amazon food case study

Amazon Food: Biting into the Food Delivery Market in India

Research by: Jones Mathew, Sandeep Puri, Darren Meister, and Maria Luisa C. Delayco

Amazon.com, Inc. (Amazon) India expanded Amazon Food into the food delivery market in March 2021 amid a pandemic and the ensuing lockdown. The move surprised the industry, especially considering that Swiggy and Zomato Ltd. (Zomato), the two key players in the food delivery business, were facing an all-time slump and that restaurants were seeking to move away from aggregators to create their own ordering platform. Zomato and Swiggy, a duopoly in the foodservice aggregator (FSA) space in the country, had been struggling to keep cash burn low, squeezing delivery-executive commissions, executing mass layoffs, and scaling down profit-draining cloud kitchens. Although the timing of the launch appeared risky, Amazon India’s confidence to take on the established players and challenge the status quo stemmed from its size, reach, resources, technological prowess, reliability, trust, and goodwill.  In a market scenario where safety and hygiene standards were set to change forever and the odds were stacked against FSAs, the industry and consumers were expecting a tough battle. Amazon had to reassess whether its strengths would be adequate to help it make satisfactory inroads into the industry, confront the obstacles, and overcome the ongoing slump and make good on its decision to be the new entrant when the established players were bearing the brunt of not only the pandemic but also a deeply divided restaurant industry.

Learning Objective

This case is designed for graduate-level marketing management courses covering modules on market entry strategies and competitor mapping. The case is also suitable for a marketing strategy course in modules on understanding the competitive advantage and understanding business models. This case may also be useful in a customer relationship management course to discuss customer experience, unique value proposition, and building opportunities and challenges in a digital world.

The case analyzes the timing of Amazon’s entry into the food delivery market, the strategies it is likely to adopt to challenge the established players, and the choices it has to make to provide a unique, innovative, and standout experience to customers likely looking for a change. It explores the challenges a huge online retailer faces when entering a highly competitive segment where it has no prior experience, at a time when market sentiment and economic conditions are strongly unfavourable. While the firm possesses certain significant strengths that could prove to be instrumental in its success, there are also issues it must address. Working through the case will give students the opportunity to explore the following issues:

• The logic behind Amazon India’s entry into the competitive food delivery market.
• The most appropriate business model and targeting and pricing strategies for Amazon Food to find success in India, considering there are different FSAs it can choose from.
• The distinctive value proposition Amazon Food should create for online food delivery customers in terms of “customer experience” as a differentiator.
• The nature and scope of technical and digital capabilities Amazon would need in order to succeed in the online food delivery business.
• The possible obstacles Amazon Foods might encounter on its route to success.

Disciplines: Entrepreneurship; & Strategy

To cite this case: Mathew, J., Puri, S. , Meister, D., & Delayco, M C. L. (2021). Amazon Food: Biting into the Food Delivery Market in India . Ivey ID: W25902. London, Canada: Ivey Publishing

To access this case: https://www.iveypublishing.ca/s/product/amazon-food-biting-into-the-food-delivery-market-in-india/01t5c00000D4spuAAB

Product details

Amazon vs. Whole Foods: When Cultures Collide

Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods last August was the corporate equivalent of mixing tap water with organic extra virgin olive oil. You’d be hard-pressed to find two companies with more different value propositions.

Even so, it was surprising to hear reports shortly after the marriage about Whole Foods customers, really angry customers, regularly encountering empty shelves at their favorite retailer. Then stories surfaced about Whole Foods employees crying over their new performance-driven working conditions imposed by Amazon.

“This is not a story where there is a good guy and a bad guy"

A tale of two cultures

From the very start, Amazon made its name on being fast, cheap, and efficient—using data to drive its product mix and enforcing strict employee discipline to squeeze out cost savings to pass on to its customers.

Whole Foods, on the other hand, always prided itself on its personal touch, empowering individual stores—even individual employees—to make decisions about products that emphasize high quality, healthy, and local foods. That decentralization, however, caused enormous inefficiencies that drove up prices to the point where critics referred to the store as “Whole Paycheck.”

The acquisition was initially met positively by Wall Street, amid hopes that Amazon’s data-driven mindset might be just the thing to enable Whole Foods to scale up and add more stores while maintaining its employee-empowered culture.

That’s not quite what happened.

“A lot of it from our perspective was centered on a culture clash,” says Campbell. “Whole Foods has a very high-empowerment kind of culture, so these  ‘draconian’ standards, telling people where to put things on the shelves and the loss of autonomy, employees were feeling angry from that.”

The new inventory system was actually something Whole Foods had started to implement before the Amazon deal, pressured by activist shareholders who had seen the grocer’s stock and sales margins slipping for two years.

“This is not a story where there is a good guy and a bad guy,” says Campbell. “It’s a story about what the limits are to scaling this high-empowerment model, and what are the limits to a model where it’s all about standardization and data.”

A model of empowerment

For decades after its founding in 1980, Whole Foods’ decentralized model had earned a cult following, driving rapid growth from its Austin, Texas, home across the country. Managers operated stores like autonomous fiefdoms, able to tailor offerings based on customer preferences for fresh, local produce. Employees—also known as team members—built relationships with customers to cater to their needs and came up with ideas, like a bike messenger service or a new bread recipe, that sometimes found their way to other stores.

“That model of empowerment brings with it a lot of wonderful, creative solutions and a great relationship with local suppliers—and customers are very into that,” says Sandino. “They were appealing to a wealthy customer with a curated selection of healthy products that people could trust.”

The company also earned loyalty from team members—it was named one of America’s best companies to work for by Fortune magazine a staggering 20 years in a row.

“It’s one of those cultures that works for some people, but not others. There is a lot more performance pressure and accountability"

In some ways, however, the company became a victim of its own success as a pioneer of organic sustainable foods. Peaking in 2013, it started losing market share to less pricey alternatives such as Walmart, which had entered the organic space. By 2017, Whole Foods had started closing stores.

Turning data into customer value

Amazon, by contrast, had always been about low costs and efficiency, pursuing a frugal focus and rigorous performance measurement in its warehouses and distributions centers. This sometimes resulted in reports of workers stressed out and exhausted by the demanding environment.

“It’s one of those cultures that works for some people, but not others,” says Campbell, “there is a lot more performance pressure and accountability.”

The model paid off for customers in low prices and fast shipping, and they became intensely loyal: According to one survey, 85 percent of Amazon Prime members visit the site, and 46 percent buy something at least once a week .

After Amazon’s acquisition, Whole Foods pushed forward with the inventory system first introduced by the activist investors, started to centralize decisions about product selection, and slashed prices by as much as 40 percent on some items.

Employees struggled, however. They were frustrated about having to do paperwork instead of helping customers, and stressed over new performance metrics with demerits if they failed to meet them. Last year, the company dropped from Fortune’s best companies to work for list for the first time in two decades.

What went wrong?

The question that Campbell and Sandino ask in their case is: Given the pressures Amazon was facing to turn around Whole Foods’ slide, should they have approached the acquisition differently?

While there are no easy answers, Campbell says that part of the issue is realizing the limits of standardization, even for a company that has perfected data-driven management.

“It’s not totally clear that data will be a perfect substitute for human judgment,” he says. “That might work in a digital platform, where you have tons of data on customer history you can use to drive a recommendation engine, but in a store environment, there is a lot of learning that takes place from employees interacting with customers that can be very localized and specific.”

That kind of tacit knowledge is not easily captured in data and performance metrics, adds Sandino. “Amazon has been an expert on delivering non-perishable foods, but that is different than learning how to prepare certain foods, or knowing how customers want their fish or a cut of meat, which may vary in the moment.”

She suggests Amazon may have been better off pursuing a management concept known as structured empowerment, where a company standardizes operations but allows flexibility for employees to make their own choices in key areas where having high-touch contact with customers matters.

In addition, she says, Amazon might have changed its performance measures to focus more on results rather than processes, holding employees accountable for goals, but giving them more leeway on how they achieve them.

“Instead of this assumption that data should take over everything, there is a huge opportunity here for data to inform and complement human judgment”

“They can make some tradeoffs and incorporate their own knowledge, rather than having to follow a recipe,” she says. That, in turn, could give them more incentive to use the data Amazon is serving up to further drive results.

Is the best yet to come?

Campbell stresses that the ideas in their case are speculative, based on second-hand reports in the press. They can’t be sure how much Amazon tried to integrate its culture with that of Whole Foods, or what its ultimate goal is for the acquisition. There is always the possibility the company is just acquiring the stores for their locations, and plans to phase out the Whole Foods brand.

Assuming that Amazon wants Whole Foods to succeed, however, it might do well to consider the benefits of the grocery chain’s empowerment model, and what elements of it to keep, before throwing out the proverbial olive oil with the tap water.

“Instead of this assumption that data should take over everything,” Campbell says, “there is a huge opportunity here for data to inform and complement human judgment.”

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Amazon Food: Biting into the Food Delivery Market in India

Amazon Food: Biting into the Food Delivery Market in India ^ W25902

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Product Description

Publication Date: September 28, 2021

Amazon.com, Inc. (Amazon) India expanded Amazon Food into the food delivery market in March 2021 amid a pandemic and the ensuing lockdown. The move surprised the industry, especially considering that Swiggy and Zomato Ltd. (Zomato), the two key players in the food delivery business, were facing an all-time slump and that restaurants were seeking to move away from aggregators to create their own ordering platform. Zomato and Swiggy, a duopoly in the food service aggregator (FSA) space in the country, had been struggling to keep cash burn low, squeezing delivery-executive commissions, executing mass layoffs, and scaling down profit-draining cloud kitchens. Although the timing of the launch appeared risky, Amazon India's confidence to take on the established players and challenge the status quo stemmed from its size, reach, resources, technological prowess, reliability, trust, and goodwill. In a market scenario where safety and hygiene standards were set to change forever and the odds were stacked against FSAs, the industry and consumers were expecting a tough battle. Amazon had to reassess whether its strengths would be adequate to help it make satisfactory inroads into the industry, confront the obstacles, and overcome the ongoing slump and make good on its decision to be the new entrant when the established players were bearing the brunt of not only the pandemic but also a deeply divided restaurant industry.

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• Amazon–Whole Foods Negotiation: Did the Exclusive Courtship Move Too Fast?

In the Amazon–Whole Foods negotiation, an insistence on exclusivity led the two parties to quickly get down to business. But speed may have led them to overlook an important factor: culture.

By PON Staff — on April 25th, 2024 / Business Negotiations

When competing with multiple parties to secure a coveted resource, such as your dream house, a cool invention, or a talented new hire, it can be hard to stand out from the pack. Amazon faced that challenge in its $13.4 billion acquisition of upscale grocer Whole Foods in 2017, as reported by Alex Morrell for Business Insider . The Amazon–Whole Foods negotiation demonstrates the value of commitment in negotiation —but also illustrates the downside of moving quickly.

For years, Whole Foods faced pressure to prop up its slumping stock price and reverse declining profits. In April 2017, activist hedge fund Jana Partners revealed it had acquired a nearly 9% stake in the grocer and was seeking to shake up upper management, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Unwilling to surrender control, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey and his team hired the advisory firm Evercore to fend off the hostile investors and help chart a path forward. The same week, Bloomberg reported that Amazon had been considering a bid for Whole Foods but had let it drop. Curiosity piqued, Whole Foods had an outside consultant reach out to Amazon, which agreed within a few days to meet to discuss a merger.

In a meeting with Whole Foods, Jana Partners demanded an overhaul of the grocer’s board of directors, among other changes. On Friday, April 28, the Whole Foods board met to contemplate its response. 

That weekend, Whole Foods leaders flew to Seattle for a meeting with Amazon that Mackey later characterized as “love at first sight.” But the Amazon–Whole Foods negotiation was only in the preliminary stages, and pressure from Jana Partners was mounting. Whole Foods engaged in talks with a competitor—supermarket chain Albertsons, according to Reuters —regarding a potential “merger of equals” and with another competitor regarding a commercial supply-chain deal but not a merger.

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Pairing Off

On May 23, Amazon submitted a written offer to purchase Whole Foods for $41 per share, 17% above the grocer’s $35 per share trading price. But Amazon, represented by Goldman Sachs, was adamant about two conditions: utmost secrecy and exclusive negotiation rights . If word of the talks got out or if Whole Foods wanted to auction itself off to the highest bidder, Amazon said it would bow out.

Mackey characterized the meeting at Amazon headquarters as “love at first sight.”

On May 30, Whole Foods’ board met to discuss its options, which included potential deals with Amazon, competing grocers, and private-equity firms. With Evercore advising that Amazon would likely offer the best price, Whole Foods decided to focus on doing a deal with the online retailer.

Whole Foods made a counteroffer of $45 per share, or almost $14.4 billion. Amazon countered at $42 per share, declaring that its best and final offer. Once again, Amazon warned Whole Foods not to approach other potential bidders and said it was prepared to close the deal quickly, according to later Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Whole Foods snapped up the offer and on June 15, went public with the merger. Shares of Whole Foods temporarily surged as investors hoped for a bidding war, but no offers materialized.

The outcome of the Amazon – Whole Foods negotiation marked “a major escalation” in the online merchant’s battle with Walmart for bigger slices of the $800 billion that Americans spend annually on groceries, according to the   New York Times . 

Lessons from the Amazon–Whole Foods Negotiation

Amazon successfully shut down its competition by making exclusivity a condition of its negotiations with Whole Foods. In his book  Dealmaking: The New Strategy of Negotiauctions  (Norton, 2020), Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School professor Guhan Subramanian notes that such shut-down moves can succeed at prematurely cutting off the competition in an auction or negotiation-auction hybrid.

To carry out such advanced negotiation techniques , you need to give your target an incentive to deal with you exclusively. This might mean making an eye-catching offer that your competitors can’t match. If you bring unique value to the deal, such as a reputation for prestige or opportunities to reach new customers, all the better.

Moreover, accompany your shut-down move with a credible threat to walk away if the target refuses to agree to an exclusivity period —and then be prepared to do so. Finally, note that shut-down moves are particularly likely to be effective when your target is under pressure to reach an agreement in a hurry, as Whole Foods was.

But there’s often a downside to an exclusive negotiation that closes quickly: Negotiators don’t have time to build rapport and discuss intangible issues, such as culture. Indeed, a year after the Amazon–Whole Foods negotiation , many Whole Foods employees were unhappy with changes Amazon imposed, including strict new inventory-management procedures . There appeared to be a culture clash between Amazon’s “tight” corporate culture and Whole Foods’ “loose” one, write University of Maryland professor Michele Gelfand and her colleagues in the Harvard Business Review . “ In addition to negotiating price and other financial terms, organizations discussing a merger need to  negotiate culture ,” they conclude . 

In retrospect, Mackey’s “love at first sight” comment about the Amazon–Whole Foods negotiation seems naive and premature. When a potential business partner wants an exclusive courtship, remember that there are often benefits to taking things slowly.  

What other takeaways have you absorbed from the Amazon – Whole Foods negotiation?

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Amazon Buys Whole Foods

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Amazon and Whole Foods: A Tale of Two Companies

October 21, 2019

Before 2017, business leaders, journalists, and others lauded Whole Foods for their human resources philosophy. The grocery giant instilled policies that encouraged teamwork and innovation among employees—from the C-suite to the checkout line. However, Amazon’s June 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods  alienated  employees who previously enjoyed the work culture at Whole Foods—and for good reason. The Amazon-Whole Foods merger provides an intriguing case study into the conditions that cause employees to enjoy their jobs.

Intense teamwork

Before the acquisition, the Whole Foods culture relied upon cohesiveness and teamwork. As FastCompany reports, “each [store] is an autonomous profit center composed of an average of 10 self-managed teams—produce, grocery, prepared foods, and so on—with designated leaders and clear performance targets. The team leaders in each store are a team; store leaders in each region are a team; the company’s six regional presidents are a team.”

Based on cost savings, increased sales, and innovations, employees could earn shared bonuses alongside their colleagues. These bonuses could be as high as an additional dollar per hour of labor for each team member.

In a 2013  interview   with Fortune , Whole Foods CEO Walter Robb explained that the firm’s team-centric management perspective was highly intentional. Executives allowed individual stores to experiment with changes—such as outfitting shelves with Braille tags for blind customers—without trudging through layers of corporate bureaucracy. Whole Foods employees prided themselves in exercising their creativity to build lasting customer relationships. Plus, stores were so transparent with their sales figures that the SEC  considered   all of Whole Foods’s employees to be corporate insiders.

What was the result of these policies? As it turns out, Whole Foods achieved the Holy Grail of hourly labor: low employee turnover. Every year, only 9% of employees left Whole Foods each year—even while its competitors wrestled with 100% churn.

After the acquisition, however, conditions quickly began to change.

Intense competition

When Amazon announced their merger with Whole Foods in 2017, analysts immediately predicted that the firms’ cultures would clash.

Intense competition among staff members characterizes Amazon, even at the blue-collar level. Fortune  reports  that Amazon employees face “intense physical pressures,” “intense surveillance and monitoring” to track performance metrics, and stagnant compensation.

When the competitive and metrics-driven culture of Amazon collided with the collaborative and innovation-driven culture of Whole Foods, the effect was quite noticeable.

Today, Amazon encourages Whole Foods employees to push Amazon Prime memberships, reducing their ability to create genuine relationships with customers. Instead of each store possessing its own unique personality, Amazon imagery attacks shoppers from all angles. The Guardian  interviewed  a Whole Food employee who shared that stores “must have large signs over our Prime deals, additional signs on the displays and samples, or we get asked about it constantly.”

Additionally, understaffing has “become the norm” for Whole Foods. The Guardian found that “hours have regularly been reduced from 40 a week to 35 to 37 in the wake of Amazon enacting a $15 minimum wage for all its employees—thus rendering any rises in pay almost non-existent.” In September 2018, employees organized a coalition called Whole Worker to push against Amazon’s human resources decisions.

What is the result of these policies? According to one article  called   “It’s Reportedly Becoming ‘Normal’ to See Whole Foods Employees Cry at Work,” Amazon’s policies are “hurting employee turnover, either causing firings, or making people so fed up that they quit.”

Culture matters

A work environment has tremendous effects on employee performance and turnover. The tangible presence of teamwork, innovation, and creativity results in cultures that encourage worker satisfaction. However, excessive limits to these workplace values instead foster misery, driving workers to find satisfaction with other employers.

Learn how  Qlicket   can help your business create a culture of satisfaction.

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Most influencer-driven purchases happen on Amazon, new data shows. Here are 5 other social-shopping takeaways from a survey of 1,200 users.

• Influencer-marketing firm Izea published a new report on US consumer-purchasing behavior.
• Of social-media users who bought a product promoted by an influencer, 94% said they'd done so on Amazon.
• Below are five other takeaways from the report, including what influences purchases.

Amazon is the go-to platform for purchases inspired by influencers, new data suggests.

An April report by influencer-marketing firm Izea found that 59% of social-media users surveyed said they'd purchased a product after seeing it used by an influencer, and 94% of those consumers had made influencer-inspired purchases on Amazon.

This could be bad news for platforms like TikTok and YouTube , which are pushing their own in-app shopping features and leaning heavily on creators to help drive sales . If their users are already accustomed to going to Amazon for these types of purchases, they would need to change consumer behavior to get people to buy directly from their apps.

Amazon also works with influencers directly to drive sales. The company runs an influencer program with tools and features to help creators build their own storefronts and earn money from purchases made using their affiliate links.

Izea's report is based on a March survey of over 1,200 US consumers about their purchasing behavior on Amazon and the impact of influencers on shopping decisions.

Eighty percent of the social-media users surveyed said they were Amazon Prime members . And 89% shopped on Amazon at least once a month.

Here are five other takeaways about influencer-driven purchases from the report:

Influencers themselves are more likely to shop on Amazon.

According to the report, influencers are 2.1 times more likely to purchase products on Amazon more than once a week compared to other social-media users.

Shoppers are influenced to make more purchases on Amazon.

Consumers guided by influencers to shop are at least 7.6 times more likely to purchase on Amazon than other websites or an in-app shopping platform like TikTok Shop or Instagram Shopping. Seventy-one percent of respondents said they were most likely to make a purchase on Amazon after seeing a product promoted by an influencer, compared with 9.4% who said Walmart.com, 9.3% who said a brand's website, and 5.7% who said they were most likely to use in-app shopping platforms.

45-to-60-year-olds are the most likely to buy products influencers promote — and make purchases on Amazon.

The study showed that participants between the ages of 45 to 60 years old were most likely to purchase a product after seeing it promoted by a social-media influencer, with 70% saying they'd done so. They were also more likely to make these purchases on Amazon — 76% said it was their preferred platform for influencer-driven purchases. By comparison, 30- to 44-year-olds were the most likely to use in-app shopping platforms for influencer-inspired buys; 8% said they were most likely to make these purchases directly within an app.

Shoppers are likely to search for a product on social media before buying it.

Sixty-three percent of those who said they were weekly Amazon shoppers and 83% of influencers surveyed said they were likely or very likely to search on social media before making a purchase.

The type of content matters, too.

Sixty-seven percent of participants 18-to-29 years old said video content influenced their Amazon purchasing decisions, which was more than the share that selected photos, blog posts, or other types of content.

Watch: Artsy CMO, Everette Taylor, tells Insider that the online art marketplace is more inclusive, and lucrative

• Main content

Prime energy, sports drinks contain PFAS and excessive caffeine, class action suits say

YouTubers Logan Paul and KSI founded Prime Hydration in 2022, and while their products have become increasingly popular and profitable, the company continues to face class action suits over the ingredients in their energy and sports drinks.

Prime Hyrdation LLC was sued April 8 in the Southern District of New York over "misleading and deceptive practices" regarding the company's 12-ounce energy drinks containing between 215-225 milligrams of caffeine as opposed to the advertised 200 milligrams, according to the class action suit.

Lara Vera, a Poughkeepsie, New York resident, filed the suit in federal court on behalf of herself and others who bought Prime products across the U.S., the complaint says. Vera purchased Prime's Blue Raspberry products several times in August 2022 for about $3 to $4 each, but she would have never bought the drinks if she had known the actual caffeine content, according to the suit.

Vera's suit is seeking $5 million from the company owned by Paul and KSI, real name Olajide Olayinka Williams "JJ" Olatunji, court records show.

Court records do not say whether Prime Hydration retained legal counsel for Vera's suit.

How much caffeine is in Prime energy drinks?

Prime's advertised 200 milligrams of caffeine is equivalent to "half a dozen Coke cans or nearly two (12-ounce) Red Bulls," Vera's class action suit says.

A 12-ounce can of Red Bull energy drink contains 114 milligrams of caffeine, and a cup of coffee contains around 100 milligrams of caffeine, according to the suit.

The suit continues to say that "there is no proven safe dose of caffeine for children." Side effects of kids consuming caffeine could include rapid or irregular heartbeats, headaches, seizures, shaking, upset stomach and adverse emotional effects on mental health, according to the complaint.

Sen. Charles Schumer , D-N.Y., called on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate Prime energy drinks in 2023 because of dangerously high caffeine levels. Schumer alleged in a letter to the FDA that vague marketing targeting young people influenced parents to buy a “cauldron of caffeine" for their kids.

Schumer's call to action to the FDA is referenced in Vera's suit.

USA TODAY contacted Prime Hydration's attorneys Tuesday afternoon but did not receive an immediate response.

What are the Prime Hydration lawsuits?

Vera's legal battle is beginning, but Prime is still dealing with another class action suit from 2023 alleging a flavor of the company's sports drinks contains PFAS, or "forever chemicals."

Independent third-party testing determined the presence of PFAS chemicals in Prime Hydration grape flavor, according to a class action suit filed Aug. 2, 2023, in the Northern District of California by the Milberg law firm on behalf of Elizabeth Castillo and others similarly affected.

"Lead plaintiff Elizabeth Castillo, a resident of California, purchased Prime Hydration on multiple occasions but says she would not have bought it at all if the product had been accurately marketed and labeled as containing PFAS," the Milberg law firm said in an August 2023 news release . "These chemicals were not reasonably detectible to consumers like herself."

Castillo's suit is seeking a $5 million judgment, court records show.

As of April 18, the judge in the case has heard Prime's argument to dismiss the suit due to Castillo not alleging "a cognizable injury" and her not alleging "facts showing a concrete (and) imminent threat of future harm," according to the drink company's motion.

Paul addressed Castillo's claims Wednesday in a 3-minute TikTok video.

"First off, anyone can sue anyone at any time that does not make the lawsuit true," Paul said in the TikTok video. "And in this case, it is not… one person conducted a random study and has provided zero evidence to substantiate any of their claims."

What are forever chemicals?

PFAS are called forever chemicals because they "bioaccumulate, or accrue in the body over time," the Milberg law said in its news release.

"These man-made chemicals are well-studied and have been found to have adverse effects on the human body and environment," the New York City-headquartered law firm said.

Many PFAS are found in people's and animal's blood and can be detected at low levels in a variety of food products and in the environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said. Forever chemicals can be found in water, air, fish and soil at locations across the nation and the globe, according to the EPA.

"There are thousands of PFAS chemicals, and they are found in many different consumer, commercial, and industrial products," the EPA said. "This makes it challenging to study and assess the potential human health and environmental risks."

Who made Prime energy drinks?

Before founding Prime Hydration LLC, Logan Paul, 29, and KSI, 30, were YouTubers who turned their millions of subscribers into supporters of their boxing, wrestling, music, social media content and other endeavors.

Going into the drinks business proved to be profitable for both YouTubers as "Prime Hydration generated more than $250 million in retail sales in its first year, including $45 million in a single month," according to the Milberg law firm.

Paul and KSI continue to keep Prime products in the spotlight whether it is paying for an ad during Super Bowl 57 , having livestreamer IShowSpeed dress up in a Prime sports drink bottle during Wrestlemania 40 or signing athletes including Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Judge, Israel Adesanya, Tyreek Hill, Kyle Larson, Alisha Lehmann and others to sponsorship deals.

Stowaway cat shipped 650 miles from home in Amazon box

LEHI, Utah (KSL) - A Utah couple’s missing cat was found more than 600 miles away after she was accidentally shipped out with an Amazon return.

Carrie Stevens Clark and her husband, Matt Clark, say their cat, Galena, has a guilty pleasure: she likes to hide in boxes.

“She’s a hider,” Stevens Clark said. “She loves to play in boxes. It’s just a part of her personality.”

But it got her into trouble April 10 when she mysteriously disappeared from the Clarks’ home in Lehi, Utah. The couple spent hours looking for any sign of their beloved cat.

“That was the worst part: we had no idea what happened,” Stevens Clark said. “We put tons of flyers up. We contacted friends and family to help us search. We searched for a whole week.”

Just as it seemed all hope was lost, the couple got a phone call last Wednesday – from a veterinarian in California. Galena’s microchip had been scanned 650 miles away near the city of Riverside.

“I just couldn’t even believe that she was in California. I thought it was a prank. It’s still hard to wrap my brain around,” Stevens Clark said.

It turned out that Galena had gotten trapped in an Amazon package her owners were using to return some shoes. She slipped inside the box while at home and managed to go undetected.

“We had no idea, so Matt took the package to the drop-off without knowing that our dear cat was inside,” Stevens Clark said.

Galena went six days without food or water in the box until she was discovered by an Amazon employee named Brandy. The employee took the cat under her care, even taking her to the vet, until she could be returned to her family.

“We are so thankful for Brandy and for everything that she did for our kitty,” Stevens Clark said.

As soon as the Clarks heard Galena had been found, they booked a flight to reunite with her the next day. They say the cat’s recovery was nothing short of miraculous.

Other than some mild dehydration, Galena was unharmed during her trip. The box she was in was split open enough to give her air, and the temperatures were such that she didn’t overheat or freeze. She is now home and back to her old self.

“It was just the best because I know that under other circumstances, she wouldn’t have been found. We’re just so happy to have her again,” Stevens Clark said.

Stevens Clark adds that she wants to encourage all pet owners to microchip their pets and “triple-check your Amazon boxes.”

Copyright 2024 KSL via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.

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The Crackdown on Student Protesters

Columbia university is at the center of a growing showdown over the war in gaza and the limits of free speech..

This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email [email protected] with any questions.

[TRAIN SCREECHING]

Well, you can hear the helicopter circling. This is Asthaa Chaturvedi. I’m a producer with “The Daily.” Just walked out of the 116 Street Station. It’s the main station for Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus. And it’s day seven of the Gaza solidarity encampment, where a hundred students were arrested last Thursday.

So on one side of Broadway, you see camera crews. You see NYPD officers all lined up. There’s barricades, steel barricades, caution tape. This is normally a completely open campus. And I’m able to — all members of the public, you’re able to walk through.

[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]

Looks like international media is here.

Have your IDs out. Have your IDs out.

Students lining up to swipe in to get access to the University. ID required for entry.

Swipe your ID, please.

Hi, how are you, officer? We’re journalists with “The New York Times.”

You’re not going to get in, all right? I’m sorry.

Hi. Can I help please?

Yeah, it’s total lockdown here at Columbia.

Please have your IDs out ready to swipe.

From “The New York Times,” I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today, the story of how Columbia University has become the epicenter of a growing showdown between student protesters, college administrators, and Congress over the war in Gaza and the limits of free speech. I spoke with my colleague, Nick Fandos.

[UPBEAT MUSIC]

It’s Thursday, April 25.

Nick, if we rewind the clock a few months, we end up at a moment where students at several of the country’s best known universities are protesting Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks, its approach to a war in Gaza. At times, those protests are happening peacefully, at times with rhetoric that is inflammatory. And the result is that the leaders of those universities land before Congress. But the president of Columbia University, which is the subject we’re going to be talking about today, is not one of the leaders who shows up for that testimony.

That’s right. So the House Education Committee has been watching all these protests on campus. And the Republican Chairwoman decides, I’m going to open an investigation, look at how these administrations are handling it, because it doesn’t look good from where I sit. And the House last winter invites the leaders of several of these elite schools, Harvard, Penn, MIT, and Columbia, to come and testify in Washington on Capitol Hill before Congress.

Now, the President of Columbia has what turns out to be a very well-timed, pre-planned trip to go overseas and speak at an international climate conference. So Minouche Shafik isn’t going to be there. So instead, the presidents of Harvard, and Penn, and MIT show up. And it turned out to be a disaster for these universities.

They were asked very pointed questions about the kind of speech taking place on their campuses, and they gave really convoluted academic answers back that just baffled the committee. But there was one question that really embodied the kind of disconnect between the Committee — And it wasn’t just Republicans, Republicans and Democrats on the Committee — and these college presidents. And that’s when they were asked a hypothetical.

Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?

If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.

And two of the presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, they’re unwilling to say in this really kind of intense back and forth that this speech would constitute a violation of their rules.

It can be, depending on the context.

What’s the context?

Targeted at an individual. Is it pervasive?

It’s targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them?

And it sets off a firestorm.

It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes. And this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board.

Members of Congress start calling for their resignations. Alumni are really, really ticked off. Trustees of the University start to wonder, I don’t know that these leaders really have got this under control. And eventually, both of them lose their jobs in a really high profile way.

Right. And as you’ve hinted at, for somewhat peculiar scheduling reasons, Columbia’s President escapes this disaster of a hearing in what has to be regarded as the best timing in the history of the American Academy.

Yeah, exactly. And Columbia is watching all this play out. And I think their first response was relief that she was not in that chair, but also a recognition that, sooner or later, their turn was going to come back around and they were going to have to sit before Congress.

Why were they so certain that they would probably end up before Congress and that this wasn’t a case of completely dodging a bullet?

Well, they remain under investigation by the committee. But also, as the winter wears on, all the same intense protests just continue unabated. So in many ways, Columbia’s like these other campuses. But in some ways, it’s even more intense. This is a university that has both one of the largest Jewish student populations of any of its peers. But it also has a large Arab and Muslim student population, a big Middle Eastern studies program. It has a dual degree program in Tel Aviv.

And it’s a university on top of all that that has a real history of activism dating back to the 1960s. So when students are recruited or choose to come to Columbia, they’re actively opting into a campus that prides itself on being an activist community. It’s in the middle of New York City. It’s a global place. They consider the city and the world, really, like a classroom to Columbia.

In other words, if any campus was going to be a hotbed of protest and debate over this conflict, it was going to be Columbia University.

Exactly. And when this spring rolls around, the stars finally align. And the same congressional committee issues another invitation to Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s President, to come and testify. And this time, she has no excuse to say no.

But presumably, she is well aware of exactly what testifying before this committee entails and is highly prepared.

Columbia knew this moment was coming. They spent months preparing for this hearing. They brought in outside consultants, crisis communicators, experts on anti-Semitism. The weekend before the hearing, she actually travels down to Washington to hole up in a war room, where she starts preparing her testimony with mock questioners and testy exchanges to prep her for this. And she’s very clear on what she wants to try to do.

Where her counterparts had gone before the committee a few months before and looked aloof, she wanted to project humility and competence, to say, I know that there’s an issue on my campus right now with some of these protests veering off into anti-Semitic incidents. But I’m getting that under control. I’m taking steps in good faith to make sure that we restore order to this campus, while allowing people to express themselves freely as well.

So then the day of her actual testimony arrives. And just walk us through how it goes.

The Committee on Education and Workforce will come to order. I note that —

So Wednesday morning rolls around. And President Shafik sits at the witness stand with two of her trustees and the head of Columbia’s new anti-Semitism task force.

Columbia stands guilty of gross negligence at best and at worst has become a platform for those supporting terrorism and violence against the Jewish people.

And right off the bat, they’re put through a pretty humbling litany of some of the worst hits of what’s been happening on campus.

For example, just four days after the harrowing October 7 attack, a former Columbia undergraduate beat an Israeli student with a stick.

The Republican Chairwoman of the Committee, Virginia Foxx, starts reminding her that there was a student who was actually hit with a stick on campus. There was another gathering more recently glorifying Hamas and other terrorist organizations, and the kind of chants that have become an everyday chorus on campus, which many Jewish students see as threatening. But when the questioning starts, President Shafik is ready. One of the first ones she gets is the one that tripped up her colleagues.

Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Columbia’s code of conduct, Mr. Greenwald?

And she answers unequivocally.

Dr. Shafik?

Yes, it does.

And, Professor —

That would be a violation of Columbia’s rules. They would be punished.

As President of Columbia, what is it like when you hear chants like, by any means necessary or Intifada Revolution?

I find those chants incredibly distressing. And I wish profoundly that people would not use them on our campus.

And in some of the most interesting exchanges of the hearing, President Shafik actually opens Columbia’s disciplinary books.

We have already suspended 15 students from Columbia. We have six on disciplinary probation. These are more disciplinary actions that have been taken probably in the last decade at Columbia. And —

She talks about the number of students that have been suspended, but also the number of faculty that she’s had removed from the classroom that are being investigated for comments that either violate some of Columbia’s rules or make students uncomfortable. One case in particular really underscores this.

And that’s of a Middle Eastern studies professor named Joseph Massad. He wrote an essay not long after Hamas invaded Israel and killed 1,200 people, according to the Israeli government, where he described that attack with adjectives like awesome. Now, he said they’ve been misinterpreted, but a lot of people have taken offense to those comments.

Ms. Stefanik, you’re recognized for five minutes.

Thank you, Chairwoman. I want to follow up on my colleague, Rep Walberg’s question regarding Professor Joseph Massad. So let me be clear, President —

And so Representative Elise Stefanik, the same Republican who had tripped up Claudine Gay of Harvard and others in the last hearing, really starts digging in to President Shafik about these things at Columbia.

He is still Chair on the website. So has he been terminated as Chair?

Congresswoman, I —

And Shafik’s answers are maybe a little surprising.

— before getting back to you. I can confirm —

I know you confirmed that he was under investigation.

Yes, I can confirm that. But I —

Did you confirm he was still the Chair?

He says that Columbia is taking his case seriously. In fact, he’s under investigation right now.

Well, let me ask you this.

I need to check.

Will you make the commitment to remove him as Chair?

And when Stefanik presses her to commit to removing him from a campus leadership position —

I think that would be — I think — I would — yes. Let me come back with yes. But I think I — I just want to confirm his current status before I write —

We’ll take that as a yes, that you will confirm that he will no longer be chair.

Shafik seems to pause and think and then agree to it on the spot, almost like she is making administrative decisions with or in front of Congress.

Now, we did some reporting after the fact. And it turns out the Professor didn’t even realize he was under investigation. So he’s learning about this from the hearing too. So what this all adds up to, I think, is a performance so in line with what the lawmakers themselves wanted to hear, that at certain points, these Republicans didn’t quite know what to do with it. They were like the dog that caught the car.

Columbia beats Harvard and UPenn.

One of them, a Republican from Florida, I think at one point even marvelled, well, you beat Harvard and Penn.

Y’all all have done something that they weren’t able to do. You’ve been able to condemn anti-Semitism without using the phrase, it depends on the context. But the —

So Columbia’s president has passed this test before this committee.

Yeah, this big moment that tripped up her predecessors and cost them their jobs, it seems like she has cleared that hurdle and dispatched with the Congressional committee that could have been one of the biggest threats to her presidency.

Without objection, there being no further business, the committee stands adjourned. [BANGS GAVEL]

But back on campus, some of the students and faculty who had been watching the hearing came away with a very different set of conclusions. They saw a president who was so eager to please Republicans in Congress that she was willing to sell out some of the University’s students and faculty and trample on cherished ideas like academic freedom and freedom of expression that have been a bedrock of American higher education for a really long time.

And there was no clearer embodiment of that than what had happened that morning just as President Shafik was going to testify before Congress. A group of students before dawn set up tents in the middle of Columbia’s campus and declared themselves a pro-Palestinian encampment in open defiance of the very rules that Dr. Shafik had put in place to try and get these protests under control.

So these students in real-time are beginning to test some of the things that Columbia’s president has just said before Congress.

Exactly. And so instead of going to celebrate her successful appearance before Congress, Shafik walks out of the hearing room and gets in a black SUV to go right back to that war room, where she’s immediately confronted with a major dilemma. It basically boils down to this, she had just gone before Congress and told them, I’m going to get tough on these protests. And here they were. So either she gets tough and risks inflaming tension on campus or she holds back and does nothing and her words before Congress immediately look hollow.

And what does she decide?

So for the next 24 hours, she tries to negotiate off ramps. She consults with her Deans and the New York Police Department. And it all builds towards an incredibly consequential decision. And that is, for the first time in decades, to call the New York City Police Department onto campus in riot gear and break this thing up, suspend the students involved, and then arrest them.

To essentially eliminate this encampment.

Eliminate the encampment and send a message, this is not going to be tolerated. But in trying to quell the unrest, Shafik actually feeds it. She ends up leaving student protesters and the faculty who support them feeling betrayed and pushes a campus that was already on edge into a full blown crisis.

[SLOW TEMPO MUSIC]

After the break, what all of this has looked like to a student on Columbia’s campus. We’ll be right back.

[PHONE RINGS]

Is this Isabella?

Yes, this is she.

Hi, Isabella. It’s Michael Barbaro from “The Daily.”

Hi. Nice to meet you.

Earlier this week, we called Isabella Ramírez, the Editor in Chief of Columbia’s undergraduate newspaper, “The Columbia Daily Spectator,” which has been closely tracking both the protests and the University’s response to them since October 7.

So, I mean, in your mind, how do we get to this point? I wonder if you can just briefly describe the key moments that bring us to where we are right now.

Sure. Since October 7, there has certainly been constant escalation in terms of tension on campus. And there have been a variety of moves that I believe have distanced the student body, the faculty, from the University and its administration, specifically the suspension of Columbia’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. And that became a huge moment in what was characterized as suppression of pro-Palestinian activism on campus, effectively rendering those groups, quote, unquote, unauthorized.

What was the college’s explanation for that?

They had cited in that suspension a policy which states that a demonstration must be approved within a certain window, and that there must be an advance notice, and that there’s a process for getting an authorized demonstration. But the primary point was this policy that they were referring to, which we later reported, was changed before the suspension.

So it felt a little ad hoc to people?

Yes, it certainly came as a surprise, especially at “Spectator.” We’re nerds of the University in the sense that we are familiar with faculty and University governance. But even to us, we had no idea where this policy was coming from. And this suspension was really the first time that it entered most students’ sphere.

Columbia’s campus is so known for its activism. And so in my time of being a reporter, of being an editor, I’ve overseen several protests. And I’ve never seen Columbia penalize a group for, quote, unquote, not authorizing a protest. So that was certainly, in our minds, unprecedented.

And I believe part of the justification there was, well, this is a different time. And I think that is a reasonable thing to say. But I think a lot of students, they felt it was particularly one-sided, that it was targeting a specific type of speech or a specific type of viewpoint. Although, the University, of course, in its explicit policies, did not outline, and was actually very explicit about not targeting specific viewpoints —

So just to be super clear, it felt to students — and it sounds like, journalistically, it felt to you — that the University was coming down in a uniquely one-sided way against students who were supporting Palestinian rights and may have expressed some frustrations with Israel in that moment.

Yes. Certainly —

Isabella says that this was just the beginning of a really tense period between student protesters and the University. After those two student groups were suspended, campus protests continued. Students made a variety of demands. They asked that the University divest from businesses that profit from Israel’s military operations in Gaza. But instead of making any progress, the protests are met with further crackdown by the University.

And so as Isabella and her colleagues at the college newspaper see it, there’s this overall chilling effect that occurs. Some students become fearful that if they participate in any demonstrations, they’re going to face disciplinary action. So fast forward now to April, when these student protesters learned that President Shafik is headed to Washington for her congressional testimony. It’s at this moment that they set out to build their encampment.

I think there was obviously a lot of intention in timing those two things. I think it’s inherently a critique on a political pressure and this congressional pressure that we saw build up against, of course, Claudine Gay at Harvard and Magill at UPenn. So I think a lot of students and faculty have been frustrated at this idea that there are not only powers at the University that are dictating what’s happening, but there are perhaps external powers that are also guiding the way here in terms of what the University feels like it must do or has to do.

And I think that timing was super crucial. Having the encampment happen on the Wednesday morning of the hearing was an incredible, in some senses, interesting strategy to direct eyes to different places.

All eyes were going to be on Shafik in DC. But now a lot of eyes are on New York. The encampment is set up in the middle of the night slash morning, prior to the hearing. And so what effectively happens is they caught Shafik when she wasn’t on campus, when a lot of senior administration had their resources dedicated to supporting Shafik in DC.

And you have all of those people not necessarily out of commission, but with their focus elsewhere. So the encampment is met with very little resistance at the beginning. There were public safety officers floating around and watching. But at the very beginning hours, I think there was a sense of, we did it.

[CHANTING]: Disclose! Divest! We will not stop! We will not rest. Disclose! Divest! We will not stop!

It would be quite surprising to anybody and an administrator to now suddenly see dozens of tents on this lawn in a way that I think very purposely puts an imagery of, we’re here to stay. As the morning evolved and congressional hearings continued —

Minouche Shafik, open your eyes! Use of force, genocide!

Then we started seeing University delegates that were coming to the encampment saying, you may face disciplinary action for continuing to be here. I think that started around almost — like 9:00 or 10:00 AM, they started handing out these code of conduct violation notices.

Hell no! Hell no! Hell no!

Then there started to be more public safety action and presence. So they started barricading the entrances. The day progressed, there was more threat of discipline. The students became informed that if they continue to stay, they will face potential academic sanctions, potential suspension.

The more they try to silence us, the louder we will be! The more they —

I think a lot of people were like, OK, you’re threatening us with suspension. But so what?

This is about these systems that Minouche Shafik, that the Board of Trustees, that Columbia University is complicit in.

What are you going to do to try to get us out of here? And that was, obviously, promptly answered.

This is the New York State Police Department.

We will not stop!

You are attempting participate in an unauthorized encampment. You will be arrested and charged with trespassing.

My phone blew up, obviously, from the reporters, from the editors, of saying, oh my god, the NYPD is on our campus. And as soon as I saw that, I came out. And I saw a huge crowd of students and affiliates on campus watching the lawns. And as I circled around that crowd, I saw the last end of the New York Police Department pulling away protesters and clearing out the last of the encampment.

[CHANTING]: We love you! We will get justice for you! We see you! We love you! We will get justice for you! We see you! We love you! We will get justice for you! We see you! We love you! We will get justice for you!

It was something truly unimaginable, over 100 students slash other individuals are arrested from our campus, forcefully removed. And although they were suspended, there was a feeling of traumatic event that has just happened to these students, but also this sense of like, OK, the worst of the worst that could have happened to us just happened.

And for those students who maybe couldn’t go back to — into campus, now all of their peers, who were supporters or are in solidarity, are — in some sense, it’s further emboldened. They’re now not just sitting on the lawns for a pro-Palestinian cause, but also for the students, who have endured quite a lot.

So the crackdown, sought by the president and enforced by the NYPD, ends up, you’re saying, becoming a galvanizing force for a broader group of Columbia students than were originally drawn to the idea of ever showing up on the center of campus and protesting?

Yeah, I can certainly speak to the fact that I’ve seen my own peers, friends, or even acquaintances, who weren’t necessarily previously very involved in activism and organizing efforts, suddenly finding themselves involved.

Can I — I just have a question for you, which is all journalism, student journalism or not student journalism, is a first draft of history. And I wonder if we think of this as a historic moment for Columbia, how you imagine it’s going to be remembered.

Yeah, there is no doubt in my mind that this will be a historic moment for Colombia.

I think that this will be remembered as a moment in which the fractures were laid bare. Really, we got to see some of the disunity of the community in ways that I have never really seen it before. And what we’ll be looking to is, where do we go from here? How does Colombia repair? How do we heal from all of this? so That is the big question in terms of what will happen.

Nick, Isabella Ramírez just walked us through what this has all looked like from the perspective of a Columbia student. And from what she could tell, the crackdown ordered by President Shafik did not quell much of anything. It seemed, instead, to really intensify everything on campus. I’m curious what this has looked like for Shafik.

It’s not just the students who are upset. You have faculty, including professors, who are not necessarily sympathetic to the protesters’ view of the war, who are really outraged about what Shafik has done here. They feel that she’s crossed a boundary that hasn’t been crossed on Columbia’s campus in a really long time.

And so you start to hear things by the end of last week like censure, no confidence votes, questions from her own professors about whether or not she can stay in power. So this creates a whole new front for her. And on top of it all, as this is going on, the encampment itself starts to reform tent-by-tent —

— almost in the same place that it was. And Shafik decides that the most important thing she could do is to try and take the temperature down, which means letting the encampment stand. Or in other words, leaning in the other direction. This time, we’re going to let the protesters have their say for a little while longer.

The problem with that is that, over the weekend, a series of images start to emerge from on campus and just off of it of some really troubling anti-Semitic episodes. In one case, a guy holds up a poster in the middle of campus and points it towards a group of Jewish students who are counter protesting. And it says, I’m paraphrasing here, Hamas’ next targets.

I saw an image of that. What it seemed to evoke was the message that Hamas should murder those Jewish students. That’s the way the Jewish students interpreted it.

It’s a pretty straightforward and jarring statement. At the same time, just outside of Columbia’s closed gates —

Stop killing children!

— protestors are showing up from across New York City. It’s hard to tell who’s affiliated with Columbia, who’s not.

Go back to Poland! Go back to Poland!

There’s a video that goes viral of one of them shouting at Jewish students, go back to Poland, go back to Europe.

In other words, a clear message, you’re not welcome here.

Right. In fact, go back to the places where the Holocaust was committed.

Exactly. And this is not representative of the vast majority of the protesters in the encampment, who mostly had been peaceful. They would later hold a Seder, actually, with some of the pro-Palestinian Jewish protesters in their ranks. But those videos are reaching members of Congress, the very same Republicans that Shafik had testified in front of just a few days before. And now they’re looking and saying, you have lost control of your campus, you’ve turned back on your word to us, and you need to resign.

They call for her outright resignation over this.

That’s right. Republicans in New York and across the country began to call for her to step down from her position as president of Columbia.

So Shafik’s dilemma here is pretty extraordinary. She has set up this dynamic where pleasing these members of Congress would probably mean calling in the NYPD all over again to sweep out this encampment, which would mean further alienating and inflaming students and faculty, who are still very upset over the first crackdown. And now both ends of this spectrum, lawmakers in Washington, folks on the Columbia campus, are saying she can’t lead the University over this situation before she’s even made any fateful decision about what to do with this second encampment. Not a good situation.

No. She’s besieged on all sides. For a while, the only thing that she can come up with to offer is for classes to go hybrid for the remainder of the semester.

So students who aren’t feeling safe in this protest environment don’t necessarily have to go to class.

Right. And I think if we zoom out for a second, it’s worth bearing in mind that she tried to choose a different path here than her counterparts at Harvard or Penn. And after all of this, she’s kind of ended up in the exact same thicket, with people calling for her job with the White House, the Mayor of New York City, and others. These are Democrats. Maybe not calling on her to resign quite yet, but saying, I don’t know what’s going on your campus. This does not look good.

That reality, that taking a different tack that was supposed to be full of learnings and lessons from the stumbles of her peers, the fact that didn’t really work suggests that there’s something really intractable going on here. And I wonder how you’re thinking about this intractable situation that’s now arrived on these college campuses.

Well, I don’t think it’s just limited to college campuses. We have seen intense feelings about this conflict play out in Hollywood. We’ve seen them in our politics in all kinds of interesting ways.

In our media.

We’ve seen it in the media. But college campuses, at least in their most idealized form, are something special. They’re a place where students get to go for four years to think in big ways about moral questions, and political questions, and ideas that help shape the world they’re going to spend the rest of their lives in.

And so when you have a question that feels as urgent as this war does for a lot of people, I think it reverberates in an incredibly intense way on those campuses. And there’s something like — I don’t know if it’s quite a contradiction of terms, but there’s a collision of different values at stake. So universities thrive on the ability of students to follow their minds and their voices where they go, to maybe even experiment a little bit and find those things.

But there are also communities that rely on people being able to trust each other and being able to carry out their classes and their academic endeavors as a collective so they can learn from one another. So in this case, that’s all getting scrambled. Students who feel strongly about the Palestinian cause feel like the point is disruption, that something so big, and immediate, and urgent is happening that they need to get in the faces of their professors, and their administrators, and their fellow students.

Right. And set up an encampment in the middle of campus, no matter what the rules say.

Right. And from the administration’s perspective, they say, well, yeah, you can say that and you can think that. And that’s an important process. But maybe there’s some bad apples in your ranks. Or though you may have good intentions, you’re saying things that you don’t realize the implications of. And they’re making this environment unsafe for others. Or they’re grinding our classes to a halt and we’re not able to function as a University.

So the only way we’re going to be able to move forward is if you will respect our rules and we’ll respect your point of view. The problem is that’s just not happening. Something is not connecting with those two points of view. And as if that’s not hard enough, you then have Congress and the political system with its own agenda coming in and putting its thumb on a scale of an already very difficult situation.

Right. And at this very moment, what we know is that the forces that you just outlined have created a dilemma, an uncertainty of how to proceed, not just for President Shafik and the students and faculty at Columbia, but for a growing number of colleges and universities across the country. And by that, I mean, this thing that seemed to start at Columbia is literally spreading.

Absolutely. We’re talking on a Wednesday afternoon. And these encampments have now started cropping up at universities from coast-to-coast, at Harvard and Yale, but also at University of California, at the University of Texas, at smaller campuses in between. And at each of these institutions, there’s presidents and deans, just like President Shafik at Columbia, who are facing a really difficult set of choices. Do they call in the police? The University of Texas in Austin this afternoon, we saw protesters physically clashing with police.

Do they hold back, like at Harvard, where there were dramatic videos of students literally running into Harvard yard with tents. They were popping up in real-time. And so Columbia, really, I think, at the end of the day, may have kicked off some of this. But they are now in league with a whole bunch of other universities that are struggling with the same set of questions. And it’s a set of questions that they’ve had since this war broke out.

And now these schools only have a week or two left of classes. But we don’t know when these standoffs are going to end. We don’t know if students are going to leave campus for the summer. We don’t know if they’re going to come back in the fall and start protesting right away, or if this year is going to turn out to have been an aberration that was a response to a really awful, bloody war, or if we’re at the beginning of a bigger shift on college campuses that will long outlast this war in the Middle East.

Well, Nick, thank you very much. Thanks for having me, Michael.

We’ll be right back.

Here’s what else you need to know today. The United Nations is calling for an independent investigation into two mass graves found after Israeli forces withdrew from hospitals in Gaza. Officials in Gaza said that some of the bodies found in the graves were Palestinians who had been handcuffed or shot in the head and accused Israel of killing and burying them. In response, Israel said that its soldiers had exhumed bodies in one of the graves as part of an effort to locate Israeli hostages.

And on Wednesday, Hamas released a video of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American dual citizen, whom Hamas has held hostage since October 7. It was the first time that he has been shown alive since his captivity began. His kidnapping was the subject of a “Daily” episode in October that featured his mother, Rachel. In response to Hamas’s video, Rachel issued a video of her own, in which she spoke directly to her son.

And, Hersh, if you can hear this, we heard your voice today for the first time in 201 days. And if you can hear us, I am telling you, we are telling you, we love you. Stay strong. Survive.

Today’s episode was produced by Sydney Harper, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Olivia Natt, Nina Feldman, and Summer Thomad, with help from Michael Simon Johnson. It was edited by Devon Taylor and Lisa Chow, contains research help by Susan Lee, original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

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• April 17, 2024   •   24:52 Are ‘Forever Chemicals’ a Forever Problem?
• April 16, 2024   •   29:29 A.I.’s Original Sin
• April 15, 2024   •   24:07 Iran’s Unprecedented Attack on Israel
• April 14, 2024   •   46:17 The Sunday Read: ‘What I Saw Working at The National Enquirer During Donald Trump’s Rise’
• April 12, 2024   •   34:23 How One Family Lost $900,000 in a Timeshare Scam

Hosted by Michael Barbaro

Featuring Nicholas Fandos

Produced by Sydney Harper ,  Asthaa Chaturvedi ,  Olivia Natt ,  Nina Feldman and Summer Thomad

With Michael Simon Johnson

Edited by Devon Taylor and Lisa Chow

Original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

Columbia University has become the epicenter of a growing showdown between student protesters, college administrators and Congress over the war in Gaza and the limits of free speech.

Nicholas Fandos, who covers New York politics and government for The Times, walks us through the intense week at the university. And Isabella Ramírez, the editor in chief of Columbia’s undergraduate newspaper, explains what it has all looked like to a student on campus.

On today’s episode

Nicholas Fandos , who covers New York politics and government for The New York Times

Isabella Ramírez , editor in chief of The Columbia Daily Spectator

Background reading

Inside the week that shook Columbia University .

The protests at the university continued after more than 100 arrests.

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

Research help by Susan Lee .

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Nicholas Fandos is a Times reporter covering New York politics and government. More about Nicholas Fandos

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Man’s unusual bacon habit blamed for migraines with terrifying parasitic cause

ORLANDO, Fla. — Doctors say a Florida man’s mysterious case of migraines may be the result of a strange bacon habit that had terrifying consequences. According to a new medical review in the American Journal of Case Reports , the man’s preference for eating undercooked bacon led to a parasitic infection called neurocysticercosis . This wasn’t your average case of food poisoning, however, as doctors believe the infection caused clusters of cysts to grow in the patient’s brain!

For over four months, the 52-year-old patient had been suffering from excruciating migraines that were rapidly worsening. According to the report, the severe headaches seemed to radiate from the back of his skull, becoming more frequent and intense. Nothing could relieve the non-stop pain — not even his typical migraine medications .

When the man was finally evaluated at a Florida hospital, brain scans revealed the startling cause for his debilitating headaches. The man’s brain was riddled with cysts from a case of neurocysticercosis. Clusters of these larvae-filled cysts peppered the deep folds of his brain.

Neurocysticercosis is the most common parasitic brain infection globally, but it’s extraordinarily rare in the United States. It’s especially rare for someone with no obvious risk factors, like traveling to the developing world, where food contamination is more common.

So, how did this man, who hadn’t ventured beyond a cruise to the Bahamas in recent years, contract such a bizarre tropical brain infection ?

The answer was his lifelong habit of eating undercooked bacon. Neurocysticercosis is caused by the pork tapeworm Taenia solium , which uses pigs as a carrier before infecting humans. People can unknowingly become infected by eating the tapeworm’s eggs in contaminated food or water .

Those eggs then hatch into larvae that spread through the body, forming cysts in various tissues — including the brain. As these cysts grow and spread over time, they can trigger neurological issues like seizures and headaches.

Although neurocysticercosis is still a major public health problem in other countries, it rarely occurs in the U.S. because of the country’s robust food safety standards and modern sanitation practices for meat.

In this case, however, doctors believe the 52-year-old’s love of “non-crispy” undercooked bacon is the source of his tapeworm infection and neurocysticercosis. The theory is that he accidentally ate live tapeworm eggs at some point — possibly after not washing his hands. Researchers call this accidental ingestion of one’s own tapeworm eggs autoinfection .

After the neurocysticercosis diagnosis was confirmed through blood tests and brain scans, doctors treated the man with a combination of anti-parasitic drugs and steroids. The medications aimed to kill the tapeworm larvae while reducing brain inflammation from the dying cysts.

Fortunately, this unconventional treatment worked. Over the following months, the brain cysts began to disappear, and the man’s brutal migraines finally went away.

“It is very rare for patients to contract neurocysticercosis outside of classic exposures or travel, and such cases in the United States were thought to be nonexistent,” study corresponding author Stephen Carlan and his team write in the American Journal of Case Reports .

“Undercooked pork consumption is a theoretical risk factor for neurocysticercosis via autoinoculation, as we suspected in this case. It is historically very unusual to encounter infected pork in the United States, and our case may have public health implications.”

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Tyson Foods Improves Efficiency with Computer Vision and Machine Learning Using AWS Services

As one of the world’s largest food companies and a recognized leader in protein, Tyson Foods Inc. (Tyson Foods) processes millions of pounds of food each week. Because of its scale of production, Tyson Foods needs its facilities to be efficient while maintaining high food quality. Manual processes, like inventory counting and machine inspections, cost valuable employee time and don’t offer near real-time insights at scale.

Tyson Foods was already using computer vision (CV) solutions to augment time-consuming processes, but the company wanted to incorporate CV powered by machine learning (ML) to reduce the cost and complexity of implementing CV while improving operational efficiency. Tyson Foods looked to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to quickly add ML to its CV solutions on production lines to increase efficiency and realize cost savings in its facilities.

These solutions help us use exactly what we need by understanding the true demand and optimizing inventory so that we can effectively plan and reduce waste.”

Barret Miller Senior Manager of the Emerging Technology Team, Tyson Foods

Automating Time-Consuming Manual Processes

Tyson Foods produces beef, pork, chicken, and prepared foods in over 100 facilities worldwide. In the United States, an estimated 20 percent of the country’s chicken, beef, and pork came from Tyson Foods facilities in 2021.

Tyson Foods started a cloud migration from data centers to AWS in 2018. During this cloud migration, Tyson Foods saw how the Amazon Go store was automating the checkout and retail experiences using cameras and CV. CV is a process that involves capturing, processing, and analyzing images and videos so that machines can extract meaningful, contextual information from the physical world. This technology at the Amazon Go store inspired the company’s emerging technology team to pursue similar CV solutions to address challenges and increase efficiency in its production processes. Due to the scale of production at Tyson Foods facilities, manual inspection processes can be time consuming and create bottlenecks. Tyson Foods successfully developed an initial CV solution to augment these manual inspection processes but knew that implementing ML would increase efficiency and decrease complexity even further. The company approached AWS for support with implementing CV solutions powered by ML for inventory management and product carrier failure identification.

Improving Production Efficiency

Tyson Foods has the capacity to process 40 million chickens per week, and the company relies on accurate inventory measurements in the facilities to fulfill customer orders. Due to the scale of production, manual techniques for counting chicken trays that pass quality assurance measures aren’t accurate enough. Alternate strategies like monitoring the hourly total weight of production per rack don’t provide data right away, preventing team members from taking action in near real time. In 2021, Tyson Foods collaborated with the Amazon Machine Learning Solutions Lab (Amazon ML Solutions Lab), which pairs an organization’s team with ML experts, to train an object detection model using Amazon SageMaker with fully managed infrastructure, tools, and workflows to build, train, and deploy ML models for any use case. This model automatically detects and counts chicken trays on video streams from production lines as employees load them onto carts. Using AWS Panorama , a collection of ML devices and a software development kit that brings CV to on-premises cameras, the company was able to deploy this model at the edge to analyze video in milliseconds. With this CV solution, poultry production supervisors receive near-real-time insights into production quantity, avoiding both underproduction and overproduction during the shift.

To improve another use case with CV powered by ML, Tyson Foods developed a solution to identify faulty plastic pins that hold product carriers in place in its poultry production facilities. Employees previously needed to manually inspect nearly 8,000 pins per line every shift because safety issues or unplanned downtime could occur if a pin fell out of place. This inspection process required attention to detail and valuable operator time. To automate the process, Tyson Foods turned to Amazon Lookout for Vision , an ML service that uses CV to spot product defects in objects at scale. Using Lookout for Vision, the company created a custom ML model to analyze images and detect anomalies, without needing ML expertise. Tyson Foods deployed the model at the edge on an AWS Panorama Appliance, which organizations can use to connect cameras and process multiple CV applications on multiple video streams simultaneously, so that its employees are notified right away that a product carrier needs maintenance when the model identifies anomalies. With this solution, team members no longer need to spend an estimated 1 hour per shift per line inspecting product carriers, which can save the company 15,000 hours of skilled labor annually in a single facility. 

Continuing to Innovate and Optimize Processes

Tyson Foods plans to continue using the same foundational processes to develop CV solutions powered by ML that address production needs and automate more of the business. Using AWS services, the company is now developing solutions faster and continuing to optimize processes. “These solutions help us use exactly what we need by understanding the true demand and optimizing inventory so that we can effectively plan and reduce waste,” says Barret Miller, senior manager of the emerging technology team at Tyson Foods.

About Tyson Foods Inc.

Tyson Foods Inc. produces beef, pork, chicken, and prepared foods in over 100 facilities worldwide. Tyson Foods provides protein through a variety of distribution channels to enterprises like restaurants, hospitals, and grocery stores.

Benefits of AWS

• Improved inventory accuracy with automated chicken tray counting 
• Enhanced safety with automated product carrier inspections
• Saves an estimated 15,000 hours annually in each facility with product carrier monitoring
• Avoids overproduction and underproduction with accurate inventory management

AWS Services Used

Aws panorama.

AWS Panorama is a collection of machine learning (ML) devices and a software development kit (SDK) that brings CV to on-premises internet protocol (IP) cameras.

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Amazon SageMaker

Amazon SageMaker is built on Amazon’s two decades of experience developing real-world ML applications, including product recommendations, personalization, intelligent shopping, robotics, and voice-assisted devices.

Amazon Lookout for Vision

Amazon Lookout for Vision is an ML service that uses computer vision to spot defects in manufactured products at scale.

Amazon Machine Learning Solutions Lab

The Amazon Machine Learning (ML) Solutions Lab pairs your team with ML experts to help you identify and build ML solutions to address your organization’s highest return-on-investment ML opportunities.

Get Started

Organizations of all sizes across all industries are transforming their businesses and delivering on their missions every day using AWS. Contact our experts and start your own AWS journey today.

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