Police say 100 arrested as clashes mark Chile coup anniversary

Issued on: 12/09/2020 - 20:50

A demonstrator is hit by a jet from a water cannon during a protest in homage to the victims of Chile's 1973 military coup, in Santiago, September 2020 Martin BERNETTI AFP

Santiago (AFP)

Chilean police said Saturday that more than 100 people were arrested after clashes marking the 47th anniversary of the coup d'etat that overthrew the leftist government of Salvador Allende.

Sixteen police officers and two civilians were wounded in the clashes that erupted after ceremonies commemorating Allende, who died in the coup that ushered in 17 years of military rule under General Augusto Pinochet.

Police general Ricardo Yanez said three police barracks had come under attack, his forces had been targeted by "several attacks with incendiary devices" and vehicles had been torched.

Most of the disturbances took place in the capital Santiago, after a march to the La Moneda presidential palace to pay tribute to Allende. The clashes continued through the night and into early morning.

The date is marked annually by violent incidents between protesters and police, with residents in some neighborhoods erecting barricades.

Yanez said the number of violent incidents had increased this year but that they were less intense than previously.

Interior Minister Victor Perez told a press conference that "it is clear that there are violent groups whose only capacity is to destroy" and that needed to be confronted and brought to justice.

Most the clashes occurred in Santiago, especially around the central Plaza Italia square which was the epicenter of months of social protests that erupted in October last year and left around 30 people dead and thousands wounded.

Allende committed suicide by shooting himself during the September 11, 1973 coup, having vowed not to be taken alive as Pinochet's troops stormed the presidential palace.

© 2020 AFP

 

Lebanese rally near presidential palace to demand justice over port blast

Issued on: 12/09/2020 - 20:24Modified: 12/09/2020 - 20:23An anti-government protest movement that erupted in Lebanon in October last year has been revived since the blast, which rekindled smouldering rage against official neglect and a political class accused of corruption ANWAR AMRO AFP

Beirut (AFP)

Hundreds of Lebanese marched Saturday on the presidential palace to denounce a lack of progress in a probe by authorities into a monster blast that ravaged swathes of the capital 40 days ago.

Some marchers carried black versions of the Lebanese flag in a sign of mourning for the more than 190 people who were killed in the August 4 explosion at the Beirut port, and others demanded the president resign.

Twenty-five suspects are in custody over the tragedy that occurred when hundreds of tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser that had been left unattended in a port warehouse exploded.


The blast, which wounded thousands and destroyed homes and businesses across large parts of Beirut, was one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever.

The government resigned in the wake of the disaster, but Lebanon has rejected an international investigation, saying it would carry out its own probe aided by foreign experts.

Saturday's march set off from the justice palace in Beirut to the hillside presidential palace, where there were also hundreds of supporters of President Michel Aoun and heavy army deployment.

Troops fired warning shots into the air as brawls between rival demonstrators broke out, AFP correspondents said.

"It is not possible that no one has been put on trial after an explosion like the one that happened on August 4," anti-government protester Layal Tohme said.

"The country is collapsing," she added.

Darine Hourani, a supporter of Aoun, said the president "cannot be held to account each time something wrong takes place" in the country.

"He is the president and we must respect him," Hourani added.

But Carla Moukahal, a critic of Aoun, said the president must step down.

"I came here to bring down this corrupt political system. We want to oust Michel Aoun. Enough is enough," said the 19-year-old.

The army said in a tweet that it had formed a cordon to separate the rival protests and that soldiers "fired into the air after some demonstrators pelted soldiers with stones and beat them with sticks".

A protest movement that erupted in October last year has been revived since the blast, which rekindled smouldering rage against official neglect and a political class accused of corruption.

The explosion, Lebanon's worst peace-time disaster, was followed by a fire on Thursday at the Beirut port, and came as Lebanese were already reeling from the country's worst economic crisis in decades.

Among those arrested by authorities as part of the investigation into the blast are top port and customs officials, as well as Syrian workers who allegedly carried out welding work at the port hours before the explosion.

No high-ranking political official has been arrested as part of the probe.

© 2020 AFP

The US is going backward in terms of social progress, a global survey shows

Inequality in the US is rising, a new report found. 

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

BUSINESS INSIDER 

When it comes to social progress, the US is slipping behind other developed countries.

 

The 2020 Social Progress Index, which measures maternal mortality rate, corruption, and education, found the US is declining both in absolute terms and relative to its highly industrialized peers in overall wellbeing and equality.

 

In addition Brazil and Hungary, the US is the only country that's declined since the index began nearly a decade ago.

 

Norway ranked first, Denmark second, and Finland came in third. Meanwhile, the US ranked 28th.

 

The Social Progress Index found that Americans have health statistics similar to citizens of Chile, Jordan, and Albania, while kids in the US get an education at a similar level to children in Uzbekistan and Mongolia, The New York Times points out.

 

In recent years, the average life expectancy of Americans has declined, in large part due to a dramatic spike in "deaths of despair" (suicides and drug overdoses).

 

American inequality has risen over the past few decades. While the upper class has seen regular wealth growth, the middle class is shrinking, Pew Research has found.

A government agency just warned this week's West Coast wildfires could spark a financial crisis. A top economist thinks the effects could linger for years.

Marguerite Ward
2 hours ago

Firefighters battle wildfires in Southern California on Saturday. JOSH EDELSON / Contributor/ Getty Images

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the government agency that regulates the US deriviatives markets, released a report this week that said increasing wildfires in the US could spark a financial crisis. 

Further, the CFTC said climate change 'poses a major risk to the stability of the US financial system and to its ability to sustain the American economy.' The ripple effect on home values, state tourism, and local government could be profound, per the report. 

Matthew Khan, distinguished economics and business professor at John Hopkins University, said the west could see a 'brain drain' if the perception emerges of a declining quality of life due to ever-increasing wildfires.

Khan also said the next generation is at risk of developmental problems due to air pollution, which would impact their productivity down the line. 

Workers are less productive when there's high air pollution, studies show. Rising air pollution that would impact millions could therefore impact GDP, Khan suggested.

More than 85 wildfires are ripping through California, Oregon and Washington state, and people's lives and homes aren't the only things at risk.

The historic 2020 wildfire season, which has already burned over 3 million acres, is far worse than last year's due to climate change, scientists have said. The trend has economists saying the economy for the region — and even the country — is in danger.

These climate risks could exacerbate some of the stresses brought on by the coronavirus pandemic, such as declining home values, state tourism, and local government budgets, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a government agency that regulates the US derivatives markets, stated in a recent report.

"Beyond their physical devastation and tragic loss of human life and livelihood, escalating weather events also pose significant challenges to our financial system and our ability to sustain long-term economic growth," Rostin Behnam, CFTC commissioner, said in a press release.

The West Coast — home to Silicon Valley and tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Apple — could take a dramatic hit over the next five to 10 years because of increasing wildfires, according to Matthew Khan, a Bloomberg distinguished professor of economics and business at Johns Hopkins University and a provost professor of Economics at the University of Southern California.

For one, Apple, Google, and Microsoft may not want to keep their headquarters there, if there's a perception that these wildfires are threatening their workers' quality of life.

"If there's the belief that California and the West will face a decline in quality of life because of ever-increasing wildfires, then this could actually lead to a brain drain if these companies move headquarters to higher quality of life places in the US," he told Business Insider.

This would hit the state's tax revenue stream hard, he said. And thousands of workers could potentially move with their companies, resulting in declining home values and consumer spending.

But on a more macro level, labor productivity across a major portion of the US could be at risk, which could impact GDP.

Workers are not as productive when there's high levels of air pollution, numerous studies show.

One 2019 study found that top chess players made significantly more mistakes when the indoor concentration of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) — air pollution — increased.

Another study (conducted earlier this year by Khan and his colleagues) found that high levels of air pollution decreased outdoor worker productivity. It also lowered the day-to-day sentiment of the overall population (including indoor workers). Research has found that happier workers are more productive.


"People are less productive when it's polluted outside," Khan said.

Increasing wildfires would also be detrimental to the next generation of America's workforce: Children, particularly low-income children who live in higher risk areas and whose families may not be able to afford expensive air purifiers.

"Epidemiology has shown us that prolonged exposure to air pollution is terrible for people's health and children's development. And so if it continues, and millions of children, millions of lower-income children are exposed to this pollution, it lowers their development, their work potential," he said.

Khan added, "That would have really bad consequences."


NOW WATCH: Meet the badass fire fighters who parachute directly into the flames

https://www.businessinsider.com/cftc-economist-warn-west-coast-wildfires-could-impact-us-economy-2020-9?jwsource=cl

Whole Foods workers say a new company policy is a 'slap in the face' and a 'disgusting abuse' of people who worked during the height of the pandemic

Hayley Peterson Sep 10, 2020

A Whole Foods Market worker moves grocery carts in Durham, N.C., 

Wednesday, April 15, 2020. AP Photo/Gerry Broome

Some Whole Foods workers are slamming the company after a recent change to the company's attendance policy.

The grocer uses a point system to track attendance. If an employee is late or misses a shift, they get up to one point. Multiple points result in disciplinary action. After six months, the points normally roll-off, giving the workers a fresh start.

Recently, though, the company extended the expiration date for points that were earned before the pandemic, according to interviews with four Whole Foods employees and internal documents.

As a result, points that Whole Foods workers accrued prior to March 3 have remained on their records longer than expected, forcing some employees to face unexpected punishment for late arrivals or absences, employees said.

"All of a sudden we are being ordered by our global HR to hand out corrective action that has elongated roll-off dates for infractions in the middle of a pandemic that is still raging," said one Whole Foods manager.

Whole Foods declined to comment on the reason behind the point extension.
"During the early days of COVID-19, we temporarily paused our Time & Attendance policy as a whole, including corrective action, in order to allow Team Members to have unlimited call outs from work, during the height of the pandemic," a company spokesperson said. "The pause was extended on two occasions and was reinstated on June 22nd, which was communicated in advance to all Team Members."

Some Whole Foods employees are furious over a change to the company's attendance policy that they say is making it harder for them to call off work despite the ongoing threat of the coronavirus.

The grocery store chain uses a point system to track attendance. If an employee is late or misses a shift, they get up to one point. Accumulated points result in disciplinary action. Normally, the points roll off after six months so that they have a clean slate.

However, the company recently added an additional 111 days to the expiration date for certain points, according to four employees of Whole Foods stores in four states, and internal company documents and emails. The extension applies to points earned prior to March 3.

As a result, attendance points that Whole Foods workers racked up prior to the pandemic have remained on their records longer than expected, forcing some employees to face unexpected punishment for late arrivals or absences, employees said.


"It's a slap in the face to everyone who showed up during the height of the pandemic," said an employee of a Philadelphia Whole Foods store, who spoke to Business Insider on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. "To say those hours we came in didn't count — it's completely cruel."

Amber Schottky, an employee of a Chicago-area Whole Foods, said going to work at the start of the pandemic was terrifying, and that she and her coworkers felt like their lives were at stake every day.

She said she felt reassured, however, when Whole Foods on March 3 relaxed its attendance policy and stopped tracking absences with points.

"If we felt overwhelmed or had symptoms or were around someone with symptoms, we felt like we could keep ourselves and our coworkers safe by staying home and not having to worry about our jobs," she told Business Insider.

Whole Foods started tracking attendance points again on June 22. Employees said they discovered over the next several weeks that the company had also added 111 days — which is the period of time that the attendance policy was relaxed — to the life of points accrued prior to March 3.

Schottky discovered the point extension when she arrived 15 minutes late to work on June 27, and later had to sign a "counseling statement" due to a point that remained on her record from mid-December.

"I looked at the [attendance] sheet and saw points that were supposed to drop off and hadn't," she said. "I had worked really hard the last couple months. ...It felt like whiplash."
Whole Foods employees can face termination for too many attendance points

Whole Foods' attendance policy states that accruing 3 points in a 6-month period results in a "counseling statement;" 5 points results in a "final warning;" and 6 points results in a firing, according to a copy of the policy viewed by Business Insider. Prior to the pandemic, points would expire after six months.


Under the recent policy change, any points that would have expired between March 3 and June 21 are given the life extension of an additional 111 days.

Whole Foods declined to comment on the reason behind the point extension. In a statement to Business Insider concerning this story, the company instead addressed the temporary pause of its attendance policy.

"During the early days of COVID-19, we temporarily paused our Time & Attendance policy as a whole, including corrective action, in order to allow Team Members to have unlimited call outs from work, during the height of the pandemic," the spokesperson said. "The pause was extended on two occasions and was reinstated on June 22nd, which was communicated in advance to all Team Members."

The spokesperson added that Whole Foods has repeatedly told employees to stay home if they are feeling unwell, and that workers may call out without corrective action if they are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 or foodborne illnesses.


Whole Foods workers are also eligible for up to two weeks of paid time off if they are diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed into quarantine by Whole Foods, the government, or a medical professional, the spokesperson said. High-risk employees are also eligible for an unpaid personal leave of absence.
'This is a disgusting abuse'

A Whole Foods manager who has been with the company for nearly a decade said he was infuriated by the point extension, however, and did not feel comfortable enforcing it.

"All of a sudden we are being ordered by our global HR to hand out corrective action that has elongated roll-off dates for infractions in the middle of a pandemic that is still raging," said the manager, who spoke to Business Insider on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. "I personally was forced to hand out corrective action documents to several of my team members knowing full well that the struggles they were dealing with during the 'pause' were by no means over and were starting in a very disadvantaged spot."

The manager and three other Whole Foods employees said the company did not widely announce the point extension. Instead, Whole Foods left it up to store managers to discuss the extension with employees, they said.

"To me this is a disgusting abuse of the Team Members who have had to struggle through a pandemic," the manager said. "I value honesty and ethics, this under-the-table change has no honesty or ethics and feels dirty to be a part of."

Experts: Revamped OxyContin hasn’t curbed abuse, overdoses

By MATTHEW PERRONEtoday

FILE - This Feb. 19, 2013 file photo shows OxyContin pills arranged for a photo at a pharmacy in Montpelier, Vt. On Friday, Sept. 11, 2020, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel said there’s no clear evidence that a reformulated version of the painkiller OxyContin designed to discourage abuse actually resulted in fewer overdoses or cases of addiction. (AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A panel of government health advisers said Friday there’s no clear evidence that a harder-to-crush version of the painkiller OxyContin designed to discourage abuse actually resulted in fewer overdoses or deaths.

The conclusion from the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel comes more than a decade after Purdue Pharma revamped its blockbuster opioid, which has long been blamed for sparking a surge in painkiller abuse beginning in the 1990s.

In a series of non-binding votes, the FDA experts said that the updated OxyContin appeared to cut down abuse via snorting and injecting, compared to the original drug. But panelists overwhelmingly ruled that data from Purdue and other researchers did not show that the reformulation curbed abuse overall or led to fewer overdoses.

Panelists said the shortcomings were due, in part, to the challenges of studying overdoses, which often involve multiple drugs.

“I think it’s very difficult to tease out cause of death and overdose,” said Dr. Lewis Nelson of Rutgers University. “Overall, I think the quality of evidence was fairly poor.”

The long-acting OxyContin tablets can still be misused by simply swallowing them, which remains the most frequent route among those with opioid addiction.

The FDA will consider the group’s opinions as it weighs whether to revisit OxyContin’s terms of approval. That could include scaling back the drug’s prescribing labeling, which currently states that it is “expected to” reduce abuse via injecting and snorting.

Purdue’s 2010 revamped OxyContin was the first of several opioids developed by drugmakers to help curb abuse. But whether the drugs met that goal remains unclear and the FDA is reviewing their use.

These so-called abuse-deterrent formulations account for just 2% of U.S. opioid prescriptions. The vast majority of opioids prescribed are generic versions of short-acting opioids like hydrocodone.

Purdue representatives said during the meeting that multiple studies showed the updated tablets are harder to crush and dissolve, making them harder to snort or inject. They said those changes represent a “meaningful incremental improvement,” over the original OxyContin launched in 1996.

Data submitted by Purdue showed both prescribing and illegal trafficking of OxyContin decreased after the company pulled and replaced the original version of the drug.

But panelists said it was impossible to decipher whether those positive trends were due to the reformulation or a host of other factors affecting opioid use, including government crackdowns on pill mills and an influx of illegal opioids like heroin and fentanyl.

Several studies suggest many people who abused OxyContin switched to generic pain pills or illicit opioids, but patterns of switching varied widely across the country and populations, further blurring the drug’s overall impact.

Purdue said in a statement following the meeting it would continue to work with the FDA as it reviewed the OxyContin studies. The company declared bankruptcy last year in an effort to settle thousands of lawsuits accusing it of over-promoting OxyContin and misleading the public about its risks.

U.S. drug overdose deaths hit a new high last year of 71,000, according to federal data, driven mainly by fentanyl and similar synthetic opioids which were involved in about half of all deaths. Deaths tied to prescription opioid overdoses have plateaued at around 15,000 annually. The slowdown follows years of prescribing restrictions and warnings aimed at physicians.

___

Follow Matthew Perrone on Twitter: @AP_FDAwriter

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

 

UN assembly approves pandemic resolution; US, Israel object

By EDITH M. LEDERERtoday

1 of 5

Members of the "Bora Testar" or Let's Test project, walk through the the Paraisopolis neighborhood of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Friday, Sept. 11, 2020. The project plans to test up to 600 people for COVID-19 in the low income neighborhood, and to expand to other vulnerable communities in the country, financed by crowdfunding and donations. (AP Photo/Carla Carniel)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a wide-ranging resolution on tackling the coronavirus pandemic Friday over objections from the United States and Israel, which protested a successful last-minute Cuban amendment that strongly urged countries to oppose any unilateral economic, financial or trade sanctions.

The 193-member world body adopted the resolution by a vote of 169-2, with Ukraine and Hungary abstaining. It was a strong show of unity by the U.N.’s most representative body, though many countries had hoped for adoption by consensus.

The resolution, which is not legally binding, is the third and most extensive adopted by the General Assembly. A resolution adopted April 2 recognized “the unprecedented effects” of the pandemic and called for “intensified international cooperation to contain, mitigate and defeat” the new coronavirus. A Mexico-sponsored resolution approved April 20 urged global action to rapidly scale up development, manufacturing and access to medicine, vaccines and medical equipment to confront the pandemic.

In Friday’s resolution, the General Assembly says the pandemic poses “one of the greatest global challenges in the history of the United Nations,” and calls for “intensified international cooperation and solidarity to contain, mitigate and overcome the pandemic and its consequences.”

The resolution urges U.N. member states “to enable all countries to have unhindered timely access to quality, safe, efficacious and affordable diagnosis, therapeutics, medicines and vaccines … as well as equipment for the COVID-19 response.”

And it recognizes “the role of extensive immunization against COVID-19 as a global public good for health in preventing, containing and stopping transmission in order to bring the pandemic to an end, once safe, quality, efficacious, effective, accessible and affordable vaccines are available.”

Afghan Ambassador Adela Raz, who coordinated the drafting of the resolution with Croatian envoy Ivan Simonovic, told the assembly the resolution is not only a response to the disease “but a tribute to the victims,” noting that more than 900,000 people worldwide have died and over 25 million have been infected.

“The world is experiencing the worst economic recession since World War II, and equality and poverty are increasing, and more people are experiencing hunger,” she said. “We are indeed facing the most significant global catastrophe since the founding of this important organization, the United Nations.”

Raz said adoption of the resolution shows the world’s nations are ready to respond, despite failing to reach consensus, and are committed to U.N. goals for 2030 including ending extreme poverty, preserving the environment and achieving gender equality “for building back better after the pandemic.”

Simonovic said the great majority of nations “have chosen the path of solidarity and multilateralism” and called the resolution “a powerful tool for mobilization of political will and financial resources.”

He said political and financial support are badly needed “to curb COVID-19, strengthen our stressed health systems and to save jobs and livelihoods.”

The resolution calls on all countries “and other relevant stakeholders to advance, with determination, bold and concerted actions to address the immediate social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, while striving to get back on track” to achieve the 2030 goals.

It calls on governments and international financial institutions “to provide more liquidity in the financial system, especially in all developing countries.” It supports recovery plans that “drive transformative change towards more inclusive and just societies including by empowering and engaging all women and girls.”

And it urges U.N. member nations “to adopt a climate- and environment-responsive approach to COVID-19 recovery efforts” including by aligning investments and domestic policies with the U.N. goals and the 2015 Paris agreement to combat climate change.

Cuba succeeded in changing a paragraph in the resolution that originally called for “the urgent removal of unjustified obstacles in order to ensure the universal, timely and equitable access to, and fair distribution of, all quality, safe, efficacious and affordable essential health technologies and products, including their components and precursors that are required in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

By a vote of 132-3, the assembly amended the resolution to urge all countries “to refrain from promulgating and applying any unilateral economic, financial or trade measures not in accordance with international law and the Charter of the United Nations that impedes the full achievement of economic and social development, particularly in developing countries.”

The United States was then overwhelmingly defeated in attempts to remove two paragraphs from the resolution, one referring to women’s rights to “sexual and reproductive health” and the other to “promoting global sustainable transport.”

In addition to arguing against the language on sanctions, the United States opposed all references to the World Health Organization, which the Trump administration stopped funding, accusing the U.N. agency of failing to do enough to stop the virus from spreading when it first surfaced in China.

It accused China of hiding the truth about the outbreak from the world in the early days which “imperiled all of us and caused needless additional suffering and death.”

Chinese diplomat Xing Jisheng responded, alluding to the recent revelation that President Donald Trump “recognized the danger of the virus at a very early stage, but deliberately played it down to avoid panic.” He asked: “Who is hiding the truth?”

Xing also asked why the U.S., with the most advanced medical system in the world, has the most COVID-19 cases. “If the United States is serious about fighting the pandemic, it should focus on protecting lives and health of its people, instead of being busy with blame-shifting,” he said.

Trump’s talk of secret new weapon fits a pattern of puzzles

By ROBERT BURNSyesterday

1 of 2

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at MBS International Airport, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020, in Freeland, Mich. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is expanding his arsenal of spectacular, but hard to explain, claims about U.S. military might.

First, there were invisible airplanes. Then, a “super duper” missile.

And now, a secret nuclear weapon.

“I have built a nuclear, a weapon, I have built a weapon system that nobody’s ever had in this country before,” Trump said in an interview with journalist Bob Woodward for his book published this week.

“We have stuff that you haven’t even seen or heard about. We have stuff that Putin and Xi have never heard about before,” Trump said, referring to Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China. “There’s nobody. What we have is incredible.”

Weapons experts are puzzling over Trump’s words. Some think he may have been talking about a nuclear warhead that was modified to reduce its explosive power. Known as the W76-2, this weapon certainly is unknown to the general public — not because of secrecy or mystery but because of its obscurity.

Asked by a reporter to clarify his comment, Trump on Thursday said he’d rather not.

“There are systems that nobody knows about, including you, and we have some systems that nobody knows about. And, frankly, I think I’m better off keeping it that way,” he said.

James Acton, a nuclear expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in an interview Friday that Trump may have been referring to the W76-2 warhead. Although its existence was not a secret, the timing of its first deployment was. The warhead is on the business end of a Trident II D-5 missile carried aboard Navy ballistic missile submarines.

“The timing matches up,” Acton said.

The Woodward interview was Dec. 5, around the time of the first W76-2 deployment, which was not announced publicly until Feb. 4. The weapon itself is not revolutionary. It’s not even the only low-yield warhead in the U.S. arsenal. It is, however, the first major addition to the strategic nuclear force in recent decades and is a departure from the Obama administration’s policy of lessening dependence on nuclear weapons in pursuit of a nuclear-free world. Joe Biden, Trump’s rival for the White House, has said the new weapon is overkill, suggesting he might shelve it if he wins in November.

Acton says Trump may well have been making a garbled reference to some other weapon.

“It’s clear that the president likes boasting about military capabilities and doesn’t always have the tightest grasp on the details,” he said.

It cannot be ruled out that the U.S. is developing a new nuclear weapon in complete secrecy. This seems unlikely, however, for two reasons — the cost would be too much for the classified, nonpublic portion of the budget, and too many people would be involved in the project for it to stay secret for long.

It’s also possible that Trump had a non-nuclear weapon in mind when he spoke, although he used the word “nuclear.”

The president has previously made extravagant claims about U.S. weapons, sometimes straying beyond reality or exaggerating their importance. He has asserted, for example, that the F-35 fighter jet, built with low-observable technologies generally referred to as stealth, is all but invisible.

“You can’t see it,” Trump said in October 2017. “You literally can’t see it. It’s hard to fight a plane you can’t see.”

Just last month he said of the F-35: “Stealth. Total stealth. You can’t see it.”

The F-35, like other stealth aircraft such as the B-2 bomber and the F-22 fighter, are designed to be harder to detect on radar than conventional planes. But they are not invisible, nor does the military claim they are.

Trump occasionally mentions his interest in hypersonic weapons, sometimes without using the term. Details of these weapons’ planned capabilities are mostly classified. In February, Trump said: “We have the super-fast missiles — tremendous number of the super-fast. We call them ‘super-fast,’ where they’re four, five, six and even seven times faster than an ordinary missile. We need that because, again, Russia has some.”

And in May, he said: “We have no choice, we have to do it, with the adversaries we have out there,” mentioning China and Russia. He added, “I call it the super-duper missile.” He said he “heard” it travels 17 times faster than any other U.S. missile.

A hypersonic weapon is one that flies at speeds in excess of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. Most American missiles, such as those launched from aircraft to hit other aircraft or ground targets, travel between Mach 1 and Mach 5, although the Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile, which has operated for decades, can reach hypersonic speeds.

 

Drone maker hurt by US-China rift, opening door to US rivals

By MATT O'BRIENyesterday

1 of 8

This June 22, 2018, photo shows a Skydio R1 drone in Redwood City, Calif. Skateboarders, surfers and YouTube stars used to be the target customers for California drone startup Skydio, which builds sophisticated self-flying machines that can follow people around and capture their best moves on video. Now it's police officers and soldiers getting equipped with the pricey drones. U.S. political and security concerns about the world's dominant consumer drone-maker, China-based DJI, have opened the door for Skydio and other companies to pitch their drones for government and business customers. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Skateboarders, surfers and mountain bikers used to be the target customers for California startup Skydio, a maker of high-end drones that can home in on people and capture their movements on video all by themselves. Now police officers, firefighters and soldiers are interested in the self-flying machines.

That’s partly because U.S. national security concerns about the world’s dominant consumer drone-maker, China-based DJI, have upended the market for small drones and opened the door to lesser-known companies pitching applications for government agencies and big business

Companies like Skydio are also tapping into a technological revolution that could do away with the need for human pilots to put drones through each one of their paces. Instead, advanced artificial intelligence is starting to power drones that can follow humans and other targets on their own. Robotics experts say Skydio’s cutting-edge AI makes its drones appealing as reconnaissance tools, as does its made-in-America vibe.

“There’s a lot of anti-China rhetoric,” said Vijay Kumar, a drone entrepreneur and the dean of engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

Years before President Donald Trump cited spying concerns in pushing to ban popular Chinese-owned apps TikTok and WeChat and ratcheting up sanctions against Chinese telecom giant Huawei, Shenzhen-based DJI was already under close watch as a potential national security threat.

A document from U.S. customs authorities alleged in 2017 that DJI drones likely provided China with access to U.S. critical infrastructure and law enforcement data. DJI denied the allegation. As political concerns grew, its rivals have increasingly seized on the opportunity to pile on the anti-DJI sentiment.

“Do you trust DJI drones?” said promotional material teasing the launch of a new product this summer from French drone-maker Parrot. “Don’t trust Chinese drones,” said another Parrot promotion.

“They’re the dominant incumbent and we’re the scrappy American underdog,” Skydio CEO Adam Bry said in an interview. “There’s a real opportunity for U.S. companies to lead the way.”

The Defense Department in August gave a seal of approval to Skydio, Parrot and three other firms to supply U.S.-manufactured drones to agencies across the federal government. “We need an alternative to Chinese-made small drones,” Mike Brown, director of the Defense Innovation Unit, said in a statement

DJI has referred to U.S. actions against it as “part of a politically-motivated agenda” to reduce market competition and support American technology “regardless of its merits.”

The attacks on DJI’s reputation and bans on its use in the military and some other federal agencies have coincided with a lull in demand for pricey personal drones as their novelty wore off. Camera-maker GoPro abandoned its drone business in 2018 and other companies have struggled to build affordable devices.

“Once you get one, it’s not real clear what you do with it as a consumer,” said tech industry analyst William Stofega of IDC.

Stofega said that’s one reason why drone companies are tailoring their products for government or commercial tasks such as inspecting pipelines, monitoring crops or police surveillance. Skydio last year hired a retired Southern California police captain to pitch its drones to law enforcement.

DJI has made a push to counter the security concerns, most recently with a Wednesday announcement that it will enable an internet “kill switch” on more drones so that commercial and government users can halt data transmission on sensitive flying missions. Its products, while off-limits to some federal agencies, are still favored by many local and regional governments in the U.S.

“If an enemy of the United States wants to see me looking for someone on a mountain, so be it,” said Kyle Nordfors, drone team coordinator for the mostly volunteer search-and-rescue crew of Weber County, Utah. “They can see how we take care of our own.”

Nordfors said he sometimes uses a Skydio drone to scout a riverbed or for other daytime tasks that require the drone to fly by itself without hitting a tree. Skydio, founded by engineers who worked on Google’s delivery drone venture Wing, employs computer vision rather than satellite-based GPS to move its drones around — enabling them to “see” and autonomously navigate around obstacles.

But mostly Nordfors uses a remote-controlled DJI drone — such as the one that helped his team track down a lost teenager this summer in Waterfall Canyon, a rugged hiking area north of Salt Lake City. “He was so thrilled,” Nordfors said of the 19-year-old. “He was jumping up and down.”

At the Clovis Police Department in California’s Central Valley, officers also have a choice of drones they can dispatch to be a “first responder” at crime scenes — at least before the haze of nearby forest fires temporarily grounded them.

The department doesn’t have its own helicopter, but officers can get their eyes and ears out to a scene quickly by piloting the drones from atop a roof near the city’s center, said Clovis police Lt. James Munro. He said the department typically uses its fleet of about a dozen DJI drones because of their durability and infrared night vision, but is also experimenting with a Skydio drone because of its ability to home in on an officer or suspect.

“You can put a little dot on the person and the drone will follow them,” Munro said.

Kumar, the Penn engineering dean who also founded a startup that sends drones into mines, said it’s not easy to shift from hobby drones to commercial applications. Aerial robots consume a lot of power, limiting how long their missions can last — one reason he said that payload-carrying delivery drone efforts spearheaded by Amazon and Google haven’t yet taken off.

Navigating safely with full autonomy is also difficult, he said.

“Skydio has taken on this challenge of developing vision-only platforms in all kinds of conditions,” he said. “That’s really hard to do.”

DJI doesn’t yet offer such autonomy, but Kumar said it won’t easily be beaten. It was first to really capitalize on the consumer potential of drones and has built out a strong manufacturing and supply chain capacity.

“It’s amazing to me that we discriminate against DJI because we think that company can spy on us,” said Kumar. “Are they a national security threat? I don’t believe so. Are they innovative? Absolutely. Do they attract top talent? Absolutely. Some of my best students have gone to DJI.”