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With Recent Headlines About Gear Falling Off Planes, Is Flying Safe?

DALLAS — It has been 15 years since the last fatal crash of a U.S. airliner, but you would never know that by reading about a torrent of flight problems in the last three months.

There was a time when things like cracked windshields and minor engine problems didn’t turn up very often in the news.

That changed in January, when a panel plugging the space reserved for an unused emergency door blew off an Alaska Airlines jetliner 16,000 feet above Oregon. Pilots landed the Boeing 737 Max safely, but in the United States, media coverage of the flight quickly overshadowed a deadly runway crash in Tokyo three days earlier.

And concern about air safety — especially with Boeing planes — has not let up.

Is flying getting more dangerous?

By the simplest measurement, the answer is no. The last deadly crash involving a U.S. airliner occurred in February 2009, an unprecedented streak of safety. There were 9.6 million flights last year.

The lack of fatal crashes does not fully capture the state of safety, however. In the past 15 months, a spate of close calls caught the attention of regulators and travelers.

Another measure is the number of times pilots broadcast an emergency call to air traffic controllers. Flightradar24, a popular tracking site, just compiled the numbers. The site’s data show such calls rising since mid-January but remaining below levels seen during much of 2023.

Emergency calls also are an imperfect gauge: the plane might not have been in immediate danger, and sometimes planes in trouble never alert controllers.

Safer than driving

The National Safety Council estimates that Americans have a 1-in-93 chance of dying in a motor-vehicle crash, while deaths on airplanes are too rare to calculate the odds. Figures from the U.S. Department of Transportation tell a similar story.

“This is the safest form of transportation ever created, whereas every day on the nation’s roads about a 737 full of people dies,” Richard Aboulafia, a longtime aerospace analyst and consultant, said. The safety council estimates that more than 44,000 people died in U.S. vehicle crashes in 2023.

But a shrinking safety margin

A panel of experts reported in November that a shortage of air traffic controllers, outdated plane-tracking technology and other problems presented a growing threat to safety in the sky.

“The current erosion in the margin of safety in the (national airspace system) caused by the confluence of these challenges is rendering the current level of safety unsustainable,” the group said in a 52-page report.

What is going on at Boeing?

Many but not all of the recent incidents have involved Boeing planes.

Boeing is a $78 billion company, a leading U.S. exporter and a century-old, iconic name in aircraft manufacturing. It is one-half of the duopoly, along with Europe’s Airbus, that dominates the production of large passenger jets.

The company’s reputation, however, was greatly damaged by the crashes of two 737 Max jets — one in Indonesia in 2018, the other in Ethiopia the following year — that killed 346 people. Boeing has lost nearly $24 billion in the last five years. It has struggled with manufacturing flaws that at times delayed deliveries of 737s and long-haul 787 Dreamliners.

Boeing finally was beginning to regain its stride until the Alaska Airlines Max blowout. Investigators have focused on bolts that help secure the door-plug panel, but which were missing after a repair job at the Boeing factory.

The FBI is notifying passengers about a criminal investigation. The Federal Aviation Administration is stepping up oversight of the company.

“What is going on with the production at Boeing? There have been issues in the past. They don’t seem to be getting resolved,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said last month.

CEO David Calhoun says no matter what conclusions investigators reach about the Alaska Airlines blowout, “Boeing is accountable for what happened” on the Alaska plane. “We caused the problem and we understand that.”

Where do design and manufacturing fit in?

Problems attributed to an airplane manufacturer can differ greatly.

Some are design errors. On the original Boeing Max, the failure of a single sensor caused a flight-control system to point the nose of the plane down with great force — that happened before the deadly 2018 and 2019 Max crashes. It is a maxim in aviation that the failure of a single part should never be enough to bring down a plane.

In other cases, such as the door-plug panel that flew off the Alaska Airlines jet, it appears a mistake was made on the factory floor.

“Anything that results in death is worse, but design is a lot harder to deal with because you have to locate the problem and fix it,” said Aboulafia, the aerospace analyst. “In the manufacturing process, the fix is incredibly easy – don’t do” whatever caused the flaw in the first place.

Manufacturing quality appears to be an issue in other incidents too.

Earlier this month, the FAA proposed ordering airlines to inspect wiring bundles around the spoilers on Max jets. The order was prompted by a report that chafing of electrical wires due to faulty installation caused an airliner to roll 30 degrees in less than a second on a 2021 flight.

Even little things matter. After a LATAM Airlines Boeing 787 flying from Australia to New Zealand this month went into a nosedive — it recovered — Boeing reminded airlines to inspect switches to motors that move pilot seats. Published reports said a flight attendant accidentally hitting the switch likely caused the plunge.

Not everything is Boeing’s fault

Investigations into some incidents point to likely lapses in maintenance, and many close calls are due to errors by pilots or air traffic controllers.

This week, investigators disclosed that an American Airlines jet that overshot a runway in Texas had undergone a brake-replacement job four days earlier, and some hydraulic lines to the brakes were not properly reattached.

Earlier this month, a tire fell off a United Airlines Boeing 777 leaving San Francisco, and an American Airlines 777 made an emergency landing in Los Angeles with a flat tire.

A piece of the aluminum skin was discovered missing when a United Boeing 737 landed in Oregon last week. Unlike the brand-new Alaska jet that suffered the panel blowout, the United plane was 26 years old. Maintenance is up to the airline.

When a FedEx cargo plane landing last year in Austin, Texas, flew close over the top of a departing Southwest Airlines jet, it turned out that an air traffic controller had cleared both planes to use the same runway.

Separating serious from routine

Aviation-industry officials say the most concerning events involve issues with flight controls, engines and structural integrity.

Other things such as cracked windshields and planes clipping each other at the airport rarely pose a safety threat. Warnings lights might indicate a serious problem or a false alarm.

“We take every event seriously,” former NTSB member John Goglia said, citing such vigilance as a contributor to the current crash-free streak. “The challenge we have in aviation is trying to keep it there.”

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Bird Flu Decimating Seal Colonies; Scientists Baffled

PORTLAND, Maine — Avian influenza is killing tens of thousands of seals and sea lions in different corners of the world, disrupting ecosystems and flummoxing scientists who don’t see a clear way to slow the devastating virus.

The worldwide bird flu outbreak that began in 2020 has led to the deaths of millions of domesticated birds and spread to wildlife all over the globe. This virus isn’t thought to be a major threat to humans, but its spread in farming operations and wild ecosystems has caused widespread economic turmoil and environmental disruptions.

Seals and sea lions, in places as far apart as Maine and Chile, appear to be especially vulnerable to the disease, scientists said. The virus has been detected in seals on the east and west coasts of the U.S., leading to deaths of more than 300 seals in New England and a handful more in Puget Sound in Washington. The situation is even more dire in South America, where more than 20,000 sea lions have died in Chile and Peru and thousands of elephant seals have died in Argentina.

The virus can be controlled in domesticated animals, but it can spread unchecked in wildlife and marine mammals such as South America’s seals that lacked prior exposure to it have suffered devastating consequences, said Marcela Uhart, director of the Latin America program at the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the University of California, Davis.

“Once the virus is in wildlife, it spreads like wildfire, as long as there are susceptible animals and species,” Uhart said. “Movement of animals spreads the virus to new areas.”

Scientists are still researching how the seals have contracted bird flu, but it is most likely from contact with infected seabirds, Uhart said. High mortality has affected South American marine mammals consistently since the virus arrived late in 2022, and birds in Peru and Chile have died by the hundreds of thousands from the virus since then, she noted.

The virus is still spreading and was detected in mainland Antarctica for the first time in February.

The deaths of seals and sea lions disrupts ecosystems where the marine mammals serve as key predators near the top of the food chain. Seals help keep the ocean in balance by preventing overpopulation of the fish species they feed on.

Many species affected, such as South American sea lions and Southern elephant seals, have relatively stable populations, but scientists worry about the possibility of the virus jumping to more jeopardized animals. Scientists have said bird flu might have played a role in the deaths of hundreds of endangered Caspian seals in Russia last year.

“The loss of wildlife at the current scale presents an unprecedented risk of wildlife population collapse, creating an ecological crisis,” the World Organization for Animal Health, an intergovernmental organization, said in a statement.

In New England, scientists with the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University found an outbreak of bird flu that killed more than 330 harbor and gray seals along the North Atlantic coast in 2022 turned out to be worse than initially thought. It’s possible the seals contracted the virus from gulls by coming into contact with sick gulls’ excrement or by preying on an infected bird, the scientists reported.

The U.S. government determined the seal die-off was an “unusual mortality event” attributable to bird flu. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has declared the event is over, but concerns remain about a possible repeat.

“Marine mammals are still pretty unique in the scale of the outbreaks that are occurring,” said Wendy Puryear, an author of the Tufts study. “One of the connections is there is a lot of virus that circulates in coastal birds. A lot of opportunities for those wild birds to host the virus and pass it on to marine mammals.”

Some scientists and environmental advocates say there could be a link between the outbreaks and climate change and warming oceans. Warmer sea temperatures off northern Chile decrease the population of forage fish, and that makes sea lions weaker and more susceptible to disease, said Liesbeth van der Meer, director of the environmental group Oceana in Chile.

Scientists and environmentalists are hopeful vaccinating poultry will help lessen the spread of the disease, van der Meer said, adding that it’s also important for people to avoid potentially infected animals in the wild.

“Authorities have carried out campaigns about the disease, strongly recommending to stay away from seabirds or marine mammals with symptoms or found dead in the coastal areas,” van der Meer said.

Even seals in aquariums are not considered completely safe from bird flu. The New England Aquarium, where outdoor harbor seal exhibits delight thousands of visitors every year, has taken strict sanitation precautions to prevent transmission of the virus to its animals, said Melissa Joblon, the Boston aquarium’s director of animal health.

Staff aren’t allowed to bring backyard poultry products to the aquarium, and an awning protects the seal exhibit from birds that could carry the virus, she said.

“We do know that it’s a risk for the animals that reside here,” said Joblon, adding that none of the aquarium’s seals have been infected.

The deaths of marine mammals are even more concerning because of mutations of the avian virus, according to a paper in the journal Nature Communications last fall. The mutations “warrant further examination and highlight an urgent need for active local surveillance to manage outbreaks and limit spillover into other species, including humans,” the study stated. 

Another study, published in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases in February, found the bird flu virus has adapted to spread between birds and mammals. Researchers found nearly identical samples of the virus in dead sea lions, a dead seal and a dead seabird. They said the finding is significant because it confirms a multispecies outbreak that can affect marine mammals and birds. 

More seal deaths could disrupt critical ecosystems around the world, said Lynda Doughty, executive director of Marine Mammals of Maine, a marine mammal rescue organization that responded to seals with bird flu during the New England outbreak. 

“You need this happy ecosystem. If we’re taking out some important species, what is the trickle-down effect of that? That’s the million-dollar question,” Doughty said. 

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New England Men’s Soccer Shirt Causes Stir With Recolored Flag

LONDON — England’s new men’s soccer team shirt is causing a bit of a stir. It’s not just the price that’s vexing some.

The decision by Nike to change the color of the St. George’s Cross on the shirt from the traditional red and white has even prompted the prime minister and the man who is favored to succeed him to make their displeasure known.

A petition on Change.org calling for a design change attracted more than 22,000 signatures by early afternoon Friday.

The new Nike-designed shirt, which has been modeled by England captain Harry Kane, is being rolled out in the run-up to the European Championship in Germany. The altered cross on the back of the shirt collar has purple and blue horizontal stripes.

Nike says it’s a “playful update” to the shirt and harks to the training kit England wore at the 1966 World Cup, the only major tournament won by the men’s team. England will be starting Euro 2024 this summer as one of the favorites.

Keir Starmer, leader of the main opposition Labour Party and a fan of English Premier League leader Arsenal, said he believed the flag, which is marked by an image of the St. George’s Cross, was a “unifier” and Nike needed to “reconsider” its decision to modify it.

“It doesn’t need to be changed,” he told the Sun newspaper. “We just need to be proud of it.”

Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, on a visit to the north of England, was also asked about the altered cross.

“I prefer the original and my general view is that when it comes to our national flags, we shouldn’t mess with them because they are a source of pride, identity, who we are and they’re perfect as they are,” said Sunak, who supports Southampton, which is vying for promotion back to the Premier League.

Nike and the English Football Association have indicated they are not going to change tack.

Despite the criticism, the FA defended the design, saying it was “not the first time” different colored St. George’s Cross-inspired designs have appeared on England shirts and it was “very proud” of the traditional cross.

“The new England 2024 home kit has a number of design elements which were meant as a tribute to the 1966 World Cup-winning team,” a spokesperson said. “The colored trim on the cuffs is inspired by the training gear worn by England’s 1966 heroes, and the same colors also feature on the design on the back of the collar.”

England coach Gareth Southgate said the furor has “not been high on my list of priorities” this week as he prepares to lead the team into friendly matches against Brazil on Saturday and Belgium on Tuesday.

“It’s a hard question to answer really because it is presumably some artistic take which I am not creative enough to understand,” Southgate said when asked about his thoughts on the new design.

“What you are really asking,” he said, “is should we be tampering with the cross of St. George? In my head, if it is not a red cross and a white background, then it isn’t a cross of St. George anyway.”

Southgate added that, for him, it was more important that the symbol of the three lions stayed on the shirt than the St. George’s Cross.

“It’s our iconic symbol — it is what distinguishes us not only from football teams around the world but from England rugby and England cricket,” he said of the three lions.

John Barnes, one of England’s best players, said he could not understand what all the fuss was about.

“It’s a much ado about nothing,” the 60-year-old former winger said.

For most people, the problem will be less the color of the flag and more its price tag. An “authentic” version for adults will cost 125 pounds ($155) and 120 pounds for children. That’s quite an outlay at a time when household budgets have been stretched as a result of one of the most acute cost-of-living crises in decades.

The Football Supporters’ Association has long bemoaned the high cost of replica shirts and suggested that a “sell-by” date should be put on kits so buyers know how long it will be in use before a newer version is released.

“An unwitting parent could easily buy a kit for Christmas or a birthday to find it’s ‘old’ within a matter of months,” a spokesperson for the group said.

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DR Congo Facing Alarming Levels of Violence, Hunger, Poverty, Disease

geneva — The World Health Organization warns that hunger, poverty, malnutrition, and disease have reached alarming levels in the Democratic Republic of Congo, especially in the east, where a resurgence of fighting between armed groups and government forces has uprooted millions of people from their homes. 

“DRC is the second-largest displacement crisis globally after Sudan, with more people forced to flee the violence since the start of the year,” said Dr. Boureima Hama Sambo, WHO representative to the DRC. 

Speaking from the capital, Kinshasa, Sambo told journalists in Geneva Friday that a combination of violence, climate shocks, and epidemics has worsened the humanitarian and overall health situation for millions of people who are struggling to find enough food to eat, a safe place to stay, and help to ward off disease outbreaks.   

“Hospitals are overwhelmed with injured people,” he said. “Close to 10 million people are on the move. Poverty and hunger affect a quarter of the population or 25.4 million people. The spread of cholera and other infectious diseases pose significant threats to the populations health.”   

United Nations relief agencies say more than two of every five children in the DRC — around 6 million children — suffer from chronic malnutrition, a condition that causes stunting, impairs cognitive development, and in cases of severe acute malnutrition, a risk of death. 

Sambo said that, “Combined to malnutrition, diseases are increasing the risk of mortality, especially in children, and putting even more pressure on the health system.  

“Women and girls are paying the high price of armed conflict and displacement,” he said, noting that “30,000 cases of gender-based violence were reported in the DRC in 2023. These numbers are among the highest in the world.” 

Flooding heightens risk 

Besides conflict-related challenges, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, says severe flooding has wreaked havoc in 18 of the DRCs 26 provinces, leaving more than 2 million people, nearly 60%  of them children, in need of assistance.   

The WHO says floods are worsening the risk of diarrheal and water-borne diseases. That, as well as the outbreak of other diseases, including cholera, measles, polio, yellow fever, anthrax, and plague, has brought an already fragile health system to its knees.   

“DRC is facing its worst cholera outbreak since 2017 with 50,000 suspected cases and 470 deaths recorded in 2023,” said Sambo, adding that the risk is particularly high in sites for internally displaced people where “living conditions are dire.” 

He said the country is also battling its largest measles epidemic since 2019, with close to 28,000 cases with 750 deaths so far this year   

“The combination of measles and malnutrition has a severe health impact on children under five years of age and the lack of access to vaccines and vaccination services further exacerbate the situation,” he said. 

Threat of mpox grows

In addition to those problems, the WHO warns mpox — previously known as monkeypox — has been on the rise across the country over the last year, with nearly 4,000 suspected cases and 271 deaths reported.  

That represents a higher case fatality than was seen during a year-long, WHO-declared international public health emergency for the disease that began in May 2022. More than two thirds of the current cases, it says, are reported in children.   

Mpox, a zoonotic disease first detected in a 9-month-old in 1970 in the DRC, when the country was known as Zaire.  Dr. Rosamund Lewis, WHO technical lead for mpox, says children continue to be most at risk of getting infected with and dying from the disease.  

“The number of cases has been gradually increasing over time. What we saw in 2023 was more than the doubling of the number of cases compared to 2022 … There is a clear concern about the continuing spread of the disease, not only by zoonotic transmission but through person-to-person sexual contact,” she said. 

“What is also new about transmission in the DRC is that sexual transmission reported for Clade 1, a variant of mpox had not been reported prior to 2023. Now what we are seeing is newly reported sexual transmission in a different part of the country, which is not endemic for mpox.”   

Lewis said the disease is spreading in areas “where there is a lot of commercial back and forth, including cross-borders and a vibrant commercial sex trade.” 

The WHO reports mpox has expanded to previously unaffected provinces, such that almost all provinces. including Kinshasa, now are reporting cases. It warns that “represents a threat to neighboring countries and beyond.”   

WHO representative Sambo observed that humanitarian needs in the country are soaring, with close to 20 million people requiring health assistance this year. Despite all the compounding challenges, he said the WHO has been scaling up its health response since last year. 

For example, he said the WHO vaccinated almost 5 million people against cholera in November, most in the eastern provinces, and vaccinated millions of people against a deadly measles outbreak last year.  Next week, he said the WHO plans to start a polio vaccination campaign in all 26 provinces. 

However, he said that continuing such lifesaving programs will be difficult to do if the health response remains severely underfunded, noting that less than 14 percent of the WHOs $624 million appeal for this year has been received.   

He urges the world not “to turn a blind eye to a situation that could have severe knock-on effects for security and health in the region.” 

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Cocoa Prices Triple in One Year as Climate Change Hits Crops

Nairobi, Kenya — With a week until Easter, chocolate lovers should brace themselves for higher prices when they purchase their favorite seasonal treats.

A nonprofit environmental group says cocoa costs three times more than it did a year ago because of climate change and the El Nino weather effect. Prices reached $8,000 per ton this week, compared with $2,500 last year at this time.

Amber Sawyer, a climate and energy analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, or ECIU, a U.K.-based nonprofit group, said the volatile weather patterns in the top cocoa-producing countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast have affected international commodity prices.

“Chocolate producers are trying to buy up cocoa, but there’s a reduced supply of it,” she said. “So obviously, because of the reduced supply, the demand has gone up, and the prices have therefore gone up for confectionery companies who make chocolate. These costs are now being fed through to consumers.”

Ghana and Ivory Coast, which produce nearly 60% of global cocoa, experienced heavy rains in December. Flooding caused crop damage and led to cocoa plants rotting with black pod disease.

Extreme heat has hurt, too.

“That’s affecting not only the crop, because it’s difficult to grow cocoa in these conditions, but also the farmers themselves,” Sawyer said.

“Farmers have gone from having too much rain to not enough rain, which means that they’re behind on production and unable to sell on the international markets,” she said.

Ghana has reduced its cocoa production estimate this year from 850,000 to 650,000 tons due to adverse weather conditions and smuggling.

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization data show cocoa is grown in countries that are most vulnerable and less prepared to deal with climate change.

A U.K.-based World Weather Attribution website analysis released Thursday showed that West Africa experienced an intense heatwave in February, with temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

Izidine Pinto, a researcher with the Royal Netherlands Metrological Institute connected with the website, said the heatwaves and heavy rainfall affect people’s lives and jobs.

“Climate change is making rainfall heavier and heatwaves like these more intense,” he said. “These changes to extreme weather are making life more dangerous for people in West Africa. … This is damaging livelihoods … damaging crops and making food prices more expensive.”

Weather experts note that heatwaves used to occur once every 100 years before widespread fossil fuel burning, but in today’s climate, heatwaves happen once every 10 years.

African countries bear the brunt of climate change despite contributing the least to greenhouse gas emissions. The ECIU urges wealthier nations to offer financial and technical aid to assist farmers in managing the impact of severe weather and climate change.

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Creature Named for Kermit the Frog Offers Clues on Amphibian Evolution

washington — There definitely were no Muppets during the Permian Period, but there was a Kermit — or at least a forerunner of modern amphibians that has been named after the celebrity frog.

Scientists on Thursday described the fossilized skull of a creature called Kermitops gratus that lived in what is now Texas about 270 million years ago. It belongs to a lineage believed to have given rise to the three living branches of amphibians — frogs, salamanders and limbless caecilians.

While only the skull, measuring around 3 cm long, was discovered, the researchers think Kermitops had a stoutly built salamander-like body roughly 15-18 cm long, though salamanders would not evolve for another roughly 100 million years.

Amphibians are one of the four groups of living terrestrial vertebrates, along with reptiles, birds and mammals. The unique features of the Kermitops skull — a blend of archaic and more advanced features — are providing insight into amphibian evolution.

“Kermitops helps us understand the early history of amphibians by revealing there isn’t a clear trend of step by step becoming more like the modern amphibian,” said Calvin So, a George Washington University paleontology doctoral student and lead author of the study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

The fossil was collected in 1984 near Lake Kemp in Texas and kept in the expansive collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington but was not thoroughly studied until recently.

Kermitops had a rounded snout, not unlike frogs and salamanders. Preserved in its eye sockets were palpebral bones, or eyelid bones, a feature absent in today’s amphibians. Its skull is constructed of roof-like bones, in contrast to the thin and strut-like bones of modern amphibians.

“The length of the skull in front of the eyes is longer than the length of the skull behind the eyes, which differs from the other fossil amphibians living at the same time. We think this might have allowed Kermitops to snap its jaws closed faster, enabling capture of fast insect prey,” So said.

The fossil record of early amphibians and their forerunners is spotty, making it difficult to figure out the origins of modern amphibians.

“Kermitops, with its unique anatomy, really exemplifies the importance of continuing to add new fossil data to understanding this evolutionary problem,” said National Museum of Natural History paleontologist and study co-author Arjan Mann.

Kermit the Frog was created by the late American puppeteer Jim Henson in 1955, and a Kermit puppet made in the 1970s is in the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History as an important cultural object.

Kermitops means “Kermit face,” a nod to the Muppet’s humorous look.

“We thought that the eyelid bones gave the fossil a bug-eyed look, and combined with a lopsided smile produced by slight crushing during the preservation of the fossil, we really thought it looked like Kermit the Frog,” So said.

Kermitops belonged to a group called temnospondyls that arose a few tens of millions of years after the first land vertebrates evolved from fish ancestors. The biggest temnospondyls superficially resembled crocodiles, including two that each were around 6 meters in length, Prionosuchus and Mastodonsaurus.

Temnospondyls are considered the progenitor lineage of modern amphibians, Mann said.

Kermitops existed about 20 million years before the worst mass extinction in Earth’s history and about 40 million years before the first dinosaurs. It lived alongside other members of the amphibian lineage as well as the impressive sail-backed Dimetrodon, a predator related to the mammalian lineage.

The environment in which Kermitops lived appears to have alternated between warm and humid seasons and hot and arid seasons.

“This environment would be similar to modern-day monsoons that take place in the Southwest U.S. and Southeast Asia,” So said.

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Oxfam Accuses Rich Corporations of ‘Grabbing’ Water From Global South

LONDON — As the United Nations observes World Water Day on Friday, there is a growing risk of conflict over water resources as climate change takes hold, the international body said.

Meanwhile, nongovernmental aid agency Oxfam accused global corporations of “grabbing” water from poorer countries to boost profits.

Declaring this year’s theme Water for Peace, the U.N. warned that “when water is scarce or polluted, or when people have unequal or no access, tensions can rise between communities and countries.”

“More than 3 billion people worldwide depend on water that crosses national borders. Yet only 24 countries have cooperation agreements for all their shared water,” the U.N. said. “As climate change impacts increase and populations grow, there is an urgent need within and between countries to unite around protecting and conserving our most precious resource.”

In South Africa’s largest city, Johannesburg, the taps have been running dry for several weeks, affecting millions of people.

On the outskirts of the city in Soweto, thousands of people have been lining up to collect water in bottles and buckets from tankers that bring in water from outside the city.

“It has been a serious challenge, a very challenging time for my age that I have to be here carrying these 20-liter buckets,” Thabisile Mchunu, an older Soweto resident, told The Associated Press on Monday. “And the sad thing is that we don’t know when our taps are going to be wet again.”

Crumbling infrastructure is partly to blame for the water shortages in Johannesburg. But scientists say worsening climate change is causing reservoirs to dry up in South Africa and many other parts of the world.

The United Nations estimates that 2.2 billion people live without safely managed drinking water.

Scientists from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say roughly half of the world’s population experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year, with poorer nations in the Global South the worst affected.

 

Water “grabbing”

In a report published Thursday, Oxfam accused major global corporations of “grabbing” vital water resources.

“The private sector is grabbing and polluting this resource at the expense of local populations in order to make profits, further increasing inequalities. Droughts exacerbated by climate change affect agriculture and therefore the economies of the countries that depend on it, contributing to increased poverty, food insecurity and health problems for the inhabitants, particularly in the Global South,” the report said.

Oxfam accuses richer countries and multinational corporations of shifting water shortages to poorer regions by importing water-intensive products such as fruit, vegetables, meat, flowers and bottled water from overseas.

The report says agriculture accounts for 70% of water withdrawals, including through irrigation systems, to support the meat industry and biofuels.

“It is part of a neocolonial logic aimed at satisfying the consumption needs of the countries of the North at the expense of the countries of the South,” Oxfam said.

Its analysis suggests the private sector is failing to reduce its impact on water resources.

Of the “350 corporations that have been analyzed through the database — which account for half of the world’s agricultural revenue — only one in four of them are declaring they are reducing water use and pollution,” Quentin Ghesquiere, an agriculture and food safety adviser at Oxfam France, told VOA.

Government regulation

Oxfam also noted that large corporations are permitted to withdraw water, even when local populations face restrictions. It highlighted the activities of the French-owned multinational food products company Danone.

“Danone, in May 2023, continued to extract water from aquifers [in France] despite the restrictions that applied to local populations, in full legality. In the same year, the company made profits of almost 900 million euros and paid out 1.2 billion euros in dividends to its shareholders,” the Oxfam report said.

In a statement to VOA, Danone said that managing water sustainably is a priority, adding that “we have accelerated our innovations and investments to reduce, on a voluntary basis, water withdrawals from our bottling site.”

“Since 2017, we have invested 30 million euros to modernize our production lines, which allowed us to reduce our withdrawals by 17% over the period 2017-2023, maintaining volumes sold,” the Danone statement said.

The Oxfam report recommends stronger regulation and calls for “ambitious funding for adaptation in developing countries and universal access to water.”

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At UN, Nations Cooperate Toward Safe, Trustworthy AI Systems

United Nations — The U.N. General Assembly adopted by consensus Thursday a first-of-its-kind resolution addressing the potential of artificial intelligence to accelerate progress toward sustainable development, while emphasizing the need for safe, secure and trustworthy AI systems.

The initiative, led by the United States, seeks to manage AI’s risks while utilizing its benefits.

“Today as the U.N. and AI finally intersect, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to choose as one united global community to govern this technology rather than to let it govern us,” said U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “So let us reaffirm that AI will be created and deployed through the lens of humanity and dignity, safety and security, human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

The Biden administration said it took more than three months to negotiate what it characterized as a “baseline set of principles” around AI, engaging with 120 countries and incorporating feedback from many of them, including China, which was one of the 123 co-sponsors of the text.

While General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, they reflect the political consensus of the international community.

The resolution recognizes the disparities in technological development between developed and developing countries and stresses the need to bridge the digital divide so everyone can equitably access the benefits of AI.

It also outlines measures for responsible AI governance, including the development of regulatory frameworks, capacity building initiatives and support for research and innovation. The resolution encourages international collaboration to address the evolving challenges and opportunities AI technologies pose, with a focus on advancing sustainable development goals.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris welcomed adoption of the resolution, saying all nations must be guided by a common set of understandings on the use of AI systems.

“Too often, in past technological revolutions, the benefits have not been shared equitably, and the harms have been felt by a disproportionate few,” she said in a statement. “This resolution establishes a path forward on AI where every country can both seize the promise and manage the risks of AI.”

At the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Switzerland, in January, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern about the risk of unintended consequences with “every new iteration of generative AI.” He said it has “enormous potential” for sustainable development but also the potential to worsen inequality.

“And some powerful tech companies are already pursuing profits with a clear disregard for human rights, personal privacy and social impact,” he said at the time.

The U.N. chief created an AI advisory body last year, and it will publish its final report ahead of the U.N.’s Summit of the Future in September.

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Economy & business/Silicon Valley & Technology
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Reddit, the Self-Anointed ‘Front Page of the Internet,’ Jumps 55% in Wall Street Debut

NEW YORK — Reddit soared in its Wall Street debut as investors pushed the valued of the company close to $9 billion seconds after it began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Reddit, which priced its IPO at $34 a share, debuted Thursday afternoon at $47 a share. The going price has climbed even higher since, with shares for the self-anointed “front page of the internet” soaring more than 55% as of around 1:20 p.m. ET.

The IPO will test the quirky company’s ability to overcome a nearly 20-year history colored by uninterrupted losses, management turmoil and occasional user backlashes to build a sustainable business.

“The supply is pretty limited and there’s strong demand, so my sense is that this is going to be a hot IPO,” Reena Aggarwal, director of Georgetown University’s Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy, said ahead of Reddit’s trading Thursday. “The good news for Reddit is it’s a hot market.”

Still, she also anticipates Reddit’s IPO to be volatile. Even with a sizeable “pop,” it’s possible that some might sell their shares to reap their gains soon after, potentially causing prices to drift.

The interest surrounding Reddit stems largely from a large audience that religiously visits the service to discuss a potpourri of subjects that range from silly memes to existential worries, as well as get recommendations from like-minded people.

About 76 million users checked into one of Reddit’s roughly 100,000 communities in December, according to the regulatory disclosures required before the San Francisco company goes public. Reddit set aside up to 1.76 million of 15.3 million shares being offered in the IPO for users of its service.

Per the usual IPO custom, the remaining shares are expected to be bought primarily by mutual funds and other institutional investors betting Reddit is ready for prime time in finance.

Reddit’s moneymaking potential also has attracted some prominent supporters, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who accumulated a stake as an early investor that has made him one of the company’s biggest shareholders. Altman owns 12.2 million shares of Reddit stock, according to the company’s IPO disclosures.

Other early investors in Reddit have included PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Academy Award-winning actor Jared Leto and rapper Snoop Dogg. None of them are listed among Reddit’s largest shareholders heading into the IPO.

By the tech industry’s standards, Reddit remains extraordinarily small for a company that has been around as long as it has.

Reddit has never profited from its broad reach while piling up cumulative losses of $717 million. That number has swollen from cumulative losses of $467 million in December 2021 when the company first filed papers to go public before aborting that attempt.

In the recent documents filed for its revived IPO, Reddit attributed the losses to a fairly recent focus on finding new ways to boost revenue.

Not long after it was born, Reddit was sold to magazine publisher Conde Nast for $10 million in deal that meant the company didn’t need to run as a standalone business. Even after Conde Nast parent Advance Magazine Publishers spun off Reddit in 2011, the company said in its IPO filing that it didn’t begin to focus on generating revenue until 2018.

Those efforts, mostly centered around selling ads, have helped the social platform increase its annual revenue from $229 million in 2020 to $804 million last year. But the San Francisco-based company also posted combined losses of $436 million from 2020 through 2023.

Reddit outlined a strategy in its filing calling for even more ad sales on a service that it believes companies will be a powerful marketing magnet because so many people search for product recommendations there.

The company also is hoping to bring in more money by licensing access to its content in deals similar to the $60 million that Google recently struck to help train its artificial intelligence models. That ambition, though, faced an almost immediate challenge when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission opened an inquiry into the arrangement.

Since Thursday just marks Reddit’s first day on the public market, Aggarwal stresses that the first key measure of success will boil down to the company’s next earnings call.

“As a public company now they have to report a lot more … in the next earnings release,” she said. “I’m sure the market will watch that carefully.”

Reddit also experienced tumultuous bouts of instability in leadership that may scare off prospective investors. Company co-founders Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian — also the husband of tennis superstar Serena Williams — both left Reddit in 2009 while Conde Nast was still in control, only to return years later.

Huffman, 40, is now CEO, but how he got the job serves as a reminder of how messy things can get at Reddit. The change in command occurred in 2015 after Ellen Pao resigned as CEO amid a nasty user backlash to the banning of several communities and the firing of Reddit’s talent director. Even though Ohanian said he was primarily responsible for the firing and the bans, Pao was hit with most of the vitriol.

Although his founder’s letter leading up to this IPO didn’t mention it, Huffman touched upon the company’s past turmoil in another missive included in a December 2021 filing attempt that was subsequently canceled.

“We lived these challenges publicly and have the scars, learnings, and policy updates to prove it,” Huffman wrote in 2021. “Our history influences our future. There will undoubtedly be more challenges to come.”

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