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‘Are We Not Humans?’

PrizmaBetim,

After my reporting trip to the Chad-Sudan border and columns about the murder, rape and starvation that have devastated Sudan, readers wrote in with many thoughtful comments and questions. Here’s my effort to address some of them:

Perhaps you could help us understand the root causes of this conflict. Is the basis for this conflict between the two warring factions religious identity, Shariah law? — David Wood, Johnson City, Tenn.

The two main warring factions are rival Sudanese military branches now locked in a civil war: the Sudanese Armed Forces and a militia called the Rapid Support Forces. Imagine if the U.S. Army and a government-backed Ku Klux Klan military force joined together to stage a coup to overthrow America’s elected government, then co-ruled oppressively for a time, and finally began fighting each other while also slaughtering and starving civilians. That’s roughly the picture.

The Rapid Support Forces were responsible for most of the massacres and rapes that I described in my columns in Sudan’s Darfur region, an echo of the Darfur genocide of two decades ago.

In Darfur, the divide is not religious, as almost all people are Sunni Muslim. Rather, it is threefold. First, the Rapid Support Forces are Arabs and target non-Arab ethnic groups. Second, those Arab attackers are mostly lighter complexioned and target Black Africans (sometimes calling them slaves or comparing them to litter or black plastic bags). Third, the Arab groups are often nomadic herders while the African tribes frequently are settled farmers, leading to conflicts over water access and grazing rights that have been exacerbated by climate change.

How can we best respond to a famine like this? Air loads of food or repairing local farming communities? — Daniel Brownstein, Berkeley, Calif.

A famine has already been declared in Sudan, and some experts fear that it could become one of the worst in history, eclipsing the 1984 famine in Ethiopia and other countries. To see starving children is searing: They do not cry or demand food but are almost expressionless, for the dying body does not expend calories on anything but keeping the major organs alive.

The best way to prevent so severe a famine in Sudan would be to end the war. But if the war continues, then we should at least press the warring parties to allow more humanitarian access. That means letting trucks bring food to communities that are starving. Doctors Without Borders reports that it has had to cut off rations for 5,000 malnourished children because warring parties are blocking attempts to resupply.

In most of the world, “to starve” is intransitive: Children starve. In Sudan, it is also transitive: Warlords starve children. The U.S. should use intelligence community resources to monitor atrocities and release intercepts and images to hold warring parties accountable and end the impunity.

This Election Will Need More Heroes

PrizmaBetim,

True political courage — the principled stand, the elevation of country over party pressure, the willingness to sacrifice a career to protect the common good — has become painfully rare in a polarized world. It deserves to be celebrated and nurtured whenever it appears, especially in defense of fundamental American institutions like our election system. The sad truth, too, is the country will probably need a lot more of it in the coming months.

In state after state, Republicans have systematically made it harder for citizens to vote, and harder for the election workers who count those votes to do so. They are challenging thousands of voter registrations in Democratic areas, forcing administrators to manually restore perfectly legitimate voters to the rolls. They are aggressively threatening election officials who defended the 2020 election against manipulation. They are trying to invalidate mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, even if they meet the legal requirements of a postmark before the deadline. They are making it more difficult to certify election results, and even trying to change how states apportion their electors, in hopes of making it easier for Donald Trump to win or even help him overturn an election loss.

Though many of these moves happened behind closed doors, this campaign is hardly secret. And last month, Mr. Trump directly threatened to prosecute and imprison election officials around the country who disagree with his lies.

Against this kind of systematic assault on the institutions and processes that undergird American democracy, the single most important backstop are the public servants, elected and volunteer, who continue to do their jobs.

Consider Mike McDonnell, a Republican state senator from Nebraska, who showed how it’s done when he announced last month that he would not bow to an intense, last-minute pressure campaign by his party’s national leaders, including former President Trump, to help slip an additional electoral vote into Mr. Trump’s column.

Currently, Nebraska awards most of its electors by congressional district, and while most of the state is safely conservative, polling shows Vice President Kamala Harris poised to win the elector from the Second Congressional District, which includes the state’s biggest city, Omaha. In the razor-thin margins of the 2024 election, this could be the vote that determines the outcome. That was the intent of Republican lawmakers in Nebraska, who waited until it was too late for Democrats in Maine, which has a similar system, to change the state’s rules to prevent one congressional district from choosing a Republican elector.

Does Your School Use Suicide Prevention Software? We Want to Hear From You.

PrizmaBetim,

In response to the youth mental health crisis, many school districts are investing in software that monitors what students type on their school devices, alerting counselors if a child appears to be contemplating suicide or self-harm.

Such tools — produced by companies like Gaggle, GoGuardian Beacon, Bark and Securly — can pick up what a child types into a Google search, or a school essay, or an email or text message to a friend. Some of these alerts may be false alarms, set off by innocuous research projects or offhand comments, but the most serious alerts may prompt calls to parents or even home visits by school staff members or law enforcement.

I write about mental health for The New York Times, including the effects of social media use on children’s brains and algorithms that predict who is at risk for suicide. I’m interested in knowing more about how these monitoring tools are working in real life.

If you are a student, parent, teacher or school administrator, I’d like to hear about your experiences. Do you think these tools have saved lives? Do they help students who are anxious or depressed get the care they need? Are you concerned about students’ privacy? Is there any cost to false positives?

I will read each submission and may use your contact information to follow up with you. I will not publish any details you share without contacting you and verifying your information.

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

Hurricanes Amplify Insurance Crisis in Riskiest Areas

PrizmaBetim,

Until late last month, there was optimism in the insurance industry. Hurricane season had been quiet and the number of wildfires was still below the yearly average. Insurers were beginning to hope that the cost of reinsurance — that is, insurance for insurers — would only inch up next year, instead of shooting higher as it did the previous two years.

Two major hurricanes have upended their calculations.

Total economic losses from Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene could soar over $200 billion, according to early estimates. While it’s far too soon to know exactly what portion will be covered by insurance companies, some consumer groups, lawmakers and analysts are already worried about a big hit to insurers’ finances that could ultimately affect millions of people living in the most vulnerable areas.

As climate change increases the intensity of natural disasters, insurance companies have pulled back from many high-risk areas by raising premiums or ending some types of coverage. The fallout from the two hurricanes, which landed within the span of two weeks, could accelerate that retreat. It could also further strain an already feeble federal flood insurance program that has filled in gaps for homeowners living in areas where private insurance companies no longer offer flood coverage.

Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida’s west coast as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday, did not ultimately cause the catastrophe that had been predicted for the Tampa Bay area. But it still did plenty of damage.

Sridhar Manyem, an analyst for the insurance industry ratings agency AM Best, said that while it was too early to estimate insurers’ obligations, industry insiders were already beginning to compare Milton to Hurricane Ian, which caused more than $55 billion of insured losses in 2022 when it hit the same area.

“Because of lack of information at first blush, usually people do this,” Mr. Manyem said. “This storm is pretty comparable to another storm in terms of size and path and intensity, so we can try to figure out what an inflation-adjusted loss would be.”

Executives and Research Disagree About Hybrid Work’s Value. Why?

PrizmaBetim,

Amazon’s C.E.O., Andy Jassy, made waves last month when he demanded that all employees return to the office five days a week. The proclamation seemed to validate similar demands made by executives like JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs’s David Solomon. And it naturally raised the question of whether others might follow suit. (It appears some have.)

But it also flew in the face of researchers and their studies that have found hybrid work benefits companies. Stanford’s Nick Bloom, for example, has found that employees who work two days a week at home are just as productive and less likely to quit. (Bloom, like others, speculated that Amazon’s pronouncement was really an attempt to reduce the work force without official layoffs.)

So why do so many employers that say they’re data-driven seem to move counter to science?

Executives are not convinced by the research. “It’s not like: ‘Aspirin definitely helps with headaches. It’s been proven again and again and again,’” Laszlo Bock, a former senior vice president for people operations at Google, told DealBook. “The academic studies that have been done, and there are not that many, show a range of outcomes — and they generally show a kind of neutral to slightly positive.”

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, said he disagreed, pointing DealBook to a meta-analysis of 108 studies.

Some are just over it. Almost five years since the start of the pandemic, many C.E.O.s are ready to move on from an experiment they never wanted to start. “When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant,” Jassy wrote in a memo about ending remote work at Amazon.

Grant says C.E.O.s may not always methodically control for whether an effect was caused by remote work, the pandemic or something else, as an academic researcher would.

For the Sake of the Planet, Nations Must Protect What Is Still Wild

PrizmaBetim, ,

A small, heart-shaped body of water aptly named Green Lake lies at just under 9,000 feet on the western side of the Tetons, deep within the Jedediah Smith Wilderness area of Wyoming. Mirroring the surrounding conifers, the surface of the lake rests perfectly still this fall evening.

From the trailhead, it’s a little over five miles and 2,000 feet of elevation gained to the snug knoll where I’ve pitched my tent. Sitting in my sling chair, I take in the view: granite cliffs, high ridges, and sweeping tundra, the alpine grass, willows, and fireweed a rippling tapestry of burgundy, lavender, saffron, straw-yellow and burnt umber. A sickle moon hangs in the fading blue sky as a Swainson’s thrush sings its liquid, rising song. There’s not another sound, except the faintest tinkle of the stream entering the lake beneath my camp.

This stillness was once the entirety of the world, a base line quiet of wind and waves, of bird, whale and human song. This highly diverse natural symphony has steadily vanished worldwide since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, replaced by a cacophony that has become the background to our everyday lives: the roar of jets, the rumble of traffic, the racket of construction.

You have to go to really wild places to reconnect with stillness on a grand scale, and it’s a nice coincidence that I’m camped this evening in one of the wilder places of the lower 48 states in this year of the 60th anniversary of the signing of the 1964 Wilderness Act. The legislation was the product of a group of visionary foresters and writers, and it contains one of the more memorable lines ever written about the relationship between humanity and nature: “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

Today, nearly 112 million acres of wilderness have been permanently set aside from development in the United States, and the natural attributes of these landscapes remain untrammeled by roads or industry, protecting hundreds of intact ecosystems and countless wildlife populations while affording unspoiled recreation to hikers, skiers, horse packers, wildlife watchers, anglers and hunters. These open spaces have also lifted the spirits of millions of visitors.

Despite these notable achievements, the United States still hasn’t protected the full ecological diversity that lies on federal lands, neglecting to include temperate forests and grass and shrub lands. Even if the 16 million acres currently designated as Wilderness Study Areas were fully protected, the United States would have set aside, by my calculation, only 5 percent of its land beyond the reach of development.

Social Security: Why It Matters for Young People, Not Just Retirees

PrizmaBetim, ,

Paul Unnasch notices the $335 in payroll taxes coming out of his paycheck every month for Social Security, and wishes he could get those dollars back.

“If there was a way to opt out of Social Security, I would,” said Mr. Unnasch, a 27-year-old technical writer who lives in Milwaukee. “I don’t have much trust in it — I know I’ll probably get something out of it, but people are living longer and there’s a huge generation of boomers retiring now.”

An aggressive saver who socks away 20 percent of his pay in retirement accounts, he would prefer to put those Social Security payroll taxes into the stock market or use them to pay down his student loans.

Mr. Unnasch’s take on Social Security isn’t unusual among younger Americans. Research shows that a majority of young people are more pessimistic about the program than their older counterparts are. Gallup polling,for example, shows that just 37 percent of Americans aged 30 to 49 expect to receive Social Security benefits when they retire — compared with 66 percent of people aged 50 or older.

Social Security is not on a course to vanish — but the concerns voiced by young people are understandable.

Last year, the program’s retirement and disability trust funds had reserves of $2.79 trillion, but expenses have been outpacing noninterest revenue since 2010, mainly because of low birthrates that translate into a declining ratio of workers paying into the program and more people drawing benefits. As a result, the trust fund reserves are forecast to be depleted in 2035. At that point, the program would be bringing in enough cash to pay only 83 percent of the benefits promised to current and future beneficiaries, according to the most recent projection of the Social Security trustees. That would be the equivalent of a 17 percent across-the-board cut in benefits.

Truly Scary Books for Halloween and Beyond

PrizmaBetim, ,

Horror movies have a capacity to scare that seems almost unfairly powerful. Even a bad horror movie — an underwritten slasher, a lazy creature feature, a predictable serial killer thriller — can disturb you with a smash cut to gruesome violence or a montage of shocking imagery. That’s what makes horror movies, like roller coasters, so much fun: They might make you vomit, or even pass out, but it’s scarily good fun to go along for the ride.

Horror novels are a different proposition. To truly scare a reader, a book must weave a more delicate web of persuasion and misdirection, depending on the power of your imagination to fill in the most chilling details. No disrespect to beloved classics like “Frankenstein” or “Dracula,” but in this modern era of on-screen terrors, it can be hard for even the greatest works of literary horror to send rivulets of sweat down your spine.

There are some books, however, that manage to unsettle, provoke and frighten as capably as any movie. These books work on the imagination slowly and deliberately, building an atmosphere of menace that can be difficult to shake. It’s a different category of fear than what’s conjured by your average horror movie: subtler and more insidious, less grisly and lurid, dominated by psychological terror and a sense of foreboding that often supersedes the spectacle of graphic violence. When done masterfully, a great horror read can haunt you long after you turn the final page.

As Halloween approaches, here are some genuinely terrifying books guaranteed to keep you up at night. These are more than simply good reads: They will freak you out.

Night Shift

By Stephen King

King has written no shortage of great horror novels and many of his classics — “It,” “The Stand,” “Pet Sematary” — are apt to raise a few goose bumps. But it’s his inaugural collection of short stories, “Night Shift,” that is perhaps his most purely terrifying work. The concision of a short story makes it an ideal format for unrelenting scares: Standouts include “The Mangler,” the gut-lurching tale of an industrial laundry machine with a mind of its own, and “Graveyard Shift,” the creepy-crawly story of a rat infestation at a textile mill in Maine.

Germany’s business groups alarmed over land border controls impacting economy

PrizmaBetim, , , ,

Germany’s business groups are raising the alarm over fears that the country’s newly reintroduced land border controls could impact the economy.

The country’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry says companies are experiencing delays, which is especially problematic for time-sensitive goods such as food.

However, it’s not just the movement of products that is of concern, but of people.

The Chamber of Commerce in Frankfurt Oder, a border town near Poland, is advocating that workers coming into Germany pass through the checks more quickly with special government certificates.

“We have seen and experienced with the enterprises in our region that they are now having problems commuting,” said Daniel Felscher, a consultant at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Ostbrandenburg.

“Also regarding the traffic of goods between the borders and especially with the workforce that Germany relies on in specific economic areas, we have to have those commuters, and we cannot lose them because we need them.”

Frank Huster, the managing director of the Federal Association for Freight Forwarding and Logistics (DSLV), told Euronews that his organisation was especially concerned about whether other European countries would bring back border checks.

Huster urged Germany to implement the green lanes policy that was in place during the pandemic, which allowed freight vehicles to pass through border crossings quickly.

“Road checks when entering Germany could also delay many trucks crossing the border. This also affects cross-border commuters who work in German logistics facilities. Restrictions on the free movement of persons can therefore also mean delays and cost increases for the economy,” Huster said.

“A return to barriers in Europe would be disastrous for the free movement of goods and the internal market.”

Extra checks to increase recession risk?

The extra border checks were put in place last month after the so-called Islamic State group claimed responsibility for an attack at a festival where three people were stabbed to death.

The interior ministry says the checks are meant to decrease irregular migration and stop criminals.

“We want to reduce irregular migration further, stop migrant smugglers and criminals, and detect Islamists before they can do any harm,” said Nancy Faeser.

“We continue to work closely with our neighbouring countries. We want to make sure that border control measures affect cross-border commuters and people living in the border regions, as well as businesses and commerce, as little as possible.”

The credit insurer Allianz Trade said it expected delays could decrease trade and increase the risk of a recession.

“The additional waiting times at the borders are also likely to increase transport and goods costs for imports by around 1.7% (services: 1.5%) and thus reduce both the overall trade volume and competitiveness, which is already at a low level for German manufacturers,” Allianz Trade stated in an email to Euronews.

“The temporary border controls could furthermore trigger a chain reaction: trade could lose up to €1.1 billion per year in the worst case. As a result, recession risks could increase further and possibly lead to economic losses in gross domestic product (GDP) of up to around €11.5 billion.”

Related
  • Could Germany’s new border controls end up getting revoked by Brussels?
  • Germany reinstates land border checks for six months in much-criticised move

An association representing Germany’s transport and logistics industry has also warned the checks could end up increasing costs for companies, leading to higher prices for consumers.

“There could be traffic jams or there could be delays, which will increase the cost for our truck companies, and they will have problems with driving and rest time, and they have to get higher prices for the transport solution, and this is a big problem,” said Dirk Engelhardt, the CEO of the Federal Association of Road Haulage, Logistics, and Disposal (BGL).

The group says if such delays happen, it will lobby the European Commission to set up special lanes so that most trucks can bypass the controls and to focus on tougher external border checks.

Albania: Italian government’s migrant centres ready to host first consignment

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Up to 400 people will initially be sent there. Exclusively male, these migrants will have been rescued by Italian ships in the Mediterranean Sea before being transported to the coastal Albanian town of Shengjin.

Here, a centre ran by Italian staff has been set up. Interpreters, medicals visits and the possibility of applying for asylum are guaranteed.

The main section is meant to house asylum seekers while their requests are being processed.

Applications must be completed within 28 days, according to the accelerated procedure foreseen in Italian law. During this time, applicants will be able to meet lawyers and staff from international organizations.

All costs to be met by Italy

Those who are not entitled to asylum will end up in another part of the camp. There are dozens of places in this centre, but if the capacity is exceeded the migrants will be transferred to Italy before being repatriated to their countries of origin.

There is also a prison, with a capacity of 20 places, for migrants who commit crimes. However, the entire centre of Gjadër is in fact a place of forced detention, fenced off and monitored by Italian police officers.

Asylum seekers who have their request accepted will be transferred to Italy with a residence permit. Those who receive a refusal will be repatriated, always at the expense and under the responsibility of Italy.

Tens of millions of euros have been spent to build these structures, but the authorities are not able to quantify the overall cost of the procedures for the five-year duration of the agreement between Italy and Albania