SAG-AFTRA Will No Longer Approve Indie Projects Written Under WGA Contract

Gene Maddaus
Mon, August 14, 2023

SAG-AFTRA announced Monday that it will no longer grant interim agreements to independent projects that were written under a Writers Guild of America contract.

The union has already given permission for 207 independent projects to continue to film during the strike, including ones with stars like Jason Bateman, Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaughey.

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SAG-AFTRA argued that the agreements supported the strike because they involved independent producers who agreed to all of the union’s demands. But they have caused considerable backlash within the union, as some members felt they undermined the strike’s overall impact.

Monday’s announcement was the first concession to that backlash. The union agreed that going forward, it will not approve projects that were written under a WGA contract and will be produced in the U.S.

“We have been advised by the WGA that this modification will assist them in executing their strike strategy, and we believe it does not undermine the utility and effectiveness of ours,” the guild announced Monday. “It is a win-win change.”

The move is a signal of solidarity with the WGA strike, which began on May 2. The WGA strike rules forbid members from engaging in “writing services,” but do not preclude WGA-covered scripts from being produced.

The SAG-AFTRA decision will not affect the 207 projects that have already been approved. In order to obtain an interim agreement from SAG-AFTRA, the producers must show they do not have financing from companies in the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. They must also agree to the latest terms proposed by SAG-AFTRA before the strike was called on July 13.

The contracts will ultimately be modified to conform to the whatever agreement the AMPTP reaches with SAG-AFTRA.

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CRYPTO CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Testimony from Sam Bankman-Fried's trusted inner circle will be used to convict him, prosecutors say

LARRY NEUMEISTER
Mon, August 14, 2023 

 FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves Manhattan federal court in New York, Feb. 16, 2023. Prosecutors said Monday, Aug. 14, they'll use testimony from Bankman-Fried's “trusted inner circle” of former executives at his collapsed cryptocurrency empire against him at an October trial. (

NEW YORK (AP) — Testimony from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s “trusted inner circle” of former executives at his collapsed cryptocurrency empire will be used to prove at an October trial that he misappropriated billions of dollars from his investors to fuel his businesses, make illegal campaign contributions and enrich himself, prosecutors said Monday.

Prosecutors made the assertions in papers filed in Manhattan federal court, where Bankman-Fried is charged with defrauding investors in his businesses and illegally diverted millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency from customers using his FTX exchange. He has pleaded not guilty.

The court filing, in which prosecutors describe evidence they plan to present to jurors, came three days after Bankman-Fried was sent to a federal jail in Brooklyn to await trial by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who said there was probable cause to believe he had tried to tamper with witness testimony at least twice since his December arrest.

It also came on the same day that prosecutors filed a streamlined indictment that contains the seven charges Bankman-Fried faces at the Oct. 2 trial — but there's no longer a campaign finance charge for now, though it could go to trial later if they are found to conform with the terms of an extradition treaty with the Bahamas.

Still, prosecutors said in the latest indictment that Bankman-Fried misappropriated customer money to help fund over $100 million in political contributions in advance of the 2022 election. The indictment said he sought to “maximize FTX's political influence” and use “these connections with politicians and government officials to falsely burnish the public image of FTX as a legitimate exchange.”

Late Monday, Bankman-Fried's lawyers filed their own court papers related to trial evidence. In them, they asked that the trial judge exclude evidence about the FTX bankruptcy, the solvency of FTC and its affiliated trading platform, Alameda Research, and their ability to pay customers back.

They also asked that the judge ban prosecutors from telling jurors that Bankman-Fried resigned from FTX. They said they may oppose the prosecution's plans to introduce evidence related to severed or withdrawn counts, such as the campaign finance charge.

Before Friday, Bankman Fried, 31, had been living with his parents in Palo Alto, California, after signing a $250 million personal recognizance bond following his extradition from the Bahamas last December.

Prosecutors recently sought his detention, saying he had tried to intimidate his former girlfriend, Caroline Ellison — the onetime CEO of Alameda Research — by releasing some of her writing to a journalist.

On Monday, the government said they would rely on testimony from Ellison, FTX co-founder Gary Wang and former FTX engineering chief Nishad Singh to show jurors “the unlawful conduct directed and undertaken by the defendant.”

All three have pleaded guilty to criminal charges in cooperation agreements with the government that could earn them leniency at sentencing.

Prosecutors said they “formed the defendant's trusted inner circle during the course of the conspiracy” and their testimony will be supplemented by multiple former employees of Alameda and FTX along with several victims, including customers, lenders and investors.

Other evidence will consist of financial records, Google documents and spreadsheets, and private communications, they added.

A spokesperson for Bankman-Fried declined comment on Monday.

Meanwhile, the judge on Monday granted a request by defense lawyers that their client be supplied his daily prescribed medications for depression and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

UN to hold emergency meeting on Azerbaijan's blockade of road from Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh

EDITH M. LEDERER
Mon, August 14, 2023 

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting Wednesday in response to a call from Armenia saying the mainly Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh in neighboring Azerbaijan is blockaded and 120,000 people are facing hunger and “a full-fledged humanitarian catastrophe.”

Armenia’s U.N. Ambassador Mher Margaryan asked for the meeting on the dire situation in Nagorno-Karabakh in a letter to the ambassador of the United States, which holds the Security Council presidency this month.

The U.S. Mission to the U.N. said Monday the emergency open meeting will take place on Wednesday afternoon.

In his letter to Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Margaryan said Azerbaijan’s complete blockade since July 15 of the Lachin Corridor – the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia – has created severe shortages of food, medicine and fuel.

“The deliberate creation of unbearable life conditions for the population is nothing but an act of mass atrocity targeting the indigenous people of Nagorno-Karabakh and forcing them to leave their homeland,” he said, stressing that this constitutes “an existential threat to them.”

Margaryan asked the Security Council, which is charged with ensuring international peace and security, “to prevent mass atrocities including war crimes, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity and genocide.”

Nagorno-Karabakh came under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by the Armenian military in separatist fighting that ended in 1994. Armenian forces also took control of substantial territory around the Azerbaijani region.

Azerbaijan regained control of the surrounding territory in a six-week war with Armenia in 2020. A Russia-brokered armistice that ended the war left the region’s capital, Stepanakert, connected to Armenia only by the Lachin Corridor, along which Russian peacekeeping forces were supposed to ensure free movement.

Margaryan accused Azerbaijan of violating the Russian-brokered armistice and international humanitarian law as well as orders by the International Court of Justice in February and July. The U.N.’s highest court said in its orders that Azerbaijan should “take all measures to ensure unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directors,” the Armenian ambassador said.

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry has accused Armenia of violating its territorial integrity and sovereignty and of smuggling weapons into Nagorno-Karabakh.

Last week, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court warned that Azerbaijan is preparing genocide against ethnic Armenians in its Nagorno-Karabakh region and called for the Security Council to bring the matter before the international tribunal.

Luis Moreno Ocampo said in a report requested by a group of Armenians, including the country’s president, that as a result of the blockade “there is a reasonable basis to believe that a genocide is being committed.”

He said the U.N. convention defines genocide as including “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.”

Privately held Esmark makes offer for US Steel, sets up bidding contest for iconic steelmaker

ALEXANDRA OLSON
Mon, August 14, 2023 






 A water tower at United States Steel Corp.'s Edgar Thomson Plant in Braddock, Pa., is seen, Thursday, May 7, 2020. On Sunday, Aug. 13, 2023, U.S. Steel said that it rejected a $7.3 billion buyout proposal from rival Cleveland Cliffs and was reviewing “strategic alternatives” after receiving several unsolicited offers. 

(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — Industrial conglomerate Esmark said Monday it has made an all-cash offer to buy U.S. Steel that values the iconic steelmaker at $7.8 billion, topping an earlier offer from rival Cleveland-Cliffs.

On Sunday, U.S. Steel said it had rejected a cash and stock offer from Cleveland-Cliffs that was valued at $7.3 billion as of the close of trading Friday. U.S. Steel also said it had received offers for all or parts of the company from several parties and was evaluating its options.

Pittsburgh-based Esmark is run by James Bouchard, a former vice president in U.S. Steel's European operations. In an interview, Bouchard said he is interested in modernizing U.S. Steel and keeping the company under American ownership.

Besides its steel-producing and distribution business, privately held Esmark has operations in aviation, oil and gas exploration, real estate and other industries.

Cleveland-Cliffs is the largest producer of flat-rolled steel and iron in North America. Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel has been a symbol of industrialization since it was founded in 1901 by J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and others, though its stock price has languished in recent years as steel prices have fluctuated.

In Monday trading on Wall Street, U.S. Steel shares soared 36.8% to close at $31.08. Cleveland-Cliffs shares rose 8.8% to $15.98.

WELCOME TO ESMARK
Press Room

The Esmark Center

In October 2008, Founder James P. Bouchard brought the Esmark legacy and brand name back to life for a third time, and today continues to refine its pathfinder business model that has propelled the company into a $400 million dollar enterprise in just three years.

Esmark is a diversified, privately-held family company with a portfolio of industrial companies with strong roots in the steel industry. Over the years, Esmark has diversified its interests and operations into a number of businesses engaged in the industrial and commodity sectors.

Esmark (a former publicly traded company on NASDAQ: ESMK) has focused on several key industries including steel services, oil and gas exploration, aviation, real estate, business services, technology and sports management.

Today, Esmark’s two largest business segments are steel services and oil and gas production. Since 2009 the company has been reacquiring some of its original steel assets that followed its growth from humble beginnings in Chicago to becoming the fourth largest American steel producer before the sale of its largest asset in 2008. Led by Founder, Chairman and CEO James P. Bouchard, Esmark’s management team has over a century of experience in executive management, strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, finance, purchasing, sales, and operations. Together, this team is rebuilding a company that will once again blend the best of its respective skills and backgrounds to deliver significant returns to its shareholders.

Esmark’s rapid rise to prominence began with its first acquisitions in 2003: East Chicago, Indiana-based Electric Coating Technologies, Inc. and Chicago Heights, Illinois-based Sun Steel, providing the company with a strong foundation into the steel service center and converter segments of the industry. Over the course of the next four years, Esmark acquired seven other service centers, painted products, and steel distribution companies that quickly propelled the company into a leading provider of value-added steel products in the Midwest with more than $600 million in annual revenue by 2006. By that time, the company had a market base stretching across the Midwest with more than 2,000 customers engaged in a diverse range of industries. During its expansion Esmark also built a number of strategic partnerships and joint ventures with leading steel companies from around the world to purchase, process, and distribute steel products throughout the U.S.

Esmark successfully completed the first hostile tender/reverse merger in the history of the United States with the combination of Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel Corporation and Esmark in 2007 and demonstrated its commitment to shareholder value with the successful sale of Esmark to OAO Severstal in August of 2008. Esmark was founded in 2003 at 25 cents per share, with an enterprise value of $2 million and revenue of $4 million. The sale to OAO Severstal was for $19.25 per share with an enterprise value of $1.3 billion and 2008 revenue of $3 billion.

Clawed blue creature found in pet aquariums worldwide turns out to be new species

Aspen Pflughoeft
Mon, August 14, 2023 

Far from its home in Indonesia, a blue, clawed creature moved around an aquarium. Scientists peered into the tank, studying their pet-turned-specimen — and discovered a new species.

Researchers in Czechia acquired several freshwater crayfish from a pet trader specializing in “ornamental aquatic animals,” according to a study published Aug. 10 in the journal Zootaxa. Crayfish are also known as crawfish or crawdads.

Freshwater crayfish are “popular ornamental animals” in the pet trade, researchers said. Several different species are all sold under the common name of “blue moon crayfish.” These species are collected in Indonesia, then exported to Europe, North America and Japan to fill aquariums worldwide.

Over a span of eight years, researchers found five distinct blue crayfish — and discovered a new species: Cherax woworae, or the steel blue crayfish, the study said.


The steel blue crayfish is “moderately-sized,” reaching about 2 inches in length and just under an inch in width, researchers said. It has two equal-sized and multi-colored claws. Its body has a “steel blue” color with “marbled sides.”

Photos show the crayfish. It has dark blue legs and an orange-tipped tail. From arm to tip, its claws change from turquoise blue to peachy orange to black.

A Cherax woworae, or steel blue crayfish, sitting on fabric.

The new species was named Cherax woworae after Daisy Wowor, a crustacean scientist and curator at the Museum Zoologicum Bogoriense in Java, Indonesia, the study said.

Steel blue crayfish are known to burrow and are native to the western coast of New Guinea, the Indonesian side of the island, the study said. The species has also been found in “thermal waters” in Hungary. The Hungarian population was “probably released by irresponsible hobbyists and originate from the pet trade.”

Researchers recommended field surveys to determine the full distribution of the new species.

The new species was identified based on its coloring and body shape, the study said. DNA analysis found the species had between 5.6% and 13.8% genetic divergence from other freshwater crayfish.

The research team included Jiří Patoka, Surya Gentha Akmal, Martin Bláha and Antonín Kouba.

UK

Rishi Sunak criticises social media craze that led to disorder
ITS THE LAW THAT'S THE CAUSE

Stephen Stafford & PA Media - BBC News
Tue, August 15, 2023 

The Prime Minister has condemned the way looting and disruption has been organised on social media as "appalling" and "unacceptable".

Rishi Sunak's comments follow calls by the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) for parents to be held accountable for children involved in criminal social media crazes

Disorder in London's Oxford Street spread last week after online rumours.

Mr Sunak said those involved should face "the full force of the law".

Nine people were arrested after trouble broke out on 9 August when social media videos urged people to turn up and cause disorder.

West End stores were forced to close their shutters and lock customers inside during the looting bid, which was reportedly inspired by a social media craze encouraging people to take part in an "Oxford Street JD robbery".

Rishi Sunak made the comments about the disorder in London following a visit to a hospital in Milton Keynes

Asked what he made of the disturbances, which occurred while he was on holiday in the US, Mr Sunak told broadcasters: "I have got to say it is appalling.

"Criminal damage, criminal behaviour is unacceptable.

"I fully support the police in bringing those people to justice - because that type of behaviour is simply unacceptable in our society."

Dispersal orders were also imposed in Southend after posts encouraging anti-social behaviour.

Donna Jones, who is PCC for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight as well as chair of the APCC, said that such incidents were organised and shared on social media and were a "real indication of societal breakdown".

She said the trend for social media crazes was "incredibly worrying" and called for action from social media companies.

"This is mindless vandalism, and it's also criminal activity in terms of shoplifting and theft, looting, mass looting," she said.

"This is taking away police hours from operational policing that they should be doing to keep genuine people that need protecting safe."

Ms Jones said parents could be forced to pay the fines for the criminal behaviour of their children under the age of 16, or under 18 if in full-time education.

"We need to send a clear message - this is not acceptable and the parents need to be held accountable," she said.

She said another social media craze involved teenagers in Southampton goading others into taking paracetamol.

BBC Verify searched TikTok to see whether there were recent videos about a paracetamol challenge involving teenagers in Southampton but couldn't find any.

They asked TikTok whether any had existed but had been deleted by them.

TikTok said: "These claims are simply wrong. We have found no evidence to support them and this content has not trended on TikTok. We have written to the government with the facts to clear up these misrepresentations."

Ms Jones said a "handful" of children were admitted to hospital in Southampton as a result of an alleged paracetamol-taking challenge.

Southampton City Council said the incident happened at Southampton Central train station, and involved children aged between 15 and 17.

It said: "We are aware of the incident in question and are continuing to work across the appropriate agencies as part of ongoing investigations and to ensure those involved are fully supported. We are unable to comment any further."

"I don't think [teenagers] understand that the fun that goes along with it - as they see it as fun - could actually potentially be very, very worrying," she added.

"This is taking up much needed ambulance time, police time and of course we can't afford for that to happen and I think parents need to get involved."

NHS advice is that paracetamol is safe to take as a painkiller when used correctly and when the dosage recommendations are followed, but can cause serious liver damage if those are exceeded.

Ms Jones called for TikTok in particular to investigate its role in organising gatherings and harmful challenges.

In a statement, TikTok said: "We have seen no evidence to support these claims and we have zero tolerance for content facilitating or encouraging criminal activities.

"We have over 40,000 safety professionals dedicated to keeping TikTok safe - if we find content of this nature, we remove it and actively engage with law enforcement on these issues."

OUTSOURCING

Firm regrets taking Facebook moderation work

Chris Vallance - BBC News
Tue, August 15, 2023 

Facebook on a screen

A firm which was contracted to moderate Facebook posts in East Africa has said with hindsight it should not have taken on the job.

Former Kenya-based employees of Sama - an outsourcing company - have said they were traumatised by exposure to graphic posts.

Some are now taking legal cases against the firm through the Kenyan courts.

Chief executive Wendy Gonzalez said Sama would no longer take work involving moderating harmful content.

Warning - this article contains distressing content

Some former employees have described being traumatised after viewing videos of beheadings, suicide and other graphic material at the moderation hub, which the firm ran from 2019.

Former moderator Daniel Motaung previously told the BBC the first graphic video he saw was "a live video of someone being beheaded".

Mr Motaung is suing Sama and Facebook's owner Meta. Meta says it requires all companies it works with to provide round-the-clock support. Sama says certified wellness counsellors were always on hand.

Ms Gonzalez told the BBC that the work - which never represented more than 4% of the firm's business - was a contract she would not take again. Sama announced it would end it in January.

"You ask the question: 'Do I regret it?' Well, I would probably put it this way. If I knew what I know now, which included all of the opportunity, energy it would take away from the core business I would have not entered [the agreement]."

She said there were "lessons learned" and the firm now had a policy not to take on work that included moderating harmful content. The company would also not do artificial intelligence (AI) work "that supports weapons of mass destruction or police surveillance".

Wendy Gonzales said "lessons" had been learned

Citing continuing litigation, Ms Gonzalez declined to answer if she believed the claims of employees who said they had been harmed by viewing graphic material. Asked if she believed moderation work could be harmful in general, she said it was "a new area that absolutely needs study and resources".

Stepping stone

Sama is an unusual outsourcing firm. From the beginning its avowed mission was to lift people out of poverty by providing digital skills and an income doing outsourced computing tasks for technology firms.

In 2018 the BBC visited the firm, watching employees from low-income parts of Nairobi earn $9 (£7) a day on "data annotation" - labelling objects in videos of driving, such as pedestrians and street lights, which would then be used to train artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Employees interviewed said the income had helped them escape poverty.

The company still works mainly on similar computer vision AI projects, that do not expose workers to harmful content, she says.

"I'm super proud of the fact that we've moved over 65,000 people out of poverty," Ms Gonzales said.

It's important, she believes, that African people are involved in the digital economy and the development of AI systems.

Throughout the interview Ms Gonzales reiterated that the decision to take the work was motivated by two considerations: that moderation was important, necessary work undertaken to prevent social media users from harm. And that it was important that African content was moderated by African teams.

"You cannot expect somebody from Sydney, India, or the Philippines to be able to effectively moderate local languages in Kenya or in South Africa or beyond," she said.

She also revealed that she had done the moderation work herself.

Moderators' pay at Sama began at around 90,000 Kenyan shillings ($630) per month, a good wage by Kenyan standards comparable to nurses, firemen and bank officers, Ms Gonzalez said.

Asked if she would do the work for that amount of money she said "I did do the moderation but that's not my job in the company".
Training AI

Sama also took on work with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

One employee, Richard Mathenge, whose job was to read through huge volumes of text the chatbot was learning from and flag anything harmful, spoke to the BBC's Panorama programme. He said he was exposed to disturbing content.

Sama said it cancelled the work when staff in Kenya raised concerns about requests relating to image-based material which was not in the contract. Ms Gonzalez said "we wrapped up this work immediately".

OpenAI said it has its own "ethical and wellness standards" for our data annotators and "recognises this is challenging work for our researchers and annotation workers in Kenya and around the world".

But Ms Gonzalez regards this type of AI work as another form of moderation, work that the company will not be doing again.

"We focus on non-harmful computer vision applications, like driver safety, and drones, and fruit detection and crop disease detection and things of that nature," she said.

"Africa needs a seat at the table when it comes to the development of AI. We don't want to continue to reinforce biases. We need to have people from all places in the world who are helping build this global technology."

UK
Wage surge raises prospect of further interest rate hike


Dearbail Jordan - Business reporter, BBC News
Tue, August 15, 2023

Office workers

Wages grew at a record annual pace in the April to June period, according to new official figures.

Regular pay rose by 7.8%, the highest annual growth rate since comparable records began in 2001.

The stronger-than-expected increase has fuelled forecasts the Bank of England will be forced to raise interest rates again to calm inflation.

Inflation - which measures the rate at which prices rise - has eased but remains high at 7.9%.

Darren Morgan, director of economic statistics at the Office for National Statistics, which released the wage and employment data, said the latest figures suggested real pay growth, which takes into account the rate of inflation, is "recovering".

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said there was "light at the end of the tunnel" for the millions struggling with the cost of living.

However, wage growth is not quite outstripping the pace of price rises. Mr Morgan told the BBC's Today programme that real pay growth was "still falling a little", dropping by 0.6%.

Labour's shadow work and pensions secretary Jonathan Ashworth said: "These figures confirm once again that the Tories are failing working people and businesses across Britain."

New inflation figures are due out on Wednesday and analysts expect them to show price growth slowed again during July to between 6.7% and 7%.

However, that remains far higher than the Bank of England's target to keep inflation at 2%. Stronger wages will stoke concerns that price rises will take longer to ease.

Sushil Wadhwani, a former member of the Bank's rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee, said financial markets were projecting that an interest rate rise at the next meeting in September was a "virtual certainty".

Markets are also forecasting that interest rates could now peak at 6% from 5.25% currently. Just a few days ago, rates were expected to peak at around 5.75%.

Mr Wadhwani, who serves on the chancellor's Economic Advisory Council, said: "The key thing is how much does the Bank need to encourage the process by raising interest rates further and I would argue that today's news is disappointing in the sense that it implies that the Bank has more work to do."

There are signs in the ONS's data that the UK jobs market is weakening. The unemployment rate rose from 4% to 4.2%, while the number of people in jobs ticked lower.

"The fall in employment in the three months to June and further rise in the unemployment rate will be welcomed by the Bank of England as a sign labour market conditions are cooling," said Ruth Gregory, deputy chief UK economist at Capital Economics.

However, she added, given that wage growth is still accelerating, she expects the Bank of England to increase its key interest rate again to 5.5%.

Commenting on another potential rise in interest rates, Mr Sunak said it was a matter for the Bank. But he added: "The best way to be able to bring interest rates down and stop them going up is to bring inflation down."

Chart showing wage growth and prices growth

Annual average pay growth in the private sector continued to outpace the public sector at 8.2%. Wages in the public sector grew at an annual pace of 6.2% between April and June.

The number of vacancies in the UK jobs market fell again, down 66,000 between May and July. However, there are still more than one million vacancies.

Finding enough people to fill vacancies is one of the biggest business barriers facing Candice Mason, the owner of Masons Minibus & Coach Hire in Hertfordshire.

"It is just dire," she told the Today programme. "It is not just me, it is every operator that I speak to, we just cannot recruit and staff our companies properly."

Ms Mason said the company had increased its wages to fill shifts left by employees who, following Covid lockdowns, decided they wanted a better work-life balance and therefore are working fewer days.

"But, of course, that created a bigger gap of needing to recruit anyway," she said. "It honestly has just been relentless since we came out of lockdown. It is the most difficult part of the business at the moment."
Triple lock

The wage figures are likely to intensify political debate over next year's rise in the state pension, which is governed by the so-called triple lock.

Government policy means the state pension rises the following April in line with either average wage growth, the inflation rate or 2.5% - whichever is higher.

It is based on wage growth between May and July, which the ONS will release next month. The inflation figure for August is also used to decide pension payments. This is released in September.

The latest set of figures signal that wage growth remains relatively high and rising. That is likely to prompt discussion over the potential increase in the state pension, and the allocation of government spending.

Pensioner groups say the state pension remains relatively low compared with some other countries.

The employment data also showed that the rate of those considered economically inactive edged lower to 20.9% between April and July.

Economically inactive people are those aged between 16 and 64 who are not looking for work.

Numbers swelled during the Covid pandemic. The ONS said on Tuesday that the number of people who were inactive because of long-term sickness had increased to a record high of 464,225.

But the overall rate dipped because more people shifted out of being economically inactive and into unemployment.

These are people who have been searching for work over the past four weeks or are available to start a job within the next fortnight.

An abandoned desert village an hour from Dubai offers a glimpse at the UAE's hardscrabble past

The Canadian Press
Tue, August 15, 2023 at 10:25 p.m. MDT·4 min rea


AL-MADAM, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Nestled in sand dunes an hour’s drive from the skyscrapers of Dubai, a desert village abandoned in the 1990s stands as an eerie relic of the rapid urbanization of the United Arab Emirates.

Built in the 1970s to house semi-nomadic Bedouin, the village of al-Ghuraifa was abandoned two decades later as oil wealth transformed the country into a global hub of commerce and tourism, home to the futuristic cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

In recent years, the ghost village near the town of al-Madam in the Sharjah emirate has become something of a tourist attraction, offering an escape from the concrete jungles of the coastal cities and a glimpse at the Emirates’ hardscrabble past.

The village, which comprises two rows of homes and a mosque, “can teach us a lot of the modern history of the UAE,” said Ahmad Sukkar, an assistant professor at the University of Sharjah who is part of a team researching the site.

It was built as part of a public housing project after the 1971 formation of the United Arab Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhdoms. The discovery of oil 13 years earlier was just starting to reshape the country.

The village housed around 100 members of the al-Ketbi tribe, Sukkar said. They were one of several Bedouin tribes that until then had led a semi-nomadic existence, raising animals, traveling among the desert oases and visiting Dubai and Abu Dhabi when they were small port towns reliant on fishing and pearl diving.

The modern cement houses, built to ease the transition to settled life, featured local flourishes. The interior walls were brightly colored, and some were adorned with mosaics. The homes also featured spaces where village elders could host local councils, known as “majalis” in Arabic. One house had wallpaper depicting a lush green landscape, a stark contrast to the monotonous sandscape outside.

It's unclear what exactly sparked the exodus just two decades after the homes were built.

In local lore, the residents were driven away by evil spirits, but Sukkar says it's more likely that they left to seek a better life in the UAE's fast-growing cities. The village had limited access to electricity and water, and was buffeted by sandstorms. Families would have also had to contend with a long commute across the desert to reach government jobs and schools in Dubai.

Nowadays the desert is slowly reclaiming the village. Drifts of sand have blown into the homes, and in some rooms, they obscure walls and nearly reach the ceiling. Only the mosque remains as it was, thanks to regular sweeping by maintenance workers from nearby Al-Madam.

Some descendants of the camel-mounted Bedouin who once plied the desert sands still reside in the Emirates' rural stretches, though many now live in cities with glimmering skyscrapers, cavernous, air-conditioned malls and a sprawling network of modern highways. Expatriates from all corners of the earth make up the vast majority of the UAE’s population, and some have taken an interest in its humbler past.

On a recent day, tour guides could be seen leading groups of visitors through the abandoned village. It’s also been the setting for music videos and social media posts featuring the foreign models, fancy cars and displays of opulence for which Dubai is now best known.

“I wonder why they left,” said Nitin Panchal, an Indian expatriate visiting the site. “Could it be a genie, could be black magic? We’ll never know.”

The municipality recently installed fencing around the perimeter, along with a security gate, garbage bins and a parking lot. Past visitors had left graffiti, scraped décor from the walls and climbed atop fragile roofs for photos.

The new measures have drained some of the mystery from the site and raised the prospect of it becoming yet another tourist attraction in a country filled with them.

Danny Booth, an expatriate from the Isle of Man, a British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, said he had decided to “come and have a look before things start to change here.”

“Sometimes these places are better left undisturbed, as they lose their charm when they become crowded,” he said.

Nick El Hajj, The Associated Press

Sand is piled in a house at the Bedouin village of al-Ghuraifabout 100 km, 62 miles, southeast of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, Sunday, July 9, 2023. Built-in the 1970s, the village was abandoned two decades later as oil wealth transformed the country into a global hub of commerce and tourism, home to the futuristic cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. 

(AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

OUTSOURCING

Tech company behind Kentucky school bus problems had similar issues in Ohio last year

The Canadian Press
Tue, August 15, 2023 



LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The company behind a disastrous change to a Kentucky city's school bus routes that resulted in more than a week of canceled classes had similar problems in two cities in neighboring Ohio last year.

Touting its connections to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, bus-routing vendor AlphaRoute pitched its mathematical models and machine-learning technology as a way of saving money and smoothing out complex bus routes in Louisville, Kentucky, and school districts across the U.S.

But real-world problems often got in the way.

Columbus began running new routes planned by AlphaRoute in fall 2022 after entering into a three-year, $1.6 million contract. But there were problems from the beginning. Most importantly, the district was not able to make adjustments quickly with the company’s software. It decided to pivot mid-year to the software it was previously using from another company, Versatrans, said district spokesperson Jacqueline Bryant.

Cincinnati Public Schools told The Associated Press in an email that it was under contract with AlphaRoute for less than one year, beginning in April 2022 at a cost of $150,000.

"AlphaRoute provided route analysis and made efficiency recommendations. CPS was not satisfied with the results and had to reroute and physically evaluate each stop,” according to the statement.

Several other districts listed as partners on the company’s website said they either no longer worked with AlphaRoute or never were its customers. The school district in Providence, Rhode Island, a listed partner, said it considered the company's proposal in 2021 but “went in another direction.”

AlphaRoute said in a Tuesday night written statement that it recognized the Kentucky school cancellations have been “terribly disruptive” and that it has had a team in Louisville helping to address them since Saturday.

“We at AlphaRoute have been working alongside the district to fix as many issues as possible as fast as possible, so that service is greatly improved when schools reopen on Friday,” it said.

In Louisville, the transportation changes recommended by AlphaRoute for Jefferson County Public Schools proved disastrous on the first day of school. Some students were not picked up in the morning while others did not arrive home until nearly 10 p.m.

The fiasco resulted in hungry and tired children, angry parents and exasperated politicians. Schools had to be closed to reevaluate the transportation plan, and students will have missed more than a week of school when they begin returning on Friday as part of a staggered reopening. The fallout has included a call from some state lawmakers to explore splitting up the state’s largest school district.

Like other districts, Jefferson County turned to AlphaRoute for ways to increase efficiency and cut the number of bus routes after a nationwide driver shortage left them scrambling for solutions to transport students. The company, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, uses computer algorithms to map out bus routes and stops.

In a March 2021 letter to Jefferson County seeking to justify its use as a single contractor, company co-founder and CEO John Hanlon outlined how his firm could solve some of the “daunting challenges” of a busing system he described as inefficient and one of the most complex in the country, with 65,000 daily bus riders.

Hanlon touted AlphaRoute as the only company capable of both rerouting buses and planning staggered school start times. Superintendent Marty Pollio championed the idea, saying the combination would allow for more efficient use of buses and let teenagers sleep longer so they could be more alert in school.

A researcher who studies automation bias — in which people are prone to overly trusting the abilities of automated systems, from factory robots to ChatGPT — said what happened in Louisville fits into a broader problem with the use of artificial intelligence technology.

Students having to walk long distances to bus stops early in the morning might have been “algorithmically correct” because it satisfied the objectives and constraints of the algorithm under Kentucky law, “but in reality parents would not want their kids walking that far at 6 a.m.,” said Aaron Schecter, a professor of information management systems at the University of Georgia.

Similarly, an algorithm might satisfy its goal of minimizing total routes, to lessen the number of drivers, at the expense of another criterion such as the time it takes to transport students. Schecter said machine-learning algorithms such as AlphaRoute’s are typically trying to optimize an objective and can overlook “worst case” harms even if the average result is satisfactory.

“The underlying principle here is that people were wooed by something that seemed sophisticated, and they trusted that AI would be a magic fix,” said Schecter, who hadn't evaluated the specific technology used.

AlphaRoute's Hanlon is the former chief operating officer of Boston Public Schools and has emphasized the company's origins as a partnership between MIT researchers and the school district.

In a 2019 scientific paper, a team lead by Dimitris Bertsimas, an MIT professor who is also a co-founder of AlphaRoute and its parent company, Dynamic Ideas LLC, said that using an algorithm for selecting the best school start times would empower Boston leaders “to make decisions based not on the political whims of special interest groups but on an objective standard agreed on by the community.”

News articles at the time said the researchers helped Boston cut 50 buses for a savings of $5 million, although transportation officials did have to vet and tweak the routes before they were used.

However, Boston only ever used routing software in a limited capacity and has no relationship with AlphaRoute today, district spokesperson Max Baker said.

In a follow-up paper in 2020, Bertsimas and his team acknowledged that Boston didn’t follow its recommendations for changed bell times and elaborated on a number of routing challenges, from the city’s meandering topography to the equity-minded policies tracing back to racial desegregation efforts of the 1970s. But it said the experiment led it to develop a new software system that it was showing to nearly 30 school districts across 17 states.

Nearly 500,000 school buses nationwide transport 25 million students, said Molly McGee-Hewitt, executive director with the National Association for Pupil Transportation. The driver shortage is a real problem, she said, but one that can be solved by offering competitive pay and benefits and reducing bureaucratic barriers to entry.

“You can’t have world-class schools without world-class infrastructure, and that includes transportation," she said.

Routing can be complicated, especially in districts that are transporting children across town to magnet schools, charter schools, special needs schools and even private schools, McGee-Hewitt said. Various software vendors have been successfully helping schools manage that challenge for years.

In a news conference Monday, Jefferson County Public School Superintendent Pollio said one significant deficiency was that the recommended routes weren’t accounting for the latest information. He said AlphaRoute gave the district the new routes earlier in the summer, but since then thousands of stops had been added as new students enrolled ahead of opening day or parents requested a different bus stop.

“When stops are added to routes, we did not properly add the time that was needed for a bus driver to complete that,” he said, explaining that those extra minutes were adding up.

“We had some room for error in our former schedule. We do not have room for error now,” he said.

In assessing fault for the opening day fiasco, Pollio has said he’s “not going to put it on the company. ... I said it from the very beginning, I take responsibility for it myself."

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Loller reported from Nashville, Tenn. AP Technology Writer O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

Travis Loller, Matt O'brien And Bruce Schreiner, The Associated Press