America’s Suburban Crime Problem

After several years of rising crime, big city mayors and police chiefs across the country are breathing a sigh of relief. Statistics published by the Council of Criminal Justice and other recent analysis show the number of homicides and aggravated assaults fell by a respective 10% and 3% in big cities in 2023 compared to 2022, though the rates remain higher than in pre-pandemic years.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

These are hopeful signals. If these trends persisted on a national scale, this could indicate violent crime markets have retracted. But declarations that violent crime is falling miss important—and disturbing—crime trends data that paint a much more complicated picture. While big city crime may be falling, suburban crime may be rising. More surprising still, crime in rural areas appears to be rising even faster—and a much higher share of this crime involves strangers and guns.

These startling findings come from an important but underappreciated nationally representative data source—the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)—that includes crimes not reported to police. Along with last year’s big city estimates, the latest figures from the FBI’s 2022 UCR program gathered from police reports, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ NCVS report drawn from interviews with households, present a complex narrative that does more than merely highlight differences in data collection methods but unveils a nuanced and evolving picture of violent crime in the U.S.

Besides a slight rise in robbery rates from 65.5 to 66.1 per 100,000 residents, the UCR program suggests a national decrease in both the rates of fatal (homicide) and non-fatal felony violence (rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) from 2021 to 2022.  In contrast, the NCVS shows an increase in non-fatal felony violence, with victimizations per 1,000 persons over the age of 12 increasing from 5.6 in 2021 to 9.8 in 2022, primarily due to a doubling of aggravated assault rates. NCVS estimates imply that a substantial portion of crime remains unreported, the so-called “dark figure” of crime that eludes the detection of law enforcement.

A clearer picture of who is at greatest risk for violent victimization emerges when analyzing crime rates by location. The NCVS shows that the traditional boundaries between urban and non-urban violence are dissolving. Suburban and rural areas, once considered safe havens, are now confronting a jump in non-fatal violent crime, fundamentally changing the geography of public safety.

The robbery rate in urban centers increased by 21% over the three years, driven largely by the 78% increase between 2021 and 2022. Looking at the suburbs, the 2022 increase in robbery rates hit 21%, contributing to the 40% increase through 2021. In the rural areas where the American dream of pastoral peace is most cherished, robbery rates rose by 44% in 2022 after a two-year decline.

This shift is further accentuated in the rates of aggravated assault, which have not only risen in urban areas but have skyrocketed in non-urban areas. In urban centers, these assaults have risen by 51% in a single year from 2021 to 2022. Looking back at the suburbs and rural areas, the respective increases were even more pronounced with rates over nearly three times and two times higher in 2022 than in 2021.

Gun violence also increased and spread across geographies. The gun-related victimization rate in urban centers increased by 1.3 per 1,000 in 2022 compared to the previous year, reaching 2019 levels after a decrease. This rate doubled over the past two years in the suburbs and is slightly higher than in 2019, while in rural areas, there was a surge in non-fatal gun violence rates, with approximately 66,000 more reported victimizations between 2021 and 2022, returning to rates last observed in 1997.

Research suggests most violent crimes are committed by someone the victim knows such as friends, acquaintances, and relatives. This remains the case, but estimates indicate strangers are responsible for more violent crimes, especially in non-urban centers. After decreases in the number of violent felony victimizations involving strangers from 2019 to 2021, all areas experienced large increases by 2022. For this one-year period, these types of victimizations climbed by 37% in urban areas, 73% in the suburbs, and more than doubled (102%) in rural locales.

Read More: If We Want to Reduce Deaths at Hands of Police, We Need to Reduce Traffic Stops

Breaking down the data by race adds a layer of complexity to the narrative. White Americans have seen a marked increase in victimization, particularly in urban areas, reversing previous declines. From 2021 to 2022, violent felony victimization for this group rose by 75% in urban areas, 93% in suburban areas, and 62% in America’s countryside.

For Black Americans, the pattern is more complex, with an initial rise in urban victimization rates followed by a 20% decrease from 2021 to 2022. However, the increase in violent felonies in suburban areas paints a troubling picture of the changing risks these communities face. For Black Americans residing in the suburbs, the rate of violent felonies spiked 74% over the three years, with a sharp leap of 172% from 2021 to 2022. Outside the metropolitan centers, the three-year increase is less dramatic (29%) but still alarming.

The rise in violent crime comes at a time of historic domestic migration. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns, people and families relocated from cities to the suburbs and rural locales, motivated by the flexibility of remote work and the desire for safer, more affordable, and more spacious living environments. Studies have found that violent victimization influences residential mobility, but it appears more factors are at play. As people migrate, they not only bring their dreams and aspirations but also create economic tensions and cultural integration challenges that can ferment crime and complicate public safety efforts. It’s in this intersection of mobility and security that we must revisit our approach to crime prevention and intervention.

Although the Justice Department’s Roadmap provides resources based on the Ten Essential Actions Cities Can Take to Reduce Violence Now, developed by the Council on Criminal Justice, the evidence is mostly from studies conducted in urban areas. Efforts to reduce violent crime in non-urban areas face challenges such as limited resources, large territories that inhibit community engagement and response times, despite initiatives like the BJA’s Rural and Small Department Violent Crime Reduction Program that collaborate with law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to develop strategies addressing these issues and Crime Analyst in Residence program intended to assist LEAs in enhancing their operational and procedural management through the utilization of data analysis and analytics.

This shift observed in the NCVS also calls for examination of the racial differences in victimization rates—particularly the heightened vulnerability of white Americans in urban settings and the complex pattern of rising and then decreasing rates for Black Americans.

Further research is needed to address gaps and uncertainties in the valuable insights provided by NCVS, particularly with regards to how victimization rates influence residential mobility within urban centers, the potential underestimation of victimization among Black people, and the variations within different areas. It is imperative to also examine the challenges posed by response rates to the NCVS, especially among hard-to-reach populations.

Meanwhile, NCVS estimates force us to seriously consider that criminal violence might be evolving rather than declining, necessitating the development and adoption of effective strategies like proven community violence reduction initiatives as well as housing, public health, and employment programs adapted to the particular needs and strengths of suburban and rural communities. Otherwise, there is a danger of resourcing and implementing urban-centric, pre-pandemic strategies in a post-pandemic world that misses the opportunity to improve community safety across racial and geographic divides.

While the recent data suggests a decrease in urban crime, many Americans still feel uneasy. It’s conceivable that the pronounced changes in victimization, particularly in suburban and rural areas, have heightened this sense of vulnerability. The discrepancy between the actual numbers and public perception challenges us to consider the changing geography of crime and the impact it has on the nation’s sense of security.

source https://time.com/6904210/america-suburban-crime-problem-essay/

Apples Never Fall Is Rotten to the Core

The apple never falls far from the tree, according to the proverb that gives Peacock’s new domestic thriller its title. But if the tree is Big Little Lies—both shows are based on best-selling mystery novels by Liane Moriarty—then Apples Never Fall, which will stream in full beginning March 14, has rolled quite a distance downhill from whence it dropped. Even Hulu’s silly adaptation of Moriarty’s Nine Perfect Strangers is substantially better.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Considering the personnel involved, it’s hard to tell why the show went so frustratingly wrong. Moriarty is on board as an executive producer. Showrunner Melanie Marnich worked on a pair of fascinating Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij series, A Murder at the End of the World and The OA, after writing the very best episode of Big Love. Annette Bening (also an executive producer) and Sam Neill star as Joy and Stan Delaney, married tennis coaches who’ve recently sold their academy and retired. The eldest of their four adult children are played by the reliably great Jake Lacy and Alison Brie.

Yet the acting is inconsistent (even Neill’s hotheaded performance can verge on John McEnroe camp), and the directing workmanlike. All of which might have been forgivable if the script, from premise to characters to the execution of big plot twists, wasn’t such a disaster. The show is goofy from the very beginning. In the overwrought opening scene, Joy rides her apple-green bicycle through her hometown of West Palm Beach. She frowns, passing the Garces (formerly Delaney) Tennis Academy, and picks out a perfect red apple at an outdoor market. Katie Herzig’s slow, moody “Buried” (sample lyric: “All the secrets buried in the backyard”) plays on the soundtrack. Then, after an Apples Never Fall title card, the camera follows a trail of apples scattered across asphalt, zooming in on the abandoned bike with blood staining its gears.

I couldn’t help it; I laughed. Obviously, Joy’s disappearance isn’t so funny to her children, who soon realize that the annoying mom who never stops calling and texting them has become impossible to reach. In the absence of a believable explanation from Stan, they start investigating. Some of the Delaneys, who each get their own point-of-view episode, are broad caricatures. Stan has exactly one mood: angry. Like a watered-down version of the actor’s smug White Lotus villain, Lacy’s Troy works in venture capital and wears T-shirts that remind everyone he went to Stanford. Amy (Brie) is a central-casting unmoored hippie. Their younger siblings have circumstances rather than personalities. Brooke (Essie Randles) has a female fiancée and a physical therapy practice; Logan (Conor Merrigan Turner), says Joy, likes “boats and yoga.” For declining to continue the Delaney tennis dynasty, all four kids are disappointments to Stan.

Of course, once the search for Joy begins in earnest, everyone’s predictable secrets (infidelity, mostly) come out. And two key suspects emerge. There’s Stan, who has a nasty scratch on his face, has told some suspicious lies about his wife’s whereabouts, and, as the show never lets us forget, has quite a temper. More mysterious is Savannah (Georgia Flood), a young woman who appeared at the Delaneys’ doorstep months ago with a bloody forehead and a story about an abusive husband. Bored in retirement and desperate to mother someone as her own children ignored her, Joy took Savannah into her home over her husband’s objections. She’s long gone by the time Joy vanishes, but Logan urges the police to look into her, whoever she is, anyway.

It’s a serviceable premise for a potboiler, despite the thin characters and trope-laden plot. But subpar storytelling robs Apples Never Fall of all suspense—or, really, any other form of enjoyment. The dialogue leans on cliché: “I was like a father to you!” “She was a force.” “It’s crazy, isn’t it? How a split second can change everything for the rest of your life.” And Marnich treats viewers like we’re stupid, spoon-feeding unadorned exposition and analysis through a pair of generic detectives (Jeanine Serralles and Dylan Thuraisingham). “Did Stanley Delaney do what I think he just did?” one asks, in a typical exchange. “Yes, he did. He just threw his son under the bus,” the other replies. Often, characters’ motivations seem nonsensical. Other times, the show hints so relentlessly at why people do the things they do that you can see the twists coming several episodes away. I can’t imagine I’ll be the only one to guess the ending early on.

About that ending. It arrives with the same thuddingly obvious force as the hurricane that also hits West Palm late in the season. And it compounds the disservice that the show does to its mostly talented cast and viewers hungry for another delicious Liane Moriarty binge. Instead of saying something specific and true about women’s lives and families, the way Big Little Lies did, Apples Never Fall reduces Joy to the blandest, most unsurprising maternal stereotype. In a finale plainly engineered to make us weep, I felt nothing except irritation. Maybe it would’ve been different if Joy, or any other character, had come off as a real person in the first place. 

source https://time.com/6899758/apples-never-fall-review-peacock/

The E.U. Has Passed the World’s First Comprehensive AI Law

(LONDON) — European Union lawmakers gave final approval to the 27-nation bloc’s artificial intelligence law Wednesday, putting the world-leading rules on track to take effect later this year.

Lawmakers in the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Artificial Intelligence Act, five years after regulations were first proposed. The AI Act is expected to act as a global signpost for other governments grappling with how to regulate the fast-developing technology.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

“The AI Act has nudged the future of AI in a human-centric direction, in a direction where humans are in control of the technology and where it — the technology — helps us leverage new discoveries, economic growth, societal progress and unlock human potential,” Dragos Tudorache, a Romanian lawmaker who was a co-leader of the Parliament negotiations on the draft law, said before the vote.

Big tech companies generally have supported the need to regulate AI while lobbying to ensure any rules work in their favor. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman caused a minor stir last year when he suggested the ChatGPT maker could pull out of Europe if it can’t comply with the AI Act — before backtracking to say there were no plans to leave.

Here’s a look at the world’s first comprehensive set of AI rules:

How does the AI Act work?

Like many EU regulations, the AI Act was initially intended to act as consumer safety legislation, taking a “risk-based approach” to products or services that use artificial intelligence.

The riskier an AI application, the more scrutiny it faces. The vast majority of AI systems are expected to be low risk, such as content recommendation systems or spam filters. Companies can choose to follow voluntary requirements and codes of conduct.

High-risk uses of AI, such as in medical devices or critical infrastructure like water or electrical networks, face tougher requirements like using high-quality data and providing clear information to users.

Some AI uses are banned because they’re deemed to pose an unacceptable risk, like social scoring systems that govern how people behave, some types of predictive policing and emotion recognition systems in school and workplaces.

Other banned uses include police scanning faces in public using AI-powered remote “biometric identification” systems, except for serious crimes like kidnapping or terrorism.

What about generative AI?

The law’s early drafts focused on AI systems carrying out narrowly limited tasks, like scanning resumes and job applications. The astonishing rise of general purpose AI models, exemplified by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, sent EU policymakers scrambling to keep up.

They added provisions for so-called generative AI models, the technology underpinning AI chatbot systems that can produce unique and seemingly lifelike responses, images and more.

Developers of general purpose AI models — from European startups to OpenAI and Google — will have to provide a detailed summary of the text, pictures, video and other data on the internet that is used to train the systems as well as follow EU copyright law.

AI-generated deepfake pictures, video or audio of existing people, places or events must be labeled as artificially manipulated.

There’s extra scrutiny for the biggest and most powerful AI models that pose “systemic risks,” which include OpenAI’s GPT4 — its most advanced system — and Google’s Gemini.

The EU says it’s worried that these powerful AI systems could “cause serious accidents or be misused for far-reaching cyberattacks.” They also fear generative AI could spread “harmful biases” across many applications, affecting many people.

Companies that provide these systems will have to assess and mitigate the risks; report any serious incidents, such as malfunctions that cause someone’s death or serious harm to health or property; put cybersecurity measures in place; and disclose how much energy their models use.

Do Europe’s rules influence the rest of the world?

Brussels first suggested AI regulations in 2019, taking a familiar global role in ratcheting up scrutiny of emerging industries, while other governments scramble to keep up.

In the U.S., President Joe Biden signed a sweeping executive order on AI in October that’s expected to be backed up by legislation and global agreements. In the meantime, lawmakers in at least seven U.S. states are working on their own AI legislation.

Read More: Federal AI Regulation Draws Nearer as Schumer Hosts Second Insight Forum

Chinese President Xi Jinping has proposed his Global AI Governance Initiative for fair and safe use of AI, and authorities have issued “ interim measures ” for managing generative AI, which applies to text, pictures, audio, video and other content generated for people inside China.

Read More: How China’s New AI Rules Could Affect U.S. Companies

Other countries, from Brazil to Japan, as well as global groupings like the United Nations and Group of Seven industrialized nations, are moving to draw up AI guardrails.

What happens next?

The AI Act is expected to officially become law by May or June, after a few final formalities, including a blessing from EU member countries. Provisions will start taking effect in stages, with countries required to ban prohibited AI systems six months after the rules enter the lawbooks.

Rules for general purpose AI systems like chatbots will start applying a year after the law takes effect. By mid-2026, the complete set of regulations, including requirements for high-risk systems, will be in force.

When it comes to enforcement, each EU country will set up their own AI watchdog, where citizens can file a complaint if they think they’ve been the victim of a violation of the rules. Meanwhile, Brussels will create an AI Office tasked with enforcing and supervising the law for general purpose AI systems.

Violations of the AI Act could draw fines of up to 35 million euros ($38 million), or 7% of a company’s global revenue.

This isn’t Brussels’ last word on AI rules, said Italian lawmaker Brando Benifei, co-leader of Parliament’s work on the law. More AI-related legislation could be ahead after summer elections, including in areas like AI in the workplace that the new law partly covers, he said.

source https://time.com/6903563/eu-ai-act-law-aritificial-intelligence-passes/

Multilingualism Is an American Tradition. So Is Backlash to It

During a recent campaign-style speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), former President Donald Trump added a new twist to his usual anti-immigrant discourse by suggesting that immigrants coming to the United States are speaking “languages that nobody in this country has ever heard of.”

The implication in Trump’s statement is that linguistic diversity is a threat. This argument is not new. While the United States does not have an official language and more than 350 languages are currently spoken here, political debate over the use of languages other than English is nearly as old as the United States itself.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

History shows us that the United States has been a reluctantly multilingual society, often pursuing linguistic assimilation instead of capitalizing on its natural linguistic diversity. Far from being mysterious and dangerous, multilingualism strengthens the economy and builds international connections.

Read More: I Rejected Spanish As a Kid. Now I Wish We’d Embrace Our Native Languages

From the time of independence, the United States has been a multilingual society. In addition to the hundreds of indigenous languages spoken prior to the first contact with European explorers and settlers, more than a quarter of all early settlers were non-English speaking. As the United States expanded, through the Louisiana Purchase and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it added both territory and vast numbers of speakers of French and Spanish.

Although often punished for speaking their own languages, many enslaved peoples brought against their will to the United States fought to maintain their native languages and created new mixed creole languages, adding to the linguistic diversity of the republic. Subsequent waves of immigration after the Civil War brought huge numbers of speakers of Scandinavian, Slavic, and Romance languages.

But the United States also has long had an uncomfortable relationship with its multilingual population. Rooted in the idea that linguistic diversity represents an obstacle to national unity, former President Theodore Roosevelt once wrote, “We have room for but one language in this country, and that is the English language.” Both local and federal campaigns sought to stamp out “foreign” and indigenous languages, particularly in times of national conflict and uncertainty.

Following the Spanish-American war, English was gradually imposed as the dominant language in schools across the newly acquired Puerto Rican territory. On the heels of World War I, a turn in public sentiment led to the closure of German-language newspapers across the Midwest and a drastic decrease in the number of students studying German. Following World War II, Japanese language schools in Hawaii were forced to close. Across the United States and Canada, residential schools established for Native and First Nations children imposed English as the sole language, often physically punishing children who dared speak a language other than English.

Time and time again, the goal of these initiatives was to promote cultural and linguistic assimilation by using language as a nationalistic unifying characteristic. But, there are economic and political consequences to demonizing rather than embracing linguistic diversity.

Indeed, countries that have embraced their multilingualism have experienced financial success, helping businesses secure more contracts and individuals earn higher salaries. Switzerland, for example, attributes more than 10% of its GDP to the fact that it is a highly multilingual society. Experts suggest that the ability to conduct business in multiple languages, and notably languages other than English, builds successful business relationships and creates a clear competitive advantage. In contrast, experts suggested that Britain in the pre-Brexit era was forgoing an additional 3.5% of its GDP due to a lack of multilingual skills in its workforce.

From a political perspective, a strong national multilingual foundation helps facilitate global relationships and policy goals. In fact, the United Nations cites multilingualism as a fundamental value in international diplomacy, contributing to communication that is more “impactful and meaningful.”

A lack of linguistic diversity has contributed to some recent policy failures. For example, the U.K. Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee cited a lack of Russian speakers in the Foreign Office as being partially responsible for its inability to predict Russian movements in Ukraine following the annexation of Crimea.

There is also a real danger in creating a broad mistrust of linguistic diversity, as it weaponizes language in service of discriminatory, anti-immigrant rhetoric. Viral videos and news stories highlight the harassment of people in the United States speaking a language other than English, with insults like “go back to your own country” and “speak English, you’re in America.” Yet, the importance that people place on the English language in the United States varies across the political spectrum. A 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center showed that Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that speaking English is important for being “truly American.” Agreement was highest (92%) among self-identified conservative Republicans, the demographic that forms much of Trump’s base.

In his speech, Trump overlaid a fear of linguistic diversity on top of his standard anti-immigrant rhetoric, using the perceived links between language and nation to stoke further mistrust of immigrant communities. By highlighting minority languages that “nobody” has ever heard of, Trump attempted to add an additional degree of suspicion.

But such warnings are rooted in fear, not history or reality. Our reality is that the United States has been multilingual from its inception. Far from being something to fear, multilingualism makes the U.S. stronger — economically, politically, and culturally — and should be nurtured and celebrated. As Trump said, “languages are coming into our country,” but that’s a good thing.

Daniel J. Olson is a Professor of Linguistics and Spanish at Purdue University and the director of the Purdue Bilingualism Lab.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

source https://time.com/6899172/immigrant-languages-history/

How Allergies Change Throughout Your Life

When Dr. Gailen Marshall was training to become a physician, he was taught that allergies were a kid thing. “Back in the day, the allergist’s office was full of children,” says Marshall, who is the president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. “If you ever thought about doing allergy testing or allergy shots in someone older than 40, that’s because you were just a money-grubbing doctor.”

A lot has changed since then. In 2021, about a quarter of U.S. adults reported seasonal allergies, compared to 19% of children.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

It’s become clear, Marshall says, that allergies aren’t only a concern for kids—and that seasonal allergies can change throughout the course of someone’s life.

Allergies can get worse—or even begin—as you age

Allergy symptoms happen when the immune system interprets typically harmless substances, such as grass or pollen, as threats. People without allergies don’t have immune responses to these substances. Those who are sensitive to them, however, produce antibodies to fight them off, kickstarting a process that leads to symptoms like sneezing, runny nose, and itchy eyes.

“If you have the allergic antibody present, we say you’re sensitized,” explains Dr. Lily Pien, an allergy and immunology specialist at the Cleveland Clinic. But it can take a while—even years—for sensitization to build to the point where someone experiences symptoms. When someone reaches that point depends on a mix of factors, including their genetic predisposition, intensity and timing of exposure to allergens, and underlying health conditions, Pien says. That variation helps explain why allergies “can manifest at different times during someone’s life,” she says.

Moving to a different region can also spark adult-onset allergies, says Dr. Rana Misiak, an allergist at Henry Ford Health. “Pollen seasons can be really different from the Midwest to the Southwest to the Northeast,” Misiak says, and adjusting to a new one can lead to issues that were never present previously.

In recent decades, there have also been societal and environmental shifts that contribute to upticks in allergies among people of all ages, Marshall says. The warming climate contributes to longer, more intense allergy seasons; globalization has introduced certain plant species to new areas; and air pollution can exacerbate all sorts of health conditions, he says.

But if you’re suddenly experiencing seasonal allergies for the first time well into adulthood, Pien says it’s worth first ruling out other causes. Bacterial and viral infections can cause allergy-like symptoms, as can anatomical issues like a deviated septum. Some people are also sensitive to irritants like cigarette smoke and perfume, but are not technically allergic to them.

Can you outgrow allergies?

Yes—but it’s not guaranteed. Roughly a quarter to a third of kids outgrow their childhood allergies, Misiak estimates. Unfortunately, though, “it’s much more difficult to lose allergies or outgrow allergies as an adult,” Pien says.

Some people with allergies do see their symptoms improve over time, but it’s not always clear why. Sometimes it’s related to lifestyle shifts, like spending more time indoors and away from pollen, or moving to a new region. Other times, Misiak says, someone may build up a tolerance to their triggers—though she says she sees that most often with pet allergies.

How to prevent and treat allergies

As a first resort, avoid your allergen to the extent possible. But since that’s easier said than done with environmental allergens like pollen, Marshall suggests starting allergy medications—like antihistamines or corticosteroids—a week or two before the worst of allergy season for a better chance at preventing symptoms.

Some studies also suggest that seemingly unrelated health factors, including your stress levels and the gut microbiome, influence allergies. That means taking care of your overall wellness by eating nutritious food, exercising, getting enough sleep, and keeping stress in check may pay off in allergy season, Marshall says.

People who aren’t able to manage their allergies through lifestyle changes or over-the-counter remedies may want to try immunotherapy, which involves repeatedly exposing someone to small amounts of their allergen until it no longer causes symptoms. Immunotherapy traditionally involves a series of injections, but there are also oral tablets for allergens including ragweed, some grasses, and dust mites.

Immunotherapy, Pien says, is the most scientifically sound way to get over an allergy, regardless of when in your life symptoms started.

source https://time.com/6900193/how-allergies-change-as-we-age/

How Our Electric Grids are Blocking a Climate Revolution

The biggest and dirtiest secret of the energy market is that most of it is lost in generating, transmitting, distributing, and using it. Solving this problem would be revolutionary, reducing competition for resources that contributes to conflict as well as climate change.

Energy is one of the most valuable businesses in the world, worth trillions of dollars a year. It is the centerpiece of most discussions about climate change because it is associated with around 80% of human made greenhouse gas emissions. As nations compete for it, energy has also been a fuel for geopolitical conflict, and today, competition for resources lurks beneath the Russia-Ukraine war and even the Israel-Hamas crisis.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

Before the war, Ukraine was the conduit through which Russia supplied Europe with 40% of its gas. After the war started, this stopped. Russia invaded Ukraine within 48 hours of the mothballing of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that it had built, bypassing Ukraine to supply Europe. Russia has since occupied approximately 20% of Ukraine’s territory, including regions most richly endowed with natural resources like gas, coal, iron ore, and lithium.

When the Russian gas taps were turned off, Europe turned to other markets such as the U.S. and the Middle East, including Israel. Competition over Israel’s natural gas reserves did not cause, but lurks beneath, the current conflict. Israel recently entered the global natural gas export market. In 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel signed a MOU with Egypt and the European Union with a view to exporting natural gas from its Tamar gas-field, the closest of three offshore gas projects to Gaza. Although its planned EastMed pipeline to Europe never made it past negotiations with Turkey and lost support from the U.S., exports to Egypt were now to be liquified and sent to Europe to meet its needs to diversify from Russia. This offered a massive cash windfall for Israel. Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, however, looked on with a dim view. Exports from Tamar were halted two days after Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th, amidst security concerns. They recently restarted. Production at Israel’s other major gas-field, Leviathon, may yet be affected. Another gas field, Karish, is in territory that as recently as 2022 had been disputed by Lebanon and over which Hezbollah had threatened to “act”.

Past conflicts over natural gas and energy security concerns offer lessons. In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, the European Commission noted that every unit of natural gas saved was 2.6 units that E.U. member states need not buy from Russia. By 2022, it didn’t have a choice. It expressed its policy as “energy efficiency first” and mandated gas and electricity reductions at the same time as making billions in market incentives available.

Such are the realities at our current stage of the energy transition. Fossil fuels still represent around 80% of the energy economy. Substantially all transport depends on oil, and therefore so do the necessities on which society depends, such as food. Natural gas is key, particularly for industry, heat and power, and renewable energy will take decades, huge investment, and immense volumes of resources to displace it with low carbon and minimally polluting energy generation.

After $6 trillion invested globally in the clean energy over the last 20 years and another $3 trillion on the grid, we are far from electrifying everything. Indeed, only some 20% of energy is electricity. For electrification to be a solution for either decarbonization or energy security, it will need to scale up by orders of magnitude. First, electricity will need to be green, which would require at least a 3 to 4 times increase in renewable energy capacity. Then electricity will need to displace the other 80% of energy supply, which would require at least another 4 to 5 times increase from a higher base as well as substantial innovation in technology.

The received wisdom is that we need more energy and a better grid to transmit electricity and renewables coming into the system. However, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), grids are the “weak link” for the energy transition. Already, projects equivalent to 5 times the volume of all wind and solar capacity added in 2022 are stuck in the queue for grid connections. Even if this current gridlock is addressed, the IEA projects the need to add or refurbish 80 million kilometers of grids by 2040, the equivalent of the entire existing global grid – or enough power lines to wrap around the earth approximately 2,000 times.

If tomorrow’s energy system relies on today’s electricity grid, then the clean energy revolution will not, as they say, be televised. Upgrading the grid is an incremental solution but fails on its own to address the core problem – that most energy is wasted in the losses associated with extracting and converting (10%), generating (50%), and transporting and distributing (10%). A large proportion of these losses take the form of waste heat, often because energy is generated far from the point of use, using technologies (using conventional fuels like gas and even ‘low carbon’ fuels like nuclear) that generate as much heat as electricity, but that can’t or don’t use it. Many of these losses can be solved cost effectively by decentralizing energy generation, bringing it close to the point of use so that the heat can be used, and to limit or eliminate transmission and distribution losses. This would achieve a step change in the efficiency of supply.

Yet more energy is wasted at the point of use. 70% of energy is used in buildings, industry, and transport. Buildings can waste a third of the energy they use just because of the wrong mechanical and electrical infrastructure, like lighting, air conditioning, and controls. This problem can be solved by upgrading the equipment and the savings generated cover the costs. Industry is less electrified than commercial or residential buildings but can make step changes in the way that it consumes heat by recovering it, storing it, and recycling it. Transport remains substantially a job for oil, despite modest electrification to date, and the “well to wheel” losses can be 75% plus. Electrification and lower carbon transport fuels increasingly represent cost effective solutions.

We need a revolution in efficiency. Simply investing more, whether it be renewable energy, or transmission grids, will not achieve the green energy revolution, especially when they are plugged into an inefficient system. At the same time, we need to do more with less. Energy efficiency is the largest, fastest, and cheapest source of greenhouse gas emission reductions, costs reductions, productivity gains, resilience, and energy security.

If we are more efficient, then we may only need a fraction of the energy we are using and competing for, and the challenges of achieving the green energy revolution cost effectively, as well as security of supply, may not be insurmountable after all.

source https://time.com/6900079/electric-grids-climate-revolution/

Meghan Markle Wins Defamation Lawsuit Brought By Half-Sister

A motion to dismiss has been granted to Meghan Markle in the defamation lawsuit filed against her by her half-sister, Samantha Markle.

Markle was sued for defamation by her half-sister following a 2021 CBS interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which she said she was an only child and did not have a close relationship with Samantha, her half-sister from her father Thomas Markle’s first marriage. Samantha also alleged in the lawsuit that the couple’s 2022 Netflix documentary series Harry & Meghan contained 14 defamatory statements against her.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

In her complaint, Samantha argued that people around her “turned against” her, viewing her as “an opportunist trying to cash in on her sister’s success and fame, despite having no relationship with her.” Samantha sought $75,000 in damages, according to the complaint. 

The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice, meaning the same claim cannot be filed again, in an order issued March 12, with Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell ruling that Samantha was unable to provide significant evidence to prove defamation. 

In the motion to dismiss, Judge Honeywell said that the examples cited in the lawsuit are simply a matter of differing opinion. “Plaintiff alleges that the statements painted her as ‘a stranger, a liar,’ and ‘a deceptive fame-seeking imposter with avaricious intentions,’” the motion to dismiss reads. “She goes on to argue that the statements ‘insinuated that [Plaintiff] has concocted a fictitious story to reap some inappropriate reward from [Defendant]’s fame.’ These… are quintessential examples of opinion that cannot be verified and therefore cannot serve as the basis of a defamation action.”

Samantha has tried twice before to sue Meghan for defamation, in cases that were thrown out in 2022 and 2023. “As a reasonable listener would understand it, defendant merely expresses an opinion about her childhood and her relationship with her half-siblings,” Judge Honeywell wrote in 2023. “Thus, the court finds that defendant’s statement is not objectively verifiable or subject to empirical proof.” Samantha’s lawyers told Newsweek that they are hoping to appeal. Lawyers for both Samantha and Meghan did not immediately return TIME’s request for comment.

source https://time.com/6900213/meghan-markle-wins-defamation-lawsuit-brought-samantha/