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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai

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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1m
γδ T cell receptor dependencies define a unique immunosurveillance modality ->Nature | More on "Gamma-delta T cell immunosurveillance research" at BigEarthData.ai
nature.com
γδ T cell receptor dependencies define a unique immunosurveillance modality
Adult mice of both sexes were used at 6–24 weeks of age. Mice were bred at the Francis Crick Institute (London, UK) and Animalario del Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas Margarita Salas (Madrid, Spain). All mouse strains were of C57BL/6J genetic background: Trgc1−/−, Tcrd-creERT2 Trgc1fl/fl, Rosa26-creERT2 Trgc1fl/fl, Tcrd-creERT2 Trgc1fl/fl;Rosa26-mTmGfl/fl (this mouse strain is the intercross of Tcrd-creERT2 and Rosa26-mTmGfl/fl, which enables the γδ T cell-specific expression of EGFP after tamoxifen administration), and Nur77-GFP reporter mice (Nr4a1GFP), which was used to assess antigen receptor signalling activity in vivo through GFP expression downstream of TCR activation. Mice were housed under specific pathogen-free conditions in a 12 h light:12 h dark cycle at an ambient temperature of 20–24 °C and relative humidity of 45–65%. Mice were kept in filter-topped cages with sterilized food and water ad libitum and autoclaved corncob bedding that was changed at least once weekly. All experiments were performed according to UK and Spain animal protection laws. Conditional Cγ1 deletion To induce conditional deletion of Cγ1, Trgc1fl mice were crossed with two different lines expressing tamoxifen-inducible Cre recombinase. Tcrd-creERT2 mice were used for Trgc1 deletion specifically in dermal and epidermal γδ T cells, while Rosa26-creERT2 mice allowed for ubiquitous deletion upon...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 3m
Wildlife hospitals need help to prepare for bird flu ->The Echo | More on "Bird flu threatens Australian wildlife hospitals" at BigEarthData.ai | #Pandemic #Wildlife #BirdFlu
echo.net.au
Wildlife hospitals need help to prepare for bird flu
Wildlife hospitals need help to prepare for bird flu H5 avian influenza is already present in NSW and has been detected as far north as the Coffs Harbour region. The number of dead birds is increasing with 55 reported dead in NSW. Other News Donated human milk program for premature babies expands across NSW Often when babies are born prematurely their mother’s milk is not yet quite ready, or the baby might not be strong enough to suckle. To help new bubs thrive until their mother’s own supply is established, the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood’s program donates pasteurised human milk to bridge the gap. The con job What will the sales pitch be to sell off new subdivisions within the Byron Shire? The beaches, tree-lined avenues?... Golden egg Maxine Hawker’s letter, (Echo, 16 September) is to be applauded and the exhibited development application (DA) for 3-5 Fingal... It’s normal and magic Holly Throsby has just released her sixth studio album Normal Magic – her first in nine years. Neglecting Australians, and our international commitments, for big business ‘We’ve had one policy; we landed it, a 2030 target of 43 per cent, net zero by 2050, both of them legislated’, said...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 5m
West Indies & Bermuda: Summer 2026 ->American Birding Association | More on "Rare bird sightings Caribbean islands" at BigEarthData.ai
aba.org
West Indies & Bermuda: Summer 2026
An Eared Dove was unusual at Dadoud (Petit-Canal), Guadeloupe on 26 Jul (Anthony Levesque). Four Yellow-billed Cuckoos were seen at Cerro El Buey Natural Area, Vieques Island on 25 Jun (Erick Bermúdez) with numerous reports of 1 to 4 individuals at this location during the month—a family group of 3 established the first breeding record for the island (a rare breeding resident in Puerto Rico). Eight Double-striped Thick-knees was an impressive number, seen by Randolph “Casper” Burrows while hunting pigs at night at Cooter Road, Inagua, Bahamas on 18 Jul. Seven American Golden Plovers were noteworthy at Patrick’s Island Lake, George Town, Grand Cayman on 27 Jul (Peter Davey). A Southern Lapwing, Cayman Island’s first, and only the second sighting for the Greater Antilles, was discovered at Cayman Brac Airport from 10–16 June (Peter Davey & Denny Swaby). A Collared Plover was noted at Animal Flower Cave Road, Flatfield, Saint Lucy, Barbados on 4 Jul (Julian Moore). A count of 29 Semipalmated Plovers at Playa Grande westside, Vieques Island, Puerto Roco on 14 Jul may have been over-summering or early southbound migrants (Erick Bermúdez). A Eurasian Whimbrel was seen on Petite Terre, Guadeloupe on 28 Jun and 5 Jul (Anthony...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 6m
More than 44,000 file legal objections to Palantir NHS platform handling their data ->The Guardian | More on "Palantir NHS data platform objections" at BigEarthData.ai | #Data
theguardian.com
More than 44,000 file legal objections to Palantir NHS platform handling their data
Tens of thousands of people have formally demanded NHS England blocks the Palantir-powered national medical data platform from handling their personal information. More than 44,000 people have filed legal objections to their health data being shared with, stored in or used by the nationwide Federated Data Platform (FDP) operated using the US company’s AI technology. The coordinated campaign utilises rights enshrined in data protection laws and means the NHS must stop using the data unless it can provide a “compelling reason” to continue. Hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions demanding the government cancels its £330m deal with Palantir, and Andy Burnham will be required to make a decision to back or axe Palantir within months. Campaigners have voiced anger at Palantir’s work for the Israeli military and Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, and two House of Commons select committees have called for Labour to exercise a break clause in the seven-year deal which comes into force in February 2027. David Murray, a retired IBM systems engineer and one of those requesting the data block, said: “I am a believer in the NHS having really good data on their patients, but I want it to be something you can really...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 8m
Ethiopia's Return to War Threatens to Engulf the Horn of Africa ->Foreign Policy | More on "Ethiopia's civil war resumes conflict" at BigEarthData.ai
foreignpolicy.com
Ethiopia's Return to War Threatens to Engulf the Horn of Africa
Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief. The highlights this week: Civil war resurges in Ethiopia’s Tigray region after four years, African countries seek greater sovereignty and representation at the United Nations, and Chad accepts a surge of Sudanese refugees fleeing war. Civil War Returns A long-predicted resurgence of Ethiopia’s civil war began last week when the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) seized three airports in the country’s northern Tigray region. The rebels also launched attacks in the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions days after forming an alliance with six other armed groups to oust Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s federal government. “We are in the situation of full-blown war now,” TPLF Vice President Amanuel Assefa said shortly after fighting broke out. On Monday, pro-government forces claimed to have captured Alamata, a strategic town about 75 miles south of Tigray’s capital of Mekelle. The conflict has escalated just as a powerful El Niño threatens crop production in Ethiopia, risking a broader humanitarian crisis. There has been rising friction between the TPLF and the federal government since the end of the two-year Tigray war in 2022. That conflict, which killed an estimated 600,000 people, concluded with the Pretoria Agreement, whereby the TPLF agreed...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 10m
Google announces Gemini 4 and says it's so capable that only 'trusted cyber defenders' can have it right now ->The Verge | More on "Google's advanced AI model release" at BigEarthData.ai | #Google #Technology
theverge.com
Google announces Gemini 4 and says it's so capable that only 'trusted cyber defenders' can have it right now
Google today revealed its next AI frontier model, which it’s calling Gemini 4 Argon. The new model delivers “frontier performance in complex workflows across real-world software engineering, enterprise knowledge work like legal and finance, and cybersecurity defense,” according to chief AI architect and Google DeepMind SVP Koray Kavukcuoglu. But the company is limiting access at first to a “set of trusted cyber defenders,” and Kavukcuoglu says that Google is “actively engaged in the U.S. government’s voluntary process for pre-release model access while we gradually expand access.” Kavukcuoglu says Gemini 4 Argon is already powering Google’s “internal workflows,” highlighting how the model has helped with tasks like large-scale codebase migrations. Google also shared a big chart showing many benchmarks where Gemini 4 fares better than competing models from OpenAI and Anthropic. (The AI community was buzzing earlier this week on X over what appeared to be leaked benchmarks for the new model.) Google will be strengthening “critical frontier safeguards” before a broader rollout, including defending against misuse and prompt injection attacks and monitoring for misalignment. The launch of Gemini 4 Argon comes just a day after OpenAI’s splashy DevDay conference, where OpenAI launched its Dots AI agent and GPT-6.1 Sol AI...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 12m
After another natural disaster, can Nepal sue wealthy countries for climate change destruction? ->Australian Broadcasting Corporation | More on "Nepal climate disaster legal accountability" at BigEarthData.ai | #ClimateChange
abc.net.au
After another natural disaster, can Nepal sue wealthy countries for climate change destruction?
With a captive audience, Prime Minister Balendra Shah rose to the dais of the United Nations General Assembly last week, "carrying a close warning for humanity". "A warming climate is destabilising the fragile Himalayan ecology," he said. "Melting permafrost is fracturing mountain slopes beneath the glaciers and accelerating the risks of ice-rock avalanches, floods, landslides and other cascading hazards." Nepal had just suffered one of its worst natural disasters in history, with flash floods killing more than 1,400 people and leaving thousands missing. "And when the next warning comes from the rooftop of the world," Mr Shah said. "Let us be ready to hear it, and ready to act." Little did he know, the next warning would come only a few days later. Another wave of floods and landslides Torrential monsoon rains in the past four days triggered another wave of flash floods and landslides, with 27 confirmed deaths in Nepal and at least 62 in neighbouring India, according to state officials. Nepali authorities warned two-thirds of the country that they were at risk of flash floods, with major river systems pushed to the brink by heavy rain. The neighbouring north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh recorded eight times its...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 14m
Financial Software Solutions Launches AI-Powered Technology, the FSS Intelligence Engine, Automating Document Review for Bankruptcy Trustees and Fiduciaries ->Morningstar | More on "AI automation in legal technology" at BigEarthData.ai | #Software #Technology
morningstar.com
Financial Software Solutions Launches AI-Powered Technology, the FSS Intelligence Engine, Automating Document Review for Bankruptcy Trustees and Fiduciaries
HOUSTON, Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Financial Software Solutions (FSS), the cloud-native technology innovator of enterprise-level case management software for bankruptcy trustees, fiduciaries, and professionals, has announced its latest AI-powered technology release, the FSS Intelligence Engine. This new technology streamlines one of the most time-intensive steps in case preparation for fiduciaries and bankruptcy trustees: reviewing and analyzing multiple documents. With the FSS Intelligence Engine, information from ECF emails, bank statements, tax returns, and document checklists is automatically read, analyzed, extracted, matched, and prioritized the moment paperwork arrives. The process happens hands-free, giving trustees faster access to the information that matters and helping them move cases forward more efficiently. The FSS Intelligence Engine includes four new features that are transforming casework: Daily Brief: Automatically reads and prioritizes ECF activity so what needs attention first rises to the top. Bank Statement Data Analysis: Examines bank statements the instant they're uploaded and automatically surfaces potential preference transfers, day-of-filing balances, and account balances. Tax Return Data Extraction: Immediately reads tax returns and feeds key data directly into pre-341 Review Reports so trustees are fully prepared before meetings of creditors. Document Request Matching: Automatically checks uploaded documents against the original document request list to ensure...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 16m
NATO Chief Rutte Dismisses Russia's Nuclear Threats Over Kaliningrad ->Mezha | More on "NATO dismisses Russia's nuclear threats" at BigEarthData.ai | #NATO #RussiaUkraineWar #RussiaUkraineWar
mezha.net
NATO Chief Rutte Dismisses Russia's Nuclear Threats Over Kaliningrad
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said he does not take Russia’s nuclear threats seriously in the event of attempts by the Alliance to isolate the Kaliningrad region. He stressed that NATO is a defensive organization and that Moscow must stop its nuclear rhetoric and its war against Ukraine. As reported by suspilne.media. Rutte made the remarks on September 30 in Brussels, answering journalists’ questions during a defense and space summit. The NATO secretary general declined to disclose details of the unofficial threatening letter that Moscow sent to the Alliance. He said he did not have the right to make the document’s contents public. So let me refer only to what the media have reported and leave it at that. We responded and essentially said: “Listen, we are a defensive Alliance, so stop making nuclear threats. This is completely inappropriate and unhelpful. In particular, stop the war in Ukraine, which is unjustified aggression against Ukraine.” We made our position clear, and it was brief and concise. – Mark Rutte Asked whether there was a risk of Russia using nuclear weapons against NATO member states, including the Baltic countries, Rutte answered in the negative. No, there is no such risk. Putin knows...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 18m
Comoros must step up fisheries investments as effects of climate change intensify, World Bank study warns ->SeafoodSource | More on "Comoros fisheries climate change impacts" at BigEarthData.ai | #WorldBank #Fisheries #ClimateChange
seafoodsource.com
Comoros must step up fisheries investments as effects of climate change intensify, World Bank study warns
A new World Bank study has found that fisheries in Comoros, an archipelagic nation in East Africa, are particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change, and therefore, the nation must invest in the sector to mitigate adverse impacts, especially as many coastal communities in the country rely on seafood as a sole food source. The study, titled “Analysis for Resilient and Adaptive Fisheries in the Comoros,” outlined the implications of climate change on Comoros’ fisheries and coastal communities by combining biophysical modeling with socioeconomic analyses, finding that ongoing coastal erosion is “accelerating the loss of vital shorelines and degrading critical marine ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrass beds, and coral reefs.” The study pointed to coral bleaching as “a particularly urgent concern, with projections indicating that more frequent and intense marine heatwaves could result in severe and widespread damage to coral-rich areas.” Several fish species in the region use coral reefs as shelter and breeding grounds. “Comoros’ vulnerability to climate impacts is influenced by its reliance on small-scale fisheries and generally low adaptive capacity, shaped by fiscal limitations, governance challenges, and limited alternative livelihoods,” the study said. Under the highest-emissions scenario, the study said Comoros would be subject to increasingly...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 20m
Amex accelerates business AI as high-profile alternatives emerge ->American Banker | More on "Amex develops business AI tools" at BigEarthData.ai | #AI
americanbanker.com
Amex accelerates business AI as high-profile alternatives emerge
Key insight: Amex added new tools for business payments. What's at stake: Fintechs and technology companies are investing in AI for business clients, creating competition. Forward look: Amex plans to release several business focused AI tools in the next year. With payment companies embracing frontier model makers' agentic artificial intelligence to enhance pitches to business clients, American Express is leaning on internal development to compete. Processing Content "Companies want to work with someone that they know has been around," Raymond Joabar, group president of global commercial services at American Express, told American Banker. Amex said it's planning to release new AI agents and AI-powered accounts payable workflows in the coming months. It's part of a larger push at Amex to internally deploy and externally sell automation for relatively mundane business processes that still require time and expense. Going corporate Amex's pending AI tools are among changes at Amex Corporate that were announced on Wednesday. The immediate changes will combine business payment cards, expense management software and an enhanced mobile app in a single product bundle. The corporate card lets businesses earn 1.5% cash back on eligible purchases, obtain physical and virtual cards for employees, and access expense management software. The...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 22m
Restoration-driven positive and negative leakage in sub-Saharan Africa ->Nature | More on "Forest restoration leakage in Africa" at BigEarthData.ai
nature.com
Restoration-driven positive and negative leakage in sub-Saharan Africa
To assess potential leakage effects of restoration projects, we generated 5 km and 10 km buffers surrounding the restoration clusters and evaluated changes in annual tree loss within restoration areas and their surrounding buffers (0–5 km, 0–10 km) relative to comparable controls. We used two distinct analytical approaches to a before- and after-control intervention framework. The first uses yet-to-be-treated polygons as a space for time control, where the control was selected from areas that were marked as restored years after the restored year of the treatment. The second uses never-treated statistically matched areas as a counterfactual with comparable biophysical and socio-economic conditions (Methods). We then applied a heterogeneity-robust difference-in-differences (DiD) model to detect relative tree loss dynamics over time and across spatial buffers19. This revealed substantial variation across restoration approaches (Fig. 2), though minor deviations from the parallel trends assumption were observed at small temporal scales. A total of 18 countries remained for the DiD analysis after filtering for restoration cultures (n = 10,038) located in forests or other woody landscapes, defined as areas with more than 20% tree cover (Supplementary Fig. 1). We also applied alternative thresholds of 33% and 50% tree cover, tree cover and annual loss records...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 24m
Scientists Just Discovered Millions of Ancient 'Batteries' Hiding on the Bottom of the Ocean ->Popular Mechanics | More on "Ocean floor mineral nodules discovery" at BigEarthData.ai | #RenewableEnergy #Batteries #Ocean #Science
popularmechanics.com
Scientists Just Discovered Millions of Ancient 'Batteries' Hiding on the Bottom of the Ocean
Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: A particular pitch-dark zone of sea floor is home to more than a trillion nodules, potato-sized lumps that have built up layers for millions of years. They contain many elements important for batteries, meaning we may have a rich new source of minerals. And their ability to separate oxygen and hydrogen means they act like tiny natural batteries. Scientists are headed back to the site to understand exactly how the mechanics of these nodules work and the potential downsides of disturbing them. ANDREW SWEETMAN IS NURSING A BEER in a hotel bar in São Paulo, Brazil, and he’s searching for answers. It’s November 2022, and for the past year, Sweetman has traveled on three separate voyages to the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ)—a pitch-dark abyssal plain, one of the deepest parts of the ocean, nestled between Hawaii and Mexico—to solve an enduring mystery. As a deep-sea ecologist at the U.K.’s Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS), he’s spent his career studying seafloor respiration, or what he terms the “heartbeat of the ocean.” Back in 2012, Sweetman discovered that sometimes that heartbeat contained a kind of aquatic arrhythmia. He had equipped a deep-sea instrument...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 26m
Russia unleashes heavy attack on Ukrainian energy grid ->RTE | More on "Russia's attacks on Ukrainian energy" at BigEarthData.ai | #RussiaUkraineWar #StandWithUkraine
rte.ie
Russia unleashes heavy attack on Ukrainian energy grid
Russia has unleashed a widely anticipated ⁠air campaign against Ukraine's energy grid, hitting power facilities and infrastructure around Kyiv and other regions in the heaviest combined attack on energy sites in months. The strikes, in which Ukrainian officials said seven people were killed, followed days of intensifying drone barrages primarily on the capital, a prelude to what many Ukrainians expect to be a winter of attacks intended to plunge cities into cold and darkness when Ukraine is short of air defences. "Russia has escalated to massive strikes on energy infrastructure," Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said on X after the attacks overnight. "Since summer, there's barely been a day without an attack on our energy infrastructure. But a combined strike of this scale hasn't happened since the end of last heating season." Russian attacks last winter, when record-low temperatures were recorded - ravaged power and heating systems, forcing Ukrainians to adapt to dire circumstances. Ukrainian capital in focus Kyiv residents woke this morning ⁠to a city shrouded in thick fog from the smoke of attacks, which authorities said damaged a key power plant and other energy facilities around the capital. President Volodymyr Zelensky said energy infrastructure in Kyiv and the surrounding...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 28m
The Sustainability Pendulum Won't Land Where It Started - CSRwire ->CSR Wire | More on "Sustainability and AI competitiveness" at BigEarthData.ai | #Land #Sustainability
csrwire.com
The Sustainability Pendulum Won't Land Where It Started - CSRwire
Sophia Mendelsohn, Chief Sustainability and Commercial Officer, SAP While the once-popular environmental, social and governance metrics of 2021 have gone out of favour and been deprioritised, sustainability is set to gain vigour with the rise of AI. Sustainability will be repositioned as a lever of competitiveness, with investment in renewable energy sources and an expanded calculation of climate risk exposure that includes physical assets as well as emissions. AI can assess the credibility of sustainability reporting with greater accuracy through better-performing models and expanded assessment capabilities. The enthusiasm for environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics that flowed through capital markets in 2021 has faded. What pushed it out of favour and, for some, down the list of strategic priorities, is familiar by now: political resistance, regulatory uncertainty, greenwashing crackdowns and geopolitical conflicts. What’s pulling it back is newer – artificial intelligence (AI). Now, sustainability’s standing is a pendulum: a combination of forces swung it out into unpopular territory but it is about to swing back. However, pendulums never swing back to exactly where they were originally. I have argued before that AI needs sustainability more than sustainability needs AI. That’s because a technology built on land, water, and power is...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 30m
12 Unhinged Facts About Great Tits That Will Absolutely Shock You ->ZME Science | More on "Surprising behaviors of great tits" at BigEarthData.ai
zmescience.com
12 Unhinged Facts About Great Tits That Will Absolutely Shock You
Great tits are small, colourful songbirds found in parks and gardens across Europe. They sing cheerfully, visit bird feeders, and look at home in a city park or on the front of a Christmas card. They also kill bats and eat their brains. Once you start looking closely at the great tit (Parus major), the cutesy garden-bird image changes drastically. These birds murder competitors, steal food from humans, cheat on their partners, develop local traditions, change their accents, and may even be evolving in response to city life. Here are 12 science-backed facts about great tits that are considerably stranger than their appearance suggests. 1. Great tits hunt bats — and eat their brains In a Hungarian cave, researchers watched great tits actively search for hibernating common pipistrelle bats hiding in rock crevices. The birds dragged the bats out, killed them and ate them. Some carcasses had been stripped of flesh and internal organs — including the brain. They seem to do it regularly, it wasn’t an isolated freak occurrence. Researchers directly observed 18 attacks over two winters, while records from the cave stretched back more than a decade. The tits were even attracted to recordings of awakening bats, suggesting...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 32m
Why diesel prices are an economic time bomb ->Vox | More on "Diesel prices and economic impact" at BigEarthData.ai
vox.com
Why diesel prices are an economic time bomb
Everyone knows how much gasoline prices matter. The recent spike in gas prices triggered by the war with Iran has fueled deep pessimism about the economy and weighed heavily on President Donald Trump’s approval ratings. But diesel fuel — the lifeblood of shipping, agriculture, and heavy industry — usually flies under the radar. Its price has surged too, and while truckers and farmers are feeling the initial blow, the rest of the country won’t be far behind. “Most products in America are shipped along the road via trucks,” Nathan Bomey, a business reporter at Axios, told Today, Explained co-host Noel King. Diesel prices “directly affect their cost of doing business, which then eventually trickles down and affects the consumer.” On the podcast, Bomey discusses what’s driving the price spike, how quickly it’s going to become a problem for everyday consumers, and whether electric semi trucks could offer a way out. Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify. What is happening with diesel? There was one major geopolitical event this year that disrupted...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 34m
Hanoi explores greener future for mine dumps ->The Star | More on "Mining restoration and forest credits" at BigEarthData.ai
thestar.com.my
Hanoi explores greener future for mine dumps
HANOI: Restoring forests and ecosystems on land ravaged by mining could help rehabilitate degraded landscapes while creating opportunities to develop forest carbon credits, experts say. At a workshop in Hanoi on Tuesday, organised by the Vietnam Academy of Forest Sciences and Forest Trends, nature-based solutions (NbS) for restoring forests were examined, as were their potential role in future carbon markets. Experts said mining can cause significant damage to forests and ecosystems through vegetation loss, soil disturbance, habitat fragmentation, erosion and water pollution. Still, mining supply chains have generally faced less stringent forest-risk requirements than commodities such as timber, coffee, rubber, soy and palm oil. Mineral commodities are rarely viewed as commodities with deforestation risks, which creates a policy gap with mineral supply chains not yet subject to equivalent requirements on forest protection and restoration, said To Xuan Phuc, an expert at Forest Trend. Phuc said the energy transition is increasing demand for minerals used in batteries, solar and wind power, electric vehicles and energy storage systems, which makes it increasingly important to balance resource extraction with forest and ecosystem protection. Vietnam has regulations covering the conversion of forest land and environmental restoration obligations for mining projects, but implementation remains uneven,...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 36m
Trump-Xi China Deals Set Eight Goals. Military Safeguards Remain Incomplete ->Military.com | More on "Trump and Xi diplomatic meetings" at BigEarthData.ai
military.com
Trump-Xi China Deals Set Eight Goals. Military Safeguards Remain Incomplete
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping left their Washington meetings last week with a list of eight “deliverables and understandings.” The list covers trade, artificial intelligence and Iran, along with diplomatic and symbolic commitments. It is not eight separately signed treaties or completed deals. A proposed military crisis agreement appears separately, and neither government has announced that it is in operation. China’s published list identifies these eight outcomes: Strategic stability: The leaders agreed to pursue a relationship based on “respect, fairness and reciprocity.” Future summits: Each government pledged support for the other’s upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and G20 meetings, which both leaders intend to attend. Iran and waterways: They agreed Iran should not develop nuclear weapons and opposed any nation enforcing tolls on international waterways. World War II history: They recalled that the United States and China fought as allies. Trade: They endorsed further trade talks, a $30 billion reciprocal tariff arrangement and an extension of earlier trade understandings. Counternarcotics: They recognized recent cooperation on cases involving drug precursors and other substances. Artificial intelligence: They agreed to a November dialogue and a channel for reporting AI incidents. Pandas: The United States welcomed two pandas leased to Zoo...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 37m
Google announces Gemini 4 Argon AI model, but you can't use it yet ->Ars Technica | More on "Google's new Gemini 4 Argon" at BigEarthData.ai | #AI #Google #Technology
arstechnica.com
Google announces Gemini 4 Argon AI model, but you can't use it yet
Google promised Gemini 3.5 Pro in June, but it spent the summer trotting out smaller Flash models. Now, Google is ready to take on the frontier again with Gemini 4 Argon. The company claims this new AI offers industry-leading performance in coding, knowledge work, and cybersecurity, but you aren’t allowed to use it yet. While most of us will have to wait to test Gemini 4, Google says engineers inside the company are already using the new model extensively. Argon reportedly used “fleet-wide telemetry data” to help Google save 300 TiB of memory across its data centers. Meanwhile, Argon agents have been working to migrate C/C++ codebases to Rust across Google, including thousands of lines in the core re2 and libgav1 libraries and more than 800,000 lines in the Fuchsia OS Zircon kernel. Google has also come armed with a raft of benchmarks to back up its claims. On the software engineering DeepSWE v1.1 benchmark, Gemini 4 Argon hits 77.9 percent, which is higher than GPT-6 Astra, Fable 5.1, and Opus 5.5. Google promises similar power across a range of long-horizon tasks, pointing to Argon’s industry-leading score in the economic analysis Vals Index test. Since this model is still in...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 40m
Gemini 4 Argon: our next era of frontier intelligence ->The Keyword | More on "Frontier AI model capabilities announced" at BigEarthData.ai
blog.google
Gemini 4 Argon: our next era of frontier intelligence
Today, we’re announcing our new frontier model, Gemini 4 Argon, which is rolling out to a set of trusted cyber defenders through our Fairwind Program. Built to sustain deep reasoning across complex, long-horizon workflows, Argon is fundamentally changing the way we work and build at Google. It delivers frontier performance in complex workflows across real-world software engineering, enterprise knowledge work like legal and finance, and cybersecurity defense. Safely releasing frontier capabilities at this level requires a phased approach. We are actively engaged in the U.S. government’s voluntary process for pre-release model access while we gradually expand access. We’ll continue to gather feedback from early testers as we iterate on guardrails before making Argon available to developers, enterprises, and consumers as soon as possible. Argon will launch at an introductory price of $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, with cached input tokens priced at 95% off input token price. Changing how we work and build at Google Gemini 4 Argon is already powering our internal workflows, with thousands of Googlers highlighting the model’s strengths in specialized coding tasks, conducting deeper research, and writing quality. It’s helping teams build faster and push the boundaries of engineering productivity...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 41m
Question of whether taxpayers or fossil fuel companies pay for climate change damage heads to Supreme Court ->The Conversation | More on "Fossil fuel companies climate liability" at BigEarthData.ai | #FossilFuel #ClimateChange
theconversation.com
Question of whether taxpayers or fossil fuel companies pay for climate change damage heads to Supreme Court
Climate change is causing billions of dollars’ worth of damage every year from floods, fires, droughts and other consequences of a rapidly warming planet. Dozens of states, cities, counties and tribes have sued major oil companies. The lawsuits demand reimbursements for the costs of recovery efforts, reconstruction and work to protect people and property from climate-related damage. The crux of their argument is an allegation of fraud, a claim that the companies knew they were contributing to climate change but did not tell the public the truth about how burning fossil fuels warms the climate. It has been well established that company scientists at Exxon and other fossil fuel companies accurately predicted global temperature increases and warned that sharply curtailing fossil fuels was the only way to avoid severe warming. Rather than alerting the public, however, the companies funded climate-denial front groups and promoted false narratives to delay transitions away from fossil fuels. In general, the companies have responded by saying federal laws and the U.S. Constitution preclude any claims for recovery of the costs taxpayers have borne. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on Oct. 5, 2026, in Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, a case...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 43m
Ukraine's war chest is running low at the worst possible moment ->POLITICO | More on "Ukraine's military funding crisis deepens" at BigEarthData.ai | #RussiaUkraineWar #StandWithUkraine
politico.eu
Ukraine's war chest is running low at the worst possible moment
KYIV — Vladimir Putin is intensifying Russia’s pressure on Ukraine, smashing cities, factories, bridges and ports with constant waves of killer drones and missiles. Short on interceptors, Kyiv is having difficulty knocking down Russia’s increasing number of jet-powered drones — and Ukraine’s problems don’t end there. Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi warned journalists this week that Ukraine faces a $27 billion defense funding gap this year, with Kyiv hoping to cover about $7 billion domestically and looking to partners for the rest. Some EU financing remains tied to reforms Kyiv must pass to unlock the money, while other allies have yet to fill the remaining gap. Overnight, Russia launched more than 190 missiles and drones in a nationwide assault that heavily targeted energy infrastructure, causing blackouts in Kyiv. “Since the summer, there has been virtually not a single day when the enemy has not attacked energy infrastructure. But an attack of this scale and intensity has not occurred since the end of the last heating season,” Koretskyi said Wednesday. Following the attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy renewed his call for allies to send more air defenses. “Every interceptor missile truly saves lives,” he said. “And the closer we get to winter,...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 45m
Activists Are Targeting One of ICE's Key Staging Grounds - Parking Spots ->Truthout | More on "ICE parking lot activism measures" at BigEarthData.ai | #IceFascism
truthout.org
Activists Are Targeting One of ICE's Key Staging Grounds - Parking Spots
The Trump administration’s abduction and deportation machine is multifaceted. There are clear-cut components — agents, shackles, and jails — and less obvious, although no less essential, ones — cars and parking spaces. In an effort to impede the attacks on immigrants, mayors of some of the country’s largest cities, including New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, have issued executive orders banning Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from using city-owned parking lots and properties. But even in cities where mayors have banned ICE from using government-owned properties, ICE still has free reign to contract with private companies. After the federal agency posted a notice seeking “Surge Parking” in 14 cities, including Boston, Wu released a public letter to local parking garage and lot owners, warning them that if ICE were “to procure such resources, it would constitute an unprovoked and unwarranted escalation, creating potentially significant risks to public safety and halting economic activity across our entire region.” “Today, I ask you to join us: Reject any proposition by ICE to facilitate an attack on the people of Boston,” she wrote. “In the face of escalating attacks on cities across the country, we...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 47m
CLOK: a chemigenetic multicolor labeling system to visualize neuronal birthdate and circuit integration ->Nature | More on "Neuronal labeling and circuit visualization" at BigEarthData.ai
nature.com
CLOK: a chemigenetic multicolor labeling system to visualize neuronal birthdate and circuit integration
On exposure to a cell-permeable, fast-binding JF dye ligand, neurons genetically expressing HaloTag become permanently fluorescently labeled, enabling precise visualization of targeted cells27,29 or, as recently shown, identification of newly inserted receptors or synaptic proteins30,31. We first performed a series of control experiments to determine key features and parameters of the CLOK labeling. In a first set of experiments, we examined if all genetically targeted neurons could be labeled with a JF dye in larval zebrafish using a transgenic (Tg) line co-expressing the HaloTag protein and a membrane-localized GFP. After incubation with a JF dye (here, JF525) at 5 days post fertilization (d.p.f.) (Methods), we evaluated the degree of colocalization of the dye and GFP fluorescence, finding 97.43 ± 1.8% of co-expressing neurons (Supplementary Fig. 1a; mean ± s.d., N = 3 fish, 16 planes), confirming robust, near-complete JF dye labeling. Delaying imaging after dye incubation in the same Tg line (incubation at 3 d.p.f. followed by imaging from 3 to 6 d.p.f.) increased the number of JF dye-negative, GFP-positive cells located at the periphery of the tectum (Supplementary Fig. 1b). This observation confirms that the HaloTag-JF dye complex remains stable, preventing JF dye from binding to newly expressed HaloTag...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 49m
RFK Jr Announcing That AI Is Now Better Than Human Doctors Shows That He Is a Buffoon Who Is Ruining Trust in American Health Institutions ->Futurism | More on "AI replacing human medical expertise" at BigEarthData.ai | #AI #Health
futurism.com
RFK Jr Announcing That AI Is Now Better Than Human Doctors Shows That He Is a Buffoon Who Is Ruining Trust in American Health Institutions
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn’t trust human doctors, but he does trust AI chatbots — and so should you, he’s using his authority as chief medical spokesperson in the US government to tell the public. The crux of the health secretary’s recent remarks during his “fireside chat” with vice president JD Vance at the Make America Healthy Again Conference on Tuesday was that AI models are now “better informed” than physicians, empowering ordinary Americans to second guess what their doctor tells them at every turn. AI, he proclaimed, has the power “to free us from medical tyranny,” the New York Times reported. It’s not an unsurprising line from a man whose distrust of scientific medicine stems from the fact that it disagrees with his crank health beliefs, which range from vaccine “skepticism” to promoting a red meat heavy diet. What’s more illuminating is how the Kennedy scion is explicitly touting AI as a way of undermining the medical establishment. “One of the things that is going to change is that we’re never ever again going to be able to be dominated by public officials who tell us, ‘Trust the experts,'” Kennedy said, as quoted by the NYT. “If somebody tells...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 51m
Trump Unleashed ->Foreign Policy | More on "Trump's Iran policy and energy" at BigEarthData.ai
foreignpolicy.com
Trump Unleashed
There is reason to believe that once the U.S. midterm elections have passed, President Donald Trump will escalate against Iran. Until now, the risk of surging energy prices has acted as a check on Trump’s behavior. In April, it forced him to retreat from open conflict and pursue a diplomatic solution. When the resulting Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) collapsed over disputed interpretations, Trump pivoted back toward economic pressure on Iran. But he has largely avoided more intense fighting in order to avoid provoking further domestic backlash over rising energy costs. Now, the United States and Iran have settled into a battle of wills to see which side can endure more economic pain. Both Iran and the global economy are under significant duress. But both sides have avoided significantly escalatory steps, such as targeting energy infrastructure, buoyed by the belief that time is on their side. Trump, for his part, has repeatedly expressed confidence that Iran’s position will soften after the November midterms, implying that Tehran is trying to make him pay a political cost for the war before pivoting to make a deal. However, Trump’s prognostication may say more about his own thinking than Iran’s. After the midterms, he may...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 53m
Birds as Teachers: Inclusive Education for Bird Conservation Through Community, Culture, and Nature ->Audubon | More on "Bird conservation through community education" at BigEarthData.ai | #Nature #Bird #Conservation
audubon.org
Birds as Teachers: Inclusive Education for Bird Conservation Through Community, Culture, and Nature
Birds have a unique ability to spark curiosity and inspire learning, especially among children. In Colombia, Audubon has harnessed that potential to help young people discover birds, understand their importance, and become stewards of the places they call home. In 2021, Catalina Casas, Field Conservation Manager for Audubon in Colombia, community education advisor Ligia García, and a group of dedicated teachers developed a pilot curriculum for schools in Colombia’s Central Andes and Southwestern region. The goal was simple but ambitious: raise awareness about migratory birds and inspire communities to protect the habitats they depend on. Aligned with Colombian Ministry of Education standards, the Birds to Discover and Conserve curriculum integrates bird conservation into science, social studies, mathematics, language arts, and citizenship education. Designed for elementary and middle school students, it combines classroom learning with outdoor experiences that connect children with their local environments. The program focuses on schools in and around priority conservation areas, many of which serve communities experiencing poverty, social inequality, and the impacts of rural conflict. Teachers are at the heart of the initiative. They helped co-design and test the materials, including teaching guides and an illustrated student workbook filled with classroom and field activities for students,...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 55m
EB-2 NIW Green Card Case Study: Approval for Conservation Scientist from Cameroon ->The National Law Review | More on "Environmental policy and conservation science" at BigEarthData.ai | #Science #Conservation
natlawreview.com
EB-2 NIW Green Card Case Study: Approval for Conservation Scientist from Cameroon
The petition demonstrated how the client’s background forms one connected body of work. Her experience in policy, security, advocacy, and data all pointed toward the same goal: analyzing complex environmental problems from the scientific, governance, and community angles at once. The record showed that this varied experience is the foundation for cross-functional conservation work, not a collection of unrelated roles. To establish national importance, the petition focused on what her work makes possible for environmental decision-making in the United States. Better ecological and social data strengthens environmental risk analysis and can sharpen the Environmental Assessments and Environmental Impact Statements required under the National Environmental Policy Act. Her focus on evidence and public health aligns with the core mission of the Environmental Protection Agency. The petition also showed she was well positioned to carry out the proposal: her academic foundation, more than a decade of cross-sector experience, her publications, and independent letters describing concrete contributions in wildlife policy and human rights due diligence all provided strong evidence of her ability to advance the proposed work. The record showed her work is built to reach the people who shape environmental policy, through research, peer-reviewed publications, guest lectures, and conferences. Her research relies...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 56m
Ukraine Needs 20mm F-16 Ammo to Down Russian Jet Drones ->Kyiv Post | More on "Ukraine's F-16 ammunition needs" at BigEarthData.ai | #Drone #RussiaUkraineWar #StandWithUkraine
kyivpost.com
Ukraine Needs 20mm F-16 Ammo to Down Russian Jet Drones
Ukraine wants to purchase tens of hundreds of thousands of 20-millimeter rounds for its F-16 fighter aircraft to shoot down Russia’s increasingly deployed jet-powered attack drones. Kyiv is negotiating with several European countries and ammunition manufacturers about potential supplies, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, Sept. 30, citing people familiar with the discussions. The ammunition would be fired from the F-16’s built-in cannon, offering Ukraine a potentially cheaper and more widely available alternative to using scarce air-to-air missiles against each Russian drone. According to Bloomberg, destroying one drone may require approximately 150 rounds. At the current intensity of Russian attacks, Ukraine could need around 10,000 such rounds per day. Cheaper option against Russian drones Ukraine has used AIM-9 Sidewinder and AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles launched from F-16s to intercept Russian aerial targets. These guided missiles are considerably more expensive than cannon ammunition and are also needed by ground-based air defense systems. Ukrainian F-16 pilots are already using their aircraft’s 20-millimeter cannons against jet-powered drones when other intercept options were unavailable. The F-16 carries an internally mounted M61A1 Vulcan six-barrel rotary cannon that fires 6,000 rounds per minute. Using it allows pilots to preserve guided missiles for cruise missiles and other high-priority targets. Each...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 58m
Medtronic Named to Fortune 2026 'Change the World' List for Touch Surgery™ Ecosystem and Healthy Neighbor - CSRwire ->CSR Wire | More on "Medtronic's AI surgical innovation platform" at BigEarthData.ai | #Healthy #Ecosystem
csrwire.com
Medtronic Named to Fortune 2026 'Change the World' List for Touch Surgery™ Ecosystem and Healthy Neighbor - CSRwire
September 30, 2026 /3BL/ – Medtronic today announced it has been named to the prestigious FORTUNE 2026 ‘Change the World’ list for its Touch Surgery™ ecosystem and Healthy Neighbor program through Medtronic LABS. The annual list showcases companies working to combat global issues and drive positive social or environmental change. The recognition highlights how Medtronic is harnessing technology to improve healthcare outcomes from the operating room to underserved communities. Touch Surgery™ ecosystem transforms the future of surgery The Touch Surgery TM ecosystem uses AI to analyze surgery and enables livestreaming for remote collaboration, helping physicians review procedures and improve surgical practices. Connecting the full surgical journey from planning and training to intraoperative collaboration, Touch Surgery now supports thousands of surgeons in 30+ countries worldwide. Announced in July 2026, Touch SurgeryTM Aide, the next-generation compute platform for the operating rooms, extends the platform by adding AI-powered, real-time support. This helps surgeons access actionable insights during robotic and laparoscopic procedures while enabling teams to review cases and continuously improve surgical decision-making. “Our vision is to make the best surgery available to more people, regardless of where they live,” said Matt Anderson, senior vice president and president, Surgical business at Medtronic. “The Touch...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
Notes from the AI Governance Center: AI auditing is getting amplified | IAPP ->International Association of Privacy Professionals | More on "AI auditing governance and compliance" at BigEarthData.ai | #AI
iapp.org
Notes from the AI Governance Center: AI auditing is getting amplified | IAPP
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
ICARDA Welcomes Dr. Nizar Haddad as Director General | Effective 1 October 2026 ->CGIAR | More on "Dryland agriculture leadership transition" at BigEarthData.ai
cgiar.org
ICARDA Welcomes Dr. Nizar Haddad as Director General | Effective 1 October 2026
ICARDA welcomes Dr. Nizar Haddad as its new Director General, effective 1 October 2026, marking the beginning of a new chapter as it continues to advance science, innovation, and partnerships for more resilient dryland agriculture and stronger livelihoods. Dr. Nizar Haddad takes on the role at a critical time for ICARDA and the dryland regions it serves. Climate change, water scarcity, land degradation, biodiversity loss, food insecurity, and geopolitical instability are putting growing pressure on agricultural systems and rural communities. However, advances in genetics, digital technologies, natural resource management, and agricultural innovation are creating new ways to respond to these challenges and build more resilient dryland food systems. Dr. Haddad is an international development leader with more than 25 years of experience advancing agricultural research, institutional transformation, and sustainable development in dryland environments. Throughout his career, Dr. Haddad has focused on translating scientific knowledge into practical solutions that support farmers, rural communities, and national development priorities. His work has consistently bridged research, policy, and implementation to deliver impact at scale. Prior to joining ICARDA, Dr. Haddad served as Mission Head and Program Director for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Saudi Arabia, where he led...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
Cultivating New Haven's next generation of scientists ->YaleNews | More on "Yale Pathways to Science program" at BigEarthData.ai | #Science
news.yale.edu
Cultivating New Haven's next generation of scientists
Before the orientation began, the Schwarzman Center rotunda teemed with students and their families eagerly receiving welcome bags. Inside the hall, the room was full of anticipatory buzz and conversation, as families were greeted by Pathways staff and settled into their seats. “Each year, there’s such incredible energy in Woolsey during this event,” said Maria Parente, associate director of public school partnerships and director of Yale Pathways. “That energy reflects the excitement these students feel entering a community of scientists and beginning a relationship with Yale.” Since 2012, Yale Pathways to Science has supported Yale faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates in developing and executing STEM programs for public middle and high schoolers in New Haven, West Haven, and Orange, all at no cost. (Students are nominated for the program by their math or science teachers, or by a school administrator, and then apply for admission.) Each year, Yale community members, in collaboration with Yale Pathways to Science, host more than 250 events for students — experiences that span topics such as biology, chemistry, physics, earth and climate science, and even, for rising seniors, the college application essay. Students select their level of engagement, registering for events depending on their schedules...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
Amazon Is Deploying AI to Spy on Its Workers and Bust Unions Before They Form ->Truthout | More on "Amazon AI workplace surveillance and unions" at BigEarthData.ai | #AI
truthout.org
Amazon Is Deploying AI to Spy on Its Workers and Bust Unions Before They Form
The 18th-century notion of the panopticon — a circular prison design with a guard station in the middle, allowing a single officer to enforce discipline by keeping watch over all the prisoners — has become real in the 21st century through AI-driven surveillance against workers: It’s the Amazon warehouse. It should be no surprise that the company that harnessed technology to create a vast, $2.7 trillion empire would employ the same sophistication to enforce workplace discipline and tamp down insurgent unionization efforts. A recent disclosure of Amazon’s internal “employee relations” documents reveals just how extreme Amazon’s methods of warehouse surveillance and control have become. Amazon employs what it calls the “Atlas” model, inputting into a computerized model a staggering amount of information on workers, their thoughts and behaviors, the workplace environment, and myriad other factors — “hundreds of data points,” according to the company. Atlas produces not just a granular measurement of ongoing worker unrest, worksite by worksite around the world, but also a prediction model for future organizing. It’s like the “precrime” police in the film Minority Report who use psychic powers to identify and apprehend would-be criminals before they act — except in this case, it’s an AI-driven...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
A population code for semantics in human hippocampus ->Nature | More on "Semantic coding in human brain" at BigEarthData.ai
nature.com
A population code for semantics in human hippocampus
Mitchell, J. & Lapata, M. Vector-based models of semantic composition. In Proc. ACL-08: HLT (eds Moore, J. D. et al.) 236–244 (Association for Computational Linguistics, 2008). Frisby, S. L., Halai, A. D., Cox, C. R., Lambon Ralph, M. A. & Rogers, T. T. Decoding semantic representations in mind and brain. Trends Cogn. Sci. 27, 258–281 (2023). Vaswani, A. et al. Attention is all you need. Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. 30, 5998–6008 (2017). Erk, K. Vector space models of word meaning and phrase meaning: a survey. Lang. Linguist. Compass 6, 635–653 (2012). Piantadosi, S. T. et al. Why concepts are (probably) vectors. Trends Cogn. Sci. 28, 844–856 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2024.06.011 (2024). Ebitz, R. B. & Hayden, B. Y. The population doctrine in cognitive neuroscience. Neuron 109, 3055–3068 (2021). Saxena, S. & Cunningham, J. P. Towards the neural population doctrine. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 55, 103–111 (2019). Deniz, F., Tseng, C., Wehbe, L., Dupré la Tour, T. & Gallant, J. L. Semantic representations during language comprehension are affected by context. J. Neurosci. 43, 3144 (2023). Goldstein, A. et al. Shared computational principles for language processing in humans and deep language models. Nat. Neurosci. 25, 369–380 (2022). Goldstein, A. et al. Alignment of brain embeddings...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
Ceres applauds permitting deal, urges action to deploy affordable homegrown clean energy ->Ceres | More on "Clean energy permitting policy advancement" at BigEarthData.ai | #CleanEnergy
ceres.org
Ceres applauds permitting deal, urges action to deploy affordable homegrown clean energy
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
Overall dietary patterns matter more for heart health than nutrients ->News-Medical | More on "Dietary patterns and heart health" at BigEarthData.ai | #Health
news-medical.net
Overall dietary patterns matter more for heart health than nutrients
A healthy, balanced dietary pattern, rather than one focused on individual nutrients or foods is key to maintaining heart health, according to a Scientific Statement issued by the American College of Cardiology and published in JACC, its flagship journal. Diets should include minimally processed plant-based foods and healthy fats and proteins, while limiting foods high in refined starches, added sugars, sodium or unhealthy fats, as well as highly processed foods of poor nutritional quality. Suboptimal diet is a key risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), and diet and lifestyle modification is widely considered essential for both primary and secondary prevention. However, the concept of a 'heart-healthy' diet has evolved over time from nutrient-centric approaches to more holistic, food- and pattern-based strategies that better reflect advances in the understanding of the complex relationship between diet and cardiometabolic health." Frank B. Hu, MD, PhD, Professor and Chair of Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Chair of the Scientific Statement Recently, guideline recommendations have shifted from individual nutrients to overall dietary patterns, with strong evidence supporting a variety of healthy dietary patterns, including the Mediterranean diet and dietary approaches to stop hypertension (DASH) diet. These patterns generally...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
How does Trump's White House AI accord work? ->Al Jazeera | More on "Trump's voluntary AI regulation accord" at BigEarthData.ai | #AI
aljazeera.com
How does Trump's White House AI accord work?
Amid calls for regulation, United States President Donald Trump met with artificial intelligence executives at the White House to put in place a voluntary pact, called the White House Accord on Super Intelligence. The agreement, which was signed by executives at Meta, Nvidia, Google, OpenAI, xAI and Anthropic on Tuesday, calls on companies to put in place guardrails internally to help monitor security risks, with four layers of control. Recommended Stories list of 4 items list 1 of 4Trump backs AI self-regulation at tech summit but is it enough? list 2 of 4OpenAI launches ‘dots,’ personal AI assistant ‘built to handle everything’ list 3 of 4Trump unveils new site to simplify access to government services list 4 of 4Trump, tech bosses sign voluntary pact pledging ‘robust’ AI safeguards end of list What does the White House Accord do and what doesn’t it do? The agreement calls for companies to maintain internal controls, establish an internal team to oversee these controls, work with independent outside auditors and create an independent board committee to review the results. The pact, however, is voluntary and not legally binding. It does not establish penalties for companies that fail to comply. The pact does not require...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
IDF Home Front Haifa District is 'readier than ever' for Iran, Houthis ->The Jerusalem Post | More on "Israel's Iran and Houthi preparedness" at BigEarthData.ai | #IsraelWar #Iran #Houthi
jpost.com
IDF Home Front Haifa District is 'readier than ever' for Iran, Houthis
The IDF Home Front Haifa District is readier than ever for war and emergency events emanating from Iran, the Yemen Houthis, and Hezbollah after the recent completion of a successful multi-front drill, District Commander Col. Yakir Bukabuza has told the Jerusalem Post. In a recent interview, Bukabuza told the Post, "We are better now at saving people faster from major destruction areas," referring to areas hit by large and powerful ballistic missiles, especially Iranian ones. "We have learned a lot about responding to home front disasters emanating from multiple fronts," he stated regarding the most recent drill he directed for the Haifa region. Overall, over the last year of war, the IDF Home Front in Haifa "gave more time for citizens to get to safe areas, a jump from 60 to 90 seconds for Haifa and the surrounding areas." Questioned about what concrete positives this extra time gives citizens, Bukabuza responded, "More time means greater readiness. It means kids in school have a better chance to get to a safer place. It means all people can walk more slowly and safely to secure areas. People also make better decisions about their safety. It raises the overall national resilience." Small steps...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
Trump Unveils Midterms Travel Plan That Will Surely Make Him Pass Out ->The New Republic | More on "Trump's midterm campaign travel schedule" at BigEarthData.ai
newrepublic.com
Trump Unveils Midterms Travel Plan That Will Surely Make Him Pass Out
Donald Trump is planning to hit the campaign trail for 32 days before the midterm elections. That would put the president on the campaign trail for more than 94 percent of the time between now and November 3, effectively placing Trump at the center of an election cycle in which Republican candidates have increasingly tried to peel away from his influence. The break-neck pace of the schedule has also spurred health concerns for a president who was recently caught out-of-breath after descending a set of stairs and climbing into his limo. A spate of election-bound, pro-MAGA personalities have already broken from Trump and his agenda in an attempt to curry favor with their local electorates. The growing list includes Florida Representatives Maria Elvira Salazar and Byron Donalds (the latter of whom is running for the Sunshine State’s governor), Maine Republican gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles, and Texas Republican congressional candidate Carlos De La Cruz. Some hopeful office-seekers have even stripped their websites and campaign materials of Trump’s name, taking advice that the White House offered in July when staffers explicitly encouraged midterm-bound Republicans to split from Trump and his sinking reputation. Top issues weighing down Trump’s popularity include the seemingly endless...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
Las Vegas Valley Water District proposes new rules, fines for watering 'nonfunctional' grass ->FOX5 Vegas | More on "Las Vegas water conservation rules" at BigEarthData.ai | #Water
fox5vegas.com
Las Vegas Valley Water District proposes new rules, fines for watering 'nonfunctional' grass
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — New rules, and possibly fines, could be coming for Las Vegas businesses and HOAs using grass or turf deemed “non-functional” in the new year. According to a notice posted to the Las Vegas Valley Water District’s website, the proposed changes are intended to include the irrigation of nonfunctional turf and other prohibited water uses as forms of water waste, subject to existing water waste fees, beginning Jan. 1, 2027. MORE ON FOX5: Southern Nevada Water Authority asks state Supreme Court to dismiss turf ban lawsuit The district said the changes also clarify property owner responsibility for unpaid balances and for damage to or theft of district property by tenants, adjust fees to align with actual costs and discourage misuse of district property, help ensure accurate and on-time reads for mobile meters, and improve document usability. The district said Assembly Bill 356, passed in the 81st Session of the Nevada State Legislature, prohibits the use of Colorado River water for irrigating nonfunctional turf beginning Jan. 1, 2027. Properties not zoned exclusively for single-family residences that continue to water nonfunctional turf will be subject to water waste fees beginning that date, according to the district. The proposed fee...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
The risk of space debris falling to Earth and causing deaths and is growing, experts say ->Space | More on "Space debris threatens Earth safety" at BigEarthData.ai | #Earth
space.com
The risk of space debris falling to Earth and causing deaths and is growing, experts say
Today's scenery in space is not a pretty picture. With the rate at which orbital launches are now occurring, some Earth orbits are so crowded and carry so many potentially dangerous, high-velocity pieces of defunct satellite litter and spent rocket stages that they could jeopardize humanity's future in space. That's the output from experts at the European Space Agency (ESA), waving a number of cautionary flags in its new Space Environment Report 2026. In brief, this disquieting appraisal from ESA points out that the number and scale of commercial satellite constellations continues to increase each year. The report estimates that the casualty risk from reentering rocket upper stages alone was over four percent in 2024, having doubled since 2020, points out space environment specialist, Ewan Wright from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. About 124 rocket stages reentered the atmosphere uncontrolled in 2024; over two per week, Wright told Space.com. "If that level is sustained for the next decade, the risk of someone somewhere being killed by rocket debris alone is 33 percent," he said. Wright said that the casualty risk from satellites is also increasing, up to one percent in 2024. "The chance of an aircraft...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
'We want justice': series of rapes trigger mass protests at Indian universities ->The Guardian | More on "Indian university sexual assault protests" at BigEarthData.ai | #MassProtest #Justice
theguardian.com
'We want justice': series of rapes trigger mass protests at Indian universities
The posters, just like the women holding them, were taking no prisoners. “Girls don’t need curfews, rapists need consequences,” read one. “Lock your dicks rather than your women at home,” read another. As hundreds of women walked from the gates of their university campus into the streets of Delhi – where sexual harassment, assault, catcalling and molestation are a constant, daily threat – they shouted together in a chorus of rage and defiance: “We want justice.” The fury that has erupted on India’s university campuses over the past week has been double-edged. The trigger was a series of brutal rapes that have taken place in Delhi in recent weeks, including the alleged gang-rape of a 17-year-old in a public park close to Delhi University by three men who posed as police officers. Just a week earlier, another 17-year-old was gang-raped and murdered in Delhi’s Swaroop Nagar neighbourhood after she went to meet friends. The accused allegedly raped her, stabbed her to death and dumped her body in a field, where it was discovered days later half eaten by dogs. Rapes of an 11-year-old and a six-year-old were reported in the same month. Last month, a 16-year-old was allegedly raped by...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
AI is creating extra work for middle managers and women ->Futurity | More on "Artificial intelligence workplace equity impacts" at BigEarthData.ai | #AI
futurity.org
AI is creating extra work for middle managers and women
It’s a common refrain that AI is changing how we work, but new research shows that AI is actually creating new forms of work and reconfiguring employees’ lived experience of work itself. In July 2026, the the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab, housed in the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, convened two workshops in collaboration with All Tech is Human, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing people together to tackle difficult technological questions and advance a technological future aligned with overall public interest. One workshop brought together mid-level professionals tasked with implementing AI on their teams, while the second convening featured senior and executive leaders making decisions about AI adoption across the organization. Both groups were asked a mirrored set of questions to assess understandings of how AI is reshaping their work or workplace. The findings illuminated disparities in overall views and experiences of AI adoption based both on individuals’ positions within organizations and their identities and roles beyond the workplace. These findings, along with key recommendations for organizations looking to support employees in these transitions, are published in a new white paper released this week. “While we continue funding longer-term research on AI’s impacts on workers and...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
Largest eigenvalue statistics of wavefront shaping in complex scattering media ->Nature | More on "Wavefront shaping in scattering media" at BigEarthData.ai
nature.com
Largest eigenvalue statistics of wavefront shaping in complex scattering media
Wavefront shaping stands as a paradigm-shifting framework for the coherent control of light, sound, and other waves in complex scattering media, such as biological tissue and disordered materials 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Experimental demonstrations have shown that by precisely tailoring the incident wavefront, the total transmission of microwaves, acoustic, elastic, or optical waves can be dramatically enhanced—or waves can even be tightly focused—through strongly scattering media 1,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19. In optics, this level of precise coherent control over light holds profound implications for imaging 11,20,21,22,23, quantum secure optical authentication 24, high-dimensional quantum optics 25,26,27, optical manipulation 28, photothermal therapy 3,29, microsurgery 30, and optogenetics in complex scattering environments 31,32,33, including biological tissue, ensembles of micro- and nanoparticles, and other seemingly opaque media. The measurement of the transmission matrix—encoding the input-output field relationship of a medium—is essential for controlling the output field via input wavefront shaping 34. Once known, the transmission matrix enables focusing light to single or multiple target positions 1,11,17,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42, or transmitting images through scattering media 43. In particular, simultaneous focusing on multiple positions has important applications in optical metrology 37, optical trapping of microparticles 28, programmable multiport optical circuits 25,26,27, and focusing on extended guide stars 32,33,36,44. A key metric for evaluating the...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
Russia strikes Ukrainian pylon with steel-cutting drone for 1st time, as power outages hit 3 regions ->The Kyiv Independent | More on "Russia's drone attacks on Ukraine's energy" at BigEarthData.ai | #Drone #RussiaUkraineWar #StandWithUkraine
kyivindependent.com
Russia strikes Ukrainian pylon with steel-cutting drone for 1st time, as power outages hit 3 regions
Russia has for the first time used a jet-powered drone equipped with a warhead designed to destroy high-voltage power pylons and steel bridge structures, presidential adviser Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov said on Sept. 30. The development comes as Moscow renews its large-scale campaign against Ukraine's energy system ahead of winter, launching its heaviest combined attack on energy infrastructure in months overnight on Sept. 30. "Bad news. Today, the enemy for the first time used a special shaped-charge cutting warhead on a jet-powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)," Beskrestnov, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky on defense technologies, wrote on Telegram. According to Beskrestnov, the warhead was developed specifically to destroy high-voltage pylons and steel bridge structures. It consists of a 40-kilogram main charge and four additional destructive modules. "I think the enemy plans to attack important high-voltage power transmission lines," he said. Russia's overnight assault involved nearly 190 attack drones as well as ballistic missiles, Zelensky said. Energy infrastructure in Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast was the primary target, while critical infrastructure was also struck in several other regions. Ukraine's Air Force said that between 6:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. local time, Ukrainian air defenses intercepted 254 of 285 drones. Russian forces launched...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
NASA, SpaceX Crew-13 Could Reach the Space Station in Less Than 9 Hours ->SciTechDaily | More on "SpaceX Crew-13 space station launch" at BigEarthData.ai | #NASA #SpaceStation #SpaceX
scitechdaily.com
NASA, SpaceX Crew-13 Could Reach the Space Station in Less Than 9 Hours
NASA and SpaceX are nearing launch of Crew-13, a four-person mission that could reach the International Space Station in less than nine hours. NASA and SpaceX are targeting 11:10 a.m. EDT on Thursday, October 1, as the earliest opportunity to launch the Crew-13 mission to the International Space Station. Before liftoff, teams will complete final preparations and detailed readiness reviews to confirm that the astronauts, the International Space Station, SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft, and the Falcon 9 rocket are ready for flight. The mission is scheduled to launch from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Crew-13 Could Reach the Station in Under Nine Hours Falcon 9 will provide the power needed to send Dragon and its crew into orbit. After separating from the rocket, Dragon will continue toward the International Space Station and adjust its orbit to line up with the fast-moving laboratory. If Crew-13 launches on October 1 as planned, the spacecraft is expected to reach the station less than nine hours later. Docking is scheduled for about 8 p.m. at the forward-facing port of the Harmony module. Docking is the process of carefully approaching the station and securely connecting the spacecraft to it...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
Trump plan to combat AI risks hinges on Big Tech pals policing themselves ->Ars Technica | More on "AI industry self-regulation debate" at BigEarthData.ai | #AI #BigTech
arstechnica.com
Trump plan to combat AI risks hinges on Big Tech pals policing themselves
Amid escalating AI security incidents causing OpenAI to halt training and pause releases, Donald Trump continues to advocate for the AI industry to regulate itself as the best path to combat emerging risks when developing frontier AI. In an agreement Tuesday, two dozen tech firms voluntarily committed to implementing controls recommended by the White House, including undergoing independent safety audits that will test whether firms’ internal controls, monitoring, and detecting are actually working. Key focuses for external reviews included “risks related to cybersecurity, biosecurity, chemical threats, and unintended actions by AI models.” Firms also agreed to regularly meet to discuss best practices and set common AI safety standards and benchmarks. Among signers were leaders like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Alphabet/Google’s Sundar Pichai. Nothing new is legally required of firms, and some—like Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI—had already committed to external audits, The Information reported. Additionally, many firms have voluntarily committed to highly secretive government safety testing. Adding to these tests, Trump insisted the Tuesday deal will somehow better address real emerging risks and is “morally binding,” despite carrying no legal weight, Bloomberg reported. “It’s almost like a constitution, in...
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Climate, Ecology, War & More: Dr. Glen Barry BigEarthData.ai @bigearthdata.ai · 1h
An 87-year-old woman whose eviction sparked protests in Spain is returning home ->NPR | More on "Spain's housing crisis and evictions" at BigEarthData.ai | #Protest
npr.org
An 87-year-old woman whose eviction sparked protests in Spain is returning home
MADRID — The 87-year-old woman at the center of the most high-profile eviction case in Spain in recent years will return home, her lawyer said Tuesday. María del Carmen Abascal has been hospitalized since she was carried out on a stretcher from the apartment where she had lived for seven decades on Wednesday. Her case has drawn tens of thousands of people to the streets in recent days and led the government to present measures to address the country's housing crisis. It remains to be seen if they go far enough to appease protesters. Abascal, who has become widely known as simply "Maricarmen," accepted a deal with the company that owns her apartment in the upscale Retiro neighborhood to return home as soon as she is discharged, her lawyer, Beatriz Duro, told The Associated Press. "She is very happy," said Duro. The agreement limits her rent to 30% of her income, meaning she would not pay more than the 500 euros ($570) per month she paid previously. The coalition led by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's Socialists announced the new measures earlier Tuesday, after four days of intense protests centered around an encampment in Puerta del Sol, Madrid's most iconic plaza...
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