The White House spent a week trying to downplay the revelation that national security authorities discussed plans for our strike in Yemen over Signal, a commercial messaging app.
In a spectacular violation of national security, Defense Secretary Pete Hegses revealed details of certain operations prior to the attack on group chat. National security adviser Michael Waltz, who added Goldberg to the chat, said he took “full responsibility” for the leak.
Several Democrats urged Hegses to step down. However, the Trump administration has tried to bypass or avoid the issue. (Trump said the scandal was a “witch hunt.”
As part of a regular check-in during Trump’s first 100-day inauguration, the New York Times asked five voters what they thought of the administration’s response.
Dave Abdallah wasn’t happy with the way Trump and those around him continued to play signal chat breaches downplay.
They are “completely wrong,” Adbola said.
He added, the violation could have cost us their lives. “This is a serious and serious mistake,” he said of the whole.
Abdallah, a real estate broker who moved to the US from Lebanon as a child, voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the 2024 election. It was a protest against the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza, and concerns that Trump would not help the situation. Still, Abdallah hoped that Trump’s foreign policy could bring peace and stability to the region.
So far, he’s disappointed.
The fighting recently resumed between Israel and Hamas. Now Abdallah believes Trump, his administration and supporters are proving hypocritical in the face of a backlash on signal issues.
He recalls watching a recent video of Tiktok showing old clips of Republicans criticizing Hillary Clinton for using private computer servers while he was Secretary of State during the Obama administration. The video then showed images of the same critic. He is now a Trump supporter and makes excuses for signal chat, not a big deal.
Such excuses struck Abdallah as dishonest. “I can’t understand that,” he said of the signal chat. “So you definitely should be on the table to get rid of someone.”
– Kurt Streeter
“I don’t think anyone should be fired for this because it’s not as serious as many people think.”
Methane plume at least 4.8 kilometers long pours into the atmosphere south of Tehran, Iran
NASA/JPL-California Institute of Technology
The world now has more ways than ever to discover invisible methane emissions, which are so far responsible for a third of global warming. But methane “super emitters” take little action even when warned that they are leaking large amounts of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to a report released at the COP29 climate summit.
“We’re not seeing the transparency and urgency that we need,” he says. Manfredi Caltagirone director of the United Nations Environment Programme’s International Methane Emissions Observatory, recently launched a system that uses satellite data to alert methane emitters of leaks.
Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas to tackle after carbon dioxide, and more countries are pledging to reduce methane emissions to avoid short-term warming. At last year’s COP28 climate summit, many of the world’s largest oil and gas companies also pledged to “elimate” methane emissions from their operations.
Today, more and more satellites are beginning to detect methane leaks from the biggest sources of methane emissions, such as oil and gas infrastructure, coal mines, landfills, and agriculture. That data is critical to holding emitters accountable, he says. mark brownstein at the Environmental Defense Fund, an environmental advocacy group that recently launched its own methane sensing satellite. “But data alone won’t solve the problem,” he says.
The first year of the UN’s Methane Alert System shows a huge gap between data and action. Over the past year, this program has 1225 alerts issued When we saw plumes of methane from oil and gas infrastructure large enough to be detected from space, we reported them to governments and companies. To date, emitters have taken steps to control these leaks only 15 times, reporting a response rate of about 1 percent.
There are many possible reasons for this, Caltagirone says. Although emissions from oil and gas infrastructure are widely considered to be the easiest to deal with, emitters may lack the technical or financial resources and some methane sources may be difficult to shut down. there is. “It’s plumbing. It’s not rocket science,” he says.
Another explanation may be that emitters are not yet accustomed to the new alarm system. However, other methane monitoring devices have reported similar lack of response. “Our success rate is not that good,” he says Jean-François Gauthier GHGSat is a Canadian company that has been issuing similar satellite alerts for many years. “About 2 or 3 percent.”
Methane super emitter plume detected in 2021
ESA/SRON
There are also some success stories. For example, the United Nations issued several warnings this year to the Algerian government about a source of methane that has been leaking continuously since at least 1999, and whose global warming impact is equivalent to driving 500,000 cars a year. It is said to be equivalent. By October, satellite data showed it had disappeared.
But the big picture shows that monitoring is not yet leading to emissions reductions. “Simply showing a plume of methane is not enough to take action,” he says. rob jackson at Stanford University in California. The central problem, he sees, is that satellites rarely reveal who owns leaky pipelines or methane-emitting wells, making accountability difficult.
Methane is a major topic of discussion at the COP29 conference currently being held in Baku, Azerbaijan. a summit At a meeting on non-CO2 greenhouse gases convened by the United States and China this week, each country announced several measures on methane emissions. That includes a U.S. fee on methane for oil and gas emitters, a rule many expect the incoming Trump administration to roll back.
Sanitary products that turn blood into a gel-like solid substance rather than absorbing it appear to reduce the risk of leakage.
Brian Hsu Researchers at Virginia Tech and their colleagues wanted to find a way to reduce the leakage that often occurs with traditional sanitary napkins and cups.
The team tested different types of biopolymers — naturally occurring chain-like molecules — in pig blood to find one that would thicken it. They used pig blood because it is more readily available than human menstrual blood and has similar properties, Xu said.
When a type of biopolymer called alginate was mixed with glycerol, a type of alcohol, and exposed to blood, it formed a gel-like substance. “If you just take alginate powder and add blood, it doesn't absorb much,” Su says. “It becomes like cocoa powder in unstirred milk, with a dry center. By adding glycerol to the alginate, we've increased its blood absorption capacity.”
To test the combination, the researchers placed 8 milliliters of blood into an artificial vagina to mimic a period, then let the blood flow onto a standard sanitary napkin that had had its absorbent material removed and replaced with gauze coated with a mixture of alginate and glycerol. After an hour, the napkin had collected more blood than vaginal bleeding from a standard, unmodified napkin.
In another part of the experiment, five subjects removed a blood-filled menstrual cup from the artificial vagina without knowing whether the cup was covered in the glycerol-alginate mixture. In the former case, blood rarely spilled, whereas in the latter case, blood always spilled.
Alginates are found naturally in algae and are sometimes used as wound dressings. “Alginates are good at forming intermolecular cross-links using calcium, and blood contains calcium,” says Su. “We think these polymers first absorb the blood, and as they dissolve they start to form cross-links, eventually gelling the blood.”
Renske van Ronkhuizen Researchers from Wageningen University in the Netherlands say adding the mixture to sanitary products could help reduce women's anxiety about bleeding during their period.
“The innovative products improve menstrual comfort and convenience, helping women to manage their periods without disrupting their daily lives,” she said.
Vehicles equipped with technology to collect data on building conditions
Madeleine Cuff
British city dwellers may have spotted a strange-looking vehicle driving around their neighborhood earlier this year. It looked just like a Google Street View vehicle, with a camera setup sticking out of the back to scan its surroundings. And like the Google car, it scanned city streets and took photos.
But these modified Teslas do more than just take pictures: they’re equipped with cutting-edge sensors and scanners that can report back the exact dimensions, heat loss, materials, age and state of disrepair of every building they drive over.
The car, equipped with what’s called the Built Environment Scanning System (BESS), has been on a spree to find out just how leaky and dilapidated Britain’s buildings really are. Between March and May, the car scanned thousands of roads and millions of buildings across London, Liverpool, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds and South Yorkshire.
Data from BESS vehicles will be combined with thermal images taken by drones and planes in a £4 million government-funded project to build a huge digital database detailing the condition of buildings across the U.K. The aim is to help housing associations, local authorities and other property owners quickly plan renovation projects for hundreds of properties at once, says Ahsan Khan of xRI, the British nonprofit behind the project.
Decarbonising UK buildings is one of the toughest challenges on the journey to net-zero emissions. The UK’s 30 million buildings account for around a third of the country’s total greenhouse gas emissions, with most of the pollution coming from the use of gas for heating and hot water.
Another problem is that many of the UK’s homes are old and drafty. Retrofitting these homes to make them more energy efficient is crucial, but knowing where to start is a huge challenge, as the age and condition of the buildings varies greatly. “We’re held back as a nation because we don’t really know what we have, where it is in terms of the built environment, and what we can do about it,” says Khan.
Currently, the only means of judging a building’s sustainability is the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), a mandatory document that rates every building on a scale of A to G and gives owners advice on how to improve the rating. But EPCs, which rely on the judgement of in-person assessors, are “expensive, time-consuming and inaccurate”, says Dr. Mike Pitts The project is part-funded by the government body Innovate UK, with other funding coming from the UK Space Agency and the Welsh Government.
For organisations such as housing associations and local authorities who want to renovate hundreds of properties at once, EPCs are of little use – instead they often have to send their own assessors to the properties and plan the works schedule, which is a costly and time-consuming undertaking.
Speeding up renovations
The new database is expected to digitise much of this process. If it works as planned, it will use machine learning to tell councils, for example, how many properties already have double glazing installed, or which homes need top-up cavity-wall insulation. In an instant, it will be able to pinpoint exactly which homes have the space and sunlight to install rooftop solar panels. Crucially, it will calculate projected savings on energy bills and provide return-on-investment information, helping organisations access green finance.
“The xRI project represents a major advance in our understanding of our existing stock,” says Mat Colmer of Innovate UK. “The validated data set will improve and automate the refurbishment process, speeding up the entire refurbishment process.”
About 7.5% of homes in England, Scotland, and Wales have already been scanned, and Khan says the framework is in place to build a beta version of the database, due to be released later this year. For now, xRI is focused on decarbonizing buildings, but the BESS vehicles are collecting data on everything they see, from tree cover to potholes, that could be put to use in the future. “The amount of data is just staggering,” Pitts says.
David Grew Researchers from Britain’s Leeds Beckett University call the project “exciting,” but warn that an in-home inspection is essential before any renovation work begins. “Homes have been tampered with many times, so the same home could be completely different,” he says. “This quick and agile method is great for accelerating progress and momentum, but it can’t and shouldn’t replace a really high-quality inspection before construction begins.”
Kate Simpson A researcher at Nottingham Trent University in the UK says neighbourhood data collected by BESS vehicles could help plan local power grid upgrades and climate resilience projects. But the data needs to be collected carefully, she says. “What’s the minimum amount of data we need to make the right decisions?” she says. “That way we can minimise the environmental impact of storing that data.”
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