of anyone who takes it. In the meantime, the ominous “motion to vacate the chair” still hangs over Kevin’s head.


This motion has the power to keep Kevin in a perpetual state of anxiety because it would allow any republican at any time to force a new vote for speaker. So in effect, Kevin would wonder every day if it was the day he was forced from his job. It would be his sword of Damocles hanging over his head on a daily basis. It would promise to make his every moment miserable.

You know what? The more I think about it, the more I start to think that Kevin McCarthy becoming speaker might just be the perfect punishment for him indeed.

Save Palmer Report! Our articles are all 100% free to read, with no forced subscriptions and nothing hidden behind paywalls. If you value our content, you’re welcome to pay for it:

Pay $5 to Palmer Report:

Pay $25 to Palmer Report:

Pay $75 to Palmer Report:

Write for the Palmer Report Community Section.

Help support Palmer Report! Our articles are all 100% free to read, with no forced subscriptions and nothing hidden behind paywalls. If you value our content, you’re welcome to pay for it:

Pay $5 to Palmer Report:

Pay $25 to Palmer Report:

Pay $75 to Palmer Report:

The post Kevin McCarthy is now taking heat from all sides appeared first on Palmer Report.

Categories
Audio Sources - Full Text Articles

Unexplained leak from docked Soyuz spacecraft cancels Russian ISS spacewalk

2022-12-15T04:13:17Z

A stream of particles, which NASA says appears to be liquid and possibly coolant, sprays out of the Soyuz spacecraft on the International Space Station, forcing a delay of a routine planned spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts December 14, 2022 in this still image taken from video. NASA TV/Handout via REUTERS

A routine spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) was called off as it was about to begin after flight controllers noticed a stream of particles spewing from a docked Soyuz spacecraft, a NASA webcast showed.

The apparent leak, which was visible in NASA’s live video feed and appeared as a torrent of snowflake-like particles spraying from the rear section of the Soyuz MS-22 capsule, seemed to be liquid escaping from the spacecraft, possibly coolant, a NASA commentator said.

NASA said none of the seven members of the current International Space Station (ISS) crew – three Russian cosmonauts, three U.S. NASA astronauts and a Japanese astronaut – were thought to be in any danger.

The mishap occurred just before two of the cosmonauts, crew commander Sergey Prokopyev and flight engineer Dimitri Petelin, suited up for a planned spacewalk to move a radiator from one module to another on the Russian segment of the ISS.

An official for Russia’s mission control operations near Moscow was heard telling Prokopyev and Petelin in a radio transmission that their spacewalk was being canceled while engineers worked to determine the nature and origin of the leak.

The NASA commentator on the livestream, Rob Navias, broadcasting from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, also said the spacewalk was called off because of the leak, which began about 7:45 p.m. EST (0130 GMT Thursday).

He said the Soyuz craft arrived at the space station in September, bringing Prokopyev, Petelin and U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio to the ISS, and has remained attached to the Earth-facing side of the orbital laboratory outpost.

The spacewalk planned for Wednesday was postponed once before, in late November, because of faulty cooling pumps in the cosmonauts’ spacesuits, Navias said.

The spacewalk was to be the 12th this year at the ISS and the 257th in the history of the 20-year-old platform. Spacewalks are typically done for space station assembly, maintenance and upgrades, according to NASA.

Navias said it was too soon to know what implications the apparent leak might have for the future safety and operation of that spacecraft, and whether it might pose any difficulties for returning crew to Earth at the end of their mission.

The ISS, spanning the length of a U.S. football field, has been continuously occupied since 2000, operated by a U.S.-Russian-led partnership that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.

Categories
Audio Sources - Full Text Articles

The Senate has again voted to ban TikTok from all government devices over national security concerns

In this photo illustration, a TikTok logo is seen displayed on a mobile phone screen.The Senate on Wednesday voted to ban TikTok from government devices.

Idrees Abbas/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

  • The Senate on Wednesday voted to ban TikTok from all government devices for a second time.
  • Lawmakers fear the social-media app can be used to spy on American users.
  • TikTok said these concerns largely stem from misinformation and “unfounded falsehoods.”

The Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved a bill that bans federal employees from downloading or using TikTok on government devices, citing national security concerns about the Chinese-owned social media app.

The bill still has to pass in the House and be signed by President Joe Biden before it becomes law.

The “No TikTok on Government Devices Act,” sponsored by GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, would “prohibit certain individuals from downloading or using TikTok on any device issued by the United States or a government corporation.”

TikTok, run by Chinese company Bytedance, has for years been under scrutiny from lawmakers concerned that it may share information about US users with the Chinese government. The Senate also passed the same ban in 2020, but the measure did not move forward in the House.

In a statement to Insider on Wednesday, TikTok called Hawley’s bill “a proposal which does nothing to advance U.S. national security interests.”

“We hope that rather than continuing down that road, he will urge the Administration to move forward on an agreement that would actually address his concerns,” TikTok said.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Categories
Audio Sources - Full Text Articles

Twitter CEO Elon Musk suing ElonJet creator Jack Sweeney

(NewsNation) — Elon Musk says he is going to sue Jack Sweeney, the programmer who tracked his private jet on the Twitter account “ElonJet.”

“Last night, car carrying lil X in LA was followed by crazy stalker (thinking it was me), who later blocked car from moving & climbed onto hood. Legal action is being taken against Sweeney & organizations who supported harm to my family,” Musk tweeted Wednesday evening.

The new Twitter CEO’s words come after Sweeney claimed Twitter hid his account and challenged Musk in an interview with NewsNation’s Leland Vittert on Tuesday night.

“I’m the one person that is showing whether he’s really going to do complete, full free speech on Twitter,” Sweeney told Vittert.

On Wednesday, Twitter apparently suspended the “ElonJet” account, Sweeney’s personal account and other accounts backed by Sweeney that track flight information. Hours later, the “ElonJet” was public again after Twitter imposed new rules that accounts cannot share someone’s current location.

This comes after Musk said last month he would not ban the account following his plane. “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Musk tweeted on Nov. 6.

Just after 5 p.m. Wednesday, the Twitter Safety account posted the social media platform has updated their private information policy to prohibit sharing someone else’s live location in “most cases.” “When someone shares an individual’s live location on Twitter, there is an increased risk of physical harm. Moving forward, we’ll remove Tweets that share this information, and accounts dedicated to sharing someone else’s live location will be suspended,” the Twitter Safety account tweeted.

“Doxxing” often refers to publicly sharing someone’s private information like their address or identity online. When reviewing reports of doxxing under their policy, Twitter’s Help Center states the company considers four key questions:

– What type of information is being shared?

– Who is sharing the information?

– Is the information available elsewhere online?

– Why is the information being shared?

Sweeney, through the “ElonJet” account, insists he has every right to post about the locations of jets.

“This account has every right to post jet whereabouts, ADS-B data is public, every aircraft in the world is required to have a transponder, Even AF1 (Air Force Track) Twitter policy states data found on other sites is allowed to be shared here as well,” the “ElonJet” account posted on Jan. 18.

Leland Vittert says Musk’s actions show where the Twitter CEO actually stands on free speech suppression: “Well, it didn’t take long. We have now figured out where Elon Musk draws the line about free speech when it comes to people talking about his private Gulfstream jet. That is the line.”

Categories
Audio Sources - Full Text Articles

Twitter Suspends Account That Tracked Elon Musk’s Jet Despite Free Speech Pledge

Twitter on Wednesday suspended an account that used publicly available flight data to track Elon Musk’s private jet, despite a pledge by the social media platform’s new owner to keep it up because of his free speech principles.

But shortly afterward, the account was suspended again. That came after Musk tweeted that a “crazy stalker” attacked a car in Los Angeles carrying his young son.

He also threatened legal action against Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old college sophomore and programmer who started the @elonjet flight-tracking account, and “organizations who supported harm to my family.” It’s not clear what legal action Musk could take against Sweeney for an account that automatically posted public flight information.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Before Wednesday, the account had more than 526,000 followers.

Tweets by ElonJet

“He said this is free speech and he’s doing the opposite,” Sweeney said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Sweeney said he woke up Wednesday to a flood of messages from people who saw that @elonjet was suspended and all its tweets had disappeared. Started in 2020 when Sweeney was a teenager, the account automatically posted the Gulfstream jet’s flights with a map and an estimate of the amount of jet fuel and carbon emissions it expended.

He logged into Twitter and saw a notice that the account was permanently suspended for breaking Twitter’s rules. But the note didn’t explain how it broke the rules.

Read More: Amid Musk’s Chaotic Reign at Twitter, Our Digital History Is at Risk

Sweeney said he immediately filed an online form to appeal the suspension. Later, his personal account was also suspended, with a message saying it violated Twitter’s rules “against platform manipulation and spam.”

And then hours later, the flight-tracking account was back again, before it was shut down anew. Musk and Twitter’s policy team had sought to publicly explain Wednesday that Twitter now has new rules.

“Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation,” Musk tweeted. “This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info. Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.”

Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended, as it is a physical safety violation. This includes posting links to sites with real-time location info.

Posting locations someone traveled to on a slightly delayed basis isn’t a safety problem, so is ok.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 15, 2022

“Doxxing” refers to disclosing online someone’s identity, address, or other personal details.

For Sweeney, it was the latest in a longtime tangle with the billionaire. The University of Central Florida student said Musk last year sent him a private message offering $5,000 to take the jet-tracking account down, citing security concerns. Musk later stopped communicating to Sweeney, who never deleted the account. Their exchange was first reported by tech news outlet Protocol earlier this year.

But after buying Twitter for $44 billion in late October, Musk said he would let it stay.

“My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk,” Musk tweeted on Nov. 6.

My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 7, 2022

Sweeney ran similar “bot” accounts tracking other celebrities’ airplanes. For hours after the suspension of the @elonjet account, other Sweeney-run accounts tracking private jets used by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and various Russian oligarchs were still live on Twitter.

But by later Wednesday, Twitter suspended all of them, including Sweeney’s personal account. He also operates accounts tracking Musk’s jet on rival social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Read More: Elon Musk’s Twitter Plans Show He’s Lost Focus on What Got Him This Far

Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment. Musk has promised to eradicate automatically generated spam from the platform, but Twitter allows automated accounts that are labeled as such — as Sweeney’s were.

Its note to Sweeney about the suspension, which he shared with the AP, said “You may not use Twitter’s services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience on Twitter.” But that rationale was different from what Musk explained later Wednesday.

Sweeney had days earlier accused Musk’s Twitter of using a filtering technique to hide his tweets, and revealed what he said were leaked internal communications showing a Twitter content-moderation executive in charge of the Trust and Safety division ordering her team to suppress the account’s reach. The AP has not been able to independently verify those documents.

Sweeney said that he suspects the short-lived ban stemmed from anger over those leaks.

Musk has previously criticized that filtering technique — nicknamed “shadowbanning” — and alleged that it was unfairly used by Twitter’s past leadership to suppress right-wing accounts. He has said the new Twitter will still downgrade the reach of negative or hateful messages but will be more transparent about it.

In his push to loosen Twitter’s content restrictions, he’s reinstated other high-profile accounts that were permanently banned for breaking Twitter’s rules against hateful conduct, harmful misinformation or incitements of violence.

Read More: Elon Musk Is the Lord of Twitter. We Are the Peasants

Sweeney said he originally started the Musk jet tracker because “I was interested in him as a fan of Tesla and SpaceX.”

In the weeks since the Tesla CEO took over Twitter, the @elonjet account has chronicled Musk’s many cross-country journeys from his home base near Tesla’s headquarters in Austin, Texas, to various California airports for his work at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters and his rocket company SpaceX.

It showed Musk flying to East Coast cities ahead of major events, and to New Orleans shortly before a Dec. 3 meeting there with French President Emmanuel Macron.

In a January post pinned to the top of the jet-tracking account’s feed before it was suspended, Sweeney wrote that it “has every right to post jet whereabouts” because the data is public and “every aircraft in the world is required to have a transponder,” including Air Force One that transports the U.S. president.

Categories
Audio Sources - Full Text Articles

Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss, Ellen Show’s Dancing DJ, Dies at 40

Stephen “tWitch” Boss, the longtime and beloved dancing DJ on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and a former contestant on “So You Think You Can Dance,” has died at the age of 40.

“It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to share my husband Stephen has left us,” his wife Allison Holker Boss said in a statement to People magazine. “Stephen lit up every room he stepped into. He valued family, friends and community above all else and leading with love and light was everything to him. He was the backbone of our family, the best husband and father, and an inspiration to his fans.”

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

The Los Angeles coroner said Boss’ cause of death was suicide.

tWitch started his tenure at “The Ellen Show” in 2014 and later was promoted to co-executive producer in 2020.

“I’m heartbroken. tWitch was pure love and light. He was my family, and I loved him with all my heart. I will miss him. Please send your love and support to Allison and his beautiful children – Weslie, Maddox, and Zaia,” Ellen DeGeneres stated on Twitter, alongside a photo of the two embracing in a hug backstage.

I’m heartbroken. tWitch was pure love and light. He was my family, and I loved him with all my heart. I will miss him. Please send your love and support to Allison and his beautiful children – Weslie, Maddox, and Zaia. pic.twitter.com/lW8Q5HZonx

— Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) December 14, 2022

The dancer-DJ also appeared in films like “Step Up: All In” and “Magic Mike XXL” and was featured in Disney+’s ”The Hip Hop Nutcracker,” released this year. He also had placed as a runner-up on “So You Think You Can Dance” and later judged season 17 of the dance competition show.

The Alabama native studied dance performance at Southern Union State Community College and Chapman University.

His love of dancing permeated through all aspects of his life as he aspired to emulate greats like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire.

“My personal opinion: The greatest of all time had to be Gene Kelly, man. Gene Kelly, because he’s a guy’s guy. I love Fred Astaire, but Fred Astaire was so smooth, and it was great. He was so classy,” Boss said in an interview with the Associated Press in 2014. “But Gene Kelly — he could be like somebody’s dad, who just decided to get up off the couch and dance around and clean the kitchen up.”

Boss posted dance videos on TikTok with his wife, who is also a professional dancer, with their children making guest appearances.

Celebrities like Questlove, Kerry Washington and Carrie Ann Inaba posted on social media in mourning.

“I have no words man. May his family find resolution in this dark time. May we all find peace of mind in our everyday lives. Everyday is a winding road and you just may never know who is on the edge,” Questlove posted on Instagram.

“Twitch brought joy and love to people all over the world through music and through dance. My heart is heavy today for his family and all of those who knew and loved him,” Washington also posted on Instagram.

The world lost a bright light today. Twitch brought joy and love to people all over the world through music and through dance. My heart is heavy today for his family and all of those who knew and loved him. pic.twitter.com/VmvxFgOF5d

— kerry washington (@kerrywashington) December 14, 2022

“He was a special one. A good man, a husband, an artist, a dancer, an entertainer, a bright light…He was extraordinary. He could do anything and he did it with a joy and grace and some swagger. Twitch, I’m at a loss… my heart seems to be frozen… like I don’t want to exhale, hoping that maybe if I don’t exhale, that someone will correct this horrible mistake. And all will be okay again,” Inaba, a “Dancing with the Stars” judge, posted on Instagram.

Boss’s passing was first reported by TMZ.

He is survived by his wife and three children.

If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental-health crisis or contemplating suicide, call or text 988. In emergencies, call 911, or seek care from a local hospital or mental-health provider.

 

Categories
Audio Sources - Full Text Articles

Elon Musk sells Tesla shares worth $3.58 billion

2022-12-15T03:21:41Z

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk speaks during the live-streamed unveiling of the Tesla Semi electric truck, in Nevada, U.S. December 1, 2022, in this still image taken from video. Tesla/Handout via REUTERS

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has sold 22 million shares worth $3.58 billion in the electric-vehicle maker this week, a U.S. securities filing showed on Wednesday.

The latest sale, Musk’s second since his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in October, brings the total Tesla stocks sold by the billionaire to nearly $40 billion over the past year.

He now owns 13.4% of the world’s most valuable carmaker, according to Refinitiv data.

Investor concerns that Musk’s purchase of Twitter could divert his time away from Tesla have driven down shares of the company more than 60% in 2022, making it one of the worst-performing stocks among major automakers and tech firms this year.

The stock hit its lowest in over two years last night.

Musk, who recently lost his title as the world’s richest person, unloaded shares over three days between Monday and Wednesday, according to the filing.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment outside business hours.

The latest share sale comes a month after Musk sold shares worth $4 billion in Tesla days after he closed the Twitter deal.

Categories
Audio Sources - Full Text Articles

“Slow Horses” Rides Again

Share

That funky, profane, noodle-slurping, cast-aside spymaster from Britain’s MI5, Jackson Lamb, lets us in on a little secret in the second season of the offbeat-espionage program, Slow Horses. It just may be that he really cares

Gary Oldman and his hapless spy crew are back for another season on Apple+ TV

But every time Lamb, portrayed with crazed and comic brilliance by Gary Oldman, offers a hint that he still believes in the high-minded goal of safeguarding the nation in service to the Queen (the new season takes place before Elizabeth II’s death), his subordinates, all fellow washouts, take notice and look to him for leadership.  That’s when he tells them to just bugger off.  

Yet, despite all the constant insults he tosses at his earnest underlings and denials of any real concern for their welfare, Lamb does have one principle that becomes the heart of this second series of six episodes: He will protect those unfortunates who work with him and avenge the lives of those who have been murdered.

This time around Lamb and the Horses confront a contemporary sounding mystery: Have the Russians unleashed  “cicadas” on us? Cicadas, in this case, are the spies and killers that Moscow Centre is rumored to have buried in the West years ago. Suddenly, Lamb believes, the cicadas have been suddenly activated for wet work, like the robotic hard-shelled insects that emerge every 17 years and drive everyone batty. Another term for them might be sleeper agents, or illegals, like the 10 Russian spies rounded up in 2010, whose lives inspired former CIA officer Joe Weisberg to create The Americans TV espionage drama.  

But killer cicadas? Decades ago, defectors from Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency told a congressional hearing that its agents had planted weapons caches in the U.S. and Europe for sabotage attacks should a shooting war break out. One said it was “likely” that GRU operatives placed “poison supplies near the tributaries to major US reservoirs,” including the Potomac River that supplies Washington, D.C. with drinking water. 

“The defectors corroborated each others’ accounts, but it’s unclear whether any caches here were ever discovered,” SpyTalk reported in 2020. “Swiss authorities reported finding a cache that had an exploding mechanism to destroy the evidence should an unauthorized person try to unearth it.” 

But back to Slow Horses. After the death of an ex-MI5 colleague from what has initially been ruled natural causes, Lamb unsurprisingly goes against the resident wisdom, convinced that the retired operative was murdered. From there, the disheveled spook hits the streets of London to track down the culprits and to resolve a nagging question. Was his colleague liquidated by a cicada? And why? 

Once again, Lamb’s support staff includes River Cartwright (Jack Lowden, Dunkirk, Mary Queen of Scots), a handsome young agent thrown into the Slough House counterintelligence purgatory because he’d screwed up on a final training exercise. Eager to redeem himself, and clearly less dysfunctional than other members of the, shall we say, eccentric Slow Horses team. Cartwright gets some sage guidance from his worldly grandfather, a retired senior MI5 official, portrayed here with magnificent precision by the always authoritative Jonathan Pryce (Game of Thrones, Wolf Hall, The Crown). The younger Cartwright feels he is chased by bad luck, relegated to Slough House unfairly. His grandfather urges patience—and caution on the cicadas case.  

The action in Slow Horses is gripping, but the portrayal of spy craft sometimes suffers in service of the story line.  How many times can a lone MI5 officer conduct clinging surveillance on a bus or a train and survive after being spotted, or use half-baked cover stories that wouldn’t survive a casual double check, or burst into a suspicious building without guns at the ready? Can it be that British gun laws allow them to be so complacent?

All the while, Lamb is jousting with his superiors at MI5, in particular Diana Taverner (the luminescent Kristin Scott Thomas), who is deputy head (Second Chair) of the domestic spy agency. She has her own set of skeletons: her ambitions for promotion to First Chair have brought her more than once to the brink of illegality and malfeasance.  A running gag in the series is her insistence that she and Lamb meet on park benches, not only for the implied operational reasons (nonsense in real spook life), but because his farts, cigarette smoke, and general overpowering odor are dispelled in the open air. 

Gary Oldman, of course, is no stranger to spy roles. The much-lauded Englishman played George Smiley in the 2011 film adaptation of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The 64-year-old actor, who could have swapped roles with Pryce in Slow Horses, hinted recently that this may be his final on-screen role. “I’ve had an enviable career, but careers wane, and I do have other things that interest me outside of acting,” he told The Times of London.  

Jackson Lamb is the creation of novelist Mick Herron, whose Slough House franchise now includes twelve books and novellas starring Lamb and the team that has been sent to MI5 purgatory. His series got off to a slow start in 2010, but recently his books have been flying off the shelves. A spot check at a local library in suburban Washington, for example, showed that all 11 copies of Slow Horses, the first book in the series,  are checked out and 69 people are in line to read it.

Each TV episode of the series, which debuted last year, ends with a cliffhanger followed by the creaking-door voice of Mick Jagger, a fan of Herron’s books and now the Apple TV+ series for which he co-wrote and sings the theme song, Strange Game.

It’s no real spoiler to say that Jackson Lamb and most of the Horses survive and will be back next year. Series three is in production now with a fourth season slated for 2023.

Makes you wonder if real intel screw ups could hang on that long.  Probably.

Peter Eisner, a SpyTalk contributing editor, is the author of three World War II nonfiction books, including MacArthur’s Spies: The Soldier, The Singer, and the Spymaster who defied the Japanese in World War II

SpyTalk is a free but subscriber-supported publication, not unlike like NPR. To support our work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Categories
Audio Sources - Full Text Articles

TC Energy restarts segment of Keystone pipeline unaffected by oil spill

2022-12-15T02:55:31Z

Canada’s TC Energy Corp (TRP.TO) is resuming operations in a section of its Keystone pipeline a week after a leak of more than 14,000 barrels of oil in rural Kansas triggered the whole pipe’s shutdown.

The company said in a statement on Wednesday that it had given notice to regulators and customers about the restart of pipeline sections unaffected by the incident. The segment of the pipeline where the incident occurred remains sealed off.

“This restart facilitates safe transportation of the energy that customers and North Americans rely on and extends from Hardisty, Alberta, to Wood River/Patoka, Illinois,” TC Energy said.

The 622,000 barrels per day (bpd) pipe has been shut since Dec. 7, when the leak was discovered. Oil sprayed nearby pastures and leaked into Mill Creek before being shut by operator TC Energy.

More than 300 people are involved in the clean-up. The timeline for the full restart of the pipeline remained uncertain, and neither a root cause failure analysis nor a full restart plan had been submitted, the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) said.

Keystone is a crucial artery shipping Canadian crude to U.S. refineries and traders have been awaiting news of when it might restart operations. The spill is the largest in nearly a decade and the clean-up operation is expected to take weeks.

The spill occurred in Washington County, Kansas, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of a junction in Steele City, Nebraska, where Keystone splits into two. Market players had speculated that TC Energy might first restart the leg of the pipeline that delivers to Patoka, Illinois.

Canadian crude prices have been relatively steady since Keystone shut down because of ample spare capacity in Alberta storage hubs, but the discount on Western Canada Select (WCS), the benchmark heavy grade, has started to creep wider as the outage drags on.

WCS for January delivery in Hardisty, Alberta, settled around $29 a barrel below U.S. crude on Tuesday, from a discount of around $27 a barrel before the leak. WCS for December delivery traded at $31.40 a barrel below U.S. crude on Wednesday, according to a Calgary broker.

WCS traded at Gulf Coast also firmed to a discount of $10.50 to U.S. crude, from minus $13 on Tuesday.

In the short term, more Canadian oil will go into storage, as alternative transportation options are limited, said Matt Murphy, director of energy research at TPH & Co.

Moving crude by rail requires a long lead time and the Enbridge Inc (ENB.TO) Mainline system is running at nearly full capacity this month, Murphy said.

The Mainline moves 3.1 million bpd of Canadian crude to refineries in the U.S. Midwest and eastern Canada. Enbridge will ration December deliveries by the most since last winter, according to company data.

Related Galleries:

Emergency crews work to clean up the largest U.S. crude oil spill in nearly a decade, following the leak at the Keystone pipeline operated by TC Energy in rural Washington County, Kansas, U.S., December 9, 2022. REUTERS/Drone Base/File Photo

Emergency crews work to clean up the largest U.S. crude oil spill in nearly a decade, following the leak at the Keystone pipeline operated by TC Energy in rural Washington County, Kansas, U.S., December 9, 2022. REUTERS/Drone Base

A satellite image shows emergency crews working to clean up the crude oil spill along Mill Creek following the leak at the Keystone pipeline operated by TC Energy, in Washington County, Kansas, U.S. December 10, 2022. Satellite image 2022 Maxar Technologies/Handout via REUTERS