Month: August 2024

Flying cars, long the dream of futurists, may finally be here. From California, Matt Dibble has our story about the rise of electric aircraft.
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GENEVA — United Nations aid agencies warn climate change is wreaking havoc throughout large parts of eastern and southern Africa, worsening the plight of millions of people struggling to survive conflict, poverty, hunger and disease.

Since mid-April, El Nino-related heavy rainfall has led to extreme weather events across East Africa, including flooding, landslides, violent winds and hail.

In Sudan

The U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, reports climate-induced heavy rains and flooding have upended the lives of tens of thousands of people in war-torn Sudan this year, displacing, injuring and killing many.

The agency warns that heavy seasonal rains are creating further misery for thousands of displaced, including refugees in dire need of humanitarian aid.

UNHCR spokesperson Olga Sarrado told journalists in Geneva Friday that torrential rains and severe floods in the past two weeks are having a devastating effect on the lives of thousands of refugees and internally displaced, noting that more than 11,000 people in the eastern Kassala state are in desperate straits.

“They include many families who recently arrived after fleeing violence in Sennar state,” she said. “Some have been displaced three or four times already since the start of the conflict.

“They have lost their belongings, including food rations, and are facing significant challenges in accessing clean water and sanitation facilities, increasing the risk of waterborne diseases,” she said.

The International Organization for Migration reports that more than 10 million people have become displaced inside Sudan and 2 million have sought refuge in neighboring countries since mid-April 2023, when rival generals from Sudan’s Armed Forces and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces plunged Sudan into war.

The UNHCR reports Sudan continues to host about 1 million refugees and asylum seekers from other countries.

Sarrado said the UNHCR is prepositioning core relief items and shelter kits in the eastern and western parts of the country where more rainfall is expected. She added that flooding in the Darfur region is causing concern among aid agencies, as this will further limit their ability to reach thousands of destitute people.

“The humanitarian needs are reaching epic proportions in the region, as hundreds of thousands of civilians remain in harm’s way and famine has been recently confirmed in a displacement site, as you all know,” she said. “The conflict has already destroyed crops and disrupted livelihoods. The climate crisis is making those displaced even more vulnerable now.”

In Southern Africa

While the heavy rains continue to pound refugees and displaced communities in Sudan, the World Food Program reports that more than 27 million people across Southern Africa, devastated by an El-Nino-induced drought are going hungry.

“I have just returned from Zimbabwe and Lesotho, two of the worst-affected countries, where 50% and 34% of the countries’ respective populations are food insecure,” said Valerie Guarnieri, WFP assistant executive director, program operations.

Speaking from Rome, she said the drought sweeping across the region has decimated crops, causing food prices to spiral and triggering a hunger crisis at a time when their food stocks are at the lowest.

She noted that the onset of this year’s lean season, which is usually from October to March, has come early this year.

“People are facing an early and much deeper lean season,” she said, adding that the situation is likely to get worse, “given production shortfalls and dwindling supply.”

She said that 21 million children, 1 out of 3 in southern Africa, are stunted and 3.5 million children are struggling with acute malnutrition and require nutrition treatment.

“These numbers are not as stark as they are in other parts of the region. Countries that are facing famine — Sudan, for instance. However, we should not have these kind of numbers in Southern Africa,” she said.

“We know that to deal with stunting, to prevent wasting, we need to be ensuring that all children and all women of child-bearing age, in particular, have access to the nutrients that they require in order to grow and to thrive.”

To deal with this crisis, Guarnieri said WFP is scaling up its operation to provide emergency food and nutrition support to 5.9 million people in seven countries between now and March.

She said that WFP is facing a $320 million funding shortfall “that jeopardizes our ability to mount a response at the scale required.”

UNHCR’s Sarrado also expressed concern that her agency’s appeal for nearly $40 million to assist and protect 5.6 million refugees, returnees, internally displaced and local communities in Sudan and five countries of refuge “has so far received only $5 million in funds.”
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United Nations — U.N. member states on Thursday approved a treaty targeting cybercrime, the body’s first such text, despite fierce opposition from human rights activists who have warned of potential surveillance dangers.

After three years of negotiations and a final two-week session in New York, members approved the United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime by consensus, and it will now be submitted to the General Assembly for formal adoption.

“I consider the documents … adopted. Thank you very much, bravo to all!” Algerian diplomat Faouzia Boumaiza Mebarki, chairwoman of the treaty drafting committee, said to applause.

The committee was set up, despite U.S. and European opposition, following an initial move in 2017 by Russia.

The new treaty would enter into force once it has been ratified by 40 member nations and aims to “prevent and combat cybercrime more efficiently and effectively,” notably regarding child sexual abuse imagery and money laundering.

Hailing a “landmark convention,” South Africa’s delegate said, “the provisions of technical assistance and capacity building offer much needed support to countries with less developed cyber infrastructures.”

But the treaty’s detractors — an unusual alliance of human rights activists and big tech companies — denounce it as being far too broad in scope, claiming it could amount to a global “surveillance” treaty and be used for repression.

In particular, the text provides that a state may, in order to investigate any crime punishable by a minimum of four years’ imprisonment under its domestic law, ask the authorities of another nation for any electronic evidence linked to the crime, and also request data from internet service providers.

Warning of an “unprecedented multilateral tool for surveillance,” Deborah Brown of Human Rights Watch told AFP the treaty “will be a disaster for human rights and is a dark moment for the UN.”

“This treaty is effectively a legal instrument of repression,” she said. “It can be used to crack down on journalists, activists, LGBT people, free thinkers, and others across borders.”

Human rights clause

Nick Ashton-Hart heads the Cybersecurity Tech Accord delegation to the treaty talks, representing more than 100 technology companies, including Microsoft and Meta.

“Regretably,” he said Thursday, the committee “adopted a convention without addressing many of the major flaws identified by civil society, the private sector, or even the U.N.’s own human rights body.”

“Wherever it is implemented the Convention will be harmful to the digital environment generally and human rights in particular,” he told AFP, calling for nations not to sign or implement it.

Some nations however are complaining the treaty actually includes too many human rights safeguards.

A few days ago, Russia, which has historically supported the drafting process, complained the treaty had become “oversaturated with human rights safeguards,” while accusing countries of pursuing “narrow self-serving goals under the banner of democratic values.”

During Thursday’s session, Iran attempted to have several clauses with “inherent flaws” deleted.

One paragraph in question stipulated that “nothing in this Convention shall be interpreted as permitting suppression of human rights or fundamental freedoms,” such as “freedoms of expression, conscience, opinion, religion or belief.”

The deletion request was rejected with 102 votes against, 23 in favor (including Russia, India, Sudan, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea and Libya) and 26 abstentions.

Neither Iran nor any other country, however, chose to prevent approval by consensus. 
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NEW YORK — Iran is ramping up online activity that appears intended to influence the upcoming U.S. election, in one case targeting a presidential campaign with an email phishing attack, Microsoft said Friday.

Iranian actors also have spent recent months creating fake news sites and impersonating activists, laying the groundwork to stoke division and potentially sway American voters this fall, especially in swing states, the technology giant found.

The findings in Microsoft’s newest threat intelligence report show how Iran, which has been active in recent U.S. campaign cycles, is evolving its tactics for another election that’s likely to have global implications. The report goes a step beyond anything U.S. intelligence officials have disclosed, giving specific examples of Iranian groups and the actions they have taken so far. Iran’s United Nations mission denied it had plans to interfere or launch cyberattacks in the U.S. presidential election.

The report doesn’t specify Iran’s intentions besides sowing chaos in the United States, though U.S. officials have previously hinted that Iran particularly opposes former President Donald Trump. U.S. officials also have expressed alarm about Tehran’s efforts to seek retaliation for a 2020 strike on an Iranian general that was ordered by Trump. This week, the Justice Department unsealed criminal charges against a Pakistani man with ties to Iran who’s alleged to have hatched assassination plots targeting multiple officials, potentially including Trump.

The report also reveals how Russia and China are exploiting U.S. political polarization to advance their own divisive messaging in a consequential election year.

Microsoft’s report identified four examples of recent Iranian activity that the company expects to increase as November’s election draws closer.

First, a group linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in June targeted a high-ranking U.S. presidential campaign official with a phishing email, a form of cyberattack often used to gather sensitive information, according to the report, which didn’t identify which campaign was targeted. The group concealed the email’s origins by sending it from the hacked email account of a former senior adviser, Microsoft said.

Days later, the Iranian group tried to log into an account that belonged to a former presidential candidate but wasn’t successful, Microsoft’s report said. The company notified those who were targeted.

In a separate example, an Iranian group has been creating websites that pose as U.S.-based news sites targeted to voters on opposite sides of the political spectrum, the report said.

One fake news site that lends itself to a left-leaning audience insults Trump by calling him “raving mad” and suggests he uses drugs, the report said. Another site meant to appeal to Republican readers centers on LGBTQ issues and gender-affirming surgery.

A third example Microsoft cited found that Iranian groups are impersonating U.S. activists, potentially laying the groundwork for influence operations closer to the election.

Finally, another Iranian group in May compromised an account owned by a government employee in a swing state, the report said. It was unclear whether that cyberattack was related to election interference efforts.

Iran’s U.N. mission sent The Associated Press an emailed statement: “Iran has been the victim of numerous offensive cyber operations targeting its infrastructure, public service centers, and industries. Iran’s cyber capabilities are defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces. Iran has neither the intention nor plans to launch cyber attacks. The U.S. presidential election is an internal matter in which Iran does not interfere.”

The Microsoft report said that as Iran escalates its cyber influence, Russia-linked actors also have pivoted their influence campaigns to focus on the U.S. election, while actors linked to the Chinese Communist Party have taken advantage of pro-Palestinian university protests and other current events in the U.S. to try to raise U.S. political tensions.

Microsoft said it has continued to monitor how foreign foes are using generative AI technology. The increasingly cheap and easy-to-access tools can generate lifelike fake images, photos and videos in seconds, prompting concern among some experts that they will be weaponized to mislead voters this election cycle.

While many countries have experimented with AI in their influence operations, the company said, those efforts haven’t had much impact so far. The report said as a result, some actors have “pivoted back to techniques that have proven effective in the past — simple digital manipulations, mischaracterization of content, and use of trusted labels or logos atop false information.”

Microsoft’s report aligns with recent warnings from U.S. intelligence officials, who say America’s adversaries appear determined to seed the internet with false and incendiary claims ahead of November’s vote.

Top intelligence officials said last month that Russia continues to pose the greatest threat when it comes to election disinformation, while there are indications that Iran is expanding its efforts and China is proceeding cautiously when it comes to 2024.

Iran’s efforts seem aimed at undermining candidates seen as being more likely to increase tension with Tehran, the officials said. That’s a description that fits Trump, whose administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of the top Iranian general.

The influence efforts also coincide with a time of high tensions between Iran and Israel, whose military the U.S. strongly supports.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said last month that the Iranian government has covertly supported American protests over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Groups linked to Iran have posed as online activists, encouraged protests and provided financial support to some protest groups, Haines said.

America’s foes, Iran among them, have a long history of seeking to influence U.S. elections. In 2020, groups linked to Iran sent emails to Democratic voters in an apparent effort to intimidate them into voting for Trump, intelligence officials said.
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GEORGETOWN, Texas — As with any desktop 3D printer, the Vulcan printer pipes layer by layer to build an object – except this printer is more than 45 feet (13.7 m) wide, weighs 4.75 tons and prints residential homes.

This summer, the robotic printer from ICON is finishing the last few of 100 3D-printed houses in Wolf Ranch, a community in Georgetown, Texas, about 30 miles from Austin.

ICON began printing the walls of what it says is the world’s largest 3D-printed community in November 2022. Compared to traditional construction, the company says that 3D printing homes is faster, less expensive, requires fewer workers, and minimizes construction material waste.

“It brings a lot of efficiency to the trade market,” said ICON senior project manager Conner Jenkins. “So, where there were maybe five different crews coming in to build a wall system, we now have one crew and one robot.”

After concrete powder, water, sand and other additives are mixed together and pumped into the printer, a nozzle squeezes out the concrete mixture like toothpaste onto a brush, building up layer by layer along a pre-programmed path that creates corduroy-effect walls.

The single-story three- to four-bedroom homes take about three weeks to finish printing, with the foundation and metal roofs installed traditionally.

Jenkins said the concrete walls are designed to be resistant to water, mold, termites and extreme weather.

Lawrence Nourzad, a 32-year-old business development director, and his girlfriend Angela Hontas, a 29-year-old creative strategist, purchased a Wolf Ranch home earlier this summer.

“It feels like a fortress,” Nourzad said, adding that he was confident it would be resilient to most tornados.

The walls also provide strong insulation from the Texas heat, the couple said, keeping the interior temperature cool even when the air conditioner wasn’t on full blast.

There was one other thing the 3D-printed walls seemed to protect against, however: a solid wireless internet connection.

“Obviously these are really strong, thick walls. And that’s what provides a lot of value for us as homeowners and keeps this thing really well-insulated in a Texas summer, but signal doesn’t transfer through these walls very well,” Nourzad said.

To alleviate this issue, an ICON spokeswoman said most Wolf Ranch homeowners use mesh internet routers, which broadcast a signal from multiple units placed throughout a home, versus a traditional router which sends a signal from one device.

The 3D-printed homes at Wolf Ranch, called the “Genesis Collection” by developers, range in price from around $450,000 to close to $600,000. Developers said a little more than one quarter of the 100 homes have been sold.

ICON, which 3D-printed its first home in Austin in 2018, hopes to one day take its technology to the Moon. NASA, as part of its Artemis Moon exploration program, has contracted ICON to develop a construction system capable of building landing pads, shelters, and other structures on the lunar surface.
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — What should have been a quick trip to the International Space Station may turn into an eight-month stay for two NASA astronauts if they have to switch from Boeing to SpaceX for a ride home.

There’s lingering uncertainty over the safety of Boeing’s new Starliner capsule, NASA officials said Wednesday, and the space agency is split over the risk. As a result, chances are increasing that test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams may have to watch from the space station as their Starliner is cut loose to return to Earth empty.

If that happens, NASA will leave behind two of four astronauts from the next SpaceX taxi flight in late September, with the vacant seats set aside for Wilmore and Williams on the return trip in February. The pair expected to be gone just a week or two when they launched June 5 as Starliner’s first crew.

NASA is bringing in additional experts to analyze the thruster failures experienced by Starliner before it docked. At the same time, NASA is looking more closely at SpaceX as a backup.

At this point, “we could take either path,” said Ken Bowersox, NASA’s space operations mission chief.

During a recent meeting, “we heard from a lot of folks that had concern, and the decision was not clear,” he said. A final decision is expected by mid-August.

Boeing issued a brief statement following NASA’s news update, repeating its position that the capsule could still safely bring the astronauts home.

“We still believe in Starliner’s capability and its flight rationale,” the company said.

Boeing will need to modify the capsule’s software in case Starliner ends up returning without a crew.

No serious consideration was given to launching a separate SpaceX flight just to retrieve Wilmore and Williams, according to commercial crew program manager Steve Stich.

Tests on the ground have replicated the thrust problems, pointing to seals as one culprit. But it’s still not understood how or why those seals swell when overheated and then shrink back to the proper size, Stich noted. All but one of the Starliner’s five failed thrusters have since been reactivated in orbit.

These thrusters are essential for allowing Starliner to back away from the space station following undocking, and for keeping the capsule in the proper position for moving out of orbit.

At the same time, engineers are grappling over helium leaks in Starliner’s propulsion system, crucial for maneuvering. The first leak occurred before liftoff but was deemed isolated and stable. Then more cropped up in flight.

NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX to ferry astronauts to and from the space station after the shuttles retired in 2011. SpaceX flew its first crew in 2020. Boeing stumbled on its first test flight without a crew and then fell further behind after a repeat demo.

Officials repeated their desire for a backup taxi service on Wednesday, A situation like this one could happen again, and “that’s why we want multiple vehicles,” Bowersox said.

The next crew flight will be SpaceX’s 10th for NASA. On Tuesday, it was delayed for a month until late September to allow for extra time to figure out how best to handle Starliner’s return. Three NASA astronauts and one Russian are assigned to the flight, and managers on Wednesday declined to say who might be bumped.
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GENEVA — Soaring temperatures in July have had detrimental effects on the well-being of hundreds of millions of people worldwide who have found the monthlong extreme heat too hot to handle, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

“The extreme heat, which continued throughout July after a hot June … has had really, really devastating impacts on communities, on people’s health, on ecosystems, also on economies,” WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis told journalists Tuesday in Geneva.

“Extreme heat has a domino effect across society,” she said, noting that the world’s hottest day on recent record was registered on July 22. “All of this is really yet another unwelcome indication, one of many, of the extent that greenhouse gases from human activities are, in fact, changing our climate.”

WMO data show widespread, intense and extended heat waves have hit every continent in the past year and global average temperatures have set new monthly records for 13 consecutive months from June 2023 to June 2024.

“At least 10 countries in the past year have recorded daily temperatures of more than 50 degrees Celsius [122 degrees Fahrenheit] in more than one location,” Nullis said. “You can well imagine this is too hot for the body to handle.”

WMO reports that Death Valley in California, considered to be the hottest place on Earth, registered an average monthly temperature of 42.5 degrees Celsius (108.5 degree Fahrenheit) at Furnace Creek, “which is a record for the site and possibly the world.”

WMO normally does not measure monthly temperature records. But Randall Cerveny, chief rapporteur for the WMO’s committee for evaluating climate and weather extremes, said ”the record appeared to be reasonable and legitimate.”

While human-induced activity is largely responsible for the long-term warming trend, meteorologists cite above-average temperatures over large parts of Antarctica as another contributing factor.

According to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, this has resulted in anomalies of more than 10-degrees Celsius above average in some areas, and above-average temperatures in parts of the Southern Ocean.

WMO climate expert Alvaro Silva said two consecutive heat waves that hit Antarctica over the last two years have contributed to record global temperatures.

“The reason is still under research, but it seems to be related with the daily sea ice extent,” he said, noting the Antarctic daily sea ice extent in June 2024 “was the second lowest on record. … This follows the lowest extent that we have in Antarctica in terms of sea ice in 2023.”

Sea ice extent is the surface area of ice covering an ocean at a given time.

Speaking from the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, Silva provided a sobering regional overview of the heat waves and extreme heat events, which are contributing to record global temperatures.

He observed that July was the warmest on record in Asia, while in Africa, he cited record-breaking temperatures in Morocco as having had “an important impact in terms of human health and deaths.”

He said intense heat waves in southern and southeastern Europe have “caused casualties and severe impacts on health.” At the same time, he pointed out that the fallout of heat waves in North America have been quite severe, noting that on August 1, “more than 160 million people, about half of the United States population, were under heat alert.”

WMO officials say evidence of our rapidly warming planet underscores the urgency of the Call to Action on Extreme Heat initiative launched by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres July 25.

In issuing this call, the U.N. chief warned that “Earth is becoming hotter and more dangerous for everyone, everywhere” and this was posing an increased threat to “our socio-economic and environmental well-being.”

WMO officials also stressed the importance of adaptation to climate change as a lifesaving measure, noting that recent estimates produced by WMO and the World Health Organization indicate the global scale-up of heat-health-warning systems for 57 countries alone “has the potential to save an estimated 98,000 lives per year.”

WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said bolstering heat early warning systems in line with her agency’s Early Warnings for All Initiative would ensure at-risk populations receive timely alerts so they can take “protective actions.”

But, she emphasized, climate adaptation alone is not enough.

“We need to tackle the root cause and urgently reduce greenhouse gas levels, which remain at record observed levels.”
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WASHINGTON — Ocean temperatures in the Great Barrier Reef hit their highest level in 400 years over the past decade, according to researchers who warned that the reef likely won’t survive if planetary warming isn’t stopped.

During that time, between 2016 and 2024, the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem and one of the most biodiverse, suffered mass coral bleaching events. That’s when water temperatures get too hot and coral expel the algae that provide them with color and food, and sometimes die. Earlier this year, aerial surveys of over 300 reefs in the system off Australia’s northeast coast found bleaching in shallow water areas spanning two-thirds of the reef, according to Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

Researchers from Melbourne University and other universities in Australia, in a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, were able to compare recent ocean temperatures to historical ones by using coral skeleton samples from the Coral Sea to reconstruct sea surface temperature data from 1618 to 1995. They coupled that with sea surface temperature data from 1900 to 2024.

They observed largely stable temperatures before 1900 and steady warming from January to March from 1960 to 2024. And during five years of coral bleaching in the past decade — during 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and 2024 — temperatures in January and March were significantly higher than anything dating back to 1618, researchers found. They used climate models to attribute the warming rate after 1900 to human-caused climate change. The only other year nearly as warm as the mass bleaching years of the past decade was 2004.

“The reef is in danger, and if we don’t divert from our current course, our generation will likely witness the demise of one of those great natural wonders,” said Benjamin Henley, the study’s lead author and a lecturer of sustainable urban management at the University of Melbourne. “If you put all of the evidence together … heat extremes are occurring too often for those corals to effectively adapt and evolve.”

Across the world, reefs are key to seafood production and tourism. Scientists have long said additional loss of coral is likely to be a casualty of future warming as the world approaches the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold that countries agreed to try and keep warming under in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

Even if global warming is kept under the Paris Agreement’s goal, which scientists say Earth is almost guaranteed to cross, 70% to 90% of corals across the globe could be threatened, the study’s authors said. As a result, future coral reefs would likely have less diversity in coral species — which has already been happening as the oceans have grown hotter.

Coral reefs have been evolving over the past quarter century in response to bleaching events like the ones the study’s authors highlighted, said Michael McPhaden, a senior climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who was not involved with the study. But even the most robust coral may soon not be able to withstand the elevated temperatures expected under a warming climate with “the relentless rise in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere,” he said.

The Great Barrier Reef serves as an economic resource for the region and protects against severe tropical storms.

As more heat-tolerant coral replaces the less heat-tolerant species in the colorful underwater rainbow jungle, McPhaden said there’s “real concern” about the expected extreme loss in the number of species and reduction in area that the world’s largest reef covers.

“It’s the canary in the coal mine in terms of climate change,” McPhaden said.
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China’s Confucius Institutes teach Chinese around the world, but there’s more to them than that. VOA’s Kate Bartlett visited a new one that is hundreds of kilometers outside the capital in rural South Africa that’s also focusing on green technology. Camera: Zaheer Cassim.
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NEW YORK — Gone is the bullhorn. Instead, New York City emergency management officials have turned high-tech, using drones to warn residents about potential threatening weather.

With a buzzing sound in the background, a drone equipped with a loudspeaker flies over homes warning people who live in basement or ground-floor apartments about impending heavy rains.

“Be prepared to leave your location,” said the voice from the sky in footage released Tuesday by the city’s emergency management agency. “If flooding occurs, do not hesitate.”

About five teams with multiple drones each were deployed to specific neighborhoods prone to flooding. Zach Iscol, the city’s emergency management commissioner, said the messages were being relayed in multiple languages. They were expected to continue until the weather impacted the drone flights.

Flash floods have been deadly for New Yorkers living in basement apartments, which can quickly fill up in a deluge. Eleven people drowned in such homes in 2011 amid rain from the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

The drones are in addition to other forms of emergency messaging, including social media, text alerts and a system that reaches more than 2,000 community-based organizations throughout the city that serve senior citizens, people with disabilities and other groups.

“You know, we live in a bubble, and we have to meet people where they are in notifications so they can be prepared,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at a press briefing on Tuesday.

Adams is a self-described “tech geek” whose administration has tapped drone technology to monitor large gatherings as well as to search for sharks on beaches. Under his watch, the city’s police department also briefly toyed with using a robot to patrol the Times Square subway station, and it has sometimes deployed a robotic dog to dangerous scenes, including the Manhattan parking garage that collapsed in 2023.
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wichita falls, texas — Elon Musk’s social media platform X has sued a group of advertisers, alleging that a “massive advertiser boycott” deprived the company of billions of dollars in revenue and violated antitrust laws.

The company formerly known as Twitter filed the lawsuit Tuesday in a federal court in Texas against the World Federation of Advertisers and member companies Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted.

It accused the advertising group’s brand safety initiative, called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, of helping to coordinate a pause in advertising after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and overhauled its staff and policies.

Musk posted about the lawsuit on X on Tuesday, saying “now it is war” after two years of being nice and “getting nothing but empty words.”

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a video announcement that the lawsuit stemmed in part from evidence uncovered by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, which she said showed a “group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott” against X.

The Republican-led committee had a hearing last month looking at whether current laws are “sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.”

The lawsuit’s allegations center on the early days of Musk’s Twitter takeover and not a more recent dispute with advertisers that came a year later.

In November 2023, about a year after Musk bought the company, a number of advertisers began fleeing X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech on the site in general, with Musk inflaming tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Musk later said those fleeing advertisers were engaging in blackmail and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.

The Belgium-based World Federation of Advertisers and representatives for CVS, Orsted, Mars and Unilever didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

A top Unilever executive testified at last month’s congressional hearing, defending the British consumer goods company’s practice of choosing to put ads on platforms that won’t harm its brand.

“Unilever, and Unilever alone, controls our advertising spending,” said prepared written remarks by Herrish Patel, president of Unilever USA. “No platform has a right to our advertising dollar.”
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TOKYO — More than 120 people died of heatstroke in the Tokyo metropolitan area in July, when the nation’s average temperature hit record highs and heat warnings were in effect much of the month, Japanese authorities said Tuesday. 

According to the Tokyo Medical Examiner’s Office, many of the 123 people who died were elderly. All but two were found dead indoors, and most were not using air conditioners despite having them installed. 

Japanese health authorities and weather forecasters repeatedly advised people to stay indoors, consume ample liquids to avoid dehydration, and use air conditioning, because elderly people often think that air conditioning is not good for one’s health and tend to avoid using it. 

It was the largest number of heatstroke deaths in Tokyo’s 23 metropolitan districts in July since 127 deaths were recorded during a 2018 heatwave, the medical examiner’s office said. 

More than 37,000 people were treated at hospitals for heatstroke across Japan from July 1 to July 28, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. 

The average temperature in July was 2.16 degrees Celsius (3.89 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average over the past 30 years, making it the hottest July since the Japan Meteorological Agency began keeping records in 1898. 

On Tuesday, heatstroke warnings were in place in much of Tokyo and western Japan. The temperature rose to about 34 C (93 F) in downtown Tokyo, where many people carried parasols or handheld fans. 

“I feel every year the hot period is getting longer,” said Hidehiro Takano from Kyoto. “I have the aircon on all the time, including while I’m sleeping. I try not to go outside.” 

Maxime Picavet, a French tourist, showed a portable fan he bought in Tokyo. “It works very, very well,” he said. “With this temperature, it’s a necessity.” 

The meteorological agency predicted more heat in August, with temperatures of 35 C (95 F) or higher. 

“Please pay attention to temperature forecasts and heatstroke alerts and take adequate precautions to prevent heatstroke,” it said in a statement. 
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Geneva — The World Health Organization is warning that governments throughout the world are unprepared to combat the global surge of COVID-19, which is putting millions of people at risk of severe disease and death.

“COVID-19 is still very much with us,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO director for epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention, told journalists in Geneva Tuesday.

“The virus is circulating in all countries. Data from our sentinel-based surveillance system across 84 countries reports that the percent of positive tests for SARS-CoV-2 has been rising for several weeks,” she said.

Not only is COVID-19 surging in many countries across seasons, she said, but at least 40 Olympic athletes have tested positive in Paris despite efforts by authorities to safeguard the venues against infectious disease circulation.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared an end to the COVID-19 pandemic as an international health threat on May 5, 2023. Since then, the U.N. agency has received scant official information from countries regarding the number of new infections and deaths, as well as other essential information.

That has forced health agency officials to scroll through government websites, looking at ministry of health reports to ascertain monthly trends on hospitalizations linked to COVID-19 infections.

“On the hospitalization rates, we have seen increases in the Americas. We have seen increases in Europe. In recent months, we have seen increases in the Western Pacific,” Van Kerkhove said. “Thirty-five countries out of 234 countries and territories are providing this information. … So about 15% of available countries and territories have that information to share with us.”

Based on wastewater surveillance, WHO officials have determined that circulation of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is 2 to 20 times higher than is currently being reported.

“This is significant because the virus continues to evolve and change, which puts us all at risk of a potentially more severe virus that could evade our detection and/or our medical interventions, including vaccinations,” said Van Kerkhove.

Over the last two years, she noted that there has been “an alarming decline in vaccine coverage,” especially among health workers and people over 60, “two of the most at-risk groups.”

“I am concerned,” said Van Kerkhove. “With such low coverage, with such large circulation, if we were to have a variant that was more severe, then the susceptibility of the at-risk populations to develop severe disease is huge. It is huge in every country.”

WHO officials observe that governments and their people have been lulled into a sense of complacency because the impact of COVID-19 is less now than it was during the pandemic. However, they also warn that could change for the worse as the immunity achieved through previous infections, and the protection achieved through vaccination, wears off.

The WHO says countries could and should be doing much more to prevent the current global surge from turning into another full-blown pandemic. The global health agency is urging countries to continue to sharpen their pandemic preparedness, readiness and response systems “to be ready for surges of COVID-19 as well as other emerging and reemerging pathogens,” such as avian influenza H5N1, mpox and dengue.

The WHO recommends that people in the highest risk groups receive a COVID-19 vaccine within 12 months of their last dose. To increase uptake and protection, it recommends people get their COVID-19 shot in tandem with their seasonal flu shot.

“Vaccination with any of the approved vaccines will protect against severe disease and death,” said Van Kerkhove. “It will lower your risk of developing severe disease. It will also lower your risk of developing post-COVID condition,” otherwise known as long COVID.
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