Category: Education

Apple and Google Lead Initiative For An Industry Specification To Address Unwanted Tracking

Paradise Erhuvwu

 

Location-tracking devices help users find personal items like their keys, purse, luggage, and more through crowdsourced finding networks. However, they can also be misused for unwanted tracking of individuals.

Today Apple and Google jointly submitted a proposed industry specification to help combat the misuse of Bluetooth location-tracking devices for unwanted tracking. The first-of-its-kind specification will allow Bluetooth location-tracking devices to be compatible with unauthorised tracking detection and alerts across iOS and Android platforms. Samsung, Tile, Chipolo, eufy Security, and Pebblebee have expressed support for the draft specification, which offers best practices and instructions for manufacturers, should they choose to build these capabilities into their products.

“Apple launched AirTag to give users the peace of mind knowing where to find their most important items,” said Ron Huang, Apple’s vice president of Sensing and Connectivity. “We built AirTag and the Find My network with a set of proactive features to discourage unwanted tracking — a first in the industry — and we continue to make improvements to help ensure the technology is being used as intended. This new industry specification builds upon the AirTag protections, and through collaboration with Google results in a critical step forward to help combat unwanted tracking across iOS and Android.”

“Bluetooth trackers have created tremendous user benefits, but they also bring the potential of unwanted tracking, which requires industrywide action to solve,” said Dave Burke, Google’s vice president of Engineering for Android. “Android has an unwavering commitment to protecting users, and will continue to develop strong safeguards and collaborate with the industry to help combat the misuse of Bluetooth tracking devices.”

In addition to incorporating feedback from device manufacturers, input from various safety and advocacy groups has been integrated into the development of the specification.

“The National Network to End Domestic Violence has been advocating for universal standards to protect survivors — and all people — from the misuse of Bluetooth tracking devices. This collaboration and the resulting standards are a significant step forward. NNEDV is encouraged by this progress,” said Erica Olsen, the National Network to End Domestic Violence’s senior director of its Safety Net Project. “These new standards will minimise opportunities for abuse of this technology and decrease the burden on survivors in detecting unwanted trackers. We are grateful for these efforts and look forward to continuing to work together to address unwanted tracking and misuse.”

“Today’s release of a draft specification is a welcome step to confront harmful misuses of Bluetooth location trackers,” said Alexandra Reeve Givens, the Center for Democracy & Technology’s president and CEO. “CDT continues to focus on ways to make these devices more detectable and reduce the likelihood that they will be used to track people. A key element to reducing misuse is a universal, OS-level solution that is able to detect trackers made by different companies on the variety of smartphones that people use every day. We commend Apple and Google for their partnership and dedication to developing a uniform solution to improve detectability. We look forward to the specification moving through the standardisation process and to further engagement on ways to reduce the risk of Bluetooth location trackers being misused.”

The specification has been submitted as an Internet-Draft via the Internet Engineering Task Force(IETF), a leading standards development organisation. Interested parties are invited and encouraged to review and comment over the next three months. Following the comment period, Apple and Google will partner to address feedback, and will release a production implementation of the specification for unwanted tracking alerts by the end of 2023 that will then be supported in future versions of iOS and Android.

Curled from Apple newsroom

Harvard names Claudine Gay 30th president.

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Claudine Gay, a widely admired higher education leader and distinguished scholar of democracy and political participation, will become the 30th president of Harvard University on July 1.

Since 2018, Gay has served as the Edgerley Family Dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), the University’s largest and most academically diverse faculty, spanning the biological and physical sciences and engineering, the social sciences, and the humanities and arts. As dean, she has guided efforts to expand student access and opportunity, spur excellence and innovation in teaching and research, enhance aspects of academic culture, and bring new emphasis and energy to areas such as quantum science and engineering; climate change; ethnicity, indigeneity, and migration; and the humanities. She has successfully led FAS through the COVID pandemic, consistently and effectively prioritizing the dual goals of safeguarding community health and sustaining academic continuity and progress. The disruptive effects of the crisis notwithstanding, she has also launched and led an ambitious, inclusive, and faculty-driven strategic planning process, intended to take a fresh look at fundamental aspects of academic structures, resources, and operations in FAS and to advance academic excellence in the years ahead.

The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Gay received her bachelor’s degree in 1992 from Stanford, where she majored in economics and was awarded the Anna Laura Myers Prize for best undergraduate thesis. In 1998, she received her Ph.D. in government from Harvard, where she won the Toppan Prize for best dissertation in political science. A quantitative social scientist with expertise in political behavior, Gay served as an assistant professor and then tenured associate professor at Stanford before being recruited to Harvard in 2006 as a professor of government. She was also appointed a professor of African and African American Studies in 2007. She was named the Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government in 2015, when she also became dean of social science at FAS.

“Claudine is a remarkable leader who is profoundly devoted to sustaining and enhancing Harvard’s academic excellence, to championing both the value and the values of higher education and research, to expanding opportunity, and to strengthening Harvard as a fount of ideas and a force for good in the world,” said Penny Pritzker, senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation and chair of Harvard’s presidential search committee. “As the Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences since 2018, and previously as dean of social science, Claudine has brought to her roles a rare blend of incisiveness and inclusiveness, intellectual range and strategic savvy, institutional ambition and personal humility, a respect for enduring ideals, and a talent for catalyzing change. She has a bedrock commitment to free inquiry and expression, as well as a deep appreciation for the diverse voices and views that are the lifeblood of a university community.

“As her many admirers know, Claudine consults widely; she listens attentively; she thinks rigorously and imaginatively; she invites collaboration and resists complacency; and she acts with conviction and purpose,” continued Pritzker. “All of us on the search committee are excited by the prospect of her bringing her high aspirations and interdisciplinary outlook across the Yard from University Hall to Massachusetts Hall. We are confident Claudine will be a thoughtful, principled, and inspiring president for all of Harvard, dedicated to helping each of our individual Schools to thrive, as well as fostering creative connections among them. She is someone intent on affirming the power of curiosity-driven learning. And she is someone eager to integrate and elevate Harvard’s efforts — throughout the arts and sciences and across the professions — to address complex challenges in the wider world.

“For all her professional accomplishments, even more impressive are Claudine’s personal qualities — her quality and clarity of mind, her broad curiosity about fields beyond her own, her integrity and fair-mindedness, and her dedication to creating opportunities for others. She will be a great Harvard president in no small part because she is such a good person,” said Pritzker.

https://news.harvard.edu/

Vision and distinctiveness: An Royal Society of Arts Academies retrospective.

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Through the RSA Academies project, we demonstrated that we’re not simply a ‘think-tank’ but we’re committed to impact on the ground. RSA Academies was a major investment in developing the potential and success of young people.

We began our engagement with the academies programme with our sponsorship of the RSA Academy in Tipton, Sandwell, in 2008. Following the early success of that initiative, we were inspired to go further. We established RSA Academies in late 2011, in the flourish of activity that followed the 2010 Academies Act, which encouraged good and outstanding schools to become academies, and opened the door to more sponsors.

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Benin’s Bronze Cockerel To Be Handed Back By Cambridge University’s Jesus College

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A bronze cockerel kept at Cambridge University that had been looted in a British raid on what is now Nigeria will be handed back this month.

The Benin bronze, known as an “okukor”, was given to Jesus College in 1905.

In 2016 it was removed from display and the Legacy of Slavery Working Party (LSWP) recommended it be returned.

The college said it became the first institution in the world to announce its decision to return a Benin Bronze, in 2019.

The LSWP, which includes academics and students, was set up in 2019 by the college to investigate historical links it may have to the slave trade.

The group concluded that the statue “belongs with the current Oba at the Court of Benin”.

The Oba of Benin is head of the historic Eweka dynasty of the Benin Empire, centred on Benin City in modern-day Nigeria.

It will be returned to Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments in a ceremony at Jesus College, attended by delegates from the commission and Benin, on 27 October.

His Royal Majesty, Oba of Benin, Omo N’Oba N’Edo Uku Akpolokpolo, Ewuare II said: “We are indeed very pleased and commend Jesus College for taking this lead in making restitution for the plunder that occurred in Benin in 1897.
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“We truly hope that others will expedite the return of our artworks which in many cases are of religious importance to us.”

Master of Jesus College, Sonita Alleyne, said it was a “historic moment”.

“This is the right thing to do out of respect for the unique heritage and history of this artefact,” she said.

“Since we took the decision to return the bronze following the college’s Legacy of Slavery Working Party’s extensive research, many organisations have followed in our footsteps.”

Prof Abba Isa Tijani, director-general of the National Commission for Museums and Monuments of Nigeria, said it was “receiving this antiquity for the benefit of the Benin people and the people of Nigeria.”

Almost 1,000 bronzes were taken after Benin City, in present-day Nigeria, was occupied by imperial troops in 1897, according to the British Museum.

About 900 of those artefacts are housed in museums and collections around the world, including the British Museum.

Jesus College’s bronze cockerel, donated by a parent of a student, took pride of place in the college dining hall.

 

‘Afgan Girls Will Soon Return To School’ | UN Assures

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A senior UN official said the Taliban will ‘soon’ announce a plan to allow Afghan girls to attend secondary school, after earlier permitting girls like these, seen in Kandahar on September 26, 2021, to attend primary school.

The Taliban will announce a framework that allows girls to attend school in Afghanistan “soon,” a senior United Nations official said, after four weeks in which Afghan boys have been allowed a secondary education but girls have not.

“The de facto minister of education told us that they are working on a framework, which they will announce soon, that will allow all girls to go to secondary school, and we are expecting that to happen very soon,” UNICEF deputy executive director Omar Abdi said at the United Nations in New York on Friday.

For weeks now the Taliban have been saying that they will allow girls to return to school as soon as possible.

The Islamist group, notorious for its brutal and oppressive rule from 1996 to 2001, has faced international fury after effectively excluding women and girls from schools and work across the country, while incrementally stripping away Afghans’ freedoms.

The Taliban permitted girls to attend primary school from the start, but have maintained that neither the girls nor their female teachers could return to secondary school yet.

Taliban officials have said that can happen only once the girls’ security and strict gender segregation can be ensured under the group’s restrictive interpretation of sharia law, adding that more time is needed to put this framework in place.

Abdi noted that, as he spoke, “millions of girls of secondary school age are missing out on education for the 27th consecutive day.”

He said the UN has urged the Taliban authorities now governing Afghanistan “not to wait” on educating girls.

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Abdi said he had visited Afghanistan the week before and met with Taliban authorities.

“In all my meetings, the education of girls was the first issue that I raised.”

He said he had received “affirmations” of the Taliban’s commitments to allow girls to attend primary school.

As for secondary school, he said they were allowed “only in five provinces,” but added that the UN is pushing for the right to be implemented throughout the country.

A 14-year-old girl identified as Asma this week expressed both her frustration with the situation and her determination to pursue an education.

“Will I be able to go to school or not? This is my biggest concern. I want to learn everything, from the easiest to the hardest subjects. I want to be an astronaut, or an engineer or architect… This is my dream,” she told Amnesty International.

“Education is not a crime,” she added. “If the Taliban announce that getting an education is a crime, then we will commit this crime. We will not give up.”

 

What is NFT?

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NFT known to be “Non-fungible tokens”, use cryptocurrencies’ blockchains to sell original versions of digital artefacts.

An NFT is a digital asset that represents real-world objectives like art, music, in-game pieces and videos. They are bought and sold online, routinely with cryptocurrency, and they frequently encode with the same underlying software as numerous cryptos.

Although they’ve been around since 2014, NFTs are gaining notoriety now because they are becoming an increasingly popular way to buy and sell digital artwork. An amazing $174 million has been spent on NFTs since November 2017.

NFTs are also generally one of a kind, or at least one of a very limited run, and have unique identifying codes.” Virtually, NFTs initiate digital scarcity ,” says Arry Yu, chair of the Washington Technology Industry Association Cascadia Blockchain Council and managing board of Yellow Umbrella Ventures.

This stands in stark contrast to most digital starts, which are almost always infinite in supply. Hypothetically, cutting off the quantity should promote the value of a given asset, presupposing it’s in demand.

But countless NFTs, at least in these early days, have been digital formations that already exist in some flesh elsewhere, like iconic video times from NBA tournaments or securitized versions of digital art that’s already drifting around on Instagram.

For instance, prominent digital master Mike Winklemann, better known as  ” Beeple” crafted a composite of 5, 000 daily traces to create perhaps the most famous NFT of the moment,” every day: The First 5000 Daylights,” which sold at Christie’s for a record-breaking  $ 69.3   million.

Anyone can view the individual images–or even the part collage of likeness online free of charge. So why are people willing to devote millions to something they could easily screenshot or download?

Because an NFT allows the buyer to own the original part. Not only that, it contains built-in authentication, which acts as proof of ownership. Collectors value those” digital bragging titles” nearly more than the item itself.

“NON-FUNGIBLE TOKENS” (NFTs) leapt from the more obscure corners of the internet into the mainstream in March 2021 when Christies, a British auction house, sold a digital work of art for $69m. What it actually flogged was an NFT, a cryptocurrency chit that proves a buyer owns an intangible marker connected to a unique piece of digital art, music or other item. Much like René Magritte’s painting of a pipe that proclaims “this is not a pipe” an NFT is not the thing it represents. Tweets, videos of basketball dunks and even the source code to the world wide web have been sold as NFTs in recent months. From June to September they generated almost $11bn in sales, an eight-fold increase on the previous four months, according to DappRadar, a market tracker. What exactly is an NFT? And why are people spending tens of millions of dollars on them?
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An NFT is a record on a cryptocurrency’s blockchain (an immutable ledger that can record more than just virtual coins) that represents pieces of digital media. Invented a few years ago, it can link not only to art but also to text, videos or bits of code. Promoters of NFTs claim that they solve a thorny problem with digital art: how to own an original. For creators who freely upload their work or sell it as identical copies, the concept of an original is difficult to pin down. Exclusivity is impossible to enforce when digital files can be shared freely on the internet. But collectors want the cachet that comes with having an exclusive claim on an artwork. This is where NFTs fit in.

How NFT Works? 

NFTs exist on a blockchain, which is an administered public record that records transactions. You’re probably most familiar with blockchain as the underlying process that makes cryptocurrencies possible.

Specifically, NFTs are typically held on the Ethereum blockchain, although other blockchains support them as well.

An NFT is created, or “minted” from digital objectives that represent both definite and intangible entries, including

 

Astronomers Discovers Mysterious Radio Signals From Unknown Hidden Planets

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Mysterious radio signals may be coming from undiscovered planets. Astronomers may have found evidence of exoplanets orbiting red dwarf stars using a new techniquemr_Brightside/Depositphotos

Astronomers have discovered strange radio signals that could be coming from unseen planets. Models suggest that some of the signals could be produced through interactions between the magnetic fields of planets and their host stars, which could represent a brand new way to detect exoplanets.

So far, more than 4,500 exoplanets have been detected orbiting other stars. Most of them are spotted using the transit method, which relies on the light from a star dimming slightly as a planet passes in front of it. Radial velocity is another common technique, where astronomers watch for a star wobbling from the gravitational influence of orbiting exoplanets. Other methods are emerging too, such as gravitational microlensing.

And now we may have a new technique in the toolbox. Astronomers from ASTRON, the national observatory of the Netherlands, and the University of Queensland in Australia have been experimenting with detecting planets through radio waves, using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope.

The team was examining red dwarfs; small stars with strong magnetic activity that produces flares and radio emissions. Detecting these stars was an advance in itself, because at greater distances from Earth, space becomes quite radio-loud, and it’s tricky to separate individual objects. But LOFAR’s increased sensitivity allowed the astronomers to pick up 19 red dwarf stars.

Of those, four were particularly intriguing – they were older stars with reduced magnetic activity, meaning they “shouldn’t” have popped up in the survey. When the astronomers modeled what could be creating the radio signals, the best explanation was that the stars were being orbited by hidden planets.

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especially if the planet is blasting its own material into space. This kind of interaction can be seen in our own solar system between Jupiter and its moon Io, and the team says that it’s the best fit for the radio signals from these four strange red dwarfs.

“Our model for this radio emission from our stars is a scaled-up version of Jupiter and Io, with a planet enveloped in the magnetic field of a star, feeding material into vast currents that similarly power bright aurorae,” says Joseph Callingham, lead author of the study. “It’s a spectacle that has attracted our attention from lightyears away.”

For now, any planets that may be orbiting these stars have yet to be directly discovered or confirmed, but the model is intriguing enough to look. The team says that future radio telescopes could be sensitive enough to spot them, and if confirmed, the technique could join our repertoire for detecting exoplanets.

The research was published in two papers, appearing in Nature Astronomy and the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Source: University of Queensland

Tanzanian Novelist Wins Nobel Prize in Literature for Portraying Fate of Refugees

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Abdulrazak Gurnah wins Nobel Prize in Literature for portraying fate of refugees
Judges praised Abdulrazak Gurnah’s ‘compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism’

His most recent work, Afterlives, was published in 2020 and takes up where Paradise left off. Speaking to The National last year, he described it as a portrayal of the effects of colonialism.

“I’m still taking it in,” he said in a call with Nobel organisers, moments after winning the prize.

“It’s both the pleasure of making things, crafting, getting it right, but it’s also the pleasure of getting something across,” he said of his work. Asked if he felt joy in writing, he joked: “I feel joy when I’ve finished.”

Mr Gurnah was born on the island of Zanzibar in what is now Tanzania, but fled for Britain to escape the persecution of Arabs in the 1960s. He wrote in English despite Swahili being his first language.

He left his family in Tanzania and could not return until 1984 to see his father, who died shortly afterwards.

“Gurnah’s dedication to truth and his aversion to simplification are striking,” said Anders Olsson, the chairman of the Nobel committee.

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“His novels recoil from stereotypical descriptions and open our gaze to a culturally diversified East Africa unfamiliar to many in other parts of the world.

“An unending exploration driven by intellectual passion is present in all his books, and equally prominent now, in Afterlives, as when he began writing as a 21-year-old refugee.”

Mr Gurnah’s first novel, Memory of Departure, was published in 1987. As well as writing books, he taught English and literature at the University of Kent, until his recent retirement.

“We are absolutely delighted that our former lecturer Abdulrazak Gurnah has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature – truly inspirational,” the university said.

The literature prize is the fourth to be handed out in this year’s Nobel season after the medicine, physics and chemistry honours. The peace prize will be awarded on Friday.

While the others have been shared, the literature prize typically goes to a single person. Mr Gurnah will take the full jackpot of 10 million crowns ($1.14m).

Previous literature winners include the novelist Ernest Hemingway, the singer Bob Dylan and Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill, who wrote multi-volume books about the First and Second World Wars.

Three Scientists Share 2021 Noble Prize In Physics

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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 “for groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems,” with one half jointly to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming,” and the other half to Giorgio Parisi “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics is shared by three scientists, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Tuesday.

In the telephone interview onsite, Parisi said he was very happy with the news and that he was not expecting this. He also emphasized the importance of to “act now” against global warming.

Three Laureates share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for their studies of chaotic and apparently random phenomena. Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann laid the foundation of the knowledge of the Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it. Giorgio Parisi is rewarded for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered materials and random processes, according to a press release from the Academy.

“The discoveries being recognised this year demonstrate that our knowledge about the climate rests on a solid scientific foundation, based on a rigorous analysis of observations. This year’s Laureates have all contributed to us gaining deeper insight into the properties and evolution of complex physical systems,” said Thors Hans Hansson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, in the release.
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Syukuro Manabe, born in 1931 in Shingu, Japan, is a senior meteorologist at Princeton University in the United States.

Klaus Hasselmann, born in 1931 in Hamburg, Germany, is a professor at Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany.

Giorgio Parisi, born in 1948 in Rome, Italy, is a professor at Sapienza University of Rome.

According to the Academy, this year’s prize amount is 10 million Swedish kronor (about US$1.15 million), with one half jointly to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann and the other half to Giorgio Parisi.

Extreme abortion laws in US takes effect in Texas

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US supreme court fails to act to block near-total ban that allows private citizens to sue abortion providers.

The most radical abortion law in the US has gone into effect, despite legal efforts to block it.

A near-total abortion ban in Texas empowers any private citizen to sue an abortion provider who violates the law, opening the floodgates to harassing and frivolous lawsuits from anti-abortion vigilantes that could eventually shutter most clinics in the state.

“Abortion access will be thrown into absolute chaos,” says Amanda Williams, executive director of the abortion support group the Lilith Fund, a plaintiff in the suit that challenged the law. “Unfortunately, many people who need access the most will slip through the cracks, as we have seen over the years with the relentless attacks here in our state.

“It is unbelievable that Texas politicians have gotten away with this devastating and cruel law that will harm so many.”

Senate Bill 8, ushered through the Republican-dominated Texas legislature and signed into law by the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, in May, bars abortion once embryonic cardiac activity is detected, which is around six weeks, and offers no exceptions for rape or incest. Texas is the first state to ban abortion this early in pregnancy since Roe v Wade, and last-minute efforts to halt it through an appeal to the US supreme court by Tuesday did not succeed.

While a dozen other states have passed similar so-called “heartbeat” bills, they have all been blocked by the courts. The Texas version is novel in that it is intentionally designed to shield government officials from enforcement, and thus make legal challenges more difficult to secure. It instead incentivizes any private citizen in the US to bring civil suit against an abortion provider or anyone who “aids or abets” the procedure.

The law “immediately and catastrophically reduces abortion access in Texas”, say state abortion providers, and will probably force many abortion clinics to ultimately close. It will prevent the majority of Texas women (85%) from accessing abortion care, as most aren’t aware they are pregnant as early as six weeks.

Planned Parenthood, which operates 11 clinics in the state, and Whole Woman’s Health clinics told the Guardian they would comply with the extreme law despite the fact that it is contrary to their best medical practices. In the days leading up to the law’s enactment, Texas clinics say they have been forced to turn away patients who need abortion care at the law’s cutoff point this week and into the near future.

Some abortion physicians in Texas have opted to discontinue offering services, choosing to forgo the potential risk of frivolous and costly lawsuits. For instance, most of the physicians across the four Whole Woman’s Health clinics in Texas will not continue care to prevent jeopardizing their livelihoods, said the clinic founder, Amy Hagstrom Miller.

“We are all going to comply with the law even though it is unethical, inhumane, and unjust,” Dr Ghazaleh Moayedi, a Texas abortion provider and OB-GYN, said. “It threatens my livelihood and I fully expect to be sued. But my biggest fear is making sure the most vulnerable in my community, the Black and Latinx patients I see, who are already most at risk from logistical and financial barriers, get the care they need.”

The law will force most patients to travel out of state for care, increasing the driving distance to an abortion clinic twentyfold – from an average of 12 miles to 248 miles one-way, nearly 500 miles round-trip, the Guttmacher Institute found. And that is only if patients have the resources to do so, including time off work, ability to pay for the procedure, and in some cases childcare.
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Providers and abortion fund support groups – who help finance travel, lodging, and direct service for low-income women through donations – have spent months scrambling to coordinate with out-of-state clinics, including in New Mexico and Colorado, to ensure patients receive timely care when SB8 goes into effect. Last year, the state was offered a glimpse of what would happen if abortion care ceased: when the state barred most abortion procedures amid the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, the number of patients who traveled out of state for care jumped nearly 400%.

Many abortion-seeking women are expected to be delayed until later in pregnancy and others will be forced to carry pregnancy to term or try to end their pregnancies without medical oversight, abortion providers caution. As with most abortion restrictions, low-income women and women of color will bear the greatest burden under SB8.

Physicians are not the only ones that could be targeted under SB8: a breathtakingly wide range of people and groups, including clinic nurses, abortion fund workers, domestic violence and rape crisis counselors, or even a family member who offers a car ride to the clinic could now face suit from strangers. Those who sue can collect a minimum of $10,000 if they win, but if providers are legally successful they cannot recoup any legal payment. The law, say providers, will spur abortion “bounty hunters”.

The law’s radical legal provision is the first of its kind in the country.

The state’s major anti-abortion lobby group, Texas Right to Life, have already helped empower anti-abortion activists to enforce the law by creating a website that invites “whistleblowers” to report violations of SB8. (In response, pro-choice advocates have flooded the digital entry forms with satirical information.)

Abortion providers, funds, and clergy members, represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and the American Civil Liberties Union, filed suit against SB8 in July, writing that the law would “create absolute chaos in Texas and irreparably harm Texans in need of abortion services.”

A preliminary injunction hearing was originally set for Monday 30 August in federal court. However, the largely conservative fifth circuit court of appeals cancelled the hearing on Sunday afternoon and denied the plaintiffs’ request to allow the district court to block the law. Providers then appealed to the US supreme court for emergency relief.

But the court failed to act before the law took effect on Wednesday, allowing it to proceed. While the nation’s high court, which now holds a strong anti-choice contingent, plans to consider a Mississippi 15-week ban that could test Roe v Wade during the next term, its lack of action in the Texas case signals the possible early unraveling of Roe.

Texas is already one of the most difficult states in the US in which to access abortion due to a slew of state laws pushed by the Republican-dominated legislature over the past decade, including a 24-hour waiting period, a 20-week abortion ban, restrictions on telemedicine, and a prohibition on private and public insurance. It is home to the highest number of abortion deserts – cities in which an abortion-seeking patient must travel at least 100 miles for care – in the country.

Following the passage of a 2013 multi-part law known as House Bill 2, roughly half of the state’s abortion clinics shuttered – dropping from 40 to less than 20. While the law was eventually struck down by the US supreme court in 2016, many clinics were unable to reopen. Large swaths of the state – including the Panhandle and west Texas – are without an abortion clinic, forcing women to travel great distances for care.

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