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• Alaska Airlines and Boeing signed an agreement in principle for a total of 68 of the 737 Max aircraft with an option for 52 more.
• Deliveries will take place over the next four years as Alaska uses the jets to replace its Airbus A320 family fleet. 
• Alaska has not yet taken delivery of a Boeing 737 Max yet but plans to fly the jet in March 2021.
• Anchorage, Alaska will also see three new routes to the Lower 48 and year-round service to Phoenix. 

• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Alaska Airlines and Boeing just inked an agreement for 23 additional 737 Max aircraft, growing the airline's total order to 68 aircraft to be delivered from 2021 to 2024. 

An agreement in principle for the Max 9 variant, based on the 737-900 Next Generation that Alaska currently flies, was signed on Friday at Boeing Delivery Center in Seattle, just miles from Alaska's primary hub at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Alaska had just agreed to lease 13 aircraft earlier in December from Air Lease Corporation, which was incorporated in Friday's agreement. 

The total order will also see an option for an additional 52 aircraft that would grow Alaska's fleet to 120 if exercised. Alaska opted for nine "white-tail" aircraft, or planes that were built but never delivered due to an order cancellation, in the order, CEO Brad Tilden told CNBC, as they were likely more cost effective than buying new builds.

The number of Max white-tails grew due to the protracted grounding of the Max, which led to order cancellations by airlines around the world over safety concerns. The lack of demand for new aircraft caused by the pandemic only compounded the number of cancellations across the board. Case in point, Air Canada notably canceled 10 Max orders, along with 12 Airbus A220 orders. 

Alaska's order brings the airline closer to once again having an all-Boeing fleet. The 737 Max 9 will replace the A320 family aircraft acquired by the airline in a 2016 merger with Virgin America, though the Airbus A321neo aircraft will stay in the fleet.

Currently Alaska's largest aircraft, the A321neo is Airbus' counterpart to the Max 9 with comparable range and seating capacity. While a single-fleet type can help keep pilot training costs low and maximize the efficiency of a pilot pool, the A321neo offers similar levels of fuel efficiency to the Max that will be useful to the airline until Boeing fulfills its orders. 

Alaska is slated to be the third or fourth airline in the US to fly the Max. With a tentative start date of March 1, per Cirium data, it may be beat by Southwest Airlines, which hasn't yet announced a firm return to service date but already has 34 Max jets in its fleet. The first routes for the aircraft in Alaska's schedule are Los Angeles-Portland, Oregon; Seattle-Los Angles, and San Diego, California-Seattle.

Once delivery is taken of the first model from Boeing, over 50 hours and 19,000 miles will be put on the aircraft to ensure it's safe to fly passengers, Alaska's website states, with proving runs on routes across the US including Hawaii and Alaska. 

American Airlines is just one week away from flying passengers on the Max again for the first time in 21 months while United Airlines is waiting until February 11, 2021. 

Alaska will be working with passengers who don't want to fly on the Max to rebook them on other aircraft, a spokesperson told Business Insider. All US airlines flying the jet have implemented similar policies in addition to eliminating change fees for most flights.  

New routes to Alaska coming in 2021

The new year will also see Alaska connect more of its namesake state with the Lower 48 as Anchorage will receive three new routes aimed at leisure travel. Denver, Las Vegas, and San Francisco will all receive direct links to America's largest state, while the existing Anchorage-Phoenix route will be increased to year-round service. 

Flights to Denver and San Francisco begin on June 17, 2021, until August 16, 2021, and will operate daily. Las Vegas service begins on May 20, 2021, with year-round service. The weekender service will see flights on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. 

Alaska will go head-to-head with United on the Denver and San Francisco routes while going untouched on the Las Vegas route. The new year-round service to Phoenix will also compete with American, Alaska's soon-to-be partner in the Oneworld airline alliance.  

It's unclear whether any will be flown with the Boeing 737 Max, though they're all prime candidates for the jet at over 2,000 nautical miles, with the exception of Anchorage-San Francisco at 1,754 nautical miles. For comparison, the Anchorage-Phoenix route is 66 nautical miles longer than the Los Angeles-New York route and is one of the longest in Alaska's route network.

Alaska is open to tourists but has entry restrictions in place, similar to Hawaii. Non-resident arrivals need to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test or pay $250 to have one administered at the airport and self-isolate upon arrival, according to the state government.

Travelers who have recovered from COVID-19 will need to show proof of a positive test from within 90 days, be asymptomatic on arrival, and show documentation from a medical professional or public health official confirming that isolation isn't required. 

Substack plans to take a “hands-off approach” to determining who can use its newsletter platform and “resist public pressure” to remove writers seen by some as “unacceptable.” In a blog post this afternoon, the company outlined a relatively lax content moderation policy designed to let writers know they won’t be removed from the platform as long as they comply with basic rules.

While it does have a short list of prohibitions, Substack says that “readers and writers are in charge.” The idea is that readers don’t have to pay for or subscribe to writers who they don’t agree with, and writers can leave — and take their mailing lists with them — if they don’t like the platform. “We just disagree with those who would seek to tightly constrain...

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The yearly Spotify Wrapped is a rather upbeat affair, which doesn’t doesn’t quite match everyone’s mood this year. For the more sullen among us, there’s another option: a bot from The Pudding that will judge us for our crimes of listening to terrible music.

If you want to be judged, you open a page titled “How Bad is Your Spotify” and you log in with your Spotify account. (It might take a couple refreshes on the “Loading your music library” page.) This absolute jerk of an AI then drags you mercilessly while it pulls your playlists and top tracks. It asks you questions before it shows any results, in phrasing that gives the plain text the same aura as the girls who bullied me in middle school. Did you really listen to Clementine by Sarah...

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Telegram is adding a new group voice chats feature that’s similar to an always-on Discord room. Voice chats are now part of existing text chats, and operate as a persistent option to speak live with friends or family. As they’re always available, you can dip in and out of voice chats just like you would in a Discord room or call.

Telegram is supporting “a few thousand participants,” so even bigger groups for things like live events will include voice chats. The feature appears at the top of an existing group chat, if enabled, allowing anyone to join the conversation freely. On the desktop versions of Telegram for Windows and Mac, you can also use a push-to-talk key for voice chats to control your microphone input.

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Ripple's XRP cryptocurrency tumbled by as much 32% on Wednesday, after the US regulator filed a lawsuit against the company's executives over sales of the token. 

• XRP lost as much as a third in value after the US regulator charged cryptocurrency firm Ripple over how it has sold the digital token.
• The token fell to its lowest since November 20, effectively wiping out all of last month's 177% gain.
• Ripple's CEO called the SEC's claim "illogical" in a blogpost on Tuesday.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

XRP was last down 27% at $0.325, its lowest since November 20. 

The US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit on Tuesday.  It said blockchain company Ripple has been running a $1.3 billion unregistered offering, akin to an unlicensed stock sale, as it does not consider the XRP token to be a cryptocurrency.

Ripple's CEO, Bradley Garlinghouse, who is named in the suit, said the SEC hadn't given the company "clarity" on whether its XPR offering is classified as a currency or security. 

"To be clear, this is all based on their illogical claim that XRP is, in their view, somehow the functional equivalent of a share of stock," Garlinghouse wrote on Ripple's company blog. 

As the crypto industry has exploded in the last decade, the SEC and other agencies have struggled to classify and regulate them.

In a separate action, the US Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network last week proposed new disclosure rules to better keep tabs on crypto wallets. 

Investment in cryptocurrencies has boomed this year, taking the price of tokens such as bitcoin to record highs. XRP, a smaller competitor, traded at 2-½ year highs as recently as a month ago. In the last week, it has lost over 40% in value, almost wiping out November's 177% rise.

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
Telegram debuts group voice chat as CEO Pavel Durov says it is nearing 500M MAUs and will launch an ad platform for public one-to-many channels next year  —  Instant messaging app Telegram is “approaching” 500 million users and plans to start generating revenue starting next year to keep the business afloat …

Videoconferencing platform Zoom has had a blockbuster year, with its stock price rising more than 500 percent due to the unprecedented surge in remote work brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. But now the company is looking to expand beyond workplace video chat and into new territories, specifically email and calendar services, according to a new report from The Information.

The company is already working on the email product, which the report states will be a web email service Zoom may begin testing as early as next year. The calendar app appears farther off and it’s unclear if development has even started. But both ideas are smart avenues for Zoom to explore, especially if companies start bringing employees back to the office and...

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IBM has been busy since it announced plans to spin out its legacy infrastructure management business in October, placing an all-in bet on the hybrid cloud. Today, it built on that bet by acquiring Helsinki-based multi-cloud consulting firm Nordcloud. The companies did not share the purchase price.

Nordcloud fits neatly into this strategy with 500 consultants certified in AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform, giving the company a trained staff of experts to help as they move away from an IBM-centric solution to choosing to work with the customer however they wish to implement their cloud strategy.

This hybrid approach harkens back to the $34 billion Red Hat acquisition in 2018, which is really the lynchpin for this approach, as CEO Arvind Krishna told CNBC’s Jon Fortt in an interview last month. Krishna is in the midst of trying to completely transform his organization, and acquisitions like this are meant to speed up that process:

The Red Hat acquisition gave us the technology base on which to build a hybrid cloud technology platform based on open-source, and based on giving choice to our clients as they embark on this journey. With the success of that acquisition now giving us the fuel, we can then take the next step, and the larger step, of taking the managed infrastructure services out. So the rest of the company can be absolutely focused on hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence.

John Granger, senior vice president for cloud application innovation and COO for IBM Global Business Services, says that IBM’s customers are increasingly looking for help managing resources across multiple vendors, as well as on premises.

“IBM’s acquisition of Nordcloud adds the kind of deep expertise that will drive our clients’ digital transformations as well as support the further adoption of IBM’s hybrid cloud platform. Nordcloud’s cloud-native tools, methodologies and talent send a strong signal that IBM is committed to deliver our clients’ successful journey to cloud,” Granger said in a statement.

After the deal closes, which is expected in the first quarter next year subject to typical regulatory approvals, Nordcloud will become an IBM company and operate to help continue this strategy.

It’s worth noting that this deal comes on the heels several other small recent deals, including acquiring Expertus last week and Truqua and Instana last month. These three companies provide expertise in digital payments, SAP consulting and hybrid cloud applications performance monitoring, respectively.

Nordcloud, which is based in Helsinki with offices in Amsterdam, was founded in 2011 and has raised more than $26 million, according to PitchBook data.

 

• House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Sunday that he expects the chamber to vote Monday on a $900 COVID-19 stimulus package.
• Congressional leaders announced Sunday they had reached a deal on the stimulus package.
• The legislation includes $600 stimulus checks, a $300-per-week increase in unemployment benefits, and $300 billion in aid for small businesses.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Democratic leaders in the House expect to vote Monday on a $900 billion relief package, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Sunday.

"I'm pleased we have reached an agreement on COVID-19 relief and an omnibus, which I expect we'll pass tomorrow and send to the Senate," he tweeted. "In order to provide time to prepare the bill for consideration, the House will meet at 6:30 p.m. to consider a one-day continuing resolution."

A continuing resolution is a stopgap funding bill which would keep the government funded for an extra day. Republicans in the Senate must also approve it, then the measure needs a signature from President Donald Trump to avoid a shutdown of the federal government after midnight.

Congress recently approved a two-day stopgap funding bill to buy more time for stimulus negotiations.

On Sunday afternoon, congressional leaders announced they had reached a long-awaited deal on a COVID-19 relief package after months of tumultuous talks.

"More help is on the way. Moments ago, in consultation with our committees, the four leaders of the Senate and House finalized an agreement," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a floor speech. "It would be another major rescue package for the American people."

Republicans and Democrats fought over many provisions, particularly a liability shield to guard firms from coronavirus-related lawsuits, as well as assistance to states and local governments. Both provisions were left out of the deal.

The compromise plan includes $600 stimulus checks for many Americans, a $300-a-week boost to unemployment benefits, and $300 billion in aid for small businesses via the Paycheck Protection Program.

Top Republicans and Democrats expect swift passage of the legislation on Monday, though no bill text has been released so far. 

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com

“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” — President Donald Trump on COVID-19, January 22nd, 2020.

“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” — Trump on COVID-19, February 24th.

“It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.” — Trump on COVID-19, March 15th.

Here’s Trump today, on the massive SolarWinds hack that targeted federal agencies and could have exposed 425 of the companies on the Fortune 500: “I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control.”

You don’t say.

Here are a few perspectives on the SolarWinds hack from entities that do not currently have negative credibility:

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• An explosive congressional report released on Friday found "significant lapses in aviation safety oversight and failed leadership" at the Federal Aviation Administration.
• The report determined that the agency repeatedly ignored safety warnings ahead of fatal crashes, was cozy with the companies it was supposed to regulate, and retaliated against whistleblowers who raised concerns.
• It also said the FAA and Boeing improperly influenced tests meant to determine if 737 MAX aircraft were safe to fly again, and that the FAA let Southwest Airlines put "millions of passengers at potential risk" by not knowing if planes were safe.
• The report summarizes the findings of a nearly two-year-long Senate investigation prompted by two fatal crashes involving Boeing 737 MAX planes, which the FAA cleared to fly again last month.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

In April 2019, following two deadly crashes involving Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation opened an investigation into the incidents.

On Friday, 20 months later, the committee released its findings in a scathing report that blamed the Federal Aviation Administration for repeatedly falling short on its regulatory duties, with regards to Boeing as well as the industry more broadly.

"Our findings are troubling," Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi who chairs the committee, said in a press release.

"The report details a number of significant examples of lapses in aviation safety oversight and failed leadership in the FAA. It is clear that the agency requires consistent oversight to ensure their work to protect the flying public is executed fully and correctly," Sen. Wicker said.

As part of its investigation, the committee heard from more than 50 whistleblowers, interviewed FAA staff, and reviewed over 15,000 pages of documents.

A spokesperson for the FAA told Business Insider the agency had "just received" the report and is "carefully reviewing the document, which the Committee acknowledges contains a number of unsubstantiated allegations."

"The FAA is committed to continuous advancement of aviation safety and improving our organization, processes, and culture," the spokesperson said.

The report comes just weeks after the FAA cleared the 737 MAX to fly again.

"Boeing is committed to improving aviation safety, strengthening our safety culture, and rebuilding trust with our customers, regulators, and the flying public. We take seriously the Committee's findings and will continue to review the report in full," Boeing said in a statement, adding "we will never forget the lives lost on board."

A spokesperson for Southwest told Business Insider the company was aware of the report and has "utilized many of these past references to improve our practices and oversight, further enhancing an already robust Safety Management System."

"Southwest Airlines maintains a culture of compliance, recognizing the Safety of our operation as the most important thing we do," the spokesperson said, adding: "We do not tolerate any relaxing of standards that govern ultimate Safety across our operation."

A few of the major points from the report include:

• During tests meant to determine if the 737 MAX was safe to fly again, Boeing "inappropriately influenced" flight simulation tests. 
• FAA senior leadership "may have obstructed" a review of the crashes conducted by the Department of Transportation's inspector general. (The FAA said it "conducted a thorough and deliberate review" along with international regulators and was "confident" that the safety issues that played a role in the crashes have been addressed.).
• The FAA "repeatedly permitted Southwest Airlines to continue operating dozens of aircraft in an unknown airworthiness condition for several years. These flights put millions of passengers at potential risk."
• FAA leadership repeatedly overruled and undermined the agency's frontline safety inspectors and ignored their warnings - and, in at least one case, the warning preceded a fatal crash.
• Multiple whistleblowers alleged a culture of "coziness" between the FAA and Boeing as well as other companies within its regulatory scope.
• The FAA provided "contradictory and misleading" information to congressional investigators, refused to answer more than half of its questions and refused to let them interview many of its staff.
• The FAA "continues to retaliate against whistleblowers."

Read the full report here »

In October, Wisconsin denied Foxconn subsidies because it had failed to build the LCD factory specified in its contract with the state. As The Verge reported, it had created a building one-twentieth the size of the promised factory, taken out a permit to use it for storage, and failed to employ anywhere near the number of employees the contract called for. Nevertheless, Foxconn publicly objected “on numerous grounds” to Wisconsin’s denial of subsidies.

Documents obtained through a records request show Foxconn’s rationale: it doesn’t think it was specifically promising to build an LCD factory at all. According to a November 23rd letter to the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), Foxconn does not think the factory specified...

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The actual, active theft of information from protected networks due to this breach will last years.

• Tom Bossert, a former homeland security advisor to President Trump, in a New York Times op-ed sounded the alarm about a recent Russian hack of US systems. 
• "The Russians have had access to a considerable number of important and sensitive networks for six to nine months," he wrote.
• He said that it could take years to remove the hackers, and Russia could use its access to monitor or alter government data, and spread chaos. 
• The hackers were able to install malware at US government agencies including the State Department and Department of Homeland Security by infiltrating SolarWinds computer software. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Russian hackers have likely seized control of hundreds of US federal government computer networks, and it could take years to work out how many and remove them, a former advisor to President Donald Trump has warned. 

Tom Bossert in a New York Times op-ed Wednesday wrote that the "magnitude of this national security breach is hard to overstate."

Bossert was Trump's homeland security advisor from shortly after the 2016 election until April 2018. He previously served as a homeland security advisor  to President George W. Bush.

He wrote: "The Russians have had access to a considerable number of important and sensitive networks for six to nine months." He said that Russia's foreign intelligence agency, the SVR, was likely behind the attack.

"While the Russians did not have the time to gain complete control over every network they hacked, they most certainly did gain it over hundreds of them," he wrote. "It will take years to know for certain which networks the Russians control and which ones they just occupy."

"The logical conclusion is that we must act as if the Russian government has control of all the networks it has penetrated."

The Russian embassy in the US has denied that Russia is behind the attack. 

Bossert goes on to describe how the hackers could exploit their access.

"The actual and perceived control of so many important networks could easily be used to undermine public and consumer trust in data, written communications and services," he writes.

"In the networks that the Russians control, they have the power to destroy or alter data, and impersonate legitimate people."

President-elect Joe Biden, as he prepares to take control of addressing the crisis, he wrote, "has to assume that communications about this matter are being read by Russia, and assume that any government data or email could be falsified."

The attacks were revealed last week by the Reuters news agency, which reported that the State Department the Department of Homeland Security were among the agencies compromised. 

The Treasury and Commerce Department were also infiltrated by the hackers, as well as the National Institutes of Health and the Pentagon, according to reports. 

Many private sector companies and organizations were also hit. 

Bossert's op-ed is one of the starkest warnings yet by a former senior US government security official on the likely extent of the hack and the full damage it could inflict.

The hackers were able to gain acces to the computers through hacking software made by SolarWinds, a firm that provides remote-access capabilities to IT specialists working for hundreds of US government and corporate clients. 

The Russian malware allowing it to access, monitor, and control compromised system, was hidden in a routine software update. 

The Russian hackers are believed to have had access to US government computer systems since about March, according to The Washington Post, monitoring and potentially stealing sensitive information. 

President Donald Trump has so far not commented on the attacks. 

After leaving a conference at the Aspen Institute last year, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson took what she calls a “rage hike” with Dr. Katharine Wilkinson, a fellow climate activist. They were frustrated with who had the power in the climate movement: a small group of white men calling the shots. The climate crisis, they thought, had a crisis of leadership.

“We were so disappointed to see the same small group of white men control the money and decision-making,” Johnson said. “They parade out people of color, Indigenous leaders, women, passing them the mic for a hot second but not actually sharing any power.”

Out of this frustration came an idea: what if they gathered women from across the environmental movement to share their wisdom? Out of that idea came a book: All We Can Save, a collection of essays by women climate leaders, co-edited by Johnson and Wilkinson, released this year.

Johnson is a marine biologist, but she devotes an increasing amount of time to projects like All We Can Save. This year, while the world grappled with collective isolation, Johnson left the coastal city of Brooklyn and retreated to upstate New York to live with her mother on their family farm.

Without access to the ocean (or a social life), Johnson focused on building leadership and representation in the climate movement. She launched a podcast, called How to Save a Planet, and focused on her two non-profits, the All We Can Save Project and the Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for coastal cities.

Her first love—and what got her fighting for the planet—was the ocean. Her passion for marine biology was sparked when she was five years old on a family trip to Key West, and evolved into a professional devotion that led her to positions at New York University, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA), and the Waitt Foundation.

Her time spent underwater understanding marine ecology, however, was never divorced from human communities. Johnson earned a PhD from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography with a dissertation on the socio-economics of sustainably managing coral reefs, co-directed the March for Science, and founded a conservation consulting firm called Ocean Collectiv.

Johnson’s focus on people and policy come from an understanding that climate has a real impact on people, and that impact is different based on where you live, how much money you have, and the color of your skin.

“There are actual people experiencing the impacts,” Johnson said. “All of these people live within the world as it exists.”

The flip side of acknowledging the disparate impact of climate change is honoring the wisdom of different communities. Johnson’s frustration with the climate movement isn’t about the current leaders doing a bad job—it’s just that we need more leaders. Her vision of the world includes people from every community in climate leadership roles.

That’s the idea behind All We Can Save. The book elevates the wisdom of farmers, artists, women working in fashion, activists, scientists, and policymakers. It takes a collective, feminist approach to the climate movement, challenging the idea of who gets to be a thought leader.

“If we leave out half the brainpower and changemaking might on the planet—accumulated in women’s minds and hearts—it’s just so foolish,” Johnson said.

Johnson and Wilkinson were astounded by the response. They never dreamed that a book of climate essays would become a best-seller. They took it as proof that this change they desperately needed—a reframing of the problems facing our world—filled a gap others felt as well.

As reading circles became action circles, Johnson and Wilkinson set to capture that momentum. They founded the All We Can Save Project to carry forward the mission of the book: supporting women climate leaders and building community.

Aside from giving Johnson the time to focus on work, this year—with the pandemic, the rise of Black Lives Matter, and the numerous climate disasters—deepened her understanding that we need to devise entirely new ways of living on this planet. Looking forward, she wants to do more dreaming. Culturally, in dystopian movies and dire climate predictions, we’ve got a good vision of the worst-case scenario. What we don’t know yet is what happens if we get it right.

“Because we don't know what we’re building, we’re sauntering away from the apocalypse instead of sprinting towards this better future,” Johnson said. “What the climate movement needs is more imagining.”

Protecting natural resources makes leaders a target for organized crime.

In Colombia, working to protect the environment can put a target on your back — and even cost you your life.

On December 3, Javier Francisco Parra Cubillos, a 47-year-old environmental official representing the Meta region in central Colombia, was fatally shot several times by two assailants on a motorcycle as he was traveling through a local municipality.

Parra Cubillos, or “Pacho” as he was called, had spent more than 20 years working for Cormacarena, an agency focused on the sustainable development of La Macarena, a small town 275 kilometers south of the Colombian capital, Bogotá.

For decades, the Colombian government’s war with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) — a Marxist guerrilla group that waged an armed insurgency in the country for over 50 years, fueled in large part by revenue from the drug trade — made La Macarena a perilous location to visit. But the government’s 2016 peace agreement with the FARC opened up the region to a flood of visitors. Pacho had dedicated his life to protecting the area’s natural resources.

But that work put him in direct conflict with those who want to use the land for other purposes, such as drug cultivation and resource extraction. And he’s not alone: In a July 2020 report, the international human rights watchdog group Global Witness confirmed that 64 land and environmental defenders were killed in Colombia in 2019, making it the deadliest country to be an environmental leader that year.

Colombia Attorney General Fernando Carrillo Flórez called for the prosecution of Pacho’s murderers, blaming the violence toward environmental leaders on organized gangs.

“The defense of the environment and the wealth of forests and jungles has made our environmental leaders a target of criminal mafias,” he tweeted on December 3. “We condemn the murder of Javier Parra, coordinator of Cormacarena, Meta. His murderers must be prosecuted.”

But the problem isn’t confined to Colombia. Around the world, from Brazil to India to Burkina Faso, environmental officials and activists regularly face the threat of being murdered, falsely accused of committing crimes, or harassed for standing up for the environment. According to Global Witness, 212 environmental leaders were killed around the world in 2019 — the deadliest year on record.

Global Witness

But over half of those deaths occurred in just two countries: Colombia and the Philippines, with Colombia far outpacing all others.

The problem is even more pronounced for indigenous environment and land defenders. Despite only making up 5 percent of the world’s population, Global Witness found that 40 percent of defenders murdered in 2019 came from indigenous communities.

A similar trend exists in Colombia, where indigenous people and other racial minorities have suffered centuries of discrimination and lack of attention from the central government. “In terms of victimization, indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations suffer disproportionately to their percentages of the population,” Cynthia Arnson, director of the Latin American program at the Wilson Center, told me.

How did it get so bad in Colombia?

Land disputes were a major factor in Colombia’s five-decade-long civil war.

As Amanda Taub explained for Vox in 2014, “In the early 1960s, the FARC and other leftist guerrilla groups formed as a rural insurgency that claimed to represent the interests of Colombia’s poor against the landed elite.” Land reform to address social and economic inequality was one of the FARC’s key demands.

But, as Taub noted, “The elite responded by organizing private ‘self-defense’ organizations to oppose the rebels” — and to defend the wealthy landowners — “which soon transformed into right-wing paramilitary groups. That became the civil war that has lasted ever since, albeit in sometimes very different forms.”

In the past 20 or so years, new disputes over land have also emerged due to drug trafficking and industries dependent on raw materials like mining. Environmental leaders and land defenders are often on the front lines protecting resource-rich areas from exploitation, which exposes them to danger.

In 2016, the Colombian government and the FARC signed a peace agreement to end the 52-year conflict, winning then-President Juan Manuel Santos a Nobel Peace Prize. But the deal hasn’t exactly been the resounding success many hoped it would be, and there has been an increase in violence in many parts of the country.

Daniel Cano Insuasty is a Colombia-based political relations coordinator for the Colombia Barometer Initiative of the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame, which monitors the 2016 peace agreement. He told me the peace agreement “wasn’t comprehensive enough to include all the different illegal armed groups in Colombia.” So, he explained, the increase in violence across the country “is something expected.”

The interests of these armed groups, Insuasty said, is focused on illegal drugs — which is directly in conflict with the interests of land defenders like Pacho, who advocate for sustainability and the protection of forests.

The peace agreement also saw an increase in social leadership on environmental issues, which led to increased visibility. “Pacho was a very public figure,” Insuasty said, which made him a target for armed groups.

The Colombian government blames paramilitary forces including the National Liberation Army (ELN), ex-FARC members who do not support the peace agreement, and criminal gangs for the violence. These groups are fighting for control over areas with heavy drug trafficking and illegal mining. These areas often overlap with areas rich in natural resources, which land and environmental defenders have been killed trying to protect.

But experts say the government’s absence from areas it secured from the FARC is also to blame. “That vacuum of power became the focus of a struggle for control of territory between a variety of criminal groups, including the ELN,” Arnson at the Wilson Center told me. “The killings are a reflection of the lack of a state presence.”

So why doesn’t the Colombian government just send more police or troops to protect the land defenders? It’s complicated.

One problem, Arnson noted, is that Colombia’s armed forces are divided over what to do to further secure areas facing violence. Another is that Colombia’s rugged terrain is very challenging to protect, which Arnson said is “one of the reasons why historically the state has had such weak control.”

The coronavirus pandemic is exacerbating the problem, placing environmental defenders at even greater risk, Chris Madden, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, told me. He said many defenders and organizers have told the organization that during the pandemic, the government has pulled back on its responsibilities to secure the region while simultaneously allowing further extraction of natural resources.

What’s more, “the coronavirus lockdown appears to have worsened the situation. We did get reports where people were attacked because they were known to be in a location because of lockdown,” Madden said.

There is a way forward

Experts say the government needs to do more to punish perpetrators and to tackle the root causes driving this violence.

When environmental defenders are killed in Colombia, the courts rarely deliver justice. According to a special report by the UN Human Rights Council, almost 90 percent of murders of human rights activists in the country do not lead to a conviction.

“There’s also the impunity issue, so these murders need to be investigated. And when people are found guilty in the legal system, they should be prosecuted based on that,” Global Witness’s Madden said.

But it isn’t as simple as beefing up security and setting up courts to prosecute crimes against defenders. Arnson said that protecting rural areas requires “basic services, health care, education, and a judicial presence as well, not just a security presence — which take a long time to build up.”

“Many specialists and international analysts agree the Colombian peace agreement is the most comprehensive in the world,” Insuasty said. “90 percent of the agreement is focused on social development programs, which is different than others in the world which focus on disarmament or demobilization.”

The way forward, he said, is to have a government with the political commitment and the resources necessary to actually achieve Colombia’s ambitious program of rural transformation.

But, as Arnson noted, “Even if that was going to be challenging before Covid, it’s even more challenging [now] in the face of the sharp economic decline [and] the rise in unemployment.”

DJI — one of the largest and most popular drone companies in the world — has been added to the US Department of Commerce’s Entity List, designating the Chinese company as a national security concern and banning US-based companies from exporting technology to the company. Reuters first reported the news, citing a conference call with a senior commerce official. The Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to a request for further details.

The ban was put in place through the same mechanism as the US government’s ongoing ban on Huawei products, and is primarily focused on blocking the export of US technology to the drone-maker. However, the ban will make it difficult for US businesses to provide parts or components for DJI to use...

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Google’s new shopping feature will let people virtually try on makeup, the company announced in a blog post. Another feature will show the products on various models.

Only lipstick and eyeshadow are part of the feature. It is also limited to a few brands, such as L’Oreal, MAC Cosmetics, Black Opal, and Charlotte Tilbury.

Image: Google

To try it out, you can search for the line you’re eying. If it’s a supported brand, you’ll see a new card that shows a model, and the specific shade that they’re wearing.

To change the shade, you use a list at the bottom; to change the model, you use the list at the top. It looks like Google and their partners have...

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Encrypted messaging app Signal has added support for group video calls for up to five people, the company has announced. Group calls can be started by tapping the video call button at the top of a supported group chat. Calls are “end-to-end encrypted — like everything else on Signal,” the company says. By default, participants are shown in a grid format, but you can swipe up for a view that focuses on individual speakers.

With a five-person limit, Signal isn’t going to be replacing video conferencing services like Zoom any time soon, but the company says it’s working to increase the maximum number of call participants over time.

Image: Signal

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SolarWinds has removed a list of high-profile clients from its website in the wake of a massive breach. The list was hosted on “Customers” page of the company’s website and is easily accessible through its Google cache. But the page has been deleted from the site itself, suggesting the company may be trying to obscure its clients in an effort to protect them from bad publicity. Google’s cache shows that the page was still live as of Monday morning (roughly 11AM ET). SolarWinds did not respond to a request for clarification.

SolarWinds is still reeling from an extensive Russia-linked hack reported on Sunday, which affected a range of government agencies and private corporations. The hack was reportedly executed by compromising SolarWinds’...

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However spotty and uncompetitive U.S. broadband is, it's particularly bad when it comes to faster speeds. Why? Because in many areas regional telcos simply refused to upgrade their aging DSL lines since doing so wasn't profitable enough, quickly enough for Wall Street's liking. As a result we've literally let these networks fall apart with no regulatory attention. That, in turn, has given cable giants like Comcast massive monopolies that cover huge swaths of the U.S., resulting in spotty coverage, higher prices, slower speeds, and routinely poor customer service.

Granted, the Ajit Pai and Trump FCC haven't been a big fan of data that accurately measures this problem. The agency has been caught time and time again leaning on data it knows isn't accurate to paint a rosy picture of U.S. broadband, which is designed to justify repeatedly kissing the ass of U.S. telecom monopolies.

Last week, the agency was again caught aggressively overinflating the availability of gigabit-speed broadband in the U.S. According to the official FCC tallies, gigabit broadband speeds are available to roughly 84% of the U.S. public, up from just 4 percent in 2016. This, the FCC will be quick to tell you, is thanks to its decision to kill net neutrality and neuter its consumer protection authority over giant broadband providers.

But when researchers at BroadbandNow did their own independent research to verify that data, they found that time and time again, the FCC's data was not just inaccurate, but immensely incorrect. Places the FCC claimed had gigabit broadband service consistently did not:

"We manually checked 75 addresses in zip codes where the FCC shows gigabit coverage, but BroadbandNow data shows that there is not an internet plan sold at that speed. We checked these addresses by calling internet service providers and asking if gigabit service was available. In all 75 cases, none of them had a gigabit service available."

In reality, somewhere around 56% of Americans may have an active gigabit connection, but even that estimate is considered optimistic given that the FCC's form 477 data collected from ISPs routinely isn't confirmed to be accurate. This creates inaccurate broadband availability maps (including the FCC's $300 million public facing one), which in turn prop up the agency's false claims that U.S. broadband is largely wonderful thanks to mindless deregulation of the sector. Worse, despite repeated criticism, the FCC's methodology remains comically bad, also resulting in an overestimate of both speed and availability:

"Chief among them is the caveat that a provider can mark a given census block – the level of granularity used within the form – as “covered” if so little as one home within the block has service in reality. This has led to widespread issues of over-reporting when it comes to where plans are actually available at the neighborhood level."

There's the added irony that a lot of the growth the U.S. did actually see during this period is thanks to things the Trump FCC either had nothing to do with, like the 2015 AT&T/DirecTV merger conditions requiring additional fiber deployment, or the hundreds of community-run municipal broadband networks agency commissioners have repeatedly demonized and have supported banning outright. This FCC then, in Trumpian fashion, claims that improvements it had nothing to do with, and those that succeeded despite it, justify deregulating Comcast and AT&T.

There's a reason that folks like Ajit Pai, hand in hand with industry, aren't fans of hard, clear data showing U.S. broadband is uncompetitive and overly expensive: somebody might just get the crazy idea to try and do something about it.

Which animals can catch Covid-19, which can’t — and why it matters.

It started in nature. A coronavirus that originated in bats has wound up in humans, causing the Covid-19 pandemic.

And it can go back to nature.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus can jump again, from humans, back into animals, back into wildlife, where it can wait, mutate, and change. Perhaps, years from now, it can infect people again.

“If we’re careful — and we’re lucky — there won’t be a wildlife population that becomes infected and becomes an established reservoir that can also infect people,” Sarah Olson, associate director of the health program at the Wildlife Conservation Society, says. “If it does, then we’ve got a long-term issue here, where this virus has the potential to be with us for millennia. And millennia is a long time. The risk may be small, but the consequences are huge.”

Our luck may soon be tested. On December 13, the US Department of Agriculture reported that a wild mink in Utah tested positive for the coronavirus.

“To our knowledge, this is the first free-ranging, native wild animal confirmed with SARS-CoV-2,” the National Veterinary Services Laboratories reported. A genetic analysis of the virus suggested the wild mink picked it up from a nearby mink farm, perhaps via wastewater runoff from the farm.

No other species surrounding the farm were found to be infected, though, and there’s no evidence that Covid-19 is spreading between wild mink. One possibility is the wild mink could have just picked it up from the farm, and has not spread it since.

Another possibility: We haven’t yet detected a bigger outbreak. “This is potentially going to be a more widespread problem in wild mink,” says Stephanie Seifert, a researcher at Washington State University’s school for global animal health. It’s “very unlikely they swabbed the only wild mink with SARS-CoV-2.”

Mink are just one species. There’s no comprehensive analysis of all the animals in the world, whether or not they can get Covid-19 and spread it among themselves, and potentially to other wildlife. The virus can be establishing copies of itself in nature right now, and we would have no real-time way of knowing.

The light at the end of the tunnel for the pandemic is growing brighter, however. Safe, effective vaccines are now starting to be distributed in the US. But the eventual end of the pandemic will likely not mean the end of SARS-CoV-2. It may still sporadically, or more regularly — no one really knows — infect animals and wildlife across the world.

In the right animal host, the virus could lurk for years before an opportune moment to jump back into humans. Over that time, the virus could change a bit, mutating into a form that could evade the current vaccines.

Several species have been infected so far: cats, dogs, lions, tigers, pumas, mink, and, most recently, snow leopards. More species have been shown, in lab studies, to be vulnerable to infection.

But scientists are still investigating: How many more animals could potentially catch SARS-CoV-2 and what will it mean for the course of the pandemic, and, for the health of wildlife?

To avoid the worst, scientists and veterinarians need to know which animals SARS-CoV-2 could potentially infect, and figure out the chances of the virus jumping from humans to the animals, and back to humans again.

Many different types of animals can catch Covid-19

Scientists already know of many types of animals that can catch SARS-CoV-2. They know it because the virus originated in the animal world — likely in bats. And they also know it because they’ve seen several species of animals get infected.

Early on in the pandemic, tigers at the Bronx zoo got sick (three of them had a cough) with the virus. Veterinarians have since found signs of Covid-19 infections in some of the animals that humans spend the most time with.

Jonathan Runstadler, a veterinarian at Tufts University, is running a surveillance study of animals that come in for treatment at the school’s veterinary clinic. So far, they’re finding “a few percent of those domestic pet dogs and cats are developing antibodies to this SARS-CoV-2 virus,” Runstadler says, meaning their bodies have encountered the infection and mounted an immune response.

“It is unknown where the infection or virus they responded to came from,” he says, but the “highest likelihood” scenario was that it came from human household members. Overall, he says it’s not a lot of animals getting infected, but it’s clear that dogs and cats can, in some instances, be infected with the virus.

Cats seem to be more susceptible than dogs, overall (though the cats themselves don’t seem to get very sick). Dogs are a highly diverse species. “So it’s possible that there may be specific breeds or types of dogs that are more susceptible, we don’t really know,” Siefert says.

Other animals have been shown to be much more susceptible not just to infection, but to severe disease and even death. In Denmark, authorities ordered the culling of millions of captive mink after outbreaks occurred on hundreds of farms.

Ole Jensen/Getty Images

The concern wasn’t just that the virus was spreading among the mink, making them sick, making their breathing difficult, and killing many. It was that the virus had jumped from the mink, and then back into people, with some genetic changes to the virus’s spike protein, which the virus uses to enter cells.

“If the virus does begin circulating in a new species, the results will really be unpredictable,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist with Georgetown’s Center for Global Health Science and Security, says. The virus is constantly mutating, changing in subtle ways. When it enters a new species, that species’ immune system make it so a significantly altered strain of the virus emerges. “The real question is whether it will change in a way that is more or less detrimental to the human population,” she says.

Currently, there’s no clear evidence that the genetic changes that occurred on the mink farm would make the virus more likely to evade a person’s immune system, or diminish the efficacy of a vaccine. But Denmark’s health authorities didn’t want to risk it. So they ordered the culling of all the mink. (Denmark’s health minister who made the decision has since resigned.)

The mink were a bit of a ticking time bomb: The virus spreads easily among mink in farms because they are kept in close quarters (the same ease of transmission happens among humans in close quarters).

Researchers are trying to figure out which animals could spread the virus from humans back to wildlife

It’s relatively easy to keep track of the virus in farmed animals. Their health is regularly monitored. Farmers notice when mink start dying. But what happens if the virus gets into an animal that spreads the virus asymptomatically, or gets into wildlife, which is harder to track?

Once a disease establishes itself in wildlife, Olson says “it’s just exponentially harder to control. I mean, you can barely get people to take vaccines. Imagine wildlife. You just have very limited options.”

The USDA maintains there “is currently no evidence” that the virus has established itself in wild mink populations near the farm where it was found. “It is important that surveillance in wildlife around infected mink farms continue, to identify if the virus enters local wildlife populations,” USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service spokesperson said in a statement to Vox.

Researchers can’t study every animal species on Earth and test whether it can carry SARS-CoV-2. They’re focusing their research on animals that could act as conduits between humans and wildlife.

Anna Fagre, a veterinarian and microbiology researcher at Colorado State University, is doing this research on deer mice. In a lab study, Fagre and colleagues revealed that deer mice can contract the virus and spread it among other deer mice.

Deer mice animals are common in rural areas. “We see them, if staying in like cabins in the woods, [deer] mice are going to set up shop there,” Fagre says. Deer mice are known to occasionally spread other viruses, and they exist at the interface between human dwelling and the broader natural world. They could be a conduit ferrying SARS-CoV-2 from humans to other wildlife.

Getty Images/iStockphoto

In her lab, “we were able to inoculate and infect these deer mice, and they actually did transmit the virus to other mice they were housed with,” Fagre says. They experienced subtle symptoms like losing a bit of weight and they “get a little bit quiet,” she says (quieter than, um, a mouse). Then, a few days later, they recover. That subtle illness might make it hard to realize if there are, suddenly, a lot of deer mice with the virus. Plus, these are not captive animals. If a viral mutation emerged among them, it would be discovered much later than what occurred in the mink.

“When this preprint [study] came out,” she says, “some people were like, ‘Oh my god, this is so scary: deer mice! We’ll never get rid of the virus if deer mice become infected.’”

For Fagre, her results aren’t a reason to panic. It was just a lab study. The results don’t mean there are deer mice running around rural areas with the virus. They also don’t mean the mice will become a source of future infection for humans.

“There are so many different steps the virus would have to take to spill back from humans into deer mice, and then circulate in deer mice, and then be transmitted back from deer mice into humans,” she says. “I’m not saying it couldn’t happen. It certainly could. Cross-species transmission is what led to the Covid-19 pandemic.” The research helps scientists be vigilant. “It’s important to be aware,” she says.

Rare human-to-animal-to-human jumps could have huge consequences

Being aware of which animals can be infected with the virus helps researchers ask new questions, too. House cats of all sorts seem to be susceptible to the virus. “I live in kind of a rural area of eastern Washington and I’ve actually caught deer mice in my house,” Seifert says. “So I’m like, can my cat, if he kills deer mice, can my cat contract SARS-CoV-2? I don’t know.”

That is unclear. Also unclear: if there are circumstances where a cat could pass the virus to a human. It’s possible, but it has yet to be seen.

“We know that in experimental studies that this can go from cat to cat,” Danielle Adney, a veterinarian-researcher working with the National Institutes of Health, says. “In the real world, it really seems like every animal that’s been reported has a pretty clear link to an infected human. So this is still a pandemic that’s driven almost exclusively by human-to-human contact.”

(Pet owners don’t have to be wary of their cats infecting them. That said: A few of the veterinarians said their colleagues need to be really careful and wear good personal protective equipment and N95 masks when working on cats — particularly if they’re doing dental work.)

But we know that rare events can have devastating consequences. It was rare for SARS-CoV-2 to jump from bats to humans. “I’m very worried about cats,” Rasmussen says. “There’s a lot of feral cats out there in the world. There’s also a lot of people who have outdoor cats that may or may not interact with other feral cats or other outdoor cats. And then if those cats are coming back, and like snuggling with their owners, that’s a potential source for the virus to spill over for future ... introductions into the human population.”

She’s not saying this will happen, or that it’s currently happening. She’s saying it’s something to monitor. Because “if it [the virus] got into something like cats, and became widespread among cats, that would be a huge problem in terms of being able to control it long-term.”

It’s still unknown which species ferried the coronavirus from bats to humans in Wuhan, China. It could have been bats, but it could have been another species. Perhaps a similar species is found in other parts of the world and can carry the virus back and forth between humans and animals.

In the near-term, vaccines will help avoid the virus jumping back from animals to humans. But 10, 20 years from now, how many people will still be vaccinated and immune to Covid-19? No one knows. Thinking about Covid-19 in animals is to think about the bigger picture, to think on a longer timeline. Covid-19 could essentially hide in animals for years, waiting, subtly mutating and changing, before making a jump back into humans.

What’s hard about this topic is all the (literal) moving, crawling, trotting, scampering pieces: There are so many species, interacting with us in so many ways, interacting with other members of their own species in so many ways, interacting with other species in so many ways. In that sense, studying Covid-19 in animals is an opportunity to better understand the complicated ways diseases spread from animals to humans, and back again. That could help keep SARS-CoV-2 at bay, but it could also help prevent future pandemics.

The research on Covid-19 and animals has uncovered some good news, too.

“Luckily, ducks and chickens and pigs have all been shown not to be susceptible, in laboratory studies, and cows have really low susceptibility,” Fagre says. That means that the situation that happened on mink farms is unlikely to occur on farms where these more common animals are raised as livestock.

It’s not just about human health, but animal health as well

Veterinarians can think of a lot of potentially scary scenarios here. Not all of them are scary in terms of human health, but for animal health, too.

Scientists have conducted broad surveys of animal biology, noting which animals have a cellular receptor similar to the ACE-2 receptor in humans. This is a protein found on the surface of many human cells that the virus uses as a front door to start hijacking the cell and replicating within it.

At the top of the list of potentially most at-risk animals are some of the most critically endangered species on the planet, and some of our closest genetic relatives in the natural world.

At the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park in Uganda, veterinarian and conservationist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is concerned about a potential outbreak among the park’s 460 mountain gorillas, which represent nearly half of all mountain gorillas left in the wild.

Gorillas share 98.4 percent of their DNA with humans. They have a similar immune system, and have similar cellular proteins through which SARS-CoV-2 enters to infect the body. If one of these precious few gorillas got infected, Kalema-Zikusoka worries they would get sick and die. Worse, the disease could spread rapidly among them.

“They don’t know how to social distance,” Kalema-Zikusoka says. Likewise, there’s no putting a mask on a 300-plus-pound wild gorilla. “They’re always grooming each other, they’re always moving together as a group. So if one of them gets Covid-19, it’s very easy for the rest of them to get it.”

Lorena de la Cuesta/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The virus, she says, plainly “is a threat to the gorillas,” as well as to chimpanzees and orangutans, which also share an overwhelming amount of DNA with humans. It’s not easy to treat a wild gorilla if it gets sick. And if one does, she says, the plan is to quarantine potentially exposed gorillas via 24-hour monitoring by park workers in the forest.

“You can’t provide the same level of intensive treatment to a wild gorilla as you would a human being, who you can put in a hospital ward, put on a ventilator for days and days,” she says. Instead, they would try to treat the gorillas in their own habitat, shooting pharmaceutical-loaded darts at the animals, if need be.

“The best we can do,” she adds, “is teach people to social distance from them.” Since the pandemic began, all people visiting the gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda must wear masks, they must get their temperatures checked, and they must stay 10 meters (32 feet) away from the animals.

Just as Covid-19 threatens gorilla conservation in Uganda, in North America, researchers are worried about bats. In recent years, millions of North American bats have died of a fungal disease called white nose syndrome. The pandemic threatens bats, for one, because it has basically shut down research on live bats. There’s fear that humans could give the bats the virus, and start an outbreak among them. “We don’t know if that can happen and which species that can happen in,” Siefert says. But considering how this virus likely originated in bats, scientists don’t want to risk it.

There’s no knowing what SARS-CoV-2 would do to bats in North America, or which species it could infect. Perhaps more would get sick and die. If infected, North American bats could become a reservoir species for SARS-CoV-2, a potential source of the virus for other wildlife, and down the line, for more human infections.

All of the veterinarians I spoke to stressed: Whatever is happening with Covid-19 in animals right now, it’s not as critical, or dire, as the situation in humans. It makes obvious sense that there are more resources currently going into tracking the spread among people, than tracking the spread among animals.

“Thousands of people are dying every day from this virus,” Fagre says. “Everyone’s first priority isn’t screening a bunch of wild rodents to see if they’ve been exposed.”

But down the line, perhaps we should prioritize them. Covid-19 is leaving a lot of shadow imprints on the world. It has upended lives and industries. But it’s also potentially burrowing itself back into nature, where it will wait. This virus came from nature, and it may very well return there. Scientists ought to track it as it does.

“This isn’t going to be the last spillover event,” Olson says, where a virus jumps from animals to humans. “We owe it to future generations to get our act together here.”

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Table of Contents: Masthead Sticky

• Thanks to many direct-to-consumer watch brands, it's easy to find a good men's watch for under $250.
• Our favorite watches come from brands like Timex, Seiko, MVMT, and Linjer.
• We've gathered 9 options for the minimalist, traditionalist, and everything in between.
• For more watches, read the best women's watches and the best watches on Amazon.

A man's watch is one of the most visible signals of his personal style. Whether it's a funky neon digital throwback, a sporty chronograph, a racer, or a simple dress watch with a leather band, a good watch is the icing on the cake that is any good outfit. And today, thanks to a direct-to-consumer watch brand boom, a well-crafted and stylish timepiece can easily be found at or under $250.

Since these options feature either a standard quartz movement or are fully digital, you definitely won't be comparing movements or mechanisms like you would between luxury mechanical watch brands. Those watches feature complicated hand-crafted mechanical clock movements to keep time, which justifies the higher price tag. They also require winding and are incredibly difficult and expensive to repair. Thankfully, the watches on this list are all made of high-quality steel and boast real leather straps and other fine details.

Another bonus at this price point? All are fully automatic, so no winding is required. In fact, the most maintenance you'll have to do for any of these is drop by a jeweler to have the battery replaced when it happens to run out every few years. Otherwise, clean with a soft cloth, store in a watch case or watch pouch, and enjoy for decades to come.

And while the watches in this guide are marketed to men, we think anyone should feel free to wear any type of watch, regardless of gender or how the accessory is labeled. Just note that the faces of these watches are larger and the bands are wider than those marketed toward women.

So, whether you're a horological aficionado looking to add another watch to your collection or a guy who just wants to complete his "fancy outfit" without breaking the bank, any of these options under $250 will make for a solid and stylish buy. And for some more information on water resistance and sizing, check out our tips below.

Here are 9 of the best men's watches under $250:

Zoom will be lifting its 40-minute meeting limit for free accounts globally in recognition of several upcoming holidays, the company confirmed to The Verge. The limits will be removed in recognition of Hanukkah, Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, and Kwanzaa. The company similarly lifted its 40-minute limit last month for Thanksgiving Day.

Here’s exactly when Zoom will be removing the 40-minute limit:

• 10AM ET Thursday, December 17th, to 6AM ET Saturday, December 19th, for the end of Hanukkah
• 10AM ET Wednesday, December 23rd, to 6AM ET Saturday, December 26th, for Christmas Eve and Christmas
• 10AM ET on Wednesday, December 30th, to 6AM ET on Saturday, January 2nd, for New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Day, and the end of...

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• The Irish Data Protection Commission fined Twitter $546,000 for violating the EU's GDPR privacy law and failing to notify the regulator of a data breach within 72 hours of one occurring.
• The case pertains to a breach during the 2018 holiday period that left users' private tweets exposed, an incident for which Twitter told Business Insider it takes responsibility.
• The EU's GDPR privacy law, passed in mid-2018, mandates that companies handling EU citizens' data ring the alarm within 72 hours of discovering a data breach.
• News of the fine also comes after the US Federal Trade Commission ordered Twitter and seven other tech companies to disclose how they collect and track people's personal information. They have 45 days to respond from the day they received the order.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Twitter is the first US company to be fined for violating the European Union's relatively new GDPR privacy law, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission said Tuesday that it's fining Twitter $546,000 for failing to note or alert regulators within 72 hours of discovering a data breach over the 2018 holiday period, which left some users' private tweets vulnerable. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) includes a mandate that if companies that handle EU citizens' data realize there has been a breach, they must inform those affected within 72 hours.

In a statement to Business Insider, Twitter's Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran said the company takes "responsibility for this mistake and remain fully committed to protecting the privacy and data of our customers, including through our work to quickly and transparently inform the public of issues that occur." He also said the issue was the result of an "unanticipated consequence of staffing between Christmas Day 2018 and New Years' Day."

The company also said all reports have been made within the required 72-hour period since the incident occurred.

The fine comes after officials deliberated for nearly two years over this specific Twitter case. Helen Dizon, head of the Irish Data Protection Commission, told the outlet that the process was "too long," but it still marks the first time that EU authorities have completed such a process. Twitter said it fixed the issue in January 2019, as the WSJ notes. 

The EU's GDPR privacy law was passed in May 2018 and marked a sweeping step toward holding tech companies more accountable. The law includes a series of stipulations, like granting customers the right to have their data deleted if they ask and requiring companies to inform people on how or why their data is being processed.

Read more: Meet 28 of Europe's lawmakers, activists, and lobbyists hashing out the rules on everything from driverless vehicles to net neutrality

Twitter is also wrapped up in an order issued Monday by the US Federal Trade Commission. The federal agency is ordering the company, as well as Amazon, Facebook, Snap, and five others, to disclose how they collect and track people's personal information online. The companies have 45 days to respond to the order from the day that they received it.

The FTC's order signals a move toward a tougher crackdown of the tech industry, which has largely enjoyed little oversight in its history.

Twitter has announced that it’ll be shutting down Periscope as a service, with the company set to discontinue the Periscope applications by March 2021. Twitter will, however, continue to offer live video streaming through its integrated Twitter Live feature within the main Twitter app.

“The Periscope app is in an unsustainable maintenance-mode state, and has been for a while,” the company explained in a blog post. “Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen declining usage and know that the cost to support the app will only continue to go up over time.”

While Periscope won’t be fully shut down until March, the company is already blocking any new account signups starting in the latest update to the apps, which is rolling out today. Users...

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It’s the second day in a row of service issues at Google, following a broader Google Cloud outage on Monday.

‘There are going to be outages and shutdowns for public cloud,’ says Bob Venero, CEO of Holbrook, N.Y.-based solution provider Future Tech, No. 96 on the CRN 2020 SP500. ‘Corporations that rely solely on public cloud to function and run are putting their businesses at risk for loss of revenue, security vulnerabilities and unexpected losses in productivity. Public cloud is not invincible.’

From how nation-state hackers evaded detection to why federal agencies were ordered to immediately power down Orion to its impact on the SolarWinds MSP business, here are the most important things to know about the SolarWinds breach.