The Michigan Republican Party says its headquarters in Lansing was vandalized over the Labor Day weekend “with radical anti-police statements,” and it shared photos of graffiti on the building.
“Sunday night our building was vandalized with radical anti-police statements,” the party tweeted Monday. “We will not be intimidated, and we will continue to work hard to ensure President @realDonaldTrump is re-elected!”
The photos showed spray-painted graffiti that said “abolish police,” “f–k police,” “f–k 12” and “f–k you.” It’s not clear who is responsible for the graffiti, though the state party said they filed a report with the City of Lansing Police Department.
It comes amid nationwide protests against police brutality and the far-left “defund the police” movement.
The graffiti also said “f–k ICE.” In a statement, the party said they believe it to be a reference to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency where its chairwoman, Laura Cox, once served as an agent.
‘DEMOCRATS SHOULD BE SCARED ABOUT MICHIGAN,’ STATE’S HOUSE SPEAKER SAYS
“This vandalism is emblematic of the chaos sweeping through our nation’s Democrat-run cities, as the radical left uses criminal tactics to try and extort weak politicians into defunding the men and woman who keep us safe,” Cox said in the statement. “Republicans will not be intimidated. President Trump will not be intimidated. And this November, the American people will show the world they will not be intimidated when they reelect President Donald Trump.”
Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, condemned the vandalism.
“Another heinous attack on police and @realDonaldTrump supporters,” McDaniel tweeted. “We will not be silenced and we are going to make our voices heard in November!”
Michigan is considered a swing state in the 2020 presidential race between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Biden’s campaign announced last week that the former vice president will be traveling to Michigan on Wednesday.
While Trump won the state in 2016, the Real Clear Politics polling average shows Biden up by 5 points in Michigan. Still, Republicans in the state insist Trump can win again.
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“Democrats should be scared about Michigan,” the state’s Republican House speaker, Lee Chatfield, told “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday, adding that “it went red in 2016” and he thinks “it will go red again” this year.
Fox News’ Talia Kaplan contributed to this report.
If you’ve ever received a parcel from a shopping platform that you didn’t order, and nobody you know seems to have bought it for you, you might have been caught up in a “brushing” scam.
It has hit the headlines after thousands of Americans received unsolicited packets of seeds in the mail, but it is not new.
It’s an illicit way for sellers to get reviews for their products.
It doesn’t mean your account has been hacked.
Here’s an example of how it works: let’s say I set myself up as a seller on Amazon, for my product, Kleinman Candles, which cost £2 each.
I then set up a load of fake accounts, and I find random names and addresses either from publicly available information or from a leaked database that’s doing the rounds from a previous data breach.
I order Kleinman Candles from my fake accounts and have them delivered to the addresses I have found, with no information about where they have been sent from.
I then leave positive reviews for Kleinman Candles from each fake account – which has genuinely made a purchase.
This way my candle page gets filled with glowing reviews (sorry), my sales figures give me an algorithmic popularity boost as a credible merchant – and nobody knows that the only person buying and reviewing my candles is myself.
It tends to happen with low-cost products, including cheap electronics.
It’s more a case of fake marketing than cyber-crime, but “brushing” and fake reviews are against Amazon’s policies.
Campaign group Which? advises that you inform the platform of any unsolicited goods when they arrive.
It first investigated the practice in 2018, and found that in some cases, the people affected had been victims of data breaches elsewhere, meaning at least some of their personal data was available in unexpected places.
“It’s an old fashioned scam – making people believe in something is a way of getting them to buy,” said Prof Alan Woodward, a cyber-security expert at Surrey University.
“Like it or not, we do all look at the reviews, even though we are getting more savvy about it, and if it says it’s from a verified purchaser, we’re less likely to think twice.”
Can you keep it?
According to Citizens’ Advice, if an item is addressed to you, and there has been no previous contact with the company, and it arrives out of the blue, then you can keep it.
US Open spokesman Chris Widmaier told CNN earlier this week the player couldn’t be named due to health laws but he was identified as Frenchman Benoit Paire by respected French sports daily L’Equipe.
He has since been identified by other players and on social media and Paire was officially replaced in the draw before the tournament started. An email sent to his agent Monday wasn’t returned.
A bubble was put in place at the Grand Slam due to the coronavirus pandemic, with players being shuttled between the tournament grounds and two tournament hotels in Long Island. All but a few are staying at those hotels, with the likes of Novak Djokovic and Serena Williams opting for private accommodation.
After a first-round singles win Monday, Mladenovic called her ordeal in New York a “nightmare.”
Then after a second-round loss Wednesday — when she blew a 6-1 5-1 lead and four match points against Varvara Gracheva — she said she and others in the enhanced protocol plan were being treated like “prisoners.”
“Public health officials of Nassau County, N.Y., have issued quarantine notices for all individuals who had prolonged close contact to a person who previously tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus,” a US Open statement sent by email to CNN said Saturday. “As the players are staying in Nassau County, the quarantine notices prevent any of these individuals from commuting to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York City.
“The USTA is obligated to adhere to government guidance at the State, City and County level. All persons who were identified as having prolonged close contact with the infected player will quarantine in their rooms for the remainder of their quarantine period.
“Kristina Mladenovic is one of these individuals, and as the Women’s Doubles competition has begun, the women’s doubles team of Kristina Mladenovic and Timea Babos has been withdrawn from the US Open.”
Delay on Friday
The withdrawal of Mladenovic came after compatriot Adrian Mannarino was eventually allowed to play his singles match Friday. He said he had also been placed in the enhanced protocol plan.
Asked why Mannarino was allowed to play but Mladenovic wasn’t, Widmaier said in an email to CNN it was because the “quarantine notices were served yesterday evening.”
Mladenovic and Babos were due to face Alison Riske and Gabriela Dabrowski in the first round. They made the doubles final at the US Open in 2018.
Parents Got More Time Off Then the Backlash Started
With its offices scheduled to remain closed until at least October and schools restarting online in California, Facebook said in August that the leave policy would remain in place through June 2021 and that employees who had already taken some leave this year would be afforded another 10 weeks next year.
That angered some nonparents. A few wrote openly about how isolated they felt, living alone and not seeing anyone for weeks at a time. The company, they said, seemed less concerned about their needs.
Facebook said all employees could take up to three days to cope with physical or mental health issues without a doctor’s note. It separately offers 30 days of emergency leave for all employees if they need to care for a sick family member. In addition, all Facebook employees receive an unlimited number of sick days and receive at least 21 vacation days a year.
“We’ve added more support for all of our employees and encourage everyone to have open discussions about the challenges they’re facing,” said Liz Bourgeois, a company spokeswoman. “In too many workplaces, trying to hide the added difficulties of caregiving or well-being is yet another burden people have to carry, and we don’t want that to be the case at Facebook.”
Resentment from employees without children about extra parental benefits existed at companies before the pandemic, of course. But the health crisis has amplified that tension. Parents who had normally been able to balance work and home are struggling to help their children learn remotely while still doing their jobs.
In a July survey of 1,700 people conducted by ZipRecruiter, a job-listing and recruiting site, parents said that if schools did not reopen at all this fall, the number of hours they could work would be reduced. Mothers said their working hours would be reduced 9 percent, while fathers said their time would go down 5 percent.
It is a difficult situation for everyone, but “for people to get upset enough to say that ‘I feel this is unfair’ demonstrates a lack of patience, a lack of empathy and a sense of entitlement,” said Laszlo Bock, Google’s former head of people operations, or human resources. He is now the chief executive of the start-up Humu, which aims to help companies manage employees more effectively.
A teardown of a digital pregnancy test has created a buzz after revealing it contained a standard paper test, similar to those used by GPs.
The experiment has raised questions about whether the extra cost of digital pregnancy tests is justified.
Some say the electronics give women a clearer answer but others point to the e-waste created by digital test kits.
The experiment also found the digital test contained a microprocessor more powerful than early home computers.
But the electronics themselves did not play a role in the hormone detection.
image captionThe electronics inside a digital pregnancy test do not analyse urine
image captionThe actual testing is done on a standard paper strip inside the digital stick
image captionLEDs light up the strip and two light sensors detect whether the test has reacted
image captionThe result is then displayed in words on the screen
Hardware researcher Foone decided to find out what was inside a pregnancy test in response to a tweet from a man questioning whether the digital pregnancy test his wife had bought was worth the extra money.
Digital pregnancy tests that display the words “pregnant” or “not pregnant” on a screen often cost about four times as much as ones that simply provide a single or double line on a paper strip to indicate pregnancy.
For the experiment, Foone used a Walmart Equate digital pregnancy test. The inner workings are similar to those in other brands including Procter and Gamble’s Clear Blue and the Boots own-brand digital pregnancy test.
Foone was surprised to find the testing element inside was basically a standard paper test.
Paper test strips detect a hormone called human chorionic gonadotrophic, which is produced during pregnancy. The test strip is treated with a chemical that changes colour when the hormone is present.
The electronics simply read the result from the paper test and then displayed the “pregnant” or “not pregnant” read-out.
The circuit board featured a “surprisingly complicated chip”, more powerful than the CPU used in the original IBM PC.
Foone concluded that digital tests were “probably not worth the money”, given that paper strip tests can cost as little as 20 cents (15p).
“It’s a scam, basically,” they wrote on Twitter. “Computers are cheap now. People are buying the digital one thinking it’s the more accurate fancy model, but it is the same.”
However, others pointed out that paper tests could be misread and judging the result of the test was subjective.
“It is not stupid or wasteful to use a hardware interface to help women with this,” said tech YouTuber Naomi Wu.
Assistant professor of bio-nanotechnology Vittorio Saggiomo agreed that interpreting the lines on a paper test could vary from person to person.
“I can see a faint line, another person doesn’t see anything,” he said.
Another user added: “The information you are supposed to get out of it is literally life-altering. You don’t want to guess the outcome, or have to re-read the manual 10 times to know how to interpret a faint line. I’d happily pay a few euros more.”
Kate Bevan, a tech editor at consumer watchdog Which?, described it as a fascinating experiment but questioned whether the digital tests were creating unnecessary e-waste.
Taking pregnancy tests apart appears to be a fairly frequent phenomenon on Twitter.
image captionThe tablet inside a pregnancy test absorbs moisture and is toxic to eat
Also contained within the test is a moisture-absorbing tablet, to keep the circuitry dry before it is used.
It has been incorrectly suggested on social media that this is an emergency contraceptive pill hidden inside the test.
One video suggesting this has been viewed 4.5 million times on Twitter.
In fact, the moisture-absorbing tablet is toxic and should not be eaten.
Image caption
Zack Smith has created a platform for jobs in the gig economy
“I think a lot of folks like myself never even get a chance, because folks don’t answer their phones, or listen to their idea, but put them in a box they shouldn’t be in,” says Zack Smith, the founder of Boston-based Jobble.
He’s talking about how hard it can be for black tech entrepreneurs to raise money.
But Mr Smith saw it as a challenge.
“It doesn’t matter what box they put me in to begin with, I’ll get out of that box and prove to them I’m bigger and better. I think this fuels me,” he says.
His firm is a US platform for jobs in the gig economy, offering work to those who want flexible hours.
According to a study of 9,874 US business founders by California-based social enterprise RateMyInvestor, only 1% of start-ups receiving venture capital were black.
But Mr Smith was fortunate to have New York-based Harlem Capital Partners, which focuses its investments on minority and women founders.
“They’ve been extremely supportive, as an investor and also a friend and a partner,” he says
Black Lives Matter not only shone a spotlight on policing, but also on other fields, like the technology industry.
In the US, 13% of the workforce is black, but at Google that proportion is just 3.7% and at Facebook 3.8%.
Image copyright Phillip Faraone/Getty Images
Image caption
Marlon Nichols says most funding goes to all-white teams
To understand why this is, follow the money, says Sydney Sykes, a Harvard graduate and venture capital investor who in 2018 co-founded BLCK VC.
Venture capital – that is, early investments in a company of between $1m (£750,000) and $30m in return for shares – is how most new start-ups get out of the blocks.
But 81% of venture capital (VC) funds specialising in making these types of investment lack a black partner.
Partly as a result, 75% of fundraising rounds go to all-white founding teams, says Marlon Nichols, a founding managing partner at California’s MaC Venture Capital.
‘Exciting investments’
Sydney Sykes says investors in tech start-ups “go by their gut feeling, and that’s where bias creeps in”.
She says investors financially back someone if they are “connected with this person”, or perhaps an entrepreneur reminds them of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg.
Image copyright Sydney Sykes
Image caption
Sydney Sykes has started a network of black investors
But she believes “when you close your mind to different types of entrepreneurs, you’re missing out on exciting investments and great companies”.
And Marlon Nichols asserts that ethnically diverse founding teams deliver investors better returns – on average 3.3 times their invested capital, compared with 2 times for all-white founders.
Ms Sykes started a network of black investors.
She and another VC principal, Frederik Groce, held a dinner and invited all the black people they knew in VC in the San Francisco Bay area, as well as other friends.
Image copyright Benedicta Banga
Image caption
Benedicta Banga says funding can be an issue
“We ended up being about 30 people, and most of the black investors in California, which is pretty wild,” she says.
Dinner went on “very much longer than it was supposed to” and by the end they’d started a network to encourage and mentor black people wanting to enter venture capital.
Duplicating excesses?
Black business founder Donnel Baird says raising funding has been “far and away the hardest part”.
Mr Baird’s start-up, Brooklyn-based BlocPower, hires local unemployed workers to replace apartment blocks’ antiquated climate systems with modern heat pumps.
These are 20-50% more efficient than air conditioners and two to three times more efficient than boiler-based furnace systems, he says.
The biggest challenge is documenting each building well enough to attract crowdsourced finance, so systems won’t cost residents anything up front, and can be paid for out of future savings.
Image copyright Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
Image caption
Donnel Baird says Silicon Valley is set for a change
They’ve developed a modelling tool called BlocMaps that quickly integrates city data sources with on-site observations, while drawing on the 1,000 buildings they’ve worked on so far in New York.
He says as founders like him make profitable exits, and have access to capital to invest in new start-ups, Silicon Valley will change.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a very long time from now,” says Mr Baird. “I think it’s going to be five years.”
But he asks of his generation of black founders: “Are we going to try to help Silicon Valley build the better world it says it wants to build, or are we going to duplicate the same excesses just with a black person in charge?”
Growth circles
Turning to the UK, lack of funding has also been an issue, one which the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has helped highlight.
In the wake of BLM, many British people, both black and white, want to support black-owned small businesses, says Benedicta Banga, who was born in Zimbabwe and lives in Solihull in the West Midlands.
So she started Blaqbase, a marketplace platform, largely because she wasn’t finding things she needed locally “like makeup for my skin type, and black-owned brands weren’t very visible online”.
Image copyright Blaqbase
Image caption
Blaqbase has gained users in the UK, US, Asia and the Caribbean
Black-owned businesses are the least-funded businesses, she says, and this is problem is compounded if you aren’t visible.
“Then you don’t grow, and you don’t get funded because you’re not growing,” she says.
While she initially thought of the platform as just being UK-based, most of the businesses on it ship worldwide, and her platform has gained users in the US, Asia and the Caribbean, she says.
‘Beacon of hope’
Another British-based tech entrepreneur, Ikenna Ordor, has started a sharing economy platform for higher-end vehicles – Starr Luxury Cars – which has expanded into private jets.
A few of his car clients turned out to be private jet owners, who were keen to earn money from renting their aircraft out.
Image copyright Ikenna Ordor
Image caption
Ikenna Ordor has found his services in demand
When coronavirus struck, these services were suddenly in demand. City workers who would always take the train into London, started to rent cars twice a week to drive to the office, says Mr Ordor.
As a Nigerian-born male, he says there is a stigma associating Nigerians with fraud. He also says black-owned businesses are less likely to be offered bank loans than other companies.
So he ultimately hopes that his example can be a “beacon of hope for young men thinking about starting businesses”.
While such a move would increase workers’ take-home pay now, there’s a catch. And employeeswho understand thatmay not be so eager for the bigger paychecks.
Just last Friday, the Treasury issued guidance for an executive order issued by President Trump giving employers the option to temporarily defer their workers’ payments of Social Security taxes — which amount to 6.2% of their wages. The deferral option is in effect for any paycheck issued from September 1 through the end of this year. Only employees whose regular pre-tax income is less than $2,000 a week (or less than $4,000 every two weeks) would be eligible.
In theory, the move is meant to help boost the economy because deferring Social Security taxes would put more money in workers’ pockets this year. Someone making $50,000, for instance, would see an extra $119 in her paycheck every two weeks until December 31.
But the catch is you’d have to pay those deferred taxes back between January 1 and May 1 of next year, said Mark Luscombe, principal analyst for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. So that same $50,000 earner would have to pay not only her regular Social Security taxes on her earnings for the first four months of 2021, she’d also have to pay the extra $119 per paycheck that her employer deferred this year.
Employers don’t want to leave workers on the hook for that, said Neil Bradley, chief policy officer for the US Chamber of Commerce. “You’re going to have to double their taxes beginning in January. You’re making a decision about people’s ability to make ends meet next year.”
What’s more, employers would be responsible for paying the deferred taxes back if the employee doesn’t. That will be an issue if an employee or seasonal worker leaves a company by early next year. Employers either will have to scramble to withhold much of that person’s last paycheck or foot the bill themselves. And irony alert: If a company does foot the bill, that could be considered taxable compensation to the ex-employee and subject to both income and payroll taxes, Luscombe said.
Should an employer want to implement the deferral, it will take a few weeks to adjust their payroll systems. Employers that administer their own systems have a lot of work ahead of them. Those that use big payroll providers, like ADP, won’t have to do the technical heavy lifting, but they will need to clearly communicate what’s happening to their employees.
Companies are not required to give employees a choice in the matter.
“It’s a business decision,” said Pete Isberg, ADP’s vice president of government affairs. But ADP is changing its systems so clients may choose to give workers the chance to elect deferral if they wish.
It’s still too early to tell how many private sector employers will choose to implement the payroll tax deferral. But based on feedback they’ve gotten so far, both Bradley and Isberg don’t expect many will. “The best feedback we’re getting is ‘We’re still looking at it,'” Bradley said.
And based on what ADP has heard anecdotally, Isberg said, “Most employers are leaning toward not adopting this program.”
Tuesday, Graceland, the estate turned memorial for musical pioneer Elvis Presley, was found to be vandalized with spray paint.
According to local outlet Commercial Appeal, the wall and sidewalk surrounding the Memphis landmark and tourist attraction were found to have graffiti sprayed all around them on Tuesday morning. Protest slogans like “Defund the Police”, “Abolish ICE”, “Black Lives Matter” and more were found in black and orange letters around the property.
Similar graffiti was found on the historic concert venue The Levitt Shell. People wrote “Eat the Rich” as well as phrases like “F**k Trump” and “Defund MPD [Memphis Police Department.]”
People sharing photos of the spray-painted walls noted that Elvis fans from around the globe usually write their names and tributes to the King of Rock n’ Roll on the wall outside his home. Some people on Twitter called for the vandalism to stop, saying it was disrespectful to Presley’s legacy.
Despite many people angry at protesters spraying the walls with graffiti, some people commended the efforts, saying it was a good spot to draw attention to issues in the city. “Graceland is an expensive, for-profit institution that fleeces tourists while giving nothing back to the black communities it sits in the middle of. It is a symbol of everything this city gets wrong abt [sic] economic development and activists are smart to use it to promote their cause,” one person tweeted.
In a statement to Commercial Appeal, Natalie Wilson, an executive director of Levitt Shell, spoke about how disappointing it was to discover the graffiti. “We wake up, excited to celebrate our city on 901 Day, and we see our beautiful historic landmark defaced with messages of pain,” she said. “And that breaks our heart. We’re broken-hearted and devastated by this.”
President Emmanuel Macron toured neighborhoods where Lebanese officials have been personae non gratae, embraced activists who have called for the downfall of the Lebanese establishment and even had dinner with the singer Fairuz, the single most popular Lebanese cultural icon who has for decades shunned the country’s political leadership.
It was beginning to feel a lot like 1920.
Back then, General Henri Gouraud declared a new Lebanese state whose first Prime Minister would be Auguste Adib. Macron on Tuesday says he wants to usher in a new “political chapter” and has sponsored a political process that led to the naming of a new Prime Minister-designate named Mustapha Adib.
The two Adibs appear not to be related. Still, the optics have been dizzying. Even for a country notorious for being subject to heavy external interference, Macron’s tour of Lebanon has been extraordinary. In one fell swoop, he seemed to stand in for Lebanon’s despised leadership, and it has aroused mixed feelings.
During months of economic spiral that saw the local currency tank, poverty rates soar and the banking sector teeter on the verge of collapse, people in Lebanon decried the absence of leadership, accusing the political elite of plundering what little resources were left in the country.
An explosion that laid waste to large swathes of the capital on August 4 seemed to ring the death knell of the state.
Fearing the collapse of the tiny eastern Mediterranean country, the international community quickly stepped in. It was a stunning volte-face.
In recent months, world leaders repeatedly proclaimed Lebanon’s political system untouchable, refusing to deal with the corrupt leadership amidst the country’s economic downfall. This came after nearly a decade of the international community flushing Lebanese coffers with money in exchange for hosting the largest number of refugees per capita in the world.
Macron was in Beirut within days of the explosion, followed by the French minister of armed forces. US Undersecretary of State David Hale also paid a visit to Lebanon, coinciding with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s own tour of the country. High-level representatives from the UK, Turkey, and various EU countries also visited the damaged city.
Suddenly the Lebanese aren’t feeling abandoned, and Macron seems to be saying all the right things.
He’s supported Lebanese protesters’ demands for a nonsectarian, civil state, something that seems to be gaining traction among the country’s leadership. He’s called for a new “political pact” that could upend previous national agreements, namely the Taif Agreement which, in 1990, ended the country’s 15-year civil war but critics say created fertile ground for the corruption and mismanagement that would continue to fester for decades.
Still, one wonders, what’s in it for Macron? When Gouraud pronounced the birth of the Lebanese state, he ushered in a French mandate. In 2020, the Lebanese government currently in the works is already being dubbed the government of Residence des Pins — the home of the French ambassador in Beirut and the seat of power of the former mandate’s high commissioners.
What this means for the country’s political system is unclear. But the sense of dereliction has been replaced by unease. And increasingly, the future is beginning to look eerily similar to the past.
New research suggests that power companies are dragging their feet when it comes to embracing green energy sources such as wind and solar.
Only one in 10 energy suppliers globally has prioritised renewables over fossil fuels, the study finds.
Even those that are spending on greener energy are continuing to invest in carbon heavy coal and natural gas.
The lead researcher says the slow uptake undermines global efforts to tackle climate change.
In countries like the UK and across Europe, renewable energy has taken a significant share of the market, with 40% of Britain’s electricity coming from wind and solar last year.
Image copyright Getty Images
But while green energy has boomed around the world in recent years, many of the new wind and solar power installations have been built by independent producers.
Large scale utility companies, including many state and city owned enterprises, have been much slower to go green, according to this new study.
The research looked at more than 3,000 electricity companies worldwide and used machine learning techniques to analyse their activities over the past two decades.
The study found that only 10% of the companies had expanded their renewable-based power generation more quickly than their gas or coal fired capacity.
Of this small proportion that spent more on renewables, many continued to invest in fossil fuels, although at a lower rate.
The vast majority of companies, according to the author, have just sat on the fence.
“If you look at all utilities, and what’s the dominant behaviour, it is that they’re not doing much in fossil fuels and renewables,” said Galina Alova, from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford.
Image copyright Getty Images
“So they might be doing something with other fuels like hydro power or nuclear, but they’re not transitioning to renewables nor growing the fossil fuel capacity.”
The author says that many of these types of utilities are government-owned and may have invested in their power portfolios many years ago.
The overall conclusion from the analysis, though, is that utility companies are “hindering” the global transition to renewables.
“Companies are still growing their fossil-fuel based capacity,” Galina Alova told BBC News.
“So utilities are still dominating the global fossil fuel business. And I’m also finding that quite a significant share of the fossil-fuel based capacity owned by utilities has been added in the last decade, meaning that these are quite new assets.
“But in order for us to achieve the Paris climate agreement goals, they either need to be retired early, or will need carbon capture and storage because otherwise they’re still here to stay for decades.”
Image copyright Getty Images
She says that inertia within the electricity industry is one key cause of the slow transition.
But the news reporting about energy companies doesn’t always capture the complexity of their investments.
“Renewables and natural gas often go hand in hand,” said Galina Alova.
“Companies often choose both in parallel. So it might be just in media reports we are getting this image of investing in renewables, but less coverage on continued investment in gas.
“So it’s not greenwashing. It is just that this parallel investment in gas dilutes the shift to renewables. That’s the key issue.”
The study has been published in the journal Nature Energy.
