Researchers with the Global Commission on the Economics of Water found more than half the world’s food production will be at risk of failure by 2049 unless urgent action is taken now to conserve water sources. According to the report, demand for fresh water will exceed supply by 40% by the end of 2029 because the world’s water systems are being put under “unprecedented stress.”
The commission said governments and experts have vastly underestimated the amount of water needed for people to have decent lives. Researchers said while between 13 and 26 gallons of water are needed per day for each person’s health and hygiene, people actually require a little more than 1,000 gallons a day to have adequate nutrition.
Researchers said for most parts of the world, that volume cannot be achieved locally, meaning people are dependent on trade to meet their needs. The report calls out northwestern India, northeastern China and eastern and southern Europe, specifically. It said nearly 3 billion people are living in areas experiencing unstable water trends and several cities sinking because of the loss of below-ground water.
Researchers emphasized the immediate need for making certain changes, like decreasing food waste, rehabilitating wetlands, establishing sustainable water use goals for companies and accurately determining the cost of water.
Explosive packages in DHL warehouses raise Russian sabotage fears
Counterterrorism officials in the United Kingdom and Germany are investigating suspected Russian sabotage targeting European transportation networks, with concerns about potential threats to aviation security. In July 2024, a package caught fire at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham, raising concerns it may have been deliberately planted on a plane destined for the U.K.
Officials are examining whether this was part of a larger Russian effort to disrupt logistics networks in Britain, in what could be an act of sabotage.
In a similar incident in Germany, a package burst into flames at a DHL facility in Leipzig, just before it was scheduled to be loaded onto a plane. German authorities suggested that had the package exploded in mid-flight, it could have resulted in a major aviation disaster. Officials suspect pro-Russian saboteurs may have been behind the incident.
Authorities believe these incidents are part of a broader Russian strategy to target European supply chains as retaliation for the West’s support of Ukraine. Intelligence agencies in both the U.K. and Germany have reported an increase in Russian sabotage attempts, including attacks on military sites and critical infrastructure.
German intelligence chief Thomas Haldenwang indicated that Russian sabotage efforts have intensified and are becoming more dangerous, with operatives targeting various aspects of Europe’s logistical networks. He emphasized the risks posed by these efforts, which he said are designed to spread instability across the continent.
Both countries’ investigations are ongoing, with U.K. police collaborating with European counterparts to determine if these incidents are connected to other similar attacks.
Head of giant 300 million year old insect detailed in scientific breakthrough
New details are emerging about one of the largest bugs ever to live on planet Earth. This 9-foot-long giant insect with dozens of legs lived over 300 million years ago in the Carboniferous period, and now we know what its head looked like.
Up until now, scientists had no idea what the creature’s noggin resembled, and the new information is helping clear up its impact on its descendants. During the week of Oct. 6, research by scientists in North America and Europe led to a breakthrough. Most of the fossils of the insect were found headless shells, left behind after the creatures molted every time they grew larger.
Discoveries of these fossils date back to the 1800s, but it took modern technology to figure out the shape of the creature’s head.
Round, with two short antennae and two eyes that stuck outwards like a crab, the hundred-pound insect had a small mouth suited for grinding leaves and tree bark.
These traits led to a confusing mixture of a centipede and a millipede, leading to difficulty deciding what the insect’s head looked like. Now, by using CT scans, researchers were able to clear up the longstanding controversy.
There’s a lot left to learn about this ancient millipede, including what exactly it ate. Questions still stand on whether it walked on land, underwater or were amphibious as well.
The UK now has most migrants in country illegally in Europe: Study
A new study found Britain has more migrants in the country illegally than any other part of Europe. According to Oxford University Researchers, there are 745,000 undocumented migrants in the United Kingdom. That’s 1 in 100 of the population.
A total of 973 migrants reached the U.K. on Saturday, Oct. 5, beating the previous record for 2024 – which was 882 people in June. Since the Labour Party took control of the U.K. government in July, 13,038 migrants have entered the U.K.
Labour says it is hoping to bring down migration and lessen reliance on overseas workers by addressing skills shortages and improving wages among Britain’s workers. Another goal Labour has is to enforce penalties for employers who fail to prevent abuse of the visa system.
The Conservative Party’s answer to the issue has been the Illegal Migration Act (IMA), which gives the home secretary powers to jail almost all those aboard the boats and move them to East Africa.
The IMA Act has failed to take off since it passed in July 2023, because there isn’t enough space to detain the tens of thousands who qualify.
US hospitals face IV shortage as new hurricane threats loom
As another hurricane barrels toward the United States’ Gulf Coast, hospitals across the country are dealing with a shortage of IV fluid caused by the last one. Hurricane Helene forced manufacturers to halt production.
The leading supplier of IV fluids in the U.S., Baxter International, said its facility in North Carolina will remain closed for the foreseeable future after it flooded during the storm. The company supplies about 60% of IV fluid bags in the U.S.
IV fluids treat dehydration and are a critical component of surgery – when patients are asleep for a long time and can’t eat or drink.
Because of Hurricane Helene, Baxter has placed limits on how many IV bags hospitals can buy at one time. There are other fluid manufacturers in the U.S. but they tend to give priority to meeting the demand from their existing customers, one Boston doctor told the Wall Street Journal.
The U.S. also can’t count on European manufacturers to fill the gap because there’s a global shortage of IV fluids right now, as well. Baxter said it’s working with health, emergency, and government officials to get back up and running as soon as possible.
The proposed California law would have required safety testing of large AI systems. It would have also given the state’s attorney general power to sue companies over serious harm caused by their tech, and it would have required a sort of “kill switch” that would turn off AI models in case of emergency.
“I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology,” Newsom said in a statement explaining his opposition. “Instead, the bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions — so long as a large system deploys it.”
It’s very clear that the harms of AI today are toward consumers and toward our democratic institutions, not sort of pie-in-the-sky sci-fi fantasies about computers making super viruses.
Patrick Hall, Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences, George Washington University
For instance, minimal risk systems like OpenAI’s Chat GPT would only need to adhere to transparency provisions and EU copyright laws. But higher risk systems, like AI models that try to predict whether a person might commit a crime, will be fully banned as of February 2025.
These algorithms are becoming a bigger and bigger part of our lives, and I do think it’s time to regulate them.
Patrick Hall, Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences, George Washington University
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Watch the exchange in the video above.
Simone Del Rosario: Patrick, what was it in this bill that the governor of California sent back and how would it have changed the AI landscape in the state?
Patrick Hall: I think that there are a lot of good things on the table for this California bill, in particular, mandatory testing before systems were released; the ability for the government to take enforcement actions when harms do occur related to AI systems; the notion of a kill switch or the ability to turn a system off quickly; whistleblower protections. There were good things there.
I think that the issue was that the focus of the law was on so-called frontier models. And these are sort of the largest AI models developed by the largest AI companies. It’s a very narrow scope. And then also it really only focused on a sort of small aspect of the performance of AI systems that has come to be known, sort of confusingly, as AI safety.
AI safety really concentrates on things like preventing systems from being used to make bioweapons, preventing catastrophic risk, and I think that was where the bill went wrong.
AI can be a dangerous technology, but I think that it’s very clear that the harms of AI today are toward consumers and toward our democratic institutions, not sort of pie-in-the-sky sci-fi fantasies about computers making super viruses. So I think that’s where the bill went wrong: its focus on catastrophic risk.
Simone Del Rosario: Do you agree with the tech companies that said this bill would have stifled innovation because of the things that you would have to do before developing or is that just an excuse that they make?
Patrick Hall: My opinion there is that it is an excuse, but it would certainly have cut into their revenues in terms of these AI systems, which are probably already under a great deal of stress. I try to explain to people that these generative AI systems require industrial-scale investments in computation, tens [to] hundreds of millions of dollars or more. So they’ve already spent a lot of money on these systems. Whenever you have a sort of regulatory burden, that, of course, increases the amount of money that you have to spend. But since we talking about the biggest, richest companies in the world, I do think it’s a little bit of an excuse.
Simone Del Rosario: I am curious: had this bill passed, or if California decides to move forward with different but similar legislation regulating AI when the rest of the country hasn’t, could this change how tech companies operate in the state of California?
Patrick Hall: Certainly you could see tech companies leave the state of California. I’m not sure how realistic that is, though. What tends to happen is almost a different scenario where most of the larger firms would apply the California regulation, or any large state regulation – California, New York, Illinois, Texas – apply the obligations to meet that regulation across the entire United States.
I’d say that’s actually a more likely outcome and perhaps another reason why some of the tech firms did not like this bill is because they knew it would not only affect their behavior and their revenues in California, but it was likely to affect their behavior and revenues throughout the country.
Simone Del Rosario: Let’s extrapolate that out even more because the EU has passed AI regulation, the AI Act, over there. These are multinational companies that have to adhere to rules in the EU. So how does that affect business in America? And how is the proposed regulation in California different from what we see in the EU?
Patrick Hall: One thing that I would like to emphasize is that EU citizens and citizens of other countries with strong data privacy laws or AI regulations really have a different experience online than Americans and and have many more protections from predatory behaviors by tech companies than we as Americans do.
What it boils down to is tech companies are able to extract a lot more data and sort of conduct a lot more experiments on Americans than they are able to on EU citizens and citizens of other countries in the world that have strong data privacy or AI regulations.
I think it’s a fully different online experience in Europe these days than it is in the U.S. The EU AI Act is a fairly different kind of law. It’s a much broader law and it’s a law that doesn’t focus only on so-called frontier models or only on large models. It doesn’t focus only on safety. It focuses on all types of uses of AI, and it has several different risk tiers, where models in different risk tiers or systems in different risk tiers have different compliance burdens. So it’s a much more holistic law.
Simone Del Rosario: Do we need to have an AI act of our own for a federal response to this?
Patrick Hall: It’s a very good question. I think the answer is yes, eventually. AI in 2024 is very data-driven, so it’s very hard to have good AI regulation without good data privacy regulation. The EU is quite far ahead of us in that they have a strong, overarching data privacy regulation, the GDPR, and after they passed that, they were able to pass an AI Act.
Now it doesn’t have to be done in that order. I’m not saying that the Europeans have done everything right. I’m not saying that they won’t stifle innovation. Certainly, they will to a certain degree, but we have a lot of catching up to do as well. We need to start thinking about data privacy and broader regulation of AI, certainly, and those two may have to be done together. It’s just hard to do AI regulation without data privacy regulation because 2024 AI is so data driven.
We as voters need to make it clear to our representatives that these types of regulations are important, and we need to make it clear the harms we’re experiencing, anything from privacy violations to inconveniences to more serious outcomes, more serious negative outcomes.
These algorithms are becoming a bigger and bigger part of our lives and I do think it’s time to regulate them. And I’d also make it clear that we have good models for regulating algorithms on the books in consumer finance and employment decision-making, in medical devices, and any of these would be a better model to start out from then than the sort of, quote-unquote, AI safety direction.
EU court rules member states must recognize legal gender changes
The European Court of Justice (EJC) ruled Thursday, Oct. 1, that EU member states must legally recognize gender identity changes made in other member countries. This marks a significant victory for trans rights supporters.
The case involved Arian Mirzarafie-Ahi, a transgender man from Romania, who had legally changed his name and gender in the U.K. However, Romania refused to reflect these changes on his birth certificate, leading to a legal battle that reached the EU’s top court.
Getty Images
The ECJ determined that Romania’s refusal violated EU law, specifically hindering the right to free movement and residence within the bloc, which is guaranteed under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.
The court emphasized that failing to recognize gender changes across borders disproportionately impacts transgender individuals, forcing them to navigate conflicting legal documents across different countries.
Mirzarafie-Ahi’s case drew significant attention due to Romania’s invasive legal requirements for gender recognition, including sterilization. In contrast, the U.K. allows legal gender changes without such conditions.
The court’s ruling reinforces that these disparities in national law cannot obstruct the rights of transgender citizens.
Although the case stems from pre-Brexit recognition in the U.K., the court clarified that the decision applies to all legal gender changes made within the EU prior to Brexit.
How melting glaciers are causing borders to shift in Italy and Switzerland
Melting glaciers are prompting the redrawing of maps along the Swiss-Italian border amid record-low snowfall and warming temperatures. Part of the impacted area is beneath the Matterhorn, one of Europe’s tallest mountains, and in the region of Plateau Rosa. All of the regions involved in the redrawn boundaries are close to popular ski resorts.
The changes come as glacier ridgelines or areas of continuous snow along the two countries border have caused natural boundaries to shift.
Switzerland said that it approved the tweaks to the border on Friday, Sept. 27, but that Italy was still in the process of “signing” the agreement between the two nations.
Switzerland said that the redrawn boundaries are in the economic interests of both nations. Experts also note that the new boundaries help sort out which country will be responsible for maintenance of specific natural areas along the boundaries.
Data showed that Switzerland’s glaciers lost 4% of their volume in 2023 following 2022’s biggest loss ever of the glaciers volume of 6% after record-low snowfall that year. Researchers have warned that if these trends continue that the recession of glacier ridgelines will only accelerate.
The diminishing snow and accelerated melting area also uncovering some mysteries. The remains of a German hiker missing since 1986 were found earlier this year near Matterhorn, and in 2022, the wreckage crash in 1968 close to the Aletsch Glacier was revealed.
Travel agents smuggle migrants to the US, some take charter flights
The State Department enforced visa restrictions on travel agents, accused of smuggling migrants into the United States. It said rogue agencies based in Europe, Africa and the Middle East are preying on vulnerable people by operating services designed to facilitate unauthorized migration.
A State Department spokesman told the Telegraph, “No one should profit from vulnerable migrants — not smugglers, private companies, public officials, nor governments.”
The Biden administration has tried to crack down on charter companies that are allowing migrants to use private planes to make it into the U.S.
Biden’s senior adviser for migration, Blas Nuñez-Neto, said migrants pay as much as $70,000 for their journey, with a big portion of that money going to charter companies.
Nuñez-Neto also said Nicaragua serves as a main launching pad for migrants, with many flying there from their home country, then making their way to the U.S.
Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega hasn’t responded to the allegations of facilitating the migrant smuggling. However, in a recent speech Ortega accused the U.S. of engaging in a war against migrants.
The Biden administration convinced Haiti in late 2023 to impose a total ban on charter flights to Nicaragua. The administration has also revoked visas of multiple charter executives.
The migrant crisis has been at the forefront of the 2024 presidential election. Republicans blame Kamala Harris for what they say is the Biden administration’s inability to get a grip on the situation.
The Department of Homeland Security reported more than 600,000 people illegally entered the U.S. and evaded capture in 2023.
Senate demands answers on popular weight loss drug’s price
As weight loss injections continue to grow in popularity, the maker of two of the most popular is testifying on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Sept. 24. The CEO of Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic and Wegovy, will testify before a Senate committee about the high cost of these popular drugs.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, the head of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has been vocal about frustrations over how much Americans are charged for their medications.
While they’re pretty much the same thing, Ozempic is used to treat type 2 diabetes, while Wegovy is specifically approved for weight loss purposes only. A previous report by the committee showed the price of Wegovy is significantly lower in European countries — for example, it’s about $140 a month in Germany and only $92 in the U.K., while the same drug runs Americans more than $1,300 a month.
Tomorrow, I will ask the CEO of Novo Nordisk, Mr. Lars Jørgensen:
Why are you charging the American people up to 10 or 15 times more for the same exact product than you're charging people in Canada and Europe? pic.twitter.com/DKaUiQSaM3
Ahead of the hearing, Novo Nordisk is defending its pricing structure in a statement saying, “We appreciate that it is frustrating that each country has its own healthcare system, but making isolated and limited comparisons ignores a fundamental fact…Unfortunately, even when we lower our prices, too often patients in the United States don’t receive the savings.”
The company also said Ozempic’s net price — which is how much money it makes after rebates and discounts are calculated — has gone down 40% since it was introduced in the U.S. Wegovy is “following a similar trajectory,” according to the company.
The Department of Health and Human Services said in a report published in February that in 2022, prices of all drugs in the U.S. were nearly three times as high as in other wealthy countries — despite whether they were name brand or generic.
