Hundreds of the world’s biggest companies are calling on governments “to act with courage and urgency” to protect the world’s natural resources.Business for Nature is a coalition of 560 companies across all sectors with combined revenues of $4 trillion, including U.S.-based retailer Walmart, investment banker Citigroup and tech giant Microsoft. The group issued a statement Monday urging lawmakers to adopt policies that will reverse the destruction of nature.“Healthy societies, resilient economies and thriving businesses rely on nature,” the statement said.The coalition said if governments fail to act, the world will not be able to meet the targets set out in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement or “prevent a catastrophic loss of biodiversity.”The statement pointed out that natural disasters linked to ecosystem degradation and climate change coast more than $300 billion each year, while an estimated 40-60% of small businesses never reopen after such events.“It is exciting and unprecedented to see so many businesses urging for bold government action to reform nature policies” said Eva Zabey, executive director of Business for Nature.  “Many businesses are making commitments and taking action. But for us all to live well within the planet’s finite limits, we need to scale and speed up efforts now, not tomorrow.”Other companies who have joined the coalition are Dutch-Swiss furniture retailer IKEA, French-based multinational food products company Danone, and Swiss-based clothing retailer H&M.   
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Indian authorities have confirmed that at least eight people died in a residential building collapse Monday morning in Maharashtra state.Search and rescue teams are working to find and bring to safety dozens of people who may be trapped in the rubble.At least 11 people were injured when the four-story building collapsed, the commissioner of Bhiwandi in Thane district, a suburb of India’s financial capital, Mumbai, said.Pankaj Ashiya said that the building was more than 30 years old and was due for repair and renovation, which were delayed due to the COVID-19 lockdown.During the June-September monsoon season, when heavy rains weaken the foundations of buildings that are poorly constructed or old, India experiences frequent structure collapses.  
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As the United States nears 200,000 deaths from COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidelines to add breathing to the most common ways the coronavirus is spread by an infected person.The U.S. has nearly 6.8 million cases of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University data late Sunday.An update Friday to the CDC website says there is growing evidence that small airborne coronavirus particles are produced when someone coughs, sneezes, sings, talks or breathes and can remain in the air to be breathed in by others, allowing an infection.“These particles can be inhaled into the nose, mouth, airways, and lungs and cause infection. This is thought to be the main way the virus spreads,” the CDC website says.They can also travel farther than 6 feet, for example when someone sings or exercises.There is also updated information from the CDC about how to protect yourself. The CDC’s advice has been to stay 2 meters away from someone, wash your hands and disinfect surfaces often, and wear a face mask.Now the CDC adds that people who are sick should stay home and isolate themselves and “use air purifiers to help reduce airborne germs in indoor spaces,” according to the CDC site.Taj Mahal to reopenDespite more than 5.4 million COVID-19 cases and about 100,000 new infections and more than 1,000 deaths daily, India will reopen the Taj Mahal to visitors Monday.India has 1.3 billion people and some of the world’s most crowded cities, but a strict lockdown in March devastated the economy and the lives of tens of millions of people. With that in mind, Prime Minister Narendra Modi doesn’t want to follow some other nations in tightening restrictions on daily activity again.Instead, his government has eased restrictions, including on many train routes, domestic flights, markets, restaurants — and now, the Taj Mahal.The world-famous white marble mausoleum in the city of Agra is India’s most popular tourist attraction, drawing 7 million visitors a year.It has been closed since March. Officials say that when it reopens, strict social distancing rules will be applied and daily visitor numbers will be capped at 5,000.Schools were also to resume Monday on a voluntary basis for students ages 14 to 17, but many Indian states have said it is too soon to have children in the classroom.WorldwideWorldwide the number of cases has surpassed 30.8 million, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.The U.S. remains the country with the most infections. Recent growth in U.S. cases in the Southwest and Midwest is being attributed to the reopening of schools and colleges.A four-day motorcycle rally has Missouri and other states bracing for an outbreak. Last year, over 100,000 people attended the Bikefest Lake of the Ozarks event. The annual event in Central Missouri began Wednesday and ends Sunday. A similar event was held last month in Sturgis, South Dakota. COVID-19 cases and one death in several states were traced back to Sturgis.The U.S. has nearly 6.8 million cases, Hopkins reported late Sunday. India follows the U.S. with 5.4 million cases and Brazil comes in third with 4.5 million infections, according to Hopkins.The U.S. has also recorded the highest number of COVID-19 deaths. The U.S. has more than 199,000 of the world’s more than 957,000 coronavirus deaths. Brazil follows the U.S. in coronavirus deaths with more than 136,000 deaths. India has reported nearly 87,000 deaths. 
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As the country mourns Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday, President Donald Trump has vowed to nominate a successor this week. The head of the Senate said he would move to confirm the nominee, but Democrats are pushing back. Two key Republican senators said they would argue to wait for a Supreme Court confirmation vote until after election. What’s clear is that both parties see this as a key battle just six weeks before Election Day. Michelle Quinn reports.
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U.S. President Donald Trump appointed Amy Coney Barrett, Barbara Lagoa and Allison Jones Rushing, three conservatives, to federal appellate court judgeships in recent years and now could pick one of them as his nominee for a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.They appear to be at the top of the U.S. leader’s list of choices to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal icon who served on the court for 27 years before her death Friday, a month and a half before the November 3 reelection contest between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden.Any of the three women — Barrett, 48, Lagoa, 52, and Rushing, 38 — would draw immediate support from Republican lawmakers in the Republican-controlled Senate. And their decisions could ensure a string of philosophically conservative decisions for a generation to come. Any of the three would likely draw vocal opposition from Democrats, even though Lagoa won appellate court confirmation on a bipartisan 80-15 vote.Florida Supreme Court Justice Barbara Lagoa, currently a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, poses in a photograph from 2019 obtained Sept. 19, 2020.Most Democrats are likely to oppose the confirmation of any of the three because it would push the current 5-4 conservative edge on the court to 6-3 and could for decades affect decisions on a host of issues, including abortion, immigration, health care, religious liberty, among others.Here are brief sketches of the three judges:Amy Coney Barrett taught law at the University of Notre Dame, one of the most prominent Catholic universities in the United States, for 15 years before Trump named her to the appellate bench in 2017. In opposing her appointment then, Democrats voiced concerns about the professed role of religion in her life.U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a law professor at Notre Dame University, poses in an undated photograph obtained from Notre Dame University, Sept 19, 2020.They cited one of her comments at Notre Dame, where Barrett, a Catholic, told students that a “legal career is but a means to an end … and that end is building the Kingdom of God.”California Senator Dianne Feinstein was one of several Democrats who questioned whether Barrett’s religious beliefs made her unqualified to adjudicate specific cases, specifically ones related to abortion, which the Catholic church opposes.”Dogma and law are two different things,” Feinstein told Barrett during her appellate court confirmation hearings. “And I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different. And I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”Republicans view her as reliably conservative and a future Supreme Court vote to overturn the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion rights in the U.S., but Barrett has offered conflicting comments on how she might vote on abortion cases.During her confirmation hearing to the appeals court, Barrett said she would “follow all Supreme Court precedent without fail” and would regard decisions such as Roe v. Wade as binding precedent.“I would never impose my own personal convictions upon the law,” she said.But she also has written that judges should not be held to upholding Supreme Court precedents, such as the abortion decision.She won Senate confirmation on a 55-43 vote.Barbara Lagoa was the first Cuban American woman to serve on the Florida state Supreme Court before becoming a federal judge in 2019. She is the daughter of parents who fled from Cuba as Fidel Castro assumed power over the island in the 1959 revolution.”She’s an extraordinary person,” Trump has said. “I’ve heard at length about her. She’s Hispanic and highly respected — Miami. Highly respected.”In 2000, as a private attorney, Lagoa was part of the legal team that defended the Miami-based relatives of Elian Gonzales, the Cuban boy caught up in the dramatic custody dispute between his father in Cuba and his relatives in Miami. The boy was eventually returned to Cuba after swimming ashore into the U.S. as his mother drowned.  Lagoa was a state court judge for more than a decade before Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appointed her to the Florida Supreme Court in January 2019. At the time, he said, “She has been the essence of what a judge should be.”She signaled she would interpret laws as written.“It is the role of judges to apply, not to alter, the work of the people’s representatives,” she said at the time. Less than a year later, Trump tapped her for an appellate court opening.FILE – Allison Jones Rushing is sworn in before a Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing on her nomination to be a United States circuit judge for the Fourth Circuit, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 17, 2018.Allison Jones Rushing won her appellate court confirmation last year with party-line Republican support over Democratic opposition, on a 53-44 vote.Democrats, civil rights, and gay and lesbian groups opposed her nomination.  They cited her internship with Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based conservative, Christian legal nonprofit that defended a Colorado baker in a Supreme Court case who fought for the right not to bake a cake for a gay wedding and in another instance that allowed companies to opt out of providing insurance for contraceptives for employees because of the owners’ religious beliefs.In addition, Rushing defended the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Rushing said she supported the four conservative justices who dissented when the Supreme Court struck down the ruling in 2015.Tim Chandler, the senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, defended Rushing, saying, “The Senate confirmed not only a highly qualified lawyer, but a woman of integrity, professional competence, and judicial demeanor.
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Several global banks moved large sums of allegedly illicit funds over a period of nearly two decades, despite red flags about the origins of the money, BuzzFeed and other media reported Sunday, citing confidential documents submitted by banks to the U.S. government.The media reports were based on leaked suspicious activity reports (SARs), filed by banks and other financial firms with the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).  The SARs, which the reports said numbered more than 2,100, were obtained by BuzzFeed News and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media organizations.In all, the ICIJ reported that the files contained information about more than $2 trillion worth of transactions between 1999 and 2017, which were flagged by internal compliance departments of financial institutions as suspicious. The SARs are in themselves not necessarily proof of wrongdoing, and the ICIJ reported the leaked documents were a tiny fraction of the reports filed with FinCEN.Five global banks appeared most often in the documents — HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Deutsche Bank AG, Standard Chartered Plc and Bank of New York Mellon Corp, the ICIJ reported.The SARs provide key intelligence in global efforts to stop money laundering and other crimes. The media reports on Sunday painted a picture of a system that is both under-resourced and overwhelmed, allowing vast amounts of illicit funds to move through the banking system.A bank has a maximum of 60 days to file SARs after the date of initial detection of a reportable transaction, according to the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The ICIJ report said in some cases the banks failed to report suspect transactions until years after they had processed them.The SARs also showed that banks often moved funds for companies that were registered in offshore havens, such as the British Virgin Islands, and did not know the ultimate owner of the account, the report said.Among the types of transactions highlighted by the report: funds processed by JPMorgan for potentially corrupt individuals and companies in Venezuela, Ukraine and Malaysia; money from a Ponzi scheme moving through HSBC; and money linked to a Ukrainian billionaire processed by Deutsche Bank.”I hope these findings spur urgent action from policymakers to enact needed reforms,” said Tim Adams, chief executive of the trade group Institute of International Finance, in a statement. “As noted in today’s reports, the impacts of financial crime are felt beyond just the financial sector – it poses grave threats to society as a whole.”In a statement to Reuters, HSBC said “all of the information provided by the ICIJ is historical.” The bank said as of 2012, “HSBC embarked on a multi-year journey to overhaul its ability to combat financial crime across more than 60 jurisdictions.”Standard Chartered said in a statement to Reuters, “We take our responsibility to fight financial crime extremely seriously and have invested substantially in our compliance programs.”BNY Mellon told Reuters it could not comment on specific SARs. “We fully comply with all applicable laws and regulations, and assist authorities in the important work they do,” the bank said.JPM did not immediately respond to a request for comment but said in a statement to BuzzFeed that “thousands of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars are devoted to helping support law enforcement and national security efforts.”In a statement on Sunday, Deutsche Bank said the ICIJ had “reported on a number of historic issues.” “We have devoted significant resources to strengthening our controls and we are very focused on meeting our responsibilities and obligations,” the bank said.FinCEN said in a statement on its website on Sept. 1 that it was aware that various media outlets intended to publish a series of articles based on unlawfully disclosed SARs, as well as other documents, and said that the “unauthorized disclosure of SARs is a crime that can impact the national security of the United States.”Representatives for the U.S. Treasury did not immediately respond to an email for comment on Sunday. 
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The United States on Monday will sanction more than two dozen people and entities involved in Iran’s nuclear, missile and conventional arms programs, a senior U.S. official said, putting teeth behind U.N. sanctions on Tehran that Washington argues have resumed despite the opposition of allies and adversaries.Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said Iran could have enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon by the end of the year and that Tehran has resumed long-range missile cooperation with nuclear-armed North Korea. He did not provide detailed evidence regarding either assertion.The new sanctions fit into U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to limit Iran’s regional influence and come a week after U.S.-brokered deals for the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to normalize ties with Israel, pacts that may coalesce a wider coalition against Iran while appealing to pro-Israel U.S. voters ahead of the Nov. 3 election.The new sanctions also put European allies, China and Russia on notice that while their inclination may be to ignore the U.S. drive to maintain the U.N. sanctions on Iran, companies based in their nations would feel the bite for violating them.A major part of the new U.S. push is an executive order targeting those who buy or sell Iran conventional arms that was previously reported by Reuters and will also be unveiled by the Trump administration on Monday, the official said.The Trump administration suspects Iran of seeking nuclear weapons — something Tehran denies — and Monday’s punitive steps are the latest in a series seeking to stymie Iran’s atomic program, which U.S. ally Israel views as an existential threat.”Iran is clearly doing everything it can to keep in existence a virtual turnkey capability to get back into the weaponization business at a moment’s notice should it choose to do so,” the U.S. official told Reuters.The official argued Iran wants a nuclear weapons capability and the means to deliver it despite the 2015 deal that sought to prevent this by restraining Iran’s atomic program in return for access to the world market.In May 2018, Trump abandoned that agreement to the dismay of the other parties, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia, and restored U.S. sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy.Iran, in turn, has gradually breached the central limits in that deal, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including on the size of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium as well as the level of purity to which it was allowed to enrich uranium.”Because of Iran’s provocative nuclear escalation, it could have sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon by the end of this year,” the official said without elaborating, except to say this was based on “the totality” of information available to the United States, including from the IAEA.The Vienna-based agency has said Iran only began significantly breaching the 2015 deal’s limits after the U.S. withdrawal and it is still enriching uranium only up to 4.5%, well below the 20% it had achieved before that agreement, let alone the roughly 90% purity that is considered weapons-grade, suitable for an atomic bomb.”Iran and North Korea have resumed cooperation on a long-range missile project, including the transfer of critical parts,” he added, declining to say when such joint work first began, stopped, and then started again.Asked to comment on the impending new U.S. sanctions and the U.S. official’s other statements, a spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations dismissed them as propaganda and said they would further isolate the United States.”The U.S.’ ‘maximum pressure’ show, which includes new propaganda measures almost every week, has clearly failed miserably, and announcing new measures will not change this fact,” the mission’s spokesman, Alireza Miryousefi, told Reuters in an email.”The entire world understands that these are a part of (the) next U.S. election campaign, and they are ignoring the U.S.’ preposterous claims at the U.N. today. It will only make (the) U.S. more isolated in world affairs,” he said.The White House declined comment in advance of Monday’s announcements.’Snap back’ of UN sanctions?The U.S. official confirmed Trump will issue an executive order that would allow the United States to punish those who buy or sell conventional arms to Iran with secondary sanctions, depriving them of access to the U.S. market.The proximate cause for this U.S. action is the impending expiration of a U.N. arms embargo on Iran and to warn foreign actors, U.S. entities are already barred from such trade, that if they buy or sell arms to Iran they will face U.S. sanctions.Under the 2015 nuclear deal the U.N. conventional arms embargo is set to expire Oct. 18.The United States says it has triggered a “snap back,” or resumption, of virtually all U.N. sanctions on Iran, including the arms embargo, that took effect at 8 p.m. Saturday/0000 GMT Sunday.Other parties to the nuclear deal and most U.N. Security Council members have said they do not believe the United States has the right to reimpose the U.N. sanctions and that the U.S. move has no legal effect.On Friday, Britain, France and Germany told the Security Council that U.N. sanctions relief for Iran, agreed under the 2015 nuclear deal, would continue beyond Sunday, despite Washington’s assertion.In letters to the Security Council on Saturday, China’s U.N. Ambassador Zhang Jun and Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia both described the U.S. move as “illegitimate” and said the U.N. sanctions relief for Iran would continue.Also Saturday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council he cannot act on the U.S. declaration that U.N. sanctions had been reimposed because it was not clear whether they had snapped back.”It is not for the secretary-general to proceed as if no such uncertainty exists,” he said.Targets include Iran’s nuclear, missile, arms groupsThe new executive order will define conventional weapons broadly as any item with a potential military use, meaning it could cover such things as speed boats that Iran retrofits to harass vessels in international waters, the U.S. official told Reuters.It would also apply to conventional circuit boards that can be used in ballistic missile guidance systems, he added.The more than two dozen targets to be hit with sanctions Monday include those involved in Iran’s conventional arms, nuclear and missile programs, the official said, saying some of the targets are already sanctioned under other U.S. programs.That could prompt criticism that the U.S. move is redundant and designed for public relations purposes to look tough on Iran, a charge critics have made about past U.S. sanctions actions.Among the targets will be Iran’s “most nefarious arms organizations,” about a dozen senior officials, scientists and experts from Iran’s nuclear complex, members of a procurement network that supplies military-grade dual-use goods for Iran’s missile program, and several senior officials involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program, the U.S. official said.The official declined to name the targets, saying this would be made public Monday, and stressed that the United States wants to deter foreign companies from dealing with them even if their governments believe this is legally permitted.”You might have a split in some countries where a foreign government may claim that the U.N. sanctions don’t snap back, but their banks and companies will abide by U.S. sanctions because they want to make sure they are not a future target,” he said.
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Relatives of some of the 12 Hong Kong people arrested by China at sea last month demanded the city’s government check on their condition and ensure that lawyers appointed by the families and not the Chinese government can meet with them.The 12 were arrested on Aug. 23 for illegal entry into mainland Chinese waters after setting off from Hong Kong in a boat bound for self-ruled Taiwan.All were suspected of committing crimes in Hong Kong related to anti-government protests that erupted last year. Ten had been charged, released on bail and not allowed to leave the former British colony, and all are now being detained in neighboring Shenzhen.Relatives of some of the detainees held a news conference outside the Hong Kong police headquarters Sunday to express their frustration with local authorities.”We want our son back. … Even though we can’t visit him, at least give us a photo or letter from him to confirm that he’s there,” said the father of one detainee, Li Tsz Yin.The relatives also asked police “to give an account of the date, time, place and process of the arrest” and whether there were any injuries or casualties, and the Marine Department to release radar records of the day of the arrest.In a statement late Sunday, Hong Kong police said authorities had reviewed the marine traffic records from Aug. 23 and “did not find sign of any China coast guard vessels entering or staying in Hong Kong waters.” It said marine police records would not be released to the public.”Hong Kong Police Force (HKPF) are now maintaining close communication with the mainland law enforcement department to obtain the latest update of the case and take timely follow-up actions. No further information has been received so far,” the statement said.Earlier, the detainees’ family members said the Hong Kong government “only shirked responsibility and confused the public with mere excuses.””However, up to now, the lawyers appointed by the families have been refused (the chance) to meet with the detainees. In other words, the conditions of the so-called arrested persons are still known only to the Chinese authorities,” a statement said.On Tuesday, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam voiced discontent with the group being characterized by some as “democratic activists being oppressed,” saying they were running away from the law. Lam said they would have to be “dealt with” by mainland authorities but pledged to provide “feasible” assistance.Police in Shenzhen said last Sunday they were suspected of illegal entry, their first public comment on the matter. The same day, China’s foreign ministry labeled the group as “separatists.”
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Facebook has told Ireland’s High Court it cannot see how its services could operate in the European Union if regulators freeze its data transfer mechanism, the Sunday Business Post reported, citing court documents seen by the paper.The U.S. social media giant last week said that the Irish Data Protection Commission, its lead EU regulator, had made a preliminary decision that the mechanism it uses to transfer data from the EU to the United States “cannot in practice be used.”Facebook requested and secured a temporary freeze on the order and a court review in the Irish High Court, which is due to consider the issue in November. In an affidavit submitted to the court to request that the order be frozen, Yvonne Cunnane, Facebook Ireland’s head of data protection and associate general counsel, said it was not clear how the company could continue providing services in the EU if the Irish order is enforced, the Sunday Business Post reported.”It is not clear to (Facebook) how, in those circumstances, it could continue to provide the Facebook and Instagram services in the EU,” the newspaper quoted the affidavit as saying.The affidavit has not been made public, a High Court spokesman said, and a Facebook spokeswoman did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.In a Sept. 9 blog post that first confirmed the investigation by the Irish regulator, Facebook said it “relied on the mechanism in question – under what are known as standard contractual clauses (SCCs) – to transfer data to countries outside the EU and that a ban would have “a far reaching effect on businesses that rely on SCCs.”The Irish investigation follows a ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union in July on when SCCs can be used legally.The ruling was in response to EU concerns that the surveillance regime in the United States might not respect the privacy rights of EU citizens when their personal data is sent to the United States for commercial use. 
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Robert W. Gore, whose invention of what created the breathable-yet-waterproof fabric known as Gore-Tex revolutionized outdoor wear and helped spawn uses in numerous other fields, has died. He was 83.Gore, who was president of W. L. Gore & Associates for almost 25 years and company chairman for 30 years, died on Thursday following a prolonged illness at his home in Delaware, company spokesperson Amy Calhoun confirmed Saturday.  Gore discovered a new form of a polymer in 1969 at a company lab in Newark, Delaware. His father, who began the company, asked Bob Gore to research a new way to manufacturer plumber’s tape at a low cost using PTFE, commonly known as DuPont’s Teflon, The News Journal of Wilmington reported.The son figured out that by stretching PTFE with a sudden yank, the polymer expanded by 1,000 percent. The resulting product, known as ePTFE, created a microporous structure. The introduction of Gore-Tex technology came seven years later.“It was truly a pivot point in this company’s history,” Greg Hannon, W.L. Gore & Associates’ chief technology officer, said last year. “Without which we would be much less significant of an organization than we are today.”The membrane within Gore-Tex fabric has billions of pores that are smaller than water droplets, leading to waterproof but breathable raincoats, shoes and other clothing. The patents ultimately led to countless other uses with medical devices, guitar strings and in space travel, the company said.Gore was born in Utah, the oldest of five children to Bill and Vieve Gore, who both founded the company in 1958. Bill Gore had previously joined DuPont’s workforce and ultimately came to Delaware. Bob Gore earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware and advanced degrees from the University of Minnesota. He succeeded his father as the company’s president and CEO in 1976. Gore and his family contributed funds for buildings and engineering laboratories at the University of Delaware.Gore is survived by his wife, Jane, as well as children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Memorial plans weren’t immediately announced by the company. 
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