National Roundup

Alaska
2 lawsuits challenge Trump’s drilling plan in refuge
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Environmental groups wasted no time challenging the Trump administration’s attempt to allow oil and gas drilling in an Alaska refuge where polar bears and caribou roam.

Two lawsuits filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Anchorage sought to block the Interior Department’s plan to allow oil and gas lease sales on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — a 1.56 million-acre strip of land along Alaska’s northern Beaufort Sea coast, or about 8% of the 19.3 million-acre refuge.

In one lawsuit, the National Audubon Society, Center for Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council and Friends of the Earth sued David Bernhardt, the Interior Department secretary who approved the oil and gas lease sales last week.

“Birds can’t vote, and they can’t file a lawsuit — but we can. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment to defend the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and protect America’s bird nursery from drilling,” David Yarnold, president and CEO of the National Audubon Society, said in a statement.

The lawsuit asserts that Bernhardt didn’t have permission to authorize a broad oil and gas leasing program because it violates government statutes managing the plain. It also claims the program violates the Endangered Species Act and other environmental policies.

In the other lawsuit, the Gwich’in Steering Committee — an Indigenous group formed to protect the refuge — and 12 other groups allege that Bernhardt and the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management violated several laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the Wilderness Act.

Nearly 200,000 animals in the Porcupine caribou herd, which are also known as reindeer, travel freely between Alaska and Canada and use the coastal plain as calving grounds.

The land agency’s “decision to violate lands sacred to my people and essential to the health of the Porcupine caribou herd is an attack on our rights, our culture and our way of life,” Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, said in a statement.

Interior spokesman Nicholas Goodwin said the “congressionally mandated energy development program” leaves 92% percent of the refuge off-limits to development.

“The department’s decision regarding where and when development can take place includes extensive protections for wildlife, including caribou and polar bears,” he said in a statement.

The Bureau of Land Management in December 2018 concluded that drilling could be conducted within the coastal plain without harming wildlife. President Donald Trump insisted Congress include a mandate providing for leasing in the refuge in a 2017 tax bill.


New Hampshire
Ex-prep school teacher accused of sexually abusing student
EXETER, N.H. (AP) — A former math teacher at a prestigious New Hampshire prep school was arrested Monday after he was accused of sexually assaulting a student numerous times over several years.

Szczesny Kaminski, 58, is accused of assaulting the unidentified student who lived at Phillips Exeter Academy between 2013 and 2015. He has been charged with three counts of pattern aggravated felonious sexual assault and three counts of misdemeanor sexual assault. Kaminski is being held on prevention detention and a bail hearing is scheduled for Tuesday at the Brentwood Circuit Court.

Exeter is one of several prep schools in New England that have recently been rocked by sexual misconduct claims going back decades, mostly involving former staffers. The claims have resulted in reports finding abuse going back decades, lawsuits by former students and criminal charges against faculty.

The problem came to light at Exeter in 2016, when it became public that a teacher had been forced to resign several years earlier after admitting to sexual misconduct with students as far back as the 1970s. Revelations of misconduct by other teachers followed in quick succession, and an investigation by a law firm in 2018 examined 28 allegations — 26 in which students accused faculty of sexual misconduct and two that maintained staff failed to respond appropriately.

The school has committed to a series of reforms and said it fired Kaminski earlier this year after learning about the allegations against him. It first investigated Kaminski in 2016 but said new information came to light this year regarding “newly discovered boundary violations.” The school held off on publicizing his firing at the request of the Exeter police so it could investigate more serious charges.

“We know that the impact of sexual abuse is especially traumatic when a student is harmed by an adult whom they had every reason to believe they could trust,” the school’s principal, William Rawson, said in a letter sent to the school community Monday. “We recognize and regret the secondary harm this communication will cause for some of our community members, but it is important that our community is aware of this development.”

California
Remains of woman found 15 years after her murder
AUBURN, Calif. (AP) — Fifteen years after a California woman disappeared and 13 years after a man was convicted of her murder, authorities said Monday that they have found her body.

Christie Wilson, 27, was last seen in the parking lot of the Thunder Valley Casino northeast of Sacramento.

Wilson had been gambling with Mario Flavio Garcia at the casino and surveillance video showed the pair walking toward the exit in the early morning hours of Oct. 5, 2005.

Placer County sheriff’s detectives arrested Garcia after they found hair and blood spots with Wilson’s DNA in his car.

Garcia was convicted in 2007 of first-degree murder and sentenced to 59 years to life in prison.

Last week investigators returned to Garcia’s former home in Auburn and conducted a new search, according to a statement Monday from the Placer County Sheriff’s Office

“They scanned the four-and-a-half-acre lot using Ground Penetrating Radar technology and identified several areas of interest,” the statement said. “Detectives and investigators searching one of those areas located and recovered skeletal remains which were brought to the Placer County Morgue for examination. Dental records have confirmed the remains found on the property, formerly owned by Garcia, are those of Christie Wilson.”

Wilson’s mother, Debbie Boyd, said the announcement marked “a day of peace” for the family.

“It’s a peace we haven’t had, and we are so happy to finally be able to close this chapter of torment and be able to move forward with great thanksgiving,” Boyd said at a Monday news conference.

Garcia, now 67, is serving his sentence at the R.J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego, according to the Sacramento Bee.