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*2020 Election Case Appeals Court Hears Arguments on Trump’s Claim of Immunity*
Judges are considering a question that has paralyzed the 2020 elections case: whether Mr. Trump is immune from prosecution because the charges are tied to actions he took while president.
Here’s the latest on the arguments.
Three federal appeals court judges on Tuesday peppered a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump with tough questions about Mr. Trump’s central defense to an indictment accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election: that he is entirely immune to the charges because they arose from actions he took while in the White House.
All three members of the three-judge panel — composed of two Democratic appointees and one Republican appointee — appeared to express skepticism about several arguments Mr. Trump’s raised to support their immunity claims.
Judge Karen L. Henderson, the sole Republican appointee on the panel, also pressed D. John Sauer, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, pushing back on his argument that for more than 200 years, American courts have never sat in judgment over a president’s official actions. Judge Henderson pointed out that until Mr. Trump was indicted — not just once, but four times — courts have never been in a situation where they had to consider the criminal liability of a president or former president.
Judge Henderson also seemed less than persuaded by Mr. Sauer’s argument that Mr. Trump was acting in his role as president and upholding his official duty to preserve the integrity of the election when he sought to challenge his loss to President Biden.
“I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ allows him to violate criminal law,” Judge Henderson said.
The hearing in front of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit could help decide when — or even whether — Mr. Trump will go to trial in the election interference case, which is unfolding in Federal District Court in Washington. It could also go a long way in determining the timing of the three other criminal trials that Mr. Trump is facing in the months ahead.
Here’s what to know:
The former president arrived at the courthouse before the hearing even though he is not required to be there — and appellate judges often prefer to hear cases as intellectual exercises without the presence of defendants. Mr. Trump has placed fighting his criminal prosecutions at the heart of his political strategy heading into the Republican primary campaign.
As Mr. Trump’s lawyers argue to the court, they are playing a long shot, hoping to persuade the judges that the Constitution affords him total immunity from prosecution for any actions he undertook as president. Read more about the lawyers in the court.
Another argument Mr. Trump’s lawyer made is that a president must be impeached and convicted before he could face criminal prosecution. It’s a legal long-shot and may come as a surprise to some of those who opted not to remove Mr. Trump from office after the Jan. 6 riot. For example, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, voted for acquittal then gave a fiery speech on the Senate floor saying that the legal system could still hold Mr. Trump to account.
Prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, who filed the case against Mr. Trump, argued that nothing in the Constitution or American history supports the idea that former presidents are above being subject to federal criminal law.
Winning the appeal is only one of Mr. Trump’s goals. He is also hoping that the litigation can eat up enough time to postpone the election trial — now set to start in early March — until after Election Day. If he retakes the White House, he could seek to order the charges against him to be dropped or try to pardon himself.
Because no former president has ever been prosecuted before, there are few definitive precedents to guide the appellate judges in deciding the question of immunity. While the Justice Department has long maintained a policy that sitting presidents cannot be indicted, Mr. Trump’s bid to claim total immunity from prosecution is a remarkable attempt to claim the protections of the presidency even though he is no longer in office.
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Charlie Savage
Jan. 9, 2024, 10:39 a.m. ET1 minute ago
1 minute ago
Charlie SavageReporting from the courthouse
Pearce is now done. Sauer is coming back.
Charlie Savage
Jan. 9, 2024, 10:36 a.m. ET4 minutes ago
4 minutes ago
Charlie SavageReporting from the courthouse
Pearce agrees with Judge Pan’s analysis that Trump’s gambit lives or dies based on whether the court decides that conviction in an impeachment proceeding is necessary before any criminal prosecution. Pearce also argues that Trump’s legal team is wrong about that.
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Charlie Savage
Jan. 9, 2024, 10:35 a.m. ET5 minutes ago
5 minutes ago
Charlie SavageReporting from the courthouse
A lawyer for the special counsel, Pearce, says Sauer’s arguments put forth an extraordinarily frightening vision. Pearce cites the possibility that a president could order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a rival and then either resign before he can be impeached or otherwise evade conviction in his Senate impeachment trial, and it would not be treated as a crime.
Charlie Savage
Jan. 9, 2024, 10:28 a.m. ET12 minutes ago
12 minutes ago
Charlie SavageReporting from the courthouse
In response to Judge Childs, Pearce argues that the court could rule in a way that allows this case to go forward while leaving open the possibility that in some other case in the future with different circumstances, a president could successfully raise a narrower immunity claim.
Jan. 9, 2024, 10:27 a.m. ET13 minutes ago
13 minutes ago
Alan Feuer
Pearce rejects Sauer’s argument that denying immunity to Trump would open a Pandora’s box of “tit-for-tat” partisan-driven prosecutions of presidents moving forward. He essentially argues that Trump is a unique case and holding him criminally liable won’t lead to an onslaught of charges against future presidents.
Charlie Savage
Jan. 9, 2024, 10:27 a.m. ET13 minutes ago
13 minutes ago
Charlie SavageReporting from the courthouse
Judge Henderson asks how the courts could write an opinion that would not unleash a floodgate of prosecutions of former presidents. Pearce, a lawyer for the special counsel, says it’s been understood since Nixon’s resignation during the Watergate scandal — and his acceptance of a pardon for having used the C.I.A. to obstruct an F.B.I. investigation — that presidents can be prosecuted for their acts in the White House. This would not be a sea change, he says, and the fact it hasn’t come up until now underscores how aberrational and serious Trump’s conduct was.
*The New Space Race Is Causing New Pollution Problems*
Earth’s stratosphere has never seen the amounts of emissions and waste from rockets and satellites that a booming space economy will leave behind.
The high-altitude chase started over Cape Canaveral on Feb. 17, 2023, when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched. Thomas Parent, a NASA research pilot, was flying a WB-57 jet when the rocket ascended past the right wing — leaving him mesmerized before he hit the throttle to accelerate.
For roughly an hour, Mr. Parent dove in and out of the plume in the rocket’s wake while Tony Casey, the sensor equipment operator aboard the jet, monitored its 17 scientific instruments. Researchers hoped to use the data to prove they could catch a rocket’s plume and eventually characterize the environmental effects of a space launch.
In the past few years, the number of rocket launches has spiked as commercial companies — especially SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk — and government agencies have lofted thousands of satellites into low-Earth orbit. And it is only the beginning. Satellites could eventually total one million, requiring an even greater number of space launches that could yield escalating levels of emissions.
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SpaceX declined to comment about pollution from rockets and satellites. Representatives for Amazon and Eutelsat OneWeb, two other companies working toward satellite mega-constellations, said they are committed to sustainable operations. But scientists worry that more launches will scatter more pollutants in pristine layers of Earth’s atmosphere. And regulators across the globe, who assess some risks of space launches, do not set rules related to pollution.
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A single circular-shaped plume from a rocket flying into the blackness of space.
The exhaust plume from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket taking off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in 2018,Credit…Matt Hartman/Associated Press
Experts say they do not want to limit the booming space economy. But they fear that the steady march of science will move slower than the new space race — meaning we may understand the consequences of pollution from rockets and spacecraft only when it is too late. Already, studies show that the higher reaches of the atmosphere are laced with metals from spacecraft that disintegrate as they fall back to Earth.
“We are changing the system faster than we can understand those changes,” said Aaron Boley, an astronomer at the University of British Columbia and co-director of the Outer Space Institute. “We never really appreciate our ability to affect the environment. And we do this time and time again.”
We Have Liftoff
When a rocket like the Falcon 9 lifts off, it typically takes about 90 seconds to punch through the lower atmosphere, or troposphere, before reaching the middle atmosphere. It was at the top of the troposphere that Mr. Parent began his pursuit, ultimately flying as high as the middle atmosphere, where the air’s density is so low that he and Mr. Casey had to wear pressure suits and heavyweight gloves, as well as helmets that provided them with oxygen.
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The middle atmosphere has seldom seen so much excitement. Commercial airliners seldom fly at these heights. Nor is there much terrestrial weather or pollution from the ground. It is thus calm, unspoiled and empty — except for the occasional rocket, which will pass through it for three to four minutes on its way to space. By the time a rocket curves into orbit, it will have dumped in the middle and upper layers of the atmosphere as much as two-thirds of its exhaust, which scientists predict will rain down and collect in the lower layer of the middle atmosphere, the stratosphere.
The stratosphere is home to the ozone layer, which shields us from the sun’s harmful radiation. But it is extremely sensitive: Even the smallest of changes can have enormous effects on it — and the world below.
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A silhouette of a space shuttle as it points toward the Earth with a sharp line of the Earth’s atmosphere, or limb, viewed from the International Space Station.
The space shuttle Endeavour on its way to docking with the International Space Station in 2010, with the Earth’s troposphere layer, in orange, clearly visible.Credit…NASA
When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it belched enough sulfur dioxide gas into the stratosphere to trigger a multiyear cooling spell on Earth. That gas created sulfate aerosols, which warmed the stratosphere while blocking heat from hitting Earth’s surface. Some scientists worry that cumulative exhaust from more rockets may affect the climate in a similar manner.
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Today, rocket exhaust pales in comparison to the exhaust emitted by aviation. But scientists are concerned that even small additions to the stratosphere will have a much bigger effect. Martin Ross, a scientist from The Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research organization in Los Angeles, compared Earth’s atmosphere to a barrel of muddy water that has settled — with muck at the bottom and a relatively clear top. If you add more dirt to the mucky bottom, it may go unnoticed. But if you add that dirt to the clear top, he said, it is likely to become cloudy or even mucky.
Just how rockets will affect that relatively clear top, the stratosphere, remains uncertain. But scientists are concerned that black carbon, or soot, that is released from current rockets will act like a continuous volcanic eruption, a change that could deplete the ozone layer and affect the Earth below.
Skyrocketing Numbers
In the 1990s, when NASA’s space shuttle and other rockets consistently launched from U.S. soil, several studies predicted that the spacecraft would cause local ozone damage. One study even forecast a loss as high as 100 percent — essentially creating a small ozone hole above Cape Canaveral that would allow more of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation to reach the ground, raising the risk of skin cancer, cataracts and immune disorders.
The studies relied on models and predictions alone, with no observational data. So Dr. Ross and his colleagues gathered data from high-altitude research flights, which did find local ozone holes in the shuttle’s wake. But they healed quickly and were not large enough to affect Cape Canaveral — at least not at the frequency of launches then, roughly 25 per year.
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A distant view of a space shuttle launching into layers of clouds on a bright day.
The space shuttle Discovery launching from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in 1988.Credit…NASA
The same may not be true going forward. In 2023, SpaceX launched nearly 100 rockets on its own, with most flights building its Starlink satellite constellation. It will soon be joined by Amazon, which is planning frequent launches for its Project Kuiper constellation, and other companies seeking substantial presences in orbit. These satellites offer a range of benefits, including broadband internet almost anywhere on Earth.
But once these companies complete their constellations of up to thousands of orbiters, the launches won’t end. Many satellites have a lifetime of five to 15 years, requiring satellite companies to loft replacements.
It is the beginning of a new era.
“I think we are at a stage in the space industry that we were at many decades ago in a number of our terrestrial environments,” said Tim Maclay, the chief strategy officer for ClearSpace, a Swiss company seeking to build sustainable space operations. “We see the prospect of development and we tend to race into it without a tremendous amount of forethought on the environmental consequences.”
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A Race Against the Space Race
As space companies set records for launches and satellites deployed, scientists are starting to quantify the potential effects.
In a paper published in 2022, soot from rockets was shown to be nearly 500 times as efficient at heating the atmosphere as soot released from sources like airplanes closer to the surface. It’s the muddy-barrel effect.
“That means that as we start to grow the space industry and launch more rockets, we’re going to start to see that effect magnify very quickly,” said Eloise Marais, an associate professor in physical geography at University College London and an author of the study.
A separate study also published in 2022 found that if the rate of rocket launches increased by a factor of 10, their emissions could cause temperatures in parts of the stratosphere to rise as much as 2 degrees Celsius. This could begin to degrade the ozone over most of North America, all of Europe and a chunk of Asia.
As a result, “people at higher latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere may be exposed to more harmful ultraviolet radiation,” said the study’s lead author, Christopher Maloney of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.
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A long plume of exhaust shooting out of a launching Starship spacecraft.
A Starship rocket launching from Texas in November. Its fuel creates less soot, using a mix of liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants.Credit…Timothy A. Clary/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
That said, Dr. Maloney’s team did not quantify how much more radiation exposure could occur.
The exact amounts of soot emitted by different rocket engines used around the globe are also poorly understood. Most launched rockets currently use kerosene fuel, which some experts call “dirty” because it emits carbon dioxide, water vapor and soot directly into the atmosphere. But it might not be the predominant fuel of the future. SpaceX’s future rocket Starship, for example, uses a mix of liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants.
Still, any hydrocarbon fuel produces some amount of soot. And even “green rockets,” propelled by liquid hydrogen, produce water vapor, which is a greenhouse gas at these dry high altitudes.
“You can’t take what’s green in the troposphere and necessarily think of it being green in the upper atmosphere,” Dr. Boley said. “There is no such thing as a totally neutral propellant. They all have different impacts.”
Smithereens of Satellites
What goes up must come down. Once satellites in low-Earth orbit reach the end of their operational lifetimes, they plunge through the atmosphere and disintegrate, leaving a stream of pollutants in their wake. Although scientists do not yet know how this will influence Earth’s environment, Dr. Ross thinks that it will be the most significant impact from spaceflight.
A study published in October found that the stratosphere is already littered with metals from re-entering spacecraft. It used the same NASA WB-57 jet that chased the SpaceX rocket plume last year, studying the stratosphere over Alaska and much of the continental U.S.
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A close-up portrait of pilot Tom Parent, in a WB-57 pressure suit, which somewhat resembles a spacesuit.
Tom Parent, in a WB-57 pressure suit in preparation for a high altitude research flight.Credit…Robert Markowitz/NASA
When the researchers began analyzing the data, they saw particles that didn’t belong. Niobium and hafnium, for example, do not occur naturally but are used in rocket boosters. Yet these metals, along with other distinct elements from spacecraft, were embedded within roughly 10 percent of the most common particles in the stratosphere.
The findings validate earlier theoretical work, and Dr. Boley, who was not involved in the study, argues that the percentage will only increase given that humanity is at the beginning of the new satellite race.
Of course, researchers cannot yet say how these metals will affect the stratosphere.
“That’s a big question that we have to answer moving forward, but we can’t presume that it won’t matter,” Dr. Boley said.
An Exception to the Rule
While scientists are raising the alarm, they don’t see themselves in opposition to rocket companies or satellite operators.
“We don’t want to stop the space industry,” said Karen Rosenlof, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chemical Sciences Laboratory, who says that satellites provide incredible services to people on the ground. But she and others are asking for a set of regulations that will consider the environmental implications.
Dr. Rosenlof argues that there are ways to reduce the impacts of the space industry without shutting it down. For example, if scientists find a threshold beyond which the space industry will start to harm the environment, it would make sense to simply limit the numbers of launches and satellites. Alternatively, the materials or fuels used by the space industry could be tweaked.
Dr. Boley agrees. “There are a lot of possibilities that could help us protect the environment while still giving access to space,” he said. “We just need to look at the big picture.”
But to do that, scientists argue, satellite operators and rocket companies need regulations. Few are currently in place.
“Space launch falls into a gray area,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has been involved in a working group on this research. “It falls between the cracks of all the regulatory authorities.”
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A bright plume from a rocket out of frame launching at nighttime.
A Falcon 9 launching from Cape Canaveral last year.Credit…Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The Montreal Protocol, for instance, is a treaty that successfully set limits on chemicals known to harm the ozone layer. But it does not address rocket emissions or satellites.
In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency is not responsible for analyzing rocket launches. The Federal Communications Commission licenses large constellations of satellites but does not consider their potential harm to the environment. (The Government Accountability Office called for changes to that F.C.C. policy in 2022, but they have yet to occur.) And the Federal Aviation Administration assesses environmental impacts of rocket launches on the ground, but not in the atmosphere or space.
That could put the stratosphere’s future in the hands of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other private space company executives — which is particularly worrying to Dr. Boley, who says the space industry does not want to slow down.
“Unless it immediately affects their bottom line, they’re simply not interested,” he said. “The environmental impact is an inconvenience.”
A spokesperson for the telecommunications company OneWeb, which has launched more than 600 satellites, said it is committed to sustainability in satellite design, constellation plans and launch efforts.
“We work closely with public and private partners to minimize the environmental impact of our fleet of satellites,” said Katie Dowd, a senior director there.
Still, OneWeb plans to expand its constellation to roughly 7,000 satellites.
“It remains to be seen how well we’re going to do this,” Dr. Maclay said. “We don’t tend to be very good as a species at proactively taking responsible steps toward environmental stewardship. It often comes as an afterthought.”
How Astronomers Are Saving Astronomy From Satellites — For Now
Even the most powerful telescopes are in peril as orbits above Earth fill with thousands of new satellites. But scientists aren’t ready to give up the night sky.
Jan. 9, 2024
*This Venezuelan Family Won Asylum. Days Later, They Lost It.*
Millions of asylum seekers have overwhelmed the immigration system. A confusing mix-up is keeping one family in limbo.
Dyluis Rojas and his wife and children fled first from Venezuela and later from Colombia and Chile, crossing deserts, jungles and rivers with one goal: to make it to the United States and stay there.
The family arrived in June 2022. Less than a year and a half later, they were elated when they received news that their asylum application had been approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, one of the federal agencies that processes immigration matters. Mr. Rojas and his wife could soon begin to work. They would eventually be able to apply for green cards.
Then, a few days later, another letter arrived, with the same date and signed by the same official. It said that Mr. Rojas’s asylum claim had been deemed “not credible” and that he had not been granted asylum. The family faced the possibility of deportation.
“We were at zero all over again,” Mr. Rojas said.
It is unclear why two opposing notices were issued and which one will stand. Immigration lawyers said that Mr. Rojas’s situation seemed highly unusual, but that miscommunication by and within government agencies was not uncommon. Now, the family is waiting again, uncertain about their fate.
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The contradictory letters shine a spotlight on a system that is badly overwhelmed as an influx of migrants crossing into the United States continues.
Thousands of people are arriving by the day, their hopes pinned on a teetering immigration bureaucracy that has received record numbers of asylum applications in the last two years. There is now a backlog of two million asylum cases, according to data from U.S.C.I.S. and the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
Asylum applicants must submit their claims within one year of arriving in the United States, but most migrants lack the know-how and resources to do so. Applications are filed to two separate federal entities: U.S.C.I.S., under the Homeland Security Department, and immigration court, which is part of the Justice Department.
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Ms. Oropeza sits at a restaurant table and feeds a spoonful of yellow rice to a toddler sitting in a stroller.
Ms. Oropeza with her youngest daughter. She and her husband, Mr. Rojas, are confused about whether they will win asylum or be deported.Credit…José A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York Times
Asylum seekers can wait years to receive a decision, with wait times and approval rates varying by U.S. region and applicants’ nationalities, among other factors. In courts across the country, the estimated average wait for an asylum hearing is now 1,429 days, according to TRAC.
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At U.S.C.I.S., the processing time is approaching a decade.
A U.S.C.I.S. official said the agency does not comment on individual immigration cases. The official said U.S.C.I.S. evaluates each case fairly and humanely and that it was putting resources toward reducing backlogs.
Understaffed government agencies are playing a perpetual game of catch-up and sometimes crossing wires, leaving the lives of migrants like Mr. Rojas hanging in the balance.
The situation only stands to get worse. Crossings at the southern border have risen to record highs under President Biden. The Border Patrol has apprehended as many as 10,000 people in a single day in recent weeks. More than 160,000 migrants, many of them Venezuelan, have come to New York City since the spring of 2022, and some 70,000 remain in the city’s care.
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The crisis has been a difficult test for Mayor Eric Adams of New York, who has implored federal officials to ease the burden on big cities by providing more funding but also by expediting work permits and helping more people apply for asylum, one of the few routes to being able to work legally.
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Four children of different ages pose in a parking lot with slight smiles on their faces. They all wear warm coats.
The family lived in a Brooklyn homeless shelter, but were moved to a Queens hotel recently, which is an hour away from the children’s school.Credit…José A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York Times
The city opened an asylum help center in June. As of last week, the city had helped migrants file over 25,000 applications, including for temporary protected status, work authorizations and asylum; of those, more than 8,100 were asylum cases. It is unclear if any of those people have been granted asylum.
Anecdotally, immigration lawyers say that some migrants who arrived in New York in the last two years have received decisions on their asylum cases, but that the vast majority of those cases are still pending.
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The lengthy timeline was one reason Mr. Rojas and his wife, Grisy Oropeza, were surprised and overjoyed to receive a notice of approval only four months after they applied.
“Words did not come,” Mr. Rojas recalled recently of the day he received the news. “We were in shock.”
A TV news crew recorded as someone from a community group explained the letter’s meaning. Mr. Rojas and Ms. Oropeza wiped away tears.
“The dream begins today,” Ana Maldonado-Alfonzo, the paralegal who helped them apply, said then.
Mr. Rojas’s asylum claim said that officials under Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, had sought to extort money from the small store he and his wife ran out of their home. In his application, Mr. Rojas said he had been beaten and imprisoned when he refused to pay, and that he continued to receive death threats after he was released.
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Eventually, after trying to make a living in Colombia and Chile, where they said they faced xenophobia, the family, including a 5-month-old baby, began a monthslong journey to the United States. They didn’t have an exact destination in mind, but they had heard a lot about New York and knew someone there. Officials bused them from the border to Washington, Mr. Rojas said, and from there they made their way north.
Desperate to work, they applied for asylum in June 2023.
“To arrive here, get a job, be established with the kids, have a better life for them — that was the hope,” Ms. Oropeza said.
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Ms. Oropeza and Mr. Rojas stand next to each other on a New York City street and look with mouths set toward the camera.
Mr. Rojas must appear in immigration court to find out what will happen to them next.Credit…José A. Alvarado Jr. for The New York Times
Once in a family shelter in Brooklyn, they began to create some stability. The older children started school, where bilingual teachers and Spanish-speaking friends helped them acclimate. With donated clothes they weathered their first winter.
In October, they received the notice of asylum approval. Then came the rejection letter. In November, without being given a reason, the family was moved to a shelter in a Queens hotel, more than an hour’s commute to the children’s school in Brooklyn.
The family is scheduled to appear in immigration court this week, a step that ManoLasya Perepa, government relations policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called “a huge waste of time.”
“Whoever made the initial findings that they are approved for asylum felt that the family, by law, met their burden of proof,” she said.
Ms. Perepa said that “inefficiencies and mismanagement and redundancies” like those that appear to have occurred in this case are what cause the immigration system “to be so sluggish and unfair.”
Jose Perez, an immigration lawyer who is representing Mr. Rojas and his family for free, said the best outcome would be for their court case to be dismissed and for U.S.C.I.S. to issue a final decision on the original asylum claim. Otherwise, the family could remain in limbo for years.
Ms. Oropeza said she felt she’d had a dream taken away in an instant. “One goes through so much to get here,” she said. “To get here and not know your destiny, to be still on that journey — it’s depressing.”
*South Korea Bans Dog Meat, a Now-Unpopular Food*
Breeding, killing and selling dogs for their meat will be banned in a country where it has fallen out of favor. Hundreds of thousands of the animal were still being bred for human consumption.
South Korea’s lawmakers on Tuesday outlawed the breeding, slaughter and sale of dogs for human consumption, a centuries-old practice that is unpopular and rare today.
Dog meat was once more common, and remained so in the decades after the Korean War when the country was destitute and meat was scarce. It is used in a well-known dish that Koreans call “bosintang,” or “soup good for your body.” But the practice became increasingly shunned as incomes, pet ownership and concern for animal welfare rose steadily in the late 20th century.
Today, many South Koreans, especially younger people, see eating dog meat as appalling. About 93 percent of South Korean adults said they had no intention of consuming dog meat in the future, and 82 percent said they supported a ban, according to a survey conducted last year by Aware, an animal welfare organization in Seoul.
“This is history in the making I never thought I would see in my lifetime,” Chae Jung-ah, the director of Humane Society International Korea, said in a statement by the group. She added, “We reached a tipping point where most Korean citizens reject eating dogs.”
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With the ban’s passage, South Korea joined a list of other places that have prohibited the trading of dog meat, including Hong Kong, India, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand, the group said. Millions of dogs are still killed each year for their meat in places like Cambodia, Indonesia and Vietnam, according to Four Paws, an animal welfare organization in Austria.
President Yoon Suk Yeol’s cabinet is expected to officially put the ban into effect. Mr. Yoon and Kim Keon Hee, the first lady, who own numerous pet dogs and cats, have campaigned for the ban. The president managed to succeed after previous governments had failed to gather enough support to end the practice.
Under the law, which has passed the National Assembly with broad support, a person who butchers dogs for human consumption could face three years in prison or a fine of 30 million South Korean won, or about $23,000, after a three-year grace period. The breeding and selling of the animals would be punishable by two years in prison or a fine of 20 million won.
The law will also offer financial incentives for dog farmers and owners of restaurants that serve dog meat to switch jobs, requiring each to submit a phaseout plan to a local government.
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In 2022, about 520,000 dogs were being raised for human consumption at 1,150 farms, and about 1,600 restaurants were selling dog meat nationwide, according to lawmakers — considerably lower than in years past.
An association of dog farmers protested the bill in the months before it passed, arguing that eating dog meat was a matter of individual choice, and demanding more compensation for farmers who would lose their businesses as a result of a ban.
The law’s passage marked a milestone for animal protection activists who have campaigned for the ban for years. Since 2015, they have helped 18 dog farmers close their operations or transition into vegetable farms. The farmers gave up their animals to be adopted as pets.
*See How 2023 Broke Records to Become the Hottest Year*
Month after month global temperatures didn’t just break records, they smashed them. This year could be even warmer.
The numbers are in, and scientists can now confirm what month after month of extraordinary heat worldwide began signaling long ago. Last year was Earth’s warmest by far in a century and a half.
Global temperatures started blowing past records midyear and didn’t stop. First, June was the planet’s warmest June on record. Then, July was the warmest July. And so on, all the way through December.
Averaged across last year, temperatures worldwide were 1.48 degrees Celsius, or 2.66 Fahrenheit, higher than they were in the second half of the 19th century, the European Union climate monitor announced on Tuesday. That is warmer by a sizable margin than 2016, the previous hottest year.
To climate scientists, it comes as no surprise that unabated emissions of greenhouse gases caused global warming to reach new highs. What researchers are still trying to understand is whether 2023 foretells many more years in which heat records are not merely broken, but smashed. In other words, they are asking whether the numbers are a sign that the planet’s warming is accelerating.
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When scientists combine their satellite readings with geological evidence on the climate’s more distant past, 2023 also appears to be among the warmest years in at least 100,000, said Carlo Buontempo, director of the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, at a news briefing. “There were simply no cities, no books, agriculture or domesticated animals on this planet the last time the temperature was so high,” he said.
Latest News on Climate Change and the Environment
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A year of record heat. 2023’s global temperatures did not just beat prior records — they left them in the dust. Scientists are now sifting through evidence to see whether this year might reveal something new about the climate and what we are doing to it. One troubling hypothesis? That the planet’s warming is accelerating and its effects are barreling our way more quickly than before.
An Arctic report card. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its 18th annual assessment of the Arctic region. According to the report, 2023 overall was the sixth-warmest year the Arctic has experienced since reliable records began in 1900, and this summer was the region’s warmest on record.
The view from above. With their ability to store planet-warming carbon, protected areas like the forests of Borneo and the Amazon can be a crucial buffer against climate change. Now, high in orbit, a new NASA program is helping researchers more accurately calculate how much carbon these reserves are keeping out of the atmosphere.
Air-conditioning use. Sixty nations in Dubai for U.N. climate talks committed to improve the efficiency of new air-conditioners by 50% and reduce greenhouse gas emissions related to those cooling machines by almost 70%, the latest in a flurry of global promises that aim to tackle climate change.
Rising emissions. The greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet are on the rise, despite years of commitments by countries to reduce them. Carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels is expected to grow by 1.1% in 2023 compared with 2022, researchers from the Global Carbon Project found.
Every 10th of a degree of global warming represents extra thermodynamic fuel that intensifies heat waves and storms, adds to rising seas and hastens the melting of glaciers and ice sheets.
A record lowSea ice formation around Antarctica was one of the metrics that broke records in 2023
Where’s All the Antarctic Sea Ice? Annual Peak Is the Lowest Ever Recorded.
Those effects were on display last year. Hot weather baked Iran and China, Greece and Spain, Texas and the American South. Canada had its most destructive wildfire season on record by far, with more than 45 million acres burned. Less sea ice formed around the coasts of Antarctica, in both summer and winter, than ever measured.
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Where 2023 was hotter or colder compared with 1991-2020 baseline
COLDER
AVERAGE
HOTTER
–3°C
–2°
–1°
–0.5°
–0.2°
+0.2°
+0.5°
+1°
+2°
+3°
Northern Canada was exceptionally warm.
Cooler-than-average areas were rare.
El Niño brought warmer temperatures to the East Pacific.
Source: Copernicus/ECMWF
NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the research group Berkeley Earth are scheduled to release their own estimates of 2023 temperatures later this week. Each organization’s data sources and analytical methods are somewhat different, though their results rarely diverge by much.
Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations agreed to limit long-term global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, and, if possible, 1.5 degrees. At present rates of greenhouse gas emissions, it will only be a few years before the 1.5-degree goal is a lost cause, researchers say.
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Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the main driver of global warming. But last year several other natural and human-linked factors also helped boost temperatures.
Explore more charts and maps documenting 2023’s record temperatures
Earth Was Due for Another Year of Record Warmth. But This Warm?
Dec. 26, 2023
What This Year’s ‘Astonishing’ Ocean Heat Means for the Planet
It’s Not Your Imagination. Summers Are Getting Hotter.
The 2022 eruption of an underwater volcano off the Pacific island nation of Tonga spewed vast amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere, helping trap more heat near Earth’s surface. Recent limits on sulfur pollution from ships brought down levels of aerosols, or tiny airborne particles that reflect solar radiation and help cool the planet.
Another factor was El Niño, the recurrent shift in tropical Pacific weather patterns that began last year and is often linked with record-setting heat worldwide. And that contains a warning of potentially worse to come this year.
The reason: In recent decades, very warm years have typically been ones that started in an El Niño state. But last year, the El Niño didn’t start until midyear — which suggests that El Niño wasn’t the main driver of the abnormal warmth at that point, said Emily J. Becker, a climate scientist at the University of Miami.
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It is also a strong sign that this year could be hotter than last. “It’s very, very likely to be top three, if not the record,” Dr. Becker said, referring to 2024.
Scientists caution that a single year, even one as exceptional as 2023, can tell us only so much about how the planet’s long-term warming might be changing. But other signs suggest the world is heating up more quickly than before.
Have Climate Questions? Get Answers Here.
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About 90 percent of the energy trapped by greenhouse gases accumulates in the oceans, and scientists have found that the oceans’ uptake of heat has accelerated significantly since the 1990s. “If you look at that curve, it’s clearly not linear,” said Sarah Purkey, an oceanographer with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.
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A group of researchers in France recently found that the Earth’s total heating — across oceans, land, air and ice — had been speeding up for even longer, since 1960. This broadly matches up with increases in carbon emissions and reductions in aerosols over the past few decades.
But scientists will need to continue studying the data to understand whether other factors might be at work, too, said one of the researchers, Karina von Schuckmann, an oceanographer at Mercator Ocean International in Toulouse, France. “Something unusual is happening that we don’t understand,” Dr. von Schuckmann said.
Raymond Zhong reports on climate and environmental issues for The Times. More about Raymond Zhong
Keith Collins is a reporter and graphics editor. He specializes in visual storytelling and covers a range of topics, with a focus on politics and technology. He has a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. More about Keith Collins
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*No, That’s Not Taylor Swift Peddling Le Creuset Cookware*
The singer did not promote a giveaway of the popular cookware, but an artificially generated version of her voice suggested otherwise.
Taylor Swift’s affinity for Le Creuset is real: Her collection of the cookware has been featured on a Tumblr account dedicated to the pop star’s home décor, in a thorough analysis of her kitchen published by Variety and in a Netflix documentary that was highlighted by Le Creuset’s Facebook page.
What is not real: Ms. Swift’s endorsement of the company’s products, which have appeared in recent weeks in ads on Facebook and elsewhere featuring her face and voice.
The ads are among the many celebrity-focused scams made far more convincing by artificial intelligence. Within a single week in October, the actor Tom Hanks, the journalist Gayle King and the YouTube personality MrBeast all said that A.I. versions of themselves had been used, without permission, for deceptive dental plan promotions, iPhone giveaway offers and other ads.
In Ms. Swift’s case, experts said, artificial intelligence technology helped create a synthetic version of the singer’s voice, which was cobbled together with footage of her alongside clips showing Le Creuset Dutch ovens. In several ads, Ms. Swift’s cloned voice addressed “Swifties” — her fans — and said she was “thrilled” to be handing out free cookware sets. All people had to do was click on a button and answer a few questions before the end of the day.
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Le Creuset said it was not involved with the singer for any consumer giveaway. The company urged shoppers to check its official online accounts before clicking on suspicious ads. Representatives of Ms. Swift, who was named Person of the Year by Time magazine in 2023, did not respond to requests for comment.
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An A.I.-generated ad that shows Taylor Swift wearing a black top and sitting near a piano. The words overlaid on the ad read: “Hey y’all, it’s Taylor Swift here!”
In recent ads posted on Meta, artificial intelligence technology helped create a synthetic version of Taylor Swift’s voice, which was paired with footage of her and clips of Le Creuset Dutch ovens.
Famous people have lent their celebrity to advertisers for as long as advertising has existed. Sometimes, it has been unwillingly. More than three decades ago, Tom Waits sued Frito-Lay — and won nearly $2.5 million — after the corn chip company imitated the singer in a radio ad without his permission. The Le Creuset scam campaign also featured fabricated versions of Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey, who in 2022 posted an exasperated video about the prevalence of fake social media ads, emails and websites falsely claiming that she endorsed weight loss gummies.
Over the past year, major advances in artificial intelligence have made it far easier to produce an unauthorized digital replica of a real person. Audio spoofs have been especially easy to produce and difficult to identify, said Siwei Lyu, a computer science professor who runs the Media Forensic Lab at the University at Buffalo.
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The Le Creuset scam campaign was probably created using a text-to-speech service, Dr. Lyu said. Such tools usually translate a script into an A.I.-generated voice, which can then be incorporated into existing video footage using lip-syncing programs.
“These tools are becoming very accessible these days,” said Dr. Lyu, who added that it was possible to make a “decent-quality video” in less than 45 minutes. “It’s becoming very easy, and that’s why we’re seeing more.”
Dozens of separate but similar Le Creuset scam ads featuring Ms. Swift — many of them posted this month — were visible as of late last week on Meta’s public Ad Library. (The company owns Facebook and Instagram.) The campaign also ran on TikTok.
The ads sent viewers to websites that mimicked legitimate outlets like the Food Network, which showcased fake news coverage of the Le Creuset offer alongside testimonials from fabricated customers. Participants were asked to pay a “small shipping fee of $9.96” for the cookware. Those who complied faced hidden monthly charges without ever receiving the promised cookware.
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Some of the fake Le Creuset ads, such as one mimicking the interior designer Joanna Gaines, had a deceptive sheen of legitimacy on social media thanks to labels identifying them as sponsored posts or as originating from verified accounts.
In April, the Better Business Bureau warned consumers that fake celebrity scams made with A.I. were “more convincing than ever.” Victims were often left with higher-than-expected charges and no sign of the product they had ordered. Bankers have also reported attempts by swindlers to use voice deepfakes, or synthetic replicas of real people’s voices, to commit financial fraud.
In the past year, several well-known people have publicly distanced themselves from ads featuring their A.I.-manipulated likeness or voice.
This summer, fake ads spread online that purported to show the country singer Luke Combs promoting weight loss gummies recommended to him by the fellow country musician Lainey Wilson. Ms. Wilson posted an Instagram video denouncing the ads, saying that “people will do whatever to make a dollar, even if it is lies.” Mr. Combs’s manager, Chris Kappy, also posted an Instagram video denying involvement in the gummy campaign and accusing foreign companies of using artificial intelligence to replicate Mr. Combs’s likeness.
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“To other managers out there, A.I. is a scary thing and they’re using it against us,” he wrote.
A TikTok spokesperson said the app’s ads policy requires advertisers to obtain consent for “any synthetic media which contains a public figure,” adding that TikTok’s community standards require creators to disclose “synthetic or manipulated media showing realistic scenes.”
Meta said it took action on the ads that violated its policies, which prohibit content that uses public figures in a deceptive way to try to cheat users out of money. The company said it had taken legal steps against some perpetrators of such schemes, but added that malicious ads were often able to evade Meta’s review systems by cloaking their content.
With no federal laws in place to address A.I. scams, lawmakers have proposed legislation that would aim to limit their damage. Two bills introduced in Congress last year — the Deepfakes Accountability Act in the House and the No Fakes Act in the Senate — would require guardrails such as content labels or permission to use someone’s voice or image.
At least nine states, including California, Virginia, Florida and Hawaii, have laws regulating A.I.-generated content.
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For now, Ms. Swift will probably continue to be a popular subject of A.I. experimentation. Synthetic versions of her voice pop up regularly on TikTok, performing songs she never sang, colorfully sounding off on critics and serving as phone ringtones. An English-language interview she gave in 2021 on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” was dubbed with an artificial rendering of her voice speaking Mandarin. One website charges up to $20 for personalized voice messages from “the A.I. clone of Taylor Swift,” promising “that the voice you hear is indistinguishable from the real thing.”
*France Gets Its Youngest and First Openly Gay Prime Minister*
Gabriel Attal, 34, replaces Élisabeth Borne in a cabinet shuffle that President Emmanuel Macron hopes can reinvigorate a term marked by drift and division.
PARIS — In a typically bold bid to revitalize his second term, President Emmanuel Macron named Gabriel Attal, 34, as his new prime minister, replacing Élisabeth Borne, 62, who made no secret of the fact that she was unhappy to be forced out.
Mr. Attal, who was previously education minister and has occupied several government positions since Mr. Macron was elected in 2017, becomes France’s youngest and first openly gay prime minister. A recent Ipsos-Le Point opinion poll suggested he is France’s most popular politician, albeit with an approval rating of just 40 percent.
Mr. Macron, whose second term has been marked by protracted conflict over a pensions bill raising the legal retirement age to 64 from 62 and by a restrictive immigration bill that pleased the right, made clear that he saw in Mr. Attal a leader in his own disruptive image.
“I know that I can count on your energy and your commitment to push through the project of civic rearmament and regeneration that I have announced,” Mr. Macron said in a message addressed to Mr. Attal on X, formerly Twitter. “In loyalty to the spirit of 2017: transcendence and boldness.”
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Mr. Macron was 39 when he sundered the French political system that year to become the youngest president in French history. Mr. Attal, a loyal ally of the president since he joined Mr. Macron’s campaign in 2016, will be 38 by the time of the next presidential election in April, 2027, and would likely become a presidential candidate if his tenure in office is successful.
This prospect holds no attraction for an ambitious older French political guard, including Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister, and Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, whose presidential ambitions are no secret. But for Mr. Macron, who is term-limited, it would place a protégé in the succession mix.
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A Painful Episode: Family groups are calling for the excavation of land in southwestern France that is believed to hold the bodies of tens of Algerian children whose parents fought for France during Algeria’s war of independence and who died after being placed in internment camps at the end of the conflict.
Immigration: President Emmanuel Macron is standing behind a tough immigration law that Parliament passed with unwanted support from the extreme right, causing fissures in his governing coalition.
Luring FIFA: A plan promoted by the government of Macron would encourage international sports bodies, including world soccer’s governing body, to move to the country by promising them tax breaks not available to French citizens and companies.
A Higher Price: The Louvre Museum said that it would raise its basic ticket price to 22 euros beginning in January, in the latest sign that visitors may face higher costs ahead of next year’s Summer Olympics in Paris.
“My aim will be to keep control of our destiny and unleash our French potential,” Mr. Attal said after his appointment.
Standing in the bitter cold at a ceremony alongside Ms. Borne, in the courtyard of the Prime Minister’s residence, Mr. Attal said that his youth — and Mr. Macron’s — symbolized “boldness and movement.” But he also acknowledged that many in France were skeptical of their representatives.
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Alain Duhamel, a prominent French author and political commentator, described Mr. Attal as “a true instinctive political talent and the most popular figure in an unpopular government.” But, he said, an enormous challenge would test Mr. Attal because “Macron’s second term has lacked clarity and been a time of drift, apart from two unpopular reforms.”
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President Emmanuel Macron walking in front of a line of troops.
President Emmanuel Macron reviewing troops in Paris last week. A reshuffle, he hopes, will invigorate his government.Credit…Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
If France is by no means in crisis — its economy has proved relatively resilient despite inflationary pressures and foreign investment is pouring in — it has appeared at times to be in a not uncharacteristic funk, paralyzed politically, sharply divided and governable with an intermittent recourse to a constitutional tool that enables the passing of bills in the lower house without a vote.
Mr. Macron, not known for his patience, had grown weary of this sense of deadlock. He decided to force Ms. Borne out after 19 months although she had labored with great diligence in the trenches of his pension and immigration reforms. Reproach of her dogged performance was rare but she had none of the razzmatazz to which the president is susceptible.
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“You have informed me of your desire to change prime minister,” Ms. Borne wrote in her letter of resignation, before noting how passionate she had been about her mission. Her unhappiness was clear.
In a word, Mr. Macron had fired Ms. Borne, as is the prerogative of any president of the Fifth Republic, and had done so on social media in a way that, as Sophie Coignard wrote in the weekly magazine Le Point, “singularly lacked elegance.”
But with elections to the European Parliament and the Paris Olympics looming this summer, Mr. Macron, whose own approval rating has sunk to 27 percent, wanted a change of governmental image.
“It’s a generational jolt and a clever communications coup,” said Philippe Labro, an author and political observer.
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Mr. Attal has shown the kind of forcefulness and top-down authority Mr. Macron likes during his six months as education minister. He started last summer by declaring that “the abaya can no longer be worn in schools.”
His order, which applies to public middle and high schools, banished the loosefitting full-length robe worn by some Muslim students and ignited another storm over French identity. In line with the French commitment to “laïcité,” or roughly secularism, “You should not be able to distinguish or identify the students’ religion by looking at them,” Mr. Attal said.
The measure provoked protests among France’s large Muslim minority, who generally see no reason that young Muslim women should be told how to dress. But the French center-right and extreme right approved, and so did Mr. Macron.
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Élisabeth Borne with Mr. Attal in a formal setting, surrounded by guards.
Éisabeth Borne, the departing prime minister, delivering a speech during the handover ceremony in Paris on Tuesday.Credit…Pool photo by Emmanuel Dunand
In a measure that will go into effect in 2025, Mr. Attal also imposed more severe academic conditions on entry into high schools as a sign of his determination to reinstate discipline.
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For these and other reasons, Mr. Attal is disliked on the left. Mathilde Panot, the leader of the parliamentary group of extreme left representatives from the France Unbowed party and part of the largest opposition group in the National Assembly, reacted to his appointment by describing Mr. Attal as “Mr. Macron Junior, a man who has specialized in arrogance and disdain.”
The comment amounted to a portent of the difficulties Mr. Attal is likely to face in the 577-seat Assembly, where Mr. Macron’s Renaissance Party and its allies do not hold an absolute majority. The change of prime minister has altered little or nothing for Mr. Macron in the difficult arithmetic of governing. His centrist coalition holds 250 seats.
Still, Mr. Attal may be a more appealing figure than Ms. Borne to the center-right, on which Mr. Macron depended to pass the immigration bill. Like Mr. Macron, the new prime minister comes from the ranks of the Socialist Party, but has journeyed rightward since. Mr. Attal is also a very adaptable politician, in the image of the president.
The specter that keeps Mr. Macron awake at night is that his presidency will end with the election of Marine Le Pen, the far right leader whose popularity has steadily risen. She dismissed the appointment of Mr. Attal as “a puerile ballet of ambition and egos.” Still, the new prime minister’s performance in giving France a sense of direction and purpose will weigh on her chances of election.
Mr. Macron wants a more competitive, dynamic French state, but any new package of reforms that further cuts back the country’s elaborate state-funded social protection in order to curtail the budget deficit is likely to face overwhelming opposition. This will be just one of the many dilemmas facing the president’s chosen wunderkind.
*ATENTAMENTE*
*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*
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