Gregg Popovich, instead of talking possible retirement, pleads for gun control before Spurs' final game


Ryan Young
·Writer
Sun, April 9, 2023 

Gregg Popovich talked about the need for common sense gun control laws in the United States for almost nine minutes on Sunday afternoon. (AP/Steven Senne)

Gregg Popovich’s coaching career may be coming to an end this summer.

Or, it might not. The longtime San Antonio Spurs coach doesn’t want to talk about his future much, and declined to address it before their final regular season game Sunday in Dallas.

What Popovich did, however, is take nearly nine minutes to talk about gun violence and the need for gun control in the United States.

Popovich is one of the most outspoken coaches in all of professional sports, and he's long advocated for gun control legislation in the wake of mass shootings. He did so after 21 people were killed at the Uvalde school shooting, the deadliest of its kind in Texas history, in 2022. Today, just after last month’s shooting at a Nashville-area school left six dead, was no different.

Popovich called out several Republican lawmakers specifically on Sunday, including Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn and Governor Bill Lee.





“I mean, I couldn’t believe it, so I wrote this thing down," Popovich said. "But Senator Marsha Blackburn, her comment after was, after the massacre, ‘My office is in contact with federal, state and local officials and we stand ready to assist.’

“In what?! They’re dead! What are you going to assist with? Cleaning up their brains off the wall? Wiping the blood off the school room floor? What are you going to assist with?

“And then there’s Governor Lee. I’m sorry to go on and on, but Bill Lee, ‘I’m closely monitoring the tragic situation. Please join us in prayer.’ What are you monitoring? They’re dead! Children, they’re dead.”

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 144 mass shootings in 2023 alone. There have been 14 more mass shootings since the one at the Covenant School in Nashville that Popovch is referencing.

“But they’re going to cloak all this stuff [in] the myth of the Second Amendment, the freedom. You know, it's just a myth. It’s a joke. It’s just a game they play. I mean, that's freedom. Is it freedom for kids to go to school and try to socialize and try to learn and be scared to death that they might die that day?

“But Ted Cruz will fix it, ‘cause he is gonna double the number of cops in the schools,” Popovich added sarcastically. “That’s what he wants to do. Well, that’ll create a great environment. Is that freedom? Or is it freedom to have a congressman who can make a postcard with all his family holding rifles, including an AR-15 or whatever. Is that cool? Is that like street cred for a republican? That’s freedom? That’s more important than protecting kids? I don’t get it.”

Popovich, 74, has been working within the Spurs organization since 1988. He’s won five NBA titles there, and compiled a 1,365-761 record heading into Sunday’s game against the Mavericks. The Spurs were eliminated from playoff contention last month.

Popovich will step away from the game, whether that’s tomorrow, in a few weeks or a few years. But at least while he’s still in the league, he’s clearly not going to stop advocating for what he’s passionate about.

Iranian women are changing cities by determining dress codes, defying authority

SOMAYEH MALEKIAN
Sat, April 8, 2023

Seven months after the beginning of the "Women Life Freedom" movement in Iran, a tangible impact is being felt across the country as many women are still refusing to wear their hijab in public and they continue to share their stories on social media.

"This is life. This is womanhood. I will never forget the epic feeling I had the day I went out with my friend and saw how we, women, have conquered the city with our bodies, with our hair in the wind," Ava, a Tehran-based musician in her mid-20's, told ABC News on condition of anonymity so she could speak freely about the movement.

"I feel that our mere presence on the streets is an act of resistance. Practicing everyday life as we want is a part of our revolution," she added.

Meanwhile, hardliner supporters of the Islamic Republic regime have been gearing up for severe pushbacks against the resistance movement.

In an address to Iran's top officials on Tuesday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leader of the Islamic Republic, said that removing the hijab is a "plot" designed by "the enemy" and is "haram based on Sharia and also politically" as he urged authorities to develop plans for the "issue."

PHOTO: Iranian women shop at the Tajrish Bazaar, ahead of Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, in Tehran, Iran March 15, 2023. (Wana News Agency via Reuters)

The recent protests began last fall following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old who was taken into custody by the morality police after she was arrested for not properly wearing a hijab. At least 22,000 people were arrested across the country in the ensuing protests and Iran Human Rights reported that at least 537 people were killed by the regime since the beginning of the protests.

The leader's speech came after some videos of the regime's conservative supporters went viral as hardline supporters made it clear that if officials do not demonstrate an ability to fight back against the liberation movement that they would "take spontaneous action." In the past decade, such threats have led to incidents like acid attacks against women who have not fully adhered to compulsory hijab rules.

"The order given by his excellency is clear," Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, a speaker for the Iranian parliament, said one day after the leader's speech as he promising hardline supporters that any bills or plans about hijab would be prioritized.

A plan of action has been presented by parliamentarian Hosein Jalali, according to a report by the semi-official Jamaran News Agency on March 26. In a press conference, he stated that women not abiding by the compulsory hijab rule could be fined up to $60,000 and other punishments like the cancellation of driver's licenses and passports could occur as well.

Questions of enforcement of these proposals, however, have not resonated much so far among many Iranians.

"I do not listen to what they say. Politics and religion must serve life, otherwise they are doomed to fail. That old fear many people used to has been diminishing. We are getting prepared to move on," Ava said. "Even in smaller cities, the 'woman, life, freedom' movement has been accepted in different levels."

While the "ultimate demand and goal" of Zahra, 47-year-old housewife from a conservative neighborhood of Isfahan is to topple the regime, she told ABC News that people appreciate achievements of protestors' "big sacrifices."

"My old mother has decided not to wear chador [the long black veil] anymore. She now believes by not wearing it that she can normalize her grandchildren and her nieces' decision to remove the hijab altogether," Zahra said.

"We know there is still a long way to get to economic and social freedom and well-being. But my super religious mother wants to support our daughters in their decision of how to dress. And It is a big change so far," she added.

Settlement reached in defamation lawsuit against Lou Dobbs, Fox News


Dominick Mastrangelo
Sun, April 9, 2023 

A settlement has been reached in a Venezuelan businessman’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News and host Lou Dobbs over statements accusing him of helping tilt the 2020 presidential election.

In a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Louis Lee Stanton filed in the Southern District of New York over the weekend, lawyers for the two parties wrote they had reached an agreement to resolve the matter. Financial terms of the agreement were not specified.

Majed Khalil filed his lawsuit in 2021, alleging statements made on Dobbs’s social media and by pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell on Dobbs’s Fox Business show defamed him by accusing the businessman of executing an “electoral 9/11” and helping change ballot counts in voting machines.

“The 2020 Election is a cyber Pearl Harbor: The leftwing establishment have aligned their forces to overthrow the United States government,” Dobbs wrote in a Twitter post that remains online.

According to Khalil’s complaint, as Powell was appearing on one of his shows, the host asked, “You say these four individuals led the effort to rig this election. How did they do it?”

Dobbs and Fox’s attorney had moved to have the case dismissed on First Amendment grounds, a motion the judge denied last fall.

“This matter has been resolved amicably by both sides,” a Fox News spokesperson said when contacted Sunday by The Hill. “We have no further comment.”

Fox canceled Dobbs’ show in February of 2021.

The network is separately fighting a $1.6 Billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over similar claims about the 2020 election made on its air. Fox has also argued the claims made Dominion in that case are protected by the First Amendment.

“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news,” the network said in a recent statement about the Dominion case. “Fox will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings.”

A trial in the Dominion case is slated to begin later this month.

Incredible: Hubble Just Spotted a Runaway Supermassive Black Hole

Jackie Appel
Sat, April 8, 2023

NASA, ESA, Leah Hustak (STScI)

Hubble just spotted a supermassive black hole zooming through the sky and leaving a star formation in its wake.

Rather than swallowing material it runs into, the black hole is dragging the material behind itself, and that material is coming together to form stars.

Researchers hope to follow up on this observation with JWST and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to confirm the sighting, and eventually use the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope to search for more of these fast-moving rogue black holes.

The James Webb Space Telescope gets all the headlines these days. That’s not to say the acclaim is undeserved—JWST takes outstandingly beautiful, high-res photos and is already revolutionizing the field of astronomical observation.

But it’s not the only space telescope putting in the work. The Hubble Space Telescope is still up in the sky making exciting discoveries. And recently, it spotted something truly unique.

According to a new study, Hubble spotted a rogue supermassive black hole that is actively forming stars in its wake. Rogue black holes are nothing new to science, but we’ve never before seen one move this fast or leave any kind of creation behind.

“This is pure serendipity that we stumbled across it,” Pieter van Dokkum, an astronomer from Yale and lead author on the study, said in a press release. “I was just scanning through the Hubble image and then I noticed that we have a little streak. I immediately thought, ‘oh, a cosmic ray hitting the camera detector and causing a linear imaging artifact.’ When we eliminated cosmic rays we realized it was still there. It didn’t look like anything we’ve seen before.”

That’s because it wasn’t like anything anyone has ever seen before. And it was spotted totally by accident—the team was originally looking for something called a globular cluster when they discovered this fast-moving black hole.

The supermassive black hole, which is likely around 20 million times the mass of our Sun, is zooming through the universe at about 3.5 million miles per hour. According to a NASA release, moving at that speed would get you from the Earth to the Moon in just 14 minutes.

It’s moving so fast, in fact, that it’s not swallowing anything in its path. By the time any new matter would fall into the monster black hole, it’s already moved on and dragged the material around into its wake.

In that wake, where the newly-collected gas is able to cool off after being hit by a speeding bullet of a black hole, there is enough material that the black hole has been triggering a string of new star formation. Bringing together all of that material has caused new stars to form as the black hole moves through the universe. There is now a string of brand new stars stretching 200,000 light years back from the location of the black hole to the galaxy researchers believe it came from.


NASA, ESA, Pieter van Dokkum (Yale); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

The team believes that the black hole probably got its speedy start in that galaxy. The dominant theory is that the galaxy used to contain a binary system of two supermassive black holes orbiting each other. Then, a rogue black hole flew into the mix, and the whole system became unstable, throwing a black hole out into the universe at impressive speed. Researchers also believe the binary was thrown in the other direction, and want to confirm its location in future observations.

Considering how novel this star-forming speedster of a supermassive black hole is, future observations are sure to follow. The plan now is to re-image the observation with the James Webb Space Telescope and the Chandra X-ray Observatory to make sure that the black hole explanation for this striking sight is the correct one. And eventually, researchers have plans to use the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Telescope to search for even more examples of this phenomenon.

No matter how long we look out at the universe, space continues to surprise us.

Putin’s plundered aircraft not our problem, insurance chief says

Oliver Gill
Sat, April 8, 2023 

Vladimir Putin seized 500 commercial aircraft after his invasion of Ukraine

 - MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Insurers will go bust if they are forced to cover the cost of Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, the founder of one of the world’s biggest brokers has warned.

David Howden, who has built an £11bn eponymous insurance empire, said his industry cannot be expected to cover the cost of war, amid a row over Mr Putin’s seizure of hundreds of commercial aircraft.

Mr Howden said: “The insurance market cannot be a systemic backstop for a war between the UK and Russia. And it's not designed to be. No policies cover it.

“Otherwise, if we covered it all, it would actually end up with the Government anyway – we'd all go bankrupt.”

Russian authorities seized 500 commercial aircraft owned by overseas leasing companies shortly after the outbreak of war against Ukraine.

The owners, mostly domiciled in Ireland, have tried to claim on insurance but have been rebuffed. They are now suing Lloyd’s of London insurers for their refusal to pay out up to $10bn (£8bn) in claims. A legal showdown in the High Court is scheduled for next year.

Mr Howden said insurers are legitimately refusing to pay under the terms of certain types of cover.

He said: “Ultimately, war has never been something that insurance has been there to cover.”

If insurance policies were broad enough to cover the impact of war, it would force the Government to bail out companies “because there is not enough capital in the insurance market to pay for it,” he said.

“The insurance industry – no-one quite knows – [but it’s] four or five trillion dollars of capital. It's small. It's a tenth of the derivative market, for example.” 

David Howden - David Rose

Howden Group has not underwritten policies itself but has deep connections within the industry as Europe’s largest broker.

The row over the “stolen” planes in Russia comes with the UK insurance sector still reeling from a public backlash to its refusal to pay claims under business interruption policies during the Covid pandemic.

Small businesses and the UK's financial regulator challenged the industry in court, with the Supreme Court ultimately ordering insurers to pay out.

Mr Howden admitted that insurers had handled the crisis poorly.

He said: “Did we cover ourselves in glory over business interruption during the Covid pandemic? No, we didn't. Should we respond differently? Yes, we should have.”

He said insurers were too focused on the technical detail of policies despite the extraordinary circumstances.

“When the claims come, the insurance company, rightly from a technical point of view but maybe wrongly from a PR point of view, say: ‘I'm very sorry, that's not covered by our policy.’”

The insurance industry is currently facing a new headache over how to handle cyber insurance.

Members of Lloyd’s of London, the 335-year-old insurance market, have been angered by the institution's insistence that all cyber policies exclude “state-backed” attacks.

Many hackers are based in countries such as Russia and North Korea. Clarifying which ones are and aren’t backed by the state can be more of an art than a science.

Lloyd’s members complain that the blanket policy is too broad and prevents them from offering coverage they would be happy to sell.

Mr Howden called the row over cyber insurance “ridiculous”. The straight-talking 59-year-old said: “The excitement over cyber is ridiculous.”

“We're trying to be clear and we try to tell people it’s not covered, [but] suddenly – because we are bad at PR – people go: ‘Oh, my God, they are excluding war.’ It’s never been covered.”

Mr Howden suggested Lloyd’s should settle the argument by drawing up official guidance as to what constitutes a state-backed attack, which the marketplace worries would leave members open to “systematic risk.”

He said: “Most wars are easy to define. Cyber wars are more difficult to define.

“What we should have on cyber is one of the very smart GCHQ people define what is a war, and what is systemic attack. And then you could go out and separately buy from the insurance market your war coverage.”

Mr Howden started his eponymous empire in 1994 with three employees, a dog and £25,000 of funding from an angel investor. These days the company is headquartered in One Creechurch Place, a 156 metre skyscraper in the heart of the City that looks directly over onto the second floor office where it all began.

David Howden - David Rose

Employing 14,500 people – 6,500 of them in the UK – across 50 countries, Howden Group is a towering presence within the insurance sector.

Mr Howden has created the largest insurance broker in the UK – and the biggest operator outside of the US – through a series of shrewd acquisitions, turbo-charged by private equity investment from General Atlantic and Hg Capital alongside funding from Canadian pension fund CDPQ.

Yet Howden Group is the UK’s fifth-largest employee-owned business, with 4,500 employees owning 35pc of the company.

“Employee ownership is amazing,” Mr Howden said. “We've built a business around people."


The buy-in from staff has helped foster a positive culture without too much effort, he said.

“People care about people and people seem to be having fun. That's culture. It's like within your family or friends, it's how you behave, how you act.”

“Anywhere where I go where they have got their culture on the wall, you know that's not their culture. You know they are lying.”

Howden Group’s combination of employee-ownership and private investment is precisely the model now being considered by John Lewis, Britain’s biggest employee-owned business.

Mr Howden said: “We don't have any dividends at all. All the money we make, we reinvest back in, unlike a public company that would use a lot of its capital to pay dividends.”

The long-standing executive is a refreshing counterpoint to the majority of Britain’s carefully manicured executives. Running a privately-owned business means he does not have to mince his words.

“We don’t make f****** kitchens!” he exclaims when asked about Howden Joinery, the kitchen supplier that shares the business’ name and is better known to the general public.

“They’re worth half what we’re worth. They are worth £3.6bn, we are worth £7.2bn.” (Add in Howden’s roughly £4bn in debt and the group boasts an enterprise value in excess of £11bn.)

Mr Howden laments that his business is not as well known as publicly traded peers such as L&G or Aviva.

“We’re opening more offices on the high street than anyone else. We’ve got a market cap that is more than Sainsbury’s – but no-one has heard of us!”

Howden Group’s head offices are an extension of its co-founder’s personal tastes. Life-size figures of dogs, oodles of artwork and clocks of all shapes and sizes are littered across the 14th floor of the company headquarters.

“These clocks are all Howden clocks, because we were clockmakers as well,” he explained, referencing the Victorian clockmakers who bore his family’s name.

For the insurance sector to flourish, it must shake off its stuffy past, he said. Above his office is a cafe and neon-signed bar stocked with beer and wine aplenty – more Shoreditch than Square Mile.

“We want to attract people who aren't in insurance. We want to get really bright young kids who think they're going to work with Google,” he said. "Don’t work for Google, come to Howden."

Mr Howden was arguably destined for a career in insurance. After dropping out of Radley College following his O Levels, he started working at City broker Alexander Howden in 1981. The company had originally been founded by his great-great-great grandfather, though the family connection had been lost by the time he joined.

Today, he lives in Oxfordshire’s Cornbury Park estate, best known among younger generations as the venue that hosts the Wilderness music festival.

“I love life,” Mr Howden said. “I think to be good at a job, you’ve got to be good at life. I don't think you can really just be a workaholic.”

Afghan religious scholars criticize girls' education ban


Afghan school girls attend their classroom on the first day of the new school year, in Kabul, Saturday, March 25, 2023. The new Afghan educational year started in Afghanistan, while high school remained closed for girls for the second year after Taliban returned to power in 2021. 

(AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi) 

Associated Press
Sat, April 8, 2023 

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan religious scholars Saturday criticized a ban on female education, as a key Taliban minister warned clerics not to rebel against the government on the controversial issue.

Girls cannot go to school beyond sixth grade in Afghanistan, with the education ban extending to universities. Women are barred from public spaces, including parks, and most forms of employment. Last week, Afghan women were barred from working at the U.N., according to the global body, although the Taliban have yet to make a public announcement.

Authorities present the education restrictions as temporary suspensions rather than bans, but universities and schools reopened in March without their female students.

The bans have raised fierce international uproar, increasing the country's isolation at a time when its economy has collapsed and worsenied a humanitarian crisis.

Two religious scholars who are well-known within Afghanistan said Saturday that authorities should reconsider their decision. Public opposition to Taliban policies is rare, although some Taliban leaders have voiced their disagreement with the decision-making process.

One scholar, Abdul Rahman Abid, said institutions should be permitted to re-admit girls and women through separate classes, hiring female teachers, staggering timetables, and even building new facilities.

Knowledge is obligatory in Islam for men and women, he told The Associated Press, and Islam allows women to study.

“My daughter is absent from school, I am ashamed, I have no answer for my daughter,” he said. “My daughter asks why girls are not allowed to learn in the Islamic system. I have no answer for her.”

He said reform is needed and warned that any delays are at the expense of the global Islamic community and also weakens the government.

Another scholar, who is a member of the Taliban, told the AP there is still time for ministries to solve the problem of girls' education. Toryali Himat cited ministries comprising the inner circle of the supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada, who is based in Kandahar.

It was on his orders that the government banned girls from classrooms. Himat said there are two types of criticism, one that destroys the system and another that makes corrective criticism.

“Islam has allowed both men and women to learn, but hijab and curriculum should be considered,” said Himat. “Corrective criticism should be given and the Islamic emirate should think about this. Where there is no criticism, there is the possibility of corruption. My personal opinion is that girls should get education up to university level.”

Acting Higher Education Minister Nida Mohammad Nadim said Friday that clerics should not speak against government policy.

He made his remarks after another scholar, Abdul Sami Al Ghaznawi, told students at a religious school that there was no conflict over girls' education. He said Islamic scripture was clear that girls' education was acceptable. Al Ghaznawi was not immediately available for comment.

Nadim appeared to target Al Ghaznawi by mentioning “an honorable scholar” at the top of a video statement released on social media.

“You encouraged the people to rebel, so what is the result?” Nadim said. “The result is that rebellion against this (ban) is allowed. If people are encouraged to rebel against the system, will it benefit Muslims?"

The minister was not immediately available for comment. But his spokesman, Hafiz Ziaullah Hashimi, confirmed Nadim’s remarks without giving further details about who they were directed at or the reason behind them.

India Looks To Kickstart Hydrogen Production With $2 Billion Plan

Editor OilPrice.com
Sun, April 9, 2023 

The future of global hydrogen is looking brighter as India, this week, presented a $2 billion subsidy scheme to push domestic hydrogen fuels, and Rystad Energy foresees a 700% growth of global hydrogen pipelines by 2035. Without an increase in hydrogen transport infrastructure, most projects will still face an uphill battle.

The Indian government is implementing a $2 billion scheme to support green hydrogen fuel producers. As part of the plan, parties will receive a 10% incentive on their costs, awarded through a competitive bidding process. The incentives will taper down annually, and the bidding scheme will be open to companies already producing hydrogen and ammonia or having renewable energy plants. The government expects to award around 130 billion rupees for the production of green hydrogen and the rest of the financial incentive will be used to support the manufacturing of electrolyzers. India's overall cost of producing green hydrogen is expected to be around 300 rupees per kilo (U.S.$ 3.70), and they hope to produce 3.6 million tons of green hydrogen in the next three years.

The Indian government aims to have 50% of its installed power generation capacity by 2030 from non-hydrocarbon fuels and reach its net-zero goals by 2070. The bidding scheme is expected to attract interest from a long list of Indian companies. The government also plans to support the manufacturing of electrolyzers with an incentive fixed at 4,440 rupees (U.S. $54) per kilowatt, and they hope to support around 3000MW of annual electrolyzer capacity for five years.

A report by CapGemini Research Institute shows that 62% of global heavy industry companies are looking at low-carbon hydrogen to replace carbon-intensive systems. Energy and Utilities (E&U) companies expect low-carbon hydrogen to meet 18% of total energy consumption by 2050. The report highlights the need to unlock investment across the hydrogen value chain, notably to develop hydrogen infrastructure, cost-effective electrolyzers, and fuel cells. The report indicates that low-carbon hydrogen could meet up to 55% of hydrogen mix totals by 2050. On average, 0.4% of total annual revenue is earmarked for low-carbon hydrogen by E&U organizations by 2030, in particular, for hydrogen energy transport and distribution, production, and R&D. Organizations must establish the right collaboration throughout the value chain, secure their offtake, develop hydrogen-competence centers, and harness technologies like simulations, digital twins, and traceability solutions to scale their low-carbon hydrogen initiatives successfully.

On the demand side of things, the lion's share of demand is expected from traditional hydrogen users such as the petroleum refining industry, chemicals, and fertilizers: 94% of petroleum refining organizations anticipate a significant impact on their industry by 2030; similarly, 83% of chemicals and fertilizer companies expect a comparable effect. The participants in the Capgemini survey indicated that they expect that new applications like heavy-duty transportation, aviation, and maritime will increase demand for hydrogen. All participants, however, still see major constraints for hydrogen applications in the abovementioned sectors, especially in production, engineering, and infrastructure. These indicators are also being addressed in a new report by Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy, although the consultancy is more optimistic about these bottlenecks. Rystad stated that due to the fact that hydrogen pipelines will be “far better” than vessels at moving hydrogen over short- and medium-range distances in the years ahead, the emphasis should be put on expanding global green hydrogen pipeline infrastructure.

Operational and planned hydrogen pipeline projects


Image: Rystad Energy Hydrogen Solution


The future looks bright, as Rystad foresees that global hydrogen pipeline projects are expected to increase by 700% over the next 12 years. At present, 90% of the 4300 km of pipelines are in Europe and North America. Worldwide, there are about 91 planned pipeline projects on paper and in the early phases of development, with 30,300 km set to go online by around 2035.

By Cyril Widdershoven for Oilprice.com

India may replace China as world’s success story, if Modi can control his autocratic instincts | Opinion


SOPA Images/Ganesh Chandra / SOPA Images/Sip

Andres Oppenheimer
Sat, April 8, 2023 at 7:44 AM MDT·4 min read

NEW DELHI, India — I don’t know whether India is going to replace China as the world’s new economic engine, but a week-long vacation here, many years since my last visit, left me surprised at this country’s rapid progress.

While there are some troublesome political signs, there is much less visible poverty on the streets than I saw the last time I visited in 2007.

The New Delhi airport, which I remembered as old and chaotic, has been rebuilt into a fairly modern and orderly airline hub.

The nearly 10-mile trip from the airport to the capital, which used to be a crumbling road where traffic was slowed by wandering cows, tricycles and bicycles, has become a much faster ride. The road is now lined with new hotels and corporate buildings.

New Delhi today looks much like Mexico City: a huge, bustling city of wide and relatively clean avenues, with magnificent monuments and public buildings. I saw more poverty in Varanasi and Agra, the other two cities I visited this time, but it was a far stretch from what I remembered.

According to World Bank projections released recently, India’s economy will expand by 6.3% this year, and by 6.4% in 2024, one of the highest growth rates in the world. By comparison, estimates by the International Monetary Fund show China’s economy is expected to grow by 5% this year and 4.5 percent in 2024.

More important in the long run, on April 14, is poised to overtake China as the world’s most populous country. According to U.N. projections, on that day India’s population will reach 1,425,777,850 people.

But friends with whom I met in India told me that the most significant number in terms of India’s importance in the world is that some 200 million Indians have joined the middle class in recent years. That is turning this country into a major business partner — and opportunity — for U.S. and Latin American businesses.

“It’s not so much the population growth, but the market growth that will count,” R. Viswanathan told me. He’s a former head of India’s foreign ministry’s Latin America department. “India’s trade with Latin America today is about $44 billion a year, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it more than doubles to $100 billion over the next five years,” he said.

Cars, motorcycles and pharmaceutical products are among the main Indian exports to Latin America, according to Viswanathan. Latin America exports mostly oil, gold and minerals to India.

In addition to its rapid growth, many Indians boast that their expats and their descendants have some of the world’s most important jobs these days.

Among them is U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris (whose mother was born in India); Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley (her parents were Indian immigrants); U.K. prime minister Rishi Sunak (his grandparents emigrated from India to Africa); and Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, both born in India.

However, I also saw an alarming personality cult following the country’s popular prime minister Narendra Modi, who has been in power since 2014 and is likely to be re-elected next year.

I saw huge signs with Modi’s picture almost on every other block along New Delhi’s main avenues, as well as in buses and public buildings. His image is virtually the only one you see on street signs.

While Modi gets high marks for helping modernize India’s economy, he is increasingly intimidating independent media and has used a loyal judiciary to ban opposition leaders.

Late last month, opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, Modi’s main political rival, was ousted from Parliament after being sentenced by a court to two years in prison for criminal defamation. His offense was jokingly asking in a 2019 campaign speech, “Why do all thieves have Modi as their surname?.”

Modi’s growing abuse of power is dangerous, becaue, among other things, unlike in China, India’s recent progress has been partly due to its democratic stability.

If Modi becomes a full-blown elected autocrat, India’s economic growth may be thwarted by favoritism, corruption and skepticism about its future. But if he somehow manages to control his authoritarian instincts, India is likely to become the world’s new economic success story.

 Blog: www.andresoppenheimer.com

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HINDUTVA IS FASCISM

A Chernobyl for AI May Be Imminent, Scientist Says

Tim Newcomb
Sat, April 8, 2023 

Marina Demkina - Getty Images

AI expert Stuart Russell reiterates the need for a pause in AI expansion before humanity loses control.

In an interview with Business Today, Russell likens the threat of unregulated AI to a potential Chernobyl event.

Leaders are calling on AI creators to ensure the safety of AI systems before releasing them to the public.

Stuart Russell knows AI. And he's concerned about its unchecked growth. In fact, he's so concerned that, in an interview with Business Today, he says an unbridled artificial intelligence carries with it the possibility of "a Chernobyl for AI."

That has the potential to be life-altering beyond our current understanding.

Russell, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, has spent decades as a leader in the AI field. He's also joined other prominent figures, like Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, in signing an open letter calling for a pause on development of powerful AI systems—defined as anything more potent than OpenAI's GPT-4.

“Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the letter reads. “Society has hit pause on other technologies with potentially catastrophic effects on society. We can do so here.”

The letter’s backers say there isn’t a level of planning and management happening in the AI field that matches the tech's potential to represent a “profound change in the history of life on Earth.” The signers say this is especially true as AI labs continue an “out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one—not even their creators—can understand, predict, or reliably control.”

Left unhindered, that kind of development could lead to "Chernobyl for AI," Russell tells Business Today, referring to the 1986 nuclear catastrophe in Ukraine that continues to show ill-effects on life over 35 years later.

"What we're asking for is, to develop reasonable guidelines [sic]," he says. "You have to be able to demonstrate convincingly for the system to be safely released, and then show that your system meets those guidelines. If I wanted to build a nuclear power plant, and the government says, well, you need to show that it's safe, that it can survive an earthquake, that it's not going to explode like Chernobyl did."

Creating new AI systems isn't all that different, Russell says, from building an airplane expected to safely fly hundreds of passengers, or a nuclear power plant with the potential to disastrously impact the world around it if something goes even slightly wrong.

AI has that same profound power, so much so leaders aren't even sure what a cataclysmic AI tragedy looks like. But they want to make sure we don't ever find out.

CRT

How Black cartographers put racism on the map of America

Joshua F.J. Inwood, Professor of Geography and Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn State 

Derek H. Alderman, Professor of Geography, University of Tennessee

THE CONVERSATION
Sat, April 8, 2023 

An early 20th-century NAACP map showing lynchings between 1909 and 1918. The maps were sent to politicians and newspapers in an effort to spur legislation protecting Black Americans. Library of Congress

How can maps fight racism and inequality?

The work of the Black Panther Party, a 1960s- and 1970s-era Black political group featured in a new movie and a documentary, helps illustrate how cartography – the practice of making and using maps – can illuminate injustice.

As these films show, the Black Panthers focused on African American empowerment and community survival, running a diverse array of programming that ranged from free school breakfasts to armed self-defense.

Cartography is a less documented aspect of the Panthers’ activism, but the group used maps to reimagine the cities where African Americans lived and struggled.


In 1971 the Panthers collected 15,000 signatures on a petition to create new police districts in Berkeley, California – districts that would be governed by local citizen commissions and require officers to live in the neighborhoods they served. The proposal made it onto the ballot but was defeated.

In a similar effort to make law enforcement more responsive to communities of color, the Panthers in the late 1960s also created a map proposing to divide up police districts within San Francisco, largely along racial lines.

The Black Panthers’ proposed police districts for the city of San Francisco, created in 1966 or 1967. Ccarolson/FoundSF, CC BY-SA

The Black Panthers are just one chapter in a long history of “counter-mapping” by African Americans, which our research in geography explores. Counter-mapping refers to how groups normally excluded from political decision-making deploy maps and other geographic data to communicate complex information about inequality in an easy-to-understand visual format.
The power of maps

Maps are not ideologically neutral location guides. Mapmakers choose what to include and exclude, and how to display information to users.

These decisions can have far-reaching consequences. When the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s set out to map the risk associated for banks loaning money to individuals for homes in different neighborhoods, for example, they rated minority neighborhoods as high risk and color-coded them as red.

The result, known as “redlining,” contributed to housing discrimination for three decades, until federal law banned such maps in 1968. Redlining’s legacy is still evident in many American cities’ patterns of segregation.

Colonial explorers charting their journeys and city planners and developers pursuing urban renewal, too, have used cartography to represent the world in ways that further their own priorities. Often, the resulting maps exclude, misrepresent or harm minority groups. Academics and government officials do this, too.

Counter-maps produce an alternative public understanding of the facts by highlighting the experiences of oppressed people.

Black people aren’t the only marginalized group to do this. Indigenous communities, women, refugees and LGBTQ communities have also redrawn maps to account for their existence and rights.

But Black Americans were among the earliest purveyors of counter-mapping, deploying this alternative cartography to serve a variety of needs a century ago.
Black counter-mapping

Mapping is part of the broader Black creative tradition and political struggle.

Over the centuries, African Americans developed “way-finding” aids, including a Jim Crow-era travel guide, to help them navigate a racially hostile landscape and created visual works that affirmed the value of Black life.

The Black sociologist and civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois produced maps for the 1900 Paris Exposition to inform international society about the gains African Americans had made in income, education and land ownership since slavery and in face of continuing racism.

Similarly, in 1946, Friendship Press cartographer and illustrator Louise Jefferson published a pictorial map celebrating the contributions of African Americans – from famous writers and athletes to unnamed Black workers – in building the United States.

In the early 20th century, anti-lynching crusaders at the NAACP and Tuskegee Institute stirred public outcry by producing statistical reports that informed original hand-drawn maps showing the location and frequency of African Americans murdered by white lynch mobs.

One map, published in 1922 in the NAACP’s magazine “Crisis,” placed dots on a standard map to document 3,456 lynchings over 32 years. The Southeast had the largest concentration. But the “blots of shame,” as mapmaker Madeline Allison called them, spanned the country from east to west and well into the north.

These visualizations, along with the underlying data, were sent to allied organizations like the citizen-led Commission on Interracial Cooperation, to newspapers nationwide and to elected officials of all parties and regions. The activists hoped to spur Congress to pass federal anti-lynching legislation – something that remains to this day unfinished business.

Civil rights activist Bayard Rustin organizing the 1963 March on Washington, an example of how existing maps can also be used in politically disruptive ways. 

AP Photo

Much anti-lynching cartography was inspired by the famed activist and reporter Ida B. Wells, who in the early 1880s made some of the first tabulations of the prevalence and geographic distribution of racial terror. Her work refuted prevailing white claims that lynched Black men had sexually assaulted white women.
Modern maps

The precariousness of Black life – and the exclusion of Black stories from American history – remains an unresolved issue today.

Working alone and with white allies, Black activists and scholars continue using cartography to tell a fuller story about the United States, to challenge racial segregation and to combat violence.

Today, the maps they create are often digital.

For example, the Equal Justice Initiative, the Alabama-based legal defense group run by Bryan Stevenson, has produced a modern map of historical lynching. It’s an interactive update of the anti-lynching cartography made 100 years ago – although a full reconstruction of lynching terror remains impossible because of incomplete data and the veil of silence that persists around these murders.

The Equal Justice Initiative’s map tells stories of people who were lynched. 

Screenshot, Equal Justice Initiative

Another modern mapping project, called Mapping Police Violence, was launched by data activists after Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. It tracks police use of force using a time-series animated map. Deaths and injuries flash across the screen and accumulate on the map of the United States, visually communicating the national scale and urgency of this problem.

Counter-mapping operates on the theory that communities and governments cannot fix problems that they do not understand. When Black counter-mapping exposes the how-and-where of racism, in accessible visual form, that information gains new power to spur social change.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. The Conversation is trustworthy news from experts. T

It was written by: Derek H. Alderman, University of Tennessee and Joshua F.J. Inwood, Penn State.

Read more:

What I learned when I recreated the famous ‘doll test’ that looked at how Black kids see race


Will European countries ever take meaningful steps to end colonial legacies?


Women of color spend more than billion on bleaching creams worldwide every year

Derek H. Alderman receives funding from National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities.

Joshua F.J. Inwood receives funding from the National Science Foundation.