Page 8A
NATION/WORLD
East Oregonian
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Trump earned
$153M and
paid $36.5M
in taxes in 2005
By JILL COLVIN
and JEFF HORWITZ
Associated Press
The Ocean Agency/XL Catlin Seaview Survey via AP
This May 2016 photo shows coral that has bleached white due to heat stress in the Maldives. Coral reefs, unique
underwater ecosystems that sustain a quarter of the world’s marine species and half a billion people, are dying
on an unprecedented scale.
Scientists race to prevent
wipeout of world’s coral reefs
Associated Press
SOUTH ARI ATOLL,
Maldives — There were
startling colors here just a year
ago, a dazzling array of life
beneath the waves. Now this
Maldivian reef is dead, killed
by the stress of rising ocean
temperatures. What’s left is
a haunting expanse of gray, a
scene repeated in reefs across
the globe in what has fast
become a full-blown ecolog-
ical catastrophe.
The world has lost roughly
half its coral reefs in the last
30 years. Scientists are now
scrambling to ensure that at
least a fraction of these unique
ecosystems survives beyond
the next three decades. The
health of the planet depends on
it: Coral reefs support a quarter
of all marine species, as well
as half a billion people around
the world.
“This isn’t something that’s
going to happen 100 years
from now. We’re losing them
right now,” said marine biol-
ogist Julia Baum of Canada’s
University of Victoria. “We’re
losing them really quickly,
much more quickly than I
think any of us ever could
have imagined.”
Even if the world could
halt global warming now,
scientists still expect that more
than 90 percent of corals will
die by 2050. Without drastic
intervention, we risk losing
them all.
“To lose coral reefs is to
fundamentally
undermine
the health of a very large
proportion of the human race,”
said Ruth Gates, director of
the Hawaii Institute of Marine
Biology.
Coral reefs produce some
of the oxygen we breathe.
Often described as underwater
rainforests, they populate a
tiny fraction of the ocean but
provide habitats for one in
four marine species. Reefs
also form crucial barriers that
protect coastlines from the full
force of storms.
They provide billions
of dollars in revenue from
tourism, fishing and other
Victor Bonito/The Ocean Agency /Reef Explorer Fiji via AP
In this March 2016 photo a snorkeler swims above cor-
al that has bleached white due to heat stress in Fiji.
The Ocean Agency/XL Catlin Seaview Survey via AP
This March 2016 photo shows coral bleached white by
heat stress in New Caledonia.
commerce, and are used in
medical research for cures
to diseases including cancer,
arthritis and bacterial or viral
infections.
“Whether you’re living
in North America or Europe
or Australia, you should be
concerned,” said biologist Ove
Hoegh-Guldberg, director of
the Global Change Institute
at Australia’s University of
Queensland. “This is not just
some distant dive destination,
a holiday destination. This is
the fabric of the ecosystem
that supports us.”
And that fabric is being
torn apart.
“You couldn’t be more
dumb ... to erode the very
thing that life depends on —
the ecosystem — and hope
that you’ll get away with it,”
Hoegh-Guldberg said.
Corals are invertebrates,
living mostly in tropical
waters. They secrete calcium
carbonate to build protective
skeletons that grow and take
on impressive colors, thanks to
a symbiotic relationship with
algae that live in their tissues
and provide them with energy.
But corals are sensitive to
temperature fluctuations, and
are suffering from rising ocean
temperatures and acidification,
as well as from overfishing,
pollution, coastal development
and agricultural runoff.
A temperature change of
just 1.8 to 3.6 degrees Fahr-
enheit can force coral to expel
the algae, leaving their white
skeletons visible in a process
known as “bleaching.”
Bleached coral can recover
if the water cools, but if
high temperatures persist
for months, the coral will
die. Eventually the reef will
degrade, leaving fish without
habitats and coastlines less
protected from storm surges.
The first global bleaching
event occurred in 1998, when
16 percent of corals died. The
problem spiraled dramati-
cally in 2015-2016 amid an
extended El Nino natural
weather phenomenon that
warmed Pacific waters near
the equator and triggered the
most widespread bleaching
ever documented. This third
global bleaching event, as it is
known, continues today even
after El Nino ended.
Headlines have focused on
damage to Australia’s famed
Great Barrier Reef, but other
reefs have fared just as badly
or worse across the world,
from Japan to Hawaii to
Florida.
Around the islands of the
Maldives, an idyllic Indian
Ocean tourism destination,
some 73 percent of surveyed
reefs suffered bleaching
between March and May
2016, according to the coun-
try’s Marine Research Center.
“This bleaching episode
seems to have impacted
the entire Maldives, but the
severity of bleaching varies”
between reefs, according to
local conditions, said Nizam
Ibrahim, the center’s senior
research officer.
Worst hit have been areas
in the central Pacific, where
the University of Victoria’s
Baum has been conducting
research on Kiritimati, or
Christmas Island, in the
Republic of Kiribati. Warmer
water temperatures lasted
there for 10 months in 2015-
2016, killing a staggering 90
percent of the reef.
Baum had never seen
anything like it.
To make matters worse,
scientists are predicting
another wave of elevated
ocean temperatures starting
next month.
The speed of the destruction
is what alarms scientists and
conservationists, as damaged
coral might not have time to
recover before it is hit again by
warmer temperatures.
Reports: Kushner
family company
in possible
Chinese deal
NEW YORK (AP) —
The company owned by
the family of President
Donald Trump’s son-in-law
is reportedly negotiating to
sell a $400 million stake in
a New York City skyscraper
to a Chinese insurer with ties
to that country’s ruling party.
The New York Times is
reporting that a company run
by Jared Kushner’s father is
hammering out a deal with
Anbang Insurance Group
for a stake in the family’s
building at 666 Fifth Avenue.
Bloomberg News also
reported on the deal. Jared
Kushner is married to the
president’s daughter Ivanka
and is a senior adviser to the
president.
The deal would unite
two politically powerful
families in both countries
and raise conflicts of interest
questions.
A White House spokes-
woman tells the Times that
Jared Kushner previously
sold his interest in the
building.
WA S H I N G T O N
(AP) — President Donald
Trump
earned
$153
million and paid $36.5
million in income taxes
in 2005, paying a roughly
25 percent effective tax
rate thanks to a tax he
has since sought to elim-
inate, according to highly
sought-after tax docu-
ments disclosed Tuesday
night.
The pages from Trump’s
federal tax return show the
then-real estate mogul also
reported a business loss
of $103 million that year,
although the documents
don’t provide detail. The
forms show that Trump
paid an effective tax rate
of 24.5 percent, a figure
well above the roughly 10
percent the average Amer-
ican taxpayer forks over
each year, but below the
27.4 percent that taxpayers
earning 1 million dollars
a year average, according
to data from the Congres-
sional Joint Committee on
Taxation.
The form were obtained
by journalist David Cay
Johnston, who runs a
website called DCReport.
org, and reported on
MSNBC’s “The Rachel
Maddow Show.” Johnston,
who has long reported on
tax issues, said he received
the documents in the mail,
unsolicited.
Trump’s hefty busi-
ness loss appears to be a
continued benefit from his
use of a tax loophole in the
1990s, which allowed him
to deduct previous losses
in future years. In 1995,
Trump reported a loss of
more than $900 million,
largely as a result of finan-
cial turmoil at his casinos.
Tax records obtained
by The New York Times
last year showed the losses
were so large they could
have allowed Trump to
avoid paying taxes for up
to 18 years. But Trump’s
2005 filing shows another
tax prevented him from
realizing the full benefit of
those deductions.
The bulk of Trump’s tax
bill that year was due to the
Alternative Minimum Tax,
a tax aimed at preventing
high-income earners from
paying minimal taxes.
The AMT requires
many taxpayers to calcu-
late their taxes twice —
once under the rules for
regular income tax and
then again under AMT —
and then pay the higher
amount. Critics say the tax
has ensnared more middle-
class people than intended,
raising what they owe the
federal government each
year.
Were it not for the
AMT, Trump would have
avoided all but a few
million dollars of his 2005
tax bill.
Trump’s
campaign
website called for the
end of the AMT, which is
expected to bring in more
than $350 billion in reve-
nues from 2016 to 2025.
As a candidate and
as president, Trump has
refused to release his
tax returns, breaking a
decades-long
tradition.
Although he initially
promised to do so, he later
claimed he was under audit
by the Internal Revenue
Service and said his attor-
neys had advised against it
— though experts and IRS
officials said such audits
don’t bar taxpayers from
releasing their returns.
The White House
pushed back even before
the release of the docu-
ments Tuesday night,
saying that publishing the
information was illegal.
“You know you are
desperate for ratings
when you are willing to
violate the law to push a
story about two pages of
tax returns from over a
decade ago,” the White
House said in a statement
issued on condition that it
be attributed to an anony-
mous official, although the
president has decried the
use of anonymous sources.
The
unauthorized
release or publishing of
federal tax returns is a crim-
inal offense, punishable
by a fine of up to $5,000
and up to five years in jail.
But Maddow argued that
MSNBC was exercising
its First Amendment right
to publish information in
the public interest.
Trump long insisted the
American public wasn’t
interested in his returns
and said little could be
learned from them. But
Trump’s full returns would
contain key details about
things like his charitable
giving, his income sources,
the type of deductions
he claimed, how much
he earned from his assets
and what strategies Trump
used to reduce his tax bill.
The issue was a major
point of attack from his
election rival Hillary
Clinton, who suggested
Trump had something to
hide.
The White House has
not said whether or not
the president plans to
release his returns while
he’s in office. More than 1
million people have signed
a White House petition
urging the president to
release them.
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