Maine Announces $65 Million Relief Fund For Organic Farmers Impacted by PFAS Pollution
Maine has announced a plan to create a $65 million relief fund for organic farmers whose livelihood is being devastated by plastic pollution from per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
PFAS are common environmental pollutants dubbed “forever chemicals.” These harmful chemicals are used to make different environmental and consumer products like firefighting foams and nonstick products. PFAS has long been a cause for concern due to its widespread presence in soil, water, food and even human blood.
For farming, one main source of PFAS is the use of sewage waste as fertilizer. During wastewater treatment, solids are separated from liquids, and the resulting “biosolids” are sold as fertilizer. These biosolids can contain PFAS, as the chemicals are not effectively removed during the treatment process. The extent of PFAS contamination on farmland in the country remains unknown. However, a 2022 estimate by the Environmental Working Group suggests that almost 20 million acres of American cropland are fertilized with sewage sludge. (Related: PFAS in biosolids fertilizer sparks damages lawsuit.)
Maine, being one of the only two states in the U.S. where PFAS testing is required, has discovered that most of its agricultural lands, even organic farms, suffer from PFAS contamination.
Jun Buckle and Hannah Hamilton, owners of an 18-acre organic vegetable farm in Unity, Maine, were among the first to discover the devastating impact of PFAS on their operations. They started their organic vegetable farm more than a decade ago to meticulously grow healthy produce. But everything turned upside down after their well water, used to wash and irrigate their vegetables, tested positive for PFAS contamination. The contamination has been linked to PFAS-laced sewage sludge used as fertilizer nearby years ago.
The results forced them to temporarily stop farming activities as they grappled with cleanup efforts and protecting their land from future contamination.
Similarly, Katia Holmes and her husband faced a crisis at their 700-acre Misty Brook Farm in Albion, Maine, in 2023. PFAS tests on their cows’ milk and hay revealed high PFAS levels. The tests reveal that 20 years ago, the previous owner of their land had spread sewer sludge on certain fields, which, in turn, left PFAS in the soil. The Holmes,’ like the Buckles, had to cease milk production and undergo a lengthy process to mitigate PFAS contamination on their farm.
To date, Maine has already found PFAS chemicals on at least 73 farms and still plans to investigate hundreds more sites.
Maine’s PFAS fund to expand support for affected farmers
In response to the debilitating situation, the government of Maine has allocated $65 million to go toward a PFAS fund. Of the $65 million, $60 million will come from the state and $5 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The fund will allow the state to greatly expand the support it already offers farmers, providing farmers who have lost revenues due to PFAS pollution an additional 12 months of lost income for a total of two years worth of support.
The fund will also contribute towards research to help farmers make informed decisions and give struggling farmers the option to sell their PFAS-contaminated land to the state “at fair market value, as if there was no contamination,” said Beth Valentine, director of the PFAS fund, during a hearing with the Maine Legislature.
The fund is expected to keep evolving through the years. One proposal that is yet to be implemented is for the fund to support medical monitoring efforts for impacted farmers.
“It is important that farmers are not held responsible for the presence of PFAS chemicals, which they did not produce or intentionally use,” said Courtney Briggs, senior director of government affairs at the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Watch this video about forever chemicals being detected in the water systems of nearly 2,800 U.S. cities.
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Canada to Stop Arms Sales to Israel
Canada will halt future arms sales to Israel, Foreign Minister Melanie Joly told the Toronto Star on Tuesday.
The statement came after the parliament passed a resolution on the matter amid a growing push among MPs to condemn Israel’s military operation against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, which has entered its sixth month.
Despite the non-binding nature of the document, Joly confirmed that the government will cease the transfer of weapons to Israel. “It is a real thing,” she said, answering a reporter’s question.
The parliamentary motion was part of a larger vote originally put forward by the minority left-leaning New Democrats (NDP), who pitched it as a way to revive peace talks and support the Palestinians. The resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza was passed on Monday after MPs agreed to tone down its language and include a demand that Hamas “must lay down its arms.”
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The document calls on Ottawa to “cease the further authorization and transfer of arms exports to Israel,” the CBC reported on Tuesday. The original text demanded the suspension “of all trade in military goods and technology with Israel.”
The resolution also calls for “the establishment of the State of Palestine as part of a negotiated two-state solution.”
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Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz condemned Joly’s remarks on X (formerly Twitter), arguing that the refusal to sell weapons “undermines Israel’s right to self-defense against Hamas terrorists.” He added that “history will judge Canada’s current action harshly.”
Hamas launched a series of raids on Israel on October 7, killing more than 1,100 people and taking more than 200 hostages. Israel’s subsequent military operation in Gaza has killed nearly 32,000 Palestinians, according to the local health authorities.
Despite the mounting international calls for a lasting ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated on Tuesday that the Israel Defense Forces will continue their advance on Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, which he described as a stronghold of the militants. “We do not see a way to eliminate Hamas militarily without destroying these remaining battalions,” he told legislators.
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AI-Generated Deepfakes Are Beginning to Sway Public Opinion All Over The World
Artificial intelligence-generated deepfakes are beginning to sway public opinion all over the world.
Creating fake photos, videos or audio clips used to require considerable resources in terms of time, technical expertise and finances. But the advent of AI has drastically lowered these barriers, providing anyone with malicious intent and a smartphone with the power to manipulate public opinion.
The sophistication of AI-generated content makes it more challenging to discern fact from fiction, making it harder to combat misinformation.
The implications of AI deepfakes on elections are multifaceted. For instance, pro-European President Maia Sandu of Moldova has found herself at the center of a disinformation storm as AI deepfakes falsely depict her endorsing a political party aligned with Russia.
Rumeen Farhana, an opposition lawmaker and a vocal critic of the ruling party in Bangladesh, also faced a similar case last year, when an AI-generated deepfake video showed her wearing a bikini. The deeply conservative Muslim nation of Bangladesh went wild with fury, discrediting Farhana’s image.
Meanwhile, in Slovakia, just days before the national elections, AI-generated audio recordings impersonated a liberal candidate discussing plans to raise beer prices and rig the election. Fact-checkers scrambled to identify them as false, but people still shared them on social media as if they were real. (Related: Google’s AI is completely fabricating fake quotes to smear truth-tellers.)
In other words, AI-generated deepfakes can be used to smear or bolster a candidate’s image, manipulate voter sentiment and erode trust in democratic institutions.
Henry Ajder, an expert in generative AI based in England, stated that, as AI-generated disinformation campaigns become increasingly sophisticated and widespread, the question now is not whether AI deepfakes could influence elections but rather how influential they will become.
“You don’t need to look far to see some people being clearly confused as to whether something is real or not,” said Ajder.
Expert expects a “tsunami of misinformation” as U.S. elections near, thanks to AI
With the U.S. presidential election coming up in November, experts warn that more AI-generated deepfakes are likely to emerge.
“I expect a tsunami of misinformation,” said Oren Etzioni, an artificial intelligence expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Washington. “I can’t prove that. I hope to be proven wrong. But the ingredients are there, and I am completely terrified.”
Deepfakes have started making their way into experimental presidential campaign ads. Etzioni said the scope for misinformation is vast, from fabricating political statements to simulating crises such as medical emergencies or acts of violence.
“You could see a political candidate like President [Joe] Biden being rushed to a hospital,” he said. “You could see a candidate saying things that he or she never actually said. You could see a run on the banks. You could see bombings and violence that never occurred.”
These fake tools could target specific groups and spread false messages about voting. For instance, they could send convincing text messages, spread wrong information about voting processes on WhatsApp in different languages, or create fake websites that look like the official website of a government organization.
“Everything that we’ve been wired to do through evolution is going to come into play to have us believe in the fabrication rather than the actual reality,” said misinformation scholar Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
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‘Losing a War is No Fun’: West Ignores Their ‘Biggest Political Disaster
Russia’s economy has survived Western sanctions “far better” than predicted, recent reports show. Meanwhile, the European Union’s (EU) economy has been suffering drastically, causing working class voters to turn against aid for Ukraine.
The Greanville Post published an article on Tuesday which claims the European Union has become the site of the 21st century’s “biggest political disaster”. The article writes that Paris, France—which once saw leftist planning agendas filled with “protests, gatherings and strikes”—now seems to be a city where there is little talk of the “economic, political and confidence collapse” of the biggest economic bloc in the world.
Daniel Lazare, an independent investigative journalist and author, sat down with Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Tuesday and discussed the recent piece.
“Well, I think Europe is losing the war,” said Lazare. “And losing a war is no fun. The situation in Ukraine is going very poorly. Russia clearly is winning, its economy is doing very well. The European economy, by contrast, is stalling. And if Russia does make progress in the war, if the Ukraine government breaks in some way, then the results for Europe will be devastating.”
“I mean, this is not a faraway war for [the EU]. It’s a faraway war for America. But it’s a war on the doorstep of the EU. And the prospect of a Ukrainian collapse would cause panic in Poland, but also in Berlin and Paris, and Macron has been making crazy noises about sending troops to Ukraine, which is completely nuts. But then again, the guy is desperate and doesn’t know quite how to respond. And, the same kind of desperation is evident in other capitals as well,” he added.
Sputnik’s Garland Nixon noted that European governments have not done a “good job” of trying to convince their public that they have to suffer and sacrifice for the “democracy of the neo-Nazis”.
“The US is also quite confident that, as you said, the ruble will be turned to rubble, the Russian economy would be smashed, that they’d be, you know, they’d be closed out of the energy market and would be crying for mercy very soon,” said Lazare of the West’s attacks on Russia’s economy. “But that didn’t happen. Quite the reverse. Russia was able to find outlets for its oil and gas. It developed markets with China and other nations. The US has wound up shooting itself in the foot. And the amazing thing is that this keeps happening again and again.”
Sputnik’s Wilmer Leon added that the reason French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz don’t want to address the collapse of their biggest economic bloc in the world is because it was done at the “behest of the United States”.
“The US really engineered this war,” said Lazare. “I don’t want to let France and Britain off the hook because they were solidly behind US efforts, but this is an American-led effort which really installed a nationalist government in Kiev, which was itching for a fight with Russia, which got one and then, followed by a full scale military invasion in February 2022.”
“The US thought it would win that war easily,” he continued. “But now the war is going very poorly. And it turns out that the US really had a very poor idea of what it was getting into. Now, the problem is that the US will not suffer the consequences anywhere near to the degree the Europeans will.”
“So, it’s a case that they followed the US, they tag along happily behind it, and now they’ve got to pay the price for their own behavior. It’s crazy, and I do agree that there’s going to be a reckoning.”
The EU’s working class is growing increasingly opposed to conflict with Russia as their economy suffers from Western imposed sanctions which saw them lose access to cheap and reliable Russian energy. The economic growth forecast for Germany, for instance, was cut down to 0.2% in 2024 from a previous projection of 1.3%, according to a recent report. Robert Habeck, Germany’s Vice-Chancellor, has said the country is performing “dramatically bad.”
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Previously-Deported Ecuadorian Who Strangled Newborn to Death Caught In New York
A previously-deported illegal alien from Ecuador who strangled her own newborn to death was arrested in New York last week, according to authorities.
On Monday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the apprehension of 33-year-old Maria Oliva Guaman upon her release from the New York State Department of Corrections after serving prison time for felony manslaughter of a newborn.
Guaman first entered the United States at a unknown location at an unknown time before being removed from the country on January 14, 2009.
She reentered the U.S. undetected before being arrested by police in Spring Valley, NY, on December 10, 2013, for murdering her own baby.
“On Sept. 15, 2014, the Rockland County, New York Supreme Court convicted her of manslaughter, a felony, in violation of section 125.20 of the New York State Penal Law and sentenced her to 12 years imprisonment,” ICE explained in a press release.
On April 8, 2014, Guaman was separately convicted of illegal reentry in a United States District Court and sentenced to time served.
“The absolute heinous nature of the crime cannot be overstated as this woman strangled her newborn baby to death and tossed him in a dumpster,” said ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) New York City Field Office Director Kenneth Genalo. “ERO NYC will seek to effect her removal to Ecuador.”
?ERO New York City arrests previously removed Ecuadorian citizen convicted of manslaughter of newborn.
Read more: https://t.co/0SsDpqK21q#ERONYC #PublicSafety pic.twitter.com/OSt7Of1EXR— ERO New York City (@ERONewYork) March 19, 2024
Guaman is being held without bond pending removal proceedings.
Authorities continue to catch dangerous foreign criminals illegally present in the U.S.
Earlier this month, a Guatemalan citizen who entered the U.S. as an ‘unaccompanied minor’ and was later ordered deported was arrested in Florida for sex crimes in Oregon.
Last month, a known MS-13 gang member with three prior deportations who is wanted for murder in his home country of El Salvador was arrested by ICE agents in Foxboro, MA.
Weeks ago, another MS-13 gangbanger from El Salvador with multiple convictions for sex crimes in the U.S. was arrested in Riverdale, Maryland.
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Ukrainian Region Honors Former Waffen-SS Fighter
Ternopol Region in western Ukraine announced on Tuesday that it had decorated Yaroslav Hunka, the World War II Nazi soldier once cheered by lawmakers in Ottawa. The medal was presented on Hunka’s 99th birthday to his great-niece.
Hunka served in the 14th Waffen SS division, which was made up of Ukrainian volunteers and was responsible for atrocities against Poles, Jews, and the Soviet resistance.
Ternopol official Oleg Sirotyuk handed the ‘Yaroslav Stetsko’ medal for service to Hunka’s relative, Olga Vitkovska, with the expectation that she will eventually present it to her great-uncle in Canada.
The regional council had voted to give Hunka the medal on February 6, citing his “significant personal contribution to the provision of assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, active charity and public activity,” according to a document quoted by the Ukrainian outlet Suspilne.
A week after that, Canada refused Russia’s request to extradite Hunka, who has been charged with genocide for his role in World War II.
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Hunka was a guest of honor at the Canadian Parliament last September, during the visit by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Then-speaker Anthony Rota introduced him as “a Canadian hero” who “fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians,” after which Hunka received two standing ovations.
Multiple Jewish groups, as well as Russia, Poland, and the UN, condemned the incident. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau deflected blame for the affair onto Rota, who had to resign.
About a month after the incident, Moscow charged Hunka with genocide and issued a warrant for his arrest. Russian diplomats have pointed to the incident as proof of “strong influence” of neo-Nazi ideology in Canada.
Ternopol Region is part of Galicia, the historical province that the 14th Waffen-SS division was named after. It had previously been ruled by Poland and Austria-Hungary.
Yaroslav Stetsko was a senior member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) led by Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis during the early stages of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
Stetsko was the head of Bandera’s Nazi-aligned ‘Ukrainian National Government’, proclaimed on June 30, 1941 in German-occupied Lviv. Adolf Hitler, however, refused to recognize the OUN-B government and had its members arrested.
After the war, Stetsko fled to the West and became the leader of OUN-B, as well as a prominent anti-Communist activist. In 1983, he was received at the White House and honored as the “last premier of a free Ukrainian State,” in the words of then-President Ronald Reagan.
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