EU pushes back deforestation law by a year after outcry from global producers

Environmentalists immediately criticized the move.


A woman walks passed a 12-meter Amazon tree trunk placed in front of the European Union Council building by environmental activists in Brussels, July 2, 2008

 (AP Photo/Thierry Charlier), File)

BY RAF CASERT
 December 4, 2024

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union agreed to delay by a year the introduction of new rules to ban the sale of products that lead to massive deforestation, caving in to demands from several producer nations from across the globe and domestic opposition within the 27-nation bloc.

Officials said Wednesday that the EU member states, the EU parliament and the executive Commission reached an agreement in principle following weeks of haggling whether the initial rules would have to be watered down even further than the simple delay by one year. Originally, it was supposed to kick in this month.

The deforestation law is aimed at preserving forests on a global scale by only allowing forest-related products that are sustainable and do not involve the degradation of forests. It applies to things like cocoa, coffee, soy, cattle, palm oil, rubber, wood and products made from them. Deforestation is the second-biggest source of carbon emissions after fossil fuels.

The lead negotiator among the different EU institutions, Christine Schneider, called the delay to implement nature protection rules “a victory,” adding it would give foresters and farmers protection from “excessive bureaucracy.”


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Environmentalists immediately criticized the move.

“With our planet’s forests destroyed further every day, we cannot afford delays to much-needed environmental protection laws like the EU’s anti-deforestation legislation,” said said Giulia Bondi of the Global Witness group. .

Officials from leading exporters of affected commodities — including Brazil, Indonesia and the Ivory Coast — fear the regulation could act as a trade barrier, hit small farmers and disrupt supply chains.

Under the deal, the rules are now scheduled to start Dec. 30, 2025, for large companies, and June 30, 2026, for small companies. The different EU institutions will still have to individually approve the deal but since they agreed on the measures, this is likely to be a formality.
In offering to delay the regulation by a year, the EU Commission has said it heeded the complaints of several global partners about their state of preparedness for the rules.

Some EU governments, including in Austria and Germany, have also sought to water down the regulation or delay its introduction.

With the delay, some governments sought to add more measures that would weaken the original rules and allow for more exemptions. Even if that was not agreed to in the current deal, Schneider said that the commission had “committed itself to updating the Deforestation Law within a year.”

Greenpeace has said that the extension would condemn the world’s forests to another year of destruction. It noted a U.N. finding that an area of forest about the size of Portugal is cut down worldwide each year.

“Instead of rolling back its environmental agenda, the EU needs to keep its commitments and show leadership to tackle the climate emergency,” said Bondi.

Global warming fills New England’s rich waters with death traps for endangered sea turtles


Hundreds of endangered sea turtles are struggling to survive, stunned by cold water after getting trapped in Cape Cod Bay’s hook-shaped geography
(AP Video: Rodrique Ngowi and Steven Senne)

A Kemp’s ridley sea turtle swims in a tank at a New England Aquarium marine animal rehabilitation facility in Quincy, Mass., Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Intern Leighton Graham, left, and biologist Sammi Chaves, right, examine a Kemp’s ridley sea turtle at a New England Aquarium marine animal rehabilitation facility in Quincy, Mass., Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Biologist Sammi Chaves, right, listens to the pulse of a Kemp’s ridley sea turtle at a New England Aquarium marine animal rehabilitation facility in Quincy, Mass., Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

QUINCY, Mass. (AP) — As global warming fills the plankton-rich waters of New England with death traps for sea turtles, the number of stranded reptiles has multiplied over the last 20 years, filling one specialized animal hospital with the endangered creatures.

The animals enter areas such as Cape Cod Bay when it is warm, and when temperatures inevitably drop, they can’t escape the hooked peninsula to head south, said Adam Kennedy, the director of rescue and rehabilitation at the New England Aquarium, which runs a turtle hospital in Quincy, Massachusetts.

More than 200 cold-stunned young turtles were being treated there Tuesday, Kennedy said.

“Climate change certainly is allowing those numbers of turtles to get in where normally the numbers weren’t very high years ago,” he said.

Cold-stunned sea turtles, sometimes near death, wash up on Cape Cod every fall and winter. The aquarium expects the number of turtles it rescues to climb to at least 400, Kennedy said. In 2010, the average was 40, he said.

High wind speeds and falling temperatures have fueled recent strandings, he said.

The total five-year average of cold-stunned sea turtles in Massachusetts was around 200 in the early 2010s, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, growing to more than 700 in recent years.


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All the turtles at New England Aquarium’s hospital are juveniles, mostly critically endangered Kemp’s ridley turtles whose migratory patterns lead to strandings here. They were being treated for maladies ranging from pneumonia to sepsis.

The Kemp’s — the world’s smallest sea turtle — lives largely in the Gulf of Mexico and ventures into the Atlantic Ocean when juvenile. Some recent science, including a 2019 study in the journal PLoS One, says the warming of the ocean increases the chance of cold-stunning events once the turtles reach the Northwest Atlantic. Warmer seas may push the turtles north in a way that makes stranding more likely, the study said.

Upon arrival, the turtles are often critically ill.

“The majority of the turtles arrive with serious ailments such as pneumonia, dehydration, traumatic injuries, or sepsis,” said Melissa Joblon, director of animal health at the aquarium.

The turtle hospital rehabilitates the animals so they can be safely returned to the wild, sometimes locally and sometimes in warmer southern waters, Kennedy said. Around 80% survive.

Margot Madden, a biologist with the National Aquarium, uses a syringe to hydrate a Kemp's ridley sea turtle at a New England Aquarium marine animal rehabilitation facility in Quincy, Mass., Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
A Kemp's ridley sea turtle receives fluids from a syringe at a New England Aquarium marine animal rehabilitation facility in Quincy, Mass., Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Some of the turtles that arrive at the hospital are green turtles or loggerheads, which are not as endangered as the Kemp’s ridley, but still face numerous threats.


“At the end of the day, getting these turtles back to the wild is what we are doing and what we want,” Kennedy said. “We want them back in the ocean.” ___

Whittle reported from Portland, Maine.

Car rams and injures orchestral musicians in Belgrade during a protest over station roof collapse


People hold banners showing Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, reading: “You have blood on your hands!” and stopping traffic, standing in silence to commemorate the 15 victims of a railway roof collapse five weeks ago, demanding accountability for the tragedy in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

A man draped in a Serbian flag stands in silence to commemorate the 15 victims of a railway roof collapse five weeks ago, demanding accountability for the tragedy in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

People hold banners reading: “You have blood on your hands!” and stopping traffic, stand in silence to commemorate the 15 victims of a railway roof collapse five weeks ago, demanding accountability for the tragedy in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

A man draped in a Serbian flag stands in silence to commemorate the 15 victims of a railway roof collapse five weeks ago, demanding accountability for the tragedy in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

A woman holds a banner that shows Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, reading: “You have blood on your hands!” and stopping traffic, standing in silence to commemorate the 15 victims of a railway roof collapse five weeks ago, demanding accountability for the tragedy in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

People hold banners showing Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic reading “You have blood on your hands!” and stopping traffic, stand in silence to commemorate the 15 victims of a railway roof collapse five weeks ago, demanding accountability for the tragedy in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

A woman holds a banner that shows Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, reads: “You have blood on your hands!” as she stops traffic, standing in silence to commemorate the 15 victims of a railway roof collapse five weeks ago, demanding accountability for the tragedy, in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024.

 (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

December 6, 2024

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — The Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra said four of its musicians were injured Friday in an incident during a weekly 15-minute traffic blockade commemorating the 15 people who died when a concrete canopy collapsed at a railway station in a northern Serbian city last month.

The traffic blockades have been held every Friday in Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, and other cities and towns since the fall of the concrete construction in Novi Sad on Nov. 1.

Hundreds also took part in protests this Friday at various locations throughout the country, standing in silence to commemorate the victims and demanding accountability for their deaths.

Some members of the Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra joined a traffic blockade at a pedestrian crossing near their place of work on Friday, a statement said. A man refused to stop and drove his car through the protesters, hurting the musicians, the statement added.

Serbian media said police arrested a 67-year-old man from the northern town of Kikinda. The musicians received medical care, reports said.

The Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra “most harshly condemns the act of violence against them (musicians) while they were expressing their personal civic opinion,” the orchestra said. It cancelled a scheduled performance on Friday evening.

Serbian university students have joined the protests in recent days, organizing 24-hour blockades at their faculties. Hundreds came out on Friday to halt traffic on busy streets in Belgrade and elsewhere.


Rallies in past weeks have occasionally been marred by violent incidents when pro-government supporters showed up and tried to disrupt the protesters blocking traffic.

The railway station building in Novi Sad was renovated twice in recent years. Many in Serbia believe rampant corruption and opaque deals resulted in sloppy work and led to the collapse of the canopy.

While prosecutors have announced the arrests of 13 people, a Serbian court has since released from detention former government construction minister Goran Vesic. This has fueled widespread skepticism of the ongoing investigation, as the ruling populists control both the police and judiciary.


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INTERNET ARCHIVE

Online library drops its legal battle to provide free e-books without publishers’ permission

BY HILLEL ITALIE
December 6, 2024


NEW YORK (AP) — A prolonged and closely watched copyright case involving an online library’s unauthorized offering of free e-books has ended after the defendant, Internet Archive, decided not to challenge an appeal’s court’s ruling against it.

In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a Manhattan federal court’s decision that found the Archive in violation of copyright law and granted a permanent injunction. The Archive had until this week to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but declined to do so.

In 2020, four major publishers — Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House — sued the Archive, alleging that it had illegally provided free copies of more than 100 books, including fiction by Toni Morrison and J.D. Salinger. The Archive had contended that its program of scanning and sharing books, “controlled digital lending,” was protected by fair use law.

“After five years of litigation, we are thrilled to see this important case rest with the decisive opinion of the Second Circuit, which leaves no room for arguments that ‘controlled digital lending’ is anything more than infringement,” Maria A. Pallante, president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, said in a statement.

The Archive’s director of library services, Chris Freeland, posted a brief statement on the Archive’s web site saying that “While we are deeply disappointed with the Second Circuit’s opinion,” they would “continue to honor” an agreement to “remove books from lending at their member publishers’ requests.”

 I SUPPORT AND USE THE INTERNET ARCHIVE 

AND ITS MEMORY HOLE FOR THE NET

Hawaiian crow that went extinct in the wild decades ago released on Maui

Five ‘alalā, also known as Hawaiian crows, have been released into the forests of Maui for the first time. The release of the ‘alalā on Maui marks a key milestone in the ongoing conservation effort to restore this intelligent and charismatic species to its natural forest habitat.

 December 4, 2024


MAKAWAO, Hawaii. (AP) — Five Hawaiian crows on Wednesday were released on Maui for the first time as part of an ongoing effort to return the species to its home, conservationists said.

The Hawaiian crows, or alala, were last found on Hawaii’s Big Island, but they went extinct in the wild in 2002, officials with the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance said in a statement. The birds, described as intelligent and charismatic, are the last survivor of all the Hawaiian crow species. Habitat loss, predation and disease by introduced species are threats, among other factors.

“The translocation of alala to Maui is a monumental step forward in conserving the species and a testament to the importance of partnership in reversing biodiversity loss,” said Megan Owen, Ph.D., vice president of conservation science at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

The release is the result of years of preparation by multiple organizations and agencies including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, State of Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources Division of Forestry and Wildlife and the University of Hawaii, she said.

The five alala released included two females and three males that spent months in a social group at Keauhou and Maui Bird conservation centers to establish strong bonds. The San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance evaluated the birds for the release based on how well they foraged for food and responded to predators. The birds were also assessed by veterinarians.

“It means a lot to me to care for the alala,” Keanini Aarona, avian recovery specialist at Maui Bird Conservation Center, said in the statement. “To me, and in my culture, the alala are like our ancestors — our kūpuna. The forest wouldn’t be there without these birds.”

Thirty of the birds were reintroduced between 2016 and 2020 in the Big Island’s Puu Makaala Natural Forest Reserve. After several successful years, alala numbers began to decline and reintroduction efforts were paused, officials said. The remaining alala were returned to human care.

PRICE GOUGING BY ANY OTHER NAME

Chipotle is raising US prices after promising bigger portions

INFLATION IS THE EXCUSE


 The Chipotle Mexican Grill logo is seen on a storefront, Oct. 14, 2022, in Boston. 

(AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

BY DEE-ANN DURBIN
December 6, 2024

Chipotle is raising its U.S. prices to offset inflation and to compensate for a promise to increase portion sizes.

Chipotle’s chief corporate affairs officer, Laurie Schalow, confirmed Friday that the Mexican restaurant chain was implementing a 2% price increase nationally. Schalow said it’s the first time the California-based company has raised its prices in more than a year.

Chipotle revealed the price increase after an analyst report released earlier this week by investment bank Truist Securities noted a 2% price increase at approximately 20% of the chain’s 3,500 U.S. stores.

Truist, which raised its price target for Chipotle’s shares, also reported that customer traffic at the chain’s restaurants accelerated in November.

Chipotle said in October that its food, beverage and packaging costs all increased in the third quarter. It cited avocados as an example.
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Avocado shipments from Mexico to the U.S. were briefly suspended in June after two U.S. Department of Agriculture employees were assaulted and temporarily held by assailants in the Mexican state of Michoacan.

Chipotle also cited the cost of ensuring it was providing “consistent and generous portions” to its customers. Former Chairman and CEO Brian Niccol said in July that Chipotle was retraining workers at approximately 10% of Chipotle’s stores after customers complained on social media that they were getting smaller portions.


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Niccol left Chipotle in September to become the chairman and CEO of Starbucks, which has said it won’t raise prices through September 2025.





Restaurant price inflation has aggravated U.S. consumers. The price of food eaten away from home rose 30% between October 2019 and October 2024, according to government figures. The price of food eaten at home rose 27% in that same period.


Earlier this year, McDonald’s said it was seeing more customers eat at home instead of getting fast food because of price increases. The company responded with a $5 meal deal and other discounts.

DEE-ANN DURBIN

Work-life balance isn’t working for women. Why?


A display of clothes is organized at a retail store on Nov. 25, 2022, in New York.

 (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, File)

BY CLAIRE SAVAGE
December 5, 2024

NEW YORK (AP) — About half of working women reported feeling stressed “a lot of the day,” compared to about 4 in 10 men, according to a Gallup report published this week.

The report suggests that competing demands of work and home comprise part of the problem: working women who are parents or guardians are more likely than men who are parents to say they have declined or delayed a promotion at work because of personal or family obligations, and mothers are more likely than fathers to “strongly agree” that they are the default responders for unexpected child care issues.

And 17% of women overall report having to address personal or family responsibilities at work “daily” or “several times a day,” compared with 11% of men overall.

“There’s been much attention and discussion about promoting women’s well-being and helping women succeed as leaders in the workplace. But at the same time, we’re seeing record levels of stress, of worry, of burnout for women,” said Gallup managing director Ilana Ron Levey at an event on Wednesday presenting the research findings, which were based on four separate surveys of nearly 20,000 adults working full time or part time, conducted between February 2023 and October 2024.

But changing workplace culture and prioritizing well-being can improve the problem, according to Karen Guggenheim, creator of the World Happiness Summit and CEO of WOHASU, the organizing body behind the event and other well-being initiatives.

“Why do we have to choose? Why are we creating environments where people have to make a choice between being the most amazing parent, partner, friend, daughter, sister, whatever, and also thriving at work?” she said, adding: “Investing in women well-being isn’t just good business - it’s a blueprint for societal progress.”

The survey, which also found that working mothers are nearly twice as likely to say they have considered reducing their hours or leaving their job altogether because of child care issues compared to working fathers, also highlights the fallout of the country’s child care crisis weeks ahead of the start of President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration.

Trump has said that child care is “something you have to have in this country” and suggested that his plans to tax imports from foreign nations at higher levels would cover the cost of child care reform, although his campaign website does not mention the issue among the administration’s priorities. Vice President-elect JD Vance has criticized efforts by the Biden administration to control rising costs in child care centers, arguing that doing so encourages parents to go back to work and neglects those who prefer to care for their children at home.

Regarding prohibitively high child care costs —- which can exceed the cost of rent for some families, according to a Department of Labor report published last month — Vance suggested parents should lean more on family members for care.

But juggling work and family responsibilities can be draining for both men and women, who are about as likely to report thinking about work during personal time, the Gallup report found.

Yet researchers also found that employers can significantly improve well-being by supporting work-life balance: Women who say they are able to maintain a healthy balance between work and personal commitments are more likely to be engaged at work, and less likely to be actively looking for a new job, the report says.

Organizations can take action by establishing informed policies, programs and resources, positioning managers to be the support system employees need, and prioritizing a culture of well-being, explained Kristin Barry, director of hiring analytics at Gallup.

And with women comprising nearly half of the workforce and the narrowest workforce participation gender gap in U.S. history, “turning a blind eye to this challenge women are facing means we are not going to accomplish our goals,” Barry said.
___


The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Literacy materials dropped by many US schools face new pressure from struggling readers’ parents

THE RIGHT WING FIGHT FOR FONICS


A child follows along with a bookmark as he reads during an after-school literacy program in Atlanta, Thursday, April 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Alex Slitz, File)

BY CAROLYN THOMPSON
 December 6, 2024

A lawsuit filed by a pair of Massachusetts families is adding to the backlash against an approach to reading instruction that some schools still use despite evidence that it’s not the most effective.

States around the country have been overhauling reading curricula in favor of research-based strategies known as the “ science of reading,” including an emphasis on sounding out words.

The lawsuit this week takes aim at approaches that do not emphasize phonics. Among them is the long-established “three-cueing” strategy, which encourages students to use pictures and context to predict words, asking questions like: “What is going to happen next?,” “What is the first letter of the word?” or “What clues do the pictures offer?”

Families of Massachusetts students who have struggled to read filed the lawsuit against authors and publishers endorsing that approach, including Lucy Calkins, a faculty member at Columbia University’s Teachers College. It seeks damages for families allegedly harmed by the material.

Thousands of schools once used three-cueing as part of the “balanced literacy” approach championed by Calkins and others that focused, for example, on having children independently read books they like, while spending less time on phonics, or the relationship between letters and sounds. Over the last several years, more than 40 states have enacted bills emphasizing instead materials grounded in evidence and scientific research, according to the nonprofit Albert Shanker Institute.

It’s unknown how many school districts still use the contested programs because the numbers aren’t tracked — but there are many, according to Timothy Shanahan, a professor emeritus in education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Many teachers have been trained to teach three-cueing so it may be used even in classrooms where it’s not part of the curriculum, he said.

He said research does show benefits from teaching phonics, but there is less information about the three-cueing method.

“There are no studies that have isolated the practice of teaching three-cueing — so we don’t know whether it helps, hurts, or is just a waste of time (although logically it seems to be in conflict with phonics, that may or may not be the case when it comes to kids’ learning),” he wrote in an email.

Three-cueing is a key part of the Reading Recovery program, which has been used in more than 2,400 U.S. elementary schools. In 2023, the Reading Recovery Council of North America filed a lawsuit saying Ohio lawmakers infringed on the powers of state and local education boards by using a budget bill to ban three-cueing.

The new lawsuit accuses Calkins and other prominent figures in childhood literacy of using deception to push schools to buy and use faulty methods. The parents who sued said their children struggled to read after learning at public schools in Massachusetts, where a 2023 Boston Globe survey found nearly half of schools used materials the state education department found to be of low quality.

The suit asks the court to order the authors, their companies and publishers to provide an early literacy curriculum that incorporates the science of reading free of charge.

One of the plaintiffs, Michele Hudak of Ashland, said she thought her son was reading at grade level until fourth grade, when he struggled to read chapter books he was assigned. Until then, testing showed him reading at grade level, the lawsuit said, “solely because he could successfully guess words from pictures.”

Calkins did not respond to an emailed message seeking comment. She has stood by her approach even while adding more phonics to her reading and writing curricula, known as Units of Study.

Last year, however, Teachers College announced it was shutting down the Reading and Writing Project that Calkins founded, saying it wanted to foster more conversations and collaboration among different approaches to literacy. Calkins has since founded the Reading and Writing Project at Mossflower to continue her work.

“Teachers need to take the best of every approach and to vary their instruction based on the particular child with whom they’re working,” Calkins said in a video posted on the new project’s website

Michael Kamil, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University, said that while Calkins gave short shrift to phonics, that is only one part of teaching children to read.

“There are myriad reasons why a student doesn’t learn to read and the reading program very rarely is the major cause,” Kamil said.
___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Earthquakes under a volcano near Alaska’s largest city raise concerns



This image provided by Alaska Volcano Observatory shows the summit of Mount Spurr on Oct. 24, 2024, in Alaska. (Wyatt Mayo/Alaska Volcano Observatory, U.S. Geological Survey via AP)

A small airplane banks for Merrill Field as a plume of ash and steam from Mount Spurr dominates the Anchorage, Alaska, skyline on, Oct. 2, 1992.

 (Paul Souders/Anchorage Daily News via AP)

BY MARK THIESSEN
December 6, 2024

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — An increase in the number of earthquakes under a volcano near Alaska’s largest city this year has geologists paying attention.

Mount Spurr, about 80 miles (129 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage, last erupted in 1992, spewing an ash cloud nearly 12 miles (19 kilometers) into the air, prompting flights to be canceled and people to don masks. Another eruption at the 11,100-foot (3,383-meter) stratovolcano could be severely disruptive to the city, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The observatory raised its alert status for Mount Spurr in October — from green to yellow — when the increase in seismic activity became pronounced and a ground deformation was spotted in satellite data. Observatory scientist David Fee said Friday there have been about 1,500 small earthquake below the volcano this year, compared to about 100 in a normal year.

While that might seem like a lot, it’s “not an enormous amount,” Fee said. It could be a precursor to an eruption — or not. Similar seismic unrest occurred from 2004 to 2006 before subsiding without an eruption.

“We don’t see any significant change in our data that would tell us that an eruption is imminent,” Fee said. “Things have been kind of this low-level unrest for a while now and we’re, of course, watching it very closely to detect any changes and what that might mean.”

Scientists are monitoring seismic stations, global satellite data and a webcam for additional changes that would signal an impending eruption. If magma is moving closer to the surface, there would be an increase in earthquakes, ground deformations, the creation of a summit lake or fumaroles, which are vents that open in the surface to vent gas and vapors.

The volcano last erupted in 1992 from the Crater Peak flank vent, located about 2 miles (3 kilometers) south of the summit. The eruption dropped about a quarter-inch of ash in Anchorage that year, prompting residents to stay inside or to go out donning masks, and the cloud drifted as far as Greenland.

A similar eruption from the same vent happened in 1953. The last known eruption from the summit was more than 5,000 years ago.

Volcanic ash is angular and sharp and has been used as an industrial abrasive. The powdered rock can cause a jet engine to shut down, which prompted Anchorage and other nearby airports to close during the 1992 eruption.

Closing airports is always an inconvenience in a state with few roads, but can be more than just inconvenient. Business would also be impacted since the Anchorage airport today is among the world’s busiest cargo hubs with Memphis, Hong Kong and Shanghai, mainly because of Alaska’s proximity to Asia.

Mount Spurr, located on the Volcanic Ring of Fire, is one of 53 volcanoes in Alaska that have been active within the last 250 years.

Connecticut court upholds $965 million verdict against Alex Jones in Sandy Hook


Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones speaks outside the federal courthouse after a bankruptcy hearing Friday, June 14, 2024, in Houston. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)

December 6, 2024


HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The Connecticut Appellate Court on Friday affirmed a $965 million verdict from 2022 against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, determining there’s “sufficient evidence” to support the damages awarded to relatives of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre victims and an FBI agent.

In its unanimous opinion, the court cited the “traumatic threats and harassment” the families endured “stemming from the lies, as propagated by the defendants, that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax.”

“Our review of the record reveals that there was sufficient evidence to support the $965,000,000 in compensatory damages awarded by the jury,” according to the 62-page decision. It marks the largest jury verdict in Connecticut history.

The appellate court did grant Jones a $150 million reprieve. It determined the plaintiffs “failed to assert a legally viable” claim under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act and that $150 million in punitive damages awarded by the lower court must be vacated, noting the plaintiffs alleged injury came from false language and not from speech related to advertising, marketing or the sale of goods.
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“We’re relieved that the Court protected the press with its decision reversing the damages in the unfair trade practices claim, but we are otherwise disappointed,” said Norm Pattis, Jones’ attorney, in a statement. He said the jury in the case was “sold a bill of goods and led to believe” Jones made millions spreading conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook mass shooting.


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“He didn’t. The jury was also encouraged to believe that all the sorrow that befell the plaintiffs was Mr. Jones’s fault. It wasn’t.,” Pattis said. “We had hoped the Appellate Court would have seen through the charade and farce that this trial became. It didn’t.”

Jones now owes a total of roughly $1.2 billion, counting the $965 million to the Connecticut families and nearly $50 million awarded by a Texas jury to the parents of a Sandy Hook child who was killed.

Jones filed for personal bankruptcy in 2022, and the sale of his Infowars platform is part of that case. A bid by The Onion satirical news outlet to buy Infowars is scheduled to return Monday to a Texas courtroom, where a judge will be deciding whether a bankruptcy auction was properly run. Jones alleges collusion and fraud.

Lawyers for the Sandy Hook families hailed the Connecticut appellate court’s ruling on Friday as an overall victory.

“Today, Alex Jones’s effort to overturn the jury’s historic verdict against him and his corrupt business, Infowars, was unanimously rejected by the Connecticut Appellate Court. The jury’s $965 million rebuke of Jones will stand, and the families who have fought valiantly for years have brought Alex Jones yet another step closer to true justice,” the lawyers said in a statement.

Pattis said he will ask the Connecticut Supreme Court to review the appellate court decision.

Jones repeatedly told his millions of followers the 2012 massacre that killed 20 first graders and six educators was staged by “crisis actors” to enact more gun control.

The appellate court also determined that a lower court “properly exercised its discretion” in finding Jones and his Infowars’ parent company Free Speech Systems LLC., liable for damages by default for failing to cooperate with court rules on sharing evidence.

Dick Van Dyke reflects on love, death in Coldplay's 'All My Love' video


 Dick Van Dyke stars in a new music video released for the Coldplay song "All My Love." File Photo by Phil McCarten/UPI | License Photo

Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Dick Van Dyke stars in a music video for Coldplay's song "All My Love," ahead of his 99th birthday.

The video is more than seven minutes long, and features Van Dyke and Coldplay frontman Chris Martin at Van Dyke's home in Malibu. The acting icon reminisces, laughs and dances, while Martin sings and plays piano.

"We've been through low, been through sunshine, been through snow," Martin begins. "All the colors of the weather."

The music pauses intermittently as Van Dyke reflects on two big concepts in life -- love and death.

"What is love?" he asks. "They've been attacking that question for centuries. I don't know. It certainly is a feeling of caring about the welfare and the life of the other person as much as you care for yourself."

He then shares an old family photograph, and talks about his favorite lyrics: "Until I die, let me hold you if you cry."

STILL HERE !!

"I'm acutely aware that I'm, you know, could go any day now, but I don't know why it doesn't concern me," Van Dyke says of death. "I'm not afraid of it. I have that feeling, totally against anything intellectual I am, that I'm going to be alright."

Van Dyke, who is well-known for his roles in Bye Bye Birdie, Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, will turn 99 years old Dec. 13.

"I think I'm one of those lucky people who got to do for a living what I would have done anyway. When you think how lucky I am, I got to do what I do, play and act silly," he adds.

"All My Love" appears on Coldplay's album Moon Music, which was released in October.

Lebanon's war casualty toll exceeds 20,000, health minister says

ZIONIST ETHNIC CLEANSING

By Dalal Saoud

Residents and emergency services personnel work at the site of an Israeli military strike near the Rafik Hariri University Hospital in the Jnah District of Beirut, Lebanon, in late October. At least 13 people were killed in the airstrike near what is the largest public hospital in southern Beirut, the Lebanese Ministry of Health said. File photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA-EFE

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- More than 4,000 people were killed and 16,600 wounded in nearly 14 months of Israeli air strikes and bombardment on Lebanon as part of a devastating conflict with Hezbollah, Health Minister Firas Abiad said Wednesday.

Most of the casualties occurred after Sept. 15, when Israel escalated the conflict with large-scale attacks on Beirut's southern suburbs and southern and eastern Lebanon.

Abiad said the almost final casualty toll released during a press conference he held in Beirut documented the Israeli war on Lebanon, especially that a large part of the attacks "are considered war crimes and must be presented to establish justice and hold accountable those responsible for these violations" in line with international law.

At least 4,047 people were killed and 16,618 injured. Of those, 790 women and 316 children died, according to the Health Ministry.

What started as an exchange of fire across the border in October 2023 turned into war when Israel expanded its attacks Sept. 17 with an unprecedented, highly sophisticated pager and walkie-talkie attack against Hezbollah members, killing a dozen people and wounding more than 3,000.

It was followed by more than two months of intensive Israeli air strikes, killing Hezbollah leader Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah and dozens of his top officials and military commanders, as well as destroying the group's bases, headquarters and military and civilian infrastructure.

The relentless Israeli air and ground bombardment led to large destruction of villages, property, hospitals and schools in the targeted areas.

Abiad said 645 people, including 26 children and 40 women, were killed and 1,983 others, among whom were 197 children and 304 women, were injured before September.

He counted 3,402 killed and 14,655 wounded after Sept. 15, with 290 children killed and 1,259 injured, as well as 750 women killed and 2,263 wounded.

Abiad indicated that the actual figures may be higher because "there are numbers of martyrs still under the rubble."

He pointed out that the numbers of child casualties show a significant increase in September, which "confirms that the Israelis targeted civilians" when they expanded their attacks.

The minister said the attacks on the health sector "were not side effects, but rather a feature of the aggression," leaving 222 killed and 330 injured among the medical staff. Sixty-seven hospitals were attacked, with seven forced to close and three partially operating.

The cost of surgeries performed, especially for the wounded by the pager explosions, reached $24 million.

Abiad said the Health Ministry and the World Health Organization are to cooperate with specialized bodies, including Johns Hopkins University in the United States and the American University in Lebanon, to study the effects of the Israeli attacks on the health sector.

D.C. attorney general sues Amazon for denying Prime deliveries in some areas


The District of Columbia's attorney general announced a lawsuit against Amazon on Wednesday, accusing the company of denying two neighborhoods high-speed delivery service.

 File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo


Dec. 4 (UPI) -- The attorney general for the District of Columbia filed a suit Wednesday against Amazon, accusing it of denying two neighborhoods high-speed delivery service.

Brian Schwalb charged in his lawsuit that since 2022, the two sections, which are traditionally underserved neighborhoods in the city, have secretly been denied the fast delivery service from Amazon despite paying for Amazon Prime memberships costing $139 annually.

"Amazon charges 48,000 D.C. residents in Wards 7 and 8 for full Prime membership while excluding them from Prime delivery benefits," Schwalb said on X. "Amazon failed to inform customers they were excluded. We are suing Amazon for deceiving D.C. residents into paying the same price for worse service."

Schwalb said in 2021, 72% of Amazon Prime packages in area codes 20019 and 20020 were being delivered within two days of check-out but by last year that stat nose-dived to 25%. He charged that's when Amazon secretly decided to stop using its delivery trucks in the area.

"Amazon knew excluding these areas would result in lower deliveries," Schwalb said. "Yet it failed to inform existing or prospective Prime members in these ZIP codes, misleading Washington customers about shipping speeds. Amazon even deceived impacted customers who reached out about delivery delays."

An Amazon spokesperson denied the company's actions are "discriminatory" and "deceptive," he said drivers have been targeted by crime suspects in the two ZIP codes and the company has taken action to protect its employees.

"We want to be able to deliver as fast as we possibly can to every ZIP code across the country, however, at the same time we must put the safety of delivery drivers first," Kelly said, according to CNBC.

"In the ZIP codes in question, there have been specific and targeted acts against drivers delivering Amazon packages. We made the deliberate choice to adjust our operations, including delivery routes and times, for the sole reason of protecting the safety of drivers."

Amazon said they would be willing to work with the attorney general's office and others to ensure the safety of drivers and reduce crime in the area. The company said it has always been upfront with its customers about the delivery times and has never attempted to deceive them about when their packages would reach them.

Study: US Lead exposure in 20th century affected mental health of millions

By HealthDay News


Decades of lead exposure from car exhaust altered the mental health of millions of Americans, making them more prone to depression, anxiety and ADHD, a new study claims. Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News

Decades of lead exosure from car exhaust altered the mental health of millions of Americans, making them more prone to depression, anxiety and ADHD, a new study claims.

Lead was first added to gasoline in 1923 to help keep car engines healthy, researchers said.

But lead is toxic to brain cells, and there's no safe level of exposure at any point in life. Children are especially vulnerable, as lead is known to impair brain development.

Leaded gas was banned in the United States in 1996, but anyone born before then -- especially during peak use in the 1960s and 1970s -- is at risk for toxic brain effects from car exhaust, researchers said.

Such exposure has caused as many as 151 million cases of mental health disorder during the past 75 years, researchers reported.

Americans born before leaded gas was banned have experienced significantly higher rates of mental health problems, and likely underwent changes in their personalities that made them less successful and resilient in life, the study concluded.

"Humans are not adapted to be exposed to lead at the levels we have been exposed to over the past century," said researcher Aaron Reuben, a postdoctoral scholar in neuropsychology at Duke University, in Durham, N.C.

"We have very few effective measures for dealing with lead once it is in the body, and many of us have been exposed to levels 1,000 to 10,000 times more than what is natural," Reuben added in a university news release.

For the study, Reuben and his colleagues analyzed historical data on blood-lead levels in U.S. children, patterns of leaded gasoline use in America and population statistics of mental health problems.

This data allowed them to calculate "mental illness points" gained from exposure to leaded gas, researchers aid.

"This is the exact approach we have taken in the past to estimate lead's harms for population cognitive ability and IQ," noted researcher Michael McFarland, a professor of sociology at Florida State University. Previous research from the team found that lead stole 824 million IQ points from the U.S. population over the past century.

As of 2015, over 170 million Americans -- more than half the U.S. population -- had elevated levels of lead in their blood as children, likely blunting their IQ and putting them at high risk for mental health disorders, researchers said.

Lead exposure is significantly linked to higher rates of mental disorders like depression and anxiety, researchers found. It also likely caused mild distress that impaired people's quality of life without resulting in a full-blown psychiatric condition.

The new study was published Wednesday in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

"We saw very significant shifts in mental health across generations of Americans," said researcher Mathew Hauer, a professor of sociology at Florida State. "Meaning many more people experienced psychiatric problems than would have if we had never added lead to gasoline."

Generation X (born 1965 to 1980) would have had the greatest lead exposures and the greatest mental health losses, the researchers concluded.

"We are coming to understand that lead exposures from the past -- even decades in the past -- can influence our health today," Reuben said. "Our job moving forward will be to better understand the role lead has played in the health of our country, and to make sure we protect today's children from new lead exposures wherever they occur."

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about the health effects of lead exposure.

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

U$A FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE

Forbes Healthcare Summit: AI can improve the quality, cost of healthcare

The healthcare summit is an annual event sponsored by Forbes and includes leaders in the nation's $4 trillion healthcare industry.

THE SUMMIT WHERE UNITED HEALTHCARE CEO 

WAS ASSASSINTED

Forbes Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Steve Forbes speaks at the 2024 Forbes Healthcare Summit at Murphy Alumni Hall - NYU Langone Health in New York City on Wednesday. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Dec. 4 (UPI) -- Artificial intelligence can improve the effectiveness and affordability of how healthcare is delivered, attendees at the 2024 Forbes Healthcare Summit in New York City were told Wednesday.

Ajay Shah, Cytovale co-founder and chief executive officer, said artificial intelligence tools are helping patients stay healthier while caregivers are lowering their healthcare delivery costs.

Cytovale is the maker of the IntelliSep AI tool that specifically diagnosis sepsis that it says is common, costly and difficult to diagnose.

"The conversation is really about the clinical operation and financial benefits to hospitals and healthcare systems," Shah said when asked about the healthcare benefits of AI tools, like IntelliSep.

"Some of what we've been able to share over the last year is demonstrating a reduction in length of stay by over a day for every patient tested with IntelliSep," Shah said.

"That's the result of enabling the physician and the providers to see the right diagnosis from the first minute of that patient's visit and dramatically changing their care pathways," he added.

"The long-term effects of sepsis are really meaningful," Shah said. "Getting patients aggressive care quickly improves the outcome of their long-term costs."

The healthcare summit is an annual event sponsored by Forbes and includes leaders in the nation's $4 trillion healthcare industry.

AI "is a powerful and disruptive area of computer science, with the potential to fundamentally transform the practice of medicine and the delivery of healthcare," the National Institutes of Health reported in 2021.

AI can help healthcare systems around the world to achieve the four-part goal of improving population health, patients' care, caregivers' experiences and lowering the cost of healthcare delivery.

"Aging populations, growing burden of chronic diseases and rising costs of healthcare globally are challenging governments, payers, regulators and providers to innovate and transform models of healthcare deliver," the NIH said.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic also demonstrated shortfalls in the available healthcare workforce and inequities in accessing care that the NIH says AI could help alleviate.

"The application of technology and artificial intelligence in healthcare has the potential to address some of these supply-and-demand challenges," the NIH said.

President Joe Biden agrees and last year issued an executive order requiring the federal government to "prioritize generative AI and other critical and emerging technologies" to accelerate their responsible use in the nation's healthcare systems and other industries.

"AI holds extraordinary potential for both promise and peril," Biden said in the executive order.

"Responsible AI use has the potential to help solve urgent challenges while making our world more prosperous, productive, innovative and secure," Biden said. "At the same time, irresponsible use could exacerbate societal harms."

He said, "harnessing AI for good and realizing its myriad benefits requires mitigating its substantial risks."

Mitigating the risks requires a "society-wide effort that includes government, the private sector, academia and civil society,"Biden said.

The Healthcare Summit fits within the context of Biden's executive order.

"The AI revolution is unleashing new ways to discover drugs, personalize medicine and even manage a doctor's paperwork," Healthcare Summit organizers said.

The invitation-only annual event at Murphy Alumni Hall, NYU Langone Health, is the 13th that Forbes has held.

Torrent of hate for health insurance industry follows CEO’s killing

By DIONNE SEARCEY and MADISON MALONE KIRCHER 

NYTimes News Service | Friday, December 6, 2024,

Reuters People walk next to a poster on Thursday outside the Hilton hotel near the scene where the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was shot dead in Midtown Manhattan. REUTERS/Mike Segar


The fatal shooting Wednesday of a top UnitedHealthcare executive, Brian Thompson, on a New York City sidewalk has unleashed a torrent of morbid glee from patients and others who say they have had negative experiences with health insurance companies at some of the hardest times of their lives.

It is unclear what motivated the incident or whether it was tied to Thompson’s work in the insurance industry. Police have yet to identify the shooter, who is still on the loose.

But that did not stop social media commenters from leaping to conclusions and from showing a blatant lack of sympathy over the death of a man who was a husband and father of two children.

“Thoughts and deductibles to the family,” read one comment underneath a video of the shooting posted online by CNN. “Unfortunately my condolences are out-of-network.”

On TikTok, one user wrote, “I’m an ER nurse and the things I’ve seen dying patients get denied for by insurance makes me physically sick. I just can’t feel sympathy for him because of all of those patients and their families.”

The dark commentary after the death of Thompson, a 50-year-old insurance executive from Maple Grove, Minnesota, highlighted the anger and frustration over the state of health care in America, where those with private insurance often find themselves in Kafkaesque tangles while seeking reimbursement for medical treatment and are often denied.

Messages that law enforcement officials say were found on bullet casings at the scene of the shooting in front of a New York hotel — “delay” and “deny” — are two words familiar to many Americans who have interacted with insurance companies for almost anything other than routine doctor visits.

Thompson was chief executive of his company’s insurance division, which reported $281 billion in revenue last year, providing coverage to millions of Americans through the health plans it sold to individuals, employers and people under government programs like Medicare. The division employs roughly 140,000 people.

Thompson received a $10.2 million compensation package last year, a combination of $1 million in base pay and cash and stock grants. He was shot to death as he was walking toward the annual investor day for UnitedHealth Group, UnitedHealthcare’s parent company.

Stephan Meier, the chair of the management division at Columbia Business School, said the attack could send shock waves through the broader health insurance industry.

About seven CEOs of publicly traded companies die each year, he said, but almost always from health complications or accidents. A targeted attack could have much larger implications.

“The insurance industry is not the most loved, to put it mildly,” Meier said. “If you’re a C-suite executive of another insurance company, I would be thinking, what’s this mean for me? Am I next?”

A longtime employee of UnitedHealthcare said that workers at the company had been aware for years that members were unhappy. Thompson was one of the few executives who wanted to do something about it, said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the company does not allow workers to speak publicly without permission.

In speeches to employees, Thompson spoke about the need to change the state of health care coverage in the country and the culture of the company, topics other executives avoided, the employee said.

Already, there is heightened concern among some public-facing health care companies, said Eric Sean Clay, president of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety. The trade group includes members that offer security to some of the largest health care companies in North America.

“The CEOs are quite often the most visible face of an organization,” he said. “Sometimes people hate on that individual and wish to do them harm.”

But few health care companies provide security for their executives, he said, in part to avoid bad optics or because it may seem unnecessary.

In the hours after the shooting early Wednesday, social media exploded with anger toward the insurance industry and Thompson.

“I pay $1,300 a month for health insurance with an $8,000 deductible. ($23,000 yearly) When I finally reached that deductible, they denied my claims. He was making a million dollars a month,” read one comment on TikTok.

Another commenter wrote, “This needs to be the new norm. EAT THE RICH.”

“The ambulance ride to the hospital probably won’t be covered,” wrote a commenter on a TikTok video in which another user featured an audio clip from the Netflix show “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.” In it, the queen makes a dramatic show of faux sorrow over a death.

The shooting prompted a wrenching outpouring of patients and family members who also posted horror stories of insurance claim reimbursement stagnation and denials.

One woman expressed frustration with trying to get a special bed for her disabled son covered by UnitedHealthcare. Another user described struggling with bills and coverage after giving birth.

“It is so stressful,” the user said in a video. “I was sick over this.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2024 The New York Times Company

CEO’s murder provokes 'dark' humor in response to America’s 'dysfunctional healthcare system'

Slain UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson

 (Photo: United Health Group)

Carl Gibson

December 05, 2024

ALTERNET

In the early morning hours of Wednesday, December 4, 2024, UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson was shot dead by a masked gunman who remains at large. On social media, his murder was met not with an outpouring of mourning, but ridicule.

In an article published by Science publication Futurism, writer Victor Tangermann explored the "incredibly dark" responses to Thompson's killing on platforms like X and Bluesky. He noted that many of the responses were "gallows humor" that were both "simultaneously ghoulish" yet also "illustrative of America's profoundly dysfunctional medical system."

"Rotating Sandwiches" meme creator Lauren Walker wrote on Bluesky: "[A]ll human life is sacred, so it's not proper to laugh when serious harm befalls someone," she wrote. "[T]he moral thing to do is instead charge them hundreds of thousands of dollars."

READ MORE: United Healthcare CEO gunned down outside Manhattan hotel: report

"Our apologies, but bullet wounds are only covered under our platinum+ package," one user wrote in response.

Many of the memes circulating in response to Thompson's murder invoke the cold nature of the private health insurance industry, in which an insured's claim can be denied even if it's for filling a prescription for medication prescribed by their doctor or for treatment necessary to save someone's life. LendingTree's ValuePenguin wrote that UnitedHealth is the worst offender, denying roughly one-third of all in-network claims (32%), which is double the industry average of 16%.

UnitedHealth has also been accused in a lawsuit of using artificial intelligence (AI) to deny claims filed by Medicare Advantage patients. The plaintiffs claim that the company had knowledge that the AI it was using "had a high potential for error," and that UnitedHealth employees were pressured by supervisors to use the algorithm to issue denials. They were also reportedly told to keep patient stays within 1% of the length of stay predicted by the AI.

The New York Post recently reported that Thompson and several UnitedHealth executives were under investigation by the Department of Justice for alleged insider trading. Thompson and three others allegedly sold more than $101 million in shares before news of the investigation was announced, which resulted in the company's stock price declining. Thompson himself reportedly made $15 million on the sale.

"deny," "defend," and "depose"

Police find words on shell casings at scene of UnitedHealthcare CEO's killing



As the manhunt for the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson continued Thursday, law enforcement said the words "deny," "defend,"and "depose" were found on shell casings left at the scene of Thompson's midtown Manhattan murder. NYPD police officers investigate the crime scene around the New York Midtown Hilton following Thompsn's murder in New York City on Wednesday.

Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Dec. 5 (UPI) -- Law enforcement on Thursday said that words were found on shell casings left at the scene of UnitedHealthcare CEO BrianThompson's midtown Manhattan killing as a manhunt for the suspect continued.

The words "deny," "defend" and "depose" were found on the cases, ABC News, NBC News and CNN reported, citing law enforcement sources.

The words may be a message from the gunman and police investigators are looking at whether they may indicate a motive in the killing.

The similar words " "delay, deny, defend" are commonly known as the three D's of the insurance industry.

As police search for the killer and investigate to determine the motive, bounty hunter and liaison to the U.S. Marshals Zeke Unger told CNN the killer didn't appear to be a professional hitman.

"I believe that the individual, by looking at the footage, had some psychological issues. That this is a revenge shooting," Unger said. "This is not a professional killer, a contract killer by his mannerisms and by the failure of the weapon."

Unger was referring to the gun appearing to jam temporarily during the shooting.

New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Thompson was targeted in a premeditated, preplanned targeted attack.
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Security video of the killing showed Thompson walking toward the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan early Wednesday morning when a hooded and masked gunman walked up behind him, pointed a silenced pistol at Thompson and fired multiple times before fleeing on a bike.

CBS News, citing a police source, said "forensic evidence" was found at the Starbucks the gunman visited before the shooting. A cellphone was also recovered in an alleyway near the shooting site that police said had investigative value.

Paulette Thompson, wife of the slain CEO, told NBC News Wednesday there had been threats against her husband.

"Basically, I don't know, a lack of coverage? I don't know details. I just know there were some people that had been threatening him," she said.

The killer was described as a 6'1" tall skinny White man dressed in all black with a hoodie and a mask.

A $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the suspect's arrest and conviction.