1651: WWX

Two years ago I retired from the Israel Prison Service, where I started out in 1996, as a dentist.

The teeth of Fatah inmates are in poor condition, whereas Hamas prisoners maintain hygiene and purity. Theirs is a religious way of life. Ascetic. With rigid discipline. They pray five times a day, don't touch sweets, don't smoke. There's no such thing as smoking in Hamas. You see a 50-year-old prisoner who is entirely free of any signs of illness. No tooth decay. I'd say, "You're Hamas?" They would say, "Yes, how did you know?" "By the teeth," I replied. A very basic insight. Everything has meaning – it's the same with regard to their way of life, for example. At 9 P.M., there is a total lights-out in the prison's Hamas wings; in the Fatah wings they watch television all night.

Regarding Tiktok ads from the perspective of creators, you have to first

understand the incentives. First of all, young adults my age (mid 20s)

and younger just want to have all the nice things previous generations

had. We truly are a generation split with some really hard workers and

some really lost souls. Many of the creators I manage want to make money

as fast as possible and Tiktok has a massive budget for Ads. This is

the path of least resistance in the attention economy. I am trying to

build a better path for upcoming creator talent but it takes time.

Culturally, that's a much larger discussion. That said, I'm going to

explain in basic terms how they get people making ads and how they turn

the dial with money flows.

Tiktok caters very well to those who

have a following. This is how you get into their advertising program to

begin with. You reach a certain threshold of follower count and you are

able to participate in a few key areas. Tiktok Shop, Tiktok Live, and

Tiktok Creator Ads. All of which have opportunities to partner with

brands by proxy or sign up for Ad spots.

The

better a creator performs in these ad spots the more ads they get,

early access, and additional opportunities. Essentially all creators are

competing against one another for a slice of the pie for an individual

ad. As a young person - it's easy money, but competitive. Here's an

example. Let's say a sports betting app has $10,000 weekly Ad pool. Creators can see that $10,000.

They show you leaderboards and how individuals stack up against other

creators by payout, conversion rates, etc. on that running ad. This is

where most follow the tides of the money flow. If you see a lot of

money in that bucket and what people are getting paid, they are more

likely to sign up for that ad spot. Many high ticket ads are just mobile

games. These games don't really have any "Trans Mao" agenda in them but

they are a huge waste of time for kids. Creators sign up for these

popular games because at times $50,000 or more are up for grabs. This

translates to thousands of dollars per week at times.

-----------------------

For “hawking” Sort of. That’s how you get the big bucks when you are working up the ladder.

The

TikTok brand must disclose to the creator beforehand with how much the

pool is and the Ad requirements. These are your key selling points. The

creator has the freedom to make a variety of content. It could be a

review, a skit, or anything else they can think of to hook or convert.

But there are key selling points that must be hit for the Ad to run.

Otherwise they won’t be paid. Keep in mind this is just one arm of the

advertising front. Brands too still make their own ads. This is just one

way they are trying to cut in more individuals and reduce work for in

house teams.

-----------------------

Sounds

like a great opportunity right? Well, signing up for ads is like

getting in line at a DMV que. Each creator gets a handful of ad spots

per week. When you sign up for an Ad you are shown an estimated number

of days until you can upload your ad for review. The most popular ads

are usually taken up first by Top 1% creators OR they have to wait 1-2

months to get into those ads. If people want money now they join the Ads

with open spots or shorter wait times. These are your B Tier and below

ads.

This is where it gets interesting. TikTok has many

other ads they run beyond the "name brand" ones people are familiar

with. Get this. This would include "AI Homework helping apps", Utility

apps such as "PDF Scanners", "AI Companions / Friends or Soulmates", or

Gay / Trans dating apps to name a few). There are far too many gimmick

ads too. These are the sorts of things I cannot bring myself to support

these creators in. I actively push them to avoid such ads. Many of these

ads still do pay creators, but usually less than $500. If a creator

does get into these spots consistently each week and is the top creator,

it can be a reliable payday. This is the game. There are times where

the money flows do shift but at the moment I am not seeing a huge push

ideologically. It does happen though. A few weeks ago I was seeing more

bible ad spots as well because of the lead up to Easter. I want to

emphasize to you and your audience that from an Advertising perspective

I'm not seeing massive money flows in a "Trans Mao" direction currently.

The algo might be because John scrolls and captures those clips. But

the foundations are there if they turn the money dial. Haven't been

seeing it currently though. Money is flowing into mobile games and has

been for some time. Feel free to look at some of the ads I have attached

for you as they were some of the more concerning ones.

I am

only seeing things from a creator advertising perspective and don't get

to communicate with brands directly. Tiktok handles that. I hope this

provides some helpful insight.

For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress. For those young people for whom a medical pathway is clinically indicated, it is not enough to provide this without also addressing wider mental health and/or psychosocially challenging problems.

Innovation is important if medicine is to move forward, but there must be a proportionate level of monitoring, oversight and regulation that does not stifle progress, while preventing creep of unproven approaches into clinical practice. Innovation must draw from and contribute to the evidence base.

Link

ITM Adam, I'm writing to tell you about my experience at my quarterly med check doctor's appointment. The last two times I've been in my doctor had recommended Ozempic for me even though my A1C was 6.3 (6.5 and below is the target range for type 2 diabetics) see attached photo. She thought it might help with weight loss and I said no I don't want to take that. This time when she recommended it and I declined she closed her laptop and confronted me with, Tell me your reasons why you don't want to take it. I felt put on the spot but managed to say that it makes you lose lean muscle mass not fat and many people have terrible side effects. I also told her that if I could go back, I would NOT take the Covid vaccine that was foisted upon me by her predecessor. She then launched into a five minute lecture on GLP drugs and lauded their benefits. I again declined and noted my A1C results and the fact that I recently had started walking again on a daily basis. Adam I DO believe that the doctors are getting paid handsomely for every Ozempic prescription they write. I only have my own anecdotal experience as evidence, but it's enough for me.

Sincerely, Sir Matty of Central Oregon

I also wanted to give you some detail around the Sound Investigations group that did the Pornhub and CIA stories. These are all former Project Veritas journalists. Eric Cochran, the narrator for the CIA story, started the group. Arden Young joined Eric part time while she was working for Project Veritas during the time I was still there as Executive Director before the organization's RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly). She helped to blow open the amazing Pornhub story. She's great, I can't say enough good things about her. The undercover journalist on the "gay" CIA date is codename "Jasper". He's kind of a whacko.

Eric's not a bad guy but his head is planted firmly up James O'Keefe's ass. Incidentally, whenever James presents about the FBI raiding his and two other PV journalists homes he plays this recording of the FBI banging on seemingly "his" door and barging in. In fact, James didn't record this, Eric Cochran did. He was also raided by the FBI as he was one of the journalists working on the Ashely Biden Diary story which PV never published. Eric was the one with the foresight to record. James never recorded the raid, but takes credit for it always and never gives Eric the credit he deserves. Eric of course doesn't speak up because he allows James to walk all over him.

Just figured I'd shed some light on the organization. I think they're doing good work even with my criticisms of some of the folks working there.

Thank you for your courage!

Viscount R Daniels

Are already eligible for debt cancellation under an existing government program but haven’t yet applied

Have been in repayment for 20 years or longer on their undergraduate loans, or more than 25 years on their graduate loans

Attended schools of questionable value

Are experiencing financial hardship

Link

Please keep me anonymous if you choose to share.

I’ve worked for a commercial environmental lab for over 10 yrs. I agree with The Show’s assessment that there is a overhype/money grab going on right now with PFAS. I see a lot of headlines noting that "PFAS is detected in NAME WATER SUPPLY HERE.” I'm thinking that when the M5M is using the detected headline that they are scaring the public by not mentioning at what levels the chemicals are present. We are talking about detection limits of around 0.1-50 parts per trillion. The test is also easily contaminated while sampling and samples need to be processed in a clean room. I doubt field sample collection occurs in a clean room. M5M are using the term detection but not mentioning concentration in the reporting which is likely causing enflamed amygdalas.

On to the money grab. Right now there was probably only a couple of large commercial lab companies like PACE working with the EPA to develop the method and that would be setup and have certification. Since limits have now been established by the EPA and the testing isn’t widely available that leaves a huge new market only available to big companies with a foot in the door so to speak. The EPA also just released maximum contaminant level (MCL) for PFAS in drinking water with a compliance timeline. Off to the races!

EPA link:[https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-pfas](https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/and-polyfluoroalkyl-substances-pfas)

Please let me know if you have any follow up questions, I’m willing to divulge more info but I don’t necessarily want me tied to the company I work. I definitely don’t want to give them a free ad.

Anonymous Lab Rat

PS If birds aren’t real then Too Many Eggs by Mimi Smith-Dvorak is the most immersive sci-fi experience I have ever read!

It appears that the mechanic working on that particular aircraft forgot to latch back on. He is probation and more then likely will be fired.

Link

ITM Adam, I had to write you because of what I heard on the recent show about the shooter, The FBI claims to have stopped in northern Idaho. It is laughable that this kid thought he would be able to do anything more than get himself shot on the spot. Most every church in Idaho has a group of parishioners who are trained and carry concealed firearms on their person at all times during services, I know Because the church I attend has a well organized system along with the use of walkie-talkies and earbuds to communicate with all the security teams inside. Clearly, this was an FBI set-up. yours truly. Sir combat rock of the Idaho Highlands.

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Sun, 14 Apr 2024 17:23

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on canceling student debt on February 21, 2024 in Culver City, California.

Mario Tama | Getty Images News | Getty Images

A more targeted forgiveness program This time, the Biden administration has narrowed its aid by targeting specific groups of borrowers. It hopes that move will help the new plan survive legal challenges.

"I think it would be easier to justify in front of a court that is skeptical of broad authority," said Luke Herrine, an assistant professor of law at the University of Alabama, in an earlier interview with CNBC.

Tens of millions of borrowers may still benefit if the program endures.

The plan would forgive the debt of borrowers who:

Are already eligible for debt cancellation under an existing government program but haven't yet appliedHave been in repayment for 20 years or longer on their undergraduate loans, or more than 25 years on their graduate loansAttended schools of questionable valueAre experiencing financial hardshipIt's not entirely clear yet how financial hardship will be defined, but it could include those burdened by medical debt or high child-care expenses, the Biden administration said.

The new plan also calls for borrowers to get up to $20,000 of unpaid interest on their federal student debt forgiven, regardless of their income.

For critics, deja vuFor critics of broad student loan forgiveness, Biden's new plan looks a great deal like his first.

After Biden touted his revised relief program, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, wrote on X that the president "is trying to unabashedly eclipse the Constitution."

"See you in court," Bailey wrote.

Missouri was one of the six Republican-led states '-- along with Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska and South Carolina '-- who brought a lawsuit against Biden's last debt relief effort.

The red states argued that the president overstepped his authority, and that debt cancellation would hurt the bottom lines of lenders. The conservative justices agreed with them.

Once the Biden administration formally releases its new student loan forgiveness plan, more legal challenges are inevitable, said higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.

"Lawsuits will likely follow within days," Kantrowitz added.

Don't miss these exclusives from CNBC PRO

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Archived Version

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 14:01

Ben Cotton, an IT expert proficient in forensics and digital systems analysis, issued a declaration last month about flaws with Maricopa County's voting machine tabulators. It was included in Kari Lake's and Mark Finchem's latest pleadings in their complaint challenging the use of voting machine tabulators in elections. One of those findings was that unauthorized executable programs were installed on the machines at least three times during the 2020 election, which could be used to alter election results without detection.

Cotton, whose firm CyFIR was hired by the Arizona Senate in 2021 to audit the 2020 election, summarized his findings, ''It is clear, based on my findings, that unauthorized programs, databases, configuration settings, and actions were present on the voting systems in Maricopa County for the elections in both 2020 and 2022.''

Regarding the executable programs, he said, ''The Maricopa EMS has a compiler installed that provides the ability to modify and create executable files and drivers on the fly that could be used to alter election results without detection. There is evidence new executable files were created at least three times during the active voting period in 2020.''

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) did not authorize the programs to create the executable files when the agency approved the software on the machines. ''These programs are not found as part of approved and certified Voting System Platform software that is listed on the EAC's Scope of Certification posted on the EAC's website,'' Cotton said.

In addition to the three executable files created during the election, ''twelve thousand five hundred and seven (12,507) executable files were created or modified after the August 6, 2019 installation date of the DVS Democracy Suite on the Maricopa voting systems,'' which also were not approved by the EAC. ''The creation and implementation of these files created after the installation date and certification date of the DVS Democracy Suite software violates and undermines the entire purpose for the EAC certification process,'' Cotton said.

A second concerning discovery he made was that the security system to tabulate the results had no encryption, so anyone could query the database to access it.

''The encryption keys used to secure the results, encrypt and decrypt the tabulator results and protect the integrity of the EMS operations are stored in plain text in an unencrypted SQL database that is accessible with a simple SQL query,'' he said. ''This egregious security lapse provides anyone with access to the voting system with the tools to alter election results without likely detection.''

He said there was only one easy hurdle a hacker had to overcome.

''The only barrier to access these keys is the Windows-log-in. This log in obviously would not prevent a malicious insider from changing results. A non-insider could easily bypass the Windows log-in feature in about 5 minutes with well-known hacking techniques available on the internet,'' the IT expert said.

Cotton added, ''Simply put, this is like a bank having the most secure vault in the world, touting how secure it is to the public and then taping the combination in large font type on the wall next to the vault door.''

Third, Cotton found that the software used on the machines, Dominion Voting System (DVS) Democracy Suite version 5.5B, was ''materially altered'' after it was approved by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). ''The MBS file and the database version could not have been produced by the DVS version 5.5B,'' he said.

He added that this was the case in the 2022 election, too.

Cotton said all the slog.txt files he examined contained a warning that stated, ''[Verification] Election database version: 1.24 is not the same as election domain version.''

Finally, Cotton found that ''EAC authorized voting system auditors Pro V&V and SLI Compliance failed to detect material changes to the voting systems in their audits of February 2021.''

''The auditors only analyzed the hash values of a very small subset of the executable files on the systems,'' Cotton said. ''Notably the auditor did not analyze or compare any files in the subdirectories of the Windows\.Net directory associated with the EMSApplicationServer functions or any other directory on the system. The auditors did not perform a comparative analysis of the software listed in the EAC Scope of Conformance and note any deviations from the certified baseline.''

He said the ''files which do not match the EAC certified file hashes are configuration files,'' which ''is especially significant because changes to configuration files change how the election software acts and whether ballots have been accurately recorded and tabulated.''

Cotton said, ''This is an egregious breach of basic security practices that must be remedied immediately. No election results provided by these voting machines can be trusted given the subjects identified and described in this report.''

A group of election integrity investigators in Arizona exposed voting machine tabulators' lack of compliance with the EAC's requirements in 2022 and filed legal actions to stop their use but got nowhere.

State Senators Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff) and Sonny Borrelli (R-Lake Havasu) held a press conference last month revealing some new findings.

'' '' ''

Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on Twitter / X. Email tips to [email protected] .Photo ''Voting Machine'' by kafka4prez. CC BY-SA 2.0.

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Archived Version

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 13:37

Dr Hilary Cass has submitted her final report and recommendations to NHS England in her role as Chair of the Independent Review of gender identity services for children and young people.

The Review was commissioned by NHS England to make recommendations on how to improve NHS gender identity services, and ensure that children and young people who are questioning their gender identity or experiencing gender dysphoria receive a high standard of care, that meets their needs, is safe, holistic and effective.

The report describes what is known about the young people who are seeking NHS support around their gender identity and sets out the recommended clinical approach to care and support they should expect, the interventions that should be available, and how services should be organised across the country.

It also makes recommendations on the quality improvement and research infrastructure required to ensure that the evidence base underpinning care is strengthened.

In making her recommendations, Dr Cass has had to rely on the currently available evidence and think about how the NHS can respond safely, effectively, and compassionately, leaving some issues for wider societal debate.

Download the Final Report (NB to open the report in browser, right click and select 'open in new tab')

ContextExploration of identity is a completely natural process during childhood and adolescence and rarely requires clinical input. However, over the past five '' ten years the number of children and young people being referred for NHS support around their gender identity has increased rapidly.

As a result, young people are waiting several years to receive clinical support and during this time they and their families are left to make sense of their individual situations, often dealing with considerable challenges and upheaval.

There has been a similar pattern in other Western countries, with clinicians noting not only the rising number but also a change in the case mix of the young people seeking support.

There have been many more birth-registered females being referred in adolescence, marking a shift from the cohort that these services have traditionally seen; that is, birth-registered males presenting in childhood, on whom the previous clinical approach to care was based.

Clinicians also noted that these young people often had other issues that they were having to manage alongside their gender-related distress.

The Independent Review set out to understand the reasons for the growth in referrals and the change in case-mix, and to identify the clinical approach and service model that would best serve this population.

To provide an evidence base upon which to make its recommendations, the Review commissioned the University of York to conduct a series of independent systematic reviews of existing evidence and new qualitative and quantitative research to build on the evidence base.

Dr Cass also conducted an extensive programme of engagement with young people, parents, clinicians and other associated professionals.

Overview of key findingsThere is no simple explanation for the increase in the numbers of predominantly young people and young adults who have a trans or gender diverse identity, but there is broad agreement that it is a result of a complex interplay between biological, psychological and social factors. This balance of factors will be different in each individual.There are conflicting views about the clinical approach, with expectations of care at times being far from usual clinical practice. This has made some clinicians fearful of working with gender-questioning young people, despite their presentation being similar to many children and young people presenting to other NHS services.An appraisal of international guidelines for care and treatment of children and young people with gender incongruence found that that no single guideline could be applied in its entirety to the NHS in England.While a considerable amount of research has been published in this field, systematic evidence reviews demonstrated the poor quality of the published studies, meaning there is not a reliable evidence base upon which to make clinical decisions, or for children and their families to make informed choices. The strengths and weaknesses of the evidence base on the care of children and young people are often misrepresented and overstated, both in scientific publications and social debate.The controversy surrounding the use of medical treatments has taken focus away from what the individualised care and treatment is intended to achieve for individuals seeking support from NHS gender services.The rationale for early puberty suppression remains unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health. The effect on cognitive and psychosexual development remains unknown.The use of masculinising / feminising hormones in those under the age of 18 also presents many unknowns, despite their longstanding use in the adult transgender population. The lack of long-term follow-up data on those commencing treatment at an earlier age means we have inadequate information about the range of outcomes for this group.Clinicians are unable to determine with any certainty which children and young people will go on to have an enduring trans identity.For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress. For those young people for whom a medical pathway is clinically indicated, it is not enough to provide this without also addressing wider mental health and/or psychosocially challenging problems.Innovation is important if medicine is to move forward, but there must be a proportionate level of monitoring, oversight and regulation that does not stifle progress, while preventing creep of unproven approaches into clinical practice. Innovation must draw from and contribute to the evidence base.Overview of RecommendationsThe recommendations set out a different approach to healthcare, more closely aligned with usual NHS clinical practice that considers the young person holistically and not solely in terms of their gender-related distress. The central aim of assessment should be to help young people to thrive and achieve their life goals.

Services must operate to the same standards as other services seeing children and young people with complex presentations and/or additional risk factors.Expand capacity through a distributed service model, based in paediatric services and with stronger links between secondary and specialist services.Children/ young people referred to NHS gender services must receive a holistic assessment of their needs to inform an individualised care plan. This should include screening for neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism spectrum disorder, and a mental health assessment.Standard evidence based psychological and psychopharmacological treatment approaches should be used to support the management of the associated distress from gender incongruence and cooccurring conditions, including support for parents/carers and siblings as appropriate.Services should establish a separate pathway for pre-pubertal children and their families. ensuring that they are prioritised for early discussion about how parents can best support their child in a balanced and non-judgemental way. When families/carers are making decisions about social transition of pre-pubertal children, services should ensure that they can be seen as early as possible by a clinical professional with relevant experience.NHS England should ensure that each Regional Centre has a follow-through service for 17''25-year-olds; either by extending the range of the regional children and young people's service or through linked services, to ensure continuity of care and support at a potentially vulnerable stage in their journey.'¯ This will also allow clinical, and research follow up data to be collected. There needs to be provision for people considering detransition, recognising that they may not wish to re-engage with the services whose care they were previously under.A full programme of research should be established to look at the characteristics, interventions and outcomes of every young person presenting to the NHS gender services.The puberty blocker trial previously announced by NHS England should be part of a programme of research which also evaluates outcomes of psychosocial interventions and masculinising/ feminising hormones.The option to provide masculinising/feminising hormones from age 16 is available, but the Review recommends extreme caution. There should be a clear clinical rationale for providing hormones at this stage rather than waiting until an individual reaches 18. Every case considered for medical treatment should be discussed at a national Multi- Disciplinary Team (MDT).Implications of private healthcare on any future requests to the NHS for treatment, monitoring and/or involvement in research, and the dispensing responsibilities of pharmacists of private prescriptions needs to be clearly communicated.

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Sun, 14 Apr 2024 13:24

Find out how Europeans manage their waste and what measures the EU is taking to ensure environmentally-friendly practices.

Published: 06-04-2018 Last updated: 21-03-2024 - 09:58

Every year 2.1 billion tonnes of waste are generated in the EU. The amount of waste and the way it is managed varies a lot across EU countries, but there has been a shift to more recycling and less landfilling.

To reduce waste and its impact on the environment, the EU has adopted ambitious targets on recycling and landfill and is working on packaging waste. The goal is to promote the shift towards a more sustainable model known as the circular economy.

Read more about EU measures to become a circular economy by 2050

Waste management practices across the EUWaste management practices vary between EU countries. The EU wants to promote the prevention of waste and the re-use of products as much as possible. If this is not possible, it prefers recycling (including composting), followed by using waste to generate energy. The most harmful option for the environment and people's health is simply disposing of waste, for example in a landfill, although it is also one of the cheapest possibilities. Even though the waste generated per capita has increased, the way we manage waste has improved - with more recycling and composting and a decrease in landfill.

60% of everyday waste collected and treated by municipalities must be reused or recycled by 2030 according to EU targetsIn line with the EU Landfill Directive, EU countries must also reduce the amount of municipal waste sent to landfill to 10% or less of the total municipal waste generated by 2035.

Export of waste outside the EU Infographic showing the export of waste from the EUThe EU also exports part of its waste. In 2022, EU exports of waste to non-EU countries amounted to 32.1 million tonnes. This was a slight decrease of 3% compared to 2021.

The majority of waste exported outside the EU (55%) consists of ferrous metals waste (iron and steel), which mostly goes to T¼rkiye. EU exported a lot of paper waste as well (15%), with India being the main destination.

In 2022, 39% of EU waste went to T¼rkiye (12.4 million tonnes), followed by India (3.5 million tonnes), UK (2.0 million tonnes), Switzerland (1.6 million tonnes) and Norway (1.6 million tonnes).

The EU wants to counter illegal exports and ensure waste is managed in an environmentally sound manner in the destination countries. In February 2024, Parliament approved stricter rules for waste shipments to non-EU countries. The rules will prohibit plastic waste exports to non-OECD countries and introduce stricter conditions for exports to OECD countries. Shipping waste to another EU country will be possible only in exceptional circumstances.

Parliament's work to achieve a circular economyIn October 2022, Parliament approved a revision of the rules on persistent organic pollutants to reduce the amount of dangerous chemicals in waste and production processes. The new rules will introduce stricter limits, ban certain chemicals and keep pollutants away from recycling.

In February 2021, the Parliament adopted a resolution on the new circular economy action plan demanding additional measures to achieve a carbon-neutral, environmentally sustainable, toxic-free and fully circular economy by 2050, including tighter recycling rules and binding targets for materials use and consumption by 2030.

In November 2023, the Parliament adopted its negotiating position on the revision of the EU rules on packaging and packaging waste. MEPs want to ban the sale of very light weight plastic carrier bags, set specific waste reduction targets for plastic packaging, encourage reuse and refill options and ban persistent pollutants used in food packaging.

More facts and figures and infographics on wasteThe impact of textile production and wasteKey numbers on e-waste in the EUPlastic waste and recycling in the EUHow to reduce packaging waste in the EU (infographics)Food waste reduction: what EU actions are there?

More on the circular economy and municipal waste

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Archived Version

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 12:30

The hottest day of the year so far will be followed by temperatures of minus 2C in parts of the UK, the Met Office has said.

Many enjoyed a warm and sunny Saturday but forecasters said temperatures will drop as the working week begins.

Sunbathers were photographed in parks and on beaches across the UK as temperatures soared well above the national average of 13C to 14C.

The highest UK temperature of 2024 was 21.8C recorded in Writtle, Essex on Saturday.

Scotland also recorded well above its normal April temperatures of 10C, with Aberdeenshire in the east reaching 16.7C.

But on Saturday night, temperatures could hit -2C to -3C in rural parts of Scotland '' and even further south they will stay in the single figures, the Met Office forecasted.

Meteorologist Ellie Glaisyer said it will be a ''chilly start to the day for all on Sunday'' but that it will be dry and there will be ''plenty of sunshine in the morning''.

Sunday is expected bring highs of just 14C to 15C in the south-east of England and 10C to 12C in the north.

Temperatures will continue to drop throughout the week and are not expected to exceed the April average.

Glaisyer said: ''Lower pressure sits out towards north of the UK, slowly sinking its way southwards '' for the rest of the weekend and into the start of the working week, it will bring with it some colder north-westerly winds.''

Snow could even fall in the higher parts of the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland on Monday, which forecasters say ''will be showery across the board''.

Hail and thunder may sweep across Wales and northern parts of England too.

Temperatures will only reach about 11C to 13C in the south that day and ''struggle to reach double figures'' in the north, Glaisyer said.

She added: ''It's a bit of a drier start for the weekend for us but that doesn't last too long because showers are on their way.''

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Archived Version

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 12:23

Iran's discovery of lithium fields on its territories is sending shockwaves within the Israeli occupation, with the latter saying it would lead to a major geopolitical shift.

Construction continues at the Thacker Pass lithium mine on April 24, 2023, near Orovada, Nevada (AP)The discovery of the Iranian lithium reservoir could lead to a shift in the regional balance of power and grant Tehran an unprecedented geopolitical and economic position, Israeli geopolitics expert Anat Hochberg Marom told Israeli Maariv newspaper on Saturday.

She added that "Israel" will closely monitor how Tehran will try to use this discovery to its advantage.

The newspaper said Iran's military strength and recent thawing of relations with Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt, as well as its military exercises at sea, including with India and Pakistan, pose a significant concern for the Israeli occupation.

The newspaper also noted that Iran was strengthening its strategic relations with Russia, not to mention China, along with its close ties with Indonesia, the largest country in the Muslim world.

It is expected that Iran's economic position and geopolitical influence will grow even greater soon, especially in light of the discovery of a massive lithium field containing 8.5 million tons of the precious mineral, making it the second-largest in the world after Chile. It is located in the Hamedan province in western Iran.

Thus, this discovery is not only significant because it holds 10% of the world's "white gold" reserves, currently estimated at around 89 million tons, but also because it has the potential to buff the Iranian economy and seemingly nullify the effectiveness of the imposed sanctions. It is considered a "winning trump card" for the Islamic Republic.

According to the Israeli expert, this discovery could have a significant impact on global energy and mining markets, as well as the global battery and electric vehicle industries. It is expected that all of this will lead to long-term changes in the global economy and politics, shifting the balance of power once again to the Middle East.

A senior official in the Iranian Ministry of Industry and Mines stated that the world's largest lithium reservoir is located outside of South America (which represents 58% of global resources), and it is the second-largest reservoir after the one in Chile, which contains 9.2 million tons of lithium.

This mineral is considered the "crown jewel" due to its immense value and importance in battery production for various electronic industries, including electric vehicles, laptops, mobile phones, solar panels, drones, and energy storage purposes.

A turning point in the energy market The Israeli newspaper said the discovery offers significant economic opportunities and rare energy resources for the Iranian government.

It is already evident that by controlling about 10% of the world's lithium consumption and having dominance over this strategic raw material, Iran will emerge as a major geopolitical player in global politics and economy.

In the face of the escalating climate crisis, the lithium field, along with other energy sources, including nuclear energy, provides power, political influence, economic strength, and energy for the Tehran government.

It is expected that all these aspects and their implications will be leveraged to benefit the region, including the international arena.

Consequently, not only is it likely to significantly enhance Iran's influence, but it may also surpass that of Gulf states, namely major oil producers in the world, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This situation could shift the balance of power and regional dynamics in Iran's favor.

Without lithium in trade, Iran traded with Iraq, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, 50.08 million tons of goods, worth $29.22 billion, during the first 10 months of the current Iranian year, registering a 0.08% year-on-year rise in weight and 15.43% year-on-year increase in value, according to the latest data released by the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration.

Iran's top trade partner was the UAE, with 20.27 million tons (up 5.48%) worth $19.77 billion (up 17.42%). Iraq follows with 24.33 million tons (down 9.97%) worth $9.08 billion (up 10.47%) and Kuwait with 4.57 million tons (up 62.98%) worth $181.01 million (up 32.45%).

During the same period, Iran's non-oil exports to the six states hit 38.93 million tons, valued at $14 billion, to record a 2.9% and a 23.91% rise in terms of weight and value respectively.

The finding would strengthen Iran's negotiating position within various economic and security alliances and agreements, shifting the focus of attention from the oil market to the lithium and "white gold" mining industries in the region, the Israeli newspaper explained.

From a medium to long-term economic perspective, lithium prices, which have been rising in recent years due to increasing global demand and demand for lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, are expected to maintain a similar trend, significantly enriching the Iranian economy.

International victoryFurthermore, the newspaper stated that this discovery represents a victory in consciousness against the United States and its allies, especially "Israel". It could lead to stronger relations with China and additional countries in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, and enhance the relations between the Middle East and Asia.

From Tehran's perspective, the discovery already increases its ability to maneuver among a large number of players, potentially reducing its reliance on the United States and the West.

The newspaper concluded by stating that there is no doubt that Iran, as a nuclear threshold state, possesses political, economic, and energy capabilities, along with boldness, development, and high motivation. Especially with the discovery of the lithium field, it is expected to be "extremely significant" and much more than it already is.

The first lithium deposit was discovered by Iranian geologists in the northwestern province of Hamadan, and the reserves are assessed at 8.5 million tonnes.

Molabeigi pointed to the world's limited lithium reserves and noted that it is a key element needed in manufacturing electric batteries, other advanced industries, strategic alloys, and defense industries.

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Archived Version

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 12:14

EU gears up to sue Germany if it doesn't change divisive gas taxGermany's neighbors say the measure is harming EU unity and hindering their efforts to ditch Russian energy.

Apr 11 4 mins read

Help us build wind farms to beat Russian bombs, Ukraine tells EUUkraine's largest private energy firm told POLITICO it wants to build a disparate energy network to better survive Russian attacks '-- but can't get capital.

Apr 5 4 mins read

EU rebuffs solar pleas as sector goes broke, document showsBut Brussels does plan to boost long-term funding for solar firms, a document seen by POLITICO shows.

Mar 28 4 mins read

EU snubs dying solar manufacturers as China poised to swallow marketThe industry asked the European Commission for urgent help to keep factories open as layoffs begin.

Mar 13 5 mins read

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Archived Version

Sun, 14 Apr 2024 01:04

Adobe is building its own AI model capable of transforming text into video and, unlike other companies, will actually pay creators of the material used to train it.

Using AI to generate video from text seems to be the next big thing in AI content creation, with OpenAI taking the lead with its Sora AI model. But whereas OpenAI has often sourced AI training materials from any public sources possible (and has been accused in lawsuits of allegedly including copyrighted works), Adobe is reportedly going down a different path, sourcing footage for training its upcoming AI model by purchasing it from certain filmmakers.

The videos Adobe is requesting are supposed to show pretty mundane things, such as using a phone, people expressing emotions, movements of the human body, and presumably more as Bloomberg mentions Adobe is purchasing 100 different types of footage. The report calculates that compensation for submitted footage ranges from $2.62 to $7.25 per minute, with each video being worth $120.

It's not clear who would be eligible to submit this footage to Adobe, or if there's a limit to how much footage can be submitted. If one person can submit at least 100 clips for $120 each, that would come out to a decent amount of compensation for filming everyday occurrences.

Canva acquires Affinity, further wounding a regulator-bruised AdobeAdobe has 'no plans' to invest in XD despite failed Figma buyFormer Adobe software engineering leader convicted of insider tradingAdobe ditches $20B Figma takeover under pressure from monopoly copsAdditionally, there are bound to be at least a few rules submissions have to abide by. Bloomberg says no footage should be offensive, show nudity, or be a copyrighted work, which is standard for Adobe. When the company ran a similar program to train its Firefly AI image generator, it didn't accept photos of brands, public figures, and even specific words per Bloomberg '' similar rules could apply to Adobe's program for training its video generator.

Copyright, however, is likely a chief concern for Adobe. OpenAI is embroiled in countless lawsuits over ChatGPT generating summaries of copyrighted novels, thanks to allegedly being trained on said novels. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last month, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati said she didn't even know whether Sora was trained on YouTube videos, something that YouTube CEO Neal Mohan says would violate the platform's terms of service.

Legally, it's not settled whether it's permissible to train an AI model using copyrighted works. Plus, while Adobe's scheme might be expensive, it could allow the company to source higher quality footage and tweak the upcoming video generation tool to Adobe's liking. ®

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Sun, 14 Apr 2024 01:03

WASHINGTON (AP) '-- The Air Force is betting a large part of its future air warfare on a fleet more than 1,000 autonomously operated drones, and later this spring its top civilian leader plans to climb into an artificial intelligence-operated warplane and let it take him airborne.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told senators on Tuesday at a hearing on the service's 2025 budget that he will enter the cockpit of one of the F-16s that the service has converted for drone flight to see for himself how the AI-controlled plane performs in the air.

''There will be a pilot with me who will just be watching, as I will be, as the autonomous technology works,'' Kendall told the Senate Appropriations Committee defense panel members. ''Hopefully neither he or I will be needed to fly the airplane.''

Drone warfare has quickly expanded from the sidelines of combat to one of its primary weapons. Drones are a daily threat in Ukraine and in the Middle East. In Ukraine, everyday citizens are targeted by Russian drones but also are assembling drones to collect video of Russian positions. In the Middle East, Iranian-backed Houthis and militant groups have regularly employed sophisticated air, sea and underwater drones to target U.S. bases and commercial ships in the Red Sea.

The Air Force began planning for its fleet of collaborative combat aircraft, or CCAs, several years ago, and it envisions a scenario in which one piloted jet will be able to quarterback multiple AI-driven, responsive drones, which the service calls ''loyal wingmen.''

The service has been tight-lipped on what the fleet of drones will look like in size or platform, whether they will be full-size warplanes or something smaller. Kendall said the converted F-16 test flight will be done for him to observe the technology behind the future fleet.

The fleet is being designed specifically with future warfare, and potentially a conflict with China , in mind. China has rapidly modernized its anti-access capabilities as more sophisticated air defense systems make it risky to send manned crews too close. Drone aircraft could augment the service's ability to breach those defenses, and they are envisioned to provide support in a variety of future missions such as surveillance or jamming.

The Air Force requested $559 million in the 2025 budget to continue research and development of the future CCA air system.

''The initial role for the aircraft was going to be counter-air, but it will have the potential to do other things,'' Kendall said.

The drone fleet is also expected to be cheaper than developing new manned jets, Kendall said. The current goal is to have each cost about a quarter to a third of what an F-35 fighter costs now, or about $20 million apiece.

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Sun, 14 Apr 2024 01:01

The AI-generated false headline was promoted by X in its official trending news section.

Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok spread fake news on X which was then promoted by the platform. Credit: Muhammed Selim Korkutata/Anadolu via Getty Images

A shocking story was promoted on the "front page" or main feed of Elon Musk's X on Thursday:

"Iran Strikes Tel Aviv with Heavy Missiles," read the headline.

Captured trending on X on April 4, 2024. Credit: Mashable screenshot

This would certainly be a worrying world news development. Earlier that week, Israel had conducted an airstrike on Iran's embassy in Syria, killing two generals as well as other officers. Retaliation from Iran seemed like a plausible occurrence.

But, there was one major problem: Iran did not attack Israel. The headline was fake.

Even more concerning, the fake headline was apparently generated by X's own official AI chatbot, Grok, and then promoted by X's trending news product, Explore, on the very first day of an updated version of the feature.

Tweet may have been deletedHow Musk let this happenA few years before Elon Musk acquired the platform then-known as Twitter, the company rolled out a new feature that provided written context for trending topics. The technology powering the written trend descriptions? Humans.

Previously when a story would break, Twitter's algorithms would catch the relevant keywords being posted and share the trend, but it sometimes wouldn't be obvious why a given set of words was trending.

But, in 2020, Twitter put together a team of human editors to curate news and put trends in context. In addition, the top tweets that showed up under a trending topic would no longer just be algorithmically ranked, but include human curation as well. One year later, Twitter partnered with AP and Reuters to further bolster its efforts to provide human-provided context to trending topics.

Shortly after Musk bought the company in October 2022, though, the written context on trending topics disappeared. Musk had laid off Twitter's human editors. As Reuters reported in November 2022, "Twitter's curation team, which was responsible for 'highlighting and contextualizing the best events and stories that unfold on Twitter,' had been axed."

X's newly updated Explore pageEarlier this week, some X fan accounts like @XDaily shared screenshots of X's upcoming Explore page relaunch. X's Explore page includes the platform's infamous trending topics list along with specific section breakouts like "News" and "Sports" to provide users with trending stories in each particular subject category.

Tweet may have been deletedMusk's updated Explore page looked poised to bring back the written context provided to trending topics and stories.

On April 4, X began rolling out its newly updated Explore page. The update provides top user posts on each individual trending topic as well as an easy-to-digest summary of the subject matter above the user content. At the very top of the page, an X-created headline presents the information to readers much as if they were about to read an article on the topic.

In addition, the update also gives Explore a new, prominent location on the platform. Explore's trending stories now appear embedded directly in the right-hand sidebar of the main X homepage, where the trending topics list used to be located, which hundreds of millions of X's daily users view everyday.

In a screenshot captured from popular Twitch user Hasan Piker's stream, the fake AI-generated X headline can be seen trending on the platform's homepage sidebar. Credit: Hasan Piker's Twitch

However, Musk has not brought back Twitter's curation team, nor has he hired new human editors to write the context X now provides.

The context is written by X's AI chatbot, Grok.

The danger of X depending on AIWe know that Grok, an AI feature heavily promoted by Musk, powers X's contextualized summaries because X says so itself in the fine print on every Explore page.

Tweet may have been deleted"Grok is an early feature and can make mistakes," reads the tiny note from X underneath the written context provided on the Explore page. "Verify its outputs."

Mashable observed X's "Iran Strikes Tel Aviv with Heavy Missiles" page which spread fake news as it was trending on Thursday.

Based on our observations, it appears that the topic started trending because of a sudden uptick of blue checkmark accounts (users who pay a monthly subscription to X for Premium features including the verification badge) spamming the same copy-and-paste misinformation about Iran attacking Israel. The curated posts provided by X were full of these verified accounts spreading this fake news alongside an unverified video depicting explosions.

A side-by-side comparison of two separate posts on the X Explore page showing fake news posts from blue check users that informed Grok. Credit: Mashable screenshot

From there, it appears X's algorithms noticed a potential story trend within these users' posts, and an Explore story page was created. We can deduce from X's own claims about its inner workings that Grok must have then created an official-looking written narrative, along with a catchy headline. It did all this based on select users sharing fake news, in an automated attempt to provide context for what the platform itself seemed to assume was a real story.

This wouldn't be the first time Grok provided users with misinformation. Previous reporting on the early versions of X's chatbot found that it often created fake news in private chats with the select few users who had access to it. However, this recent incident combined with the new Explore feature presents the first time X took Grok's misinformation, packaged it as a real trending news story, and promoted it to its entire user base, ostensibly as context for a real event.

Under Musk, disinformation has skyrocketed on the platform known as X. Thanks to the new Explore product, the company promoted a falsehood, disseminated by paying bad actors who stand to make money in exchange for generating engagements.

One day after Grok generated this fake story that X then promoted via its Explore page, the company rolled Grok out to all Premium-subscribed X users so they could use the misinformation-creating AI chatbot as well.

Tweet may have been deleted Topics Artificial IntelligenceTwitterElon Musk

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Sun, 14 Apr 2024 00:58

A court has ruled Ontario must pay for a penis-sparing vaginoplasty for a person who identifies as neither fully female nor fully male

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Published Apr 12, 2024 ' Last updated 1 day ago ' 4 minute read

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The surgery, which is not available anywhere in Canada, involves creating a vaginal canal, or opening, without removing the penis. Photo by Getty ImagesOntario has been ordered to pay for surgery for a resident who is seeking to have a vagina constructed while leaving their penis intact.

Denying the procedure would infringe on the person's Charter-protected right to security of the person, an Ontario court said in its ruling.

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The unanimous decision by a three-member panel of judges of Ontario's Divisional Court could expand access to a novel ''bottom surgery'' for people who identify as non-binary, meaning neither fully male nor fully female.

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The Ontario resident, identified in court documents as K.S., has been locked in a legal battle with the Ontario Health Insurance Plan since 2022, when OHIP denied a funding request to have a penile preserving vaginoplasty performed at a clinic in Austin, Texas.

The surgery, which is not available anywhere in Canada, involves creating a vaginal canal, or opening, without removing the penis.

K.S., 33, was born male but identifies as female dominant and uses a feminine name.

OHIP denied her request for funding, arguing that the procedure is not included on its list of sex-reassignment procedures, and is therefore not an insured service.

K.S. appealed OHIP's decision to Ontario's Health Services Appeal and Review Board, arguing that forcing her to have her penis removed would invalidate her identity and be akin to an illegal act of conversion therapy.

She also worried about the risk of complications and urinary incontinence from the urological rerouting, and the risk of orgasm dysfunction. She argued the procedure she is seeking abroad is like standard vaginoplasties performed in Ontario, but without the additional procedure, namely, the penectomy.

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The appeal board overturned OHIP's decision, ruling that a vaginoplasty is among the genital surgeries listed for public coverage and need not inherently include removal of the penis. The board therefore ruled the procedure eligible for public funding.

OHIP appealed the board's decision to the Divisional Court, arguing the review board erred in finding a penis-sparing vaginoplasty is specifically listed as an insured service, and that it failed to consider that the unorthodox procedure is considered an experimental procedure in Ontario, and, therefore, not eligible for funding.

Just because vaginoplasty is listed as an insured service doesn't mean any type of vaginoplasty qualifies, OHIP argued in court.

The court disagreed. Vaginoplasty and penectomy are listed as discrete, separate services on Ontario's list of surgeries eligible for funding, the court said. ''The fact that most people who have a vaginoplasty have it done in a way that also involves a penectomy'' doesn't change the provision. If the province had intended for only one type of vaginoplasty to be insured (vaginoplasty with penis removal) it should have drafted the list differently, the court said.

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The court said the appeal board's conclusion was also consistent with standards of care developed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) '-- an influential group whose guidelines for gender-affirming care for children and youth were found to lack ''developmental rigour'' in a sweeping review released this week.

The WPATH standards ''expressly refer to vaginoplasty without penectomy as a surgical option for some non-binary people,'' Justice Breese Davies wrote in the court ruling.

While the court said it didn't need to address Charter arguments, if there was any ambiguity concerning what should or should not be covered, the review board's interpretation was also consistent with Charter values of equality and security of the person, the court added.

''The Charter-protected right to security of the person safeguards individual dignity and autonomy,'' Davies wrote. Requiring a transgender or non-binary person born male ''to remove their penis to receive state funding for a vaginoplasty would be inconsistent with the values of equality and security of the person.''

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''Such an interpretation would force transgender, non-binary people like K.S. to choose between having a surgery (penectomy) they do not want, and which does not align with their gender expression to get state funding, on the one hand, and not having gender affirming surgery at all, on the other,'' Davies wrote.

''Such a choice would reinforce their disadvantaged position and would not promote their dignity and autonomy.''

OHIP's appeal was dismissed, and the province ordered to pay K.S. $20,000 to cover legal costs.

''This is a significant win for the transgender and non-binary communities,'' K.S.'s lawyer, John McIntyre, told CTV News Toronto.

''We hope that OHIP decides to accept the decision of the court rather than seeking leave to appeal so that K.S. can move forward with her surgery she has been trying to get for years now.''

''K.S. is very happy with this unanimous decision,'' McIntyre said in an email to the National Post. ''The Divisional Court determined the existing language of the Health Insurance Act and the Schedule of Benefits clearly provided coverage for the procedure she sought.''

In earlier reports, National Post was told that gender-affirming surgeries at the Texas clinic range from US$10,000 to $70,000, depending on what is done.

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Sun, 14 Apr 2024 00:32

In partnership with

In 2021, a book titled ''The Human-Machine Team: How to Create Synergy Between Human and Artificial Intelligence That Will Revolutionize Our World'' was released in English under the pen name ''Brigadier General Y.S.'' In it, the author '-- a man who we confirmed to be the current commander of the elite Israeli intelligence unit 8200 '-- makes the case for designing a special machine that could rapidly process massive amounts of data to generate thousands of potential ''targets'' for military strikes in the heat of a war. Such technology, he writes, would resolve what he described as a ''human bottleneck for both locating the new targets and decision-making to approve the targets.''

Such a machine, it turns out, actually exists. A new investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call reveals that the Israeli army has developed an artificial intelligence-based program known as ''Lavender,'' unveiled here for the first time. According to six Israeli intelligence officers, who have all served in the army during the current war on the Gaza Strip and had first-hand involvement with the use of AI to generate targets for assassination, Lavender has played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war. In fact, according to the sources, its influence on the military's operations was such that they essentially treated the outputs of the AI machine ''as if it were a human decision.''

Formally, the Lavender system is designed to mark all suspected operatives in the military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), including low-ranking ones, as potential bombing targets. The sources told +972 and Local Call that, during the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender, which clocked as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants '-- and their homes '-- for possible air strikes.

During the early stages of the war, the army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender's kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a ''rubber stamp'' for the machine's decisions, adding that, normally, they would personally devote only about ''20 seconds'' to each target before authorizing a bombing '-- just to make sure the Lavender-marked target is male. This was despite knowing that the system makes what are regarded as ''errors'' in approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.

Moreover, the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes '-- usually at night while their whole families were present '-- rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses. Additional automated systems, including one called ''Where's Daddy?'' also revealed here for the first time, were used specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family's residences.

Palestinians transport the wounded and try to put out a fire after an Israeli airstrike on a house in the Shaboura refugee camp in the city of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 17, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

The result, as the sources testified, is that thousands of Palestinians '-- most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting '-- were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes, especially during the first weeks of the war, because of the AI program's decisions.

''We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,'' A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. ''On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It's much easier to bomb a family's home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.''

The Lavender machine joins another AI system, ''The Gospel,'' about which information was revealed in a previous investigation by +972 and Local Call in November 2023, as well as in the Israeli military's own publications . A fundamental difference between the two systems is in the definition of the target: whereas The Gospel marks buildings and structures that the army claims militants operate from, Lavender marks people '-- and puts them on a kill list.

In addition, according to the sources, when it came to targeting alleged junior militants marked by Lavender, the army preferred to only use unguided missiles, commonly known as ''dumb'' bombs (in contrast to ''smart'' precision bombs), which can destroy entire buildings on top of their occupants and cause significant casualties. ''You don't want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people '-- it's very expensive for the country and there's a shortage [of those bombs],'' said C., one of the intelligence officers. Another source said that they had personally authorized the bombing of ''hundreds'' of private homes of alleged junior operatives marked by Lavender, with many of these attacks killing civilians and entire families as ''collateral damage.''

In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any ''collateral damage'' during assassinations of low-ranking militants. The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.

Palestinians wait to receive the bodies of their relatives who were killed in an Israeli airstrike, at Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, October 24, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

The following investigation is organized according to the six chronological stages of the Israeli army's highly automated target production in the early weeks of the Gaza war. First, we explain the Lavender machine itself, which marked tens of thousands of Palestinians using AI. Second, we reveal the ''Where's Daddy?'' system, which tracked these targets and signaled to the army when they entered their family homes. Third, we describe how ''dumb'' bombs were chosen to strike these homes.

Fourth, we explain how the army loosened the permitted number of civilians who could be killed during the bombing of a target. Fifth, we note how automated software inaccurately calculated the amount of non-combatants in each household. And sixth, we show how on several occasions, when a home was struck, usually at night, the individual target was sometimes not inside at all, because military officers did not verify the information in real time.

STEP 1: GENERATING TARGETS 'Once you go automatic, target generation goes crazy' In the Israeli army, the term ''human target'' referred in the past to a senior military operative who, according to the rules of the military's International Law Department, can be killed in their private home even if there are civilians around. Intelligence sources told +972 and Local Call that during Israel's previous wars, since this was an ''especially brutal'' way to kill someone '-- often by killing an entire family alongside the target '-- such human targets were marked very carefully and only senior military commanders were bombed in their homes, to maintain the principle of proportionality under international law.

But after October 7 '-- when Hamas-led militants launched a deadly assault on southern Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and abducting 240 '-- the army, the sources said, took a dramatically different approach. Under ''Operation Iron Swords,'' the army decided to designate all operatives of Hamas' military wing as human targets, regardless of their rank or military importance. And that changed everything.

The new policy also posed a technical problem for Israeli intelligence. In previous wars, in order to authorize the assassination of a single human target, an officer had to go through a complex and lengthy ''incrimination'' process: cross-check evidence that the person was indeed a senior member of Hamas' military wing, find out where he lived, his contact information, and finally know when he was home in real time. When the list of targets numbered only a few dozen senior operatives, intelligence personnel could individually handle the work involved in incriminating and locating them.

Palestinians try to rescue survivors and pull bodies from the rubble after Israeli airstrikes hit buildings near Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, October 22, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills)

However, once the list was expanded to include tens of thousands of lower-ranking operatives, the Israeli army figured it had to rely on automated software and artificial intelligence. The result, the sources testify, was that the role of human personnel in incriminating Palestinians as military operatives was pushed aside, and AI did most of the work instead. According to four of the sources who spoke to +972 and Local Call, Lavender '-- which was developed to create human targets in the current war '-- has marked some 37,000 Palestinians as suspected ''Hamas militants,'' most of them junior, for assassination (the IDF Spokesperson denied the existence of such a kill list in a statement to +972 and Local Call).

''We didn't know who the junior operatives were, because Israel didn't track them routinely [before the war],'' explained senior officer B. to +972 and Local Call, illuminating the reason behind the development of this particular target machine for the current war. ''They wanted to allow us to attack [the junior operatives] automatically. That's the Holy Grail. Once you go automatic, target generation goes crazy.''

The sources said that the approval to automatically adopt Lavender's kill lists, which had previously been used only as an auxiliary tool, was granted about two weeks into the war, after intelligence personnel ''manually'' checked the accuracy of a random sample of several hundred targets selected by the AI system. When that sample found that Lavender's results had reached 90 percent accuracy in identifying an individual's affiliation with Hamas, the army authorized the sweeping use of the system. From that moment, sources said that if Lavender decided an individual was a militant in Hamas, they were essentially asked to treat that as an order, with no requirement to independently check why the machine made that choice or to examine the raw intelligence data on which it is based.

''At 5 a.m., [the air force] would come and bomb all the houses that we had marked,'' B. said. ''We took out thousands of people. We didn't go through them one by one '-- we put everything into automated systems, and as soon as one of [the marked individuals] was at home, he immediately became a target. We bombed him and his house.''

''It was very surprising for me that we were asked to bomb a house to kill a ground soldier, whose importance in the fighting was so low,'' said one source about the use of AI to mark alleged low-ranking militants. ''I nicknamed those targets 'garbage targets.' Still, I found them more ethical than the targets that we bombed just for 'deterrence' '-- highrises that are evacuated and toppled just to cause destruction.''

The deadly results of this loosening of restrictions in the early stage of the war were staggering. According to data from the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza, on which the Israeli army has relied almost exclusively since the beginning of the war, Israel killed some 15,000 Palestinians '-- almost half of the death toll so far '-- in the first six weeks of the war, up until a week-long ceasefire was agreed on Nov. 24.

Massive destruction is seen in Al-Rimal popular district of Gaza City after it was targeted by airstrikes carried out by Israeli forces, October 10, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills)

'The more information and variety, the better' The Lavender software analyzes information collected on most of the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip through a system of mass surveillance, then assesses and ranks the likelihood that each particular person is active in the military wing of Hamas or PIJ. According to sources, the machine gives almost every single person in Gaza a rating from 1 to 100, expressing how likely it is that they are a militant.

Lavender learns to identify characteristics of known Hamas and PIJ operatives, whose information was fed to the machine as training data, and then to locate these same characteristics '-- also called ''features'' '-- among the general population, the sources explained. An individual found to have several different incriminating features will reach a high rating, and thus automatically becomes a potential target for assassination.

In ''The Human-Machine Team,'' the book referenced at the beginning of this article, the current commander of Unit 8200 advocates for such a system without referencing Lavender by name. (The commander himself also isn't named, but five sources in 8200 confirmed that the commander is the author, as reported also by Haaretz.) Describing human personnel as a ''bottleneck'' that limits the army's capacity during a military operation, the commander laments: ''We [humans] cannot process so much information. It doesn't matter how many people you have tasked to produce targets during the war '-- you still cannot produce enough targets per day.''

The solution to this problem, he says, is artificial intelligence. The book offers a short guide to building a ''target machine,'' similar in description to Lavender, based on AI and machine-learning algorithms. Included in this guide are several examples of the ''hundreds and thousands'' of features that can increase an individual's rating, such as being in a Whatsapp group with a known militant, changing cell phone every few months, and changing addresses frequently.

''The more information, and the more variety, the better,'' the commander writes. ''Visual information, cellular information, social media connections, battlefield information, phone contacts, photos.'' While humans select these features at first, the commander continues, over time the machine will come to identify features on its own. This, he says, can enable militaries to create ''tens of thousands of targets,'' while the actual decision as to whether or not to attack them will remain a human one.

The book isn't the only time a senior Israeli commander hinted at the existence of human target machines like Lavender. +972 and Local Call have obtained footage of a private lecture given by the commander of Unit 8200's secretive Data Science and AI center, ''Col. Yoav,'' at Tel Aviv University's AI week in 2023, which was reported on at the time in the Israeli media.

In the lecture, the commander speaks about a new, sophisticated target machine used by the Israeli army that detects ''dangerous people'' based on their likeness to existing lists of known militants on which it was trained. ''Using the system, we managed to identify Hamas missile squad commanders,'' ''Col. Yoav'' said in the lecture, referring to Israel's May 2021 military operation in Gaza, when the machine was used for the first time.

Slides from a lecture presentation by the commander of IDF Unit 8200's Data Science and AI center at Tel Aviv University in 2023, obtained by +972 and Local Call.

Slides from a lecture presentation by the commander of IDF Unit 8200's Data Science and AI center at Tel Aviv University in 2023, obtained by +972 and Local Call.

The lecture presentation slides, also obtained by +972 and Local Call, contain illustrations of how the machine works: it is fed data about existing Hamas operatives, it learns to notice their features, and then it rates other Palestinians based on how similar they are to the militants.

''We rank the results and determine the threshold [at which to attack a target],'' ''Col. Yoav'' said in the lecture, emphasizing that ''eventually, people of flesh and blood take the decisions. In the defense realm, ethically speaking, we put a lot of emphasis on this. These tools are meant to help [intelligence officers] break their barriers.''

In practice, however, sources who have used Lavender in recent months say human agency and precision were substituted by mass target creation and lethality.

'There was no ''zero-error'' policy' B., a senior officer who used Lavender, echoed to +972 and Local Call that in the current war, officers were not required to independently review the AI system's assessments, in order to save time and enable the mass production of human targets without hindrances.

''Everything was statistical, everything was neat '-- it was very dry,'' B. said. He noted that this lack of supervision was permitted despite internal checks showing that Lavender's calculations were considered accurate only 90 percent of the time; in other words, it was known in advance that 10 percent of the human targets slated for assassination were not members of the Hamas military wing at all.

For example, sources explained that the Lavender machine sometimes mistakenly flagged individuals who had communication patterns similar to known Hamas or PIJ operatives '-- including police and civil defense workers, militants' relatives, residents who happened to have a name and nickname identical to that of an operative, and Gazans who used a device that once belonged to a Hamas operative.

''How close does a person have to be to Hamas to be [considered by an AI machine to be] affiliated with the organization?'' said one source critical of Lavender's inaccuracy. ''It's a vague boundary. Is a person who doesn't receive a salary from Hamas, but helps them with all sorts of things, a Hamas operative? Is someone who was in Hamas in the past, but is no longer there today, a Hamas operative? Each of these features '-- characteristics that a machine would flag as suspicious '-- is inaccurate.''

Palestinians at the site of an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, February 24, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Similar problems exist with the ability of target machines to assess the phone used by an individual marked for assassination. ''In war, Palestinians change phones all the time,'' said the source. ''People lose contact with their families, give their phone to a friend or a wife, maybe lose it. There is no way to rely 100 percent on the automatic mechanism that determines which [phone] number belongs to whom.''

According to the sources, the army knew that the minimal human supervision in place would not discover these faults. ''There was no 'zero-error' policy. Mistakes were treated statistically,'' said a source who used Lavender. ''Because of the scope and magnitude, the protocol was that even if you don't know for sure that the machine is right, you know that statistically it's fine. So you go for it.''

''It has proven itself,'' said B., the senior source. ''There's something about the statistical approach that sets you to a certain norm and standard. There has been an illogical amount of [bombings] in this operation. This is unparalleled, in my memory. And I have much more trust in a statistical mechanism than a soldier who lost a friend two days ago. Everyone there, including me, lost people on October 7. The machine did it coldly. And that made it easier.''

Another intelligence source, who defended the reliance on the Lavender-generated kill lists of Palestinian suspects, argued that it was worth investing an intelligence officer's time only to verify the information if the target was a senior commander in Hamas. ''But when it comes to a junior militant, you don't want to invest manpower and time in it,'' he said. ''In war, there is no time to incriminate every target. So you're willing to take the margin of error of using artificial intelligence, risking collateral damage and civilians dying, and risking attacking by mistake, and to live with it.''

B. said that the reason for this automation was a constant push to generate more targets for assassination. ''In a day without targets [whose feature rating was sufficient to authorize a strike], we attacked at a lower threshold. We were constantly being pressured: 'Bring us more targets.' They really shouted at us. We finished [killing] our targets very quickly.''

He explained that when lowering the rating threshold of Lavender, it would mark more people as targets for strikes. ''At its peak, the system managed to generate 37,000 people as potential human targets,'' said B. ''But the numbers changed all the time, because it depends on where you set the bar of what a Hamas operative is. There were times when a Hamas operative was defined more broadly, and then the machine started bringing us all kinds of civil defense personnel, police officers, on whom it would be a shame to waste bombs. They help the Hamas government, but they don't really endanger soldiers.''

Palestinians at the site of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, March 18, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

One source who worked with the military data science team that trained Lavender said that data collected from employees of the Hamas-run Internal Security Ministry, whom he does not consider to be militants, was also fed into the machine. ''I was bothered by the fact that when Lavender was trained, they used the term 'Hamas operative' loosely, and included people who were civil defense workers in the training dataset,'' he said.

The source added that even if one believes these people deserve to be killed, training the system based on their communication profiles made Lavender more likely to select civilians by mistake when its algorithms were applied to the general population. ''Since it's an automatic system that isn't operated manually by humans, the meaning of this decision is dramatic: it means you're including many people with a civilian communication profile as potential targets.''

'We only checked that the target was a man' The Israeli military flatly rejects these claims. In a statement to +972 and Local Call, the IDF Spokesperson denied using artificial intelligence to incriminate targets, saying these are merely ''auxiliary tools that assist officers in the process of incrimination.'' The statement went on: ''In any case, an independent examination by an [intelligence] analyst is required, which verifies that the identified targets are legitimate targets for attack, in accordance with the conditions set forth in IDF directives and international law.''

However, sources said that the only human supervision protocol in place before bombing the houses of suspected ''junior'' militants marked by Lavender was to conduct a single check: ensuring that the AI-selected target is male rather than female. The assumption in the army was that if the target was a woman, the machine had likely made a mistake, because there are no women among the ranks of the military wings of Hamas and PIJ.

''A human being had to [verify the target] for just a few seconds,'' B. said, explaining that this became the protocol after realizing the Lavender system was ''getting it right'' most of the time. ''At first, we did checks to ensure that the machine didn't get confused. But at some point we relied on the automatic system, and we only checked that [the target] was a man '-- that was enough. It doesn't take a long time to tell if someone has a male or a female voice.''

To conduct the male/female check, B. claimed that in the current war, ''I would invest 20 seconds for each target at this stage, and do dozens of them every day. I had zero added value as a human, apart from being a stamp of approval. It saved a lot of time. If [the operative] came up in the automated mechanism, and I checked that he was a man, there would be permission to bomb him, subject to an examination of collateral damage.''

Palestinians emerge from the rubble of houses destroyed in Israeli airstrikes in the city of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 20, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

In practice, sources said this meant that for civilian men marked in error by Lavender, there was no supervising mechanism in place to detect the mistake. According to B., a common error occurred ''if the [Hamas] target gave [his phone] to his son, his older brother, or just a random man. That person will be bombed in his house with his family. This happened often. These were most of the mistakes caused by Lavender,'' B. said.

STEP 2: LINKING TARGETS TO FAMILY HOMES 'Most of the people you killed were women and children' The next stage in the Israeli army's assassination procedure is identifying where to attack the targets that Lavender generates.

In a statement to +972 and Local Call, the IDF Spokesperson claimed in response to this article that ''Hamas places its operatives and military assets in the heart of the civilian population, systematically uses the civilian population as human shields, and conducts fighting from within civilian structures, including sensitive sites such as hospitals, mosques, schools and UN facilities. The IDF is bound by and acts according to international law, directing its attacks only at military targets and military operatives.''

The six sources we spoke to echoed this to some degree, saying that Hamas' extensive tunnel system deliberately passes under hospitals and schools; that Hamas militants use ambulances to get around; and that countless military assets have been situated near civilian buildings. The sources argued that many Israeli strikes kill civilians as a result of these tactics by Hamas '-- a characterization that human rights groups warn evades Israel's onus for inflicting the casualties.

However, in contrast to the Israeli army's official statements, the sources explained that a major reason for the unprecedented death toll from Israel's current bombardment is the fact that the army has systematically attacked targets in their private homes, alongside their families '-- in part because it was easier from an intelligence standpoint to mark family houses using automated systems.

Indeed, several sources emphasized that, as opposed to numerous cases of Hamas operatives engaging in military activity from civilian areas, in the case of systematic assassination strikes, the army routinely made the active choice to bomb suspected militants when inside civilian households from which no military activity took place. This choice, they said, was a reflection of the way Israel's system of mass surveillance in Gaza is designed.

Palestinians rush to bring the wounded, including many children, to Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as Israeli forces continue pounding the Gaza Strip, October 11, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills)

The sources told +972 and Local Call that since everyone in Gaza had a private house with which they could be associated, the army's surveillance systems could easily and automatically ''link'' individuals to family houses. In order to identify the moment operatives enter their houses in real time, various additional automatic softwares have been developed. These programs track thousands of individuals simultaneously, identify when they are at home, and send an automatic alert to the targeting officer, who then marks the house for bombing. One of several of these tracking softwares, revealed here for the first time, is called ''Where's Daddy?''

''You put hundreds [of targets] into the system and wait to see who you can kill,'' said one source with knowledge of the system. ''It's called broad hunting: you copy-paste from the lists that the target system produces.''

Evidence of this policy is also clear from the data: during the first month of the war, more than half of the fatalities '-- 6,120 people '-- belonged to 1,340 families, many of which were completely wiped out while inside their homes, according to UN figures . The proportion of entire families bombed in their houses in the current war is much higher than in the 2014 Israeli operation in Gaza (which was previously Israel's deadliest war on the Strip), further suggesting the prominence of this policy.

Another source said that each time the pace of assassinations waned, more targets were added to systems like Where's Daddy? to locate individuals that entered their homes and could therefore be bombed. He said that the decision of who to put into the tracking systems could be made by relatively low-ranking officers in the military hierarchy.

''One day, totally of my own accord, I added something like 1,200 new targets to the [tracking] system, because the number of attacks [we were conducting] decreased,'' the source said. ''That made sense to me. In retrospect, it seems like a serious decision I made. And such decisions were not made at high levels.''

The sources said that in the first two weeks of the war, ''several thousand'' targets were initially inputted into locating programs like Where's Daddy?. These included all the members of Hamas' elite special forces unit the Nukhba, all of Hamas' anti-tank operatives, and anyone who entered Israel on October 7. But before long, the kill list was drastically expanded.

''In the end it was everyone [marked by Lavender],'' one source explained. ''Tens of thousands. This happened a few weeks later, when the [Israeli] brigades entered Gaza, and there were already fewer uninvolved people [i.e. civilians] in the northern areas.'' According to this source, even some minors were marked by Lavender as targets for bombing. ''Normally, operatives are over the age of 17, but that was not a condition.''

Wounded Palestinians are treated on the floor due to overcrowding at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, central Gaza Strip, October 18, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills)

Lavender and systems like Where's Daddy? were thus combined with deadly effect, killing entire families, sources said. By adding a name from the Lavender-generated lists to the Where's Daddy? home tracking system, A. explained, the marked person would be placed under ongoing surveillance, and could be attacked as soon as they set foot in their home, collapsing the house on everyone inside.

''Let's say you calculate [that there is one] Hamas [operative] plus 10 [civilians in the house],'' A. said. ''Usually, these 10 will be women and children. So absurdly, it turns out that most of the people you killed were women and children.''

STEP 3: CHOOSING A WEAPON 'We usually carried out the attacks with ''dumb bombs''' Once Lavender has marked a target for assassination, army personnel have verified that they are male, and tracking software has located the target in their home, the next stage is picking the munition with which to bomb them.

In December 2023, CNN reported that according to U.S. intelligence estimates, about 45 percent of the munitions used by the Israeli air force in Gaza were ''dumb'' bombs, which are known to cause more collateral damage than guided bombs. In response to the CNN report, an army spokesperson quoted in the article said: ''A s a military committed to international law and a moral code of conduct, we are devoting vast resources to minimizing harm to the civilians that Hamas has forced into the role of human shields. Our war is against Hamas, not against the people of Gaza.''

Three intelligence sources, however, told +972 and Local Call that junior operatives marked by Lavender were assassinated only with dumb bombs, in the interest of saving more expensive armaments. The implication, one source explained, was that the army would not strike a junior target if they lived in a high-rise building, because the army did not want to spend a more precise and expensive ''floor bomb'' (with more limited collateral effect) to kill him. But if a junior target lived in a building with only a few floors, the army was authorized to kill him and everyone in the building with a dumb bomb.

Palestinians at the site of a building destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, March 18, 2024. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

''It was like that with all the junior targets,'' testified C., who used various automated programs in the current war. ''The only question was, is it possible to attack the building in terms of collateral damage? Because we usually carried out the attacks with dumb bombs, and that meant literally destroying the whole house on top of its occupants. But even if an attack is averted, you don't care '-- you immediately move on to the next target. Because of the system, the targets never end. You have another 36,000 waiting.''

STEP 4: AUTHORIZING CIVILIAN CASUALTIES 'We attacked almost without considering collateral damage' One source said that when attacking junior operatives, including those marked by AI systems like Lavender, the number of civilians they were allowed to kill alongside each target was fixed during the initial weeks of the war at up to 20. Another source claimed the fixed number was up to 15. These ''collateral damage degrees,'' as the military calls them, were applied broadly to all suspected junior militants, the sources said, regardless of their rank, military importance, and age, and with no specific case-by-case examination to weigh the military advantage of assassinating them against the expected harm to civilians.

According to A., who was an officer in a target operation room in the current war, the army's international law department has never before given such ''sweeping approval'' for such a high collateral damage degree. ''It's not just that you can kill any person who is a Hamas soldier, which is clearly permitted and legitimate in terms of international law,'' A. said. ''But they directly tell you: 'You are allowed to kill them along with many civilians.'

''Every person who wore a Hamas uniform in the past year or two could be bombed with 20 [civilians killed as] collateral damage, even without special permission,'' A. continued. ''In practice, the principle of proportionality did not exist.''

According to A., this was the policy for most of the time that he served. Only later did the military lower the collateral damage degree. ''In this calculation, it could also be 20 children for a junior operative '... It really wasn't like that in the past,'' A. explained. Asked about the security rationale behind this policy, A. replied: ''Lethality.''

Palestinians wait to receive the bodies of their relatives who were killed in Israeli airstrikes, at Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, November 7, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

The predetermined and fixed collateral damage degree helped accelerate the mass creation of targets using the Lavender machine, sources said, because it saved time. B. claimed that the number of civilians they were permitted to kill in the first week of the war per suspected junior militant marked by AI was fifteen, but that this number ''went up and down'' over time.

''At first we attacked almost without considering collateral damage,'' B. said of the first week after October 7. ''In practice, you didn't really count people [in each house that is bombed], because you couldn't really tell if they're at home or not. After a week, restrictions on collateral damage began. The number dropped [from 15] to five, which made it really difficult for us to attack, because if the whole family was home, we couldn't bomb it. Then they raised the number again.''

'We knew we would kill over 100 civilians' Sources told +972 and Local Call that now, partly due to American pressure, the Israeli army is no longer mass-generating junior human targets for bombing in civilian homes. The fact that most homes in the Gaza Strip were already destroyed or damaged, and almost the entire population has been displaced, also impaired the army's ability to rely on intelligence databases and automated house-locating programs.

E. claimed that the massive bombardment of junior militants took place only in the first week or two of the war, and then was stopped mainly so as not to waste bombs. ''There is a munitions economy,'' E. said. ''They were always afraid that there would be [a war] in the northern arena [with Hezbollah in Lebanon]. They don't attack these kinds of [junior] people at all anymore.''

However, airstrikes against senior ranking Hamas commanders are still ongoing, and sources said that for these attacks, the military is authorizing the killing of ''hundreds'' of civilians per target '-- an official policy for which there is no historical precedent in Israel, or even in recent U.S. military operations.

''In the bombing of the commander of the Shuja'iya Battalion, we knew that we would kill over 100 civilians,'' B. recalled of a Dec. 2 bombing that the IDF Spokesperson said was aimed at assassinating Wisam Farhat. ''For me, psychologically, it was unusual. Over 100 civilians '-- it crosses some red line.''

A ball of fire and smoke rises during Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, October 9, 2023. (Atia Mohammed/Flash90)

Amjad Al-Sheikh, a young Palestinian from Gaza, said many of his family members were killed in that bombing. A resident of Shuja'iya, east of Gaza City, he was at a local supermarket that day when he heard five blasts that shattered the glass windows.

''I ran to my family's house, but there were no buildings there anymore,'' Al-Sheikh told +972 and Local Call. ''The street was filled with screams and smoke. Entire residential blocks turned to mountains of rubble and deep pits. People began to search in the cement, using their hands, and so did I, looking for signs of my family's house.''

Al-Sheikh's wife and baby daughter survived '-- protected from the rubble by a closet that fell on top of them '-- but he found 11 other members of his family, among them his sisters, brothers, and their young children, dead under the rubble. According to the human rights group B'Tselem, the bombing that day destroyed dozens of buildings, killed dozens of people, and buried hundreds under the ruins of their homes.

'Entire families were killed' Intelligence sources told +972 and Local Call they took part in even deadlier strikes. In order to assassinate Ayman Nofal, the commander of Hamas' Central Gaza Brigade, a source said the army authorized the killing of approximately 300 civilians, destroying several buildings in airstrikes on Al-Bureij refugee camp on Oct. 17, based on an imprecise pinpointing of Nofal. Satellite footage and videos from the scene show the destruction of several large multi-storey apartment buildings.

''Between 16 to 18 houses were wiped out in the attack,'' Amro Al-Khatib, a resident of the camp, told +972 and Local Call. ''We couldn't tell one apartment from the other '-- they all got mixed up in the rubble, and we found human body parts everywhere.''

In the aftermath, Al-Khatib recalled around 50 dead bodies being pulled out of the rubble, and around 200 people wounded, many of them gravely. But that was just the first day. The camp's residents spent five days pulling the dead and injured out, he said.

Palestinians digging with bear hands find a dead body in the rubble after an Israeli airstrike which killed dozens Palestinians in the middle of Al-Maghazi refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, November 5, 2023. (Mohammed Zaanoun/Activestills)

Nael Al-Bahisi, a paramedic, was one of the first on the scene. He counted between 50-70 casualties on that first day. ''At a certain moment, we understood the target of the strike was Hamas commander Ayman Nofal,'' he told +972 and Local Call. ''They killed him, and also many people who didn't know he was there. Entire families with children were killed.''

Another intelligence source told +972 and Local Call that the army destroyed a high-rise building in Rafah in mid-December, killing ''dozens of civilians,'' in order to try to kill Mohammed Shabaneh, the commander of Hamas' Rafah Brigade (it is not clear whether or not he was killed in the attack). Often, the source said, the senior commanders hide in tunnels that pass under civilian buildings, and therefore the choice to assassinate them with an airstrike necessarily kills civilians.

''Most of those injured were children,'' said Wael Al-Sir, 55, who witnessed the large-scale strike believed by some Gazans to have been the assassination attempt. He told +972 and Local Call that the bombing on Dec. 20 destroyed an ''entire residential block'' and killed at least 10 children.

''There was a completely permissive policy regarding the casualties of [bombing] operations '-- so permissive that in my opinion it had an element of revenge,'' D., an intelligence source, claimed. ''The core of this was the assassinations of senior [Hamas and PIJ commanders] for whom they were willing to kill hundreds of civilians. We had a calculation: how many for a brigade commander, how many for a battalion commander, and so on.''

''There were regulations, but they were just very lenient,'' said E., another intelligence source. ''We've killed people with collateral damage in the high double-digits, if not low triple-digits. These are things that haven't happened before.''

Palestinians inspect their homes and try to rescue their relatives from under the rubble after an Israeli airstrike in the city of Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, October 22, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Such a high rate of ''collateral damage'' is exceptional not only compared to what the Israeli army previously deemed acceptable, but also compared to the wars waged by the United States in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.

General Peter Gersten, Deputy Commander for Operations and Intelligence in the operation to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria, told a U.S. defense magazine in 2021 that an attack with collateral damage of 15 civilians deviated from procedure; to carry it out, he had to obtain special permission from the head of the U.S. Central Command, General Lloyd Austin, who is now Secretary of Defense.

''With Osama Bin Laden, you'd have an NCV [Non-combatant Casualty Value] of 30, but if you had a low-level commander, his NCV was typically zero,'' Gersten said. ''We ran zero for the longest time.''

'We were told: ''Whatever you can, bomb''' All the sources interviewed for this investigation said that Hamas' massacres on October 7 and kidnapping of hostages greatly influenced the army's fire policy and collateral damage degrees. ''At first, the atmosphere was painful and vindictive,'' said B., who was drafted into the army immediately after October 7, and served in a target operation room. ''The rules were very lenient. They took down four buildings when they knew the target was in one of them. It was crazy.

''There was a dissonance: on the one hand, people here were frustrated that we were not attacking enough,'' B. continued. ''On the other hand, you see at the end of the day that another thousand Gazans have died, most of them civilians.''

''There was hysteria in the professional ranks,'' said D., who was also drafted immediately after October 7. ''They had no idea how to react at all. The only thing they knew to do was to just start bombing like madmen to try to dismantle Hamas' capabilities.''

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant speaks with Israeli soldiers at a staging area not far from the Gaza fence, October 19, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

D. stressed that they were not explicitly told that the army's goal was ''revenge,'' but expressed that ''as soon as every target connected to Hamas becomes legitimate, and with almost any collateral damage being approved, it is clear to you that thousands of people are going to be killed. Even if officially every target is connected to Hamas, when the policy is so permissive, it loses all meaning.''

A. also used the word ''revenge'' to describe the atmosphere inside the army after October 7. ''No one thought about what to do afterward, when the war is over, or how it will be possible to live in Gaza and what they will do with it,'' A. said. ''We were told: now we have to fuck up Hamas, no matter what the cost. Whatever you can, you bomb.''

B., the senior intelligence source, said that in retrospect, he believes this ''disproportionate'' policy of killing Palestinians in Gaza also endangers Israelis, and that this was one of the reasons he decided to be interviewed.

''In the short term, we are safer, because we hurt Hamas. But I think we're less secure in the long run. I see how all the bereaved families in Gaza '-- which is nearly everyone '-- will raise the motivation for [people to join] Hamas 10 years down the line. And it will be much easier for [Hamas] to recruit them.''

In a statement to +972 and Local Call, the Israeli army denied much of what the sources told us, claiming that ''each target is examined individually, while an individual assessment is made of the military advantage and collateral damage expected from the attack '... The IDF does not carry out attacks when the collateral damage expected from the attack is excessive in relation to the military advantage.''

STEP 5: CALCULATING COLLATERAL DAMAGE 'The model was not connected to reality' According to the intelligence sources, the Israeli army's calculation of the number of civilians expected to be killed in each house alongside a target '-- a procedure examined in a previous investigation by +972 and Local Call '-- was conducted with the help of automatic and inaccurate tools. In previous wars, intelligence personnel would spend a lot of time verifying how many people were in a house that was set to be bombed, with the number of civilians liable to be killed listed as part of a ''target file.'' After October 7, however, this thorough verification was largely abandoned in favor of automation.

In October, The New York Times reported on a system operated from a special base in southern Israel, which collects information from mobile phones in the Gaza Strip and provided the military with a live estimate of the number of Palestinians who fled the northern Gaza Strip southward. Brig. General Udi Ben Muha told the Times that ''It's not a 100 percent perfect system '-- but it gives you the information you need to make a decision.'' The system operates according to colors: red marks areas where there are many people, and green and yellow mark areas that have been relatively cleared of residents.

Palestinians walk on a main road after fleeing from their homes in Gaza City to the southern part of Gaza, November 10, 2023. (Atia Mohammed/Flash90)

The sources who spoke to +972 and Local Call described a similar system for calculating collateral damage, which was used to decide whether to bomb a building in Gaza. They said that the software calculated the number of civilians residing in each home before the war '-- by assessing the size of the building and reviewing its list of residents '-- and then reduced those numbers by the proportion of residents who supposedly evacuated the neighborhood.

To illustrate, if the army estimated that half of a neighborhood's residents had left, the program would count a house that usually had 10 residents as a house containing five people. To save time, the sources said, the army did not surveil the homes to check how many people were actually living there, as it did in previous operations, to find out if the program's estimate was indeed accurate.

''This model was not connected to reality,'' claimed one source. ''There was no connection between those who were in the home now, during the war, and those who were listed as living there prior to the war. [On one occasion] we bombed a house without knowing that there were several families inside, hiding together.''

The source said that although the army knew that such errors could occur, this imprecise model was adopted nonetheless, because it was faster. As such, the source said, ''the collateral damage calculation was completely automatic and statistical'' '-- even producing figures that were not whole numbers.

STEP 6: BOMBING A FAMILY HOME 'You killed a family for no reason' The sources who spoke to +972 and Local Call explained that there was sometimes a substantial gap between the moment that tracking systems like Where's Daddy? alerted an officer that a target had entered their house, and the bombing itself '-- leading to the killing of whole families even without hitting the army's target. ''It happened to me many times that we attacked a house, but the person wasn't even home,'' one source said. ''The result is that you killed a family for no reason.''

Three intelligence sources told +972 and Local Call that they had witnessed an incident in which the Israeli army bombed a family's private home, and it later turned out that the intended target of the assassination was not even inside the house, since no further verification was conducted in real time.

Palestinians receive the bodies of relatives who were killed in Israeli airstrikes, Al-Najjar Hospital, southern Gaza Strip, November 6, 2023. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

''Sometimes [the target] was at home earlier, and then at night he went to sleep somewhere else, say underground, and you didn't know about it,'' one of the sources said. ''There are times when you double-check the location, and there are times when you just say, 'Okay, he was in the house in the last few hours, so you can just bomb.'''

Another source described a similar incident that affected him and made him want to be interviewed for this investigation. ''We understood that the target was home at 8 p.m. In the end, the air force bombed the house at 3 a.m. Then we found out [in that span of time] he had managed to move himself to another house with his family. There were two other families with children in the building we bombed.''

In previous wars in Gaza, after the assassination of human targets, Israeli intelligence would carry out bomb damage assessment (BDA) procedures '-- a routine post-strike check to see if the senior commander was killed and how many civilians were killed along with him. As revealed in a previous +972 and Local Call investigation , this involved listening in to phone calls of relatives who lost their loved ones. In the current war, however, at least in relation to junior militants marked using AI, sources say this procedure was abolished in order to save time. The sources said they did not know how many civilians were actually killed in each strike, and for the low-ranking suspected Hamas and PIJ operatives marked by AI, they did not even know whether the target himself was killed.

''You don't know exactly how many you killed, and who you killed,'' an intelligence source told Local Call for a previous investigation published in January. ''Only when it's senior Hamas operatives do you follow the BDA procedure. In the rest of the cases, you don't care. You get a report from the air force about whether the building was blown up, and that's it. You have no idea how much collateral damage there was; you immediately move on to the next target. The emphasis was to create as many targets as possible, as quickly as possible.''

But while the Israeli military may move on from each strike without dwelling on the number of casualties, Amjad Al-Sheikh, the Shuja'iya resident who lost 11 of his family members in the Dec. 2 bombardment, said that he and his neighbors are still searching for corpses.

''Until now, there are bodies under the rubble,'' he said. ''Fourteen residential buildings were bombed with their residents inside. Some of my relatives and neighbors are still buried.''

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Sat, 13 Apr 2024 23:49

The first clause in the Bill of Rights states that ''Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.''

Establishment clause of First Amendment often interpreted to require separation of church and stateFor approximately the first 150 years of the country's existence, there was little debate over the meaning of this clause in the Constitution. As the citizenry became more diverse, however, challenges arose to existing laws and practices, and eventually, the Supreme Court was called upon to determine the meaning of the establishment clause.

Though not explicitly stated in the First Amendment, the clause is often interpreted to mean that the Constitution requires the separation of church and state.

'Separation of church and state' metaphor rooted in early American fears of government involvementRoger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, was the first public official to use this metaphor. He opined that an authentic Christian church would be possible only if there was ''a wall or hedge of separation'' between the ''wilderness of the world'' and ''the garden of the church.'' Williams believed that any government involvement in the church would corrupt the church.

The most famous use of the metaphor was by Thomas Jefferson in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. In it, Jefferson declared that when the American people adopted the establishment clause they built a ''wall of separation between the church and state.''

Jefferson had earlier witnessed the turmoil of the American colonists as they struggled to combine governance with religious expression. Some colonies experimented with religious freedom while others strongly supported an established church.

Thomas Jefferson created the most famous use of the metaphor ''separation of church and state'' in a letter where he mentioned a ''wall of separation.'' (Image via White House Historical Association, painted by Rembrandt Peale in 1800, public domain)

Jefferson fought to disestablish Anglican church in Virginia colonyOne of the decisive battlegrounds for disestablishment was Jefferson's colony of Virginia, where the Anglican Church had long been the established church.

Both Jefferson and fellow Virginian James Madison felt that state support for a particular religion or for any religion was improper. They argued that compelling citizens to support through taxation a faith they did not follow violated their natural right to religious liberty. The two were aided in their fight for disestablishment by the Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and other ''dissenting'' faiths of Anglican Virginia.

During the debates surrounding both its writing and its ratification, many religious groups feared that the Constitution offered an insufficient guarantee of the civil and religious rights of citizens. To help win ratification, Madison proposed a bill of rights that would include religious liberty.

As presidents, though, both Jefferson and Madison could be accused of mixing religion and government. Madison issued proclamations of religious fasting and thanksgivings while Jefferson signed treaties that sent religious ministers to the Native Americans. And from its inception, the Supreme Court has opened each of its sessions with the cry ''God save the United States and this honorable court.''

Public school religion cases allow Supreme Court to define establishment clause protectionIt was not until after World War II that the Court interpreted the meaning of the establishment clause.

In Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the Court held that the establishment clause is one of the liberties protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, making it applicable to state laws and local ordinances. Since then the Court has attempted to discern the precise nature of the separation of church and state.

In 1971 the Court considered the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania statute that provided financial support to nonpublic schools for teacher salaries, textbooks, and instructional materials for secular subjects and a Rhode Island statute that provided direct supplemental salary payments to teachers in nonpublic elementary schools.

The Schempp family, pictured here, brought suit that led to a 1963 ruling by the Supreme Court in Abington School District v. Schempp that banned bible reading and the recitation of The Lord's Prayer in public schools, saying that it violated the First Amendment's establishment clause requiring separation of church and state. (AP Photo/John F. Urwiller, used with permission from The Associated Press.)

Lemon test developed to vet laws dealing with religious establishmentIn Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), the Court established a three-pronged test for laws dealing with religious establishment. To be constitutional a statute must have ''a secular legislative purpose,'' it must have principal effects that neither advance nor inhibit religion, and it must not foster ''an excessive government entanglement with religion.''

The Court modified the Lemon test in Agostini v. Felton (1997) by combining the last two elements, leaving a ''purpose'' prong and a modified ''effects'' prong.

In County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union (1989), a group of justices led by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in his dissent developed a coercion test: The government does not violate the establishment clause unless it provides direct aid to religion in a way that would tend to establish a state church or involve citizens in religion against their will.

Endorsement test used in cases involving religious displays on public propertyJustice Sandra Day O'Connor proposed an endorsement test that asks whether a particular government action amounts to an endorsement of religion.

In Lynch v. Donnelly (1984), O'Connor noted that the establishment clause prohibits the government from making adherence to a religion relevant to a person's standing in the political community. Her fundamental concern was whether government action conveyed a message to non-adherents that they are outsiders. The endorsement test is often invoked in religious display cases.

In McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union (2005), the Court ruled that the display of the Ten Commandments in two Kentucky courtrooms was unconstitutional but refused in the companion case, Van Orden v. Perry (2005), to require the removal of a long-standing monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol.

David Harlow, left, and Michael Stys, view the Ten Commandments monument on display at the State Judicial Building in Alabama in 2002. A U.S. District Court ruled that placing the monument in the state building was a violation of the separation of church and state. (AP Photo/Dave Martin. Used with permission from The Associated Press)

Court says in neutrality test that government must treat religous groups the sameQuestions involving appropriate use of government funds are increasingly subject to the neutrality test, which requires the government to treat religious groups the same as it would any other similarly situated group.

In a test of Ohio's school voucher program, the Court held 5-4 in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002) that Ohio's program is part of the state's general, neutral undertaking to provide educational opportunities to children and does not violate the establishment clause. In his opinion for the majority, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote that the ''Ohio program is entirely neutral with respect to religion.''

More recently, in 2022, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Carson v. Makin that Maine could not exclude families who send their children to religious schools from its state-funded tuition reimbursement program. The program helped children who live in rural areas without public schools nearby, but said the tuition could not be used for religious schools. The court, in a ruling written by Justice John Roberts Jr., said that the policy violated the parents' right to freely exercise their religion and that a public benefit that flowed to a religious school based on a parent's choice did not ''offend'' the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

Supreme Court declares in 2022 it has abandoned the Lemon testMost significantly in 2022, the Supreme Court marked a change in how it will interpret Establishment Clause cases going forward. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the high court declared it had abandoned the Lemon test and instead, will interpret the Establishment Clause in ''reference to historical practices and understandings.'' In the majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that that the lower courts had created a ''vice between the Establishment Clause on one side and the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses on the other,'' a conflict he associated with the Lemon test. Instead, he viewed the establishment and free exercise clauses as complementary and working together to decrease unnecessary government interference with religion.

From the colonial era to the present, religions and religious beliefs have played a significant role in the political life of the United States. Religion has been at the core of some of the best and worst movements in the country's history. As religious diversity continues to grow, concerns about separation of church and state are likely to continue.

This article was originally published in 2009. J. Mark Alcorn is a high school and college history instructor in Minnesota. Hana M. Ryman is a Middle School Humanities Educator in Orlando, Florida.

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Sat, 13 Apr 2024 22:22

Lisa D. Cook is one of the world's most powerful economists. She taught economics at Harvard University and Michigan State University and served on the Obama administration's Council of Economic Advisers before being appointed, in 2022, to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which controls the interest rates and money supply of the United States.

Despite her pedigree, questions have long persisted about her academic record. Her publication history is remarkably thin for a tenured professor, and her published work largely focuses on race activism rather than on rigorous, quantitative economics. Her nomination to the Fed required Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a tie-breaking vote; by contrast, her predecessor in the seat, Janet Yellen, now Treasury secretary, was confirmed unanimously.

The quality of her scholarship has also received criticism. Her most heralded work, 2014's ''Violence and Economic Activity: Evidence from African American Patents, 1870 to 1940,'' examined the number of patents by black inventors in the past, concluding that the number plummeted in 1900 because of lynchings and discrimination. Other researchers soon discovered that the reason for the sudden drop in 1900 was that one of the databases Cook relied on stopped collecting data in that year. The true number of black patents, one subsequent study found, might be as much as 70 times greater than Cook's figure, effectively debunking the study's premise.

Cook also seems to have consistently inflated her own credentials. In 2022, investigative journalist Christopher Brunet pointed out that, despite billing herself as a macroeconomist, Cook had never published a peer-reviewed macroeconomics article and had misrepresented her publication history in her CV, claiming that she had published an article in the journal American Economic Review. In truth, the article was published in American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, a less prestigious, non-peer-reviewed magazine.

An exclusive City Journal and Daily Wire investigation reveals additional facts that cast new doubt on Cook's seriousness as a scholar.

In a series of academic papers spanning more than a decade, Cook appears to have copied language from other scholars without proper quotation and duplicated her own work and that of coauthors in multiple academic journals without proper attribution. Both practices appear to violate Michigan State University's own written academic standards.

We will review several examples which, taken together, establish a pattern of careless scholarship at best or, at worst, academic misconduct.

In a 2021 paper titled ''The Antebellum Roots of Distinctively Black Names,'' Cook copied-and-pasted verbatim language from Charles Calomiris and Jonathan Pritchett, without using quotation marks when describing their findings, as required. Here is the original passage from Calomiris and Pritchett:

During this time, New Orleans was the largest city in the South and the site of its largest slave market. Unlike states with a common law tradition, Louisiana treated slaves like real estate, and slave sales had to be recorded and notarized in order to establish title (Louisiana 1806, section 10). Today, the records of many of these slave sales may be found in the New Orleans Notarial Archives and the New Orleans Conveyance Office. Because of the availability of these records and the size of the market, New Orleans is the best source for data on slave sales within the United States.

Here is Cook's paper, which, though it cites Calomiris and Pritchett, lifts their language verbatim, which we have marked in italics, substituting only the word ''slaves'' with the politically correct phrase ''the enslaved'':

Unlike states with a common law tradition, Louisiana treated the enslaved like real estate, and slave sales had to be recorded and notarized in order to establish title (Louisiana 1806 section 10). Today the records of many of these slave sales may be found in the New Orleans Notarial Archives and the New Orleans Conveyance Office. Because of the availability of these records and the size of the market, New Orleans is the best source for data on slave sales within the United States. [ . . . ]

During this time New Orleans was the largest city in the South and the site of its largest slave market.

She does something similar in her October 2021 paper, ''Closing the Innovation Gap In Pink and Black,'' which, despite significant government subsidies and years spent on it by Cook, summarized the work of researchers Charles Becker, Cecilia Elena Rouse, and Mingyu Chen by copying roughly 70 words without quotes.

This appears to be a violation of the standards in Michigan State University's guidebook, which states that authors must paraphrase or add direct quotations to verbatim passages. ''It is your responsibility to make certain that you understand the difference between quoting and paraphrasing, as well as the proper way to cite and delineate quoted material,'' the guidebook reads.

In multiple papers, Cook also appears to have copied language from her own prior papers, or those of coauthors, without proper attribution.

In a 2018 paper, ''Rural Segregation and Racial Violence,'' Cook appears as the lead author, with scholars Trevon Logan and John Parman as coauthors. But this paper simply duplicates word-for-word much of Logan and Parman's prior work without Cook. For example, the year prior, Logan and Parman published an original paper, with the following language:

The 1880 census comes after the Civil War and before the nation moved to Jim Crow. For example, at the time of the 1880 census, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed equal protection in public accommodation, was still in place although not necessarily enforced. The 1940 census, however, depicts residential patterns after the rise of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the influx of European immigrants. Importantly, the 1940 census comes largely before the rise of significant suburbanization seen in the post-war years. It is this period from the late-nineteenth century to 1940 that Cutler, Glaeser and Vigdor (1999) cite as the rise of the American ghetto. While urban segregation as measured by isolation and dissimilarity was generally rising, the segregation patterns across cities tended to persist over time, with the most segregated cities at the turn of the century also being the most segregated cities at the end of the century. The complete census returns for 1880 and 1940 allow us to see whether our neighbor-based segregation index shows a similar rise in urban segregation and whether a comparable change in segregation occurred in rural areas.

[ . . . ]

Table 3 shows the variation in our neighbor-based segregation index by census region in both 1880 and 1940. All statistics are weighted by the number of black households in the county so they should be interpreted as representing the level of segregation experienced by the average black household. Counties are divided between rural and urban to distinguish between the segregation patterns described by Cutler, Glaeser, and Vigdor specific to cities and more general patterns affecting the rest of the population. As noted earlier, we designate a county as urban if more than one-quarter of the households from that county live in an urban area and rural if less than one-quarter of the households live in an urban area.

Cook duplicates long passages verbatim, marked here in italics, without quotation or proper attribution:

The 1880 census comes after the Civil War and before the nation moved systematically to Jim Crow. For example, at the time of the 1880 census, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed equal protection in public accommodation, was still in place. The 1940 census, however, depicts residential patterns after the rise of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the influx of European immigrants. Importantly, the 1940 census comes largely before the rise of significant suburbanization seen in the postwar years. It is this period from the late-19th century to 1940 that Cutler, Glaeser, and Vigdor (1999) cite as the rise of the American ghetto. While urban segregation as measured by isolation and dissimilarity was generally rising, the segregation patterns across cities tended to persist over time, with the most segregated cities at the turn of the century also being the most segregated cities at the end of the century. The complete census returns for 1880 and 1940 and the Logan-Parman measure provide an opportunity to test whether a comparable change in segregation occurred in rural areas.

[ . . . ]

Figure 3 shows the variation in our segregation index from 1880 through 1940. All statistics are weighted by the number of black households in the county and should therefore be interpreted as representing the level of segregation experienced by the average black household. Counties are divided between rural and urban to distinguish between the segregation patterns described by Cutler, Glaeser, and Vigdor (1999) that were specific to cities and more general patterns affecting the rest of the population. We follow Logan and Parman (2017) and define a county as urban if more than one-quarter of the households from that county live in an urban area and rural if less than one-quarter of the households live in an urban area.

Complicating things further, that 2018 paper by the same three authors also recycled, without proper attribution, long passages of identical language from an article they published in another journal, ''Racial Segregation and Southern Lynching.'' Here is a passage from the earlier paper:

As such, the predicted correlation of residential segregation in political theories is indeterminate. The effect of segregation could lead to more racial violence or less. The direction of the effect depends on how whites view the potential outcomes of black political advancement. Most narrative histories suggest that whites held great apprehension of black political advances irrespective of their interaction with blacks. At the same time, whether segregation mediated or enhanced any of those sentiments is unknown, particularly because rural segregation has not received sustained attention in the literature. [ . . . ]

The Logan-Parman measure is an intuitive approach to residential segregation. They assert that the location of households in adjacent units can be used to measure the degree of integration or segregation in a community, similar to Schelling's (1971) classic model of household alignment. Areas that are well integrated will have a greater likelihood of opposite race neighbors that corresponds to the underlying racial proportion of households in the area. The opposite is also true'--segregated areas will have a lower likelihood of opposite race neighbors than the racial proportions would predict. The measure relies on the individual-level data available in federal census records. With the 100% sample of the federal census available through the Minnesota Population Center's Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), it is possible to identify the races of next-door neighbors. Census enumerators went door to door to record households, meaning that next-door neighbors are adjacent to one another on the census manuscript page. The number of black households with white neighbors in a county can therefore be calculated by looking at the order and races of all household heads on the census manuscript pages. The measure is based on comparing this number of black households in a community with white neighbors to the number expected under complete integration and under complete segregation.

And here is a passage from the second paper, with verbatim language in italics. The minor word and punctuation substitutions, which are as trivial as replacing an em dash with a colon, suggest a certain measure of deliberate modification of the copied text:

The predicted correlation of residential segregation in political theories, in contrast, is indeterminate. The effect of segregation could lead to more racial violence or less. The direction of the effect depends on how whites view the potential outcomes of black political advancement. Most narrative histories suggest that whites held great apprehension of black political advances irrespective of their interaction with blacks. At the same time, whether segregation mediated or enhanced any of those sentiments is unknown, particularly because rural segregation has not received sustained attention in the literature. [ . . . ]

They assert that the location of households in adjacent units can be used to measure the degree of integration or segregation in a community, similar to Schelling's (1971) classic model of household alignment. Areas that are well integrated will have a greater likelihood of different-race neighbors that corresponds to the underlying racial proportion of households in the area. The opposite is also true: segregated areas will have a lower likelihood of different-race neighbors than the racial proportions would predict. The measure relies on the individual-level data available in federal census records. With the 100 percent sample of the 1880 federal census available through the Minnesota Population Center's Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) and the 100 percent samples of the 1900 through 1940 censuses hosted by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), it is possible to identify the races of next-door neighbors. Census enumerators went door to door to record households, meaning that next-door neighbors are adjacent to one another on the census manuscript page. The number of black households with white neighbors in a county can, therefore, be calculated by looking at the order and races of all household heads on the census manuscript pages. The measure is based on comparing the actual number of black households in a community with white neighbors to the number expected under complete integration and under complete segregation.

Finally, Cook recycled substantial portions of at least three passages from her own 2011 paper, ''Inventing social capital: Evidence from African American inventors, 1843''1930,'' in the 2014 paper on patents that helped propel her to academic stardom.

When reached for comment, a Federal Reserve spokesman pointed to Cook's prior testimony to Congress, in which she stated: ''I certainly am proud of my academic background.''

Does the deliberate recycling of old material, including material from coauthors, constitute academic misconduct? It is true that journalists, for example, often adapt previous reporting into a compilation or a book. But the standard in academia is more rigorous. According to the Michigan State University guidebook, republishing identical material across multiple journals, without proper attribution, appears to be a violation of the rule against ''self-plagiarism.'' The standard is that scholars cannot use copied language ''regardless of whether [they] are or are not the author of the source of the copied text or idea.''

What should the consequences be for this kind of academic misconduct? At Michigan State, administrators have warned students that ''plagiarism is considered fraud and has potentially harsh consequences including loss of job, loss of reputation, and the assignation of reduced or failing grade in a course.'' Certainly, for an esteemed professor and now a governor of the Federal Reserve, that standard should be the bare minimum.

Cook is no stranger to mobilizing such punishments against others. In 2020, she participated in the attempted defenestration of esteemed University of Chicago economist Harald Uhlig for the crime of publicly opposing the ''defund the police'' movement. She called for Uhlig's removal from the classroom, claiming that he had made an insensitive remark about Martin Luther King, Jr. (The university closed its own inquiry after concluding that there was ''not a basis'' to investigate further.) Uhlig, in a 2022 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, asked the pertinent question: Under the leadership of an ideologue such as Lisa Cook, would the Fed continue to pursue its mandate, or succumb to left-wing activism?

Time will tell if the gears of justice turn against Lisa Cook, or if repeated academic misconduct, defended by some as mere sloppiness or isolated mistakes, is fast becoming an acceptable part of the academic order'--as long as the alleged author of that behavior is favored by the powerful.

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America's Cultural Revolution. Luke Rosiak is an investigative reporter for The Daily Wire and author of Race to the Bottom: Uncovering the Secret Forces Destroying American Public Education.

Photo by Brooks Kraft/ Getty Images

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Sat, 13 Apr 2024 15:39

Last Updated on March 28, 2024

Reflecting on my past life as a commercial photographer, when bulky cameras were the tools of my trade, I marvel at today's reality, where AI can create images without a shutter click. This evolution into the realm of no-equipment visual content creation naturally leads me to question the podcasting industry's next frontier. With synthetic voice technology, the prospect of no-equipment podcasting is not just a future concept'--it's knocking at our door. Having navigated the shift from film to digital, I'm now keen to explore how these AI voices will shape the narratives and experiences in the podcasting space.

Introduction: The Next Frontier in Podcast EquipmentPhotographer: Markus Spiske | Source: UnsplashImagine a world where podcasts are not limited by the availability of a microphone or recording equipment or the need for a soundproof studio. Picture a future where the entry barrier to start a podcast is so low that anyone with a story to tell can share it, irrespective of their technical expertise or financial resources. Thanks to the advent of synthetic voice technologies, this is not a distant reality but a present possibility.

As someone who has witnessed the skepticism surrounding new tech time and again, I find this development both fascinating and inevitable.

To some podcasting purists, the idea of using anything but the human voice and traditional recording methods is unthinkable. They argue that the essence of podcasting'--its human touch, the nuances of storytelling, and the emotional connection it fosters'--cannot be replicated by machines. Yet, my stance is simple: if the end result is compelling and the content is engaging, the means of production should not overshadow the creation itself.

The 'Uncanny Valley': Navigating Through Discomfort to AcceptanceThe Uncanny Valley Effect '-- Creepy, right? (Image by Author and DALL-E)The 'Uncanny Valley' resonates with anyone who's followed the evolution of robotics or computer-generated imagery. It refers to the eerie feeling we experience when an artificial representation of a human is almost, but not quite, lifelike. It's the reason Victorian dolls or certain computer-animated characters can unsettle us'--they are close to real, yet something is amiss, something that reminds us they are not human. However, the 'Uncanny Valley' is traversed successfully as technology advances.

The original uploader was Macdorman at English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia CommonsTake, for example, the progression of video game graphics. In the past, 3D models had awkward movements and unrealistic features which felt out of place. But today, we have virtual characters that are so lifelike that they can evoke genuine emotional responses from the audience. Likewise, AI-generated baby photos now bring smiles instead of discomfort, proving how our acceptance of technology has improved with time.

In podcasting, synthetic voices are crossing their own 'Uncanny Valley.'

Initial text-to-speech engines were robotic and cold, lacking the warmth of human speech. Today, AI voices are increasingly nuanced, capable of inflection and emotional range. As this technology matures, it's not far-fetched to envision synthetic voices that are as relatable and engaging as any human host.

In both segments, there is a clear delineation between the concept of embracing new podcasting technologies and the psychological journey from discomfort to acceptance, as represented by the 'Uncanny Valley.' The focus is on the evolution of technology and our changing perceptions rather than the technical aspects of the tools themselves.

Historical Resistance to Innovation: Calculators to Computers in EducationPhotographer: Wim van 't Einde | Source: UnsplashI must admit, I'm aging myself here. Taking a trip down memory lane, I recall learning how to use a slide rule in a German school! For the uninitiated (AKA young), a slide rule is a mechanical analog computer of sorts primarily used for multiplication and division. Let's not forget that it has no batteries to die mid-calculation. Those were the days when the idea of a handheld calculator in a classroom was as foreign as landing on Mars.

The introduction of calculators into the educational system was met with a mix of apprehension and outright rejection. Many feared that these devices would atrophy students' ability to perform basic arithmetic. "If they rely on calculators, they'll never learn proper arithmetic!" was the rallying cry of concerned educators and parents alike. Fast forward a few decades, and not only are calculators commonplace, but they've evolved into the computers and tablets that now pepper classrooms around the world.

The story might evoke memories of bulky desktop computers making their first appearances in schools to the slightly younger demographic than myself. Critics were quick to dismiss them as distractions, expensive paperweights destined to collect dust in the corner of the room. Yet, here we are, in an era where technology is not just an aid but a cornerstone of modern education. The slide rule to calculator to computer progression in schools perfectly encapsulates the cyclical nature of technological resistance and eventual acceptance.

The Digital Photography Revolution: An Artistic TalePhotographer: Aditya Vyas | Source: UnsplashIn the 1980s, I found myself immersed in the world of commercial product photography in the heart of New York City. My specialty was special effects photography, a craft that required the precision and patience only the most passionate photographers could muster. I worked with 11—14 view cameras, the kind that required motion control to capture the intricate details of multiple-exposure shots. This method, called "Helioptics," wasn't new; it was pioneered by a German wartime photographer named Henry Ries, under whom I had the privilege to work in his studio on 33rd Street. (Here is one of my favorite photography artworks by Henry Ries)

Our work was meticulous and deeply rooted in the analog world. Each photograph was an act of patience, a dance between light and film that no digital camera could replicate'--or so we thought. As time marched on, the very art that we had perfected began to wane, replaced by the burgeoning field of computer graphics. Where once we manipulated physical light and shadow, now pixels and renderings started to take the lead.

The transition from film to digital photography was a seismic shift. Neither Henry nor I were initially in favor, excited, or even accepting of these new technologies. The digital realm felt cold, impersonal, and devoid of the human touch that film so warmly captured. And yet, as digital cameras improved, their undeniable convenience and growing quality became impossible to ignore.

This revolution was not just technological; it was personal.

The advances that I once viewed with skepticism ultimately closed that chapter on my career in photography. In an ironic twist of fate, I embraced the digital world and became one of Wall Street's first PC computer programmers. My journey from the darkroom to the computer room was complete'--a transition that mirrored the broader acceptance of digital technology in the artistic community.

Beyond Photography: Broader Technological ShiftsPhotographer: Tengyart | Source: UnsplashThe history of innovation is replete with examples of resistance to new technologies. These examples underscore a pattern of skepticism followed by gradual acceptance.

Consider the arrival of electric lighting. When Thomas Edison's invention first emerged, it was met with distrust. Many preferred the familiar, warm glow of gas lamps and were hesitant to invite the stark, bright light of electricity into their homes. Concerns about safety and the cost of rewiring buildings were prevalent. Yet, as the technology proved reliable and the benefits became clear, electric light transitioned from a novelty to a necessity.

Another example is the shift from manual to computerized systems in industries such as manufacturing and banking. Workers and management alike were apprehensive about replacing established processes with computer systems, fearing job loss and a depersonalization of work. Over time, however, the increased efficiency and accuracy provided by computers led to their widespread adoption, transforming these industries and creating new opportunities for innovation and employment.

These instances, like many others, reflect a common trajectory where initial rejection gives way to eventual acceptance, illustrating the repeating cycle of technological impact.

Back To Podcasting's Potential: The AI-Assisted Conversational Show with No Microphone or RecorderPhotographer: Etienne Boulanger | Source: UnsplashAs I explore the edges of podcasting's potential, I am drawn to the concept of a no-equipment conversational podcast'--one that not only matches but surpasses my abilities as a human host. With platforms like WonderCraft.AI, we are on the cusp of creating synthetic voices that express emotions and engage listeners in a way that feels both authentic and compelling.

For me, the idea of my virtual co-host and assistant, Polly, interviewing me is a thrilling prospect.

I am working on a scenario where I research a topic, organize my thoughts, and then Polly articulately presents questions for me to formulate my point of view.

This approach could potentially address a personal challenge of mine: as a German immigrant, English is not my first language, and I sometimes struggle to express myself verbally with the clarity and precision I desire. With AI synthetic voice assistance, I can be more clear, persuasive, and concise, leveraging technology to bridge the gap between recording my thoughts and my audience's understanding. Plus, I can do the same thing in French or Italian, both languages which I do not speak well or at all.

Looking to the future, the benefits of this concept are even more enticing. A significant advantage is the ability to record episodes while traveling without the logistical burdens of traditional equipment. My wife and I spend considerable time on the road, and an AI-powered podcasting setup would allow us to create content seamlessly wherever our journeys take us. This flexibility, combined with the expressive prowess of AI, could revolutionize the way I think about and produce podcasts.

Facing the Critics: There Will Be "Haters"Photographer: Mahdi Bafande | Source: UnsplashInnovation invariably invites criticism, and the integration of AI in podcasting is no exception.

Traditionalists in the industry may view the use of synthetic voices and AI-driven content creation as a step too far, a departure from the authentic essence of podcasting.

The concerns range from the loss of human touch to the fear of technology rendering human podcasters obsolete.

Despite this resistance, the value of experimentation in new podcast production forms cannot be overstated. Experimentation is the engine of progress, driving us to discover solutions to problems we didn't know existed and to improve upon the familiar. By exploring AI-assisted podcasting, we are not dismissing the art of human conversation but enhancing it, expanding the possibilities for creators who might be limited by language barriers, physical constraints, or lack of access to traditional recording setups.

Furthermore, new forms of podcast production can democratize the medium, allowing for a diversity of voices and stories that might otherwise remain unheard. The potential for AI to assist in content creation extends beyond mere convenience; it is a tool for inclusion, enabling a broader range of individuals to share their experiences and knowledge with the world.

Criticism of new technology is a natural part of its evolution. Addressing these concerns head-on, with clear examples of the benefits and opportunities provided by AI in podcasting, is essential. This dialogue with critics is not only healthy but necessary for the medium to grow and reach its full potential.

So over to you, go ahead and let me have it in the comments section!

Some ExamplesCold Case Chronicles '' Leveraging voice changer technology, this podcast recreated the voices of suspects, witnesses, and law enforcement officials to add a layer of authenticity to their investigative storytelling.

Our Own Podcasting Resources Guide Podcast '' Here's the fun twist: Our host is Polly, our AI-powered Polymash team member! She's the one who brings you the latest additions featured on the Podcasting Resources Guide.

Hacker News Recap '' This daily podcast recaps some of the top posts on Hacker News every day. It is a third-party project, independent from HN and YC, with text and audio generated by Wondercraft.ai.

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Sat, 13 Apr 2024 15:30

NYU professor Jonathan Haidt's new book '' The Anxious Generation ,'' blaming cellphones and social media for the teen mental health crisis, is the no. 1 New York Times hardcover nonfiction bestseller and, when I checked, the no. 2 seller among all books at Amazon. Peggy Noonan wrote about it in her Wall Street Journal column this past Saturday. It mines a vein that Doug Lemov also worked in a piece Education Next published in August 2022, '' Take Away Their Cellphones .''

Yet there's another, non-technology possible contributor to the mental health crisis that's getting less attention but may be just as significant. That is the decline in church attendance. A professor of epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Tyler VanderWeele, writes in Harvard Public Health:

Extrapolations from the Nurses' Health Study data suggest that about 40 percent of the increasing suicide rate in the United States from 1999 to 2014 might be attributed to declines in attendance at religious services during this period. Another study suggested declining attendance from 1991 to 2019 accounted for 28 percent of the increase in depression among adolescents.

The piece also says:

A major 2022 systematic review in the Journal of the American Medical Association documented 215 studies, each with sample sizes over 1,000 participants, using longitudinal data to evaluate the relationship between religion and health. The evidence from meta-analyses , large longitudinal studies (including from Harvard's own Nurses' Health Study ), and handbooks providing more extensive documentation, suggests that weekly religious service attendance is longitudinally associated with lower mortality risk , lower depression , less suicide , better cardiovascular disease survival , better health behaviors , and greater marital stability , happiness , and purpose in life .

VanderWeele is best known for being nearly canceled at Harvard after students, administrators, and faculty got wind of a Supreme Court brief he wrote defending the traditional definition of marriage. I found out about this latest article he wrote when it was highlighted in an email from Harvard's central-administration-published Gazette. That suggests either that someone now running Harvard wanted to send a clear message of support that he hasn't been canceled, or that whomever is editing the Gazette was unaware of the cancellation situation. Either explanation is plausible.

A 2019 chart from Joint Economic Committee Republicans tracking what Princeton professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton call ''Deaths of Despair.Gallup has tracked declines in church attendance. Anyway, plenty of mental-health clinicians I know see in religious-service attendance some of the habits and attitudes that can help to combat depression and anxiety. There's the supportive community, the face-to-face interaction, the getting out of bed and out of the house, the sense of purpose and meaning, the expressions of gratitude and humility. Or, as Shai Held nicely puts it in his new book '' Judaism Is About Love ,'' the balance between humility and ''a robust sense of self-worth.'' (''Woe to a person who is unaware of their shortcomings, because they will not know what to work on. But even greater woe to a person who is unaware of their virtues, because they don't even know what they have to work with,'' is a quote from Rabbi Yeruham Levovitz that Held marshals for this point.) Held, like VanderWeele, has had some funding from the John Templeton Foundation, which is interested in religion.

VanderWeele, like any good scientist, is careful to note the difference between causation and correlation, and cautious enough to use language like ''suggest'' rather than more definitive language such as ''demonstrate'' or ''prove.''

None of this is to say that anyone should avoid seeking professional mental health treatment and instead go to church or synagogue as a substitute.

And there's a danger, too, of instrumentalizing organized religion, taking a utilitarian view of it so that it's useful only for its public health benefits rather than out of any more inherent truth. It could be that if people participate in organized religion only because they are seeking the health benefits, those benefits do not materialize in the way that they would if the participation came from some other motivation. Or perhaps they would anyway, because the attendance matters more than the original motivation, and the motivation may change over time.

From a public policy perspective, there are plenty of steps one could take to encourage religious service attendance. My personal favorite would be to make the government financially neutral as to whether a child attends a religious private school or a government-run public school. That could have other benefits as well. Another would be to ease regulations to make it easier for congregations to build or for congregations to rent spaces or use homes for services.

Kahn Backs Bennet Theory of Times Trouble : When former New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet wrote his long piece in the Economist back in December 2023 about how the New York Times lost its way, I headlined my summary of it '' James Bennet on how Academia Ruined Journalism .'' Bennet wrote, ''The new newsroom ideology seems idealistic, yet it has grown from cynical roots in academia: from the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth; that there is only narrative, and that therefore whoever controls the narrative '' whoever gets to tell the version of the story that the public hears '' has the whip hand.''

Back then, the Times pushed back hard against Bennet. ''I could not disagree more strongly with the false narrative he has constructed about The Times,'' Times publisher AG Sulzberger said in a statement .

Now Sulzberger's hand-picked executive editor, Joe Kahn, has given the Wall Street Journal an interview in which he basically backs the Bennet theory that higher education is to blame for the ideological conformity that afflicts the Times. From the Journal's account of its interview with Kahn:

He also suggested that colleges aren't preparing new hires to be tolerant of dissenting views.

''Young adults who are coming up through the education system are less accustomed to this sort of open debate, this sort of robust exchange of views around issues they feel strongly about than may have been the case in the past,'' he said, adding that the onus is on the Times to instill values like independence in its employees.

It's all somewhat comical circular blame-shifting. The employers blame the colleges, the colleges blame the primary and secondary education system, and so forth. What newspaper does Kahn think the professors and teachers and graduate students are reading? Credit to him, though, for at least publicly acknowledging the problem.

Recent Work : Speaking of the problems at the New York Times, my latest column over at the Algemeiner is headlined '' New York Times Bares Anti-Israel Bias in Dispatch From Berlin .'' It's about some of the tricks the Times uses to villainize Israel. Please check it out if you are interested in that sort of thing.

Thank you! : Thanks for reading. If you find The Editors valuable and would like to support our continued growth, please become a paying subscriber if you aren't already.

And please consider helping us grow by sharing this with a friend who might learn from it.

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Fri, 12 Apr 2024 16:13

Harvesting Data for A.I. A.I. Data Race, Explained What Is 'Synthetic Data'? A.I. Faces Quiz Key Figures in the Field U.S. World Business Arts Lifestyle Opinion Audio Games Cooking Wirecutter The Athletic Harvesting Data for A.I. A.I. Data Race, Explained What Is 'Synthetic Data'? A.I. Faces Quiz Key Figures in the Field Mistral, a French start-up considered a promising challenger to OpenAI and Google, is getting support from European leaders who want to protect the region's culture and politics.

A lot is riding on Arthur Mensch, chief executive of Mistral, an artificial intelligence start-up, whose company has shot into the spotlight after he founded it last year in Paris with two college friends. Credit... Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times By Liz Alderman and Adam Satariano

Liz Alderman and Adam Satariano visited Mistral's headquarters in Paris as part of their reporting.

April 12, 2024, 12:01 a.m. ET

Arthur Mensch, tall and lean with a flop of unkempt hair, arrived for a speech last month at a sprawling tech hub in Paris wearing jeans and carrying a bicycle helmet. He had an unassuming look for a person European officials are counting on to help propel the region into a high-stakes match with the United States and China over artificial intelligence.

Mr. Mensch, 31, is the chief executive and a founder of Mistral, considered by many to be one of the most promising challengers to OpenAI and Google. ''You have become the poster child for A.I. in France,'' Matt Clifford, a British investor, told him onstage.

A lot is riding on Mr. Mensch, whose company has shot into the spotlight just a year after he founded it in Paris with two college friends. As Europe scrambles to get a foothold in the A.I. revolution, the French government has singled out Mistral as its best hope to create a standard-bearer, and has lobbied European Union policymakers to help ensure the firm's success.

Artificial intelligence will be built rapidly into the global economy in the coming decade, and policymakers and business leaders in Europe fear that growth and competitiveness will suffer if the region does not keep up. Behind their worries is a conviction that A.I. should not be dominated by tech giants, like Microsoft and Google, that might forge global standards at odds with the culture and politics of other countries. At stake is the bigger question of which artificial intelligence models will wind up influencing the world, and how they should be regulated.

''The issue with not having a European champion is that the road map gets set by the United States,'' said Mr. Mensch, who just 18 months ago was working as an engineer at Google's DeepMind lab in Paris, building A.I. models. His co-founders, Timoth(C)e Lacroix and Guillaume Lample, also in their 30s, held similar positions at Meta.

In an interview at Mistral's spartan, whitewashed offices facing the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris, Mr. Mensch said it ''wasn't safe to trust'' U.S. tech giants to set ground rules for a powerful new technology that would affect millions of lives.

''We can't have a strategic dependency,'' he said. ''That's why we want to make a European champion.''

Image Mistral's offices on the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris. Mr. Mensch said it ''wasn't safe to trust'' U.S. tech giants to set ground rules for a powerful new technology like A.I. Credit... Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times Europe has struggled to produce meaningful tech companies since the dot-com boom. As the United States turned out Google, Meta and Amazon, and China produced Alibaba, Huawei and ByteDance, which owns TikTok, Europe's digital economy failed to deliver, according to a report by France's Artificial Intelligence Commission. The 15-member committee '-- which includes Mr. Mensch '-- warned that Europe was lagging on A.I., but said it had the potential to take a lead.

Mistral's generative A.I. technology allows businesses to launch chatbots, search functions and other A.I.-driven products. It has surprised many by building a model that rivals the technology developed at OpenAI, the U.S. start-up that ignited the A.I. boom in 2022 with the ChatGPT chatbot. Named after a powerful wind in France, Mistral has rapidly gained ground by developing a more flexible and cost-efficient machine-learning tool. Some big European firms are beginning to use its technology, including Renault, the French auto giant, and BNP Paribas, the financial services company.

Image Europe's leaders at the U.K. Artificial Intelligence Safety Summit last year. Artificial intelligence will be built rapidly into the global economy in the coming decade. Credit... Pool photo by Toby Melville The French government is giving Mistral its full-throated support. President Emmanuel Macron has called the company an example of ''French genius'' and had Mr. Mensch for dinner at the ‰lys(C)e presidential palace. Bruno Le Maire, the country's finance minister, frequently praises the company, while C(C)dric O, the former France digital minister, is an adviser to Mistral and owns shares in the start-up.

The French government's backing is a sign of A.I.'s growing importance. The United States, France, Britain, China, Saudi Arabia and many other countries are trying to strengthen their domestic capabilities, setting off a technological arms race that is influencing trade and foreign policy, as well as global supply chains.

Mistral has emerged as the strongest European contender in the global battle. Yet many question whether the company can keep up with large American and Chinese competitors and develop a sustainable business model. In addition to the considerable technological challenges of building a successful A.I. company, the computing power needed is staggeringly expensive. (France says its cheap nuclear power can meet the energy demand.)

OpenAI has raised $13 billion, and Anthropic, another San Francisco firm, has raised more than $7.3 billion. Mistral has so far raised roughly 500 million euros, or $540 million, and earns ''several million'' in recurring revenue, Mr. Mensch said. But in a sign of Mistral's promise, Microsoft took a small stake in February, and Salesforce and the chipmaker Nvidia have backed the start-up.

''This could be one of the best shots that we have in Europe,'' said Jeannette zu F¼rstenberg, the managing director of General Catalyst and a founding partner of La Famiglia, two venture capital firms that invested in Mistral. ''You basically have a very potent technology that will unlock value.''

Mistral subscribes to the view that A.I. software should be open source, meaning that the programming codes should be available for anyone to copy, tweak or repurpose. Supporters say allowing other researchers to see the code will make systems safer and fuel economic growth by speeding its use among businesses and governments for applications like accounting, customer service and database searches. This week, Mistral released the latest version of its model online for anyone to download.

OpenAI and Anthropic, by contrast, are keeping their platforms closed. Open source is dangerous, they argue, because it has the potential to be co-opted by for bad purposes, like spreading disinformation '-- or even creating destructive A.I.-powered weapons.

Mr. Mensch dismissed such concerns as the narrative of ''a fear-mongering lobby'' that includes Google, Microsoft and Amazon, which he said were seeking to cement their dominance by persuading policymakers to enact rules that would squash rivals.

Image ''The issue with not having a European champion is that the road map gets set by the United States,'' Mr. Mensch said. Credit... Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times A.I.'s biggest risk, Mr. Mensch added, is that it will spur a workplace revolution, eliminating some jobs while creating new ones that will require retraining. ''It's coming faster than in the previous revolutions,'' he said, ''not in 10 years but more like in two.''

Mr. Mensch, who grew up in a family of scientists, said he was fascinated by computers from a young age, learning to program when he was 11. He played video games avidly until age 15, when he decided he could ''do better things with my time.'' After graduating from two elite French universities, ‰cole Polytechnique and ‰cole Normale Sup(C)rieure, he became an academic researcher in 2020 at France's prestigious National Center for Scientific Research. But he soon pivoted to DeepMind, an A.I. lab acquired by Google, to learn about the industry and become an entrepreneur.

When ChatGPT burst onto the scene in 2022, Mr. Mensch teamed up with his university friends, who decided that they could do the same or better in France. At the company's airy work space, a corps of sneaker-wearing scientists and programmers now tap busily at keyboards, coding and feeding digital text culled from the internet '-- as well as reams of 19th-century French literature, which is no longer subject to copyright law '-- into the company's large language model.

Image A member of the audience coding while Mr. Mensch spoke at Station F in Paris last month. Credit... Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times Mr. Mensch said he felt uncomfortable with Silicon Valley's ''very religious'' fascination with the concept of artificial general intelligence, the point when, tech leaders like Elon Musk and Sam Altman believe, computers will overtake the cognitive ability of humans, with potentially dire consequences.

''The whole A.G.I. rhetoric is about creating God,'' he said. ''I don't believe in God. I'm a strong atheist. So I don't believe in A.G.I.''

A more imminent threat, he said, is the one posed by American A.I. giants to cultures around the globe.

''These models are producing content and shaping our cultural understanding of the world,'' Mr. Mensch said. ''And as it turns out, the values of France and the values of the United States differ in subtle but important ways.''

With his growing clout, Mr. Mensch has stepped up his calls for lighter regulation, warning that restrictions will damage innovation. Last fall, France successfully lobbied in Brussels to limit regulation of open-source A.I. systems in the European Union's new Artificial Intelligence Act, a victory that helps Mistral maintain a rapid development pace.

''If Mistral becomes a big technical power,'' said Mr. O, the former digital minister who led the lobbying effort, ''it's going to be beneficial for all of Europe.''

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Fri, 12 Apr 2024 15:12

Photo: Jason Bean-Pool (Getty Images), Ford

Bronco Sport owners are having some trouble today, as Ford recalled 22,270 of the compact crossovers (alongside 20,382 Escapes ) for possible cracked fuel injectors. One famed Bronco owner, however, has things even worse: The family of OJ Simpson confirmed his death at age 76 this morning , following a battle with cancer.

Ford Bronco Off-Roadeo Adventure Ride

Simpson was known for his skill as a running back for the Buffalo Bills, and also for not fitting into a glove back in 1995 . Perhaps his biggest contribution to car culture, however, came from his slow-speed chase in a white Ford Bronco the year prior '-- a chase that contributed to the death of Bronco line , and established a close link between the two household names . The Bronco and the Juice go hand in hand.

The O.J. Simpson car chase lasted 45 minutes. Watch it unfold

It's fitting, then that the day of OJ's death should also be a dark day for the Bronco line. No matter how much Ford has tried to separate the two , you can't really divorce the SUV from the Isotoner not-owner. If you don't believe me, go out and buy yourself a white Bronco. See how long it takes the comments to start rolling in.

If you're the owner of a 2022-2023 Bronco Sport or 2022 Ford Escape, head over to the NHTSA's recall page to see if your car is affected. If not, see if you can find any memorial deals on white Broncos in your area. Maybe you'll even find The One .

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Fri, 12 Apr 2024 15:03

This savory release joins the new lineup of 7-SelectTM sparkling waters developed in collaboration with Miracle Seltzer

UPDATE '' APRIL 1, 2024:

April Fools! We admit that we created a limited supply of 7-Select Big Bite Hot Dog Sparkling Water as a joke, but it sounds like there might be more people out there than we anticipated who want to see our Big Bite Hot Dogs as a beverage. If you or someone you know supports Big Bite Hot Dog Sparkling Water, make yourselves known by voting on @7eleven's Instagram story (live through 7:11 a.m. ET 4/2) or comment on a social post and we'll see what we can do! For everyone else, you can find other flavors of 7-Select x Miracle Seltzer sparkling waters and Big Bite Hot Dogs (in their delicious traditional form) at 7-Eleven, Speedway and Stripes stores nationwide. Follow @7eleven on Instagram for the latest news on Big Bite Hot Dog Sparkling Water and more.

IRVING, TX (March 27, 2024) '' 7-Eleven, Inc., the world's largest convenience retailer, today announced a collection of new 7-SelectTM sparkling waters in a variety of bold and cutting-edge flavors. The retailer teamed up with art-inspired beverage brand Miracle Seltzer to create a lineup of sparkling waters with flavors including: Lemon Lime, Green Apple, Sweet Orange and Hot Dog, a twist on one of 7-Eleven's most beloved snacks, the Big Bite® Hot Dog.

The Big Bite Hot Dog Sparkling Water combines the delicious and mouthwatering experience of 7-Eleven's iconic Big Bite Hot Dog into one refreshing beverage '' ketchup and mustard included. Gone are the days of alternating bites of a hot dog with sips of a beverage, now those on the go can swap the bun for bubbles.

''While crafting flavors like Lemon Lime and Sweet Orange came more easily, our journey took an unexpected turn with the creation of Big Bite Hot Dog Sparkling Water '' a daring flavor that pushes the boundaries of flavor innovation,'' said Marissa Jarratt, 7-Eleven, Inc. Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing & Sustainability Officer. "7-Eleven is constantly in pursuit of innovative, unique experiences for our customers, and the 7-Select x Miracle Seltzer lineup is sure to delight even the most adventurous of palates. We're excited for customers to embark on this flavor adventure and experience their favorite snack in a whole new form."

More details on the availability of this flavor will be revealed on April 1 '' but in the meantime, the rest of the 7-Select x Miracle Seltzer lineup including Lemon Lime, Green Apple and Sweet Orange can be found at select 7-Eleven®, Speedway® and Stripes® stores.

''Through our collaboration with 7-Eleven, Miracle Seltzer continues to shake up the beverage industry with new, innovative flavors,'' said Jason Wright, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Miracle Seltzer. ''By infusing elements of design, fashion and art into each and every sip, we bring consumers along on a journey through flavor and creativity.''

"7-Select products are known and loved by our customers as high quality, innovative products at a great value,'' shared Nikki Boyers, Vice President of Private Brands at 7-Eleven. ''The 7-Select sparkling waters are the latest example of this and we can't wait to hear what our customers think of these fun, colorful flavors.''

Thirsty for more? Get Lemon Lime, Green Apple, and Sweet Orange sparkling water delivered on 7NOW® Delivery, available throughout the U.S. with real-time tracking that lets customers know when to expect their orders, typically in about 30 minutes. The 7NOW Delivery app can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play, or by visiting 7NOW.com.

##

About 7-Eleven, Inc.

7-Eleven, Inc. is the premier name in the U.S. convenience-retailing industry. Based in Irving, Texas, 7-Eleven operates, franchises and/or licenses more than 13,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada. In addition to 7-Eleven ® stores, 7-Eleven, Inc. operates and franchises Speedway® , Stripes® , Laredo Taco Company® and Raise the Roost® Chicken and Biscuits locations. Known for its iconic brands such as Slurpee ® , Big Bite ® and Big Gulp ® , 7-Eleven has expanded into high-quality sandwiches, salads, side dishes, cut fruit and protein boxes, as well as pizza, chicken wings and mini beef tacos. 7-Eleven offers customers industry-leading private brand products at outstanding value. Customers can earn and redeem points on various items in stores nationwide through its 7Rewards ® and Speedy Rewards ® loyalty programs with more than 80 million members, place an order in the 7NOW ® delivery app in over 95% of the convenience retailer's footprint, or rely on 7-Eleven for other convenient services. Find out more online at www.7-eleven.com .

About Miracle Seltzer

Started in 2019 as an art project between longtime collaborators B. Thom Stevenson and Jason Wright, Miracle was founded with the goal of exposing the world to the creative community that surrounded them. Over the years Miracle became a cult drink found at fashion shows, art galleries, coffee shops and anywhere else that people are searching for something more. Steadfast in the idea that each of us are a Miracle, our beverages and apparel are connective tissues between communities, aiming to inspire and uplift everyone that takes a sip. With the support of friends, family, strangers and the divine, you can now find three flavors of our sparkling water at a 7-Eleven near you.

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Fri, 12 Apr 2024 11:55

Lisa D. Cook is one of the world's most powerful economists. She taught economics at Harvard University and Michigan State University and served on the Obama administration's Council of Economic Advisers before being appointed, in 2022, to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which controls the interest rates and money supply of the United States.

Despite her pedigree, questions have long persisted about her academic record. Her publication history is remarkably thin for a tenured professor, and her published work largely focuses on race activism rather than on rigorous, quantitative economics. Her nomination to the Fed required Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a tie-breaking vote; by contrast, her predecessor in the seat, Janet Yellen, now Treasury secretary, was confirmed unanimously.

The quality of her scholarship has also received criticism. Her most heralded work, 2014's ''Violence and Economic Activity: Evidence from African American Patents, 1870 to 1940,'' examined the number of patents by black inventors in the past, concluding that the number plummeted in 1900 because of lynchings and discrimination. Other researchers soon discovered that the reason for the sudden drop in 1900 was that one of the databases Cook relied on stopped collecting data in that year. The true number of black patents, one subsequent study found, might be as much as 70 times greater than Cook's figure, effectively debunking the study's premise.

Cook also seems to have consistently inflated her own credentials. In 2022, investigative journalist Christopher Brunet pointed out that, despite billing herself as a macroeconomist, Cook had never published a peer-reviewed macroeconomics article and had misrepresented her publication history in her CV, claiming that she had published an article in the journal American Economic Review. In truth, the article was published in American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, a less prestigious, non-peer-reviewed magazine.

An exclusive City Journal and Daily Wire investigation reveals additional facts that cast new doubt on Cook's seriousness as a scholar.

In a series of academic papers spanning more than a decade, Cook appears to have copied language from other scholars without proper quotation and duplicated her own work and that of coauthors in multiple academic journals without proper attribution. Both practices appear to violate Michigan State University's own written academic standards.

We will review several examples which, taken together, establish a pattern of careless scholarship at best or, at worst, academic misconduct.

In a 2021 paper titled ''The Antebellum Roots of Distinctively Black Names,'' Cook copied-and-pasted verbatim language from Charles Calomiris and Jonathan Pritchett, without using quotation marks when describing their findings, as required. Here is the original passage from Calomiris and Pritchett:

During this time, New Orleans was the largest city in the South and the site of its largest slave market. Unlike states with a common law tradition, Louisiana treated slaves like real estate, and slave sales had to be recorded and notarized in order to establish title (Louisiana 1806, section 10). Today, the records of many of these slave sales may be found in the New Orleans Notarial Archives and the New Orleans Conveyance Office. Because of the availability of these records and the size of the market, New Orleans is the best source for data on slave sales within the United States.

Here is Cook's paper, which, though it cites Calomiris and Pritchett, lifts their language verbatim, which we have marked in italics, substituting only the word ''slaves'' with the politically correct phrase ''the enslaved'':

Unlike states with a common law tradition, Louisiana treated the enslaved like real estate, and slave sales had to be recorded and notarized in order to establish title (Louisiana 1806 section 10). Today the records of many of these slave sales may be found in the New Orleans Notarial Archives and the New Orleans Conveyance Office. Because of the availability of these records and the size of the market, New Orleans is the best source for data on slave sales within the United States. [ . . . ]

During this time New Orleans was the largest city in the South and the site of its largest slave market.

She does something similar in her October 2021 paper, ''Closing the Innovation Gap In Pink and Black,'' which, despite significant government subsidies and years spent on it by Cook, summarized the work of researchers Charles Becker, Cecilia Elena Rouse, and Mingyu Chen by copying roughly 70 words without quotes.

This appears to be a violation of the standards in Michigan State University's guidebook, which states that authors must paraphrase or add direct quotations to verbatim passages. ''It is your responsibility to make certain that you understand the difference between quoting and paraphrasing, as well as the proper way to cite and delineate quoted material,'' the guidebook reads.

In multiple papers, Cook also appears to have copied language from her own prior papers, or those of coauthors, without proper attribution.

In a 2018 paper, ''Rural Segregation and Racial Violence,'' Cook appears as the lead author, with scholars Trevon Logan and John Parman as coauthors. But this paper simply duplicates word-for-word much of Logan and Parman's prior work without Cook. For example, the year prior, Logan and Parman published an original paper, with the following language:

The 1880 census comes after the Civil War and before the nation moved to Jim Crow. For example, at the time of the 1880 census, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed equal protection in public accommodation, was still in place although not necessarily enforced. The 1940 census, however, depicts residential patterns after the rise of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the influx of European immigrants. Importantly, the 1940 census comes largely before the rise of significant suburbanization seen in the post-war years. It is this period from the late-nineteenth century to 1940 that Cutler, Glaeser and Vigdor (1999) cite as the rise of the American ghetto. While urban segregation as measured by isolation and dissimilarity was generally rising, the segregation patterns across cities tended to persist over time, with the most segregated cities at the turn of the century also being the most segregated cities at the end of the century. The complete census returns for 1880 and 1940 allow us to see whether our neighbor-based segregation index shows a similar rise in urban segregation and whether a comparable change in segregation occurred in rural areas.

[ . . . ]

Table 3 shows the variation in our neighbor-based segregation index by census region in both 1880 and 1940. All statistics are weighted by the number of black households in the county so they should be interpreted as representing the level of segregation experienced by the average black household. Counties are divided between rural and urban to distinguish between the segregation patterns described by Cutler, Glaeser, and Vigdor specific to cities and more general patterns affecting the rest of the population. As noted earlier, we designate a county as urban if more than one-quarter of the households from that county live in an urban area and rural if less than one-quarter of the households live in an urban area.

Cook duplicates long passages verbatim, marked here in italics, without quotation or proper attribution:

The 1880 census comes after the Civil War and before the nation moved systematically to Jim Crow. For example, at the time of the 1880 census, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed equal protection in public accommodation, was still in place. The 1940 census, however, depicts residential patterns after the rise of Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the influx of European immigrants. Importantly, the 1940 census comes largely before the rise of significant suburbanization seen in the postwar years. It is this period from the late-19th century to 1940 that Cutler, Glaeser, and Vigdor (1999) cite as the rise of the American ghetto. While urban segregation as measured by isolation and dissimilarity was generally rising, the segregation patterns across cities tended to persist over time, with the most segregated cities at the turn of the century also being the most segregated cities at the end of the century. The complete census returns for 1880 and 1940 and the Logan-Parman measure provide an opportunity to test whether a comparable change in segregation occurred in rural areas.

[ . . . ]

Figure 3 shows the variation in our segregation index from 1880 through 1940. All statistics are weighted by the number of black households in the county and should therefore be interpreted as representing the level of segregation experienced by the average black household. Counties are divided between rural and urban to distinguish between the segregation patterns described by Cutler, Glaeser, and Vigdor (1999) that were specific to cities and more general patterns affecting the rest of the population. We follow Logan and Parman (2017) and define a county as urban if more than one-quarter of the households from that county live in an urban area and rural if less than one-quarter of the households live in an urban area.

Complicating things further, that 2018 paper by the same three authors also recycled, without proper attribution, long passages of identical language from an article they published in another journal, ''Racial Segregation and Southern Lynching.'' Here is a passage from the earlier paper:

As such, the predicted correlation of residential segregation in political theories is indeterminate. The effect of segregation could lead to more racial violence or less. The direction of the effect depends on how whites view the potential outcomes of black political advancement. Most narrative histories suggest that whites held great apprehension of black political advances irrespective of their interaction with blacks. At the same time, whether segregation mediated or enhanced any of those sentiments is unknown, particularly because rural segregation has not received sustained attention in the literature. [ . . . ]

The Logan-Parman measure is an intuitive approach to residential segregation. They assert that the location of households in adjacent units can be used to measure the degree of integration or segregation in a community, similar to Schelling's (1971) classic model of household alignment. Areas that are well integrated will have a greater likelihood of opposite race neighbors that corresponds to the underlying racial proportion of households in the area. The opposite is also true'--segregated areas will have a lower likelihood of opposite race neighbors than the racial proportions would predict. The measure relies on the individual-level data available in federal census records. With the 100% sample of the federal census available through the Minnesota Population Center's Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), it is possible to identify the races of next-door neighbors. Census enumerators went door to door to record households, meaning that next-door neighbors are adjacent to one another on the census manuscript page. The number of black households with white neighbors in a county can therefore be calculated by looking at the order and races of all household heads on the census manuscript pages. The measure is based on comparing this number of black households in a community with white neighbors to the number expected under complete integration and under complete segregation.

And here is a passage from the second paper, with verbatim language in italics. The minor word and punctuation substitutions, which are as trivial as replacing an em dash with a colon, suggest a certain measure of deliberate modification of the copied text:

The predicted correlation of residential segregation in political theories, in contrast, is indeterminate. The effect of segregation could lead to more racial violence or less. The direction of the effect depends on how whites view the potential outcomes of black political advancement. Most narrative histories suggest that whites held great apprehension of black political advances irrespective of their interaction with blacks. At the same time, whether segregation mediated or enhanced any of those sentiments is unknown, particularly because rural segregation has not received sustained attention in the literature. [ . . . ]

They assert that the location of households in adjacent units can be used to measure the degree of integration or segregation in a community, similar to Schelling's (1971) classic model of household alignment. Areas that are well integrated will have a greater likelihood of different-race neighbors that corresponds to the underlying racial proportion of households in the area. The opposite is also true: segregated areas will have a lower likelihood of different-race neighbors than the racial proportions would predict. The measure relies on the individual-level data available in federal census records. With the 100 percent sample of the 1880 federal census available through the Minnesota Population Center's Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) and the 100 percent samples of the 1900 through 1940 censuses hosted by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), it is possible to identify the races of next-door neighbors. Census enumerators went door to door to record households, meaning that next-door neighbors are adjacent to one another on the census manuscript page. The number of black households with white neighbors in a county can, therefore, be calculated by looking at the order and races of all household heads on the census manuscript pages. The measure is based on comparing the actual number of black households in a community with white neighbors to the number expected under complete integration and under complete segregation.

Finally, Cook recycled substantial portions of at least three passages from her own 2011 paper, ''Inventing social capital: Evidence from African American inventors, 1843''1930,'' in the 2014 paper on patents that helped propel her to academic stardom.

When reached for comment, a Federal Reserve spokesman pointed to Cook's prior testimony to Congress, in which she stated: ''I certainly am proud of my academic background.''

Does the deliberate recycling of old material, including material from coauthors, constitute academic misconduct? It is true that journalists, for example, often adapt previous reporting into a compilation or a book. But the standard in academia is more rigorous. According to the Michigan State University guidebook, republishing identical material across multiple journals, without proper attribution, appears to be a violation of the rule against ''self-plagiarism.'' The standard is that scholars cannot use copied language ''regardless of whether [they] are or are not the author of the source of the copied text or idea.''

What should the consequences be for this kind of academic misconduct? At Michigan State, administrators have warned students that ''plagiarism is considered fraud and has potentially harsh consequences including loss of job, loss of reputation, and the assignation of reduced or failing grade in a course.'' Certainly, for an esteemed professor and now a governor of the Federal Reserve, that standard should be the bare minimum.

Cook is no stranger to mobilizing such punishments against others. In 2020, she participated in the attempted defenestration of esteemed University of Chicago economist Harald Uhlig for the crime of publicly opposing the ''defund the police'' movement. She called for Uhlig's removal from the classroom, claiming that he had made an insensitive remark about Martin Luther King, Jr. (The university closed its own inquiry after concluding that there was ''not a basis'' to investigate further.) Uhlig, in a 2022 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, asked the pertinent question: Under the leadership of an ideologue such as Lisa Cook, would the Fed continue to pursue its mandate, or succumb to left-wing activism?

Time will tell if the gears of justice turn against Lisa Cook, or if repeated academic misconduct, defended by some as mere sloppiness or isolated mistakes, is fast becoming an acceptable part of the academic order'--as long as the alleged author of that behavior is favored by the powerful.

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of America's Cultural Revolution. Luke Rosiak is an investigative reporter for The Daily Wire and author of Race to the Bottom: Uncovering the Secret Forces Destroying American Public Education.

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Sun, 14 Apr 2024 13:49

Tanya Lewis: Hi, this is Your Health, Quickly, a Scientific American podcast series.

Josh Fischman: We bring you the latest vital health news: discoveries that affect your body and your mind.

Lewis: And we break down the medical research to help you stay healthy.

On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

I'm Tanya Lewis.

Fischman: I'm Josh Fischman.

Lewis: We're Scientific American's senior health editors.

Today we're going to look at how measles'--a disease that was practically eliminated in the U.S.'--has resurged in recent months, because people basically forgot how bad it was and got complacent about vaccines.

[CLIP: Theme music]

Fischman: Just a week ago, the U.S. reported its 113th case of measles for 2024.

Lewis: That's more cases than we had in all of 2023, when we had 58 during the whole year. And we've still got three-quarters of this year to go.

Fischman: And an increase in measles means an increase in danger.

Katelyn Jetelina: It's actually the most contagious infectious disease we know on Earth. Approximately one infected person can transmit it to about 12 to 18 other people. It's a devastating disease.

Fischman: That's Katelyn Jetelina, a public health scientist.

Jetelina: I'm an epidemiologist and data scientist.'...I'm also an advisor and consultant to the CDC, as well as Resolve to Save Lives, which is also a global health nonprofit.

Fischman: Katelyn also writes Your Local Epidemiologist, a newsletter that has been tracking measles, among other things.

Jetelina: A lot of people have forgotten how dangerous measles is because of the vaccines, right? We've largely wiped it out, but we do not want to mess with measles. One in five of those who get infected that are not vaccinated will be hospitalized, one in 20 will develop pneumonia.'...One in 1,000 will develop encephalitis, which is inflammation of the brain, which can cause permanent brain damage. And one to three in 1,000 will die.

Lewis: There'salso this strange problem that measles can bring on called ''immune amnesia.''

Fischman: I've heard of that. It's a weird thing.

Lewis: Yeah. It's not completely understood, but the measles virus seems to wipe out B cells, the immune cells that ''remember'' viruses you've previously encountered and help fight them off'--hence, ''amnesia.'' And that leaves you vulnerable to those illnesses again.

Jetelina: What we're seeing after measles infection is that if you survive that measles infection, that's great news, but you're not necessarily in the clear because there's mortality that happens after the fact from other viruses.

Lewis: So measles is definitely a bad disease. But Katelyn said that a lot of people have forgotten how bad it is because vaccines are so successful.

Fischman: Yeah. Before the vaccines, we were getting about 600,000 cases a year. Now we typically top out at 40 to 50 cases each year.

Lewis: We've had the measles vaccine for about 70 years, and now most kids get it as a combination, measles-mumps-rubella, or MMR. You get one shot when you're about a year old, and the second shot at four to six years old'--before kids start school.

Fischman: And it works incredibly well.

Lewis: It does. Two shots are 97 percent effective at preventing measles. Plus these shots are safe. The most common side effect, in about one in 3000 kids, is a short fever that resolves on its own.

Fischman: Now, years ago, there was this BS idea that measles shots somehow triggered autism.

Lewis: Yeah, and let's be clear: There's absolutely no link between the MMR vaccines and autism. A single fraudulent study claimed that there was, but it was debunked years ago. Many other studies have searched for a connection and failed to find one.

Fischman: And despite that, every year, the number of kids in kindergarten with measles shots is going down. And that's because more parents are asking for vaccine exemptions. A lot of them don't trust the shots. A recent survey from the University of Pennsylvania found that the percentage of people who believe already-approved vaccines are unsafe jumped from nine percent all the way up to 16 percent between 2021 and 2023.

Jetelina: Exemptions for vaccine-preventable diseases for kindergarten is increasing'...right now.'...So there's two types of exemptions a parent could take in most states.'...One is a medical exemption. And then two is a non-medical exemption, which is for, like, religious reasons or philosophical reasons. Those medical exemptions have not increased for the past 10, 20 years. What is increasing are those non-medical exemptions. And it's increasing very quickly.

Fischman: Katelyn says the increase can be traced to our own amnesia about the danger of measles, and also distrust of scientists and doctors who say the vaccines are safe. One of the states where exemptions have been increasing is Florida, and that's right where a measles outbreak of 11 cases was earlier this year. Most of them were traced to an elementary school. Florida's official response to that was really controversial.

Jetelina: The Florida Surgeon General said that those that were exposed but unvaccinated could continue going back to school, when the standard of practice is that those unvaccinated need to isolate for 21 days. The reason this is a standard of practice is because'...measles has a long incubation period, meaning it can take a while for you to be exposed and have symptoms.

Lewis: So basically you can be infected, not know it for weeks, and still run around infecting others?

Fischman: Right. The other thing that was controversial was what the Florida surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, didn't say in a letter that he wrote to parents. He didn't mention that if you were exposed but unvaccinated, you still could get the vaccine within 72 hours, and it reduces the chances of the virus taking hold in your body.

Jetelina: If your child is unvaccinated but exposed, they can still get the vaccine within 72 hours of exposure. That will not only help their symptoms, but also they can go back to school if they get vaccinated. That would be huge.'...I don't want to keep my kid away from school for 21 days.

Fischman: There's one cool point about the Florida school, Katelyn says. Parents with exposed but unvaccinated kids kept them home, despite Ladapo's letter. That really helped contain the outbreak.

Lewis: That is reassuring. Parents do want to protect their kids, after all. It also underlines how important vaccination is. There's been another outbreak in the Chicago area, with more than two dozen cases as of late March. Many of the people are in a migrant center, under extremely crowded conditions, and came from countries where the vaccine wasn't available.

Clearly, the vaccines are crucial. So how do we deal with growing vaccine misinformation and distrust? Does Katelyn have ideas?

Fischman: She does. She focuses on what social scientists call ''trusted messengers.''

Jetelina: These are people in our community that have a face, that have a voice, right? It's much easier to trust someone that you know, rather than the ivory tower or someone behind the CDC brick wall. And that can be anyone. It can be pastors, it can be education boards.

A lot of people'...are very trusted in their pediatrician and what they are recommending. And so I think it's not only getting to the people,'...each household in the community, but it's also getting the right information to physicians'...and they feel very confident in vaccines, for example, and the reasons we do what we do. So this collective amnesia can be stomped out before measles takes hold more.

[CLIP: Show music]

Fischman: Your Health, Quickly is produced by Carin Leong, Madison Goldberg, Jeff DelViscio, and by us. It's edited by Elah Feder and Alexa Lim. Our music is composed by Dominic Smith.

Lewis: Our show is a part of Scientific American's podcast, Science, Quickly. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you like the show, give us a rating or a review!

And if you have a topic you want us to cover, you can email us at yourhealthquickly@sciam.com. That's your health quickly at S-C-I-A-M dot com.

Just a quick request: My colleague Lauren Young and I are working on a podcast series on caregiving for older family members, and the challenges of navigating care at home vs. institutional care. We're hoping to speak to people who have experience caring for their own family members. Please email yourhealthquickly@sciam.com with the subject ''caregiving'' if you're interested.

For Your Health, Quickly, I'm Tanya Lewis.

Fischman: AndI'm Josh Fischman.

Lewis: See you next time.

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Sun, 14 Apr 2024 12:32

Johnson urges Biden to issue work permits to undocumented immigrants

Johnson urges Biden to issue work permits to undocumented immigrants 00:54 CHICAGO (CBS) -- Mayor Brandon Johnson joined several local activists on Thursday in calling on President Joe Biden to allow work permits for undocumented immigrants.

On the first anniversary of his election as mayor, Johnson hosted a roundtable discussion with business and community leaders from across the city. The group is pushing the federal government to extend legal permits to undocumented migrants who have worked and paid taxes in the U.S. for decades, not just to newly arrived asylum seekers.

"We need the president to extend the same economic opportunities to our long-term undocumented brothers and sisters," Johnson said.

Leaders said work permits would ensure undocumented migrants are provided with fair wages and other benefits, and allow those workers the dignity they deserve.

Last September, the Biden administration granted temporary legal status to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants as the nation grapples with growing numbers of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border after fleeing Venezuela and other parts of Central and South America.

Johnson and other Chicago leaders have said Biden should grant work permits to all immigrants, regardless of their legal status.

"I don't think people realize that people can't even get a bank account, can't have a savings account, a checking account, because they are undocumented. So work permits for all is an opportunity to right that wrong, to have an equitable approach as we decide who is worthy and who is not.," City Clerk Anna Valencia said.

Advocates said Illinois is home to some 480,000 long-term undocumented residents.

Johnson also has been urging the president to speed up work permits for the thousands of asylum seekers who have come to Chicago over the past two years.

Migrant advocates have said getting asylum seekers work permits will allow them to more quickly find permanent housing and move out of city-run shelters.

More from CBS News

In: Chicago Joe Biden Brandon Johnson Migrants Todd Feurer Todd Feurer is a web producer at CBS News Chicago. He has previously written for WBBM Newsradio, WUIS-FM, and the New City News Service.

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Fri, 12 Apr 2024 15:08

Below is an approximation of this video's audio content. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video.

While 64 percent of men develop hidden prostate cancers by their 60s, the lifetime risk of being diagnosed with prostate cancer is only about 11 percent (and the risk of dying from prostate cancer is 2.5 percent at the average age of 80). So, most men develop prostate cancer, but they die with their tumors rather than from their tumors. Most men with prostate cancer live their whole lives never knowing they even had it. That's one of the problems with screening for it. Many prostate cancers that are detected may never have led to harm even if they'd gone undiscovered. Nonetheless, not all men are so lucky. About thirty thousand Americans die each year from prostate cancer. So, should you get a PSA prostate screening test or not?

PSA stands for prostate specific antigen, an enzyme secreted by cells of the prostate to liquify semen and cervical mucus to facilitate fertilization. Elevated levels in the blood can be a sign of prostate cancer, which led to FDA approval as a screening test for the early detection of prostate cancer in the 1990s. If it comes back high, the test is usually repeated. If it's still high, the next step is typically an ultrasound-guided biopsy of the prostate through the rectum. If there's cancer, then options include surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, or a delayal of treatment.

However, the USPSTF, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, the main independent scientific panel that sets evidence-based clinical prevention guidelines, recommended against routine PSA screening, as does the American College of Preventive Medicine, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the vast majority'--85 percent'--of professional medical societies in developed countries around the world opposed.

In 2018, though, the USPSTF shifted from a summary judgement against to ''the decision to be screened for prostate cancer should be an individual one,'' which is more in line with the ''shared decision-making'' stance of the American Urological Association, the American College of Physicians, and the American Cancer Society. In other words, men should be informed about the risks and benefits, and decide for themselves. However, men who are on the fence and don't express a clear preference in favor of screening should not be screened, according to the latest USPSTF recommendations.

More recently, an international panel of experts concluded that clinicians need not feel obligated to systematically bring it up, judging that most men would decide to decline PSA testing, given the clear harms and small and uncertain benefits. That, however, is up to you. I personally declined, but let's run the numbers.

Similar to the 92 percent of women who didn't know or overestimated the mortality reduction from mammograms by tenfold or more, 89 percent of men vastly overestimated the benefits of prostate cancer screening, or simply had no idea. Most thought 50 prostate cancer deaths could be prevented out of 1,000 men regularly screened, when in reality, it's more like one. But doesn't even a one in 1,000 chance of not dying from cancer make a few blood tests worth it? The downsides are more than inconvenience, though.

About one in seven men who undergo PSA screening will test positive, yet in two-thirds of the cases, the biopsy results will be normal. So, out of the 1,000 men regularly screened, about 150 will have a false alarm and be biopsied unnecessarily, which can cause minor complications like pain and bloody ejaculate, or in approximately 1 percent of cases, more serious complications like blood-borne infections that require hospitalization. The greatest harm, though, is overdiagnosis. Unnecessary biopsies are bad enough, but nothing compared to unnecessary cancer treatment.

Large-scale randomized trials suggest that 20 to 50 percent of men diagnosed with prostate cancer would have never become symptomatic in their lifetime. They never would have been any wiser had they not been screened, but now they may be needlessly heading to the operating table. About three in 1,000 men die during or soon after radical prostatectomy. That may help explain why there appears to be no overall mortality benefit to prostate cancer screening. For every life that is saved, another may be extinguished for a cancer they never would have even known about.

Another 50 in 1,000 men end up with serious surgical complications. Even if the surgery goes smoothly, about one in five men develop long-term urinary incontinence requiring the use of pads, and most men'--two out of three'--will experience long-term erectile dysfunction. Most men who receive radiation therapy also experience long-term sexual erectile dysfunction, and up to one in six experience long-term bowel issues, such as fecal incontinence. If this was saving your life, it would be worth it; but over 16 years, rather than being saved from a prostate cancer death by screening, it may be 25 times more likely that you were instead overdiagnosed with a cancer that wouldn't have bothered you. Yet, you come away after treatment thinking the PSA test saved your life. It's like with the mammograms. The people who have been harmed the most'--unnecessary cancer treatment'--feel as though they've been helped the most.

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Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:56

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Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:54

Uri Berliner is a senior business editor at NPR. In his 25 years with NPR, his work has been recognized with a Peabody Award, a Gerald Loeb Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and a Society of Professional Journalists New America Award, among others.Today, we published in The Free Press his firsthand account of the transformation he has witnessed at National Public Radio. Or, as Uri puts it, how it went from an organization that had an ''open-minded, curious culture'' with a ''liberal bent'' to one that is ''knee-jerk, activist, scolding,'' and ''rigidly progressive.''

Uri describes a newsroom that aimed less to cover Donald Trump but instead veered towards efforts to topple him; a newsroom that reported the Russia collusion story without enough skepticism or fairness, and then later largely ignored the fact that the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion; a newsroom that purposefully ignored the Hunter Biden laptop story'--in fact, one of his fellow NPR journalists approved of ignoring the laptop story because ''covering it could help Trump.'' A newsroom that put political ideology before journalism in its coverage of Covid-19. And, he describes a newsroom where race and identity became paramount in every aspect of the workplace and diversity became its north star.

In other words, NPR is not considering all things anymore.

On today's episode: How did NPR lose its way? Why did it change? And why does this lone journalist feel obligated to speak out?

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Fri, 12 Apr 2024 14:52