U.S. celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, who committed suicide in June at age 61, posthumously earned a pair of Emmy Awards on Sunday for his work on the popular CNN food-and-travel show he hosted, “Parts Unknown.”
Bourdain was awarded one of the Emmys, the U.S. television industry’s highest honor, for outstanding writing of a nonfiction program for an episode of the series set in southern Italy that aired last November during its 10th season.
He also shared a second Emmy prize for best informational series or special in his role as host and executive producer of “Parts Unknown.”
Three more Emmys went to various other people for their behind-the-camera work on the series - in the categories for best picture editing, sound editing and best short-form nonfiction or reality series.
The awards were announced on the second night of the Creative Arts Emmys, which cover mostly secondary and technical categories and are given out in advance of the higher-profile Primetime Emmys, which will be presented on Sept. 17.
Bourdain previously won Emmys four years in a row, from 2013 through 2016, as producer and host of “Parts Unknown” in the category of outstanding informational series or special.
The series, which typically featured Bourdain sampling the local cuisine and culture of far-flung or lesser-traveled destinations around the world, earned him the prestigious Peabody Award in 2014.
Bourdain also earned several Emmy nominations as host of a cooking-themed reality competition show on ABC, “The Taste,” and won a Creative Arts Emmy for outstanding cinematography in nonfiction programming for another travel-food show of his, “No Reservations.”
Bourdain, who started his career as a dishwasher in New York restaurants and rose to become one of the world’s best-known TV chefs and food connoisseurs, once sharing a televised meal in Vietnam with then-U.S. President Barack Obama, died on June 8.
He was found hanged in his hotel room in Strasbourg, France, where he had been working on an upcoming episode of his program, which was in its 11th season at the time.
Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney and Michael Perry
California Governor Jerry Brown signed landmark legislation Monday committing his state to a 100 percent clean electricity grid by 2045.
"This bill and the executive order put California on a path to meet the goals of Paris and beyond," Brown said at a signing ceremony in state capital Sacramento.
"It will not be easy. It will not be immediate. But it must be done."
At least 20 countries and twice as many large cities have made similar pledges, but California -- the fifth largest economy in the world -- is by far the biggest jurisdiction to do so to date.
The electric sector represents 16 percent of the state's greenhouse gas emissions. More broadly, California has set ambitious goals to slash greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.
On the international stage, California has emerged as a leader on climate action as US President Donald Trump has opted out of the landmark 2015 Paris climate treaty and moved aggressively to dismantle the policies of his predecessor, Barack Obama.
"It's impossible to overstate how significant it is for a state as large and influential as California to commit to 100 percent clean energy," said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune.
"California is showing the world that a transition to 100 percent clean energy is within reach."
But Brown cautioned that reducing emissions enough to meet the Paris goal of capping global warming below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) remains a daunting task.
"Have no illusions," Brown said. "California and the rest of the world have miles to go before we achieve zero-carbon emissions."
- 'Governor Moonbeam' -
Scientists estimate that the global economy will have to become "carbon neutral" -- removing any additional CO2 put into the atmosphere -- by mid-century or shortly thereafter to avoid catastrophic climate impacts, including deadly heatwaves and superstorms engorged by rising seas.
The new bill mandates that least 60 percent of electricity will have to come from renewable energy, especially solar and wind.
This leaves the door open to power generated by nuclear reactors, geothermal sources or even natural gas, if CO2 emissions are converted into fuel or syphoned off into secure storage underground, a technology known as carbon capture and storage.
The outgoing governor, who leaves office in January, will host subnational governments, cities and businesses this week in San Francisco for the three-day Global Climate Action Summit.
Brown, 80 years old, first proposed renewable legislation 40 decades ago during his inaugural stint as California chief executive, earning him the nickname "Governor Moonbeam."
"Brown really launched the modern renewable energy industry when he was governor the first time," said Jim Williams, a professor of Energy Systems Management at the University of San Francisco and author of a seminal 2012 study that mapped the decarbonization of California's economy by mid-century.
A U.S. judge on Monday firmly rejected a bid by accused Russian agent Maria Butina to be released from jail pending trial, calling her a “very real” flight risk, and granted a prosecution request for a gag order in the high-profile case.
“I cannot envision a scenario for Ms. Butina to be released from jail,” U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said during a status hearing in the case, adding that such a move simply would result in her being “placed into a car with diplomatic tags” and whisked away to an airport for a Russia-bound flight.
Chutkan imposed a media gag order after prosecutors accused Butina’s defense attorney, Robert Driscoll, of violating court rules by speaking publicly about the evidence in ways that could taint the jury pool.
The judge said she agreed that Driscoll’s repeated comments to the news media had “crossed the line.” Chutkan also warned Driscoll to stop using “quite descriptive” and “colorful” language in the briefs he has filed with the court in the case.
The 29-year-old Butina, a former American University graduate student, was charged in July with acting as an agent of the Russian government and conspiracy to take actions on behalf of Russia. Butina has pleaded not guilty. She could face years in prison if convicted.
Her lawyers had sought Butina’s release from jail pending trial, saying she was not a flight risk. To prove it, they tried to get the judge’s permission to show video clips at the start of the hearing, including one Chutkan described as featuring Butina and her boyfriend Paul Erickson, a U.S. conservative activist, lip-syncing to the “Beauty and the Beast” theme song.
‘WHAT ON EARTH’
The judge rebuffed Driscoll’s request to show the videos, saying, “I’m not sure what on Earth the relevance is to Ms. Butina’s risk of flight.”
The judge also later said, “There is a very real risk of flight” with Butina.
Butina’s defense argued against having a gag order in light of an admission by prosecutors in a court brief filed late on Friday night that they had misinterpreted text messages and erred when they previously had accused Butina of offering sex in exchange for a position in an unidentified special interest organization.
Chutkan had harsh words for the Justice Department lawyers about the error, saying the incorrect allegations were “notorious” and damaged Butina’s reputation. The judge added that she reviewed the text messages at issue between Butina and a person identified only as “D.K.” and could tell within “five minutes” the texts were just a joke.
“It was apparent on their face,” Chutkan told the prosecutors, saying she was “concerned” that someone at the Justice Department possibly could have construed the text messages any other way.
The next hearing in the case is scheduled for Nov. 13.
Butina is accused of working with a Russian official and two unidentified U.S. citizens to try to infiltrate a U.S. gun-rights organization and influence American foreign policy toward Russia. Moscow has labeled the case against Butina “fabricated” and called for her release.
Erickson is not actually named in the criminal complaint, though he is referenced as being one of two U.S. people involved in the alleged conspiracy. He has not been charged with a crime. He has not returned calls from Reuters seeking comment.
While the gun-rights group was not identified, Butina’s social media accounts show she attended many National Rifle Association events and met with top officials of the influential lobby group that has close ties to Republican politicians including President Donald Trump.
Questions relating to Russia have cast a cloud over Trump’s presidency.
Butina’s lawyers have identified the Russian official as Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who was hit with U.S. Treasury Department sanctions in April.
The Russian central bank has declined comment on the case.
Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Will Dunham
U.S. President Donald Trump received a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un asking for a second meeting and the White House is already looking at scheduling one, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said on Monday.
The two leaders have been discussing North Korea’s nuclear program since their unprecedented June 12 summit which has been criticized for being short on concrete details about how and whether Kim is willing to give up on a nuclear weapons program that threatens the United States.
Trump told reporters on Friday that a personal letter from Kim was on the way. “It was a very warm, very positive letter,” Sanders said at a briefing.
“The primary purpose of the letter was to request and look to schedule another meeting with the president which we are open to and are already in the process of coordinating that,” Sanders said.
Sanders told reporters the letter exhibited “a continued commitment to focus on denuclearization of the peninsula.” She said a military parade in Pyongyang on Sunday was “a sign of good faith” because it did not feature any long-range nuclear missiles.
Reporting by Steve Holland, writing by Roberta Rampton; Editing by James Dalgleish
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday directed the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation to promote regulations to phase out the use of climate change pollutants called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).
The change, to be implemented from 2020-2024, is expected to reduce such emissions by more than 20 percent of projected levels by 2030, the statement said. “The regulations would prohibit specific substances for use in new consumer products.”
A group of U.S. states led by New York had, in June, sued the Environmental Protection Agency over a plan to roll back limits on the use of hydrofluorocarbons, which are used in air conditioning, refrigerants, aerosols and foam-blowing.
DEC will seek input on the proposal before drafting rules, with the intent of finalizing them in 2019.
New York’s Environmental Protection Fund includes nearly $10 million for projects to reduce HFCs and greenhouse gases.
Reporting by Eileen Soreng in Bengaluru; Editing by Richard Chang
Hurricane Florence strengthened "rapidly" on Monday and is now a powerful Category 4 hurricane, US forecasters said, as governors of three eastern US states declared an emergency and told residents to prepare for the storm.
The Atlantic hurricane's maximum sustained winds have increased to nearly 130 miles per hour (195 kilometers per hour), the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in an advisory issued at noon Eastern Time (1600 GMT).
"Florence has continued to rapidly strengthen," it said. "Florence is expected to be an extremely dangerous major hurricane through Thursday."
Florence was 575 miles (925 kilometers) south-southeast of Bermuda and the center of the hurricane was forecast to pass between Bermuda and the Bahamas on Tuesday and Wednesday, the NHC said.
It said Florence, a Category 4 storm on the five-level Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, could approach the coast of South Carolina or North Carolina on Thursday.
Storm surge and hurricane watches may be issued Tuesday morning for portions of southeastern US states, the NHC said.
Hurricane Florence has the potential to bring catastrophic flooding to areas of the eastern United States already soaked by heavy rain and may be the strongest storm to hit the region in decades.
On its current track, Florence is expected to slam the Carolinas and Virginia the hardest -- and the three states issued emergency declarations to speed preparations.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam's office described Florence as possibly the state's "most significant hurricane event in decades," and warned of "catastrophic inland flooding, high winds and possible widespread power outages."
"The largest threat to life from hurricanes is not the high winds," it said. "Flooding is the deadliest result of these storms."
The US Navy ordered ships at its major base in Hampton Roads, Virginia, to put to sea, saying "the forecasted destructive winds and tidal surge are too great to keep the ships in port."
Heavy rain in the Washington area over the weekend has already led to flooding in historic Alexandria, Virginia, local media reported, and the National Weather Service issued a flood watch for part of the Potomac River.
Florence is currently moving west at around 13 mph (20 kph), and is forecast to drench a large swath of the US East Coast running from northern Florida to New Jersey.
- Two more hurricanes -
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper's office said Florence is already being felt along the state's coast, with large sea swells resulting in life-threatening rip currents and surf.
"Everyone in North Carolina needs to keep a close eye on Florence and take steps now to get ready for impacts later this week," Cooper said.
A mandatory evacuation was ordered for residents of Hatteras Island and some other areas of Dare County in North Carolina.
The storm "is too powerful and its path is too uncertain to take any chances," South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster said, issuing his state's emergency declaration.
Florence was producing large swells expected to reach from the northern Caribbean to the southern coasts of Canada's Maritime provinces.
At this height of the Atlantic hurricane season, Florence was being trailed on east-to-west paths by two other hurricanes, Helene and Isaac.
Helene -- 375 miles (600 kms) west of the Cape Verde islands off the African coast -- had winds up to 105 mph (165 kph), and was expected to continue moving west-northwest for another couple of days, the NHC said in its 1500 GMT bulletin.
Hurricane Isaac -- which late Sunday became the fifth hurricane of the season -- is heading west towards the Caribbean.
At 1500 GMT, Isaac, which the NHC called a small hurricane, was about 1,150 miles (1,855 kms) east of the Windward Islands -- a region still recovering from last year's powerful Hurricane Maria -- with maximum sustained winds near 75 mph (120 kph).
Isaac is expected to gain strength in the next day or two before beginning to weaken mid-week when it approaches the Lesser Antilles.
Maria -- which killed at least 3,057 people, most in Puerto Rico -- is believed to be the third-costliest tropical cyclone on record.
The United States has decided to shutter the Palestinian mission in Washington in the latest move against them by President Donald Trump, a Palestinian official said Monday, denouncing what he called a "dangerous escalation".
The closure comes as Trump seeks to force the Palestinian leadership, which has cut off contact with the White House, to negotiate with his team pursuing a plan for Middle East peace -- something the US president has termed the "ultimate deal."
The United States has also been angered by a Palestinian bid to have Israel investigated for war crimes at the International Criminal Court.
Palestinian officials say the reason given for the closure was their stepped-up campaign at the ICC.
"We have been notified by a US official of their decision to close the Palestinian mission to the US," Palestine Liberation Organisation secretary-general Saeb Erekat said in a statement.
"This is yet another affirmation of the Trump administration's policy to collectively punish the Palestinian people, including by cutting financial support for humanitarian services including health and education."
- Row over ICC move -
Under longstanding American law, permission for the PLO to maintain its mission in Washington must be renewed every six months.
US officials say Palestinian leaders have breached the arrangement by calling for Israeli officials to be prosecuted at the ICC in The Hague.
The United States had already threatened to close the office in November.
The decision comes just ahead of the 25th anniversary of the first Oslo accord on September 13, which was famously sealed with a handshake on the White House lawn and raised hopes of a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Husam Zomlot, head of the PLO mission in Washington, told journalists in Ramallah that the closure was "to protect Israel from war crimes, crimes against humanity that Israel is committing in the occupied Palestinian territories."
Both Erekat and Zomlot pledged to push forward with Palestinian efforts at the ICC, where the chief prosecutor has already opened a preliminary probe into the allegations.
The White House had not yet commented on the mission's closure, but the Wall Street Journal reported US National Security Adviser John Bolton was due to announce it in a speech later Monday.
The Palestinian leadership cut off contact with the Trump administration after the US president recognised the disputed city of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December.
The Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
- 'Bullying' -
Trump has since pledged to withhold aid from the Palestinians until they return to the negotiating table.
In recent weeks, the United States has cut more than $200 million in bilateral aid to the Palestinians as well as cancelled its support for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.
In making such moves, Trump has sided with Israel on core issues in the conflict without publicly asking for any concessions in return.
Palestinian leaders see his White House as blatantly biased in favour of Israel.
"Part of it is bullying," Zomlot said in response to a question about the US strategy.
"But the main part of it is just going ahead and implementing the grocery list that was submitted to them by (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu."
The Palestinians have asked the ICC to investigate Israel on issues ranging from settlement building in the occupied West Bank to civilian casualties in the 2014 Gaza war, among others.
Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Malki visited the ICC in May and called on it to open an immediate investigation.
The ICC launched a preliminary probe in 2015 into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and the Palestinian territories, in the wake of the Gaza war.
Despite a visit to the region, the tribunal has yet to move to the next stage and open a full-blown investigation which could possibly lead to charges being brought.
Accused Russian agent Maria Butina’s lawyers were set to ask a U.S. judge on Monday to release her pending trial after prosecutors backed off their allegation that she had offered sex in exchange for a job at a special interest organization.
In a brief filed late on Sunday, Butina’s lawyers criticized the prosecution’s case for why she should remain jailed and cited a series of errors they said prosecutors have made.
Butina, 29, is set to appear before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Monday afternoon for a status hearing. The former American University graduate student was charged in July with acting as an agent of the Russian government and conspiracy to take actions on behalf of Russia. She has pleaded not guilty. She could face years in prison if convicted.
Her lawyers said prosecutors also wrongly claimed she had applied for a tourist visa after completing her graduate studies. They said she actually had applied for work authorization permission, which they called “a fact that carries a very different implication about her future plans in the United States and undermines the government’s fear of her bolting to Russia.”
Shortly before midnight on Friday, prosecutors filed a brief with the court opposing a request by Butina’s lawyers to let her out of jail, arguing she remains a serious flight risk.
In the filing, they acknowledged they may have misinterpreted text messages between Butina and a person identified by the initials D.K. that they previously had cited as evidence that she had offered sex in exchange for a position in an unidentified special interest organization. They also admitted their mistake about the tourist visa.
However, prosecutors wrote, “If the defendant is released, and she goes to the Russian embassy or consulate, she will be beyond the reach of this Court, and it will have no redress.”
Butina is accused of working with a Russian official and two unidentified U.S. citizens, trying to infiltrate a gun-rights organization in the United States and influence American foreign policy toward Russia.
The gun-rights group was not identified. However, her social media accounts show she attended many National Rifle Association events and met with top officials of the influential lobby group that has close ties to Republican politicians including President Donald Trump. The NRA did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Questions relating to Russia have cast a cloud over Trump’s presidency.
Butina’s lawyers identified the Russian official as Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who was hit with U.S. Treasury Department sanctions in April. One of the two U.S. people mentioned in the criminal complaint matches the description of Butina’s boyfriend Paul Erickson, a conservative U.S. political activist.
A magistrate judge in July ordered Butina jailed without bail pending trial after prosecutors presented evidence suggesting she had connections to Russian intelligence operatives and was being funded by Russian oligarchs.
Russia has labeled the case against Butina “fabricated” and called for her release.
The Russian central bank has declined comment on the case.
Erickson could not be immediately reached and has previously not returned calls seeking comment on the case.
Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Will Dunham
Author J.K. Rowling joined other social media users in condemning an Australian political cartoonist for his racist caricature of Serena Williams.
Mark Knight, cartoonist for Melbourne's Herald Sun newspaper, tweeted out his response to Williams' challenge of a referee at this weekend's U.S. Open final, which she lost to Naomi Osaka after she was penalized multiple times and lashed out in frustration.
The cartoonist depicted Williams with grotesquely racist features and showed her stomping on her tennis racquet and spitting out a pacifier, while the referee and opponent are depicted as calm, slender white people.
Rowling called out Knight for his racist artwork, and for inaccurately portraying the woman who won the final match and the U.S. Open title.
"Well done on reducing one of the greatest sportswomen alive to racist and sexist tropes and turning a second great sportswoman into a faceless prop," Rowling tweeted.
A Russian vaccine disinformation campaign targeting the United States and Western Europe described in a recent study is part of a chain of Russian and Soviet medical disinformation campaigns that stretches back for decades. During the Cold war the KGB fanned the flames of conspiracy theories in stories planted in obscure foreign newspapers and disseminated on shortwave radio broadcasts. Russian intelligence has updated its playbook to incorporate Twitter bots and trolls, but the motives and effects haven’t changed. The anti-vaxx project, like a global effort in the 1980s that blamed the U.S. military for the AIDS epidemic, is aimed at undermining confidence in democratic institutions and normalizing belief in irrational conspiracy theories.
Another thing hasn’t changed: spreading lies about the causes and treatment of deadly diseases causes deaths and illnesses that could have been prevented. The health of innocents is treated as collateral damage in an undeclared and unnecessary conflict.
Russia didn’t invent the vaccine controversy, but it is adapting it to its own goals. The Internet Research Agency has used the #VaccinateUS hashtag to send political messages, for example with tweets like At first our government creates diseases then it creates #vaccines.what’s next?! #VaccinateUS.
The AIDS disinformation campaign of the 1980s serves as a template for weaponizing health information and a guide to the likely course and potential impacts of the current vaccine campaign. The operation started on July 17, 1983, with a letter printed in the Patriot, a low-circulation Indian newspaper that had been set up two decades earlier with KGB funds and stayed in business through covert Soviet subsidies. The letter claimed to be from an anonymous American scientist but was actually written by the KGB. It asserted that AIDS was the result of U.S military biological warfare experiments.
Slipping disinformation into the Patriot wasn’t an unusual tactic. During the Cold War, both the KGB and the CIA co-opted newspapers in the developing world, as well as in European countries including Italy and Greece, as vectors for spreading what today would be called “fake news.”
Compared to the lightning speeds of social media, AIDS disinformation spread glacially. It took two years, until October 1985, for the lies in the Patriot letter to be replicated in print, this time in Moscow’s Literaturnaya Gazeta newspaper. At that point something absolutely critical happened. In the 20th century’s version of going viral, hundreds of newspapers and magazines around the world with no obvious connections to the Soviet government began reporting and embellishing the story. Dozens of variants appeared, all claiming that AIDS was a deliberate plot or an accidental byproduct of U.S. biological war research. Many pushed the notion that HIV didn’t cause the disease, and that AIDS drugs were a conspiracy by big pharma and the CIA to impoverish and poison poor people in developing countries.
These ideas took hold in the American Left. For example, CovertAction Information Bulletin, a magazine published in Washington, DC by allies of a Philip Agee, a CIA defector, promoted pseudo-scientific arguments about the provenance of AIDS.
From the KGB perspective, the high point of the campaign came on March 30, 1987, when CBS News anchor Dan Rather reported Soviet claims that AIDS had been developed in a U.S. military lab – and did not include any rebuttal from the U.S. government.
The propaganda contributed to a massive public health disaster. South African President Thabo Mbeki cited Soviet sources when he rejected the scientific consensus that the HIV virus caused AIDS. Mbeki’s decision to reject the use of effective drugs led to over 300,000 preventable deaths.
Facing its own AIDS epidemic, the Soviet Union eventually discontinued the AIDS propaganda campaign. It was impossible, however, to reverse the harm it had caused, or to recall AIDS myths that had taken on a life of their own.
Similarly, even if Russia’s intelligence services instructed the Internet Research Agency and other Kremlin-directed propaganda operations to switch off the vaccine disinformation campaign, it would be impossible to reverse the damage that has already been done. Measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases are on the rise in Western Europe, and parts of the U.S. are at great risk because the number of vaccinated children has fallen below levels required to maintain population immunity.
In addition to Twitter and Facebook, the Russian government has deployed its television network, RT, to spread and legitimize messages from anti-vaxxers. While RT has a small audience, its programs are archived on YouTube, where they are only a click away from anxious parents seeking information about vaccine safety.
Beyond the use of the Internet, there are important differences between Russia’s vaccine propaganda and the USSR’s AIDS campaign. While the AIDS initiative clearly originated in Moscow, and the outbreak of fake news can be traced to a specific point in time, vaccine skepticism has a long history that is independent of Russian intelligence.
In another departure from the AIDS disinformation campaign, Russia is playing both sides of the controversy, matching vitriolic anti-vaxx messages with equally blunt pro-vaccine tweets. This makes sense because Russia’s goals have nothing to do with vaccines or health. The idea is to tear apart Russia’s adversaries by creating false controversies that pit citizens against each other. As more people are drawn into believing in irrational conspiracies they turn away from the fundamental institutions that are the foundations for democratic societies.
A 24-year-old man killed his wife, three toddlers and mother-in-law at their suburban family home, where he remained for several days before turning himself in, Australian police said Monday.
The alleged murders are the third such family tragedy to rock Western Australia state in recent months.
Police charged Anthony Robert Harvey with the murders of his two-year-old twins Alice and Beatrix, his three-year-old daughter Charlotte and his 41-year-old wife Mara in the southwestern city of Perth.
Harvey, who lived in the home, is also alleged to have killed his mother-in-law Beverley Quinn, 73, after she arrived at the same address the next day.
Western Australia Police Commissioner Chris Dawson told reporters no firearms were used in the attacks which police believe were carried out with several weapons including "a blunt instrument and knives".
"We're alleging that the murders took place over two days," he said.
"The mother Mara and her three children were all murdered over a period of time on the third (of September), and that Mrs Quinn was murdered the following morning."
Dawson said the two women were allegedly attacked in the kitchen while the children were killed "in other rooms of the house".
"We are alleging that Mr Harvey remained at the... house for some days" before heading north, he added.
Police found the bodies of the five victims at the unassuming detached family home after Harvey walked into a police station in a remote mining area some 1,500 kilometres (900 miles) north of the city on Sunday -- a week after their deaths.
A Facebook profile believed to be Mara's showed her cradling a newborn in her arms, with a man reported to be Harvey beside her, and stated that she was engaged in August 2014.
A real estate listing showed a modest three-bedroom house and a standalone garage.
- 'Her girls were her world' -
Mara Harvey's sister Taryn, also Quinn's daughter and the children's aunt, wrote about her heartbreak at the killings.
"There are no words to explain the emptiness and loss that we are feeling," she wrote in a statement released by police late Monday, adding that Mara's young children "were her world" and she was "so proud of each of them".
"This world is a sadder place with the loss of these five beautiful people but Heaven has gained five new angels."
Earlier a friend of Mara's told Fairfax Media she was "pretty unlucky in love before she met him... so (when they got together) it was like 'yay, now she gets to start a family'".
A neighbour told national broadcaster ABC he had returned from a holiday to "silence in the street".
"We noticed that the house next door was pretty quiet, which was unusual," said Richard Fairbrother, who lives next door to the family's house.
"We could hear and see the kids playing in the backyard quite often."
Other neighbours spoke of a shocked community that had been close, calm and peaceful.
Dawson said it was the third tragedy involving multiple deaths in a family home in his state since May.
In July a man allegedly killed his mother and two siblings. A grandfather shot dead his wife, daughter and her four children in a murder-suicide in May.
Harvey is expected to return to court on September 19.
Nations on either side of the whale hunting debate are set for a standoff as the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meets Monday, with Japan hoping to overturn the 32-year-old ban on commercial whale hunting.
Japan will unveil proposals during the meeting in Florianopolis, Brazil, that outraged conservationists say are a blatant attempt to overturn the hunting moratorium that has largely held together since 1986.
"If Japan's proposals were accepted it would once again be open season on whales, so this is the most dangerous and reckless attempt to bring back commercial whaling that we have seen in decades," said Claire Bass, head of Humane Society International UK.
Japan, which exploits a moratorium loophole to hunt whales for "scientific purposes," argues that recovering stocks of some species justifies a return to "sustainable whaling."
Brazil is instead trying to rally anti-whaling nations behind a "Florianopolis Declaration," which states that commercial whaling is no longer a necessary economic activity, favoring increased investment in whale watching.
"Our challenge at this meeting is whether we can bridge the two different ideas or find a situation where we can agree to disagree so that we can see the future rather than just fighting each other," Joji Morishita, the incoming Japanese commission chairman, told AFP
Other key issues being discussed in the week-long meeting are risks to whales of human-made underwater noise pollution, ship strikes, climate change and fishing gear entanglement.
Nations opposed to whaling plan to renew a long-standing proposal for the creation of a South Atlantic Whale Sanctuary, after previous proposals were knocked down by the pro-whaling lobby.
The Japanese delegation argues that stocks of Minke whales and other species have recovered, and proposes setting new catch quotas "for species whose stocks are recognized as healthy by the IWC's scientific committee."
- Rule change -
Among Japan's proposed reforms is a rule change that would allow decisions to be made by simple majority vote, doing away with the current practice of a three-quarters majority being needed.
Japan says the commission's decision making ability is hampered by this rule, because of the rift between supporters and opponents of whaling.
It also wants to set up a "Sustainable Whaling Committee" which would create catch-quotas for nations wishing to allow their nationals to hunt healthy whale populations for commercial purposes.
It would commit the IWC to re-establish commercial whaling quotas from 2020. Under its scientific whaling program, Japanese fishermen harpooned 333 Minke whales this year.
Iceland and Norway are the only countries that allow commercial whaling and are likely to come under renewed pressure at the IWC meeting, which runs until Friday.
"This meeting is critical," said Patrick Ramage of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
"Member countries must stand together and push progress towards whale protection, not let this commission be pulled back into the bygone era of commercial whaling."
Conservation groups are opposed to a proposal before the IWC to increase annual whale kill quotas for countries where aboriginal subsistence hunting is practiced, including the United States, Russia, Greenland and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
The IWC, set up in 1946, meets every two years. The African island nation of Sao Tome and Principe recently became the body's 89th member.
The New York Times recently published an anonymous op-ed from a “senior official” in the Trump administration. In the op-ed, the unnamed author describes President Donald Trump as “impetuous, adversarial, petty, and ineffective.” He or she depicts a White House in which the author – together with like-minded colleagues – work to undermine the president’s “half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless” decisions.
A tweet from the president, in what appears to be in reference to the op-ed, asked: Treason?
Some commentators, making clear that they had difference of opinion with President Trump’s policies, nonetheless, condemned the author for writing the piece – and for working to undermine the decisions of a sitting president.
Steven Pike, a former diplomat in both the Obama and Bush administrations, for example, wrote that the legal remedy for a genuinely incapacitated president involves the use of the 25th Amendment. As Pike observes, if the author believes the president is genuinely not up to the job, then the available recourse is to follow the Constitution, not to “improvise.”
Regardless of its legality, as a scholar who studies political ethics, I would argue the decision to write this op-ed is likely unethical, and could set a dangerous precedent.
Norms of democracy
Democratic institutions require a great many people to do particular jobs - the author of the op-ed included.
He or she serves within a system of defined responsibilities, in which he or she has access to power only because the President has chosen to give it. To refuse to do what that job demands - which includes, in this case, keeping secrets and helping the president achieve his goals - violates the moral norms of professional ethics.
The op-ed, moreover, seems intended to embarrass a sitting president, and to make it more difficult for him to govern.
This seems, to put it mildly, undemocratic. Whatever else is true, the president was elected, and the one who is resisting him from within was not.
Is this civil disobedience?
One could, perhaps, argue that the author is following the American tradition of civil disobedience. Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst, famously leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, breaking the law in doing so. He wanted to demonstrate that the Johnson administration had been systematically lying to the American public.
Ellsberg defended himself by using the example of America’s best-known advocate of civil disobedience – Martin Luther King Jr. In King’s letter from Birmingham Jail, King argued that citizens had a moral duty to resist unjust laws, and cited St. Augustine to add that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
The author might try to use these ideas to defend his or her decisions. I do not think the attempt would succeed.
Martin Luther King Jr. with President Lyndon B. Johnson. King said citizens had a duty to resist unjust laws, but that had to be done openly.
King insisted that lawbreaking must be open, and that the lawbreaker must be ready to accept punishment. That was because the law of a democratic society deserves our respect, and ignoring that law with impunity undermines that law’s authority. Thus, King allowed himself to face unjust imprisonment.
The same was true for Ellsberg, who voluntarily provided his name to the authorities, and was subsequently charged with espionage and conspiracy.
In the present case, as we know, the author decided to hide his or her name, and continues to serve in the Trump administration. He or she is unwilling to risk either imprisonment or unemployment. For King, one cannot make this choice. Respectful disobedience to democratic law is possible, but it necessarily involves taking responsibility for that disobedience, and allowing the law to take its course.
The actions that the author describes as “resistance” to the president’s wishes are similarly covert. They have been hidden – at least until now – both from the public and from the president himself.
Both King and Ellsberg broke laws to create public discourse. They sought to focus public attention on particular forms of evil, so as to begin the process of holding that evil to account. The publication of the op-ed, however, does not do the same. If anything, by highlighting the author’s methods of resistance, it will make such resistance more difficult in the future.
Refusal to comply
The author could seek a more radical principle to justify his or her decisions. Perhaps the author’s resistance could be morally justified based on a theoretical approach such as that offered by Arthur Applbaum, a political philosopher at Harvard.
Applbaum has argued that disobedience by officials might be morally legitimate, when that disobedience prevents them from complicity in serious injustice. Applbaum rests his analysis on the limits of what he calls role morality.
The defense lawyer, for instance, does not directly seek justice – her role is to defend her client, and she must assume that the system as a whole will produce justice. When she cannot make that assumption, though – when the system begins to produce profound injustice – Applbaum argues she cannot comply with the moral requirements of the role.
The author of the op-ed could make a similar claim for his or her deviation from the rules of the role they play within the White House. If the author believes that President Trump represents a danger to the United States, it could allow the author to listen to the commands of conscience, rather than the constraints of the job and make the decisions that were made in this case.
Setting a precedent
Even here, though, there are some grave ethical concerns.
The foremost of these is that Applbaum’s justification would only work if the disobedience would actually result in more justice. The permission to break the rules in the name of ethics - whether that involves resisting the president, or breaching confidentiality by writing about that resistance - is not a permission to make a bad situation worse.
Commentators have already noted, however, that this might be exactly what the publication of this op-ed will do. Things may be worse in the White House after this op-ed. They may, in fact, be worse because of this op-ed. The op-ed complains of President Trump’s irrationality and paranoia. Publishing the op-ed is unlikely to reduce either.
Another risk to note is that this extraordinary decision by a senior official to undermine his or her own administration sets a precedent. It announces that this sort of thing can be done, because it has been done.
President Trump’s political opponents have responded to the op-ed with mixed emotions. Jennifer Holdsworth, a Democratic strategist, said that the author of the op-ed was “extremely brave” but also that it was setting a “dangerous precedent.”
Both of Holdsworth’s reactions, in my view, are right.
