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  • Companies are trying to attract more smartphone users across Africa. But there are risks

    Companies are trying to attract more smartphone users across Africa. But there are risks

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    ACCRA, Ghana — Anita Akpeere prepared fried rice in her kitchen in Ghana’s capital as a flurry of notifications for restaurant orders lit up apps on her phone. “I don’t think I could work without a phone in my line of business,” she said, as requests came in for her signature dish, a traditional fermented dumpling.

    Internet-enabled phones have transformed many lives, but they can play a unique role in sub-Saharan Africa, where infrastructure and public services are among the world’s least developed, said Jenny Aker, a professor who studies the issue at Tufts University. At times, technology in Africa has leapfrogged gaps, including providing access to mobile money for people without bank accounts.

    Despite growing mobile internet coverage on the continent of 1.3 billion people, just 25% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa have access to it, according to Claire Sibthorpe, head of digital inclusion at the U.K.-based mobile phone lobbying group GSMA. Expense is the main barrier. The cheapest smartphone costs up to 95% of the monthly salary for the poorest 20% of the region’s population, Sibthorpe said.

    Literacy rates that are below the global average, and lack of services in many African languages — some 2,000 are spoken across the continent, according to The African Language Program at Harvard University — are other reasons why a smartphone isn’t a compelling investment for some.

    “If you buy a car, it’s because you can drive it,” said Alain Capo-Chichi, chief executive of CERCO Group, a company that has developed a smartphone that functions through voice command and is available in 50 African languages such as Yoruba, Swahili and Wolof.

    Even in Ghana, where the lingua franca is English, knowing how to use smartphones and apps can be a challenge for newcomers.

    One new company in Ghana is trying to close the digital gap. Uniti Networks offers financing to help make smartphones more affordable and coaches users to navigate its platform of apps.

    For Cyril Fianyo, a 64-year-old farmer in Ghana’s eastern Volta region, the phone has expanded his activities beyond calls and texts. Using his identity card, he registered with Uniti, putting down a deposit worth 340 Ghanaian Cedis ($25) for a smartphone and will pay the remaining 910 Cedis ($66) in installments.

    He was shown how to navigate apps that interested him, including a third-party farming app called Cocoa Link that offers videos of planting techniques, weather information and details about the challenges of climate change that have affected cocoa and other crops.

    Fianyo, who previously planted according to his intuition and rarely interacts with farming advisors, was optimistic that the technology would increase his yields.

    “I will know the exact time to plant because of the weather forecast,” he said.

    Kami Dar, chief executive of Uniti Networks, said the mobile internet could help address other challenges including accessing health care. The company has launched in five communities across Ghana with 650 participants and wants to reach 100,000 users within five years.

    Aker, the scholar, noted that the potential impact of mobile phones across Africa is immense but said there is limited evidence that paid health or agriculture apps are benefiting people there. She asserted that the only beneficial impacts are reminders to take medicine or get vaccinated.

    Having studied agricultural apps and their impact, she said it doesn’t seem that farmers are getting better prices or improving their income.

    Capo-Chichi from CERCO Group said a dearth of useful apps and content is another reason why more people in Africa aren’t buying smartphones.

    Dar said Uniti Networks learns from mistakes. In a pilot in northern Ghana designed to help cocoa farmers contribute to their pensions, there was high engagement but farmers didn’t find the app user-friendly and needed extra coaching. After the feedback, the pension provider changed the interface to improve navigation.

    Others are finding benefit with Uniti’s platform. Mawufemor Vitor, a church secretary in Hohoe, said one health app has assisted her to track her menstruation to help prevent pregnancy. And Fianyo, the farmer, has used the platform to find information on herbal medicine.

    But mobile phones are no substitute for investment in public services and infrastructure, Aker said.

    She also expressed concerns about the privacy of data in the hands of private technology providers and governments. With digital IDs in development in African nations such as Kenya and South Africa, this could pave the way for further abuses, Aker said.

    Uniti Networks is a for-profit business, paid for each customer that signs up for paying apps. Dar asserted that he was not targeting vulnerable populations to sell them unnecessary services and said Uniti only features apps that align with its idea of impact, with a focus on health, education, finance and agriculture.

    Dar said Uniti has rejected lucrative approaches from many companies including gambling firms. “Tech can be used for awful things,” he said.

    He acknowledged that Uniti tracks users on the platform to provide incentives, in the form of free data, and to provide feedback to app developers. He acknowledged that users’ health and financial data could be at threat from outside attack but said Uniti has decentralized data storage in an attempt to lessen the risk.

    Still, the potential to provide solutions can outweigh the risks, Aker said, noting two areas where the technology could be transformative: education and insurance.

    She said mobile phones could help overcome the illiteracy that still affects 773 million people worldwide according to UNESCO. Increased access to insurance, still not widely used in parts of Africa, could provide protection to millions who face shocks on the front lines of climate change and conflict.

    Back in Fianyo’s fields, his new smartphone has attracted curiosity. “This is something I would like to be part of,” said neighboring farmer Godsway Kwamigah.

    ___

    Thompson reported from Dakar, Senegal.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Companies are trying to attract more smartphone users across Africa. But there are risks

    Companies are trying to attract more smartphone users across Africa. But there are risks

    [ad_1]

    ACCRA, Ghana — Anita Akpeere prepared fried rice in her kitchen in Ghana’s capital as a flurry of notifications for restaurant orders lit up apps on her phone. “I don’t think I could work without a phone in my line of business,” she said, as requests came in for her signature dish, a traditional fermented dumpling.

    Internet-enabled phones have transformed many lives, but they can play a unique role in sub-Saharan Africa, where infrastructure and public services are among the world’s least developed, said Jenny Aker, a professor who studies the issue at Tufts University. At times, technology in Africa has leapfrogged gaps, including providing access to mobile money for people without bank accounts.

    Despite growing mobile internet coverage on the continent of 1.3 billion people, just 25% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa have access to it, according to Claire Sibthorpe, head of digital inclusion at the U.K.-based mobile phone lobbying group GSMA. Expense is the main barrier. The cheapest smartphone costs up to 95% of the monthly salary for the poorest 20% of the region’s population, Sibthorpe said.

    Literacy rates that are below the global average, and lack of services in many African languages — some 2,000 are spoken across the continent, according to The African Language Program at Harvard University — are other reasons why a smartphone isn’t a compelling investment for some.

    “If you buy a car, it’s because you can drive it,” said Alain Capo-Chichi, chief executive of CERCO Group, a company that has developed a smartphone that functions through voice command and is available in 50 African languages such as Yoruba, Swahili and Wolof.

    Even in Ghana, where the lingua franca is English, knowing how to use smartphones and apps can be a challenge for newcomers.

    One new company in Ghana is trying to close the digital gap. Uniti Networks offers financing to help make smartphones more affordable and coaches users to navigate its platform of apps.

    For Cyril Fianyo, a 64-year-old farmer in Ghana’s eastern Volta region, the phone has expanded his activities beyond calls and texts. Using his identity card, he registered with Uniti, putting down a deposit worth 340 Ghanaian Cedis ($25) for a smartphone and will pay the remaining 910 Cedis ($66) in installments.

    He was shown how to navigate apps that interested him, including a third-party farming app called Cocoa Link that offers videos of planting techniques, weather information and details about the challenges of climate change that have affected cocoa and other crops.

    Fianyo, who previously planted according to his intuition and rarely interacts with farming advisors, was optimistic that the technology would increase his yields.

    “I will know the exact time to plant because of the weather forecast,” he said.

    Kami Dar, chief executive of Uniti Networks, said the mobile internet could help address other challenges including accessing health care. The company has launched in five communities across Ghana with 650 participants and wants to reach 100,000 users within five years.

    Aker, the scholar, noted that the potential impact of mobile phones across Africa is immense but said there is limited evidence that paid health or agriculture apps are benefiting people there. She asserted that the only beneficial impacts are reminders to take medicine or get vaccinated.

    Having studied agricultural apps and their impact, she said it doesn’t seem that farmers are getting better prices or improving their income.

    Capo-Chichi from CERCO Group said a dearth of useful apps and content is another reason why more people in Africa aren’t buying smartphones.

    Dar said Uniti Networks learns from mistakes. In a pilot in northern Ghana designed to help cocoa farmers contribute to their pensions, there was high engagement but farmers didn’t find the app user-friendly and needed extra coaching. After the feedback, the pension provider changed the interface to improve navigation.

    Others are finding benefit with Uniti’s platform. Mawufemor Vitor, a church secretary in Hohoe, said one health app has assisted her to track her menstruation to help prevent pregnancy. And Fianyo, the farmer, has used the platform to find information on herbal medicine.

    But mobile phones are no substitute for investment in public services and infrastructure, Aker said.

    She also expressed concerns about the privacy of data in the hands of private technology providers and governments. With digital IDs in development in African nations such as Kenya and South Africa, this could pave the way for further abuses, Aker said.

    Uniti Networks is a for-profit business, paid for each customer that signs up for paying apps. Dar asserted that he was not targeting vulnerable populations to sell them unnecessary services and said Uniti only features apps that align with its idea of impact, with a focus on health, education, finance and agriculture.

    Dar said Uniti has rejected lucrative approaches from many companies including gambling firms. “Tech can be used for awful things,” he said.

    He acknowledged that Uniti tracks users on the platform to provide incentives, in the form of free data, and to provide feedback to app developers. He acknowledged that users’ health and financial data could be at threat from outside attack but said Uniti has decentralized data storage in an attempt to lessen the risk.

    Still, the potential to provide solutions can outweigh the risks, Aker said, noting two areas where the technology could be transformative: education and insurance.

    She said mobile phones could help overcome the illiteracy that still affects 773 million people worldwide according to UNESCO. Increased access to insurance, still not widely used in parts of Africa, could provide protection to millions who face shocks on the front lines of climate change and conflict.

    Back in Fianyo’s fields, his new smartphone has attracted curiosity. “This is something I would like to be part of,” said neighboring farmer Godsway Kwamigah.

    ___

    Thompson reported from Dakar, Senegal.

    ___

    The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • America’s debt tops $34 trillion, but commission to address it looks dead in Congress

    America’s debt tops $34 trillion, but commission to address it looks dead in Congress

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    WASHINGTON — For Mike Johnson it was effectively a Day 1 priority.

    It’s well past time, the newly elected House speaker said in October, to establish a bipartisan commission to tackle the federal government’s growing $34.6 trillion in debt. “The consequences if we don’t act now are unbearable,” he said, echoing warnings from his predecessor and other House Republicans.

    More than six months later, the proposal appears all but dead, extinguished by vocal opposition from both the right and the left.

    The collapse underscores an unyielding dynamic in Washington, with lawmakers in both parties loath to consider the unpopular tradeoffs that would be necessary to stem the nation’s swelling tide of red ink — particularly in an election year. Facing the reality that any fiscal commission would almost certainly suggest that Americans pay more or get less from their government, lawmakers have time and again done what they do so well: punt the problem to the next Congress. And they seem poised to do so again.

    Many Democrats and left-leaning advocacy groups oppose the commission because they fear it would recommend cuts to Social Security benefits. Some Republicans and right-leaning groups are against it as well, fearing the panel would recommend tax increases. They’ve labeled the commission a “tax trap.”

    “I’m disappointed that we haven’t got as much momentum as I thought we would,” said Rep. Jodey Arrington, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee. “The speaker supported it, endorsed it from the outset. But I think there are some outside groups that have weighed in, that have said that this is a backdoor way to raise taxes, and it scared some of my Republican colleagues.”

    Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., sponsor of the debt commission bill in the Senate, was even more pessimistic.

    “No one seems to care,” Manchin said. “It’s a shame, $34.6 trillion in debt. No one cares about it.”

    The debt commission legislation, modeled after previous efforts, would create a 16-member panel to recommend steps that could be taken to balance the federal budget at the earliest reasonable date and improve the long-term fiscal health of Medicare and Social Security. The commission would have 16 members — 12 from Congress, evenly divided by party, and four outside experts without voting power. The GOP-controlled House Budget Committee advanced the bill in a 22-12 vote.

    The fiscal realities that would face any commission are well documented and center to a large extent on Social Security and Medicare, which consume an ever-growing share of the federal budget, and interest payments on the nation’s debt.

    For Social Security, the reserves for the The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund will run out in 2033. At that point, the program will have enough tax revenue coming in to pay about 79% of scheduled benefits. For Medicare, the trust fund covering inpatient hospital stays, hospice care and stays at skilled nursing facilities has sufficient funds to pay full benefits until 2036. At that point, 11% spending cuts would be required to match incoming revenue.

    The last fiscal commission over a decade ago — chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson — recommended $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the course of a decade through a combination of tax increases and painful spending cuts. But the 11-7 vote in favor of the package was not enough to force Congress to consider it back in 2010.

    Supporters of a new debt panel noted that they modeled their bill on something that has succeeded in the past — commissions to consolidate the nation’s military bases. The new commission would work under a similar structure with the legislation requiring each chamber to vote on its final proposal expeditiously.

    Still, Democratic lawmakers and the White House are skeptical of forming a debt commission. Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told lawmakers in a recent hearing that the administration was concerned that the one thing on the table for the commission would be Social Security benefit cuts, not asking high-income Americans to pay higher taxes.

    “It will be borne on the backs of those who paid into the system and rely on this program to retire in peace,” Young said.

    More than 100 Democratic lawmakers also signed onto a letter opposing the commission back in January as powerful groups such as the AFL-CIO and AARP voiced their concerns.

    When Republican-aligned groups also came out against the bill, including Americans for Tax Reform and the Club for Growth, prospects for moving ahead dampened considerably. Their opposition weakened GOP leadership’s leverage in attaching the commission to an annual spending bill or other must-pass measure.

    “There’s no guarantee about the outcome. I think that’s what scares more people, and this town likes to know what the outcome is,” said the House bill’s author, Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich.

    Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said any mechanism that allows for tax increases undermines former President Donald Trump and other Republicans running for office on a platform of cutting taxes. He said the focus must be strictly on spending reductions, and “tax increases are what politicians do instead of making decisions and hard choices.”

    “The modern Republican Party is not going to put tax increases on the table as if they were part of the solution to anything,” Norquist said. “Tax increases solve no problem.”

    That approach also makes Democrats such as Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas wary of a commission.

    “We cannot solve our problems by cutting entirely. It’s got to be with some additional revenue. Unless revenues are very much on the table, I’m not for anything. It has to be both,” Doggett said.

    As bleak as things look for the bill now, Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., said getting legislation through Congress is often a long game. Getting a House committee to approve the commission was an important step, he said. “We’re as far along as we’ve ever been.”

    Supporters said they will continue pushing for getting a commission approved by the end of this Congress. Manchin mentioned the possibility of attaching it to legislation in a lame-duck session after the election and before the new Congress is sworn into office.

    “We’re in that classic position where everybody hates us,” said Peters, one of three Democrats who voted for the bill in committee and is a co-sponsor. “We must be doing the right thing.”

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  • CVS Health chops 2024 forecast as cost struggles with Medicare Advantage persist

    CVS Health chops 2024 forecast as cost struggles with Medicare Advantage persist

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    CVS Health missed first-quarter expectations and chopped its 2024 outlook more than a dollar below Wall Street’s forecast.

    Shares of the health care giant plunged Wednesday after the company said it was still struggling with rising costs from care use in its Medicare Advantage business.

    Company leaders told analysts they were still dealing with rising use from outpatient care and in supplemental benefits. The company also saw some new pressure from inpatient care.

    CEO Karen Lynch said the company’s visibility into trends during the quarter was impaired by the cyberattack on Change Healthcare, which is operated by rival UnitedHealth Group. Change provides provides technology used to submit and process insurance claims for several insurers.

    CVS Health had already scaled back 2024 expectations earlier this year as it worked to understand why costs keep rising from Medicare Advantage, the privately run version of Medicare, the government’s program which is for people age 65 and older.

    Company leaders said Wednesday they aren’t seeing the same pressure from its commercial insurance business, which includes plans sold to employers and on individual insurance exchanges.

    CVS Health said it now expects adjusted earnings for 2024 to be at least $7, down its previous forecast of at least $8.30.

    Analysts had been forecasting earnings of $8.27 per share, according to FactSet.

    The guidance reduction was much more significant than expected, according to Leerink analyst Michael Cherny. He said in a research note that it raises questions about the company’s path to reaching its previously stated goal of double-digit growth in earnings per share next year.

    In the first quarter, CVS Health’s net income plunged 48% to $1.11 billion. It booked adjusted earnings of $1.31 per share on total revenue of $88.4 billion.

    Analysts expected earnings of $1.69 per share on $89.33 billion in revenue for the first quarter.

    CVS Health Corp. runs one of the nation’s largest drugstore chains and a huge pharmacy benefit management business that operates prescription drug coverage for big clients like insurers and employers. It also covers more than 26 million people with health insurance through its Aetna arm. That includes the Medicare Advantage business.

    Shares of the Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based company were down nearly 17% to $55.29 in afternoon trading.

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  • New Jersey seeks fourth round of offshore wind farm proposals as foes push back

    New Jersey seeks fourth round of offshore wind farm proposals as foes push back

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    LONG BEACH TOWNSHIP, N.J. — New Jersey is seeking a new round of proposals to build wind energy farms off its coastline, forging ahead with its clean energy goals even as local opposition and challenging economics create blowback to the effort.

    The state Board of Public Utilities on Tuesday opened a fourth round of solicitations for offshore wind farms, giving interested companies until July 10 to submit proposals.

    “Advancing this solicitation really demonstrates that we are committed to seeing the economic development that offshore wind is bringing to New Jersey and will continue to bring, as well as the clean energy that is so important for the residents of the state,” said the board’s president, Christine Guhl-Sadovy.

    There are currently three preliminarily approved offshore wind projects in New Jersey.

    One from Chicago-based Invenergy and New York-based energyRE. Called Leading Light Wind, would be built 40 miles (64 kilometers) off Long Beach Island and would consist of up to 100 turbines, enough to power 1 million homes.

    Another, called Attentive Energy Two, would be built 42 miles (67 kilometers) off Seaside Heights and would not be visible from the shoreline. It is a joint venture between Paris-based TotalEnergies and London-based Corio Generation, and it would power over 650,000 homes.

    The third is Atlantic Shores, a joint partnership between Shell New Energies US LLC and EDF-RE Offshore Development LLC. It would generate enough energy to power 700,000 homes and would be 8.4 miles (13.5 kilometers) off the coast of Long Beach Island.

    New Jersey has set a goal of getting 100% of its energy from clean sources by 2035, and it wants to become the East Coast leader in offshore wind.

    “The strong wind resources off New Jersey’s shoreline are well-suited to the development of a robust offshore wind program,” said Kira Lawrence, a senior policy advisor with the board. “New Jersey remains committed to ensuring that natural resources including fish, marine mammals, birds and other wildlife are protected throughout the development, construction, operation and decommissioning of offshore wind projects.”

    Most of the state’s environmental groups support offshore wind as a way to phase out the burning of fossil fuels that contribute to climate change and the severe weather that New Jersey and other places have experienced.

    “To achieve the necessary carbon emission reductions to protect our communities from the climate crisis, we need a major transition in our energy sector now,” Anjuli Ramos-Busot, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, wrote in comments submitted to the board before its vote. “Offshore wind is the future, and one of our greatest clean energy solutions that will benefit the local communities here in our state without the further burning of fossil fuels.”

    Other comments sent to the board oppose offshore wind projects as economically unsound and environmentally risky.

    “If the NJPBU and other agencies along with the offshore wind developers are so sure that there will be no negative impact on fishing, tourism or real estate, then these claims should be guaranteed in the solicitation, along with appropriate penalties if harm to the tourism, fishing and real estate values occurs,” the group Defend Brigantine Beach and Downbeach wrote to the board.

    Many offshore wind opponents blame site-preparation work for a spate of whale deaths along the U.S. East Coast over the past year and a half. But numerous federal and state agencies say there is no evidence of a link between the projects and the animal deaths. some of which were attributed to ship strikes or entanglement with fishing gear.

    Last October, the Danish wind giant Orsted scrapped plans for two wind farms off New Jersey, saying they were no longer feasible economically.

    ___

    Follow Wayne Parry on X, formerly Twitter, at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC

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  • Tech CEOs Altman, Nadella, Pichai and others join government AI safety board led by DHS’ Mayorkas

    Tech CEOs Altman, Nadella, Pichai and others join government AI safety board led by DHS’ Mayorkas

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    WASHINGTON — The CEOs of leading U.S. technology companies are joining a new artificial intelligence safety board to advise the federal government on how to protect the nation’s critical services from “AI-related disruptions.”

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the new board Friday which includes key corporate leaders in AI development such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

    AI holds potential for improving government services but “we recognize the tremendously debilitating impact its errant use can have,” Mayorkas told reporters Friday.

    Also on the 22-member board are the CEOs of Adobe, chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, Delta Air Lines, IBM, Northrop Grumman, Occidental Petroleum and Amazon’s AWS cloud computing division. Not included were social media companies such as Meta Platforms and X.

    Corporate executives dominate, but it also includes civil rights advocates, AI scientist Fei-Fei Li who leads Stanford University’s AI institute as well as Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, two public officials who are “already ahead of the curve” in thinking about harnessing AI’s capabilities and mitigating risks, Mayorkas said.

    He said the board will help the Department of Homeland Security stay ahead of evolving threats.

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  • Connecticut Senate passes wide-ranging bill to regulate AI. But its fate remains uncertain

    Connecticut Senate passes wide-ranging bill to regulate AI. But its fate remains uncertain

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    HARTFORD — The Connecticut Senate pressed ahead Wednesday with one of the first major legislative proposals in the U.S. to rein in bias in artificial intelligence decision-making and protect people from harm, including manufactured videos or deepfakes.

    The vote was held despite concerns the bill might stifle innovation, become a burden for small businesses and make the state an outlier.

    The bill passed 24-12 after a lengthy debate. It is the result of two years of task force meetings in Connecticut and a year’s worth of collaboration among a bipartisan group of legislators from other states who are trying to prevent a patchwork of laws across the country because Congress has yet to act.

    “I think that this is a very important bill for the state of Connecticut. It’s very important I think also for the country as a first step to get a bill like this,” said Democratic Sen. James Maroney, the key author of the bill. “Even if it were not to come and get passed into law this year, we worked together as states.”

    Lawmakers from Connecticut, Colorado, Texas, Alaska, Georgia and Virginia who have been working together on the issue have found themselves in the middle of a national debate between civil rights-oriented groups and the industry over the core components of the legislation. Several of the legislators, including Maroney, participated in a news conference last week to emphasize the need for legislation and highlight how they have worked with industry, academia and advocates to create proposed regulations for safe and trustworthy AI.

    But Senate Minority Leader Stephen Harding said he felt like Connecticut senators were being rushed to vote on the most complicated piece of legislation of the session, which is scheduled to adjourn May 8. The Republican said he feared the bill was “full of unintended consequences” that could prove detrimental to businesses and residents in the state.

    “I think our constituents are owed more thought, more consideration to this before we push that button and say this is now going to become law,” he said.

    Besides pushback from Republican legislators, some key Democrats in Connecticut, including Gov. Ned Lamont, have voiced concern the bill may negatively impact an emerging industry. Lamont, a former cable TV entrepreneur, “remains concerned that this is a fast-moving space, and that we need to make sure we do this right and don’t stymie innovation,” his spokesperson Julia Bergman said in a statement.

    Among other things, the bill includes protections for consumers, tenants and employees by attempting to target risks of AI discrimination based on race, age, religion, disability and other protected classes. Besides making it a crime to spread so-called deepfake pornography and deceptive AI-generated media in political campaigns, the bill requires digital watermarks on AI-generated images for transparency.

    Additionally, certain AI users will be required to develop policies and programs to eliminate risks of AI discrimination.

    The legislation also creates a new online AI Academy where Connecticut residents can take classes in AI and ensures AI training is part of state workforce development initiatives and other state training programs. There are some concerns the bill doesn’t go far enough, with calls by advocates to restore a requirement that companies must disclose more information to consumers before they can use AI to make decisions about them.

    The bill now awaits action in the House of Representatives.

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  • China blasts US military aid to Taiwan, says island entering a ‘dangerous situation’

    China blasts US military aid to Taiwan, says island entering a ‘dangerous situation’

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    BEIJING — China on Wednesday blasted the latest package of U.S. military assistance to Taiwan on Wednesday, saying that such funding was pushing the self-governing island republic into a “dangerous situation.”

    The U.S. Senate late Tuesday passed $95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after months of delays and contentious debate over how involved the United States should be in foreign wars. The package included $8 billion for Taiwan, meant to counter the threat of invasion by China, which claims the entire island as its own territory and has threatened to take it by force if necessary.

    The mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office said the aid “seriously violates” U.S. commitments to China and “sends a wrong signal to the Taiwan independence separatist forces.”

    Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian added that Taiwan’s ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, which won a third four-year presidential term in January, is willing to “become a pawn for external forces to use Taiwan to contain China, bringing Taiwan into a dangerous situation.”

    On Tuesday, Taiwan’s President-elect Lai Ching-te told a visiting U.S. Congressional delegation that the aid package would “strengthen the deterrence against authoritarianism in the West Pacific ally chain” and “help ensure peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and also boost confidence in the region.”

    The package has had broad congressional support since Biden first requested the money last summer. But congressional leaders had to navigate strong opposition from a growing number of conservatives who question U.S. involvement in foreign wars and argue that Congress should be focused instead on the surge of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

    The package covers a wide range of parts and services aimed at maintaining and and upgrading Taiwan’s military hardware. Separately, Taiwan has signed billions in contracts with the U.S. for latest-generation F-16V fighter jets, M1 Abrams main battle tanks and the HIMARS rocket system, which the U.S. has also supplied to Ukraine.

    Taiwan has also been expanding its own defense industry, building submarines and trainer jets. Next month, it plans to commission its third and fourth domestically designed and built stealth corvettes to counter the Chinese navy as ptensions art of a strategy of asymmetrical warfare, in which a smaller force counters its larger opponent by using cutting edge or nonconventional tactics and weaponry.

    China launches daily incursions into waters and airspace around Taiwan by navy ships and warplanes. It has also sought to pick away Taiwan’s few remaining formal diplomatic partners.

    However, only two People’s Liberation Army Air Force planes and seven navy vessels were found operating in areas around Taiwan between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, possibly as a result of heavy rainstorms and low visibility overnight along the island’s west coast facing China.

    At times of heightened tensions, China has launched dozens of such missions over a 24 hour period, many of them crossing the center line in the Taiwan Strait dividing the sides or entering Taiwan’s air defense identification zone.

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  • Biden is marking Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal solar power grants

    Biden is marking Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal solar power grants

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    WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is marking Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal grants for residential solar projects serving 900,000-plus households in low- and middle-income communities. He also plans to expand his New Deal-style American Climate Corps green jobs training program.

    The grants are being awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency, which unveiled the 60 recipients on Monday. The projects are expected to eventually reduce emissions by the equivalent of 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and save households $350 million annually, according to senior administration officials.

    Biden’s latest environmental announcements come as he is working to energize young voters for his reelection campaign. Young people were a key part of a broad but potentially fragile coalition that helped him defeat then-President Donald Trump in 2020. Some have joined protests around the country of the administration’s handling of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

    Senior administration officials said young Americans are keenly invested in the Biden climate agenda and want to actually help enact it. The Climate Corps initiative is a way for them to do that, the officials said.

    Solar is gaining traction as a key renewable energy source that could reduce the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels, which emit planet-warming greenhouse gases. Not only is it clean, but solar energy can also boost the reliability of the electric grid.

    But solar energy can have high costs for initial installation, making it inaccessible for many Americans — and potentially meaning a mingling of environmental policy with election-year politics.

    Forty-nine of the new grants are state-level awards, six serve Native American tribes and five are multi-state awards. They can be used for investments such as rooftop solar and community solar gardens.

    Biden is making the announcement at northern Virginia’s Prince William Forest Park, about 30 miles southwest of Washington. It was established in 1936 as a summer camp for underprivileged youth from Washington, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps to help create jobs during the Great Depression.

    Biden used executive action last year to create the American Climate Corps modeled on Roosevelt’s New Deal. He is announcing Monday that nearly 2,000 corps positions are being offered across 36 states, including jobs offered in partnership with the North American Building Trades Unions.

    Biden has often used Earth Day as a backdrop to further his administration’s climate initiatives. Last year, he signed an executive order creating the White House Office of Environmental Justice, meant to help ensure that poverty, race and ethnic status do not lead to worse exposure to pollution and environmental harm.

    He has tried to draw a contrast with GOP congressional leaders, who have called for less regulation of oil production to lower energy prices. Biden officials counter that GOP policies benefit highly profitable oil companies and could ultimately undermine U.S. efforts to compete with the Chinese in the renewable energy sector.

    Biden will use his Virginia visit to discuss how “a climate crisis fully manifest to the American people in communities all across the country, is also an opportunity for us to come together,” said White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi.

    He said the programs can “unlock economic opportunity to create pathways to middle-class-supporting careers, to save people money and improve their quality of life.”

    The awards came from the Solar for All program, part of the $27 billion “green bank” created as part of a sweeping climate law passed in 2022. The bank is intended to reduce climate and air pollution and send money to neighborhoods most in need, especially disadvantaged and low-income communities disproportionately impacted by climate change.

    EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe said she was “looking forward to these funds getting out into the community, giving people skills, putting them to work in their local communities, and allowing people to save on their energy bills so that they can put those dollars to other needs.”

    Among those receiving grants are state projects to provide solar-equipped roofs for homes, college residences and residential-serving community solar projects in West Virginia, a non-profit operating Mississippi solar lease program and solar workforce training initiatives in South Carolina.

    The taxpayer-funded green bank has faced Republican opposition and concerns over accountability for how the money gets used. EPA previously disbursed the other $20 billion of the bank’s funds to nonprofits and community development banks for clean energy projects such as residential heat pumps, additional energy-efficient home improvements and larger-scale projects like electric vehicle charging stations and community cooling centers.

    ___

    St. John reported from Detroit.

    ___

    Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Biden is marking Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal solar power grants

    Biden is marking Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal solar power grants

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    WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is marking Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal grants for residential solar projects serving 900,000-plus households in low- and middle-income communities. He also plans to expand his New Deal-style American Climate Corps green jobs training program.

    The grants are being awarded by the Environmental Protection Agency, which unveiled the 60 recipients on Monday. The projects are expected to eventually reduce emissions by the equivalent of 30 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and save households $350 million annually, according to senior administration officials.

    Biden’s latest environmental announcements come as he is working to energize young voters for his reelection campaign. Young people were a key part of a broad but potentially fragile coalition that helped him defeat then-President Donald Trump in 2020. Some have joined protests around the country of the administration’s handling of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

    Senior administration officials said young Americans are keenly invested in the Biden climate agenda and want to actually help enact it. The Climate Corps initiative is a way for them to do that, the officials said.

    Solar is gaining traction as a key renewable energy source that could reduce the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels, which emit planet-warming greenhouse gases. Not only is it clean, but solar energy can also boost the reliability of the electric grid.

    But solar energy can have high costs for initial installation, making it inaccessible for many Americans — and potentially meaning a mingling of environmental policy with election-year politics.

    Forty-nine of the new grants are state-level awards, six serve Native American tribes and five are multi-state awards. They can be used for investments such as rooftop solar and community solar gardens.

    Biden is making the announcement at northern Virginia’s Prince William Forest Park, about 30 miles southwest of Washington. It was established in 1936 as a summer camp for underprivileged youth from Washington, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps to help create jobs during the Great Depression.

    Biden used executive action last year to create the American Climate Corps modeled on Roosevelt’s New Deal. He is announcing Monday that nearly 2,000 corps positions are being offered across 36 states, including jobs offered in partnership with the North American Building Trades Unions.

    Biden has often used Earth Day as a backdrop to further his administration’s climate initiatives. Last year, he signed an executive order creating the White House Office of Environmental Justice, meant to help ensure that poverty, race and ethnic status do not lead to worse exposure to pollution and environmental harm.

    He has tried to draw a contrast with GOP congressional leaders, who have called for less regulation of oil production to lower energy prices. Biden officials counter that GOP policies benefit highly profitable oil companies and could ultimately undermine U.S. efforts to compete with the Chinese in the renewable energy sector.

    Biden will use his Virginia visit to discuss how “a climate crisis fully manifest to the American people in communities all across the country, is also an opportunity for us to come together,” said White House National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi.

    He said the programs can “unlock economic opportunity to create pathways to middle-class-supporting careers, to save people money and improve their quality of life.”

    The awards came from the Solar for All program, part of the $27 billion “green bank” created as part of a sweeping climate law passed in 2022. The bank is intended to reduce climate and air pollution and send money to neighborhoods most in need, especially disadvantaged and low-income communities disproportionately impacted by climate change.

    EPA Deputy Administrator Janet McCabe said she was “looking forward to these funds getting out into the community, giving people skills, putting them to work in their local communities, and allowing people to save on their energy bills so that they can put those dollars to other needs.”

    Among those receiving grants are state projects to provide solar-equipped roofs for homes, college residences and residential-serving community solar projects in West Virginia, a non-profit operating Mississippi solar lease program and solar workforce training initiatives in South Carolina.

    The taxpayer-funded green bank has faced Republican opposition and concerns over accountability for how the money gets used. EPA previously disbursed the other $20 billion of the bank’s funds to nonprofits and community development banks for clean energy projects such as residential heat pumps, additional energy-efficient home improvements and larger-scale projects like electric vehicle charging stations and community cooling centers.

    ___

    St. John reported from Detroit.

    ___

    Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Unions in Greece call widespread strikes, seeking a return to bargaining rights axed during bailouts

    Unions in Greece call widespread strikes, seeking a return to bargaining rights axed during bailouts

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    ATHENS, Greece — Strikes called by Greece’s largest labor union halted ferries and public transport services in Athens and elsewhere Wednesday.

    The General Confederation of Greek Labor, GSEE, called the strikes to press for a return of collective bargaining rights axed more than a decade ago during a severe financial crisis.

    Hundreds of protesters began gathering in central Athens to attend a demonstration planned for later Wednesday.

    The 24-hour strikes kept ferries at ports and disrupted other public services, leaving some state-run hospitals running on emergency staffing levels.

    Greece has returned to robust economic growth and an investment-grade sovereign bond rating following a series of international bailouts and a severe recession during the 2010-18 crisis.

    But unions argue that many labor rights removed as a temporary measure during the bailout-era have not been restored.

    “We were told during the bailouts that the (measures) would only last for a few years until Greece gets back on its feet. That’s not what’s happening now,” GSEE leader Yiannis Panagopoulos told a news conference ahead of the strike.

    “Restoring labor laws, collective and individual working rights, costs nothing. And it gives us the tools to seek fair pay.”

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  • Google removes links to California news sites for some users

    Google removes links to California news sites for some users

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    SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Google on Friday began removing California news websites from some people’s search results, a test that acted as a threat should the state Legislature pass a law requiring the search giant to pay media companies for linking to their content.

    Google announced the move in a blog post on Friday, calling it a “short-term test for a small percentage of users … to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience.” The company said it also would pause new investments in the California news industry, including the partnership initiative with news organizations and its product licensing program.

    “By helping people find news stories, we help publishers of all sizes grow their audiences at no cost to them. (This bill) would up-end that model,” Jaffer Zaidi, Google’s vice president for global news partnerships, wrote in the blog post.

    The California Legislature is considering a bill that would require tech giants like Google, Facebook and Microsoft to pay a certain percentage of advertising revenue to media companies for linking to their content. How much the companies would have to pay would be decided by a panel of three judges through an arbitration process.

    The bill aims to stop the loss of journalism jobs, which have been disappearing rapidly as legacy media companies have struggled to profit in the digital age. More than 2,500 newspapers have closed in the U.S. since 2005, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. California has lost more than 100 news organizations in the past decade, according to Democratic Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, the bill’s author.

    “This is a bill about basic fairness — it’s about ensuring that platforms pay for the content they repurpose,” Wicks said. “We are committed to continuing negotiations with Google and all other stakeholders to secure a brighter future for California journalists and ensure that the lights of democracy stay on.”

    The state Assembly passed the bill last year with bipartisan support despite fierce opposition and lobbying efforts from big tech companies. The California Senate would have to pass it later this year for it to become law.

    Supporters said the legislation would help level the playing field between news publishers and large digital platforms and provide a “lifeline” to local news organizations, which rely heavily on Google’s search engine to distribute its content in the digital era. While Google’s search engine has become the hub of a digital advertisement empire that generates more than $200 billion annually, news publishers saw their advertising revenues nosedive significantly in the last few decades.

    But opponents, including Google, Meta and some independent newsrooms, call the legislation a “link tax” that would primarily benefit out-of-state newspaper chains and hedge funds and further decimate local news organizations. Richard Gingras, Google’s vice president of news, also told state lawmakers, in a hearing last December, that Google already made significant contributions to support local journalism, pointing to the tech giant’s financial grants and training to nearly 1,000 local publications in 2023, among other programs.

    Google’s search engine should be seen as “the largest newsstand on Earth,” Gingras said, where it helps connect users to news websites more than 24 billion times per month. Google’s search engine holds an estimated 90% share of the market.

    “This traffic in turn helps publishers make money by showing ads or attracting new subscribers,” he said, adding that it’s estimated that each click on a link from Google is worth 5 cents to 7 cents to a news website.

    Google’s decision to temporarily remove links to news websites is not a new tactic for tech giants to use when pushing back on unwanted legislation. When Canada and Australia passed similar laws to promote journalism, Meta — the company that owns Facebook and Instagram — responded by blocking content from Canadian publishers on its sites in Canada. The company made similar threats to U.S. Congress and California lawmakers last year. Google had threatened to do the same in Canada. But in November, Google agreed to pay 100 million Canadian dollars ($74 million U.S. dollars) to the news industry.

    News publishers would suffer and could lay off more journalists if Google completely blocks content from its search, but experts say Google also would take a financial hit without news content.

    “Google would be damaging itself enormously if it decided to stop using newspaper content,” Brandon Kressin, an antitrust attorney representing News Media Alliance and other news publishers, told lawmakers in a December hearing. “They would be cutting off their nose to spite their own face.”

    The political wrangling over Google’s dominant search engine can throttle access to various news sources comes against the backdrop of legal trouble that could culminate in decisions that undercut the company’s internet empire.

    After presenting evidence to support its allegations that Google has been abusing its power to stifle competition and innovation during the biggest antitrust trial in a quarter century, lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department will present its closing arguments next month to a federal judge who is expected to issue a decision in the case later this year.

    Following another antitrust trial that ended in December, a federal jury concluded Google had turned its app store for smartphones running on its Android software into an illegal monopoly that limited consumer choices while enriching the company through unfairly high commissions charged for in-app purchases. A hearing on the changes that Google will have to make resulting from that verdict is also scheduled to occur next month.

    California has attempted to boost local journalism through various initiatives, including a $25 million multiyear, state-funded program in partnership with UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to place 40 early-career journalists in local newsrooms annually. Lawmakers are also considering another proposal that would expand tax credits for local news organizations this year.

    —-

    Associated Press reporter Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to the report.

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  • US-China competition to field military drone swarms could fuel global arms race

    US-China competition to field military drone swarms could fuel global arms race

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    As their rivalry intensifies, U.S. and Chinese military planners are gearing up for a new kind of warfare in which squadrons of air and sea drones equipped with artificial intelligence work together like a swarm of bees to overwhelm an enemy.

    The planners envision a scenario in which hundreds, even thousands of the machines engage in coordinated battle. A single controller might oversee dozens of drones. Some would scout, others attack. Some would be able to pivot to new objectives in the middle of a mission based on prior programming rather than a direct order.

    The world’s only AI superpowers are engaged in an arms race for swarming drones that is reminiscent of the Cold War, except drone technology will be far more difficult to contain than nuclear weapons. Because software drives the drones’ swarming abilities, it could be relatively easy and cheap for rogue nations and militants to acquire their own fleets of killer robots.

    The Pentagon is pushing urgent development of inexpensive, expendable drones as a deterrent against China acting on its territorial claim on Taiwan. Washington says it has no choice but to keep pace with Beijing. Chinese officials say AI-enabled weapons are inevitable so they, too, must have them.

    The unchecked spread of swarm technology “could lead to more instability and conflict around the world,” said Margarita Konaev, an analyst with Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

    As the undisputed leaders in the field, Washington and Beijing are best equipped to set an example by putting limits on military uses of drone swarms. But their intense competition, China’s military aggression in the South China Sea and persistent tensions over Taiwan make the prospect of cooperation look dim.

    The idea is not new. The United Nations has tried for more than a decade to advance drone non-proliferation efforts that could include limits such as forbidding the targeting of civilians or banning the use of swarms for ethnic cleansing.

    Drones have been a priority for both powers for years, and each side has kept its advances secret, so it’s unclear which country might have an edge.

    A 2023 Georgetown study of AI-related military spending found that more than a third of known contracts issued by both U.S. and Chinese military services over eight months in 2020 were for intelligent uncrewed systems.

    The Pentagon sought bids in January for small, unmanned maritime “interceptors.” The specifications reflect the military’s ambition: The drones must be able to transit hundreds of miles of “contested waterspace,” work in groups in waters without GPS, carry 1,000-pound payloads, attack hostile craft at 40 mph and execute “complex autonomous behaviors” to adapt to a target’s evasive tactics.

    It’s not clear how many drones a single person would control. A spokesman for the defense secretary declined to say, but a recently published Pentagon-backed study offers a clue: A single operator supervised a swarm of more than 100 cheap air and land drones in late 2021 in an urban warfare exercise at an Army training site at Fort Campbell, Tennessee.

    The CEO of a company developing software to allow multiple drones to collaborate said in an interview that the technology is bounding ahead.

    “We’re enabling a single operator to direct right now half a dozen,” said Lorenz Meier of Auterion, which is working on the technology for the U.S. military and its allies. He said that number is expected to increase to dozens and within a year to hundreds.

    Not to be outdone, China’s military claimed last year that dozens of aerial drones “self-healed” after jamming cut their communications. An official documentary said they regrouped, switched to self-guidance and completed a search-and-destroy mission unaided, detonating explosive-laden drones on a target.

    In justifying the push for drone swarms, China hawks in Washington offer this scenario: Beijing invades Taiwan then stymies U.S. intervention efforts with waves of air and sea drones that deny American and allied planes, ships and troops a foothold.

    A year ago, CIA Director William Burns said Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping had instructed his military to “be ready by 2027” to invade. But that doesn’t mean an invasion is likely, or that the U.S.-China arms race over AI will not aggravate global instability.

    Just before he died last year, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger urged Beijing and Washington to work together to discourage AI arms proliferation. They have “a narrow window of opportunity,” he said.

    “Restraints for AI need to occur before AI is built into the security structure of each society,” Kissinger wrote with Harvard’s Graham Allison.

    Xi and President Joe Biden made a verbal agreement in November to set up working groups on AI safety, but that effort has so far taken a back seat to the arms race for autonomous drones.

    The competition is not apt to build trust or reduce the risk of conflict, said William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

    If the U.S. is “going full speed ahead, it’s most likely China will accelerate whatever it’s doing,” Hartung said.

    There’s a risk China could offer swarm technology to U.S. foes or repressive countries, analysts say. Or it could be stolen. Other countries developing the tech, such as Russia, Israel, Iran and Turkey, could also spread the know-how.

    U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in January that U.S.-China talks set to begin sometime this spring will address AI safety. Neither the defense secretary’s office nor the National Security Council would comment on whether the military use of drone swarms might be on the agenda.

    The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

    Military analysts, drone makers and AI researchers don’t expect fully capable, combat-ready swarms to be fielded for five years or so, though big breakthroughs could happen sooner.

    “The Chinese have an edge in hardware right now. I think we have an edge in software,” said CEO Adam Bry of U.S. drone maker Skydio, which supplies the Army, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the State Department, among other agencies.

    Chinese military analyst Song Zhongping said the U.S. has “stronger basic scientific and technological capabilities” but added that the American advantage is not “impossible to surpass.” He said Washington also tends to overestimate the effect of its computer chip export restrictions on China’s drone swarm advances.

    Paul Scharre, an AI expert at the Center for a New American Security think tank, believes the rivals are at rough parity.

    “The bigger question for each country is about how do you use a drone swarm effectively?” he said.

    That’s one reason all eyes are on the war in Ukraine, where drones work as eyes in the sky to make undetected front-line maneuvers all but impossible. They also deliver explosives and serve as sea-skimming ship killers.

    Drones in Ukraine are often lost to jamming. Electronic interference is just one of many challenges for drone swarm development. Researchers are also focused on the difficulty of marshaling hundreds of air and sea drones in semi-autonomous swarms over vast expanses of the western Pacific for a potential war over Taiwan.

    A secretive, now-inactive $78 million program announced early last year by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, seemed tailor-made for the Taiwan invasion scenario.

    The Autonomous Multi-Domain Adaptive Swarms-of-Swarms is a mouthful to say, but the mission is clear: Develop ways for thousands of autonomous land, sea and air drones to “degrade or defeat” a foe in seizing contested turf.

    A separate DARPA program called OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics, had the goal of marshaling upwards of 250 land-based drones to assist Army troops in urban warfare.

    Project coordinator Julie Adams, an Oregon State robotics professor, said swarm commanders in the exercise managed to choreograph up to 133 ground and air vehicles at a time. The drones were programmed with a set of tactics they could perform semi-autonomously, including indoor reconnaissance and simulated enemy kills.

    Under the direction of a swarm commander, the fleet acted something like an infantry squad whose soldiers are permitted some improvisation as long as they stick to orders.

    “It’s what I would call supervisory interaction, in that the human could stop the command or stop the tactic,” Adams said. But once a course of action — such as an attack — was set in motion, the drone was on its own.

    Adams said she was particularly impressed with a swarm commander in a different exercise last year at Fort Moore, Georgia, who single-handedly managed a 45-drone swarm over 2.5 hours with just 20 minutes of training.

    “It was a pleasant surprise,” she said.

    A reporter had to ask: Was he a video game player?

    Yes, she said. “And he had a VR headset at home.”

    ___

    Associated Press Writer Zen Soo in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

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  • Here’s what we know about Uber and Lyft’s planned exit from Minneapolis in May

    Here’s what we know about Uber and Lyft’s planned exit from Minneapolis in May

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    MINNEAPOLIS — The future of Uber and Lyft in Minneapolis has garnered concern and debate in recent weeks after the City Council voted last month to require that ride-hailing companies pay drivers a higher rate while they are within city limits.

    Uber and Lyft responded by saying they would stop serving the Minneapolis area when the ordinance takes effect May 1, causing the city to weigh the ordinance it passed. The state could also take action, while riders and drivers are left wondering what could come next.

    Here is what we know so far:

    The Minneapolis City Council last month overrode a mayoral veto and passed an ordinance that requires ride-hailing companies to pay drivers a minimum rate of $1.40 per mile and $0.51 per minute — or $5 per ride, whichever is greater — excluding tips, for the time spent transporting passengers in Minneapolis.

    Supporters of the ordinance said the rate would ensure that companies pay drivers the equivalent of the city’s minimum wage of $15.57 per hour.

    Council Member Jamal Osman, who co-authored the ordinance, said in a statement: “Drivers are human beings with families, and they deserve dignified minimum wages like all other workers. … the Minneapolis City Council will not allow the East African community, or any community, to be exploited for cheap labor.”

    Many East African immigrants in the Minneapolis area work as Uber and Lyft drivers and have advocated for the rate increase.

    However, a recent study commissioned by the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry found that a lower rate of $0.89 per mile and $0.49 per minute would meet the $15.57 per hour goal.

    Uber and Lyft said they can support the rate from the state’s study. But if the higher rate from the Minneapolis ordinance goes into effect, the companies said they will leave the market May 1.

    Josh Gold, an Uber spokesperson, said the company plans on ending its operations in Minneapolis, St. Paul and the Twin Cities metro area — including the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport.

    The metro area includes more than 3 million people, which is more than half the state’s population.

    CJ Macklin, a Lyft spokesperson, said Lyft will end its operations only in Minneapolis. Lyft will still service the airport, but will not pick up or drop off passengers at any Minneapolis locations.

    Both companies previously pulled out of Austin, Texas, in 2016, after the city pushed for fingerprint-based background checks of drivers as a rider safety measure. The companies returned after the Texas Legislature overrode the local measure and passed a law implementing different rules statewide.

    Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz said he is “deeply concerned” about the possibility of Uber and Lyft leaving the Minneapolis area.

    Walz said the move would have statewide impact and affect everyone who relies on the service, including people trying to get home safely from bars, people with disabilities, students and others.

    State lawmakers could pass legislation that would supersede the local ordinance. But Walz said the most efficient solution is to ask the Minneapolis City Council to work out a compromise.

    Minneapolis City Council members could vote to change the ordinance, take it back completely or leave it as is.

    Council member Linea Palmisano said she plans to continue voting against it unless it is changed. Palmisano said she has heard from many community members who oppose it, including students, part-time and low-income workers, hospitals and more.

    Palmisano said she has also heard from drivers who do not agree with it and “are now at risk of losing their livelihood.”

    Council member Robin Wonsley, the ordinance’s lead author, said the ordinance’s rate is “the right thing to do.”

    “For far too long, this industry has exploited workers of color and immigrant workers for cheap labor. We have the opportunity and the responsibility to build a rideshare industry that is not based on poverty wages and exploitation,” she said.

    Residents in the Twin Cities metro area are divided — some support the ordinance because it will help marginalized workers, while others oppose it because they don’t want Uber and Lyft to leave.

    Marianna Brown, an Uber driver in her 60s living in a suburb of Minneapolis, supports the ordinance and isn’t worried, saying other ride-hailing companies — and even a local driver-owned co-op — are planning to enter the Minneapolis market. Brown, a Jamaican immigrant, said drivers have been abused by Uber and Lyft for too long.

    Arianna Feldman, 31, of Minneapolis, said she supports the ordinance and has taken close to 2,000 rides on Lyft because she doesn’t drive, has health issues and doesn’t have access to reliable public transit.

    “I think it’s really shameful that these multimillion-dollar companies are holding us hostage like this and punishing communities for demanding a very basic right to get compensated correctly,” she said.

    Jake Clark, 44, of St. Paul, is an Uber and Lyft driver and opposes the ordinance. Clark said he has never earned less than $25 per hour and has earned up to $75 per hour because he prioritizes customer service and strategizes which rides to accept.

    Michael Sack, 34, of Minneapolis, also opposes the ordinance. He has cerebral palsy and serves on the Minneapolis Advisory Committee on People with Disabilities. He urged the City Council and state Legislature to find a way to increase drivers’ pay while keeping ride-hailing services affordable.

    “It is critical to keep the cost of rides down because people with low incomes, which most individuals with impairments have, utilize Uber and Lyft,” he said.

    ___

    Trisha Ahmed is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @TrishaAhmed15

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  • AT&T says a data breach leaked millions of customers’ information online. Were you affected?

    AT&T says a data breach leaked millions of customers’ information online. Were you affected?

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    NEW YORK — The theft of sensitive information belonging to millions of AT&T’s current and former customers has been recently discovered online, the telecommunications giant said this weekend.

    In a Saturday announcement addressing the data breach, AT&T said that a dataset found on the “dark web” contains information including some Social Security numbers and passcodes for about 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders.

    Whether the data “originated from AT&T or one of its vendors” is still unknown, the Dallas-based company noted — adding that it had launched an investigation into the incident. AT&T has also begun notifying customers whose personal information was compromised.

    Here’s what you need to know.

    Although varying by each customer and account, AT&T says that information involved in this breach included Social Security numbers and passcodes — which, unlike passwords, are numerical PINS that are typically four digits long.

    Full names, email addresses, mailing address, phone numbers, dates of birth and AT&T account numbers may have also been compromised. The impacted data is from 2019 or earlier and does not appear to include financial information or call history, the company said.

    Consumers impacted by this breach should be receiving an email or letter directly from AT&T about the incident. The email notices began going out on Saturday, an AT&T spokesperson confirmed to The Associated Press.

    Beyond these notifications, AT&T said that it had already reset the passcodes of current users. The company added that it would pay for credit monitoring services where applicable.

    AT&T also said that it “launched a robust investigation” with internal and external cybersecurity experts to investigate the situation further.

    AT&T has seen several data breaches that range in size and impact over the years.

    While the company says the data in this latest breach surfaced on a hacking forum nearly two weeks ago, it closely resembles a similar breach that surfaced in 2021 but which AT&T never acknowledged, cybersecurity researcher Troy Hunt told the AP Saturday.

    “If they assess this and they made the wrong call on it, and we’ve had a course of years pass without them being able to notify impacted customers,” then it’s likely the company will soon face class action lawsuits, said Hunt, founder of an Australia-based website that warns people when their personal information has been exposed.

    A spokesperson for AT&T declined to comment further when asked about these similarities Sunday.

    Avoiding data breaches entirely can be tricky in our ever-digitized world, but consumers can take some steps to help protect themselves going forward.

    The basics include creating hard-to-guess passwords and using multifactor authentication when possible. If you receive a notice about a breach, it’s good idea to change your password and monitor account activity for any suspicious transactions. You’ll also want to visit a company’s official website for reliable contact information — as scammers sometimes try to take advantage of news like data breaches to gain your trust through look-alike phishing emails or phone calls.

    In addition, the Federal Trade Commission notes that nationwide credit bureaus — such as Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — offer free credit freezes and fraud alerts that consumers can set up to help protect themselves from identity theft and other malicious activity.

    ___

    AP Reporter Matt O’Brien contributed to this report from Providence, Rhode Island.

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  • California wants to pay doctors more money to see Medicaid patients

    California wants to pay doctors more money to see Medicaid patients

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    SACRAMENTO, Calif. — When Hunter Morgan bought an optometry practice in Southern California three years ago, one of the first things he did was start seeing patients who use Medicaid — the government-funded health insurance program for low-income people.

    The previous owners had not accepted patients on Medicaid, which covers roughly a third of California’s 39 million residents. But Morgan felt he had a responsibility to serve people in need.

    Just five months later, Morgan said, he had to stop treating Medicaid patients because of the paltry pay. He charges $175 for eye exams, but the most he could get from Medicaid was about $40. That made it difficult to pay his staff and pricey rent in the upscale beach community of Encinitas, 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of San Diego.

    “We couldn’t function that way,” he said.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his Democratic allies in the state Legislature have greatly increased the number of people on Medicaid, including all eligible adults in the state who are in the country without legal permission. But while California’s Medicaid now covers some 15 million people, the rates it pays to doctors have not kept up.

    It has contributed to a crisis at some rural hospitals, some of which needed an emergency loan from the state Legislature last year to keep from closing. And it has made it harder for people enrolled in Medicaid to find doctors willing to treat them, forcing some to drive long distances to seek care.

    Health care providers have been clamoring for California’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, to pay them more. But California doesn’t have extra money thanks to back-to-back multibillion-dollar budget deficits. To pay doctors more, Newsom and the state Legislature chose to raise taxes — but not in the way you might think.

    Just about every state taxes things like hospitals, nursing homes and ambulances to help pay for their share of Medicaid. Since 2005, California has taxed managed care organizations — the private companies that contract with the state to provide Medicaid benefits.

    But unlike with most taxes, the companies don’t have to pay all of it. The state pays most of it for them, then uses the money to trigger more federal payments for Medicaid. That means more money for everybody.

    Last year Newsom signed a law that greatly increased this tax. It means the state will get $19.4 billion through 2026. On Thursday the Legislature is scheduled to vote to increase it again, generating an estimated $1.5 billion more.

    “California is pulling every lever of government to increase access to affordable, high-quality health care across the state,” Newsom said in a statement to The Associated Press.

    In the past, California has used that kind of surplus to balance its budget. But this time the state has vowed to use part of it to pay doctors more for treating Medicaid patients.

    How much, and who will get it, will be fully decided this year. The first increases last year went to primary care doctors, maternity care and some mental health services. This year’s increases, which have not yet been approved by the Legislature, would include things like obstetric, vaccine and abortion services — and optometry.

    For optometrists, Newsom is proposing to raise rates to match those paid by Medicare, the federal government’s health insurance program for people 65 and older. That could mean California’s roughly 8,000 licensed optometrists would get a lot more money for Medicaid patients — roughly $130 per exam instead of $47.

    Health care providers have cheered these increases, but they’re still nervous. California’s budget deficits have only been growing.

    “If things really did get bad, I think, they could use the money for other purposes,” said Kristine Schultz, executive director of the California Optometric Association.

    Newsom already wants to change the tax increase he signed last year, which included $11 billion more to hike provider payments over five years. This year, because of the deficit, Newsom wants to use $8 billion for provider payments over four years. Providers would still get the same increase, but it would expire sooner.

    Plus, the federal government must approve California’s tax on managed care organizations every three years. The Biden administration has signaled recently that it wants to reduce how much money states can collect, and that could force California to lower the tax in the future, cutting into its ability to continue paying doctors higher rates.

    “It’s a real concern,” said Stuart Thompson, senior vice president for governmental affairs for the California Medical Association, during a recent public hearing before lawmakers. “We don’t want to create a scenario in which we have a program that goes for four years and then we reach the cliff.”

    Republicans in the Legislature have criticized Newsom’s plan to raise the tax again. There is “no guarantee it stays in the health care space,” said Assemblymember Vince Fong, a a Republican and vice chair of the Assembly Budget Committee.

    But Assembly Democrats appear to view the plan more favorably. Democrat Akilah Weber, chair of the budget subcommittee that oversees health care spending, said the deficit is requiring “some changes” but she remains committed to the rate increases.

    An increase for optometrist payments would be good news for people in Fresno, a Central Valley city with a large population of low-income farm workers who are on Medicaid.

    At one eye care practice in the city, Fogg Remington, Medicaid patients historically made up about 15% of clients. But it stopped accepting new Medicaid patients in January, citing low rates and a new law requiring health care workers to be paid at least $25 per hour.

    Fogg Remington optometrist Dr. Anthony Chavez said that if California were to increase its rates, it would be a “no brainer” to reverse that decision.

    “We want to help these people,” Chavez said.

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  • State Medicaid offices target dead people’s homes to recoup their health care costs

    State Medicaid offices target dead people’s homes to recoup their health care costs

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    WASHINGTON — As Salvatore LoGrande fought cancer and all the pain that came with it, his daughters promised to keep him in the white, pitched roof house he worked so hard to buy all those decades ago.

    So, Sandy LoGrande thought it was a mistake when, a year after her father’s death, Massachusetts billed her $177,000 for her father’s Medicaid expenses and threatened to sue for his home if she didn’t pay up quickly.

    “The home was everything,” to her father said LoGrande, 57.

    But the bill and accompanying threat weren’t a mistake.

    Rather, it was part of a routine process the federal government requires of every state: to recover money from the assets of dead people who, in their final years, relied on Medicaid, the taxpayer-funded health insurance for the poorest Americans.

    A person’s home is typically exempt from qualifying for Medicaid. But it is subject to the estate recovery process for those who were over 55 and used Medicaid to pay for long-term care such as nursing home stays or in-home health care.

    This month, a Democratic lawmaker proposed scuttling the “cruel” program altogether. Critics argue the program collects too little — roughly 1% — of the more than $150 billion Medicaid spends yearly on long-term care. They also say many states fail to warn people who sign up for Medicaid that big bills and claims to their property might await their families once they die.

    LoGrande says that’s how she ended up in a two-year legal battle with Massachusetts after her father died. Several years before he died in 2016, she had turned to a local nonprofit for advice on caring for her elderly father. The group suggested she sign him up for Medicaid. She even remembers asking about the house, but was assured the state would only seek the house if it sent her father to a nursing home.

    “He never would have signed on with anything that would put his home in jeopardy,” she said.

    For years, her father got an annual renewal notice from the state’s Medicaid office. She says it wasn’t until after his death, when the state’s demand for $177,000 arrived, that she saw the first bill for his care, which included a brief stint in the hospital for pain from cancer, medications and hospice.

    “That’s what ripped my guts out,” LoGrande said. “It was dishonest.”

    The state settled with the LoGrandes in 2019 and released its claim on the house.

    State policies around this recovery process vary widely, according to a 2021 report from the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, which makes policy recommendations to Congress.

    Some states will put a lien — a legal right — on a home while others don’t. Meanwhile, some Medicaid offices try to recoup all medical costs from patients, like doctor visits or prescriptions, while others just pursue the costs for long-term care. Alaska and Arizona pursued just dozens of properties in recent years while other states go after thousands of homes, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.

    New York and Ohio topped the country for such collections, recovering more than $100 million combined in a single year, a Dayton Daily News investigation found.

    An investigation into the Kansas program, released Tuesday by the Health and Human Services inspector general, found that program was cost effective — yielding $37 million while only spending $5 million to recover the money, But the state didn’t always collect the money from estates that were eligible.

    Last month, a foundation for one of the industry’s biggest health insurance giants called on Massachusetts to overhaul its process, which includes collecting reimbursement for most Medicaid costs, beyond the federal government’s minimum requirement to recover long-term care expenses. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of Massachusetts recommended the state Legislature pass a law that would prohibit those additional collections.

    Estate recovery “has the potential to perpetuate wealth disparities and intergenerational poverty,” said Katherine Howitt, a Medicaid policy director with the foundation.

    In Tennessee, which recovered more than $38.2 million from more than 8,100 estates last year, Imani Mfalme found herself in a similar predicament after her mother’s death in 2021.

    As her mother’s early-onset Alzheimer’s worsened, Mfalme continued to care for her. But in 2015, when Mfalme was diagnosed with breast cancer and needed a double mastectomy, she started looking at other options. She hosted a meeting in her mother’s home with the local Medicaid office. The representative told her to drain her mother’s bank accounts – money Mfalme poured into assisted living facility payments for her mom – so her mother would qualify for the program.

    She recalls being somewhat offended during the meeting after the representative asked her three times: “This is your mother’s home?” The representative, Mfalme said, made no mention that she could be forced to sell the house to settle her mother’s bill with Medicaid once she died.

    Now, Tennessee’s Medicaid office says she owes $225,000 and the state is seeking a court order that would require Mfalme to sell the house to pay up.

    Mfalme, now 42, said she wants to pay what she can, but the house is a particular pain point. Her mother, a Black woman, purchased her dream home in Knoxville after she won a landmark discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, Boeing, for paying her less than her male coworkers.

    “She fought hard for equal pay and equal rights. Just to see that ripped away just because she was sick and I was sick, it’s just absolutely devastating,” Mfalme said of her mother.

    TennCare, Tennessee’s Medicaid office, said in an email to The Associated Press that it would not comment on specific cases.

    The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission’s report recommended that Congress reverse the 1993 law that required states to recover money from estates, instead making it optional.

    Earlier this month, Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois reintroduced legislation that would end the federal government’s mandate. Schakowsky believes the rule is a losing proposition for families, who give up their homes, and taxpayers, who don’t see big returns from the recovery efforts.

    “It is one of the most cruel, ineffective programs that we see,” Schakowsky told the AP. “This is a program that doesn’t work for anybody.”

    In a gridlocked Congress, where some Republicans are clamoring to trim Medicaid entitlements, the bill is unlikely to garner the bipartisan support needed to become law.

    There’s at least one person who acknowledges the rule isn’t working: the man who engineered it.

    Many people don’t know about the decades-old mandate, which was intended to encourage people to save for long-term care — or risk losing the equity from their home, explained Stephen Moses, who now works for the conservative Paragon Health Institute.

    “The plan here was to ensure that people who need long-term care can get it but that you plan ahead to be able to pay privately so you don’t end up on the public health care program,” Moses said.

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  • State Medicaid offices target dead people’s homes to recoup their health care costs

    State Medicaid offices target dead people’s homes to recoup their health care costs

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    WASHINGTON — As Salvatore LoGrande fought cancer and all the pain that came with it, his daughters promised to keep him in the white, pitched roof house he worked so hard to buy all those decades ago.

    So, Sandy LoGrande thought it was a mistake when, a year after her father’s death, Massachusetts billed her $177,000 for her father’s Medicaid expenses and threatened to sue for his home if she didn’t pay up quickly.

    “The home was everything,” to her father said LoGrande, 57.

    But the bill and accompanying threat weren’t a mistake.

    Rather, it was part of a routine process the federal government requires of every state: to recover money from the assets of dead people who, in their final years, relied on Medicaid, the taxpayer-funded health insurance for the poorest Americans.

    A person’s home is typically exempt from qualifying for Medicaid. But it is subject to the estate recovery process for those who were over 55 and used Medicaid to pay for long-term care such as nursing home stays or in-home health care.

    This month, a Democratic lawmaker proposed scuttling the “cruel” program altogether. Critics argue the program collects too little — roughly 1% — of the more than $150 billion Medicaid spends yearly on long-term care. They also say many states fail to warn people who sign up for Medicaid that big bills and claims to their property might await their families once they die.

    LoGrande says that’s how she ended up in a two-year legal battle with Massachusetts after her father died. Several years before he died in 2016, she had turned to a local nonprofit for advice on caring for her elderly father. The group suggested she sign him up for Medicaid. She even remembers asking about the house, but was assured the state would only seek the house if it sent her father to a nursing home.

    “He never would have signed on with anything that would put his home in jeopardy,” she said.

    For years, her father got an annual renewal notice from the state’s Medicaid office. She says it wasn’t until after his death, when the state’s demand for $177,000 arrived, that she saw the first bill for his care, which included a brief stint in the hospital for pain from cancer, medications and hospice.

    “That’s what ripped my guts out,” LoGrande said. “It was dishonest.”

    The state settled with the LoGrandes in 2019 and released its claim on the house.

    State policies around this recovery process vary widely, according to a 2021 report from the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, which makes policy recommendations to Congress.

    Some states will put a lien — a legal right — on a home while others don’t. Meanwhile, some Medicaid offices try to recoup all medical costs from patients, like doctor visits or prescriptions, while others just pursue the costs for long-term care. Alaska and Arizona pursued just dozens of properties in recent years while other states go after thousands of homes, totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.

    New York and Ohio topped the country for such collections, recovering more than $100 million combined in a single year, a Dayton Daily News investigation found.

    An investigation into the Kansas program, released Tuesday by the Health and Human Services inspector general, found that program was cost effective — yielding $37 million while only spending $5 million to recover the money, But the state didn’t always collect the money from estates that were eligible.

    Last month, a foundation for one of the industry’s biggest health insurance giants called on Massachusetts to overhaul its process, which includes collecting reimbursement for most Medicaid costs, beyond the federal government’s minimum requirement to recover long-term care expenses. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of Massachusetts recommended the state Legislature pass a law that would prohibit those additional collections.

    Estate recovery “has the potential to perpetuate wealth disparities and intergenerational poverty,” said Katherine Howitt, a Medicaid policy director with the foundation.

    In Tennessee, which recovered more than $38.2 million from more than 8,100 estates last year, Imani Mfalme found herself in a similar predicament after her mother’s death in 2021.

    As her mother’s early-onset Alzheimer’s worsened, Mfalme continued to care for her. But in 2015, when Mfalme was diagnosed with breast cancer and needed a double mastectomy, she started looking at other options. She hosted a meeting in her mother’s home with the local Medicaid office. The representative told her to drain her mother’s bank accounts – money Mfalme poured into assisted living facility payments for her mom – so her mother would qualify for the program.

    She recalls being somewhat offended during the meeting after the representative asked her three times: “This is your mother’s home?” The representative, Mfalme said, made no mention that she could be forced to sell the house to settle her mother’s bill with Medicaid once she died.

    Now, Tennessee’s Medicaid office says she owes $225,000 and the state is seeking a court order that would require Mfalme to sell the house to pay up.

    Mfalme, now 42, said she wants to pay what she can, but the house is a particular pain point. Her mother, a Black woman, purchased her dream home in Knoxville after she won a landmark discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, Boeing, for paying her less than her male coworkers.

    “She fought hard for equal pay and equal rights. Just to see that ripped away just because she was sick and I was sick, it’s just absolutely devastating,” Mfalme said of her mother.

    TennCare, Tennessee’s Medicaid office, said in an email to The Associated Press that it would not comment on specific cases.

    The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission’s report recommended that Congress reverse the 1993 law that required states to recover money from estates, instead making it optional.

    Earlier this month, Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois reintroduced legislation that would end the federal government’s mandate. Schakowsky believes the rule is a losing proposition for families, who give up their homes, and taxpayers, who don’t see big returns from the recovery efforts.

    “It is one of the most cruel, ineffective programs that we see,” Schakowsky told the AP. “This is a program that doesn’t work for anybody.”

    In a gridlocked Congress, where some Republicans are clamoring to trim Medicaid entitlements, the bill is unlikely to garner the bipartisan support needed to become law.

    There’s at least one person who acknowledges the rule isn’t working: the man who engineered it.

    Many people don’t know about the decades-old mandate, which was intended to encourage people to save for long-term care — or risk losing the equity from their home, explained Stephen Moses, who now works for the conservative Paragon Health Institute.

    “The plan here was to ensure that people who need long-term care can get it but that you plan ahead to be able to pay privately so you don’t end up on the public health care program,” Moses said.

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  • The United States has its first large offshore wind farm, with more to come

    The United States has its first large offshore wind farm, with more to come

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    America’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm is officially open, a long-awaited moment that helps pave the way for a succession of large wind farms.

    Danish wind energy developer Ørsted and the utility Eversource built a 12-turbine wind farm called South Fork Wind 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Montauk Point, New York. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul went to Long Island Thursday to announce that the turbines are delivering clean power to the local electric grid, flipping a massive light switch to “turn on the future.” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland was also on hand.

    Achieving commercial scale is a turning point for the industry, but what’s next? Experts say the nation needs a major buildout of this type of clean electricity to address climate change.

    Offshore wind is central to both national and state plans to transition to a carbon-free electricity system. The Biden administration has approved six commercial-scale offshore wind energy projects, and auctioned lease areas for offshore wind for the first time off the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts. New York picked two more projects last month to power more than 1 million homes.

    This is just the beginning, Hochul said. She said the completion of South Fork shows that New York will aggressively pursue climate change solutions to save future generations from a world that otherwise could be dangerous. South Fork can generate 132 megawatts of offshore wind energy to power more than 70,000 homes.

    “It’s great to be first, we want to make sure we’re not the last. That’s why we’re showing other states how it can be done, why we’re moving forward, on to other projects,” Hochul told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview before the announcement.

    “This is the date and the time that people will look back in the history of our nation and say, ‘This is when it changed,’” Hochul added.

    South Fork will generate more than four times the power of a five-turbine pilot project developed earlier off the coast of Rhode Island, and unlike that subsidized test project, was developed after Orsted and Eversource were chosen in a competitive bidding process to supply power to Long Island. The Long Island Power Authority first approved this project in 2017. The blades for the 12 Siemens Gamesa turbines reach speeds of more than 200 miles per hour (350 kilometers per hour).

    Ørsted CEO Mads Nipper called the opening a major milestone that proves large offshore wind farms can be built, both in the United States and in other countries with little or no offshore wind energy currently.

    With South Fork finished, Ørsted and Eversource are turning their attention to the work they will do offshore beginning this spring for a wind farm more than five times its size. Revolution Wind will be Rhode Island and Connecticut’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm, capable of powering more than 350,000 homes next year. The site where the cable will connect in Rhode Island is already under construction.

    In New York, the state said last month it would negotiate a contract with Ørsted and Eversource for an even larger wind farm, Sunrise Wind, to power 600,000 homes. The Norwegian company Equinor was picked for its Empire Wind 1 project to power more than 500,000 New York homes. Both aim to start providing power in 2026.

    After years of planning and development, 2024 is a year of action— building projects that will deliver sizeable amounts of clean power to the grid, said David Hardy, group executive vice president and CEO Americas at Ørsted.

    Ørsted, formerly DONG Energy, for Danish Oil and Natural Gas, started aggressively building wind farms off the coast of Denmark, the U.K. and Germany in 2008. The company sold off the North Sea oil and gas assets on which it had built its identity to focus on clean energy, becoming Ørsted. It’s now one of the biggest wind power developers.

    The first U.S. offshore wind farm was supposed to be a project off the coast of Massachusetts known as Cape Wind. A Massachusetts developer proposed the project in 2001. It failed after years of local opposition and litigation.

    Turbines began spinning off Rhode Island’s Block Island as a pilot project in 2016. But with just five of them, it’s not a commercial-scale wind farm.

    Last year brought challenges for the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry, as Ørsted and other developers canceled projects in the Northeast that they said were no longer financially feasible. High inflation, supply chain disruptions and the rising cost of capital and building materials were making projects more expensive as developers were trying to get the first large U.S. offshore wind farms opened.

    Industry leaders expect 2024 to be a better year, as interest rates come down and states ask for more offshore wind to meet their climate goals.

    The nation’s second large offshore wind farm, Vineyard Wind, is expected to open later this year off the coast of Massachusetts, too. The first five turbines are providing power for about 30,000 homes and businesses in Massachusetts. When all 62 turbines are spinning, they’ll generate enough electricity for 400,000 homes and businesses. Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners are the joint owners of that project.

    The Biden administration wants enough offshore wind energy to power 10 million homes by 2030. Interior Secretary Haaland said that “America’s clean energy transition is not a dream for a distant future— it’s happening right here and right now.”

    ___

    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • A federal judge has ordered a US minority business agency to serve all races

    A federal judge has ordered a US minority business agency to serve all races

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    NEW YORK — A federal judge in Texas has ordered a 55-year-old U.S. agency that caters to minority-owned businesses to serve people regardless of race, siding with white business owners who claimed the program discriminated against them.

    The ruling was a significant victory for conservative activists waging a far-ranging legal battle against race-conscious workplace programs, bolstered by the Supreme Court’s ruling last June dismantling affirmative action programs in higher education.

    Advocates for minority-owned businesses slammed the ruling as a serious blow to efforts to level the playing field for Black, Hispanic and other minority business owners who face barriers in accessing financing and other resources.

    Judge Mark T. Pittman of the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Texas, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, ruled that the Minority Business Development Agency’s eligibility parameters violate the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantees because they presume that racial minorities are inherently disadvantaged.

    The agency, which is part of the U.S. Commerce Department, was first established during the Nixon administration to address discrimination in the business world. The Biden administration widened its scope and reach through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act in 2021, making it a permanent agency and increasing its funding to $550 million over five years.

    The agency, which helps minority-owned businesses obtain financing and government contracts, now operates in 33 states and Puerto Rico. According to its yearly reports, the agency helped businesses raise more than $1.2 billion in capital in fiscal year 2022, including more than $50 million for Black-owned enterprises, and more than $395 million for Hispanic-owned businesses.

    In a sharply worded, 93-page ruling, Pittman said that while the agency’s work may be intended to “alleviate opportunity gaps” faced by minority-owned businesses, “two wrongs don’t make a right. And the MBDA’s racial presumption is a wrong.”

    Pittman ruled that while the agency technically caters to any business that can show their “social or economic disadvantage,” white people and others not included in the “list of preferred races” must overcome a presumption that they are not disadvantaged. The agency, he said, has been using the “unconstitutional presumption” for “fifty-five years too many.”

    “Today the clock runs out,” Pittman wrote.

    Dan Lennington, deputy counsel at the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which filed the lawsuit, said called it “a historic” victory that could affect dozens of similar federal, local and state government programs, which also consider people of certain races inherently disadvantaged. He said the ruling will pave the way for his and other conservative groups to target those programs.

    “We just think that this decision is going to be applied far and wide to hundreds of programs using identical language,” Lennington said.

    Justice Department lawyers representing Minority Business Development Agency declined to comment on the ruling, which can be appealed to the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in New Orleans. In court filings, the Justice Department cited congressional research showing that minority business owners face systemic barriers, including being denied loans at a rate three times higher than nonminority firms, often receiving smaller loans and being charged higher interest rates.

    John F. Robinson, president of the National Minority Business Council, said the ruling is “a blow against minority owned businesses,” and does nothing to help majority-owned businesses because they already enjoy access to federal resources through the Small Business Administration.

    “It has the potential of damaging the whole minority business sector because there will be less service available to minority-owned businesses,” Robinson said.

    In a similar ruling last year, a Tennessee judge struck down a program run by the Small Business Administration that steered some government contracts toward minority-owned businesses.

    Several other lawsuits have targeted government and private sector programs designed to benefit minority-owned businesses, including the case against the Fearless Fund, an Atlanta-based organization that provides early-stage funding to businesses owned by women of color.

    Arian Simone, CEO of the Fearless Fund, criticized what she called dwindling corporate commitment to equity programs in the face of the growing legal challenges.

    “Practically every day there seems to be a new legal ruling that chips away at our attempt to close economic gaps that exist for people of color,” she said in a statement. “The inaction by those who claim to be committed to equity has created the vacuum for this to happen.”

    But Alphonso David, president & CEO of The Global Black Economic Forum, who is helping to represent the Fearless Fund, said the Texas ruling is not necessarily predictive of how those other cases will play out.

    He pointed to another ruling Wednesday in which a conservative group lost its attempt to reinstate a lawsuit against pharmaceutical giant Pfizer over a fellowship program for Black, Latino and Native American professionals.

    The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the group, Do No Harm, lacked standing because it didn’t identify the plaintiffs by name. David said the Fearless Fund is making a similar argument against the American Alliance for Equal Rights, the conservative group that filed its lawsuit on behalf of anonymous women.

    Do No Harm Chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb said he was “disappointed by the Court’s decision” and would continue to pursue appeals.

    Pfizer did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The company, despite winning dismissal of the original lawsuit, changed the criteria of its fellowship program last year to open it to all races.

    DEI advocates celebrated a separate win on Tuesday when a Florida law that limits discussions on race and diversity in the workplace was ruled to be unconstitutiona l by a federal appeals court.

    “I think what we’re going to see over the next months — and years — is just a flurry of lawsuits from different directions, with conservative and liberal judges around the country reaching totally contradictory decisions to one another,” said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at New York University’s School of Law. “And that ultimately it’s going to have to wind its way back to the Supreme Court.”

    ___

    AP Race & Ethnicity reporter Graham Lee Brewer and AP Business Writer Haleluya Hadero contributed to this story.

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