Americans on Wednesday are marking the 18th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
President Donald Trump is observing the day with a morning moment of silence at the White House before attending a ceremony at the Pentagon for families of those killed when al-Qaida terrorists flew a hijacked plane into the building.
In New York, hundreds of survivors and family members of those killed are gathering at Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood before two al-Qaida-hijacked commercial flights brought them down.
FILE – Lanterns are carried during a candlelight memorial for the passengers and crew of United Flight 93, at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Shanksville, Pa, Sept. 10, 2015.
Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to attend ceremonies in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, near where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed after passengers took control from the terrorists who had hijacked the plane.
Nineteen men affiliated with al-Qaida carried out the four hijackings.
The deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor in 1941, the events of Sept. 11 permanently changed America’s perception of security and prompted then-President George W. Bush to declare war on terrorism and invade Afghanistan.
U.S.-led coalition forces knocked the Taliban from power in Afghanistan, but the conflict is still ongoing, ranking as the United States’ longest war. U.S. and Taliban representatives have held recent peace talks, but just as details of a potential agreement were being made public, President Donald Trump canceled planned meetings with Taliban and Afghan officials because of continued Taliban attacks in Kabul.
The United States searched for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden for years after the attacks, and in May 2011 a team of U.S. Navy Seals raided a compound in Abbottabod, Pakistan, where they shot him dead.
Memorials for those killed in the attacks now stand at all three sites in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The Pentagon crash site was quickly rebuilt after the attacks. A new tower at the World Trade Center site took longer to construct, but now rises above the Manhattan skyline as the tallest building in the United States.
It was a sobering moment this July 1 in Gillette, Wyoming, when two of the largest coal mines in the country closed in midshift.
Melissa Peterson Worden was one of about 600 people who lost their jobs that day, when the nation’s sixth-largest coal mining company, Blackjewel, abruptly went out of business.
“It is the thing they said would never happen,” Worden said. “And it happened.”
Blackjewel had applied for bankruptcy protection that morning. But the company couldn’t get funding to keep the mines running while courts sorted out its finances. So the mines closed that afternoon. They haven’t opened since.
Blackjewel’s bankruptcy underscores the paradigm shift taking place in the electric power industry. In just the last decade or so, more than half of the nation’s 530 coal-fired power plants have shut down or announced plans to do so as cheaper, cleaner alternatives have moved in, according to the Sierra Club.
Coal Industry’s Decline Hits Nation’s Largest Producer video player.
WATCH: Coal Industry’s Decline Hits Nation’s Largest Producer
While the downturn in the coal industry has hit hard in the Eastern U.S. region of Appalachia, Wyoming is the nation’s largest coal producer by far. The state dug more than 316 million tons of coal in 2017, more than all seven states of Appalachia combined.
Companies with mines in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin were thought to have “jewels in their balance sheets,” said Robert Godby, director of the University of Wyoming’s Center for Energy Economics and Public Policy, “because the Powder River Basin was so profitable.”
“But that’s changed in a few short years,” he added. “The tide has just turned so quickly that it’s caught a lot of people off guard.”
Rock bottom prices
Even as the coal industry faltered elsewhere, the Powder River Basin thought it would weather the downturn.
Coal is so easy to mine in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, the local joke goes, that all you need is a golf club. Huge seams lie just below the surface.
The mines are massive. Seven of the 10 largest mines in the country are here. Dump trucks the size of houses carry 400 tons of coal at a time through terraced craters carved out of the grasslands.
The huge economies of scale meant coal from these mines was among the cheapest in the country. The state supplies 40% of the nation’s coal, fueling power plants from Georgia to Oregon.
Coal’s backers blame the Obama administration environmental regulations for closing plants that have kept the lights on for generations.
But experts say the decline has more to do with the rapid rise of cheaper natural gas since the mid-2000s. And the plunging cost of solar and wind power in just the last few years is helping renewable energy further cut into coal’s market.
That’s forcing a reckoning in places like Gillette, Wyoming, the de facto capital of the Powder River basin.
FILE – Rancher L.J. Turner stands near a well on his spread south of Gillette, Wyo., March 29, 2017. Many locals say they’re optimistic President Donald Trump will revitalize the coal industry. Economists and Turner are skeptical.
Change comes to the ‘energy capital’
Mining is “kind-of a family thing” for Rory Wallet.
His father, stepfather and sister all have worked in the coal mines around Gillette, he said. His grandfather was a phosphate miner before that.
“It’s a wonderful way to make a living. A decent, livable living,” he said. “I’ve got four kids, so it’s a great way to keep them insured and keep food on the table and keep a good home over their head.”
But Wallet lost his job in the Blackjewel bankruptcy.
“We’re struggling,” he said. “The big one for us is the house payment.”
Mining is a high paying job with good benefits that doesn’t require higher education. When mining jobs dry up, experts say, it’s hard to find a substitute.
That poses a problem for Gillette, population 30,000. The city bills itself as the “Energy Capital of the Nation.”
While Gillette and Wyoming are profiting from oil and gas development, those industries tend to boom and bust. Coal has been a relatively steady source of tax revenue for decades.
“Coal has built the city as you see it,” said Gillette Mayor Louise Carter-King.
Gillette has weathered previous downturns. But the mayor sees the coal industry is on a downward trajectory.
“That’s why it’s important that we diversify,” she said.
FILE – A lot is riding on the Integrated Test Center at a coal-fired power plant near Gillette, Wyo., where researchers study ways to capture carbon dioxide. Pictured is the Dave Johnson coal-fired power plant near Glenrock, Wyo., July 27, 2018.
The carbon prize
The city and the state have a lot riding on an experimental project called the Integrated Test Center attached to a coal-fired power plant just outside town. The $15 million facility allows researchers to plug directly into the plant’s exhaust and study ways to capture the planet-warming carbon dioxide.
Many experts consider carbon capture essential to fighting climate change. The world’s existing power plants, factories, vehicles and other fossil fuel-burning infrastructure are already on track to produce enough carbon dioxide to push the planet into catastrophic warming, scientists say.
While coal plants are closing in the United States and Europe, the rest of the world is building or planning to build hundreds more.
Carbon capture technology is not yet commercially viable, however, and is years away at best.
Next year, the center will be one of two sites hosting the $20 million Carbon XPRIZE. The other site is in Alberta, Canada. Teams from around the world will compete to find the best way to turn the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions into profitable products, such as building materials or chemicals.
Whether they win or lose, Carter-King hopes some of the teams competing for the prize will set up shop in Gillette permanently.
In the meantime, Rory Wallet said recent events have shaken his faith in coal — but not much.
“I’d lie if I said it didn’t,” he said. However, he added, “I plan on hanging on. If I don’t get a coal job immediately I’ll keep looking in the basin. They’re always available.”
Miners are a family, he said, and “it’s something I love doing.”
But there is a growing sense in Gillette that, after keeping the lights on for decades, coal will not be there forever.
The big question is, what’s next?
“The United States is saying, ‘What do you have for us now?’“ Melissa Peterson Worden said. “And we have to come up with a better answer than, ‘If you don’t like coal, don’t turn your lights on.’ We can’t be those people anymore.”
Britain is getting set for a general election likely to be held in November, as the political crisis over the country’s exit from the European Union deepens.
The British parliament was officially suspended or “prorogued” in the early hours of Tuesday, just weeks before the country is due to crash out of the European Union. Opposition lawmakers have branded the move a coup by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and have vowed to take him to court if he refuses to request a Brexit extension from the European Union.
Britain is scheduled to leave the bloc Oct. 31, although legislation passed last week by opposition MPs seeks to force the prime minister to ask Brussels for an extension to the Brexit process if no exit deal can be reached.
Britain on Election Footing as Crisis Pits Parliament v Prime Minister video player.
WATCH: Britain on Election Footing as Crisis Pits Parliament vs. Prime Minister
The political stalemate must be broken soon, says Stephen Booth, acting director of the Open Europe policy group in London.
“Clearly we are gearing up for a general election at some time or other, probably in November now. And I think increasingly everything is going to be framed in those terms. Which is one of the reasons why (opposition Labour leader) Jeremy Corbyn and the anti no-deal MPs are quite keen to see Boris Johnson sent to Brussels in a humiliating fashion to ask for an extension,” Booth said.
Johnson says Brexit will happen
Boris Johnson joined lessons at a London primary school Tuesday, announcing new investment in education widely seen as a warmup for an election campaign.
“I think we will get a deal (with the EU). But if absolutely necessary we will come out with no deal,” the prime minister told reporters.
Opposition MPs have warned they will take Johnson to court if he refuses to ask for an extension. The government is looking for an escape route, says analyst Booth.
“One is simply refusing to comply and seeing what happens in terms of any court cases or legal action that might happen,” he said.
A piece of paper with the word “silenced” sits on the British Parliament speaker’s chair at the House of Commons, in protest of the House’s suspension, in London, Sept. 10, 2019.
Parliament suspended
For now Parliament has been silenced, much to the indignation of opposition lawmakers.
At 2 a.m. Tuesday several MPs interrupted the suspension ceremony by trying to physically restrain the speaker from leaving his chair. Others held up protest banners and shouted “Shame on you!” at ruling Conservative MPs.
The government will likely frame any election campaign as the people versus an intransigent parliament trying to overturn the Brexit referendum, says Catherine Barnard, professor of European Union Law at the University of Cambridge.
“There’s a real irony about this of course because in the referendum a lot of people said they voted leave because they wanted to take back control to the Westminster parliament. And now what we’re seeing, the narrative that’s being developed, is direct democracy through referendum versus representative democracy through MPs,” Barnard says.
In Brussels, the European Union Tuesday began appointing a new team of commissioners. Even if Britain asks for an extension, some EU members could veto it, Booth says.
“We’ve heard certain noises from particularly the French government, and I think that is indicative of a growing frustration in the European Union of sort of, ‘We are open to an extension but what is the plan?’”
In Ireland, there are fears that any border checks resulting from Brexit could spark a return to sectarian violence. Such concerns were underlined Monday as dissident Republicans attacked police with petrol bombs in Londonderry, a reminder that the implications of Brexit go far beyond the theatrics of Westminster.
Renée Zellweger said she felt a “sense of responsibility” to portray the late singer Judy Garland as authentically as possible in the movie “Judy,” which was shown at the Toronto Film Festival on Tuesday to a standing ovation.
The film depicts the last six months of Garland’s life, arriving in London in 1968 as part of a sold-out concert tour meant to refurbish her financial state.
Amidst a rocky custody battle with her fourth husband and accompanied on the tour by her fifth and final husband, Micky Dean, played by Finn Wittrock, Garland struggles with depression, anxiety and addiction.
Zellweger called her portrayal of Garland a “continued sort of exploration” between the famous actress and singer’s public persona and her private experiences.
“There are many parameters that are non-negotiable that have been said on the public record and through Judy’s own words and things. So you kind of feel a sense of responsibility to represent that as authentically as possible,” Zellweger said.
“And then the rest was pretty difficult to know because we’re talking about very private moments that haven’t been shared and it’s sort of an interpretation of what the experiences of the person who was living under those circumstances at that time might be like.”
Zellweger is known for method acting, where she doesn’t break character even when a scene is finished filming – a trait that helped her fellow cast members inhabit Garland’s world too.
Actor Finn Wittrock poses as he arrives at the Canadian premiere of “Judy” at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Sept. 10, 2019.
Wittrock didn’t even recognize his co-star the first time he saw her in character.
“From kind of that point on until the end, I very rarely saw this Renée Zellweger, you know? I hung out with Judy,” he told Reuters Television.
Zellweger’s performance has received positive reviews.
“Renée was perfect because she’s a great actress, but also she sings, she’s very funny and she has a big heart,” said Rupert Goold, the director of the film. “Audiences feel they know Renée at a certain level, that she’s one of them. And I think that’s a very Garland-like quality.”
