Washington, District of Cats: US capital first city to count its felines

This still image from video released by the DC Cat Count/Humane Rescue Alliance shows a cat photographed by a wildlife camera in Washington 

Handout DC Cat Count/Humane Rescue Alliance/AFP Photo


Issued on: 24/10/2021 

Washington (AFP)

As its front paws touch the ground, the whiskered creature looks up, eyes darting left. A wildlife camera clicks and captures the scene.

It's a cat — and the location isn't a remote rainforest, but the capital of the United States.

The photo is part of the DC Cat Count, a first of its kind, three-year effort by animal welfare advocates, conservationists and scientists to enumerate every Felis catus in Washington.

The team behind the study says it provides an accurate estimate of the size of the city's indoor, outdoor and shelter population.

It found there are about 200,000 cats in the District of Columbia, with about half of them living indoors only, said Tyler Flockhart, a conservation biologist and science lead on the DC Cat Count.

The other half is a group that includes owned cats with limited or unlimited access outdoors, stray cats, and roughly 3,000 to 4,000 feral cats who avoid interactions with humans, Flockhart said.

"I don't think that you can find another wild mammal — another wild carnivore — that occurs at that density anywhere in the world," he said, of cats and urban environments.

A cat  KITTEN is wrapped in a towel and held in the arms of a Humane Rescue Alliance (HRA) employee at an HRA animal shelter in Washington

 Bastien INZAURRALDE AFP Photo

"I think that this is really sort of an interesting idea that we can have so many cats in such a small location."
Consensus for a cat census

The study brought together groups that are often at odds over the impact that outdoor cats have on wildlife and landscape.

This still image from video released by the DC Cat Count/Humane Rescue Alliance shows a bobcat photographed by a wildlife camera in Washington

Handout DC Cat Count/Humane Rescue Alliance/AFP Photo

While conservationists worry that outdoor cats can decimate bird populations, animal advocates seek to ensure the welfare and safety of cats seeking to survive outside.

"What was really groundbreaking with the DC Cat Count was these organizations coming together," said Stephanie Shain, the chief operating officer of the Humane Rescue Alliance (HRA), which took part in the study.

They were driven by a common purpose "to really focus not on who is right or who has been right, but really focus on getting it right — finding out the information, analyzing the data," she added.

Shain said HRA recommends that cat owners keep their feline friends indoors only in order to keep them safe and avoid damaging wildlife.

"I was pleased to see how many people actually follow that advice," she said.

To count all the cats who call the seat of American power home, researchers surveyed more than 2,600 residents, analyzed animal shelter records, walked along specific routes in search of cats and set up wildlife cameras in more than 1,500 spots.

"This is probably the most thorough analysis of cats of any city in the world," Flockhart said.

He and other researchers continue to analyze the data collected since 2018 and the research has already led to several peer-reviewed scientific papers.

The DC Cat Count team also made an extensive toolkit available online with protocols and guidelines for organizations wishing to carry out their own cat census.

Besides cats, the camera traps also snapped pictures of numerous animals including squirrels, raccoons, foxes, deer — and even a bobcat.

"There's a huge diversity of wildlife in our cities," Flockhart said.

"We tend to think of it as humans-only, and it could be anything but the case. There are all types of wildlife, from rodents all the way up to large predators."

© 2021 AFP

Germany to increase controls as far-right activists target Polish border

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (pictured October 21, 2021) said that 800 police had already been deployed on the German-Polish border to help deal with a recent increase in migrants crossing into Germany from Belarus 

Ina Fassbender POOL/AFP/File

Issued on: 24/10/2021 
Berlin (AFP)

Horst Seehofer told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper that 800 police had already been deployed on the German-Polish border to help deal with a recent increase in migrants crossing into Germany from Belarus.

"If necessary, I am ready to reinforce this even more," he added.

Police on Sunday broke up around 50 activists from the radical far-right group "The Third Way" (Der III. Weg), which had called for its members to gather to take action against migrants seeking to cross the border from Poland.

During the operation, police seized pepper spray, a bayonet, a machete and batons.

A recent surge in people crossing illegally over the EU's eastern frontier with Belarus has placed major strains on member states.

Poland has proposed building a 350 million euro ($410 million) wall on its border with Belarus to keep migrants out.

Asked whether such border walls were necessary, Seehofer said: "It is legitimate for us to protect the external border in such a way that undetected border crossings are prevented."

According to figures from the German interior ministry, around 5,700 people have travelled over the border between Germany and Poland without an entry permit since the start of the year.

On Saturday, a suspected smuggler was taken into custody after 31 illegal migrants from Iraq were found in a van near the Polish border.

Seehofer wrote to his Polish counterpart Mariusz Kaminski last week to propose increasing joint patrols along the border with Poland in response to rising numbers of migrants.

People hold signs with slogans such as "No one is illegal" (pictured) as they take part in a protest in solidarity with migrants who have been pushed back at Poland's border with Belarus in Warsaw, October 17, 2021 

Wojtek RADWANSKI AFP/File

Kaminski responded that Poland would offer its "full support" for such measures.

However, Seehofer also said last week Germany had no plans to close the border with Poland, adding that such a move would also be "legally questionable".

The EU accuses the Belarusian authorities of flying migrants from the Middle East and Africa to Minsk and then sending them into the bloc on foot in retaliation for sanctions imposed over a crackdown on the opposition.

Earlier this month, officials from countries including Poland, Lithuania and Greece argued for barriers along EU borders to counter efforts to weaponise migration.

Brussels has so far shied away from funding border walls for members states, insisting that the current legal framework only allows it to use EU budget funds for "border management systems".

© 2021 AFP

Oil-reliant Saudi Arabia faces questions over 'net zero' pledge

Issued on: 24/10/2021 -

Saudi Aramco's Dhahran oil plants, pictured on February 11, 2018 -- the kingdom is the world's biggest oil exporter

 AHMAD EL ITANI Saudi Aramco/AFP/File

Dubai (AFP)

They questioned plans by the world's top oil exporter to raise its production capacity despite the pledge, and Greenpeace raised doubts over the timing of Saturday's announcement.

The watchdog accused Saudi Arabia, one of the world's biggest polluters, of trying to divert criticism at next week's COP26 climate-change summit in Glasgow.

With increasing global urgency to limit global warming, COP26 aims to set the world on a path to net zero by mid-century.

"We question the seriousness of this announcement, as it comes in parallel with plans for the kingdom to increase its oil production," Greenpeace MENA campaigns manager Ahmad El Droubi said in a statement.

Saudi state oil firm Aramco said this month it plans to increase production capacity from 12 million to 13 million barrels a day by 2027.

Riyadh's net zero pledge "seems to simply be a strategic move to alleviate political pressure ahead of COP26", El Droubi said.

For Ben Cahill, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the kingdom "will have to make a massive push on energy efficiency and decarbonising the power sector."

Saudi Arabia also said it would join a global effort to cut emissions of methane -- another planet-warming gas -- by 30 percent by 2030, while Aramco committed to being a carbon net zero enterprise by 2050.

The United Nations says more than 130 countries have set or are considering a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by mid-century, an objective it says is "imperative" to safeguard a liveable climate.

Carbon neutrality is a balance between emitting carbon and absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.

Saturday's Saudi pledge came after neighbouring United Arab Emirates, also one of the world's biggest oil exporters, said it was targeting carbon neutrality by 2050. Bahrain, which exports refined petroleum, made a promise similar to Saudi on Sunday.
Oil for water

Saudi Arabia, the largest crude producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, also draws heavily on oil and natural gas to meet its growing power demands and desalinate its water.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman delivers a speech during the opening ceremony of the Saudi Green Initiative forum on October 23, 2021, in the Saudi capital Riyadh 

Fayez Nureldine AFP/File

The sun-drenched desert kingdom, population 34 million, is estimated to belch about 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year -- more than France (population 67 million) and slightly less than Germany (population 83 million).

Crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman, who made Saturday's announcement, in 2016 announced his Vision 2030 to end Saudi Arabia's addiction to oil by diversifying the economy through foreign investments, business opportunities and other measures.

But the wide-ranging initiative has been further complicated by the coronavirus and falling crude prices, and oil still makes up more than 70 percent of the kingdom's export value.

In its announcement on Saturday, Saudi Arabia also said it plans to invest in "new energy sources, including hydrogen".

However, hydrogen "maintains the status quo of dependency on fossil fuels", which are used in its production, said El Droubi. He urged the Saudis to "prioritise phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them with renewable energy".

Waiting for detail

In his announcement, the crown prince targeted reducing carbon emissions by 278 million tonnes annually by 2030, and said more than 450 million trees would be planted in the first phase of a plan to grow billions in the coming decades.

Aramco's goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 only includes emissions from its own operations. According to Bloomberg, more than 80 percent of the company's total emissions come from customers burning its fossil fuels.

The Saudi announcements were hailed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the COP26 host.

He said the "landmark pledge to reach net zero emissions by 2060 is a major step forward".

COP26 president Alok Sharma also welcomed the news, adding: "I look forward to the detail."

"Direct crude burn in power generation will have to be phased out, and renewable energy will have to gradually displace gas," he told AFP.

© 2021 AFP

Stimulus Alert: Manchin Wants Child Tax Credit Earnings Limit at $60K — Is It a Realistic Threshold?

In 25 U.S. states, $60,000 annual income is not even enough to qualify for middle class as a family of four, according to another GOBankingRates study.

Dawn Allcot
Fri, October 22, 2021

MICHAEL REYNOLDS / EPA-EFE

Among cuts to President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” reconciliation plan is the enhanced monthly child tax credit. Right now, it looks like the CTC will only be extended for another year, instead of the four years originally proposed. In addition, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) is proposing an income cap of $60,000 per year for families eligible to receive the enhanced credit. This would mean that more than 37 million children across the country would lose access to the credit, which currently offers $300 per month to qualifying children under 6 years old and $250 per month for children ages 6 and up.

Child Tax Credit in Danger: Planned Payments Could Be Reduced by 4 Years If Budget Battle Divides Democrats

Earlier this year, the CTC was increased from a total of $2,000 per child to $3,000 per child 6 and up and $3,600 per child under 6, with half the amount offered as an advance. Economists say that if it were extended through 2025, the enhanced CTC could reduce the child poverty rate from 14.2% to 8.4%, according to a recent report from the Urban Institute. That would mean nearly 40% fewer children across the U.S. living in poverty.

Manchin’s upper income limit of $60,000 to receive the credit, however, does not take into account families of varying sizes or the higher costs of living in many cities and regions. In all but 12 of GOBankingRates’ study of 50 major cities, homeowners and renters alike needed more than $60,000 to “live comfortably.” The study addressed individuals, not families, which means the money needed to live with children in these metro areas would exceed the income for a single person, or even a couple.

Social Security FYI: Will Stimulus Payments and Child Tax Credit Affect Your Benefits?

When you look at the median income in these cities, 38 fall under Manchin’s $60,000 threshold. However, that’s just the median, which could leave close to 50% of all families potentially exceeding that $60,000 income mark — but still not reaching the income level to live comfortably with kids.

Take the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, which has a median income of $58,202, just under Manchin’s “magic number” of $60,000, as an example. To live comfortably as a homeowner, you’d need to earn at least $80,071, while renters need $82,999.

Related: Which States Received The Most Child Tax Credit Money To Date?

GOBankingRates used the 50/30/20 metric to define “living comfortably” in these cities, which means that 50% of your income goes toward necessities, leaving 20% for savings and investments and 30% for splurges and fun.

Even in cities where salaries skew higher, more than 50% of people are barely “making it” financially. ” Austin’s median income of $63,717 for individuals exceeds Manchin’s upper limit for the child tax credit, yet homeowners need $98,007 to live comfortably in the up-and-coming tech hub, while renters can get by on $94,455.

Stimulus Alert: Is the Future of the Child Tax Credit in Danger of Massive Reduction?

Stimulus Errors: Was Your Child Tax Credit Check Smaller Than Usual? Here’s What’s Going On

In 25 U.S. states, $60,000 annual income is not even enough to qualify for middle class as a family of four, according to another GOBankingRates study. By reducing the upper income limits for the CTC, Manchin’s proposal does not take into account the cost of living in different areas, different size families or the amount of money it actually takes to avoid poverty in the U.S. today.

Letters to the Editor: If Americans reject Biden's agenda, it's because of warped GOP values

Sun, October 24, 2021, 


Vice President Kamala Harris listens as President Biden speaks at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington on Oct. 21. (Associated Press)

To the editor: Columnist Jonah Goldberg claims that President Biden's Build Back Better plan isn't as popular as people think. He's undoubtedly right if you consider that the United States fails to fall even in the top 10 countries worldwide on quality-of-life indicators, including education, income distribution and healthcare.

In the 2021 U.S. News & World Report ranking, our country comes in at No. 20. We are barely competitive.

Such quality-of-life measures are of little interest in Washington, especially among conservatives, who place a high priority on low taxes, small government and a strong national defense.


For them, it would appear to matter little that if quality of life were an international sporting event, another year would have passed without the U.S. even making the playoffs. And no, the answer is not to fire the coach.

Bernie Schaeffer, Goleta

..

To the editor: I am frequently in opposition to Goldberg's opinions, but I will concede his points usually seem to be well researched and supported by facts.

But he slips in one claim that should not go unchallenged. He states, "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may turn heads by scrawling 'tax the rich' on her ballgown, but the truth is we already do — at a remarkably progressive rate."

His research and facts seem to have been omitted. Did he run out of space ? Perhaps he will address the personal income tax rates for Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet and Donald Trump in a future column.

Jeff Wiley, Monrovia

..

To the editor: Goldberg repeats two Republican talking points that mislead.

He says the rich are already taxed progressively in this country. Yes, some rich people pay high income tax rates.

For example, Bill Maher is paid to do his HBO program as well as make appearances at comedy shows. However, as a part owner of the New York Mets, he increases his wealth the way the truly wealthy do: by buying an asset that increases in value, on which you pay no taxes unless you sell it.

Wealthy people earn much of their money through capital gains, taxed at no more than 20%.

Goldberg also repeats the Republican mantra that even if we confiscated all the wealth of the top 1%, it still wouldn't pay for the Green New Deal or Medicare for all.

Forbes magazine says there are 2,755 billionaires in the world who control $13.1 trillion in assets. There are 724 American billionaires, who together are worth more than $4 trillion. That sure would pay for a lot.

Ronald Townsend, Los Angeles

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

COVID takes a bite from Bazoulé’s cult of sacred crocodiles


In this photo provided by Religion News Service, Alfred Kabore poses with a sacred crocodile in Bazoule, Burkina Faso, Oct. 17, 2021.

 (Joseph Hammond/Religion News Service via AP)

JOSEPH HAMMOND
Fri, October 22, 2021

BAZOULÉ, Burkina Faso (RNS) — The small live chicken, offered as a lure to get the crocodile to come out of the lake, barely convinced the massive male reptile to the water’s edge. The croc, himself the lure for the sprinkling of visitors who had come 20 miles from the capital, Ouagadougou, to pose with the beings held sacred by locals, seemed disinterested in tourists and chicken alike.

“We used to have large groups coming and students. That has slowed a lot in the last couple of years,” said Pierre Kaboré, president of the Association for Tourism and Development of Bazoulé and the head of a local association of 15 crocodile caretakers.

A recent visit confirmed that there were more crocodiles lounging on the shore of the holy lake than cars in the parking lot. With an uprising in Burkina Faso’s north and the travel disruptions of COVID-19, the number of tourists has slowed in this village of some 2,000 people and 100 or more fully adult crocodiles, with another 100 still maturing.

The local cult of the crocodile dates to sometime in the 1500s, when, during a period of severe drought, locals believe, a crocodile appeared and led local women to a source of fresh water. A thanksgiving was held by the grateful villagers and the reptiles have been revered ever since.

Since the early 1960s, the crocodiles of the lake have again provided for the people of the area, as the crocodiles of Bazoulé have become one of the country’s premier tourist attractions.

It is common to find crocodiles in the compounds of local families in the dry season, which runs from November to April. At other times crocodiles wander into the village seeking safe places to lay their eggs, and the locals protect the nests from predators.

West African crocodiles are generally less aggressive than their counterparts on the Nile, and the villagers and tourists pet them and large cattle from the village drink from the lake without fear.

Most of the crocodiles subsist on fish, birds and other small game, but a handful are selectively groomed to chase chickens for tourists. The locals collect the teeth of the crocodiles, who shed them often, to make into amulets, earrings and other jewelry.

“The local boys swim in the lake despite the crocodiles, and I did it too,” said Kaboré. “We know not to swim, though, too soon after the babies hatch — the mothers are very protective.”

But the crocodile cult goes beyond the commercial advantages: Their potentially valuable crocodile skin is not harvested for leather and the carcasses are buried intact in a small, unmarked cemetery in a quiet grove dedicated to crocodiles that is barred to tourists. Dead crocodiles receive burial services similar to those of humans in the village and are often buried in coffins.

At the center of the faith practice of the people of Bazoulé are the large male crocodiles known as the “old man of the lake.” The current holder of this esteemed position is believed to be 110 years old and thus has lived through the entire arc of Burkina Faso’s modern history: From the brutal colonial war raged by France to control “Upper Volta” during World War I to the rise and assassination in 1987 of rebel leader Thomas Sankara, who gave the country its name, which combines several Indigenous languages.

The previous old man of the lake, who died more than a decade ago, had lived even longer. “He was about 136, which is quite old for a male, but some females here potentially live up to 150 years,” said Kaboré.

In an annual ceremony known as Koom Lakre, offerings are made to the old man of the lake by a village elder. While chickens are sufficient for the entertainment of visitors, the old man is propitiated with sheep, goats and occasionally small donkeys.

Crocodiles’ cries heard by villagers are treated as omens that are interpreted by elders. Yet, there are increasingly fewer ears to hear those cries.

“We used to have over 100 people on the weekends coming here to see the crocodiles. Now it’s just a few cars a day,” said Alfred Kaboré, another crocodile caretaker. A small compound with a café and benches shaped like crocodiles sits empty.

Locals once keen on the tourist trade have refocused on the vegetable gardening for which the village is also known.

“There will always be a connection between us and the crocodiles. Even if someone leaves the village or shows interest in another religion, they still venerate the crocodiles as (a) god. Respect — this is the animist way,” said Alfred Kabore.

NBA-Kanter denounces China's human rights record again amid backlash


FILE PHOTO: NBA: Boston Celtics-Media Day

Amy Tennery
Fri, October 22, 2021

(Reuters) - Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter posted a new video on Friday denouncing China's human rights record regarding Uyghur people and other Muslim minorities.

The video comes two days after Kanter, who has a history of activism speaking out against his native Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan, condemned the Chinese treatment of Tibet in a similar video, prompting a backlash in China L1N2RH0K2.


"Heartless Dictator of China, XI JINPING and the Communist Party of China. I am calling you out in front of the whole world. Close down the SLAVE labor camps and free the UYGHUR people!" Kanter wrote on Twitter. "Stop the GENOCIDE, now!"

Chinese authorities have been accused of facilitating forced labour by detaining around a million Uyghurs and other primarily Muslim minorities in camps since 2016.

China denies wrongdoing, saying it has set up vocational training centres to combat extremism.

"It's so disappointing that the governments and leaders of Muslim majority countries are staying silent while my Muslim brothers and sisters are getting killed, raped and tortured," Kanter said in a video accompanying the tweet, posted hours before the Celtics' home opener against the Toronto Raptors.

Kanter, 29, was pilloried on Chinese social media and his name appeared to be blocked on the popular Weibo messaging platform.

Celtics highlights were absent from China's Tencent Holdings Ltd sports platform on Thursday.

The United States voiced concern on Friday at China's actions against the National Basketball Association following Kanter's criticism of China's treatment of Tibet.

A State Department spokesperson said in an email, referring to the People's Republic of China: "The United States is deeply concerned by the PRC's actions against the National Basketball Association for statements one player made regarding Tibet."

The Celtics and the NBA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York and Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Ken Ferris)

Udoka: Celtics haven't talked to Kanter about Tibet comments

Raptors Celtics Basketball

Boston Celtics' Enes Kanter wears shoes with a political message during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Toronto Raptors, Friday, Oct. 22, 2021, in Boston. AP Photo/Michael Dwyer

JIMMY GOLEN
Fri, October 22, 2021

BOSTON (AP) — Boston Celtics coach Ime Udoka said Friday night that he hasn’t talked to center Enes Kanter about the player's criticism of the Chinese government that led to the team's games being pulled off television there.

“We know it’s out there,” Udoka said before the team's home opener against the Toronto Raptors. “He is very passionate about a lot of things and he has the freedom to say what he wants. That’s above my department.”

In a series of social media posts, Kanter proclaimed his support for Tibetan independence and called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator.” Kanter also wore shoes with the phrase “Free Tibet” on them during the Celtics game on Friday against Toronto, when he played five minutes and scored two points.


“More than 150 Tibetan people have burned themselves alive!! — hoping that such an act would raise more awareness about Tibet,” he wrote on Twitte r. "I stand with my Tibetan brothers and sisters, and I support their calls for Freedom."

Chinese broadcaster Tencent did not show the Celtics’ opener against the Knicks on streaming services that typically air the games, an apparent response to Kanter’s statements.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Thursday that Kanter was “clout-chasing, trying to get attention with Tibet-related issues.”

“His wrong remarks are not worth refuting,” Wang said.

Neither the NBA nor the Celtics have commented.

A native of Turkey, Kanter has been an outspoken critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Turkish government. Kanter has said his passport was revoked by his homeland in 2017.

It’s not the first time the league has been forced to navigate its relationship with the Chinese government — and the gigantic media market it controls. In October 2019, then-Houston general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of government protesters in Hong Kong, also leading to games being pulled from the air.

The NBA estimated that the strained relationship with the Chinese and lost broadcast rights cost the league about $400 million in revenue during the 2019-20 season alone.

___

AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds contributed to this story.

___

More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Enes Kanter: Boston Celtics star under fire for Xi Jinping comments

Fri, October 22, 2021

In a video posted to Twitter, Kanter expressed support for the Free Tibet movement


Boston Celtics basketball player Enes Kanter is under fire in China after calling President Xi Jinping a "brutal dictator".

In a video posted to Twitter, he also expressed support for the Free Tibet movement.

His name has since been blocked from Chinese social media site Weibo, and the streaming of Celtics games has reportedly been cancelled.

China's foreign ministry has accused Kanter of "trying to get attention".

It comes two years after tweets from then Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey prompted China's broadcaster to cease showing NBA games.

"My message for the Chinese government is free Tibet," Kanter told his followers. "Tibet belongs to Tibetans."

China has long been accused of suppressing cultural and religious freedom in Tibet, a remote and mainly Buddhist region. The government denies the accusations and says Tibet has developed considerably under its rule.

On the same day as his video, Kanter showed off shoes with the phrase "Free Tibet" designed by Australia-based Chinese dissident cartoonist Badiucao. He had planned to wear them for his match against the New York Knicks but did not play. It's unclear whether the decision not to play Kanter was related to his political message.



Badiucao told the BBC that Kanter reached out to him weeks ago regarding collaborating on this project. "He has a very clear idea that he wants to advocate for the Tibetan community," the cartoonist said.

"It's a disappointment that he was not given a single minute on the court."

Chinese backlash to NBA boss's Hong Kong tweet

Protest held at Beijing Olympics torch lighting

Future Celtics matches are not listed as available for live broadcast on Chinese streaming app Tencent.

On the Celtics' official page, some fans called for him to be removed from the team while others urged an apology.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Kanter's remarks "were not worth refuting".

"We will never accept those attacks to discredit Tibet's development and progress," he said.

Kanter, who is known for his activism, has had his Turkish passport removed by the country's government over his remarks about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In 2019, prosecutors in Turkey issued an international arrest warrant for Kanter, claiming he had links with armed groups behind a 2016 failed coup. Kanter denies the allegations.
When politics and sports tangle

Zhaoyin Feng, BBC News, Washington

The NBA has once again stepped onto a political landmine in one of its biggest markets.

Overnight, Enes Kanter has been largely wiped out from China's internet, but compared to Daryl Morey's Hong Kong tweet that set off a social media firestorm two years ago, reactions in China toward Kanter's comments have been relatively subdued.

Many NBA fans in China may know little about what exactly Kanter said, only realising the fact that he has offended the authorities. Without mentioning Kanter's comments, an NBA blogger in China says the player "forgot his own place" and tried to ingratiate himself with the US. "He is just a basketball player… He should focus on playing the ball."

The bigger picture of this controversy is that with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics around the corner, politics and sports appear to be on a colliding path.

Activists have been urging a boycott of the Beijing Olympics over the country's human rights record, while China has repeatedly slammed these calls as "politicisation of sports". A senior member of the International Olympic Committee recently said that it's beyond the organisation's power to hold the Chinese government accountable for any human right abuses.

As both China's sporting prowess and its tension with the West continue to rise, it will soon be almost impossible for athletes, companies and international leagues to untangle the complicated link between politics and sports.

The story of Carol and Karen: Two experimental Facebook accounts show how the company helped divide America

Jessica Guynn and Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY
Sat, October 23, 2021

In 2019, two users joined Facebook. Both had similar interests: young children and parenting, Christianity, civics and community.

"Carol," 41, was a conservative from North Carolina. She was interested in news, politics, then-President Donald Trump and the nation's first family. She followed the official accounts for Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Fox News.

"Karen" was the same age and lived in the same state. But she was a liberal who liked politics, news, and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. She disliked Trump. She followed a local news site, pages about North Carolina and the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.

Facebook's algorithms got to work, suggesting what they'd be interested in.

Accepting recommendations for sites supportive of Trump led Carol to suggestions for a site called “Donald Trump is Jesus,” and another for QAnon, a wide-ranging extremist ideology that alleges celebrities and top Democrats are engaged in a pedophile ring. Karen was presented with anti-Trump pages, including one that posted an image showing an anus instead of Trump's mouth.

The two women were not real. They were created by a Facebook researcher to explore how the social media platform deepened political divides in the U.S. by recommending content rife with misinformation and extremism.

The experiment shows that Facebook, which had 2.9 billion monthly active users as of June 30, knew before the 2020 presidential election that its automated recommendations amplified misinformation and polarization in the U.S., yet the company largely failed to curtail its role in deepening the political divide.

Reports describing the experiments are among hundreds of documents disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by attorneys for Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee. The redacted versions were obtained by a consortium of 17 news organizations, including USA TODAY.

In the summer of 2019, a Facebook researcher created two fictitious accounts with similar demographics but opposite political beliefs. Facebook's recommendation algorithm quickly suggested the users follow accounts on extreme ends of the political spectrum.

Jose Rocha said he's experienced the divisiveness firsthand.

A military veteran who grew up in a Democratic, pro-union family in Selah, Washington, Rocha said Facebook normalized racist views and led him down a rabbit hole to far-right ideologies.

For a time, Rocha said, he became a Nazi sympathizer and a backer of other extremist views – behavior he now blames on Facebook's recommendations system.

"I wouldn't have even known they existed if it wasn't for Facebook. So I wouldn't have went out seeking them," said Rocha, 27.

Bill Navari, 57, a conservative sports commentator from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said a cousin blocked him on Facebook after he suggested she get her TDS ("Trump derangement syndrome") checked.

“I’ve seen people on Facebook saying, ‘If you are voting for Trump, unfriend me.' But I didn’t see anyone saying, ‘If you are voting for Biden, unfriend me,'” he said. “Facebook has become like oil and water, and never the two shall meet.”

These days, he steers clear of political debates on Facebook.

“I’ll post pics of my family, of my dog, where we went on vacation, and I stay in touch with the friends and family. But posting a meme or putting something on Facebook, it’s not going to change anyone’s mind,” he said. “I just think the conversation has become so coarse.”

Is Facebook to blame? “I don’t like pointing fingers without direct knowledge,” he said. “But I do think that Facebook is a party to this.”

The internal Facebook documents show how swiftly its recommendation algorithms can amplify polarization by sending users to content that's rife with misinformation and extremism.

The company's experiment with the hypothetical conservative user was called "Carol's Journey to QAnon." Within five days of going live on June 2, 2019, the user was barraged by "extreme, conspiratorial and graphic content," the researcher wrote.

One of the recommendations included an image labeling former President Barack Obama a "traitor" with a caption that read, "When we're done he'll claim Kenyan citizenship as a way to escape." (Despite racist claims to the contrary, Obama is a U.S. citizen.)

The report on the fictitious liberal user was called "Karen and the Echo Chamber of Reshares." That account went live on July 20, 2019. Within a week, Facebook's recommendations pivoted to "all anti-Trump content." Some recommendations came from a small Facebook group that had been flagged for "promoting illegal activity," the Facebook researcher wrote.

One image served to Karen showed then-first lady Melania Trump's face superimposed on the body of a bikini-clad woman kneeling on a bed. The caption read, "Melania Trump: Giving evangelicals something they can get behind."

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen appears before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee at the Russell Senate Office Building on October 05, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Haugen left Facebook in May and provided internal company documents about Facebook to journalists and others, alleging that Facebook consistently chooses profits over safety. (Photo by Matt McClain-Pool/Getty Images)

Haugen, the former Facebook employee who has blown the whistle on the company, is a former product manager who worked on Facebook’s Civic Integrity team, focusing on elections. She had a front-row seat to the most divisive political events in recent memory, including the Jan. 6 insurrection in which Trump supporters tried to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden's win in the presidential election.

Concerned that Facebook was prioritizing profits over the well-being of its users, Haugen reviewed thousands of documents over several weeks before leaving the company in May.

The documents, some of which have been the subject of extensive reporting by The Wall Street Journal and CBS News' "60 Minutes," detail company research showing that toxic and divisive content is prevalent in posts boosted by Facebook and shared widely by users.

"I saw Facebook repeatedly encounter conflicts between its own profits and our safety. Facebook consistently resolves these conflicts in favor of its own profits," Haugen alleged during a Senate hearing this month. "The result has been more division, more harm, more lies, more threats, and more combat."

Haugen has called on Facebook to limit its practice of prioritizing content that has drawn shares and comments from many users.

She has sought federal whistleblower protection from the SEC, alleging that Facebook, a publicly traded company, misled investors. She could get a financial award if the SEC were to penalize the company.

In this file photo illustration, a smartphone displays the logo of Facebook on a Facebook website background, on April 7, 2021, in Arlington, Virginia. Facebook's independent Oversight Board announced on April 13, 2021, it would start accepting requests to remove "harmful content" that users believe has been wrongly allowed to remain on the leading social network. The move broadens the mandate of the so-called "supreme court" of Facebook, which up to now had been tasked with reviewing instances of whether content was improperly taken down from Facebook or Instagram.

Facebook denies that it is the cause of political divisions in the U.S.

“The rise of polarization has been the subject of serious academic research in recent years but without a great deal of consensus," said spokesman Andy Stone. "But what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarization."

Facebook cited a research study that showed polarization has declined in a number of countries with high social media use even as it has risen in the U.S.

As for the test accounts, Stone said the experiment was "a perfect example of research the company does to improve our systems and helped inform our decision to remove QAnon from the platform."
Facebook tweaks its algorithms to increase engagement

After Russia used Facebook to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, pressure built on the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg to do something about misinformation and divisive content.

Meanwhile, critics charged that the company's apps exploited human psychology to hook people on social media, hijacking their time and undermining their well-being.

Facebook and Instagram ads linked to Russia during the 2016 election.

Especially worrying to company leaders was that users were less engaged on the platform. They scrolled through updates on their timelines, reading articles and watching videos. But they commented and shared posts less than before.

In response, Facebook radically altered the algorithm that determines what to display at the top of users' News Feed, the stream of posts from friends, family, groups and pages. The change was aimed at bringing users more updates from friends and family that spark meaningful social exchanges, the company said at the time.

But the focus on posts with high numbers of comments and likes rewarded outrage and resulted in the spread of more misinformation and divisive content, according to internal documents reviewed by USA TODAY. The more negative or incendiary the post, the farther and faster it spread.

The change was noticeable.

Kent Dodds, a software engineer from Utah, said he rarely uses Facebook. In September 2019, he hopped on to voice his support for then-Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.

Soon Dodds' News Feed shifted. Instead of seeing posts from his social circle, he was bombarded by political posts from distant Facebook connections.

“I remember coming away from that thinking, Facebook wants me to fight. They really want me to engage with these friends I haven’t talked to in a long time about their very different political views, and clearly not in a positive way,” Dodds said.

“Whether or not Facebook is intentional about what their algorithm is doing, it is responsible for it, and it’s doing harm to our society and they should be held accountable,” he said.

The debates over user engagement and polarization are complex, said Eli Pariser, author of "The Filter Bubble" and a researcher and co-director of New_Public, an incubator seeking to create better digital spaces.

"I think it’s also pretty clear that the company had made a whole bunch of decisions to prioritize engagement, and those have had public consequences,” he said.
One user's rule: Don't mix friends and family on Facebook

Deanie Mills struggled to deal with those consequences.

Mills is a 70-year-old crime novelist and grandmother who lives with her husband on a remote West Texas ranch. Half her family are Democrats; the other half are old-school conservatives, many of them military veterans.

For years she bit her tongue at family gatherings. “I didn’t want to get into a barroom brawl over politics with friends,” she said.

In 2008, she joined Facebook and used her account to speak out against the Iraq War at the urging of her son, a Marine who had become disillusioned with the war effort.

Facebook friend requests from relatives started to roll in. “I thought, oh crap,” said Mills, who backed Barack Obama for president. “I support the troops 100%, but I don’t support this war and I don’t want to lose family over it.”

She created a rule: Don’t mix Facebook with family. Relatives agreed to stay in touch in other ways.

Today she said her heart breaks every time she hears about families and friendships ripped apart by Facebook feuds. The problem, she said, is that people have a predilection for sensationalism, fear and outrage.

“People just want to be whipped up,” Mills said. “And Facebook says, ‘Here’s your drug. Come back here in the alley and I can fix you up.'"

Experts who have studied Facebook say that's how the platform is engineered.

Brent Kitchens, an assistant professor of commerce at the University of Virginia, co-authored a 2020 report that found Facebook users' News Feeds become more polarized as they spend more time on the platform. Facebook usage is five times more polarizing for conservatives than for liberals, the study found.

"Everything leads me to believe it's not malicious, and not intentional, but it's something they're aware of from their engagement-based content curation," Kitchens said.

Chris Bail, the director of Duke University's Polarization Lab, said he believes Facebook has played a role in deepening political divisions, but he cautioned there are other factors. He partly blames social media users who – consciously or not – seek validation and approval from others.

"Changing a few algorithms wouldn't do the trick to change that," said Bail, the author of "Breaking the Social Media Prism."

Alex Mayercik, a 52-year-old from Houston, also blames human nature.

“I have often said to people: It was harder for me to come out as a gay conservative than it was for me to come out,” she said.

Her political views and support of Trump cost her friends on Facebook, including her best friend from grade school, she said. "These were people that were friends, that I knew, that I broke bread with, that I went to church with."

But she also blames Facebook.

“I feel it leans one way politically, and that does not promote open dialogue,” said Mayercik. “People have to disagree. It seems to me that whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or any other social media platform, everybody is entitled to have an opinion.”
Facebook removes guardrails after election

Haugen told U.S. senators this month she was alarmed when, after the 2020 presidential election and before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Facebook disbanded her team and turned off safeguards to combat misinformation and dangerous movements.

Removing those measures, such as limits on live video, allowed election fraud misinformation to spread widely and for groups to gather on Facebook as they planned to storm the Capitol, she testified.

Protesters attempt to enter the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6 after mass demonstrations during a joint session of Congress to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump.

"Facebook changed those safety defaults in the runup to the election because they knew they were dangerous. And because they wanted that growth back, they wanted the acceleration of the platform back after the election, they returned to their original defaults," Haugen said when she testified before Congress earlier this month.

"The fact that they had to 'break the glass' on Jan. 6 and turn them back on, I think that’s deeply problematic," she said.

Facebook rolled back the measures when conditions returned to normal after the election, a decision "based on careful data-driven analysis," Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of policy and global affairs, wrote in a recent memo to employees.

Some of those measures were left in place through February, he wrote. "And others, like not recommending civic, political or new groups, we have decided to retain permanently."

The Facebook researcher who created Carol and Karen suggested deeper changes. The platform's recommendations should exclude groups or pages with known references to conspiracies in their names, such as QAnon, and those with administrators who broke Facebook's rules.

The researcher left the company in August 2020 as Facebook banned thousands of QAnon pages and groups, criticizing the failure to act sooner, BuzzFeed News reported. The FBI labeled QAnon a potential domestic terrorism threat in 2019.

Stone said Facebook adopted some of the researcher's recommendations earlier this year, such as eliminating the "like" button in the News Feed for pages that had violated the company's rules but had not yet been removed from the platform.

Bail said Facebook should change its system in a more fundamental way.

Rather than boost posts that get the most likes, he said, the platform should boost those with a large number of likes from a cross-section of sources, including Democrats and Republicans.

Regardless of whether Facebook makes such changes, it has already lost its hold on Katie Bryan. The interior designer from Woodbridge, Virginia, said she got fed up with the spread of hate and misinformation by Trump supporters when he first ran for president. She responded by unfriending friends and relatives.

Now, she said, “I don’t really even enjoy logging on to Facebook anymore."

Since Haugen came forward, Bryan deleted the Facebook and Instagram apps from her phone.

Contributing: Grace Hauck and Rachel Axon

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Facebook whistleblower documents: Company knew it was dividing America

US Blueprints for a 'national cloud' have been drawn up. Big Tech wants in.

David Ingram and Jacob Ward

Fri, October 22, 2021

Big tech has big designs on a big cloud.

A steady drumbeat from some of the most influential executives in the technology industry has emerged in recent months to push the idea that the U.S. government should invest in a "national research cloud" — a hub for U.S. research into artificial intelligence where researchers from academia and smaller tech companies could share data sets and other resources.

It's an idea that has been backed by a government commission led by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt and including executives from Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle, which recommended that the Biden administration create a hub for U.S. research into artificial intelligence. The White House has warmed up to the idea, ordering another report on it due next year with an eye toward competing with China on the development of artificial intelligence.

“We should be able to stay ahead of China. We estimated that we are one to two years ahead of China, broadly speaking, in this area. I hope that’s true,” Schmidt said in an interview with NBC News.

“Investments that are targeted in research — new algorithms — should be able to keep us ahead,” he said.

The stakes could be enormous. Some experts in artificial intelligence believe it has the potential to transform the economy — automating some jobs, while creating new ones — and the potential military applications have spurred investment by the Pentagon.

But this month, the idea began getting fresh pushback. Research groups including New York University's AI Now Institute and Data & Society, a nonprofit technology research group based in New York, say the very tech companies pushing this idea stand to profit from it, because the national hub would likely be housed in the same companies' commercial cloud computing services.

They say that's a conflict, and little more than a cash grab by what's effectively the next generation of military contractors. The plan also could entrench the very same tech companies that President Joe Biden's antitrust enforcers are working to rein in, these critics say.

"What this essentially is, is a subsidy to large tech companies," said Meredith Whittaker, a co-founder of the AI Now Institute, a research center for artificial intelligence at NYU.

A former researcher at Google, Whittaker was active within the company in pushing back against its handling of AI ethics. She left in 2019 and has continued to be a consistent critic of how large tech companies handle AI research and its impact.

Whittaker pointed out that the Biden administration pledged in July to rein in a "small number of dominant Internet platforms" that use their power to "extract monopoly profits."

"We need to break out of these narrow frames that are set by self-interested tech oligarchs," she said.

Other criticisms from her and fellow researchers are that the government has barely put thought into the privacy issues or potentially harmful influence of ramping up AI research, and that the alleged competition with China to win an AI arms race may be exaggerated in a replay of Cold War panic.

The idea of a national cloud for AI has been kicking around for years as a way to provide cutting-edge computing power to academic researchers and other people who don't happen to work at a place like Google or Amazon, which have specialized and lucrative divisions dedicated to cloud computing.

One potential advantage, advocates say, is that a national cloud could be the home for huge, secure sets of data that could help train AI systems. Some Americans fear that Chinese researchers have a leg up in AI development because they already have access to large, government-sanctioned data sets in China.

This month, the AI Now Institute and Data & Society submitted written comments on the idea. They argued that the plan for a national cloud would help big tech companies consolidate power and that a Cold War-style competition with China was misleading and dangerous.

“Winning at whose expense?” Brittany Smith, policy director for Data & Society, said in an interview. She said the federal task force that's reviewing the idea should consider evidence that large-scale AI systems result in discriminatory treatment, and proceed with caution.

“It’s always just, ‘Go go, go. Launch the thing. Build the thing. Scale the thing,’” she said. Researchers need to take time, she said, “talking about the costs and talking about who’s hurt and why they are considered expendable in this fake race to do things that don’t actually make any sense.”

More skepticism has come from other organizations. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington, said in written comments this month that the government should “set rigorous restrictions on the influence of companies involved,” in part to protect civil liberties.

Andrew Moore, head of Cloud AI at Google Cloud and a member of the federal task force on the subject, said in an interview that the role of Google and other corporations would be limited in any national effort.

"It will be driven by academics and the government funding agencies that are involved," he said.

And, he said, it's important that no single cloud-services provider take on a dominant role. A national cloud would be more like a "multi-cloud," he said. "We would never want to see a future where researchers were tied to specific clouds. We very much believe in competition, both among the big established cloud providers and many of the other folks that are involved."

Last year, a bill to develop a national cloud got bipartisan support in Congress as well as endorsements from tech companies and several large research universities.

Another boost came in March, when the federal commission chaired by Schmidt included a national cloud among its recommendations for winning an AI arms race against China. The commission also included Oracle CEO Safra Catz; Andy Jassy, who has since become the CEO of Amazon; and executives at Google and Microsoft.

Representatives for Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle did not respond to requests for comment. The federal government is already a big customer of commercial cloud computing services.

Next up, the Biden administration and Congress are weighing a major investment of money. In June, the White House announced the creation of a task force to help draw up a blueprint for a national cloud — which would officially be called the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource, or NAIRR.

The task force is due to submit an interim report to Congress in May and a final report in November 2022.

Boom times for Shell amid record gas prices

Rachel Millard
Fri, October 22, 2021

Shell

Major oil companies are expected to reveal booming profits after global gas prices soared.

Shell is forecast to post quarterly revenue of $2.1bn (£1.5bn) for its natural gas division when it reports on Thursday, an almost three-fold increase on the same quarter last year.

Gas prices have climbed globally amid a global crunch in supplies, with Asian spot liquified natural gas prices four times higher than during the third quarter of 2020.

The rally is leading to painful increases in household bills across Britain and Europe, while factories have been forced to curb output.

None the less, higher prices mean windfalls for producers as well as potentially for the pension pots invested in their stocks.

Oil prices have also climbed, with Brent Crude rising more than 60pc since the start of the year to more than $85 on Friday.

Shell’s shares have climbed 35pc this year, to 1,749p, while BP’s have climbed 40pc to 356p.

Analysts at HSBC expect cash flows for the third quarter - covering July to September - among integrated oil companies to be double than those of a year ago.

“The strength of oil and gas prices means the companies are even more free cash positive than we had already expected,” they said.

“While some of this excess free cash should enable them to accelerate low-carbon spending, much of it is likely to be seen in cash returns to shareholders.”

Shell is reaping the rewards of its £47bn purchase of rival BG Group, a major liquefied natural gas producer, in 2016.

FTSE 100 rival BP is set to report third quarter results on November 2.

HSBC believes its results “will show the strength of its excess free cash flow,” albeit its “leverage to stronger oil and gas prices isn’t as great as many of its peers”.

The sector is under growing pressure to invest more in renewable energy and cut carbon emissions.

BP announced plans last year for a 10-fold increase in low carbon investment by 2030 and a 40pc fall in its own oil and gas production by 2030.

Shell plans to cut the net carbon footprint of its products by 20pc by 2030 and by 100pc by 2050.