Beware a sharks, radiation, masses of garbage: Benoit Lecomte starts 9,000 km float opposite Pacific

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TODAY:

• France’s Benoit Lecomte begins his bid to be a initial chairman to float opposite a Pacific Ocean
• Rosemary Barton sits down with mythological U.S. counsel and feminist Gloria Allred to speak about what motivates her to quarrel for a rights of women — including a right to be heard
• The U.S. supervision is readying two large bailouts for a struggling American spark industry
• Missed The National final night? Watch it here

A really, unequivocally prolonged swim

If all goes well, a next 6 months will be a many unchanging of Benoit Lecomte’s life.

For 8 hours a day he’ll be churning his limbs in a cold sea currents, perplexing to wand off a dullness fundamental to a plea of apropos a initial chairman to float opposite a immeasurable Pacific.

If anyone is prepared for such earthy and mental extremes, it is substantially the male who once front-crawled opposite a wintry Atlantic in only 73 days.

But that was 20 years ago, and that outing was some 2,400 kilometres shorter.

Benoit Lecomte, left, with his children Max and Ana, gives his rigging a final check Tuesday before commencement his bid to float opposite a Pacific Ocean. (Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images)This morning, a 51-year-old Frenchman entered a waters off Chōshi, Japan, swimming a initial few hundred metres of his 8,851-kilometre tour in a association of his children Max and Ana. By day’s finish he hopes to be 48 kilometres closer to his ultimate idea — San Francisco, Calif.

Lecomte’s route will initial take him adult a seashore of Japan, until he can join a eastward North Pacific current.

Accompanied by a support organisation of six, he will spend his nights aboard a 20-metre yacht dubbed Discovery. He’ll reenter a H2O a subsequent morning, regulating GPS positioning to make certain that it’s during a accurate mark where he got out.

In serve to his quest for a record books, there is a systematic purpose.

Lecomte and his group have partnered with 12 organizations, including NASA and a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. More than 1,000 H2O samples will be taken along a lane and checked for wickedness levels and little plant and animal life. And he is wearing a deviation guard on his wetsuit to magnitude a durability bequest of a Fukushima reactor disaster on a ocean.

Lecomte leaves Japan behind as he starts a prolonged float to San Francisco. (Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images)The swimmer himself will be a guinea pig, as his organisation and doctors on seaside guard a physiological and psychological effects of spending 6 true months in a water.

After his successful Atlantic crossing, Lecomte had vowed that he would never put himself by such an distress again. But his solve shortly faded and he has been formulation this marathon float for years, training adult to 5 hours a day in a H2O and on land.

Nutrition is a executive concern. His doctors envision that he will need to feast 8,000 calories a day, and the support vessel is well-stocked with pasta and spam. He also skeleton brief pauses to siphon down high-calorie shakes while in a water.

And there are dangers, of course. As Lecomte nears a California seashore he will be channel by a Great White Shark emigration area — a critical exam for a shark repellent bracelet he wears on his wrist.

Lecomte hopes his float will raise recognition of meridian change and environmental issues, most quite a problem of plastics in a seas. At a median of his route, he will spend several days swimming by what is famous as a Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating mass of fishing nets, cosmetic bags, straws, styrofoam and all sorts of other waste that now covers 1.6 million block kilometres — three times a distance of his local France.

Lecomte swims behind his support vessel off a Brittany pier of Quiberon during a finish of his trans-Atlantic float in Sep 1998. The vessel had an electromagnetic-field generator to sentinel off sharks. (Reuters)Ocean rubbish isn’t only unsightly, it can infer lethal as well. This past weekend, authorities in Thailand found a pilot whale stranded and in distress in shoal H2O nearby shore. It vomited adult 5 cosmetic bags before dying. A necropsy found 8 kilograms of cosmetic in a whale’s stomach.

“I’ve been swimming for a prolonged time and a change only in a final 30 years is troubling, that we can see so most degradation,” he recently told a Australian Broadcasting Corporation, referring to a state of a oceans.

Lecomte is scheduled to arrive is San Francisco around a commencement of December. His daily swell can be tracked here.

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Rosemary Barton on assignment

Rosemary Barton sat down with mythological U.S. counsel and feminist Gloria Allred to speak about what motivates her to quarrel for a rights of women — including a right to be heard:

Gloria Allred’s bureau is not what you’d design — or not what we expected, anyway.

It is full of heavy, dim seat from another time. The list is also forged of dim wood, yet there is no tangible space on it to work — photos and tokens cover it entirely.

So instead of operative during a desk, Allred has a mechanism set adult on a potion list with a velvet chair tucked in beside it.

Gloria Allred, left, and Rosemary Barton in Allred’s Los Angeles office. (Carmen Merrifield/CBC)Of course, most of this could be given Allred spends no poignant time in her office.

She is constantly moving, constantly travelling, constantly boring a container behind her from one authorised box and one city to a next.

She will be 77 in July, yet she doesn’t cruise negligence down and seems astounded to be asked when she finds time to rest, or nap, or take a break.

The answer is, she does not. Allred works weekends. She has not taken a holiday given a 1980s. Work is not only what she does, it is also who she is.

And a reason she does her work — defending women and minorities — is because, she says, of her faith in probity and in giving people a voice.

That comes with risks of defamation, unproven allegations, and counter-suits. But she is peaceful to take those risks. Her clients, mostly intimately assaulted women, are also peaceful to take them in sequence to find probity of any kind.

And within 5 mins of assembly her, we start to know because women disclose in Allred. She is tough, assured and reluctant to behind down. She is a feminist of a initial order, and she is a cheerleader of women.

It is tough to speak to her and not feel as yet you, too, could take on a world.

• WATCH: Rosemary Barton’s talk with Gloria Allred tonight on The National on CBC Television and streamed online

Coal attention bailout

The U.S. supervision is readying two large bailouts for a struggling American spark industry, as Donald Trump tries to make good on his oath to bring behind a “beautiful, clean” hoary fuel.

The White House systematic Energy Secretary Rick Perry to take “immediate steps” final Friday to hindrance serve shutdowns of coal-fired and chief generating plants, on inhabitant confidence grounds.

According to a leaked memo, a process will see appetite complement operators systematic to buy electricity from “at-risk facilities” in sequence safeguard a “strategic mix” of generating ability in a eventuality of impassioned continue events or cyber attacks.

Piles of spark lay in front of Pacificorp’s 1,440 megawatt coal-fired appetite plant in Castle Dale, Utah. Almost 270 coal-fired appetite plants have close down in a United States given 2010. (George Frey/Getty Images)Almost 270 coal-fired appetite plants have close down in a United States given 2010, as producers opt for cheaper healthy gas generating stations and move some-more solar and breeze projects into a grid.

It’s misleading what a cost of such an unprecedented involvement in a U.S. appetite marketplace would be. But there is a intensity cost tab for another appearing bailout — as most as $15 billion US.

An review by a U.S. Government Accountability Office into a finances of a account that helps spark miners pang from black lung illness has identified a multibillion-dollar hole in a books as some-more claims hurl in and a bum attention seeks to steep a share of a bills.

A radiological technician looks during a chest cat-scan of a late spark miner who has black lung disease. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)The report, expelled yesterday, found that a Black Lung Disability Trust fund, that is ostensible to be financed by a taxation on spark producers, lacks sufficient income to accommodate a liabilities. In 2017, a account had to steal $1.3 billion US from taxpayers to make a payouts for medical bills.

The problem is approaching to worsen, as a black lung levy on spark mines is set to be cut by 55 per cent during a finish of 2018.

At present, some-more than 14,000 miners and former miners are sketch from a fund. The series of people diagnosed with black lung has been usually increasing, with some-more than 2,300 new cases over a past decade and a half.

One new investigate related a resurgence of a illness to a industry’s struggles, as a remaining miners work longer hours for smaller operators who deposit rebate income in dirt rebate systems.

Miners arrives for a start of their change during American Energy Corp.’s Century Mine in Beallsville, Ohio. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)Or it could simply be a duty of a fact that miners who can no longer find work are now willing to acknowledge that they are pang from a syndrome. (In a past, many hid their illness to keep their jobs. For example, autopsies carried out after a 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine blast in West Virginia showed that 17 of a 29 passed had a disease.)

Either way, a incapacity trust account is now on lane to have to borrow a serve $15 billion by 2050, in serve to a stream $4.3 billion debt and a $6.5 billion in loans that a U.S. supervision has already forgiven.

Yesterday, Trump’s Department of Labor released a matter confirming that advantages will continue to be paid out in a future, “regardless of a Fund’s financial condition.”

Donald Trump binds a pointer ancillary a spark attention during a convene in Wilkes-Barre, Penn., on Oct. 10, 2016. During his choosing campaign, Trump done steady promises to revitalise America’s spark mining sector. (Dominick Reuter/AFP/Getty Images)During his 2016 campaign, Trump done repeated promises to revitalise America’s spark industry by doing divided with tough environmental standards for producers and users. The vows helped him to a 68 per cent landslide in West Virginia on choosing night, Trump’s largest domain of victory.

But a jobs have been delayed to materialize, with only 771 new spark miners hired in 2017.

Overall, U.S. spark companies occupy around 55,000 people — less than a third of a series in a mid-1980s.   

The American solar appetite industry, that employs 250,000 people, lost only over 10,000 jobs in 2017.

Quote of a moment

“This proceed acknowledges that some-more survivors and family members wish to share their experiences, while underscoring a coercion this supervision places in saying a elect broach petrify recommendations that will residence systemic issues to assistance keep Indigenous women and girls safe.”

– Carolyn Bennett, a Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, explains Ottawa’s preference to extend a inhabitant exploration into murdered and blank Indigenous women and girls a six-month extension, rather than a dual years and $50 million that commissioners had requested.

Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Carolyn Bennett speaks during a AFN Special Chiefs Assembly in Gatineau, Que., on May 1. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)

What The National is reading

• 112 Tunisian migrants suspicion passed in Mediterranean (CBC)
• Rob Ford’s widow sues Doug Ford, alleging she’s due millions (Toronto Star)
• Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty to rape, sex charges (CBC)
• A swell in neo-Nazi attacks terrifies refugees in Greece (LA Times)
• London Fire Brigade told Grenfell residents to stay put as lethal fire widespread (CBC)
• Apple jams Facebook’s web-tracking collection (BBC)
• Ethiopia’s council rises state of puncture (Africanews)
• Cleaners find decade-old mummified remains in hoarder’s home (Sydney Morning Herald)

Today in history

June 5, 1985: Keanu Reeves is roving high

A year before he strike it large as Heaver inYoungblood, a 20-year-old Keanu Reeves was still bustling hosting CBC’s girl module Going Great. Here he interviews a 16-year-old who runs her possess roving propagandize in Woodstock, Ont., and afterwards demonstrates because he was never expel in Young Guns. “I’d rather be with hot, sweaty, large horses than Jacqueline Bisset or Elizabeth Taylor,” he proclaims. Really.  

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Article source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/national-today-newsletter-coal-gloria-allred-ben-lecomte-1.4691909?cmp=rss