CNN
 — 

Axl Rose is ending a 30-year Guns N’ Roses tradition.

The band’s frontman recently posted a note saying on social media that he would no longer be tossing his microphone into the crowd during their concerts after it came to his attention that a fan may have been hurt at their recent show in Adelaide, Australia.

“If true, obviously we don’t want anyone getting hurt or to somehow in any way hurt anyone at any of [our] shows anyway,” Rose wrote in a note he tweeted. “Having tossed the mic at the end of [our] show for over 30 years we always felt it was a known part of the very end of [our] performance that fans wanted and were aware of to have an opportunity to catch the mic.”

He thanked the band’s supporters for understanding.

“Unfortunately there [are] those that for their own reasons chose to frame their reporting regarding this subject in a more negative n’ irresponsible out of nowhere light which couldn’t [be] farther from reality,” Rose said. “We hope the public and of course [our] fans get that sometimes happens.”

In 2017, the Niti Aayog submitted a white paper to then Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu. The paper titled ‘Dispensing with the Railway Budget’ made the case for scrapping a stand-alone Railway Budget. It was an unnecessary practice argued the paper, as neither the size of the Railway Budget, in the context of the full budget outlay, nor the contribution of the railways was that large anymore.

Prabhu in turn, wrote to then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, batting for a merger and calling an end to what he termed a ‘colonial practice’. Jaitley concurred and the Bibek Debroy Committee was set up to examine the possibility. Chaired by Bibek Debroy, member of the NITI Ayog and co-author of that white paper, the committee recommended doing away with a separate Railway Budget, ending a 92-year-old-long history of separate Railway and Union Budgets.

For the ruling NDA government, there was also a political motivation behind the decision. The railway portfolio was often the rook on the chess board: a ministry held by strong regional partners in coalition governments and seen as a conduit for channelling regional aspirations and displaying political strength. For the 2017 NDA government, the decision to merge the Railways Budget with the Union Budget was a reflection of its solid majority in the Lok Sabha and its desire to hold firmly onto the financial reins, elbowing out any potentially ambitious ally.

Also Read | Three major rail accidents in three years: What is the government doing?

It is the same hegemonic intent that has marked the BJP-led NDA’s charge of the Indian Railways since 2014. In the more recent past however, the Ministry led by Piyush Goyal from 2017 to 2019 and from 2021 onwards by Ashwini Vaishnaw has also been marked with a high level of both hubris and what appears to be rank incompetence.

It brings us back to this decision taken a few years back with the question: is it time to bring back the Railway Budget?

First, financial and performance accountability. In its 2022 report, the Comptroller and Auditor General, the government’s auditor said the Railways’ Depreciation Reserve Fund or DRF, which provides for the replacement and renewal of assets, was not just “insufficient” but that by providing money through an alternate fund, the railways had optically reduced allocations to the DRF. In short, accounts were “dressed up,” presenting working expenses and operating ratios in a better light than they were. Not just that, the report warned there was every possibility, not least against a depleting surplus, that replacement and renewal of over aged assets could become a burden for the Government of India. The ‘throw forward’ value or expenses budgeted to be met in later years was estimated at a startling Rs.94,873 crore.

Leave aside the growing backlog of these degenerating assets. For 2021-22, Indian Railways recorded its worst-ever operating ratios of 107.39 per cent: expenses have been much higher than sales or revenues. How much time has been spent in the Parliament discussing these creaking assets, both physical and financial? Would it have been better to have a Railway Budget that would ensure space, time and discussion around these numbers? After all, the country’s supreme audit institution raised several serious concerns in 2023. When does the country’s Railway Minister intend to address them?

The second motivation for abandoning a standalone Railway Budget was to move away from the purported ‘politicisation’ of the event. Let’s rewind to what the last few years have looked like, in terms of political optics. Amidst much fanfare, India’s first bullet train project was announced by the Prime Minister in 2017. Connecting Ahmedabad and Mumbai, the deadline for the entire project lapsed a long time back in 2022. It’s unclear how much progress has been made, but it is clear there is no high-speed train in sight until at least 2028. However, Vaishnaw, who has been reportedly overseeing the project, has been quick to find a political reason behind things stalling. In a recent press interaction, the Minister blamed the former Maharashtra government, led by Uddhav Thackeray, alleging that necessary permissions weren’t granted during their tenure leading to delays. 

Also Read | Odisha train tragedy raises questions about rail safety and signals system

And yet, even as deadlines slip away, much like the speed of the mythical bullet train, the BJP went ahead and promised a clutch of bullet train corridors in its recent manifesto. Politicising the railways then is perhaps a trick only one party is allowed to play.

When Vaishnaw was given the railways portfolio, business publications wrote fawning tributes to the technocrat, billing him Modi’s “whizkid,” an “infra expert” and “an efficacious entrepreneur and an anodyne politician.”. In 2024, 18 coaches of the Mumbai-Howrah Mail derailed in Jharkhand, killing two people and injuring 20, multiple coaches of the Chandigarh-Dibrugarh Express derailed in Uttar Pradesh, a goods train hit the stationary Kanchanjunga Express killing 10 people, and four coaches of the Sabarmati-Agra Superfast Express were derailed. All in just the first six months of this year.

But gone are the days when Railway Ministers resigned in the wake of train accidents; Vaishnaw was in fact retained as the Railway Minister even after the devastating triple-train tragedy in Odisha that claimed 293 lives.

In recent weeks, Vaishnaw has chosen to make insidious references to questions around sabotage suspicions and once again reproved any attempt to turn the issue into what he terms a political debate. Let’s go back to the times when a single day was allocated to discussing the financial health, and more importantly safety and security aspects of a transport system that carries close to 43 million passengers a day.

As of August 2024, there are 51 Vande Bharat Express trains in operation in India. Reclining and revolving seats, mobile charging sockets, wi-fi and air-conditioned coaches, each ticket on an average priced at Rs.1200. In its zeal to boost per-passenger revenue, the heartbeat of India’s mode of travel has seen the production of more premium coaches, the launch of more high-end trains. All while bringing down the production of sleeper and general coaches.

In the peak travel months of April, videos on social media documented how scores of Indians were travelling. Squatting on floors, aisles and in toilets, virtual stampedes breaking out as many tried unsuccessfully to enter compartments that were gasping with the number of people already packed into. Perhaps it is on the day of the Railway Budget that the Minister will explain why in the last 10 years, general section seats have been slashed from 50 per cent to 43 per cent while AC coaches have increased from 15 per cent to 24 per cent. Do Indians who cannot afford a more luxurious air-conditioned journey not deserve to travel? Or perhaps they do, only if they are first ready to put their lives at risk, forced to travel as no living being should.

A Budget would be the most fitting way to stand up and speak to the true owners of India’s railway system: the people of India. Whose interests after all, are the railways being built to meet?

Also Read | Kanchanjunga Express train accident a result of failure at all levels of Railway hierarchy

The greatest irony is that this premiumisation of the Indian Railways is happening even as losses incurred in passenger services have been steadily increasing over the years. In 2019-2020 for instance, the entire profit from freight operations were used to compensate for the loss from passenger and other coach services.

There’s another possible motive to consider. Why has not more money been pumped into replacing and renewing assets that would improve the quality of railway infrastructure, and the safety of its passengers? Why does the Railway Ministry remain stubbornly over-reliant on the transportation of coal for its freight earnings, even though the CAG recommended diversifying the freight basket in order to boost freight earnings? Given the utter lack of transparency on how to investigate or prevent this stream of tragic accidents, or into what ails the financials of the railways, one wonders: is the ultimate goal for the current government to wring its hands in despair and point to privatisation as the messiah and cure to all these problems, something the Debroy Committee had pitched for in its 2015 report? It has certainly been done across India’s airports and the results of the bidding process are there for all to see.

In a 2016 interview, Debroy responded to a question on whether scrapping the Railway Budget was a good idea, as a separate Budget ensured more scrutiny, with these words:  “I am glad that you are so optimistic about the Railway Budget being scrutinised… I wish I could be so blissfully happy about the great deal of scrutiny that the bunch of Railway Budget papers presented in Parliament brings.”

Recent weeks have displayed both the power and impact a strong opposition and intense Parliamentary debates can have on ensuring the government is held accountable. We have lost enough lives to railway tragedies that have gone unexplained and unatoned. If the Parliament, and a Budget are where answers will finally be found, bring it on.

Mitali Mukherjee is Director of the Journalist Programmes at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. She is a political economy journalist with more than two decades of experience in TV, print and digital journalism. Mitali has co-founded two start-ups that focussed on civil society and financial literacy and her key areas of interest are gender and climate change.

Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @DeanObeidallah@masto.ai. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
 — 

Last year, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia spoke at a white nationalist event organized by Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes that caused Republican leaders to denounce her.

Last week, Greene’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended by the Elon Musk-headed platform over a tweet with a graphic referring to a “Trans Day of Vengeance,” as she denounced a planned transgender rights rally.

And come Tuesday, Greene has announced plans to protest in New York City when former President Donald Trump is expected to be arraigned on an indictment of more than 30 counts, calling the proceedings against him an “unconstitutional WITCH HUNT!”

But on Sunday, Greene was featured on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in an interview the long-running show promoted on Twitter with the tease: “Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, nicknamed MTG, isn’t afraid to share her opinions, no matter how intense and in-your-face they are. She sits down with Lesley Stahl this Sunday on 60 Minutes.” The images attached to this tweet by “60 Minutes” include Greene and Stahl walking through the US Capitol, taking a stroll outside and Greene showing Stahl something on her phone.

In the segment that aired Sunday night, Stahl noted the congresswoman had moved from the fringe to the GOP’s front row in two years despite a “sharp tongue” and “some pretty radical views” as well as “over the top” comments such as “the Democrats are a party of pedophiles.” Stahl also referred to video of Greene chasing a Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor, still maintaining that the 2020 election was stolen and failing to criticize Trump over spending. (The interview was conducted before news of his indictment.)

But Stahl didn’t mention Greene spoke at a white nationalist event a year ago while a member of Congress or her extreme anti-Muslim views and her defense of January 6 rioters.

Criticism of CBS for amplifying Greene has been swift and well-deserved even before the program aired. Former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois tweeted beforehand: “Wow. Insane that 60 min would do this.” (Kinzinger is a CNN senior political commentator.)

Journalist Molly Jong-Fast also slammed “60 Minutes” with the tweet: “Attention is currency and 60 minutes is spending its currency on the Jewish space lasers woman.” (Jong-Fast was apparently referring to Greene’s past claim that a massive California wildfire was started by “a laser” beamed from space controlled by a prominent Jewish banking family.)

David Hogg, who survived the 2018 horrific school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and has since become an activist against gun violence, responded, “I look forward to your questions about why she thinks school shootings are fake and why she’s supported QAnon.”

Greene amplified the conspiracy theory — two years before being elected to Congress — that the Parkland shooting that took 17 lives was staged. And in 2019, Greene appeared on video confronting Hogg outside the Capitol when he was championing laws to save lives from gun violence, screaming that the then-teenager was a “coward.” She also called Hogg “#littleHitler” on social media.

Greene’s own tweet promoting Sunday’s segment was not filled with her typical smears of “fake news” when she doesn’t like the coverage. Rather, Greene urged people to tune in as she praised “60 Minutes” host Stahl (and misspelled her first name): “It was an honor to spend a few days with the legendary icon Leslie Stahl and talented crew @60Minutes.” Greene added, “Leslie is a trailblazer for women in journalism. And while we may disagree on some issues, I respect her greatly.”

Now, it is true that “60 Minutes” over its 50-plus-year history has featured what the show has dubbed “controversial” guests. These include a 2000 interview with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, whose 1995 terrorist attack left 168 dead, including 19 children. And the show did a 1979 interview with Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Perhaps “60 Minutes” views Greene — who has repeatedly downplayed and even defended the January 6, 2021, attack plus called for the GOP to become the party of “Christian nationalism” — in the vein of its long list of controversial guests. (CBS had not responded to a request from CNN for comment at time of publishing.)

However, the choice of Greene as a guest instantly recalls the comments of then-CBS CEO Les Moonves during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign when he admitted that Trump’s candidacy “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” Moonves added, “The money’s rolling in and this is fun. … (T)his is going to be a very good year for us,” concluding, “Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”

Moonves may be gone from CBS, but it appears his mindset continues at “60 Minutes.” And that may be good for “60 Minutes,” but it’s definitely not good for America.

CNN
 — 

Air pollution spiked to unhealthy levels around the world in 2021, according to a new report.

The report by IQAir, a company that tracks global air quality, found that average annual air pollution in every country — and 97% of cities — exceeded the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines, which were designed to help governments craft regulations to protect public health.

Only 222 cities of the 6,475 analyzed had average air quality that met WHO’s standard. Three territories were found to have met WHO guidelines: the French territory of New Caledonia and the United States territories of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were among the countries with the worst air pollution, exceeding the guidelines by at least 10 times.

The Scandinavian countries, Australia, Canada, Japan and United Kingdom ranked among the best countries for air quality, with average levels that exceeded the guidelines by 1 to 2 times.

In the United States, IQAir found air pollution exceeded WHO guidelines by 2 to 3 times in 2021.

“This report underscores the need for governments around the world to help reduce global air pollution,” Glory Dolphin Hammes, CEO of IQAir North America, told CNN. “(Fine particulate matter) kills far too many people every year and governments need to set more stringent air quality national standards and explore better foreign policies that promote better air quality.”

Above: IQAir analyzed average annual air quality for more than 6,000 cities and categorized them from best air quality, in blue (Meets WHO PM2.5 guildline) to worst, in purple (Exceeds WHO PM2.5 guideline by over 10 times). An interactive map is available from IQAir.

It’s the first major global air quality report based on WHO’s new annual air pollution guidelines, which were updated in September 2021. The new guidelines halved the acceptable concentration of fine particulate matter — or PM 2.5 — from 10 down to 5 micrograms per cubic meter.

PM 2.5 is the tiniest pollutant yet also among the most dangerous. When inhaled, it travels deep into lung tissue where it can enter the bloodstream. It comes from sources like the burning of fossil fuels, dust storms and wildfires, and has been linked to a number of health threats including asthma, heart disease and other respiratory illnesses.

Millions of people die each year from air quality issues. In 2016, around 4.2 million premature deaths were associated with fine particulate matter, according to WHO. If the 2021 guidelines had been applied that year, WHO found there could have been nearly 3.3 million fewer pollution-related deaths.

IQAir analyzed pollution-monitoring stations in 6,475 cities across 117 countries, regions and territories.

In the US, air pollution spiked in 2021 compared to 2020. Out of the more than 2,400 US cities analyzed, Los Angeles air remained the most polluted, despite seeing a 6% decrease compared to 2020. Atlanta and Minneapolis saw significant increases in pollution, the report showed.

“The (United States’) reliance on fossil fuels, increasing severity of wildfires as well as varying enforcement of the Clean Air Act from administration to administration have all added to U.S. air pollution,” the authors wrote.

Researchers say the main sources of pollution in the US were fossil fuel-powered transportation, energy production and wildfires, which wreak havoc on the country’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities.

“We are heavily dependent on fossil fuels, especially in terms of transportation,” said Hammes, who lives a few miles from Los Angeles. “We can act smartly on this with zero emissions, but we’re still not doing it. And this is having a devastating impact on the air pollution that we’re seeing in major cities.”

Climate change-fueled wildfires played a significant role in reducing air quality in the US in 2021. The authors pointed to a number of fires that led to hazardous air pollution — including the Caldor and Dixie fires in California, as well as the Bootleg Fire in Oregon, which wafted smoke all the way to the East Coast in July.

China — which is among the countries with the worst air pollution — showed improved air quality in 2021. More than half of the Chinese cities analyzed in the report saw lower levels of air pollution compared to the previous year. The capital city of Beijing continued a five-year trend of improved air quality, according to the report, due to a policy-driven drawdown of polluting industries in the city.

The report also found that the Amazon Rainforest, which had acted as the world’s major defender against the climate crisis, emitted more carbon dioxide than it absorbed last year. Deforestation and wildfires have threatened the critical ecosystem, polluted the air and contributed to climate change.

“This is all a part of the formula that will lead to or is leading to global warming.” Hammes said.

The report also unveiled some inequalities: Monitoring stations remain scant in some developing countries in Africa, South America and the Middle East, resulting in a dearth of air quality data in those regions.

“When you don’t have that data, you’re really in the dark,” Hammes said.

Hammes noted the African country of Chad was included in the report for the first time, due to an improvement in its monitoring network. IQAir found the country’s air pollution was the second-highest in the world last year, behind Bangladesh.

Tarik Benmarhnia, a climate change epidemiologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who has studied the health impact of wildfire smoke, also noted that relying only on monitoring stations can lead to blind spots in these reports.

“I think it is great that they relied on different networks and not only governmental sources,” Benmarhnia, who was not involved in this report, told CNN. “However, many regions do not have enough stations and alternative techniques exist.”

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in its 2021 report that, in addition to slowing the speed of global warming, curbing the use of fossil fuels would have the added benefit of improving air quality and public health.

Hammes said the IQAir report is even more reason for the world to wean off fossil fuel.

“We’ve got the report, we can read it, we can internalize it and really devote ourselves to taking action,” she said. “There needs to be a major move towards renewable energy. We need to take drastic action in order to reverse the tide of global warming; otherwise, the impact and the train that we’re on (would be) irreversible.”

CNN
 — 

Lake Powell, the second-largest human-made reservoir in the US, has lost nearly 7% of its potential storage capacity since 1963, when Glen Canyon Dam was built, a new report shows.

In addition to water loss due to an intense multiyear drought, the US Geological Survey and the Bureau of Reclamation report found, Lake Powell faced an average annual loss in storage capacity of about 33,270 acre-feet, or 11 billion gallons, per year between 1963 and 2018.

That’s enough water to fill the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall about 1,600 times.

The capacity of the reservoir is shrinking because of sediments flowing in from the Colorado and San Juan rivers, according to the report. Those sediments settle at the bottom of the reservoir and decrease the total amount of water the reservoir can hold.

As of Monday, Lake Powell was around 25% full, according to data from the Bureau of Reclamation.

It’s bad news for a region already facing water shortages and extreme wildfires due to the drought. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration drought experts said last week these conditions are expected to at least continue – if not worsen – in the coming months.

Lake Powell is an important reservoir in the Colorado River Basin. Both Lake Powell and nearby Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, have drained at an alarming rate. In August, the federal government declared a water shortage on the Colorado River for the first time after Lake Mead’s water level plunged to unprecedented lows, triggering mandatory water consumption cuts for states in the Southwest that began in January.

And last week, Lake Powell dipped below the critical threshold of 3,525 feet above sea level, sparking additional concerns about water supply and hydropower generation millions of people in the West rely on for electricity.

The significance of the dwindling water supply along the Colorado cannot be overstated.

The system supplies water for more than 40 million people living across seven Western states and Mexico. Lakes Powell and Mead provide a critical supply of drinking water and irrigation for many across the region, including rural farms, ranches and native communities.

“It is vitally important we have the best-available scientific information like this report to provide a clear understanding of water availability in Lake Powell as we plan for the future,” Tanya Trujillo, assistant secretary for water and science with the US Department of Interior, said in a statement. “The Colorado River system faces multiple challenges, including the effects of a 22-year-long drought and the increased impacts of climate change.”