One immune cell type appears to attack any type of cancer.

IMMUNE ATTACK! —
One immune cell type appears to attack any type of cancer.
We don’t know enough to know whether this is useful yet.
JOHN TIMMER - 1/22/2020, 1:57 PM

While cancerous cells look a lot like normal human cells, they're still different enough that the immune system regularly attacks them. Obviously, this attack sometimes bogs down, allowing cancer to thrive and spread. Figuring out how to get the immune system back on track has been a major focus of research, and success in the area has been honored with a Nobel Prize.

Despite these successes, many patients aren't helped by the newer immune-focused therapies, raising questions of what else we still need to figure out to help cancer patients. A new paper highlights something we may have missed: a class of immune cells that appears to be primed specifically to attack cancer. But the finding raises questions about what it is on cancer cells that the immune cells are recognizing and why they fail to keep cancer in check.

Finding cancer killers
The start of this work was pretty simple: a large international team of researchers grew a mix of immune cells called "T cells" in the presence of cancerous cells and looked for cells that grew rapidly. This rapid growth is typically a sign that the immune cells have been activated by something they recognize—in this case, the cancer. They identified one particular lineage of T cells that grew well and named it MC.7.G5, confirming yet again that most scientists don't belong in the creative industries.

One notable thing about the MC.7.G5 cells quickly became apparent: MC.7.G5 didn't simply grow well in the presence of cancer cells; it killed them. So, the authors tested a variety of different cancer types (lung cancer, melanoma, colon, breast, and more). These cells don't have much in common. They're activated by different mutations, start out with different populations of proteins on their surface, and have many other differences from one another. So it wasn't clear what the T cells could possibly be recognizing on their surfaces in order to attack them. Yet attack them they did.

To find out, the researchers did an experiment that wouldn't have been possible just a decade earlier: they used a gene-editing construct to eliminate every single protein-coding gene that we know of in the genome. Lots of individual populations of a cancer-cell line had a single gene knocked out and then were tested to see whether the MC.7.G5 immune cells could still kill them. If any cancer cells were left alive, then the gene edited in them would be essential for producing the molecule used by the immune cells to recognize cancer.

FURTHER READING
Treatments that cause the immune system to attack cancer earn a Nobel...
The experiment identified a series of genes involved in putting a single protein on the surface. But, of course, that protein is also present on normal cells. How could it possibly be responsible for the cancer cells being recognized as distinct?

Fortunately, we know a lot about the family of molecules that the protein, MR1, belongs to, as well as a bit about MR1 itself. The larger family includes the molecules that help the immune system recognize self from non-self by binding to bits of the cell's proteins and presenting them on the cell's surface for the immune system to check out. If either these molecules or the proteins they present look different, the immune system attacks. So, that makes a degree of sense as something that can trigger the immune system to go after the cancer cells.

MR1, however, doesn't work like that. Instead, it brings some of the cell's metabolites to the surface. And the researchers confirmed that it has to bind to something in order to make it to the surface. They hypothesize that it's a metabolite that's specific to cancer cells, but they have no idea what it might be.

Stay on target
While there are still some question marks about what causes these immune cells to pick out cancerous cells, there's no shortage of evidence that they do so effectively. The researchers tested the immune cells against resting and dividing normal cells and got no response. MC.7.G5 didn't kill healthy cells that were stressed or damaged. So, there's no indication that the immune cells accidentally go off target and kill healthy cells.

The researchers also confirmed that the cancer-killing T cells are defined by the standard receptor that T cells normally use to recognize infected cells. They made a copy of this receptor's genes and inserted them into T cells from an unrelated individual. They also killed cancerous cells from at least two different sources.

Finally, the authors injected lymphoma cells into immune-compromised mice, then added the cancer-killing T cells. In control mice without the cancer-killing cells, the lymphoma took over the bone marrow, eventually accounting for about 80 percent of the cells there. With the cancer-killing cells injected at the same time, the bone marrow in the mice consistently had far fewer cancer cells (consistently less than 10 percent of the total cells). This indicates that the immune cells can help keep cancer in check but may not be able to consistently eradicate it.

Does that mean, as the BBC has claimed, that these cells "May treat all cancer"? Well, to begin with, the T cells were seemingly unable to eliminate cancer in mice. That's more significant than it seems, in that lots of potential treatments seem to work well in mice, but few ever advance to the point of clinical trials in humans, much less end up being used as treatments. This is a case when mouse assays are helpful for knowing what deserves a closer look but far from the last word on a topic.

Do we all have cancer killers?
These cancer-killing immune cells were also obtained from at least two individuals, suggesting that they may be present in all humans. Yet humans regularly suffer from cancer, so there's clearly something that keeps them from doing their job. At this point, we don't have the slightest clue as to what that something might be.

Then there's the issue of what the cells are recognizing that allows them to identify cancer cells. Whatever it is, it's not widely present on healthy cells. But the body has a dizzying number of specialized cell types, so we've barely scratched the surface of testing whether these cells might attack some healthy cell types. However, if the authors are right about a couple of things, there's a very good chance the cells might.

The authors suggest that the target of the cancer-killing cells is a metabolite presented on the surface by the protein MR1. And, because the gene-editing screen didn't pull out any metabolic enzymes, they suspect that the metabolite is essential for cancer cell viability. It's difficult to understand how something central to cancer cell viability, produced using the same genes found in normal cells, isn't ever produced by normal cells.

None of this is to say that this discovery won't end up being important. But we really need much more information before we're in a position to judge whether it is or not.

Nature Immunology, 2020. DOI: 10.1038/s41590-019-0578-8 (About DOIs).

IF YOU CLAIM TO CARE ABOUT THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT, NUCLEAR FISSION IS A
TEMPORARY WORKING ALTERNATIVE TO OIL AND GAS.

Attention Elon Musk and interested parties...As George Carlin might say...just in case you give a shit...would you consider building slow-poke nuclear reactors with the capacity to reuse spent fuel rods. I suggest you build these small reactors all over North America as quickly as possible in order to provide clean Electricity for our current polluting economic system. Climate change can be mitigated with safe nuclear fission reactors in the short term while the better solution, fusion reactors, remains in the development stage. Wind and solar power are not currently enough to mitigate the usage of Coal and Oil, (are you understanding this, China) and time is short....very short for Biodiversity on planet Earth. The social genius Carlin also mentioned, loudly, that Nature does not need you, you need nature.
Signed: N.J. Raglione. Director...The World Friendly Peace and Ecology Movement.

Harry and Meghan’s Big Funding Source Is Private. Sort of.

Benjamin Mueller 12 hrs ago

a close up of a traffic light: St Mary’s island in the Isles of Scilly. The archipelago off the southwestern coast of England is part of Prince Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall.
Next Slide
Full Screen

1/4 SLIDES © Tom Jamieson for The New York Times
St Mary’s island in the Isles of Scilly. The archipelago off the southwestern coast of England is part of Prince Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall.
LONDON — Every six months or so, Alan Davis sets out from his seaside bungalow on a far-flung island off the southwestern coast of England carrying a rent check of 12.5 pounds (about $16) for his landlord.

But this is no ordinary landlord, and no ordinary rent check.
Mr. Davis lives on a tiny corner of the Duchy of Cornwall, the property empire controlled by Prince Charles, the heir to Britain’s throne, who has quietly turned an inheritance of rundown farmland into a billion-pound real estate conglomerate. By a quirk of British law, Mr. Davis has to pay the prince for the privilege of living on his land, piddling as the checks may be.
Sign Up For the Morning Briefing Newsletter
“It’s a feudal way of carrying on,” Mr. Davis said. “They put their finger in and demand money. They’re a law unto themselves.”
Prince Charles’s fortune, long shielded from scrutiny by parliamentary indifference and obscure accounting, spilled into public view this month when his younger son, Prince Harry, announced that he and his wife, Meghan, were quitting their royal duties. In trying to prove that they would renounce taxpayer money, Harry and Meghan gave Britons a peek at the shadowy world of ostensibly private finance that bankrolls the family and its mansions, gardens and considerable staff.
But what the royals call private contains, by any other measure, a generous mix of public giveaways: medieval landholdings passed from one male heir to the next, sweeping tax relief, indemnity from some laws and exemptions from others, ownership of long stretches of coastline and all the treasure buried in Cornwall.
Those perks have delivered Prince Charles substantial wealth. Income from the duchy has nearly tripled in two decades, to £21.6 million, about $28.3 million, last year. But the uproar over Harry and Meghan’s funding has raised uncomfortable questions for the prince and the royals about whether any of their income can truly be considered private.
Coming on the heels of Prince Charles’s brother Andrew being kicked off the royal front lines for socializing with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, such scrutiny is another dent to the royal mystique.
“Harry has chucked a grenade into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace,” said David McClure, the author of a book about the royal family’s wealth. “It’s weakened the foundations of the royal family and their money, and it’s raised issues that don’t just apply to Harry but have been bubbling under the surface for at least a decade.”
Among the biggest of those is the special treatment afforded Prince Charles’s property empire, an estate that, among other things, pays for the upkeep of his country mansion and furnished £5 million last year for the families of Harry and his older brother, Prince William.
Formed in 1337 to provide the royal heir with an income, the duchy came with fringe benefits: the right to unclaimed shipwrecks on Cornish shores, washed-up whale and sturgeon carcasses, and at least 250 gallons of wine from boats docking at Cornish ports.
Nearly 700 years later, Prince Charles has held onto some anachronistic perks. Into his 20s, the prince is said to have received feudal dues of 100 silver shillings and a pound of peppercorns from the mayor of Launceston in Cornwall.
But with the help of British real estate heavyweights, he has transformed his sleepy holdings into a thriving business covering 200 square miles, turning the focus from rural land to profit-rich urban holdings.
The duchy has a vast footprint, stretching from the rocky shores of Cornwall to south London, and from medieval castles to a granite-walled men’s prison. It recently bought a 400,000-square-foot supermarket warehouse north of London.
A spokeswoman for the duchy said in a statement that Parliament had “confirmed its status as a private estate” and that the Treasury had agreed that its tax status did not confer an unfair advantage. “The prince has always ensured it is run with the interests of its communities as an equal priority,” the statement said.
The duchy’s holdings reflect how the royal family’s wealth has become concentrated in the hands of Prince Charles and his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, whose own estate, the Duchy of Lancaster, paid her £21.7 million last year. Together, the two duchies bankroll more than a dozen members of the family, supplementing a taxpayer grant of £82 million last year reserved for official duties and the upkeep of several palaces.
Despite lawmakers once deeming its current income “an accident of history,” the Duchy of Cornwall has mostly avoided harsh questions, in part by playing up its interest in traditional architecture and sustainable practices across its humbler holdings: scores of farms, much of Dartmoor National Park in Devon and rivers throughout Cornwall. But analysts say that obscures fierce commercial instincts.
“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and swims like a duck, you sort of assume it is a duck,” a Labour lawmaker told duchy officials during a 2013 hearing. “The Duchy of Cornwall looks and behaves like a corporation.”
But the duchy does not pay taxes like a corporation. Instead it sits in a sort of legal limbo, using its royal status to skirt corporation and capital gains taxes even as it argues that, as a private estate, it has no obligation to open its books. The duchy said that its capital gains were all reinvested in the business, obviating the need to tax them, and that only companies paid corporation tax.
Prince Charles pays tax on his duchy income only voluntarily, and after deducting what analysts believe to be about £10 million that he deems official and charitable spending. He has also written off tens of thousands of pounds that he pays for gardening at Highgrove, his country house, on the basis that members of the public were occasionally invited in.
“The Duchy of Cornwall can be whatever it’s convenient for it to be,” said John Kirkhope, who wrote a doctoral thesis about the duchy in 2013. “If you want to inquire into its privileges, you can’t, because it’s supposedly a private estate, in the same way I have a private bank account. But when it’s convenient, it’s also a crown property, so that for example it doesn’t pay the same rate of tax as any similar entity would pay.”
The duchy’s powers go even further.
It inherits the possessions of anyone who dies in Cornwall without a will or next of kin, a power that in some years has yielded hundreds of thousands of pounds. The duchy funnels the money into charities after deducting its own costs.
The duchy owns the right to mine in Cornwall, even under private homes — a right that it registered to extend as recently as eight years ago.
Most extraordinarily in critics’ eyes, the duchy has the right to be consulted on any legislation that affects its interests. Over the years, governments have interpreted that to include bills about hunting, road safety, children’s rights, marine access and wreck removal. A 2008 planning law exempts the duchy from ever committing a planning offense.
A similar carve-out gives Prince Charles unusual power over homeowners on the Isles of Scilly, a picturesque archipelago off the southwestern coast of England, and in Newton St. Loe, a village near Bath.
People like Mr. Davis own their homes there, but the duchy owns the ground on which they are built. Such an arrangement is not uncommon in England, but homeowners would usually have the option to buy the land. Not on some duchy land.
That enables the duchy to charge small ground rents to homeowners grandfathered into long leases, like Mr. Davis. Once those leases lapse, it can also raise rents to thousands of pounds per year, making it difficult for people to sell or mortgage their homes.
In one case, a couple built a house on the Isles of Scilly, only for the duchy to force them to sign a lease bequeathing the property to Prince Charles’s estate upon their death, said Lord Berkeley, a Labour peer in the House of Lords.
“They set up an arrangement where tenants are too frightened to do anything, for fear of losing their property,” said Lord Berkeley, who tried unsuccessfully to push through a bill in 2017 ending the duchy’s special landlord status and removing its tax exemptions. “In what we like to think of as a democratic country, that doesn’t seem fair to me.”
Nor have lawmakers approved of how Prince Charles handles the duchy’s accounting. He pays rent to the duchy for Highgrove, his country house. But because the money goes into the duchy’s revenues, it empties back into Prince Charles’s pocket as income.
The duchy said the prince paid rent, at market value, to avoid the duchy taking on costs it shouldn’t. Still, he is effectively paying it to himself — and allowing himself to take a tax deduction.
“He pays money out from one pocket and receives it back in the other pocket,” Mr. Kirkhope said.
Polls show that the public is dubious of government funding for anyone outside the core line of succession. And Harry and Meghan’s departure has intensified the focus on how and why the public pays for the royals’ lifestyle.
Palace aides have indicated that Prince Charles may dip into his personal investments, rather than the Duchy of Cornwall, to fund Harry and Meghan’s lives in Canada. But that and much else remains unresolved, including how long British taxpayers will pay for the couple’s security.
“It’s the third rail of public discussions about the royal family: royal finances,” said Patrick Jephson, a former private secretary to Diana. “It is royal people and royal advisers’ least favorite topic of conversation.”
Mr. Davis says that among people the Isles of Scilly, around where he lives and pays his rent to the duchy, the mood has hardened against Prince Charles.
“They hate him basically,” Mr. Davis said. “Most people can’t abide him. All the money he gets goes out of the island. And that’s how he can afford to give Harry £2.3 million to live his lifestyle.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump told his national security adviser in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript by the former adviser, John R. Bolton.
The president’s statement as described by Mr. Bolton could undercut a key element of his impeachment defense: that the holdup in aid was separate from Mr. Trump’s requests that Ukraine announce investigations into his perceived enemies, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy firm while his father was in office.
Mr. Bolton’s explosive account of the matter at the center of Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, the third in American history, was included in drafts of a manuscript he has circulated in recent weeks to close associates. He also sent a draft to the White House for a standard review process for some current and former administration officials who write books.
Sign Up For the Morning Briefing Newsletter
Multiple people described Mr. Bolton’s account of the Ukraine affair.
The book presents an outline of what Mr. Bolton might testify to if he is called as a witness in the Senate impeachment trial, the people said. The White House could use the pre-publication review process, which has no set time frame, to delay or even kill the book’s publication or omit key passages.
Over dozens of pages, Mr. Bolton described how the Ukraine affair unfolded over several months until he departed the White House in September. He described not only the president’s private disparagement of Ukraine but also new details about senior cabinet officials who have publicly tried to sidestep involvement.
For example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged privately that there was no basis to claims by the president’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani that the ambassador to Ukraine was corrupt and believed Mr. Giuliani may have been acting on behalf of other clients, Mr. Bolton wrote.
Mr. Bolton also said that after the president’s July phone call with the president of Ukraine, he raised with Attorney General William P. Barr his concerns about Mr. Giuliani, who was pursuing a shadow Ukraine policy encouraged by the president, and told Mr. Barr that the president had mentioned him on the call. A spokeswoman for Mr. Barr denied that he learned of the call from Mr. Bolton; the Justice Department has said he learned about it only in mid-August.
And the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was present for at least one phone call where the president and Mr. Giuliani discussed the ambassador, Mr. Bolton wrote. Mr. Mulvaney has told associates he would always step away when the president spoke with his lawyer to protect their attorney-client privilege.
During a previously reported May 23 meeting where top advisers and Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, briefed him about their trip to Kyiv for the inauguration of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Trump railed about Ukraine trying to damage him and mentioned a conspiracy theory about a hacked Democratic server, according to Mr. Bolton.
Charles J. Cooper, a lawyer for Mr. Bolton, declined to comment. The White House did not provide responses to questions about Mr. Bolton’s assertions, and representatives for Mr. Johnson, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Mulvaney did not respond to emails and calls seeking comment on Sunday afternoon.
Mr. Bolton’s submission of the book to the White House may have given the White House lawyers direct insight into what Mr. Bolton would say if he were called to testify at Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial. It also intensified concerns among some of his advisers that they needed to block Mr. Bolton from testifying, according to two people familiar with their concerns.
The White House has ordered Mr. Bolton and other key officials with firsthand knowledge of Mr. Trump’s dealings not to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. Mr. Bolton said in a statement this month that he would testify if subpoenaed.
In recent days, some White House officials have described Mr. Bolton as a disgruntled former employee, and have said he took notes that he should have left behind when he departed the administration.
Mr. Trump told reporters last week that he did not want Mr. Bolton to testify and said that even if he simply spoke out publicly, he could damage national security.
“The problem with John is it’s a national security problem,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference in Davos, Switzerland. “He knows some of my thoughts. He knows what I think about leaders. What happens if he reveals what I think about a certain leader and it’s not very positive?”
“It’s going to make the job very hard,” he added.
The Senate impeachment trial could end as early as Friday without witness testimony. Democrats in both the House and Senate have pressed for weeks to include any new witnesses and documents that did not surface during the House impeachment hearings to be fair, focusing on persuading the handful of Republican senators they would need to join them to succeed.
But a week into the trial, most lawmakers say the chances of 51 senators agreeing to call witnesses are dwindling, not growing.
Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, said the Bolton manuscript underscores the need for him to testify, and the House impeachment managers demanded after this article was published that the Senate vote to call him. “There can be no doubt now that Mr. Bolton directly contradicts the heart of the president’s defense,” they said in a statement.
Republicans, though, were mostly silent; a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, declined to comment.
Mr. Bolton would like to testify for several reasons, according to associates. He believes he has relevant information, and he has also expressed concern that if his account of the Ukraine affair emerges only after the trial, he will be accused of holding back to increase his book sales.
Mr. Bolton, 71, a fixture in conservative national security circles since his days in the Reagan administration, joined the White House in 2018 after several people recommended him to the president, including the Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson.
But Mr. Bolton and Mr. Trump soured on each other over several global crises, including Iranian aggression, Mr. Trump’s posture toward Russia and, ultimately, the Ukraine matter. Mr. Bolton was also often at odds with Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Mulvaney throughout his time in the administration.
Key to Mr. Bolton’s account about Ukraine is an exchange during a meeting in August with the president after Mr. Trump returned from vacation at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. Mr. Bolton raised the $391 million in congressionally appropriated assistance to Ukraine for its war in the country’s east against Russian-backed separatists. Officials had frozen the aid, and a deadline was looming to begin sending it to Kyiv, Mr. Bolton noted.
He, Mr. Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper had collectively pressed the president about releasing the aid nearly a dozen times in the preceding weeks after lower-level officials who worked on Ukraine issues began complaining about the holdup, Mr. Bolton wrote. Mr. Trump had effectively rebuffed them, airing his longstanding grievances about Ukraine, which mixed legitimate efforts by some Ukrainians to back his Democratic 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, with unsupported accusations and outright conspiracy theories about the country, a key American ally.
Mr. Giuliani had also spent months stoking the president’s paranoia about the American ambassador to Ukraine at the time, Marie L. Yovanovitch, claiming that she was openly anti-Trump and needed to be dismissed. Mr. Trump had ordered her removed as early as April 2018 during a private dinner with two Giuliani associates and others, a recording of the conversation made public on Saturday showed.
In his August 2019 discussion with Mr. Bolton, the president appeared focused on the theories Mr. Giuliani had shared with him, replying to Mr. Bolton’s question that he preferred sending no assistance to Ukraine until officials had turned over all materials they had about the Russia investigation that related to Mr. Biden and supporters of Mrs. Clinton in Ukraine.
The president often hits at multiple opponents in his harangues, and he frequently lumps together the law enforcement officials who conducted the Russia inquiry with Democrats and other perceived enemies, as he appeared to do in speaking to Mr. Bolton.
Mr. Bolton also described other key moments in the pressure campaign, including Mr. Pompeo’s private acknowledgment to him last spring that Mr. Giuliani’s claims about Ms. Yovanovitch had no basis and that Mr. Giuliani may have wanted her removed because she might have been targeting his clients who had dealings in Ukraine as she sought to fight corruption.
Ms. Yovanovitch, a Canadian immigrant whose parents fled the Soviet Union and Nazis, was a well-regarded career diplomat who was known as a vigorous fighter against corruption in Ukraine. She was abruptly removed last year and told the president had lost trust in her, even though a boss assured her she had “done nothing wrong.”
Mr. Bolton also said he warned White House lawyers that Mr. Giuliani might have been leveraging his work with the president to help his private clients.
At the impeachment trial, Mr. Trump himself had hoped to have his defense call a range of people to testify who had nothing to do with his efforts related to Ukraine, including Hunter Biden, to frame the case around Democrats. But Mr. McConnell repeatedly told the president that witnesses could backfire, and the White House has followed his lead.
Mr. McConnell and other Republicans in the Senate, working in tandem with Mr. Trump’s lawyers, have spent weeks waging their own rhetorical battle to keep their colleagues within the party tent on the question of witnesses, with apparent success. Two of the four Republican senators publicly open to witness votes have sounded notes of skepticism in recent days about the wisdom of having the Senate compel testimony that the House did not get.
Since Mr. Bolton’s statement, White House advisers have floated the possibility that they could go to court to try to obtain a restraining order to stop him from speaking. Such an order would be unprecedented, but any attempt to secure it could succeed in tying up his testimony in legal limbo and scaring off Republican moderates wary of letting the trial drag on when its outcome appears clear.
Katie Benner, Nicholas Fandos and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.
Katie Benner and Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.

Company Customizing Ads on your Browser
Opt Out? Opt In?
You have the choice if you can find them in your browser account.
Contact them and tell them how you feel about companies that gather your behavior
information for marketing purposes.
===============================================
33Across
=======

4 Info
====

========
AcuityAds
========
Adara
========
Adbrain
========
AddThis
======
Adelphic
======
AdGear Technologies
================
Adobe Marketing Cloud - Advertising Services
==================================
Adroll
======
Alphonso
=======
Amazon Ad System
==============
http://www.amazon.com
Amazon Ad System is the online advertising platform through which Amazon.com delivers interest-based advertising on its own sites and across the web. Amazon.com has been providing personalized recommendations to customers on our own sites for many years. Amazon Ad System brings that expertise and other innovations to the delivery of online advertising.
To learn more about how we collect and use the information for online advertising, please visit http://www.amazon.com/InterestBasedAds
===================================
Amobee
=======
Apollo Program
===========
AppNexus
=========
Audiencerate
==========
AuDigent
==========
BazaarVoice
=========
Beeswax
=======
Bombora
=======
BounceX
=======
Branch
======
Catalina BuyerVision
===============
Choozle
======
Clickagy
======
Clicksco
======
Cognitiv
======
Connexity
=======
Conversant
========
Criteo
=====
Cross Pixel
========
dataxu
=====
Datonics
======
Demandbase
=========
DigiTrust
=======
Drawbridge
=========
Dstillery
=========
EMX
=========
eXelate, a Nielsen Company
====================
Experian
=======
Exponential
=========
Eyeota
=====
Eyereturn
=======
EyeView Digital
==============
Status Unavailable
==============
Facebook
============
Flashtalking
============
FreeWheel
============
Google Inc.
============
GroundTruth
============
GumGum
============
IHS Markit Digital
==============
Index Exchange
==============
Innovid
==============
Inuvo
==============
iPromote
==============
IQM.com
==============
Kargo Global
==============
KBMG.com
==============
Knorex
==============
Krux Digital
==============
LinkedIn
==============
LiveIntent
==============
LiveRamp
==============
LKQD Technologies
===============
Lotame
===============
Marchex
===============
MaxPoint Interactive
===============
Media.net
==============
MediaMath
========
Merkle
==============
Microsoft
==============
MiQ
==============
ImPlatform
=============
Narrativ
=============
Nativo
=============
NC Audience Exchange/News IQ
========================
Neustar/Aggregate Knowledge
========================
Numberly
========================
Oath Inc
========================
OpenX
========================
Oracle Data Cloud
========================
Outbrain
========================
OwnerIQ
========================
Parrable
========================
Pinterest
========================
PubMatic
========================
Pulpo
=========
PulsePoint
=========
Qualia
==========
Quantcast
==========
Rakuten Marketing
==============
Resonate
==============
Responsys
=============
Retargetly
=============
RhythmOne
=============
Rubicon Project
=============
Run Inc
=============
Samba.TV
=============
ScorecardResearch
==============
Semasio
======
ShareThis
========
Signal Digital
==========
Simpli.fi
==========
Sizmek
==========
Skimlinks
==========
Sojern
==========
Sovrn
==========
SteelHouse
==========
Swoop
==========
Taboola
==========
Tapad
==========
Telaria SAS
==========
The Trade Desk
============
The Walt Disney Company
===================
Throtle
======
Tremor Video
==========
Triplelift
==========
Twitter
==========
Undertone
==========
Unruly Group
==========
V12 Group
==========
Varick
==========
Vertical Mass
==========
Viant (Specific Media/Vindico)
======================
Vibrant Media
==========
Weborama
========
Xaxis
=====
Yieldmo
=======
Zeta Global
=========
Ziff Davis
========

Corbin Hiar, E&E News and Lisa Riordan Seville - NBC News - Thursday, January 16, 2020

PHILADELPHIA — Last May, an air monitor on the border of the East Coast's largest oil refinery recorded a level of benzene, a cancer-causing gas, more than 21 times the federal limit.
In June, an explosive early morning fire rocked the Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery, terrifying nearby residents. Weeks after the disaster, as PES filed for bankruptcy and wound down operations, another air monitor in the network that rings the facility quietly registered the same sky-high reading for benzene. Long-term exposure to the sweet-smelling chemical has been linked to leukemia, lymphoma and a host of blood and immune system disorders.
That monitor, on the edge of this 1,300-acre complex of steel and pipe, is across an expressway from schools, parks, a strip mall and hundreds of homes.
Charles Reeves lives less than a mile and a half north of both air monitors in the largely African American neighborhood of Grays Ferry. A community organizer in this area of low-slung row houses, Reeves keeps tabs on the news in the neighborhood. He said no one informed him or his neighbors that they may have been exposed to benzene until he was contacted by NBC News, E&E News and the Investigative Reporting Workshop, a nonprofit newsroom based at American University.
"Poor people don't get information," said Reeves, 61, a grandfather and prostate cancer survivor. "Whichever way that blows, we're going to be affected."
The refinery disaster in June unleashed over 5,200 pounds of deadly hydrofluoric acid. A 4 a.m. leak inside a unit that produced high-octane gasoline caused a series of explosions that sent a ball of fire into the night sky. One blast hurtled a slab of metal bigger than a school bus across the river. Quick action by workers meant no one was killed or seriously injured. The refinery ceased production in August.
The catastrophic blaze provided a stark illustration of the hazards the refinery has long posed for Philadelphians. But even in its wake, officials gave no formal notice to residents that the same facility had registered among the highest benzene levels of any refinery in the country, according to data submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Philadelphia Energy Solutions, or PES, is just one of a dozen refineries of the more than 130 refineries operating across the country that have consistently exceeded the EPA's "action level" of 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air, according to data compiled and analyzed by the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group that advocated for the fenceline monitoring program now required at all refineries.
High benzene readings registered by the network of monitors around a refinery don't necessarily translate to dangerous levels in the community, according to the city and EPA. But former EPA officials who examined the hard-to-access data compared ongoing high benzene concentrations around the Philadelphia refinery and near other top benzene emitters to levels more often seen in China and India. And they criticized local and federal officials for failing to address the problem or adequately warn the public.
That information could also come into play for investors eyeing the South Philadelphia site. Its creditors are looking to unload the refinery at a closely watched bankruptcy auction on Friday, as both residents and former workers watch from the sidelines.
The pollution threat from the bankrupt refinery didn't begin last spring or end in July 2019 for Reeves and his neighbors.
Opened in the late 1800s and long operated by Sunoco, the refinery was temporarily saved from insolvency in 2012 by a group of investors led by the Washington, D.C.-based private-equity giant Carlyle Group.
For more than a year and a half prior to the fire, air monitors near the blast site and along the perimeter of the refinery registered troubling levels of benzene, according to "fenceline" data submitted by refineries to the EPA.
The data, which EPA began posting early last year, shows the refinery exceeded the benzene emissions limit for all but 12 weeks from the end of January 2018 to late September 2019 — an 86-week span.
That may have exposed thousands of Philadelphians to troubling levels of benzene, including children like those who often play in the streets of Grays Ferry.
More than 297,000 people live within three miles of the refinery. About 60 percent of those residents are minority, and nearly 45 percent live below the poverty line, according to census data.
"The residents of South Philadelphia bear the environmental cost of the refinery and get almost none of the benefit," said Peter DeCarlo, an atmospheric scientist who spent the last eight years at Philadelphia's Drexel University. "It's a classic environmental justice issue."
In June, PES sent local and federal regulators a plan for how it aimed to cut benzene emissions, which the company mainly blamed on leaks and a neighboring facility.
Since then, city officials have not spoken publicly about the high benzene readings or the plan for addressing those emissions.
Bankruptcy battle looms
Now Reeves and other clean air advocates are fighting to keep the 335,000 barrel-per-day refinery closed.
They would like to see the site, which has been home to oil storage facilities since shortly after the Civil War, converted to a less polluting commercial use. At least one advocacy group, Philly Thrive, is planning to bus opponents of reopening the refinery to New York City, where the PES auction will be held in the offices of the refinery's bankruptcy lawyers.
Advocates have also pressured Mayor Jim Kenney to oppose bids that include fossil fuel components. The Delaware bankruptcy court that's overseeing the refinery sale has granted his administration a consulting role during the auction.
Labor unions, on the other hand, want to see the refinery back up and running. Most of the hulking refinery was unaffected by the blast. More than 1,000 oil workers lost their jobs last year when PES abruptly closed, citing financial fallout from the fire.
They argue the refinery benefited the Philadelphia region.
"There's an idea out there that we weren't good neighbors. But that's false," said Ryan O'Callaghan, a laid-off worker and former president of United Steelworkers Local 10-1.
"We all live around the refinery," said O'Callaghan, who grew up in Grays Ferry and now lives seven miles away. "I belong to a social club in South Philly. Most of my time is spent there."
PES first filed for bankruptcy in 2018 to shed debt it blamed on EPA's ethanol mandate for gasoline.
PES is currently owned largely by its former creditors, according to bankruptcy filings. Credit Suisse Asset Management and Bardin Hill Investment Partners, which each control more than a quarter of the company, are now the primary owners. Carlyle maintains a 15 percent stake and Energy Transfer Operating LP, Sunoco's parent company, owns just over 7 percent.
Soon after the refinery shut down, Mayor Kenney created an expert panel to help the city evaluate its options. But Kenney didn't inform the Refinery Advisory Group of the benzene issue, said Mark Alan Hughes, the chairman of the advisory group's environment and science committee.
Potential buyers of the PES refinery or investors in the land should know about the benzene problems and potential legal liability for the emissions, Hughes said.
"If it becomes clear that there is a very strong lawsuit here, then it's going to affect your bidding," said Hughes, who is also the faculty director of the University of Pennsylvania's Kleinman Center for Energy Policy.
Carlyle and Credit Suisse Asset Management didn't respond to requests for comment on the refinery's benzene emissions or how they could affect the sale. Bardin Hill declined to comment and Energy Transfer Operating LP directed questions to PES, which also didn't respond to inquiries.
James Garrow, a spokesman for Philadelphia's Department of Public Health, said in a statement that "it is a well-known fact that refineries emit benzene during operation." He said that a city-run air monitor a half mile from the refinery didn't record excessive benzene emissions after the disaster and that any "responsible bidder" would seek out such information.
Reeves, the community organizer, was critical of the city's outreach efforts around the refinery sale.
"The same people, the same companies that allowed the stuff to happen are trying to decide what happens in the future," he said.
"Where are the people who still live here, who can't afford to leave?" he asked. "We're still getting kicked to the back."
Americans at risk
PES and most other U.S. refineries began monitoring benzene emissions on Jan. 30, 2018, to comply with a 2015 EPA rule that tightened emission standards for refineries.
In proposing the regulation, EPA argued that benzene — a naturally occurring component of crude oil and still a key ingredient in gasoline — is mainly released by leaking equipment. It's a good "indicator of other air toxics emitted from fugitive sources," the agency said.
When the rule took effect, PES was planning to go public and warned potential investors that the "fenceline monitoring requirement may lead to corrective action measures, including the installation of additional pollution controls, even if the refinery is otherwise in compliance with its air emissions permits."
The benzene monitoring requirement forced PES and other refinery operators to place air monitoring tubes around the borders of their refineries and then measure and analyze the amount of the carcinogenic gas that those monitors detected every two weeks. For refineries whose average annual emission topped the action level of 9 micrograms of benzene per cubic meter of air, the regulation required operators to determine the cause of the refinery's excess emissions and create a plan to reduce them.
"We project that no refinery should exceed that fenceline benzene concentration action level if in full compliance" with the stricter emissions standards, the rule said.
In weeks before and after the 2019 fire, some of the monitors along the fenceline repeatedly hit 190 micrograms per cubic meter. The emissions levels, however, could have been even higher since PES noted that the reading "exceeds instrument calibration range."
"Oh my god," said Bob Sonawane, a toxicologist who worked in EPA's Office of Research and Development for more than three decades. "The numbers that you're saying are very, very high, like some things happening in China, India and many other places."
In a corrective action plan required by the refinery rule, PES blamed many of its high benzene readings on a different company's petroleum terminal across the Schuylkill River as well as its own "benzene tanks and benzene unloading operations" that it argued are "nonrefinery operations and therefore not sources to be controlled." The refinery operator also promised to conduct additional sampling and inspections and work with the neighboring facility.
Garrow, the health department spokesman, said the city didn't receive the PES document until three days after the June 21 refinery disaster. But even then, city officials did not tell the public. At a press conference on June 25 about the refinery fire, Mayor Kenney told reporters "there are no findings that would suggest a threat to public health."
Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project and former head of EPA's enforcement office, cast doubt on the refinery's attempt to explain away its high benzene readings.
"The monitoring they report is supposed to screen out background levels, including what comes from upwind sources," he said.
The plan also doesn't appear to be working. As of Sept. 25, 2019 — the last biweekly period EPA has posted online and more than two months after PES stopped producing fuel — the refinery's average annual emission level was 49 micrograms per cubic meter. That's higher than any other refinery that reported data to EPA and over five times the benzene action level.
Yet Sonawane, the toxicologist, said even the federal action level is "not protective of public health."
A hazard summary he worked on while at EPA warned that anyone exposed to air with more than 0.45 micrograms per cubic meter of benzene over their lifetime would have a greater than one in 1 million chance of developing cancer "as a direct result of continuously breathing air containing this chemical." That risk increases to more than 10 in 1 million at the level set by the federal refinery rule.
In Grays Ferry, that means residents, over a lifetime of exposure, may have been breathing air of a quality that the EPA estimates could be linked to an incidence of cancer of more than 100 adults out of a population of 1 million.
Children in the neighborhood could be at even greater risk of developing certain cancers, Sonawane estimated, citing research published after 2003, when EPA last reviewed the health dangers posed by benzene.
For example, a 2015 analysis in the American Journal of Epidemiology found "children might be affected at lower benzene levels than adults."
Silent regulators
Public health advocates are critical of Philadelphia and EPA for staying mostly silent about the benzene levels in South Philadelphia and around the country.
"That makes no sense," said Schaeffer, with the Environmental Integrity Project. "It's bad government and bad corporate management."
Schaeffer criticized Mayor Kenney for failing to tell residents about the benzene problem and for not talking about the company's response, as the powerful investors who own the refinery try to sell it off.
Schaeffer was also critical of his former agency. While city officials may have incentives to keep quiet because of the impending sale, Schaeffer said that the "EPA shouldn't have quite the same constraints."
"That's why you have feds overseeing all these state and local programs," he said. "So they should be on the hook, too."
Public health and the environment are a top concern for EPA, the agency said in an email, and it has worked to reduce emissions from all types of facilities, including refineries. When it comes to informing the public, EPA said it often lets local partners take the lead.
Asked about the agency's response to the PES plan to reduce benzene emissions, the agency said that it "does not comment on ongoing potential enforcement activities unless and until we take a public action."
For his part, Reeves expects little to change for the residents of Grays Ferry and other fenceline neighborhoods.
"The [bankruptcy] judge right now is making decisions without the input of the community," Reeves said while his grandchildren and a group of boys he mentors played on the street outside his home. He added that refinery workers had "told us to move."
But moving, he said, is not an option for many people in his neighborhood.

Sir David Attenborough warns of climate 'crisis moment'
By David Shukman
Science editor
16 January 2020

Share this with Facebook
Share this with WhatsApp
Share this with Twitter

Share
Related Topics
Our Planet Matters
Media caption
China needs to tackle climate change - Attenborough
"The moment of crisis has come" in efforts to tackle climate change, Sir David Attenborough has warned.
According to the renowned naturalist and broadcaster, "we have been putting things off for year after year".
"As I speak, southeast Australia is on fire. Why? Because the temperatures of the Earth are increasing," he said.
Sir David's comments came in a BBC News interview to launch a year of special coverage on the subject of climate change.
Scientists say climate change is one of several factors behind the Australian fires; others include how forests are managed and natural patterns in the weather.
Sir David told me it was "palpable nonsense" for some politicians and commentators to suggest that the Australian fires were nothing to do with the world becoming warmer.
"We know perfectly well," he said, that human activity is behind the heating of the planet.
BBC announces new climate change coverage
What is climate change?
Where we are in seven charts
Greenland's ice faces melting 'death sentence'
Download the updated BBC Energy Briefing (10.4MB)
What does Sir David mean by 'the moment of crisis'?
He's highlighting the fact that while climate scientists are becoming clearer about the need for a rapid response, the pace of international negotiations is grindingly slow.
The most recent talks - in Madrid last month - were branded a disappointment by the UN Secretary-General, the British government and others.
Decisions on key issues were put off and several countries including Australia and Brazil were accused of trying to dodge their commitments.

"We have to realize that this is not playing games," Sir David said.
"This is not just having a nice little debate, arguments and then coming away with a compromise.
"This is an urgent problem that has to be solved and, what's more, we know how to do it - that's the paradoxical thing, that we're refusing to take steps that we know have to be taken."
What are those steps?
Back in 2018, the UN climate science panel spelled out how the world could have a reasonable chance of avoiding the most dangerous temperature rises in the future.
It said that emissions of the gases heating the planet - from power stations and factories, vehicles and agriculture - should be almost halved by 2030.

Image copyright
Getty Images
Image caption
Australia has been badly hit by bushfires
Instead, the opposite is happening.
The release of those gases is still increasing rather than falling and the key gas, carbon dioxide, is now in the atmosphere at a level far above anything experienced in human history.
As Sir David put it: "Every year that passes makes those steps more and more difficult to achieve."
Why does this matter right now?
This year is seen as a vital opportunity to turn the tide on climate change.
The UK is hosting what's billed as a crucial UN summit, known as COP26, in Glasgow in November.
Ahead of that gathering, governments worldwide are coming under pressure to toughen their targets for cutting emissions.
That's because their current pledges do not go nearly far enough.

Assuming they are delivered as promised (and there's no guarantee of that), there could still be a rise in the global average temperature of more than 3C by the end of the century, compared to pre-industrial levels.
The latest assessment by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lays bare the dangers of that.
It suggests that a rise of anything above 1.5C would mean that coastal flooding, heatwaves and damage to coral reefs would become more severe.
And the latest figures show that the world has already warmed by just over 1C.
What happens next?
As things stand, further heating looks inevitable.
"We're already living in a changed world," according to Professor Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading, a scientist whose depictions of global warming have often gone viral on social media.
He uses bold coloured stripes to show how much each year's temperature is above or below average - different shades of red for warmer and blue for colder.



Media caption
Our Planet Matters: Climate change explained
The designs now adorn T-shirts, scarves and even a tram in Germany.
At the moment, Prof Hawkins uses dark red to denote the highest level of warming, but regions such as the Arctic Ocean have achieved maximum level year after year.
Such is the scale of change that he's having to search for new colours.
"I'm thinking about adding dark purple or even black", he told me, to convey future increases in temperature.
"People might think climate change is a distant prospect but we're seeing so many examples around the world, like in Australia, of new records and new extremes."

What else is on the environmental agenda this year?
The natural world, and whether we can stop harming it.
While most political attention will be on climate change, 2020 is also seen as potentially important for halting the damage human activity is having on ecosystems.
Sir David has a blunt explanation for why this matters: "We actually depend upon the natural world for every breath of air we take and every mouthful of food that we eat."
World leaders are being invited to the Chinese city of Kunming for a major conference on how to safeguard Nature.

Image copyright
Getty Images
Image caption
The northern white rhino (seen here) is down to just two animals, making it "functionally" extinct
A landmark report last year warned that as many as one million species of animals, insects and plants are threatened with extinction in the coming decades.
A more recent study found that the growth of cities, the clearing of forests for farming and the soaring demand for fish had significantly altered nearly three-quarters of the land and more than two-thirds of the oceans.
One of the scientists involved, Prof Andy Purvis of the Natural History Museum in London, says that by undermining important habitats, "we're hacking away at our safety net, we're trashing environments we depend on".
He points to the impact of everything from the use of palm oil in processed food and shampoo to the pressures created by fast fashion.
And while the need for conservation is understood in many developed countries, Prof Purvis says "we've exported the damage to countries too poor to handle the environmental cost of what they're selling to us".
The gathering in Kunming takes place in October, a month before the UN climate summit in Glasgow, confirming this year as crucial for our relations with the planet.
Follow Davidon Twitter.

What is climate change?
Climate-related words and phrases explained
How much warmer is your city?
What is your diet's carbon footprint?
Where we are in seven charts