Clean-up crews worked on Monday to contain the damage from an oil spill off the coast of California that dumped up to 3,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific Ocean and has closed the beach in a community known as “Surf City”.
The spill on Saturday is thought to have been caused by a broken pipeline connected to an offshore platform owned by Houston-based Amplify Energy.
Shares in Amplify, which closed its production and pipeline operations in the Beta Field where the oil was pumped, fell by 43.8 per cent to $3.23 on Monday.
Huntington Beach, about 40 miles south of Los Angeles and home of the US Open of Surfing, was hit hardest. Mayor Kim Carr said 13 square miles of ocean and coastline were covered in oil and that an “ecological disaster” was unfolding. Dead fish and birds have washed up on the beach, which the mayor warned could be closed for months.
Oil was also threatening to wash ashore further south in Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, some of the most expensive coastline in the country.
Michelle Steel, a Republican congresswoman from the Orange County district that includes Huntington Beach, has asked the Biden administration to issue a disaster declaration. Orange County was once a bedrock of the Republican party but has recently handed important victories to the Democrats.
The spill has cast a spotlight on the risks posed by California’s ageing offshore oil and gas infrastructure. There are 23 oil and gas platforms operating in federally controlled waters more than three miles off the California coast, most of which have been running for more than 40 years, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a US agency.
The Beta Field facilities were built in the late 1970s and early 1980s and the area today produces about 3,600 barrels a day of oil.
Amplify has been cited for dozens of environmental infractions over the years, including 72 “incidents of non-compliance” that were serious enough to force the company to shut down equipment on the platform, according to federal regulatory data.
Martyn Willsher, Amplify chief executive, told a press conference on Monday that an anchor from a ship was “one of the distinct possibilities” for the cause of the spill.
He said his company would pay for the clean-up. “Whatever needs to be done, we’ll take care of it . . . We have significant insurance, in addition to our funds on hand,” he said.
New offshore leasing and drilling in state-owned waters was halted after a spill in Santa Barbara, California that was the largest in the country when it took place in 1969.
Willsher told analysts in August that the company planned to drill two new wells at its field in the fourth quarter of this year, saying the “strong commodity price environment” meant the project could yield “significant free cash flow”. US crude hit a seven-year high on Monday.
Amplify is the successor company to Memorial Production Partners, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early 2017 after an earlier oil price downturn.
California, home to one of America’s early oil booms in the 1920s, has reported declining crude output for years but remains the seventh-largest producer in the US, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Environmentalists said the spill should accelerate California’s efforts to halt oil production.
Two California lawmakers, US senator Dianne Feinstein and congressman Jared Huffman, introduced legislation this year seeking to ban oil and gas drilling in federal waters such as at the Beta Field.
In April, Gavin Newsom, California governor, asked the state’s Air Resources Board to develop a plan to phase out oil extraction across the state by no later than 2045. His administration has sought to halt issuance of permits for hydraulic fracturing, a technique for extracting oil and gas, by January 2024.
Officials are now looking to California’s waters for their potential to produce wind power. In May, the Biden administration started to push forward plans to lease two large areas off the northern California coast to offshore wind development.
Amplify’s largest shareholder is Avenue Capital Group, an investment firm co-founded by billionaire investor Marc Lasry, which owned a stake of 7 per cent, according to recent regulatory filings.
Taiwan has urged Beijing to stop "irresponsible provocative actions" after 56 Chinese warplanes entered its air defence zone on Monday - the largest ever reported incursion by China's air force.
Taiwan called Beijing the "chief culprit" for recent tensions.
But China has blamed the United States for increased agitations with Taiwan.
China sees democratic Taiwan as a breakaway province, but Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state.
The island has been complaining for more than a year about China's air force repeatedly flying nearby.
Since Friday, China has sent almost 150 aircraft into Taiwan's defence zone.
The latest mission included 34 J-16 fighters and 12 nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, which all flew in an area near the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands, according to a map provided by the Taiwanese government.
Four more Chinese fighters were spotted late on Monday, taking the total to 56 aircraft in one day.
Taiwan's top China policy-making body, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), accused Beijing of "seriously damaging the status quo of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait".
"We demand the Beijing authorities immediately stop its non-peaceful and irresponsible provocative actions," MAC spokesman Chiu Chui-cheng said in a statement.
"China is the culprit for causing tensions between the two sides of the (Taiwan) Strait and it has further threatened regional security and order," he added, saying Taiwan "will never compromise and yield" to threats.
In response, China accused Washington of being the provocateurs, while warning against supporting Taiwanese independence.
"Engaging in Taiwan independence is a dead end. China will take all steps needed and firmly smash any Taiwan independence plots," the ministry said.
"China's determination and will to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity is unwavering."
The US should stop supporting and "inflating" Taiwan separatist forces, it added.
China and Taiwan: The basics
Why do China and Taiwan have poor relations? China and Taiwan were divided during a civil war in the 1940s, but Beijing insists the island will be reclaimed at some point, by force if necessary
How is Taiwan governed? The island has its own constitution, democratically elected leaders, and about 300,000 active troops in its armed forces
Who recognises Taiwan? Only a few countries recognise Taiwan. Most recognise the Chinese government in Beijing instead. The US has no official ties with Taiwan but does have a law which requires it to provide the island with the means to defend itself
Car crash death of Swedish artist who survived murder attempts after drawing Mohammed may have been caused by burst tyre – but cops can't explain why police protection officer was driving at 100mph
Lars Vilks, 75, died in a crash after his car veered onto the other side of the road
Investigators believe a tyre may have burst on the police protection car
But they do not know why it was travelling an estimated 100mph in a 68mph area
Swedish police investigating the car crash death of a controversial artist who had survived multiple assassination attempts after drawing a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed cannot explain why his car was travelling so fast.
Lars Vilks, 75, was killed Sunday when the police car he was travelling in veered onto the wrong side of the road and collided with a truck.
Both vehicles caught fire and the truck driver, 45, was taken to hospital with serious injuries, while the two police protection officers and Vilks were all killed.
Investigators believe there were no external influences that led to the death of the artist and say the crash may have been caused by a burst tyre.
But they are unable to explain why the car was travelling at around 100mph, witnesses say, in a 68mph zone.
Lars Vilks, 75, was killed Sunday when the police car he was travelling in veered onto the wrong side of the road and collided with a truck
Investigators believe there were no external influences that led to the death of the controversial artist
Police chief Carina Persson said: 'Normally, you must follow the speed limits and traffic rules that apply.
'In some situations, the police have the opportunity to drive at other speeds, in urgent cases and urgent service.'
Asked whether there was any indication why the car would have been in a rush, Ms Persson replied: 'I have no such information.'
Police say at present, there is nothing to suggest the crash was anything other than an accident.
Investigators have found remains of a tyre on the road before the car veered through the metal barriers on the central reservation, into the path of the truck.
The car carrying Mr Vilks was reportedly travelling at a high speed before it veered into the other lane and collided with the truck, becoming wedged underneath it. Both vehicles caught fire (pictured)
They believe the size of the car, weighing an estimated 4.5 tonnes, helped it push through the crash barrier which is normally meant to prevent such incidents occurring.
A police probe is still looking into whether there was any foul play, while another investigation is focusing on gross negligence by the police driver.
The car was being followed by another police escort car, whose officers are being interviewed as witnesses.
Stefan Sinteus, head of the regional investigation unit, said: 'We do not yet know the reason why the bodyguard car has crossed the wrong lane.
A police probe is still looking into whether there was any foul play, while another investigation is focusing on gross negligence by the police driver
'We have found tyre remains, so we are looking at the possibility if there could have been a tyre explosion or similar.'
The truck driver, 45, remains in hospital with serious injuries.
The collision occurred just before 3pm in Markaryd, in the province of Kronoberg, Sweden.
National Police Chief Anders Thornberg said: 'It is with dismay and great sadness that I received the news that our two colleagues and our security person died this afternoon.
'My thoughts go out to their relatives, families, friends and co-workers.
'I am also in contact with the police in the region to make sure that they get the support they need.'
The relatives of Mr Vilks and the two officers have been notified.
The truck driver was airlifted to hospital by helicopter, where he will be questioned by police over what happened.
The section of the road has reportedly been rebuilt several times in recent years to improve traffic safety.
Vilks was largely unknown outside Sweden before 2007, when he drew a sketch of Mohammed with a dog's body.
Dogs are considered unclean by conservative Muslims and Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favourable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.
Al-Qaeda put a bounty on Vilks' head. In 2010, two men tried to burn down his house in southern Sweden.
Since that time, Vilks was forced to live under police protection, 'due to the fact that he made use of his freedom of expression and his artistic freedom,' Lind said Monday.
Over the years he continued to face death threats.
In 2014, a woman from Pennsylvania pleaded guilty in a plot to kill him.
The following year, a free-speech seminar that Vilks attended in Copenhagen, Denmark, was attacked by a lone gunman who killed a Danish film director and wounded three police officers.
Pakistani protesters shout anti-Swedish slogans during a protest in Lahore against Vilks
Vilks, who was widely believed to have been the intended target of that 2015 attack, was whisked away unharmed by bodyguards. The gunman later killed a Jewish security guard outside a synagogue and wounded two more officers before he was killed in a firefight with police.
Born in 1946 in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, Vilks worked as an artist for almost four decades and rose to fame for challenging the boundaries of art through several controversial works.
His most famous pieces included 'Nimis' - a sculpture of driftwood built without permission in Sweden's Kullaberg nature reserve - as well as Prophet Muhammad drawings, including the one that showed the prophet as a dog.
Vilks initially planned to display the drawing at an exhibit at a Swedish cultural heritage center, but the drawing was removed over security concerns.
It went largely unnoticed until a Swedish newspaper printed the drawing with an editorial defending freedom of expression.
Several of his works, including driftwood sculptures and Mohammad drawings, including the one showing the Muslim prophet's head on the body of a dog, are currently on display in Warsaw, Poland.
The works are being shown as part an exhibition curated by a right-wing director that aims to challenge left-wing political correctness.
Prominent members of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government, donors to his party and family members of the country’s powerful military generals have moved millions of dollars of wealth through offshore companies, a new investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) alleges.
Khan, who rose to power in 2018 on the back of promises to arrest Pakistan’s “corrupt” political elites, was not personally named in the newly leaked documents, dubbed the Pandora Papers, which were released late on Sunday.
Two members of Khan’s cabinet – Water Resources Minister Moonis Elahi and Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin – were prominent in the leaks, alongside more than 700 other Pakistani citizens, including family members of several high-ranking military officials, donors to Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party and opposition political leaders’ families.
The ICIJ’s investigation is based on more than 11.9 million confidential files leaked from 14 offshore financial services firms.
Ownership of offshore holding companies is not illegal in most countries, and does not indicate wrongdoing, but the instrument is frequently used to avoid tax liability or to maintain secrecy around large financial transactions.
Khan on Sunday said his government would “investigate all our citizens mentioned in the Pandora Papers [and] if any wrongdoing is established we will take appropriate action”.
We welcome the Pandora Papers exposing the ill-gotten wealth of elites, accumulated through tax evasion & corruption & laundered out to financial "havens". The UN SG's Panel FACTI calculated a staggering $7 trillion in stolen assets parked in largely offshore tax havens.
The revelations about the large financial transactions of former members of Pakistan’s military offer a rare glimpse into the wealth of those belonging to an institution that has ruled the country for almost half of its 74-year history.
The military is also “the largest conglomerate of business entities in Pakistan, besides being the country’s biggest urban real estate developer and manager, with wide-ranging involvement in the construction of public projects”, according to a 2021 United Nations report.
The ICIJ leak named five former high-ranking military officers, including a former air force chief and two lieutenant-generals in the army, as being linked to large offshore investments in property and commercial enterprises.
Ministers in the crosshairs
Finance Minister Tarin has denied any wrongdoing in his being named as the director and beneficial owner of Triperna Inc, a holding company established in the Seychelles in 2014, saying that the company was to be used for an investment transaction into a bank that he owned which did not take place.
Pakistan’s Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin is named in the leaks and has denied any wrongdoing [File: Farooq Naeem/AFP]
“No account was opened, no transactions were made,” he told Pakistani television channel Geo News on Sunday night, following the revelations.
“Before it could happen there was a bomb blast in Karachi, and Tariq bin Laden [the potential investor, a Saudi national] became disinterested in our bank.”
Tarin said the company never held any assets and was closed soon thereafter.
The case of Moonis Elahi, Pakistan’s current water resources minister, appears to be more complicated, with the ICIJ investigation alleging Elahi sought to invest $5.6m from an alleged loan scandal into a trust through international financial services provider Asiaciti Trust in January 2016.
Asiaciti Trust accepted Elahi as a client a month later, despite a risk assessment commissioned by the company identifying his involvement in “several corrupt land development projects” during his time as a provincial politician in Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province.
Elahi’s father, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, is one of the province’s highest profile politicians, and had previously served as chief minister of Punjab in the military government of General Pervez Musharraf.
The Elahis served as key allies of Musharraf throughout his tenure, until he resigned in 2008, and were frequently accused of involvement in multimillion-dollar corruption.
In 2007, authorities found that the Bank of Punjab, owned by the then Elahi-led provincial government, had reportedly issued $608m in unsecured loans, many to companies owned by the families or friends of political leaders or to the bank’s own directors. When the loans were not recovered, the provincial government paid to bail out the bank.
The $5.6m transaction proposed by Elahi to Asiaciti Trust was allegedly made from proceeds from Bank of Punjab loans, ICIJ says.
Asiaciti Trust proposed Elahi invest the money in a vehicle that would own two properties in the United Kingdom, and also identified the Pakistan-based RYK sugar mill as a potential investment.
Ultimately, however, Elahi backed out of the deal when Asiaciti Trust said they would have to inform Pakistan’s tax authority, the Federal Board of Revenue, about the transaction, records show.
In 2017, public records show Elahi’s wife used a UK shell company to transfer a London apartment, valued at $8.2m, to a woman named Mahrukh Jahangir for no monetary exchange. A woman with the same name as Jahangir appears on public documents as a 9.4 percent shareholder in RYK Mills, ICIJ reported.
Elahi denies any wrongdoing, and a spokesperson for the minister, whose Pakistan Muslim League-Q is a PTI coalition partner, blamed the allegations on “political victimisation”.
PM Khan’s backers
Elahi and Tarin were not the only high-ranking members of PM Khan’s PTI party to be named in the Pandora Papers.
Others whose holdings have been exposed include the son of the prime minister’s former finance and revenue adviser Waqar Masood Khan, the brother of Industries Minister Khusro Bakhtyar, and former water resources minister, Faisal Vawda.
Omer Bakhtyar, the minister’s brother, was shown to have transferred a $1m apartment in the Chelsea area of London to his mother through an offshore company in 2018, the same year Khan’s PTI swept to power.
Two key financial backers of Khan’s PTI party were also named in the Pandora Papers: disgraced banker Arif Naqvi and prominent businessman Tariq Shafi.
Naqvi, a major donor to Khan’s 2013 election campaign, transferred ownership of three luxury apartments, a country estate and a suburban London property in the UK, to an offshore trust operated by Deutsche Bank in 2017, the files show.
Naqvi has subsequently been charged by US prosecutors with more than $400m in fraud, and is facing extradition to that country while resident in the UK.
Shafi, another large PTI donor, was shown to hold $215m through offshore companies, according to the Pandora Papers.
Rare military revelations
The Pandora Papers also offer a rare glimpse into the wealth held by former members of the country’s powerful military, which has used the alleged corruption of civilian political leaders to justify seizing power three times in the country’s history.
The Pandora Papers show that in 2007, the wife of Lieutenant-General Shafaat Ullah Khan, a prominent general and key ally of then-President General Musharraf, acquired a $1.2m apartment through an offshore transaction.
Shah denied any wrongdoing in responses to the ICIJ.
Major-General Nusrat Naeem, a former director-general of counterintelligence at Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), owned a company in the British Virgin Islands that was registered in 2009, shortly after he retired.
Naeem was later accused of $1.7m in fraud related to the purchase of a steel mill. The case was dropped and he denies any wrongdoing.
Raja Nadir Pervez, a retired army lieutenant-colonel and former government minister, is shown to have owned a British Virgin Islands-registered company that has been related to major transactions “in machinery and related businesses to India, Thailand, Russia and China”, the ICIJ says.
“Records show that in 2003, Pervez transferred his shares in the company to a trust that controls several offshore companies,” the ICIJ reported. “One of the trust’s beneficiaries is a British arms dealer.”
Following his retirement, Pervez transitioned to politics, first being elected to parliament in 1985. In 2013, Pervez joined Imran Khan’s PTI party.
Other military-linked Pakistanis to be named in the Pandora Papers include two sons of former Pakistani Air Force chief Abbas Khattak, who in 2010 registered a British Virgin Islands company; and the daughter of a retired lieutenant-general who owns two apartments in one of London’s most expensive neighbourhoods through an offshore trust.
A Swedish artist who sketched the Prophet Muhammad's head on a dog's body has died in a traffic accident, according to local media.
Lars Vilks was reportedly travelling in a civilian police vehicle which collided with a truck near the town of Markaryd in southern Sweden.
Two police officers were also killed and the truck driver was injured.
Vilks, 75, lived under police protection after being subjected to death threats over the cartoon.
The cartoon, published in 2007, offended many Muslims who regard visual representation of the Prophet as blasphemous. It came a year after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet.
A statement from police said it was still unclear how the collision occurred, but initially there was nothing to suggest that anyone else was involved.
The cartoon caused outrage and led then Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt to meet ambassadors from 22 Muslim countries in an attempt to defuse the situation.
Shortly afterwards, al-Qaeda in Iraq offered a $100,000 (£73,692) reward for his murder.
In 2015, Vilks attended a debate on free speech that was targeted in a gun attack in Copenhagen. He said he was probably the target of the attack, which killed a film director.
Although he is most famous for his sketch of Muhammad as a dog, Vilks was an artist and activist who often worked with paint or created installations.
A former Facebook whistleblower responsible for a series of bombshell leaks has revealed her identity.
Frances Haugen, 37, who worked as a product manager on the vivid misinformation team at Facebook, was interviewed on Sunday by CBS.
She said the documents she leaked proved that Facebook repeatedly prioritised "growth over safety".
Facebook said the leaks were misleading and glossed over positive research conducted by the company.
In the interview, on CBS's 60 Minutes programme, Ms Haugen said she had left Facebook earlier this year after becoming exasperated with the company. Before departing, she copied a series of internal memos and documents.
She shared those documents with the Wall Street Journal, which has been releasing the material in batches over the last three weeks - sometimes referred to as the Facebook Files.
Revelations included documents that showed that celebrities, politicians and high profile Facebook users were treated differently by the company. The leaks revealed that moderation policies were applied differently or not at all to such accounts - a system known as XCheck (cross-check).
Another leak showed that Facebook was also facing a complex lawsuit from a group of its own shareholders.
The group alleges, among other things, that Facebook's $5bn (£3.65bn) payment to the US Federal Trade Commission to resolve the Cambridge Analytica data scandal was so high because it was designed to protect Mark Zuckerberg from personal liability.
But its allegations about Instagram that have been particularly worrying to US politicians.
Internal research by Facebook (which owns Instagram) found that Instagram was impacting the mental health of teenagers but did not share its findings when they suggested that the platform was a "toxic" place for many youngsters.
According to slides reported by the Wall Street Journal, 32% of teenage girls surveyed said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.
Ms Haugen will testify before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday in a hearing titled "Protecting Kids Online", about the company's research into Instagram's effect on the mental health of young users.
Last week, a Facebook executive testified to US senators that the leaks had failed to highlight the positive impact the platform had on teens.
However, Ms Haugen was damning in her assessment of her former employer.
"There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook," she said.
"Facebook over and over again chose to optimise for its own interests, like making more money."
Ms Haugen also talked about the deadly Capitol Hill riots in January - claiming that Facebook helped fuel the violence.
She said Facebook turned on safety systems to reduce misinformation during the US election - but only temporarily.
"As soon as the election was over they turned them back off, or they changed the settings to what they were before, to prioritise growth over safety, and that really feels like a betrayal of democracy."
Appearing on CNN, Vice President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said it was ludicrous to suggest Facebook was responsible for the riots.
"I think it gives people false comfort to assume that there must be a technological, or technical, explanation for the issues of political polarisation in the United States," he said.
Pakistan’s Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin is named in the leaks and has denied any wrongdoing [File: Farooq Naeem/AFP]
