New Zealander without college degree couldn’t talk his way into NASA and Boeing—so he built a $1.8 billion rocket company

Story by Tom Huddleston Jr. • CNBC

Peter Beck, 45, is the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab.© Provided by CNBC

This story is part of CNBC Make It's The Moment series, where highly successful people reveal the critical moment that changed the trajectory of their lives and careers, discussing what drove them to make the leap into the unknown.

In early 2006, Peter Beck took a "rocket pilgrimage" to the U.S.

The native New Zealander always dreamed of sending a rocket into space. He even skipped college because of it, taking an apprenticeship at a tools manufacturer so he could learn to work with his hands, tinkering with model rockets and propellants in his free time.

By the time of his pilgrimage, he'd built a steam-powered rocket bicycle that traveled nearly 90 mph. He hoped his experiments were enough to convince NASA or companies like Boeing to hire him as an intern. Instead, he was escorted off the premises of multiple rocket labs.

"On the face of it, here's a foreign national turning up to an Air Force base asking a whole bunch of questions about rockets — that doesn't look good," Beck, now 45, tells CNBC 

Make It.

Still, he learned that few companies were actually building what he wanted to build: lightweight, suborbital rockets to transport small satellites. On the flight back to New Zealand, he plotted his future startup, even drawing a logo on a napkin.

Convincing investors to back someone without a college degree in an industry where he couldn't even land an internship wouldn't be easy. Failure would push him even further away from his lifelong dream.

Beck launched the company, Rocket Lab, later that same year. In 2009, it became the Southern Hemisphere's first private company to reach space. Today, it's a Long Beach, California-based public company with a market cap of $1.8 billion. It has completed more than 35 space launches, including a moon-bound NASA satellite last year.

Here, Beck discusses how he turned his disappointment into opportunity, the biggest challenges he faced, and whether he ever regrets his decision to create Rocket Lab.

CNBC Make It: When you didn't land an aerospace job in the U.S., you immediately started thinking about launching your own company. Why?

Beck: One of the things I'm always frustrated with is how long everything takes. Ask anybody who works around me: There's a great urgency in everything. I don't walk upstairs, I run upstairs. As we've grown as a company, it's always a sprint.

I wish things would get faster. I'm always battling time.

How do you recognize a window of opportunity opening, and when is it worth the risk to jump through it?

Back your intuition and go for it.

I would classify my job as taking an enormous risk and then mitigating that risk to the nth degree. Given that, you have to see windows of opportunity and run into them.

The challenge is that, especially within this industry, you have to poke your head into the corner but not commit too deeply. Otherwise, you'll get your head cut off. I start by being very analytical: "OK, we're here. What happened for us to get here? And how do we get out of here?"

Sometimes, you can take big risks. Sometimes, you need to be very safe and methodical about how to back out of situations. Control the things you can control and acknowledge the things you can't control.

Running a rocket company is kind of like that scene in "Indiana Jones," where he's getting chased by that giant ball. You have to flawlessly execute, because the moment that you don't, the consequences can be terminal for the company pretty quickly.

What do you wish you'd known when you decided to start your own rocket company?

At the end of the day, I probably wouldn't change anything. There were plenty of errors and failures along the way, but ultimately, those things create the DNA of a company.

Getting your first rocket to orbit is the easiest part. On rocket No. 1, you've got all your engineers and technicians poring over one rocket for a large period of time. Now, there's one rocket that rolls out of that production line every 18 days. That's just immensely more difficult.

Sometimes, it's really good to have a bit of a bad day. Not during a flight, obviously, but during testing. Just when you think things are going good, you're reminded of how hard this business really is. Every time that you take too much of a breath, you'll be humbled very quickly.

What's the biggest challenge you faced getting started?

Nothing happens without funding in this business. When I first started Rocket Lab, I ran around Silicon Valley trying to raise $5 million.

At that time, that was an absurd amount of money for a rocket startup. A rocket startup was absurd [in general], it was only SpaceX then. A rocket startup from someone living in New Zealand was even more absurd.

We grew up and tried to raise really small amounts of funding. That really shaped us about being ruthlessly efficient and absolutely laser-focused on execution. The hardest thing [we did] is actually the thing that shaped the company into the most successful form it could be.

When do you feel the most pressure?

The most terrifying thing I've ever done is the staff Christmas party. That's the moment you realize that your decisions are responsible for these people's livelihoods. As a public company, I take that even more seriously. It's a tremendous amount of pressure.

On top of that, you have a customer. That can be a national security customer, where lives are depending on you delivering that asset to orbit. It can be a startup, and there can be hundreds of people at a company that you can destroy just by putting the payload into the ocean.

So I absolutely hate launch days. Now that we've done 35 launches, I'm not puking in the toilet like I used to. But man, I still really don't enjoy it, because there's just so much invested in each launch. So much responsibility.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Louis Dreyfus to expand Canada canola plant, latest to crush more oilseeds

Story by By Rod Nickel • 

Farm fields of canola bloom near La Salle, Manitoba© Thomson Reuters

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Global crop trader Louis Dreyfus Corp said on Tuesday it will more than double the size of its Canadian canola crushing plant in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, the latest North American oilseed processor to expand.

A global drive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has prompted refiners to start building facilities to produce less-polluting renewable diesel from canola, soybeans and other feedstocks.

Some of Louis Dreyfus' Canadian competitors such as Richardson International, Cargill Inc and Viterra have already announced plans to expand canola crushing, raising questions about how much more of the yellow-flowering crop farmers can grow to supply the plants.

U.S. soybean crushing is also fast expanding.

Canola futures soared to record highs last year after Russia invaded Ukraine, then the world's biggest sunflower oil exporter, tightening vegetable oil supplies.

Canada is the world's biggest producer and exporter of canola, a cousin of rapeseed that is mainly processed into vegetable oil for human consumption and meal for animal feed.

Louis Dreyfus, in a statement, said that construction will begin this year and more than double the facility's annual crush capacity to more than 2 million tonnes. It did not say when it expects the expansion to be complete or how much it will cost.

The 14-year-old facility employs 120 people currently.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; additional reporting by Gus Trompiz in Paris)

Earth's Population Could Soon Start Falling. Here's Why
Story by Rebecca Dyer • Yesterday -  ScienceAlert

People Walk Downhill

The number of humans on Earth reached 8 billion in November 2022.

Now a new report suggests that the world's population may peak at just 9 billion by 2050, a number far lower than previously thought.

Compared to other more well-known estimates, such as those from the United Nations, the latest prediction is either a breath of fresh air, or an omen of disaster.

The pros and cons of Earth's growing human population are hotly debated, with proponents citing positive effects on the economy and technology and critics emphasizing the risks to the environment and social harmony.

While it could be argued that smaller populations require less energy, housing, food, and water, there are some significant caveats. Most importantly, an imminent reversal of population growth means we need major investments in education and health, not to mention ways to overcome economic inequality in an aging society.

"These extraordinary turnarounds are designed as policy and investment road maps that will work for the majority of people," the authors write in their report.

"They are not an attempt to create some impossible-to-reach utopia; instead, they are an essential foundation for a resilient civilization on a planet under extraordinary pressure."

The report's predictions are based on extensive research, and much of it shows that the top 10 percent of the wealthiest people in the world are mostly responsible for the overconsumption that threatens the stability of the environment. Including climate change.

"Humanity's main problem is luxury carbon and biosphere consumption, not population," says environmental scientist Jorgen Randers, one of the modelers for Earth4All, the initiative that worked with the Global Challenges Foundation to create this report.

"The places where population is rising fastest have extremely small environmental footprints per person compared with the places that reached peak population many decades ago."

The authors predicted how to manage population growth in each major region using scientific data, with a goal to form a human population that can thrive on Earth for a long time.

Related video: Researchers Look Into the Declining Population of Earth (Veuer)
Duration 1:23  View on Watch

Ten countries and regions are considered in the analysis, from China to the United States to Sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, population growth rates are highest in several African nations, such as Angola, Niger, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria, as well as in some Asian countries, such as Afghanistan.



A map showing the 10 macro-regions used in the analysis. (B. Callegari/P.E. Stoknes/Earth4All)© Provided by ScienceAlert

Using a recently built dynamics model, the researchers looked into two different scenarios that could take place this century.

The first scenario, grimly titled "Too Little Too Late," imagines the world meandering along much as it has since 1980. This is predicated on the assumption that variables such as birth rates, savings and debt levels, tax rates, and income models will continue their current patterns.

This scenario forecasts a global population peak of 8.8 billion in the middle of this century and a gradual decline to 7.3 billion in 2100.

Global inequality, ecological footprints, and wildlife extinction will rise as economic and population growth slows. Regional collapses may increase as social divisions within and between countries grow, especially in countries with weak economies and poor governments.

In the more hopeful scenario, called the "Giant Leap," the global population peaks at 8.5 billion by around 2040 and declines to just six billion by the end of the century. The authors indicate that one of the deciding factors in this optimistic outcome is that economic inequality around the world is recognized as a source of division and a threat to democracy and human progress.

In this hypothetical future, extreme poverty would be eliminated by the year 2060, which would have a profound impact on global population growth.

This turnaround requires massive poverty reduction investments and revolutionary food and energy security, inequality, and gender equality policies.

"A good life for all is only possible if the extreme resource use of the wealthy elite is reduced," explains Randers.



Comparing five population scenarios to 2100. (B. Callegari/P.E. Stoknes/Earth4All)

Other major projections overlook rapid economic development as a solution to rising populations, according to the authors.

"Few prominent models simulate population growth, economic development and their connections simultaneously," states economist Beniamino Callegari, one of the authors of the report.

What's more, the UN's modeling approach fails to explain trends' origins and future changes, according to the report. For instance, why and how a society's birth and death rates deviate from historical norms and what that means for its future.

"We know rapid economic development in low-income countries has a huge impact on fertility rates," adds co-author, psychologist and economist Per Espen Stoknes. "Fertility rates fall as girls get access to education and women are economically empowered and have access to better healthcare."

More research and some big changes are undoubtedly required.

The authors note, "What we aimed to achieve with our scenarios is to illustrate that (1) demographic, socio-economic and natural change is possible, and (2) its magnitude and ultimate impact will depend primarily on the actions we are going to take in this decade."

This report has been published as a working paper titled: People and Planet: 21st Century Sustainable Population Scenarios and Possible Living Standards Within Planetary Boundaries.

Frank Stronach: Fixing capitalism by mandating profit sharing

Opinion by Frank Stronach • National Post

One of my favourite books published over the last few years is “Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few,” by Robert Reich, a public policy professor at UC Berkeley and secretary of labour in the Clinton administration.



Reich’s main argument is that capitalism is damaged and that the rich are getting richer while the poor and middle class are getting poorer, creating the greatest income inequality and wealth disparity in nearly a century.

He’s right that capitalism is a system that enriches only a few. I also agree with Reich’s call for a revival of corporate profit sharing, which was much more widespread in the 20th century, when some of America’s biggest and most well-known companies had profit-sharing programs.

At the company I founded, Magna International, profit sharing was one of the hallmarks of our operating philosophy. We made all of our employees and managers partners in profitability.

Harvard Business School called it “Magna’s success formula.” I called our profit-sharing philosophy “fair enterprise,” because I believed that all of the company’s key stakeholders — investors, managers, employees and the communities they worked in — each had a moral right to share in the success of the business.

It became the driving force that placed Magna on a path of incredible growth and profitability in the decades that followed. By the time Magna celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2007, the company had shared more than $1 billion in profits with employees.

Fewer large companies today are sharing profits with their workers, and it’s one of the reasons why there is growing income and wealth inequality. As a result, I believe we should establish a national policy that would require large companies with more than 300 employees to give their workers 20 per cent of their annual profits.

If we did that, we would be able to create a system where wealth is distributed more evenly and fairly throughout the economy, rather than remaining concentrated in the hands of relatively few individuals.

Compared to investors and senior management, employees get a disproportionately small share of the wealth that companies generate. But without employees, you haven’t got a business. I’ve always believed that it takes three forces to drive a business: investors, managers and employees — and all three have a right to share in the firm’s profits.

Profit sharing on a national scale could spur increased productivity and the sort of widespread and sustained economic growth that we haven’t experienced since the end of the Second World War.

The key beneficiary of this proposal would be companies themselves. If workers have a tangible stake in the company’s success, they’ll be highly motivated to produce better products for better prices. It’s just human nature: when you get a piece of the action, you work harder and constantly think of ways to improve quality and boost sales.

But there are many additional benefits to sharing profits with employees. It would put more money into the pockets of consumers, and governments would get a bigger slice of the taxes generated by a large spike in consumer spending.

In addition, at a time when companies are struggling to attract and keep employees, profit sharing would be a potent employee retention tool. And profit sharing makes relations between management and employees much more harmonious since both stakeholders have a shared vested interest. Everyone in the boat is rowing in the same direction.

A 2015 study found that companies that shared profits with their employees experienced not only a more positive workplace culture, but also a greater return on equity.

We need a new kind of capitalism — one that makes employees partners in profit participation, makes businesses more competitive and turns workers into part-owners by giving them a share of the wealth they help create.

Sharing profits worked spectacularly for my company. I know it could do the same for other companies, as well. Profit sharing would also help improve the living standards of Canadian workers.

If we can’t find ways to spread the wealth more evenly, we as a society will have a major problem in the years ahead.

National Post
fstronachpost@gmail.com
Frank Stronach is the founder of Magna International Inc., one of Canada’s largest global companies, and an inductee in the Automotive Hall of Fame.

LGBTQ group asks CRTC to ban Fox News Channel over anti-trans comments

Story by Anja Karadeglija • Yesterday 3:12 p.m.

An LGBTQ rights group wants the CRTC to ban Fox News from Canadian cable packages over “false and horrifying claims” made by host Tucker Carlson regarding transgender individuals.


Fox News host Tucker Carlson is being accused of stoking resentment against trans individuals, suggesting they© Provided by National Post

Egale Canada is in the process of filing a formal application with the CRTC, communications and marketing director Jennifer Boyce said in an email. The group published an open letter last week, following an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight in late March.

The letter said the Fox News “coverage aimed to provoke hatred and violence against 2SLGBTQI communities, particularly those who are Two Spirit, trans, nonbinary and gender non-conforming (2STNBGN).”

Egale said Carlson made false claims about those communities, including “painting them as violent and dangerous.” The segment aimed to provoke resentment and violence against 2STNBGN people through false claims and “malicious misinformation,” Egale Canada executive director Helen Kennedy said in the open letter.

“During the segment, Carlson made the inflammatory and false claim that trans people are ‘targeting’ Christians. To position trans people in existential opposition to Christianity is an incitement of violence against trans people that is plain to any viewer.”

Related video: LGBTQ advocates discuss "anti-trans" bills (WLEX Lexington, KY)

Duration 2:53   View on Watch

The letter also accused the segment of stoking resentment against 2STNBGN individuals through misinformation “including that trans people are given preferential treatment in employment and other opportunities.”

The CRTC maintains a list of international channels cable, satellite and IPTV providers can include in their packages. In March 2022, the CRTC removed Russia Today and RT France from the list, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In its decision, the CRTC said the content of the Russian channels “appears to constitute abusive comment since it tends or is likely to expose the Ukrainian people to hatred or contempt on the basis of their race, national or ethnic origin.”

The letter from Egale said the CRTC must investigate whether Fox News violates the Television Broadcasting Regulations, and asked the regulator to hold public consultations on removing the channel from the list of authorized channels.

It argued non-Canadian broadcasters must be held to the same standards as Canadian broadcasters, which can be fined or lose their licence for broadcasting abusive content that “when taken in context, tends to or is likely to expose an individual or a group or class of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability.”

Once a formal application is filed with the CRTC, the regulator decides whether to accept it. If it’s accepted, the CRTC will post the file on its website as an open “Part 1” application, with a deadline for the public and interested parties to submit their comments.

A spokesperson for Fox News did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

“Given the rising levels of anti-trans hate around the world and the potential for segments like the one recently aired on Fox News, there needs to be a serious Canadian conversation about the broadcasting of Fox News in Canada,” Kennedy said in the letter.

Egale said it experienced “firsthand the hate that is generated from a single segment aired on Fox News in Canada. We cannot begin to imagine the broader impacts and potential rise in hate that might result from allowing more content like this to air in Canada.”

'May cause serious side-effects': How medical school admissions can perpetuate inequality and reward privilege

Story by Janelle S. Taylor, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto and Claire Wendland, Professor and Chair, Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Yesterday - THE CONVERSATION

Would-be physicians are often told that a winning medical school application requires stories about observing clinical care. Applicants’ quests to get clinical experiences — through, for example, physician shadowing, global health experiences or medical scribe work — can have harmful unintended consequences.


Volunteering for global health experience is a common way of gaining clinical observation experiences for medical school applicants. This, and other opportunities to get close to the practice of medicine, also have unintended consequences. 

Such activities can perpetuate inequality when they disguise privilege as merit, reinforce damaging narratives or even hurt patients in poorer countries, and contribute to exploiting a vulnerable labour force.

We are medical anthropologists who have researched social and cultural dimensions of medical education. As teachers, we have worked with thousands of undergraduate pre-meds. We recently published, together with two co-authors, an article that we believe is the first to draw attention to how medical-school applications can cause broader harms.

Aspiring physicians encounter many sources of advice, from the admissions websites of medical schools to pre-health advising centres to paid coaches. All of these advisors recommend experiences that put medical-school applicants adjacent to medical care.

The advice may seem sensible. Watching medical professionals at work could serve as an occupational test drive. Applicants might better understand the profession before starting a long and gruelling training period — and possibly taking on a heavy burden of student debt. Admissions committees may also hope that such activities can provide evidence of personal qualities desirable in a physician, such as determination, altruism and a commitment to service.

It’s hard to say whether such experiences actually make for better doctors; the evidence is limited. The quest for such experiences does have other effects, however — and as anthropologists, those interest us. In particular, we want to shine a bright light on the effects that these activities have, in the broader social world:

How do applicants’ social backgrounds affect their access to clinical observation experiences?

Which potentially great doctors get lost along the way, discouraged even from applying?
And how might pre-med students’ presence as observers matter, for practising clinicians and their patients?

Three common pathways to gaining clinical observation experiences are physician shadowing, global health experiences and medical scribe work. Each offers opportunities to get close to the practice of medicine, but each also brings unintended consequences that run counter to the values of the medical profession.

Physician shadowing

Physician shadowing involves following doctors during their day-to-day working routines.


Physician shadowing is strongly recommended or even required by medical schools, but it is increasingly difficult to arrange without family or social connections to physicians.

What a student is invited to observe varies considerably, depending upon policies around patient privacy and the idiosyncrasies of individual physicians. What patients are told about this “member of the team” may vary too.

The ethics of shadowing can be troubling, and the implications for equity are problematic. Though strongly recommended or even required by medical schools, shadowing is increasingly difficult to arrange without family or social connections to physicians. Studies show that students from less privileged backgrounds struggle to find shadowing opportunities and may become discouraged and give up.

Shadowing launders social privilege into individual merit, preserving medicine as a field for elites that masquerades as a meritocracy.

Global health experiences

Global health experiences are short-term volunteer stints in low-income countries. These opportunities have expanded dramatically in the last two decades.

Some are university led, others are run by for-profit groups and packaged as (expensive) tours. They bring students from wealthier countries to communities in poorer parts of the world to observe health problems and medical care, often across stark racialized divides. Without historical context for the differences they encounter, students can easily fall into regarding poverty and illness as somehow natural or inevitable, rather than recognizing them as outcomes of colonial relations and their contemporary legacies.


Global health experiences bring North American students to communities in poorer parts of the world to observe health problems and medical care.© (Shutterstock)

Placement organizations often market these experiences as helpful for strengthening one’s medical school application. Some of our own students feel caught between a distaste for what they call “poverty porn,” and the worry that such experiences are critical. For some, the cost is also prohibitive. We see additional reasons for concern: undergraduate global health tours can also reinforce colonial or “white saviour” narratives, slotting students and those they encounter into rescuer and victim roles.

Read more: How white saviourism harms international development

When inexperienced students actually participate in delivering treatment, such as extracting teeth or delivering babies, they can also cause medical harm.

Medical scribes

Medical scribe work involves clerical labour created by the adoption of electronic health records.

A scribe is present in the clinic, typing notes into a computerized record in real time while a physician speaks with or examines patients. The work is not well paid, and offers few opportunities for advancement, but companies that employ scribes advertise it as “the ultimate clinical experience that you can get before medical school.”


Medical scribe work: pathway to a physician career or poorly paid dead-end job?

© (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

And, indeed, young people with excellent college training in biology or other science fields compete fiercely for these otherwise unpromising jobs, in hopes that they will strengthen applications to medical school, although there is little evidence that they do.

Much as the slim hope of playing in the NFL helps fill the ranks of student-athletes on U.S. college football teams, the slim hope of gaining admittance to medical school helps staff low-ranking clerical positions within medicine. In this way, the competition for medical school admissions may contribute to exploitative labour conditions.

All three of these pathways to clinical experience worsen the inequalities that trouble medicine as a profession. None of them has been demonstrated to make better doctors. Some of them cause harms far afield. All of them are likely to put excellent applicants from less privileged backgrounds at a disadvantage.

It is time to apply “first, do no harm” to the medical-school application process.

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

Read more:
Equitable medical education can be achieved with efforts toward real change

Five strategies to improve medical training – to reduce stress and boost expertise

EPA proposes new regulations on toxic gas used to sterilize spices and medical equipment

Story by Brenda Goodman • CNN

The US Environmental Protection Agency proposed a set of new restrictions on facilities that use the cancer-causing chemical ethylene oxide, a colorless, odorless gas that is used to sterilize medical devices and spices.

The agency said the new rules, which have not been finalized, would help to reduce ethylene oxide gas that these facilities release by 80%, bringing emissions below a Clean Air Act standard for elevated cancer risk.

Communities exposed to ethylene oxide gas had lobbied the EPA to put tighter controls on plants that use ethylene oxide gas.

In 2018, an EPA report found that dozens of communities across the nation faced elevated cancer risks because of trace of amounts of ethylene oxide released into air as part of the sterilization process.

The EPA issued the report on the new risks without issuing a news release, as it had done for the same report in years past. Some affected communities learned of the risk through health assessments conducted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and media reports. A report from the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General found that some communities weren’t alerted to their risk by EPA at all.

The elevated risk became apparent after a two-decade long review of the toxicity of ethylene oxide by scientists in EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program.

While the EPA acknowledged that ethylene oxide was more dangerous that had been previously understood, it continued to use an older set of rules to regulate facilities that released ethylene oxide as well as companies that manufacture it.

The proposed rules aim to better align regulations on the producers and users of ethylene oxide with the cancer risk posed by the chemical.

In this September 2018 photo, protesters chant in front of the Illinois headquarters of Sterigenics, a facility that sterilized medical equipment using the chemical ethylene oxide. - Mark Black/The Chicago Tribune/Getty Images

In issuing the proposed rules, the EPA said it aimed to strike a balance between lowing cancer risks for impacted communities and workers who use ethylene oxide while preserving “critical sterilization capabilities.”

The proposed rules would apply to 86 commercial sterilization facilities in the United States that use ethylene oxide gas to fumigate spices and medical devices.

The EPA says 20 billion medical devices – mostly single-use, disposable items used in health care such as catheters, gloves and surgical gowns – are sterilized using ethylene oxide.

The US Food and Drug Administration is actively exploring alternatives to the use of the gas, the EPA said on Tuesday, but some devices still can’t be sterilized any other way.

In proposing the new rules, EPA said its new analysis found that exposure to ethylene oxide, or EtO, on the job significantly increased cancer risks for workers in sterilization facilities and those who apply ethylene oxide in health care facilities.

“Now, a new EPA analysis shows that there may also be significant risks to workers who handle [ethylene oxide] and people who live, work or go to school near places where EtO is used in sterilization. And failing to take action to address these risks is simply unacceptable,” EPA Administrator Janet McCabe said on a call with reporters.

The additional lifetime cancer risk for a worker exposed to ethylene oxide for eight hours a day, 240 days a year for 35 years was between 1 in 10 and 1 in 36 for workers in sterilization facilities; and between 1 in 12 and 1 in 25 for workers exposed to ethylene oxide in health care facilities.

To help lower those risks, the proposed rules require greater use of personal protective equipment for workers and new controls to decrease the amount of ethylene oxide in indoor air.

They will also be required to use new real-time monitoring methods to confirm that these pollution controls are working inside facilities.

These controls can measure ethylene oxide in indoor air down to 10 parts per billion.

They will also lower the amount of ethylene oxide that can be used for each sterilization cycle.

If the rules go into effect, sterilizers would have 18 months to make the changes, which the EPA said is an accelerated time frame under the Clean Air Act.

The EPA is now taking public comment on the new rules.

For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com

More than 200 pharmaceutical executives sign open letter calling for reversal of Texas abortion pill ruling

Story by Annika Kim Constantino • Yesterday 

More than 200 pharmaceutical executives signed on to an open letter calling for the reversal of a federal judge's decision to suspend the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was among the corporate leaders who signed the letter after U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's controversial ruling Friday.

 
The executives expressed support for the FDA's authority to regulate drugs and said Kacsmaryk's decision "ignores decades of scientific evidence and legal precedent."


Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla attends a conversation during the World Economic Forum WEF 2022 Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, May 25, 2022.© Provided by CNBC

More than 200 pharmaceutical executives signed on to an open letter calling for the reversal of a federal judge's decision to suspend the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.

Albert Bourla, the CEO of pharma titan Pfizer, was among the corporate leaders who joined the letter after U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's controversial ruling Friday.

"We call for the reversal of this decision to disregard science, and the appropriate restitution of the mandate for the safety and efficacy of medicines for all with the FDA, the agency entrusted to do so in the first place," the letter said.

The executives said Kacsmaryk's decision "ignores decades of scientific evidence and legal precedent." They also raised concerns that the ruling will "set a precedent" for diminishing the FDA's authority over drug approvals, which would create uncertainty for the entire industry.

"If courts can overturn drug approvals without regard for science or evidence, or for the complexity required to fully vet the safety and efficacy of new drugs, any medicine is at risk for the same outcome as mifepristone," the executives wrote in the letter.

They added that regulatory uncertainty will likely reduce incentives for investing in new drugs, which would endanger the "innovation that characterizes our industry."

Pfizer is one of the first major pharmaceutical companies to publicly react to the ruling. Among the other executives who signed the letter are Biogen President Alisha Alaimo and Cristal Downing, Merck's chief communications and public affairs officer.

The letter included a link to a Google form for other executives and employees to add their names.

Moderna, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the letter.

On Monday, the primary lobbying arm of the pharmaceutical industry, PhRMA, issued a separate statement saying Kacsmaryk's ruling undermines the regulatory process.

"The FDA is the gold standard for determining whether a medicine is safe and effective for people to use," said Priscilla VanderVeer, PhRMA's vice president of public affairs. "While PhRMA and our members are not a party to this litigation, our focus is on ensuring a policy environment that supports the agency's ability to regulate and provides access to FDA-approved medicines."

Kacsmaryk sided with an anti-abortion group, arguing the FDA rushed its approval process and violated federal standards. He suggested the agency ignored mifepristone's serious safety risks due to "political pressure."

"The Court does not second-guess FDA's decision-making lightly," Kacsmaryk wrote in his decision. "But here, FDA acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns — in violation of its statutory duty — based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions."

In the open letter, executives acknowledged that the FDA's drug development and approval process is not perfect. But they defended the agency's longstanding determination that mifepristone is a safe and effective method to terminate an early pregnancy.

The abortion pill "has been proven by decades of data to be safer than Tylenol, nearly all antibiotics and insulin," the executives wrote in the letter.

The FDA declined to comment on the letter, directing CNBC to the agency's statement on Saturday.

"[Mifepristone's] approval was based on the best available science and done in accordance with the laws that govern our work," that statement said.

The FDA approved mifepristone in 2000. Medication abortion has become the most accessible and preferred method for terminating a pregnancy in the U.S. since then, accounting for more than half of all abortions nationwide.

Mifepristone will be available in the short term, because Kacsmaryk delayed his order for a week to give the Biden administration time to appeal.

Kacsmaryk's decision conflicts with a ruling by a federal judge in Washington state. Less than an hour after the Texas ruling, the Washington state judge issued a preliminary injunction that could protect access to mifepristone in the 17 states and Washington, D.C., that brought a lawsuit arguing that too many regulations exist on the drug.

The dueling orders by two federal judges create a complicated legal standoff that could potentially escalate to the Supreme Court.

— CNBC's Meg Tirrell and Spencer Kimball contributed to this report.

RIP
Al Jaffee, longtime Mad magazine cartoonist, dead at 102

NEW YORK (AP) — Al Jaffee, Mad magazine's award-winning cartoonist and ageless wise guy who delighted millions of kids with the sneaky fun of the Fold-In and the snark of "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions," has died. He was 102.


Al Jaffee, longtime Mad magazine cartoonist, dead at 102© Provided by The Canadian Press

Jaffee died Monday in Manhattan from multiple organ failure, according to his granddaughter, Fani Thomson. He had retired at the age of 99.

Mad magazine, with its wry, sometimes pointed send-ups of politics and culture, was essential reading for teens and preteens during the baby-boom era and inspiration for countless future comedians. Few of the magazine’s self-billed “Usual Gang of Idiots” contributed as much — and as dependably — as the impish, bearded cartoonist. For decades, virtually every issue featured new material by Jaffee. His collected "Fold-Ins," taking on everyone in his unmistakably broad visual style from the Beatles to TMZ, was enough for a four-volume box set published in 2011.

Readers savored his Fold-Ins like dessert, turning to them on the inside back cover after looking through such other favorites as Antonio Prohías' "Spy vs. Spy" and Dave Berg's "The Lighter Side." The premise, originally a spoof of the old Sports Illustrated and Playboy magazine foldouts, was that you started with a full-page drawing and question on top, folded two designated points toward the middle and produced a new and surprising image, along with the answer.

The Fold-In was supposed to be a onetime gag, tried out in 1964 when Jaffee satirized the biggest celebrity news of the time: Elizabeth Taylor dumping her husband, Eddie Fisher, in favor of "Cleopatra" co-star Richard Burton. Jaffee first showed Taylor and Burton arm in arm on one side of the picture, and on the opposite side a young, handsome man being held back by a policeman.

Fold the picture in and Taylor and the young man are kissing.

The idea was so popular that Mad editor Al Feldstein wanted a follow-up. Jaffee devised a picture of 1964 GOP presidential contenders Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater that, when collapsed, became an image of Richard Nixon.

"That one really set the tone for what the cleverness of the Fold-Ins has to be," Jaffee told the Boston Phoenix in 2010. "It couldn't just be bringing someone from the left to kiss someone on the right.”

Jaffee was also known for "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions," which delivered exactly what the title promised. A comic from 1980 showed a man on a fishing boat with a noticeably bent reel. “Are you going to reel in the fish?” his wife asks. “No,” he says, “I’m going to jump into the water and marry the gorgeous thing.”

Jaffee didn’t just satirize the culture; he helped change it. His parodies of advertisements included such future real-life products as automatic redialing for a telephone, a computer spell checker and graffiti-proof surfaces. He also anticipated peelable stamps, multiblade razors and self-extinguishing cigarettes.

Jaffee's admirers ranged from Charles M. Schulz of "Peanuts" fame and “Far Side" creator Gary Larson to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who marked Jaffee’s 85th birthday by featuring a Fold-In cake on “The Colbert Report.” When Stewart and "The Daily Show" writers put together the best-selling "America (The Book)," they asked Jaffee to contribute a Fold-In.

"When I was done, I called up the producer who'd contacted me, and I said, 'I've finished the Fold-In, where shall I send it?' And he said — and this was a great compliment — 'Oh, please Mr. Jaffee, could you deliver it in person? The whole crew wants to meet you,'" he told The Boston Phoenix.

Jaffee received numerous awards, and in 2013 was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, the ceremony taking place at San Diego Comic-Con International. In 2010, he contributed illustrations to Mary-Lou Weisman's "Al Jaffee's Mad Life: A Biography." The following year, Chronicle Books published "The MAD Fold-In Collection: 1964-2010."

Art was the saving presence of his childhood, which left him with permanent distrust of adults and authority. He was born in Savannah, Georgia, but for years was torn between the U.S., where his father (a department store manager) preferred to live, and Lithuania, where his mother (a religious Jew) longed to return. In Lithuania, Jaffee endured poverty and bullying, but also developed his craft. With paper scarce and no school to attend, he learned to read and write through the comic strips mailed by his father.

By his teens, he was settled in New York City and so obviously gifted that he was accepted into the High School of Music & Art. His schoolmates included Will Elder, a future Mad illustrator, and Harvey Kurtzmann, a future Mad editor. (His mother, meanwhile, remained in Lithuania and was apparently killed during the war).

He had a long career before Mad. He drew for Timely Comics, which became Marvel Comics; and for several years sketched the "Tall Tales" panel for the New York Herald Tribune. Jaffee first contributed to Mad in the mid-1950s. He left when Kurtzmann quit the magazine, but came back in 1964.

Mad lost much of its readership and edge after the 1970s, and Jaffee outlived virtually all of the magazine's stars. But he rarely lacked for ideas even as his method, drawing by hand, remained mostly unchanged in the digital era.

“I’m so used to being involved in drawing and knowing so many people that do it, that I don’t see the magic of it,” Jaffee told the publication Graphic NYC in 2009. “If you reflect and think about it, I’m sitting down and suddenly there’s a whole big illustration of people that appears. I’m astounded when I see magicians work; even though I know they’re all tricks. You can imagine what someone thinks when they see someone drawing freehand and it’s not a trick. It’s very impressive."

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This story has been corrected to show that Antonio Prohías was the creator of the “Spy vs. Spy” comic strip.

Hillel Italie, The Associated Press

Sweet little lies: Maple syrup fraud undermines the authenticity of Canada's 'liquid gold'

Story by Robert Hanner, Professor, Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, 

Maria G. Corradini, Associate Professor - Arrell Chair in Food Quality, University of Guelph,

 Maleeka Singh, PhD Candidate, Food Science, University of Guelph, 

Sujani Rathnayake, Research assistant, Hanner Lab, University of Guelph

 • Yesterday 
THE CONVERSATION


Ensuring that maple syrup products are not mixed or substituted with other sugar syrups protects the reputation of Canadian products.© (Shutterstock)

Maple syrup, Canada’s “liquid gold,” is among the 10 most adulterated foods globally.

Maple syrup’s desirability has made it a target for delinquent activities, including food fraud and theft. In 2011 and 2012, almost 3,000 tonnes of maple syrup were stolen from the Strategic Reserve in Québec.

The Great Maple Syrup Heist reflects the food’s status as a highly valuable commodity and the target of delinquent activities.

In addition to the threat posed to maple syrup by thieves and smugglers, unreliable production yields due to climate events have required establishing production quotas to stabilize pricing and supply.

As a consequence, there have been reports of prohibition-style smuggling and sugar syrups labelled as maple syrup permeating the market. These actions cheat consumers and introduce food safety risks into the supply chain.

Consumers pay more for a lower value product. In addition, the introduction of other sugars or sugar syrups may pose risks to individuals with sugar sensitivities, as maple syrup has a lower glycemic index than white sugar or corn syrups.

Fingerprinting maple syrup glow

As such, there is a need for the development of more accurate and rapid testing tools to monitor maple syrup fraud.

Our research team at the University of Guelph has been developing methods to detect maple syrup fraud. We use fluorescence fingerprinting, which analyzes how certain molecules in maple syrup glow when exposed to UV and visible light, to see if there is any potential maple syrup adulteration.

In UV light, maple syrup naturally glows. Fluorescence fingerprinting maps the intensity of the light emitted by these specific fluorescent (glowing) compounds, and can provide a unique 3D rendering of a sample’s composition while also reporting on its quality, safety and identity.

Using key features found in the fluorescence fingerprints, we explored ways to better detect maple syrup adulteration even when the levels are as low as one per cent.

Our study examines the adulteration of dark and amber maple syrups with common maple syrup adulterants, at percentages ranging from one to 50 per cent.

Distinct fluorescence fingerprints were found for each tested syrup and mixture, revealing features that can be used to distinguish pure from adulterated samples.

Machine learning and identification


Maple syrup glows under UV light.© (M. Singh)

The fluorescence fingerprints obtained when the samples were exposed to UV and visible light show several features (or peaks) that gradually changed in samples tampered with adulterants. We were able to correctly detect adulteration in 70 to 100 per cent of samples, depending on how the features were quantified and analyzed, by creating a fluorescence index or by using machine learning techniques.

To fully validate this approach, we will need to use larger datasets that will help us control for other factors — like the environments maple trees grow in — that may affect the content of the syrups.

Other common fingerprinting techniques, such as DNA barcoding that examines short DNA fragments, can detect adulteration in other foods, like fish or sausages.

These methods don’t work well for maple syrup because the extensive processing required to transform sap into syrup potentially degrades the DNA.

In contrast, fluorescence fingerprints rely on a food’s chemical composition, so identifying the presence of adulterants can happen even in highly processed samples. Most foods naturally contain intrinsic fluorescent compounds, which means they glow under UV and visible light — the amount of and type of glow represent distinguishing characteristics.

Quality control

Since using fluorescent fingerprinting only requires the use of light, it is a non-invasive, efficient and affordable strategy for checking whether maple syrup contains any other sugar syrups. It is also fast, providing information about a sample within minutes.

This approach can be applied at different points in the supply chain as part of quality assurance and control. This would ensure that consumers receive safe, high-quality foods, and that they are not cheated financially. Confirming the quality of maple syrup would also protect the brand reputation of Canadian products.

Maia Zhang, research assistant at the University of Guelph, co-authored this article.

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

Read more:
Unlocking the secrets of maple syrup, one molecule at a time

How technology will help fight food fraud

Maleeka Singh receives funding from the Arrell Food Institute.

Maria G. Corradini receives funding from NSERC

Robert Hanner has received funding from the Arrell Food Institute, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and Oceana (US & Canada).

Sujani Rathnayake received funding from the Arrell Food Institute of the University of Guelph from 2019-2022.