Activists: Survey of Black people in US in its homestretch


 Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza attends the Glamour Women of the Year Awards at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center on Monday, Nov. 8, 2021, in New York. More than 100 racial justice groups, led by Garza, are making a last push on a large-scale survey that will be the basis for a public policy agenda focused on the needs of Black people who aren’t as often engaged through conventional public polling and opinion research.

(Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)More


AARON MORRISON
Fri, December 16, 2022 

More than 100 racial justice groups, led by a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, are making a last push on a large-scale survey that will be the basis for a public policy agenda focused on the needs of Black people who often are not as engaged in conventional public polling and opinion research.

It's called the Black Census Project, but the activists working on it say it’s not meant to duplicate the once-a-decade federal population count from a couple years ago.

“We’re often the subject of symbolic engagement, whether that’s plates of soul food or the latest dance craze, but very rarely do our communities get asked what it is that we’re dealing with every day, as it relates to the economy, our democracy, our society,” said Alicia Garza, a BLM co-founder who is principal and founder of the Black Futures Lab, a public policy nonprofit.

Since February, when Garza’s organization launched the project, canvassers have gone into Black communities in nearly every U.S. state to conduct the confidential, self-reporting survey, which is also available online. The survey, which takes about 10 minutes, asks participants their views on political representation in both parties, racial justice issues and the coronavirus pandemic, among other topics.

If the goal of 250,000 survey responses is reached by the Dec. 31 deadline, it would be the largest surveying of Black people of any kind in U.S. history, Garza said.

“For us, the Black census was a way to just be really scientific when we’re talking about what Black people care about, what Black people want, and even who Black people are going to vote for and why,” she said.

As part of the last push of the survey, organizers said they have engaged with interfaith leaders for what they’re calling Black Census Sunday. Faith leaders will include Black census information in their sermons and offer opportunities for people to complete the surveys during services.

Early next year, Black Futures Lab plans to share findings with the Biden administration and other elected officials to offer insight into the needs of Black people and how to address them.

In 2018, the inaugural Black Census Project surveyed over 30,000 Black people from around the U.S. The survey findings were revealed in a report, which highlighted the experiences and viewpoints of the Black LGBTQ community.

This year, organizers aimed to garner at least six times that number, aided by partnerships with dozens of well-known and legacy social justice organizations, including the NAACP, Color of Change, the National Action Network, Black Voters Matter and the Black Women’s Roundtable.

Bridgette Simpson, co-founder of Barred Business, a nonprofit that helps formerly incarcerated Black women and girls find stable housing, employment and educational opportunities, is a Black Census Project partner. Having served 10 years in prison herself, Simpson said the project has been intentional about reaching people who have experienced incarceration.

“(Black people) are not a monolith,” she said. “We all are different and we all have different experiences. But in order for us to really be able to get the changes that we need in our community, we need to be able to know who we are, to see the gamut, and then be able to transfer this into true political power.”

Simpson’s hope is that the survey increases the profile of formerly incarcerated people, so that politicians and elected leaders see them as a constituency worth courting.

“Without a process like this, it is impossible for us to have any seat at the table,” she said.

“We can bring all the seats that we want, but it won’t be at the right table. So with the census and other data efforts, we’re able to set a table where we can properly eat.”

The Black Census Project launched just before the U.S. Census Bureau revealed in March that Black, Hispanic and American Indian residents were missed at higher rates during the 2020 census than they were a decade ago. The federal census figures help determine the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal spending each year, which can be especially critical in Black and Latino communities that historically contend with underinvestment and underfunding of public resources such as education and infrastructure.

Garza said her project has always been about empowering Black communities by providing an alternative to the data sources that governments rely on.

“One way for us to decolonize data and decolonize polling is to decenter white people and their opinions about it,” she said. “This project is about us, by us and for us. It’s more important for us that Black people are talking to each other about what we are going to do to flex our power.”

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Aaron Morrison is a New York City-based member of the AP's Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/aaronlmorrison.

Reports of Musk forcing tracking ads on Twitter put him on a costly collision course with EU privacy laws



Natasha Lomas
Wed, December 14, 2022 at 7:19 AM MST·8 min read

Twitter's lead privacy regulator in the European Union is being kept very busy indeed by Elon Musk's erratic piloting of the bird site.

Following a report by Platformer, which suggests Musk is planning to force users to accept personalized advertising unless they pay for a subscription service that will include an opt-out for ads, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) told us it is reviewing the matter.

This adds to a growing pile of data protection concerns piling up on its desk -- let's call these the real 'Twitter Files' -- such as Musk providing access to Twitter systems to non-staff reporters (um, security and privacy anyone?); the status of Twitter's main establishment in Ireland (and, therefore, the streamlined situation it currently enjoys with the DPC leading oversight of its compliance with the EU's General Data Protection Regulation, aka the GDPR); and whether Twitter has adequate compliance staff and appropriate resources to deal with all the inbound enquiries from regulators and users (such as requests for deletion of data) since Musk took an axe to halve company headcount, to name a small portion of the regulatory chaos he's kicked up in very short order.

Twitter’s lead EU watchdog for data protection has fresh questions for Musk

Under the GDPR Twitter needs a valid legal basis to process personal data, such as tracking and profiling users to target them with ads.

Consent is one of the legal bases that can be possible under the GDPR -- but you can't force users to consent; consent must be freely given if it's to meet the legal bar. Ergo, forcing users to pay up or else be tracked and targeted looks unlikely to pass muster with EU regulators.

Another legal bases permitted in the GDPR is contractual necessity. And it's worth noting that this is the legal basis currently claimed by Facebook-owner Meta for the 'personalized' ads it forces on users of its social networking services.

However in a blow to Musk's ambitions to follow Zuck and force microtargeted ads into Europeans eyeballs whether they like it or not (or else, in Musk's case, force Europeans to pay him not to profile them for ad targeting), the European Data Protection Board recently issued a decision on a long running complaint against Meta's controversial choice of legal basis -- which, per press reports, appears to rule out using a claim of performance of a contract to run behavioral advertising.

Meta’s behavioral ads will finally face GDPR privacy reckoning in January

There is also legitimate interest (LI) -- another legal basis that exists in the GDPR. But, again, it's a sad trombone for Musk on this front as TikTok was forced to abort a planned switch of legal basis for its personalized ads, from consent to LI, this summer -- after warnings from Italy's DPA that this would not be legit.

The DPC also stepped in to 'engage' with TikTok on the matter -- in its capacity as TikTok's lead supervisor for GDPR. But it's not just the GDPR that's likely to apply here if Twitter similarly tries to force tracking ads on users in Europe: The EU's ePrivacy Directive, which governs online tracking, also likely comes into play -- and, as Italy's DPA warned TikTok a few months ago, you can't do tracking without asking for consent. Ergo LI won't fly for Twitter tracking ads.

Additionally, and unhappily for Musk -- who is famously not a fan of regulators -- the ePrivacy Directive does not have a one-stop-shop mechanism streamlining regulatory oversight (and oftentimes shrinking risk) via a lead DPA, as is the case with the GDPR. So if he tries to force tracking ads on EU users he's opening the company up to enforcement by privacy watchdogs across the bloc, from Italy to France, and on through as many of the 27 EU Member States that have DPAs with an appetite for enforcement.

France's privacy watchdog, the CNIL, has been very active on enforcing ePrivacy against tech giants in recent years -- fining Google $120 million two years ago for dropping tracking cookies without consent, for instance, and hitting the adtech giant a second time with a further $170 million penalty this January over cookie consent dark patterns. It has also spanked Amazon and Facebook with multimillion dollar penalties for ePrivacy breaches over the same time frame. So there's little reason to think the French would turn a blind eye to a swashbuckling Muskian forced-tracking-ads adventure.

It's worth noting there are examples in some EU Member States (notably Germany) of certain news media websites putting up paywalls that offer users a choice between subscribing to view their content (i.e. journalism) or getting free access to it but with the stipulation that they agree to be tracked as the 'price' for this freebie.

Their approach remains controversial with data protection law experts and may not survive legal challenges. But, in the meanwhile, it doesn't necessarily offer much succour to Musk's ambitions to force ads on unwilling Europeans, either, since there is a clear difference between pay-or-be-tracked-gating of journalism (i.e. profession content that the paywalling company is paying to produce) vs pay-or-be-tracked-gating of user generated content which Musk is getting for free for some crazy reason, even as he yells at Twitter users to pay him ~$8pm or else.

So a pay-me-or-else paywall in the microblogging platform case doesn't look like it would be smooth sailing either.

So what penalties might Musk face if he goes ahead and tries to force ads on European users?

Under the GDPR, penalties can scale up to 4% of global annual turnover -- so, on paper, the cost of breaking the law can certainly get expensive (though Twitter has escaped major sanction to date). But GDPR penalties against tech giants have been getting bigger in recent years (even if the bill may take years to arrive). And flagrant/wilful breaches typically invite bigger fines than one-off incidents like a security slip up.

ePrivacy also allows EU regulators to levy dissuasive sanctions for breaches -- and these can, demonstrably, exceed a hundred million dollars apiece (i.e. from a single regulator), so costs could stack up quickly here too if multiple watchdogs wade in.

ePrivacy enforcement is also not slowed down by a one-stop-shop mechanism funnelling cross-border complaints through a single lead regulator (as happens with the GDPR). So fines could arrive in fairly short order if Musk pushes ahead with forced tracking despite the lack of a legal path for such processing.

Both privacy laws also enable EU regulators to issue corrective orders against infringing practices. And failure to comply with such orders invites -- you guessed it! -- further sanction. So if Musk refuses to correct course he is walking into an ongoing world of costly regulatory pain in Europe.

He has more regulatory trouble brewing in the region, too.

Looming on the horizon is application of the EU's new Digital Services Act (DSA), the bloc's rebooted Internet rulebook, which concerns itself with content governance issues, so how platforms tackle problems like terrorism, hate speech, disinformation etc. Here again Musk's 'free the bird' approach has quickly thrown regulatory expectations into a spin that has led (already) to closer scrutiny by EU lawmakers than would likely have occurred without the Tesla CEO at the helm of Twitter.

The European Commission itself will oversee larger platforms' compliance with the DSA, rather than national authorities. And just last month it warned Twitter over the need to have adequate resourcing for compliance in place -- saying it would carry out a stress test of its approach at its Dublin HQ early next year. So it's already putting Twitter on DSA watch.

It remains to be seen whether or not the Commission will classify Twitter as a so-called VLOP -- meaning it would take on the burden of regulating Musk's erratic rule itself. But he is essentially inviting that increased level of EU scrutiny (and regulatory risk) by playing so fast and loose with existing governance and compliance structures. Ergo, Twitter's DSA compliance being regulated by the Commission looks rather more possible than it probably should, based on an assessment of the platform's size alone. And that's all down to Musk's hard work ripping up existing governance structures and driving out compliance expertise.

Penalties under the DSA can scale up to 6% of global annual turnover. The regulation also contains powers for regulators to ban infringing services if they repeatedly fail to correct governance -- so if Musk keeps on trolling the region's regulators a complete loss of Twitter's EU revenue cannot be entirely ruled out... Buckle up!


Musk at Twitter has ‘huge work’ ahead to comply with EU rules, warns bloc

Europe seals a deal on tighter rules for digital services

Trump's (STEPHEN MILLER'S) Immigrant Crackdown Left A Critical Shortage Of Workers In U.S. Economy

Mary Papenfuss

Thu, December 15, 2022 

Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration while president — along with the effect of the COVID pandemic — has left the U.S. economy in critical need of workers, significantly hobbling growth, according to economists.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has estimated that the economy is short an astonishing 3.5 million workers, and economists estimate half of those workers would typically be migrants allowed into the country, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

“There is no question: We need more immigration,” Adam Ozimek, chief economist at the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization, told the Post.

“Immigrants aren’t just workers, they are particularly flexible, mobile workers who help address acute labor shortages wherever they emerge,” he added. “And that’s particularly important in this constrained economy we’re facing right now.”

During his 2016 presidential campaign and while in office, Trump typically characterized immigrants as a detriment to the nation and specifically referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and criminals. While president, he complained about migrants coming from “shithole” nations.

But immigrants are tremendously valuable in national economies, according to data. They provide a flexible workforce and are often willing to do jobs Americans turn down, such as low-paying, physically demanding work in the hospitality, agriculture, construction and health care industries.

Worker shortages can lead to higher prices as employers raise wages to lure workers to jobs.

Immigration has “rebounded somewhat” in the last six months, the Post noted, but major shortages remain while the nation also grapples with worker losses caused by retirements and health issues, the newspaper reported.

The “crisis” had triggered a bipartisan push to increase legal immigration, but efforts went nowhere, according to the Post.

Giovanni Peri, director of the Global Migration Center at the University of California, Davis, estimates it could be another four years before the country makes up for current shortfalls through more legal immigration. Even then, he told the Post, it won’t be enough to catch up to the aging American workforce, which will leave millions of more positions unfilled.

Check out the full Washington Post report here.

Private Space Firm Blows up Space Station Module—and That's a Good Thing


Kevin Hurler
Wed, December 14, 2022 

Private space company Sierra Space announced yesterday that it successfully completed a stress test last month on an in-development astronaut habitat—a test that involved the pumping of gas into the inflatable module until it blew apart. This is the second successful test, following one earlier this year in July.

Sierra Space has been developing the Large Integrated Flexible Environment, or LIFE, habitat to continue its foray into long-term commercial spaceflight. The company says that the LIFE habitat is a three-story platform designed for both low Earth orbit and long-duration missions that can house habitation and science efforts. The company, along with Blue Origin, is seeking to place a private space station, called Orbital Reef, into Earth orbit, onto which the LIFE modules would be attached.


Conceptual image of Orbital Reef.

To test the strength of the LIFE habitat in space, Sierra Space performed a successful Ultimate Burst Pressure (UBP) test. The team took a one-third scale version of the habitat and pumped it full of nitrogen gas until the point of failure—explosion—to determine its stress limits. Given how violent the explosion threatened to be, the Sierra Space team performed the test on the same launch pad that NASA used to test rockets during the Apollo program. This is the second UBP stress test of LIFE, following one in July. Both have proven successful.

“This second successful UBP test proves we can demonstrate design, manufacturing and assembly repeatability, all of which are key areas for certification,” said LIFE chief engineer Shawn Buckley in a company press release. Sierra Space CEO Tom Vice also said: “The LIFE habitat module is essential technology for enabling humans to safely and comfortably begin to develop new civilizations in space.”

Sierra Space’s LIFE Habitat Successfully Completes Second Ultimate Burst Pressure Test

The LIFE module is a large, round habitat made out of woven fabric, primarily consisting of Vectran, which is a synthetic fiber made from a liquid crystal polymer. Vectran is commonly used in spaceflight application, including the airbags that helped land the Pathfinder on Mars in 1997. This second test was performed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and the first was performed at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Sierra Space says that this most recent test saw LIFE withstanding pressures of 204 psi, exceeding the safety threshold of 182.4 psi.

Theoretically, the LIFE habitat will launch on a conventional rocket and will then be inflated while in orbit, providing astronauts with a spherical habitat that is 27 feet (8.2 meters) in diameter to live and work in. Sierra Space says it will conduct a full scale UBP tests of the LIFE habitat in 2023 to complete NASA’s certification.

Harvard names new president, first Black woman to hold top job


Thu, December 15, 2022 
By Ross Kerber and Dan Whitcomb

BOSTON (Reuters) -Harvard University on Thursday named Claudine Gay, the school's dean of Faculty Arts and Sciences, as its 30th president, the first Black person and only the second woman to hold the job.

Gay, the daughter of Haitian immigrants who joined Harvard as a professor in 2006, succeeds Lawrence Bacow as president of the prestigious, nearly 400-year-old Ivy League university. She will take over in July 2023.

"Claudine is a remarkable leader who is profoundly devoted to sustaining and enhancing Harvard’s academic excellence" Penny Pritzker, secretary of the U.S. Commerce Department under President Barack Obama and chair of the search committee, said in a written statement.

Gay, 52, will step into the job in Cambridge, Massachusetts as the university faces challenges to its admissions policies.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider a 2014 lawsuit claiming that Harvard violates the U.S. Constitution and discriminates against Asian students by considering the race or ethnicity of applicants. Many legal experts believe the conservative-leaning top court will agree.

Harvard argues that eliminating race as a consideration would hamper its efforts to create a more diverse student body.

The university has also been criticised for so-called legacy admissions favouring children of alumni, big donors or athletes.

"With the strength of this extraordinary institution behind us, we enter a moment of possibility, one that calls for deeper collaboration across the University, across all of our remarkable Schools," Gay said in a written statement.

"There is an urgency for Harvard to be engaged with the world and to bring bold, brave, pioneering thinking to our greatest challenges," she said.

Harvard's website lists tuition for full-time students as$54,768 per year, although many students are eligible for grants or scholarships.

The university, with an endowment for 2022 of $50.9 billion, was founded in 1636 and is the oldest higher learning institution in the United States. It counts eight U.S. Presidents among its alumni, including Obama.

(Reporting by Ross Kerber and Dan WhitcombEditing by Diane Craft and David Gregorio)

FAKE LIBERTARIAN

After banning the college student who tracked Elon Musk's jet, Twitter also banned sharing links to his jet tracker accounts on other social media platforms

Kelsey Vlamis
Wed, December 14, 2022 


Elon Musk and the Gulfstream G550 jet.Sean Zanni / Contributor/Getty Images; Courtesy of Jetcraft

The college student who tracked Elon Musk's jet on Twitter had over 30 of his accounts banned on Wednesday.


Twitter also blocked anyone from sharing links to Sweeney's accounts on other platforms.


Musk said in November he would allow the account to remain due to his "commitment to free speech."

Twitter on Wednesday banned an account that previously tracked Elon Musk's private jet — but it also went a step further, banning anyone from sharing a link to similar accounts on other social media sites.

The @ElonJet Twitter account, run by college student Jack Sweeney, was suspended from the platform, despite Musk saying in November he would not ban the account due to his "commitment to free speech." Sweeney told Insider at the time he was "pleased" that Musk would allow his account to remain.

"I kind of figured that was his stance because if it wasn't people would be after him for saying one thing and then coming and banning my account," Sweeney, who called himself a fan of Musk, said in November.

But on Wednesday the account — as well as more than 30 others that Sweeney used to track the private jets of celebrities — was suspended. Shortly after, Twitter announced an update to its "Private Information policy" that would "prohibit sharing someone else's live location in most cases."

"When someone shares an individual's live location on Twitter, there is an increased risk of physical harm. Moving forward, we'll remove Tweets that share this information, and accounts dedicated to sharing someone else's live location will be suspended," the company said in a tweet.

In addition to blocking the Twitter account that tracked Musk's jet, the platform has also banned sharing links to Sweeney's @elonmusksjet Instagram account and his "Elon Musk's Jet" Facebook page. When trying to tweet a link to the Instagram account as of Wednesday evening, Twitter returned an error message with the note: "We can't complete this request because the link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful."

Twitter has blocked sharing links to Instagram and Facebook pages that track his private jet.Twitter

In the updated policy, Twitter also stated that sharing links to sites that track real-time location would also be blocked, writing that prohibited live location information included "information shared on Twitter directly or links to 3rd-party URL(s) of travel routes, actual physical location, or other identifying information that would reveal a person's location, regardless if this information is publicly available."

Sweeney told Insider's Grace Kay on Wednesday that his personal Twitter account was suspended hours after his jet tracking accounts, which compiled and published publicly available data.

"I really didn't think he'd suspend my personal account," Sweeney said. "I didn't think he'd do anything because of all the media attention he'd get."

Sweeney, who previously said his account had been "shadow-banned," also said he planned to continue tracking Musk's jet on other platforms.

"I mean, fuck this guy," he said. "This is ridiculous. My personal account doesn't even track the planes. I'm going full-blast."

Elon Musk tried to get rid of Twitter bots by blocking hundreds of thousands of accounts, but accidentally impacted many legitimate users

Pete Syme
Wed, December 14, 2022 

Musk at a 2022 Halloween party.Taylor Hill/Getty Images

Twitter blocked around 30 mobile carriers due to Elon Musk's bot fears, per Platformer.


But this meant many real users were also denied access to the app on Sunday.


Staff rushed to reverse the ban after top telecom companies passed on customer complaints.

Elon Musk accidentally blocked real Twitter users as the platform denied access to hundreds of thousands of accounts in an attempt to reduce bot numbers, Platformer reported.

Around midnight Saturday, the world's second-richest person tweeted: "The bots are in for a surprise tomorrow."

Hours later, the main telecom providers in India and Russia – plus the second-biggest in Indonesia – were all blocked from Twitter.

Roughly 30 mobile carriers, primarily in eastern Asia, were all cut off from the app as part of Musk's attempt to limit spam.

Instead of identifying individual accounts, Twitter identified mobile networks which were associated with large bots networks, Platformer reported.

It first blocked SMS messages used for two-factor authentication, before preventing access to Twitter completely.

Musk's concern about bots was a prime issue as he tried to pull out of the deal to acquire Twitter over the summer. His lawyers also argued that Twitter was hiding staff responsible for calculating how many accounts were bots.

He had claimed that 20% of users were fake or spam, but Musk's own data scientists found the number to be around 5% to 11%.

Sunday's ban only lasted for a bit more than an hour, before the telecom companies passed their customers' complaints onto the social network.

On the company's Slack, a Twitter engineer shared an email from one of the companies, Platformer reported. One employee said: "I expect more emails like this to hit our peering queue tomorrow."

Another replied: "We blocked a fair few huge carriers, so I would expect so."

The telecom companies were told the issue was due to "routing configuration changes" as Twitter staff quickly undid the block.

Musk had also demanded employees explain why a specific account had been able to impersonate him, per Platformer. The hacked account had been able to share crypto scams because it was verified.

One employee said that Twitter's content moderation tool used to identify spam "has been unstable for at least a week now."

Twitter did not immediately reply to Insider's request for comment.

Working at 76: Inflation forces hard choice for older adults



Older Americans-Inflation Worries

Kasey Dungan, 73, holds her 11-year-old mixed dachshund Sandy in a subsidized Phoenix apartment for older adults on Monday, December 12, 2022. She says she feels fortunate to be with her dog in her home after falling into homelessness early this year. But high costs for food and other bills mean her entire Social Security check is gone by month's end. 

(AP Photo/Cheyanne Mumphrey)

ANITA SNOW
Thu, December 15, 2022 
PHOENIX (AP) — Lenore Angey never imagined she'd have to go back to work at age 76.

With an ailing husband and the highest prices she can remember for everything from milk to gasoline, the retired school lunch worker from Cleveland, Ohio, now works part time as a salesperson at a local department store to cover the costs of food and medicine.

“The holidays are going to be tough, and it's not just for seniors,” said Angey, who said she was happy to get an extra 10 hours a week during the busy shopping season. “Luckily my daughter-in-law did all the cooking for Thanksgiving and I brought a few dishes. But the Christmas celebration will definitely be more modest.”

Inflationary pressures may be starting to ease, but higher prices throughout much of 2022 are still taking a toll on older adults, with a larger share of people like Angey saying they felt their finances were worse off than a year before. Consumer inflation in November was still up 7.1% from a year earlier.

While people of all ages are struggling, those over 65 often have an even harder time because they usually live on a fixed income, unable to increase their paychecks with overtime or bonuses.

The problem will become more widespread in the coming years as more baby boomers, who began turning 65 in 2011, join the ranks of the retired. In 2050, the U.S. population ages 65 and over will be 83.9 million, nearly double what it was (43.1 million) in 2012, the Census Bureau projects.

Angey gets less than $1,000 monthly with her small pension from a school district and Social Security. She said her husband earns a bit more.

Angey was among participants in an AARP report released last month that showed more than a third of people 65 and older described their financial situation at midyear as worse than it was 12 months before. It was a huge jump from the 13% of adults 65 and older who said the same thing in January.

The older adults were among 4,817 adults aged 30 and over who participated in a semiannual survey fielded in July across all 50 states and the District of Columbia by the independent social research organization NORC at the University of Chicago on behalf of AARP. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.57%.

While a large share of people in all age groups described difficult financial struggles this year, a breakdown by age showed that older people are much more pessimistic about their own economic futures. While nearly half of adults ages 30-49 said they thought their finances would improve over 12 months, only a little more than a quarter of people 50 and older thought the same thing.

The financial insecurity that inflation has caused this year has forced many older adults to make difficult decisions, said Dana Kennedy, AARP director for Arizona.

“Many people are living on a fixed income and have cut back, or are even delaying retirement,” said Kennedy.

Survey participant Frank Hiller, 62, of Eastampton, New Jersey, said the higher prices have caused him to rethink when to retire, and whether he and his wife will remain in their four-bedroom house in retirement.

“I used to think it would be 65, but now I’m thinking 67,” said Hiller who works as an auto technician at a car dealership. “And we had thought we’d stay in our house, but we’ll probably downsize. It’s a lot of space and costs a lot to keep up.”

Although Hiller’s family hasn’t had to make drastic changes to keep up with inflation, they have been re-examining their internet and cable TV package, wondering if they should finally drop the internet phone line.

Kennedy, of AARP Arizona, said spiraling apartment prices in her state have squeezed a lot of older adults out of the rental market.

Kasey Dungan, 73, said she feels fortunate to be with her 11-year-old mixed dachshund Sandy in a subsidized Phoenix apartment for older adults after falling into homelessness early this year.

Still, costs for food and other bills mean her entire Social Security check is gone by month's end.

“I don't have money to go to the show or anything,” said Dungan, a widow who does her own shopping and cooking even though she sometimes uses a rolling walker.

She said she's looking forward to next month, when millions of Social Security recipients will get an 8.7% boost in their benefits that will be eaten up in part by rising costs.

The average recipient will receive over $140 more monthly in the largest cost-of living adjustment in more than 40 years. About 70 million people, including retirees, disabled people and children, receive Social Security benefits.

“I'm hoping it will help me to buy more groceries, especially with inflation the way it is,” said Dungan, who counts on a monthly food box for older adults through a federal program to get enough to eat.

Phoenix resident Lois Nyman, who just turned 85, said she's lucky to have her health and able to augment her Social Security payments with a part-time job as an adjunct community college instructor coordinating clinical experience for future nurses at local hospitals.

Still, she said, inflation has made things a bit tighter this year, which means she and her neighbor go out to dinner about once a month now rather than every week.

“For Thanksgiving I just bought a couple of turkey legs instead of a whole turkey,” said Nyman, who lives with a son in his 60s. “I can't believe how much more things now cost at the grocery store. I try to go when things are on sale, down to the same prices as a year ago.”

____

This report was written with the support of a journalism fellowship from The Gerontological Society of America, The Journalists Network on Generations and The John A. Hartford Foundation.

Huge Berlin aquarium bursts, unleashing flood of devastation

 

Following the burst of a huge aquarium, the atrium of a hotel is devastated in Berlin Germany, Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. German police say a huge aquarium in the center of Berlin has burst, causing a wave of devastation in and around the Sea Life tourist attraction. 

EMILY SCHULTHEIS and FRANK JORDANS
Fri, December 16, 2022

BERLIN (AP) — A huge aquarium in Berlin burst, spilling debris, water and more than a thousand tropical fish out of the AquaDom tourist attraction in the heart of the German capital early Friday.

Police said parts of the building, which also contains a hotel, cafes and a chocolate store, were damaged as 1 million liters (264,000 gallons) of water poured from the aquarium shortly before 6 a.m. (0500 GMT). Berlin's fire service said two people were slightly injured.

The company that owns the AquaDom, Union Investment Real Estate, said in a statement Friday afternoon that the reasons for the incident were “still unclear.”

Mayor Franziska Giffey said the incident had unleashed a “veritable tsunami” of water but the early morning timing had prevented far more injuries.


“Despite all the destruction, we were still very lucky,” she said. “We would have had terrible human damage” had the aquarium burst even an hour later, once more people were awake and in the hotel and the surrounding area, she said.

The 25 meter tall (82 foot tall) AquaDom was described as the biggest cylindrical tank in the world and held more than a thousand tropical fish before the incident. Among the 80 types of fish it housed were blue tang and clownfish, two colorful species known from the popular animated movie “Finding Nemo.”

“Unfortunately, none of the 1,500 fish could be saved,” Giffey said.

Efforts were underway Friday afternoon to save an additional 400 to 500 smaller fish housed in aquariums underneath the hotel lobby. Without electricity, their tanks were not receiving the necessary oxygen for them to survive, officials said.

"Now it’s about evacuating them quickly,” Almut Neumann, a city official in charge of environmental issues for Berlin's Mitte district, told German news agency dpa.

Various organizations, including the Berlin Zoo, offered to take in the surviving fish.

Aquarium operator Sea Life said it was saddened by the incident and was trying to get more information about the incident from the owners of the AquaDom.

Sea Life's own aquarium is located in the same building and visitors can tour it and the AquaDom on a single ticket.

There was speculation freezing temperatures that got down to minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight caused a crack in the acrylic glass tank, which then exploded under the weight of the water. Police said there was no evidence the incident resulted from a malicious act.

About 300 guests and employees had to be evacuated from the hotel surrounding the aquarium, police said.

Sandra Weeser, a German lawmaker who was staying in the hotel, said she was awoken up by a large bang and thought there might have been an earthquake.

“There are shards (of glass) everywhere. The furniture, everything has been flooded with water," she said. "It looks a bit like a war zone.”

Police said a Lindt chocolate store and several restaurants in the same building complex, as well as an underground parking garage next to the hotel, sustained damage. A fire service spokesman said building safety experts were assessing the extent to which the hotel had sustained structural damage.

Hours after the incident, trucks began clearing away the debris that had spilled out onto the street in front of the hotel. Brightly colored Lindt chocolate wrappers were scattered in front of the building where the chocolate shop had been damaged. A small crowd of tourists and onlookers snapped photos from behind the police line across the street.

The aquarium, which was last modernized in 2020, is a major tourist magnet in Berlin. The 10-minute elevator ride through the tropical tank was one of the highlights of the attraction.

Animal rights group PETA tweeted Thursday that the aquarium became a “death trap” for the fish housed in it. “This man-made tragedy shows that aquariums are not a safe place for fish and other marine life," they wrote.

Iva Yudinski, a tourist from Israel who had been staying at the hotel, said she was shocked by the incident

“Just yesterday we watched it and we were so amazed (by) its beauty," she said. "Suddenly it’s all gone. Everything is a mess, a total mess.”

Spain passes pioneering sexual, reproductive health law


A woman walks past an anti-abortion poster across the street from the private clinic Dator, which provides abortions, in Madrid


Thu, December 15, 2022 

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's parliament on Thursday passed a sexual and reproductive health law that allows girls aged 16 and 17 to undergo abortions without parental consent and, in a first for a European country, offers state-funded paid leave for women who suffer from painful periods.

"These advancements allow us to exercise freedom over our bodies, with the state recognising the full citizenship of more than half the population," Equality Minister Irene Montero told lawmakers before the vote, which was adopted with a 190-154 majority and five abstentions.

The country's leftist coalition government had introduced the bill - opposed by anti-abortion activists and the Catholic Church - in May with the aim of guaranteeing abortion access and destigmatising menstrual health.

The new law removes a mandatory three-day "reflection" period for women who wish to terminate their pregnancy and eliminates the need for those aged 16-17 to obtain the consent of a parent or guardian to abort. This requirement had been put in place by the conservative People's Party government in 2015.

It also includes paid leave for pregnant women from week 39, ensures the distribution of free menstrual products in public institutions such as schools, prisons or health centres, and designates surrogate pregnancies - which are illegal in Spain - as a form of violence against women.

Lourdes Mendez from the far-right party Vox said that by declaring abortion a human right, the law violated the constitution and turned Spain's system of values upside down.

"In the face of an unplanned pregnancy or a baby that may be born with a disability, there is only one way out: the elimination of the life of her child," she said.

Sonia Lamas, a spokesperson for the women's health clinic Dator, told Reuters in an interview in May that the clinic welcomed these measures.

The so-called reflection period was unnecessary because "women make very informed decisions and we don't need to reflect on something that we have already decided", she added.

The clinic has faced protests by abortion opponents who regularly hold group prayers and stage demonstrations in front of the building.

Lamas said the groups conducted campaigns "to approach women in areas such as the entrance of accredited clinics - which should be safe spaces".

The law is now headed for the upper house for final approval.

(Reporting by David Latona, Susana Vera and Elena Rodríguez; Editing by William Maclean)

More questions than answers at Colorado River water meetings




A formerly sunken boat sits upright into the air with its stern stuck in the mud along the shoreline of Lake Mead at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area on June 10, 2022, near Boulder City, Nev. Living with less water in the U.S. Southwest is the focus for a conference starting Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022, in Las Vegas, about the drought-stricken and overpromised Colorado River.

 (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

KEN RITTER
Thu, December 15, 2022

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Key questions resurfaced Thursday at a conference of Colorado River water administrators and users from seven U.S. states, Native American tribes and Mexico who are served by the shrinking river stricken by drought and climate change.

Who will bear the brunt of more water supply cuts, and how quickly?

What target goals need to be met for voluntary cutbacks in water use by the seven states that rely on the river before the federal government steps in?

What about controlling water evaporation once snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains enters the system and begins flowing to Mexico?

“I don’t have answers. I just have questions right now,” Ted Cooke, general manager of the Central Arizona Project, said during a Colorado River Water Users Association panel about the state of the river.

The agency manages canals delivering water to much of Arizona, and was the first to feel the effects last year of drought-forced cuts to water flow from the river.

The Colorado provides drinking water to 40 million people, irrigation for millions of acres of agriculture and hydropower in the U.S. Southwest.

“Collective painful action is necessary now,” Chuck Cullom, executive director of the Upper Colorado River Commission, said during the same panel.

The river serves four headwater states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — and three so-called Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada. Tribes and Mexico also have water entitlements.

Talk at sessions Wednesday and Thursday has focused on cooperation between users to solve shortages. But data showing less water flows into the river than is drawn from it has dominated over the conference. And after more than two decades of drought and climate change, the annual conference at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas has taken on a crisis vibe.

“The alternative to inaction is brutal and entirely obvious,” Cullom said of a domino effect of shortages that would be borne first by entities with junior water rights advancing to those with senior standing. “We agree all states, sectors and tribes must play a role.”

Deadlines about what to do are fast approaching, along with a deadline next Tuesday for public comment on a federal Bureau of Reclamation effort expected to yield a final report by summer about how to save about 15% of river water now distributed to recipients.

David Palumbo, the Bureau of Reclamation deputy commissioner of operations, told the conference panel with Cooke and Cullom Thursday he hoped for answers. Those include assumptions about the amount of water flowing in the river; effects of changing river flows in the Grand Canyon; how officials should administer reductions; and considerations about public health and safety.

Limiting population growth was not discussed as an option. Cooke said market forces, not the government, should dictate who moves where.

“People have the right to make a good choice or a bad choice,” he said, “and that includes moving to a spot that might not have water.”

The bureau controls the flow of the river with waterworks including the nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona state line and Lake Powell formed by the Glen Canyon Dam on the Arizona-Utah line.

Lake Mead was at 100% capacity in mid-1999. Today it is 28% full. Lake Powell, which was last full in June 1980, is at 25%.

Water deliveries were cut last year for the first time to Arizona and Nevada, mostly affecting farmers in Arizona under a 1968 agreement that gave the state junior rights to river water in exchange for U.S. funding to build a 336-mile (540-kilometer) canal to its major cities.

The bureau could impose top-down rules that override shares that states agreed to take in 1922 and subsequent agreements. However, although federal officials are due to speak on Friday — including Camille Touton, bureau commissioner, and two top Interior Department representatives — blockbuster announcements are not expected.

Reclamation officials last June told the seven states they’ll have to cut more, and left it to them to identify ways to cut the 15% next year, or have restrictions imposed on them. The federal government has also allocated billions of dollars to pay farmers to fallow fields and to help cities cut water use.

“We’re using more than we have,” Brenda Burman, former head of the Bureau of Reclamation, said during “Colorado River 101” on Wednesday.

“We could be looking at a lot of cuts. We could be looking at a lot of changes,” she said.

As head of the bureau, Burman had warned the Water Users Association four years ago that drought action was needed. She'll be replacing Cooke, who is retiring, as general manager of the Central Arizona Project.

Becky Mitchell, director of the Colorado Water Conservation Board, expressed frustration Thursday that people don't realize that water is captured in Upper Basin states and then doled out by the bureau in Lower Basin states.

Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming "live within the means of the river every day,” she said.

John Entsminger, general manager of the Las Vegas-based Southern Nevada Water Authority, compared dealing with the effects of drought on the Colorado River to a national emergency like a hurricane in Florida, and said the federal government could invest national emergency funds.

Entsminger also said it's time to chart the amount of water lost to evaporation when usage and allocations are considered.

“We have not accounted for the amount of water we are losing from the system,” he said. “Call it evaporation, system losses, call it strawberry shortcake for all we care. Do the math and the analysis.”

___

Associated Press journalist Peter Prengaman in Las Vegas contributed to this repor