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7 Min Read (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In January Ellie Mitchell started getting a barrage of texts and emails from her internet service provider, warning her she was running out of data. “The messages kept coming: ‘You’ve used 75%, 80%, 90%.’” Mitchell, director of youth nonprofit Maryland Out of School Time Network, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview. “It felt like we were being held hostage,” said Mitchell, who was working from home in Baltimore, Maryland alongside her husband and their two children attending school online. Comcast Corp, one of the largest internet providers in the United States, announced in November it would be capping data usage for residential customers not on an unlimited plan in several cities in the northeast. ....
7 Min Read WASHINGTON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As U.S. President Joe Biden vows to tackle the country’s housing affordability crisis, one group is trying to convince cities they can end homelessness outright armed with one thing: better data. For homeless service providers across the United States, late January means the “point-in-time” count, in which volunteers spend a single night combing streets, parks and forests for people sleeping rough, or living in cars or tents. The federally mandated count offers a key snapshot of the unhoused population, but the data has long been criticized by some homelessness advocates. “It’s crazy,” said Jake Maguire, co-director of the anti-homelessness program Built for Zero at the national nonprofit Community Solutions. “We’re told it’s scientific, but it produces a very uncertain number.” ....
3 Min Read (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - From reducing bias in product design to tackling racial injustice, more than 100 businesses, governments and nonprofits on Thursday launched a global initiative to make artificial intelligence more ethical and transparent. The Global AI Action Alliance will identify tools and best practices to safely and ethically use AI, which is projected to contribute more than $14 trillion to the global economy by 2035. “AI holds the potential to deliver enormous benefits to society, but only if it is used responsibly,” said Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in a statement. In the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing, for example, architects are planning an AI-run development that will be lined with sensors and wifi-connected devices to gather data on everything from weather and pollution to people’s eating habits. ....
26 Jan 2021 / 20:56 H. By Matt Maynard SANTIAGO, Jan 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - There were two reasons mountain guide Viviana Callahan and her climbing partner Felipe Cancino made the first ever ascent of Cerro El Barco, a 4,500m mountain flanked by glaciers in the central Chilean Andes. The first was her mountaineering experience, which has seen her make the first recorded human footprints on multiple snowy peaks in the country s southern ice fields. And the second was the citizen-led Queremos Parque (We Want a Park) campaign to turn this pristine wilderness 60km (35 miles) from Santiago into a massive national park, providing protected green space for residents of the overcrowded capital. ....
Vaccine rollout a war against time for Amazon indigenous groups Reuters 1/26/2021 By Anastasia Moloney BOGOTA, Jan 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Indigenous leaders in the Amazon rainforest urged governments on Tuesday to ensure vaccine rollouts reach all tribal communities as a devastating new wave of COVID-19 overwhelms the region s health systems. Jose Gregorio Diaz, who heads the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Peoples of the Amazon Basin (COICA), said his people faced a health emergency and urgently need vaccines. We re concerned that the indigenous peoples that make up the entire Amazon basin are not included in vaccination plans, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of a webinar organised by COICA. ....