Vietnam vets' annual ceremony relocated from D.C. due to Army parade
But he was too sick to travel, she said, riddled with illness from exposure to Agent Orange during his five years with the Air Force in the Vietnam War. After he died in December, days after his 80th birthday, she applied for him to be part of a ceremony held at the memorial that annually honors hundreds of veterans who fought in the war and died after they came home. She'd go alone, for him.
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New York Times
8 hours ago
- New York Times
New Judge Assigned to 9/11 Case Ahead of 24th Anniversary of Attacks
An Air Force judge who was in college at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been named as the new judge in the long-running terrorism case at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Lt. Col. Michael Schrama is the fifth judge in the case against five men who are accused of conspiring in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The case has been stuck in pretrial hearings since 2012. Prosecutors made a deal last summer with three of the defendants, including the man accused of being the mastermind of the plot, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to plead guilty in exchange for life sentences. That would have averted their death-penalty the agreement has been revoked twice, including this month by an appeals court in Washington, potentially returning the case to the question of whether the defendants' torture from 2002 to 2006 while they were in C.I.A. detention has rendered their confessions inadmissible. Colonel Schrama was assigned to the case on Wednesday. Prosecutors have indicated that they would like to see him on the bench the week of Sept. 1 for an examination of his qualifications. If no disqualifying conflicts emerge, it will be Colonel Schrama's job to manage the pretrial proceedings at a time when the case has splintered into three parts. Mr. Mohammed and two other defendants who had the plea deal are in one camp. The previous judge, Col. Matthew N. McCall, had ruled that their pretrial agreements were valid contracts before he retired in May. Their lawyers are preparing an appeal to seek the deals' reinstatement, and have shunned any case-moving litigation at the Guantánamo court as a potential breach of the contract. Another defendant, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, was found mentally incompetent to go to trial and his case was severed. Prosecutors have asked the court to revisit that fifth defendant, Ammar al Baluchi, was litigating on a separate track. The last judge wrapped up his four years on the case by suppressing Mr. Baluchi's interrogations by the F.B.I. at Guantánamo in 2007 as having been obtained through his C.I.A. torture. Prosecutors are seeking to reinstate his confessions. Colonel Schrama, who is in his 40s, graduated from Roger Williams University School of Law in 2008, around the time the defendants were first brought to court. He then joined in the Air Force and has served as a military prosecutor and defense counsel on appeal cases. This is his second stint as a military judge. He handled court-martial cases at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia from 2021 to 2023, and returned to the bench last month. Colonel Schrama was an English student at Georgetown University and a starting defensive end on the school's football team at the time of the attacks. Before he went to law school, he taught high school English in New online personal and professional biography said he suffered a 'season-ending injury' in his third year at Georgetown. According to his Air Force biography, he has specialized in environmental law while serving in the military. He also earned a Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, possibly from a nine-month stint as the staff attorney for an air wing in Kuwait in 2019.
Fast Company
9 hours ago
- Fast Company
Trump rollback on clean energy subsidies stalls major solar, wind projects and manufacturing plans
Singapore-based solar panel manufacturer Bila Solar is suspending plans to double capacity at its new factory in Indianapolis. Canadian rival Heliene's plans for a solar cell facility in Minnesota are under review. Norwegian solar wafer maker NorSun is evaluating whether to move forward with a planned factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And two fully permitted offshore wind farms in the U.S. Northeast may never get built. These are among the major clean energy investments now in question after Republicans agreed earlier this month to quickly end U.S. subsidies for solar and wind power as part of their budget megabill, and as the White House directed agencies to tighten the rules on who can claim the incentives that remain. This marks a policy U-turn since President Donald Trump's return to office that project developers, manufacturers and analysts say will slash installations of renewable energy over the coming decade, kill investment and jobs in the clean energy manufacturing sector supporting them, and worsen a looming U.S. power supply crunch as energy-hungry AI infrastructure expands. Solar and wind installations could be 17% and 20% lower than previously forecast over the next decade because of the moves, according to research firm Wood Mackenzie, which warned that a dearth of new supplies could slow the expansion of data centers needed to support AI technology. Energy researcher Rhodium, meanwhile, said the law puts at risk $263 billion of wind, solar, and storage facilities and $110 billion of announced manufacturing investment supporting them. It will also increase industrial energy costs by up to $11 billion in 2035, it said. 'One of the administration's stated goals was to bring costs down, and as we demonstrated, this bill doesn't do that,' said Ben King, a director in Rhodium's energy and climate practice. He added the policy 'is not a recipe for continued dominance of the U.S. AI industry.' The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The Trump administration has defended its moves to end support for clean energy by arguing the rapid adoption of solar and wind power has created instability in the grid and raised consumer prices – assertions that are contested by the industry and which do not bear out in renewables-heavy power grids, like Texas' ERCOT. Power industry representatives, however, have said all new generation projects need to be encouraged to meet rising U.S. demand, including both those driven by renewables and fossil fuels. Consulting firm ICF projects that U.S. electricity demand will grow by 25% by 2030, driven by increased AI and cloud computing – a major challenge for the power industry after decades of stagnation. The REPEAT Project, a collaboration between Princeton University and Evolved Energy Research, projects a 2% annual increase in electricity demand. With a restricted pipeline of renewables, tighter electricity supplies stemming from the policy shift could increase household electricity costs by $280 a year in 2035, according to the REPEAT Project. The key provision in the new law is the accelerated phase-out of 30% tax credits for wind and solar projects: it requires projects to begin construction within a year or enter service by the end of 2027 to qualify for the credits. Previously the credits were available through 2032. Now some project developers are scrambling to get projects done while the U.S. incentives are still accessible. But even that strategy has become risky, developers said. Days after signing the law, Trump directed the Treasury Department to review the definition of 'beginning of construction.' A revision to those rules could overturn a long-standing practice giving developers four years to claim tax credits after spending just 5% of project costs. Treasury was given 45 days to draft new rules. 'With so many moving parts, financing of projects, financing of manufacturing is difficult, if not impossible,' said Martin Pochtaruk, CEO of Heliene. 'You are looking to see what is the next baseball bat that's going to hit you on the head.' About face Heliene's planned cell factory, which could cost as much as $350 million, depending on the capacity, and employ more than 600 workers, is also in limbo, Pochtaruk said in an interview earlier this month. The company needs more clarity on both what the new law will mean for U.S. demand, and how Trump's trade policy will impact the solar industry. 'We have a building that is anxiously waiting for us to make a decision,' Pochtaruk said. Similarly, Mick McDaniel, general manager of Bila Solar, said 'a troubling level of uncertainty' has put on hold its $20 million expansion at an Indianapolis factory it opened this year that would create an additional 75 jobs. 'NorSun is still digesting the new legislation and recent executive order to determine the impact to the overall domestic solar manufacturing landscape,' said Todd Templeton, director of the company's U.S. division that is reviewing plans for its $620 million solar wafer facility in Tulsa. Five solar manufacturing companies – T1 Energy, Imperial Star Solar, SEG Solar, Solx and ES Foundry – said they are also concerned about the new law's impact on future demand, but that they have not changed their investment plans. The policy changes have also injected fresh doubt about the fate of the nation's pipeline of offshore wind projects, which depend heavily on tax credits to bring down costs. According to Wood Mackenzie, projects that have yet to start construction or make final investment decisions are unlikely to proceed. Two such projects, which are fully permitted, include a 300-megawatt project by developer US Wind off the coast of Maryland and Iberdrola's 791 MW New England Wind off the coast of Massachusetts. Neither company responded to requests for comment. 'They are effectively ready to begin construction and are now trapped in a timeline that will make it that much harder to be able to take advantage of the remaining days of the tax credits,' said Hillary Bright, executive director of offshore wind advocacy group Turn Forward.
Fast Company
9 hours ago
- Fast Company
The Eames House in L.A. is open again after closing during the fires
After closing for five months due to smoke damage from the Palisades Fire, the Eames House (Case Study House #8) in Los Angeles has reopened to visitors—now with a more determined mission to serve as a place of community. Nearly 7,000 buildings were destroyed in the Palisades Fire, and though the Eames House was spared, cleanup efforts have been intensive. A crew took about a week to wipe away flame retardant that had been dropped to slow the fire from advancing from the outside of the home. They also dug up the property's plantings beds so the soil could be replaced due to concerns about toxic materials. 'We were very fortunate,' says Lucia Atwood, the granddaughter of architects Charles and Ray Eames who built the Pacific Palisades home in 1949. The home is a model of resilience, but its stewards were also proactive. Atwood tells Fast Company interventions began in 2011 to better fire- and drought-proof the home, which is a National Historic Landmark and on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. Those efforts that took on greater urgency after the Getty Fire in 2019. 'At that point it became very clear that there were going to be an increasing number of of extremely damaging fires,' says Atwood, the former executive director of the Eames Foundation. The foundation has worked to harden the landscape, a process that included clearing brush and removing some of the more than 250 trees that were on the property. Subscribe to the Design latest innovations in design brought to you every weekday SIGN UP Reopening events this month with local leaders, neighbors, and fire survivors have turned the Eames House into an Eames home for the community, as is the case for patrons of the Palisades Library, which was destroyed in the fires. After offering the library the use of the property, including the home's studio, which is open to the public for the first time, for events like book clubs and sales, the head of the library got emotional, says Adrienne Luce, who was announced the Eames Foundation's first non-family member executive director in April. 'This place is for you,' Luce recalls telling the library's head, and she says she started to choke up. 'Being so close to the devastation actually is a wonderful opportunity to serve and support the local community and long-term community rebuilding efforts.' Reopening means 'really engaging and serving the local community,' Luce says.
