Zoom paying no taxes while getting rich is proof 'the system is rigged': Robert Reich

Bob Brigham
March 20, 2021

www.rawstory.com

The video conferencing service Zoom saw its revenues soar during the coronavirus pandemic, but the fact the company paid no federal income taxes reveals a dark lesson about our economy, a leading economist explained on Saturday.

"Zoom saw its profits increase 4,000% last year," former Labor Secretary Robert Reich noted.

"But, wait for it, paid no federal income taxes. Zero. Folks, the system is rigged," the Berkeley economics professor concluded.

Reich linked to an analysis by Matthew Gardner of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).

"Zoom Video Communications, the company providing a platform used by remote workers and school children across the country during the pandemic, saw its profits increase by more than 4,000 percent last year but paid no federal corporate income tax on those profits," Gardner wrote. "The company reports that it made $660 million of pre-tax profits for 2020, an exponential increase from its $16 million in pre-tax profits in 2019. The immediate shift to online activity explains the company's unprecedented income growth. For many, Zoom has become a ubiquitous daily meeting space, both for work, class instruction, family gatherings and evening happy hours."

The analysis noted that the company, "reduced its worldwide income taxes by $300 million in 2020 using stock-based compensation. As an ITEP report explains, companies that compensate their leadership with stock options can write off, for tax purposes, huge expenses that far exceed their actual cost. This is a strategy that has been leveraged effectively by virtually every tech giant in the last decade, from Apple to Facebook to Microsoft. Zoom's success in using stock options to avoid taxes is neither surprising nor (currently) illegal.

The company also used accelerated depreciation and tax credits for research and development.

"Zoom's corporate tax avoidance has helped create a short-term cash bonanza for the company: Zoom ended the fourth quarter of 2020 with $4.2 billion in cash and equivalents. This prompted one analyst on the company's fourth-quarter earnings call to ask how the company planned to spend it all, to which Zoom's CFO and CEO responded that while they haven't yet mapped out a strategy to deploy their newfound mountain of cash, 'if any of you have any great advice how to do that' they'd love to hear it," the report noted.

PEOPLE BEFORE PROFITS
Big pharma quietly planning price hike for COVID vaccines in 'near future': report

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP OF BIG PHARMA

Common Dreams
March 20, 2021

www.rawstory.com

Eager to capitalize on the lasting presence of the coronavirus, executives at Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer—the pharmaceutical corporations that supplied the Covid-19 vaccines approved for use in the U.S.—are quietly planning to hike prices on doses "in the near future," once they decide the pandemic is over, The Intercept's Lee Fang reported Thursday.

"Companies like Pfizer, which has not made the vaccine available to 85% of the world's population... are now waiting for the opportune time to raise prices once enough people have been vaccinated."
—Achal Prabhala, Access IBSA

Although the rapid development of coronavirus vaccines—made possible by large infusions of public resources—has given Big Pharma companies "a boost in goodwill... the public is still sensitive to drug pricing and the reputational risk has, so far, curtailed their ability to reap large financial rewards," Fang noted. "But that environment, they hope, will change once the pandemic ends: a date that drugmakers themselves reserve the right to declare."
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Many epidemiologists expect the coronavirus to become endemic, "and as Covid-19 mutations continue to spread and booster shots may be required on a regular basis, leaders from the three companies are enthusiastic about cashing in," wrote Fang.

"As this shifts from pandemic to endemic, we think there's an opportunity here for us," Pfizer's Chief Financial Officer Frank D'Amelio said during a recent healthcare conference sponsored by Barclays Bank. The potential need for booster shots, D'Amelio added, provides "a significant opportunity for our vaccine from a demand perspective, from a pricing perspective, given the clinical profile of our vaccine."

According to Fang, "Moderna and Johnson & Johnson have also pledged affordability for their vaccines for the duration of the pandemic but have indicated to investors that they plan to return to more 'commercial' pricing as early as later this year."

The three companies behind the approved Covid-19 vaccines, which are "already poised to be some of the most lucrative drugs of all time," expect to "bring in billions in profit this year alone," Fang noted.

That's true, Fang added, even though "the U.S. government has fully financed the research and development" of Moderna and Johnson & Johnson's vaccines, while Pfizer's vaccine "was developed in partnership with BioNTech, a company that received nearly $500 million in development assistance from the German government."

According to Fang:

Pfizer, one of the early global leaders in the vaccine race, is very clear about the enormous moneymaking opportunity they see in the vaccines. D'Amelio, the company's CFO, spoke on a Zoom call last Thursday at the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference, to discuss the issue.

Carter Lewis Gould, an analyst with Barclays Bank, noted that Pfizer faced the particular challenges with "optics" but asked when the company could "pursue higher pricing down the road."

The current pricing, said D'Amelio, is "clearly not being driven by what I'll call normal market conditions, normal market forces," but rather the "pandemic state that we've been in and the needs of governments to really secure doses from the various vaccine suppliers." Once the pandemic ends, he continued, there will be "significant opportunity" for Pfizer.

Pfizer has agreed to prices of $19.50 per coronavirus vaccine dose in the U.S. and almost $64 per dose in the European Union, leading to projections that the company would bring in "$15 billion this year alone from sales, of which $4 billion would be purely profit," Fang wrote. But "those revenue projections are based on prices largely negotiated with governments under pandemic conditions, which could soon change."

As Common Dreams has reported, drugmakers have faced pressure from dozens of lawmakers and hundreds of civil society groups who are demanding that vaccine recipes be shared with manufacturers in developing countries, where inoculation rates are far lower. A failure to boost global vaccine production, experts say, will prolong the pandemic—exacerbating needless economic suffering and preventable deaths and possibly undermining the efficacy of vaccines as variants emerge.

Through its massive army of lobbyists, Big Pharma has been fighting calls to regulate drug prices as well as the India and South Africa-led proposal—supported by 70% of the U.S. public but opposed by President Joe Biden and the leaders of other wealthy nations—to temporarily waive the World Trade Organization's patent protections, which currently enable a handful of private companies to monopolize knowledge and technology related to coronavirus tests, treatments, and vaccines.

Fang wrote that Pfizer's Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla told investors during a call that "the company had little to worry about in terms of political opposition."

"We believe the industry has generated a great deal of goodwill with Congress and public opinion through our Covid-19 treatment and vaccine efforts," said Bourla.

During last week's Barclays Bank-hosted healthcare conference, Fang wrote, Moderna President Stephen Hoge said that "post-pandemic, as we get into those what I will call seasonal epidemics that you would expect to happen with a SARS-CoV-2 virus, we would expect more normal pricing based on value."

And at the Raymond James Institutional Investors Conference earlier this month, Fang noted, Johnson & Johnson's Executive Vice President Joseph Wolk told investors that the company would "reevaluate the vaccine for 'pricing that's much more in line with a commercial opportunity' when the pandemic is over."

As Fang reported:

Wolk noted that the end of the pandemic is a "fluid" question. The announcement, Wolk said, would come down to a percentage of people vaccinated, though he did not give any specific figures. The "pandemic period will be in place for the majority of this year, if not the entire piece of this year," he continued, before making it clear that the declaration would be left to Johnson & Johnson.

"I think when we look at it, it's not going to be something that's dictated to us," said Wolk.
The end of the pandemic may be declared by the World Health Organization or other international bodies. Drug firms, however, are not under a legal requirement to make prices based on the WHO's determination.

Achal Prabhala, coordinator for the AccessIBSA project, which advocates for access to medicines, told Fang that "Americans are amazed that they're getting vaccines for free. And of course they're not because they've already paid for them once and now they're amazed that they're not paying for them twice."

"Companies like Pfizer, which has not made the vaccine available to 85% of the world's population, are enjoying immense popularity in the U.S. and Europe because of the fact that they got the vaccines done fast, and they seem to work well," Prabhala continued. "That's an unusually good position for pharma, they're not used to being thought of as saviors."

"It's pretty interesting," he added, "that they are now waiting for the opportune time to raise prices once enough people have been vaccinated."

Big Pharma's profit-maximizing behavior, as documented in The Intercept's new reporting, is part of a long-standing pattern.

For instance, hospitalizations skyrocketed last year, but routine visits to the doctor's office and demand for new prescription medications fell sharply as a result of the pandemic. As Common Dreams reported at the time, the pharmaceutical industry planned to make up for lost revenue by raising prices on more than 300 drugs in the U.S. on January 1.

"Big Pharma's greed is a danger to public health," Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said last summer, when Gilead announced that it would charge U.S. hospitals $3,120 per privately insured patient for a treatment course of remdesivir, a Covid-19 drug whose development was financed in large part by taxpayers.

Last week, before the latest reporting on Big Pharma's plans to raise Covid-19 vaccine prices in the coming months, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urged Biden to join the more than 100 countries that support an emergency waiver of the WTO's restrictive intellectual property rights agreement.

"It is unconscionable," said Sanders, "that amid a global health crisis, huge multibillion dollar pharmaceutical companies continue to prioritize profits by protecting their monopolies and driving up prices rather than prioritizing the lives of people everywhere, including in the Global South."

Biden Cancels $1 Billion Of Student Loans

Zack Friedman
Contributor FORBES

Personal Finance
Bestselling Author, The Lemonade Life.

 I write and speak about leadership and greatness.

President Joe Biden cancels student loans 

(Photo by Joshua Roberts/Getty Images) GETTY IMAGES

This story is developing.

The Biden administration is cancelling $1 billion of student loans.

Here’s what you need to know.

Student Loans

In the ongoing debate over student loan cancellation, at least some borrowers will get student loan forgiveness. In a major announcement, the U.S. Department of Education will enact student loan cancellation for 72,000 student loan borrowers who previously had some student loans cancelled, but now will get full student loan cancellation. The Biden administration says the previous formula to cancel student loans in cases of fraud or school closure that was used in the Trump administration — which often created partial student loan forgiveness — was unfair to student loan borrowers.

Under a federal law known as the borrower defense to repayment, borrowers could get federal student loan cancellation if they attended a school that engaged in deceptive or illegal practices or closed suddenly. In 2016, the Obama administration issued new rules to protect student borrowers and get student loan relief. These rules existed as a form of consumer protection because absent these rules, student loan borrowers would still have to pay off student loans even if they didn’t find gainful employment after attending schools such as ITT Technical Institute or Corinthian Colleges.

Betsy DeVos: Student loan forgiveness is too generous

Former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said the borrower defense to repayment rules were too generous to student loan borrowers, awarding too much student loan forgiveness, and hurting taxpayers who footed the bill. Last year, attorneys general from 22 states, plus the District of Columbia, sued U.S. Secretary of Education in federal court over her decision to limit student loan forgiveness for students. DeVos rewrote the borrower defense to repayment rules so she could, in her words, strike a balance between the needs of students and taxpayers. DeVos says her student loan forgiveness rules would save taxpayers $11 billion over 10 years. Under the DeVos standard, student loan cancellation was not automatic, borrowers had to apply for student loan relief, and borrowers had three years to prove their claim of financial harm.

How this will change student loan cancellation

Easier to get student loan cancellation

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona will replace the previous formula for student loan cancellation in cases of fraud with a new standard that will provide “a streamlined path” so borrowers can get full student loan cancellation. This decision to roll-back decisions (and create new policies) regarding student loans likely are the first of more to come. For example, in the history of income-driven repayment plans, only 32 student loan borrowers have ever received student loan forgiveness. In the coming months, expect additional policies that could advance rights for student loan borrowers and help with student loan forgiveness and even student loan cancellation. This could include, for example, improving income-driven repayment plans. The Education Department will also work to ensure that these borrowers remain eligible to get federal student loans and have their credit scores repaired, as necessary.

“Borrowers deserve a simplified and fair path to relief when they have been harmed by their institution’s misconduct,” Cardona said. “A close review of these claims and the associated evidence showed these borrowers have been harmed, and we will grant them a fresh start from their debt.”

Student loans and bankruptcy

Student loan borrowers also have been successful in gaining student loan discharge through the bankruptcy process. This student loan borrower, for example, got $430,000 of student loans cancelled.

Student loan servicers

Student loan servicers also could face increased scrutiny in the Biden administration. A federal judge recently found that Navient, which services $300 billion of student loans, misled student loan borrowers.

Tax-free student loan forgiveness

The new stimulus package, the American Rescue Plan of 2021, does not include any student loan cancellation for student loan borrowers. However, the stimulus bill makes any student loan forgiveness tax-free through December 31, 2025. So, if Congress or the president cancels student loans or you get student loan forgiveness through an income-driven repayment plan, you won’t owe any income tax on the amount forgiven.

Will your student loans get cancelled?

You may be wondering what this means for your student loans and whether your student loans will get cancelled. Today’s announcement signals an Education Department that is friendlier to student loan borrowers and that is open to student loan cancellation, particularly in cases of fraud. However, this is not the only student loan cancellation to expect. Biden still wants to cancel $10,000 of student loans immediately, which is separate from the announcement today to cancel $1 billion of student loans for 72,000 student loan borrowers. According to the latest student loan debt statistics, There are still 45 million more borrowers who collectively owe $1.7 trillion of student loan debt, many of whom are hoping for some amount of student loan cancellation. While wide-scale student loan cancellation may come in some form, it may take longer than expected. While there are various proposals for student loan cancellation, Democrats have not formulated a student loan forgiveness plan that Congress can pass.

America Reacts To $1 Billion Of Student Loan Cancellation


President Joe Biden cancels $1 billion of student loans (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images) GETTY IMAGES

President Joe Biden just cancelled $1 billion of student loans—and this is how America reacted.

Here’s what you need to know.

Student Loans

Student loan cancellation is here, and the the U.S. Department of Education just cancelled $1 billion of student loans for 72,000 student loan borrowers. These student loan borrowers previously had some student loans cancelled, but now will get full student loan cancellation if they attended a school that engaged in deceptive or illegal practices or closed suddenly.

What do people think about this major decision to cancel student loans? Here is a non-comprehensive, general cross-section of some of the feedback from across social media:
1. Biden cancels $1 billion of student loans — let’s celebrate

Many people on social media lauded the decision to cancel $1 billion of student loans, saying it was a significant step to address student loan cancellation. Student loan borrowers have been hoping for financial relief, and they say Biden delivered on his promise. Not only did Biden ensure student loan cancellation, but he did so in the first 100 days of his administration. Importantly, this student loan cancellation will be tax-free to the student loan borrowers. The new stimulus package makes student loan forgiveness tax-free through December 31, 2025

2. Student loan cancellation — this is just the beginning

Congress may cancel student loans more than once. While some borrowers cheered the decision to cancel student loans, others framed this student loan cancellation as only the first step in a bigger process for student loan forgiveness. They view this announcement as a potential precursor to Biden cancelling student loans through executive order or Congress cancelling student loans through legislation. Whether the amount of student loan forgiveness is $10,000, $50,000 or another amount, this group views this student loan cancellation as only the beginning of a broader plan to fix student loans.

3. Student loan cancellation — this only help some borrowers

Another group of people on social media criticized Biden’s student loan cancellation. Why? While they recognized the magnitude of the headline number of $1 billion, they mentioned that the actual amount of student loan forgiveness paled in comparison to both the amount of outstanding student loan debt and the aggregate numbers of student loan borrowers. For example, the latest student loan debt statistics show that 45 million borrowers collectively owe $1.7 trillion of student loan debt. On a percentage basis, $1 billion of student loan forgiveness equates to 0.6% of all student loans outstanding. Similarly, 72,000 student loan borrowers benefits about 0.2% of all student loan borrowers. So, this group of people aren’t particularly impressed with this latest move for student loan cancellation.

4. Will my student loans get cancelled?

A fourth group of people are asking: “Will my student loans get cancelled?” Some of these student loan borrowers attended schools that closed, while others say their college defrauded them. If your school misled you or engaged in illegal deceptive practices, you may be able to get student loan forgiveness for some or all of your federal student loan debt. You can apply for student loan cancellation under borrower defense to student loan repayment forgiveness

.
5. Biden cancels $1 billion of student loans, but taxpayers will pay

A final group of people on social media say that this student loan cancellation is an unfair wealth transfer that sticks taxpayers with the bill. They say that student loan cancellation isn’t free; it’s funded by taxpayers. Some social media users question why taxpayers must bail out student loan borrowers who made bad decisions to attend for profit colleges, for example. (One retort from several social media users: Congress has bailed out large corporations. Why not forgive student loans for individual borrowers in financial need?). Others ask why there should be wide-scale student loan forgiveness for some borrowers when millions of other borrowers duly paid off their student loans by making financial sacrifices and, in some cases, working multiple jobs. They say there are several reasons why student loans shouldn’t be cancelled and they don’t want taxpayers paying for student loan forgiveness when the vast majority of Americans either don’t have student loans or didn’t attend college.

Biden student loan forgiveness: what’s next?

This may not be the only student loan forgiveness that will happen during the Biden administration. Congress and the president are both considering wide-scale student loan forgiveness. Importantly, this $1 billion of student loan cancellation is different than the wide-scale student loan cancellation that potentially could impact millions of student loan borrowers. The borrowers impacted through this major student loan announcement are a select group of people who got partial student loan forgiveness, but Biden wants to make these borrowers whole through borrower defense to repayment and cancel the remainder of their federal student loans too. The debate to cancel student loans for more student loan borrowers will continue. Therefore, don’t expect wide-scale student loan cancellation now. However, don’t expect all 45 million borrowers to get student loan forgiveness or get all their student loans forgiven. It’s more likely that Congress will limit who qualifies, how much student loan forgiveness there will be, and when the student loan cancellation might come. If Congress, rather than the president, cancels student loans, progressives in Congress will need to deliver a student loan bill that moderate Democrats can support. Make sure you create your own student loan plan because there is no guarantee that your student loans will get cancelled. Here are some potential options to consider:

Student loan refinancing (lower interest rate, lower monthly payment)

Income-driven repayment plans (lower monthly payment for federal loans)

Public service loan forgiveness (student loan forgiveness for federal loans)

Animal behaviour: Female wild bonobos provide care for infants outside their social group

Scientific Reports

March 19, 2021

Observations of groups of wild bonobos, reported in Scientific Reports, suggest that two infants may have been adopted by adult females belonging to different social groups. The findings may represent the first report of cross-group adoption in wild bonobos, and potentially also the first cases of cross-group adoption in wild apes.

Bonobos form social groups of multiple males and females that sometimes temporarily associate with one another. Nahoko Tokuyama and colleagues observed four groups of wild bonobos between April 2019 and March 2020 in the Luo Scientific Reserve in Wamba, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The authors identified two infants whom they believe were adopted by female bonobos from different social groups.

Flora, a 2.6-year-old female, was cared for by Marie, an 18-year-old female with two young daughters. Ruby, a 3-year-old female, was cared for by Chio, a 52–57-year-old female whose own offspring had emigrated to a different social group. Flora’s biological mother, Fula, visited Marie’s social group prior to Marie caring for Flora but was not observed interacting with members of the group and it is unknown whether she is still alive. Ruby’s biological mother was not identified by the authors.

The authors believe adoption had occurred as Marie and Chio were observed providing maternal care to the infants, including carrying, grooming, nursing and nesting with them, for periods longer than 18 and 12 months, respectively. The authors observed no aggression between members of Marie’s and Chio’s social groups towards Flora or Ruby. Analysis of faecal mitochondrial DNA samples indicated that the infants and carers were not maternally related.

The findings indicate that adoption in bonobos may not only involve cases where there are kin relationships or pre-existing social relationships between adoptive and biological mothers. The authors suggest that the potential adoptions may have been driven by bonobos’ altruism, strong attraction to infants and high tolerance towards individuals outside of their own social group.

Full paper  available at:

 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83667-2

'Sonic Boom' heard in UK likely caused by 'daytime fireball' meteor

"Normally when you hear that it's a good sign that you have got rocks that have made it to the surface. It's incredibly exciting and I'm a bit stunned."

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
MARCH 22, 2021 

A bright fireball, believed to be a meteor streaks across

 the sky over city of Austin, 2019
(photo credit: ORLANDO RODRIGUEZ /VIA REUTERS)


A loud "sonic boom" heard throughout parts of England Saturday afternoon appears to have been caused by an "extremely rare" type of meteor known as a daytime fireball, the BBC reported Sunday.

The loud sonic boom was reported in Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Jersey, and was accompanied by pictures and videos on social media depicting an object appearing to fly across the sky.

But after experts analyzed the images, they determined it was a meteor.
University of Oxford aviation meteorology expert Simon Proud took to Twitter to confirm this, and showed footage of the meteor flying over the UK captured via weather satellite.

According to Dr. Ashley King of the UK Fireball Alliance, the meteor would likely have been flying at supersonic speeds.

"Normally when you hear that it's a good sign that you have got rocks that have made it to the surface. It's incredibly exciting and I'm a bit stunned," he said, according to the BBC.

The alliance has also asked people in the area to report finds of any fragments, which are believed to be small blackish stones or dark dust, BBC reported.

The incident occurred ahead of a planned flyby of a sizeable asteroid named 2021 EQ3, which is set to fly closer to the Earth than the Moon Monday night, though the 38 meter-wide asteroid will not pose any risk to anything or anyone on the planet, or any nearby satellites.

TO SEE THE ACTUAL UK FIREBALL CLICK HERE

https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/editors-picks/meteor-captured-on-dashcam-footage-qLuFSZwX

Majority of British support nurses’ strike 

against 1% pay rise, poll find

Exclusive: More than three-quarters back more generous increase

Andrew Woodcock

Political Editor@andywoodcock

THE INDEPENDENT
3/19/2021

(PA)

A majority of British voters would back nurses taking strike action against the 1 per cent pay rise offered by the government after a year on the Covid-19 frontline, a new poll has revealed.

The Savanta ComRes survey for The Independent found 53 per cent support for industrial action by NHS nurses, against just 28 per cent in opposition.

The unusually high level of backing for walkouts by essential frontline health workers was reflective of strong opposition to the government’s pay offer to NHS staff in England.

Just 11 per cent said that nurses should receive a 1 per cent hike, compared to an overwhelming 77 per cent who said the settlement should be more generous - including 25 per cent who said the rise should be 10 per cent or more.

The Royal College of Nursing is demanding a 12.5 per cent increase for its members, branding health secretary Matt Hancock’s offer “pitiful”.

The Royal College of Nursing’s chief executive and general secretary Dame Donna Kinnair said the findings showed ministers were out of touch with public backing for better rewards for nurses.

“In standing by its measly pay offer, the government has grossly misjudged how much the public values our highly-skilled professional nursing staff,” Dame Donna told The Independent.

“The prime minister saw up close how NHS nursing staff can make the difference to patient safety when he needed treatment.

“He must urgently reconsider his 1 per cent recommendation. It is the only way to secure more nurses for the future.”

The RCN this month set up a £35m strike fund to prepare for possible industrial action.

The independent panel that advises the government on NHS salaries - covering nearly all hospital staff, but not GPs and dentists - is due to make its own pay recommendations in early May, when ministers will make their final decision.

Today’s poll showed similar support for pay increases for NHS doctors, with 13 per cent of those questioned backing the 1 per cent offer, against 71 per cent saying it should be higher.

Just 5 per cent said nurses should join other public sector workers in taking a pay freeze to help pay down the debts incurred during the pandemic, with 8 per cent saying the same for NHS doctors.

Ministers argue that the contribution made by NHS staff in the fight against coronavirus has been recognised in their exemption from the pay freeze imposed on public sector workers with salaries over £24,000, and say the proposed hike is above the current inflation level of 0.9 per cent.

But with economists expecting inflation to rise over the coming year, the increase is likely to equate to a real-terms cut in spending power, once higher prices are taken into account.

UK
UNISON 

Outsourced security staff at East Lancashire Hospitals call off strike plan after last minute deal

By Robert Kelly robertkelly83 News Reporter


Outsourced security staff at East Lancashire Hospitals call off strike plan after last minute dealt

SECURITY staff employed by private contractor Engie Services Ltd within East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust have postponed the strike action they had planned over their employer’s failure to pay NHS rates.

The staff - who work at Burnley General Hospital and Royal Blackburn Hospital were set to begin a 48-hour strike on Sunday at 6.30pm.

But in a dramatic turn of events, the hospital workers have postponed their plans to strike after receiving a last-minute pay offer by their employer Engie.

Currently, Engie only pays the hospital workers the minimum wage rate, which leaves some of the Lancashire security staff up to £6,000 per year worse off compared to security guards employed on NHS terms.

The French company has offered to pay the hospital workers NHS Agenda for Change hourly pay rates for the next four weeks whilst they continue to negotiate with UNISON to permanently resolve the issue.

UNISON North West regional organiser Rebecca Lumberg said: “This is a welcome step in the right direction. We have always said that this is a strike that could be avoided if Engie made a genuine offer to this dedicated group of security workers.

“Security staff keep our hospitals safe and they deserve full NHS Agenda for Change pay and working conditions, especially after putting their lives at risk during the pandemic.

“Engie’s offer to pay NHS rates for basic hourly pay is a welcome gesture of goodwill and will temporarily provide security workers with a living wage. But this group are determined to secure full NHS Agenda for Change pay levels, including enhancements for hours worked at evenings and weekends.

“If Engie do not offer NHS pay rates on a permanent basis within the next four weeks, this determined group of security workers are ready to announce further strike dates.”

The Lancashire Telegraph have contacted East Lancashire Hospitals Trust for a comment on the news.

INDIA

Rising temperatures in Maharashtra to impact crop productivity: Study

After unseasonal rains and hailstorms struck various parts of the state last month, more than 20,000 hectares of crops -- mainly wheat and bajra -- were affected.


Written by Sanjana Bhalerao | Mumbai |
March 21, 2021 6:57:35 pm

Of the 58.74 lakh* hectares of rabi acreage in the state, 20,000 hectares sustained damage. Wheat and bajra crop, especially, sustained extensive damage. Similarly, market-ready onion plots were damaged. (Representational) 

*LAKH IS 100.000

Mumbai, Pune, Satara and Solapur districts will register significant warming — by 1 to 2.5 degrees Celsius — post-2033, a climate change study has found. Rising temperatures and extreme rainfall events in Maharashtra are also likely to have a serious impact on the food plate. The observation was made in a study titled ‘Future Climate Change Scenario over Maharashtra, Western India: Implications of the Regional Climate Model for the Understanding of Agricultural Vulnerability’, published in the peer-reviewed journal Springer Nature.

The study by Rahul Todmal, Assistant Professor of Geography at Vidya Pratishthan’s ASC College in Baramati, assesses the vulnerability of agriculture in the state due to the changing climate.

Based on the estimate climatic data from IITM- Pune and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the period between 2015 and 2100, the study states that Maharashtra is very likely to experience considerably warmer conditions after 2033, whereas parts of Konkan and Madhya Maharashtra will register significant warming (by 1 to 2.5 degree Celsius). The study indicated that the annual mean minimum temperatures are expected to rise significantly across 80 per cent of Maharashtra districts over the next five decades.

The study also highlights the impacts on production of crops such as jowar (18 per cent reduction) sugarcane (up to 22 per cent), rice (0-49 per cent) due to increase in the annual temperature by 2050.

After unseasonal rains and hailstorms struck various parts of the state last month, more than 20,000 hectares of crops — mainly wheat and bajra — were affected. Hail and thunderstorms lashed various parts of Maharashtra, including districts of Buldhana, Jalna, Nanded, Nashik, Dhule, Jalgaon and Sangli. Of the 58.74 lakh hectares of rabi acreage in the state, 20,000 hectares sustained damage. Wheat and bajra crop, especially, sustained extensive damage. Similarly, market-ready onion plots were damaged.

Todmal, who hails from a farming family in Ahmednagar, experienced the impact of climate change that ravaged his farmland. He said, “Agronomic studies have confirmed that the warmer climatic conditions never favour agricultural productivity. The future temperature rise is very likely to reduce the productivity of traditional rain-fed (jowar, bajra, pulses) crops and irrigated cash crops (sugarcane, onion, maize etc.) as well. The rise in annual minimum temperature, particularly during the winter season, may adversely affect the productivity of wheat.”

He added that the future winter and summer seasons are very likely to become warmer and hotter, respectively.

While Bhandara, Gondia, Akola, Washim, Parbhani, Hingoli and Yavatmal districts may register a significant rise in monsoon rainfall by 53–123 mm, pockets in Ahmednagar, Aurangabad and Jalgaon districts are expected to undergo a notable increase in rainfall without any spatial pattern, he observed

The study recommends that the Maharashtra government needs to consider these environmental changes while formulating policies regarding agricultural and water resources.

"There’s no alternative": Louisiana’s ambitious plan to stay above water

Louisiana has a $1.5 billion plan to slow sea-level rise and BP is paying for it

By ZOYA TEIRSTEIN

SALON
MARCH 21, 2021

A damaged home in New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. (Getty/Justin Sullivan)

This post originally appeared on Grist. Grist is a nonprofit news agency working toward a planet that doesn't burn and a future that doesn't suck. 

Louisiana has never been hard to pinpoint on a map — it's the only state in the U.S. that looks like a giant boot. At least it did, before the ocean swallowed the carbon emissions belched out by industrializing nations and began to swell. Now, the boot is losing a football field of land every hour to the rising tide.

In order to save the state from sea-level rise, the Louisiana state government is embarking on a series of years-long, multi-billion dollar projects to slow the rate of land loss. This month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal civil works and military engineering agency, greenlighted the first of those large projects. The money to fund it is coming from an unlikely place: BP, the multinational oil corporation.

Slowing the rate of land loss in a state like Louisiana is easier said than done. As the ocean has risen, it has seeped into the delicate bayous that comprise the sole of the boot, flushing them with saltwater and killing the deep-rooted plants that keep the watery marshes from disintegrating. This slow seepage has cascading effects. It makes folks living along the coast more vulnerable to tropical storms, hurricanes, and storm surge. It threatens to wipe away huge swaths of Louisiana's tourism industry and indigenous species of flora and fauna. And it will eventually force millions of Louisiana residents to flee their homes. The state could lose a third of its coast by 2050.

Counterintuitively, Louisiana plans to solve this problem using another body of water: the Mississippi River. State officials aim to harness the river's unparalleled power to generate new land.

Their first foray into this land-making enterprise will take place in the Barataria Basin, a wetland south of the city of New Orleans. Using remediation funds from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which covered the coast in a thick layer of oil in 2010 and is still impacting wildlife and industry in the region, the state will channel the river and the crucial sediment and nutrients it carries into the basin. Doing so will prevent the basin — which serves as a buffer for the rest of the state, and particularly New Orleans, against flooding from hurricanes and sea-level rise — from losing 550 square miles of land over the next 50 years. The project made it through a major hurdle of the approval process on March 5 when the Army Corps released a draft environmental impact statement that assessed the pros and cons of the diversion. If all goes according to plan, construction could begin as soon as spring 2022. The mid-Barataria diversion is shaping up to be one of the largest ecosystem re-engineering projects in U.S. history.

Before the late 1800s, the Mississippi River flowed freely without sophisticated earthen and concrete impediments like dams and walls. As it flooded and retracted seasonally, it deposited sediment along its banks. Where it emptied into the ocean, it forged swaths of coastline. The volatile nature of the river made living near it impossible and using the river for navigation and trade difficult. Just before the turn of the 20th century, the Army Corps of Engineers started putting up walls and levees along the river to stop it from flooding. Louisianians drained the river-adjacent marshes and wetlands and built houses on them. Putting the river in a straightjacket made it possible for people to live along its banks, which, thanks to the river's land-building power, were some of the highest land in a state. But restricting the river also prevented it from building new land, and the state stopped growing.

"We made a decision, and now we're living with the results," Steve Cochran, campaign director for the environmental advocacy group Restore the Mississippi Delta and vice president for coastal resilience at the Environmental Defense Fund, told Grist.

The $1.5 billion Mid-Barataria Basin Diversion project will punch a hole through the straightjacket and use a complicated series of gates and locks to divert a portion of the river into the Barataria Basin, allowing the river to deposit sediment into the wetland and rebuild it. The flow through the structure when the diversion is operational will equal the force of the Hudson River — 7,500 cubic feet of water and sediment will flow into the basin every second during peak river flow in the spring, the equivalent of approximately five Olympic-sized swimming pools, every minute. It's expected to create about 28 square miles of new land in the basin, and help preserve many more square miles from disappearing.

"We're managing change in a climate-driven environment, that's the norm going forward," Cochran said. "That's what everybody in my business is doing, is trying to figure out how to manage ecosystems in a world where change is occurring."

There are downsides to changing the landscape in Louisiana yet again. Oyster farmers and shrimpers in the Barataria Basin will face an inundation of fresh water, which will kill their shellfish and cover their farms with sediment. Bottlenose dolphins in the Barataria Bay will suffer, too — an estimated 34 percent of them could die when the diversion is up and running sometime in 2022. But the benefits of the project outweigh the negatives.
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"There's no alternative," Andy Sternad, head of resilience practice at the Louisiana-based architecture firm Waggonner and Ball, told Grist. "If it doesn't happen, there's no land building, there's increasing wetland loss, and New Orleans becomes coastal." The protective systems built around New Orleans — 350 miles of floodgates and levees — and other densely populated areas of the Mississippi Delta were never intended to be the first line of coastal defense against storms and storm surge, he said. "They depend on the marsh in front of them to function properly."

The project, which is one plank of a larger effort to protect and restore the Louisiana coast called the Louisiana Coastal Master Plan — a $50 billion plan created in 2007, two years after Hurricane Katrina walloped the state — will serve as a pilot for other parts of Louisiana experiencing severe land loss. Funding for the projects relies in part on the roughly $9 billion in BP settlement money the state will receive through 2032.

Access to that money has made it possible for Louisiana to design climate adaptation projects in the short term. Other states experiencing sea-level rise and other effects of climate change don't have a pot of remedial money to dip into. But there are efforts underway to change that.

About two dozen counties, cities, and states across the U.S. have filed lawsuits against oil companies that seek to make those companies pay for their outsized contributions to the climate crisis. The lawsuits have been battled back by oil companies thus far, but many of them are still ongoing. If they're successful, some of the lawsuits would establish stockpiles of money that could be used for projects to protect communities vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

Annapolis, Maryland, became the latest city to sue fossil fuel companies for damages inflicted by climate change in February. City Dock, the historic heart of Annapolis' downtown area, flooded 65 times in 2019, the lawsuit alleges. The city plans to demolish and rebuild that dock and a nearby parking structure, a renovation specifically aimed at addressing "ongoing and future tidal flooding and storm surge issues," the city said. The $56 million project is tiny compared to the $1.5 billion sediment diversion in Louisiana, but it'll be the largest construction project in Annapolis history.

"This lawsuit is all about accountability and determining who should pay the high costs of dealing with climate change," Annapolis Mayor Gavin Buckley said last month. "Fossil fuel companies knew the danger, concealed their knowledge, and reaped the profits. It is time we held them accountable." If Annapolis and other plaintiffs have their way, the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project won't be the last climate adaptation project that Big Oil pays for.

EXCERPT FROM

The end of closed democracy?

The forces that have assembled behind Biden can end racism and exclusion everywhere

Anthony Barnett

LONG READ, PDF LINK AT BOTTOM

A new direction has opened up, which no one planned or foresaw.


After 1980, Stuart Hall foresaw the “reactionary modernisation” of market fundamentalism. It was to split the broad forces of the left in three. Social democrats – and in the US, the Democrats – collaborated in the evisceration of their working-class support, either actively or because they could not prevent it as they embraced ‘globalisation’. The traditional socialist left remained committed to confronting ‘the system’ from which their energies and idealism were now completely excluded, and held on to a Jacobin intransigence that had flourished in the 1960s.

In between were the greens, liberals, many single-issue campaigners and (for want of a better term) small-r republicans who later took advantage of the internet to encourage participation and active democracy. They sought a path between what they experienced as two forms of closure: neoliberalism and neo-Leninism. openDemocracy was part of this inventive but marginalised politics, which lent it distinction but little influence.

The core ideology of neoliberalism imploded with the great financial crash of 2008. The market, which was supposed to know best, had failed. Governments, which were supposed to be the problem, had to rescue the rich. The governing parties of the centre-left were blindsided by the crash. Having already abandoned socialism, they were capsized when capitalism abandoned them.

In the US, on the right, the Tea Party movement showed that anti-elite populism had support and energy. Trump was to wrap himself in the rage of these Republican voters and led a right-wing rising against politics itself. Only someone as utterly shameless as Trump, with his mastery of the media – a rentier plutocrat, whose residential towers were laundromats for international oligarchs – could lead such a movement.

An Occupy Wall Street march through New York's Times Square in 2011. 

Anthony Pleva / Alamy Stock Photo

The response from the left has been slower, but deeper. In 2011, Occupy Wall Street demonstrated the popularity in the US of opposition to “the 1%”. Worldwide, it saw a new generation voice opposition to social and economic inequality and demand real democracy.

As these protests ebbed, the Jacobin tendency, with its unflinching critique of capitalism, gained a late reinvigoration. Yet on 6 January 2021, neo-Leninists were confronted with a real-time vision of their insurrectionist dream, as millions watched a live-streamed occupation of the Capitol.

It should have been us, wrote Alain Brossat and Alain Naze on the Verso Books blog, entranced by both the iconoclasm of the intrusion and the shocked reactions to it. With a salute to Lenin, they advised us to “urgently escape” what they describe as the “emotional contamination” of being appalled by what Trump’s mob did. (“We are not going to shed tears over the ransacking of Ms Pelosi’s office,” the authors wrote.) Instead, “people could and should […] reformulate the question on their own terms: storming of the Capitol, why not? – but rather by the Sioux or, say, a coalition of descendants of Sitting Bull, Geronimo, John Brown, Nat Turner, Malcolm X and Emma Goldman!”

The old answer to ‘why not?’ is that the capitalist order will hardly be shaken by an internationalist’s wet dream. The 21st-century reply is that a much more significant occupation of the Capitol actually took place in June 2020, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with other Democratic leaders, took the knee in its halls – for the 8 minutes and 46 seconds that police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the neck of George Floyd in Minneapolis as he slaughtered him.

George Floyd mural, Minneapolis, by Xena Goldman, Cadex Herrera, Greta McLain, Niko Alexan-der, Pablo Hernandez. | Wikicommons/ Lorie Shaull. Some rights reserved.


Like Trumpism, Black Lives Matter entered Congress in a novel fashion – but as rightfulness, not barbarism. Its activists went on to supercharge the mobilisation for Biden in November. The reward has been a flurry of anti-discrimination executive orders issued with determination by the new president.

This is not the ‘reformism’ we are used to, pushed through by a progressive elite that is proud of its paternalism while it excludes the dangerous from its councils. The moral imperative to repudiate structural racism has been so broad and so overwhelming that you no longer qualify to be a political leader unless you are willing to take the knee.

The absurdity of those seeking a vanguardist seizure of power connects to a deeper defeat for the Marxist left. In the 1960s, radicals in the West were trapped between Stalinism and a stifling, corporate labour movement. Attempting a breakout made sense and an astonishing variety of internationalist strategies were adopted, from the violent and sectarian to the academic and abstruse. Yet, as Tom Nairn began to show in the arguments he developed in the 1970s, seeking any solution in a revamped proletarian orthodoxy was flawed. Both capitalist development itself, as well as resistance to it, would always be shaped in a fundamental way by national differences that “cannot be glossed over or occluded”.

It is an argument that has been surely vindicated. For here we are in the third decade of the 21st century and the world’s defining contest is not, despite globalisation, an international class conflict. Instead it is between two nation states. An ex-communist nation seeks to reshape the world in its image with patriotic self-confidence, while the old hegemon is reaffirming its national predominance. Both are now seeking to conscript support across the world.


What is happening is too strong and autonomous to be fobbed off. The world of closed democracy is ending.


There is a Socialist International, a Progressive Alliance, a Fourth International and a Progressive International, but not a single influential ‘international’ capable of responding to the multiple crises of the global system. Yet simultaneously, questions of democratic self-determination, from Hong Kong to Belarus, Myanmar and Zimbabwe, not to speak of India, Turkey, Iran and Russia, show that the national question is taking on a new expression, as the young in particular demand free and fair elections and an end to corruption. In the US, this generational call has energised the Democratic Party and entered Congress.

These national movements for democracy are not nationalist in the sense of bellicose demands for competitive distinction. Quite the contrary, they take forward a worldwide shift in the nature of democracy itself. In my recent essay Out of the Belly of Hell, I showed how the response of governments around the world to COVID-19 reveals that a fundamental change has taken place. A combination of forces have developed across the last 50 years in a contraflow to the dominance of neoliberalism. None originated from socialist opposition to capitalism. Together they have altered the balance of expectations between people and government and generated a humanisation that resists the supremacy of market values.

The forces are material, in terms of the advances of science and its application to medical treatments. They are ideological, in terms of feminism, anti-racism, #MeToo and human rights. They are political, with the rise of ecological consciousness and the environmental movement. And they are even created by the market, in that consumers are empowered, most notably with respect to our bodies and our fitness – and, thanks to computerisation, our capacity to communicate. Social media is shaping these networked expressions of civil society.

I did not expect this combination of forces to help deliver a clear-cut political expression so rapidly as it has in the US. As we have seen, organisations from across civil society were crucial to Trump’s defeat. What is unprecedented is that they had sufficient influence to affect the outcome.

Corporate and financial capital still dominate, but politics no longer serves them alone, by putting the interests of the market first. Instead, power is having to listen to people everywhere. In these circumstances the legacy attitudes of traditional left politics, whether liberal, reformist or radical, have to change. What is happening is too strong and autonomous to be fobbed off. The world of closed democracy is ending.

17 March 2021

This essay is the third in a series of responses to the storming of the Capitol. The first was a short, quick defence of the nobility and necessity of insurrection, which contrasted the events in Washington, DC with recent protests in Hong Kong. The second looked at the way that Trump himself is a product of the 1960s. The fourth will be on the coming conflict between Washington and Beijing.

 A PDF version is available here.

RSPCA checks on Arctic walrus spotted off south Wales coast

Animal ‘slightly underweight’ but seemed in generally good health and was probably looking for food

The walrus was first spotted a week earlier in County Kerry, 

Ireland, before seemingly making its way over to south Wales. 

Photograph: RSPCA/PA


PA Media
Sun 21 Mar 2021 16.21 GMT

An Arctic walrus has been spotted off the Pembrokeshire coast, prompting a callout to the RSPCA to check on the animal’s welfare.

The walrus was first spotted a week earlier on rocks in County Kerry, Ireland, before seemingly making its way over to south Wales.


Ellie West, and RSPCA animal rescue officer, said: “It seems this Arctic walrus has swum over to Wales and was resting on rocks when I went to check on him. He was resting and, although appearing slightly underweight, thankfully he wasn’t displaying any signs of sickness or injury.

“This is an incredibly rare sighting and these big, beautiful animals never usually venture so far south. The juvenile walrus has likely travelled down this way in search of food.”

The walrus appeared to have a few scrapes but seemed in generally good condition and was seen to be swimming well.

Geoff Edmond, RSPCA national wildlife coordinator, said: “This was a landmark day for the RSPCA’s wildlife team. While we’ve been rescuing animals and responding to welfare calls for almost 200 years, I believe this is our first ever walrus call.”

He added: “We’re pleased he seems well but, if anyone spots him in this area or elsewhere and has concerns about his welfare, we’d ask them to call our emergency hotline.

“We’d also ask members of the public who may spot him on the rocks to keep their distance and not to approach him or spook him as he needs to rest and conserve his energy.

“I will certainly never forget this day, in fact it’s still sinking in that I’ve been monitoring a walrus on the Pembrokeshire coast, it’s been absolutely amazing.”

He tried to save a rare parrot. It cost him his life.

Megan Janetsky and Anthony Faiola 

Mar 21 2021

PROAVES.ORG
Gonzalo Cardona Molina spent two decades nurturing the rare bird, a species once thought extinct.

On a January morning in the foothills of the Andes, Gonzalo Cardona Molina gave his daughter a goodbye hug, jumped on his 2015 Yamaha motorcycle and set off for the habitat of the elusive yellow-eared parrot.

Cardona had spent two decades nurturing the rare bird, a species once thought extinct. Now, they numbered in the thousands, and he was their protector – the overseer of the wild preserve in this South American nation where they thrived anew. A preserve that happens to abut one of Colombia's most notorious drug routes.

“God willing, I will be coming back to you soon,” the 55-year-old told his daughter.

Three days later, a search party found his body in a shallow grave with two bullets in his chest. His slaying was the latest in a deadly wave of killings of environmentalists in Colombia, a nation where they are fast becoming almost as endangered as the species they strive to protect.

Authorities are treating it as another in a long list of killings of community activists by resurgent armed groups and other actors as a moment of shaky peace slips away. In this war-weary nation of 50 million, the 2016 peace accords between the government and leftist guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, is collapsing, sparking renewed violence as dissident fighters, right-wing paramilitaries and criminal gangs battle over trafficking routes, illicit mining and illegal logging.

“Environmentalists like Gonzalo operate in areas where there is a fight for territory,” said Alex Cortés, founder of ProAves, who worked with Cardona for two decades. “The environmentalists become a hindrance.”

It's not just environmentalists. An estimated 310 activists - Indigenous leaders, community mobilizers and others who got in the way of the armed groups - were killed last year in Colombia, the highest death toll since the signing of the peace deal, according to the Bogota-based human rights group Indepaz.

"We've seen a marked increase of violence, and this is reflected not just in the killings of human rights defenders, but also in the number of threats and attacks," said Juliette de Rivero, representative for the UN Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia.

In one of the most biologically diverse countries in the world, environmentalists are being targeted for their efforts to preserve sensitive habitats used by drug traffickers and armed gangs, and their activism against legal and illegal mining, agriculture, fossil fuel extraction, and hydroelectric plants and dams.

Sometimes, they're simply unwanted eyes and ears in remote regions where the Colombian government is largely absent and illicit activity thrives.

PROAVES.ORG
The yellow-eared parrot was believed to have perished until 1999, when a small cluster was discovered near Cardona's town.

“The cause of Gonzalo's death and of many other leaders is not because they were even calling out the presence of armed groups or denouncing them, it's because of their very presence,” said a Colombian government official familiar with the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution by armed groups.

“They're people safeguarding nature, they're also out there constantly observing. That's uncomfortable for the armed groups.”

Statistics on their killings vary. London-based Global Witness called Colombia the world's deadliest country for environmentalists in 2019 with 64 killings. 2020 appears to have been at least as deadly, the group said.

Such violence is a decades-old scourge. But as activists increasingly come into conflict with legal and illegal interests in rural areas – and as security forces take a step back during the coronavirus pandemic – observers see a deadly surge.

In January, 11-year-old Francisco Vera, who drew attention speaking to lawmakers about the dangers of fracking, single-use plastic and animal abuse – a sort of Greta Thunberg of Colombia – received anonymous threats.

“I want to hear him scream while I cut off his fingers, to see if he keeps talking about environmentalism,” read a threat from an anonymous Twitter account.

Colombian Environmental Minister Carlos Eduardo Correa says the government has made strides against illegal deforestation and is moving to protect activists.

Attacks on environmentalists “should not happen in Colombia or anywhere in the world, less against leaders like Gonzalo, who gave everything for nature,” he told The Washington Post. “Gonzalo worked hard for the conservation of birds. He leaves an important legacy.”

While Colombia's government blames the violence largely on armed groups, others connect it to legal companies and extractive projects. The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre reported last year that 44 per cent of attacks on human rights defenders were against activists who raised concerns about just five companies.

Cardona, who managed the Andean Parrot Reserve of Roncesvalles in the centre of the Tres Cordilleras mountain range in western Colombia, laboured for 20 years to save the endangered yellow-eared parrot.

The mustachioed environmentalist, known for his perpetual smile, travelled from town to town, speaking to schools and communities about the importance of protecting the birds and the wax palms in which they nest and flourish.

“He loved the birds more than his own life,' said Kelly Rojas, his 36-year-old daughter.

The yellow-eared parrot was believed to have perished until 1999, when a small cluster was discovered near Cardona's town. Cortés, of ProAves, and a small team traveled to Roncesvalles in search of the bird. There they met Cardona, the son of a local farmer. He was eager to join their efforts.

Cardona had a fifth-grade education. But he became a self-taught naturalist, learning to spot different species of birds. He devoured texts on preservation.

“He would sit down and read and read and read,” Rojas said.

He managed the parrot reserve for 15 years, protecting 12,300 acres of habitat and wetlands. He rode his motorcycle across thousands of miles of unpaved back roads, tracking bird populations, and replanting seedlings of the wax palms in the surrounding mountains.

The yellow-eared parrot grew from 100 birds to 2,900 in the Tres Cordilleras region alone. Researchers at the University of Newcastle last year credited Cardona and ProAves with saving the species.

The region has long been a hotbed for trafficking drugs, guns and people. When Cardona began his conservation work, he and the other researchers were frequently caught between the sides in Colombia's brutal civil war. Cortés said they often had to ask permission from armed groups to work in the area.

The peace accords brought a temporary lull, but the violence has come roaring back.

Members of the FARC dissident group known as Compañía Adán Izquierdo have established a stronghold in the region, according to local and national authorities. Paramilitary gangs have also been traversing the roadways, sparking clashes over territory.

Colombia's Prosecutor's Office confirmed Cardona's death is being investigated as the killing of a social leader by armed groups. The office declined to provide further details, citing an ongoing investigation.

Shortly after Cardona went missing, family and friends organised a search party. Leader Salomón Muñoz said his queries to locals drew looks of terror.

“They wouldn't say anything; everyone had their mouths shut,” he said. “There was this fear.”

One searcher spotted fresh dirt and gravel under a patch of trees. Muñoz said he felt his stomach drop as he knelt down and sunk his hands into the earth.

“The first thing that appeared was his face,” he said.

When Muñoz and a funeral director drove the body back to be buried, he said, they were met by what seemed an entire town in mourning. At the funeral, Muñoz sang a song he wrote to celebrate the parrots.

“I sang with all of my love in the church, as they put him in the ground, as they were burying him,” Muñoz said. "Fly fly, my little bird. Fly to the sky in peace."


The Washington Post

Profit tumbled at Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest oil company

By Alexis Benveniste, CNN Business

Updated 4:00 PM ET, Sun March 21, 2021

New York (CNN Business)Saudi Aramco had a rough 2020, just like every other oil company. But Aramco isn't any ordinary oil company -- it's the world's biggest, and the pandemic's toll on its business had a decidedly adverse effect on the Saudi-owned business.

The company announced Sunday that its net profit fell a whopping 44.4% to $49 billion in 2020. Dealt that significant blow, Saudi Aramco committed to spend less this year than it had anticipated: Aramco said it planned to spend about $35 billion in 2021 on capital expenditures, down sharply from its previous estimate of $40 billion to $45 billion.

Nonetheless, the oil company was upbeat about the future: It maintained its $75 billion dividend for the year and the company thinks it will return to pre-pandemic oil production levels by the end of 2021.

Saudi Aramco president and CEO Amin Nasser said on a call with reporters he is very optimistic about 2021, and he expects the company to reach close to 99 million barrels per day by the end of the year. He said this outlook is based on the views of different global entities and agencies, and he predicted demand will increase in 2022.

"Vaccine deployment will make the situation much better," he added

The profit drop reflects the coronavirus pandemic's effect on global energy markets. Last spring, the coronavirus pandemic sent demand for travel plummeting, causing oil usage to drop rapidly. At the same time, Saudi Arabia ramped up production as part of a price war against Russia. That led to a major oil glut, and the world ran out of room to store barrels.

Since the historic oil price decline that led price into negative territory, oil has roared back after OPEC and Russia agreed to roll over production cuts. In February, oil breached $60 per barrel, the highest level since January 2020.

"As the enormous impact of Covid-19 was felt throughout the global economy, we intensified our strong emphasis on capital and operational efficiencies," Nasser said.
The earnings report comes at a time when Saudi Aramco refineries have been facing drone attacks from Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

"Our reliability in 2020 despite Covid-19 and these attacks on different parts of our facilities in the north and the south and in Ras Tanura lately is 99.9%," Nasser said. "It's even higher than previous years."
It's further demonstration about the robust crisis management and continuity plans that we have."
-- CNN's John Defterios contributed to this report.