Mexican Doctors Fighting The Coronavirus Are Being Attacked From All Sides — Including By Their Own President

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been forced to apologize after insinuating that doctors were greedy.

Karla ZabludovskyBuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From  Mexico City May 11, 2020,

Henry Romero / Reuters

MEXICO CITY — As COVID-19 cases climb in Mexico, a row has broken out between the president and medical groups after he accused some doctors of only being in it for the money.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been criticized by former health ministers for botching the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. At a press conference on Friday, López Obrador turned on his critics, saying that under previous administrations, the first question doctors would ask their patients was not about their condition, but how much money they had. He did not specify how he knew this, who the doctors he was talking about were, or whether they worked in the public or private sector.

The accusation prompted at least 23 colleges and associations across the country to demand a public apology, calling it “irresponsible” and “shameful.”

“This is offensive to the entire medical guild,” the Mexican Association of General Surgery said in a written statement. “It is not a moment to criticize, disqualify or censure” healthcare.

For some, López Obrador’s claim was no surprise, as he often rails against the “neoliberal” governments that came before him. He uses his daily press conferences to attack critics and the media, and has consistently underplayed the coronavirus health crisis — he was still out hugging supporters and touring the country well after his own experts advised people to stay home.

After coming under fire, López Obrador tried to walk back his accusation at Monday's press conference, saying that if doctors took his statement to mean he thought they were looking to enrich themselves, “I offer them an apology.” He then went on to say that the socialist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara had been a doctor.

Protests over the lack of protective gear have broken out in several states as dozens of health workers have contracted COVID-19. Shortages hobbled the healthcare system even before the pandemic hit, after López Obrador ordered steep budget cuts that delayed surgeries and led to layoffs. Last year, Germán Martínez, the head of the social security institute, which provides healthcare access to more than 12 million Mexicans, resigned after calling the cuts “inhumane.”


Alfredo Estrella / Getty Images
A health worker holds a sign reading, "I am a nurse. I fight for you and for my life #stayathome," during a protest in Mexico City on April 13.

Dozens of health workers have been subjected to verbal and physical attacks, including a nurse who was doused with bleach by a stranger as she walked home from work and an emergency room doctor who was detained by police as he tried to drive into his neighborhood. In the State of Mexico, people broke into a public hospital and punched medical personnel they accused of injecting patients with deadly solutions to kill them.

“No other country in the world has seen their medical staff as abandoned as we’ve been here,” said Francisco Moreno, an infectious disease expert at Mexico City’s ABC Hospital, a private hospital. “The prime example of that has been given by the president.”

López Obrador’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Most unsettling for many in the medical community here is the sense that they are in the dark about the magnitude of the crisis in Mexico. According to health officials, there are 35,022 confirmed cases and 3,465 deaths, but complaints of widespread underreporting have cast doubt about these numbers. With about 1,000 tests per 1 million people, Mexico has one of the lowest testing rates in the world, according to the private research firm Statista.

Officials maintain that about 75% of hospital beds with access to a ventilator nationwide, and 38% in Mexico City, remain available, but doctors are doubtful. In Mexico City, virtually all of these beds in private hospitals are in use, according to Moreno.

Last week, reports by El País, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times pointed to a significantly higher death toll in Mexico than the government has reported.

José Narro Robles, who served as health minister under the previous administration, has called into question Mexico’s official COVID-19 count, warning that many cases are being reported as influenza or atypical pneumonia.

When asked about these accusations on Friday, López Obrador waved them off as political wrangling and said that prior to his government, corruption had reigned in the healthcare system.

But López Obrador is facing reports of corruption within his own government. A company owned by León Manuel Bartlett, the son of one of his allies, has come under investigation for selling overpriced ventilators to the state, at the cost of $65,000 each — rather than the $20,000 they cost before the crisis broke out — according to Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad, a civil anti-corruption group.

Karla Zabludovsky is the Mexico bureau chief and Latin America correspondent for BuzzFeed News and is based in Mexico City.

As states weigh human lives versus the economy, history suggests the economy often wins

April 29, 2020 

A 1620 engraving depicts tobacco being prepared for export from Jamestown, Virginia. Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Image

Policymakers are beginning to decide how to reopen the American economy. Until now, they’ve largely prioritized human health: Restrictions in all but a handful of states remain in effect, and trillions have been committed to help shuttered businesses and those who have been furloughed or laid off.

The right time to start opening up sectors of the economy has been up for debate. But history shows that in the wake of calamities, human life often loses out to economic imperatives.

As a historian of early America who has written about tobacco and the aftermath of an epidemic in New England, I’ve seen similar considerations made in the face of disease outbreaks. And I believe that there are crucial lessons to be drawn from two 17th-century outbreaks during which economic interests of a select few won out over moral concerns.
Tobacco, a love story

During the 16th century, Europeans fell in love with tobacco, an American plant. Many enjoyed the sensations, like increased energy and decreased appetite, that it produced, and most who wrote about it emphasized its medicinal benefits, seeing it as a wonder drug that could cure a variety of human ailments. (Not everyone celebrated the plant; King James I of England warned that it was habit-forming and dangerous.)

By the early 17th century, the English grew increasingly eager to establish a permanent colony in North America after failing to do so in places like Roanoke and Nunavut. They saw their next opportunity along the James River, a tributary of Chesapeake Bay. Following the establishment of Jamestown in 1607, the English soon realized that the region was perfect for cultivating tobacco.

The newcomers, however, didn’t know they had settled in an ideal breeding ground for the bacteria that cause typhoid fever and dysentery. From 1607 to 1624, approximately 7,300 migrants, most of them young, traveled to Virginia. By 1625 there were only about 1,200 survivors. A 1622 uprising by local Powhatans and drought-induced shortages of food contributed to the death toll, but most perished from disease. The situation was so dire that some colonists, too weak to produce food, resorted to cannibalism.

Aware that such stories might dissuade possible migrants, the Virginia Company of London circulated a pamphlet that acknowledged the problems but stressed that the future would be brighter.

And so English migrants continued to arrive, recruited from the armies of young people who had moved to London looking for work, only to find scant opportunities. Jobless and desperate, many agreed to become indentured servants, meaning they would work for a planter in Virginia for a set period of time in exchange for passage across the ocean and compensation at the end of the contract.

Tobacco production soared, and despite a drop in the price due to the overproduction of the crop, planters were able to amass substantial wealth.
From servants to slaves

Another disease shaped early America, even though its victims were thousands of miles away. In 1665, the bubonic plague struck London. The next year, the Great Fire consumed much of the city’s infrastructure. Bills of mortality and other sources reveal that the city’s population may have dropped by as much as 15% to 20% during this period.

The timing of the twinned catastrophes couldn’t have been worse for English planters in Virginia and Maryland. Though demand for tobacco had only grown, many indentured servants from the first wave of recruits had decided to start their own families and farms. Planters desperately needed labor for their tobacco fields, but English workers who might have otherwise emigrated instead found work at home rebuilding London.

With fewer laborers coming from England, an alternative started to seem increasingly attractive to planters: the slave trade. While the first enslaved Africans had arrived in Virginia in 1619, their numbers grew significantly after the 1660s. In the 1680s, the first anti-slavery movement appeared in the Colonies; by then, planters had come to rely on imported slave labor.

Yet planters didn’t need to prioritize labor-intensive tobacco. For years, Colonial leaders had been trying to convince planters to grow less labor-intensive crops, like corn. But enamored by the allure of profits, they stuck with their cash crop – and welcomed ship after ship of bound laborers. The demand for tobacco outweighed any sort of moral consideration.

Legalized slavery and indentured servitude are no longer familiar parts of the American economy, but economic exploitation persists.

Despite the heated anti-immigration rhetoric that has come from the Oval Office in recent years, the United States continues to rely heavily on immigrant workers, which includes farm workers. Their importance has become even more apparent during the pandemic, and the government has even declared them “essential.” After Trump announced his immigration ban on April 20, the executive order exempted farm workers and crop pickers, whose numbers have actually grown under his administration.

So even before states were weighing whether to reopen nonessential businesses, these laborers were on the frontlines, working and sleeping in close proximity, immunocompromised due to chemical exposure, with little access to proper medical care.

And yet rather than reward them for performing this essential work, some in the government are reportedly trying to slash their low wages even further, while giving farm owners a multi-billion-dollar bailout.

Whether it’s a plague or pandemic, the story tends to remain the same, with the quest for profits eventually prevailing over concerns for human health.

Author

Peter C. Mancall
Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

THE CONVERSATION

Pediatricians seeing a growing demand for medical cannabis for kids

May 10, 2020


There are only a handful of conditions in which evidence supports the use of medical cannabis in children. (Shutterstock)

Most Canadian pediatricians are shying away from medical cannabis for patients, knowing that it can hurt the developing brain and that there isn’t much research to guide them.

But physicians say they are getting increasing requests for cannabis from parents, for a growing list of conditions.

Dr. Adam Rapoport, medical director of the pediatric palliative care team at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, says, “This is mostly driven by parents, and doctors have fallen behind.”

Lauren Kelly agrees. “It’s happening and we’re playing catch-up.”

Kelly is a pharmacologist and scientific director of the Canadian Childhood Cannabinoid Clinical Trials, a national research consortium. Her group is working quickly to develop answers to questions about cannabis for children. “The use of it has far outpaced the evidence, and that’s the biggest challenge.”

Fifty per cent of pediatricians surveyed in 2017 had at least one patient who had used cannabis for medical reasons in the past year. But the cannabis use is not stemming from prescriptions (called physician authorizations). Only four per cent of pediatricians said they had authorized medical cannabis for one of their patients.
Research still lacking for many conditions

Since then, pediatricians like Dr. Daniel Flanders, director of Kindercare Pediatrics in Toronto, say that requests have grown only more frequent and the reasons for the requests more diverse.

Flanders is asked about medical cannabis at least two to three times a week for issues such as chronic pain, mental health issues, arthritis, ADHD and sleep problems.

In a survey, only four per cent of pediatricians said they had authorized medical cannabis for one of their patients. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

But there are only a very few conditions for which the science is solid when it comes to using cannabis in children.

Pointing to a handful of well-executed randomized controlled trials and a recent systematic review of the literature on medical cannabis for complex pediatric seizure disorders, Dr. Evan Lewis, a pediatric neurologist in Toronto, says there is very good evidence supporting its use in certain seizure conditions, such as Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, Dravet syndrome and tuberous sclerosis.

“Outside of that, it is kind of extrapolating from the evidence and using less robust evidence in the literature,” he says.

That’s not stopping some parents and physicians from pushing the boundaries.

It’s a path worth taking in some cases, Lewis says.

Lewis is now using cannabis for other types of seizures, and also authorizes cannabis in select cases for a range of conditions such as migraines, concussions, sleep problems, autism, tics, movement disorders and behavioural problems in children with neurological conditions. It’s also being used in Canada for symptom relief in palliative care, chronic pain disorders, spasticity, incurable malignancies and ADHD.

But Lewis says that the research is not as high-quality as he would like, and for many conditions, does not exist at all.
Dosing issues

Another difficulty is that standard dosing has not been established and experimental cannabis protocols often use purified cannabidiol (CBD), a compound in marijuana with no psychoactive effects.

This type of CBD-only preparation is not available for patients in Canada, so physicians have to choose products that contain both CBD and the compound delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is psychoactive and gives users a high.

A parent holds a bottle of cannabis oil used to treat her son’s seizures caused by Dravet syndrome. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Dr. Richard Huntsman, pediatric neurologist at the University of Saskatchewan, is part of a team trying to solve the problem of dosing regimens for children with complex seizure disorders. In addition to establishing a target dose using oils, his study also measured CBD and THC levels in the blood and showed that these levels remained low. The study used an oil that contained 20 parts CBD to one part THC.

“People are very worried about their kids getting high,” he said, but based on these results, he adds, this is “not so much of a worry,” at least in this population.

And contrary to common belief, he found that the medication appeared to help with cognitive function, instead of impairing it. He is cautious though, and warns that the study was done in a small number of children.
Guidelines in development

With the cannabis landscape changing quickly in Canada, doctors are looking for advice. The Canadian Paediatric Society plans to publish guidance documents this summer, according to its cannabis working group co-chair, Dr. Christina Grant, an adolescent health specialist at McMaster Children’s Hospital.

In the meantime, she says that every day, she advises teens in her Hamilton office that cannabis is not a good treatment option for anxiety and depression.

“The effect is the opposite,” she says, noting that one-sixth of youth who experiment with cannabis, even for self-medication, develop cannabis use disorder.

While physicians await the recommendations, Kelly says that her research consortium has launched five new clinical trials of medical cannabis in kids, and other Canadian research groups are quickly trying to play catch-up as well.

“I certainly don’t think it can be the cure-all. It’s not magic. But there are some areas that are showing promise … we should be investing in research,” says Kelly.

Author

Michelle Ward
Academic Pediatrician & Journalist, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

THE CONVERSATION

Under the guise of coronavirus response, Alberta justifies education cuts

May 11, 2020

With Alberta schools closed, Caleb Reid, 17, and his siblings are home schooling in Cremona, Alta., shown here, March 23, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Alberta has begun easing restrictions following coronavirus shutdowns. As Premier Jason Kenney has noted, the hard-hit province has been affected by more than the pandemic. Oil prices and sales have plummeted and remain well below government budgetary projections.

But in the face of these mounting crises, some of the premier’s decisions have made things even worse for Albertans.

As education scholars with expertise in kindergarten to Grade 12 education, counselling psychology and adult learning, we believe the decision to target educational assistants through funding cuts is one troubling example.

In late March, while Alberta families scrambled to figure out how to make the most of at-home education, the Kenney government cut provincial funding normally covering as many as 25,000 EAs, substitute teachers and other support workers, putting jobs at risk.

Kenney’s acrimony toward critics, public sector workers and federal Liberals seems to have underpinned some of his policy decisions.
‘Redirected’ to COVID-19

A ministry of education statement said funds would be redirected “to support Alberta’s COVID-19 response.” Education Minister Adriana LaGrange assured Albertans that layoffs were temporary.

But the cuts are not just a response to the immediate crisis. They are in line with a larger political agenda of diminishing the public sector, including public education.

As well, at a time when Canadians are being told that “we’re all in this together,” the cuts seem to exacerbate provincial and federal tensions by effectively forcing the federal government to shoulder provincial education costs.

In one statement, a ministry of education spokesperson said that “any staff who are affected by this temporary funding adjustment are encouraged to apply for the federal government’s enhanced employment insurance program as well as other support programs for Canadian workers.”

The cuts turned education workers into handy pawns in Kenney’s larger feud with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals.

A child and adult walk outside in Calgary, in April 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Cuts to vital educational assistants

When school shutdowns were announced in mid-March, LaGrange guaranteed that school authorities would “receive their full allotment of funding for the 2019-20 school year.” The later cutbacks were justified by claims that EAs and other support workers were “not being utilized in an at-home learning environment.”

Although it’s clear that some workers, such as bus drivers, could not continue in their jobs, EAs were wrongly targeted.

While teachers have had to find space to continue their jobs from home, teaching is not a desk job. Teaching involves regular contact and relationships with students.

Students and parents are experiencing greater stress and risk becoming overwhelmed as they grapple with COVID-19.

Read more: 4 strategies to support vulnerable students when schools re-open after coronavirus

The relationships that teachers, EAs, and other support staff develop with students matter.
Crucial for equitable schooling

In inclusive classrooms, “all children are welcomed and valued … [and] contribute to regular schooling and classroom-learning activities,” notes inclusive education scholar Tim Loreman. Loreman’s review of 57 scholarly articles confirms that effective inclusion requires both specialized staff and revised curriculum and teaching. Loreman also finds that such education benefits all students.

Successive Alberta governments, including this one, have set procedures for assessing students’ special needs. If a student has an assessment that determines instructional support, like being paired with an EA, is warranted, access to such support is a right.

If anything, EAs are even more important now.

Already vulnerable children and families, especially those dealing with special learning needs, are most at-risk without the support of EAs. Teachers who suddenly have become online educators, often using unfamiliar platforms, lack time for individualized work with students. On top of supporting students with special needs, many EAs can provide vital technical support for teachers.
Impact on workers

For workers targeted by the cutbacks, the implications exceed losing a job and a salary. Psychiatric research into the links between employment and mental health establishes that work contributes to people’s well-being, particularly if workplace conditions are favourable. The benefits of work are “most apparent when compared with the well-documented detrimental mental health effects of unemployment.”

In effect, these cutbacks traded off spending on education now for increased spending on mental health down the road.

Read more: Precarious employment in education impacts workers, families and students
Layoffs are counter-productive

When Trudeau introduced the wage subsidy program for businesses impacted by COVID-19, he explained that these financial measures were designed “to keep businesses and workers connected” and help “businesses not just stay afloat … but be ready to gear back up when things get better” and to avoid layoffs.

Although public schools are not businesses and school boards can’t access that program, the logic is the same: Organizations, including schools, will be better able to resume normal operations more quickly, smoothly and effectively if they retain as many workers as possible.

Kenney’s effort to terminate thousands of educators flies in the face of that logic.
Chipping away at public education

Kenney’s negative relationship with public sector workers, including teachers, precedes the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whether by cutting funding to education, excluding teachers from a curriculum redesign project or transferring the management of their pensions over their objections, Kenney and the United Conservative Party government have steadily refused to consult with teachers or respect their expertise.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney updates media on measures taken to respond to COVID-19 in Edmonton in March 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

This is consistent with an agenda to diminish the public sector, including public education. In September 2019, the government ordered school boards with the word “public” in their names to remove it. Again, there was no consultation or explanation.

Political scientist Duane Bratt explained why so many were concerned about the removal:

“ … there has been suspicion of the Kenney government toward public education for a while. He is closely aligned with private schools, with homeschoolers.”

Kenney himself attended private secondary schools.

Lessons to be learned

So, what are some lessons here? First, experts, including professionals, bring vital knowledge to policy discussions and sound decision making.

Second, public policies and services are interlinked. Education policy is also economic, public and mental health, social and workplace policy.

Third, policy can have unexpected outcomes, as it is interpreted and implemented on the ground. While some boards of education laid off EAs, others dealt with the cutbacks in unexpected ways.

The Calgary Board of Education (CBE) trimmed facility and administrative costs and laid off higher-paid psychologists. The CBE was able to retain “school-based staff that provide the most direct support for student learning,” including EAs and substitute teachers.

Fourth, ideologically based opposition to the public sector should not overtake crucial services and respect for workers. That holds especially true during a full-blown crisis.

Finally, even in a time of crisis and turbulence, thoughtful policy that respects citizens’ well-being is the ultimate evidence of a meaningfully democratic system.

THE CONVERSATION 

Authors
Kaela Jubas
Associate Professor, Adult Learning, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary

Jackie Seidel
Associate professor of curriculum and learning, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary
\

Jaime L. Beck
Instructor, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary

Kaori Wada
Assistant Professor, Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary
Disclosure statement

Kaela Jubas receives funding from SSHRC (not directly related to this article).

Jaime Beck receives funding from the Taylor Institute for research related to teaching and learning at the post-secondary leve, not for work related to this article. Jaime is also a co-chair of the non-profit organization the Mahatma Gandhi Canadian Foundation for World Peace.

Kaori Wada receives funding from the Taylor Institute for research related to teaching and learning at the post secondary level, which is not related to this article.

Jackie Seidel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Partners

BBC Sports Andrew Cotter commentates penguin parade on Australia's Phillip Island

Voiceover narrates fairy penguin’s high-stakes waddle from shoreline to burrows in parade that used to attract thousands of visitors nightly

 With live sport now a scarce resource, BBC commentator Andrew Cotter has lent his distinctive voice to the fairy penguins of Phillip Island.

He has narrated the birds’ nightly waddle back to their burrows, turning Victoria’s famous penguin parade into a high-stakes, long-distance race.

“They gather on the beach, the tension mounting, and away they go! There’s the defending champion, wearing his familiar navy blue and white. Great waddling style,” Cotter says as one penguin hits the lead.

Cotter has become one of the coronavirus pandemic’s viral hits after commentating the antics of his labradors, Olive and Mabel, in videos posted to Twitter. His video “Game of Bones” now has more 30m views.

Coronavirus stars: BBC sports commentator Andrew Cotter's dogs Olive and Mabel go viral

Read more

It seems his latest video is in collaboration with Visit Victoria and Phillip Island Nature Parks – an attempt to draw international attention to one of Australia’s biggest tourist attractions.

“I knew all about the penguins of Phillip Island before this and have visited Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road or Mornington Peninsula every year for the past 15 years,” Cotter said.

“I love it all down there so this was a natural fit.”

The daily parade of penguins, who waddle from the shoreline to their burrows, attracts thousands of visitors to Phillip Island Nature Park every year.

Andrew Cotter(@MrAndrewCotter)

Some sports are slower. More about the strategy. pic.twitter.com/JMBaGJ1tSd

April 9, 2020

Catherine Basterfield, the park’s chief executive, said: “The penguins are quite comfortable in front of an audience as they are used to doing their nightly waddle in front of visitors at the penguin parade, but this kind of global recognition goes above and beyond.

“The penguins never fail to entertain with their antics, and Andrew’s wonderful wit has captured this beautifully.”

The Penguin Parade is still closed to visitors due to Covid-19 lockdowns, but staff are still on-site to keep an eye on the wild penguin community.

Even when large gatherings are allowed once again in Victoria, tourism sites will likely continue to struggle. Large tour groups from around the world make up a significant portion of revenue, but there is still no timeline for when Australia’s international border restrictions will be eased.

Humans and Neanderthals 'co-existed in Europe for far longer than thought'


Cave objects suggest modern humans and Neanderthals shared continent for several thousand years


Nicola Davis
Mon 11 May 2020
 

Stone artefacts found at Bacho Kiro cave. Photograph: Tsenka Tsanova/SWNS


Modern humans were present in Europe at least 46,000 years ago, according to new research on objects found in Bulgaria, meaning they overlapped with Neanderthals for far longer than previously thought.

Researchers say remains and tools found at a cave called Bacho Kiro reveal that modern humans and Neanderthals were present at the same time in Europe for several thousand years, giving them ample time for biological and cultural interaction.

“Our work in Bacho Kiro shows there is a time overlap of maybe 8,000 years between the arrival of the first wave of modern humans in eastern Europe and the final extinction of Neanderthals in the far west of Europe,” said Prof Jean-Jacques Hublin, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, a co-author of the research, adding that that was far longer than previously thought. Some scholars have suggested a period of not more than 3,000 years.

Neanderthals were roaming Europe until about 40,000 years ago. “It gives a lot of time for these groups to interact biologically and also culturally and behaviourally,” Hublin added.

Writing in studies published in the journals Nature and Nature Ecology & Evolution, Hublin and colleagues report how they excavated Bacho Kiro, a site that has been studied several times over the past decades. Previous excavations revealed human remains and tools of a very specific type known as “initial upper palaeolithic”. Hublin said such stone and bone tools showed features both of tools known to have been used by Neanderthals and toolkits used by later modern humans, with much debate over which hominin was making them.


However, previous dating of the site ran into a number of difficulties, including from contamination. Now Hublin and colleagues have carried out new excavations and unearthed more tools and remains, including bone fragments and a tooth revealed by methods including ancient DNA analysis to be from early modern humans.

The team report that radiocarbon dating of modern human remains found in the same layer as the tools suggested the remains dated to between 46,790 and 42,810 years ago, while a dating technique based on the rate of changes in DNA from mitochondria, the “powerhouses” of cells, suggested a date of between 44,830 and 42,616 years ago.

The team say the same sort of tools were found in the layer beneath, alongside animal remains dating to almost 47,000 years ago. “We are talking about the oldest modern humans in Europe,” said Hublin, adding that their archaeological context was “crystal clear”. In other words, this group was making initial upper palaeolithic tools .

Among further discoveries, the researchers found jewellery fashioned from cave bear teeth that they say is strikingly similar to that produced by the very last Neanderthals. They say this adds weight to the idea the latter may have adopted innovations as a result of contact with early modern humans.

“Some people would say that is a coincidence; I don’t believe it,” said Hublin, noting there was already genetic evidence that the groups interbred. “I don’t see how you can have biological interaction between groups without any sign of behavioural influence of one on the other.”

Prof Chris Stringer, an expert in human origins from London’s Natural History Museum, said while his team had previously discovered what was possibly an incomplete modern human skull in Greece from more than 200,000 years ago, the new research was important.

“In my view this is the oldest and strongest published evidence for a very early upper palaeolithic presence of Homo sapiens in Europe, several millennia before the Neanderthals disappeared,” he said.

He added that doubt remained about whether Neanderthals were influenced in their jewellery making by early modern humans.

Stringer said the new study highlighted several mysteries, including why the appearance of such early modern humans in Europe 46,000 years ago did not lead to their earlier establishment and an earlier disappearance of Neanderthals.

“One possibility is that the dispersals into Europe [of modern humans of the initial upper palaeolithic] were by pioneering, small bands, who could not sustain their occupations in the face of a larger Neanderthal presence, or the unstable climates of the time,” he said.

ROGUE NATION USA 
Interpol issues red notice for 'fugitive' Anne Sacoolas

Suspect in UK death of teenager Harry Dunn fled to US claiming diplomatic immunity
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

Mon 11 May 2020
 

Harry Dunn was 19 when he was killed after his motorcycle was hit by a car.

 Photograph: Family Handout/PA

An Interpol notice has been circulated worldwide making Anne Sacoolas in effect a fugitive from justice if she sets foot outside her native United States.

Sacoolas was charged in the UK with causing the death by dangerous driving of a 19-year-old motorcyclist, Harry Dunn, last August.

The US refused to accept an extradition warrant, saying she enjoyed diplomatic immunity at the time of the crash. Her husband worked at a CIA spying base, RAF Croughton in Northampton.

She and her family left the country with the knowledge of the Foreign Office a fortnight later. The Foreign Office agreed she had diplomatic immunity, a point disputed by lawyers working for Dunn’s family.

Boris Johnson and the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, have both asked for Sacoolas to be extradited, but the political pressure has led nowhere. Donald Trump instead suggested compensation and tried to engineer a meeting in the White House between Sacoolas and Dunn’s parents.

Radd Seiger, a lawyer for the Dunn family, said Northamptonshire police had confirmed that the Interpol notice had been issued, adding that this meant in the Foreign Office’s view she did not have diplomatic immunity at the time of her initial arrest. “Red notices would not be served on valid diplomats,” he said. “It means she would be arrested if she sought to leave the United States.”

He continued: “It is time for her to come back to the UK and on behalf of the family I urge the authorities both in London and Washington to make that happen. It is time to do the right thing.” He said she would receive a fair trial in the UK.

Seiger said: “It is a monumental scandal. The UK government know it and that is why Harry’s parents were treated like lepers. Both governments were and are terrified that this was all going to be exposed. Well thanks to the free press it has been. Parliament must now launch a full-scale inquiry into what happened.”

Seiger is specifically angry that the Foreign Office, within days of the accident, agreed with US lawyers that Sacoolas had diplomatic immunity, when this claim was at best arguable in court.

A red notice has been described as an international wanted person’s notice but is not in itself an arrest warrant.

Interpol issued nearly 14,000 red notices last year. It cannot compel the law enforcement authorities in any country to arrest someone who is the subject of a red notice.

Each member country decides what legal value it gives to a red notice and the authority of their law enforcement officers to make arrests.

Topics

Factory behind India gas leak operated illegally until 2019

Company that owns factory admitted 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.

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 a flood of ash slurry.


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.”

BARRICK GOLD 

Politics and Porgera: why Papua New Guinea cancelled the lease on one of its biggest mines

The announcement not to renew the goldmine lease is fraught but part of an attempt to ‘take back PNG

Jonathan Pryke and Shane McLeod

Tue 12 May 2020
 

A view of tailings at Barrick Gold Corp’s Porgera mine, Papua New Guinea. Photograph: Catherine Coumans/Reuters

Late in April, in the middle of a global pandemic and slow-boiling domestic economic crisis, the government of Papua New Guinea made the surprising announcement not to extend the mining lease on a goldmine that contributes roughly 10% of the country’s total exports.

The announcement not to renew the special mining lease for the Porgera mine was a shock, not least to the mine’s operator, Barrick Gold, and their joint venture partner Zijin Mining.

Papua New Guinea will not be dependent on Australia in 10 years, new PM says

Porgera is one of Papua New Guinea’s longest running goldmines. Operating for 30 years in the highlands province of Enga, this large mine was expected to produce around 250,000 ounces of gold in 2019.It employs more than 5,000 people and the 5% landowner and provincial equity stakehas helped to fast-track the efforts to bring services and education to one of the country’s most remote provinces.

While a significant economic contributor, the mine has also brought with it significant controversy, including concerns over human rights, environmental issues and conflicts over compensation.

While the government seems within its rights not to renew the lease, the blindsiding of the announcement has led Barrick to lash out, saying the move was “tantamount to nationalisation without due process”.Sign up for the Guardian’s weekly Pacific coronavirus email

So why has the government taken this drastic action?


Prime Minister Marape was sworn into office in May 2019 and quickly set a narrative to “take back PNG”, arguing that the PNG people were not getting their fair share of the benefits of the formal economy and major natural resource projects. PNG’s ongoing economic crisis has been well documented and is only set to deepen in the fallout of Covid-19. As the tenth most natural resource-dependent economy in the world it is no surprise that the natural resource sector found itself in the government’s crosshairs.

The government is in the middle of negotiating a number of major natural resource deals – PNG LNG expansion, Papua LNG, P’nyang LNG, Frieda River copper and gold, and Wafi Golpu gold – that have the potential to transform PNG’s economic prospects for decades if properly negotiated. The 2020 oil price collapse has sent many of these projects back into the freezer and forced the government to narrow its sights. The decision on Porgera is an attempt from the government to both harvest more benefit from existing projects and to send a shot across the bow to projects still in negotiation that they mean business.

The government is walking a tightrope. It should, of course, be looking to extract every cent of benefit from these projects that it can. But if the government pushes too far, and acts too erratically, already weak investor sentiment will evaporate. While the people of Papua New Guinea own the resources under their feet, the PNG resource industry is not yet at a point where it can exploit them without foreign capital and expertise.

It’s no secret that pressure for a move on Porgera was a theme in local politics. The popular Enga governor, Peter Ipatas, was keen for the province to get a greater stake in the mine’s future. Ipatas is one of the country’s most successful politicians, and was among a group of influential governors whose moves last year swung the prime ministership to Marape.

Yet the limits of the government’s approach are already being tested. Marape had hoped Barrick would keep the mine operating while negotiating its exit. But the company’s firm refusal of that option and its immediate shutdown of the mine have demonstrated its bargaining power. Barrick’s Chinese joint venture partner, Zijin, has flagged international political ramifications, warning the lease dispute could damage bilateral relations between PNG and China.

PNG could find another operator to take over the mine and re-open it, but would likely find that tricky in the midst of a high-stakes legal dispute.

The immediate prospects are shaping up as a lose-lose outcome for both sides. PNG is taking the income hit right when it needs to stabilise its finances. But any compromise to allow Barrick to continue operating would dismantle the strong local support that Marape has won by being seen to “take back” the mine for the country.

Barrick is big and multinational enough to survive without the Porgera revenue, but the longer a legal dispute with the government goes on, the more its claims to a social licence to return to operations would be diminished.

Both sides might welcome a timely intervention by the courts that could give them space to step away from the high-stakes conflict and negotiate an appropriate face-saving compromise.

Medieval Europe’s waves of plague also required an economic action plan

May 6, 2020 

The Black Death (1347-51) devastated European society. Writing four decades after the event, the English monk and chronicler, Thomas Walsingham, remarked that “so much wretchedness followed these ills that afterwards the world could never return to its former state.”

This medieval commentary reflects a lived reality: a world turned upside down by mass fear, contagion and death.

Yet society recovered. Life continued despite the uncertainty. But it was not “business-as-usual” in the aftermath — the threat of plague remained.

The Triumph of Death by Pieter Bruegel the Elder shows a devastated landscape where death is taking people indiscriminately as it appeared to during a wave of plague. (Museo del Prado)

Slow and painful recovery

The post-Black Death world had “not been made any better by its renewal.” The French monk, Guillaume de Nangis, lamented that men were more “miserly and grasping,” “greedy and quarrelsome” and involved in more “brawls, disputes and lawsuits.”

The shortage of workers in the aftermath was acute. The contemporary Historia Roffensis notes that swaths of land in England “remained uncultivated,” in a world dependent on agricultural production.

A scarcity of goods soon followed, forcing some landlords in the realm to lower or pardon rents in order to keep their tenants. “If labourers work not,” quipped the English preacher, Thomas Wimbledon, “priests and knights must become cultivators and herdsmen, or else die for want of bodily sustenance.”

Sometimes, the stimulus came by force. In 1349, the English government issued its Ordinance of Laborers, which legislated able-bodied men and women be paid salaries and wages at the pre-plague 1346 rate.

Other times, the recovery was more organic. According to the French Carmelite friar, Jean de Venette, “everywhere women conceived more readily than usual;” none was barren and pregnant women abounded. Several gave birth to twins and triplets, signalling a new age in the aftermath of such a great mortality.
A common and familiar enemy

Then the plague returned. A second pestilence struck England in 1361. A third wave affected several other countries in 1369. A fourth and fifth wave followed in 1374-79 and 1390-93 respectively

.

A painting by Domenico Gargiulo of Naples depicts a wave of disease that ravaged the city in the mid-1500s.

Plague was a constant feature in late medieval and early modern life. Between 1348 and 1670, wrote historians Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, it was a regular and recurring event:

“… sometimes across vast regions, sometimes only in a few localities, but without omitting a single annual link in this long and mournful chain.”

The disease impacted communities, villages and towns with greater risks to urban centres. With its dense population, London was scarcely free from disease with large outbreaks in 1603, 1625, 1636 and the “Great Plague” of 1665, which claimed 15 per cent of the city’s population.

No generation escaped its wrath.

Controlling the disaster

Governments were not shy in their responses. While their experience could never prevent an outbreak, their management of disease tried to mitigate future disasters.

Queen Elizabeth I’s Plague Order of 1578 implemented a series of controls to support the infected and their families. Throughout England, a government initiative ensured that infected people did not leave their homes for food or work.

Pesthouses were also built to house the sick and protect the healthy. In 1666, King Charles II ordered each town and city “to be in readiness in case any infection should break out.” If an infected person was discovered, he or she would be removed from the house and city while the former was closed for 40 days, with a red cross and the message “Lord have mercy upon us” affixed to the door.

In some cases, barriers, or cordons sanitaires, were built around infected communities. But they sometimes did more harm than good. According to the Enlightenment historian Jean-Pierre Papon, residents of the Provençal town of Digne in 1629 were prevented from leaving, from burying their dead and from constructing cabanes where they might have otherwise safely isolated from the disease.
State and moral authority

Experience and regulatory measures weren’t always effective.

The great plague that struck the southern French city of Marseille between 1720 and 1722 killed an estimated 100,000 people. Following the arrival of the Grand Saint-Antoine, a merchant ship returning from the Levant, “proper care and remedies” to prevent the fatal consequences of this disease were delayed and ignored. The disease spread to all parts of the city.

French artist Michel Serre’s 1721 work shows a view of the town hall in Marseilles during the city’s outbreak of plague the previous year. (Marseille Museum of Fine Arts)

The plague began to rage there within a matter of weeks. A corrupt doctor, false bills of health, political and economic pressures to unload the ship’s merchandise, and corrupt officials investigating the initial spread of the disease, all contributed to a disaster that could scarcely be contained in southern France.

Hospitals were saturated, unable to “receive the vast quantity of sick which came to them in throngs.” Exercising “double diligence,” authorities built new hospitals in the alleys, “fitted up large tents” on the city’s outskirts, filling them with “as many straw beds as possibly could remain there.”

Fearful of transmission on its shores, the English government quickly updated its protective measures. The Quarantine Act of 1721 threatened violence, imprisonment or death on anyone endeavouring to escape the enforced confinement, or those refusing to obey the new restrictions.

A portrait of Edmund Gibson, the bishop of London, attributed to English portraitist John Vanderbank. (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)

Some deemed these measures unnecessary. “Infection may have killed its thousands,” wrote one anonymous author, “but shutting up hath killed its ten thousands …”

Edmund Gibson, the bishop of London and an apologist for the government, disagreed. “Where the disease is desperate,” he wrote, “the remedy must be so too.” As such, he wrote, there was no point dwelling “upon rights and liberties, and the ease and convenience of mankind, when there was plague hanging over our heads.”

Social dislocation was an inevitable result — a necessary evil. But as medieval and early modern experiences with plague remind us, it is not a permanent fixture.

Author   Kriston R. Rennie

Visiting Fellow at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, and Associate Professor in Medieval History, The University of Queensland
University of Queensland provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.


What can the Black Death tell us about the global economic consequences of a pandemic?

Miniature by Pierart dou Tielt

March 3, 2020

Concerns over the spread of the novel coronavirus have translated into an economic slowdown. Stock markets have taken a hit: the UK’s FTSE 100 has seen its worst days of trading for many years and so have the Dow Jones and S&P in the US. Money has to go somewhere and the price of gold – seen as a stable commodity during extreme events – reached a seven-year high.

A look back at history can help us consider the economic effects of public health emergencies and how best to manage them. In doing so, however, it is important to remember that past pandemics were far more deadly than coronavirus, which has a relatively low death rate.

Without modern medicine and institutions like the World Health Organization, past populations were more vulnerable. It is estimated that the Justinian plague of 541 AD killed 25 million and the Spanish flu of 1918 around 50 million

By far the worst death rate in history was inflicted by the Black Death. Caused by several forms of plague, it lasted from 1348 to 1350, killing anywhere between 75 million and 200 million people worldwide and perhaps one half of the population of England. The economic consequences were also profound.
‘Anger, antagonism, creativity’

It might sound counter-factual – and this should not minimise the contemporary psychological and emotional turmoil caused by the Black Death – but the majority of those who survived went on to enjoy improved standards of living. Prior to the Black Death, England had suffered from severe overpopulation.

Following the pandemic, the shortage of manpower led to a rise in the daily wages of labourers, as they were able to market themselves to the highest bidder. The diets of labourers also improved and included more meat, fresh fish, white bread and ale. Although landlords struggled to find tenants for their lands, changes in forms of tenure improved estate incomes and reduced their demands.

But the period after the Black Death was, according to economic historian Christopher Dyer, a time of “agitation, excitement, anger, antagonism and creativity”. The government’s immediate response was to try to hold back the tide of supply-and-demand economics.

Life as a labourer in the 14th century was hard. British Library

This was the first time an English government had attempted to micromanage the economy. The Statute of Labourers law was passed in 1351 in an attempt to peg wages to pre-plague levels and restrict freedom of movement for labourers. Other laws were introduced attempting to control the price of food and even restrict which women were allowed to wear expensive fabrics.

But this attempt to regulate the market did not work. Enforcement of the labour legislation led to evasion and protests. In the longer term, real wages rose as the population level stagnated with recurrent outbreaks of the plague.

Landlords struggled to come to terms with the changes in the land market as a result of the loss in population. There was large-scale migration after the Black Death as people took advantage of opportunities to move to better land or pursue trade in the towns. Most landlords were forced to offer more attractive deals to ensure tenants farmed their lands.

A new middle class of men (almost always men) emerged. These were people who were not born into the landed gentry but were able to make enough surplus wealth to purchase plots of land. Recent research has shown that property ownership opened up to market speculation.

The dramatic population change wrought by the Black Death also led to an explosion in social mobility. Government attempts to restrict these developments followed and generated tension and resentment.

Meanwhile, England was still at war with France and required large armies for its campaigns overseas. This had to be paid for, and in England led to more taxes on a diminished population. The parliament of a young Richard II came up with the innovative idea of punitive poll taxes in 1377, 1379 and 1380, leading directly to social unrest in the form of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381.

Peasants revolting in 1381. Miniature by Jean de Wavrin

This revolt, the largest ever seen in England, came as a direct consequence of the recurring outbreaks of plague and government attempts to tighten control over the economy and pursue its international ambitions. The rebels claimed that they were too severely oppressed, that their lords “treated them as beasts”.
Lessons for today

While the plague that caused the Black Death was very different to the coronavirus that is spreading today, there are some important lessons here for future economic growth. First, governments must take great care to manage the economic fallout. Maintaining the status quo for vested interests can spark unrest and political volatility.

Second, restricting freedom of movement can cause a violent reaction. How far will our modern, mobile society consent to quarantine, even when it is for the greater good?

Plus, we should not underestimate the knee-jerk, psychological reaction. The Black Death saw an increase in xenophobic and antisemitic attacks. Fear and suspicion of non-natives changed trading patterns.

There will be winners and losers economically as the current public health emergency plays out. In the context of the Black Death, elites attempted to entrench their power, but population change in the long term forced some rebalancing to the benefit of labourers, both in terms of wages and mobility and in opening up the market for land (the major source of wealth at the time) to new investors. Population decline also encouraged immigration, albeit to take up low skilled or low-paid jobs. All are lessons that reinforce the need for measured, carefully researched responses from current governments.

Authors

Adrian R. Bell
Chair in the History of Finance and Research Dean, Prosperity and Resilience, Henley Business School, University of Reading

Andrew Prescott
Professor of Digital Humanities, University of Glasgow

Helen Lacey
Lecturer in Late Medieval History, University of Oxford
Disclosure statement

Adrian R. Bell receives funding from the AHRC and previously from the ESRC.

Andrew Prescott receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Rsearch Council.

Helen Lacey receives funding from the AHRC.