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Originally published July 11, 2022. This story is brought to you today as part of our Best of ECT News series. A TED Talk by Graham Conway, principal engineer at Southwest Research Institute, asserts that electric vehicles are less green than ICE cars and it is well argued. While I don’t agree with all of Conway’s metrics, the point he makes is valid, which is that the things we need to do to truly make an electric vehicle green have not been done yet. We are nowhere near the maximum potential for the electric car. Conway contends that for the…

WASHINGTON — Venezuela on Saturday freed seven Americans imprisoned in the South American country in exchange for the release of two nephews of President Nicholas Maduro’s wife who had been jailed for years by the United States on drug smuggling convictions, a senior U.S. official said.The swap of the Americans, including five oil executives held for nearly five years, is the largest trade of detained citizens ever carried out by the Biden administration.“We are relieved and gratified to be welcoming back to their families today seven Americans who had been wrongfully detained for too long in Venezuela,” said Joshua Geltzer, the…

CNN  —  President Joe Biden on Saturday announced the return of seven Americans he said were wrongfully detained in Venezuela for “years.” “Today, after years of being wrongfully detained in Venezuela, we are bringing home Jorge Toledo, Tomeu Vadell, Alirio Zambrano, Jose Luis Zambrano, Jose Pereira, Matthew Heath, and Osman Khan. These individuals will soon be reunited with their families and back in the arms of their loved ones where they belong,” the President said in a statement. Vadell, Toledo, Jose Luis Zambrano, Alirio Zambrano, and Pereira are five of the six American oil executives known as the “CITGO 6”…

The S&P 500 may be trading around 2022 lows, but a new report finds active managers are having their best year since 2009. The numbers suggest they still have a long way to go, though.S&P Global recently published its Mid-Year 2022 SPIVA U.S. Scorecard, which measures how well U.S. actively managed funds perform against certain benchmarks. The study found that 51% of large-cap domestic equity funds performed worse than the S&P 500 in the first half of 2022, on track for its best rate in 13 years — down from an 85% underperformance rate last year.This is partially due to…

Entrepreneurs, in my mind, aren’t just founders of for-profit business. It’s anyone who comes up an idea and turns it into something real, who translates a passion into a project.As the mom of two entrepreneurial sons, I’ve found that of all the parenting advice out there, the most important ones are about teaching kids to be bold enough to try new things. But how do you do that?When writing my book, “Raising an Entrepreneur,” I asked 70 parents who raised highly successful adults about the most extreme things they did that helped make their kids brave and confident:1. They taught…

The major personality traits are considered to remain relatively stable over most of a person’s adult life but can be influenced by stressful personal events.A recent study found changes in the expression of personality traits during the COVID-19 pandemic in a nationally representative sample.The findings suggest that younger people were more susceptible to changes in personality traits, showing a decline in conscientiousness, agreeableness, and an increase in neuroticism.These results suggest that, in addition to stressful personal events, global events such as the COVID-19 pandemic could potentially lead to changes in personality traits.Previous studies have shown that levels of neuroticism declined…

General Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of the US Air Force in the Pacific, said North Korea’s possession of such a weapon was especially unsettling because, unlike other powers, Pyongyang did not consider nuclear arms to be strictly deterrents – kept but never used. “They’ve threatened to use those weapons against their neighbours, and possibly even the US,” he said. “I mean, if you think about other countries who have those weapons, they don’t talk like that. And so that should have everyone concerned.” Wilsbach said he “would not be surprised if we saw some sort of test in the near future”,…

With the school semester back in full swing, a new regulation by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) aims to keep lice out of the classroom and affecting kids’ heads.As AAP notes in a new clinical report titled “Head Lice,” a school’s quarantine approach to eradicating a lice infestation can often be “psychologically stressful” to individuals.“It is important for medical providers to educate and reassure affected individuals and caregivers that head lice are neither a health hazard nor a sign of poor hygiene and are not responsible for the spread of any disease,” the report says. “Despite this knowledge, there…

It’s no secret that George and Amal Clooney are the quintessential power couple, and their latest venture puts their massive celebrity to noble use. Last night in New York City, the Clooneys, cofounders of The Clooney Foundation for Justice, debuted their inaugural Albie Awards, designed to honor courageous defenders of justice across the globe. “Tonight the awards are shining a light on justice champions who are doing amazing work in their communities, from Belarus to Kenya to South Africa to Manila—but they’re doing it at great risk,” Amal, dazzling in a head-to-toe gold Versace ensemble, told Vogue. “They’re either facing imprisonment…