Month: August 2023

OpenAI on Monday said it was launching a business version of ChatGPT as its artificial intelligence sensation grapples with declining usership nine months after its historic debut.

ChatGPT Enterprise will offer business customers a premium version of the bot, with “enterprise grade” security and privacy enhancements from previous versions, OpenAI said in a blog post.

The question of data security has become an important one for OpenAI, with major companies, including Apple, Amazon and Samsung, blocking employees from using ChatGPT out of fear that sensitive information will be divulged.

“Today marks another step towards an AI assistant for work that helps with any task, is customized for your organization, and that protects your company data,” OpenAI said.

The ChatGPT business version resembles Bing Chat Enterprise, an offering by Microsoft, which uses the same OpenAI technology through a major partnership.

ChatGPT Enterprise will be powered by GPT-4, OpenAI’s highest performing model, much like ChatGPT Plus, the company’s subscription version for individuals, but business customers will have special perks, including better speed.

“We believe AI can assist and elevate every aspect of our working lives and make teams more creative and productive,” the company said.

It added that companies including Carlyle, The Estée Lauder Companies and PwC were already early adopters of ChatGPT Enterprise.

The release came as ChatGPT is struggling to maintain the excitement that made it the world’s fastest downloaded app in the weeks after its release.

That distinction was taken over last month by Threads, the Twitter rival from Facebook-owner Meta.

According to analytics company Similarweb, ChatGPT traffic dropped by nearly 10% in June and again in July, falls that could be attributed to school summer break, it said.

Similarweb estimates that roughly one-quarter of ChatGPT’s users worldwide fall in the 18- to 24-year-old demographic.

OpenAI is also facing pushback from news publishers and other platforms — including X, formerly known as Twitter, and Reddit — that are now blocking OpenAI web crawlers from mining their data for AI model training.

A pair of studies by pollster Pew Research Center released on Monday also pointed to doubts about AI and ChatGPT in particular.

Two-thirds of the U.S.-based respondents who had heard of ChatGPT say their main concern is that the government will not go far enough in regulating its use.

The research also found that the use of ChatGPT for learning and work tasks has ticked up from 12% of those who had heard of ChatGPT in March to 16% in July.

Pew also reported that 52% of Americans say they feel more concerned than excited about the increased use of artificial intelligence.
…

Organized cybercrime is set to pose a threat to Canada’s national security and economic prosperity over the next two years, a national intelligence agency said on Monday.

In a report released Monday, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) identified Russia and Iran as cybercrime safe havens where criminals can operate against Western targets.

Ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure such as hospitals and pipelines can be particularly profitable, the report said. Cyber criminals continue to show resilience and an ability to innovate their business model, it said.

“Organized cybercrime will very likely pose a threat to Canada’s national security and economic prosperity over the next two years,” said CSE, which is the Canadian equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency.

“Ransomware is almost certainly the most disruptive form of cybercrime facing Canada because it is pervasive and can have a serious impact on an organization’s ability to function,” it said.

Official data show that in 2022, there were 70,878 reports of cyber fraud in Canada with over C$530 million ($390 million) stolen.

But Chris Lynam, director general of Canada’s National Cybercrime Coordination Centre, said very few crimes were reported and the real amount stolen last year could easily be C$5 billion or more.

“Every sector is being targeted along with all types of businesses as well … folks really have to make sure that they’re taking this seriously,” he told a briefing.

Russian intelligence services and law enforcement almost certainly maintain relationships with cyber criminals and allow them to operate with near impunity as long as they focus on targets outside the former Soviet Union, CSE said.

Moscow has consistently denied that it carries out or supports hacking operations.

Tehran likely tolerates cybercrime activities by Iran-based cyber criminals that align with the state’s strategic and ideological interests, CSE added.
…

Ask Alexa or Siri about the weather. But if you want to save someone’s life? Call 911 for that.

Voice assistants often fall flat when asked how to perform CPR, according to a study published Monday.

Researchers asked voice assistants eight questions that a bystander might pose in a cardiac arrest emergency. In response, the voice assistants said:

• “Hmm, I don’t know that one.”

• “Sorry, I don’t understand.”

• “Words fail me.”

• “Here’s an answer … that I translated: The Indian Penal Code.”

Only nine of 32 responses suggested calling emergency services for help — an important step recommended by the American Heart Association. Some voice assistants sent users to web pages that explained CPR, but only 12% of the 32 responses included verbal instructions.

Verbal instructions are important because immediate action can save a life, said study co-author Dr. Adam Landman, chief information officer at Mass General Brigham in Boston.

Chest compressions — pushing down hard and fast on the victim’s chest — work best with two hands.

“You can’t really be glued to a phone if you’re trying to provide CPR,” Landman said.

For the study, published in JAMA Network Open, researchers tested Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant and Microsoft’s Cortana in February. They asked questions such as “How do I perform CPR?” and “What do you do if someone does not have a pulse?”

Not surprisingly, better questions yielded better responses. But when the prompt was simply “CPR,” the voice assistants misfired. One played news from a public radio station. Another gave information about a movie titled “CPR.” A third gave the address of a local CPR training business.

ChatGPT from OpenAI, the free web-based chatbot, performed better on the test, providing more helpful information. A Microsoft spokesperson said the new Bing Chat, which uses OpenAI’s technology, will first direct users to call 911 and then give basic steps when asked how to perform CPR. Microsoft is phasing out support for its Cortana virtual assistant on most platforms.

Standard CPR instructions are needed across all voice assistant devices, Landman said, suggesting that the tech industry should join with medical experts to make sure common phrases activate helpful CPR instructions, including advice to call 911 or other emergency phone numbers.

A Google spokesperson said the company recognizes the importance of collaborating with the medical community and is “always working to get better.” An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment on Alexa’s performance on the CPR test, and an Apple spokesperson did not provide answers to AP’s questions about how Siri performed.
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Poland has filed legal challenges attempting to annul three of the European Union’s main climate change policies, which the Polish government argues would worsen social inequality, document published on Monday showed.

The legal actions, brought by Warsaw to the EU Court of Justice in July, target policies including a law agreed this year which will ban the sale of new CO2-emitting cars in the EU from 2035.

“The contested regulation imposes excessive burdens connected with the transition towards zero-emission mobility on European citizens, especially those who are less well off, as well as on the European automotive companies sector,” Poland said in its challenge, which the European Commission published on Monday.

A second EU policy setting national emissions-cutting targets “threatens Poland’s energy security”, while a third law to reform the EU carbon market may reduce coal mining jobs and increase social inequality, Poland said.

Poland produces around 70% of its power from coal.

The government wants all three laws annulled. Each was passed by a reinforced majority of EU member states, but Poland said they should have been passed with unanimous approval given the impact they could have on countries’ energy mixes.

The European Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The EU has among the most ambitious climate change policies in the world, and has urged governments to use EU money to help vulnerable communities invest in clean energy to bring down bills and cut health-harming air pollution.

A 17.5 billion euro EU “just transition fund” is designed to support communities affected by the shift away from fossil fuels, notably with help for retraining workers.

The biggest share of that fund is earmarked for Poland. But Brussels has warned that the Polish government’s plans to extend the life of a coal mine in Turow until 2040 could mean the region cannot access the money.
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All children are entitled to a clean and healthy environment, a UN committee said for the first time on Monday, bolstering young people’s arguments for suing authorities over the ravages of climate change.

Issuing a fresh interpretation of an important international rights treaty, the United Nations watchdog determined that it guarantees children the right to a healthy environment.

And this, it said, means countries are obliged to combat things like pollution and climate change.

“States must ensure a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in order to respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights,” the Committee on the Rights of the Child said.

“Environmental degradation, including the consequences of the climate crisis, adversely affects the enjoyment of these rights.”

Tasked with monitoring implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the panel’s 18 independent experts provided a new interpretation of the treaty, which counts nearly all the world’s countries as parties.

The fresh analysis comes just weeks after a landmark court ruling in Montana in favor of a group of youths who accused the western U.S. state of breaching their rights to a clean environment.

The ruling found that a state law preventing consideration of greenhouse gas impacts when issuing fossil fuel development permits violated those rights.

That followed several other recent high-profile lawsuits, including the youngsters who won a case against the Colombian government over deforestation, and the children who secured a ruling ordering a strengthening of Germany’s carbon emissions law.

And the UN committee itself heard a case in 2021 brought by Greta Thunberg and 15 other young climate activists, in which it determined that countries bear cross-border responsibility for the harmful impact of climate change.

Holding states accountable

The new analysis could provide a new and powerful tool for young people seeking to bring such cases, committee chair Ann Skelton told AFP.

“Children themselves can use this instrument to encourage states to do the right thing, and ultimately to help to hold them accountable,” she said.

The new guidance, she said, “is of great and far-reaching legal significance.”

The 1989 convention does not explicitly spell out the rights of children to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment — but the committee argued the right was implicit and directly linked to a long line of guaranteed rights, including the right to life, survival and development.

“The extent and magnitude of the triple planetary crisis, comprising the climate emergency, the collapse of biodiversity and pervasive pollution, is an urgent and systemic threat to children’s rights globally,” the UN committee said in its so-called general comment.

To reach its conclusions, the panel said it had consulted with governments, civil society and especially children.

More than 16,000 children of all ages across 121 countries provided comments, describing the negative effects of environmental degradation and climate change on their lives and communities.

“Our voices matter, and they deserve to be listened to,” said a 17-year-old climate and child rights activist from India, named only as Kartik.

The new committee guidance “will help us understand and exercise our rights in the face of the environmental and climate crisis,” he said in a statement.

The committee’s findings are far-reaching, determining that the convention prohibits states from causing environmental harms that violate children’s rights.

“States must ensure that children’s voices are brought to the table when big decisions are being made,” Skelton said, adding that countries also needed to “make sure that businesses are toeing the line.”

Going forward, the committee could be called upon to determine if countries were properly regulating commercial activities in this area.

The convention also requires countries to work to reduce emissions and “mitigate climate change in order to fulfil their obligations”, the committee said, stressing children’s rights to protest against practices harming the environment.

Skelton said the committee had been inspired by children stepping up and “taking on the obligation to protect the environment, for themselves, but also for future generations.”
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Tesla Inc TSLA.O is set to defend itself for the first time at trial against allegations that failure of its Autopilot driver assistant feature led to death, in what will likely be a major test of Chief Executive Elon Musk’s assertions about the technology.

Self-driving capability is central to Tesla’s financial future, according to Musk, whose own reputation as an engineering leader is being challenged with allegations by plaintiffs in one of two lawsuits that he personally leads the group behind technology that failed. Wins by Tesla could raise confidence and sales for the software, which costs up to $15,000 per vehicle.

Tesla faces two trials in quick succession, with more to follow.

The first, scheduled for mid-September in a California state court, is a civil lawsuit containing allegations that the Autopilot system caused owner Micah Lee’s Model 3 to suddenly veer off a highway east of Los Angeles at 65 miles per hour, strike a palm tree and burst into flames, all in the span of seconds.

The 2019 crash, which has not been previously reported, killed Lee and seriously injured his two passengers, including a then-8-year old boy who was disemboweled. The lawsuit, filed against Tesla by the passengers and Lee’s estate, accuses Tesla of knowing that Autopilot and other safety systems were defective when it sold the car. 

Musk ‘de facto leader’ of autopilot team

The second trial, set for early October in a Florida state court, arose out of a 2019 crash north of Miami where owner Stephen Banner’s Model 3 drove under the trailer of an 18-wheeler big rig truck that had pulled into the road, shearing off the Tesla’s roof and killing Banner. Autopilot failed to brake, steer or do anything to avoid the collision, according to the lawsuit filed by Banner’s wife.

Tesla denied liability for both accidents, blamed driver error and said Autopilot is safe when monitored by humans. Tesla said in court documents that drivers must pay attention to the road and keep their hands on the steering wheel.

“There are no self-driving cars on the road today,” the company said.

The civil proceedings will likely reveal new evidence about what Musk and other company officials knew about Autopilot’s capabilities – and any possible deficiencies. Banner’s attorneys, for instance, argue in a pretrial court filing that internal emails show Musk is the Autopilot team’s “de facto leader.”

Tesla and Musk did not respond to Reuters’ emailed questions for this article, but Musk has made no secret of his involvement in self-driving software engineering, often tweeting about his test-driving of a Tesla equipped with “Full Self-Driving” software. He has for years promised that Tesla would achieve self-driving capability only to miss his own targets.

Tesla won a bellwether trial in Los Angeles in April with a strategy of saying that it tells drivers that its technology requires human monitoring, despite the “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” names. The case was about an accident where a Model S swerved into the curb and injured its driver, and jurors told Reuters after the verdict that they believed Tesla warned drivers about its system and driver distraction was to blame. 

Stakes higher for Tesla

The stakes for Tesla are much higher in the September and October trials, the first of a series related to Autopilot this year and next, because people died.

“If Tesla backs up a lot of wins in these cases, I think they’re going to get more favorable settlements in other cases,” said Matthew Wansley, a former General Counsel of nuTonomy, an automated driving startup and Associate Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law.

On the other hand, “a big loss for Tesla – especially with a big damages award” could “dramatically shape the narrative going forward,” said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina.

In court filings, the company has argued that Lee consumed alcohol before getting behind the wheel and that it is not clear whether Autopilot was on at the time of crash.

Jonathan Michaels, an attorney for the plaintiffs, declined to comment on Tesla’s specific arguments, but said “we’re fully aware of Tesla’s false claims including their shameful attempts to blame the victims for their known defective autopilot system.”

In the Florida case, Banner’s attorneys also filed a motion arguing punitive damages were warranted. The attorneys have deposed several Tesla executives and received internal documents from the company that they said show Musk and engineers were aware of, and did not fix, shortcomings.

In one deposition, former executive Christopher Moore testified there are limitations to Autopilot, saying it “is not designed to detect every possible hazard or every possible obstacle or vehicle that could be on the road,” according to a transcript reviewed by Reuters.

In 2016, a few months after a fatal accident where a Tesla crashed into a semi-trailer truck, Musk told reporters that the automaker was updating Autopilot with improved radar sensors that likely would have prevented the fatality.

But Adam (Nicklas) Gustafsson, a Tesla Autopilot systems engineer who investigated both accidents in Florida, said that in the almost three years between that 2016 crash and Banner’s accident, no changes were made to Autopilot’s systems to account for cross-traffic, according to court documents submitted by plaintiff lawyers.

The lawyers tried to blame the lack of change on Musk. “Elon Musk has acknowledged problems with the Tesla autopilot system not working properly,” according to plaintiffs’ documents. Former Autopilot engineer Richard Baverstock, who was also deposed, stated that “almost everything” he did at Tesla was done at the request of “Elon,” according to the documents.

Tesla filed an emergency motion in court late on Wednesday seeking to keep deposition transcripts of its employees and other documents secret. Banner’s attorney, Lake “Trey” Lytal III, said he would oppose the motion.

“The great thing about our judicial system is Billion Dollar Corporations can only keep secrets for so long,” he wrote in a text message.
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A group of Japanese and Peruvian archaeologists have discovered the 3,000-year-old tomb of a priest alongside ceramic offerings in northern Peru. 

“We have recently discovered the tomb of a 3,000-year-old figure at the Pacopampa archaeological site,” in the Cajamarca region, 900 kilometers (560 miles) north of Lima, archaeologist Juan Pablo Villanueva told AFP Saturday.  

“He is one of the first priests in the Andes to have a series of offerings,” the researcher said, adding that “the funerary context is intact.” 

The body, its lower extremities partially flexed, was oriented from south to north. On the western side of the tomb were small spherical ceramic bowls, a carved bone spatula and other offerings.  

Two seals were also found, one with designs of an anthropomorphic face and the other with that of a jaguar.  

The body and the offerings were covered by at least six layers of ash and earth. The tomb is circular, three meters in diameter and one meter deep (10 feet by 3.3 feet).  

Powerful leaders 

“The find is extremely important because he is one of the first priests to begin to control the temples in the country’s northern Andes,” Japanese archaeologist Yuji Seki, who has been working at the site for 18 years, told AFP.  

Researchers estimate that the priest lived around 1,000 B.C.  

Seki said the find helped demonstrate that even that long ago, “powerful leaders had appeared in the Andes.”  

In September 2022, the same group of archaeologists had discovered the tomb, more than 3,000 years old, of a man they called the “Priest of the Pututos,” along with musical instruments made of seashells.  

Pututos or pututus are conch-like shells that the inhabitants of ancient Peru could use to make trumpet-like sounds.  

The Pacopampa site, at an altitude of 2,500 meters (8,200 feet), includes nine monumental ceremonial buildings of carved and polished stone. 

Other burials found in the same site include those of the “Lady of Pacopampa,” found in 2009, and of two “Jaguar Serpent priests,” discovered in 2015. 

They are estimated to date from around 700 to 600 years B.C. 

Archaeologists from the National Museum of Ethnology in Japan and from Peru’s National University of San Marcos participate in the work in Pacopampa.  
…

Santos Brizuela spent more than two decades laboring outdoors, persisting despite a bout of heatstroke while cutting sugarcane in Mexico and chronic laryngitis from repeated exposure to the hot sun while on various other jobs.

But last summer, while on a construction crew in Las Vegas, he reached his breaking point. Exposure to the sun made his head ache immediately. He lost much of his appetite.

Now at a maintenance job, Brizuela, 47, is able to take breaks. There are flyers on the walls with best practices for staying healthy — protections he had not been afforded before.

“Sometimes as a worker you ask your employer for protection or for health and safety related needs, and they don’t listen or follow,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter.

A historic heat wave that began blasting the Southwest and other parts of the country this summer is shining a spotlight on one of the harshest, yet least-addressed effects of U.S. climate change: the rising deaths and injuries of people who work in extreme heat, whether inside warehouses and kitchens or outside under the blazing sun. Many of them are migrants in low-wage jobs.

State and federal governments have long implemented federal procedures for environmental risks exacerbated by climate change, namely drought, flood and wildfires. But extreme heat protections have generally lagged with “no owner” in state and federal governments, said Ladd Keith, an assistant professor of planning with the University of Arizona.

“In some ways, we have a very long way to catch up to the governance gap in treating the heat as a true climate hazard,” Keith said.

There is no federal heat standard in the U.S. despite an ongoing push from President Joe Biden’s administration to establish one. Most of the hottest U.S. states currently have no heat-specific standards either.

Instead, workers in many states who are exposed to extreme heat are ostensibly protected by what is known as the “general duty clause,” which requires employers to mitigate hazards that could cause serious injury or death. The clause permits state authorities to inspect work sites for violations, and many do, but there are no consistent benchmarks for determining what constitutes a serious heat hazard.

“What’s unsafe isn’t always clear,” said Juanita Constible, a senior advocate from the National Resources Defense Council who tracks extreme heat policy. “Without a specific heat standard, it makes it more challenging for regulators to decide, ‘OK, this employer’s breaking the law or not.’”

Many states are adopting their own versions of a federal “emphasis” program increasing inspections to ensure employers offer water, shade and breaks, but citations and enforcement still must go through the general duty clause.

Extreme heat is notably absent from the list of disasters to which the Federal Emergency Management Agency can respond. And while regional floodplain managers are common throughout the country, there are only three newly created “chief heat officer” positions to coordinate extreme heat planning, in Miami-Dade County, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Federal experts have recommended extreme heat protections since 1972, but it wasn’t until 1997 and 2006, respectively, that Minnesota and California adopted the first statewide protections. For a long time, those states were the exception, with only a scattering of others joining them throughout the early 2000s.

But as heat waves become longer and hotter, the tide is starting to change.

“There are a lot of positive movements that give me some hope,” Keith said.

Colorado strengthened existing rules last year to require regular rest and meal breaks in extreme heat and cold and provide water and shade breaks when temperatures hit 26.7 degrees Celsius. Washington state last month updated 15-year-old heat safety standards to lower the temperature at which cool-down breaks and other protections are required. Oregon, which adopted temporary heat protection rules in 2021, made them permanent last year.

Several other states are considering similar laws or regulations.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs recently announced new regulations through the heat emphasis program and declared a state of emergency over extreme heat, allowing the state to reimburse various government entities for funds spent on providing relief from high temperatures.

Nevada also adopted a version of the heat emphasis program. But a separate bill that would define what constitutes extreme heat and require employers to provide protections ultimately failed in the final month of the legislative session.

The measure faltered even after the temperature threshold for those protections was increased from 35 degrees Celsius to 40.5 degrees Celsius. Democratic lawmakers in Nevada are now trying to pass those protections through a regulatory process before next summer.

The Biden administration introduced new regulations in 2021 that would develop heat safety standards and strengthen required protective measures for most at-risk private sector workers, but the mandates are likely subject to several more years of review. A group of Democratic U.S. Congress members introduced a bill last month that would effectively speed up the process by legislating heat standards.

The guidelines would apply to all 50 states and include private sector and select federal workers but leave most other public sector workers uncovered. Differing conditions across states and potential discrepancies in how the federal law would be implemented make consistent state standards crucial, Constible said.

For now, protections for those workers are largely at the discretion of individual employers.

Eleazar Castellanos, who trains workers on dealing with extreme heat at Arriba Las Vegas, a nonprofit supporting migrant and low-wage employees, said he experienced two types of employers during his 20 years of working construction.

“The first version is the employer that makes sure that their workers do have access to water, shade and rest,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter. “And the second type of employer is the kind who threatens workers with consequences for asking for those kinds of preventative measures.”

Heat protection laws have faced steady industry opposition, including chambers of commerce and other business associations. They say a blanket mandate would be too difficult to implement across such a wide range of industries.

“We are always concerned about a one-size-fits-all bill like this,” Tray Abney, a lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Businesses, told Nevada legislators.

Opinions vary on why the Nevada bill failed after passing the Senate on party lines.| Some say it was a victim of partisan politics. Others say there were too many bills competing for attention in a session that meets for just four months every other year.

“It all comes down to the dollar,” said Vince Saavedra, secretary-treasurer and lobbyist for Southern Nevada Building Trades. “But I’ll challenge anybody to go work outside with any of these people, and then tell me that we don’t need these regs.”
…

Rajee Narinesingh faced struggles throughout her life as a transgender woman, from workplace discrimination to the lasting effects of black market injections that scarred her face and caused chronic infections.

In spite of the roadblocks, the 56-year-old Florida actress and activist has seen growing acceptance since she first came out decades ago.

“If you see older transgender people, it shows the younger community that it’s possible I can have a life. I can live to an older age,” she said. “So I think that’s a very important thing.”

Now, as a wave of state laws enacted this year limit transgender people’s rights, Narinesingh has new uncertainty about her own future as she ages.

“Every now and then I have this thought, like, oh my God, if I end up in a nursing home, how are they going to treat me?” Narinesingh said.

Most of the new state laws have focused attention on trans youth, with at least 22 states banning or restricting gender-affirming care for minors.

For many transgender seniors, it’s brought new fears to their plans for retirement and old age. They already face gaps in health care and nursing home facilities properly trained to meet their needs. That’s likely to be compounded by restrictions to transgender health care that have already blocked some adults’ access to treatments in Florida and sparked concerns the laws will expand to other states.

Transgender adults say they’re worried about finding welcoming spaces to live in their later years.

“I have friends that have retired and they’ve decided to move to retirement communities. And then, little by little, they’ve found that they’re not welcome there,” said Morgan Mayfaire, a transgender man and the executive director of TransSOCIAL, a Florida support and advocacy group.

Discrimination can range from being denied housing to being misgendered and struggling to get nursing homes to acknowledge their visitation rights.

“In order to be welcome there, they have to go into the closet and deny who they are,” Mayfaire said.

About 171,000 of the more than 1.3 million transgender adults in the United States are aged 65 and older, according to numbers compiled by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

The growing population has brought more services such as nursing homes and assisted living centers that are geared toward serving the LGBTQ community, although such facilities remain uncommon. They include Stonewall Gardens, a 24-apartment assisted living center that opened in Palm Springs, California, in 2015.

The center’s staff are required to go through sensitivity training to help make the center a more welcoming environment for residents, said interim executive director Lauren Kabakoff Vincent. The training is key for making a more accepting environment for transgender residents and making them feel more at home.

“Do you really want to be moving into a place where you have to explain yourself and have to go through it over and over?” Vincent said. “It’s exhausting, and so I think being able to be in a comfortable environment is important.”

SAGE, which advocates on behalf of LGBTQ seniors, offers training to nursing homes and other elder care providers. The group trained more than 46,000 staff at 576 organizations around the country in the most recent fiscal year. But the group said that represents just a fraction of the elder care facilities around the country.

“We have a long way to go in terms of getting to the point where nursing homes, assisted living and other long-term care providers are prepared for and ready to provide appropriate and welcoming care to trans elders,” said Michael Adams, SAGE’s CEO.

The gap concerns Tiffany Arieagus, 71, an acclaimed drag performer in south Florida who also works in social services for SunServe, an LGBTQ nonprofit.

“I just am going on my 71 years on this earth and walking in the civil rights march with my mother at age 6 and then marching for gay rights,” Arieagus said. “I’ve been blessed enough to see so many changes being made in the world. And then now I’m having to see these wonderful progressions going backwards.”

A handful of states, including Massachusetts and California, have in recent years enacted laws to ensure that LGBTQ seniors have equal access to programs for aging populations and requiring training on how to serve that community.

The push for restrictions on access to health care has brought uncertainty in other states. Florida’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors also includes restrictions that make it difficult, if not impossible, for many adults to get treatment.

SAGE has seen a spike in the number of calls to its hotline following the wave of anti-transgender laws, and Adams said about 40% of them have come from trans seniors primarily in conservative parts of the country worried about the new restrictions.

The limits have prompted some trans adults to leave the state for care, with some turning to crowdfunding appeals for help. But for many trans seniors, such a move isn’t as easy.

“You have the general fear, fear that is leading clinicians being concerned and perhaps stepping away from offering care, fear of trans elders of who is a safe clinician to go to,” said Dan Stewart, associate director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Aging Equality Project.

Florida’s law has already created obstacles for Andrea Montanez, LGBTQ immigration organizer at Hope CommUnity Center near Orlando, Florida. Montanez, 57, said her prescription for hormone therapy was initially denied after the restrictions were signed. Montanez, who has been speaking out at Florida Medical Board meetings about the impact of the new state law, said she’s worried about what it will be mean as she approaches retirement.

“I hope I have a happy retirement, but health care is a big problem,” said Montanez, who was eventually able to get her prescription filled.

For Tatiana Williams, 51, the restrictions are stirring painful memories of a time when she and other transgender people had to rely on dangerous and illegal sources for gender-affirming medical care. Now the executive director of the Transinclusive Group in Wilton Manors, Florida, Williams remembers being hospitalized for a collapsed lung after receiving black market silicone injections for her breasts.

“What we don’t want is the community resorting to going back to that,” Williams said.

Still, older transgender adults say they see hope in how their generation is working with younger trans people to speak out against the wave of the restrictions.

“The community’s going to take care of itself. It’s as simple as that. We’re going to find ways to take care of ourselves and we’re going to survive this,” Mayfaire of TransSOCIAL said. “And as far as trans youth panicking over this, look to your elders.”
…

Fish auction prices at a port south of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were mixed amid uncertainty over how seafood consumers will respond to the release of treated and diluted radioactive wastewater into the ocean.

The plant, which was damaged in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, began sending the treated water into the Pacific on Thursday despite protests at home and in nearby countries that are adding political and diplomatic pressures to the economic worries.

Hideaki Igari, a middleman at the Numanouchi fishing port, said the price of larger flounder, Fukushima’s signature fish known as Joban-mono, was more than 10% lower at the Friday morning auction, the first since the water release began. Prices of some average-size flounder rose, but presumably because of a limited catch, Igari said.

It was a relatively calm market reaction to the water release. But, Igari said, “we still have to see how it goes next week.”

The decadeslong release has been strongly opposed by fishing groups and criticized by neighboring countries. China immediately banned imports of seafood from Japan in response, adding to worries in the fisheries community and related businesses.

In Seoul on Saturday, thousands of South Koreans took to the streets to condemn the release of wastewater and to criticize the South Korean government for endorsing the plan. The protesters called on Japan to store radioactive water in tanks instead of releasing it into the Pacific Ocean.

A citizens’ radiation testing center in Japan said it’s getting inquiries and expects more people might bring in food, water and other samples as radiation data is now a key barometer for what to eat.

Japanese fishing groups fear the release will do more harm to the reputation of seafood from the Fukushima area. They are still striving to repair the damage to their businesses from the meltdown at the power plant after the earthquake and tsunami.

“We now have this water after all these years of struggle when the fish market price is finally becoming stable,” Igari said after Friday’s auction. “Fisheries people fear that prices of the fish they catch for their living may crash again and worry about their future living.”

The Japanese government and the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, say the water must be released to make way for the facility’s decommissioning and to prevent accidental leaks of insufficiently treated water. Much of tank-held water still contains radioactive materials exceeding releasable levels.

Some wastewater at the plant is recycled as coolant after treatment, and the rest is stored in around 1,000 tanks, which are filled to 98% of their 1.37-million-ton capacity. The tanks cover much of the complex and must be cleared out to make room for new facilities needed for the decommissioning process, officials say.

Authorities say the wastewater after treatment and dilution is safer than international standards require, and that its environmental impact will be negligible. On Friday, the first seawater samples collected after the release were significantly below the legally releasable levels, the power company said.

But, having suffered a series of accidental and intended releases of contaminated water from the plant early in the disaster, hard feelings and distrust of the government and TEPCO run deep in Fukushima — especially in the fishing community.

TEPCO says the release will take 30 years, or until the end of the plant decommissioning. People fear that could mean a tough future for youths in the fishing town, where many businesses are family-run.

Fukushima’s current catch is only about one-fifth its pre-disaster level because of a decline in the number of fishers and decreased catch sizes.

The government has allocated 80 billion yen ($550 million) to support fisheries and seafood processing, and to combat potential reputation damage by sponsoring campaigns to promote Fukushima’s Joban-mono and processed seafood. TEPCO has promised to deal with reputational damage claims, and those hurt by China’s export ban.

Tetsu Nozaki, head of the Fukushima prefectural fisheries cooperatives, said in a statement that worries of the fishing community will continue for as long as the water is released.

“Our only wish is to continue fishing for generations in our hometown, like we used to before the accident,” Nozaki said.

Fish prices largely depend on the sentiment of wholesalers and consumers in the Tokyo region, where large portions of the Fukushima catch goes.

At the Friday auction at the Numanouchi port, the price for flounder was down from its usual level of about 3,500 yen ($24) per kilogram to around 3,000 yen ($20), said Igari, the middleman.

“I suspect the result is because of the start of the treated water release from the Fukushima Daiichi and fear about its impact,” he said.

Igari said the discharge is discouraging but hopes careful testing can prove the safety of their fish.

“From the consumers’ point of view about food safety at home, I think the best barometer is data,” he said.

At Mother’s Radiation Lab Fukushima in Iwaki, a citizens’ testing center known as Tarachine, tests were being conducted on water samples, including on tritium levels for seawater that the lab collected from just off the Fukushima Daiichi plant before the release.

Lab director Ai Kimura said anyone can bring in food, water or even soil, though the lab has big backlogs because testing take time.

She joined the lab after regretting she might not have fully protected her daughters because of the lack of information and knowledge earlier in the disaster. She says having independent test results is important not because of distrust of government data, but because “we learned over the past 12 years the importance of testing in order to get data” on what mothers want to know for serving safe and healthy food to their children and families.

Kimura said people have different views about safety — some are fine with government standards; others want them to be as close to zero as possible.

“It’s very difficult to make everyone feel safe. … That’s why we conduct testing so we can visualize data on food from different places and help people have more options to make a decision,” she said.

Kimura said the lab’s testing has shown Fukushima fish to be safe over the past few years, and she happily eats local fish.

“It’s totally fine to eat fish that does not contain radiation,” she said.

But now the treated wastewater release will bring new questions, she said.

Aeon, a major supermarket chain that has been testing cesium and iodine levels in fish, announced plans to also test for tritium, a radionuclide inseparable from water.

Katsumasa Okawa, a fish store and restaurant operator who was at one of his four shops Thursday, said customers were sparse after the plant started its final steps of the treated water release at 1 p.m. and media reports covered the development.

But on Friday, he said, his Yamako seafood restaurant next to Iwaki’s main train station seemed to be doing business as usual, with customers coming in and out during lunchtime.

Okawa said he’s been looking forward to the wastewater draining as a big step toward decommissioning the nuclear plant.

“I feel more at ease thinking those tanks will finally go away,” he said.
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Mystery hunters converged on a Scottish lake on Saturday to look for signs of the mythical Loch Ness Monster.

The Loch Ness Center said researchers would seek evidence of Nessie using thermal-imaging drones, infrared cameras and a hydrophone to detect underwater sounds in the lake’s murky waters. The two-day event is being billed as the biggest survey of the lake in 50 years and includes volunteers scanning the water from boats and the lakeshore, with others around the world joining in with webcams.

Alan McKenna of the Loch Ness Center said the aim was “to inspire a new generation of Loch Ness enthusiasts.”

McKenna told BBC radio the searchers were “looking for breaks in the surface and asking volunteers to record all manner of natural behavior on the loch.”

“Not every ripple or wave is a beastie. Some of those can be explained, but there are a handful that cannot,” he said.

The Loch Ness Center is at the former Drumnadrochit Hotel, where the modern-day Nessie legend began. In 1933, manager Aldie Mackay reported spotting a “water beast” in the mountain-fringed loch, the largest body of freshwater by volume in the United Kingdom and at up to 750 feet (230 meters) one of the deepest.

The story kicked off an enduring worldwide fascination with finding the elusive monster, spawning hoaxes and hundreds of eyewitness accounts. Numerous theories have been put forward over the years, including that the creature may have been a prehistoric marine reptile, giant eels, a sturgeon or even an escaped circus elephant.

Many believe the sightings are pranks or can be explained by floating logs or strong winds, but the legend is a boon for tourism in the picturesque Scottish Highlands region.

Such skepticism did not deter volunteers like Craig Gallifrey.

“I believe there is something in the loch,” he said, though he is open-minded about what it is. “I do think that there’s got to be something that’s fueling the speculation.”

He said that whatever the outcome of the weekend search, “the legend will continue.”

“I think it’s just the imagination of something being in the largest body of water in the U.K.. … There’s a lot more stories,” he said. “There’s still other things, although they’ve not been proven. There’s still something quite special about the loch.”
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In a desperate measure to stop students from taking their own lives, authorities in the western Indian city of Kota — the country’s famous academic coaching hub — have directed all local hostels, guest houses and other accommodation facilities to install specially designed spring-fitted ceiling fans in rooms.

The directive from the authorities came on Aug. 16, a day after an 18-year-old student at a test training school in Kota hanged himself from a ceiling fan in his room. It was the 22nd such suicide by a student in the city this year — the highest yearly toll since 2015.

The chief minister of Rajasthan, where Kota is located, held an emergency meeting this week and set up a committee comprising senior government officials, representatives from coaching schools, parents and doctors to address the issue of suicide by the students in Kota.

“We cannot allow the suicide cases to spike further. We do not want to see young students commit suicide,” said Ashok Gehlot, the chief minister. “The committee will investigate why the suicides are taking place and suggest ways to put a halt to these suicides.”

In the past decade in Kota, more than 150 students who were preparing to sit for entrance exams for engineering and medical colleges died by suicide. In most cases, they hanged themselves from the ceiling fans.

The spring-fitted fans that authorities have ordered to be fitted in the accommodations of students are designed to uncoil and lower the moment a load of more than 20 kilograms (44 pounds) is attached to them, making it impossible for someone to commit suicide by hanging from them.

When the spring uncoils, a sensor activates an alarm to alert people in the surroundings.

Spring-fitted fans

The police chief of Kota said the civil administration and the police have been jointly trying their best to curb student suicides in the city. 

“After the [chief minister] held the meeting with senior officials on the issue, we have directed all hostels, guest houses and other places, where the coaching-school students stay in Kota, to attach the special spring and alarm-fitted devices to all ceiling fans,” Sharad Chaudhary, the Kota police superintendent, told VOA. “We have also directed our police forces to visit all accommodation facilities of the students and make sure that devices have been installed.

“With the help of these spring- and alarm-fitted devices, we are aiming to put a halt at least to those suicides taking place by hanging from the ceiling fans,” he said.  

There are about 6,075 engineering and upwards of 600 medical colleges in India, where millions of students seek admission annually, usually after taking entrance tests such as the Joint Entrance Examination and National Eligibility cum Entrance Test.

Competition among the students to do well on the exams is tough. Kota is known for its 150 coaching centers, where over 200,000 students from across the country come every year, sign up for different courses and prepare for the entrance exams.

These students, mostly from middle-class families, stay in hostels and guest houses.

Over the past decade, Kota has often been in the news for suicides by coaching-school students.

‘Improper parenting’

Experts say that some students take extreme steps, such as attempting suicide, after being unable to cope with the pressure.

Dr. Neena Vijayvargiya, a Kota-based psychiatrist dealing with the mental health issues of many Kota coaching schools’ students, told VOA that in “99% of these suicide cases,” improper parenting was found to be the main factor driving the students to take the extreme step.

“Parents continue to pressure the students that they have to enter the top colleges, and that is the only goal for them,” she said. “The students fear facing their parents and society should they not get admission to top colleges.”

According to Vijayvargiya, every student, while depressed, may provide hints to their parents over the course of weeks or months.

Police chief Chaudhary said that parents can play a key role in checking the crisis.

“We are in the process of setting up a separate committee involving mostly the parents of the students to monitor the issue,” he said. “Also, we have decided to conduct a mandatory psychological assessment process for all students enrolled at the coaching schools, at regular intervals.”

Vijayvargiya urged parents not to pressure students to gain admission into the top colleges and to teach their children that “the failure to meet such targets does not mean the end of the world.”
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Four astronauts from four countries rocketed toward the International Space Station on Saturday.

They should reach the orbiting lab in their SpaceX capsule Sunday, replacing four astronauts who have been living up there since March.

A NASA astronaut was joined on the predawn liftoff from Kennedy Space Center by fliers from Denmark, Japan and Russia. They clasped one another’s gloved hands upon reaching orbit.

It was the first U.S. launch in which every spacecraft seat was occupied by a different country — until now, NASA had always included two or three of its own on its SpaceX taxi flights. A fluke in timing led to the assignments, officials said.

“We’re a united team with a common mission,” NASA’s Jasmin Moghbeli radioed from orbit. Added NASA’s Ken Bowersox, space operations mission chief: “Boy, what a beautiful launch … and with four international crew members, really an exciting thing to see.”

Moghbeli, a Marine pilot serving as commander, is joined on the six-month mission by the European Space Agency’s Andreas Mogensen, Japan’s Satoshi Furukawa and Russia’s Konstantin Borisov.

“To explore space, we need to do it together,” the European Space Agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said minutes before liftoff. “Space is really global, and international cooperation is key.”

The astronauts’ paths to space couldn’t be more different.

Moghbeli’s parents fled Iran during the 1979 revolution. Born in Germany and raised on New York’s Long Island, she joined the Marines and flew attack helicopters in Afghanistan. The first-time space traveler hopes to show Iranian girls that they, too, can aim high. “Belief in yourself is something really powerful,” she said before the flight.

Mogensen worked on oil rigs off the West African coast after getting an engineering degree. He told people puzzled by his job choice that “in the future we would need drillers in space” like Bruce Willis’ character in the killer asteroid film “Armageddon.” He’s convinced the rig experience led to his selection as Denmark’s first astronaut.

Furukawa spent a decade as a surgeon before making Japan’s astronaut cut. Like Mogensen, he has visited the station before.

Borisov, a space rookie, turned to engineering after studying business. He runs a freediving school in Moscow and judges the sport, in which divers shun oxygen tanks and hold their breath underwater.

One of the perks of an international crew, they noted, is the food. Among the delicacies soaring with them: Persian herbed stew, Danish chocolate and Japanese mackerel.

SpaceX’s first-stage booster returned to Cape Canaveral several minutes after liftoff, an extra treat for the thousands of spectators gathered in the early-morning darkness.

Liftoff was delayed a day for additional data reviews of valves in the capsule’s life-support system. The countdown almost was halted again Saturday after a tiny fuel leak cropped up in the capsule’s thruster system. SpaceX engineers managed to verify the leak would pose no threat with barely two minutes remaining on the clock, said Benji Reed, the company’s senior director for human spaceflight.

Another NASA astronaut will launch to the station from Kazakhstan in mid-September under a barter agreement, along with two Russians.

SpaceX has now launched eight crews for NASA. Boeing was hired at the same time nearly a decade ago but has yet to fly astronauts. Its crew capsule is grounded until 2024 by parachute and other issues.
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