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Nakonde Airport is a an airport project that is being developed by the Zambian National Service, part of the Zambian military. Despite the opposition of the local community, who will be the most impacted by the project, the construction is going ahead. Here, members of the local community, along with some words by Stay Grounded Campaigner, Hannah Lawrence, explain more about the situation there.

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A farmworker takes a break to drink water. FFP farms comply with mandatory heat stress protections that include the provision of shade, water, electrolytes, rest breaks, training, and the ability to stop work and seek medical treatment without fear of retaliation

Every summer, extreme heat threatens the lives and health of the people who harvest our food. But the risks farmworkers face don’t disappear when temperatures cool. Long days of physically demanding work continue to strain the body throughout the year, in soaring temperatures and on cooler days alike.

That’s why, beginning August 1 of this year, every Fair Food Program participating grower will be required to provide electrolyte beverages or electrolyte supplements to workers year-round, further strengthening the Program’s industry-leading heat protections.

The new standard builds on what The Washington Post called “America’s strongest workplace heat rules,” and what Reuters just singled out as a successful cross-sector initiative amidst ever-rising temperatures. Workers on Fair Food Program farms already have what so many are fighting for: shade, clean drinking water, paid rest breaks, heat illness training, and the right to seek medical attention without fear of retaliation. Now, they will also have year-round access to electrolytes—an increasingly important safeguard as scientific research links prolonged heat exposure to chronic kidney disease and other serious health conditions.

This is how the Fair Food Program has always advanced over its 16 years in operation: Workers and growers identify problems, they collaborate on solutions, and together they raise the standards for an entire industry. For going on two decades now, that partnership has transformed agriculture time and time again, be it with the development of groundbreaking field truck safety standards or the carving out of a clean channel for H-2A worker recruitment. Today, tens of thousands of farmworkers across 22 states and three countries are protected by a worker-driven system of education, independent monitoring, rigorous audits, and legally binding market enforcement that has effectively eliminated forced labor, sexual violence, and other severe abuses from participating farms.

And the impact of that pioneering worker-driven approach is expanding every single day.

Worker organizations in industries ranging from construction to sugarcane, bananas, and the plant nursery industry are partnering with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to bring the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model to millions more workers across the country and around the globe.

That growth depends on people like you.

Every new protection the Fair Food Program wins—and every new industry where workers, suppliers, and corporate buyers plant the flag of this proven model—requires sustained support from people like you, people who believe a world without exploitation and abuse behind every product we consume is possible. 

That’s why we’re asking you to become a Fair Food Sustainer today.

Your monthly gift provides the reliable support that allows workers to organize, educate their coworkers, strengthen protections like this new electrolyte standard, and bring the Fair Food Program to new industries and countries. One-time donations make a difference. Monthly giving builds movements.

Now is the time to bring that model to millions more workers… but we can’t do it without you.

Click here to become a Sustainer.

En la seva ambició de convertir el futbol en un esport veritablement global, la FIFA s’acosta cada vegada més als autòcrates i els avala obertament. Tanmateix, no són només els règims els que estan remodelant el futbol. El neoliberalisme també està transformant el joc i la relació entre els aficionats i els seus clubs. Hem parlat amb el politòleg i autodeclarat nostàlgic del futbol Cas Mudde.

Alessio Giussani: El 2025, poc abans que Trump comencés a bombardejar l’Iran, la FIFA li va concedir el seu premi de la pau. El president de la FIFA, Gianni Infantino, també va aparèixer a l’anomenada “junta de la pau” amb una gorra de Trump. Mentrestant, els aficionats normals són expulsats pels preus. Continua sent aquest el joc del poble?

Cas Mudde: El futbol mundial està cada vegada més capturat pels diners i per persones i règims dubtosos. La FIFA no és una excepció, sinó un cas extrem.

El Mundial de 2018 a Rússia va ser un torneig problemàtic, però no va generar gaire publicitat negativa. El 2022, a Qatar, era impossible ignorar la connexió entre futbol i  política. Tot i això, el règim qatarià va acabar obtenint una imatge pública força positiva: la gent es va oblidar de les vulneracions dels drets humans i de la quantitat desmesurada de diners gastada en estadis que pràcticament no tindrien utilitat després del torneig, i es va quedar amb la idea que havia estat un gran Mundial. Això és el que ha passat, pràcticament, amb tots els règims, democràtics o no, que han organitzat una Copa del Món. Aquest any, sospito, serà la primera vegada que els països amfitrions rebran més publicitat negativa que positiva.

Això no importa gaire a un país tan gran i poderós com els Estats Units, i encara menys a Trump, la base electoral del qual ni tan sols té interès pel futbol. Deixarà de preocupar-se pel torneig tan bon punt deixi de ser-li útil. Però això sí que perjudicarà la manera com la gent percep el futbol mundial.

Almenys sobre el paper, aquest no és el “Mundial MAGA”. L’organitzen tres nacions —els EUA, el Canadà i Mèxic— que representen tres espais diferents de la política mundial: els defensors dels combustibles fòssils, el liberalisme ultracentrista i el socialisme del Sud global. Quin significat li atribueixes a això?

Mark Carney també és defensor dels combustibles fòssils. El que és interessant és que aquest Mundial es coneixia inicialment com «la candidatura unificada», però en qüestió de mesos es va convertir, de fet, en el Mundial MAGA: tot gira al voltant dels Estats Units i de Trump. Això representava un repte, però també una gran oportunitat per al Canadà i Mèxic. El Canadà hauria pogut demostrar que és el bon noi de l’Amèrica del Nord; Mèxic hauria pogut demostrar que és el veritable país del futbol. El llistó és tan baix que fer el que tothom sol fer ja et fa quedar bé.

“La FIFA és, en molts sentits, un projecte increïblement colonial, que aposta per totes les coses dolentes que el colonialisme ha deixat enrere, incloses la corrupció i el lideratge personalista.

En canvi, Canadà i Mèxic no han dit res sobre el premi de la pau, del tracte a l’equip iranià i Omar Artan, i sobre l’àrbitre somali a qui es va denegar el visat. L’únic que fan és facilitar les coses a Trump i intentar suavitzar la situació quan fa alguna cosa dolenta, per això crec que també afrontaran crítiques. En general, no tinc la sensació que cap dels països amfitrions estigui particularment entusiasmat amb aquest Mundial. Claudia Sheinbaum ha impulsat algunes iniciatives realment bones a Mèxic, com ara construir centenars de camps comunitaris, però no hi veig un impuls real.

L’edició del Mundial de 2022 va ser una de les edicions més globals fins a la data, amb Qatar com a amfitrió i el Marroc arribant a les semifinals. L’edició d’enguany s’ha ampliat per incloure 48 equips en lloc de 32. Hi ha algun mèrit decolonial en l’ambició d’Infantino de fer que el futbol mundial sigui veritablement global?

El projecte d’Infantino és aconseguir la seva reelecció. Com més associacions nacionals de futbol estiguin representades al Mundial, més satisfetes estaran amb el seu lideratge. Si realment volgués decolonitzar el futbol, podria haver canviat la representació proporcional entre continents. En canvi, només va ampliar el nombre de participants sense canviar els criteris subjacents. Això vol dir tenir encara més països d’Europa, perquè són rics, i això és el que volen els patrocinadors.

La FIFA és, en molts sentits, un projecte increïblement colonial, que beneficia tots els elements negatius que el colonialisme ha deixat enrere, incloses la corrupció i el lideratge personalista. Essencialment, la FIFA dona diners a les associacions nacionals de futbol perquè els gastin com considerin millor per al progrés del futbol als seus països. Per descomptat, molts règims simplement agafen aquests diners i se’ls embutxaquen, deixant el futbol sense desenvolupar. Però a la FIFA això no li importa gaire.

La política de la FIFA també està empitjorant. El 2018, no es va pronunciar contra les polítiques russes contràries als drets LGBTQIA+, però tampoc els va donar suport. A Qatar, es va prohibir als capitans dels equips portar braçalets amb els colors de l’arc de Sant Martí. Ara, la FIFA defensa activament Trump i fins i tot el celebra.

Només una fracció de les nacions que participen al Mundial són democràcies —i encara menys liberals—, i el mateix s’aplica al conjunt dels membres de la FIFA. Hi ha maneres de defensar els valors liberals sense el postureig civilitzacional?

Si vols ser coherent, hauries de deixar la política al marge tant com puguis, perquè si converteixes la FIFA i el Mundial en un projecte liberal-democràtic, aleshores et dirigeixes a una minoria d’estats, i mai no seràs veritablement global. Es podria argumentar que ser polític, encara que de vegades siguis hipòcrita o incoherent, és millor que mantenir-se al marge de la política. Però ja no estic segur que sigui així, perquè les campanyes d’inclusió de la FIFA s’han tornat tan buides, tan vagues i tan plenes de pinkwashing que l’únic missatge que arriba és que tot el que diuen sobre política és una collonada. [Nota de la traductora: “pinkwashing” es manté en anglès perquè és un terme d’ús habitual per descriure l’ús instrumental de causes LGTBIQ+ per millorar la imatge d’una institució.]

Al mateix temps, és clar, la política sempre hi és. Organitzar un Mundial és una gran oportunitat per a qualsevol règim, i la neutralitat no fa que l’esdeveniment deixi de ser polític. Però sí que tinc un problema amb fixar expectatives elevades i no estar mai a l’altura —que és precisament el que ha fet la FIFA amb la seva agenda de drets humans i els seus grans compromisos amb la sostenibilitat. No pot existir un Mundial sostenible, i sempre hi haurà participants que no respectin els drets humans. Aleshores, per què la FIFA no introdueix una agenda menys ambiciosa però que realment compleixi?

Vivim un moment de ressorgiment del nativisme i del nacionalisme, amb l’extrema dreta en ascens arreu del món. Alimenta un Mundial farcit de política aquestes dinàmiques, o el futbol pot canalitzar el nacionalisme cap a alguna cosa més afable, fins i tot unificadora?

El sociòleg britànic Michael Billig va encunyar el terme “nacionalisme banal” per descriure les representacions quotidianes d’una nació, que construeixen un sentit compartit d’identitat nacional. Es tracta, per exemple, de banderes nacionals penjades a l’exterior dels edificis públics. El nacionalisme esportiu entra dins d’aquesta categoria, i té elements negatius. Al meu país, els Països Baixos, una part del nostre sentiment antigermànic no provenia de la Segona Guerra Mundial, sinó del futbol. Al mateix temps, els equips de futbol en molts països són més multiculturals que les societats, i jugadors de diferents ètnies esdevenen herois i models per a molts —almenys mentre guanyen.

El que és peculiar del futbol és l’emoció i la intensitat que afegeix al nacionalisme banal, fent que el nacionalisme sigui una mica secundari. Guanyar vol dir guanyar un partit, no que la teva nació domini una altra. Per molt que em desagradin les banderes, crec que hi ha un pànic moral al voltant del nacionalisme i el hooliganisme en el futbol. Hi ha elements inclusius i exclusius: pot ser tant bo com dolent.

Imparteixes un curs sobre futbol i política. Com interpretes aquesta relació, i com veus que evoluciona?

Gran part de l’atenció se centra en l’alta política: institucions, governs, partits, etcètera. A mi m’interessa més la ‘baixa’ política de l’esport, la música, la cultura, etc. Faig servir el futbol per ensenyar política, perquè el futbol reflecteix la societat de moltes maneres. Curiosament, aquest és un dels cursos més radicals que he impartit. Llegim Judith Butler i la performativitat de gènere, i parlem molt d’identitat i globalització.

Pensa en la rellevància creixent dels “equips de la diàspora”, aquelles seleccions nacionals que  estan més  formades cada vegada més per jugadors nacionals “de sang” encara que no hagin nascut ni crescut al país que representen. Senegal n’és un exemple paradigmàtic, amb gairebé la meitat dels jugadors nascuts o criats fora del país —principalment a França, la seva antiga potència colonial. Els equips de la diàspora són, en certa manera, el contrari dels “equips cívics”, formats per jugadors de minories nascuts i criats en un país, com els alemanys d’origen turc. Això mostra que fins i tot els estats molt restrictius amb la immigració poden ser molt flexibles quan es tracta d’esportistes d’elit, i que les persones antiimmigració no tenen cap problema amb això.

La UE també ha tingut un paper important en la configuració del futbol modern. La sentència Bosman del Tribunal de Justícia de la Unió Europea, el 1995 va sacsejar el sistema europeu de traspassos futbolístics per alinear-lo amb les normes del mercat únic. I com que Europa és tan dominant en el futbol global, la sentència va canviar el sistema mundial.

Interpretes el futbol com a part de la societat civil. Quin és el raonament darrere d’aquesta associació?

Solia treballar sobre la societat civil a l’Europa postcomunista a finals dels anys noranta i principis dels 2000, hi havia una associació positiva entre una societat civil forta i una democràcia saludable. Però el discurs tenia un enfocament molt limitat en grups prooccidentals, grups feministes, etcètera. M’interessaven els anomenats grups de la societat “incivilitzada”, que no eren necessàriament prodemocràtics, però que unien molt a les persones i eren políticament actius. Els hooligans i els ultres sovint tenen dues cares: tenen mala reputació, particularment a Europa, però també són actius en bones causes, com ajudar persones pobres o comunitats locals després de terratrèmols o altres desastres naturals. M’agrada aquesta complexitat.

Com ha canviat el neoliberalisme el futbol?

Per donar resposta a aquesta pregunta sovint faig servir el club al que dono suport, el PSV Eindhoven. El PSV va ser fundat per treballadors de Philips. Era, en molts sentits, una representació de l’economia industrial, d’una forma de capitalisme arrelat. Philips tenia una connexió amb Eindhoven perquè tenia fàbriques a la ciutat, i senzillament no pots  agafar fàbriques i traslladar-les a un altre lloc. Ara tens clubs, com el Manchester City, que són un reflex perfecte del neoliberalisme global. Un règim estranger decideix invertir en un club no perquè tingui una connexió amb una comunitat local, sinó perquè aquest club és una marca global i et dona accés a una audiència global. La connexió entre capitalisme i futbol sempre hi ha estat, però el capitalisme ha canviat, i el futbol està canviant amb ell.

La majoria dels aficionats al futbol no volen seure en un estadi asèptic i vigilat. Volen seure en un lloc que encara tingui atmosfera i autenticitat sense el racisme i el sexisme. I això és possible.

Sent nostàlgic, he de recordar que els vells temps no sempre van ser tan purs. Abans dels fons d’inversió, hi havia l’oligarca rus Roman Abramóvitx que va comprar el Chelsea. En contextos més petits, hi havia el venedor de cotxes de segona mà que dirigia el club local. L’escala era més petita i més local, però aquell tipus també era dubtós i feia servir el futbol per elevar la seva pròpia imatge.

El que em preocupa des del punt de vista de la societat civil és que, tot i que sempre hi va haver explotació i jerarquia, també hi havia una connexió amb la comunitat. Philips depenia d’Eindhoven. Els capitalistes d’avui no tenen aquesta connexió, i la comunitat local gairebé ja no té veu. Els grans clubs ja no depenen de la venda d’entrades com a part important dels seus ingressos. Ara els diners provenen dels drets de retransmissió i dels patrocinadors.

Els aficionats són a temps de salvar el joc en el qual s’ha convertit?

Els aficionats són una mica com els addictes: tenen el poder de destruir el sistema demà mateix si deixen d’alimentar la maquinària. Ningú no invertirà diners en el futbol si ningú no el mira. Però, si ho fan, també hi surten perdent. Per això tenen poques opcions per plantar cara. Poden resistir la mercantilització des de dins del sistema. A Alemanya, per exemple, van aconseguir frenar la implantació dels partits dels dilluns al vespre. O bé poden abandonar el sistema del tot i crear clubs alternatius propietat dels aficionats, però aquests clubs no poden competir al màxim nivell.

No soc particularment optimista perquè veig que el futbol modern es destrueix a si mateix de la mateixa manera que ho fa el capitalisme. S’expandeix a nivells insostenibles, com un esquema piramidal en què el valor es va aprimant cada cop més. Les firmes de capital privat i els règims estan injectant diners al sistema perquè esperen alguna cosa a canvi, ja sigui benefici o victòries diplomàtiques. Però poden retirar-se tan ràpidament com hi van entrar si s’adonen que ja no els queda res a guanyar. I quan la bombolla esclata, no tornem al punt on érem abans, perquè les lleialtats han desaparegut. La generació d’anglesos que ha quedat exclosa dels estadis de la Premier League pels preus no tornarà així com així.

Molts clubs de futbol es troben entre les institucions més antigues que existeixen. Han existit durant més d’un segle, i han donat sentit al fet de ser d’algun lloc. Quan una antiga ciutat minera perd un equip de futbol, és una pèrdua important per a la comunitat.

Malgrat tot, el futbol encara és capaç de crear comunitat i connexió. Hi ha res que els partits polítics o les organitzacions de la societat civil en puguin aprendre?

El tipus de relació que tens amb un club que segueixes és profundament irracional. No pots recrear aquesta relació artificialment.

Una cosa que se’n pot aprendre és la importància de l’arrelament. Si la gent continua donant suport a un club fins i tot quan perd o baixa de categoria, és perquè s’hi sent connectada. Molts clubs locals funcionen gràcies a voluntaris i persones que no en treuen diners. La professionalització creixent i la manca d’arrelament són cada vegada més febleses comuns dels moviments progressistes, i veig que una cosa semblant passarà en el futbol modern.

Si no et reconeixen com a part de la comunitat, la gent sent que has perdut el contacte. La majoria d’ONG avui dia no tenen voluntaris; tenen professionals. I per als professionals, la institució importa més que la causa. Si el que t’importa principalment és una causa, trobes maneres de fer la feina fins i tot quan s’acaben els diners. Però si el que t’importa principalment és la institució, passaràs a una altra cosa i trobaràs una altra feina. Les grans ONG s’han convertit en negocis amb llocs de treball molt ben pagats ocupats per persones que passen d’una organització a una altra. El mateix està passant al futbol.

Pel costat positiu, el futbol no s’ha tornat també més inclusiu?

Absolutament. Als anys vuitanta i noranta, les dones o les persones queer no se sentirien segures en un estadi de la Premier League, i ara sí. En certa manera, la gentrificació ha fet el futbol més accessible per a alguns grups. És clar que ha exclòs una part de la classe treballadora blanca, però una part de la classe treballadora blanca abans excloïa altres grups. Hi he pensat molt, perquè com qualsevol nostàlgic, hi havia una part que no veia. Com a home blanc heterosexual, formo part del grup que abans posseïa l’estadi, i per això mai no vaig experimentar l’exclusió.

Però la securitització i l’expulsió de la gent pels preus no són les úniques opcions per combatre la discriminació, i els aficionats més rics no són necessàriament menys racistes. Molt del sexisme, l’homofòbia i el racisme que veus als estadis és performatiu. Per tant, el camí a seguir és redefinir el paper de l’aficionat. Alemanya mostra que es poden tenir estadis assequibles que també siguin més inclusius. Funciona millor quan són els mateixos aficionats els qui es controlen i es moderen mútuament. El Borussia Dortmund, per exemple, tenia un problema important amb neonazis als anys vuitanta i, en gran mesura, va aconseguir expulsar-los.

La majoria dels aficionats al futbol no volen seure en un estadi asèptic i vigilat. Volen seure en un lloc que encara tingui atmosfera i autenticitat sense el racisme i el sexisme. I això és possible.

La popularitat del futbol femení està explotant. Pot ser una alternativa més saludable a les dinàmiques que has estat descrivint?

Sovint recorrem a les dones per resoldre els problemes que han creat els homes. Diem que els homes són així, de manera que necessitem més dones, perquè les dones són diferents. Però les dones no són necessàriament millors que els homes. Si l’estructura t’empeny en una determinada direcció, no importa qui siguis. En l’estructura actual, que el futbol femení continuï sent “pur” també voldria dir que les dones continuïn cobrant molt menys que els homes en nom d’algun ideal, i no crec que això sigui just.

En qualsevol cas, sembla que el futbol femení s’està transformant ràpidament al futbol modern i avança en la mateixa direcció que el futbol masculí —potencialment fins i tot més de pressa. La propietat de varis clubs ja és una realitat. Als EUA, un club de Columbus, Ohio, ha pagat recentment 200 milions de dòlars a la National Women’s Soccer League per incorporar-se a la lliga el 2028. Això són molts més diners del que s’està gastant en les jugadores.

Tot i així, molts clubs de futbol femení són més actius políticament que els clubs masculins, perquè les jugadores són més explícites. Ser futbolista dona encara es veu com una transgressió, de manera que tendeixes a estar més compromesa políticament. Però quant menys transgressor i més mercantilitzat es torni el futbol femení, menys polític serà. De moment, continua sent una via d’escapament per a molts aficionats perquè és més assequible i més divertit —sens dubte per als grups minoritaris, i particularment per a les persones queer.

On se situa el futbol femení pel que fa a la seva dimensió comunitària i de societat civil?

Gairebé tots els clubs femenins han estat fundats per clubs masculins, de manera que molt pocs són realment l’expressió d’una comunitat. Hi ha excepcions, com el Turbine Potsdam a Alemanya, que és un dels equips femenins amb més èxit del país. Però ara han estat  superats per clubs com el Bayern de Munic i el Wolfsburg, perquè no pots competir amb els gegants.

Tanmateix, la majoria dels aficionats al futbol femení tenen un propòsit polític, i en aquest sentit són l’expressió d’una comunitat. Molts aficionats subratllen que hi són per donar suport a l’esport femení, no a un club concret. Ningú no va a un partit de futbol masculí per donar suport al moviment. Per tant, hi ha un element de comunitat.

Translated by Sandra Cruz

How hot is too hot?

Photo by Rajiv Bajaj on Unsplash

By Paul Atkin

Mad dogs and Englishmen, go out in the mid-day sun

Noel Coward.

The heatwaves in May and June have so far caused 2,700 excess deaths. There are likely to be more before Summer is out. 

And with the current El Nino giving a violent upward spike to the underlying heat accumulation being steadily built by greenhouse gases, we can expect worse next year. And worse the year after that. This is what climate change is.

To put the deadly consequences into perspective, 2,700 excess deaths is 

• more than five times the number of people murdered in the year ending March 2025; which was 522.
• almost double the road accident total for 2025; which was 1,556 
• and three quarters as many as the total deaths during the thirty years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland between 1969 and 1998; which was 3,489.

Some of the people who died will have read articles in the press playing down the severity of the heatwaves – claiming that Red and Amber heat warnings are not a sober health warning, but just another symptom of a society that no longer has what it takes even to get through “gorgeous weather” – believed them, and acted accordingly.

The TUC supports a maximum workplace temperature. 

Giving Hannah Spencer’s maximum workplace temperature bill government time to make sure it doesn’t get talked out, would be a good way for Andy Burnham to show he is serious about improving people’s lives. 

The bill, if passed, would create an independent body to recommend maximum safe workplace temperatures and set out how the recommendations should be implemented. 

In the coming months, while pressing for this legislation, we will have to struggle with unbearably hot workplaces, often with managers in air conditioned offices playing it down. 

• In August, UNISON is making heat its theme of the month for its Year of Green Action
• The TUC is hosting a heatwave organising call at 1pm on Wednesday 29 July, to share advice on how to keep your workplace cool — with actions you can take to win protections now and build towards a national maximum temperature.
• There’s a lot of useful resources on the Heat Strike site.  

This graph from the Met Office shows the trend and points to where we are heading. When Eurostar puts out a spec for a train capable of running in 55C heat, do they consider whether their crew and passengers would be able to get to or from the train if it was that hot outside?

 

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The post How hot is too hot? first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

What happens when the global economy depends on fish traveling 10,000 miles, oil flowing through a single strait, and enough cheap fossil fuel energy to build civilizations that previous generations couldn't even imagine?

Sometimes a big story can be told with a very small object.

Take the hazards of plastic pollution in the ocean, and a single bottle cap floating in the Pacific Ocean near Japan.

Captured in a net by scientists aboard a Japanese research vessel in 2023, this plastic cap had been transformed into a tiny ecosystem of hundreds of creatures. Through careful detective work, scientists unraveled a journey that brought the cap, and its stowaways from tropical waters far to the south.

The discovery, detailed in a new paper in Marine Pollution Bulletin, underscores the ways in which life is adapting to an increasingly plastic-filled ocean, and the potential for buoyant, virtually indestructible bits of trash to serve as rafts for invasive species.

“We found organisms that normally live in southern tropical waters,” said Naoto Jimi, the lead author and a scientist at Nagoya University. “Geographic range extensions of some species may be occurring under the radar.”

The potential for ocean-borne plastic to act as a raft for enterprising species has been a concern for some time. Famously, Japanese flotsam from a 2011 tsunami washed ashore in North America bearing nearly 300 coastal species. Scientists have surmised that tiny floating islands of plastic in the middle of the ocean are creating novel ecosystems of their own.

In the case of the bottle cap, that ecosystem was just 35 millimeters in diameter. Despite its small size, when scientists inspected the cap they discovered a little world inhabited by 307 individual organisms representing 9 different taxa. Perhaps most impressive was a Eunice bipapillata, a type of polychaete. This particular species of bottom-dwelling worm resembles a millipede with a slender, flat ribbon of a body lined by dozens of short legs.

 

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The worm had built a protective mucus shell, which in turn offered a landscape to be colonized by a marine menagerie, what the scientists described as “a miniature reef.” The residents’ identities provided some clue about the cap’s distant origins. The worm normally is found in the tropical western Pacific.

A closer analysis of some of the organisms offered a more detailed account of their travels. The shells of foraminifera, tiny organisms commonly known as forams, provide a temperature record of the surrounding ocean water in which different parts of the shell are made, much like tree rings vary from year to year depending on rainfall. Scientists can measure ratios of two isotopes of oxygen in the parts of the shell to determine water temperature.

Two of the foram shells revealed a movement from warmer to cooler waters, with a peak of nearly 30°C down to around 22°C – roughly the water temperature where the cap was caught.

The scientists traced the movement with still more detail by using a computer model of regional ocean currents. Simulations of a tiny object dropped in the ocean arriving at the spot where it was caught revealed a likely origin in the Philippines, a journey of some 70 days and more than 1,500 kilometers. That route was a match for marks on the cap, tracing to a Philippine beverage brand.

The findings illustrate that “the marine plastic problem should therefore be considered not only from the perspectives of aesthetic damage, ingestion, and entanglement, but also from those of biogeography and invasive species risk,” said Jimi.

With an estimated 30 million metric tons of plastic already floating in the ocean, and more arriving every day, that’s a lot of bottle caps waiting to be turned into mini-reefs.

Jimi, et. al. “Multi-proxy reconstruction of bottle-cap rafting using biofouling communities, stable isotopes and drift modeling.” Marine Pollution Bulletin. July 7, 2026.

Photo: Inside a 3.5 cm plastic bottle cap: A miniature ecosystem of 307 organisms drifted from the Philippines to waters south of Japan.© Sugashima Marine Biological Laboratory, Nagoya University

Lindsay Fenlock is a senior researcher in the Climate and Energy Program at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). Nikki Reisch is a human rights lawyer and social justice advocate who leads the Climate & Energy Program at CIEL.

Much has been written about when fossil fuel companies knew their products cause harm to the climate, public health, and the environment. Less attention has been paid to just how long governments have known, too, and what they did or failed to do with that knowledge. That information is not just a matter of historical record – it’s a matter of legal responsibility. 

A year ago this month, the world’s highest court affirmed that countries have been under an obligation to curb climate change since they knew about the foreseeable risks it posed and to remedy its harms. This historic advisory opinion opened the door for States to be held accountable not only for failing to act on climate change, but also for making it worse by perpetuating its primary cause: fossil fuel production and use.

While the ruling is clear about the content of climate duties under international law, it is silent on when those duties first applied to specific countries or how long they have been breaching them. The earlier governments knew about the drivers and dangers of climate change, the longer they have been under an obligation to prevent it, and the greater their potential liability for the resulting harms.

Once they were informed of the risks fossil fuels posed to the climate, States had a duty to do everything in their power to prevent those risks from materializing – and at a minimum, to refrain from exacerbating them. But, as trends in fossil fuel dependence and climate destruction make clear, they did not.

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Early knowledge

A new report from the Center for International Environmental Law shows that the governments of many major emitting countries have known since at least the 1960s that fossil fuel use was warming the planet and, if continued, could lead to dire impacts –  including melting of the polar ice caps, catastrophic sea level rise, and extreme heat.

Yet some of the countries responsible for the largest cumulative shares of carbon emissions have claimed that global awareness of climate change emerged only in the late 1980s, around the time the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established and negotiations of a climate convention began.

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Why? Because admitting that they have known about the chief causes and foreseeable consequences of climate change for the better part of a century would mean they had a duty to prevent it that they’ve been flouting for decades.

Drawing  on a wide range of publicly available government records and scientific studies, CIEL’s research exposes when knowledge of climate change made its way onto policymakers’ desks and into public discourse. The report synthesizes some of the groundbreaking research by scholars such as Naomi Oreskes on the history of American climate science, putting their findings into a legal context and broadening the discussion to other countries.

First findings in 19th century

The origins of the climate harms the world is experiencing today – more extreme storms, deadly heat waves, floods, and sea level rise – stem from around 1850, when industry began burning so much fossil fuel that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere began to rise.

Scientists figured out quite quickly that the release of these ancient carbon stores could warm Earth. The first paper that modeled the potential warming impact of fossil fuel use, for example, came out in 1896, while the first studies that confirmed global temperatures were rising came out before World War II. 

Government records show international cooperation on climate change research picking up around 1957, when countries worldwide coordinated funding for thousands of research projects as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY).

The IGY spawned the world’s first program to monitor atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and the 69 participating governments were apprised of the results. By this time, governmental scientific organizations in most of the world knew that continued fossil fuel use could heat the planet dramatically, with potentially significant adverse impacts. Many countries also became aware of industry research on climate change during this decade through their state-owned oil companies.

Big emitters knew

In the 1960s, the world’s top atmospheric scientists, chemists, and geophysicists concluded that fossil fuel emissions not only could warm the earth, but they were already doing so. They also concluded that continuing to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere was likely to cause serious harm to food systems, ecosystems, human health, and communities, including through sea level rise and deadly extreme weather events. By the 1960s and 1970s, many governments had ample warning that continued reliance on fossil fuels could have profoundly dangerous global consequences. 

Evidence indicates that this information reached public officials —  in some cases at the highest echelons of government. In the United States –  the largest historic emitter of carbon dioxide –  White House officials exchanged memos over what to do about the “carbon dioxide problem” during the 1960s and a presidential report published in 1965 unequivocally attributed warming to fossil fuels and warned about catastrophic levels of temperature and sea level rise if trends continued. 

Excerpt from a letter sent by US diplomat Daniel Moynihan to President Richard Nixon’s administration Excerpt from a letter sent by US diplomat Daniel Moynihan to President Richard Nixon’s administration

In the United Kingdom, the greenhouse effect was first raised in a parliamentary debate in 1969, and in France, a state-owned oil company published a magazine article about the dangers of atmospheric carbon dioxide in 1971, while the Canadian environment ministry regularly published articles about climate change in its employee magazine throughout the 1970s and 80s. 

Even the most generous reading of this information shows that many of the world’s largest contributors to climate change, including the United States, Canada, Germany, and Australia,  knew enough to change course over two decades before the first meeting of the IPCC  in 1988, if not far earlier. 

The story does not end there. As an illustrative compilation of publicly available, English-language evidence, CIEL’s report is not a complete survey of what all major emitters knew.  And facts about what a given country knew are not, on their own, sufficient to secure accountability. But, together with evidence about how that knowledge was subsequently acted upon –  or, as was often the case, denied, dismissed, and distorted – and about how climate impacts have unfolded, they solidify foundations for climate justice and repair. 

The post Major emitting countries knew of climate risks decades earlier than claimed appeared first on Climate Home News.

Headline News:

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• “Fastest Renewable Energy Growth Ever” • Renewable Energy Statistics 2026 released by the International Renewable Energy Agency shows that renewable electricity generation grew by 9.8% in 2024. This is significantly higher than the growth recorded in 2023. Overall, renewables accounted for 31.7% of the electricity generation globally in 2024. [CleanTechnica]
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For more news, please visit geoharvey – Daily News about Energy and Climate Change.

They wanted to hold Exxon accountable. Then they got hacked. A decade after climate activists’ emails were breached, a court case is shedding new light on who allegedly orchestrated the hacking.

By Matt Simon

Illustration by Grist / Getty Images​​

Jul 23, 2026

Topic

Climate + Transportation

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This story is published in partnership with the Guardian.​

On a cold January morning in 2016, Kert Davies joined a group of climate advocates and lawyers at the Rockefeller Family Fund’s office in Upper Manhattan to discuss an audacious goal: holding Exxon Mobil, one of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies, accountable for climate change. A few months earlier, a set of explosive media reports had revealed that the company’s own scientists determined as early as 1982 that the extraction and burning of fossil fuels caused climate change — but Exxon went on to fund climate denial campaigns anyway.

For Exxon, it was a public relations crisis that carried potentially devastating legal consequences. Davies, the founder of the Climate Investigations Center, a group that monitors the fossil fuel industry, had been strategizing with other climate advocates to make those consequences stick, using the hashtag #ExxonKnew to raise public awareness.

About a month after the meeting in Manhattan, Davies received the first fishy email. It appeared to be from Facebook and said, “Kert, you have 5 poke.” Similar messages arrived over the next few days — emails that looked like notifications from people on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Not realizing he was being phished, Davies clicked some of the links embedded in the strange messages. But he soon felt a creeping sense of dread. In early March, he asked his colleagues on a climate activist listserv: “Has anybody received weird emails?” They replied that they had. Some had clicked links and entered their passwords.

Inundated with ominous emails, the feeling of constant danger started to stifle the group’s communication. Then, the following month, a Wall Street Journal reporter reached out to Davies about a detailed agenda she had obtained for the January meeting he’d attended at the Rockefeller Family Fund’s office. In April 2016, details from the email were published by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news publication, which alleged “secret coordination” against Exxon by climate activists. 

Although Davies didn’t think it was unusual for environmental advocates to meet to strategize against one of the world’s largest polluters, Exxon soon latched onto the media reports to fight subpoenas and lawsuits it was now facing from 17 attorneys general. Defending itself from the investigations, Exxon quoted the meeting agenda in its court filings to argue that activists were conspiring against the company.

A criminal investigation would later reveal that the email obtained by the two publications had been hacked. But details about who ordered the hack have long been a mystery. Now, court documents allege that the hack was ordered by a firm representing Exxon itself — the very company Davies and others were trying to hold accountable for climate deception.  

An Exxon Mobil gas refinery, as seen in March 2006 in Baytown, Texas. Benjamin Lowy / Getty Images

The potential link to the oil company came to light last year, after the U.S. government issued an arrest warrant and attempted to extradite Israeli private investigator Amit Forlit from the U.K. Suddenly, Forlit was facing hacking and wire fraud charges that could land him in prison for up to 45 years. In the indictment from the U.S. attorney’s office in New York, which was unsealed earlier this year, prosecutors alleged that a public affairs firm working on behalf of an oil giant matching Exxon’s description hired Forlit to execute a project that involved hacking climate activists. In court documents, Forlit referenced the indictment and alleged that the hacking was commissioned by DCI group, a public affairs firm with a longtime relationship with Exxon. Separately, Reuters reported that the FBI had investigated DCI Group regarding the hacking operation.

DCI Group and Exxon deny involvement. Exxon Mobil did not reply to a request for comment, however, the company has previously said it has not been “involved in, nor are we aware of, any hacking activities. If there was any hacking involved, we condemn it in the strongest possible terms.” The company has said it acknowledges “climate change is real, and we have an entire business dedicated to reducing emissions.”

“We do and always have directed all our employees and consultants to comply with the law,” Craig Stevens, a partner at DCI Group, wrote in an email. He added that his firm has “been told by the government that neither DCI nor any of its personnel are under investigation” and that they had “no knowledge or understanding” of the alleged hacking activity. “Any insinuation otherwise is completely false and unsubstantiated,” he wrote.

Through his lawyer, Forlit declined to comment. He has pleaded not guilty.

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Today, as a direct result of the revelations about what Exxon knew about climate change and when, the fossil fuel giant and others are fighting lawsuits brought by states and cities that could result in hundreds of billions of dollars in damages. And in the past decade, threats to climate advocates have only grown more dangerous; fossil fuel companies have worked with security firms or police to surveil activists who opposed pipeline projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline and Line 3. Cybercrime has grown more sophisticated, and a global hack-for-hire industry has, so far, faced few consequences.

Davies, who is still monitoring Exxon, hopes the Forlit case will reveal whether the oil giant was involved in the hack. “None of that has been proven yet. So any furtherance of that story and that proof is really important to me, personally, and to a lot of the people who were attacked by this operation 10 years ago,” he said. “It’s personal, because I really don’t like bullies or liars or cheaters.”

About a year after Davies began receiving those strange messages, an investigative reporter who was covering financial fraud in Germany began receiving similar emails and flagged them to the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which investigates efforts to surveil civil society. John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the lab, quickly determined they were phishing attacks. Citizen Lab researchers noticed that the links in the emails used a custom URL shortener. They then developed a technique to figure out the full unshortened URLs containing target email addresses, giving them a comprehensive list of those targeted.

Many of the victims were people at environmental groups and advocates campaigning against Exxon, but Scott-Railton and his colleagues found that the hundreds of targets also included the families and friends of activists. Non-environmental groups — for example, hedge funds, short sellers, and financial journalists — were targeted as well.

“We began toying with the idea that perhaps this was a mercenary group and they were taking commissions,” Scott-Railton said.

Scott-Railton contacted Davies in the fall of 2017. By then, Davies was experiencing another wave of phishing attacks. This time, a number of emails mentioned Exxon, including one pretending to be his colleague sharing a Dropbox document titled “ExxonMobil (confidential).docx”.

Davies still had no idea where the messages were coming from. When he met with Scott-Railton, the researcher showed Davies that he was on a long list of targets — one that included far more activists than just those in his circle of Exxon critics.

“It was really a relief to know that I wasn’t imagining that we were being targeted,” Davies recalled.

As he investigated the hacking group, Scott-Railton helped Davies and other potential targets search their inboxes for evidence that the strange messages were phishing attempts that could be traced to a single hacking group. Davies alone had received more than 80 such emails. Armed with this evidence, several targets of the phishing attacks shared Citizen Lab’s findings with the Department of Justice, or DOJ, which then began gathering evidence of a coordinated scheme. 

The Justice Department uncovered correspondence that showed a group of unnamed co-conspirators had emailed Israeli private investigator Aviram Azari, suggesting “we can make some money working together” and inviting him to a business meeting in India. The group then used phishing attacks to successfully hack into the email accounts of various targets located in the U.S. Based on this evidence, in September 2019, federal agents arrested Azari at the John F. Kennedy International Airport while he was on his way to Disneyland with his family. He was charged with managing hacking projects and pleaded not guilty. (Azari’s attorney did not reply to requests for comment.)

As the government continued to build its case, Davies met with DOJ investigators in early 2020 and told them everything he knew. A few months later, Citizen Lab published a groundbreaking report revealing that the phishing emails came from Dark Basin, a hack-for-hire group based in India. The climate advocates were just one group of targets among many; the hackers had attacked thousands of people across six continents, including politicians, prosecutors, CEOs, journalists, and human rights defenders. The report revealed the hackers had a highly detailed understanding of the Exxon critics and their relationships — suggesting they’d been provided with instructions. But the client who ordered the hack was still unknown.

Climate activists protest on the first day of the Exxon Mobil trial outside the New York State Supreme Court building in October 2019. Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images

After languishing in a New York prison for years awaiting trial, Azari pleaded guilty to the hacking charges in 2022, but denied knowledge of the client. Sentencing documents revealed that he played a crucial role in a global hacking campaign that targeted thousands of people — stretching well beyond the #ExxonKnew campaign — with clients paying him more than $4.8 million over almost five years for managing intelligence-gathering and phishing campaigns. He directed hackers, including the group in India, to target specific victims’ online accounts. 

The DOJ investigation confirmed the successful hacking of more than 100 of Azari’s victims, including those involved in the #ExxonKnew campaign. The government’s sentencing memo said that some of the hacked documents that were stolen from climate advocates’ online accounts were leaked to the press, and that articles about those hacked documents were incorporated into Exxon’s court filings as it battled state attorneys general investigations. DOJ investigators also asked Davies and others to write victim impact statements for Azari’s sentencing. Davies wrote that the attack had caused “anxiety, paranoia, depression, sleeplessness, and fear.”

But despite the revelations from the Azari case, the client who allegedly ordered the hack remained unknown — until the DOJ issued a warrant for the arrest of Israeli private investigator Amit Forlit and requested his extradition.

Forlit’s extradition case sent shockwaves through the U.S. climate community and began providing the answers Davies and others had been waiting for. Davies knew that Exxon had a long working relationship with DCI Group, a strategic communications firm based in Washington, D.C. Public documents show Exxon was a major client of DCI Group, spending more than $3 million on lobbying, including $320,000 in 2015, the year the hacking was allegedly commissioned.

In a filing arguing against his extradition last year, Forlit’s lawyer named the alleged client for the first time: “The hacking is alleged to have been commissioned by DCI Group, a lobbying firm representing ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies.” 

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Davies was elated. Finally, what he had suspected all along was trickling out in court documents. “There’s been periods of time where I thought, ‘Oh, that’s over. There’s no way to ever figure it out.’ And then all of a sudden — this breakthrough,” he said.

With Forlit potentially facing decades in prison if extradited to the U.S., his lawyer referenced the then-sealed DOJ indictment and named the companies in a legal filing. The lawyer argued that one of the reasons for his prosecution in the U.S. was to “advance the politically-motivated case of pursuing ExxonMobil, with Mr. Forlit a form of collateral damage in that endeavor.” But the court didn’t find this argument persuasive, and in April, Forlit was extradited to the U.S.

The U.S. indictment was unsealed in April, offering tantalizing new details. It alleged Forlit was “a leader of a sprawling cybercriminal enterprise” via Israel-based intelligence-gathering firms, and that his actions involved co-conspirators in the U.S., U.K., Israel, and India. The indictment says the operation targeting climate activists was carried out on behalf of a client: “one of the world’s largest oil and gas corporations, with headquarters in Irving, Texas.” (When the indictment was first filed in 2022, Exxon Mobil was the only major global oil company with headquarters in Irving, Texas.)

The exterior of Exxon Mobil’s campus on the outskirts of Houston, Texas, where the company relocated its headquarters from Irving, photographed in February 2022. Brandon Bell / Getty Images

The indictment described allegations using ciphers instead of specific names of people and companies, but the names were clear to anyone who had read Forlit’s U.K. court filings opposing his extradition. The indictment laid out a chain of events connecting Forlit and Azari to a “lobbying firm” — which Forlit’s U.K. filings say was DCI Group — and in turn the lobbying firm’s “client,” which the U.K. filings say was Exxon Mobil. The indictment alleged that in October 2015, the client asked the lobbying firm for help responding to civil investigations it was facing related to climate change. 

According to the indictment, a principal at the lobbying firm contacted Forlit about a project that would target people working on climate and environmental issues. In a memo to Forlit, the principal laid out a plan for how they “would operationalize the research on the bad guys.” The principal sent the memo to Forlit with a cover email that said: “This is what I gave the client yesterday.” The memo referenced “recent attacks” on the client — the oil and gas company in Irving, Texas — “over climate change by groups on the left” and the “opportunity to go ‘on offense.’”

Prosecutors alleged that Forlit then emailed the principal a proposal for the climate change project, with a $125,000 monthly budget, outlining how his firms would gather intelligence for the client’s use in lobbying and legal proceedings. Forlit then allegedly contracted Azari and others who, in turn, hired hackers. 

The indictment alleges that the hackers successfully breached the accounts of two targets who worked for a climate advocacy nonprofit in February and March of 2016 (around the time that Davies heard from the Wall Street Journal reporter) and continued their phishing spree, successfully hacking more targets, until late 2017. The indictment alleges the stolen materials were funneled through Azari and Forlit to the principal at the lobbying firm and ultimately used in lobbying work and climate litigation filings for the client. Between 2014 and 2017, Forlit’s firms allegedly earned $7 million through the scheme, including work on the climate hack.

A decade after they received a flood of phishing attempts, the targets are now poring over the unsealed indictment, trying to piece together the identity and motivations of those who attacked them a decade ago. Although the government investigation confirmed the successful hacking of 100 victims, the Forlit indictment focuses on five unnamed victims.

Lee Wasserman, director and secretary of the Rockefeller Family Foundation, has reason to believe he is “Victim 5.” He and others received letters from the DOJ stating that they were victims of the scheme, although the government never confirmed to them whether they were successfully hacked.

Wasserman believes he was targeted because he supported a Columbia Journalism School investigation into what Exxon knew about climate change that was published in the Los Angeles Times. He also met with the New York attorney general to talk about Exxon. “We think Exxon and their allies’ conduct was the most consequential corporate deception of all time,” Wasserman said. 

But the phishing attempts had a chilling effect on their accountability efforts, he added. They switched from email to phone calls, and at times, Wasserman found himself whispering because he wondered if someone had bugged his office or home. He pondered whether cars could be lurking outside to follow him or his colleagues.

A Mobil logo is seen on a gas station in Los Angeles in November 2023. Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto / Getty Images

Wasserman hopes the court process will reveal how the idea was hatched, who directed the operation, and who paid for it. “We’re all sitting on the edge of our seats waiting to see if we hear that at trial,” he said.

In 2016, Jennifer Cunningham was a partner with SKDKnickerbocker, a public affairs firm, and a policy consultant to the New York Attorney General. She was involved in the climate litigation work and recalled receiving phishing emails, which she believes were attempts to obtain information about the litigation strategy.

In an interview with Grist, she initially said the hackers were not successful. “I remember there were a couple that I really narrowly avoided, because [they appeared to be] from a colleague,” she said. Her office turned over the phishing emails to federal prosecutors.

But later, after reviewing the Forlit indictment, she was fairly certain she recognized herself in it. “Wait — I must be Victim 3?” she wrote in a text message. “If so, I guess they were successful in hacking in, which I never knew.” She hopes the court case will reveal more details, including the communication between the companies and the hackers.

Scott-Railton, who first exposed the hacking operation, said, “The #ExxonKnew hacking campaign stands out, in my mind, as one of the largest and most brazen hacking attempts I’ve ever seen against environmental organizations — or for that matter, U.S. advocacy organizations in general.” These groups continue to face digital threats, he explained; phishing attempts still occur, and hacking has progressed to include more sophisticated methods of intrusion that don’t require targets to click on anything. For instance, the Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware had been used to target human rights defenders and journalists. “I have no doubt that a version of this is going to come again,” he said.

This year, Davies received a letter from the DOJ stating that he was a “victim” in the Forlit case. He hopes that the people who ordered the hacking operation are named and held accountable.

“I still live not knowing if I was hacked,” Davies said. “I don’t have proof that they did hack me, that they did get my password. I don’t have proof that they didn’t. And that’s the thing that still rests with me: Am I secure?”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline They wanted to hold Exxon accountable. Then they got hacked. on Jul 15, 2026.

On Saturday, June 20, over 3,000 people from across Europe and around the world gathered in Central Hall Westminster in London, UK for the International...

The post Lessons from the London International Conference Against War first appeared on Spring.

Hadirnya koleksi game yang semakin lengkap membuka kesempatan bagi pemain untuk mengenal berbagai konsep permainan dalam satu platform. Mulai dari tema petualangan, mitologi, budaya Asia, hingga dunia fantasi modern, setiap permainan memiliki karakteristik dan mekanisme yang berbeda. Variasi ini menjadi salah satu alasan mengapa banyak pengguna tertarik menjelajahi berbagai pilihan yang tersedia.

Pengamat industri hiburan menilai bahwa keberagaman permainan merupakan faktor penting dalam meningkatkan pengalaman pengguna. Tidak hanya mengandalkan tampilan visual, para pengembang juga menghadirkan fitur-fitur inovatif seperti putaran bonus, animasi interaktif, serta mekanisme permainan yang dirancang agar lebih menarik. Dengan demikian, setiap permainan mampu memberikan sensasi yang berbeda tanpa kehilangan ciri khasnya.

Istilah “slot gacor” sendiri kerap digunakan oleh komunitas pemain sebagai sebutan populer untuk permainan yang dianggap memberikan pengalaman bermain yang menyenangkan berdasarkan persepsi maupun pengalaman masing-masing pengguna. Perlu dipahami bahwa hasil dalam permainan berbasis sistem acak tetap bersifat acak, sehingga tidak ada jaminan hasil tertentu pada setiap putaran. Karena itu, istilah tersebut lebih mencerminkan tren pembicaraan di kalangan komunitas daripada sebuah kepastian.

Di sisi lain, perkembangan teknologi turut mendorong kualitas permainan menjadi semakin baik. Grafis beresolusi tinggi, efek suara yang imersif, serta kompatibilitas dengan berbagai perangkat membuat pengguna dapat menikmati permainan dengan lebih nyaman. Baik melalui komputer maupun perangkat seluler, akses terhadap berbagai pilihan game kini semakin mudah dilakukan kapan saja.

Tidak hanya dari sisi teknologi, para penyedia permainan juga terus memperluas koleksi judul game dengan menghadirkan pembaruan secara berkala. Kehadiran tema-tema baru memberikan warna tersendiri bagi pemain yang ingin mencoba pengalaman berbeda. Langkah ini sekaligus mencerminkan tingginya persaingan industri dalam menghadirkan hiburan digital yang lebih inovatif dan relevan dengan minat pengguna.

Berbagai komunitas daring juga turut berperan dalam memperkenalkan permainan-permainan yang sedang menjadi perbincangan. Melalui forum diskusi maupun media sosial, para pemain saling berbagi pengalaman mengenai fitur permainan, tampilan grafis, hingga mekanisme bonus yang mereka anggap menarik. Aktivitas tersebut menciptakan ekosistem informasi yang membantu pemain mengenal lebih banyak pilihan game.

Meski demikian, para pengguna tetap disarankan untuk mengedepankan sikap bijak dalam menikmati hiburan digital. Menentukan batas waktu bermain, memahami aturan permainan, serta tidak menjadikan permainan sebagai sarana mencari keuntungan yang pasti merupakan langkah penting dalam menjaga pengalaman bermain tetap positif dan seimbang.

Secara keseluruhan, hadirnya game yang semakin beragam telah membuka cakrawala baru bagi pencinta permainan slot digital. Variasi tema, teknologi yang terus berkembang, serta inovasi fitur menjadi daya tarik utama yang membuat kategori permainan ini terus diperbincangkan. Dengan memilih permainan sesuai preferensi pribadi dan menikmati hiburan secara bertanggung jawab, pengguna dapat merasakan pengalaman bermain yang lebih nyaman, informatif, dan menyenangkan.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to close the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, a 6,500-acre agricultural research station in Maryland that is home to the nation’s premier bee research and disease diagnosis hub. The closure comes at a critical moment for bees.

Issue 94, Green Energy Times’ July –October 2026 Edition, has gone to press and will soon be available at the usual locations.

It can be downloaded as a pdf file HERE.

Individual articles will soon be available. 

"The effects on farmers, livestock and crops have been catastrophic. The AGRIFISH Council, which is due to meet on 13 July 2026, must include measures to tackle this situation."

The post ECVC: The AGRIFISH Council Must Take Action to Tackle the Intense Heatwave Situation appeared first on La Via Campesina - EN.

TV must showcase real animal lives Channel Comment brendan 15th July 2026 Teaser Media

In 2024, the Santa Barbara Council of Governments won a grant from Caltrans to use artificial intelligence to design a countywide bike map in collaboration with UC Santa Barbara and Simon Fraser University. The grant promised to teach AI to map bicycle infrastructure and develop a universal, regional wayfinding plan and would “revolutionize bicycle infrastructure mapping” according to a statement.

Now that revolution will be put to the test.

This week, the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments (SBCAG) launched the map in English and Spanish and is seeking feedback from bicyclists to test the map’s accuracy.

“The map is only as good as the information behind it,” SBCAG Transportation Planner Peter Williamson said in announcing the project. “The people who know our streets and neighborhoods best are the people who live, work and ride here.”

The interactive map uses artificial intelligence trained on Google Street View imagery and OpenStreetMap data to estimate how comfortable people will feel bicycling on roads throughout Santa Barbara County. Riders are being asked to review the map and report missing bike lanes, incorrect route information, inaccurate comfort ratings, and other errors before the public comment period ends on August 14.

Unlike traditional bicycle maps that simply show where bike facilities exist, the AI model attempts to classify streets based on rider comfort by analyzing roadway characteristics including bike infrastructure, traffic volumes, speed limits, lane widths, and other features visible in street imagery and mapping data.

For transportation planners, that could make the tool useful for identifying where riders are likely to feel comfortable—or where they are likely to avoid riding altogether. But only if the model matches reality.

As transportation agencies increasingly experiment with artificial intelligence, Santa Barbara’s project may become an early test of where AI can genuinely improve bicycle planning—and where it still needs human judgment.

The SBCAG project is expected to wrap-up, including publishing its final maps, in summer 2027.

Drivers who don’t move their parked cars for street cleaning are getting in the way of New York City’s viral new hobby: picking up trash. 

Even a state Assembly Member is following the trend, and complaining about scofflaws who refuse to move their cars when the Department of Sanitation drives street sweepers down their block. 

“The amount of garbage under this car lets me know that this car does not move,” said Assembly Member Chantel Jackson (D-East Tremont) in an Instagram video documenting her neighborhood cleanup on June 27. Jackson’s camera panned to a black sedan with trash caked around each wheel. 

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“They have not been able to clean this street, so let’s get this done,” Jackson narrated before using her trash picker and broom to try to clean the accumulated litter. “I don’t see any tickets on it, so I’m really not sure what the situation is with this car, if it’s abandoned or if the ticket agent is just skipping this one. I tried to clean it as much as I could but it’s really better if the cars move to get this done.”

Facts on the ground

Ninety-seven percent of New York City’s street parking is completely free. All the city asks of drivers is that they move their cars a few times a week for approximately 90 minutes so that DSNY’s street sweepers can vacuum up debris.

This arrangement has firmly lodged itself in city folklore. New Yorkers romanticize the “street-cleaning shuffle,” in which motorists wait in double-parked cars until sweepers come through and then quickly reclaim their parking spot. Documentary filmmaker Jon Wilson devoted an entire episode of his popular HBO series “How To” to the practice. 

In reality, free street parking encourages drivers to use the public curb as long-term car storage. The city’s meager fine for failing to move for the street sweepers — just $65 — is far less than the cost of a dedicated garage. Drivers leave their cars on the street and gladly pay the fines because parking in a garage is oftentimes far more expensive. This allows trash to accumulate underneath cars, adding to the buildup of filth in the city.

“I think there’s some deep problems in the system, and I do think that tickets would have to [increase] if the city actually wants the behavior to be changed,” said David Clarke, who grew his Instagram account @TrashTalkNYC to 45,000 followers in just 48 days by posting a daily video cleaning up city streets with little more than a picker and a broom.

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Based on his experience cleaning streets across the city, Clarke said the city’s official street cleaning system doesn’t work at all. On his block on 171st Street, he has never once seen the street sweeper make it down without any cars in the way. 

“On my street, the street sweeper only makes it to the curb once every ten times,” he told Streetsblog. “I have strong feelings about it, because to me, at that point, you might as well just have someone with a broom come through. Like, why are we paying for a system that we can’t use?”

Clarke recently began using a car to transport gear for his volunteer meetups. Looking for parking in a safe lot revealed the financial pressures at play.

“The tickets have to be proportional to the cost of parking in the area,” Clarke said of current alternate-side parking penalties. A local garage asked him to pay $400 per month to park his new ride. From his close observations of his block, he estimates he would get a $65 ticket around twice a month if he left it on the street for free — far less than the monthly garage rent.

“The city is just occasionally enforcing tickets, but not really solving the problem,” he said. 

Put a sticker on it

Both DSNY and the NYPD can ticket cars for staying put during street cleaning. NYPD issues around 1.5 million tickets per year, while DSNY issues around 500,000 per year, according to DSNY.

Some lawmakers want the city to adopt a more confrontational approach when discouraging drivers from blocking street sweepers. The city council recently passed a bill, sponsored by Council Member Gale Brewer (D-Upper West Side), that reinstates the practice of applying hard-to-remove stickers on the windows of law-breakers’ precious vehicles. 

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In May, the City Council passed a resolution that called on Albany to allow the city to install automated enforcement cameras on street sweeper vehicles. Under the relevant legislation, S1891A, those cameras would catch the license plates of cars blocking the way and issue a ticket automatically. The pending bill, sponsored by state Senator Robert Jackson (D-Upper Manhattan) and heralded by DSNY, cleared the State Senate in early June but didn’t get a vote in the State Assembly before the year’s legislative session ended.

In the absence of effective enforcement, DSNY has resorted to public shaming. Beyond the resurrected stickers, the department publishes a “Hall of Shame” of “Sidewalk Slobs” — the agency’s term for property owners and businesses who neglect to keep the sidewalk outside their buildings clean, as required by law.

After all, the department told Streetsblog the city doesn’t give out enough tickets to deter the practice. Under two million parkers are ticketed per year for not moving their cars, but you probably don’t remember the last time you walked down an entirely compliant block.

“Nearly 500,000 car owners disregard street cleaning regulations every week, keeping us from cleaning more than 3,000 miles of streets,” DSNY Commissioner Gregory Anderson said in a statement. “Our goal here is not to issue more summonses, but to send a message that if you decide that your convenience is more important than clean neighborhoods, then yes, you will receive a summons. And if Albany lets us send that message loudly and clearly to all neighborhoods, people will finally start to move their cars. We don’t want to issue summonses — we just want to clean the streets.”

Fill a government vacuum

DSNY has a complicated relationship with do-gooders like Clarke and Assembly Member Jackson, in part due to burdensome bureaucratic process that requires official city approval for volunteer clean-ups.

To officially organize a street clean-up in NYC, volunteers must plan it at least two weeks in advance. The department only approves clean-ups on streets and sidewalks, not in other public places like parks or beaches. The organized clean-ups are intended for the department to share supplies, but New York’s Strongest won’t stop people like Clarke from venturing out on their own, the agency said.

However, trash pickers still risk fines if they leave bagged trash in the wrong spot. DSNY recently established a rule that forbids any entity that cleans the streets — including business improvement districts and neighborhood associations, but also random groups of volunteers — from placing “any amount of refuse or recycling next to or against any public litter basket.”

“They make it very difficult for grassroots efforts,” said Samantha MacBride, who worked at DSNY for nearly 20 years in sustainable waste management and now teaches at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. “The type of spontaneous community groups, like this sort of newest generation, that doesn’t work for [DSNY], because it’s very bureaucratic.” 

MacBride works in an academic field known as Discard Studies, which examines and critiques popular assumptions about waste, including those related to volunteers who pick up litter.

“Even though I critique individualizing environmental problems in the area of recycling, with litter it’s different, because it is very close to actual individual behavior and individual daily life and individual outcomes,” she said, adding that social media accounts like Clarke’s “really show the ingenuity and how much further ahead socially and technologically these groups are than large city agencies.” 

But for all the positives, MacBride cautioned against an outcome where people are picking up the government’s slack. 

“When any type of voluntary effort starts to substitute for basic provision of services,” she said, “there is reason to be concerned.”

Correction: An earlier this story incorrectly stated that Clarke had used his GoFundMe money to purchase a car. He already owned the car.

The federal government would be required to set aside a portion of future transportation funding for high-speed rail under a new Congressional bill aimed at countering a Republican-led bid to just keep building highways.

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) has re-introduced the American High-Speed Rail Act, which authorizes $205 billion over five years to boost high-speed rail and, most important, would make funding for high-speed rail development automatic rather than subject to normal annual appropriations.

“America deserves the same world-class high-speed rail system that other countries have had now for decades,” said Moulton. “This isn’t just about improving convenience, it’s about creating smart, business-driven investment that will create millions of good-paying jobs, connect communities big and small, fight climate change, and ensure America leads the way in the infrastructure of the future.”

The bill puts an emphasis on transit-oriented development, expanding incentives to ensure that new rail hubs catalyze affordable housing and commercial growth in surrounding areas. It also has provisions that would encourage private investment through grants and loan eligibility and increase funding flexibility for the timing and sources of the non-federal costs.

“This legislation marks a transformative step toward creating a more connected, sustainable, and prosperous future for all Americans,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), a co-sponsor. “By investing in a national high-speed rail network, we are not only alleviating strain on our highways and airports and creating safer communities, but we are also strengthening productivity and lowering carbon emissions.”

The bill would be a necessary counterweight to the BUILD America 250 Act currently making its way through negotiations.

As Streetsblog USA has reported, the House’s proposed infrastructure legislation would be uniquely bad for passenger rail. Unlike Moulton’s proposal, it does not fund any specific funding beyond what’s secured by the Highway Trust Fund.. The proposed bill also contrasts the robust Biden-era Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, expiring on Sept. 30, that secured record amounts of funding for rail projects.

Crucially, roughly $475 billion of the $580 billion that the BUILD American 250 bill would allocate over its five years is automatically set aside for highway funding without requiring annual appropriations. Meanwhile, the remaining $106 billion for transit will be subject to the give-and-take of the annual appropriation process, which, as NACTO put it in a statement, “makes it more challenging for local agencies to plan and build transit projects, as funding is not guaranteed.” 

Never a better time

The guaranteed high-speed rail funding would come as crucial high-speed rail projects — such as the California High-speed rail project between San Francisco and Los Angeles and another between Chicago and St. Louis —  are struggling to get off the ground.

The latter proposal, in particular, could use the funding guarantee after commissioners of the Illinois High Speed Rail Commission objected to the most recent cost and ridership projections.

The Commission has focused on the route that has the highest projected ridership of the options and is uniquely well-positioned for development because it’s wholly contained in Illinois. The line is projected to see over 2.8 million riders annually, almost five times the current annual ridership. The journey would be two and a half hours, a dramatic improvement from the four-and-a-half-hour car ride and the five-hour Amtrak offering.

Questionably, the projections did not account for any future transit-oriented development, underestimating the broader effects of the project. Their projections also don’t consider positive effects on the greater Midwest region. 

The High Speed Rail Alliance’s vision for a network in the Midwest hinges on Chicago as a core driver of intercity ridership in the network, with lines branching out to other midwestern hubs like Minneapolis-St. Paul, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati. 

Also overlooked in the projections is induced demand — the principle that increasing the supply or quality of something makes consumers want more. It’s often applied to “one more lane” highway expansion that leads to something like the 26-lane Katy Freeway in Houston.

The same logic applies to high-speed rail. Building it will make taking the train more attractive — it will then be faster, cheaper, and more convenient — leading to higher ridership.

For example, the Amtrak Borealis line between St. Paul and Chicago debuted in May 2024 and it beat projected ridership by nearly 60 percent even though it is just regular passenger rail service,. 

The line’s success shows that demand for safe, reliable transportation options for Americans is there and is often underestimated. A frequent and reliable high-speed option would only make the offering that much sweeter for passengers.

Americans are ready for a high-speed rail network.

In a survey conducted for the U.S High Speed Rail Association, 72 percent of registered voters say that they support creating a nationwide high-speed rail network.

The survey tells us that Americans are tired of lackluster rail options. 

Rail investment in the most-densely populated regions in the country is a no-brainer. High-speed rail connections in cities like Chicago and San Francisco that already have robust public transit networks would eliminate many car trips and lead some residents to abandon the costs and hassles of car ownership entirely.

For more information, visit the High Speed Rail Alliance.

We’ve been busy at Sound Transit. We’re in the midst of one of the most-ambitious transit expansions in the country. We set all-time records for daily and monthly ridership during the World Cup during our region’s moment as host to visitors from around the globe. And our board just closed a daunting gap in the agency’s long-term financial plan, setting us on a sustainable trajectory to continue building and operating a world-class transit system for decades to come. 

We’ve done all this while growing our light rail ridership beyond that of systems in L.A., Boston, and San Diego to claim the top spot nationally, and while we’ve driven down our monthly hours of unplanned service disruptions to a new low since we started tracking that metric in 2024. 

In March, we took a giant step forward in our system expansion when we opened the Crosslake Connection, a new light rail segment linking Seattle to the tech-oriented communities of Bellevue and Redmond on the east side of Lake Washington. The feat required groundbreaking engineering — it is, after all, the world’s first passenger rail on a floating bridge. And the support Sound Transit received on the day we cut the ribbon is something none of us at the agency will ever forget.

Getting to that moment, however, required overcoming major challenges. There were pockets of community opposition. There were lawsuits. There were thorny engineering problems to solve. The opening was ultimately delayed by almost three years. 

At a high level, what got us to that ribbon-cutting was an abiding commitment from all who worked on the project to see it through to completion. Beyond that, there are several discrete lessons we took away from the Crosslake opening that I believe can be applied to just about any ambitious public works project. Following are three of them:

Lesson 1: Know and uphold your values

Part of how we overcame project obstacles was by adhering to a clear set of values that guided our decision-making process. These longstanding agency values of safety, integrity, collaboration, and quality were not abstract principles, but pillars in the practical framework that allowed us to navigate each challenge we encountered.

In our planning of the Crosslake segment, some residents in a nearby jurisdiction were unhappy with a change in highway lane configuration due to the addition of light rail onto the bridge. In response to a lawsuit they brought — one that would have delayed permits — we eventually reached an agreement to carry out some mitigation measures.

When we made it to the Crosslake opening years later, city leaders from this community praised the new segment, even calling rail on the bridge “one of the most beautiful public train routes anywhere.”

Light rail on the I-90 floating bridge.

What started as a contentious legal battle eventually evolved into a productive relationship. Over time, we built trust with this community by adhering to our values — by being transparent and collaborative in response to both local and regional needs.

Lesson 2: Iterate, refine and test

Being the first to do something comes with difficulties and risks. Our capital delivery team and partners faced a tall order when asked to run rail across a floating bridge. There was of course no blueprint from elsewhere to reference, so it required ingenuity, resolve, and a willingness to challenge our own thinking.

To ensure we developed a piece of rail infrastructure that could move in six directions and accommodate changing water levels, wind and waves, and vehicle traffic volumes, we designed a novel track bridge inspired by systems used to retrofit large buildings for earthquakes. We then put our design to the test using full-scale models at the Transportation Technology Center in Colorado, with about 10,000 sensors placed on the trains and tracks to collect data. See this video for an in-depth technical look at the bridge project.

Once we entered the construction phase, we again had to lean on our values of safety, accountability and adaptability in navigating fabrication challenges so we could deliver not only a system that worked, but one that will function reliably and safely for generations to come. 

Lesson 3: Connect the big picture to the details

When I started as CEO, one of my first requests of staff was to hand me a delivery schedule for the Crosslake project. The project team and I then reviewed it step by step, line by line, to identify any place where we could compress the schedule without compromising safety or system resilience. In doing this, we were able to draw clearer lines between how specific steps were being carried out and related impacts to the overall schedule. 

The exercise bore fruit, as it enabled us to move up the previously assumed opening date by several months. This demonstrated how an organization’s leader is often uniquely positioned to coordinate efforts in service of a primary objective, encourage those working seemingly intractable issues to stop “suffering in silence,” accept an appropriate level of risk, and seek collaborative solutions to the toughest questions. 

After opening the Crosslake segment, our agency and region were immediately rewarded. New riders begin using the newly-expanded system to commute to and from work, attend events, or simply enjoy a trip to one of the many destinations now accessible via a $3 train trip.

• How would the BUILD America 250 Act affect your state and congressional district? In terms of raw dollars, New York and California have the most to lose from House Republicans’ five-year transportation funding bill. However, rural red states would also lose a substantial portion of their transit funding. (Urban Institute)
• Two-thirds of Americans say they would pay more to live in a walkable neighborhood, but fewer support the types of development that make walkable neighborhoods possible. (Realtor.com)
• Salvage yards are having a hard time selling used EV batteries to recyclers because it’s often cheaper to mine more minerals straight from the ground. (NPR)
• Lloyd Alter, age 73, argues that states should be testing drivers in their 70s, but most are going in the opposite direction. (Carbon Upfront!)
• Climate change is going to make highway construction even more expensive. For example, it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions, to protect just one short stretch of Northern California highway from increased flooding. (Grist)
• Drivers kill eight people a day in Florida at least partly because, unlike European countries with far lower traffic death rates, the state is not serious about punishing speeders. (Florida Politics)
• Denver built, widened or repaired 41 miles of sidewalk last year, which only leaves another 1,400 miles to go. (Denver 7)
• Only a quarter of Kansas City streetcar riders were attending a FIFA fan festival, which suggests a recent extension had as much to do with record June ridership as the World Cup. (Star)
• Columbus, Ohio has finished installing the city’s longest protected bike lane, two-and-a-half miles on North 4th Street. (WOSU)
• Omaha is redesigning Ames Avenue as part of its Vision Zero plan. (3 News Now)
• Watch Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo name-drop his way out of a traffic ticket. (MeidasTouch/X)
• Portland cyclists are looking to break the world record for largest e-bike ride. (Momentum Mag)