Businesses' changing credit usage a worrying trend: Equifax

Rosa Saba, The Canadian Press

New data suggests a significant shift in credit usage among businesses in the first quarter of 2023, Equifax Canada said.

The latest numbers highlight growing financial stress in the industrial and financial trades, and cast doubt on the stability of the Canadian economy, the credit rating agency said Tuesday.

Businesses’ total outstanding balance on bank-issued instalment loans declined by 2.4 per cent compared with the first quarter last year, at $12.9 billion. 

However, credit card balances grew by 15 per cent and lines of credit increased by 11 per cent.

Jeff Brown, head of commercial solutions at Equifax Canada, said the shift in credit usage by businesses is alarming.

"It's not something we've seen in the past few years," he said. "This is kind of like an early warning indicator."

Instalment loans are generally used for growth and expansion, Brown said.

"You have to be spending money to be making money as a small business," he said. "When you see a lapse in that, you see a growth in credit card spends, typically, it's a sign of financial instability."

Equifax said the Bank of Canada's rate hikes may have contributed to this trend of shifting toward credit products that don't lock business owners into fixed repayment periods and offer more interest-rate flexibility.

With many businesses already holding extra debt from the pandemic, such as from government loan programs, racking up credit card debt could put businesses in a difficult hole to dig themselves out of, Brown said.

General conditions for businesses are getting tougher, said Pedro Antunes, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada.

Businesses relying on short-term credit products is “not a good sign,” he said.

Bankruptcy levels aren’t a disaster at this point, as they’ve now met pre-pandemic levels, but the upward trend nevertheless points to the challenges businesses are having as the economy slows, Antunes said.

The decline in instalment loans and the shift toward credit card usage could be impeding businesses' growth potential and hindering their ability to make larger investments, Equifax said.

This is the first quarter we have seen this shift, Brown said, noting that businesses could just be testing the waters and hoping interest rates normalize. Banks are likely also getting a little more stringent with lending in the wake of the U.S. banking crisis, he said.

But over time, credit card usage could become a dangerous habit, and a decline in small business spending could have trickle-down effects, he said.

"All these debts are starting to accumulate, so we have seen delinquencies climb back up to near pre-pandemic levels," said Brown. "We just don't want to see this trend continue."

The consumer has been resilient as households spent the savings they had built up over the pandemic, but Antunes expects spending to slow going forward, which will weigh on businesses.

“A lot of those excesses that households have, I think, are being whittled away by inflation, by interest rates,” he said.

The Conference Board’s own confidence index shows businesses aren’t feeling optimistic, said Antunes, and are likely to hold back on spending or investment.

Equifax said industrial and financial trades in particular are showing signs of financial stress, which could have ripple effects on the overall economy.

The first quarter also saw a slowdown in new business openings, which Equifax said is a concerning trend. January, February and March have shown a consistent month-over-month increase in business establishments for the past two years, the agency said, but in 2023 there was a noticeable dip.

As of the end of February, new business starts were down year over year by 16.5 per cent in Ontario, 14.2 per cent in B.C., 11.4 per cent in Alberta and 7.5 per cent in Quebec.

Brown said this trend is expected to continue throughout the summer as economic conditions weaken amid higher interest rates.

"There might be a whole backlog of aspiring entrepreneurs of aspiring entrepreneurs who want to start their business, but they just know that now's not the right time," he said.

"The cost of borrowing money is too expensive."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 20, 2023.

OFSI stability buffer hike could hurt bank profits, dividends: Analyst

Ben Cousins, BNN Bloomberg

Changes to regulatory requirements for Canadian banks’ cash on hand will lead to stretched profits at the country’s big banks and could hurt dividend payouts, according to an analyst.

On Tuesday, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions hiked the domestic stability buffer to 3.5 per cent of risk-weighted assets, up from three per cent, effective Nov. 1.

The change means Canada’s big banks will need to carry Common Equity Tier 1 capital of at least 11.5 per cent of risk-weighted assets, though all six banks already carry more than that level.

Nigel D'Souza, financial services analyst at Veritas Investment Research, told BNN Bloomberg Tuesday the change won’t “impede the banks’ material operation,” but will lead to a further tightening.

“There will be profitability pressures for the Canadian banks,” he said.

“What this will do is constrain capital a little bit where banks will be more careful in terms of dividend payout increases or more restrictive on share buybacks.”

To listen to the full interview with D'Souza, click on the video

With files from Bloomberg News

 

 

Canada bank watchdog toughens capital rule with risks rising

Esteban Duarte, Bloomberg News

Canada’s banking regulator imposed higher capital requirements on the country’s largest banks for the second time in about six months, a signal of concern about risks
building up in the financial system.

The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions said it’s lifting the domestic stability buffer to 3.5 per cent of risk-weighted assets from its current 3 per cent level. The regulator increased it by the same amount in December. 

The change means the six largest domestic banks will be required to hold Common Equity Tier 1 capital of at least 11.5 per cent of risk-weighted assets. All six are currently above that level. The new requirements come into effect Nov. 1. 

“Current vulnerabilities, including high household and corporate debt levels, the rising cost of debt, and increased global uncertainty around fiscal and monetary policy, coupled with Canada’s financial sector showing strength throughout the winter and spring has presented the opportunity for OSFI to build more resiliency in the system,” the bank watchdog said in a statement. 

The change underscores growing anxiety in Canada about how households are grappling with the rapid increase in borrowing costs. Last month, in its annual review of the financial system, the Bank of Canada said a rising number of homeowners have mortgages that consume at least a quarter of their income, and some are relying on credit cards to meet expenses in the face of steeper payments.

OSFI sets the stability buffer based on its view of financial vulnerabilities, including levels of household and corporate debt and economic forecasts. Elevated office vacancies are also raising concerns that banks may be forced to take losses on commercial real estate loans. Commercial property represents about 10% of the loan
portfolios of Canada’s six largest banks, surpassed only by residential mortgages, according to a recent analysis by National Bank of Canada analyst Gabriel Dechaine. 
While real estate risks at Canadian banks are growing, particularly in the office category, existing reserves are large enough to absorb losses, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Paul Gulberg and Ethan Kaye. 

The updated capital requirements apply to the two Canadian lenders on the list of global systemically important banks, Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank. It also applies to the four other institutions on OSFI’s list of domestic systemically important banks: Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and National Bank of Canada.

Scientists Link Cosmic Radiation to Earthquakes for the First Time

Story by Robyn White • Yesterday 

A stock photo shows a concept of cosmic radiation. Scientists have found a link between cosmic radiation and earthquakes.© Pitris/Getty

Scientists have made a link between cosmic radiation and earthquakes for the first time.

The CREDO project, initiated in 2016 by the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Krakow, Poland, is working to analyze how earthquakes can be predicted by measuring cosmic radiation.

The destruction caused by strong earthquakes could be significantly reduced if scientists learned how to predict where and when they will occur.

A new study from the project found a strong connection between cosmic radiation and earthquakes, although not in a way that anyone expected.

"We cannot imagine a conventional scenario in which cosmic radiation causes earthquakes, and this comes from my whole career—25 years—experience in the field of ultra-high energy cosmic rays," Dr. Piotr Homola, coordinator of CREDO and first author of the article describing the discovery in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics told Newsweek.

"The most intriguing outcome of our study is that we see a connection between the two seemingly disconnected science realms: cosmic rays and seismicity," Homola said. "But we cannot conventionally point to a possible causal relation: neither cosmic rays causing earthquakes, nor some process inside Earth causing a regular and complex effect with radiation that precedes a seismic shock."

While the hypothesis that a link between earthquakes and cosmic radiation may seem peculiar at first, Homola explains that the foundations of the idea are actually quite rational.

Eddy currents within the core of the planet—which generate its magnetic field—divert charged particles of cosmic radiation. So, if a huge earthquake was associated with these flow disturbances, the magnetic field would be affected, and cause changes inside our planet.

When CREDO scientists analyzed cosmic radiation data from the Neutron Monitor Database project (collected over the last 50 years) and the Pierre Auger Observatory (collected since 2005), a clear correlation was found between earthquakes of magnitude 4 or larger, and the intensity of secondary cosmic radiation.

But this correlation is only evident when cosmic ray data shifts 15 days relative to seismic data. This suggests it could give scientists information on earthquakes well in advance.

But it is still not clear whether it will be possible to determine the location of these earthquakes.

This is because correlations are not evident in location specific analyses, the study said. In fact, the correlations only appear when seismic data is taken into account on a global scale.

This suggests that from changes in cosmic ray intensity, we can see "a phenomenon to which our planet is subjected as a whole."

The findings open the door to consider other less conventional explanations.

"On the other hand, we have in mind exotic scenarios such as dark matter streams, capable of affecting both the Earth as a whole in a mechanical way (seismic shocks) and generate radiation which could precede the shock and be observed with standard cosmic ray detection techniques," Homola said.

"Such a 'third party' scenario could completely explain the number of peculiarities in our observation, although at the moment only qualitatively," he said. "The ongoing studies aim at testing the exotic scenarios we have in mind, and, if we succeed, this would of course mean an epochal discovery

CRISPR CRITTER
1st gene-edited snakes use mysterious 'Turing patterns' to achieve near-perfect hexagonal scales

Story by Jennifer Nalewicki • Yesterday 

Introducing the world’s first genetically modified snake.© University of Geneva

For the first time ever, scientists have created genetically modified snakes. The CRISPR-edited reptiles are providing new insight into how corn snakes (Pantherophis guttatus) develop their precisely patterned scales.

Much like feathers on birds or hairs on mammals, snake scales are the result of placodes — small, thickened structures on the skin that develop at the embryonic level, according to a new study published Wednesday (June 14) in the journal Sciences Advances.

But unlike most other species including mice, where the placodes are random, a snake's placodes develop in a highly organized fashion, laying out the positioning of every single scale. Rather, the spatial organization of these placodes follows a pattern in nature first explained by mathematician Alan Turing, the researchers added.

Scientists from Geneva wanted to know exactly how and why these "near-perfect hexagonal pattern[s]" developed on the dorsal scales located on the snakes' backs and flanks, but not on the ventral scales that form as a single row on the animals' underbellies.

The researchers found that an embryo's ventral scales develop first and align with the position of somites — blocks of cells that determine the location of the vertebrae, ribs, muscles and dermis of the skin. Once the ventral scales are established, two separate "waves" of placodes develop, traveling toward each other.

The waves meet laterally, creating the tidy hexagonal patterns that are the hallmark of a snake's skin, according to a statement.

Related: Scientists changed scales on chicken feet to feathers by tweaking a single gene

"To confirm our work, we used computer simulations and received similar results," lead author Athanasia Tzika, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Genetics and Evolution at the University of Geneva, told Live Science. "This is surprising because the pathway is essential for proper development of skin appendages in birds, reptiles and mammals."

Tzika pointed to lizards with a mutated EDA gene, which were previously studied in her university's lab, as an example of a reptile that never developed scales.

This led researchers to create the world's first genetically modified snakes. Using CRISPR-Cas9, which edits genes by severing the DNA and letting the natural DNA repair itself, Tzika and her team successfully created "mutant" snakes that lacked dorsal-lateral (hexagonal) scales, but still had ventral scales.

She said that this proved that the scales aren't "self-organizing" and occur "without a functional canonical EDA pathway."

In total, the scientists created four corn snakes, all of which are currently two years of age and "are doing well," Tzika said.

"The animals we produced are exactly the same as the naturally occurring snakes; we were able to reproduce the same phenotype," Tzika said.

She said they plan to conduct another round of CRISPR edits on the genetically modified snakes in two years, once they reach sexual maturity, "to see if the mutation will transmit to the next generation."

The IRS could recover $12 for every $1 spent on scrutinizing the ultra-wealthy's taxes

Story by insider@insider.com (Juliana Kaplan) • Yesterday

Joe Raedle/Getty Images© Provided by Business Insider

A new paper looks at the return on investment from auditing America's highest-earning taxpayers.

Economists find that every extra dollar spent on auditing the top 10% of taxpayers yields $12 in revenue.

However, audit rates have been plummeting over the past decade as the IRS remains underfunded.

It turns out that scrutinizing the rich's taxes pays off.

A new paper from economists at the Department of Treasury, Harvard University, and the University of Sydney looks at the return on investment from IRS audits from 2010 through 2014. They find that while it's much more expensive to audit the wealthiest tax payers, it's still a hearty return on investment. Auditing the top 1% yields $4.25 per dollar spent, and that number soars to $6.29 when auditing the top 0.1%.

And pouring even just a bit more money into auditing the rich could yield a lot more revenue, with every additional dollar yielding up to potentially $12 in revenue from the top 90th percentile of earners.

The findings illustrate how much money might be sitting untapped in what the IRS calls the tax gap — the chasm between taxes owed and taxes paid. America's highest earners are especially adept at not paying their taxes; a 2021 study from the IRS and economists found that the top 1% of earners don't report nearly a quarter of their income. And the top 0.1% under-report twice as much. The Treasury Department has previously estimated that the top 1% evade $163 billion in taxes annually.

That avoidance "has huge consequences. because it just means that low and moderate income families have to pick up a bigger share of our overall cost of government," Amy Hanauer, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told Insider.

"It also means that the public services that we all depend on are underfunded," Hanauer said. "So we have less revenue to pay for healthcare and education and higher education and infrastructure and all of the things that our tax dollars support that enable us to have strong communities."

But IRS audits have been plunging over the last decade, as Republican-pushed budget cuts have led to the agency's budget shrinking by over 20%, even as demand grew at nearly the same rate. Audits have especially plummeted for the country's highest earners, according to IRS data, with the audit rate for those earning $10 million or more falling from nearly 14% in 2012 to 9% in 2018, the last year for which the IRS has a good idea of the final rate. They estimate it fell to under 2% by 2020, although the IRS notes that the rate for the most recent years will increase as more audits are opened over time. A 2022 report from the Government Accountability Office found that, from 2010 to 2018, audit rates fell the most for taxpayers making over $200,000.

Part of that is due to the sheer cost of auditing the country's highest earners, who generally have more complex incomes and situation. As the authors of the latest report on audits find, it costs a little over $5,000 to audit someone who's in the bottom half of earners; meanwhile, it costs just over $15,000 to audit someone earning in the top 0.1%. But an audit of a top 0.1% brings in an average of around $95,491, according to the paper — and that also becomes the revenue gift that keeps on giving.

According to the paper, after getting audited, those taxpayers experience what's called the deterrence effect. After getting audited once, they're more likely to keep paying more of what they're supposed to pay. Per the researchers, those extra taxes one-time auditees pay out raise three times as much revenue as the initial audit, and that holds true for the richest tax payers.

But all of that comes as Congress once again strips back IRS funding as part of a debt ceiling bill, potentially leaving the agency without padding to up auditing enforcement and increasing the deficit.

"Republicans insisted on cutting that IRS funding, which makes no sense," Hanauer said. "It's going to reduce our revenue and it's actually going to increase the deficit by close to 20 billion, because we won't collect taxes that are actually owed that we know are owed. So it's really puzzling to me. Are they in favor of breaking the law? Because that's what it seems like

Face of Medieval Teen Girl in Rare Christian Burial Finally Revealed

Story by Aristos Georgiou • NEWSWEEK

The face of a teenage girl who lived in Medieval Europe and was likely an early convert to Christianity has been revealed in a detailed reconstruction.

The young woman, who died at the age of 16 around 1,300 years ago, was buried in the village of Trumpington, England, near Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

The nature of her burial was unusual and the grave contained an incredibly rare gold and garnet cross, among other precious artifacts, indicating that she had been part of the elite at the time.

Experts know about some aspects of her life based on the information gleaned from the burial site, which was excavated in 2011, but other aspects of her story remain a mystery. Now, new research, alongside facial reconstruction, is providing fascinating insights into the young woman's life and the story of Christianity as the religion spread across Europe.

The facial reconstruction created by forensic artist Hew Morrison will go on public display for the first time Wednesday at the University of Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) as part of a new exhibition, alongside artifacts from the Anglo-Saxon burial site.

Morrison created the likeness using measurements of the woman's skull combined with tissue depth data for Caucasian females.

While Morrison had to make some educated guesses regarding certain aspects of the woman's face, such as her eye and hair color, in the absence of DNA analysis, the reconstruction provides a good indication of what she may have looked like before death.

"Personally, I find it really helps to humanize her," Emma Brownlee, an archaeologist with the University of Cambridge, told Newsweek. "We know a lot about her life for someone who lived 1,300 years ago, and so I found being able to see her face a surprisingly emotional experience."

Brownlee, who was not involved in the reconstruction but has been studying the woman, said her burial was significant because it is "quite unusual" compared to others from the period in this region of the world.

"Most people in this period were buried simply in the ground, or sometimes in coffins, but she was buried in a bed," Brownlee said. "Only 17 other bed burials have been found in England, so it's not common, and is a way of marking someone out as being special.

The gold and garnet cross is another reason this is a significant burial; this is a period when Christianity was becoming the dominant religion, and the cross suggests that this young woman was an early convert. It also indicates that she's someone of high status—only the elite would have been able to access such rich materials."

The ornate and extremely rare 7th-century artifact known as the Trumpington cross is one of only five of its kind ever found in Britain. Other artifacts found at the burial site include delicate gold and garnet pins connected by a gold chain, and a decorative headboard.

"The significance [of the burial] is partly the rarity—of both bed burial and these sorts of high-status cross-shaped pieces of jewelry—but also what it indicates about who is heavily involved in the early Christian church in eastern Britain in the 7th century A.D.," Sam Lucy, an Anglo Saxon burial specialist with the University of Cambridge, told Newsweek.

"The evidence is increasingly clear that this short phase of furnished female burial—from about AD 645-685—is explicitly Christian, with many of those Christian items included within what are often high-status female graves, rather than male ones," Lucy said.


While we think of the church as historically male-dominated, there is a brief and very early phase in this period when women were very heavily involved, according to Lucy.

These women brought over some of the first missions from the kingdom of Francia—which ruled over large swathes of Western Europe, including much of what is now the territory of France and Germany—and headed up early monastic institutions.

"We don't think these very young burials would have held these particular roles, but they seem to have been part of that world," Lucy said.

A new analysis of the Trumpington woman's bones and teeth, conducted by bioarchaeologists Sam Leggett and Alice Rose (in which Brownlee was involved) helps to paint an even more detailed picture of her life.

The findings show that the girl did not spend her childhood anywhere in the British Isles but migrated there in her early teens.


The Trumpington Cross found at the young woman's burial site. The rare gold and garnet cross is only one of five of its kind ever found in Britain. University of Cambridge Archaeological Unit

© University of Cambridge Archaeological Unit

"By combining the scientific results with my work on comparable burials from right across Europe, we suggest that southern Germany is a likely place of origin," Brownlee said.

The analysis also showed that the girl's diet changed slightly between her earlier childhood and when she died, characterized by a small drop in the proportion of animal protein.

"This tells us that the food in her homeland and what she was eating in England was different," Leggett, who is now at the University of Edinburgh, told Newsweek. "This drop in protein could be due to a different food culture in England which wasn't very meat heavy, or perhaps due to adherence to religious dietary rules."

There is still much that we do not know about the girl, including how she died, although there are signs that she was ill throughout her childhood.

"She was quite a young girl when she moved, likely from part of southern Germany, close to the Alps, to a very flat part of England. She was probably quite unwell and she travelled a long way to somewhere completely unfamiliar—even the food was different. It must have been scary," Leggett said in a statement.

Researchers also do not know for certain why she moved so far from home at such a young age, although the researchers outline potential possibilities.

Evidence from this burial and others in the Cambridge region suggest that there was a movement of a small group of elite young women to the area from a mountainous area in continental Europe—most likely Germany—in the latter half of the 7th century.

"She could have been part of the early Christian Church, and moved to be a part of a religious house in England; or she was a high-status bride being sent over to solidify political—and religious—ties between two families or kingdoms," Leggett said.

The face of a 7th Century teenage girl believed to have been one of England's earliest Christians has been reconstructed. 

(Credit: SWNS)

HISTORICAL NEWS

JUNE 19, 2023

by Study Finds

CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom — The reconstructed face of a teenage girl from the 7th century may reveal what one of England’s earliest Christians looked like. Scientists in the United Kingdom say there’s an interesting twist in her tale. Chemical analysis of her bones and teeth suggest that she emigrated from southern Germany to the U.K. when she was around seven years-old.

Her remains were found near Cambridge, accompanied by a rare gold and garnet cross. This burial is one of only 18 bed burials unearthed in the country, suggesting that she may have had royal lineage. The burial appears linked to two others in the vicinity. Archaeologists speculate that these individuals might have been part of a group dispatched from Germany to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity.

After the analysis of her skull, the face of the girl, who was about 16 years-old, was reconstructed. Her renowned “Trumpington Cross” will be displayed publicly alongside her reconstructed image for the first time.

The teen’s remains were first discovered near Cambridge in 2012. The ornate cross, one of only five ever discovered in Britain, identifies her as one of England’s earliest converts to Christianity.

The Trumpington Cross. (Credit: SWNS)

Hew Morrison created the detailed image using measurements of the young girl’s skull and tissue depth data for Caucasian females. While the precise color of her hair and eyes could not be determined due to the lack of DNA analysis, the image provides a compelling representation of her appearance shortly before her demise.

“It was interesting to see her face developing. Her left eye was slightly lower, about half a centimeter, than her right eye. This would have been quite noticeable in life,” says Morrison, a forensic artist, in a media release.

A “you-are-what-you-eat” analysis of the young woman’s teeth and bones, conducted as part of a PhD research at the University of Cambridge, has revealed additional intriguing details about her brief life.

Bioarcheologists Dr. Sam Leggett and Dr. Alice Rose, and archaeologist Dr. Emma Brownlee, showed the girl relocated to England from a region near the Alps, likely southern Germany, about a decade before her death. They also discovered that the proportion of protein in her diet declined by a small yet significant amount after her arrival in Britain, a change that took place towards the end of her life. This suggests the period between her arrival and burial was tragically brief.

“She was quite a young girl when she moved, likely from part of southern Germany, close to the Alps, to a very flat part of England. She was probably quite unwell and she travelled a long way to somewhere completely unfamiliar – even the food was different. It must have been scary,” says Dr. Leggett, now at the University of Edinburgh.

The Trumpington Cross is found during the excavation of the burial in 2012. (Credit: SWNS)

Previous analysis revealed that the girl had suffered from an illness, but the exact cause of her death remains unknown.

Her remarkable burial involved her being laid on a carved wooden bed adorned with the rare cross, gold pins, and fine clothing. The ornate gold and garnet cross identifies her not only as one of the earliest converts to Christianity in England but also as a member of the aristocracy, or potentially royalty.

The most famous example of such a cross was found in the coffin of St. Cuthbert, at Durham Cathedral. This ties into the history of the period, as in 597 AD, the Pope had sent St. Augustine on a mission to England to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxon kings, a process that spanned several decades.

“She must have known that she was important and she had to carry that on her shoulders. Her isotopic results match those of two other women who were similarly buried on beds in this period in Cambridgeshire,” Dr. Leggett continues.

“So it seems that she was part of an elite group of women who probably travelled from mainland Europe, most likely Germany, in the 7th century, but they remain a bit of a mystery. Were they political brides or perhaps brides of Christ? The fact that her diet changed once she arrived in England suggests that her lifestyle may have changed quite significantly.”

Trumpington Cross burial facial reconstruction created by forensic artist Hew Morrison using measurements of the woman’s skull and tissue depth data for Caucasian females. (Credit: SWNS)

“These are intriguing findings, and it is wonderful to see this collaborative research adding to our knowledge of this period. Combining the new isotopic results with Emma Brownlee’s research into European bed burials really does seem to suggest the movement of a small group of young elite women from a mountainous area in continental Europe to the Cambridge region in the third quarter of the seventh century,” adds Dr. Sam Lucy, a specialist in Anglo-Saxon burial from Newnham College, who published the Anglo-Saxon excavations at Trumpington Meadows.

“Southern Germany is a distinct possibility owing to the bed burial tradition known there. Given the increasingly certain association between bed burial, such cross-shaped jewelry, and early Anglo-Saxon Christianity, it is possible that their movement related to pan-European networks of elite women who were heavily involved in the early Church.”

“The story of this young woman goes to the very heart of what our exhibition is all about – new research making visible the lives of people at pivotal moments of Cambridgeshire’s history. MAA holds one of Britain’s most important collections of Early Medieval archaeology and the Trumpington bed burial is so important. It looks like it still has much more to teach us,” concludes Dr. Jody Joy, the exhibition’s co-curator.

The exhibition at Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology will run until April next year and will also include pottery and textile from the Bronze Age Must Farm settlement, dubbed “Britain’s Pompeii,” as well as the amulet of a feast-loving chieftain, a carving of an Iron Age man and a young friar’s ivory belt buckle.

Generative AI Is at the Heart of the Ongoing Reddit Protest—Here’s Why

Story by Matt Crisara • Popular Mechanics


If you’ve been on Reddit in the past week, you’ve likely seen more than a few subreddits going dark. Seasoned Redditors will know that subreddits (essentially topic-specific message boards) come and go, but this recent mass exodus of thousands of them has raised quite a few red flags. So what gives? Reddit recently announced that it would start charging third-party developers to access its application programming interface (API)—a tool that developers use to utilize Reddit’s app data.

The app allows members to create communities about literally anything on the internet, giving these microcosms a space in which to congregate. With over 1.6 billion monthly users thus far in 2023, Reddit’s popularity has given way to third party apps that allow users to access the platform through a different user interface. However, the new, paid API could spell the end for these outside apps, forcing them to pay millions of dollars just to stay alive—therefore triggering the protest.

Which Apps Will This Affect?

Apollo is one of many well-known apps that provide a different interface for users to interact with Reddit; it’s the same information, just presented in a different way. (See the side-by-side image below for a comparison of the two apps.)


From left to right: Reddit and Apollo user interfaces© Courtesy Matt Crisara

Developers have a bee in their bonnet because access to this data used to be free, but now comes at a cost. Reddit plans to charge developers that require higher usage limits 24 cents for every 1,000 API calls or less than $1 per user every month. To offer some perspective, Apollo says these charges could cost upward of $20 million a year.

Why AI Could Be to Blame

So this new change is making substantial cuts into Apollo’s—and other apps’—bottom line. But why?

Generative AI is one of the biggest movers for Reddit’s recent decision to start charging for its data. If you think about it, Reddit is a perfect platform to collect training data for AI algorithms. Seeing as the app is an amalgamation of everyone and everything on the internet—and is updated as things happen—you can’t do much better than that. One of the critical issues with ChatGPT, for instance, is that its dataset is stuck in the year 2021. However, the data from Reddit could provide a massive step up for AI, and we reckon Reddit knows it—hence its paid API.

How Subreddits Are “Protesting”

Over 7,000 subreddits, including the larger ones—think r/music, r/gaming, r/science, and r/todayilearned—made access private between June 12–14, and some until further notice. This means that members of these communities will be unable to access these communities until Reddit reverses its decision to charge third parties to use its API.



the music subreddit pop up showing that it is now a private channel© Courtesy Matt Crisara

Developers see the move as nothing more than Reddit pulling the plug on third-party apps. However, the company says it’s “just business.” “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman in a June 9 Ask-Me-Anything thread.

Some of the more popular subreddits have come back online over the weekend after Huffman told NBC News on Thursday that he was considering making changes to the site’s content moderator removal policy in order to make it easier for regular users to vote out moderators if their decisions are unpopular—such as taking a subreddit dark.

A June 16 statement from the moderators of r/gaming, for example, note that Huffman’s words likely amounted to a threat:

Unfortunately, we’re at a point where we feel no amount of protesting will ever address those concerns, and any further blackouts and protests will only continue to hurt the community.
Initially, a majority of the community widely supported the blackout of /r/gaming. Though after the first 48 hours, it became less clear what the best move forward was. In the past day, we’ve been contacted by admins with what appears to be a thinly veiled threat to “reopen or else”.
Frankly, we had already prepared to reopen the subreddit, but we’d be lying if we said the pressure from the admins didn’t expedite our actions. At the end of the day, we do not trust that our community would be in good hands if solely controlled by Reddit administrators; we want to ensure the subreddit stays an inclusive space, irrespective of race, sexuality, or gender identity. The messaging from the admins—and specifically Steve Huffman—has been erratic, reactive, unprofessional, and inconsistent. We’re at a point where we want to make sure that the overall community will not permanently suffer from impulsive decisions made by Reddit.

That certainly doesn’t mean the Reddit protest is over. As of 10 a.m. on June 20, nearly 3,400 subreddits were still restricting access, according to a Twitch stream tracking the protest. Those that still have the lights out and remain completely private include r/DIY, which has over 20 million users; r/listentothis, which has over 10 million users; and r/photography which has over 5 million users. Many other subreddits are currently restricted, meaning anyone can view posts or comment, but only approved users can create posts.

Perspective: Twitter vs. Reddit

It’s important to note that this move to charge developers to use an app’s API isn’t unique to just Reddit. Twitter is another social media giant that shut off free access to its API after Elon Musk bought the company, with the end result leaving third-party apps with no other choice but to close up shop.

However, Twitter is a unique case because the executive decision was a unilateral move to ban third-party apps. Sure, it appears Reddit isn’t simply looking to sweep the rug out from under these third-party apps—being such a treasure trove of information to train AI models—but the end result remains that same.

Let us know below what you think of these social media companies slimming down their operations.

Fighting for their lives: Why children are taking the battle over climate change to court

Opinion by William S. Becker, opinion contributor •The Hill

 Yesterday 

Children worldwide are the victims of a profoundly fundamental injustice. They and future generations are victims of a carbon cartel in which governments and the fossil fuel industry are ruining their hopes for the future.

The world’s governments keep feeding the industry’s insatiable greed, giving it trillions of dollars annually in direct and indirect subsidies to keep producing oil, natural gas and coal — $6 trillion in 2020 alone. They know that fossil energy causes climate change, yet the world and the United States still obtain 80 percent of their energy from these fuels.

Children have the most to lose but the least power to stop it. They can’t vote; most can’t assert control as shareholders. They can and do protest, but moral arguments have had little effect. Their best and only legal recourse is in the courts.

Decades ago, Oregon environmental attorney Julia Olson took this personally after becoming a mother. She founded a nonprofit, Our Children’s Trust, to help children file lawsuits against government policies that promote fossil fuels. The result is litigation in 50 states and against the federal government, alleging that support for fossil fuel production violates youth’s constitutional right to life.

The first of these suits began last week in Montana, a state with a third of America’s recoverable coal reserves and a constitution that guarantees a “clean and healthful environment” for its citizens. Olson is the youngsters’ lead attorney.

In an even more consequential lawsuit, Olson and her team are helping 21 young Americans challenge the constitutionality of federal government policies that promote fossil fuel production and consumption. For eight years, the U.S. Department of Justice under Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden have used legal maneuvers to keep the case from going to court.

Now, a federal judge has ruled the lawsuit, Juliana v. the United States, can proceed. President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland shouldn’t continue standing in the way — the youth deserve the chance to defend their futures.

Observers doubt that either case, even if successful, will force changes in government energy policies. The carbon cartel is formidable. The industry buys the loyalty of Congress with unlimited monetary contributions to political campaigns. Last year it spent more than $130 million on congressional elections, with 83 percent going to Republicans. It spent another $124 million to lobby the federal government for more oil and gas subsidies, infrastructure spending, and so on.

Yet, a victory in Juliana could influence the outcome of 685 other lawsuits against climate-related government policies worldwide. The children’s goals in Montana are a declaration by the court that they are entitled to a future free of catastrophic climate change. In addition, they want the court to affirm that public officials have a fiduciary duty to protect vital natural resources like the atmosphere for current and future generations — a legal principle called the Public Trust Doctrine.

Further, they want the judge to establish that climate stability requires dramatically reducing the atmosphere’s concentration of greenhouse gases. Scientists say the climate would be stable at 350 parts per million. It is now 420 ppm and climbing. Concentrations of the principal gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), have increased 100 times faster than during the Earth’s last warming period, with half the increase in the last 40 years.

Scientists now predict that warming will exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius next year, the preferred limit of the Paris climate agreement. Nevertheless, the International Monetary Fund reports that direct and indirect fossil energy subsidies in the United States totaled $662 billion in 2020 — 33 times the $20 billion usually cited in the media.

As the trial began in Montana last week, an unscheduled witness appeared to underscore the importance of the children’s case. Smoke from 437 active wildfires in Canada — the same smoke that turned New York City’s air into an opaque orange toxic soup — crossed into Montana and triggered warnings it was dangerous to breathe in the Big Sky state.

Wildfires are one of several types of weather disasters providing indisputable evidence our climate is becoming more violent and rapidly making life in the United States more dangerous. As June began, there had been nine climate-related weather disasters this year, with losses exceeding $1 billion each, according to the National Oceanic and Space Administration (NOAA). Nearly 150 million people were at risk of flooding as spring began. In April, 25 inches of rain fell over 12 hours, triggering flash floods in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. It was an event with a statistical likelihood of happening only once every 1,000-2,000 years.

The right to life in the Constitution is not well defined. But it certainly must include the fundamental rights necessary for life: clean air, unpolluted water, toxin-free foods, and reasonable safety from human-caused deadly weather. The fossil energy industry and governments that support it are violating those rights.

Air pollution has dropped 78 percent since Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970. However, the American Lung Association (ALA) says 64 million Americans — one in three of us — still live where fossil fuel pollution makes breathing dangerous. About 7.5 million American children suffer from asthma, often because of poor air quality. The ALA says frequent and intense heat, drought and wildfires are making it more difficult to protect air quality. One study estimates air pollution causes as many as 200,000 deaths annually in the United States, about half from fossil fuel combustion.

The World Economic Forum acknowledges that water is a “fundamental human right.” However, climate-induced drought threatens water availability. So does fossil energy production and consumption, which account for about 40 percent of all water withdrawals in the U.S. 2.2 million Americans lack running water, and 44 million have inadequate water systems.

Climate change is a “primary driver” of global hunger, according to World Food Program (WFP). Researchers warn that 120 million people worldwide may be exposed to severe compound droughts yearly by the end of the century. Climate shocks like droughts and floods kill crops and livestock, degrade soils, damage infrastructure and drive up food prices. When that happens, conflict, displacement and mass migration follow.

These are only some of the threats to the lives of present and future generations. Climate change also compromises the pursuit of happiness, another unalienable right the Declaration of Independence calls self-evident. The carbon cartel is openly and profitably threatening it.

While the Montana lawsuit is the first of its kind in U.S. history, it must not be the last. And because greenhouse gases don’t stop at state boundaries, litigation should not be limited to state energy policies. The U.S. government and governments worldwide need to fulfill their obligation to fundamental human rights by ending fossil fuel pollution.

Our children deserve credit and all the support we can give them for trying to hold governments accountable.

William Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project (PCAP), a nonpartisan initiative founded in 2007 that works with national thought leaders to develop recommendations for the White House and Congress on climate and energy policies. PCAP is not affiliated with the White House.

How a Mexican spiritual leader preserves the sacred knowledge of the volcano known as El Popo



AMECAMECA, Mexico (AP) — Moisés Vega has a distinctive job: The 64-year-old Mexican says he can speak the sacred language of volcanoes to ask for good weather and a good crop.

Mexico lowered the alert level on the Popocatépetl volcano by early June after its eruptions of gas and ash had drawn the attention of the international community. For Vega, though, the 17,797-foot (5,425-meter) mountain, known as El Popo, is a living being that never fades from his sight.

“The Popocatépetl is our father and the Iztaccíhuatl is our mother," he said, referring to a neighboring volcano. "They are providers of water and we are not afraid of them. On the contrary, their exhalations are blessings because they give us life.”

There is no English translation for his profession, but among the inhabitants of the towns of central Mexico, men like him are called “graniceros."

“Their work is based on the pre-Hispanic notion of conciliation with nature,” said archaeologist Arturo Montero, from the University of Tepeyac. “They are regulators of the weather who believe that the mountains are spirits of nature.”

It's unknown how many “graniceros” are in Mexico. Vega says that in Amecameca, the city where he lives 44 miles southeast of Mexico City, there are only four (himself included). He estimates that there could be a similar number in nearby towns.

Many locals believe that only men who are struck by lightning and survive — Vega among them — are the ones who can claim the job.

“I knew I would become a ‘granicero’ since I was a boy,” Vega said. He was ordained to fill that role in a ritual in 1998.

His main task is to perform rituals three times per year to ask the volcanoes for good weather; just the right amount of rain needed for the crops. He mostly leads these ceremonies in stone shrines built by the locals in “El Popo” or “El Izta,"

He also works as a traditional healer and makes additional income explaining El Popo's story to tourists visiting a volcano museum in Amecameca.

Montero said it's not easy for contemporary “graniceros” to remain well-versed in ancient knowledge, given that many have to take a variety of jobs to get by. But they want to preserve their ancestral legacy and responding to inquiries from anthropologists, journalists and tourists helps them do that, he said.

On a recent Sunday, Vega pointed to a replica of a shrine built to show visitors what real temples devoted to volcanoes look like. He said the rituals he performs are a fusion of pre-Hispanic and Christian elements. In addition to flowers and fruits, shrines have crosses, but not crucifixes. They are painted in blue, to represent the sky, or white, to emulate clouds.

“I respect the (Catholic) religion because we grew up in this place, but the mountain speaks to us in the words of our grandparents, not in the words of the conquerors,” he said in reference to the evangelization led by the Spaniards after 1521.

The roar of “El Popo” tells him that something is wrong. Someone may have climbed its slopes to perform an animal sacrifice, which is against the community’s beliefs. A thief may have stolen the crosses from their sacred spots. A group of drunken men may have profaned its soil.

Alcohol is forbidden in the volcanoes, Vega said, because spirits can get drunk and interfere with the weather. This could lead to a catastrophe, he said, as bad weather can destroy the crops and leave people hungry.

The sacred understanding of “El Popo” varies from town to town, but many agree that the volcano does not threaten their lives. Leticia Muñoz, who sells avocados in the town of Ozumba, said she trusts “graniceros” more than the government and she would never evacuate her home.

“One sees that (the volcano) is harmless," she said. "If he wanted to, he would explode.”

The last big eruption of El Popo was in 1994; many in Mexico City could see the smoke. Many people who were evacuated said they lost their animals and vowed they would never leave again.

The connection between local communities and volcanoes has evolved through the centuries because each mountain responds to the needs of its inhabitants, said Laura Elena Romero, an anthropologist from the University of the Americas Puebla.

According to Romero, the sacred mountains of Mesoamerica are associated with the essential resources of life and that is why “graniceros” like Vega make offerings to ask for rain while others request prosperity for their businesses.

During rituals, she said, there’s a dialogue between men and volcanoes and they are seen as members of each community.

“The volcano wouldn’t harm the people to whom it belongs,” she said.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

María Teresa Hernández, The Associated Press

Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge explores founder’s slavery links

Story by Nadia Khomami Arts and culture correspondent

 The Guardian• Yesterday 

Photograph: Prisma by Dukas Presseagentur GmbH/Alamy© Provided by 

An exhibition by the Fitzwilliam Museum will explore Cambridge’s connections to enslavement and exploitation for the first time, both in the university and the city.

Black Atlantic: Power, People, Resistance features works made in west Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Europe, and interrogates the ways Atlantic enslavement and the Black Atlantic shaped the University of Cambridge’s collections.

Historic pieces will be exhibited in dialogue with works by modern and contemporary black artists including Donald Locke, Barbara Walker, Keith Piper, Alberta Whittle and Jacqueline Bishop.

Between 1400 and 1900, people resisting colonial slavery in the Americas produced new cultures known as the Black Atlantic, the museum said.

By asking questions about how Atlantic enslavement and the Black Atlantic shaped the university’s collections, the museum said it has made new discoveries about Cambridge’s own connection to colonialism.

The exhibition begins by looking at the early history of the Fitzwilliam Museum and its founder, Viscount Richard Fitzwilliam (1745-1816). A student at Cambridge, Fitzwilliam left a large sum of money and an extensive art collection to the university upon his death, founding the museum that bears his name.

It is revealed how a significant part of Fitzwilliam’s wealth and art collection was inherited from his grandfather Matthew Decker, a prominent Dutch-born British merchant and financier who in 1700 helped to establish the South Sea Company, which obtained exclusive rights to traffic African people to the Spanish colonial Americas.

The show’s first section, Glimpses of the World Before Transatlantic Enslavement, will highlight the independent histories of west Africa, the Caribbean and Europe, with highlights including rare pre-1500 tools and ceremonial stone objects from the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and Jan Jansz Mostaert’s Portrait of an African Man, which is believed to be the earliest individual portrait of a black person in European art.

Section two, Cambridge Wealth from Atlantic Enslavement, reveals how the profits of enslavement filtered into everyday life in Britain, and how European colonies passed laws that created racial categories to justify enslavement and promote anti-black racism.

Examples of historical race-based pseudoscience, some developed by academics at Cambridge, will be displayed alongside reflective pieces by contemporary artists, curators, activists and academics.

Fashion, Consumption, Racism and Resistance looks at how products harvested by enslaved people – from mahogany, ivory and turtle shell to coffee, sugar cane and tobacco – became fashionable materials for European luxury goods and central to everyday consumption in Britain.

And the final chapter, Plantations: Production and Resistance, highlights the contribution of Indigenous, enslaved and free black people to major scientific discoveries and botanical knowledge, which were brought back to Britain. Among the works included is John Tyley’s drawing of a young man sitting under a breadfruit tree – a rare example of a historic and named black artist depicting a black subject.

The exhibition, which opens in September, is the first in a series of planned shows and interventions at the Fitzwilliam Museum between 2023 and 2026.

Luke Syson, the museum’s director, said the exhibition was “an important moment in the history of the Fitzwilliam”.

He added: “Reflecting on the origins of our museum, the exhibition situates us within an enormous transatlantic story of exploitation and enslavement, one whose legacy is in many ways as pervasive and insidious today as it was in the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth century.”