BILLY BARR'S GESTAPO 

Oregon to sue federal agencies over response to Portland protests

July 18 (UPI) -- Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said Saturday that the state will sue federal law enforcement agencies over their response to Black Lives Matter protests in Portland.

Rosenblum announced in a Twitter post that the lawsuit would be filed specifically in response to federal officers allegedly seizing and detaining residents without probable cause and excessive force. The agencies named included U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Protection Service.

Nightly protests against police violence have attracted hundreds to sometimes thousands in Portland for more than six weeks in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day.

Since at least Tuesday, federal officers have been using unmarked vehicles to grab protesters off the streets and detain them with little explanation of why they are being arrested in an apparent escalation of federal force, witnesses told Oregon Public Broadcasting reported

"I share the concerns of our state and local leaders -- and our Oregon U.S. senators and certain congressional representatives -- that the current escalation of fear and violence in downtown Portland is being driven by federal law enforcement tactics that are entirely unnecessary and out of character with the Oregon way," Rosenblum said in a statement.

"These tactics must stop. They not only make it impossible for people to assert their First Amendment rights to protest peacefully. They also create a more volatile situation on our streets."

Last week police shot a Portland protester in the head with an impact munition causing serious injuries, OregonLive reported.

Rosenblum announced a state criminal investigation with the Multnomah County District Attorney into the injury. She blamed the incident on a federal police officer.

"The federal administration has chosen Portland to use their scare tactics to stop our residents from protesting police brutality and from supporting the Black Lives Matter movement. Every American should be repulsed when they see this happening. If this can happen in Portland, it can happen anywhere," Rosenblum said.

Tensions between the city of Portland and federal agencies heated up after Acting Secretary Chad Wolf of the Department of Homeland Security arrived downtown on Thursday afternoon, KOIN reported. Federal officers deployed tear gas outside the federal courthouse after protesters stood their ground late Thursday night when they were told to disperse. By the end of the night, 20 people were arrested.

CBP said it arrested "violent anarchists" over the past several weeks, accusing them of damaging and destroying federal property.

CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan tweeted that his agency "will continue to arrest the violent criminals that are destroying federal property and injuring our agents/officers in Portland."

"CBP will restore and maintain law and order."

Two separate marches were scheduled that night, one a "fight for Black Lives," by the PNW Youth Liberation Front against "the rise of fascism and hate in America," according to Radical Guide website. The other a "March for Black Education," which according to the PDX Black Lives Matter Events was to bring awareness to the lack of black representation in Portland Public Schools and the treatment of Black, Indigenous, and people of color students and faculty.

The total number of arrests since federal officers came to Portland has not been disclosed.

Last week federal officers arrested a protester for vandalizing a federal courthouse. According to a series of Portland police tweets, federal officers also arrested two other people for unlawfully pointing lasers into federal officers' eyes and another person for breaking a hole in the door of the federal courthouse with a hammer and striking one of the federal officers who responded to the scene in the head and shoulder with a hammer.


“Flat-Out Unconstitutional”: Federal Officers In Unmarked Vans Are Snatching People Off The Streets In Portland

“They're snatching people and asking questions later," said one resident.

Craig SilvermanBuzzFeed News Reporter


Last updated on July 17, 2020

@KohzKah / Twitter / Via Twitter: @KohzKah

Protesters in Portland, Oregon, say federal officers deployed by President Donald Trump are increasing tensions and violating civil rights by roaming the streets in unmarked vans and detaining people without probable cause.

Videos and witness accounts detail how armed officers outfitted in camouflage and lacking identifying information on their uniforms are snatching people off the street. One viral video shared on July 15 shows two men in fatigues exiting an unmarked van, grabbing a person by their arms, and escorting them to a vehicle. The officers remained silent as bystanders asked who they were and what they were doing.


The Sparrow Project@sparrowmedia
Militarized Federal Agents from a patchwork of outside agencies have begun policing Portland (in rented minivans vans) without the explicit approval of the mayor, the state, or local municipalities. This is what that looks like in practice:04:22 PM - 15 Jul 2020
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The identity of the person detained in that video is unknown, but Portland resident Mark Pettibone told Oregon Public Broadcasting he was detained on July 15 by a group of federal officers. He said they grabbed him off the street for no reason, placed him in an unmarked van, and used his hat to cover his eyes while he was transported to a federal courthouse.

“I just happened to be wearing black on a sidewalk in downtown Portland at the time,” Pettibone said. “And that apparently is grounds for detaining me.”

Juniper Simonis, a quantitative ecologist who volunteers as a medic at protests, told BuzzFeed News that federal officers forcibly took them into custody and separated them from their service dog for using chalk on the sidewalk in front of a federal building on July 10. Simonis said they were sprayed with OC gas, a form of pepper spray, at close range.

“They jumped me and assaulted me without any legal or verbal communication to me about being under arrest, or telling me to stop,” said Simonis, a trans woman who uses "they"/"them" pronouns. “They're snatching people and asking questions later.”

On Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Oregon sued the Department of Homeland Security and US Marshals Service in what it said was "one "many [lawsuits] the ACLU will be filing against federal authorities in Portland for their unconstitutional attacks on people protesting the police killing of George Floyd."

The ACLU added DHS and US Marshals Service to a lawsuit that had already been filed against local law enforcement agencies, where a federal judge had already issued an order blocking local officials from dispersing, arresting, or using force against reporters and legal observers until Oct. 30.

"What is happening in Portland is an unconstitutional nightmare," Vera Eidelman, staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project said in a statement. "The ACLU will not let the government respond to protests against police brutality with still more brutality."

The ACLU's motion filed Friday looks to add the federal agencies to the judge's order.

Although the motion specifically mentions federal agents' actions against journalists and legal observers, and does not mention arrests of protesters, it is the first attempt to legally block federal agents' actions on the ground in Portland.

Juniper Simonis is arrested.

A task force — including officers from the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the US Marshals Service — was deployed to Portland in early July after Trump issued an executive order about protecting national landmarks. But rather than remaining on federal property to protect statues and memorials, federal officers have at times engaged peaceful protesters and citizens with “less lethal” munitions and have been documented driving around and detaining people on city streets.

“Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street we call it kidnapping,” Jann Carson, interim executive director of the ACLU of Oregon, said in a statement. “The actions of the militarized federal officers are flat-out unconstitutional and will not go unanswered.”

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown called the deployment of federal officers a “blatant abuse of power.” The use of federal officers has also been condemned by the mayor of Portland, both of Oregon’s US senators, the Portland Police Bureau, and the local sheriff.

Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, along with two other members of Congress, sent a letter to acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Attorney General Bill Barr requesting information about the deployment and a July 11 incident when a member of the US Marshals Service hit a peaceful protester in the head with an impact munition, fracturing his skull and requiring surgery.

“A peaceful protester in Portland was shot in the head by one of Donald Trump’s secret police,” Wyden tweeted. “Now Trump and Chad Wolf are weaponizing the DHS as their own occupying army to provoke violence on the streets of my hometown because they think it plays well with right-wing media.”

On Friday, the US attorney in Oregon called on the DHS's Office of the Inspector General to look into reports that protesters were detained without probable cause.

Wolf arrived in Portland this week amid the criticism.

“The city of Portland has been under siege for 47 straight days by a violent mob while local political leaders refuse to restore order to protect their city,” he said in a DHS news release on Thursday. “Each night, lawless anarchists destroy and desecrate property, including the federal courthouse, and attack the brave law enforcement officers protecting it.”

DHS released a list of 90 examples of what it called “lawless destruction and violence” in Portland dating back to May 29. Roughly a quarter of the incidents listed involved vandalism, graffiti, or trespassing. Eleven of the listed incidents resulted in arrests. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that federal officials have so far charged 13 people related to the protests.

In response to criticism that federal officers in Portland are not identifying themselves, Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, tweeted, “You will not see names on their uniforms b/c these same violent criminals use this information to target them & their families, putting both at risk.” Law enforcement officers are generally not required by law to identify themselves, according to Lawfare.

Benjamin Haas, the advocacy counsel at Human Rights First and a former Army intelligence officer, told BuzzFeed News the deployment of militarized federal officers in a US city is alarming.

“These law enforcement officers look more like the special operations forces I supported as an Army intelligence officer in Afghanistan than civilian police who are supposed to serve and protect American communities,” Haas said.

He added that the federal officers in Portland are “blurring the line between the military and law enforcement, [which] is unhealthy for democracy and American communities.”

After being grabbed off the street and brought to a federal courthouse, Pettibone said he was released without charges after he kept asking for a lawyer. DHS has not commented publicly on Pettibone’s arrest.

Simonis said they were also brought to the Portland federal courthouse after being arrested in front of the Edith Green–Wendell Wyatt Federal Building. After Simonis said they were detained for roughly eight hours and denied a phone call or access to a lawyer, they were released and issued two federal tickets for petty offenses.

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the arrest of Simonis.

Simonis said it’s possible other people are being detained and kept for longer periods without the ability to contact a lawyer.

“We know that there are people getting snatched off the streets, but we only know the stories of the people who have made it out,” they said.

Craig Silverman is a media editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in Toronto.

Coronavirus crisis could lead to wildlife ranger jobs being cut and a 'poaching pandemic', warn leading conservationists
We are protecting wildlife at risk from poachers due to the conservation funding crisis caused by COVID-19. Help is desperately needed to support wildlife rangers, local communities and law enforcement personnel to prevent wildlife crime. Donate to help Stop the Illegal Wildlife Trade HERE

Emma Ledger
2 days ago

Beverly Joubert

Covid-19 risks creating a funding crisis that could lead to wildlife ranger jobs being cut and a ‘poaching pandemic’, leading conservationists have told The Independent.

Many conservation organisations have seen revenue plummet as a result of the economic crisis caused by the virus.

With few government support schemes available, a reduction in ranger numbers would risk more animals been killed, fuelling the illegal trade in wildlife.



The Covid-19 conservation crisis has shown the urgency of The Independent’s Stop The Illegal Wildlife Trade campaign, which seeks an international effort to clamp down on illegal trade of wild animals

Dereck and Beverly Joubert, the founders of Great Plains Conservation, told The Independent that “the situation is unravelling” and “we need rangers now more than ever”.

“There were about 40,000 rangers across Africa before Covid-19,” Dereck said. “But reports suggest that this figure will be cut by between 40-50 per cent.

“Without rangers we risk returning to the high poaching levels that many countries suffered decades ago.”

In response, they have set up an emergency intervention called Project Ranger to identify areas most urgently in need.

They will work with local, on-the-ground partners to support rangers and anti-poaching personnel to keep animals safe if critical gaps in the anti-poaching operations emerge in Africa’s protected areas.

Project Ranger is an emergency intervention to protect frontline staff set up by Dereck and Beverly Joubert

This week The Independent revealed the potential scale of the conservation crisis caused by the pandemic as tourism revenues plummet, which in turn risks impacting on the livelihoods of hundreds of rangers.

It shows the urgency of our Stop The Illegal Wildlife Trade campaign, which was launched by The Independent's largest shareholder Evgeny Lebedev to call for an international effort to clamp down on the illegal trade of wild animals, which remains one of the greatest threats to future biodiversity.

Funds raised will to pay for vital wildlife protection projects implemented by the campaign’s partner charity Space for Giants. This will work to help stop the poaching and illegal trafficking of animals.

Guy Disney, Frontline Protection Technical Advisor for Space for Giants, said: “The illegal wildlife trade operates across national borders, so to disrupt it most effectively, our approach is to work with organisations that also collaborate across borders to allow threats to wildlife minimised.”

Targeted patrols have helped contribute to a drop in elephant poaching of 90% where Space for Giants operates in Kenya. However such successes rely on pre-Covid levels of ranger protection - if not more.

At the start of April, 10 of the 35 anti-poaching personnel who protect Tanzania’s Enduimet Wildlife Management Area were told they were out of a job.

Safeguarding the 450-square mile area for the remaining workers means harder work, with extra distances to patrol each day. New restrictions to prevent the spread of Covid and to keep them safe - such as time-consuming hygiene measures - have made their jobs harder.

National governments and conservation NGOs have worked throughout the crisis to maintain deploying wildlife rangers and surveillance teams across Africa.
Wildlife hotspots devoid of the usual level of surveillance would allow both subsistence poachers and criminal networks to encroach on land that might ordinarily be avoided, killing even more animals and flooding the wildlife trade market.

Sport Beattie, Founder and CEO of Game Rangers International, trains and manages more than 100 rangers in Zambia. He said “Conservationists across the continent are extremely concerned that wildlife crime could potentially spread as fast as the virus, if left unchecked. None of us knows what the future looks like.”

More than 1,000 rangers have died in the line of duty in the past decade, testament to the threat faced in their struggle against the illegal wildlife trade.

Kaddu Sebunya, CEO of African Wildlife Foundation, said that as incidences of poaching increase so too does the risk to rangers. He said: “We're hearing about more clashes between poachers and security officers, which have resulted in deaths.”

MORE ABOUT:
STOP THE WILDLIFE TRADE | COVID-19 | CORONAVIRUS | RANGERS | STOP THE ILLEGAL WILDLIFE TRADE


Coronavirus, and the economic havoc it has wreaked, is causing a global conservation crisis


We are protecting wildlife at risk from poachers due to the conservation funding crisis caused by Covid-19. Help is desperately needed to support wildlife rangers, local communities and law enforcement personnel to prevent wildlife crime. Donate to help Stop The Illegal Wildlife Trade HERE

Evgeny Lebedev @mrevgenylebedev
3 days ago

A few years ago, I had the honour of meeting the world’s most eligible bachelor. Sudan was a hulking great rhinoceros, protected by the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya. I remember stroking the gentle giant, struggling with the fact that this was the last male northern white rhino on the planet. Two years ago he died, thus making this subspecies extinct.

As Covid-19 wreaks havoc on public health and the world economy, a new conservation crisis has gone unnoticed. Since March of this year, it is feared that 10 per cent of Botswana’s rhinos lie dead.

Niger has uncovered a “massacre” of gazelles in a nature reserve. And Uganda is seeing an unprecedented rise in snare traps, designed to trap large mammals like rhinos and elephants.

In Asia, the problem is equally grave. India has seen a doubling of leopard poaching. Nepalese musk deer are threatened, and wildlife ecosystems across South Asia are coming under new stresses.

Watch more

Can social media be weaponised against the illegal wildlife trade?

In Russia, wildfires are raging across the Siberian tundra, destroying acres of animal habitat. The long-running battle to save the Amur leopard – of which there remains an adult population of just 90 individuals, according to WWF – is a particular source of concern for me during this crisis.

Ignore it as we may, the human and natural worlds are intimately linked. This coronavirus-induced conservation crisis stems from the global economic crash caused by the virus, the effects of which we will likely experience for many years. On the ground, a collapse in tourism threatens to enfeeble the ability of national parks and local conservation groups to protect wildlife. A fall in funding for NGOs has left them worrying how to support the vital work of rangers and national park sites.

Just last week, the head of one world-renowned wildlife NGO admitted to me in private that his organisation’s funding was in tatters, and its conservation and research work across the world may not be able to continue.

The coronavirus has forced governments in Africa and South Asia particularly to refocus their attention, not on long-term environmental and ecological targets, but on immediate welfare programmes for their people. In Africa especially, governments commendably enforced strict lockdowns that have so far spared the continent the brunt of the coronavirus crisis – but this has caused major economic damage to what in many cases were already among the world’s weakest economies.

The bottom line is that people are suffering, many are falling back into poverty and many more are hungry. Illegal poaching, deforestation and the taking of animal parts are shooting up – of this much we are certain.
Watch more

Banning wildlife markets will help protect us from the next pandemic

What we cannot currently know is the extent of the damage. Many of these areas, in sub-Saharan Africa particularly, are out of bounds and inaccessible during this time. We need to have experts on the ground to assess the damage and help those at risk of absolute poverty to secure their livelihoods.

When I launched our Stop The Illegal Wildlife Trade campaign in The Independent and Evening Standard, we knew that the natural world was under threat. We did not know the extent of the damage. This is only now becoming clear.

That is why our campaign is so urgent. Through zoonotic transfer via a pangolin, the coronavirus emerged from the illegal wildlife trade, as did Sars and countless other diseases. We are campaigning alongside the conservation charity Space for Giants to gather the resources to protect wildlife. And we want our campaign to play a part in showing readers why this issue is among the most serious crises facing humanity at present.

After Covid-19, we can no longer pretend that what happens in the natural world is cordoned off from our world, or our lives. I hope you, the readers, will join us in this fight to prevent more species following the fate of Sudan. Our campaign to end the illegal wildlife trade aims to protect nature, but in doing so we are also protecting our own future.

Evgeny Lebedev is a shareholder of The Independent and the Evening Standard

KAPITALISM IS TOXIC 

Orange 'acid streams' filmed flowing near abandoned mine in Russia

Incident comes just weeks after Kremlin announces states of emergency over massive fuel leak

Tom Embury-Dennis  JULY 18,2020

Orange-coloured rivers fan out over forested landscape near village of Lyovikha in the Urals ( Getty Images )

Footage has emerged of streams running orange near a disused copper-sulphide mine in Russia's Ural mountain range.

Drone footage uploaded by an Instagram travel blogger last week shows a landscape scarred by the apparent wastewater near the village of Lyovikha in western Siberia.


Russian prosecutors said they are inspecting a facility that is supposed to treat acid runoff from the abandoned mine, according to AFP.

"Since 2004, a copper pyrite mine has been abandoned there. It turned out to be flooded and now acidic rivers flow from there," the blogger, Sergey Zamkadniy, wrote on Instagram.

The waste was meant to be kept inside ponds and treated, but heavy rains have caused them to overflow.

NOT UNLIKE THE GOLD MINE IN THE USA THE EPA FLOODED AND ALLOWED TOXINS TO POLLUTE A MAJOR RIVERWAY....JUST SAYING....

TRIFECTA Read more
Siberia’s record heatwave forecast to continue, as wildfires rage
Putin announces state of emergency after massive fuel leak in Arctic

Russia responds to coronavirus vaccine hacking claims

After a local environmentalist reported the issue to authorities last year, he claimed he was told the company tasked with tackling the run-off had inadequate funds to buy enough lime to neutralise the acid.

A spokeswoman for local prosecutors said experts would take samples from the area to find out if treatment of the "acidic water" was in line with the rules.

The probe comes just weeks after the Kremlin was forced to announce a state of emergency in Siberia after a massive fuel leak left two rivers with a bloody red tinge.

Tens of thousands of tonnes of diesel is understood to have leaked from a local power plant, affecting more than 1000,000 sq metres of land in the region.

Lockdown hasn’t stopped Milton Keynes’ delivery robots

From dispatching food, to ferrying medicine, these mini machines are becoming a vital service amid the pandemic, write Cade Metz and Erin Griffith

Wednesday 3 June 2020

The sudden usefulness of the robots to people staying in their homes is a tantalising hint of what the machines could one day accomplish ( Getty )

If any place was prepared for quarantine, it was Milton Keynes. Two years before the pandemic, a startup called Starship Technologies deployed a fleet of rolling delivery robots in the small city about 50 miles northwest of London.

The squat six-wheeled robots shuttle groceries and dinner orders to homes and offices. As the coronavirus spread, Starship shifted the fleet even further into grocery deliveries. Locals like Emma Maslin can buy from the corner store with no human contact.

“There’s no social interaction with a robot,” Maslin says.

The sudden usefulness of the robots to people staying in their homes is a tantalising hint of what the machines can one day accomplish – at least under ideal conditions. Milton Keynes, with a population of 270,000 and a vast network of bicycle paths, is perfectly suited to rolling robots. Demand has been so high in recent weeks that some residents have spent days trying to schedule a delivery.

In recent years, companies from Silicon Valley to Somerville, Massachusetts, have poured billions of dollars into the development of everything from self-driving cars to warehouse robots. The technology is rapidly improving. Robots can help with deliveries, transportation, recycling, manufacturing.

Watch more

Amazon rolls out new delivery robot called Scout

But even simple tasks like robotic delivery still face technical and logistical hurdles. The robots in Milton Keynes, for example, can carry no more than two bags of groceries.

“You can’t do a big shop,” Maslin says. “They aren’t delivering from the superstores.”

A pandemic may add to demand but does not change what you can deploy, says Elliot Katz, who helps run Phantom Auto, a start-up that helps companies remotely control autonomous vehicles when they encounter situations they cannot navigate on their own.

“There is a limit to what a delivery bot can bring to a human,” Katz says. “But you have to start somewhere.”

Industry veterans know this well. Gabe Sibley, an engineer and a professor who previously worked with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, started Zippy for sidewalk deliveries in 2017. But the San Francisco company quickly ran into challenges. The robots can move only at the pace of walking, around 1mph. That severely limits the delivery area, particularly for hot food, Sibley says.

The company never deployed any robots, selling in 2018.

“In this country, where we designed our cities around the car, the solution to sidewalk delivery is to use the roads,” Sibley says.

Founded in 2014 and backed by more than $80m (£63m), Starship Technologies is based in San Francisco. It has deployed most of its robots on college campuses around the US. Equipped with cameras, radar and other sensors, they navigate by matching their surroundings to digital maps built by the company in each location.

Currently, machines are not able to hold much (Reuters)

The company chose Milton Keynes for a wider deployment in part because the robots can navigate it with relative ease. Built after the Second World War, the city was carefully planned, with most streets laid out in a grid and bicycle and pedestrian paths, called “redways”, running beside them.

When the Starship robots first arrived in Milton Keynes, Liss Page thought they were cute but pointless. “The first time I met one, it was stuck on the curb outside my house,” she says.

Then, in early April, she opened a letter from the NHS advising her not to leave the house because her asthma and other conditions made her particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus. In the weeks that followed, the robots provided a much-needed connection to the outside world.

It just seemed like a vanity project before. The pandemic has given them a platform to launch a real business

Smaller deliveries suit Page because she lives alone. A vegan, she can order nut milk and margarine straight to her door. But like the grocery vans that deliver larger orders across the city, the Starship robots are ultimately limited by what is on the shelves.

“You pad out the order with things you don’t really need to make the delivery charge worthwhile,” Page says. “With the last delivery, all I got were the things I didn’t really need.”

Residents like Page set deliveries through a smartphone app. They typically pay £1 for each delivery, but in Milton Keynes, Starship has raised the price to as much as £2 during the busiest times in an effort to spread demand across the day.


The robots deliver groceries to doctors, nurses and other employees of the NHS for free. They even join the Thursday night tribute to the NHS, blinking their headlights as residents clap and cheer from their doorsteps. The fleet of 80 robots will soon expand to 100.
There is the potential for the robots to become a viable business (Getty)

Though this may be the most extensive deployment of delivery robots in the world, others have popped up in recent years. In Christiansburg, Virginia, Paul and Susie Sensmeier can arrange drugstore and bakery deliveries via flying drone. Wing, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has been offering drone deliveries in the area since the fall.

They can order penne pasta, marinara sauce and toilet paper. But they can’t order prescription medicines via Wing – the drones are stocked at a Wing warehouse, not at a drugstore – and like the robots in Milton Keynes, the drones can carry only so much.


“I can only get two muffins or two croissants,” Susie Sensmeier, 81, says.

Companies like Wing and Starship hope they can expand these services and refine their skills. Now there is new impetus.

“Overnight, delivery has gone from a convenience to a vital service,” says Starship’s chief executive, Lex Bayer. “Our fleets are driving nonstop, 14 hours a day.”

In Milton Keynes, Starship has gradually expanded the reach of its service, doubling its fleet and teaming up with several new grocery stores. It recently started at a service in Chevy Chase, Maryland, not far from Washington.


Page, a business analyst who has lived in Milton Keynes for more than 25 years, believes the service can become a viable business.

“It just seemed like a vanity project before,” she says. “The pandemic has given them a platform to launch a real business.”

Companies have poured billions into the sector (Reuters)

But as much as the pandemic has lifted startups like Starship, it has also hurt them. Many of the college campuses where Starship deployed its robots have shut down. Though the company has worked to shift those robots to nearby locations, it has been forced to lay off employees and contractors. Janel Steinberg, a company spokesperson, says the cuts were “primarily about rebalancing our workforce to adapt to the demand in different locations”.

Read more
Delivery robot bursts in flames after ‘human error’

Food delivery robots will soon take to the streets of London

Domino’s set to introduce pizza delivery robots in New Zealand

Nuro, a startup in Silicon Valley, has long promised larger robots that can drive on public roads. But it has not yet deployed these robots, and like most self-driving car companies, Nuro has been forced to curtail its testing. Rather than making deliveries, its robots are shuttling supplies across an old basketball stadium in Sacramento that has been converted into a temporary hospital.

Sidewalk robots and flying drones also require human help. Starship and similar companies must monitor the progress of each robot from afar, and if anything goes wrong, remote operators take over. With social distancing, that has become more difficult. Remote operators who once worked in call centres have moved into their homes.

Katz’s company, Phantom Auto, is now helping companies make the transition. “This is a very, very difficult problem to solve,” Katz says. “We are in the autonomy-doesn’t-quite-work-yet business.”

© The New York Times

AMAZON ROLLS OUT NEW DELIVERY ROBOT CALLED SCOUT


An Amazon employee will accompany the autonomous machines at first to ensure they can safely navigate around pedestrians and pets

Anthony Cuthbertson

Thursday 24 January 2019

Amazon has launched a new robot delivery service in the US using a six wheeled machine that is "the size of a small cooler".

The Amazon Scout uses self-driving technology to navigate through neighbourhoods to deliver packages to Amazon Prime customers, though its initial roll out is limited.

The first deliveries are taking place in Snohomish County, just to the north of Amazon's headquarters in Seattle, Washington.

Deliveries will be limited to daylight hours between Monday and Friday amd only six of the Scout delivery robots will be deployed at first.

Each will also be accompanied by an Amazon employee to ensure they can safely navigate around any pedestrians or pets it might come across.

Inside the Amazon Fulfilment Centres
Show all 15

YOU CAN CALL THEM WHAT YOU WANT BUT THEY ARE

STILL WAREHOUSES.

Sean Scott, vice president of Amazon Scout, said the Scout robot will be part of a growing number of delivery solutions for the online retail giant.

"We are happy to welcome Amazon Scout to our growing suite of innovative delivery solutions for customers and look forward to taking the learnings from this first neighborhood so Amazon Scout can, over time, provide even more sustainability and convenience to customer deliveries," Mr Scott said.

Snohomish County executive Dave Somers added: “We are delighted to welcome Amazon Scout into our community. Similar to Amazon, we are always looking for new ways to better deliver service to our residents.”

The Scout robot is being tested near Amazon's Seattle headquarters (Amazon)

Other delivery methods Amazon is currently working on include autonomous drones, which are already being tested in the UK.

It is hoped such technologies will dramatically reduce delivery times, with the first Prime Air delivery in 2016 dropping off a package within 13 minutes of being ordered.


"It looks like science fiction, but it's real," Amazon said at the time. "One day, seeing Prime Air vehicles will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road."

Amazon is yet to reveal if and when the Scout robot or Prime Air will be introduced to customers on a wider scale.

'Like teleporting your consciousness': Could Japanese robots be the answer to loneliness while social distancing

In a time of social distancing, robots could be just what the doctor ordered, write Simon Denyer, Akiko Kashiwagi and Min Joo Kim

Students practise dance moves with a robot at Wooam Elementary School in Seoul ( Photography by The Washington Post )

As the coronavirus pandemic rewrites the rules of human interaction, it also has inspired new thinking about how robots and other machines might step in.

The stuff of the bot world – early factory-line automation up to today’s artificial intelligence – has been a growing fact of life for decades. The worldwide health crisis has added urgency to the question of how to bring robotics into the public health equation.

Nowhere is that truer than in Japan, a country with a long fascination with robots, from android assistants to robot receptionists. Since the virus arrived, robots have offered their services as bartenders, security guards and deliverymen.

Read more

Lockdown hasn’t stopped Milton Keynes’ delivery robots

But they don’t necessarily need to supplant humans, researchers say. They can also bridge the gap between people mindful of social distance – now or when the next major contagion hits.

Want to drop in on your elderly parents but are afraid of passing on a coronavirus infection? Maybe you’re missing your grandchildren, and finding Zoom chats a little limiting?

Ideas are brewing.

Hugging the bot

The Newme robot developed by Japanese company Avatarin is basically a tablet computer on a stand, with wheels. The user controls the avatar from a laptop or tablet, and his or her face shows on the avatar’s screen.

“It’s really like teleporting your consciousness,” says founder and CEO Akira Fukabori. “You are really present.” 

Akira Fukabori demonstrates his company's Newme robot avatar (The Washington Post/Simon Denyer)

Already available commercially, Avatarin’s robots have been used by doctors to interact with patients in a Japanese coronavirus ward; by university students in Tokyo to “attend” a graduation ceremony; and by fans of the Yomiuri Giants baseball team to remotely interview their favourite players after games held in empty stadiums.

There are even avatar robots that have just arrived at the International Space Station.

But it’s the way the robot is already being used by families separated by the coronavirus that really underscores the heart of the technology – starting with the family of the company’s chief operating officer, Kevin Kajitani, whose parents live in Seattle.

“His parents can’t always come and visit their grandson,” Fukabori says. “But they always access the avatar, and can even chase their grandson. And the grandson really hugs the robot.”

Avatarin is part of Japan’s ANA airline group, and the company has joined with the X Prize Foundation to launch a $10m (£8m), four-year contest for companies to create more complex robots that could further develop the avatar concept.

“You need to move,” Fukabori says. “This is really important, because we forget the freedom of this mobility. You can just walk around, and people will talk to you about really, really natural things. That creates human trust. That isn’t as easy in Webex or Zoom, where if you don’t know each other it’s really hard to keep talking.”

Work is underway on prototypes that allow users to control a remote robot through virtual reality headsets and gloves that allow the wearer to pick up, hold, touch and feel an object with a distant robotic hand, with potential uses ranging from space exploration to disaster relief or elderly care.

While robots can sometimes seem disturbing and alien to westerners, they are seen in a more welcoming light by many Japanese people

But Fukabori says the cheaper, lightweight avatars offer more immediate and affordable uses. What sets this project apart from existing avatar robots, the company says, is the ability for users to access the robots easily from a laptop, by renting them out rather than having to buy them.

Avatarin hopes to install the avatars in more hospitals and in elderly-care centres, shops, museums, zoos and aquariums. The company also aims to have 1,000 in place for next year’s Tokyo Olympics.

Cleaning patrol

In Tokyo, robotics lab ZMP has been developing three small bots to help compensate for Japan’s shrinking workforce, employing the same technology as self-driving cars.

A delivery robot aims to transport goods ordered online from local warehouses to customers’ doors; a patrol robot, with six cameras, does the job of a security guard; a self-driving wheelchair can be programmed to take users to specific destinations. The wheelchair is already available and approved for use on Tokyo streets. The others still await official permission to venture out alone in public.

Now, the patrol robot has been adapted so it can also disinfect surfaces as it patrols, and is attracting interest from Tokyo’s Metro stations as well as other businesses.

In May, prime minister Shinzo Abe noted surging demand for unmanned deliveries and pledged to carry out tests to see if delivery robots were safe to use on roads and sidewalks by the end of the year.


Even the self-driving wheelchair can come into its own amid a coronavirus-filled world, the company says, potentially helping elderly people move around more independently without a helper who might be a vector for the virus.
A robotic bartender makes coffee and mixes drinks at the offices of Qbit Robotics in Tokyo (The Washington Post/Simon Denyer)

“Before corona, most customers wanted to reduce workers,” says Hisashi Taniguchi, ZMP’s chief executive. “But after corona, our customers changed drastically. Now, they want to accelerate unmanned systems.”

Bot bartender

Qbit Robotics, also in Tokyo, has programmed a robotic arm and hand to interact with customers and serve them coffee, mix cocktails or even serve a simple cup of instant pasta.


President and chief executive Hiroya Nakano says he aims not to replace human interaction but to supply robots that can communicate and entertain in a “friendly” way.

While robots can sometimes seem disturbing and alien to westerners, they are seen in a more welcoming light by many Japanese people, Nakano says.

“Until now, expectations have been high for what robots can do in the future, but they haven’t been able to do what humans do,” he says. “But now we are living with the coronavirus, the idea of no contact or automation has become especially important. And I feel there is an extremely high expectation for robots to meet that demand.”


And one can dance, too

In South Korea, a Chinese-made robot is already greeting children in Seoul’s schools as they reopen.

The Cruzr, with eyes that beam a neon-blue light and a video screen on its chest, takes kids’ temperatures and reminds them to follow anti-virus rules.

“Please wear your mask properly,” the robot tells a student at Wooam Elementary School whose mask wasn’t covering his nose.


Chinese robot maker UBTech launched Cruzr in 2017 as a humanoid service robot for businesses, but the pandemic has given it added value as a personal assistant free from infection risks.

It is also being used by medical institutions for mass temperature screening, patient monitoring and medical record-keeping, helping overwhelmed medical workers.
Three robots developed by ZMP are seen in the company’s office lobby in Tokyo (The Washington Post/Simon Denyer)

In June, Seoul’s Seocho district government deployed Cruzr robots to the district’s 51 public schools, helping reduce the burden on overworked teachers.


Before the robot came to school, teachers had taken kids’ temperatures as they arrived, creating long lines and raising infection risks from human contact. Now, the robot checks the temperature of multiple students as they walk by and immediately sounds an alarm if anyone has a fever.

“At first, students were ill at ease with the robot greeting them at the school gate, but in a matter of weeks, students have embraced it as part of the school community,” says Yoo Jung-ho, the head of Wooam’s science department.
But this robot is actually the same height as I am and also displays goofy dance moves, and I realised I can befriend him and share a fun time

At the school, students wave towards the robot at the gate as they walk into the school, and nod in agreement when it reminds them about the mask rules.


The robot can also provide basic academic help and entertain students by teaching them simple dance moves.

“Of course, robots can’t replace teachers at classrooms yet, but there is significant and rising potential for ‘contactless’ teaching with the pandemic,” Yoo says.

Nine-year-old Lee Hye-rin says she “befriended” the robot after they danced together.

“When I first saw the robot standing in place of our teachers greeting us at the entrance, I found it cold and disorienting,” she says. “But this robot is actually the same height as I am and also displays goofy dance moves, and I realised I can befriend him and share a fun time.”

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But Lee feels the robot is not so friendly when it orders her to wear her mask properly.

“If I fail to follow the mask rule, my teacher’s warning will be followed with a smile telling me to behave better in the future, but the robot doesn’t smile when it warns me about the mask,” she says.

© The Washington Post

How robots are increasing the gender pay gap

'There is a growing body of evidence that automation is disproportionately impacting women, with the overwhelming majority of high paid, high-tech jobs taken up by men,' says researcher

Maya Oppenheim Women's Corresponden

Researchers at King’s College London and London School of Economics discovered introducing robots into the workplace has had a 'sizeable' detrimental effect on the gender pay gap in Europe ( AFP/Getty )

Robots are increasing the gender pay gap because women are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of automation, a study has found.

Researchers at King’s College London and the London School of Economics say the use of robots in the workplace has had a “sizeable” detrimental impact on the gender pay gap in Europe.

The study found that for every 10 per cent increase in the number of robots being used by a company, there was a 1.8 per cent increase in the conditional pay gap between male and female workers.



But researchers did find both men and women saw their pay increase overall due to automation. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) defines automation as tasks currently performed by workers being replaced with technology – potentially involving computer programmes, algorithms, or robots.

Dr Cevat Giray Aksoy, one of the report’s authors, said: “At a time when policymakers are putting increased efforts into tackling gender gaps in the labour market, our evidence is important.

“Our results suggest that governments not only need to ensure that education and vocational training systems provide people with the right skills demanded in the future, but also need to pay attention to distributional issues. They need to increase efforts to make sure that women and men are equally equipped with the skills most relevant for future employability.”
The study, titled Robots and the Gender Pay Gap in Europe, discovered the impact on the pay gap was especially pronounced in what researchers referred to as “outsourcing destination countries”, where gender inequality was already more noticeable at work
“Outsourcing origin countries” – predominantly Western European countries – did not witness a striking rise in the pay gap comparative to automation.
Men were found to be more likely to be in job positions which were higher-skilled and higher in the work-related pecking order which, when coupled with advances in automation, compounded the pre-existing pay gap.
The study analysed data on workplace automation between 2006 to 2014 from 20 European countries and 28 million observations

Researchers looked at patterns in the UK, Spain, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Sweden.

Fabian Wallace-Stephens, of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), raised concerns about the study’s findings.

Mr Wallace-Stephens, who is senior researcher at the RSA Future Work Centre, said: “Far from creating a level playing field for the workforce, there is a growing body of evidence that automation is disproportionately impacting women, with the overwhelming majority of high paid, high-tech jobs taken up by men.

“While we are still waiting to see how the pandemic will impact the economy in the long-term, it is likely that this process will accelerate in the coming months. Improving the infrastructure around retraining and re-skilling, alongside a wider culture change, will be necessary if automation is to benefit everyone in our post-pandemic economy.”

A previous report, carried out by the RSA and the Women’s Budget Group, drew attention to the dangers of new technologies worsening existing gender divides in the workplace – calling for recent cases of women suffering from in-built bias in artificial intelligence systems to be met with a “robust response” from policymakers and employers.

The study, which came out last August, warned “algorithmic prejudice” could become one of the new giants of modern poverty if it is left unchecked.

In March last year, the national statistics office announced women in the UK are considerably more likely than men to be working in jobs endangered by the advance of technology.
The ONS said 1.5 million people in England are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation – with women holding more than 70 per cent of those roles believed to be at high risk.

The three occupations with the highest probability of automation were found to be waiters and waitresses, shelf-stackers and basic retail roles – all of which are low-skilled or routine. However, well-educated women were also found to be more at risk than men.

PHOTOS
US Police clash with people protesting over racism and police brutality

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TO ENLARGE RIGHT CLICK

COPS USE BICYCLES AS MOBILE WALL AGAINST PEACEFUL
PROTESTERS. NOTICE THAT THE ARRESTING COP HAS
BLACK TAPE COVERING HIS NAME AND ID NUMBER!!!

THEY TEACH BATON USE IN COP SKOOL, TIME 
TO WATCH OLD ROBIN HOOD MOVIES WHEN HE 
 MEETS LITTLE JOHN AT THE BRIDGE.

PEACEFUL FEMALE PROTESTER GETS PUNCHED OUT
BY COP WHILE FRIEND PHOTOGRAPHING WARNED OFF
BY COP

IN YOUR FACE THIS IS WHAT VIOLENCE LOOKS LIKE 

BEEN THERE DONE THAT, TUG OF WAR BETWEEN
PEACEFUL PROTESTERS AND COPS

WHY YOU SHOULD NOT TAKE A BACK PACK TO
A DEMONSTRATION

POLICE MANHANDLE PROTESTERS AFTER BEING
SUBJECT TO ASSAULT BY NON LETHAL PLASTIC
BOTTLES OF H2O AND AN APPLE 

SUPER COP CCS MK-9 MACE SPRAY, NON LETHAL
 RUBBER BULLET, TEAR GAS CANISTER, PROJECTILE GUN, 
KEVLAR VEST, GUN, TASER, KEVLAR HELMET GASMASK, GOGGLES COMBINATION, BULGING ADRENAL STEROID MAN MUSCLES VS. UNARMED PROTESTERS, PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES, OH YEAH AND THE APPLE.

COPS ALWAYS INTENDED TO STOP THE PROTEST
HERE THEY CHARGE UNARMED PEACEFUL DEMONSTRATORS
NOTICE THAT NON LETHAL PLASTIC WATER BOTTLE
A PROTESTER IS THREATENING THE POLICE WITH

THERE WAS NO RIOT UNTIL THESE GUYS CREATED ONE

EVEN BICYCLE COPS CAN BE DANGEROUS, ESPECIALLY
IF THEY ARE ALSO A BOOGALOO BOI LIKE THE COP IN
THE HAWAIIAN SHIRT IN THE LOWER LEFT CORNER !


CANISTER GUN, USED FOR FIRING TEAR GAS, PEPPER BALLS,
RUBBER BULLETS, ALL CAN CAUSE IMPACT INJURIES IF 
THEY HIT YOUR BODY, THESE ARE CALLED 'NON LETHAL'
YOU DON'T CALL THEM THAT IF THEY FRACTURE YOUR
SKULL, OR INDENT IT. AS YOU CAN SEE THE COP CAN
AIM IT WHERE HE WANTS IT TO GO, YOUR HEAD 
YOUR CHEST, YOUR LEG, WAIT WHY IS HE FIRING
MUNITIONS AT PEOPLE, THAT'S VIOLENT.
HE ALSO WEARS ARMOURED GLOVES OR BRASS
KNUCKLES IN LEATHER AS WE USED TO CALL EM
BUT STILL HE IS A NICE GUY, CAUSE HE IS WEARING HIS
PINK BREAST CANCER BRACELET.

A DUMPSTER FIRE IS NOT VIOLENCE IT'S A DUMPSTER
FIRE. BUT FOR THESE GUYS ANY EXCUSE WILL DO

POLICE BATON TWIRLING CLASS OF 2020
VS SINGLE PROTESTER WITH NON LETHAL
PLASTIC WATER BOTTLE

INVISIBLE MAN DISTRACTS BATON WIELDING COP
AS HE IS ASSAULTED BY A PROTESTERS SIGN