The yearlong effort by House Republicans to impeach President Joe Biden is reaching a critical stage, as the President’s brother and son may testify in the coming weeks even as questions linger about whether the disjointed investigation has uncovered any impeachable offenses.

House Republicans have yet to prove that money made by Joe Biden’s son Hunter or other family members in overseas business deals made it to Joe Biden or influenced his actions while he was President or Vice President. Months of press releases and depositions by the Republican leaders of the House Oversight Committee have been big on fanfare and light on substance.

Joe Biden’s brother Jim Biden is scheduled to be interviewed by the committee on Dec. 6, and Joe Biden’s son Hunter is scheduled to be deposed on Dec. 13. 

Hunter Biden’s legal team believes the Republicans’ case against the President is weak enough that its lead lawyer on Tuesday challenged Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to let Hunter testify at a public hearing. “Our client will get right to it by agreeing to answer any pertinent and relevant question you or your colleagues might have, but—rather than subscribing to your cloaked, one-sided process—he will appear at a public Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing,” Abbe Lowell wrote on Hunter Biden’s behalf. “A public proceeding would prevent selective leaks, manipulated transcripts, doctored exhibits, or one-sided press statements.”

Comer refused the offer, saying Hunter Biden would be deposed privately and could be called later to testify in a public hearing. The House Oversight Committee “won’t conduct this investigation on Hunter’s terms,” Comer wrote Tuesday on X. “The President’s son must first appear for a deposition.”

The public back-and-forth came as some House Republicans are acknowledging that the information uncovered so far hasn’t shown Joe Biden being influenced by money being made by his son or other family members, or it playing a role in any of his actions as a public servant. On Tuesday, Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo, who’s been driving attention toward Comer’s investigation for months, asked Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan, a member of the Oversight Committee, if Republicans had found any policy changes Joe Biden made as a result of those business deals. “The short answer is no,” McClain said. “That’s what we are trying to get to right now.” 

The inquiry has produced evidence suggesting Hunter Biden traded off his family name to advance his business interests. Hunter Biden is also the focus of a federal criminal investigation and has been charged with lying about his drug use when he purchased a handgun in 2018.

Meanwhile, Comer has been casting his investigation farther afield. On Monday, the Kentucky Republican wrote in an op-ed published by Fox News that the Committee has concerns about the classified documents found last year in a closet in Joe Biden’s University of Pennsylvania offices in Washington, D.C., but that the prosecutor investigating the documents case, Special Counsel Robert Hur, refused to let House Republicans look at the material.

The inquiry into Biden’s improper possession of classified documents has unfolded alongside an investigation into former President Donald Trump’s taking of classified documents to his home in Florida, with Trump allegedly refusing to give some of them back. That led to Trump being federally charged in August in a case that could reach trial next year. Biden has said he didn’t know the classified documents were in his possession and that he returned them promptly when they were discovered.

Comer wrote that he was concerned individuals without security clearances may have had access to the Biden documents and that some of the documents were related to countries where Biden’s son and family members were doing business deals. But Comer hasn’t shown evidence that’s the case.

“President Biden’s mishandling of classified material and his involvement in his family’s business schemes threaten our national security,” Comer wrote in his op-ed, suggesting the documents could play a larger role than previously expected in an impeachment push that’s expected to reach its final stages early next year.

The House impeachment inquiry into Biden is picking up momentum after the House muddled through a leadership crisis throughout most of October, after the chamber voted to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. His replacement, Speaker Mike Johnson, is watching the impeachment proceedings closely and said earlier this month that the inquiry is at “an inflection point” and that the “appropriate” next step is to put witnesses under oath and question them to “fill gaps in the record.” 

Idaho officials on Monday asked the Supreme Court to restore a strict abortion law that would allow the state to prosecute physicians conducting abortions in some cases. If the Supreme Court decides to weigh in, it would be the first time the nation’s highest court would render a judgment on punishing abortion-providing doctors after overturning the constitutional right an abortion.

The Idaho law, enacted in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, allows state officials to prosecute or revoke the professional license of doctors who perform abortions, except in cases where it is necessary to prevent the woman’s death or when the pregnancy results from rape or incest.

It’s unclear if the Supreme Court will step in, but the justices are yet to schedule an abortion hearing since the Dobbs decision. “It’s pretty routine when you lose in the lower court to ask the Supreme Court to intervene,” says Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California at Davis with an expertise in abortion. “Whether the court is willing to intervene or even wants to deal with yet another abortion case is a trickier question.”

Idaho’s law is one of the strictest in the nation, and whether the Supreme Court gets involved will have legal and political ramifications in the country’s shifting abortion landscape. A ruling against Idaho “may discourage states from going as far as Idaho has,” says Ziegler. “There’s also the politics of it, where we’ve seen voters being increasingly unhappy with sweeping abortion bans.”

Read More: Idaho’s New Law Will Punish Anyone Helping a Minor Access an Out-of-State Abortion With Up to 5 Years in Prison

The legal battle in Idaho is part of a broader wave of challenges following the Dobbs decision. Idaho’s near-total abortion ban has been contested in courts for over a year. After an initial appeal by the state, a panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a ruling that would have allowed the law to take effect. However, an en banc panel of 9th Circuit judges later put the law on hold earlier this month.

The law was originally challenged in court by the Biden Administration, which argued that the Idaho law would inhibit emergency room doctors from performing abortions that are necessary to stabilize the health of women facing medical emergencies and violated the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a provision of a federal Medicare statute that bars states from imposing restrictions that would prevent emergency room doctors from treating patients.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruled in favor of the Biden Administration in August 2022, claiming that Idaho officials cannot enforce the abortion law against doctors who are also obligated to follow the federal EMTALA. Winmill expressed concern that doctors in emergency rooms could face an impossible task of complying with both federal and state law, given the complex and chaotic nature of emergency medical situations. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in September at first agreed to let Idaho enforce its ban pending appeal, but then the full panel of appeals judges in November lifted the stay, effectively meaning the law cannot go into effect.

In a court filing on Monday, Idaho’s Republican attorney general urged the Supreme Court to step in on an emergency basis to put the district court’s ruling on hold while it appeals the decision, claiming that it marked “an ongoing violation of both Idaho’s sovereignty and its traditional police power over medical practice.”

Idaho officials also argued that both Winmill’s initial decision and the recent 9th Circuit ruling infringe on the Supreme Court’s endorsement of states’ rights in the Dobbs decision. Idaho officials, represented by a conservative legal group that opposes abortion, contend that the federal emergency care law in question, EMTALA, is intended to prevent “patient dumping” rather than allowing the federal government to dictate state abortion law.

The Idaho case comes more than a year after abortion laws were thrown into turmoil following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, a longstanding ruling that guaranteed abortion rights to women nationwide.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Hamas released 12 hostages and Israel released 30 Palestinian prisoners on Tuesday, the fifth day of a fragile cease-fire that has enabled humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza and that mediators hope to extend even as Israel pledges to resume the war.

Israel said 10 of its citizens and two Thai nationals freed by Hamas returned to Israel. Soon after, Israel released the Palestinian prisoners. The truce is due to end after one more exchange Wednesday night.

CIA director William Burns and David Barnea, who heads Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, were in Qatar, a key mediator with Hamas, to discuss extending the cease-fire and releasing more hostages, a diplomat said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks. A U.S. official confirmed Burns was in Qatar, speaking anonymously because the director’s travel plans are not publicized for security reasons.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to visit the region this week, also with an eye to extending the truce.

Israel has vowed to resume the war with “full force” to destroy Hamas once it’s clear that no more hostages will be freed under the deal.

The Biden administration has told Israel it must avoid “significant further displacement” and mass casualties among Palestinian civilians if it resumes the offensive, and that it must operate with more precision in southern Gaza than it has in the north, according to U.S. officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.

Hamas and other militants are still holding about 160 hostages out of the 240 seized in their Oct. 7 assault into southern Israel that ignited the war. Israel has said it is willing to extend the cease-fire by one day for every 10 additional hostages that Hamas releases, according to the deal brokered by the Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. But Hamas is expected to make much higher demands for the release of captive soldiers.

Israel has vowed to end Hamas’ 16-year rule in Gaza and crush its military capabilities. That would almost certainly require expanding the ground offensive from northern Gaza to the south, where most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million is now crowded. It’s unclear where they would go if Israel expands its ground operation, as Egypt has refused to accept refugees and Israel has sealed its border.

Hostages and prisoners released

The latest group of Israeli hostages freed from Gaza — nine women and a 17-year-old — was flown to hospitals in Israel, the Israeli military said.

Tuesday’s hostage release brought to 60 the number of Israelis freed under the terms of the truce between Israel and Hamas. An additional 21 hostages — 19 Thais, one Filipino and one Russian-Israeli — have been released in separate negotiations since the truce began.

Earlier in the war, Hamas released four Israeli hostages, and the Israeli army rescued one during its offensive in Gaza. Two other hostages were found dead in Gaza.

The latest swap brought to 180 the number of Palestinian women and teenagers freed from Israeli prisons. Most have been teenagers accused of throwing stones and firebombs during confrontations with Israeli forces. Several released women were convicted by Israeli military courts of attempting to carry out deadly attacks. The prisoners are widely seen by Palestinians as heroes resisting occupation.

The freed hostages have mostly stayed out of the public eye, but details of their captivity have started to emerge.

In one of the first interviews with a freed hostage, 78-year-old Ruti Munder told Israel’s Channel 13 television that she was initially fed well in captivity but that conditions worsened as shortages took hold. She said she was kept in a “suffocating” room and slept on plastic chairs with a sheet for nearly 50 days.

Israel imposed a siege on Gaza at the start of the war and only allowed a trickle of food, water, medicine and fuel to enter prior to the cease-fire, leading to widespread shortages and a territory-wide power blackout.

Tuesday saw the first major exchange of fire between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters in northern Gaza since the cease-fire began Friday. Each side blamed the other for the outbreak, but no further violence followed and the swap went ahead. Still, it underscored the fragility of the truce, with the warring sides holding their positions in close proximity to each other.

Northern Gaza in ruins

The cease-fire has allowed residents who remained in Gaza City and other parts of the north to venture out to survey the destruction and try to locate and bury relatives.

In northern Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, which Israel bombarded heavily for weeks and which troops surrounded in heavy fighting with militants, “you come across whole city blocks that have been demolished, just a pancake of concrete layered as buildings have collapsed,” said Thomas White, the Gaza director for the U.N. agency caring for Palestinian refugees.

The agency delivered six trucks of aid to the camp, including supplies for a medical center. Footage of White’s visit showed streets lined with destroyed buildings, cars, and piles of rubble.

A U.N.-led aid consortium estimates that, across Gaza, over 234,000 homes have been damaged and 46,000 completely destroyed, amounting to around 60% of the territory’s housing stock. In the north, the destruction “severely compromises the ability to meet basic requirements to sustain life,” it said.

More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, roughly two-thirds of them women and minors, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. More than 1,200 people have been killed on the Israeli side, mostly civilians killed in the initial attack.

At least 77 soldiers have been killed in Israel’s ground offensive. Israel says it has killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence.

Authorities were able to reopen the dialysis department at Gaza City’s Shifa hospital after medical teams brought a small generator. Around 20 patients there had gone two or three weeks without dialysis, Dr. Mutasim Salah told Al-Jazeera TV from the hospital.

Two weeks ago, Israeli forces seized the hospital, which Israel had contended was used as a major base by Hamas, an accusation that the group and hospital staff deny.

Fears for the south

Israel’s bombardment and ground offensive have displaced more than 1.8 million people, nearly 80% of Gaza’s population, with most having sought refuge in the south, according to the U.N. Hundreds of thousands of people have packed into U.N.-run schools and other facilities, with many forced to sleep on the streets outside because of overcrowding.

Though, rain and cold winds sweeping across Gaza have made conditions even more miserable.

On Tuesday, Hanan Tayeh returned to her destroyed home in the central town of Johor al-Deek, scouring for any belongings in the wreckage.

“I came to get anything for my daughters. Winter has come, and I have nothing for them to wear,” she said. “It is cold, we are homeless.”

The cease-fire has allowed increased aid of 160 to 200 trucks a day into Gaza, bringing desperately needed food, water and medicine, as well as fuel for homes, hospitals and water treatment plants. Still, it is less than half what Gaza was importing before the fighting, even as humanitarian needs have soared.

Juliette Toma, a spokesperson for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, said people come to shelters asking for heavy clothes, mattresses and blankets, and that some are sleeping in damaged vehicles.

“The needs are overwhelming,” she told The Associated Press. “They lost everything, and they need everything.”

(LANSING, Mich.) — Michigan is implementing one of the nation’s most ambitious clean energy mandates, aiming to be carbon-free by 2040 in what is a pivotal test of the Democrats’ environmental goals in a state with a long-standing manufacturing legacy.

Michigan will join four other states in requiring utility providers to transition to 100% carbon-free energy generation by 2040 under legislation signed Tuesday by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The state has also set a goal for utilities to generate 50% of their energy from renewable sources by 2030, a significant leap from the current 12%.

The state-level mandates support the Biden administration’s goals of a carbon pollution-free electricity sector by 2035 and a net-zero emissions economy by no later than 2050.

The clean energy package, which was approved by Democrats in the Michigan Legislature this month, has been lauded by environmental groups. Lisa Wozniak, executive director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, said she hopes Michigan’s plan serves as a model for other states.

“Michigan is at the heart of the industrial Midwest. What happens here sets the tone for what could happen all across this country,” Wozniak said.

Michigan ranked 11th in electricity consumption nationwide in 2021, with a majority of it coming from coal, natural gas and motor gasoline. Of the 12% produced through renewable sources last year, most came from winds that sweep across the Great Lakes.

A resource that naturally replenishes over time and is derived from solar, water or wind power is considered renewable. Under the package, clean energy includes renewable sources along with nuclear energy and natural gas. Natural gas can be used only if utilities capture and store the carbon emissions.

Meeting the 50% renewable energy goal by 2030, and 60% five years later, will require a massive buildout of utility-scale renewable energy resources in Michigan.

Just over 17,000 acres (6,880 hectares) of land in the state are currently used for wind and solar generation, according to Dan Scripps, chairman of the Michigan Public Service Commission. Scripps told lawmakers during a Nov. 7 committee hearing that an additional 209,000 acres (84,579 hectares) of land will be needed for projects to hit the 60% renewable energy goal.

To achieve this, Michigan lawmakers will give the state’s Public Service Commission the authority to supersede local governments for the approval of these large projects.

The provision has quickly become the package’s most contentious element. A local government coalition, including the Michigan Association of Counties, has strongly opposed it, with the Michigan Township Association arguing it stifles the input of local officials and residents in communities where these facilities are set to operate for the next several decades.

Public reaction to the Democrats’ ambitious energy plan could have wide-reaching implications for the party in 2024. Michigan was a critical component of the Democrats’ “blue wall” that also includes Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and that helped Joe Biden win the White House in 2020.

The clean energy plan became possible only after Michigan Democrats last year flipped both chambers of the Legislature while holding power in the governor’s office to win full control of state government for the first time in four decades.

The legislation signed Tuesday will also increase energy efficiency requirements and raise the cap on rooftop solar from 1% to 10% of each utility’s five-year average peak load.

Connecticut, New York, Oregon and Minnesota all share Michigan’s timeline of being carbon-free by 2040 while Rhode Island has set a goal of using 100% renewable energy by 2033, according to the Clean Energy States Alliance.

Questions linger about how well the mandates will work and whether states will stick to the timelines. Michigan’s legislation includes a provision that allows for extensions on the requirements if “good cause” is shown.

All living U.S. first ladies and multiple Presidents are expected to attend a tribute celebrating the life of former first Lady Rosalynn Carter, who passed away on November 19 at 96 years old. 

The private tribute on Nov. 28 is part of a three-day memorial service for the former First Lady taking place across Georgia this week, which began on Monday with a wreath laying ceremony at Carter’s alma mater, Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, Ga. In the evening, the public was able to pay their respects as her remains lay in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. The funeral will be held on Wednesday.

Here’s what to know. 

Who is expected to attend?

Former president Jimmy Carter, 99 and currently in hospice care, is planning to travel to Atlanta to attend his wife’s memorial service on Emory University’s campus.

He will be joined by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, along with their spouses. All the living former First Ladies — Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump— are also expected to be in attendance.

Multiple members of Congress will be present, including both Georgia senators, along with members of the Emory community, with whom the Carters had a longstanding relationship.

Memorial and funeral service

Tuesday’s service will be an invitation-only tribute to the former First Lady. The service is expected to include some of her favorite Scripture passages and songs, along with tributes from Carter’s longtime aide and friend Kathryn Cade, journalist Judy Woodruff, and grandson Jason Carter. Her surviving grandchildren will serve as honorary pallbearers. 

The memorial service will be followed by a funeral on Wednesday in Plains, Ga., at the couple’s family home where she lived most of her life alongside her husband and former President Jimmy Carter. 

“We are doing exactly what she wanted at the service,” her grandson Jason Carter told CNN. “She would have been amazed and gratified by the outpouring of love and support.”

Read more

Read TIME’s obituary for Carter, a pioneering First Lady who worked tirelessly to raise awareness for those with mental health illness, here.

Read about Carter’s decision to hire a wrongfully convicted murderer to serve as White House nanny here—and how they became lifelong friends.

Read about Jimmy Carter’s secret to living to 99, according to his grandson, here.

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network.

In the three decades since it was first introduced, the plastic, coin-sized sticker you see on fruit and vegetables has become a staple of modern agriculture, imparting essential information about the grower, brand, country of origin, and even price of fresh produce as it crisscrosses the globe. The Product Look Up (PLU) label is designed to be briefly scanned then discarded, destined for landfill. There, it might last for hundreds of years, joining an endless accumulation of plastic packaging also intended to be removed after purchase and immediately jettisoned.

Like most single-use packaging, the stickers are not easily recycled. Those that don’t end up in landfill collect in the environment, and then often end up clogging up our rivers and oceans. According to the United Nations Environment Program, nearly a garbage truck and a half’s worth of plastic ends up in rivers, lakes, and oceans every minute. Eventually those plastics break down into micro and nano plastic particles that poison our air, the water we drink, and our bloodstream. Approximately 40% of all plastic produced is designed for single-use purposes, and little of it is easily recycled. Like the PLU sticker, it is used just once and then thrown away. Yet the long-term consequences are enormous: The production of plastic, 98% of which is sourced from fossil fuels, is the cause of some 10% of all global greenhouse-gas emissions.

One proposed solution is to replace these plastics with alternatives: biodegradable utensils, compostable wrappers, plant-based bottles, and compressed-fiber plates and bowls. Theoretically, these products could seamlessly slot into existing supply chains, requiring no sacrifice on the part of consumers, who are clamoring for more sustainable options. But production is limited in scale, more expensive than conventional plastic, and it’s not yet clear that the alternatives are actually better for human and planetary health: most plant-based plastics are, on a molecular level, identical to their fossil-fuel-sourced siblings and last just as long in the environment. Other substitutes require many of the same toxic chemical additives as conventional plastics to keep them waterproof, flexible, durable, and colorfast.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that the infrastructure to ensure these bioplastics actually biodegrade or compost is very limited. That means that despite the best intentions of manufacturers and consumers, supposedly compostable plastic bags and supposedly biodegradable single-use cutlery may be causing just as much climate damage as conventional plastics. 

The future of such plastics, as well as the role of bioplastics in the global economy, is under negotiation. In November, representatives from 162 nations converged in Nairobi, Kenya, for INC-3, the third of five planned sessions for the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee to develop a global treaty to end plastic pollution, a kind of Paris Climate Accords for plastic. So far, the delegates have put forth a wide range of options, ranging from greater recycling capacity to a tax on manufacturers, which would go to global cleanup projects. Among the more ambitious proposals is for global production of virgin plastic to be slashed, largely through a reduction in single use products. Treaty negotiations are scheduled to conclude at the end of 2024.

Read more: Countries May Be Getting One Step Closer To Actually Tackling Plastic Pollution

A complete ban would not be enough to end the plastic scourge, but it’s a start. A new tool developed by the University of California Santa Barbara, UC Berkeley, and the Benioff Ocean Initiative shows that a 90% reduction of single-use plastics would remove some 286 million metric tons of ocean pollution by 2050—the equivalent in water bottles stacked end-to-end would cover the distance to the sun and back nearly six times. (Marc and Lynn Benioff, who support the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at UC Santa Barbara, also own TIME Magazine).

The composting complication

Practically speaking, there isn’t enough global supply of alternative materials to replace the amount of single-use plastic being produced today, and that may be a good thing, says Paula Luu, project director for the Center for the Circular Economy at impact investing firm Closed Loop Partners. That’s because, while plastic alternatives show a lot of promise, it won’t be realized unless their implementation is accompanied by an upgrade of current waste-collection systems, ongoing scientific research, and policy change. “Before we do a full switchover, we really need to focus on addressing a number of different challenges, including customer education, waste-recovery infrastructure, and the economic incentives to a full transition,” says Luu. “If it’s not done thoughtfully, with a whole-system view, it could result in unintended consequences.”

France’s effort to reduce single-use plastics is a case in point. In 2022, the country banned all non-compostable PLU tags. A win for French environmentalists, however, soon became a sticky problem for produce importers: in a globalized market where produce comes from all corners of the world, one country’s ban on plastic PLU tags only really works when every other country opts to do the same.

The technology exists—multinational fruit-labeling company Sinclair, among others, has been producing them for years—but the cost is higher given how cheap plastic is. A global ban on plastic stickers would certainly encourage competition and economic incentives, leading to lower prices for compostable versions. But without widespread access to composting facilities, most of those compostable stickers would end up in landfill anyway, where they could cause even more climate damage than conventional plastic. In a well-regulated composting facility, bacteria use oxygen to break organic materials down into carbon. In a landfill’s low-oxygen environment, that material creates methane as it decomposes, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Read more: Compostable Dog Poop Bags Aren’t Really That Compostable

The terms “biodegradable” and “compostable” are often misinterpreted to mean that the products will melt away in the natural environment, which is rarely the case. To meet a baseline standard of compostability, 90% of a PLU sticker, or a fork, for that matter, must break down into carbon matter within six to 24 months under carefully regulated heat and moisture conditions. But if you just tossed a supposedly biodegradable fork into your backyard, it could last almost as long as your typical plastic cutlery. In one 2019 study, researchers left compostable plastic bags buried in soil or submerged in seawater for three years as a trial. At the end, some of the bags were intact enough to carry a full load of groceries. Which means that without a dramatically ramped-up global system of collecting and processing biodegradable packaging, compostable is little better than plastic for the environment.

In the U.S., only 27% of the population has access to food waste composting programs, and only 142 out of the 201 industrial composting facilities nationwide that process food waste will accept compostable packaging as well, according to a new survey conducted by the composting website BioCycle and the Composting Consortium, a business group that promotes effective composting. That means that the country is producing far more compostable cups, plates, and take-out containers than it can actually process, says BioCycle’s editor and publisher, Nora Goldstein.

Facilities that are reluctant to take compostable packaging argue that they can’t always tell the difference between conventional plastics and compostable, and they don’t want to risk contamination. A compostable sachet of pre-washed salad greens looks just like a polyethylene produce bag, says Goldstein. “If I can’t tell the difference, and I am a composting professional, your average consumer is just as likely to throw a plastic bag in the compost as a compostable bag in the recycling.” Both are bad: When plastic ends up in compost, the facility can’t sell it, which threatens the financial viability of the project. And when compostable packaging ends up in a recycling facility, it can gum up the machinery or, depending on how it is made, taint the next batch of recycled plastic.

Plant-based doesn’t necessarily mean plant-friendly

Add plant-based plastics into the mix, and you have even more problems. Polyethylene terephthalate, the PET plastic used for most soda bottles (and also in many other single-use packaging products), is usually extracted from fossil fuels, but, in a process similar to turning corn into ethanol, it can also be manufactured from plants. The plant- and fossil-fuel-based versions are chemically indistinguishable—the only way to tell the difference is through radiocarbon dating (carbon molecules extracted from fossil fuels are older than ones that come from plants)—and like conventional PET, plant-based PET can be recycled.

But when consumers see a label saying a plastic is plant-based, “One in two Americans will say, ‘Oh, this belongs in a composting bin’,” says Luu of Closed Loop Partners, which recently conducted a survey of American attitudes to plastic alternatives. In other words, consumers might think they are doing the right thing, even if half of them are putting their plant-based PET products in the wrong place. Luu believes better labeling is the answer: “Just like we universally understand the stop sign, we should immediately understand that this package is compostable because it’s tinted green or is prominently labeled. If we don’t get labeling and design right, we could be creating problems for both the recycling and the composting industries.”

Another option, says Daphna Nissenbaum, CEO and co-founder of TIPA Corp, a multinational company producing a wide range of compostable plastic films and food packaging, is to go the fully compostable PLU route, and mandate, through global standards, that all flexible plastic packaging—sandwich wrappers, zipper bags, cling film, and shopping bags, for example—goes to the compost bin. TIPA’s technology, which is licensed to manufacturers around the world, can create compostable packaging for everything from dry cleaning to granola bars. The goal is for no one to ever worry about special labels, she says. “It will be intuitive. If it’s flexible, it will go in the compost with the banana peels.” On the other hand, if it’s rigid, like a soda bottle or a yogurt pot, it should go to recycling. 

The only problem is that while TIPA’s films are compostable, they, like many other compostable products, are still made partially from fossil fuels. The technology exists to make a fully compostable, fully plant-based plastic product, but it is far more expensive than conventional plastics, and does not always work as well, especially if it is used to package food items that are acidic, or liquid, or require long-term storage. Blending plant-based and fossil-fuel sourced plastics to create a compostable product lowers the cost and improves performance.

The truth: ‘carbon is carbon’

That is the dirty secret of so-called bioplastics, says Ramani Narayan, a chemical engineering professor at Michigan State University and an expert on alternative plastics. “Carbon is carbon, it doesn’t matter where it comes from when it comes to biodegradability.”

What matters is how the long polymer chains that make the plastic, no matter the source of carbon, are configured: insert oxygen molecules in the right place with the help of a chemical additive, and it opens the way for microbes that can accelerate decomposition. Compostability may help solve plastic pollution, but if compostable plastics are still made with fossil fuels, it does nothing to address the problem of carbon emissions.

Like conventional plastics, both plant-based and biodegradable versions—no matter their source—still need chemical additives to help with durability, fire resistance, waterproofing and colorfastness. Compressed fiber and paper plates, bowls, and cups are often lined with a plastic film to keep them from leaking. Those additives can be toxic for human health and dangerous for the environment, yet few have been studied.

Pennie Lindeque, head of science for marine ecology and biodiversity at the U.K.’s Plymouth Marine Laboratory, is currently trying to do just that, investigating how the breakdown process of biodegradable plastics impacts the ocean ecosystem. Marine creatures still mistake fragments for prey, and chemicals released in the process of breaking down might have unforeseen consequences for other kinds of ocean life, including coral. “Biodegradable materials could help reduce the impacts of plastic waste in the ocean. However, we must be sure that such materials, and the chemicals they contain, do in fact demonstrate little or no impact on organisms and ecosystems,” she says. We don’t want to, as she puts it, “jump from the frying pan into the fire.”

Read more: There’s Almost No Research on the Health Impact of Plastic Chemicals in the Global South

One of the most promising plastic replacements is polyhydroxyalkanoate, or PHA, which is made by fermenting plant sugars that come from beets, corn, and other vegetable waste, or even biogas from landfill, in a process similar to brewing beer. As with other naturally-occurring polymers like silk or cellulose, PHA products degrade into nontoxic components within months. They can also be shredded, melted, and reformed into new products. Different kinds of bacteria, some naturally occurring, others specifically engineered, are used instead of chemical additives to create properties such as flexibility and transparency.

According to chemists that specialize in plastic alternatives, most conventional plastics could theoretically be replaced by PHA, but its biodegradable qualities are better suited for single-use and disposable items. That said, PHA is currently expensive and time-consuming to produce—current global capacity is 100,000 metric tons a year, compared to the 430 million metric tons of conventional plastic produced annually. And even Anindya Mukherjee, co-founder of GO!PHA, a global PHA-focused business coalition, admits that it could have other drawbacks that have yet to be discovered. Indeed, there is a glaring absence of scientific oversight for pretty much all the current alternative plastic options, he says. “Right now, anybody can say anything they want about how good their product is for the environment. There needs to be a scientific advisory board as part of the INC process, one that will regulate the development and the proliferation of alternatives. Otherwise, we will always have this problem.”

Better science plays an important role, but it is not enough, says Christina Dixon, ocean lead for the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency. To solve plastic’s underlying problem, we have to look beyond substitutes and rethink our reliance on disposable goods. “These new materials may seem like some sort of Holy Grail—walking and talking like a plastic without plastic’s impact—but all they are doing is shifting the burden somewhere else.” Instead, Dixon argues, we need to create circular systems that rely on reusable, refillable goods that last, instead of a linear trajectory from production through consumption to disposal. “Our goods should not be designed to end up in landfill, no matter what they are made of,” she says.

The alternative plastic world is a minefield, cloaked in sustainability marketing that at best is aspirational, and at worst causes as many problems as the products it is trying to replace. A ban on single-use plastics could level the playing field, allowing products that are better for the climate, for the environment, and for human health to rise to prominence. That also means questioning the very idea of disposability. That is, after all, what started all the problems in the first place. If plastic products were valuable, they probably wouldn’t end up polluting our oceans.

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To find the closest historical precedent to what George Santos is about to face, you have to go back 21 years, when James Traficant was standing in the well of the House, spinning his latest colorful tale of victimhood, and dang was it a doozy. 

With his last chance to convince his colleagues not to kick him out of the House, Traficant had a laundry list of defenses at the ready. That the 10-count racketeering indictment against the Ohio Democrat was the result of a personal vendetta by former Attorney General Janet Reno. That there was no truth to the allegation that he was involved in a murder-for-hire scheme to eliminate a horse trainer who might testify against him. That Traficant had done nothing wrong when congressional staffers “voluntarily” worked on his farm and houseboat, and he only “borrowed” his aides’ paychecks in what prosecutors alleged was a kickback scheme that had staffers sliding cash under his office door. That Traficant allegedly had plenty of his pals confessing on tapes that the feds had bullied them into testifying against him, that one of those agents attempted to rape a constituent to coerce her to testify, and that a friend had seen his business curiously firebombed to destroy evidence that exonerated him.

“They didn’t allow witnesses to testify,” he lamented as the presiding officer repeatedly told Traficant to drop his blue language that, by today’s standards for profanity, seems quaint. “They allowed none of my tapes. All of my tapes were exculpatory.”

Maybe Traficant truly believed his conspiracy-tinged paranoia that July day back in 2002, his last in the House. Nonetheless, it was an embarrassing day for those of us who ever called Traficant’s Youngstown-based district home. In that northeast Ohio district, Traficant may have been the kook who ended his out-of-nowhere speeches with the Star Trek slogan of “beam me up” but he won re-election easily. I still have a flag that flew over the House as a graduation present from a man I once interviewed as a high school intern at The Warren Tribune-Chronicle; he knew how to keep the locals happy and when to feed the media appetite for colorful quotes that made it seem like he really mattered.

Yet as a newly convicted felon, his colleagues wanted Traficant gone and didn’t want to rely on Mahoning Valley voters to get it right. Traficant didn’t take the hint and used 30 minutes of floor time to mount a last-minute, long-odds pitch to keep his job, though at times he seemed to know his effort was doomed from the start. “I’m prepared to lose everything. I’m prepared to go to jail. You go ahead and expel me,” he said with contemptuous fatalism.

And they did. By a 420-to-1 vote, Traficant became just the second House member since the Civil War to be expelled from the House. It turns out, even Congress has the occasional limit to its patience.  

More than two decades later, the House will face the same question again: Has the behavior of one of their own gone so far as to warrant expulsion? Santos, a New York Republican, would be just the third House member to meet that fate since lawmakers expelled 10 Confederates from their ranks during the first year of the Civil War. Santos is accused of serial misconduct in a scathing bipartisan, 56-page ethics report that spans the deceiving of donors, the embezzlement of campaign cash, and the use of it on Botox and subscriptions to a website mainly used for porn. A resolution to expel him from Rep. Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, was expected Tuesday afternoon, and under the House rules he would merit a vote within two days.

Read more: What I Learned Investigating George Santos

But rather than argue his innocence as Traficant mostly did in his unhinged final appeal to his colleagues (notwithstanding his allegation that donors bought “Senators’ girlfriends gifts”), Santos seems determined to burn down the House as he heads toward the exits. In a three-hour rant on Friday on the platform formerly known as Twitter, Santos unfurled invectives, insults, and insinuations. While he was objectively accurate when he said lawmakers cast the occasional vote while drunk, he was on potentially shakier ground when accusing others of skipping work on the regular because they’re too hungover after a night of booze and sex with lobbyists.

“Within the ranks of the United States Congress, there’s felons galore, there’s people with all sorts of sheisty backgrounds, and all of a sudden, George Santos is the Mary Magdalene of the United States Congress,” posited Santos, whose reported drag name was not Mary Magdalene but rather Kitara Ravache.

In the days since that online rampage, Santos has told anyone who will listen that he’s heading toward expulsion, no matter what he does. He’s probably right. 

Still, there is a non-zero chance that some of his colleagues will stick with him. There are two reasons that lawmakers may summon for defending a fabulist with a dodgy understanding of campaign finance laws and a totally unmoored relationship with the truth: 1) the GOP majority currently stands at a paltry four seats and the odds Republicans can hold Santos’ district are slim at best; and 2) absent a criminal conviction, as Traficant had, some members may feel that even an Ethics Committee report as damning as this one isn’t enough to override the will of the voters.

That second justification could play with lawmakers who would be on the fence in other circumstances. After all, an ethics lapse isn’t unheard of in Congress. Facing 23 criminal indictments, Santos survived a first attempt to expel him. The effort fell well short of the two-thirds tally—291 votes—to expel him; only 179 members said he should go and another 19 simply said they were present. 

While Santos seems determined to become a parody of himself worthy of Bowen Yang’s yeoman work on Saturday Night Live, he may be playing the long game within a party where truth has become a standing victim. And that might be what feeds a third bucket of reluctant Santos apologists: he might never go away, and making him a victim only gives him an easier glidepath back to relevance.

On his way out the door in 2002, Traficant spun up a credulity-stretching tale explaining his innocence, offering up as evidence that the feds didn’t bother to tap his phones, didn’t have his fingerprints on dollar bills, and no FBI or IRS agents who investigated him ever testified against him. He added scores of non sequiturs as well, such as the fact the forensic accountant injured his groin in a courtroom accident and the spouse of the judge worked for a law firm representing one of the witnesses. To cap off his yarn, Traficant said that when pulled over late one night, he passed a field sobriety test meant to bust a political opponent. “There’s no physical evidence,” he said defiantly before saying his colleagues implicated in a House page sex scandal got to stay in power so he should, too. (The whole video is cringeworthy and a masterclass in political theater.)

A few months after his expulsion, the booted nine-term lawmaker still earned 15% of the vote from his Pennsylvania jail cell while running as an independent. After serving seven years of an eight-year sentence, Traficant tried to make another comeback as an independent. That time, in 2010’s Tea Party wave, he snagged 16% of the vote.

Which is why, while most of Washington is eager to rid itself of Santos, there is a slice of the population that believed Traficant’s nutty version of reality and will believe Santos’ claim that he is actually cleaner than most of his colleagues at the Capitol. After all, Santos is barely trying to defend himself against any of the numerous allegations against him, noting he has given 40 speeches, taken 100 meetings, cleared 1,200 constituent cases, and repeatedly defended President Donald Trump. Americans love a comeback story, and there will always be room on far-right platforms to reward a panderer, no matter how ridiculous the record.

Doubt it? A 91-times-charged ex-President who has his own tenuous relationship with reality is the far-ahead leader of the current Republican Party and, just seven weeks from the Iowa caucuses, is seemingly unreachable. If Trump can make a comeback while fighting four separate criminal cases and a raft of other legal troubles in the wings, Santos might believe he could do the same in miniature. Given the state of the current GOP, Santos could be making the most fact-based assessment of his political prospects in an alternative reality where facts are actual liabilities and fabricated credentials are strengths.

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The soap opera-like ousting and swift return of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman produced plenty of fodder for ironic quips online but it also exposed some serious fault lines. One such critique I enjoyed was: “How are we supposed to solve the AI alignment problem if aligning just a few board members presents an insurmountable challenge?”

As the company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI may be one of the more recognizable names, but artificial intelligence is more than one company. It’s a technology of immense consequence, yet it remains almost entirely unregulated. The E.U. has a chance to meaningfully tackle that challenge—but not if it bends the knee to Big Tech’s ongoing onslaught. Inspirational Members of the European Parliament have so far been standing firm in the face of incredible pressure, in an effort to save this landmark legislation. On the weekend, E.U. Commissioner Thierry Breton spoke out against what he claims are self-serving lobbying efforts by France’s Mistral AI and other AI companies that do not serve public interest. These lawmakers need and deserve our support at this crucial moment.

Europe is poised to lead in a world that is waking up to the need to regulate AI. From the U.S. Executive Order to the recent AI Safety Summit hosted by the U.K. at Bletchley Park, countries everywhere are recognising that if we are going to share the benefits of this incredible technology, we must mitigate its risks. The E.U. AI Act will be the first comprehensive legal framework aimed at doing precisely this, but a handful of technology firms are holding the political process hostage, threatening to sink the ship unless their systems are exempt from regulation. To capitulate will damage European innovation, put profits before public safety, and represent an affront to democracy. Our lawmakers must not bend the knee. 

On Nov. 10 negotiations broke down after France and Germany pushed back against proposed regulation of “foundation models.” Together with Italy, they subsequently released a nonpaper that articulated these demands, asking that companies building foundation models only be subject to voluntary commitments. Foundation models are general-purpose machine learning systems, such as Open AI’s GPT-4 (which underpins ChatGPT), that can be subsequently applied to a large range of downstream applications and functions. Regulating these foundation models will force AI corporations to make sure they are safe before deployment, rather than waiting to act until after dangerous systems are released, which comes with clear danger of public harm. Given growing concern on the potential risks presented by these advanced systems, including mass misinformation, enabled bioterrorism, hacking of critical infrastructure, large-scale cyber attacks and more, this is a sensible provision to include.

Read More: E.U.’s AI Regulation Could Be Softened After Pushback From Biggest Members

We have seen first-hand the need for codified legal protections, rather than relying on corporate self-regulation. For example, the psychological harm wrought by social media on young women and girls has become increasingly apparent. The companies that ran the platforms and channels that hosted harmful content were aware of this damage for years yet failed to act. Voluntary commitments are neither sufficient nor reliable. We need prevention, rather than cure, if we want to stop people getting hurt. We need enforceable safety standards and risk mitigation for powerful AI from the start. 

So why the objection? Holdouts claim that it will hinder innovation for businesses who want to adapt and use AI, but this simply isn’t true. Regulating foundation models is essential for innovation as it will protect downstream smaller European users from the requirements of compliance, and from liability if things go wrong. There are only a handful of very well-resourced companies that are developing the most impactful foundation models, but there are thousands of small companies in the E.U. that have already adopted them for concrete business applications, and many more who plan to do so. We need balanced obligations across the value chain—the broadest shoulders should bear the biggest load.

This is reflected in the makeup of the opposing sides. The European DIGITAL SME Alliance, comprising 45,000 business members, wants to regulate foundation models. Two European AI corporations (France’s Mistral AI and Germany’s Aleph Alpha), along with a handful of giant U.S. firms do not. Their argument is also not borne out by real-world experience. My own country Estonia is bound by the exact same E.U. rules and regulations as Germany, yet has a vibrant and thriving startup ecosystem. If those who oppose regulation of foundation models, like Mistral’s Cedric O, are looking to point the finger, they must look elsewhere. In truth, while those opposing regulation claim to be protecting the E.U.’s innovation ecosystem, such a step-down would more likely transfer financial and legal burdens away from large corporations and onto startups, which have neither the ability nor the resources to change the underlying models.

France and Germany also claim that regulating foundation models will stifle Europe’s ability to compete in AI on the global stage. This doesn’t hold up. The tiered approach proposed, which is already a compromise between the Parliament and the Council of the E.U., allows for targeting so that competitors to major AI companies can emerge without onerous restrictions. European lawmakers should close their ears to fearmongering pushed by Big Tech and its newest allies, and remember the Act’s purpose: To achieve a fair and balanced framework that safeguards innovation while preventing harm. It must not be a legislative device for anointing a few Silicon Valley-backed AI leaders with sectoral supremacy and zero requirements, while preventing thousands of European businesses from maximizing the technology’s potential. 

The Parliament supports regulating foundation models, as do many in the Commission and the Council. The business community endorses it, as do the thousands of AI experts who have profound concerns about the dangers of these increasingly powerful systems if left unchecked. A handful of tech firms should not be allowed to hold our political process to ransom, threatening to detonate this landmark legislation and throw away three years of work. They must not be allowed to put their profits before our safety, and to put market capture before European innovation. 

This story was originally published by Grist.

Diplomats, academics, and activists from around the globe will gather yet again this week to try to find common ground on a plan for combating climate change. This year’s COP, as the event is known, marks the 28th annual meeting of the conference of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. More than 70,000 people are expected to descend on Dubai for the occasion. 

In addition to marathon negotiations and heated discussions, the fortnight-long assembly will see all manner of marches, rallies, speakers, advocacy, and lobbying. But, aside from fanfare, it remains unclear how much COP28 will, or can, achieve. While there have been signs that the United States and China could deepen their decarbonization commitments, countries have struggled to decide how to compensate developing countries for climate-related losses. Meanwhile, global emissions and temperatures continue climbing at an alarming rate. 

That has left some to wonder: Have these annual gatherings outlived their usefulness?

To some, the yearly get-togethers continue to be a critical centerpiece for international climate action, and any tweaks they might need lie mostly around the edges. “They aren’t perfect,” said Tom Evans, a policy analyst for the nonprofit climate change think tank E3G. “[But] they are still important and useful.” While he sees room for improvements — such as greater continuity between COP summits and ensuring ministerial meetings are more substantive — he supports the overall format. “We need to try and find a way to kind of invigorate and revitalize without distracting from the negotiations, which are key.”

Others say the summits no longer sufficiently meet the moment. “The job in hand has changed over the years,” said Rachel Kyte, a climate diplomacy expert and dean emerita of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. She is among those who believe the annual COP needs to evolve. “Form should follow function,” she said. “And we are using an old form.” 

Durwood Zaelke, co-founder and former president of the Center for International Environmental Law, was more blunt. “You can’t say that an agreement that lets a problem grow into an emergency is doing a good job,” he said. “It’s not.”

Established in 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an international treaty that aims to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the worst effects of climate change. Some 198 countries have ratified the Convention, which has seen some significant wins. 

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol marked the first major breakthrough, and helped propel international action toward reducing emissions — though only some of the commitments are binding, and the United States is notably absent from the list signatories. The 2015 Paris Agreement laid out an even more robust roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, with a target of holding global temperature rise to “well below” 2°C (3.6°F) above preindustrial levels, and “pursuing efforts” to limit the increase to 1.5°C (2.7°F).

Although the path to that future is narrowing, it is still within reach, according to the International Energy Agency. But, some experts say, relying primarily on once-a-year COP meetings to get there may no longer be the best approach.

“Multilateral engagement is not the issue anymore,” Christiana Figueres said at a conference earlier this year. She was the executive secretary of the Convention when the Paris agreement was reached, and said that while important issues that need to be ironed out on the international level — especially for developing countries — the hardest work must now be done domestically. 

“We have to redesign the COPs…. Multilateral attention, frankly, is distracting governments from doing their homework at home,” she said. At another conference a month later, she added, “Honestly, I would prefer 90,000 people stay at home and do their job.”

Kyte agrees and thinks it’s time to take at least a step back from festival-like gatherings and toward more focused, year-round, work on the crisis at hand. “The UN has to find a way to break us into working groups to get things done,” she said. “And then work us back together into less of a jamboree and more of a somber working event.”

The list of potential topics for working groups to tackle is long, from ensuring a just transition to reigning in the use of coal. But one area that Zaelke points to as a possible exemplar for a sectoral approach is reducing emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas with more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide in the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere.

“Methane is the blow torch that’s pushing us from global warming to global boiling,” he said. “It’s the single biggest and fastest way to turn down the heat.”

To tackle the methane problem, Zaelke points to another international agreement as a model: the Montreal Protocol. Adopted in 1987, that treaty was aimed at regulating chemicals that deplete the atmosphere’s ozone layer, and it has been a resounding success. The pollutants have been almost completely phased out and the ozone layer is on track to recover by the middle of the century. The compact was expanded in 2016 to include another class of chemicals, hydrochlorofluorocarbons.

“It’s an under-appreciated treaty, and it’s an under-appreciated model,” said Zaelke, noting that it included legally binding measures that the Paris agreement does not. “You could easily come to the conclusion we need another sectoral agreement for methane.”

Zaelke could see this tactic applying to other sectors as well, such as shipping and agriculture. Some advocates — including at least eight governments and the World Health Organisation — have also called for a “Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty”, said Harjeet Singh, the global engagement director for the initiative. Like Zaelke, Kyte, and others, he envisions such sectoral pushes as running complementary to the main Convention process — a framework that, while flawed, he believes can continue to play an important role.

“The amount of time we spend negotiating each and every paragraph, line, comma, semicolon is just unimaginable and a colossal waste of time,” he said of the annual events. But he adds the forum is still crucial, in part because every country enjoys an equal amount of voting power, no matter its size or clout.

“I don’t see any other space which is as powerful as this to deliver climate justice,” he said. “We need more tools and more processes, but we cannot lose the space.”

Conspiracy theories, especially about vaccines, spread like wildfire during the COVID-19 pandemic, but such anti-science thinking is extending far beyond COVID-19.  There are now conspiracies about sunscreen, the causes of cancer, and wifi—among other alleged ills—and they are going global. 

Anti-vaccine conspiracies have even begun to influence dog owners. A recent study published in the medical journal Vaccine found that around 4 in 10 dog owners in the U.S. thought vaccinating their dogs against diseases like rabies could cause the dogs to get autism, an entirely unscientific belief.

One reason for this expansion in conspiratorial and paranoid beliefs is a new alliance between two groups that might, at first blush, seem to have little in common. Some New Age spirituality and wellness influencers are aligning themselves with extreme right-wing anti-science activists, a merging of interests known as conspirituality. British journalist James Ball calls it “the-wellness-to-fascism pipeline.” The pipeline also runs in the other direction: in the U.S, for example, the far right-wing conspiracy monger Alex Jones sells a variety of wellness products, including diet pills, fluoride-free toothpaste, and tinctures that are claimed to boost male virility.

There are many theories circulating to explain conspirituality, such as the notion that both the wellness and anti-science conspiracy movements attract people who are distrustful of the mainstream, including of mainstream medicine and media. But there’s surely another draw: profit. There are millions—in fact, billions—of dollars to be made from conspiracy capitalism. As the writer Naomi Klein told the New York Times, the two movements are not just joining together through a shared suspicion of power, but also because “their demands fit within the well-worn grooves of individualism, entrepreneurship and self-promotion—the capitalist virtues, that is.”

The spread of conspiracy entrepreneurialism

The curious case of anti-sunscreen “activism” is one illuminating example of conspiracy entrepreneurialism. 

In the U.S., Dr. Joseph Mercola, a Florida osteopathic physician, is well known for spreading misinformation about COVID-19, and was identified by the Center for Countering Digital Hate as one of the most prolific peddlers of anti-vaccine falsehoods. At the same time, he is selling alternative wellness products that have gained him an estimated net worth in excess of $100 million.  

Mercola has falsely claimed that medically-approved sunscreens are dangerous and recommends you “steer clear” of them because they “interfere with natural vitamin D production.”  He urges us to consider UVB as the “good guy.”  He is dangerously wrong.  Both types of ultraviolet (UV) rays, UVB and UVA, can damage your skin. While it is true that UVB does not penetrate the skin as deeply as UVA, UVB is far from harmless and UVB rays are thought to cause most skin cancers.  It comes as no surprise to discover that Mercola is selling his own brand of what he calls “natural” sunscreen.  A similar idea is perpetuated by Pete Evans, celebrity chef, author and influencer in Australia, the country with the highest skin cancer rates in the world. He falsely argues that sunscreens contain “poisonous chemicals,” such as oxybenzone and nanoparticles, and rob the body of Vitamin D. 

In South Africa, Dr. Naseeba Kathrada pivoted from selling beauty and weight loss products to speaking about how to use potentially harmful “natural” supplements to “detox” after a Covid vaccine. She also runs a fear- and misinformation-filled Telegram group and on community radio stoked fears around childhood vaccination during a measles outbreak. She joined a cohort of doctors and lawyers who combined advocacy for ivermectin, which is ineffective at preventing or treating COVID-19, with anti-vaccine rhetoric.

Zandré Botha, a “multi-dimensional healer,” released a clip that went viral during South Africa’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign, which was featured on the online show hosted by U.S. far-right personality Stew Peters. Botha falsely claimed her “live-blood analysis” showed “nanoparticles” in the blood of vaccine recipients, while selling an unproven “post COVID injection protocol” along with a spiritual testimony through her website. Meanwhile, “indigenous” wellness products like “medicinal herbal teas” are advertised as a “COVID-19 Buster,” and are promoted to people like South African celebrity chef Lesego Semenya days before he died of COVID-19. Kathrada and other anti-vaccine doctors and activists feature prominently on the website of the pseudo-medical World Council for Health, whose “Principles of a Better Way” exude conspirituality.

The durability of misinformation

One problem with this kind of misinformation is that once it gets under the skin, it’s hard to correct. In an intriguing study, American adults were randomly divided into three groups to view simulated Facebook videos. One group watched a video that promoted sunscreen, the other watched a fake interview with a doctor claiming that sunscreen was unhealthy because it damaged your DNA, accelerated aging, and increased the risk of cancer.  Those who saw the misinformation video reported being significantly less likely to wear sunscreen when going out in the sun.  

In a third group, simulated comments were posted designed to correct the misinformation video in real time—but these real time corrections did not significantly increase people’s intentions to wear sunscreen. Trying to correct misinformation is not only hard, but can sometimes even make more people believe them more deeply.

Read More: The Conspiritualty of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In the U.S., wellness products and services–which include gym memberships, yoga, and meditation classes–are worth at least $450 billion a year. While some of these services, like gyms, are subject to legislation and regulation, “natural” products have so far escaped scrutiny, so it’s no surprise that the industry is doing all it can to fight legislation that would regulate them. For example, in both Canada and New Zealand, recent legislation to tighten regulation of natural products, in line with medical products, was fiercely opposed by the natural health lobby. The lobby argued that the regulation favored the pharmaceutical industry, framing the regulation as ‘an assault’ on the natural products industry.

The Big Wellness industry is increasingly borrowing its anti-regulation tactics from the playbooks of Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Tobacco. In the U.S., the offices of the Natural Products Association (NPA) are a stone’s throw from the Capitol, and its President and CEO, Dan Fabricant, admits it is lobbying pretty much every day, with up to a dozen lobbyists working at any one time. 

One of the most contested issues of late was last year’s bipartisan Dietary Supplement Listing Act,  which would have required all manufacturers of natural products and supplements to register with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) a full list of ingredients, as well as provide relevant warnings, precautions, and allergen statements. Its supporters, including the Council for Responsible Nutrition and the American Medical Association, argued it would have helped the FDA identify and warn consumers about unsafe products, and give doctors easy access to a database to help determine which natural products were appropriate. The bill, opposed by the natural products industry, died in committee. 

How to fight back against conspirituality

Conspiratorial anti-science wellness influencers who spread disinformation about evidence-based medicines, vaccines, and sunscreen while hawking their own “natural” products are putting public health at risk. How best can scientists push back?

There’s a range of strategies we must use. One helpful approach is to “inoculate” the public against misinformation—that is, warn them via social media, for example, that unscrupulous influencers will try to peddle anti-scientific notions and arm them with scientific counter-arguments that neutralize the misinformation. A recent review of 42 studies of such inoculation found that it enhanced “individuals’ ability to discern real information from misinformation.” Another strategy is to point out that the merchants of disinformation are motivated by profit. Improving health literacy among the public may help them discern misinformation, particularly in regions where health information contains jargon or words in the dominant languages like English that don’t translate well into widely spoken vernacular. Scientists may also help through a commitment to more research (similar to intervention trials) into the effectiveness of strategies to counter misinformation and the impact on public health. 

Anti-science wellness influencers will surely keep pushing ever more wacky and dangerous treatments, like  perineum sunning, sun-gazing and correcting your bad eyesight with spiritual healing instead of glasses. Pushing back effectively has become more urgent than ever.

In the first episode of Virgin River, Alexandra Breckenridge’s Mel Monroe, a nurse practitioner from Los Angeles, arrives in the fictional North California enclave after signing a year-long contract to work at the town’s family medical clinic with Doc Mullins (Tim Matheson). Over the course of five seasons, Mel and her fellow residents of the cozy wooded community see plenty of drama: characters have survived stabbings, shootings, car crashes, and drug rings; houses have been intentionally burnt down, and others destroyed in a ravenous wildfire. And yet, Mel’s first-year work anniversary has not even officially passed.

Despite there being five seasons of Virgin River since it debuted in 2019, with a total of 52 episodes, the actual timeline of the series is shockingly slow. Beyond Mel’s contract, it’s easy to know that not that much time has passed in what is essentially the West Coast version of Stars Hollow since one character, Charmaine (Lauren Hammersley), the ex-girlfriend of Mel’s fiancée Jack (Martin Henderson), has been pregnant with twins since the end of the first season.

But Virgin River is finally speeding things up—a little. The final episode of the first part of the fifth season followed the characters around on Labor Day, and, in its last moments, flashed forward to winter, with Christmas just around the corner. Now, two new episodes will drop on Netflix on November 30, and pick up where things left off. They’ll be packed with all the twists and turns that the series is known for, along with some quaint holiday fare. (And if you can’t wait until then, Netflix just released the first nine minutes of the new installment here).

Because so much happens on Virgin River—and in so little time—it can be hard to keep up. So, here’s a refresher on what went down the last time we saw Mel Monroe and all her friends, and what’s going on in their lives ahead of the new episodes. 

Where do Mel and Jack stand now?

All characters on Virgin River seem to be a little cursed, but no one more so than the town’s midwife and nurse practitioner Mel. She arrived in town (remember in VR time, around a year ago) grieving the recent loss of her husband and the stillbirth of their daughter. She refers to herself as somewhat of an orphan—her mother died when she was 11, and her father a decade ago—and has no other family besides her older sister Joey. In Virgin River, she meets the local bar owner and former Marine Jack, who becomes her lifeline (remember, he confesses that he’s falling in love with her after knowing her for a month).

And they’ve been through it together. Jack’s house was burned to the ground, and he was later shot and nearly killed. Things started to turn around for the couple: Mel got pregnant, Jack started building what promised to be a lucrative glamping business, and they got engaged. But that all came crashing down. Mel had a miscarriage during the wildfires of season 5, and it turns out that Jack’s biggest investor was running a drug trade out of their construction site.  

Though Jack’s money is now tied up in an FBI investigation over what happened on his site, when we last see the couple, they’ve decided to make a huge financial investment. After Ava (Libby Osler) reveals that she’s selling her family’s land, where their beloved farm once stood, Mel tells Jack that she wants to purchase it, so they can live there with their children one day. This is a huge moment of growth for Mel, who was very resistant to the idea of trying to have a family with Jack again after her miscarriage. For the first time in a long while (take that with a grain of salt in VR world), she is looking forward to, and optimistic about their future.  

How about Brie, Brady, and Mike?

When the drug trade is finally busted, police officer Mike (Marco Grazzini) is shot, and taken to the hospital, where Jack’s sister Brie (Zibby Allen) stays by his bedside. They are not officially together yet, but sparks were flying at the baseball game earlier in the season when they kissed for the first time. Mike seems a lot less complicated than Brady (Benjamin Hollingsworth)—Jack’s fellow Marine who got caught up in the drug drama, risking Brie’s safety in the process. Though it is Brady who leads the police to finally catching the person at the center of it all, Brie tells him that she wished she knew that he was cooperating with the authorities. She does also say that she will always love him. 

Both Brie and Brady have promising new romances on the horizon: Brie and Mike share chocolate shakes in his hospital room on their “first date,” and Brady starts hanging out with the woman whose daughter he helped rescue during the wildfires. 

Who is the father of Charmaine’s babies?

After spending three full seasons making Mel and Jack’s lives absolutely miserable, Charmaine reveals at the end of season 4 that the father of her babies is not Jack, the ex-boyfriend who has been by her side for several months, preparing for a nasty and expensive custody battle over the twin boys. The shocking development left Jack angry and confused—he had fully embraced becoming a father and was excited, even if Charmaine was constantly threatening that he would never see the children because he hurt her feelings by being in love with Mel instead of her. 

In season 5, the paternity of Charmaine’s babies is finally revealed. Calvin, the troubled drug lord, is the father. But when did they even get together? It’s an open question. The Christmas episodes at least promise to offer one huge resolution: After being pregnant for almost the entire duration of the series, Charmaine will finally give birth.

What’s going on with Lizzie and Denny?

Doc’s grandson Denny (Kai Bradbury), who revealed that he has Huntington’s Disease, is happily in love with his girlfriend Lizzie (Sarah Dugdale). Though he’s still coming to terms with his terminal prognosis, Denny tells Lizzie at the Labor Day carnival that he might want to leave Virgin River, and see what the world has to offer with the time he has left. He even asks Lizzie if she would consider leaving Virgin River to go with him. But then Lizzie drops a bombshell: she thinks she’s pregnant.

What did Preacher do with Wes’ body?

Another character with a burgeoning romance is Preacher, the chef of Jack’s bar played by Colin Lawrence. He’s fallen hard for firefighter Kaia (Kandyse McClure). And doesn’t he deserve a little happiness in his life? Preacher spent the past few seasons wrapped up in the chaos that is Paige—a baker who had assumed a new identity because she was on the run with her son from an abusive relationship. When her ex-husband Wes finally found where she lived in season 2, she pushed him down the stairs in self defense and accidentally killed him. Scared, Paige called Preacher and he helped hide Wes’ body in the woods. Though Wes’ twin Vince eventually turned up in Virgin River on the hunt for his brother, he was arrested for attempted murder and kidnapping and taken away. This was a huge moment of relief for Preacher—Vince was the last person to really care about Wes, so now the beloved cook is in the clear. Or so he thought. 

At the carnival, Kaia gets a phone call from her boss who says that they’ve just found a body in the woods. Preacher asks if it was a victim of the wildfires, and Kaia says that the body looks like it had been up there for some time, “like someone buried it.” 

How are Hope and Doc getting along?

These two curmudgeons spent the full first season of the show at each other’s throats, on the brink of divorce after 20 years of being separated. They decided to give it another go, and are now happily in love, even if they bicker like the old married couple that they are. Now that Hope, Virgin River’s mayor played by Annette O’Toole, has basically recovered from her near fatal car accident, she is finally hoping to take care of her husband for a change. Doc, who suffers from macular degeneration, is grappling with what it will mean for his life as he loses his vision. But at the carnival, he learns that he’s been accepted into a clinical trial. Hope emphasizes that she will be with him every step of the way as he navigates the disease.

Why is Mel looking for her father?

In classic Virgin River fashion, the final episode of the first part of season 5 ended with a big twist. Mel receives a phone call from Joey, and learns that her sister has been rummaging through some of their late mother’s stuff, including love letters from decades ago. The letters are not from their father—and they are postmarked from Virgin River. Having read through them, Joey believes that their mother was writing to the man who might be Mel’s actual biological father. Yet again, a paternity puzzle is upon us. This is Virgin River after all.

In the face of a proposed dog meat ban in South Korea, the Korea Dog Meat Farmers’ Association—which has long opposed moves to crack down on the industry—said that it was mulling the release of 2 million dogs near government landmarks in Seoul as well as the homes of lawmakers. 

“If you ask how big the opposition from farmers is, we’re talking about releasing 2 million dogs we’re raising,” Joo Young-bong, the head of the association said during a radio show last week. He then listed targeted sites including the presidential office, the agriculture minister’s home and offices of lawmakers who have introduced the bills.

According to a bill which aims to end South Korea’s dog meat trade by 2027, announced by the ruling People Power Party on Nov. 17, businesses—such as dog farms, butchers, retailers, and restaurants—will have to submit to local authorities their plans to phase out dog meat. They would also be given a three-year grace period, as well as financial aid from the government, to transition out of the trade. The People Power Party also suggested a maximum five-year jail sentence or a fine of 50 million won ($38,000) for offenders of the ban. 

The bill is the result of rare bipartisan support, after 44 lawmakers from both the ruling party and the opposition Democratic Party of Korea formed a group last month to discuss the issue. But among the most prominent advocates for the ban is first lady Kim Keon-hee, with whom South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol shares five cats and six dogs. (Yoon had previously drawn criticism, even from fellow party members, for proposing that the anti-dog meat bill be named after his wife.)

Last week, Kim also mentioned the legislative development to Queen Camilla during the couple’s state visit to London, In response, Queen Camilla said they welcomed Kim’s efforts,  a presidential spokesperson later told reporters. 

Governmental initiatives mulling dog meat bans in South Korea have stalled in the past because of heated protests from those in the industry.

Authorities say there are over 1,000 breeding farms and 34 slaughterhouses in South Korea, as well as some 1,600 restaurants that serve dog meat. Industry representatives say the numbers are far bigger, with an estimated 3,500 farms and 3,000 restaurants that face risks of shutting down should a ban be implemented.

Dog meat farmers are again vehemently opposing the recent bill, arguing that their livelihoods are at stake, and that the ban would erase the culture of dog meat consumption. Besides the recent threat to release dogs in Seoul, supporters of the dog meat trade have resorted to similar moves in the past, such as staging a dog meat tasting event in front of the National Assembly in 2019, while animal rights activists called for a ban on the trade.

The centuries-old practice of eating dog meat, which is traditionally known to combat summer heat, is typically only eaten by older people today—the cuisine has come under increasing controversy, amid animal cruelty concerns and the rising popularity of dogs as household pets.

According to a 2023 Nielsen poll commissioned by Humane Society International, an animal advocacy group, 86% of South Koreans have little intention of consuming dog meat, and 57% support a ban on dog meat consumption. A Gallup Korea poll last year showed that 64% of respondents opposed dog meat consumption.

Joo, the chairman of the dog meat farmers’ association, said that while he agreed with public health and cruelty concerns surrounding breeding and slaughter facilities, he said that the solution was for the dogs to be recognized as livestock and farmers made to abide by food safety standards. A previous attempt by authorities to categorize dogs as livestock in 2008 was met with opposition from animal rights activists, who claimed that the move would legitimize the dog meat trade, which is neither legal nor explicitly prohibited. 

The practice is also a sore spot for the country’s growing prominence on the international stage, some argue. “Foreigners think South Korea is a cultural powerhouse. But the more K-culture increases its international standing, the bigger shock foreigners experience over our dog meat consumption,” said Han Jeoung-ae, an opposition lawmaker who supports a ban on dog meat, in June. Last year, an exchange program sending South Korean high school students to a town in New Jersey was axed after activists complained about the dog meat trade in the students’ hometown of Gangwha.

The recently proposed ban was welcomed by animal rights groups which have campaigned for years for an end to the country’s dog meat trade. HSI, which has participated in rescue operations on South Korea’s dog farms, said in a statement that the proposed ban was a “dream come true.”

Lola Webber, the director of HSI’s End Dog Meat campaign, tells TIME that the group has been working with dog meat farmers in South Korea for almost a decade, encouraging them to switch to more sustainable livelihoods. “Most of these farmers have experienced societal, family and financial pressure to get out of farming dogs,” she says. “With so few people wanting to eat dog meat in the country, it’s gotten harder to make a living and these farmers know the writing is on the wall for this cruel industry.”

“So the threats and protests that we always hear from the small but vocal dog farmer associations whenever a ban is suggested, is not really in the farmers’ best interests nor representative of farmers as a whole.”

In a nation as affluent as the United States, it’s a harsh reality that more than 44 million people, including vulnerable children and seniors, grapple daily with food insecurity. Yet, this problem is not confined within any single nation’s borders. Globally, conflicts, climate changes, and a worldwide pandemic have escalated the number of those in dire need of access to food from 80 million to an astonishing 350 million in the past seven years. 

If the chronically hungry formed their own nation today, it would be the third-largest in the world. This isn’t just a metaphor; it’s a stark representation of the vastness of this crisis.

The glaring irony is that globally, we produce sufficient food, yet fail in equitable distribution. This massive global misalignment threatens more than just the immediate need for food around the world. It underlies geopolitical instability, exacerbates shortages, and triggers mass migrations.

We cannot achieve world peace and progress on a planet half fed and half hungry.

The tools and solutions we require to combat the challenge are available, including more sustainable, efficient ways to provide short-term hunger relief, and new production systems and delivery methods to provide nutritious food and clean water. Piecemeal action is already happening, but we can collectively do much better. We must do better.

My own personal encounter with hunger began in childhood, in a home where meals weren’t always certain. A turning point came with an act of kindness — a stranger delivering a Thanksgiving meal. This gesture filled more than a physical void; it instilled a lifelong resolve to combat hunger.

My multi-decade journey combating hunger and its underlying contributors has been both eye-opening and disheartening. The generosity of everyday human beings is such a powerful force for good if directed. At the same time, during the past decade I have witnessed on multiple occasions cuts being made to essential hunger relief programs like the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), both before and after the pandemic. Both drive me to greater action and my search for the answer to the critical question: Why, in a world capable of producing ample food, are so many still battling hunger?

What I have concluded is that the solution lies beyond mere food provision; it’s about transforming our global perspective and methods for sustainable nourishment. It involves rethinking strategies to supply food without burdening impoverished populations and our planet.

As John F. Kennedy once said, “The war against hunger is truly mankind’s war of liberation.”

The financial aspect, though daunting, is manageable. Annually, $265 billion is required for sustainable hunger eradication, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization , a small fraction of the global GDP. It’s a feasible investment for the welfare of millions and the stability of our global community.

This battle against hunger demands a unified front, combining the efforts of NGOs, governments, and conscientious citizens. It’s about harnessing our resources, innovations, and collective will to bridge the gap between surplus and need.

As we strategize and form alliances, the power of individual action remains crucial. One person’s efforts can significantly impact this seemingly insurmountable issue, as history has repeatedly shown. Personally, I would have not even considered 40 years ago when I started giving food to just two families that I would now be able to successfully deliver 1 billion meals to families in the U.S.

Big-minded, innovative approaches are needed to tackle the diverse challenges of global hunger. This includes investing in agricultural technology to improve crop yields in underdeveloped regions, creating better food storage and transportation methods to reduce waste, and implementing policies that ensure fair distribution of resources needed to sustainably feed the world.

Furthermore, it’s essential to address the root causes of hunger, which often lie in political instability, economic disparity, and social injustice. Solutions must be holistic, addressing these underlying issues to create lasting change.

Moreover, the impact of hunger extends beyond the immediate lack of food. It affects children’s ability to learn, workers’ productivity, and the overall health of communities. Addressing hunger is not just about providing meals; it’s about laying the foundation for a healthier, more productive society. Making the investment now will more than pay for itself long-term.

As we stand at this crossroads, the challenge is not only to feed the hungry but to do so in a way that respects our planet and its resources. Sustainable practices in agriculture and food distribution are vital for the well-being of future generations.

I believe in our collective ability to address and eventually solve this crisis. This conviction stems from personal experiences and the numerous stories of resilience and generosity I’ve encountered. It’s a testament to the power of human compassion and ingenuity.

Together, we can change the course of global hunger and ensure that no individual, regardless of their location, faces the uncertainty of their next nutritious meal.

I first heard the name George Santos in 2019 when my editor assigned me a routine writeup about a new congressional candidate. At the time, I was doing one and often more pieces a day for Newsday’s newsletter about New York politics, and I was glad to have what seemed like a quick hit.

Santos got on the phone immediately. But it was a strange call. He claimed he was launching his campaign as we spoke, but also that he was currently in Florida for a work conference. He seemed vague on some policies, but he spoke defiantly about his personal story–a first-generation American (his phrase) and work in private equity for his whole career (which I eventually learned was wrong). 

I wrote the little piece and he shared it on Facebook and in one parallel universe, this could have been the last I heard or wrote about the Queens newcomer. But Santos’s strange doings created plenty of fodder for me in the following months. Like not being clear about whether he lived in the district, or raising money for a “recount” campaign committee for a race he’d definitely lost. He had some wild statements about abortion. Still, not many people were paying much attention to him. So even after negative pieces, he’d pick up the phone. 

Eventually, though, he started hiding. By his second campaign in 2022 (“second time’s the charm,” he accurately told me), he skipped an endorsement interview, and once hustled away when he saw me in the men’s room before a Newsday debate. (The editorial board endorsed his opponent.)

After he won, the New York Times published their blockbuster story that connected the dots for many of his lies and strangenesses. But now I just had further questions about this guy who’d been kicking around the back of my mind for years. Clearly he had lied about almost everything, but why? 

So began my effort to get inside George Santos’s head. He made it very clear from the outset that he would not be “lending” his voice (his phrase) to my book, The Fabulist, and that neither he nor anyone from his staff were interested in talking. Fine by me. I found plenty of people who were happy to chat, including over 100 individuals who knew him, from friends and family to former teachers and dates. I spoke to people he scammed and people who just remembered him as a pretty fun guy. I learned about his jokes and his routines, and how expensive a wine bottle he’d order ($200, one person said). These helped fill out his profile even without a personal interview—and even if he had chatted, how would I have trusted him not to lie?

I traveled to different places in search of him. I understood that Brazil had been a key beacon in his late adolescence–maybe a shining moment, even, of real happiness–and so I spent weeks there to learn more about his teenage years and experimentations with drag and romance. This is how I ended up in a “sauna” where sex could be purchased for $8, to watch Santos’s drag mentor perform the kind of show that Santos once watched and emulated. Santos has downplayed his drag history and there are only a few photos and brief videos, so watching Santos’s mentor in person was the only way to see the origin of Santos’s routine in full.

I listened to every podcast I could find where he did in fact lend some words. I read multiple books by KrisAnne Hall, a firebrand political author he said he admired, and gathered photographs and video of Santos from well before he got famous. I walked places where he had walked, including the now-shuttered College Point cube where he worked as a young man in a dreary call center, a place where the sound of airplanes lifting off from LaGuardia might have reminded him of all the places he wanted to fly but was not. I watched him in federal court, as in October when he donned bright red shoes and a funereal dark jacket, saying nothing to reporters but blowing a kiss by the courthouse steps. The chase could get alternately very solemn or surreal, and I could feel both far from him and very close, as when someone sent me a picture of his literal passport, as well as half-naked snapshots of him in a bath. 

I also knocked on a lot of doors in New York, and he was not thrilled with that: “We have video proof of you trespassing inside various buildings where my family members reside and leaving notes under their doors,” was the way he described my standard shoe-leather reporting. 

I did leave a lot of notes and knocked on lots of unopened doors, but you never know what can happen when you exercise your knuckles. Once, in an apartment unit that was associated with Santos’s dad, I spoke to a Greek man who was not Gercino dos Santos but who nevertheless was so thrilled about his connection with the whole Santos story that he banged on a few other portals and got some neighbors out on the landing to marvel the afternoon away. 

Sometimes, you also find someone you’ve been looking for. 

My search for the real Santos included knocking and calling until the absolute last moment. On the day I was last supposed to submit the manuscript I successfully caught a friend of Santos’s at home in Queens because there was a story I wanted to factcheck. Factchecking, by the way, was also something Santos refused to do. “This is your journey,” he texted me in response to a request on that front. “Now own up your short coming [sic] and know I will challenge any and all thing [sic] inaccurate in your book.”

The chase continued even after the book was done. Chatting with a Nassau GOP functionary recently, for example, I was told a delightful story about Santos “bidding” on a bowtie in an impromptu political raffle. This was during a GOP leaders meeting back in the fall of 2022. Santos went away with the bowtie, but supposedly the party never saw a check. 

Never change, George.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has been stood up. Rishi Sunak, his British counterpart, was scheduled to meet him on Tuesday for a 45-minute lunch. But after Mitsotakis reiterated Greece’s longstanding position to the BBC on Sunday that Britain must return the Elgin Marbles, Sunak canceled.

The Elgin Marbles—a collection of sculptures from ancient Greece—are just a few of thousands of items amassed by the British during the days of its global empire. But recent years have seen more countries demand the U.K. repatriate items: Nigeria is asking for its Benin Bronzes back, China says its cultural relics must be handed over, and Greece wants its sculptures.

“We feel that the sculptures belong to Greece and that they were essentially stolen,” Mitsotakis told the BBC.

The spat also reflects a row over politics. Mitsotakis met with U.K. opposition leader Keir Starmer on Monday, a move that is rarely welcomed by those in government. Sunak and Starmer have laid out different approaches to the Elgin Marbles.

Below, what you need to know. 

What are the Elgin Marbles?

The Elgin Marbles were created between 447 and 432 B.C. as architectural decor for the Parthenon—the temple of the Greek goddess Athena—on the Acropolis in Athens.

The sculpture collection in the British Museum consists of 15 metopes (sculpted relief panels), 17 pedimental figures, and 247 ft. of the original 524-ft. Parthenon frieze which shows a procession held during Athena’s birthday.

How did they end up in British possession?

During the early 19th century, at a time when Greece was under Ottoman control, an aristocrat named Thomas Bruce—more popularly known as Lord Elgin—was British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Elgin had sought to improve the level of artistic appreciation in Great Britain then, and so he had a plan to create drawings and plaster casts from Athenian architecture at his own expense, according to British historian William St. Clair’s book Lord Elgin and the Marbles.

Elgin eventually received a permit to do so from Ottoman authorities, as well as “take away any pieces of stone with old inscriptions or sculptures thereon.” Debate remains over whether or not the document exists and is legally binding.

From 1801 to 1805, Elgin and his team of artists removed about half of the remaining sculptures in the Parthenon—as well as other architectural decor across the Acropolis. It took a series of shipments to send all of the Elgin Marbles to England. A U.K. Parliamentary Select Committee in 1816 ruled he had acquired them legally, and the collection was sold to the British government for some £35,000.

The sculptures were then transferred to the British Museum by an Act of Parliament later that year.

How has Greece demanded for the Elgin Marbles?

While Greece has demanded the return of the Elgin Marbles since the country’s independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1832, the last four decades have seen a slew of public relations and diplomacy offensives from Athens to regain them.

In the early 1980s, Greek minister for culture Melinda Mercouri launched a campaign calling for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens. In 1983, she even met with the British Museum’s then-director, David Wilson, to demand the sculptures’ return. That year, the first formal request for restitution was filed to the British government.

In 2009, Athens opened the Acropolis Museum, in part to dispel arguments from the British that they would have nowhere to house the Elgin Marbles safely. The British Museum’s public call to help to locate over 2,000 lost artifacts earlier this year also prompted Greek culture minister Lina Mendoni to question if the safety arguments holds.

Talks between Greece and the British Museum have been ongoing since November 2021, according to the New York Times, mainly between Kitsotakis and former U.K. finance minister George Osborne, who is now chair of the British Museum.

Do the British want to return the Elgin Marbles?

The 1963 British Museum Act bans the museum from parting with any items in its collection. Sunak has also repeatedly said that he would not change British law to allow the Parthenon sculptures to leave the museum.

Under this law, however, the museum’s trustees may lend items in its collection for public exhibition, even outside the U.K.

Conservative lawmakers have long rejected any sort of removal from the British Museum’s collection. But Starmer, who polls suggest will become the next Prime Minister when an election is called by January 2025, has said he would not oppose a temporary loan.

Public support for the repatriation is high, a YouGov poll commissioned by the Parthenon Project, a campaign to return the sculptures to Athens, found that 64% of polled British were in favor of returning the sculptures if Greece would lend other artifacts to British museums. Some 52% are also in favor of a return without conditions.

On its website, the British Museum says “constructive discussions” for a partnership with Greece on the Parthenon sculptures are ongoing.

Video calls, streaming services, social media: In our wireless age, they all seem to simply float in the cloud. It’s easy to forget they are transmitted along actual physical wires running across the seabeds of our planet. Spanning nearly 750,000 miles, these 400-plus subsea cables handle more than 95% of internet traffic, whether it’s the news, SWIFT transactions, or government communications. Cables are the “out-of-sight arteries of globalization,” as Surabhi Ranganathan, a law professor at Cambridge University and expert on oceans, puts it. But the U.S.-China cable race is putting this essential infrastructure at risk, as existing institutions tasked with its protection seem unprepared to step in.

A new Asia-Europe data link is the most recent example. In February, U.S. company SubCom landed the subsea cable project for $600 million, only three years after HMN Tech, a formerly Huawei-owned Chinese company, nearly won the contract. A global consortium of telecom firms, including China Telecom and Microsoft, went for SubCom instead, even though the Chinese bid was substantially cheaper. The move came after fears of espionage had led the U.S. government to apply significant pressure on telecom firms not to back HMN Tech, reportedly under threat of sanctions. Yet as transpired in April, HMN Tech is now simply developing its own $500-million Asia-Europe cable passing via Singapore and the Middle East to France—in each of which the Chinese-led consortium has business agreements with national telecom providers.

This is not an isolated instance. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Team Telecom regularly interferes to keep Chinese companies from winning bids or laying direct U.S.-China cable links. China in turn allegedly cut off subsea internet cables at Taiwan’s Matsu island, which is closer to the mainland, in early February. Some have suggested it was a test case for China to try similar moves elsewhere. Could geopolitical cable competition, as security analysts suggest, fragment the ostensibly one-world internet infrastructure? Are we nearing a “Cold War under the sea”?

It’s not that simple. Data flows have never been truly “global.”

The first deep-sea cable connections were laid in the 1850s, and by 1866 the SS Great Eastern had laid the first durable transatlantic cable. Instead of bringing world peace or a “Victorian internet,” telegraphs connected imperial outposts more than anything. In subsequent decades, a boom in deep-sea cables greased the engines of European imperialism. Contemporaries referred to them as “the nervous system of the British Empire.” Gutta-percha, the rubber used to insulate subsea cables, became a prized commodity extracted from latex-producing colonies like Singapore and Borneo.

To smooth out technical complications, government delegates created the International Telegraph Union (ITU) in 1865, which became one of the world’s first international organizations. ITU would go on to adopt universal standards for Morse code, tariffs, and accounting rules. Other steps were taken to protect deep-sea cables; in 1884, delegates of 30 governments gathered in Paris and adopted the Convention for the Protection of Submarine Telegraph Cables. Yet these regulatory efforts failed to depoliticize telecommunications. Telegraph lines remained fiercely contested, and governments were unable to agree on protections against wartime sabotage.

The 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS) complemented the ITU by protecting companies’ “freedom to lay submarine cables and pipelines” in international waters. Yet the U.S. never signed the Convention, and both the U.S. and China have their own provisions that contradict UNCLOS. For example, UNCLOS protects the right of companies to lay and maintain cables even in a state’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) unless this interferes with that state’s other rights. Telecom representatives are thus eager that the U.S. ratify the Convention, so that they can operate off America’s shores with less geopolitically-motivated interference.

Fast-forward to today, the ITU, which is now a U.N. agency, is still meant to oversee globalization’s electric arteries. While the ITU sets technical standards for data cables, key decisions are still taken behind closed doors in national capitals and in corporate fora.

The disparate number of players—from governments to private businesses to industry forums—complicates the ITU’s coordination and agenda-setting powers. As does the messy and unclear ownership structures of multi-company consortia that typically build, own, and operate subsea cables, as well as jurisdictional questions given that they span both domestic and international waters.

Still, ITU and UNCLOS provisions that facilitate laying cables in the high seas in the absence of a robust regulatory environment are encouraging the kind of tit-for-tat disputes over the world’s subsea cables seen earlier this year. This not only puts actual internet access at risk but also fuels conflict in geopolitically-strategic locations such as the South China Sea.

In March this year, the U.S. Congress passed the UnderSea Cable Control Act, pitting “American superiority in undersea cable capabilities” against “China’s economic and military reach.” Such language is an unnecessary provocation and another reminder that we’re far way from a global data network based on cooperation and independent regulation.

The ITU’s Strategic Plan for 2024-2027 calls for equal internet access for everyone. In a world where a vast array of services and communications depend on it, that is a laudable goal. But the actions of cable operators and governments suggest that the infrastructure underpinning the world’s data networks may actually be going in the opposite direction, in ways that could ultimately jeopardize this goal.

The ITU has to adapt and may well need to assume a stronger role. This would include not shying away from imposing clear rules about subsea cables, and actively reining in companies or their state backers. Whether it can do so remains the big question.

Hamas still has nine American hostages, the White House confirmed on Monday, a day after a four-year-old girl became the first American hostage taken during the Oct. 7 attack in Israel to be released.

Abigail Edan was reunited with her extended family on Sunday, one of 17 hostages released that day. Abigail’s mother and father were shot dead in front of her in their home on Kibbutz Kfar Azza during Hamas’ massacre.

President Biden wants the remaining Americans to be included in a new round of hostage releases expected over the next few days, John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House’s National Security Council, said on Monday, soon after Israel and Hamas agreed to extend a ceasefire for two more days. Israel originally agreed to pause the bombardment of Gaza for four days and release 150 Palestinian prisoners held in the West Bank in exchange for 50 hostages being returned home from Gaza.

Biden spent the weekend making calls on the negotiations around the ceasefire from Nantucket island off the coast of Massachusetts, where he spent the Thanksgiving holiday at the waterfront house of investor David Rubenstein.

More From TIME

On Saturday, Biden spoke with Qatar’s Emir Sheik Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani at a “very critical moment” to “help resolve an impasse,” involving which hostages would be released, Kirby said. On Sunday, Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try to find terms under which Israel would agree to extend the four-day pause in fighting by another two days.

The initial pause in fighting allowed the largest single convoy carrying humanitarian assistance to enter Gaza since the Oct. 7 attacks, Kirby said. Two hundred trucks were sent to the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Sunday and 137 trucks of supplies were unloaded by the United Nations in Gaza. In recent weeks, the US government has assisted more than 840 American citizens and their families leave Gaza and enter Egypt, Kirby said.

As the Israeli military has waged a campaign to kill Hamas’s military leaders and destroy the group’s extensive tunnel network built under Gaza, more than 15,000 people in Gaza have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Biden has faced heavy criticism from some Democrats for not doing more to pressure Israel to do more to avoid civilian casualties. 

Kirby suggested on Monday that Biden’s handling of the situation thus far had played a key role in the fragile progress toward peace made in recent days. “The president understands that there’s strong feelings on multiple sides,” Kirby said. “He also believes right down to his core, that the approach we’ve been taking has been getting results.”

Rescue teams are hoping to free the 41 construction workers who have been trapped in a tunnel in northern India for more than two weeks, attempting to hand drill the workers out.

Rescuers are attempting to create a horizontal channel that trapped workers can escape through. So far, rescue workers have dug about 1 meter and have 11 more to go, state spokesperson Kirti Panwar said on Monday.

The workers have been trapped behind debris after a landslide near the Himalayas caused a tunnel to collapse on Nov. 12. The rescue mission has taken longer than expected, leaving those trapped inside with limited access to food, water, and medicine.

Rescue teams have been working around the clock to create a safe passageway for people to exit, but faced setbacks due to faulty machinery that broke last week. 

“We don’t know what the drilling machine will have to cut through. It could be loose soil or rocks. But we are prepared,” Devendra Patwal, a disaster management official, said at the scene of the collapse on Monday. 

Here’s a timeline since the collapse. 

Tunnel collapse

On November 12, a 4.5 km highway tunnel that was being built as a way to ease travel to Hindu pilgrimage sites caved into itself, around 200 meters from the tunnel’s entrance. 

Rescue efforts have proven difficult because the tunnel collapsed in Uttarakhand state, a mountainous region. 

Authorities initially outlayed a number of plans to rescue the trapped workers, including digging vertically from the top of the mountain, though there are fears that additional debris would fall during the process.  

Rescuers install of a steel pipe to get supplies inside the tunnel 

Rescuers installed a six-inch wide steel pipe to deliver food, water and other supplies to trapped workers on Nov. 21. 

Through the pipe, workers are being fed rotis, flat bread, lentils, and other dishes. Video of the workers also became available after the construction of the pipe. A separate pipe is delivering oxygen, as doctors monitor both the mental and physical health of those trapped.

Family members of the trapped workers worry about their well-being. Jyotish Basumatary, has spoken to his brother, who is trapped, at least four times since the accident. “We called out their names, and one by one they lined up — we could see them on the camera. But nobody spoke about how they felt,” Basumatary told the New York Times.

Rescuers try drilling to reach workers inside

Rescuers were initially planning on using a heavy drill to break through 60 meters of debris from the landslide, but plans were paused on Nov. 24, when the machinery meant to drill a hole wide enough for the trapped workers to travel through was damaged.

Originally, the hope was the drill could push in a pipe that was wide enough to wheel out the trapped construction workers on stretchers, but the drill was completely broken after it hit an obstacle on Friday, Reuters reported. Significant progress was made, with only 10-15 meters left to drill, but rescuers then had to remove the damaged machine, which again cost them time.

Now, two separate rescue plans are taking place. One involves more than a dozen rescuers taking turns using hand drilling tools to expand the horizontal drilling that was put on pause after the auger broke. 

Other workers are drilling vertically from the top of the hill where the tunnel was being built. They will have to drill through nearly 350 feet in order to reach trapped workers, according to the AP. 

Authorities have not given an official deadline on when they predict the rescue operations will be complete, though some say they believe workers will be back with their families by Christmas.

Billionaire Elon Musk said that he’d like to help rebuild Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war in a conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his social-media platform X. 

It’s important to first “deradicalize” the Palestinian territories, similar to how other Arab states have become more moderate in recent years, including Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu said in a live discussion broadcast on the site formerly known as Twitter on Monday.

Musk, who is under fire for amplifying antisemitic content on X, is meeting with Israeli officials and toured the Kfar Aza kibbutz where some of the worst violence occurred on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants broke through the country’s border barriers and attacked civilians. Musk described seeing bullet shell casings in cribs on the tour. 

After watching footage of the attack by Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the US and European Union, Musk called the apparent joy expressed by the killers “evil” and “jarring.” Israel has been showing footage of the attack by Hamas in screenings around the world.

Still, Netanyahu didn’t address the latest antisemitism row on X in the approximately 20-minute broadcast. Musk has defended himself from what he labeled “bogus media stories” after he endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory earlier this month on X. Major brands including Apple Inc. and Walt Disney Co. have stopped advertising on his social media platform over concerns of increasing antisemitism and hate speech since he took over Twitter last year.

Musk’s trip to Israel will also include meetings with Benny Gantz, an opposition leader and member of the three-man war cabinet and President Isaac Herzog.

(SAN FRANCISCO) — Facebook parent Meta Platforms deliberately engineered its social platforms to hook kids and knew — but never disclosed — it had received millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram but only disabled a fraction of those accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint described in reports from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

The complaint, originally made public in redacted form, was the opening salvo in a lawsuit filed in late October by the attorneys general of 33 states.

Company documents cited in the complaint described several Meta officials acknowledging the company designed its products to exploit shortcomings in youthful psychology such as impulsive behavior, susceptibility to peer pressure and the underestimation of risks, according to the reports.

Others acknowledged Facebook and Instagram also were popular with children under age 13 who, per company policy, were not allowed to use the service.

Meta said in a statement to The Associated Press that the complaint misrepresents its work over the past decade to make the online experience safe for teens, noting it has “over 30 tools to support them and their parents.”

With respect to barring younger users from the service, Meta argued age verification is a “complex industry challenge.”

Instead, Meta said it favors shifting the burden of policing underage usage to app stores and parents, specifically by supporting federal legislation that would require app stores to obtain parental approval whenever youths under 16 download apps.

One Facebook safety executive alluded to the possibility that cracking down on younger users might hurt the company’s business in a 2019 email, according to the Journal report.

But a year later, the same executive expressed frustration that while Facebook readily studied the usage of underage users for business reasons, it didn’t show the same enthusiasm for ways to identify younger kids and remove them from its platforms, the Journal reported.

The complaint noted that at times Meta has a backlog of up to 2.5 million accounts of younger children awaiting action, according to the newspaper reports.