Day: September 2, 2020

Astronomers say they have discovered evidence of the first intermediate-size black hole, created by the merger of two smaller black holes.Up to this point, astronomers had observed black holes – super-dense regions of space with gravity so strong light cannot escape them – in only two general sizes.There are small, or “stellar” black holes, formed when stars collapse into themselves. They range in size from three to four times the mass of our sun to tens of times the mass of our sun.There are also are supermassive black holes that are millions, maybe billions, of times more massive than our sun. A supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy is believed to be 4 million times the mass of our sun. Intermediate-size black holes had been theorized, but never “observed” by astronomers, until now.In a study published Wednesday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers say the observation came in the form of a signal detected in May 2019 by the National Science Foundation’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). The signal was a brief but powerful gravitational wave.One of the authors of the study, French researcher Nelson Christensen, explains that due to the nature of gravitational waves – literally, ripples in the fabric of space-time – they offer a completely different way to observe the universe, as opposed to the light that different cosmic bodies give out – in other words, what we can see through a telescope.Christensen says light allows you to see the universe, but gravitational waves allow you to “hear” it. He compares it to a doctor seeing a patient and noting some physical symptoms that appear on the outside, but then placing a stethoscope on the patient’s chest to get a better understanding of what may be wrong.By studying the gravitational wave signal, the team discerned this ripple in the cosmic fabric was likely created by the merger or collision of two black holes, about 85 and 66 times the mass of the sun, respectively. They created a new, intermediate black hole about 142 times the mass of our sun.Christensen said all this came from a signal that lasted about a tenth of second and resulted from an event that occurred about 7 billion years ago. But he said without that “blip” of a gravitational wave, they never would have known it had happened. He said, “There would be no way to see two black holes spinning around each other and colliding if not for gravitational waves.”Though long theorized, studying gravitational waves is fairly new. Scientists detected gravitational waves for the first time in 2015, using LIGO. Since then, the gravitational-wave detector has listened in to more of these ripples in space-time.Christensen says each time they turn on the detectors, they “hear” interesting things. “The universe is providing us with all kinds of surprises, and that’s really wonderful.” 
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Pakistan has blocked access to five dating apps for their delivery of “immoral/indecent content” in the majority-Muslim nation. The state regulator, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, PTA, identified the platforms as Tinder, Grindr, Tagged, Skout and SayHi.”PTA issued notices to the above-mentioned platforms for the purpose of removing dating services and to moderate livestreaming content in accordance with the local laws of Pakistan,” PTA said Tuesday. It did not elaborate on the ban, but the country’s laws prohibit homosexuality and extra-marital relationships. The PTA statement noted that the five companies failed to respond to its directive within the stipulated time, prompting the authority to block their services in Pakistan. The statement did not elaborate on the time frame. Officials at the five companies have not commented on PTA’s action, which has been criticized at home. “PTA, deciding what adults should watch privately or not, is itself “immoral” if “morality” or “moral order” could be understood as a term in Islamic Pakistan! PTA is creating undemocratic trends; courts need to stop PTA!,” tweeted Moeed Pirzada, a prime-time TV news anchor in Pakistan.Tinder is globally popular and owned by Match Group.  FILE – A woman checks the Grindr app on her mobile phone, May 29, 2019.Grindr, which has a large following in the United States, describes itself as a social network “for gay, bi, trans, and queer people.” The PTA directive noted, however, that the authority can unblock the services if the management of their companies “assures adherence to the local laws with respect to moderating the indecent/immoral content through meaningful engagement.”Data from analytics firm Sensor Tower shows Tinder has been downloaded more than 440,000 times in Pakistan within the last 12 months, the Reuters news agency reported. Grindr, Tagged and SayHi have each been downloaded about 300,000 times. Skout has been downloaded 100,000 times during the same period, according to the data.   Last week, PTA formally asked video sharing platforms YouTube and TikTok to immediately block what PTA denounced as “vulgar, indecent, nude and hate speech content for viewing in Pakistan.”   The authorities directed both companies to tighten its content monitoring and moderation mechanism to block access to “the unlawful material” and “objectionable” content. 
 
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Louisianians woke up Wednesday, Aug. 26 to news that Laura would be arriving as a Category 4 hurricane. The storm was expected to hit Lake Charles early Thursday morning.   Throughout the day, doctors, nurses, maintenance and cafeteria workers filled Lake Charles Memorial Hospital. The plan was for several shifts of employees to be ready once the winds picked up that night. Whole floors were designated as sleeping areas for off-duty staff. Dr. Gary Kohler, a pulmonary critical care physician, arrived for his shift at 6:30 a.m. He remembered sensing how nervous everyone was in those hours before the storm. 
 “No one wanted to be alone,” he said. “When we were on break, a lot of us would sit around a table together. It was a shared fear of not knowing what was coming.”    In 2005, the hospital was evacuated before Hurricane Rita arrived and devastated the city. Hurricane Laura was predicted to be more ferocious. But this time, there were no plans to leave.    “You can’t help but wonder what’s going to hold and what isn’t, both at the hospital, but also at your home,” Kohler said.The calm before   A headshot of Dr. Gary Kohler, who works at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital in Louisiana. (Photo courtesy/Lake Charles Memorial Hospital)As the strengthening hurricane headed for the Louisiana-Texas border, 1.5 million residents were ordered to evacuate.    Most chose to heed the warning, particularly residents in Lake Charles, a city of 80,000 that bore the brunt of the storm.   Tens of thousands of the city’s residents evacuated to areas north, east and west on Wednesday.  But some were asked to stay. “Our families left town,” Kohler told VOA. “But as long as there were patients at the hospital, we were going to be there.”    Kohler works in the intensive care unit (ICU) treating the critically ill. During a normal year, patients in the ICU might include those with heart, lung and kidney ailments, or those who suffered strokes or are battling major infections. But this year, a separate wing is reserved for patients who tested positive for the coronavirus. “Our patients tend to be the sickest in the hospital — that’s why they’re in the ICU,” Kohler explained. “And we’ve been hit pretty hard by COVID patients this year, which has made the work a lot more challenging.” Louisiana has the highest number of cumulative coronavirus cases per capita of any state in the U.S. Kohler said Lake Charles Memorial had so many patients this summer from a second wave of the virus that multiple patients were placed in a single room.   “That’s a lot of very sick patients we’re taking care of,” he said. “And when it became clear how strong Hurricane Laura was going to be when it hit us, I knew it had the potential to be a long night.”  Nagging fears   A storm surge of nine feet was predicted for parts of Lake Charles. Everyone at the hospital knew that if the building lost water, they would not be able to properly sanitize themselves or their patients. And if the power went out and the generators did not operate, they would have to manually sustain patients on ventilators.  Shannon Williams, an ICU registered nurse, arrived Wednesday at 5:45 a.m. She called the storm the scariest moment of her life. 
 
“To be honest, my biggest fear was that the building was going to collapse on us, and that all that would be left of my co-workers, patients and me was a very sad story,” she said.A photo of three nurses, including Shannon Williams, are at work at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital in Louisiana. (Photo courtesy/Shannon Williams)Laura hits Kohler and Williams said the wind began to pick up around 8:30 p.m. Shortly after that, the hospital lost its main power source.   “I was concerned we lost power so early and before the main part of the storm arrived,” Kohler said. “But fortunately, the generators kicked on.” The generators are only meant to keep the essential functions of the hospital running, which does not include air conditioning. The lack of air conditioning is a serious problem in southern Louisiana, where temperatures and humidity climb to unbearable heights during summer months. Kohler recalled the uncomfortable situation.   “I was soaked with sweat,” he said. “But the nurses — they’re dressed for hours in their PPEs (personal protective equipment), and they looked like they had just come in from a rainstorm.”  Kohler said it was so humid in the hospital, the flooring was slick from condensation. The windows leaked from the rainfall. Around 1 a.m. Thursday, Williams said the wind sounded like a train speeding past the east side of the building where she was trying to sleep.  A maintenance worker checked the situation. The news was not good.  “These are six-foot-tall windows, so you could see some random debris smashing against them,” she said. “And the maintenance guy said it’s because the window was warped — you could see them flexing in and out — which is why water was also leaking in.” The storm caused many of the windows in the hospital to warp, including those in the ICU. The immediate danger was that the windows would shatter, leaving no protection from the storm outside.  Williams said the nurses frantically thought of ways to protect the patients and themselves should the windows burst. One window did collapse, creating a noisy wind tunnel in the ICU. But the remaining windows managed to hold.   “You had patients crying, and just generally really afraid,” Kohler said. “They were so hot and uncomfortable, and it was a scary experience. Plus, who knows when they saw their family last — family members aren’t allowed to visit COVID patients.” Kohler said the toughest moment of the night for him was when the hospital’s water stopped running.   “You can’t stay sterile if you can’t wash your hands,” he said. “We couldn’t even flush toilets anymore, let alone think about doing a procedure. At that point, you just hope a patient doesn’t require anything big.”   The aftermath   For the remainder of the night, the phones were not working, and employees had no idea what was happening outside.    “Our focus was on making our patients as comfortable as possible, and our nurses did an incredible job,” Kohler said. He explained that in the middle of the storm, some nurses took a device designed to heat patients and repurposed it to keep them cool. “They did everything they could to keep our patients comfortable,” Kohler said. “Our nurses are the real heroes of this hurricane.” Kohler said he woke up at 6 a.m. Thursday and could see outside for the first time since Laura made landfall. “I could see a neighborhood across the street from our hospital, and it was hard to find a home that didn’t have a tree through their roof,” he said. “Trees on roofs. Roofs gone. Trees inside houses. Electrical poles down. Debris all over the street. It’s hard to imagine my city ever being the same.”   But there was no time to think about the future. The staff still had work to do.    “I’m just extremely proud of our resilience,” Williams said. “The next day, we still had no air conditioning and no water. We still had no idea what was happening in the outside world, or what happened to our homes. But we kept working for our patients.”    Williams said the moment when the winds died down, and she realized everyone would survive, was when she finally breathed a sigh of relief.  Kohler’s moment came Thursday afternoon, when ambulances from Mississippi, Georgia and Kentucky arrived to transport critically ill patients to other hospitals.  “That’s where you felt the collective sigh of relief,” he said. “That’s when it felt like we made it. We had never lost the ability to give medication. We had never lost the ability to give blood. And we had never lost the ability to give antibiotics. We did a good job.” On Friday, when it became clear that the city might not have water or electricity for three weeks or more, the announcement was made that the hospital would be completely evacuated.    Patients were evacuated that day. The staff stayed until the last one left.   “I saw heroes,” Kohler said. “The nurses, the maintenance workers, the cafeteria workers. They sacrificed themselves for the patients at this hospital. They’re heroes, and they’ll be ready to get back to work when it’s time.” 
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The World Health Organization’s Europe director says the COVID-19 crisis won’t necessarily end with a vaccine, but with societies learning how to live with it.In an interview with British broadcaster SKY News Wednesday, WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge said the governments that take an active leadership role and embrace public health and social measures will have the most success moving beyond the COVID-19 crisis. He said, “That could happen tomorrow.”Kluge understands that economies have been badly hurt by lockdowns and shutdowns, but every approach has its risks.Like many other health experts, Kluge predicts new surges in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations as the colder months approach and people are indoors. But he said it will not be like early in the pandemic when governments were taken by surprise.He said, “Now, we target the virus. We can manage transmission, manage our economies and open the education sector and that’s good news.”Kluge said for that reason, he is optimistic that while the virus will not be gone, nations now have tools to deal with it. He said people must continue to avoid mass gatherings, use masks and testing capacity must be improved, along with tracking and tracing, and localized lockdowns must be an option.“We have to be prepared for this in a positive manner,” he said.
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Louisianians woke up Wednesday, Aug. 26 to news that Laura would be arriving as a Category 4 hurricane. The storm was expected to hit Lake Charles early Thursday morning.   Throughout the day, doctors, nurses, maintenance and cafeteria workers filled Lake Charles Memorial Hospital. The plan was for several shifts of employees to be ready once the winds picked up that night. Whole floors were designated as sleeping areas for off-duty staff. Dr. Gary Kohler, a pulmonary critical care physician, arrived for his shift at 6:30 a.m. He remembered sensing how nervous everyone was in those hours before the storm. 
 “No one wanted to be alone,” he said. “When we were on break, a lot of us would sit around a table together. It was a shared fear of not knowing what was coming.”    In 2005, the hospital was evacuated before Hurricane Rita arrived and devastated the city. Hurricane Laura was predicted to be more ferocious. But this time, there were no plans to leave.    “You can’t help but wonder what’s going to hold and what isn’t, both at the hospital, but also at your home,” Kohler said.The calm before   A headshot of Dr. Gary Kohler, who works at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital in Louisiana. (Photo courtesy/Lake Charles Memorial Hospital)As the strengthening hurricane headed for the Louisiana-Texas border, 1.5 million residents were ordered to evacuate.    Most chose to heed the warning, particularly residents in Lake Charles, a city of 80,000 that bore the brunt of the storm.   Tens of thousands of the city’s residents evacuated to areas north, east and west on Wednesday.  But some were asked to stay. “Our families left town,” Kohler told VOA. “But as long as there were patients at the hospital, we were going to be there.”    Kohler works in the intensive care unit (ICU) treating the critically ill. During a normal year, patients in the ICU might include those with heart, lung and kidney ailments, or those who suffered strokes or are battling major infections. But this year, a separate wing is reserved for patients who tested positive for the coronavirus. “Our patients tend to be the sickest in the hospital — that’s why they’re in the ICU,” Kohler explained. “And we’ve been hit pretty hard by COVID patients this year, which has made the work a lot more challenging.” Louisiana has the highest number of cumulative coronavirus cases per capita of any state in the U.S. Kohler said Lake Charles Memorial had so many patients this summer from a second wave of the virus that multiple patients were placed in a single room.   “That’s a lot of very sick patients we’re taking care of,” he said. “And when it became clear how strong Hurricane Laura was going to be when it hit us, I knew it had the potential to be a long night.”  Nagging fears   A storm surge of nine feet was predicted for parts of Lake Charles. Everyone at the hospital knew that if the building lost water, they would not be able to properly sanitize themselves or their patients. And if the power went out and the generators did not operate, they would have to manually sustain patients on ventilators.  Shannon Williams, an ICU registered nurse, arrived Wednesday at 5:45 a.m. She called the storm the scariest moment of her life. 
 
“To be honest, my biggest fear was that the building was going to collapse on us, and that all that would be left of my co-workers, patients and me was a very sad story,” she said.A photo of three nurses, including Shannon Williams, are at work at Lake Charles Memorial Hospital in Louisiana. (Photo courtesy/Shannon Williams)Laura hits Kohler and Williams said the wind began to pick up around 8:30 p.m. Shortly after that, the hospital lost its main power source.   “I was concerned we lost power so early and before the main part of the storm arrived,” Kohler said. “But fortunately, the generators kicked on.” The generators are only meant to keep the essential functions of the hospital running, which does not include air conditioning. The lack of air conditioning is a serious problem in southern Louisiana, where temperatures and humidity climb to unbearable heights during summer months. Kohler recalled the uncomfortable situation.   “I was soaked with sweat,” he said. “But the nurses — they’re dressed for hours in their PPEs (personal protective equipment), and they looked like they had just come in from a rainstorm.”  Kohler said it was so humid in the hospital, the flooring was slick from condensation. The windows leaked from the rainfall. Around 1 a.m. Thursday, Williams said the wind sounded like a train speeding past the east side of the building where she was trying to sleep.  A maintenance worker checked the situation. The news was not good.  “These are six-foot-tall windows, so you could see some random debris smashing against them,” she said. “And the maintenance guy said it’s because the window was warped — you could see them flexing in and out — which is why water was also leaking in.” The storm caused many of the windows in the hospital to warp, including those in the ICU. The immediate danger was that the windows would shatter, leaving no protection from the storm outside.  Williams said the nurses frantically thought of ways to protect the patients and themselves should the windows burst. One window did collapse, creating a noisy wind tunnel in the ICU. But the remaining windows managed to hold.   “You had patients crying, and just generally really afraid,” Kohler said. “They were so hot and uncomfortable, and it was a scary experience. Plus, who knows when they saw their family last — family members aren’t allowed to visit COVID patients.” Kohler said the toughest moment of the night for him was when the hospital’s water stopped running.   “You can’t stay sterile if you can’t wash your hands,” he said. “We couldn’t even flush toilets anymore, let alone think about doing a procedure. At that point, you just hope a patient doesn’t require anything big.”   The aftermath   For the remainder of the night, the phones were not working, and employees had no idea what was happening outside.    “Our focus was on making our patients as comfortable as possible, and our nurses did an incredible job,” Kohler said. He explained that in the middle of the storm, some nurses took a device designed to heat patients and repurposed it to keep them cool. “They did everything they could to keep our patients comfortable,” Kohler said. “Our nurses are the real heroes of this hurricane.” Kohler said he woke up at 6 a.m. Thursday and could see outside for the first time since Laura made landfall. “I could see a neighborhood across the street from our hospital, and it was hard to find a home that didn’t have a tree through their roof,” he said. “Trees on roofs. Roofs gone. Trees inside houses. Electrical poles down. Debris all over the street. It’s hard to imagine my city ever being the same.”   But there was no time to think about the future. The staff still had work to do.    “I’m just extremely proud of our resilience,” Williams said. “The next day, we still had no air conditioning and no water. We still had no idea what was happening in the outside world, or what happened to our homes. But we kept working for our patients.”    Williams said the moment when the winds died down, and she realized everyone would survive, was when she finally breathed a sigh of relief.  Kohler’s moment came Thursday afternoon, when ambulances from Mississippi, Georgia and Kentucky arrived to transport critically ill patients to other hospitals.  “That’s where you felt the collective sigh of relief,” he said. “That’s when it felt like we made it. We had never lost the ability to give medication. We had never lost the ability to give blood. And we had never lost the ability to give antibiotics. We did a good job.” On Friday, when it became clear that the city might not have water or electricity for three weeks or more, the announcement was made that the hospital would be completely evacuated.    Patients were evacuated that day. The staff stayed until the last one left.   “I saw heroes,” Kohler said. “The nurses, the maintenance workers, the cafeteria workers. They sacrificed themselves for the patients at this hospital. They’re heroes, and they’ll be ready to get back to work when it’s time.” 
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The United States says it will not participate in a global initiative to develop, manufacture and equally distribute a vaccine for COVID-19 because the World Health Organization is taking a leading role in the effort. More than 170 countries are in talks to participate in the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Facility, dubbed Covax, a joint project undertaken by the WHO, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, an organization founded by Bill and Melinda Gates to vaccinate children in the world’s poorest countries.In this Aug. 14, 2020, file photo, laboratory technicians work at the mAbxience biopharmaceutical company on an experimental coronavirus vaccine developed by Oxford University and the laboratory AstraZeneca in Garin, Argentina.President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the WHO back in July, after claiming the agency mishandled the outbreak and showed deference to China, where the virus was first detected late last year. White House spokesman Judd Deere issued a statement saying the United States “will continue to engage our international partners to ensure we defeat this virus, but we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China.” Surie Moon, the co-director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, told The Washington Post that when the United States decides not “to participate in any sort of multilateral effort to secure vaccines, it’s a real blow.” The Trump administration has launched its own COVID-19 vaccine initiative, Operation Warp Speed, that aims to deliver 300 million doses of an approved vaccine by next January.  The initiative has distributed billions of dollars to a handful of pharmaceutical companies to develop, manufacture and test a potential vaccine.Senator Roy Blunt, R-Mo. and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., speak with Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the NIH, after he testified at a hearing on the plan to research, manufacture and distribute a coronavirus vaccine, known as Operation Warp Speed.”This president will spare no expense to ensure that any new vaccine maintains our own FDA’s gold standard for safety and efficacy, is thoroughly tested, and saves lives,” Deere said in his statement, referring to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The Trump administration’s initiative is one of many around the world aiming to quickly introduce a COVID-19 vaccine, with a handful currently in late-stage human trials.  But recent remarks by Dr. Stephen Hahn, the FDA commissioner, that the agency would consider authorizing an emergency use of a vaccine before the completion of  late-stage human trials raised concerns among WHO officials Monday.   Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s chief scientist, said issuing such an authorization “has to be done with a great deal of seriousness and reflection. It’s not something that you do very lightly.” In a related development, a panel of government health experts says there is no evidence to date that convalescent blood plasma is an effective treatment for coronavirus patients to help them build immunity. Convalescent blood plasma comes from patients who have recovered from the coronavirus and is rich in antibodies. The FDA approved an emergency authorization of the use of convalescent blood plasma on August 23, a decision President Trump described as “truly historic.” But a panel of more than three dozen experts for the National Institutes of Health issued a statement Tuesday that there is “insufficient data to recommend either for or against the use” of convalescent blood plasma, and says doctors should not rely on it as a standard of care until more studies have been conducted. A day after the emergency authorization was announced, FDA Commissioner Hahn, the FDA commissioner, apologized for apparently overstating the benefits of using convalescent blood plasma. Dr. Hahn reaffirmed claims made by Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar of a 35% decrease in mortality among those younger than 80 years of age who were not on a respirator, a month after receiving the treatment early in the course of their disease.  But critics said the administration’s claim was a gross exaggeration of preliminary findings of a study conducted by the prestigious Mayo Clinic, noting that the study lacked a comparison group of untreated COVID-19 patients.    Dr. Hahn conceded this fact in a tweet apologizing for his remarks, explaining that he should have said that the data shows “a relative risk reduction not an absolute risk reduction.”   
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Facebook said Tuesday that it removed a small network of accounts and pages linked to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, the “troll factory” that has used social media accounts to sow political discord in the U.S. since the 2016 presidential election.  Twitter also suspended five related accounts. The company said the tweets from these Russia-linked accounts “were low quality and spammy” and that most received few, if any, likes or retweets. The people behind the accounts recruited “unwitting” freelance journalists to post in English and Arabic, mainly targeting left-leaning audiences. Facebook said Tuesday the network’s activity focused on the U.S., U.K., Algeria and Egypt and other English-speaking countries and countries in the Middle East and North Africa.  The company said it started investigating the network based on information from the FBI about its off-Facebook activities. The network was in the early stages of development, Facebook added, and saw “nearly no engagement” on Facebook before it was removed. The network consisted of 13 Facebook accounts and two pages. About 14,000 accounts followed one or more of the pages, though the English-language page had a little over 200 followers, Facebook said.FILE – An man looks at a Facebook app on his smartphone in Amritsar, India, March 22, 2018.Still, its presence points to ongoing Russian efforts to disrupt the U.S. election and sow political discord in an already divided country. To evade detection, the people behind the network recruited Americans to do their bidding, likely unknowingly, both as journalists and as people authorized to purchase political advertisements in the U.S. Facebook said the people behind the network posted about global events ranging from racial justice in the U.S. and the U.K., NATO, the QAnon conspiracy, President Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. The network spent about $480 on advertising on Facebook, primarily in U.S. dollars. However, Facebook said less than $2 worth of those ads targeted the U.S. The network’s posts directed people to a website called PeaceData, which claims to be a global news organization that, according to a  report by research firm Graphika, “took a left-wing stance, opposing what it portrayed as Western imperialism and the excesses of capitalism.” The FBI said in a statement Tuesday that it provided information to the platforms “to better protect against threats to the nation’s security and our democratic processes.” “While technology companies independently make decisions regarding the content of their platforms and the safety of their members, the FBI is actively engaged with our federal partners, election officials, and the private sector to mitigate foreign threats to our nation’s security and our elections,” the statement said.  Separately, Twitter said Tuesday it will start adding context to its trending section, which shows some of the most popular topics on the service at any given moment. Experts and even Twitter’s own employees have expressed concerns that the trending section can be gamed to spread misinformation and abuse. Twitter uses algorithms and human employees to determine what topics are trending — it is not simply the most popular topics, but topics that are newly popular at any given time. But it’s not difficult to artificially elevate trends.  In the coming weeks, Twitter said, users in the U.S., U.K., Brazil, India and several other countries will see brief descriptions added to some trends to add context. “To be clear, we know there is more work to do to improve trends and the context updates we’re announcing today are just a small step in the right direction,” said Liz Lee, a product trust partner and Frank Oppong, a product manager, in a blog post. “We need to make trends better and we will.” 
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