Ritchie Torres was appalled. In March, the New York City Council Member learned from the New York Times that the iconic sports and entertainment arena Madison Square Garden, the legendary home to the Knicks and the Rangers and an endless parade of arena performers, has used facial recognition software to scan the faces of spectators upon entrance. Details remain scant, but the technology is meant to identify “problem” attendees by matching their faces to those stored in a database. Using the largely unregulated technology–and not telling the public what was being done with their faces–“radically challenges privacy as we know it,” says Torres, who represents the Bronx.In October, he introduced a bill that aims to bring a modicum of transparency to businesses’ use of the biometric technology, as well as iris and fingerprint scanning, by requiring businesses to conspicuously disclose the use of the technology at business entrances.“We’re increasingly living in a marketplace where companies are collecting vast quantities of personal data without the public’s consent or knowledge,” he says. “In a free and open society, I have the right to know whether a company is collecting my personal data, why a company is collecting my data, and whether a company will retain my data and for what purpose.”Under the bill, companies would be required to disclose, with signs at every entrance, if and how they are collecting, retaining, converting, and storing the biometric data of their customers. The online component of the bill would require a company to disclose four pieces of information online: the amount of information it retains and stores; the kind of information it collects; a privacy policy; and, most critically for Torres, any information sharing with third parties.To Torres, facial recognition is the most intrusive yet least regulated form of a fast-growing swath of biometric technology he characterizes as being “shrouded in secrecy.”“It’s even more intrusive than fingerprinting, [which] is a tangible intrusion into my privacy,” Torres explains. “This facial recognition is an invisible and intangible intrusion–that’s what makes it more pernicious. Even more than that, you’re building a database of private information that can then be commercialized.”Madison Square Garden [Photo: Flickr user Daniel]He also cites the potential for false positives in face recognition systems. (During a recent set of tests by London’s Metropolitan police, for instance, clandestine face recognition matches found in public places resulted in a 100% failure rate.) Poorly trained algorithms tend to impact non-white faces, an especially poignant concern for residents of the Bronx, where, according to census data, there is a more diverse array of faces than any other place in the country.But wherever you live, basic disclosure is “utterly uncontroversial,” Torres says. “If you believe that businesses should be able to collect your personal data without your knowledge or consent, then we disagree on first principles.”In the absence of federal regulations, the technology is spreading across public spaces: Airports, casinos, and retailers are buying software that can run on real-time feeds from ever-improving CCTV cameras. The software typically comes with access to databases of faces of suspicious individuals, though it’s unclear how those databases are assembled and how to remove faces from them. (Federal law enforcement agencies operate a database said to contain the faces of half of the U.S. population.)The Dept. of Homeland Security has been rolling out face recognition systems at airport gates across the country as part of a post-9/11 biometric system. Amazon has lately courted controversy with its Rekognition service, a facial scanning software used by law enforcement agencies like ICE, as well as many of its other cloud customers. Facebook is well known for its facial recognition algorithm, allowing the company to identify users and target ads at them accordingly. Last month, Microsoft’s president called for rules around face recognition, while Google said it would not yet sell facial recognition services for the time being, given the ongoing privacy and ethical concerns.In March, the same month that the Times described MSG’s technology, the ACLU asked 20 of America’s top retailers if they used facial recognition on their customers. All but two of the companies refused to confirm or deny. One company, Ahold Delhaize–a brand that owns supermarkets Food Lion, Stop & Shop, Giant, and Hannaford–responded that they did not use face recognition. Four years ago, the hardware company Lowe’s tested face recognition for a three-month period to identify shoplifters at three stores, but says it does not currently use the technology.Torres said he doesn’t know which other New York City businesses are currently using facial recognition technology on customers, or how. And therein lies the problem. “Since there is no regulation, since there is not even the most basic standards of transparency, we don’t know how widespread the use of facial recognition technology is in New York City or elsewhere in the country–we just don’t know,” he says. “Businesses are under no obligation to report on the use of facial recognition technology. I think that is part of the purpose of the bill: to shed light on a world of biometric technology that has historically been hidden from public view.”Ritchie Torres [Photo: Noam Galai/Getty Images]While face recognition at places like MSG has been touted as a security measure, the data could also easily be used for other purposes. For several years, advertisers have used facial recognition in electronic billboard campaigns, and the company Bidooh is trying to dominate this market by creating an out-of-home ad network that will target ads at people through facial recognition-equipped electronic billboards. Founded by Abdul Alim, who says he was inspired by the sci-fi film Minority Report, Bidooh aims to be the Google AdWords and Facebook Ads of the out-of-home advertising market.“Madison Square Garden assures me that the use of facial recognition technology is limited to security,” Torres says. “But here is the concern I have with companies generally: What could begin as a security measure could easily evolve into something else. Once data is retained, it can be readily repurposed for profit. I’m concerned about the commercialization of private data.”In Illinois, face scanning companies must abide by the U.S.’s most extensive biometric privacy law. Companies must obtain express, opt-in consent from consumers before collecting their face or selling that data to third parties, and must delete any data within three years of collecting it. (Texas and Washington also restrict face recognition.) The Illinois law also empowers people to enforce their data rights in court, and since 2015, Google, Snapchat, Facebook, and others have faced lawsuits for allegedly violating the law. But late last month a judge in Chicago dismissed the suit against Google, saying the plaintiff, whose face was unwittingly captured in 11 photos taken by a Google Photos user, didn’t suffer “concrete injuries.”Meanwhile, against the protests of privacy experts, a recently proposed amendment to the Chicago municipal code would permit businesses to use face surveillance systems in their stores and venues. As with Torres’s bill, the bill would require the businesses to simply post signs giving patrons notice about some of their surveillance practices, while circumventing the stronger protections provided by the state law.Torres says he’s “optimistic” his proposal will pass when it comes before a committee hearing, sometime within the next few months. But there are still headwinds, he says. Some stakeholders worry about the law potentially opening the floodgates to lawsuits. And a few advocates felt his legislation could go farther to regulate facial recognition and other biometric technologies.For example, the law doesn’t address government uses of the technology, including by the NYPD, which came under fire last year when The Intercept described trials of an ethnicity-detecting face recognition system. But another New York City law, authored by former Council Member James Vacca, has recently created the Automated Decision Systems Task Force, which will look into the various algorithms across any government agency that underlie public policy-making. The task force, announced in May by Mayor Bill de Blasio, will issue a report in December 2019, in which it will recommend procedures for “reviewing and assessing City algorithmic tools to ensure equity and opportunity.”“I see the bill as a floor not a ceiling,” Torres says of his proposal. “It seems to me disclosure is a natural starting point, and if we come to discover abuses in the use of facial recognition or facial screening technology, then we can adopt regulations aimed at preventing those abuses.”Update: This story has been updated to reflect Lowe’s current face recognition policy.

At first sight, Donald Trump’s presidency might seem to prove that, in the end, people can get used to anything. Mr Trump’s election two years ago was an enormous shock to the American system. Soon, however, many persuaded themselves that the system would find ways of working around the Trump threat. There was much talk of “adults in the room” in the administration who would protect American values, interests and alliances from the interloper. On Wall Street, financial markets took a similar bet. However reckless the president, they concluded, he would not be permitted to make policy that would affect share prices and corporate profits.Those who always despised Mr Trump are entitled to point out that this is what they said all along. But this is not just another Trump shock moment. The significant thing happening in America right now is that the undecideds are beginning to come off the fence. Even some generally cautious observers of the American scene now seem to accept that the Trump problem keeps on growing and that the “work-around” options no longer have credibility. “Last week was a watershed moment for me,” says one of these observers, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. He wrote on Monday, amid the attacks on Mr Powell: “People wanted disruption, but too often Trump has given us destruction, distraction, debasement and sheer ignorance.”Two other events of this week need to be seen in this context. Mr Trump’s first, typically bumptious visit as president to Iraq (in which he refused to meet Iraqi leaders or leave the US airbase) was a classic debasement, topped off by the Trump trademark of an outright lie about a pay rise to the military and by the shameless claim that the US, which unilaterally invaded Iraq, are “no longer the suckers”. Meanwhile, the budget impasse with Congress that led to the federal government shutdown last week is a classic Trump distraction, in which the only consistent thing about the president’s random daily comments is that they are invariably untrue.This is not just the disruptive Trump presidency that many voted for and some at first decided to put up with. It is a different phase in the Trump era, in which the stakes are higher. Mr Trump now faces both the climax of the Mueller investigation and, from next week, the Democrat takeover in the House of Representatives. Both have the potential to put the president under legal and political pressures that, until now, he has not had to cope with. Mr Trump’s increasingly erratic belligerency is not simply a display of his own continuing unsuitability for the presidency. It is the behaviour of a president who sees the threats facing him and whose instability is such that he may try to pull the temple down with him. Topics Donald Trump Opinion US politics US Congress House of Representatives Iraq Middle East and North Africa US domestic policy editorials

Enlarge this image A colorized image of a brain cell from an Alzheimer's patient shows a neurofibrillary tangle (red) inside the cytoplasm (yellow) of the cell. The tangles consist primarily of a protein called tau. SPL/Science Source hide caption toggle caption SPL/Science Source A colorized image of a brain cell from an Alzheimer's patient shows a neurofibrillary tangle (red) inside the cytoplasm (yellow) of the cell. The tangles consist primarily of a protein called tau. SPL/Science Source Scientists have found a biological clue that could help explain why African-Americans appear to be more vulnerable than white Americans to Alzheimer's disease.A study of 1,255 people, both black and white, found that cerebrospinal fluid from African-Americans tended to contain lower levels of a substance associated with Alzheimer's, researchers report Monday in the journal JAMA Neurology.Yet these low levels did not seem to protect black participants from the disease.The finding "implies that the biological mechanisms underlying Alzheimer's disease may be very different in [different] racial groups," says Dr. John Morris, an author of the paper and director of the Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Washington University in St. Louis. Shots - Health News Scientists Start To Tease Out The Subtler Ways Racism Hurts Health And if Alzheimer's works differently in African-Americans, that difference could make them more vulnerable to the disease, Morris says.The study has limitations, though, says Lisa Barnes, a cognitive neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center in Chicago, who wrote an accompanying editorial.For example, it could not fully account for the effects of some other known Alzheimer's risk factors — including hypertension, diabetes and obesity — or some suspected risk factors, including stress and poverty. Also, the study included just 173 African-Americans and was able to obtain spinal fluid samples from only half of them.Even so, Barnes says she was excited to see the study "because we have so little data" on African-Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities.At the moment, most of what scientists have learned about Alzheimer's comes from studies of white people."We know relatively little about whether Alzheimer's disease is manifested in an identical way in underrepresented groups," Morris says.So researchers at Washington University have spent the past two decades reaching out to the African-American community in St. Louis. For example, the Alzheimer's research center has had an African-American Advisory Board since 2000 to help it be "more welcoming to people of color," Morris says. Shots - Health News Is It Time To Stop Using Race In Medical Research? The effort made it possible to do the study comparing Alzheimer's in whites and blacks, Morris says. But he adds that getting spinal fluid, which required participants to undergo an uncomfortable procedure, was still "not an easy ask."The study included people ages 43 to 104. Most had no signs of memory or cognitive problems, while about a third were in the early stages of dementia."We set out to see if the disease process seems to be the same in both racial groups," Morris says.Researchers used brain scans and samples of spinal fluid to look for two biological hallmarks of Alzheimer's. One was amyloid, a protein that forms sticky plaques in the brain. The other was a protein called tau, which forms toxic tangles inside brain cells. National Taking The 'Journey' Through Alzheimer's Together Blacks and whites in the study were no different when it came to plaques. "However, the tau proteins were notably different," Morris says.Spinal fluid from African-Americans contained lower levels of tau protein. And the difference was most apparent among those with a gene called APOE4.Morris says it's too soon to speculate about why there may be a link between the APOE4 gene and low tau levels in African-Americans. But if the link is real, he says, it could eventually lead to an explanation for racial differences in Alzheimer's that includes biology.First, though, researchers would need to confirm the tau connection in a study that includes many more African-Americans, Barnes says.And that will be a challenge, she says, because African-Americans are often hesitant to participate in medical research — especially if it involves an invasive procedure like a spinal tap."When you try to go to populations that have been sort of marginalized and abused by past research," she says, "it becomes very, very difficult."One way to do bigger studies of African-Americans is for research centers to collaborate. "If we start to pool our numbers together, we'll be able to do more than just one center alone [could do]," Barnes says.But to truly understand how Alzheimer's disease works in people who aren't white, she says, more researchers will have to reach out to groups that have been wary of scientific studies."We really need minority communities to be involved and to have a voice in what we're finding," Barnes says. "We can't do it by ourselves."

At an old electricity substation in north-west Washington, perhaps fittingly for the Donald Trump era, colourful murals of John F Kennedy have disappeared behind wooden boards for months, due to construction work. But a few minutes’ walk away, past a Metro station, a bland shopping mall and the Maryland border, is the new election campaign headquarters of a man working hard and spending big in an attempt to assume the Kennedy mantle.Elizabeth Warren, Tulsi Gabbard and Julián Castro may now have stolen his thunder, but former congressman John Delaney was the first Democrat with national political experience to formally announce a 2020 presidential campaign. Hoping to prove that the early bird catches the worm, he did so all the way back in July 2017. He has been hustling for votes ever since, with a Kennedy-inspired message of common purpose. Critics, opinion polls and his campaign Twitter account (with just 12,000 followers) suggest he is more Don Quixote, embarked on a romantic but doomed quest.Delaney has made 21 trips to Iowa, the first caucus state, visiting all 99 counties and making 214 stops. He has also made 10 trips to New Hampshire, the first primary state, visiting seven counties and making 96 stops. Having spent $3.5m, recruited staff and opened offices, he has become Exhibit A for America’s never-ending campaign, in stark contrast to the UK and other countries where general elections take a month or two, four or five years apart.“I do think our election cycles are very long and I don’t think that’s great,” admits the affable Delaney. But he reasons: “The presidency of the United States is a very unique elected position. So if anything merits a longer vetting process, the presidency does to some extent. In general our election cycles are too long, but this job is so consequential that I don’t think it’s a bad thing to give people more time to get to know you.”Weren’t people sick of politics after the traumatic 2016 election? Not a bit of it.“People were totally excited to talk about 2020,” he says. “Democrats are quite excited to turn the page on the current president, so for most it’s not too early to talk about 2020. Most Democrats are not saying, ‘Well, let’s give this guy a chance.’ They’re way past that. The notion of who’s going to be our nominee in 2020 and how do we beat him is something every Democrat in this country really wants to talk about.”Another much scrutinised quirk of the American electoral system is the arbitrary power of Iowa and New Hampshire, neither representative of the country’s racial diversity. Warren, a Massachusetts senator and the first major candidate to enter the contest after announcing an exploratory committee, earlier this month campaigned in Iowa until she went hoarse. There are still more than 650 days until election day.Again, Delaney defends a process that requires politicians to meet voters in their living rooms and coffee shops rather than run nationally.“If you had a primary on one day and everyone voted the same day they” – he points to a big flatscreen TV showing cable news – “would determine the nominees. So I think there’s a valuable role for a few states to go early and the states have to be of a size that you can actually campaign in them. You can’t campaign in California in a grassroots way. It’s too big.“Iowa and New Hampshire fit that size, and you get the sense that the people who are engaged in politics in Iowa and New Hampshire carry a sense of stewardship with them of the role they play. They don’t actually think they pick the president. They think they ask the right questions and there’s a valuable role for that.”Delaney backed Hillary Clinton last time but offers an unexpected criticism: “Neither Hillary or Bernie [Sanders] campaigned in Iowa or New Hampshire the way you’re supposed to. They came and did big events. That’s not what the people expect. They expect to sit down in small group gatherings and ask you questions.”Recent research by the New York Times found that American elections have always been long, drawn out affairs by international standards. In 1960, Kennedy declared his candidacy 11 months before polling day. In 1992, Bill Clinton threw his hat in the ring more than a year ahead of the vote. For 2008, Republican John McCain formed his exploratory committee in November 2006. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton launched theirs in January 2007.For the epic 2016 election, it was December 2014 when Republican establishment favourite Jeb Bush said he would “actively explore” a bid. Senator Ted Cruz was the first major candidate to formally announce, in March 2015. Clinton entered the race a month later, followed in June by Trump’s now infamous descent on a Trump Tower escalator.Delaney, however, has broken all records for hitting the ground running. His logic is simple: name recognition.“I think I’m the right person for the job,” he said, “and I have the right vision, but not enough people knew who I was and so the way to solve that problem is to get in early. To some extent the race is starting now and I had to almost run a pre-race so that I was in the game when the race started.”Even so, it appears he will soon be joined by enough Democratic candidates to constitute a football team and a Broadway chorus. When Delaney finds himself on a crowded debate stage, how will he try to stand out? “You have to have tremendous clarity as to why you’re running for president,” he said.And why are you? “The central issue facing this country is how deeply divided we are and someone has to bring us together so that we can actually do the kind of things we need to do to prepare our country for the future. The world is changing so fast and we’re just sitting on our hands and unless we actually get back to this notion of common purpose – which doesn’t mean we agree with each other on everything, far from it, we should have great debates – but some notion of common purpose, I really worry about our future.”Among his ideas is getting the president to debate on the floor of the House of Representatives four times a year, similar to prime minister’s questions in the UK.“That would fundamentally change how the American people think about these issues and think about their leaders and think about common ground,” he says. “Everything can change. We’ve seen that across history. Trends that you think are unshakeable get shaken, so we can change these trends. We just have to be committed to do it.”Delaney is the author of a book, The Right Answer, the title of which refers to a 1958 speech in which Kennedy said: “Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the right answer.” He is hoping to provide the antidote to the current hyperpartisan malaise.Viable candidates also need a personal narrative and Delaney has one. “I think I have the perfect background,” he insists, while admitting he is hardly objective. Born and raised in New Jersey, the son of an electrician, he describes himself as “a blue-collar kid, first in the family to go to college”, who went on to found two financial companies, becoming the youngest chief executive on the New York stock exchange.In 2012 Delaney “rolled up my sleeves and went into the Congress”, showing willingness to work across the aisle. “I’ve had the experiences you need,” he says. “I’ve lived the American dream. I know how the private sector works, but we should never elect someone who’s never done public service as our our president, and I think we’re seeing that with our current president.”A father of four daughters who enjoys watching the Washington Capitals ice hockey team, Delaney was the sixth-richest member of Congress with an estimated net worth of $93m. He is friends with Tom Steyer, the billionaire philanthropist seeking Trump’s impeachment. His plush new campaign HQ in Friendship Heights, with campaign posters decorating cubicles for 35 staff, shares a floor with RBC Wealth Management.All of which means that the white, male 55-year-old centrist is a hard sell to the left. The progressive group Democracy for America’s first presidential pulse poll was led by Sanders on 36.14%, followed by former vice-president Joe Biden at 14.87%. Delaney limped in 22nd, on 0.09%.Asked if Sanders or Warren can win the nomination, he replies carefully: “I think that someone who comes forth and wants to build a big tent party has a better chance of winning.“If we as a Democratic party say we’re going to become the party the American people are looking for, which is a party that’s honest, civil, respectful, focusing on common ground, positive, optimistic and has big ideas about the future and welcomes progressives, centrists and disaffected Republicans, I think we’ll run the table in 2020. If we step forward and say we’re going to be the party of ‘half the country is wrong about everything they believe’ and drive further divisions, then we’re not going to win.”Delaney is likely to be up against African American candidates such as senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. There are some who argue that a person of his gender and race is the last thing the party, which just elected its most diverse contingent to the House, needs in 2020.“If people feel that way, I respect their views,” he says. “I think their reasons for feeling that way are good intentions. Do I think that is where the whole party is? No, and that’s for the Democratic voters. I tend to think that the American people in general and the Democratic party voters in particular make a deeper analysis of who they’re looking for.“You could have someone who’s an African American running for president who doesn’t stand for any of the things that the Democratic party stands for. I just don’t think the Democratic party is going to vote for someone because of the colour of their skin. They care about their values. They care what they’re going to fight for. They care about their vision for the future.” Topics US elections 2020 Democrats US politics Maryland interviews

I flew back to the US from London last week, and after waiting for two hours at immigration I stood by as the officer frowned at my documents. My children’s US passports had been scanned without a problem. But looking at my green card, the officer asked: “Was this lost or stolen in the last year?” As it happens, it was. “Then I’m sorry,” he said, glancing down at my three-year-olds. After a seven-hour flight and all that waiting in line, they were doing breaststroke across the JFK floor. “You’ll have to step this way.”I have heard about the Congratulations, You Have Problems With Your Paperwork room at JFK, but until that moment had never actually seen it. It is a small, windowless room dominated by a raised bank of desks, behind which six or so officers sit, with several more patrolling the room. “No cellphones,” snapped a woman as I knelt on the floor, restraining a child with one hand while trying to text the cab driver waiting for us outside with the other.“OK, I’m just – .” It took her two seconds to cross the floor and rip the mobile phone from my hand, an act so surprising I laughed. “Wow,” I said. “As if I couldn’t hate this frigging country any more.”This was a childish thing to say. Most of the time I quite like the US. But more obviously, it was the purest expression I will probably ever make of the confidence that comes from being a white woman in possession of a British passport. “Now sit down,” yelled the woman. I stood up and looked around the room. The only empty seats were two rows at the back that had been pushed too close together to use. Alongside, a group of Hispanic men hovered uncertainly. Now we joined them. “Sit down!” yelled another officer. When nothing happened, he jutted his chin at the men, directing them to push apart the seats. “See what can be done when you work together?” he said sarcastically.This facetiousness seemed to me the most shocking aspect of the situation: engineering people into a position of powerlessness, then mocking them for failing to show enterprise. There was no time to dwell on it, however, because just then my phone went off. “Whoever’s phone this is, come turn it off!” bellowed the woman. As I approached her desk, she was momentarily distracted, and once again I started texting the driver. Her scream was so loud – “Are you TEXTING? And are you on MY SIDE OF THE DESK?” (I had inadvertently drifted) – I thought for a moment she would actually restrain me.“Did you go the full Poppins?” a British friend asked me afterwards. But the fact is, I didn’t. I was suddenly frightened. There was no bathroom access in this room, and both my children were wailing they needed a wee. The officers were completely implacable. A Middle Eastern woman holding a tiny baby sent me sympathetic glances, and after an hour my paperwork was returned – no explanation, no apology – and we left. I am still furious and indignant about the authoritarianism of that room, but more than that, of course, at the awareness that we got off very lightly.• Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist Topics US immigration Opinion comment

I was at what should have been a farmers’ market in Berkeley, California, last year when a throng of black-clad antifascists tried to scrap it out with far-right ralliers in the middle of a park named after Martin Luther King Jr. I watched scrawny college students get pummeled by hulking, be-swastika-ed ex-soldiers and ex-law enforcement officers in motorcycle gear. The antifascists’ one reprisal was setting off a homemade smoke bomb, which promptly blew back into their own faces, drawing raucous jeering from the white supremacists. It was as close to a war zone as I ever hope to be, and it was unequivocally a win for the racists.They had proved they could march into a historic bastion of nonviolent liberalism and troll its occupants into a frothy-mouthed rage, fulfilling their own prophecies of an extremist “alt-left” while also making national news. I went home that night more worried about America, and especially protest in America, than I had ever been before. It was easy to imagine the Bay Area becoming an extremist battleground—each weekend an opportunity for the next rally turned riot.That vision has not come to pass. In the long arc of American racism, 2017 saw a sudden spike in visibility, but it was not the beginning of a new era in which people routinely walk the streets advertising their white supremacy. This year has brought the opposite trend: 2018 has been a year of pushing the alt-right and other white nationalist groups back underground, and punishing them for misdeeds committed during their brief moment in the sun. That’s a testament to the strength of the backlash against 2017’s naked racism, and evidence of how costly being openly racist has become—especially on the internet, where it has doomed entire social media platforms to obscurity. This must be counted as a good thing.Regardless of what scaremonger reporters might espouse, the alt-right, as we have come to know it over the last two years, has failed—as extremism researchers always knew it would. But in its place has come something shadowier and far older: an underground white supremacist movement operating on society’s fringes, and a culture that disavows the racists while quietly mainstreaming their ideas.Far-right extremist groups almost always implode or succumb to infighting, and the alt-right is no exception. Many of the groups that made headlines last year (and even this year) have since disbanded. Vanguard America and the Traditionalist Workers Party, who organized the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, both succumbed to internal squabbling, and the Proud Boys effectively disbanded after founder Gavin McInnes quit the group. As a result, no rally has even approached the numbers Charlottesville drew last year.Want more? Read all of WIRED’s year-end coverageMuch of tension within these groups has been the result of America—average citizens, tech companies, and judges alike—coming down on them, hard. Richard Spencer, who coined the term alt-right, canceled his college speaking tour because the (very negative) audience response was “intimidating.” James Fields, who drove a car into a crowd of counterprotesters at the Charlottesville rally, was convicted of murdering Heather Heyer and sentenced to life in prison, plus 419 years. Platforms including Facebook, YouTube, and GoFundMe have banned prominent alt-right figures like Milo Yiannopolous, Gavin McInnes, and Infowars’ Alex Jones; Alt-right havens Gab and the Daily Stormer have been shunted to increasingly provincial corners of the web. Many rank and file alt-righters have been doxed and lost their jobs. Being openly racist got a lot less OK in 2018, and we should be proud of that.The issue, though, is that while there’s satisfaction and schadenfreude in watching these public flounderings, the alt-right doesn’t have to be visible to succeed. In fact, going underground is a return to the status quo for American white supremacy. For decades, leaders like David Duke have been instructing their followers to blend in to polite society, and then occasionally make oblique calls for lone-wolf terrorist actors. It’s that kind of individual and small-cell violence that’s on the rise in 2018: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School experienced a massacre at the hands of a radicalized racist student, Oakland’s Nia Wilson was fatally stabbed by a suspected alt-righter; worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue were murdered by an anti-Semitic alt-right sympathizer.In its place has come something shadowier: an underground white supremacist movement operating on society’s fringes, and a culture that disavows the racists while quietly mainstreaming their ideas.There’s a sick rhythm to these acts of violence: The news breaks, reporters scour social media to learn more about the perpetrator, and the next day is awash in stories about the mounting death toll caused by American white supremacy. Hate crime in America is still on the rise, and US law enforcement has found itself woefully ill-equipped to fight (or even understand and report) it.The alt-right is ideologically more dangerous the more invisible it gets, because it’s easier to make prejudice palatable when it is presented alongside mainstream conservative ideas. The alt-right may have gone underground physically, but its ideas persist and are being actively normalized—there’s no need to risk walking the streets when presidents and respectable-looking talking heads will spread your ideas for you.Dr. Elon & Mr. Musk: Life inside Tesla's production hellA guide to all 17 (known) Trump and Russia investigationsWhy we all take the same travel photosAn Intel breakthrough rethinks how chips are madeThe promise—and heartbreak—of cancer genomics👀 Looking for the latest gadgets? Check out our picks, gift guides, and best deals all year round📩 Want more? Sign up for our daily newsletter and never miss our latest and greatest stories

How prepared is the United States for the inevitable next disaster?Hurricane Florence killed 50 and caused $22bn in damages last year; shortly after, Hurricane Michael killed 36 and left hundreds without homes. The California wildfires erupted the following month, destroying thousands of structures and leaving 89 dead. As climate change causes more intense superstorms and at a higher frequency, things are only likely to get worse.Researchers, representatives, and residents have called for better preparation. A study released this year by the National Institute of Building Sciences found that every $1 spent on hazard mitigation saved the nation $6 in future disaster costs and, for years, severe storms have been heralded as the “wake-up call” – the disaster that will finally spur action. Yet last year, the federal government spent more than $300bn on disaster recovery.So where are we going wrong?If you ask a disaster specialist about preparation, expect the Netherlands to come up. The water-logged nation that sinks below sea level a little more each year has set a global standard for how to be ready; there hasn’t been a death from flooding in 65 years. Disasters, to the Dutch, are not abstract risks, but instead events that can be expected, planned for – and ultimately avoided – even when the waters rise.The Dutchman Henk Ovink, appointed by his government as the world’s only water ambassador, has tried to inspire other countries to adopt that outlook and instruct on how to be ready for climate-driven catastrophes.“We can’t prevent them from happening,” Ovink told CBS last September. “But the impact that is caused by these disasters we can decrease by preparing ourselves,” he added. “The storms are perhaps man-caused and you can debate that. But the catastrophes because of the storms? Those are manmade.”In the US, according to Patrick Roberts, an associate professor at Virginia Tech and author of the book Disasters and the American State, there needs to be a shift in focus. Roberts believes too much pressure and reliance is put on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), when resources and preparation should start at the state and local levels.“Fema isn’t the cavalry,” he says, explaining that the agency is often blamed for things beyond its control. “The roots of vulnerability to disaster are in communities. The neighbors, the residents, the city, the state – they are going to be the first to respond and they are going to do the bulk of the rebuilding.”When the responsibility falls to federal agencies, or even when people look to the president during disasters, Roberts says there’s no accountability in the localities where response and preparation efforts take place. The challenge for the nation, then, is to find ways to incentivize cash-strapped cities to front the finances for risk mitigation. For wealthier states with strong agencies like California, it might be feasible, but others may struggle.But it’s been difficult to get states to stick to their own plans.The federal government requires states to complete threat and hazard identification and risk assessments (Thira) each year, a process that feeds into the National Preparedness System started under Barack Obama. But the program does little to ensure plans are enacted. One analyst interviewed about the process said Thira reports weren’t worth more than the paper they are printed on.Roberts says oftentimes, after a consultant writes them up, the plans end up just sitting on a shelf. “I have looked at mitigation plans in Louisiana and Mississippi and in some counties nothing has been done because there is no money,” he says.“How do you get localities and the private sector to prepare for uncertain disasters that might be far off, when they have a lot of immediate needs, including economic development?” Roberts says. “The pressures to cut corners are sometimes too strong and the payoff for preparing for uncertain disasters that might not be on that politician’s watch are too small.”While some states lack the ability to implement their own strategies, many are also failing to adequately assess the finances they have available or what has been spent when disasters strike.A report released by Pew Charitable Trusts in June highlighted how policy planning has been hampered by how poorly disaster spending is tracked, and how different the standards are between states.“The big takeaway is it is very hard to manage what you don’t track,” says Anne Stauffer, the Pew director who led the study. “Where and how the dollar flows tells you what is being done, and when you are looking at disasters and the costs of disasters and disaster spending, there’s not just the immediate response, which makes the headlines, it is the long-term recovery – which can go on for years.”The Pew research confirmed what stakeholders at all levels have experienced: the intergovernmental relationships involved are complex and messy. But costs are rising across all sectors, and eight of Fema’s most expensive years have occurred in the past decade.That’s why some experts have called for more to be done on the federal level to shore up struggling states. Irwin Redlener, the director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness and author of the book Americans at Risk, says he is sick of seeing lessons go unlearned after every emergency.“We as a society suffer from a massive case of shortsightedness,” he says. “After we have gone through the drama of the TV reporters in hip-boots, standing in the flooding waters holding on to their hats in the rain, then the cameras go away, the headlines go on to something else, and we forget about it,” he adds. “We hit that snooze alarm button and we drift back off into a state of complacency.”While he agrees that Fema shouldn’t be seen as the first responder, he believes the federal government should play a bigger role in prevention.There are also federal programs in dire need of attention. The National Flood Insurance Program, on which more than 5 million residents and businesses rely, has been deep in debt for years, despite regular bailouts. The program finances rebuilding in areas again and again, without assessing risk or incentivizing better preparation for the next flood. A 2017 CBO report found that the NFIP loses roughly $1.4bn a year, and the agency reportedly owes more than $20.5bn to the US Treasury.Fema’s flood maps, an important risk-assessment tool, are woefully inadequate and have come under criticism for years. According to a 2017 Department of Homeland Security audit, Fema’s mapping programs are plagued by mismanagement. Often obsolete risk assessments are provided to the public, making residents less likely to prepare, and the agency unable to assess accurate rates for coverage.But solutions won’t be easy to finance, and currently there’s more political capital in protecting the public from ideologically driven fears.The government shutdown, fueled by an impasse over President Trump’s demand for funding for his border wall, which he claims will curb migration into the US through Mexico, is now stretching into its fourth week with no end in sight. Furloughed federal firefighters have been stopped from clearing brush in the forests, in areas that will be increasingly fire-prone when the seasons change. Agencies that typically work on risk mitigation, detection and relief are closed down.Redlener believes preparedness all comes down to political will and what’s required is a stronger dedication to using resources the right way. Politicians will have to make harder decisions and must be encouraged by their constituents. As climate change will cause ever-increasing costs, what’s on the line are lives and livelihoods.“It is in the interest of our whole country to become more resilient, to deal with the underlying causes” he says, adding, “If we are unwilling to make basic investments, we will end up paying a terrible price.” Topics Natural disasters and extreme weather Hurricane Florence Hurricane Michael California Wildfires news

LOS ANGELES — Pacific Gas and Electric Company announced the departure of its chief executive Sunday as it remained besieged by a financial crisis related to California’s historic wildfires.PG&E said the company had initiated a search to replace the top official, Geisha Williams, who had led the utility since 2017. It said John Simon, the company’s general counsel, would serve as interim chief executive during the search.“While we are making progress as a company in safety and other areas, the board recognizes the tremendous challenges PG&E continues to face,” said Richard C. Kelly, PG&E’s chairman.[Read more: The company announced early Monday that it planned a bankruptcy filing by the end of the month.]PG&E, the state’s largest investor-owned utility, faces an estimated $30 billion exposure to liability for damages from the 2017 and 2018 wildfires that killed scores in Northern California. The sum would exceed its insurance and assets, raising concern in the state capital about the utility’s future.The billions in potential costs have prompted a series of downgrades in PG&E’s ratings, including decisions last week by Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings to downgrade the utility’s bonds to junk.The “action is driven entirely by the further weakening of Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s credit quality,” Moody’s stated in its decision.Gov. Gavin Newsom has said that responding to the utility and wildfire issues are among his top priorities after taking office last week.Fire investigators determined that PG&E’s equipment was responsible for at least 18 of 21 major fires in 2017 as well as fires in 2018. Some of the fires have been attributed to power lines’ coming into contact with trees, which critics have said is a result of the utility’s failure to trim the trees.Senator Jerry Hill, a San Francisco Democrat who heads the State Senate’s energy subcommittee on gas, electric and transportation safety, said the company needed to take steps to improve its operations as state and federal investigations have highlighted troubles with its safety culture. He said the departure of Ms. Williams was long overdue.“It certainly good news to hear,” Mr. Hill said. “It’s late in coming.”

And then there’s IBM. The company is in Vegas to announce a new computer system of its own. But the IBM Q System One is the furthest thing possible from your next laptop. It’s the newest iteration of IBM Q, the company’s foray into quantum computing, the mind-bending technology that transcends computing architectures as we’ve known them since the middle of the 20th century.As the “System” in Q System One indicates, the goal is to take something that began as a raw lab project and turn it into a full-fledged system that’s “stable, scalable, and more modular,” says IBM VP for Q strategy and ecosystem Bob Sutor. “And that we can use as this blueprint for how we will build more and more of them to make them available on the cloud.”Unlike classical computing, quantum isn’t relentlessly binary; a quantum bit, or “qubit,” can be on and off at the same time and “entangled” with other qubits in complex relationships. That gives machines built with qubits the potential to someday solve computing problems at a clip far beyond that of any system that deals only in mundane ones and zeroes. The technology has a long way to go before it’s ready for full commercial deployment–and even then, it will be a tool for new kinds of industrial-strength number crunching rather than a rival for computers in their familiar form.A rendering of IBM’s new Q System One [Photo: courtesy of IBM]Still, IBM’s decision to make this announcement at the most consumery of tech conferences isn’t random. Along with giving CEO Ginni Rometty something to talk about during her CES keynote, it’s in line with past IBM efforts to introduce its research efforts to consumers early on, as it did when it turned its Watson AI into a superhuman Jeopardy contestant back in 2011.The company began allowing outsiders to tinker with quantum computing as a service in 2016 and even released an iPhone game about the technology last year; Bob Wisnieff, IBM’s CTO for quantum computing, says that it doesn’t just want to address an audience of computing nerds. “We realized that . . . this is something that touches people at a very deep level, that people are very interested,” he explains. “So we’re using [CES] because this is something that is much broader than just people who are deeply into information technology.”Building a systemFor all the ways in which a quantum computer diverges from computing devices in their classical form–from a 1960s IBM mainframe to your smartphone–the 20-qubit Q System One is designed to address some requirements that are pretty conventional. For instance, it incorporates firmware that monitors the health of the system and wrangles software updates. Like any computing system, it’s engineered with temperature in mind–in this case, to maintain the cryogenic state required by qubits. It also hooks into the internet, using traditional computing technology as glue to provide access to its quantum computing resources.Even though Q System One reflects some of the elements that quantum computing will need to enter the mainstream, Sutor emphasizes that it’s still a research project. “Everybody is at the experimental phase right now,” he says. “Everybody in the world, I would say. And part of it is simply that no one has quantum computers that are ultimately powerful enough to solve brand-new problems.”IBM’s existing quantum computing efforts have been spearheaded out of its Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, New York. Along with introducing the Q System One, the company is announcing that it will open an IBM Q Quantum Computation Center at another corporate facility in Poughkeepsie, about 45 miles to the north. “Poughkeepsie is a really historic IBM site,” says Sutor. “It was started in 1941; there was an old canning company and we took it over to do some manufacturing. And then through the years it became the center of our design and manufacturing for the mainframes . . . And so to be bringing IBM quantum computers back to Poughkeepsie is a very nice looping back into our history.”From left, IBM CTO of quantum computing Bob Wisnieff, Goppion marketing manager Peter Hohenstatt, Map Project Office director Will Howe, and IBM Research distinguished engineer Jim Speidell [Photo: courtesy of IBM]The innards of IBM’s Q quantum computers are improbable-looking multitiered metal assemblages that you can’t look at without thinking of a high-tech chandelier. Though the guts remain the same, the company decided to gussy up Q System One a bit. It worked with two sister London-based design studios, Map Project Office and Universal Design Studio, on the design and commissioned Italy’s Goppion–the company responsible for the protective glass for the Louvre’s Mona Lisa and the Tower of London’s Crown Jewels–to fashion a case. The result puts the Q System One innards within a sleek metal cryostat cylinder. The cylinder is itself suspended in a 9-foot airtight cube made of borosilicate glass–which, though functional, also serves as a showcase.Given that Q System One is still very much an experiment rather than a mature commercial offering, you might wonder if IBM is getting ahead of itself by pouring resources into the design aspect. But Wisnieff says that this too connects the project to IBM’s legacy, which has included caring about design for decades.“It’s hearkening back to the 1960s and Thomas J. Watson Jr.’s [vision] of ‘good design is good business,'” he says. “We want people, when they look at this, to know that we’re entering a new era within quantum computing.”It’s the softwareAs with any computer, the Q System One is ultimately only as interesting as the tasks human beings can accomplish with the software it runs. Quantum is such an epoch-shifting departure from existing computer science that IBM formed the Q Network, an alliance that teams its scientists with those at big companies, startups, and research institutions to explore the technology’s applications in fields ranging from financial services to chemistry.At CES, IBM is announcing new members of the Q Network: ExxonMobil, Europe’s CERN research lab, Argonne National Laboratory, Fermilab, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Each brings a different perspective to quantum computing’s opportunities and challenges.“To provide affordable, scalable, reliable energy requires every discipline of science and every discipline of engineering to integrate together to solve these problems,” says Vijay Swarup, VP of research and development at ExxonMobil. “And what underpins a lot of the solutions is computational capabilities.” The potential for quantum computing to accomplish tasks impossible with conventional computers–such as modelling molecules down to the last detail–could help the energy company with next-generation challenges such as waylaying and storing waste CO2 from power plants before it enters the atmosphere, a process known as carbon capture. “We are optimistic that quantum can provide us with insights that we’ve just not been able to garner with traditional computing,” says Swarup.How soon could a machine such as a descendant of today’s Q System One deliver enough quantum-enabled computational muscle to enable such insights? Swarup cheerfully admits that he doesn’t know. But part of the purpose of ExxonMobil participating in the Q Network is developing enough understanding of the technology’s possibilities to have an informed opinion of where it’s going and when it’ll get there.“It’s impossible to handicap if you’re not working on it,” he says.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California power company PG&E Corp, which expects to soon file for bankruptcy, said on Wednesday it would cost between $75 billion and $150 billion to fully comply with a judge’s order to inspect its power grid and remove or trim trees that could fall into power lines and trigger wildfires. FILE PHOTO - PG&E crew work on power lines to repair damage caused by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah NouvelagePG&E said in a filing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco that it could not on its own afford the work proposed in a Jan. 9 order by U.S. District Judge William Alsup, who is overseeing conditions of the company’s probation following a 2010 gas pipeline explosion. To pay for the proposed work, PG&E said it would have to pass the bill to ratepayers who get their power from the utility company’s nearly 100,000 miles (161,000 km) of overhead lines in northern California. “PG&E would inevitably need to turn to California ratepayers for funding, resulting in a substantial increase - an estimated one-year increase of more than five times current rates in typical utility bills,” the company said. PG&E, which provides electricity and natural gas to 16 million customers in northern and central California, is facing widespread litigation, government investigations and liabilities that could top $30 billion following fatal wildfires in 2017 and 2018. On Tuesday, PG&E said it had secured $5.5 billion in financing from four banks as it prepares to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on or about Jan. 29. The utility on Wednesday estimated it would have to remove 100 million trees or more to safeguard power lines, a campaign that would face “myriad legal obstacles to reconfiguring the California landscape,” as it would require contending with state and federal agencies as well as private property owners. A proposal to restrict using power lines deemed unsafe during high winds is not feasible because lines traverse rural areas to service urban zones, while “de-energization” of lines could also affect the power grid in other states, PG&E said. State Senator Bill Dodd questioned PG&E’s filing, underscoring the frustration of many California policymakers after they approved legislation last year to let utilities recover some of the costs related to wildfires in 2017 and others starting in 2019. The legislation, which critics called a bailout, did not make provisions for fires last year and it was approved before November’s Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history. “PG&E’s mismanagement and lack of credibility casts doubt over anything they put forward,” Dodd told Reuters in an email. “The company can and must do more to ensure safety, and I expect the court and regulators will make that happen.” In separate court papers citing concerns about the complexity of regulations around PG&E’s power transmission, the U.S. government recommended a court-assigned monitor review Alsup’s proposals and consult with relevant agencies to reach “workable” terms for the company. The government said the monitor is “in the best position to determine whether wildfires can be prevented by fixing gaps in the currently regulatory scheme, or by improving PG&E’s compliance with current regulations.” While PG&E questioned the judge’s proposals, the company said it has no issue with the monitor checking its efforts to mitigate wildfire risks. Alsup’s order would modify terms of PG&E’s probation. He will hold a hearing on the new terms on Jan. 30. Reporting by Jim Christie; editing by Richard PullinOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

(Reuters) - PG&E Corp’s shares and bonds fell sharply for a second day on Tuesday, as a failure to make interest payments by the California power utility added to investor nerves following the company’s plans to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. FILE PHOTO: PG&E works on power lines to repair damage caused by the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, U.S. November 21, 2018. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage/File PhotoThe state’s biggest private utility’s shares have lost 71 percent of their value since the start of January, when the company began exploring options for protection from claims its equipment was responsible for California’s catastrophic wildfire in November. PG&E’s shares lost 52 percent of their value on Monday after the company said it was preparing to file for Chapter 11 protection, and they closed down 18 percent on Tuesday. PG&E missed interest payment of about $21.6 million of its 2040 bond due Tuesday, per regulatory filing and the company said it has a 30-day grace period to make the interest payment. California politicians are in a quandary over whether to offer a bailout or risk allowing the state’s largest private utility to fail. Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, told reporters late on Monday his team was discussing the possibility of helping PG&E stay solvent, but no decisions had been made. PG&E said on Tuesday that Rothschild Inc banker Roger Kimmel had resigned from the company’s board, adding only that the resignation did not involve any disagreement on any matter relating to its operations. Rothschild did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. PG&E, which provides electricity and natural gas to 16 million customers in northern and central California, faces widespread litigation, government investigations and liabilities that could potentially exceed $30 billion due to the fires. The company’s chances of emerging from bankruptcy proceedings hinge in part on an arcane California legal rule that threatens to keep it perpetually on the hook for liabilities from catastrophic wildfires. The doctrine, known as “inverse condemnation”, exposes utilities in the state to liabilities from wildfires regardless of their negligence, as long as their equipment is involved. That legal rule could keep PG&E exposed to additional liabilities from future fires and leave the company stuck in bankruptcy limbo, according to restructuring experts and people familiar with the matter. Still, analysts from Chicago-based brokerage Morningstar, said in a note to clients that this was one of the rare cases where shares could emerge from the process with some value. “The most likely near-term scenario is a fourth-quarter 2018 accounting charge that cuts PG&E’s book equity well below its allowed regulatory capital structure,” they said. “Our new fair value estimate for PG&E is $11 per share after considering possible bankruptcy scenarios.” Reporting by John Benny in Bengaluru; Editing by Patrick GrahamOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

On Monday 23 January 2017, three days after he was inaugurated into the White House, Donald Trump signed an executive order that put the lives of millions of women around the world at risk.The reintroduction of the Mexico City policy – or “global gag rule” as it’s commonly known – banned overseas NGOs from receiving US federal funding if they provided any abortion services. While aid organisations were braced for the move (the gag rule, introduced by Ronald Reagan in 1984, has been reintroduced and rescinded by Republican and Democrat governments respectively), they were not prepared for it to be extended to cover all global healthcare programmes, instead of just family planning services.The following day, the high-profile political fightback began. Lilianne Ploumen, the then Dutch minister for foreign trade and development cooperation, called on donors to try to plug the estimated $8.8bn (£7bn) hole that would be left when the global gag rule came into force later that year. The SheDecides movement was born.A pledging conference in Brussels followed two months later, attended by more than 50 countries, which raised $200m for some of the major organisations that had refused to sign up to the gag order, such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International. Ploumen was heralded as Superwoman in her home country.But that was just the beginning. Funding pledges have now topped $450m, government ministers and foundations have became vocal champions of the cause and a manifesto has been written.Crucially, though, SheDecides has morphed from a top-down urgent international response to Trump’s policies into a growing global grassroots movement campaigning for the fundamental rights of women and girls to have control of their own bodies, everywhere.More than 50,000 individuals and 300 organisations have registered their support for the movement, and pledged to take action. On 2 March, SheDecides events were held in 19 countries, from India and Afghanistan, to Egypt and Namibia, and the US to Australia. In South Africa, 250 ministers, policymakers and young people from across the region met in Pretoria (more are expected in March 2019). In November, health ministers from the 16 countries in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) adopted a “groundbreaking” new sexual and reproductive health and rights strategy, with scorecards to mark progress, with encouragement and input from SheDecides experts.“I’m proud as punch how it’s evolved, and surprised how it’s evolved,” says Robin Gorna, who has led the SheDecides support team since May 2017. “On one level the gag rule was not unexpected. We knew it was extremely likely. What was unexpected was the expansion and impact [it would have on the] global health systems.”What was also unexpected was the scale of the reaction to it. “It was a gift to feminists in many ways,” adds Gorna. “What’s exciting about the SheDecides movement is we have lasted, grown and morphed and become part of the broader feminist conversations … and we’ve hooked into bigger conversations that have been going on for decades, about body autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights,” says Gorna.“We said in the beginning we didn’t want to be defined by Trump or one man’s bad policies, but it’s pretty remarkable that in September last year, when we brought champions together, it became clear we were no longer defined by him.”At a local level, the draw of SheDecides is its power to build bridges between policymakers and young people, says Praise Mwesiga, a policy, advocacy and partnership officer at the Youth and Adolescent Health Forum in Uganda.She recalls how policymakers and young people came together at an “open house” organised by the forum in Kampala. “We conducted a simple survey to see if people would buy into the idea of SheDecides. We got a lot of people interested in that.” Among those interested is the health minister Jane Aceng.Mwesiga said the open house, and subsequent meetings, had raised the profile of some of the most contentious issues in Uganda – teen pregnancies, sex education and abortion. More young people have visited the forum and have been invited to speak at events.“We were already working with young people,” says Mwesiga.“But we embraced [SheDecides] because young people get to decide for themselves, have a choice, decide what to do with their bodies.”Levi Singh, a youth strategy officer at the SRHR Africa Trust, in South Africa, says that although it is too early to assess the impact of SheDecides, he believes the SADC agreement couldn’t have been achieved without the weight of the movement.Previous attempts to update the SADC sexual and reproductive health strategy had failed to deliver the wide-ranging vision campaigners had hoped, says Singh. But with ministers from South Africa and Namibia appointed SheDecides champions, he says they’ve started to talk more earnestly about change to policies and attitudes.“The value is SheDecides helping to convene these processes.”But, apart from the vision and collaborative opportunities, Lucy Masiye, the national president of YWCA in Zambia, says the “daring”, unashamedly bold name of the movement is a big draw. “That speaks to people. It’s a straight message. We are now boldly saying, ‘You have not been listening. Now this is what we have to do. A woman has to be heard.’”Masiye says SheDecides is “very relevant for our association to be part of”, and she now has the job of taking its message to other organisations in Zambia and among YWCAs globally. “I’m excited because many more people have now come on board.“The SheDecides movement started at international level, but the strength of it is its work as a local movement, which can at least help us bring to light the issues of women and children’s rights.” Topics Global development Women's rights and gender equality Reproductive rights (developing countries) 'Global gag rule' Reproductive rights features

African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than white adults. Yet scientists have no idea why this is the case.To try to figure it out, a team of researchers from Washington University in St. Louis recruited 1,255 participants, including over 170 African Americans (17% of total participants), and tracked them from 2004 through the end of 2015. (In the US, black Americans make up about 13.4% of the total population.) Over this time period, roughly a third of all participants went on to develop Alzheimer’s disease. The rates of Alzheimer’s were roughly the same in both black and white study participants, but, as the scientists announced in a new study published today (Jan. 7) it appears Alzheimer’s may have different genetic risk factors and chemical signatures in African Americans than it does in white populations.Alzheimer’s is a progressive form of dementia characterized by detrimental buildups of misshapen amyloid plaques and tau proteins in the brain and surrounding fluid. Although both destroy brain cells, early research indicates that tau may be more responsible for cognitive decline than amyloid. In the recent study, the researchers found that African American participants across the board tended to have lower levels of tau than white participants. Yet, they developed Alzheimer’s at the same rate as the white participants.Because having lower levels of tau didn’t seem to stop participants from developing Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers believe that perhaps, black people may be more susceptible to the effects of tau. African Americans are also more likely to have other known risk factors for Alzheimer’s, like vascular disease.Additionally, the team found that even though form of the APOE gene known as APOE4 has been linked to higher risks of Alzheimer’s in white populations, African Americans who had APOE4 had lower levels of tau. APOE4 may not be the risk factor for African Americans that it is for white people, says John Morris, a neuroscientist at Washington University and lead author of the paper.This work is preliminary, but suggests clinical implications down the line. If future work supports the idea that there are differences in the way Alzheimer’s manifests itself among different populations, treatments may need to be more diverse, too.Figuring that out will require research institutions to do a better job recruiting African American participants (and people of color in general) for Alzheimer’s research. Morris estimates that only about 2% of people included studies looking at the efficacy of anti-amyloid drugs were black, even though some estimates suggest roughly 20% of Alzheimer’s patients are black.Previous work has identified several known factors that have led to this research gap. Often, participants are recruited to clinical trials through specialty clinics, which may not be accessible to patients with low incomes or poor health insurance, who are disproportionately likely to be people of color. Research institutions may not communicate details of the trial to people of color, which makes them less likely to enroll. Additionally, some African Americans understandably harbor distrust against medical institutions after horrific, nonconsensual studies such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which the US federal government failed to treat black men for syphilis for decades to see the infection’s full effects.Cases of dementia in minorities are expected to soar in the coming decades. Alzheimer’s research needs to quickly address possible differences among races in order to ensure all populations have access to effective treatment. “We now need to make our research cohorts representative of the populations so we can begin to ask and address these questions,” says Morris.

Don’t become the story. That’s an adage in the news business that most journalists try to live by, even in a time that rewards self-promotion. And it’s a rule that Megyn Kelly flouted again and again. While this tendency was not much of a factor in her previous job, as a prime-time anchor at Fox News, it created complications during her 18-month stint at NBC.The network canceled her show, “Megyn Kelly Today,” days after she suggested on air that dressing up in blackface for Halloween was appropriate for white people. Ms. Kelly’s comments, and the uproar that followed, felt familiar to many fans and critics.[NBC and Megyn Kelly part ways with the full $69 million from her contract.]Those who become stars at major broadcast networks have a rare talent for being interesting and innocuous at the same time. Ms. Kelly, a former corporate lawyer who made her name as a sometimes confrontational interviewer, struggled to walk that line.Here is a look at the times Ms. Kelly became the story.December 2013 Weighing In on Santa and JesusOn her Fox News show, “The Kelly File,” Ms. Kelly took issue with an essay in Slate arguing that the popular image of Santa Claus as a white man was due for a makeover. “For all of you kids watching at home, Santa just is white,” Ms. Kelly said.Later in the discussion, she added, “Jesus was a white man, too.” In the panel discussion that followed, she did not acknowledge research that traces St. Nicholas to a fourth-century bishop in what is now Turkey and scholarship that has long debated what Jesus actually looked like.Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who hosted shows on Comedy Central at the time, led the rhetorical charge against Ms. Kelly’s remarks. “You do know Jesus wasn’t born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, right?” Mr. Stewart said.May 2016 Kelly vs. TrumpMs. Kelly’s feud with Donald J. Trump — which broadened her appeal beyond her Fox News base — began in Cleveland during the first Republican presidential debate in August 2015. Before a prime-time audience, Ms. Kelly questioned the candidate about his history of denigrating women as pigs, dogs and “slobs.” After the event, Mr. Trump added Ms. Kelly to his list of Twitter targets, saying she “really bombed” as a moderator. He also told an interviewer that, during the debate, Ms. Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever” — a comment widely interpreted as a reference to menstruation.Mr. Trump refused to participate in a later debate that Ms. Kelly moderated in Iowa. The attention raised her profile but also made her the target of death threats, she later wrote in her memoir. Fox News stood by its host, issuing a statement that Mr. Trump had an “extreme, sick obsession” with her.After months of Mr. Trump calling Ms. Kelly “crazy,” “overrated” and “sick,” Roger E. Ailes, then the chairman of Fox News, tried to broker a truce between his star and the candidate at Trump Tower. Weeks later, Ms. Kelly sat down to interview the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. But the tough questions went missing. Critics described the tone of the interview — part of a Fox News prime-time special that aired in May 2016 — as “crushed velvet” and “neither groundbreaking nor especially informative.”After the interview, Mr. Trump posted a supportive message on Twitter: “Well done Megyn — and they all lived happily ever after!”June 2017 A Tepid Interview With Vladimir PutinWhen NBC hired Ms. Kelly, it planned to make her a force of its news division. Not only would she host the third hour of its morning franchise, the “Today” show, she would also host a Sunday night newsmagazine program meant to challenge “60 Minutes” on CBS.The debut episode of “Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly” had a big guest: Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president. But during the one-on-one interview, Mr. Putin proved unwilling to offer up more than his presence, evading or delivering pat answers to Ms. Kelly’s questions about allegations of Russia’s interference in the American presidential election. After Ms. Kelly asked about possible communications between the Trump campaign and the Russian ambassador to the United States, he said, “That’s complete nonsense. Do you even understand what you’re asking?”Critics branded the interview as “boring,” a “lukewarm flop” and a “rough start.” The New Yorker said Ms. Kelly had been “out-manipulated.” June 2017 Platform for a Conspiracy TheoristThe third guest for “Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly” was Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who founded Infowars. Before the episode aired, families of children and teachers killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — which Mr. Jones has called a hoax — pleaded with NBC not to give him publicity, especially in a segment scheduled for Father’s Day. Before the interview, critics accused Ms. Kelly of being too cozy with Mr. Jones, especially after Infowars published audio of her cajoling and flattering him to do the interview by saying she did not want to portray him “as some boogeyman.” Mr. Jones also released a photo from the day of the interview that showed him and Ms. Kelly in a car. In the picture, she was smiling and wearing sunglasses.Parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting asked NBC to spike the interview, and a Connecticut affiliate announced that it would not air the program. Ms. Kelly was also disinvited from a Sandy Hook charity event and accused by some viewers of infecting NBC with Fox News-style conservatism.Face to face with Mr. Jones, Ms. Kelly challenged him repeatedly and described his claims as “reckless accusation, followed by equivocations and excuses.” But by then the public relations battle had been lost.September 2017 Debra Messing Sends Her RegretsWith her Sunday night troubles behind her, it was time for the unveiling of Ms. Kelly as the host of “Megyn Kelly Today.” Her challenge? Prove to audiences — and the NBC executives who had given her a three-year, $69 million contract — that she could make herself at home in the bubbly environs of morning television.Her first guests were the creators and cast of the rebooted NBC sitcom “Will & Grace.” Debra Messing, a star of the show, seemed enthusiastic about promoting the return of the groundbreaking comedy — which broke taboos about the portrayal of gay characters in mainstream entertainment in the late 1990s.During the segment Ms. Kelly called out to a “Will & Grace” superfan who happened to be in the audience, inviting him to the stage of Studio 6A. The audience applauded as the beaming man received hugs from the sitcom’s stars. And then came Ms. Kelly’s question: “Is it true that you became a lawyer, and you became gay, because of Will?” The suggestion that sexual orientation is a choice prompted many of Ms. Messing’s fans to criticize her participation on Ms. Kelly’s program, and the actress said on Instagram that her appearance with the show had been a mistake. “Regret going on,” Ms. Messing wrote. “Dismayed by her comments.”And despite a big promotional push, the show’s first week drew lackluster ratings.September 2017 The Jane Fonda Tussle, Part 1Ms. Kelly’s first week on “Today” also included an awkward encounter with a Hollywood legend. Jane Fonda assumed she was sitting down with Ms. Kelly to discuss “Our Souls at Night,” the film she had made with Robert Redford. But the host wanted to talk about Ms. Fonda’s plastic surgery. When pressed, the actress fixed Ms. Kelly with a glare that later became a meme. “We really want to talk about that now?” Ms. Fonda asked.January 2018 The RematchMs. Fonda continued to talk to other outlets about the interview, telling Variety that it “stunned” her and was “so inappropriate.” She even referred to it on the Jan. 16 edition of “Today,” drawing laughter from the hosts, Hoda Kotb and Savannah Guthrie.On Jan. 22, Ms. Kelly hit back, saying at the top of a three-minute segment that “it’s time to address the ‘poor me’ routine.” After telling viewers that she had “no regrets about that question,” she added, “Nor am I in the market for a lesson from Jane Fonda on what is and is not appropriate.”Sounding more like a Fox News pundit than a “Today” show host, Ms. Kelly went on to question Ms. Fonda’s patriotism. She made a reference to “Hanoi Jane” — a nickname attached to the actress after her 1972 visit to North Vietnam and the resulting photo of her seated on an antiaircraft gun, which Ms. Fonda has since called her biggest regret. The actress “still says she’s not proud of America,” Ms. Kelly said, “so the moral indignation is a little much.”January 2018 The Body-Shaming BrouhahaWhen Ms. Kelly was in law school, she found herself gaining weight. Eager to slim down, she asked her stepfather to shame her whenever she went into the kitchen. “And it works,” she said with a thumbs-up gesture during a segment about a mother who posted photos of the svelte physique she was able to maintain while raising three young children. “What’s your excuse?” the mother added in a caption.Ms. Kelly went all in on the shaming regimen during her interview of the mother. “You should parlay the shaming thing into a professional business,” the host said. “Because some of us want to be shamed!”The comments did not go over well, with Meghan McCain noting on Twitter that fat shaming has “real-life ramifications.”“I still cringe when I hear a person attacked for his or her weight,” Ms. Kelly said on her show the next day. “Please know I would never encourage that toward any person. I’ve been thinking a lot about why I once encouraged it toward myself.”

It would be hard to think of a more perverse subject for a show than Whistler and Nature. The American painter (1834-1903) famously despised nature’s rampant chaos. He hated the way nature kept cropping up all over the place without any thought of harmony, structure or aesthetic restraint, all of which had to be imposed upon it by artists such as himself. “Nature is very rarely right,” runs one of Whistler’s typical barbs, “to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that Nature is usually wrong.”Of course the natural world is present in his art, if deeply veiled in mist or moonlight. Every one of Whistler’s Nocturnes is an outdoor scene, after all, showing the Thames and other great rivers dissolving in atmospheric fog. A gathering of Nocturnes would have been magnificent to behold (there is only one here); likewise an exhibition of his black and white visions of Venice, adrift on its mystic lagoon. Whistler and Water: that would have been a spectacular show. But instead, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge has 90 works that wander so far from the theme of nature, on the whole, as to make a mockery of the show’s title.Two nude models recline on a bed in the studio, one holding a Japanese fan. Another poses in diaphanous robes against an ornamental balcony, an oil study repeated several times. In a sequence of drawings, a slender girl stands tall in Grecian robes, light igniting the rippling edge of the cloth, which is the point of the picture; the girl herself is faceless.At 62 Sloane Street, in 1859, Whistler’s brother-in-law sits reading in the lamplit interior. In Paris, where Whistler lived for many years, ant-sized figures are depicted moving around in the dusk from the windows of his apartment. There may be the semblance of a tree or two, occasionally a bush, but on the whole nature is a blank in the picture space. Rivers have their potent abstract force in his art, but river banks don’t: lost in the diffusion of Whistler’s fog.The Nocturnes of the 1870s are prefigured, somewhat, in a group of rapt and liquid paintings made on the beach at Trouville the previous decade. A single translucent brushstroke breezes across a canvas to indicate wind skittering the sand and sea air. The brushstroke is more beautiful than the scene itself; that’s the declaration. And later, in The Bathing Posts, Brittany, from 1893, the sea is elegantly measured and balanced in wide blue swaths between the posts in question. Nature as perfect decor.That nature was a pretext for painting, and for Whistler’s adventures in pre-impressionism, is most fully apparent in one of the disappointingly small number of oil paintings in this show. In this work, a group of female figures with Japanese parasols stare out into a pale continuum of vaporous water and sky as if viewing the glories of Mount Fuji. One girl is even dressed in a kimono. In fact we are in Battersea and this is the filthy old Thames. But Japonisme was the latest fashion and Whistler collected Japanese prints. He never abandoned western perspective, but he was a close student of the flattened space of ukiyo-e; this is his floating world.The inclusion of some of Whistler’s own Japanese prints, on the other hand, drags him down. Indeed the whole show feels ill considered. Whistler and Nature is organised by the Hunterian in Glasgow, which rejoices in a world-class Whistler collection, so you might expect stronger and more pertinent exhibits, not least a few more paintings. Almost all the works here are drawings, lithographs or etchings, displayed entirely without flair and accompanied by extravagant captions comparing Whistler with Rembrandt as a printmaker. Ninety works, and still this exhibition feels puny. It is astonishing that neither the Hunterian nor the Fitzwilliam could have managed to borrow more than one Nocturne.But there is an alternative way to look at this show, which is to ignore its vaunted theme altogether. Forget nature, and its false focus, and observe instead a more intimate narrative of Whistler’s life. Here he is at 25, already got up in one of his dandy hats; with his new young wife, Beatrice, with his relatives in Paris, or back in Greenwich depicting a pensioner. Notice the way he has scribbled right over that etching, the way his signature changes, the arrival of the trademark butterfly or the quaint, curlicued inscriptions on certain prints, advertising a forthcoming London exhibition.The Venice etchings are outlandish, shadowy, bizarre. He went there in 1879 after losing all his money during the famous libel suit against Ruskin, for the latter’s claim that Whistler had “flung a pot of paint in the public’s face”. In one deeply mysterious print, almost entirely composed of fine vertical lines, Whistler brilliantly conjures the effect of light glancing upon stone, glass and water, redoubled in endless reflections behind which the city disappears.The last works are small, melancholy, precise: observations of the Thames and Waterloo Bridge in the 1890s viewed from his room at the Savoy, where Beatrice now lay dying of cancer. The London landscape has turned to gloaming and smoke. And in Nocturne, the one unqualified masterpiece of this show, out of the blue-green fog that lies on the river loom two strange forms that might be vessels, and might be mirages in the dusk – a vision of the material world vanishing into the last moment between light and darkness.• Whistler and Nature is at the Fitzwilliam, Cambridge, until 17 March. It transfers to the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle, 30 March to 16 June, and will be on show at the Hunterian in Glasgow in 2020 Topics Art The Observer Exhibitions reviews

The much-anticipated final season of Game of Thrones will premiere on 14 April, HBO has confirmed. The announcement was made at the end of a new trailer for the fantasy series that aired ahead of the premiere for True Detective.Created by long-time Game of Thrones director David Nutter, the trailer is an ominous, darkly lit effort that sees Jon Snow and Sansa and Arya Stark venture into the crypts of their ancestral home Winterfell. After walking past statues of deceased members of the Stark dynasty they encounter their own effigies, hinting at possible untimely deaths for the trio. The trailer ends with the crypt filling with a freezing fog, suggesting the arrival of the show’s supernatural antagonists The White Walkers.Adapted from George RR Martin’s novels, Game of Thrones has proved a ratings juggernaut for HBO, acquiring a vast international audience and winning multiple awards since its launch in 2011. Little is known of the show’s eighth and final season, but it has been confirmed that it will consist of six feature-length episodes, concluding with “the most sustained action sequence ever made for television or film”, according to a behind-the-scenes report from Entertainment Weekly.While the final season of Game of Thrones will likely provide a full stop for the stories Jon, Sansa and Arya, it will not be the last we see of the show’s fictional world Westeros, with a prequel series created by Jane Goldman and starring Naomi Watts currently in production.The final season of Game of Thrones will air on HBO in the US and Sky Atlantic in the UK. Topics Game of Thrones news

When Diego Rivera painted his famous Detroit Industry Murals during the Great Depression, he captured a sense of wistfulness shared by many across the United States.Through his colorful panels, he showcased an era “before the 1929 stock market crash, when industrial productivity, employment, and wages were at their height,” art historian Linda Bank Downs has noted. Yet at the same time, it was lost on no one that this “golden age” had crumbled, resulting in “an atmosphere of self-doubt, fear of the future, and blame of the industrialists” for having “abdicated moral economy.”Eighty-five years later, it’s hard not to gaze at these remarkable frescos and wonder: How might Rivera interpret today’s world of work? What, for that matter, should any of us conclude when the unemployment rate is extremely low, corporate profits are surging, and GDP growth has been strong, but so many folks still find themselves left behind?During a recent trip to Detroit, I not only had the chance to reflect on these questions, I had the privilege of considering them through the eyes of 19 high school students who’d traveled to Michigan to study the fall of industrial America—not just the collapse in the 1930s, but the hollowing out of millions of middle-class jobs over the past several decades.Oakwood School students at the Diego Rivera industry murals. [Photo: Teva Corwin]The course, which I co-taught, was part of a special two-week immersion session at Oakwood School in Los Angeles, where each December, the regular curriculum is suspended so that students can take a deep dive into one subject. (My son and daughter are Oakwood graduates.)Oakwood is a private school, and most of the families that go there are extraordinarily privileged. Exposing students to the fact that about half of all working people in the U.S. earn less than $30,000 a year was, in itself, bound to be eye-opening. “It was piercing the bubble in which these kids live,” says Victor Cohen, an Oakwood social studies teacher who designed and led the class with me.As a final group project, our 10th, 11th, and 12th graders summoned their inner Diego Rivera and made their own industry mural for the 21st century—a stinging commentary, as it turned out, on a society in which the overwhelming majority of workers don’t partake in the prosperity they produce nearly to the degree that they once did.First, though, there was much to absorb.Fourth-grade skills in a knowledge economyAfter landing in Detroit, we had dinner at Slows Bar BQ with Nicole Sherard-Freeman, president of the city’s workforce agency, who explained how local public schools have, far too often, left a generation ill-equipped to land a decent job in an economy that increasingly rewards knowledge and skills.In a distressing number of cases, graduates are “doing really well if they read and do math at a ninth-grade level,” she said. “Many are at a fourth-grade level.”The next morning, the class sifted through boxes at the United Auto Workers archives and chatted with Paul Massaron, a longtime union official, who spoke of how automation had eaten away at lots of well-paid factory jobs. He was quick to add, however, that at least some of the work now largely performed by robots—like painting automobiles—wasn’t fit for humans in the first place.It used to be that “if you were painting cars red, you coughed red that day,” Massaron recalled. “If you were painting them blue, you coughed blue.”We toured Ford’s Rouge Factory, which Rivera depicts in his murals, and where these days the F-150 pickup is manufactured.The next morning, the students heard a much different take from activists at the Boggs Center, who criticized GM for putting profits over people.We attended services at Church of the Messiah, a congregation determined to create jobs as well as save souls. And we hung out with Joann Castle and Greg Hicks, both of whom were instrumental in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, which in the late 1960s battled against exploitation and discrimination at the auto plants and within the United Automobile Workers (UAW). They’ve continued to fight for those without much power ever since.“There’s always going to be a movement where people are struggling,” Castle told the class. “It’s like a river that just keeps on going.”Venturing into Trump countryOn our last day in the area, we headed an hour south of Detroit to Monroe, which had twice backed Barack Obama for the White House before flipping to Donald Trump by more than 20 points. To start the day, the students gathered with their peers from the big public high school, where they compared and contrasted their lives as teenagers—”Everyone loves Travis Scott.” “There’s more opportunity in L.A.”— and made some new friends.At Monroe County Community College, we engaged with a panel of Trump supporters, who expressed admiration for the president’s policies—if not always his rhetoric—on immigration and trade. “Jobs are coming back,” declared Leigh Cole, a retired Marine from Monroe.Nonetheless, concerns remain.“We don’t have $40-an-hour union jobs like we used to,” said Joe Bellino, the Republican state lawmaker who represents the area, pointing to a Ford plant that shuttered about 10 years ago, during the Great Recession, taking out 1,200 positions.Longer term, Bellino said, his real worry isn’t that any particular factory will close. As cars become more high-tech—essentially computers on wheels—the entire industry could shift out of the region to, say, California, or other places with a better-trained workforce.“We might wake up one day and not have an auto business,” Bellino said. “That scares the bejesus out of us.”Our last stop was Flint, where we met with Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician who helped blow the whistle on the city’s water crisis, and State Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich (D-MI).In the mid-1960s, we learned, Flint boasted the highest per-capita income in the country. But as GM jobs began to dry up in the 1980s, the city fell into a downward spiral, and it’s now counted among the poorest and most violent in the U.S.“It’s all the lists you don’t want to be on,” Ananich said.When we got back to Los Angeles, we were joined by two closing speakers: Laphonza Butler, president of Local 2015 of the Service Employees International Union, and Carmen Rojas, CEO of The Workers Lab.Each highlighted ways in which they and their colleagues are improving conditions for low-wage workers—undertaking successful SEIU organizing drives, sparking the Fight for $15, launching worker-owned co-ops—but acknowledged that even these triumphs have left people short of what they need to make ends meet.As a nation, we’ve chosen for people to scrap “for the bare minimum,” Rojas said. “It’s just-enoughism.”“We have to demand more,” Butler asserted.Commentary in chalkHaving taken in so much, it was finally time to make the mural. Armed with chalk, the students covered an 8-by-12-foot wall with an array of images representing four overarching themes.The first, which spreads across the top of the piece and consumes the middle section, is the ongoing threat of automation—especially to workers engaged in repetitive tasks. The class had been struck by how Ford featured giant robotic arms, not human hands, during a gaudy display of how the F-150 is assembled.Working on the Oakwood School mural [Photo: Avery Carey]The second theme, which runs in a triptych along the bottom of the mural, is the rise and decline of organized labor. It begins with a drawing of the 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike—a work stoppage that, as Hanna-Attisha had described to us in Flint, had propelled the UAW into prominence and, in turn, “birthed the middle class.” The series ends with the logo for the Fight for $15, a wage that the students couldn’t imagine trying to survive on.“That’s not the middle class,” says Lucy Cameron, a 10th grader. “That’s not enough money. That’s just not a lot at all.”The third theme is abandonment, punctuated by a portrayal of a mothballed factory, a Ford truck marked with a “Just Fired” sign, and a “GM baby” clutching a fistful of cash.[Photo: Avery Carey]Oscar Haas, a 17-year-old senior who lampooned GM, says he actually appreciated the argument that if the automaker hadn’t gotten ahead of consumer trends by reducing its payroll, it could “wind up hemorrhaging tons of money.”“I am definitely sympathetic to the company,” he says. But he ultimately couldn’t get past the plight of the workers–“those who got the short end of the stick.”The fourth theme is resilience. Inspired by all of those who have dedicated themselves to lifting up their communities amid so much despair, the students drew a collection of symbols, including the mythical Sankofa bird, which flies forward but looks backward while carrying an egg in its mouth. It has been adopted by residents in Flint as a reminder to persevere but never forget all that happened, and to prioritize the young.Also in that portion of the mural is 2 +2 = 8, a formula we discovered at the Heidelberg Project, an outdoor art space in Detroit, which pushes us to expand our thinking and not automatically accept that things will forever be the way they are.As the class wrapped up, the students emphasized that there were no easy solutions to the problems they’d observed. They also stressed that the past was far from perfect, especially for people of color. “We tend to over-romanticize the 1950s,” says Julia Smith, a senior.Still, “something’s changed,” she says. “In the ’50s, people with a regular job could have a house with a white picket fence and provide for their kids. Now they can’t.”For these students, the central takeaway was clear: For all too many hard-working Americans, it’s not a pretty picture.

Donald Trump has strongly denied the stunning claim that he was secretly working on behalf of Russia and again threatened to declare a national emergency to fund a border wall.In 20-minute live phone interview with Fox News on Saturday night, he described as an “insult” the New York Times story that alleged the FBI launched an investigation into whether the he was acting as a Russian asset, against his own country’s interests.Trump said the story, which claimed the investigation opened after Trump fired the FBI director James Comey in May 2017, was “the most insulting article ever written”.“If you read the article you’ll see that they found absolutely nothing,” he said during the Fox News interview.“I think [the story] was a great insult and the New York Times is a disaster of a paper. It’s a very horrible thing they said.” Citing anonymous sources, the Times said the investigation was part counterintelligence, to determine whether Trump was knowingly or unknowingly working for Moscow and posed a threat to national security. It was also part criminal, to ascertain whether Trump’s dismissal of Comey constituted obstruction of justice.The FBI effort was soon absorbed into the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and alleged collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow, the Times reported, adding that it was unclear if the counterintelligence aspect is still being pursued.The president again called Comey a “liar” and claimed the entire Russia investigation was a “terrible hoax”.“Everybody knows it. It’s really a shame because it takes time; it takes effort. Everybody knows there’s no collusion,” he said.Trump repeated baseless claims that the FBI mishandled an investigation into his election rival, Hillary Clinton. The president insisted that he had been far tougher on Russia than any other president, repeating claims he tweeted earlier on Saturday. “I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton,” he tweeted. “Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again!”Trump’s warm relationship with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has long set alarm bells ringing. The day after firing Comey, he hosted Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, in the Oval Office – and disclosed intelligence from an Israeli counterterrorism operation. At a summit in Helsinki last summer, Trump appeared to side with Putin over his own intelligence agencies on the question of election interference.On Saturday, the Washington Post reported that Trump took the notes from of a 2017 meeting with Putin in Hamburg from his own interpreter. Citing current and former US officials, the paper also said Trump instructed the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials.Asked why he would not release the conversations, Trump said: “I would. I don’t care ... I’m not keeping anything under wraps. I couldn’t care less.” In December the president startled his own national security officials by suddenly announcing the withdrawal of troops from Syria, widely seen as handing a strategic victory to Russia and prompting the defense secretary James Mattis to quit. He also bizarrely endorsed the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.The House intelligence committee chairman, Adam Schiff, said in a statement he did not “comment on the specifics of the New York Times report” but said “counterintelligence concerns about those associated with the Trump campaign, including the president himself, have been at the heart of our investigation since the beginning”.His committee, he said, “has a responsibility to the American people to ensure that the president is working in our national interest and is not motivated by any other factor”.Holed up at the White House, Trump turned to the other subject dominating US politics: the partial government shutdown which, going into its 23rd day, is now the longest in history, eclipsing the record set under Bill Clinton.He called on the Democrats to do a deal and again threatened to declare a national emergency if they don’t “come to their senses”.“I have the absolute right to call a national emergency,” he said. “Other presidents have called national emergencies for lesser importance than this. I’d rather see the Democrats come back from their vacation and act. It would take me 15 minutes to get a deal done and everyone could go back to work.”Trump is demanding $5.7bn towards his long-promised wall on the US-Mexico border, claiming it will solve a humanitarian and national security crisis. Democrats, who control the House of Representatives, have passed measures to reopen the government without funding the wall, which they regard as an expensive, impractical and immoral response to a manufactured crisis. The result is a political stalemate that leaves a quarter of the government unfunded.About 800,000 workers missed pay cheques on Friday. The House and Senate voted to give federal workers back pay whenever the federal government reopens, then left Washington for the weekend.With polls showing Trump getting most of the blame, the president is toying with the idea of declaring a national emergency, bypassing Congress and funding the wall from existing federal revenue. Republicans are divided on the move and it would be certain to face legal challenges. Topics Trump-Russia investigation The Observer FBI Donald Trump James Comey US politics Russia Trump administration news

A widely shared Wall Street Journal report from Sunday focuses blame for the shortfall on poor sales of Apple’s new “low-cost” phone, the iPhone XR, in the Chinese market. The piece argues that because the XR sells for the equivalent of $945 U.S. dollars in China, price-conscious buyers see options in Chinese phones from the likes of Huawei and Oppo as better deals, while Chinese “status” buyers are more likely to opt for the top-of-the-line iPhone Xs and Xs Plus.Sounds reasonable, but a new UBS analysis tells a different story, suggesting that geopolitics may have played a much larger role than originally understood. UBS’s Tim Arcuri says iPhone shipments to China fell off sharply in December after the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada December 1, and as anxieties over a U.S.-Chinese trade war lingered.Here’s Arcuri in a research note released Monday:“According to China MIIT data, we calculate Apple shipments in China were ~9-10 million through the first two months of the [holiday 2018] quarter, thus implying that shipments in December month may have only been a couple of million units. iPhone XR was weak since launch, but this much of decline could imply some potential backlash to the Huawei event and trade issues.”Meng is the daughter of Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei. She was arrested at the request of the U.S., which also requested her extradition. The U.S. government suspects Meng of violating rules that prohibit trade with hostile countries including Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria. The arrest came on the same night that President Trump was meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires to discuss trade. In the meeting, Trump and Xi agreed to a 90-day trade truce, but the Meng’s arrest immediately introduced uncertainty to U.S.-China standoff.Shortly before the Buenes Aires meeting, on November 26, Trump said he did not want to delay the imposition of tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods past January 1, 2019. He also said he was considering placing a 10% tariff on Apple phones and laptops that are manufactured in China and sent back to he U.S. for sale.A U.S. delegation is heading to China this week to further trade talks with Chinese government officials. They hope to strike a lasting compromise to head off a trade war that could be costly to both countries, and very likely to Apple.

As the partial US government shutdown drags on, the disruption to the market for initial public offerings (IPOs) is building up. The longest closure in history—with no end in sight—may already ripple through the entire first quarter, according to Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman.Some companies had already delayed IPOs in the fourth quarter as markets were whipsawed by a spike in price swings, Friedman said during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. There were 22% more applications for public offerings at the end of 2018 than there were a year ago, and that IPO pipeline is getting squeezed even more by the shutdown, she said.The disruption to public offerings shows how a self-inflicted wound is taking its toll on US financial markets, one of the American economy’s greatest resources. Some companies will find that their financial statements have gone stale during the government closure, causing delays of a month or more before they’re able to tap the public market. Squeezing more IPOs into a shorter timeframe is also problematic for companies looking to attract the full attention of investors when marketing their offerings. And the SEC will have catching up to do.“Recognize that once the SEC reopens, they’re going to have a huge backlog,” Friedman said. “They do really important work to assess these companies.”Some companies will still find ways to raise money through legal workarounds (paywall) that allow them to avoid the usual signoffs from watchdogs. But the warning from Nasdaq’s CEO shows one of the ways the impasse in Washington is filtering into the financial system—a problem that will only increase the longer the shutdown continues.