The Full Belmonte, September 4, 2022
Leak ruins NASA moon rocket launch bid; next try weeks away
By MARCIA DUNN
“CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s new moon rocket sprang another dangerous fuel leak Saturday, forcing launch controllers to call off their second attempt this week to send a crew capsule into lunar orbit with test dummies. The inaugural flight is now off for weeks, if not months.
The previous try on Monday at launching the 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System rocket, the most powerful ever built by NASA, was also troubled by hydrogen leaks, though they were smaller. That was on top of leaks detected during countdown drills earlier in the year.
After the latest setback, mission managers decided to haul the rocket off the pad and into the hangar for further repairs and system updates. Some of the work and testing may be performed at the pad before the rocket is moved. Either way, several weeks of work will be needed, according to officials.
With a two-week launch blackout period looming in just a few days, the rocket is now grounded until late September or October. NASA will work around a high-priority SpaceX astronaut flight to the International Space Station scheduled for early October.” Read more at AP News
Trump moves to general election mode with Pennsylvania rally
By MARC LEVY and JILL COLVINtoday
“WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — Larry Mitko voted for Donald Trump in 2016. But the Republican from Beaver County in western Pennsylvania says he has no plans to back his party’s nominee for Senate, Dr. Mehmet Oz — ‘no way, no how.’
Mitko doesn’t feel like he knows the celebrity heart surgeon, who only narrowly won his May primary with Trump’s backing. Instead, Mitko plans to vote for Oz’s Democratic rival, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a name he’s been familiar with since Fetterman’s days as mayor of nearby Braddock.
‘Dr. Oz hasn’t showed me one thing to get me to vote for him,’ he said. ‘I won’t vote for someone I don’t know.’
Mitko’s thinking underscores the political challenges facing Trump and the rest of the Republican Party as the former president shifts to general election mode with a rally Saturday night in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the first of the fall campaign.
While the rally was organized to bolster Oz and Doug Mastriano, the GOP’s hard-line nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, it was Trump’s first rally since the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago club, and Trump spent part of the evening railing against it.
He called it ‘one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history’ and ‘a travesty of justice.’
‘They’re trying to silence me and more importantly they’re trying to silence you. But we will not be silenced, right?’ Trump said.
Investigators recovered thousands of documents in the search, including more than 100 with classified and top secret markings.
Trump’s endorsed picks won many Republican primaries this summer, but many of the candidates he backed were inexperienced and polarizing figures now struggling in their November races. That’s putting Senate control — once assumed to be a lock for Republicans — on the line.
In addition to Oz, among the others are author JD Vance in Ohio, venture capitalist Blake Masters in Arizona and former football star Herschel Walker in Georgia.
‘Republicans have now nominated a number of candidates who’ve never run for office before for very high-profile Senate races,’ said veteran Republican pollster Whit Ayres. While he isn’t writing his party’s chances off just yet, he said, ‘It’s a much more difficult endeavor than a candidate who had won several difficult political races before.’” Read more at AP News
Texas governor says rape victims can prevent pregnancy by taking Plan B
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said rape victims in the state can prevent pregnancies by using emergency contraception pills such as Plan B, The Dallas Morning News reported Friday.
In Texas, abortions are banned and do not include exceptions for rape or incest.
Late last month, a so-called ‘trigger law’ went into effect following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade earlier this year. The trigger law makes it a felony to perform an abortion in the state with narrow exceptions when the pregnant person’s life is at risk.
‘We want to support those victims, but also those victims can access health care immediately, as well as to report it,’ Abbott told The Dallas Morning News and KXAS-TV’s ‘Lone Star Politics ‘in a segment obtained by the Morning News that will air on Sunday.
‘By accessing health care immediately, they can get the Plan B pill that can prevent a pregnancy from occurring in the first place,’ he added.
Plan B is an oral contraceptive that is taken within 72 hours of unprotected sex or a ‘contraceptive accident’ to prevent pregnancy, according to the product’s website. The pill prevents an egg from being released from the ovary to prohibit fertilization.” Read more at The Hill
Crash threat over Mississippi skies ends with pilot’s arrest
By EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS and NIKKI BOERTMAN
“RIPLEY, Miss. (AP) — An airport worker who knew how to take off but not land stole a small airplane Saturday and threatened to crash it into a Walmart, circling for five hours over unnerved Mississippians before ending the flight safely in a soybean field where police arrested him.
Cory Wayne Patterson, 29, was uninjured after the rough landing shortly after posting a goodbye message to his parents and sister on Facebook, authorities said at a news conference. The message said he ‘never actually wanted to hurt anyone.’
After an anxious morning of watching the plane’s meandering path overhead, Tupelo Mayor Todd Jordan called the resolution ‘the best case scenario.’
No one was injured.
Patterson was employed fueling planes at the Tupelo Regional Airport, giving him access to the twin-engine Beechcraft King Air C90A, police Chief John Quaka said.
It was not immediately known why, shortly after 5 a.m., the 10-year Tupelo Aviation employee took off in the fully fueled plane. Fifteen minutes later, Patterson called a Lee County 911 dispatcher to say he planned to crash the plane into a Tupelo Walmart, Quaka said. Officers evacuated people from the Walmart and a nearby convenience store.” Read more at AP News
Chile Votes on Constitution That Would Enshrine Record Number of Rights
In a single ballot on Sunday, Chileans will decide on abortion, universal health care, rights for nature and a record expansion of constitutional rights.
“SANTIAGO, Chile — Voters in Chile on Sunday could transform what has long been one of Latin America’s most conservative countries into one of the world’s most left-leaning societies.
In a single ballot, Chileans will decide whether they want legal abortion; universal public health care; gender parity in government; empowered labor unions; greater autonomy for Indigenous groups; rights for animals and nature; and constitutional rights to housing, education, retirement benefits, internet access, clean air, water, sanitation and care ‘from birth to death.’
It is perhaps the most important vote in the 204-year history of this South American nation of 19 million — a mandatory, nationwide plebiscite on a written-from-scratch constitution that, if adopted, would be one of the world’s most expansive and transformational national charters.
After three years of protests, campaigning and debate, the country’s future boils down to a simple, single question: Approve or reject?
If voters approve the text, Chile, which legalized divorce only in 2004, would suddenly have more rights enshrined in its constitution than any other nation. If they reject it, Chile would have little to show for what had once been seen as a remarkable political revolution.
Now, it appears the sweeping ambition of Chile’s proposed constitution could also be its downfall.
Many Chileans worry that the new charter would too drastically change their country, and their concerns have been amplified by confusion over the details, uncertainty over the impact and rampant misinformation.
‘How the hell do you vote on a constitution with 388 articles?’ said Gabriel Negretto, a political science professor in Chile who has studied constitutional reforms across the world. ‘You are overwhelming voters.’
Chile fits into a recent trend of new constitutions providing more human rights than older charters, Mr. Negretto said. The three current constitutions with the highest number of rights, Ecuador, Bolivia and Serbia, were all enacted since 2006.
If voters reject the proposed Chilean constitution, it would be a major setback for the new administration of President Gabriel Boric, a tattooed, 36-year-old former student-protest leader who took office in March, but has quickly faced plummeting approval ratings amid rising inflation and crime. The constitution would enable Mr. Boric to carry out his leftist vision, while rejection could mire his term in more political fighting about what to do next.
A year ago, most Chileans would have bet that the country would embrace the proposed constitution. There has long been widespread discontent with the current constitution, which has roots in the brutal dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who ruled from 1973 until 1990.
In 2019, nationwide protests that left 30 people dead led Chile’s political leadership to grant a referendum on the constitution. A year later, nearly four out of five Chileans voted to replace it.
But now polls suggest that Chileans will reject the replacement. In May, details emerged about the sheer scope of the final proposal, and since then, ‘rechazo,’ or reject in Spanish, has had a consistent and sizable edge in polls over ‘apruebo,’ or approve.
‘I’m waking up at 5 in the morning. I’m very stressed,’ said Claudia Heiss, a political science professor at the University of Chile who helped the government create the process to draft a new text.
‘I think that ‘rechazo’ will win,’ she added. ‘And all of this will be for nothing.’
Still, there is a wild card. Since, unlike other elections, Sunday’s vote is mandatory, with a minimum penalty of $30 for failing to cast a ballot, voter turnout could break records.
A rejection of the proposed constitution would be a huge historical exception. Over the past 230 years, 93 percent of the 179 national plebiscites on new constitutions have been accepted, according to an analysis by Zachary Elkins and Alex Hudson, two political scientists.” Read more at New York Times
Gorbachev buried in Moscow in funeral snubbed by Putin
By JIM HEINTZ and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOVyesterday
“MOSCOW (AP) — Russians who came for a last look at former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Saturday mourned both the man and his policies that gave them hope. President Vladimir Putin claimed to be too busy to attend.
Gorbachev, who died Tuesday at age 91, launched drastic reforms that helped end the Cold War. But he also precipitated the breakup of the Soviet Union, which Putin had called the 20th century’s ‘greatest geopolitical catastrophe.’
The farewell viewing of his body in an ostentatious hall near the Kremlin was shadowed by the awareness that the openness Gorbachev championed has been stifled under Putin.
‘I want to thank him for my childhood of freedom, which we don’t have today’ said mourner Ilya, a financial services worker in his early 30s who declined to give his last name.
‘I am a son of perestroika,’ he said, using the Russian word for Gorbachev’s reform, or reconstruction, initiatives.
I’’d like us to have more people like him in our history,’ said another mourner, Yulia Prividennaya. ‘We need such politicians to settle the situation in the world when it’s on the verge of World War III.’
After the viewing, Gorbachev’s body was buried next to his wife Raisa in Novodevichy cemetery, where many prominent Russians lie, including the post-Soviet country’s first president, Boris Yeltsin, whose struggle for power with Gorbachev sped up the collapse of the Soviet Union.
MIKHAIL GORBACHEV
The procession that carried the coffin into the cemetery was led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, editor of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, Russia’s last major Kremlin-critical news outlet before it suspended operations in March. Gorbachev used funds from his own Nobel prize to help start the paper.
The Kremlin refusal to formally declare a state funeral reflected its uneasiness about the legacy of Gorbachev, who has been venerated worldwide for bringing down the Iron Curtain but reviled by many at home for the Soviet collapse and the ensuing economic meltdown that plunged millions into poverty.
On Thursday, Putin privately laid flowers at Gorbachev’s coffin at a Moscow hospital where he died. The Kremlin said the president’s busy schedule would prevent him from attending the funeral.” Read more at AP News
How Fake GPS Coordinates Are Leading to Lawlessness on the High Seas
A technology enabling the transmission of fake locations to carry out murky or even illegal business operations could have profound implications for the enforcement of international law.
“The scrappy oil tanker waited to load fuel at a dilapidated jetty projecting from a giant Venezuelan refinery on a December morning. A string of abandoned ships listed in the surrounding turquoise Caribbean waters, a testament to the country’s decay after years of economic hardships and U.S. sanctions.
Yet, on computer screens, the ship — called Reliable — appeared nearly 300 nautical miles away, drifting innocuously off the coast of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. According to Reliable’s satellite location transmissions, the ship had not been to Venezuela in at least a decade.
Shipping data researchers have identified hundreds of cases like Reliable, where a ship has transmitted fake location coordinates in order to carry out murky and even illegal business operations and circumvent international laws and sanctions.
The digital mirage — enabled by a spreading technology — could transform how goods are moved around the world, with profound implications for the enforcement of international law, organized crime and global trade.” Read more at New York Times
Barbara Ehrenreich, Explorer of Prosperity’s Dark Side, Dies at 81
Her book ‘Nickel and Dimed,’ an undercover account of the indignities of being a low-wage worker in the United States, is considered a classic in social justice literature.
“It was a casual meeting.
Over salmon and field greens, Barbara Ehrenreich was discussing future articles with her editor at Harper’s Magazine. Then, as she recalled, the conversation drifted.
How could anyone survive on minimum wage? She mused. A tenacious journalist should find out.
Her editor, Lewis Lapham, offered a half smile and a single word reply: ‘You.’
The result was the book ‘Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America’ (2001), an undercover account of the indignities, miseries and toil of being a low-wage worker in the United States. It became a best seller and a classic in social justice literature.
Ms. Ehrenreich, the journalist, activist and author, died at 81 on Thursday at a hospice facility in Alexandria, Va., where she also had a home. Her daughter, Rosa Brooks, said the cause was a stroke.
Working as a waitress near Key West, Fla., in her reporting for ‘Nickel and Dimed,’ Ms. Ehrenreich quickly found that it took two jobs to make ends meet. After repeating her journalistic experiment in other places as a hotel housekeeper, cleaning lady, nursing home aide and Wal-Mart associate, she still found it nearly impossible to subsist on an average of $7 an hour.
Every job takes skill and intelligence, she concluded, and should be paid accordingly.
One of more than 20 books written by Ms. Ehrenreich, ‘Nickel and Dimed’ bolstered the movement for higher wages just as the consequences of the dot-com bubble snaked through the economy in 2001.
‘Many people praised me for my bravery for having done this — to which I could only say: Millions of people do this kind of work every day for their entire lives — haven’t you noticed them?’ she said in 2018 in an acceptance speech after receiving the Erasmus Prize, given to a person or institution that has made an exceptional contribution to the humanities, the social sciences or the arts.
Barbara Alexander was born on Aug. 26, 1941, in Butte, Mont., into a working-class family. Her mother, Isabelle Oxley, was a homemaker; her father, Benjamin Howes Alexander, was a copper miner who later earned a Ph.D. in metallurgy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and became director of research at Gillette.
Ms. Ehrenreich noticed those millions throughout a writing career in which she tackled a variety of themes: the myth of the American dream, the labor market, health care, poverty and women’s rights. Her motivation came from a desire to shed light on ordinary people as well as the ‘overlooked and the forgotten,’ her editor, Sara Bershtel, said in an email.
Having grown up steeped in family lore about the mines, Ms. Ehrenreich recalled thinking it was normal for a man over 40 to do dangerous work and be missing at least a finger.
‘So to me, sitting at a desk all day was not only a privilege but a duty: something I owed to all those people in my life, living and dead, who’d had so much more to say than anyone ever got to hear,’ she wrote in the introduction to ‘Nickel and Dimed.’
Both of her parents were heavy drinkers. In a 2014 memoir, she described her mother’s wrath as the ‘central force field’ of her childhood home. She believed that her mother’s death, from a heart attack, had been induced by an intentional overdose of pills.
Ms. Ehrenreich graduated from Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1963. She received a Ph.D. in cell biology in 1968 from Rockefeller University in New York, where she met her first husband, John Ehrenreich.
After her studies, she became a budget analyst for New York City and then a staff member at the New York-based (and now defunct) nonprofit Health Policy Advisory Center in 1969. In 1971 she began working as an assistant professor in the Health Sciences Program at the State University of New York, Old Westbury. But the social and political upheaval of the 1960s awakened her anger and fueled her desire to write.
Her first book, ‘Long March, Short Spring: The Student Uprising at Home and Abroad’ (1969), co-written with Mr. Ehrenreich, grew out of her anti-Vietnam War activism. Their second book, ‘The American Health Empire: Power, Profits and Politics,’ was published the next year.
Ms. Ehrenreich quit her teaching job in 1974 to become a full-time writer, selling a number of articles to Ms. magazine in the 1970s.
Numerous critically acclaimed books followed, including ‘The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment’ (1983), ‘Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class’ (1989), ‘The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed’ (1990) and ‘Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War’ (1997).
It was her firsthand reporting in ‘Nickel and Dimed,’ however, that resonated with working Americans and became a turning point in her career.” Read more at New York Times
Earnie Shavers, Hard-Punching Heavyweight, Is Dead at 78
He won 68 bouts by knockout and fought some of the biggest names in boxing. He lasted 15 rounds against Muhammad Ali. But he never won a championship.
“Earnie Shavers, who was regarded as one of the hardest punchers in boxing history, but who failed in his two quests to capture a world heavyweight championship in the 1970s, died on Thursday in Virginia, a day after his 78th birthday.
The Associated Press said it had been informed of Shavers’s death, at the home of one of his daughters, by his close friend Kenny Rainford, a British former boxer. Rainford, whose aunt was married to Shavers for a decade, did not cite the cause but said that Shavers had ‘slowed down all of a sudden.’
Shavers won 74 bouts, 68 by knockouts, lost 14 and fought to one draw in a professional career that lasted from 1969 to 1995.
The boxing publication The Ring recently ranked Shavers as the seventh-greatest puncher of all time.” Read more at New York Times
Jane Fonda says she has cancer, is dealing well with chemo
FILE - Jane Fonda arrives at the Season 7 final episodes premiere of "Grace and Frankie," on April 23, 2022, at NeueHouse Hollywood in Los Angeles. The 84-year-old actor said in an Instagram post Friday, Sept. 2, 2022, that she has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and has begun a six-month course of chemotherapy. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Jane Fonda said on social media Friday that she has cancer.
‘So, my dear friends, I have something personal I want to share. I’ve been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and have started chemo treatments,’ the 84-year-old actor wrote in an Instagram post.
‘This is a very treatable cancer,’ she added, ‘so I feel very lucky.’
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a cancer that begins in the white blood cells and affects parts of the body’s immune system.
Fonda acknowledged that unlike many, she is privileged to have insurance, and access to the best doctors and care.
‘Almost every family in America has had to deal with cancer at one time or another and far too many don’t have access to the quality health care I am receiving and this is not right,’ she said.
Fonda said she has begun a six-month course of chemotherapy, is handling the treatments well, and will not let it interfere with her climate activism.” Read more at AP News