Order a Coke to wash down some hummus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank these days and chances are the waiter will shake his head disapprovingly or worse, mutter shame, shame in Arabic before suggesting the popular local alternative: a can of Chat Cola.Chat Cola its red tin and sweeping white script bearing remarkable resemblance to the iconic American soft drinks logo has seen its products explode in popularity across the occupied West Bank in the past year as Palestinian consumers, angry at Americassteadfast support for Israelin itswar against Hamas in Gaza, protest with their pocketbooks.No one wants to be caught drinking Coke, said Mad Asaad, 21, a worker at the bakery-cafe chain Croissant House in the West Bank city of Ramallah, which stopped selling Coke after the war erupted. Everyone drinks Chat now. Its sending a message.Since Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, attacktriggeredIsraels devastating military campaign in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian-led boycott movement against companies perceived as supportive of Israel gained momentum across the Middle East, where the usual American corporate targets likeMcDonalds,KFCandStarbuckssawsales slide last year.Here in the West Bank, the boycott has shuttered two KFC branches in Ramallah. But the most noticeable expression of consumer outrage has been the sudden ubiquity of Chat Cola as shopkeepers relegate Coke cans to the bottom shelf or pull them altogether.When people started to boycott, they became aware that Chat existed, Fahed Arar, general manager of Chat Cola, told The Associated Press from the giant red-painted factory, nestled in the hilly West Bank town of Salfit. Im proud to have created a product that matches that of a global company.With the buy local movement burgeoning during the war, Chat Cola said its sales in the West Bank surged more than 40% last year, compared to 2023.While the companies said they had no available statistics on their command of the local market due to the difficulties of data collection in wartime, anecdotal evidence suggests Chat Cola is clawing at some of Coca-Colas market share.Chat used to be a specialty product, but from what weve seen, it dominates the market, said Abdulqader Azeez Hassan, 25, the owner of a supermarket in Salfit that boasts fridges full of the fizzy drinks.But workers at Coca-Colas franchise in the West Bank, the National Beverage Company, are all Palestinian, and a boycott affects them, too, said its general manager, Imad Hindi.He declined to elaborate on the business impact of the boycott, suggesting it cant be untangled from the effects of the West Banks economic free-fall and intensified Israeli security controls that have multiplied shipping times and costs for Palestinian companies during the war.The Coca-Cola Company did not respond to a request for comment.Whether or not the movement brings lasting consequences, it does reflect an upsurge of political consciousness, said Salah Hussein, head of the Ramallah Chamber of Commerce.Its the first time weve ever seen a boycott to this extent, Hussein said, noting how institutions like the prominent Birzeit University near Ramallah canceled their Coke orders. After Oct. 7, everything changed. And after Trump, everything will continue to change.President Donald Trumps callfor the mass expulsion of Palestiniansfrom Gaza, which herephrased last weekas a recommendation, has further inflamedanti-American sentimentaround the region.With orders pouring in not only from Lebanon and Yemen but also the United States and Europe, the company has its sights set on the international market, said PR manager Ahmad Hammad.Hired to help Chat Cola cash in oncombustible emotions created by the war, Hammad has rebranded what began in 2019 as a niche mom-and-pop operation.We had to take advantage of the opportunity, he said of the companys new Palestinian taste logo and national flag-hued merchandise.In its scramble to satisfy demand, Chat Cola is opening a second production site in neighboring Jordan. It rolled out new candy-colored flavors, like blueberry, strawberry and green apple.At the steamy plant in Salfit, recent college graduates in lab coats said that they took pains to produce a carbonated beverage that could sell on its taste, not just a customers sense of solidarity with the Palestinians.Quality has been a problem with local Palestinian products before, said Hanna al-Ahmad, 32, the head of quality control for Chat Cola, shouting to be heard over the whir of machines squirting caramel-colored elixir into scores of small cans that then whizzed down assembly lines. If its not good quality, the boycott wont stick.Chat Cola worked with chemists in France to produce the flavor, which is almost indistinguishable from Cokes just like its packaging. Thats the case for several flavors: Squint at Chats lemon-lime soda and you might mistake it for a can of Sprite.In 2020, the Ramallah-based National Beverage Company sued Chat Cola for copyright infringement in Palestinian court, contending that Chat had imitated Cokes designs for multiple drinks. The court ultimately sided with Chat Cola, determining there were enough subtle differences in the can designs that it didnt violate copyright law.In the Salfit warehouse, drivers loaded family size packages of soda into trucks bound not only for the West Bank but also for Tel Aviv, Haifa and other cities in Israel. Staffers said that Chat soda sales inIsraels predominantly Arabcities jumped 25% last year. To broaden its appeal in Israel, Chat Cola secured kosher certification after a Jewish rabbis thorough inspection of the facility.Still, critics of the Palestinians-ledBoycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, say that its main objective to isolate Israel economically for its occupation of Palestinian lands only exacerbates the conflict.BDS and similar actions drive communities apart, they dont help to bring people together, said Vlad Khaykin, the executive vice president of social impact and partnerships in North America for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. The kind of rhetoric being embraced by the BDS movement to justify the boycott of Israel is really quite dangerous.While Chat Cola goes out of its way to avoid buying from Israel sourcing ingredients and materials from France, Italy and Kuwait it cant avoid thecircumstances of Israeli occupation, in which Israel dominatesthe Palestinian economy, controls borders, imports and more.Deliveries of raw materials to Chat Colas West Bank factory get hit with a 35% import tax half of whichIsrael collects on behalfof the Palestinians. The general manager, Arar, said his companys success depends far more on Israeli bureaucratic goodwill than nationalist fervor.For nearly a month last fall, Israeli authorities detained Chats aluminum shipments from Jordan at theAllenby Bridge Crossing, forcing part of the factory to shut down and costing the company tens of thousands of dollars.Among the local buyers left in the lurch was Croissant House in Ramallah, where, on a recent afternoon, at least one thirsty customer, confronting a nearly empty refrigerator, slipped to the supermarket next-door for a can of Coke.Its very frustrating, said Asaad, the worker. We want to be self-sufficient. But were not.Isabel Debre, Associated Press

Tens of thousands of U.S. government workers have been fired in recent weeks, according to a Reuters tally of announcements tracking President Donald Trumps plan to shrink the federal workforce.So far, few indications of those lost jobs have appeared in the various formal measures of the U.S. job market.Economists will be keeping an eye on the data because federal government hiring has been a steady contributor to overall U.S. employment growth as the pace of private-sector hiring has eased. Over the last two years through January, the ranks of non-U.S. Postal Service federal workers as a share of overall payroll employment has edged up to 1.52% from 1.47%.Despite that rise, the federal civilian worker share of total U.S. employment is near its historic low of 1.4% from late 2000. The federal workforce share peaked at just over 4% in the early 1950s.Also, Trumps cuts being carried out under the direction of Tesla CEO Elon Musks Department of Government Efficiency have not just been aimed at those directly on government payrolls but also at private companies and individuals performing contract work for the government.A 2020 Brookings Institution study estimated that for every one federal employee there are two contractors. With that in mind, Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, estimated that with a consensus estimate of ultimately 300,000 DOGE-related federal job cuts, the total employment reduction could be closer to 1 million.So when will these reductions start to materialize in the official data? Heres a guide:Weekly jobless claimsEach Thursday, the Labor Departments Employment and Training Administration reports the number of people who the previous week had filed for state unemployment benefits for the first time. The report includes a running tally of all those who continue to collect benefits beyond one week, a figure called continued claims and reported with a one-week lag.Federal employees who have lost their jobs, though, are not included in the state claims data. They are tracked separately under the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees (UCFE) program, and the data is reported with a one-week lag.In the latest week ended February 8, 613 initial claims had been filed by former federal workers, and that figure has not climbed above 1,000 in more than two years. It also remains below the level typically seen during comparable seasons in the years immediately before the COVID-19 pandemic.In the previous week, 7,110 former federal workers were receiving continued benefits, around the same number seen at this time of year in the last two years. Moreover, those continued claims tended to be much higher during comparable times of year before the pandemic.Since the Trump and Musk cuts are not aimed only at those earning a government paycheck, some indications of the extent of job losses may start appearing soon in data from individual states with high concentrations of jobs supported by federal government activities.Washington and the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia are home to hundreds of thousands of workers whose employers perform work under federal contracts, making them key locations to watch.Only Washington has shown an uptrend in new benefits filings. In the latest week ended February 15, the advance number of new filings was about 1,700 and the highest in nearly two years. It is also well above the level typically seen in the years just before the pandemic, with the exception of a short-lived spike in January 2019 due to a government shutdown over a budget impasse.New claims in Maryland and Virginia, meanwhile, have both averaged about 2,800 per week since Trump took office on January 20, both within the trend range over the last year.Texas, Florida, California and Georgia also have high numbers of federal workers and associated contractors.There are some caveats.Not everyone who loses a job is eligible for jobless benefits, and this includes certain contract workers. So some job losses will never appear in the weekly claims data.Also, not everyone files for benefits immediately after losing a job or at all. Many people dont file for a week or more after their job was eliminated, and some among them will find new work promptly and never have a need to seek government support. That said, a generally slowing job market may mean that final dynamic is less at play this time around.Nonfarm payrollsEach month, typically on the first Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the U.S. employment situation, which updates the unemployment rate as well as the total level of employment and levels and changes by sector, including local, state and federal government employment.The next report is due on March 7, covering February. It is based on a survey conducted during the week when the 12th day of the month falls. In this case, that was a week when news reports about firings within the federal government began circulating widely, so there is a chance that the level of non-USPS civilian employment was affected by that development.Net federal hiring outside the postal service totaled 3,700 in January. It has averaged about 5,700 a month over the last two years and has shrunk in just one month in that span. It is unclear whether the reports of firings that surfaced during the week of February 9-16 would have been made official and reported in that weeks BLS survey.Trump shrunk federal civilian employment by about 17,000 workers in his first year of office during his first term, including about 13,000 in his first three months. But it began growing again, and by the time the pandemic struck he had overseen an expansion in the federal workforce of 60,000 people.Job openings and labor turnover surveyThe Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) measures the number of posted job vacancies on the last day of each month, and also estimates the monthly number of gross hirings and job separations, including people who quit, are laid off, or leave for another reason such as retirement.It is not as timely as the payrolls report. The next report, for instance, will be issued on March 11, covering January. As a snapshot of where things stood at the end of the month, it could reflect Trumps January 20 hiring freeze order, which directed that all job postings be removed and many job offers rescinded.The latest figure, for December, showed 140,000 federal government job vacancies, roughly in line with the monthly average over the term of former President Joe Biden. Monthly federal openings totaled about 110,000 during Trumps first term from January 2017 to January 2021.Gross federal hiring, meanwhile, totaled 30,000 in December unchanged for three months and the lowest number since May 2018.State and local payrolls reportsThe BLS also provides monthly state and local employment reports.The next State Employment and Unemployment report will be issued on March 17, covering January. This report shows employment levels, job gains and losses and unemployment rates across all 50 states, Washington, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.It shows government employment levels but combines state, local and federal government figures. Still, it will be another resource for indications of government contractors shedding jobs, especially in areas of high concentrations of these employers.However, it is not likely that this will make itself evident before the report for February is issued in mid-April.The Metropolitan Area Employment and Unemployment Summary, meanwhile, tracks employment across nearly 400 metropolitan areas across the U.S. This has an even longer delay, of two months, and shows payroll employment levels, changes and jobless rates but does not show employment sector activity.The earliest this might be expected to reflect the effects of federal firings at the local level will be in late April when the report for February is issued.Dan Burns, Reuters

Nature has always been the best engineer. From the aerodynamics of birds to the swarm intelligence of ants, evolution has solved problems in ways that human technology is still trying to replicate. MITs latest creationan insect-sized flying robot with an unprecedented 17-minute flight timebrings us a step closer to mastering the physics of nature. Weighing less than a gram and modeled after bees, these microbots are reshaping whats possible in robotics, with implications that extend far beyond the lab.Traditional micro-drones have long struggled with a fundamental problem: energy efficiency. The challenge isnt just making them small and light; its about sustaining flight long enough for them to be useful. Until now, most insect-sized bots had a flight time measured in seconds, not minutes. MITs solution was a complete redesign of the wing system. By cutting the number of wings from eight to four and improving the actuators that power them, researchers reduced wasted energy and improved overall stability. The result? A bot that moves faster than a fruit fly and can perform complex maneuvers like somersaults and controlled loopsall while staying airborne for nearly 1,000 seconds.Designer: Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyThis breakthrough could reshape the future of micro-drones, particularly in environments where conventional UAVs fall short. Precision pollination is one of the most immediate applications. Bee populations worldwide are in steep decline, with commercial beekeepers reporting losses of more than 50% in recent years. Without natural pollinators, agriculture faces a major crisis. These tiny, autonomous flying machines could offer a backup plan, ensuring crops are pollinated even in the absence of bees. Vertical farmswhere space efficiency is keycould also benefit from fleets of these bots, navigating between plants in multilevel structures without the need for large open fields.Close-up of the insect-inspired wing structureBut the real potential of MITs innovation lies in what it means for the broader field of drone technology. Todays consumer and commercial drones are fundamentally limited by battery life. Most small drones struggle to stay airborne for more than 30 minutes, constrained by the weight of their lithium-ion batteries. MITs research suggests an alternative path: instead of just improving battery technology, what if drones were designed to be far more energy-efficient in the first place? The principles used to extend the flight time of these microbotsoptimized wing design, better actuator efficiency, and reduced energy losscould be applied to larger drones. Imagine a surveillance drone capable of flying for hours instead of minutes, or a delivery drone that doesnt need to land and recharge as frequently.This kind of efficiency is also critical for search-and-rescue operations. In disaster zones, drones are often deployed to locate survivors, assess damage, and map hazardous areas. A drone that can remain airborne for extended periods without requiring frequent returns to base would be invaluable. MITs findings could enable a new generation of ultra-light, ultra-efficient aerial robots designed for long-duration missions.Beyond practical applications, the evolution of micro-drones brings up ethical and security concerns. Autonomous flying bots capable of operating in swarms could be used for surveillance, espionage, or even military applications. Miniaturized drones with extended flight times could gather intelligence undetected or perform reconnaissance in environments that are inaccessible to human operators. As with any emerging technology, regulation and oversight will be critical in ensuring these advancements are used responsibly.For now, MITs research is focused on refining the technology even further. The next steps involve integrating onboard sensors and possibly even tiny batteries to extend flight time to an astonishing 10,000 seconds. Researchers are also working on improving landing precision, so these bots can autonomously land on flowers and recharge, mimicking real bees.The post MITs New Insect-Sized Winged Drones Have a Flight-Time of 17 Minutes first appeared on Yanko Design.

Operatives working for Elon Musks DOGE appear to be editing the code of AutoRIFsoftware designed by the Defense Department that could assist in mass firings of federal workers, sources tell WIRED.

When Jeep owners complained ads were appearing while driving, the carmaker said it was a glitch. But as automakers consider connected car opportunities, in-vehicle selling might be too tempting to ignore.

The company said it was working to fix the problem after iPhone users began reporting the issue.

Proposed cuts at a key US government agency will likely mean the demise of CHIPS Act funding, which could effectively end the program and undermine efforts to reshore semiconductor manufacturing and research to the US.Axios and Bloomberg on Tuesday reported that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) plans to cut 497 jobs this week. NIST, a non-regulatory agency within the US Department of Commerce (DoC), helps drive innovation and industrial competitiveness and, overseas, the CHIPS for America program.Robert Maire, president of consulting firm Semiconductor Advisors, wrote in a blog post that the plan to cut NIST staff isnt bluff or negotiation tactic. Instead, the layoffs signal a complete shift in direction under US President Donald J. Trump, he said.Trump made it clear over the last few days that he will institute 25% tariffs on imported semiconductor devices, so [its] obvious that strategy is shifting from incentivizing US chip production to penalizing imports instead, Maire said. This also lowers the likelihood of TSMC taking over Intel manufacturing, as giving top US chip production to Taiwan contradicts the new strategy.The Trump Administration, Maire said, hasnt fully considered the impact of the cuts, since 100% of AI chips, most Intel chips, all AMD chips, TSMC customers chips, and more than 80% of memory chips are imported with the majority of them outside the US.Obviously chip manufacturing companies will slow spending on programs they previously thought they were getting CHIPS Act funding for, if not cancel those projects outright, Maire said. If I were running a chip company, I would not count on CHIPS Act funding even if I had a signed contract, as its clearly not worth the paper its written on if NIST is eviscerated.Industry analysts have agreed in the past that tariffs on imports will act as a penalty on the industry, while the CHIPS Act hallmark legislation passed three years ago under then-President Joseph R. Biden Jr. acts an incentive.Jack Gold, principal analyst with tech industry research firm J. Gold Associates, has called Trumps plan to enact tariffs on oversea chip makers is simply wrong. Funds already granted under the CHIPS Act should be safe if transferred, but with NIST staff cuts, the program could stall without oversight, he said.Ending it would be a mistake, Gold said, arguing that incentives work better than tariffs for bringing chip manufacturing back to the US. If funding is pulled, companies like Intel might halt their projects, as they likely cant replace the lost funding, he added.I dont know how the companies (Intel and others) would replace the funding if it gets pulled, Gold said. In fact, I think its unlikely and the chip guys would just shutter whatever they are building, at least for the near term.The issue goes beyond CHIPS funding, Gold added, saying program cuts will hurt local communities expecting new facilities that would create jobs, pay taxes, and boost the economy. Areas such as Ohio, where projects were planned, will miss out, he said. And, local politicians in states expecing the grant monies, including New York, Ohio, Texas, and Arizona, are likely unhappy, he said.As for why Trump and company would do this, I think its just a short sighted view of, Lets cut all spending, without regard for what that spending ultimately means. As I said, you cant accomplish bringing back manufacturing to the US simply by penalizing with tariffs. It wont work, Gold said. Besides, it takes three to four years to build out a new fab, so imagine that amount of tariffs going into our products. What doesnt have a chip in it these days? We will all be paying more for things.The CHIPS Actwas passed overwhelmingly in 2022by both houses of Congress to address computer chip supply chain shortages that surfaced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thelegislation provided the Commerce Department with $52.7 billion for a suite of programs to revitalize the US position in semiconductor research, development, and manufacturing.To date, the DoChas allocated, but not dispensed, about $32 billionin funding among chipmakers, includingIntel,Samsung,Micron,TSMC, andTexas Instruments, all of whom haveunveiled plans for a number of new US chip fabrication plants. In return, those chip designers and makers have pledged about $300 billion in current and future projects in the US, according to the White House under Biden.The CHIPS Act has spurred $450 billion in private investment across 28 states, creating 58,000 jobs,according to the Semiconductory Industry Association.With the CHIPS Act spurring them on, the likes ofQualcomm, in partnership with GlobalFoundries,also said it would invest$4.2 billionto double chip production in its Malta, NY, facility.Despite widespread bipartisan backing, some members of Congress expressed concerns about certain provisions, such as the level of government subsidies or the potential for the bill to benefit only a few large tech companies. Still, the majority of both Democrats and Republicans recognized the strategic importance of boosting semiconductor production on US soil.In addition to Trumps opposition, House Speaker Mike Johnson said in 2024 that Republicans would likely repeal the CHIPS Act. Johnson, who voted against the measure, later walked his comments back,saying he would like to streamline it, according to The Associated Press.

Atlassians Trello project management tool has received a facelift with featuresdesigned to organize meetings and ideas in a cohesive manner.The new features include an inbox, a planner, and a mix of add-ons and generative AI (genAI) tools to help customers summarize emails, organize meetings, and quickly sort through the barrage of pop-ups appearing in the software.In the past, Trello had kind of veered in the direction of project management because you were planning and helping people plan bigger and more complex projects. Now we are redirecting the focus on an individual task management, said Gaurav Kataria, head of product for Trello at Atlassian.With the update, Trello focused on simplicity, ease of use, and helping individual users be more productive, Kataria said. The company highlighted two specific features: Inbox and Planner, which are currently in beta. The AI-based inbox, for instance, serves to collect and summarize key action points and organizes to-do lists collected from a variety of collaborative and productivity apps. Planner serves to coordinate scheduling and tasks.The new features are built atopcurrent features that include to-do lists and cards, which help users organize and complete projects.This represents a big shift for Trello, asthe current feature sethas been pretty much the same for the last 14 years, Kataria said.A built-in large-language model (LLM) parses messages and can summarize key action items and dates, which are then organized as a to-do list in the Inbox. Users can read those summaries in the inbox, then use the Planner feature to organize meetings in the calendar.For example, knowledge workers are often drowning in emails, Slack messages, Microsoft Team messages and notifications that come from applications that might include Salesforce and Workday.The most common use cases just forward everything on to one single to-do list and have the AI summarize it. By far, this is the killer use case, Kataria said.There are many ways to forward a message to Trellos inbox. For example, a user can forward a meeting reminder email on Google to Trello, which then adds it. A Slack message about a meeting can be tagged and saved to the Inbox. Apples Siri can also be used to send notes or reminders to the inbox.The new features will become generally available in six weeks to paid users. They will not be available to freemium users.Atlassian is also known for Jira, its enterprise product management tool. Companies can import data from Jira into Trello and vice versa.A lot of teams have graduated from Trello to Jira for project management needs, but use Trello for individual productivity. Thats where theres a clear separation between Trello and Jira. But at the same time, theynicely integrate with each other, Kataria said.Trellos structural approach and interface make it easy to manage work and serves as a major on-ramp to other Atlassian products, said Wayne Kurtzman, research vice presidentof social, communities and collaboration at IDC.Making Trello a personal work hub shows promise, as long as features and interface evolve with their technical audience, Kurtzman said.In addition to other vendors in the collaborative work management segment, challenges could come from unexpected places as competitors focus on workflow automation.Atlassian has to balance the expectations of their Trello base with the desire to onboard them to Jira, Kurtzman said. If done with care, making Trello a personal product with team abilities could accomplish this.

As an undergraduate, Michael Schoen87 found that joining his fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha, and participating in team sports helped him make the most of his years at MIT. MIT changed my life, says Schoen, who played on rugby and varsity soccer teams. But without athletics and my fraternity, Im not sure Id have gotten through MIT. I was the first kid in my family to attend college.Early supporter. Soon after graduating, Schoen began making gifts to the MIT Department of Athletics, Physical Education, and Recreation (DAPER). He helped start Friends of DAPER, an alumni organization that raises funds and recruits volunteers, and has served on the DAPER visiting committee. When I visit MIT, he says, I see how facility upgrades and innovative programming are benefiting all students, not only varsity athletes.Lasting relationships. Schoens MIT roots are evident in his professional life as well. After 30 years in leadership roles at major investment banks, he now works as strategic advisor and special assistant to his fraternity brother John Oyler 90, founder and CEO of BeiGene, a pharmaceutical company with a mission to make cancer treatment more affordable and accessible.Body, mind, and spirit. Schoens wife, Kathleen, a clinical nutritionist, shares his philanthropic priorities. Nothing is more important than the whole personbody, mind, and spirit, he says. Athletics is part of the lives of many students and applicants. With athletics programs worthy of MIT, we attract and keep the best students.Help MIT build a better world. For more information, contact Liz Vena: 617.324.9228;evena@mit.edu. Or visithttp://giving.mit.edu.

In 2019,Legena Henry,SM 10, and the students in her renewable energy course at the University of the West Indies in Barbados wondered how to help their island stop using fossil fuel by 2030. Their first thought was to emulate Brazilhome to the worlds largest fleet of cars that run on sugar-based ethanol. But the small volume of sugarcane crops in Barbados made that impractical. Even the islands plentiful distilleries, which once primarily used sugarcane to make rum, now depend on imported molasses.COURTESY OF LEGENA HENRYWhat happened next was pure serendipity. One of Henrys undergraduates, Brittney McKenzie, commuted to the lab every day past resort beaches covered in brown mounds of invasive sargassum seaweed. Why dont we look at sargassum? she asked Henry.After mixing wastewater from the rum distillery with sargassum, they ran some experiments in the lab. And the thing is, it worked! says Henry, who has a masters in mechanical engineering from MIT and a PhD from the University of the West Indies (where she is a lecturer). Microbes in the mix fed on sugar in the wastewater and digested the seaweedand what Henry thought might turn out to be a nice paper has since become what she calls a game changer.Sargassum,which has been distributed by ocean currents to become the worlds largest macroalgal bloom, fills over 800 dump trucks on a bad day in Barbados. But thanks to this research, instead of being taken to a landfill, the seaweed can now be converted into renewable natural gas to fuel cars. (In addition to the distillery wastewater, manure from local Blackbelly sheep is often in the mix.)All the islands in this region of the Caribbean have a sargassum problem and a rum wastewater problemand ultimately a climate-change problem, Henry told Nature. This solution is a win-win-win.Henry is now the CEO ofRum & Sargassum, a startup she cofounded in 2021. In recent test drivesone in Barbados and another in Grenada as part of the Second European UnionCaribbean Global Conference on Sargassumthe biofuel operated a portable generator, which in turn charged an electric vehicle.The project requires collaboration among people with a wide spectrum of expertise, and Henry credits MIT with showing her that the best solutions come from a multidisciplinary approach. It also requires getting support for what some may see as a small nation solution, Henry explains. But she is very hopeful.Sargassum has now become part of the conversation that will turn the climate crisis around, she says.