For small island nations, marine plastic cleanup is prohibitively expensive


The cost of cleaning up plastic along the coasts of island nations like the Seychelles requires bigger, richer nations -- some of which are responsible for the pollution -- to contribute to the cause, researchers say. Photo by SCAPIN/Pixabay

Sept. 10 (UPI) -- Island nations like the Seychelles are uniquely vulnerable to the barrage of plastic pollution pouring into the world's oceans, and research published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports suggests the cleanup bill is prohibitively expensive.

"The Indian Ocean is fringed with countries that have poor waste management infrastructure," lead researcher April Burt told UPI in an email.

"Other studies have shown that most of the marine plastic litter in the oceans is coming from ten rivers, the majority of which are in Asia," said Burt, an ecologist and graduate student at Oxford University in Britain.

Cleanup efforts on the Seychelles revealed an abundance of plastic shoes, mostly flip flops, as well as netting and line from commercial fishing operations.

To estimate the financial burden the barrage of plastic places on small island nations like the Seychelles, Burt and her research partners first calculated the effort to clean a small portion of the coast.

Scientists determined a 2019 cleanup, comprising 980 hours of work by 12 volunteers over the course of five weeks, cost a total of $224,538.

Next, researchers set out to estimate the total amount of plastic found strewn across Aldabra, the Seychelles' outer islands and the world's second-largest coral atoll.

RELATED Plastic debris leaches toxins into the stomachs of sea birds

"We conducted a series of transects at 20 locations along the coast in each of the main coastal habitat types: beach, vegetation and limestone karst," Burt said. "For each transect we separated and weighed the litter found into six main categories and used this to extrapolate up to estimate total litter accumulated."

The six litter categories included: consumer plastic items, such as toothbrushes and cigarette lighters; plastic packaging material like plastic bottles; fishing-related items, such as buoys and netting; plastic footwear; small, unidentified plastic fragments; and other materials like glass.

"Our research shows that the main source was from the industrial tuna fisheries -- this industry exports tuna worldwide," Burt said.

RELATED Autopsies show microplastics in all major human organs

When researchers added it all up, they determined it would require 18,000 hours of labor and cost $4.68 million to clean up all the plastic pollution found along the Aldabra coast.

Because much of the plastic pollution that makes its way to the shores of smaller island nations is coming from bigger, richer nations and extractive industries, the researchers suggest that wealthier countries help pay for the cleanup.

"We hope our findings will be used by local and regional governments to call out the need for international funding for dealing with the issue of marine plastic litter," Burt said.

Burt also said more must be done to ensure the commercial fishing industry can't continue to dump waste with impunity.

"The huge costs involved in removal are way beyond the financial capacity of local organizations and governments who are responsible for these island ecosystems," she said.

upi.com/7037059

States sue EPA over pollution in Chesapeake Bay



The lawsuit said the federal government failed to ensure Pennsylvania and New York implemented plans that lived up to an agreement to protect the Chesapeake Bay from pollution. File Photo by Bill Portlock/Chesapeake Bay Foundation


Sept. 10 (UPI) -- The attorneys general of three mid-Atlantic states and Washington, D.C., on Thursday sued the Environmental Protection Agency, accusing it of failing to protect the Chesapeake Bay.

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said the EPA has failed to meet its obligations under an agreement to reduce pollution and restore local waters. Delaware and Virginia were also listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

"The Chesapeake Bay is a national treasure," Frosh said. "Restoring the health of the bay will take a coordinated, comprehensive effort by each of the watershed states. EPA has walked away from its responsibility to regulate and manage the efforts of the bay states. Today, we are asking the court to force EPA to do its job."

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a non-profit group devoted to protecting the region, concurrently filed its own lawsuit against the EPA in the same court. Anne Arundel County, Md., and the Maryland Watermen's Association were also listed as plaintiffs.

RELATED For small island nations, marine plastic cleanup is prohibitively expensive

The states' lawsuit accuses the EPA of failing to ensure Pennsylvania and New York implement plans to reduce pollutants that affect the bay's watershed. The attorneys general said the plans didn't meet goals outlined by the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement, which was signed in 2014.

Neither plans cut down on the amount of nitrogen or phosphorus that enters the bay.

"This is the moment in time for the Chesapeake Bay. If EPA fails to hold Pennsylvania, and to a lesser extent New York, accountable the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint will be yet another in a series of failures for Bay restoration," said CBF President William C. Baker. "It doesn't have to be this way. Under the Blueprint we have seen progress. But unless pressure is brought to bear on Pennsylvania, we will never get to the finish line.

In response to the lawsuit, the EPA touted progress it said has been made in the watershed, including expanding underwater bay grass by 28,000 acres from 1984 to 2019.

"We have taken and will continue to take appropriate actions under our Clean Water Act authorities to improve Chesapeake Bay water quality," the agency said in a statement.

"In the past year alone, EPA and its federal partners have provided nearly a half billion dollars to support Bay watershed restoration activities, and EPA has delivered thousands of hours of technical assistance to the states, as well as comprehensive reviews of state implementation plans and progress forecasts to identify strengths and weaknesses. EPA's focus is on continuing to make unprecedented progress to restore the Chesapeake Bay and local waters."

 

It's unbearable': Lesbos refugees sleep on streets after devastating fire

Residents of Moria camp struggle to salvage what they can as protesters try to block efforts to rebuild

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Fri 11 Sep 2020 06.00 BSTLast modified on Fri 11 Sep 2020 07.57 BST

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 Refugees sleep on the road, close to Mytilene, after fire destroyed Moria refugee camp. Photograph: Miloš Bičanski/Getty Images

Plumes of smoke rise above the ashes and twisted metal. In many parts this is all that remains of Europe’s largest refugee camp.

Just a few days ago, the Moria camp in Lesbos was home to thousands of children and their families. Now all that is left are the smoldering ruins and jagged outlines of scorched tents.

Helicopters and small planes buzz over the devastation, trying to tackle the remaining blazes. The camp is still a tinderbox of dry wood, tents and living containers. A young man asks police if he can access a part of the camp to get his things but a small fire has just started and is growing. The police shake their heads and tell him to come back tomorrow to check if anything still remains.

'Catastrophe' warning as thousands left homeless by Lesbos refugee camp fire

 

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In other parts of the camp, young men emerge through the smoke, dragging what belongings they can salvage.

Somaya, 27, a graduate in political science from Afghanistan, sits quietly holding a bundle of her remaining possessions. Until Tuesday, she was living in a part of the camp assigned to single women. “Everything happened very quickly,” she said. “Police helped us to leave and a few minutes [later] all of our section burned in the fire.”

Since Tuesday evening, she has been sleeping on the street along with thousands of other people. “We have had a very bad night last night,” she said, “we haven’t anything.”

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0:55

 Thousands left without shelter as fire rips through Lesbos refugee camp – video

Ali, who is aged 19 and lived alone in Moria, says that people are struggling to cope. On Wednesday night, people huddled in the doorways of supermarkets and outside the police station as the cold set in. “We don’t have any other place to go,” he says.

Although food has been delivered to some of those who fled the camp, Ali hasn’t eaten for nearly two days. “Everything is very bad and [getting] worse,” he says. “We don’t know what will happen to us.”

Faris Al-Jawad of aid charity Médecins Sans Frontières said that their teams had been treating babies with smoke inhalation as well as children who had been on the streets for over two days. The response from the authorities, was “lacklustre”, he said. People needed to be immediately evacuated to the mainland and other European countries, he added.

Across the island the fire has caused anger, indignation and despair, and divided the community on what should come next. Some local people express solidarity with the refugees but many hope that the camp will not be rebuilt. On Thursday, two trucks blocked the road to stop construction vehicles reaching the burnt-out ruins of the camp.

The mayor of Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos, Stratis Kytelis, is among those opposing a new camp and told local media that he will not accept any reopening of the Moria facility.

Three miles down the road, other refugees at the smaller Kara Tepe camp have been sharing their food and consoling those who fled the flames at Moria, yet can do little to provide shelter. There appear to be no official plans to help relocate those who have lost their homes and shelters, and no sign of the ferries reportedly on their way to provide somewhere for people to sleep.

For now, the thousands who fled Moria have nowhere to go. The family of Mohammed, 35, who worked as a government employee in Afghanistan, are some of those facing another night on the street. “Please,” he says simply, “this situation is unbearable.” 

More cats might be COVID-19 positive than first believed, study suggests

Study shows cats are fighting off the virus with naturally developed antibodies; however, they could be at risk of reinfection

A newly published study looking at cats in Wuhan, where the first known outbreak of COVID-19 began, shows more cats might be contracting the disease than first believed.

Date:September 9, 2020

Source:Taylor & Francis Group

A newly published study looking at cats in Wuhan, where the first known outbreak of COVID-19 began, shows more cats might be contracting the disease than first believed.

Researchers from Huazhong Agricultural University, in the Chinese city, took blood samples from 102 cats between January and March 2020, following the first outbreak. Nasal and anal swabs were also collected.

Reporting their findings in peer-reviewed journal Emerging Microbes & Infections, they show COVID-19 antibodies present in 15 of the blood samples taken from the cats. Of these, 11 cats had neutralizing antibodies -- proteins that bind so successfully to a virus they block the infection.

None of the cats actually tested positive for COVID-19 or displayed obvious symptoms and, according to the results of return visits, none of these felines have died.

The sample of cats looked at included 46 abandoned from 3 animal shelters, 41 from 5 pet hospitals, and 15 cats were from COVID-19 patient families.

The three cats with the highest levels of antibodies were all owned by patients who had been diagnosed with COVID-19, whilst there were also signs of cats being infected with the virus by other cats from those that were abandoned (4) or based in the pet hospitals (4).

Commenting on the findings, lead author Meilin Jin states that whilst there is currently no evidence for cat-to-human transmission, precautions should be considered.

"Although the infection in stray cats could not be fully understood, it is reasonable to speculate that these infections are probably due to the contact with SARS-CoV-2 polluted environment, or COVID-19 patients who fed the cats.

"Therefore measures should be considered to maintain a suitable distance between COVID-19 patients and companion animals such as cats and dogs, and hygiene and quarantine measures should also be established for those high-risk animals."

The team assessed the type of antibody reactions in thorough detail and were able to describe the dynamic characteristics of the antibodies found.

Amongst many discoveries within the antibodies, they saw that the type of reaction produced by the cats resembles those observed in seasonal coronavirus infections, implying that the cats who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection "remain at risk of re-infection."

The authors state that this is a similar transient antibody response to also be observed in humans, and that their study should be used going forwards as a "reference for the clinical treatment and prevention of COVID-19."

"We suggest that cats have a great potential as an animal model for assessing the characteristic of antibody against SARS-CoV-2 in humans," they add.

From here, the team state that more research is needed to establish the route of Covid-19 from humans to cats.

"Retrospective investigation confirmed that all of antibody positive samples were taken after the outbreak, suggesting that the infection of cats could be due to the virus transmission from humans to cats. Certainly, it is still needed to be verified via investigating the SARS-CoV-2 infections before this outbreak in a wide range of sampling," Jin states.
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Story Source:

Materials provided by Taylor & Francis Group. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:
Qiang Zhang, Huajun Zhang, Jindong Gao, Kun Huang, Yong Yang, Xianfeng Hui, Xinglin He, Chengfei Li, Wenxiao Gong, Yufei Zhang, Ya Zhao, Cheng Peng, Xiaoxiao Gao, Huanchun Chen, Zhong Zou, Zheng-Li Shi, Meilin Jin. A serological survey of SARS-CoV-2 in cat in Wuhan. Emerging Microbes & Infections, 2020; 1 DOI: 10.1080/22221751.2020.1817796

Experiments reveal why human-like robots elicit uncanny feelings

New insights into the uncanny valley phenomenon

Experiments reveal a dynamic process that leads to the uncanny valley, with implications for both the design of robots and for understanding how we perceive one another as humans.

Date:September 10, 2020

Source:Emory Health Sciences

Androids, or robots with humanlike features, are often more appealing to people than those that resemble machines -- but only up to a certain point. Many people experience an uneasy feeling in response to robots that are nearly lifelike, and yet somehow not quite "right." The feeling of affinity can plunge into one of repulsion as a robot's human likeness increases, a zone known as "the uncanny valley."

The journal Perception published new insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying this phenomenon made by psychologists at Emory University.

Since the uncanny valley was first described, a common hypothesis developed to explain it. Known as the mind-perception theory, it proposes that when people see a robot with human-like features, they automatically add a mind to it. A growing sense that a machine appears to have a mind leads to the creepy feeling, according to this theory.

"We found that the opposite is true," says Wang Shensheng, first author of the new study, who did the work as a graduate student at Emory and recently received his PhD in psychology. "It's not the first step of attributing a mind to an android but the next step of 'dehumanizing' it by subtracting the idea of it having a mind that leads to the uncanny valley. Instead of just a one-shot process, it's a dynamic one."

The findings have implications for both the design of robots and for understanding how we perceive one another as humans.

"Robots are increasingly entering the social domain for everything from education to healthcare," Wang says. "How we perceive them and relate to them is important both from the standpoint of engineers and psychologists."

"At the core of this research is the question of what we perceive when we look at a face," adds Philippe Rochat, Emory professor of psychology and senior author of the study. "It's probably one of the most important questions in psychology. The ability to perceive the minds of others is the foundation of human relationships. "

The research may help in unraveling the mechanisms involved in mind-blindness -- the inability to distinguish between humans and machines -- such as in cases of extreme autism or some psychotic disorders, Rochat says.

Co-authors of the study include Yuk Fai Cheong and Daniel Dilks, both associate professors of psychology at Emory.

Anthropomorphizing, or projecting human qualities onto objects, is common. "We often see faces in a cloud for instance," Wang says. "We also sometimes anthropomorphize machines that we're trying to understand, like our cars or a computer."

Naming one's car or imagining that a cloud is an animated being, however, is not normally associated with an uncanny feeling, Wang notes. That led him to hypothesize that something other than just anthropomorphizing may occur when viewing an android.

To tease apart the potential roles of mind-perception and dehumanization in the uncanny valley phenomenon the researchers conducted experiments focused on the temporal dynamics of the process. Participants were shown three types of images -- human faces, mechanical-looking robot faces and android faces that closely resembled humans -- and asked to rate each for perceived animacy or "aliveness." The exposure times of the images were systematically manipulated, within milliseconds, as the participants rated their animacy.

The results showed that perceived animacy decreased significantly as a function of exposure time for android faces but not for mechanical-looking robot or human faces. And in android faces, the perceived animacy drops at between 100 and 500 milliseconds of viewing time. That timing is consistent with previous research showing that people begin to distinguish between human and artificial faces around 400 milliseconds after stimulus onset.

A second set of experiments manipulated both the exposure time and the amount of detail in the images, ranging from a minimal sketch of the features to a fully blurred image. The results showed that removing details from the images of the android faces decreased the perceived animacy along with the perceived uncanniness.

"The whole process is complicated but it happens within the blink of an eye," Wang says. "Our results suggest that at first sight we anthropomorphize an android, but within milliseconds we detect deviations and dehumanize it. And that drop in perceived animacy likely contributes to the uncanny feeling."

Story Source:

Materials provided by Emory Health Sciences. Original written by Carol Clark. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:
Shensheng Wang, Yuk F. Cheong, Daniel D. Dilks, Philippe Rochat. The Uncanny Valley Phenomenon and the Temporal Dynamics of Face Animacy Perception. Perception, 2020; 030100662095261 DOI: 10.1177/0301006620952611

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Unconscious learning underlies belief in God, study suggests

Individuals who can unconsciously predict complex patterns, an ability called implicit pattern learning, are likely to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who creates patterns of events in the universe, according to neuroscientists.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN BY ALLA 

Date:September 9, 2020

Source:Georgetown University Medical Center

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Hands raised to sunset, prayer concept (stock image).
Credit: © ipopba / stock.adobe.com

Individuals who can unconsciously predict complex patterns, an ability called implicit pattern learning, are likely to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who creates patterns of events in the universe, according to neuroscientists at Georgetown University.

Their research, reported in the journal Nature Communications, is the first to use implicit pattern learning to investigate religious belief. The study spanned two very different cultural and religious groups, one in the U.S. and one in Afghanistan.

The goal was to test whether implicit pattern learning is a basis of belief and, if so, whether that connection holds across different faiths and cultures. The researchers indeed found that implicit pattern learning appears to offer a key to understanding a variety of religions.

"Belief in a god or gods who intervene in the world to create order is a core element of global religions," says the study's senior investigator, Adam Green, an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience at Georgetown, and director of the Georgetown Laboratory for Relational Cognition.

"This is not a study about whether God exists, this is a study about why and how brains come to believe in gods. Our hypothesis is that people whose brains are good at subconsciously discerning patterns in their environment may ascribe those patterns to the hand of a higher power," he adds.

"A really interesting observation was what happened between childhood and adulthood," explains Green. The data suggest that if children are unconsciously picking up on patterns in the environment, their belief is more likely to increase as they grow up, even if they are in a nonreligious household. Likewise, if they are not unconsciously picking up on patterns around them, their belief is more likely to decrease as they grow up, even in a religious household.

The study used a well-established cognitive test to measure implicit pattern learning. Participants watched as a sequence of dots appeared and disappeared on a computer screen. They pressed a button for each dot. The dots moved quickly, but some participants -- the ones with the strongest implicit learning ability -- began to subconsciously learn patterns hidden in the sequence, and even press the correct button for the next dot before that dot actually appeared. However, even the best implicit learners did not know that the dots formed patterns, showing that the learning was happening at an unconscious level.

The U.S. section of the study enrolled a predominantly Christian group of 199 participants from Washington, D.C. The Afghanistan section of the study enrolled a group of 149 Muslim participants in Kabul. The study's lead author was Adam Weinberger, a postdoctoral researcher in Green's lab at Georgetown and at the University of Pennsylvania. Co-authors Zachery Warren and Fathali Moghaddam led a team of local Afghan researchers who collected data in Kabul.

"The most interesting aspect of this study, for me, and also for the Afghan research team, was seeing patterns in cognitive processes and beliefs replicated across these two cultures," says Warren. "Afghans and Americans may be more alike than different, at least in certain cognitive processes involved in religious belief and making meaning of the world around us. Irrespective of one's faith, the findings suggest exciting insights into the nature of belief."

"A brain that is more predisposed to implicit pattern learning may be more inclined to believe in a god no matter where in the world that brain happens to find itself, or in which religious context," Green adds, though he cautions that further research is necessary.

"Optimistically," Green concludes, "this evidence might provide some neuro-cognitive common ground at a basic human level between believers of disparate faiths."

A scholar of the Middle East, Moghaddam is a professor in Georgetown's Department of Psychology. Warren, who received his doctorate in Psychology at Georgetown and also holds a masters of divinity, directs the Asia Foundation's Survey of Afghan People. Additional authors include Natalie Gallagher and Gwendolyn English.



Story Source:

Materials provided by Georgetown University Medical Center. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:
Adam B. Weinberger, Natalie M. Gallagher, Zachary J. Warren, Gwendolyn A. English, Fathali M. Moghaddam, Adam E. Green. Implicit pattern learning predicts individual differences in belief in God in the United States and Afghanistan. Nature Communications, 2020; 11: 4503 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18362-3

Humans' food consumption is wiping out nature at an unprecedented rate, WWF report says

How we produce and consume food is wiping out nature at an unprecedented rate, the WWF conservation group says.

Reuters 

Some populations of African elephants have declined by 86% since 1976

Katie Spencer, news correspondent Published 9th Sep 2020
In its Living Planet report, the charity finds population sizes of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have fallen by more than two-thirds (68%) globally in the last 50 years.
WWF's UK chief executive Tanya Steele said: "We are wrecking our planet and with it putting our own health and the health of the environment at risk."
The report calls for "urgent and ambitious global action" in both conservation and the food and agriculture system.
"What we are doing is using our planet's resources faster than it can recover them," Ms Steele said.
"We can conserve what we have… but we do have to tackle the heart of the problem, which is that we are producing and consuming food in a way that is destroying global habitats…and we really have to try to turn that around."
Little has changed in the two years since the last Living Planet Report came out and the latest assessment of the state of the world's wildlife is bleak.
The report finds 75% of the planet's ice-free-land has now been significantly altered by human activity.
Among the most dramatic decline in wildlife is Tanzania's African elephant population, which has fallen by 86% since 1976, primarily due to poaching.
Costa Rica's leatherback turtles on Tortuguero beach saw an 84% decline in the estimated number of nests laid between 1995 and 2011.
In the UK, it is thought the effects of agricultural intensification was behind an 85% decline in the grey partridge between 1970 and 2004.
Latin America and the Caribbean have seen the largest drop anywhere in the world - a 94% decline in monitored wildlife populations.
Ms Steele said the global coronavirus pandemic has "undoubtedly shone a light on the fragility of our planet".
"It's also shone a light on how exotic diseases can be transmitted - ultimately it's about nature being out of balance with humans," she explained.
"When we see species dropping so dramatically over a time period of the last 50 years, we know that the ecosystem itself, which is our life support system, is starting to fail.
"It's what we rely on for fresh water and clean air and the food we produce, so we have to take these warnings and these statistics very seriously."

© Sky News | Wild animals in dramatic decline - and human eating habits are to blame


World's wildlife populations plunge 68% in 46 years

Rebecca Falconer

A giant panda cub at a conservation and research center in the Sichuan Province of China in 2019. Photo: An Yuan/China News Service/Visual China Group via Getty Images

Wildlife populations have plummeted 68% in less than half a century and the "catastrophic" decline shows no sign of slowing down, a major conservation report published Wednesday warns.

Driving the news: The World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) "Living Planet Report 2020" that monitored 4,392 species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians from 1970 to 2016 points to one underlying cause for the populations decline and deterioration of nature: humanity.

What they found: Deforestation undertaken to increase agricultural land space was the biggest contributor to the decline, according to the biennial, which was in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London.
Three quarters of all freshwater and a third of all land mass is dedicated to food production, the report notes.
Populations in Latin America and the Caribbean have seen the biggest fall, with an average decline of 94%. Global freshwater species have fallen 84%.
"Nowhere in the ocean is entirely unaffected by humans," notes the report, with overfishing and pollution exacerbated by climate change cited as major problems.

Of note: The findings concur with those of a 2019 United Nations report that warns 1 million animal and plant species are under threat from extinction — driven by changes in land and sea use; "direct exploitation of organisms," such as hunting, fishing and logging; climate change; pollution; and invasive species.

What they're saying: WWF-U.S. President and CEO Carter Roberts said in a statement, "As humanity’s footprint expands into once-wild places, we're devastating species populations. But we're also exacerbating climate change and increasing the risk of zoonotic diseases like COVID-19."

Between the lines: The spillover of pathogens from animals to humans — driven mainly by human behaviors like urbanization and the demand to eat meat — is increasing, Axios' Eileen Drage O'Reilly notes.
These Zoonotic diseases have "quadrupled in the last 50 years, mostly in tropical regions," a letter sent to Congress in March from more than 100 wildlife and environmental groups stated.

The bottom line: A study published in the journal Nature Thursday and co-authored by over 40 nonprofits and academics finds cutting food waste and opting for more nutritional diets would help prevent further losses to the ecosystem.
The WWF report also notes that the environmental crisis can be mitigated by such considerations and if world leaders take urgent action on consumption industries, including ending deforestation.

Read the full "Living Planet Report 2020," via DocumentCloud:

Nikola doubters should throw their skepticism 'out the window' after GM agreed to build the startup's Cybertruck rival, industry watchers say

GM SCREWS OSHAWA WORKERS PUTS THEM OUT OF WORK SO IT CAN INVEST IN HYDROGEN TRUCKS

Mark Matousek Sep 9, 2020

GM will produce Nikola's Badger pickup truck. Nikola

Nikola announced on Tuesday that General Motors will build its electric pickup truck and supply hydrogen fuel cells for its electric semi trucks.

The partnership gives Nikola a major credibility boost, Wedbush Securities analysts said in a research note.

"There have been many skeptics around Nikola and its founder Trevor Milton's ambitions over the coming years, which now get thrown out the window," the analysts said.

Nikola was at the forefront of the handful of electric-vehicle startups that have gone public this year before making their first deliveries. Though such a move creates upside for investors, it also carries uncertainty around whether those companies will be able to execute on their plans and find enough customers willing to take a chance on them.

Nikola's newly announced $2 billion partnership with General Motors eliminates much of that uncertainty, Wedbush Securities analysts Dan Ives, Strecker Backe, and Ahmad Khalil said in a research note published on Tuesday.

"This news is a huge shot in the arm for Nikola," the analysts said. "There have been many skeptics around Nikola and its founder Trevor Milton's ambitions over the coming years, which now get thrown out the window with stalwart GM making a major strategic bet on Nikola for the next decade."

Under the deal, GM will engineer and build Nikola's Badger electric pickup truck, supply future Nikola vehicles with its hydrogen fuel-cell system, and take an 11% stake (worth $2 billion) in the startup. Nikola, which designed the Badger, will handle sales and marketing. GM said it expects to net $4 billion from the deal, while Nikola estimated savings of over $5 billion.

Hydrogen-powered semi trucks are the core of Nikola's business, but founder and executive chairman Trevor Milton has said he envisions the Badger as a way to make the company more attractive to investors, since most won't drive a semi truck.

"The reason why people love Apple: Everyone touches their product. Why do they love Google? Everyone touches their product," Milton said during a July interview with the "This Week in Startups" podcast. While semi trucks will drive Nikola's profits, Milton said, "the pickup truck's for the consumer. And the consumer is the one who is part of the Robinhood portfolio, who's part of the family office or whatever. And that's where all the valuation of the company comes from."

Read more:
Nikola soars 35% after striking $2 billion manufacturing partnership with General Motors

Nikola and Fisker may have cut a year off the time Tesla and Uber spent going public by joining Wall Street's 'blank-check' IPO craze

Nikola's CEO reveals what Elon Musk rival Trevor Milton is really like as a boss

Tesla competitor Nikola quietly disclosed its only revenue source so far: building solar panels for its founder

A Facebook engineer just quit in protest, accusing the company of 'profiting off hate'
Aaron Holmes
Sep 8, 2020

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Erin Scott/Reuters

A Facebook software engineer quit the company on Tuesday and criticized its approach to handling misinformation, accusing the platform of "profiting off hate in the US and globally."

The engineer, Ashok Chandwaney, said Facebook should more strongly approach removing content that encourages violence, citing Facebook's decision not to take down a post from President Donald Trump that said "when the looting starts, the shooting starts," as well as its failure to remove an event that called for violence against protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Facebook, long seen as one of the most sought-after workplaces in Silicon Valley, has faced mounting pushback from employees in recent years over its moderation policies. 

Software engineers are among the highest-paid Facebook employees.

A Facebook software engineer resigned and publicly criticized the company on Tuesday, accusing it of "profiting off hate."

In a letter detailing their decision to quit, Ashok Chandwaney described some of Facebook's recent actions as breaking points that led them to quit. Chandwaney called out Facebook's failure to remove a militia group's event inciting violence against protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as well as its choice not to remove a post by President Donald Trump that said "when the looting starts, the shooting starts."

Several Facebook employees have left the company in recent months after voicing similar concerns — at least three left in one week after CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees the company would not remove Trump's post. Those grievances build on years of scandals at Facebook, including its role in enabling Russian election interference, Cambridge Analytica spying, and genocide in Myanmar.

Chandwaney, who is gender nonbinary, laid out their reasons for leaving the company in a public Facebook post on Tuesday. They also detailed their decision to quit in an interview with The Washington Post and published a copy of their resignation letter on Facebook's internal employee message board.


In a statement to Business Insider, Chandwaney said they quit because they felt their criticism of Facebook wasn't being heard.

"As far as I can tell, the company is approaching hate content and hate organizing as a PR issue rather than a substantive issue to take real action on," Chandwaney said. ""From where I was sitting, after years of frustration, I couldn't see a better path to push for that change than to speak out publicly."

A Facebook representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (The company typically doesn't comment on personnel matters.)

Facebook has taken steps in recent months to crack down on hate speech and content that glorifies violence — the company recently implemented a ban on militia groups and commissioned a civil-rights audit of its platform.

But in their resignation letter, Chandwaney said Facebook's recent moves appeared more motivated by public relations than a willingness to change. Chandwaney added that they had become disillusioned with Facebook's stated mission to "build social value."

"I've heard numerous, unsatisfying explanations for how the various things I've worked on here has been building social value," they wrote. "In all my roles across the company, at the end of the day, the decisions have actually come down to business value."

Software engineers are among the most sought-after and highest-paid Facebook employees, according to publicly available salary data.

Chandwaney wrote in their resignation letter that they were motivated in part by the work of Color of Change, an activist group that has pressured Facebook to take a harsher stance on content moderation and remove content like Trump's post.


Color of Change's president, Rashad Robinson, applauded Chandwaney's letter in a statement on Tuesday.

"Color Of Change is happy to support them," Robinson said, "but it's a shame Facebook employees feel the need to turn to civil rights organizations to protect communities of color, rather than their own employer."

NE

At least 37 million people have been displaced by America's 'war on terror' in less than 20 years

John Haltiwanger
Sep 8, 2020
Bush delivering a speech to crew aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, as the carrier steamed toward San Diego, California on May 1, 2003. Larry Downing/Reuters

At least 37 million people have been displaced by America's "global war on terror," according to a new report from Brown University's Cost of War project.

The number of displaced people could be as high as 59 million, the report states.

Displacement has caused "incalculable harm to individuals, families, towns, cities, regions, and entire countries physically, socially, emotionally, and economically," the report states.

The federal government's price tag for the war on terror is over $6.4 trillion, and it's killed over 800,000 people in direct war violence

At least 37 million people, and possibly up to 59 million, have been displaced by America's "global war on terror" since it was launched by former President George W. Bush's administration nearly 20 years ago, according to a new report from Brown University's Cost of War project.

The report says that it offers the first comprehensive picture on how many people have been displaced by the conflicts waged by the US as part of the so-called "war on terror."

"The US post-9/11 wars have forcibly displaced at least 37 million people in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria. This exceeds those displaced by every war since 1900, except World War II," the report states.

Millions of others have been displaced in smaller conflicts involving US forces in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia, according to the report.


To put this into perspective, 37 million is nearly equivalent to the population of California — the most populous state in the US.

A little over 25 million of those who've been displaced have returned home, the report added, going on to say that "return does not erase the trauma of displacement or mean that those displaced have returned to their original homes or to a secure life."

Displacement has caused "incalculable harm to individuals, families, towns, cities, regions, and entire countries physically, socially, emotionally, and economically," the report states, emphasizing that the total number of displaced people does not fully capture the impact of losing one's home and more.

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump makes an unannounced visit to U.S. troops at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan Reuters

The report was issued just days before the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, which fostered major changes across the globe and continue to have a reverberating impact on America's approach to foreign affairs. Overall, the war on terror is widely viewed as a massive failure that cost the US an exorbitant amount of money and resources, to say nothing of the loss of life.


According to the Cost of War project, the federal government's price tag for the war on terror is over $6.4 trillion, and it's killed over 800,000 people in direct war violence.

The US still has troops in Afghanistan, which it invaded in October 2001, and the Trump administration is engaged in ongoing, tenuous peace talks with the Taliban. Historians generally agree that the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 catalyzed the rise of ISIS, which fostered an entirely new conflict in Iraq and Syria, as well as terror attacks worldwide. Meanwhile, though Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, Al Qaeda has not been totally defeated.