New Twitter policy aims to pierce fog of war misinformation

SHOW'S MUSK STILL DOESN'T OWN IT

By DAVID KLEPPER


FILE - A destroyed tank near the village of Malaya Rohan, Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Monday, May 16, 2022. Twitter is stepping up its fight against misinformation with a new policy cracking down on posts that spread potentially dangerous false stories. Under the new rules, which take effect Thursday, May 19, 2022, Twitter will no longer automatically recommend posts that mischaracterize conditions during a conflict or make misleading claims about war crimes or atrocities.

(AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter is stepping up its fight against misinformation with a new policy cracking down on posts that spread potentially dangerous false stories. The change is part of a broader effort to promote accurate information during times of conflict or crisis.

Starting Thursday, the platform will no longer automatically recommend or emphasize posts that make misleading claims about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including material that mischaracterizes conditions in conflict zones or makes false allegations of war crimes or atrocities against civilians.

Under its new “crisis misinformation policy,” Twitter will also add warning labels to debunked claims about ongoing humanitarian crises, the San Francisco-based company said. Users won’t be able to like, forward or respond to posts that violate the new rules.

The changes make Twitter the latest social platform to grapple with the misinformation, propaganda and rumors that have proliferated since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. That misinformation ranges from rumors spread by well-intentioned users to Kremlin propaganda amplified by Russian diplomats or fake accounts and networks linked to Russian intelligence.

“We have seen both sides share information that may be misleading and/or deceptive,” said Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of safety and integrity, who detailed the new policy for reporters. “Our policy doesn’t draw a distinction between the different combatants. Instead, we’re focusing on misinformation that could be dangerous, regardless of where it comes from.”

The new policy will complement existing Twitter rules that prohibit digitally manipulated media, false claims about elections and voting, and health misinformation, including debunked claims about COVID-19 and vaccines.

But it could also clash with the views of Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who has agreed to pay $44 billion to acquire Twitter with the aim of making it a haven for “free speech.” Musk hasn’t addressed many instances of what that would mean in practice, although he has said that Twitter should only take down posts that violate the law, which taken literally would prevent action against most misinformation, personal attacks and harassment. He has also criticized the algorithms used by Twitter and other social platforms to recommend particular posts to individuals.

The policy was written broadly to cover misinformation during other conflicts, natural disasters, humanitarian crises or “any situation where there’s a widespread threat to health and safety,” Roth said.

Twitter said it will rely on a variety of credible sources to determine when a post is misleading. Those sources will include humanitarian groups, conflict monitors and journalists.

A senior Ukrainian cybersecurity official, Victor Zhora, welcomed Twitter’s new screening policy and said that it’s up to the global community to “find proper approaches to prevent the sowing of misinformation across social networks.”

While the results have been mixed, Twitter’s efforts to address misinformation about the Ukraine conflict exceed those of other platforms that have chosen a more hands-off approach, like Telegram, which is popular in Eastern Europe.

Asked specifically about the Telegram platform, where Russian government disinformation is rampant but Ukraine’s leaders also reaches a wide audience, Zhora said the question was “tricky but very important.” That’s because the kind of misinformation disseminated without constraint on Telegram “to some extent led to this war.”

Since the Russian invasion began in February, social media platforms like Twitter and Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, have tried to address a rise in war-related misinformation by labeling posts from Russian state-controlled media and diplomats. They’ve also de-emphasized some material so it no longer turns up in searches or automatic recommendations.

Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and expert on social media and disinformation, said that the conflict in Ukraine shows how easily misinformation can spread online during conflict, and the need for platforms to respond.

“This is a conflict that has played out on the internet, and one that has driven extraordinarily rapid changes in tech policy,” he said.


Associated Press writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report from Boston.

Spy agencies urged to fix open secret: A lack of diversity

AS WHITE AS THE UNIVERSITIES THEY RECRUIT FROM

By NOMAAN MERCHANT

A sign stands outside the National Security Administration (NSA) campus on in Fort Meade, Md., on June 6, 2013. The national reckoning over racial inequality sparked by George Floyd's murder two years ago has gone on behind closed doors inside America's intelligence agencies. Shortly after his death, employees of the National Security Agency had a call to speak to their director about racism and cultural misunderstandings. One by one, officers spoke about examples of racism that they had seen in America's largest intelligence service.

(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — The peril that National Security Agency staff wanted to discuss with their director didn’t involve terrorists or enemy nations. It was something closer to home: racism and cultural misunderstandings inside America’s largest intelligence service.

The NSA and other intelligence agencies held calls for their staff shortly after the death of George Floyd. As Gen. Paul Nakasone listened, one person described how they would try to speak up in meetings only to have the rest of the group keep talking over them. Another person, a Black man, spoke about how he had been counseled that his voice was too loud and intimidated co-workers. A third said a co-worker addressed them with a racist slur.

The national reckoning over racial inequality sparked by Floyd’s murder two years ago has gone on behind closed doors inside America’s intelligence agencies. But publicly available data, published studies of diversity programs and interviews with retired officers indicate spy agencies have not lived up to years of commitments made by their top leaders, who often say diversity is a national security imperative.

People of color remain underrepresented across the intelligence community and are less likely to be promoted. Retired officers who spoke to The Associated Press described examples of explicit and implicit bias. People who had served on promotion boards noted non-native English speakers applying for new jobs would sometimes be criticized for being hard to understand — what one person called the “accent card.” Some say they believe minorities are funneled into working on countries or regions based on their ethnicity.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, the first woman to serve in her role, has appointed diversity officials who say they need to collect better data to study longstanding questions, from whether the process for obtaining a security clearance disadvantages people of color to the reasons for disparities in advancement. Agencies are also implementing reforms they say will promote diversity.

“It’s going to be incremental,” said Stephanie La Rue, who was appointed this year to lead the intelligence community’s efforts on diversity, equity and inclusion. “We’re not going to see immediate change overnight. It’s going to take us a while to get to where we need to go.”

The NSA call following Floyd’s death was described by a participant who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private discussion. The person credited Nakasone for listening to employees and making public and private commitments to diversity. But the person and other former officials said they sometimes felt that their identities as people of color were discounted or not fully appreciated by their employers.

The NSA said in a statement that the agency “has been steadfast in our commitment to building and sustaining a diverse and expert workforce.”

“Beyond the mission imperative, NSA cultivates diversity and promotes inclusion because we care about our people and know it is the right way to proceed,” the statement said.

MAD MAGAZINE SPY VS SPY WAS MORE DIVERSE

A former NSA contractor alleged this year that racist and misogynistic comments often circulate on classified intelligence community chatrooms. The contractor, Dan Gilmore, wrote in a blog post that he was fired for reporting his complaints to higher-ups. A spokeswoman for Director Haines, Nicole de Haay, declined to comment on Gilmore’s allegations but said employees who “engage in inappropriate conduct are subject to a variety of accountability mechanisms, including disciplinary action.”

The U.S. intelligence community has evolved over decades from being almost exclusively run by white men — following a stereotype that Rep. Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat, referred to in a hearing on diversity last year as “pale, male, Yale.” Intelligence agencies that once denied security clearances to people suspected of being gay now have active resource groups for people of different races and sexual orientation.

Testifying at the same hearing as Himes, CIA Director William Burns said, “Simply put, we can’t be effective and we’re not being true to our nation’s ideals if everyone looks like me, talks like me, and thinks like me.”

But annual charts published by the Office of Director of National Intelligence show a consistent trend: At rising levels of rank, minority representation goes down.

Latinos make up about 18% of the American population but just 7% of the roughly 100,000-person intelligence community and 3.5% of senior officers. Black officers comprise 12% of the community — the same as the U.S. population — but 6.5% at the most senior level. And while minorities comprise 27% of the total intelligence workforce, just 15% of senior executives are people of color.

A 2015 report commissioned by the CIA said the “underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minority officers and officers with a disability at the senior ranks is not a recent problem and speaks to unresolved cultural, organizational, and unconscious bias issues.” Among the report’s findings: Progress made between 1984 and 2004 in promoting Black officers to senior roles had been lost in the following decade and recruitment efforts at historically Black colleges and universities “have not been effective.”

“Since its founding, the Agency has been unmistakably weak in promoting diverse role models to the executive level,” the report said.

Lenora Peters Gant, a former senior human capital officer for the CIA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, wrote last year that the intelligence community constantly imposes barriers on minorities, women and people with disabilities. Gant, now an adviser at Howard University, called on agencies to release some of their classified data on hiring and retention.

“The bottom line is the decision making leadership levels are void of credible minority participation,” Gant said.

ODNI is starting an investigation of the slowest 10% of security clearance applications, reviewing delays in the cases for any possible examples of bias. It also intends to review whether polygraph examiners need additional race and ethnicity training.

The intelligence community currently doesn’t report delays in getting a security clearance — required for most agency jobs — based on race, ethnicity or gender. The months or years a clearance can take can push away applicants who can’t wait that long.

The office is implementing annual grant monitoring and assigning additional staff to work with universities in the intelligence community’s Centers for Academic Excellence program, intended to recruit college students from underrepresented groups. A 2019 audit said it was impossible to judge the program due to poor planning and a lack of clear goals.

The program also got a new logo after ODNI officials heard that the previous “IC CAE” insignia appeared to spell out “ICE,” an unintended reference to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Additional quiet changes are taking place across the agencies. Officials say the changes were in process before Floyd’s death, though conversations held with employees brought new urgency to diversity issues.

The NSA stopped requiring applicants for internal promotions to disclose the date they were last promoted to the boards considering their application. Officials familiar with the change say it was intended to benefit applicants who take longer to move up the agency ladder, often including working parents or people from underrepresented communities.

The agency said in a statement that officials “regularly examine the outcomes of our personnel systems to assess their fairness.”

The CIA two years ago formally tied yearly bonuses for its senior executives to their performance on diversity goals, measured next to factors such as leadership and intelligence tradecraft. Last year’s class of new senior executives was the most diverse in the agency’s history, with 47% women and 27% people from minority backgrounds, exceeding the percentages of women and minorities in the agency’s total workforce.

Said CIA spokesperson Tammy Thorp: “We are proud of the agency’s progress in ensuring our hiring, assignment, and promotion processes do not create barriers to advancement.”

La Rue, the chief diversity officer for the intelligence community, has hired several data analysts and plans for her office to issue annual report cards on diversity for each intelligence agency. She acknowledges advocates have to break through enduring skepticism inside and outside government that diversity goals undermine the intelligence mission or require lower standards.

“The narrative that we have to sacrifice excellence for diversity, or that we are somehow compromising national security to achieve our diversity goals, is ridiculous,” she said.

 

EVEN SIXTIES TV HAD A MORE DIVERSE SPY AGENCY

Handling of Buffalo suspect spurs talk of uneven restraint

By DEEPTI HAJELA and CLAUDIA LAUER

 People pray outside the scene of a shooting where police are responding at a supermarket, in Buffalo, N.Y., May 15, 2022. When police confronted Payton Gendron, the white man suspected of killing 10 Black people at the supermarket, he had an AR-15-style rifle and was cloaked in body armor. Yet officers talked to Gendron, convinced him to put down his weapon and arrested him without firing a single shot. Some people are asking why that type of treatment hasn't been afforded to Black people in encounters where they were killed over minor traffic infractions, or no infractions at all. 

(AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — When police confronted the white man suspected of killing 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket, he was the very poster boy for armed and dangerous, carrying an AR-15-style rifle and cloaked in body armor and hatred.

Yet officers talked to Payton Gendron, convinced him to put down his weapon and arrested him without firing a single shot. Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia that day cited their training and called it “a tremendous act of bravery.”

In a country where Black people have been killed in encounters with police over minor traffic infractions, or no infractions at all, though, it’s raised the question: Where is that training, that determined following of protocol, when it comes to them?

“It’s important to emphasize this is not about why aren’t police killing white supremacist terrorists,” said Qasim Rashid, a human rights lawyer and satellite radio host who was among those on social media making posts about the subject. “It’s why can’t that same restraint and control be applied to a situation involving an unarmed Black person?”

He and others pointed to a litany of examples of white men taken calmly into police custody after shootings, including Dylann Roof, who killed nine Black people at a South Carolina church in 2015; Robert Aaron Long, who killed eight people at Georgia massage businesses last year; Patrick Crusius, who is accused of killing 23 people in a racist attack at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart in 2019; and Kyle Rittenhouse, whose attempt to surrender immediately after shooting three white people at a Wisconsin protest was rebuffed. Meanwhile, George Floyd, Atatiana Jefferson, Tamir Rice and a host of other Black people have died at police hands when the initial circumstances were far less volatile.

“There’s just a stark contrast between how a Kyle Rittenhouse or a Payton Gendron gets treated by the system in these incidents versus how a Black man gets treated in general,” said Insha Rahman, vice president of advocacy and partnerships at the Vera Institute — a national nonprofit research and advocacy group focused on criminal justice.

Rahman said there are a lot of similarities in the public perception of the two cases. Rittenhouse walked toward police with an AR-15-style rifle slung over his shoulder, his hands raised. He testified at trial that police told him to “go home,” and he turned himself in the next day. He was acquitted of all charges after arguing self-defense.

“A few folks said at the time, if Kyle Rittenhouse was a young Black man, he wouldn’t have made it out of Kenosha that night. He might not have ever made it to a trial,” she said.

Rahman also cautioned against viewing high-profile incidents in a vacuum. She said people need to consider everyday interactions with the police, which along with arrests happen at a disproportionate and often more dangerous level for Black people.

The difference has been noted in Buffalo, said Jillian Hanesworth, 29, the city’s poet laureate and director of leadership development at Open Buffalo, a nonprofit focused on social justice and community development.

“We see how Black and brown people get treated by the police,” she said, that police don’t hesitate to “take deadly action against Black and brown people.”

Martìn Sabelli, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said historically there has been a racial divide in the U.S. that affects every aspect of the criminal legal process.

“The perception of racism is perpetuated because it’s rooted in a reality,” Sabelli said, noting the impact of implicit bias on policing has been studied extensively. “We are unfortunately in the process of trying to reverse decades or even longer of explicit racism in many police departments around the country and that is often aggravated by implicit bias that exists at a subconscious level. And unfortunately it taints these encounters by subconsciously making officers believe a person of color is more dangerous than a white person.”

Frank Straub, director of the National Policing Institute Center for Targeted Violence Prevention, said he hoped there’s a rethinking of how police respond to situations, in the wake of what the public has seen of disparate treatment in recent years.

“Maybe the fact that these videos are out there ... hopefully that now is impacting how officers are being trained to respond to arrest situations,” he said.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of Police Executive Research Forum, an organization dedicated to improving the professionalism of policing, said Buffalo’s Gramaglia asked his group for help with de-escalation training last year as a deputy commissioner.

The specific training is known as ICAT, for integrating communication assessment and tactics. Wexler’s group trained Buffalo’s police trainers on the tactics in February 2021, he said, adding that the department had not completed that training with all of its officers yet.

“That gives you a sense of how the department was thinking,” Wexler said. “It’s communication, slowing things down, using time and distance and cover, rather than rushing into a situation.”

“I think you have to look at the facts and training and tactics and realize every situation is different,” Wexler said. He noted that a security guard, who was a former police officer, shot at the gunman as he stalked the aisles inside Tops Friendly Market. The guard was killed.

“But the situation changed,” he said. “I don’t know all the facts, but when the suspect came out, officers might have a different perception of whether he was an immediate threat.”

—-

Lauer reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press videojournalist Noreen Nasir contributed from Buffalo.

—

Hajela is a member of the AP’s team covering race and ethnicity, and is on Twitter at twitter.com/dhajela.

Militant attacks hurt Pakistan relations with Afghan Taliban

By KATHY GANNON

May 19, 2022

1 of 6

FILE- Police officers attend the funeral prayer of a colleague who was killed in an overnight attack by Pakistani Taliban who targeted police in multiple attacks in Islamabad and elsewhere in the country's northwest, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Jan. 18, 2022. Faced with rising violence, Pakistan is taking a tougher line to pressure Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to crack down on militants hiding on their soil, but so far the Taliban remain reluctant to take action -- trying instead to broker a peace. (AP Photo, File)


ISLAMABAD (AP) — Faced with rising violence, Pakistan is taking a tougher line to pressure Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers to crack down on militants hiding on their soil, but so far the Taliban remain reluctant to take action — trying instead to broker a peace.

Last month came a sharp deterioration in relations between the two neighbors when Pakistan carried out airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan. Witnesses said the strikes hit a refugee camp and another location, killing at least 40 civilians. UNICEF said 20 children were believed to be among the dead.

Pakistan never confirmed the April 15 strikes, but two days later its Foreign Ministry issued a sharp warning to the Taliban not to shelter militants.

The pressure has put the Taliban in a tight corner. The Taliban have long been close to several militant groups carrying out attacks in Pakistan, particularly the Pakistani Taliban, a separate organization known by the acronym TTP. The TTP and other groups have only got more active on Afghan soil since the Taliban takeover in August.

But the Taliban are wary of cracking down on them, fearful of creating more enemies at a time when they already face an increasingly violent campaign by Afghanistan’s Islamic State group affiliate, analysts say.

A series of bombings across Afghanistan in recent weeks, mostly targeting minority Hazaras, has killed dozens. Most are blamed on the Islamic State affiliate, known by the acronym IS-K. The bloodshed has undermined the Taliban’s claims to be able to provide the security expected of a governing force.

This week, the Taliban hosted talks between the TTP and a Pakistani government delegation as well as a group of Pakistani tribal leaders, apparently hoping for a compromise that can ease the pressure. On Wednesday, the TTP announced it was extending to May 30 an earlier cease-fire it had called.

The Taliban government’s deputy spokesman Bilal Karimi said it “is trying its best for the continuation and success of the negotiations and meanwhile asks both sides to have flexibility.”

But past cease-fires with the TTP have failed, and already the current one was shaken by violence last weekend.

Pakistan’s frustration appears to be growing as violence on its soil has increased.

The secessionist Baluchistan Liberation Army killed three Chinese nationals in late April. The TTP and the Afghan-based IS have targeted Pakistan’s military with increasing regularity.

Militant attacks in Pakistan are up nearly 50% since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, according to the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, an independent think tank based in Islamabad that tracks militant activities. The group documented 170 attacks between September and mid-May that killed 170 police, military and paramilitary personnel and more than 110 civilians.

The United Nations estimates that as many as 10,000 TTP militants are hiding in Afghanistan. So far, Afghanistan’s rulers have done little to dismantle militant redoubts on their territory.

Prominent Afghans from southern Afghanistan, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the Pakistani Taliban and Pakistani Baluch secessionists had established several safe houses in the area during the previous U.S.-backed government’s rule and they have remained since the Taliban takeover.

The Pakistani airstrikes in April marked a dramatically tougher stance. They came after a militant ambush killed seven soldiers near the border with Afghanistan. Pakistani and Afghani border forces often exchange rocket fire amid disputes over the frontier — but it is rare for Pakistan to use warplanes on targets inside its neighbor.

The change came after weeks of political turmoil in Pakistan that unseated Imran Khan as prime minister. Khan had been an advocate of negotiations with militants and had campaigned for the world to engage with the Taliban after their takeover in Afghanistan.

Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the U.S.-based Wilson Center said Khan “had a soft spot for the Taliban as well as a principled opposition to the use of force in Afghanistan.”

With Khan now out of the picture and TTP attacks continuing, “we can expect a stronger Pakistani readiness to use military operations,” he said.

The Afghan Taliban are warning Pakistan against further military action, threatening retaliation.

The airstrikes “are not acceptable,” Taliban-appointed Defense Minister Mohammad Yaqoob warned Pakistan in late April. “The only reason we have tolerated this attack is because of our national interest, but it is possible we will not be so tolerant in the future.”

The son of the Taliban founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, Yaqoob is a powerful figure in the Taliban leadership, which is struggling to stay united amid disagreements about how to govern their war-ravaged nation.

The leadership council seems firmly split between two camps: the pragmatists and hard-liners. Pragmatists have pushed for global engagement and opening of schools to girls of all ages. The hard-liners want to return Afghanistan to the late 1990s Taliban rule when women and girls were denied access to most public spaces and a rigid and unforgiving version of Islam and tribal rule was imposed.

A flurry of repressive edicts of late suggest the hard-liners have the upper hand, including an order that women wear all-encompassing veils that leave only the eyes visible and a decision not to allow girls to attend school past the sixth grade.

Yaqoob falls among the pragmatists, according to several prominent Afghans familiar with the Taliban leadership. Still, there seems no decision among the leaders on either side of the divide to oust militants on their territory.

“I do not see any quick fix to the Pakistan-Afghan situation. The Taliban will continue to provide sanctuary to the TTP and hope they can extend their own influence into Pakistan over time,” said Shuja Nawaz, an expert and fellow at the South Asia Center of the U.S-based Atlantic Council.

“So, expect the situation to deteriorate, especially with the (Pakistan) military calling the shots on Afghan policy,” Nawaz said.

How gas interests slowed Chile’s clean energy transition

By DIANE JEANTET

FILE - Solar panels stand in the Quilapilún solar energy plant, a joint venture by Chile and China, in Colina, Chile, Aug. 20, 2019. Chile has long held itself out as a global leader in the fight against climate change and now nearly 22% of Chile’s power is generated by solar and wind farms, putting it far ahead of both the global average, 10%.

 (AP Photo/Esteban Felix, File)


RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Chile holds itself out as a global leader on climate change. Nearly 22% of Chile’s electricity is generated by solar and wind farms, putting it far ahead of both the global average, 10%, and the United States, at 13%. It was one of the first countries to declare a target for renewable energy, in 2008.

Yet even as solar farms have spread across the north and center of the long, narrow nation, imported natural gas, a polluting fossil fuel, has been able to sideline the clean electricity they provide thanks to a sweet deal won from the government.

Marcelo Mena, a former environment minister in Chile, witnessed that waste of clean power before he took the helm at the new Global Methane Hub, a nonprofit aimed at reducing global methane emissions. Natural gas is basically methane.

”They’re actually hindering the power that we can deliver from renewable energy,” Mena said of his experience with natural gas in an interview with the Associated Press. “It’s been more of an opposition towards 100% renewable target.”

Mena became disillusioned as he saw renewable energy pushed out by fossil fuels in the north of the country, where sunshine is most plentiful.

“At the same time, in the south of Chile, there is a big lack of natural gas for heating and people are heating themselves with wood and choking on it. It was such a big contradiction,” said Mena. “That’s my personal journey.”

Chile provides a view into the way fossil fuel companies can manage to stay on top, even under governments that try to pursue clean energy.

The shock that led to an energy transition in Chile came in the mid 2000s, when Argentina drastically reduced gas exports to Chile to focus on its domestic market. Chileans faced strict power rationing and regular blackouts.

After scrambling to come up with an alternative, the nation saw an opportunity.

Chile receives some of the strongest and most consistent sunshine on the planet, especially in the Atacama Desert, in the north. So it was natural for the country to seek investment in solar and wind projects through public auctions and quotas that required electricity companies to offer a minimum amount of renewable energy.

Investors heard their call. Developers built out hundreds of solar, wind and geothermal plants throughout the country, which stretches 4,300km (2,700 miles) from north to south.

But the devil was in the details. To provide power when the sun wasn’t shining, the government also invested heavily in fossil fuel infrastructure.

Natural gas importers and owners of gas-fired plants successfully argued that to secure long-term contracts for gas, they needed a guarantee that the Chilean power grid would take their gas-fired electricity even when other, greener generators were making plenty of power.

Chilean power generator Colbun, a large consumer of natural gas, said international contracts in which LNG importers must pay for gas whether they need it or not, along with a lack of storage, leave the sector vulnerable.

“It is important that the regulations recognize this condition so that the electricity market has enough natural gas to ensure the safety and competitiveness of the system,” the company said in an emailed response to the AP.

The government allowed them to declare electricity from LNG imports as “forced gas,” meaning gas-fired electricity was given priority on the power market, which otherwise favors renewables.

“Any situation in the electricity market that preferences fossil fuel, taking space away from renewables, is a loss for the environment and for the energy transition,” said Ana Lía Rojas, who leads the Chilean Association of Renewable Energies and Storage.

Another consequence of forcing gas-fired electricity into the market is that it lowered electricity prices for all providers, meaning they got paid less, said Alfredo Solar, a solar plant manager with over 20 years of experience.

“I have worked in solar plants that, for example, were in default because the market price was much lower than what was projected,” Solar said, stressing that providers of renewable energy operate without contracts and depend on those revenues.

Emissions from burning gas, oil and coal for electricity, transportation and other uses are the chief driver of climate change. Last year, researchers calculated that nearly 60% of the world’s oil and gas reserves and 90% of the coal reserves need to stay underground by 2050 in order to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Natural gas or methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that has an even stronger impact on the environment than carbon dioxide, in the short term. Methane traps heat 84 times more effectively than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, making methane reduction one of the fastest routes to reducing global warming, experts said.

In November, during the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, the Biden administration, the European Union and dozens of other nations pledged to reduce overall methane emissions worldwide by 30% by 2030.

Last year, the Chilean government reduced the advantage given to natural gas power providers. Their power still enters the grid at a reduced price, but is not supposed to displace renewables. Yet the concept of “forced gas” still exists, and renewable advocates in Chile say the changes are not enough.

In other countries, battery storage is rapidly taking the place of new gas-fired power plants because they can provide electricity to the grid when the sun is down or the wind is not blowing. In the United States, this kind of stored electricity has increased 1200% in five years. An amount equaling what three nuclear plants can provide was installed in 2021. That was double the year before.

But large-scale battery storage is still too expensive to be widely used in Chile, said Daniel Salazar, former executive director of Chile’s northern power grid, now with consultancy firm EnergiE. “Chile has several projects, but they are still high-cost solutions that do not compete with other options,” Salazar said.

Even Rojas, of the Chilean renewable energy association, supported the role of natural gas. “Natural gas is the fuel of the energy transition, the technology that will allow us to make those adjustments, as long as it never takes space away from renewables,” she said.

In many other countries, the idea of natural gas as the fuel that enables the energy transition is fading. That’s because the fuel is only more climate friendly than coal if it does not leak out and is not deliberately released from wells and infrastructure along its path to the power plant. But studies and satellite imagery show both things do happen.

By 2030, solar power should account for 30% of total installed electricity capacity in Chile, according to the Association of Power Generators. That would make it the nation’s largest source of power.

Mena, the former environment minister, said the established energy companies used to tell him that phaseout of fossil fuels takes a long time. Five years ago, he said, people were telling him the price of solar could never plunge. But it did. “My take-home message is change comes from unreasonable people,” willing to go up against what is supposedly impossible, he said pointing to Chile’s large and growing clean energy sector. “We need unreasonable people making that change.”

____

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all

EMOTIONAL PLAGUE

Suicides indicate wave of ‘doomerism’ over escalating climate crisis

While alarm over wildfires, droughts, flooding and societal unrest is on the rise, not many of us talk about climate angstThis article contains a description of a suicide

Wildfire approaches a woman’s house on the island of Evia, Greece, in August 2021. 

Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

Oliver Milman
@olliemilman

Thu 19 May 2022 

It was a stunning, grisly act. A man, a climate activist and Buddhist, had set himself on fire on the steps of the US supreme court. He sat upright and didn’t immediately scream despite the agony. Police officers desperately plunged nearby orange traffic cones into the court’s marbled fountain and hurled water at him. It wasn’t enough to save him.

The death of Wynn Bruce, a 50-year-old photographer who lived in Boulder, Colorado, was a shock to those who knew him. “It was so upsetting,” said April Lyons, a psychotherapist who knew Bruce from a therapeutic dance class they both took. “He was a solid person, a compassionate, kind person. We had no idea he’d do this.”

Activists held a vigil at the New York supreme court for Wynn Bruce. Photograph: Karla Ann Cote/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

Bruce’s father, Douglas, said he was sure the self-immolation – on 22 April, which is Earth Day – was “a fearless act of compassion about his concern for the environment”. There is no explicit evidence of this, although Bruce had posted a fire emoji to Facebook along with the Earth Day date of his upcoming suicide.

To some, though, the terrible act was an indication of the curdling anguish that many people now harbor over the escalating climate crisis. Bruce’s death felt hauntingly familiar.

Four years ago nearly to the exact date, David Buckel, a civil rights lawyer, walked to New York City’s Prospect Park early one morning, doused himself with gasoline and set himself alight. Unlike Bruce, Buckel, who was 60, left a two-page note emailed to media outlets minutes before his death stating that “my early death by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing to ourselves.”

Bruce’s death “did make me think of what David did and also the incredible pain this sort of act causes the people who love them”, said Terry Kaelber, who was Buckel’s husband. The duo were vegetarians and dutifully did their recycling. Buckel, a keen composter, had become somewhat agitated about environmental depredation. “You can never expect this, though,” said Kaelber. “My heart pours out to Wynn’s family.”

The deaths also provoked a sense of frustration that such horrific acts are not only contemplated, but then have an ephemeral impact when they do occur. Kaelber said that after the flowers of condolence were cleared from near the scorched grass of Prospect Park, some climate activists took to wearing red ribbons to remind others of Buckel’s sacrifice. But that, too, soon faded.

“We have no leaders on this issue, none, no one,” Kaelber said. “So I get the despair people have but the answer isn’t to do what they did. They could’ve had more impact joining with people who are driving for change. Imagine if Wynn had chained himself and 100 Buddhists to the gates of the supreme court instead.

“They think doing this will galvanize people, and maybe it will a few people, but my first thought with Wynn was that no one on the supreme court will care. It will just be this passing thing in the media. It’s tragic.”

Few people worried about the climate crisis are driven to self-harm over it, of course, let alone set themselves aflame in an echo of Thich Quang Duc, the Vietnamese monk who self-immolated in protest against the persecution of Buddhists in 1963.

Instead, climate activists have marched in huge numbers, joined divestment campaigns, glued themselves to roads and chained themselves to oil drilling equipment. “It’s just so clear to me that I have to take this stand,” said Peter Kalmus, a Nasa climate scientist as he handcuffed himself to a JPMorgan Chase building during a protest in Los Angeles last month. “We are heading towards fucking catastrophe – we are going to lose everything.”

Yet most of us who fret about climate change do so discreetly. Studies have shown that while alarm over worsening wildfires, droughts, flooding and societal unrest is on the rise, not many of us talk about climate angst with others, to avoid political arguments or simply avoid bringing down the mood.

Those who do speak out are often younger activists – research has shown that half of people between 16 and 25 years old believe the Earth may be doomed, while three-quarters feel anxiety when they think or hear about climate change. Some speak openly of not wanting to bring children into a hotter, harsher world.

“Living in climate truth is like living in a nightmare. It’s absolutely horrible and I can understand why the vast majority of Americans don’t do it,” said Margaret Klein Salamon, a clinical psychologist turned climate activist. “But the worst part is that everyone’s acting normal – it’s like we are zombies. The sense of helplessness and hopelessness is holding back conversations and political action.”

Salamon leads an organization, called the Climate Awakening, that facilitates “climate emotions conversations” both in-person and virtually that encourage people to open up about their climate fears. Salamon said that many describe living in a sort of waking, powerless nightmare where an obvious catastrophe is unfolding but society just blithely ignores it.

“Some people have described it as like they are at a funeral but everyone else is treating it like a party,” said Salamon. “People are still going to college, planning for retirement, doing all the things as if the future will look just like the past when we know that’s not true. There’s a delusion of normalcy.”

There are regular attempts to jolt us free from political inertia, whether that’s the increasingly exasperated excoriations of the Swedish school striker turned movement leader Greta Thunberg, the soaring success of the Netflix film Don’t Look Up, which satirized the blase attitude of politicians and the media toward scientific warnings, or the increasingly frantic pronouncements of António Guterres, the secretary general of the United Nations, who has said continuing use of fossil fuels is “madness” and the work of “dangerous radicals”.

This desire to shake people from a pall of complacency may have also motivated Bruce and Buckel, although Susan Clayton, a professor of psychology and environmental studies at the College of Wooster, cautions it’s risky to assume the full motivations behind a suicide. As social creatures who feed off each other’s cues, however, we are all affected by what Clayton calls “collective ignorance”.

“If there’s a fire and we look around us and see no one is doing anything, you can feel you are also expected to do nothing, not realizing that other people are looking to you for the same reason,” she said. “There’s this sense that people around us are not only doing nothing about this problem, but not even acting like it’s important.”

For all the efforts of various activists, and promises by governments to restrain dangerous global heating, carbon emissions leapt globally last year as we reverted back to the polluting status quo before Covid lockdowns. Wildfires are now a year-round menace to the US west. On Friday, it hit 51C in Pakistan, while India has baked in such extreme, record heat that dozens of people have died and birds are falling from the sky.

The UN has warned that a broken perception of risk based on “optimism, underestimation and invincibility” is fueling such disasters. Oil and gas companies are planning, unhindered, a massive tranche of “carbon bomb” drilling projects that will propel us firmly towards climate catastrophe.

There is much to be anxious of, but some climate scientists argue we cannot let a wave of “doomerism” become paralyzing. There is still hope that concerted action will avoid the worst, that momentum is building for a cleaner, greener world. Activism is a good release valve for climate worries, Clayton said, not only to help confront the problem but as a forum to speak to others with similar concerns.

“Climate doomerism can be harmful, because it robs us of agency, the agency we still have in determining our future,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University. “I fear that doomism and defeatism leads us down the path of inaction, or worse.

“It would be much better for folks to channel those emotions toward the common goal of speaking truth to power and holding our policymakers accountable for addressing the mounting climate crisis.”

To little public fanfare, two memorials were held for Wynn Bruce last week, one in Boulder and one in Minnesota, where his father still lives. Attendees spoke of his kindness and friendship. The media had noted the manner of his death as a terrible curiosity, rather than dig into his motivations, and quickly moved on to other topics. The planet continued to heat up.

“I don’t believe David or Wynn’s acts will drive change but maybe I’m wrong, and God bless them if it does,” said Kaelber. “But it really is no way to do things. There is a better way.”

In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 and online chat is also available. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

HomeServe agrees £4bn takeover by Canadian investment group

Multibillion-pound takeover of the domestic emergency repair business will net its founder and his wife almost £500m

HomeServe’s core business is selling emergency repairs insurance through utilities suppliers.

 Photograph: MBI/Alamy


Mark Sweney
THE GUARDIAN

Thu 19 May 2022 

The domestic repair and emergency services business HomeServe is to be sold to a Canadian alternative investment group in a multibillion-pound takeover deal that will net its founder and his wife almost £500m.

The Walsall-based company, which has grown into one of the UK’s largest domestic emergency businesses since being founded nearly three decades ago, accepted a £12-a-share offer from Brookfield Asset Management on Thursday that values the business at £4.1bn.

HomeServe, which is growing in the US, Europe and Asia, was founded by Richard Harpin as a joint venture with South Staffordshire Water in 1993. It has been listed on the FTSE 250 since 2004.

The deal values Harpin’s 7.38% stake, and the 4.76% controlled by his wife, Kate, at a combined £495m.

While the offer is a 71% premium on HomeServe’s share price the day before Brookfield’s interest in the company became public, it is lower than the £13.65 peak in 2020 when the group was seen as a “pandemic winner”.

HomeServe said the terms of the offer were “fair and reasonable” and it would recommend the deal to shareholders.

Brookfield said it has no current plans to break up the business, which employs 9,000 people directly and has tens of thousands of contracted tradespeople on its books, but intends to carry out a strategic review, including looking at whether parts could be spun off.

HomeServe’s core business is selling emergency repairs insurance through utilities suppliers but it also owns Checkatrade, the online platform for matching local tradespeople to homeowners needing services.

Huddersfield-born Harpin, 57, co-founded the business in the 90s because he found it so hard to find good tradespeople to reliably carry out repairs at properties in a housing rental business he owned at the time.

“HomeServe has become a world-class business with an important purpose – to make home repairs and improvements easy for homeowners and trades,” said Harpin.

“I am proud of the company we have built and am delighted that Brookfield is committed to providing long-term capital and global expertise, which I am confident will accelerate progress towards our vision to be the world’s largest, most-trusted provider of home repairs and improvements.”

Brookfield, based in Toronto, has Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, as its vice-chairman. HomeServe would not comment on whether Harpin would remain with the company under its new ownership structure.

BRASCAN/BROOKFIELD

Cuba hits back at U.S. as tensions rise over Summit of Americas

By Dave Sherwood -
© Reuters/ALEXANDRE MENEGHINI

HAVANA (Reuters) - A top Cuban diplomat on Friday told Reuters the United States was making a "desperate effort" to impose its will on the rest of the Western Hemisphere by determining which countries should be invited to the upcoming U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas.

A Biden administration official said on Friday the United States had begun sending out invitations, but declined to say which countries were on the list. A senior State Department official said in April that Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela would likely be excluded because they have not shown respect for democracy.

Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, in a written statement to Reuters, said such a decision was a "reflection of American contempt for our region," in a sharp rebuke of comments on Thursday from Kerri Hannan, deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, accusing Cuba of using the Summit to distract from allegations of human rights abuses at home.

"[Hannan] should better explain what her government has decided to do and abandon ambiguous and unwarranted language about the right to participate in a non-U.S. event. It is [for] all of the Americas," De Cossio said.

A potential boycott of the June 6-10 summit by a growing number of leaders, including Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has raised the risk of embarrassment for President Joe Biden, who will host the gathering in Los Angeles.

Lopez Obrador said last week he would not go to the summit if Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela were not invited. His Bolivian counterpart, President Luis Arce, followed suit.

De Cossio said the United States had only itself to blame for the predicament.

"It is disrespectful that the official does not consider as genuine and independent the positions of Latin America and the Caribbean to demand an inclusive hemispheric summit," he said.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said late on Thursday the U.S. government was having “constructive conversations” with Lopez Obrador around the summit. He added that former U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, Biden's special envoy for the summit, had a “good exchange of views” with Lopez Obrador in a two-hour Zoom meeting this week.

De Cossio has blasted such talks and the undersecretary's statements as part of a campaign by the U.S. to pressure regional leaders.

"The desperate efforts of...numerous officials of the United States throughout the region to impose their positions are well known," De Cossio told Reuters.

(Reporting by Dave Sherwood in Havana; additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

Biden officials consider inviting Cuban representative to Americas summit -source

By Dave Sherwood and Matt Spetalnick - 

HAVANA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Biden administration officials are considering inviting a Cuban representative to the U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas, a person familiar with the matter said, as Washington scrambled to head off a potentially embarrassing boycott by some regional leaders.

Discussion has focused on allowing a Cuban presence at the next month's Los Angeles summit below the level of the country's president or foreign minister, but it is at an early stage and no decision has been made, the source told Reuters on Friday.

President Joe Biden's aides were weighing the idea as his administration began sending out invitations for the summit. But for now U.S. officials declined to say what countries were on the list or whether the leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua would be excluded.

A growing number of leaders, including Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, have threatened to skip the summit unless all countries in the region are allowed to attend.

The prospect for summit no-shows risks diplomatic failure for Biden, whose aides have hoped the summit, held every three or four years, would be a chance to reassert Washington's commitment to a region it is often accused of neglecting.

It was unclear whether Communist-ruled Cuba, which participated at the head of state level in the last two summits in 2015 and 2018 and has blasted Washington for its handling of the June 6-10 gathering, would even accept an invitation for lower-level observer status. The Associated Press first reported that the idea was under consideration.

The White House and the Cuban embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"We're still considering additional invites, and we'll share the final list of invites once all invitations have gone out," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

The Biden administration has signaled for weeks that it could exclude the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, saying they did not have respect for democracy.

But faced with pushback from Latin American and Caribbean countries, the White House had held off sending out invitations and refused to release a participants list.

A top Cuban diplomat told Reuters the United States was making a "desperate effort" to impose its will on the Western Hemisphere by determining which countries should be invited.

Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, in a written statement, said such a decision was a "reflection of American contempt for our region."

It was a rebuke to comments on Thursday from Kerri Hannan, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, accusing Cuba of using the summit controversy to distract from allegations of human rights abuses at home.

U.S. TALKS TO LOPEZ OBRADOR

Lopez Obrador said last week he would not go if Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela were not invited. His Bolivian counterpart, President Luis Arce, followed suit.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Thursday that U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, Biden's special envoy for the summit, had a “good exchange of views” with Lopez Obrador via Zoom this week, Sullivan said. But he gave no details.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is also likely to skip the meeting, sources told Reuters, without specifying his reason.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said he would not attend, a day after the United States criticized the reappointment of an attorney general it links to corruption.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said on Wednesday that his government was "not interested" in attending.

(Reporting by Dave Sherwood in Havana and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Aurora Ellis, Chizu Nomiyama and Bernard Orr)

African scientists baffled by monkeypox cases in Europe, US


LONDON (AP) — Scientists who have monitored numerous outbreaks of monkeypox in Africa say they are baffled by the disease's recent spread in Europe and North America.

Cases of the smallpox-related disease have previously been seen only among people with links to central and West Africa. But in the past week, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, U.S., Sweden and Canada all reported infections, mostly in young men who hadn’t previously traveled to Africa.

France, Germany, Belgium and Australia confirmed their first cases of monkeypox on Friday.

“I’m stunned by this. Every day I wake up and there are more countries infected,” said Oyewale Tomori, a virologist who formerly headed the Nigerian Academy of Science and who sits on several World Health Organization advisory boards.

“This is not the kind of spread we’ve seen in West Africa, so there may be something new happening in the West,” he said.

Monkeypox typically causes fever, chills, a rash and lesions on the face or genitals. WHO estimates the disease is fatal for up to one in 10 people, but smallpox vaccines are protective and some antiviral drugs are also being developed.

One of the theories British health officials are exploring is whether the disease is being sexually transmitted. Health officials have asked doctors and nurses to be on alert for potential cases, but said the risk to the general population is low.

Nigeria reports about 3,000 monkeypox cases a year, WHO said. Outbreaks are usually in rural areas, where people have close contact with infected rats and squirrels, Tomori said. He said many cases are likely missed.

Tomori hoped the appearance of monkeypox cases across Europe and other countries would further scientific understanding of the disease.

The WHO's lead on emergency response, Dr. Ibrahima Soce Fall, acknowledged this week that there were still “so many unknowns in terms of the dynamics of transmission, the clinical features (and) the epidemiology.”

On Friday, Britain's Health Security Agency reported 11 new monkeypox cases, saying that “a notable proportion” of the most recent infections in the U.K. and Europe have been in young men with no history of travel to Africa who were gay, bisexual or had sex with men.

Authorities in Spain and Portugal also said their cases were in young men who mostly had sex with other men and said those cases were picked up when the men turned up with lesions at sexual health clinics.

Experts have stressed they do not know if the disease is being spread through sex or other close contact related to sex.

Nigeria hasn't seen sexual transmission, Tomori said, but he noted that viruses that hadn’t initially been known to transmit via sex, like Ebola, were later proven to do so after bigger epidemics showed different patterns of spread.

The same could be true of monkeypox, Tomori said.

In Germany, Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said the government was confident the outbreak could be contained. He said the virus was being sequenced to see if there were any genetic changes that might have made it more infectious.

Rolf Gustafson, an infectious diseases professor, told Swedish broadcaster SVT that it was “very difficult” to imagine the situation might worsen.

“We will certainly find some further cases in Sweden, but I do not think there will be an epidemic in any way," Gustafson said. "There is nothing to suggest that at present.”

Scientists said that while it's possible the outbreak's first patient caught the disease while in Africa, what's happening now is exceptional.

“We've never seen anything like what's happening in Europe,” said Christian Happi, director of the African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases. “We haven't seen anything to say that the transmission patterns of monkeypox have been changing in Africa. So if something different is happening in Europe, then Europe needs to investigate that.”

Happi also pointed out that the suspension of smallpox vaccination campaigns after the disease was eradicated in 1980 might inadvertently be helping monkeypox spread. Smallpox vaccines also protect against monkeypox, but mass immunization was stopped decades ago.

“Aside from people in west and Central Africa who may have some immunity to monkeypox from past exposure, not having any smallpox vaccination means nobody has any kind of immunity to monkeypox,” Happi said.

Shabir Mahdi, a professor of vaccinology at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, said a detailed investigation of the outbreak in Europe, including determining who the first patients were, was now critical.

“We need to really understand how this first started and why the virus is now gaining traction,” he said. “In Africa, there have been very controlled and infrequent outbreaks of monkeypox. If that's now changing, we really need to understand why.”

___

Geir Moulson in Berlin, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and AP reporters across Europe contributed to this report.

Maria Cheng, The Associated Press

SO DRY THEY IGNITE

These Cigarettes Are Being Recalled In Canada Because Of 'An Increased Fire Hazard'
Canada Edition (EN) - 
 Narcity


Some cigarettes are being recalled in Canada due to "an increased fire hazard" and more than 250,000 packages are affected.

This recall was issued by Health Canada on May 19 and it's for Viceroy brand cigarettes that were sold in Ontario, B.C., and Quebec.

The affected products are "Viceroy Full (Viceroy Original), Regular Size, 20 cigarettes" that come in individual packages and cartons because of concerns about their flammability.

While this might sound surprising given that cigarettes are lit with flames and then burned, there are specific regulations about it that need to be met.

According to Health Canada, cigarettes sold, made or imported in Canada have to burn their full length no more than 25% of the time.

Smokes that don't meet that requirement can actually pose a dangerous fire hazard if dropped on furniture, bedding or other textiles because they can start a fire.

The recalled cigarette cartons sold in Ontario, B.C., and Quebec have the traceability codes 3930 26 and 4230 26, and the UPC is 059300521883.

Individual packages sold in Ontario that were recalled have the traceability code 393226 ## CA. Packages sold in B.C. have 393226 ## CA or 423526 ## CA and ones recalled in Quebec have 423526 ## CA or 393226 ## CA.

All of the individual packages that are recalled have 059300021888 as the UPC.

See the full list here.

As of May 10, the company has not reported any incidents or injuries that were caused by the recalled darts.

If you have these recalled products, Health Canada recommends you immediately stop using them and contact the distributor, Imperial Tobacco Canada Limited, to arrange a return and replacement.

Narcity has reached out to Imperial Tobacco Canada for comment and the article be updated when a response is received.

This article’s cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.