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3M CEO must attend mediation in earplug litigation, judge rules

Dietrich Knauth
Mon, May 22, 2023


(Reuters) - A federal judge has ordered 3M Co CEO Michael Roman to attend mediation aimed at resolving nearly 260,000 lawsuits alleging that 3M military earplugs caused hearing loss, saying the negotiations have reached a "critical juncture."

U.S. District Judge Casey Rodgers, in whose Florida court the lawsuits have been consolidated, on Friday ordered Roman to attend mediation talks in Pensacola on May 25 and 26, so that he may "listen and engage directly with the mediators." The mediation so far has been "encouraging," but it requires 3M senior leadership to push ahead, Rodgers said in her order.

Roman's attendance will ensure that 3M's board will have "firsthand knowledge of the current state of the negotiations" when evaluating any settlement offer, Rodgers said.

3M has sought to resolve the lawsuits brought by veterans and members of the military who allege that 3M's combat arms earplugs were defective and damaged their hearing through the bankruptcy of its subsidiary Aearo Technologies LLC, which manufactured the earplugs.

3M had opposed efforts to renew mediation efforts in Florida federal court while Aearo's bankruptcy case is pending. Previous efforts reached an impasse in January, as 3M and the earplug plaintiffs focused their attention on Aearo's bankruptcy.

3M was ordered earlier this month to resume mediation.

A company spokesman said Monday that 3M continues to believe that Aearo's bankruptcy provides a better option for resolving the earplug claims "more quickly, with more certainty and with more balanced recoveries among claimants."

Aearo's bankruptcy strategy has been fiercely opposed by plaintiffs, who said that 3M was merely trying to escape litigation in Florida, following a series of unfavorable legal rulings and trial losses.

Veterans and service members have called for the dismissal of Aearo's bankruptcy, which is proceeding in U.S. bankruptcy court in Indianapolis, and they are awaiting a ruling from the judge overseeing the case.

Aearo filed for bankruptcy last July, with 3M pledging $1 billion to fund Aearo's liabilities stemming from the lawsuits that accuse both Aearo and 3M of misrepresenting the earplugs' effectiveness.

The litigation against 3M and Aearo is the largest-ever multi-district litigation in U.S. history, with nearly 330,000 cases filed and nearly 260,000 pending cases, according to court statistics from May 15.

3M has lost 10 of the 16 cases that have gone to trial so far, with about $265 million being awarded in total to 13 plaintiffs.

The MDL is In re 3M Combat Arms Earplug Products Liability Litigation, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Florida, No. 19-md-2885.

For the plaintiffs: Bryan Aylstock of Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis & Overholtz; Shelley Hutson of Clark, Love & Hutson; and Chris Seeger of Seeger Weiss

For 3M: Mike Brock, Christa Cottrell, David Horowitz and Saghar Esfandiarifard of Kirkland & Ellis

Read more:

US veterans suing 3M over earplugs seek to stop unit's 'false alarm' bankruptcy

3M earplug bankruptcy creates 'corrosive' tension with other courts, attorney says

Is 3M earplug bankruptcy the beginning of the end of mass tort MDLs?

3M notches sixth win in combat earplugs litigation

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth)

Montana is banning TikTok. But can the state enforce the law and fend off lawsuits?

The Canadian Press
Mon, May 22, 2023



NEW YORK (AP) — TikTok is challenging Montana's first-of-its kind law that makes it illegal for people to use the social media app in the state. It's the second lawsuit since the ban was adopted.

Montana Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed the law Wednesday expecting a legal fight. The law, scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2024, also faces questions over whether it can be enforced.

Five TikTok users sued the state last week saying the law is unconstitutional. TikTok made similar arguments in its lawsuit Monday in federal court in Missoula.

Montana's rules are more far-reaching than restrictions on TikTok in place elsewhere, which include bans on government-issued devices in nearly half the states and within the U.S. federal government.

There are 200,000 TikTok users in Montana and 6,000 businesses that use the video-sharing platform, according to company spokesperson Jamal Brown.

Here’s what you need to know:

WHY IS MONTANA BANNING TIKTOK?

Proponents of the law in Montana claim the Chinese government could harvest U.S. user data from TikTok and use the platform to push pro-Beijing misinformation or messages to the public.

That mirrors arguments made by a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. Senate, as well as the heads of the FBI and the CIA, all of whom have said TikTok could pose a national security threat because its Beijing-based parent company ByteDance operates under Chinese law.

Critics have pointed to China’s 2017 national intelligence law that compels companies to cooperate with the country’s governments for state intelligence work. Another Chinese law, implemented in 2014, has similar mandates.

TikTok says it has never been asked to hand over its data, and it wouldn’t do so if asked.

WHAT DOES TIKTOK ARGUE IN THE LEGAL CHALLENGE?

The lawsuit filed Monday by TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, says the new law violates the Constitution's right to free speech. It says the law is based on unfounded speculation that the Chinese government could access users’ data.

“The state cites nothing to support these allegations,” the company's attorneys wrote. “The state's bare speculation ignores the reality that (TikTok) has not shared, and would not share, U.S. user date with the Chinese government.”

Emily Flower, spokesperson for the Montana Department of Justice, said the legal challenges were expected. She said the Chinese Communist Party was using TikTok as a tool to spy on Americans by “collecting personal information, keystrokes, and even the locations of its users.”

The case could serve as a testing ground for the TikTok-free America many national lawmakers have envisioned.

HOW DOES MONTANA PLAN TO BAN TIKTOK?

The law will prohibit downloads of TikTok in the state and fine any “entity” — an app store or TikTok — $10,000 per day for each time someone accesses, downloads or is offered the ability to access TikTok.

That means Apple and Google, which operate app stores on Apple and Android devices, would be liable for violations. Penalties would not apply to users.

The statewide ban would be void if the social media platform is sold to a company that is not based in a country designated as a foreign adversary.

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen has pointed to technology used to restrict online sports gambling apps as a way to curtail TikTok from operating in the state. Those violations can be reported by anyone. And once the state verifies a breach has taken place, it sends a cease-and-desist letter to the company involved, said Kyler Nerison, a spokesperson for Knudsen's office.

SO, COULD THE TIKTOK BAN WORK?

Cybersecurity experts say that, other than avoiding the fine, there's nothing incentivizing the companies involved to comply and it will be extremely difficult — if not impossible — to adequately enforce the law.

The U.S. doesn't have anything equivalent to the type of control countries like China have on what their citizens access on the web. Compounding that, internet service providers are out of the picture.

Before the Montana law passed, lawmakers rewrote portions of the bill to let them off the hook after a lobbyist for AT&T said during a February hearing the legislation was “not workable” to put into effect.

COULD TECH COMPANIES BLOCK IT?

A representative for TechNet, the trade group that counts the two tech giants as its members, said app stores don’t have the ability to “geofence” apps in different states and it would be impossible to prevent TikTok from being downloaded in Montana. The group has said the responsibility should be on an app to determine where it can operate, not an app store.

Telecoms analyst Roger Entner, of Recon Analytics, says he believes the app stores could have the capability to enforce the law, but it would be cumbersome to implement and full of loopholes. Apple and Google’s address-linked billing could be bypassed with prepaid cards and IP geolocation easily masked by using a VPN service, which can alter IP addresses and allows users to evade content restrictions, said mobile security expert Will Strafach, the founder of Guardian, which makes a privacy protection app for Apple devices.

Oded Vanunu, head of products vulnerability research at the cybersecurity firm Check Point, agreed it would be difficult for app stores to isolate a single state from downloading an app. He suggested it would be more feasible for TikTok to comply since it controls the software and can “adjust the settings based on the geographical location or IP addresses" of users.

COULD TIKTOK BLOCK ITSELF?

When users allow TikTok to collect their location information, it can track a person to at least 3 square kilometers (1.16 square miles) from their actual location. If that feature is disabled, TikTok can still collect approximate location information - such as the region, city or zip code in which a user may be located - based on device or network information, like an IP address.

But similar to the app stores, cybersecurity experts note that any enforcement measures the company implements could be easily bypassed with a VPN and efforts to use IP geolocating might lead to other issues.

David Choffnes with Northeastern University's Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute said cell providers may use the same types of IP addresses for multiple states, which could mean someone not in Montana could incorrectly be blocked from TikTok.

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AP Technology Writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report from Boston.

Haleluya Hadero, The Associated Press

Labor union says it will start recall effort against Oregon state lawmaker

Mon, May 22, 2023 

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — One of Oregon’s largest labor unions says it’s going to try to oust a Democratic state lawmaker who has been a longtime labor ally.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 said Monday it had filed paperwork to initiate a recall effort against Rep. Paul Holvey of Eugene, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported.

If successful, it could trigger an election later this year deciding whether Holvey, the House speaker pro-tem, can stay in office.

Holvey, joined the House in 2004 and is a former union representative. But the union says his failure to support House Bill 3183, which would block cannabis employers from interfering with employee efforts to unionize, is one of the reasons behind its effort. The union is trying to make the case that the representative has turned his back on working people.

“He has shown that his allegiance lies with large corporations, not with Oregonians,” Local 555 President Dan Clay said in a statement.

Holvey told OPB that the recall caught him off-guard.

“I’m very surprised they’d pursue this sort of retaliation over this particular bill,” he said. “I am a strong labor person, I grew up in labor and have always pursued legislation to help working people.”

The union says Holvey killed the cannabis union bill, and strongly suggests in its planned filing with the Secretary of State that he did so at the behest of La Mota. That’s the cannabis dispensary chain whose owners have come under scrutiny for donating to Democrats while failing to pay their taxes. The business' owners have not given money to Holvey's personal campaign committee, but they did donate $20,000 to the main political action committee for electing House Democrats.

UFCW Local 555 also says Holvey secured a legal opinion from legislative attorneys that suggests the bill could be illegal. The union believes that opinion is misleading and could affect its efforts to help workers unionize.

Holvey said he had questions about whether the UCFW bill was legal and acted accordingly, obtaining two opinions from legislative attorneys suggesting HB 3183 could be precluded by federal law.

“All I could see was this would put us into potential litigation where I felt pretty strongly the state would lose,” he said.

In order to force an election later this year, the union must collect signatures equivalent to 15% of the voters in Holvey’s Lane County district that participated in last year’s race for governor. According to state elections officials, the union needs 4,598 signatures by Aug. 21.

The Associated Press

The housing slowdown is a top signal that the US is headed into a moderate recession, Fannie Mae says

Jennifer Sor
Mon, May 22, 2023 


A housing slowdown is a major indicator of a coming recession, Fannie Mae's chief economist said.


Existing home sales are on track to post further declines later this year, the mortgage giant estimated.


But the strength of the sector could also help pull the US out of a recession in 2024.

The housing market is signaling that the US is headed into a moderate, Fannie Mae's chief economist Doug Duncan warned.

Newsday LLC / Contributor/Getty Images

The government-sponsored mortgage agency predicted a modest recession to hit the economy later this year, pointing especially to the slowdown in US housing activity. Existing home sales have plunged to their lowest level since 2010, and are on track to post more declines later this year, per Fannie Mae's estimates.

A decline in sales is particularly expected in multifamily real estate, as credit conditions are expected to tighten this year.

"There are select data available to support several alternative views of the path of the economy, though we maintain our view that a modest recession will begin in the second half of 2023," Duncan said in a statement on Friday. "Housing remains exhibit number one for why we expect the recession to be modest."

Economists have been warning of a possible recession over the last year, largely due to rising interest rates and tighter credit conditions in the economy. Central bankers have raised interest rates 500 basis points in a year to tame inflation, a move that risks pushing the economy into a downturn. It's also influenced mortgage rates to trend higher, and has pushed the 30-year mortgage to 20-year highs. This has has weighed on the housing market as high borrowing costs push both buyers and sellers to the sidelines.

Still, Duncan noted that housing sector has outperformed expectations, given rising interest rates and high inflation. A relatively strong housing market could help the economy exit a recession as soon as 2024, he added.

But housing activity overall is unlikely to pick up soon, other industry experts have warned. That's because affordability will be pressured until mortgage rates begin to drop, and rates are expected to remain near a 20-year-high through the next year, Bankrate analyst Jeff Ostrowski told Insider.

Here's why the US doesn't have to pay off its $31 trillion mountain of debt, according to Paul Krugman

Jennifer Sor
Mon, May 22, 2023 

Franck Robichon/Reuters

The US government doesn't have to pay off its $31 trillion debt, Paul Krugman said.


The government debt can't be compared to something like a household's finances, Krugman said.


"When governments for one reason or another run up large debts, it is, as far as I can tell, unusual to pay those debts off."

The US doesn't actually have to pay off its $31 trillion mountain of debt, according to top economist Paul Krugman, hitting back at the idea that government finances can be compared to household balance sheets in an op-ed weeks before the US possibly defaults on some obligations.

Though individual borrowers are expected to pay off debts, the same isn't true for governments, Krugman argued in a column for the New York Times on Friday. That's because unlike people, governments don't die, and they gain more revenue with each passing generation.

"Governments, then, must service their debts – pay interest and repay principal when bonds come due – but they don't necessarily have to pay them off; they can issue new bonds to pay principal on old bonds and even borrow to pay interest as long as overall debt doesn't rise too much faster than revenue," he added.

Though the debt-to-GDP ratio hovered around 97% last year, interest payments on that debt is only around $395 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget, or around 1% of last year's GDP.

Historically, it's also unusual for governments to pay off large debts, Krugman said. Such was the case for Great Britain, which has largely held onto the debt it incurred as far back as the Napoleonic wars.

Krugman's argument comes amid growing contention over the US debt level, with policymakers still sparring over the conditions they want to raise the country's borrowing limit. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has said he would reject a short-term debt ceiling increase unless spending cuts are negotiated, having proposed a bill that would slash around $4.5 trillion on spending.

Congress now has less than two weeks to raise the borrowing limit before the government could potentially run out of cash, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned. A default on the country's obligations could result in catastrophe for financial markets, experts have warned. Krugman has called for the debt ceiling to be abolished, as the risk of a financial crisis offers Republicans a "choke point" on fiscal policy.

Space station welcomes 2 Saudi visitors, including kingdom's 1st female astronaut

Mon, May 22, 2023 


CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — The International Space Station rolled out the welcome mat Monday for two Saudi visitors, including the kingdom's first female astronaut.

SpaceX's chartered flight arrived at the orbiting lab less than 16 hours after blasting off from Florida. The four guests will spend just over a week there, before returning to Earth in their capsule.

The 270-mile-high (430-kilometer-high) docking puts the space station population at 11, representing not only Saudi Arabia and the U.S., but the United Arab Emirates and Russia.

UAE's astronaut Sultan al-Neyadi greeted them with dates, a traditional Arab welcome.

“This shows how space brings everyone together,” said Saudi Arabia's first female astronaut, Rayyanah Barnawi, a stem cell researcher. “I'm going to live this experience to the max.”

Saudi fighter pilot Ali al-Qarni dedicated the visit to everyone back home. “This mission is not just for me and Rayyanah. This mission is also for the people with ambition and dreams.”

The Saudi government is picking up the multimillion-dollar tab for both of them.

John Shoffner, a Knoxville, Tennessee, businessman who started a sports car racing team, is paying his own way. Retired NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson is their chaperone. She now works for Axiom Space, the Houston company that organized the 10-day trip, its second to the space station.

The company cited ticket prices of $55 million each for last year's private trip by three businessmen, but won't say how much the latest seats cost.

Only one other Saudi has flown before in space, a prince who rode on NASA's shuttle Discovery in 1985.

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

Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press

Most powerful space telescope ever built identifies ancient star-studded galaxy


Nina Massey, PA Science Correspondent
Mon, May 22, 2023

Astronomers have used the most powerful telescope ever built to identify a massive, densely packed galaxy 25 million light years away.

Known as GS-9209, the galaxy formed around 600 to 800 million years after the Big Bang, and is the earliest of its kind found to date, researchers say.

The scientists, led by University of Edinburgh experts, used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to reveal the properties of GS-9209 for the first time.

Lead researcher Dr Adam Carnall, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Physics and Astronomy, said: “The James Webb Space Telescope has already demonstrated that galaxies were growing larger and earlier than we ever suspected during the first billion years of cosmic history.

“This work gives us our first really detailed look at the properties of these early galaxies, charting in detail the history of GS-9209, which managed to form as many stars as our own Milky Way in just 800 million years after the Big Bang.

“The fact that we also see a very massive black hole in this galaxy was a big surprise, and lends a lot of weight to the idea that these black holes are what shut down star formation in early galaxies.”

The researchers found that despite being around 10 times smaller than the Milky Way, GS-9209 has a similar number of stars to our own galaxy.

According to the study, their combined mass is around 40 billion times that of our sun, and they were formed rapidly before star formation in GS-9209 stopped.

GS-9209 is the earliest known example of a galaxy no longer forming stars – known as a quiescent galaxy.

The James Webb Space Telescope (Nasa/Alamy/PA)

When the researchers observed it at 1.25 billion years after the Big Bang, no stars had formed in the galaxy for about half a billion years.

The study also suggests there is a supermassive black hole at the centre of GS-9209.

It is five times bigger than astronomers might anticipate in a galaxy with this number of stars.

The discovery could explain why GS-9209 stopped forming new stars, the astronomers say.

When supermassive black holes grow they release huge amounts of high-energy radiation, which can heat up and push gas out of galaxies.

According to the researchers, this could have caused star formation in GS-9209 to stop, as stars form when clouds of dust and gas particles inside galaxies collapse under their own weight.

GS-9209 was first discovered in 2004 by Edinburgh PhD student Karina Caputi, who was supervised at the time by professors Jim Dunlop and Ross McLure at the university’s School of Physics and Astronomy.

The research, published in the journal Nature, was supported by the Leverhulme Trust, the Science and Technology Facilities Council and UK Research and Innovation.

World’s Biggest Nuclear Plant May Stay Closed Due to Papers Left on Car Roof

Shoko Oda
Mon, May 22, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- A week after Japanese regulators postponed the restart of the world’s biggest nuclear power plant due to safety lapses, a careless employee working from home added to the company’s woes.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Japan’s Niigata prefecture, said an employee placed a stack of documents on top of a car before driving off and losing them.

The mishap is the latest in a string of mistakes for the utility and is likely to further erode the regulator’s confidence in Tepco. Safety lapses and a strict regulatory process have stopped Japan from restarting most of its nuclear reactors shut in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

The nation’s Nuclear Regulation Authority, which oversees safety protocols of Japan’s remaining 33 reactors, decided just last week to keep a de facto ban on the power station from resuming operations, saying that the utility’s preventative measures are inadequate.

The utility discovered the breach when a local resident found some of the papers, which were related to dealing with fires and floods. The company is still trying to recover 38 pages of documents. Both the employee and their manager were given warnings and Tepco said it would make sure all staff follow stringent rules on taking documents and information off-site.

Watchdog proposes first set of global rules for crypto sector


Illustration shows representation of cryptocurrency Bitcoin, Ethereum 

and Dash plunging into water

By Huw Jones

Mon, May 22, 2023 

LONDON (Reuters) -International securities watchdog IOSCO unveiled on Tuesday the first global approach to regulating cryptoasset and digital markets, drawing on lessons from last year's collapse of the FTX exchange that fuelled concerns over consumer protection.

The industry, which typically only has to comply with anti-money laundering checks, has been calling for a global approach to regulation as different jurisdictions follow their own rules.

The moves come after crypto exchange FTX began U.S. bankruptcy proceedings last November following a liquidity crisis that prompted intervention from regulators worldwide.

Tuesday's recommendations are a "turning point in addressing the very clear and proximate risks to investor protection and market integrity risks," said Jean-Paul Servais, who chairs the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).

The proposed standards cover dealing with conflicts of interest, market manipulation, cross-border regulatory cooperation, custody of cryptoassets, operational risks, and treatment of retail customers.

The 18 measures planned apply long-established safeguards from mainstream markets to eliminate conflicts of interest between the different parts of a crypto transaction.

The watchdog said it aimed to finalise the standards by the end of the year, and expected its 130 members worldwide to use them to plug gaps in their rulebooks promptly.

IOSCO, an umbrella group of regulators such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Japan's Financial Services Agency, Britain's Financial Conduct Authority and Germany's BaFin, is canvassing public opinion on the regulations.

The step follows the European Union's finalisation this month of the world's first set of comprehensive rules, piling pressure on Britain, the United States and other countries to come up with their own norms.

(Reporting by Huw Jones; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Clarence Fernandez)

'Leap of faith:' Alaska pursues carbon offset market while embracing oil

Mon, May 22, 2023 



JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaska's push to become a bigger player in the clean energy market is in the spotlight this week at a conference convened by its Republican governor, even as the state continues to embrace new fossil fuel production, including the controversial Willow oil project on the petroleum-rich North Slope.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy successfully pushed through the legislature a bill he is expected to sign Tuesday that would allow the oil-reliant state to cash in on the sale of so-called carbon credits to companies looking to offset their carbon emissions. Projects could include credits for improving a forest’s health through thinning or by allowing trees to grow bigger, thereby increasing a forest’s potential to hold carbon.

Lawmakers cast the bill as allowing Alaska to have the best of both worlds — continuing to permit oil drilling, mining and timber activities while also stepping into the potentially lucrative market for sequestering carbon dioxide. But some watching Alaska's foray into this sector wonder if the program will gain traction as Dunleavy and lawmakers have said the aim isn't restricting emissions but generating a new revenue stream.

“There’s kind of a field of dreams quality to this issue. ‘If you plant the trees and create credits, will anyone buy them?’” said Barry Rabe, a political scientist who studies environmental and climate politics at the University of Michigan’s Gerald Ford School of Public Policy.

“What’s just not clear is what that market would look like and whether or not purchasers ... will find that an attractive investment,” he said. “That’s the leap of faith.”

Alaska has no carbon emissions reductions goals or overarching climate plan and relies heavily on oil production. It is also experiencing first-hand the impacts of the changing climate, such as coastal erosion threatening Indigenous villages, unusual wildfires and thinning sea ice.

The Willow project being developed by ConocoPhillips Alaska is the latest to draw international attention to the state’s oil reserves. The project approved by the Biden administration earlier this year could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day. It is being challenged in court by environmentalists who argue the U.S. should be moving away from new drilling in the face of climate change.

Republican Sen. Shelley Hughes said she was not fond of the carbon credit concept but was concerned that without embracing it, the state could face backlash from groups over its support for resource development projects, including its backing of Willow.

“I think that in order to get capital investment into our state, we are going to have to be perceived in a way that is trying to work through all of this,” she said during the recent legislative debate.

The bill that passed last week was one of two proposed by Dunleavy as a way to generate a new form of income for the state, which has struggled with deficits for much of the last decade. It would allow the state to set up carbon sequestration projects on forestland and sell credits to companies seeking to offset their emissions, with 20% of the revenue from such sales going to a state fund that supports renewable energy projects.

The bill also would let the state lease lands to third parties that want to manage sequestration projects of their own, such as reforesting areas burned by wildfire or growing kelp.

It could be several years before the first credit sales occur because of the time it will take to set up a program and develop or vet projects.

Another Dunleavy proposal that would have set up a regulatory system allowing for underground storage of carbon dioxide did not advance this session but remains in play for next year's legislative session.

Dunleavy, meanwhile, is expected to tout the newly passed credit offset plan at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference in Anchorage this week. The governor created the conference in part “to show the world what Alaska has to offer,” spokesperson Grant Robinson said.

Some Republican lawmakers said the measure will allow Alaska to capitalize on the demand for carbon emissions offsets from companies already doing business in Alaska that might otherwise purchase carbon credits elsewhere.

“So if they’re going to do it anyways and they're going to operate (on) Alaskan lands, then why shouldn’t we provide the service of carbon offsets to these companies?" Republican Rep. Kevin McCabe said. “At least then it stays in Alaska and we get some benefit to our state treasury for it.”

Becky Bohrer, The Associated Press

Fast fashion has spawned a mountain of leftover clothes in the Chilean desert that's so massive it can now be seen clearly from space


Matthew Loh
Mon, May 22, 2023 

A woman searches for clothes in the Chilean Desert.

Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images

A gigantic heap of unused clothes in Chile is so big that a satellite can easily spot it.


High resolution images of the clothing dump was posted on May 10 by satellite photo app SkyFi.


Much of the landfill contains clothes that couldn't sell in stores in the US, Europe, and Asia.

A giant dump of unused fast fashion clothing in Chile's Atacama Desert is now clearly visible to satellites.

The still-growing mountain of discarded or unworn clothes — manufactured in Bangladesh or China and sent to retail stores in the US, Europe, and Asia — are brought to Chile when they aren't sold, according to Agence France-Presse.

At least 39,000 tons of those clothes accumulate in landfills in the Atacama Desert, the outlet found in 2021.

On May 10, a high-resolution satellite photo of the discarded clothes was posted in a blog by SkyFi, the developers of a satellite photo and video app.

"The 50 cm resolution image, which is classified as Very High Resolution, was taken using satellite imagery, and it shows how big the pile is compared to the city in the bottom of the picture," the developers wrote.

The clothes can't be sent to municipal landfills because they aren't biodegradable and often contain chemical products, Franklin Zepeda, the founder of EcoFibra, a company that tries to reuse the textiles by making insulation panels, told the AFP.

So the unused garments sit next to Chile's Iquique port, about a mile from some of the city's poorer neighborhoods.

The landfill sometimes attracts migrants and local women, who search the dump for items they can wear or sell, per AFP.

Women search for clothing items in the Atacama Desert

.MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP via Getty Image

The fast fashion industry aims to give consumers affordable access to fashion trends but contributes between 2 to 8% of the world's carbon emissions, the United Nations found in 2018.

Nearly 85% of all textiles go to dumps every year, and fashion production consumes vast amounts of water and pollutes rivers and streams, Insider's Morgan McFall-Johnsen previously reported.

The Ellen McArthur Foundation, a UK think-tank, estimated that enough clothes to fill a garbage truck are burned and sent to a landfill every second.

Fast fashion's market size is expected to grow to $122.9 billion in 2023, up from $106.4 billion in 2022, according to market research firm The Business Research Company.