A new California law regulating online content moderation will force X to reveal how it reviews hate speech

Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert
Fri, December 29, 2023 

Elon Musk's X sued to stop a new California law from going into effect, citing free speech concerns.


The law, which regulates online content moderation, will go into effect anyway, a judge ruled.


Now X will be required to disclose annual reports about hate speech and extremism on the platform.

An attempt by Elon Musk's X to stop a new California law from going into effect was shot down by a federal judge on Thursday, signaling that the billionaire's social media platform will be accountable to a new set of rules about online content moderation despite the company's efforts to avoid such regulation.

The bill, AB 587, was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom last November. It requires social media companies with over $100 million in annual revenue to publicly post their terms of service, including information about how content is moderated on the platform. It also requires qualifying companies to submit two reports each year to the state's Attorney General, detailing statistics about actions taken by the company to moderate hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation or misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference.

X filed suit against the state of California in September, arguing the bill violates the social media company's freedom of speech under both the First Amendment and California's state constitution, writing in the initial complaint that AB 587 "compels companies like X Corp. to engage in speech against their will."

"AB 587 seeks to force social media companies to provide the Attorney General and the public detailed information about how, if at all, they define and moderate the boundaries of the most controversial categories of content," the company argued in its suit. "Put another way, through AB 587, the State is compelling social media companies to take public positions on controversial and politically charged issues."

On Thursday, a judge disagreed and shot down X's petition for a preliminary injunction, which would have halted implementation of the law.

"While the reporting requirement does appear to place a substantial compliance burden on social media companies, it does not appear that the requirement is unjustified or unduly burdensome within the context of First Amendment law," US District Judge William Shubb wrote in his decision.

He added: "The statistics required if a company does choose to utilize the listed categories are factual, as they constitute objective data concerning the company's actions. The required disclosures are also uncontroversial. The mere fact that the reports may be "tied in some way to a controversial issue" does not make the reports themselves controversial."

Representatives for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Since Musk's $44 billion takeover of the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, he declared himself a "free speech absolutist" and took aim at content moderation policies on the site, laying off a portion of the site's trust and safety team.

Under Musk's leadership, X has re-instated the accounts of users who had violated the app's old rules about inciting violence and spreading misinformation, including Donald Trump, comedian Kathy Griffin, and "manosphere" influencer Andrew Tate.

Musk himself has also engaged in a war with advertisers, calling them the "greatest oppressors" of free speech after multiple big brands pulled their content from X. The advertiser exodus followed reports of surging antisemitism on the site and a controversial post by Musk that suggested that the "great replacement theory" (often levied against pro-immigration Jewish populations) was "the actual truth."

He has since apologized for the tweet, which was widely regarded as antisemitic.

Elon Musk’s X Loses Bid to Undo California Content Moderation Law

Charisma Madarang
Thu, December 28, 2023 

Elon Musk’s X failed to block a California law that requires social media companies to disclose their content-moderation policies.

U.S. District Judge William Shubb rejected the company’s request in an eight-age ruling on Thursday.

“While the reporting requirement does appear to place a substantial compliance burden on social medial companies, it does not appear that the requirement is unjustified or unduly burdensome within the context of First Amendment law,” Shubb wrote, per Reuters.

The legislation, signed into law in 2022 by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, requires social media companies to publicly issue their policies regarding hate speech, disinformation, harassment and extremism on their platforms. They must also report data on their enforcement of these practices.

“California will not stand by as social media is weaponized to spread hate and disinformation that threaten our communities and foundational values as a country,” Newsom said in a statement at the time. “Californians deserve to know how these platforms are impacting our public discourse, and this action brings much-needed transparency and accountability to the policies that shape the social media content we consume every day.”

X, formerly Twitter, sued the state in September and argued that the law violated free speech rights protected under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and California’s state constitution.

After Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, he promised advertisers that the company would not become a “free-for-all hellscape” once he was in charge. A few months after the billionaire took ownership of the social media platform, The New York Times released a report showing that hate speech on the platform had risen dramatically his takeover.

In November, a report by the watchdog group Media Matters found that ads for brands like Apple, Bravo, and Amazon had appeared on X next to white nationalist hashtags such as #WLM (White Lives Matter) or #KeepEuropeWhite. Following the report, X advertisers Disney, Apple, Lionsgate, Comcast/NBCUniversal, and IBM severed ties with the platform.

Rolling Stone


Musk’s X loses bid to block California content moderation law

Nick Robertson

THE HILL
Fri, December 29, 2023 


Social media giant X, formerly Twitter, lost its bid to block a California content moderation law on Friday, with a federal judge dismissing the company’s challenge.

The company claimed the California law violated its free speech rights by requiring it to publicly post its policies and report data on hate speech, disinformation, harassment and extremism online.

District Judge William Shubb ruled the law’s reporting requirements should be considered corporate speech, which can be more closely regulated by the government.

“The mere fact that the reports may be ‘tied in some way to a controversial issue’ does not make the reports themselves controversial,” Shubb wrote. “While the reporting requirement does appear to place a substantial compliance burden on social media companies, it does not appear that the requirement is unjustified or unduly burdensome within the context of First Amendment law.”

The moderation law came under fire from tech leaders when it was first proposed last year. Florida and Texas have pursued similar reporting requirements for tech companies.

“California will not stand by as social media is weaponized to spread hate and disinformation that threaten our communities and foundational values as a country,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) said when the measure was unveiled last year.

“Californians deserve to know how these platforms are impacting our public discourse, and this action brings much-needed transparency and accountability to the policies that shape the social media content we consume every day,” he added.

X owner Elon Musk has severely cut back content moderation on the social media platform since he purchased it last year. The lack of moderation has caused advertisers to flee the site and launched legal inquiries into company practices.

The European Union launched a probe into X this month to investigate whether the company broke its content moderation laws.


Musk’s X Fails to Block California Content Moderation Law

Peter Blumberg and Malathi Nayak
Fri, December 29, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk’s X Corp. lost its effort in court to block a California law that seeks to control toxic posts on social media by requiring companies to disclose their content-moderation polices.

In an eight-page ruling Thursday, a federal judge in Sacramento rejected arguments by the company formerly known as Twitter that the measure violates the free-speech rights of social media platforms.

The ruling comes after Musk ignited a firestorm in November by endorsing antisemitic posts on his platform. X Corp. Chief Executive Officer Linda Yaccarino scrambled to contain the fallout after major advertisers like Sony, Discovery, Apple and CBS stopped or paused spending on the site.

California Governor Gavin Newsom said when he signed AB 587 in 2022 that it was designed to protect the public by demanding companies reveal their policies on hate speech, disinformation, harassment and extremism on their platforms, and report data on their enforcement of the policies.

But X Corp. complained in a September lawsuit that the law’s true intent is “to pressure social media platforms to ‘eliminate’ certain constitutionally protected content viewed by the state as problematic.”

The office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta said it was pleased with the ruling.

The attorney general “will continue fighting for this commonsense law, which requires social media companies with annual gross revenues of at least $100 million to publicly disclose information about their content-moderation policies,” a spokesperson for Bonta said Friday in an email.

Representatives of X Corp. didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The US Supreme Court is considering whether Republican-backed laws in Florida and Texas violate the free-speech rights of social media companies by limiting their freedom to decide how material is presented and requiring detailed explanations for content-moderation decisions. The court will rule by the middle of 2024.

Read More: Musk’s X Sues to Block California Anti-Hate Speech Law

When Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, he vowed it would be free of censorship and reinstated formerly banned users while firing content moderators. Researchers have said that during Musk’s tenure, the platform has seen a spike in harmful content due to policy changes in content moderation.

The self-styled “free speech absolutist” went on to hire Yaccarino, who was an NBCUniversal ad executive, to help repair partnerships in the media industry and lure back advertisers.

Musk has blamed watchdog groups including the Anti-Defamation League, the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Media Matters for America for a slump in US advertising revenue on X. He said they have tried to kill the platform with false accusations about it being overloaded with harmful content. The organizations have denied Musk’s claims.

US District Judge William Shubb disagreed with X Corp.’s argument that the California law interferes with the company’s content screening process in violation of the Constitution.

“While the reporting requirement does appear to place a substantial compliance burden on social medial companies, it does not appear that the requirement is unjustified or unduly burdensome within the context of First Amendment law,” Shubb wrote in his order.

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.


Musk's X loses legal challenge to California content law

Angel Smith and Brad Smith
Fri, December 29, 2023 

Elon Musk's social media platform X, formerly Twitter, has lost a legal bid to block a California state law requiring disclosure of content moderation practices. The failed challenge comes amid growing backlash over misinformation and insensitive content gaining steam on X after Musk's takeover.

Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi and Brad Smith break down the details, touching upon Musk's juggling of responsibilities across his other companies and X CEO Linda Yaccarino's leadership role in 2024.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.

Video Transcript

BRAD SMITH: Elon Musk's X is facing some legal setbacks in California. X, formerly known as Twitter, lost a bid challenging a state law mandating social media platforms to publicly disclose how they moderate content. The company tried overturning the law back in September of this year.

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, Brad, yeah, this one is really is an interesting one to watch from the standpoint is first, is this stabilize-- does this platform stabilize at some point next year? And if it does, do advertising dollars finally start to come back into the likes of Twitter slash X.

Because a lot of studies right now, a lot of research that is hitting into yearend, suggests a lot of ad dollars are flowing into LinkedIn, Meta, Instagram, you name it. And why is this important for Musk to get these dollars back? Because he can't be distracted anymore. I think it's very important for him to stay focused on delivering what he needs to deliver at Tesla because that-- that stake in Tesla, that value in Tesla essentially drives whatever he does, whether it's SpaceX, X, you name it.

BRAD SMITH: Here, the money is not going to flow back in droves and here's why. When you've got a replay video that any CEO or investor or perhaps not even investor, any marketer or advertiser who's overseeing millions of dollars in ad campaigns that gets spent on social media, you look at X, you look at the platform, you say it is a cesspool of some of the worst thoughts and perpetuation of just slander that has started to really unfold under Musk's leadership.

And I use leadership very kind of liberally in this because at the end of the day, anytime you have a CEO or a head of a company, a holding company that has Twitter underneath of it, telling its customers to go F themselves, who is going to--

I mean, there's an old book out there that's-- I believe it's titled "Hug Your Customer" or something like that. This is the exact opposite of hugging your customer. This is telling your customer that, hey, if you're going to try and move your dollars away from me for one reason or another because you don't agree with me, well, then you know what? I don't need you. It turns out you actually do at the end of the day.

And I think for other companies that are going to be able to capitalize on that. You mentioned LinkedIn, subsidiary of Microsoft. We can also think about Snapchat or Pinterest-- two of the other names that perhaps could see even more of that time spent going to their platform and also some of those ad dollars as well.

BRIAN SOZZI: One thing to watch I think going into next year, Brad, is if an X CEO Linda Yaccarino actually survives the year. Now, this is-- Linda is an incredibly accomplished industry executive with very deep contacts and deep knowledge of her industry.

At what point does she just have enough of Musk and decides this is not where she wants to spend the next year or two, three years of her life and her career. Because if she does, she may not have-- it hurts her reputation tremendously in all the many years she has put into crafting her space in this industry.

BRAD SMITH: 100% agree.


Elon Musk's X is seeing an exodus of ad dollars — and LinkedIn is picking up some of that revenue

Lakshmi Varanasi
Fri, December 29, 2023 


Demand for digital advertising on LinkedIn is rising as brands leave X.


LinkedIn saw a 10% jump in US ad revenue from 2022 to 2023, according to Insider Intelligence.


Meantime, X's US ad revenue dropped more than 50% this year, per Insider Intelligence.

Professional networking platform LinkedIn is seeing a surge in demand for digital advertising space from brands — especially those looking to part ways with Elon Musk's X. And it's helping the company charge more.

"This is LinkedIn season," Leesha Anderson, vice-president of digital marketing and social media at Outcast ad agency, told the Financial Times. "Most have switched over to LinkedIn over the past year… A few weeks ago most of our clients were off X. Now they are all off X."

Over the past several weeks, there's been a mass exodus of advertisers from X. Major companies from IBM to Apple to Disney have pulled ads from the platform following reports they were being displayed next to pro-Nazi posts and that Musk was doubling down on antisemitic comments.

And while Musk told departing advertisers they could go "f--k" themselves, LinkedIn seems to have presented itself as a more hospitable alternative, telling brands they could "work with a partner who respects the world you operate in," according to a pitch deck seen by the FT.

LinkedIn's US advertising revenue for 2023 will come in at close to $4 billion — marking a 10% jump from 2022, according to estimates from Insider Intelligence, which is owned by Business Insider's parent company. And that number is likely to swell next year to about $4.56 billion.

Meanwhile, X is on pace to bring in $1.89 billion in ad revenue in the US this year, representing a 54% drop from 2022, according to Insider Intelligence.

The influx of digital advertisers has helped drive up LinkedIn's ad prices, which are usually determined by an auction. In some cases, the competition has pushed up prices by as much as 30% over the past year, one executive told the FT. LinkedIn did not comment on how many digital advertisers it serves, but a spokesperson told BI that the number has doubled in the past five years.

Still, X and LinkedIn remain smaller players in the digital advertising space. X accounted for a mere 0.4% of total digital ad spending in the country this year, while LinkedIn accounted for just 1.5%, according to Insider Intelligence. Ad giants like Google and Meta brought in close to 27% and 21% respectively.

X did not respond to BI's request for comment.

Business Insider

Israel's Gaza bombing campaign is the most destructive of this century, analysts say

CBC
Sat, December 30, 2023 

Israeli troops walk in the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023. (The Associated Press - image credit)


Few outside journalists have been able to enter Gaza, but developments in satellite technology over the past decade have made it possible to accurately assess from space the destruction brought by the war in the small Palestinian enclave.

Some of the tools being used to track bomb damage in Gaza were developed to measure deforestation or damage following natural disasters.

In addition to taking bird's-eye-view photos of rooftops and streets, satellites can aim radar at an angle, causing it to bounce off buildings and scatter in a way that allows operators to "see" not only rooftops but also the sides of structures. Computers can then compare it to baseline data collected before the bombs hit.


Corey Scher of the City University of New York Graduate Center and Jamon Van Den Hoek of Oregon State University are experts in mapping damage during wartime. They've studied the effects of aerial bombing and artillery strikes in conflicts ranging from Syria to Yemen to Ukraine.

They applied data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellite to Gaza and found levels of destruction unprecedented in recent conflicts, Scher told CBC News.

"We're adapting and building off of almost two decades of research that's mainly gone into catastrophe impact mapping, so after seismic hazards or floods, and adapting those methods to war and conflict," he said.

Palestinians evacuate the body of a person killed in an Israeli airstrike on a car in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Friday, Dec. 22, 2023.

Palestinians remove the body of a person killed in an Israeli airstrike on a car in Rafah, Gaza Strip, Friday, Dec. 22, 2023. (Hatem Ali/Associated Press)

As of Dec. 22, 20,057 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war started, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. During the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took about 240 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israel.

The intensity of bombing in Gaza is something the researchers said they've never seen before.

"It's just the sheer speed of the damage," said Van Den Hoek. "All of these other conflicts that we're talking about [Ukraine, Syria, Yemen] are years long. This is a little over two months. And the sheer tempo of the bombing — not just the scale of it but the sheer tempo — there's nothing that tracks [like] this in such a short timeframe."

The two researchers have worked extensively on Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

"The extent and the pace of damage in Gaza only compares to the heaviest-hit cities that we've seen in Ukraine," said Scher. "And those were much smaller areas. Mariupol and Bakhmut by area are smaller and the built-area density and clustering of structures was also much less."

United Nations figures have yet to be finalized for both conflicts, but the ones released to date show that Israeli forces have killed approximately twice as many women and children in two months in Gaza as Russian forces have killed in Ukraine in nearly two years.

"Where we do have comparable surveys in Ukraine, Gaza is really standing out as much faster and much larger in extent. A much larger portion of the built environment is affected in Gaza," said Scher.

Van Den Hoek said that while Israel's 2021 bombing of Gaza damaged several hundred buildings, in 2023, an equivalent or even larger number of freshly damaged buildings are being detected in each daily data update.

"Somewhere around a third, maybe 40 per cent of all structures in Gaza, are showing some degree of damage, some of which are likely destroyed. In north Gaza and Gaza City, we see much higher rates approaching two-thirds," he said.

More damage than Dresden

The Financial Times did a statistical analysis that compared Gaza to the Allied bombing campaign over Germany during the Second World War.

Three cities in Germany were effectively destroyed from the air during that war: Cologne, Hamburg and Dresden. In Hamburg and Dresden, a mix of high explosives and incendiary bombs created the notorious "firestorm" conditions that caused streets to melt.

Data analyzed by Scher and Van Den Hoek shows that by Dec. 5, the percentage of Gaza's buildings that had been damaged or destroyed already had surpassed the destruction in Cologne and Dresden, and was approaching the level of Hamburg.

Israel Defence Forces (IDF) dropped around 1,000 bombs a day in the first week of the campaign and said that it had conducted more than 10,000 airstrikes on Gaza as of Dec. 10. The number of aircraft involved or bombs dropped on each mission is unknown, but Israel's main strike aircraft are capable of carrying six tons of bombs each.

For context, London was hit with an estimated 19,000 tons of bombs during the eight months of the Blitz, and the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was equivalent to 15,000 tons of high explosive.

The figures for airstrikes do not take into account the many thousands of artillery shells fired into Gaza since Oct. 7.

Biden denounces 'indiscriminate bombing'

Israel's bombing tactics have drawn criticism from its strongest allies. On Dec. 12, U.S. President Joe Biden warned that Israel had the world's sympathy following the Oct. 7 massacre but it's "starting to lose that support by indiscriminate bombing."

In a year-end interview with CBC News's chief political correspondent, Rosemary Barton, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that "the voices from Israel's strongest friends, like Canada, like Australia, especially like the United States ... are becoming increasingly concerned that … the short-term actions being taken by Israel are actually putting at risk the long-term safety and even support for a Jewish state into the future."

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas, and on Dec. 25 said Israel's campaign is "not close to being over."

"We're not stopping, he said. "We're continuing to fight, and we're intensifying the fighting in the coming days. It's going to be a long war that's not close to ending."

Israel has pushed back on the criticism, arguing its forces are conducting themselves no differently than U.S. troops did when they faced difficult urban warfare against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or when they fought the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But the intensity of Israel's air campaign, the size of the munitions used and the number of civilians killed as a result all differ from the Western allies' campaigns in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Smoke rises after an airstrike by U.S.-led coalition warplanes during fighting between Iraqi special forces and Islamic State militants on the western side of Mosul on Feb. 25.

Smoke rises after an airstrike by U.S.-led coalition warplanes during fighting between Iraqi special forces and Islamic State militants on the western side of Mosul on Feb. 25, 2017. (Khalid Mohammed/The Associated Press)

The largest bomb that coalition forces typically used in bombing Islamic State forces in Mosul or in their Syrian urban stronghold of Raqqa were 500-pound Mk-82 bombs. Israel has pounded Gaza with bombs of up to 2,000 pounds.

Also, Western coalition forces did not drop unguided bombs (also known as "iron bombs" or "dumb bombs") in or near built-up areas in their wars against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Ba'athist Iraq, the Iraqi insurgency or the Islamic State.

Israel, by contrast, has made extensive use of unguided munitions that are predictably much less accurate than the guided versions it has in its inventories.

CBC News has reached out to the Israeli embassy for comment, but has not received a response.

In a video posted to X, Israeli Air Forces Chief of Staff Brigadier-General Omer Tischler said "dumb bombs ... are standard munitions regularly used by militaries worldwide," and that the claim these are indiscriminate and cause uncontrollable damage is "misleading."

Overlapping "kill radius" circles

In recent years, the U.S. has developed non-explosive munitions that can reduce collateral damage almost to zero. It used such a missile — the Hellfire R9X — to kill al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul in August 2022.

The building he was in suffered no major damage and the family members with him were all uninjured.

Israel, meanwhile, has used the most destructive and lethal non-nuclear weapons in its arsenal in the very heart of Gaza's most densely-populated neighbourhoods.

Satellite imagery has revealed hundreds of new craters more than 10 metres wide across the Gaza Strip that are normally associated only with 2,000-pound bombs.

In some areas of Gaza, so many of the bombs have been dropped that the multiple overlapping "kill radius" circles cover entire districts.

Machine learning, machine targeting

Although Israel has objected to President Biden's characterization of its campaign as "indiscriminate," the IDF has acknowledged that it is using new artificial intelligence tech called "Gospel" to identify targets for its sorties into Gaza.

Little is known about the inputs that are used by that AI program, or the parameters the IDF has set for it, but Israeli users have described a system that generates new targets for bombing at many times the rate of human decision-making.

Former IDF chief of staff Avi Kochavi told an Israeli publication in June that the Gospel system is "a machine that produces vast amounts of data more effectively than any human, and translates it into targets for attack."

Gospel collates intelligence reports to generate likely home addresses for people Israel believes may be members of Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza. Those homes can then be added to the target list.

Palestinians evacuate from a site hit by an Israeli bombardment on Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023.

Palestinians evacuate from a site hit by an Israeli bombardment on Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023. (Fatima Shbair/Associated Press)

Even if there are no mistakes, such targeting with large bombs typically will kill family members and neighbours of the target, as well as passers by.

On Oct. 31, the IDF used a 2,000-pound bomb on the crowded Jabaliya refugee camp to kill Hamas member Ibrahim Biari. The bomb, which has a lethal fragmentation area equivalent to about 60 soccer fields, left a vast crater, killed more than 100 civilians and left hundreds more homeless.

The IDF says they have no other choice.

Earlier this month, IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told CBC's Power & Politics, "if we don't finish this mission, if we don't take out Hamas, then they will come back" and "try to do worse" than the Oct. 7 attacks.

Van Den Hoek and Scher said science can show the effects of such bombing but can't get inside the minds of those doing the targeting.

"We can't talk about 'indiscriminate' because that has intentionality loaded into it," said Van Den Hoek. "Indiscriminate means that you're hitting targets that are not intended, and we don't have any data on that. We can't talk about the precision of weaponry …. But we can talk about the breadth of it and the pace of it, and align with all these other data points.

"At some point, if everything becomes a target, then claims over precision are kind of meaningless. If everything is a target, what's the point of precision?"

Casualties tell the tale

The effect of Israel's approach to bombing has been seen both in the sheer numbers of casualties and in the identities of those being killed.

In just two months, the bombing has killed one per cent of Gaza's entire population. Allied bombing of Germany, by comparison, killed a smaller percentage of the German population over the course of the entire Second World War.

It's not clear how many of Gaza's 20,000 reported fatalities are civilians and how many are members of militant groups. Israel claims that it has killed one militant for every two civilians, a rate that Conricus called "tremendously positive."

For its part, the IDF said they are conducting a "precise, focused and process-based campaign," according to Tischler.

But even accepting Israel's figures and deducting them from the total reported deaths indicates that, in just two months, Israeli forces in Gaza have killed more civilians than the U.S.-led coalition killed in the first nine months of its invasion of Iraq, a country with more than 10 times the population.

The U.S. bombing campaign of Afghanistan following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is thought to have caused about 1,000 to 1,200 civilian casualties in its first three months.

Israeli bombing becoming harsher

The British NGO Action on Armed Violence has compared the death toll of Israeli airstrikes in previous rounds of Gaza fighting and found it to be several times higher in 2023 than in 2012 (Operation Pillar of Defence), 2014 (Operation Protective Edge), or 2021 (Operation Wall Guardian).

Each airstrike causing civilian casualties in 2023's Operation Swords of Iron produced just over 10 fatalities on average, compared to 1.3, 2.5 and 1.7 per fatal bombing in those previous bouts of bombing.

"This surge points to a potential escalation in military tactics, payload capacity or a shift in targeting policies that appear to have disregarded the safety and lives of the civilian population to a greater extent than in previous operations," the NGO concluded.

Comparisons with past conflicts reveals another anomaly of the casualty lists of 2023: the high percentage of women and children killed.

Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at the hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza, on Dec. 21, 2023.

Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at the hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza, on Dec. 21, 2023. (Fatima Shbair/Associated Press)

Israel argued after the 2014 war that the relatively low proportion of women and children among the dead proved that it was making efforts to avoid harming civilians, and supported its claim that 40 to 50 per cent of those killed by the IDF that year were members of militant groups such as Hamas.

According to figures compiled by the UN Refugee Works Agency, women and children accounted for just 37 per cent of the fatalities in 2014. The rest were adult men, including combatants and civilians.

But in 2023, women and children account for about 70 per cent of the reported death toll, according to the Gaza Health Ministry's figures. It may be that later studies will revise the casualty lists and turn up what for now appears to be missing: the large number of excess adult male deaths that normally would be expected when military power is focused on killing enemy combatants and avoiding civilian casualties.

Women in Gaza appear to be dying at a rate similar to men — and both are being outpaced by the death rate for minors in a territory UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has described as "a graveyard for children."

The IDF say they have killed about 8,000 members of Hamas and affiliated groups in Gaza, presenting a discrepancy with Gaza health authorities, who have reported only about 6,000 adult male deaths.

The 20,000 dead so far reported in Gaza more closely resembles a random sampling of its civilian demographics than the ranks of an all-male fighting force such as Hamas.

Nazi Germany had admirers among American religious leaders – and white supremacy fueled their support

Meghan Garrity, George Mason University 

 Melissa J. Wilde, University of Pennsylvania
Fri, December 29, 2023 

THE CONVERSATION

Thousands of people attend a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden in New York in May 1934, with counterprotestors outside. 

Anthony Potter Collection/Hulton Archive via Getty Images


Each September marks the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws, whose passage in 1935 stripped Jews of their German citizenship and banned “race-mixing” between Jews and other Germans.

Eighty-eight years later, the United States is facing rising antisemitism and white supremacist ideology – including two neo-Nazi demonstrations in Florida in September 2023 alone.

The Nuremberg Laws were a critical juncture on the Third Reich’s path toward bringing about “the full-scale creation of a racist state … on the road to the Holocaust,” according to legal historian James Whitman. Yet across the Atlantic, many Americans were unconcerned, and even admiring – including some religious leaders.


As a political scientist and a sociologist, we wanted to examine what Americans thought about Hitler and the National Socialist Party before the U.S. entered World War II – and see what lessons those findings might hold for our country today. Our recent research, which focused on religious publications, suggests that Americans’ support for Nazi Germany is best explained by belief in white supremacy.
View from the pulpit

In 1935, Adolf Hitler entered his third year in power and legally solidified the Nazi regime’s racist policies. During this period, Jews, Romani, homosexuals, the mentally or physically disabled and African-Germans were all targets of Hitler’s wrath. Thousands of refugees fled the country in search of safety – many to U.S. shores.

Chart from Nazi Germany showing the regime’s racial categorizations under the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Individual public opinion data about Nazi Germany is not available for this period; Gallup’s first survey on the topic was conducted in 1938. Instead, we used a database of periodicals from religious organizations that one of us, Wilde, had originally compiled for a book on views of contraception in the early 20th century. Using these periodicals, we examined the views of leaders in 25 of the United States’ most prominent religious groups.

In the 1930s, the U.S. was a far more religious country than it is today, with around 95% of Americans claiming membership in a religious denomination. The groups in our sample include 82% of Americans who reported religious membership at the time. Most are white Protestant denominations, but our sample also included Roman Catholics, three Jewish groups, Black churches, and smaller groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

We argue that while these texts are not necessarily representative of individual members’ views, they are evidence of the views religious elites tried to cultivate in large segments of the American population.
‘Unequaled in cruelty’

These periodicals dispel the notion that Americans did not know, or understand, the gravity of the situation in Germany at the time. A third of the denominations in our sample were critical of Hitler, and their alarm demonstrates that ample information was available about the escalating situation in Nazi Germany.


These groups, which were both Christian and Jewish, wrote about “the omnipresent terror that grips every town and hamlet”; the German concentration or “education camps”; and the number of people jailed, sent to camps, killed or sterilized. Leaders of Conservative Judaism warned that “German Jewry is on the way to extinction.” The Universalist General Convention described the situation in Germany as “unequaled in cruelty and brutality even by the Spanish Inquisition.”

On the other end of the spectrum, religious leaders from the Norwegian Lutheran Church, which has long since merged with other denominations, emphasized that Hitler was legitimately elected and enjoyed strong support among the German people. Another article recounted a recent trip to Germany, writing that “what we interpret as militarism” is a manifestation of support for “the program of Hitler” and “the common good.” The Presbyterian Church in the U.S. – a white Southern denomination that later merged with other Presbyterian denominations – wrote of Hitler’s regime making “effort[s] toward social justice” with reforms for illegitimate children.

And while some religious elites sympathetic to Hitler acknowledged that the Nazis’ tactics were unsavory, they suggested “the means do not, taken by themselves, condemn the end.”
Finding the pattern

As we analyzed the periodicals, we classified leaders’ writings into four categories. Beyond groups that clearly sympathized with Hitler or criticized him, the largest number were ambivalent, with mixed views. Others were “distant,” barely commenting on events in Europe.

We found that two main factors explain religious elites’ views of Hitler in 1935. The first is whether their group embraced white supremacist ideas. The second is whether they were atop the religious hierarchy – that is, mainstream Protestant denominations whose members would not have been at risk of persecution in Germany.

Groups that consistently criticized Hitler had members that were marginalized because of their race or ethnicity. They regularly spoke out against prejudice, segregation and lynching. In contrast, denominations that were well established and mostly white tended to be ambivalent toward Nazism, even those that spoke out against anti-Black racism in the U.S.

Jewish pushcart workers on New York’s Lower East Side participated in a two-hour protest in 1933, refusing to make sales, during a day of mass demonstrations against the persecution of German Jews. 

Bettmann via Getty Images

But a few groups, five in total, did more than express ambivalence – they openly sympathized with Hitler. What united these groups were white supremacist beliefs. Their periodicals included articles titled “The Fitness of the Anglo-Saxon” and “Why the Anglo Saxon,” emphasizing “men are born equal in their rights, but they are not equal in their fitness and ability to serve … God needed the white Anglo-Saxon race.”

Importantly, the groups that supported Hitler were also antisemitic and eugenicists, believing human beings could be “perfected” through selective breeding.

However, antisemitism was rampant at the time, even among groups that were ambivalent about Hitler. Similarly, support for eugenics was too broad to explain why certain religious groups in the U.S. sympathized with the Nazis. There were even religious leaders who criticized Hitler yet had connections to the American Eugenics Movement, which promoted forced sterilization laws and, later, the legalization of birth control.

Instead, what most strongly differentiated Hitler’s sympathizers in this era was their belief in white supremacy vis-a-vis African Americans. These groups published literature claiming that African Americans were physically and mentally inferior, and one wrote positively of the Ku Klux Klan. A Southern Baptist bishop wrote, “The Negro is not like the white man … there are striking differences physical and mental,” going on to claim, “the white race … assumes its superiority in strength and capacity.”
Fast-forward

Although 1935 is nearly a century behind us, U.S. politics has been awash in comparisons to the Third Reich for several years now. Former President Donald Trump recently compared his indictments to Nazi Germany, obfuscating the mass atrocities of Hitler’s regime.

But such comparisons do prompt reflection on what drove American support for Nazi Germany in the 1930s, as Trump campaigns with an authoritarian vision for his second term, and as white nationalism remains a major aspect of U.S. politics.

In 1935, Europe was not at war, and concern about mass killings would have seemed alarmist. Yet just a few years later, a global conflagration began. On the anniversary of the Nuremberg Laws, what motivated American support for Hitler’s authoritarianism in the 1930s still resonates today.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.

It was written by: Meghan Garrity, George Mason University and Melissa J. Wilde, University of Pennsylvania.

Read more:


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Holy voter suppression, Batgirl! What comics reveal about gender and democracy

Melissa Wilde received funding from the Louisville Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania for the data connected to this research.

Meghan Garrity does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Argentina’s Top Unions Call Strike Against Milei’s Reforms

NOT A LIBERTARIAN HE'S A FASCIST

Maria Eloisa Capurro
Thu, December 28, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- President Javier Milei will face his first general strike after just more than a month in office as Argentina’s top unions call for a nationwide protest against his plans to deregulate the country’s economy, change its voting system and reduce social safety nets.

Workers will stop across the country on Jan. 24 to protest Milei’s measures, according to an announcement on Thursday from the CGT, one of Argentina’s oldest and most powerful union groups. They plan to take to the streets around congress in Buenos Aires to fight an “illegal” decree to deregulate the economy signed by the president last week, union leader Hector Daer said in a speech.

The strike will be the biggest test yet to Milei’s plans to reduce the hand of the state in Argentina’s crisis-prone economy. It is also the fastest called by CGT after the inauguration of a new president in the past 40 years, according to local media. The government on Wednesday sent to congress a wide-ranging bill with hundreds of proposals spanning from the elimination of Argentina’s primary elections to the privatization of 41 state-owned companies.

Read More: Milei Blitzes Argentina’s Congress With Far-Ranging Reform Bill

The bill, several hundred pages long, gives Milei additional powers to decide on economic policy throughout his term.

With less than a month in office, the new government is already facing a series of street protests after announcing the end of price controls, sharp spending cuts and a more than 50% devaluation of the Argentine peso.

The general strike by unions connected to the Peronist movement now in the opposition would also test the hard-line approach of Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, who recently announced a series of measures to limit protests and street blockades carried out without a permit.

Argentines protest against Milei's 'mega-decree' imposing austerity

Saskia O'Donoghue
Thu, December 28, 2023

Argentines protest against Milei's 'mega-decree' imposing austerity

Thousands of Argentines have taken to the streets of Buenos Aires to protest a decree of sweeping economic reform and deregulation proposed by newly-elected President Javier Milei.

Marching at the behest of labour unions, the protesters demanded the courts intervene to invalidate the mega-decree they say would carve away at worker and consumer protections.

Congress is sitting in an extraordinary session this week, at the request of ultra-libertarian Milei - in office since 20 December 10 - to consider the plan.

The decree would change or scrap more than 350 economic regulations in a country accustomed to heavy government intervention in the market.

Among others, it abolishes a price ceiling on rent, eliminates some worker protections and scraps laws shielding consumers from abusive price increases at a time annual inflation exceeds 160% and the poverty level has surpassed 40%.

Members of the Argentine Workers' General Confederation and social organisations protest against the economic reforms of Argentine President Javier Milei - Matias Baglietto/NurPhoto via Getty Images

A number of civic groups have recently filed a judicial motion to have the decree declared unconstitutional.

On Wednesday, protesters waved Argentine flags and placards reading: "The homeland is not for sale."

"We do not question the legitimacy of President Milei, but we want him to respect the division of powers. Workers need to defend their rights when there is an unconstitutionality," construction union leader Gerardo Martinez told reporters at the march.

What might happen to Argentina after Milei's mega-decree?

Milei's "chainsaw plan" to cut state spending has triggered a series of street protests against the government.

Other aspects of the decree include an end to automatic pension increases, restrictions on the right to strike - and easing away from price caps for private health services.

It also terminates some 7,000 civil service contracts.

Unless Congress scraps the plan in its entirety, the decree will enter into force on Friday.

Milei's far-right party, Freedom Advances, has 40 of the 257 deputies in Congress and seven of 72 senators.

"The decree is destructive of all labour rights," 45-year-old teacher Martin Lucero, who took part in the protest, said.

"The Argentine people chose Milei as president of the nation, not as emperor," he added.

Milei Brings His Chainsaw to Argentina's Regulatory State
Katarina Hall
Fri, December 29, 2023 at 5:15 AM MST·3 min read

Javier Milei | JUAN MABROMATA / GDA Photo Service/Newscom

A little more than two weeks after assuming office, Argentinian President Javier Milei on Wednesday presented his most extensive reform bill to Congress aimed at deregulating South America's second-largest economy.

The 351-page bill includes 664 articles aimed at deregulating and modifying laws pertaining to several sectors, including labor, commercial, real estate, aeronautics, and health. According to Milei, the omnibus bill contains two-thirds of all of his reform proposals.

"Argentina is immersed in a serious and deep economic, financial, fiscal, social, pension, security, defense, tariff, energy, health and social crisis without precedent, which affects all levels of society and the very functioning of the State," the bill states.

These crises were caused by "an innumerable number of restrictions on the exercise of constitutional rights, especially those of trading, working, and exercising lawful industry," the bill continues, adding that these restrictions "severely limit competition" and "artificially distort prices" while "burdening the real income of citizens."

The first measure in the bill calls for the declaration of "a public emergency in economic, financial, fiscal, pensions, defense, tariff, energy, health, administrative, and social matters until December 31, 2025." If approved, this would mean that Milei would have both the executive and legislative powers and would be able to decide on issues that are currently only regulated by Congress. The measure can be extended for up to two years.

An entire chapter of the bill is dedicated to privatizing several state-owned companies in order to generate "greater competition and economic efficiency, reduce the tax burden, improve the quality of services, promote private investment and professionalize management." The bill mentions 41 companies it proposes to privatize, including the flagship airline Aerolíneas Argentinas, the oil company YFP, the country's largest bank, Banco de la Nación, the news agency Télam, the water company AYSA, the Argentine mint, and the country's rail system.

Milei's proposal aims to simplify, digitalize, and de-bureaucratize the administration "to promote transparency and due administrative process…to obtain efficient regulations for market competitiveness, job creation, and everything that contributes to raising the standard of living of citizens."

The bill proposes to eliminate the primary elections and switch to a single-ballot system. It also seeks to move the chamber of deputies from a system that determines the number of representatives proportionally with the population to one of single-member constituencies.

The bill also extends the government's new anti-protest measures, increasing penalties to up to four years in prison for those who use arms to disrupt public transportation and up to five years for those who "direct, organize, or coordinate a meeting or demonstration that impedes, hinders or obstructs circulation."

Another chapter specifically addresses oil and seeks to ensure affordable oil supplies by leaving prices up to the market. Currently, the government can meddle in crude and gasoline prices, according to Bloomberg. The new bill will not allow the executive branch "to intervene, or fix, prices in the domestic market."

Other measures in the bill include the resale of sports tickets with "no limit to the number of times such operation may be carried out;" the authorization of self-driving cars for individuals, passengers, or cargo; abolishing price ceilings on rent; easing price caps for private health services; and "express divorces."

The measures will be reviewed by Congress during the extraordinary sessions that began this week and will last until January 31. But Milei's opposition, which holds the majority of seats in Congress, has vowed to not let the decree pass. Meanwhile, protests have sprung up in response to the omnibus bill. Several social organizations took to the streets in Buenos Aires, and Argentina's main labor union called for a general strike on January 24 in protest against the reforms.

Should Milei's sweeping reforms pass, Argentina would move from being one of the world's most regulated economies to a deregulated, free market economy that could reverse decades of government failure.

The post Milei Brings His Chainsaw to Argentina's Regulatory State appeared first on Reason.com.


Explainer-What is in Javier Milei's sweeping Argentina reform bill?

Lucinda Elliott and Jorgelina do Rosario
Updated Fri, December 29, 2023 

Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei closes his political campaign in Buenos Aires

By Lucinda Elliott and Jorgelina do Rosario

(Reuters) - Argentine President Javier Milei has sent a reform bill to Congress proposing far-reaching changes to the country's tax system, electoral law and public debt management.

The push to reshape South America's second-largest economy with an omnibus bill requires approval from lawmakers in both chambers of Congress, where Milei's coalition holds a small minority of seats.

WHAT ARE THE MAJOR REFORMS IN THE BILL?

The bill has 664 articles that range from allowing the privatization of 41 public companies, eliminating the presidential primary vote and introducing a broad 15% tax on most exports.

The government also proposed raising export taxes for soy and its derivatives to 33% from 31%. Argentina is the world's No. 1 exporter of processed soy.

The bill aims to introduce tax amnesties for Argentines, allowing them to register and repatriate some undeclared assets such as stocks, cryptocurrencies and cash.

A reform to public debt management would remove limits on sovereign bonds issued overseas and eliminate some conditions on restructuring debt.

Changes to Argentina's proportional representation electoral system would raise the number of lawmakers in each district to one per 161,000 inhabitants, from one per 180,000 inhabitants. This would give more power to the populous province of Buenos Aires in the lower house of Congress, according to a note to clients by consultancy firm 1816.

Among the more controversial reforms cited, is a call to cede some legislative power to the presidency until Dec. 31, 2025, with the option to extend these for a further two years.

WHAT ABOUT MILEI'S PRESIDENTIAL DECREE?

Markets cautiously welcomed a presidential decree from Milei last week to deregulate the economy, which came into effect on Dec.29 and also introduces wide-ranging reforms such as the end to export limits.

That decree must go before a legislative commission to weigh its constitutionality. It will remain in force unless both Congress and the Senate vote it down.

Unlike the reform bill, the presidential decree does not include changes to the tax and the electoral system, which must be put to congressional debate under Argentina's constitution.

HOW LONG COULD IT TAKE TO PASS THE REFORM BILL?

Milei's government sent the bill to Congress on Wednesday and has called for extraordinary sessions to fast-track its reform agenda.

The extraordinary sessions are scheduled through Jan. 31, shortening the usual recess until March. Lawmakers will set up commissions to analyze the proposals, which may include input from experts and government officials.

Several of the measures proposed require an absolute majority, such as electoral reform, which analysts warn could slow the process down. There is no set timeline stipulated for the bill to be debated.

HOW STRONG IS THE GOVERNMENT'S POSITION IN CONGRESS?

Milei's coalition, La Libertad Avanza, controls only 15% of seats in the lower house, so must rally support to move forward.

If eventually approved by the lower house, the bill moves to the Senate, where the government is even weaker, with less than 10% of seats.

Given his lack of a strong party or a majority in either chamber, analysts warn that Milei faces an uphill battle to advance his reform agenda.

"My doubt is whether Milei is open to accepting changes, or whether he wants the bill to pass without accepting any amendments," said Ignacio Labaqui senior analyst at Medley Global Advisors in Buenos Aires. "If he goes for the second option, he is literally declaring war on the legislative branch and has a high chance of losing."

Opposition movements have organized demonstrations against Milei's agenda in several cities since he took office Dec. 10.

(Reporting by Lucinda Elliott in Montevideo and Jorgelina do Rosario in London. Editing by Brad Haynes and Alistair Bell)


Argentina formally announces it won't join the BRICS alliance in Milei's latest policy shift
Associated Press
Fri, December 29, 2023 

President-elect Javier Milei waves during a joint session of Congress to officially declare him and his running mate winners of the presidential runoff election, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2023. 

(AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

BUENOS AIRES (AP) — Argentina formally announced Friday that it won't join the BRICS bloc of developing economies, the latest in a dramatic shift in foreign and economic policy by Argentina's new far-right populist President Javier Milei.

In a letter addressed to the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — all members of the alliance — Milei said the moment was not “opportune" for Argentina to join as a full member. The letter was dated a week ago, Dec. 22, but released by the Argentine government on Friday, the last working day of 2023.

Argentina was among six countries invited in August to join the bloc made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to make an 11-nation bloc. Argentina was set to join Jan. 1, 2024.

The move comes as Argentina has been left reeling by deepening economic crisis.

Milei's predecessor, former center-left president Alberto Fernandez, endorsed joining the alliance as an opportunity to reach new markets. The BRICS currently account for about 40% of the world’s population and more than a quarter of the world’s GDP.

But economic turmoil left many in Argentina eager for change, ushering chainsaw-wielding political outsider Milei into the presidency.

Milei, who defines himself as an “anarcho-capitalist” — a current within liberalism that aspires to eliminate the state — has implemented a series of measures to deregulate the economy, which in recent decades has been marked by strong state interventionism.

In foreign policy, he has proclaimed full alignment with the “free nations of the West,” especially the United States and Israel.

Throughout the campaign for the presidency, Milei also disparaged countries ruled “by communism” and announced that he would not maintain diplomatic relations with them despite growing Chinese investment in South America.

However, in the letter addressed to his counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva in neighboring Brazil and the rest of the leaders of full BRICS members — Xi Jinping of China, Narenda Mondi of India, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Matamela Ramaphosa of South Africa — Milei proposed to “intensify bilateral ties” and increase “trade and investment flows.”

Milei also expressed his readiness to hold meetings with each of the five leaders.

Argentina pulls out of plans to join Brics bloc
Robert Plummer - BBC News
Fri, December 29, 2023 

Mr Milei said his foreign policy "differs in many ways from that of the previous government"


Argentina's new President, Javier Milei, has withdrawn the country from its planned entry into the expanding Brics club of nations.

In a letter to the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, Mr Milei said decisions taken by the preceding government had been revised.

The Brics countries are often seen as a counterweight to the Western-led world.

Argentina had been among a much-vaunted new tranche of six countries poised to join the grouping next month.

It would have been admitted to the Brics club on 1 January, alongside Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

What is the Brics group and which new countries are joining?

Its change of heart comes after Mr Milei, a populist right-wing outsider, won a surprise election victory in November with radical pledges to overhaul the South American nation's ailing economy.

He succeeded left-wing Peronist Alberto Fernández, whose views were more aligned with those of the bloc's existing members.

Mr Milei said in his letter that his government's foreign policy "differs in many ways from that of the previous government".

He added that although he did not consider it "appropriate" for Argentina to become a full Brics member, he was still committed to strengthening bilateral ties, particularly with the aim of increasing trade and investment flows.

Argentina begins 'shock therapy' by devaluing peso

First protests in Argentina against austerity plan

Although the Brics alliance is often portrayed as promoting a more multipolar world, it is economically dominated by China, which accounts for more than 70% of the bloc's combined GDP.

Argentina's bid for membership under Mr Fernández had the support of Beijing, but Mr Milei has strongly criticised China.

On the campaign trail, he described the Chinese government as assassins and said he would not work with communists.

Argentina's changing attitudes highlight the delicacy of its economic and political position as it struggles to reverse decades of economic mismanagement.

It is battling soaring inflation, with prices rising by about 150% over the last year. It is also struggling with low cash reserves and high government debt, while 40% of the population is living below the poverty line.

Mr Milei's administration has already devalued the country's currency by more than 50% as his plans for economic shock therapy begin to take effect.

Externally, Brics members Brazil and China are Argentina's two biggest trading partners, but the US is not far behind, making it imperative to preserve good working relations with all three.

And as a man who has contemplated replacing the Argentine peso with the US dollar, Mr Milei shows signs of inclining more towards Washington than Beijing in future.

Stones worshipped by Indian villagers turn out to be dinosaur eggs

DPA
Thu, December 28, 2023 

A stone sphere worshipped by Indian farmers for generations has turned out to be a fossilised dinosaur egg. Vishal Verma/dpa

Farmer Vesta Mandloi was surprised to learn recently that one of the "stone balls" his family had been worshipping for generations has turned out to be the fossilised egg of a giant dinosaur that lived in central India's Narmada valley millions of years ago.

Like Mandloi, many farmers of Padlya village in Madhya Pradesh's Dhar district have been worshipping these roughly palm-sized balls known locally as Kankar Bhairav or stone Shiva. The balls lie in small clusters often at the root of a fig tree in an open field and are considered the guardians of the land and livestock.

But after a group of scientists took a closer look, Mandloi found out that the stone he worshipped is in fact the egg of a titanosaur, one of the largest dinosaurs to have existed on earth.


"We were visiting the area in early December to develop a plan for a geological park when we met Mandloi and other farmers," Mahesh Thakkar of the Birbal Sahni Institute of Paleosciences (BSIP) in Lucknow said.

Scientists believe that the dinosaurs were decimated during volcanic activity around 65 million years ago leaving behind a treasure trove of fossil-rich rocks along the valley of the river Narmada, which stretches thousands of kilometres from Madhya Pradesh to Gujarat in the far west.

Large numbers of dinosaur bones, teeth, claws and eggs have been found since the early 19th century and Mandloi's Karkara Bhairav is the latest discovery.

"Many of these fossils still exist because tribal people have been worshipping and taking care of them for time immemorial," said amateur palaeontologist Vishal Verma.

Even though they are referred to as Kankar Bhairava (kankar means stone and Bhairav is another name for the Hindu god Shiva), these stones are not worshipped in the traditional Hindu way with baths of water or milk. "Once a year near Diwali, the villagers make farm animals like cows or goats walk over these stones to gain the protection of the deity," Verma said.

A high school physics teacher, Verma has been an avid fossil hunter and conservationist right from his teenage days spent in this region of rolling hills and ancient volcanic rocks where dinosaurs used to roam 145 million years ago.

In January a group of palaeontologists including Verma reported the finding of 256 eggs of herbivorous titanosaurs in several clusters in Dhar district.

Published in the PLOS One research journal, the study reveals new details about the breeding and nesting habits of the long-necked dinosaurs. The discovery of ovum-in-ovo or multishell eggs and their clustering together indicates that the titanosaurs' breeding habits were similar to those of modern-day birds, according to the report.

Thakkar and his team are helping the Madhya Pradesh government's Ecotourism Department plan a geological park in the area which will include the egg clusters. Verma says he hopes the park will also showcase the ancient traditions of the local people which have helped to preserve the dinosaur eggs.

Villagers in India's Madhya Pradesh helping a palaeontologist photograph a nest of fossilised dinosaur eggs. Vishal Verma/dpa

Venezuela oil giant says 80 percent of oil spill cleaned up

AFP
Thu, December 28, 2023 

More than 80 percent of the spill at Venezuela's El Palito oil refinery has been cleaned up, officials say (Juan Carlos HERNANDEZ)

Venezuela's state oil company said Thursday that an oil spill at a refinery on the country's western coastline was no longer "active" and that more than 80 percent of the affected area had been cleaned up.

Wednesday's spill at the El Palito facility in the northwestern state of Carabobo occurred when heavy rainfall caused fluids to overflow from lagoons at the site, PDVSA said on social media platform X.

"It is important to clarify that it is not heavy crude oil, but a discharge of hydrocarbons, wastewater or effluents that were directed to the coastal marine environment," the company said.


"At this time there is no active source of spillage, there is no rupture of pipeline or system," it went on, adding that the "situation is being controlled by highly trained personnel under current safety protocols."

The spill sloshed tarry ooze onto beaches, affecting several seaside resorts and causing environmental groups and fishermen to sound the alarm.

Work was under way Wednesday to clean up the spill.

The last oil spill recorded in the area was in July 2020, when waste from the same refinery flowed into the sea.

That accident contaminated Morrocoy National Park, a tourist area with a score of islets with white sand beaches.

Venezuela, which has one of the world's largest oil reserves, saw its production fall from 3 million barrels per day more than a decade ago to 850,000 barrels per day now, with production expected to surpass 1 million barrels later next year.

ba/dga/md/cwl

‘We’re out of step’: how post-Brexit UK is drifting from EU standards


Heather Stewart

THE GUARDIAN
Thu, 28 December 2023 

Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

When the government announced this year it would indefinitely delay plans to force UK companies to adopt a new post-Brexit quality mark, the UKCA, Simon Blackham, of the insulation maker Recticel, was delighted. “Yes! An outbreak of common sense,” he recalls thinking.

His joy was short-lived, however. It quickly emerged that the government’s change of heart did not apply to construction products, such as the insulation panels Recticel manufactures in Stoke-on-Trent.

Within the next 18 months, the Belgian-owned firm expects to have to spend about £400,000 in the UK retesting its products to comply with the new regime.

It is an increasingly common story: three years on from Brexit, as the government celebrates leaving the EU’s complex regulatory regime, many firms are finding the practicalities of this “divergence” costly and confusing – and business groups say that it is going to get worse.

Chemicals are another case in point. Since January 2020, the UK has failed to ban 36 pesticides that are not allowed for use in the EU.

Blackham wearily explains that construction products are overseen by Michael Gove’s housing ministry, not the Business and Trade department which issued that statement back in August, saying the government would continue to recognise the EU’s CE mark for many products.

Gove’s department has opted instead to press ahead with replacing the CE mark with the UKCA, for all construction products sold in the UK from June 2025.

This new mark incorporates the same standards as the EU version – but only UK-accredited testing facilities will be able to validate it.

Blackham, Recticel’s senior technical manager in the UK, explains that means everything will need to be retested, by a UK-based lab. In Recticel’s case, he says, this would have to be done for eight products, at a cost of approximately £35,000 each. The firm will also have to repeat fire testing, at about £14,000 a product.

“It’s the same standards, to the same test method, the same everything – and it would have to be paid for, ultimately by the customer, for us to retest material to a test that we already have, to a standard we’ve already done it to,” he says.

The firm has not yet made the final decision to go ahead, in the hope that, as in so many areas relating to post-Brexit regulation, the government – or its successor – could change its mind.

“Where we are at the moment is that we’re still waiting, still hoping that there is a chink of common sense on the horizon,” he says. But with testing capacity in the UK limited, they will to have to take the plunge soon.

A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities confirmed that the intention was not to recognise the CE mark from June 2025, but added, “we are reforming the UK’s construction product regime, and we recognise the need to provide certainty for the sector. We are carefully considering the recommendations put forward by independent reviewers and will set out next steps in due course.”

Simon Storer, chief executive of the Insulation Manufacturers Association, says the challenges faced by Recticel are being replicated at many other firms. “The unintended consequences are significant and incredibly damaging,” he says. “Most of the companies in my sector are European-owned, and they don’t want to produce a product to a different standard than the one they do in mainland Europe.”

He adds that there are concerns about whether there is testing capacity in the UK to underpin the new regime. “I understand that there are some products that there is no test in the UK for – therefore in theory they will not be eligible to be placed on the UK market. That is the seriousness of it.”

In one sense, the experience of the construction products industry is an exception. The decision to stick with CE marking for most sectors fitted a broader push by Rishi Sunak’s government to quietly smooth over trade frictions with the EU – by negotiating the Windsor Framework governing trade with Northern Ireland, and rejoining the Horizon scientific community, for example.

Plans to impose border checks on goods coming into the UK have been repeatedly delayed – though are now due to come into force next month.

“Active divergence has more or less stopped,” says Joël Reland, who tracks regulatory changes at the thinktank UK in a Changing Europe.

He says the cost of living crisis has meant bashing Brussels is no longer seen as good politics. “What voters care about is the economy and inflation, and if you want to boost growth and control inflation, you don’t want to be pursuing much divergence because it’s disruptive to business and it potentially damages your trade.”

“We’re getting more aligned in some areas,” agrees Stephen Phipson, chief executive of the manufacturers’ group Make UK, citing the decision to rejoin the European scientific funding scheme Horizon, and the 2035 date for phasing out petrol cars, which is now the same as in the EU, after Sunak pushed it back.

However, many goods exporters have already faced a battery of new tests and requirements since the trade and cooperation agreement (TCA) with the EU came into force in May 2021; and the challenge is likely to continue, as EU regulations shift over time – what Reland and his colleagues call “passive divergence”.

Peter Kersh has just retired as managing director of the Yorkshire-based fish food maker WorldFeeds, which supplies aquariums and fish farms in more than 40 countries.

After the TCA rewrote the rules of trade with Europe, it took the firm a year before it could find a way of dealing with the checks and paperwork necessary for every shipment.

Previously, they would send small consignments via “groupage,” where a logistics firm would take a mixed shipment across to the continent made up of products from many different firms.

Carriers stopped offering the service, once every crate from the UK had to be separately checked and accounted for. “When you ship food into the EU now you have to produce a health certificate, which is a laborious matter, and you have to have a vet inspection of your products on-site before they’re shipped across. So there’s all this rigmarole to go through, and it’s costly,” Kersh says.

WorldFeeds ultimately found a solution – sending a full load to a single EU client, who then ships individual orders on to other customers. “So we’ve managed to kind of get our marketplace back. But it took a year to sort out and it’s added 30% to the cost of the product,” Kersh says.

“Our customers have been very loyal to us: it’s a very special brand, it’s the best fish food in the world and people like it. But of course you can only stretch a piece of elastic so far, and they won’t wait because they’ve got to feed their fish. So we’ve been massively prejudiced by this. And it’s just really sad.”

And like many respondents to the British Chamber of Commerce’s annual survey on the TCA earlier this month, he says that the gap between UK and EU regulation is likely to widen, as the EU’s rules shift and the UK struggles to keep up, even if it wants to.

“Food is hugely regulated. It gets into ingredients that you can and can’t use: so they could ban an ingredient in the EU that we’re still using in the UK, which means you’re going to have two separate products now, because you can’t sell the same one.”

Perhaps because of barriers such as these, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility has suggested goods trade has been hit harder by Brexit than services exports, which have performed in line with other G7 countries.

Labour has promised to align the UK more closely with EU rules – seeking new agreements on veterinary standards, for example, and mutual recognition of professional standards. But such changes appear unlikely to tackle the broader issue of the EU’s regulatory system drifting further away from the UK’s, as rules are updated over time.

“We are starting to get out of step,” says Phipson. “We don’t have the regulatory capacity to keep up: it’s not intentional but we’re lagging behind.”