ATLANTA (October 22, 2024) — On Tuesday, October 29,at 10:00 a.m., the Senate Study Committee on Veterans’ Mental Health and Housing, chaired by Sen. Chuck Payne (R–Dalton), will hold its fourth hearing.
This event is open to the public andwill be live-streamed on the Senate websitehere.
ABOUT THE COMMITTEE:
The Senate Study Committee on Veterans’ Mental Health and Housing was created to evaluate the adequacy of Georgia’s public and private programs and services when providing resources to veterans. The committee will recommend additional measures to ensure that Georgia veterans and their families have the support they need to thrive after their military service ends.
MEDIA OPPORTUNITIES:
We kindly request that members of the media confirm their attendance in advance by contacting Jantz Womack at SenatePressInquiries@senate.ga.gov.
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Sen. Chuck Payne serves as the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans, Military and Homeland Security. He represents the 54th Senate District, which includes Whitfield and Murray County, as well as part of Gordon County. He may be reached at 404.463.5402 or by email atchuck.payne@senate.ga.gov.
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged four current and former public companies – Unisys Corp., Avaya Holdings Corp., Check Point Software Technologies Ltd, and Mimecast Limited – with making materially misleading disclosures regarding cybersecurity risks and intrusions. The SEC also charged Unisys with disclosure controls and procedures violations. The companies agreed to pay the following civil penalties to settle the SEC’s charges:
Unisys will pay a $4 million civil penalty;
Avaya. will pay a $1 million civil penalty;
Check Point will pay a $995,000 civil penalty; and
Mimecast will pay a $990,000 civil penalty.
The charges against the four companies result from an investigation involving public companies potentially impacted by the compromise of SolarWinds’ Orion software and by other related activity.
“As today’s enforcement actions reflect, while public companies may become targets of cyberattacks, it is incumbent upon them to not further victimize their shareholders or other members of the investing public by providing misleading disclosures about the cybersecurity incidents they have encountered,” said Sanjay Wadhwa, Acting Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Here, the SEC’s orders find that these companies provided misleading disclosures about the incidents at issue, leaving investors in the dark about the true scope of the incidents.”
According to the SEC’s orders, Unisys, Avaya, and Check Point learned in 2020, and Mimecast learned in 2021, that the threat actor likely behind the SolarWinds Orion hack had accessed their systems without authorization, but each negligently minimized its cybersecurity incident in its public disclosures. The SEC’s order against Unisys finds that the company described its risks from cybersecurity events as hypothetical despite knowing that it had experienced two SolarWinds-related intrusions involving exfiltration of gigabytes of data. The order also finds that these materially misleading disclosures resulted in part from Unisys’ deficient disclosure controls. The SEC’s order against Avaya finds that it stated that the threat actor had accessed a “limited number of [the] Company’s email messages,” when Avaya knew the threat actor had also accessed at least 145 files in its cloud file sharing environment. The SEC’s order against Check Point finds that it knew of the intrusion but described cyber intrusions and risks from them in generic terms. The order charging Mimecast finds that the company minimized the attack by failing to disclose the nature of the code the threat actor exfiltrated and the quantity of encrypted credentials the threat actor accessed.
“Downplaying the extent of a material cybersecurity breach is a bad strategy,” said Jorge G. Tenreiro, Acting Chief of the Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit. “In two of these cases, the relevant cybersecurity risk factors were framed hypothetically or generically when the companies knew the warned of risks had already materialized. The federal securities laws prohibit half-truths, and there is no exception for statements in risk-factor disclosures.”
The SEC’s orders find that each company violated certain applicable provisions of the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and related rules thereunder. Without admitting or denying the SEC’s findings, each company agreed to cease and desist from future violations of the charged provisions and to pay the penalties described above. Each company cooperated during the investigation, including by voluntarily providing analyses or presentations that helped expedite the staff’s investigation and by voluntarily taking steps to enhance its cybersecurity controls.
The SEC’s investigation involving the four companies was conducted by Arsen Ablaev and Michael Baker of the Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit (CACU) and David D’Addio in the Boston Regional Office. It was supervised by Amy Flaherty Hartman and Mr. Tenreiro of the CACU and Kathryn A. Pyszka of the Chicago Regional Office.
Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region
The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) today (October 22) laid charges against six Mainland fisherman deckhands suspected of engaging in fishing using snake cages (a type of cage trap banned in Hong Kong waters) on a local fishing vessel in waters off Hei Ling Chau and a local coxswain on board.
A joint operation was conducted by the AFCD together with the Hong Kong Police Force yesterday (October 21). A local fishing vessel was suspected of engaging in fishing using snake cages and was intercepted at around 11am on the same day for investigation. Some fishing gear (including snake cages and winches) on board was seized by the AFCD.
After the investigation, charges were laid against the seven men who were suspected to have violated the Fisheries Protection Ordinance (Cap. 171). They will appear at the Eastern Magistrates’ Courts tomorrow (October 23).
Only a vessel registered under the Ordinance can be used for fishing in Hong Kong waters and only the fishing methods listed on its Certificate of Registration of Local Fishing Vessel can be employed for fishing by the vessel. The conditions of the Certificate of Registration of Local Fishing Vessel regarding cage traps stipulate that any collapsible cage traps should not be connected in any way to another; or should not exceed five metres in any of its extended dimensions. Hence, fishing using snake cages is in breach of the registration conditions. Offenders are liable to a maximum fine of $100,000 and six months’ imprisonment upon conviction.
A spokesman for the AFCD stressed, “The Government is committed to combatting illegal fishing activities in Hong Kong waters. The AFCD will continue to step up patrols and take stringent enforcement action.”
The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today issued the following statement marking 10 years since the attack at the National War Memorial and on Parliament Hill:
“Ten years after the day, we remember the horrific terrorist attack at the National War Memorial and on Parliament Hill.
“Corporal Nathan Cirillo was shot and killed while standing guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was murdered just two days before in another attack, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec. Today, our hearts are with their families and friends who still grieve the loss of their loved one.
“On October 22, 2014, Canadians saw terrifying pictures and videos of an attack on Parliament Hill. But there is one image from that day I remember clearly: people protecting one another as we took shelter wherever we were. I remember that, in the days that followed, political debate was subsumed by collegial support. And above all, we all remember the service and the sacrifice of those who stood guard, and those who rushed toward danger to save lives.
“That is what we remember today, and what we must never forget.”
Members of the Malian junta wave as civilians gather to celebrate the overthrow of the president on Aug. 21, 2020. AP Photo/File
In September 2024, authorities in Benin detained the country’s former sports minister and a prominent businessman for allegedly plotting a coup against the West African nation’s president, Patrice Talon. Had a putsch materialized, Benin would have joined a growing list of African countries to have experienced a military coup over the past four years.
As I’ve observed over the course of my research on the politics of military coups, civilian support is actually a common, if not critical, part of coup politics, and far from unique to this recent resurgence of military takeovers.
How common are civilian-supported coups?
In the popular imagination of a military coup, power-hungry soldiers command tanks down a capital’s streets to seize authority from the political leadership. In this vision, civilians are often passive actors or otherwise assumed to be the opponents of coups. Yet such a setting is belied by numerous examples, both recent and throughout history.
In West Africa’s Niger, for example, the M62 movement – a coalition of civil society organizations – gathered its members on the streets to support the coup in July 2023, outnumbering prior protests calling for the reinstatement of President Mohamed Bazoum. In neighboring Mali, the M5-RFP protest movement served a similar role in the aftermath of the country’s 2020 coup – although fissures in its relationship with the junta have since surfaced.
Even Benin’s thwarted plot had a civilian dimension. Its alleged masterminds, the sports minister and prominent businessman who were said to have funded the planned coup, were not soldiers but part of the governing bureaucracy or elite civil society.
To see how common such cases are, I collected data on civilian support and involvement in all successful military coups since 1950. Defining coups as “successful” if the soldiers manage to stay in power for at least seven days, that gave me 242 cases over a period of nearly 75 years to analyze, spanning different regions like Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.
Out of the 242 episodes, 189 coups – or nearly 80% – saw some type of civilian support, either in the takeover’s instigation or in the later consolidation of power.
Coups without any sign of civilian support were generally those that saw a military leader ousted by other members of the ruling junta – contexts where soldiers already dominated the political landscape.
Breaking down the numbers over time, civilian-supported coups represented the lion’s share in each decade, even as the overall frequency of coups ebbed by the 1990s with the end of the Cold War.
But in the past two decades, virtually every successful coup has been associated with some level of support outside the military. So while civilian support might not be unique to recent cases, there is evidence that it has become a more common fixture of military coups – at least among the successful ones.
Of course, these stats do not include failed coups or thwarted conspiracies. But the failed attempts to instigate a coup in Benin – or, for that matter, in Brazil in January 2023 – suggest that these numbers might underestimate the frequency of civilian support for, and involvement in, coups.
How civilians support coups
In general, civilian support for coups can manifest in different ways. But in a recent study, I identified two broad patterns: instigation and consolidation.
Instigation, by default, occurs in the pre-coup stage and involves civilians taking action to spark a coup attempt.
Protests and insurrections in pursuit of a military coup are common methods of instigation. For example, early in 2023, supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro seized the National Congress after weeks of publicly calling on the military to stop President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s inauguration. While their efforts ultimately failed to produce a coup, they are illustrative of the civilian dynamic.
In late 2021, disgruntled members of Sudan’s transitional government organized protests in Khartoum, the capital, calling for the military’s intervention. The military answered days later by removing Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok from power.
Instigation can also involve more targeted actions. For instance, the alleged Benin coup plot involved targeting specific members of the security services with bribes in exchange for their participation. In Brazil, recent court documents implicated Bolsonaro himself in coordinating a coup plot and attempting to ensure the participation of top military leaders.
In other cases, political parties developed secret cells in the armed forces to later give the go-ahead for a coup – like in Bolivia in 1952, Iraq in 1963, Afghanistan in 1978 and Sudan in 1989.
Consolidation, on the other hand, involves actions taken during and in the immediate aftermath of a coup.
This could include actions like taking up arms alongside soldiers during a military takeover, organizing pro-coup protests or assuming important governing tasks alongside a new junta. Here, civilians seek to ensure a coup succeeds and its objectives take root – even against domestic and international opposition.
Among the recent West African cases, civilians have especially worked to consolidate coups against international opposition. For example, after the Economic Community of West African States threatened military intervention to reverse Niger’s coup in 2023, M62 and other civilian-led protest groups rallied to support the coupists. Thousands also enlisted in the Volunteers for the Defense of Niger, a pro-junta civilian militia created to combat international intervention against the coupists.
Why civilian coup support matters
Soldiers are unlikely to even attempt a coup without confidence that at least some civilians will back their efforts.
Portraying civilian support for military takeovers as exceptional thus misses a critical component of coup politics. And this misconception benefits coupists, who can use civilian allies to present their actions as legitimate or even revolutionary, which is what happened in Egypt in 2013.
Military coups also do not occur in a vacuum. A proper focus on the civilian element of coup politics allows researchers and international observers to better contextualize military takeovers in broader social struggles for the state.
This could lead to greater engagement with the issue of what kinds of civilian segments are instigating and consolidating coups. Are they close to the targeted leader such as in Benin’s alleged plot? Or are they members of the political opposition, like in Niger and Mali?
These nuances should be front and center to researchers, policymakers and diplomats as they seek to understand – and mitigate – sudden and often destabilizing takeovers of a state.
Salah Ben Hammou has received funding from the United States Institute of Peace and Minerva Research Initiative. He is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy.
October has long been associated with ghosts – from ancient Celtic festivals to ward off restless spirits after harvest time to the modern standby of using an old sheet to make a last-minute Halloween costume. In the middle of the 19th century, however, popular portrayals of ghosts became a year-round staple, in part because photographers discovered that they could depict them.
The first ghost photographs were accidents. Early cameras required 30 seconds or more to take a photo. If someone wandered briefly into the shot, the resulting picture would contain their ghostly trace superimposed over substantial furniture, buildings or people who had held still for the full exposure.
When shrewd photographers realized that the inconvenience of long exposure time could become an asset, detailed directions for creating these illusions proliferated. Photographers could cut ghost figures from transparent material and place them onto glass negatives or inside camera bodies. Or they could make real people half-transparent through tricks of double exposure.
As early as 1856, experts gleefully noted that one could create images of ghosts “for the purpose of amusement.” Commercial photographers began producing this spectacular phenomenon for fun and profit and – as I have found while researching early portrait photography – thereby helped feed media fascination with all things ghostly.
Turning accident into amusement
Photographs became collectible amusements partly thanks to the midcentury invention of the stereoscope – a device that created three-dimensional optical illusions.
Stereoscope cards contain two pictures of the same scene, photographed from slightly different angles. A viewer selects a card, inserts it and then presses the instrument to their face. The device isolates their eyes, so each sees only one picture. As the brain, trying to avoid double vision, merges these images into one, the result is a 3D effect.
The Perfecscope from 1895 and a collection of stereoscopic cards. Andrea Kaston Tange, CC BY
In the 1850s, reading aloud was the primary form of at-home entertainment. Daily newspapers ran no images, and the technology to reproduce photographs in books or periodicals was still 40 years away. But this affordable gizmo could bring the whole world into your living room.
My archival research has turned up newspapers full of articles and ads promoting stereoscopic “marvels.” The London Stereoscopic Co. advertised “effects almost miraculous” and marketed the device for family entertainment. By 1856, a mere two years after the company’s founding, its catalog listed over 100,000 cards, including views of dramatic landscapes, exotic tourist destinations, famous portraits and card sets that told stories.
Among these collections of sights unseen were plenty of ghostly images. “The Ghost in the Stereoscope,” a colorized card, shows two men in open-mouthed surprise at the sudden appearance of a ghost at their supper table. The title signals the jump scare that the image maker hoped would likewise amaze the viewer when the 3D ghost loomed before their very eyes.
On another card, “That’s Too Thin,” a ghost points an accusatory arm at one man sitting at a gaming table. The 1876 guide “How to Write Letters” lists “too thin” among its “slang words and phrases” to be avoided for their “low associations and vulgar ideas,” which suggests that the offender is doing something unseemly for a respectable man. This visual joke relied on a pot-kettle formula: A figure so thin as to be see-through is calling out someone else as “too thin.”
Nothing was meant to imply that these were pictures of actual spirits. Some – like “The Haunted Lane,” in which two men who cower in supposed terror from a ghost are obviously photographed in a studio with “lane” props – were so melodramatic as to be funny. Others were more melancholy and featured mourning husbands whose ghost-wives played the piano beside them, or orphaned children whose ghost-mothers watched over them from beyond the grave. All of them were performances.
And all of them helped stoke a midcentury market hungry for ghostly thrills. In 1859, novelist Wilkie Collins published his spectral “The Woman in White” in installments in Charles Dickens’ weekly magazine. It sold over 100,000 copies and launched a decade-long craze for hair-raising sensation fiction.
The “Illustrated Police News,” launched in 1864, contained supposedly true tabloid-style stories that often featured ghosts. And in 1862, John Henry Pepper, a British scientist and popular lecturer, refined a projection technique that could create apparitions onstage during live theater productions. Commonly known as Pepper’s Ghost, the dramatic illusions began appearing immediately on both sides of the Atlantic.
Some stereoscope cards referenced multiple forms of popular entertainment to create ghost images that worked as layered visual jokes. The 1865 card “A Dream After Seeing Pepper’s Ghost” is a great example of how the Victorian penchant for allusions and wordplay found its way into this visual pastime.
The sleeping young woman’s “dream” is a photographic ghost: The looming, gauzy figure filling the dark space of the window beside her bed would have appeared to float in 3D stereoscope. “Seeing Pepper’s Ghost” obviously refers to a play she has attended: Her fine clothes tossed haphazardly on the furniture indicate a late evening out.
But the ghost has the head of a cow and wears a necklace on which is lettered “MUSTARD.” A Victorian viewer accustomed to wordplay riddles would realize that this ghost-of-pepper also implies that the sleeper ate too much of an overly seasoned roast beef dinner, for indigestion was commonly understood to cause bad dreams.
Together, these details may allude to Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” A theater company in 1865 would undoubtedly use the sensational new Pepper’s technique to place the ghost of Jacob Marley onstage to torment his former business partner, the miser Scrooge. And Scrooge quite famously dismisses Marley’s ghost initially as “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard” – that is, as merely a bad dream brought on by overeating. A clever viewer would delight in puzzling through these playful layers of stereoscopic magic.
But in the Halloween season, it’s fun to contemplate the lighter side of this history, when an appetite for haunting tales inspired photographic ghost effects that seem delightfully ahead of their time.
Andrea Kaston Tange does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Some experts have said that the hurricanes could cause voter numbers to drop – and impacts of Helene have already prompted a few early polling stations in western North Carolina to close. But more North Carolina residents turned out to vote on the first day of early voting than they did in 2020.
Amy Lieberman, a politics and society editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Michael T. Morley, who studies natural disasters and election law, to understand how these recent storms could complicate voting in the presidential election.
A home in Manasota Key, Fla., that was damaged by Hurricane Milton is seen on Oct. 13, 2024. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
What are the major issues that hurricanes can create ahead of an election?
A hurricane or natural disaster makes an election tremendously more challenging for both election officials and voters on various practical levels.
Election administrators might have been injured, or their homes could be flooded or destroyed. State officials need to ensure, especially in areas that have been hardest hit, that enough local administrators remain in place to continue distributing absentee ballots and to staff early voting locations.
Still, I have not seen empirical evidence that the results of any federal elections in recent decades have changed as a result of hurricanes.
What could these major hurricanes mean for voters in North Carolina and Florida?
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order on Oct. 3, 2024, in response to Hurricane Helene. Among other things, Florida law says that in a state of emergency the governor can suspend state statutes or regulations governing state business when complying with them can interfere with disaster response.
Florida, like other states, has deadlines for when election officials must designate polling locations. DeSantis waived this deadline to authorize county officials to designate new ones. DeSantis’ order also gives election officials more discretion about where new polling locations may be located. And he made it easier for state employees to step in and serve as poll workers, particularly on Election Day.
DeSantis suspended a state requirement so a person who cannot return to their home can ask by phone to have a vote-by-mail ballot sent to wherever they are staying – not just their registered home address. Making it easier for ballots to be sent to people, wherever they are, is one of the most effective measures that Florida has implemented to help make voting easier.
In North Carolina, meanwhile, state officials have authorized different changes that will apply to the 25 counties in the western part of the state that are under emergency orders because of the hurricane. These changes are mostly focused on voting by mail and polling place workers. They also allow county boards of elections to change Election Day voting locations and permit voters to drop off absentee ballots at any county board of election office by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.
Western North Carolina voters now also have until Nov. 4 to request a mail-in ballot, as opposed to the original deadline of Oct. 29.
What sort of legal issues, if any, do these changes open up?
Disputes have already arisen about potential extension of the voter registration deadlines in states affected by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Courts in Florida and Georgia have already declined emergency motions to extend the voter registration deadline.
Similar disputes are likely to arise over such election rules as photo identification requirements at polling places and the deadlines for requesting and returning absentee ballots.
Occasionally, challenges also arise alleging that certain measures to address an emergency have gone too far.
During the height of the pandemic, for example, the Trump presidential campaign filed lawsuits that unsuccessfully challenged state decisions to automatically mail absentee ballots to people registered to vote.
A U.S. post offic, damaged by flooding from Hurricane Helen, is pictured on Oct. 3, 2024, in Marshall, N.C., showing one of the complications for people who planned to vote by mail. Mario Tama/Getty Images
What are you most concerned about heading into the election?
My biggest concern is that, particularly if the election is close, a losing candidate might attempt to use the hurricane as a way of trying to challenge the election results or call them into question.
Courts will almost certainly reject that. Once the election has happened, a court generally will not set aside the results or order additional voting, even if voters faced substantial burdens and people think there is more that election officials could have done. This is especially true in the context of a presidential election, since the U.S. Constitution and federal law establish several important postelection deadlines involving the Electoral College.
Some people already have unwarranted skepticism about the electoral process. It would be bad for our democracy if the recent hurricanes are exploited as a basis for refusing to accept the election’s results.
Michael T. Morley is Sheila M. McDevitt Professor of Law at FSU College of Law. He serves as Faculty Director of the FSU Center for Election Law established by the Florida State Legislature and Vice Chair of the Florida Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission for Civil Rights. He is a member of the National Task Force on Election Crises and Election Officials Legal Defense Network.
White signs emblazoned with a big blue dot are going up in yards across Omaha, Nebraska, in an unusual political statement of support for Democratic candidates.
Nebraska splits its electoral votes, giving Omaha’s congressional district a single electoral vote out of the state’s total of five. If enough of Omaha’s metropolitan voters back Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for president, Omaha will appear on the electoral map as a “blue dot” on a field of Republican red.
Most U.S. states award all their electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the state’s election, no matter the margin of victory. Only Nebraska and Maine split their electoral votes.
Nebraska awards one vote to each congressional district, plus two votes to the state’s overall winner. It began this practice in 1992 to draw more presidential campaigns to the state. Nebraska, as a whole, so predictably leans conservative that neither Republicans nor Democrats had bothered to campaign there.
In the eight presidential elections since 1992, Omaha has turned blue only twice – in 2008 and 2020, backing Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Democratic voters hope to buck statewide trends again in 2024.
The blue dot movement began in mid-August 2024 in Omaha’s Dundee neighborhood, when local residents Jason Brown and Ruth Huebner-Brown spray-painted a blue circle on a white sign and put it on their lawn as a conversation starter.
One sign grew to 10, 100, 1,000, snowballing into a movement. Now blue dot signs can be found well beyond Omaha, even in other states. On Facebook and Reddit, people share where to find the signs and how to make your own.
A simple blue dot on a white background has become a powerful political symbol – a reference to a map that does not have to be seen to be visualized. For Omahans in the know, the sign is a reminder of what the city’s place on the map might be come Nov. 5.
For others, the enigmatic sign simply raises questions, creating opportunities for Omahans to discuss the importance of voting in Nebraska.
The sly way the blue dot sign refers to an election map without actually showing that map reminded me of my suffrage movement research.
In the 1910s, women activists campaigning to get American women the vote used a map as part of their campaign. It depicted U.S. states that had passed suffrage in white and the rest in black – dark marks on the nation.
The suffragists plastered their map across the country and sold it through the National Woman Suffrage Publishing Company. In newsletters and magazines, they shared how to make maps for rallies using easily accessible materials. The map became so familiar to the American public by 1912 that it was referred to in speeches and newspaper articles without the visual.
At suffrage parades and pageants they formed “living suffrage maps,” with women dressed in white representing states with the vote and those in black representing states where they could not.
As women’s suffrage momentum grew, spreading from western to eastern U.S. states, the map had ever-fewer black spots. In 1914, Nevada became the last western state to pass suffrage.
“The suffrage map showing Nevada as the last ‘black spot’ in the West was printed in every newspaper and on every leaflet,” suffragists later wrote about their efforts. It was “put up in public places and on large banners hung in the streets.”
With Nebraska’s blue dot signs, Omahans are fighting to keep their spot on the map, not erase it. They are an act of claiming space, making Democrats visible in a state so strongly associated with Republicans.
On Oct. 20, 2024, in yet another echo of the women’s suffrage movement, they even created a “human blue dot” at a rally in a local park.
A Republican red dot in Omaha. Christina Dando, CC BY
Two I’ve seen are a white sign depicting just an entirely red Nebraska, and a white sign with a large red dot with a golden wave on its top that resembles Trump’s hair.
These red dot and red Nebraska signs are catching on, but not in the same way as blue dot signs have.
Kirk described Nebraska as “being one of the most Republican states” and said the state’s electoral votes must “go towards electing the candidate the vast majority of Nebraskans prefer.”
Many people reacted with fury, and the bill did not advance in Nebraska’s one-house state Legislature. That’s another of the state’s political quirks: Nebraska is the only state to have a state legislature without an upper and lower chamber of lawmakers.
The system, called the unicameral, is officially partyless, meaning its 49 representatives are elected without their party on the ballot.
The unicameral dates from 1937 when it was thought this less costly, nonpartisan system would be a more representative form of government. So is splitting the state’s electoral votes: Voters can feel more confident that their vote counts and that every vote counts.
When South Carolina Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham visited Nebraska in September 2024, he pushed Gov. Jim Pillen, a fellow Republican, to implement a winner-take-all system for the 2024 election.
Pillen said he would not call a special session of the unicameral unless he has the 33 votes needed to pass the change to the state’s electoral system. That appears unlikely to happen before November.
Red + blue = purple?
A winner-take-all approach to Electoral College votes has the effect of erasing nuance and difference on the map of America by painting states as entirely red or blue.
No state has ever voted 100% Democrat or Republican. The country should be drawn in shades of purple.
Nebraska has the misleading appearance of overwhelming redness because of its many Republican-leaning rural counties with low population density. Yet Nebraska’s registered voters are approximately two-thirds Republicans and one-third Democrats. Many registered Democrats live in cities such as Omaha and Lincoln.
But they can be found throughout the state – just look for the blue dot.
Christina Elizabeth Dando does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
As the U.S. presidential election approaches, news reports and social media feeds are increasingly filled with data from public opinion polls. How do pollsters know which candidate is ahead in what swing state or with which key demographic group? Or what issues are most important to as many as 264 million eligible voters across a vast country?
In other words: How do pollsters do what they do?
At Emerson College Polling, we lead a dynamic survey operation that, like many others, has continuously evolved to keep pace with shifting trends and technologies in survey research. At the inception of survey research – about 100 years ago – data was primarily collected through mail and in-person interviews. That’s not true nowadays, of course.
In the early days of the survey industry, being asked to participate in a poll was novel, and response rates were high. Today, we’re bombarded with survey requests via email, text, online pop-ups, and phone calls from unknown numbers. With fewer landlines, busy parents juggling work and family, and younger adults who rarely answer calls, preferring text communication, it has become much harder to engage respondents. This shift in behavior reflects the evolving challenges of reaching diverse populations in modern survey research.
In the broadest possible terms, polls and surveys have two elements – choosing whom to contact, and reaching them in a way that’s likely to get a response. These elements are often intertwined.
In the 1970s, after household telephones had become widespread in the U.S., survey operators adopted a random-sampling method called random digit dialing, in which the survey’s designers would choose the area codes they wanted to reach and live operators randomly dialed seven-digit phone numbers within that area code.
By the 1990s, pollsters began moving away from random digit dialing, which was time-consuming and expensive because the random selection often picked phone numbers that were out of service or not useful for opinion surveys, such as businesses or government offices. Instead, pollsters began adopting registration-based sampling, in which public voter registration records were used to compile the lists from which respondents were randomly selected.
The information in these and other associated public records, such as those detailing gender, age and educational attainment, allowed a refinement of random sampling called stratified sampling. That’s where the one big list was split into subgroups based on these different characteristics, such as party affiliation, voting frequency, gender, race or ethnicity, income or educational attainment.
Survey-takers then chose randomly from among those subgroups in proportion to the population as a whole. So if 40% of the overall population have college degrees and 60% do not, a poll of 100 people would randomly select 40 people from the list of those with a college degree and 60 from the list of those without.
Other advances in ways to reach respondents emerged late in the 20th century, such as interactive voice response, which did not require live operators. Instead, automated systems played recordings of the questions and registered the spoken responses. In 2000, internet-based polling also began to emerge, in which participants filled out online forms.
From probability to nonprobability sampling
Over the past two decades, the rise of cellphones, text messaging and online platforms has dramatically changed survey research. The traditional gold standard of using only live operator telephone polls has become nearly obsolete. Now that phones display who is calling, fewer people answer calls from unknown numbers, and fewer of them are willing to talk to a stranger about their personal views.
Even the random sampling that was once standard has given way to a nonprobability sampling approach based on increasingly specific population proportions. So if 6% of a population are Black men with a certain level of education and a certain amount of household income, then a survey will strive to have 6% of its respondents match those characteristics.
In quota sampling, participants may not be selected randomly but rather chosen as participants because they have specific demographic attributes. This method is less statistically rigorous and more prone to bias, though it may yield a representative sample with relative efficiency. By contrast, stratified sampling randomly selects participants within defined groups, reducing sampling error and providing more precise estimates of population characteristics.
To help polling operations find potential respondents, political and marketing consulting firms have compiled voter information, including demographic data and contact details. At Emerson College Polling, we have access to a database of 273 million U.S. adults, with 123 million mobile numbers, 116 million email addresses and nearly 59 million landline numbers.
A newer technique pollsters are using to reach respondents is something called river sampling, an online method in which individuals encounter a survey during their regular internet browsing and social media activity, often through an ad or pop-up. They complete a short screening questionnaire and are then invited to join a survey opt-in panel whose members will be asked to take future surveys.
Our polling operation has used a range of approaches to reach the more than 162,000 people who have completed our polls so far this year in the United States.
Unlike traditional pollsters, Emerson College Polling does not rely on live operator data collection outside of small-scale tests of new survey methods to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of different polling approaches.
Instead, like most modern pollsters, we use a mix of approaches, including text-to-web surveys, interactive voice response on landlines, email outreach, and opt-in panels. This combination allows us to reach a broader, more representative audience, which is essential for accurate polling in today’s fragmented social and media landscape. This diverse population includes younger individuals who communicate through various platforms distinct from those used by older generations.
When we contact the people in our stratified samples, we take into account differences between each communication method. For example, older people tend to answer landlines, while men and middle-aged people are more responsive to mobile text-to-web surveys. To reach underrepresented groups – such as adults ages 18 to 29 and Hispanic respondents – we use online databases that they have voluntarily signed up for, knowing they may be surveyed.
We also use information about whom we sample and how to calculate the margin of error, which measures the precision of poll results. Larger sample sizes tend to be more representative of the overall population and therefore lead to a smaller margin of error.
For instance, a poll of 400 respondents typically has a 4.9% margin of error, while increasing the sample size to 1,000 reduces it to 3%, offering more accurate insights.
The goal, as ever, is to present to the public an accurate reflection of what the people as a whole think about candidates and issues.
Spencer Kimball works for Emerson College Polling.
Camille Mumford works for Emerson College Polling.
You’ve probably seen them: alarming columns or stories with alarming headlines about how somebody is going to exploit an obscure provision in election law to undo the 2024 presidential election and toss it to the House of Representatives. Your vote won’t count, and democracy will go to hell.
Election law scholar Justin Levitt throws cold water on those scenarios, and in an interview with Naomi Schalit, The Conversation’s senior editor for politics and democracy, he says the voters will decide the election, “flat out.”
What’s “electoral process porn?”
It’s a writing genre identifying a tactic or loophole that’s supposedly going to fundamentally change the election process – what I called “The Key to the Whole Thing This Time” in a Slate piece earlier this year – usually, by taking away everyone’s voting rights and magically delivering the election to one candidate. It’s a lurid, titillating take that depends on the fact that election law and process can sometimes seem impenetrable.
What distinguishes this type of think piece from other reporting on the election process is tone and emphasis, rather than information. Just like not every sex scene in the movies needs an NC-17 label, not every piece about how elections work is going to be electoral process porn.
Perhaps the worst part about electoral process porn is that it leaves readers with an unjustified feeling of helplessness, even the thought that voting might be pointless, if it’s all subject to this supposed hidden gimmick. It is dystopian fiction masquerading as analysis, feeding on people’s anxieties that a basic process of self-government might be taken out of their own hands.
A selection of headlines trumpeting the ways the 2024 presidential election could be subverted. Mother Jones, Politico, USA Today
Can you give me a few examples? I want the person who reads this to understand concretely what you’re talking about.
Sure. One example fits the mold of the artful con: the heist movie or spy thriller that depends on knowing the particular procedural lever to deliver results, the MacGuffin nobody else can anticipate, making the person who’s the center of the thriller the smartest person in the room. It’s the story about an Electoral College feature in which an obscure part of the law, say subparagraph (ii)(B) of paragraph (1)(c) about delivering a particular piece of paper, secretly holds the spell to make millions of votes disappear. It depends on a wildly implausible sequence of events and a whiff of magical legalism, with a basic misunderstanding of what legal rules are for.
Another example is the armchair detective mystery, with the promise that if you squint just right, you can find the clues that finally solve the big crime. This type of piece often centers on alleged voter fraud, making a legitimate loss feel more palatable by suggesting it’s theft instead. The thing is, these are usually murder mysteries with no dead bodies. People motivated to play detective will often find suspicious patterns in conduct that’s entirely lawful.
A third version is a horror story, with jump scares at scale: tales of voter suppression predicting that evildoers will steal the election by preventing millions of legitimate voters from casting ballots that count.
But there are practices and rules that can be obstacles to voting.
There sure are. I’m a civil rights lawyer, so it’s worth noting that some election rules do make the process harder than it needs to be. Sometimes intentionally. Rules disenfranchising people with convictions offer a particularly stark version of that very real problem. We’ve got an obligation to keep making the election process better.
But these electoral process porn articles often portray the system as an endless nightmare of procedural hurdles. That’s not reality for most of the electorate.
Yes. And it diminishes people’s confidence in the power of their vote. I think it would be somewhat less harmful if it were paired with a message of empowerment, like, “Here is what people are trying to do to take power. But it’s not going to work. And you can ensure your voice counts by registering and casting your ballot.”
I don’t mean to shake my finger at writers who are trying to present information in a way that draws readers in. But the tone of these columns, and the degree to which they empower or discourage, matters. These process-porn pieces are at their worst when the voters are peripheral, when the articles say, “This is being done to you, and there’s really nothing you can do about it other than get angry and give us money.”
We’re getting pretty close to Election Day, which is the culmination of the vote. Are there legitimate problems that voters should be aware of?
There will be some bumps, sure. Until humans figure out how not to make mistakes, there will be issues that crop up. It’s a good thing that for most Americans, voting is a period of time, rather than a single day. That gives opportunities to catch and address the problems.
The Electoral College means that a few thousand voters in a few swing states are going to decide the winner. It’s going to be up to those voters, flat out – who decides to cast a ballot and who they decide to vote for – not a deus ex machina. The election process is designed to tell us who we chose, not to determine the answer without us.
But 537 votes is an anomaly. The elections of 2016and 2020 were very close in the states that determined the Electoral College results – but still nowhere near Florida-in-2000 close.
And because of all the fail-safes built into the system, even very close is something the election process can handle. I’m very confident that the voters are going to decide this election, not the lawyers or the courts.
Electoral process porn is adult fiction. In the real world, it turns out “The Key To The Whole Thing This Time” isn’t a process quirk. It’s us.
Professor Levitt served as the country’s first White House Senior Policy Advisor for Democracy and Voting Rights, from 2021-2022.
Continued support from the White House for Ukraine could hinge on the presidential election.AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
The U.S. presidential election isn’t drawing eyes only at home – Moscowand Kyiv are watching closely, too.
Regardless of who wins in November, there will be significant implications for Ukraine as it continues to resist Russia in a war heading toward a fourth year.
During the presidential debate on Sept. 10, 2024, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Republican contender Donald Trump had a chance to clarify their positions on Ukraine. Trump evaded ABC moderator David Muir’s question regarding the importance of Ukraine’s victory over Russia, twice. Instead, he repeated his long-standing line that he would achieve a negotiated peace quickly – even before taking office as president.
At the same debate, Harris dismissed the idea of Trump negotiating with “a dictator who would eat you for lunch.” She instead emphasized the Biden policy to support Ukraine “as long as it takes” in concert with U.S. allies.
But detail has been light on what either candidate would actually do to support Ukraine and end the war. So, what do we know about each candidate’s approach to Ukraine based on their records?
Trump: A ‘very fair and rapid deal’?
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Trump has repeatedly stated that ending the war is in the U.S.’s best interests and that he can end the war quickly. In fact, Trump is certain that had he remained president after the 2020 election, Russian President Vladimir Putin would not have invaded – an unsubstantiated claim he repeated during the Sept. 10 presidential debate.
Trump has often reiterated that both Putin and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy respect him, and he would be able to use his “good relationship” with both to bring them to the negotiating table and end the war.
Yet, Trump’s record on his relationships with Zelenskyy and Putin is rather complicated.
Trump’s relationship with Zelenskyy is similarly laden with baggage. A 2019 phone call between the two men, during which Trump pressured Ukraine’s president to open a criminal investigation into Joe Biden, led to Trump’s impeachment. In exchange, Ukraine would have received continued U.S. support for the country’s defense against Russia, which had been waging a proxy war in eastern regions of Ukraine since 2014. During the subsequent hearings in Congress, one of Trump’s aids testified that “Trump did not give a sh*t about Ukraine” and was only interested in his own political gains.
Standing next to Zelenskyy during a meeting at the Trump Tower on Sept. 27, 2024 – their first meeting since Sept. 25, 2019 – Trump said he was sure that both Zelenskyy and Putin are interested in peace and that a “very fair” and “rapid” deal is possible.
When asked what that deal might entail, Trump responded that it’s “too early” to discuss details and that both he and Zelenskyy have “their own ideas.”
While the Republican candidate has not been explicit on the details of negotiations or possible conditions, some of his proxies have voiced proposals. Trump’s vice presidential pick, JD Vance, has laid out a plan that includes potential land concessions on the part of Ukraine and the creation of a demilitarized zone along the battle lines of the Russian-occupied territory of eastern Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Trump’s son Donald Jr. co-authored a piece with former presidential candidate turned Trump ally Robert F Kennedy Jr., arguing that a concession to Russian demands for “Ukrainian neutrality and a halt to NATO’s eastward expansion” were reasonable to avoid a nuclear game of chicken. Although these have not been echoed in Trump’s own statements on Ukraine, both men have the ear of the Republican candidate.
Harris has been harshly critical of Trump’s approach to Ukraine. “They are not proposals for peace,” Harris said in response to suggestions that Ukraine cede territory for peace. “Instead they are proposals for surrender,” she added.
Such views are in line with Harris’ record. As part of the Biden administration, Harris has given vocal support to Ukraine’s fight for political sovereignty and territorial integrity.
At the onset of the full-scale invasion in early 2022, Harris traveled to Europe to help shore up a coalition of European allies to support Ukraine.
As a presidential candidate, Harris has openly signaled her commitment to supporting Kyiv – not only for Ukraine survival but for the collective security of NATO allies and the U.S. itself. Harris emphasized this point in the September debate, suggesting that Ukraine was not Putin’s final stop and that he has “his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.”
Standing next to Zelenskyy in Washington on Sept. 26, 2024, Harris reiterated the point: “The United States supports Ukraine not out of charity, but because it’s in our strategic interest.”
Since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, the U.S. Congress has passed five bills that provide aid to Ukraine, totaling US$175 billion.
However, a six-month delay in aid in early 2024 highlighted growing partisan tension in Congress over continued aid to Ukraine.
The composition of Congress after the November election is another unknown factor in Washington’s support for Ukraine. Zelenskyy met with congressional leaders during his visit to the U.S. in September, but notably absent was Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, who in the past has shown reluctance to support continued funding.
For the large part, support for Ukraine remains bipartisan in Congress and among American voters. Yet there is a risk the election could further politicize the issue. And the outcome of November’s vote could determine whether U.S. efforts going forward focus more on pushing for a negotiated deal or on-going support for Ukraine.
Lena Surzhko Harned does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
A simple difference in the genetic code – two X chromosomes versus one X chromosome and one Y chromosome – can lead to major differences in heart disease. It turns out that these genetic differences influence more than just sex organs and sex assigned at birth – they fundamentally alter the way cardiovascular disease develops and presents.
While sex influences the mechanisms behind how cardiovascular disease develops, gender plays a role in how health care providers recognize and manage it. Sex refers to biological characteristics such as genetics, hormones, anatomy and physiology, while gender refers to social, psychological and cultural constructs. Women are more likely to die after a first heart attack or stroke than men. Women are also more likely to have additional or different heart attack symptoms that go beyond chest pain, such as nausea, jaw pain, dizziness and fatigue. It is often difficult to fully disentangle the influences of sex on cardiovascular disease outcomes versus the influences of gender.
While women who haven’t entered menopause have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease than men, their cardiovascular risk accelerates dramatically after menopause. In addition, if a woman has Type 2 diabetes, her risk of heart attack accelerates to be equivalent to that of men, even if the woman with diabetes has not yet gone through menopause. Further data is needed to better understand differences in cardiovascular disease risk among nonbinary and transgender patients.
Despite these differences, one key thing is the same: Heart attack, stroke and other forms of cardiovascular disease are the leading cause of death for all people, regardless of sex or gender.
The reasons behind sex and gender differences in cardiovascular disease are not completely known. Nor are the distinct biological effects of sex, such as hormonal and genetic factors, versus gender, such as social, cultural and psychological factors, clearly differentiated.
What researchers do know is that the accumulated evidence of what good heart care should look like for women compared with men has as many holes in it as Swiss cheese. Medical evidence for treating cardiovascular disease often comes from trials that excluded women, since women for the most part weren’t included in scientific research until the NIH Revitalization Act of 1993. For example, current guidelines to treat cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure are based primarily on data from men. This is despite evidence that differences in the way that cardiovascular disease develops leads women to experience cardiovascular disease differently.
In addition to sex differences, implicit gender biases among providers and gendered social norms among patients lead clinicians to underestimate the risk of cardiac events in women compared with men. These biases play a role in why women are more likely than men to die from cardiac events. For example, for patients with symptoms that are borderline for cardiovascular disease, clinicians tend to be more aggressive in ordering artery imaging for men than for women. One study linked this tendency to order less aggressive tests for women partly to a gender bias that men are more open than women to taking risks.
In a study of about 3,000 patients with a recent heart attack, women were less likely than men to think that their heart attack symptoms were due to a heart condition. Additionally, most women do not know that cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 cause of death among women. Overall, women’s misperceptions of their own risk may hold them back from getting a doctor to check out possible symptoms of a heart attack or stroke.
These issues are further exacerbated for women of color. Lack of access to health care and additional challenges drive health disparities among underrepresented racial and ethnic minority populations.
Sex difference in heart disease
Cardiovascular disease physically looks different for women and men, specifically in the plaque buildup on artery walls that contributes to illness.
Women are more likely than men to have cardiovascular disease that presents as multiple narrowed arteries that are not fully “clogged,” resulting in chest pain because blood flow can’t ratchet up enough to meet higher oxygen demands with exercise, much like a low-flow showerhead. When chest pain presents in this way, doctors call this condition ischemia and no obstructive coronary arteries. In comparison, men are more likely to have a “clogged” artery in a concentrated area that can be opened up with a stent or with cardiac bypass surgery. Options for multiple narrowed arteries have lagged behind treatment options for typical “clogged” arteries, which puts women at a disadvantage.
In addition, in the early stages of a heart attack, the levels of blood markers that indicate damage to the heart are lowerin women than in men. This can lead to more missed diagnoses of coronary artery disease in women compared with men.
Too often, women with symptoms of cardiovascular disease are sent away from doctor’s offices because of gender biases that “women don’t get heart disease.”
Considering how symptoms of cardiovascular disease vary by sex and gender could help doctors better care for all patients.
One way that the rubber is meeting the road is with regard to better approaches to diagnosing heart attacks for women and men. Specifically, when diagnosing heart attacks, using sex-specific cutoffs for blood tests that measure heart damage – called high-sensitivity troponin tests – can improve their accuracy, decreasing missed diagnoses, or false negatives, in women while also decreasing overdiagnoses, or false positives, in men.
Our research laboratory’s leaders,collaborators and other internationally recognized research colleagues – some of whom partner with our Ludeman Family Center for Women’s Health Research on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus – will continue this important work to close this gap between the sexes in health care. Research in this field is critical to shine a light on ways clinicians can better address sex-specific symptoms and to bring forward more tailored treatments.
The Biden administration’s recent executive order to advance women’s health research is paving the way for research to go beyond just understanding what causes sex differences in cardiovascular disease. Developing and testing right-sized approaches to care for each patient can help achieve better health for all.
Amy Huebschmann receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Heart Lung Blood Institute, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, the United States Health Resources and Services Administration and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, or the United States government.
Judith Regensteiner receives funding from the National Institutes of Health focused on sex differences in the cardiovascular consequences of type 2 diabetes. She also has a mentoring grant from the NIH.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Farah Nibbs, Assistant Professor of Emergency and Disaster Health Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Long before colonialism brought slavery to the Caribbean, the native islanders saw hurricanes and storms as part of the normal cycle of life.
The Taino of the Greater Antilles and the Kalinago, or Caribs, of the Lesser Antilles developed systems that enabled them to live with storms and limit their exposure to damage.
On the larger islands, such as Jamaica and Cuba, the Taino practiced crop selection with storms in mind, preferring to plant root crops such as cassava or yucca with high resistance to damage from hurricane and storm winds, as Stuart Schwartz describes in his 2016 book “Sea of Storms.”
The current disaster crisis that the Caribbean’s small islands are experiencing as hurricanes intensify did not start a few decades ago. Rather, the islands’ vulnerability is a direct result of the exploitative systems forced upon the region by colonialism, its legacies of slave-based land policies and ill-suited construction and development practices, and its environmental injustices.
Rather than growing crops that could sustain the local food supply, the Europeans who began arriving in the 1600s focused on exploitative extractive economic models and export cash crops through the plantation economy.
They forced Indigenous people off their lands and built settlements along the coast, which made it easier to import enslaved peoples and goods and to export cash crops such as sugar and tobacco to Europe – and also left communities vulnerable to storms. They also developed settlements in low-lying areas, often near rivers and streams, which could provide transportation for agricultural produce but which became flood risks during heavy rains.
Homes built to the water’s edge in Saint-Martin, an overseas collectivity of France, were devastated when Hurricane Irma hit in 2017. Helene Valenzuela/AFP via Getty Images
Today, more than 70% of the Caribbean’s population lives along the coast, often less than a mile from the shore. These coastlines are not only highly exposed to hurricanes but also to sea-level rise fueled by climate change.
Legacies of slave-based land policies
Colonialism’s legacy of land policies has also made recovery from disasters much harder today.
When colonial powers took over, a few landowners were given control of most of the land, while the majority of the population was forced onto marginal and small areas. The local population had no legal right to the land, as the people did not possess land certificate titles or deeds and were often forced to pay rent to landlords.
After independence, most island governments tried to acquire land from former plantations or estates and to redistribute it to the working class. But these efforts, mainly in the 1960s and ’70s, largely failed to transform land ownership, improve economic development or reduce vulnerability.
One colonial legacy perpetuating vulnerability to this day is known as crown land, or state land. In the English-speaking Caribbean, all land for which there was no land grant was considered property of the British crown. Crown land can be found in every English-speaking island to this day.
How colonial powers controlled the Caribbean over time.
For example, in Barbuda, all land is vested in the “crown in perpetuity” on behalf of Barbudans. This means that an individual born on the island of Barbuda cannot individually own land.
After emancipation from slavery, freed people had no right nor access to land. To build houses, they were forced to lease land from the former enslavers who at a whim could terminate their employment or kick them off the land.
This led to the development of a particular type of housing structure known as chattel houses in countries such as Barbados. These houses are tiny and were constructed in a way in which they could be easily taken apart and loaded onto carts, should the residents be forced out by their former enslavers. Many Bajans still live in these houses today, although quite a few have been converted to restaurants or shops.
In Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, owned by the Dutch, slave huts were built along the coast, on land not suitable for agriculture and easily damaged by storms. These former slave huts are now tourist attractions, but the colonial patterns of settling along the coast has left many coastal communities exposed to hurricane damage and rising seas.
The vulnerability of such houses is not only a result of their exposure to natural hazards but also the underlying social structures.
In many islands today, poorer residents can’t afford protective measures, such as installing storm shutters or purchasing solar-powered generators.
They often live in marginal and disaster-prone areas, such as steep hillsides, where housing tends to be cheaper. Houses in these areas are also often poorly constructed with low-grade materials, such as galvanized sheeting for roofs and walls.
This situation is made worse by the informal and unregulated nature of residential housing construction in the region and the poor enforcement of building codes.
Due to the legacy of colonialism, most housing or building standards or codes in the Commonwealth Caribbean are relics from the United Kingdom and in the French Antilles from France. Building standards across the region lack uniformity and are generally subjective and uncontrolled. Financial limitations and staffing constraints mean that codes and standards more often than not remain unenforced.
Progress, but still a lot of work to do
The Caribbean has made progress in developing wind-related building codes to try to increase resilience in recent years. And while damage from torrential rain is still not properly addressed in most Caribbean building standards, scientific guidance is available through the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology in Barbados.
Construction standards can help the islands build resilience. But work remains to be done to overcome the legacy of colonial-era land policies and development that have left island towns vulnerable to increasing storm risks.
Farah Nibbs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
In one of the most haunting scenes of Stephen King’s 1975 novel “Salem’s Lot,” a gravedigger named Mike Ryerson races to bury the coffin of a local boy named Danny Glick. As night approaches, a troubling thought overtakes Mike: Danny has been buried with his eyes open. Worse, Mike senses that Danny is looking through the closed coffin back at him.
A mania overcomes Mike. Prayers run through his head – “the ways things like that will for no good reason.” Then more disturbing thoughts intrude: “Now I bring you spoiled meat and reeking flesh.” Mike leaps into the hole he’s dug and furiously shovels soil off the coffin. The reader knows what he’s going to do, but ought not to do, next: Mike will open the coffin, freeing whatever Danny has become.
Enter the whip-poor-wills. Several of them, King writes, “had begun to lift their shrilling call,” the demand for violence that gives the species its name: whip-poor-will.
This isn’t the first time whip-poor-wills appear in “Salem’s Lot,” nor is it the last time King would invoke them in his work. But despite the importance of the species to King, whip-poor-wills never appear in film and television adaptations of “Salem’s Lot.”
Released on Oct. 3, 2024, the most recent adaptation of “Salem’s Lot” incorporates birdsong but makes little use of them. Here and there, an American crow or blue jay calls. Sparrowlike chirps pepper scenes at night. And as Mike unburies the undead Danny, the less threatening call of a barred owl replaces that of whip-poor-wills.
The whip-poor-will got its name from the male’s three-note call that sounds like it’s wailing, ‘Whip poor will.’
As a cultural sociologist writing a book about eastern whip-poor-wills, I’m interested in this omission not because it reflects an unfaithful recreation of King’s novel. Rather, I see the erasure of whip-poor-wills from “Salem’s Lot” as a symptom of broader ecological changes, one in which species loss is also tied to cultural loss.
Perhaps the best known whip-poor-wills in American horror appear in H.P. Lovecraft’s novella “The Dunwich Horror.” Lovecraft references the species nearly two dozen times in his story, with the birds often appearing around the deaths of the Whateley family, who live in the fictional town of Dunwich, Massachusetts.
By behaving in ways that real whip-poor-wills never do, Dunwich’s nightjars symbolize the horrors the Whateleys unleash on the townspeople. The birds also act as psychopomps: beings who guide the souls of the newly deceased to the afterlife.
Dunwich’s whip-poor-wills remain in the town until Halloween – “unnaturally belated,” Lovecraft writes – as they chant in unison with the dying breaths of Whateleys. (Indeed, most whip-poor-wills leave the Northeast by the end of September, and they usually don’t coordinate their singing.) But though whip-poor-wills are essential to the plot of “The Dunwich Horror,” another common owl, this one a great horned owl, replaces whip-poor-wills in the 1970 film adaptation of Lovecraft’s story.
King, too, uses whip-poor-wills to great effect. In “Jerusalem’s Lot,” the short story King later published as a prelude to “Salem’s Lot,” whip-poor-wills haunt the Maine town. And in his 1989 novel “The Dark Half,” King references the lore of whip-poor-wills as psychopomps.
Lovecraft’s and King’s fictional whip-poor-wills draw on widespread Indigenous, European and American beliefs about the species. A whip-poor-will singing near one’s home was an especially ominous sign, usually meaning that death would soon take someone in the house. An 1892 article in the American Journal of Folklore documents this belief in King’s home state, Maine. It also offers a story, probably apocryphal, as evidence: “A whippoorwill sang at a back door repeatedly; finally, the woman’s son was brought home dead, and the corpse brought into the house through the back door.”
Birds and belief disappear
For the better part of the 19th and early 20th centuries, whip-poor-will lore circulated among people who encountered the bird. Outside of the world of folklore studies, you can find passing mention of ill omens in the nature writing of Henry David Thoreau and Susan Fenimore Cooper, though neither gave credence to these superstitions. Into the 20th century, local newspapers continued to share lore about the birds with their readers.
But as erasure of the species from horror suggest, broader cultural familiarity with whip-poor-wills has atrophied. In one exception, “Chapelwaite,” a 2021 television series based on King’s “Jerusalem’s Lot,” the characters explicitly discuss the birds’ behaviors, so that viewers understand the reference.
The cultural erasure of whip-poor-wills mirrors the species’ actual decline. Conservationists estimate that eastern whip-poor-will populations have declined by about 70% since the 1970s. This decline is likely leading to what the naturalist Robert Michael Pyle calls the “extinction of experience.” Pyle reasons that when a species declines, people lose opportunities to encounter it in local landscapes and are less likely to be familiar with it in the first place.
Such declines also drive social and cultural losses. This is most stark when a species goes extinct. Consider the passenger pigeon. As the writer Jennifer Price shows in her book “Flight Maps,” the life of Americans was once entwined with the species. When massive flocks of passenger pigeons arrived, communities gathered to hunt the birds, which were once an integral part of the American diet. Now, however, the species is remembered almost exclusively as a symbol of human-induced extinction.
A passenger pigeon pictured in the early 20th century, shortly before the species went extinct. Bettmann/Getty Images
Similarly, the decline of common birds alters people’s relationships to the environment. For instance, in the U.K., the decline of house sparrows robs landscapes of the beloved sight and sound of a once ubiquitous species. The loss of common cuckoos, meanwhile, means that spring arrives in the U.K. without its iconic song.
Beyond cultures of loss
I think we are witnessing similar cultural changes with whip-poor-wills. Their absence in the adaptations of King’s work mirrors their absence both in the landscape and in people’s lives. But though lossand grief rightfully characterize many people’s relationship with whip-poor-wills and other declining species, I want to make a case for hope.
On one hand, there’s reason to be hopeful about the possibility of conservation: Whip-poor-wills appear to respond well to forest management practices that create diverse forests with a mix of younger and older trees. Many places where whip-poor-wills breed have active conservation plans to support the bird and other species that share their habitats.
Nor are whip-poor-wills culturally extinct.
After all, readers still find their way to the works of Lovecraft and King. These and other enduring references to the species offer people an opportunity to find their way back to the bird – and to what the species meant to all those who have cared for them.
Jared Del Rosso does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Basel III is an internationally agreed set of measures and standards developed and issued by the international standard setting body, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (Basel Committee). It expanded upon and replaced Basel II. The various Basel III reforms were brought together into one consolidated set of standards, collectively referred to as the Basel Framework.
Implementation of the components of the Basel Framework continues to progress internationally, and the Isle of Man Financial Services Authority is committed to meeting international standards where it is appropriate and proportionate to do so.
We have to take into account that many of our banks are part of large international banking groups that are subject to consolidated supervision in countries that have, or are moving towards, Basel III implementation. At the same time, implementation of reforms in the Island needs to be suitable and effective for the profile of the sector.
We have updated our Basel III webpage to help explain our approach to implementation and to set out the core components of the Basel Framework.
Updating the liquidity framework
We have already implemented several elements of the Basel III reforms, including a framework for domestic systemically important banks, requirements for better quality and levels of capital, and reporting of the leverage ratio (a non-risk-based capital ratio).
Although further reforms to capital adequacy will need to be considered, implementing the Basel III liquidity reforms is a key priority for the Authority to help maintain an effective regulatory and supervisory framework and to continue to provide adequate protection for consumers.
We have therefore set out today a roadmap for the implementation of the Basel III liquidity standards in the Isle of Man and look forward to working with the sector to bring these changes into operation.
As Hispanic Heritage Month segues into Global Diversity Awareness Month, Instructional Technology Specialist for New Mexico’s Gadsden Independent School District Saul Nunez, who guided his Santa Teresa High School student team to a National Finalist honor in the 2022-2023 Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition, focused attention on underappreciated opportunities that science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and careers offer for Hispanic students in the U.S.
Saul Nunez, Instructional Tech Specialist for New Mexicos Gadsden Independent School District, a Samsung Solve for Tomorrow alum.
His Opinion piece, ”Let’s expand our kids’ vision of what’s possible,” in The El Paso Times highlighted that:
“Hispanic youth represent an underutilized resource for a society that needs a vibrant STEM workforce. Between 2023 and 2033, STEM jobs are projected to grow by 10.4%, far above the 3.6% growth in non-STEM jobs. The Hispanic community is among the fastest-growing U.S. populations; with both youth and entrepreneurial spirit on our side. The more we can encourage Hispanic students’ participation in STEM, the better off all America will be.”
The intent of CCMIS is to focus on accelerating the adoption of new technologies and sustainable practices in mining and is ideally suited for Acceleware to present potential benefits of EM Powered Heat to operators and mining equipment innovators active in Chile. As part of the commitment under the Canada/Chile memorandum of understanding signed at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) 2024 conference in Toronto, the CCMIS summit will enable Canada to leverage its leadership in Chile’s world-class mining industry. This collaboration will promote the sustainable use of natural resources and uphold Canada’s position as a leader in clean, efficient technologies and smart mining innovations.
“Acceleware is very excited to be heading to Santiago, Chile for these two events, where we will have the opportunity to network with mining companies and innovators including BHP, Codelco, Glencore, Teck, Hatch, South32, Anglo Gold and others. These events are specifically focused on bringing together operators and innovators who are actively working to evaluate decarbonization opportunities and deploy electrification technologies like ours,” said Geoff Clark, Chief Executive Officer. “We see a significant opportunity for our mining decarbonization technologies to be of interest there, especially given that Chile is the world’s largest copper producer with one third of world production and reserves, and is also a leading producer of molybdenum, gold, silver and lithium.”
In addition to having the opportunity to showcase its technology and solutions, Acceleware will also engage in pre-arranged meetings with Chilean mine operators, integrators and industry leaders. MICA will share an update on collaboration or pilot projects that result from the CCMIS initiative at PDAC 2025 in Toronto.
About Acceleware Acceleware is an advanced electromagnetic (EM) heating company with highly scalable EM solutions for large industrial applications. The Company’s solutions provide an opportunity to economically electrify and decarbonize industrial process heat applications previously considered difficult to abate, which could have a significant impact on global GHG emissions.
Acceleware is piloting RF XL, its patented low-cost, low-carbon EM thermal production technology for heavy oil and oil sands that is materially different from any heavy oil recovery technique used today. The Company is also working with a consortium of world-class potash partners on a pilot project using its patented and field proven Clean Tech Inverter (CTI) to decarbonize drying of potash ore and other minerals. Acceleware is actively developing partnerships for EM heating of other industrial applications in mining, steel, agriculture, cement, hydrogen and other clean fuels.
Acceleware and Saa Dene Group (co-founded by Jim Boucher) have created Acceleware | Kisâstwêw to raise the profile, adoption, and value of Acceleware technologies. The partnership is intended to improve the environmental and economic performance of industry by supporting ideals that are important to Indigenous peoples, including respect for land, water, and clean air.
Acceleware is a public company listed on Canada’s TSX Venture Exchange under the trading symbol “AXE”.
About MICA MICA was created on July 9, 2021 through an investment of $40 million from the Government of Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund. MICA is a $112.4 million pan-Canadian initiative bringing together stakeholders from a wide range of fields to accelerate the development and commercialization of innovative technologies to make the mining sector more productive and sustainable.
Disclaimers
This news release contains “forward-looking information” and “forward-looking statements” (collectively, “forward-looking statements”) within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as “expects”, “anticipates”, “plans”, “continues”, “budget”, “scheduled”, “forecasts”, “estimates”, “believes” or “intends” or variations or negatives of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results “may” or “could”, “would”, “might”, “shall” or “will” be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements.
In this news release, forward-looking statements relate to, among other things, statements relating to the benefits of CTI electrification, and future development plans and timing. Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in forward-looking information. Those assumptions and factors are based on information currently available to the Company. The material facts and assumptions include initial studies of applicability of CTI technology to industrial applications are accurate, third party estimates of market size are correct, and the timeline estimates are reasonable. Actual results may vary from the forward-looking information in this news release due to certain material risk factors. The Company cautions the reader that the above list of risk factors is not exhaustive and additional risk factors risk factors are described in detail in Acceleware’s continuous disclosure documents, which are filed on SEDAR at http://www.sedar.com. The forward-looking information contained in this release is made as of the date hereof and the Company is not obligated to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Due to the risks, uncertainties and assumptions contained herein, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein.
Neither the TSXV nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Secretary for Health Prof Lo Chung-mau and Secretary for Education Choi Yuk-lin today co-chaired the first meeting of the Task Group on New Medical School to discuss strategic directions and major parameters for the establishment of a third medical school in Hong Kong.
The task group concluded that the third medical school should adopt an innovative strategic positioning in pursuit of complementary development with the two existing medical schools.
It recommended that the curriculum design of the new medical school should be accorded top priority and that the medical curriculum should meet the requirements stipulated by the Medical Council of Hong Kong.
The task force also required that arrangements should also be made for medical students to undergo adequate clinical training to ensure they are well equipped with both professional knowledge and clinical skills to safeguard the interest of patients.
Additionally, the new medical school should set out a forward-looking and long-term development plan for its campus and teaching facilities, as well as an interim arrangement for a campus and a teaching hospital if admission of students is essential before the long-term facilities are available, alongside strategies to ensure financial soundness.
Prof Lo said the establishment of a third medical school is a significant project in the development of medical education in Hong Kong.
“Not only will it attract global talent and nurture more outstanding doctors to reinforce the city’s healthcare system in the sustainable provision of healthcare services with enhanced quality and quantity, but also serves to promote high-quality development in medical education and research, dovetailing with the city’s development as an international hub for medical training, research and innovation.”
Noting that the establishment of a new medical school will elevate Hong Kong’s position as an international education hub, Ms Choi supplemented that the scope of local medical teaching and research will be expanded through an innovative curriculum design and diversified student recruitment arrangements, complementing the goals of nurturing future talent and promoting the “Study in Hong Kong” brand.
Land will also reserved in the Northern Metropolis Ngau Tam Mei for the new medical school campus and the associated integrated medical teaching and research hospital.
The Oscar Austin departed Norfolk, Va., September 30, after being homeported there since its commissioning Aug. 19, 2000, and is now assigned to Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 60 / Commander, Task Force (CTF) 65 and U.S. 6th Fleet, now the fifth DDG in Rota with a sixth to follow.
Oscar Austin is ballistic missile defense, anti-submarine, and anti-surface warfare capable.
NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Center Sigonella (FLCSI) Site Rota has been preparing for the arrival for years to ensure the crew and their families, approximately 500 people, can be properly supported with mailing and household goods services.
“NAVSUP FLCSI plays a huge role in behind-the-scenes logistics,” said Commander Travis Miller, NAVSUP FLCSI Site Rota director. “We strive and take strategic action to meet the operational needs of the forward-deployed ships, and in parallel, support the needs of the crew and their families.”
FLCSI is responsible for all material processing, shipping, receiving and woodworking since the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) turned over their largest warehouse and its responsibilities to NAVSUP in 2020. While everything, including the storage containers for fuels, was built before the arrival of the first DDG to Site Rota in 2014, FLCSI has been investing to improve the support of all operational forces operating out of this base.
“Moving a ship to a new homeport is a very big deal,” said Andrew Benson, the FLCSI executive director, who attended the ceremony. “The new sailors and their families have property that needs to be shipped overseas. They have letter mail and Amazon packages coming into our post offices. We have to figure out how to store more fuel and more parts for the ships. This is what we do at FLCSI; we sustain the warfighter. This isn’t something that just happens, we’ve been planning for this for a long time to ensure we are ready to support.”
Prior to Oscar Austin’s arrival, the mail center in NAVSTA Rota was at 98 percent capacity for boxes on site. With the arrival of USS Oscar Austin, the estimated growth was 250 new mailboxes. To prepare, NAVSUP FLCSI Site Rota added 360 new mailboxes with plans for a fleet mail center expansion to improve functionally and storage on site.
NAVSUP FLCSI, in conjunction with NAVSUP headquarters, identified a need for more manpower resulting in a proposed increase of 24 additional personnel being added to NAVSUP FLCSI Site Rota to support this growth in mission.
“We’ve had considerable growth in all products and services supporting all customers across the Iberian Peninsula,” Miller said. “The Oscar Austin is the acute eyes on target that is arriving, but the base footprint itself has grown considerably.”
Over the last two years, NAVSUP FLCSI Site Rota has seen an increase of 500 household goods shipping transactions to support new sailors and their families. This number doesn’t include the other increases in manning around the base as new units move in to support the ships.
The arrival of the Oscar Austin and the other DDGs doesn’t impact just Rota; it makes an impact on FLCSI sites around the region as the ships move through their areas of responsibility.
“As these additional ships operate throughout our critical area of responsibility, we are likely to be supporting them from every site across the FLCSI enterprise,” Benson said. “Our wonderful team of logistics professionals is standing by to support the Oscar Austin and all the other DDGs that now call Rota their home as the move throughout the region.”
Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Lauren Boebert (Colorado, 3)
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (CO-03), House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (AR-04), and Western Slope Oil & Gas Association Executive Director Chelsie Miera released the following statements opposing the latest Colorado-Utah land grab by the Biden-Harris Administration’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
“Once again, the Biden-Harris Administration and the radical progressives in charge of BLM are attempting to lock up our public lands from critical uses like oil & gas exploration. Instead of putting Coloradans first, they’re continuing to bend the knee to Green New Deal worshippers who want to destroy Colorado’s oil & gas industry and the tens of thousands of good-paying jobs that support families across the state. Our children will lose out on millions of dollars for education from this tyrannical seizure of our land and there is nothing balanced about it. Obama, Biden and Harris have tried to use the Gunnison Sage-Grouse’s ugly, non-endangered cousin, the Greater Sage-Grouse, to lock up more than 183 million acres in the West. This new land grab attempt doubles down to lock up tens of millions of acres more of surface and subsurface mineral rights. There was no consideration by this regime of what is actually best for all Coloradans. I will fight this newest land grab just like I’ve done for every ridiculous attempt from the Biden-Harris Administration and BLM to damage our economy.” said Congresswoman Boebert.
“This is just the latest attempt from BLM to prioritize environmental activists over the economic needs of local communities,” said House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman (AR-04). “By limiting the ability of domestic energy producers to use our public lands, the Biden-Harris Administration will continue to drive up energy costs for hard working American families. House Republicans will work to stop this nonsensical war on American energy and will make sure Americans know that we cannot trust this Administration when it comes to supporting American jobs and reducing energy costs.”
“In a state with the most stringent regulations on oil and gas development for our private, state, and federal lands, it is frustrating for our oil & gas employees to watch the Biden-Harris Administration continue to make production of our clean, reliable and affordable natural gas nearly impossible in Colorado,” said Chelsie Miera, Executive Director of Western Slope Oil & Gas Association. “We are grateful to Congresswoman Boebert for her continued advocacy in support of the thousands of families who work in our oil & gas industry and Coloradans who depend on our energy production.”
Background:
This week, the Biden-Harris Administration unleashed another massive land grab in Colorado and Utah when the agency released Records of Decision for the Big Game Resource Management Plan (RMP) Amendment, the Gunnison Sage-Grouse Resource Management Plan Amendment, and plans for the Grand Junction and Colorado River Valley Field Offices.
Establishing a one-mile buffer completely around this Gunnison Sage-Grouse’s habitat and drastically reducing surface disturbances in the bird’s habitat is ridiculous and unnecessary.
The BLM’s record of decision for oil and gas management that amends resource management plans in Colorado significantly changes the management plans and could hinder responsible energy production on six million surface acres managed by BLM and 16 million acres of BLM-managed sub-surface mineral estate and closes off low and medium potential oil and gas areas.
In this land grab, BLM also amended 11 Resource Management Plans in Colorado and Utah to lock up land for Gunnison sage-grouse habitat on more than two million acres of BLM-managed public land and nearly three million acres of public subsurface mineral estate.
Changes to the Colorado River Valley and Grand Junction Field Office RMPs also close off low and medium potential oil and gas areas. These bureaucratic seizures also designate new wilderness areas that contribute to catastrophic wildfires as they prevent active forest management and mechanical thinning.
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Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (video statements)
Watch Seattle Assistant Special Agent in Charge discuss our nine satellite offices for FBI Seattle, called resident agencies. One of the benefits of working in a resident agency is that these agents are exposed to many types of investigations. For a full transcript and download, visit:
Headline: A new Copilot tool will give Institut Curie researchers more time to focus on cancer
In a similar vein, researchers regularly are asked to evaluate others’ work, or to help decide whether a research project should be financed. One part of those tasks involves searching databases to ensure that the idea is original. Or perhaps the topic isn’t directly within the researcher’s expertise and they need to read up about it. That now involves time-consuming keyword searches, which could be done much more quickly with Copilot for Researcher, which will be able to provide, say, a one-page summary.
“You can always keep control. You can always go back to the paper. You can always troubleshoot things, but you have a first level of analysis, which is not hard, but very time consuming,” Hersen said.
In addition to being researchers, they are writers, editors, evaluators, recruiters, managers, project managers, accountants …. Many also teach.
“The more they publish well, the more they are recognized in their domain, the more they are experts, the more things are demanded of them, often without being paid extra,” said Tatiana Malherbe, deputy director of the Institut Curie’s research center.
Headline: Lenfest Institute, OpenAI and Microsoft announce $10M AI Collaborative and Fellowship program for US metro news organizations
Chicago Public Media, The Minnesota Star Tribune, Newsday (Long Island, New York), The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Seattle Times will receive grant funding and enterprise credits for experimentation with generative AI
PHILADELPHIA — Oct. 22, 2024 — The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, a leader in developing solutions for the next era of local news, on Tuesday announced a major new collaboration with OpenAI and Microsoft Corp. to help newsrooms explore and implement ways in which artificial intelligence can help drive business sustainability and innovation in local journalism through the Lenfest Institute AI Collaborative and Fellowship program.
In the initial round of funding, Chicago Public Media, Newsday (Long Island, NY), The Minnesota Star Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Seattle Times will each receive a grant to hire a two-year AI fellow to pursue projects that focus largely on improving business sustainability and implementing AI technologies within their organizations. The fellowship will also provide OpenAI and Microsoft Azure credits to help these publications experiment and develop tools to assist with local news. As part of the program, the news organizations will work collaboratively with each other and the broader news industry to share learnings, product developments, case studies and technical information needed to help replicate their work in other newsrooms. An additional three organizations will be awarded fellows in a second round of grants.
“We are pleased to be working with both OpenAI and Microsoft on this important initiative to support local news,” said Jim Friedlich, executive director and CEO of The Lenfest Institute. “Through these fellowships — and by sharing results with the broader news industry — we will help empower local newsrooms to explore, implement and advocate for AI business solutions that uphold the highest ethical standards while strengthening their future prospects. The Lenfest Institute and OpenAI incubated the fellowship program, which is designed to promote the use of AI in creating a sustainable future for independent local journalism, and we welcome its expansion in scope and resources with Microsoft’s commitment.”
The first slate of AI Collaborative and Fellows members will work on projects that focus on the use of AI for analysis of public data, to better utilize news and visual archives, to build audience engagement, for creating new AI-based news tools and products, and more. The projects were chosen through an application process led by The Lenfest Institute with assistance from FT Strategies, a global media consultant, and Nota, a provider of AI tools for journalism.
“While nothing will replace the central role of reporters, we believe that AI technology can help in the research, investigation, distribution and monetization of important journalism. We’re deeply invested in supporting smaller, independent publishers through initiatives like The Lenfest Institute AI Collaborative and Fellowship, ensuring they have access to the same cutting-edge tools and opportunities as larger organizations,” said Tom Rubin, chief of Intellectual Property and Content, OpenAI. “Local news is a particularly vulnerable area of journalism, and we believe AI can help it thrive.”
The selected projects are:
Chicago Public Media, which publishes The Chicago Sun-Times and runs public radio station WBEZ, will focus on leveraging AI for transcription, summarization and translation to expand content offerings and reach new audiences.
The Minnesota Star Tribune will experiment with AI summarization, analysis and content discovery for both its journalists and readers.
Newsday will build AI public data summarization and aggregation tools for its newsroom, for readers and for businesses as a marketing services offering.
The Philadelphia Inquirer will use AI platforms to build a conversational search interface for its archives. It will also leverage AI to monitor and analyze media produced by local municipalities and agencies.
The Seattle Times will use AI platforms to assist in advertising go-to-market, sales training support, and other sales analytics before rolling out learnings to other business functions and departments.
“We need local journalism to inform and educate citizens, expose wrongdoing, and encourage civic engagement. We will work with the Lenfest AI Fellowship to drive AI innovation that can help news organizations create new products to extend their reporting, find new sources of revenue, and ultimately build a more sustainable future,” said Teresa Hutson, corporate vice president, technology for fundamental rights at Microsoft. “We hope these news organizations will be lighthouses for the industry, to provide examples of how AI can build a better future for the business of news.”
To support the new Lenfest Institute AI Collaborative and Fellowship program and resources, OpenAI and Microsoft are each awarding $2.5 million in direct funding and $2.5 million in software and enterprise credits, for a total of up to $10 million. The two-year pilot program is in partnership with The Lenfest Institute’s Local Independent News Coalition (LINC), a group of eight of the largest independently owned metropolitan news organizations in the United States.
LINC is one of several Communities of Practice led by The Lenfest Institute with funding from the Institute and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. LINC includes The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Chicago Public Media (WBEZ and The Chicago Sun Times), The Dallas Morning News, Newsday (Long Island, New York), The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Seattle Times, The Minnesota Star Tribune, and The Tampa Bay Times.
Learn more about LINC here and sign up to receive updates on the Lenfest AI Fellows experiments and lessons learned through The Lenfest Institute Solution Set newsletter.
About The Lenfest Institute for Journalism
The Lenfest Institute for Journalism creates solutions for the next era of local news by investing in sustainable business models at the intersection of local journalism and community in Philadelphia and nationwide.
About OpenAI
OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Its mission is to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, [email protected]
Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit Microsoft Source at https://news.microsoft.com/source. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at https://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-public-relations-contacts.
BOSTON, Oct. 22, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Risk Strategies, a leading national specialty insurance brokerage and risk management firm, today announced the acquisition of George W. Blaisdell Insurance, a well-established agency focused on employee benefits based in Hampton Falls, NH. The acquisition further enhances the presence and capabilities of the Risk Strategies Employee Benefits Practice in its New England region. Terms of the deal were not announced.
Founded in 1988 by its principal, George W. Blaisdell, the agency has been a successful, specialized provider of employee benefits insurance and related services to clients across the New England region. The agency primarily specializes in designing and delivering group benefit plans to employers of all sizes. It also offers individual health and Medicare supplements, as well as 401k services.
“We are excited to welcome George W. Blaisdell Insurance to the Risk Strategies family,” said John Greenbaum, National Employee Benefits Practice Leader, Risk Strategies. “Their expertise and strong reputation in the employee benefits space align perfectly with our strategic goals. We look forward to using our combined strengths to build new business and deliver exceptional value to our clients.”
Company founder George W. Blaisdell brings over 35 years of experience and specialty expertise in providing clients with expert guidance and robust employee benefits plans. With a diverse client base throughout New England across various industries, Blaisdell is dedicated to designing and delivering group plans tailored to meet the unique needs of organizations of all sizes.
“Joining Risk Strategies is a significant milestone for our agency,” said Blaisdell. “With their resources and support, we can continue to grow and provide our clients with even better service and solutions. We are thrilled to become part of such a dynamic specialty organization.”
Blaisdell is the second benefits-focused addition to the Risk Strategies National Benefits Practice in the New England Region this year. In June, it was announced that Risk Strategies had acquired Baker Benefit Group, with operations in Maine and Connecticut.
Additionally, Risk Strategies made two other benefits-focused acquisitions in 2023: Connecticut-based May, Bonee & Clark in April and Massachusetts-based Strategic Benefit Solutions in September.
Other notable acquisitions in the New England region in recent years include Gerard B. Tracy Associates in 2019, CBG Benefits in 2018, and Mosse & Mosse Associates in 2017.
“We have one of the industry’s most knowledgeable employee benefits practice,” said Ed Flanagan, New England Region Leader, Risk Strategies. “Adding Blaisdell to the group is further demonstration of our commitment to deepening this expertise at all levels of the organization.”
Risk Strategies, part of Accession Risk Management Group, is a North American specialty brokerage firm offering comprehensive risk management services, property and casualty insurance and reinsurance placement, employee benefits, private client services, consulting services, and financial & wealth solutions. The 9th largest U.S. privately held broker, we advise businesses and personal clients, have access to all major insurance markets, and 30+ specialty industry and product line practices and experts in 200+ offices – Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Grand Cayman, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, Nashville, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, and Washington, DC. RiskStrategies.com
Headline: Rosneft and the Ministry of Tourism of the Samara Oblast Present the “Zhiguli Weekend” Motor Tourist Route
Rosneft and the Ministry of Tourism of the Samara Oblast presented the “Zhiguli Weekend” motor tourist route, which runs along the region’s landmark and most picturesque locations.
Rosneft is committed to the development of domestic automobile tourism and aims to create comfortable conditions for car travellers. One of Rosneft’s key objectives is to enhance the quality of its roadside assistance and customer service at its filling stations.
The route presentation was held at a Rosneft filling station in Samara. Egor Okhotnikov, a notable navigator of LADA Sport ROSNEFT racing team, took part in the event.
The tourist route “Zhiguli Weekend” runs through Samara, Togliatti, Syzran and unique landscapes and locations of the region. Tourists can efficiently use their travel time and immerse themselves in the atmosphere of the Volga region thanks to well-designed logistics. Rosneft filling station app makes it easy to find the nearest filling station along the route.
In the historic city of Syzran, guests will be introduced to the region’s only Kremlin. It was built in 1683 and is recognized as an object of national cultural heritage.
In the “Russia’s car capital” Togliatti tourists will be able to visit the AVTOVAZ museum, as well as the production site of LADA Sport ROSNEFT, the leading team in Russian circuit racing, whose title sponsor for many years is Rosneft.
Samara, the capital of the region, will surprise travelers with the longest five-kilometer waterfront. From any point of the waterfront there is a breathtaking panoramic view of the Volga River. In the historical part of the city visitors will be welcomed by the museum-appartment of the author of “The Golden Key” Alexei Tolstoy, an art museum and a unique underground structure – Stalin’s bunker, 37 metres deep.
Along the way, motor tourists can visit other cultural sights of the region: the old village Shiryaevo, where Ilya Repin wrote sketches for the painting “Barge Haulers on the Volga”, a Gothic castle on the shore of the Zhiguli Sea (Kuybyshev Reservoir) and much more.
The route also includes unique natural monuments: Samarskaya Luka National Park and Zhiguli Nature Reserve. This year the Samarskaya Luka National Park celebrates its 40th anniversary. Rosneft’s Samara Enterprises have been supporting the national park’s projects for 13 years, the most significant of which is the study and preservation of the population of the Red Book white-tailed eagle.
Samara Oblast is one of Rosneft’s strategic regions of operation. The Company is present in the region with a powerful full-cycle production complex, including scientific and project support, oil and gas production, oil and gas processing, oil refining, production of lubricants, additives and catalysts, as well as a retail network. Large enterprises such as Samaraneftegaz, Kuibyshev Refinery, Novokuibyshevsk Refinery, Syzran Refinery, Novokuibyshevsk Oil and Additives Plant, Novokuibyshevsk Petrochemical Company, and Samaranefteprodukt operate in Samara Oblast.
Rosneft’s network of filling stations is the largest in the region, covering all major highways in key tourist destinations, including the M-5 highway, as well as highways leading to neighboring regions: the Republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, Ulyanovsk, Saratov and Orenburg Oblasts. In the Samara Oblast there are 77 stations of the company, where you can fuel your car with high-quality fuel, have a comfortable rest in a cafe or buy goods you need on the road.
Rosneft filling stations with well-developed infrastructure will help to make traveling along the “Zhiguli Weekend” route as comfortable as possible.
Reference:
Rosneft’s retail network is the largest in the Russian Federation in terms of geographical coverage and number of stations, and the Rosneft filling station brand is one of the leaders in Russia in terms of recognition and fuel quality. The retail chain of the Company covers 61 Russian regions. The Company has a network of approximately 3,000 operating filling stations. In addition to high-quality fuel, the Company offers its customers a wide range of goods and services – from shops and cafes to roadside assistance.
Earlier, Rosneft signed memorandums on cooperation in the development of domestic tourism with the Moscow City Tourism Committee, the Krasnoyarsk and Altai Territories, the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Republic of Udmurtia, and the Arkhangelsk, Samara, Voronezh and Ulyanovsk Regions, and the Stavropol Krai.
In 2023, Rosneft launched a special information and service platform “Russian Horizons: Come With Us!”. The special project allows car tourists to choose and plan routes to places of interest using the infrastructure of Rosneft’s network of motorway services and filling stations.
RCMP Traffic Services Labrador is continuing traffic enforcement between Sheshatshiu and Happy Valley-Goose Bay with a number of motorists ticketed for various offences over the past weekend.
On October 18, 2024, at approximately 1:15 p.m., police stopped a vehicle on Route 520 near Sheshatshiu. The driver, a 37-year-old man, was driving while prohibited and was arrested. The man was released from custody and is set to appear in court at a later date to answer to charges of driving while prohibited and breach of a probation order.
A short time later, police stopped an unregistered vehicle on Route 520 near Sheshatshiu. The driver, a 49-year-old man, was operating an uninsured vehicle with a suspended driver’s licence. The man was ticketed for the offences.
On October 19, 2024, at approximately 1:15 p.m., police stopped a vehicle on Route 520 near Sheshatshiu that had been unregistered since 2014. In addition, the vehicle was uninsured and the driver, a 35-year-old man, had a suspended licence. The man was ticketed for the violations.
Approximately an hour later, police stopped a suspected prohibited driver operating a vehicle on Route 520 near Sheshatshiu. The 37-year-old man was confirmed as driving while prohibited and was arrested. The man was released from custody and is set to appear in court at a later date to answer to a charge of driving while prohibited.
On October 20, 2024, at approximately 1:00 p.m., police stopped a vehicle on Route 520 near Goose River. The driver, a 32-year-old man, who was operating the vehicle with a suspended licence, provided a roadside breath sample that was above the provincial limit for alcohol. The man was issued a further licence suspension and was ticketed for operating a vehicle while suspended.
Later that evening, at approximately 7:00 p.m., police stopped an unregistered vehicle on Royal Street in Happy Valley-Goose Bay. The driver, a-49-year-old man, was operating an uninsured vehicle. He was ticketed for both offences.
All six vehicles were seized and impounded. RCMP NL Traffic Services remains dedicated to road safety and the enforcement of the Highway Traffic Act.
Dhaka (Agenzia Fides) – “The interim government in power in Bangladesh is doing its best, working against corruption and for transparency. The executive, led by Mohammad Yunus, is made up of people who seem sincerely committed to the good of society,” said the Archbishop of Dhaka, Bejoy D’Cruze, OMI, to Fides about the present and future of the South Asian country where a student uprising between July and August 2024 led to the resignation of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India. “The interim government gave itself about two years to carry out the necessary reforms in the country, listening to the representatives of the student movement, civil society, political movements and religious communities,” he reports. “I met Yunus and he assured me that he is committed to respecting the rights of all, including those of religious minorities such as Hindus and Christians,” D’Cruze continued. Meanwhile, Yunus announced the establishment of six commissions to deal with reforms in as many areas as possible: electoral system, police, judiciary, anti-corruption, public administration and the constitution. “The issues on the agenda are diverse and challenging, and we need time to take the right steps. I believe that the Bangladeshi people must now be patient and confident. It is important that democracy is always protected, that the rights of religious and ethnic minorities are guaranteed, that the secularity of the state is not abandoned and that the rule of law is always respected and promoted,” the archbishop hopes. Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) has in recent days begun trials for crimes against humanity committed during anti-government protests in July and August, issuing arrest warrants for former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and 45 others, including several prominent members of the Awami League, Hasina’s party. The new government reinstated the court and appointed judges who have examined more than 60 complaints of crimes against humanity and genocide. Former Prime Minister Hasina is implicated in over 200 investigations for murders, attempted murders, kidnappings and other crimes. Recalling the days of protests, the archbishop said: “In truth, no one expected such a major turnaround. The former prime minister had ruled for three terms and was accused of political manipulation, corruption and lack of transparency. Her government was then harsh towards any political opposition and restricted freedom of opinion, conscience and speech. After initial protests, the police responded with strong violence, which further inflamed tempers and increased the scale of the revolt, which ultimately led to the fall of the government,” the Archbishop notes. “It was a shock for many, but it must be said that the country needed a change. Now we are trying to build a just and peaceful future. It is true that we are in a transitional phase of uncertainty, that the protests have not yet completely subsided and that there have been some problems, for example for the Hindu communities, which have suffered unfounded aggression. There is a fear that radical Islamist groups could seize the opportunity and recruit new followers. As Bangladeshi Catholics, we have confidence and hope in the good work and goodwill of the Yunus government, which we hope will lead the country into a new historic phase of stability, justice and prosperity,” Archbishop D’Cruze concludes. (PA) (Agenzia Fides, 22/10/2024)
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by Mauro ArmaninoNiamey (Agenzia Fides) – Pierluigi Maccalli, who was held hostage for more than two years by Salafist-inspired groups, has returned to Niger, the place of his kidnapping, to spend a few days (see Fides, 7/10/2024). This return coincides with the same date on which his captivity began in the savannah of Burkina Faso and then in the immense Sahara desert. A beginning and an end.Between these symbolic moments, two years of solitude in captivity, marked by chains that accompanied him during the long starry nights of the desert. Since then, Pierluigi has been very attentive to the progress in negotiations for other hostages like him, held in the Sahel and elsewhere. His chains were of freedom, as they transformed him into a hostage of peace, of words and of unarmed hands. However, for those who have not had the same dramatic and privileged destiny as his friend and confrere mentioned, life can pass as if they were prisoners, without realizing it or without wanting it. Sometimes, they may even prefer to live as hostages to avoid risking what is most dangerous in life: freedom. Pierluigi saw, felt and suffered the chains at his feet. For about a month, he was chained day and night to a chain one meter and twenty centimeters long. Only dogs, perhaps, can understand what that means for a person accustomed to moving, traveling and deciding where to go. There are those who do not realize that they are chained, just as Pierluigi was, and are content with the food offered to them in their daily lives.There are hostages of misery, created, reproduced and accepted as unavoidable, and sometimes maintained because that is how the world seems to have worked since the world began. Some are born to live as slaves, resigned to their destiny written in a book of sand, while others can decide the kind of future they will have for themselves and their children. There are also hostages of the humanitarian world that thrives right where the cry of those suffering from a disease that kills more than war resonates loudest: hunger. Hostages who, often, have never been told that what is written in the book of destiny is nothing more than sand scattered by the wind. A different world is possible when invisible chains are recognized.In the Sahel, this extraordinary space of history, cultures, traditions, conflicts and adventures, there are still hostages of fear. Fear of the present, of the possible arrival of armed groups that impose the law and death. Fear of tomorrow: sowing, harvesting, granaries, the taxes to be paid per person, forced conversions and recruitment into the jihadist nebula, which trades in religion, gold, drugs, weapons and the best years of the young. Fear of denunciation that turns everyone into a suspect, even within families and villages where for decades there has been relative harmony and acceptance of differences. Then come the fostered identities that are exclusive, deadly and divisive.Finally, there are hostages who are perhaps less recognizable and, perhaps for that reason, more harmful. They are the hostages of the lie, which prevails through rhetoric that justifies the means to an end. They associate, support, justify, defend and align themselves with the dominant thought of the moment. Politics becomes irrelevant and human rights are a commodity of ideological change, because what matters is the good of the people, as a group of “enlightened” people, often armed. Hostages who infiltrate what remains of the parties, unions, media and even the medals of merit in the field. My friend Pierluigi was right. He said that they can chain the feet but not the heart and the spirit. As a reminder of his time in captivity, he has carried with him a link of the chain. To remember that only those who have carried the chains risk their lives for the freedom of others. (Agenzia Fides, 22/10/2024)
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His Majesty The King has today decided on the recommendation of the Government Offices to present Royal Orders of Knighthood to ten foreign citizens.
“These distinctions are an expression of our immense gratitude for those individuals’ efforts in conjunction with Sweden joining NATO. I would also like to extend a special thanks to Finland’s former President Sauli Niinistö, who is an earlier recipient of the Order of the Seraphim. Sweden’s membership makes NATO stronger and Sweden more secure,” says Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
“The individuals who are now receiving the Swedish Orders made significant efforts in support of Sweden’s accession to NATO,” says Minister for Foreign Affairs Maria Malmer Stenergard.
The following individuals will be awarded the Royal Order of the Polar Star:
Former Prime Minister Sanna Marin Commander Grand Cross For extraordinary efforts for Swedish interests
Former Minister for Foreign Affairs Pekka Haavisto Commander Grand Cross For extraordinary efforts for Swedish interests
Former Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Commander Grand Cross For extraordinary efforts for Swedish interests
Secretary of State Antony Blinken Commander Grand Cross For extraordinary efforts for Swedish interests
National Security Adviser Jacob Sullivan Commander Grand Cross For extraordinary efforts for Swedish interests
Director General Petri Hakkarainen Commander, First Class For extraordinary efforts for Swedish interests
Former Director of the Private Office of the Secretary General Stian Jenssen Commander, First Class For extraordinary efforts for Swedish interests
Ambassador Julianne Smith Commander, First Class For extraordinary efforts for Swedish interests
Ambassador Jeffry Flake Commander, First Class For extraordinary efforts for Swedish interests
Former Senior Director Amanda Sloat Commander, First Class For extraordinary efforts for Swedish interests
On 22 October 2022, President of the Council of Ministers Giorgia Meloni, Vice-Presidents Antonio Tajani and Matteo Salvini and the Government Ministers were sworn in by the President of the Republic.
On 22 October 2024, the Meloni Government, the first in Italy’s history to be headed by a woman, turns two years old and has become the seventh longest-serving Government of the Italian Republic.
The document attached provides a summary of the key figures and most significant measures that have been approved and launched since the Government first took office, made possible by the Government’s teamwork with the precious support of the State administration system.
The principle guiding the Government’s work is adherence to and timely implementation of the joint programme which the centre-right coalition presented to the Italian people, winning their trust at the general election on 25 September 2022.
This programme has enabled Italy to regain a key leading role at international level, to boost economic growth and employment, to launch long-awaited reforms, to protect the industrial and productive fabric from the impact of high energy costs and the consequences of the current geopolitical crises, to safeguard public finances, and to defend the purchasing power of households, particularly those with children and the most vulnerable.
Over the course of its legislative term, the Government will continue working to consolidate its achievements and to fully deliver on the commitments made to citizens in its programme.
