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An attorney for a Texas pipeline company said Wednesday at trial that he will prove various Greenpeace entities coordinated delays and disruptions of a controversial oil pipeline’s construction in North Dakota, and defamed the company to its lenders.Attorneys for the Greenpeace defendants told a jury there is no evidence to back up the claims by Dallas-based Energy Transfer, which seeks potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from Greenpeace.The case is tied to protests in 2016 and 2017 of the Dakota Access Pipeline and its controversial Missouri River crossing upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation. The tribe has long opposed the pipeline as a risk to its water supply. The pipeline was completed in 2017.Energy Transfer and its subsidiary Dakota Access allege trespass, nuisance, defamation, and other offenses by Netherlands-based Greenpeace International and its American branch, Greenpeace USA. The lawsuit also names the group’s funding arm, Greenpeace Fund Inc.Greenpeace paid professional protesters to come to the area, sent blockade supplies, organized or led protester trainings, passed “critical intel” to the protesters and told untrue things to stop the pipeline from being built, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Trey Cox, told the jury in his opening statement.“They didn’t think that there would ever be a day of reckoning, but that day of reckoning begins today,” Cox said in opening statements.Attorneys for the defendants emphasized what they said are distinctions between the various Greenpeace entities, such as what they do and how they’re organized.They said Greenpeace International and Greenpeace Fund Inc. had zero involvement in the protests, while Greenpeace USA had six employees at Standing Rock for five to 51 days. Greenpeace is committed to nonviolence, and only got involved at Standing Rock because of tribal outreach, the attorneys said.“This was an Indigenous-led movement by the Native tribes, and we wanted them to have the spotlight,” said Greenpeace USA attorney Everett Jack Jr.One of nine alleged defamatory statementsthat Energy Transfer desecrated burial grounds and culturally important sites during constructionwas made many times by the tribe before any of the Greenpeace statements, he said.Cox said that statement was included in a letter sent to Energy Transfer’s banks and signed by the executive directors of Greenpeace International and Greenpeace USA.He added that Energy Transfer made 140 adjustments to its pipeline route in order to respect sacred sites.“Our goal was to be a good corporate citizen in North Dakota,” Cox said.More than 500 organizations from more than 50 countries signed on to that letter, said Greenpeace International attorney Courtney DeThomas, who described it as an act of free expression.No financial institution will testify that it received, read or was influenced by the letter, which was signed after thousands of protesters were already at Standing Rock, DeThomas said.Greenpeace representatives have said the lawsuit is an example of corporations abusing the legal system to go after critics and is a critical test of free speech and protest rights. An Energy Transfer spokesperson said the case is about Greenpeace not following the law, not free speech.Greenpeace says the lawsuit is going after $300 million, citing a figure from a previous federal case. The lawsuit complaint asks for damages in an amount to be proved at trial.Because of Greenpeace, Energy Transfer incurred over $82 million in security, contractor and property costs, and lost $80 million of profits, Cox told jurors. The pipeline was supposed to be completed by January 1, 2017, but wasn’t moving oil until five months later, he said.Greenpeace’s “deceptive narrative scared off lenders” and Energy Transfer lost half its banks, he said. The company suffered over $68 million in lost financing and spent $7.6 million for public relations “to deal with these problems and lies” from the “whisper campaign,” Cox said.But Jack said Greenpeace had nothing to do with the company’s delays in operating or refinancing. He also disputed how Energy Transfer is claiming or calculating its damages. The company also has no expert to back its claim of reputational harm, he said.Jury selection took place earlier in the week and the estimated five-week trial is now underway. Nine jurors and two alternates will hear the case in Mandan, North Dakota.The company filed a similar case in federal court in 2017, which a judge dismissed in 2019. Energy Transfer subsequently filed the lawsuit now at trial in state court.Earlier in February, Greenpeace International filed an anti-intimidation suit in the District Court of Amsterdam against Energy Transfer, saying the company acted wrongfully and should pay costs and damages resulting from its “meritless” litigation. Jack Dura, Associated Press
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In this hectic modern world, it’s natural to feel like your ducks arent in a row, but every so often the planets seem to align. This week, Mercury is joining Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune for a seven-planet parade (although not all of them will be visible to the naked eye). Heres what that all means and how best to see it. How exactly do planets align? According to NASA, the term planetary parade isnt really a technical term in astronomy, but it’s cute and paints a fun picture. Additionally, planetary alignment has a few different meanings; it can refer to when the planets line up with each other or when they line up with the moon or stars. For our purposes, we are referring to the latter. The eight planets in our solar system all orbit the sun on a relatively flat, disc-shaped plane. Almost a metaphor for life, each planet moves at its own speed along the orbit. Because of this, it is inevitable that they occasionally line up from time to time. How often does this happen? It all depends on your perspective. According to NASA, this is not a rare occurrence, but it does not happen every year. For Dr. Gerard van Belle, director of science at Lowell Observatory, this is just another day at the office. On the scale of supermoon to death asteroid, this is more a supermoon sort of thing, Dr. van Belle explained to the New York Times. Both NASA and Dr. van Belle do acknowledge that even though it is not rare, it is still a fun phenomenon to witness. How to see the planets align in February 2025 This week is prime viewing for stargazers hoping to catch the planets in action. For most places in the world, the evening of Friday, February 28, is the optimal viewing night. Enter your location into the Sky Tonight app to confirm and head outside right after sunset. Which planets are part of the parade? You wont need special equipment to see Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Mars. For Uranus and Neptune, binoculars or a telescope are a must. Be careful with your eyes when spotting Saturn as it is close to the sun and low in the horizon. After you take in the wonders of the night sky, you might find yourself inspired to bring more alignment into your own life by, for example, syncing up with your coworkers on a project (even the annoying ones). If the planets can come together, maybe you can, too.
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E-Commerce
Thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development workers who have been fired or placed on leave as part of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the agency are being given a brief window Thursday and Friday to clear out their workspaces.USAID placed 4,080 staffers who work across the globe on leave Monday. That was joined by a “reduction in force” that will affect another 1,600 employees, a State Department spokesman said in an emailed response to questions.USAID has been one of the biggest targets so far of a broad campaign by President Donald Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, a project of Trump adviser Elon Musk, to slash the size of the federal government. The actions at USAID leave only a small fraction of its employees on the job.Trump and Musk have moved swiftly to shutter the foreign aid agency, calling its programs out of line with the Republican president’s agenda and asserting without evidence that its work is wasteful. In addition to its scope, their effort is extraordinary because it has not involved Congress, which authorized the agency and has provided its funding.A report from the Congressional Research Service earlier this month said congressional authorization is required “to abolish, move, or consolidate USAID,” but the Republican majorities in the House and the Senate have made no pushback against the administration’s actions. There’s virtually nothing left to fund, anyway: The administration now says it is eliminating more than 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in U.S. assistance around the world.It’s unclear how many of the more than 5,600 USAID employees who have been fired or placed on leave work at the agency’s headquarters building in Washington. A notice on the agency’s website said staff at other locations will have the chance to collect their personal belongings at a later date.The notice laid out instructions for when specific groups of employees should arrive to be screened by security and escorted to their former workspaces. Those being let go must turn in all USAID-issued assets. Workers on administrative leave were told to retain their USAID-issued materials, including diplomatic passports, “until such time that they are separated from the agency.”Many USAID workers saw the administration’s terms for retrieving their belongings as insulting. In the notice, the employees were instructed not to bring weapons, including firearms, “spear guns” and “hand grenades.” Each worker is being given just 15 minutes at their former workstation.The administration’s efforts to slash the federal government are embroiled in various lawsuits, but court challenges to temporarily halt the shutdown of USAID have been unsuccessful.However, a federal judge on Tuesday gave the Trump administration a deadline of this week to release billions of dollars in U.S. foreign aid, saying it had given no sign of complying with his nearly two-week-old court order to ease the funding freeze. Late Wednesday, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked that order, with Chief Justice John Roberts saying it will remain on hold until the high court has a chance to weigh in more fully.That court action resulted from a lawsuit filed by nonprofit organizations over the cutoff of foreign assistance through USAID and the State Department. Trump froze the money through an executive order on his first day in office that targeted what he portrayed as wasteful programs that do not correspond to his foreign policy goals.Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly said in a statement that the attack on USAID employees was “unwarranted and unprecedented.” Connolly, whose district includes a sizable federal workforce, called the aid agency workers part of the “world’s premier development and foreign assistance agency” who save “millions of lives every year.” Gary Fields, Associated Press
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