Category: Silicon Valley

Tons of waste dumped in poorly regulated riverside landfills or directly into the waterways that flow across three countries end up accumulating behind a trash barrier in the Drina River in eastern Bosnia during the wet weather of winter and early spring.

This week, the barrier once again became the outer edge of a massive floating waste dump crammed with plastic bottles, rusty barrels, used tires, household appliances, driftwood and other garbage picked up by the river from its tributaries.

The river fencing installed by a Bosnian hydroelectric plant, a few kilometers upstream from its dam near Visegrad, has turned the city into an unwilling regional waste site, local environmental activists complain.

Heavy rain and unseasonably warm weather over the past week have caused many rivers and streams in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro to overflow, flooding the surrounding areas and forcing scores of people from their homes. Temperatures dropped in many areas Friday as rain turned into snow.

“We had a lot of rainfall and torrential floods in recent days and a huge inflow of water from (the Drina’s tributaries in) Montenegro which is now, fortunately, subsiding,” said Dejan Furtula of the environmental group Eko Centar Visegrad.

“Unfortunately, the huge inflow of garbage has not ceased,” he added.

The Drina

The Drina River runs 346 kilometers (215 miles) from the mountains of northwestern Montenegro through Serbia and Bosnia. and some of its tributaries are known for their emerald color and breathtaking scenery. A section along the border between Bosnia and Serbia is popular with river rafters when it’s not “garbage season.”

Some 10,000 cubic meters (more than 353,000 cubic feet) of waste are estimated to have amassed behind the Drina River trash barrier in recent days, Furtula said. The same amount was pulled in recent years from that area of the river.

Removing the garbage takes up to six months, on average. It ends up at the municipal landfill in Visegrad, which Furtula said “does not even have sufficient capacity to handle (the city’s) municipal waste.”

“The fires on the (municipal) landfill site are always burning,” he said, calling the conditions there “not just a huge environmental and health hazard, but also a big embarrassment for all of us.”

Environmental woes

Decades after the devastating 1990s wars that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Balkans lag behind the rest of Europe both economically and with regard to environmental protection.

The countries of the region have made little progress in building effective, environmentally sound trash disposal systems despite seeking membership in the European Union and adopting some of the EU’s laws and regulations.

Unauthorized waste dumps dot hills and valleys throughout the region, while trash litters roads and plastic bags hang from the trees.

In addition to river pollution, many countries in the western Balkans have other environmental woes. One of the most pressing is the extremely high level of air pollution affecting several cities in the region.

“People need to wake up to problems like this,” Visegrad resident Rados Brekalovic said.
…

As damaging as it was for more than 32 trillion gallons of rain and snow to fall on California since Christmas, a worst-case global warming scenario could juice up similar future downpours by one-third by the middle of this century, a new study says.

The strongest of California’s storms from atmospheric rivers, long and wide plumes of moisture that form over an ocean and flow through the sky over land, would probably get an overall 34% increase in total precipitation, or another 11 trillion gallons more than just fell. That’s because the rain and snow is likely to be 22% more concentrated at its peak in places that get really doused, and to fall over a considerably larger area if fossil fuel emissions grow uncontrolled, according to a new study in Thursday’s journal Nature Climate Change.

The entire western United States would likely see a 31% increase in precipitation from these worst of the worst storms in a souped-up warming world because of more intense and widely spread rainfall, the study said.

Scientists say the worst-case scenario, which is about 4.4 degrees Celsius (7.9 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times, looks a bit more unlikely since efforts are being undertaken to rein in emissions. If countries do as they promise, temperatures are on track to warm about 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit), according to Climate Action Tracker.

The National Weather Service calculated that California averaged 11.47 inches of precipitation statewide from Dec. 26 to Jan. 17 — including 18.33 inches in Oakland and 47.74 inches in one spot 235 miles north of San Francisco — because of a series of nine devastating atmospheric rivers that caused power outages, flooding, levee breaks, washouts and landslides. At least 20 people died.

“It could be even worse,” said study author Ruby Leung, a climate scientist at the U.S. Pacific Northwest National Lab. “We need to start planning how would we be able to deal with this.”

Leung used regional scale computer simulations to predict what the worst of the western winter storms will be like between 2040 and 2070 in a scenario where carbon emissions have run amok. She looked at total precipitation, how concentrated peak raining and snowing would be and the area that gets hit. All three factors grow for the West in general. California is predicted to get the highest increase in peak precipitation, while the Southwest is likely to see more rain because of a big jump in area of rainfall. The Pacific Northwest would see the least juicing of the three areas.

Overall precipitation is a bit lessened from adding all the factors, because just as the peak rainfall grows the rainfall on the edges of the storms is predicted to weaken, according to the study.

There are two types of storms that Leung said she worries about: Flash floods from intense rain concentrated over a small area and slower, larger floods that occur from rain and snow piling up over a large area. Both are bad, but the flash floods cause more damage and hurt people more, she said.

And those flash floods are likely to get worse from what Leung’s paper calls a “sharpening” effect that happens in an ever warmer world. That means more rainfall concentrated in the central areas of storms, falling at higher rates per hour, while at the outer edges rainfall is a bit weaker.

This happens because of the physics of rain storms, Leung said.

Not only can the atmosphere hold 4% more moisture per degree Fahrenheit (7% per degree Celsius), but it’s what happens in the storm that changes and makes the precipitation come down even more, Leung said. You’ve got air rising inside the storm with more water vapor condensing to produce rain and snow; it then releases heat “that kind of causes the storm to become more vigorous and stronger,” she said.

When water vapor condenses it comes down as rain and snow along the edges of the storm, but heating sort of squeezes that falling precipitation in toward the middle, Leung said.

“The concepts and impacts of how precipitation features are likely to change are well quantified and well explained,” said David Gochis, an expert in how water affects the weather at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, who wasn’t part of the study.

When she used computer simulations, Leung chose the most severe worst-case scenario for how the world’s carbon emissions will grow. It’s a scenario that used to be called business as usual, but the world is no longer on that track. After years of climate negotiations and the growth of renewable fuels the globe is heading to less warming than the worst case, according to climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the tech company Stripe and Berkeley Earth.

“We are providing more of a worst-case scenario, but understanding that if we do take action to reduce emissions in the future, we could end up better,” Leung said. “If we control the emissions and lower the global warming in the future, we can limit the impacts of climate change on the society, particularly flooding and extreme precipitation that we are talking about in this study.”
…

Countless artists have taken inspiration from “The Starry Night” since Vincent Van Gogh painted the swirling scene in 1889.

Now artificial intelligence systems are doing the same, training themselves on a vast collection of digitized artworks to produce new images you can conjure in seconds from a smartphone app.

The images generated by tools such as DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion can be weird and otherworldly but also increasingly realistic and customizable — ask for a “peacock owl in the style of Van Gogh” and they can churn out something that might look similar to what you imagined.

But while Van Gogh and other long-dead master painters aren’t complaining, some living artists and photographers are starting to fight back against the AI software companies creating images derived from their works.

Two new lawsuits —- one this week from the Seattle-based photography giant Getty Images —- take aim at popular image-generating services for allegedly copying and processing millions of copyright-protected images without a license.

Getty said it has begun legal proceedings in the High Court of Justice in London against Stability AI — the maker of Stable Diffusion —- for infringing intellectual property rights to benefit the London-based startup’s commercial interests.

Another lawsuit filed Friday in a U.S. federal court in San Francisco describes AI image-generators as “21st-century collage tools that violate the rights of millions of artists.” The lawsuit, filed by three working artists on behalf of others like them, also names Stability AI as a defendant, along with San Francisco-based image-generator startup Midjourney, and the online gallery DeviantArt.

The lawsuit said AI-generated images “compete in the marketplace with the original images. Until now, when a purchaser seeks a new image ‘in the style’ of a given artist, they must pay to commission or license an original image from that artist.”

Companies that provide image-generating services typically charge users a fee. After a free trial of Midjourney through the chatting app Discord, for instance, users must buy a subscription that starts at $10 per month or up to $600 a year for corporate memberships. The startup OpenAI also charges for use of its DALL-E image generator, and StabilityAI offers a paid service called DreamStudio.

Stability AI said in a statement that “Anyone that believes that this isn’t fair use does not understand the technology and misunderstands the law.”

In a December interview with The Associated Press, before the lawsuits were filed, Midjourney CEO David Holz described his image-making subscription service as “kind of like a search engine” pulling in a wide swath of images from across the internet. He compared copyright concerns about the technology with how such laws have adapted to human creativity.

“Can a person look at somebody else’s picture and learn from it and make a similar picture?” Holz said. “Obviously, it’s allowed for people and if it wasn’t, then it would destroy the whole professional art industry, probably the nonprofessional industry too. To the extent that AIs are learning like people, it’s sort of the same thing and if the images come out differently then it seems like it’s fine.”

The copyright disputes mark the beginning of a backlash against a new generation of impressive tools — some of them introduced just last year — that can generate new images, readable text and computer code on command.

They also raise broader concerns about the propensity of AI tools to amplify misinformation or cause other harm. For AI image generators, that includes the creation of nonconsensual sexual imagery.

Some systems produce photorealistic images that can be impossible to trace, making it difficult to tell the difference between what’s real and what’s AI. And while most have some safeguards in place to block offensive or harmful content, experts say it’s not enough and fear it’s only a matter of time until people utilize these tools to spread disinformation and further erode public trust.

“Once we lose this capability of telling what’s real and what’s fake, everything will suddenly become fake because you lose confidence of anything and everything,” said Wael Abd-Almageed, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Southern California.

As a test, The Associated Press submitted a text prompt on Stable Diffusion featuring the keywords “Ukraine war” and “Getty Images.” The tool created photo-like images of soldiers in combat with warped faces and hands, pointing and carrying guns. Some of the images also featured the Getty watermark, but with garbled text.

AI can also get things wrong, like feet and fingers or details on ears that can sometimes give away that they’re not real, but there’s no set pattern to look out for. And those visual clues can also be edited. On Midjourney, for instance, users often post on the Discord chat asking for advice on how to fix distorted faces and hands.

With some generated images traveling on social networks and potentially going viral, they can be challenging to debunk since they can’t be traced back to a specific tool or data source, according to Chirag Shah, a professor at the Information School at the University of Washington, who uses these tools for research.

“You could make some guesses if you have enough experience working with these tools,” Shah said. “But beyond that, there is no easy or scientific way to really do this.”

But for all the backlash, there are many people who embrace the new AI tools and the creativity they unleash. Searches on Midjourney, for instance, show curious users are using the tool as a hobby to create intricate landscapes, portraits and art.

There’s plenty of room for fear, but “what can else can we do with them?” asked the artist Refik Anadol this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he displayed an exhibit of his AI-generated work.

At the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Anadol designed “Unsupervised,” which draws from artworks in the museum’s prestigious collection — including “The Starry Night” — and feeds them into a massive digital installation generating animations of mesmerizing colors and shapes in the museum lobby.

The installation is “constantly changing, evolving and dreaming 138,000 old artworks at MoMA’s Archive,” Anadol said. “From Van Gogh to Picasso to Kandinsky, incredible, inspiring artists who defined and pioneered different techniques exist in this artwork, in this AI dream world.”

For painters like Erin Hanson, whose impressionist landscapes are so popular and easy to find online that she has seen their influence in AI-produced visuals, she is not worried about her own prolific output, which makes $3 million a year.

She does, however, worry about the art community as a whole.

“The original artist needs to be acknowledged in some way or compensated,” Hanson said. “That’s what copyright laws are all about. And if artists aren’t acknowledged, then it’s going to make it hard for artists to make a living in the future.”
…

The World Health Organization says there is no evidence that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines increase the risk of strokes in older people.

WHO officials say there is no basis to the recent concerns raised by the media and science communities about the safety of the mRNA booster shots. They say the concerns, which are related to one U.S. data system that monitors safety, presented misinformation about deaths related to COVID-19 infection.

Kate O’Brien, WHO director of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals, said other U.S. and national vaccine safety monitoring systems have not found further evidence that mRNA vaccines lead to strokes.

“At this point in time, the best evidence is that there is no true association between the booster doses of Pfizer in the older adults and strokes,” she said. “And, again, there is an ongoing, unending system to continuously monitor safety, not only for COVID vaccine and dose-by-dose, but also for all other vaccines.”

O’Brien said COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing hospitalization, severe disease, or death, but less effective at stopping people from getting infected and transmitting the disease.

She noted it is particularly important that people in high priority groups receive all their recommended doses. They include people over age 60, those who have underlying medical conditions or are immunocompromised, pregnant women and health workers.

“For the strains that we have circulating in the world now, the omicron strains, the first booster dose actually improves the performance of your primary series for protection against the severe end of the disease spectrum,” O’Brien said. “So, you actually need three doses to get that optimal protection from vaccines.”

O’Brien said there is no direct evidence of the performance of the monovalent or bivalent vaccines on the XBB.1.5 strain of COVID-19. Since there currently is no data on whether the newer bivalent vaccines are more effective than ancestral vaccines, she said the WHO recommends both for booster doses.
…

Alphabet Inc., the parent company of tech giant Google, announced Friday it is laying off 12,000 workers across the entire company — cuts reflecting six percent of the company’s total workforce.

In an email to employees Friday, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai said the company saw dramatic growth over the past two years and hired new employees “for a different economic reality than the one we face today.” He said he takes full responsibility for the decisions that led to where the company is today.

In his email, Pichai said the layoffs come following “a rigorous review across product areas and functions” to ensure the company’s employees and their roles are aligned with Google’s top priorities. “The roles we’re eliminating reflect the outcome of that review,” he said.

In the email, Pichai said U.S. employees to be laid off already have been notified, while it is going to take longer for employees in other countries because of different laws and regulations.

Google’s decision comes the same week other big tech companies, Meta Platforms Inc. – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Twitter Inc., Microsoft and Amazon, announced they were laying off thousands of employees.

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
…

South Korea on Friday announced an end to its indoor mask mandate, one of the country’s last major pandemic restrictions.

Health authorities said as of Jan. 30, face coverings will no longer be required indoors, except in hospitals, pharmacies, and on public transportation.

The move was made because a winter spike in COVID-19 cases is on the decline and the overall pandemic situation is under control, authorities said.

“Of course, there may be some increase in cases after changing the mandatory mask rule, but given the current situation in Korea we are not expecting a major spike,” said Jee Young-mee, the commissioner of the Korean Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

The announcement came exactly three years after South Korea reported its first COVID-19 case.

South Korea is the world’s last remaining developed country to lift its indoor mask rule and one of just a handful of nations where masks are still expected to be worn in nearly every public setting.

In Seoul, the densely populated metropolitan area where nearly half the country lives, many residents say they disagree with lifting the mask mandate.

“It’s too early,” said Kim Da-young, a 30-year-old nursing student, who said she fears a spike in COVID-19 cases. “I’m still nervous about taking off my mask, so I’ll keep wearing it.”

According to an opinion poll released earlier this month, 66% of South Koreans will continue to wear masks even after the mandate is lifted. Several polls suggest a large percentage of South Koreans do not ever anticipate a situation in which masks are not needed.

In Seoul, masks have become an expected part of daily life – and not just in crowded indoor settings. The vast majority of residents wear masks while walking outside. Many even keep the masks on when riding alone in an automobile, jogging on an empty path, or sitting on a park bench away from others.

Many residents say there’s little reason to take a mask off, if they have to put it back on to get on a bus or train. Others cite personal circumstances, such as living with older family members who are more susceptible to even mild diseases. South Korea has one of the world’s oldest populations.

Seoul resident Choi Seo-hyun said she is worried about spreading COVID-19 to her 2-month-old daughter.

“Even if I go out without the baby, I think I’ll still wear [the mask],” said Choi, who also cited fears about the seasonal flu.

“People have been wearing masks for a while, so I understand why they want to take them off. But wouldn’t it still be a little dangerous to take it off indoors?” she asked.

Widespread mask-wearing is seen as one of the main reasons South Korea was able to prevent the level of mass COVID-19 deaths seen in other countries, while at the same time avoiding mass lockdowns.

Other factors include the country’s quick and effective system of contact tracing, which has now ended, and an affordable national health care system.

South Korea has also quickly adjusted its COVID-19 policies as conditions changed. Almost all pandemic restrictions have been lifted, except for a seven-day isolation guideline for those who test positive at an official testing center.

The country has also imposed new rules for visitors from China, which has seen a massive spike in cases after abandoning its zero-COVID policy.
…

Every year, the night sky grows brighter, and the stars look dimmer.

A new study that analyzes data from more than 50,000 amateur stargazers finds that artificial lighting is making the night sky about 10% brighter each year.

That’s a much faster rate of change than scientists had previously estimated looking at satellite data. The research, which includes data from 2011 to 2022, is published Thursday in the journal Science.

“We are losing, year by year, the possibility to see the stars,” said Fabio Falchi, a physicist at the University of Santiago de Compostela, who was not involved in the study.

“If you can still see the dimmest stars, you are in a very dark place. But if you see only the brightest ones, you are in a very light-polluted place,” he said.

As cities expand and put up more lights, “skyglow” or “artificial twilight,” as the study authors call it, becomes more intense.

The 10% annual change “is a lot bigger than I expected — something you’ll notice clearly within a lifetime,” said Christopher Kyba, a study co-author and physicist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam.

Kyba and his colleagues gave this example: A child is born where 250 stars are visible on a clear night. By the time that child turns 18, only 100 stars are still visible.

“This is real pollution, affecting people and wildlife,” said Kyba, who said he hoped that policymakers would do more to curb light pollution. Some localities have set limits.

The study data from amateur stargazers in the nonprofit Globe at Night project was collected in a similar fashion. Volunteers look for the constellation Orion — remember the three stars of his belt — and match what they see in the night sky to a series of charts showing an increasing number of surrounding stars.

Prior studies of artificial lighting, which used satellite images of the Earth at night, had estimated the annual increase in sky brightness to be about 2% a year.

But the satellites used aren’t able to detect light with wavelengths toward the blue end of the spectrum — including the light emitted by energy-efficient LED bulbs.

More than half of the new outdoor lights installed in the United States in the past decade have been LED lights, according to the researchers.

The satellites are also better at detecting light that scatters upward, like a spotlight, than light that scatters horizontally, like the glow of an illuminated billboard at night, said Kyba.

Skyglow disrupts human circadian rhythms, as well as other forms of life, said Georgetown biologist Emily Williams, who was not part of the study.

“Migratory songbirds normally use starlight to orient where they are in the sky at night,” she said. “And when sea turtle babies hatch, they use light to orient toward the ocean — light pollution is a huge deal for them.”

Part of what’s being lost is a universal human experience, said Falchi, the physicist at University of Santiago de Compostela.

“The night sky has been, for all the generations before ours, a source of inspiration for art, science, literature,” he said.
…

FBI Director Christopher Wray said Thursday that he was “deeply concerned” about the Chinese government’s artificial intelligence program, asserting that it was “not constrained by the rule of law.”

Speaking during a panel session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wray said Beijing’s AI ambitions were “built on top of massive troves of intellectual property and sensitive data that they’ve stolen over the years.”

He said that left unchecked, China could use artificial intelligence advancements to further its hacking operations, intellectual property theft and repression of dissidents inside the country and beyond.

“That’s something we’re deeply concerned about. I think everyone here should be deeply concerned about,” he said.

More broadly, he said, “AI is a classic example of a technology where I have the same reaction every time. I think, ‘Wow, we can do that?’ And then I think, ‘Oh God, they can do that.’”

Such concerns have long been voiced by U.S. officials. In October 2021, for instance, U.S. counterintelligence officials issued warnings about China’s ambitions in AI as part of a renewed effort to inform business executives, academics and local and state government officials about the risks of accepting Chinese investment or expertise in key industries.

Earlier that year, an AI commission led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt urged the U.S. to boost its AI skills to counter China, including by pursuing “AI-enabled” weapons.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment Thursday about Wray’s comments. Beijing has repeatedly accused Washington of fearmongering and attacked U.S. intelligence for its assessments of China.
…

As the coronavirus pandemic enters its fourth year, the United States is grappling with a new subvariant of COVID-19 called XBB.1.5, and China is reporting a spike in cases following the dismantling of its zero-COVID policy. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reports.
…

Software giant Microsoft on Wednesday became the latest major company in the tech sector to announce significant job cuts when it reported it would lay off 10,000 employees, or about 5% of its workforce.

Microsoft’s job cuts come just as e-commerce leader Amazon begins a fresh round of 18,000 layoffs, extending a wave of other major cuts at Twitter, Salesforce and dozens of smaller technology firms in recent weeks.

The phenomenon of job losses in the tech sector has global reach but has been keenly felt in Silicon Valley and other West Coast tech hubs in the United States. The website layoffs.fyi, which tracks job cuts in the tech industry, has identified well over 100 tech firms announcing layoffs since January 1 across North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. In all, the website has counted more than 1,200 firms making layoffs since the beginning of 2022.

Changing environment

In an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella appeared to suggest that retrenchment in the tech sector was a result of reduced consumer demand.

“During the pandemic, there was rapid acceleration,” Nadella said. “I think we’re going to go through a phase today where there is some amount of normalization in demand.”

He said the company would seek to drive growth by increasing its own productivity. The interview took place before Microsoft officially announced the layoffs.

One major focus of the layoffs, according to multiple media reports, was the division of the company that makes augmented reality systems, including the company’s HoloLens goggles and the Integrated Visual Augmentation System, which until recently were being developed in cooperation with the U.S. Army.

Later in the day in an email to employees, Nadella wrote, “These are the kinds of hard choices we have made throughout our 47-year history to remain a consequential company in this industry that is unforgiving to anyone who doesn’t adapt to platform shifts.”

However, he signaled the company would continue hiring in areas such as artificial intelligence that management believes are strategically important.

Also on Wednesday, Doug Herrington, head of Amazon’s global retail business, said his company was restructuring to meet consumers’ demands but would continue to invest in areas where it saw the potential for growth, including its grocery delivery business.

Stronger, perhaps

Wayne Hochwarter, who teaches business administration at Florida State University, described the layoffs at Microsoft and Amazon as examples of businesses making adjustments to their workforces in the face of a changing business climate.

“I think they overestimated the trends in personal purchasing patterns, and they thought, ‘OK, we’re going to make sure we’re not shorthanded,’” he told VOA. “And then when things softened a little bit, they realized they had hired too many people.”

He also warned against reading too much into the latest layoffs.

“I don’t think the tech sector is going to heck in a handbasket,” he said. “They may have reevaluated where things are going to go, but I don’t see this as a catalyst for sending us into economic deterioration, or anything that’s going to put a crimp on the economy.”

Looking to the future, Hochwarter said, the workforce changes are “probably going to make them stronger companies.”

Weathering the storm

Margaret O’Mara, author of the book The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America, told VOA that the current run of layoffs in the U.S. was just the latest chapter in a long cycle of booms and busts in the tech sector.

In some important respects, she said, it’s a story about more than just a misreading of trends in consumer preferences.

“It’s similar to other downturns, and there have been many — for every boom there was a bust — in that their macro[economic] conditions have shifted,” she said. “Tech is an industry that’s very much fueled by investment capital and the stock market.”

O’Mara said that over the last 10 years, with low interest rates and large amounts of cash flowing through the economy, conditions have been “extraordinary” for the growth of U.S. tech companies. As those conditions change, so does the amount of money investors want to put into tech firms.

However, O’Mara, a professor of American history at the University of Washington, said it was important not to look at conditions today as similar to the catastrophic dot-com bust of 2000.

“Tech is many orders of magnitude larger than it ever has been before,” she said. “We are talking about platform companies that are unlike the dot-coms, which were very young and very frothy, and it was easy for their value to collapse. They weren’t providing the essential services … fundamental to the rest of the economy.”

By contrast, she said, companies like Microsoft and Amazon have deep connections to the broader U.S. economy and should be able to withstand the current economic headwinds.

Difficult for H-1B visa holders

A disproportionate share of workers in the U.S. technology sector are non-citizens who hold H-1B visas, which allow companies to sponsor them. Layoffs are particularly difficult for visa holders — the overwhelming majority of whom are from India — because once their employment is terminated, they have just 60 days to find a new sponsor. Otherwise, they are required to leave the country.

Hochwarter said he thought companies would pull back on hiring H-1B visa workers, at least for the time being.

“My sense is that because that takes a great deal of effort and energy on the part of the employing organization, they’re probably going to start cutting down on those because they’re just not quite as needed,” he said.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Labor Martin Walsh, speaking at Davos, bemoaned the state of U.S. immigration law, saying it denies the U.S. the workers it needs to drive economic growth.

“We need immigration reform in America. America has always been a country that has depended on immigration. The threat to the American economy long term is not inflation, it’s immigration,” he said. “It’s not having enough workers.”
…

Environmental activist Greta Thunberg is set to meet International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol in Davos on Thursday, organizers of a fringe round-table event at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting told Reuters.

Thunberg is to meet Birol along with fellow campaigners Helena Gualinga, Vanessa Nakate and Luisa Neubauer, the organizers said in a statement.

The IEA, which makes policy recommendations on global energy, had no immediate comment.

Thunberg was released by police on Tuesday after being detained alongside other climate activists during protests in Germany.

“Yesterday I was part of a group that peacefully protested the expansion of a coal mine in Germany. We were kettled by police and then detained but were let go later that evening,” she tweeted, adding: “Climate protection is not a crime.”

‘We are not winning’

Former United States Vice President Al Gore said in Davos that he agreed with Thunberg’s efforts in Germany and that the climate crisis was getting worse faster than the world was tackling it.

“We are not winning. The crisis is still getting worse faster than we are deploying these solutions,” Gore told a WEF panel, highlighting a growing gap between those “old enough to be in positions in power and the young people of this world.”

Thunberg, whose current whereabouts are not clear, attended the WEF meeting in Davos in January 2020, when she challenged world leaders, including former U.S. President Donald Trump, to act on climate change, saying that “our house is still on fire.”

She has also participated in previous protests on the fringes of the gathering, which brings business and political leaders together in the Swiss ski resort for a dialogue on topical issues.

Activists protest oil firms’ role

Climate change is one of the main items on the agenda for this year’s meeting, which has already seen protests against the role of big oil firms, with activists saying they are hijacking the debate over how to address global warming.

Representatives of major energy firms including BP, Chevron, Occidental Petroleum Corp., and Saudi Aramco are among 1,500 business leaders gathered there.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called on the WEF attendees to make “credible,” accountable net-zero pledges.

A social media campaign this week added to pressure on oil and gas companies, promoting a “cease and desist” notice sponsored by Thunberg, Nakate, Neubauer and Gualinga through the non-profit website Avaaz.

The call, which has garnered more than 850,000 signatures, demands that energy company CEOs “immediately stop opening any new oil, gas, or coal extraction sites, and stop blocking the clean energy transition we all so urgently need.”

It threatens legal action and more protests if they fail to comply.

The oil and gas industry has said that it needs to be part of the energy transition as fossil fuels will continue to play a major role in the world’s energy mix as countries shift to low- economies.
…

The impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine is being felt as far away as Indian-administered Kashmir, where ornithologists see the conflict as contributing to a shortage of migratory birds which make their way each winter from Europe to the wetlands of the Kashmir Valley.

Every February, the wildlife protection department conducts a census of migratory birds in Kashmir. The department says that more than 1.1 million birds of 39 species visited the region in 2021. The census estimated 810,000 birds in 2020 and 950,000 in 2019.

The department has not yet begun this year’s count but the wildlife warden of wetlands, Ifshan Dewan, told VOA, “I am getting reports from various wetlands on low arrival of migratory birds compared to the last year.”

Experts believe that the nearly year-old war between Russia and Ukraine could be one reason for the reduced size of this year’s migratory flocks, both in Kashmir and elsewhere in the region.

Irfan Jeelani, founder of the birding club Birds of Kashmir, told VOA that birds from China, Siberia, central Asia and Europe visit Kashmir every winter. “Birds from Europe could be affected due to the war and have altered their flyway to reach here; however, weak ones couldn’t reach their destinations,” Jeelani suggested.

A similar pattern has been noted in the neighboring Jammu region, where Parmil Kumar, the head of the department of statistics at the University of Jammu, said the war in Ukraine could have been responsible for some species arriving almost two weeks later than usual.

“There is also a reduction of about 15% in the number of birds visiting this winter to Jammu region,” said Kumar, who is a birder himself.

Bird migration expert Andrew Farnsworth agreed that the Ukraine-Russia war could be a factor affecting the number of migratory birds visiting the Kashmir region this winter but noted that birds come to the valley from many regions besides Europe.

“Maybe slightly, but there are so many other factors and so many more birds arriving from more easterly locations to Kashmir, in addition to ongoing military and industrial activities in and around Kashmir for years,” said Farnsworth, a senior research associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

“War can and certainly does affect the movements of birds, whether by habitat destruction, increased hunting pressure during long conflicts, or destruction by military actions.”

Wildlife experts are looking to see if this year’s census bears out observations seeming to show significantly reduced populations of bird species that make the trip from Europe, such as the black stork, great white pelican and purple heron.

Wildlife experts in Ukraine say there is no doubt that the war is endangering a wide variety of creatures there.

The conflict has “threatened not only Ukraine’s population but also biodiversity, including a significant number of rare and globally vulnerable bird species,” said a recent article by Oleg Dudkin, CEO of the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Birds and Martin Harper, regional director at BirdLife Europe & Central Asia.

Asad R. Rahmani, a member of the governing body of Wetlands International South Asia, said another likely explanation for the declining migratory bird population in Kashmir is the destruction of wetlands that provide a winter home for the birds.

“Most birds that come to India belong to the Central Asian Flyway and Ukraine does not fall in this flyway,” he told VOA. “There is always a movement from Europe of some birds. Still, the bulk of the migratory birds come from central Russia, Mongolia, northern China, Tibet, and some countries of central Asia.”

If adequately protected, Kashmir’s wetlands could become a major tourist attraction, he added.

Rashid Naqash, the regional wildlife warden for the Kashmir region, said in an interview that his department is trying its best to protect the region’s wetlands. His department manages eight main wetlands where migratory birds congregate in huge droves during winter.

Regarding the war in Ukraine, Naqash said the migratory birds instinctively avoid places with a lot of activity and instead take safer routes to get to their wintering grounds. But he said, “It is hard, dangerous, and stressful for migratory birds to find other ways to get to where they spend the winter.”
…

Campaigners have welcomed a decision to remove the skeleton of an 18th century man with gigantism from public display at a London museum.

The remains of Charles Byrne, who was 2.31 meters (7ft 7in), had been on show at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in central London.

But the museum has said the self-styled “Irish Giant” will not be part of the collection when it reopens in March after a five-year, £4.6-million ($5.7-million) refurbishment.

Thomas Muinzer, a senior law lecturer at Aberdeen University in Scotland, called the decision “wonderful news”.

But he said the development was only a “partial success”, as Byrne himself wanted to be buried at sea, to prevent anatomists using him for study.

In 2011, Muinzer and Len Doyal, a medical ethicist, published a paper in the British Medical Journal, calling for Byrne’s final wishes to be respected.

“Byrne’s remains ought to be buried at sea or at least be withdrawn from public display,” they wrote.

The British writer Hilary Mantel, who died last year and wrote a 1998 fictionalized portrait of Byrne called “The Giant”, had also backed the campaign.

RCS England said last week that trustees of the collection had discussed the “sensitivities” of keeping and displaying Byrne’s skeleton during the closure.

The skeleton was acquired after Byrne’s death aged 22 in 1783 by the eminent surgeon and anatomist John Hunter.

Before he could be buried, Hunter paid Byrne’s friends £500 — the equivalent of £60,000 today — for his body.

The decision comes as museums in the UK and around the world are reassessing the provenance of their collections.

The Hunterian is due to begin a new program later this year “to promote new research and explore issues around the display of human remains and the acquisition of specimens” during the British colonial period.

Hunter and others in the 18th and 19th century “acquired many specimens in ways we would not consider ethical today”, it added.

A decision has been made to only make the skeleton only available for “bona fide medical research” into gigantism.

Muinzer said it had already been extensively studied and its complete DNA extracted, but scientific understanding of the condition remains limited and people still suffer from it today.

As a result, Byrne’s last wishes — which RCS England said are well-documented but anecdotal — should be respected, he added.

“We don’t have to worry about the resurrectionists and grave robbers now thank goodness,” he added.
…

People in Somalia are highly traumatized due to political instability, prolonged violence and humanitarian crisis, a new health study said.

The joint study by the United Nations, Somalia’s health ministry and the country’s national university found that mental disorder is prevalent across the country. It said that cases are about 77 percent higher than a previous study by the World Health Organization (WHO), which suggested that nearly 40% of the population in Somalia had a mental or psychological disorder.

The study further said that the prevalence of mental disorders among the young is significantly higher than previously reported.

“There is a high prevalence and wide range of the various mental disorders (76.9%), substance abuse disorders (lifetime, 53.3%; current, 50.6%) and poor quality of life in both non-clinical and clinical populations,” the study said.

The study obtained by VOA Somali Service was conducted between October 25 and November 15 2021. The data was collected from 713 participants in the towns of Baidoa, Kismayo and Dolow. The majority of the participants (68.1%) were younger than 35 years and 58.5% were males.

All three towns host internally displaced persons who have been impacted by conflicts, and droughts which forced the pastoral communities to migrate to urban locations in search of food, water, and safety.

“Conflicts and clashes have brought about mental illness because we face many of these challenges in our country,” a young person in Kismayo who was interviewed for the study told the researchers. “For example, explosions occur, and the witness might live with the shock and trauma that can affect their state of mind and even cause mental illness. Stress caused by joblessness also leads to mental health issues.”

The study is a collaboration between the WHO, the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Federal Ministry of Health and the Somali National University (SNU).

According to the WHO, which led the research, this is the first-ever epidemiological study on mental health in Somalia.

“The study findings clearly indicate the prevalence of mental health disorders is higher in the younger population than we initially used to think or assume through various estimates,” said Dr. Mamunur Rahman Malik, WHO Country Representative.

“Our earlier WHO study suggested that only 40% of the population in Somalia might have a mental or psychological disorder. But what we have seen now is 76%, which is a high prevalence rate,” Malik told VOA.

Somalia Minister of Health Dr. Ali Haji Adam agrees that mental health situation among the population is “very poor.”

“There has been armed conflict, poverty, fear, instability, and unemployment for a long time; this is causing mental wounds,” Adam said. “They cannot cope with what is happening in front of them; mothers and children are being killed in front of them and that is damaging their mental health.”

Malik said a worrying finding is that the most common mental health illness among this population is panic disorder and post-traumatic disorder.

“Panic disorder, 39%, and post-traumatic disorder at 37%. And this is amongst the young age group,” Malik said.

He said if untreated, this might lead to suicidal tendencies. He said in previous estimates WHO saw the suicide rate among the young population in Somalia as one of the highest in the world, 14 to 15 per 100,000 population. This new study finds that the risk of committing suicide among young people in Somalia is 22 per 100,000.

The authors of the study said this is surprising for a community where Islam is the predominant religion, and where teaching prohibits suicide. They urged clinicians to consult with their patients about suicidal thoughts during evaluation, regardless of religious beliefs or practices.

Substance abuse

The other discovery of the study is the high degree of prevalence of substance abuse among the young population.

Adam said that the younger generation who are the most affected by mental health illnesses are turning to drug abuse.

“A young person with an ambition, and a future when they cannot realize their ambition and aspiration, cannot find a job they face mental pressure,” Adam told VOA. “It’s likely they turn to drug abuse.”

Malik agrees that the hopeless situation and lack of sufficient access to mental health facilities are driving the mentally ill to resort to the abuse use of prohibited substances.

“These are coping mechanisms, but this is self-destruction, that’s the most worrying factor for me,” he said.

The most common substance used was tobacco, 38%, followed by sedatives which is 37%, and these are not regulated in the country, Malik said.

He said Somalia is the only country that has not ratified the WHO’s global convention on Tobacco Control. He urged the Somali government to ratify and commit to controlling substance abuse of tobacco and sedatives.

“We are actually at risk of losing a whole generation because these young people have no hopes for the future and they comprise 70% of the people in this country,” Malik said. “Instead of using them as human assets we are at risk of losing them because there is a high burden of mental health and substance abuse, and this is making them non-productive and they’re becoming a huge economic burden.”

The increased mental illnesses can be seen in mental health care clinics.

Dr. Liban Mohamed Omar opened a mental health clinic eight months ago after he returned from Europe. He says his polyclinic and psychiatric center receives dozens of patients every week.

“Of the patients I receive, two to three out of every four persons have got mental health issues,” Omar told VOA.

In addition to the political and social upheavals in the country, women face specific challenges that exacerbate their mental health situation.

“Women face many [cases of] abuse, such as rape,” Omar said.

Omar cited a lack of awareness and a shortage of skilled mental health workers and services which forces many to resort to substance abuse and to even contemplate ending their life.

Peace building

The researchers see improving mental health as an integral part of peace-building in Somalia, a country where there has been civil strife since the collapse of the state in 1991.

Malik said in conflict-affected countries the burden of mental health is high.

“These young people who were carrying a huge burden of mental health can be an easy target for radical forces because these are disillusioned young people,” Malik said.

“Our assumption is if these people can be socially integrated after addressing their mental health condition, social cohesion, and community reconciliation may increase and that can lead to peace-building in a way that these mentally ill young people may not be the targets of radical forces so they can contribute to the society.”

Malik said only 5 to 10 percent of the primary healthcare centers in Somalia currently can offer mental health services, far less than what is needed.

“The total number of mental health professionals in Somalia is 82 in a population of over 15 million,” Malik said. “And if you compare it in terms of mental health professionals, 100,000 population it is less than one. So, the future lies in investing in mental health services at the primary health care level.

The study recommended training of frontline health care workers, increased awareness, and routine screening of mental disorders at the primary health care level.
…

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the military and private citizens started using Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink, which eventually became key to Ukraine’s resistance. From Kyiv, Myroslava Gongadze tells the story of one Ukrainian engineer who volunteers to support the technology and the soldiers who use it.
…

There was visible excitement among students when schools reopened Tuesday in Malawi’s two biggest cities, Lilongwe and Blantyre, after a two-week suspension caused by a cholera outbreak. 

The bacterial illness has killed close to 800 people, more than 100 of them children, and affected more than 25,000. 

Malawi’s government announced measures to prevent cholera from spreading in schools but warned it will shut down the schools again if needed.  

To many students, especially those who are preparing to take national examinations this year, the closure doomed their hope of passing the exams.

Ronnie Lutepo, a teenaged student at Michiru View secondary school in Blantyre, said returning to the school was the best thing he hoped for.

“Yes, as I was at home my mum was telling me to study, but being in an examination class affected me badly,” he said. “We are all supposed to be here and ready for the exams and if we are not ready, we are not going to get good grades.”

The reopening comes after the government announced that it has put into place preventive measures against the spread of cholera, which is transmitted mainly through dirty water. 

These include fixing broken boreholes and water taps in the schools and banning the sale of cooked food around school premises.

Malawi is battling its worst cholera outbreak in a decade. Government statistics show that as of Monday it had registered 25,458 cases since the start of the outbreak last March, with 550 cases reported on Monday alone.

The disease has so far killed more than 800 people with around 1,000 hospitalizations as of Tuesday.  

Justin Rice Phiri, the deputy head teacher at Michiru View secondary school, told VOA that the school has put in place measures to prevent students from contracting the disease.

“At the same time our support staff; the cleaners and the cooks have been trained on how best to prevent the cholera and also giving them the protective wear; the gloves, the work suits and the like,” he said.

On Tuesday, the U.N.’s children’s agency, UNICEF, started distributing anti-cholera supplies in schools in areas most affected by the outbreak.

Government authorities, however, have warned that they may close the schools again should the outbreak spread among students at an unmanageable level.
…

In his meeting Tuesday with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden appeared to have made no progress persuading the Netherlands to support new U.S. restrictions on exporting chip-making technology to China, a key part of Washington’s strategy in its rivalry against Beijing.

During a brief appearance in front of reporters before their meeting, Biden said he and Rutte have been working on “how to keep a free and open Indo-Pacific” to “meet the challenges of China.”

“Simply put, our companies, our countries, have been so far just lockstep in what we’ve done, and our vision for the future. So today, I look forward to discussing how we can further deepen our relationship and securing our supply chains to strengthen our transatlantic partnership,” he added.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the administration will continue its efforts.

“We don’t push any of our allies or our partners. We consult with them closely, and they make their own decisions,” she said in a briefing to reporters on Tuesday.

ASML Holding NV, producer of the world’s most advanced semiconductor lithography systems required to manufacture the most advanced chips, is headquartered in Veldhoven, making the Netherlands key to Washington’s chips push against Beijing.

Ahead of Rutte’s visit, Dutch Trade Minister Liesje Schreinemacher said the Netherlands is consulting with European and Asian allies and will not automatically accept the new restrictions that the U.S. Commerce Department launched in October.

“You can’t say that they’ve been pressuring us for two years and now we have to sign on the dotted line. And we won’t,” she said.

Rutte did not mention the semiconductor issue ahead of his meeting with Biden, focusing instead on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where the NATO allies have been working together to support Kyiv.

“Let’s stay closely together this year,” Rutte said. “And hopefully, things will move forward in a way which is acceptable for Ukraine.”

Tech supremacy

The battle for U.S. tech supremacy and Washington’s effort to cut off critical technology supplies to Chinese companies began under the administration of former President Donald Trump. Biden took it further by trying to consolidate allies behind the effort, including the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan — home to leading companies that play key roles in the industry’s supply chain.

Allies’ support is crucial, according to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). If they do not implement complementary export controls, the U.S. sanctions will cause Chinese buyers to “revise their shopping lists” and replace American devices and equipment with comparable foreign components.

There’s a clear strategic interest in diversifying the supply chain, but the reality is complicated, said Sujai Shivakumar, director of the Renewing American Innovation Project at CSIS.

“This is a major shift, and so, there needs to be coordination … because this impacts a very complex supply chain that spans the world,” Shivakumar told VOA. “It’s a major realignment. It’s a major rewiring. So, there are a lot of details within that broader strategic shift that [have] to be worked out.”

Fifteen percent of ASML’s sales are in China, and the company [has] “already sacrificed,” Peter Wennink, CEO of ASML, said in a December interview with NRC newspaper. He said that following U.S. pressure, the Dutch government has restricted the company from exporting its most advanced lithography machines to China since 2019.

Last week, Biden hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who said he backs Biden’s attempt but did not agree to match the sweeping curbs targeting China’s semiconductor and supercomputing industries.

Like the U.S., Japan has launched an ambitious program to bring back cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing domestically, part of the Kishida government’s broader strategy to respond to global supply chain disruptions and try to contain China.

U.S. officials say export restrictions on chips are necessary because China can use semiconductors to advance their military systems, including weapons of mass destruction, and to commit human rights abuses.

The October restrictions follow the U.S. Congress’ July passing of the CHIPS Act of 2022, which provides $52 billion to strengthen domestic semiconductor manufacturing, design and research, and reinforce America’s chip supply chains. The legislation also restricts companies that receive U.S. subsidies from investing in and expanding cutting-edge chipmaking facilities in China.

Beijing has invested heavily in its semiconductor industry as Washington has sought to cut it out of the semiconductor supply chain. In 2015, China laid out plans to invest $1.4 trillion in advanced technologies, aiming to achieve 70% self-sufficiency in semiconductors by 2025.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
…

Nearly two thirds of the sharks and rays that live among the world’s corals are threatened with extinction, according to new research published Tuesday, with a warning this could further imperil precious reefs.

Coral reefs, which harbor at least a quarter of all marine animals and plants, are gravely menaced by an array of human threats, including overfishing, pollution and climate change.

Shark and ray species — from apex predators to filter feeders — play an important role in these delicate ecosystems that “cannot be filled by other species”, said Samantha Sherman, of Simon Fraser University in Canada and the wildlife group TRAFFIC International.

But they are under grave threat globally, according to the study in the journal Nature Communications, which assessed extinction vulnerability data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to look at 134 species of sharks and rays linked to reefs.

The authors found 59 percent of coral reef shark and ray species are threatened with extinction, an extinction risk almost double that of sharks and rays in general.

Among these, five shark species are listed as critically endangered, as well as nine ray species, all so-called “rhino rays” that look more like sharks than stingrays.

Keeping reefs healthier

“It was a bit surprising just how high the threat level is for these species,” Sherman told AFP. 

“Many species that we thought of as common are declining at alarming rates and becoming more difficult to find in some places.”

Sherman said the biggest threat to these species by far is overfishing.

Sharks are under most threat in the Western Atlantic and parts of the Indian Ocean, whereas the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia are the highest risks for rays.

These regions are heavily fished and do not currently have management in place to reduce the impact on these species, said Sherman.

Coral reef fisheries directly support the livelihoods and food security of over half a billion people, but this crucial ecosystem is facing an existential threat.

Human-driven climate change has spurred mass coral bleaching as the world’s oceans get warmer.

Modelling research has shown that even if the Paris climate goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is reached, 99 percent of the world’s coral reefs will not be able to recover.

At two degrees of warming, the number rose to 100 percent.

“We know coral reef health is declining, largely due to climate change, however, coral reef sharks and rays can help keep reefs healthier for longer,” said Sherman. 

The study was carried out by an international team of experts from universities, government and regional oceanic and fishery organizations as well as non-governmental organizations across the world.
…