Exclusive-Biden taps former EPA chief for White House climate coordinator role -sources

FILE PHOTO: EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy speaks during a news conference, accompanied by U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in Washington

Tue, December 15, 2020, 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President-elect Joe Biden will name Gina McCarthy, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration to a new role leading domestic climate policy coordination at the White House, two sources familiar with the process said on Tuesday.

McCarthy will lead inter-agency efforts to coordinate domestic climate change policy and serve as a counterpart to John Kerry, who Biden appointed as his special envoy on climate change.

McCarthy is currently the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental group. As EPA administrator to Obama she crafted some of the Obama administration's signature climate policies, including the Clean Power Plan to slash emissions from power plants.
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She is expected to play a key role carrying out the incoming Biden administration's planned actions to tackle climate change and address environmental justice.

Biden has called for a net zero emission target for power plants by 2035, as well as an aggressive push to shift to electric vehicles and expand the production of renewable energy.

Biden is also expected to name Jennifer Granholm as his energy secretary, Pete Buttigieg as his transportation secretary and New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland as interior secretary.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw, Valerie Volcovici and David Shepardson; Editing by Chris Reese and Aurora Ellis)

Deb Haaland Is Joe Biden's 'Leading Candidate' For Interior Secretary

Jarrett Renshaw and Valerie Volcovici
Tue, December 15, 2020, 

WILMINGTON, Del./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico appears to be President-elect Joe Biden's top choice to head the Interior Department, three informed sources said, a pick that would make her the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency.

The position would give her authority over a department that employs more than 70,000 people across the United States and oversees more than 20% of the nation's surface, including tribal lands and national parks like Yellowstone and Yosemite.

She has told Reuters she would seek to usher in an expansion of renewable energy production on federal land to contribute to the fight against climate change, and undo President Donald Trump's focus on bolstering fossil fuels output.

Two of the sources familiar with the proceedings said Biden's team was close to finalizing the decision on Haaland but weighing concerns about the loss of a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Democrats are hanging on to a slim majority. The third source said the decision was made and that an announcement was imminent.

Biden is also in the process of finalizing other key energy and environment picks, including Environmental Protection Agency Administrator and Secretary of Energy - all of which will be crucial to his sweeping climate change agenda.

Two sources said Biden currently favors Jennifer Granholm to run the Department of Energy. Granholm, 61, was Michigan's first female governor and pushed for a transition to green technologies in the longtime car-manufacturing state.

Progressive activists and tribal leaders waged a pressure campaign over the past few weeks for Biden to select Haaland for Interior, sending letters to the Biden transition team and launching a #DebforInterior campaign on social media.

Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and one of the first Native American women elected to Congress, has said she believes the fact that she was being considered for the Interior post was good news for Native American areas.

"I'm glad our country's progressed to a place where an idea like this is a consideration," she said.

The Trump administration had used the Interior Department as a key tool in its "energy dominance" agenda, which prioritized deregulation and fastracking of fossil fuel projects to maximize domestic oil, gas, and coal output.

About a fifth of U.S. oil production comes from federal leases.

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw and Valerie Volcovici with additional reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Howard Goller and Mark Heinrich)

Deb Haaland Is Joe Biden's 'Leading Candidate' For Interior Secretary

Jennifer Bendery
·Senior Politics Reporter, HuffPost
Tue, December 15, 2020, 2:10 PM MST

Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) is the front-runner to be President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for interior secretary, a source familiar with the selection process tells HuffPost.

“Haaland is the leading candidate,” said this source, confirming a Reuters report that came out earlier Tuesday. “She is great and has strong support.”

The challenge, though, is that if Haaland is offered the job and confirmed to it, she would leave her House seat open at a time when Democrats already have a slim majority. Two other House Democrats, Marcia Fudge (Ohio) and Cedric Richmond (La.), are planning to take administration jobs. If Haaland leaves too, Democrats would have a 219-213 majority until each of those House seats could be filled in special elections.

“There is mounting pressure and increasingly vocal concern not to pull anyone else from the House,” said this source, who requested anonymity in order to speak freely.

No final decisions have been made. And Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill declined to say whether Pelosi supports Haaland potentially taking the interior secretary post.

“We have an existing policy of not commenting on private conversations concerning the transition,” said Hammill. “I am also not in a position to comment on any possible announcements not yet made by the transition.”

But if Biden does pick Haaland for interior secretary, it wouldn’t actually take that long to fill her seat. Per New Mexico’s rules, Haaland could continue being a member of Congress until the Senate confirmed her to the Interior post. That’s when she’d have to resign her House seat, and the New Mexico Secretary of State would have 10 days to set the date of the election. The election would have to occur within 77-91 days of the seat becoming vacant.

So all told, the maximum amount of time from her resignation to a special election is roughly three months. There would only be a general election, between a Democrat chosen by the state Democratic Party and a Republican chosen by the state GOP. And Haaland’s district, New Mexico’s 1st congressional district, is solidly Democratic: Biden won it by 23% in November.

In terms of timing of an interior secretary announcement, the source familiar with the selection process said it will happen “ideally very soon,” but couldn’t say if it would be this week.

Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) would make history as the first-ever Native American Cabinet secretary if President-elect Joe Biden picks her for interior secretary. (Photo: Bill Clark via Getty Images)

If Haaland is chosen, it will be historic. She’d be the first-ever Native American cabinet secretary. She would bring her experience as chairwoman of a House Natural Resources subcommittee with oversight authority for the Interior Department. Her selection would also reflect the will of tribes all over the country, who have been privately and publicly urging Biden to nominate her.

The Interior Department is responsible for managing the country’s natural resources and honoring the federal government’s commitments to Native American tribes, which it has failed to do time and time again. It also oversees the Bureau of Indian Education and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the latter of which manages over 55 million acres of land held in trust for Native Americans by the government. Both agencies are notoriously underfunded and have failed to adequately serve Indigenous communities.

The seismic shift of putting a Native American woman in charge of the department with oversight of public lands ― from which Indigenous people were forcibly removed by the U.S. government ― is not lost on Haaland.

“The symbolism alone, yes, it’s profound,” she told HuffPost last month.

Related...

A Record Number Of Native Candidates Are Heading To Congress

Tribes Want Deb Haaland For Interior Secretary. Some Biden Advisers Are Trying To Thwart Her.

After A Smooth Start, Biden Faces Frustration Over Cabinet Picks

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Report: Of the hundreds of people invited to Mike Pompeo's indoor holiday party, a few dozen showed up


Catherine Garcia
Tue, December 15, 2020



Secretary of State Mike Pompeo found out what happens when you send out 900 invitations to an indoor holiday party during a pandemic that has killed at least 300,000 Americans: not that many people show up.

The Tuesday event for the families of diplomats in high-risk locations was hosted by Pompeo and his wife, Susan, in Washington, D.C. As of Monday night, only about 70 people had accepted their invitations, and even fewer showed up, two U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter told The Washington Post. Pompeo had been scheduled to speak, but canceled his address and had someone else deliver a message in his place, the Post reports.

Government health officials have urged people not to attend indoor gatherings amid the pandemic, and several lawmakers and the American Foreign Service Association, a nonpartisan union representing diplomats, asked Pompeo to cancel the party over concerns it would be a super-spreader event. The State Department had said masks would be required and social distancing enforced; photos obtained by the Post show a masked Santa greeting children, with maskless people sitting down to eat around him.


One woman, the wife of a diplomat now overseas, told the Post she RSVPed no on her invitation over worries that if she became sick, there wouldn't be anyone to take care of her children. "It was a completely irresponsible party to throw," she

ICC prosecutor sees 'reasonable basis' for crimes against humanity in Philippine drug war


Tue, December 15, 2020, 

MANILA (Reuters) - The office of the International Criminal Court's (ICC) prosecutor said there is a "reasonable basis" to believe that crimes against humanity were committed during Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs.

Since taking office in 2016, Duterte launched a bloody anti-narcotics crackdown in which thousands have been killed, sparking global outrage and criticism from rights groups.

Duterte has at times lashed out at what he said were international efforts to paint him as a "ruthless and heartless violator of human rights" and unilaterally withdrew the Philippines from the ICC's founding treaty in 2018.


The presidential office on Tuesday dismissed the report as speculative and legally erroneous.

"They can do what they want to. We do not recognise the jurisdiction of the ICC," Harry Roque, Duterte's spokesman, told a news conference.

The report issued on Monday said "the office is satisfied that information available provides a reasonable basis to believe that the crimes against humanity of murder, torture and the infliction of serious physical injury and mental harm as other inhumane acts were committed" between 2016 and 2019.

Many people targeted had been on a drug watch lists compiled by authorities or had previously surrendered to police, while a significant number of minors were victims, the report said.

Government data show that 5,942 suspected drug dealers have been killed as of the end of October, though rights groups suspect the death toll is much higher and say thousands more have died in shadowy circumstances.

Rights groups accuse police of systematically executing suspected drug dealers and users. Police deny this and say those killed violently resisted arrest during sting operations.

Philippine police spokesman Ysmael Yu declined to comment, saying his office has yet to receive a copy of the ICC report.

The Hague-based ICC started its preliminary examination of the Philippines drug campaign in 2018 and is due to reach a decision on whether to seek authorisation to open a formal investigation in the first half of next year.

(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Ed Davies and Jacqueline Wong)

U.S. Feds to delay seeking legal protection for monarch butterfly

FILE - In this July 29, 2019, file photo, a monarch butterfly rests on a plant at Abbott's Mill Nature Center in Milford, Del. Trump administration officials are expected to say this week whether the monarch butterfly, a colorful and familiar backyard visitor now caught in a global extinction crisis, should receive federal designation as a threatened species. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

JOHN FLESHER
Tue, December 15, 2020

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Federal officials on Tuesday declared the monarch butterfly “a candidate” for threatened or endangered status, but said no action would be taken for several years because of the many other species awaiting that designation.

Environmentalists said delaying that long could spell disaster for the beloved black-and-orange butterfly, once a common sight in backyard gardens, meadows and other landscapes now seeing its population dwindling.

The monarch's status will be reviewed annually, said Charlie Wooley, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Great Lakes regional office. Emergency action could be taken earlier, but plans now call for proposing to list the monarch under the Endangered Species Act in 2024 unless its situation improves enough to make the step unnecessary.

The proposal would be followed by another year for public comment and development of a final rule. Listing would provide a number of legal protections, including a requirement that federal agencies consider effects on the butterfly or its habitat before allowing highway construction and other potentially damaging activities.

Scientists estimate the monarch population in the eastern U.S. has fallen about 80% since the mid-1990s, while the drop-off in the western U.S. has been even steeper.

“We conducted an intensive, thorough review using a rigorous, transparent science-based process and found that the monarch meets listing criteria under the Endangered Species Act," Fish and Wildlife Service Director Aurelia Skipwith said in a statement. "However, before we can propose listing, we must focus resources on our higher-priority listing actions.”

Scientists will continue monitoring the butterfly's numbers and the effectiveness of what Wooley described as perhaps the most widespread grassroots campaign ever waged to save an imperiled animal.

FILE - In this June 2, 2019, file photo, a fresh monarch butterfly rests on a Swedish Ivy plant soon after emerging in Washington. Trump administration officials are expected to say this week whether the monarch butterfly, a colorful and familiar backyard visitor now caught in a global extinction crisis, should receive federal designation as a threatened species. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Since 2014, when environmental groups petitioned to list the monarch, school groups, garden clubs, government agencies and others around the nation have restored about 5.6 million acres (nearly 2.3 million hectares) of milkweed plants on which monarchs depend, Wooley said. They lay eggs on the leaves, which caterpillars eat, while adults gather nectar from the flowers.

The volunteer effort “has been phenomenal to see," he said. “It has made a difference in the long-term survival of monarchs and helped other pollinators that are potentially in trouble.”

But advocacy groups say it has compensated for only a small fraction of the estimated 165 million acres (67 million hectares) of monarch habitat — an area the size of Texas — lost in the past 20 years to development or herbicide applications in cropland.

“Monarchs are too important for us to just plant flowers on roadsides and hope for the best,” said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “They need the comprehensive protection that comes only from the Endangered Species Act, which would save them and so many other beleaguered pollinators that share their habitat.”

The monarch's plight is part of what the United Nations describes as a worldwide crisis threatening 1 million species — one of every eight on Earth — with extinction because of climate change, development and pollution.

Even so, the Trump administration has listed only 25 species — fewer than any since the act took effect in 1973. The Obama administration added 360.

Trump's team also has weakened protections for endangered and threatened species in its push for deregulation. Among other changes, it limited consideration of climate change's effects on animals when evaluating whether they should be listed.

Global warming is one of the biggest dangers to the monarch. It contributes to lengthening droughts and worsening storms that kill many during their annual migration.

About 90% of the world's monarchs live in North America. Scientists measure their abundance by the size of the areas they occupy in Mexico and California, where they cluster during winter after flying thousands of miles from as far away as Canada.

The Fish and Wildlife Service estimates the larger eastern population declined from about 384 million in 1996 to a low of 14 million in 2013 before rebounding somewhat, reaching about 60 million last year.

But the California-based western group dropped from about 1.2 million in 1997 to fewer than 30,000 in 2019. Preliminary survey results this fall have turned up only about 2,000, said Lori Nordstrom, the Fish and Wildlife Service's assistant regional director.

While such grim prospects qualify the monarch for listing, officials said the law allows delays when the agency has limited resources and must focus on higher-priority cases under consideration.

Species ahead in line might be worse off, or courts might have set deadlines for decisions on them.

The Great Lakes office, which is handling the monarch case, is considering nine others with higher-priority status. They include the little brown bat, the plains spotted skunk, the Illinois chorus frog, the golden-winged warbler, Blanding's turtle, the Mammoth Springs crayfish, two freshwater mussels and a plant called Hall's bulrush.

Advocacy groups said 47 species have gone extinct waiting to be listed.

“Protection for monarchs is needed — and warranted — now," said George Kimbrell, legal director for the Center for Food Safety. “The Biden administration must follow the law and science and protect them.”

Also this week, the Fish and Wildlife Service said the northern spotted owl, listed as threatened in 1990, has declined enough since then to justify downgrading to “endangered” — or in peril of extinction. But it also was placed behind higher-priority cases.

Nordstrom said the timing of the announcements about the monarch and the spotted owl was coincidental and did not represent a trend toward finding species fit for listing yet putting them on a waiting list.

In this June 2, 2019, file photo, a monarch butterfly wing soon after it emerged in Washington. 

 administration officials are expected to say this week whether the monarch butterfly, 

a colorful and familiar backyard visitor now caught in a global extinction crisis, 

should receive federal designation as a threatened species. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

___

Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this story from Oklahoma City.

 In Taiwan pig country, U.S. pork decision rankles, divides families

Staff make marks on a pig on a farm in Pingtung

Ann Wang
Tue, December 15, 2020

PINGTUNG, Taiwan (Reuters) - In southern Taiwan's pig-producing heartland, the government's contentious decision to ease restrictions on imports of U.S. pork is rankling some producers and dividing families.

President Tsai Ing-wen's decision in August to allow imports of U.S. pork containing ractopamine, an additive that enhances leanness but is banned in the European Union and China, has roiled Taiwan politics.

In Taiwan's southernmost county of Pingtung, a major pork-producing area, pig farmer Wu Jung-en, 63, said he was "furious and shocked" when he heard the news.

"I'm quite worried this will make people fear pork, so maybe they won't eat it anymore. It's a terrible thing for us," Wu, who has a heard of about 10,000 hogs, told Reuters.

His 32-year-old son Wu Hung-chi, however, doesn't see it that way.

"I've told my friends that if they're scared, then go and buy warm-body pork," said the younger Wu, referring to meat that is eaten shortly after slaughter, rather than frozen.

"It's a free market. If it's no good it will be phased out. Nobody is forcing you to eat it."

That's an argument the government makes, and says its decision brings Taiwan into line with international practice. Taipei is also hoping the move eases the way for a free trade deal with Washington.

The main opposition Kuomintang party opposes the move on safety grounds, holding noisy protests and flinging pig guts in parliament on one occasion.

Pork is Taiwan's most popular meat, with the average person consuming almost 40 kg annually.

Most pork consumed in Taiwan is domestically-reared, with only around 1% currently coming from the United States.



Teng Hung-chao, a pork farmer for more than three decades who runs an agricultural sales cooperative in Pingtung, said he too was angered by the move, fearing the impact at home.

"The United States is a major pork producer that is quite competitive, so imports will be cost effective. But it can't be forced on us, bringing chaos to our industry and taking it down."

(Reporting by Ann Wang; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

US regulators OK genetically modified pig for food, drugs

This undated photo provided by Revivicor, Inc., a unit of United Therapeutics, shows a genetically modified pig. U.S. regulators have approved a genetically modified pig for food and medical products, making it the second such animal to get the green light for human consumption -- but United Therapeutics, the company behind it says there are no imminent plans for its meat to be sold. (Revivicor, Inc. via AP)

CANDICE CHOI
Tue, December 15, 2020, 

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. regulators have approved a genetically modified pig for food and medical products, making it the second such animal to get the green light for human consumption. But the company behind it says there are no imminent plans to sell it for meat.

The pig is genetically engineered to eliminate the presence of alpha-gal, a type of sugar found in many mammals. The sugar makes its way into many products — including medications, cosmetics and food — and can cause allergic reactions in some people.

The main goal of the company behind the pig, United Therapeutics Corp., is to develop medical products, such as blood thinners, that won't set off such reactions, said its spokesman Dewey Steadman. Eventually, the Silver Spring, Maryland-based firm hopes to develop a way for the pig's organs to be transplanted into people.

The pig, called GalSafe, also has commercial potential as food, but Steadman said the company doesn’t know when it might be able to secure an agreement with a meat producer to process and sell it. He noted the meat allergy the pig addresses, called alpha-gal syndrome, isn't yet considered a major issue.

“It's known, but it's not well known," Steadman said.

Health researchers don't fully understand how the allergy develops, but it has been tied to bites from certain ticks. In 2009, there were 24 reported cases, but more recent estimates exceed 5,000 cases, according to a report by a working group for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Symptoms can include hives, itching, cramping and vomiting. Unlike other food allergies, alpha-gal reactions typically happen several hours after eating beef, pork or lamb, making it difficult to diagnose.

Jaydee Hanson, policy director for the Center for Food Safety, noted that meat from the genetically modified pigs wasn’t tested in people with the allergies.

“You’re offering it up as something they can eat, without knowing whether it addresses their allergy,” Hanson said.

The FDA said it didn’t evaluate allergy-specific food safety, since the company’s application didn’t include data on the preventing such reactions.

The Center for Food Safety has sued the FDA over the first genetically modified animal the agency approved for human food — salmon engineered to grow faster. The group said it's reviewing the agency's decision on the GalSafe pig posted Monday.

Greg Jaffe of the Center for Science in the Public Interest said the FDA's approval of the GalSafe pig announced Monday is also concerning because it came without a chance for public comment.

“Nobody was given notice, and all of a sudden there’s an approved animal," he said.

The company didn't disclose exactly how it altered the animal's DNA. Jaffe said the pig was produced by knocking out a gene responsible for producing the sugar and adding another that serves as a marker for the silenced gene.

Jaffe said he's not aware of any rules on how pork from genetically modified pigs would need to be labeled to be sold in supermarkets. A representative for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees meat labeling, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Steadman said the United Therapeutics pigs would be more difficult to produce than conventional pigs for meat because of requirements governing how they must be kept and slaughtered. He said there are about 25 GalSafe pigs at an Iowa farm.

Long term, he said the goal is to combine the genetic modification with multiple other changes to make their organs acceptable for transplants in people. For years, researchers have been looking into the idea of transplanting pig organs as a way of eliminating shortages of donated organs.

Though there aren't any plans yet to sell meat from GalSafe pigs, the genetically modified salmon could become available in the U.S. soon. AquaBounty, the company that produces the fish, says it is determining the best time to harvest the salmon, which have been growing in indoor tanks at a plant in Indiana.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Technology beats humans at growing strawberries in Pinduoduo smart agriculture competition

Pinduoduo Inc.Tue, December 15, 2020,

Pinduoduo’s Smart Agri Competition

A member of the traditional farming teams tending to the strawberry beds at the Smart Agriculture Competition. (Source: Pinduoduo)

Pinduoduo’s Smart Agri Competition

Close-up shot of strawberries grown in automated greenhouses at the Smart Agriculture Competition (Source: Pinduoduo)

Pinduoduo’s Smart Agri Competition

Sensors deployed in the greenhouse to monitor plant growth at the Smart Agriculture Competition (Source: Pinduoduo)

Pinduoduo’s Smart Agriculture Competition took place over four months and pitted data scientists against top strawberry growers

Technology teams produced 196% more strawberries by weight on average compared with traditional farmers

Technology teams also outperformed farmers in return on investment by an average of 75.5%

SHANGHAI, China, Dec. 16, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Technology beat farmers at growing strawberries in the inaugural Smart Agriculture Competition organized by Pinduoduo Inc. (NASDAQ: PDD), China’s largest agri-focused technology platform, underscoring its potential to raise agricultural productivity and increase food security.

The four technology teams, which employed data analysis, intelligent sensors and greenhouse automation, produced an average of 6.86 kilograms of strawberries, or 196% more than the 2.32 kilograms average for the three teams of traditional growers.

The technologists also outperformed farmers in terms of return on investment by an average of 75.5%, according to the competition organizers.

CyberFarmer.HortiGraph, a team made up mostly of researchers from the China Agricultural University and National Agriculture Intelligence Equipment Engineering Technical Research Center, placed first in the competition.

The four-month competition, which ended on Nov. 30, 2020, was co-organized by Pinduoduo and the China Agricultural University, with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as technical adviser. The contest is the first cross-disciplinary smart agriculture competition in China organized by a technology company and university to develop planting methods to raise productivity and yield.

The push into smart agriculture is part of Pinduoduo’s broader goal of helping China realize the full economic potential of its vast agriculture resources. One of the first steps in improving productivity is to raise the level of digitization across the value chain, from production to the transportation and sale of food.

Precision farming technology can help improve the crop on the production end, while agriculture analytics can cut food wastage by reducing mismatches in supply and demand. For the growers, e-commerce allows them to tap on a much larger market than the local wholesaler, freeing them from the constraints of geography.

“Technology is the force multiplier that helps both the people who grow the food and the people who eat it,” said Andre Zhu, senior vice president of Pinduoduo. “Investing in agriculture benefits the greatest number of people. We are happy to play the role of matchmaker and enabler.”

Pinduoduo will explore promoting the technology developed by the teams in the competition to working farms in China. The company operates the largest agricultural e-commerce platform in China and works with farmers from impoverished regions of the country to sell their produce to urban consumers.

In the competition, the technology teams had the advantage of being able to control temperature and humidity through greenhouse automation, the organizers noted. They were also more precise at controlling the use of water and nutrients. The traditional farmers had to achieve the same tasks by hand and experience.

CyberFarmer.HortiGraph, the winning team, employed knowledge graph technology to collect grower experience, historical cultivation data, and strawberry image recognition. This was then combined with water, fertilizer and greenhouse climate models to create an intelligent decision strategy for growing strawberries.

“This competition was a successful journey for the team to explore how technology can be used in agriculture,” said Lin Sen, the team leader for CyberFarmer.HortiGraph and a researcher based at Beijing’s National Engineering Research Center for Information Technology in Agriculture.

The Smart Agriculture Competition has inspired at least one of the technology teams to commercialize their research, showing the potential market demand for smart agriculture solutions.

Zhi Duo Mei, comprising a group of university researchers, set up a company of the same name to provide its strawberry-planting technology to farming cooperatives after receiving numerous inquiries during the competition.

"In agriculture, traditional farmers distrust data scientists, thinking they are flashy yet useless; data scientists also look down on farmers, thinking they are too old-fashioned," said Cheng Biao, the leader of the Zhi Duo Mei team. "Through this competition, we realized the importance of combining both sides' advantages and working together."

The competition helped Sun Yuqing, a member of Yanjiutian, the all-women team of farmers in the competition, change her view of technology.

“For agriculture to advance, we need new techniques, new talent,” said Sun.

About Pinduoduo Inc.

Pinduoduo operates China's largest agri-focused technology platform, providing an online marketplace that connects millions of agricultural producers with consumers across the country. A pioneer of interactive commerce and the consumer-to-manufacturer model, Pinduoduo aims to bring more businesses and people into the digital economy so that local communities can benefit from the increased productivity and convenience through new market opportunities.

For more information on Pinduoduo news and industry trends, please visit our content hub at http://stories.pinduoduo-global.com/.

For media enquiries, please contact us at internationalmedia@pinduoduo.com

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at:
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/66c60559-d746-4515-92a7-3424819da70b
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/290ee609-0cfb-460b-99ec-0b91a9ec6045
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e9a8c7c5-2f86-463e-bdf2-

Why Alibaba rival Pinduoduo is investing in agritech

Rita Liao

Wed, December 16, 2020

Back in 2018, Pinduoduo sent shock waves through the investor community when it raised $1.6 billion from a Nasdaq listing as a three-year-old company. Online shoppers in China were excited to see its rise as an alternative to long-time market dominators Alibaba and JD.com.

But the startup founded by former Google engineer Colin Huang has ambitions well beyond e-commerce. It's answering the Chinese government's call to modernize the country's agriculture and bolster the rural economy.

Life in China has become highly digital in many facets, from retail and entertainment to education and healthcare. But agriculture remains an exception. A McKinsey report from late 2017 showed that agriculture was among the least digitized industries in China. Pinduoduo saw an opportunity in the gap and started life by selling fruits online. Over time it has grown into a comprehensive e-commerce platform rivaling Alibaba, but agriculture "has always been close to the heart of Pinduoduo since its inception," said Pinduoduo's senior vice president Andre Zhu.

"Investing in smart agriculture is an extension of what we do and guided by our goal of promoting digital inclusion."

Instead of a standalone department, the firm's agricultural endeavor is a company- and even society-wide effort. Its strategy and investment team takes the lead to identify solutions targeting all stages of agriculture that the company can help scale up. At the implementation stage, the team might then tap its operational colleagues for contacts at various local governments and traditional farms that want to try the technologies.

"At least on the downstream distribution side, on e-commerce marketplaces for agricultural products, I would say we are relatively ahead compared to the rest of the world," Xin Yi Lim, executive director of sustainability and agriculture impact at Pinduoduo, told TechCrunch in an interview.

In 2019, nearly 600,000 merchants sold farm produce through Pinduoduo. That translated to some 12 million farmers who supplied their fruits and vegetables to the merchants. In August, Pinduoduo pledged to sell $145 billion worth of farm produce annually by 2025. The number was $21 billion in 2019.

"But it's really the upstream portion that we're hoping to encourage and drive further investment in," Lim added.

As such, the e-commerce giant has been traveling up the agricultural lifecycle, from building logistics infrastructure for distribution to equipping farmers with marketing know-how. In 2019, it trained close to 500,000 farm operators through its online e-commerce business institute.

Farmers in Yunnan Province learn how to open and operate a store on Pinduoduo at the Duo Duo University. / Photo: Pinduoduo

When it comes to production, Pinduoduo is able to track purchase behavior from its hundreds of millions of buyers and tell farmers what they should plant and how much they should price their products, an approach in line with the firm's larger direct-to-consumer strategy to cut traditional middlemen costs.

The e-commerce firm is also hoping to gather agronomic expertise for its farm suppliers. It kickstarted a smart farming competition this year, calling teams from around the world to grow strawberries using artificial intelligence and connected devices. They were graded on criteria such as the fruit's sweetness, energy and fertilizer use, and their AI strategy. The winner's design would then be rolled out at one of the AI-powered Duo Duo Farms, a project jointly launched by Pinduoduo and the provincial government of Yunnan to let farmers sell directly on the e-commerce platform.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg of Pinduoduo's agricultural long game. The firm doesn't disclose exactly how much it plans to invest in the field, though Lim said "compared to some of the other players in the industry, our involvement in agriculture is definitely more comprehensive."

The company looks for investment opportunities outside China as well. While domestic players come with more affordable hardware applications, especially drones and sensors, more mature solutions around crop modeling and prediction are found in Western countries where large commercial farms prevail, Lim noted.

Agritech adoption among Pinduoduo farmers is still "relatively small" because the firm's smart farming initiative is in the early stage. But the e-commerce upstart might be well-positioned to drive the development of agritech in China.

Different from the U.S. and Australia, China is dominated by small-scale farms that often can't afford to buy advanced farming equipment. Lacking demand, agritech startups have had difficulty fundraising to subsequently invest in customer acquisition and lowering their price point, Lim explained.

"Pinduoduo can already connect [agritech startups] with a wide pool of potential customers. I think that helps to ease a little bit of the initial pain point," said Lim.

Finally, injecting technologies into farming could help retain talent in China's vast rural hinterland, which is losing young labor to bigger, more affluent cities.

"In the long term, we [could] make farming more efficient and easier. There could potentially be a transformation in the whole structure of the farming industry. We could see young people feel that 'I can actually be an entrepreneur. There are these tools that can give me more control over the output,'" Lim suggested.

"There are potentially people who today are not farmers who could then start to see farming as a viable alternative."

Pinduoduo named digital agriculture pioneer at 2020 World Digital Agriculture Conference

Pinduoduo Inc. Tue, December 15, 2020

SHANGHAI, China, Dec. 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pinduoduo Inc. (NASDAQ: PDD), China’s largest agri-focused technology platform, was named a pioneer in digital agriculture at a major conference, with its “cloud agriculture” model recognized as one of the top 10 achievements in digital agriculture in the world.

The accolades were handed out at the 2020 World Digital Agriculture Conference held in Guangzhou, China, on Dec. 12. The conference aims to demonstrate the integration of digital technology and modern agriculture, and the organizing committee selected several case studies to showcase how digital technology empowers agriculture.

Pinduoduo has focused on agriculture since its establishment in 2015 and has become the go-to destination for high quality, great value agricultural products. In 2019, the transaction volume of farm products reached RMB 136.4 billion (US$20.8 billion) on Pinduoduo’s online marketplace.
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As of the end of 2019, Pinduoduo has covered almost all agricultural production areas in China, with more than 12 million agrarian producers directly connected to the marketplace serving more than 700 million consumers.

Pinduoduo has brought a systems approach to tackling the inter-related issues at various points of the agricultural value chain, committing substantial resources and investments to solve entrenched structural problems in the industry.

The company’s initiatives include improving downstream market access for farmers and training younger e-commerce talent, revamping midstream logistics infrastructure to reduce waste, lower costs and speed up the delivery of agricultural products. Pinduoduo also works with industry partners and universities to develop upstream technology to increase the resilience of the food supply chain.

Earlier this year, Pinduoduo jointly organized the Smart Agriculture Competition with the China Agricultural University, under the technical guidance of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The competition sought to identify cost-efficient and scalable agricultural technology that can be promoted as standardized solutions across China. The final results are expected to be released on Dec. 16, 2020.

About Pinduoduo Inc.

Pinduoduo is an innovative and fast-growing technology platform that provides buyers with value-for-money merchandise and fun and interactive shopping experiences. The Pinduoduo mobile platform offers a comprehensive selection of attractively priced merchandise, featuring a dynamic social shopping experience that leverages social networks effectively.

For more information on Pinduoduo news and industry trends, please visit our content hub at http://stories.pinduoduo-global.com

A pandemic atlas: A virus widens Israel's religious rifts

JOSEF FEDERMAN

Tue, December 15, 2020,

BNEI BRAK, Israel (AP) — When Israel went into its second nationwide coronavirus lockdown in September, most of the country quickly complied. But in some ultra-Orthodox areas, synagogues were packed, mourners thronged funerals and COVID-19 cases continued to soar.

The flouting of nationwide safety rules in ultra-Orthodox areas reinforced a popular perception that the community prioritizes faith over science and cares little about the greater good. It also has triggered a backlash that threatens to ripple throughout Israeli society for years.

“Many Israelis understand that there is a serious challenge and we cannot just sort of allow time to pass and hope that this issue will go away,” said Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a think tank that studies Israeli society and politics.

Over the years, the ultra-Orthodox minority has wielded outsize influence over broader Israeli society, using its kingmaker status in parliament to secure generous budgets and benefits for its people and generating resentment among the broader public.

The events of 2020 brought long-simmering tensions to a boil. Medical experts estimate the ultra-Orthodox have accounted for about one-third of the country’s coronavirus cases, despite making up just 12% of the population.

Avraham Rubenstein, mayor of the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, calls the uproar unfair. Rubenstein has been widely praised for overseeing a successful effort to bring one of Israel’s worst coronavirus outbreaks under control in just a few weeks. He believes the anger toward the ultra-Orthodox is motivated by ignorance, animosity and hostile media coverage.

“There is a creator of the universe," he acknowledged. "We are believers. But when you go outside in Bnei Brak, the first thing you will see is people wearing masks and keeping their distance.”

Rubenstein says the lawbreakers are a tiny percentage of the ultra-Orthodox community and that the high infection rates are due to crowded conditions in his city. Ultra-Orthodox Jews live in some of Israel’s poorest cities and neighborhoods. It is common for families of eight or 10 people to be crowded together in small apartments.

Early on in the coronavirus crisis, Israel was seen as a model of success. The country moved quickly last spring to seal its borders and impose lockdown restrictions that appeared to bring the virus under control. But the reopening of the economy was mismanaged, and the virus quickly returned.

The neighboring Palestinian territories — the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — are coping with their own crises.

With a poorer population and much less advanced medical system after years of Israeli occupation, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has repeatedly imposed lockdown measures, devastating an already fragile economy.

The Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, stifled by an Israeli-Egyptian blockade, did not report a single case of community-spread coronavirus until August. But the numbers have spiked since then, raising fears that its decrepit health system could collapse.

By mid-December, Israel reported 3,749 cases per 100,000 population. On the West Bank, there were 2,798 cases per 100,000 people; in Gaza, 1,327, according to the World Health Organization.

In Israel, the ultra-Orthodox were not the only ones who struggled. Israel’s Arab minority also has experienced disproportionately high infection rates, in large part because of the popular custom of holding large weddings. Young Israelis, Jewish and Arab, flocked to beaches and parties. And many middle-class Israelis have participated in mass demonstrations against Netanyahu as the economy has suffered and unemployment has soared.

Rubenstein won plaudits for bringing in a retired army general to manage the crisis last spring. His city operates numerous programs to assist the ill and their families and maintains a situation room that keeps close tabs on infections. It has enlisted hundreds of volunteers who have recovered from COVID-19, believing they are no longer contagious, to help older residents. Many people worship outdoors, and synagogues throughout the city have put up plastic sheets to keep attendees safe from one another.

Rubenstein says Israelis must understand that the ultra-Orthodox, who avoid computers and the Internet and consider religious study to be essential like “water and oxygen.” Their schools have remained open while other children study remotely. He says they must be allowed to manage things in their own way, but that doesn't mean people want to be sick or don’t consider themselves proud Israelis.

“We are an inseparable part of the country,” he said.

New and rediscovered species found in pristine Andes of Bolivia

Tue, December 15, 2020

LA PAZ (Reuters) - A scientific expedition high in the Bolivian Andes revealed 20 species new to science, including "lilliputian frog" plus four rediscovered species including the "devil-eyed frog" previously thought to be extinct, Conservation International said.

The expedition was led by the environmental group and the government of capital city La Paz. It included 17 scientists who went to the Chawi Grande, a locality belonging to the Huaylipaya indigenous community near La Paz.

"The remarkable rediscovery of species once thought extinct, especially so close to the city of La Paz, illustrates how sustainable development that embraces conservation of nature can ensure long-term protection of biodiversity," Conservation International said in a statement.

The lilliputian frog measures only about 10 millimeters in length, making it one of the smallest amphibians in the world.

"Due to their tiny size and habit of living in tunnels beneath the thick layers of moss in the cloud forest, they were difficult to find even by tracking their frequent calls," the environmental group said.

Four new butterfly species were also discovered, including two species of "metalmark butterflies", which feed on flower nectar in open areas and forest clearings.

The "devil-eyed frog, which was previously known only from a single individual observed more than 20 years ago, was found to be relatively abundant in the cloud forest," the group said.

Previous expeditions attempting to find this black frog with red eyes concluded empty-handed.

Also rediscovered was the "Alzatea verticillata," a small flowering tree that was previously known only from a single record in Bolivia and was found on this expedition after 127 years.

"Numerous expeditions had been made in Bolivia to find this mysterious tree over the years. All failed until now," Conservation International said.