CrowdStrike was disruptive, but how prepared were businesses in the first place?


By Dr. Tim Sandle
DIGITAL JOURNAL
July 29, 2024

A flawed update sent out by the little-known security firm CrowdStrike brought airlines, TV stations, and myriad other aspects of daily life to a standstill - Copyright AFP Raul ARBOLEDA

The silicon dust is beginning to settle on the CrowdStrike outage (described as the largest IT outage in history – one that will cost Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. alone more than $5 billion in direct losses), yet there remains a considerable amount to debate and to puzzle over.

The incident related to a software update that caused a widespread outage to Microsoft systems, resulting in grounded flights and disruptions to other major industries.

To gain different perspectives, Digital Journal reached out to three leading cybersecurity experts to garner a new take on the situation.

Vendors are still suffering impacts

First up is Jake Williams: former NSA hacker, Faculty at IANS Research, a Boston-based cybersecurity research and advisory firm, and VP of R&D at Hunter Strategy.

Williams begins buy assessing the shockwave: “Vendor management teams should take inventory of which of their vendors are still suffering impacts from the CrowdStrike event. This will be important for future Business Continuity Plan (BCP) planning. If an organization can’t recover quickly from a relatively simple fix like this, they will fare far worse if hit with ransomware.”

This leads to Williams’ substantive point – the need for businesses to be ready for any eventuality: “One of the most important things you can do for your security program this week is to proactively discuss security controls with your stakeholders. Acknowledge that automatic content (signature) updates pose a risk, but delaying those updates is an even greater risk.”

Williams advises: “Talk candidly about vulnerability management and how this plays into the equation. Most importantly, don’t wait for stakeholders to come to you; when they do, they’ll likely have already taken a position, often an uneducated one. By being proactive, you get to control the narrative. As my vet says, it’s far easier to prevent heartworms than to treat them.”

The second commentator is Scott Kannry: Co-founder and CEO of Axio, a SaaS provider of cyber risk management and quantification solutions.

The failure of key technological dependencies impedes businesses

Kannry focuses on the ‘here and now’, of how firms should rise to the challenge: “The critical focus for companies needs to shift to impact minimization. As Board Members and CEOs query their CISOs and Chief Risk Officers, it’s clear that while high-calibre companies like CrowdStrike can suffer such events, the key lies in preparedness. Organizations must thoroughly understand how the failure of key technological dependencies can impede their business and actively work on minimizing such impacts.”

What does tis entail? “This process, grounded in enterprise risk management, involves identifying core products and services, understanding the technologies and processes that enable them, and assessing the resiliency against potential failures. Ultimately, it’s a cost-benefit analysis of risk and resilience that aligns financial and security perspectives, ensuring companies are better prepared for future disruptions. Given the inevitable recurrence of such events, focusing on impact minimization is essential to safeguarding business operations and mitigating significant damage.”


The need to adopt best-of-breed solutions

Third is Pranava Adduri, former founding engineer at Rubrik and CTO and co-founder of Bedrock Security, a data security company.

Adduri ponders over the weaknesses that have made more firms vulnerable to such events: “Security platform consolidation has primarily been driven by the goals of reducing costs and management overhead. Over time, the industry has shifted from best-of-breed solutions to all-in-one, consolidated platforms. When evaluating a platform, it is crucial to recognize that you are investing not only in technology but also in the engineering quality of the team behind it.”

On the subject of drift, Adduri notes: “The further a platform diverges from its core competency, whether it’s EDR or NextGen Firewall, the lower the engineering quality potentially becomes. Last week’s outage revealed significant gaps in the engineering quality of a core EDR product line. Customers utilizing the broader platform offerings (cloud, data, etc) of such vendors need to consider the correlated risk they assume when purchasing secondary product lines. This underscores the need to continue to adopt best-of-breed solutions, which ensure specialized focus and higher engineering standards for that domain.”

BRUTALLST ARCHITECTURE

Hamburg transforms its huge ‘ugly wart’ Nazi bunker


By AFP
July 31, 2024

A former Nazi bunker in Hamburg has been transformed into a new leisure complex - Copyright AFP/File Alex Wroblewski
Sophie MAKRIS

A huge former Nazi bunker in Hamburg has been transformed into a leisure complex filled with restaurants, a concert hall and roof terraces where visitors can relax in an orchard.

It is a novel answer to the question that has long vexed Germany — what to do with former Nazi sites that are too complex to demolish?

The five storeys of the imposing concrete structure in Hamburg’s St Pauli district, one of the largest bunkers in the world, can now be accessed via steps bolted onto the outside of the building.

The complex includes a hotel with 134 bedrooms, a 2,000-seat concert space and allotment plots for locals.

“The idea of raising the height of the building with greenery was to add something peaceful and positive to this massive block left over from the Nazi dictatorship,” said Anita Engels from the Hilldegarden neighbourhood association, which supported the project.

Almost 40 metres (130 feet) tall and weighing 76,000 tonnes, the St Pauli bunker has exterior walls 2.5 metres thick and a roof consisting of 3.5 metres of reinforced concrete.

The building was one of eight “flak towers” constructed by Hitler during the Third Reich, with anti-aircraft guns standing where the apple trees now grow.

– Triple threat –

Three were in Berlin, two in Hamburg and three in Vienna.

“They protected the government quarter in Berlin, the port facilities in Hamburg and the historic centre that Hitler loved in Vienna,” said historian Michael Foedrowitz.

The huge structures also functioned as shelters, as well as serving as a kind of architectural “propaganda” about the power of Hitler’s rule, he said.

The flak tower at Berlin zoo is the only one that has been completely destroyed, since the explosives required would pose too big a risk for the heavily populated areas where the others stand.

After the war, the bunker in St Pauli was initially used as accommodation for homeless people before being transformed into office space for media and advertising companies in the 1950s.

The lower floors have more recently been home to a popular nightclub, a radio station and a climbing gym.

“But that didn’t lead to the story of the bunker being told, to critical reflection. There wasn’t even a sign at the entrance,” said Engels.

As part of the renovation project launched in 2019 by the city of Hamburg and private investors, Hilldegarden has been helping to bring the history of the building back to life.

The association has collected testimonies from people who lived in the bunker during and after the war as well as records of the hundreds of forced labourers who built the structure in just 300 days in 1942.

On the first floor, an exhibition now presents the history of the site.

“In Berlin, up to 60,000 civilians were counted taking refuge in a pair of towers designed to hold around 30,000 people — the size of a small town,” historian Foedrowitz said.

– Massive bombing –

The St Pauli complex housed up to 25,000 civilians including during the Allied bombing raids of Operation Gomorrah in July 1943, which devastated Hamburg.

Brigitte Schulze, a 72-year-old pensioner who came to visit the refurbished bunker, said she felt it was “good to keep this history alive, especially as the witnesses are disappearing”.

“And the setting is pleasant, with the park and the trees,” she said.

Schulze lives near Hamburg but it had never occurred to her before to visit the building, which she described as “just an ugly wart”.

She was one of thousands of visitors to the new complex in its first month.

A few years ago, Hamburg’s second flak tower was converted into a mini power station producing electricity from renewable sources.

In Berlin, the towers in Friedrichshain and Humboldthain have been buried beneath unassuming artificial hills in two city parks.

Druze in Golan reject Israeli threats to retaliate for rocket strike


By AFP
July 30, 2024

Druze pallbearers carry the coffin of Guevara Ibrahim, 11, one of 12 children killed in a rocket strike in the Druze Arab town of Majdal Shams in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights on Saturday - Copyright AFP Jerome BROUILLET

Druze residents of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights distanced themselves Tuesday from Israeli threats to retaliate against Lebanon’s Hezbollah group for a deadly rocket strike on a Druze Arab town in the territory.

Most of Majdal Shams’s around 11,000 residents still identify as Syrian more than half a century after Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.

On a visit to the town on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Israel would deliver a “severe response” to the strike, which killed 12 children aged between 10 and 16 as they played football on Saturday.

On Tuesday, the Israeli army said it had struck around 10 Hezbollah targets overnight and killed one of the Iran-backed group’s fighters.

Scores of Majdal Shams residents had come out to protest Netanyahu’s visit, many donning traditional Druze caps.

The hawkish prime minister arrived hours after hundreds of mourners had joined the funeral procession for one of the children killed, Guevara Ibrahim, 11.

In a statement issued after his visit, Druze lay and religious leaders said the community rejects the “attempt to exploit the name of Majdal Shams as a political platform at the expense of the blood of our children”.

Noting that the Druze faith “forbids killing and revenge in any form”, the community leaders said “we reject the shedding of even a single drop of blood under the pretext of avenging our children”.

– ‘Who will we strike?’ 

The Israeli military has said that the rocket which hit Majdal Shams was fired by Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, which has traded regular cross-border fire with Israeli forces since the Gaza war began last October, has denied responsibility for the strike, though it claimed multiple attacks on Israeli military positions the same day.

An AFP journalist reported that a semblance of normality had returned to Majdal Shams on Tuesday, with shops open and residents walking on the streets.

But the Druze leaders and residents said the whole community was still reeling from the children’s deaths.

“The tragedy is immense, the impact is painful and the loss is shared by every household in the Golan,” they said.

A paramedic from Majdal Shams, Nabih Abu Saleh, told AFP: “The town is in a state of mourning that may last for a week.

“We can’t look into each other’s eyes, because tears will flow,” he added.

Saleh said his community was “against any Israeli response”, and asked: “Who will we strike? Our people in Syria and Lebanon?”

The Druze, who follow an offshoot of Shiite Islam, are an Arabic-speaking community present in Israel, Lebanon and Syria, including the Golan.

The violence on the Israel-Lebanon border since October has killed 22 soldiers and 24 civilians on the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan, according to army figures.

At least 527 people have been killed on the Lebanese side, according to an AFP tally. Most have been fighters, but the toll includes at least 104 civilians.

How spyware turned this Kansas high school into a ‘red zone’ of dystopian surveillance

Max McCoy, Kansas Reflector
July 29, 2024 

Spyware (Shutterstock)

I hated high school.

So I ditched as much class as I could and spent my time racing muscle cars on Route 66 outside of my hometown of Baxter Springs and pursuing other misadventures. I was always reading, though, and in between repairing blown head gaskets and thrown timing chains I had my nose in books, trash and treasure alike, from “The Monkey Wrench Gang” to Hemingway and Harper Lee. My high school guidance counselor told me I should give up my dreams of being a writer and join the Navy instead. I managed to graduate from high school by the intervention of a school superintendent who reckoned I was smarter than I looked and allowed me to test out of some required classes. I still have my graduation photo around someplace, me at 17 in a cap and gown and leaning against the hood of an old GTO.

Later I went to college and washed out after a semester or two and then gave it another try after a couple of years and did better. I eventually graduated from a four-year public university in Kansas and then got an advanced degree and spent some years as an investigative reporter at daily newspapers and published a couple of dozen books with New York houses. I sometimes thought about calling my old high school guidance counselor to gauge her reaction but always thought better of it because, after all, it wasn’t bad advice, considering.

But high school today? It makes my blood run cold.

I wouldn’t last 10 minutes.

Sartre was wrong. Hell used to be other people. Now it’s high school.

I’m convinced of this because I’ve been following the news coverage of Lawrence High School. Just imagine you’re a student at Lawrence High (go Chesty the Lion!) and every homework assignment, email, photo, and chat on your school-supplied device is being monitored by artificial intelligence for indicators of drug and alcohol use, anti-social behavior, and suicidal inclinations.

That’s been the reality since last November, when the district began a $162,000 contract with Gaggle, a Dallas-based student safety technology company to provide around-the-clock surveillance. If a word or an image triggers an alert in the AI software, the result could range from the student being sent to an administrator to being referred to online counseling to getting a visit from local police.

The Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 988.

Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It is free, available 24/7, and confidential.

The district says Gaggle is a tool to increase the safety and welfare of its students and staff. That’s an admirable goal, because suicide is the second leading cause of death for youths 15-19, according to the National Institute for Mental Health. In Kansas, the suicide rate among young people has outpaced the national average, according to the Kansas Health Institute.

“With Gaggle, our district is better equipped to proactively identify students who are at risk for potential unsafe behaviors, provide support where needed, and foster a safer school environment,” according to the USD 497 website.

Gaggle claims that it has saved an “estimated” 5,790 student lives between 2018 and 2023. It did this, according to its website, by analyzing 28 billion student items and flagging 162 million of those for review.

AI surveillance flags “concerning content” on school-issued devices and software accounts for review and blocks potentially harmful content, according to its website. Expert human review, it says, helps district officials to take action before students harm themselves or others, and in severe situations it alerts “district-appointed” contacts, even after hours or on weekends. If no district representative is available, the police might be summoned.

What Gaggle is selling is an antidote for fear — for administrators, for parents, for students — in exchange for civil liberties. It’s difficult to argue with 5,790 lives saved, if you take it at face value, but I have my doubts about that number.

At what point is the safety you think you’re buying for students actually doing harm in unintended ways? Won’t teachers avoid assignments that challenge students to consider real-world problems like violence, depression and suicide? Won’t students learn just to keep their emotions to themselves, instead of confiding in a teacher or another trusted adult? What about the chilling effect on student creativity and expression?

Gaggle is the thought police for K-12 campuses.

Lawrence school board president Kelly Jones confers with principal Quentin Rials during an April 19, 2024, meeting with student journalists about their concerns with the district’s use of spyware. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

It would be easy to describe what’s happening to students at Lawrence High School as Orwellian, but that would be an easy and not exactly fitting metaphor. It does resemble in general the dystopian novels we used to be assigned to read in high school — “1984” and “Brave New World” — but a more accurate comparison is to a science fiction novella you may have never heard of.

In Philip K. Dick’s “The Minority Report,” published in 1956 and made into a movie by Steven Spielberg in 2002, a predictive policing system is used to arrest people before they have the chance to commit the crime they are expected to. Dick’s story — like the use of Gaggle — pits authoritarianism and conformity against creativity and individual liberty.

Just consider what happened to photography students at Lawrence High School shortly after Gaggle was introduced. Nearly an entire class, reported the student newspaper, was called in to explain to administrators the contents of their art portfolios.

“To have administrators reach out to a student,” editor-in-chief Maya Smith wrote in February, “a file in their Google account must be in what Gaggle calls ‘red zone,’ whether it be a photo, document or video. For photography students, photos for various projects were flagged for what was deemed ‘nudity.’ ”

But, Smith reported, none of the students said there was nudity in their work. It was difficult to discuss the images with administrators because the files had been removed from the student accounts, so even the creators couldn’t see them.

Much of what we know about Gaggle at Lawrence High has come from the student newspaper, the Budget. Its enterprising staff of student journalists questioned whether the district’s use of Gaggle was proper under the First Amendment, the Kansas Shield Law and the Kansas Student Publications Act. Newsgathering is a constitutionally protected activity and those in authority shouldn’t have access to a journalist’s notes, photos and other unpublished work.

“People in authority can violate your rights while believing they are protecting you,” the Budget staff wrote in explaining their coverage. “It’s up to you to protect your work process and product. Adults didn’t tell us to fight the good fight. We did it ourselves.”

Lawrence High School journalism teacher Barbara Tholen says students should feel free to talk openly with teachers. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

The staff also reported that when Gaggle flags an email, it stops delivery, which could delay students seeking help. This concern was echoed by their journalism adviser, Barbara Tholen, when earlier this month the district voted to renew Gaggle’s contract, at $53,000. Tholen said a student had shared her thoughts in an email to a trusted teacher, only to have the email rerouted to an administrator.

“Imagine the person that student trusted most with news of their struggles never knowing to reach back out to them with words of comfort,” Tholen told the Lawrence school board, as reported by the Lawrence Times. “We need students to share concerns openly with us — that saves lives.”


The district reached an agreement in April with Budget staff to remove Gaggle from the devices of student journalists. But with the renewal of the contract, the rest of the student body has no such reprieve. A school board member made it clear that students and staff had no expectation of privacy when using district-issued devices. As Reflector intern Grace Hills reported, “Gaggled” has become a new verb in the Lawrence school district.

The question of student surveillance is made more difficult by a lack of clear data on whether it works and if so, whether the collateral damage to privacy is justified. School officials across the country defend the use of such surveillance by arguing that if it saves just one life, it’s worth it. But is it worth it if it turns schools into virtual prisons?

“Through a careful review of the existing evidence, and through interviews with dozens of school staff, parents and others,” wrote a group of Rand researchers in February, “we found that AI based monitoring, far from being a solution to the persistent and growing problem of youth suicide, might well give rise to more problems than it seeks to solve.”


Surveillance software, which became prevalent during the pandemic, may disproportionately target minority students, according to a 2021 piece in the Conversation. According to reported Fast Company magazine, Gaggle previously flagged the words “gay” and “lesbian” in assignments and chat messages.

And about those estimated 5,790 student lives that Gaggle claims to have saved? I asked the company to share its methodology with me. It seemed a suspiciously exact number for an estimate. It also seemed out of proportion, considering there are fewer than 10,000 suicide deaths of those ages 10-24 each year, as of 2018, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Each of our Possible Student Situations (PSSs), which are the highest priority alerts our safety team receives, are reviewed by the head of our Safety Team against a number of different criteria that include nature of the alert, context around the alert, and if the alert resulting [sic] in school or district leaders providing intervention or support that prevented a student death,” Shelby McIntosh Goldman, Gaggle’s vice president of marketing and research, told me. “If the incident meets all criteria, it is counted as a life saved (and yes, counts are exact and tracked annually.) The classification also goes through a secondary audit to create as much inter-rater reliability as possible.”

That’s a lot of “Minority Report” verbiage that says it’s a guess.

And what about Gaggle’s failures? Does it count lives lost?

“By ‘live lost’ I’m assuming you’re asking about situations where the Gaggle Safety Team received an alert but intervention or support did not prevent a student death,” McIntosh Goldman said. “We haven’t received any feedback indicating that occurred in the five plus years that we’ve been tracking lives saved, but due to student privacy issues there is no way for us to confirm that.”

That last sentence represents a positively Orwellian decline in the use of the English language. Tortured prose aside, wouldn’t keeping track of tragedies on their watch be just as important to Gaggle, and more accurate, than guessing at number of lives saved? But then, I’m not trying to sell districts on around-the-clock student surveillance.

The erosion of student privacy by Gaggle and other educational spyware firms, such as Bark and Gnosis IQ, should be of concern to anybody who takes their Bill of Rights seriously. Spyware represents a grave threat to the student press and free speech on campus. It also conditions students to expect government surveillance and may create an assumption that nothing a student does at school — or at home — should be beyond the authority of administrators.

When I was in high school, challenging authority meant cutting class and doing burnouts in front of school. About the only surveillance I was subject to was the speed gun of the local cops.

There were a few teachers I knew I could trust, and that was enough.

But who do you trust in a red zone?

Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and X.

'Now we crush Trump': Michael Moore unleashes 2024 battle plan

He believes the impact of Harris' candidacy is going to hit Trump like a pile of bricks.

Brad Reed
July 29, 2024 
RAW STORY

Michael Moore / Shutterstock

Progressive filmmaker Michael Moore on Monday unveiled his battle plan to win the 2024 presidential election with an article titled, "Now, We Crush Trump: 100 Days to a Better World."

Moore begins by documenting the massive jolt in enthusiasm that has greeted Vice President Kamala Harris's entrance into the 2024 presidential campaign at the top of the Democratic ticket.

"A euphoric nation exploded in a joyful belief that finally the promise of the American Dream was no longer just a 'promise' nor a 'dream' but a roaring reality that immediately took off like a rocket," Moore writes of Harris' candidacy. "And each day this week has seen a new record set for a Presidential campaign."

He then goes on to list off the massive fundraising, volunteer signups, and new voter registrations that took place in the wake of Harris ascending as the likely Democratic nominee as evidence that Democrats are gearing up to deliver a final blow to former President Donald Trump's political ambitions.

ALSO READ: Bad news for Trump: Harris will bring the receipts on Dobbs abortion decision

In fact, he believes the impact of Harris' candidacy is going to hit Trump like a pile of bricks.

"Mr. Trump — how do you expect to win when what you believe in is the opposite of what more than two-thirds of the country believes regarding many of the major issues of the day?!" he asked. "You are running as a right wing whackadoodle in a country that has seriously become more open and progressive. The majority of Americans HATE what you stand for."

He then says that the only way Harris can lose is by depressing the Democratic base by tacking too far to the center, which he said would be akin to "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."

"If too many people sense it’s the same old political hoo-ha, the Democratic vote will be seriously depressed, millions will stay stuck in their despair, and all of this may lead to a Trump victory," he argued. "This must not happen."


Read the full analysis here.

'Rankly undemocratic': Trump scorched for promising to strip rights from D.C. residents

AND RACIST TOO

Matthew Chapman
July 30, 2024

RAW STORY

Former President Donald Trump has lately taken to claiming that he will shut down home rule in Washington, D.C., dictating how the city will be run from on high to clean up crime and other perceived problems.

The Washington Post editorial board tore into the former president over this, blasting his plan as "rankly undemocratic" and, while not necessarily illegal owing to the Constitution's unique grant of power to Congress over the status of the district, an enormous step back for political representation.

All of this comes after years of increasingly bitter debate over the status of D.C. altogether, with a growing movement advocating the district become a full state, both to gain proper congressional representation and to stop having their every political decision subject to congressional veto.

"For a taste of what Republicans might have in mind for a Trump-led takeover of D.C., consult the nearly 50 bills to change laws in the District — on subjects as diverse as sports team logos and local election laws — that GOP lawmakers have proposed in recent years," wrote the board. "One would ban abortion in the city; another would repeal home rule entirely."

Much of this is being done in the name of fighting crime — which, the board noted, spiked after the pandemic and remained high even after most other cities got their public safety issues under control.

Read also: Opinion: Crime is not on the rise — so why do so many Americans think it is?

"In the end, though, democracy worked, as it has in the past," wrote the board. "Voter concerns about rising rates of carjackings and homicides pushed the council to shift gears, enacting anti-crime legislation [Mayor Muriel] Bowser, a Democrat, also supported. Courts increased the use of pretrial detention for potentially violent defendants, police cracked down on open-air drug markets, and the city hired more officers."

Trump and his Republican allies, by contrast, would force D.C. to be accountable only to the whims of a (presumably Republican) congressional majority, with its residents getting no say, wrote the board.

"Even if the District had not rebounded, its people, like all other Americans, have an inherent right to rule themselves, even if it means their leaders sometimes make mistakes. This principle, enshrined in the nation’s founding documents, needs no further justification. But if Republicans need one, it is that democratic systems, for all their messiness, tend to self-correct in ways that top-down systems do not," the board said.


Ironically, the board noted, in the pro-Trump Project 2025 document that calls for increasing executive power and reshaping every federal program into a right-wing bent, the Heritage Foundation proclaimed that “the principles of federalism should be upheld; these indicate that states better understand their unique needs.”

This should apply to D.C. as well, the board concluded, with "no special exception."

Trump loses lead in 7 battleground states: 'Kamala moves the needle'

Maya Boddie, Alternet
July 30, 2024 

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images, Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

Just two weeks after President Joe Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidency, the new 2024 Democratic nominee is taking the lead over former President Donald Trump in several states, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

Per the news outlet's latest poll, in collaboration with Morning Consult, the vice president "has wiped out Donald Trump’s lead across seven battleground states."

Among all seven swing states Bloomberg polled, Harris leads Trump, 48 to 47 percent. The poll has her ahead but within the margin of error in Arizona (49-47); Nevada (47-45 percent); Wisconsin (49 to 47 percent); and tied in Georgia (47 to 47 percent). Biden was not leading in Georgia, Arizona or Nevada when he dropped out.

Harris is solidly ahead in Michigan, leading Trump 53 to 42 percent. But Trump remains in the lead in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania (50 to 46 percent) and is ahead in North Carolina (48 to 46 percent).

"Since last month’s survey, our swing state tracking revealed many self-identified Democrats coming home to support their party’s candidate," Morning Consult's senior director of research, Alexander Podkul, said. "Harris’ switch to the top of the ticket appears to have excited her base."

Bloomberg noted that while "the numbers suggest Harris has a shot at reassembling the voter coalition that propelled President Barack Obama to the White House" in 2008, "The race remains a toss-up."

However, the news outlet emphasizes Harris' newness to the race and that the poll "shows newfound enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket under the 59-year-old Harris. The switch-up in candidates looks set to boost the turnout in swing states, where there’s evidence that key constituencies for the party have been energized by her candidacy."

Georgia voter Robert Banks told Bloomberg, "Kamala moves the needle. People are excited."

Vaccines tell a success story that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Trump forget  LIE ABOUT

The Conversation
July 26, 2024

Vaccination (AFP)

Vaccinations have provided significant protection for the public against infectious diseases. However, there was a modest decrease in support in 2023 nationwide for vaccine requirements for children to attend public schools.

In addition, the presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading critic of childhood vaccination, has given him a prominent platform in which to amplify his views. This includes an extensive interview on the “Joe Rogan Experience,” a podcast with over 14 million subscribers. Notably, former President Donald Trump has said he is opposed to mandatory school COVID-19 vaccinations, and in a phone call Trump apparently wasn’t aware was being recorded, he appeared to endorse Kennedy’s views toward vaccines.

I am a biochemist and molecular biologist studying the roles microbes play in health and disease. I also teach medical students and am interested in how the public understands science

Here are some facts about vaccines that skeptics like Kennedy get wrong:

Vaccines are effective and safe

Public health data from 1974 to the present conclude that vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives worldwide over the past 50 years. Vaccines are also constantly monitored for safety in the U.S.

Nevertheless, the false claim that vaccines cause autism persists despite study after study of large populations throughout the world showing no causal link between them.

Claims about the dangers of vaccines often come from misrepresenting scientific research papers. Kennedy cites a 2005 report allegedly showing massive brain inflammation in monkeys in response to vaccination, when in fact the authors of that study state that there were no serious medical complications. A separate 2003 study that Kennedy claimed showed a 1,135% increase in autism in vaccinated versus unvaccinated children actually found no consistent significant association between vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes.

Kennedy also claims that a 2002 vaccine study included a control group of children 6 months of age and younger who were fed mercury-contaminated tuna sandwiches. This claim is false.



Vaccines are continuously monitored for safety before and long after they’re available to the general public. Elena Zaretskaya/Moment via Getty Images

Aluminum adjuvants help boost immunity

Kennedy is co-counsel with a law firm that is suing the pharmaceutical company Merck based in part on the unfounded assertion that the aluminum in one of its vaccines causes neurological disease. Aluminum is added to many vaccines as an adjuvant to strengthen the body’s immune response to the vaccine, thereby enhancing the body’s defense against the targeted microbe.

The law firm’s claim is based on a 2020 report showing that brain tissue from some patients with Alzheimer’s disease, autism and multiple sclerosis have elevated levels of aluminum. The authors of that study do not assert that vaccines are the source of the aluminum, and vaccines are unlikely to be the culprit.

Notably, the brain samples analyzed in that study were from 47- to 105-year-old patients. Most people are exposed to aluminum primarily through their diets, and aluminum is eliminated from the body within days. Therefore, aluminum exposure from childhood vaccines is not expected to persist in those patients.

Vaccines undergo the same approval process as other drugs

Clinical trials for vaccines and other drugs are blinded, randomized and placebo-controlled studies. For a vaccine trial, this means that participants are randomly divided into one group that receives the vaccine and a second group that receives a placebo saline solution. The researchers carrying out the study, and sometimes the participants, do not know who has received the vaccine or the placebo until the study has finished. This eliminates bias.

Results are published in the public domain. For example, vaccine trial data for COVID-19, human papilloma virus and rotavirus is available for anyone to access.

Vaccine manufacturers are liable for injury or death

Kennedy’s lawsuit against Merck contradicts his insistence that vaccine manufacturers are fully immune from litigation.

His claim is based on an incorrect interpretation of the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, or VICP. VICP is a no-fault federal program created to reduce frivolous lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers, which threaten to cause vaccine shortages and a resurgence of vaccine-preventable disease.


A person claiming injury from a vaccine can petition the U.S. Court of Federal Claims through the VICP for monetary compensation. If the VICP petition is denied, the claimant can then sue the vaccine manufacturer.


Drug manufacturers are liable for any vaccine-related death or injury. 

Andreas Ren Photography Germany/Image Source via Getty Images

The majority of cases resolved under the VICP end in a negotiated settlement between parties without establishing that a vaccine was the cause of the claimed injury. Kennedy and his law firm have incorrectly used the payouts under the VICP to assert that vaccines are unsafe.

The VICP gets the vaccine manufacturer off the hook only if it has complied with all requirements of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and exercised due care. It does not protect the vaccine maker from claims of fraud or withholding information regarding the safety or efficacy of the vaccine during its development or after approval.

Good nutrition and sanitation are not substitutes for vaccination

Kennedy asserts that populations with adequate nutrition do not need vaccines to avoid infectious diseases. While it is clear that improvements in nutrition, sanitation, water treatment, food safety and public health measures have played important roles in reducing deaths and severe complications from infectious diseases, these factors do not eliminate the need for vaccines.

After World War II, the U.S. was a wealthy nation with substantial health-related infrastructure. Yet, Americans reported an average of 1 million cases per year of now-preventable infectious diseases.

Vaccines introduced or expanded in the 1950s and 1960s against diseases like diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles, polio, mumps, rubella and Haemophilus influenza type B have resulted in the near or complete eradication of those diseases.

It’s easy to forget why many infectious diseases are rarely encountered today. The success of vaccines does not always tell its own story. It must be retold again and again to counter misinformation.

IN THE CASE OF RFK JR AND TRUMP ITS DISINFORMATION

Mark R. O'Brian, Professor and Chair of Biochemistry, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Tagging seals with sensors helps scientists track ocean currents and a changing climate

The Conversation
July 26, 2024 

Seals © Denis Charlet / AFP

Researchers have been attaching tags to the foreheads of seals for the past two decades to collect data in remote and inaccessible regions. A researcher tags the seal during mating season, when the marine mammal comes to shore to rest, and the tag remains attached to the seal for a year.

A researcher glues the tag to the seal’s head – tagging seals does not affect their behavior. The tag detaches after the seal molts and sheds its fur for a new coat each year.

The tag collects data while the seal dives and transmits its location and the scientific data back to researchers via satellite when the seal surfaces for air.

First proposed in 2003, seal tagging has grown into an international collaboration with rigorous sensor accuracy standards and broad data sharing. Advances in satellite technology now allow scientists to have near-instant access to the data collected by a seal.

New scientific discoveries aided by seals

The tags attached to seals typically carry pressure, temperature and salinity sensors, all properties used to assess the ocean’s rising temperatures and changing currents. The sensors also often contain chlorophyll fluorometers, which can provide data about the water’s phytoplankton concentration.

Phytoplankton are tiny organisms that form the base of the oceanic food web. Their presence often means that animals such as fish and seals are around.

The seal sensors can also tell researchers about the effects of climate change around Antarctica. Approximately 150 billion tons of ice melts from Antarctica every year, contributing to global sea-level rise. This melting is driven by warm water carried to the ice shelves by oceanic currents.

With the data collected by seals, oceanographers have described some of the physical pathways this warm water travels to reach ice shelves and how currents transport the resulting melted ice away from glaciers.

Seals regularly dive under sea ice and near glacier ice shelves. These regions are challenging, and can even be dangerous, to sample with traditional oceanographic methods.

Across the open Southern Ocean, away from the Antarctic coast, seal data has also shed light on another pathway causing ocean warming. Excess heat from the atmosphere moves from the ocean surface, which is in contact with the atmosphere, down to the interior ocean in highly localized regions. In these areas, heat moves into the deep ocean, where it can’t be dissipated out through the atmosphere.

The ocean stores most of the heat energy put into the atmosphere from human activity. So, understanding how this heat moves around helps researchers monitor oceans around the globe.

Seal behavior shaped by ocean physics

The seal data also provides marine biologists with information about the seals themselves. Scientists can determine where seals look for food. Some regions, called fronts, are hot spots for elephant seals to hunt for food.

In fronts, the ocean’s circulation creates turbulence and mixes water in a way that brings nutrients up to the ocean’s surface, where phytoplankton can use them. As a result, fronts can have phytoplankton blooms, which attract fish and seals.

Scientists use the tag data to see how seals are adapting to a changing climate and warming ocean. In the short term, seals may benefit from more ice melt around the Antarctic continent, as they tend to find more food in coastal areas with holes in the ice. Rising subsurface ocean temperatures, however, may change where their prey is and ultimately threaten seals’ ability to thrive.

Seals have helped scientists understand and observe some of the most remote regions on Earth. On a changing planet, seal tag data will continue to provide observations of their ocean environment, which has vital implications for the rest of Earth’s climate system.

Lilian Dove, Postdoctoral Fellow of Oceanography, Brown University


This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

'Worrisome': Global methane spike imperils climate goals, study warns

Olivia Rosane, Common Dreams
July 30, 2024 

This NASA illustrative image obtained on March 25, 2020 shows NASA's new three-dimensional portrait of methane, the world's second-largest contributor to greenhouse warming, as it arises from a diversity of sources on the ground and how it moves through the atmosphere. © Handout, AFP

Methane emissions are rising faster than expected, a new study has warned, and the surge is putting global climate goals at risk.

The study, published Monday in Frontiers in Science, found that methane emissions have risen quickly since 2006, with the growth rates for atmospheric methane seeing an "abrupt and rapid increase" in the early 2020s.

"The growth rate of methane is accelerating, which is worrisome," lead study author and Duke University climate scientist Drew Shindell, toldThe Guardian. "It was quite flat until around 20 years ago, and just in the last few years we've had this huge dump of methane. It's made the job of tackling anthropogenic warming all the more challenging."

"Reducing CO2 will protect our grandchildren—reducing methane will protect us now."

Methane is the second leading greenhouse gas heating the atmosphere and contributing to the climate crisis. It is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide during the first 20 years after being emitted, but it also fades from the atmosphere much more quickly—in around 12 years rather than centuries. Methane emissions released between the industrial era and 2019 have caused 65% as much global heating as carbon dioxide, according to the new paper.

Methane emissions have spiked in recent years, reaching record levels in 2021 and 2022. The increase in atmospheric methane concentrations in 2021 was also the highest ever recorded. The growth rates in the early 2020s "far exceeded" predictions, and the situation is not expected to improve on its own.

"This study shows that emissions are expected to continue to increase over the remainder of the 2020s if no greater action is taken and that increases in atmospheric methane are thus far outpacing projected growth rates," the authors wrote.

Methane is emitted primarily by leaks and flaring during fossil fuel production, animal and rice agriculture, and the decaying of organic matter. The authors considered what had caused methane production to spike in the early 2020s specifically, and concluded that the two main drivers were fossil fuels—primarily oil and gas production—and an increase in decomposition rates from wetlands as higher temperatures interacted with La Niña conditions in the tropics.

Despite the significant role that methane plays in accelerating the climate emergency, only around 2% of climate finance is dedicated to targeting it, and current policies only respond to around 13% of total methane emissions. Given the rising rates of methane growth, the authors argued that this must change.

"It is imperative to rapidly reduce methane emissions to reduce the accelerating climate damages so many people around the world are suffering," Shindell said in a statement.

Why has the world dragged its feet on methane so far?

"The world has been rightly focused on carbon dioxide, which is the largest driver of climate change to date," Shindell explained. "Methane seemed like something we could leave for later, but the world has warmed very rapidly over the past couple of decades, while we've failed to reduce our CO2 emissions. So that leaves us more desperate for ways to reduce the rate of warming rapidly, which methane [cuts] can do."

Methane, Shindell told The Guardian, "is the strongest lever we can quickly pull to reduce warming between now and 2050."

"There's just such a rapid response to cutting it," Shindell continued. "We've already seen the planet warm so much that if we are to avoid worse impacts we have to reduce methane. Reducing CO2 will protect our grandchildren—reducing methane will protect us now."

Refusing to curb methane could also undermine efforts to reduce CO2: for every 50 megatons of methane that are not eliminated in keeping with low-warming projections, the remaining carbon dioxide budget is reduced by 150 gigatons.

The scientists outlined three "imperatives" for tackling methane:Reverse the rise in emissions;
Make a plan to tackle CO2 and methane together; and
Optimize methane-reduction plans and technologies for maximum effect.

To that end, the study authors developed an online tool that policymakers and other interested parties can use to gauge the effectiveness and economic benefits of different technologies and strategies.

"The benefits of methane mitigation nearly always outweigh the net costs," Shindell said in a statement.

Each ton of methane emitted in 2020 caused between $470 and $1,700 in damages, without considering methane's contribution to deadly air pollution. If that is taken into account, the true cost per ton could be $7,000 or more.

The most effective action a stakeholder can take to reduce emissions will depend on where they live and their position in society. For governments in countries with large fossil fuel industries, for example, the most important tools would be regulating production, offering incentives for companies to capture any methane, or charging the companies for emitting methane, the study authors argue.

For individuals, the most effective actions may be altering their consumption patterns or taking political action.

"People can make sure they avoid overconsumption of beef and dairy, and compost their organic waste whenever possible," said Shindell in a statement.

"If it's not possible where they live, they can vote for those who'll create programs for composting in their towns. They can also vote for those who will make polluters pay for methane emissions rather than letting them profit while society picks up the tab for the damages they're inflicting."