- Blinken takes aim at Israeli settlements; says US will press ahead with Israel-Saudi normalization The Associated Press
- Blinken slams settlements, says Arab world ties can’t replace peace with Palestinians The Times of Israel
- Settlement expansion is obstacle to peace, Blinken tells US Israel lobby Reuters
- Secretary Antony J. Blinken at the 2023 American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Summit – United States Department of State Department of State
- Biden administration to set up new post focused on Abraham Accords The Times of Israel
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China Makes Advances in Ditching the US Dollar for Settlements — Inks Deal With Brazil and Completes First Yuan LNG Purchase – Economics Bitcoin News – Bitcoin News
- China Makes Advances in Ditching the US Dollar for Settlements — Inks Deal With Brazil and Completes First Yuan LNG Purchase – Economics Bitcoin News Bitcoin News
- Brazil, China ditch U.S. dollar for trade in favor of their own currencies TVP World
- Brazil, China aim to deepen agriculture, finance and trade cooperation CGTN
- China, Brazil to trade in local currencies – Chinadaily.com.cn China Daily
- Brazil & China Sign Agreement To Drop US Dollar And Use RMB Yuan – Real In Bilateral Trade Silk Road Briefing
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Ben & Jerry’s sues parent company in bid to block deal enabling sales at settlements
NEW YORK — Ben & Jerry’s filed a US federal lawsuit on Tuesday against its parent company, seeking to block an agreement with an Israeli firm that would allow sales of its product in the West Bank, as the legal battle over the ice cream maker’s attempted boycott of settlements continued.
The Vermont-based firm filed the civil suit in the US Southern District Court of New York against Conopco, the main US branch of Unilever, the parent company of Ben & Jerry’s.
The lawsuit argues that Unilever breached its acquisition deal with Ben & Jerry’s by announcing an agreement last week with the Israeli vendor that produces and distributes the ice cream in the country to continue sales in the West Bank, after the Ben & Jerry’s board said it was halting sales in “occupied Palestinian territory” last year.
Unilever reached an agreement with Avi Zinger, the owner of Ben & Jerry’s Israel, and his company American Quality Products (AQP), giving it permanent independence to continue sales in Israel and the West Bank with the Ben & Jerry’s logos in Hebrew and Arabic, but not English. The boycott was set to come into effect at the end of 2022, when Ben & Jerry’s contracts with Zinger were due to expire.
Ben & Jerry’s is seeking an injunction to prevent the move, as well as damages from the agreement and all profits Unilever makes from it. Ben & Jerry’s had previously said it would no longer profit from sales in Israel.
The court denied a Ben & Jerry’s request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Unilever’s agreement with Zinger.
In response to the lawsuit, Unilever told The Times of Israel it “had the right to enter this arrangement. The deal has already closed. We do not comment on pending litigation.”
Avi Zinger, Israeli manufacturer and distributor of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (YouTube screenshot)
Alyza D. Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which represents Zinger and AQP, said in response, “It’s a done deal. Unilever chose the morally correct, socially just and principled path when it ensured that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream would always continue to be produced and sold in Israel and the West Bank.”
“Avi Zinger stands arm in arm with Unilever and commends Unilever’s decision to forcefully defend its agreement with him,” Lewin told The Times of Israel.
Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s have been out of sync on the settlement boycott since the start and seemed to have been increasingly at odds. Tuesday’s legal filing appeared to be the first direct legal dispute between the two sides.
The lawsuit against Conopco and Unilever seeks to block the transfer of Ben & Jerry’s branding to the Israeli company and prevent sales in the West Bank without approval from the ice cream company, and to dissolve the agreement Unilever made with Zinger. Unilever mostly conducts its US business through Conopco, which is wholly owned by Unilever United States. The lawsuit also refers to the defendant as Unilever. It wasn’t immediately clear why Ben & Jerry’s filed the lawsuit against Conopco, and not against Unilever US, although it may have been for reasons related to the case’s jurisdiction.
Pro-Israel demonstrators protest against Ben and Jerry’s over its boycott of the West Bank, and against antisemitism, in Manhattan, New York City, on August 12, 2021. (Luke Tress/Flash90)
The dispute focuses on the autonomy of the Ben & Jerry’s board and its commitment to its “core values” and social mission, which the company says is integral to its identity and business success. Ben & Jerry’s says its owners violated agreements related to its board and social commitments by transferring the brand to the Israeli branch.
When Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, it granted the board autonomy “for safeguarding the integrity of the essential elements of the Ben & Jerry’s brand-name,” the lawsuit said. The Ben & Jerry’s board made the West Bank boycott announcement independently of Unilever. The UK-based multinational wholly owns Ben & Jerry’s and has some authority over financial and operational matters, but the ice cream maker retained its independence on other issues in the acquisition agreement.
Unilever’s decision to go against the Ben & Jerry’s board and allow sales in the West Bank violated their merger agreement, the lawsuit alleges, calling it an attempt to “usurp the Board’s contractual authority and nullify its previous decision prohibiting the sale of Ben & Jerry’s products in the West Bank.” It also said transferring the logos to the Israeli company in a unilateral decision was a violation of its merger agreement.
The lawsuit noted that Unilever said it “recognized the right” of Ben & Jerry’s to make decisions about its “social missions” after the settlement boycott was announced last year, but “abruptly reversed course” with the agreement last week, telling the board about it on June 23, shortly before it was made public.
“Stunned, the Chair of the Independent Board attempted to engage in discussions with Unilever, requesting a copy of the transfer agreement and time for the Independent Board to review. She received neither,” the lawsuit said.
“Unilever’s unilateral decision was made without the consent of Ben & Jerry’s Independent Board of Directors, the entity contractually empowered with protecting Ben & Jerry’s brand,” the lawsuit said. It seeks an injunction restraining Unilever from “violating the express terms” of their merger agreement to “preserve the status quo and protect the brand and social integrity Ben & Jerry’s has spent decades building.”
The board decided to file litigation against the move on Friday in a 5-2 decision, with its two Unilever appointees dissenting.
The lawsuit refers to sales in the West Bank only and does not refer specifically to settlements, Jerusalem or sales in Israel at any point.
Pedestrians walk on Church St., past the Ben & Jerry’s shop, in Burlington, Vermont, March 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Ben & Jerry’s said its progressive ethos is integral to the company and its business success, tracing its “social mission” back to its Jewish founders, who decided to make the business “more than just an ice-cream company” in the early 1980s.
“As a result of its decades of advocacy, Ben & Jerry’s had become the ‘gold standard’ for corporate activism,” the lawsuit said, submitting positive media coverage of its advocacy as evidence.
The lawsuit was signed by Anuradha Mittal, the chair of the Ben & Jerry’s board.
Ben Cohen, one of the company founders, submitted a statement saying that he supported the lawsuit and the West Bank boycott, and believed the Unilever decision violated the acquisition agreement. Jerry Greenfield, the other co-founder, included a statement in support of Ben & Jerry’s social mission, without addressing the West Bank dispute.
The lawsuit said the board started receiving complaints about sales in the West Bank in 2013 and began looking into the issue, and that its decision to withdraw from the area was the result of a 2019 fact-finding mission to Israel and the West Bank. It did not say why the decision was not announced until 2021. Ben & Jerry’s was under heavy pressure from anti-Israel activists to cut sales to Israel at the time due to the war between Israel and Gaza terror groups.
Zinger and his company refused to comply. Their license to sell the ice cream was set to expire at the end of 2022, meaning the boycott had not yet come into effect.
Ben & Jerry’s announcement of the boycott triggered massive blowback for Unilever. A number of US states enacted laws barring Israel boycotts, pulling close to a billion dollars from Unilever, and the company’s value plummeted over $20 billion in the months after the boycott announcement, at a time when the market was on the rise. Over 30 states have anti-boycott legislation and 12 state attorneys general and treasurers from seven states also called on Unilever to reconsider the boycott.
Pro-Israel demonstrators protest against Ben & Jerry’s over its boycott of the West Bank, and against antisemitism, in Manhattan, New York City, on August 12, 2021. (Luke Tress/Flash90)
Ben & Jerry’s is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Unilever, despite its board’s independence on some matters. Unilever is a UK-based conglomerate and one of the largest consumer goods companies in the world, with some 400 brands and a market value of around $116 billion.
Ben & Jerry’s Israel and Zinger had sued Unilever in US federal court in New Jersey, saying the company was violating US and Israeli laws and illegally terminating their business relationship. The agreement announced last week appeared to have resolved the dispute, until Tuesday’s court filings.
Under the terms of his deal with Unilever, Zinger has independence to produce and sell Ben & Jerry’s products in Israel and the West Bank in perpetuity. The monetary terms of the arrangement were kept confidential.
Israel and its supporters hailed the agreement as a major victory against the boycott movement against Israel. Ben & Jerry’s did not explicitly endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement targeting the entire Jewish state, but its settlement boycott has been lumped in with the movement by activists on both sides and the BDS movement got on board with its boycott.
The decision sparked uproar in Israel and among some US Jewish groups, many of whom called it antisemitic, since the company has no boycotts against any other area of the world.
Critics of the attempted West Bank boycott note that Ben & Jerry’s allows its products to be sold in states with atrocious human rights records, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran and China. The company has not taken action regarding other disputed territories including Tibet, Crimea, Western Sahara and Kashmir.
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Russian Finance Ministry Calls On Crypto for International Settlements
The Russian Ministry of Finance submitted a new draft of a bill that calls for using crypto for international settlements payments.
The bill, “On Digital Currencies,” was introduced in February, which would remedy previous drafts seeking to ban crypto as a form of payment, rather than exploring its merits as an investment vehicle.
The new bill considers proposals made by the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Digital Development, the Federal Tax Service, and the Center for National Projects of the Analytical Center. The Finance Ministry will discuss the new bill with the United Russia party.
Limited scope for foreign trade
A central bank representative noted that while it’s theoretically possible to use cryptocurrencies for foreign trade, such applications are limited in their scope. He said that cryptocurrencies “serve much fewer payments than traditional payment systems,” and international regulators can detect large transactions and stop them.
In February, the Central Bank proposed a ban on cryptocurrencies, covering cryptocurrency mining, circulation, and possession of crypto, imposing a one billion rubles fine on anyone in contravention of these laws.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Binance has prevented the deposit and trading of cryptocurrencies of Russians with assets over $10,000 (EUR 10,000). Russia currently holds $630 billion in reserves, with half of those reserves being held abroad in commercial banks and foreign central banks.
The Bank of Russia’s bill would prevent banks from engaging in crypto services and owning cryptocurrency.
Another attempt to evade sanctions?
Maxim Bashkatove, the head of the Legal Development Direction at the Center for Strategic Research, said that the proposal to use cryptocurrencies as a settlement vehicle for foreign transactions, has been considered for some time.
Bashkatove emphasized that using cryptocurrency in this way should not be misinterpreted as Russia avoiding sanctions but rather as an alternative to international banking protocol SWIFT and payment processors MasterCard and Visa, all of which have pulled out of Russia.
He said that this application of cryptocurrencies aligns with one of cryptocurrency’s original tenets, which is removing intermediaries from transactions.
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For Human Settlements on Mars, Solar Power May Beat Nuclear Energy
This artist’s concept depicts astronauts and human habitats on Mars. Credit: NASA
Photovoltaics may be more practical for long stays on
Most scientists and engineers who have considered the logistics of living on the surface of Mars have assumed that nuclear power is the best option, owing in large part to its reliability and 24/7 operation. Miniaturized Kilopower nuclear fission reactors have improved over the last decade to the point where 
An artist’s rendering of a crewed Martian biomanufactory powered by photovoltaics and capable of synthesizing food and pharmaceuticals, manufacturing biopolymers and recycling biological waste. Credit: Artwork by Davian Ho
The new study, published on April 27, 2022, in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, uses a systems approach to actually compare these two technologies head-to-head for a six-person extended mission to Mars involving a 480-day stay on the planet’s surface before returning to Earth. That is the most likely scenario for a mission that reduces the transit time between the two planets and extends time on the surface beyond a 30-day window.
Their analysis found that for settlement sites over nearly half the Martian surface, solar is comparable or better than nuclear, if you take into account the weight of the solar panels and their efficiency — as long as some daytime energy is used to produce hydrogen gas for use in fuel cells to power the colony at night or during sandstorms.
“Photovoltaic energy generation coupled to certain energy storage configurations in molecular hydrogen outperforms nuclear fusion reactors over 50% of the planet’s surface, mainly within those regions around the equatorial band, which is in fairly sharp contrast to what has been proposed over and over again in the literature, which is that it will be nuclear power,” said UC Berkeley bioengineering doctoral student Aaron Berliner, one of two first authors of the study.
Astronauts traveling to Mars will need to minimize the weight of the power system they take with them from Earth. Photovoltaics would be the best choice if their planned settlement site is in the yellow area on this flattened map of Mars. Also shown are the sites of previous missions that have landed on Mars, including Jezero Crater (upper right), which NASA’s rover Perseverance is now exploring. Credit: Image by Anthony Abel and Aaron Berliner, UC Berkeley
The study gives a new perspective on Mars colonization and provides a road map for deciding which other technologies to deploy when planning manned missions to other planets or moons.
“This paper takes a global view of what power technologies are available and how we might deploy them, what are the best-use cases for them and where do they come up short,” said co-first author Anthony Abel, a graduate student in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “If humanity collectively decides that we want to go to Mars, this kind of systems-level approach is necessary to accomplish it safely and minimize cost in a way that’s ethical. We want to have a clear-eyed comparison between options, whether we’re deciding which technologies to use, which locations to go to on Mars, how to go and whom to bring.”
Longer missions have greater power needs
In the past, NASA’s estimates of the power needs of astronauts on Mars have generally focused on short stays, which don’t require power-hungry processes for growing food, manufacturing construction materials or producing chemicals. But as NASA and leaders of companies now building rockets that could go to Mars — including Elon Musk, CEO of
Humans on Mars would need to use the only raw materials available — water ice, atmospheric gases, the Martian soil and sunlight — to make everything they need for survival. Researchers like those in CUBES, based at UC Berkeley, are working on ways to turn these raw materials into food, medicine, fuel and structural materials. This flow chart shows how in situ resource utilization (ISRU) turns the raw materials into a form that can be used to synthesize food and pharmaceuticals (FPS) and manufacture biopolymers (ISM) for use by the crew. Waste is collected and reused (loop closure, or LC) to maximize efficiency and reduce the cost of supply logistics from Earth. Credit: Illustration by Aaron Berliner and Davian Ho, UC Berkeley
One key need is power for biomanufacturing facilities that use genetically engineered microbes to produce food, rocket fuel, plastic materials and chemicals, including drugs. Abel, Berliner and their co-authors are members of the Center for the Utilization of Biological Engineering in Space (CUBES), a multi-university effort to tweak microbes using the gene-insertion techniques of synthetic biology to supply necessary supplies for a colony.
The two researchers discovered, however, that without knowing how much power will be available for an extended mission, it was impossible to assess the practicality of many biomanufacturing processes. So, they set out to create a computerized model of various power supply scenarios and likely power demands, such as habitat maintenance — which includes temperature and pressure control — fertilizer production for agriculture, methane production for rocket propellant to return to Earth, and bioplastics production for manufacturing spare parts.
Pitted against a Kilopower nuclear system were photovoltaics with three power storage options: batteries and two different techniques for producing hydrogen gas from solar energy — by electolysis and directly by photoelectrochemical cells. In the latter cases, the hydrogen is pressurized and stored for later use in a fuel cell to produce power when the solar panels are not.
Only photovoltaic power with electrolysis — using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen — was competitive with nuclear power: It proved more cost-effective per kilogram than nuclear over nearly half the planet’s surface.
The main criterion was weight. The researchers assumed that a rocket ferrying a crew to Mars could carry a payload of about 100 tons, exclusive of fuel, and calculated how much of that payload would need to be devoted to a power system for use on the planet’s surface. A journey to and from Mars would take about 420 days — 210 days each way. Surprisingly, they found that the weight of a power system would be less than 10% of the entire payload.
For a landing site near the equator, for example, they estimated that the weight of solar panels plus hydrogen storage would be about 8.3 tons, versus 9.5 tons for a Kilopower nuclear reactor system.
Their model also specifies how to tweak photovoltaic panels to maximize efficiency for the different conditions at sites on Mars. Latitude affects the intensity of sunlight, for example, while dust and ice in the atmosphere can scatter longer wavelengths of light.
Advances in photovoltaics
Abel said that photovoltaics are now highly efficient at converting sunlight into electricity, though the best performers are still expensive. The most crucial new innovation, however, is a lightweight and flexible solar panel, which makes storage on the outbound rocket easier and the cost of transport less.
“The silicon panels that you have on your roof, with steel construction, glass backing, et cetera, just won’t compete with the new and improved nuclear, but newer lightweight, flexible panels all of a sudden really, really change that conversation,” Abel said.
He noted, too, that lighter weight means more panels can be transported to Mars, providing backup for any panels that fail. While kilowatt nuclear power plants provide more power, fewer are needed, so if one goes down, the colony would lose a significant proportion of its power.
Berliner, who is also pursuing a degree in nuclear engineering, came into the project with a bias toward nuclear power, while Abel, whose undergraduate thesis was about new innovations in photovoltaics, was more in favor of solar power.
“I feel like this paper really stems from a healthy scientific and engineering disagreement on the merits of nuclear versus solar power, and that really the work is just us trying to figure out and settle a bet,” Berliner said. “which I think I lost, based on the configurations we chose in order to publish this. But it’s a happy loss, for sure.”
Reference: “Photovoltaics-Driven Power Production Can Support Human Exploration on Mars” by Anthony J. Abel, Aaron J. Berliner, Mia Mirkovic, William D. Collins, Adam P. Arkin and Douglas S. Clark, 27 April 2022, Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences.
DOI: 10.3389/fspas.2022.868519
Other co-authors of the paper are Mia Mirkovic, a researcher at UC Berkeley at the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center; William Collins, UC Berkeley professor-in-residence of earth and planetary science and senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab); Adam Arkin, CUBES director and the Dean A. Richard Newton Memorial Professor in UC Berkeley’s Department of Bioengineering; and Douglas Clark, the Gilbert Newton Lewis Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and dean of the College of Chemistry. Arkin and Clark are also senior faculty scientists at Berkeley Lab.
The work was funded by NASA (NNX17AJ31G) and graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation (DGE1752814).
Feds pay $128M to families after FBI bungled tips on Parkland shooting
The federal government will pay a $127.5 million settlement over the Parkland, Fla. school massacre — after it admitted the FBI didn’t follow up on two tips that could have prevented the massacre.
The legal deal announced Wednesday settles 40 lawsuits tied to the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which remains the largest high school shooting in US history.
The Department of Justice did not admit fault in the shootings, and the settlement “resolved all the cases” filed against the government by family members of the 16 shooting victims and all the survivors of the attack, a news release said.
Nikolas Cruz, 23, had pleaded guilty to killing 17 students and staff members at the school, and trying to kill 17 others when he opened fired on his former classmates and teachers with a semi-automatic weapon on Valentine’s Day in 2018.
The FBI mishandled two tips about the gunman in the months before the shooting, officials conceded to Congress a month after the shooting.
In one instance, a YouTuber had told the bureau that Cruz had posted “Im going to be a professional school shooter” on the comment section of one of his videos.
Even though the username of the poster was “Nikolas Cruz,” agents at the time said they could not determine his true identity, officials said.
In the other instance, a person who said they were friends of the Cruz family told the FBI’s West Virginia field office that Nikolas admired ISIS and was collecting assault weapons. The tipster was concerned that Cruz might shoot up a school, and told the feds he had threatened to kill his mom and was mutilating small animals.
That tip was never followed up on nor forwarded to local authorities, the feds admitted.
“The FBI could have and should have done more to investigate the information it was provided prior to the shooting,” Acting Deputy Director David Bowdich told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018.
“While we will never know if any such investigative activity would have prevented this tragedy, we clearly should have done more.”
Survivors of the shooting successfully lobbied statehouses across the country to pass a slew of gun control measures in the aftermath of the shooting.
With Post wires
SEC approves BSTX for blockchain settlements on traditional markets
The Boston Security Token Exchange (BSTX), a new facility of the Boston-based BOX exchange, received regulatory approval from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to operate as a blockchain-based securities exchange.
BSTX was launched jointly by BOX and Overstock’s blockchain arm tZERO, originally seeking approval for launching publicly-traded registered security tokens. However, the SEC approval to operate as a national securities exchange allows BSTX to use blockchain technology for faster settlements in traditional markets. According to the SEC,
“The Commission notes that the [BSTX] Exchange’s current proposal does not involve the trading of digital tokens and such a proposal, or any other additional use of blockchain technology.”
While the SEC has previously denied BSTX permission to offer crypto-focused services, the latest approval allows the facility to use a proprietary market data feed, BSTX Market Data Blockchain.
In addition, BSTX will also use blockchain technology to help investors experience faster transaction times on the same day (“T+0”) or the next day (“T+1”), instead of the standard two business-day (“T+2”) settlement cycle sported by traditional markets.
Along with the regulatory approval based on BSTX’s rule change proposals (SR-BOX-2021-06), the SEC placed four conditions for BOX in line with BSTX’s operations.
The requirement includes joining all relevant national market system plans related to equities trading, ensuring Regulatory Services Agreement with FINRA, Intermarket Surveillance Group membership for the BSTX facility, and an applicable governance structure.
Related: SEC reportedly probing crypto lending products by Gemini and Celsius
In line with the above developments, the SEC is also reportedly reviewing some of the high-yield crypto lending products offered by Gemini, Celsius Network and Voyager Digital.
As Cointelegraph reported, the SEC is conducting an inquiry into considering registering crypto lending services as securities. A Bloomberg report on the matter suggests that the SEC’s main concern lies with the high-yield offering by crypto lending services.
Princess Haya: Court orders Dubai ruler to pay ex-wife $728m — one of the UK’s largest ever divorce settlements
The figure will be used to cover Princess Haya’s security costs for the rest of her life, as well as ongoing costs for the couple’s two children — Al Jalila Bint Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Sheikh Zayed Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum — with an upfront payment of $333 (£251.5m) due in the next three months.
There is no fixed value on the total settlement, as the court ruled that Sheikh Mohammed should pay the annual security costs for his two children, aged nine and 14, for the rest of their lives or until a further court order is issued.
In his written judgement published Tuesday, Mr Justice Moor found that the biggest threat facing Princess Haya and her children Jalila and Zayed, is from “[Sheikh Mohammed] himself, not from outside sources.”
The determination was made in reference to the Sheikh’s “campaign” of intimidation inflicted on Princess Haya, including “his ability to make use of the Pegasus software, which is only available to governments,” to spy on the Princess and her staff, a revelation which surfaced in court documents in October.
Other details about Sheikh Mohammed and Princess Haya’s married life were disclosed in the written judgment, including evidence that the princess paid four security staff some £6.7 million ($8.8 million) in blackmail money to stay silent over an affair she had with one of them.
Details of the affair were heard in court earlier in the case, including allegations from the Princess that she had received a threatening phone call from Sheikh Mohammed about it at the time which left her feeling “terrified.”
Following the ruling, a spokesperson for Sheikh Mohammed said he has always made sure his children are provided for.
“The court has now made its ruling on finances and he does not intend to comment further,” said the spokesperson in a statement.
“He asks that the media respect the privacy of his children and do not intrude into their lives in the UK.”
The divorce settlement marks the final stage in a years-long battle between the estranged couple, during which the UK high court determined that Sheikh Mohammed used his “immense wealth, political power and international influence” in an attempt to bully and silence the 47-year-old princess.
A separate ruling delivered in March 2020 concluded Sheikh Mohammed had previously organized the abduction of two of his daughters and forcibly returned them to Dubai, where he held them against their will.
The Sheikh has repeatedly denied all claims raised in the case.
CNN’s Caroline Faraj contributed to this report.
NYT: Agreement reached to scrap race as a factor in NFL concussion settlements
The Times reviewed a copy of the agreement that is now under seal pending a review by US District Judge Anita B. Brody, according to the docket.
In the 46-page document, the NFL and other parties said, “No Race Norms or Race Demographic Estimates — whether Black or White — shall be used in the Settlement Program going forward” and no party is allowed to appeal the claims based on the merit of race or the use of race norms.
The Times report also said an expert panel will organize new norms that will be applicable to “all future neuropsychological tests under the program, all claims that have not yet been ruled on, and all claims that are currently on appeal in which race norms or race demographic estimates may be at issue.”
“We look forward to the Court’s prompt approval of the agreement, which provides for a race-neutral evaluation process that will ensure diagnostic accuracy and fairness in the Concussion Settlement,” Brad Karp, a lawyer for the NFL, said in a statement to the Times.
In 2013, the NFL settled a class-action lawsuit brought by thousands of former players and their families that accused the league of concealing what it knew about the dangers of concussions.
The league agreed to pay $765 million, without admitting fault, to fund medical exams and compensate players for concussion-related health issues, among other things.
Then in 2020, two retired players sued the NFL for allegedly discriminating against Black players who submitted claims in that settlement. The players, Najeh Davenport and Kevin Henry, said the NFL race-corrected their neurological exams, which prevented them from being compensated.
According to court documents, former players being evaluated for neurocognitive impairment were assumed to have started with worse cognitive function if they were Black. So if a Black player and a White player received the exact same scores on a battery of thinking and memory tests, the Black player would appear to have suffered less impairment. And therefore, the lawsuit stated, would be less likely to qualify for a payout.
In early March, a judge dismissed the players’ lawsuit and ordered a mediator to address concerns about how race correction was being used.
CNN has reached out to Christopher Seeger, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, and the NFL, but has not yet received responses.
Martian cave entrances may offer the perfect radiation shelter for human settlements
There are very good reasons why Mars is such a desolate, barren landscape. With no thick atmosphere nor a magnetic field, the Red Planet’s surface is bombarded daily by radiation up to 900 times higher than seen on Earth. However, some places are sheltered. New research has found that cave entrances are shielded from the harmful radiation that normally hits Mars. This may make them ideal as both sites for future settlements and robotic missions meant to scour for signs of alien life.
Despite amazing advances in space exploration in the last decade, if we’re going to take the idea of settling Mars sometime during this century seriously, there are many challenges that need to be overcome. That’s unless we’re content with one-way suicide missions.
There’s no shortage of environmental hazards out to kill any astronaut bold enough to dare set foot on Mars. For one, the planet only has 0.7% of Earth’s sea-level pressure, meaning any human on Mars must wear a full pressure suit or stay barricaded inside a pressure-controlled chamber, otherwise oxygen wouldn’t flow through the bloodstream and the body could swell and bleed out.
Then there’s the issue of radiation. Mars is farther away from the Sun than Earth, receiving roughly 60% of the power per square meter seen on a similar site on Earth. But since Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field to deflect energetic particles, coupled with the paper-thin atmosphere, its surface is exposed to much higher levels of radiation than Earth. Furthermore, besides regular exposure to cosmic rays and solar wind, it receives occasional, lethal radiation blasts due to strong solar flares.
Measurements performed by the Mars Odyssey probe suggest that ongoing radiation levels on Mars are at least 2.5 times higher than what astronauts experience on the International Space Station. That’s about 22 millirads per day, which works out to 8000 millirads (8 rads) per year. For comparison, the people in the U.S. are exposed to roughly 0.62 rads/year on average.
Any attempt to colonize the Red Planet will require measures to ensure radiation exposure is kept to a minimum. Some of the proposed ideas thus far involve habitats built directly into the ground or even above-ground habitats using inflatable modules encased in ceramics.
But a better idea may be to take advantage of the natural shelters already in place. Mars is dotted with deep pits, caves, and lava tube structures across its surface. According to a new study performed by researchers led by Daniel Viúdez-Moreiras at Spain’s National Institute for Aerospace Technology, many of these caverns could offer ample protection to human settlers.
“Caves and their entrances have been proposed as habitable environments and regions that could have preserved evidence of life, mostly due to their natural shielding from the damaging ionizing and non-ionizing radiation present on the surface. However, no studies to date have quantitatively determined the shielding offered by these voids on Mars,” the researchers wrote in the journal Icarus.
The researchers found that the levels of UV radiation inside Martian caverns were, in some cases, ~2% of those values found on the surface.
“Numerical simulations of cave entrances show a reduction even more than two orders of magnitude in UV radiation, both in the maximum instantaneous and cumulative doses, throughout the year and at any location of the planet,” the researchers found.
What’s more, the amount of active radiation is still higher than the minimum required for Earth-like photosynthesis. In other words, cave entrances could shelter both humans and their plant food source. However, it’s unclear whether ionizing radiation — the kind of electromagnetic radiation associated with cancer — is blocked in the same way as UV radiation.
“Ionizing radiation doesn’t present exactly the same behavior as UV radiation,” Viúdez-Moreiras. told New Scientist. “However, it is expected that ionizing radiation will also be strongly attenuated in pit craters and cave skylights.”
High-resolution surface imaging data recorded over the past couple of decades by instruments like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Context Camera system (CTX), together with Mars Odyssey’s thermal emission imaging system (THEMIS), suggest that the Tharsis bulge may be the best region for cave candidates on Mars. More than 1,000 suitable caves have been identified in this region, which also contains three enormous shield volcanoes, Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Ascraeus Mons.
Tharsis city sounds like an awesome name for the first human settlement on Mars. Remember the name.