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The Arctic Council brought up climate change, and the U.S. couldn’t handle the heat

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to sign the consensus-dependent agreement regulating the Arctic. The hiccup, according to sources? Climate change. So this year, for the first time since its founding in 1996, there was no joint declaration at the Meeting of the Arctic Council.

With record-breaking carbon emissions and temperatures, the U.N’s mass extinction prediction, and local governments constantly rolling out carbon reduction plans (like NYC, LA, Washington), it’s no surprise that climate change was one of the big issues at the meeting. The intergovernmental convention brings together leaders from the eight countries neighboring the Arctic every couple years to draft an agreement for the sustainable use of the region’s resources.

“A majority of us regarded climate change as a fundamental challenge facing the Arctic and acknowledged the urgent need to take mitigation and adaptation actions and to strengthen resilience,” Finnish Foreign Minister Timo Soini wrote in a 10-page statement. Only when the statement touched on climate issues, like pollution, carbon sinks, and loss of biodiversity, did he use the tell-tale “a majority.”

“I don’t want to name and blame anyone,” Soini said of the agreement’s failure to pass.

Reuters’ sources reported that Pompeo disagreed with phrasing in the document that stated climate change was a serious threat to the Arctic. He didn’t want the most recent information on climate science included in the report, diplomats present at the council told the New York Times.

His refusal to sign meant that no declaration could be passed. Instead, the council members each signed a statement committing to proceed with Arctic development sustainably, but that didn’t mention climate change.

Pompeo has a different story — he claims that he backed out because of concerns that the unbinding agreement would not hold Russia and China accountable enough moving forward.

On Sunday, the day before his refusal, he made a policy speech where he sang praises for an Arctic less swathed in ice sheets. He lauded the potential oil, gas, and metal extraction in newly uncovered regions, while simultaneously warning of the threat a squabbling Russia and China would pose. Not once did he mention climate change, nor the communities most immediately affected by retreating sea ice and warming seas. Still, acknowledging the economic potential created by the Arctic’s warming seemed at odds with his refusal to sign an agreement that assigned a name to the effect.

Funny, then, that he should tell the council that “collective goals … are rendered meaningless, even counterproductive as soon as one nation fails to comply,” in explaining why the U.S. would not sign the agreement. Exemplary performance, Mr. Pompeo.

You can see his whole speech here:

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The Arctic Council brought up climate change, and the U.S. couldn’t handle the heat

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Greta Thunberg dresses down more global elites for climate inaction

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Young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is continuing her tour of speaking truth to power. Last December, she accused the delegates to the U.N. climate talks in Poland of “stealing” their children’s futures. And on Friday, at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, she delivered another powerful speech, calling for quick and bold progress on climate change.

“At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories,” Thunberg told the audience. “But their financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag.”

Climate change became a hot topic of discussion at the 2019 meeting of the global elite. Sixteen-year-old Thunberg joined the ranks of Prince William and British naturalist and TV personality Sir David Attenborough, who also urged decisive action on climate change. National leaders, like Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, unveiled plans and goals for tackling warming at the forum.

Although Thunberg’s message was dire, she stopped short of saying the world is doomed. “Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around — we can still fix this,” Thunberg said. “I want you to act as if the house was on fire. Because it is.”

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Greta Thunberg dresses down more global elites for climate inaction

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The world is hot, on fire, and flooding. Climate change is here.

The worst ravages of climate change are on display around the world.

Wildfires have ripped through towns in Greece, floods have submerged parts of Laos, and heat waves have overwhelmed Japan. These are striking examples of climate change playing out in its deadliest forms, and they’re making  the term “natural disaster” an outdated concept.

People in Greece were jumping into the Aegean to escape advancing wildfires, according to a report in the New York Times. More than 70 are confirmed dead so far, and some scenes are horrific. 

“Greece is going through an unspeakable tragedy,” said Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, in a televised address to declare three days of national mourning.

This is already Greece’s hottest year on record. Although the last few weeks have been mild and wet, it’s nearly certain that warm weather has played a role in drying out forests throughout Europe, where the number of fires this year is 43 percent above normal. Longer summers, more intense drought, and higher temperatures are all linked to greater fire risk.

We’ve known enough about meteorology to link extreme events to their increased likelihood as they are happening for years now. Recent advances in extreme weather attribution can often tell us exactly how much.

Ample evidence links worsening fires with human activity. Greece and much of the Mediterranean region is projected to turn into desert over the next several decades, and there are signs that this shift has already begun. As the region’s native trees die off and urban areas expand into neglected forests, firefighting resources are becoming woefully overmatched. Regardless of ignition source — arson or lightning or human carelessness — massive wildfires will become more common as droughts intensify and heat waves get more common. Extreme winds, like those blamed for fanning the flames this week in Greece and during megafires in Portugal last year, can make an already dire situation uncontrollable.

It’s the hottest month of one of the hottest years in the history of human civilization, and unusual wildfires are sprouting up all over the map. Sweden has called for emergency assistance from the rest of the European Union to help battle massive wildfires burning north of the Arctic Circle. Across the western United States, 50 major wildfires are burning in parts of 14 states, fueled by severe drought. The wildfires burning in Siberia earlier this month sent smoke plumes from across the Arctic all the way to New England, four thousand miles away. Last year, big wildfires burned in Greenland for the first time in recorded history.

And then there are the rains. In Laos, after days of downpours, a hydropower dam that was under construction collapsed on Tuesday. Hundreds of people have been reported missing. Higher global temperatures increase the evaporation rate, putting more water vapor in the atmosphere and making extreme downpours more common.

In recent weeks, high temperature records have been set on nearly every continent. On Monday, Japan had its hottest temperature in recorded history — 106 degrees Fahrenheit — just days after one of the worst flooding disasters the country has ever seen.

Algeria has recorded the highest reliably measured temperature in Africa, 124 degrees Fahrenheit. In late June, the temperature never dropped below 108 degrees Fahrenheit in Oman — the highest overnight low temperature anywhere in the world.

Even in normally temperate places the air has been sweltering: Temperatures approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit hit parts of Canada, overwhelming hospitals in Montreal — where another heat wave is imminent this week.

According to calculations from climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, this year will likely be the world’s fourth warmest year on record globally, behind 2015, 2016, and 2017. With another El Niño on the way, next year could be even hotter.

All over the world, heatwaves are getting longer and more intense, the most well-documented and deadliest consequence of our failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

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The world is hot, on fire, and flooding. Climate change is here.

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Fiji leads U.N. climate talks that warming kept it from hosting

On Wednesday, in Bonn, Germany, a delegation from the Pacific delivered a declaration to leaders who had assembled for the United Nations annual climate conference. Calling themselves “Pacific Climate Warriors,” the group collected more than 23,000 signatures from people all over the world demanding the pursuit of more ambitious targets than those set in the Paris Agreement.

“For more than two decades, negotiations have failed to deliver the action required to protect Pacific homes and livelihoods from dangerous climate change,” George Nacewa, from the South Pacific archipelago of Fiji, said in a statement released by the delegation.

But at this year’s Conference of Parties (COP), the 23rd round of negotiations and the second since the passing of the Paris Agreement, attendants from some of the most vulnerable places on earth are hopeful that their concerns will finally take center stage.

“This is a Pacific-led COP,” said Nacewa. “And we are here to ensure the world hears genuine voices from the Pacific.”

Although the climate talks are taking place in Germany’s capital, Fiji’s government is presiding over them, and its prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, is leading the agenda. Since Fiji is still recovering from Tropical Cyclone Winston, which devastated the country last year, Germany stepped in to provide facilities and help foot the huge costs that come with holding the conference. (France spent $197 million to host the climate talks in 2015.)

The unusual arrangement underscores the uneven power dynamic Fiji and other small island nations face: The countries that are already most affected by climate change, the ones that most need international action, are unable to actually host the forum — and truly illustrate the scope of the problem to the people responsible for acting on it.

“All over the world, vast numbers of people are suffering,” Bainimarama said in his opening speech. “Our job as leaders is to respond to that suffering with all means available to us.”

Tropical Cyclone Winston made landfall in Fiji as a Category 5 storm in February of last year. It killed 44 people and plundered more than 30,000 homes. Damage and loss from Winston amounted to 20 percent of the country’s GDP — more than $950 million dollars.

There’s a lot on the line for Bainimarama, whose country was recently ranked as having the 15th highest disaster risk, according to the World Risk Report. In addition to forecasts showing an increased frequency of severe storms — an issue also threatening islands, like Puerto Rico and Dominica in the Caribbean — Fiji has seen a rate of sea level increase nearly twice as high as the global average. Rising ocean water infiltrates fresh water supplies and damages farmland. A World Bank report forecasted that these factors will likely cause more than $50 million dollars — roughly four percent of GDP — of damages annually on Fiji’s main island alone. Residents of 64 Fijian villages are already leaving their homes because of encroaching tides, while 830 more settlements face relocation.

Despite all this, Fiji is faring better than some of its neighbors. And even as it loses land, the country is gaining climate refugees from other island nations. The government of Kiribati bought 6,000 acres in Fiji to prepare for a mass migration because its 33 coral atolls and reef islands could be completely submerged by 2100.

For the people of Fiji, Kiribati, and the rest of the Pacific, the international community’s willingness to curb the worst effects of climate change literally equates to their continued existence or total loss of cultures. So when Prime Minister Bainimarama told his fellow heads of state in his opening speech, “We must not fail our people,” attendants from the Pacific held out hope that perhaps the rest of the world would see climate change as they do — something that’s happening here and now, not a nightmare we still hope to avoid.

“This provides a very critical opportunity,” says Alfred Ralifo, climate policy manager for the South Pacific branch of the World Wildlife Fund, who lives in Fiji. “The role has amplified the voice of small island developing states at this COP and has brought to the forefront all the challenges and the needs that small island developing states face in terms of mitigation, adaptation, and ensuring that our needs are actually heard and prioritized as part of the agenda.”

Bainimarama has laid out Fiji’s vision for COP23, which includes capping the global average temperature at 1.5 degrees Celsuis above pre-industrial temperatures. Pledges by each signatory of the Paris Agreement — currently every nation in the world, though the United States plans to bow out — would only hold that rise to 3 degrees at best.

The Fijian prime minister also spearheaded an initiative to push for oceans to be an integral part of the U.N. climate talks by 2020. Oceans are only mentioned once in the Paris Agreement, but Bainimarama believes they should garner more attention because they play a critical role in regulating global temperatures by absorbing heat and carbon.

“Being a small island we have a lot of ocean resources,” says Ralifo, adding that the health of the world’s open seas has a disproportionate effect on his nation’s food and water security. “We feel that we cannot address global climate change without any action on oceans.”

Ralifo also says it is important for Fiji to push for increased financial support for small island states, not only for mitigation but also for adaptation to the effects of a warming climate. Leaders from vulnerable nations are also expected to bring up compensation for “loss and damage” — paid for by wealthier countries who emit more carbon and are most responsible for climate change.

“This COP should be about the people, not the profits of the polluters,” said the Pacific Climate Warrior George Nacewa. “Climate change is real and impacting us now. It’s imperative that we stand up for the Pacific.”

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Fiji leads U.N. climate talks that warming kept it from hosting

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Der Spiegel Just Published the Minutes From Trump’s Contentious Meeting With G7 Leaders

Mother Jones

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German magazine Der Spiegel has been given access to minutes from a contentious meeting of G7 leaders in Taormina, Sicily, at the end of May, in which they applied last-ditch pressure on President Donald Trump to stay in the Paris climate agreement.

The meeting came toward the end of Trump’s first trip abroad as president—and became an opportunity for world leaders to intensely lobby the American president before Trump’s final decision on whether the United States would leave the historic climate accord.

The leaders told Trump in no uncertain terms that if the United States abandoned the agreement, China would be the direct beneficiary.

“Climate change is real and it affects the poorest countries,” said Emmanuel Macron, the newly elected French president, at the outset of the private conversation.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau then told Trump that the success of repairing the ozone layer proved that industry could be persuaded to act on harmful emissions, according to the account.

Then, German Chancellor Angela Merkel brought up China: “If the world’s largest economic power were to pull out, the field would be left to the Chinese,” she said. According to Der Spiegel, Merkel added that Chinese President Xi Jinping was preparing to take advantage of the vacuum left by America’s exit. Even Saudi Arabia, she added, was preparing for a world without oil.

Trump was unmoved. “For me,” the president reportedly said, “it’s easier to stay in than step out,” adding that green regulations were killing American jobs.

As it became clear Trump would not budge, Macron admitted defeat, according to this account.

“Now China leads,” he said.

The account adds fresh details to the president’s fraught European trip. Following the meeting, the G7 broke with tradition to release a statement where six nations reaffirmed the Paris climate agreement, without the United States. The president also caused a diplomatic scuffle in Italy after accusing Germany of being “very bad” on trade and appeared to literally shove aside a leader of a NATO ally.

In a Rose Garden ceremony last Thursday, Trump announced that the United States would leave the historic Paris climate agreement—promising to “begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris accord or an entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States.”

In response to the president’s announcement, President Macron of France released a video statement, saying, “If we do nothing, our children will know a world of migrations, of wars, of shortage. A dangerous world.”

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Der Spiegel Just Published the Minutes From Trump’s Contentious Meeting With G7 Leaders

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Trump Told Russians That Comey Was a "Nut Job," as FBI Investigation Inches Closer to the White House

Mother Jones

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Two bombshell reports on Friday afternoon shed more light on President Donald Trump’s rationale for firing FBI Director James Comey and showed just how close the FBI’s Russia investigation is getting to Trump’s inner circle.

The day after he fired Comey, Trump met with top Russian diplomats in the Oval Office. There, the New York Times revealed Friday afternoon, he badmouthed Comey and seemed to imply that his firing was prompted by the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. “I just fired the head of the FBI,” Trump said, according to the Times. “He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer did not dispute this account.

Moments later, the Washington Post reported that a current White House official in Trump’s inner circle is now under scrutiny in the Russia investigation:

The law enforcement investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign has identified a current White House official as a significant person of interest, showing that the probe is reaching into the highest levels of government, according to people familiar with the matter.

The senior White House adviser under scrutiny by investigators is someone close to the president, according to these people, who would not further identify the official.

The White House did not dispute this report either. Both reports came out shortly after Trump departed for his first overseas trip as president.

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Trump Told Russians That Comey Was a "Nut Job," as FBI Investigation Inches Closer to the White House

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Another Trump Bombshell Hits: New York Times Reports He Asked FBI Chief to Drop Flynn Investigation

Mother Jones

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President Donald Trump asked former FBI Director James Comey to drop the FBI’s investigation of former national security adviser Mike Flynn, according to a bombshell report published by the New York Times that was based on a memo Comey wrote following the conversation.

“I hope you can let this go,” Trump told Comey in a private one-on-one meeting at the White House in February, the day after Flynn was fired for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the Times reports. Comey supposedly felt uncomfortable with the exchange and wrote a memo detailing the discussion. From the Times:

The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence an ongoing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of the memo to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey that Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.

Mr. Comey did not say anything to Mr. Trump about curtailing the investigation, only replying: “I agree he is a good guy.”

The Times included a denial from the White House:

While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn. The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.

After the Times published the story late Tuesday afternoon, the White House sent the same statement to members of the White House press corps.

The Times notes that Andrew McCabe, Comey’s deputy and the current acting director of the FBI, told a Senate panel last week that there hadn’t been any interference in the FBI’s investigation so far.

The story also reported that Trump had asked Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to leave the room so he could speak to Comey by himself. In this private conversation, Trump also reportedly pressed Comey to prosecute reporters for publishing classified information.

The Times‘ explosive story came at the end of a day that was already full of White House chaos, with Flynn’s successor, retired Lt. General H.R. McMaster trying to defend Trump in the face of the previous day’s Washington Post‘s report that Trump had disclosed highly sensitive classified information during his Oval Office meeting with Kislyak and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

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Another Trump Bombshell Hits: New York Times Reports He Asked FBI Chief to Drop Flynn Investigation

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Report: Trump Divulged “Highly Classified” Information to Russian Ambassador

Mother Jones

Days after President Donald Trump met with top-level Russian diplomats last week—an Oval Office meeting that was closed to American media—the Washington Post reports the president shared “highly classified” information with both the Russian ambassador and foreign minister—allegations based on accounts provided to the Post by anonymous “current and former U.S. officials.”

According to the Post, this sensitive information concerned “elements of a specific plot” by the Islamic State:

The information Trump relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.

The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said that Trump’s decision to do so risks cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and National Security Agency.

“This is code-word information,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”

As the Post notes, the president has broad authority to declassify pieces of information at his choosing, but “for most anyone in government, discussing such matters with an adversary would be illegal.” (The National Security Agency and the CIA declined to provide comment to the Post.)

Two US officials confirmed the Post’s account to BuzzFeed News late Monday afternoon, with one official adding that “it’s far worse than what has already been reported.”

Head to the Washington Post for the full account.

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Report: Trump Divulged “Highly Classified” Information to Russian Ambassador

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State Department Pulls Post Gushing About Mar-a-Lago

Mother Jones

After drawing sharp criticism on Monday, the State Department deleted a web article that showcased the President’s Mar-a-Lago estate and private club. The post, which had been available on the department’s ShareAmerica site since April 4, highlighted the compound’s “style and taste” while noting the central role the oceanside property has played in Trump’s presidency, having hosted state visits by Chinese president Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The post‘s tone was questioned after it gained wide notice on social media. “This reads almost as if it’s an advertisement for the private club,” says Jordan Libowitz, Communications Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). “This makes you question whether there were ulterior motives in mind.”

ShareAmerica, a State Department public diplomacy project that creates social media friendly stories about US politics, culture, and places, characterizes itself as a “platform for sharing compelling stories and images that spark discussion and debate on important topics like democracy, freedom of expression, innovation, entrepreneurship, education, and the role of civil society.” The Mar-a-Lago article was shared by the U.S. Embassy in London’s website, and promoted by the Facebook page of the State Department’s Bureau of Economic & Business Affairs.

The post drew the ire of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon):

“It’s somewhat out of the ordinary for government websites to be talking about current businesses of the sitting president. That’s not a situation we’ve really seen before,” says Libowitz.

A State Department official provided Mother Jones a short statement after deleting the post late on Monday: “The intention of the article was to inform the public about where the President has been hosting world leaders. We regret any misperception and have removed the post.”

Since his inauguration, Trump has spent 25 days at the club at a hefty cost to taxpayers and local residents. Mar-a-Lago’s initiation fee jumped to $200,000 around the same time that Trump entered office.

The ShareAmerica article included an outline of the estate’s history, noting that the original owner—the cereal titan Marjorie Merriweather Post—willed her Palm Beach, Florida compound to the US government, hoping it would be used as a presidential retreat. At the time, the 114-room mansion was rejected as being unsuitable. In 1985, Trump purchased the residence, refurbished it, and reopened it as a private club in 1995. The now-deleted ShareAmerica post frames Trump’s 2016 election victory as fulfilling the original owner’s plan: “Post’s dream of a winter White House came true with Trump’s election in 2016.”

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State Department Pulls Post Gushing About Mar-a-Lago

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EU-Britain Divorce Will Get Started… Someday

Mother Jones

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Prime Minister Theresa May submitted an official notice today the Great Britain will be exiting the European Union:

Now that Prime Minister May has officially given notice to Tusk, the next step is to begin negotiations about the negotiations. In about a month, the UK and EU will formally sit down to come to terms on how the negotiations will work.

“Most of the formal stuff that will be agreed upon in the big meetings has already been penciled in,” Tim Oliver, an expert on the EU at the London School of Economics, tells me….Ultimately, Oliver believes, “nothing substantive” will be agreed upon until after the French presidential election in April and the German parliamentary election in late September. That’s because the French and Germans are, by far, the two most important EU member states. Without a firm sense of who their leaders will be in the coming years, it will be impossible to know what terms the EU might agree to.

In other words, nothing really happens for the next six months. And that’s totally OK because, hey, that still leaves 18 months to negotiate the biggest, messiest divorce in treaty history. Plenty of time. No need for any sense of urgency here.

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EU-Britain Divorce Will Get Started… Someday

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