CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Netflix pays $59 million to settle tax dispute in Italy


MILAN (AP) — Netflix has agreed to pay more than 55.8 million euros ($59 million) to settle a tax dispute, Milan prosecutors said Friday.

The payment covers taxes, penalties and interest from October 2015 through 2019. The streaming service also established an Italian legal entity this year, which will determine its Italian tax burden based on subscriptions to Italian residents, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors in Milan said the investigation was triggered by the physical presence in Italy of technological infrastructure, including 350 servers, aimed at producing revenue.

Netflix welcomed the settlement that ends the case covering the tax years 2015 to 2019.

“We cooperated with the authorities throughout this investigation and, as we have always made clear, we acted in full compliance with Italian and international tax law,’’ Netflix said in a statement.

Netflix officially opened an office in Rome earlier this month with about 70 employees.

The Associated Press

Pugs Not Considered 'Typical' Dog Breed from Health Perspective, New Study Finds

Vanessa Etienne - Yesterday
 People


Pugs can no longer be considered "typical" dogs because of their inherent health issues, according to a new study in the journal Canine Medicine and Genetics.

On Wednesday, researchers from The Royal Veterinary College (RVC) found that breeding pugs for their specific "flat-faced" appearance has caused severe health issues for the dog breed.

The study analyzed 4,308 pugs and 21,835 dogs of other breeds in the United Kingdom and reported pugs had an increased risk for 23 disorders, including lower respiratory tract disorder, upper respiratory tract disorder, abdominal disease, and brain disorder. About 17 percent of pugs were also obese compared to nearly 7 percent of other dogs.

Researchers concluded that pugs have "diverged substantially from mainstream dog breeds and can no longer be considered as a typical dog from a health perspective."


© Provided by People Getty
RELATED: Meet Noodle — The 13-Year-Old Pug that Decides if It's a 'Bones' or 'No Bones' Day on TikTok

"Although hugely popular as pets, we now know that several severe health issues are linked to the extreme body shape of pugs that many humans find so cute," Dr. Dan O'Neill, an associate professor at the RVC and lead study author, said in a statement. "It is time now that we focus on the health of the dog rather than the whims of the owner when we are choosing what type of dog to own."

"This study clearly demonstrates how it is the extreme characteristics many owners find so appealing, such as squashed faces, big eyes, and curly tails, which are seriously compromising pugs' health and welfare and often result in a lifetime of suffering," said Justine Shotton, president of the British Veterinary Association. "While these extreme, unhealthy characteristics remain, we will continue to strongly recommend potential owners do not buy brachycephalic breeds such as pugs."

Pugs have become increasingly popular in recent years, with a five-fold increase in Kennel Club registrations of pugs between 2005 and 2017, per BBC. The American Kennel Club (AKC) currently lists pugs as the 28th most popular dog breed out of the 204 AKC-recognized breeds.

Hundreds of beagles died at facility before government took action

“This is a nasty business," Block says. “There’s cruelty everywhere, from the beginning of it to the end.”


National Geographic
Rachel Fobar - 
© Photograph by PETA

More than 5,000 dogs were crowded in small, barren cages lined with feces and mold. A three-week-old puppy was stuck in a waste pan under his cage, dried feces matting his fur. Fights between kennel mates had left some dogs dead, including one by “evisceration.”

These violations and dozens more were documented in recent United States Department of Agriculture public inspection reports. Yet for months, the USDA, which is responsible for enforcing the Animal Welfare Act, neither confiscated any dogs nor suspended or revoked the license of the animal-breeding facility in Cumberland, Virginia. The facility is owned by Envigo, a privately held company with 20 locations across North America and Europe that provides animals for pharmaceutical and biomedical research.


© Photograph by PETA

Dogs at Envigo are crowded in small, barren cages. According to the USDA, puppies were found stuck in waste pans under their cages, and 13 nursing females had been deprived of food for 42 hours. Some animals had died from injuries inflicted during fights.

In early May, National Geographic approached the USDA for comment about the facility’s history of violations and ongoing welfare problems. On May 18, authorities from the USDA and the Department of Justice confiscated 145 dogs in need of immediate medical care from Envigo’s facility in Cumberland, Virginia, according to a complaint filed the next day by the DOJ in federal court against Envigo. The Humane Society of the United States assisted in the seizures.


© Photograph by Humane Society

A beagle peeks out of a cage at Inotiv’s Mount Vernon, Indiana facility, where the Humane Society of the United States conducted a seven-month investigation that ended in March. The USDA has taken no enforcement action against this facility.

“Envigo’s disregard for the law and the welfare of the beagles in its care has resulted in the animals’ needless suffering and, in some cases, death,” according to the DOJ complaint.

The USDA and the DOJ declined to comment.

The lack of punitive action before May 18, given the gravity and number of the violations, has shocked and mystified animal welfare advocates.

“It is baffling” that the USDA repeatedly cited Envigo without rendering “immediate aid to those animals,” said Daphna Nachminovitch, senior vice president of cruelty investigations for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which carried out a separate undercover investigation at Envigo last year.


© Photograph by Humane Society

At the Inotiv facility, the Humane Society witnessed research macaques restrained for dosing with experimental drugs and left unattended. According to the investigator's report, two primates accidentally hanged themselves.

It isn’t just animal welfare activists who raised the alarm; outrage over the violations have become a bipartisan rallying point. In early April, Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, signed five “beagle bills” to protect research animals and block dealers from doing business after severe welfare violations.

U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both Democrats, wrote to the USDA urging it to “pursue aggressive enforcement actions” against Envigo. “In light of persistent and egregious violations” of the Animal Welfare Act, the senators urged the department to “immediately suspend the license of the Envigo breeding facility in Cumberland and initiate formal administrative proceedings.”

Envigo breeds beagles as well as primates, rabbits, and rodents for use in toxicology research and other medical experiments. The Virginia facility is a member of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International, or AAALAC, an accrediting body that conducts site visits every three years.

Businesses that profit from certain species of animals must be licensed under the Animal Welfare Act, which requires them to be inspected regularly by the USDA to ensure compliance. In four visits to the Cumberland operation since July 2021—most recently in March 2022—USDA inspectors documented more than 70 welfare violations. They found that 13 beagle mothers who were nursing litters of six-week-old puppies, 78 in all, had gone without food for 42 hours. According to the inspectors’ report, Envigo deprived the mothers to reduce their milk production as part of its “weaning of puppies” procedure.

To have so many violations is “unheard of,” Nachminovitch says. And considering their severity, “it’s chilling.”

The confiscated beagles will be placed “with rescue and shelter partners for adoption after their immediate needs are tended to,” according to the Humane Society.

In a statement given to National Geographic prior to the seizure of dogs, Envigo spokesperson Mark Hubbard said the facility has made improvements in recent months, including reducing the number of dogs on-site, hiring a second veterinarian, performing more than 2,700 physical examinations, and increasing staff salaries. “We are aware the USDA has issued another inspection report that essentially repeats earlier findings, all of which are being addressed through a comprehensive remediation plan that has been in progress,” he wrote.

Hubbard also said that the USDA recognizes improvements Envigo has made and that AAALAC has indicated that the facility should continue to receive accreditation. Hubbard couldn’t immediately be reached for comment about the seizures.

Yet the pattern of welfare violations at what is now Envigo dates back decades. USDA records also show that Huntingdon Life Sciences, which later merged with Harlan Labs to form Envigo, has had violations going back to the late 1990s. Citations from a 1997 report on Huntingdon showed “severe” suffering at a New Jersey facility—including a dog with an untreated broken leg, a drugged dog that was recommended for euthanasia but was not put down, and primates crying out and vomiting, unattended by a veterinarian.

Envigo’s record is an “unmitigated, unprecedented disaster,” says Eric Kleiman, a researcher at the Animal Welfare Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.

USDA’s spotty enforcement record

National Geographic has documented a pattern of USDA failure to take action over animal welfare violations during the past several years, marked by a 90 percent drop in enforcement actions against licensed animal facilities between 2015 and 2020. There were two high-profile license revocations late last year.

In October 2021, the department revoked the license of Moulton Chinchilla Ranch in Minnesota after citing it for more than a hundred violations dating back to 2013; inspectors had found filthy cages, decomposing carcasses, and accumulated feces. Less than a month later, the USDA revoked the license of Iowa dog breeder Daniel Gingerich after multiple inspections over six months. Dogs had heavily matted coats and skin conditions, and many were seen panting in the summer heat, their water bowls empty. At least three dogs were found dead.

In comparison, more than 300 puppies died at Envigo’s Cumberland branch between January 1 and July 20, 2021, and “the facility has not taken additional steps to determine the causes of death,” according to the USDA report. Yet for months, the department failed to take any action.

One veterinarian for 5,000 dogs

Not attempting to establish why the dogs died violates the Animal Welfare Act. At the time of the USDA’s July and October 2021 inspections, Envigo had only one staff veterinarian to attend to 5,000 dogs. The USDA’s numerous veterinary care citations are “evidence that [one veterinarian] is an insufficient number,” Kleiman says.

The USDA’s inspection policy requires a follow-up visit within 14 days of a “direct” citation, a violation that has a “serious or adverse effect on the health and well-being of the animal.” In the July 20 report, inspectors noted seven direct non-compliances, including food deprivation, cramped living spaces, and inadequate veterinary care for ear infections and oozing wounds. Yet inspectors didn’t return as required to Cumberland for three months. In November 2021 and March 2022, inspectors documented more direct citations, but again failed to re-inspect within 14 days.

The Animal Welfare Act also requires that whenever the USDA believes a business is “placing the health of any animal in serious danger,” the department must notify the U.S. Attorney General, who has the discretion to prosecute the case in federal court.

‘Prolonged, unalleviated pain’

A recent investigation of another facility accredited by AAALAC indicates that Envigo’s welfare problems are not isolated.

Inotiv—a rapidly expanding multinational pharmaceutical development company that breeds, sells, and conducts toxicology and other experiments on animals—reported $89.6 million in revenue last year, when it acquired Envigo. Inotiv owns about 62,000 animals, including monkeys, rabbits, and cats, as well as the thousands of beagles.

In a seven-month undercover investigation of an Inotiv laboratory in Mount Vernon, Indiana, released on April 21, the Humane Society of the United States found that dogs, primates, pigs, mice, and rats faced “prolonged, unalleviated pain” during toxicology tests before they died.

Toxicology tests assess an animal’s tolerance to drugs. Doses administered by injection or feeding tube are increased until the animal experiences adverse effects.

In a statement, Inotiv spokesperson Kate Snedeker said the company is “governed by applicable federal, state, and local regulations,” as well as its internal animal care guidelines and oversight by the USDA and AAALAC.

“The research we conduct is required by global governmental regulatory agencies before new life-saving drugs can be brought to the market,” she wrote. “For more than 20 years, Inotiv has participated, directly and indirectly, in studying and developing alternative methods to conduct biomedical research.” Snedeker could not be immediately reached for comment about the seizures at Envigo’s Cumberland facility.

The Food and Drug Administration, which approves drugs for human use, says drug companies do animal tests “to discover how the drug works and whether it’s likely to be safe and work well in humans.” But the agency doesn’t mandate animal trials.

Yet drug companies routinely conduct tests on animals because it’s “the status quo,” says Kitty Block, the Humane Society’s president. “There’s big money in breeding these animals and then using them.” She considers the reliance on animal testing “lazy,” and says the FDA should promote innovative, humane drug-testing methods such as organ-on-a-chip technologies, 3D printing of human tissues, and computer modeling instead.

FDA press officer Veronika Pfaeffle said her agency aims to “reduce the reliance on animal-based studies” and has taken significant steps in “replacing, reducing, and/or refining” them, including forming working groups to advance new technologies. But “there are still many areas where animal research is scientifically necessary,” she said.

For example, alternative approaches “cannot always predict side effects” that might occur in the human body, she said, adding that animal research has been instrumental in advancing drugs to prevent polio, eradicate smallpox, and vaccinate against and treat COVID-19.

When necessary for research, the animals involved “should be cared for under strict, humane guidelines,” Pfaeffle said.

‘This is a nasty business’

But the FDA isn’t responsible for ensuring humane treatment of animals; that falls to the USDA and AAALAC. If, for example, an animal is in extreme distress, the USDA requires facilities to “ensure that animal pain and distress are minimized” and to have a protocol for euthanizing animals.

Yet at Inotiv’s Indiana facility, the Humane Society’s investigator saw researchers continuing to administer doses of drugs to animals that were shaking, vomiting, and had labored breathing. According to the report, an Inotiv technician, under orders from the veterinarian, continued to dose a primate in obvious distress, while saying, “I’m so sorry, lady—maybe this will be your last dose. I kind of hope it is because it’s torture at this point.”

Inotiv’s Indiana lab, with more than 1,300 animals, had only one full-time veterinarian between August 2021 and March 2022, according to the Humane Society’s investigation. Fewer than 50 staff were spread so thinly that basic care, such as trimming dogs’ toenails, was neglected, according to the Humane Society. Primates were left unattended in restraint chairs, and two accidentally hanged themselves, the investigator reported.

Animal welfare experts are critical not just of the USDA’s reluctance to take action over infractions, but also of what they consider to be AAALAC’s weak oversight. The industry’s accreditation agency schedules site visits only once every three years and, according to the Animal Welfare Institute, has a history of dismissing welfare problems that violate the USDA’s guidelines. AAALAC’s reports are not made public.

The organization’s accreditation isn’t “even close to being sufficient” to ensure animal welfare, Block says. It’s “the proverbial fox guarding the hen house.”

Kathryn Bayne, the global director of AAALAC, defended her organization, writing in an email that “AAALAC International takes very seriously information received regarding compromised research animal welfare at an institution participating in the accreditation program. Investigations are ongoing.”

The USDA’s most recent inspection of Inotiv’s lab, in August 2021, cited no infractions, despite multiple violations documented by the Humane Society investigation at the same time. The multiple severe violations documented at Envigo’s facility and the alleged failure to follow euthanasia procedures at Inotiv’s should be a wakeup call for the USDA to ramp up its oversight and enforcement of animal breeding and research companies, Kleiman says. “Research won’t police itself.”

Kleiman says the USDA should send an unequivocal message that “no matter how large, how powerful, how wealthy” these companies are, animal suffering won’t be tolerated.

“This is a nasty business," Block says. “There’s cruelty everywhere, from the beginning of it to the end.”

George Carlin's daughter says documentary shows comedian's evolution

By Fred Topel

MAY 19, 2022 

George Carlin poses in one of his own photos.

 Photo courtesy of George Carlin's estate and HBO

LOS ANGELES, May 19 (UPI) -- George Carlin's daughter, Kelly, said her father's work was always about personal growth, as much as artistic growth, an evolution depicted in the documentary George Carlin's American Dream, premiering Friday on HBO.

"He was aware of that evolution," Kelly said in a recent Television Critics Association Zoom panel.

The two-part documentary, directed by Michael Bonfiglio and produced by Judd Apatow, chronicles the late George Carlin's comedy career. He began as half of a duo with Jack Burns and then performed clean bits on TV variety shows in the '60s.

In the '70s, Carlin evolved into the raunchy standup who'd talk about the seven words you cannot say on television. His material frequently addressed religion and political issues like abortion.

"He went from a very mainstream, clean comic, to the counterculture guy, to sort of his final incarnation in the late '80s until he died of heart failure in 2008," Bonfiglio said. "That evolution as an artist and as a human being is really a lot of what comprises the film."

Carlin's evolution encompassed drug use and family discord. American Dream explores his addiction to cocaine, and his wife, Brenda Carlin's, alcoholism. She died in 1997 of liver cancer.

"He was trying to be a good father and a good husband during the '70s when things were pretty out of control," Apatow said. "It really is a story of someone who's trying to keep their comedy evolving while trying to be a good person."

Kelly Carlin wrote about growing up with her parents in her book, A Carlin Home Companion. She said American Dream addresses some of her experiences, too.

"He was a guy who was on the road a lot," Kelly Carlin said. "He missed a lot of my recitals and a lot of my events, but we were very close emotionally."

She said her father kept her and her mother out of his act, noting that the personal side of her father will be the most surprising material in American Dream.

"Unless you happen to read my book or my dad's autobiography, and not a lot of people have, this is going to be the big stage for this man," Kelly Carlin said. "I'm thrilled to bring the human George Carlin forward through this project."

George Carlin died of heart failure in 2008 at age 71.

The comedian's history encompasses much of America's political history, as he addressed ongoing issues onstage. American Dream points out that his targets were frequently authority figures like the church or politicians.

"He never believed in punching down," Kelly Carlin said. "He always fought for the underdog and tried to lift the underdog up -- or anyone else who was oppressed by the system."

In some cases, he got ahead of major issues. The filmmakers said he was talking about pharmaceutical companies and the environmental crisis in the '70s, long before they were mainstream issues.

"It's really shocking how many subjects he has the best routine about and the best insight about," Apatow said. "Even though some of this material is decades old, it really applies to all of the divisions and the problems that we're seeing right now."

American Dream also includes much of George Carlin's story in his own voice. Apatow said the comic had recorded 23 hours of his autobiography. The print edition, Last Words, was published posthumously in 2009.

The documentary also includes studio footage of George Carlin talking directly to the camera. Apatow also had access to personal archival material.

"There's notebooks and Post-it notes with all these phrases and ideas, and we show a lot of it in the film," Apatow said.

"What we try to explore is the type of personality that loves language and loves words, and he really worked harder than, I think, any comedian in the history of comedy at writing and crafting."

Famed psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s unknown letters to be auctioned in Jerusalem



By JERUSALEM POST STAFF - Yesterday 
© (photo credit: KEDEM AUCTION HOUSE)


A unique collection of 62 handwritten and typewritten letters by famed psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung that have never been printed or published before are set to be auctioned at the Kedem Auction House in Jerusalem on May 24th.

Among renowned psychologist Sigmund Freud's finest pupils – Freud regarded him as his natural successor – Carl Gustav Jung is known as the father of analytical psychology and the theorist who gave rise to the concept of "collective unconscious."

The letters were primarily addressed to fellow psychoanalyst Dr. Rivkah Schärf Kluger – who was Jewish. While most of the letters discussed issues regarding psychiatry, Jung appeared to be intrigued by the Hebrew language and Jewish texts in some of the letters.

In a letter dated May 24, 1944, he thanks Schärf Kluger for sending him a particular kabbalistic composition, writing "This (composition) strongly reinforces my own feelings and experiences. I was very impressed by it. In the darkest hours of my illness, every night I found myself in something of a ‘pomegranate orchard’” — Likely a reference to the book by Rabbi Moses ben Jacob Cordovero titled “Pardes Rimonim” (Pomegranate Orchard).


Previously-unpublished letters by Carl Jung. (credit: KEDEM AUCTION HOUSE)

Jung would also often ask questions pertaining to Jewish culture and language, such as when he asked for an interpretation of the word rikmah (embroidery, tapestry).

“This unique collection sheds light on various aspects of Jung's life and philosophy,” said Meron Eren, Kedem Auction House CEO and co-founder. “This is a true treasure to see such a large collection of unseen letters uncovered and published. A rare occasion for researchers, students, and all who study Jung’s heritage.”

'There is no convoy to support' Lich testifies in defence of accepting 'freedom award'

Aedan Helmer 

MAY 20,2022
Ottawa Citizen

Tamara Lich, pictured 

The second day of Tamara Lich’s bail review hearing began Friday with the Crown lobbing accusations that Lich violated her bail conditions on several occasions and an on-record suggestion that the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms is financing her legal defence.

Lich testified by videolink from her Alberta home that she does not believe her acceptance of the JCCF’s 2022 “George Jonas Freedom Award” constitutes a breach, while her lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, lodged an immediate objection to any questions regarding her legal fees.

“Wow. Object,” Greenspon said, citing a “clear case” of solicitor-client privilege.

Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips sided with Greenspon on that point, ruling the privacy of solicitor-client privilege “far outweighs” any value the evidence of her legal fees could provide to the proceedings.

Temperatures had cooled considerably inside courtroom No. 36 by the time court resumed Friday following a fiery session on Thursday, which featured a rare testy exchange between Assistant Crown Attorney Moiz Karimjee and Phillips, the presiding judge.

Karimjee at one point asked the judge to “recuse” himself Thursday, a request Phillips flatly denied.

Karimjee continued his cross-examination of Lich on Friday by accusing her of breaching several conditions of her release order, suggesting Lich knew her support of the JCCF fundraiser was “related” to the “Freedom Convoy.”

Lich acknowledged the gala event and the award may be “related” to the cause, but said, “I don’t think it’s a breach.”

Karimjee also produced a social media post on Friday featuring Lich wearing a pendant emblazoned with a truck and the words “Freedom Canada,” which Karimjee said is being sold in an online fundraiser to support the convoy.

“There is no convoy to support,” Lich shot back.

Lich said she understood the March 7 release conditions to mean “there’s no organizing of anything related to the convoy or any future protests.”

This week’s much-anticipated bail review of one of the most prominent “Freedom Convoy” leaders had initially been scheduled for Greenspon to challenge Lich’s bail conditions that restrict her from accessing her social media accounts.

Lich is seeking to have her social media access reinstated, with Greenspon arguing the condition was overly broad and restrictive, amounting to an outright “banishment.”

The Crown filed an application this week arguing Lich should be returned to jail on the grounds that she “has continued her support of the convoy cause” by agreeing to accept the JCCF’s freedom award, which is to be presented at a June 16 gala in Toronto featuring keynote speaker Rex Murphy.

Lich is currently barred from entering Ontario as part of the conditions of her release. She said she hopes to attend similar JCCF events scheduled for Calgary and Vancouver.

Lich and fellow protest organizer Chris Barber are jointly charged with mischief, obstructing police, counselling others to commit mischief and intimidation.

She was arrested Feb. 17 and was initially denied bail on Feb. 22, though that decision was overturned on March 7 and she was ordered to return home with list of conditions, including a broad order not to “verbally, in writing, financially or by any other means support anything related to the Freedom Convoy.”

The hearing was initially set for a day-and-a-half, though Phillips has already expressed his concern the parties may not complete their submissions in the allotted time.

More to come…

ahelmer@postmedia.com

Lich - Wikipedia 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lich

In fantasy fiction, a lich (/ˈlɪtʃ/; from the Old English līċ, meaning "corpse") is a type of undead creature. Lich. Wesnothlich.png. A lich from the game The ...

Scientists Create Material That Can Scrub Polluted Air Clean

Michael Leidig, Zenger News - 
Newsweek
© UL/Bernal/Zenger


New sponge-like material has been invented by scientists in Ireland that can absorb toxic benzene from polluted air.

Benzene is classified as a carcinogen that increases the risk of cancer and other illnesses and is also a cause of bone marrow failure.

It is a natural constituent of crude oil and used in gas. It has a sweet smell that is responsible for the aroma at most petrol stations and is frequently used as an industrial chemical that has limited consumer use because of its toxicity.

But now, researchers at the University of Limerick, in Ireland, have developed a new material that has the ability to capture it from the air.

The material is capable of capturing even trace amounts of benzene from the air, and crucially uses less energy than existing materials to do so, according to the researchers.

The sponge-like porous material could revolutionize the search for clean air and have a significant impact in the battle against climate change, the researchers believe.

Professor Michael Zaworotko, Bernal chair of Crystal Engineering and Science Foundation of Ireland research professor at University of Limerick's Bernal Institute, and colleagues developed the new material, with findings reported in the prestigious Nature Materials journal.

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including benzene, are a class of toxic pollutants that cause severe environmental and health issues. Developing technologies to remove benzene from air at trace concentrations and doing it with a low energy footprint are both challenges that have not been overcome until now.

Zaworotko explained, "A family of porous materials - like sponge - have been developed to capture benzene vapor from polluted air and produce a clean airstream for a long working time."

He added: "These materials could be regenerated easily under mild heating, making them candidates for air purification and environmental remediation.

"Our materials can do much better in both sensitivity and working time than traditional materials."

Zaworotko and Dr. Xiang-Jing Kong from the Department of Chemical Sciences at UL, along with colleagues from leading universities in China, developed the new porous material which has such a strong affinity for benzene that it captures the toxic chemical even when present at just 1 part in 100,000.

This material resembles Swiss cheese because it is full of holes, and it is these holes that attract the benzene molecules, according to the researchers.

In terms of energy, because the capture process is based upon physical rather than chemical bonding, the energy footprint of capture and release is much lower than previous generations of materials.

Zaworotko said: "Breaking up gas mixtures is hard to do. This is especially true for the minor components that comprise air, which include carbon dioxide and water. The properties of our new material show that breaking up is no longer hard to do for benzene."

Earlier work from Zaworotko's lab resulted in leading materials for carbon capture and water harvesting.

The water harvesting material has favorable properties for capturing and releasing water from the atmosphere that is already being used in dehumidification systems.

Xiang-Jing Kong explained: "Based on smart design, our materials do well in addressing challenges of both technical and social relevance, such as trace benzene removal from the air. This is hard for conventional materials, and thus highlights the charm of porous materials."

Overall, these results suggest that a new generation of bespoke porous materials of the type invented at UL can enable a general approach to the capture of toxic chemicals from the air.

"Aromatic isomers are difficult to separate in their mixtures with traditional methods, which are always energy-intensive," Xiang-Jing Kong explained.

"This research opened up possibilities to design porous materials for efficient separation of these chemicals with low energy input as well as the removal of other trace pollutants from the air."

The study was funded by the European Research Council and Science Foundation Ireland.

This story was provided to Newsweek by Zenger News.

Pharmacy in the sea: Dolphins ‘use coral as medicine for skin ailments’

A bottlenose dolphin rubbing its belly on coral. The animals are prone to skin conditions, such as yeast, bacterial and viral pox infections, which seem to be exacerbated by climate change. 

Photograph: Cultura Creative RF/Alamy

New research suggests the cetaceans may be self-medicating for their skin ailments, adding to evidence of the medicinal properties of some corals and sponges


Seascape: the state of our oceans is supported by

About this content

Sofia Quaglia

Thu 19 May 2022 

Who doesn’t like a bath scrub? Dolphins definitely do: they are known for being clever, playful, tactile animals, and they like to rub against rough surfaces, nap in coral beds and soak on sponges like guests at an underwater spa.

However, dolphins may be getting more from their bath scrubs than just relaxation and leisure. A study published today suggests that bottlenose dolphins may be self-medicating their skin ailments with the help of corals, adding to growing research on their previously unexplored medicinal properties.


“It’s very intensive,” said Angela Ziltener, one of the study’s lead authors, of the behaviour of the dolphins with particular corals. “They don’t just go through [the coral] – they go up, they come back down again and they rub their belly, their ventral area and the back.”

Dolphins in the Red Sea cleaning their skin in seagrass. The researchers found dolphins were meticulous in choosing which parts of their body to rub.

 Photograph: Natalia Pryanishnikova/Alamy

Dolphins have thick, smooth and resilient skin, but can be prone to skin conditions such as yeast and bacterial infections, scars or tattoo-like lesions caused by viral pox infections. These ailments seem to be exacerbated by global heating.

Ziltener, a wildlife biologist at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and her team have been surveying a community of 360 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) in the northern Red Sea since 2009. They observed that the dolphins often queued up nose-to-tail to rub themselves against corals as soon as they woke up and right before they went to sleep, as if they were showering for the day. As well as a mechanical rub, the dolphins also caused the corals to release a polyp mucus.

The team also noticed that the dolphins returned to the same coral species, and appeared to be meticulous in choosing which parts of their body to rub. They ran lab tests on 48 samples of corals, sponges and coral mucus “chosen” by the dolphins, including the gorgonian coral Rumphella aggregata, the leather coral Sarcophyton sp. and the sponge Ircinia sp.

A bottlenose dolphin scratches itself on bushy black coral (Rumphella antipathes) in the Red Sea. Photograph: imageBroker/Alamy

The results, published in the journal iScience, revealed at least 17 different bioactive metabolites with antibacterial, antioxidative and oestrogen-like hormonal properties, all of which could be useful in skin treatments.

The compounds are not commonly used in antibiotics for humans or animals, but an expanding body of research shows that some corals and sponges have medicinal properties, including antimicrobial.

“Such metabolites are helpful if you have an infection,” said Gertrud Morlock, an analytical chemist at Justus Liebig University Giessen in Germany, and a lead author of the study. “If the dolphins have a skin infection, these compounds could have something like a healing property.

“If you think about it, they have no other options. If they have a problem with the skin, what can they do?”

The researchers tested 48 corals, sponges and coral mucus used by dolphins, including (from top left) the sponge Ircinia sp., the leather coral Sarcophyton sp., and the gorgonian whip coral Rumphella aggregata. 

Photograph: Alamy

The authors note that further research is needed to show which coral’s medicinal properties the dolphins need to treat given ailments, and whether these properties have a measurable, positive impact on the cetaceans’ health.

Learning more about the dolphin’s social network and demographic could help with this. Tracking individual dolphins that display the behaviour, and seeing if they have fewer skin diseases or decreased mortality compared with the rest of the group, would make this argument stronger, according to Sarah Powell, a former marine biologist who studies how dolphins transmit their skin diseases but was not involved in the study.

Past research has shown that dolphins like to use coral sponges as foraging tools. “I do not find it to be such a reach that dolphins would utilise corals and other plants in their environment for other purposes,” said Powell.


Highly contagious marine epidemic rips through Caribbean’s coral reefs

Stephanie Venn-Watson, a marine biologist who studies health and longevity in dolphins and was also not involved in the research, said: “Since dolphins are inherently playful and tactile animals who love to rub, it is difficult to be sure that the dolphins are using the corals for medicinal purposes.”

A next step in proving the link would be to show that corals ignored by dolphins lack the same medicinal properties, she said. “This is a nice science-driven itch to be scratched.”

The Christian leader trying to break America’s link between faith and guns

Peter Cook says in the aftermath of the Buffalo racist shooting white Christian denominations have a duty to act

Peter Cook, head of the New York State Council of Churches:

 ‘It starts with straight-up, honest conversations within our churches.’

 Photograph: Edward Helmore/The Guardian

Edward Helmore

The Guardian

Thu 19 May 2022 

In the aftermath of the racist shooting that killed 10 on Saturday in Buffalo, the director of the New York State Council of Churches, the Rev Peter Cook, has been a constant presence at prayer gatherings and public memorials.

The organization he leads represents eight denominations to New York state government; and he has the ear of political leaders, including Governor Kathy Hochul, in shaping the political response to a massacre that targeted the Black community of East Buffalo – one that has been met with expressions of faith as well as anger and distress.



How the Buffalo massacre is part of US tradition: ‘We’ll continue to see killings’

Cook’s message is that it’s the responsibility of white Christian denominations to challenge white America’s relationship with God and guns that is intertwined with white supremacy. According to online postings, the alleged shooter, Payton Gendron, wanted to fashion America as a white-dominated, Christian nation.

Such extreme conservative views developed over time from President Nixon’s “southern strategy” to increase political support among white voters in the south by appealing to racism against Black people, tough-on-crime policies and anti-abortion sentiments. According to Cook, guns became ensnared in the strategy.

“It really gave tacit cultural permission to people of faith to own guns, so they conveniently worked their way into this religious freedom argument and conflated it with Christianity itself,” Cook said on Wednesday. “It doesn’t have any theological integrity to it at all, but we use the language of faith to acquire power and to further white supremacist notions.”

Drawing attention to the marriage between faith and guns comes with political risk, as the then Democratic party presidential hopeful Barack Obama found in 2008 when, in an unscripted moment, he took aim at white working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses. “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama said in remarks that his rivals pounced on.

How to detach gun ownership from being a marker of Christian faithfulness, and the accompanying politicization, concerns Cook. Without knowing Gendron’s faith background, he said the accused shooter “really stepped into that political slew of white nationalists, another derivation of the southern strategy, advanced also in … looking to preserve the sense of a white, Christian nation and of the original founders being white, Christian men, being representative of what America is”.




Some Black churches, Cook said, have had to accommodate the language of things like “tough on crime”, and the increase in mass incarceration under Bill Clinton, in order to maintain their own political influence and power.

East Buffalo has suffered from discriminatory lending practices, poor health outcomes, high rates of maternal death, lesser investment in schools, food deserts and highways driven through Black neighborhoods to connect white people from one place to another.

In the Buffalo massacre’s aftermath, most denominations have come out with strong statements against violence and are advocating for federal legislation to require a universal gun background check, prohibit buying firearms at gun shows and ban semi-automatic weapons. In New York, they are pushing for legislation to stop guns from being imported from states with laxer gun laws.

“I think for the church, with a number of exceptions because gun culture infuses Christianity, we need the strongest gun laws we can think of,” Cooks says. “We don’t think much of the second amendment.”

Attempts to forge stronger relationships between churches and gun control advocates have proceeded slowly. Two years ago, Everytown for Gun Safety began an interfaith effort with more than a dozen religious leaders to increase election turnout in support of candidates who support anti-gun violence measures. The group’s partners include representatives from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh backgrounds.

“Churches, especially white evangelical churches, have largely ignored this question – I think, much to their own detriment and to the detriment of the people they’re called to serve,” said the Rev Rob Schenck at the time.

Schenck, a former evangelical anti-abortion activist who shifted to support abortion rights, described gun violence as a “life-or-death issue”, making it essential to include gun control in “pro-life” agendas.

Others who have taken up that call include the Rev Traci Blackmon, who became prominent after police fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Blackmon is expected in Buffalo this weekend as the funerals of the Tops Friendly Market shooting victims begin.

Cook said he was appalled when a church in his region held a fundraising raffle for an AK-47.

A memorial for the victims of a weekend shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

 Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters



The effort to detach guns from faith within church leadership and congregations may need an assertive voice that links pastoral care to larger structural questions while resisting the inevitable political pushback.

Cook alluded to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor and theologian who opposed the Nazis.

“It’s going to come from a lot of conversation and teaching within the church and really getting people within the faith to act on their faith and really weigh in on these policy questions,” Cook said. “That’s a really hard thing to do, but I think if there were more people within our congregations who paid attention to this stuff and really put the pressure on Congress and their legislators to pass tough gun laws, that could be really important.”

But Cook concedes that could be tough.

“It starts with straight-up, honest conversations within our churches and getting people to get out of their pews, get out here, and show up at rallies, be present and listen to people, listen to their pain,” Cook said. “A lot of times churches can be a little insular.

“We’re debating what color we should have for the carpet and what kind of coffee we’re going to serve at coffee hour. We’ll preach about loving thy neighbor and non-violence, but how that really translates to people’s personal and collective lives is complicated.”

Interview

‘A catastrophic failure’: computer scientist Hany Farid on why violent videos circulate on the internet

‘Hashing’ would allow copies of videos to be removed from social media – but tech companies can’t be bothered to make it work

‘These are now trillion-dollar companies. How is it that their hashing technology is so bad?’ Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images

Johana Bhuiyan
Thu 19 May 2022 

In the aftermath of yet another racially motivated shooting that was live-streamed on social media, tech companies are facing fresh questions about their ability to effectively moderate their platforms.

Payton Gendron, the 18-year-old gunman who killed 10 people in a largely Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday, broadcasted his violent rampage on the video-game streaming service Twitch. Twitch says it took down the video stream in mere minutes, but it was still enough time for people to create edited copies of the video and share it on other platforms including Streamable, Facebook and Twitter.

So how do tech companies work to flag and take down videos of violence that have been altered and spread on other platforms in different forms – forms that may be unrecognizable from the original video in the eyes of automated systems?

On its face, the problem appears complicated. But according to Hany Farid, a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, there is a tech solution to this uniquely tech problem. Tech companies just aren’t financially motivated to invest resources into developing it.

Farid’s work includes research into robust hashing, a tool that creates a fingerprint for videos that allows platforms to find them and their copies as soon as they are uploaded. The Guardian spoke with Farid about the wider problem of barring unwanted content from online platforms, and whether tech companies are doing enough to fix the problem.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Twitch says that it took the Buffalo shooter’s video down within minutes, but edited versions of the video still proliferated, not just on Twitch but on many other platforms. How do you stop the spread of an edited video on multiple platforms? Is there a solution?

It’s not as hard a problem as the technology sector will have you believe. There’s two things at play here. One is the live video, how quickly could and should that have been found and how we limit distribution of that material.

The core technology to stop redistribution is called “hashing” or “robust hashing” or “perceptual hashing”. The basic idea is quite simple: you have a piece of content that is not allowed on your service either because it violated terms of service, it’s illegal or for whatever reason, you reach into that content, and extract a digital signature, or a hash as it’s called.

This hash has some important properties. The first one is that it’s distinct. If I give you two different images or two different videos, they should have different signatures, a lot like human DNA. That’s actually pretty easy to do. We’ve been able to do this for a long time. The second part is that the signature should be stable even if the content is being modified, when somebody changes say the size or the color or adds text. The last thing is you should be able to extract and compare signatures very quickly.

So if we had a technology that satisfied all of those criteria, Twitch would say, we’ve identified a terror attack that’s being live-streamed. We’re going to grab that video. We’re going to extract the hash and we are going to share it with the industry. And then every time a video is uploaded with the hash, the signature is compared against this database, which is being updated almost instantaneously. And then you stop the redistribution.

How do tech companies respond right now and why isn’t it sufficient?

It’s a problem of collaboration across the industry and it’s a problem of the underlying technology. And if this was the first time it happened, I’d understand. But this is not, this is not the 10th time. It’s not the 20th time. I want to emphasize: no technology’s going to be perfect. It’s battling an inherently adversarial system. But this is not a few things slipping through the cracks. Your main artery is bursting. Blood is gushing out a few liters a second. This is not a small problem. This is a complete catastrophic failure to contain this material. And in my opinion, as it was with New Zealand and as it was the one before then, it is inexcusable from a technological standpoint.

But the companies are not motivated to fix the problem. And we should stop pretending that these are companies that give a shit about anything other than making money.

Talk me through the existing issues with the tech that they are using. Why isn’t it sufficient?

I don’t know all the tech that’s being used. But the problem is the resilience to modification. We know that our adversary – the people who want this stuff online – are making modifications to the video. They’ve been doing this with copyright infringement for decades now. People modify the video to try to bypass these hashing algorithms. So [the companies’] hashing is just not resilient enough. They haven’t learned what the adversary is doing and adapted to that. And that is something they could do, by the way. It’s what virus filters do. It’s what malware filters do. [The] technology has to constantly be updated to new threat vectors. And the tech companies are simply not doing that.

Why haven’t companies implemented better tech?

Because they’re not investing in technology that is sufficiently resilient. This is that second criterion that I described. It’s easy to have a crappy hashing algorithm that sort of works. But if somebody is clever enough, they’ll be able to work around it.

When you go on to YouTube and you click on a video and it says, sorry, this has been taken down because of copyright infringement, that’s a hashing technology. It’s called content ID. And YouTube has had this technology forever because in the US, we passed the DMCA, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that says you can’t host copyright material. And so the company has gotten really good at taking it down. For you to still see copyright material, it has to be really radically edited.

So the fact that not a small number of modifications passed through is simply because the technology’s not good enough. And here’s the thing: these are now trillion-dollar companies we are talking about collectively. How is it that their hashing technology is so bad?

These are the same companies, by the way, that know just about everything about everybody. They’re trying to have it both ways. They turn to advertisers and tell them how sophisticated their data analytics are so that they’ll pay them to deliver ads. But then when it comes to us asking them, why is this stuff on your platform still? They’re like, well, this is a really hard problem.

The Facebook files showed us that companies like Facebook profit from getting people to go down rabbit holes. But a violent video spreading on your platform is not good for business. Why isn’t that enough of a financial motivation for these companies to do better?

I would argue that it comes down to a simple financial calculation that developing technology that is this effective takes money and it takes effort. And the motivation is not going to come from a principled position. This is the one thing we should understand about Silicon Valley. They’re like every other industry. They are doing a calculation. What’s the cost of fixing it? What’s the cost of not fixing it? And it turns out that the cost of not fixing is less. And so they don’t fix it.

Why is it that you think the pressure on companies to respond to and fix this issue doesn’t last?

We move on. They get bad press for a couple of days, they get slapped around in the press and people are angry and then we move on. If there was a hundred-billion-dollar lawsuit, I think that would get their attention. But the companies have phenomenal protection from the misuse and the harm from their platforms. They have that protection here. In other parts of the world, authorities are slowly chipping away at it. The EU announced the Digital Services Act that will put a duty of care [standard on tech companies]. That will start saying, if you do not start reining in the most horrific abuses on your platform, we are going to fine you billions and billions of dollars.

[The DSA] would put pretty severe penalties for companies, up to 6% of global profits, for failure to abide by the legislation and there’s a long list of things that they have to abide by, from child safety issues to illegal material. The UK is working on its own digital safety bill that would put in place a duty of care standard that says tech companies can’t hide behind the fact that it’s a big internet, it’s really complicated and they can’t do anything about it.

And look, we know this will work. Prior to the DMCA it was a free-for-all out there with copyright material. And the companies were like, look, this is not our problem. And when they passed the DMCA, everybody developed technology to find and remove copyright material.

It sounds like the auto industry as well. We didn’t have seat belts until we created regulation that required seat belts.

That’s right. I’ll also remind you that in the 1970s there was a car called a Ford Pinto where they put the gas tank in the wrong place. If somebody would bump into you, your car would explode and everybody would die. And what did Ford do? They said, OK, look, we can recall all the cars, fix the gas tank. It’s gonna cost this amount of dollars. Or we just leave it alone, let a bunch of people die, settle the lawsuits. It’ll cost less. That’s the calculation, it’s cheaper. The reason that calculation worked is because tort reform had not actually gone through. There were caps on these lawsuits that said, even when you knowingly allow people to die because of an unsafe product, we can only sue you for so much. And we changed that and it worked: products are much, much safer. So why do we treat the offline world in a way that we don’t treat the online world?

For the first 20 years of the internet, people thought that the internet was like Las Vegas. What happens on the internet stays on the internet. It doesn’t matter. But it does. There is no online and offline world. What happens on the online world very, very much has an impact on our safety as individuals, as societies and as democracies.

There’s some conversation about duty of care in the context of section 230 here in the US – is that what you envision as one of the solutions to this?

I like the way the EU and the UK are thinking about this. We have a huge problem on Capitol Hill, which is, although everybody hates the tech sector, it’s for very different reasons. When we talk about tech reform, conservative voices say we should have less moderation because moderation is bad for conservatives. The left is saying the technology sector is an existential threat to society and democracy, which is closer to the truth.

So what that means is the regulation looks really different when you think the problem is something other than what it is. And that’s why I don’t think we’re going to get a lot of movement at the federal level. The hope is that between [regulatory moves in] Australia, the EU, UK and Canada, maybe there could be some movement that would put pressure on the tech companies to adopt some broader policies that satisfy the duty here.

Twitch did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Facebook spokesperson Erica Sackin said the company was working with the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) to share hashes of the video with other companies in an effort to prevent its spread, and that the platform has added multiple versions of the video to its own database so the system automatically detects and removes those new versions. Jack Malon, a spokesperson for YouTube parent company Google, said YouTube was also working with GIFCT and has removed hundreds of videos “in relation to the hateful attack”. “In accordance with our community guidelines, we’re removing content that praises or glorifies the perpetrator of the horrific event in Buffalo. This includes removing reuploads of the suspect’s manifesto,” Malon said.