GM Defense’s New Infantry Squad Vehicle Passes Grueling Sand Dune Trials In UAE
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Armed Forces completed evaluation trials of the Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV) by General Motors Defense, built on the chassis of a Chevrolet Colorado ZR2 midsize truck.
GM Defense’s ISV successfully completed all trials that the UAE Armed Forces could throw at the offroad utility vehicle for elite military special operations units in the Middle Eastern country. The trial included traveling nearly 1,250 miles across highways, dunes, soft sand tracks, and rocky walls while carrying maximum payload capacities.
In addition to mobility trials, the ISV completed the maintenance trial, which included two days of field repair testing and maintenance.
“This was GM Defense’s first time sending a vehicle to UAE Summer Trials, and our successful completion is a testament to the strength of our ISV and to the expertise and dedication of our team,” said Steve duMont, GM Defense president.
DuMont continued: “Through completion of all phases, we’ve demonstrated that we can successfully leverage the advanced technologies of our parent company, General Motors, to deliver a highly capable off-road vehicle that can meet the needs of defense and government customers in the UAE and throughout the region. Our Summer Trial achievements are a key step forward in our planned growth in the region as we seek to offer the ISV and its variants to this important customer base.”
In 2020, the United States Army selected the ISV to enhance its operational capabilities. The ISV incorporates 90% commercial off-the-shelf parts, is designed to carry nine infantrymen. The vehicle’s adaptability for air transportability allows it to be deployed through military aircraft, including C-130 to UH-60 Blackhawk.
The ISV is the big brother to the ultra-light Polaris MRZR that Special Forces have used for years. Occasionally, the MRZR will be listed on the auction website Gov Planet for civilians to purchase.
At least five Palestinians were killed and one other wounded after a faulty aid drop in Gaza City on Friday. The casualties occurred following a botched attempt to drop humanitarian assistance from a plane, which ended up landing in a residential area in Sheikh Radwan, northwest of Gaza City, according to Al-Jazeera.
Videos captured by local journalists showed over a dozen packages dropped from a plane falling at a great speed near the al-Fayrouz Towers area.
The Palestinian media office in Gaza confirmed that five people had been killed, and criticized the use of air drops to deliver aid. “These operations are useless and not the best way to bring in aid, and we demand the opening of land crossings to bring in thousands of tons of aid immediately and urgently,” it said.
“Dropping aid in this way takes on a showy and propaganda character rather than a humanitarian [one],” the media office added. “We warned previously that they pose a death threat to the lives of citizens in the Gaza Strip, and that is what happened.”
An eyewitness told Al-Jazeera on Friday: “People were waiting for the drops when they noticed they were coming in fast. So a group of people took cover in a construction site.”
“One of the packages fell atop the site, causing it to collapse, killing and wounding people inside. I rushed to help the people inside when I realized my cousin was among them. He is now dead.”
Airdropping aid is used when all other alternatives fail, and when a population desperately needs life-saving aid while it is cut off from the world.
So far, Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and France have coordinated with Israel to airdrop aid in different areas of the blockaded Gaza Strip. The US on Sunday carried out its first humanitarian aid airdrop in Gaza with more than 30,000 meals parachuted in by three military planes. The operation was reportedly carried out jointly with Jordan’s air force.
Watch: some of the crates sound like bombs when they hit the ground at high speed…
هذا ما خلفه الإسقاط الجوي على مدينة غزة ، ش&يد وعدد من الإصابات نتيجة إسقاط فاشل على منازل المواطنين شمال مخيم الشاطئ.. pic.twitter.com/NUbkv05mtx
— إسماعيل الغول – Ismail Alghoul (@ismail_gh2) March 8, 2024
Palestinians have said that airdropped aid quantities are too small in comparison to the needs of a starving population in Gaza.
“It is pointless,” Ahmad Mansour, a Palestinian in the south of Gaza, told Middle East Eye earlier this week. “A lot of the aid ended up in the sea or areas controlled by the Israeli army. You have got thousands of people running towards a few parcels of aid. They are playing games with us.”
“I cannot understand why the world cannot pressure Israel to allow humanitarian aid trucks in,” Mansour continued. “Why can humanitarian aid workers not be protected to distribute the aid fairly? Is the new motto: ‘We will eat and get medicine only if we are lucky enough to catch something falling from the sky’?”
‘We Got To Reign Her In’: Behind The Scenes Of Nuland’s Early Retirement
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern in a new interview has speculated over the reasons behind Victoria Nuland stepping down from her high-ranking position as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the number three top official in the State Department.
Her retirement was announced by her boss Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday. But the question is why now when the administration is attempting to stay the course and present a strong continued stance on Ukraine, also as Biden is still seeking to get tens of billions in defense aid through Republicans in the House.
While there have been rumors that maybe she could be in poor or declining health, McGovern has told Russia’s Sputnik that the notoriously hawkish Nuland was a liability at a moment NATO and Russia are inching closer to direct nuclear-armed confrontation.
“My best guess here is that the CIA and the Defense Department and the NSA got this message around saying, ‘look, Victoria’s got her own agenda here,’” said McGovern.
The former CIA official continued to speculate: “‘The president doesn’t really want to strike these ammo depots in Russia or knock down the [Crimean] Bridge. So we got to rein her in, I guess it’s time for her to go to early retirement.’”
Another theory, though not necessarily contradictory to the above, has been advanced by professor of national security at Bowie State University Dr. Matthew Crosston.
He laid out what “a staunch anti-Putinist Nuland was and how fervently she wanted to continue to utilize Ukraine as a platform in which to continue to weaken and/or slight Russia on the global stage — and perhaps even up the ante in that conflict with her support of sending ballistic missiles into Ukraine.” But she also knows the Ukrainian side is losing.
She may have seen the writing on the wall as Ukraine forces are in retreat, and wanted to bail before potential total defeat:
“She undoubtedly understood that if American support lessons or wanes, Ukraine loses, period,” Crosston pointed out. “Perhaps she did not want to be in the Administration that would be responsible for that outcome.”
But both McGovern and Crosston would agree that with Nuland as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (in this capacity she basically ran all of US foreign policy in Europe), ceasefire talks between Kiev and Moscow remained an extremely distant prospect or even an impossibility.
“One thing is certain: as long as Nuland remained in that chair, there was literally no chance such talk could even be theorized. Now it can,” Crosston concluded.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald also weighed in on Nuland stepping down in an interview with The Hill. Greenwald describes the “singular monstrousness of Victoria Nuland and her bipartisan, blood-stained, ghoulish career“…
Nuland’s temporary replacement for under secretary upon her retirement has been announced as career diplomat John Bass, a former ambassador to Afghanistan. He is currently in the position of the undersecretary of state for management. He oversaw Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, and so it is somewhat ironic that he’ll also oversee Ukraine policy at this critical juncture where Kiev is clearly against the ropes.
The Senate passed six government funding bills on March 8 to avoid an impending shutdown deadline that was poised to activate at midnight later that night.
Senators approved the funding package 75–22 early in the evening on March 8 after hours of debate. Democrats pushed for a faster vote, while Republicans proposed several amendments to the funding package that all inevitably failed.
After the House of Representatives passed its measure on March 6, only the Senate was left to pass its funding bills before they were all sent to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. In addition to the March 8 deadline, there is another looming shutdown deadline on March 22.
The bills passed by Democrats and Republicans, including a second set of bills ahead of the March 22 deadline, will get Congress one step closer to funding vital government programs for the remainder of the fiscal year.
The spending package funds programs including the departments of Veterans Affairs, Energy, Agriculture, Transportation, Commerce, Justice, Interior, military construction, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Housing and Urban Development, and other federal programs.
The package was touted by both Republicans and Democrats.
The Senate bills would also provide critical support for veteran medical care, hiring new air traffic controllers, and scientific research programs for the United States’ economic competitiveness with China.
“This is an outcome both parties can be proud of because we have found a way to put the needs of our country first,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the Senate floor on March 8.
“Today’s bipartisan agreement gives us momentum and space to finish the remaining appropriation bills by March 22. Of course, it’s going to take both sides working together to keep that momentum alive,” he added.
“To folks who worry that divided government means nothing ever gets done, this bipartisan package says otherwise.”
House Bill
House Republicans under Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) leadership passed the House funding package on March 7 with bipartisan support from Democrats. The final vote was 339–85, which included two Democrats and 83 Republicans voting in opposition to the spending bills.
That 1,050-page package of bills from the House funds the same list of departments and government programs as the Senate version.
However, it also reduces funding for several programs, which Mr. Johnson referred to as “sharp cuts to agencies and programs critical to President Biden’s agenda” in a news release on March 3.
Those include 10 percent spending reductions for the Environmental Protection Agency, a 6 percent reduction for the FBI, and a 7 percent reduction for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
The bills also include provisions intended to restrain agencies the GOP claims are weaponized against Republicans.
“This legislation forbids the Department of Justice from targeting parents exercising their right to free speech before school boards, while it blocks the Biden administration from stripping Second Amendment rights from veterans,” Mr. Johnson said on March 3.
Since many Republicans wanted to do away with funding the government via large omnibus bills, the House Freedom Caucus pushed other GOP members to oppose the package.
“The House Freedom Caucus opposes the $1.65 trillion omnibus spending bill, which will be decided in two halves, the first being brought to the floor this week under suspension of the rules,” the group said in a March 5 statement.
“Even in the face of $34 trillion in national debt, the omnibus will bust the bipartisan spending caps signed into law less than a year ago and is loaded with hundreds of pages of earmarks worth billions.”
Despite the opposition from some Republicans, the passage of these funding bills marks a rare show of bipartisanship in Congress during a contentious primary and general election season.
Republicans Voice Concerns
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), while voicing support for the spending package, also chided Democrats for seeming poised to skip voting on the amendments.
“I don’t know why we’re having such a hard time figuring out how we deal with amendments around here. It’s just not that hard,” she said.
“I don’t think that there’s anything out there that should scare any of us about taking an amendment … But the fact that we cannot figure out how to get to a time agreement because the Democrats don’t want to entertain amendments, or they want to direct what amendments we have,” Ms. Murkowski added.
“I think we can do a little bit better.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was critical of the spending package, calling it a “pork fest of epic proportions.”
“It also is sort of the grease that eases in billions and trillions of other dollars because you get people to buy into the total package by giving them a little bit of pork for their town, a little bit of pork for their donors,” he added.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), instead, warned her Republican colleagues that delaying the vote would hurt the veterans who need their government benefits the most.
“I want to offer my colleagues a warning. If we do not act at midnight tonight, we will have a partial government shutdown,” she said.
“Do we really want a veteran who has bravely and loyally served his country and is now trying to file a claim for benefits to find that the Veterans Benefits Administration’s doors are closed to him or her? Is that what we want to have happen?”
Although the reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial craft has remained within the realm of conspiracy theories, a new report shows that the Department of Defense (DOD) had been asked to consider investigating the issue.
A study by the U.S. Department of Defense’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO)—first reported by Politico—examined unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), commonly referred to as UFOs, from 1945 until the present. The study was released on Friday.
The report found “no evidence that any [U.S. government] investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology,” according to The Washington Post.
According to the report, these alleged alien craft could be written off as “ordinary objects and phenomena, and the result of misidentification.”
Although the report largely debunked UAP sightings, it found that a program titled “Kona Blue” was proposed to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the 2010s, which would have examined the benefits of reverse-engineering recovered extraterrestrial craft.
According to the report, the proposal was rejected by DHS “for lacking merit” because there was no craft recovered.
“It is critical to note that no extraterrestrial craft or bodies were ever collected, this material was only assumed to exist by Kona Blue advocates and its anticipated contract performers,” the report stated.
Kona Blue was first declassified in AARO’s report.
According to AARO’s acting director, Tim Phillips, the program was never approved because no department “possessed any material or information.”
‘Misrepresentations’
Mr. Phillips later attributed the sightings to misrepresentations of popular culture and classified military programs.
“These are rational people making observations and just relating to what they know,” Mr. Phillips said. “We were able to go back to the program owners in that range and ask, ‘by the way, what were we flying during this week?’ My God, I would have thought it would have been a UAP myself when I actually saw the picture of it.”
The report contradicts much of what David Grusch, a former intelligence officer turned whistleblower, said throughout 2023 when discussing what the U.S. government knew about extraterrestrial technology.
He alleged that covert factions within the U.S. government possessed alien craft and bodies.Mr. Grusch, who has been openly critical of AARO, spoke about the UAP Disclosure Act, legislation that was being considered in Congress that could allow for greater transparency regarding what the government knows about UAPs.
According to Mr. Grusch, the legislation was modeled after the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which directed the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to establish the Assassination Records Review Board to collect all records related to the assassination of President Kennedy.
Though the board never met the expectations of those questioning the official narrative, Mr. Grusch said this bill had more “teeth” to “force the issue.”
In November 2023, Reps. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), and Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) held a press conference in which they vehemently criticized the stalling of the legislation. Some pointed out their issues with the legislation itself, which allows for the collection of UAP records to be disclosed to the public 25 years after the date of record creation unless the president deems such disclosure a threat to national security.
Most recently, an unclassified report from the Pentagon’s inspector general claimed that the DOD had no “coordinated approach” to investigate the UAP issue. Due to this lack of coordination, the report stated that it left the United States open to external military threats, which compromises national security.
There have been multiple testimonies of government officials claiming that recovered UAP craft have been reverse-engineered for technological advancement.
In 1997, Lt. Col. Philip Corso made a striking claim in his memoir “The Day After Roswell.” He alleged that during his tenure as a member of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s National Security Council and as head of the foreign technological desk at the U.S. Army’s Research and Development Department, he led the Army’s reverse-engineering project. This project allegedly utilized recovered technology from the 1947 Roswell crash and disseminated the information to major corporate firms.
Using the provided information, these firms manufactured “lasers, integrated circuitry, fiber-optics networks, accelerated particle-beam devices, and even the Kevlar material in bulletproof vests,” Lt. Col. Corso wrote.
The Roswell incident was initially reported as a confirmed recovered flying saucer by the U.S. Army Air Forces before the story was quickly retracted and reported as a fallen weather balloon.
New York AG Letitia James Sued For Overriding Transgender Sports Ban
New York Attorney General Letitia James has been sued by a Nassau County executive who has accused her of unconstitutional discrimination for trying to override the county’s decision to block biologically mmale transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
The lawsuit was filed by Nassau County official Bruce Blakeman, who said on X that he filed the lawsuit “to protect women’s sports and ensure a safe environment for women.”
“Bullying of women and girls will not be tolerated!” he added, in response to James’ cease and desist letter and threat to use legal action to force the county to allow trans athletes to compete.
In a March 5 complaint filed in the Eastern District of New York, Blakeman seeks to block James from overriding his executive order imposing the ban at county-run facilities. Blakeman argues that her C&D violates the constitutional rights of girls and women, while accusing her of “unconstitutionally discriminating against individuals on the basis of gender” in regards to sporting events, The Epoch Times reports.
“There is a movement for biological males to bully their way into competing in sports or leagues or teams that identify themselves or advertise themselves as girls’ or female or women’s teams or leagues,” Blakeman said during a Feb. 22 press conference.
“We find that unacceptable. It’s a form of bullying,” he added.
In response, James demanded that the executive order be revoked – citing a New York law which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex or “gender identity or expression.”
A spokesperson for Ms. James’ office told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that it believes Mr. Blakeman’s executive order is “transphobic and discriminatory” and violates New York state law.
“This is not up for debate: the executive order is illegal, and it will not stand in New York,” the spokesperson said.
‘Undeniable’ Biological Differences
The Nassau County executive order mandates that sports organizations applying for permits in Nassau County facilities must designate teams according to one of three categories: males, men, or boys; females, women, or girls; coed or mixed, including males and females. The criterion for designation is a team member’s biological sex.
The new rule expressly prohibits the Nassau County Department of Parks, Recreation and Museums from issuing permits for the use of county facilities for competitions or sports events in which biological males participate in female-designated teams and leagues.
The department may, however, issue permits for events in which women compete in men’s leagues or events.
Samantha Goetz, a deputy county attorney who was recently elected as a District 18 legislator, spoke at the Feb. 22 press conference in support of the executive order.
“This is a matter that concerns the integrity, the fairness, and the safety of women’s sports,” she said. “Our biological differences are undeniable.”
Ms. Goetz, who played varsity basketball, said the executive order is also about access to opportunity like sports scholarships and, ultimately, it’s about “protecting our female athletes.”
Mr. Blakeman argued at the press conference that the problem chiefly concerns female-identifying males taking part in women’s sports. He said allowing this poses a safety risk due to female competitors due to men’s generally superior strength and size, while also depriving women of opportunities.
“What we are saying here today with our executive order is that if a league or team identifies themselves or advertises themselves to be a girls’ or women’s league or team, then biological males should not be competing in those leagues,” he said.
Mr. Blakeman added that he hoped the move would not be seen as discriminatory. He pointedly stated that transgender athletes are welcome to compete in the co-ed or mixed league or in one that corresponds to their sex but not necessarily their preferred gender identity.
However, Ms. James didn’t see it that way.
‘Blatantly Illegal’
Ms. James claimed that the executive order violates the rights of men who identify as women, and forces sports teams and leagues to either discriminate against them or find another place to play.
“The law is perfectly clear: you cannot discriminate against a person because of their gender identity or expression. We have no room for hate or bigotry in New York,” Ms. James said in a statement.
“This executive order is transphobic and blatantly illegal,” she continued, adding that if the county doesn’t revoke the order, she’ll take further legal action.
The issue of men competing in women’s sports has become a highly charged issue, with a number of states adopting laws banning transgender-identifying athletes from participating in school sports.
While some of these transgender sports bans face legal challenges, an overwhelming majority of Americans say that athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that conform with their “birth gender.”
World Athletics, the international governing body for the sport of athletics, recently banned transgender women from competing in women’s events at international competitions.
House Democrats are pressing SpaceX and its CEO, Elon Musk, for answers on allegations coming from Ukrainian intelligence officials that Russian forces are using SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service in their ongoing war with Ukraine.
On Wednesday, March 6, House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) sent a letter to SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell, calling for her to address how Russian forces may have obtained SpaceX terminals.
Starlink terminals connect to SpaceX’s constellation of thousands of satellites operating in low Earth orbit. SpaceX began supplying thousands of Starlink terminals to Ukraine after Russian invasion forces entered the country in February 2022, helping keep Ukraine online even as Russian attacks degraded their existing telecommunications and internet infrastructure.
Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) first raised concerns about Russian forces using the Starlink service on Feb. 11. GUR spokesman Andriy Yusov stated at the time that Ukrainian intelligence officials had intercepted radio transmissions in which Russian soldiers described widespread use of the satellite internet service around the contested Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
“This is starting to become systemic,” Mr. Yusov said of Russia’s alleged use of the Starlink service.
Mr. Musk has denied the allegations, stating, “To the best of our knowledge, no Starlinks have been sold directly or indirectly to Russia.”
But Mr. Raskin and Mr. Garcia are continuing to press the question. The two lawmakers noted a report last month by the U.S. Department of Commerce, which said “Russia routinely relies on evasive or deceptive tactics such as the use of third-party intermediaries or transshipment points” to evade U.S. export controls against the country.
The two lawmakers noted Mr. Musk’s denial, but reiterated Mr. Yusov’s characterization of Russia’s Starlink usage as “systemic.”
“We are concerned that you may not have appropriate guardrails and policies in place to ensure your technology is neither acquired directly or indirectly, nor used illegally by Russia,” their letter to Ms. Shotwell reads.
The Democrats called on SpaceX to reveal how many reports or complaints it has received alleging Russian use of the Starlink service, as well as how many of those complaints the company investigated. The lawmakers also pressed SpaceX to explain its review process for such complaints, detail its safeguards against illicit acquisitions of Starlink terminals, what measures SpaceX advises to take when it determines an actor has illicitly acquired a Starlink terminal, and what work SpaceX has taken on its own and with the U.S. federal government to prevent such illicit acquisition and use of Starlink services. The lawmakers called on Ms. Shotwell to provide SpaceX’s response by March 20.
How Russia May Have Obtained Starlink Terminals
Not cited in the Democrats’ March 6 letter is a Feb. 13 blog post in which Ukraine’s GUR service posits intermediaries in Arab countries may be facilitating the transfers of Starlink terminals to Russian forces. That blog post describes an audio recording in which a Russian “occupier” is quoted as saying “the Arabs bring everything: wires, Wi-Fi, router… .” According to the GUR blog post, this same Russian individual reportedly went on to say the cost to obtain a Starlink device is 200,000 Russian Rubles (about $2,200).
While the GUR shared an audio recording in their Feb. 11 blog post, they did not provide the audio recording described in the Feb. 13 blog post, which might provide further clarity about how Starlink terminals may be ending up in Russian hands.
NTD News reached out to Mr. Raskin and Mr. Garcia’s offices, seeking more details about what evidence is guiding their SpaceX probe. Neither lawmaker’s office responded by press time.
More than two years on, the war between Russia and Ukraine has seen territory repeatedly change hands. Defense materials, from combat vehicles to weapons systems and items like Starlink terminals, may also see changes in ownership throughout the course of the fighting.
Among NTD News’ list of questions for Mr. Garcia was whether he and Mr. Raskin had ruled out the possibility that Russian forces had acquired Starlink terminals from defeated Ukrainian troops.
NTD News also reached out to SpaceX for comment about the possibility of Starlink terminals being captured on the battlefield, as well as evidence it may have of illicit transfers of these terminals through intermediaries. Likewise, SpaceX did not respond by press time.
Biden Campaign Chair Says “No Surprise” The President Is Losing Key Voters
The Biden campaign has admitted to a “shift” among the electorate which has made it no “surprise” that the president is losing key voters to former President Donald Trump, based on a recent New York Times/Siena poll.
The poll, conducted Feb. 25 – Feb. 28, found that just one out of four registered voters believes “the country is moving in the right direction.” It also showed that Trump has been breaking the Democrat stronghold among women, which are now evenly split.
Speaking with CNN‘s Wolf Blitzer, campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu first questioned the accuracy of the poll, before seemingly explaining it away as “tectonic shifts.”
“Well, first of all, I‘m not sure that‘s accurate, but assuming that some of those things are occurring, it‘s not really a big surprise. As you know, because you‘re an expert in political science, there are tectonic shifts going on amongst the electorates.“
Robot mode: Engage
He then rattled off a talking point – suggesting that “women in this country understand that Trump has declared war on them by appointing three Supreme Court justices that have reversed Roe versus Wade, that has resulted in Alabama outlawing in vitro fertilization.”
“Or in Ohio, police officers [having] gone into a woman‘s house to look into a toilet because they’ve now criminalized miscarriages. So now you see a huge swing, as should be expected, of women basically saying, ‘Why is the government in the business of my reproductive health,'” he continued.
According to Landrieu, Biden will “fight for every vote,” adding “The president’s going to talk about his record, how when he came into office, what he had to deal with, what it is that he put together in a bipartisan way — really, that has been second to none — and then he‘s going to talk about the future. But the bigger point that Joe Biden wants to tell America is that America is worth fighting for, that democracy [is at] risk, and that when we do things together we can do big things.”
Boiling tap water is good for more than just killing certain harmful pathogens. It can also destroy contaminants such as microplastics and chemicals, making drinking water safer to drink.
A new research letter published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters indicates that boiling tap water for just five minutes could reduce the amount of microplastics by up to 90 percent. Researchers from Guangzhou Medical University and the Center for Environmental Microplastics Studies in China recommend boiling water in nonplastic electric kettles on gas stoves to remove impurities such as polystyrene, polyethylene, and polypropylene.
According to the researchers, boiling water has been used since ancient times as a purification method in some Asian countries. “This simple boiling-water strategy can ‘decontaminate’ [nano- and microplastics] from household tap water and has the potential for harmlessly alleviating human intake of [nano- and microplastics] through water consumption,” they wrote.
Harder Water Captures More Microplastics
Water of a certain alkalinity and hardness typically produces incrustants—insoluble mineral remnants like calcium carbonate—upon boiling. For the study, the researchers hypothesized that calcium carbonate encounters nanoplastics as it crystallizes in hot water. The calcium carbonate then encapsulates the nanoplastics as it becomes the flaky crust you sometimes see at the bottom of your tea kettle.
The study showed that boiling hard tap water containing 300 milligrams per liter (mg/L-1) of calcium carbonate reduced nano- and microplastics by nearly 90 percent, while water containing 80 mg/L-1 reduced particles by 84 percent. In soft water samples containing less than 60 mg/L-1 of calcium carbonate, boiling still reduced plastics by over 25 percent.
The Problem With Millions of Tons of Plastic
Because of our heavy reliance on plastic, nanoplastics and microplastics are common in groundwater and surface water around the globe. Microplastics are truly everywhere, having been detected as far south as Antarctica and north as the Arctic. These insidious particles have even been detected at the peak of Mt. Everest and down in the Mariana Trench. In fact, plastic comprises the largest portion of marine garbage; according to a 2020 study published in Science of the Total Environment, more than 8 million tons of plastic entered the ocean in 2017. That number represented over 33 times more plastic than the amount that had entered the ocean in 2015, indicating a disturbingly worsening problem.
As plastic disintegrates, microscopic pieces are released into the environment. Microplastics are typically less than 5 millimeters in size but can break down into even smaller pieces called nanoplastics. Nanoplastics are nearly impossible to see at 1 micrometer in size. The micro and nano pieces have been found in water, air, soil, food, and table salt, according to some studies.
The health effects of nano- and microplastics haven’t been fully realized. Still, research has suggested that their accumulation in the human body can cause insulin resistance, liver metabolic disorder, DNA damage, organ dysfunction, immune response issues, neurotoxicity, and reproductive harm.
While the research team only focused on three types of nanoparticles, the discovery is a boon for public health. The team estimated that people who boil their water take in two to five times less nanoplastics than those who do not.
“Drinking boiled water apparently is a viable long-term strategy for reducing global exposure to [nano- and microplastics],” the research team wrote, adding that it is likely more effective than drinking bottled water, especially bottled in plastic. The average liter-sized bottle of water contains 240,000 pieces of nanoplastic, which is 10 to 100 times more particles than previously thought.
Rivian Shelves New Georgia Factory In Latest Cost-Cutting Measures
Two weeks after Rivian Automotive Inc. announced a disappointing production forecast and another round of job cuts, the company’s CEO revealed that the construction of a $5 billion factory in Georgia would be put on hold to reduce costs.
CEO RJ Scaringe unveiled a crossover EV called the R3. The new model will be priced lower than the R2 to increase affordability and boost sales.
Scaringe also surprised investors by announcing its new factory at the Georgia site east of Atlanta would be shelved.
“Rivian’s Georgia plant remains an extremely important part of its strategy to scale production of R2 and R3. The timing for resuming construction is expected to be later to focus its teams on the capital-efficient launch of R2 in Normal, Illinois,” the filing said.
The filing noted that the decision reduced capital expenditures for the automaker by $2.25 billion and “improved cash visibility.”
“Our Georgia site remains really important to us,” Scaringe said, adding, “It’s core to the scaling across all these vehicles, between R2, R3 and R3X. And we’re so appreciative of all the partnerships we’ve had there.”
No timetable was provided to investors about restarting work on the Georgia plant. Local governments have offered Rivian $1.5 billion in incentives to create thousands of jobs at the new plant.
Rivian’s shares jumped more than 13% on Thursday. In premarket trading in New York on Friday, shares are flat. Year-to-date performance has been awful, down 47%.
Short interest has surged in Rivian over the past year. Current data from Bloomberg shows 112.4 million shares short, or about 14.5% of the float is short.
Tom Narayan, an RBC Capital Markets analyst, warned in a note this week that Rivian’s financial implications of a lower-priced EV remain uncertain.
“Currently, R1 is losing money,” Narayan said, adding, “The critical question is how will Rivian be able to produce R2 profitably at the $45,000 price point?”
“EV sentiment is extremely negative… and will eventually deteriorate further, in our view. Legacy OEMs must find a way to balance EV relevancy with capital discipline. Full OEM mergers are complex, politically sensitive and tough to execute. Could ‘merging’ EV projects be more reasonable?” Jonas said.
Consolidation is certainly a theme in the EV space this year.
