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It’s a chaotic time for the Consumer Electronics Show 2022, the world’s largest technology event. Last-minute COVID-19-related cancellations have wreaked havoc on the organizers’ plans to host exhibitors and welcome visitors in person in Las Vegas and online. But as VOA’s JulieTaboh reports, the show will go on.
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Twitter on Sunday banned the personal account of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for multiple violations of its COVID-19 misinformation policy, according to a statement from the company. 

The Georgia Republican’s account was permanently suspended under the “strike” system Twitter launched in March, which uses artificial intelligence to identify posts about the coronavirus that are misleading enough to cause harm to people. Two or three strikes earn a 12-hour account lock; four strikes prompt a weeklong suspension, and five or more strikes can get someone permanently removed from Twitter. 

In a statement on the messaging app Telegram, Greene blasted Twitter’s move as un-American. She wrote that her account was suspended after tweeting statistics from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, a government database which includes unverified raw data. 

“Twitter is an enemy to America and can’t handle the truth,” Greene said. “That’s fine, I’ll show America we don’t need them and it’s time to defeat our enemies.” 

Twitter had previously suspended the account for periods ranging from 12 hours to a full week. 

The ban applies to Greene’s personal account, @mtgreenee, but does not affect her official Twitter account, @RepMTG. 

A Greene tweet posted shortly before her weeklong suspension in July claimed that the virus “is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65.” According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people under 65 account for nearly 250,000 of the U.S. deaths involving COVID-19. 

Greene previously blasted a weeklong suspension as a “Communist-style attack on free speech.” 
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Looking west from Hazel Mountain, Brad Kreps can see forested hills stretching to the Tennessee border and beyond, but it is the flat, denuded area in front of him he finds exciting.

Surface coal mining ended on this site several years ago. But with a clean-up underway, it is now being prepared for a new chapter in the region’s longstanding role as a major energy producer – this time from a renewable source: the sun.

While using former mining land to generate solar energy has long been discussed, this and five related sites are among the first projects to move forward in the coalfields of the central Appalachian Mountains, as well as nationally.

Backers say the projects could help make waste land productive and boost economic fortunes in the local area, part of a 250,000-acre (101,171-hectare) land purchase by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in 2019, one of its largest such acquisitions.

“There’s very little activity going on this land, so if we can bring in a new use like solar, we can bring tax revenue into these counties that are really trying to diversify their economies,” said Kreps, a TNC program director.

Besides creating a new source of green energy, the project offers a model for solar development that does not impinge on forests or farmland, he said.

TNC, a U.S.-based environmental nonprofit, has identified six initial sites for solar plants in the area and is now moving forward with projects on parcels covering about 1,700 acres.

The two companies that have bid to do the work – solar developer Sun Tribe and major utility Dominion Energy – estimate the projects could produce around 120 megawatts (MW) of electricity, potentially enough to power 30,000 homes.

Construction is expected to start in two or three years after pre-development work and permitting are completed.

“This is a ground-breaking model,” said Emil Avram, Dominion’s vice president of business development for renewables in Virginia.

Dominion believes it is the largest utility-scale renewable energy initiative to be developed on former coal mining land, and could be replicated elsewhere, Avram added.

Renewables targets

The U.S. government formally began looking at putting renewable energy installations on disturbed land – including mines, but also contaminated sites and landfills – in 2008.

Since then, the RE-Powering America’s Land program has mapped over 100,000 potential sites covering more than 44 million acres, and helped establish 417 installations producing 1.8 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, according to March data.

A toxic landfill site in New Jersey, for instance, now hosts a 6.5-MW solar installation, while a former steel mill in New York has been turned into a wind farm with capacity of 35 MW.

Yet on mine land, the work has so far been mostly limited to doing inventories and providing technical assistance, resulting in fewer than a half-dozen projects, said Nels Johnson, TNC’s North America director for energy.

That has stunted solar developers’ interest in mine land, he said – a knowledge gap he hopes the new projects can help fill, particularly amid a surging focus on meeting clean energy goals.

“After five to 10 years of almost nobody paying attention to this, there’s an awakening starting to take place,” he said. “As more and more states pass renewable energy commitments, it’s kind of a situation of the dog catching the car.”

Virginia, for instance, has a 2020 clean energy bill that, among other things, pushes for Dominion Energy’s electricity in the state to be carbon-free by 2045.

There are about 100,000 acres affected by coal mining in southwest Virginia alone, said Daniel Kestner, who manages the Innovative Reclamation Program for the state’s energy department.

“Reusing land like former coal mines makes a lot of sense instead of looking at prime farmland … or lands near populated areas where there may be conflict,” he said.

Kestner’s team is now exploring renewable energy development as an approved option for required post-mining reclamation work.

‘LIFE AFTER COAL’

Appalachia had harbored a deep-rooted skepticism toward renewable energy, said Adam Wells, regional director of community and economic development with Appalachian Voices, a nonprofit that works in former coal communities.

But recent years have seen a turnaround, he noted, with the recognition that the coal industry – the region’s longstanding main economic driver – will not return to its former strength.

Across the country, the number of coal mines dropped by 62% from 2008 to 2020, based on U.S. government figures, translating into a loss of 100,000 jobs since the mid-1980s, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.

Starting around 2015, Wells said, “it became necessary to talk about what life after coal looks like in Appalachia. And so, as a result, it became safe to talk about solar.”

While the number of jobs from utility-scale solar development does not compare to coal-industry jobs, he said, it could still be significant.

“It does generate notable and meaningful tax revenues for localities at a time of declining revenues from coal,” he added.

For now, communities are watching the shift with a “wait-and-see” attitude, he said.

Dominion Energy’s 50-MW project is the largest of the six local solar initiatives now underway.

While Dominion does not have job and tax revenue estimates for that project, it noted in a recent regulatory filing that 15 newly proposed solar projects across Virginia would generate more than $880 million in economic benefits and support almost 4,200 jobs associated with construction.

The company is under major pressure to increase solar production and is planning for an additional 16,000 MW by 2035, executive Avram said, requiring new capacity of about 1,000 MW annually through that date.

“That will require a fair amount of land – a thousand acres per project, roughly,” he said.

While the initial mine-land project in southwestern Virginia is relatively small, he said, it is an important “stepping stone” in learning how to work on previously disturbed sites.

TNC’s Kreps sees much more opportunity, literally on the horizon.

“There’s hundreds of thousands of acres like this across the region – and in many cases, right now they aren’t creating a lot of economic value,” he said.

His organization, he added, aims to demonstrate “that we can manage these lands for nature outcomes and people outcomes.” 
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U.S. authorities have asked telecom operators AT&T and Verizon to delay for up to two weeks their already postponed rollout of 5G networks amid uncertainty about interference with vital flight safety equipment.

The U.S. rollout of the high-speed mobile broadband technology had been set for December 5, but was delayed to January 5 after aerospace giants Airbus and Boeing raised concerns about potential interference with the devices used by planes to measure altitude.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, Steve Dickson, asked for the latest delay in a letter sent Friday to AT&T and Verizon, two of the country’s biggest telecom operators.

The U.S. letter asked the companies to “continue to pause introducing commercial C-Band service” — the frequency range used for 5G — “for an additional short period of no more than two weeks beyond the currently scheduled deployment date of January 5.”

The companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The U.S. officials’ letter assures the companies that 5G service will be able to begin “as planned in January with certain exceptions around priority airports.”

The officials say their priority has been “to protect flight safety, while ensuring that 5G deployment and aviation operations can co-exist.”

Last February, Verizon and AT&T were authorized to start using 3.7-3.8 GHz frequency bands on December 5, after obtaining licenses worth tens of billions of dollars.

But when Airbus and Boeing raised their concerns about possible interference with airplanes’ radio altimeters, which can operate in the same frequencies, the launch date was pushed back to January. 

The FAA requested further information about the instruments, and it issued directives limiting the use of altimeters in certain situations, which sparked airline fears over the potential costs.

When Verizon and AT&T wrote to federal authorities in November to confirm their intention to start deploying 5G in January, they said they would take extra precautions beyond those required by U.S. law until July 2022 while the FAA completes its investigation.

The conflict between 5G networks and aircraft equipment led French authorities to recommend switching off mobile phones with 5G on planes in February.

France’s civil aviation authority said interference from a signal on a nearby frequency to the radio altimeter could cause “critical” errors during landing. 
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U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and the head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Friday asked AT&T and Verizon Communications to delay the planned Jan. 5 introduction of new 5G wireless service over aviation safety concerns.

In a letter Friday seen by Reuters, Buttigieg and FAA Administrator Steve Dickson asked AT&T Chief Executive John Stankey and Verizon Chief Executive Hans Vestberg for a delay of no more than two weeks as part of a “proposal as a near-term solution for advancing the co-existence of 5G deployment in the C-Band and safe flight operations.”

The aviation industry and FAA have raised concerns about potential interference of 5G with sensitive aircraft electronics like radio altimeters that could disrupt flights.

“We ask that your companies continue to pause introducing commercial C-Band service for an additional short period of no more than two weeks beyond the currently scheduled deployment date of January 5,” the letter says.

Verizon and AT&T both said they received the letter and were reviewing it. Earlier Friday the two companies accused the aerospace industry of seeking to hold C-Band spectrum deployment “hostage until the wireless industry agrees to cover the costs of upgrading any obsolete altimeters.”

Buttigieg and Dickson said under the framework “commercial C-band service would begin as planned in January with certain exceptions around priority airports.”

The FAA and the aviation industry would identify priority airports “where a buffer zone would permit aviation operations to continue safely while the FAA completes its assessments of the interference potential.”

The government would work to identify “mitigations for all priority airports” to enable most “large commercial aircraft to operate safely in all conditions.” That would allow deployment around “priority airports on a rolling basis,” aiming to ensure activation by March 31 barring unforeseen issues.

The carriers, which won the spectrum in an $80 billion government auction, previously agreed to precautionary measures for six months to limit interference.

On Thursday, trade group Airlines for America asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to halt deployment of new 5G wireless service around many airports, warning thousands of flights could be disrupted.

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, representing 50,000 flight attendants at 17 airlines, called the Transportation Department proposal “the right move to successfully implement 5G without using the traveling public (and the crews on their flights) as guinea pigs for two systems that need to coexist without questions for safety.”

Wireless industry group CTIA said 5G is safe and spectrum is being used in about 40 other countries.

House Transportation Committee chair Peter DeFazio on Friday backed the airline group petition warning “we can’t afford to experiment with aviation safety.” 
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This year’s Consumer Electronics Show will end a day earlier than planned, the organizer of the global technology and gadget show said, after companies including Amazon and General Motors dropped out of attending the Las Vegas event in person because of omicron concerns. 

“The step was taken as an additional safety measure to the current health protocols that have been put in place for CES,” event organizer Consumer Technology Association said on Friday, announcing the event will now end on January 7. 

The spread of the omicron variant has led to a sharp jump in COVID-19 infections across the world, making many reconsider their travel plans and leading to thousands of flight cancellations. 

The number of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. has doubled in eight days to a record of 587,143 new cases on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally. 

As worries over the new variant loom, many companies have withdrawn from presenting in-person at the event, planned both virtually and in-person, that begins on January 5 with more than 2,200 exhibitors. 

Over the last few days, a host of firms including Advanced Micro Devices, Proctor & Gamble, Google, and Facebook parent Meta Platforms have also dropped their in-person plans. 

Sony Group’s Sony Electronics has said it will have limited staffing and attendees at the event. 

All attendees in Las Vegas will be required to be fully vaccinated and masked. COVID-19 test kits will also be provided at the venue, according to CTA’s statement. 

 
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