Farmer protests continue in Berlin over fuel subsidy cuts
DPA
Tue, January 16, 2024 

Numerous snow-covered tractors stand on the street 17 in front of the Brandenburg Gate. Farmers, haulage companies and tradespeople protest against planned cuts in subsidies by the German government, including for agricultural diesel. Kay Nietfeld/dpa


Protesting farmers continued to drive tractors around Berlin's government district on Tuesday, a day after mass demonstrations against proposals to cut agricultural diesel fuel subsidies.

About 330 tractors and other farm vehicles stood along the boulevard leading toward Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate on Tuesday morning, according to local police.

But police said there was a constant stream of departures and new arrivals.

Two further demonstrations were announced on Tuesday, including one by a farmers' association for the surrounding German state of Brandenburg. Further convoys of tractors joined them in the course of the morning.

In addition, a vigil by the Free Farmers' Association had been running since the previous night.

On Monday morning, several thousand tractors, and many more protesters, descended on central Berlin to demonstrate against the fuel subsidy cuts proposed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition government.

The proposal came amid efforts by Scholz's government to close a major budget gap. The government has so far softened the proposal, offering to gradually phase out the subsidy over three year, but agricultural leaders have demanded further concessions.

The centre-right CDU/CSU opposition bloc, which has largely backed the farmers in their protest against the government, called on Tuesday for wide-ranging financial and regulatory relief for the agricultural sector.

The CDU/CSU has proposed making the diesel fuel subsidy permanent, extending permits for livestock barns and creating a new animal welfare fee on products in supermarkets to offset the cost of implementing new welfare and environmental regulations.

"There finally needs to be an awareness that every regulation, every rule and every requirement is associated with harsh consequences for the daily work of our farmers,"

the CDU's Steffen Bilger told dpa.

There's no more money, German minister tells rowdy farmers

Mon, January 15, 2024 


By Thomas Escritt

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's Finance Minister Christian Lindner took to the stage on Monday in front of thousands of jeering farmers protesting against tax rises and told them there was no money for further subsidies.

Berlin has been brought to a near standstill by the demonstration, which filled one of its central avenues with trucks and tractors as some 10,000 farmers arrived to cap a week of protests that have become a flashpoint for anti-government anger.

"I can't promise you more state aid from the federal budget," Lindner told the crowd from a chilly stage in front of the Brandenburg Gate. "But we can fight together for you to enjoy more freedom and respect for your work."

The protests have heaped pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition as it struggles to fix a budget mess and contain right-wing groups.

The protests erupted after a government decision to phase out a tax break on agricultural diesel as it tried to balance its 2024 budget following a constitutional court ruling in November forced it to revise its spending plans.

Facing a backlash, the government has already said it would maintain a tax rebate on new agricultural vehicles and spread the scrapping of the agricultural diesel subsidy over several years.

But farmers, with the vocal backing of the opposition conservatives and the far-right, say that is not enough.

"I have respect for every politician who is prepared to come to us," said Farmers' Union head Joachim Rukwied, who at one moment had to take the microphone from Lindner and beg the crowd to stop jeering for long enough to listen to him.

"The finance minister is here," he said. "It makes no sense to boo him."

The government has taken a conciliatory tone as concern has grown that political debate has become radicalised and demonstrations could turn violent.

Disruption caused by protests and train strikes last week hurt coalition parties in the polls and propelled the far-right Alternative for Germany party to new heights.

At a later meeting with protest leaders in parliament, coalition legislators promised, without giving details, to unveil proposals on Thursday that would lower costs to farmers while making their sector "sustainable".

MUCKING OUT

Lindner, describing himself as a lad from the countryside who had mucked out stables in his time, sought to win over farmers by contrasting their peaceful protest in Berlin to the behaviour of climate activists who had sprayed paint on the Brandenburg Gate - "the symbol of German national unity".

But he said scarce money was needed for long neglected investments in schools and roads and for industrial energy subsidies.

Jeers grew louder when Lindner said money was needed because of the war in Ukraine.

"With the war in Ukraine, peace and freedom in Europe are threatened once again, so we have to invest once again in our security as we used to," he said.

Complaints ranging from high energy costs to competition from Ukrainian grain have driven farm protests around Europe in recent months. On Monday, Romanian farmers protested near border crossings with Ukraine, a vital lifeline for Kyiv's war effort, to drive home their demand for more public support.

Tractors and trucks that arrived overnight from across Germany parked nose-to-tail along the route. Crowds of farmers, wrapped up against the cold, waved German flags and held up banners marked with slogans including: "Without farmers, no future".

The governing parties are divided over how best to meet farmers' demands. Agriculture Minister Cem Ozdemir, a Green, has suggested financial rewards for humane animal husbandry, while some Social Democrats want to offer higher produce prices, and Lindner's Free Democrats want to cut administrative overheads.

Several bus and tram lines closed for the protest, which was patrolled by around 1,300 officers, police said.

(Reporting by Thomas Escritt, Linda Pasquini, additional reporting for Sibylle de la Hamaide in Paris; Reuters TV; Editing by Andrew Heavens, Barbara Lewis and Ros Russell)

German farmers and their tractors throng Berlin in a protest against fuel subsidy cuts

GEIR MOULSON
Mon, January 15, 2024













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APTOPIX Germany Farmers Protest
Farmers with tractors arrive for a protest at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. Farmers drove thousands of tractors into Berlin on Monday in the climax of a week of demonstrations against a plan to scrap tax breaks on the diesel they use, a protest that has tapped into wider discontent with Germany’s government. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

BERLIN (AP) — Farmers clogged Berlin streets with their tractors on Monday, honking their horns in protest at a plan to scrap tax breaks on the diesel they use, the climax of a week of protests that has tapped into wider discontent with Germany’s government.

Columns of tractors rolled into the capital ahead of the demonstration at the landmark Brandenburg Gate. Over the past week, farmers have blocked highway entrances and slowed traffic across Germany with their protests, intent on pushing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government to abandon the planned cuts entirely.

They’re not satisfied with concessions the government has already made. On Jan. 4, it watered down its original plan, saying that a car tax exemption for farming vehicles would be retained and the cuts in the diesel tax breaks would be staggered over three years.

“Take back the proposed tax increases, then we'll pull back,” said the chairman of the German Farmers’ Association, Joachim Rukwied. He said the demonstration sent a message to politicians that “too much is too much.”

“We are an important part of Germany — please don't forget that,” he said.

Finance Minister Christian Lindner was greeted with boos, whistles and chants of “Get lost” as he defended the government's revised plan. He conceded that the original proposal “was too much and it was too fast” and said the protests were legitimate and peaceful.

“There should be no special sacrifice by farming, just a fair contribution” to getting Germany's finances in order, he added. He told Rukwied that “your protest was already successful” and said the delay in cutting the tax breaks buys time to find ways to reduce bureaucracy for farmers and improve their productivity.

The plan to reduce the tax breaks resulted from the need to fill a large hole in the 2024 budget. The farmers’ protests come at a time of deep general discontent with Scholz's center-left government, which has become notorious for frequent public squabbles and lengthy wrangling over sometimes poorly communicated decisions.

In a video message Saturday, Scholz acknowledged concerns that go well beyond farming subsidies, saying that crises, conflicts and worries about the future are unsettling people. Polls have shown a comfortable majority sympathizing with the farmers’ protest, and Monday’s demonstration was joined by Germany’s road transport association.

Farmers say their frustration runs deeper than the current plans.

“We are not standing here today just because of the agricultural diesel cuts,” Theresa Schmidt, head of an association that represents young farmers, told the rally. “In recent years and decades, we have been beaten endlessly — more and more requirements, tighter rules and restrictions.”

“We have more and more requirements and are being overloaded with food from abroad that is produced below our standards," said Alfred Winkler, a farmer from the Bavarian region of Franconia.

Lindner said “agriculture isn't a sector like every other” and there are good reasons for state support, noting that it gets 9 billion euros (nearly $9.9 billion) from the government and the European Union every year.

Farmers' representatives met later Monday with the leaders of all three governing parties' parliamentary groups, who held out the prospect of action on the wider challenges farmers face. But they didn't resolve the disagreement over diesel tax breaks.

___

Kerstin Sopke in Berlin contributed to this report.

Farmers in Germany decry plans to scrap diesel tax breaks
Liv Stroud
Mon, January 15, 2024 


Tens of thousands of farmers rolled into Berlin aboard tractors on Monday for the climax of a week of demonstrations against a plan to scrap tax breaks on the diesel they use, a protest that has tapped into wider discontent with Germany's government.

Police said late Sunday evening that the space set aside for vehicles in front of the Brandenburg Gate, where Monday's demonstration was being held, was already full.

Over the past week, farmers have blocked highway entrances and slowed down traffic across Germany with their protests, intent on pushing Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government to abandon the planned cuts entirely.

Brussels, my love? German farmers' freak-out panics Brussels

They're not satisfied with the concessions the government has already made. On 4 January it watered down its original plan, saying that a car tax exemption for farming vehicles would be retained and the cuts in the diesel tax breaks would be staggered over three years.

24-year-old farmer Philipp Oswald said farmers would rather not rely on subsidies but warned without them many would be forced to abandon the profession and Germany would be left with to rely on more imports.

Farmers with tractors arrive for a protest at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, Monday, 15 January 2024 - Ebrahim Noroozi/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved.

"It's not in anyone's interest to excessively import goods from abroad that haven't been produced to the standards we've been following for 30 or 40 years," he told Euronews.

Scholz said in a video message on Saturday that “we took the farmers’ arguments to heart” and insisted the government came up with “a good compromise.” He also said officials will discuss “what else we can do so that agriculture has a good future.”

Leaders of the three governing parties' parliamentary groups plan to meet with farmers' representatives, though officials have dampened hopes of scrapping the subsidy cuts.

German farmers descend on Berlin with tractors in protest against plans to scrap diesel tax break

Martin Hofstetter, a political expert in agriculture at Greenpeace Germany said 50% of German farmer's income comes from agricultural subsidies.

He cautioned that "it's clear that these subsidies, as they are currently being paid, are senseless in the long run. Farmers also know this. We could go and say, let's see who needs this money. And also, how do we use the money in the future? It's clear that our agriculture needs to be more climate-friendly, climate-adapted, respond to climate change, and become more ecological."

A sign in German saying "We farmers take care of your food" hangs on a tractor parked along Bismarckstraße during the farmers' protest in Berlin, 15 January, 2024. - Monika Skolimowska/(c) Copyright 2024, dpa (www.dpa.de). Alle Rechte vorbehalten

Hofstetter, who studied agriculture, said he doesn't believe all or many farms will suddenly stop producing if the subsidies are reduced, but argued that a stronger focus on regional markets, on the European market would emerge.

"For the 420 million EU residents who want high-quality products – we should focus more on them and less on competing with China or Brazil in the world market," he explained.

The plan to cut the tax breaks resulted from the need to fill a large hole in the 2024 budget. The farmers’ protests come at a time of deep general discontent with the centre-left Scholz’s government, which has become notorious for frequent public squabbles and lengthy wrangling over sometimes poorly communicated decisions.

Scholz acknowledged concerns that go well beyond farming subsidies, saying that crises, conflicts and worries about the future are unsettling people.

Tractors head again to Berlin centre in climax to farmer protests

DPA
Mon, January 15, 2024 

Numerous tractors parked at Strasse des 17. Juni between Tiergarten S-Bahn station and Ernst-Reuter-Platz. According to the police, around 10000 participants and 5000 vehicles are expected to take part in a large demonstration by farmers' associations and the BGL haulage association against planned subsidy cuts by the federal government, including for agricultural diesel. Monika Skolimowska/dpaMore

Large numbers of tractors were heading to Berlin city centre on Monday morning for another demonstration by farmers who are angry at government plans to end tax breaks on diesel fuel.

Honking tractors could be heard in several neighbourhoods. Other agricultural workers were also seen joining the protest.

Around midday (1100 GMT) thousands of farmers from all over Germany plan to hold a rally at the iconic Brandenburg Gate against the end of diesel tax breaks for the agricultural sector, in a climax to their week of protests. Many tractors were already parked by the monument in the early morning.

In addition to representatives of the Farmers' Association and trade unions, Germany's Finance Minister Christian Lindner will also speak at the rally.

Around 5,000 tractors and other agricultural vehicles from all over Germany are expected to take part.

On Sunday evening, the police were already having to stop tractors from entering the demonstration area in the capital's governmental district.

"It can't take any more," said a police spokesperson in the evening.

Heavy traffic obstructions are to be expected throughout the German capital on Monday.

In one concession, the government has decided not to abolish the motor vehicle tax exemption for the agricultural sector. However, farmers argue that this decision does not go far enough.

Farmers tractors line up in a parking lot to gather for their journey to Berlin. Thousands of farmers are expected to take part in another major demonstration in Berlin on Monday against the planned end of diesel tax breaks for the agricultural sector. Patrick Pleul/dpa

Farmers tractors line up in a parking lot to gather for their journey to Berlin. Thousands of farmers are expected to take part in another major demonstration in Berlin on Monday against the planned end of diesel tax breaks for the agricultural sector.

 Patrick Pleul/dpa

Thousands of tractors block traffic in central Berlin
DPA
Mon, January 15, 2024 at 3:26 AM MST·2 min read
2



Numerous tractors, trucks and cars parked on the Strasse des 17. According to the police, around 10000 participants and 5000 vehicles are expected to take part in a large demonstration by farmers' associations and the BGL haulage association against planned subsidy cuts by the federal government, including for agricultural diesel. Monika Skolimowska/dpa


Thousands of German farmers, lorry drivers and craftsmen gathered with tractors and other heavy equipment in front of Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate on Monday morning.

Police on Monday morning estimated that at least 3,000 tractors had already arrived for the protest and an estimated 2,000 more were on the way. The tractors blocked traffic in parts of the city, and Berlin's public transit agency reported major service delays.

About 10,000 people had registered for the demonstrations, but Berlin police expect even more to attend.

A total of 1,300 police officers have been deployed to accompany the farmer protests, Police Commissioner Barbara Slowik told city leaders on Monday.

The farmers are protesting against government plans to cut diesel fuel subsidies for the agricultural sector.

Joachim Rukwied, the president of the German Farmers' Union, and German Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the liberal-conservative Free Democrats (FDP) party are among those due to speak at the demonstration.

Numerous tractors, trucks and cars lined up on Strasse des 17. Juni. According to the police, around 10000 participants and 5000 vehicles are expected to take part in a large demonstration by farmers' associations and the BGL haulage association against planned subsidy cuts by the federal government, including for agricultural diesel. Monika Skolimowska/dpaMore

Numerous tractors, trucks and cars are parked on the central reservation and at the side of the road on Bismarckstrasse. According to the police, around 10000 participants and 5000 vehicles are expected to take part in a large demonstration by farmers' associations and the BGL haulage association against planned subsidy cuts by the federal government, including for agricultural diesel. Monika Skolimowska/dpaMore

Tractors converge on Berlin for farmers' protest
Reuters
Sun, January 14, 2024





German farmers prepare for a protest against the cut of farm vehicle tax subsidies in Berlin

BERLIN (Reuters) - Farmers and their tractors rumbled towards Berlin from every corner of Germany on Sunday ahead of a giant protest demanding a rethink of plans to tax farmers more.

Some 3,000 tractors, 2,000 trucks and 10,000 people were expected to fill the streets around Berlin's Brandenburg Gate on Monday for a rally that will cap a week of protests against the government.

The protests have heaped pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition as it struggles to fix a budget mess and contain right-wing forces.

Caught on the back foot, it has already agreed not to scrap a tax rebate on new agricultural vehicles and to spread over years the scrapping of an agricultural diesel subsidy.

But farmers, with the vocal backing of the opposition conservatives and the far-right, say this does not go far enough.

"Farmers will die out," said farmer Karl-Wilhelm Kempner on Sunday as he boarded a bus in Cologne heading for the demonstration. "The population must understand that far more food will be imported" if subsidies are not restored.

The government is showing a conciliatory face amid concerns that political debate in the country is becoming radicalised and that demonstrations could turn violent.

Finance Minister Christian Lindner will address the protest and coalition party leaders have invited leaders of the demonstrations for talks.

Disruption caused by protests and train strikes last week hurt coalition parties in the polls and propelled the far-right Alternative for Germany party to new heights.

In a video podcast on Saturday, Scholz said the government had listened to farmers' demands and compromised.

"We've taken the farmers' arguments to heart and revised our proposals. A good compromise," he said.

(Reporting by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Ros Russell)

Row escalates over ‘defamatory’ articles accusing billionaire’s wife of plagiarism
James Warrington

Mon, January 15, 2024 

Bill Ackman is threatening to sue Axel Springer over stories published by Business Insider - Richard Drew/AP
US hedge fund tycoon Bill Ackman has threatened to sue Axel Springer as a plagiarism row at the German publishing giant intensifies.

The billionaire has said he will file a formal complaint against Axel Springer after Business Insider published stories accusing his wife, Neri Oxman, of copying large passages of her dissertation from Wikipedia and other academics.

In a post on Twitter, Mr Ackman added: “By complaint I mean lawsuit, to be clear.”

The legal threat marks an escalation of a public row between Axel Springer and Mr Ackman, who has attacked the publisher over what he described as “false claims and defamation”.

Ms Oxman, a high-profile American-Israeli academic, has admitted that she had failed to properly credit sources in part of her dissertation and apologised for the errors.

Ms Oxman has already admitted that she failed to properly credit sources in part of her dissertation - Steven Ferdman/Getty Images North America

Nevertheless, Mr Ackman has questioned the motivations and processes behind Business Insider’s reporting.

Axel Springer, which also owns Politico as well as the Bild and Die Welt newspapers, last week launched an investigation into the stories amid concerns they could be viewed as anti-Semitic.

In a note to staff on Sunday, Barbara Peng, chief executive of Business Insider, said the review had found “no unfair bias or personal, political, and/or religious motivation in the pursuit of the stories”.

She added: “The process we went through to report, edit, and review the stories was sound, as was the timing … The stories are accurate and the facts well documented.”

A spokesman for Axel Springer declined to comment on the legal threat, but said: “We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom.”

The findings have failed to placate Mr Ackman, who said the company had “tripled down on their false claims and defamation”.

He added: “I would not rely on the self-adjudicated claims of Business Insider and/or Axel Springer to get an understanding of the truth.”

The stories about Ms Oxman came after Mr Ackman, who is chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management, led calls to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay over accusations of plagiarism.

Mr Ackman last year led calls to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay over accusations of plagiarism - Mark Schiefelbein/AP

After Ms Gay stepped down earlier this month she conceded that “some material duplicated other scholars’ language, without proper attribution” but denied claiming credit for other people’s work.

In a series of lengthy posts on social media, the tycoon said his wife was given only 90 minutes to respond to the allegations against her.

He has also tried to involve private equity firm KKR, Axel Springer’s biggest shareholder, in the row. In one post, he wrote: “How can KKR be the ultimate controlling shareholder of a totally unethical and sleazy media company?”

KKR declined to comment.

The row has created a headache for Berlin-based Axel Springer, which has an explicitly pro-Israel stance in its reporting. Employees in Germany are required to sign a mission statement asserting support for Israel’s right to exist.

While staff at Politico and Business Insider are not required to sign such a declaration, Axel Springer chief executive Mathias Döpfner has said he expects all staff to adhere to the company’s values.

Business Insider CEO Defends Neri Oxman Plagiarism Coverage: ‘There Was No Unfair Bias’

Stephanie Kaloi
Sun, January 14, 2024 


On Jan. 7, MIT academic and entrepreneur Neri Oxman was accused of plagiarism in reporting from Business Insider. The story broke after former Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned from her post due to similar accusations — Oxman’s husband Bill Ackman was among those who led the march that resulted in Gay’s ousting. On Sunday, Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng defended both the accuracy and the motivations behind the outlet’s investigation.

In a letter published on Insider’s site, Peng defended the outlet against charges that the investigation into Oxman was unjust. In a series of bullet points, she wrote, “There was no unfair bias or personal, political, and/or religious motivation in the pursuit of the stories.”

“The stories were newsworthy and Neri Oxman, who has a public profile as a prominent intellectual and has been a subject of and participant in media coverage, is a fair subject,” Peng continued.

“The process we went through to report, edit, and review the stories was sound, as was the timing. Through their representative, Oxman and Ackman responded that they had made the decision not to comment.”

Peng added, “The stories are accurate and the facts well documented.”

Billionaire Ackman later responded on social media, writing, “Business Insider is toast. You will hear from us in a few weeks. It will look something like this: At My Signal, Unleash Hell.”

He linked to a clip from the film “Gladiator” include that quote.


Ackman had taken issue with the results of Business Insider’s investigation, which found that Oxman “stole sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, other scholars, and technical documents in her academic writing.” In a lengthy tweet posted on Jan. 9, Ackman wrote that he “personally disputed the facts (as well as the reporting process) of Business Insider’s stories initially in an approximately one-hour conversation with a director of Business Insider on Sunday morning beginning at 10:01am.”

Peng’s entire letter reads:

“We are a journalism organization with high standards and a commitment to truth and fairness. Regarding the recent reporting on Neri Oxman, we feel it’s important to share the following:

There was no unfair bias or personal, political, and/or religious motivation in the pursuit of the stories.


The stories were newsworthy and Neri Oxman, who has a public profile as a prominent intellectual and has been a subject of and participant in media coverage, is a fair subject.


The process we went through to report, edit, and review the stories was sound, as was the timing. Through their representative, Oxman and Ackman responded that they had made the decision not to comment.


The stories are accurate and the facts well documented.

Business Insider supports and empowers our journalists to share newsworthy, factual stories with our readers, and we do so with editorial independence.

We stand by our newsroom and our reporting, which will continue onward.

Barbara Peng
CEO, Business Insider“

This story has been updated.

 TheWrap.

Following review, Business Insider stands by reports on wife of ex-Harvard president's critic

DAVID BAUDER
Sun, January 14, 2024 at 2:30 PM MST·3 min read





Rev. Al Sharpton, second from left, joins with protesters outside the office of hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who has donated millions to Harvard, to protest his campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024, in New York. Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned Tuesday amid plagiarism accusations and criticism over testimony at a congressional hearing where she was unable to say unequivocally that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school's conduct policy. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)












NEW YORK (AP) — Business Insider’s top executive and parent company said Sunday they were satisfied with the fairness and accuracy of stories that made plagiarism accusations against a former MIT professor who is married to a prominent critic of former Harvard President Claudine Gay.

“We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom,” said a spokesman for Axel Springer, the German media company that owns the publication.

The company had said it would look into the stories about Neri Oxman, a prominent designer, following complaints by her husband, Bill Ackman, a Harvard graduate and CEO of the Pershing Square investment firm. He publicly campaigned against Gay, who resigned earlier this month following criticism of her answers at a congressional hearing on antisemitism and charges that her academic writing contained examples of improperly credited work.

With its stories, Business Insider raised both the idea of hypocrisy and the possibility that academic dishonesty is widespread, even among the nation's most prominent scholars.

Ackman's response, and the pressure that a well-connected person placed on the corporate owners of a journalism outlet, raised questions about the outlet's independence.

Business Insider and Axel Springer's "liability just goes up and up and up,” Ackman said Sunday in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “This is what they consider fair, accurate and well-documented reporting with appropriate timing. Incredible.”

Business Insider's first article, on Jan. 4, noted that Ackman had seized on revelations about Gay's work to back his efforts against her — but that the organization's journalists “found a similar pattern of plagiarism" by Oxman. A second piece, published the next day, said Oxman had stolen sentences and paragraphs from Wikipedia, fellow scholars and technical documents in a 2010 doctoral dissertation at M.I.T.

Ackman complained that it was a low blow to attack someone's family in such a manner and said Business Insider reporters gave him less than two hours to respond to the accusations. He suggested an editor there was an anti-Zionist. Oxman was born in Israel.

The business leader reached out in protest to board members at both Business Insider and Axel Springer. That led to Axel Springer telling The New York Times that questions had been raised about the motivation behind the articles and the reporting process, and the company promised to conduct a review.

On Sunday, Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng issued a statement saying “there was no unfair bias or personal, political and/or religious motivation in pursuit of the story.”

Peng said the stories were newsworthy and that Oxman, with a public profile as a prominent intellectual, was fair game as a subject. The stories were “accurate and the facts well-documented,” Peng said.

“Business Insider supports and empowers our journalists to share newsworthy, factual stories with our readers, and we do so with editorial independence,” Peng wrote.

Business Insider would not say who conducted the review of its work.

Ackman said his wife admitted to four missing quotation marks and one missed footnote in a 330-page dissertation. He said the articles could have “literally killed” his wife if not for the support of her family and friends.

“She has suffered severe emotional harm,” he wrote on X, “and as an introvert, it has been very, very difficult for her to make it through each day.”

For her part, Gay wrote in the Times that those who campaigned to have her ousted “often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned arguments.” Harvard's first Black president said she was the subject of death threats and had “been called the N-word more times than I care to count.”

There was no immediate comment Sunday from Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider's global editor in chief. In a memo to his staff last weekend that was reported by The Washington Post, Carlson said he made the call to publish both of the stories and that he knew the process of preparing them was sound.

Business Insider stands by reporting on Bill Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, says stories ‘are accurate’ with ‘no unfair bias’

Oliver Darcy, CNN
Sun, January 14, 2024 


Business Insider and its parent company, Axel Springer, said Sunday that they stood by the outlet’s reporting that Neri Oxman, a prominent former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, had plagiarized in her doctoral dissertation.

In a note Sunday morning, Barbara Peng, chief executive of Business Insider, said the outlet had spent several days reviewing its reporting after public complaints made by Ackman. The review, Peng said, found that “there was no unfair bias” and that the “process we went through to report, edit, and review the stories was sound.”

Peng said a pair of stories the outlet published earlier this month reporting that Oxman had plagiarized other scholars’ work and lifted more than a dozen sections from Wikipedia “are accurate.” She described Oxman as a “fair subject” and “has a public profile as a prominent intellectual and has been a subject of and participant in media coverage,” rebutting Ackman’s complaints that she should have been immune to coverage tied to Ackman’s recent activism.

“Business Insider supports and empowers our journalists to share newsworthy, factual stories with our readers, and we do so with editorial independence,” Peng wrote. “We stand by our newsroom and our reporting, which will continue onward.”

In the wake of the reporting, Oxman acknowledged she had failed to properly cite some of her work. “I regret and apologize for these errors,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. Ackman has since disputed the veracity of Business Insider’s reporting and said Oxman has hired an attorney. A representative for Ackman declined to comment to CNN on Sunday, but on X, Ackman threatened the publication: “Business Insider is toast. You will hear from us in a few weeks. It will look something like this: At My Signal, Unleash Hell.”

Business Insider announced last week that Axel Springer had compelled a review of its reporting alleging that Oxman had plagiarized her work, eliciting questions and criticism of the parent company’s decision.

The stories had been published after Ackman helped spearhead a campaign to oust Claudine Gay as Harvard University’s president. Ackman applied relentless pressure on Harvard to remove Gay, initially criticizing the academic for the school’s response to anti-Semitism and then later for plagiarism, the latter of which ultimately led to her removal.

A spokesperson for Axel Springer told CNN on Sunday that the German publishing powerhouse was satisfied with the review Business Insider had completed.

“We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom,” the spokesperson said.

The days-long review had alarmed staffers at Business Insider, who were troubled about the precedent such a review might set, particularly on a punchy newsroom known for aggressively reporting on the wealthy and powerful. One staffer told CNN earlier this week that journalists at the outlet were perturbed about “the chilling effect” that Axel Springer’s move could have on the organization.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN.com

Axel Springer Stands by Business Insider Reporting on Bill Ackman’s Wife

Alexandra Bruell
Sun, January 14, 2024 

Neri Oxman is a designer and former MIT professor. - Gary He for The Wall Street Journal

Business Insider owner Axel Springer said it stands by the publication after reviewing the reporting process behind stories that alleged plagiarism by Neri Oxman , the designer and former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who is married to hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman.

The German media company said last week it would review the process and motivations behind the recent BI articles . The review came amid complaints from Ackman, in a series of posts on X, about the publication’s reporting tactics.

Ackman’s concerns included the notion that anti-Zionism was at play in the reporting process, which people at Business Insider rejected.

“We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom,” Axel Springer said in a statement.

“There was no unfair bias or personal, political, and/or religious motivation in the pursuit of the stories,” Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng said in an internal memo. “The stories were newsworthy and Neri Oxman, who has a public profile as a prominent intellectual and has been a subject of and participant in media coverage, is a fair subject.”

Oxman, who is Israeli, was a professor at MIT’s Media Lab for about a decade. BI’s reporting on her began with a story that said she didn’t use quotation marks when quoting another work in several instances, and paraphrased from a book without a citation. Oxman apologized for those occurrences in a post on X.

Business Insider owner Axel Springer said in a statement, ‘We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom.’ - Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg News

A follow-up BI story went deeper, claiming that Oxman had lifted several passages from Wikipedia in her 2010 MIT doctoral dissertation, without citation.

In his posts on X, Ackman said the BI reporting was in retaliation for his role in generating a wave of scrutiny of Harvard University and its leadership. Ackman was one of the earliest critics of how Harvard University’s leadership handled students’ response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and allegations of plagiarism against Claudine Gay, who resigned as the university’s president earlier this month.

Ackman said BI gave his communications representative less than two hours to provide a comment for the follow-up article after sending an email with detailed examples of alleged plagiarism by Oxman.

“Business Insider’s and [Axel Springer’s] liability just goes up and up and up,” Ackman posted on X in response to Axel Springer’s statement defending the publication and its reporting. “This is what they consider fair, sound, accurate and well documented reporting with appropriate timing.”

In a post last week that recounts his communication with leadership at Axel Springer, he made several demands, including that the publication remove stories alleging plagiarism by his wife, create a settlement fund “to compensate all those who have been victimized by BI,” and severely punish those responsible for the reporting.

“The process we went through to report, edit, and review the stories was sound, as was the timing,” Peng said in the memo. “The stories are accurate and the facts well documented.”

Axel Springer’s review had dismayed BI staffers, from senior editors to rank-and-file journalists, who thought the parent company shouldn’t have gotten involved, the Journal previously reported.

Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com

Most Read from The Wall Street Journal

The Next Battle in Higher Ed May Strike at Its Soul: Scholarship

Anemona Hartocollis
Mon, January 15, 2024

Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who resigned in August of 2023 after an investigation found serious flaws in studies he had supervised going back decades, on campus prior to the revelations, in Palo Alto, Calif., May 2, 2022. (Carolyn Fong/The New York Times)

Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of Stanford University, resigned in August after an investigation found serious flaws in studies he had supervised going back decades.

Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University, resigned as the new year dawned, under mounting accusations of plagiarism going back to her graduate student days.

Then, Neri Oxman, a former star professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was accused of plagiarizing from Wikipedia, among other sources, in her dissertation. Her husband, hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman, was one of Gay’s most dogged critics. And he has vowed to scour the records of MIT’s faculty and its president, Sally Kornbluth, for plagiarism.

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The attacks on the integrity of higher education have come fast and furious over the past few years. The federal Varsity Blues investigation, in which wealthy parents were accused of using bribery and fraud to secure spots for their children in resume-building colleges, launched a debate over merit and the admissions game. The affirmative action lawsuit against Harvard exposed how Asian American students must perform at a higher standard to win entry. And the protests over the Israel-Hamas war opened administrators to charges that they tolerated antisemitism on their campuses.

Now, the focus has moved into what may be the very soul of higher education: scholarship.

There are differences among the cases — Tessier-Lavigne and Gay were the faces of their institutions, while Oxman is a former faculty member who was well known in her field of computational design. Defenders of Gay and Oxman say that their lifting of words is minor and that they were not accused of stealing ideas. And unlike Tessier-Lavigne, they have not had to retract any papers.

But the recent controversies have helped fuel the skepticism that some scholarship is not as rigorous as it purports to be.

“It does strike me that this is a problem of the universities’ own making,” said Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, which keeps a database of retracted papers now numbering more than 46,000.

“They have tried every which way to avoid acknowledging just how common misconduct is in academia, and what that does is give ammunition to sometimes — let’s face it — bad-faith actors who want to undermine confidence or undermine the reputation of an institution,” Oransky said.

There is probably more to come. A congressional committee has announced that it would investigate a “hostile takeover” of higher education by “political activists, woke faculty and partisan administrators.”

A cottage industry of checking research papers had already sprung up in the past two decades, including Retraction Watch, the Center for Open Science and Data Colada, a blog dedicated to unmasking research based on bad data.

The number of retracted research papers has grown dramatically over time, to more than 10,000 retractions internationally in 2023, an annual record, according to the journal Nature, up from about 400 papers in 2010, when Retraction Watch began its work, Oransky said.

This may be in part because the scrutiny has intensified, he said. Nature also blamed the rise of paper-writing mills.

“What’s different this time is the levels at which this seems to be striking — Harvard and Stanford,” Oransky said. “These are cataclysmic events.”

Gay, a professor of government and African and African American studies, asked for a handful of corrections in citation and quotation in her dissertation and scholarly papers. But she stood by her work, and an outside panel cleared her of research misconduct.

A review panel found that Tessier-Lavigne, a neuroscientist, had not personally engaged in or known about data manipulation but that “there may have been opportunities to improve laboratory oversight and management.” He agreed to retract three papers and correct two more.

Oxman, a celebrated architect and designer, apologized on social media for some lapses in attribution in her dissertation.

Not everyone thinks academia is rife with deception.

Stephen Voss, an associate professor of political science at the University of Kentucky, said he was dismayed that in their attempts to defend Gay, some academics had suggested that plagiarism was commonplace within their ranks.

“I viewed some of these defenses of Claudine as being false confessions to misbehavior that actually is not taking place at the level her defenders wanted to suggest,” Voss said. “The ‘It goes on all the time’ argument.”

Gay is accused of copying, with only light paraphrasing, two passages from Voss’ work in her dissertation.

Voss said he was not troubled by it, since he had been her teaching fellow at Harvard, helping to teach her quantitative analysis, and later her colleague in the same lab. “It would have been quite natural for her to borrow ideas from me,” he said. “The Claudine Gay story is just going to force everybody to be a little more careful about citations.”

The internet and software such as Turnitin, which targets academic publishing and research, may make it easier to detect plagiarism. And plagiarism watchers are waiting to see what the future of artificial intelligence will bring — more plagiarism or better detection?

But until now, that software has been used more against students than against professors and administrators.

Many scholars are worried that attacks on research will be used by politicians, donors and even other scholars as a pretext to go after their ideological enemies.

“A broad suspicion toward intellectuals and academics is a rich vein in American culture, and recent events have supported it,” Voss said.

Ackman, head of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, was a vocal critic of Gay’s leadership at Harvard, from her handling of antisemitism on campus to her support for diversity, equity and inclusion policies. The accusations of plagiarism against her became part of his attack.

After Gay announced that she would resign from her presidency but remain on the faculty, Ackman posted on X, formerly Twitter: “There would be nothing wrong with her staying on the faculty if she didn’t have serious plagiarism issues. Students are forced to withdraw for much less.”

Ackman declined to comment for this article.

It’s this kind of attack that concerns Jonathan Bailey, a copyright and plagiarism consultant who also runs the website Plagiarism Today. “There’s a lot of worry that the heat has been turned up and the people who are doing the evaluations don’t necessarily have academic research or journalistic integrity in mind,” he said.

Just as new accusations dribbled out against Gay until the day before she resigned, they have continued against Oxman. On Thursday, Retraction Watch posted a blog item saying that her thesis lifted about 100 words without quotation or citation from an article published in Physics World in 2000. The blog said it learned of the overlap from Steve Haake, a sports engineer who wrote the original article.

“I have never intentionally presented someone else’s words or ideas as my own,” Oxman said in a statement emailed through a spokesperson for her husband Friday, the day after the Retraction Watch item appeared. “In the process of writing a 330-page dissertation, I missed a couple of footnotes and some quotation marks. Had AI software been available in 2009, I could have avoided these errors. The mistakes are simply a function of my humanity.”

Even so, the attacks on academic integrity are sure to continue.

“While President Gay’s resignation is welcome news, the problems at Harvard are much larger than one leader, and the committee’s oversight will continue,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., who heads the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said after Gay’s resignation Jan. 2.

There was a similar crisis of confidence in universities in the 1980s, as questions were raised about plagiarism and fabricated data in scientific research, including at Harvard. Al Gore, then a Democratic representative of Tennessee, and Rep. John Dingell Jr., a Michigan Democrat, among others, held oversight hearings.

Academics argued that research misconduct was rare, and politicians contended it was underreported, according to a history published by federal agencies. Many of those testifying minimized the problem or said that criminalizing scientific fraud would create a climate of fear that would impede research.

In the current dispute, Harvard responded through a defamation lawyer when the New York Post first raised accusations of plagiarism against Gay. Ackman, writing on X, has invoked lawyers and demanded that Business Insider — which first reported the plagiarism accusations against Oxman — “suspend” its stories.

“I don’t want to say history is repeating itself, but there are shades of that,” Oransky said. Neither side, he predicted, is likely to back down. “These are really high stakes.”

c.2024 The New York Times Company

The mystery of Siberia's strange exploding craters may have finally been solved

Mon, January 15, 2024

Scientists offered a new explanation for the huge craters that keep appearing in Siberia.


These craters, first spotted in 2012, can be more than 160 feet deep and over 65 feet wide.


They may be due to hot time bombs made of natural gas building up under the frozen ground.

Scientists are putting forward a new explanation for the giant exploding craters that seem to be randomly appearing in the Siberian permafrost.

These craters, first spotted in 2012, have been popping up in the deserted Siberian permafrost, puzzling scientists.

They can be substantial, reaching more than 160 feet in depth and 65 feet in width, and blasting chunks of debris hundreds of feet away.

Some reports have suggested the blasts can be heard 60 miles away.

Now scientists are proposing that hot natural gas seeping from underground reserves might be behind the explosive burst.

The findings could explain why the craters are only appearing in specific areas in Siberia.

The area is known for its vast underground reserves of natural gas, the study's lead author Helge Hellevang, who is a professor of environmental geosciences at the University of Oslo in Norway, told Business Insider.

"When climate change or atmosphere warming is weakening the other part of the permafrost, then you get these outbursts — only in Siberia," he said.
Gas makes the hole, but it comes from deep reserves

An exploding crater in Siberia is shown here.

VASILY BOGOYAVLENSKY/AFP via Getty Images

Permafrost traps a lot of organic material. As temperatures rise, it thaws, allowing that mulch to decompose. That process releases methane.

So scientists had naturally proposed the methane seeping from the permafrost itself was behind the craters.

This isn't a crazy thought. It's notably the process that's thought to lead to thermokarsts, lakes that appear in areas where permafrost is melting, which bubble with methane and can be lit on fire.

Themokarsts are full of methane, which bubbles to the surface.NASA / Sofie Bates

But that doesn't explain why the so-called exploding craters are so localized.

Only eight of these craters have been identified so far, all within a very specific area: the Western Siberian Yamal and Gydan peninsulas in Northern Russia.

Exploding lakes, by contrast, are seen in a wide variety of areas where permafrost is found, including Canada.

Hellevang and his colleagues suggest there's another mechanism at play: hot natural gas, seeping up through some kind of geological fault, is building up under the frozen layer of soil and heating the permafrost from below.

Those hot gas plumes would help thaw the permafrost from the bottom, making it weaker and more likely to collapse.

A diagram, cropped from the study, explains the process by which the exploding craters could be formed. The natural gas building up over a layer of sediment is represented in purple.Helge Hellevang et al, 2023, https://doi.org/10.31223/X59Q3K CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

"This explosion can only happen if the permafrost is thin and weak enough to break," said Hellenvang.

Rising temperatures melt the upper layer of the permafrost at the same time. This creates the perfect conditions for the gas to be freed suddenly, triggering either an explosion or a "mechanical collapse" caused by the gas, which is under pressure.

That creates the crater, Hellevang and colleagues are suggesting.

The area is rife with natural gas reserves, which lines up with Hellevang and colleagues' theory, per the study.

"This area is one of the largest petroleum provinces in the world," he said.

According to the scientist's model, more of these craters could have been created and have since disappeared as nearby water and soil fell in to fill the gap.

"This is a very remote area, so we don't really know the true number," he said.

"If you look at the satellite image of the Yamal Peninsula, there are thousands of these round plate-like depressions. Most or all of them could have been thermokarsts, but potentially they could also be earlier craters that have formed," he said.

The hypothesis was published on the online server EarthArXiv last month. The article has not yet been validated by a review from scientific peers.
A dangerous hypothesis for the climate crisis

A helicopter view of a crater on the Yamal Peninsula, northern Siberia.VASILY BOGOYAVLENSKY/AFP via Getty Images

While the idea has merit, more evidence will be needed to show these reserves of gas are building under the permafrost, Lauren Schurmeier, an Earth scientist at the University of Hawai'i who researches the topic, told New Scientist.

Still, if the hypothesis is found to be correct, this could spell trouble for climate models.

Natural gas is full of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. This could mean the craters are acting like huge chimneys through which the damaging chemical could be freed suddenly into the atmosphere, Thomas Birchall at the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway, told New Scientist.

"If that's the standard way that large accumulations fail then you're dumping a lot of methane in a very short time," he told New Scientist.

Hellenvang, however, exercised caution. If this phenomenon only exists in this very limited area, it may be that the impact is minute on a global scale. While there is likely a large amount of methane stored in underground reserves, it's not clear how much of that could get out.

"I think what we need to do is understand first and foremost how much methane is naturally leaking from these kind of systems, and then compare that to how much methane that is actually within the permafrost for organic matter," Hellenvang said.

"Then we can have a more realistic budget on how much can be released because of atmospheric heating or climate change," he said.

Explainer-Houthi attacks expose China's commercial stakes in Red Sea

Mon, January 15, 2024

Container ships sail across the Gulf of Suez towards the Red Sea before entering the Suez Canal, in El Ain El Sokhna in Suez

By Joe Cash

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has called for an end to attacks on civilian vessels in the Red Sea that have dramatically widened the Hamas-Israel conflict and placed Beijing's commercial interests along the Suez Canal at risk.

The Iran-backed Houthi militia from Yemen that seeks "Death to Israel" is challenging the ability of the world's biggest trading nation to defend billions in strategic investments in Egypt.

Since President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi came to power in 2014, China has stepped up its investment and commercial activities along Egypt's Suez Canal, through which a significant amount of the Asian giant's West-bound goods flow.

INVESTMENT AND TRADE

Beijing has encouraged state-owned companies to invest tens of billions in Egypt's logistics, transport and energy sectors, data from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank shows, and has extended $3.1 billion in loans, according to the World Bank.

And in the months leading up to Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel alone, firms from China and Hong Kong pledged at least $20 billion in various projects along Egypt's arterial waterway.

Attacks deterring commercial shipping from the Red Sea and Suez Canal could frustrate Chinese investors who have committed huge sums to the waterway's development to profit from their safe passage.

State-owned shipping giant COSCO, which on Jan. 7 joined Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, Evergreen, and other major shipping lines in suspending services to Israel, last March invested $1 billion in Egypt's port infrastructure, according to the AEI.

COSCO was joined by CK Hutchison Holdings, a prominent Hong Kong-based congolomerate, which in March announced plans to put up a further $700 million to develop a new container terminal in the Red Sea port of Ain Sokhna and in B100, a new container terminal in the Mediterranean port of Alexandria.

That same month, demonstrating China's broader commercial interests in Egypt as a link between Asia and Mediterranean and European markets, Xinxing Ductile Iron Pipes made known plans to invest $2 billion in iron and steel plants, also in Ain Sokhna.

And in October, Egypt's Suez Canal Economic Zone struck a $6.75 billion deal with state-owned China Energy to develop green ammonia and green hydrogen projects in the Sokhna Industrial Zone, as well as a $8 billion agreement with Hong Kong-listed United Energy Group to establish a potassium chloride production site.

Equally at stake is President Xi Jinping's flagship Belt and Road Initiative, of which Egypt, Yemen and Iran are all members.

China consistently maintains it will not interfere in the domestic affairs of other sovereign states, leading analysts to question how it should respond when problems emerge among BRI members.

The dilemma arises in particular when the issue fundamentally undermines the BRI's stated purpose, which is to connect Asia with Europe through the creation of a series of continent-spanning investment and trade corridors.

REPUTATION ON THE LINE

More than money is at stake.

Beijing is under pressure to prove that its involvement in an unexpected detente between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran in 2023 went further than dotting the "i"s and crossing the "t"s.

Following that agreement, China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, currently in Egypt as part of a tour of four African countries, said Beijing wants to play a constructive role in handling global "hotspot issues."

U.S. officials believe China to be instrumental in reining in Iran, and have reportedly pressed Beijing to use its influence over Tehran to help prevent the conflict between Hamas - which is also backed by Iran - and Israel from spreading.

When COSCO was still visiting Israeli ports despite its competitors having already re-routed Asia-to-Europe voyages via South Africa's Cape of Good Hope, some analysts questioned whether Chinese influence over Iran was playing a part. Iranian oil makes up some 10% of China's crude imports.

Bloomberg reported on Thursday at least five vessels transiting the Red Sea were signalling "all Chinese crew" or words to that effect in a space on a communications network that would normally contain the ship's destination to try and avoid attack.

China's Wang Yi in Cairo on Sunday told his Egyptian counterpart that Beijing backed a larger, more authoritative Israeli-Palestinian peace conference and a timetable to implementing a two-state solution.

So far, China appears restrained in its diplomacy because of its position of non-interference in other sovereign states' internal affairs. Yet at the same time it aspires to raise what Wang has referred to as China's "international influence, appeal and power" to shape events through diplomacy.

(Reporting by Joe Cash, Editing by William Maclean)

PhD student ruffles feathers after debunking common misconception about wind turbines: ‘There’s been promising research’

Susan Elizabeth Turek
Tue, January 16, 2024 

Wind turbines can be seen as imposing and sometimes eerie structures, which may be part of the reason why they’ve been on the receiving end of misinformation that would give bird lovers pause.

TikToker Rosh (@all_about_climate) shared a short video on the social media platform to debunk a popular misconception about the clean-energy generators.

“Is it true that wind farms kill birds? This is a common thing you hear, and yes, it is absolutely true,” he explained, noting that studies are still “trying to quantify” the numbers.

“That’s bad obviously. We don’t want to be killing birds,” he continued before pointing out: “On the grand scale of things which kill birds, wind turbines are actually quite low down the list.”

The primary factor? According to data Rosh shared from Statista — and alluded to in his video — your childhood cartoons were on to something.

Cats cause the deaths of billions of birds each year in the United States, with building and vehicle collisions, poison, and run-ins with electrical lines rounding out the top five.

“We’ve had a cat for just over a year and I think his bird count is about 2 or 3 a week,” one TikToker shared.

Rosh also points out how dirty energy contributes significantly more to bird mortality than wind turbines, which don’t produce planet-warming pollution when they generate energy.

According to the National Audubon Society, rising global temperatures primarily brought on by the burning of oil, gas, and coal are making birds vulnerable, with nearly 70% of the winged creatures in North America “at increasing risk of extinction.”

Oil spills are another factor. While most are small, as noted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, they still have a negative impact. And larger ones, such as the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, can be particularly devastating not just to avian life but also human health.

Given that birds chow down on at least 400 million tons of insects every year, per a study in ScienceDaily, a world with fewer birds has the potential to get seriously overrun by crop-destroying pests.

Some people have turned to chemical-free lawn care to avoid poisoning our winged friends, while others have participated in Lights Out programs during night hours so birds are able to navigate without confusion.

In this case, TikTokers clamored to engage with Rosh’s educational debunking, liking the video nearly 7,000 times.

“There’s been promising research around reducing bird deaths by painting one [wind turbine] blade black,” one commenter pointed out.

“We should definitely ban cats gotta save the birds,” another person joked.