Chipmaker Intel to halt $25-billion Israel plant, news website says


FILE PHOTO: Intel logo ·Reuters

Reuters
Mon, Jun 10, 2024

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Intel Corp is halting plans for a $25-billion factory in Israel, Israeli financial news website Calcalist said on Monday, in a report that the chipmaker did not confirm or deny.

The U.S. company, asked about the report, cited the need to adapt big projects to changing timelines, without directly referring to the project.

"Israel continues to be one of our key global manufacturing and R&D sites and we remain fully committed to the region," Intel said in a statement.

"Managing large-scale projects, especially in our industry, often involves adapting to changing timelines. Our decisions are based on business conditions, market dynamics and responsible capital management," it said.

Israel's government in December agreed to give Intel a $3.2-billion grant to build the $25-billion chip plant in southern Israel.

Intel has previously said that the factory proposed for its Kiryat Gat site, where it has an existing chip plant, was an "important part of Intel’s efforts to foster a more resilient global supply chain" alongside the company’s investments in Europe and the United States.

Intel operates four development and production sites in Israel, including its manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat called Fab 28. The factory produces Intel 7 technology, or 10-nanometer chips.

The planned Fab 38 plant was due to open in 2028 and operate through 2035.

Intel employs nearly 12,000 people in Israel.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; editing by James Mackenzie and Rod Nickel)

FORWARD TO THE PAST

Southern Baptists expel Virginia church for believing women can serve as pastors

PETER SMITH
Updated Tue, June 11, 2024 

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Even as they prepare to vote on a formal ban on churches with women pastors, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to boot one such church from its ranks.

Messengers, as voting representatives are known, voted 6,759 to 563 to oust First Baptist Church of Alexandria, a historic Virginia congregation that affirms women can serve in any pastoral role, including as senior pastor. A similar scenario played out at last year’s meeting. Two congregations, including a well-known California megachurch, were ejected from the convention. Ninety-two percent of messengers approved this year's ouster.

The Virginia congregation has been involved in the nation's largest Protestant denomination since its 19th century founding and has contributed millions toward denominational causes. But it came under scrutiny after the pastor of a neighboring church reported it to denominational authorities over its having a woman as pastor for children and women.

The vote came after the denomination's credentials committee recommended earlier Tuesday that the denomination deem the church to be not in “friendly cooperation,” the formulation for expulsion, on the grounds that it conflicts with the Baptist Faith and Message. That statement of Southern Baptist doctrine declares only men are qualified for the role of pastor. Some interpret that only to apply to associate pastors as long as the senior pastor is male.

“We find no joy in making this recommendation, but have formed the opinion that the church’s egalitarian beliefs regarding the office of pastor do not closely identify with the convention’s adopted statement of faith,” said Jonathan Sams, chair of the credentials committee.

The Alexandria church is currently led by a man, Robert Stephens, but the church has made clear it believes women can serve as senior pastors, too. Stephens said his church has had women in ministry for more than 44 years and wants to continue cooperating with Southern Baptists who disagreed on this issue.

“First Alexandria stands before you today as a testament that we can maintain a fruitful partnership with churches that take a different stance on women in ministry,” he said. “We at First Baptist are advancing the gospel, and we hope that we will continue to work alongside you all.”

Afterward, representatives from the Alexandria church said they wished the SBC well. But they said they would focus on First Baptist's own work, ranging from sending a mission team to Nicaragua to partnering on a Bible translation project to taking part in a church youth camp and other ministries.

“This is a sad moment for us, but we also recognize that God has a future for First Baptist Church,” Stephens said.

“We have good news to share with the world, and we will keep doing that,” added Kim Eskridge, the pastor for children and women.

On Wednesday, delegates are slated to consider enshrining a ban on churches with any women pastors in the SBC's constitution. The proposed amendment received preliminary approval last year, and it requires a final vote this year to be enacted. As of Tuesday evening, 10,895 messengers were registered to take part.

Early Tuesday, a small group of women stood outside the Indiana Convention Center in a low-key demonstration in support of women in ministry.

“I hope that people know women have equal value and can be pastors,” said the Rev. Meredith Stone, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry. The organization originated among Southern Baptists in the 1980s, but it now works with women in a variety of Baptist denominations.

Joining them was Christa Brown, who has long advocated for fellow survivors of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches and criticized the denomination’s resistance to reforms, an effort she has chronicled in a new memoir, “Baptistland.” The Southern Baptists ongoing struggles with sexual abuse reforms is also on this year's calendar.

She said there’s a direct connection between issues of abuse and the equality of women in ministry.

“When you squash some people, it sets up a lot more people to be squashed,” she said.

An SBC Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force recently concluded its work. While it has provided a curriculum for training churches on preventing and responding to abuse, it has not achieved the mandate of previous annual meetings to establish a “Ministry Check” database of offenders, which could help churches avoid hiring them.

“We’re probably beyond frustrated that there are not names on the database right now or the database is not live right now,” said Josh Wester, chairman of the task force, which officially concluded its work Tuesday. Messengers adopted its recommendations and assigned the denomination’s Executive Committee to complete goals such as activating Ministry Check and creating a “permanent home” for abuse response.

After denominational officials said they couldn’t get insurance for producing a Ministry Watch list, Wester said he and some others set up a separate non-profit organization to maintain it. But he said the Executive Committee’s new leadership is looking for ways to oversee it in-house.

The list would include those convicted or found liable for abuse in civil court — short of an earlier annual meeting’s call for a list including those who confessed or were credibly accused outside of court.

Wester said the ultimate goal is for a broader list.

“We’re just trying to get a database online because it can always be improved,” Wester said.

Though some have advocated for reforms for the past two decades, the SBC has particularly struggled to respond to sexual abuse in its churches since a 2019 report by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News. It said that roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers faced allegations of sexual misconduct in the previous two decades.

The denomination subsequently commissioned a report from a consulting firm, Guidepost Solutions. It concluded that leaders of the convention’s Executive Committee intimidated and mistreated survivors who sought help. The committee handles day-to-day business of the convention.

Some outspoken voices have contended that there is no crisis of abuse in the convention and that such claims are overstated.

But survivor Tiffany Thigpen, one of several advocates for abuse survivors attending the meeting, noted that SBC messengers have repeatedly supported reforms.

“Our hope has been that the messengers finally get as frustrated as we’ve been and say, ‘OK, wait, we’re not allowing this anymore,’" she said.

In events held on the sidelines of the meeting, politics has been featured. On Monday, former President Donald Trump appealed for votes in a videotaped message to attendees of a staunchly anti-abortion conservative group that met next door to the convention center.

On Tuesday, former Vice President Mike Pence told an audience of about 500 that he would “never” vote for President Joe Biden, criticizing him on border, abortion and other policies. But Pence stopped short of endorsing Trump, his estranged onetime running mate.

Later, messengers approved a resolution against any effort to establish a state religion, including “Christianity as the state religion of the United States” — a notable move given the rise of Christian nationalism in some conservative circles. The resolution calls for robust religious freedoms and for Christians to get involved in public office.

___

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


Southern Baptists are poised to ban churches with women pastors. Some are urging them to reconsider

Peter Smith, Associated Press
Tue, June 11, 2024 




(AP) – From its towering white steeple and red-brick facade to its Sunday services filled with rousing gospel hymns and evangelistic sermons, First Baptist Church of Alexandria, Virginia, bears many of the classic hallmarks of a Southern Baptist church.

On a recent Sunday, its pastor for women and children, Kim Eskridge, urged members to invite friends and neighbors to an upcoming vacation Bible school — a perennial Baptist activity — to help “reach families in the community with the gospel.”

But because that pastor is a woman, First Baptist’s days in the Southern Baptist Convention may be numbered.

At the SBC’s annual meeting June 11-12 in Indianapolis, representatives will vote on whether to amend the denomination’s constitution to essentially ban churches with any women pastors — and not just in the top job. That measure received overwhelming approval in a preliminary vote last year.

Leaders of First Baptist – which has given millions to Southern Baptist causes and has been involved with the convention since its 19th century founding — are bracing for a possible expulsion.

“We are grieved at the direction the SBC has taken,” the church said in a statement.

And it’s not alone.

By some estimates, the proposed ban could affect hundreds of congregations and have a disproportionate impact on predominantly Black churches.

The vote is partly the culmination of events set in motion two years ago.

That’s when a Virginia pastor contacted SBC officials to contend that First Baptist and four nearby churches were “out of step” with denominational doctrine that says only men can be pastors. The SBC Credentials Committee launched a formal inquiry in April.

Southern Baptists disagree on which ministry jobs this doctrine refers to. Some say it’s just the senior pastor, others that a pastor is anyone who preaches and exercises spiritual authority.

And in a Baptist tradition that prizes local church autonomy, critics say the convention shouldn’t enshrine a constitutional rule based on one interpretation of its non-binding doctrinal statement.

By some estimates, women are working in pastoral roles in hundreds of SBC-linked churches, a fraction of the nearly 47,000 across the denomination.

But critics say the amendment would amount to a further narrowing in numbers and mindset for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which has moved steadily rightward in recent decades.

They also wonder if the SBC has better things to do.

It has struggled to respond to sexual abuse cases in its churches. A former professor at a Southern Baptist seminary in Texas was indicted in May on a charge of falsifying a record about alleged sexual abuse by a student in order to obstruct a federal investigation into sexual misconduct in the convention.

SBC membership has dipped below 13 million, nearly a half-century low. Baptismal rates are in long-term decline.

The amendment, if passed, wouldn’t prompt an immediate purge. But it could keep the denomination’s leaders busy for years, investigating and ousting churches.

From women pastors to sexual abuse to Trump, Southern Baptists have a busy few days ahead of them

Many predominantly Black churches have men as lead pastors but assign pastor titles to women in other areas, such as worship and children’s ministries.

“To disfellowship like-minded churches … based on a local-church governance decision dishonors the spirit of cooperation and the guiding tenets of our denomination,” wrote Pastor Gregory Perkins, president of the SBC’s National African American Fellowship, to denominational officials.

The controversy complicates the already-choppy efforts by the mostly white denomination to diversify and overcome its legacy of slavery and segregation.

Amendment proponents say the convention needs to reinforce its doctrinal statement, the Baptist Faith and Message, which says the office of pastor is “limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

“If we won’t stand on this issue and be unapologetically biblical, then we won’t stand on anything,” said amendment proponent Mike Law, pastor of Arlington Baptist Church in Virginia.

Since Baptist churches are independent, the convention can’t tell them what to do or whom to appoint as a pastor.

But the convention can decide which churches are in and which are out. And even without a formal amendment, its Executive Committee has begun telling churches with women pastors that they’re out. That included one of its largest, Saddleback Church of California.

When Saddleback and a small Kentucky church appealed to the annual meeting in 2023, delegates overwhelmingly refused to take them back.

The amendment would give such enforcement actions more teeth.

Some churches with women pastors quit on their own in the past year. They range from Elevation Church, a North Carolina megachurch, to First Baptist of Richmond, Virginia, which had close SBC ties from the convention’s founding.

Law contended the issue has been a “canary in the coalmine” for liberal denominations, several of which began ordaining women and later LGBTQ+ people.

“Southern Baptists are facing a decisive moment,” he said in a video on a pro-amendment website. “Here’s the trajectory of doing nothing: Soon Southern Baptist churches will start openly supporting homosexual clergy, same-sex marriage and eventually transgenderism.”

Others point out that Pentecostal and other denominations have had women pastors for generations and remain theologically conservative.

Some SBC churches with women pastors are heavily involved with the convention, while others have minimal connections and identify more closely with historically Black or other progressive denominations.

Also, some SBC churches interpret the 2000 faith statement as only applying to senior pastors. As long as a the church leader is male, women can serve other pastoral roles, they say.

Such churches may leave if SBC leaders interfere with congregations following “their conscience, biblical convictions, and values by recognizing women can receive a pastoral gift from God in partnership with male leadership,” said Dwight McKissic, a pastor from Arlington, Texas, on the social media platform X.

Other churches say women can be in any role, including senior pastor, and churches can agree to disagree if they embrace most of the SBC faith statement.

That category includes First Baptist of Alexandria. Though its current senior pastor is male, it recognizes “God’s calling to ordain any qualified individual, male or female, for pastoral ministry,” the church said in a statement.

First Baptist leaders declined interview requests, but it has posted extensively about the issue on its website.

It said while it plans to send representatives to the SBC annual meeting, it was warned to expect a motion to deny them voting privileges.

“I do believe we need to be heard and represented,” Senior Pastor Robert Stephens told members in a video-recorded meeting.

The SBC’s top administrative body opposes the amendment. Investigating churches’ compliance would consume an unsustainable amount of time and energy over something that shouldn’t be a litmus test for fellowship, wrote Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, in a Baptist Press commentary.

Baptist Women in Ministry, which began within the SBC in the 1980s but now works in multiple Baptist denominations, has taken note. The Rev. Meredith Stone, its executive director, said some women pastors within the SBC have reached out for support.

The group plans to release a documentary, “Midwives of a Movement,” about 20th century trailblazers for women in Baptist ministry, on the eve of the SBC meeting.

“As they are saying women have less value to God than men in the church, we want to make sure that women know they do have equal value and that there are no limits to how they follow Christ in the work of the church,” Stone said.

Southern Baptists
Messengers stand for worship during a Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting Tuesday, June 11, 2024, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Doug McSchooler)
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Missed mortgage, credit payments in Canada hit pre-COVID highs: Report

More than 1.26 million people missed a credit payment in Q1 2024, says Equifax Canada

John MacFarlane
·Senior Reporter
Updated Tue, June 11, 202

(AUSTRALIA OUT) American express visa and mastercard credit cards (Photo by Fairfax Media via Getty Images via Getty Images) (Fairfax Media via Getty Images)

The financial burden on Canadian households intensified in the first quarter of 2024, with missed payments on mortgages and other forms of credit rising to pre-pandemic levels, according to Equifax Canada.

The “challenging economic conditions” since the pandemic have prompted Canadians to make various moves to manage their finances, including extending their mortgage lengths to reduce payments, says Rebecca Oakes, Equifax Canada’s vice-president of advanced analytics. “It’s not just homeowners feeling the strain. Whether you own or rent, the high cost of living remains a heavy burden for many.”

More than 34,000 Canadians missed a mortgage payment in Q1, nearly 23 per cent more than in Q1 2023, according to Equifax’s latest Consumer Credit Trends Report. More than 1.26 million people missed making some kind of credit payment in the quarter, up 12.2 per cent from last year.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance Canada, Oakes says the Bank of Canada’s decision to cut interest rates by 25 basis points, though a welcome move for Canadians, isn’t likely to have a significant impact.

“It's only really scratching the surface in terms of what it's going to do to payments,” she said. “It needs to go down at least a full per cent, maybe, before there's probably some meaningful impact to individuals.”
Some provinces stand out

Oakes notes the financial stress is not distributed evenly across Canada, with certain indicators higher in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec. Those provinces all had “above-average jumps,” in the range of 13 to 15 per cent, among consumers missing some kind of credit payment in Q1.

“When you look overall, the numbers aren't terrible but then when you start to look at certain geographies, you start to see a lot more stress coming through,” Oakes said, adding that the high costs of owning or renting a home in certain cities can be a major driver.

In Ontario, the total of mortgage balances at 90 days or more without payment — known as “severe delinquency” — topped $1 billion for the first time. (Though delinquency rates in Toronto are up over 2020 figures, the growth of that dollar figure has been driven primarily by soaring home prices and resultant mortgage costs, Oakes says.)

Equifax’s report aligns with other recent research showing that ongoing financial stress and high prices have dampened the housing market and big-ticket spending. The report says new mortgages “hit an all-time low” in Q1 “as consumers held off making big purchase and financing decisions amid rate-cut speculations.” Nationally, there was a year-over-year drop in mortgage refinancing levels (down 2.6 per cent) and in first-time home buyer volumes (down 10 per cent).

On a provincial level, Alberta’s new mortgage originations actually rose 10.6 per cent year-over-year, with housing affordability concerns likely fuelling interprovincial migration, Equifax notes.

“As high home prices and reduced affordability continue in some geographies, more consumers are making the decision to relocate to more financially accessible regions,” Oakes said. “In the last 12 months, the number of individuals who moved from Ontario and British Columbia to other provinces exceeded those who moved to Ontario. Almost 71 per cent of all interprovincial movement to Alberta came from those two provinces alone.”

John MacFarlane is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jmacf.

CANADA

Corus Entertainment stock plunges over 20% to new 52-week low

Jeff Lagerquist
Tue, June 11, 2024 

The Corus logo inside Corus Quay in Toronto is photographed on Friday, June 22, 2018. Corus Entertainment Inc. is cutting its quarterly dividend.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tijana Martin (The Canadian Press)

Corus Entertainment (CJR-B.TO) shares sank to a new 52-week low on Tuesday as analysts predict the loss of content from Warner Brothers Discovery could cost the Canadian media company over $150 million in lost revenue next year.

Last week, Toronto-based Corus announced that some of its programming and trademark arrangements with Warner Brothers Discovery will not be renewed in 2025. The change will mainly impact five of the company’s channels, including HGTV Canada, Food Network Canada, Magnolia Network, Oprah Winfrey Network, and Cooking Channel Canada. Corus channels Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, and Boomerang also broadcast content from Warner Brothers Discovery.

On Monday, larger rival Rogers Communications (RCI-B.TO) announced multi-year deals with NBCUniversal and Warner Brothers Discovery. In 2025, Rogers plans to carry Warner Brothers Discovery’s English-language lifestyle and factual content on its network.

Toronto-listed Corus shares fell as much as 21.7 per cent in early trading on Tuesday, setting a fresh 52-week low for the battered stock, which has dropped nearly 75 per cent in the last 12 months.

CIBC Capital Markets analyst Scott Fletcher downgraded Corus shares to “underperformer” from “neutral,” while slashing his price target from $0.85 per share to $0.25. He estimates the programming Corus is set to lose could result in as much as $150 million in lost revenue next year, and $40 million in lost profit.

Corus generated $1.51 billion in annual revenue in the fiscal year 2023, and an adjusted profit of $334 million.

“With Corus already facing the pressure of a declining advertising market, the additional hit to revenue calls Corus’ financial future further into question,” Fletcher wrote in a note to clients.

Drew McReynolds at RBC Capital Markets also lowered his price target from $1.25 per share to $0.50, while maintaining a “sector perform” rating.

“We have decreased our target multiples to reflect the higher risk profile associated with the step-back in earnings visibility against the backdrop of a still sluggish television advertising market and elevated leverage,” he noted in a report.

Citing Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission specialty channel data, McReynolds says the five Corus channels impacted by the loss of Warner Brothers Discovery content generated about $155 million in regulated revenue in 2022.

Pressure on Canada’s telecom sector has risen in recent months due to the impact of higher interest rates on consumers and heightened competition. Shares of Rogers and Bell Canada owner BCE (BCE.TO) have fallen significantly since early 2024.
Rogers Communications Inc. (RCI-B.TO)

For CIBC Capital Markets analyst Stephanie Price, that’s created a buying opportunity for the latter company. In a note to clients last month, she said concerns about competition, interest rates and free cash flow growth have been priced into the stock. That prompted a rating boost from “neutral” to “outperformer,” with a $52 per share price target.

“While we acknowledge the difficult competitive environment and the role of rates in telecom valuations, BCE appears attractive at current levels relative to the group," Price wrote on April 22.

Jeff Lagerquist is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jefflagerquist.


Rogers scoops rights to HGTV, Food Network, Discovery and more from Corus, Bell

Alex Nino Gheciu
Mon, June 10, 2024 

The Canadian Press


TORONTO — Rogers Communications Inc. has scored "milestone" multi-year deals that will see it scoop the Canadian rights to several lifestyle brands from Corus Entertainment and Bell Media in the new year, including HGTV, Food Network and Discovery.

The media giant said Monday that starting in January, Rogers will be home to several Warner Bros. Discovery lifestyle brands including HGTV, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Magnolia Network and OWN — currently held by Corus — and the brands Discovery, Motor Trend, Science, Animal Planet and I.D., currently held by Bell.

Rogers also said it will bring NBCUniversal’s Bravo channel to Canada in September, making it the rights holder north of the border for titles including reality TV mainstays "The Real Housewives," "Vanderpump Rules" and "Top Chef."

Colette Watson, president of Rogers Sports and Media, called the deals a "milestone long-term content partnership."


The news comes after Corus revealed a fall/winter lineup last week that added Pamela Anderson's "Pamela's Cookin' With Love" to Food Network Canada and Bryan Baeumler's “Building Baeumler” to HGTV Canada. New seasons from HGTV Canada personalities Sebastian Clovis, Scott McGillivray, Debra Salmoni and Randy Spracklin were also announced.

Troy Reeb, Corus' executive vice president of networks and content, said programming and brands on several of the lifestyle properties acquired by Rogers are "anticipated to be impacted" in the new year. He added that Corus' rights to Adult Swim and Cartoon Network won't be affected.

Corus announced last week that it had been informed by Warner Bros. Discovery that some of its programming and trademark arrangements would not be renewed when they expire at the end of the year.

Bell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At a virtual event for media and advertisers Monday afternoon, Watson said this is "truly a transformational year" for Rogers and that the investment helps the company compete with foreign streamers.

Rogers said it will work with Canadian distribution partners to make the content widely available.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 10, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:RCI.B, TSX:CJR.B)

Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press

African Elephants Use Unique Names LikeHumans, New Study Suggests

According to a new study published on Monday, June 10, African elephants refer to one another with "individually specific calls"

Getty

African Elephants walking across the savanna of the Massai Mara, Kenya


Gabrielle Rockson

PEOPLE
Tue, June 11, 2024 


Humans aren't the only animals to use names.

According to a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution on Monday, June 10, African elephants also refer to one another through unique sounds.


Per NBC News, the study found that elephants can hear their names over long distances across the savanna when they speak to one another using low rumbles.

The research also discovered that the elephants learn to recognize and address their mates using their names instead of just imitating sounds.

“Here we present evidence that wild African elephants address one another with individually specific calls, probably without relying on imitation of the receiver,” the study abstract read.

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Getty A family or herd of African Elephants marching in line at Amboseli National Park, Kenya

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To get the results, the study used “machine learning to demonstrate that the receiver of a call could be predicted from the call’s acoustic structure, regardless of how similar the call was to the receiver’s vocalizations,” adds the abstract.

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Scientists achieved this by following a herd of elephants in jeeps at Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park, to closely observe the animals who called out and the ones who responded.

"We've had several incidents where we've been with these elephants and the matriarch of the family will give a call, and everyone in the family will answer,” co-author and Colorado State University ecologist George Wittemyer, said per ITV News.

"Then several seconds later, she'll give seemingly a very similar call and nobody in the family would answer except one individual."


Henrik Karlsson/GettyAn African savanna elephant


According to ITV News and NBC News, researchers then played recordings of the names to individual elephants and disovered that the animals responded more energetically by flapping their ears and lifting their trunks whenever they heard their own noises.

“Just like humans, elephants use names, but probably don’t use names in the majority of utterances, so we wouldn’t expect 100%,” study author and Cornell University biologist Mickey Pardo said, per NBC News.

Moreover, scientists say that animals with complex social structures and family groups are more likely to use individual names as it helps them reunite after a separation.

“If you’re looking after a large family, you’ve got to be able to say, ‘Hey, Virginia, get over here!’ ” Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, who was not involved in the study, told NBC News.

“Elephants are incredibly social, always talking and touching each other — this naming is probably one of the things that underpins their ability to communicate to individuals,” Wittemyer added, per the outlet. “We just cracked open the door a bit to the elephant mind.”


African elephants use names to call each other, study suggests

Amarachi Orie, CNN
Mon, June 10, 2024 at 8:09 p.m. MDT·6 min read

Wild African elephants may address each other using individualized calls that resemble the personal names used by humans, a new study suggests.

While dolphins are known to call one another by mimicking the signature whistle of the dolphin they want to address, and parrots have been found to address each other in a similar way, African elephants in Kenya may go a step further in identifying one another.

These elephants learn, recognize and use individualized name-like calls to address others of their kind, seemingly without using imitation, according to the study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The most common type of elephant call is a rumble, of which there are three sub-categories. So-called contact rumbles are used to call another elephant that is far away or out of sight. Greeting rumbles are used when another elephant is within touching distance. Caregiver rumbles are used by an adolescent or adult female toward a calf she is caring for, according to the study.

The researchers looked at these three types of rumbles, using a machine-learning model to analyze recordings of 469 calls made by wild groups of females and calves in Amboseli National Park and Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves between 1986 and 2022. All the elephants could be individually identified by the shape of their ears, as they had been monitored continuously for decades, according to the study.

The idea was that “if the calls contained something like a name, then you should be able to figure out who the call was addressed to just from the acoustic features of the call itself,” said lead study author Mickey Pardo, an animal behaviorist and postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University in New York.

The researchers found that the acoustic structure of calls varied depending on who the target of the call was.

The machine-learning model correctly identified the recipient of 27.5% of calls analyzed, “which may not sound like that much, but it was significantly more than what the model would have been able to do if we had just fed it random data,” Pardo told CNN.

“So that suggests that there’s something in the calls that’s allowing the model to identify who the intended receiver of the call was,” he added.

An elephant family comforts a calf while napping under a tree in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya. - George Wittemyer

Call and response

The researchers also found that the elephants probably weren’t just mimicking the voice of the individual they were addressing. By comparing pairs of calls between callers and receivers, as well as the receivers’ calls to other individuals, they discovered that the majority of the calls made by the caller did not sound more like the receiver’s call than when they addressed other individuals, according to the study.

The researchers then played back calls to 17 elephants to see whether they recognized and responded to ones that had originally been directed at them.

They found that the elephants would respond more strongly to a call that was originally addressed to them than to one from the same caller that was originally addressed to someone else. “So that meant that the elephants could tell if a call was meant for them just by hearing that call,” Pardo said.

He added that the study “tells us something about the cognitive abilities of elephants because if elephants are addressing one another in this way, they’re basically coming up with names for each other. That implies some capacity for abstract thought — they have to be able to learn this arbitrary sound and associate it with other individuals and essentially call each other by name.”

Coen Elemans, a professor of bioacoustics at the University of Southern Denmark who was not involved with the study, called the findings “very exciting because the use of names was unknown amongst animals.”

“In some animals, such a parrots and dolphins, individuals can have a specific call that others try to mimic, but that is not equivalent to a human name,” Elemans said.
The evolution of language

Elephants maintain lifelong varied social bonds with many individuals and are often separated from their closely bonded social partners, according to the study.

So, some calls can be used to grab the attention of an individual who is far away, whereas close-distance calls might be used to strengthen social bonds, similar to when humans respond more positively and cooperatively when someone remembers their name, the researchers said.

As several families cross the Ewaso Ngiro River together, a female from the Native Americans family responds to her calf’s distress call. - George Wittemyer

When elephants were close together, caregiving rumbles were more likely to be correctly classified by the machine-learning model than greeting rumbles. The researchers suggested that caregivers may use names more frequently with their calves to either comfort the calf or to help it learn its name.

Calls by adult females were also classified more correctly than calls by juveniles, suggesting that adult females may use names more in their calls because the behavior takes years to develop, according to the study.

Pardo said most mammals are not really capable of learning to produce new sounds — an ability needed in order to label something with a name.

He added that since humans, dolphins and elephants address individuals in their species with something like a name, “the need to name other individuals may have had something to do with the evolution of language.”

“Maybe this pressure of having all these complex social relationships — and you need to be able to address others as individuals — is what led animals, including potentially our own ancestors, to develop this ability to associate new sounds with new things. That sort of could be what led to language,” Pardo continued.

“It would be super interest to investigate if these names are learned. Only very few animal groups are able to imitate sounds, what we call vocal learning,” Elemans said in an email. “We knew some individual elephants could also mimic sounds. Now this study may point towards why vocal learning may also be important; name calling in the wonderfully complex social biology of elephants.”

The study authors were not able to conclusively determine whether different elephants used the same name to refer to the same individual, or if they addressed the same individual with different names.

They also could not determine which aspects of the calls were the name, with calls also having information such as the identity, age, sex and emotional state of the caller encoded in their characteristics, according to the study.

Pardo said he would really like to figure out “how these calls actually contain a name, and I’d be able to isolate the names for specific individuals, and then I think that would open up a lot of other areas of inquiry.”

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Scientists used AI to figure out elephants have names for themselves

Grace Eliza Goodwin

BUSINESS INSIDER

Tue, June 11, 2024


Scientists used AI to find elephants likely have unique names for each other.


Machine learning analyzed hundreds of elephant calls recorded in Kenya between 1986 and 2022.


Elephants' ability to recognize name-like calls indicates they may be capable of abstract thought.

Scientists using AI tools have discovered that elephants likely have unique names for each other, according to a new study.

A group of scientists used machine learning to analyze hundreds of wild African elephant calls recorded in Kenya between 1986 and 2022, publishing their findings on Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Specifically, the researchers looked at three different types of communication, or "rumbles" between the endangered species of elephants: "contact calling" rumbles when an elephant is calling to another that is more than 50 meters away, "greeting" rumbles when elephants are close to each other, and "caregiving" rumbles when a female elephant is comforting a calf.

They did not analyze other types of rumbles, like "let's go" rumbles, because elephants are less likely to use specific names in that context, the authors explained.

Within each of these types of interactions, the researchers found evidence that elephants address each other with name-like calls specific to each individual — the first time similar behavior has been observed outside humans.

Unlike dolphins and parrots, who address each other by mimicking the receiver's voice, these elephant calls are not imitations of what each elephant sounds like.

They're more abstract, like the names humans use for each other.

That could mean elephants have a capacity for abstract thought greater than we previously understood.

A machine learning model helped the researchers interpret each call's acoustic structure to determine which elephant was being addressed. This wouldn't have been possible without the help of AI, because humans alone aren't able to differentiate elephant rumblings very well, The New York Times reported.

When the researchers replayed a call originally addressed to one elephant, that elephant responded differently than to calls meant for another individual, the researchers explain in the study.

The researchers posted a video to YouTube that shows a mother elephant hearing a playback of her daughter calling to her. When she hears her daughter's call, the mother raises her head and calls back.

"So that meant that the elephants could tell if a call was meant for them just by hearing that call," Mickey Pardo, a lead author on the study, told CNN.

Still, the researchers couldn't identify which part of the call contained the elephant's name, noting that each call is also simultaneously coded with the caller's characteristics, like its age, sex, emotional state, and behavioral context.

Pardo told CNN that the study "tells us something about the cognitive abilities of elephants because if elephants are addressing one another in this way, they're basically coming up with names for each other."

"That implies some capacity for abstract thought," Pardo added. "They have to be able to learn this arbitrary sound and associate it with other individuals and essentially call each other by name."

And if the elephants have names for each other, it's also possible that they have names for other objects too, according to the study's authors.

The authors explained that although they found mixed support for their hypothesis that different elephants use the same name to refer to a fellow elephant, they did find "at least some convergence among different callers addressing the same receiver." And, the authors wrote, it's possible that every elephant within a family uses the same name to address a specific member.

Nuclear Power Is Hard. A Climate-Minded Billionaire Wants to Make It Easier.

Brad Plumer

The New York Times
Tue, June 11, 2024 











Equipment at the future site of TerraPower's nuclear power plant near Kemmerer, Wyo., June 10, 2024. Bill Gates has poured $1 billion into a project in Wyoming coal country that aims to build the first in a new generation of nuclear reactors that produce emissions-free electricity. (Benjamin Rasmussen/The New York Times)


KEMMERER, Wyo. — Outside a small coal town in southwest Wyoming, a multibillion-dollar effort to build the first in a new generation of U.S. nuclear power plants is underway.

Workers began construction Tuesday on a novel type of nuclear reactor meant to be smaller and cheaper than the hulking reactors of old and designed to produce electricity without the carbon dioxide that is rapidly heating the planet.

The reactor being built by TerraPower, a startup, won’t be finished until 2030 at the earliest and faces daunting obstacles. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission hasn’t yet approved the design, and the company will have to overcome the inevitable delays and cost overruns that have doomed countless nuclear projects before.


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What TerraPower does have, however, is an influential and deep-pocketed founder. Bill Gates, currently ranked as the seventh-richest person in the world, has poured more than $1 billion of his fortune into TerraPower, an amount that he expects to increase.

“If you care about climate, there are many, many locations around the world where nuclear has got to work,” Gates said during an interview near the project site Monday. “I’m not involved in TerraPower to make more money. I’m involved in TerraPower because we need to build a lot of these reactors.”

Gates, the former head of Microsoft, said he believed the best way to solve climate change was through innovations that make clean energy competitive with fossil fuels, a philosophy he described in his 2021 book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”

Nationwide, nuclear power is seeing a resurgence of interest, with several startups jockeying to build a wave of smaller reactors and the Biden administration offering hefty tax credits for new plants.

Hopes for TerraPower’s project are especially high among the 3,000 residents in the nearby Wyoming towns of Kemmerer and Diamondville. For decades, the local economy has depended on a coal-fired power plant and an adjacent mine. But that plant is scheduled to close by 2036 as the nation shifts away from burning coal.

A new reactor, and the jobs that come with it, could offer a lifeline.

“When the talk a few years ago was that we were losing the coal mine and the power plant, this wasn’t a happy community,” said Mary Crosby, a Kemmerer resident and the county grant writer. The reactor, she said, “gives us a chance.”

At a recent conference in New York, David Crane, the Energy Department undersecretary for infrastructure, said that two years ago he “didn’t really see” a case for next-generation reactors. But as demand for electricity surges because of new data centers, factories and electric vehicles, Crane said he had become “very bullish” on nuclear to provide carbon-free power around the clock without needing much land.

The challenge was building the plants, Crane said. “Nothing we’re trying to do is easy.”

A New Type of Reactor

Gates became interested in nuclear power in the early 2000s after scientists persuaded him of the need for vast amounts of emissions-free electricity to fight global warming. He was skeptical that wind and solar power, which don’t run at all hours, would be enough.

“Wind and solar are absolutely fantastic, and we have to build them as fast as we can, but the idea that we don’t need anything beyond that is very unlikely,” Gates said. How, he asked, would Chicago heat homes during long winter stretches with little wind or sun?

One problem with nuclear power, though, is that it has become prohibitively expensive. Traditional reactors are huge, complex, strictly regulated projects that are difficult to build and finance. The only two U.S. reactors built in the past 30 years, Vogtle Units 3 and 4 in Georgia, cost $35 billion, more than double initial estimates, and arrived seven years behind schedule.

Gates is betting that radically different technology will help. With TerraPower, he funded a team of hundreds of engineers to redesign a nuclear plant from scratch.

Today, every U.S. nuclear plant uses light-water reactors, in which water is pumped into a reactor core and heated by atomic fission, producing steam to create electricity. Because the water is highly pressurized, these plants need heavy piping and thick containment shields to protect against accidents.

TerraPower’s reactor, by contrast, uses liquid sodium instead of water, allowing it to operate at lower pressures. In theory, that reduces the need for thick shielding. In an emergency, the plant can be cooled with air vents rather than complicated pump systems. The reactor is just 345 megawatts, one-third the size of Vogtle’s reactors, making for a smaller investment.

Chris Levesque, TerraPower’s CEO, said its reactors should ultimately produce electricity at half the cost of traditional nuclear plants. “This is a much simpler plant,” he said. “That gives us both a safety benefit and a cost benefit.”

TerraPower’s design has another unique feature. Most reactors can’t easily adjust their power output, making it hard to mesh with fluctuating wind and solar farms. TerraPower’s reactor will have a molten salt battery that allows the plant to ramp up or down as needed.

“That helps with the economics,” Levesque said. “We can store energy and then sell it to the grid when it has a higher value.”

Still, it remains to be seen whether TerraPower can achieve lower costs. In 2022, the company estimated that its Kemmerer reactor would cost $4 billion, with the Energy Department contributing up to $2 billion. That’s already pricier than modern gas or renewable plants, and costs could rise further.

Most recent attempts to build nuclear plants have been hobbled by delays and unforeseen expenses, said David Schlissel, a director at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Last year in Idaho, NuScale, another startup, abandoned plans to build six small light-water reactors after struggling with price increases.

“There’s no evidence these small reactors are going to be built any faster or any cheaper than larger ones,” Schlissel said, arguing that utilities should prioritize safer investments such as wind, solar and batteries.

Gates conceded that TerraPower’s first plant was likely to be especially expensive as the company navigated a learning curve. But, he said, he could absorb that financial risk in a way that utilities and regulators can’t. (In addition to Gates, TerraPower has raised $830 million from outside investors.)

The company says that if it can push past initial hurdles and build multiple reactors, it can drive costs down to be economically competitive.

“We’re taking that risk, which, because of our design, we feel very good about,” Gates said. “But it means you need very deep pockets.”

Looking for a Lifeline

In Kemmerer, officials are hoping that bet pays off. This part of Wyoming has relied on coal, oil and gas since the first mine opened in 1887, but America’s coal consumption has fallen by half over the past two decades.

The Naughton coal plant, south of town, dominates the sagebrush landscape and, at its peak, employed nearly 250 workers. When the utility that owns it, PacifiCorp, announced a few years ago that it would retire the facility, many wondered what could possibly replace it. The closure has since been delayed to 2036.

In 2021, TerraPower decided that a nearby site was ideal for a new reactor, since the company could reuse the coal plant’s transmission lines and retrain its workers. The nuclear plant would employ 250 people and create 1,600 temporary construction jobs.

“Now I’ve got people all over the country calling and saying, I want to be on that job,” said Jerry Payne, business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers Local 322, the union that represents many coal plant workers. “It means a lot for Kemmerer.”

After losing residents for decades, Kemmerer is showing signs of revival. A new coffee shop, Fossil Fuel Coffee Co., and several businesses have opened downtown and two sprawling housing developments are planned on the outskirts.

Concerns about the project linger, especially over its timeline. In 2022, TerraPower announced a two-year delay because it would no longer buy nuclear fuel from Russia and needed to find a new supplier.

“People kept asking, is this thing ever going to be built?” said Bill Thek, the Kemmerer mayor. “But now that we’re seeing dirt moving, that’s energizing.”

Last fall, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a hearing in town to field questions from some nervous residents. Do regulators account for earthquakes? (Yes.) Is there a permanent place to store the plant’s radioactive waste? (Not yet.)

“There are people who are excited, and also people who are uncomfortable with the technology,” said Madonna Long, who was born in Kemmerer, left for a few decades, and returned in 2020 to open a medical supply business. “But we don’t have anybody knocking on our door and saying, ‘Hey, I’ll build something else.’”

The Energy Department estimates that hundreds of retiring or closed coal plants nationwide could be suitable locations for new reactors, since they already have grid connections and water supplies. Doing so, the agency said, could also help coal communities avoid steep economic losses.

Challenges Ahead

In March, TerraPower submitted a 3,300-page application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a permit to build the reactor, but that will take at least two years to review. The company has to persuade regulators that its sodium-cooled reactor doesn’t need many of the costly safeguards required for traditional light-water reactors.

“That’s going to be challenging,” said Adam Stein, director of nuclear innovation at the Breakthrough Institute, a pro-nuclear research organization.

TerraPower’s plant is designed so that major components, like the steam turbines that generate electricity and the molten salt battery, are physically separate from the reactor, where fission occurs. The company says those parts don’t require regulatory approval and can begin construction sooner.

A bigger obstacle might be procuring fuel, since today Russia is the only supplier of the specialized enriched uranium used by TerraPower. While Congress has allocated $3.4 billion to bolster domestic fuel supplies, that will take time.

The company does have a customer: PacifiCorp, which provides power across six Western states, plans to purchase electricity from TerraPower’s first reactor and has expressed interest in additional reactors after that. The utility says any cost overruns will be borne by TerraPower, not ratepayers. But that agreement hasn’t been finalized, and some critics worry about the effect on household electricity bills.

“It’s fine for people to be skeptical about this, because nuclear has failed again and again,” Gates said. “A lot of things could go wrong or delay us. But it’s such an important project that I’m basically standing by it financially. I do see it as utterly different from every other fission project being done.”

c.2024 The New York Times Company


In Wyoming, Bill Gates moves ahead with nuclear project aimed at revolutionizing power generation

JENNIFER McDERMOTT
Mon, June 10, 2024 

 Taillights trace the path of a motor vehicle at the Naughton Power Plant, Jan. 13, 2022, in Kemmerer, Wyo. Bill Gates and his energy company are starting construction at their Wyoming site adjacent to the coal plant for a next-generation nuclear power plant he believes will “revolutionize” how power is generated. (AP Photo/Natalie Behring, File)

Bill Gates and his energy company are starting construction at their Wyoming site for a next-generation nuclear power plant he believes will “revolutionize” how power is generated.

Gates was in the tiny community of Kemmerer Monday to break ground on the project. The co-founder of Microsoft is chairman of TerraPower. The company applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March for a construction permit for an advanced nuclear reactor that uses sodium, not water, for cooling. If approved, it would operate as a commercial nuclear power plant.

The site is adjacent to PacifiCorp’s Naughton Power Plant, which will stop burning coal in 2026 and natural gas a decade later, the utility said. Nuclear reactors operate without emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases. PacifiCorp plans to get carbon-free power from the reactor and says it is weighing how much nuclear to include in its long-range planning.

The work begun Monday is aimed at having the site ready so TerraPower can build the reactor as quickly as possible if its permit is approved. Russia is at the forefront for developing sodium-cooled reactors.

Gates told the audience at the groundbreaking that they were “standing on what will soon be the bedrock of America’s energy future.”

“This is a big step toward safe, abundant, zero-carbon energy,” Gates said. “And it’s important for the future of this country that projects like this succeed.”

Advanced reactors typically use a coolant other than water and operate at lower pressures and higher temperatures. Such technology has been around for decades, but the United States has continued to build large, conventional water-cooled reactors as commercial power plants. The Wyoming project is the first time in about four decades that a company has tried to get an advanced reactor up and running as a commercial power plant in the United States, according to the NRC.

It’s time to move to advanced nuclear technology that uses the latest computer modeling and physics for a simpler plant design that’s cheaper, even safer and more efficient, said Chris Levesque, the company’s president and chief executive officer.

TerraPower's Natrium reactor demonstration project is a sodium-cooled fast reactor design with a molten salt energy storage system.

“The industry’s character hasn’t been to innovate. It’s kind of been to repeat past performance, you know, not to move forward with new technology. And that was good for reliability,” Levesque said in an interview. “But the electricity demands we’re seeing in the coming decades, and also to correct the cost issues with today’s nuclear and nuclear energy, we at TerraPower and our founders really felt it’s time to innovate.”

A Georgia utility just finished the first two scratch-built American reactors in a generation at a cost of nearly $35 billion. The price tag for the expansion of Plant Vogtle from two of the traditional large reactors to four includes $11 billion in cost overruns.

The TerraPower project is expected to cost up to $4 billion, half of it from the U.S. Department of Energy. Levesque said that figure includes first-of-its-kind costs for designing and licensing the reactor, so future ones would cost significantly less.

Most advanced nuclear reactors under development in the U.S. rely on a type of fuel — known as high-assay low-enriched uranium — that's enriched to a higher percentage of the isotope uranium-235 than the fuel used by conventional reactors. TerraPower delayed its launch date in Wyoming by two years to 2030 because Russia is the only commercial supplier of the fuel, and it’s working with other companies to develop alternate supplies. The U.S. Energy Department is working on developing it domestically.

Edwin Lyman co-authored an article in Science on Thursday that raises concerns that this fuel could be used for nuclear weapons. Lyman, the director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the risk posed by HALEU today is small because there isn’t that much of it around the world. But that will change if advanced reactor projects, which require much larger quantities, move forward, he added. Lyman said he wants to raise awareness of the danger in the hope that the international community will strengthen security around the fuel.

NRC spokesperson Scott Burnell said the agency is confident its current requirements will maintain both security and public safety of any reactors that are built and their fuel.

Gates co-founded TerraPower in 2008 as a way for the private sector to propel advanced nuclear energy forward to provide safe, abundant, carbon-free energy.

The company's 345-megawatt reactor could generate up to 500 megawatts at its peak, enough for up to 400,000 homes. TerraPower said its first few reactors will focus on supplying electricity. But it envisions future reactors could be built near industrial plants to supply high heat.

Nearly all industrial processes requiring high heat currently get it from burning fossil fuels. Heat from advanced reactors could be used to produce hydrogen, petrochemicals, ammonia and fertilizer, said John Kotek at the Nuclear Energy Institute.

It’s significant that Gates, a technological innovator and climate champion, is betting on nuclear power to help address the climate crisis, added Kotek, the industry group’s senior vice president for policy.

“I think this has helped open people’s eyes to the role that nuclear power does play today and can play in the future in addressing carbon emissions," he said. “There’s tremendous momentum building for new nuclear in the U.S. and the potential use of a far wider range of nuclear energy technology than we’ve seen in decades.”

___

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Banana giant held liable for funding paramilitaries

Vanessa Buschschlüter - BBC News
Tue, June 11, 2024 

[Getty Images]


A court in the United States has found multinational fruit company Chiquita Brands International liable for financing a Colombian paramilitary group.

The group, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), was designated by the US as a terrorist organisation at the time.

Following a civil case brought by eight Colombian families whose relatives were killed by the AUC, Chiquita has been ordered to pay $38.3m (£30m) in damages to the families.


Chiquita said in a statement that it intended to appeal against the jury's verdict, arguing that there was "no legal basis for the claims".

The jury in the case, which was heard in a federal court in South Florida, found Chiquita responsible for the wrongful deaths of eight men killed by the AUC.

The AUC engaged in widespread human rights abuses in Colombia, including murdering people it suspected of links with left-wing rebels.

The victims ranged from trade unionists to banana workers.

The case was brought by the families after Chiquita pleaded guilty in 2007 to making payments to the AUC.

During the 2007 trial, it was revealed that Chiquita had made payments amounting to more than $1.7m to the AUC in the six years from 1997 to 2004.

The banana giant said that it began making the payments after the leader of the AUC at the time, Carlos Castaño, implied that staff and property belonging to Chiquita's subsidiary in Colombia could be harmed if the money was not forthcoming.

Lawyers for Chiquita argued that the company had no choice but to pay the AUC to protect its Colombian employees from violence.

But the plaintiffs argued that the company formed "an unholy alliance with the AUC" at a time when Chiquita was expanding its presence in regions controlled by the AUC.

The regular payments continued even after the AUC was designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organisation in 2001.

While the AUC claimed to have been created to defend landowners from attacks and extortion attempts by left-wing rebels, the paramilitary group more often acted as a death squad for drug traffickers.

At its height, it had an estimated 30,000 members who engaged in intimidation, drug trafficking, extortion, forced displacement and killings.

It also launched brutal attacks on villagers they suspected of supporting left-wing rebels.

The group demobilised in 2006 after reaching a peace deal with the government, but some of its members went on to form new splinter groups which continue to be active.

The class-action lawsuit against Chiquita which ended on Monday focussed on nine cases, which were chosen out of hundreds of claims against the banana company.

The jury found that the AUC was responsible for eight of the nine murders examined as part of the lawsuit.

The jury also ruled that Chiquita had knowingly provided substantial assistance to the AUC, to a degree sufficient to create a foreseeable risk of harm.

Chiquita said in a statement released after the verdict that the situation in Colombia was "tragic for so many, including those directly affected by the violence there, and our thoughts remain with them and their families".

"However, that does not change our belief that there is no legal basis for these claims," it added.

The company said it remained confident that its legal position would ultimately prevail.

Agnieszka Fryszman, one of the leading lawyers for the plaintiffs, meanwhile praised the families she represented, saying that they had "risked their lives to come forward to hold Chiquita to account, putting their faith in the United States justice system".

She added that "the verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed, but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita's doorstep".

Another lawyer for the Colombian families, Leslie Kroeger, said that “after a long 17 years against a well-funded defence, justice was finally served”.

A second case against Chiquita brought by another group of plaintiffs is due to start on 15 July.


US banana giant ordered to pay $38m to families of Colombian men killed by death squads

Luke Taylor in Bogotá

THE GUARDIAN
Tue, June 11, 2024

Paramilitary troops of the Colombian United Self-Defense Forces (AUC) train in the mountains near Catatumbo, in Colombia on 29 January 2000.Photograph: Carlos Garcia/AFP via Getty Images


A Florida court has ordered Chiquita Brands International to pay $38m to the families of eight Colombian men murdered by a paramilitary death squad, after the American banana giant was shown to have financed the terrorist organisation from 1997-2004.

The landmark ruling late on Monday came after 17 years of legal efforts and is the first time that the fruit multinational has paid out compensation to Colombian victims, opening the way for thousands of others to seek restitution.

Related: Warlord behind 1,500 murders returns to Colombia after 12-year sentence in US

It also marks the first time a major US corporation has been held liable for such rights abuses in another country and could lead to a series of similar lawsuits involving rights violations across the world.

“This verdict sends a powerful message to corporations everywhere: profiting from human rights abuses will not go unpunished,” said Marco Simons at EarthRights, one of the law firms representing the families of those killed by the paramilitaries.

Chiquita pleaded guilty in 2007 to funding “a specially designated global terrorist” for secretly paying the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) $1.7m over seven years at the height of Colombia’s brutal conflict, but had never before been ordered to pay compensation to victims.

The rightwing AUC sprang up in the 1980s to protect landowners from leftist rebels such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), but went on to become the worst perpetrators of human rights violations in the south American nation – and one of the country’s largest drug-traffickers.

Until it disarmed as part of a 2004 peace process, the AUC was responsible for most of the civilian lives lost in Colombia’s brutal, six-decade-long conflict, which left 450,000 people dead and millions displaced.

Chiquita has argued that it was extorted by the AUC and that the payments were necessary to protect its employees from armed Marxists.

Court documents show that Chiquita continued paying the AUC after it had been designated an international terrorist organisation in the US in 2001 and that executives saw the payment as the “cost of doing business in Colombia”.

Related: Colombian elite backed death squads, former paramilitary commander says

New evidence presented to the Florida courts also showed that Chiquita allowed the AUC to use its ports to import automatic rifles and its banana boats to smuggle cocaine across the seas, human rights lawyers at International Rights Advocates (IRAdvocates) said.

The civil cases were brought by the family members of trade unionists, banana workers and activists who were tortured, killed and disappeared by paramilitaries as they sought to control the vast banana-producing regions of Colombia.

Some victims were forcibly disappeared by the AUC merely for being suspected of sympathising with the rebels, the rights firms said.

Among the victims who presented evidence was the widow of a union leader who was tortured, decapitated and dismembered by the AUC in 1997.

“It’s a triumph of a process that has been going on for almost 17 years, for all of us who have suffered so much during these years,” said another of the victims, who asked not to be named. “We’re not in this process because we want to be. It was Chiquita, with its actions, that dragged us into it. We have a responsibility to our families, and we must fight for them.”

The case was a “bellwether trial”, said Terrence Collingsworth, executive director of IRAdvocates, one of the legal firms representing the victims.

If the other pending cases are not resolved by negotiation, a second bellwether trial is scheduled for 14 July.

“These brave women and the other Plaintiffs in this case have demonstrated that corporate criminals like Chiquita can be held accountable through courage and perseverance. Hopefully, this verdict will inspire others to fight for corporate accountability,” Collingsworth said in a statement. “In my experience, corporations operating in the global economy will do whatever they can get away with. We just showed them that there are real consequences for corporate outlaws.”


Florida jury finds Chiquita Brands liable for Colombia deaths, must pay $38.3M to family members

Curt Anderson
Tue, June 11, 2024




Banana giant Chiquita Brands must pay $38.3 million to 16 family members of people killed during Colombia's long civil war by a violent right-wing paramilitary group funded by the company, a federal jury in Florida decided.

The verdict Monday by a jury in West Palm Beach marks the first time the company has been found liable in any of multiple similar lawsuits pending elsewhere in U.S. courts, lawyers for the plaintiffs said. It also marks a rare finding that blames a private U.S. company for human rights abuses in other countries.

“This verdict sends a powerful message to corporations everywhere: profiting from human rights abuses will not go unpunished. These families, victimized by armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the judicial process,” Marco Simons, EarthRights International General Counsel and one plaintiff's lawyer, said in a news release.

“The situation in Colombia was tragic for so many,” Chiquita, whose banana operations are based in Florida, said in a statement after the verdict. “However, that does not change our belief that there is no legal basis for these claims.”

According to court documents, Chiquita paid the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia — known by its Spanish acronym AUC — about $1.7 million between 1997 and 2004. The AUC is blamed for the killings of thousands of people during those years.

Chiquita has insisted that its Colombia subsidiary, Banadex, only made the payments out of fear that AUC would harm its employees and operations, court records show.

Reacting to the ruling on social media, Colombian president Gustavo Petro questioned why the U.S. justice system could “determine” Chiquita financed paramilitary groups, while judges in Colombia have not ruled against the company.

“The 2016 peace deal … calls for the creation of a tribunal that will disclose judicial truths, why don’t we have one?” Petro posted on X, referencing the year the civil conflict ended.

The verdict followed a six-week trial and two days of deliberations. The EarthRights case was originally filed in July 2007 and was combined with several other lawsuits.

“Our clients risked their lives to come forward to hold Chiquita to account, putting their faith in the United States justice system. I am very grateful to the jury for the time and care they took to evaluate the evidence,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, another attorney in the case. “The verdict does not bring back the husbands and sons who were killed, but it sets the record straight and places accountability for funding terrorism where it belongs: at Chiquita’s doorstep.”

In 2007, Chiquita pleaded guilty to a U.S. criminal charge of engaging in transactions with a foreign terrorist organization — the AUC was designated such a group by the State Department in 2001 — and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. The company was also required to implement a compliance and ethics program, according to the Justice Department.

Curt Anderson, The Associated Press



Major US banana firm Chiquita Brands ordered to pay $38m to victims of Colombian terror group it funded

Sky News
Tue, June 11, 2024 



Banana firm Chiquita Brands has been ordered to pay $38.3m (£30m) to 16 family members of people killed by a right-wing paramilitary group it funded during Colombia's long civil war.

The decision by a federal jury in Florida marks the first time the company has been found liable in any of a number of similar lawsuits pending elsewhere in the US.

It also marks a rare finding that blames a private US company for human rights abuses in other countries.

"This verdict sends a powerful message to corporations everywhere: profiting from human rights abuses will not go unpunished," Marco Simons, EarthRights international general counsel and one plaintiff's lawyer, said in a statement.

"These families, victimised by armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the judicial process."

"The situation in Colombia was tragic for so many," Chiquita, whose banana operations are based in Florida, said in a statement after the verdict.

"However, that does not change our belief that there is no legal basis for these claims."

According to court documents, Chiquita paid the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia - known by its Spanish acronym AUC - about $1.7m (£1.3m) between 1997 and 2004.

The AUC is blamed for the killings of thousands of people during those years.

Chiquita has insisted its Colombia subsidiary, Banadex, only made the payments out of fear that AUC would harm its employees and operations, according to court records.

Reacting to the ruling on social media, Colombian President Gustavo Petro questioned why the US justice system could "determine" Chiquita financed paramilitary groups, while judges in Colombia have not ruled against the company.

"The 2016 peace deal… calls for the creation of a tribunal that will disclose judicial truths, why don't we have one?" Mr Petro posted on X, referencing the year the civil conflict ended.

The verdict followed a six-week trial and two days of deliberations.

The EarthRights case was originally filed in July 2007 and was combined with several other lawsuits.

In 2007, Chiquita pleaded guilty to a US criminal charge of engaging in transactions with a foreign terrorist organisation - a designation given to the AUC in 2001 - and agreed to pay a $25m (£19.6m) fine.



Chiquita found liable for funding Colombian right-wing terrorist group

David Matthews, New York Daily News
Tue, June 11, 2024 


A federal jury in Florida has found Chiquita liable for funding a Colombian terrorist group and must pay millions to the families of victims.

Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, a right-wing paramilitary group that operated during the country’s civil war, disbanded in 2006 but not before it was deemed a terrorist organization by the United States.

The lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2008, said payments from the multinational fruit company allowed the group to operate. Among the group’s human rights abuses was the killing of people believed to support left-wing rebels.

The families of eight men who were killed by the group filed a lawsuit against Chiquita, arguing its funding of the group made it responsible for the deaths. The South Florida jury agreed and ordered them to pay their families $38.3 million dollars.

“This verdict sends a powerful message to corporations everywhere: profiting from human rights abuses will not go unpunished. These families, victimized by armed groups and corporations, asserted their power and prevailed in the judicial process,” said Marco Simons, general counsel at EarthRights International and one plaintiff’s lawyer.

Chiquita had previously pleaded guilty to making $1.7 million in “security services” payments to the AUC between 1997 and 2004, despite its status as a terrorist organization, and agreed to pay a $25 million fine, the Justice Department said.

The company claimed it only made the payments because it was extorted by the AUC and feared for its workers’ safety.

Chiquita said it plans to appeal the verdict.

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