J&J settles first talc cases to go to trial after failed bankruptcies

BRENDAN PIERSON
November 16, 2023 




(Reuters) - Johnson & Johnson on Thursday said it has settled two lawsuits claiming its talc products caused cancer, the first such cases to go to trial since a federal court rejected the company's plan to move its talc liabilities into bankruptcy court.

The settlements resolved lawsuits brought by two men, Rosalino Reyes and Marlin Eagles, who said they developed mesothelioma related to asbestos in J&J talc powder, and was part of a broader deal to settle all talc cases brought by the law firm representing them, Kazan, McClain, Satterley & Greenwood, the company said. Reyes' family continued his lawsuit after he died in 2020.

The company faces more than 50,000 lawsuits over talc, most by women with ovarian cancer. It has said that its talc products are safe and do not contain asbestos.

J&J and the plaintiffs' lawyers did not disclose any terms of the settlement, or how many cases it covered. Reyes' trial had begun last week, while Eagles' was about to begin, with a jury chosen.

"The Eagles and the Reyes families express thanks to the jurors and courtroom personnel who participated in the trial," Joseph Satterley and Denyse Clancy, attorneys for the plaintiffs, said in a joint statement.

"Our negotiations continue with the remaining firms who have a shared interest in achieving a fair and expedient resolution of their clients talc claims," J&J said in a statement.

"For those firms who elect not to pursue reasoned resolutions, we will continue to aggressively litigate their claims in the tort system, where we have prevailed in the overwhelming majority of the cases tried because the claims are meritless and are based upon junk science."

Trials in the cases have a mixed record, with major plaintiff wins including a $2.1 billion judgment awarded to 22 women with ovarian cancer. A New Jersey appeals court last month threw out a $223.7 million verdict against the company, finding the testimony of the plaintiffs' expert witnesses unsound.

The company stopped selling talc-based baby powder in favor of cornstarch-based products, citing an increase in lawsuits and "misinformation" about the talc product's safety.

The settlement comes after J&J failed for a second time in July to move tens of thousands of claims over talc into bankruptcy court, where it hoped to resolve them through a proposed $8.9 billion settlement. It is appealing that ruling.

Trials had mostly been on hold while J&J petitioned the bankruptcy court, but have now been able to resume.

(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)

Corporate, global leaders peer into a future expected to be reshaped by AI, for better or worse

MICHAEL LIEDTKE AND BARBARA ORTUTAY
November 16, 2023 

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Joe Biden and other global leaders have spent the past few days melding minds with Silicon Valley titans in San Francisco, their discussions frequently focusing on artificial intelligence, a technology expected to reshape the world, for better or worse.

For all the collective brainpower on hand for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, there were no concrete answers to a pivotal question: Will AI turn be the springboard that catapults humanity to new heights, or the dystopian nightmare that culminates in its demise?

“The world is at an inflection point — this is not a hyperbole," Biden said Thursday at a CEO summit held in conjunction with APEC. “The decisions we make today are going to shape the direction of the world for decades to come.”

Not surprisingly, most of the technology CEOs who appeared at the summit were generally upbeat about AI's potential to unleash breakthroughs that will make workers more productive and eventually improve standards of living.

None were more bullish than Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, whose software company has invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI, the startup behind the AI chatbot ChatGPT.

Like many of his peers, Nadella says he believes AI will turn out to be as transformative as the advent of personal computers were during the 1980s, the internet's rise during the 1990s and the introduction of smartphones during the 2000s.

“We finally have a way to interact with computing using natural language. That is, we finally have a technology that understands us, not the other way around,” Nadella said at the CEO summit. “As our interactions with technology become more and more natural, computers will increasingly be able to see and interpret our intent and make sense of the world around us.”

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, whose internet company is increasingly infusing its influential search engine with AI, is similarly optimistic about humanity's ability to control the technology in ways that will make the world a better place.

“I think we have to work hard to harness it,” Pichai said. “But that is true of every other technological advance we’ve had before. It was true for the industrial revolution. I think we can learn from those things.”


The enthusiasm exuded by Nadella and Pichai has been mirrored by investors who have been betting AI will pay off for Microsoft and Google. The accelerating advances in AI are the main reasons why the stock prices of both Microsoft and Google's corporate parent, Alphabet Inc., have both soared by more than 50% so far this year. Those gains have combined to produce an additional $1.6 trillion in shareholder wealth.

But the perspective from outside the tech industry is more circumspect.

“Everyone has learned to spell AI, they don’t really know what quite to do about it,” said former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is now director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “They have enormous benefit written all over them. They also have a lot of cautionary tales about how technology can be misused.”

Robert Moritz, global chairman of the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, said there are legitimate concerns about the “Doomsday discussions” centered on the effects of AI, potentially about the likelihood of supplanting the need for people to perform a wide range of jobs.

Companies have found ways to train people who lose their jobs in past waves of technological upheaval, Moritz said, and that will have to happen again or “we will have a mismatch, which will bring more unrest, which we cannot afford to have.”

San Francisco, APEC's host city, is counting on the multibillion-dollar investments in AI and the expansion of payrolls among startups such as OpenAI and Anthropic to revive the fortunes of a city that's still struggling to adjust to a pandemic-driven shift that has led to more people working from home.

“We are in the spring of yet another innovative boom," San Francisco Mayor London Breed said, while boasting that eight of the biggest AI-centric companies are based in the city.

The existential threat to humanity posed by AI is one of the reasons that led tech mogul Elon Musk to spend some of his estimated fortune of $240 billion to launch a startup called xAI during the summer. Musk had been scheduled to discuss his hopes and fears surrounding AI during the CEO summit with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, but canceled Thursday because of an undisclosed conflict.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicted AI will prove to be “the greatest leap forward of any of the big technological revolutions we’ve had so far.” But he also acknowledged the need for guardrails to protect humanity from the existential threat posed by the quantum leaps being taking by computers.

“I really think the world is going to rise to the occasion and everybody wants to do the right thing,” Altman said.

Guatemalan prosecutor moves to strip president-elect's immunity

SOFIA MENCHU
November 16, 2023 

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - A Guatemalan prosecutor moved to strip President-elect Bernardo Arevalo of his immunity from prosecution on Thursday, in the latest escalation of a political crisis that critics say is an undemocratic scheme aimed at overturning the election results.

Prosecutor Angel Sanchez, who works under Attorney General Consuelo Porras, accused Arevalo and his running mate of complicity in the takeover of the capital's San Carlos University last year, blaming them of damaging cultural assets, illicit association and influence trafficking.

Porras, accused by the U.S. government of corruption, has pursued a criminal investigation against anti-corruption reformer Arevalo as well as his center-left Seed Movement party since before he won a landslide run-off election in August.

Seeking to strip Arevalo and Vice President-elect Karin Herrera's immunity could lead to arrest warrants and ultimately disrupt their scheduled inauguration in January, though both judges and lawmakers must still weigh in.

Later on Thursday, Arevalo dismissed the prosecutor's action as "absolutely illegal" and an affront to democracy.

"What we're seeing is their limitless capacity to fabricate cases," said Arevalo, adding the efforts will not prevent him from taking office.

The prosecutor's actions, which also include issuing arrest warrants for 27 others as well as fresh police raids in search of evidence, was also condemned by a senior U.S. diplomat.

"Today's raids (ordered by prosecutors) and other ongoing efforts to undermine democracy in Guatemala are unacceptable," wrote Brian Nichols, U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, in a post on messaging platform X. He added those seeking to block Arevalo "will face consequences" but did not go into further detail.

Since Arevalo's 20-point margin of victory in August, mass street protests have broken out across the country demanding Porras' resignation.

(Reporting by Sofia Menchu; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Chris Reese)

@NO MASTERS! NO SLAVES!@

‘They called me a slave’: Witness testimony exposes alleged RSF-led campaign to enslave men and women in Sudan

NIMA ELBAGIR, BARBARA ARVANITIDIS, ALEX PLATT, TAMARA QIBLAWI AND PALLABI MUNSI, CNN
November 16, 2023

Mahdi, 16, was blindfolded when a strange man felt for his biceps. He was looking for a “strong” boy to use as a farmhand.

The size of his muscles helped the man determine Mahdi’s price as he bought him from a militiaman who had captured him in the West Darfur capital of El Geneina.

“They hit me and called me a slave. And they kept hitting me,” Mahdi said of his captors and other unknown men. “I’d crouch down and they’d smack me in the neck.”

His harrowing testimony was among dozens – including accounts from women who alleged sexual enslavement – collected as part of an exclusive documentary by CNN about the humanitarian toll exacted by the ongoing fight between Sudan’s ruling military and the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The documentary, which will air this Sunday on “The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper,” exposes an RSF-led campaign to enslave men and women in El Geneina, the largest city controlled by the paramilitary group in Sudan’s Darfur region.

Sudanese women who fled the conflict in El Geneina, in Sudan's Darfur region, line up to receive rice portions from Red Cross volunteers in Ourang on the outskirts of Adre, Chad, on July 25, 2023. - Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

A CNN team in the Chadian refugee camp of Adre, across the border from El Geneina, spoke to over a dozen witnesses who described the abduction of people en masse, with women forced to perform sexual acts in exchange for food and water and both men and women being traded by their captors. Their accounts shed further light on the violence in the genocide-scarred western Sudanese region over the past five months.

To protect the witnesses and survivors, CNN is not identifying them by their real names.

The apparent atrocities peaked after the RSF — which a CNN investigation has shown is backed by Russian mercenary group Wagner — captured El Geneina in mid-June. In the days that followed, a man named Khalid said he saw RSF-uniformed fighters escorting over a dozen shackled women into the El Geneina Industrial School, where he worked as a teacher.

“They flogged them with whips that they use on animals while the girls were screaming,” said Khalid, who told CNN he watched the scene unfold from his hiding place behind a pile of chopped wood in the school compound.

He only came out of hiding when night fell. Throughout the day, he said, he saw the fighters forcing women into classrooms at gunpoint, after which he said he heard sounds that indicated torture and rape.

Many of the women, Khalid said, appeared to have been trafficked from further north in Sudan — where women’s style of dress can display relative affluence, and where the tribal and racial mix is typified by generally lighter complexions.

Several Sudan-based rights groups, including the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) and the government’s Combating Violence Against Women Unit, have told CNN that they believe the RSF abducted dozens of women from the capital, Khartoum, trafficking them to the paramilitary group’s strongholds in Darfur.

Survivors of enslavement and assault in El Geneina spoke about repeated sexual and racial abuse at the hands of the Rapid Support Forces and their Arab allied militia fighters. - Alex Platt/CNN

Rights group activists say they have spoken to scores of local sources who said the women appeared to have been sexually exploited by the RSF. In Adre, CNN spoke to four other witnesses, in addition to Khalid, who said they saw evidence of RSF trafficking women from northern Sudan.

One former abductee from Darfur— who CNN is not naming — said she saw a 4x4 vehicle roll up into an Arab neighborhood in El Geneina, carrying four women who appeared to be northern Sudanese women in the back.

She said she saw an RSF fighter approach the driver and ask how much he was willing to “sell” the women for.

She recalled hearing the driver boast that he had “handpicked the women” and that “no amount of cash” would make him release them to the RSF fighter.

‘To us you are all slaves’

The trafficking of women from Arab-majority areas in the north of the country has become a widely discussed practice in Sudan, with widespread reports of RSF fighters demanding ransoms for their release.

In Darfur, captured women from non-Arab tribes appear to have been treated differently — the apparent sexual exploitation of women tends to involve shorter periods of captivity, and their abuse is reported by dozens of witnesses, survivors and activists to be racially fuelled.

The RSF, a largely Arab fighting force that has been accused of ethnically cleansing non-Arab tribes in Darfur, is widely named as the culprit of wide-scale sexual exploitation there.


The RSF has not responded to CNN’s request for comment about allegations of sexual enslavement.

The paramilitary group has previously denied allegations of conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign and committing sexual violence, in Darfur.

According to a Human Rights Watch report published in August, the RSF raped “several dozen women and girls” in El Geneina between late April and late June.

Mahdi, 16, said he was sold as a farmhand after he was kidnapped along with his brother, who was later shot dead. - Alex Platt/CNN

“The assailants appear to have targeted people because of their Masalit ethnicity and, in some cases, because they were known activists,” the report said.

Several former Darfuri abductees told CNN that fighters from the RSF and their Arab militia allies hurled racist abuse at them during their captivity. One 22-year-old woman named Raghm said she was kidnapped by an RSF-uniformed fighter from her home and detained in a brothel.

She said she heard her captor receiving money in exchange for her enslavement in the brothel — up to 7,000 Sudanese pounds, the equivalent of $10.

“He said to me: ‘To us you all are slaves. To us you are not free,’” said Raghm, who belongs to the Masalit tribe, the main target of the RSF’s revived apparent ethnic cleansing campaign.

Between beatings, she said she recalled him saying: “You are dirt. You are a disgrace.”

In Arabic, the word for ‘slave’ is a racial slur equivalent to the n-word.
‘They flogged us with whips’

Another woman told CNN she and the female members of her family were raped in captivity for four days.

“They locked my mother, myself, and my sisters up for four days and they raped us,” said 20-year-old Hawa. “On the fifth day, we fled. We saw some of (the Arab militia) on the street and they flogged us with whips. They told us to run for our lives, and cursed us, calling us donkeys and goats.

“The children were exhausted, barely walking a few steps before they collapsed,” she said.

Rapid Support Forces leader General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo speaks during a press conference at the Rapid Support Forces headquarters in Khartoum, Sudan, on February 19, 2023. - Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters

CNN also found evidence of the enslavement of males as part of the attack on El Geneina.

Mahdi, the 16-year-old boy, told CNN he was kidnapped by the RSF with his brother and that he heard RSF fighters negotiating his “price” to work as a farmhand. He listened to the back-and-forth between his captors and other men while he was blindfolded, his hand and feet bound by rope.

They felt his biceps because they said they “wanted a strong one,” he told CNN.

He said he spent 10 days in the house that he was sold to before escaping and making it to the relative safety of Chad. The brother who was taken at the same time as him was killed by the RSF, he said.

The documentary to be aired Sunday is the latest in a series of CNN investigations into atrocities committed by the RSF in Sudan.

In recent months, CNN has uncovered how the Russian mercenary group Wagner has backed the RSF throughout this war, as well as evidence of arbitrary executions, wholesale destruction of homes, and forced displacement of Sudanese civilians.

Editor’s Note: This report would not have been possible without the contributions of Sudanese journalists whom we are not naming for their safety.

Disturbing videos emerge showing atrocities against African ethnic groups in Darfur

SARAH DEAN, ALLEGRA GOODWIN AND DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN
November 16, 2023 at 4:20 PM


Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters


Members of African ethnic groups in Sudan’s Darfur region appear to have been rounded up by members of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and other Arab militias, according to videos and images verified and geolocated by CNN.

The videos emerged over the past two weeks. In one of them shared online and geolocated to Ardamata, an outlying district in El Geneina city in West Darfur state, racist slurs can be heard as men in fatigues refer to the captives as “dogs” and tell them to “gather here”.

In another cut of the video, the same men in fatigues can be seen whipping the men. At one point the men appear to be forced to run down the street. A man fires shots.

In another video, filmed less than a five-minute drive from the first video, the RSF logo appears visible on the uniforms of some of the men dressed in light colored fatigues who appear to be controlling the men huddled together on the ground. The word “liquidation” is mentioned and the words “slay them.”

The RSF on November 4 announced it had taken over the main army base in El Geneina (the 15th division headquarters), close to where these videos were filmed.

A Reuters reporter spoke to three men fleeing from Darfur into Chad on November 7 who said they had witnessed killings by Arab militias and RSF forces targeting the Masalit ethnic group in Ardamata, the news agency reported.

“Sickening reports and images coming from Ardamata, West Darfur, inc [sic] of assassinations, grave violations and massacres of civilians, following RSF takeover of area. Those with authority must uphold international humanitarian law, protect civilians, ensure rule of law and provide unfettered humanitarian access to vulnerable persons,” the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, Toby Harward, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

In another video that circulated on Tuesday, over a dozen bodies are piled together in what appears to be a mass grave. Three men inside the ditch throw sand on the bodies in an apparently half-hearted attempt to bury them. A voice from behind the camera barks orders at them.

It is unclear where the video was filmed, but one of the men helping bury the dead says he is from El Geneina. Halfway through the video, a man sits up from among the bodies, the dust falling off his face.

“Hey! That guy’s alive,” shouts a voice from behind the camera. “Kill him,” shouts another man shortly before the video ends.

CNN does not know the fate of the men concerned. It’s also unclear whether the men filmed in the ditch are the same men as those seen in the video running from RSF soldiers and militia loyal to the RSF.

The RSF has denied that “any incidents of ethnic cleansing or tribal conflict took place in the Ardmetta [Ardamata] area of El Geneina, West Darfur State.”

In a statement responding to questions from CNN last Wednesday, the RSF said it does not target civilians and that its forces are “fighting side-by-side with the people of Sudan to restore our country to its rightful path of civilian-led democratic rule.”

The paramilitary group said, however, that as a result of the conflict between RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the Ardamata neighborhood, their actions “did unfortunately result in the displacement of civilians” as the military zone is located amid residential areas.

“The conflict ended with our forces seizing control of the SAF 15th Infantry Division and liberating the division headquarters,” the statement said, adding that “since the division was liberated, Ardmetta has seen no further acts of aggression or armed conflict. Residents have returned to their homes, and security has stabilized, allowing life to resume as normal.”
New surge in killings

Amid the most significant increase in displacement in months, aid agencies operating in Chad say arrivals from Sudan have been describing a new surge in killings and fighting in West Darfur.

Ethnic-related killings have intensified since fighting broke out mid-April between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF, according to witnesses and aid groups operating in the region.

In September, the United Nations’ human rights body (UNJHRO) said it had received reports of at least 13 mass graves in El Geneina believed to contain civilians from the ethnic Masalit tribe who were allegedly killed in attacks by the RSF and allied Arab militias.


Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said Tuesday that, following increased fighting in El Geneina, its teams working across the border in eastern Chad have seen an “immediate and major increase in the number of people arriving in the region.”

“Our people there in Ardamata were killed and displaced. Children are slaughtered, women’s money and belongings are robbed, and they can’t escape,” one Sudanese woman, Nabila Abdel Rahman, told Reuters on Tuesday.

In neighboring South Sudan, the UN’s humanitarian agency (OCHA) said there has also been a “significant increase in Sudanese refugees in the past few days.”

MSF said a 27-year-old man had told staff at its hospital in Adré, Chad, that he fled El Geneina with 16 other people, but their group was attacked on the road to Chad. He said the attackers killed everyone, but he survived by playing dead.

“Eventually a new group of refugees arrived and helped him reach the border. He has multiple bullet wounds on his hands and legs,” the MSF news release said.
A pattern of abuse

The incidents described to aid agencies follow a pattern of similar alleged abuses by the RSF since the conflict began, according to multiple CNN reports.

“In the first three days of November, we have seen more new arrivals of Sudanese refugees than during the whole previous month; about 7,000 people crossed the border,” MSF outreach coordinator, Stephanie Hoffmann, said.

UN refugee agency (UNHCR) director of external relations Dominique Hyde said she witnessed a surge in human suffering when she visited Sudan last week.

In the Darfur region, fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and RSF has caused even more displacement with thousands struggling to find shelter and many sleeping under trees by the roadside, a UNCHR news release said.

“Child malnutrition is rampant, women are being raped, violence prevails and entire families are sleeping outside with no roof over their heads,” Hyde wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Since the war in Sudan broke out in April, 4.5 million people have been internally displaced and an estimated 1.2 million have fled to neighbouring countries, according to UNHCR.

On November 7, the US State Department announced that during talks in Jeddah, the SAF and RSF “committed to take steps to facilitate increased humanitarian assistance, and to implement confidence-building measures.”

They were unable to agree on a ceasefire implementation.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, IGAD, also on behalf of the African Union, and the United States call upon the SAF and RSF to put the Sudanese people first, silence the guns, and seek a negotiated end to this needless war,” a joint statement from the talks released by the State Department said.

They came after US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called for an “immediate cessation of attacks” in El Fasher in North Darfur.

“The United States is deeply troubled by reports of an imminent large-scale attack by Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on El Fasher, North Darfur, that would subject civilians, including hundreds of thousands of displaced persons – many of whom only recently fled to El Fasher from other areas – to extreme danger,” Blinken said in a press statement on November 2.

CNN’s Sarah Dean and David McKenzie reported from South Africa and Allegra Goodwin from London.

‘An invisible killer’: ACTUALLY A VERY VISIBLE KILLER

Beijing cleaned up its toxic air. Why can’t New Delhi?

ANALYSIS BY RHEA MOGUL, CNN
November 16, 2023 

More than 20 million people woke last week to a thick, acrid, and noxious smog that settled densely across the Indian capital.

Primary schools were forced to shut, vehicles restricted from traveling on roads and construction brought to a halt as a hazy gray enveloped New Delhi, blocking buildings from view and prompting residents to panic buy air purifiers.

Behind closed doors, state authorities and federal officials gathered to put together a plan that would clean up the city’s air after its Air Quality Index (AQI) passed 500 – a figure so high that experts warn it could be shaving more than a decade off the life expectancy of those who live there.

But the scene is hardly unprecedented.

Every year, New Delhi’s skies turn the same sickly yellow, prompting the same scramble by authorities to crackdown on the pollution. Every year, around this time, headlines about the issue dominate the news, reminding the country’s 1.4 billion people that smog season is back with a vengeance.

And every year, people ask why nothing has changed.

“It’s an invisible killer,” said Jyoti Pande Lavakare, author of “Breathing Here is Injurious to Your Health: The Human Cost of Air Pollution” and co-founder of clean air non-profit Care for Air.

“And unfortunately, there is just no political will to solve this problem from any party. There is not one party that has put its head down and said, ‘we are sickening the entire country and let’s fix it’.”

The Akshardham temple is barely visible as smog envelopes New Delhi on November 9, 2023. - Arun Sankar/AFP/Getty Images

A success story

New Delhi’s current toxic skies are reminiscent of another major Asian capital that about a decade ago was famous for a smog so thick that it could shroud entire skyscrapers from view: Beijing.

China’s capital has since cleaned up its act, which begs the question: if Beijing can clean up its toxic air, why can’t India too?

Like India, rapid industrialization and urbanization contributed to China’s remarkable rise as an economic superpower. And like India’s expansion, China’s came with an environmental cost: a deep reliance on fossil fuels and emission heavy industries that was making the air putrid with pollutants.

In Beijing, a city of nearly 22 million people, the air had become so bad that it was widely referred to as the “air-pocalypse.” Hospitals were often flooded with respiratory patients, and residents – especially families with children – were so desperate that many left the city to take jobs further south, and even overseas, where the air was better.

The central business district in Beijing on June 3, 2013. - Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images/File

The United States embassy in Beijing published its own air quality data, infuriating Chinese officials but also raising awareness among the Chinese public about how bad things had become.

A key moment in China’s fightback came in 2013, when the government started to invest billions of dollars into a national air pollution action plan.

What followed was a rollout of new regulations, including restricting the number of vehicles on the roads in major cities, tightening environmental oversight and controls on emissions, building a nationwide system of air monitoring stations, and reining in coal and other heavy-polluting industries.

Beijing, said Frank Christian Hammes, Global CEO of IQAir, “took it seriously.”

“We see electrification. In restaurants, and on street food vendors, we don’t see coal being used anymore. The power generators have shifted to gas. All this has made a big difference,” he said.

In the decade since, China has seen its air quality improve dramatically. The country’s pollution levels in 2021 had fallen 42% from 2013, according to a report from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago, which praised its “staggering success in combating pollution.”

A decade later, Beijing has long fallen off the top of the world’s worst pollution list and currently ranks 27 on the ranking by IQAir, a Swiss company that tracks global air quality.

New Delhi started the week by once again clinching the top spot.
Hundreds of thousands of lives saved

China’s raft of clean air policies have been so successful, they have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, research has shown.

The report warned, however, there is still work to do and Beijing’s particulate pollution – the tiny but highly dangerous pollutants that can evade the human body’s usual defenses – is still 40% higher than in the most polluted county in the United States.

Nonetheless, the data shows China is on the right track. And many in India want to see similar progress in their country.

“India has everything in place to change what’s happening. We have science and the finance, but we lack a reduction-based approach,” said Sunil Dahiya, from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) in New Delhi.

In comparison to Beijing’s strict measures that were intended for long-term success, New Delhi’s have been “reactive,” he argued.

“These are not solutions,” Dahiya added.


Morning commuters pass the CCTV tower in Beijing, China, on Monday, Oct. 30, 2023. - Stringer/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Traditionally, toward the end of the year after the winter harvest, millions of farmers clear their leftover rice stubble by setting fields alight to prepare for the incoming wheat crop. This, together with vehicular and industrial pollution, has created copious amounts of smog across the northern Indian states of Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and New Delhi.

Tens of millions of poor households in the country also continue to rely on cheap and harmful fuels for cooking.

At a nationwide level, India launched its Clean Air Programme in 2019, ushering in strategies across 24 states and union territories to reduce particulate matter concentration by 40% by 2025-26. The measures include cracking down on coal-based power plants, setting up air monitoring systems and banning burning of biomass.

Some Indian cities have seen improvements in their air quality, according to government data. But a lack of strict enforcement and coordination means progress has been slow, experts suggest.

To deal with New Delhi’s persisting pollution, officials have tried sprinkling water on the roads, restricting traffic by requiring vehicles with odd or even license plates to travel on alternating days, and constructing in 2018 two smog towers worth 200 million rupees ($2.4 million), which are intended to act as giant air purifiers.

Though it isn’t increasing, between 2018 and 2022, New Delhi’s average PM2.5 concentration (a measure of pollutants in the air) for the month of November, when the pollution season typically begins, has stayed more or less the same, according to IQAir.

This November alone, New Delhi has remained on the top of IQ Air’s list of most polluted cities for at least five days so far. To tackle the problem the city this year plans to induce rain to wash away the dust – a method adopted by other Asian countries, including China, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Traffic on a road enveloped by smog in New Delhi, India, on November 3. - AP

However, scientists say it is unclear how effective this method really is.

“These are just band-aid solutions,” said Hammes. “We need to address the underlying issues. And that is stopping biomass burning and switching to cleaner fuels.”

China’s authoritarian one-party system, unlike India’s democracy, means that officials follow orders quickly, experts say.

“With Beijing, once the government decided they were going to tackle pollution, they did it,” said Lavakare from Care for Air. “The same could be achieved in India – maybe even faster – but it’s just not a national concern. It’s a systemic failure year after year. And nobody seems to want to solve it.”
A blame game

Publicly, local and national leaders repeatedly trade blame for the capital’s toxic air.

Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s chief minister and leader of the Aam Aadmi Party, considered to be the antithesis of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has been accused of “inaction and insensitivity” by members of the national government.

They say Kejriwal’s team has done little in terms of implementing effective policies to clean New Delhi’s air. “Delhiites are complaining of itching and breathlessness and children are falling ill. Only Kejriwal is responsible for all this,” said Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva.

The AAP has retaliated by accusing the federal government of cutting their funding to tackle pollution and failing to take the issue seriously.

During a Supreme Court hearing last week, judges Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia appeared visibly irritated at the political backsliding. “There cannot be a political battle every time. We are at zero level patience on this issue now,” they said as they instructed authorities to ban fireworks ahead of Diwali and stop farmers from burning crops.

CNN has contacted both Kejriwal’s office and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India, but is yet to receive a response.

“Every party had at least air pollution in their agenda, but over time because of other factors that momentum has been lost,” said Dahiya from CREA.

Pollution might be taking a back seat, even for India’s citizens, Dahiya said.

“It picks up at times and dies down,” he added. “India is faced with lots of other vulnerabilities. It might not be an issue they talk about every day. But it’s one they certainly face every day.”

New Delhi residents burst firecrackers on Diwali despite a nationwide ban to curb pollution levels on November 12, 2023. - Raj K Raj/Hindustan Times/Getty Images

When millions celebrated Diwali last weekend, many defiantly took to the streets, with little to no pushback from authorities, bursting firecrackers that emitted more smoke into the sky.

As a result, New Delhi started the week as the most polluted city in the world, with a “hazardous” AQI level higher than 420, according to IQAir.

“Your most vulnerable population will be affected for the rest of their lives,” said Hammes from IQAir. “You’re not even giving a fighting chance for an entire generation, really.”

Lavakre, from Care for Air, said people will lose years off their lives.

“How do you even begin to come to terms with that?” she said.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for SMOG 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for AIR POLLUTION 

Australian telco Optus tells lawmakers it had no plan to address total outage

BYRON KAYE
November 16, 2023 


SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia's second-largest telco, Optus, had no crisis plan when a network-wide outage left nearly half the country without phone or internet for 12 hours, an executive told parliament on Friday, acknowledging the company's defences had failed.

The Singapore Telecommunications-owned company had recently war-gamed scenarios in which the routers that direct voice and internet data failed in entire states, but it never expected a nationwide shutdown because it had alternate connections built into its network.

"We didn't have a plan in place for that specific scale of outage," Optus managing director of networks Lambo Kanagaratnam told a Senate hearing on the Nov. 8 failure that left much of the country unable to make payments, receive healthcare or contact emergency services for most of a day.

"It was unexpected. We have high levels of redundancy and it's not something that we expect to happen," he added, using the telecommunications term for alternate routes to send data when an initial pathway fails.

The comments underscore concerns about the resilience of Australia's telecommunications networks, which have been in the spotlight since a massive data breach at Optus last year exposed the personal data of 10 million Australians. Now the company faces a fresh reputational crisis after the service blackout, which it has said was triggered by a standard software upgrade at Singtel.

The Australian government has already imposed tougher cyber security reporting standards on telcos, and has said it plans to introduce mandatory reporting of ransomware attacks in all sectors as part of an overhaul of the country's cyber security laws to be announced this month.

Kanagaratnam told the hearing Optus never expected a total shutdown because it had filters designed to stop all 90 of the company's routers from being overloaded with data. But the filters failed, cutting the company's ability to send data on alternate routes.

"The outage was a result of our defence not working as it should have," he said. "Our network should have been able to deal with the change."

The length of the outage - from about 4am to 4pm local time - was because Optus had to physically reboot all 90 routers plus another 50 core network devices, he added.

Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, asked why the company took six hours to dispel public concerns it was under a cyber attack, told the hearing "there were some strange coincidences that made us quite worried about that" because the Singtel board was in the country that day.

Bayer Rosmarin said 228 calls to Australian emergency hotline Triple-0 failed to connect because of the outage, but the telco had followed up all incidents and "thankfully everybody is OK".

Asked whether Optus was overly reliant on third-party contractors, Bayer Rosmarin said "it is something I do think we should look at, in terms of the right level of outsourcing and insourcing".

Singtel has said that although Optus experienced an outage after its software upgrade, the upgrade itself was not the cause.

($1 = 1.5473 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Gerry Doyle)

West Virginia training program restores hope for jobless coal miners

MARK STRASSMANN
November 16, 2023

CBS News


Mingo County, West Virginia — In West Virginia's hollers, deep in Appalachia, jobless coal miners are now finding a seam of hope.

"I wasn't 100% sure what I was going to do," said James Damron, who was laid off two years ago from a mine.

"I did know I didn't want to go back in the deep mines," he added.

Instead, Damron found Coalfield Development, and its incoming CEO, Jacob Israel Hannah.

"Hope is only as good as what it means to put food on the table," Hannah told CBS News.

The recent boom in renewable energy has impacted the coal industry. According to numbers from the Energy Information Administration, there were just under 90,000 coal workers in the U.S. in 2012. As of 2022, that number has dropped by about half, to a little over 43,500.

Coalfield Development is a community-based nonprofit, teaching a dozen job skills, such as construction, agriculture and solar installation. It also teaches personal skills.

"They're going through this process here," Hannah said.

Participants can get paid for up to three years to learn all of them.

"We want to make sure that you have all the tools in your toolkit to know when you do interview with an employer, here's the things that you lay out that you've learned," Hannah explained.

The program is delivering with the help of roughly $20 million in federal grants. Since being founded in 2010, it has trained more than 2,500 people, and created 800 new jobs and 72 new businesses.

"Instead of waiting around for something to happen, we're trying to generate our own hope," Hannah said. "…Meeting real needs where they're at."

Steven Spry, a recent graduate of the program, is helping reclaim an abandoned strip mine, turning throwaway land into lush land.

"Now I've kind of got a career out of this," Spry said. "I can weld. I can farm. I can run excavators."

And with the program, Damron now works only above ground.

"That was a big part of my identity, was being a coal miner," Damron said. "And leaving that, like, I kind of had to find myself again, I guess...I absolutely have."

WAGE THEFT
Waffle House charges employees for food — even if they don’t eat it

JOSEPH LAMOUR
November 16, 2023 

Waffle House workers are asking their employer to end a long-standing policy that regularly docks their paychecks.

On Nov. 8, a coalition of Waffle House workers and supporters delivered nearly 13,000 signed petitions from Waffle House workers, service workers and other allies to Waffle House’s headquarters in Norcross, Georgia.

As first reported by The Messenger, Waffle House workers delivered their demands with support from Raise Up The South, also known as Union of Southern Service Workers, which is being built by service workers to combat low wages and improve working conditions.

“Waffle House workers from across the South are fed up. We’re sick and tired of making poverty wages, the constant threat of in-store violence, and mandatory meal deductions — whether we eat a meal or not while on a shift,” reads the beginning of the petition. “We refuse to be exploited — and so we’re getting organized.”

Waffle House did not respond to a request for comment on this story, but told The Post and Courier, “Waffle House is proud of its long record of effectively addressing any concerns our Associates report to us. We intend to do that directly with our Associates.”

Cindy Smith, a 29-year veteran of the chain who works in Georgia, was part of the coalition of workers present for the delivery of demands.

Waffle House employees (Courtesy Union of Southern Service Workers)

Smith says Waffle House’s mandatory meal deduction policy, which takes a portion of every employee’s pay for meals — whether or not the employee eats anything — has been part of her time at the restaurant for as long as she’s been an employee.

“The meal deductions have always been taken out, but it was only like $1.50 per shift. Then they decided to start bumping it up,” Smith tells TODAY.com, adding that workers weren’t notified about any changes. “Every day that you work now, it is $3.75 that comes out of your check. That’s more than I make an hour.”

Waffle House employees (Courtesy Union of Southern Service Workers)

Smith, who makes $2.92 an hour plus tips at the chain, says the fee is doubled if employees work a double shift whether or not they eat. “85 to 95% of us don’t even eat the Waffle House food. We’re still having to pay for it,” she says. (Georgia’s minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13.)

Other employees say their Waffle House locations take different amounts. Dreanna Colvin says her store deducts $3.15 a shift, and Gerald Green told The Messenger he paid $39 in three weeks for food he never consumed.

“I barely have any money to pay any bills,” Smith says. “We can’t even buy groceries.”


In addition to an end to paycheck deductions for meals, asking that the chain instead make it optional for employees to purchase discounted shift meals, Waffle House workers are demanding that Waffle House pay $25 an hour for all workers, cooks and servers, that it provide round-the-clock security and allow workers to weigh in about in-store safety.

Waffle House employees (Courtesy Union of Southern Service Workers)

“At one point, probably 2011, I was robbed at gunpoint,” Smith recalls, adding that safety has been an issue at the chain for a long time. “Waffle House didn’t reach out and I had to work my entire shift.”

Waffle House has made headlines for crimes that have been committed in stores, including physical fights that have sent celebrities to court, robberies and even murder. TikTok is littered with videos of several different melees in stores across the country, including one viral instance that made a star out of a Waffle House worker with quick reflexes.

“It’s the same fights when I used to work third shift. They start fighting in the building and out the door and they’re in the parking lot,” Smith says. “It’s been going on for years.”

Smith says their safety demands also extend to working during natural disasters. Waffle House is known for aiming to stay open 24/7 at all costs, including during hurricanes, floods and more. This reputation inspired FEMA to look to the chain’s locations to see how debilitating a severe weather event is. It was coined the “Waffle House Index” by former FEMA director W. Craig Fugate.

“I worked straight through the hurricane that came through Georgia that put the power out. I worked every single day, drove to and from work, even though we didn’t have any electricity at home,” Smith says of Hurricane Idalia. “During the snowstorms, I was transporting people, they put ‘em up in hotels, just to make sure the employees get to work.”

Waffle House employees (Courtesy Union of Southern Service Workers)

Smith says, the day of the protest, she and the group of ralliers present at Waffle House headquarters were hoping for the best outcome, but they were ultimately disappointed.

“We all stood out there. We were very quiet. We were not rude. We were not disrespectful,” Smith says. “We only sent three people in to deliver 13,000 signed petitions for them to tell us if we did not get off the property, they were going to call the police, and they threw all 13,000 petitions in the trash.”

In terms of next steps, Smith says they’re “hoping to get more people to stand behind us, whether they work for Waffle House or not.”

“Waffle House claims that their associates are family, but you’re letting your family live below poverty levels,” she adds. “We’re starving to death. But we’re still getting up every day and going into work.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com

California scientists seek higher pay in 3-day strike drawing thousands of picketers

WHITE, BLUE, PINK THE COLOR OF YOUR COLLAR NO LONGER MATTERS WE ARE ALL PROLETARIANS NOW

SOPHIE AUSTIN
November 16, 2023 



SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — More than 1,000 state scientists in California took to the picket line Thursday on day two of a three-day strike, calling for higher wages for work they say often goes unrecognized in a state that sets environmental policy trends on the national and global stage.

The California Association of Professional Scientists, a union representing about 5,200 scientists across more than 50 state departments, decided to strike after three years of stalled contract negotiations, said President Jacqueline Tkac. The push for a better contract began when state scientists were furloughed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We're not here to settle for anything less than the fair pay and respect that we deserve,” Tkac said. “We hope that the state can recognize the opportunity that we have in front of us.”

The strike comes during a big year for labor, one in which health care professionals, Hollywood actors and writers, and auto workers picketed for better pay and working conditions. It also comes amid new California laws granting workers more paid sick leave and increased wages for health care and fast food workers.

The scientists — whose work includes creating earthquake warning systems, protecting wildlife and reducing air pollution — picketed outside of the California Environmental Protection Agency building in downtown Sacramento. Most wore green shirts representing their union, and many held signs that read, “Scientists Strike Back” and “Defiance for Science." Drivers, including firefighters, honked in support as they drove by.

Tkac accused Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration of boasting about the state’s leadership on climate policy without recognizing those who do the work.

“Nobody wants to be here, but we have to,” Tkac said.

The union says state scientists are paid 40% to 60% less than professionals in comparable positions doing similar work.

The state says it has been working to reach a fair deal with the scientists. The California Department of Human Resources recently filed a complaint of unfair labor practices against the union in an attempt to prevent the strike.


The department said Wednesday it was disappointed by the walkout and that the state continues to bargain “in good faith.” Camille Travis, a department spokesperson, said the union sought mediation then called for the strike before that process concluded.

The state will continue working toward a fair agreement with the union, as it has with other bargaining units, Travis wrote in an email. She said the state “has taken steps to ensure that service to the public continues with as little disruption as possible.”

Kelsey Navarre, an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, said it is important for people to recognize the wide-ranging work of state scientists that includes conserving natural resources, monitoring food safety and protecting public health.

“It's really hard to be able to make a living — especially in some of these larger cities like Sacramento and L.A. and in the Bay Area — on the salary that we get working for the state,” Navarre said.

Jan Perez, an environmental scientist with the California Natural Resources Agency who has worked for the state for 25 years, said she chose her job in part because she believes “the state has the greatest impact on preserving and protecting our environment.”

Perez said she's lucky to have worked for the state long enough to afford living in Sacramento.

“When I look back at what an entry-level scientist makes and what the rents are and mortgage is in Sacramento, I honestly don't know how they're doing it,” Perez said.

___

Sophie Austin is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: @sophieadanna

NYC
Central Park carriage driver charged with animal abuse after horse collapsed and died

SAMAN SHAFIQ, USA TODAY
November 16, 2023 

A carriage horse is viewed at Central Park on November 14, 2011 in New York City.

A carriage horse driver in Central Park, New York has been charged with animal abuse and neglect for allegedly overworking a carriage horse to the point that it collapsed and suffered from "significant health issues," Manhattan's district attorney's office said in a news release.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., charged the horse, Ryder's, coachman with one count of overdriving, torturing and injuring animals, a class A misdemeanor, and failure to provide proper sustenance.

Ryder was euthanized several months after the incident in August 2022 "due to his poor medical condition", said the DA's office.
'Unacceptable'

“As alleged, Ryder should not have been working on this hot summer day," said the DA. "Despite his condition, he was out for hours and worked to the point of collapse."

Bragg said that the abuse Ryder faced was "unacceptable" and that all animals deserve to be "treated with the utmost care".

The hoofs of a carriage horse are viewed at Central Park on November 14, 2011 in New York City. Following three serious accidents involving Central Park horses over the past two weeks, some local lawmakers have renewed their call to ban carriage horses.

What happened with Ryder?

The district attorney's office, citing court documents and statements, said that the horse collapsed around 5:10 p.m. on August 10, 2022, in the middle of the street at West 45th Street and 9th Avenue in Manhattan, New York after working in Central Park since 9:30 a.m. Ryder had been observed to be very thin and frail throughout the day and was seen "walking slowly while panting with his tongue hanging out of his mouth," said the news release.

While Ryder was suffering, his coachman "repeatedly tried to force him to stand by pulling on the reins, yelling, and using a whip," said the DA's office, adding that the animal was not given any water or sustenance despite the 84-degree weather.

When the horse collapsed and lay on the ground, his driver kept Ryder attached to the carriage harness, said the DA's office, until an NYPD officer removed the harness, allowing the animal to fully lie down. The officer also put ice and cold water on Ryder to help him recover.

"It was later determined that Ryder suffered from a variety of significant health issues," said the news release. "He was eventually euthanized due to his overall health and medical conditions."

An arrest warrant was produced for Ryder's driver and he was arrested on November 13, according to court records and arraigned on November 15, where he pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor. He is now expected to appear in court on December 20, 2023 to address the charges.

Attorney's statement

Raymond L. Loving, the horse carriage coachman's attorney, told USA TODAY that the case "reeks of interference by outside groups".

"The incident in this case took place in August of last year," said Loving. "Now over a year later the District Attorney’s Office has decided to bring criminal charges. Are you kidding me? People have known about this case for over a year."

"This case reeks of interference by outside groups being brought to bear on the District Attorney’s Office," added Loving. He did not specify who these "outside groups" were.

Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at sshafiq@gannett.com and follow her on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @saman_shafiq7.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Central Park carriage driver charged with abuse after horse's death