Category: Silicon Valley

new york — U.S. suicides last year remained at about the highest level in the nation’s history, preliminary data suggests. 

A little more than 49,300 suicide deaths were reported in 2023, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number that could grow a little as some death investigations are wrapped up and reported. 

Just under 49,500 were reported in 2022, according to final data released Thursday. The numbers are close enough that the suicide rate for the two years are the same, CDC officials said. 

U.S. suicide rates have been rising for nearly 20 years, aside from a two-year drop around the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. So “a leveling off of any increase in suicide is cautiously promising news,” said Katherine Keyes, a Columbia University public health professor who studies suicide. 

Indeed, there’s reason for optimism. A 2-year-old national crisis line allows anyone in the U.S. to dial 988 to reach mental health specialists. That and other efforts may be starting to pay off, Keyes said, but it “really remains to be seen.” 

Experts caution that suicide — the nation’s 11th-leading cause of death in 2022 — is complicated and that attempts can be driven by a range of factors. Contributors include higher rates of depression, limited availability of mental health services, and the availability of guns. About 55% of all suicide deaths in 2022 involved firearms, according to CDC data. 

The CDC’s Thursday report said: 

—Suicide was the second-leading cause of death for people ages 10–14 and 20–34, and the third-leading cause for people ages 15–19. 

—Deaths continue to be more common among boys and men than girls and women. The highest suicide rate for any group — by far — was in men ages 75 and older, at about 44 suicides per 100,000 men that age. 

—Among women, the highest rate was in those who were middle-aged, about 9 per 100,000. But more dramatic increases have been seen in teens and young women, with the rate for that group doubling in the last two decades. 

—The overall suicide rate in 2022 and 2023 was 14.2 per 100,000. It also was that high in 2018. Before then, it hadn’t been that high since 1941. 
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — SpaceX launched a rescue mission for the two stuck astronauts at the International Space Station on Saturday, sending up a downsized crew to bring them home but not until next year. 

The capsule rocketed into orbit to fetch the test pilots whose Boeing spacecraft returned to Earth empty earlier this month because of safety concerns. The switch in rides left it to NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov to retrieve Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. 

Because NASA rotates space station crews approximately every six months, this newly launched flight with two empty seats reserved for Wilmore and Williams won’t return until late February. Officials said there wasn’t a way to bring them back earlier on SpaceX without interrupting other scheduled missions. 

By the time they return, the pair will have logged more than eight months in space. They expected to be gone just a week when they signed up for Boeing’s first astronaut flight that launched in June. 

NASA ultimately decided that Boeing’s Starliner was too risky after a cascade of thruster troubles and helium leaks marred its trip to the orbiting complex. The space agency cut two astronauts from this SpaceX launch to make room on the Dragon capsule’s return leg for Wilmore and Williams. 

Wilmore and Williams watched the liftoff via a live link sent to the space station, prompting a cheer of “Go Dragon!” from Williams, NASA deputy program manager Dina Contella said. 

Williams has been promoted to commander of the space station, which will soon be back to its normal population of seven. Once Hague and Gorbunov arrive Sunday, four astronauts living there since March can leave in their own SpaceX capsule. Their homecoming was delayed a month by Starliner’s turmoil. 

Hague noted before the flight that change is the one constant in human spaceflight. 

“There’s always something that is changing. Maybe this time it’s been a little more visible to the public,” he said. 

Hague was thrust into the commander’s job for the rescue mission based on his experience and handling of a launch emergency six years ago. The Russian rocket failed shortly after liftoff, and the capsule carrying him and a cosmonaut catapulted off the top to safety. 

Rookie NASA astronaut Zena Cardman and veteran space flier Stephanie Wilson were pulled from this flight after NASA opted to go with SpaceX to bring the stuck astronauts home. Promised a future space mission, both were at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, taking part in the launch livestream. Gorbunov remained on the flight under an exchange agreement between NASA and the Russian Space Agency. 

“Every crewed launch that I have ever watched has really brought me a lot of emotion. This one today was especially unique,” a teary-eyed Cardman said following the early afternoon liftoff. “It was hard not to watch that rocket lift off without thinking, ‘That’s my rocket and that’s my crew.'” 

Moments before liftoff, Hague paid tribute to his two colleagues left behind: “Unbreakable. We did it together.” Once in orbit, he called it a “sweet ride” and thanked everyone who made it possible. 

Earlier, Hague acknowledged the challenges of launching with half a crew and returning with two astronauts trained on another spacecraft. 

“We’ve got a dynamic challenge ahead of us,” Hague said after arriving from Houston last weekend. “We know each other and we’re professionals and we step up and do what’s asked of us.” 

SpaceX has long been the leader in NASA’s commercial crew program, established as the space shuttles were retiring more than a decade ago. SpaceX beat Boeing in delivering astronauts to the space station in 2020, and it is now up to 10 crew flights for NASA. 

Boeing has struggled with a variety of issues over the years, repeating a Starliner test flight with no one on board after the first one veered off course. The Starliner that left Wilmore and Williams in space landed without any issues in the New Mexico desert on September 6, and has since returned to Kennedy Space Center. A week ago, Boeing’s defense and space chief was replaced. 

Delayed by Hurricane Helene pounding Florida, the latest SpaceX liftoff marked the first for astronauts from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. SpaceX took over the old Titan rocket pad nearly two decades ago and used it for satellite and station cargo launches, while flying crews from Kennedy’s former Apollo and shuttle pad next door. The company wanted more flexibility as more Falcon rockets soared. 
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PERRY, Florida — Hurricane Helene caused dozens of deaths and billions of dollars of destruction across a wide swath of the southeastern United States, and more than 3 million customers went into the weekend without power and, for some, a continued threat of floods.

Helene blew ashore in Florida’s Big Bend region as a Category 4 hurricane late Thursday packing winds of 225 kilometers per hour and then quickly moved through Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee. The storm uprooted trees, splintered homes and sent creeks and rivers over their banks and straining dams.

Western North Carolina was essentially cut off because of landslides and flooding that forced the closure of Interstate 40 and other roads. There were hundreds of water rescues, none more dramatic than in rural Unicoi County in eastern Tennessee, where dozens of patients and staff were plucked by helicopter from the roof of a hospital that was surrounded by water from a flooded river.

The storm, now a post-tropical cyclone, was expected to hover over the Tennessee Valley on Saturday and Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said. Several flood and flash flood warnings remained in effect in parts of the southern and central Appalachian Mountains, while high wind warnings also covered parts of Tennessee and Ohio.

Among the at least 44 people killed in the storm were three firefighters, a woman and her 1-month-old twins, and an 89-year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree. According to an Associated Press tally, the deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

When the water hit knee-level in Kera O’Neil’s home in Hudson, Florida, she knew it was time to escape.

“There’s a moment where you are thinking, ‘If this water rises above the level of the stove, we are not going to have much room to breathe,’” she said, recalling how she and her sister waded through chest-deep water with one cat in a plastic carrier and another in a cardboard box.

Evacuations and record rainfall

In North Carolina, a lake featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing” overtopped a dam and surrounding neighborhoods were evacuated, although there were no immediate concerns it would fail.

People also were evacuated from Newport, Tennessee, a town of about 7,000 people, amid concerns about a dam near there, although officials later said the structure had not failed.

Tornadoes hit some areas, including one in Nash County, North Carolina, that critically injured four people.

Atlanta received a record 28.24 centimeters of rain in 48 hours, the most the city has seen in a two-day period since recordkeeping began in 1878, Georgia’s Office of the State Climatologist said on the social platform X. Some neighborhoods were so badly flooded that only car roofs could be seen poking above the water.

Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage.

Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful cyclones sometimes in a matter of hours.

Big Bend region hit hard

Florida’s Big Bend is a part of the state where salt marshes and pine flatwoods stretch into the horizon, and where the condo developments and strip malls that have carved up so much of the state’s coastlines elsewhere are largely absent.

It’s a place where Susan Sauls Hartway and her 4-year-old Chihuahua mix, Lucy, could afford to live within walking distance of the beach on her salary as a housekeeper.

At least, until her house was carried away by Helene. Friday afternoon, Hartway wandered around her street near Ezell Beach, searching for where the storm may have deposited her home.

“It’s gone. I don’t know where it’s at. I can’t find it,” she said of her house.

Born and raised in rural Taylor County, Hartway said there is nowhere in the world she would rather be, even after Helene. But she’s watched as wealthier residents from out of state have bought up second homes here. She wonders how many of them will sell out — and what will happen to the locals who have nowhere else to go.

“There’s so many people down here … this was all they had,” she said.

The community has taken direct hits from three hurricanes since August 2023.

All five who died in one Florida county were in neighborhoods where residents were told to evacuate, said Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff in Pinellas County in the St. Petersburg area. Some who stayed ended up having to retreat to their attics to escape the rising water. He said the death toll could rise as crews go door-to-door in flooded areas.

More deaths were reported in Georgia and the Carolinas, including two South Carolina firefighters and a Georgia firefighter who died when trees struck their trucks. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin reported at least one death in his state.

Power loss and infrastructure damage

President Joe Biden said he was praying for survivors, and the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency headed to the area. The agency deployed more than 1,500 workers, and they helped with 400 rescues by late Friday morning.

Officials urged people who were trapped to call for rescuers and not tread floodwaters, warning they can be dangerous due to live wires, sewage, sharp objects and other debris.

In Georgia, an electrical utility group warned of “catastrophic” damage to utility infrastructure, with more than 100 high-voltage transmission lines damaged. And officials in South Carolina, where more than 40% of customers were without power, said crews had to cut their way through debris just to determine what was still standing in some places.

The hurricane came ashore near the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 30 kilometers northwest of where Hurricane Idalia hit last year at nearly the same ferocity. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the damage from Helene appears to be greater than the combined effects of Idalia and Hurricane Debby in August.

The destruction extended far beyond Florida.

Historic flooding expected

A mudslide in the Appalachian Mountains washed out part of an interstate highway at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.

Another slide hit homes in North Carolina, and occupants had to wait more than four hours to be rescued, said Ryan Cole, the emergency services assistant director in Buncombe County. His 911 center received more than 3,300 calls in eight hours Friday.

“This is something that we’re going to be dealing with for many days and weeks to come,” Cole said.

Forecasters warned of flooding in North Carolina that could be worse than anything seen in the past century. The Connecticut Army National Guard sent a helicopter to help.

Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.
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PREK TAKEO, Cambodia — The Mekong River is a lifeline for millions in the six countries it traverses on its way from its headwaters to the sea, sustaining the world’s largest inland fishery and abundant rice paddies on Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

Cambodia’s plan to build a massive canal linking the Mekong to a port on on its own coast on the Gulf of Thailand is raising alarm that the project could devastate the river’s natural flood systems, worsening droughts and depriving farmers on the delta of the nutrient-rich silt that has made Vietnam the world’s third-largest rice exporter.

Cambodia hopes that the $1.7 billion Funan Techo canal, being built with Chinese help, will support its ambition to export directly from factories along the Mekong without relying on Vietnam, connecting the capital Phnom Penh with Kep province on Cambodia’s southern coast.

At an August 5 groundbreaking ceremony, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet said the canal will be built “no matter what the cost.” By reducing costs of shipping to Cambodia’s only deep-sea port, at Sihanoukville, the canal will promote, “national prestige, the territorial integrity and the development of Cambodia,” he said.

Along with those promises comes peril. Here is a closer look.

The threat to the Mekong

The Mekong River flows from China through Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. It supports a fishery that accounts for 15% of the global inland catch, worth more than $11 billion annually, according to the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund. Flooding during the wet season makes the Mekong Delta one of the world’s most productive farm regions.

The river already has been disrupted by dams built upstream in Laos and China that restrict the amount of water flowing downstream, while rising seas are gnawing away at the southern edges of the climate-vulnerable Mekong Delta.

Brian Eyler, director of the Washington-based Stimson Center’s Southeast Asia Program, warns that high embankments along the 100-meter-wide, 5.4-meter-deep canal will prevent silt-laden floodwater from flowing downstream to Vietnam. That could worsen drought in Vietnam’s rice bowl and Cambodia’s floodplains, an area stretching over roughly 1,300-square kilometers.

The view from Vietnam’s rice bowl

A drier Mekong Delta is a concern for Vietnam’s agricultural sector, which powers 12% of its economy. The southwestern provinces of An Giang and Kien Giang would likely be most impacted. The delta’s latticework of rivers crisscrossing green fields is vital for Vietnam’s own plans of growing “high quality, low emission rice” on 1 million hectares of farmland by 2030. The aim is to cut earth-warming greenhouse gases, lower production costs and increase farmers’ profits.

Water from the river is “essential” not just for Vietnam’s more than 100 million people but also for global food security, said Nguyen Van Nhut, director of rice export company Hoang Minh Nhat.

Vietnam’s exports of 8.3 million metric tons of rice in 2023 accounted for 15% of global exports. Most was grown in the Mekong Delta. The amount of silt being deposited by the river has already dropped and further disruptions will worsen salinity in the area, hurting farming, Nhat said.

“This will be a major concern for the agriculture sector of the Mekong delta,” he said.

Cambodia’s view

Cambodia says the canal is a “tributary project” that will connect to the Bassac River near Phnom Penh. President Hun Sen claimed on social media platform X that this means there would be “no impact on the flow of the Mekong River.”

But blueprints show the canal will connect to the Mekong’s mainstream and in any case the Bassac consists entirely of water from the Mekong, Eyler said.

Cambodian authorities are downplaying the potential environmental impacts of the project. “This is their logic-defying basis for justifying no impact to the Mekong River,” he said.

A document submitted in August 2023 to the Mekong River Commission — an organization formed for cooperation on issues regarding the Mekong — does not mention using water from the canal for irrigation, though Cambodia has since said it plans to do so. The Stimson Center added it was “logical” that irrigation would be needed during dry months, but that would require negotiating an agreement with the other Mekong countries.

The Mekong River Commission told The Associated Press all major projects on the Mekong River “should be assessed for their potential transboundary impacts.” It said it was providing technical support to “increase transparency and cooperation among concerned countries.”

Sun Chanthol, the Cambodian deputy prime minister who oversees the project, didn’t respond to a request for comments.

Nationalistic rhetoric and tense neighbors

Cambodia has rejected criticism of the canal, which is widely seen as an effort by the country’s ruling elite to curry support for Prime Minister Hun Manet, who succeeded his father Hun Sen, who led Cambodia for 38 years.

The canal is to be built jointly by Chinese state-owned construction giant China Road and Bridge Corporation and Cambodian companies. But it is enveloped in nationalistic rhetoric. The canal would provide Cambodia a “nose to breathe through” by reducing its dependence on Vietnam, Hun Sen has said.

Vietnam has avoided openly criticizing its neighbor, instead communicating its concerns quietly. Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said at a press conference in May that Hanoi had asked Cambodia to share information and assess the environmental impacts of the project to “ensure the harmony of interests” of Mekong countries.

Many Cambodians remain suspicious of Vietnam’s intentions, believing it may want to annex Cambodian territory. Given the contentious past between the two countries, bigger and richer Vietnam is taking care not to appear to be impinging on Cambodian sovereignty, said Nguyen Khac Giang, an analyst at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.

“Although in Vietnam, there are big concerns,” he said.

Lost in Cambodia’s nationalistic rhetoric are the concerns of people like Sok Koeun, 57, who may lose her home.

The tin-roofed cottage where she has lived with her family since 1980 is right where the canal is due to be built. The river provides her with fish to feed her family when she struggles to get by selling sugarcane juice and recycling plastic cans.

No one has been in touch, she says, to answer her mounting questions: Will she get compensated? Will she get land? Or cash? Where will they go?

“I only learned about it (the canal) just now,” she said.
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SAO PAULO/BRASILIA BRAZIL — Brazil’s Supreme Court said on Friday that social platform X still needs to pay just over $5 million in pending fines, including a new one, before it will be allowed to resume its service in the country, according to a court document. 

Earlier this week, the Elon Musk-owned U.S. firm told the court it had complied with orders to stop the spread of misinformation and asked it to lift a ban on the platform. 

But Judge Alexandre de Moraes responded on Friday with a ruling that X and its legal representative in Brazil must still agree to pay a total of $3.4 million in pending fines that were previously ordered by the court. 

In his decision, the judge said that the court can use resources already frozen from X and Starlink accounts in Brazil, but to do so the satellite company, also owned by Musk, had to drop its pending appeal against the fund blockage.  

The judge also demanded a new $1.8 million fine related to a brief period last week when X became available again for some users in Brazil. 

X, formerly known as Twitter, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

According to a person close to X, the tech firm will likely pay all the fines but will consider challenging the fine that was imposed by the court after the platform ban.  

X has been suspended since late August in Brazil, one of its largest and most coveted markets, after Moraes ruled it had failed to comply with orders related to restricting hate speech and naming a local legal representative. 

Musk, who had denounced the orders as censorship and called Moraes a “dictator,” backed down and started to reverse his position last week, when X lawyers said the platform tapped a local representative and would comply with court rulings. 

In Friday’s decision, Moraes said that X had proved it had now blocked accounts as ordered by the court and had named the required legal representative in Brazil. 
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Abuja, Nigeria — Leaders in Africa say the fight against malaria on the continent is facing significant funding gaps due to the ongoing global financial crisis and the impact of climate change.

African leaders this week met in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly and called for a concerted effort to avert a funding crisis they say could set back decades of progress in the fight against malaria.

The African Leaders Malaria Alliance, or ALMA, which hosted the high-level meeting, said if malaria funding continues to shrink, there will be an expected additional 112 million cases and some 280,000 deaths by the year 2029.

Africa already accounts for an estimated 236 million malaria cases — or 95% of the global total — and 97% of deaths. Nigeria accounts for nearly a third of that burden.

Guinea-Bissau President Umaro Sissoco Embalo, who serves as chair of ALMA, said that Africa stands at a critical moment in the fight against malaria.

“We must act urgently to protect lifesaving malaria intervention,” he said. “This is very important because our target is to finish with malaria in Africa.”

Experts said Africa needs up to $6.3 billion in malaria funding annually to eliminate the disease and called for continued support for malaria financing within the global funding framework.

ALMA also said the impact of climate change and growing resistance to insecticide and antimalarials are further hampering progress against the disease in Africa.

Ngashi Ngongo, head of the Executive Office at the Africa Union, said, “Achieving the elimination of malaria alongside progress toward other endemic diseases such as HIV and TB will lay the foundation for reducing Africa’s disease burden and further propel the achievement of universal health coverage on the continent.

“This progress is essential for strengthening health systems, and it is a necessity as we prepare for future pandemics, which are inevitable,” he said.

Following the World Health Organization’s approval last year, the first malaria vaccines are being introduced into routine child immunization schedules across Africa.

And on Thursday in New York, Nigerian health authorities signed a deal with U.S.-based drone company Zipline to use artificial intelligence-powered drones to expand access to medical supplies, including blood and vaccines.

Abdu Muktar, who is the national coordinator of Nigeria’s Unlocking Healthcare Value-Chain Initiative, commended the “very bold agenda” for producing health care products locally.

“But now we also have to be able to deliver,” he said. “What Zipline is doing is using technology to make sure you deliver. You’ll be able to reduce wastage in whatever it is — vaccines, therapeutics. You’ll be able to be accountable. … You are able to reach more people.”

In 2022, governments of malaria-endemic countries contributed about $1.5 billion toward combatting the disease.
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According to the International Energy Agency, the world now invests almost twice as much in clean energy as it does in fossil fuels. But with that shift comes environmental risks related to the mining of critical minerals. VOA’s Jessica Stone looks at how nations are navigating the environmental challenges of creating a renewable future.
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HONG KONG — Hong Kong welcomed a new pair of giant pandas gifted by Beijing on Thursday with a lavish ceremony, raising hopes for a boost to the city’s tourism.

An An and Ke Ke are the third pair of giant pandas to be sent to the city from mainland China since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Their arrival came after their new neighbor, Ying Ying, gave birth to twins last month and became the world’s oldest first-time panda mother on record.

With the addition of the new bears, the twins, and their father, Le Le, Hong Kong now houses six pandas.

Chief Executive John Lee on Tuesday said An An is a 5-year-old male panda who is agile, intelligent and active, while Ke Ke, a 5-year-old female, is good at climbing, cute and has a gentle temperament.

The new arrivals will undergo two months of quarantine and adapt to their new home at Ocean Park, a zoo and aquarium that has long been a favorite of residents and tourists. Lee expressed hope that the public could meet the new bears in mid-December.

In October, the government will invite residents to propose new names that showcase the pandas’ characteristics.

Tourism industry representatives are optimistic about the potential impact of housing six pandas, hoping it will boost visitor numbers in Hong Kong. Officials have encouraged businesses to capitalize on the popularity of the new bears and newborn cubs to seize opportunities in what some lawmakers have dubbed the “panda economy.”

Pandas are widely considered China’s unofficial national mascot. The country’s giant panda loan program with overseas zoos has long been seen as a tool of Beijing’s soft-power diplomacy. Giant pandas are only found in China’s southwest and their population is under threat from development.

But caring for pandas in captivity is expensive. A zoo in Finland agreed with Chinese authorities to return two loaned giant pandas to China more than eight years ahead of schedule because they were too costly for the facility to maintain amid declining visitors.

Hong Kong’s Ocean Park has been hosting pandas since 1999, when the first pair, An An and Jia Jia, arrived in the financial hub shortly after it was handed back to China.

Jia Jia, who died at 38 in 2016, is the world’s oldest-ever panda to have lived in captivity. The average lifespan for a panda in the wild is 18 to 20 years, while in captivity it’s 30 years, according to the Guinness World Records.
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WASHINGTON — An executive at cybersecurity company CrowdStrike apologized in testimony to Congress for sparking a global technology outage over the summer. 

“We let our customers down,” said Adam Meyers, who leads CrowdStrike’s threat intelligence division, in a hearing before a U.S. House cybersecurity subcommittee Tuesday. 

Austin, Texas-based CrowdStrike has blamed a bug in an update that allowed its cybersecurity systems to push bad data out to millions of customer computers, setting off a global tech outage in July that grounded flights, took TV broadcasts off air and disrupted banks, hospitals and retailers. 

“Everywhere Americans turned, basic societal functions were unavailable,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green said. “We cannot allow a mistake of this magnitude to happen again.” 

The Tennessee Republican likened the impact of the outage to an attack “we would expect to be carefully executed by a malicious and sophisticated nation-state actor.” 

“We’re deeply sorry and we are determined to prevent this from ever happening again,” Meyers told lawmakers while laying out the technical missteps that led to the outage of about 8.5 million computers running Microsoft’s Windows operating system. 

Meyers said he wanted to “underscore that this was not a cyberattack” but was, instead, caused by a faulty “rapid-response content update” focused on addressing new threats. The company has since bolstered its content update procedures, he said. 

The company still faces a number of lawsuits from people and businesses that were caught up in July’s mass outage. 
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new york — Caroline Ellison, a former top executive in Sam Bankman-Fried’s fallen FTX cryptocurrency empire, was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday after she apologized repeatedly to everyone hurt by a fraud that stole billions of dollars from investors, lenders and customers. 

U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said Ellison’s cooperation was “very, very substantial” and “remarkable.” 

But he said a prison sentence was necessary because she had participated in what might be the “greatest financial fraud ever perpetrated in this country and probably anywhere else” or at least close to it. 

He said in such a serious case, he could not let cooperation be a get-out-of-jail-free card, even when it was clear that Bankman-Fried had become “your kryptonite.” 

“I’ve seen a lot of cooperators in 30 years here,” he said. “I’ve never seen one quite like Ms. Ellison.”

She was ordered to report to prison on November 7. 

Ellison, 29, pleaded guilty nearly two years ago and testified against Bankman-Fried for nearly three days at a trial last November. 

At sentencing, she emotionally apologized to anyone hurt by the fraud that stretched from 2017 through 2022. 

“I’m deeply ashamed with what I’ve done,” she said, fighting through tears to say she was “so so sorry” to everyone she had harmed directly or indirectly. 

She did not speak as she left Manhattan federal court, surrounded by lawyers. 

In a court filing, prosecutors had called her testimony the “cornerstone of the trial” against Bankman-Fried, 32, who was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison. 

In court Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon called for leniency, saying her testimony was “devastating and powerful proof” against Bankman-Fried. 

The prosecutor said Ellison’s time on the witness stand was very different from Bankman-Fried, who she said was “evasive, even contemptuous, and unable to answer questions directly” when he testified. 

Attorney Anjan Sahni asked the judge to spare his client from prison, citing “unusual circumstances,” including her off-and-on romantic relationship with Bankman-Fried and the damage caused when her “whole professional and personal life came to revolve” around him. 

FTX was one of the world’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges, known for its Superbowl TV ad and its extensive lobbying campaign in Washington before it collapsed in 2022. 

U.S. prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried and other executives of looting customer accounts on the exchange to make risky investments, make millions of dollars of illegal political donations, bribe Chinese officials, and buy luxury real estate in the Caribbean. 

Ellison was chief executive at Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency hedge fund controlled by Bankman-Fried that was used to process some customer funds from FTX. 

As the business began to falter, Ellison divulged the massive fraud to employees who worked for her even before FTX filed for bankruptcy, trial evidence showed. 

Ultimately, she also spoke extensively with criminal and civil U.S. investigators. 

Sassoon said prosecutors were impressed that Ellison did not “jump into the lifeboat” to escape her crimes but instead spent nearly two years fully cooperating. 

Since testifying at Bankman-Fried’s trial, Ellison has engaged in extensive charity work, written a novel, and worked with her parents on a math enrichment textbook for advanced high school students, according to her lawyers. 

They said she also now has a healthy romantic relationship and has reconnected with high school friends she had lost touch with while she worked for and sometimes dated Bankman-Fried from 2017 until late 2022. 
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GENEVA — Police in northern Switzerland said Tuesday that several people have been detained and a criminal case opened in connection with the suspected death of a person in a “suicide capsule.”

The “Sarco” capsule is presumably designed to allow a person sitting in a reclining seat inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber. The person is then supposed to fall asleep and die by suffocation in a few minutes.

Exit International, an assisted suicide group based in the Netherlands, said it is behind the 3D-printed device that cost over $1 million to develop.

Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no “external assistance” and those who help the person die do not do so for “any self-serving motive,” according to a government website.

A law firm informed prosecutors in Schaffhausen canton that an assisted suicide involving the Sarco had taken place Monday near a forest cabin in Merishausen, regional police said in a statement. They said that “several people” were taken into custody and that prosecutors opened an investigation on suspicion of incitement and accessory to suicide.

Dutch newspaper Volkskrant reported Tuesday that police had detained one of its photographers who wanted to take pictures of the use of the Sarco. It said Schaffhausen police had indicated the photographer was being held at a police station but declined to give a further explanation.

The newspaper declined to comment further when contacted by the Associated Press. 

In an email, the Dutch Foreign Ministry told the AP that it was in contact with the newspaper and Swiss officials. 

“As always, we cannot interfere in the legal process of another country. At the same time, the Netherlands stands firmly for press freedom. It is very important that journalists worldwide can do their work freely,” it said. 

Exit International, the group behind the Sarco, said in a statement a 64-year-old woman from the U.S. Midwest — it did not specify further — who had suffered from “severe immune compromise” had died Monday afternoon near the German border using the Sarco device.

It said Florian Willet, co-president of The Last Resort, a Swiss affiliate of Exit International, was the only person present and described her death as “peaceful, fast and dignified.”

Dr. Philip Nitschke, an Australian-born trained doctor behind Exit International, has previously told the AP that his organization received advice from lawyers in Switzerland that the use of the Sarco would be legal in the country.

In the Exit International statement on Tuesday, Nitschke said he was “pleased that the Sarco had performed exactly as it had been designed … to provide an elective, non-drug, peaceful death at the time of the person’s choosing.”

The claims of Nitschke and Exit International could not be independently verified.

On Monday, Health Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider was asked in Swiss parliament about the legal conditions for the use of the Sarco capsule. She suggested its use would not be legal.

“On one hand, it does not fulfill the demands of the product safety law, and as such, must not be brought into circulation,” she said. “On the other hand, the corresponding use of nitrogen is not compatible with the article on purpose in the chemicals law.”

In July, Swiss newspaper Blick reported that Peter Sticher, a state prosecutor in Schaffhausen, wrote to Exit International’s lawyers saying any operator of the suicide capsule could face criminal proceedings if it was used there — and any conviction could bring up to five years in prison.

Prosecutors in other Swiss regions have also indicated that the use of the suicide capsule could lead to prosecution.

Over the summer, a 54-year-old U.S. woman with multiple health ailments had planned to be the first person to use the device, but those plans were abandoned.

Switzerland is among the only countries in the world where foreigners can travel to legally end their lives and has organizations that are dedicated to helping people kill themselves. But unlike others, including the Netherlands, Switzerland does not allow euthanasia, which involves health care practitioners killing patients with a lethal injection at their request and in specific circumstances.

Some lawmakers in Switzerland have argued that the law is unclear and have sought to close what they call legal loopholes.
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Egypt’s second-largest city, Alexandria, lies in the Eastern Mediterranean, a top climate change hotspot that has dealt with record global air and ocean temperatures this year. Egypt-based photojournalist Hamada Elrasam presents scenes of everyday life that have been impacted by the changing climate phenomenon in the low-lying metropolis that has survived over two millennia, only to find itself on this century’s climate frontlines. Written in collaboration with Elle Kurancid.
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wyoming, iowa — Taking a late-summer country drive in the Midwest means venturing into the corn zone, snaking between 12-foot-tall green, leafy walls that seem to block out nearly everything other than the sun and an occasional water tower.

The skyscraper-like corn is a part of rural America as much as cavernous red barns and placid cows.

But soon, that towering corn might become a miniature of its former self, replaced by stalks only half as tall as the green giants that have dominated fields for so long.

“As you drive across the Midwest, maybe in the next seven, eight, 10 years, you’re going to see a lot of this out there,” said Cameron Sorgenfrey, an eastern Iowa farmer who has been growing newly developed short corn for several years, sometimes prompting puzzled looks from neighboring farmers. “I think this is going to change agriculture in the Midwest.”

The short corn developed by Bayer Crop Science is being tested on about 30,000 acres (12,141 hectares) in the Midwest with the promise of offering farmers a variety that can withstand powerful windstorms that could become more frequent due to climate change. The corn’s smaller stature and sturdier base enable it to withstand winds of up to 50 mph — researchers hover over fields with a helicopter to see how the plants handle the wind.

The smaller plants also let farmers plant at greater density, so they can grow more corn on the same amount of land, increasing their profits. That is especially helpful as farmers have endured several years of low prices that are forecast to continue.

The smaller stalks could also lead to less water use at a time of growing drought concerns.

U.S. farmers grow corn on about 90 million acres (36 million hectares) each year, usually making it the nation’s largest crop, so it’s hard to overstate the importance of a potential large-scale shift to smaller-stature corn, said Dior Kelley, an assistant professor at Iowa State University who is researching different paths for growing shorter corn.

Last year, U.S. farmers grew more than 400 tons (363 metric tons) of corn, most of which was used for animal feed, the fuel additive ethanol or exported to other countries.

“It is huge. It’s a big, fundamental shift,” Kelley said.

Researchers have long focused on developing plants that could grow the most corn but recently there has been equal emphasis on other traits, such as making the plant more drought-tolerant or able to withstand high temperatures. Although there already were efforts to grow shorter corn, the demand for innovations by private companies such as Bayer and academic scientists soared after an intense windstorm — called a derecho — plowed through the Midwest in August 2020.

The storm killed four people and caused $11 billion in damage, with the greatest destruction in a wide strip of eastern Iowa, where winds exceeded 100 mph. In cities such as Cedar Rapids, the wind toppled thousands of trees but the damage to a corn crop only weeks from harvest was especially stunning.

“It looked like someone had come through with a machete and cut all of our corn down,” Kelley said.

Or as Sorgenfrey, the Iowa farmer who endured the derecho put it, “Most of my corn looked like it had been steamrolled.”

Although Kelley is excited about the potential of short corn, she said farmers need to be aware that cobs that grow closer to the soil could be more vulnerable to diseases or mold. Short plants also could be susceptible to a problem called lodging, when the corn tilts over after something like a heavy rain and then grows along the ground, Kelley said.

Brian Leake, a Bayer spokesman, said the company has been developing short corn for more than 20 years. Other companies such as Stine Seed and Corteva also have been working for a decade or longer to offer short-corn varieties.

While the big goal has been developing corn that can withstand high winds, researchers also note that a shorter stalk makes it easier for farmers to get into fields with equipment for tasks such as spreading fungicide or seeding the ground with a future cover crop.

Bayer expects to ramp up its production in 2027, and Leake said he hopes that by later in this decade, farmers will grow short corn everywhere.

“We see the opportunity of this being the new normal across both the U.S. and other parts of the world,” he said.
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NEW YORK — First lady Jill Biden is unveiling a new set of actions to address health inequities faced by women in the United States, plans that include spending at least $500 million annually on women’s health research. 

Biden was making the announcement Monday while closing out the first day of this year’s Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York. 

The additional government spending will mainly come from the Department of Defense, which provides medical care to more than 230,000 active-duty military women and nearly 2 million military retirees, as well as their family members. The research will focus on why these women experience endocrine, hematological and other immunity-related disorders twice as often as men. 

“Our nation is home to the best health research in the world, yet women’s health is understudied and research is underfunded,” Biden said at a separate event on Friday. “And we still know too little about how to effectively prevent, diagnose, and treat a range of health conditions in women, from heart disease to cancers.” 

The commitment was among the largest of the more than 100 expected at the two-day meeting of political, business and philanthropic leaders gathering to address some of the world’s most pressing issues. Former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Clinton Foundation Vice Chair Chelsea Clinton have set this year’s theme as “What’s Working,” a way to look for potential solutions and effective programs in tumultuous times. 

“You don’t look at a problem and say, ‘That’s impossible,’” Bill Clinton said in his opening remarks. “You don’t just throw up your hands. You roll up your sleeves.” 

An example of that strategy came from the announcement that a wide-ranging group of 15 nonprofits, humanitarian aid organizations and other funders will join forces to address the humanitarian crisis in Sudan following more than a year of conflict. 

The Coalition for Mutual Aid in Sudan — which includes The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Giving, Global Fund for Women, and The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee — will donate at least $2 million to mutual aid groups in the country by the end of the year. It also pledged to raise another $4.5 million for those groups within the next two years. 

Patricia McIlreavy, president of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, which has been representing the coalition, said that, while much more aid is needed, the collaboration and problem-solving of the group is an important step forward. 

“It gets us started,” McIlreavy told The Associated Press. “And it models the behavior you want to see from others. If you wait until it’s the perfect opportunity, you’ve missed many of the opportunities that were good enough.” 

World Food Program director Cindy McCain said earlier this month that “Sudan’s nearly a forgotten crisis” and that 25 million people there already face acute hunger. Last week, the top United Nations humanitarian official said fighting is escalating in the conflict that began in April 2023 when long-simmering tensions between Sudan’s military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital Khartoum and spread to other regions. The U.N. says more than 14,000 people have been killed and 33,000 injured. 

“With ongoing impediments to a large-scale international aid response, Sudanese community groups have become the primary frontline responders and are currently the most effective means of reaching millions on the brink of starvation,” Patricia McIlreavy, president of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, said in a prepared statement on behalf of the coalition. “With so many lives on the line, the imperative to support local aid efforts in Sudan has never been more urgent.” 

The Center for Disaster Philanthropy says more than 12 million people have been forced from their homes in Sudan, creating what is now the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis. The danger from the conflict has prevented most international aid agencies from delivering supplies to those in need. 

Greg Milne, the Clinton Global Initiative CEO who convened a panel in April to raise awareness and support for the Sudanese people, said the new coalition is an example of what bringing organizations from varied sectors can do. 

“We know strong, diverse partnerships can help address often overlooked and even dire challenges, and develop unexpected and innovative solutions,” he said. 

Philanthropic leaders, including Bill Gates, World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres, Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee, and Rockefeller Foundation President Raj Shah will share information about their work during CGI, as will Prince Harry, who will discuss the launch of The Archewell Foundation Parents’ Network, which supports parents of children harmed online. In his Tuesday appearance, the Duke of Sussex will also address his work with the World Health Organization and others to reduce violence against children, an issue he and his wife Meghan outlined on a recent trip to Colombia. 

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani Sadriu, and Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics are set to address the conference, as are CEOs from Pfizer, Mastercard, IKEA, Pinterest, Sanofi and Chobani. 
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