Congress wary on future aid as well-connected businesses rake in millions

The numerous anecdotes and controversies pouring out of the Paycheck Protection Program loan data are shaping lobbying efforts around the next economic relief package.


Sen. Ron Johnson is among the bipartisan group of lawmakers calling for tighter restrictions on future aid. | Samuel Corum/Getty Images


By ZACHARY WARMBRODT POLITICO 07/07/2020


The revelation that well-heeled businesses and nonprofits benefited from emergency small business loans is making it more likely that Congress will impose new limits on aid in its next rescue plan for employers and workers.

The Trump administration disclosed Monday that the recipients of the more than $521 billion in forgivable loans included top lobbying and law firms, private equity-backed restaurant chains like P.F. Chang’s, investment companies and even Kanye West’s clothing brand. Though $130 billion remains uncommitted under the so-called Paycheck Protection Program, it's rekindling long-running concerns about the degree to which businesses with ample sources of financing are getting government-backed support while smaller employers continue to struggle.

"It’s important for taxpayers and for the administration to ask whether some of these companies followed the rules," Rep. Ben McAdams (D-Utah) said Tuesday. "Moving forward, Congress should ensure that the affected small businesses receive the assistance they need – not celebrity clothing lines or companies already determined to be ineligible.”

POLITICO DISPATCH: JULY 8

The coronavirus pandemic has led to a surge in families considered food insecure — and that’s true across demographic groups. But for Black and Hispanic families, the numbers are unprecedented.

Lawmakers negotiating the next round of small business aid were already discussing ways to target funds at employers that were hit hardest by the pandemic-induced shutdown even before the data was released. But the disclosures are spurring new calls for oversight of whether many of the program's loan recipients should have received the money. The loans have proved attractive to businesses of all sizes because they can be forgiven if employers maintain their payrolls. If they don't, they remain loans with a 1 percent interest rate.

The extraordinary aid program is widely lauded as an overall success after delivering emergency funds to nearly 4.9 million borrowers in less than three months, with 86.5 percent of businesses taking loans of less than $150,000. Defenders of the program's rocky rollout — including its shifting guidelines on who should receive the money — say it was the price to pay to keep workers attached to their jobs in rapid fashion.

Still, the numerous anecdotes and controversies pouring out of the Paycheck Protection Program loan data are shaping lobbying efforts around the next economic relief package that Congress is expected to take up later this month.

"It's straightforward," said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. "Big businesses that can keep people on the payroll without a PPP loan should not get one. The purpose of these taxpayer dollars going out the door was to ensure that entities that truly needed money to keep regular Americans employed received it. "



CONGRESS
New data shows lawmakers secured millions in small-business aid


BY MELANIE ZANONA, ZACHARY WARMBRODT AND SAM MINTZ

Even the champions of the program have started arguing that it's time for a major overhaul. Linking the delivery of aid with demonstrated need is a key feature lawmakers are considering as they draft ideas for what to do beyond the initial iteration of the program, which closes to new loans on Aug. 8.

Senate Small Business Chairman Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a key architect of the program, has floated plans for new types of loans that would be available to businesses that employ 300 or fewer employees and can prove that they suffered significant revenue losses this year. One of his proposals for a long-term loan would focus on seasonal employers, businesses that make at least half of their profit in a low-income community, as well as manufacturers and hotels. Rubio's plan included $25 billion set aside for businesses that employ 10 or fewer people.




A bipartisan group of lawmakers who want to let businesses apply for second Paycheck Protection Program loans are also proposing that the additional aid be limited to the smallest businesses that took hits to revenue.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is among those calling for tighter restrictions on the flow of loan funds. In June, he slowed efforts in Congress to loosen the program's rules after warning that lawmakers should also enact reforms to prevent funds from going to organizations that didn't need them. He appears to have won over Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who said last month he agreed with Johnson that under the Paycheck Protection Program there should be "very specific criteria" that money goes to companies that need the help.

Johnson told POLITICO in an interview that he prefers Congress set the threshold based on businesses' profitability this year.

"We had to do something fast, we had to do something massive," Johnson said. "We knew that it was going to be far from perfect. But now we have more time and we really can provide greater direction and better targeting in terms of what the aid needs to be."

It would be a big change from the way Congress first designed the program. While it was aimed at businesses with fewer employees, it included exceptions for large restaurant and hotel chains to tap into the funds. The loan application doesn't require borrowers to prove hardship outside of a self-certification that "current economic uncertainty" made the loan necessary to support ongoing operations. After a public backlash when several large, publicly traded companies disclosed receiving the loans, the Trump administration tried to deter further takeup by the biggest corporations by threatening penalties and audits

The plight of small businesses is even more popular in American politics than apple pie," said Aaron Klein, a Brookings Institution fellow and former chief economist of the Senate Banking Committee. "The hidden truth is that lots of large businesses fit under the legal definitions of small business. The new data release crystallizes to the American public in every community around the country that recipients of millions of dollars in PPP money were not small, local stores but rather big enterprises with deep pockets who took advantage of free government money."

Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Small Business Committee, told POLITICO in an interview that the next phase of small business support would concentrate on employers at smaller businesses as well as underbanked, minority and rural businesses.

"It's going to be based upon need," Cardin said. "There's going to be a revenue loss standard for businesses that qualify. It won't be the type of self-certification you saw in the first round and basically allowing almost any small business to qualify for funding."

Amanda Fischer, policy director at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, said Congress needs to consider "structural changes to get money into the hands of the most vulnerable small businesses." Fischer said she sees the possibility of Congress tightening eligibility rules or making some firms pay back the money.

"For example, some reporting showed that private equity portfolio firms gamed rules to gain access when they were otherwise prohibited," she said. "Hedge funds also received some PPP funds. This clearly was not the congressional intent."

The disclosures have given new ammunition to consumer advocates who are arguing that the program's reliance on banks to deliver the aid has benefited the well-connected while leaving the smallest businesses — including those owned by people of color — without access.

Ashley Harrington, federal advocacy director at the Center for Responsible Lending, said Congress should consider direct grants instead of using banks as intermediaries.

"The question is not just did they deserve the loans, did they need the loans," she said. "But they had access that other communities did not have. That's something we need to recognize and address when we think about what small business relief looks like going forward."

Cerne Abbas chalk giant is not prehistoric, snail remains suggest

Famous 180ft figure on Dorset hillside may only be a few hundred years old, new analysis findsChris Baynes

Archaeologists began work to establish the Cerne Abbas Giant's age this year but have tests have been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic ( PA )

An ancient naked man sculpted into a chalk hillside in Dorset is unlikely to be prehistoric as was once believed, archaeologists have said.

The Cerne Abbas giant may only be a few hundred years old, say researchers whose investigations into the age of the 180ft figure received assistance from a surprising source: snails.

Shells unearthed at the site of Britain’s largest chalk figure – depicted brandishing a club and, notoriously, a 35ft erect penis – indicate the artwork could not have been carved any earlier than medieval times, they added.

Fragments of snail species that first arrived in the country in the 13th and 14th centuries were discovered in soil samples contemporaneous with the giant.

The National Trust, which owns the site, and researchers from the University of Gloucestershire began tests earlier this year to determine the age of the giant, whose origins and purpose remain shrouded in mystery.

Tests of soil samples extracted from the hillside have been delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, with results not expected until later this year.

But separate analysis by environmental archaeologist Mike Allen of tiny snail shell fragments found at the site suggest the giant “may have been a rather more recent addition to the Dorset landscape than some have suggested”.

No trace of species brought over by the Romans from France as food were found at the site, but microscopic fragments of snails thought to have arrived accidentally in packing straw from Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries were discovered.

This suggests the figure “may not be prehistoric, nor even Roman, but may belong to more recent times”, wrote Mr Allen and the National Trust’s Martin Papworth in the magazine Current Archaeology.

A National Trust spokesperson told The Independent the archaeologists had made “tentative early suggestions about the age of the Cerne Abbas giant” but that “full analysis is ongoing and results will be made available as soon as possible”.

Mr Papworth said full soil sample test results would likely indicate “a date range, rather than a specific age, but we hope they will help us better understand, and care for, this famous landmark”.

The earliest recorded mention of the giant, gifted to the National Trust by the Pitt-Rivers family 100 years ago, was in 1694.

Theories about its origins range from an ancient fertility symbol and likeness of Greco-Roman hero Hercules to a caricature of Oliver Cromwell.

Brian Edwards, a historian at UWE Bristol, suggested the artwork may have been created in the late 17th century by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, the future third Earl of Shaftesbury, and used as a propaganda tool depicting King William III as Herculean.

Other researchers believe the giant could have been carved by local landowner and MP, Baron Holles of Ifield, a bitter foe of Cromwell, and see the club as a reference to repressive rule and the phallus a mockery of the republican leader’s Puritanism.

Gordon Bishop, chair of the Cerne Historical Society, previously said Cerne Abbbas villagers were keen to know the truth about the local landmark.

“Although there are some who would prefer the giant’s age and origins to remain a mystery, I think the majority would like to know at least whether he is ancient or no more than a few hundred years old. Whichever may be the case, he is unique,” he said.

SO WHAT YOU ARE SAYING IS A BUNCH OF MEDIEVAL VANDALS CREATED A GIANT PIECE OF GRAFFITI ON THE HILLSIDE TO PUZZLE THE FOLKS LIKE MODERN CROP CIRCLES DO 

Texas on track for driest conditions of the last 1,000 YEARS due to climate change with certain parts facing megadroughts, new study warns

Researchers used advanced climate models to predict the future of Texas

The data shows the state could face driest conditions of the past 1,000 years

West Texas could experience decreased rainfall and increased temperatures

The predictions are set to occur in the Lone Star State by the end of the century
By STACY LIBERATORE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 8 July 2020

Scientists warn Texas, which is home to some 29 million Americans, could be plagued with extreme heat due to future climate change.

The stark warning comes as climate models reveal the state could face its driest conditions of the past 1,000 years by the end of the century.

Western areas are likely to be hit with a 'double whammy' of decreased rainfall and increased temperatures that result in a megadrought.

All of these events combined could deplete Texas' water supply, leading experts to call on officials to prepare a 100-year water source plan.

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Scientists warn Texas, which is home to some 29 million Americans, could be plagued with extreme heat due to future climate change. The stark warning comes as climate models reveal the state could face its driest conditions of the past 1,000 years by the end of the century

A team at Texas A&M University released the climate study, which used advanced models that project drought conditions.

John Nielsen-Gammon, director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies and the Texas State Climatologist, said: 'Our study shows that the drier conditions expected in the latter half of the 21st century could be drier than any of those megadroughts, depending on how you measure dryness.'


He also noted that the state was much wetter following the last Ice Age some 15,000 years ago, but has since remained the current climate Texas experiences today.

Droughts have been a major player in Texas' history and an event in the 1950s still holds the 'drought record' and still remains the worst in the past 125 years.


All of these events combined could deplete Texas' water supply, leading experts to call on officials to prepare a 100-year water source plan. Certain areas of Texas are already experiencing extreme temperatures

However, the new model takes climate change into account, which would dramatically deplete water supplies, leading the state into a devastating drought.

'The state water plan doesn't explicitly consider climate change in figuring out how water supply and water demand will both change,' Nielsen-Gammon said.

'As our paper points out, pinning numbers on either of those changes is a difficult challenge, and it's not simply a matter of estimating changes in precipitation.

'Tying future water supply to criteria established by the drought of record is a defensible choice, but policymakers should be aware that the chances of exceeding the drought of record are probably increasing year by year.'

The reports also reveals that the western regions are vulnerable to megadroughts.

'West Texas seems most likely to get a double whammy: decreased rainfall and increased temperatures,' Nielsen-Gammon said.

'Even though rainfall has increased statewide over the past century by about 10 percent, West Texas has seen little to no increase.'

Researches are confident that Texas will continue a path of hotter drier conditions, as any long-term changes in precipitation will be 'dwarfed' by how much more evaporation will deplete the water supply. Pictured is a bed of Lake Austin that has dried up

'West Texas is already planning for what happens as one or more critical aquifers get depleted.'

'Climate change is going to make that depletion happen a little bit faster, but the decline of the Ogallala Aquifer is primarily caused by water extraction for irrigation rather than by climate change.'

Researches are confident that Texas will continue a path of hotter drier conditions, as any long-term changes in precipitation will be 'dwarfed' by how much more evaporation will deplete the water supply.

However, droughts are temporary by definition, so it would not be correct to think of the future as a state of permanent drought, Nielsen-Gammon said.

'It's really a change in the climate, with the normally dry conditions in West Texas slowly migrating toward East Texas,' he said.

Climate change increases possibility of drought in US (related)

United sending layoff notices to nearly half of U.S. employees

FILE – In this March 25, 2020 file photo, United Airlines planes are parked at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. United Airlines will send layoff warnings to 36,000 employees – nearly half its U.S. staff – in the clearest signal yet of how deeply the virus outbreak is hurting the airline industry. United officials said Wednesday, July 8 that they still hope to limit the number of layoffs by offering early retirement, but they have to send notices this month to comply with a law requiring that workers get 60 days’ notice ahead of mass job cuts. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)
By ASSOCIATED PRESS |PUBLISHED: July 8, 2020

By DAVID KOENIG

United Airlines is warning 36,000 employees – nearly half its U.S. staff – they could be furloughed in October, the clearest signal yet of how deeply the virus pandemic is hurting the airline industry.

The outlook for a recovery in air travel has dimmed in just the past two weeks, as infection rates rise in much of the U.S. and some states impose new quarantine requirements on travelers.

United officials said Wednesday that they still hope to limit the number of layoffs by offering early retirement benefits, and that 36,000 is a worst-case scenario. The notices going to employees this month are meant to comply with a 60-day warning ahead of mass job cuts.


The furloughs could include up to 15,000 flight attendants, 11,000 customer service and gate agents, 5,500 maintenance workers and 2,250 pilots.

“The United Airlines projected furlough numbers are a gut punch, but they are also the most honest assessment we’ve seen on the state of the industry,” said Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants. “This crisis dwarfs all others in aviation history, and there’s no end in sight.”

If United carries through on the notices, furloughs would take effect on or shortly after Oct. 1. United can’t lay off workers before then as a condition of the $5 billion it got as its share of $25 billion in federal aid to help airlines cover payroll costs.

The flight attendants’ union and other airline labor groups are lobbying Congress for another $25 billion to protect jobs through next March. But a senior United executive expressed doubt that Congress would approve the spending in an election year.

United has already cut capital spending by $2.5 billion and convinced thousands of employees to take unpaid leave. It has hoarded cash after raising billions in new borrowing – including mortgaging its MileagePlus frequent-flyer program.


But with ticket sales sagging again, the Chicago-based airline is still losing about $40 million a day, executives said.

Layoffs are “the last option left to protect the long-term interests of the company,” said the senior United official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity.

Executives said the notices covered 45% of the airline’s U.S. staff, most of whom are represented by unions. They would have reinstatement rights if United’s fortunes improve. Another 1,300 management and support staff will be laid off Oct. 1, the company said. Including international employees, United has a work force of about 95,000.

Air travel in the U.S. plunged about 95% from March 1 until mid-April, then began a slow recovery. The number of U.S. air travelers around the July 4 weekend was the highest since mid-March, but was still down about 70% from a year ago.

In recent weeks, the number of new reported cases of COVID-19 has roughly doubled to about 50,000 a day. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Chicago have announced that people arriving from states with high infection rates will have to quarantine, throwing up a new roadblock to travel.

United’s traffic at its hub in Newark, New Jersey, has slumped more deeply than the rest of its network since those quarantine rules were announced.

Executives of other airlines have predicted their companies will be much smaller, with fewer employees, in October.

Delta Air Lines recently told employees that it will send layoff notices to more than 2,500 of its 14,000 pilots. Germany’s Lufthansa has warned that it might cut 22,000 jobs, and Air France last week announced plans to eliminate 7,500 jobs.

United Airlines issues notice of a potential layoff to 36,000 employees

Wajeeh Khan  8th July, 18:00


United Airlines issues notice of a potential layoff to 36,000 employees .
The U.S. airline says it will prioritise voluntary measures to cut its workforce.
Labour unions want U.S. Congress to extend payroll support until March.

As of December 2019, United Airlines had a global workforce of 96,000 employees. The air carrier is currently in talks with its labour union for pilots over early retirements. Multiple labour union, including the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), requested the U.S. Congress last month to consider extending its payroll support for airlines until end of March 2021.

United performed slightly upbeat in the stock market in 2019 with an annual gain of about 7%. At the time of writing, the Chicago-headquartered company is valued at £7.25 billion and has a price to earnings ratio of 8.55.

Ancient DNA suggests early migrants to the Caribbean may have come from several places, including perhaps North America.  

Ancient DNA reveals diverse origins of Caribbean’s earliest inhabitants

By Lizzie Wade Jun. 4, 2020

The Caribbean, which today includes a diverse mix of human cultures, was one of the last places in the Americas occupied by people. Yet researchers don’t know precisely where these early migrants came from when they arrived somewhere between 8000 and 5000 years ago. Now, ancient DNA suggests the deep history of the Caribbean includes complex tales of migration and mingling, including how descendants of the first waves of inhabitants interacted with newcomers who arrived beginning 2800 years ago.

“I’m thrilled to see the time span they were able to cover,” says Jada Benn Torres, a genetic anthropologist at Vanderbilt University who wasn’t involved in the new research. Genetic material decays quickly in tropical environments, she notes, and only a handful of genomes from precolonial Caribbean people had been sequenced prior to the new work.

Archaeologists divide precolonial Caribbean history into two eras: the Archaic Age, which includes the region’s early settlements and stretches back 8000 years on some islands, and the Ceramic Age, which began about 2800 years ago. In this latter age, an apparent wave of new arrivals from northern South America brought different styles of pottery and a lifestyle that depended more on agriculture to the islands, according to previous archaeological and genetic research.

But the origins of the Archaic Age peoples remained unclear. A team of mostly European and Caribbean researchers analyzed the DNA of 52 individuals from seven Archaic Age archaeological sites on Cuba, spanning from 3200 years ago to 700 years ago. They found evidence of at least two genetic groups, they report today in Science. That suggests these groups came from different places. “This is the first time that we can actually say that these [early inhabitants] were not only culturally diverse, but also biologically diverse,” says Yadira Chinique de Armas, an archaeologist at the University of Winnipeg and an author of the paper.

One individual showed a genetic similarity to Indigenous people who lived on California’s Channel Islands 5000 years ago, raising the possibility that some of the Caribbean’s earliest inhabitants may have originally hailed from North America or Central America. But researchers need additional genomes from ancient people who lived in places like Florida and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula to know for sure, says Kathrin Nägele, an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the paper’s first author.

Another big question is what happened when Archaic Age groups met the Ceramic Age newcomers after 2800 years ago. The Science paper found just one person, from Puerto Rico, who shows mixed Ceramic Age and Archaic Age admixture. Another paper on ancient DNA from the Caribbean, posted this week on bioRxiv, examined 184 early Caribbean inhabitants and found two people who had a mix of genes from both Ceramic Age and Archaic Age peoples. Both individuals lived on Hispaniola, the island that today includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It’s rare to see so little genetic mixing between groups once they meet, says Hannes Schroeder, an ancient DNA researcher at the University of Copenhagen. “We need more individuals from those crucial places in order to really have an idea as to how widespread [this genetic mixing] was.”

The studies are “both really novel contributions,” says Jorge Ulloa Hung, an archaeologist at the Museum of the Dominican Man and the Technological Institute of Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, who wasn’t involved in either one. Traditional models of Caribbean history, influenced by the views of European colonizers, erased the region’s complexity and diversity. But the new genetic work shows “the Caribbean was potentially always a mosaic” of cultures, origins, and ancestries.

doi:10.1126/science.abd16

A conservation scientist enlists Colombia’s ex-guerrillas in a new cause: preserving their country’s biodiversity

Plant biologist Dairon Cárdenas López from the Sinchi Amazonic Institute of Scientific Research teaches ex-combatants how to collect samples from plants. LILIANA HEREDIA

By Rodrigo Pérez Ortega Jul. 8, 2020 , 12:35 PM

For more than 50 years, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fought a civil war sparked partly by social inequities from the remote jungles of Colombia. In 2016, FARC and the Colombian government signed a peace agreement. Suddenly, a question loomed: How to reincorporate 14,000 former combatants back into society?

Jaime Góngora, a wildlife geneticist at the University of Sydney, saw an opportunity. A native of Colombia, “I saw how many people were being impacted directly and indirectly by the conflict,” he says. But he also believed in the potential of conservation to give the ex‑combatants a new purpose. After all, they had spent years in the jungle and knew it better than anyone.

Colombia is considered one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, but its jungles and forests remain largely unexplored by scientists, thanks in part to FARC’s occupancy. Since the peace agreement, surveys in these regions have found close to 100 new species. Góngora now leads a group of researchers from the United Kingdom, Australia, and 10 Colombian institutions who are working with ex‑combatants to study Colombia’s native plants and animals

Since 2017, Góngora has gone back to Colombia three or four times a year to organize workshops with more than 100 ex‑combatants and train them in conservation science skills. Science sat down with Góngora in Washington, D.C., in early March, before the coronavirus pandemic slowed his project, which has suspended in-person training but plans to continue virtually.

This interview, translated from Spanish, has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Q: How did this project start and how did you establish the relationships with the ex-combatants?

A: Federica Di Palma, an evolutionary genomicist at the Earlham Institute invited me to partner in a capacity-building project called GROW Colombia. Supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund with £6.5 million, it aims to build bioscience and biodiversity conservation both in Colombia and the United Kingdom.

However, I identified that the project was missing something important for Colombia’s post‑conflict situation: the ex-combatants. So, I proposed training programs, which I named Peace with Nature, that seek to empower these ex-combatants with citizen science skills.

The initial contact through the Colombian embassies in the United Kingdom and Australia, and the consultation with stakeholders, including FARC, took 15 to 18 months—it’s been a lot of work.




Jaime Góngora leads a citizen science workshop in March. COURTESY OF JAIME GÓNGORA

Q: What are the main goals of Peace with Nature?

A: It aims to drive sustainable development and empower former members of FARC to become conservationists. This is a vital step to enable them to contribute to environmental projects, improve their livelihoods, and reincorporate into society. We teach them to undertake inventories of biodiversity and protect it, as well as come up with sustainable environment-based business ideas.

These workshops have also increased awareness of potential ecotourism projects where they live. We are providing opportunities to develop connections with regional and national institutions to implement their projects.

Q: Training ex-combatants to do citizen science is not something you hear about every day. What has been their response so far?

A: Very positive. We built on their traditional knowledge, interest in environmental aspects, and connection to nature as they spent many years in the most remote parts of the jungle, forest, savannas, and mountains.

They engaged in designing the methodologies, identifying the routes where the inventories would take place and could be used for ecotourism purposes. They shared with us their traditional knowledge, how they live in the jungle, what medicinal plants they used and bush food they consumed. Along with this, they explained the ecological aspect embedded in their stories.

In the workshops, which last three to five days in remote areas of Colombia, they learn techniques for biodiversity inventories. They now have excellent skills—they obtain samples and walk in the bushes without making noises so they can see birds, monkeys, and other animals. They also learn to use iNaturalist—and app and online repository for biodiversity used by citizen scientists around the globe—to document part of the inventories and inform potential ecotourists of attractions in their communities.

The response of Colombia’s government agencies, research institutes and academia has also been very positive.

Q: Right after the peace deal was announced, researchers started to venture into previously unexplored territories to study them. Why include ex-combatants in research and not, for example, undergraduate students?

A: If we are talking about biodiversity as part of the post-conflict situation, this is not only for academics and researchers. The main participants there are ex-combatants. A socioeconomic survey of more than 10,000 FARC ex-combatants showed that their ages range between their 20 to 60 years, with 77% men. Most of them know how to read and write and half of them have a primary education. When asked about what jobs they wanted to do now that there’s peace, 84% of them were interested in terrestrial and river environmental restoration.

Q: What kind of workshops and inventories have you carried out so far?

A: I led a major Peace with Nature workshop in a former guerrilla village in the Caquetá province. Thirty ex-combatants, 20 men and 10 women, took part, representing 16 villages. As a result, we did the first inventory, but the main goal was to do a nationwide training so we could build on these skills and knowledge for subsequent workshops at the regional level.

We did the first regional workshop last March in a remote ex-combatant village named Charras in the province of Guaviare at the interface of three major ecosystems in Colombia: Andes, Orinoquia, and Amazon. There, we did a more comprehensive workshop and inventory of an ecotourism trail identifying more than 120 plant and animal species, which were uploaded to iNaturalist.

Q: What has surprised you the most working with the ex-combatants?

A: In some of the workshops, we have the presence of the police and military forces along with the ex-combatants. I think what has surprised me most is the opportunity that biodiversity offers for reconciliation and healing after an armed conflict. These workshops have been spaces for a respectful dialogue about biodiversity and nature.

Ex-combatants and soldiers were fighting each other some years ago, and now they work together and learn together—it’s all-around biodiversity.

(Watch a video about Peace with Nature here.)

doi:10.1126/science.abd7316

Rodrigo Pérez Ortega is a science journalist covering life sciences, medicine, health, and academia.

Polynesians on Nuku Hiva, an island in the North Marquesas, carry traces of Native American ancestry. 

Polynesians steering by the stars met Native Americans long before Europeans arrived

 DMITRI ALEXANDER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

By Lizzie WadeJul. 8, 2020 , 11:00 AM

By about 1200 C.E., Polynesians were masters of oceanic exploration, roaming 7000 kilometers across the Pacific Ocean in outrigger canoes. Guided by subtle changes of wind and waves, the paths of migrating birds, bursts of light from bioluminescent plankton, and the position of the stars, they reached and settled islands from New Zealand to Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, the closest Polynesian island to South America.

So it’s natural to wonder: Did these world-class explorers make it the last 3800 kilometers to South America? A genomic study of more than 800 modern Polynesians and Native Americans suggests they did.

The work strengthens earlier evidence that somewhere—perhaps on the northern coast of South America—the two groups met and mixed well before the era of European colonialism. And it shakes up the most popular model of where Native American genes first took root in Polynesia, shifting the focus from Rapa Nui to islands farther west

“This is an excellent, exciting study,” says Lars Fehren-Schmitz, an anthropological geneticist at the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz. Expanding genomic research to islands beyond Rapa Nui “was what was missing from the whole picture.”

Earlier hints of contact between the two regions included the sweet potato, which was domesticated in the Andes but grown and eaten all over Polynesia for hundreds of years before Europeans arrived. And a 2014 study of 27 modern people from Rapa Nui found they had Native American ancestry dating back to between 1300 C.E. and 1500 C.E.—at least 200 years before the first Europeans landed there in 1722 C.E. But a 2017 ancient DNA study, led by Fehren-Schmitz, found no sign of Native American ancestry in five people who lived on Rapa Nui before and after European contact.


Population geneticist Andrés Moreno-Estrada and anthropologist Karla Sandoval, both at Mexico’s National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity, traveled to Rapa Nui in 2014 and invited the community to participate in a study. They analyzed genome-wide data from 166 people from the island. Then they combined those data with genomic analyses of 188 Polynesian people from 16 other islands, whose genetic samples had been collected in the 1980s.

“It’s an amazing data set,” says Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas, a population geneticist at the University of Lausanne who led the 2014 work that found evidence for contact.

Moreno-Estrada, Sandoval, and their team found that people on many islands had both Polynesian and European ancestry, reflecting their colonial histories. But they were also able to detect a small amount of Native American ancestry in people from the eastern Polynesian islands of Palliser, the Marquesas, Mangareva, and Rapa Nui. The Native American sequences were short and nearly identical—seemingly a legacy of one long-ago meeting with a Native American group, rather than sustained contact over generations, Moreno-Estrada says.

Comparing those sequences with genomes from people from 15 Indigenous groups from the Pacific coast of Latin America, researchers found most similarity to the Zenu, an Indigenous group from Colombia, the team reports today in Nature.

Analyses of the length of the Native American sequences show this ancestry appeared first on Fatu Hiva in the South Marquesas roughly 28 generations ago, which would date it to about 1150 C.E. That’s about when the island was settled by Polynesians, raising the possibility the contact happened even earlier. The genetic legacy of that mixing was then carried by Polynesian voyagers as they settled other islands, including Rapa Nui.

Where exactly the first encounter took place, the team can’t say. Modern Latin American fishermen lost at sea have been known to drift all the way to Polynesian islands. “It could have been one raft lost in the Pacific,” Moreno-Estrada says.

But it’s more likely that Polynesians traveled to the northern coast of South America, says Keolu Fox, a genome scientist at UC San Diego. Polynesian voyagers frequently traveled between islands and could have journeyed to South America and back, perhaps multiple times, Fox says. “In the process, these Polynesians bring back the sweet potato, and they also bring back a small fragment of Native American DNA” from relationships on the mainland. “The ocean is not a barrier” for Polynesians, he says.

Fehren-Schmitz and other researchers agree contact is likely, but stress that only ancient DNA can provide direct evidence of an encounter. But DNA degrades quickly in the tropics—and Polynesian communities that remember being disrespected by Western scientists in the past may be reluctant to grant permission for genetic studies of their ancestors, says Fox, who is Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian). To move forward, he says, researchers need to deeply engage on an ongoing basis with descendant communities on many islands.

For now, “This study shows us a new path to follow,” says Francisco Torres Hochstetter, an archaeologist at the Father Sebastian Englert Anthropological Museum in Hanga Roa on Rapa Nui. “It opens our minds.” 

doi:10.1126/science.abd7159 


Lizzie Wade is Science's Latin America correspondent, based in Mexico Cit

Japan supercomputer finds ways to cut risk of airborne virus infection

Operating trains with windows open and limiting number of passengers

 may help reduce risk of infection

REUTERS

Supercomputer-driven models simulated in Japan have suggested that operating commuter trains with windows open and limiting the number of passengers may help reduce the risk of novel coronavirus infection, as scientists warn the virus may spread in the air.

In an open letter published Monday, 239 scientists in 32 countries outlined evidence they say shows floating virus particles can infect people who breathe them in.

The World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged “evidence emerging” of airborne transmission, but said it was not definitive.

Even if the coronavirus is airborne, questions remain about how many infections occur through that route. How concentrated the virus is in the air may also decide contagion risks, said Professor Yuki Furuse of Kyoto University.

In the open letter, scientists urged for improvements to ventilation and the avoidance of crowded, enclosed environments — recommendations Japan broadly adopted months ago, according to Shin-ichi Tanabe, one of the co-authors of the letter.

“In Japan, the committee for COVID-19 countermeasures insisted on the 3Cs at an early stage,” said Tanabe, a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, referring to Japan’s public campaign to avoid closed spaces, crowded places and close-contact settings. “This was ahead of the world.”

As the nation tamed the pandemic, with over 19,000 confirmed cases and 977 deaths so far, Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura credited its success to the 3Cs and its cluster-tracing strategy.

The recent study by Japanese research giant Riken using the world’s fastest supercomputer, the Fugaku, to simulate how the virus travels in the air in various environments recommended several ways to lower infection risks in public settings.

Makoto Tsubokura, the study’s lead researcher, said that opening windows on commuter trains can increase ventilation two- to threefold, lowering the concentration of ambient microbes.

But to achieve adequate ventilation, there needs to be space between passengers, the simulations showed, representing a drastic change from the custom of packing commuter trains tightly, for which the nation is notorious.

Other findings advised the installation of partitions in offices and classrooms, while hospital beds should be surrounded by curtains that touch the ceiling.

A-bomb survivor Setsuko Thurlow calls for early enforcement of nuke ban pact

Setsuko Thurlow speaks at a peace event in Hiroshima in a photo taken on Nov. 9. | KYODO

KYODO

NEW YORK – Atomic bombing survivor and peace advocate Setsuko Thurlow on Tuesday called for more countries to join a nuclear ban treaty so that the U.N.-adopted pact can enter into force at an early date.

In an online gathering hosted by Japanese nongovernmental organization Peace Boat, Thurlow, who survived the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima at age 13, shared a vision of denuclearization and disarmament so as to prevent further tragedies.

“That massive killing of human beings — it is not acceptable behavior, it’s totally illegal, and that’s something we can avoid,” Thurlow said. “Our resources should be to enrich human life, not to destroy our lives.”

The 88-year-old also welcomed recent international momentum for abolishing nuclear weapons.

“Maybe I won’t live long enough to see the total elimination of nuclear weapons, but it would be nice if that happened,” she said.

Her speech comes ahead of the 75th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki just days before Japan’s surrender in World War II.

This year also marks the third anniversary of the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in July 2017. “We can’t just let it stand, doing nothing. We have to make it work by bringing in 12 more nations,” Thurlow said, referring to the total of 38 countries that had ratified the pact as compared to the 50 required for it to enter into force.

Later in the day, Fiji completed the process of ratification, becoming the 39th country to do so.

But the potential effectiveness of the treaty remains uncertain as all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, all of which possess nuclear weapons — as well as Japan and others have declined to ratify the nuclear ban treaty.

A longtime resident of Canada, Thurlow has been actively involved in antinuclear movements, offering her personal account in English.

For her advocacy work with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN, Thurlow was one of the representatives who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the campaign in 2017.

HERE’S WHY INTRODUCING A UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME MUST BE PART OF THE UK’S POST-COVID RECOVERY

 JONATHAN RHYS WILLIAMS 8TH JULY 2020


“A system that is humane, rapid and above all, simple.” Not words you’d expect a Tory MP to use when describing a policy that redistributes wealth from those who can afford to pay a little more to those who need a little more. Yet those are the words Tory grandee Sir Edward Leigh used to describe Universal Basic Income in March, when he urged the government to implement a ‘Recovery’ UBI to help those struggling from the financial fallout of the pandemic.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a fixed, regular and unconditional payment given to all citizens regardless of their wealth, income or employment status. The idea isn’t new. In the 18th century, Thomas Paine wrote in Agrarian Justice how the Earth is the common property of man and we should all share in its spoils.

Indeed, Sir Red Ed said he ran the idea past Thatcher forty years ago, and although she wasn’t keen, her economic guru Milton Friedman was a fan of another form of basic income: the negative income tax. Martin Luther King also advocated the idea, as did Friedrich Hayek, and more recently, Pope Francis.

This idea reaches across the political spectrum, and at a time when all of us must play our part in rebuilding the economy we should consider new ways to ensure everyone receives the support they need. A UBI is the fairest way of doing this. It creates a financial floor that everyone can stand on, instead of relying on the trickle-down economics that followed the 2008 financial crash. That model did not work – it only served to increase the wealth of the very richest. We cannot afford to get the response wrong again, because if resurgent right-wing populism was the result of the last financial collapse, god only know what the result of the corona-crash will be.
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That’s why I contacted the UBI Lab Network and co-founded UBI Lab Cardiff with my old roomie Liam Richards. The idea is one I’ve followed for many years. With US Presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s success in bringing UBI to the American mainstream, and with the pandemic now shaking our economy to the core, it propelled me into doing more than just being an armchair admirer.

UBI Lab Cardiff’s objective is for a basic income trial to be undertaken here in Wales. We’ve written to the First Minister of Wales, asking him to follow Scotland’s lead (a report was recently published recommending Scotland hold a pilot) and to look at ways in which we can run a pilot here in Wales.

Our letter gained serious traction – prominent politicians such as the Welsh leaders of the Lib Dems and the Green Party signed the letter, as did several Cardiff councillors. We’ve since drafted a letter and a motion asking Cardiff Council to support the idea of a pilot in the city, and we’re in discussion with academics at Cardiff University to draft a working paper for our pilot. The UBI Lab Network has already successfully lobbied councils in Sheffield, Liverpool and Hull to pass motions backing the idea of a pilot, and we hope Cardiff will soon follow.

There’s now a body of evidence that illustrates the benefits of a basic income. Trials have been undertaken in Namibia, Canada, India and most recently in Finland. All have shown reductions in poverty and homelessness, significant increases in physical and mental wellbeing, significant improvements in public trust in government, higher levels of educational attainment and increases in employment.

The latter of these statistics may surprise you. UBI’s detractors often say that we would all sit at home and stop working. But that fails to recognise the fact that a UBI only provides a basic level of income. It does not provide for all of the things we enjoy doing, such as going out or going on holiday. It is simply a basic level of security to ensure that no one is left destitute in the 21st century. Not a big ask is it? You may also be surprised to learn that Alaska has had a form of basic income since the seventies, which is paid from a sovereign wealth fund created through oil profits. Good idea, right?
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Support is growing for UBI in Wales and across the UK, with over 100 MPs signing a letter for a Recovery UBI to be implemented as a response to the pandemic. The Future Generations Commissioner in Wales, Sophie Howe, recently supported a UBI as a “very real solution to helping people out of poverty and aiding the economy, while reducing society’s gaping inequalities which have grown deeper during the crisis.” Furthermore, the First Minister of Wales said at this year’s Hay Festival that he was willing to “play his part in such an experiment.”

UBI Lab Cardiff recognises that many people will wonder how we can afford to pay everyone a basic level of income if a trial was successful and UBI was rolled out to everyone. That conversation must run parallel with discussions about simultaneous measures such as reforming the tax system so that we tax wealth more effectively, the introduction of new taxes such as a carbon tax, and higher tax rates on top earners who would also receive a basic income but who don’t need it. In short, you would give high earners a basic income with one hand and take it away with the other through taxation.

We are not professing that UBI is a silver bullet that will eradicate poverty and solve all the other economic problems caused by years of austerity. But poverty is quite simply a lack of cash. By putting money directly into people’s hands they are likely to spend it in their local economies, which will help communities recover in the years following the pandemic. It will also give citizens the freedom and confidence to be entrepreneurial and retrain in readiness for a more automated economy, and this will help put rocket boosters under our post-Covid recovery.

In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity, and a Universal Basic Income is that opportunity. The last time the UK faced a national emergency of this magnitude we founded our most-loved institution. That institution is universal, unconditional and free-to-use from cradle to grave.

It is time to make Universal Basic Income our generation’s NHS.

This article was written by Jonathan Rhys Williams, Co-Founder of the UBI Lab Cardiff.