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All day long, our brains are busy receiving sensory information: smells, sounds, sights, and so on. We absorb much of this without really thinking about it. However, every now and then something we see grabs our attention, maybe a stunning landscape or a beautiful sunset. We stop what we're doing and spend a moment taking it in. Are we the only animal that can stop and take conscious notice of what we see?

A study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that we're not. It appears that at least one other animal - the rhesus monkey, Macaca mulatta - shares our ability to pay deliberate attention to what it sees. The authors of the study infer this ability, paradoxically, from the manner in which the monkey deals with visual inputs it doesn't consciously notice.

Double disassociation
Credit: Amanda Dalbjörn/Unsplash
It has been known for some time that even when visual stimuli escape our conscious attention, we respond to it subliminally, says Yale psychologist Laurie Santos, co-senior author of the paper along with Yale psychologist Steve Chang and Ran Hassin of Hebrew University. Even so, she says, "We tend to show different patterns of learning when presented with subliminal stimuli than we do for consciously experienced, or supraliminal stimuli." ("Supraliminal" describes visual stimuli that are consciously noted.)

The authors of the study set out to see if rhesus monkeys exhibited a similar "double disassociation" in the way they respond to supraliminal vs. subliminal visual stimuli.

Ask a monkey a question
Credit: Jamie Haughton/Unsplash
Obviously, research on animals is hampered by our inability to question critters. As a result, scientists need to be creative in designing experimental methods that allow them to draw conclusions based strictly on empirical observation.

"People have wondered for a long time whether animals experience the world the way we do, but it's been difficult to figure out a good way to test this question empirically," says first author of the study, Moshe Shay Ben-Haim, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.

The researchers came up with a series of experiments in which both humans and rhesus monkeys could observably demonstrate how they process subliminal and supraliminal visual stimuli.

In the experiments, participants were tasked with predicting the side of a computer screen on which a target image would appear depending on the position of a visual cue, a small star symbol, provided by the researchers.

When the researchers displayed the cue on one side of the screen long enough to ensure that it was noticed - that is, it was a supraliminal signal - both humans and monkeys learned to look for the target image on the opposite side of the screen.

On the other hand, when the star flashed on the screen only very briefly, both humans and monkeys consistently looked to the side on which this subliminal signal had appeared, anticipating the target image's appearance there.

In the first case, the subjects learned the significance of the cue's position. In the second, their response simply mirrored the subliminal cue. This, say the authors, demonstrates the different ways in which humans - and monkeys apparently - react to visual stimuli that are consciously noticed or not.

Ben-Haim summarizes the authors' interpretation of the experiment:

"These results show that at least one non-human animal exhibits both non-conscious perception as well as human-like conscious visual awareness. We now have a new non-verbal method for assessing whether other non-human creatures experience visual awareness in the same way as humans."

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Developing mobility as a service – user, operator and governance perspectives

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Developing mobility as a service – user, operator and governance perspectives

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European Transport Research Review 13, Article number: 37 (2021) Cite this article

3124 Accesses

1 Citations

2 Altmetric

Metrics

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) can be briefly described as an emerging concept that aims to fulfil individual's mobility needs in a sustainable way by combining different transport services to seamless trips [ 1], offering an appealing alternative to owning and using a private car [ 2]. The core characteristics of MaaS include integration of multiple transport modes, various payment options, and use of various technologies enabling the use of single interface and platform, while catering for personalization and customization to offer user-centric mobility services [ 3]. The history of MaaS by name is not long, but MaaS can be seen as an evolutionary continuation of integrating mobility services [ 2], having its origins in Intelligent Transport Systems concepts [ 4]. In addition, these integration and customization efforts enabled by wider digitalization are related to many collaboration opportunities and challenges across diverse sets of actors in the mobility sector and beyond.

As we are witnessing MaaS emergence across the world, research on MaaS is accumulating rapidly [ 5, 6, 7, 8]. Under the umbrella of an emerging concept, we can see that MaaS concept is evolving, as the technological aspects are changing simultaneously with the societal understanding of the underlying problems and needs. Thus, we are witnessing a phase of interpretative flexibility [ 9], where many actors have a surface agreement on MaaS conceptualization, but in fact have underlying conflicting perspectives. Similarly, previous research on MaaS has been quite diverse, ranging from studies of user perspectives and bundling design [ 10, 11], potential systemic effects such as welfare losses [ 12], as well as challenges of networked governance [ 13] and the need for responsible innovation practices [ 4].

This topical collection aims to provide additional breadth and depth to the rapidly developing MaaS literature. The papers can be clustered around three main themes. Firstly, three papers provide an overview of the state of MaaS development and discuss governance issues [ 14, 15, 16]. Secondly, three papers provide pilot and survey results with a focus on rural, urban and work-related mobility [ 17, 18, 19]. Thirdly, there are four papers which explore including new mobility offerings, in particular ridesourcing and automated transport, into mobility services [ 20, 21, 22, 23].

State of MaaS development and governance issues

Esztergar-Kiss et al. [ 14] analyze the features of more than 30 MaaS services and identify three cluster groups, of which the route planners usually include few transport modes but lack payment solutions, while the public systems include payments for public transport but have limited information on other modes. The third parties have most diverse services, including comprehensive mobility packages. Esztergar-Kiss et al. [ 14] and Murati [ 15] both highlight the importance of opening access to information and payment data services of transport operators for third-party resale and use. Such regulation already exists in Finland and France. However, providing comprehensive mobility packages encounters various governance issues. Murati [ 15] notes that there is no harmonised legal base for multimodal travel chains. Thus, passenger rights cannot be guaranteed on events delaying one segment of the journey and causing the passenger to miss the following segment. Hence, it is necessary to amend transport regulations from a multimodal perspective.

Van den Hurk et al. [ 16] identify through a case study in Utrecht responsibilities for public and private actors in cities to develop digital mobility platforms. They identify open questions about the roles of stakeholders, ambiguous understanding of the mobility platform and highlight the need for public and landowner participation in the development process to enable market-based demand for MaaS in cities.

MaaS pilots and surveys

Eckhardt et al. [ 17] widen the traditionally city-based scope of MaaS pilots and research to rural areas through two case studies in Finland. This research presents a demand-responsive transport pilot in Finland aimed to combine self-paying customers with government subsidized statutory social and health service transport customers. Based on the comprehensive key performance indicators, the integration may result in cost savings for public sector, improve vehicle occupancy rates and reduce vehicle mileage and emissions.

Maas [ 18] confirms the previous findings on the importance of public transport as the backbone of MaaS offerings and highlight car and bike sharing as enhancing the overall utility. His study from Dresden shows significant differences in the preferred type of subscription and shows a method for segmenting user groups. He also finds that private car costs are massively underestimated, which leads to prices for MaaS offerings to be considered too high. Günther et al. [ 19] conducted a 22-month study with 93 university employees on corporate mobility as a service (CMaaS) and show that experiences of electric vehicles and mobility services on business travel may help to positively influence users' attitudes towards new mobility concepts. Integrated in-company multimodal mobility offerings also enable possibility of significant reductions in mobility costs for the business travel.

New mobility services for MaaS

In order to analyze the effects of mobility services on transport systems, it is necessary to incorporate travel chains into travel demand models. Wilkes et al. [ 20] show how ridesourcing services can be simulated in a microscopic travel demand model. They highlight that decision parameters for ridesourcing may differ from those for public transport and more data on willingness to pay and travel times is needed to improve the modelling. One solution for future last-mile service within MaaS offerings may be shared automated vehicles, which, according to Eppenberger & Richter [ 21], may improve equity in accessibility if the complementarity to public transport is ensured. Bellone et al. [ 22] report the results of user surveys conducted during automated vehicle pilots in four cities. Overall experience of the automated minibuses were very positive and passengers felt safe on-board. However, increased speed, improved service level and smoother operation were commonly wished for future services. Automated vehicle pilots have mostly focused on minibuses, but Hang Rong et al. [ 23] present an analysis of waterborne automated vehicle services to visit museums in Amsterdam. Waterborne automated services would somewhat increase the total travel time compared to land public transport, but significantly decrease the walking distance. Survey results highlight that waterborne automated service could be preferred over land transport and traditional canal boats.

Future research directions

Presenting the papers together in this topical collection has the added value of giving the readers a wide understanding on the complex set of issues related to MaaS, while also giving specific examples from case studies. Given that developing MaaS is intertwined with the development of sustainable transport system as a whole, including specifically public transport system and new forms of micro-mobility together with the challenges of digitalisation, the papers of this topical collection are relevant to European transport researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.

Research collected under the banner of this topical collection has pushed the boundary of our understanding of MaaS, but also opened up new and highlighted old pathways for further research and development. To begin, we need further evaluation of various MaaS design variations, with or without bundling, in both stated preference and in living lab settings. This pathway goes hand in hand with longer pilot duration and higher emphasis on responsible innovation principles. For example, wider citizen engagement in pilots would help with expanding sample sizes and their representativeness by moving away from participants that are by default interested in new technologies. More responsible experimentation would also deploy mixed methods besides using only questionnaires, relying on focus group and even more engaging, co-creation and service design, methods. Furthermore, evaluation frameworks used in the future would need to expand to include a wider set of sustainability indicators. Simultaneously, as MaaS is emerging over time, we need further studies evaluating business models and market constellations as services and actors are evolving. For this aspect, we also need further governance studies, both in-depth cases and cross-comparison, accounting for diverse and changing networks of actors in operations, planning and policy. Finally, there is a further need for legislative studies on user rights and operator responsibilities, but also more fundamental studies on ethical principles for the ongoing digitalization of mobility services. With this in mind, we hope that this topical collection is an encouragement for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to continue seeking future MaaS development pathways that are in line with a rich diversity of European cultures, and being grounded in European values of human dignity, equality, freedom and democracy.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. Tampere University, Tampere, Finland

Heikki Liimatainen

2. Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

Miloš N. Mladenović

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The authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Heikki Liimatainen.

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Liimatainen, H., Mladenović, M.N. Developing mobility as a service - user, operator and governance perspectives. Eur. Transp. Res. Rev. 13, 37 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12544-021-00496-0
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Developing mobility as a service - user, operator and governance perspectives - European Transport Research Review

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European Transport Research Review 13, Article number: 37 (2021) Cite this article 3124 Accesses 1 Citations 2 Altmetric Metrics Mobility as a Service (MaaS) can be briefly described as an emerging concept that aims to fulfil individual's mobility needs in a sustainable way by combining different transport services to seamless trips [ 1], offering an appealing alternative to owning and using a private car [ 2].

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Stackblitz raises $7.9M to bring a better IDE to your browser

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StackBlitz, a developer-focused startup that uses WebAssembly and WebContainers to give you a full development environment in your browser, today announced that it has raised a $7.9 million seed funding round led by Greylock with participation from GV, GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner, atSpoke c…

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Unbelievable success stories

By India Today Web Desk: With everything from ordering food, to booking cheapest hotels available on our fingertips, we are using tons of applications and services every single minute of the day.

But have you thought about who thought of these ideas and had the courage to make it into a reality, and not just that, but also turned their idea into a multi-million dollar company?

Some of these companies were a product of well thought and implemented ideas while some came up as an accident. You'll be surprised to know how these people built their empires!

1. Airbnb

Two people who were struggling to pay their rent after moving to a different city, saw an opportunity of offering bed and breakfast on a minimal price and bam! got their first Airbnb customer, a 30-year-old Indian man.

The company didn't take off immediately, the founders had to sell cereal boxes for at least six months to get the company afloat. After several rejections, it received its first funding of USD 112 million, and the rest is history.

2. Alibaba.com

The story of Alibaba founder, Jack Ma is a total rags-to-riches story. Jack was born poor in communist China, failed his university entrance exam twice and was rejected from tonnes of jobs including KFC. He had no knowledge of internet or coding but was captivated by the internet he first time used it.

He started two internet ventures which failed miserably, and after four years of that, he finally started alibaba.com. He gathered all of his connections and convinced them to invest in his vision. It started attracting customers and Ma is now the richest man in China.

3. Instagram

Instagram, the globally famous photo app, was founded by Stanford University graduate, Kevin Systrom who was born in a very common family and was a tech genius.

He was in school when he was introduced to tech and used to learn coding by himself at night. He started working on an app which was more or less a cross between Foresquare and Flickr.

Very few people know that Mark Zuckerburg wanted to hire him while he was undergraduate but he denied the offer as he wanted to complete his degree. Kevin, along with his friend Mike, spent eight weeks aggressively on developing this app And finally on the night of October 6, 2010, they pushed the launch button!

Only after two hours of Instagram going LIVE, its servers started falling down because of rush of traffic and within 24 hours it became #1 app on iOS. Within nine months, Instagram had a record-breaking 7 million users, which also included some of the highly-influential tech-loving celebrities like Justin Bieber and Ryan Seacrest.

4. Pinterest

Pinterest's success story is one of the most inspiring one because its founder, Ben Silbermann held onto the idea and struggled with it even after 90 per cent of people didn't like it. Within four months of the launch, it only had 900 users. It was a flop and not funded for a very long time.

Ben was raised by doctors and was following the same path as them. He got into Yale and that's when he knew he didn't want to be a doctor. He graduated and joined Google in sales and support.

Being a non-engineer in Google, he didn't quite like the culture and felt out of place. That's when he started working on his start-up, Pinterest. Since, it didn't do that well, he was labelled as a failure for a really long time before Pinterest finally took off after a famous blogger recommended it.

5. Uber

Uber was born out of the situation when its founder Travis Kalanick couldn't find a cab in Paris to get to a conference. He envisioned it as a way to lower the cost of black-car service at the touch of a button.

After two previous failed start up ventures, it was difficult for Kalanick to convince the investors to believe in him but as soon as Ubercab launched in San Francisco, it became a huge hit! After SF, they went on to expand Uber to other US cities and internationally, first country being Paris.

Uber is currently valued at USD 69 billion, making it the most valuable privately held tech company in the world.

All of these stories have different timings and circumstances but one common lesson, Hold onto your dreams, you always start small!
Read: Stepping into a Start-up? Keep in mind these top 5 tips Read: Startup: Whether to join or not?

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5 unbelievable success stories of big companies that were once a startup

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Unbelievable success stories By India Today Web Desk : With everything from ordering food, to booking cheapest hotels available on our fingertips, we are using tons of applications and services every single minute of the day.

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Rob Bilott on land owned by the Tennants near Parkersburg, W.Va. Credit... Bryan Schutmaat for The New York Times

Feature

Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. Then he took on an environmental suit that would upend his entire career - and expose a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution.

Rob Bilott on land owned by the Tennants near Parkersburg, W.Va. Credit... Bryan Schutmaat for The New York Times

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Just months before Rob Bilott made partner at Taft Stettinius & Hollister, he received a call on his direct line from a cattle farmer. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant of Parkersburg, W.Va., said that his cows were dying left and right. He believed that the DuPont chemical company, which until recently operated a site in Parkersburg that is more than 35 times the size of the Pentagon, was responsible. Tennant had tried to seek help locally, he said, but DuPont just about owned the entire town. He had been spurned not only by Parkersburg's lawyers but also by its politicians, journalists, doctors and veterinarians. The farmer was angry and spoke in a heavy Appalachian accent. Bilott struggled to make sense of everything he was saying. He might have hung up had Tennant not blurted out the name of Bilott's grandmother, Alma Holland White.

White had lived in Vienna, a northern suburb of Parkersburg, and as a child, Bilott often visited her in the summers. In 1973 she brought him to the cattle farm belonging to the Tennants' neighbors, the Grahams, with whom White was friendly. Bilott spent the weekend riding horses, milking cows and watching Secretariat win the Triple Crown on TV. He was 7 years old. The visit to the Grahams' farm was one of his happiest childhood memories.

When the Grahams heard in 1998 that Wilbur Tennant was looking for legal help, they remembered Bilott, White's grandson, who had grown up to become an environmental lawyer. They did not understand, however, that Bilott was not the right kind of environmental lawyer. He did not represent plaintiffs or private citizens. Like the other 200 lawyers at Taft, a firm founded in 1885 and tied historically to the family of President William Howard Taft, Bilott worked almost exclusively for large corporate clients. His specialty was defending chemical companies. Several times, Bilott had even worked on cases with DuPont lawyers. Nevertheless, as a favor to his grandmother, he agreed to meet the farmer. ''It just felt like the right thing to do,'' he says today. ''I felt a connection to those folks.''

The connection was not obvious at their first meeting. About a week after his phone call, Tennant drove from Parkersburg with his wife to Taft's headquarters in downtown Cincinnati. They hauled cardboard boxes containing videotapes, photographs and documents into the firm's glassed-in reception area on the 18th floor, where they sat in gray midcentury-modern couches beneath an oil portrait of one of Taft's founders. Tennant - burly and nearly six feet tall, wearing jeans, a plaid flannel shirt and a baseball cap - did not resemble a typical Taft client. ''He didn't show up at our offices looking like a bank vice president,'' says Thomas Terp, a partner who was Bilott's supervisor. ''Let's put it that way.''

Terp joined Bilott for the meeting. Wilbur Tennant explained that he and his four siblings had run the cattle farm since their father abandoned them as children. They had seven cows then. Over the decades they steadily acquired land and cattle, until 200 cows roamed more than 600 hilly acres. The property would have been even larger had his brother Jim and Jim's wife, Della, not sold 66 acres in the early '80s to DuPont. The company wanted to use the plot for a landfill for waste from its factory near Parkersburg, called Washington Works, where Jim was employed as a laborer. Jim and Della did not want to sell, but Jim had been in poor health for years, mysterious ailments that doctors couldn't diagnose, and they needed the money.

DuPont rechristened the plot Dry Run Landfill, named after the creek that ran through it. The same creek flowed down to a pasture where the Tennants grazed their cows. Not long after the sale, Wilbur told Bilott, the cattle began to act deranged. They had always been like pets to the Tennants. At the sight of a Tennant they would amble over, nuzzle and let themselves be milked. No longer. Now when they saw the farmers, they charged.

Wilbur fed a videotape into the VCR. The footage, shot on a camcorder, was grainy and intercut with static. Images jumped and repeated. The sound accelerated and slowed down. It had the quality of a horror movie. In the opening shot the camera pans across the creek. It takes in the surrounding forest, the white ash trees shedding their leaves and the rippling, shallow water, before pausing on what appears to be a snowbank at an elbow in the creek. The camera zooms in, revealing a mound of soapy froth.

''I've taken two dead deer and two dead cattle off this ripple,'' Tennant says in voice-over. ''The blood run out of their noses and out their mouths. ... They're trying to cover this stuff up. But it's not going to be covered up, because I'm going to bring it out in the open for people to see.''

The video shows a large pipe running into the creek, discharging green water with bubbles on the surface. ''This is what they expect a man's cows to drink on his own property,'' Wilbur says. ''It's about high time that someone in the state department of something-or-another got off their cans.''

At one point, the video cuts to a skinny red cow standing in hay. Patches of its hair are missing, and its back is humped - a result, Wilbur speculates, of a kidney malfunction. Another blast of static is followed by a close-up of a dead black calf lying in the snow, its eye a brilliant, chemical blue. ''One hundred fifty-three of these animals I've lost on this farm,'' Wilbur says later in the video. ''Every veterinarian that I've called in Parkersburg, they will not return my phone calls or they don't want to get involved. Since they don't want to get involved, I'll have to dissect this thing myself. ... I'm going to start at this head.''

The video cuts to a calf's bisected head. Close-ups follow of the calf's blackened teeth (''They say that's due to high concentrations of fluoride in the water that they drink''), its liver, heart, stomachs, kidneys and gall bladder. Each organ is sliced open, and Wilbur points out unusual discolorations - some dark, some green - and textures. ''I don't even like the looks of them,'' he says. ''It don't look like anything I've been into before.''

Bilott watched the video and looked at photographs for several hours. He saw cows with stringy tails, malformed hooves, giant lesions protruding from their hides and red, receded eyes; cows suffering constant diarrhea, slobbering white slime the consistency of toothpaste, staggering bowlegged like drunks. Tennant always zoomed in on his cows' eyes. ''This cow's done a lot of suffering,'' he would say, as a blinking eye filled the screen.

''This is bad,'' Bilott said to himself. ''There's something really bad going on here.''

Bilott decided right away to take the Tennant case. It was, he says again, ''the right thing to do.'' Bilott might have had the practiced look of a corporate lawyer - soft-spoken, milk-complected, conservatively attired - but the job had not come naturally to him. He did not have a typical Taft résumé. He had not attended college or law school in the Ivy League. His father was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, and Bilott spent most of his childhood moving among air bases near Albany; Flint, Mich.; Newport Beach, Calif.; and Wiesbaden, West Germany. Bilott attended eight schools before graduating from Fairborn High, near Ohio's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. As a junior, he received a recruitment letter from a tiny liberal-arts school in Sarasota called the New College of Florida, which graded pass/fail and allowed students to design their own curriculums. Many of his friends there were idealistic, progressive - ideological misfits in Reagan's America. He met with professors individually and came to value critical thinking. ''I learned to question everything you read,'' he said. ''Don't take anything at face value. Don't care what other people say. I liked that philosophy.'' Bilott studied political science and wrote his thesis about the rise and fall of Dayton. He hoped to become a city manager.

But his father, who late in life enrolled in law school, encouraged Bilott to do the same. Surprising his professors, he chose to attend law school at Ohio State, where his favorite course was environmental law. ''It seemed like it would have real-world impact,'' he said. ''It was something you could do to make a difference.'' When, after graduation, Taft made him an offer, his mentors and friends from New College were aghast. They didn't understand how he could join a corporate firm. Bilott didn't see it that way. He hadn't really thought about the ethics of it, to be honest. ''My family said that a big firm was where you'd get the most opportunities,'' he said. ''I knew nobody who had ever worked at a firm, nobody who knew anything about it. I just tried to get the best job I could. I don't think I had any clue of what that involved.''

At Taft, he asked to join Thomas Terp's environmental team. Ten years earlier, Congress passed the legislation known as Superfund, which financed the emergency cleanup of hazardous-waste dumps. Superfund was a lucrative development for firms like Taft, creating an entire subfield within environmental law, one that required a deep understanding of the new regulations in order to guide negotiations among municipal agencies and numerous private parties. Terp's team at Taft was a leader in the field.

As an associate, Bilott was asked to determine which companies contributed which toxins and hazardous wastes in what quantities to which sites. He took depositions from plant employees, perused public records and organized huge amounts of historical data. He became an expert on the Environmental Protection Agency's regulatory framework, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act. He mastered the chemistry of the pollutants, despite the fact that chemistry had been his worst subject in high school. ''I learned how these companies work, how the laws work, how you defend these claims,'' he said. He became the consummate insider.

Bilott was proud of the work he did. The main part of his job, as he understood it, was to help clients comply with the new regulations. Many of his clients, including Thiokol and Bee Chemical, disposed of hazardous waste long before the practice became so tightly regulated. He worked long hours and knew few people in Cincinnati. A colleague on Taft's environmental team, observing that he had little time for a social life, introduced him to a childhood friend named Sarah Barlage. She was a lawyer, too, at another downtown Cincinnati firm, where she defended corporations against worker's-compensation claims. Bilott joined the two friends for lunch. Sarah doesn't remember him speaking. ''My first impression was that he was not like other guys,'' she says. ''I'm pretty chatty. He's much quieter. We complemented each other.''

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They married in 1996. The first of their three sons was born two years later. He felt secure enough at Taft for Barlage to quit her job and raise their children full-time. Terp, his supervisor, recalls him as ''a real standout lawyer: incredibly bright, energetic, tenacious and very, very thorough.'' He was a model Taft lawyer. Then Wilbur Tennant came along.

The Tennant case put Taft in a highly unusual position. The law firm was in the business of representing chemical corporations, not suing them. The prospect of taking on DuPont ''did cause us pause,'' Terp concedes. ''But it was not a terribly difficult decision for us. I'm a firm believer that our work on the plaintiff's side makes us better defense lawyers.''

Bilott sought help with the Tennant case from a West Virginia lawyer named Larry Winter. For many years, Winter was a partner at Spilman, Thomas & Battle - one of the firms that represented DuPont in West Virginia - though he had left Spilman to start a practice specializing in personal-injury cases. He was amazed that Bilott would sue DuPont while remaining at Taft.

''His taking on the Tennant case,'' Winter says, ''given the type of practice Taft had, I found to be inconceivable.''

Bilott, for his part, is reluctant to discuss his motivations for taking the case. The closest he came to elaborating was after being asked whether, having set out ''to make a difference'' in the world, he had any misgivings about the path his career had taken.

''There was a reason why I was interested in helping out the Tennants,'' he said after a pause. ''It was a great opportunity to use my background for people who really needed it.''

Bilott filed a federal suit against DuPont in the summer of 1999 in the Southern District of West Virginia. In response, DuPont's in-house lawyer, Bernard Reilly, informed him that DuPont and the E.P.A. would commission a study of the property, conducted by three veterinarians chosen by DuPont and three chosen by the E.P.A. Their report did not find DuPont responsible for the cattle's health problems. The culprit, instead, was poor husbandry: ''poor nutrition, inadequate veterinary care and lack of fly control.'' In other words, the Tennants didn't know how to raise cattle; if the cows were dying, it was their own fault.

This did not sit well with the Tennants, who began to suffer the consequences of antagonizing Parkersburg's main employer. Lifelong friends ignored the Tennants on the streets of Parkersburg and walked out of restaurants when they entered. ''I'm not allowed to talk to you,'' they said, when confronted. Four different times, the Tennants changed churches.

Wilbur called the office nearly every day, but Bilott had little to tell him. He was doing for the Tennants what he would have done for any of his corporate clients - pulling permits, studying land deeds and requesting from DuPont all documentation related to Dry Run Landfill - but he could find no evidence that explained what was happening to the cattle. ''We were getting frustrated,'' Bilott said. ''I couldn't blame the Tennants for getting angry.''

With the trial looming, Bilott stumbled upon a letter DuPont had sent to the E.P.A. that mentioned a substance at the landfill with a cryptic name: ''PFOA.'' In all his years working with chemical companies, Bilott had never heard of PFOA. It did not appear on any list of regulated materials, nor could he find it in Taft's in-house library. The chemistry expert that he had retained for the case did, however, vaguely recall an article in a trade journal about a similar-sounding compound: PFOS, a soaplike agent used by the technology conglomerate 3M in the fabrication of Scotchgard.

Bilott hunted through his files for other references to PFOA, which he learned was short for perfluorooctanoic acid. But there was nothing. He asked DuPont to share all documentation related to the substance; DuPont refused. In the fall of 2000, Bilott requested a court order to force them. Against DuPont's protests, the order was granted. Dozens of boxes containing thousands of unorganized documents began to arrive at Taft's headquarters: private internal correspondence, medical and health reports and confidential studies conducted by DuPont scientists. There were more than 110,000 pages in all, some half a century old. Bilott spent the next few months on the floor of his office, poring over the documents and arranging them in chronological order. He stopped answering his office phone. When people called his secretary, she explained that he was in the office but had not been able to reach the phone in time, because he was trapped on all sides by boxes.

''I started seeing a story,'' Bilott said. ''I may have been the first one to actually go through them all. It became apparent what was going on: They had known for a long time that this stuff was bad.''

Bilott is given to understatement. (''To say that Rob Bilott is understated,'' his colleague Edison Hill says, ''is an understatement.'') The story that Bilott began to see, cross-legged on his office floor, was astounding in its breadth, specificity and sheer brazenness. ''I was shocked,'' he said. That was another understatement. Bilott could not believe the scale of incriminating material that DuPont had sent him. The company appeared not to realize what it had handed over. ''It was one of those things where you can't believe you're reading what you're reading,'' he said. ''That it's actually been put in writing. It was the kind of stuff you always heard about happening but you never thought you'd see written down.''

The story began in 1951, when DuPont started purchasing PFOA (which the company refers to as C8) from 3M for use in the manufacturing of Teflon. 3M invented PFOA just four years earlier; it was used to keep coatings like Teflon from clumping during production. Though PFOA was not classified by the government as a hazardous substance, 3M sent DuPont recommendations on how to dispose of it. It was to be incinerated or sent to chemical-waste facilities. DuPont's own instructions specified that it was not to be flushed into surface water or sewers. But over the decades that followed, DuPont pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds of PFOA powder through the outfall pipes of the Parkersburg facility into the Ohio River. The company dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA-laced sludge into ''digestion ponds'': open, unlined pits on the Washington Works property, from which the chemical could seep straight into the ground. PFOA entered the local water table, which supplied drinking water to the communities of Parkersburg, Vienna, Little Hocking and Lubeck - more than 100,000 people in all.

Bilott learned from the documents that 3M and DuPont had been conducting secret medical studies on PFOA for more than four decades. In 1961, DuPont researchers found that the chemical could increase the size of the liver in rats and rabbits. A year later, they replicated these results in studies with dogs. PFOA's peculiar chemical structure made it uncannily resistant to degradation. It also bound to plasma proteins in the blood, circulating through each organ in the body. In the 1970s, DuPont discovered that there were high concentrations of PFOA in the blood of factory workers at Washington Works. They did not tell the E.P.A. at the time. In 1981, 3M - which continued to serve as the supplier of PFOA to DuPont and other corporations - found that ingestion of the substance caused birth defects in rats. After 3M shared this information, DuPont tested the children of pregnant employees in their Teflon division. Of seven births, two had eye defects. DuPont did not make this information public.

In 1984, DuPont became aware that dust vented from factory chimneys settled well beyond the property line and, more disturbing, that PFOA was present in the local water supply. DuPont declined to disclose this finding. In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public.

(In a statement, DuPont claimed that it did volunteer health information about PFOA to the E.P.A. during those decades. When asked for evidence, it forwarded two letters written to West Virginian government agencies from 1982 and 1992, both of which cited internal studies that called into question links between PFOA exposure and human health problems.)

By the '90s, Bilott discovered, DuPont understood that PFOA caused cancerous testicular, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals. One laboratory study suggested possible DNA damage from PFOA exposure, and a study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer. DuPont at last hastened to develop an alternative to PFOA. An interoffice memo sent in 1993 announced that ''for the first time, we have a viable candidate'' that appeared to be less toxic and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time. Discussions were held at DuPont's corporate headquarters to discuss switching to the new compound. DuPont decided against it. The risk was too great: Products manufactured with PFOA were an important part of DuPont's business, worth $1 billion in annual profit.

But the crucial discovery for the Tennant case was this: By the late 1980s, as DuPont became increasingly concerned about the health effects of PFOA waste, it decided it needed to find a landfill for the toxic sludge dumped on company property. Fortunately they had recently bought 66 acres from a low-level employee at the Washington Works facility that would do perfectly.

By 1990, DuPont had dumped 7,100 tons of PFOA sludge into Dry Run Landfill. DuPont's scientists understood that the landfill drained into the Tennants' remaining property, and they tested the water in Dry Run Creek. It contained an extraordinarily high concentration of PFOA. DuPont did not tell this to the Tennants at the time, nor did it disclose the fact in the cattle report that it commissioned for the Tennant case a decade later - the report that blamed poor husbandry for the deaths of their cows. Bilott had what he needed.

In August 2000, Bilott called DuPont's lawyer, Bernard Reilly, and explained that he knew what was going on. It was a brief conversation.

The Tennants settled. The firm would receive its contingency fee. The whole business might have ended right there. But Bilott was not satisfied.

''I was irritated,'' he says.

DuPont was nothing like the corporations he had represented at Taft in the Superfund cases. ''This was a completely different scenario. DuPont had for decades been actively trying to conceal their actions. They knew this stuff was harmful, and they put it in the water anyway. These were bad facts.'' He had seen what the PFOA-tainted drinking water had done to cattle. What was it doing to the tens of thousands of people in the areas around Parkersburg who drank it daily from their taps? What did the insides of their heads look like? Were their internal organs green?

Bilott spent the following months drafting a public brief against DuPont. It was 972 pages long, including 136 attached exhibits. His colleagues call it ''Rob's Famous Letter.'' ''We have confirmed that the chemicals and pollutants released into the environment by DuPont at its Dry Run Landfill and other nearby DuPont-owned facilities may pose an imminent and substantial threat to health or the environment,'' Bilott wrote. He demanded immediate action to regulate PFOA and provide clean water to those living near the factory. On March 6, 2001, he sent the letter to the director of every relevant regulatory authority, including Christie Whitman, administrator of the E.P.A., and the United States attorney general, John Ashcroft.

DuPont reacted quickly, requesting a gag order to block Bilott from providing the information he had discovered in the Tennant case to the government. A federal court denied it. Bilott sent his entire case file to the E.P.A.

''DuPont freaked out when they realized that this guy was onto them,'' says Ned McWilliams, a young trial lawyer who later joined Bilott's legal team. ''For a corporation to seek a gag order to prevent somebody from speaking to the E.P.A. is an extraordinary remedy. You could realize how bad that looks. They must have known that there was a small chance of winning. But they were so afraid that they were willing to roll the dice.''

With the Famous Letter, Bilott crossed a line. Though nominally representing the Tennants - their settlement had yet to be concluded - Bilott spoke for the public, claiming extensive fraud and wrongdoing. He had become a threat not merely to DuPont but also to, in the words of one internal memo, ''the entire fluoropolymers industry'' - an industry responsible for the high-performance plastics used in many modern devices, including kitchen products, computer cables, implantable medical devices and bearings and seals used in cars and airplanes. PFOA was only one of more than 60,000 synthetic chemicals that companies produced and released into the world without regulatory oversight.

''Rob's letter lifted the curtain on a whole new theater,'' says Harry Deitzler, a plaintiff's lawyer in West Virginia who works with Bilott. ''Before that letter, corporations could rely upon the public misperception that if a chemical was dangerous, it was regulated.'' Under the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the E.P.A. can test chemicals only when it has been provided evidence of harm. This arrangement, which largely allows chemical companies to regulate themselves, is the reason that the E.P.A. has restricted only five chemicals, out of tens of thousands on the market, in the last 40 years.

It was especially damning to see these allegations against DuPont under the letterhead of one of the nation's most prestigious corporate defense firms. ''You can imagine what some of the other companies that Taft was representing - a Dow Chemical - might have thought of a Taft lawyer taking on DuPont,'' Larry Winter says. ''There was a threat that the firm would suffer financially.'' When I asked Thomas Terp about Taft's reaction to the Famous Letter, he replied, not quite convincingly, that he didn't recall one. ''Our partners,'' he said, ''are proud of the work that he has done.''

Bilott, however, worried that corporations doing business with Taft might see things differently. ''I'm not stupid, and the people around me aren't stupid,'' he said. ''You can't ignore the economic realities of the ways that business is run and the way clients think. I perceived that there were some 'What the hell are you doing?' responses.''

The letter led, four years later, in 2005, to DuPont's reaching a $16.5 million settlement with the E.P.A., which had accused the company of concealing its knowledge of PFOA's toxicity and presence in the environment in violation of the Toxic Substances Control Act. (DuPont was not required to admit liability.) At the time, it was the largest civil administrative penalty the E.P.A. had obtained in its history, a statement that sounds more impressive than it is. The fine represented less than 2 percent of the profits earned by DuPont on PFOA that year.

Bilott never represented a corporate client again.

The obvious next step was to file a class-action lawsuit against DuPont on behalf of everyone whose water was tainted by PFOA. In all ways but one, Bilott himself was in the ideal position to file such a suit. He understood PFOA's history as well as anyone inside DuPont did. He had the technical and regulatory expertise, as he had proved in the Tennant case. The only part that didn't make sense was his firm: No Taft lawyer, to anyone's recollection, had ever filed a class-action lawsuit.

It was one thing to pursue a sentimental case on behalf of a few West Virginia cattle farmers and even write a public letter to the E.P.A. But an industry-threatening class-action suit against one of the world's largest chemical corporations was different. It might establish a precedent for suing corporations over unregulated substances and imperil Taft's bottom line. This point was made to Terp by Bernard Reilly, DuPont's in-house lawyer, according to accounts from Bilott's plaintiff's-lawyer colleagues; they say Reilly called to demand that Bilott back off the case. (Terp confirms that Reilly called him but will not disclose the content of the call; Bilott and Reilly decline to speak about it, citing continuing litigation.) Given what Bilott had documented in his Famous Letter, Taft stood by its partner.

A lead plaintiff soon presented himself. Joseph Kiger, a night-school teacher in Parkersburg, called Bilott to ask for help. About nine months earlier, he received a peculiar note from the Lubeck water district. It arrived on Halloween day, enclosed in the monthly water bill. The note explained that an unregulated chemical named PFOA had been detected in the drinking water in ''low concentrations,'' but that it was not a health risk. Kiger had underlined statements that he found particularly baffling, like: ''DuPont reports that it has toxicological and epidemiological data to support confidence that exposure guidelines established by DuPont are protective of human health.'' The term ''support confidence'' seemed bizarre, as did ''protective of human health,'' not to mention the claim that DuPont's own data supported its confidence in its own guidelines.

Still, Kiger might have forgotten about it had his wife, Darlene, not already spent much of her adulthood thinking about PFOA. Darlene's first husband had been a chemist in DuPont's PFOA lab. (Darlene asked that he not be named so that he wouldn't be involved in the local politics around the case.) ''When you worked at DuPont in this town,'' Darlene says today, ''you could have everything you wanted.'' DuPont paid for his education, it secured him a mortgage and it paid him a generous salary. DuPont even gave him a free supply of PFOA, which, Darlene says, she used as soap in the family's dishwasher and to clean the car. Sometimes her husband came home from work sick - fever, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting - after working in one of the PFOA storage tanks. It was a common occurrence at Washington Works. Darlene says the men at the plant called it ''Teflon flu.''

In 1976, after Darlene gave birth to their second child, her husband told her that he was not allowed to bring his work clothes home anymore. DuPont, he said, had found out that PFOA was causing health problems for women and birth defects in children. Darlene would remember this six years later when, at 36, she had to have an emergency hysterectomy and again eight years later, when she had a second surgery. When the strange letter from the water district arrived, Darlene says, ''I kept thinking back to his clothing, to my hysterectomy. I asked myself, what does DuPont have to do with our drinking water?''

Joe called the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources (''They treated me like I had the plague''), the Parkersburg office of the state's Department of Environmental Protection (''nothing to worry about''), the water division (''I got shut down''), the local health department (''just plain rude''), even DuPont (''I was fed the biggest line of [expletive] anybody could have been fed''), before a scientist in the regional E.P.A. office finally took his call.

''Good God, Joe,'' the scientist said. ''What the hell is that stuff doing in your water?'' He sent Kiger information about the Tennant lawsuit. On the court papers Kiger kept seeing the same name: Robert Bilott, of Taft Stettinius & Hollister, in Cincinnati.

Bilott had anticipated suing on behalf of the one or two water districts closest to Washington Works. But tests revealed that six districts, as well as dozens of private wells, were tainted with levels of PFOA higher than DuPont's own internal safety standard. In Little Hocking, the water tested positive for PFOA at seven times the limit. All told, 70,000 people were drinking poisoned water. Some had been doing so for decades.

But Bilott faced a vexing legal problem. PFOA was not a regulated substance. It appeared on no federal or state list of contaminants. How could Bilott claim that 70,000 people had been poisoned if the government didn't recognize PFOA as a toxin - if PFOA, legally speaking, was no different than water itself? In 2001, it could not even be proved that exposure to PFOA in public drinking water caused health problems. There was scant information available about its impact on large populations. How could the class prove it had been harmed by PFOA when the health effects were largely unknown?

The best metric Bilott had to judge a safe exposure level was DuPont's own internal limit of one part per billion. But when DuPont learned that Bilott was preparing a new lawsuit, it announced that it would re-evaluate that figure. As in the Tennant case, DuPont formed a team composed of its own scientists and scientists from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. It announced a new threshold: 150 parts per billion.

Bilott found the figure ''mind-blowing.'' The toxicologists he hired had settled upon a safety limit of 0.2 parts per billion. But West Virginia endorsed the new standard. Within two years, three lawyers regularly used by DuPont were hired by the state D.E.P. in leadership positions. One of them was placed in charge of the entire agency. ''The way that transpired was just amazing to me,'' Bilott says. ''I suppose it wasn't so amazing to my fellow counsel in West Virginia who know the system there. But it was to me.'' The same DuPont lawyers tasked with writing the safety limit, Bilott said, had become the government regulators responsible for enforcing that limit.

Bilott devised a new legal strategy. A year earlier, West Virginia had become one of the first states to recognize what is called, in tort law, a medical-monitoring claim. A plaintiff needs to prove only that he or she has been exposed to a toxin. If the plaintiff wins, the defendant is required to fund regular medical tests. In these cases, should a plaintiff later become ill, he or she can sue retroactively for damages. For this reason, Bilott filed the class-action suit in August 2001 in state court, even though four of the six affected water districts lay across the Ohio border.

Meanwhile the E.P.A., drawing from Bilott's research, began its own investigation into the toxicity of PFOA. In 2002, the agency released its initial findings: PFOA might pose human health risks not only to those drinking tainted water, but also to the general public - anyone, for instance, who cooked with Teflon pans. The E.P.A. was particularly alarmed to learn that PFOA had been detected in American blood banks, something 3M and DuPont had known as early as 1976. By 2003 the average concentration of PFOA in the blood of an adult American was four to five parts per billion. In 2000, 3M ceased production of PFOA. DuPont, rather than use an alternative compound, built a new factory in Fayetteville, N.C., to manufacture the substance for its own use.

Bilott's strategy appeared to have worked. In September 2004, DuPont decided to settle the class-action suit. It agreed to install filtration plants in the six affected water districts if they wanted them and pay a cash award of $70 million. It would fund a scientific study to determine whether there was a ''probable link'' - a term that delicately avoided any declaration of causation - between PFOA and any diseases. If such links existed, DuPont would pay for medical monitoring of the affected group in perpetuity. Until the scientific study came back with its results, class members were forbidden from filing personal-injury suits against DuPont.

A reasonable expectation, at this point, was that the lawyers would move on. ''In any other class action you've ever read about,'' Deitzler says, ''you get your 10 bucks in the mail, the lawyers get paid and the lawsuit goes away. That's what we were supposed to do.'' For three years, Bilott had worked for nothing, costing his firm a fortune. But now Taft received a windfall: Bilott and his team of West Virginian plaintiff lawyers received $21.7 million in fees from the settlement. ''I think they were thinking, This guy did O.K.,'' Deitzler says. ''I wouldn't be surprised if he got a raise.''

Not only had Taft recouped its losses, but DuPont was providing clean water to the communities named in the suit. Bilott had every reason to walk away.

He didn't.

''There was a gap in the data,'' Bilott says. The company's internal health studies, as damning as they were, were limited to factory employees. DuPont could argue - and had argued - that even if PFOA caused medical problems, it was only because factory workers had been exposed at exponentially higher levels than neighbors who drank tainted water. The gap allowed DuPont to claim that it had done nothing wrong.

Bilott represented 70,000 people who had been drinking PFOA-laced drinking water for decades. What if the settlement money could be used to test them? ''Class members were concerned about three things,'' Winter says. ''One: Do I have C8 in my blood? Two: If I do, is it harmful? Three: If it's harmful, what are the effects?'' Bilott and his colleagues realized they could answer all three questions, if only they could test their clients. Now, they realized, there was a way to do so. After the settlement, the legal team pushed to make receipt of the cash award contingent on a full medical examination. The class voted in favor of this approach, and within months, nearly 70,000 West Virginians were trading their blood for a $400 check.

The team of epidemiologists was flooded with medical data, and there was nothing DuPont could do to stop it. In fact, it was another term of the settlement that DuPont would fund the research without limitation. The scientists, freed from the restraints of academic budgets and grants, had hit the epidemiological jackpot: an entire population's personal data and infinite resources available to study them. The scientists designed 12 studies, including one that, using sophisticated environmental modeling technology, determined exactly how much PFOA each individual class member had ingested.

It was assured that the panel would return convincing results. But Bilott could not predict what those results would be. If no correlation was found between PFOA and illness, Bilott's clients would be barred under the terms of the agreement from filing any personal-injury cases. Because of the sheer quantity of data provided by the community health study and the unlimited budget - it ultimately cost DuPont $33 million - the panel took longer than expected to perform its analysis. Two years passed without any findings. Bilott waited. A third year passed. Then a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. Still the panel was quiet. Bilott waited.

It was not a peaceful wait. The pressure on Bilott at Taft had built since he initiated the class-action suit in 2001. The legal fees had granted him a reprieve, but as the years passed without resolution, and Bilott continued to spend the firm's money and was unable to attract new clients, he found himself in an awkward position.

''This case,'' Winter says, ''regardless of how hugely successful it ends up, will never in the Taft firm's mind replace what they've lost in the way of legal business over the years.''

The longer it took for the science panel to conduct its research, the more expensive the case became. Taft continued to pay consultants to interpret the new findings and relay them to the epidemiologists. Bilott counseled class members in West Virginia and Ohio and traveled frequently to Washington to attend meetings at the E.P.A., which was deciding whether to issue advisories about PFOA. ''We were incurring a lot of expenses,'' Bilott says. ''If the scientific panel found no link with diseases, we'd have to eat it all.''

Clients called Bilott to say that they had received diagnoses of cancer or that a family member had died. They wanted to know why it was taking so long. When would they get relief? Among those who called was Jim Tennant. Wilbur, who had cancer, had died of a heart attack. Two years later, Wilbur's wife died of cancer. Bilott was tormented by ''the thought that we still hadn't been able to hold this company responsible for what they did in time for those people to see it.''

Taft did not waver in its support of the case, but the strain began to show. ''It was stressful,'' Sarah Barlage, Bilott's wife, says. ''He was exasperated that it was lasting a long time. But his heels were so dug in. He's extremely stubborn. Every day that went by with no movement gave him more drive to see it through. But in the back of our minds, we knew that there are cases that go on forever.''

His colleagues on the case detected a change in Bilott. ''I had the impression that it was extremely tough on him,'' Winter says. ''Rob had a young family, kids growing up, and he was under pressure from his firm. Rob is a private person. He didn't complain. But he showed signs of being under enormous stress.''

In 2010, Bilott began suffering strange attacks: His vision would blur, he couldn't put on his socks, his arms felt numb. His doctors didn't know what was happening. The attacks recurred periodically, bringing blurry vision, slurred speech and difficulty moving one side of his body. They struck suddenly, without warning, and their effects lasted days. The doctors asked whether he was under heightened stress at work. ''Nothing different than normal,'' Bilott told them. ''Nothing it hadn't been for years.''

The doctors ultimately hit upon an effective medication. The episodes ceased and their symptoms, apart from an occasional tic, are under control, but he still doesn't have a diagnosis.

''It was stressful,'' Bilott says, ''not to know what the heck was going on.''

In December 2011, after seven years, the scientists began to release their findings: there was a ''probable link'' between PFOA and kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, pre-eclampsia and ulcerative colitis.

''There was relief,'' Bilott says, understated nearly to the point of self-effacement. ''We were able to deliver what we had promised to these folks seven years earlier. Especially since, for all those years, DuPont had been saying that we were lying, trying to scare and mislead people. Now we had a scientific answer.''

As of October, 3,535 plaintiffs have filed personal-injury lawsuits against DuPont. The first member of this group to go to trial was a kidney-cancer survivor named Carla Bartlett. In October, Bartlett was awarded $1.6 million. DuPont plans to appeal. This may have ramifications well beyond Bartlett's case: Hers is one of five ''bellwether'' cases that will be tried over the course of this year. After that, DuPont may choose to settle with every afflicted class member, using the outcome of the bellwether cases to determine settlement awards. Or DuPont can fight each suit individually, a tactic that tobacco companies have used to fight personal-injury lawsuits. At the rate of four trials a year, DuPont would continue to fight PFOA cases until the year 2890.

DuPont's continuing refusal to accept responsibility is maddening to Bilott. ''To think that you've negotiated in good faith a deal that everybody has abided by and worked on for seven years, you reach a point where certain things were to be resolved but then remain contested,'' he says. ''I think about the clients who have been waiting for this, many of whom are sick or have died while waiting. It's infuriating.''

As part of its agreement with the E.P.A., DuPont ceased production and use of PFOA in 2013. The five other companies in the world that produce PFOA are also phasing out production. DuPont, which is currently negotiating a merger with Dow Chemical, last year severed its chemical businesses: They have been spun off into a new corporation called Chemours. The new company has replaced PFOA with similar fluorine-based compounds designed to biodegrade more quickly - the alternative considered and then discarded by DuPont more than 20 years ago. Like PFOA, these new substances have not come under any regulation from the E.P.A. When asked about the safety of the new chemicals, Chemours replied in a statement: ''A significant body of data demonstrates that these alternative chemistries can be used safely.''

Last May, 200 scientists from a variety of disciplines signed the Madrid Statement, which expresses concern about the production of all fluorochemicals, or PFASs, including those that have replaced PFOA. PFOA and its replacements are suspected to belong to a large class of artificial compounds called endocrine-disrupting chemicals; these compounds, which include chemicals used in the production of pesticides, plastics and gasoline, interfere with human reproduction and metabolism and cause cancer, thyroid problems and nervous-system disorders. In the last five years, however, a new wave of endocrinology research has found that even extremely low doses of such chemicals can create significant health problems. Among the Madrid scientists' recommendations: ''Enact legislation to require only essential uses of PFASs'' and ''Whenever possible, avoid products containing, or manufactured using, PFASs. These include many products that are stain-resistant, waterproof or nonstick.''

When asked about the Madrid Statement, Dan Turner, DuPont's head of global media relations, wrote in an email: ''DuPont does not believe the Madrid Statement reflects a true consideration of the available data on alternatives to long-chain perfluorochemicals, such as PFOA. DuPont worked for more than a decade, with oversight from regulators, to introduce its alternatives. Extensive data has been developed, demonstrating that these alternatives are much more rapidly eliminated from the body than PFOA, and have improved health safety profiles. We are confident that these alternative chemistries can be used safely - they are well characterized, and the data has been used to register them with environmental agencies around the world.''

Every year Rob Bilott writes a letter to the E.P.A. and the West Virginia D.E.P., urging the regulation of PFOA in drinking water. In 2009, the E.P.A. set a ''provisional'' limit of 0.4 parts per billion for short-term exposure, but has never finalized that figure. This means that local water districts are under no obligation to tell customers whether PFOA is in their water. In response to Bilott's most recent letter, the E.P.A. claimed that it would announce a ''lifetime health advisory level for PFOA'' by ''early 2016.''

This advisory level, if indeed announced, might be a source of comfort to future generations. But if you are a sentient being reading this article in 2016, you already have PFOA in your blood. It is in your parents' blood, your children's blood, your lover's blood. How did it get there? Through the air, through your diet, through your use of nonstick cookware, through your umbilical cord. Or you might have drunk tainted water. The Environmental Working Group has found manufactured fluorochemicals present in 94 water districts across 27 states (see sidebar beginning on Page 38). Residents of Issaquah, Wash.; Wilmington, Del.; Colorado Springs; and Nassau County on Long Island are among those whose water has a higher concentration of fluorochemicals than that in some of the districts included in Rob Bilott's class-action suit. The drinking water in Parkersburg itself, whose water district was not included in the original class-action suit and has failed to compel DuPont to pay for a filtration system, is currently tainted with high levels of PFOA. Most residents appear not to know this.

Where scientists have tested for the presence of PFOA in the world, they have found it. PFOA is in the blood or vital organs of Atlantic salmon, swordfish, striped mullet, gray seals, common cormorants, Alaskan polar bears, brown pelicans, sea turtles, sea eagles, Midwestern bald eagles, California sea lions and Laysan albatrosses on Sand Island, a wildlife refuge on Midway Atoll, in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean, about halfway between North America and Asia.

''We see a situation,'' Joe Kiger says, ''that has gone from Washington Works, to statewide, to the United States, and now it's everywhere, it's global. We've taken the cap off something here. But it's just not DuPont. Good God. There are 60,000 unregulated chemicals out there right now. We have no idea what we're taking.''

Bilott doesn't regret fighting DuPont for the last 16 years, nor for letting PFOA consume his career. But he is still angry. ''The thought that DuPont could get away with this for this long,'' Bilott says, his tone landing halfway between wonder and rage, ''that they could keep making a profit off it, then get the agreement of the governmental agencies to slowly phase it out, only to replace it with an alternative with unknown human effects - we told the agencies about this in 2001, and they've essentially done nothing. That's 14 years of this stuff continuing to be used, continuing to be in the drinking water all over the country. DuPont just quietly switches over to the next substance. And in the meantime, they fight everyone who has been injured by it.''

Bilott is currently prosecuting Wolf v. DuPont, the second of the personal-injury cases filed by the members of his class. The plaintiff, John M. Wolf of Parkersburg, claims that PFOA in his drinking water caused him to develop ulcerative colitis. That trial begins in March. When it concludes, there will be 3,533 cases left to try.

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The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare (Published 2016)

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Feature Rob Bilott was a corporate defense attorney for eight years. Then he took on an environmental suit that would upend his entire career - and expose a brazen, decades-long history of chemical pollution. Rob Bilott on land owned by the Tennants near Parkersburg, W.Va. Credit...

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What is Volkswagen accused of?

It's been dubbed the "diesel dupe". In September, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that many VW cars being sold in America had a "defeat device" - or software - in diesel engines that could detect when they were being tested, changing the performance accordingly to improve results. The German car giant has since admitted cheating emissions tests in the US.

VW has had a major push to sell diesel cars in the US, backed by a huge marketing campaign trumpeting its cars' low emissions. The EPA's findings cover 482,000 cars in the US only, including the VW-manufactured Audi A3, and the VW models Jetta, Beetle, Golf and Passat. But VW has admitted that about 11 million cars worldwide, including eight million in Europe, are fitted with the so-called "defeat device".

The company has also been accused by the EPA of modifying software on the 3 litre diesel engines fitted to some Porsche and Audi as well as VW models. VW has denied the claims, which affect at least 10,000 vehicles.

In November, VW said it had found "irregularities" in tests to measure carbon dioxide emissions levels that could affect about 800,000 cars in Europe - including petrol vehicles. However, in December it said that following investigations, it had established that this only affected about 36,000 of the cars it produces each year.

Full details of how it worked are sketchy, although the EPA has said that the engines had computer software that could sense test scenarios by monitoring speed, engine operation, air pressure and even the position of the steering wheel.

When the cars were operating under controlled laboratory conditions - which typically involve putting them on a stationary test rig - the device appears to have put the vehicle into a sort of safety mode in which the engine ran below normal power and performance. Once on the road, the engines switched out of this test mode.

The result? The engines emitted nitrogen oxide pollutants up to 40 times above what is allowed in the US.

What has been VW's response?

"We've totally screwed up," said VW America boss Michael Horn, while the group's chief executive at the time, Martin Winterkorn, said his company had "broken the trust of our customers and the public". Mr Winterkorn resigned as a direct result of the scandal and was replaced by Matthias Mueller, the former boss of Porsche.

"My most urgent task is to win back trust for the Volkswagen Group - by leaving no stone unturned," Mr Mueller said on taking up his new post.

VW has also launched an internal inquiry.

With VW recalling millions of cars worldwide from early next year, it has set aside €6.7bn (£4.8bn) to cover costs. That resulted in the company posting its first quarterly loss for 15 years of €2.5bn in late October.

But that's unlikely to be the end of the financial impact. The EPA has the power to fine a company up to $37,500 for each vehicle that breaches standards - a maximum fine of about $18bn.

The costs of possible legal action by car owners and shareholders "cannot be estimated at the current time", VW added.

How widespread are VW's problems?

What started in the US has spread to a growing number of countries. The UK, Italy, France, South Korea, Canada and, of course, Germany, have opened investigations. Throughout the world, politicians, regulators and environmental groups are questioning the legitimacy of VW's emissions testing.

VW will recall 8.5 million cars in Europe, including 2.4 million in Germany and 1.2 million in the UK, and 500,000 in the US as a result of the emissions scandal.

No wonder the carmaker's shares have fallen by about a third since the scandal broke.

Will more heads roll?

It's still unclear who knew what and when, although VW must have had a chain of management command that approved fitting cheating devices to its engines, so further departures are likely.

Christian Klingler, a management board member and head of sales and marketing is leaving the company, although VW said this was part of long-term planned structural changes and was not related to recent events.

In 2014, in the US, regulators raised concerns about VW emissions levels, but these were dismissed by the company as "technical issues" and "unexpected" real-world conditions. If executives and managers wilfully misled officials (or their own VW superiors) it's difficult to see them surviving.

Are other carmakers implicated?

That's for the various regulatory and government inquiries to determine. California's Air Resources Board is now looking into other manufacturers' testing results. Ford, BMW and Renault-Nissan have said they did not use "defeat devices", while other firms have either not commented or simply stated that they comply with the law.

The UK trade body for the car industry, the SMMT, said: "The EU operates a fundamentally different system to the US - with all European tests performed in strict conditions as required by EU law and witnessed by a government-appointed independent approval agency."

But it added: "The industry acknowledges that the current test method is outdated and is seeking agreement from the European Commission for a new emissions test that embraces new testing technologies and is more representative of on-road conditions."

Environmental campaigners have long argued that emissions rules are being flouted. "Diesel cars in Europe operate with worse technology on average than the US," said Jos Dings, from the pressure group Transport & Environment. "Our latest report demonstrated that almost 90% of diesel vehicles didn't meet emission limits when they drive on the road. We are talking millions of vehicles."

Car analysts at the financial research firm Bernstein agree that European standards are not as strict as those in the US. However, the analysts said in a report that there was, therefore, "less need to cheat". So, if other European carmakers' results are suspect, Bernstein says the "consequences are likely to be a change in the test cycle rather than legal action and fines".

Certainly is. Over the past decade and more, carmakers have poured a fortune into the production of diesel vehicles - with the support of many governments - believing that they are better for the environment. Latest scientific evidence suggests that's not the case, and there are even moves to limit diesel cars in some cities.

Diesel sales were already slowing, so the VW scandal came at a bad time. "The revelations are likely to lead to a sharp fall in demand for diesel engine cars," said Richard Gane, automotive expert at consultants Vendigital.

"In the US, the diesel car market currently represents around 1% of all new car sales and this is unlikely to increase in the short to medium term.

"However, in Europe the impact could be much more significant, leading to a large tranche of the market switching to petrol engine cars virtually overnight."

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The scandal over VW cheating pollution emissions tests in the US is casting a cloud over the whole car industry.

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Johnson&Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

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Johnson&Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

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J&J knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder

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Johnson & Johnson says its Baby Powder is safe. But Reuters found its talc was sometimes tainted with asbestos, a fact it kept from regulators and the public.

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Exhausted workers, polluting journeys: how unethical is next-day delivery?

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Exhausted workers, polluting journeys: how unethical is next-day delivery?

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he pandemic turned the US into a next-day delivery nation. Amazon, in particular, saw sales surge during the dark days of Covid. In the first three months of 2021, the company watched its total sales tick up by 44%, constituting $8.1bn in profit. Those sales were led by the 200 million subscribers to Amazon's super-fast delivery service Prime as people demanded everything from desk chairs to bananas delivered the next day.

Amazon sold 44% more items during the pandemic, but the cost of fulfilling those orders increased by only 31%. This saving was one of scale - high-order volume allowed Amazon to operate even more efficiently. "It has run its warehouses closer to full capacity, and delivery drivers have made more stops on their routes, with less time driving between customers," reported the New York Times.

During that period of lockdowns, Amazon's quick delivery became a lifeline for many people. But as we approach a return to a more normal life, many of us are investigating the various habits and proclivities we unconsciously established during Covid. Do we want to go back to the office? Are we satisfied with our current employment situation? And is the endless cycle of cardboard arriving at our doorsteps putting an undue strain on the planet, on our infrastructure, and on the human spirit?

Amazon Prime ships about 1.6m packages a day. That operation is buoyed by a worldwide logistics team which rumbles all day and night. Isn't that a little gluttonous? Or, as M Sanjayan, CEO of Conservation International, put it in an interview with NPR: "You don't need a pair of socks to get to you swiftly. It probably makes just as much sense to get it to you efficiently."

For Amazon workers, this means working at an extraordinary pace. Jacob, who joined Amazon two years ago, says he has logged a total of 30,000 miles, and 400 routes. He is frequently saddled with shifts that force him to deliver to "70 separate three-story buildings" with more than 350 packages. "I was logging over 120 flights of stairs on my Fitbit," he tells the Guardian.

"Amazon constantly reminds us they put profits over their workers," he says. "I ended up having a normal 200-plus stop day on Easter Sunday. Zero mercy shown."

The physical toll bears out in the data. According to a survey of workers in a Long Island Amazon warehouse, 42% reported physical pain in their day-to-day duties - usually in the feet and lower back. (They also noted psychological pressures and a deterioration of their normal sleep schedules.)

"I do feel like the workload is unreasonable," says another driver interviewed by the Guardian, who asked to remain anonymous. "There is no time to break. It is impossible to complete a route, and take your breaks, and be back to the station in time."

In the past eight years there have been hundreds of accidents involving Amazon vehicles, including at least six deaths, which were documented in BuzzFeed News investigation in 2019. But it is difficult to know the exact figures, given the way Amazon outsources its delivery apparatus to a worldwide network of companies. In total, BuzzFeed identified at least 250 outsourced dispatchers who work with Amazon.

An Amazon delivery worker stacks boxes for delivery on a cart in New York City in November 2021. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

In many cities Amazon is promising packages in as little as five hours, or tells customers they can order by midnight and receive products the next morning. Would more time to make deliveries lead to a more equitable work environment? Jacob says an earlier cutoff for next-day delivery orders could give Amazon employees more time to breathe, but he also isn't sure if customers would accept having to wait longer. "The standard has been raised," he says.

There are also questions about how sustainable this relentless pace is within the climate emergency. There are two differing philosophies about the emission impact of next-day delivery. Some argue that by streamlining the flow of products - bundling up all of our assorted consumption needs into parcels on a shared conveyor belt - we are taking the cars off the road that would previously be making routine trips to local strip malls. "The question is always, 'What are we replacing?'" says Miguel Jaller, a professor at UC Davis and co-director of the Sustainable Freight Research program. "If you're replacing a two-gallon-per-mile large SUV going every day to a store far away, then we're benefiting the environment."

Amazon has claimed it will reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 (and has already made some strides in that arena - they remain the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy). But given the sheer diversity of items available on Amazon and other e-commerce retailers, experts say it becomes more difficult to assert that next-day delivery streamlines the supply chain. The average Prime order might constitute radically different items, which are both guaranteed to make it to your doorstep in 24 hours or less. "It gets harder to consolidate," Anne Goodchild, a professor of engineering at the University of Washington, told Vox. "I think it's easy to overlook how much travel we're adding."

Packages in a rented U-Haul truck as they are delivered in a residential neighborhood in Wisconsin in December 2020. Photograph: Mark Hertzberg/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

This is complicated further by Amazon's reliance on contract labor, many of which use trucks that are considerably smaller than the giant 18-wheelers that haul fresh stock to bricks-and-mortar retailers, and generally carry a much heavier carbon footprint given their limited storage space. (In total, those vehicles are responsible for one0quarter of all carbon emissions in the transportation category.) In general, Jaller is unconvinced that the industry's continued focus on speed above everything lends itself to a carbon-neutral model.

"They started pushing one-day delivery and then they started pushing one-hour delivery. The faster you're providing a service, the less likely you're able to be [environmentally] efficient," he says.

Jaller does recommend a few remediesincluding a pivot to zero-emission vehicles. But generally speaking, experts believe that the path towards a sustainable, livable, non-exploitative future must begin with a shift in our social priorities.

"It's not a massive chunk of your total environmental impact, but every decision a consumer makes has some impact," says Austin Whitman, CEO of the non-profit Climate Neutral, when I asked him if he believes next-day delivery can coexist within the ethical posture of any conscious shopper. "Should you put it on your list of the top 10 things to avoid? Absolutely."

An Amazon delivery man rides past a street mural in the Bowery neighborhood of New York City. Photograph: Jason Szenes/EPA

Kai Lendwehr, the press officer of the environmental non-profit MyClimate, agrees. He advocates for a reorientation in the relentless parameters of consumption. Instead of searching for a supply-chain apparatus that sustainably satiates our demands, maybe we simply need to be wondering if we truly need the things we're purchasing in the first place.

"It's about conscious buying," he says. "Decide what you need, do some research, focus on quality, on things that make you feel suitable for a longer timeframe, and then click the green button. It shouldn't really matter when the product arrives."

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Exhausted workers, polluting journeys: how unethical is next-day delivery?

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he pandemic turned the US into a next-day delivery nation. Amazon, in particular, saw sales surge during the dark days of Covid. In the first three months of 2021, the company watched its total sales tick up by 44%, constituting $8.1bn in profit.

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What The Victoria’s Secret Harassment Allegations Teach Us About Retaliation

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What The Victoria’s Secret Harassment Allegations Teach Us About Retaliation

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What The Victoria’s Secret Harassment Allegations Teach Us About Retaliation

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Even though retaliation for reporting is illegal, it is the most common discrimination charge filed at The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

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Disney hasn't found itself in this much trouble since 1941

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Disney hasn't found itself in this much trouble since 1941

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The family-friendly, controversy-averse Walt Disney Co. has walked into the buzz saw of the American culture wars, version 2022.

In April, officials at Disney objected to a Florida law prohibiting instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded by signing a bill revoking Disney's self-governing status, a unique arrangement in which the company operated like an independent fiefdom within the state.

Traditionally, the custodians of one of Hollywood's most reliable cash machines have been careful to sidestep political minefields that might remind customers of a realm outside the Magic Kingdom. Better to wallow with Scrooge McDuck in the Money Bin than be caught in the crosshairs of Fox News chyrons.

Only once before has the Disney brand gotten so entangled in a public relations briar patch - in 1941, when the original iteration of the company was confronted by an internal revolt that pitted the founding visionary against his pen-and-ink scriveners.

The characters in the showdown were as colorful as any drawn on the studio's animation cels: union activists, gangsters, communists and anti-communists, and, not least, Walt Disney himself, who, dropping his avuncular persona, played a long game of political hardball and slow-burn payback.

Workers grumble as Disney's star soars

Even then, Walt Disney inspired a special kind of awe around Hollywood.

Billy Wilkerson, editor of The Hollywood Reporter, declared Disney "the only real genius in this business" in the Dec. 17, 1937, issue of the periodical.

Disney was hailed as the father of the first sound cartoon, " Steamboat Willie" (1928); the first Technicolor cartoon, " Flowers and Trees" (1932); and the first feature-length cartoon, " Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs " (1937).

"Snow White" marked the beginning of the extraordinary creative streak - " Pinocchio" and " Fantasia" in 1940, " Dumbo" the following year and 1942's " Bambi " - on which the Disney mythos would be built forever.

In 1940, Disney plowed the profits from "Snow White" into a state-of-the-art animation studio in Burbank, California, where the comfort of his workers, so he said, was a high priority.

"One of Walt Disney's greatest wishes has always been that his employees could work in ideal surroundings," read an advertisement in the Oct. 10, 1940, issue of The Hollywood Reporter. "The dean of animated cartoons realizes that a happy personnel turns out the best work."

But even by the standards of exploitative Hollywood shop floors, Disney animators were overworked and underpaid. Forced to hunch over a drawing board for 10 hours a day, they had no desire to whistle while they worked. Instead, they wanted a strong union to negotiate on their behalf. Disney didn't want any of it.

The animators opted to be represented by the confrontational Screen Cartoonists Guild rather than the pro-management "company union," the American Society of Screen Cartoonists.

"Disney cartoonists make less than house painters," charged the guild. "The girls are the lowest paid in the entire cartoon field. They earn from $16 to $20 a week, with very few earning as high as $22.50." The guild demanded a 40-hour, five-day work week, severance pay, paid vacation and a minimum wage scale ranging from $18 a week for apprentices to $250 for cartoon directors.

To go nose to nose with Disney in the negotiations, the Screen Cartoonists Guild chose Herbert Sorrell of the Motion Picture Painters, Local 644, a longtime thorn in the side of studio management.

Sorrell was a broad-shouldered union man of the old-school variety. A former heavyweight prize fighter, he was not afraid to mix it up on the picket line with cops and strikebreakers.

Sorrell's footwork in the boxing ring - not to mention the brass knuckles he carried - came in handy. In the 1930s, labor organizing in Hollywood could be more hazardous than stunt work. Many studio heads had already cut sweetheart deals with the mobbed-up trade unions, notably the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees, run by a Chicago-schooled gangster named Willie Bioff.

Animators put down their pens

On May 28, 1941, the Screen Cartoonists Guild called a strike, and hundreds of animators walked out on Disney.

Brazenly violating Disney's copyright, the strikers repurposed Disney characters into pro-union spokesmen and paraded outside theaters playing Disney films.

" There are no strings on me!" exclaimed Pinocchio in one placard. The slogans were as clever as the visuals: " Snow White and 700 Dwarfs," " 3 Years College, 2 Years Art School, 5 Years Animation Equals 1 Hamburger Stand" and " Are We Mice or Men? "

Disney was enraged. He claimed that Sorrell had threatened to turn the Burbank studio into a "dust bowl" unless he caved to the strikers' demands.

Behind the scenes, Disney offered the SCG a deal brokered by the gangster Willie Bioff.

Disney then placed ads in the trade press saying he had made generous offers to "your leaders" - that would be Bioff - and had acceded to most of the strikers' demands.

"I am positively convinced that Communistic agitation, leadership and activities have brought about this strike, and has persuaded you to reject this fair and equitable settlement," Disney said.

"Dear Walt," Sorrell retorted, "Willie Bioff is not our leader. Present your terms to OUR elected leaders, so that they may be presented to us and there should be no difficulty in quickly settling our differences."

Eventually, the feds, in the person of the National Labor Relations Board, intervened. On July 29, after 62 days of rage on both sides, Disney settled - through clenched teeth. Disney and the Screen Cartoonists Guild squabbled intermittently until the end of the year, but Sorrell had won on the big points: better wages, job security and a " closed shop," which requires union membership as a condition for employment.

Disney's revenge

To Disney, though, this wasn't just a dispute between management and labor. It was oedipal rebellion against the father in his own house.

In October 1947, Disney got his chance for revenge when he testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which was investigating Hollywood for alleged communist subversion in motion picture content and within the ranks of organized labor.

Disney was called as a friendly witness, and friendly he was: While waiting to testify, he good-naturedly sketched pictures of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse for the children of the committee members.

At the witness table, Disney emphasized that while today "everyone in my studio is 100% American," the percentage had not always been so high. He named the name that had stuck in his craw since 1941. "A delegation of my boys, my artists, came to me and told me that Mr. Herbert Sorrell ... was trying to take them over," Disney said. Sorrell and his cohorts, charged Disney, "are communists," though admittedly, "no one has any way of proving those things."

Proven or not, Disney's allegations were career-killers. Many of the activist cartoonists of 1941 fell victim to Hollywood's notorious blacklist era, when hundreds of workers on both sides of the screen were rendered persona non grata at the studios for their political affinities.

As a result, the Screen Cartoonists Guild softened its tone. In 1952, it voted to become affiliated with the firmly anti-communist International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees - Bioff's former outfit. As for Sorrell, he was hounded by charges of communist sympathies and ultimately barred from a leadership position in his own union.

Disney, you know about. After venting before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, he navigated the company back to the 50-yard line of America's culture wars. There the entertainment conglomerate stayed - until recently, when it wandered off Disney World into the swampland of Florida politics.

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Disney hasn't found itself in this much trouble since 1941

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The family-friendly, controversy-averse Walt Disney Co. has walked into the buzz saw of the American culture wars, version 2022. In April, officials at Disney objected to a Florida law prohibiting instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Florida Gov.

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With TV prices down 17%, Black Friday shoppers may find ‘excellent deals’

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With TV prices down 17%, Black Friday shoppers may find ‘excellent deals’

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Here’s everything you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica scandal

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Here’s everything you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica scandal

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Cambridge Analytica is in the midst of a media firestorm after an undercover sting operation caught senior executives boasting about psychological manipulation, entrapment techniques and fake news campaigns.

Alongside social media giant Facebook, the London-based elections consultancy is at the center of an ongoing dispute over the alleged harvesting and use of personal data. The allegations have heightened concerns over whether such data was then used to try and influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Brexit vote.

Both companies deny any wrongdoing.

What happened in the undercover operation?

In an explosive expose broadcast by Britain's Channel 4 News on Monday, senior executives at Cambridge Analytica, including its CEO Alexander Nix, were caught on camera suggesting the firm could use sex workers, bribes and misinformation in order to try and help political candidates win votes around the world.

Cambridge Analytica, however, has claimed that the reporters tricked the company, and that it never had any intention of carrying out the scenarios discussed.

The news channel's reporter posed as a representative of a wealthy Sri Lankan family looking to gain political standing. While executives initially denied they used "entrapment," after several meetings with the reporter, they put forward some tactics they could use.

How did this initially come to light?

The Channel 4 News investigation, broadcast Monday, followed articles published over the weekend by the New York Times and U.K. newspaper The Observer. The reports sought to outline how the data of millions of Facebook profiles ended up being given to Cambridge Analytica.

Academic Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research created an app called "thisisyourdigitallife" in 2014. Users were paid to take a psychological test and the app collected the data. It also gathered data on a person's Facebook friends, according to the reports.

In this way, 50 million Facebook profiles were mined for data. Kogan then shared this with Cambridge Analytica, which allowed the firm to build a software solution to help influence choices in elections, according to whistleblower Christopher Wylie, who revealed the alleged practices to both newspapers.

Wylie claimed the data sold to Cambridge Analytica was then used to develop "psychographic" profiles of people and deliver pro-Trump material to them online.

Cambridge Analytica has denied any of this data was used in connection to the Trump campaign.

How has Facebook responded?

Facebook has said that while the data was obtained by Cambridge Analytica legitimately, it claimed that Kogan "lied" to the social media platform and violated its policies in transferring the data.

Facebook banned Kogan's app in 2015 and ordered all parties he had given data to, including the consultancy, to destroy it. Recent reports surfaced suggesting that this data was not destroyed. Nonetheless, Cambridge Analytica argues it did delete the data when it was told to.

"The entire company is outraged we were deceived. We are committed to vigorously enforcing our policies to protect people's information and will take whatever steps are required to see that this happens," Facebook said in a statement released Tuesday.

The social media giant added its senior executives would continue to "work around the clock to get all the facts."

Although CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg have yet to speak publicly about the allegations, the social media company is expected to share more in briefs with congressional committees this week.

Why does this story matter?

The saga is significant because of the way the harvested data might have been used. It was allegedly utilized to direct messages for political campaigns supported by Cambridge Analytica, most notably Trump's election victory and the Brexit vote.

Nonetheless, the role that marketing - or Cambridge Analytica - might have had to do with either of those political outcomes is not known. Cambridge Analytica has since denied the allegations made in the New York Times and Observer reports.

The Channel 4 News investigation featured undercover footage of Cambridge Analytic a's Nix claiming he met with Trump "many times" and that the company was largely responsible for a vast amount of the Trump campaign's activity in 2016.

"We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting... We ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign, and our data informed all the strategy," he said.

Speaking to CNBC in Hong Kong at the Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference, former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said he wasn't sure about the accuracy of some of the claims about a data analytics firm and its influence on the U.S. presidential election.

What happens next?

U.S. senators have urged Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg to testify before Congress about how the social media giant will protect its users. Meanwhile, in the U.K., Zuckerberg has been summoned by the chairman of a parliamentary committee in order to explain the "catastrophic failure" to lawmakers.

The head of the European Parliament has also said it will carry out an investigation to see whether data was misused.

Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, was suspended on Tuesday following Channel 4 News' undercover investigation.

"In the view of the board, Mr Nix's recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation," the embattled company said in a statement.

Cambridge Analytica said it would proceed to carry out a full and independent investigation following the reports.
- CNBC's Arjun Kharpal and Anita Balakrishnan contributed to this report.

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Here's everything you need to know about the Cambridge Analytica scandal

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Cambridge Analytica is in the midst of a media firestorm after an undercover sting operation caught senior executives boasting about psychological manipulation, entrapment techniques and fake news campaigns. Alongside social media giant Facebook, the London-based elections consultancy is at the center of an ongoing dispute over the alleged harvesting and use of personal data.

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Twitter Blue Tick Fiasco: Eli Lilly, Lockheed Martin Lose Billions

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Twitter Blue Tick Fiasco: Eli Lilly, Lockheed Martin Lose Billions

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Twitter Blue Tick Fiasco: Eli Lilly, Lockheed Martin Lose Billions

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The botch-up has caused many brands to rethink their position on Twitter

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Bitcoin crash: what’s behind crypto collapse?

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Bitcoin crash: what’s behind crypto collapse?

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Cryptocurrency is volatile, with a track record of “boom and bust“ cycles that have left many wondering whether it’s safe to invest.

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Is a bitcoin crash coming? - Times Money Mentor

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Bitcoin is a highly volatile cryptocurrency with a track record of "boom and bust" cycles - when its price soars and then plummets back to earth.

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VR for Corporate Training: Examples of VR in the Workplace

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VR for Corporate Training: Examples of VR in the Workplace

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https://virtualspeech.com/blog/how-is-vr-changing-corporate-training

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While many continue to debate over the adoption rates of virtual reality (VR) and if it really will be 'the future', a VR tidal wave is quietly bringing VR very much into the present. A number of companies are exploring VR as a supplementary tool for corporate training and you could find yourself being trained in VR sooner than you think.

For those new to VR, it uses 3D-generated images to immerse a user into a simulated environment so that they feel like they are actually there. VR can be broken down into three types:

Mobile - users insert their mobile phone into a VR headset (e.g. Merge VR, Blitzwolf VR)

Standalone - the headset does not require any additional cables or devices to run (e.g. Oculus Go, Oculus Quest)

Desktop - VR powered by high-end computers and a VR headset (e.g. Oculus Rift, HTC Vive)

The argument for VR in corporate training is simple - it can increase engagement and knowledge retention levels, and employees can be trained in a safer, more cost efficient way.

VR enables employees to learn through practical experience. Experiential learning has long been argued as the most effective way to learn and studies have shown that learning through experience increases the quality of learning, and retention by 75-90%.
Benefits of VR in corporate training include higher engagement and retention levels, experiential learning, safer for high risk situations and reduced spend on training and travel.
So, how is virtual reality being used in corporate training?

Improving business and soft skills

Many business skills require practice to become good at them and VR provides employees with a safe space to practice and learn from their experiences.

Skills such as public speaking, sales, negotiation, and networking are rarely taught at school so are not embedded in our minds in the same way that remembering facts and figures for a test are. Yet it's these enterprise skills that keep businesses running and are what managers demand in new candidates and employees.

VR enables companies to fill these skills gap and instil transferable, enterprise skills within their employees.

VirtualSpeech specialise in this soft skills training, integrating traditional online classes with VR. The VR element allows employees to practice what they've learnt in the courses in realistic simulations such as networking events, dealing with the media, and speaking in meetings and at conferences.
VirtualSpeech help employees improve communication and business skills in realistic environments.
Users can upload their own presentations, record speeches, and receive instant feedback on their eye contact, use of filler words, pitch, pace, and more (see the full list of features). They can then practice further to improve their scores, even when they are working remotely - all they need is their mobile device and a VR headset. Managers also have the option to view their employees' progress to identify strengths and any areas for improvement.

Diversity, inclusion and harassment training

Diversity and inclusion training has become a focus area for many companies over the last couple of years so it naturally follows that there are VR simulations that replicate these scenarios too. One company using such a virtual simulation for corporate training is Mursion. They built a virtual tool in partnership with the College of William and Mary to reduce unconscious bias and improve communication between employees when confronted with discrimination.

Vantage Point is another company focussed on sexual harassment training. Their training takes into account hard-to-detect nuances of common sexual harassment situations and teaches techniques such as bystander intervention, identification of sexual harassment, and on response training.

Customer experience

Retail stores are also starting to use VR training to improve the customer experience. For example, Walmart are working with STRIVR (previously known for training NFL athletes in VR) to create a 'Black Friday' simulator to train and prepare employees for the holiday rush.
STRIVR training a Walmart employee in a VR simulation.
For an in-depth look at how VR will enhance soft skills training, read our white paper:

Reducing risk in high-stake situations

The safety of the virtual world is not just good for interpersonal skills - it is the ideal training method for dangerous or high-stake situations. Before VR, employees would have to imagine a high-risk scenario and visualise how they would cope with it.

VR removes the need to imagine a difficult situation and instead replaces it with a realistic simulation. It provides an effective learning experience by training people in the most realistic way possible, without the situation actually happening in real life.

For example, BP partnered with Igloo Vision to train their employees in start-up and emergency exit procedures at their oil refinery in Hull, England. Employees were able to learn from mistakes in the virtual world and thus reduce the probability of making the same error in the real world - an error which could ultimately cost someone's life.
Chemical engineers training inside an Igloo Vision dome.
Doctors and surgery

VR can also be used to lower risk in life-threatening situations in medical procedures. Surgeons at the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles (CHLA) partnered with Shauna Heller and a team of developers (funded by Facebook's Oculus VR division), to create training for how to treat children in emergencies. Specifically, their simulation helps doctors learn how to save infants who have suffered a seizure or are in anaphylactic shock.

The benefit of using VR for corporate training in this situation, is that it is safe to make mistakes and learn from them - a doctor's performance is monitored and measured to assess where adjustments could be made in real life.

Of course, the time pressure is lower in a controlled training environment so doctors can consider their options more thoroughly in VR training than if they were training on the job. This would allow them to make more informed decisions, at a quicker rate, for more patients, when faced with the situation in reality. Ultimately, effective VR training could save lives.
Osso VR surgical training platform.
An example of VR being used successfully in this sector is when the Johnson & Johnson Institute began looking to improve medical training for surgeons. They worked with Osso VR to develop immersive training for doctors to perform operations. The results saw a 230&percnt; increase in surgical performance.

VR training works on the premise of mistake-driven learning, allowing doctors to learn the best solution in a risk-free environment. The cost of making a mistake in the virtual world is nothing compared to the cost of human error in reality.

Training and preparing military personnel

The military have been using VR for years as a supplementary method of training. Military training includes flight simulations for pilots, battlefield simulations for on-ground soldiers, and response to battlefield injuries for medical personnel.

VR training is used as part of boot camp exercises (alongside traditional military training). VR has the unique ability to make the soldiers feel like they are actually on the battlefield and they can put their skills to the test, and build on them in a safe environment. Teamwork, communication and the speed of reactions are all important factors in training an elite force, and can all be practiced and improved upon by using VR training.

The Virtual Squad Training System (VSTS) at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii use wireless VR training environments as part of their military training. Trainee soldiers are given a head mounted display, motion trackers, and wireless weapon controllers that accurately reflect the size, weight and shape of real military weapons such as the M4 and M165. They are then immersed in a combat simulator and can learn by practical experience, without putting themselves or each other in potentially fatal situations.
Virtual Squad Training System being used as part of their military training.
Given the nature of their jobs, soldiers must be able to adapt themselves to unpredictable and complex situations. VR simulations are a powerful tool for replicating these situations and ensuring soldiers are more prepared for a variety of combat situations.

Workforce productivity

DHL Express wanted to increase the skills and knowledge of people within their organisation. Working with Immerse, they built a VR training platform to promote the principles of safe, efficient unit load device (ULD) stacking. The new method was tested at 12 locations around the world and found 99% of participants felt it helped them work better and more efficiently.

Working with Gravity Sketch, Ford has been using VR to produce car mockups with impressive results. Being able to start in 3D and stay in 3D has improved productivity and transformed designer workflow. VR and Gravity Sketch allow designers to create a 3D sketches straight from their imagination.
Designing a car with Gravity Sketch.
Recruiting and onboarding

VR training can also be used to improve the recruitment and onboarding process within a company. Using an interview simulator, HR professionals and managers can practice asking interview questions to potential candidates and learn the questions typically asked, skills to look for, and warning signs about a potential employee.

This type of corporate training also extends to existing employees, who can receive virtual in-house training for internal promotions within a company.

Once a candidate has accepted a job offer, the next step is the onboarding process. Onboarding is the first experience of training an employee receives and it can give them a good idea of the training they can expect as they progress with the company.

A company without an effective onboarding process is more likely to have lower employee retention levels and productivity. VR can vastly improve this process and make it more efficient and enjoyable. New employees can be given an introduction to the company, a tour of the building, view multiple business locations, meet their manager, and much more - all in the comfort of their own home, before they've even stepped foot in the office.
Interview practice in VR can be extended to train HR professionals and managers.
Onboarding in VR can allow employees to experience the company culture and daily life in their role before their first day, making them feel more confident when they do start.

Virtual training can also set a universal standard for onboarding for MNCs with multiple locations around the world. If every location followed the same structure for virtual onboarding, retention and productivity of employees would increase, while costs would decrease with a standardised process.

Barriers to adoption of VR training

Despite the benefits of using VR for corporate training, there are barriers to adoption that are holding companies back. The short term cost of implementing VR training can be higher than traditional methods because of the price of purchasing the VR headsets.

However newer headsets, such as the Oculus Go and Quest standalone headset, have proven very popular as employees are able to loan the headset from their company to complete the training and return it afterwards.

It's not just the purchasing of hardware that need to be considered when balancing the budget. Initially integrating VR training with existing LMS and customising the training for your particular brand can both add to the cost of uptake. With such a new, evolving technology, the risk of ensuring ROI is higher than for traditional training methods.
3D Repo is working with companies such as Balfour Beatty and Highways England to deploy a Virtual Reality (VR) simulation for health and safety training.
Of course, the main reason for introducing VR training is to benefit employees but there is a risk of employee backlash, especially from older generations who tend to be more reluctant to adopt new technologies.

As more companies introduce VR to their training catalogue, and report positive results, the risk will lower for more cautious managers and we'll likely see VR training as standard.

As millennials make up an increasing proportion of the workforce, companies will have to adapt to their behaviours, working styles, and preferred methods of training - which are likely to be technology-focused and geographically dispersed.

The future of VR in corporate training

Companies are already implementing VR as a tool for corporate training. From public speaking, to medical procedures, to training for dangerous situations, VR provides a realistic, safe training environment for employees.

Despite the initial set-up cost, managers are realising the long term reduction in cost and the ROI in terms of engagement, safety, and retention of training in VR. As the VR industry develops and more becomes possible in a virtual setting, training in VR will become commonplace.

Corporate training will be an important step into mass consumer adoption of virtual reality, as more people realise it's beneficial to so much more than gaming.

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VR for Corporate Training: Examples of VR already being used

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While many continue to debate over the adoption rates of virtual reality (VR) and if it really will be 'the future', a VR tidal wave is quietly bringing VR very much into the present. A number of companies are exploring VR as a supplementary tool for corporate training and you could find yourself being trained in VR sooner than you think.

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Burberry burns about £28.6 million worth of unsold stock annually

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Burberry burns about £28.6 million worth of unsold stock annually

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Other luxury brands under scrutiny after Burberry stock burn revelations

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Burberry, which has been in the crosshairs for burning tens of millions of dollars of its products, is far from the only firm to destroy unsold goods to maintain the exclusivity and luxury mystique of their brands.

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Is SHEIN bad? Unmasking the unethical business practices of the fashion brand

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Is SHEIN bad? Unmasking the unethical business practices of the fashion brand

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https://www.okaybliss.com/shein-the-unethical-business-pracitices/

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Shein entered the fast fashion market as a price-inclusive and size-inclusive brand whose clothing boasted a diverse range of sizes at affordable prices. The brand's growth was evident as valued it at $100 billion in April 2022 - more than the combined worth of its rivals H&M and Zara.

However, the China-based company's "ultra-fast fashion" business model catering to young people was not well-received as it perpetuates the extremely rapid trend cycles of cloth production and overconsumption. Furthermore, emerging allegations of unethical business practices do not bode well for the company's image.

SHEIN sells inconsistent and substandard quality products at extremely low prices

Shein is notorious for its "reasonably" priced clothing, which can sometimes come across as a bit too cheap, where one can find dresses and tops for less than $20 apiece. Naturally, the quality of the apparel was questioned as the pictures portrayed on the brand's website displayed top-notch products despite the rock-bottom prices.

It does not help that the reviews of Shein's clothing on the Trustpilot website are polarizing with some customers having found good quality products while others shared opposite views. But one thing is certain - the quality is inconsistent.

Fashion blogger Ines Fressynet had an unfavorable experience with the brand and gave it the following review:

"There are no words to describe how ill-fitting and poor quality the items were when they arrived. My first impulse was to throw all of them away, which says a lot for someone like me who is conscious of living a low waste lifestyle. But in my view, that's where Shein's clothing belongs: in the bin."

Other common issues faced by buyers include having to wait weeks for delivery, packages getting lost in transit, and delays in refunds for aggrieved customers.

In October 2021, Shein came under fire for having a disproportionate amount of lead in its clothing items, particularly in handbags and children's jackets, which are health hazardous. The company has since pulled the items from its site and vowed to ensure "continuous improvement of [their] supply chain".

The supply chain of SHEIN is rife with unethical and illegal manufacturing ways

An investigation launched by uncovered the occurrences of unethical practices prevalent in the manufacturing base and supply chain of Shein which is located in Guangzhou, southern China. For instance, the garment workers were found to be working 12 hours a day with only one day off in a month.

Courtesy of Public Eye

Such working conditions are in violation of the Chinese Labor Laws which puts the ceiling of work time at 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week with at least a day off in a week. In contrast, the mostly immigrant workers of Shein toll away for more than 75 hours a week in less-than-ideal conditions.

"You might find a local in the office of a company, but in the production departments there are only migrant workers," wrote the researcher in the report.

The employees were not eligible for insurance as they had not signed an employment contract with the company. Likewise, the payment method - where the workers were paid per clothing item they completed - encouraged long hours of work with little benefit.

These exploitative manufacturing processes go against the Shein Supplier Code of Conduct, one of which says:

"Supplier partners shall arrange working hours reasonably and shall comply with local laws and regulations."

It was further discovered that most of the workers were housed in informal production sites with little to zero safety standards. The buildings did not have emergency exits and were characterized by barred windows and blocked corridors that housed huge bags of products.

Only experienced seamstresses are able to meet the demanding requirements | Courtesy of Public Eye

SHEIN's lack of transparency about its labor source is a likely front for shady workplace practices and possible human rights violation

Although analysts have pegged Shein's annual revenue at $10 billion in 2020, the company has yet to make public disclosures of its actual finances. It has also failed to disclose the working conditions of its supply chain as required by the laws of the United Kingdom.

As per , Shein's lack of transparency on the matter is concerning and potentially violates the UK's Modern Slavery Act 2015, which combats forced labor.

The report also discovered that Shein had falsely claimed about being certified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and SA 8000 (administered by Social Accountability International) on its website.

The statements were later withdrawn by the company when it came to light that they had lied about their workplace certifications.

Thus, the company's adamant silence on its finances and continued secrecy about the workings of its supply chain have raised speculations about shady labor practices and probable human rights violations.

SHEIN's mass production of disposable apparel to suit temporary fashion trends is environmentally unsustainable

Shein's rapid and mass production of thousands of different garment styles in a day is not only seen as exploitative to its customers but also harmful to the environment. According to The Guardian, more than 94 percent of Shein's inventory goes out of stock within three months.

This is alarming as it not only promotes disposable clothing among its young customers but also adds to the increasing pile of textile waste generated by the fashion industry. Moreover, the above report mentioned that a majority of Shein's return orders were directed to the landfill instead of being put back in circulation.

Ryan McVay/Getty Images

In an interview with Green Matters, Venetia La Manna, the co-founder of the 'Remember Who Made Them' campaign that advocates for the welfare of garment workers, said:

"The main issue with Shein is their sheer lack of ethics. Their scale of output is unsustainable for our planet and its finite resources. There's also zero evidence to suggest that they pay their workers fair living wages and they continue to outright steal designs from independent brands."

In efforts to become more environmentally sustainable and socially conscious since the allegations, Shein announced the launch of its Shein Cares Fund in December 2021. The fund pledged $10 million to promote recycling and support global non-profit organizations, reported PR Newswire.

"Empowering individuals and giving back to those in need has been part of our company DNA since day one," said Molly Miao, the Chief Marketing Officer at SHEIN.

SHEIN has been involved in trademark disputes with multiple established brands including Dr. Martens, Levi's, and Ralph Lauren

In 2020, Airwair International Limited, the owner of the Dr. Martens footwear brand, filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Shein for mass producing and selling counterfeit Dr. Martens boots under the name "Martin boots".

The Financial Times noted that it was not the first time Shein was involved in a trademark dispute as it had previously been sued by Levi Strauss in 2018 for copying its "Arcuate" stitching patterns. Nonetheless, the case was settled out of court.

Other well-known brands such as Ralph Lauren, Stussy, and Deckers Outdoor Corporation (owner of the UGGS footwear brand) followed suit and filed copyright infringement complaints against Shein for stolen designs.

According to The Fashion Law, Ralph Lauren accused Shein's parent organization, Zoetop Business Company, of "willful and deliberate infringement" for copying trademarks on its clothes that were "substantially indistinguishable and/or confusingly similar to one or more of Ralph Lauren's marks."

However, such disputes are not unheard of in the fast fashion world and are not limited to Shein. Notable brands such as Zara, H&M, Forever 21, and Rue21 have been involved in similar cases of copyright and trademark breaches.

SHEIN is "infamous" for stealing designs from independent and small-time designer brands

Apart from imitating designs from established brands, Shein has also been accused of stealing designs from small and independent designers. In 2018, the Los Angeles-based independent brand Valfré took legal action against Shein for selling clothes with identical artwork.

Ilse Valfre's design Vs. SheIn's design

The creator of the brand, Ilse Valfre, told that she was notified of the intellectual theft by her customers who "sent [her] photos of the identical copies of [her] product on Shein through Instagram and email". She also addressed the issue in a statement, writing:

"First and foremost, Valfré has always been an art brand, it grew out of my love of comics and illustrating. To see my artwork being re-used by yet another fast fashion company shows how little they care about artistic vision and meaningful designs."

Likewise, in May 2021, Shein was involved in another incident of design theft with a local earring brand, Kikay. The brand's co-founder Quinn Jones told The Financial Times that Shein is "infamous" for stealing designs from small brands. He added:

"It's on Shein to do the due diligence because until they stop running their business this way, they're just continually hurting small businesses and people trying to support themselves."

In this case, Shein apologized to Kikay for the mishap and removed the product from their site. reported that Shein has also imitated designs from other indie sustainable brands such as Transformations by Tracy, Run & Follow, and Flaws of Couture.

Read Next: Why is SHEIN so cheap? Inside Shein's controversial culture

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Is SHEIN bad? Unmasking the unethical business practices of the fashion brand - OkayBliss

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Shein entered the fast fashion market as a price-inclusive and size-inclusive brand whose clothing boasted a diverse range of sizes at affordable prices. The brand's growth was evident as Bloomberg valued it at $100 billion in April 2022 - more than the combined worth of its rivals H&M and Zara.

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Angry protests at world's biggest iPhone factory

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Angry protests at world's biggest iPhone factory

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-63725812

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In late October many workers fled the plant amid rising Covid cases and allegations of poor treatment of staff, their escape captured on social media as they rode lorries back to their hometowns elsewhere in the central Chinese province.

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China Covid: Angry protests at giant iPhone factory in Zhengzhou

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In late October many workers fled the plant amid rising Covid cases and allegations of poor treatment of staff, their escape captured on social media as they rode lorries back to their hometowns elsewhere in the central Chinese province.

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Made in Bangladesh: The Unethical Treatment of Sweatshop Workers

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Made in Bangladesh: The Unethical Treatment of Sweatshop Workers

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Japanese Management Accounting and recent changes of target costing at Toyota

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Japanese Management Accounting and recent changes of target costing at Toyota

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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=a108134e-94c1-4674-b56c-3a0653d7995d

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Laura Rude-Barbato, mother of three children, and Athena Hohenberg, mother of a 4-year-old, filed a class action false advertising lawsuit in a California federal court against Ferrero U.S.A., Inc., the maker of Nutella. Plaintiffs alleged that Ferrero falsely advertises Nutella as nutritional when in reality it is no healthier than a candy bar.

Plaintiffs Marnie Glover and Jayme Kaczmarek filed similar class action lawsuits - later consolidated - in federal court in New Jersey. Ferrero recently agreed to settle both lawsuits under separate agreements, subject to final court approval in July.

Plaintiffs in the California action alleged that for many years "Ferrero has been running television and print ads, primarily in Europe, suggesting Nutella is nutritious, an appropriate breakfast food, and that it promotes children's healthy growth and development." Plaintiffs also alleged that "Ferrero has invaded the United States with the same misleading advertising strategies, played out on the labels of Nutella, in television commercials and print ads, on the Web and elsewhere, designed to and effective in persuading American consumers that Nutella is an appropriate breakfast food, and a healthy alternative to things like jelly and syrup."

According to plaintiffs, Ferrero's allegedly deceptive advertising campaign is misleading "because Nutella, far from being nutritious and part of a 'balanced breakfast,' in fact contains about 70% saturated fat and highly processed sugar by weight. . .[is]. . .made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. . .and therefore contained toxic artificial trans fat. . .substances [that] contribute significantly to a number of serious diseases, and cause thousands of otherwise preventable deaths each year." Plaintiffs in the New Jersey action alleged similar claims against the company.

The challenged commercials show a mother feeding Nutella to her child while claiming it is a healthy, balanced breakfast. Similarly, Nutella's labeling portrayed the spread as a healthy breakfast by showing fresh fruit, whole wheat bread, and orange juice.

California plaintiffs filed their class action lawsuit asserting claims for false advertising, unfair competition, violation of California's Consumer Legal Remedies Act, breach of express warranty, and breach of implied warranty of merchantability. Plaintiffs sought "an order compelling Ferrero to (1) cease marketing its products using the misleading tactics [alleged in the lawsuit], (2) conduct a corrective advertising campaign, (3) restore the amounts by which Ferrero was unjustly enriched, and (4) destroy all misleading and deceptive materials and products." Plaintiffs also demanded that Ferrero admit that Nutella was not any healthier than a candy bar. The New Jersey plaintiffs alleged violations of New Jersey's Consumer Fraud Act, as well as claims for breach of express and implied warranties.

On January 10, 2012, the parties in the New Jersey action filed a class action settlement agreement resolving their dispute. Similarly, on January 19, 2012, the parties in the California action also filed a class action settlement agreement with the federal court in California. Despite submitting to the terms of these settlements, which Ferrero says it did only to avoid costly litigation, the company denies any wrongdoing or liability, and continues to stand by its products and advertising campaigns. Ferrero agreed under the settlements to pay over $3 million to consumers and up to another $3.9 million in fees and costs. Ferrero also agreed to (1) include Nutrition Keys on the front panel of Nutella "indicating quantity/content of Calories, Saturated Fat, Sodium and Sugar in Nutella based on the serving size"; (2) modify the back panel of Nutella's label "by removing the phrase 'An example of a tasty yet balanced breakfast' and replace it with 'Turn a balanced breakfast into a tasty one'"; (3) replace and not air the television commercial at issue; and (4) modify Nutella's Web site by removing certain information, and replacing the phrases "Nutella and Nutrition," "About Nutella," and "Breakfast Builder" with new language.

The federal court in California issued an order preliminarily approving the settlement on January 23, 2012, and scheduled a fairness hearing for July 9, 2012, for final approval of the settlement. On February 3, 2012, the court in New Jersey also issued an order preliminarily approving the settlement in that action, scheduling its final fairness hearing for July 9.

To read copies of the court documents in both actions, click here.

Why it matters: Food retailers must carefully and accurately label and advertise the nutritional value of their food products to avoid class action litigation. Retailers must have substantiation for their health claims and be sure not to oversell the nutritional value of their products. Otherwise, savvy class counsel with sympathetic clients trolling for an easy payday may bring costly lawsuits for allegedly deceptive advertisements or product labeling that could have easily been avoided.

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Nutella maker settles class actions asserting false advertising claims

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Laura Rude-Barbato, mother of three children, and Athena Hohenberg, mother of a 4-year-old, filed a class action false advertising lawsuit in a California federal court against Ferrero U.S.A., Inc., the maker of Nutella. Plaintiffs alleged that Ferrero falsely advertises Nutella as nutritional when in reality it is no healthier than a candy bar.

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https://www.npr.org/2022/11/18/1137204271/qatar-world-cup-controversies

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Nestlé: The Most Evil Business in the World

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Unethical Marketing Destroys Customer Experience And Brand Reputation

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Unethical Marketing Destroys Customer Experience And Brand Reputation

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No one likes a con artist. Over time - if not right away - customers know when they are being "had." It can range from slightly exaggerated claims to blatant lies - and everything in between. This is unethical marketing.

On the other hand, ethical marketing is about truth and transparency. A study by Label Insight found that 94% of consumers are likely to be loyal to a brand that offers complete transparency. Furthermore, 73% of consumers say they would be willing to pay more for a product from such a brand.

This brings us to MarketingCharts, a resource for marketing information and data. It tracks trends related to all things - as the name implies - marketing. It recently shared an infographic illustrating "What Best Describes Unethical Marketing." The information came from a survey of 400 marketers in the U.S. and the UK about what they consider to be unethical marketing strategies. Here are some of the more popular answers:

· 69% said marketing that exaggerates or distorts the truth is unethical.

· 64% said marketing that targets and exploits vulnerable groups is unethical.

· 62% said marketing that conceals important information is unethical.

· 58% said marketing that is shaming is unethical.

· 56% said marketing that uses unrealistic or altered images is unethical.

· 56% said marketing that induces anxiety or fear is unethical.

· 43% said high pressure sales tactics are unethical.

There were others, but you get the idea. On the front end, if consumers recognize that they are on the receiving end of these unethical practices, they will take their business elsewhere. On the back end, after purchasing a product, if the consumer experiences any of these unethical tactics, he or she will feel duped - and may share the story on social media. These customers may tell their friends. Regardless, the experience has been ruined. The chance of repeat business from this customer is questionable, if not doubtful or ruined completely.

For example, plenty of companies have hidden fees - banks, utility companies, cable and internet companies, and more. They advertise a price but when the customer receives the bill, there are, in addition to the price, taxes and other fees the customer doesn't understand. And when these are explained, the customer often disagrees with them.

I recently checked out of a hotel and was surprised by the daily "resort fee" that was on the bill. I wasn't informed about this when I checked in. Maybe I missed it in the "fine print" when I made my reservation. They said the resort fee included free use of the internet and access to the gym. I've stayed in much more reasonably priced hotels that didn't charge a "resort fee" for those amenities.

Here's another example. I once worked with a printer who told me my project would be done by a certain date. When he missed the delivery date - and not by just a little bit - he said that if he had told me how long the project was actually going to take, I probably would have found someone else to print it. He was right. I found a new printer for my next project.

Part of a good customer experience is the confidence and trust the customer has in the company. Exaggerating or distorting the truth, even slightly, is a lie. Total transparency and honesty are expected - even assumed - by most. The good news is that the consumer has a way to fight back against unethical marketing. Today, the customer's voice is louder than ever thanks to social media. Cross the customer, and the brand may find itself in a public relations nightmare.

There's an old saying: buyer beware. Today's version of that saying may be the reverse: company beware. If you cross your customers, they may walk. Even worse, they may talk. When they talk, it may be to more than just a few friends. It could be the next viral message that is seen by tens of thousands, or even millions. Transparency is key. Your reputation is your brand. Don't destroy it with unethical marketing messages and customer experiences that skirt the line of good taste and ethics.

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Unethical Marketing Destroys Customer Experience And Brand Reputation

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No one likes a con artist. Over time - if not right away - customers know when they are being "had." It can range from slightly exaggerated claims to blatant lies - and everything in between. This is unethical marketing. On the other hand, ethical marketing is about truth and transparency.

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Tesco payment manipulation for suplayers

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Tesco payment manipulation for suplayers

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Business correspondent, BBC News

Tesco "knowingly delayed paying money to suppliers in order to improve its own financial position", the supermarket ombudsman has found.

The Grocery Code Adjudicator, Christine Tacon, said the supermarket seriously breached the industry's code of conduct to protect grocery suppliers.

She found extensive evidence that Tesco had acted unreasonably when delaying payments to suppliers.

Tesco apologised for the practices, saying they had harmed its suppliers.

Tesco remains under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) into alleged accounting irregularities.

The grocery ombudsman's investigation began in February 2015 following the revelation of an accounting scandal at Tesco.

In September 2014 a £250m black hole was found in the company's accounts - a sum later revised up to £326m - because of the way Tesco booked income from its suppliers.

Ms Tacon said: "I received internal Tesco emails which encouraged Tesco staff to seek agreement from suppliers to the deferral of payments due to them in order to temporarily help Tesco margins.

"I also saw internal Tesco emails suggesting that payments should not be made to suppliers before a certain date in order to avoid underperformance against a forecasted margin."

The SFO investigation began in October 2014.

Laith Khalaf, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said stockbrokers believed Tesco would be hit with a substantial fine from the SFO.

"Cantor Fitzgerald are suggesting Tesco could face financial penalties in excess of £500m for its accounting misdemeanours, pending the publication of the forthcoming Serious Fraud Office investigation," he said.

"The company is not out of the woods yet, but has at least started on the slow path of recovery."

Chief executive Dave Lewis said Tesco had changed substantially: "Over the last year we have worked hard to make Tesco a very different company from the one described in the GCA report.

"The absolute focus on operating margin had damaging consequences for the business and our relationship with suppliers. This has now been fundamentally changed."

Mr Lewis said that material changes were made in January 2015 that addressed the majority of the historic practices referred to in the report: "We have changed the way we work by reorganising, refocusing and retraining our teams and we will continue to work in a way which is consistent with the recommendations."

Shares in Tesco closed 2.3% higher at 159.3p in London. The stock has fallen almost 32% over the past 12 months.

Ms Tacon's investigation found that even when a debt had been acknowledged by Tesco, on occasions the money was not paid for more than 12 months, with some amounts taking two years to be repaid, the investigation found.

One example involved a supplier owed a multi-million pound sum as a result of price changes being incorrectly applied to Tesco systems over a long period. This was eventually paid back by Tesco more than two years after the incorrect charging had begun.

"I found that delay in payments was a widespread issue that affected a broad range of Tesco suppliers on a significant scale," Ms Tacon said.

"The delay in payments had a financial impact on suppliers, was an administrative burden to resolve, detracted from the time available to develop customer focussed business and had a detrimental impact on some suppliers' relationships with Tesco."

This is the first investigation by Ms Tacon since the creation of her role as Grocery Code Adjudicator.

No fines

Her investigation covers the period from June 2013 until February last year. Tesco provided her team with the findings of its own review, specifically aimed at finding practices which might be in breach of the code.

Ms Tacon cannot fine Tesco as she only acquired this power after the investigation began.

The adjudicator examined three key areas: the length of time taken to pay money due to suppliers, unilateral deductions from suppliers and an intentional delay in paying suppliers in some cases.

On the issue of payment for better shelf positions or space for products, Ms Tacon found no evidence that Tesco breached this part of the grocery code.

However, she found evidence of a range of practices that she would like examined.

Her five recommendations include stopping Tesco from making unilateral deductions from money owed for goods supplied. Suppliers will be given 30 days to challenge any proposed deduction and if challenged Tesco will not be permitted to make the deduction.

Ms Tacon has set a four-week deadline for Tesco to say how it plans to implement her recommendations. She will then require regular reports from the company on its progress.

Business minister Anna Soubry said the adjudicator had conducted a thorough and fearless investigation into a "scandalous situation".

"Tesco say they have changed their practices and I very much hope they have. Paying smaller suppliers on time and treating them fairly is good and proper business. Late payment can hinder the growth and productivity of these suppliers and can threaten their existence," she said.

The sharp fall in Tesco's share price that resulted from the accounting scandal has prompted legal action by a number of institutions and other investors in the retailer.

Stewarts Law said on Tuesday it will be contacting Tesco ahead of starting formal legal action for the group, which had suffered losses running into the tens of millions of pounds following the revelation of the accounting scandal.

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

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Tesco knowingly delayed payments to suppliers

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Business correspondent, BBC News Tesco "knowingly delayed paying money to suppliers in order to improve its own financial position", the supermarket ombudsman has found. The Grocery Code Adjudicator, Christine Tacon, said the supermarket seriously breached the industry's code of conduct to protect grocery suppliers.

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How ethical is Missguided Ltd? | Ethical Consumer

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Our ethical ratings and stories for Missguided Ltd | Ownership structure and associated brands | Related shopping guides.

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Suppliers went to Missguided headquarters demanding their overdue payments

Last autumn the company was saved in a takeover by investment firm Alteri

A winding-up petition was issued on May 10 by clothing suppliers JKS Fashions

Fast fashion has been dealt its latest blow with retail giant Missguided teetering on the brink of collapse after the industry was slammed for its 'slavery' production lines and huge environmental waste.

The online fashion brand is understood to be lining up administrators from Teneo for a potential insolvency process after police were called to their Manchester headquarters this week.

On May 10, a winding-up petition was issued against Missguided by clothing supplier JKS Fashions. Creditors have applied for compulsory liquidation and a Manchester court is due to hear the case in July.

Three suppliers for Missguided warned they are at risk of going bankrupt due to outstanding payments.

Fast fashion brands have been in the spotlight for many controversies since the Covid-19 pandemic, and have also faced profit slumps.

Boohoo, a rival of Missguided, saw their shares plunge by £1.3billion in July 2020 after Priti Patel asked the National Crime Agency to investigate the fast fashion chain over claims they were using an alleged £3.50-an-hour sweatshop in Leicester to product cheap clothing during the pandemic.

The Home Secretary stepped in to probe the issues amid claims the factories were operating without social distancing measures in place with workers not all wearing masks.

Ms Patel called the allegations 'truly appalling' and vowed to clamp down on modern slavery in Britain.

The clothing produced by the fast fashion industry also produces more than 92 million tonnes of waste a year, and consumes around 1.5trillion tonnes of water annually.

A study found that fast fashion is helping to kill the planet, and British shoppers were at the forefront of the waste with more garments bought per person per year in the UK than anywhere else in Europe with an astonishing 59 lbs worth in weight.

Developing countries bear most of the brunt of this excess waste.

The UK's waste is more than double the global average of 29 lbs - and almost twice as much as fashion-conscious Italian consumers, who purchase an average of 32 lbs each. Germans are the second most wasteful, buying 37 lbs per person.

Suppliers turned up at Missguided's offices earlier this week demanding overdue payments be made according to reports by The i.

Last autumn, the company was saved in a takeover by investment firm Alteri which announced redundancies in December as part of a turnaround plan.

In the past few weeks, Alteri has been searching for companies to buy the business, with JD Sports and Shein amongst those expected to make a bid.

Alteri bought a 50 per cent stake in Missguided last autumn for £53million and since the start of 2022, has been pumping cash into the fast fashion business.

But last month, Missguided confirmed it was looking for a potential new buyer as founder Nitin Passi stepped down as chief executive.

It hired Teneo to assess strategic options at the time and it is now understood that the corporate advisory firm would oversee any insolvency process.

A spokesman for the company said: 'Missguided is aware of the action being taken by certain creditors of the company in recent days, and is working urgently to address this.

'A process to identify a buyer with the required resources and platform for the business commenced in April and we expect to a provide an update on progress of that process in the near future.'

Before the pandemic, Asos was valued higher on the stock market than Marks & Spencer, but by October 2021, their market cap sat at £2.4billion compared to just under £3.4billion for M&S.

Fashion is now the second largest industrial polluter after aviation, accounting for 10 per cent or more than 1.7 billion tons of global carbon dioxide emissions annually.

Textile treatment and dyeing are responsible for a third of the micro-plastic pollution in the oceans - a colossal 190,000 tons per year.

Global clothing production has roughly doubled in 15 years. Brits are spending an estimated £2.7 billion on items we wear only once.

'The average garment use-time has, consequently, decreased by 36 percent compared with 2005,' said paper author and design researcher Kirsi Niinimaki of the Aalto University in Finland.

'There is evidence in the UK, Norway and elsewhere suggesting disposal after little use, especially for impulse purchases.'

Fast fashion is based on low-priced, trend-led products - and relies on 'recurring consumption'. This practice represents a 'key environmental threat', Professor Niinimaki said.

Constant turnovers in wardrobe contents has to stop - and be replaced by a new trend dubbed 'slow style', the researchers argued.

Shoes, dresses, shirts, trousers and coats need to last for years - instead of months - to combat climate change, they added.

Shoppers will also have to pay more, with the 'environmental impact' of their purchases reflected in the prices, the team concluded.

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Is this the end for fast fashion? Online giant Missguided facing axe

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Suppliers went to Missguided headquarters demanding their overdue payments Last autumn the company was saved in a takeover by investment firm Alteri A winding-up petition was issued on May 10 by clothing suppliers JKS Fashions Fast fashion has been dealt its latest blow with retail giant Missguided teetering on the brink of collapse after the industry was slammed for its 'slavery' production lines and huge environmental waste.

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Crammed into squalid factories to produce clothes for the West on just 20p a day, the children forced to work in horrific unregulated workshops of Bangladesh

Photographer Claudio Montesano Casillas went inside sweatshops in Keraniganj, Dhaka

Due to workload kids eat, shower and sleep inside the factories with just half a day off a week

Estimated 7,000 informal factories in Bangladesh are not subject to safety controls

Photographs show buildings without emergency exits, fire safety plans or extinguishers

Nearby Rana Plaza factory burned down in 2013 killing 1,100 people

These are the photographs that show the grim reality for thousands of children in Bangladesh who are forced to work long crippling hours stitching labels into clothes.

Despite improved safety standards in formal factories, unregistered sweatshops like these are not inspected.

While the factories mainly make clothes for the local and Indian market, they also supply well-known and established international brands through subcontracts, which making it difficult for companies to know exactly where all their clothes are coming from.

Photographer Claudio Montesano Casillas has revealed both the shocking lack of safety controls inside some of Bangladesh's unregulated clothes factories as well as the grueling routines of the children that work there

Casillas visited the factories at first by accident as part of an 'Old Dhaka' tour, but was fascinated by the conditions.

An informal factory could comprise of a room with 15 sewing machines and are often without emergency exits, fire safety plans or extinguishers as they are not subjected to the nation wide fire and buildings safety assessments.

The children, who don't have time to go to school, are tasked with a huge range of jobs from embroidery and sticking on sequins to dyeing fabric and machine cleaning.

He said: 'Inside these factories garment workers work six to six and a half days per week from dawn till far after dusk for a minimum wage. The workers from these factories sleep inside or rent rooms next to these factories.

'They come from villages to cities seeking for employment and dreaming of a better life,' he said.

It is thought there are about a million children aged 10 to 14 working as child labourers in Bangladesh, according to UNICEF - but the number is far higher when the age band is expanded.

But they end up scraping a living - that doesn't much exist outside of work. In one photograph, Casillas shot boys showering at the factory, which is where they eat, wash and sleep due to workload.

Bangladesh says 80 per cent of formal factories are safe

Bangladesh's garment industry is the second-largest exporters of textiles after China and has a notorious fire safety record.

More than 1,100 people died at a garment factory fire outside Dhaka in 2013 in one of Bangladesh's worst industrial accidents.

And the working conditions and facilities are much worse than most formal export oriented factories - which are inspected regularly.

Children and adult employees earn as little as £6.50 a month, or less than 800 Bangladeshi taka. At best, they can expect 1,950 taka (£16) .

That is significantly less than the 5,300 taka (£41.80) minimum wage for entry level garment workers set by the government in the wake of the Rana Plaza disaster, in which more than 1,100 people died, mostly women.

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Inside the horrific unregulated sweatshops of Bangladesh

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Photographer Claudio Montesano Casillas went inside sweatshops in Keraniganj, Dhaka Due to workload kids eat, shower and sleep inside the factories with just half a day off a week Estimated 7,000 informal factories in Bangladesh are not subject to safety controls Photographs show buildings without emergency exits, fire safety plans or extinguishers Nearby Rana Plaza factory burned down in 2013 killing 1,100 people These are the photographs that show the grim reality for thousands of children in Bangladesh who are forced to work long crippling hours stitching labels into clothes.

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25 Most unethical clothing companies in 2022

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25 Most unethical clothing companies in 2022

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25 Most Unethical Clothing Companies in 2023

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Let's be real for a moment: Fast fashion is wreaking havoc on the planet. Multinational corporations are chiefly focused on making executives and shareholders rich - and they are exploiting...

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How solar farms in space might beam electricity to Earth

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How solar farms in space might beam electricity to Earth

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By Emma Woollacott Technology of Business reporter

Solar panels in space would be able to collect sunlight unfiltered by the atmosphere

It sounds too good to be true: a plan to harvest solar energy from space and beam it down to Earth using microwaves.

But it's something that could be happening as soon as 2035, according to Martin Soltau, the co-chairman at Space Energy Initiative (SEI) - a collaboration of industry and academics.

SEI is working on a project called Cassiopeia, which plans to place a constellation of very large satellites in a high Earth orbit.

Once deployed the satellites would harvest solar energy and beam it back down to Earth.

He says the potential is almost unlimited.

"In theory it could supply all of the world's energy in 2050," he says.

"There's sufficient room in orbit for the solar power satellites, and the Sun's supply of energy is vast. A narrow strip around geostationary Earth orbit receives more than 100 times the amount of energy per year than all of humanity is forecast to use in 2050," Mr Soltau says.

Earlier this year, the UK government announced £3m in funding for space-based solar power (SBSP) projects, following an engineering study conducted by consultancy Frazer-Nash that concluded the technology was viable.

SEI is hoping to get a big chunk of that money.

Its satellites would be made up of hundreds of thousands of small, identical modules produced in factories on Earth, and assembled in space by autonomous robots, who would also carry out servicing and maintenance.

The solar energy collected by the satellites would be converted into high frequency radio waves and beamed to a rectifying antenna on Earth, which would convert the radio waves into electricity.

Each satellite could deliver around 2GW of power into the grid, making each satellite comparable in power output to a nuclear power station.

Here on Earth, sunlight is diffused by the atmosphere, but in space it comes directly from the sun without interference.

So a space-based solar panel can collect a lot more energy than a similar sized one on Earth.

Similar projects are under development elsewhere.

The Space Energy Initiative has designed satellites to collect solar energy in space

In the US, for example, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is working on some of the critical technologies needed for such a system, in a project known as Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research (SSPIDR).

These include improving solar cell efficiencies, solar-to-radio frequency conversion and beam forming, as well as reducing the large temperature fluctuations on spacecraft components and creating designs for deployable structures.

Late last year, the team successfully demonstrated new components for a so-called sandwich tile, which is used to convert solar energy into radio waves.

So is it safe to beam energy back to earth?

In a 2009 report Nasa scientist James Logan looked at the safety issues. In his report, he said the intensity of a typical space-based microwave beam would reach 30mW/cm2 at the centre - around 3% as strong as a typical counter-top microwave oven.

At its perimeter, the energy from the beam would be around the same as the amount of radiation that current standards allow to leak up to 5cm away from a microwave oven.

Although birds might be able to detect the microwave beams, the beams could "never even come close to 'cooking' birds in flight", the report said.

More technology of business:

While many of the biggest hurdles have already been cleared, there are still potential problems.

"My personal take on this is that we like to think the technology is there, but it's not quite ready yet for us to embark on a project of such complexity," says Dr Jovana Radulovic, a thermodynamics lecturer at the University of Portsmouth, who specialises in renewable energy systems.

She makes the point that launching a large number of solar panels into space will be expensive and, given that any project could require hundreds of launches, it would generate a lot of carbon dioxide.

But there is cause for optimism. An environmental analysis of the Cassiopeia project by the University of Strathclyde has concluded that overall, including launch, the carbon footprint could be as little as half that of terrestrial solar, at about 24g of CO2 per kilowatt-hour.

Space-based solar farms could potentially supply all the world's energy, says Martin Soltau

Meanwhile, says Mr Soltau, the economic case is improving all the time.

"The cost of launch has fallen by 90% and is continuing to fall, and this has been game-changing for the economics," he says.

"Secondly, there have been some real advances in the design of solar power satellites, so that they're much more modular, which provides resilience and reduced production costs. Thirdly, we've got real advances in robotics and autonomous systems."

With only limited funding from the UK government, SEI is hoping to attract private investment for some of the technologies involved. However, warns Dr Radulovic, the proposed timeline may be over-optimistic.

"I think with significant investment and focused effort into this area, there's no reason why we couldn't have the system up and running as smaller pilot projects in the foreseeable future," she says.

"But something on a large scale - we are talking about kilometres of solar arrays - would take a substantially longer time."

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How solar farms in space might beam electricity to Earth

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The UK government is supporting projects to put solar panels in space and beam energy back to Earth.

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Why is Nestlé The Most Evil and Hated Company in the World?

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Why is Nestlé The Most Evil and Hated Company in the World?

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Why is Nestlé The Most Evil and Hated Company in the World?

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Whenever there is a discussion about the most corrupt and unethical corporations in the world, Nestlé always tops the list. Nestléis one of the biggest companies in the world, with hundreds of products being sold all around the globe. It is no surprise that Nestlé dominates the processed and packaged food market.

Nestléhas around 339,000 people working for it in its 447 factories in 189 countries. But why is a company with such a huge influence and market called evil and unethical? Let's start with its history. Nestlébegan its journey in Switzerland in 1867 and was founded by Henry Nestle. He wanted to start his own line of milk-based baby formula for babies who were unable to receive breast milk due to a variety of factors.

Even if the formula is only dried milk, vegetable oils, and sugars, the key factor is the company's marketing, which has led to people feeling that the formula is essential for their babies' growth and wellness and that breast milk is insufficient. You can see how misguided this is because most medical experts agree that breast milk, and only breast milk, is the greatest nourishment for infants.

The company is also facing numerous lawsuits for other frauds and unethical deeds it has committed. Despite this, the company continues to reign supreme, raking in billions of dollars every day. In this article, we will be discussing the reasons why Nestlé is the most hated corporation in the world.

Nestlé Infant Formula Scandal
Nestlé's Packaged Water
Nestlé's Use of Child Labours
Nestlé's Factory Waste Polluting The Environment

Nestlé Infant Formula Scandal

Nestlé controls approximately 2000 brands around the world, with its baby formula being the most popular. However, the company's product has a dreadful track record.

The company expanded its baby formula market in the 1970s and began advertising their baby formula as superior to breast milk, attempting to manipulate customers by spreading the narrative that their formula is beneficial for infants and provides all of the necessary nutrients that breast milk cannot. They even bribed medical specialists to testify on their behalf. This is so ethically terrible that no one can dispute it.

The ad campaigns encourage mothers to replace breast milk with baby formula. The most horrible thing Nestlé did was hire "saleswomen" in developing regions of Asia and Africa and send them to give medical advice to mothers and hand them free samples of the baby formula.

Under-educated mothers of underdeveloped countries believed the women as they were dressed as nurses. The free samples were weighed and packaged strategically to last just up to the day when the mothers get fully dependent on the formula and stop lactating themselves.

The company's horrible PR stunt led to thousands of infant deaths as the mothers were swapping Nestlé's baby formula for breast milk. This left the children deficient in the necessary nutrients that breast milk provides.

The worst impact was in the underdeveloped regions of the world, where mothers were diluting the formula with more water to save money and were unknowingly starving the children. Breast milk provides all the elements vital for the development of the baby and its immune system. With a lack of natural milk, the babies from underdeveloped regions with no access to clean water suffered from many diseases and died.

It resulted in thousands of deaths and the formula was even named 'Baby Killer' by the media. When the situation got worse and people started getting mad about this and protesting, the World Health Organisation in 1981, passed an International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes. But the damage was done. The company tried to clear their name and started mentioning in their advertisements that breast milk cannot be replaced.

Even though the company is trying their best to keep their baby formula's image squeaky clean after the big "Baby Killer" blunder, by promoting ads encouraging mothers and talking about the benefits of natural milk. They are still pushing the baby formula and bribing health workers in countries with lenient laws and still getting away with it.

Nestlé's Packaged Water

Nestlé is also one of the leading producers of packaged water bottles. The bottles are packed with single-use plastic, leading to pollution of the environment and killing millions of sea creatures. According to several reports, during beach cleanings, most of the plastic bottles collected are Nestlé brands, which proves that Nestlé is one of the major contributors to water and land pollution. And it's not just the plastic bottles that harm the environment; the water-filled in the plastic bottles harms the environment equally, if not more.

No matter what fancy pictures of springs, lakes and mountains the labels have, almost all the water in the packaged bottles of Nestlé is from the ground. Nestlé is blamed for exploiting the groundwater of the areas where the public needs it the most and selling it for their profit. 4

It is clearly unethical and dangerous for the environment. The company is also guilty of taking water sources from the countries where people are forced to drink dirty water as their clean water sources are acquired by Nestlé for their bottled water plants.

In 2013, the corporation began diverting abundant clean water from Pakistani locals and using it for their factories, leaving the population with no other choice except to drink sewage and sludge water. Not just in Pakistan; the evil corporation is doing the same thing in numerous undeveloped countries with abundant natural resources that Nestlé can readily exploit due to tax regulations.

Nestlé's Use of Child Labours

Nestlé sells a wide range of chocolate goods made with cocoa obtained through forced and trafficked child labour. During the 2000s, the company, along with several other chocolate companies, was accused of using child labour to produce cocoa for their chocolates. Nestlé claimed to get rid of this problem and create ethically correct products by the year 2005. But it has not done much regarding the issue.

The company claims that most of the unpaid child labour involved in chocolate production is done by children working on their parents' farms. Because the farmers cannot afford school and need all the working hands possible to afford food, shelter, and other necessities. However, the reasoning is absurd because Nestlé is the one that pays them, thus they should do something to help the farmers who work for them. They should offer them assistance and raise the amount of money they pay to the farmers.

They tried to improve their image by including 'fair trade' marks on their labels to showcase that the chocolate bars are made with ethically sourced cocoa, but it didn't solve the main problem, which was illegal child labour. They still have farms and plants where forced child labour is taking place, but they haven't done much about it and do not provide any proof that the products sold are ethically made.

Nestlé's Factory Waste Polluting The Environment

As discussed earlier, the company's plastic water bottles are the major culprits of water and land pollution. The single-use of plastic is the main reason for littering and water pollution. The company has claimed to replace all their single-use plastic bottles with recyclable ones. But there is no progress in that department yet.

Not only are the plastic bottles damaging the environment; the waste generated by the company's factories is causing irreversible damage to the environment and marine life. In 2020, a Nestlé milk powder plant in France released its biological waste in the local water bodies and killed around 3 metric tons of fish. And even after making many colossal promises and claims for reducing plastic waste and use, the company has increased its share of reusable, recyclable plastic by only 1%.

According to the latest reports from the Ellen McArthur Foundation, the company has done nothing and made zero progress in the environmentally safe sector and has not addressed the waste they are generating at all.

Conclusion

Nestlé is a multibillion-dollar corporation with complete market dominance. Despite the fact that they have engaged in several unethical and illegal activities, they are able to get away with it because of their wealth, power, and influence in lawmaking as a large corporation.

The brand has a good marketing game and the ability to easily influence its consumer base through advertisements with bold claims and promises, but the reality is far worse than imagination. That is why the company has been dubbed "the most evil company of all time."

FAQs

Why Nestlé is an unethical company?

Nestle is known as an unethical company because of the use of child labour and manufacturing plastic bottles that are damaging the environment.

Does Nestlé have a bad reputation?

Yes, Nestle is known for human trafficking, Child labour, and manipulating customers.

Why is Nestlé being boycotted?

Nestle was being boycotted because it manipulated uneducated mothers y selling its infant formula in poor countries leading to malnutrition.

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Why is Nestlé The Most Evil and Hated Company in the World?

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Whenever there is a discussion about the most corrupt and unethical corporations in the world, Nestlé always tops the list. Nestléis one of the biggest companies in the world, with hundreds of products being sold all around the globe. It is no surprise that Nestlé dominates the processed and packaged food market.

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https://youtu.be/IV3dnLzthDA

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The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History

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A quiet crisis is spreading through Amazon warehouses.

Data collected in workplace inspections indicates that Amazon's pace of work wildly increases the risk of injury for its more than 750,000 US warehouse workers. The risk of debilitating muscle and joint injuries is off the charts, workplace regulators have said.

Because these injuries build up over time, Amazon workers may not know they're at risk for months or years - but they can be left with a lifetime of pain.

Washington state has gone furthest in analyzing Amazon's injury crisis, thanks to the state workers' compensation system collecting some of the most detailed data on work-related muscle and joint injuries in the US.

Four Washington state inspections conducted from 2020 to 2022 found a " direct connection" between Amazon's pace of work and its high injury rates. The state's initial inspection was sparked by internal data published in 2020 by Reveal at the Center for Investigative Reporting, which indicated that nationwide, Amazon warehouse workers were twice as likely to get seriously hurt as workers in other warehouses. (Serious injuries are ones that keep workers from doing their usual jobs.)

The company's injury epidemic has also led to a federal workplace-safety investigation. Federal prosecutors this summer referred worker-safety complaints to the Department of Labor, which has inspected Amazon warehouses in five states.

Amazon has previously called the federal investigation "unfounded." The company has also taken issue with Washington state regulators' conclusions. Amazon's own analysis of data collected by the state's inspectors found substantially lower injury risks, an Amazon representative said in a statement.

Insider used the Washington regulators' data to identify four exceptionally hazardous jobs at Amazon warehouses and talked to four current and former Amazon employees from the Pacific Northwest who were injured doing that work.

This is the human cost of Amazon's push for speed.

'The military was hard, but it was nothing compared to Amazon'

When Mark Takakura, 32, started working at Amazon in September 2020, he knew he was in for hard work.

That was fine with him. Before working at Amazon, he'd been a US Army medic for four years.

What he didn't know was that he'd signed up for one of the most hazardous jobs at one of Amazon's most dangerous US facilities, according to data collected during workplace-safety inspections. That job was pulling pallets and carts loaded with hundreds of pounds of merchandise to different stations around the warehouse.

Two years later, the job has left him with what he and his doctor expect to be a lifetime of pain.

Takakura works at Amazon's fulfillment center in DuPont, Washington, about an hour's drive south of Seattle - one of the most dangerous Amazon fulfillment centers in the country, according to federal workplace-safety data. He enjoyed the camaraderie he found at the facility, which employs many veterans. And he tried hard to keep up with what he described as a grueling pace of work, moving quickly to keep other workers well-stocked with items to process.

Six months after Takakura started at DuPont, his back started to ache.

"It took months for that ache, for that sore, to become a stiffness," he said. He started having trouble twisting when he woke up in the morning. Then, last autumn, he was at work, reaching down to lift a 30-pound bag of dog food off the warehouse floor, he said, when he felt "a jolt, a slip," and a sudden, needling pain.

X-rays show degeneration in Takakura's mid-spine, most likely exacerbated by pulling packages around the warehouse at least 40 hours a week, and sometimes up to 60 hours during peak season, Takakura's doctor confirmed to Insider.

Amazon said the individual injuries described in this article don't "represent the experience of our more than 750,000 front-line employees."

"We take the health and safety of our team seriously and the allegations raised are being investigated," an Amazon representative, Lisa Levandowski, said in a statement. "While we aren't perfect, this reporting is extremely selective."

After his injury, Takakura began struggling to keep up with Amazon's productivity expectations. He received a verbal warning from his manager that his performance was subpar.

"They've told us numerous times, if you need to slow down to be safe, then do it," Takakura said. "But that's not the case." If he were to slow down to protect his back, he said, managers "come up to us and mention: 'You guys need to start picking up. What can we do to improve productivity?'"

"It's no secret that there are a lot of double standards," he said.

Even after nearly a year of chiropractic visits and physical and massage therapy, Takakura's back pain hasn't totally subsided. At this point, he's resigned himself to a lifetime of managing the injury, he said.

"Me and my veteran buddies always say, the military was hard, but it was nothing compared to Amazon," Takakura said.

Takakura's injury is the most common kind of workplace injury at Amazon warehouses. Called a musculoskeletal disorder, it encompasses many kinds of muscle and joint damage caused by repetitive motion and overuse. Tendonitis, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and hernias are all types of musculoskeletal disorders.

Amazon has said such injuries account for roughly 40% of workplace injuries at its facilities.

Musculoskeletal injuries are a major driver of Amazon's above-industry-average injury rates: While Amazon workers are twice as likely as non-Amazon warehouse workers to get hurt, per the federal data, they're four times as likely to incur a musculoskeletal disorder, Washington state data indicates.

These are serious injuries. At the DuPont warehouse, Amazon workers with such injuries took an average of 103 days to heal, Washington state found. Workers' compensation payouts to Amazon workers with musculoskeletal disorders are often in the tens of thousands of dollars - some exceed $100,000, data from Washington state shows.

But because musculoskeletal disorders take months to develop and aren't as visible as other, more catastrophic injuries, even some Amazon workers write them off.

'They tell you that pain is going to be normal'

Tania Troit, 48, who also works in the DuPont warehouse, started noticing pain in her hip in March 2021.

Troit works largely on the ship dock, where workers move packages into and out of semitrailers. In one Amazon warehouse inspected by Washington state regulators, workers on the ship docks were expected to move so quickly that their injury risk exceeded a federal government safety model's ability to calculate it.

Troit, though, said Amazon's culture of working through discomfort convinced her to ignore the pain.

Amazon will "tell you that pain is going to be normal, just take ibuprofen, the pain will go away, you'll get used to it," Troit said. "I kept pushing, I'm competitive, I'm trying to get these numbers they're telling us about. By the end of the shift, I'm limping, I can barely walk, they're like, just take ibuprofen. So I did, thinking, this is normal, right?"

She didn't report her pain to her manager for six months.

"I kept doing it until I came to work one day and said, 'I need to find something else to do - otherwise I'm going to break myself,'" she said.

By that time, she could barely walk. Doctors told her the pain was inflammation from repetitive use, she said.

Workers say that Amazon's expectations that they meet productivity expectations - in Amazon parlance, "make rate" - or be fired can be so stressful that it makes injuries worse.

'They literally won't allow me to work at a safe speed'

Pennelloppe Allee, 53, said working to unbox merchandise at an Amazon warehouse near Portland, Oregon, made her hands go numb and tingle. She'd experienced similar pain while working as a barista nearly two decades ago, she said, but had been pain-free for years, until starting at Amazon.

Washington state regulators have singled out Allee's role, which Amazon calls "decant," as an especially hazardous occupation in Amazon's warehouses.

Allee tries to move more slowly to keep the pain under control, she said, but she's been written up twice for failing to make rate.

Washington state regulators found a " direct connection" between Amazon's expectation that warehouse employees "maintain a very high pace of work" - or else face discipline - and the epidemic of joint and muscle injuries at Amazon warehouses. The state slapped Amazon with four workplace-safety violations, ordering the company to better protect workers from musculoskeletal disorders. To do so, Amazon could allow workers to move slower and give them longer breaks, the state suggested.

In a statement, an Amazon representative said Washington regulators' conclusions were based on insufficient evidence. The person said that in some cases, the state extrapolated from small numbers of workers or a few minutes of observation. Amazon also said the regulators didn't factor in lulls during shifts.

In a statement, Washington regulators defended how they conducted their inspections.

A Washington State Department of Labor and Industries representative, Matt Ross, said the state's conclusions were "driven by the priority of keeping workers safe on the job and based on conditions on the ground when we visited these warehouse sites."

Amazon has also disputed the relationship between its productivity goals and injuries.

"It's a misconception that Amazon has quotas," Heather MacDougall, then Amazon's worker-safety chief, told the nonprofit National Safety Council in June. "We do not. But we are committed to ensuring that performance expectations and safety operations can coexist."

But a document written by Amazon attorneys in 2022 during a legal dispute with a Florida warehouse worker lays out how Amazon calculates its rates in detail.

Amazon sets rates at the 25th percentile of productivity across a five-week rolling average of workers who perform a specific role, the document said.

That means Amazon's policy is to increase warehouse productivity targets if the vast majority of facility employees are meeting them. And it means that Amazon expects 25% of its employees to fail to meet their productivity targets.

The purpose of setting a target is "to ensure efficient picking rates and overall productivity," the document said. "Efficient picking rates are essential to Amazon's business model and success, as it is a company modeled on the ability to get customers their purchased items quickly."

According to the document and a recent Amazon lawsuit against Washington state, the company also aims to discipline 3% to 5% of workers with the lowest productivity scores. Employees can be fired if they receive three written warnings over a six-month period.

In a statement, an Amazon representative said that comparing workers' productivity against their peers' was a fair way of charting employee performance. Amazon also uses productivity targets to recognize employees who are excelling, the person added.

"We assess performance based on safe and achievable expectations, accounting for tenure, peer performance, and adherence to safe work practices," the company wrote in a safety report published this year. Amazon fired less than 0.4% of its workers for failing to meet productivity goals last year, that report noted.

A review of hundreds of written warnings included in a wrongful-termination lawsuit between Amazon and a New York employee shows Amazon has often disciplined workers who're close to meeting Amazon's goals. The warnings, which encompass a period from 2018 to 2020, show workers received written disciplinary notices even if they were working at 80% to 90% of Amazon's productivity expectations.

"The stress of trying to make rate makes the pain worse," Allee said. "They literally won't allow me to work at a safe speed. I am getting in trouble, and my job is being threatened now, because they won't allow me to work at a speed that is safe for my body."

'That period was not a good time in my life'

Tekeshia Williams, 41, started working the night shift at Amazon during one of the hardest times in her life. Her teenage daughter had just been found to have brain cancer. Williams was spending her days shuttling her daughter to doctor's appointments, leaving no one to watch her then-4-year-old twins.

She needed extra money to pay for childcare, she said, and she'd heard good things about Amazon's flexible work schedule.

She'd also heard about Amazon's hard-driving, fast-paced culture. But the Army reservist figured she could handle it: She was strong from training to pass military fitness tests.

She started working at Amazon's DuPont warehouse in the autumn of 2020, largely in a role that required her to remove merchandise from conveyor belts and place it on tall, robot-propelled shelves, a job Amazon calls "stow."

Six months later, her shoulders were in so much pain that she couldn't hug her children or get dressed without her husband's assistance. Some days, she could barely hold the steering wheel to drive.

Her discomfort was "a 10," Williams said, so sharp and enduring that it was comparable to the pain of giving birth. "That period was not a good time in my life," she said.

Williams was out of work for more than 150 days because of her shoulder injury, internal Amazon injury logs show.

Now, her daughter's cancer is in remission, and Williams quit Amazon earlier this year. She'd exceeded her unpaid-time-off allowance, and she was worried Amazon would fire her. "I'd rather quit than be fired," she said. "I've never been fired from a job before."

Her pain has subsided but hasn't vanished after two rounds of physical therapy. "My worry is that this may be an ongoing issue for an indefinite amount of time," she said.

Amazon employees say Amazon is weaponizing its injury-prevention program against them

Amazon has said it's working to address its injury crisis, and it has set a goal of reducing musculoskeletal disorders at its facilities by 40% in the next three years. The company needs to become "Earth's Safest Place to Work," Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, said in his final letter to shareholders last year.

But so far Amazon has refused to allow workers to slow down - despite more than a decade of increasingly loud alarms from regulators and media outlets.

"We don't set unreasonable performance goals," Bezos said in last year's shareholder letter.

Last year, Amazon donated $12 million to the National Safety Council to "invent new ways to prevent" musculoskeletal disorders. The company has rolled out workplace-safety initiatives at its warehouses, including a job-rotation program, daily stretches, and training on how to properly lift and grip.

But three University of California at San Francisco ergonomists wrote this year that Amazon's safety interventions "will not reduce risk." The ergonomists were opposing Amazon's request that it not be required to address pace-of-work hazards while the company's appeal of Washington's violations was ongoing.

The company can't expect coaching to prevent injury when Amazon workers are "performing jobs that are inherently hazardous by design," Carisa Harris Adamson, Robert Harrison, and David Rempel wrote.

"The physical demands of the work processes" at Amazon warehouses "are so high" that only equipment changes, shorter workdays, or a slower pace of work will lower the risk of injury, the professors concluded.

Amazon's appeal of Washington's workplace-safety violations is likely to take years. This month, Amazon took the additional step of suing the state, challenging how the appeals board had handled its case. Attorneys for Amazon wrote that regulators' conclusions about Amazon's workplace safety were based on "faulty and incomplete data and unreasoned risk calculations."

'Dear Mr. Clark ...'

All four Amazon workers who spoke with Insider on the record said they felt compelled to try to convince the company to change its practices and protect workers, even at the risk that Amazon could retaliate against them.

Allee and Troit still work for Amazon, though Allee said she suspected she might be fired soon for failing to make rate. (Amazon said it's looking into the experiences of Allee and Troit.)

Takakura was fired from Amazon in mid-September for exceeding his allowance of unpaid time off. He had taken time off to wait for the results of a COVID-19 test in July - under a previous Amazon policy, those hours wouldn't have counted toward his time-off allowance, but Amazon changed its policy earlier this year. Takakura said he had been unaware.

An Amazon representative said Takakura received warnings about his negative time-off balance before being fired. Takakura said he had spoken with his manager about the negative balance and believed the company was working to resolve the issue, so he ignored the automated warnings he received.

"I gave two years to this company, got injured at this company, and for them to fire me like that? It's insulting," he said. He doesn't know where he'll work next.

Williams is working toward her MBA. For an English-composition class last term, Williams wrote several papers about Amazon's high injury rates. One was a letter to Amazon's warehouse CEO at the time, Dave Clark.

"Dear Mr. Clark," the letter began. "I would first like to say that I enjoyed working for your company. I had never had a job that afforded me so much flexibility when I needed last-minute time off."

It continued: "The one downside to working for the Amazon Warehouse in DuPont, Washington (BFI3) is the amount of injuries that I have sustained while I was employed there."

Williams says she knows how Amazon could reduce its injury rate: "Stop making people rush."

"But then, you know, I love my Prime," she said. "I love my one-day shipping. To get stuff out like that, people have to be moving really fast."

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Amazon workers say minor aches suddenly became debilitating as they raced to meet speed targets

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A quiet crisis is spreading through Amazon warehouses. Data collected in workplace inspections indicates that Amazon's pace of work wildly increases the risk of injury for its more than 750,000 US warehouse workers. The risk of debilitating muscle and joint injuries is off the charts, workplace regulators have said.

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https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2022-02-15/how-online-learning-is-reshaping-higher-education

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Two years ago, as COVID-19 caused campuses to close, some institutions were able to shift their students to already robust online learning programs. But many other colleges and universities scrambled to build online education curricula from scratch. Students and faculty often found themselves logging onto Zoom or other platforms for the first time, with little knowledge of how to navigate a new world of virtual learning.

"When the pandemic hit, it was a provocation, as well as a demand for innovation," said Caroline Levander, the vice president for global and digital strategy at Rice University in Houston, during a recent webinar on the future of online learning hosted by U.S. News & World Report.

While the changes were challenging for many, faculty members at Rice and elsewhere embraced the new opportunities that online learning offered. Levander shared an example of a Rice physics professor, Jason Hafner, who capitalized on the virtual environment to find compelling new ways to teach concepts to students.

"He had been innovating with online delivery in our non-credit offerings before the pandemic," said Levander. But once COVID-19 spread, Hafner moved beyond the walls of his classroom and took advantage of Rice's physical campus to enhance his teaching with video-recorded experiments conducted outside of normal class times. For example, in one lesson, he climbed atop a rock edifice in Rice's engineering quad to drop two equally sized spheres - one made of aluminum and the other of steel - to demonstrate that they would fall with the same acceleration despite their different densities.

Now, many educators are reassessing how virtual learning can further enhance the student experience by offering greater flexibility than in-class options, particularly for hybrid and all-virtual instruction models. During the early days of the pandemic, "people stood up Zoom classrooms" and "they put a lot of video lectures up online," said Jeff Borden, the chief academic officer for D2L, a company that creates online learning software. "That's fine. That was important to get people through." Now, however, Borden stressed, colleges and universities have the opportunity to move beyond these makeshift models. They can work to build more durable online learning platforms that meet the needs of a range of learners who must access coursework at different times and in different formats to suit their particular goals and lifestyles.

While a four-year college education can be thought of as a default for many, there are a lot of people for whom "that's not the right path," said Borden. In fact, some students may be looking simply to gain credentials or to upskill, rather than get traditional degrees. "There are tens of millions of other people in our society who have needs that are other than that, who have desires that are different than that," Borden noted. Online learning now enables older students, working adults, people from nontraditional backgrounds and those who might be neurodiverse to access content more easily than ever before, Borden added.

The multitude of options also extends to graduate and professional schools, many of which have rolled out fully or partially online programs in recent years. In fact, applicants to Rice's fully online master's degree program are "much more diverse in every way than students who apply to the residential counterpart," Levander said, because access is made easier and more compatible to students who may be juggling work and family obligations.

"The nice thing about online education is that it can actually escape geographical boundaries," said Don Kilburn, the CEO of UMass Online, which has offerings across the five University of Massachusetts schools. Kilburn agreed with his fellow panelists that online learning models play a critical role in broadening access. He also emphasized the potential added benefit of lessening the financial burden on students, since online programs can often cost a fraction of in-person ones. "Part of accessibility is affordability," he said. "I do think there are ways to actually deliver fully online programs that have a lower cost structure and may actually reduce the cost of education significantly."

Part of serving the needs of those who choose to attend classes online means understanding why they do so and how their needs differ from those who choose traditional, in-person options, said Nancy Gonzales, the executive vice president and university provost at Arizona State University, whose online programs will reach approximately 84,000 students this year.

Many online students choose to take fewer courses at a time and may take semesters off to accommodate other aspects of their lives like taking care of children or work responsibilities - part of why the flexibility of online learning is so appealing, Gonzales said. "We've been trying to really try to understand what is the cadence of attendance and how do we meet the needs of students, because they are a very different population," said Gonzales.

At the same time, for Gonzales, part of what makes an online education model successful is providing students with comparable support and services to what they might receive through in-person instruction. Such services might range from financial aid counseling to ensuring that students can interact with their peers on discussion boards, in order to ensure that interactions with classmates are not lost when attending class online.

But the promise of online education, the panelists agreed, is great. "I think we are just at the beginning of the digital transformation," said Kilburn. "I can't tell you when, but at some point you will see a revolution in education like you will in everything else."

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How Online Learning Is Reshaping Higher Education

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As the pandemic eases, many institutions are realizing that properly planned online platforms will allow them to better serve all students, including nontraditional learners.

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Table of Contents

1. Working Conditions in The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

2. What Started The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire?

3. Importance of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burned, killing 146 workers. It is remembered as one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history, as the deaths were largely preventable-most of the victims died as a result of neglected safety features and locked doors within the factory building. The tragedy brought widespread attention to the dangerous sweatshop conditions of factories, and led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of workers.

Working Conditions in The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the Asch Building, on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, in Manhattan. It was a true sweatshop, employing young immigrant women who worked in a cramped space at lines of sewing machines. Nearly all the workers were teenaged girls who did not speak English and worked 12 hours a day, every day. In 1911, there were four elevators with access to the factory floors, but only one was fully operational and the workers had to file down a long, narrow corridor in order to reach it. There were two stairways down to the street, but one was locked from the outside to prevent stealing and the other only opened inward. The fire escape was so narrow that it would have taken hours for all the workers to use it, even in the best of circumstances.

Did you know? Exactly 79 years to the day after the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, another tragic fire occurred in New York City. The blaze, at the Happy Land Social Club in the Bronx, killed 87 people, the most deadly fire in the city since 1911.

The danger of fire in factories like the Triangle Shirtwaist was well-known, but high levels of corruption in both the garment industry and city government generally ensured that no useful precautions were taken to prevent fires. Blanck and Harris already had a suspicious history of factory fires. The Triangle factory was twice scorched in 1902, while their Diamond Waist Company factory burned twice, in 1907 and in 1910. It seems that Blanck and Harris deliberately torched their workplaces before business hours in order to collect on the large fire-insurance policies they purchased, a not uncommon practice in the early 20th century. While this was not the cause of the 1911 fire, it contributed to the tragedy, as Blanck and Harris refused to install sprinkler systems and take other safety measures in case they needed to burn down their shops again.

Added to this delinquency were Blanck and Harris' notorious anti-worker policies. Their employees were paid a mere $15 a week, despite working 12 hours a day, every day. When the International Ladies Garment Workers Union led a strike in 1909 demanding higher pay and shorter and more predictable hours, Blanck and Harris' company was one of the few manufacturers who resisted, hiring police as thugs to imprison the striking women, and paying off politicians to look the other way.

What Started The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire?

On March 25, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers at the factory when a fire began in a rag bin. The manager attempted to use the fire hose to extinguish it, but was unsuccessful, as the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. As the fire grew, panic ensued. The young workers tried to exit the building by the elevator but it could hold only 12 people and the operator was able to make just four trips back and forth before it broke down amid the heat and flames. In a desperate attempt to escape the fire, the girls left behind waiting for the elevator plunged down the shaft to their deaths. The girls who fled via the stairwells also met awful demises-when they found a locked door at the bottom of the stairs, many were burned alive.

Those workers who were on floors above the fire, including the owners, escaped to the roof and then to adjoining buildings. As firefighters arrived, they witnessed a horrible scene. The girls who did not make it to the stairwells or the elevator were trapped by the fire inside the factory and began to jump from the windows to escape it. The bodies of the jumpers fell on the fire hoses, making it difficult to begin fighting the fire. Also, the firefighters ladders reached only seven floors high and the fire was on the eighth floor. In one case, a life net was unfurled to catch jumpers, but three girls jumped at the same time, ripping the net. The nets turned out to be mostly ineffectual.

Within 18 minutes, it was all over. Forty-nine workers had burned to death or been suffocated by smoke, 36 were dead in the elevator shaft and 58 died from jumping to the sidewalks. With two more dying later from their injuries, a total of 146 people were killed by the fire.

Importance of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

The fire helped unite organized labor and reform-minded politicians like progressive New York Governor Alfred E. Smith and Senator Robert F. Wagner, one of the legislative architects of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal agenda. Frances Perkins, who served on a committee that helped to set up the Factory Investigating Commission in New York in the wake of the fire, would later become Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor. The workers union set up a march on April 5 on New York's Fifth Avenue to protest the conditions that had led to the fire. It was attended by 80,000 people.

Despite a good deal of evidence that the owners and management had been horribly negligent in the fire, a grand jury failed to indict them on manslaughter charges. To settle lawsuits against them, they eventually paid $75 in compensation to each victim's family-a fraction of the $400 per death that they were paid by their insurer.

Still, the massacre for which they were responsible did finally compel the city to enact reform. In addition to the Sullivan-Hoey Fire Prevention Law passed that October, the New York Democratic set took up the cause of the worker and became known as a reform party. Both were crucial in preventing similar disasters in the future.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burned, killing 146 workers. It is remembered as one of the most infamous incidents in American industrial history, as the deaths were largely preventable.

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https://amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/mar/06/they-took-my-world-fashion-giant-shein-accused-of-art-theft

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The artist Vanessa Bowman, who was baffled when she received an email from a fan in Canada asking if she was collaborating with Shein. Photograph: Karen Robinson/The Observer

Vanessa Bowman paints the world around her: the 19th-century village church, her back garden, the leaves on the trees in the fields where she walks her dog.

Once she has chosen a scene from her rural Dorset idyll, she puts brush to canvas, sometimes poring over the details for days in her studio.

Over three decades she has honed a unique style and earned a loyal fanbase, with 20,000 followers on Instagram and commissions from House & Garden, Prince Charles's Highgrove shop and Farrow & Ball.

But when she received an email from a fan in Canada, asking whether she was collaborating with online fashion firm Shein, she was baffled.
Art and design
The £17 jumper in the image attached to the email had a picture printed on it that was unmistakably hers. But Bowman had not partnered with the multibillion dollar Chinese clothing behemoth. Instead, she alleges it plastered her picture on its product without ever getting in touch.

"They didn't remotely bother trying to change anything," she said. "The things I paint are my garden and my little village: it's my life. And they've just taken my world to China and whacked it on an acrylic jumper."

While copyright infringement is far from new, Bowman's experience is part of a wider trend.

The oil painter, 51, is the latest member of a fast-growing club of artists and designers who claim their work has been stolen by Shein.

Launched in Nanjing in 2008, and based in Singapore, the world's biggest online fashion firm has a murky ethical track record, including on the environment and workers' rights.

But despite its reputation, it has thrived, gaining almost cult-like status among teenage fans drawn to its constantly updated product range and ultra-low prices.

On TikTok alone, videos showing customers unpacking orders with dozens of items, labelled with the hashtag #SheinHaul, have racked up more than 4.5 billion views.

As its customer base has grown, so too has the list of alleged copyright breaches.

Dozens of people have posted about their designs being stolen online, sometimes using the slogan #ShameOnShein. One illustrator, who claimed to have their skeleton artwork lifted, tweeted: "Shein stole my art and slapped it on a phone case, not sure if I should be flattered or mad."

Another UK-based artist said she had spent "hours creating new and fresh designs" and felt "a little bit of a sick feeling" when a fan told her that her frog artwork had been used on stickers sold on Shein. "I really don't want to be associated with them at all," she wrote.

Some companies who claim to have had their designs copied have taken legal action, including Dr Martens and Levi Strauss. But, for many independent designers and artists, the time and energy involved with pursuing a complaint is too great to face.

Artists say firm with murky ethical record is stealing their designs

Aside from posting on social media, Bowman thought her chance of success was so slim it was not worth spending more time agonising over. "I was really angry that somebody could just take something I've worked so hard to produce. They obviously don't care," she said. "But all I want to do is paint in my studio; I don't want to get involved with lawyers and could feel myself getting really stressed. It was a bit David and Goliath and I was completely overwhelmed."

For those who do choose to take on the firm, it can often be a losing battle.

Elora Pautrat, 26, an illustrator and digital artist based in Edinburgh, sent a stern email to Shein after a fan messaged her on Instagram to tell her one of her ethereal purple cityscapes was being used on a mousemat. "They didn't have my authorisation and never asked me anything," she said.

At first she didn't receive a reply. But when she posted her complaint on social media, Shein - a rival to Asos, Boohoo and PrettyLittleThing - wrote back and apologised. After an exchange, Pautrat was paid some money from the sales of the product and promised it would never happen again. But since that first incident, in 2020, she claims the company has lifted her work on about 10 further occasions and used it on products including stickers and prints.

Each time, she patiently writes to the copyright infringement team and calls them out on social media. But a few months later, it happens again.

"It's frustrating because they do have power and resources to make proper collaborations with artists and still make a lot of money out of it," said Pautrat, who says the latest alleged violation was in January. "But they just keep stealing for some reason, which just isn't fair."

William Miles, an intellectual property lawyer and partner at Briffa, a specialist art law firm, said the problem of designs being lifted was becoming "ever more prevalent" in the fast fashion sector.

His firm is seeing two or three infringement cases per month. "The fundamental issue, I think, is that fashion companies are under pressure to produce large volumes of new and fashionable goods, so their designers often go for the quick fix," he said.

"A change that has happened is that these things often aren't dealt with by the court: they're dealt with by the court of public opinion," he added. "The person puts side-by-side pictures on social media, everyone gets really angry, and it looks bad for the fast fashion label. But some seem to have slightly thicker skin than others."

The Artists' Union, which represents more than 500 members in England, called for regulatory action to hold repeat offenders to account.

Zita Holbourne, the organisation's national chair, said it was "constantly representing artists in these kinds of cases. This is about companies trying to exploit art for their own benefit and profit without a thought for the rights of those artists. They need to be exposed, challenged and named and shamed," she said.

Shein said it "respects designers and artists, and the intellectual property rights of others", and takes "all claims of infringement seriously".

"When legitimate complaints are raised by valid IP rights holders, Shein promptly addresses the situation," it said.

It added that suppliers were required to certify that their products did not infringe the intellectual property of third parties, with "appropriate action" taken when "non-compliance is found".

The Shein jumper bearing one of Vanessa Bowman's designs. Photograph: @vanessabowmanartist Instagram

Artist Elora Pautrat used social media to call out Shein after it used one of her purple cityscapes on a mousemat. Photograph: Elora Pautrat

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'They took my world': fashion giant Shein accused of art theft

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Vanessa Bowman paints the world around her: the 19th-century village church, her back garden, the leaves on the trees in the fields where she walks her dog. Once she has chosen a scene from her rural Dorset idyll, she puts brush to canvas, sometimes poring over the details for days in her studio.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36662636

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LuxLeaks scandal: Luxembourg tax whistleblowers convicted

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Two whistleblowers in “Luxleaks” tax scandal get suspended jail terms as journalist on trial is acquitted

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Ikea withdraws meatballs from UK stores after discovery of horsemeat

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Furniture store says it has removed meatballs as precaution after Czech food inspectors found horse DNA

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Exhausted workers, polluting journeys: how unethical is next-day delivery?

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Exhausted workers, polluting journeys: how unethical is next-day delivery?

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'It shouldn't really matter when the product arrives.' Illustration: Mark Harris/The Guardian

The pandemic turned the US into a next-day delivery nation. Amazon, in particular, saw sales surge during the dark days of Covid. In the first three months of 2021, the company watched its total sales tick up by 44%, constituting $8.1bn in profit. Those sales were led by the 200 million subscribers to Amazon's super-fast delivery service Prime as people demanded everything from desk chairs to bananas delivered the next day.

Amazon sold 44% more items during the pandemic, but the cost of fulfilling those orders increased by only 31%. This saving was one of scale - high-order volume allowed Amazon to operate even more efficiently. "It has run its warehouses closer to full capacity, and delivery drivers have made more stops on their routes, with less time driving between customers," reported the New York Times.

During that period of lockdowns, Amazon's quick delivery became a lifeline for many people. But as we approach a return to a more normal life, many of us are investigating the various habits and proclivities we unconsciously established during Covid. Do we want to go back to the office? Are we satisfied with our current employment situation? And is the endless cycle of cardboard arriving at our doorsteps putting an undue strain on the planet, on our infrastructure, and on the human spirit?

Amazon Prime ships about 1.6m packages a day. That operation is buoyed by a worldwide logistics team which rumbles all day and night. Isn't that a little gluttonous? Or, as M Sanjayan, CEO of Conservation International, put it in an interview with NPR: "You don't need a pair of socks to get to you swiftly. It probably makes just as much sense to get it to you efficiently."

For Amazon workers, this means working at an extraordinary pace. Jacob, who joined Amazon two years ago, says he has logged a total of 30,000 miles, and 400 routes. He is frequently saddled with shifts that force him to deliver to "70 separate three-story buildings" with more than 350 packages. "I was logging over 120 flights of stairs on my Fitbit," he tells the Guardian.

"Amazon constantly reminds us they put profits over their workers," he says. "I ended up having a normal 200-plus stop day on Easter Sunday. Zero mercy shown."

The physical toll bears out in the data. According to a survey of workers in a Long Island Amazon warehouse, 42% reported physical pain in their day-to-day duties - usually in the feet and lower back. (They also noted psychological pressures and a deterioration of their normal sleep schedules.)

"I do feel like the workload is unreasonable," says another driver interviewed by the Guardian, who asked to remain anonymous. "There is no time to break. It is impossible to complete a route, and take your breaks, and be back to the station in time."

In the past eight years there have been hundreds of accidents involving Amazon vehicles, including at least six deaths, which were documented in BuzzFeed News investigation in 2019. But it is difficult to know the exact figures, given the way Amazon outsources its delivery apparatus to a worldwide network of companies. In total, BuzzFeed identified at least 250 outsourced dispatchers who work with Amazon.
Amazon
In many cities Amazon is promising packages in as little as five hours, or tells customers they can order by midnight and receive products the next morning. Would more time to make deliveries lead to a more equitable work environment? Jacob says an earlier cutoff for next-day delivery orders could give Amazon employees more time to breathe, but he also isn't sure if customers would accept having to wait longer. "The standard has been raised," he says.

There are also questions about how sustainable this relentless pace is within the climate emergency. There are two differing philosophies about the emission impact of next-day delivery. Some argue that by streamlining the flow of products - bundling up all of our assorted consumption needs into parcels on a shared conveyor belt - we are taking the cars off the road that would previously be making routine trips to local strip malls. "The question is always, 'What are we replacing?'" says Miguel Jaller, a professor at UC Davis and co-director of the Sustainable Freight Research program. "If you're replacing a two-gallon-per-mile large SUV going every day to a store far away, then we're benefiting the environment."

Amazon has claimed it will reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040 (and has already made some strides in that arena - they remain the largest corporate buyer of renewable energy). But given the sheer diversity of items available on Amazon and other e-commerce retailers, experts say it becomes more difficult to assert that next-day delivery streamlines the supply chain. The average Prime order might constitute radically different items, which are both guaranteed to make it to your doorstep in 24 hours or less. "It gets harder to consolidate," Anne Goodchild, a professor of engineering at the University of Washington, told Vox. "I think it's easy to overlook how much travel we're adding."

Quick delivery became a pandemic lifeline for many - but is the endless cycle of cardboard putting an undue strain on the planet, our infrastructure and workers?

This is complicated further by Amazon's reliance on contract labor, many of which use trucks that are considerably smaller than the giant 18-wheelers that haul fresh stock to bricks-and-mortar retailers, and generally carry a much heavier carbon footprint given their limited storage space. (In total, those vehicles are responsible for one0quarter of all carbon emissions in the transportation category.) In general, Jaller is unconvinced that the industry's continued focus on speed above everything lends itself to a carbon-neutral model.

"They started pushing one-day delivery and then they started pushing one-hour delivery. The faster you're providing a service, the less likely you're able to be [environmentally] efficient," he says.

Jaller does recommend a few remediesincluding a pivot to zero-emission vehicles. But generally speaking, experts believe that the path towards a sustainable, livable, non-exploitative future must begin with a shift in our social priorities.

"It's not a massive chunk of your total environmental impact, but every decision a consumer makes has some impact," says Austin Whitman, CEO of the non-profit Climate Neutral, when I asked him if he believes next-day delivery can coexist within the ethical posture of any conscious shopper. "Should you put it on your list of the top 10 things to avoid? Absolutely."

An Amazon delivery worker stacks boxes for delivery on a cart in New York City in November 2021. Photograph: Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Kai Lendwehr, the press officer of the environmental non-profit MyClimate, agrees. He advocates for a reorientation in the relentless parameters of consumption. Instead of searching for a supply-chain apparatus that sustainably satiates our demands, maybe we simply need to be wondering if we truly need the things we're purchasing in the first place.

"It's about conscious buying," he says. "Decide what you need, do some research, focus on quality, on things that make you feel suitable for a longer timeframe, and then click the green button. It shouldn't really matter when the product arrives."

Packages in a rented U-Haul truck as they are delivered in a residential neighborhood in Wisconsin in December 2020. Photograph: Mark Hertzberg/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

An Amazon delivery man rides past a street mural in the Bowery neighborhood of New York City. Photograph: Jason Szenes/EPA

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Exhausted workers, polluting journeys: how unethical is next-day delivery?

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The pandemic turned the US into a next-day delivery nation. Amazon, in particular, saw sales surge during the dark days of Covid. In the first three months of 2021, the company watched its total sales tick up by 44%, constituting $8.1bn in profit.

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Eight children who claim they were used as slave labour on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast have launched legal action against the world's biggest chocolate companies. They accuse the corporations of aiding and abetting the illegal enslavement of "thousands" of children on cocoa farms in their supply chains.

Nestlé, Cargill, Barry Callebaut, Mars, Olam, Hershey and Mondelēz have been named as defendants in a lawsuit filed in Washington DC by the human rights firm International Rights Advocates (IRA), on behalf of eight former child slaves who say they were forced to work without pay on cocoa plantations in the west African country.

The plaintiffs, all of whom are originally from Mali and are now young adults, are seeking damages for forced labour and further compensation for unjust enrichment, negligent supervision and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

It is the first time that a class action of this kind has been filed against the cocoa industry in a US court. Citing research by the US state department, the International Labour Organization and Unicef, among others, the court documents allege that the plaintiffs' experience of child slavery is mirrored by that of thousands of other minors.

Ivory Coast produces about 45% of the global supply of cocoa, a core ingredient in chocolate. The production of cocoa in west Africa has long been linked to human rights abuses, structural poverty, low pay and child labour.

A sign warns against child labour in cocoa production in Ghana. Photograph: jbdodane/Alamy

A central allegation of the lawsuit is that the defendants, despite not owning the cocoa farms in question, "knowingly profited" from the illegal work of children. According to the submissions, the defendants' contracted suppliers were able to provide lower prices than if they had employed adult workers with proper protective equipment.

The lawsuit also accuses thecompanies - whose industry body is the World Cocoa Foundation - of actively misleading the public in the voluntary 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol, characterised by the complainants as promising to phase out some child labour ("the worst forms", in the protocol's words).The original deadline for achieving certain standards was 2005. In 2010, a follow-up framework of action for Ivory Coast and Ghana spoke of aiming for "a significant reduction" in the worst forms by 2020.

In the legal claim, all eight plaintiffs describe being recruited in Mali through trickery and deception, before being trafficked across the border to cocoa farms in Ivory Coast. There, they were forced to work - often for several years or more - with no pay, no travel documents and no clear idea of where they were or how to get back to their families.

The court papers allege that the plaintiffs, all of whom were under 16 years old at the time of their recruitment, worked on farms in major cocoa-producing areas of the country. The defendants' apparent influence in these markets is described as "dominant" by the plaintiffs' counsel.

The lawsuit claims one plaintiff wasonly 11 years old when a local man in his home town of Kouroussandougou, Mali, promised him work in Ivory Coast for 25,000 CFA francs (£34) a month. The legal documents allege that the boy worked for two years without ever being paid, often applying pesticides and herbicides without protective clothing.

The documents claim another child named as a plaintiff in the suit had visible cuts on his hands and arms from machete accidents. Speaking of his experience of forced labour between 2009 and 2011, he recalls being constantly bitten by insects. As with most of the plaintiffs, he claims in the lawsuit that he was promised payment after the harvest, but it never came.

Many of the plaintiffs quoted in the court documentsreport being fed little and working long hours. Often, they claim they were kept alone or isolated from other child workers, who spoke different dialects.

Police checks during an operation to rescue children from child traffickers in Aboisso, Ivory Coast. Photograph: Luc Gnago/Reuters

During field work for this case, the plaintiffs' legal team say that they routinely found children using machetes, applying chemicals and undertaking other hazardous tasks on cocoa plantations that were producing for one or more of the defendants.

As well as being morally repugnant, such abuses against children represent a "humanitarian disaster" as they contribute to Ivory Coast's ongoing poverty, the court papers state. The widespread use of child slavery is also credited by the plaintiffs for causing "long-term mental and physical trauma".

The case documentation maintains that the defendants are responsible for developing the entire cocoa production system of Ivory Coast. As key participants in this "venture", it is claimed that they either knew or should have known about the "systematic" use of child labour.

The case is being brought under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2017. IRA is currently involved in a separate complaint filed under the Alien Tort Statute against Nestlé and Cargill.

In a statement Cargill said: "We are aware of the filing and while we cannot comment on specifics of this case right now, [the company wants] to reinforce we have no tolerance for child labor in cocoa production. Children belong in school. They deserve safe living conditions and access to good nutrition."

Nestlé said that the lawsuit "does not advance the shared goal of ending child labor in the cocoa industry" and added, "child labor is unacceptable and goes against everything we stand for. Nestlé has explicit policies against it and is unwavering in our dedication to ending it. We remain committed to combatting child labor within the cocoa supply chain and addressing its root causes as part of the Nestlé Cocoa Plan and through collaborative efforts."

Responding to news of the lawsuit, a Mars spokesperson said: "We don't comment on any possible pending litigation."

Mondelēz said it did not wish to comment.

Barry Callebaut said it has committed to eradicating child labour from its supply chain by 2025. "Every year we publish the progress we have made against this target in our Forever Chocolate progress report," it said.

An Olam spokesperson said that the company has a zero-tolerance policy for forced or slave labour in their supply chain. "If we were to identify any instances, we would immediately take action which includes notifying the appropriate authorities," they said.

A spokesperson for Hershey said: "We understand and agree with the concerns about the heartbreaking instances of child and forced labor. Hershey does not tolerate child or forced labor in our supply chain. These human rights violations have no place in the global cocoa industry, and we are committed to ending it. Effectively eliminating human rights violations and addressing the underlying issue of poverty that is the root cause of these labor violations requires significant investment and intervention on the ground in West Africa, not in the courts.

"We have worked hard over the past several years to implement meaningful programs and work with our cocoa suppliers and West African governments to combat these issues and use our influence to make a positive impact."

This article was amended on 19 February 2021. An earlier version said that in 2001 cocoa companies promised to "phase out" child labour. For avoidance of doubt, the words "phase out" were those of the complainants in the legal case.

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Mars, Nestlé and Hershey to face child slavery lawsuit in US

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Chocolate companies are among the defendants named in a lawsuit brought by former child workers in Ivory Coast

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Inside Apple's Chinese 'sweatshop' factory

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Inside Apple's Chinese 'sweatshop' factory

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103798/Revealed-Inside-Apples-Chinese-sweatshop-factory-workers-paid-just-1-12-hour.html

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Inside Apple's Chinese 'sweatshop' factory where workers are paid just £1.12 per hour to produce iPhones and iPads for the West

Factories covered in suicide nets to stop workers leaping to their deaths

18 people have killed themselves at the facility

iPhone, iPad and MacBook assembled in factory in Shenzhen

Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett Packard products also built on site

Apple have opened the doors to their Chinese 'sweatshop' factories where employees are paid as little as £1.12 an hour.

Many of the staff perform monotonous tasks like wiping down screens or shaving aluminium from the edge of the Apple logo for ten tedious hours at a time.

And now the conditions inside the factory in Shenzhen - where 18 employees have killed themselves - can be seen, after ABC TV network were given exclusive access.

The broadcaster revealed that the entry-level salary of just £180 per month is so low that it would take more than two months salary to pay for the cheapest iPad.

Even if the lowest earners do the maximum available overtime of 80 hours per month, they still do not earn enough to pay tax.

Previous reports have claimed that some of the workers were doing 24 hours at a time, while others were forced to stand for their entire shifts.

While the Nightline documentary knocks down those suggestions, it does show the suicide nets covering the whole site, in place to stop over-worked and stressed employees leaping to their deaths.

Managers ordered asked for the nets to be put up two years ago after nine workers committed suicide in the space of three months.

Apple - the world's most valuable technology company - have faced claims that their contractors are forcing staff to do overtime involuntarily and employing underage workers at the factory.

It was in response to these attacks that Apple threw open their doors at the Foxconn City plant in Shenzhen, China.

Foxconn City is a unit of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Company which employs up to 1.1million people in a series of huge factory complexes in China.

Liang Juan, 26, told ABC News that management is 'strict'.

Wearing a white boiler-suit in the spotless factory, it is her job to flip over camera lenses with a tiny pair of tweezers.

Asked what she thinks about when performing the dull task, she said: 'I don't think much about other things because the management is strict and we're busy working and have no time to think about other things.'

Despite the boring jobs unemployed young Chinese workers queue up for work - and employees say that working conditions are much better than at other factories.

An estimated 3,000 people were queuing at the gates to find work on one day when ABC News were there.

Workers are charged around £11 per month to share a dormitory with seven other people and pay around 50 pence for a rice dish in the cafeteria.

Apple have also allowed independent examiners from the Washington-based Fair Labour Association in to carry out inspections.

APPLE: ROTTEN IN CHINA?

The Foxconn City complex of factories, run by Foxconn Technology Group, employ 235,000 workers and Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett Packard projects are also built on the site.

In 2009, a Foxconn employee fell or jumped from an apartment building after losing an iPhone prototype.

Over the next two years, at least 18 other Foxconn workers were linked to attempted suicides.

Despite claims to the contrary, the abuses appear to have continued.

With demand for the firm's products soaring the factory is forced to churn out products in growing numbers. Last year they sold 93million iPhones, 40million iPads, 38million iPods and 17million computers.

The ABC journalists given unrestricted access to the site and freedom to talk to anyone found that staff were paid above the minimum wage - and no-one worked there below the age of 16.

Apple said 60,000 workers have been sent on college courses for free and they have informed one million staff of their legal rights.

Chief-executive Tim Cook said that they were working hard to improve conditions for workers.

'No one in our industry is doing more' to improve the live of employees,' he said, PC Mag reported.

He added: 'We are constantly auditing facilities, going deep into the supply chain, looking for problems, finding problems, and fixing problems, and we report everything because we believe that transparency is so very important in this area.'

However, concerns about the factory remain - and ABC News suggested that managers were warned in advance of their visit.

Last month, 150 Foxconn employees threatened to leap from a three-story building after claiming of poor pay and pressurised working conditions.

Nightline - iFactory: Inside Apple screens on ABC tomorrow at 11.35pm ET/PT

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Inside Apple's Chinese 'sweatshop' factory where workers are paid just £1.12 per hour to produce iPhones and iPads for the West

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Factories covered in suicide nets to stop workers leaping to their deaths 18 people have killed themselves at the facility iPhone, iPad and MacBook assembled in factory in Shenzhen Microsoft, Dell and Hewlett Packard products also built on site Apple have opened the doors to their Chinese 'sweatshop' factories where employees are paid as little as £1.12 an hour.

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Human rights violations in Quatar during the preparations for the World Cup

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Human rights violations in Quatar during the preparations for the World Cup

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Tell FIFA and its sponsors to act now to protect migrant workers in Qatar from abuse.
Migrants from Bangladesh, India and Nepal working on the refurbishment of the showcase Khalifa Stadium and landscaping the surrounding gardens and sporting facilities known as the "Aspire Zone" are being exploited. Some are being subjected to forced labour. They can't change jobs, they can't leave the country and they often wait months to get paid. Meanwhile, FIFA (football's global governing body), its sponsors and the construction companies involved are set to make massive financial gains from the tournament.

We have found eight ways that some workers building the Khalifa Stadium and the Aspire Zone are being exploited...

My life here is like a prison. The manager said: 'If you want to stay in Qatar be quiet and keep working.'
Deepak, metal worker on the Khalifa Stadium

8. Forced labour

One of the companies supplying workers to Khalifa Stadium subject its employees to forced labour. Workers who refuse to work because of their conditions are threatened with having their pay deducted, or handed over to the police for deportation without receiving the pay they are owed.

The manager said 'these men are causing trouble, they are lazy. Watch them closely. If they do not show up to work or try to escape, report them to the police.
Kamal, a Nepalese metal worker on Khalifa Stadium

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By

Denyse K. Uwera, a Rwandan author and photographer, has published "Strong Women behind a Strong Coffee," a coffee table book of photos that tells the experiences of 25 women who play important roles in the coffee industry.

The book honors the commitment of rural women who labor hard to produce the quality coffee that Rwanda is known for.

The book was launched on March 11 at Norskken Kigali during a Book Launch and cocktail organized by Illume editions.

In the book, Uwera tells stories of women who work in Rwanda Small Holders Coffee Company (RWASHOSSCO) and others who belong in a cooperative called Dukunde Kawa. She described how hard they work and their contribution to the production of quality coffee.

"This book launch was more than I expected, but the best part is that I was able to celebrate women behind coffee in Rwanda. We talk a lot about the Rwandan coffee, but there are people behind this who make all this possible," said Uwera, The author of the book

According to Uwera, she started working on the book in 2019 and started by just taking pictures of the women to show what they do in an exhibition, but it evolved into an entire book about the experience.

"I used to call them strong women, and what defines them is that they are behind the good coffee that we drink. That's where the whole idea came from," said Uwera with excitement.

The book launch event was attended by half of the women featured in the book, family, Denyse's friends, and other coffee farmers' partners in Rwanda.

"I am thrilled that Denyse launched her book that recognizes rural women and their role in coffee making," said Cesarie Kantarama, who is the author's mother. "I am a farmer myself, and as a parent, I always inspired her to love what family does and every parent should," she added.

"I am proud of Denyse's growth and the way she told these women's stories because the world needs to know women's role in the production of the amazing coffee since we are also in Women's Month," said Hortance Dushime, who attended the book launch.

"This is a very joyful day for me because I am a coffee farmer from a rural area, but today my story is being told to the world. I am very grateful to Denyse," Epiphanie Ndacyayisenga, one of the women from the book who hails from Gakenke district. She is a mother of 9.

In an interview, Uwera, who is a content creator and a mother of one, said this is her first book to be published but added she has plans of writing more.

The book is available at Haute Baso, Chanzo (at Repub Lounge), Ikirezi Bookstore, and Ubumuntu Shop. And there will be an online edition soon, according to Illume editions, a Rwandan publishing company that published the book with support from Root Capital and Wagner Foundation.
The newly published book is entitled ' Strong Women behind a Strong Coffee' RDB's Chief Executive Officer Clare AKamanzi (Left) joined Denise Uwera (C) during the launch of her book entitled Strong Women behind a Strong Coffee'. Courtesy Some women whose pictures feature in the newly published book Denise Uwera, a Rwandan author and photographer poses for a picture with her book
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new book chronicles resilience of rwandan women in coffee industry | newtimes

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New book chronicles resilience of Rwandan women in coffee industry

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By Denyse K. Uwera, a Rwandan author and photographer, has published "Strong Women behind a Strong Coffee," a coffee table book of photos that tells the experiences of 25 women who play important roles in the coffee industry. The book honors the commitment of rural women who labor hard to produce the quality coffee that Rwanda is known for.

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René Descartes argued that each of us is, fundamentally, a thinking thing. Thought is our defining activity, setting us aside from animals, trees, rocks. I suspect this has helped market philosophy as the life of the mind, conjuring up philosophers lost in reverie, snuggled in armchairs. But human beings do not, in fact, live purely in the mind. Other philosophers have recognised this, and connected our inner lives with an everyday, bodily process: walking. The act of putting one foot in front of another creates rhythm, movement, and can elevate the spirit. From teaching to reflecting, here are some suggestions for your next stroll.
1. Aristotle: Walk and talk.
Aristotle was named a peripatetic, one who paces, for his habit of strolling up and down whilst teaching. For Aristotle, walking facilitates talking - and, presumably, thinking. Although Aristotle's walking was famous, he was not the first philosopher to have the habit. Socrates was delighted at how students trailed after their teacher, as reported in Plato's Protagoras: "I saw how beautifully they took care never to get in Protagoras' way. When he turned around with his flanking groups, the audience to the rear would split into two in a very orderly way and then circle around to either side and form up again behind him. It was quite lovely." Comedy writers of the time also made fun of Plato for tiring out his legs whilst working out "wise plans."
2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Examine everything in your own time.
For Rousseau, the great benefit of walking is that you can move at your own time, doing as much or as little as you choose. You can see the country you're travelling through, turn off to the right or left if you fancy, examine anything which interests you. In Emile, he writes: "To travel on foot is to travel in the fashion of Thales, Plato, and Pythagoras. I find it hard to understand how a philosopher can bring himself to travel in any other way; how he can tear himself from the study of the wealth which lies before his eyes and beneath his feet." He adds that those who ride in well-padded carriages are always "gloomy, fault-finding, or sick," whilst walkers are "always merry, light-hearted, and delighted with everything."
3. Henry Thoreau: Allow nature to work on you.
Thoreau argues that humans are a part of nature, and walking through nature can allow us to grow spiritually. He argues that being in the wild can act on us, that mountain air can feed our spirits. In his article, "Walking," he advises us to focus: "I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit... What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?" To feel the benefits of walking through nature, we must allow it to enter us, to soak it up.
4. George Santayana: Reflect on the privilege of movement.
Santayana points out that plants cannot move, whilst animals can. In "The Philosophy of Travel", he wonders if this privilege of "locomotion" is the "key to intelligence", writing: "The roots of vegetables (which Aristotle says are their mouths) attach them fatally to the ground, and they are condemned like leeches to suck up whatever sustenance may flow to them at the particular spot where they happen to be stuck. Close by, perhaps, there may be a richer soil or a more sheltered or sunnier nook but they cannot migrate, nor have even the eyes or imagination by which to picture the enviable neighbouring lot." Moving around allows animals to experience more of the world, to imagine how it might be elsewhere.

Gros has done more than any other philosopher to advance the philosophy of walking, although according to this amusing interview he does not walk enough. He maintains we should walk alone, preferably through nature. Once you've left populated streets, roads, and public spaces behind, you leave their noises behind. No more speed, jostling, clamour, clattering footsteps, white noise murmurs, snatches of words, rumbling engines. As he notes in "A Philosophy of Walking," gradually, you retrieve silence: "All is calm, expectant and at rest. You are out of the world's chatter, its corridor echoes, its muttering. Walking: it hits you at first like an immense breathing in the ears. You feel the silence as if it were a great fresh wind blowing away clouds." The silence gathered by walking is refreshing, restorative.

Throughout the ages, and for different reasons, we have been encouraged (sometimes urged!) to step outside and explore the world by foot. Whether to clear our heads, to gain new perspective, or simply to absorb the wonders of nature, perhaps there is something for everyone to gain by slipping on a pair of shoes and venturing forth into the great beyond.

Featured image credit: Dmitry Schemelev on Unsplash.

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Five philosophers on the joys of walking | OUPblog

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René Descartes argued that each of us is, fundamentally, a thinking thing. Thought is our defining activity, setting us aside from animals, trees, rocks. I suspect this has helped market philosophy as the life of the mind, conjuring up philosophers lost in reverie, snuggled in armchairs.

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Climate Action

It's that time of year again: Time to put 2019 - a tumultuous year of ups and downs for our planet - to bed and start fresh with renewed energy and vision for 2020. And there's no better time, because 2020 going to be a pivotal year for our planet.

Five years into the adoption of the Paris Agreement, 2020 will mark the year where we assess our collective progress on our greatest global challenges at the international political scale. The year is also ripe for political movement, as more than 65 countries will be hosting major elections this year.

The time could not be better for individuals and communities to make their priorities known, and to vote on those priorities at the ballot boxes and polls.

2020 will also mark 50 years of Earth Day (I know, it's flown by for me, too). The 50th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22 will bring Earth Day back to its roots to mobilize millions to act for our planet.

We hope to see you in April, but what if you also want to do something today? To combat climate change, we need bold political action (that's where your power as a voter comes in) and transformative change across industries and sectors. But change also starts with individual action.

Look, I know that composting your food scraps or cleaning up your community isn't all that we need to transform our way of living - we need bold political action (that's where your power as a voter comes in) and transformative change across industries and sectors as well.

But what these acts may do is set you on the path of continued action, and increased ambition, from day to day, week to week, and year to year.

Solving our climate crisis isn't going to be easy. It's going to be a challenge, and it's going to be uncomfortable. But, hey, it's the New Year. If I can't get you to make some changes when I have you at your most guilt-ridden, when can I?

Ready to take the first step (or steps) to save the planet?

12 resolutions for the planet in 2020:

1. Go plant-based (1-2 meals a day)

You might be regretting your food choices over the holidays. Skip the crash diet (you look beautiful!) and try plant-based instead.

Animal agriculture has an enormous impact on climate change, contributing as much greenhouse gases as every car, plane, train, and ship on Earth. Going plant-based is one of the most powerful ways to reduce our personal carbon footprints (or foodprint, as we call it). Not ready to go all the way? Just start with one meal, or go plant-based for breakfast and lunch, like author Jonathan Safran Foer. Bon appetit!

2. Skip the gym. Skip the car.

Did I mention again that you look great just as you are? But if you're insistent on toning up, skip the gym membership (it's kind of a New Year's cliché, isn't it?) by skipping the car.

We know this doesn't work for everyone, but where and when you can, skip the car and walk, bike or take public transportation instead. You'll get some good (free!) exercise, while taking a huge bite out of your personal carbon footprint. For every mile you don't drive, you reduce your carbon footprint by one pound. Bonus points if you're lugging bags of groceries home on your walk.

4. Compost, compost, compost

Food waste greatly contributes to climate change. Think about it - when you toss food in the trash, you're wasting all the resources that it took to grow, harvest and ship that food.

Food also sits in a landfill, producing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that is 34 times more potent over a 100-year period than carbon dioxide. If food waste were a country, it would be the world's third-largest emitter after the U.S. and China. So serve yourself as much as you can eat, salvage your leftovers and compost what's truly bad.

Not sure where to compost? Try your local farmer's market - many coordinate with municipal services to provide free composting to communities - or pair up with others in your apartment or on your block to split a composting service.

6. Skip the single-use plastic bag

Did you know that those convenient plastic grocery bags are only used for an average of 15-20 minutes? Meanwhile they have a lifespan of 500-1,000 years in the landfill. Suddenly that convenience is looking very inconvenient for our planet...

Just stick a reusable bag in your purse or backpack, or stash one in your desk. It's that simple.

To take this step to the next level, see if you can go a whole day without plastic. It's much harder than you might think, but it gives you an illuminating view at just how bad our plastic problem is, while identifying key places to cut plastics from your life.

7. Pass it on: Recycling edition

The last one was easy, so this resolution will push you.

The next time you see someone recycling wrong, let them know. Connect over how you also used to toss your containers in unwashed, or tried to recycle plastic grocery bags - which you should be skipping in the first place - then share the right way to do it,

Pass along our 7 tips to recycling better or just show them. Let us know that you and your friends are recycling right.

It can be hard to correct people, especially loved ones who have been doing things one way (the wrong way) for years, but when you pass on what you know, information can spread exponentially.

Also, don't be afraid to remind them that recycling isn't the be-all-end-all solution to our planet's woes, and that in many ways recycling is an opportunity for industries to shunt the burden of responsibility onto consumers, when it should be squarely on producers who should be developing more sustainable alternatives...or you can save that for another day.

8. Register your Earth Day event (and turn up!)

The American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

The power of civil society mobilization cannot be overstated - just look at the first Earth Day, when 20 million individuals mobilized to come together to demand increased protections for our planet. History was made on April 22, 1970, and it's a history that we have marked every year since then.

The first Earth Day sparked a fire of legislative action to follow, from the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, to the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts.

The 50 th anniversary of Earth Day is going to be another historic moment for our planet. But to make history, we need you. How can you take your action to the next level on Earth Day?

Take your action to the next level on Earth Day by joining the global EARTHRISE mobilization for our planet on April 22, checking out the confirmed events for Earth Day 2020 and registering your own events.

9. Go plant-based (2.0 version)

So you've replaced two meals a day with plant-based options - awesome. Now make the jump to go plant-based three times a day. Each time you buy plant-based products, you're sending a demand signal to the food industry by voting with your wallet.

Not sure you can do it? Read how our staff writer went plant-based in 2019, and be inspired. Because if that meat-eating Midwesterner can embrace a tofu scramble, anyone can.

10. Travel, with care

Travelling to new places is always a top resolution, but air travel is, well, problematic.

Just how problematic, you ask? As author David Wallace Wells warns in his book "The Uninhabitable Earth," every round-trip flight from New York to London costs the Arctic three square meters of ice.

Short of travelling by solar sailboat (à la Greta Thunberg), let's resolve to travel smarter in 2020. For instance, you can travel by train (Greta's other preferred mode of travel) and explore locations closer to home. Maybe 2020 is the year that you finally see those incredible local landmarks and national parks.

Also, consider swapping a vacation for a staycation - you'll greatly reduce your carbon footprint, as well as saving massive amounts of money (another top New Year's resolution).

11. Stop buying crap

Since we're talking about saving more money, one of the best ways to do that is by simply buying less. What we really mean is buy less crap.

Take fast fashion - we buy far more clothing than we need (and wear), often tossing clothes in the trash: Research shows that a garbage truck's worth of clothing and textiles is landfilled or incinerated every second.

Every. Second.

So, don't buy it, and don't buy into it! You should never underestimate your power as a consumer. Try writing to the company or use the power of social media to call for an end to unjust and wasteful practices. Instead, try shopping secondhand. It's a great way to give new life to old clothes while saving money and keeping perfectly good clothing out of landfills.

It's also a good way to ensure you're not wearing the same faux-hipster bohemian crop top as everyone else this season...

Like with food waste, not only are these clothes sitting in landfills to produce greenhouse gases as they break down, but the resources (including low-paying and dangerous labor for marginalized communities) used to create these textiles is also wasted as well. Our current clothing industry is incredibly polluting, resource-intensive and wasteful (not to mention unjust).

12. Register to vote (and turn up!)

Two of the greatest civic opportunities that citizens have are the ability to mobilize, and the ability to vote. These are two unassailable chances to help drive and shape the political agenda, so don't waste them!

As we mentioned, 2020 will see more than 65 countries hosting major elections. Is your country one of them? If so, make sure you're registered to vote. Then do your research and understand candidates' stances before you show up at the polls.

Most importantly, TURN UP on election day - get to your polling place and vote. It's arguably the most powerful individual action that a person can take, with an impact bigger than carrying a reusable bag every day or taking public transportation.

Climate change will never be solved by recycling, or bicycling, for that matter. It's going to require immense political will and leadership to overhaul our cities, our industries and our economies to embrace the opportunities of a clean energy future. This sounds huge - and it is - but remember that these political leaders are elected by votes from individuals just like you and me.

If you really want to save the planet, make voting your top priority in 2020.

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12 New Year's resolutions for the planet in 2020 - Earth Day

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Javascript must be enabled for the correct page display Skip to Content Climate Action It's that time of year again: Time to put 2019 - a tumultuous year of ups and downs for our planet - to bed and start fresh with renewed energy and vision for 2020.

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A Pregnant Woman Ordered a Latte at McDonald’s. She Received a Cup of Cleaning Fluid. (Published 2018)

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“It just felt like my mouth was burning,” she said. The fast-food chain said the same thing has happened before.

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MyAdvent let's you create personal online advent calendars with photos, voice messages and videos and share those with friends during the Christmas season.

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Lying in bed late at night or waiting at the platform for the commuter train home, we often daydream about where it would be so much nicer to be: perhaps the beaches of Goa on India's west coast, a little restaurant by a quiet canal in Venice, the highway near Big Sur in California or maybe the Faroe islands, far to the north of Scotland.

The desire to travel is, almost always, sparked by a picture or two: a couple of mental snapshots that encapsulate all that seems most alluring about a destination. A trip lasting many hours and costing what could be a small fortune may be initiated by nothing grander or more examined than one or two mental postcards.

We travel because of a background belief that, of course, the reality of a scene must be nicer than the evanescent mental images that take us there. But there is something about the way our minds work that we would do well to study before we ever pack a suitcase: mental images are momentary. That is, they last, at best, three seconds. When we imagine a scene, we imagine not a film but, that far briefer and in many ways far more forgiving medium, a picture.

And yet, we are never in a destination just for a moment and that brute fact alone may be enough to cause grievous damage to the hopes that transport us far from home. We know the phenomenon well enough at the cinema. Imagine if in the course of a story, the screen were filled with a sublime view of ocean waves crashing against a craggy headland. We might sigh with desire at such splendour. But if the camera started to linger on the scene, we might rapidly grow twitchy. What is fabulous in increments of seconds can become properly maddening after half a minute. Two minutes in, we may be so irritated as to be ready to leave our seats.

It's not that we're ungrateful or shallow, rather that we absorb beauty quickly and then want to move on. Beauty is like a brilliant joke: we laugh, but don't need the comic element to be continuously replayed.

The lovely mental pictures that get us to travel are - in essence - hugely edited versions of what we actually encounter in any destination. We will, eventually, certainly see these pictures, but we will also see so much else, so much that is painful or boring, dispiriting or mundane: hours of footage of the stained airline seat ahead of us, the back of the taxi driver's head, the wall of the cheap hotel, a framed photograph of Marilyn Monroe on the wall of a little local restaurant...

Furthermore, there will always be something else on the lens between us and the destination we'd come for, something so tricky and oppressive as to undermine the whole purpose of having left home in the first place, namely: ourselves.

We will, by an unavoidable error, bring ourselves along to every destination we'd ever wanted to enjoy.

And that will mean bringing along so much of the mental baggage that makes being us so intolerably problematic day to day: all the anxiety, regret, confusion, guilt, irritability and despair. None of this smear of the self is there when we picture a trip from home. In the imagination, we can enjoy unsullied views. But there, at the foot of the golden temple or high up on the pine-covered mountain, we stand to find that there is so much of 'us' intruding on our vistas.

We ruin our trips by a fateful habit of taking ourselves along on them.

There's a tragi-comic irony at work: the vast labour of getting ourselves physically to a place won't necessarily get us any closer to the essence of what we'd been seeking. As airlines, hotel chains and travel magazines conspire never to tell us, in daydreaming of the ideal location, we may have already enjoyed the very best that any place has to offer us.

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Lying in bed late at night or waiting at the platform for the commuter train home, we often daydream about where it would be so much nicer to be: perhaps the beaches of Goa on India's west coast, a little restaurant by a quiet canal in Venice, the highway near Big Sur in California or maybe the Faro

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Grocery shops during coronavirus pandemic

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Grocery shops during coronavirus pandemic

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Food Bloggers reveal their cuisine hot spots

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Food Bloggers reveal their cuisine hot spots

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