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Fatal eviction: A profile of one family’s despair

Bob Hennelly, Insider NJ
February 13, 2024

This impromptu Homeless encampment in a woodlot behind the Neptune Shop-Rite. Similar encampments have cropped up throughout New Jersey as the pandemic era foreclosure and eviction moratoriums have ended. 

Photo: Bob HEnnelly

This article originally appeared in InsiderNJ.

NEPTUNE, N.J. — Last month, an American flag was still blowing in the January breeze on Lincrest Terrace as police gathered evidence.

The scene: a murder-suicide that took the lives of Reuben Alarcon, 51, and Andrea Alarcon, 41, and their two daughters, nine-year-old Scarlett and six-year-old Emma, who attended Hannah Caldwell Elementary School.

Their bodies were discovered by officers from the Union County Sheriff’s Department who had come to the house to serve an eviction notice on the family, whose home of 15 years had been sold out from underneath them in November at a Sheriff’s sale. Sale price: $322,000.

Investigators believe it was Andrea, described by neighbors as a “loving” mother, who shot her husband and daughters before turning the gun on herself.

Emma’s pre-K teacher told the New York Post the Alarcon family were “very caring, loving, nurturing and generous, describing Andrea as “a dutiful class mom who ‘was on top of everything’ and made Valentine’s Day gifts for her daughter’s 14 classmates.”

New Jersey is the densest state in the nation, and yet, despite our close proximity to each other social conventions and the shame we dole out for financially falling behind can keep us trapped, isolated in our own living hell while we desperately try to keep up appearances.

Now, almost a year since President Joe Biden formally declared the COVID pandemic over, foreclosure and eviction moratoriums that were put in place during the mass death event are no longer in effect. We are now seeing surges in both.

Invisible funnel cloud

The Alarcon family was swept off this earth by what can only be described as an invisible tornado — a vortex of America’s gun violence, mental health and affordable housing death spirals. Polite society and our elected leaders are prone to say "nobody saw it coming" as kind of a post-traumatic salve we apply on our collective conscience. This bromide shields us from having to confront the brutality of an economic system that’s fueled by the dispossession and seizure of a family’s home but also funds the campaigns of the people that make the laws and appoint the judges.

While professional Democrats are touting Biden’s "miraculous" economic recovery, they neglect to describe the ongoing misery index that provides essential context to the robust Gross Domestic Product numbers they use to make their case. While we have seen wage growth, which has been stagnate for decades, grow late last year at a faster pace than inflation, the number of households who were paying more than 50 percent of their income for rent during the pandemic continued to surge.

“The U.S. has a shortage of 7.3 million rental homes affordable and available to renters with extremely low incomes,” reports the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “Only 33 affordable and available rental homes exist for every 100 extremely low-income renter households. Extremely low-income renters face a shortage in every state and major metropolitan area. Among states, the supply of affordable and available rental homes ranges from only 17 affordable and available homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households in Nevada to 58 in South Dakota. In 12 of the 50 largest metro areas in the country, the absolute shortage of affordable and available homes for extremely low-income renters exceeds 100,000 units.”

In New Jersey, there are 323,284 households that fall into that extremely low income cohort. Nearly 75 percent of them are “cost burdened,” which means paying for housing is forcing them to shortchange other essentials like food or healthcare, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In our state, there are just 31 affordable housing units available for every hundred families in need of a place to live.

“Americans are losing their homes at a faster rate this year as banks make up for lost time after state and federal foreclosure bans expired,” reported CBS MoneyWatch. “Lenders repossessed nearly 96,000 properties during the first three months of 2023, up 22 percent from the same period last year, according to real estate data provider ATTOM.”

According to the most recent data, New Jersey ranks third in the nation for foreclosures, behind Maryland and Connecticut. According to SoFi Learn, a personal finance website, one in every 2,775 homes in our state was in foreclosure at the start of the year with 1,347 in foreclosure out of 3.7 million housing units. The hardest hit counties are Cumberland, Gloucester, Warren, Sussex and Atlantic.

Rent hikes higher than inflation

In August, the New Jersey Monitor reported that as the eviction moratorium ended on Jan. 1, 2022 the state’s official homeless numbers ticked past 10,000 for the first time since 2015.

“Rents are rising. New Jersey’s median rent in December 2022 was $2,723 — 8.38 percent higher than the same time the previous year and higher than the national median of $2,007, according to a Rent.com report,” according to the news source. “Rental vacancies fell. New Jersey had a 3.7 percent rental vacancy rate last year, down from an 11.2 percent a decade ago, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank.”

While economists credited the Federal Reserve and the White House for a "soft landing" of the economy, it was actually a crash landing for many who had already been hanging on by a thread during the pandemic.

According to last year’s Point-in-Time Count, which is mandated by the federal government for all communities that have gotten federal homeless assistance, roughly 653,100 people were experiencing homelessness, the highest such count since reporting started in 2007. In that single night count, there were close to 35,000 people under the age of 25 without shelter that are categorized as unaccompanied youth.

In New Jersey, that Point-in-Time Count in January of 2023 identified 7,408 households, including 10,267 persons, that were experiencing homelessness with almost 2,000 people identified as chronically homeless and 1,416 people actually unsheltered the night of the count.


A vacant home in Neptune, N.J. Photo: Bob Hennelly

Walter Herres is the executive director of SHILO, (Supporting Homeless and Innovatively Loving Others), a grassroots non-profit working primarily in New Brunswick, who is now himself dealing with homelessness. He is also very active with the New Jersey Poor People’s Campaign and has been extensively trained in helping at-risk individuals regain their footing. During a phone interview with InsiderNJ, Herres said the Point-in-Time Count upon which so many policy decisions are based, vastly undercounts the number of people who are caught up in the worsening shelter crisis.

“These are fairy tale statistics. There’s no way that on one night in January that you are going to go out and find all of the homeless meaning you would walk right past me if I had on some new Jordan sneakers with a nice jacket on and I put on cologne — you would have walked right past me with your clipboard,” Herres explained.

“There’s a national shortage of affordable housing,” he said, and the reality is we see people of all races “forced into nomadic living in their cars.”

Herres contrasted how the nation gears up for lost dogs with how it handles the unsheltered.

“If you report your dog missing in America we will go outside with a van and will go around to try and pick your dog up and shelter it until you can pick it up,” Herres said. “That’s where we are in America.”

New Jersey’s shelter crisis is really acute in Trenton, the state capital.

“They have so many abandoned houses in Trenton — they just found the body of a homeless person that died in one. That’s where most of the homeless live — in those abandoned buildings,” Herres said.

A mayor's lament

Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora knows all too well the challenge of having a vast stock of vacant homes, a city with a significant homeless population, and a dearth of resources to address both.

“We just had a row house fire and five houses went up and the problem is we have squatters coming in and it’s cold and they start fires to get warm,” Gusciora told InsiderNJ during a phone interview.

Gusciora, who also served in the state legislature, estimates his city has “well over 1,000” of these residential properties in various stages of disrepair. “A lot of these houses have slipped into decay, so we have to fix roofs and porches. The pipes are gone and it’s almost cost prohibitive to save them.”

Across New Jersey, there are thousands upon thousands of vacant homes that are boarded up falling deeper and deeper into neglect posing public safety and fire risks to our most fragile neighborhoods. Meanwhile, we read isolated local newspaper accounts of homeless encampments in Neptune or in the woods behind Shop-Rite, in Atlantic City next to the Golden Nugget.

In our post-pandemic economic recovery, we just cranked back up the conveyor belt that carries families that had been sheltered, out on to the streets with the resumption of foreclosures and evictions. It’s like we just threw a switch and let the grinding begin without any regard for the potential human consequences like we saw with the Alarcon family’s tragedy.

It’s all right and just is what we tell ourselves. We can’t have people living someplace for free, why that’s not fair to everybody else that has to pay for shelter and here in New Jersey, when property rights bump up against human rights, you know what and who will prevail. It’s in the Garden State’s DNA. After all, we were a northern state that had no trouble turning over runaway slaves to the agents of their masters.

Property is property.

Online images reinforce gender stereotypes more than text: study

Agence France-Presse
February 14, 2024

Images on online platforms have a gender bias that under-represents women, according to a new study 

© STAFF / AFP/File

Images on the internet reinforce gender stereotypes -- such as doctors being men or nurses women -- more than text, contributing to a lasting bias against women, a U.S.-based study said Wednesday.

The importance of images has soared as much of the world's media, communication and even social interactions have moved online.

But this rising dominance of the image "exacerbates gender bias" by significantly under-representing women, according to the study in the journal Nature.

Lead author Douglas Guilbeault, a researcher at the business school of the University of California, Berkeley, told AFP that this was an "alarming" trend.

He warned of "the potential consequences this can have on reinforcing stereotypes that are harmful, mostly to women, but also to men."

Study co-author Solene Delecourt, also from UC Berkeley, said an example would be if a child was trying to find out more about a profession online but only saw images of one gender.

"They may feel like they don't belong," she said.

Images are also "often more memorable and emotionally evocative than text," the study said.

'Really concerning'

For the study, the researchers sifted through more than one million images from Google, Wikipedia and the IMDb film database, as well as billions of words on those platforms.

They looked for potential bias in nearly 3,000 social categories, including jobs such as doctor or lawyer, or roles such as neighbour or colleague.

Both over-represented men, but the images displayed even more gender bias than the words, the researchers found.

For example, the stereotype that women are nurses was "consistently stronger" in the images than the text, Guilbeault said.

This bias was not limited to the United States -- the researchers used many images from websites around the world -- nor was it confined to a particular platform.

The gender bias is also larger than what the general public broadly think, according to an opinion poll carried out by the researchers.

The team also used US census data to show that the under-representation of women for these jobs seen in online images does not match reality.

Finally, they looked into what psychological impact this bias has on people using the internet.

They had 450 people search online for specific jobs -- such as astronaut, poet or neurobiologist -- some reading text while others looked at images.

Afterwards, the participants carried out a test designed to measure their bias.

The group that looked up images had a more pronounced gender bias -- and the effect was still present during another test three days later, the researchers said.

"Images influence people in ways that they may not consciously realize," Guilbeault said.

He also lamented that there has been so little attention paid to "this shift towards image-based communication".

The researchers pointed to the role of online platforms in amplifying gender bias through their images, calling for more to be done.

They also warned that new image generators driven by artificial intelligence algorithms draw heavily on existing online images.

"It's not a surprise that the images these algorithms generate reflect all kinds of biases," Guilbeault said.

© 2024 AFP

Oil, gas lobby enters presidential campaign with EV ad in key swing states

2024/02/13

President Joe Biden sits at the wheel of a Cadillac Lyriq electric vehicle as he visits the 2022 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

 - Mandel Ngan/AFP/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS

WASHINGTON — A lobbying group for the oil and gas industry has launched a new television advertising campaign targeting the Biden administration’s promotion of electric vehicles in several battleground states.

One ad from American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers accuses Democratic President Joe Biden of “rushing to ban new gas-powered cars, no matter where you live or what you need.”

“They want to force you into an electric vehicle,” the ad continues.

Since he took office in 2021, Biden has been ambitious in setting targets for reducing emissions from vehicles with internal combustion engines. His administration's tougher emissions standards have been coupled new tax incentives for buying or leasing an electric vehicle. The ads make no mention of the 2024 presidential election or other candidates for the White House.

But the ad placement in key swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in an election year suggests that the oil and gas industry sees debate over the future of gas-powered cars as an issue that will engage voters.

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers say the ads are part of a “major seven-figure” campaign. The ads call on voters to call the Biden administration and ask the Democratic president to “Stop the EPA’s car ban.”

The Biden campaign responded Monday to the ads.

“While (former President Donald) Trump had the United States losing the EV race to China, President Biden is keeping Michigan at the forefront of car manufacturing by investing in the future to ensure good-paying union jobs end up in America, not halfway around the world," said Alyssa Bradley, communications director for Biden's Michigan campaign.

The ads allude to two regulatory proposals by the Biden administration that would require dramatic improvements to vehicle fuel economy for new cars — and therefore dramatically decrease gas usage — within the next decade.

One proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency, beginning in model year 2027, would phase in strict emission requirements on all new vehicles sold. The average light-duty vehicle would need to emit only 82 grams of carbon dioxide per mile. For 2021, average emissions were 348 grams per mile.

Used vehicles would not be subject to any new requirements.

The proposed regulation does not specify exactly how automakers should achieve such reductions, but it does suggest that electric vehicles may need to make up 67% of all new vehicle sales to meet the lower emission targets.

Electric vehicle sales made up 7.6% of all new vehicle sales last year, according to Kelley Blue Book estimates. That was an increase from 5.9% in 2022.

A related proposal from the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would require new light-duty vehicles to average approximately 58 miles per gallon by 2032.

The figure was 26 miles per gallon last year, a record high for the U.S. but less than half the 2032 goal.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the leading lobbying group for automakers in the U.S., has pushed back against the proposals. The rules are “neither reasonable nor achievable in the time frame provided,” it said in a public comment on the EPA proposal.

The EPA and DOT regulations are not yet final, but Biden is unlikely to back away from his emissions-reduction commitments and longstanding support for electric vehicles.

If Biden wins reelection, his administration will be able to follow through on enforcement of proposed regulations. By contrast, if a Republican challenger wins in November, they may reverse course on tougher fuel economy requirements.

Former President Donald Trump has denounced the regulatory proposals.

"The auto industry is being assassinated," the 2024 Republican front-runner said in a Sept. 27 speech at a nonunion auto supplier in Clinton Township, Michigan. "If you want to buy an electric car, that's absolutely fine. I'm all for it. But we should not be forcing consumers to buy electric vehicles they don't want to buy."

Bradley, the Biden campaign spokeswoman, rejected that notion.

"There is no EV mandate," she said.

"Donald Trump and his allies can’t run on the facts, so as usual, they need to lie to distract from his losing agenda of trickle-down tax cuts, closed factories, and shipping jobs abroad," Bradley added.

In a statement, the lobbying group said its ad campaign is aimed at “seven critical states”: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Ohio and Montana.

Of those seven states, Trump won all but Nevada in the 2016 presidential election. He only won Ohio and Montana in 2020.

Trump is returning to Michigan on Saturday for a campaign rally ahead of the state's Feb. 27 presidential primary.

_____

© The Detroit News

World demand for liquefied natural gas jumps 50% by 2040: Shell

London (AFP) – British energy group Shell on Wednesday forecast that world demand for liquefied natural gas would jump more than 50 percent by 2040, fuelled by China dumping coal.


Issued on: 14/02/2024 - 

China dropping coal for cleaner gas will drive increasing demand for liquefied natural gas (LNG), according to Shell 

© CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU / AFP/File

"Demand for natural gas has already peaked in some regions but continues to rise globally, with LNG demand expected to reach around 625-685 million tonnes a year in 2040, according to the latest industry estimates," Shell said in a report.

Global LNG demand would grow beyond that date, "driven by industrial demand in China and economic development in South Asia and South-east Asia", the energy major added.

Steve Hill, executive vice president for Shell Energy, said China was likely to dominate LNG demand growth in the current decade "as its industry seeks to cut carbon emissions by switching from coal to gas".

While LNG is cleaner than coal, it also produces greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

Industry and many governments argue that LNG is a "bridge fuel" between coal and renewables such as wind and solar.

Hill on Wednesday said that "with China's coal-based steel sector accounting for more emissions than the total emissions of the UK, Germany and Turkey combined, gas has an essential role to play in tackling one of the world's biggest sources of carbon emissions and local air pollution".

Shell said global trade in LNG reached 404 million tonnes last year, up from 397 million tonnes in 2022.

Despite the small uplift owing to tight supplies, the company said "LNG continued to play a vital role in European energy security in 2023, following a slump in Russian pipeline exports to Europe" one year earlier.

Last year saw gas prices retreat from record highs set in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"However, gas prices and volatility remained significantly higher in 2023 than in the 2017-2020 period," Shell added.

© 2024 AFP

'This cannot go on': Scandal over presidential child sex abuse pardon rocks Orban's Hungary

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is facing his biggest political crisis since returning to power in 2010, following the shock resignations of two of his allies over a child sex abuse case.

Issued on: 14/02/2024 - 

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban addresses the parliament in Budapest, Hungary on December 13, 2023. 

©  Bernadett Szabo, Reuters

By:NEWS WIRES
ADVERTISING


Hungary's President Katalin Novak and former Justice Minister Judit Varga -- the ruling Fidesz party's most prominent women -- stepped down on Saturday over the pardoning of a convicted child abuser's accomplice.

With June's local and European elections approaching fast, Orban has been facing rare public anger, including from government insider and Varga's ex-husband Peter Magyar, who railed against the premier's system of power.

Since returning to power in 2010 "no political scandal has had such a rapid and severe political impact," the Political Capital think-tank said in a report.

"What makes these events extraordinary is that one controversy leads to another and the government is simply unable to put an end to it," the institute's analyst Robert Laszlo told AFP.

Corruption and cronyism

Following the surprise resignations, Peter Magyar, who has held several senior positions in state companies, took to social media to heap further criticism on ruling Fidesz politicians.

"I do not for one minute want to be part of a system in which the real culprits hide behind women's skirts," he wrote on Facebook, announcing his withdrawal from two public companies.

On Sunday evening, Magyar upped the ante by giving a lengthy interview to the Partizan YouTube channel, one of the few remaining independent media outlets that's not dominated by pro-government voices.

In the video, which has garnered more than 1.6 million views on the platform, Magyar criticised endemic corruption in Hungary.

He decried the enormous wealth Viktor Orban's inner circle had accumulated over the years, as Brussels has frozen billions of euros amid suspicions that European funds were being misused.

"It must be said now that this cannot go on," said Magyar, questioning whether it was "normal" that "a few families own half the country?".

He also took aim at Orban's powerful cabinet chief Antal Rogan, calling him Fidesz's "Cardinal Richelieu", whom he claimed had almost total control over the government's communication, much like the French 17th century royal advisor.

Magyar did not immediately respond to a request for comment by AFP.

An Orban spokesperson said "the government does not concern itself with the desperate attempts of people in hopeless situations", without providing further information.
Solid foundations

Orban has not publicly addressed the controversy for nearly a week while keeping a low profile on social media, with all eyes on his annual State of the Nation address scheduled for Saturday.

"The scandal has struck at the heart of the Orban government, which spent a considerable amount of money and energy to build a narrative around protecting children," Policy Solutions institute head Andras Biro-Nagy told AFP.

The affair revealed that "it was a simply unacceptable and untenable story," he added.

He said the public outrage was amplified by the fact that Novak -- Hungary's former Minister for Family Affairs -- had been the face of "family-friendly" policies.

Despite the abrupt resignations, no explanation for the presidential pardon has so far been given.

Calvinist Bishop and adviser to Novak, Zoltan Balog, confirmed media reports that he had supported granting clemency to the former deputy director of a children's home, who had helped cover up his boss's sexual abuse of children in their charge.

Following last week's demonstrations instigated by the opposition, well-known influencers have called for another rally to take place on Friday.

It remains to be seen whether Orban can quickly turn the page on the controversy.

"For the moment, it seems unlikely that Orban's reputation among his supporters will be damaged," Political Capital said in its report, given how solidly the nationalist leader has established his power.

But experts expect that the government will launch a further crackdown on the independent press that revealed the pardon scandal.

(AFP)

US prestige at stake as Texas company launches for the Moon


By AFP
February 13, 2024

Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company leading mission "IM-1," is aiming to become the first company to achieve a soft touchdown on Earth's celestial sibling, and land the first US robot on the surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. 

- Copyright POOL/AFP ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS

Gianrigo Marletta with Issam Ahmed in Washington

Another month, another Moonshot: An American spaceship attempting a lunar landing is to launch early Wednesday, the second private-led effort this year after the first ended in failure.

Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company leading mission “IM-1,” is aiming to become the first company to achieve a soft touchdown on Earth’s celestial sibling, and land the first US robot on the surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Its golf cart-sized Nova-C lander named “Odysseus” will blast off on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:57 am local time (0557 GMT).

“We understand and welcome the responsibility of our IM-1 and mission as we hope to become the first commercial company to successfully land on the Moon,” the company’s Trent Martin told reporters.

It is due reach its landing site Malapert A on February 22, an impact crater 300 kilometers (180 miles) from the south pole, where NASA hopes to eventually build a long term presence and harvest ice for both drinking water and rocket fuel under Artemis, its flagship Moon-to-Mars program.

– Back to the Moon –

NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to ship science hardware to better understand and mitigate environmental risks for astronauts, the first of whom are scheduled to land no sooner than 2026.

The instruments include cameras to document the effect of engine plume on the surface, a device to analyze dust haze that appears during lunar twilight, and precision landing technology that uses pulses of light from a laser.

NASA scientist Susan Lederer said the mission would go further south than any lander has been on the Moon “and will give us an opportunity to test our instruments in this very harsh environment where the Sun is always low on horizon.”

There is also more colorful cargo aboard, including a digital archive of human knowledge and 125 mini-sculptures of the Moon by the artist Jeff Koons.

After touchdown, the payloads are expected to run for roughly seven days before lunar night sets in on the south pole, rendering Odysseus inoperable.

IM-1 is the second mission under a NASA initiative called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), which the space agency created to delegate trucking services to the private sector to achieve savings and to stimulate a wider lunar economy.

The first, by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, launched in January, but its Peregrine spacecraft was hit by an onboard explosion that caused a fuel leak, and was eventually brought back to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

– Busy calendar –

Soft landing a robot on the Moon is challenging because a spaceship has to navigate treacherous terrain amid a lag of several seconds in communications with Earth, and use its thrusters for a controlled descent in the absence of an atmosphere that would support parachutes.

Only five nations have succeeded: the Soviet Union was first, then the United States, which is still the only country to also put people on the surface.

In America’s long absence, China has landed three times since 2013, India in 2023, and Japan was the latest, last month — though its robot has struggled to stay powered on after a wonky touchdown left its solar panels pointing the wrong way.

Apart from Astrobotic’s failed attempt, two other private initiatives got close: Beresheet, operated by an Israeli nonprofit, crash landed in 2019, while Japanese company ispace also had a “hard landing” last year.

Intuitive Machines has two more launches scheduled for this year, while another Texas company, Firefly Aerospace has one too. Astrobotic will get another shot in late 2024, carrying a NASA rover to the south pole.

Apollo to Artemis: Why America is betting big on private space

By AFP
February 12, 2024

While NASA's public-private strategy for space has had some success, it also carries the risk of the United States falling behind its principal space rival, China, in achieving major milestones including the next crewed mission to land on the Moon 

- Copyright AFP/File Luis ROBAYO

Issam AHMED

A private Houston-based company is set this week to lead a mission to the Moon which, if successful, will mark America’s first lunar landing since the end of the Apollo era five decades ago.

Reputation will be on the line when Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C spaceship will launch atop a SpaceX rocket on Wednesday, following recent completed touchdowns by China, India and Japan.

So why entrust such tasks to the commercial sector, especially after an attempt by another company with similar goals, Astrobotic, failed just last month?

The answer lies in the way NASA has fundamentally reorganized itself for Artemis, the agency’s flagship Moon-to-Mars program.

During the Cold War, the space agency was handed blank checks and managed industrial contracts down to the last bolt — but the new paradigm bets on America’s mighty market economy to deliver breakthroughs at a fraction of historic costs.

While the current approach has borne some fruit, it also carries the risk of the United States falling behind its principal space rival, China, in achieving major milestones — namely the next crewed mission to the Moon, and getting the first rocks back from Mars.

– SpaceX success –

The focus on fledgling companies under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative builds on the example set by the meteoric rise of SpaceX, which was derided in its startup phase as reckless, but is now arguably the agency’s favorite contractor.

Scott Pace, a former member of the National Space Council, told AFP that NASA had intentionally adopted a policy that prioritized “more shots on goal” at lower costs.

“The reliability that SpaceX has now is as a result of painfully blowing up multiple rockets along the way,” he said.

SpaceX launches are currently the only way astronauts launch from US soil, following the end of the NASA-led space shuttle program in 2011 that left NASA reliant on Russia’s Soyuz rockets.

Elon Musk’s company beat heavily-favored aerospace giant Boeing in certifying its system first, proving for experts the value of competition between companies providing different options.

Each space shuttle launch cost over $2 billion, adjusted for inflation, according to a study in the journal Nature, while the estimated average cost for NASA to buy a seat on a SpaceX flight is around $55 million, according to a government audit.

– On to Artemis –

During the Apollo era, NASA was given more than $300 billion, according to an analysis by Casey Dreier of the nonprofit Planetary Society — far more than the $93 billion to be spent by 2025 on Artemis.

Rather than telling private industry exactly what to build, the agency now purchases services from companies — though this at-times piecemeal approach carries certain drawbacks.

While NASA owns the giant Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion crew capsule, it has contracted with SpaceX an unconventional and as yet unproven landing system based on the company’s next-generation Starship rocket, to provide the first crewed lunar touchdown.

Starship has yet to complete a flight test without blowing up — and it requires ultra-cold refueling multiple times while in orbit before it travels to the Moon, independently of SLS, to dock with Orion and pick up the astronauts.

Futuristic space fuel depots could be a great way to facilitate long-range missions to Mars — the founding ideal of SpaceX, which Musk pursues with messianic fervor — but getting it right could well delay the return of American boots to the Moon.

NASA has said this could take place by 2026 at the earliest, though that timeline threatens to drag. China, meanwhile, has set a deadline of 2030 for its own crewed landing — and has lately stuck to its promises.

The Chinese “don’t go through all of the shenanigans the US has, which is extreme polarization followed by government shutdown threats, followed by continuing resolutions,” G. Scott Hubbard, a former top NASA official, told AFP.

For better or worse, America is locked into its new public-private paradigm.

Artemis was intentionally designed with an array of international partnerships — Europe, Canada, Japan, the United Arab Emirates and more — in order to prevent it from being scrapped, said Dreier.

Moreover, a previous Moon-to-Mars program called Constellation that was conceived in the 2000s and managed more like Apollo was canceled, largely due to budget constraints, so there is little realistic alternative.

CYBER ATTACK

Iran-backed hackers interrupt UAE, UK and Canadian programming with fake AI news broadcast

A group of hackers linked to Iran have interrupted BBC and a host of other European TV streaming services in Britain, the United Arab Emirates and Canada, Microsoft stated in a report earlier this month, noting a marked acceleration of Iranian cyber attacks since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. The programming was interrupted with a fake news report on Gaza featuring graphic images and what appeared to be an AI-generated anchor – the first time Iran has used AI in this way in its influence operations.

Issued on: 14/02/2024 -

A screen grab provided by Microsoft of the fake news broadcast that aired in early December with what appeared to be an AI-generated anchor. 

© Microsoft
By:Bahar MAKOOI

According to the American IT giant, the hacker attack took place in early December and underscored “the fast and significant expansion in the scope of Iranian operations since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict”.

The fake news broadcast focused on Israel’s operations in Gaza and was accompanied by a banner that read: “We have no choice but to hack to deliver this message to you."

The AI news anchor then went on to present graphic – and unverified images – of Palestinians, including women and children, allegedly killed or injured by Israeli forces in Gaza.

"I was watching BBC News around 10.30 pm when the programme was abruptly disrupted, and instead, harrowing visuals from Palestine appeared on my screen. I watched transfixed as my screen froze, and a message from the hacker popped up in all caps against a green background. This was immediately followed by a news bulletin presented by an AI anchor. It was surreal and scary," a Dubai resident told Khaleej Times.

Another user interviewed by the same newspaper recounted how she was unable to shield her children from the graphic images that suddenly popped up on the TV screen.

“Every channel we switched to displayed the same content," she said.

In its February 8 report, Microsoft's Threat Analysis Centre (MTAC) said the disruption had also reached audiences in Britain and Canada.

MTAC attributed the attack to Cotton Sandstorm – a group it has previously identified as “an Iranian state actor sanctioned by the US Treasury Department for their attempts to undermine the integrity of the 2020 US presidential elections”.
AI ‘a key component’

Microsoft said the group, which labelled itself “For Humanity” during the operation, had published videos on the Telegram messaging app, showing how it had hacked into three online streaming services and disrupted “several news channels” with the fake AI broadcast.

It added it was “the first Iranian influence operation Microsoft has detected where AI played a key component in its messaging”.

Since the start of the war, Microsoft said it had noted collaboration between groups affiliated with Iran and, in particular, between a group linked to Iran’s intelligence and security ministry and “Hezbollah cyber units”.

Fabrice Popineau, an AI specialist who lectures and conducts research at France’s prestigious engineering school CentraleSupélec, said the attack was quite a feat. “The achievement is not so much the production of an AI-generated news broadcast, but the fact that they managed to insert it in the right place,” he said.

Nicolas Arpagian, vice-president of cybersecurity firm HeadMind Partners, also pointed to the technical aspect of how the group had attacked the streaming services.

"The cyber attack did not directly target the television channels but the operators of them, not the sender but the receiver," he explained.

According to Arpagian, these type of attacks – in which graphic photos and videos are displayed – fall under a special propaganda category known as “agit-prop”, aiming to spark an emotional reaction and political agitation.

"As soon as you have people feeling it, experiencing it in their homes, in their privacy, the goal is achieved,” he said.
Surge in Iranian cyber attacks

Iran’s upswing in hackings and influence campaigns highlights the regime’s desire to show that it can attack anywhere, anytime. Microsoft said that while it had tracked only nine Iranian-linked groups active in Israel in the first week of the war, this number had grown to as many as 14 just two weeks into the conflict.

It also said that Iranian cyber influence operations had skyrocketed from around one operation “every other month” in 2021, to 11 in October, 2023, alone.

In November last year, these Iran-backed groups also started to extend their attacks beyond Israel to include Israeli allies. Among the targets were a handful of small town water utilities in the United States, including in Pennsylvania, where stunned staff at the Aliquippa water authority discovered that their industrial control device had been hacked. A message on the device screen read: “You have been hacked. Down with Israel. Every equipment ‘made in Israel’ is Cyber Avengers’ legal target.” The Cyber Avengers is affiliated to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, which is a key branch of the country’s armed forces.

This particular attack was remarkable in the sense that it targeted Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), which are commonly used in factory automation processes, including robotised machines and assembly line devices. Such attacks can therefore heavily disrupt operations, and, depending on the industry affected, cause major damage.

US police have opened an investigation into the attack.

This article was adapted from the original in French.

Vietnamese Valentine's: help me find a partner, Buddha

Agence France-Presse
February 14, 2024 

Young Vietnamese flock to an ancient pagoda in Hanoi hoping a Valentine's Day offering will help them find a partner

(Nhac NGUYEN/AFP)

Young men and women flocked to an ancient pagoda in central Hanoi on Wednesday hoping a Valentine's Day offering would help them find a partner -- a major priority for many Vietnamese.

Office worker Nguyen Thi Ly respectfully placed a tray with sweets, water, money -- fake bills of both dong and US dollars -- and the familiar Valentine's roses on the altar at the Ha Pagoda.

"Please help me Buddha, I want to have a boyfriend this year to stop being single," she mumbled before the altar, already packed with dozens of other similar trays.

Vietnam is a communist state but Buddhist and Confucian traditions are still strong, with many people going to pray on the first, middle and last days of the lunar month for peace, luck and prosperity.

While Valentine's Day stems from Christianity, Vietnamese have increasingly marked the occasion in recent years, seeking divine intervention in their love lives.

"It's a spiritual procedure, but it reflects that young people now have become insecure about how to find the right other half," said educational psychology expert Tran Thanh Nam.

- 'Like robots' -

Heavily focused on his work as a doctor, Nguyen Van Duong is single in his early 30s. His marital status worries his parents and himself.

"My parents are getting older day by day. They just want me to get married and have kids," Duong explained as his reason for worshipping on Wednesday.

Marriage and family are traditionally important in Vietnamese society, increasing pressure on young people to wed and have children.

The legal marriage age is 18 for women and 20 for men, but as in many increasingly urban, educated societies, few Vietnamese settle down so early.

In 2022 the average age of marriage was just under 30, according to official data reported by state media.

Too much focus on work, and the usual distractions of the 21st century -- smartphones, internet and social media -- have eroded would-be young sweethearts' social skills, psychology expert Nam told AFP.

"They have become like robots," he said.

This may partly explain the appeal of supernatural assistance.


"I have prayed here at this pagoda five times for a relationship," Nguyen Thi Trinh, 26, told AFP.

"I believe I will be blessed with a boyfriend this year, so that the family would stop asking 'When are you going to get married?'"

'Mock marriages' give hope to Thai LGBTQ community

Bangkok (AFP) – Dozens of same-sex couples were joined in the bonds of mock matrimony in ceremonies across Thailand's sprawling capital on Wednesday, in a dress rehearsal for official unions expected later this year if a change in the law goes ahead.

Issued on: 14/02/2024 -

Kan Kerdmeemool (L) and Pakotchakorn Wongsupa (R), together for 30 years, pose for photos at a 'mock' wedding ceremony for LGBTQ couples Bangkok 

© Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP

City authorities organised the ceremonies for LGBTQ couples in all of Bangkok's 50 districts in a symbolic gesture of support as the national government works to pass a marriage equality bill that cleared an initial reading in parliament in December.

The events coincided with Valentine's Day, with one held at a ritzy shopping mall decked out in pink and carrying the slogan "Love has no boundaries".

Among the happy couples attending were Kan Kerdmeemool and her partner Pakotchakorn Wongsupa, who met through a mutual friend 30 years ago.

A couple registers for marriage certificates ahead of the mock wedding ceremony on Valentine's Day 

© Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP

"I thought it was impossible," Kan, 67, told AFP after receiving a "mock marriage" certificate from the district office -- which carries no official weight for now.

"We deserve to have the same rights as other people."

For LGBTQ couples, the new law would mean inheritance and adoption rights they currently do not enjoy.

Lee Ronald Battiata, 65, an American man who met his Thai transwoman partner Ariya Milintanapa through a dating app, said the bill would benefit their two children -- one from Battiata's previous marriage and another through adoption.

"Even if you don't agree with our lifestyle, it still impacts children, and we're trying to make a life for them," he told AFP.

Ariya Milintanapa (centre L) and partner Lee Ronald Battiata (centre R) say the marriage bill will help their children

 © Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP

The marriage equality bill must pass through several more stages, but if successful, Thailand would be the first nation in Southeast Asia to recognise same-sex unions.

Naiyana Supapung, a gender activist of over four decades and part of the 13-member committee that studied the draft bill, said the law was expected to take effect before May this year.

"It's a historic moment of change," she told AFP.

Huge first step

Activists have been pushing for same-sex marriage rights for over a decade, but in a kingdom where politics is regularly upended by coups and mass street protests, the advocacy did not get far.

"Our politics were not stable. Our country was not ready," LGBTQ campaigner Matcha Porn-in told AFP.

The new law -- which was proposed by a group of activists and the cabinet -- is an amendment of a century-old civil code.

Some believe the marriage equality bill still has gaps, but say it is a good starting point 

© Lillian SUWANRUMPHA / AFP

It would replace the terms "husbands and wives" with "spouses", and make the law gender neutral.

However, critics said there are still gaps in the legislation.

"The law was written by a group of men, so there are still traces of gender inequality," Naiyana told AFP.

But she believed the new law would be a good starting point.

"We try to do as much as we can, and we can take it from there."

© 2024 AFP

Is there a universal language of love or is the key to relationship success simply hard work?


By Dr. Tim Sandle
February 13, 2024

Ukraine has seen a wartime surge in weddings as couples rush to tie the knot in the face of Russia's invasion - Copyright AFP Sergei SUPINSKY

What is the best approach to take for fostering and nurturing high-quality, loving relationships? This is a question that psychologist Louis Hickman has been weighing up recently. The findings of his research come at the right time, just ahead of Valentine’s Day.

To understand Louis Hickman’s perspective, it is necessary to explore the concept of so-called ‘love languages’. Hickman is an assistant professor of industrial-organizational psychology in the College of Science at Virginia Tech and he has been researching this area for many years.

Hickman says: “In the theory, there are five languages: words of affirmation, physical touch, gifts, quality time, and acts of service… we all have a ‘primary’ love language, and we will experience a high quality relationship when our primary language matches our partner’s.” These languages were first coined by a psychologist called Gary Chapman in 1992.

But do these languages actually exist and function in a meaningful way? Hickman presents a simple solution to what is ostensibly a complex problem: “It may have some usefulness for helping people understand one part of the problem, but it is not a silver bullet.”

Hickman presented his love languages research last spring at the International Association for Relationship Research’s Mini-Conference on Resilience in Interpersonal and Social Environments.

The researcher found that matching on your love languages did not predict relationship satisfaction in any meaningful sense, with a few caveats. Here Hickman finds: “Relationship satisfaction suffers when a person strongly desires something their partner does not provide, or when they strongly dislike something that their partner provides.”

Expanding on this, Hickman continues: “While a match between a person and their partner’s love language predicted relationship satisfaction, the partners’ big five traits – extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness, better predicted relationship satisfaction. In other words, you can predict relationship satisfaction better from your partner’s self-reported big five traits than with your and your partner’s love languages.”

As how this works is no surprise, Hickman explains: “People experience higher relationship satisfaction when they and their partner are more emotionally stable and agreeable.”

Hickman is not entirely opposed to the concept of love languages. He indicates: “They could potentially be helpful if perhaps your partner feels that you are not providing enough of or too much of one of those types of behaviours.”

The key to success says Hickman is the building a successful relationship through both people putting in the effort.

Hickman reasons: “Open, honest communication is necessary and that is not captured in love languages. You must be motivated to improve or maintain the quality of your relationship, know how to effectively do so, and enact that knowledge into behaviour.”