Scientists concerned that coronavirus is adapting to humans

Researchers have observed mutations in some strains that may help the virus spread

Ian Sample Science editor Sun 10 May 2020

Scientists are keeping a close eye on genome mutations to prevent a coronavirus vaccine that only works against some strains. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA


Scientists have found evidence for mutations in some strains of the coronavirus that suggest the pathogen may be adapting to humans after spilling over from bats.

The analysis of more than 5,300 coronavirus genomes from 62 countries shows that while the virus is fairly stable, some have gained mutations, including two genetic changes that alter the critical “spike protein” the virus uses to infect human cells.

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine stress that it is unclear how the mutations affects the virus, but since the changes arose independently in different countries they may help the virus spread more easily.

The spike mutations are rare at the moment but Martin Hibberd, professor of emerging infectious diseases and a senior author on the study, said their emergence highlights the need for global surveillance of the virus so that more worrying changes are picked up fast.


When will a coronavirus vaccine be ready?


“This is exactly what we need to look out for,” Hibberd said. “People are making vaccines and other therapies against this spike protein because it seems a very good target. We need to keep an eye on it and make sure that any mutations don’t invalidate any of these approaches.”

Studies of the virus revealed early on that the shape of its spike protein allowed it to bind to human cells more efficiently than Sars, a related virus that sparked an outbreak in 2002. The difference may have helped the latest coronavirus infect more people and spread rapidly around the world.

Scientists will be concerned if more extensive mutations in the spike protein arise, not only because they may alter how the virus behaves. The spike protein is the main target of leading vaccines around the world, and if it changes too much those vaccines may no longer work. Other potential therapies, such as synthetic antibodies that home in on the spike protein, could be less effective, too.

“This is an early warning,” Hibberd said. “Even if these mutations are not important for vaccines, other mutations might be and we need to maintain our surveillance so we are not caught out by deploying a vaccine that only works against some strains.”

The scientists analysed 5,349 coronavirus genomes that have been uploaded to two major genetics databases since the outbreak began. By studying the genetic makeup of the viruses, the scientists worked out how it has diversified into different strains and looked for signs that it was adapting to its human host.

In an unpublished study that has yet to be peer reviewed, the researchers identified two broad groups of coronavirus that have now spread globally. Of the two spike mutations, one was found in 788 viruses around the world, with the other present in only 32.

The study shows that, until January, one group of coronaviruses in China escaped detection because they had a mutation in the genetic region that early tests relied on. More recent tests detect all of the known types of the virus.

Last month, an international team of scientists used genetic analyses to show that the coronavirus likely originated in bats and was not made in a lab as some conspiracy theorists have claimed.

The whiteness of anti-lockdown protests

How ignorance, privilege, and anti-black racism is driving white protesters to risk their lives.

By Maia Niguel Hoskin

Protesters demonstrate outside the Orange County Administration Building demanding the end of stay-at-home orders and the reopening of Florida businesses. Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

This story is part of a group of stories called

First-person essays and interviews with unique perspectives on complicated issues.


Last weekend, thousands gathered in Washington, Michigan, Texas, Maryland, and California to protest lockdown orders resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Some marched with rifles draped across their backs and handguns resting on their hips, while others shared conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and his involvement with the Covid-19 vaccine.

Even in larger, less-rural cities in California, groups waved “Trump 2020” flags and marched the streets with signs that read, “No Liberty. No Life.” And these protests only seem to be picking up steam: On Friday, thousands stormed the Wisconsin State Capitol, carrying flags and wearing Tea Party regalia.

But what has been most glaringly obvious about these protests isn’t the far-right theatrics. It’s that almost everyone marching to end stay-at-home orders is white. And if they do return to “regular life” and refuse to distance themselves, their overt disregard will impact the population most vulnerable to the virus — black people.

It’s easy to dismiss the anti-lockdown protests as business per usual in the land of right-wing Trumpism. But there is a much larger issue at play that existed long before President Donald Trump took office, and that he has learned to artfully exploit. It’s why it’s not surprising that in some areas, protesters waved Confederate flags or held signs that read, “Give me liberty or give me Covid-19.” The protests are symptomatic of the profound presence of whiteness and white supremacy in America.

On the surface, the protests are about the contentious debate over reopening the economy during a pandemic, when more commerce risks more infections and the overwhelming of our hospital systems. Trump and other Republicans who have pushed to scrap lockdown orders sooner rather than later argue that doing so will prevent the country from going into economic collapse.


“You’re going to lose more people by putting a country into a massive recession or depression,” said Trump during a press conference on March 24, when he first began pushing the idea of reopening the economy, only one week into the lockdown. “You can’t just come in and say let’s close up the United States of America, the biggest, the most successful country in the world by far.”

But if states open back up, it will come at whose expense? In the US, black Americans are dying of Covid-19 at disproportionate rates to other racial and ethnic groups. According to an American Public Media Research Lab report published this week, almost 50,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the country. Data for about three-fourths of those deaths reveals that the mortality rate for blacks is 2.7 times higher than for whites. Although blacks make up only 13 percent of the population, they represent 30 percent of Covid-19 patients in the US. The data continues to reveal which Americans face the greatest risk if the country is reopened.

To be fair, some protesters have expressed a deep financial need to return to work, to keep their lights on and a roof over their heads, which is understandable given that 26 million Americans have lost their jobs — skyrocketing the unemployment rate. As the first of the month quickly approaches, many Americans are wondering how they’ll pay their rent and only 80 million of 171 million Americans have received their CARES act stimulus checks so far.

But these protests are also attended by Trump supporters who have been convinced by conservative media pundits like Fox News contributor Bill Bennett, who during an April 13 interview on Fox, argued that the virus is actually less deadly than the seasonal flu and that “this was not and is not a pandemic.” Before Covid-19 began to ravage our country in February, the Trump administration doubled down on claims that the virus was no more deadly than the seasonal flu, and that containment was “airtight.” These claims were made despite the CDC warning that community spread was inevitable and the country would most likely experience severe interruptions in daily life.

Admittedly, I might also be eager to return to swapping germs, if I thought the virus was nothing worse than a cold and if I lived far away from the cities experiencing widespread infection, as many of the protesters do.


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What the anti-stay-at-home protests are really about

But this isn’t just happening in rural areas. Protests are also happening in wealthy, elite, and yes, very white cities and suburbs too. Residents of Newport Beach and Huntington Beach, two Southern California coastal cities in Orange County, aired their grievances by the hundreds last week. Protesters were seen socializing and laughing, wearing pro-Trump baseball caps while standing far less than the advised six feet apart.

Huntington Beach and Newport Beach have some of the highest numbers of confirmed cases in Orange County, yet the residents’ eagerness to end social distancing orders feels informed and motivated by the reality of who is most impacted by Covid-19 — black communities. Both of these cities are predominantly white and affluent; Newport Beach’s median income hovers around $123,000 while Huntington Beach’s is about $88,000, compared to the national median income of $62,000.

While it might seem ludicrous that whiteness and income level would somehow make people immune to infection, there is some truth to such beliefs. In the event that these rich white folks find themselves with a cough and fever, they are more likely to have the reassurance and privilege of access to local testing centers and quality, unbiased health care. Meanwhile, black people do not have access to quality and racially unbiased health care. Between 2010 and 2018, blacks were 1.5 times more likely to be uninsured compared to whites.

Black people also have a higher prevalence of heart disease and high blood pressure, and black men have the shortest life expectancy of all other racial and gender groups — and racism and discrimination are the drivers of these poor health outcomes and inequities. In fact, disparities such as these have never been more apparent than in this pandemic: Doctors have expressed concern that Covid-19 testing is not as accessible to black communities. Meanwhile, blacks and Latinos also make up the largest number of essential workers, who are most at risk of infection.


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Covid-19 is disproportionately taking lives of black people

Race and socioeconomics do absolutely play into who is most vulnerable to getting Covid-19 — and who is most likely to die.
Oppression 101

On Twitter earlier this week, I saw a meme about whites feeling oppressed by the current lockdown order, which I knew had to be a joke (boy, was I wrong). During an interview on Fox & Friends, Michigan Conservative Coalition Chair Meshawn Maddock shared that residents of Michigan “feel oppressed” and “there are certain businesses and workers that should be able to safely get back to work right now.”


Oppressed is an interesting word choice. Let’s start first with what racist oppression is. Oppression is not getting a job, a promotion, a business loan, or approved for your dream home solely based on your race — things black people deal with regularly. On the other hand, oppression is not staying in the comfort of your home, with a full fridge, health care, and a 401k. Oppression is also not a term that should be used willy-nilly, at the first feeling of discomfort, crying it to get your way — putting other people’s health and lives at risk. Many of us are uncomfortable right now. But please do not conflate discomfort with oppression.

Being white is the default identity in America. Whiteness is our cultural tapestry. It’s America’s norm, against which all others are measured, and there is a special kind of security that comes along with being the norm. So when you suddenly do not have free rein to go about your business unchecked, it can feel like a massive threat. And in turn, protesters have taken to the streets to fight to keep that security. That feeling of “oppression” these white protesters have voiced is the residual effect of living in a country that has been shaped to cater to their racial majority status, and consequently, their perceived loss of power and privilege.

Ironically, some of these same conservative white groups that want to be liberated now also vehemently fought tooth and nail against movements such as Black Lives Matter and did not understand the value nor the need for blacks to speak out against their actual oppression. Some of these whites fear the same oppression they have inflicted on people of color, and we’re seeing a glimpse of that fear, without any self-awareness, in the pandemic.

To be clear, most Americans, white people included, are sitting tight at home and obeying social distancing and shelter-in-place orders. But as anti-lockdown protests become more politicized, outrage might begin to grow and others may inevitably join the chorus. This could prove to benefit Trump come election time as he plays to his base, targeting states with Democratic governors who have imposed social distancing orders.

But while it’s natural to marvel at how reckless Trump’s tweets are — like the ones that called for residents of Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia to “LIBERATE” themselves — the discussion about the president’s Twitter fingers inciting social and racial upheaval is low-hanging fruit. Trump is not the root cause of America’s ongoing saga with racism and white privilege. His rhetoric simply brings to life white supremacist and racially privileged perspectives that have existed for centuries — and have been given the opportunity, in a deeply stressful time, to surface loudly, donning MAGA hats, and exercising their right to bear arms.

Dr. Maia Niguel Hoskin is a college professor of graduate-level counseling, freelance writer, public speaker, and a researcher of all things race, mental health, and social media.

Trump dismantles environmental protections under cover of coronavirus

Administration is weakening protections ahead of the election, making changes that could take years for a Democratic president to undo


Emily Holden in Washington THE GUARDIAN Mon 11 May 2020

The Trump administration is diligently weakening US environment protections even amid a global pandemic, continuing its rollback as the November election approaches.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, US federal agencies have eased fuel-efficiency standards for new cars; frozen rules for soot air pollution; proposed to drop review requirements for liquefied natural gas terminals; continued to lease public property to oil and gas companies; sought to speed up permitting for offshore fish farms; and advanced a proposal on mercury pollution from power plants that could make it easier for the government to conclude regulations are too costly to justify their benefits.

The government has also relaxed reporting rules for polluters during the pandemic.

Trump’s ambitions reach even to the moon, which he has announced he wants the US to mine.

Trump seizes on pandemic to speed up opening of public lands to industry
Read more

Gina McCarthy, formerly Barack Obama’s environment chief, now runs the Natural Resources Defense Council. She said the Trump administration was acting to cut public health protections while the American public is distracted by a public health crisis.

“People right now are hunkered down trying to put food on the table, take care of people who are sick, worry about educating their children at home,” McCarthy said. “How many people are going to really be able to sit down and scrutinize these things in any way?”

McCarthy said the government was “literally not interested in the law or science”, and that “is going to become strikingly clear as people look at how the administration is handling Covid-19”.

The Trump administration is playing both offense and defense, rescinding and rewriting some rules and crafting others that would be time-consuming for a Democratic president to reverse.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has written what critics say will be a weak proposal for climate pollution from airplanes, a placeholder that will hinder stricter regulation.

Trump officials have been attempting to create a coronavirus relief program for oil and gas corporations, a new move in his campaign to back the industry and stymie global climate action. The president has sown distrust of climate science and vowed to exit the Paris climate agreement, which the US can do after the election.

Historians say Trump’s presidency has forced a pendulum swing back from the environmental awakening of the 1960s and 70s, when there was bipartisan support for conservation. Protecting the environment – and particularly the climate – is an issue that has become embroiled in political ideology.

FacebookTwitterPinterest The gas-powered Valley Generating Station in the San Fernando Valley on 10 March 2017. Trump officials have been attempting to create a coronavirus relief program for oil and gas corporations. Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images

“What Trump’s done is create a blitzkrieg against the environment … trying to dismantle not just Obama’s environmental achievements but turn back the clock to a pre-Richard Nixon day,” said Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University who is writing a book on the subject.

“It’s just death by a thousand cuts. It’s not one issue, it’s just across the board.”

The administration is under a tight deadline to secure changes before the election. A US law, the Congressional Review Act, allows lawmakers to more easily rescind regulations or rollbacks issued later in an election year.


“They’re hitting a now or never timeline,” said Christine Tezak, the managing director at the analysis firm ClearView Energy Partners. “There’s a lot they want to get done before the election, just in case.”

Some trends are working against Trump – including states advancing environmental goals, and low-cost renewable power and natural gas helping reduce the climate footprint of the electricity sector. Even Houston, an energy hub, has issued a climate action plan. Yet such contributions are not expected to be enough to fulfill America’s role in stalling the global crisis.

Environmental advocates have challenged many of the Trump changes in court – and won. The Natural Resources Defense Council has sued 110 times and says it has prevailed in about 90% of lawsuits resolved.

Recently, judges tossed out a permit for the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline and decided the EPA cannot bar scientists who receive federal grants from serving as agency advisers.

Jeff Holmstead, a lawyer with the firm Bracewell who represents regulated industries and was a deputy EPA administrator under George W Bush, argued that many of the changes characterized as “rollbacks” are actually “sensible, reasonable regulatory reforms” or fixes to problems.

“It’s impossible to understand the Trump administration’s EPA unless you go back and look at the Obama administration,” he said. “In many groups there was a sense that there really had been a great deal of regulatory overreach. And even if you disagree with that, the regulatory programs created problems that they didn’t come back and fix.”
‘This is about who we’re protecting’

Trump’s deregulatory agenda has addressed some issues industry would rather were left alone. The agency is changing the way it calculates the benefits of mercury controls for power plants. Companies had already complied with the rule and most didn’t want it changed. But the revision is meant to set a precedent for the government to ignore some positive health outcomes of regulation.

Trump’s weakened standards often go against science too, critics say.

Last month, for example, the EPA decided not to tighten rules for soot pollution, refuting rebutting guidance from experts that more stringent standards would save lives. The EPA has also repopulated advisory boards with representatives from industry and conservative states and is trying to change what science it can consider when developing health protections.

If a Democrat takes the White House, it will take years to reverse some changes. Moving faster would require Democrats holding both chambers of Congress. Even then, industry would fight hard.

Christopher Cook, the environment chief for Boston, said Trump’s efforts had been “incongruous with all the actions that major cities are taking”.

“The thing I would ask most Americans to consider when they’re supporting stronger regulation is that this isn’t about what we’re protecting against, this is about who we’re protecting,” Cook said, noting that places with more pollution are faring worse under the coronavirus pandemic.

“Covid has been a dry run for the climate crisis. We’ve seen the populations that Covid affects because it attacks the respiratory system. We can’t continue with bad air in America.”

Carrie Lam blames Hong Kong education system for fuelling protests

Pro-Beijing leader pledges to overhaul school system, after weekend of heavy-handed police action

Helen Davidson and agencies
Mon 11 May 2020 THE GUARDIAN

Riot police during a demonstration in a shopping mall in Hong Kong on Sunday. Photograph: Anthony Kwan/Getty Images

Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leader, Carrie Lam, has vowed to overhaul the city’s education system, saying its liberal studies curriculum helped to fuel last year’s violent pro-democracy protests.

Her intervention follows a weekend of heavy-handed police responses to scattered protests across the city, with journalists pepper-sprayed and searched, at least 18 people injured, a 12-year-old student journalist detained, and an estimated 200 people arrested.

Lam described the current secondary school programme as a “chicken coop without a roof” and said her government would soon unveil its plans. She reportedly said students needed protection from being “poisoned” and fed “false and biased information”.

“In terms of handling the subject of liberal studies in the future, we will definitely make things clear to the public within this year,” she told the pro-government Ta Kung Pao newspaper in an interview published on Monday.

Lam has record low approval ratings as leader and is under increasing pressure from Beijing authorities frustrated with the pro-democracy protests which have besieged the city since June.

Recent weeks have seen extraordinary interventions by Beijing into Hong Kong affairs and warnings that it will not “stand idly by” while the “political virus” of protesters continue.


Flash mob protests were called for the weekend after a house committee meeting in Hong Kong’s legislative council turned violent on Friday afternoon, drawing groups mainly to shopping malls to chant slogans and sing, where they were met by large contingents of riot police.
Aaron Mc Nicholas(@aaronMCN)

This boy was asked by the police how old he was; he told them he was 13. He’s since been identified as being part of Student Depth Media.

The issue of secondary schoolers acting as reporters is a tough one, but he did nothing provocative and kept his cool while being singled out pic.twitter.com/W5vabppywlMay 10, 2020

On Sunday police chased protesters through the upmarket complexes and streets of Kowloon.


Live streams of the demonstrations showed police appearing to shoot pepper balls inside a mall where people were shopping and dining with families, pinning a child to the ground, and detaining two student journalists aged 12 and 16. Pandemic prevention laws were also used to issue fines against people for gathering.

Hong Kong police denied they arrested the two children, saying the minors were taken to the police station for their own safety, where their guardians were called to collect them. The mother of the younger boy told media police had threatened to fine her if he was seen again.

The police force said they entered the shopping malls to “stop protesters breaching to peace”, and responded in Mong Kok to protesters setting fires and “seriously disturbing the public order and posing a threat to public safety”.

Hospital officials told RTHK News 18 people presented to emergency rooms with injuries sustained during protests on Sunday, including the legislator Roy Kwong who was shown on live streams being forcefully held to the ground by police in Mong Kok, and a journalist who alleged a police officer had strangled her neck from behind for several seconds.
LO Kin-hei 羅健熙(@lokinhei)

this is the moment lawmaker Roy Kwong is subdued.

He was pushed forcefully to the ground, and riot police rushed to press his head onto the floor with their knees. pic.twitter.com/sTJ1KaYxoPMay 10, 2020

In Mong Kok a large group of reporters were kettled by police, told to kneel and stop filming, and prevented from leaving despite some appearing to have been affected by pepper spray.

Since the protests began last June there are growing concerns about police brutality and rule breaches occurring without consequence, including the targeting of journalists.
Damon Pang(@damon_pang)

#HongKongPolice has asked a large amount of #HongKong journalists to fall on their knees, asking mainstream media to group together & other web-based or student press to stay elsewhere in #MongKok. The reporters are asked to stop rolling their live streams #HongKongProtests pic.twitter.com/alKFoVujzzMay 10, 2020

HK leader blames protests on education, vows system overhaul

AFP May 11, 2020

HK riot police enter a shopping mall to disperse protesters during demonstrations on Labour Day. (AP pic)

HONG KONG: Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leader on Monday vowed to overhaul the city’s education system, arguing its liberal studies curriculum helped fuel last year’s violent pro-democracy protests.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam described the current secondary school programme as a “chicken coop without a roof” and said her government would soon unveil their plans.

“In terms of handling the subject of liberal studies in the future, we will definitely make things clear to the public within this year,” she told the pro-government Ta Kung Pao newspaper in an interview published Monday.

Her comments are likely to inflame those Hong Kongers who fear Beijing is chipping away at the freedoms that make the city a major international draw as political tensions rise once more.

With the backing of Beijing, Hong Kong’s government is pushing ahead with a bill that outlaws insulting China’s national anthem and leading pro-establishment figures are lobbying for an anti-sedition law.

The government says new legislation is needed to curb snowballing support – especially among younger Hong Kongers – for democracy and greater autonomy from China.

Opponents say the laws will cut back on free speech and do little to heal the city’s festering divides.

Hong Kong has some of Asia’s best schools and universities with academic freedoms unseen in mainland China.

Liberal studies was introduced in 2009 as a way to foster critical thinking with schools allowed to choose how they teach it.

But it has become a bete noire for Chinese state media and pro-Beijing politicians who have called for more patriotic education.

In Monday’s interview, Lam said she felt the classes allowed teachers to push their political biases and that greater oversight by the government was now needed.

Hong Kong was convulsed by seven straight months of often-violent youth-led pro-democracy protests last year, with millions hitting the streets.

More than 8,000 people have been arrested – around 17% of them secondary school students.

The mass arrests and the coronavirus pandemic ushered in a period of enforced calm.

But with the finance hub successfully tackling its Covid-19 outbreak – and social distancing measures easing – small protests have bubbled up.

On Sunday, riot police chased flash-mob protesters through multiple shopping malls.

They later used pepper spray and batons against protesters, bystanders and journalists in the district of Mong Kok.

Multiple arrests were made, many of them youngsters.

Lam has resisted calls for universal suffrage or an independent inquiry into the police’s handling of the protests.

In the New Year, she vowed to heal the divisions coursing through Hong Kong, but her administration has offered little in the way of reconciliation or a political solution.

Arrests and prosecutions have continued apace, while Beijing’s offices in the city sparked a constitutional row last month by announcing a greater say in how Hong Kong is run.


Hong Kong: Hundreds arrested as protest movement returns

Police say they have arrested 230 people, some as young as 12, after a weekend of pro-democracy demonstrations. Activists are concerned that pandemic lockdown measures will be used by China to roll back more rights.


Some 230 people were arrested in protests over the weekend in Hong Kong, local authorities said on Monday. Pro-democracy demonstrations have picked back up in the city after weeks of under a coronavirus-related lockdown.

Police said the detainees were between the ages of 12 and 65, and the charges ranged from assaulting an officer to failure to provide proof of identity. Democratic lawmaker Roy Kwong was amongst those arrested, officers said he was being charged with disorderly conduct. Video showed him being surrounded by police and pushed to the ground.

Read more: China: First foreign national prosecuted over Hong Kong protests

On Sunday, protestors had gathered for a sing-along event at a shopping mall when hundreds of riot police were called in to disperse the crowd. According to police, they also blocked roads in the city's Mongkok district and started fires.

Onlookers and journalists also got caught up in the ensuing clashes, with police firing tear gas at reporters and activists alike.


"Some journalists who were sprayed by pepper spray were not allowed to receive immediate treatment, and they were requested to stop filming," said Chris Yeung, chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists' Association.

Several people hospitalized

Footage of the scuffles, which included some people lying on the ground bleeding, were reminiscent of when Hong Kong was brought to a standstill by months of protests last year. At least 18 people had to be brought to local hospitals, the city's Hospital Authority said, including Kwong.

Read more: Lam Wing-Kee: Hong Kong bookseller fights back against China with Taiwan shop

There have been widespread worries amongst democracy advocates in Hong Kong that restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the pandemic will be used by China to further clamp down on rights. For example, a contact-tracing app meant to control who comes into contact with infected people may be used to target anti-Beijing protestors, activists have warned.

Current restrictions only allow public gatherings of a maximum of eight people.

Despite fears across Asia about a possible second wave of the virus, organizers are still planning to hold an annual mass pro-democracy rally on July 1. They say they are expecting two million people to join the even that marks the anniversary of Hong Kong was handed over from British to Chinese rule.

es/mm (AP, Reuters)

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Date 11.05.2020

Cargo ship sailors press-ganged into keeping the world's trade afloat

‘Ticking time bomb’ as contracts aren’t honoured and ports stop crews going ashore even for urgent medical care

Seascape: the state of our oceans is supported by

Karen McVeighMon 11 May 2020
 

Cargo ships wait to onload on the Marmara Sea outside Istanbul. Photograph: Erdem Şahin/EPA


Thomas Stapley-Bunten was due to finish his contract aboard the Al Shamal, a huge cargo ship carrying liquid natural gas, early last month. The ship docked at the LNG terminal in Fos Cavaou, southern France, as planned, but by then the world was in coronavirus lockdown. He couldn’t disembark, and international flights were grounded, preventing him from getting home to Newcastle, UK.

So the 27-year-old former Royal Navy warfare officer has been stuck onboard as the Al Shamal criss-crosses the ocean from Qatar to Turkey and France and back. The 34-man crew, from the Philippines, India, Russia and Ireland, have had their pay increased by 50%, but they just want to go home.

Thomas Stapley-Bunten: ‘People are essentially prisoners. There is no way to get off the ship.’

“We are still loading, sailing and discharging our cargo. But in the back of our minds, we are starting to realise: we are trapped. People are essentially prisoners,” he said. “There is no way to get off the ship.”

Stapley-Bunten is one of 150,000 seafarers stranded at sea on their vessels, forced to work beyond their contracts indefinitely, often seven days a week. Many have families and don’t know when they will see them again. They have been given no choice but to keep going, from port to port, unloading at docks that are open for cargo but closed to the seafarers who deliver it.

Cargo ships are responsible for delivering as much as 90% per cent of the global trade in goods, and the world’s 1.2 million seafarers are a resilient workforce, operating in often dangerous conditions, seven days a week. Britain, Spain and the Netherlands have designated them key workers during the health crisis. But they are being stretched to the limit: working beyond their contracts, exhausted, under stress, and invisible to the governments that rely on the goods they carry.


Cruise companies accused of refusing to let stranded crew disembark due to cost

The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) has received multiple reports of crew members with life-threatening conditions who have been refused emergency treatment at ports, despite the illnesses being unrelated to Covid-19. Unions and shipping and maritime organisations warn of a health and safety crisis. They are lobbying governments to lift restrictions to allow crew members home, but so far with little success.

Many governments are making huge efforts to ensure cargo continues to be delivered safely. But there is no similar effort to help seafarers. The European commission has issued guidelines to facilitate the safe movement of seafarers and shipping companies, suggesting key ports – including Singapore, Rotterdam, Gibraltar and Hong Kong – where crew changes could take place safely. But unions have said port states and governments are not responding.

“Governments are managing to get their citizens home from abroad, passengers from cruise liners, yet there are 150,000 seafarers still out there, working to keep global supply chains open, who can’t get home,” Mark Dickinson, general secretary for Nautilus International, the maritime union, said.


“The EU, the International Transport Workers’ Federation, the International Labour Organization, are saying please get these seafarers home, but individual governments are not pulling their weight. It is becoming a health and safety crisis and it’s getting worse by the day.”

Kees Wiersum, captain of a Dutch-flagged specialised cargo ship currently sailing off the coast of Madagascar, said he is concerned about “fatigue and depression” among his 21-man, mainly Filipino, crew.

“They are in contact with their families, but if something happens, they can’t do anything,” said Wiersum. “We are trying to keep their spirits up, but they will tell you their families need them home. Some of them are expecting babies and they can’t get home for the births.”

Even if they were repatriated to the Philippines, one of the largest suppliers of seafarers in the world, they would face the additional obstacle of overcrowded quarantine facilities in Manila. 

Filipino seafarers stranded amid the coronavirus pandemic rest inside a dormitory in Manila. Photograph: Francis R Malasig/EPA

“Our minister of transport calls us heroes. He said we are vital for the economy,” said Wiersum, 61, a Dutchman who has spent 43 years at sea. “But we are treated like pariahs, like criminals. We can’t go ashore for a walk or a beer, or even for medical help. In Holland, they have repatriated holidaymakers all over the world. But they forgot about us.”

One of the most pressing problems is that seafarers are not being afforded the usual rights to get medical treatment at ports. Fabrizio Barcellona, from the seafarer section of the ITF, said he was receiving 10–15 reports of medical emergencies a day, and those are “just the ones we know about”.

The strain of being forced to work long beyond the end of your contract also increases the risk of accidents, seafarers say. Andrewi Kogankov, 47, from St Petersburg, Russia, has been captain aboard the Spetses Lady oil tanker since November. His contract ran out in March, but the planned crew change in Qatar was cancelled due to the lockdown, forcing him to continue sailing. His contract has now been extended for two months.

Scottish fishermen turn to food banks as Covid-19 devastates industry

“We are feeling exhausted,” Kogankov said. “We are working 24/7, we have a tough schedule, handling dangerous cargo. You have to be careful, you have to concentrate. When you are six, seven months on board, thinking about your family, you can lose your concentration.”

This week the International Maritime Organization warned its 174 member states that trade and global supply chains would “come to a halt” unless crews on ships can be replaced. If the 150,000 seafarers estimated to be working beyond their contracts are not relieved of their duties in two weeks, they will be in breach of maritime regulations.
 Crew wear face masks on a Pacific International Lines ship in Singapore. Photograph: Pacific International Lines/Reuters

Several groups – including the ITF, International Chamber of Shipping and the International Air Transport Association – have proposed a 12-step protocol to allow seafarers to join or leave ships at a series of “repatriation hubs”, from where they could fly home.

Stephen Cotton, general secretary of the ITF, said: “Our message for governments is clear: you cannot continue with a mentality of out of sight, out of mind, and we strongly urge governments to act now before we suffer more serious human or environmental consequences.”

Guy Platten, general secretary of the International Chamber of Shipping, described the plight of seafarers as a “ticking timebomb”.

“We could start to see disruption to trade, and more importantly we risk accidents and mental health issues. Putting this off is no longer an option.”

Indian chemical factory behind deadly gas leak was operating illegally

Company that owns factory admitted in 2019 it did not have valid environmental clearance

Hannah Ellis-Petersen , Aruna Chandrasekhar and Michael Safi
Mon 11 May 2020

Friends and relatives gather outside a Visakhapatnam hospital mortuary to mourn the 12 people who died after a gas leak at the city’s LG Polymers plant. Photograph: AFP/Getty

The chemical factory that leaked gas into a coastal Indian city on Thursday morning, killing at least 12 people and putting hundreds in hospital, was operating illegally until at least the middle of 2019, documents show.

In an affidavit [pdf] filed by LG Polymers in May 2019, as part of its application to expand the plastic plant’s operations, the South Korean multinational admitted it was operating its polystyrene plant without the mandatory environmental clearance from the Indian government.

“As on this date our industry does not have a valid environmental clearance substantiating the produced quantity, issued by the competent authority, for continuing operations,” the company said.

In the early hours of Thursday, toxic styrene fumes began leaking from the LG plant in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh state, as preparations were underway to restart production after a nationwide lockdown. The gas enveloped residents as they slept, causing people to collapse in the streets as they fled their homes. About 1,000 people were exposed to the gas, which causes neurological symptoms including headaches and nausea, as well as burning eyes. Twelve residents, including two children, died.

India's chemical plant disaster: another case of history repeating itself

Read more

The documents show that in December 2017, LG Polymers applied to the central government for the mandatory environmental clearance, in regard to a proposed expansion. The factory had been operating since 2001, but it is unclear whether the company had ever applied for the legally required permit before this.

In its affidavit filed May 2019, LG Polymers informed central and state government it had not fulfilled its legally binding environmental requirement. Prior to this, the factory had operated based only on consent given by the Andhra Pradesh pollution control board. The same pollution control board had also given approval on six separate occasions for LG Polymers to expand its operations.

The company then inexplicably withdrew its application in November 2019, even though the clearance had not yet been granted. The Guardian could not confirm whether it had since received the necessary permits.

Environment clearance involves carrying out scoping and pollution studies, consulting with affected communities and mapping out any potential contaminating impact of the plant, under the scrutiny of an expert panel.

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1:11 Several killed and hundreds in hospital after gas leak from chemical plant in India – video report

“Running without an environment clearance is a crime: consent from the pollution board is not a ground on which they can operate,” a Delhi-based environmental lawyer, Ritwick Dutta, said. “They should have ceased production at least then. Culpability is with the pollution control board, state and central environment authorities. They knew, they should have taken action proactively.”


LG Polymers did not respond to a request for comment.

EAS Sarma, a former government finance and power secretary, who lives in Visakhapatnam, has filed a legal petition against the ministry of environment, the Andhra Pradesh state government and LG Polymers, calling for them to be held accountable for failing to comply with environmental law and to pay damages for contaminating the area. The petition was heard on Friday by the National Green Tribunal, India’s top environmental court. Its ruling is awaited.

The erosion of environmental safeguards and legislation has been evident since the prime minister, Narendra Modi, came to power in 2014. Green laws have been eased in favour of reduced industrial scrutiny and factories are now allowed to apply for retrospective environmental clearance. In March, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change amended the law so that smaller industrial, mining and energy projects will no longer be required to undergo environmental impact assessment.

Environmentalists said this lack of enforcement and accountability on environmental laws meant it was not uncommon for major industries, such as construction or coal mines, to operate without clearance. Federal and local pollution and industrial safety watchdogs are often thinly staffed and poorly trained and equipped.

The cost of poor environmental regulation is high. On Thursday, as well as the LG Polymers leak, there were industrial accidents at two other factories, one in Chhattisgarh and another in Tamil Nadu, that hospitalised several workers. In April, six people, including two toddlers, died when the waste pond burst at a factory in Madhya Pradesh’s Singrauli region, which was allegedly operating in violation of environmental laws, releasing an ash flurry.

VS Krishna of the Andhra Pradesh Human Rights Forum said there was already an attempt by state government to remove LG Polymers from any potential criminal liability for the gas leak.

“No one is talking about criminal liability, there’s not been any deterrent,” he said. “There’s been a spate of accidents in this city and it all ends at compensation. The attempt to whitewash the South Koreans and the government has already started.”

Coronawashing: for big, bad businesses, it's the new greenwashing

A Who’s Who of polluters, tax dodgers and outsourcing vultures are urging us to #StaySafe and clap for the NHS

Mon 11 May 2020 Oscar Rickett

‘HSBC is now showing its caring side ... Yet at the same time it has decided, at Ramadan, to block donations to a Palestinian aid charity.’ Photograph: Maureen McLean/REX/Shutterstock

Last week, the Lancashire Post carried a feelgood yarn about a great British success story. “It’s plane sailing for BAE Systems – with a little help from Carol Vorderman”, ran the headline, accompanied by a picture of the smiling former Countdown maths whizz sitting in the cockpit of a plane.

Lancashire’s biggest private sector employer had “designed and built a ventilator” to aid treatment in the coronavirus pandemic, and they’d done it with a bit of help from the beloved TV personality, who said that her small private plane had delivered some of the vital components.

You had to read to the end of the article to find out that, in fact, the world’s sixth largest arms-producing company had simply manufactured 2,700 ventilator parts, and that “ventilator design did not eventually go forward to full-scale production due to the drop in the need for ventilator technology”.

All of which represents another great day at the office for the communications team of a company that made $21bn in sales in 2018 – 95% of them to military customers – and whose Typhoon and Tornado aircraft have been key to devastating Saudi-led attacks on Yemen, which have killed thousands of civilians and contributed to what the UN calls a “humanitarian catastrophe”.

A key element of coronawashing is, of course, the performance – being seen to be supportive in the face of a national and global tragedy

The word coronavirus has entered our vernacular in the space of a few months – now it’s also swiftly become a shortcut to brand self-awareness and vague corporate caring, with many companies quick to jump on board. A Who’s Who of polluters, tax dodgers and outsource vultures are urging us to #StaySafe, pumping out soft-focus branded content that makes Forrest Gump look like an episode of Chernobyl.

In a neoliberal society in which private companies need to project an image of public-spirited compassion, a global pandemic means back-to-back strategy Zoom calls for corporate communications teams. The mission objective is: how do we look like legends without impacting our profits?

More than that, these are often businesses that helped create and profit from the weakened public services and diminished standards of living that the outbreak of Covid-19 has served to expose, and which have hampered the UK’s response. These feelgood pieces of PR, then, are exercises not just in making it look like corporations are fighting the crisis, but that they also are definitely not culpable in having helped worsen it.


We have become used to sportswashing, greenwashing, pinkwashing and even wokewashing. We are now in the first wave of coronawashing, in which corporations trip over themselves to clap for key workers, before packaging the footage up into moving nuggets of shareable content and promoting them on several social media platforms. In the background, these same companies are asking for government bailouts and taking advantage of a crisis to push for favourable legislation and the slashing of regulations that are more necessary than ever.

And so we have Holly Branson, doing her best Ivanka Trump, tweeting about Virgin ventilator design while her father, Richard, lord of the boomers, moves on from taking legal action against the NHS to pleading for government money.

Then we have HSBC, which, among much else, has been heavily fined in the US for facilitating tax evasion and money laundering and was found to have “helped clients dodge millions in tax”. The banking giant is now showing its caring side by filling newspaper advertising pages with messages of support in this time of crisis. Yet at the same time it has decided, at Ramadan, to block donations to a Palestinian aid charity.

Meanwhile, on YouTube, in a video entitled Thank You For Not Riding, plaintive piano lines soundtrack footage of ordinary people in their homes during pandemic. It’s not until you get to the end of this moving tribute to the common man that you realise it was made by Uber, a company with a litany of questionable work practices, which is now using coronavirus sick-leave measures to argue against giving its drivers employee status.

Examples of coronawashing are everywhere. Amazon, the selfless buddy who does a favour for you behind the scenes and then tells you and all your mutual friends about it, was recently “revealed” as a “mystery £250,000 donor to UK bookshops”. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos makesmore than $8m every single day. His company has been deemed “worst” for aggressive tax avoidance and has long been widely blamed for the destruction of the very independent bookshops it is now so generously and mysteriously donating to.

A key element of coronawashing is, of course, the performance – being seen to be supportive in the face of a national and global tragedy. Primark donated “care packs” to staff at London’s new Nightingale hospital, established to treat coronavirus, but in Bangladesh it was cancelling production of $273m-worth of goods, leaving already immiserated workers destitute. (In the face of adverse publicity, Primark reversed its position.)

All of which recalls a line from, of all people, Peter Buffett, son of investor billionaire Warren. In an essay entitled The Charitable-Industrial Complex, Buffett described taking over some of his father’s philanthropic work and finding himself sitting around the table with power players “searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left”.

This is a neat description of the coronawashers: these corporations obviously weren’t responsible for the global pandemic, but they spent decades eviscerating the public sphere, which, in turn, has reduced the state’s ability to respond to large-scale problems. Now they hope to be patted on the back for throwing out some loose change and clapping the NHS (in an inspiring social media clip that you can like and share).

• Oscar Rickett is a journalist and writer

Trump’s grand alliance: MAGA hat-wearing cosplay fascism meets neoliberal capitalism — and the results could hardly be worse

 May 11, 2020 By Andrew O'Hehir, Salon- Commentary


One thing that unites the MAGA-hat cosplay fascists of the anti-lockdown “movement” and the Karens and Chads of the hashtag-resistance is the shared conviction that the United States of America is special and that nothing that happens here has much relationship to anything that happens anywhere else. OK, we might hear some comparisons to Germany in the 1930s — on both sides, honestly! — but even that is kind of a special declaration of specialness, as if fascism hasn’t experienced something of a spring awakening all around the world.

Normally this blindness to history and context, and this theological belief in the greatness of whichever aspect of Americanness is being foregrounded at the moment — whether that’s constitutional checks and balances or sepia-toned, sentimentalized white supremacy — is totally wrong-headed. I mean, it pretty much always is. But right now, in the deeply improbable timeline where we find ourselves, I think we have to admit that America’s situation is distinctive and unique

Our nation is leading the world — right down the historical crapper. Donald Trump is not solely responsible for this, and I’ll stick to my guns on the argument that he’s not all that important, in world-historical terms, and not nearly as anomalous as he seems. But, sweet Jesus, has he found his moment and made the most of it!

After three-plus years of criminality, corruption and general incompetence — much of it so clownish that a mid-level Cleveland mafia boss of the 1950s would have found it insulting — our bleach-injecting, hurricane-nuking, Greenland-purchasing stable genius has finally stumbled into the major crisis that will define his presidency for posterity. (Assuming there is any.) Yeah, whatever about Ukraine and his impeachment trial — which was this year, unbelievably enough, and it’s only May. That’s now totally forgotten. Robert Mueller, pulling long faces on Capitol Hill and delivering indecipherable double negatives perhaps meant to denote grave constitutional concerns? I don’t even remember who that is, do you?

The hell with that stuff. Along came the coronavirus pandemic, which was in general terms a predictable event but one that nonetheless caught the Western world at a vulnerable moment. The major democracies of Western Europe, all of which are going through significant trauma, handled it well in some cases and alarmingly poorly in others. Then the virus came to the United States, and I have to say: When it comes to fucking this up, we’re No. 1.

The Trump administration’s flamboyant display of overconfidence, lies, mixed messaging, buck-passing, goalpost-shifting, petulant blame games, incoherent policy reversals, conspiracy theories and anti-scientific balderdash has, in a certain sense, been wondrous to behold. It has certainly been revelatory, in that our nation has shown its ass to the world, and from now until the end of time will not plausibly be viewed as a leading power in science or medicine or public health.

This isn’t funny, obviously, and I will stop trying to be entertaining long enough to observe that we can now say with confidence that at least 100,000 Americans will die in this pandemic, and probably many more than that. The fact that Trumpian virus-truthers are out there convincing each other that those numbers have been faked somehow, and that the libtards have some vested interest in running up the score, is simultaneously completely unsurprising at this point and deliriously far beyond anything we could have imagined back in the innocent days of the Benghazi investigation and “but her emails.”

How many of those human lives could have been saved with a coherent and rational response from the federal government? We will likely never know, but whatever the number is, it’s much too large.

Will the Trump administration — and, to speak truthfully, its behind-the-scenes puppetmasters in the corporate suites with sweeping views of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty — succeed in framing those deaths as vaguely regrettable but necessary sacrifices to “the economy” or “the American way of life,” understood as grand, inhuman abstractions not unlike the deities of bygone civilizations? We don’t know that either. It’s cold comfort to conclude that their scheme to pretend that the economy has been “reopened” and everything’s going great and this was the plan all along is stupid and won’t work. But that’s where we are.

I remarked on Twitter recently that it would clarify matters if we replaced all such generic references to “the economy” and “the market” and “America” with “Yog-Sothoth,” an all-devouring Elder God from H.P. Lovecraft’s paranoid mythos. Americans are warriors, who have never hesitated to face death to save Yog-Sothoth! Human lives are sacred, of course — even, hypothetically, those of older and less productive people — but not as sacred as Yog-Sothoth!

Please don’t start mumbling at me about how everything will be different after Joe Biden takes office and the Democrats win the Senate. Just take all that old flea-ridden furniture to the dump and drop it off. Because even if all that happens, we’ll get the usual half-baked, apologetic Democratic policy mélange, in which everybody gets an orange slice and the Wall Street banks and Silicon Valley tycoons get monopoly control of all the orange trees, all the water and all the sunlight. If Republicans are all-in on the Yog-Sothoth cult, Democrats have got some really good focus-group pie charts from 2004 that tell them the smart play is to occupy the middle ground between appeasing it and embracing it.

And we will still be, now and forever, the country that elected a third-rate con man who had no actual interest in being president, and whose only policy agenda was to pursue psychic revenge against the elite liberals who mocked him by encouraging racist backlash, pouring gasoline on the culture wars and demolishing the federal government from the top down. And we’re stuck with him, by the way. Please disabuse yourself of the liberal magical thinking that Trump will go to prison after he leaves office (he won’t), that he won’t somehow be rehabilitated as a “controversial yet charismatic” ex-president (he will) or that he won’t get a presidential library in his dotage and a state funeral when he finally kicks the bucket.

Of course it’s true that any other president, even the dim or reactionary ones, would have done a vastly better job during this emergency. Barack Obama would have been great, probably superior at handling a pandemic than he was at the political and economic crises he actually faced — but Bill Clinton and, for that matter, George H.W. Bush would have managed the situation like competent adults as well. (Even George W. Bush would probably have grasped that it was a time to defer to expert advice.) If there’s a silver lining here — and there really isn’t — there’s no longer any question that Trump will be remembered as a massively useless and destructive president. He had some work to do to get past James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson into “worst episode ever” position, but I think he’s done it now.

But to act like it’s just bad luck that we wound up with a hateful, soulless idiot in the White House at this perilous moment is missing the point on a grand scale. We got here because this is where we are. Donald Trump could only have happened now, and he represents the confluence of various toxic currents that have been thrown into stark relief by the coronavirus pandemic. We can summarize those in familiar terms: the two-party political system is paralyzed, our civic culture is bitterly divided and dysfunctional, economic inequality has reached epic proportions, and the global economic system, undergirded by the philosophy known as “neoliberalism,” is in profound and worsening crisis.

One consequence of all that bad stuff is the global resurgence of fascism, which I mentioned up top. In the American context that has provoked an increasing number of violent hate crimes along with a whole lot of theatrical play-acting, such as the armed goons seen protesting in Lansing, Michigan, and other state capitals. I’m not suggesting those people are not dangerous — read this cautionary essay by Aleksandar Hemon, who lived through the violent collapse of Yugoslavia — but for the moment they’re disorganized and their numbers are small. Most American fascism is just petty, lard-ass older people emitting gas on the internet.

Bands of gun-toting morons staging photo-ops on the statehouse steps, as I read things, is more a symptom of cultural collapse than a cause. It’s also unclear whether Donald Trump has any actual thoughts about the fascist renewal, beyond an instinctive sympathy with malice, racism and stupid caricatures of masculinity. He’s had Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller whispering dark wisdom in his ear at various times, but he possesses no vision of the world beyond his own self-glorification.

When it comes to the free-trade and fiscal austerity policies identified with neoliberalism, the equation is different: Trump doesn’t understand those things and instinctively dislikes them, which might be the only borderline-redeeming quality of his presidency. Bannon tried to push him toward full-throated “national socialism,” which would never have worked but at least had the virtue of logical consistency. Which, come to think of it, is no longer a virtue!

After following a trail of billion-dollar crumbs into the forest to the cabin in the woods haunted by Mitch McConnell and the CEO class, Trump has now thoroughly imbibed the brainworms of the Yog-Sothoth paradox, served in a delicious cocktail of Lysol and hydroxychloroquine. That would be the paradox through which a system that oppresses almost everyone in endless cycles of overwork, bottomless debt and pointless consumption, while massively enriching a few, is identified with “freedom.” This is how neoliberal capitalism and the rising tide of fascism, which from the beginning were supposed to be incompatible, have become aligned.

If this vision of freedom is completely incoherent or psychotic, in America it gets invested with all kinds of symbolic meaning. The “freedom” to go into Publix without wearing a mask or to buy a toaster oven without standing in line — like the freedom to reject scientific thought as “cultural Marxism” or the freedom to hold fantastic and irrational opinions because coastal liberals find them obnoxious — becomes a totem of heroic individual resistance to tyranny, a marker of identification with the founding fathers and the noble “lost cause” of the Confederacy and John Wayne at the end of “Stagecoach.”

It’s perfectly true that most Americans do not hold blatantly insane beliefs about freedom and science and history and the nature of our economy, and that large majorities appear to favor what could broadly be called social-democratic solutions to our nation’s worsening problems. That may yet create legitimate reasons for optimism in the decades ahead, but in the short and medium term it’s nowhere near as encouraging as it ought to be. W.B. Yeats’ lines from “The Second Coming” get quoted too often, because they’re irresistible:


The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Given our political duopoly, “the best” must be read as “the best available option,” that being the not-blatantly-insane party, which — even faced with the cult of Yog-Sothoth — remains consumed by existential doubt and internal conflict, not to mention pathologically averse to anything that resembles a large or ambitious plan not cloaked in immense draperies of bewildering bureaucratic language.

It’s not just that the NBI Party has selected a hilariously terrible candidate to run against Trump, or that it keeps flirtatiously trying to strain the biggest chunks of fascism out of the neoliberal Clorox cocktail and chug the remainder. Those things are only true in the first place because everyone in mainstream American politics remains trapped in the toxic myth of American exceptionalism — the narrative frame that insists we are a special nation anointed by God and invested with divine purpose, if only we can figure out what that is.

That’s a blatantly insane belief that has distorted our entire history, and has now brought us Donald Trump and the national tragedy and humiliation of this pandemic. Those things are not anomalies, and we cannot wish them away. We will never get past them unless we free ourselves from the collective delusion of our national greatness. Time is running out.