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Orica's Kooragang Island plant has saved the Lower Hunter 20 billion litres of drinking water since it switched to using recycled water a decade ago. Login or signup to continue reading The annual savings are the equivalent of approximately 8,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools or the water consumption of more than 120,000 households. "We're very proud to be a founding partner of the Kooragang Island Recycled Water Scheme , which has enabled us to reduce our site's potable water usage by around 70 per cent," Orica Kooragang Island's manufacturing centre manager Viney Kumar said. "Back in 2014, we were the largest consumer of drinking water in the lower Hunter, using about five per cent of all potable water in the region; now we use less than two per cent. The milestone caps off a run of environmental improvement projects completed at the site in recent years including the recent completion of a $46 million pollution control upgrade . Mr Kumar said the company's commitment to sustainability was key to ensuring the site's continued success. "The Kooragang Island facility is a critical asset and an integral part of the company's global operations. By continuously improving our environmental performance, we aim to future-proof the site for the benefit of the community and the local economy," he said. Kooragang Island consumes water for use in cooling towers, steam generation, chemical production, equipment cleaning and employee amenities. It is an essential element that enables the facility to manufacture products for the resources, agriculture, medical, food, and beverage industries. The recycled water is delivered via an 8 kilometre pipeline from coNEXA's advanced water treatment plant at Mayfield West. "Forward looking companies like Orica, are fundamental to our business," coNEXA chief executive Kurt Dahl said. "As a producer of high-quality recycled water, we actively seek partners which understand their water footprint and value the resilience that comes from a non-potable supply. "Our Kooragang Water business is an example of industry working together with public and private water utilities to deliver long-term sustainability outcomes, which benefit stakeholders and the broader community," said Mr Dahl. Orica celebrated the completion of a $46 million pollution control upgrade that will slash ammonium nitrate emissions by 95 per cent in October. The project involved retro-fitting the prill tower with an irrigated fibre-bed scrubber to capture particles of ammonium nitrate produced during the manufacturing process. Another industrial water user, Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group (NCIG) , also introduced recycled water at its Kooragang operations in 2023. Recycled water is now utilised as part of day-to-day operations for dust suppression, machine washdown and landscaping. The initiative has reduced the company's reliance on potable water by up to 50 per cent per year. It will also result in up to 275 megalitres (the equivalent of 110 Olympic-sized swimming pools or the annual water usage of just over 1700 residential homes) of drinking water saved for use in the region's network. Matthew Kelly has worked as a journalist for more than 25 years. He has been working as a general reporter at the Newcastle Herald since 2018. In recent years he has reported on subjects including environment, energy, water security, manufacturing and higher education. He has previously covered issues including the health and environmental impacts of uncovered coal wagons in the Hunter Valley, the pollution of legacy of former industrial sites and freedom of information issues. Matthew Kelly has worked as a journalist for more than 25 years. He has been working as a general reporter at the Newcastle Herald since 2018. 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Ahead of the Supreme Court ‘s Jan. 10 hearing on whether to grant TikTok an emergency injunction to prevent it from being banned by the U.S. government, several groups and members of Congress have weighed in on the issue — both against the law, arguing it violates First Amendment rights of TikTok’s users, and in support of the ban because of national security concerns over its Chinese parent company. The Supreme Court agreed to hear TikTok’s appeal for an emergency injunction blocking a federal law — the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act — that will ban the popular video app unless Chinese parent ByteDance sells its stake. The high court scheduled arguments to hear TikTok’s appeal on Friday, Jan. 10, on an expedited timeline that will let the court consider the issue before the law is set to take effect on Jan. 19. According to the court’s docket, a total of two hours is allotted for oral argument. “The parties are directed to brief and argue the following question: Whether the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, as applied to petitioners, violates the First Amendment,” the Supreme Court’s docket listing for the case said. Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), filed an amicus brief with the court Friday in support of TikTok’s appeal. “All three are strong advocates of free expression and are deeply concerned that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act will deprive millions of Americans of their First Amendment rights,” they said in the brief. “The TikTok ban does not survive First Amendment scrutiny,” Markey, Paul and Khanna wrote. “Its only historical parallels are illegitimate. Its principal justification — preventing covert content manipulation by the Chinese government — reflects a desire to control the content on the TikTok platform and in any event could be achieved through a less restrictive alternative. And its secondary justification of protecting users’ data from the Chinese government could not sustain the ban on its own and also overlooks that Congress did not consider whether less drastic mitigation measures could address those concerns.” Also backing TikTok in an amicus brief were eight free-speech groups — the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy & Technology, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Progressive Policy Institute, Fight for the Future and Public Knowledge. In their brief, they noted “the government has not presented credible evidence of ongoing or imminent harm caused by TikTok.” “Banning TikTok would trample on the constitutional rights of over 170 million Americans,” Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement. “This social media platform has allowed people around the world to tell their own stories in key moments of social upheaval, war and natural disaster while reaching immense global audiences. The government’s attempt to cut U.S. users off from speaking and sharing on TikTok is extraordinary and unprecedented.” He added that TikTok “is a unique forum for expression online — and the connections and community that so many have built there cannot be easily replaced. TikTok creators can’t simply transfer their audiences and followers to another app, and TikTok users can’t simply reassemble the many voices they’ve discovered on the platform.” In a separate amicus brief , the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, Free Press and PEN America also urged the Supreme Court to strike down the federal TikTok ban. In their brief, the groups argued the law is viewpoint-motivated because it “forecloses an entire medium of expression online.” The group claimed the government has no legitimate interest in banning Americans from accessing foreign speech, even if that speech reflects foreign manipulation, and that while the government has a legitimate interest in protecting U.S. citizens from covert propaganda and safeguarding their personal data, those interests can be achieved through less restrictive means. “Restricting citizens’ access to foreign media is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, and we should be very wary of letting the practice take root here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “Upholding the ban would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy.” On the other side, seven human-rights groups — which said they are “dedicated to shedding light on the blatant human rights violations occurring in the People’s Republic of China” — filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in favor of the TikTok divest-or-ban law. The groups (Campaign for Uyghurs, the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong, Hong Kong Watch, International Campaign for Tibet, Uyghur American Association, Uyghur Human Rights Project and Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation) argued the law is constitutional and a “necessary step toward protecting the physical and digital safety of those who seek to illuminate the atrocities occurring in the PRC.” “TikTok under its current corporate structure is a clear instrument for the CCP to harass, target and silence activists and dissidents in the U.S., the PRC, and around the world,” the group said. “In sum, we stand for the proposition that the U.S. Constitution does not protect a PRC company’s right to act as an unregistered foreign agent — covertly shaping the American information environment through a nonexpressive algorithm at the instruction of a foreign adversary government.” According to the law, in the absence of a “qualified divestiture” by ByteDance, the TikTok ban will go into effect Jan. 19 — unless the law is blocked by the Supreme Court. The law gives the U.S. president the ability to grant a one-time extension of “not more than 90 days” if the president determines that ByteDance has a legitimate sales negotiation in progress to sell its TikTok stake; if that’s the case, the sell-or-ban date would be April 19, 2025. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a Dec. 6 ruling rejected TikTok’s argument that the law unconstitutionally infringes Americans’ First Amendment rights, TikTok and ByteDance filed the appeal with the Supreme Court seeking the emergency injunction. The D.C. Circuit, in its unanimous 3-0 ruling, said the law does “not target speech based upon its communicative content. The TikTok-specific provisions instead straightforwardly require only that TikTok divest its platform as a precondition to operating in the United States.” According to the court, the U.S. government “has offered persuasive evidence demonstrating that the Act is narrowly tailored to protect national security.” President Biden signed the TikTok divest-or-ban bill into law on April 24, 2024, after it passed in Congress with solid bipartisan support. U.S. lawmakers have expressed deep concern about TikTok’s Chinese ownership, suggesting that the Chinese communist regime could use the app to spy on Americans or use it to promulgate pro-China propaganda. The law’s backers have argued that it is not a ban of TikTok per se, because it would allow TikTok to continue to be distributed in the U.S. if ByteDance divests its stake in TikTok to a party or parties not based in a country the U.S. designates a “foreign adversary.” In an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court on Dec. 18, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) urged the Supreme Court to reject TikTok’s request for an emergency injunction. “TikTok is a wildly popular social-media application under the direct control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” the senator wrote. The “clear national-security threat posed by this application” prompted Congress to pass the law, which, by forcing a sale by ByteDance, would “remove[] the control of this popular application from the primary geopolitical opponent of the United States.” McConnell wrote that “Any such injunction will move the divesture date beyond that prescribed by law —and into a new presidential administration. TikTok clearly hopes that the next administration will be more sympathetic to its plight than the incumbent administration. In other words, delay is the point.” President-elect Donald Trump was noncommittal when he was asked at a press conference earlier this month whether he would try to reverse the TikTok law, responding, “We’ll take a look at TikTok.” Trump added, “I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok” because of his belief that the app helped drive young voters toward his side of the ballot. VIP+ Analysis: TikTok Has Entered the Realm of the Internet Traffic “Supergiants” During his first term as president, Trump was unsuccessful in his efforts to force ByteDance to sell majority control in TikTok to U.S. owners, also citing national security fears. Trump’s divest-or-ban executive order was found unconstitutional by federal courts on First Amendment grounds. A year ago, a federal judge blocked Montana’s first-of-its-kind statewide ban of TikTok , ruling that the law likely violated the First Amendment. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, at a March 2023 hearing held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee , asserted that “ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government.” ByteDance has said 60% of its ownership is represented by “global institutional investors” including Blackrock, General Atlantic and Susquehanna International Group.President-elect Donald Trump's designees for national intelligence, defense secretary, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation faced tough questioning from senators on Monday. Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is Trump's pick for the director of national intelligence. The Democrat-turned-Republican is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and a decorated combat veteran. In 2022, Gabbard said the Ukraine war could have been avoided, "if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia's legitimate security concerns." Gabbard also faced scrutiny for a secret 2017 meeting with now-exiled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. "It does call into question whether a person who held those outrageous views could suddenly be sitting next to the president of the United States and have the last word as he makes decisions about how the U.S. should respond to a situation like this," said Rep. Dan Kildee, a Michigan Democrat. Trump tapped loyalist Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Patel pledged to radically transform the law enforcement agency, including shutting down the D.C. headquarters. "I'd take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals, go be cops," said Patel during an interview on the Shawn Ryan Show. Democrats say Patel could weaponize the agency. Patel previously talked about going after his and Trump’s perceived enemies. "They have literally published an enemies list," said Rep. Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat. Republicans dismissed Patel's rhetoric after meeting with him on Monday. "I interpret that as hyperbole," said Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican. Trump, on Meet the Press Sunday, said he won’t direct the FBI to investigate his political enemies, but he believes Patel will do "what he thinks is right."
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- California, home to some of the largest technology companies in the world, would be the first U.S. state to require mental health warning labels on social media sites if lawmakers pass a bill introduced Monday. The legislation sponsored by state Attorney General Rob Bonta is necessary to bolster safety for children online, supporters say, but industry officials vow to fight the measure and others like it under the First Amendment. Warning labels for social media gained swift bipartisan support from dozens of attorneys general, including Bonta, after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called on Congress to establish the requirements earlier this year, saying social media is a contributing factor in the mental health crisis among young people. “These companies know the harmful impact their products can have on our children, and they refuse to take meaningful steps to make them safer,” Bonta said at a news conference Monday. “Time is up. It’s time we stepped in and demanded change.” State officials haven't provided details on the bill, but Bonta said the warning labels could pop up once weekly. Up to 95% of youth ages 13 to 17 say they use a social media platform, and more than a third say that they use social media “almost constantly,” according to 2022 data from the Pew Research Center. Parents’ concerns prompted Australia to pass the world’s first law banning social media for children under 16 in November. “The promise of social media, although real, has turned into a situation where they’re turning our children’s attention into a commodity,” Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, who authored the California bill, said Monday. “The attention economy is using our children and their well-being to make money for these California companies.” Lawmakers instead should focus on online safety education and mental health resources, not warning label bills that are “constitutionally unsound,” said Todd O’Boyle, a vice president of the tech industry policy group Chamber of Progress. “We strongly suspect that the courts will set them aside as compelled speech,” O’Boyle told The Associated Press. Victoria Hinks' 16-year-old daughter, Alexandra, died by suicide four months ago after being “led down dark rabbit holes” on social media that glamorized eating disorders and self-harm. Hinks said the labels would help protect children from companies that turn a blind eye to the harm caused to children’s mental health when they become addicted to social media platforms. “There's not a bone in my body that doubts social media played a role in leading her to that final, irreversible decision,” Hinks said. “This could be your story." Common Sense Media, a sponsor of the bill, said it plans to lobby for similar proposals in other states. California in the past decade has positioned itself as a leader in regulating and fighting the tech industry to bolster online safety for children. The state was the first in 2022 to bar online platforms from using users’ personal information in ways that could harm children. It was one of the states that sued Meta in 2023 and TikTok in October for deliberately designing addictive features that keep kids hooked on their platforms. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, also signed several bills in September to help curb the effects of social media on children, including one to prohibit social media platforms from knowingly providing addictive feeds to children without parental consent and one to limit or ban students from using smartphones on school campus. Federal lawmakers have held hearings on child online safety and legislation is in the works to force companies to take reasonable steps to prevent harm. The legislation has the support of X owner Elon Musk and the President-elect’s son, Donald Trump Jr . Still, the last federal law aimed at protecting children online was enacted in 1998, six years before Facebook’s founding.Twenty years ago, Somalia was headed for catastrophe. Conflict, drought and government collapse threatened to plunge 200,000 people into famine. But relief groups lacked enough food for everyone and had no consistent way of identifying those most at risk of starvation. A man angered about his clan’s limited share of food aid fired shots at humanitarian workers. Nicholas Haan, an American then working on the aid effort for the United Nations, had an idea: Create an evidence-driven system that objectively classified acute food insecurity and engaged both international experts and Somali leaders so all agreed on how to manage the crisis. The idea worked, Haan said. Locals helped gather evidence for the analysis. That led to greater acceptance of tough decisions on where to send aid, he said. The process Haan and other aid workers sketched out in about a month eventually evolved into the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, a global partnership that’s a linchpin in today’s vast system for monitoring and alleviating hunger. It is designed to sound the alarm about developing food crises so organizations can respond and prevent famine and mass starvation . But as hunger crises sweep parts of the developing world this year, the technocratic assumptions on which the IPC warning system rests are colliding with messy and brutal realities. In March, the IPC warned that famine was imminent in northern Gaza. In August, it said famine had taken hold in part of Sudan’s North Darfur state. Nevertheless, U.N. officials said in early November that the entire population of northern Gaza was at “imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.” In Darfur, little aid has reached Zamzam, a famine-stricken camp for displaced people, and its estimated 500,000 residents are at risk of dying of hunger-related causes. Critically, the IPC is struggling to access the data it needs to conduct informed analyses . With most of the world’s food crises being driven by conflict, it has become increasingly difficult to gather the information the IPC requires to classify vulnerable nations on its five-stage acute food-security scale. In Gaza, Israeli bombing and restrictions on movement have impeded efforts to collect statistics on malnutrition, deaths unrelated to trauma , and other essential data. In Sudan, violence, military roadblocks, bureaucratic obstruction and a telecommunications blackout have disrupted efforts to test for malnutrition, count deaths and survey people about their access to food. Another frequently false assumption underpinning the IPC’s work: The world will respond promptly to its warnings. In reality, significant aid sometimes comes after the starving are already dying in droves. Perhaps the system’s greatest weakness – one its creator Haan points to himself – is the premise that governments in hunger-stricken countries will cooperate fully with the IPC, the U.N. and other outside helpers. G overnment involvement can be the system’s greatest strength, Haan said, empowering countries to solve their own problems. But Reuters found that giving local officials a seat at the table – as the IPC usually does – also can pose a conflict of interest, positioning them to undermine the hunger monitor’s work and harming the people it is meant to protect. This is especially true in cases of civil war, when a government’s military strategy can trump humanitarian goals. “It inadvertently gives a veto to any belligerent party that does not want a famine declared,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of the humanitarian relief group Refugees International and former director of the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance in the U.S. Agency for International Development. In three countries now suffering severe food crises, Reuters found that governments or rebels have blocked or falsified the flow of data to the IPC or have tried to suppress its findings. In Ethiopia, the government disliked an IPC finding that 350,000 people were experiencing catastrophic acute food insecurity – so it stopped working with the IPC. In Yemen, Houthi rebels commandeered the IPC’s research process and exaggerated a food crisis to try to get more aid. In Sudan, the government tried to invalidate a survey that showed high rates of acute malnutrition among children. Ethiopian and Sudanese officials told Reuters the IPC analyses were flawed. Houthi representatives said their research documented a legitimate humanitarian crisis . One reason for such sabotage: Governments fear the international stigma and domestic political blowback from being unable to perform one of their most basic duties – feeding their own people. “Countries don’t want to be told they’re presiding over a famine,” said Mark Lowcock, who coordinated U.N. emergency relief efforts from 2017 to 2021. “It does not win you international kudos and admiration. So these state entities try to wiggle and weave to avoid having that exposed.” The IPC acknowledges that the impediments sometimes slow its work and delay alerts seeking urgently needed resources for places with extreme hunger crises. That is one reason for new protocols the IPC announced Nov. 22. IPC Global Program Manager Jose Lopez, in response to questions about the warning system’s shortcomings, said the IPC will now require that its technical experts take over government-headed analyses within two weeks of when evidence points to famine and there are exceptional circumstances, such as government interference or delay. The IPC said the change is intended to ensure timely, unbiased reports during crises, in hopes of halting mass starvation and preventing widespread deaths. In October, the IPC also issued new guidance on how analysts should incorporate conflict conditions into their reports . The guidance cites the IPC’s failure to warn early enough that South Sudan seemed headed for famine in 2020. Armed militias were fighting over resources and historic grievances, displacing tens of thousands of people. Analysts hadn’t adequately factored in the impact of the organized violence on food security, the document says. The guidance directs analysts to consider ways conflict can drive food insecurity, such as cutting access to food, causing prices to skyrocket and disrupting crop production. Reuters’ examination of how the IPC operates and whether it is an effective alert system is based on internal IPC documents and communications, meeting minutes of humanitarian organizations and data on aid delivery, nutrition and donations. Reporters also interviewed dozens of aid workers, government officials, IPC analysts and academics who study food security. Many of the problems plaguing the IPC are beyond its control, from civil war and other conflicts that obstruct data collection to tardy reactions to its forecasts by aid donors and distributors. The IPC says its hunger analyses help direct $6 billion in annual aid to the more than 35 nations it monitors. But $15 billion of requests for food security and nutrition globally went unmet in 2023 , according to U.N. data that tracks the flow of aid. Martin Griffiths, who stepped down as U.N. humanitarian relief chief in June, said shortage s of data, money and access to areas where people are starving has created a situation in which “your hands are tied behind your back from the beginning.” The U.N.’s own internal weaknesses also can hamper relief efforts. In Ethiopia, massive amounts of aid from the U.N.’s World Food Program (WFP) were diverted, in part because of the organization’s lax administrative controls. An internal WFP report on Sudan identifies a range of problems in the organization’s response there, including an inability to respond adequately to the crisis, missed funding opportunities and what it describes as “anti-fraud challenges,” Reuters reported Wednesday. Today, the IPC is an independent body funded by Western nations and overseen by 19 large humanitarian organizations and intergovernmental institutions. Though its duties are far-reaching, its resources are tight: It has just 60 paid staff and an $8.5 million annual budget. It relies on hundreds of analysts from governments and partner agencies to produce reports on hunger and acute malnutrition in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. IPC reports rank areas for acute food insecurity on a one-to-five scale that slides from minimal to stressed, crisis, emergency and famine. In each country, a “technical working group,” usually headed by the national government, analyzes data, classifies areas on the IPC scale and issues periodic reports. Rather than gathering its own data, the IPC relies on the WFP, a multi-billion-dollar global distributor of food aid, and other relief organizations and government agencies to provide it. When famine is in play, the group’s analysis often gets another layer of scrutiny – from the IPC’s five-member Famine Review Committee, which vets and verifies the finding. The IPC’s hunger analyses require rigorously examining data on factors scientifically linked to food security, such as crop yields, food prices and malnutrition. Although those uniform standards and technical rigor are important, it is essential that they don’t become a barrier or slow the process of delivering aid, said Deepmala Mahla, chief humanitarian officer for the relief organization CARE, an IPC partner. “The single largest driver of hunger in the world is conflict,” Mahla said. “This means that people who are most desperately in need are in the hardest-to-reach areas. The single most pressing IPC challenge is the difficulty in collecting mortality and nutrition data from these areas.” In Gaza, Israel’s 13-month military campaign has displaced an estimated 1.9 million Palestinians, many of them multiple times. Bombings, movement restrictions and evacuations ordered by Israel’s military block access to health care and keep aid workers from reaching people in need. All this makes it extremely difficult for the IPC to get data for two of the statistics it seeks for a famine determination – malnutrition and hunger-related deaths , aid workers told Reuters. The IPC’s preferred method for assessing acute malnutrition levels is to measure children’s weight and height. But Israeli bombing has destroyed many of Gaza’s hospitals and clinics – and along with them, scales and height boards. Humanitarian organizations instead trained health workers to measure children’s upper arms. The IPC relied on such measurements in October, when it reported that acute malnutrition rates in Gaza were 10 times higher than before the conflict but still below its threshold for deeming an area in famine. But the data was collected in August and September, before conditions worsened in the north, where Israel is conducting intense attacks. Since October, health workers have been unable to get there to collect malnutrition data. The conflict also has imperiled the data collectors themselves, who often are aid workers. At least 337 aid workers have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli operation began , the most ever in a single crisis, according to the U.N. In November 2023, a few weeks before IPC analysts began working to gauge whether Gaza was in famine, a convoy carrying staff and family from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders, or MSF) came under fire, killing two. MSF said the convoy was clearly marked with the aid group’s logo and said all evidence pointed to a deliberate attack by Israel. So worried was the IPC about aid workers’ safety in Gaza that it set up anonymized Zoom calls to conduct its work, six participants told Reuters. Some of the IPC analysts worked for humanitarian organizations on the ground in Gaza, and the IPC feared they could be targeted by Israel. So each day, a facilitator would conceal the analysts’ identities before letting them into the virtual meeting room. Instead of screen names, they had numbers: Analyst 1, Analyst 2, Analyst 3. All kept their cameras off. The Israel Defense Forces did not respond to Reuters questions about the MSF incident, attacks on aid workers or the IPC’s efforts to protect its analysts . COGAT, the Israeli government body that oversees aid to Gaza, told Reuters that in recent months a new Israeli government board has begun focusing on the safety of humanitarian workers. It “facilitates efficient and rapid information sharing” to help them distribute aid safely and effectively, COGAT said. The IPC did not have a group of analysts working in Gaza when Israel’s military operation began. So the IPC set up an ad hoc group, headed by its own staff rather than local government representatives. The arrangement was meant to protect the group’s neutrality, two IPC sources said. Almost everywhere else the IPC operates, a government official heads the working group. The IPC works on the assumption that governments want to get aid to the starving. But Reuters found that several governments or ruling factions sought to manipulate or suppress data collection for IPC analyses. They have used the IPC’s own rigorous requirements to exclude crucial evidence of famine and delay the publication of reports warning about the risk of famine. In Sudan, the government sought to suppress a key malnutrition and mortality s tudy that helped show that the huge displaced persons camp called Zamzam was in famine. The camp formed in 2004, during attacks by the Sudanese government and Janjaweed-aligned militia that resulted in ethnically motivated mass killings. It now shelters about 500,000 displaced people. MSF randomly selected and measured the upper arms of 659 children there in January. The aid group found almost 25% to be acutely malnourished – higher than the IPC’s 15% threshold for famine. It also found alarmingly high mortality rates among the wider population. At the end of March and into early April, the group screened another 4 7 ,000 children and found one of every three malnourished. Some children died while waiting in line to be screened, said Seham Abdullah, a 28-year-old doctor who worked on the survey and is still treating patients there. Others died on the way to the clinic, she said. “The children are sent away because there are no beds,” Abdullah told Reuters. “Then they come back later and their conditions are worse.” MSF treatment for malnourished children has been hindered by sporadic aid shipments. For a time this fall, it was unable to treat 5,000 children with acute malnutrition because warring parties were preventing supplies from reaching the camp. MSF’s child nutrition and mortality survey from January gave the IPC valuable data points as it worked to determine if the area was in famine. A famine analysis considers people’s access to food, along with malnutrition and mortality rates. But the Sudanese government – engaged in a civil war with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and adamantly opposed to a famine declaration for strategic reasons – rejected the study. Ibrahim Khatir, head of the North Darfur health ministry, told Reuters in August that MSF’s findings were exaggerated to drum up funding. Aid organizations “d o it as advertising so they can get more support,” he said. “So they can get nice houses, cars, salaries, they rely on the suffering, the hunger.” In response to Khatir’s remarks, MSF noted the statistical rigor of its analysis and called its findings “unambiguous.” “The plight of Sudanese people, only receiving a trickle of humanitarian aid at best while trapped by hunger and war, is nothing short of outrageous,” Michel-Olivier Lacharité, MSF head of emergency operations, said in an emailed statement to Reuters. In June, Sudan’s ambassador to the U.N., Al-Harith Idriss al-Harith Mohamed, criticized outsiders’ efforts to declare famine in Sudan, which he called “a narrative whereby famine can be dictated from above.” A famine declaration would increase pressure on the government to open a key aid-shipment border crossing from Chad, which he called a “Pandora’s box” that would open up arms smuggling to the RSF. Sudan’s agriculture minister, Abubakr al-Bushra, raised similar objections in a letter later that month to Lopez, the IPC chief. Lopez replied that the IPC could not factor Sudan’s military concerns into its analysis. “The issues you raised about the risks of diversion of humanitarian assistance and of a potential conflict expansion go beyond the purpose and objectives of a Famine Review,” Lopez said in the July 4 letter, seen by Reuters. After MSF published its nutrition and mortality findings on Zamzam in February, it took the IPC six months to alert the world that famine was happening there. Over that time, the average number of graves dug daily in Zamzam grew. Reuters used high-resolution optical and radar satellite imagery to examine activity in seven Zamzam graveyards. The images reveal an average rate of at least 1.6 new graves added each day in March. By November, that rate had grown to at least 4 each day . The analysis is likely an undercount because it is impossible to know if the images reveal every burial, especially small children’s graves. In February, MSF estimated that one child was dying every two hours in the camp. The news agency’s use of satellite imagery is an example of new types of data that could be incorporated into the IPC’s analyses, Haan said. The Famine Review Committee cited Reuters’ work as one piece of evidence in its August famine finding. The IPC is now working with Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab to explore ways of using similar analyses in its reports, Haan said. It also is exploring machine-learning techniques, which rely on computer models to predict outcomes. Zamzam’s misery continues. The camp has come under intense shelling this week, a volunteer worker and an aid organization told Reuters. Sudan isn’t the only place where the IPC ran into intense government resistance . In June 2021, the IPC analyzed the risk of famine in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where paramilitary forces were then in the midst of violent conflict with government forces. The hunger monitor found that more than 350,000 people were in Phase 5, or catastrophic conditions. Ethiopia’s central government challenged the IPC’s methodology and conclusions, but the IPC published its analysis anyway. It added a disclaimer: “This report has not been endorsed by the Government of Ethiopia.” The government reacted furiously. It “perceived the publication as unilateral and unauthorized,” a senior government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. The government later expelled seven senior U.N. officials and blocked further IPC access in Ethiopia. No IPC analyses have been performed in Ethiopia since, although the government official said talks recently began in an effort to improve relations between the government and the IPC. Strong-arming of the IPC and the broader humanitarian relief system became severe in Yemen in 2023, when Houthi rebel forces who control the country’s north tried to exaggerate a hunger crisis to draw international humanitarian aid, four sources with knowledge of the situation told Reuters. Houthi rebels have been accused of massive aid diversion there. The Houthis’ humanitarian arm handpicked data collectors in 2023 to conduct surveys to assess the population’s access to food, according to three sources from the U.N.’s WFP. Reuters was unable to learn specifics about how the data was collected. The Houthis then used the data to press the IPC to say that many urban areas were experiencing food emergencies when in fact people had access to food and markets, said an IPC working group member, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The person said that Houthi officers threatened IPC members with consequences if they did not classify areas as the Houthis wanted. Houthi security forces have arrested and held incommunicado dozens of U.N. staff and employees of nongovernmental organizations. In a written response to questions from Reuters, the Houthi Supreme Council for the Management and Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (SCMCHA) said the humanitarian crisis in Yemen is an “undisputed fact and not fabricated.” “The data collection process was carried out in the required manner according to the standards agreed upon with the World Food Program,” the SCMCHA said, noting that half of the data collectors were selected by the WFP. It denied diverting aid and threatening aid workers and said the arrests of U.N. staff were lawful. “These are false and untrue allegations,” the statement read. “We completely reject them. No pressure was exerted on the committee.” A global IPC team reviewed the Houthi-collected data and found that it overstated hunger levels, three IPC sources told Reuters. The IPC decided not to publish the Houthi-led analysis. And because of security concerns, it did not publish its own evaluation, either, the sources said. Even when the IPC’s work is unhindered and timely, donor countries often respond sluggishly to warnings of a food crisis. And conflict, closed borders and movement restrictions make it difficult to deliver aid. That can leave humanitarian agencies with too little money to keep hunger from worsening. The world supplied only 39% of the aid that agencies requested in 2023 to alleviate food insecurity and improve nutrition, according to U.N. data. This year is on track for only slightly better results. Government officials from seven donor countries told Reuters they take note of the IPC’s reports, but they also weigh budgetary and political priorities, climate predictions, logistical hurdles to delivering aid, and the actions of other donors. Germany would pay attention to an IPC Phase 4 or Phase 5 determination, said Andreas von Brandt, Berlin’s ambassador to the U.N. in Rome. But it wouldn’t guarantee a response. “Our funds are limited,” von Brandt said. “Even in the best years we wouldn’t have all the funds to suffice.” The first famine the IPC identified – in 2011 in Somalia – illustrates the devastating toll when aid arrives too late. Drought and armed conflict among militant groups fighting for control of the country’s south led to mass displacement and dire food shortages from 2010 through 2012. IPC analyses repeatedly warned of an imminent risk of famine. Yet donors balked at sending relief to a region controlled by militants the U.S. had labeled as terrorists . Humanitarian aid to the afflicted area dropped by half from 2008 to 2011, as aid workers came under attack. Only after an IPC analysis found the area in famine in July 2011 did donor nations and organizations respond with a deluge of aid. By then, much of the damage had already been done. It turned out to be one of the deadliest famines of the 21st century. An estimated 258,000 people – most of them children under 5 – died from hunger-related causes, according to a 2013 analysis commissioned by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Almost half died before famine was even declared, the study found. The geopolitical roadblocks and the failure of the various arms of the humanitarian aid system to work together to prevent starvation frustrates Haan, 20 years after he came up with his idea to classify hunger. “All of that comes crashing down on the woman and the girl and the young boy in Zamzam who can’t eat tonight, and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to eat tonight, no reason at all,” he said. Reporting by Lena Masri, Deborah Nelson, Maggie Michael, Steve Stecklow, Ryan McNeill, Jaimi Dowdell and Benjamin Lesser. Source: Reuters (Additional reporting by Giulia Paravicini, Kaylee Kang, Nafisa Eltahir, Khalid Abdelaziz, Allison Martell and Charlie Szymanski. Edited by Janet Roberts.)UK, US, EU Authorities Gather in San Francisco to Discuss AI Safety
Bank of America Corp. stock underperforms Wednesday when compared to competitorsCentral Committee on Counter-Terrorism meeting 2024 heldOpenAI and Microsoft have a secret definition for “AGI,” an acronym for artificial general intelligence, or any system that can outperform humans at most tasks. According to leaked documents obtained by The Information , the two companies came to agree in 2023 that AGI will be achieved once OpenAI has developed an AI system that can generate at least $100 billion in profits. There has long been a debate in the AI community about what AGI really means, or whether computers will ever be good enough to outperform humans at most tasks and wipe out major swaths of the economy. The term “artificial intelligence” itself is something of a misnomer because much of it is really just a prediction machine, taking in keywords and searching large amounts of data without really understanding the underlying concepts. But OpenAI has received more than $13 billion in funding from Microsoft over the years, and that money has come with a strange contractual agreement that OpenAI would stop allowing Microsoft to use any new technology it develops after AGI is achieved. OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit under the guise that its technology was supposed to benefit humanity. The idea behind cutting off Microsoft once AGI is attained is that AGI would cause harm to humanity in the hands of a for-profit company. In exchange for investing billions in a nonprofit, Microsoft’s current agreement with OpenAI guarantees it a slice of profits until it reaches a predetermined cap somewhere in the tens of billions; the cap is meant to ensure most profit goes back to building products that benefit humanity, supposedly. As has been well documented at this point, OpenAI is no longer interested in this non-profit model, because the structure makes it difficult to raise more money and compete against other AI players. Since October, The Information says Microsoft and OpenAI have been negotiating changes to their arrangement, which also includes the tech giant serving as OpenAI’s exclusive cloud hosting provider. Microsoft and OpenAI have been on diverging paths for some time now. It was recently reported that the latter has begun incorporating AI models developed in-house into its 365 Copilot product in order to improve cost and efficiency. It doesn’t make sense for Microsoft to continue relying on OpenAI, an independent company, for technology that it believes will be the backbone of its productivity software going forward. Microsoft needs proprietary tech. OpenAI, for its part, is far away from achieving $100 billion in profit on technology whose true value remains speculative, which means it would likely have to keep giving its technology to Microsoft for a long time—not great when it looks like they are headed towards being competitors. And handing over large amounts of its revenue makes it less attractive to new investors, which it will need as it continues to burn cash . Getting rid of the cloud hosting agreement could also allow OpenAI to negotiate better hosting costs with an alternative provider.
European nations suspend Syrian asylum decisionsAlbany scores 24 4th-quarter points to overtake Hampton 41-34
Swift's daily impact on Vancouver may have exceeded 2010 games, says industry figureNoneBoxing Day shopper footfall was down 7.9% from last year across all UK retail destinations up until 5pm, MRI Software’s OnLocation Footfall Index found. However, this year’s data had been compared with an unusual spike in footfall as 2023 was the first “proper Christmas” period without Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, an analyst at the retail technology company said. It found £4.6 billion will be spent overall on the festive sales. Before the pandemic the number of Boxing Day shoppers on the streets had been declining year on year. The last uplift recorded by MRI was in 2015. Jenni Matthews, marketing and insights director at MRI Software, told the PA news agency: “We’ve got to bear in mind that (last year) was our first proper Christmas without any (Covid-19) restrictions or limitations. “Figures have come out that things have stabilised, we’re almost back to what we saw pre-pandemic.” There were year-on-year declines in footfall anywhere between 5% and 12% before Covid-19 restrictions, she said. MRI found 12% fewer people were out shopping on Boxing Day in 2019 than in 2018, and there were 3% fewer in 2018 than in 2017, Ms Matthews added. She said: “It’s the shift to online shopping, it’s the convenience, you’ve got the family days that take place on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.” People are also increasingly stocking-up before Christmas, Ms Matthews said, and MRI found an 18% increase in footfall at all UK retail destinations on Christmas Eve this year compared with 2023. Ms Matthews said: “We see the shops are full of people all the way up to Christmas Eve, so they’ve probably got a couple of good days of food, goodies, everything that they need, and they don’t really need to go out again until later on in that week. “We did see that big boost on Christmas Eve. It looks like shoppers may have concentrated much of their spending in that pre-Christmas rush.” Many online sales kicked off between December 23 and the night of Christmas Day and “a lot of people would have grabbed those bargains from the comfort of their own home”, she said. She added: “I feel like it’s becoming more and more common that people are grabbing the bargains pre-Christmas.” Footfall is expected to rise on December 27 as people emerge from family visits and shops re-open, including Next, Marks and Spencer and John Lewis that all shut for Boxing Day. It will also be payday for some as it is the last Friday of the month. A study by Barclays Consumer Spend had forecast that shoppers would spend £236 each on average in the Boxing Day sales this year, but that the majority of purchases would be made online. Nearly half of respondents said the cost-of-living crisis will affect their post-Christmas shopping but the forecast average spend is still £50 more per person than it was before the pandemic, with some of that figure because of inflation, Barclays said. Amid the financial pressures, many people are planning to buy practical, perishable and essential items such as food and kitchenware. A total of 65% of shoppers are expecting to spend the majority of their sales budget online. Last year, Barclays found 63.9% of Boxing Day retail purchases were made online. However, a quarter of respondents aim to spend mostly in store – an 11% rise compared with last year. Karen Johnson, head of retail at Barclays, said: “Despite the ongoing cost-of-living pressures, it is encouraging to hear that consumers will be actively participating in the post-Christmas sales. “This year, we’re likely to see a shift towards practicality and sustainability, with more shoppers looking to bag bargains on kitchen appliances and second-hand goods.” Consumers choose in-store shopping largely because they enjoy the social aspect and touching items before they buy, Barclays said, adding that high streets and shopping centres are the most popular destinations.
Vikings waive former starting cornerback Akayleb Evans in another blow to 2022 draft class EAGAN, Minn. (AP) — The Minnesota Vikings waived cornerback Akayleb Evans on Saturday in another setback for their beleaguered 2022 draft class. Canadian Press Nov 23, 2024 2:56 PM Nov 23, 2024 3:05 PM Share by Email Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Print Share via Text Message FILE - Minnesota Vikings cornerback Akayleb Evans (21) walks off the field following an NFL football game against the Tennessee Titans, Nov. 17, 2024, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Stew Milne, File) EAGAN, Minn. (AP) — The Minnesota Vikings waived cornerback Akayleb Evans on Saturday in another setback for their beleaguered 2022 draft class. Evans started 15 games last season, but he had been relegated to a special teams role this year after the Vikings added veteran cornerbacks Stephon Gilmore and Shaquill Griffin. Evans was a fourth-round pick out of Missouri, one of three defensive backs among Minnesota's first five selections in 2022. Lewis Cine (first round) was waived and Andrew Booth (second round) was traded earlier this year. One of their second-round picks, guard Ed Ingram, lost his starting spot last week. Evans was let go to clear a roster spot for tight end Nick Muse, who was activated from injured reserve to play on Sunday at Chicago. The Vikings ruled tight end Josh Oliver out of the game with a sprained ankle. ___ AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL The Associated Press See a typo/mistake? Have a story/tip? This has been shared 0 times 0 Shares Share by Email Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Print Share via Text Message Get your daily Victoria news briefing Email Sign Up More Football (NFL) AFC standouts meet when Herbert, Chargers host Jackson's Ravens on Monday night Nov 23, 2024 3:02 PM Reeling Cowboys visit Dan Quinn's overachieving Commanders in a franchise role reversal Nov 23, 2024 12:18 PM Cowboys and Commanders ride losing streaks into the NFC East rivals' first meeting this season Nov 23, 2024 12:12 PMYPSILANTI, Mich. (AP) — On a damp Wednesday night with temperatures dipping into the 30s, fans in sparsely filled stands bundled up to watch Buffalo beat Eastern Michigan 37-30 on gray turf. The lopsided game was not particularly notable, but it was played on one of the nights the Mid-American Conference has made its own: A weeknight. “A lot of the general public thinks we play all of our games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, not just some of them in November,” MAC Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher said in a telephone interview this week. “What it has done is help take what was a pretty darned good regional conference and has given it a national brand and made it a national conference.” When the conference has played football games on ESPN or ESPN2 over the last two seasons, the linear television audience has been 10 times larger than when conference schools meet on Saturdays and get lost in the shuffle when viewers have many more choices. The most-watched MAC game over the last two years was earlier this month on a Wednesday night when Northern Illinois won at Western Michigan and there were 441,600 viewers, a total that doesn’t include streaming that isn’t captured by Nielsen company. During the same span, the linear TV audience has been no larger than 46,100 to watch two MAC teams play on Saturdays. “Having the whole nation watching on Tuesday and Wednesday night is a huge deal for the MAC,” Eastern Michigan tight end Jere Getzinger said. “Everybody wants to watch football so if you put it on TV on a Tuesday or Wednesday, people are going to watch.” ESPN has carried midweek MAC football games since the start of the century. ESPN and the conference signed a 13-year extension a decade ago that extends their relationship through at least the 2026-27 season. The conference has made the most of the opportunities, using MACtion as a tag on social media for more than a decade and it has become a catchy marketing term for the Group of Five football programs that usually operate under the radar in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and New York. Attendance does tend to go down with weeknight games, keeping some students out of stadiums because they have class or homework and leading to adults staying away home because they have to work the next morning. “The tradeoff is the national exposure,” Buffalo coach Pete Lembo said. “You know November nights midweek the average fan is going to park on the couch, have a bowl of chips and salsa out in front, and watch the game from there." When the Bulls beat Ball State 51-48 in an overtime thriller on a Tuesday night earlier this month, the announced attendance was 12,708 and that appeared to be generous. There were many empty seats after halftime. “You watch the games on TV, the stadiums all look like this,” Buffalo fan Jeff Wojcicki said. “They are not packed, but it’s the only game on, and you know where to find it.” Sleep and practice schedules take a hit as well, creating another wave of challenges for students to attend class and coaches to prepare without the usual rhythm of preparing all week to play on Saturday. “Last week when we played at Ohio in Athens, we had a 4-four bus ride home and got home at about 3:30 a.m.,” Eastern Michigan center Broderick Roman said. “We still had to go to class and that was tough, but it's part of what you commit to as an athlete.” That happens a lot in November when the MAC shifts its unique schedule. During the first two weeks of the month, the conference had 10 games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays exclusively. This week, there were five games on Tuesday and Wednesday while only one was left in the traditional Saturday slot with Ball State hosting Bowling Green. Next week, Toledo plays at Akron and Kent State visits Buffalo on Tuesday night before the MAC schedule wraps up with games next Friday and Saturday to determine which teams will meet in the conference title game on Dec. 7 in Detroit. In all, MAC teams will end up playing about 75% of their games on a Saturday and the rest on November weeknights. When the Eagles wrapped up practice earlier this week, two days before they played the Bulls, tight end Jere Getzinger provided some insight into the effects of the scheduling quirk. “It's Monday, but for us it's like a Thursday,” he said. Bowling Green coach Scot Loeffler said he frankly has a hard time remembering what day it is when the schedule shift hits in November. “The entire week gets turned upside down,” Loeffler said. “It’s wild, but it’s great for the league because there’s two days a week this time of year that people around the country will watch MAC games.” AP freelance writer Jonah Bronstein contributed to this report. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football
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