The best wildlife photos of 2022 include a ball of bees, a snake eating a bat, and polar bears raiding an abandoned town

Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Mon, December 19, 2022 

Karine Aigner/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The London Natural History Museum announced the 2022 winners of its Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest.

The 20 winners were selected from more than 38,000 entries.

Winning photos include a frenzied ball of bees, a dancing sea star, and the brushy mouth of a whale.

As a ball of swarming cactus bees rolled across the hot Texas sand, Karine Aigner trained her camera on the spectacle.

The cactus bees, like most other bees, are endangered by habitat loss, pesticides, and the changing climate. But that didn't stop this cluster of buzzing insects from trying to multiply. All but one of the bees in that ball were male, swarming around a single female. As they clamored for an opportunity to mate, Aigner's camera lens clicked.

The resulting photo, above, won the Grand Title in this year's Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, which the Natural History Museum in London develops and produces each year.

From more than 38,000 entries, Aigner's photo and 19 other category winners stood out.

"Wings whirring, incoming males home in on the ball of buzzing bees that is rolling straight into the picture. The sense of movement and intensity is shown at bee-level magnification and transforms what are little cactus bees into big competitors for a single female," Roz Kidman Cox, who chaired the panel of judges, said in a statement.

Other winning photos reveal animals, birds, and sea creatures in the throes of life: hunting, being hunted, wandering, dying, dancing for potential mates, and struggling to survive as their world gets smaller.

The Grand Title winner for young photographers captured the contrast inside a whale's mouth

Katanyou Wuttichaitanakorn/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Katanyou Wuttichaitanakorn, a 16-year-old from Thailand, was on a whale-watching tour when a Bryde's whale surfaced near the boat. Struck by the whale's dark skin, pale pink gums, and brushy mass of baleen teeth, he snapped a picture. It snagged Wuttichaitanakorn's first award in the competition.

Cox called the photo a "dazzling creation."

"The pin-sharp detail of the tiny anchovies is set against an abstraction of color, with the weave of brown baleen hair rimmed by a cascade of water drops," Cox said.
In another winning photo, a snake captured a spooky snack

Fernando Constantino Martínez Belmar/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

In the Cave of the Hanging Snakes, in Quintana Roo, Mexico, Fernando Constantino Martínez Belmar waited in the dark as a Yucatán rat snake poked its head from the rock ceiling. Just like every night, as thousands of bats swarmed out of the cave, the resident snakes waited for just the right opportunity to lunge from their hiding places and snatch a meal.

Using a red light that would be less disruptive in the dark, Martínez Belmar captured the hunt in the split moment before this snake retreated with its prize.

A snow leopard pursued its own, much bigger, prey

Anand Nambiar/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Across a ravine in the Himalayas, Anand Nambiar watched this leopard maneuver uphill from a herd of ibex, then charge them toward a steep cliff.

Snow leopards are at risk of extinction due to hunting, climate change, and mining that destroys their habitat.

A vulnerable spectacled bear surveyed its disappearing territory

Daniel Mideros/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Spectacled bears are the only bear species native to South America, and their numbers are dwindling. The disappearance and fragmentation of their habitat has culled them to just a few thousand.

Photographer Daniel Mideros captured one of those bears with a camera he set up on a wildlife corridor, which bridges fragments of habitat between human settlements in Quito, Ecuador.

A beloved mountain gorilla died in her caretaker's arms

Brent Stirton/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Ndakasi was rescued at two months old after her troop of gorillas was massacred. Photographer Brent Stirton was there to capture her rescue, and returned 13 years later to capture her death, as she laid in the arms of her lifelong caretaker, Andre Bauma, at Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"I loved her like a child," Bauma told the BBC after her death in 2021. "Her cheerful personality brought a smile to my face every time I interacted with her."

Polar bears raided a long-abandoned town

Dmitry Kokh/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The island of Kolyuchin, in the Siberian Chukchi Sea, lost its human inhabitants long ago. The abandoned settlements there have a new population now: wandering polar bears.

Dmitry Kokh was aboard a yacht, sheltering from a storm, when he spotted the bears moving in and out of buildings on the distant island. He flew a drone out to photograph them.

One small bird listened to the earth...

Nick Kanakis/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

This young grey-breasted wood wren was foraging when photographer Nick Kanakis happened by. The ground-dwelling bird hopped through the leaf litter in Colombia's Tatamá National Park, listening to the ground for the faint squirms of small insects — lunch for the wren.

...while a showy bird puffed out its chest feathers

José Juan Hernández Martinez/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The Canary Islands houbara does a frantic courting dance. From a spot he dug out, José Juan Hernández Martinez watched the whole thing. The houbara raises the plumes on the front of its neck, throws its head back, sprints forward, circles back, and pauses a moment before starting over again. This photo shows its full puffy glory during that brief pause.

A sea star performed its own eerie mating dance

Tony Wu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year

Birds may have to impress their mates, but sea stars only have to spawn. Still, to set up their spawns for success, they must dance. Rising, swaying, pulsing, and undulating may help release the eggs and sperm, or send them into currents of water so they mix and fertilize. As clouds of sea-star sperm and eggs filled the water, photographer Tony Wu captured this otherwordly invertebrate in the throes of its dance.

Editor's note: This story was first published on October 11, 2022.

NOW THE PROTESTS WILL BEGIN
Hyundai lays off staff after idling Russian plant since March



Mon, December 19, 2022 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - South Korea's Hyundai Motor Co, formerly one of Russia's biggest car makers, has begun laying off workers at its St Petersburg factory, which has stood idle since March, largely due to the effects of Russia's military intervention in Ukraine.

"Owing to the continued suspension of production, Hyundai Motor is taking steps to optimise its staff numbers in Russia," Hyundai's Russian unit said in a statement.

It did not say how many staff members would be laid off.

Around 2,600 people built Hyundai and Kia cars at the plant, which has a capacity of some 200,000 vehicles per year.

South Korean media reported in October that Hyundai was considering options for its Russian operations including selling its manufacturing plant.

Most Western car factories in Russia are now idle due to sanctions and a shortage of component supplies, and some auto makers have transferred their plants to Russian owners, while Chinese firms step in to fill the gap in the market.

(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Bernadette Baum)

Toyota's CEO isn't fully sold on electric cars — and he says a 'silent majority' is on his side

Tim Levin

Mon, December 19, 2022 

While Toyota is working on EVs, it isn't ready to overhaul its entire business just yet.Thomson Reuters

• Toyota boss Akio Toyoda has long said that electric cars aren't the only way forward for the auto industry.

• He said a "silent majority" in the auto business agrees with him.

• Lots of car companies are racing to electrify their lineups. Toyota isn't moving as quickly.

Car companies from General Motors to Volkswagen are making big promises about eliminating combustion engines and electrifying their lineups.

But Toyota, the world's biggest carmaker, isn't quite sold on electric vehicles. And it thinks it's not alone.

Speaking to reporters recently, Toyota president Akio Toyoda said that most of the auto industry doesn't think EVs are the only way forward, even as policies banning gasoline car sales and propping up EVs make an all-electric future seem inevitable.

"That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it's the trend so they can't speak out loudly," Toyoda said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

A pioneer and leader in hybrid cars, Toyota has resisted going all-in on electrification like some of its biggest rivals. It has argued that the best way to reduce emissions is to offer customers a variety of options, including hybrids, plug-in hybrids, hydrogen-powered models, and EVs. Not everyone is ready for an electric car, the automaker has said, due to high prices and underdeveloped charging infrastructure.

"Because the right answer is still unclear, we shouldn't limit ourselves to just one option," Toyoda said, per the WSJ.

The strategy has drawn the ire of progressive and environmentalist groups, who argue that any technology short of an all-electric vehicle contributes needlessly to global warming.

Still, Toyota is changing with the times. Last December, it announced plans to invest 4 trillion yen (roughly $29 billion) to roll out 30 battery-powered models by 2030. It aims to sell at least 3.5 million EVs annually by that year, representing around a third of its global sales.

Layoffs are coming for self-driving truck company TuSimple


Rebecca Bellan
Mon, December 19, 2022

Autonomous trucking technology company TuSimple plans to cut a chunk of its workforce, potentially as early as this week, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited "people familiar with the matter."

While the Journal reported layoffs could affect at least half of TuSimple's workforce, TechCrunch's own source familiar with the matter said that number is not correct, but wouldn't say more. It might be closer to 15%, according to online forums, some of which have speculated there's been a game of telephone happening here (e.g. 15 sounds like 50).

Talks of layoffs at TuSimple have been ongoing for weeks, particularly following the end of TuSimple's deal with Navistar to co-develop purpose-built autonomous semi trucks. TuSimple has rescinded offers it gave to interns to join the company, and posts on LinkedIn and Blind have mentioned "huge layoffs."

While the number of employees to be let go is still unknown -- TuSimple currently has about 1,430 full-time employees globally -- it's not surprising to see yet another tech company downsize as a result of macroeconomic headwinds and internal dramas.

TuSimple has suffered a couple of executive shakeups this year. CEO Cheng Lu, who was asked to step down into an advisory role in March, took over again last month. His predecessor and TuSimple's founder Xiaodi Hou was fired following an internal probe that showed certain employees having ties and sharing confidential information with Hydron, a China-backed hydrogen-powered trucking company. The company is still facing multiple federal investigations related to its relationship with Hydron.

TuSimple's stock price has also plummeted this year, dropping 95.63% from January, and the company has dealt with loss of investor confidence following the crash of one of its trucks in April. As a company building frontier technology, TuSimple has struggled to generate nearly enough revenue to cover its cash burn. In the third quarter, TuSimple reported $113 million in losses on a revenue of $2.7 million -- revenue which came from hauling freight for shippers in trucks that had a human safety operator behind the wheel.

"Like every technology and self-driving company, we are closely examining our spending and how to align that with our strategy," Lu told TechCrunch.

WSJ reported that TuSimple plans to scale back its work building self-driving systems and testing autonomous trucks on public roads in Arizona and Texas, a claim that Lu denied to TechCrunch. The teams involved in TuSimple's operations in Tucson and self-driving software algorithms would be cut down as a result, the sources told the Journal.

Some of the imminent layoffs might come from the teams responsible for co-building trucks with Navistar. However, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that TuSimple is planning on replacing Navistar with a new OEM partner.

Sources told WSJ they expect layoffs to begin Tuesday, and that TuSimple told employees offices would be closed down Tuesday and Wednesday.
Canary in the coal mine

Interns whose offers to join the company were rescinded, as well as current TuSimple employees, have mentioned layoffs occurring at the company on LinkedIn and Blind.

"Affected by today's TuSimple massive layoffs, my return offer as a Research Engineer was rescinded," posted one former intern earlier this month who worked at TuSimple from June to September.

In response to a query on Blind by a person who recently interviewed at the company, one TuSimple employee commented on December 5 saying: "We're going through huge layoffs right now. Stock is at an all time low. No clear path to making money." The same person also said that staff morale "is pretty low."
That sentiment is mirrored by other comments on TuSimple's Blind profile. The latest company review, dated December 6, is titled "never trust this company." The employee, a software applications engineer, said that a pro of working for TuSimple is the company "provide[s] you with a hallucination that [it] may succeed." Cons were listed as toxic culture, horrible CEO, no profitable product and massive layoffs on the way.

While Blind posts are anonymous, the company told TechCrunch its community is made up of verified professionals. No one is allowed to post unless they are verified as a current employee of a given workplace using their work email.

How Biden's FCC nominee became a major campaign target


Gigi Sohn looks on during a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee confirmation hearing, examining her nomination to be appointed Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C., February 9, 2022. 

Pete Marovich/Pool via REUTERS 

Cristiano Lima, (c) 2022, The Washington Post
Sun, December 18, 2022 

WASHINGTON - Nearly two years into President Biden's term, he and Senate Democrats have yet to lock down a majority at the Federal Communications Commission amid a protracted fight over his pick for the agency, Gigi Sohn. Progressive groups and consumer advocates have lamented the delay as hamstringing efforts to restore open internet protections and expand broadband access.

Sohn's nomination has faced steadfast opposition from Senate Republicans, who have pointed to her past advocacy work and public remarks on topics including Fox News in casting the former Democratic FCC staffer as a "partisan" and "radical" activist.

That push to tank Sohn's nomination has been bolstered by conservative groups taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in attack ads, according to a review by The Washington Post.

The moves highlight how the battle over the FCC nomination, which typically draws limited fanfare, grew into a significant campaign flash point.

In the past year, two conservative nonprofits - the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) and the Center for a Free Economy (CFE) - have placed at least $246,000 in Facebook ads opposing Sohn, according to a review of digital ads archives. Facebook does not disclose the exact amount paid or reach garnered for ads on the site, but its database shows that the two groups' paid messages have been shown to users at least 14.8 million times.

The bulk of the spending has come from AAF, an opposition research group that has targeted dozens of Biden's nominees. The ads, some of which were still running as of last week, hammer Sohn over what they call her "extremist defund the police politics" and cite opposition to her nomination from the Fraternal Order of Police, a group made up of law enforcement officials.

The ads appear to reference a memo released by the law enforcement group surfacing tweets that Sohn "liked" pushing back on "'Defund' ... attacks" and calling on lawmakers to pass progressive agenda items including to "Defund police surveillance."

AAF and CFE did not return requests for comment. Sohn declined to comment.

Jeff Hauser, founder of the progressive watchdog group Revolving Door Project, said the spending makes the campaign among the most sprawling of any targeting a Biden pick.

"It's relatively rare that you see this kind of effort," said Hauser, whose group tracks federal appointments and the battles over their confirmations.

Hauser said it's rare for a single commissioner or regulator to face this level of opposition, and he said the Facebook campaigns are likely just a fraction of the total money spent given that there are "many forms of spending which do not create a financial trail."

Hauser pushed back on the criticisms leveled against Sohn in the ads, particularly those based off her past liked tweets related to policing. "No one can meaningfully determine what her views are on policing from a liked tweet," he said.

One AAF ad running through Dec. 9 warned that "some senators may sneak her into office in the lame-duck session before the end of the year" and urged Biden to pick "a new nominee."

The message arrives during a key stretch: Senate Democrats face a dwindling window to confirm Sohn before their session expires after the end of the year, and will need to overcome additional procedural hurdles next year if they do not.

A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who controls floor votes, did not return requests for comment on whether he intends to take up Sohn's nomination before the end of the year. The White House did not return a request for comment.

Sohn's nomination also has been opposed by the One Country Project, a group founded by former Democratic senators Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly, which in April announced "a six-figure ad campaign" arguing that Sohn "is the wrong choice for the FCC and rural America."

The group, which did not return a request for comment, said the ads would run in key states whose senators could be crucial to Sohn's still-pending nomination, including West Virginia, Nevada and Arizona.

Facebook ads explicitly mentioning Sohn were dominated by messages opposing her nomination, according to our review, but at least one group took out ads backing it.

The Communications Workers of America (CWA), a labor union representing employees of communications and media firms, bought at least $52,000 in Facebook ads backing Sohn. The messages were shown to users at least 2.8 million times, according to the ad database.

"Don't let corporate CEOs and their dark money groups stop the expansion of high-speed broadband access to the entire country," said one ad urging support for Sohn. Beth Allen, a spokesperson for CWA, said in a statement that they are "fully engaged" in backing Sohn because it is "extremely important" that the FCC be "fully staffed."

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An 'Imperial Supreme Court' Asserts Its Power, Alarming Scholars


One study found that the Supreme Court led since 2005 by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has been "uniquely willing to check executive authority." (NYT)

Adam Liptak
Mon, December 19, 2022

WASHINGTON — The conventional critique of the Supreme Court these days is that it has lurched to the right and is out of step with the public on many issues. That is true so far as it goes.

But a burst of recent legal scholarship makes a deeper point, saying the current court is distinctive in a different way: It has rapidly been accumulating power at the expense of every other part of the government.

The phenomenon was documented last month by Mark A. Lemley, a law professor at Stanford University, in an article called “The Imperial Supreme Court” in The Harvard Law Review.

“The court has not been favoring one branch of government over another, or favoring states over the federal government, or the rights of people over governments,” Lemley wrote. “Rather, it is withdrawing power from all of them at once.”

He added, “It is a court that is consolidating its power, systematically undercutting any branch of government, federal or state, that might threaten that power, while at the same time undercutting individual rights.”

The arguments this month over the role of state legislatures in setting rules for federal elections seemed to illustrate the point. The questioning suggested that the court was not prepared to adopt a novel legal theory that would upset the ordinary checks and balances at the state level in election litigation.

Rather, the justices seemed ready to elevate their own role in the process, giving themselves the right to do something ordinarily forbidden: second-guess state courts’ interpretations of state law.

In a similar vein, Justice Elena Kagan noted the majority’s imperial impulses in a dissent from a decision in June that limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to address climate change.

“The court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision maker on climate policy,” she wrote. “I cannot think of many things more frightening.”

A second study, to be published in Presidential Studies Quarterly, concentrated on cases involving the executive branch and backed up Lemley’s observations with data. Taking account of 3,660 decisions since 1937, the study found that the court led since 2005 by Chief Justice John Roberts has been “uniquely willing to check executive authority.”

This trend was even more pronounced in cases discussed in law school casebooks and featured on the front page of The New York Times. The executive branch in the Roberts court era won just 35% of the time in those cases, a rate more than 20 percentage points lower than the historical average.

The study’s authors, Rebecca L. Brown and Lee Epstein, both of the University of Southern California, wrote that “there is little indication that the Roberts court’s willingness to rule against the president bears any reliable relation to preserving the balance among the branches or the workings and accountability of the democratic process.”

“Instead,” they wrote, “there are increasingly frequent indications that the court is establishing a position of judicial supremacy over the president and Congress.”

Brown added in an interview that the nature of the court’s reasoning has shifted.

“When the court used to rule in favor of the president, they would do so with a sort of humility,” she said. “They would say: ‘It’s not up to us to decide this. We will defer to the president. He wins.’ Now the court says, ‘The president wins because we think he’s right.’”

Nor does the Supreme Court seem to trust lower federal courts. It has, for instance, made a habit of hearing cases before federal appeals courts have ruled on them, using a procedure called “certiorari before judgment.” It used to be reserved for exceptional cases like President Richard Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings to a special prosecutor or President Harry Truman’s seizure of the steel industry.

Before 2019, the court had not used the procedure for 15 years, according to statistics compiled by Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Since then, he found, the court has used it 19 times.

The court has been using another kind of shortcut to enhance its power, as two law professors — Lisa Tucker of Drexel University and Stefanie A. Lindquist of Arizona State University — demonstrated in a recent guest essay. The court has been, they wrote, “increasingly setting aside legally significant decisions from the lower courts as if they had never happened, invalidating them in brief procedural orders.”

Yet another study, from Tejas Narechania, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, examined the cases selected by the justices for full-blown review on the merits.

“The Roberts court, more than any other court in history, uses its docket-setting discretion to select cases that allow it to revisit and overrule precedent,” Narechania found in the study, which will be published in the St. Louis University Law Journal and built on an earlier one in the Columbia Law Review.

In September, in remarks at a judicial conference, Roberts insisted on the court’s primacy.

“You don’t want the political branches telling you what the law is,” he said, echoing Chief Justice John Marshall’s famous statement in Marbury v. Madison, the foundational 1803 decision: “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial branch to say what the law is.”

The statement is popular with the current court. “Over half of the total number of majority or concurring opinions in Supreme Court history to have quoted this language from Marbury,” Brown and Epstein wrote, “have been penned by the Roberts court.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Australia's hidden housing crisis is getting worse as many face homelessness



Mon, December 19, 2022
By Stella Qiu and Praveen Menon

CAMPBELLTOWN, Australia (Reuters) - Belinda has applied for more than 100 rental homes in the past year and been rejected every time.

The 39-year-old Australian single mother of four now lives in an temporary shelter in Campbelltown, southwest of Sydney, and has six months to find a home that costs under A$500 ($340) a week, or risk ending up sleeping rough.

"I don't know where I'm supposed to go after that. I have got a house full of furniture that I don't really want to get rid of. I don't really want to get rid of my cat or my puppy," said Belinda. "It is a bit scary to tell you the truth."

Relentlessly rising rents, eight consecutive interest rate hikes, surging living costs and devastating natural disasters in the past few years have inflamed what was already among the world's least affordable rental markets.

Every state capital city is experiencing a decline in rental affordability this year, according to the annual Rental Affordability Index report published by SGS Economics and Planning.

GRAPHIC: Australians struggle to find rentals 

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/AUSTRALIA-PROPERTY/zgpobbnqavd/chart.png

Across Australia, couples out of work and single parents on government aid face a market where only 0.1% of rentals are affordable, according to another report by not-for-profit welfare group Anglicare.

A person on the minimum wage is barely better off, as wages fail to keep up with spiralling rents. Sydney is listed among the world's top 10 most expensive rental markets by property agency Savills, above cities including Miami and Paris.

In Demographia's International Housing Affordability report this year, Sydney ranked the world's second-least affordable market, behind only Hong Kong.

"You cannot afford a house on your own if you are only working one job," said Maria, 46, a resident at a housing programme run by the not-for-profit Dignity in Campbelltown.

"When I leave here - let's be realistic - it's going to be hard for me if I am by myself."

Rental supply is at the lowest in two decades, pitting renters against record numbers of people who can no longer afford to buy after a surge in house prices.

"We have seen increasingly at the lower end of the market, people on lower incomes, the supply of rental stock available to them is reducing quite significantly, so this could have spillover effects on homelessness," said Cameron Kusher, Director of Economic Research at Data firm PropTrack.

GRAPHIC: Rents hit record highs 

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/AUSTRALIA-PROPERTY/zdvxddxldvx/chart.png

HOMELESSNESS 'TSUNAMI'

Rising migration levels after borders reopened this year have added to demand, with competition for properties resulting in rental bidding wars. The New South Wales government announced last week it would ban auction-style rental bidding.

Renters, however, are getting evicted by home-owners looking to jack up rents to keep pace with rising inflation, which is at a 32-year high, welfare groups and renters told Reuters.

Suzanne Hopman, Dignity's CEO, told Reuters they were heading to what could be the busiest Christmas they have ever had, as more and more people seek a place to rest, food and other support.

"We fear there is a tsunami of homelessness about to hit," said Hopman, whose shelter in Campbelltown is already packed to capacity.

"Every story of homelessness is different but one thing that we are noticing now is the cost of living and increasing rents, which has put additional pressure on people who were at risk of homelessness, and the lack of housing supply," she added.

Many made homeless end up living in cars or campervans, out of sight from society, the government and the media.

Film maker Sue Thomson and producer Adam Farrington-Williams' feature documentary 'Under Cover' records the lives of dozens of women over 50 and their experiences of homelessness.

"They are the hidden homeless. Gender inequality and wage disparity are all issues that led to it and need to be considered when looking at homelessness," Thomson said.

Australia's worst floods on record in the east of the country earlier this year destroyed homes and forced about 40,000 people to evacuate, adding to the housing crisis.

SEEKING SOLUTIONS

Property owners say rising costs are forcing them to raise rents.

"Cost pressures include rising interest rates, rising maintenance costs, and other related costs such as strata fees and council fees," said Debra Beck-Mewing, Strategic Buyers Agent and Vice President of Property Owners Association of New South Wales.

Beck-Mewing said rents were rebounding after many property owners dropped rents during COVID, and will likely to continue to increase in 2023 due to increased rental demand after immigrations allowances were raised by almost one-third.

"We’re already massively undersupplied with rental properties because the government has continued to drive investors out of the market. And now with increased migration, the rental problem will continue to get worse," said Beck-Mewing.

Public and low cost housing has also failed to keep up with demand.

A report by Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) showed there were 440,200 social housing dwellings nationwide at June 2021, an increase of less than 1% in the previous 12 months. Waiting times for social housing applicants can now be up to 10 years.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has promised a fix and announced a national housing accord in October, which includes a A$350 million grant for the construction of 10,000 affordable homes.

The government has enlisted the country's A$3.3 trillion pension fund industry to help build affordable homes, although some funds and experts are sceptical.

Trina Jones from Homelessness New South Wales said for the move to be successful, homes need to be representative of social and affordable housing, and not aimed at making profits.

"We know there are families sleeping in tents, in cars, apprentices that cannot retain their apprenticeship because they are experiencing homelessness," said Jones.

"It starts with a home and we must invest in that safety net and provide support for the people to ensure their homelessness is brief and non-recurring."

($1 = 1.4751 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Praveen Menon and Stella Qiu; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

A-10 pilot reveals what it was like trying to land an attack aircraft that was literally falling apart around her

Ryan Pickrell
Mon, December 19, 2022 

Capt. Taylor "Petrie" Bye standing in front of her A-10 attack aircraft

Courtesy photo

In spring 2020, Capt. Taylor Bye's A-10 attack aircraft started falling apart on a training flight.


She had to land with no cockpit canopy, panels falling off, and landing gear up.


Bye spoke to Insider about the experience and what it was like getting back in the air afterwards.

The last thing any pilot wants to see is their plane falling apart while they are trying to fly it, but that was the nightmare scenario US Air Force A-10 attack aircraft pilot Capt. Taylor "Petrie" Bye found herself in.

On April 7, 2020, a routine training flight suddenly was anything but when the 30 mm GAU-8/A Avenger cannon on Bye's A-10C Thunderbolt II malfunctioned during a gun run at Grand Bay Range at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.


Problems with the powerful gatling gun triggered a series of catastrophes that ultimately forced her to land her plane with no cockpit canopy, missing panels, and landing gear up.

This 75th Fighter Squadron pilot talked to Insider about the skillful flying and impressive crash-landing, for which she received not one but two prestigious service awards.
'Never been so focused on a landing in my entire life'

Bye's A-10 sits on the runway after making an emergency landing on April 7, 2020 

at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia.US Air Force photo by Andrea Jenkins

When Bye attempted to fire the cannon on a strafing run, she heard a troubling pop. Then a light came on warning her that the gun was "unsafe." Concerned, she quickly climbed to a safer altitude to assess the situation.

Looking over the gauges that relay critical aircraft health information, "everything showed me that my jet was still flying and functioning like normal," she said, adding that her "immediate response was, 'Ok, good, I'm not going to fall out of the sky.'"

But while the plane could fly, it was not in great shape. Further assessments with the help of her wingman found that some exterior panels were either missing or hanging off the aircraft, indicating that the gun malfunction had caused damage.

Bye began making preparations to land the plane, which is when she discovered another problem. Part of the plane's landing gear was inoperable, making a safe landing impossible.

"When it happened, I didn't panic. I didn't freak out. I didn't fear for my life because I knew that I had the training," she recalled. "My adrenaline was up. I could tell my heart was racing. And I consciously knew that it was a severe situation, but there wasn't ever panic."

"I think my body just went into survival mode," she said, explaining that the extensive emergency response training that all Air Force pilots receive kicked in, helping her remain calm in a difficult situation.

After going over possible options with support personnel, Bye made the decision to belly land the plane, something the aircraft was built to be able to do if necessary but is still a risky move.

In that moment, the cockpit canopy on Bye's aircraft suddenly separated with what she described as a loud pop followed by an even louder rush of wind that sounded like roaring thunder. As Bye lowered her seat to shield herself from the wind blast, she knew that she needed to act.

"It is time to get this jet on the ground," Bye remembered saying over the radio, her mind made up. "My jet was literally falling apart around me," she recalled, adding that she "didn't want anything else to come off."

Bye, 75th Fighter Squadron pilot and chief of standardization and evaluation, poses on the flight line.US Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Briana Beavers

Though the Air Force does not train its pilots to do this, Bye was not completely unfamiliar with this kind of landing. Not only did she know another pilot who made a gear-up landing, but during her first operational assignment as an A-10 pilot at Osan Air Force Base in South Korea, she belly-landed a jet in a simulator.

That said, pulling something like that off in a simulated training environment is quite different from having to do it in the real world, when life and limb are on the line.

"When I made the decision, I knew it was just like, this is game time," Bye remembered thinking at the time. "I have to do this, and I only get one shot at it."

"I'll be honest with you, I have never been so focused on a landing in my entire life," she said, recalling "there was hardly anything familiar about that approach and landing."

She received guidance from her wingman, director of operations, and others, helping her avoid various potential hazards, but nothing really looked or felt the way it normally would, making landing a challenge.

"About to touch down, that was the first time I realized that it was actually a pretty dangerous and severe situation," she said.

It wasn't until she was back on the ground though that it crossed her mind that "something absolutely terrible could have happened," she said. In flight, there simply wasn't time for that kind of thinking.

Observers told Bye that when her plane touched down, sparks went flying. Unsure if the fuel lines were still intact, she got out as fast as possible once the aircraft slid to a stop, executing emergency egress procedures.

Back on the ground after that rough landing, "it took me a while actually to process what was happening," Bye said. "My adrenaline was still up for like the rest of the day, and I did not really sleep because I was just trying to process it," she recalled, "but it didn't really hit me initially."

"It didn't really truly hit me until almost a year later when I was unfortunate enough to listen to the tape," she said, explaining that "hearing my voice when my canopy blew off actually caused a significant emotional event. I was like, 'Wow, that was actually kind of traumatic.'"
'Meant to be in the Air Force'

Bye stands next to a training aircraft.Courtesy photo

When talking to Bye about her military service, it is very clear that this 29-year-old pilot from North Carolina is all in for the US Air Force, but her first choice, which was inspired by her grandfather's service in World War II, was actually the Navy.

"I wanted to fly an F-14 Tomcat, and I wanted to take off from of a carrier," she said, recalling learning about the jet from a recruiter. "It is a very classic, like 'Top Gun'-type pipe dream, but that's what originally got me started wanting to fly."

Aside from the fact the Navy stopped flying Tomcats, swapping them out for Hornets, there was another problem. "The Navy did not want me," Bye said. "It turned out I wasn't meant to be in the Navy. I was meant to be in the Air Force."

Bye commissioned into the Air Force in 2015 straight out of the United States Air Force Academy, where she first flew.

The first aircraft she flew was a small Cirrus SR22, but "flying did not come natural," Bye said, explaining that although the program offered cadets the opportunity to fly solo, she "did not show the skill required" to do so during that program.

Her first ever solo flight was in a DA20 in Colorado during Air Force pilot training, and the experience, she said, "was so much fun."

"It was so cool to be in the Rockies and getting to fly around by myself. It was so surreal and gave me so much confidence," she said. "It is so funny saying that now because I fly solo every day, but back then, when I hadn't done it before, it was just, I don't know, my adrenaline had never been higher in my life."

Bye's interest in the A-10 began when she was a student at the United States Air Force Academy Preparatory School, where she first learned about this "awesome" plane "that was just like a tank killer." Later, at the academy, a professor who had worked as an engineer at Edwards Air Force Base in California when the aircraft was first going through testing furthered that interest.

But what really sold her on the A-10 was a mentor, now a senior leader at Moody who flew the A-10. "He told me so many war stories," she said. "And the ones that stuck out to me were when he got to talk with the guys on the ground that he helped protect."

"The rush of emotions I felt listening to him, I was just like 'Yep, that is what I want to do,'" Bye said. "Like shooting the gun is cool, but supporting the men and women on the ground who are in a lot more of harm's way than I am, that was how I wanted to serve."

"As a cocky cadet, I was just like, 'Yeah, I want to go fast. I want to blow things up.' But that was really when I found what I wanted my career to be, just serving the men and women on the ground," she said.

The A-10 was first introduced in the 1970s and is the first Air Force plane that was specifically built for close-air support missions and engaging ground targets, including tanks and other armored vehicles. In conflicts, the A-10 has been a saving grace for troops on the ground.

Bye said that she still gets excited about dropping weapons, firing the plane's powerful cannon, and flying, even if she sometimes wishes her slower-moving close-air support plane could fly a little bit faster, but that essential support mission is "absolutely" what she loves most about the jet.
'Can't imagine flying anything else'

Bye sitting in the cockpit of an aircraftCourtesy photo

The unfortunate incident in spring 2020 could have easily shaken Bye's confidence in herself as a pilot, as well as in her plane of choice, but she was back flying a week after the accident.

"When it first happened, I, of course, started Monday night quarterbacking myself, asking: What could I have done better? What did I do wrong? Did I cause it to happen?"

As these questions swirled around, Bye reached out to other pilots in her community who had been through stressful events, and they provided the support and reassurance she needed.

Bye is the only female A-10 pilot in her squadron, but, she explained, "it is not very often that I actually think about the fact that I'm the only woman. I've been incredibly blessed with the people that I work with, and I never feel isolated."

Talking about when she first got back into a plane after the incident, Bye said, "I was nervous in the sense of like, I did not want that to happen again, but it also built my confidence so much."

"I was like, 'Bring it on. If I can land gear up, I can handle whatever this flight is going to bring,'" she said. "I'm not saying I wasn't nervous. I definitely was nervous, but it wasn't enough to keep me out of the cockpit."

She also said that the unusual incident gave her added confidence in the A-10, a tough jet built to take a beating.

"That situation actually just showed me how reliable the jet is," Bye said, explaining, "Yes, something went wrong, but it was still reliable. The jet was put together well enough that I was able to land it in the condition it was in. If anything, it gave me more confidence in the jet."

She said that she still loves the A-10, telling Insider, "I can't imagine flying anything else."

In November 2021, Bye flew her mishap A-10, tail No. 995, for the first time since the Air Force maintenance and repair teams finished putting it back together.

Reflecting on her many unique experiences, she said, "I didn't know that I would love flying, but I love it. I think being a fighter pilot is absolutely the coolest job in the world."

Editor's note: This post was first published on December 14, 2021

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/12/a-10-why-thunderbolt-is-flying-tank.html

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POSTMODERN ROBBER BARON

Laid-off Twitter manager says he was told not to address employees' questions and concerns after Elon Musk's takeover, which felt 'evil'

Kate Duffy
Thu, December 15, 2022

An ex-Twitter manager said being told to ignore his workers' concerns after Musk joined felt "evil."


Amir Shevat said Twitter failed to communicate with staff about what was going on.


Shevat, who said he looked after 150 staff, told Insider he was laid off with most of his team.

A senior Twitter employee who was laid off said it felt wrong to ignore questions and concerns from his team after Elon Musk acquired the platform.

Amir Shevat, the former head of product for Twitter's developer platform, told Insider on Tuesday that the company's management style changed immediately after Musk took over in late October.

"We got zero communication," Shevat said. "Not only that, we were told as managers not to gather our team and address their questions and concerns. It felt a little evil, I'm sorry to say, and bullish."

Shevat said there were 150 people on his team, but he was told that only two workers remained, post-layoffs. He said he found out he was laid off after he was locked out of Slack and work emails around 1 a.m. on November 4.

In the week between Musk joining and Shevat being laid off, Shevat said he was assigned random tasks that lacked any context.

One day, Twitter told Shevat to "stack rank" his team from top to bottom. When he asked whether this was based on performance, impact, or seniority, the higher-ups told him they didn't know.

Before Musk became the owner of Twitter, Shevat said he knew what was expected of him to be a good leader for his team.

"The Twitter post-Elon was 'sit there and don't do anything' basically, and 'don't talk to your team, don't calm them down, don't do anything'," Shevat said.

According to Shevat, Twitter leaders gave managers such as himself no answers about whether they should continue with the work they were doing. He described the approach as "inhumane."

Twitter's lack of communication seeped through into its layoffs, Shevat said, with many employees not being given notice they were getting fired.

"There wasn't any consideration for people with disabilities, visas, maternity leave and sick leave," said Shevat, who recently created a list of hiring companies for former Twitter staff.

Since being laid off, Shevat said he has filed an arbitration claim against Musk for not following through with the promise of providing severance, which includes pay and benefits for two months. His attorney, Lisa Bloom, told Insider it seemed that Musk cared "very little" about the employees who built Twitter and for those who still work there.

Shevat said it was shocking that his team received no communication and were mostly all fired, despite coming into Musk's Twitter with "an open heart" and being eager to create new features for the platform.

"If this would have gone differently, Elon would have won a team that is deeply passionate, that deeply cares about Twitter and its platform," Shevat said.

Twitter didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

A SpaceX director defended Elon Musk after Twitter layoffs, telling employees to show some empathy for the billionaire, report says

Kate Duffy
Thu, December 15, 2022 


SpaceX CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk.Steve Nesius/Reuters

A SpaceX director told Twitter staff to show empathy for Elon Musk after mass layoffs, per Bloomberg.

Antonio Gracias also said in the meeting it was "hard" for Musk, the report said.

Staff have called Gracias and other people Musk has brought into Twitter as "goons," per the report.

A SpaceX director stood up for his boss Elon Musk in front of Twitter employees after the company carried out mass layoffs, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

Antonio Gracias, who is also a director at Tesla, told Twitter staff to show some empathy for Musk after he laid off scores of workers, per Bloomberg, citing former employees and partners in its report.

"This is hard for him," Gracias said in the meeting, according to Bloomberg. It wasn't clear when Gracias said this, but layoffs at Twitter took place from early November through to Thanksgiving.

Gracias was among the individuals in Musk's inner circle to replace Twitter executives who were fired or resigned after the billionaire took over, per the report. The other people included David Sacks, former PayPal chief operating officer; Alex Spiro, Musk's lawyer; and Sriram Krishnan, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, Bloomberg reported.

Twitter employees have referred to these people as "the goons," per Bloomberg.

Bloomberg's report said the individuals haven't been allocated official roles at Twitter, but they have advised Musk on business matters and were added to the corporate directory.

One former employee told Bloomberg that Gracias banged the drum for Musk in a meeting with sales bosses, saying: "He's a winner. He wins everywhere."

Gracias, Twitter, and SpaceX didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment made outside of normal US operating hours.

Gracias was one of the many employees which Musk has pulled from his other companies to work at Twitter. The New York Times reported Musk brought in more than six SpaceX lawyers to work on the platform, as well as 17 top executives from Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company, per CNBC.

It follows the loss of thousands of Twitter employees through firings, layoffs, and resignations since Musk bought the platform in late October. Entire departments at Twitter have barely — or any — staff remaining.

Elon Musk enlists more than 6 lawyers from SpaceX to bolster Twitter's depleted legal department, report says

Kate Duffy
Wed, December 14, 2022 

SpaceX CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk beside a Falcon 9 launch.

REUTERS/Mike Brown/Getty Images

Elon Musk has brought in more than six SpaceX lawyers to work at Twitter, the NYT reports.


Twitter's legal department is depleted after recent layoffs and resignations, per the NYT.


Musk has reportedly enlisted executives and engineers from his other ventures.

Elon Musk has enlisted more than six lawyers from his rocket company SpaceX to help fill the gaps in Twitter's workforce, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Twitter's legal department is depleted after the various layoffs and resignations that happened in recent months, according to The Times.

After Musk acquired the platform in late October, thousands of Twitter employees were laid off, fired, or resigned from their jobs. This has left entire departments at Twitter without many — or any — staff remaining.

More than six SpaceX lawyers were authorized to access Twitter's internal systems, per The Times, citing documents and two people familiar with the matter. The Times reported that Chris Cardaci, SpaceX's vice president of legal, and Tim Hughes, the senior vice president, global business and government affairs, were recruited to work at Twitter.

SpaceX, Twitter, and Cardaci didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. Hughes couldn't be reached for comment.

The move comes as former employees have filed lawsuits against Twitter, accusing it of unfair practices.

The SpaceX lawyers aren't the only workers at a Musk-led company reportedly being brought into Twitter. The billionaire has enlisted cousins, interns, fans, and around 150 staff from his other ventures to work at Twitter, Insider's Kali Hays reported.

At least 17 top executives from Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company were authorized to work at Twitter, per CNBC. The publication also reported Musk brought more than 50 employees at Tesla over to Twitter who were expected to learn source code, data-privacy rules, and content moderation.

AMERIKA

People addicted to opioids rarely get life-saving medications. That may change.

December 17, 20225:00 AM ET
BRIAN MANN
NPR

Methadone and other opioid-addiction medications are proven to save lives. But most people addicted to fentanyl, heroin and pain pills never get medical treatment.Kevin D. Liles/AP

Doctors and researchers have known for decades that safe, easy-to-use medications are a game-changer for people addicted to opioids.

Buprenorphine and methadone reduce cravings for opioids and ease withdrawal symptoms, helping people avoid relapses and deadly overdoses.

"If somebody has access to these life-saving medications, it cuts their mortality risk by 50 percent," says Dr. Linda Wang, a researcher who treats patients with addiction at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.

"It has a huge impact preventing death."

But as fatal opioid overdoses surge in the U.S., topping 80,000 deaths last year, access to these medications remains severely limited.

Wang says in part that's because of complex, often punitive federal regulations that restrict how these medicines are prescribed and dispensed.

Methadone in particular is unavailable to Americans who don't have access to special federally-approved opioid treatment clinics.

Regular physicians aren't allowed to prescribe the medication, even though they are allowed to prescribe highly addictive opioid pain medications.

"It comes down to policy and legislation that got passed at a time when we were enacting a war on drugs and criminalizing addiction," Wang said.

As a result, public health officials say only one in 10 Americans struggling with addiction ever receive treatment. Studies show access to treatment is especially difficult for people of color.

Those policies left millions of people vulnerable as the powerful, toxic synthetic opioid fentanyl spread in the U.S., making addiction even more dangerous.
As fentanyl deaths surge, lowering barriers to addiction treatment

Now the Biden administration is moving to reform and liberalize federal rules for treating opioid addiction, the first major overhaul in two decades.

"There were significant barriers that were quite stigmatizing for patients as they enter treatment," says Dr. Neeraj Gandotra, chief medical officer for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the federal agency that oversees addiction.

Gandotra points out even people who do manage to get methadone are often forced to visit a government-approved clinic multiple times a week to get doses.

"The idea that they aren't allowed to get take-home [doses], the fact that they have to go to the clinic daily, that is a significant barrier," Gandotra said.

During the COVID pandemic, the federal government and most states relaxed opioid treatment rules on an emergency basis.

Patients could get addiction medications with a telehealth visit, for example, and receive more take-home doses.

Dr. Brian Hurley, head of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), says that experiment worked.

"There was no evidence that diversion increased or risk increased, but there was evidence that people who gained access to treatment did better," he said.

The rule-change proposed by the Biden administration would make those reforms permanent. It would also eliminate waiting periods for access to methadone and expand telehealth options even further.

Gandotra says SAMHSA also plans to eliminate stigmatizing language from federal rules for opioid treatment programs, including the term "detoxification."

Danielle Russell struggled to gain access to methadone, which helped stabilize her life after heroin addiction. She takes the medication daily and is now finishing her PhD at Arizona State University.Danielle Russell

A life-saving medication and years of stigma

Danielle Russell, who has taken methadone for much of the last 10 years, says these reforms are long overdue.

She struggled to gain access to methadone while addicted to heroin before finding a clinic that would help her.

"I don't think I would be alive without it," Russell says.

She credits methadone for allowing her to stabilize her life and go back to school, where she's about to get her PhD in justice studies at Arizona State University.

But she also says she's faced years of stigma and surveillance within the opioid treatment system, where she often felt less like a patient and more like a criminal.

"It's pervasive," she said. "It almost is like an oil that coats your skin as soon as you walk in [the clinic] door."

During the pandemic, Russell says she was finally allowed to take home a month's supply of her medication at a time. That spared her the near-daily trips to the nearest clinic, a 45-minute drive from her home in Phoenix.

"Not to sound dramatic, but it was life-changing. I suddenly could live like a normal person."

Everyone interviewed for this story agrees these rule changes will help expand access to opioid-treatment medications and reduce stigma.

"The changes in SAMHSA's proposed rule are really ground-breaking," says Sheri Doyle with the Pew Charitable Trust's substance use initiative.

The reforms could be especially important for people of color who "end up facing more stringent requirements than others," according to Doyle.

"There is this inherent lack of trust built into the system of care that is just unfounded," Doyle said.
More reform needed as opioid deaths surge

But Doyle and others say more reforms are needed that would require congressional action.

For now, methadone in particular will remain heavily regulated and will still only be available through a limited number of certified opioid-treatment programs.

"These steps are necessary, but not sufficient," says Dr. Hurley, head of ASAM. "We need additional routes to access for methadone treatment."

Some addiction experts and government officials say the ultimate goal is for opioid recovery medicines to be regulated like medications for other chronic diseases.

"We hope they are placed on the same spectrum as other conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension," says SAMSHA's Dr. Neeraj Gandotra.

He acknowledged that kind of equality of care for addiction patients is a long way off.

"I think it's too early to say whether this [rule change] is a step toward that. We believe it is, but I have to say I'm not sure how far along we still have to go," Gandotra said.