Hundreds of steel workers protest against job losses in South Wales

Rod Minchin, PA
Sat, 17 February 2024

Hundreds of people have joined protests against the proposed loss of thousands of steel jobs in South Wales.

Tata is consulting on plans to shut down blast furnaces at Port Talbot with the loss of around 2,800 jobs as it switches to a more environmentally friendly way of producing steel.

The firm plans to invest £750 million in the electric arc furnace, alongside funding for a support package for the employees expected to be made redundant during the transition.


The UK Government has committed to investing £500 million at the site.

A protest is being held in Port Talbot, while workers from the Llanwern site marched in Newport city centre.

Trade unions Unite and Community are currently balloting its workers at Tata over strike action.

Among those attending the Port Talbot rally were Welsh Government ministers Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles who are rivals to be the next Welsh Labour leader and First Minister.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said there have been almost 6,400 jobs lost in the British steel industry since 2015.

“Friends, together our politicians have sat by and watched our steel industry be decimated,” she told the rally.

“They have handed our steel to overseas corporations, undermined our economy and our national security.

Around 2,800 jobs could be lost (Peter Jehle via X/PA)

“Well, we say here together: no more. The time for begging is over. Now is the time for action. Now is the time for us to fight with everything we have. Fight for our communities and fight for UK steel.”

Community union assistant general secretary Alasdair McDiarmid said: “Tata’s bad deal for steel would be devastating for South Wales, with thousands of jobs on the line both directly and in the supply chain.

“The economy would suffer, and Britain losing its strategic steelmaking capability would pose a grave threat to national security and sovereignty.

“We are urging Tata and the UK Government to reconsider the destructive path they are taking us down, and to look again at the credible alternative which is already on the table in the form of the multi-union plan which Community and GMB have put forward.”

Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP for Aberavon, said: “Port Talbot steelworks has been the beating heart of our community for generations.

“Tata’s proposals for the site threaten that proud tradition and the works’ enormous future potential.

“Their narrow, electric arc furnace-only plan would sacrifice highly-skilled local jobs and leave the UK dependent on dirty steel imports.

“The people of Port Talbot and South Wales are rightly asking the company to stop and think again before it is too late – it is time for Tata, and the UK Government, to listen.”




A Tata Steel spokesman said: “Much of our existing iron and steelmaking operation in Port Talbot is at the end of its life, is unreliable and inefficient, and contributing to losses of £1.7 million a day in the last quarter alone.

“We believe we have a very exciting future ahead, providing the high quality, low-CO2 steels that our customers in the UK and overseas are so desperate for.

“Furthermore, producing steel from scrap that already exists in significant quantities in the UK rather than importing iron ore and coal from across the world, will be the foundation for more resilient UK manufacturing supply chains.”

A UK Government spokesman said: “We recognise that this is a concerning time for Tata’s employees at Port Talbot and we will continue to support staff affected by the transition.

“The UK Government has put in place one of the biggest support packages in history, with a £500 million grant as part of the £1.25 billion commitment by Tata to secure the future of the Welsh steel industry.

“Additionally, £100 million has been put towards the creation of a Transition Board – £80 million from the UK Government and £20 million from Tata Steel.

“This record level of support shows just how much the UK Government values the Welsh steel industry and the people and communities whose livelihoods depend on it.”

UK
‘Crunch time for council’ as yoga and Pilates instructors prepare to strike

Alan Jones, PA Industrial Correspondent
Fri, 16 February 2024 



Yoga, Pilates and aerobics instructors are to strike in a dispute over pay.

Members of Unison employed by Colchester City Council will walk out for seven days from Wednesday February 28 until Tuesday March 5.

Although the Leisure World and Northern Gateway Leisure Park trainers are directly employed by the council, they are not part of the same pay scheme as other staff.

Unison said the local authority has refused to increase pay for yoga and Pilates coaches of £25 per session since 2015, while aerobics instructors have been earning just £22.50.

Melinda Harrison, an aerobics instructor at the council for the past nine years, said: “Every other employee has had a pay rise, but we’ve been completely ignored. It’s like we don’t exist. We don’t get reviewed. It’s like the council has forgotten us.

“Ten years is a long time to go without a pay rise and the cost of living has shot up. It’s completely unfair to leave 

Workers at a defence agency are to be balloted for industrial action in a dispute over pay.

Members of the Prospect union at Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S), will vote in the coming weeks on whether to launch a campaign of action.

The union said the employer failed to meet its pay claim and imposed an “unagreed” offer for 2023-2024 of 3.25% or less.

Prospect is recommending that members vote yes to both strike action, and action short of strike.

The agency is responsible for managing MoD procurement across the Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force, and for support programmes for the UK’s armed forces.

Its headquarters is located at the MoD’s Abbey Wood complex in Bristol.

Prospect General Secretary, Mike Clancy, said: “Our members at DE&S are committed experts dedicated to keeping our country safe in an increasingly dangerous world.

“Yet instead of recognising their invaluable work, their employer is attempting to impose another significant cut in pay, with an offer below that negotiated elsewhere in the public sector, and far below their private sector counterparts.

“Industrial action is always a last resort. It is not too late for the employer to come back to the table and make a better offer.”

A DE&S spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that Prospect have taken the decision to hold an industrial action ballot over the 2023/24 pay offer, which was implemented last September after negotiations with our recognised trades unions.

“More than half of DE&S employees received base pay increases of at least 3.25% – the figure quoted by Prospect – with some of our lowest paid employees receiving as much as 14.63% in uplifts. The overall average base pay increase across all employees in 2023/24 was 5.1%.”

UAE pledges unmatchable investment in The TORY  Telegraph


Christopher Williams
Fri, 16 February 2024 

The Telegraph

The United Arab Emirates has pledged unmatchable investment in The Telegraph if its planned takeover is allowed, in its first public comments on the controversy over its potential threat to press freedom.

Writing in The Telegraph, Rani Raad, the chief executive of International Media Investments (IMI), the UAE company providing 75pc of the funding for RedBird IMI’s planned deal, said that “any other bid simply cannot offer anything like the financial security and investment we can”.

Rival bidders including a consortium of the hedge fund billionaires Sir Paul Marshall and Ken Griffin, and the publisher of The Daily Mail remain interested in an acquisition of The Telegraph if RedBird IMI’s complex debt deal with the Barclay family fails.


Mr Raad added: “RedBird IMI intends to grow The Telegraph brand precisely at a time when in the UK and the US the media industry seems to be in a spiral of retreat, redundancies, and spending cuts.

“To be clear: as media owners, we will be doing just the opposite, which must surely be welcome news to the management and staff of The Telegraph.”

Mr Raad, chief executive of International Media Investments (IMI), says that ‘any other bid simply cannot offer anything like the financial security and investment we can’ - Rani Raad

Despite its wealth, senior editorial managers and writers have raised concerns over the involvement of IMI, which is effectively an arm of the state. It is controlled by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the vice-president of the UAE and owner of Manchester City.

The proposed takeover is currently in limbo pending an investigation of its potential threat to the public interest by Ofcom. The media regulator is scheduled to deliver its report to the Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer by 11 March. She could then order months of further investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which could ultimately lead to the deal being blocked.

Mr Raad, a former CNN executive and close ally of Jeff Zucker, the head of RedBird IMI, again set out undertakings which they argue will protect The Telegraph from any UAE interference. They include an editorial trust board and legal guarantees that IMI will be a passive investor only.

RedBird, a US private equity firm providing 25pc of the £600m price, would be responsible for the management of The Telegraph.

Mr Raad said that The Times editorial board, established when Rupert Murdoch bought the newspaper in 1981 and intended to protect it from his influence, was viewed as ineffective until it was scrapped in 2022. But he argued that the Telegraph editorial trust board would have real powers backed by the law.

Mr Raad said: “We all know that in the past promises were made, only to be broken almost before the ink on the newsprint was dry.

“We have learned the lessons of News Corp, when promises were made that were never fully kept about The Times. Ours meet the far higher standard of enforceability.”

IMI faces cross-party opposition in Parliament, including from Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, who has warned that state ownership of a significant news outlet would set “dangerous precedent for other democracies”.

This week Fraser Nelson, the editor of The Spectator, appeared before a Lords select committee. He urged an amendment to the Media Bill, which is making its way through Parliament, to outlaw media ownership by foreign states.

‘Man I just want a dishwasher job’: Why are Olive Garden and FedEx forcing job applicants to endure a strange personality test that turns them into blue avatars?


Chloe Berger
Sat, February 17, 2024 at 4:00 a.m. MST·7 min read

Step aside, Na'vi version of Sigourney Weaver: A new blue avatar is becoming famous. If you apply to one of several large corporations today, you might see a blue guy that looks like the Walmart version of Disney’s wide-eyed style of animation. No, it’s not a company mascot; it’s actually part of your evaluation.

The blue avatars are part of a long and confusing personality quiz in the hiring process at a handful of big companies. Many applicants find their presence not only bizarre, but also a bit insulting.

The blue people are courtesy of Paradox.ai, which boasts several billion-dollar companies as clients, including McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Citizens, and more. It’s worth noting that not all of the clients of Paradox.ai use the personality test feature, as different spokespeople from Citizens, 3M, and CVS Health all confirm. Still, many have taken to social media to express their confusion as to why this extra hoop—a long, bizarre personality test—is being placed in front of applicants considering many of these same companies claim to suffer a staffing shortage.

“Getting a dishwashing job at Olive Garden now requires a personality test from an AI company where you respond to more than 60 slides featuring a blue alien called Ash,” tweets Emanual Maiberg, who first reported on said quiz in a larger piece for 404 Media.

Already strung out and cynical about the state of work, employees and job applicants found these types of assessments to be the final nail in the coffin. Although economists maintain that we’re in a tight job market, the hunt is longer and trickier than it used to be in part because of extraneous quizzes and interviews. Just last year, the average time it took to hire an employee reached a record high of 44 days, per Josh Bersin Company and AMS.

“Companies are quick to fire and then are very slow to hire,” says Dan Schawbel, managing partner at Workplace Intelligence, comparing the current situation to the job market coming out of the 2008 recession.
The long, winding, blue road to an Olive Garden job

Let’s say you decide to apply for a job at Olive Garden. One of the first things you’ll see is an A.I. chatbot named Olivia (named after, and using the likeness of, the Paradox’s founder’s fiancée).

After answering a couple of screening questions, you’ll get a pop-up for the personality assessment, illustrated with weird blue humanoids. The personality quiz itself will tell you there’s “not one right answer,” but to look at the picture and either click “me” or “not me” if the depiction of the blue avatar describes how you might act, or feel. You’ll see a bunch of slides like this, featuring the blue avatars in situations like grabbing pizza before others partake, or engaging in artistic endeavors. The process culminates with the AI system telling you your Big 5 personality traits. Many have commented on Maiberg’s tweet to discuss how dystopian these tests feel. Some suggest not being honest on the tests, as answers can be used against you.

Part of the whole process is seeing if you’ll be a willing cog in the machine or rage against it. Companies often shirk applicants that aren’t personality fits “because they don't want this person that they're hiring to shake things up. They really want someone to fall in line with the status quo,” says Schawbel.

Dr. Heather Myers, chief IO psychologist at Traitify by Paradox (the official name of the personality test), tells Fortune the personality test can be done in under two minutes, claiming the competition rates for their tests are “significantly higher” than other assessments and that turnover has decreased by up to 25% for Paradox’s clients. Myers says Paradox’s goal is to “simplify the hiring process and remove friction for job applicants,” and that while it’s not meant to eliminate a company’s human decision-making process, automation can help neutralize dead ends and create a more efficient job system.

But in attempting to alleviate employers’ frustration, Paradox is stirring employee frustration—it’s a bit of a paradox, if you will. The test is a way to filter out applicants, according to Schawbel. Adding that it’s a way of seeing who really wants the gig by “put[ting] individuals through the gauntlet,” he explains it “weeds out a lot of people.”

“Paradox was created entirely because we were frustrated by the experience of finding and getting jobs, too,” Adam Godson, Paradox's president and chief product officer says. “So, we fully appreciate the job seeker perspective.” He added that there’s been too much friction and obstacles in the hiring process at many companies, and that Traitify is a way to take out those obstacles and conflict.

But if one side of the relationship is this irritated, obviously something is wrong. “The goal is, how do we make the entire hiring process good for employers and employees,” says Schawbel. “And if it's only good for one party, then it's a broken matchmaking system, or broken hiring system.” He adds that a long process creates more frustration, as burnt out employees are overburdened while they wait for help.
Worker shortage or picky employers?

Despite Paradox’s asserted intentions, the personality tests seem to have struck a chord with people, and not in a good way.

A prospective software engineer for FedEx went viral after posting screenshots of Paradox’s “bizarre personality test” to Reddit, voicing their frustration about “how blatantly prejudicial this type of thing is.” The applicant said they withdrew their application, having felt unrepresented by the results and areas of the test saying they had room to grow.

Another user posted about the same test that Olive Garden gave them. “Man I just want a dishwasher job,” they said. Someone in the comment section asserted, “this is just my opinion, but companies cant [sic] find anyone to hire anymore because they have set their standards so stupidly high that no one seems worth while.”

Indeed, companies are adding these personality tests “for a reason, because they can get away with it,” says Schawbel, explaining that, even if they cry hiring shortage wolf, they are getting enough qualified applicants to want to filter some out. It means that both within the white-collar and blue collar fields, application processes are feeling increasingly long and tiring. And that doesn't come without consequences. These candidates who have a bad experience are also more likely to be deterred from applying again to the company, to complain about it on social media, and also avoid said company for services in their personal lives, he adds, pointing to past research and studies.

Over the last couple of years, companies in the retail and hospitality sectors (the sectors in which Paradox has many clients)) have complained of staffing issues. During The Great Resignation, many workers left their jobs to find opportunities with less stressful working conditions and greater pay.

But the companies complaining it’s hard to hire and retain right now aren’t making applicants’ lives any easier as they deliver a slew of questions, quizzes, and interviews for jobs that don’t even offer competitive wages. Interview processes have gotten longer in general, according to experts from CNBC Make It. As for the hiring managers, “maybe they're being too picky. But they don't think they are,” Schawbel says.

It’s just part of the process, if you ask Olive Garden. “This is one of many ways our restaurant leaders assess candidates to ensure they have the right people in the right roles — which sets our team members up for success and provides great guest experiences,” a spokesperson for Darden Restaurants, which owns Olive Garden, said in a statement to Fortune.

Still, tired job applicants are understandably feeling a bit bristled by having to take the time to pretend to want to work somewhere. “Just in case you’re wondering, it’s absolute hell trying to get jobs of any kind out here, and that’s why half of America is struggling to pay rent (including me),” one person said, quote-tweeting Maiberg’s post.

“I think we’re going to reach a breaking point in labor soon. employers have gone completely off the rails and people are exhausted,” a Twitter user claimed. Americans are feeling disenchanted by their jobs and staring down the barrel of a long job market, these personality tests are all enough to leave us feeling, well … blue.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Plant-based meat’s fatal flaw makes it the latest victim of the everything bubble: ‘Worse-tasting products that aren’t healthier than the real thing’

Irina Ivanova
Sat, February 17, 2024


The 2020s have been a real one so far. The interest rate shock that followed the highest inflation since the 1980s have created a world where money is just more expensive and it’s disrupting business models from dating apps to streaming services to commercial office leasing. And then there’s plant-based meat.

Once seen as the answer to human health and climate change, alt-meat startups raised nearly $15 billion in venture capital funding over the last dozen years. But they've now flamed out, and funding for food-technology startups has fallen to the lowest level in nearly a decade. Venture-capital bible Pitchbook, which has been tracking the carnage, recently asked, “Have we hit peak plant-based meat?”

And yet, reasons to eat mostly plants are more abundant now than ever. The Earth’s climate has just passed a key tipping point, with global temperatures for the past year 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Animal agriculture is the biggest industrial source of water pollution and takes up three-quarters of the world’s agricultural land. Americans with means are intensely interested in eating more healthily, and they’re well aware of plant-based foods.

“Of all the foods we eat, meat and dairy have the biggest impact. Globally, it makes up around 11% of all greenhouse gas emissions,” said Paul West, senior scientist of ecosystems and agriculture at Project Drawdown, an organization focused on climate solutions. “Changing what we eat and what we waste is essential to reduce emissions.”

So what went wrong with the plant-based meat promises? It comes down to price, taste, and the health factor, according to industry analysts and former workers.

Price is a major factor. It’s far cheaper to make a pot of rice and beans than a steak. But on the supermarket shelves, Beyond, Impossible and other plant-based burgers are consistently pricier than their animal counterparts—about 30% more, when compared to burgers.

“Plant based proteins [are] listed typically at a price premium, and typically when you're talking about traditional beef, a 30% to 40% price premium, so I think that's a very challenging sell in this inflationary environment," Alex Frederick, senior emerging technology analyst at Pitchbook, told Fortune. “Also, in an inflationary environment, it's challenging to get consumers to try new or more premium products.”

According to the nonprofit Good Food Institute, which promotes meat alternatives, price is a barrier for one in five people who don’t eat plant-based meats, and for one in four who eat them infrequently. GFI suggested consumers would be willing to pay just 5% to 10% more for alt-meat than animal meat.
‘We didn’t love it’

Saba Fazeli worked at Beyond Meat for five years after getting an education at Stanford as a mechanical engineer and eventually came to the conclusion that completely plant-based meats would never substitute for the real thing.

“It was really exciting; I was really proud to be doing that work,” Fazeli, 29, told Fortune. But after a few dizzy years, the market spoke. In 2022, Beyond’s sales fell 10%. In the third quarter of last year, the most recent available, U.S. sales were down 31% from 2022. Across all plant-based foods, unit sales between 2020 and 2021 were flat, and fell in 2022, according to GFI.

“The mass-market response was not an overwhelming, ‘Yes, we will give up meat and do this forever,’” Fazeli said. “It was more of a, ‘We tried it and we didn't love it, so we're not going to do it again.’”

Fazeli’s heart is still in the space—he left Beyond to co-found a startup that makes mostly plant-based meat. But he named several reasons for the price disparity between veggie burgers 2.0 and their animal-based counterparts.

Most of the ingredients that go into alt-meat patties—grains, rice, seed oils, soy—are relatively cheap, he said. But the chemical engineering that goes into “the last little bit,” making it taste meaty, is pricey. “Trying to emulate the fat-melting characteristics of a true animal fat with plant fats, all those little ingredient components that are added are what both contribute to the long ingredient list and also drive the cost up for the plant-based meat products.”

There's also the problem of scale—as startups, many plant-based meat companies are competing with industry players that are many times larger and benefit from efficiencies of scale. Startups might have to spend more money on marketing or trying to get themselves in front of consumers.

That’s not to mention the government subsidies available to animal agriculture. Consider one Berkeley study, which found that removing subsidies would push the price of a Big Mac from $5 to $13, even higher than typical supermarket prices for plant-based meats.

To be sure, engineered plant-based proteins have only been on the scene for an eyeblink compared to the two centuries over which humans have developed the industrial meat system. In a statement, an Impossible spokesperson said: “The plant-based category is just getting started. This is a $7.5 billion global industry compared to the $1.4 trillion animal meat industry. Meat analog products like ours have only been in-market for less than a decade and at mass in just the last few years."

The spokesperson added, "We're the only plant-based meat company in the US seeing consistent growth and we're outpacing all our competitors in both dollar sales and unit sales."

Beyond Meat did not respond to a request for comment.

Tastes OK, less filling

Taste is another issue. While Beyond and Impossible took consumers’ taste buds by storm when they first reached mass markets, in the long run, that storm turned into a trickle. Taste is the top reason consumers avoid plant-based meat (or don’t repurchase after trying it once), according to GFI.

“For a lot of people, it's just too much of a jump,” said West. “Even if they're able to drive down the price so it is more competitive [with animal meat], and even though Impossible burgers taste a lot like a hamburger—I mean, I've had them; it's not the same thing,” he said.

And, fairly or not, health perceptions of alt-meat as more processed than the real thing have also played a role. Some newer plant-based burgers have been shown to have even more salt than the beef kind, along with lower amounts of some vitamins, and most nutritionists suggest approaching them as an occasional treat—not a staple. The presence of specialty lab-developed ingredients is also a concern for some people as well as a marketing point of pride for competitors (Chipotle declined to carry Beyond or Impossible meats in its stores, instead developing its own alt-meat that it boasted was “grown on a farm, not in a lab.”)

Some experts say the backlash against alt-meat is overblown. “It's still better than a burger, both in terms of the environment and your health, even if it's not a salad,” said West. But fairly or not, it’s had an impact. In 2020, half of consumers believed plant-based meats were healthy, but by 2022, that portion fell to 38%, as Beyond Meat executives said on a recent earnings call.

For Fazeli, and his co-founder, Brice Klein, all this coalesced into frustration with “the alt-meat space.”

“Asking people to spend more money for worse-tasting products that aren't healthier than the real thing is not a great way to drive repeat purchases,” Klein told Fortune. “The other frustration is that we realized that none of these products or companies are really solving a consumer problem—where climate change is an earth problem,” he added. But “you cannot eat values.”

29-year-old best friend entrepreneurs want to reinvent plant-based meat with real animal fat: ‘If you add fat, it makes it taste incredible’

Irina Ivanova
Sat, February 17, 2024 


As a 29-year-old on his second startup, Brice Klein has perfected the working-until-late routine, often leaving the office at 8 p.m. or later. But as he’ll willingly tell you, that demanding schedule often led to unpleasant compromises.

Chief among them was food. Klein, an early employee at a vertical-farm company aiming to revolutionize produce, found himself eating less-than-innovative food night after night.

“I have distinct memories of leaving the gym or my mom's house at 9, stopping by Mollie Stones at 9:15 or 9:30, minutes later microwaving the Amy's Vegetable Korma I'd just purchased, and then collapsing on the couch as I shoveled it down while watching an episode of The Office before bed,” Brice told Fortune.

“I didn't feel good about my existence,” he said. “It wasn’t a particularly amazing meal. I was like, ‘this kind of gets the job done.’” It was particularly challenging since Klein was a vegetarian.

“For a long time I'd eat a block of tofu or beyond burger or half bag of Quorn or Protein+ Pasta at night, but every one of those still felt like a concession on some combination of flavor, cost, and health,” he recalled.

These days, Klein still on the convenience kick but feels much happier about the mixes he’s throwing in a microwave or skillet. As one-half of the duo behind Choppy, Klein and his business partner and best friend, Saba Fazeli, also 29, are eating a lot of their own creations—chopped steak, pulled pork, or carne asada made of 90% plants and 10% animal parts.

For his part, Fazeli left a job at Beyond Meat to solve what he saw as the problem in the alt-meat space: Plant-based proteins just don’t taste like the animal kind.

Looking at the last three years of plant-based meat sales would seem to confirm that hypothesis. Plant-based proteins burst on the scene around 2018, promising to save the climate and Americans’ health, and soared high for a few years on cheap funding from venture capitalists.

But many startups stumbled during the pandemic and have yet to recover. Unit sales of plant-based foods were flat from 2020 to 2021, and then fell in 2022. The pioneer of the space, Beyond Meat, is in “survival mode,” according to one analyst. The company’s “bleeding” veggie burger propelled it to the the highest-popping IPO in 2019, but its onetime $3.8 billion market cap has shriveled to just $450 million today. And funding for alternative proteins has collapsed to the lowest amount in nearly a decade, according to venture-capital tracker Pitchbook, which last year asked, “Have we hit peak plant-based meat?”

‘Adding meat back’

Klein and Fazeli met as freshmen at Stanford, where they quickly bonded over their shared love of board shorts and skateboarding and went on to graduate as mechanical engineers. The duo bounced around roughly 70 business ideas between them before landing on Choppy (business name: “Momentum Foods”), whose tagline is “adding meat back into plant-based meat.” They’re one of a handful of startups aiming to boost plant-based meats with the addition of something until recently unthinkable—real fat.

In San Francisco, Mission Barns is working on developing lab-grown fat to add to plant-based meatballs and burgers. In London, the startup Hoxton Farms, launched after its omnivore founders had a disappointing experience eating a plant-based burger at a pub. “We realized what it was missing, it’s fat,” co-founder Max Jamilly told Fortune. They beta-tested this idea during the pandemic by cooking plant-based burgers at home with added pork fat, and then graduated to growing pork-fat cells in a lab, on the belief that lab-grown fat would bypass the ethical issues of raising and slaughtering animals.

The company, now with roughly 50 employees, has raised $29 million at a $50 million valuation, according to Pitchbook. And while Jamilly touts the climate benefits of lab-grown fat, but he believes its true selling point will be the taste.

“Health and environment and animal welfare are enough to make you order something off a menu or put it in your shopping basket at the grocery store, but that will not make you eat it every week,” he said. “What makes people keep eating stuff is taste.”

And, he added, “Any chef will tell you, any day of the week, if you add fat, it makes it taste incredible.”

Plant-based meat startups are adding real animal fat to the mix: ‘It didn’t sizzle right, it didn’t smell right, it didn’t have that incredibly fatty taste and mouth feel’


Irina Ivanova
Sat, February 17, 2024 

Biologist Max Jamilly was in a pub with a friend when he hit upon the idea for his next business. Jamilly and his friend Ed Steele, both meat-eaters who were trying to cut down on their carbon footprint, had ordered a plant-based meat patty off the menu. They soon regretted it.

“It didn’t sizzle right, it didn’t smell right, it didn’t have that incredibly fatty taste and mouth feel,” Jamilly told Fortune. At that point, he realized what plant-based foods have been missing, and what he would spend his future years developing: Fat.

Now, as founders of the three-year-old Hoxton Farms, Jamilly and Steele are at the forefront of a nascent trend in the alt-meat world: Putting animal fats (often cultivated in a lab) into plant-based items.

London-based Hoxton Farms cultivates different types of pork fat. They’re competing with Mission Barns, in San Francisco, which is developing vat-grown pork fat to incorporate into plant-based bacon, meatballs, and sausages. And then there’s Los Angeles-based Choppy (formerly Paul’s Table), which mixes 10% animal fat, collagen or broth into mostly plant-based carne asada and chopped steak, which it sells in a handful of supermarkets on the West Coast. Others, including Lypid and Cubiq Foods, are working on convincing vegan versions of animal fat.

Ed Steele and Max Jamilly of Hoxton Farms.

The turn toward meat (of a sort) comes after a dismal couple years for alternative proteins. Once flying high on venture capital funding and lofty promises to save the climate and Americans’ health, plant-based protein companies crashed during the pandemic and most haven’t recovered.

Beyond Meat, whose “bleeding” veggie burger propelled it to the the highest-popping IPO in 2019, has slid from a market cap of $3.8 billion to just $450 million today. Beyond Meat is in ‘survival mode,’ an analyst told trade publication AgFunderNews recently. Impossible Foods, which reported 50% revenue growth last year, has nonetheless backed off IPO plans, citing market conditions. Both companies laid off staff last year. And funding for plant-based meats has collapsed to the lowest amount in nearly a decade, according to venture-capital tracker Pitchbook, which last year asked, “Have we hit peak plant-based meat?”

It turns out that, after the “wow” factor wore off, meat-eaters weren’t convinced enough by the imitation stuff to keep eating it—in particular, as plant-based beef runs about 30% to 40% pricier than the real thing, according to Pitchbook senior emerging technology analyst Alex Frederick.

“Asking people to spend more money for worse-tasting products that aren't healthier than the real thing is not a great way to drive repeat purchase,” Brice Klein, a co-founder of Choppy, told Fortune. “None of these products or companies are really solving a consumer problem, where climate change is an earth problem. But it's not a consumer problem; you cannot eat values.”

Defenders of plant-based meats note that they've only been on the scene for a short time. In a statement, an Impossible spokesperson said: “The plant-based category is just getting started. This is a $7.5 billion global industry compared to the $1.4 trillion animal meat industry. Meat analog products like ours have only been in-market for less than a decade and at mass in just the last few years."

The spokesperson added, "We're the only plant-based meat company in the US seeing consistent growth and we're outpacing all our competitors in both dollar sales and unit sales." Beyond Meat did not respond to Fortune's request for comment.

Today, vegetarians or vegans make up just 5% of Americans, roughly the same portion as two decades ago. And those carnivores who are interested in cutting back on their meat intake—including the three founders who Fortune spoke with for this story—are more likely to substitute beef with chicken, or vegetables, than a faux-beef patty.

“Many people would rather reduce the number of times they eat burgers rather than having a meat alternative that doesn’t taste quite as good and where they’re not sure what is in it,” Rosemary Green, a sustainability professor at the London School of Health and Tropical Medicine, told Fortune.

Startup alt-meat founders

Where’s the beef?

Enter the next phase of the alt-meat revolution: Actual fat, or, in some cases, meat byproducts like broth or collagen.

Fat, as any professional chef knows, is a powerful conduit of flavor—it’s why many recipes have the cook sauté garlic or spices in oil before adding other ingredients. “Fat gives food that creamy, silky, rich texture that we crave,” chef and culinary instructor Becky Selengut wrote in an essay recently. We crave it because hominids evolved to gravitate to calorie-dense fats and proteins during a time when food was hard to come by; indeed, some research suggests our taste for fad led to the evolution of humans’ unusually big brains.

Animal fat, which is solid at room temperature, is especially hard to replicate using plant-based oils, says Hoxton Farms’ Jamilly. (Even coconut oil, the most solid of the plant fats, melts at around 76 degrees Fahrenheit, a far much lower melting point than animal fat.)

“Fat affects the way [food] looks and it has by far the biggest effect on how meat cooks,” he says. “When you heat up a steak, some of the fat softens and then some of it renders, it turns to liquid,” he explains. As the steak cooks in its own fat, the heat and oxygen combine to create the Maillard reaction, which browns the meat. “And the reason the flavor of a steak really lingers is because the fat coats your taste buds,” he says.

Animal fat contains different flavor profiles, what Jamilly calls a “signature,” which contribute to the distinctive flavor of each meat. “That’s why pork tastes different from beef and from chicken. None of them taste like coconut,” he says.

That’s why, according to Jamilly, alt-meat companies “are desperate for innovative ingredients that will make their products better.”

Some flavor, slightly less processing

Cell-cultivation companies still have a long way to go before their products hit shelves, including scaling up and, in the UK, gaining regulatory approval. (U.S. regulators cleared lab-grown meat to eat last year; the UK’s government has yet to weigh in.) They’re betting on the idea that lab-grown meat will still be viewed more positively than lab-processed vegetable proteins. Consumers who have become increasingly health-conscious and were likely turned off by the revelation that Impossible and Beyond are highly processed and not great for health.

“Rightly or wrongly, people think of meat as one ingredient,” says Jamilly. “People like the idea of a clean label, and if they can replace five or six nasty ingredients with cultivated fat, people love it.”

In a sense, plant meat suffered from the worst of both worlds—more “processed” than most typical vegetarian fare and more expensive than animal meat. Once the novelty of almost-the-real-thing veggie burgers wore off, it made sense that consumers would return to their typical ways.

“With meat, you are comparing against a commodity product,” says Frederick. And then there’s the cost: plant-based meats are about 30% to 40% more expensive than the equivalent beef product, he says—”that's a very challenging sell in this inflationary environment.”

In a sense, putting a little bit of fat or broth in a vat of (mostly) plants is just a high-tech version of millennia-long cooking techniques when resources are scant: Adding some beef bones to a stew for flavor, or stretching ground meat with grains or breadcrumbs for meatballs. It’s undeniable that humans will need to eat less meat in the future if we are to prevent climate change. But that diet may look more flexitarian and less strict vegetarian.

“People care most about flavor, and then price and health,” Choppy co-founder Saba Fazeli tells Fortune. Mostly-plant products like his, he says, are the future, rather than absolutes. “It tastes like what you'd expect, and it's better for you and the planet.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Alberta couple raises contamination concerns as Health Canada cracks down on cord blood clinic

CBC
Fri, February 16, 2024 

Cord blood samples are processed for cryopreservation at a Singapore laboratory

 (Luis Enrique Ascui/Reuters - image credit)

For Carly and Ben Seligman, banking their two children's umbilical cord blood felt like investing in medical insurance.

The Calgary couple no longer trust that the potentially life-saving stem cells they have spent thousands of dollars to preserve remain viable or safe.

"Collecting and banking the cord blood felt like this sort of one-time opportunity to leave future medical doors open for your child," Carly Seligman said in an interview.

"You want to try and give your child every opportunity."

The Seligmans say they have spent more than $3,900 to store the umbilical cord blood of their two children, now 12 and nine years old, at the Canadian Cord Blood bioRepository (CCBR) in west Edmonton.

More than three months after Health Canada issued a public health warning about the facility, the regulator says the operation remains in contravention of health safety standards.

Issued in November, the public health advisory cautions that cord blood banked at the facility could pose serious health risks including the spread of infectious diseases and contamination.

Questions linger about the viability of hundreds of umbilical cord blood specimens as Health Canada continues to warn about unsafe and unsanitary conditions.

Health Canada says the repository has failed to submit a corrective action plan, as ordered. The facility remains barred from accepting new specimens.

Cord blood from about 800 clients remains at the repository and the regulator says the specimens should be tested to ensure they are safe and viable before use in medical treatments.

Rich in stem cells, cord blood can be used to treat a variety of medical issues including blood and immune disorders. The specimens are kept sterile and frozen through cryopreservation.

The Canadian Cord Blood bioRepository, like all of Canada's private cord blood banks, charges for the service of collecting and storing cord blood in case it is needed by the infant donor later in life.

'Have our samples been contaminated?'

The facility charges around $900 in processing for each specimen, and roughly $110 per year after that in annual fees.

With another storage payment due, Carly Seligman is demanding more transparency from the operator.

"Did their storage practices compromise the usability of our children's cord blood?" she said. "Have our samples been contaminated?"

The clinic's founder and CEO, Dr. John Akabutu, told CBC he could not comment on the enforcement on the advice of his lawyers.

In correspondence with the Seligmans, Akabutu maintains the facility is in compliance and was subjected to an inspection by Health Canada staff who were misinformed of the regulations.

Timothy Caulfield, a University of Alberta professor and a Canada Research Chair in health law and policy, said the ongoing lack of compliance is concerning.

"It's tremendously worrisome," Caulfield said. "It's a breach of trust and, of course, it brings into question the value of those cells in the future."

Caulfield said Health Canada's warning should send a message to cord blood repositories across the country. He said stronger enforcement is needed for the private, for-profit industry, especially around advertising.

Clinics often promote yet-to-be developed stem cell therapies and inflate the likelihood that such specimens will be needed by — or even useful to — donors in the future, he said.

Caulfield encouraged parents to donate instead to public cord banks. Public banks, which are free for donors and regulated by Health Canada, use their blood stores for research and to treat any patient who might require stem cell therapy.

He said specimens at private banks rarely become of use. If your baby were to need stem cells, the child would probably need them from someone else.

Consumers need to be wary of speculative medical claims made by private cord banks, he added.

"They leverage real science in order to sell a product," he said. "Take care and scrutinize their claims very, very closely.

"Parents are in a vulnerable situation. Everyone wants to do what's best for their kids."

The inspection

The federal Food and Drugs Act regulates all cord blood banks but private banks are not subject to routine inspections.

Health Canada conducted its first site visit to CCBR on March 15, 2023, followed by an additional site visit on July 27.

Health Canada says its investigation began following a tip from a member of the public. Inspectors found the facility was processing, testing and storing blood in an environment that was "unclean or cleaned with expired disinfectants."

The repository also had inadequate measures to monitor temperature, humidity and contamination during processing, testing and storage, Health Canada said. It also noted concerns about a lack of qualified personnel, uncalibrated equipment and poor record-keeping.

"The department continues to monitor the CCBR to ensure they are not collecting, processing, testing and storing new cord blood," Health Canada said in a statement to CBC on Feb. 9.

"Should CCBR continue to operate and not adequately address Health Canada's concerns, the department will take additional enforcement action."

The repository was also advertising that cord blood could be used by someone other than the donor, Health Canada said.

The facility is only permitted to store blood for autologous use, meaning a specimen can only be used by the person it came from.

"CCBR has confirmed to Health Canada they have not released cord blood for autologous use in Canada and has stopped registering new customers. This means there is no immediate risk to health for the general public."

The department has not ordered the destruction of any blood specimens. Customers are encouraged to contact the company to understand their options, Health Canada said.

They need to demonstrate and prove that our samples haven't been compromised. - Ben Seligman

The operator was ordered to inform all of its clients of the enforcement. The Seligmans said they found out from a news article.

Soon after, the couple received an invoice and wrote to the facility, asking how it would improve its safety standards. The response they received left them with more questions, said Ben Seligman.

"We were simply trying to understand what our options are," he said, "and ultimately understand where things stand with the samples of our two kids.

"They need to demonstrate and prove that our samples haven't been compromised."

In the responding email, Akabutu states that Health Canada incorrectly classified the facility as a drug producer and transplantation centre.

Akabutu alleged in the email that Health Canada inspectors were not knowledgeable and included misinformation in their reports. The facility is "not deficient" from a regulatory perspective, he wrote.

He states that none of the samples stored on site will be used for unmodified transplantation, and said he would consider those methods "yesterday's medicine."

"The samples that we hold for you can be compared to gold ore from a gold mine," he wrote to the Seligmans. "Gold ore requires refinement to produce gold bars, which is comparable to refining our samples."

Health Canada declined to comment on Akabutu's allegations about the inspection.

Heidi Elmoazzen, an expert on cord-blood banking, said the clinic's claims cast doubt on how useful the samples could be for future treatments.

She said the vast majority of the currently approved medical therapies rely on unmodified transplantion, where the cells are used without any further medical manipulation, such as gene editing.

"Cord blood is used to treat over 80 diseases and disorders. And the way they're used right now is in an unmodified form," said Elmoazzen, who has a PhD in medical sciences from the University of Alberta with a concentration in cryobiology.

"I think a lot of families would expect that, as that is the most common use of cord blood, that they would be able to use these units for that purpose."

Elmoazzen encouraged affected customers to demand answers about what the facility is doing to come into compliance.

"The cord blood bank should be able to notify the customers about what they're doing to alleviate the concerns of the families. That's what Health Canada has asked them to do."

The Seligmans are unsure of what they will do with their children's cord blood units. They fear their family has lost something irreplaceable.

"There is the financial cost but even more than that, you're investing in something bigger," Carly Seligman said. "Cord blood, it's a one-time shot."

BUNKER BILLIONAIRE SEEKS IMMORTALITY

Exclusive: Bryan Johnson, the tech founder spending millions to be 18 again, says his goal is to make death optional

Eleanor Pringle
Sat, February 17, 2024 

Courtesy of Bryan Johnson

They say only two things in life are certain: death and taxes. Billionaire biohacker Bryan Johnson doesn't subscribe to that opinion—and not because he has radical ideas about fiscal policy.

The tech entrepreneur has gained notoriety for the $2-million-a-year anti-aging routine he's named the Blueprint protocol, which aims to reverse his biological age to 18—and has met with some degree of success.

For Johnson, this entails eating his last meal at 11 a.m., always sleeping alone, and taking more than 100 supplements a day, among many other radical choices. He also subjects himself to a vast array of tests and experiments: blood plasma transfusions, microneedling, full-body LED exposure, and MRI scans to name a few.

The result has led many to conclude Johnson is not quite…human. Or at least he isn't living within the parameters of a normal human life. Johnson plays along, saying he "loves" the feedback from "haters" because at least they're engaging in the conversation.

But despite Johnson's face appearing across global news outlets over the past 12 months, he insists his "don't die" wish isn't about him alone. It's about the people he loves. For them, he says, he's attempting to make death an option.

In an exclusive interview with Fortune, Johnson said his own mortality is beside the point. He aims to prove humans have an opt-out clause for the seemingly inevitable—if only they're willing to depart from the norm.
Death defiant

Readers may only need to look to fiction to identify one of the biggest flaws in Johnson's ambitions. The idea for many of staying frozen in time while watching peers, friends, and family age around them—and die—is unthinkable.

Johnson said his preparation for this outcome is to fight its eventuality, adding: "I'm currently working on trying to keep my dad alive. His life expectancy is 68 using a life expectancy calculator, he included in that the duration of time that he's been obese, that he used heavy drugs. He's now 71, he's past due."

The former Silicon Valley executive is not only putting his money where his mouth is and funding the treatments for his father, but he's offered his own blood plasma as a transfer.

The procedure was "surprisingly" effective, according to Johnson, who posted on X in November that his "super blood" had reduced his father's age by 25 years.

"Every day he experiences is incredibly precious," Johnson continued, adding his father is also undergoing gene therapy and will be receiving stem cell therapy in the Bahamas in the coming weeks.

"I think life is worth fighting for," said Johnson, a father of three. "I think that no matter a person's situation, even in the case of my father who's already overdue, it's worth fighting for.

"When you feel his vibrancy for life, he rages against death. That inspires me. I understand that in a world where death is inevitable, it feels like a hopeless situation to fight.

"In a world where death is a maybe, it's a different equation. My dad fills that."
Johnson points to the past to respond to the skeptics

Johnson compared present-day skepticism toward his outlook to the mistrust previous generations would have had toward modern medicine.

"Imagine we're speaking with Homo erectus a million years ago and we ask [them]: What do you think future humanity's ability will be to repair broken bones or infections? All the things that would cause them a death in their teenage years and early 20s," he said.

"Imagine us telling them: 'You're just going to take this little white thing and put it in your mouth, and it's going to eliminate the infection.' Or when someone breaks a bone: 'We're actually going to fix it…and you'll operate just as you did before.'"

Johnson believes in the next few decades humanity will make millions of years worth of evolutionary advancement—and he isn't alone in that estimation.

AI, for example, has been widely touted for the benefits it will have to global health, while the World Health Organization has often drawn attention to the importance of healthy aging.

As author and cellular health expert Greg Macpherson told Fortune last year: “We need to treat and train everybody to make longevity accessible. A healthier population doesn’t drain a health system—there are massive economic benefits.”
'What I wish I knew'

Johnson is also in the unique position of being the first of his kind: the self-proclaimed "most-measured man in history."

Although being a "lab rat"—as Blueprint jokingly refers to its founder—may be exciting, it can also be a lonely experience. Johnson has previously spoken about how much he'd value a partner but appreciates his lifestyle makes him "impossible" to be with.

Despite this, Johnson has made it clear he's far happier now than he ever was as the fridge-raiding, brownie-gorging Bryan of his Silicon Valley days.

But are there any remnants of his old life he wished he could hold onto now, anything he thought he knew before embarking on this project?

At the question, Johnson goes quiet, but after 20 seconds of reflection, responds: "I have this relationship with my son."

"He's wise beyond his years. He will actually listen to me. I'll tell him what he's experiencing, what he can likely experience, what the outcome of those experiences are going to be, and unlike most people his age, he doesn't need to experience these things to believe it."

Johnson added: "We humans have this thing where every generation to some degree repeats the same mistakes as every generation before them... and so I wish that I would've had the sort of influence in my life to grow and mature faster and try to be wiser."
A longevity mentality

For Johnson there are a raft of benefits to the protocol: He's no longer "owned by [his] emotions" or finds himself raiding the fridge for snacks without self-control. "It's actually really liberating," Johnson says.

Of course, that's all well and good for Johnson. But what about the billions of other people on the planet who don't have a fortune to call upon to try to save a loved one—or themselves—from aging?

Johnson said the essence of his motivation isn't for him alone, or even for his family: "We scoured all the scientific literature and we put it all in me, we shared all of my data and then we made the entire thing for free."

Johnson has indeed widely shared his recipes, training plans, and vast amounts of data monitoring his progress for free online. More recently some aspects of the protocol have been commercialized: bottles of olive oil, supplements, and certain key ingredients for his balanced lifestyle.

But critics might say there are pockets of humanity that are already often living to more than 100 years old—without the hefty price tag. So-called "blue zones" have been identified for their unusual longevity, with the phenomenon first identified by Dan Buettner, a National Geographic explorer and fellow. These regions include Sardinia in Italy, the islands of Okinawa in Japan, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, the island of Ikaria in Greece, and Loma Linda in California.

Johnson was clear his work is not a competition, but rather part of a wider shift in mentality to longevity. "It doesn't matter what my life expectancy is, it doesn't matter if I die or not," he said. "It's that we are thematically, objectively, functionally engineering our way to 'don't die' as a species."

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

U$

State governments looking to protect health-related data as it's used in abortion battle

Fri, February 16, 2024 

Some state governments and federal regulators were already moving to keep individuals' reproductive health information private when a U.S. senator’s report last week offered a new jolt, describing how cellphone location data was used to send millions of anti-abortion ads to people who visited Planned Parenthood offices.

Federal law bars medical providers from sharing health data without a patient’s consent but doesn’t prevent digital tech companies from tracking menstrual cycles or an individual’s location and selling it to data brokers. Legislation for federal bans have never gained momentum, largely because of opposition from the tech industry.

Whether that should change has become another political fault line in a nation where most Republican-controlled states have restricted abortion — including 14 with bans in place at every stage of pregnancy — and most Democratic ones have sought to protect access since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade.

Abortion rights advocates fear that that if such data is not kept private, it could be used not only in targeted ads but also in law enforcement investigations or by abortion opponents looking to harm those who seek to end pregnancies.

“It isn't just sort of creepy,” said Washington state Rep. Vandana Slatter, the sponsor of a law her state adopted last year to rein in unauthorized use of health information. “It's actually harmful.”

But so far, there's no evidence of widespread use of this kind of data in law enforcement investigations.

“We’re generally talking about a future risk, not something that’s happening on the ground yet,” said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project and an advocate of protections.

The report last week from Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, showed the biggest known anti-abortion ad campaign directed to people who had been identified as having visited abortion providers.

Wyden's investigation found that the information gathered by a now-defunct data broker called Near Intelligence was used by ads from The Veritas Society, a nonprofit founded by Wisconsin Right to Life. The ads targeted people who visited 600 locations in 48 states from 2019 through 2022. There were more than 14 million ads in Wisconsin alone.

Wyden called on the Federal Trade Commission to intervene in the bankruptcy case for Near to make sure the location information collected on Americans is destroyed and not sold to another data broker. He’s also asking the Securities Exchange Commission to investigate whether the company committed securities fraud by making misleading statements to investors about the senator’s investigation.

It's not the first time the issue has come up.

Massachusetts reached a settlement in 2017 with an ad agency that ran a similar campaign nearly a decade ago.

The FTC sued one data broker, Kochava, over similar claims in 2022 in an ongoing case, and settled last month with another, X-Mode Social, and its successor, Outlogic, which the government said sold location data of even users who opted out of such sharing. X-Mode was also found to have sold location data to the U.S. military.

In both cases, the FTC relied on a law against unfair or deceptive practices.

States are also passing or considering their own laws aimed specifically at protecting sensitive health information.

Washington's Slatter, a Democrat, has worked on digital privacy issues for years, but wasn't able to get a bill with comprehensive protections adopted in her state.

She said things changed when Roe was overturned. She went to a rally in 2022 and heard women talking about deleting period-tracking apps out of fear of how their data could be exploited.

When she introduced a health-specific data privacy bill last year, it wasn't just lawyers and lobbyists testifying; women of all ages and from many walks of life showed up to support it, too.

The measure, which bars selling personal health data without a consumer's consent and prohibits tracking who visits reproductive or sexual health facilities, was adopted with the support of nearly all the state's Democratic lawmakers and opposition from all the Republicans.

Connecticut and Nevada adopted similar laws last year. New York enacted one that bars using tracking around health care facilities.

California and Maryland took another approach, enacting laws that prevent computerized health networks from sharing information about sensitive health care with other providers without consent.

“We're really pushing forward with the free-flowing and seamless exchange of health care data with the intend of having information accessible so that providers can treat the whole person,” said Andrea Frey, a lawyer who represents health care providers and digital health systems across. “Conversely, these privacy concerns come into play.”

Illinois, which already had a law limiting how health tracking data — measuring heart rates, steps and others — can be shared, adopted a new one last year that took effect Jan. 1 and that bans providing government license plate reading data to law enforcement in states with abortion bans.

Bills addressing the issue in some form have been introduced in several states this year, including Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, South Carolina and Vermont.

In Virginia, legislation that would prohibit the issuance of search warrants, subpoenas or court orders for electronic or digital menstrual health data recently cleared both chambers of the Democratic-controlled General Assembly.

Democratic Sen. Barbara Favola said she saw the bill as a necessary precaution when Republican politicians, including Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, have sought restrictions on abortion.

“The next step to enforcing an abortion ban could be accessing menstrual health data, which is why I’m trying to protect that data,” Favola said in a committee hearing.

Opponents asked whether such data had ever been sought by law enforcement, and Favola responded that she wasn’t aware of a particular example.

“It’s just in search of a problem that does not exist,” said Republican Sen. Mark Peake.

Youngkin's administration made it clear he opposed similar legislation last year, but his press office didn't respond to a request for comment on where he stands on the current version.

Sean O'Brien, founder of the Yale Privacy Lab, says there is a problem with the way health information is being used, but he's not sure laws will be the answer because companies could choose to ignore the potential consequences and continue scooping up and selling sensitive information.

“The software supply chain is extremely polluted with location tracking of individuals,” he said.

___

Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Associated Press reporters Frank Bajak in Boston and Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this article.

Geoff Mulvihill, The Associated Press

Nigeria’s currency has fallen to a record low as inflation surges. How did things get so bad?

Fri, February 16, 2024 



ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerians are facing one of the West African nation’s worst economic crises in years triggered by surging inflation, the result of monetary policies that have pushed the currency to an all-time low against the dollar. The situation has provoked anger and protests across the country.

The latest government statistics released Thursday showed the inflation rate in January rose to 29.9%, its highest since 1996, mainly driven by food and non-alcoholic beverages. Nigeria's currency, the naira, further plummeted to 1,524 to $1 on Friday, reflecting a 230% loss of value in the last year.

“My family is now living one day at a time (and) trusting God,” said trader Idris Ahmed, whose sales at a clothing store in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja have declined from an average of $46 daily to $16.

The plummeting currency worsens an already bad situation, further eroding incomes and savings. It squeezes millions of Nigerians already struggling with hardship due to government reforms including the removal of gas subsidies that resulted in gas prices tripling.

A SNAPSHOT OF NIGERIA’S ECONOMY

With a population of more than 210 million people, Nigeria is not just Africa’s most populous country but also the continent’s largest economy. Its gross domestic product is driven mainly by services such as information technology and banking, followed by manufacturing and processing businesses and then agriculture.

The challenge is that the economy is far from sufficient for Nigeria’s booming population, relying heavily on imports to meet the daily needs of its citizens from cars to cutlery. So it is easily affected by external shocks such as the parallel foreign exchange market that determines the price of goods and services.

Nigeria's economy is heavily dependent on crude oil, its largest foreign exchange earner. When crude prices plunged in 2014, authorities used its scarce foreign reserves to try to stabilize the naira amid multiple exchange rates. The government also shut down the land borders to encourage local production and limited access to the dollar for importers of certain items.

The measures, however, further destabilized the naira by facilitating a booming parallel market for the dollar. Crude oil sales that boost foreign exchange earnings have also dropped because of chronic theft and pipeline vandalism.

MONETARY REFORMS POORLY IMPLEMENTED

Shortly after taking the reins of power in May last year, President Bola Tinubu took bold steps to fix the ailing economy and attract investors. He announced the end of costly decadeslong gas subsidies, which the government said were no longer sustainable. Meanwhile, the country's multiple exchange rates were unified to allow market forces to determine the rate of the local naira against the dollar, which in effect devalued the currency.

Analysts say there were no adequate measures to contain the shocks that were bound to come as a result of reforms including the provision of a subsidized transportation system and an immediate increase in wages.

So the more than 200% increase in gas prices caused by the end of the gas subsidy started to have a knock-on effect on everything else, especially because locals rely heavily on gas-powered generators to light their households and run their businesses.

WHY IS THE NAIRA PLUMMETING IN VALUE?

Under the previous leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria, policymakers tightly controlled the rate of the naira against the dollar, thereby forcing individuals and businesses in need of dollars to head to the black market, where the currency was trading at a much lower rate.

There was also a huge backlog of accumulated foreign exchange demand on the official market — estimated to be $7 billion — due in part to limited dollar flows as foreign investments into Nigeria and the country’s sale of crude oil have declined.

Authorities said a unified exchange rate would mean easier access to the dollar, thereby encouraging foreign investors and stabilizing the naira. But that has yet to happen because inflows have been poor. Instead, the naira has further weakened as it continues to depreciate against the dollar.

WHAT ARE AUTHORITIES DOING?

CBN Gov. Olayemi Cardoso has said the bank has cleared $2.5 billion of the foreign exchange backlog out of the $7 billion that had been outstanding. The bank, however, found that $2.4 billion of that backlog were false claims that it would not clear, Cardoso said, leaving a balance of about $2.2 billion, which he said will be cleared “soon.”

Tinubu, meanwhile, has directed the release of food items such as cereals from government reserves among other palliatives to help cushion the effect of the hardship. The government has also said it plans to set up a commodity board to help regulate the soaring prices of goods and services.

On Thursday, the Nigerian leader met with state governors to deliberate on the economic crisis, part of which he blamed on the large-scale hoarding of food in some warehouses.

"We must ensure that speculators, hoarders and rent seekers are not allowed to sabotage our efforts in ensuring the wide availability of food to all Nigerians,” Tinubu said.

By Friday morning, local media were reporting that stores were being sealed for hoarding and charging unfair prices.

HOW ARE NIGERIANS COPING WITH TOUGH TIMES?

The situation is at its worst in conflict zones in northern Nigeria, where farming communities are no longer able to cultivate what they eat as they are forced to flee violence. Pockets of protests have broken out in past weeks but security forces have been quick to impede them, even making arrests in some cases.

In the economic hub of Lagos and other major cities, there are fewer cars and more legs on the roads as commuters are forced to trek to work. The prices of everything from food to household items increase daily.

“Even to eat now is a problem,” said Ahmed in Abuja. “But what can we do?”

Chinedu Asadu, The Associated Press

Nevada issues first license to a lounge in Las Vegas where cannabis can be consumed recreationally

Fri, February 16, 2024 


LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nevada regulators have issued the first license to operate a lounge where cannabis can be consumed recreationally, marking the first of what are expected to be dozens of such operations.

The state Cannabis Compliance Board announced Thursday that the license was awarded to a business in Las Vegas following an inspection by agents earlier this week. The lounge — dubbed Smoke and Mirrors — is owned by Thrive Cannabis Marketplace, the state’s largest independently owned cannabis business.

There are currently 19 lounges that have been approved by the compliance board for a conditional license. A final inspection will be required before a license is granted and they can open to the public.

It’s been years since Nevada voters first approved legalizing recreational cannabis. In 2021, lawmakers cleared the way for business owners to apply for licenses to establish on-site consumption lounges.

The state’s cannabis industry had promoted the lounges for their economic development potential and pitched them as a draw for tourists who visit Las Vegas annually but can’t legally use the products in places like hotels.

Thrive Cannabis Marketplace officials said their consumption lounge will open to the public in late February. It will have a range of products for customers — including cannabis-infused cocktails — and will serve as a hub for artists and musicians to showcase their work.

“It’s more than a venue, it’s a platform for the cannabis industry as a whole, where tourists and locals alike can be a part of a new chapter in the evolution of hospitality,” said Chris LaPorte, managing partner of RESET, a Las Vegas-based cannabis hospitality company.

The Associated Press