Endangered whale population sinks close to 20-year low


FILE - In this March 28, 2018, file photo, a North Atlantic right whale feeds on the surface of Cape Cod bay off the coast of Plymouth, Mass. The population of North Atlantic right whales has dipped to the lowest level in two decades, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A type of whale that is one of the rarest marine mammals in the world lost nearly 10% of its population last year, a group of scientists and ocean life advocates said on Monday.

The North Atlantic right whale numbered only 366 in 2019, and its population fell to 336 in 2020, the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium said. The estimate is the lowest number in nearly two decades.

Right whales were once abundant in the waters off New England, but were decimated during the commercial whaling era due to their high concentrations of oil. They have been listed as endangered by the U.S. government for more than half a century.

The whales have suffered high mortality and poor reproduction in some recent years. There were more than 480 of the animals as recently as 2011. They’re vulnerable to fatal entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with large ships, and even when they survive, they often emerge less fit and less able to feed and mate, said Scott Kraus, chair of the consortium.

“No one engaged in right whale work believes that the species cannot recover from this. They absolutely can, if we stop killing them and allow them to allocate energy to finding food, mates and habitats that aren’t marred with deadly obstacles,” Kraus said.

The whales feed and mate off New England and Canada. They then travel hundreds of miles in the fall to calving grounds off Georgia and Florida before returning north in the spring.

The whale consortium was founded in the mid-1980s by a group of science institutions including the New England Aquarium and today includes dozens of members from academia, industry, government and elsewhere.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the arm of the federal government that monitors and regulates ocean issues, cautioned that the group’s estimate is preliminary and has not yet been peer reviewed. However, the agency shares the consortium’s concern about the loss of right whales, said Allison Ferreira, a spokesperson for the agency.

“North Atlantic right whales are one of the most imperiled species on the planet, and the latest estimate shows that the substantial downward trajectory of right whale abundance documented over the last decade continues,” Ferreira said.

The whales, which can weight 135,000 pounds (61,235 kilos) have been a focus of conservationists for generations. Recently, efforts to save the whales have resulted in new restrictions on U.S. lobster fishing, and pushback from the fishing industry about those new rules.

The rules are designed to reduce the number of rope lines that link buoys to lobster and crab traps, and went into effect this year. However, the rules also resulted in a flurry of lawsuits, and a federal judge ruled this month that fishermen can continue to fish until further notice in an area off the coast of Maine that had been slated for restriction from their gear.

World set to miss goal of $100B climate aid pledged to poor

By FRANK JORDANS


This Oct. 24, 2021 taken photo shows demonstrators from Extinction Rebellion push a self-made cart in the shape of the climate target "1.5" in Berlin, Germany. Officials say a target for rich countries to provide poor nations with $100 billion in aid each year to tackle global warming will be missed, dealing a blow to the upcoming U.N. climate talks in Glasgow. Senior officials from Canada and Germany were tasked with breaking a deadlock in negotiations ahead of next week’s summit.

 (Annette Riedl/dpa via AP)


BERLIN (AP) — A target for rich countries to provide poor nations with $100 billion in aid each year to tackle global warming will be missed, dealing a blow to the upcoming U.N. climate talks in Glasgow.

Senior officials from Britain, Canada and Germany, who had hoped to break a deadlock in negotiations ahead of next week’s summit, announced Monday that current data shows the goal won’t be reached until 2023 — three years later than agreed.

“The goal was almost certainly missed in 2020,” said Alok Sharma, the U.K. official who will chair the talks in Glasgow.

Failure to fulfil the pledge first made in 2009 and reaffirmed at the 2015 Paris climate talks, had “been a source of deep frustration for developing countries,” he added. “I absolutely get this.”

But Sharma, who will now have to face the frustration of poor nations over the funding shortfall, pointed to a projected rise in financial aid beyond the agreed threshold in the coming years.

“The plan provides confidence that the $100 billion will be met in 2023, and importantly, it projects that the $100 billion will be exceeded in subsequent years, with up to $117 billion being mobilized in 2025,” he said.

Over the 2021-2025 period, $500 million would likely be mobilized in public and private finance, he added.

The report was compiled by Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, Jonathan Wilkinson, and Germany’s deputy environment minister, Jochen Flasbarth, who drew on data provided by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which tracks international flows of climate finance.

“Not all of our conversations were really (...) polite,” Flasbarth told reporters of the talks that had taken place with rich and poor nations in recent weeks.

“There is disappointment and we share this disappointment,” he said. “But the result we have now is not bad enough (to allow) not to be constructive in Glasgow.”

But Mohamed Adow, a long-time observer of U.N. climate talks who now heads Nairobi-based environmental think tank Power Shift Africa, said the plan won’t satisfy poor nations, who have insisted that the original target must be met.

“The $100 billion of climate finance is not only a lifeline to poor and vulnerable communities on the front line of a climate crisis they did not cause, it’s also the bare minimum that rich countries need to do to hold up their end of the bargain at COP26,” he said

Adow warned the plan now submitted to the U.K. to take to the COP26 talks in Glasgow should not be considered “mission accomplished.”

“Poor nations will not be conned and the leaders of the developed world need to ... get this money on the table if COP26 is going to be a success,” he said.

Teresa Anderson, climate policy coordinator at ActionAid International, noted that much of the financial support from rich to poor countries is still made out as loans that those on the frontlines of climate change struggle to repay.

“It is vital that climate finance comes in the form of grants,” she said.

Sharma said the upcoming talks would seek to address that issue, as well as the demand from poor countries for half of the funds to be devoted to adapting to climate change. Currently, the overwhelming share is earmarked for measures to reduce emissions.

The Washington-based environmental think tank World Resources Institute has calculated that only a handful of rich countries including France, Japan, Norway, Germany and Sweden are providing a fair share of climate aid.

Based on the size of its economy and greenhouse gas emissions, the United States has fallen far short in recent years, though President Joe Biden has pledged to double U.S. climate finance contributions to $11.4 billion a year by 2024.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the climate talks at http://apnews.com/hub/climate

CRIMINAL CYBER CAPITALI$M

Russian-linked Nobelium hacker behind SolarWinds attack strikes again


The Russian-linked hacker Nobelium behind the 2020 Solarwind attacks has targeted global information technology supply chains again, a Microsoft blog said Sunday. 

File Photo by Ken Wolter/UPI/Shutterstock

Oct. 25 (UPI) -- The Russia-linked hacker Nobelium behind the 2020 SolarWinds cyberattacks has struck global information technology supply chains again.

Tom Burt, who serves as corporate vice president of Microsoft's Customer Security and Trust team, warned of the new attack by the Russian nation-state actor Nobelium Sunday in a blog.

"Nobelium has been attempting to replicate the approach it has used in past attacks by targeting organizations integral to the global IT supply chain," Burt said in the blog. "This time, it is attacking a different part of the supply chain: resellers and other technology service providers that customize, deploy and manage cloud services and other technologies on behalf of their customers.

"We believe Nobelium ultimately hopes to piggyback on any direct access that resellers may have to their customers' IT systems and more easily impersonate an organization's trusted technology partner to gain access to their downstream customers."

Burt said Microsoft first noticed the new attack in its "early stages" in May and since then has notified more than 140 resellers and technology service providers who were targeted.

Investigators found that 14 of these resellers and service providers were compromised.

The attack against resellers and service providers is part of the Russian-linked hacker's broader activities this summer. From July 1 through Tuesday, Microsoft informed 609 customers of 22,868 attempted attacks with a success rate in the "low single digits."

Prior to July 1, Microsoft notified customers about overall nation-state hacker attempts 20,500 times, including a phishing scheme in May targeting government and organizations through mimicking the United States Agency for International Development.

Earlier this month, Microsoft published a report on digital defense that found Russia was behind 58% of state-backed hacks over the past year.

"The recent activity is another indicator that Russia is trying to gain long-term systematic access to a variety of points in the technology supply chain and establish a mechanism for surveilling -- now or in the future -- targets of interest to the Russian government," Burt said in the blog Sunday.

The attack n network security software from SolarWinds last year breached at least nine U.S. federal agencies, along with dozens of companies, including Fortune 500 businesses.

Earlier this year, technology executives testified before Congress that the SolarWinds attack launched in March 2020 and discovered by cybersecurity firm Microsoft and Fire Eye (now known as Mandiant) in December, was unprecedented in scale and sophistication.

"While the SolarWinds supply chain attack involved malicious code inserted in legitimate software, most of this recent intrusion activity has involved leveraging stolen identities and the networks of technology solutions, services, and reseller companies in North America and Europe to ultimately access the environments of organizations that are targeted by the Russian government," Charles Carmakal, Mandiant senior vice president and chief technology officer, said in a statement to ZDNet.com.

Microsoft: Russian-backed hackers targeting cloud services

By ALAN SUDERMAN

FILE - In this Jan. 28, 2020, file photo, a Microsoft computer is among items displayed at a Microsoft store in suburban Boston. Microsoft says the same Russia-backed hackers responsible for the 2020 SolarWinds breach continue to attack the global technology supply chain and are have been relentlessly targeting cloud service resellers and others since summer. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Microsoft said Monday the same Russia-backed hackers responsible for the 2020 SolarWinds breach continue to attack the global technology supply chain and have been relentlessly targeting cloud service companies and others since summer.

The group, which Microsoft calls Nobelium, has employed a new strategy to piggyback on the direct access that cloud service resellers have to their customers’ IT systems, hoping to “more easily impersonate an organization’s trusted technology partner to gain access to their downstream customers.” Resellers act as intermediaries between giant cloud companies and their ultimate customers, managing and customizing accounts.

“Fortunately, we have discovered this campaign during its early stages, and we are sharing these developments to help cloud service resellers, technology providers, and their customers take timely steps to help ensure Nobelium is not more successful,” Tom Burt, a Microsoft vice president, said in a blog post.

The Biden administration downplayed Microsoft’s announcement. A U.S. government official briefed on the issue who insisted on anonymity to discuss the government’s response noted that “the activities described were unsophisticated password spray and phishing, run-of-the mill operations for the purpose of surveillance that we already know are attempted every day by Russia and other foreign governments.”

The Russian Embassy did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

U.S. and Russian ties have already been strained this year over a string of high-profile ransomware attacks against U.S. targets launched by Russia-based cyber gangs. U.S. President Joe Biden has warned to Russian President Vladimir Putin to get him to crack down on ransomware criminals, but several top administration cybersecurity officials have said recently that they have seen no evidence of that.

Supply chain attacks allow hackers to steal information from multiple targets by breaking into a single product they all use. The U.S. government has previously blamed Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency for the SolarWinds hack, a supply-chain hack which went undetected for most of 2020, compromised several federal agencies and badly embarrassing Washington.

The hacking campaign is called SolarWinds after the U.S. software company whose product was used in that effort. The Biden administration in April placed new sanctions against six Russian companies that support the country’s cyber efforts in response to the SolarWinds hack.

Microsoft has been observing Nobelium’s latest campaign since May and has notified more than 140 companies targeted by the group, with as many as 14 believed to have been compromised. The attacks have been increasingly relentless since July, with Microsoft noting that it had informed 609 customers that they had been attacked 22,868 times by Nobelium, with a success rate in the low single digits. That’s more attacks than Microsoft had flagged from all nation-state actors in the previous three years.

“Russia is trying to gain long-term, systematic access to a variety of points in the technology supply chain and establish a mechanism for surveilling – now or in the future – targets of interest to the Russian government,” Burt said.

Microsoft did not name any of the hackers’ targets in their latest campaign. But cybersecurity firm Mandiant said it had seen victims in both Europe and North America.

Mandiant Chief Technology Officer Charles Carmakal said the hackers’ method of going after resellers make detection difficult.

“It shifts the initial intrusion away from the ultimate targets, which in some situations are organizations with more mature cyber defenses, to smaller technology partners with less mature cyber defenses,” he said.

___

AP Business Writer Matt Ott in Silver Spring, Maryland, contributed to this report.

NH Health officials criticize rejection of vaccine funding


CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — New Hampshire’s rejection of federal funding for vaccine outreach and other programs will further strain the state’s hospitals and delay the administration of COVID-19 vaccines to children, health care officials said Monday.

The Republican-led Executive Council, a five-member panel that approves state contracts, rejected $27 million in federal vaccination funding this month, although a legislative committee later approved accepting $4.7 million.

Jim Potter, executive vice president of the New Hampshire Medical Society, said pediatricians “desperately need” the money to begin vaccinating children.

“You’re going to have parents who are going to be delayed months in getting their kids vaccinated,” Potter said. “This is not so much about the rights of some individuals, it’s simply denying access to care to what I would say is the majority of parents of children who want the vaccine.”

Dr. Don Caruso, CEO at Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene, said hospitals are struggling with a high volume of patients, many of whom delayed care during the pandemic and are coming in sicker. Some are cutting back on elective procedures, while intensive care patients are being moved around the state, he said, adding that staff members are exhausted and leaving the health care profession.

“What the Executive Council did was a travesty,” Caruso said.

The health officials were joined at a news conference by the state’s all-Democratic congressional delegation, who called the council’s actions misguided and dangerous.

Republican councilors argued the grant language would have required the state to comply with any “future directives” issued by the Biden administration regarding COVID-19, such as vaccine mandates, although the state attorney general said that wasn’t true.

Asked whether they could get federal waivers to remove that language, U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said the delegation did its part by securing the funds.

“We’ve already talked to the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), we’re talking to the various federal agencies, but the reality is, we’ve done our job,” Shaheen said. “Now it’s time for the governor and the Republican Executive Councilors to do their jobs and protect the health and safety of the people of this state.”

NTSB chair wants Tesla to limit where Autopilot can operate


FILE - This July 8, 2018 photo shows Tesla 2018 Model 3 sedans sit on display outside a Tesla showroom in Littleton, Colo. Tesla wants to keep secret its response to the U.S. government’s request for information in an investigation of its Autopilot partially automated driving system. The electric vehicle maker sent a partial response by a Friday deadline to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is investigating how the system detects and responds to emergency vehicles parked on highways. In a document posted on its website Monday, Oct. 25, 2021 the agency says it is reviewing the response and that Tesla has asked that its whole submission be treated as confidential business information. 

(AP Photo/David Zalubowsi, File)


DETROIT (AP) — The head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is calling on Tesla to act on recommendations to limit where its Autopilot driver-assist system can operate and to put a system in place to make sure drivers are paying attention.

In a letter sent to Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Monday, Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy says the electric vehicle maker has not responded to the agency’s recommendations issued four years ago.

Homendy also says company statements that safety is the primary design requirement for Tesla are undercut by the rollout of “Full Self-Driving” software to customers who test it on public roads. The tests are being done “without first addressing the very design shortcomings” that allowed three fatal Tesla crashes that were investigated by the NTSB, she wrote.

The NTSB investigates crashes but has no regulatory authority. It can only make recommendations to automakers or other federal agencies such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Messages were left Monday seeking comment from Tesla.

“If you are serious about putting safety front and center in Tesla vehicle design, I invite you to complete action on the safety recommendations we issued to you four years ago,” Homendy wrote.

The agency, she wrote, has long advocated for multiple technologies to prevent crashes and save lives, “but it’s crucial that such technology is implemented with the safety of all road users foremost in mind.”

Homendy wrote that her agency appreciates Tesla’s cooperation as it investigates other fatal Tesla crashes in Texas and Florida.

She pointed out that the agency found that the driver in a 2016 crash in Williston, Florida, ran his car on Autopilot on roads where it wasn’t designed to operate safely. The NTSB also determined that Autopilot didn’t effectively monitor the driver to make sure he was paying attention.

Tesla has said that Autopilot and “Full Self-Driving” are driver assist systems and cannot drive themselves, despite their names. It says drivers should always pay attention and be ready to take action.

The NTSB made the recommendations in 2017 to Tesla and five other automakers. The other five responded describing what action they would take, but Tesla did not officially respond, Homendy wrote.

The letter comes as federal agencies step up pressure on Tesla over its partially automated driving systems. It comes just hours after NHTSA posted a document showing that Tesla wants to keep secret its response to the agency’s investigation of Autopilot.

The electric vehicle maker sent the agency a partial response by a Friday deadline. The agency is investigating how Autopilot detects and responds to emergency vehicles parked on highways.

In a document posted on its website Monday, the agency says it is reviewing Tesla’s response, and that Tesla has asked that its whole submission be treated as confidential business information.

Companies often ask that some information be kept confidential when they respond to the agency, but seldom does it allow entire documents to be kept secret. Much of the time the documents are heavily redacted before being placed in public files.

In August the safety agency made a detailed information request to Tesla in an 11-page letter that is part of a wide-ranging investigation into how Autopilot behaves when first responder vehicles are parked while crews deal with crashes or other hazards.

The agency wants to know how Teslas detect a crash scene, including flashing lights, road flares, reflective vests worn by responders and vehicles parked on the road.

The agency opened the investigation in August, citing 12 crashes in which Teslas on Autopilot hit parked police and fire vehicles. In the crashes under investigation, at least 17 people were hurt and one was killed.

NHTSA announced the investigation into Tesla’s driver assist systems including Autopilot and/or Traffic Aware Cruise Control after a series of collisions with emergency vehicles since 2018. The probe covers 765,000 vehicles from the 2014 through 2021 model years.

Autopilot, which can keep vehicles in their lanes and stop for obstacles in front of them, has frequently been misused by Tesla drivers.

The agency also is asking Tesla for details on how it ensures that drivers are paying attention, including instrument panel and aural warnings.

Tesla also faces another deadline from NHTSA. By Nov. 1 it has to explain why an over-the-internet software update improving Autopilot’s ability to spot emergency vehicles in low-light conditions should not be considered a recall.

Also, a NHTSA spokeswoman said Monday that the agency has asked Tesla for information about changes to “Full Self-Driving” software that is being tested on public roads by selected Tesla owners.

Musk wrote on Twitter during the weekend that Tesla was spotting “issues” with a new version of the software, so it was rolling that back to a previous version. Earlier he wrote that the new version was experiencing “regression” in left turns at traffic lights.

On Monday, Musk tweeted that the problem had been fixed and said the issue was power-saving mode interacting with the software.

Critics say the changes show Tesla is testing software on public roads without proper simulation and internal checks.

Northam: $200M wind turbine project to create 310 jobs


Two of the offshore wind turbines have been constructed off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va., Monday, June 29, 2020. Gov. Ralph Northam says a $200 million factory will create hundreds of jobs making turbine blades for offshore wind projects. Virginia-based Dominion Energy is already partnering with Spain's Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy on the $7.8 billion project, which will generate energy 27 miles off Virginia Beach. The factory at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal promises 310 jobs producing blades for this project and others across North America. The project announced Monday, Oct. 25, 2021 includes more than $80 million in investments for buildings and equipment at the terminal.

 (AP Photo/Steve Helber, file)

PORTSMOUTH, Va. (AP) — Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy will partner with Dominion Energy on a $200 million factory making turbine blades for offshore wind projects, creating 310 jobs, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced Monday.

Virginia-based Dominion previously selected the Spanish company as its partner for its $7.8 billion energy generation project 27 miles (43 kilometers) off the coast of Virginia Beach. The Siemens Gamesa factory at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal will produce turbine blades for the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project as well as other offshore wind energy generators around North America.

The factory project includes more than $80 million in investments for buildings and equipment at the terminal, where about 50 new service jobs are expected to support the effort.

“The U.S. offshore market is a critical part of our overall global strategy, with our presence in Virginia playing a crucial and central role,” Siemens Gamesa Offshore Business Unit CEO Marc Becker said in a statement.

Over the next 10 years, building and operating the offshore wind industry will be worth $109 billion to businesses in its supply chain, according to a recent report from the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind. That figure is up from the group’s $70 billion estimate just two years ago.

Coastal states are moving to enter or expand their roles in the industry and some have been vying to become supply chain hubs by planning and building onshore support sites for manufacturing wind power components.

“Virginians want renewable energy, our employers want it, and Virginia is delivering it,” Northam said in a statement. “Make no mistake: Virginia is building a new industry in renewable energy, with more new jobs to follow, and that’s good news for our country.”

In August, Northam announced that Dominion Energy would lease 72 acres of the deep-water, multi-use marine cargo terminal in Portsmouth as a staging and pre-assembly area for the foundations and turbines to be installed off Virginia Beach. The project is expected to provide enough electricity to power 660,000 homes by 2026, Dominion has said.

A two-turbine pilot project is currently operating off Virginia Beach. Federal officials announced the beginning of a review process for the project over the summer.

The Virginia Clean Economy Act sets a target for Dominion Energy to construct or purchase at least 5,200 megawatts of energy through offshore wind by 2034 and to achieve 100% carbon-free energy production by 2045.

Nuclear power: Are energy price hikes prompting a German rethink?

Energy prices are soaring globally, and Germany's neighbors are building new nuclear reactors.  Some want to revisit the commitment to go nuclear-free.  


'Nuclear energy? No thank you!' has been the rallying cry of several generations in Germany


In Germany, the stock market price for electricity has risen by around 140% since January. Experts believe energy prices are being driven up by the rocketing cost of natural gas, which has gone up 440% since the beginning of the year.

So far electricity and gas prices for households in Germany have increased only 4.7% in the first half of 2021, but many consumers fear the rise in market costs may soon be passed on to them. Germany already pays the most for electricity in Europe, with around half of the cost made up of taxes, levies, and surcharges, part of which is meant to facilitate the transition to renewable energy.

Currently about a quarter of Germany's electricity comes from coal and about another quarter from renewables, 16% from natural gas and around 11% from nuclear energy.


This December, half of Germany's remaining nuclear reactors are scheduled to be taken offline. The other half are to cease operation next year as part of the government's plan to go nuclear-free. That shift could potentially drive energy prices even higher as Germany also moves away from coal and becomes more reliant on gas in the short term while planning to move to renewables in the long term.

Three-quarters of Germans want their government to take tougher measures to combat price rises, and 31% said they would support keeping nuclear power if it would stabilize electricity prices, according to a poll by the price comparison service Verivox. The study surveyed 1,000 people aged 18 to 69 across Germany in September 2021 and was representative of the population in terms of age, gender and the German state of residence. That statistic represents an 11% increase in support for nuclear power since 2018.  

Watch video03:06 Germany's phaseout of nuclear power almost done

Pros and cons of nuclear power

Following the September 26 national election, the center-left Social Democrats, environmentalist Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats have begun coalition negotiations to form Germany's next government. The preliminary agreements saw a commitment to build new gas power plants and to phase out coal power by 2030, but no extensions for the use of nuclear power.

On October 13, in an open letter in the German daily newspaper Die Welt, experts warned that Germany risked "carbonizing its energy system by phasing out nuclear power” and missing its 2030 climate goals. The experts believe that the loss in nuclear-produced electricity will not be able to be made up for using new renewable energy production and will instead require burning more coal and natural gas. The letter calls for the life cycles of the remaining power plants to be extended from 2030 to 2036.  

40 YEARS OF GERMAN ANTI-NUCLEAR ACTION

A movement is born

Germany’s anti nuclear movement got its start in the early 1970s, when protestors came out in force against plans for a nuclear power plant at Wyhl, close to the French border. Police were accused of using unnecessary force against the peaceful demonstrations. But the activists ultimately won, and plans for the Wyhl power station were scrapped in 1975.

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The letter was initiated by British environmentalist John Law, but despite the unpopularity of such views in Germany, it has a number of German signatories. Simon Friederich, professor of the philosophy of science at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, was one of them.

"We want to expand renewables. If we have to first replace the nuclear plants that have gone with new renewables, then of course that's an unnecessary setback," he told DW.

Friederich did not always have such positive views on nuclear energy and was part of a generation that campaigned to shut down nuclear power plants. "I was raised in the 80s in a green family of anti-nuclear vicars," he said. Like many other young Germans at the time, he read Gudrun Pausewang's 1987 young-adult novel "Fall-Out," which tells the story of a Chernobyl-like disaster in Germany, and was horrified.  

But when he began to study physics at university, he became more critical. After the Fukushima disaster in Japan caused Germany to speed up the phasing out of nuclear power, he was skeptical that nuclear power was worse than other commonly used alternatives, like coal. He does not argue that nuclear power is a perfect option but says it is an important measure for now because of its low carbon footprint and ability to produce large amounts of power at any time of year.

Top Green politicians — here, Jürgen Trittin and Claudia Roth — often attended antinuclear rallies

Little chance of political turnaround

But even if it is unclear how Germany will replace nuclear and coal power and meet its climate goals, it is very unlikely that Germany's political leadership would allow an even temporary extension of the lifespan of its remaining nuclear reactors. "The political price is almost infinity. Hardly any elected politician would do so. Certainly not a government that includes the Greens," Lion Hirth, professor of Energy Policy at the Hertie School of Governance, told DW. "It would look like betraying the cause. There are very few political topics that have gathered so strong a consensus over so long."

Opposing nuclear energy goes to the core of the activism that launched the Green Party in 1980 and that continues to be its rallying cry. Green Party co-chair Robert Habeck reiterated in an article in September 2020 his belief that responsibility for future generations must be the guiding principle with which to approach energy production and its consequences.

For him, that rules out nuclear energy because of the problem of nuclear waste — which can be harmful to up to a million years — and for which safe long-term storage issues have still not been resolved.

Green Party co-chair Robert Habeck feels energy policy must not threaten future generations

The Green Party was founded as part of the antinuclear movement in West Germany and was instrumental in bringing about the agreement on the nuclear phaseout as part of the governing coalition in 2002. Green politicians took part in protests in the 1970s and 1980s against the Wackersdorf reprocessing plant, the transport of nuclear waste to Gorleben and the construction of the Brokdorf nuclear power plant, protests that they see as part of Germany's social iconography.

Friederich recognizes that he is an exception for Germany, but also sees it as a debate going beyond Germany's borders. "I am not totally naive. There is no party in the coalition negotiations that has made this part of their election priorities." He believes the real issue is about the future of nuclear power in Europe and whether Germany will oppose or attempt to shape its use. 

Watch video01:20 Germany debates nuclear waste storage

Europe divided over nuclear energy  

Within the EU, France leads an influential bloc that supports nuclear energy as a means of cutting carbon emissions. Germany's neighbors — Poland and the Czech Republic — are also part of that group. All three are currently building new nuclear power plants and have pushed for the inclusion of nuclear energy in the European Union's carbon reduction plans. 

In April 2020, the European Commission's scientific body, the Joint Research Centre, released a report that found that nuclear power is a safe, low-carbon energy source comparable to wind and hydropower. Those findings allow nuclear power to receive the green investment label under EU rules. "The analyses did not reveal any science-based evidence that nuclear energy does more harm to human health or to the environment than other electricity production technologies," the report said. 

In response, the energy ministers of Germany, Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg and Spain signed a letter to the European Commission asking for nuclear power to be denied the special status. "Nuclear power, however, is a high-risk technology — wind energy is not. This essential difference must be taken into account," the letter said. It also stated that the report failed to account for a serious nuclear incident.  

Gundremmingen in Bavaria is so proud of its nuclear plant that its coat of arms bears a golden atom

Deploring the shutdown

At the end of 2021, Germany will shut down three of the last six remaining German nuclear reactors. At the Gundremmingen facility in Bavaria, one of the units ceased operation in 2017. Now the last unit will be shut.  

The plant will go from employing approximately 540 workers to 440 in the first year after closure, according to a statement provided to DW from the German multinational energy company RWE, which runs the plant. Many workers are still needed to decommission and disassemble the plant, which is planned to take over 10 years. But fewer and fewer people will be employed as time passes.   

Despite an accident in 1977 that required one of the reactors to be shut down — considered the worst incident in a nuclear power plant in Germany's history — many locals continue to have a positive view of nuclear power. 

"We find it really sad," Gerlinge Hutter, who runs the Zum Ochsen Inn in Gundremmingen, told DW about the closing of the plant. She expects fewer people will now come to stay, since many of their guests worked at the plant. "We also worry about the electricity prices. And we know it is still sure to be nuclear power we are getting because the countries around us are all building new reactors." 

Watch video26:01 Bleak winter ahead: Who’s to blame for Europe’s energy crisis?

While you're here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what is happening in German politics and society, with an eye toward understanding this year’s elections and beyond. You can sign up here for the weekly email newsletter Berlin Briefing, to stay on top of developments as Germany enters the post-Merkel era.

Georgia nuclear reactors delayed again as costs mount

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Power Co. is pushing back the startup date for its two new nuclear reactors near Augusta, saying it’s still redoing sloppy construction work and that contractors still aren’t meeting deadlines.

The unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. now says the third reactor at Plant Vogtle won’t start generating electricity until sometime between July and September of next year. Previously the company said it would start in June at the latest. The fourth reactor won’t come online until sometime between April and June of 2023.

The delay will mean more costs for a project already estimated to exceed $27.8 billion overall. Georgia Power, which owns 46% of the project, had already estimated it would spend $9.2 billion, with another $3.2 billion in financing costs.

Besides Georgia Power, most electrical cooperatives and municipal utilities in Georgia own shares of the plants. Also obligated to buy power from Vogtle are Florida’s Jacksonville Electric Authority and some cooperatives and municipal utilities in Alabama.

Southern said Thursday that it would release a new estimate of Vogtle’s costs along with quarterly earnings next week. But the amount could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. When Georgia Power announced a delay of three to four months in July, the combined additional cost to all owners was around $1 billion. Southern recorded its entire share of the July costs as a loss to shareholders, but could still ask ratepayers to pay.

The delay could also push back when customers will begin paying a larger share of the plant’s costs. The Georgia Public Service Commission plans to vote next month on what could be a $224 million rate increase to pay for $2.1 billion in construction costs on Unit 3. What would be roughly a 3% rate increase for residential customers, or $3.78 a month on a bill of $122.73, is supposed to take effect after Unit 3 goes into commercial operation.

Some consumers have asked the five-member elected Public Service Commission to delay the Vogtle rate increase, citing two other upcoming Georgia Power rate increases.

Georgia Power’s 2.6 million customers have already paid more than $3.5 billion toward the cost of Vogtle units 3 and 4 under an arrangement that’s supposed to hold down borrowing costs. Public Service Commission staff members earlier estimated that the typical customer will have paid $854 in financing costs alone by the time the Vogtle reactors are finished.

In August, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission released the results of a special inspection that said two sets of electrical cables that are supposed to provide redundancy in Unit 3 weren’t properly separated. Earlier, Georgia Power had to repair a leak in Unit 3′s spent fuel pool.

Construction monitors have long criticized the project for sloppy workmanship and unrealistic timelines. Georgia Power’s time and cost estimates continue to converge with the later in-service dates and higher costs that monitors have projected.

The company said in stock market filing Thursday that the latest delay stems from more substandard construction work at Unit 3 that must be redone. It said contractors continue to not meet schedules for completing work. Georgia Power said it’s diverting workers from building Unit 4 to fix Unit 3′s problems.

Georgia Power said for years that Unit 3 would be in commercial operation by November 2021, but has pushed back that deadline three times since May. When approved in 2012, the estimated cost was $14 billion, with the first electricity being generated in 2016.

The company and regulators insist the plant — the first new U.S. reactors in decades — is the best source of clean and reliable energy for Georgia. Opponents have long pointed to what they say would be cheaper, better options, including natural gas or solar generation.

___

Follow Jeff Amy at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.

Facebook Papers are a ‘call to arms’ over pressing need to regulate: MPs
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Online criteria for Afghan refugee program changes, applies only to those…

The problem with Ron DeSantis' mini-Trump pose (opinion)

The Facebook Papers make clear the pressing need for governments around the world to crack down and put meaningful regulations on the social media giant, say two Canadian MPs who are part of the International Grand Committee on Disinformation.© Provided by Global News Senior campaigner Flora Rebello Arduini adjusts an installation outside parliament in Westminster in London, Monday, Oct. 25, 2021. A 4-metre-high installation depicting Mark Zuckerberg surfing on a wave of cash was constructed outside parliament, as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen is due to testify to MPs on how the company puts profits ahead of public safety. The action comes after SumOfUs research revealed Instagram is still awash with posts promoting eating disorders, unproven diet supplements and skin-whitening products. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

That committee is preparing to hear from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen during a meeting next month in Brussels, Belgium. The two Canadian MPs spoke with Global News Monday about what they are taking away from the revelations in the Facebook Papers.

In short? The time to act is now, they say.

"It is past time for stronger platform governance and it is past time for greater accountability," said Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith.

"I think it’s a call to arms for public rules."

READ MORE: Facebook failed to stop global spread of abusive content, documents reveal

On Monday morning, 17 American news organizations began publishing a series of articles that paint a damning portrait of Facebook's internal operations with regards to how it manages and reviews content.

The articles are based on thousands of pages of internal company documents obtained by Haugen, a whistleblower who was formerly a product manager at the social media giant.

EXPLAINED: What are the Facebook Papers?

Haugen has testified before American and British regulators about how she says Facebook prioritizes profits over safety. She had said the company hides research assessing what role it plays in inciting political violence, and the records have prompted serious concerns about the extent to which its products hurt teenage users, particularly girls.

Several of the media articles about the Facebook Papers cited records showing the social media giant's employees have warned the company was failing to police abusive content, repeatedly being told it was causing harm, and that its algorithms were inciting political violence for years.

Angus says parliamentarians have ‘obligation’ to hold Facebook, other social media sites to account

Erskine-Smith said the revelations add to the urgency for government to regulate the algorithms used by social media companies seriously and force greater transparency on them.

He pointed to C-11, the Digital Charter Implementation Act, as an example of legislation the government should prioritize when Parliament resumes at the end of November.

READ MORE: Facebook whistleblower says platform amplifies online hate, extremism

NDP MP Charlie Angus said the coming session of Parliament should be one where all parties work together to crack down on social media giants like Facebook in light of the information in Facebook Papers.

“I think Canadians are expecting this Parliament to show maturity and work together," Angus told Global News. "I think Big Tech would be an area where we could all work together.”

"The Facebook papers reveal more about what we already know – that this is a massively powerful corporation that has consistently refused to take action to address the real-time harms that are happening on its platform," he continued.

"Mr. Trudeau must address this longstanding pattern of corporate negligence. This will include efforts to break up the Facebook monopoly, to institute rigorous oversight and to establish credible penalties, including criminal sanctions, for the corporate negligence at Facebook."

Erskine-Smith suggested discussions about breaking up Facebook would only be effective if done in partnership with American lawmakers.

The International Grand Committee on Disinformation was first created in 2018.

The goal of the committee is to bring together lawmakers and policymakers facing the challenge of trying to regulate the "increasing – and increasingly malignant – influence of social media platforms."

—With files from The Associated Press and Reuters.

People or profit? Facebook papers show deep conflict within

By BARBARA ORTUTAY

October 25, 2021 

Facebook the company is losing control of Facebook the product — not to mention the last shreds of its carefully crafted, decade-old image as a benevolent company just wanting to connect the world.

Thousands of pages of internal documents provided to Congress by a former employee depict an internally conflicted company where data on the harms it causes is abundant, but solutions, much less the will to act on them, are halting at best.

The crisis exposed by the documents shows how Facebook, despite its regularly avowed good intentions, appears to have slow-walked or sidelined efforts to address real harms the social network has magnified and sometimes created. They reveal numerous instances where researchers and rank-and-file workers uncovered deep-seated problems that the company then overlooked or ignored.

Final responsibility for this state of affairs rests with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who holds what one former employee described as dictatorial power over a corporation that collects data on and provides free services to roughly 3 billion people around the world.

“Ultimately, it rests with Mark and whatever his prerogative is — and it has always been to grow, to increase his power and his reach,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a Syracuse University communications professor who’s followed Facebook closely for years.

Zuckerberg has an ironclad hold on Facebook Inc. He holds the majority of the company’s voting shares, controls its board of directors and has increasingly surrounded himself with executives who don’t appear to question his vision.

But he has so far been unable to address stagnating user growth and shrinking engagement for Facebook the product in key areas such as the United States and Europe. Worse, the company is losing the attention of its most important demographic — teenagers and young people — with no clear path to gaining it back, its own documents reveal.

Young adults engage with Facebook far less than their older cohorts, seeing it as an “outdated network” with “irrelevant content” that provides limited value for them, according to a November 2020 internal document. It is “boring, misleading and negative,” they say.

In other words, the young see Facebook as a place for old people.

Facebook’s user base has been aging faster, on average, than the general population, the company’s researchers found. Unless Facebook can find a way to turn this around, its population will continue to get older and young people will find even fewer reasons to sign on, threatening the monthly user figures that are essential to selling ads. Facebook says its products are still widely used by teens, although it acknowledges there’s “tough competition” from TikTok, Snapchat and the like.

So it can continue to expand its reach and power, Facebook has pushed for high user growth outside the U.S. and Western Europe. But as it expanded into less familiar parts of the world, the company systematically failed to address or even anticipate the unintended consequences of signing up millions of new users without also providing staff and systems to identify and limit the spread of hate speech, misinformation and calls to violence.

In Afghanistan and Myanmar, for instance, extremist language has flourished due to a systemic lack of language support for content moderation, whether that’s human or artificial intelligence-driven. In Myanmar, it has been linked to atrocities committed against the country’s minority Rohingya Muslim population.

But Facebook appears unable to acknowledge, much less prevent, the real-world collateral damage accompanying its untrammeled growth. Those harms include shadowy algorithms that radicalize users, pervasive misinformation and extremism, facilitation of human trafficking, teen suicide and more.

Internal efforts to mitigate such problems have often been pushed aside or abandoned when solutions conflict with growth — and, by extension, profit.

Backed into a corner with hard evidence from leaked documents, the company has doubled down defending its choices rather than try to fix its problems.

“We do not and we have not prioritized engagement over safety,” Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global policy management, told The Associated Press this month following congressional testimony from whistleblower and former Facebook employee Frances Haugen. In the days since Haugen’s testimony and appearance on “60 Minutes” — during which Zuckerberg posted a video of himself sailing with his wife Priscilla Chan — Facebook has tried to discredit Haugen by repeatedly pointing out that she didn’t directly work on many of the problems she revealed.

Full Coverage: The Facebook Papers

“A curated selection out of millions of documents at Facebook can in no way be used to draw fair conclusions about us,” Facebook tweeted from its public relations “newsroom” account earlier this month, following the company’s discovery that a group of news organizations was working on stories about the internal documents.

“At the heart of these stories is a premise which is false. Yes, we’re a business and we make profit, but the idea that we do so at the expense of people’s safety or wellbeing misunderstands where our own commercial interests lie,” Facebook said in a prepared statement Friday. “The truth is we’ve invested $13 billion and have over 40,000 people to do one job: keep people safe on Facebook.”

Statements like these are the latest sign that Facebook has gotten into what Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook data scientist, described as a “siege mentality” at the company. Zhang last year accused the social network of ignoring fake accounts used to undermine foreign elections. With more whistleblowers — notably Haugen — coming forward, it’s only gotten worse.

“Facebook has been going through a bit of an authoritarian narrative spiral, where it becomes less responsive to employee criticism, to internal dissent and in some cases cracks down upon it,” said Zhang, who was fired from Facebook in the fall of 2020. “And this leads to more internal dissent.”

“I have seen many colleagues that are extremely frustrated and angry, while at the same time, feeling powerless and (disheartened) about the current situation,” one employee, whose name was redacted, wrote on an internal message board after Facebook decided last year to leave up incendiary posts by former President Donald Trump that suggested Minneapolis protesters could be shot. “My view is, if you want to fix Facebook, do it within.”

This story is based in part on disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by Haugen’s legal counsel. The redacted versions received by Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press.


They detail painstakingly collected data on problems as wide-ranging as the trafficking of domestic workers in the Middle East, an over-correction in crackdowns on Arabic content that critics say muzzles free speech while hate speech and abuse flourish, and rampant anti-vaccine misinformation that researchers found could have been easily tamped down with subtle changes in how users view posts on their feed.

The company insists it “does not conduct research and then systematically and willfully ignore it if the findings are inconvenient for the company.” This claim, Facebook said in a statement, can “only be made by cherry-picking selective quotes from individual pieces of leaked material in a way that presents complex and nuanced issues as if there is only ever one right answer.”

Haugen, who testified before the Senate this month that Facebook’s products “harm children, stoke division and weaken our democracy,” said the company should declare “moral bankruptcy” if it is to move forward from all this.


At this stage, that seems unlikely. There is a deep-seated conflict between profit and people within Facebook — and the company does not appear to be ready to give up on its narrative that it’s good for the world even as it regularly makes decisions intended to maximize growth.

“Facebook did regular surveys of its employees — what percentage of employees believe that Facebook is making the world a better place,” Zhang recalled.

“It was around 70 percent when I joined. It was around 50 percent when I left,” said Zhang, who was at the company for more than two years before she was fired in the fall of 2020.

Facebook has not said where the number stands today.

See full coverage of the “The Facebook Papers” here: https://apnews.com/hub/the-facebook-papers

EXPLAINER: Just what are 'The Facebook Papers,' anyway?

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