The disappearance of a top livestreamer shows the risk of doing business in China


By Jane Li
Published June 17, 2022

In the span of less than two weeks, Li Jiaqi went from being China’s top e-commerce influencer to semi-taboo topic.

Li, who has more than 43 million followers on Chinese social media platforms, abruptly ended a livestream session citing technical issues on June 3rd. Since then, he’s been absent from his daily livestreams, during which tens of millions of people would watch him promote products ranging from face masks to hand sanitizers.

Li disappeared after he displayed a tank-shaped layered ice cream. Tanks are often used as a symbol for the 1989 June 4th Tiananmen protests, during which the Chinese military cracked down on students. Chinese authorities have forbidden any discussion or commemoration of the massacre, and those who violate that unspoken rule are punished.

Although for now Li’s accounts and name can still be found on Chinese social media, no mainland Chinese media covered the possible cause of Li’s suspension. Meanwhile, both Li’s agency and Taobao, the e-commerce platform that hosted Li’s livestream under Chinese tech giant Alibaba, have been mum on the incident. This has prompted speculation about whether Li is banned by Beijing because of what seems to be an inadvertent mistake rather a calculated political statement. “He disappeared just because of a tank shaped dessert? They are too sensitive and stupid. Originally not many youngsters knew about that history, now many are being encouraged to learn about it after this incident,” said a user on Weibo.

Li’s sudden disappearance showcases the high level of uncertainty of doing business in China. Despite signals from Beijing indicating its willingness to relax scrutiny of the tech sector recently, the fact that the country’s most influential live e-commerce figure could vanish overnight lays bare the growing risks companies face in China, where political red lines are quickly expanding to include even mundane moves like Li’s ice cream display.

Another layer of risk facing companies, especially those engaged with content business, comes from the young generation’s lack of awareness of many historical events, including the Tiananmen protests, due to years of Beijing’s censorship of those events. This means youngsters who grew up under China’s tight internet control, including Li who was born in 1992, struggle to navigate taboos when creating or moderating content—a situation now named by internet users as “Li Jiaqi Paradox.”
Brands set to suffer loss from Li’s absence

One immediate consequence of Li’s disappearance could be a short-term blow to the many brands that have contracts with him to promote their products, including Dior and La Mer, according to Nikkei Asia, a financial magazine. The brands will now have to find new channels for the goods days before the 618 shopping festival, one of China’s two annual shopping extravaganzas.

The stakes could be high. Li sold a whopping $1.7 billion worth of goods during a 12-hour-or-so livestream last year, once again proving his clout in the live commerce industry. This year, Li’s first-day pre-618 sale is estimated to have exceeded 4.1 billion yuan ($611 million), surpassing the same period last year, Tracy Dai, director of operations at marketing and research firm China Skinny, told Quartz. (Platforms’ pre-sale periods before shopping festivals usually start at least half a month ahead of the event.)

The impact could be even bigger for Taobao, which lost Viya, another top livestreaming influencer, late last year after she was fined for tax evasion by authorities. She has since disappeared from the industry. With Li’s suspension, it’s unlikely another key opinion leader can step up to fill the void, said Dai.
The transformation of the livestreaming industry

Meanwhile, analysts say Li’s disappearance could in turn transform the livestream e-commerce industry, which reached around $171 billion in value in 2020 according to McKinsey.

“The trend of pursuing top livestreamers has probably passed…Live e-commerce is developing towards the direction of becoming more diversified,” said Tang Xiaotang, an independent consumption analyst based in China.

The industry used to reply heavily on top influencers’ personal charm, with brands often having to pay them handsome commissions and granting exclusive discounts to land a spot livestreamers’ sessions. Now, many lesser-known, cheaper influencers are finding creative ways of attracting audience.

One such example is Chinese private education giant New Oriental, which was hit hard by Beijing’s crackdown on the after-school tutoring market last year. The company’s shares have jumped recently after some of its former tutors became popular influencers by using English during their livestreams, including to sell rice for the company’s newly founded e-commerce platform.

“Product type will also be diversified, with companies like New Oriental targeting the middle class in big cities to offer pricier goods,” said Tang.

 GOP Candidate Says Drag Queens a Danger to Kids. But This Drag Queen Says She ‘Had Her Kid in Front’ of One

Alan Halaly   Sat, June 18, 2022, 

via Facebook

Trump-endorsed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is the latest in a long line of GOP politicians to claim drag shows are a danger for children. But one of Phoenix’s most famous drag queens just publicly called her out for taking part in the drag scene herself—and allegedly letting her own daughter join in the fun.

Rick Stevens, better known to Phoenix’s queer scene as established drag queen Barbra Seville, brought all the receipts in posts on Twitter and Facebook on Friday night, sharing photos of himself and Lake together, apparently at drag events, before he says Lake “turned to the right.”

Lake, who former President Donald Trump praised as someone who will fight to end “woke” curriculum in schools, recently took to social media to weigh in on the conservative fight to prevent children from attending drag shows.

“They kicked God out of schools and welcomed the Drag Queens,” Lake wrote on Friday, on Instagram and Twitter. “They took down our Flag and replaced it with a rainbow. They seek to disarm Americans and militarize our Enemies. Let’s bring back the basics: God, Guns & Glory.”

But Stevens said this stance is a far cry from the Lake he’s known since her ‘90s Fox10 news days, when he said she frequented a club he performed at.

Stevens wrote that he’s performed for Lake's birthday, in her home (with young children in attendance), and at “some of the seediest bars in Phoenix.”

Kari Lake, dressed as Elvis, poses with drag queen Barbra Seville.

via Facebook

In an interview with Arizona Central, Stevens said Lake’s comments were shocking. He also recalled a time when he said she allowed her young daughter to watch Seville perform.

“She’s friends with drag queens,” he said. “She’s had her kid in front of a drag queen. I’ve done drag in her home for her friends and family. She’s not threatened by them. She would come to shows constantly. To make me be the bogeyman for political gain, it was just too much.”

“Kari was a friend of mine, and I stood by her when she turned to the right,” Stevens wrote.

Lake seemed to be a supporter of the LGBTQ+ community in screenshots of private messages Stevens posted that date back to 2012.

via Instagram

The Republican candidate’s campaign was quick to hit back on Stevens’ claims, however.

“Richard’s accusations were full of lies,” Lake’s campaign wrote in a statement. “The event in question was at a party at someone else’s house, and the performer was there as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. It wasn’t a drag show, and the issue we’re talking about isn’t adults attending drag shows, either. The issue is activists sexualizing young children, and that’s got to stop.”

Above all, Stevens told Arizona Central he feels betrayed by Lake, who he considers to be a hypocrite.

“If I can do anything to expose the hypocrisy, and if I can do anything to keep someone like that, a few votes away, from power, I’m happy to do that,” Stevens said.

'We're going to fight': Assange's wife on extradition decision

  

"We're going to fight this. We're going to use every appeal avenue," she told reporters. "I'm going to spend every waking hour fighting for Julian until he is free, until justice is served."

Alberta NDP choose Nathan IP to run in Edmonton-South West

Hamdi Issawi - 

Edmonton Journal

Alberta's NDP nominated Edmonton Public School Board trustee Nathan Ip Saturday to run in the Edmonton-South West riding, currently held by UCP Labour and Immigration Minister Kaycee Madu.

Alberta’s Opposition nominated Edmonton Public School Board trustee Nathan Ip to run in the capital’s only riding held by the United Conservative Party.

In a Saturday news release, the province’s New Democratic Party announced Ip as their candidate for Edmonton-South West in Alberta’s 2023 election. Labour and Immigration Minister Kaycee Madu currently represents the riding, and is the only UCP MLA with a seat in the city.

Ip, a three-term trustee for Ward H in southwest Edmonton, said he’s “deeply worried” about the province’s direction, and listed the UCP’s draft kindergarten to Grade 6 curriculum among his complaints.

“I’m excited for the chance to be a voice for my community, and to build a future for Alberta where no one is left behind,” he said, adding that the riding is home to a young and fast-growing community that deserves a representative who will stand up for it.


Ip announced he was joining the race for the Edmonton-South West nomination on March 29, and has said he’s running to protect publicly funded education, help build new schools, and provide leadership that serves community needs.

“We are in dire need for new schools in the growing areas of Edmonton-South West,” he said Saturday.

— With files from Lisa Johnson

A horse seized in a tax fraud case was sold back to its owner after authorities realized how much it cost to look after: report


Ryan Hogg
Sat, June 18, 2022

Getty Images

US authorities seized Lex, a $750,000 showjumping horse, as part of a $1.3 billion fraud case.


Federal agents realized it would cost up to $55,000 a year to care for, Bloomberg reported.


Christine Fisher, daughter of the man indicted, paid $25,000 to get the horse back, per Bloomberg.

The US Government sold a $750,000 showjumping horse back to its owner for just $25,000 after realizing it would cost too much to look after, Bloomberg reported.

Authorities initially seized the horse, called Lex, after its owner, the Atlanta accountant Jack Fisher, was indicted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in connection with tax fraud worth $1.3 billion along with four other individuals.

Fisher had bought the horse, a 15-year-old Holsteiner, for his daughter Christina. She pleaded with authorities to leave Lex, saying: "Take whatever you want that's monetary, but you can't treat a living animal like this."

"I feel violated and helpless," Christina told Bloomberg. "I'm not a part of the case. I'm not a part of the business. I was completely caught off guard, and they took an innocent animal."

Bloomberg reported that federal agents soon realized it would cost between $45,000 to $50,000 a year to feed and care for Lex, excluding medical costs.

The horse's value had dropped sharply, with an examination determining it to be worth $145,000, according to the report.

The US Attorney's Office in Atlanta then agreed to return the horse to Christina for $25,000, on the understanding that they could collect more if her father was convicted. She planned to ride the horse down the aisle on her wedding day.

Documents released by the Justice Department in February show Jack Fisher used proceeds of the tax fraud to buy the horse, as well as properties worth millions of dollars, and $225,000 tickets for a Super Bowl "Hall of Fame Experience."

US authorities use the proceeds from selling seized assets to compensate the victims of fraud and deter crime, in a process known as federal forfeiture.

The seizure of horses has some precedent. In 2012, authorities raised $4.8 million by selling more than 150 horses belonging to then-comptroller of Dixon, Illinois, Rita Crundwell after she was indicted on misappropriating city funds to fund a "lavish lifestyle."

But Fisher's case highlights the running costs associated with maintaining assets before they can be sold.

The US is facing huge costs to maintain assets such as superyachts seized from Russian oligarchs, according to US national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

The Justice Department and the IRS didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider

A Chinese Telescope Did Not Find an Alien Signal. The Search Continues.

Dennis Overbye
Sat, June 18, 2022

It was a project that launched a thousand interstellar dreams.

Fifty years ago, NASA published a fat, 253-page book titled, “Project Cyclops.” It summarized the results of a NASA workshop on how to detect alien civilizations. What was needed, the assembled group of astronomers, engineers and biologists concluded, was Cyclops, a vast array of radio telescopes with as many as 1,000 100-meter-diameter antennas. At the time, the project would have cost $10 billion. It could, the astronomers said, detect alien signals from as far away as 1,000 light-years.

The report kicked off with a quotation from astronomer Frank Drake, now an emeritus professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz:

“At this very minute, with almost absolute certainty, radio waves sent forth by other intelligent civilizations are falling on the earth. A telescope can be built that, pointed in the right place and tuned to the right frequency, could discover these waves. Someday, from somewhere out among the stars, will come the answers to many of the oldest, most important and most exciting questions mankind has asked.”

The Cyclops report, long out of print but available online, would become a bible for a generation of astronomers drawn to the dream that science could answer existential questions.

“For the very first time, we had technology where we could do an experiment instead of asking priests and philosophers,” Jill Tarter, who read the report when she was a graduate student and who has devoted her life to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, said a decade ago.

A book published 50 years ago titled

I was reminded of Cyclops and the work it inspired this week when word flashed around the world that Chinese astronomers had detected a radio signal that had the characteristics of being from an extraterrestrial civilization — namely, it had a very narrow bandwidth at a frequency of 140.604 MHz, a precision nature doesn’t usually achieve on its own.

They made the detection using a giant new telescope called the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope, or FAST. The telescope was pointed in the direction of an exoplanet named Kepler 438 b, a rocky planet about 1 1/2 times the size of Earth that orbits in the so-called habitable zone of Kepler 438, a red dwarf star hundreds of light years from here, in the constellation Lyra. It has an estimated surface temperature of 37 degrees Fahrenheit, making it a candidate to harbor life.

Just as quickly, however, an article in the state-run newspaper Science and Technology Daily reporting the discovery vanished. And Chinese astronomers were pouring cold water on the result.

Zhang Tong-Jie, the chief scientist of China ET Civilization Research Group, was quoted by Andrew Jones, a journalist who tracks Chinese space and astronomy developments, as saying, “The possibility that the suspicious signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high, and it needs to be further confirmed or ruled out. This may be a long process.”

Dan Werthimer, of the University of California, Berkeley, who is among the authors of a scientific paper on the signal, was more blunt.

“These signals are from radio interference; they are due to radio pollution from earthlings, not from E.T.,” he wrote in an email.

This has become a familiar story. For half a century, SETI, or the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, has been a game of whack-a-mole, finding promising signals before tracking them down to orbiting satellites, microwave ovens and other earthly sources. Drake himself pointed a radio telescope at a pair of stars in 1960 and soon thought he had struck gold, only to find out the signal was a stray radar.

More recently, a signal that appeared to be coming from the direction of the sun’s closest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri, was tracked down to radio interference in Australia.

Just as NASA’s announcement last week that it would make a modest investment in the scientific study of unidentified flying objects was intended to bring rigor and practicality to what many criticized as wishful thinking, so, too, was the agency’s Cyclops workshop held at Stanford University over three months in 1971. The conference was organized by John Billingham, an astrobiologist, and Bernard Oliver, who was the head of research for Hewlett-Packard. The men also edited the conference’s report.

In the introduction, Oliver wrote that if anything came of Cyclops he would consider this the most important year of his life.

“Cyclops was, indeed, a milestone, largely in pulling together a coherent SETI strategy, and the clear calculations and engineering design that followed,” said Paul Horowitz, an emeritus professor of physics at Harvard University who went on to design and start his own listening campaign called Project Meta, funded by the Planetary Society. Movie director Steven Spielberg (“E.T.” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) attended the official opening in 1985 at the Harvard-Smithsonian Agassiz Station in Harvard, Massachusetts.

“SETI was for real!” Horowitz added.

But what Oliver initially received was only a “Golden Fleece” award from Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., who crusaded against what he considered government waste.

“In my view, this project should be postponed for a few million light years,” he said.

On Columbus Day in 1992, NASA did initiate a limited search; a year later, Congress canceled it at the behest of Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev. Denied federal support ever since, the SETI endeavor has limped along, supported by donations to a nonprofit organization, the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, California. Recently, through a $100 million grant, Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner set up a new effort called Breakthrough Listen. Horowitz and others have expanded the search to what they call “Optical SETI,” monitoring the sky for laser flashes from distant civilizations.

Cyclops was never built, which is just as well, Horowitz said, “because, by today’s standards, it would have been an expensive hulking monster.” Technological developments like radio receivers that can listen to billions of radio frequencies at once have changed the game.

China’s big new FAST telescope, also nicknamed “Sky Eye,” was built in 2016 partly with SETI in mind. Its antenna occupies a sinkhole in Guizhou in Southwest China. The size of the antenna eclipses what was the iconic Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, which collapsed ignominiously in December 2020.

Now FAST and its observers have experienced their own trial by false alarm. There will be many more, SETI astronomers say.

The generation of astronomers who were inspired by the Cyclops report is getting old. Billingham died in 2013. Oliver died in 1995. Tarter retired from the SETI Institute in 2012, proud that she had never sounded a false alarm.

Those who endure profess not to be discouraged by the Great Silence, as it is called, from out there. They’ve always been in the search for the long run, they say.

“The Great Silence is hardly unexpected,” said Horowitz, including because only a fraction of a percent of the 200 million stars in the Milky Way have been surveyed. Nobody ever said that detecting that rain of alien radio signals would be easy.

“It might not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen,” Werthimer said.

“All of the signals detected by SETI researchers so far are made by our own civilization, not another civilization,” Werthimer grumbled in a series of emails and telephone conversations. Earthlings, he said, might have to build a telescope on the backside of the moon to escape the growing radio pollution on Earth and the interference from constellations of satellites in orbit.

The present time, he said, might be a unique window in which to pursue SETI from Earth.

“One hundred years ago, the sky was clear, but we didn’t know what to do,” he said. “One hundred years from now, there will be no sky left.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

• China Says It May Have Detected Signals From Alien Civilizations

Biden Proposes Changes to Help Rescue California Nuclear Plant


Mark Chediak
Fri, June 17, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- The US Department of Energy is proposing changes requested by California Governor Gavin Newsom that will allow the state’s last nuclear power plant to qualify for federal financial assistance.

The Energy Department proposed removing a requirement that would have prevented PG&E Corp.’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant from getting a portion of $6 billion in funds the Biden Administration is making available to rescue reactors at risk of closing early because they are losing money. The Energy Department posted the suggested amendment on its website and asked for public comments by June 27.

Newsom is reconsidering a state plan to retire Diablo Canyon in 2025 because of projected electricity shortages that could lead to blackouts in the state.

The effort to keep Diablo Canyon open would gain momentum if the plant can qualify for federal financial aid. California’s potential reversal of its anti-nuclear power stance underscores the crisis the state is facing as it seeks to decarbonize its grid.

Last month, Newsom asked the Energy Department to amend its nuclear funding criteria so Diablo Canyon would be eligible. The federal program was originally designed to help nuclear plants that were financially struggling in competitive wholesale power markets, which wasn’t the case with Diablo Canyon.

The Energy Department suggested that it would eliminate a requirement that a nuclear reactor applying for funds not recover more than 50% of its costs from regulated rates or contracts. The costs of PG&E’s Diablo Canyon plant are recovered through bill charges to its customers.

NO NEED FOR A MASK

In a pinch, you might be able to breathe through your butt

Cassidy Ward
Sat, June 18, 2022

We generally don’t like to think about the fact that there is a large worm-like organ inside of our abdomens. That’s the sort of thing which you usually only have to make peace with when watching horror comedies like Slither, but it doesn’t stop it from being true. Your intestines stretch for roughly 15 feet inside your body, winding a path between your stomach and rectum.

Despite being among the creepiest of your internal organs, your intestines play a crucial role in your everyday life, taking up nutrients from the food you eat and ridding your body of waste, but their job ends at your end. They can’t, for instance, help you breathe right?

Getting the oxygen needed for survival is achieved through various processes in the animal kingdom. Insects gather oxygen through holes in in their bodies known as spiracles, and some vertebrate animals can breathe through their butts. Sort of.

In the winter, turtles slow their metabolism and get most of their oxygen through their cloaca in a process known as cloacal respiration. Other reptiles and amphibians use similar respiration techniques to breathe without using lungs. If you happen to be a mammal, however, it’s long been believed that if your lungs are out of commission than you are out of luck. At least until recently.

We’ve long known that the intestines could take up chemical components and deliver them to the rest of the body. That’s one of the ways your gut microbiome communicates with your brain, but it was unclear if the same or similar processes could be used to get oxygen into the blood stream.

To test the hypothesis, scientists created a scenario in which pigs and mice in a laboratory were deprived of normal respiration and ventilated via the intestines. To improve the likelihood of oxygen uptake, some animals had their intestines scrubbed in order to thin the mucosal lining and reduce the barrier to the blood stream. Their findings were published in the journal Clinical and Translational Resource and Technology Insights.

Unsurprisingly, control animals who were deprived of respiration and received no intestinal ventilation, died after about 11 minutes. Animals who received intestinal ventilation without the intestinal scrubbing survived almost twice as long, about 18 minutes, indicating that there was some oxygen uptake. Lastly, 75% of those animals who had been scrubbed and received pressurized oxygen into the rectum, survived for an hour, the total length of the experiment.

This seemed to prove that mice and pigs are capable of intestinal respiration under the right conditions, giving researchers reason to believe that other mammals — like humans — might have the same capability.

However, the process of scrubbing the intestines is potentially dangerous and researchers wanted to uncover if there was an alternative solution which could achieve similar results. Their answer turned out to be oxygen-rich liquids known as perfluorocarbons. They repeated a similar experiment, again using mice and pigs, but this time they flooded the intestines which perfluorocarbons instead of gaseous oxygen. They found that the animals experienced increased blood oxygen levels which measured at normal levels.

While the effect has not yet been tested on humans, scientists suggest it might serve as an effective alternative respiration technique when conventional methods like mechanical ventilation don’t work. It’s also possible that introducing high levels of oxygen into the digestive tract will have a negative impact on the microbiome, but that’s generally a secondary concern if you can’t breathe. Further testing is needed to determine if intestinal ventilation might be an effective lifesaving tool in people.

With any luck, most of us won’t ever been in a situation where we’ll need intestinal ventilation. However, if a respiratory disease knocks us on our butts and our lungs are bottoming out, we might be willing to consider a little derri-air.

ANOTHER USE FOR MASKS
Pollution from California's 2020 wildfires likely offset decades of air quality gains

Tony Briscoe
Fri, June 17, 2022

Wildfire smoke drifts through Los Angeles in September 2020.

 (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

It was a nightmare fire season that California won't soon forget.

As more than 9,000 wildfires raged across the landscape, a canopy of smoke shrouded much of the state and drifted as far away as Boston.

All told, more than 4.3 million acres would be incinerated and more than 30 people killed. Economic losses would total more than $19 billion.

But the damage caused by California's 2020 wildfire season is still coming into focus in some respects, particularly when it comes to the air pollution it generated.

In an analysis published this week in the annual Air Quality Life Index, researchers found that wildfire smoke probably offset decades of state and federal antipollution efforts, at least temporarily.

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic took cars off the road and temporarily halted some industries, particulate pollution — widely considered one of the greatest threats to life expectancy — soared to some of the highest levels in decades in parts of California in 2020, according to the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, which produces the report estimating how air pollution may reduce life expectancy.

Nationally, 29 of the top 30 counties with the highest level of particulate pollution that year were in California, researchers found.

The report is the latest to highlight the dangerous health effects of wildfire smoke at a time when drought and climate change are fueling extreme wildfire behavior. Now, as the state enters what is expected to be another serious wildfire season, researchers say the toll these natural disasters can take on human health is striking.

“Places that are experiencing frequent or more frequent wildfires are going to experience higher air pollution levels, not just for a couple of days or weeks, but it could impact the annual level of exposure,” said Christa Hasenkopf, director of air quality programs at the University of Chicago institute. “It can bump up that average to unsafe and unhealthy levels that really do have an impact on people’s health. When we think of wildfires, we think of short-term events — and hopefully they are — but they can have long-term consequences [considering] your overall air pollution exposure.”

Mariposa County, a sparsely populated county seated in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada, typically enjoys cleaner air than much of the state. But in 2020 it led the nation in annual average concentrations of fine particulate at 22.6 micrograms per cubic meter — more than four times the World Health Organization recommended guidelines. Likewise, more than half of all counties in California experienced their worst air pollution since satellite measurements began collecting data in 1998.

If the particulate concentrations Mariposa County experienced in 2020 were sustained, the average resident’s life would be shortened by 1.7 years, according to the report. That’s compared to if residents were permanently breathing air in line with widely accepted international health guidelines.

In Tulare County, levels of fine particulate were twice the national average in 2020.

Donelda Moberg, a longtime resident of Lindsay who has emphysema, has grown accustomed to enduring air pollution that drifts to her corner of the San Joaquin Valley from nearby Bakersfield and Fresno. However, in 2020, with many people housebound due to the pandemic, she remembers the skies were much clearer than normal.

By autumn, conditions had taken a dramatic turn with the wildfires.

Moberg, 67, recalls the haze being so thick she couldn’t see the hill six blocks from her home. The pall of smoke above the valley obscured the stars at night and made the sun appear blood-orange during the day. And the abundance of ash falling from the sky regularly coated cars along the street.

For weeks, she didn’t leave the house except to go grocery shopping, or for church services and doctor appointments.

“The sky was a clay color and it made the sun a funny color — it didn’t look normal,” Moberg said. “You could always tell whether it was safe to go out or not by just looking at the way the sun shined.”

Between 1970 and 2020, five decades since the Clean Air Act was passed, the United States has witnessed tremendous progress in curtailing air pollution, including a 66.9% reduction in fine particulate — the pollutant that increases chances of lung disease, heart attack and stroke, the report said.

These reductions have prolonged the lives of most Americans, including those in Los Angeles County, where levels of particle pollution has been halved, extending the average Angeleno’s lifespan by 1.3 years, according to a University of Chicago analysis.

In recent years however, wildfire smoke has accounted for up to half of all fine-particle pollution in the Western United States.

Fine particulate matter has been viewed as one of the preeminent threats to public health. When inhaled, these microscopic particles — 30 times smaller than a human hair — can venture deep into the lungs and into the bloodstream, increasing the chance of lung disease and potentially triggering a heart attack or stroke.

Recent research suggests the fine particulate generated by wildfires to be much more dangerous than other sources of combustion, such as vehicle exhaust or gas-fired power plants.

“When you have a wildfire, they burn everything,” said Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics at the Harvard School of Public Health. “They burn cars, they burn buildings, they burn plastic. So it’s not only the level of [particulate pollution] that gets really high, but the type of [this pollution] that you’re breathing.”

The pollution emanating from the 2020 wildfires likely resulted in 1,200 to 3,000 premature deaths for seniors, according to estimates from Stanford University.

In September 2021, the World Health Organization lowered its recommended guideline from 10 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter to 5, a revision scientists say signals that lower levels are detrimental to human health. According to the updated guidelines, nearly 93% of people in the United States lived in counties with unhealthful levels of pollution in 2020, including the entire population of California.

In addition to wildfires, fine particulate is also produced by car tailpipe emissions and smokestacks of fossil fuel power plants. Issues with this pollution are compounded by California’s mountainous terrain, which traps air pollution and allows it to linger, especially within inland valleys that are beyond the reach of ocean breezes.

But the rising threat of wildfires remains on the minds of many.

Amid a third year of drought, much of the San Joaquin Valley is primed for wildfires. All it takes is a bolt of lightning, a spark from a transmission line or a negligently discarded cigarette.

Moberg, who lives in the shadow of hills covered in dry brush, is aware of the delicate balance. But there’s not much she can do besides pray fires and smoke don’t return.

“We’re always like, ‘Please, don’t catch fire, hills.’”



This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Pakistan to stay on terror financing watchdog's 'gray list'



A Pakistan watches news channel flashing news regarding FATF decision, at a market in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday, June 17, 2022. An international watchdog said Friday it will keep Pakistan on a so-called "gray list" of countries that do not take full measures to combat money-laundering and terror financing but raised hopes that its removal would follow an upcoming visit to the country to determine its progress. (AP Photo/Fareed Khan)More

MUNIR AHMED
Fri, June 17, 2022

ISLAMABAD (AP) — An international watchdog said Friday it will keep Pakistan on a so-called “gray list” of countries that do not take full measures to combat money laundering and terror financing but raised hopes that its removal would follow an upcoming visit to Islamabad to determine its progress.

The announcement by Marcus Pleyer, the president of the Financial Action Task Force, was a blow to Pakistan's newly elected government, which believes that it has mostly complied with the organization's tasks.

Expectations were high in Pakistan that FATF would announce its removal from the list at Friday's meeting in Berlin.

Instead, Pleyer said an onsite inspection by FATF in Pakistan would take place before October, and that a formal announcement on Pakistan's removal would follow. He said FATF is praising Islamabad for implementing the organization's action plans — a clear indication that Pakistan is moving closer to getting off the “gray list."

“Pakistan’s continued political commitment to combating both terrorist financing and money laundering has led to significant progress," FATF said in a statement. The country's efforts were sustained, it said and added that Pakistan’s “necessary political commitment remains in place to sustain implementation and improvement in the future."

Pakistan's foreign ministry said FATF reviewed Pakistan’s progress in countering terror financing during a four-day meeting this week and “acknowledged the completion of Pakistan’s" action plans. It said a visit to Pakistan was authorized as a final step toward exiting from the FATF’s “gray list."

Also Friday, FATF removed Malta from its “gray list" but added Gibraltar. Pleyer urged Gibraltar to take steps in the right direction, including focusing on the gatekeepers to the financial system.

The Paris-based group added Pakistan to the list in 2018. The “gray list” is composed of countries with a high risk of money laundering and terrorism financing but which have formally committed to working with the task force to make changes.

At the time, the south Asian country avoided being put on the organization's “black list” of countries that do not take adequate measures to halt money laundering and terror financing but also have not committed to working with the FATF. The designation severely restricts a country’s international borrowing capabilities.

Still, being on the Paris-based international watchdog's “gray list” can scare away investors and creditors, hurting exports, output and consumption. It also can make global banks wary of doing business with a country.

Pakistan has said it continues to detain suspects involved in terror financing to comply with tasks set by the watchdog. A Pakistani-based independent think tank, Tabadlab, has estimated that it has cost the country’s economy $38 billion since it was put on the gray list in 2018.

The FATF is made up of 37 member countries, including the United States, and two regional groups, the Gulf Cooperation Council and the European Commission. Currently, only Iran and North Korea are blacklisted.