Several universities to experiment with micro nuclear power

Last Energy's demonstration unit that contains a prototype reactor, is shown Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, in Brookshire, Texas. For the company's CEO, Bret Kugelmass, the urgency of the climate crisis means zero-carbon nuclear energy must be scaled up soon. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

JENNIFER McDERMOTT
Thu, February 9, 2023 at 6:02 AM MST·6 min read

If your image of nuclear power is giant, cylindrical concrete cooling towers pouring out steam on a site that takes up hundreds of acres of land, soon there will be an alternative: tiny nuclear reactors that produce only one-hundredth the electricity and can even be delivered on a truck.

Small but meaningful amounts of electricity — nearly enough to run a small campus, a hospital or a military complex, for example — will pulse from a new generation of micronuclear reactors. Now, some universities are taking interest.

“What we see is these advanced reactor technologies having a real future in decarbonizing the energy landscape in the U.S. and around the world,” said Caleb Brooks, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The tiny reactors carry some of the same challenges as large-scale nuclear, such as how to dispose of radioactive waste and how to make sure they are secure. Supporters say those issues can be managed and the benefits outweigh any risks.


Universities are interested in the technology not just to power their buildings but to see how far it can go in replacing the coal and gas-fired energy that causes climate change. The University of Illinois hopes to advance the technology as part of a clean energy future, Brooks said. The school plans to apply for a construction permit for a high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor developed by the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation, and aims to start operating it by early 2028. Brooks is the project lead.

Microreactors will be “transformative” because they can be built in factories and hooked up on site in a plug-and-play way, said Jacopo Buongiorno, professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Buongiorno studies the role of nuclear energy in a clean energy world.

“That’s what we want to see, nuclear energy on demand as a product, not as a big mega project,” he said.

Both Buongiorno and Marc Nichol, senior director for new reactors at the Nuclear Energy Institute, view the interest by schools as the start of a trend.

Last year, Penn State University signed a memorandum of understanding with Westinghouse to collaborate on microreactor technology. Mike Shaqqo, the company’s senior vice president for advanced reactor programs, said universities are going to be “one of our key early adopters for this technology.”

Penn State wants to prove the technology so that Appalachian industries, such as steel and cement manufacturers, may be able to use it, said Professor Jean Paul Allain, head of the nuclear engineering department. Those two industries tend to burn dirty fuels and have very high emissions. Using a microreactor also could be one of several options to help the university use less natural gas and achieve its long-term carbon emissions goals, he said.

“I do feel that microreactors can be a game-changer and revolutionize the way we think about energy,” Allain said.

For Allain, microreactors can complement renewable energy by providing a large amount of power without taking up much land. A 10-megawatt microreactor could go on less than an acre, whereas windmills or a solar farm would need far more space to produce 10 megawatts, he added. The goal is to have one at Penn State by the end of the decade.

Purdue University in Indiana is working with Duke Energy on the feasibility of using advanced nuclear energy to meet its long-term energy needs.

Nuclear reactors that are used for research are nothing new on campus. About two dozen U.S. universities have them. But using them as an energy source is new.

Back at the University of Illinois, Brooks explains the microreactor would generate heat to make steam. While the excess heat from burning coal and gas to make electricity is often wasted, Brooks sees the steam production from the nuclear microreactor as a plus, because it's a carbon-free way to deliver steam through the campus district heating system to radiators in buildings, a common heating method for large facilities in the Midwest and Northeast. The campus has hundreds of buildings.

The 10-megawatt microreactor wouldn't meet all of the demand, but it would serve to demonstrate the technology, as other communities and campuses look to transition away from fossil fuels, Brooks said.

One company that is building microreactors that the public can get a look at today is Last Energy, based in Washington, D.C. It built a model reactor in Brookshire, Texas that's housed in an edgy cube covered in reflective metal.

Now it's taking that apart to test how to transport the unit. A caravan of trucks is taking it to Austin, where company founder Bret Kugelmass is scheduled to speak at the South by Southwest conference and festival.

Kugelmass, a technology entrepreneur and mechanical engineer, is talking with some universities, but his primary focus is on industrial customers. He's working with licensing authorities in the United Kingdom, Poland and Romania to try to get his first reactor running in Europe in 2025.

The urgency of the climate crisis means zero-carbon nuclear energy must be scaled up soon, he said.

“It has to be a small, manufactured product as opposed to a large, bespoke construction project,” he said.

Traditional nuclear power costs billions of dollars. An example is two additional reactors at a plant in Georgia that will end up costing more than $30 billion.

The total cost of Last Energy’s microreactor, including module fabrication, assembly and site prep work, is under $100 million, the company says.

Westinghouse, which has been a mainstay of the nuclear industry for over 70 years, is developing its “eVinci” microreactor, Shaqqo said, and is aiming to get the technology licensed by 2027.

The Department of Defense is working on a microreactor too. Project Pele is a DOD prototype mobile nuclear reactor under design at the Idaho National Laboratory.

Abilene Christian University in Texas is leading a group of three other universities with the company Natura Resources to design and build a research microreactor cooled by molten salt to allow for high temperature operations at low pressure, in part to help train the next generation nuclear workforce.

But not everyone shares the enthusiasm. Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called it “completely unjustified.”

Microreactors in general will require much more uranium to be mined and enriched per unit of electricity generated than conventional reactors do, he said. He said he also expects fuel costs to be substantially higher and that more depleted uranium waste could be generated compared to conventional reactors.

“I think those who are hoping that microreactors are going to be the silver bullet for solving the climate change crisis are simply betting on the wrong horse,” he said.

Lyman also said he fears microreactors could be targeted for a terrorist attack, and some designs would use fuels that could be attractive to terrorists seeking to build crude nuclear weapons. The UCS does not oppose using nuclear power, but wants to make sure it’s safe.

The United States does not have a national storage facility for storing spent nuclear fuel and it’s piling up. Microreactors would only compound the problem and spread the radioactive waste around, Lyman said.

A 2022 Stanford-led study found that smaller modular reactors — the next size up from micro — will generate more waste than conventional reactors. Lead author Lindsay Krall said this week that the design of microreactors would make them subject to the same issue.

Kugelmass sees only promise. Nuclear, he said, has been “totally misunderstood and under leveraged.” It will be “the key pillar of our energy transformation moving forward.”

 

SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH  

Des Moines Public Schools may close buildings, cut staff to balance future budgets


Samantha Hernandez, Des Moines Register
Wed, February 8, 2023

Des Moines Public Schools officials could close buildings as part of balancing next year's budget. They're also exploring the potential for staff cuts.

That's what officials said Tuesday night during a Des Moines School Board discussion on the 2023-24 school year budget. They are beginning their planning on a budget amid new legislation that uses taxpayer money to help send students to private schools and a 3% state funding increase that lags behind the 6.5% annual inflation rate at the end of 2022.

Closing yet-to-be-identified buildings and moving expenses to nongeneral fund accounts, as well as making other cuts, could save an estimated $1 million, Interim Superintendent Matt Smith and Chief Financial Officer Shashank Aurora told board members.

More:What does Iowa's $107M funding increase really mean for its public schools? What we found:

“We're looking on both for FY '24 and, of course, beyond, the elimination of some facilities and the consolidation of other facilities," Smith said during the meeting. "And, so, there's more to come on that and our budget season, but there is some consolidation that will be taking place."

Officials are considering closing some athletic and/or extracurricular facilities around the district, Aurora told the Des Moines Register Wednesday. A final decision on which facilities might close has not been made.

An outside company is conducting a district-wide demographic study the board will use to decide if district boundaries need to be redrawn or if buildings will be closed, he said.

“There's also the consolidation of some underutilized facilities,” Smith said Tuesday. “… And so, we're looking on both for FY '24 and, of course, beyond the elimination of some facilities and the consolidation of other facilities.”

Closures could be considered for the 2024-25 school year budget as well, Smith said.

The district must cut about $9.8 million from next year's budget, Aurora said. The total of the proposed 2023-24 budget will not be available until mid-March.

This is not the first time officials have discussed closing buildings as a cost-saving measure. During 2022-23 budget discussions, Aurora told the board the district might have to consider closing buildings.

Staffing and health care cuts also possible

Additional proposed cuts include changes to the employee health care plan and staffing.

The health care plan change would save the district an estimated $750,000, the administration said. Under the proposal, employees no longer would have a $100 copay on specialty medicines like cancer medication or EpiPens, the administration said.

Proposed staffing reductions could save an estimated $9 million and include cuts to 2% of the teaching staff because of declining enrollment, 5% of support staff and 5% of central office staff, they say.

"One of the top priorities for (Des Moines Education Association) is to keep cuts as far away from classroom individuals directly engaged with students as possible," said Josh Brown, the teachers union president, in an interview Wednesday. "We are surveying our members currently to get their priorities in the budget to be able to amplify and lift up their voices in the process."

Heading into the current 2022-23 school year, district officials made $9.4 million in cuts because of declining enrollment. Those reductions included eliminating 12 full-time positions, canceling a conference and using money earmarked for other costs to cover general spending.

The effects of the new 'school choice' law

The newly passed "school choice" law will eventually put $7,635 into an account for every student who wants to attend private school. The law was a top priority for Gov. Kim Reynolds over the last three legislative sessions.

Central Campus is seen on April 29, 2021 in Des Moines.

The new law also gives public school districts about $1,205 in additional money for each private school student who lives within district boundaries. But those districts would also lose about $7,600 per student for those who choose to leave for a private school through an education savings account.

Districts will only get the supplemental funds for students who apply for and receive an ESA, Aurora said.

Des Moines Public Schools, which has an enrollment of about 31,000, has lost 2,500 students over the last three years for reasons including open enrollment and families relocating, Smith said.

"This actually started prior to the pandemic," he said. "The pandemic exacerbated and amplified that loss of enrollment."

Related:How far will Iowa's $7,600 education savings accounts go for covering private school costs?

The district lost 500 students last school year following the passage of several new laws, including the end of the open enrollment deadline, Aurora said in the same interview. This school year, the district has lost 250 students.

The budget will likely not be approved until April. District officials plan to hold community budget information meetings in late February and early March.

Samantha Hernandez covers education for the Register. Reach her at (515) 851-0982 or svhernandez@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @svhernandez or Facebook at facebook.com/svhernandezreporter.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Des Moines Public Schools may close buildings to balance future budgets

Israeli minister says no pause on ILLEGAL settlements after US asked Israel to halt expansion


Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich speaks to the media in Jerusalem

Tue, February 7, 2023 

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - One of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's hard-right allies said on Tuesday Israel would not freeze Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank, a week after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed Israel to halt construction.

"There will be no construction freeze in Judea and Samaria period," a statement from Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Zionism party said on Tuesday, using a term common in Israel for the West Bank.

Senior members of Netanyahu's far-right coalition have sought to further expand Jewish settlement in the West Bank, which was captured by Israel in a 1967 war and where Palestinians have long aimed to establish a state. Most world powers consider Israel's settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as illegal.

On a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories last week, Blinken repeated U.S. calls for a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and called publicly for an end to settlement expansion.

In private talks with Netanyahu, Blinken also asked Israel to stop Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank and halt the demolition of Palestinian houses, three U.S. and Arab sources confirmed to Reuters, stressing that the request was not expressed as a formal demand.

Smotrich also oversees defence ministry organizations that are responsible for enforcing some regulations in the West Bank, giving him significant powers over the area.

Hopes of achieving a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state based largely in the West Bank, have all but disappeared since the last round of U.S.-sponsored talks stalled in 2014.

(Reporting by Emily Rose, Steve Holland, Editing by William Maclean)

'Operation Exodus': Brazil miners flee Yanomami land

Alan CHAVES
Wed, February 8, 2023


Wearing broken flip-flops held together by a frayed cord, Joao Batista, an illegal gold miner in the Brazilian Amazon, has been walking for days to escape the jungle, fleeing a looming security-force crackdown.

The wiry 61-year-old with deep creases in his leathery skin is one of thousands of mine workers rushing to leave the Yanomami Indigenous reservation, as Brazil sends in the police and army to wrest back control of the remote territory from invaders accused of sparking a humanitarian crisis.

Indigenous leaders say illegal miners have poisoned the water with mercury, destroyed the rainforest, raped and killed inhabitants, and triggered a food emergency that is devastating the reservation's 30,000 Yanomami.

Batista, who spent the last seven months working at an illegal mine, does not see himself as a criminal. But he says life left him few options other than "garimpo" -- wildcat mining.

"Look, I never went to school. At my age, what else am I going to do to survive?" he told AFP as he walked down a dirt road outside the town of Alto Alegre, in the northern state of Roraima.

He still had around 85 kilometers (53 miles) to go before returning to his home in the state capital, Boa Vista.

Up the road, a family fleeing a mine camp was trying to hitch a ride to the capital -- a 23-year-old mother, 15-year-old father and their three small children.

They caught malaria in the rainforest, and were too sick to walk, they said.

"Our kids are sick, too. I need to get to Boa Vista," said the young father.

- Reverse gold rush -

There has been an exodus of mine workers from the Yanomami reservation since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva ordered Brazil's military to establish a no-fly zone there last week, cracking down on the bush planes the mines rely on for food and supplies.

Some are making the gruelling trek out on foot. Others are fleeing down the Uraricoera river, crowding more than 30 people onto long, narrow boats.

Justice Minister Flavio Dino said Monday the government had begun deploying more than 500 police and soldiers for an operation to evict the miners, along with the mine-camp cooks, prostitutes and others drawn to the rainforest gold rush.

Dino said the government expected at least 80 percent of the estimated 15,000 people who have invaded the Yanomami reservation would leave on their own before authorities began "coercive" measures, which he said would come this week.

As a first step, environmental agency IBAMA said Wednesday it had started destroying heavy equipment seized at the mines, including a helicopter, plane and bulldozer.

The Yanomami territory, Brazil's biggest Indigenous reservation, is one of several to suffer a massive influx of illegal miners under far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), whom activists accuse of encouraging the incursions.

- 'Real criminals' -

The crackdown is stoking tension in the region, where an entire economy has developed around the illegal gold industry.

Gold sells for 280 reais (around $55) a gram on the black market in Roraima. AFP met miners carrying up to 30 grams.

But the money risks running out fast.

At a local truck stop, an illegal bush pilot flashed a handful of gold -- his payment for a recent flight. He said he worried it would be his last: he has had to stop working because of the no-fly zone.

Locals fear the impact of a massive influx of newly jobless workers.

Military police in Roraima launched what they called "Operation Exodus" to "intensify" their presence in the region and "preempt disturbances."

Authorities have encouraged the miners to leave the reservation voluntarily -- though Dino vowed to prosecute "all those who committed crimes such as genocide, environmental crimes, financing illegal gold mining and money laundering."

One 58-year-old miner, who asked to be identified only as "Parmalat," his nickname, said he resented being treated like a criminal, when crimes like corruption often go unpunished.

"We're treated like we're worthless," he said.

"All we want to do is work, and we're called criminals. The real criminals aren't treated that way."

Converting U.S. coal plants to renewable projects is cheaper than running them




Isabella O'Malley, M.Env.Sc
Wed, February 8, 2023 

Rapidly falling renewable energy prices coupled with sustainable incentives from the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are making coal an increasingly undesirable energy source.

This trend was confirmed in a recent report by Energy Innovation, a think-tank based in San Francisco, which claims that it costs more money to continue operating over 99 per cent of all coal-fired plants in the U.S. than to replace them with wind or solar energy projects.

Of the 210 coal plants that were reviewed in the report, it was found that solar replacement for 199 of the plants would be more economic than coal, solely based on the costs of energy generation. Wind was also found to be a cost-effective option for 104 plants and was even the cheapest option for 13 plants.

“Wind and solar energy are unequivocally cheaper than coal-fired generation across the country,” the report stated. “Replacing coal generation with local solar resources could drive up to $589 billion USD in clean energy investment in energy communities across the U.S.”

Train wagons loaded with coal in Norfolk, Virginia. 

(Kim Steele/ The Image Bank/ Getty Images)

Coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel and releases many other pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides that contaminate ecosystems and are hazardous to human health.

According to a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) released in December 2022, coal use potentially peaked in 2022 or could peak in 2023 before a plateau occurs. Global carbon emissions from coal-fired generation reached an all-time high in 2021 and exceeded 36 per cent of the world’s total electricity generation that year.

According to Energy Innovation, coal generation has declined by 52 per cent in the U.S. since 2010 and renewable power generation exceeded coal for the first time in 2020. Additional factors that are contributing to coal’s falling usage include clean energy policies, costly retrofits, the falling cost of natural gas, and improved energy efficiency in buildings.

Watch below: Solar panels in space can beam energy back to Earth

Click here to view the video

In addition to significant savings, the report notes that economic diversification, new jobs, tax revenue, and power reliability are benefits for local economies that replace coal plants with renewable projects.

The report noted that there are several barriers to replacing coal plants with wind or solar energy and suggested the following policies that can support the transition: utilities taking full advantage of IRA financing programs, requiring re-assessments of any utility investment plan that was completed prior to the IRA since costs are now outdated, and planning and funding from state legislatures and energy offices to support a coal community-centred economic transition.

Thumbnail image: John Ames Power Plant. It is a coal utility company located on the Kanoa River in West Virginia. (VisionsofAmerica/ Joe Sohm/ Digital Vision/ Getty Images)

‘Drop-dead gorgeous’ new snake in South America named after Leonardo DiCaprio’s mom


Aspen Pflughoeft
Wed, February 8, 2023 

Munching on snails and slithering along the jungle canopies of South America, several bright-eyed species of snakes went undetected — until now.

Scientists were surveying snakes in Colombia, Ecuador and Panama when they found several species they didn’t recognize, the researchers said in a study published Jan. 25. Further analysis confirmed their discovery of five new species of snail-eating, tree-dwelling snakes.

The new species — all of which have distinctive eye colors — are “drop-dead-gorgeous,” according to a Jan. 27 news release from EurekAlert.

One of the newly discovered species, Sibon irmelindicaprioae, or DiCaprio’s snail-eating snake, was named after actor and film producer Leonardo DiCaprio’s mother, Irmelin DiCaprio, the study said. DiCaprio’s publicist and producer did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment.

The study said Leonardo DiCaprio is a “long-time advocate and supporter of biodiversity conservation around the world.” He and other conservationists chose the names for some of the snakes in honor of their loved ones, according to EurekAlert.

The 2-foot-long snake has bright orange eyes and bands of reddish-orange, white and brown, photos show. DiCaprio’s snail-eating snakes are “docile and never attempt to bite,” the study said. Instead, the snake defends itself by coiling its body around its head and emitting a “musky and distasteful odor.” The species was found in the jungles of Panama and Colombia.

Scientists also discovered a species named Sibon canopy, or the canopy snail-eating snake, per the study. This species had vibrant blood-red eyes and a matching scale pattern of deep red, white and green patches, photos show. The species has only been found in Panama.

The Sibon canopy snake also known as canopy snail-eating snake.

Another of the newfound species was named Sibon marleyae, or Marley’s snail-eating snake, researchers said. The snake was named after Marley Sheth, the daughter of “long-time supporters of biodiversity conservation,” per the study.

Marley’s snail-eating snakes have burnt-orange eyes, a charcoal-colored tongue and a speckled scale pattern of maroon, orange, yellow and white, photos show. The species has been found in Ecuador and Colombia. Similarly to DiCaprio’s snail-eating snakes, this species is also docile and emits a foul odor when threatened.

The fourth species scientists discovered is Sibon vieirai, or Vieira’s snail-eating snake, the study said. Just over 2 feet long, these snakes have brown eyes and a matching scale pattern of deep browns, speckled with white and green, photos show.

Vieira’s snail-eating snakes are more active at night and during rainfall, the study said. The species is found in Ecuador and Colombia.

The Sibon vieirai snake, also known as Vieira’s snail-eating snake.

Researchers also discovered Dipsas welborni, or Welborn’s snail-eating snake, per the study. Also about 2 feet long, the snakes have tannish brown eyes and striped scale patterns of white and various shades of brown and copper, photos show.

When threatened, the species flattens itself, attempts to form a triangular shape with its head and emits a foul smell, scientists said.

The Dipsas welborni snake, also known as the Welborn’s snail-eating snake.

All five snake species are threatened by legal and illegal mineral mining, researchers said in the EurekAlert news release. Open-pit mining operations destroy vegetation that these tree-dwelling species rely on to live and forage.

“These new species of snake are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of new species discoveries in this region,” Alejandro Arteaga, a biologist who conducted the research said in the release. “But if illegal mining continues at this rate, there may not be an opportunity to make any future discoveries.”

Facial recognition bias frustrates Black asylum applicants to US, advocates say

Melissa del Bosque in Tucson
Wed, February 8, 2023 

Photograph: José Luis González/Reuters

The US government’s new mobile app for migrants to apply for asylum at the US-Mexico border is blocking many Black people from being able to file their claims because of facial recognition bias in the tech, immigration advocates say.

Non-profits that assist Black asylum seekers are finding that the app, CBP One, is failing to register many people with darker skin tones, effectively barring them from their right to request entry into the US.

People who have made their way to the south-west border from Haiti and African countries, in particular, are falling victim to apparent algorithm bias in the technology that the app relies on.

Related: Trump v Biden: how different are their policies on the US-Mexico border?

Often disparaged within the already-marginalized population of people trying to migrate into the US, Black people within that group are now confronted with yet another hurdle.

Advocates are protesting that since the app’s rollout by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) last month, the algorithm problems are sharply reducing the number of Black asylum seekers who can fill out their applications.

The app is working for some migrants but blocking others, especially those who are most vulnerable, said Felicia Rangel-Samponaro, co-director of the non-profit Sidewalk School, which provides educational programs for asylum seekers in the Mexican cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, near the eastern end of the Texas border, where many Haitians are living in makeshift camps. It also runs a shelter in Reynosa with the church group Kaleo International.

“There are about 4,000 Black asylum seekers waiting in Reynosa and at least another 1,000 Haitians in Matamoros. Hardly anyone is getting an asylum appointment. Neither population is being represented as it should,” she said.

Related: Biden’s ‘carrot and stick’ approach to deter migrants met with anger

With the public health law Title 42 still in place as a result of the latest court ruling, and expanded last month to add Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans alongside Venezuelans as restricted nationalities, in yet another controversial turn in the Biden administration’s immigration policy, options for seeking asylum at the border have narrowed further.

The government announced in early January that the new CBP One mobile app would be the only way migrants arriving at the border can apply for asylum and exemption from Title 42 restrictions, saying it would “reduce wait times and help ensure safe, orderly and streamlined processing”.

In the Mexican city of Tijuana, at the opposite end the US-Mexico border, near San Diego, another large community of Haitian asylum seekers is waiting and experiencing the same problems with the app, according to non-profits that are assisting them, as are people from African countries and other Black migrants trying to enter.

Migrants seeking asylum in the US use their phones to request an appointment through the CBP One application. Photograph: José Luis González/Reuters

“The facial recognition is not picking up [images] if people have darker skin tones,” said Erika Pinheiro, executive director at Al Otro Lado, a binational legal and humanitarian aid organization.

Pinheiro’s organization held a workshop for Haitians in Tijuana on how to use the app a day after it went live on 12 January. But with the app unable to map the features of many darker-skinned asylum seekers, they cannot upload their photos in order to receive an asylum appointment with the US immigration authorities, Pinheiro said.

“The Haitians at the workshop were getting error after error message on the app,” she said.

Rangel-Samponaro noted that others are being blocked, too. “We’ve also seen it affect Venezuelans who are darker-skinned,” she said.

Racial bias in face recognition technology has long been a problem. Increasingly used by law enforcement and government agencies to fill databases with biometric information including fingerprints and iris scans, a 2020 report by Harvard University called it the “least accurate” identifier, especially among darker-skinned women with whom the error rate is higher than 30%.

Emmanuella Camille, a staff attorney with the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a non-profit that aids Haitian and African asylum seekers, said the CBP One app has helped “lighter-skin toned people from other nations” obtain their asylum appointments “but not Haitians” and other Black applicants.

Besides the face recognition technology not registering them, there are other barriers, too. Many asylum seekers have outdated cellphones – if they have cellphones at all – that don’t support the CBP One app and often have limited or no access to the internet.

All three of the non-profits told the Guardian they have been in daily contact with US CBP about issues with the app. Last week, CBP introduced a Haitian Creole version of the app, Camille said. Before that it was only offered in Spanish and English.

Camille said migrants are “being told by CBP that the only way they can cross the border is by using this app … [It’s] the only source of hope for them right now.”Rangel-Samponaro said advocates were experimenting with ways to get the technology to work for darker-skinned asylum seekers. One fix they’ve come up with is installing bright construction lights at the shelter in Reynosa, which Haitians and others shine on their faces as they take the photo to upload to the app.

“So far it seems to be working, so the adults can get past that,” she said. “But it’s still not working for children under the age of six.”

This prevents families from applying for asylum.

“I’ve yet to speak with a white asylum seeker who has had the same issue,” she said. “And we help everybody in both cities.”

Another solution is that Black asylum seekers buy brand new cellphones. “If you can afford to spend $1,000 on a new cellphone, then you can upload the image no problem. But who can afford that?” Rangel-Samponaro said. “Not anyone living in a migrant camp.”

CBP did not reply with comments before publication, after being approached with questions by the Guardia

‘The kids need help’: how young people want adults to tackle gun violence



Abené Clayton in Los Angeles
Wed, February 8, 2023 

Guns are now the No 1 killer of children and teens under 18 in the US, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was analyzed by University of Michigan researchers.

While 2020 marked the first year that more children and teens of all races and ethnicities across the US were killed by guns than in car accidents, homicide has been the No 1 cause of death among Black teenage boys and young adults over 15 for at least a decade, according to CDC data, and the second leading cause of death among Hispanic teenage boys and men ages 15 to 34. The trend was underscored by the recent high-profile killings of an 18-year-old at a gas station in Oakland, California, and two boys, ages 14 and 15, at a high school in Des Moines, Iowa.

Despite bearing much of the weight of the nation’s gun violence, young people have little formal power to do anything about it, since decisions about how governments legislate guns and how communities and schools respond to shootings is primarily left to lawmakers, voters and law enforcement officials.

Related: ‘Took a long time to get here’: the women stopping gun violence in their communities

Still, violence prevention and getting resources to communities is a top-of-mind issue for US teens and young adults. In an open letter the youth voting advocacy group NextGen America sent Joe Biden ahead of this week’s State of the Union address, the young people implored him and Congress to address lax state gun laws and racial disparities among homicide victims and gunshot wound survivors. A majority of Gen Z is more worried about guns than the climate crisis, according to a recent survey by Project Unloaded, while 70% of young voters said that US gun control laws should be stricter, according to a 2018 Harvard Institute of Politics poll.

“Politicians should be more involved in the community,” said Greg Novelo, a 20-year-old resident of Richmond, California, a small city north of San Francisco. “There’s no progress to show that they’re helping the community … they need activities, programs, parks you can go to that are safe.”

The Guardian spoke with Novelo and several other young Latino and Black Californians about what they want to see older generations do to prevent gun violence and to help youth navigate the aftermath of shootings.

Conversations about school safety must include neighborhood violence

Mass shootings on school campuses, while rare, dominate conversations about student safety. This means that most of the solutions put forth - like arming teachers, hiring more campus police and monitoring student communications - rarely address the shootings that happen near schools and on the blocks that students traverse to get there.

“When they have these conversations it’s more about gun violence at school and police using guns, not what goes on around the neighborhood,” said Liz Nsilu, a 17-year-old student at King/Drew Magnet school in Los Angeles. The school is just outside Watts, a majority Black and Latino neighborhood where residents have long struggled to keep shootings down and support those affected.

“I would like to hear someone ask how we feel living in the neighborhoods that we live in or having our school where it is now. I think teachers and the principal [should have] a school-wide conversation,” said Ilicia Mendez, another 17-year-old King/Drew student.

Nsilu and Mendez have a space to talk about shootings and gender-based violence that affect them through the Women’s Leadership Project (WLP), a group that works in South Los Angeles schools to mentor and support students.

Local violence prevention and youth development groups like WLP seek out students who are regularly exposed to violence to help them work through their feelings on off- campus shootings. And teachers across the US are working to make conversations about gun violence a part of classroom curricula. Still, these programs are sparse.

“The schools sometimes do their part,” said Tereek Hill, a 21-year-old Richmond resident.

When he was in high school, a student was shot and killed and administrators organized a campus-wide moment of silence and allowed students to leave class to decompress in the student health center, Hill recalled.

He didn’t feel safe at school because he knew that community violence can spill on to school grounds, especially since some students carried guns because they felt unsafe walking in their neighborhood. “If my friend just got killed, I’d think I’m next,” Hill said.

He wishes that schools could find a balance between keeping students safe and not criminalizing those who carry because they rightly feel unsafe in their communities. Strategies like backpack searches and arresting students aren’t the answer, he said: “We don’t want to go backward.”

Intergenerational connections help - if they come without judgment

The connections between older and younger generations can be a central component of gun violence prevention. Whether it’s a teacher, school counselor or a professional violence intervention worker, the students the Guardian spoke with said they looked to the adults in their lives and communities to lobby officials and help young people navigate the complex emotions that come with being exposed to gun violence.

But youth also want to see adults be more inclusive in their engagement with young people, including those who are already carrying guns, have been incarcerated or are in need of immediate intervention that can stop them from being shot or shooting someone else.

“They are at the most risk, so why exclude them? You can change them,” Beverly Obed, a 15-year-old King/Drew student, said of the need for programs that reach her most at-risk peers. “Excluding them might lead them further down the drain, stuck in [a bad] situation because they can’t get out because they’ve been excluded when they tried to reach out.”

Novelo, 20, of Richmond, has first-hand experience of this exclusion and the consequences of having nowhere to turn.

“I grew up hearing gunshots every day,” he said. “As a little kid, I needed more people to talk to and listen without [fear of] getting in trouble.”

Novelo began carrying a gun for protection as a young teen. When he would speak with school staff or other adults, he said, the fact that he carried and would skip school overshadowed the fear and daily trauma he was facing and needed help addressing.

“School counselors would offer support or resources, but when you talk to them they find fault [with me] and say, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have done this or that,’” Novelo said. “It made me feel like I needed to keep everything to myself and bottle it up, and it messes with your head a little. There’s so much emotion and sometimes it’s tough to handle, and when you don’t have someone to talk to you end up doing [negative] things.”

He dropped out of high school during his junior year and months later, at age 18, he was shot eight times while hanging out with friends in San Pablo, a city just outside of Richmond. While in the hospital, he connected with Ryse Center, a Richmond-based violence prevention and youth development non-profit. Now, he said, he is getting the judgment-free mental health support he needed early in his adolescence.

“Older people should think about what programs would have helped them back then … and what they went through to help the community,” Novelo said.

Law enforcement isn’t always the solution

For many students in South Los Angeles and the Bay Area, police are a questionable solution to the problem of gun violence. They described seeing police use force in their communities, which are disproportionately harmed by gun violence, rather than helping people find solutions to young people being involved in gangs and gun violence.

When a shooting happens near or on a campus, administrators and lawmakers often defer to police to keep students and staff secure and safe. But this reliance on police has also led to a disproportionate number of Black and students being arrested on campus, thus fueling the school-to-prison pipeline, parents and students have said.

“That upsets me the most: the police using their force on us, taking advantage of their position because of what’s going on in our communities with gang violence,” said Mendez, of King/Drew.

The on-campus dynamic coupled with the history of police shootings of unarmed Black and Latino people make it difficult for the students to imagine what role law enforcement would play in local violence interventions like healing circles and community meetings among people who have lost a loved one to violence or survived being shot.

Related: A shooting killed their student. Now two California teachers are educating kids about gun violence

“It wouldn’t be effective for police to be in a healing circle because a lot of people in Los Angeles have trauma, from being shot by the police, chased by the police,” Nsilu added.

This lack of trust means that creating solutions to prevent and respond to gun violence is a job best left to the community members who deal with the fallout of shootings, Hill said.

“I’m not comfortable with [police] at all. The only help I see from them is escorting people during a funeral,” he said of how he’s seen police engage with those who have been affected by gun violence. “The community around us is responsible, the community should hold each other accountable.”

Youth need more resources to heal from gun violence

Jason Madison’s first confrontation with gun violence happened early in life. When he was nine, Madison’s mother and toddler nephew were shot in a drive-by in their hometown of Richmond. Both survived the shooting, which Madison witnessed; his mother was hit in the thigh and his then-two year old nephew was shot in the foot and was briefly in critical condition.

Madison, now 22, wasn’t physically injured in the shooting, but says he was left to deal with mental trauma and unanswered questions alone.

“Seeing someone get shot even though they didn’t die is still trauma,” he said. “I dealt with it alone and I wish I had support … I needed somebody to talk to and relate to and help me through the pain and trauma I went through.”

Through Ryse Center, Madison has been working through his trauma through poetry and counseling sessions. And while he is grateful to have these resources now, he wishes that it hadn’t taken most of his life to get them. He also wants more organizations like Ryse to expand their reach to capture those who have been harmed by gun violence, directly and indirectly.

“As soon as my mom and nephew got shot, I feel like somebody - the ambulance people or police - should have put us in some type of counseling,” Madison said. “The kids need help. We go through a lot. We go through so much in our life. We need more resources.”

‘Monster profits’ for energy giants reveal a self-destructive fossil fuel resurgence

Oliver Milman in New York

THE GUARDIAN
Thu, February 9, 2023 

Photograph: PA Lawrence, LLC./Alamy

While 2022 inflicted hardship upon many people around the world due to soaring inflation, climate-driven disasters and war, the year was lucrative on an unprecedented scale for the fossil fuel industry, with the five largest western oil and gas companies alone making a combined $200bn in profits.

In a parade of annual results released over the past week the “big five” – Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP and TotalEnergies – all revealed that last year was the most profitable in their respective histories, as the rising cost of oil and gas, driven in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, helped turbocharge revenues.

Related: Shell and BP face tough job of keeping customers and investors happy as profits roll in

Exxon, the Texas-based oil giant, led the way with a record $55.7bn in annual profit, taking home about $6.3m every hour last year. California’s Chevron had a record $36.5bn profit, while Shell announced the best results of its 115-year history, a $39.9bn surplus, and BP, another London-based firm, notched a $27.7bn profit. The French company TotalEnergies also had a record, at $36.2bn.

When the 2022 results for all publicly traded oil and gas companies are tallied the total profits are expected to exceed $400bn, “a number we’ve never seen before, and one that was built off the backs of working families who were victimized by oil and gas executives’ greed”, according to Claire Moser, deputy executive director of the US activist group Climate Power.Interactive

The stratospheric profits were criticized as “outrageous” by Joe Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Biden said that “we’re still going to need oil and gas for a while” but the US president attacked companies for enriching shareholders through share buybacks rather than helping alleviate rising gasoline costs for drivers.

The big five oil and gas companies have already confirmed that most of the bumper profits will be going to stock buybacks and dividends. The $200bn in combined profits equates to about five times the US’s annual foreign aid budget, or about double what the world gave to Ukraine last year in military and humanitarian assistance. If the oil executives had decided to use this money to go to space, they could have left the Earth’s atmosphere 3,225 times on Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket, at $62m a trip.Interactive

António Guterres, the secretary-general of the UN, was scornful of the industry in a speech on Monday, in which he expressed incredulity at the “monster profits” of fossil fuel companies at a time when the world needs to be rapidly slashing its planet-heating emissions to avoid climate breakdown.

“If you cannot set a credible course for net-zero [emissions], with 2025 and 2030 targets covering all your operations, you should not be in business,” Guterres said. “Your core product is our core problem. We need a renewables revolution, not a self-destructive fossil fuel resurgence.”

Even though the rollout of renewable energy such as solar and wind is gathering momentum around the world, countries are still forging ahead with numerous “carbon bomb” projects that would push the world beyond agreed “safe” temperature limits. Last year, more than $1tn were invested in fossil fuel infrastructure and extraction worldwide.

The sale of oil and gas remains so enticing that BP this week announced it is scaling back its climate ambitions, retaining its fossil fuel assets for longer than it previously expected. “We need continuing near-term investment into today’s energy system – which depends on oil and gas – to meet today’s demands and to make sure the transition is an orderly one,” said Bernard Looney, BP’s chief executive. “At the end of the day, we’re responding to what society wants.”

Looney has previously called BP a “cash machine” due to its prodigious financial returns, while the company’s finance chief, Murray Auchincloss, last year admitted that “it is possible that we are getting more cash than we know what to do with”.

Related: Carbon offsets are flawed but we are now in a climate emergency

This stance drew a sharp rebuke from campaigners who point out that the largest fossil fuel companies are still investing relatively little into clean energy, endangering the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

“If the bulk of your investments remain tied to fossil fuels, and you even plan to increase those investments, you cannot maintain to be Paris-aligned, because you will not achieve large-scale emissions reductions by 2030,” said Mark van Baal, founder of Follow This, an activist shareholder group.

“The picture is clear now, no oil major has plans to drive down emissions this decade. Now it’s up to the shareholders. Together with major investors, we continue to compel BP to put its full weight behind the energy transition.”

The EU Says Twitter Didn't Complete Its Homework Assignment

Kevin Hurler
Thu, February 9, 2023 

Several tech companies submitted reports for the EU’s Transparency Centre, but the union says that Twitter’s was lacking data.

EU officials are singling out Twitter today after the company’s report on the role of disinformation on its platform fell short of competitors like Google and Meta. Twitter now has until July to submit an updated report to the EU.

The EU has officially unveiled the Transparency Centre, which is a collection of reports from several different tech companies that have signed the 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation as a part of the EU’s commitment to battling disinformation and misinformation online. The reports, submitted from companies like Google, Meta, and even the likes of Adobe, outline how each company is enacting the Code of Practice on Disinformation on their platforms. The EU was pretty happy with the reports received from most companies—except for Twitter

According to the EU’s press release, while Twitter did meet the deadline to submit, the company’s report is short on data and lacks information on how Twitter fact checks information on its site. Twitter now has to resubmit a report by this July, with complete information on how the company is implementing the Code of Practice on Disinformation.

“Today’s reports mark a step in the battle against online disinformation. It comes as no surprise that the degree of quality vary greatly according to the resources companies have allocated to this project,” said Thierry Breton, EU’s Commissioner for Internal Market, in a statement. “It is in the interest of all signatories to abide by their commitment to fully implement the Code of practice against disinformation, in anticipation of the obligations under the Digital Services Act.”

Twitter did not immediately return Gizmodo’s request for comment on the matter.

Now that Twitter has changed hands to CEO Elon Musk, the company appears to have focused less on battling disinformation and more on rolling out useless UX updates. Recently, users noticed that Twitter was testing out an excessive and unnecessary 4,000-character tweet feature. Disinformation, meanwhile, is continuing to run rampant on the platform—after Musk’s purchase of Twitter closed in late October, the company promptly removed its covid-19 misinformation policy. Despite this, Twitter’s history of misinformation is a long one, one that predates Musk’s ownership.

Gizmodo