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Divers Cleaning Seabed Off Greece’s Alonissos Island Raise Alarm About Marine Pollution (Maria)
The author writes, “Off the Greek island of Alonissos in the eastern Aegean Sea, volunteer divers grab decaying plastic bottles, a tire and a rusted anchor chain from the seabed and place them in a trash bag as part of an EU-funded cleanup to protect marine life. The items recovered off Alonissos — a favorite tourist spot for its green-blue waters, and Europe’s largest protected marine park — represent just a tiny part of the tens of thousands of tons of waste that litter the Mediterranean Sea every year.”
Border Patrol Is Conducting Legally Dubious Raids Across California — And Bragging About It Online (Reader Steve)
From the San Francisco Chronicle: “These raids weren’t just unusual for their brazenness. They were conducted by a Border Patrol unit hundreds of miles from its typical territory — one that has not just ramped up its activity far from the border but has boasted about legally dubious behavior on social media. Many of the initial reports about the raids assumed Immigration and Customs Enforcement was responsible. It didn’t occur to most people that such actions would be carried out by another agency, a sector of Border Patrol based in El Centro, a few miles from the U.S.-Mexico border in Imperial County, more than 300 miles away.”
Utah Lawmakers’ Own Study Found Gender-Affirming Care Benefits Trans Youth. Will They Lift The Treatment Ban? (DonkeyHotey)
From The Salt Lake Tribune: “Utah‘s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth was meant to be a moratorium, giving lawmakers the chance to reevaluate the policy once experts reviewed research on the impacts of treatment. This week, nearly 2½ years after the law took effect, lawmakers received the findings of that study. Utah health care experts concluded, in a more than 1,000-page report, ‘Overall, there were positive mental health and psychosocial functioning outcomes’ as a result of gender-affirming care. But some Republican legislators are already dismissing those findings.”
US Companies Honed Their Surveillance Tech in Israel. Now It’s Coming Home. (Laura)
The author writes, “After deploying AI tools in Israel and on the U.S. border, American tech companies are now powering domestic repression.”
Tesla Weighed Down by $800 Million in Unsold Cybertrucks (Sean)
The author writes, “In the weeks after Tesla unveiled its Cybertruck in November 2019, the automaker claimed to have logged more than 1 million advance reservations. As it turns out, only a handful of those have been translated into actual sales. Now, the automaker has an estimated 10,000 unsold trucks piled up on dealer and factory lots — worth about $800 million. The lack of demand has led Tesla to pull the plug on a range extender option that was supposed to deal with the truck’s limited range.”
Here Is Everything That Has Changed Since Congestion Pricing Started in New York (Dana)
From The New York Times: “Policy changes often take years to show results. Even then, you may have to squint to see them. And then there is congestion pricing in New York. Almost immediately after the tolls went into effect Jan. 5 — charging most vehicles $9 to enter Manhattan from 60th Street south to the Battery — they began to alter traffic patterns, commuter behavior, transit service, even the sound of gridlock and the on-time arrival of school buses.”
A Fungus That Can ‘Eat You From the Inside Out’ Could Spread as the World Heats Up (Mili)
The author writes, “Infection-causing fungi responsible for millions of deaths a year will spread significantly to new regions as the planet heats up, new research predicts — and the world is not prepared. Fungi … play an important role in ecosystems but can have a devastating impact on human health: Fungal infections kill an estimated 2.5 million people a year, and a lack of data means that number could be far higher. Yet we are still very far from understanding them, especially how these incredibly adaptable organisms will respond to a warming climate.”
