Tentative agreement reached in Minneapolis teachers strike


On Friday, Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of teachers announced a tentative agreement in an 18-day teacher strike. Pictured are teachers striking in Los Angeles on Jan. 18, 2019. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

March 25 (UPI) -- Minneapolis Public Schools Friday announced a tentative agreement with the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers that could get teachers back into classrooms after an 18-day strike.

In a statement on its website, the school district said, "MPS is extremely pleased to welcome students back to school on Monday, March 28, pending an MFT membership vote. MPS and MFT reached a tentative contract agreement for our teachers and educational support professionals."

The Minneapois Federation of Teachers also announced the tentative agreement ending the 18 day teacher's strike.

"Early Friday morning, both chapters of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education Support Professionals reached tentative agreements with the Minneapolis Public Schools that, if ratified, will end the strike," the MFT said in a statement.

The teachers union said the "historic agreements" include major gains made on pay for Education Support Professionals, protections for educators of color, class size caps and mental health supports.

Members of the striking union will vote on whether or not to ratify the tentative agreement.

"MPS looks forward to sharing details about the tentative agreement in partnership with MFT leadership," Minneapolis Public Schools said in its statement.

The teachers union went on strike for higher pay, smaller class sizes and better mental health support.

Minneapolis teachers celebrate tentative deal to end strike

By STEVE KARNOWSKI

FILE - Minneapolis teachers and supporters picket at 34th street and Chicago Avenue South in Minneapolis, on Tuesday, March 8, 2022. Teachers in Minneapolis have reached a tentative agreement to end a more than two-week strike over pay and other issues that idled some 29,000 students and around 4,500 educators and staff. The district and the union for teachers and staff announced the deal early Friday, March 25. (Elizabeth Flores /Star Tribune via AP)


MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Teachers in Minneapolis reached a tentative agreement early Friday to end a more than two-week strike over pay and other issues that idled some 29,000 students and around 4,500 educators and staff in one of Minnesota’s largest school districts.

The union for teachers and support staff planned to announce details later in the day, but said it achieved what it sought when its members walked off the job March 8 after they were unable to agree on a contract with district leaders. Ratification votes were expected over the weekend.

Superintendent Ed Graff said he was looking forward to welcoming students and staff back to school on Monday. However, union leaders said talks on a return-to-work agreement were still underway Friday afternoon.

“These historic agreements contain important wins for our students and the safe and stable schools they deserve,” the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education Support Professionals said in a statement, adding that “major gains were made on pay for Education Support Professionals, protections for educators of color, class size caps and mental health supports” for students.

At a news conference and rally outside district headquarters, union leaders said they would get details out to their members shortly. They said the gains included higher starting wages for the lowest-paid workers, and exemptions for teachers of color from seniority-based layoffs that they said could serve as a national model.

“The collective action of our members has shown that strikes work,” said Shaun Laden, head of the union’s education support professionals unit. “We know that we needed fundamental change in the Minneapolis Public Schools, and that was a big part of what this is about.”

Greta Callahan, who leads the union’s teachers unit, said their gains on the critical issue of mental health supports for students included a doubling of nurses and counselors in elementary schools, and a social worker in every building, but acknowledged they got less than what they had sought.

Laden also acknowledged that some of the gains could be temporary because they depend on one-time federal coronavirus relief money.

Graff declined to give details about the contract at an earlier news conference, but said he believes it’s fair to teachers and staff.

School Board Chair Kim Ellison thanked students for their patience.

“I know for many of our students, and many of you, the past two weeks have been difficult and long,” she said. “You’ve missed your teachers, you’ve missed your school, you’ve missed your friends. I’m so excited for you that you’re able to return to school on Monday. I know your teachers are going to be incredibly thrilled to see you.”

But a teachers strike entered its third day Friday in Sacramento, California, where unions representing 2,800 teachers and 1,800 school employees hit the picket lines Wednesday over pay and staffing shortages The Sacramento City Unified School District has canceled classes at its 76 schools, affecting 43,000 students.

Across the country, unions are seizing the opportunity posed by tight labor markets to recover some of the power they feel they lost in recent decades. And experts expect to see more labor strife as the country emerges from the pandemic. President Joe Biden’s administration is considering changes that could make it easier for federal workers and contractors to unionize.

The Minneapolis walkout, the city’s first by teachers since 1970, sent families who had endured the most chaotic days of the coronavirus pandemic fretting anew about lost academic progress and scrambling to arrange child care. Churches, Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCAs and park buildings opened their doors to provide students with safe places to hang out and get meals. High schoolers staged a series of solidarity actions to support the teachers, including an all-night sit-in at district headquarters.

Erin Zielinski, mother to a first-grader at Armatage Elementary School in south Minneapolis, greeted news of the settlement with a one-word text: “Hallelujah!” She and her husband said as the strike began that they supported the teachers, though they worried whether the district could meet their demands.

“I’m relieved to know that the union received an offer to be able to continue to provide schools that are good and safe,” she said. “A major reason why we chose to move to Minneapolis in the first place.”

Minneapolis Public Schools administrators and school board members insisted throughout the talks that they didn’t have enough money to meet teachers’ demands, especially for large permanent salary increases. Graff told reporters Friday that the two new contracts with the teachers and support staff “are going to require us to take a look at our budgets and make some adjustments going forward” over the coming weeks and months.

“We walked out united to change the trajectory of MPS and ensure that educators have a greater say in how we do our work,” the union said. “This too has been achieved and will have impacts that improve our district for years to come.”

Teachers in neighboring St. Paul reached a tentative agreement the night before the Minneapolis teachers walked out, getting a deal that had some similarities to what their Minneapolis counterparts were seeking. Union leaders cited that as evidence that Minneapolis administrators had room to compromise, too.

Ben Polk, a special education aide, said he was relieved at the settlement but wanted to see terms before he commented further. Polk said earlier in the strike that understaffing meant aides like him were having to attend to too many higher-need children at once, making it more difficult for both teachers and students.

Graff said schools will probably need to add extra school days in June to meet the minimum state requirements due to the lost time, but that the details had yet to decided.

___

Associated Press writer Doug Glass contributed to this report.

Fridays For Future school climate strikes resume worldwide

Hundreds gather and hold up signs in Pershing Square as part of the Global Climate Strike in Los Angeles on September 20, 2019. The Fridays For Future school climate strikes resumed worldwide Friday.

File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

March 25 (UPI) -- Friday marked the resumption of worldwide school climate strikes by young activists intent on sparking action to deal with causes of climate change. Hundreds of protests were expected on all seven continents.

On its website, Fridays For Future posted a map of planned protest actions.

"The catastrophic climate scenario that we are living in is the result of centuries of exploitation and oppression through colonialism, extractivism and capitalism, an essentially flawed socio-economic model which urgently needs to be replaced," Fridays For Future said in a statement on its website.

Many of the Fridays For Future actions in Europe were also tied to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

"Colonizers and capitalists are at the core of every system of oppression that has caused the climate crisis," Fridays For Future said, "and decolonization, using the tool of climate reparations, is the best kind of action."

Fridays For Future is a youth-led climate strike movement that started in August 2018 when then-15-year-old Greta Thunberg began a school strike for climate in Sweden.

She says young people are demanding a safe future.

Friday's school climate strikes started in New Zealand.

Fridays For Future tweeted a video of the New York City protests and other actions happening around the world.

Demands of the school climate strike activists include keeping the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, ensuring climate justice and equality, and listening to the best science when it comes to climate action.

Activists stage global climate protest, slam Ukraine war

By FRANK JORDANS

PHOTO ESSAY 1 of 22

Demonstrators of the Fridays for Future movement march in downtown Rome, Friday, March 25, 2022. Climate activists staged a tenth series of worldwide protests Friday to demand leaders take stronger action against global warming, with some linking their environmental message to calls for an end to the war in Ukraine. (Mauro Scrobogna/LaPresse via AP)

BERLIN (AP) — Climate activists staged a 10th series of worldwide protests Friday to demand that leaders take stronger action against global warming, with some linking their environmental message to calls for an end to the war in Ukraine.

The Fridays for Future movement, inspired by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, called demonstrations from Indonesia to Europe and the United States.

In Jakarta, activists dressed in red robes and held placards demanding “system change not climate change.”

Others held a banner saying “G-20, stop funding our extinction,” a reference to the fact that the Group of 20 biggest developed and emerging economies accounts for about 80% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Indonesia hosts the group’s next summit this fall.

In Rome, protesters carried a giant inflatable globe through the streets and a banner reading “Make school, not war.”

Some 300 protests were planned in Germany, which has taken in about 250,000 Ukrainian refugees in the past month.

Thousands of mostly young people, many carrying Ukraine’s yellow and blue national flag, marched through Berlin’s government district to the Brandenburg Gate — long a symbol of the Cold War division between East and West.

Those speaking at the Berlin rally included two young Russian activists, who denounced their government’s actions in Ukraine.

“There are a lot of Russian people who are against (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, and they do not support what Putin is doing,” Polina Oleinikova told The Associate Press.

Oleinikova, 19, said that people who speak out against the government in Russia now “risk to be imprisoned on a daily basis.”

“It is very scary and we are afraid, but still we are (doing) our activism because we feel that it is very important,” she said. “It is the right thing to do and we won’t stop.”

Fellow climate activist Arshak Makichyan said the war in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed on Russia by the West were also having a drastic impact on the Russian economy

“Everything we had is collapsing,” he said, adding that he hoped Putin would be forced to resign and brought to trial.

Ilyess El Kortbi, a 25-year-old who helped set up Fridays for Future Ukraine, praised his fellow activists from Russia for speaking out.

“They are doing the best they can,” he told the AP. “Even if their regime is authoritarian and really repressive, they still continue standing with us against Putin.”

El Kortbi, who managed to flee just before the Russian advance reached his home city of Kharkiv, appealed to Germany and other European countries to stop buying fossil fuels from Russia.

“The war in Ukraine could stop anytime,” he said. “The EU and especially Germany just need to stop financing this.”

That message was echoed by many Germans at the march, frustrated that their country is paying tens of millions of euros (dollars) a day to buy fossil fuels that contribute to Moscow’s war chest even as the burning of oil, gas and coal harms the planet.

“We are here today to show that peace and climate justice belong together,” said Clara Duvigneau, a student from Berlin.

She said Germany should invest in renewable energy rather than seek alternative sources of oil and gas from places such as the Gulf or the United States.

“We want the energy transition to happen as quickly as possible,” said Duvigneau.

Several hundred young people gathered in Paris, marching from the domed Pantheon on the Left Bank to the Bastille plaza.

They carried signs reading “Wake Up” with a drawing of a burning Earth, calling on French presidential candidates to do more to fight climate change, or accusing French oil company TotalEnergies of cozying up to Putin for its refusal to pull out of Russia.

In Washington, D.C., demonstrators gathered in Lafayette Square, across from the White House, before marching toward the U.S. Capitol.

A few hundred young people showed up, many carrying signs and placards, including one that read, “Fossil fuels fund war. Green energy now.”

Sophia Geiger, 19, an activist with Fridays for Future, said she wants President Joe Biden to declare a national climate emergency — a repeated demand by environmental groups since Biden took office.

Geiger, who is taking a year off from her education to focus on climate action, said, “Even though he acknowledges this is a crisis, he does not act like it.”

___

Associated Press writer Suman Naishadham contributed from Washington, D.C.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of climate issues at https://apnews.com/hub/climate and of the Russia-Ukraine war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

GERMANY

Fridays for Future protests call for peace and climate justice

Coordinated global demonstrations drew thousands of mostly young people calling for climate leadership under the motto "People not Profit." In Germany, the war in Ukraine and bans on Russian fossil fuels were in focus.

In Germany, the war in Ukraine and Russian fossil fuel imports took center stage as more

 than 10,000 people gathered

Global protests organized by the activism network Fridays for Future attracted thousands of participants across Germany and the world Friday, all under the motto "People not Profit," in what was the group's 10th global climate strike.

The staggered protests began in Asia and Australia then moved to Europe and Africa before finishing later in the Americas.

In Stockholm, Sweden, climate activist Greta Thunberg joined protesters in the streets. Thunberg, whose lone demonstrations inspired the global movement, shared a video on Twitter of her and others hopping up and down with placards, yelling, "We are unstoppable! Another world is possible!"

Authorities in Germany say more than 10,000 mostly young people turned out to protest in Berlin, though organizers claim more than 22,000 attended. Thousands more gathered in Hamburg, Bremen, Munich and many other cities around the country.

Ukraine war shines light on Germany's fossil fuel dependency

In Germany, the war in Ukraine and the role of fossil fuels in it added a new dimension to the sense of urgency expressed by protesters. Participants demanded Germany's government immediately ban all import of Russian fossil fuels, for instance, accusing the administration of "funding the war" as a result of Germany's energy dependency.

The drastic changes recently initiated by Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition government were also the object of scorn. Protesters bemoaned the fact that the government now plans to scrap its climate goals to subsidize automobiles for the next two years, and build new liquid gas shipping terminals for imports rather than expanding renewables at home and lowering energy consumption.

Russian and Ukrainian activists were present in Berlin, too, some as invited speakers who told of the dangers of protesting in Russia, but also the necessity of doing so.

One Ukrainian who escaped to Germany from Kharkiv said, "The war in Ukraine could stop anytime. The EU and especially Germany just need to stop financing this."

"We are here today to show that peace and climate justice go together," said Berlin student Clara Duvigneau. She, like many at the rally, expressed extreme frustration at the fact that Germany pays tens of millions of euros to Moscow each day for fuels that harm the planet. "We want the energy transition to happen as quickly as possible," she said. 

Germany's 'systemic problem' with fossil fuel dependency

Many protesters criticized the Scholz administration's attempts to bolster supply by shifting dependency from one autocrat to another; Economic Affairs and Climate Action Minister Robert Habeck this week traveled to Qatar to negotiate liquid gas purchasing contracts with the emirate.

"If — like Robert Habeck — you have to travel to Qatar to get away from Putin's gas, you have a systemic problem," climate activist Luisa Neubauer told the daily taz newspaper in Berlin Friday. "In either case we finance opponents of democracy and increase the risk of climate collapse."

Another climate movement calling itself the "Last Generation" says it plans more nationwide protests in Germany on Saturday. The group says members will unfurl large banners with climate crisis facts on buildings across the country. The group says it will target banks, businesses and government agencies "financing the global expansion of deadly fossil fuel use."

New Orleans school board reverses little known ban on jazz


FILE - Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis performs for school children during a program "Cookin' with Jazz'' with celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse in New Orleans, Aug. 28, 2006. During Carnival season, flocks of marching bands parade through the city streets even though jazz music and dancing has been banned in New Orleans public schools for almost a century. The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reports the Orleans Parish School Board is poised this week to reverse that policy 100 years after it was passed. School officials say they're glad the local jazz ban has been ignored for decades. The board planned to vote to reverse the policy Thursday, March 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Cheryl Gerber)

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — With its president saying it had racist origins, the New Orleans school board has unanimously reversed a little known but century-old ban on jazz in schools in a city which played a huge role in developing jazz and where it is still played nightly at various venues.

“I’m very glad that we can rescind this policy. I want to acknowledge it. It was rooted in racism,” Orleans Parish School Board President Olin Parker said during the meeting Thursday night. “And I also want to acknowledge the tremendous contributions of our students and especially of our band directors, whose legacy continues from 1922 through present day.”

The board’s resolution said it wanted “to correct the previous action of the School Board and to encourage jazz music and jazz dance in schools.”

Board minutes from March 24, 1922, said “it was decided that jazz music and jazz dancing would be abolished in the public schools.” One member — who walked out on a special meeting called at the end of the session because reporters were not allowed to cover it — abstained from voting on jazz.


Officials told The Times Picayune / The New Orleans Advocate that the 1922 board members were trying to distance students from a genre with African American origins.

A copy of a news clipping from 1922, posted on the newspaper’s website, did not mention race. It quoted the resolution’s sponsor, “Mrs. A. Baumgartner,” as saying she had seen “a lot of rough dancing” at after-school events. “This cheek-to-cheek dancing is terrible,” she said.

Ken Ducote, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools, brought the policy to the board’s attention after reading about it in Al Kennedy’s book “Chord Changes on the Chalkboard: How Public School Teachers Shaped Jazz and the Music of New Orleans.”

“It was just one of those things that was buried in the books,” board member Carlos Zervigon said Friday. “Obviously it was ridiculous and never really applied. But what an opportunity to be able to go back and reverse it on the 100th anniversary of its passage and acknowledge what our schools played in the formation and development of music in our classrooms.”

The earlier board’s vote on March 24, 1922, was passed without “prior policy development, analysis, or debate,” and the proposal had not been on the agenda, the current board noted.

“We’re glad that the policy was ignored by our schools, because our schools played a major role in the development of jazz,” said member Katherine Baudouin.

57% of U.S. households paid no federal income tax in 2021

"The reason people don't pay federal income tax is that they don't make enough money,"


The United States Internal Revenue Service Building in Washington, D.C. The Tax Policy Center said roughly 57% of U.S. households paid no federal income tax in 2021. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo


March 25 (UPI) -- Roughly 57% of U.S. households paid no federal income tax in 2021, and 19% of Americans paid neither payroll nor federal income taxes in 2021, according to the Tax Policy Center.

For 2022, the Tax Policy Center estimates that about 47% won't pay federal income taxes.

The share of American households paying no federal income tax rose to more than 60% in 2020 due in part to massive COVID-19 pandemic job losses.

Before the pandemic, 44% paid no federal income tax.

RELATED Report: America's 400 wealthiest families paid 8.2% in income taxes

Tax Policy Center senior fellow Howard Gleckman said in addition to pandemic job losses, a decline in incomes, stimulus checks and tax credits contributed to the large number of households paying no federal income tax.

"Combined, all this substantially reduced the income tax liability of more than a hundred million households and temporarily turned many from payers of small amounts of federal income tax to non-payers," Gleckman said.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., wants to require all American households to pay some federal income tax as part of his Rescue America plan.

RELATED  Senate Democrats unveil 15% corporate minimum tax proposal

"All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax," Scott said.

Gleckman called Scott's plan "silly."

"The reason people don't pay federal income tax is that they don't make enough money," he said.

RELATED Here's how Democrats would raise taxes on the rich

TPC estimates that the lowest-income households -- less than about $27,000 annually -- would pay an average of nearly $1,000 more in taxes in 2022, reducing their after-tax incomes by nearly 6%.

TPC said low-income families with children would pay the most under Scott's plan. His plan would slash their after-tax incomes by more than $5,000, or more than 20%.

Ukraine war could bring loss of aid, worsen food scarcity in Lebanon

By Dalal Saoud
MARCH 24, 2022 

A woman searches for food in the garbage in Beirut, Lebanon, in February. The war in Ukraine, which has paused wheat exports to Lebanon, could make food scarcity worse. Photo by Wael Hamzeh/EPA-EFE

BEIRUT, Lebanon, March 24 (UPI) -- The Russian war in Ukraine has brought fears that food will become more scarce and life-saving humanitarian assistance could disappear from cash-strapped Lebanon, whose population is sinking deeper into poverty.

Lebanon imports 66% of its wheat from Ukraine and 12% from Russia and relies on both countries to import cooking oil.

The disruption in the food supply comes as Lebanon deals with the worst financial crisis in its history, with the Lebanese pound losing more than 90% of its value since October 2019. Unemployment is soaring.

A growing number of Lebanese have been able to survive so far due to international aid and local charity initiatives that started to pour in, especially after an explosion at the Beirut port devastated much of the city and destroyed its grain silos, leaving the country without storage facilities.

Losing international humanitarian assistance as the world's attention shifts to Ukraine would be life-threatening to a large segment of the Lebanese population.

"As if the Lebanese didn't have enough problems, now [they are facing the impact of] the war in Ukraine," Bujar Hoxha, country director of CARE International in Lebanon, told UPI. "The situation is much worse and keeps on worsening."

Hoxha said that according to "scary" figures released in November, some 2.2 million Lebanese were facing food shortages, noting that their numbers have undoubtedly increased since then.

About 3.2 million to 3.7 million Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon are also suffering food shortages, although "they are a bit better than the Lebanese" because they get assistance from the United Nations agencies, respectively the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.

What worries him most is a possible "shift in attention to other crises," with most grants to Lebanon -- whose population is moving from below poverty to extreme poverty -- coming to an end in the coming months.

Most of the grants his organization and other NGOs are implementing are short-term, ranging between "six months and one year in the best-case scenarios."

RELATED U.S. to accept 100,000 Ukrainian war refugees, provide $1 billion in aid

"If we stop now the current short-term assistance, the needs will double or triple as the situation will become much worse," Hoxha said. "So the fear is whether international assistance will continue, but if it is short-term, that won't solve the problem."

The need for the international community to keep supporting Lebanon is widely illustrated by heart-breaking stories about increasing food insecurity in the crisis-ridden country.

A mother with three children in Tripoli, Lebanon's poorest city in the north and the most impoverished along the entire Mediterranean coast, has to choose every day who to feed first.

"The one who is hungrier will have breakfast and the less hungry will have to wait for lunch or dinner with the little food the mother is able to put on the table," said Patricia Khodr, communication and media manager at Care International.

For another mother, feeding her infant baby is a painful mission. "Instead of the regular five spoons of baby milk, she only put one in her baby's bottle."

In another family, one of the children works the whole day just to be able to buy 1 kilo of bananas at 10,000 Lebanese pounds (40 cents) that would be wrapped in sandwiches for dinner.

"We haven't seen such poverty before. The people are going poorer by the day, with growing cases of malnutrition, especially among children and women. Many can't even afford one meal per day," Khodr told UPI.

Concerns about malnutrition and cases of anemia among children were also voiced by Etienne Careme, acting representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Lebanon.

"Access to healthy food is really a problem. When you have children who don't have access to healthy food, the next generation will have a problem," Careme told UPI, referring to a survey in December showing that 46% of the Lebanese population were found to be food insecure.

With uncertainty surrounding the Ukraine-Russia war, its duration and impact, shifting to local production, diversifying the Lebanese diet and importing substitutes could be a solution, Careme said.

With a real possibility that 6 million tons of wheat Ukraine was planning to export globally before the end of June 2022 will not materialize, Lebanon, which required between 35,000 and 40,000 tons of wheat per month for domestic milling before the port explosion, will have to rely on alternative suppliers to satisfy its domestic food needs.

"The most critical period to secure imports will likely be between now and the end of June, when trading of fresh supplies from the harvest in the northern hemisphere will start," Careme said.

With only one month's wheat reserves left, Lebanon is doubling efforts to find alternative import sources.

"For sure, we are in a crisis, but we haven't reached the catastrophe," Hani Bohsali, president of the Syndicate of Importers of Foodstuffs in Lebanon, told UPI.

Luckily, food importers have imported enough food supplies for two months ahead of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan that starts April 2.

"But some of the imports from Ukraine were stopped because of the war," said Bohsali, who like other food importers, started to contact other suppliers in China, the United States, South America, Malaysia, Thailand, Poland and Hungary for the post-Ramadan period.

"We are searching for any source to secure food supplies, even at a higher cost. Let's not talk about the worst-case scenario. Let's see how today we can secure the basic commodities: wheat, oil and sugar," he said.

He noted that some of Lebanon's regular suppliers, like Turkey, Egypt and Algeria, have stopped exports for three months because of the Ukraine conflict but asked "would they be able to do that for a year? Their economies could collapse."

However, securing food supplies won't necessarily mean that it could be affordable to many, especially with the country's hyperinflation, skyrocketing food, fuel and fertilizer prices globally and in the absence of international aid and financial assistance.

"We are heading toward another humanitarian catastrophe for sure and the only solution to avoid this is to combine the humanitarian with the development funds," Hoxha said

Fighting over the available resources is another big concern.

"Tension between Syrians and Lebanese is increasing because of humanitarian assistance: who gets what and how much... This is really worrying," he said.

WELL THAT WAS UNEXPECTED
Antarctica's Conger ice shelf collapses in most significant loss since early 2000s

Satellite images show the Conger ice shelf in Antarctica has collapsed, scientists report. Photo courtesy of Stef Lhermitte/Twitter

March 25 (UPI) -- The Conger ice shelf in Antarctica has collapsed, according to satellite data, in what scientists say is the most significant collapse there in nearly 20 years.

While the ice shelf is relatively small -- it is roughly the size of Rome -- Dr. Catherine Colello Walker said the event, which came in a week with unusually high temperatures, could be a harbinger for more collapses to come.

"It won't have huge effects most likely, but it's a sign of what might be coming," said Walker, an Earth and planetary scientist for NASA and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

"It is one of the most significant collapse events anywhere in Antarctica since the early 2000s when the Larson B ice shelf disintegrated," Walker told the Guardian.

RELATEDNOAA's Arctic report card finds 'alarming' trend in climate crisis

Ice shelves permanently float and don't add to rising sea levels. However, if entire ice shelves collapse, glacial ice on land can be released into oceans and that can raise sea levels, according to scientists.

Temperatures increased with an "atmospheric river" event, where a stream of warm air rolls over a region -- in this case, raising the temperature 30 degrees higher than normal for this time of year.

"We need to better understand how the warm period has influenced melt along this whole sector of Antarctica," Andrew Mackintosh, head of the school of Earth, atmosphere and the environment at Monash University, told Cnet.



University of Minnesota geologist Peter Neff says the collapse of even a small ice shelf in Antarctica is surprising.

"We still treat East Antarctica like this massive, high, dry, cold and immovable ice cube," Neff said.

RELATED Ice shelf disintegration accelerating Pine Island Glacier descent toward sea

According to Neff, satellite data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission showed the ice shelf collapse started between March 5 and 7.

"This collapse, especially if tied to the extreme heat brought by the mid-March atmospheric event, will drive additional research into these processes in the region," Neff said.

More than a third of Antarctica's ice shelves will be at risk of collapse if global temperatures reach 4 degrees celsius above preindustrial levels, according scientists.

Massive iceberg 4 times the size of NYC breaks off in Antarctica

In December, scientists warned that an ice shelf holding back a crucial Antarctic glacier could break up within five years. If that happens it could greatly increase the rate of sea level rise.

Ice shelf collapses in previously stable East Antarctica

This satellite image provided by NASA, Aqua MODIS 12 on March 2022 shows the main piece of C-37 close to Bowman Island. Scientists are concerned because an ice shelf the size of New York City collapsed in East Antarctica, an area that had long been thought to be stable. The collapse last week was the first time scientists have ever seen an ice shelf collapse in this cold area of Antarctica.
(NASA via AP)

An ice shelf the size of New York City has collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long thought to be stable and not hit much by climate change, concerned scientists said Friday.

The collapse, captured by satellite images, marked the first time in human history that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse. It happened at the beginning of a freakish warm spell last week when temperatures soared more than 70 degrees (40 Celsius) warmer than normal in some spots of East Antarctica. Satellite photos show the area had been shrinking rapidly the last couple of years, and now scientists wonder if they have been overestimating East Antarctica’s stability and resistance to global warming that has been melting ice rapidly on the smaller western side and the vulnerable peninsula.

The ice shelf, about 460 square miles wide (1200 square kilometers) holding in the Conger and Glenzer glaciers from the warmer water, collapsed between March 14 and 16, said ice scientist Catherine Walker of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She said scientists have never seen this happen in this part of the continent, making it worrisome.

“The Glenzer Conger ice shelf presumably had been there for thousands of years and it’s not ever going to be there again,” said University of Minnesota ice scientist Peter Neff.

The issue isn’t the amount of ice lost in this collapse, Neff and Walker said. That is negligible. It’s more about the where it happened.

Neff said he worries that previous assumptions about East Antarctica’s stability may not be correct. And that’s important because if the water frozen in East Antarctica melted — and that’s a millennia-long process if not longer — it would raise seas across the globe more than 160 feet (50 meters). It’s more than five times the ice in the more vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet, where scientists have concentrated much of their research.

Helen Amanda Fricker, co-director of the Scripps Polar Center at the University of California San Diego, said researchers have to spend more time looking at that part of the continent.

“East Antarctica is starting to change. There is mass loss starting to happen,” Fricker said. “We need to know how stable each one of the ice shelves are because once one disappears” it means glaciers melt into the warming water and “some of that water will come to San Diego and elsewhere.”

Scientists had been seeing this particular ice shelf — closest to Australia — shrink a bit since the 1970s, Neff said. Then in 2020, the shelf’s ice loss sped up to losing about half of itself every month or so, Walker said.

“We probably are seeing the result of a lot of long time increased ocean warming there,” Walker said. “it’s just been melting and melting.”

Still, one expert thinks that only part of East Antarctica is a concern.

“Most of East Antarctica is relatively secure, relatively invulnerable and there are sectors in it that are vulnerable,” said British Antarctic Survey geophysicist Rob Larter. “The overall effect of climate change around East Antarctica is it’s chipping away at the edges of the ice sheets in some places, but it’s actually adding more snow to the middle.”

Last week, what’s called an atmospheric river dumped a lot of warm air — and even rain instead of snow — on parts of East Antarctica, getting temperatures so far above normal that scientists have spent the last week discussing it. The closest station to the collapsed ice shelf is Australia’s Casey station, about 180 miles (300 kilometers) away and it hit 42 degrees (5.6 degrees Celsius), which was about 18 degrees (10 degrees Celsius) warmer than normal.

And that, Walker said, “probably is something like, you know, the last straw on the camel’s back.”

Fricker, who has explored a different more stable East Antarctic ice shelf, said an ice shelf there “is the quietest most serene place you can imagine.”

This satellite image provided by NASA, Terra MODIS 22 on February 2022 shows The Conger/Glenzer (Bowman Island) ice shelf and associated fast ice pre-collapse.

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Read stories on climate issues by The Associated Press at https://apnews.com/hub/climate

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

How did Chennai become India's chess hub?

Indian chess players are hailing a decision to move the 44th Chess Olympiad from Moscow to Chennai as an opportunity to bring more new players into the fold. The city has long played host to the country's top players.

Chennai is home to most of India's top chess masters, including Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa,

 the world's  second youngest chess grandmaster.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the International Chess Federation has moved the venue for the 44th Chess Olympiad from Moscow to Chennai.

Chennai, which is widely known as India's "mecca of chess," quickly pounced on the chance to host the prestigious event.

With a promise of 1 billion rupees (€11.9 million, $13.1 million) budget, the Tamil Nadu state government announced that the event will be held in the historic town of Mahabalipuram on the outskirts of the state capital Chennai.

Over 2,000 players from about 150 countries, including icons like Magnus Carlsen, will participate in the event from July 28 to August 10, 2022.

The state's Chief Minister, M K Stalin tweeted, "A proud moment for Tamil Nadu! Chennai warmly welcomes all the Kings and Queens from around the world!"

 

Tamil Nadu leads way with grandmasters

Tamil Nadu has given rise to at least two dozen grandmasters, including the five-time world chess champion Viswanathan 'Vishy' Anand and the 16-year-old Rameshbabu "Pragg" Praggnanandhaa, who recently made international headlines.

The country's first international master, Manuel Aaron, grew up in Tamil Nadu. The country's first female grandmaster, Subbaraman Vijayalakshmi, is also from the state.

The All India Chess Federation (AICF)'s secretary, Bharat Singh Chauhan, told DW nearly a third of all emerging young chess talents in the country hail from Tamil Nadu. With such a high density of chess players, the state's capital Chennai has become a hotspot for chess events over the past decades.

"When I was playing, tournaments would happen only in Tamil Nadu, and most of them in Chennai," Chauhan said.

Even as other cities, including New Delhi, were considered for the 2022 Chess Olympiad, Chauhan said that the AICF chose Chennai as the event would gain better visibility in a city that had a "wider chess culture."

Irrespective of the political party in power, the Tamil Nadu government has supported the sport consistently, says Srinath Narayanan, a 27-year-old grandmaster from Chennai. He was also the non-playing vice-captain of the Indian team for the first online Chess Olympiad.

"For example, when the Indian team won the Olympiad in 2021, the Tamil Nadu government was the only one in the country to confer a state-level reward for the winners," he said.

Narayanan added that the state's efforts to set clear eligibility for different awards motivates youth to win the different titles. "Players from the state clearly have an edge as administratively it is easier to be a chess player in Chennai," he said, adding that the 2022 Chess Olympiad will attract even more young people from across India to participate in chess.

Decades of tradition

The popularity of chess in Chennai stretches back to the 1950s, according to well-known grandmaster and five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand.

"The culture of playing international chess existed in Chennai even before I became a grandmaster. This is because Chennai always had a wonderful group of volunteers who used to run chess clubs," he said.

One of the first well-known clubs in Chennai was started in 1972 by Manuel Aaron, who dominated chess in India from the 1960s to 1980s. The monthly membership fee was just 20 rupees (€0.24)($0.26) at the time. Similarly, many other chess clubs were formed in Chennai and the rest of Tamil Nadu. Today, the players from these clubs offer tough competition to their Russian contemporaries.

Anand said that these clubs generated many grandmasters from the state, who in turn inspired more youth to pursue chess full-time. He remarked that grand sporting events like the Olympiad would leave a deep impact in young people's minds, as many of them will get to know what an event looks like and get to see their favorite chess stars in person, he added.

"All chess players have fond memories of events like these. It leaves an impact. This Chess Olympiad will do that for many youngsters from Chennai and the rest of India," he said. 

How Paul Gauguin contributed to the colonial myth

A new Berlin show explores how the French artist's world-famous paintings from the South Sea islands contributed to the myth of an exotic paradise.



Even though he was disappointed by the impact of colonization in French Polynesia, he didn't transmit that in his works

At the end of the 19th century, French artist Paul Gauguin was tired of the Parisian arts scene. He felt European civilization was "artificial and conventional" and aimed to reconnect with a sense of purity, which he believed could be found in "untouched" civilizations.

He therefore left France and his family behind in 1891, setting sail for Tahiti, and later the Marquesas island of Hiva Oa (French Polynesia), where spent most of the rest of his life, until his death in 1903 at the age of 54.

Inspired by the simple everyday life of the Tahitians, his South Seas paintings with pure, strong colors, conveyed the island's tropical atmosphere.

'Amusements in the spirit of the devil,' a Gauguin painting from 1894

During that period, he created a large number of important works that are still famous today — portraits of women on the beach, harvesting, sitting under a tree, half-naked, eating fruit.
The myth of the untouched natural paradise

The myth of the islands' exoticism appealed to him. He positioned himself against colonialism, but he also had questionable relations with 13-year-old girls.

With his South Seas paintings, Paul Gauguin, born in Paris in 1848, contributed to shaping a myth that was already circulating in Europe: In the 18th century, several travelogues by European seafarers stylized islands like Tahiti as utopian natural paradises, where free and public love was practiced like a religion.

However, the painter did not find an untouched South Seas paradise on the colonized island. In his travel diary "Noa Noa," he complained about being "disgusted by the whole European triviality" and "disappointed by things that were so far from what I had wished for and, above all, imagined."

But he didn't portray his disappointment or the traces of colonization in his paintings. Were his depictions more wishful thinking than reality?


IMPOVERISHED OUTSIDER: PAUL GAUGUIN
Sailor, bank clerk and amateur painter
Before Paul Gauguin decided to become a painter, he spent his time cruising on the world's oceans and working as an investment banker at the Paris Bourse. He earned quite a lot of money and founded a family with five children. The impressionists, holding his amateur paintings in great esteem, encouraged him to present them in their exhibititions - and that's when his social decline began.
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'Why are you angry?'

The exhibition "Paul Gauguin — Why Are You Angry?" examines the relationship between Gauguin's South Sea myth and the history of colonization. It explores Gauguin's contribution to colonial ideas, attempting to determine how his perspective depicted or even shaped the narrative of the time.

First shown at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, the touring exhibition now opens in Berlin's Alte Nationalgalerie museum.

The exhibition is named after a painting by Gauguin, which in the Tahitian original is called "No te aha oe riri." Created in 1896 during the artist's second stay in Tahiti, it depicts scantily clad women looking away from the viewer, with a few chicken running among them.

The enigmatic title defies clear interpretation. The exhibition similarly offers different interpretations on Gauguin's artistic work.

The show "looks at Gauguin's oeuvre — which was also shaped by Western, colonial ideas of 'the exotic' and 'the erotic' —, juxtaposing the works with historical material from both Gauguin's past and his present, and with international contemporary art," says the Alte Nationalgalerie in its press presentation of the exhibition.

Gauguin's works from Tahiti are set in contrast with works by contemporary artists Angela Tiatia, Yuki Kihara, Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer. Some of the artists are from the South Pacific. Their works break with the traditional Western views on the South Seas — and especially with the cliché of the exotic, available woman.

"Paul Gauguin - Why Are You Angry?" is on show from March 25 to July 10 at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

This article was originally written in German.

WWW LINKS

Exhibition 'Paul Gauguin — Why Are You Angry?'

Do octopuses have emotions?

They look so "alien" but octopuses feel and remember pain like we do. We can track their emotional reactions. But their deeper feelings are a mystery.

Octopuses have three hearts and taste with their suckers

Octavia, an octopus at the New England Aquarium in Boston, was old and dying. She had been moved from her display tank to a quieter, dark place that resembled an octopus' den. That's where the animals go to in the wild when they are nearing the end of their lives.

Her friend, Sy Montgomery, wanted to say goodbye.  

The author and naturalist had known Octavia for several years. Montgomery had fed Octavia fish and played with her countless times. It was part of Montgomery's research for her 2015 book The Soul of an Octopus. Montgomery describes the animal's remarkable intelligence. She had befriended four octopuses (yes, that's the correct plural) with very different personalities.

Montgomery with an octopus (not Octavia) at the New England Aquarium

When DW spoke to Montgomery, she recalled the last time she saw Octavia.

"She was sick, she was old and she was clearly dying," Montgomery said. "I opened the tank and she floated to the top to see me. And she was not hungry ― I handed her a fish and she just took it and put it aside. She made the effort to come up from the bottom of that tank to see me and to touch me. She extended her suckers to me and looked me in the face and held me for minutes."

That was after a period of 10 months during which Octavia had been down in her den, all on her own. She hadn't seen Montgomery or other people. For an animal that only lives three to five years, "10 months is decades," Montgomery said.

Soon after that Octavia passed away.

Emotions — not just reflex reactions

Their last goodbye was one of many interactions that Montgomery has had with octopuses that make her certain they have emotions. Her take is based on personal experiences, anecdotal evidence. But Montgomery isn't alone in her assessment.

There is a consensus in the field of animal sentience that octopuses are conscious beings — that they can feel pain and actively try to avoid it.

Kristin Andrews and Frans de Waal posit in a new report published in the journal Science that many animals, including cephalopods such as octopuses, feel pain . But they don't just react reflexively, like a child pulling away their hand from a hot stove. That type of reaction is known as nociception.

Octopuses display reactions that go far beyond that, say Andrews and de Waal, citing research from the past 20 years.

Octopuses can change their color and blend in with the environment

"Nociception does not necessarily reach the central nervous system and consciousness," they write in the Science article — that means the animal may want to avoid pain, but that this pain doesn't come with any associated feeling.

Octopuses, however, have shown that they avoid places where they previously experienced negative stimuli, even if they are free of pain in that very moment.

That, Andrews and de Waal write, is because they remember the pain they felt there, processed it and noted it as something they want to avoid. They feel a memory of pain.

The difference between emotions and feelings

When researchers look at the inner lives of animals, they distinguish between emotions and feelings.

Emotions, write Andrews and de Waal, are "measurable physiological and/or neural states that are often reflected in behavior."

That includes increased body temperature, increased neurotransmitter and hormone activity or an animal's avoiding a place where a scientist poked it with a stick the other day.

Feelings, on the other hand, happen at a deeper level than emotions.

Human animals often share their feelings verbally. We say things like "I'm so happy!" or "That makes me really angry."

People can't communicate with other animals on that level. So, it's impossible for us to know exactly what non-human animals feel. But that doesn't mean they don't feel anything.

Speaking to DW, Andrews said "scientists should accept the feelings-side of emotions for animals, just like we do for humans. The 'yay!' of joy, the crushing, heavy despair of sadness. Feelings of pain, feelings of pleasure or of sun on your skin."

"We can't measure that in animals. But we can't measure it in humans either," said Andrews, the Research Chair in Animal Minds at York University in Toronto, Canada.  

Scuba divers like filmmaker Craig Foster say octopuses are highly curious creatures

Montgomery makes the same point. Sure, she doesn't know what feelings are at play when an octopus comes up to the water's surface to touch her gently. But do we ever have that knowledge about another living creature, she asks.

"I don't know what octopuses feel in their hearts," Montgomery said. "But I also don't know what my husband truly feels or whether happiness for him feels the same as happiness feels for me."

Important step for animal welfare

The UK has taken a step towards recognizing octopuses and their relatives as sentient — as their being conscious, with feelings and memories of pain.

Cephalopod molluscs, like octopuses, and decapod crustaceans, like crabs, lobsters and crayfish, are included in a new animal welfare law that is going through the UK parliament right now.

Jonathan Birch, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, led a team that looked at more than 300 studies before advising the UK government on the law.

If the UK's new animal welfare law is passed, crayfish, octopuses and their relatives will 

enjoy higher levels of protection

"The evidence tilted towards the animals being sentient," Birch said. "We recommended the inclusion of all of these animals in the scope of the animal welfare law. But the evidence was particularly strong for octopuses."

Birch says it's human to find it hard to empathize with animals like crayfish or octopuses, "because they look so different from us and they seem so alien."

"But that doesn't mean there's nothing there to empathize with, it doesn't mean they don't have feelings," he said. "We've got to be led by the evidence on this."

Edited by: Zulfikar Abbany