Polarizing pick for lands chief to have nomination pulled
SEATTLE — President Donald Trump intends to withdraw the nomination of William Perry Pendley to head the Bureau of Land Management, a senior administration official said Saturday — much to the relief of environmentalists who insisted the longtime advocate of selling federal lands should not be overseeing them.
Pendley, a former oil industry and property rights attorney from Wyoming, has been acting as the director of the agency for more than a year under a series of temporary orders from Interior Secretary David Bernhardt. Democrats alleged the temporary orders were an attempt to skirt the nomination process, and Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and conservation groups have filed lawsuits to have Pendley ousted from office.
Trump announced Pendley’s nomination to become the bureau’s director in June. A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, confirmed Saturday that the president intended to withdraw that nomination.
The bureau oversees nearly a quarter-billion public acres in the West and much of the nation’s onshore oil and gas development.
The White House did not offer an explanation for the decision, which is not expected to become official until the Senate returns to session.
The Interior Department said in a statement that the president makes staffing decisions and that Pendley continues leading the agency as deputy director for programs and policy.
Guard threats: Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard vowed Saturday there would be dangerous consequences for the United Arab Emirates after it announced a historic deal with Israel to open up diplomatic relations.
The UAE is the first Gulf Arab state to do so and only the third Arab nation to establish normalized relations with Israel, Iran’s regional archenemy. As part of the U.S.-brokered deal, Israel agreed to temporarily put off the annexation of occupied land sought by the Palestinians for their future state.
The Iranian Guard called the deal a “shameful” agreement and an “evil action“that was underwritten by the U.S., according to the group’s statement on a website it runs, Sepah News.
Clock ticks for TikTok: President Donald Trump late Friday gave the Chinese company ByteDance 90 days to divest itself of any assets used to support the popular TikTok app in the United States.
Trump’s executive order said there is “credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance. might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.”
Trump recently ordered sweeping but vague bans on dealings with the Chinese owners of TikTok and the messaging app WeChat, saying they are a threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy and the economy.
It remains unclear what the TikTok orders mean for the app’s 100 million U.S. users, many of them teenagers or young adults who use it to post and watch short-form videos. Trump on Friday also ordered ByteDance to divest itself of “any data obtained or derived“from TikTok users in the U.S.
Microsoft is in talks to buy parts of TikTok, which has said it spent nearly a year trying to engage in “good faith” with the U.S. government to address U.S. concerns.
Algeria reopens: Algeria started reopening its mosques, cafes, beaches and parks Saturday for the first time in five months, gradually relaxing one of the world’s longer virus confinement periods.
Curfews remain in place in more than half the country, and masks are required outdoors as Algeria tries to keep virus infections down. But authorities decided to start reopening public places starting Saturday, saying the virus infection rate is believed to have stabilized.
Crowds packed beaches in the capital Algiers, celebrating the opportunity to swim in the Mediterranean Sea amid the August heat.
Pope speaks: Pope Francis on Saturday urged Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan to continue talks to resolve their years-long dispute over a massive dam Ethiopia is building on the Blue Nile that has led to sharp regional tensions and fears of military conflict.
Francis, speaking to a crowd gathered at St. Peter’s Square on an official Catholic feast day, said he was closely following negotiations between the three countries over the dam.
Egypt and Sudan suspended talks with Ethiopia this month after Ethiopia proposed linking a deal on the filling and operations of its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam to a broader agreement about Blue Nile waters that would replace a colonial-era accord with Britain.
The colonial-era deal between
Ethiopia and Britain effectively prevents upstream countries from taking any action — such as building dams and filling reservoirs — that would reduce the share of Nile water to downstream countries Egypt and Sudan. The Blue Nile is the source of as much as 85% of the Nile River’s water.
Sea lions: U.S. authorities on Friday gave wildlife managers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho permission to start killing hundreds of sea lions in the Columbia River basin in hopes of helping struggling salmon and steelhead trout.
The bulky marine mammals long ago figured out that they could feast on the migrating fish where they bottleneck at dams or where they head up tributaries to spawn.
“These are places where the fish are really vulnerable,” said Shaun Clements, senior policy analyst for the Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife. “We have to manage this so the fish can get through to spawn.”
The new permit allows the states and several Native American tribes to kill 540 California sea lions and 176 Steller sea lions over the next five years along a 180-mile stretch of the Columbia, from Portland to the McNary Dam upriver, as well as in several tributaries. It’s the first time they have been allowed to kill the much larger Steller sea lions.
The sea lions, whose populations generally are healthy, have posed a long-running conundrum for wildlife officials, pitting mammals protected under federal law against protected — and valuable — fish runs. Complicating matters is that Columbia River salmon are a key food source for the Pacific Northwest’s endangered population of orcas, which scientists say are at risk of extinction if they don’t get more sustenance.