WASHINGTON: The Republicans’ tax package would boost traditional forms of energy such as oil and gas while also supporting renewable energy such as wind and solar power — and even extend a hand to buyers of electric cars.
An agreement by House and Senate negotiators would open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, while preserving tax credits for wind power and other clean energy. The bill also would extend a tax credit of up to $7,500 for purchases of plug-in electric vehicles such as the Tesla Model 3 and Chevrolet Bolt.
Republicans rolled out the bill late Friday.
Opening the remote Arctic refuge to oil and gas drilling is a longtime Republican priority that most Democrats fiercely oppose. The 19.6-million-acre refuge in northeastern Alaska is one of the most pristine areas in the US and is home to polar bears, caribou, migratory birds and other wildlife.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and other Republicans say drilling can be done safely with new technology, while ensuring a steady energy supply for West Coast refineries.
Murkowski, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said opening the refuge to drilling is “the single-most important step we can take to strengthen our long-term energy security and create new wealth.”
The House and Senate are expected to vote on the $1.5 trillion tax legislation next week as GOP leaders push the most sweeping rewrite of the tax code in more than three decades.
The bill preserves a phase-out of tax incentives for both the solar and wind industries passed in 2015. Tax credits for wind are set to expire in 2020, and solar credits in 2022.
The wind-energy credits are popular with some Republicans, including Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who worked to defend them after they were curtailed in a version passed by the House.
Electric cars comprise just about 1 percent of sales nationwide, but several states have mandates that such “zero emission vehicles” make up a much larger portion of vehicle sales. Manufacturers worry that eliminating the tax credit would have made those targets virtually impossible to meet.
The Arctic refuge has been the focus of a political fight for nearly four decades. Former President Bill Clinton vetoed a GOP plan to allow drilling in the refuge in 1995, and Democrats led by Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell defeated a similar plan in 2005.
Most congressional Republicans support the drilling plan, including veteran Alaska Rep. Don Young, one of the plan’s negotiators. Young called drilling “crucially important to the nation” and said it would decrease US dependence on foreign oil and create jobs for Alaskans.
Democrats and environmental groups say the GOP plan risks spoiling one of the nation’s most pristine areas and is especially unwise at a time when US oil production is booming, with imports declining and exports reaching record levels.
Lawmakers “do not need to ruin a wildlife refuge and an ecosystem that is intact just to give tax breaks to big corporations,” Cantwell said. “We can do better than this.”
US Republican tax bill boosts oil, gas drilling and renewable energy
US Republican tax bill boosts oil, gas drilling and renewable energy
Italy blames badly drafted ICC warrant for Libyan suspect’s release
- Justice Minister Carlo Nordio told parliament Wednesday that Najim had been arrested on a warrant “that I do not hesitate to define as characterised by inaccuracies “
- Najim was freed after an appeals court refused to validate his arrest
ROME: Italy’s government shifted blame Wednesday for its much-criticized release of a Libyan war crimes suspect to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which it said had presented a poorly written arrest warrant.
Osama Almasri Najim, the head of Libya’s judicial police, was arrested in the northern Italian city of Turin on January 19 on an ICC warrant, only to be released and flown home to Tripoli two days later on an Italian air force plane.
Opposition parties have denounced the decision to free a man wanted on charges including murder, rape and torture relating to his management of Tripoli’s Mitiga detention center.
Justice Minister Carlo Nordio told parliament Wednesday that Najim had been arrested on a warrant “that I do not hesitate to define as characterised by inaccuracies, omissions, discrepancies and contradictory conclusions.”
Najim was freed after an appeals court refused to validate his arrest.
The justice minister said the court had noted discrepancies concerning dates within the arrest warrant, with crimes attributed to Najim in places dated to February 2011 and others to February 2015.
“An irreconcilable contradiction emerges regarding an essential element of the criminal conduct of the arrested person, regarding the time of the crime committed,” said Nordio, citing “patent, gross and serious contradictions” within the warrant.
The ICC six days later sent a “corrected version” of the arrest warrant, Nordio said, including the dissenting opinion of a judge who had questioned a lack of jurisdiction by the court.
AFP asked for comment from the ICC, but did not immediately receive a response.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni revealed last week that she, Nordio and Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi were under investigation over the case.
A complaint had been made to a Rome prosecutor, who passed it onto the special court that considers cases against ministers.
Elly Schlein, leader of the center-left opposition Democratic Party, said Wednesday that Italy’s “international credibility has been tarnished” by the case.
And she called again for Meloni to come to parliament herself to explain what she said was the government’s “deliberate choice... to free and escort home a Libyan torturer.”
“What kind of country do we want to be, colleagues? On the side of the tortured or on the side of the torturers?” Schlein asked in parliament.
Piantedosi spoke to MPs shortly after Nordio, where he repeated that once Najim had been released from custody, he was deemed too dangerous to remain in Italy.
He denied suggestions that Italy had bowed to pressure from Libya in repatriating Najim.
Some opposition politicians have alleged the suspect was sent home to avoid jeopardizing relations with Libya.
Italy has a controversial agreement dating from 2017 with the UN-backed Libyan government in Tripoli in which Rome provides training and funding to the Libyan coast guard for help deterring the departures of migrants, or returning those already at sea back to Libya.
“I deny in the most categorical manner that... the government received any act or communication that could even remotely be considered a form of undue pressure,” Piantedosi said.
Belgian police hunting two suspects after Brussels metro shooting
- Police initially launched a manhunt in the tunnels of the metro system
- Broadcaster VRT said the shooting was probably drug-related and said the shooters
BRUSSELS: Belgian police were hunting two suspects on Wednesday after a shooting near the Brussels South international railway station, the city’s prosecutor’s office said.
Nobody was injured in the shooting, which happened around 6.00 am (0500 GMT), at the Clemenceau metro station in central Brussels, prosecutors said, adding there were no indications of a terrorist motive in the incident.
Police initially launched a manhunt in the tunnels of the metro system, which was partially closed after two men carrying machine guns were seen fleeing into the Clemenceau station.
Broadcaster VRT said the shooting was probably drug-related and said the shooters had aimed at one person but had missed.
VRT showed on its website images of two people walking into Clemenceau metro station in central Brussels and opening fire with automatic weapons. The station along with several others around the station were shut for hours after the incident.
Another video showed a large group of heavily armed police assembling at the Clemenceau station, as a massive search for the suspects got underway.
The incident crippled traffic on the heavily used metro system in Brussels, which hosts many European Union institutions and NATO’s headquarters.
By 2 p.m. (1300 GMT) the whole city metro system had reopened, including the stations around the Gare du Midi international train station, the arrival point for Eurostar trains from Paris and London.
Ukraine brings back 150 POWs in latest swap with Russia, Zelensky says
- “Some of the boys were held captive for more than two years,” Zelensky said
KYIV: Ukraine has brought back 150 troops from Russian captivity, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday, announcing the latest prisoner swap with Russia.
“All of them are from different sectors of the front... Some of the boys were held captive for more than two years,” he said on the Telegram messaging app.
Frenchman returns home after Indonesian death row reprieve: airport source
- Serge Atlaoui, 61, was to be driven from the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris to court and then on to jail
- Atlaoui’s lawyer Richard Sedillot has said he would work to have his client’s sentence “adapted” so that the father of four could be released
Atlaoui’s lawyer Richard Sedillot has said he would work to have his client’s sentence “adapted” so that the father of four could be released
BOBIGNY, France: A Frenchman reprieved after 18 years on death row in Indonesia for alleged drug offenses landed back in France on Wednesday, an airport source said.
Serge Atlaoui, 61, was to be driven from the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris to court and then on to jail, according to a source close to the case and the prosecutor’s office in the nearby town of Bobigny.
Under an agreement last month between both countries for his transfer, Jakarta has left it to the French government to grant him either clemency, amnesty or a reduced sentence.
France abolished capital punishment in 1981.
A prosecutor in Bobigny would inform Atlaoui “of his imprisonment in France in execution of his sentence,” the public prosecutor’s office there said before he landed.
He will then immediately be taken to prison, it added.
Atlaoui’s lawyer Richard Sedillot has said he would work to have his client’s sentence “adapted” so that the father of four could be released.
Atlaoui was arrested in 2005 at a factory in a Jakarta suburb where dozens of kilogrammes of drugs were discovered, with Indonesian authorities accusing him of being a “chemist.”
A welder from Metz in northeastern France, he has always denied being a drug trafficker, saying that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylic factory.
Atlaoui had left Jakarta for Paris on Tuesday evening on board a KLM flight via Amsterdam.
His return was made possible after an agreement between French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin and his Indonesian counterpart, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, on January 24.
In the agreement, Jakarta said it had decided not to execute Atlaoui and authorized his return on “humanitarian grounds” because he was ill.
Atlaoui was tight-lipped and wore a face mask at a news conference at Jakarta’s main airport, after he was driven there in a black van from the capital’s Salemba prison and handed over to French police officers.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws and has executed foreigners in the past.
The Southeast Asian country has in recent weeks released half a dozen high-profile detainees, including a Filipino mother on death row and the last five members of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug ring.
According to French association Ensemble contre la peine de mort (“Together Against the Death Penalty“), at least four other French citizens are on death row around the world: two in Morocco, one in China, and a woman in Algeria.
Philippine lawmakers vote to impeach VP Sara Duterte
- Duterte is first sitting vice president to face impeachment in Philippine history
- Final decision to remove her from office is now with the upper house
MANILA: The Philippine House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte, following a petition signed by the majority of legislators.
House of Representatives Secretary-General Reginald Velasco told a plenary meeting of the lower house that more than two-thirds of lawmakers had endorsed a complaint seeking to remove Duterte from office.
“The total number of House members who verified and swore before me this impeachment complaint is 215 House members,” he said.
In the Philippines, an impeachment complaint requires at least one-third of support from the 306-member House of Representatives before it can be transmitted to the upper house, where the 23 senators would serve as jurors in a process that could result in Duterte’s removal from office and her lifetime disqualification from holding office.
“There is a motion to direct the secretary-general to immediately endorse to the Senate … the motion is approved. The secretary-general is so directed,” House Speaker Martin Romualdez said.
Duterte is the first sitting vice president to face impeachment in the country’s history. She has been embroiled in a row with Marcos, following the collapse of a powerful alliance between their families that brought them a landslide victory in the 2022 election.
She has faced at least four impeachment complaints by a number of legislators and activist groups over a range of issues, including a death threat that she publicly made against Marcos, his wife and the House speaker last year, betrayal of public trust, as well as misusing millions of dollars in public funds.
The daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte has consistently denied wrongdoing, describing the moves against her as a political vendetta.
She is expected to stay in office until the Senate delivers its judgment. A trial date has not yet been set.
