To solve the climate crisis, we need an investment revolution
We can create the future we need - but we have to make a start now
Image: Karsten Würth on Unsplash.com
25 Jul 2020
Nicole Systrom Founder, Sutro Energy Group
The World Economic Forum

More on the agenda
Explore context
Climate Change

Explore the latest strategic trends, research and analysis

The scale of the climate crisis and its potential impacts mean we need a scientific and investment revolution to tackle it.

There are opportunities for patient investors in areas such as energy storage and electrification.

It's time to tap into the power of science and innovation. Here's a guide.


It’s hard to know its ultimate scale or how long it will take, but over the coming months the world will be watching the urgent efforts of scientists to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. At the same time, engineers and academics will develop technologies and models to help businesses and our economy adapt to this extended period of social distancing, Zoom calls and home schooling. And manufacturers will continue to dedicate some of their factories to the mass production of everything from hand sanitizer to ventilators. It’s clear our capacity for innovation is being tested.


It reminds us that as much as we depend on our leaders in moments of crisis and need – and boy, do we ever – we also depend on the tenacity and insights of scientists, the ingenuity and vision of entrepreneurs, and the resourcefulness and boldness of companies to solve big problems. But we also need investors.


I have spent much of my career trying to facilitate innovations that will help us address another existential threat to our society: climate change. Like COVID-19, this is an area where the scale of the problem is so vast and the repercussions so massive – with huge economic and social justice implications – that we need nothing less than a scientific and investment revolution.

Have you read?
There's no better time for investors to start making healthy returns
Billions for sustainable investments – Germany’s plan for a green recovery
Private sector investors must now step up to quell the COVID-19 crisis


Decarbonizing our entire economy by 2050 will require two things:


1. Massive investments and innovation in areas like electrification, affordable long-term energy storage, and regenerative agriculture.


2. Investors patient enough to allow these investments to pay off.


For those willing to wait 10 to 15 years for returns, there is an opportunity to focus long-term on energy storage and the technology we need to remake transportation systems. Electrifying our vehicle fleet is the single biggest opportunity we have to reduce emissions in the transportation sector, but we’ll need a seismic increase in electricity production in order to shift from oil and gas, and provide equitable access to clean transportation options. This increase in demand for clean power can be met by solar and wind, but will also require long-term seasonal energy storage—batteries that can provide energy when renewables don’t provide enough to keep the lights on.


One prominent company working on long-term seasonal energy storage is Form Energy, which is developing a new type of sulphur-based battery. Form, which is based in the Boston area and is backed by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, was founded by Mateo Jaramillo, who launched Tesla’s PowerWall business, and MIT professor Yet-Ming Chiang. Another start-up, Quidnet, is pioneering technology that pumps water to store energy at extremely large capacities.


Game-changing innovations aren’t always about new technologies. A generation ago, in the 1990s, New York began to purchase land in the Catskills watershed. The innovative idea was that by acquiring land upstate to restrain development, they could reduce runoff and pollution to provide clean water to New York City. In this case, better short-term forest management saved taxpayers between $8 billion and $10 billion because they didn’t have to build a filtration plant that would cost millions of dollars a year to operate – allowing the state to sequester carbon, offset greenhouse gases and help communities better adapt to the extreme weather patterns and precipitation changes brought about by climate change.
New investments in clean energy over the past 14 years have flattened
Image: Bloomberg New Energy Finance

At a time when tropical forests are sequestering less carbon dioxide – studies show that by 2035 the Amazon won’t be taking on any new CO2, and that deforestation has been rapidly increasing while the world was distracted by the COVID-19 crisis – investors should be exploring ways to empower local municipalities and indigenous communities to better manage and restore forests, marshland and other natural ecosystems. New financial instruments could provide payoffs in the form of cash raised for local communities, increased biodiversity and climate resiliency.


None of this is to minimize the importance of near-term investments in proven or close-to-proven technologies. Indeed, investing in sustainable infrastructure and all the jobs that will create can be a cornerstone of the world’s economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. Everything from building community solar farms to next-generation energy-efficiency retrofits and energy-efficient coatings for windows should be on the table for investors.


So should making electric grids more efficient. While replacing them all will take decades, companies like Siemens and Stem have been developing software that learns from patterns and allows everyone from utility partners to industrial facility managers at universities and corporate campuses across the country to forecast and manage electricity use more efficiently. These, too, are worthy areas of investment.

What's the World Economic Forum doing about the transition to clean energy?


















Show


One major lesson from COVID-19 is that science matters. Sometimes it tells us that we need to make a moonshot investment in, say, decarbonizing energy-intensive industries like cement and steel production. Other times, science points to simpler but equally game-changing steps, such as how crop rotation, managed grazing, and manure and organic fertilizer management could make the agricultural sector carbon-neutral.


But of all the lessons we’ve learned from COVID-19 as we race toward a solution, perhaps the biggest is that we ignored the warning signals instead of preparing. With the climate, let’s make the most of this opportunity. Let’s start that race now and tap the power that innovation has to accelerate change and unlock new and surprising possibilities. And let’s look to scientists, enabled by savvy investors, to lead the way.
Share

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.
Written by

Nicole Systrom, Founder, Sutro Energy Group

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

INVESTMENT MUST BE MADE AS SOCIAL CAPITAL REMOVING CAPITAL FROM THE 1% AND INVESTING IT FOR THE GOOD OF ALL, THE COMMONWEALTH

On Bugs Bunny’s 80th birthday, how Jewish is that wascally wabbit anyway?

THE WARNER CARTOONISTS MODELED THEIR CHARACTERS AFTER MOVIE STARS SUCH AS PETER LORRE, IN BUG'S CASE IT WAS THIS GUY

Benjamin Ivry

July 26, 2020 

Image by Getty Images

As we celebrate the 80th anniversary of the release of “A Wild Hare,” the first animated short starring Bugs Bunny, the question arises: How Jewish was the sassy, anti-authoritarian rabbit?

Since 1940, Jewish audiences have taken Bugs to their heart for his anarchic energy in lightning-fast short films of concentrated intensity and visual quality, especially those made before 1950.

Bug’s voice, created by the radio personality Mel Blanc (1908–1989) of Russian Jewish origin, was a blend of Brooklyn and Bronx tones. Blanc was such a virtuoso of melting pot sound effects that Milt Josefsberg, a writer on the Jack Benny Program, Blanc’s longtime employer, told his biographer that scripts routinely challenged Blanc to produce seemingly impossible accents. One such was a man on the street identified as an African American gay Jew (using derogatory slang terms of the time). Blanc faithfully reproduced this unlikely blend of tonal characterizations, so Bugs’ Bronx/Brooklyn mix proved no challenge to him.



The typical plot of Bugs Bunny shorts, in which the hare is pursued by an adversary, often the hunter Elmer Fudd, could also be seen as archetypically Jewish. Andrea Most’s “Theatrical Liberalism: Jews and Popular Entertainment in America” declares: “A remarkable amount of American comedy created by Jews features characters who are running for their lives.”

Bugs’ aggressiveness was a matter of concern to Looney Tunes films director Chuck Jones. Worried that violence wreaked upon opponents might repel audiences, Jones insisted that Bugs must first be endangered by antagonists before he reciprocated. Bugs’ catchphrase, “Of course you realize, this means war,” was lifted from Groucho Marx’s 1933 film “Duck Soup.”

Yet even when Bugs imitated Groucho’s stooping posture and waggling eyebrows in “Hair-Raising Hare” (1946) and “Slick Hare,” (1947) the effect was no more overtly Jewish than other visual vocabulary that inspired the filmmakers, such as Clark Gable’s gnawing on carrots in “It Happened One Night” (1934). Director Tex Avery claimed that the expression “What’s up, Doc?” was often heard in the Southwest during his youth.

Likewise, when Bugs reminisces in “A Hare Grows in Manhattan” (1947) and “What’s Up, Doc” (1950), about growing up on New York’s East Side, Irish American family life as described in Betty Smith’s “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is parodied, not Jewish lore.

Over the years, enthused articles marked by wishful thinking that Bugs might be Jewish were overshadowed by the Jewish historian Elliott Horowitz (1953-2017.) In a 2004 article in “Jewish Studies Quarterly,” and an earlier 2001 article in “Annales,” Horowitz addressed the question of Bugs’ Yiddishkeit with scholarly panache.

Horowitz explains that hares appeared in the painted ceiling of the wooden synagogue of Chodorow, a shtetl in Galicia, Poland, recreated in the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv, as well as the synagogue of Gwozdziec, a replica of which was installed at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.

Boris Khaimovich of the Hebrew University’s Center for Jewish Art has analyzed the meaning of hares in East European Jewish tradition, pointing out that although rabbits and hares are non-kosher, hounds chase hares in early Jewish illuminated manuscripts. One book, the Kennicott Bible created in Spain in 1476, shows hares “punishing or ruling their enemies,” even “storming a fortress occupied by a wolf” in a Bugs-like retort to tyranny.

This treasure, now in Oxford’s Bodleian Library, was reproduced in Bezalel Narkis’s “Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts.” Khaimovich posits that in this “topsy-turvy” world, “hares in medieval Jewish iconography personify the Jews.”


From the wooden synagogue of Chodorow, Elliott Horowitz traces a line to the artist David Moss born in 1946 in Dayton, Ohio. Illustrator of a much-acclaimed Haggadah Moss included images of Jews as hares endangered by specific historical enemies, which according to Horowitz may reflect early exposure to such Bugs Bunny films. In “Herr meets Hare,” (1945) Bugs faces down Nazi henchman Hermann Goering by dressing as a combination Lady Godiva and Valkyrie, as music from Wagner’s “Tannhäuser” plays on the soundtrack. Later in the same short, Bugs terrifies Adolf Hitler by masquerading as Joseph Stalin.

Given these and other examples, Horowitz asks if Bugs Bunny may be considered Jewish art. Not, he concludes, if we adopt Cecil Roth’s definition of Jewish art as necessarily produced by Jews. Yet if we consider the criterion in Richard Cohen’s “Jewish Icons” that such art must reflect the “Jewish experience,” then we may consider Bugs a proponent of Yiddishkeit.

With adherence, further worries appear for those chary about the gleeful violence meted out by a representative of Judaism. Joseph Epstein noted in “The American Scholar” in Autumn 1984, “A short while ago I saw a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and found my heart going out to Elmer Fudd, that nasty rabbit’s victim.”

Epstein’s empathy was shared by Jack Shaheen, a writer of Lebanese Christian origin with expertise about ethnic stereotypes. Shaheen stated wistfully, “My childhood hero, Bugs Bunny, clobbers nasty Arabs in “1001 Rabbit Tales”(1982). Bugs trounces an ugly genie, a dense sheikh, and the ruler’s spoiled son.”

Bugs is indeed one violent Lepus. His never-say-die assertiveness was displayed in World War II propaganda well beyond “Hare Meets Herr,” with “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips” (1944) so vehemently anti-Japanese that it has been embargoed from public screenings in recent years.

Bugs was on the battlefield as mascot in U.S. Air Force 380th Bombardment Group planes, and served as squadron logo for Marine Torpedo/Bomber Squadron 242, also gracing the nose of 8th Air Force bombers.

So if Bugs is Jewish, his fighting spirit would be akin to that of Moshe Dayan or Ariel Sharon, perhaps echoed in a plagiarization on “Tomorrow’s Pioneers,” a children’s program broadcast from 2007 to 2009 on Al-Aqsa TV, a Palestinian Hamas-affiliated station. To educate future jihadis and suicide bombers, a Bugs Bunny wannabe named Assoud boasts that he will “get rid of the Jews, Allah willing.”

Comparably unsettling images were evoked in the critic Geoffrey Hartman’s discussion of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus in “The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust.” Hartman defines cartoons as transitional objects “helping us toward a difficult truth.” “Maus” reflected Nazi representation of Jews as rodents to “our own uneasy conscience about the ‘lower’ orders of creation” like rabbits who are slaughtered and also promoted “to comic strip immortality.”

Correspondingly, the American Jewish essayist Stephen Miller (b. 1941) in reflections published in “The Sewanee Review” in Spring 2011, relates how in childhood, he saw both God and Bugs Bunny as cruel, but at least Bugs had a sense of humor. More recently, after viewing Bugs cartoons while mulling over violent anti-Semitism, Miller fell asleep and dreamt that the rabbit, chased by Elmer Fudd, emerged into a “crowd of ranting jihadists who are marching with their AK-47s held high and screaming anti-Semitic curses. Bugs is staring at these men and wondering what’s going on. ‘Eh, what’s up, Doc?’ he says to no one in particular.”

Such visions imply that on his 80th birthday, Bugs may be assimilated to Judaism only with caution, since as a triumphantly reactive character, assimilation may bring with it further unsought responses.

Benjamin Ivry is a frequent contributor to the Forward.

https://forward.com/culture/449550/on-bugs-bunnys-80th-birthday-how-jewish-is-that-wascally-wabbit-anyway/

I’m a Zionist. Here’s why I protested in L.A. against annexation

• July 23, 2020
• By Dan Lainer-Vos

Image by Dan Lainer-Vos

Anti-annexation protesters outside the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles July 19, 2020.

I protested in front of the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles last Sunday. I never thought that I would do that. In doing so I allied myself with the thousands of Israelis who have been rallying in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his annexation plan. Just like them, I support Israel, I am a Zionist– and yet, I believe the annexation plan is so deeply immoral and disturbing that I feel compelled to act.

And I hope that all American Jews will join me.

Growing up in Israel, political arguments swirled around me for as long as I can remember. At the dinner table, at school, in the youth movement. At the heart of all the arguments was the question of the occupation and Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians.

People on the right argued that the Occupied Territories, Judea and Samaria in their terminology, were, in fact, ours all along, a divine, biblical gift. If this argument failed they quickly resorted to more practical considerations, offering a conditional willingness to withdraw if only a “trustworthy Palestinian partner” would one day appear. In the meanwhile, their suggestion was to temporarily hold onto those territories, conveniently ignoring the people that lived there.

Those on the left, like myself, argued that keeping millions of Palestinians under military occupation for decades was immoral. If this argument failed to gain traction, they cautioned that in the long run, the occupation would result in international isolation, economic drain, and, ultimately, cripple Israel’s democracy.

Given my views on the occupation, enlisting in the Israeli army posed a bit of a challenge for me. Ultimately, my belief in Zionism and my motivation to serve my country overcame my doubts. Israel was the haven that embraced my mother and her family after the Holocaust, and it had served as a haven for so many others since.

Now I realize that the key factor that allowed me to serve was the belief that the occupation was temporary. This assumption allowed me to avoid reckoning with the fact that I personally contributed to the oppression of millions of Palestinians.

A lot has changed since. After the army, as an undergraduate, I met and fell in love with a wonderful Jewish American woman who became my wife. We later moved to the United States where we established a family. Living in the United States, surrounded by mostly liberal Jews, sharpened my understanding of the wrongs of the occupation. Things that seemed natural in Israel, like the near-total separation between Jews and Arabs, are deeply unsettling from here.

Yet even after almost two decades here, my heart is still in Israel. I remain a political junkie. Every morning, I still check news from Israel first. But today, much of the old arguments between left and right seem stale. My way, which once seemed like a vibrant alternative, has been so marginalized that people now use the term ‘lefty’ as a curse. It is painful.

Looking back, I see that some of my anti-occupation cautionary predictions were wrong. Despite the deepening of the occupation, Israel has not become a pariah state in the eyes of the international community. The post-Cold War world, it is now clear, cares little about Israel’s actions in the occupied territories. Furthermore, despite deepening inequalities, Israel’s economic growth continues unabated. One can even argue that the occupation, which secured a flow of cheap labor, construction jobs in settlements, and demand for hi-tech security-related technologies has spurred Israel’s economy, even if not everyone shares the bounty.

But the warnings about the corrupting effects of the occupation on Israel’s democracy, unfortunately, proved accurate. In an effort to cement their hold over the government, Netanyahu and his allies presented Palestinian citizens as undifferentiated enemies, effectively rendering their votes illegitimate. Their success was so complete that in recent elections even the centrist parties that have sought to oust Netanyahu embraced the anti-democratic idea that Arab parties are not legitimate partners when it comes to forming a governing coalition. Netanyahu’s intensifying attacks on liberal NGOs and the legal system are designed to further delegitimize anyone who dares to contest the idea that only Jews should partake in the political process.

Even from the United States, I feel the effect of this shift very personally. While my political beliefs have placed me in the opposition for most of my life, only in recent years do I feel unwelcome in my own state. In the past, I used to talk with strangers about politics to get a sense of the street. It used to be enlightening even if sometimes unsettling. I recall a conversation with a taxi driver who related that prior to 1967 it was his father who waited for a day’s job at the junction and now has become the contractor who picks Palestinian day laborers. In recent visits to Israel, when I broach such conversations, the response is often hostile.

The plan to annex large parts of the occupied territories, I fear, will make it even worse. It will turn the occupation, which I long considered a temporary aberration, into the norm which will destroy the possibility that sometime, in the future, a just Israel may reassert itself. The annexation will make it clear that this country, which I love so deeply, is no longer mine. While my own story is unique, I suspect that this is true for all American Jews who care about Israel and about the equality of all people. If the occupation becomes permanent, loving Israel will be impossible.

This is why, on July 19, I went to protest with dozens of other L.A. Jews against the annexation in front of the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles. I believe that protesting against the current Israeli government is the duty of every American Jew who cares about Zionism and about Israel’s future. I hope you will join me in consulates around the country. Our voices must be heard.

Dan Lainer-Vos is an adjunct assistant professor of sociology at University of Southern California and the author of “Sinews of the Nation: Constructing Irish and Zionist Bonds in the United States.”

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

Trump’s Hint That He May Not Concede Election Would Be a Crisis Like No Other

If Trump loses the electoral college in the fall, which is by no means certain or even likely, he may refuse to concede. Were this to happen, either a military or civilian response or a co-ordinated military and civilian response to remove him from office might be required.

by Jeffrey B. Meyers

U.S. President Donald Trump is deploying irregularly uniformed armed federal agents in unmarked government vehicles to cities like Portland, Ore., and Chicago to seize unarmed protesters off the street without legal reason.

Historian Timothy Snyder’s wise warning at the opening of the Trump era was prescient: “When men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and the picture of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.”

From the riots in Charlottesville, Va., three summers ago to right now, Snyder has described Trump’s America. The authoritarian threshold has now been decisively crossed. Democracy and the rule of law, to the extent they were ever more than noble aspirations, are now receding into the rear-view mirror.

Think that is alarmist? Then why are millions of Americans, and probably billions of people worldwide, dreading a second Trump term?

We can all intuit that the cult of the personality surrounding Trump is powerful and will be difficult to dislodge, whatever the outcome of the election in November.

Suicide cult?

Steven Hassan, a leading U.S. expert on cult formation and mind control, has made the compelling, book-length case that Trump’s base behaves and acts more like a suicide cult than a traditional political partisan group. The recent politicization of masking during the COVID-19 pandemic by Trump supporters suggests that Hasan may be on to something.

With his references to good people on both sides in Charlottesville and his insistence in a recent interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News that whites are the victims of more police violence than Blacks, Trump remains the gaslighter-in-chief.

His abuse of the presidential bully pulpit has unabashedly unleashed the demons of hate and conspiracy into America’s public spaces.

No one should be surprised. This dark vision was presented to the world in all its dystopic horror in Trump’s inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2017.

Civil rights declining in the U.S.

Now, Trumpism has spread globally, including into some the world’s leading democratic states with the most long-standing commitments to the rule of law. It is no coincidence that international human rights watchdog Freedom House described 2017, the year Trump took office, as the 12th consecutive year of decline in global freedom as measured by net declines in political rights and civil liberties in 71 states, with only 35 registering gains.

The pace of decline has continued in subsequent years. The 2020 Human Rights Watch World Report delves into rights violations in the United States in areas that include racial inequality in the criminal justice system, rising poverty and inequality in health-care outcomes.

All of this was documented before COVID-19 and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matters movement following the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, in Minneapolis in May.

As the U.S. heads into its statutorily scheduled election on “the first Tuesday after Nov. 1” (and in case you are curious, it is almost impossible for Trump to actually cancel the election), the depth of the president’s disdain for democracy and the rule of law is on full display.

False claims

In the Wallace interview, Trump — with his habit of proudly revealing his inner authoritarian dialogue — offered a racist and patently false riff on how more whites are killed by police than Blacks, contrary to the evidence.

Trump also falsely claimed that Joe Biden’s campaign was promising to abolish or defund police. And he offered another unprovoked outburst against the New York Times 1619 project that tells the story of America from the arrival of the first European slave ship in the British colony of Virginia rather that starting at the country’s founding in 1776.

Trump also revealed hostility to the removal of the Confederate flag, Confederate statues or any other symbolic move to acknowledge the obvious current cultural and historical watershed moment in America.

And after three and a half years in office, Trump still shocks. This time, the moment came when Wallace asked the president whether he would accept defeat in an election. His response: “I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense, OK?”

From there, Trump went on to explain how Hillary Clinton never accepted her loss to him in 2016, which is also false.

Wallace, to his credit, was dogged and pushed Trump, asking again. Trump responded, just as he had to a similar question in 2016 from Wallace: “No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t last time either.”

The difference last time, however, was that Trump was not the White House incumbent. This is why he’s raised serious concerns about overstaying his welcome and difficulties around the peaceful handover of power.

Term in office ends on Jan. 20

The 20th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution specifies that a president’s term in office “shall end at noon on the 20th day of January” after an election.

This peaceful transfer of power in accordance with the 20th Amendment has, from 1787 to 2017, permitted the American experiment to continue bound by democratic principles and rule of law.

Granted, it’s not always been easy and there have been blips. In the 1876 election at the end of the Reconstruction era, the outcome between Democrat Samuel J. Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was so close that Congress appointed a special Electoral Commission to resolve the matter.

More recently in the Bush vs. Gore case, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped into the breach and tipped the scale for Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore.

Every historical blip in the peaceful transition of power between presidents in American history has revolved around divergent Electoral College and popular vote counts. Many of the most recent elections have had this type of divergence, including 2016.

In 2000, Gore stepped aside and obeyed the ruling of the Supreme Court despite the misgivings of some of his supporters.

If Trump loses the electoral college in the fall, which is by no means certain or even likely, he may refuse to concede. Were this to happen, either a military or civilian response or a co-ordinated military and civilian response to remove him from office might be required.

To decisively end the Trump presidency, a large mandate with clear margins in key swing states will be necessary. Of course, if he wins re-election or there is electoral interference again, the next few years could be much worse. In the meantime, buckle up.

Jeffrey B. Meyers is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Thompson Rivers University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


Image: Reuters

ICE bans new international students enrolled in online-only classes from entering U.S.

BY LI COHEN

JULY 24, 2020 / 10:07 PM / CBS NEWS

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on Friday that international students who plan to solely enroll in online classes this fall will be barred from entering the country. The announcement came as the U.S. topped 4 million coronavirus cases and as colleges and universities roll out plans to shift to online learning for the fall semester.

"Nonimmigrant students in new or initial status after March 9 will not be able to enter the U.S. to enroll in a U.S. school as a nonimmigrant student for the fall term to pursue a full course of study that is 100 percent online," ICE said in its press release.

The department also mandated that designated school officials are not to provide new international students with an I-20 form that declares their legal student status. This guidance includes new international students who are outside of the U.S. and want to take online-only classes at an education institution that is certified by the Student and Exchange Visitor Program.

ICE has tried to enact similar guidance earlier this summer, saying international students attending schools who switch to online-only learning this fall would have had to either transfer schools, leave the country or possibly be deported. The department rescinded that guidance on July 14.

Now, international students who "were actively enrolled" at a school in the U.S. on March 9 will not be affected by Friday's guidance, ICE said.

As of November, there were more than 1 million international students in the U.S., according to the Institute of International Education.

Immigration
Lawsuit challenges detention of migrant children at Texas hotel
Migrant mom detained by ICE fears being separated from her son
Migrant kids allegedly held in hotels with "no security" or virus protection

Out of more than 1,250 colleges in the U.S., 12% are switching to an online-only model this fall, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which has been tracking college's plans for the upcoming semester. The University of California, Clemson University, Harvard University and Princeton University are among the colleges moving online.

In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance for how colleges and universities should approach the upcoming semester. The lowest risk option for spreading coronavirus, according to the CDC, is for schools to "engage in virtual-only learning options, activities, and events," and for residence halls to be closed, where feasible.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. has roughly doubled since the beginning of June, according to data monitored by Johns Hopkins University. College-age students — those between the ages of 18 and 29 — make up roughly 21% of cases in the U.S., according to the CDC.

ICE's announcement on Friday was met with criticism.

In a tweet, the American Civil Liberties Union said that the Trump administration "is exploiting the pandemic to target immigrant youth," and that the new policy will "disrupt the lives of hundreds of thousands of students." The organization said Congress "must investigate" the ban.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy described ICE's announcement as an "attack on our international students."

"These rules are unnecessary and un-American, and the middle of a public health crisis is no time to be playing with the futures of our students," he tweeted.

It’s time for @ICEgov to drop this attack on our international students. These rules are unnecessary and un-American, and the middle of a public health crisis is no time to be playing with the futures of our students.https://t.co/B2AJU0maK7— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) July 24, 2020

The New Jersey Office of the Secretary of Education described the news as "unbelievable and "xenophobic and illegal."

"Just 10 days ago, @ICEgov rescinded its directive. Now here we go again with the xenophobic and illegal antics," the office tweeted. "We consider newly-enrolling international students part of our New Jersey family, regardless of whether they're learning online or not. ICE should too."

Unbelievable. Just 10 days ago, @ICEgov rescinded its directive. Now here we go again with the xenophobic and illegal antics. We consider newly-enrolling international students part of our New Jersey family, regardless of whether they’re learning online or not. ICE should too. https://t.co/Xy2YcsZ7Z3— NJ Office of the Secretary of Higher Education (@NJHigherEd) July 24, 2020

First published on July 24, 2020 / 10:07 PM

© 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Over 13,000 S.African health workers contract coronavirus

By AFP - Jul 23,2020 - 

Staff shortages and a lack of personal protective equipment have been blamed for the infection increases (AFP photo)

JOHANNESBURG — Coronavirus has infected some 13,000 South African health workers and killed more than 100 of them, the health ministry said on Thursday, as the virus takes a toll on frontline caregivers.

South Africa holds the highest number of infections on the continent with 408,052 recorded cases and 5,940 deaths so far.

It is also the world's fifth worst-affected country in terms of diagnosed infections.

Health ministry spokesman Popo Maja told AFP that 13,174 health workers had become infected as of Tuesday, including 103 deaths and 6,394 people declared recovered.

South Africa's statistics were unveiled as the World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that more than 10,000 health workers in 40 countries had been sickened by the virus.

"The growth we are seeing in COVID-19 cases in Africa is placing an ever-greater strain on health services across the continent," said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, at a news conference on Thursday.

"This has very real consequences for the individuals who work in them, and there is no more sobering example of this than the rising number of health worker infections," she said.

A combination of a recent spike in infections, staff shortages and a lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) have been blamed for the infection increases.

A recent report by South Africa's National Institute for Occupational Health said hospital admissions of health workers were increasing weekly in line with the national trend of rising numbers of admissions.

The data revealed that by July 12, some 2.6 percent of COVID-19 hospital admissions in South Africa were healthcare workers.

Those infected included nurses, doctors, porters, administrators, paramedics and laboratory scientists.

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize told parliament earlier this month that "since the COVID-19 pandemic, PPE supply chains have become severely constrained".

WHO Africa chief Moeti said it was critical to ensure health workers "have the equipment, skills and information they need to keep themselves, their patients and colleagues safe".

Sub-Saharan Africa has recorded more than 750,000 coronavirus cases, including 15,000 deaths.

Ukraine anti-corruption activist's house torched 

By AFP - Jul 23,2020 

Vitaly Shabunin talks to media in front of his burnt house on Thursday (AFP photo)

GNIDYN, Ukraine — A prominent Ukrainian anti-corruption campaigner said on Thursday his house had been set on fire and condemned authorities for failing to protect activists.

Vitaly Shabunin, the head of the non-profit Anti-Corruption Action Centre, posted photos on Facebook of his one-storey house with damaged interiors and a collapsed roof.

The Anti-Corruption Action Centre said it believed the arson was "an assassination attempt" targeting Shabunin and his family.

Speaking to reporters in front of his house in the village of Gnidyn outside Kiev, Shabunin accused President Volodymyr Zelensky of failing to protect activists.

"He hasn't done anything about it so far," he said. "People are being maimed and killed. And no one is held responsible for this."

Former actor and comedian Zelensky came to power last year pledging sweeping political change and to root out corruption.

Nobody was hurt in the blaze that tore through Shabunin's house early Thursday, he said, adding that he, his wife and their children were not at home.

His parents managed to escape after a neighbour heard an explosion.

Shabunin said he did not know who had set the house on fire.

But Shabunin said he and his centre had a lot of powerful enemies, including Interior Minister Arsen Avakov and Igor Kolomoisky, a controversial tycoon with ties to Zelensky.

Police have opened a criminal probe.

Matti Maasikas, the EU ambassador to Ukraine, said he was "very disturbed" and called on Kiev to investigate.

"Civil activists must feel safe to carry on their mission," he tweeted.

In November 2018, Ukrainian anti-corruption campaigner Kateryna Gandzyuk died following numerous surgeries after attackers poured about a litre of acid on her.

Gandzyuk's death turned the spotlight on dozens of assaults on anti-corruption campaigners in Ukraine.

Both the European Union and the United States have called the attacks on activists unacceptable and urged authorities to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Pushing region, world into chaos

JORDAN TIMES

Home » Opinion » Editorial » Pushing region, world into chaos

Jul 22,2020 - Last updated at Jul 22,2020

In an interview this week with the British newspaper The Guardian, Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Omar Razzaz warned that the Israeli government’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank would be "ushering in a new apartheid state" that could be a radicalising force and further destabilise the region and the world, stressing that the annexation move would enshrine a South African-style apartheid system

In the interview, the Premier warned that anything short of the viable two-state solution is going to push the region and the world into chaos, challenging any Israeli official to come up with a better alternative than the two-state solution.

Reiterating Jordan’s unwavering position on the Palestinian issue that is based on the two-state solution and supporting the inalienable rights of the Palestinians, Razzaz clearly stated that Jordan opposes any steps that are not part of a comprehensive plan that leads to the envisioned two-state solution.

The Premier’s interview with the Guardian came to send a clear message to the world on where Jordan stands on the Palestinian issue as the official position of the Kingdom in this respect has become only too clear to the world. A position that staunchly propagates the two-state solution as the sole viable, just, sustainable and practical formula for the Palestinian case, excluding the one-state solution as solution that cannot be even thought of.

At a time when the entire world is reeling under the grip of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, Jordan continued to champion the Palestinian issue and has been repeatedly sending messages to the world and exerting its utmost efforts so the world does not lose sight of the core issue in the Middle East. In fact, Jordan has not ceased challenging unilateral Israeli actions in international fora and continued spearheading a slew of efforts and meetings with agendas topped by the peace process.

The Kingdom has not retreated one inch from its pursuit of Middle East peace based on the two-state solution, which guarantees the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the June 4, 1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital, living securely and peacefully alongside an Israeli state in accordance with international legitimacy resolutions and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.

Jordan’s unwavering and principled position in this regard remains clear; the two-state solution, which is supported by the EU and world powers, and anything short of that solution would only exacerbate tensions in a volatile region that has already been navigating tumultuous waters.

Peace and stability in the world can sprout solid roots only when there is peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis based on the two-state solution and Israel’s illegal, rejected and condemned plans to annex Palestinian territories do not serve regional or global peace and stability.

http://jordantimes.com/opinion/editorial/pushing-region-world-chaos

Rivian to begin deliveries of electric pickup truck in June 2021

 July 24, 2020



Image Credits: SOPA Images (opens in a new window)/ Getty Images

Rivian has started to run a pilot production line at its factory in Normal, Illinois, as the electric vehicle startup prepares to bring its pickup truck and SUV to market in summer 2021.

In an email sent to prospective customers, Rivian said deliveries of its R1T electric pickup truck will begin in June 2021. Deliveries of the R1S electric SUV will start in August 2021.

Rivian said in May that deliveries of the R1T and R1S would be pushed to 2021. It wasn’t clear — until today’s email — exactly when deliveries would begin.


Running a pilot production line is a critical step necessary to root out potential problems ahead of a full production launch. The two vehicles were supposed to come to market at the end of 2020. That timeline was extended to 2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic prompted Rivian to suspend construction work on the factory, a former Mitsubishi plant that the company acquired in 2017. The factory was where Mitsubishi in a joint venture with Chrysler Corporation called Diamond-Star Motors produced the Mitsubishi Eclipse, Plymouth Laser and Dodge Avenger, among others.

The factory will produce its R1T and R1S electric vehicles for consumers, as well as 100,000 delivery vans for Amazon. Rivian has said it is still on track to begin deliveries of electric vans built for Amazon in early 2021. About 10,000 of these electric vans will be on the road as early as 2022, and all 100,000 vehicles will be on the road by 2030, Amazon previously said.

Garmin global outage caused by ransomware attack, sources say
•July 25, 2020




Image Credits: Garmin / TechCrunch (screenshot()


An ongoing global outage at sport and fitness tech giant Garmin was caused by a ransomware attack, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident.


The incident began late Wednesday and continued through the weekend, causing disruption to the company’s online services for millions of users, including Garmin Connect, which syncs user activity and data to the cloud and other devices. The attack also took down flyGarmin, its aviation navigation and route-planning service.


Portions of Garmin’s website were also offline at the time of writing.


Garmin has said little about the incident so far. A banner on its website reads: “We are currently experiencing an outage that affects Garmin.com and Garmin Connect. This outage also affects our call centers, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chats. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and apologize for this inconvenience.”


In a brief update on Saturday, Garmin said it had “no indication that this outage has affected your data, including activity, payment or other personal information.”


The two sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they are not authorized to speak to the press, told TechCrunch that Garmin was trying to bring its network back online after the ransomware attack. One of the sources confirmed that the WastedLocker ransomware was to blame for the outage.


One other news outlet appeared to confirm that the outage was caused by WastedLocker.






Garmin’s online services have been down for days. The cause is believed to be ransomware, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident. (Screenshot: TechCrunch)

WastedLocker is a new kind of ransomware, detailed by security researchers at Malwarebytes in May, operated by a hacker group known as Evil Corp. Like other file-encrypting malware, WastedLocker infects computers, and locks the user’s files in exchange for a ransom, typically demanded in cryptocurrency.
Malwarebytes said that WastedLocker does not yet appear to have the capability to steal or exfiltrate data before encrypting the victim’s files, unlike other, newer ransomware strains. That means companies with backups may be able to escape paying the ransom. But companies without backups have faced ransom demands as much as $10 million.


The FBI has also long discouraged victims from paying ransoms related to malware attacks.


Evil Corp has a long history of malware and ransomware attacks. The group, allegedly led by a Russian national Maksim Yakubets, is known to have used Dridex, a powerful password-stealing malware that was used to steal more than $100 million from hundreds of banks over the past decade. Later, Dridex was also used as a way to deliver ransomware.

Yakubets, who remains at large, was indicted by the Justice Department last year for his alleged part in the group’s “unimaginable” amount of cybercrime during the past decade, according to U.S. prosecutors.


The Treasury also imposed sanctions on Evil Corp, including Yakubets and two other alleged members, for their involvement in the decade-long hacking campaign.


By imposing sanctions, it’s near-impossible for U.S.-based companies to pay the ransom — even if they wanted to — as U.S. nationals are “generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them,” per a Treasury statement.


Brett Callow, a threat analyst and ransomware expert at security firm Emsisoft, said those sanctions make it “especially complicated” for U.S.-based companies dealing with WastedLocker infections.


“WastedLocker has been attributed by some security companies to Evil Corp, and the known members of Evil Corp — which purportedly has loose connections to the Russian government — have been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury,” said Callow. “As a result of those sanctions, U.S persons are generally prohibited from transacting with those known members. This would seem to create a legal minefield for any company which may be considering paying a WastedLocker ransom,” he said.


Efforts to contact the alleged hackers were unsuccessful. The group uses different email addresses in each ransom note. We sent an email to two known email addresses associated with a previous WastedLocker incident, but did not hear back.


A Garmin spokesperson could not be reached for comment by phone or email on Saturday. (Garmin’s email servers have been down since the start of the incident.) Messages sent over Twitter were also not returned. We’ll update if we hear back.