Penguin poop spotted from space ups the tally of emperor penguin colonies

Eight new spots include the first reported offshore breeding sites for the largest penguins

Using satellite images of penguin poop, researchers now think there are 61 total emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica.

P. BUCKTROUT/BAS

By Carolyn Gramling
Patches of penguin poop spotted in new high-resolution satellite images of Antarctica reveal a handful of small, previously overlooked emperor penguin colonies.

Eight new colonies, plus three newly confirmed, brings the total to 61 — about 20 percent more colonies than thought, researchers report August 5 in Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. That’s the good news, says Peter Fretwell, a geographer at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England.

The bad news, he says, is that the new colonies tend to be in regions highly vulnerable to climate change, including a few out on the sea ice. One newly discovered group lives about 180 kilometers from shore, on sea ice ringing a shoaled iceberg. The study is the first to describe such offshore breeding sites for the penguins.

Great guano

Using satellite images of penguin poop, researchers have now identified 61 emperor penguin colonies on Antarctica. In addition to 50 previously known colonies (green triangles), a new study confirms three that were previously suspected (yellow squares) and adds eight new ones (red circles). To spot the colonies, researchers scanned images captured by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellite, looking for telltale reddish-brown stains on the otherwise pristine Antarctic snow.
Antarctic emperor penguin colonies

P.T. FRETWELL AND P.N. TRATHAN/REMOTE SENSING IN ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION 2020

Penguin guano shows up as a reddish-brown stain against white snow and ice (SN: 3/2/18). Before 2016, Fretwell and BAS penguin biologist Phil Trathan hunted for the telltale stains in images from NASA’s Landsat satellites, which have a resolution of 30 meters by 30 meters.
Emperor penguins turned a ring of sea ice around an iceberg into a breeding site. The previously unknown colony was found near Ninnis Bank, a spot 180 kilometers offshore, thanks to a brown smudge (arrow) left by penguin poop.P.T. FRETWELL AND P.N. TRATHAN/REMOTE SENSING IN ECOLOGY AND CONSERVATION 2020

The launch of the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellites, with a much finer resolution of 10 meters by 10 meters, “makes us able to see things in much greater detail, and pick out much smaller things,” such as tinier patches of guano representing smaller colonies, Fretwell says. The new colony tally therefore ups the estimated emperor penguin population by only about 10 percent at most, or 55,000 birds.

Unlike other penguins, emperors (Aptenodytes forsteri) live their entire lives at sea, foraging and breeding on the sea ice. That increases their vulnerability to future warming: Even moderate greenhouse gas emissions scenarios are projected to melt much of the fringing ice around Antarctica (SN: 4/30/20). Previous work has suggested this ice loss could decrease emperor penguin populations by about 31 percent over the next 60 years, an assessment that is shifting the birds’ conservation status from near threatened to vulnerable.

Green energy and better crops: Tinted solar panels could boost farm incomes

by Jacqueline Garget, University of Cambridge

Greenhouse with tinted solar panels. Credit: Paolo Bombelli (University of Cambridge

Researchers have demonstrated the use of tinted, semi-transparent solar panels to generate electricity and produce nutritionally superior crops simultaneously, bringing the prospect of higher incomes for farmers and maximizing use of agricultural land.

By allowing farmers to diversify their portfolio, this novel system could offer financial protection from fluctuations in market prices or changes in demand, and mitigate risks associated with an unreliable climate. On a larger scale it could vastly increase capacity for solar-powered electricity generation without compromising agricultural production.

This is not the first time that crops and electricity have been produced simultaneously using semi-transparent solar panels—a technique called agrivoltaics. But in a novel adaptation, the researchers used orange-tinted panels to make best use of the wavelengths—or colors—of light that could pass through them.

The tinted solar panels absorb blue and green wavelengths to generate electricity. Orange and red wavelengths pass through, allowing plants underneath to grow. While the crop receives less than half the total amount of light it would get if grown in a standard agricultural system, the colors passing through the panels are the ones most suitable for its growth.

"For high value crops like basil, the value of the electricity generated just compensates for the loss in biomass production caused by the tinted solar panels. But when the value of the crop was lower, like spinach, there was a significant financial advantage to this novel agrivoltaic technique," said Dr. Paolo Bombelli, a researcher in the University of Cambridge's Department of Biochemistry, who led the study.

The combined value of the spinach and electricity produced using the tinted agrivoltaic system was 35% higher than growing spinach alone under normal growing conditions. By contrast, the gross financial gain for basil grown in this way was only 2.5%. The calculations used current market prices: basil sells for around five times more than spinach. The value of the electricity produced was calculated by assuming it would be sold to the Italian national grid, where the study was conducted.

"Our calculations are a fairly conservative estimate of the overall financial value of this system. In reality if a farmer were buying electricity from the national grid to run their premises then the benefit would be much greater," said Professor Christopher Howe in the University of Cambridge's Department of Biochemistry, who was also involved in the research.

The study found the saleable yield of basil grown under the tinted solar panels reduced by 15%, and spinach reduced by around 26%, compared to under normal growing conditions. However, the spinach roots grew far less than their stems and leaves: with less light available, the plants were putting their energy into growing their 'biological solar panels' to capture the light.

Laboratory analysis of the spinach and basil leaves grown under the panels revealed both had a higher concentration of protein. The researchers think the plants could be producing extra protein to boost their ability to photosynthesise under reduced light conditions. In an additional adaptation to the reduced light, longer stems produced by spinach could make harvesting easier by lifting the leaves further from the soil.

"From a farmer's perspective, it's beneficial if your leafy greens grow larger leaves—this is the edible part of the plant that can be sold. And as global demand for protein continues to grow, techniques that can increase the amount of protein from plant crops will also be very beneficial," said Bombelli.

"With so many crops currently grown under transparent covers of some sort, there is no loss of land to the extra energy production using tinted solar panels," said Dr. Elinor Thompson at the University of Greenwich, and lead author of the study.

All green plants use the process of photosynthesis to convert light from the sun into chemical energy that fuels their growth. The experiments were carried out in Italy using two trial crops. Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) represented a winter season crop: it can grow with fewer daylight hours and can tolerate colder weather. Basil (Ocimum basilicum) represented a summer season crop, requiring lots of light and higher temperatures.

The researchers are currently discussing further trials of the system to understand how well it would work for other crops, and how growth under predominantly red and orange light affects the crops at the molecular level.

Solar panels cast shade on agriculture—in a good way

---

More information: Elinor P. Thompson et al. Tinted Semi‐Transparent Solar Panels Allow Concurrent Production of Crops and Electricity on the Same Cropland, Advanced Energy Materials (2020). DOI: 10.1002/aenm.202001189

Journal information: Advanced Energy Materials 

Provided by University of Cambridge 

How an abandoned ship became a ‘ticking time bomb’ in Beirut

MARK MACKINNON

SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT
LONDON PUBLISHED AUGUST 5, 2020


A survivor is taken out of the rubble after a massive explosion in Beirut, Lebanon.
HASSAN AMMAR/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
1 of 19 https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-how-an-abandoned-ship-became-a-ticking-time-bomb-in-beirut/

The series of events that led to Tuesday’s catastrophic explosion in Beirut appears to have begun in late 2013, when technical problems forced a cargo ship to make an unscheduled stop in the city’s port.

Lebanon’s port authorities were shocked when they boarded the vessel to inspect it. Not only was the merchant vessel Rhosus, flying a Moldovan flag, unfit to continue on its journey – it was carrying an astonishing 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate in its hold.

That ammonium nitrate – which was eventually taken off the ship and stored in a warehouse at the port – is believed to have been responsible for Tuesday’s massive blast. Lebanon’s health ministry said Wednesday that the death toll had risen to 135 with about 5,000 wounded, according to a report from Reuters.


The death toll is expected to rise further as rescue workers continue to search through the rubble of Beirut’s devastated port district, where the explosion left little standing.

Explosion in Beirut: What we know so far about Lebanon’s disaster, and what caused it

Across the city, an estimated 250,000 people were made homeless by the disaster.


Ammonium nitrate, which is most commonly used as fertilizer, becomes explosive when it mixes with fuel oil. Videos of the Beirut explosion show a fire at a port warehouse just before the blast, which sent an orange-tinged mushroom cloud high into the sky, and caused injuries and damage across much of the densely populated Lebanese capital.

The owner of the Rhosus was a Russian national, Igor Grechushkin, whose last known address was Cyprus. He did not answer calls to his mobile phone on Wednesday. His LinkedIn page appeared to have been deleted.

Shipping records show the Rhosus began its fateful journey at the Black Sea port of Batumi, in Georgia, on Sept. 23, 2013. The intended destination for its cargo was Mozambique, but the ship only made it as far as Beirut, where it was impounded on Nov. 21, 2013.

“Upon inspection of the vessel by Port State Control, the vessel was forbidden from sailing. Most crew except the Master and four crew members were repatriated and shortly afterwards the vessel was abandoned by her owners after charterers and cargo concern lost interest in the cargo. The vessel quickly ran out of stores, bunker and provisions,” reads a note posted online by Baroudi & Associates, a Lebanese law firm that, acting on behalf of “various” unnamed creditors, obtained an order to have the ship arrested.

Lebanese Canadians suffer anxious wait for news after tragedy in Beirut

The ship’s captain (or “master”) and the four unfortunate crew members – all of them Ukrainian nationals – were forced to remain on board the Rhosus to keep the ship and its volatile cargo afloat. They became causes célebre in their native Ukraine, where local media regularly reported on the “hostages” who were trapped on board a derelict ship in the port of Beirut.


“The owner, Igor Grechushkin, actually abandoned the ship and the remaining crew,” the ship’s captain, Boris Prokoshev, said in a June 2014 statement he gave, while still aboard the Rhosus, to a Ukrainian legal aid organization. “He says that he went bankrupt. I don’t believe him, but that doesn’t matter. The fact is that he abandoned the ship and the crew, just like he abandoned his cargo, ammonium nitrate, which is on the ship.”

Finally, almost exactly a year after the ship was first detained, a Lebanese judge allowed the seamen to leave the ship and return home. “Emphasis was placed on the imminent danger the crew was facing given the ‘dangerous’ nature of the cargo still stored in ship’s holds,” reads the account by Baroudi & Associates, who said they took on the sailors’ case on compassionate grounds.

The lawyers’ note, published in a shipping industry journal called The Arrest News, which tracks ships that have been impounded, ends on an ominous note. “Owing to the risks associated with retaining the ammonium nitrate on board the vessel, the port authorities discharged the cargo onto the port’s warehouses. The vessel and cargo remain to date in port awaiting auctioning and/or proper disposal.”

Six years later, that same cargo was still in a Hangar 12 at Beirut’s port. It’s a situation that explosives experts have referred to as a “ticking time bomb.”

Lebanon’s Supreme Defense Council, which met following the blast, said the explosion appeared to have occurred during welding work at Hangar 12.

Facebook launches TikTok RIVAL as Microsoft in ‘$30bn’ buyout talks
5 Aug, 2020
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FILE PHOTO. © Getty Images / NurPhoto

Instagram, owned by tech giant Facebook, has launched its new ‘Reels’ short video feature in 50 countries – including the US – in what appears to be a direct challenge to TikTok. Microsoft is currently in talks to buy the latter.

Not unlike the hugely popular TikTok, Reels allows users to record, edit and post 15-second video clips. The new feature, already tested in several countries including Brazil and Germany, launched in India in early July – about a week after TikTok was banned by Narendra Modi’s government as one of 59 Chinese apps deemed “prejudicial to [the] sovereignty and integrity of India, defense of India, security of state and public order.”

The mass app ban came in the wake of a spike in tensions between India and China after their militaries engaged in a border skirmish. However, TikTok has also been under increasing suspicion by Western governments apparently fearful it’s Beijing-based ownership means it could share user data with the Chinese government. TikTok owners ByteDance have denied the claims.

ALSO ON RT.COM‘Prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity’: India BANS 59 Chinese mobile apps including TikTok & Shareit

US President Donald Trump told reporters on August 1 that he would soon sign an executive order banning TikTok in the US, but has since rowed back on the threat by saying it would be allowed to continue operating in the country if it is bought by a US company – and the US Treasury gets “a very substantial” cut of the purchase price “because we’re making it possible for this deal to happen.”

TikTok is rumored to be worth $30 billion or more. Microsoft and ByteDance are aiming to come to an agreement in the coming three weeks, according to a CNBC source cited on Wednesday.

ALSO ON RT.COMThe clock is TikToking: Trump says he doesn’t mind if Microsoft buys TikTok, as long it's done in 6 weeks & Uncle Sam GETS A CUT

Instagram adds video clips in challenge to TikTok

by Glenn Chapman

Instagram is adding video clips in an attempt to muscle in on TikTok's boom

Instagram on Wednesday added a new short-form video feature to the image-focused platform in a direct challenge to TikTok, which is in the crosshairs of US President Donald Trump.

"Reels" lets users record videos of up to 15 seconds and provides tools for editing, audio and effects, according to the Facebook-owned company.

"Reels invites you to create fun videos to share with your friends or anyone on Instagram," the social media platform, based in California, said in a blog post.

Trump has threatened to ban China-based TikTok in the United States on national security grounds, giving it until the middle of September to work out a takeover deal with Microsoft or another suitor.

The president on Tuesday defended his demand for the US government receive a large share of any TikTok purchase price after his stance was slammed by critics who said it appears unconstitutional and akin to extortion.

Copying competition

Reels puts an Instagram spin on the kind of playful video snippet sharing that has made TikTok a social media phenomenon.

"Reels is a big part of the future of entertainment on Instagram," the service said. "Our community is telling us they want to make and watch short-form, edited videos."

The feature is launching in more than 50 countries including Australia, Brazil, Britain, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the United States.

"Reels gives people new ways to express themselves, discover more of what they love on Instagram, and help anyone with the ambition of becoming a creator take center stage," the platform said.

The move fits Facebook's pattern of copying features that are hits at rival online services.

How the social networking titan wields its power in the market came under scrutiny last week when Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and the heads of Apple, Google, and Amazon were grilled by a US congressional antitrust committee.

"Simply put, they have too much power," said Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat who chairs the panel which has been conducting a year-long investigation into the business practices of the four companies.

"This power staves off new forms of competition, creativity, and innovation," Cicilline said.

Any deal allowing Microsoft to buy TikTok could be transformative for the US tech giant's efforts to become more consumer-focused— if it can overcome the business and political risks.

Buying TikTok could make Microsoft a hipper, more youth-centric company after years of shifting to enterprise services and cloud computing, say analysts.

Watch out, TikTok: Facebook launching rival video editing app called Instagram Reels

---

© 2020 AFP

India’s Modi founds a Hindu temple on mosque’s ruins, a triumph for his nationalist government
JEFFREY GETTLEMAN AND HARI KUMAR
NEW DELHI
THE NEW YORK TIMES
PUBLISHED AUGUST 5, 2020

Open this photo in gallery

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, left and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat attend the groundbreaking ceremony of a temple dedicated to the Hindu god Ram in Ayodhya, India, on Aug. 5, 2020.

RAJESH KUMAR SINGH/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

In a moment of triumph that India’s Hindu nationalists had worked toward for years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday set the ceremonial cornerstone for a new Hindu temple at the site of a destroyed mosque in Ayodhya.

Hindus and Muslims have clashed over the Ayodhya site for decades, setting off waves of sectarian violence that has killed thousands. As Modi sat cross-legged and chanted mantras in front of a Hindu priest Wednesday, part of the elaborate groundbreaking ceremony for the temple, it was the fulfilment of a promise to his Hindu political base and an unmistakable milestone in his efforts to shift India’s secular foundations toward a more overtly Hindu identity.

Millions of Indians watched the ceremony on television or on social media. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, the gathering in Ayodhya itself was more muted than originally planned, with the crowds kept away. Hindu priests chose Wednesday, and specifically at 12:44 p.m., as the most auspicious time to begin building the new temple.

With the cameras rolling, Modi took centre stage. He performed Hindu rituals, such as offering holy water and putting a red mark on his forehead, alongside some of India’s most avowed Hindu nationalists. They included Yogi Adityanath, the firebrand Hindu monk turned chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, and Mohan Bhagwat, the leader of the RSS, a Hindu supremacist group, whose members helped tear down the mosque that used to stand in Ayodhya.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and two prominent Muslims visited one of India's most contentious religious sites on Wednesday, in a joint effort to show a change in attitudes between Hindu's and Muslims.REUTERS

“The wait of centuries is coming to an end,” Modi proclaimed.


Modi’s triumphal moment collides with a tough reality. India has been walloped by the coronavirus, racking up more infections than any other nation besides the United States and Brazil. The virus is cutting through India’s political class, including some people close to Modi.

In the past few days, Dharmendra Pradhan, the oil minister, and Amit Shah, the home minister who is widely considered India’s second-most-powerful person after Modi, came down with the coronavirus and have been hospitalized. Several other top politicians have fallen sick.

And the economy has fallen into a deep well. Economists have predicted that more than 100 million Indians lost their jobs or are in serious danger of losing them. As factories shut down and people retreated to their homes under coronavirus lockdown rules, some of which still stand, tens of millions of labourers poured out of the cities, making harrowing journeys back into the countryside, where they hoped to rely on their rural families to survive.

Some economists have predicted that India’s once booming economy could contract by nearly 10 per cent, tipping millions back into poverty.

In that environment, for many Indian Hindus, Modi’s Ayodhya ceremony was a captivating distraction. It symbolized Modi’s “total domination over India,” said Arati Jerath, a political commentator.

The intent, Jerath said, is for Modi to show that he and his party are “building a Hindu nation and that India is a Hindu-majority country, not the Nehruvian secular India that we have known for the last 70 years.”

All week, government officials have been prepping the site. The fire brigade has been hosing down Ayodhya’s streets with sanitizer. Saffron flags – it is the holy colour for Hinduism – fluttered from nearby rooftops, and houses around the temple site had been hastily splashed with a coat of fresh paint. Security officers chalked out the precise spot for Modi to fly in by military helicopter.

Aug. 5 coincides with the anniversary of Modi’s move on Kashmir, another political gift to Hindu nationalists. On Aug. 5, 2019, Modi’s government suddenly announced that it was eradicating the statehood of Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim majority state, bifurcating the territory and turning it into a federal enclave.Kashmiris saw this as a betrayal of decades of policy that allowed Kashmir a certain degree of autonomy, and thousands of Kashmiris were rounded up and arrested. Some Kashmiri leaders still remain in detention.

A few months later, Modi’s government passed a citizenship law that blatantly discriminated against Muslims. That law proved incredibly divisive, setting off nationwide protests that formed the biggest challenge yet to Modi’s agenda and put him on the defensive for the first time.

Modi’s participation in Ayodhya is seen in this light, as another decisive step toward an India that officially favours its Hindu majority – about 80 per cent of the country is Hindu, 14 per cent Muslim.

“The last 15 months have seen a more systematic and ruthless action toward rewriting the constitution and ushering in a new grammar of state power,” Suhas Palshikar wrote in a column this week in The Indian Express, one of India’s leading progressive newspapers. “The new republic is founded on a militant culture of majoritarianism.”

India’s Muslim community has mostly stayed quiet about Ayodhya, accepting defeat.

In November, India’s Supreme Court green-lighted the construction of a Hindu temple on the site where the mosque had stood before Hindu devotees destroyed it in 1992 with sledgehammers and their bare hands. Modi’s party has cast its quest to build a temple as a key step in establishing India as overtly Hindu, wiping away centuries of oppression at the hands of the Muslim Mughal Empire and British colonialists.

Many independent analysts saw the Supreme Court’s decision as a capitulation to the majoritarian politics of Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party.

Many Hindus believe that the disputed site was the birthplace of their revered god Ram and that an earlier temple for Ram was demolished during Mughal rule to build the mosque. The case had been tossing and turning in Indian courts since the 1950s.


After Hindu supremacists destroyed the Babri Mosque in 1992, it set off riots across the country that killed around 2,000 people. The Ayodhya shock waves continued for years; the widespread religious massacres in Gujarat in 2002 were connected to Ayodhya as well.

In place of the mosque, Hindus erected a tent resembling a temple, and before the coronavirus hit, countless tourists visited it. When the case reached the Supreme Court in 2010, the deity Ram was given legal standing, awkwardly pitting the god Hindus revere most against the Muslim parties in the suit.

The mosque that had stood on the site was built in the 1500s during Mughal rule, a period that many right-wing Hindus feel bitterly about, seeing it as subjugation under Muslim occupation. Although monuments like the Taj Mahal – also built under the Mughals – are some of India’s most celebrated sites, Hindu hard-liners see them as testaments of past oppression.

The plan is to build a expansive stone temple in Ayodhya on a raised platform with multiple turrets, pillars and domes and many intricate carvings. Although no shovels or bulldozers were visible at Wednesday’s groundbreaking ceremony, construction crews have already begun to clear the land.

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The Moneyist

‘We, the qualifying taxpayers, should not have to suffer’: When will I receive my FIRST stimulus check?

Published: Aug. 5, 2020 

By Quentin Fottrell

‘I was the supervisor of the department that processed and reconciled parking citations. Since mid-March, the number of parking citations drastically fell due to the coronavirus pandemic’


The Moneyist answers dilemmas in an age of coronavirus


Dear Moneyist,

I feel I was unfairly denied the stimulus payment. In 2019, I made a total of $51,331. My filing status was “single, no children.” I was denied the stimulus payment on 4/10/20 because the IRS based my income on my 2018 taxes.

I was permanently laid off from my job as a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic. I was the supervisor of the department that processed and reconciled parking citations written by my city.

Since mid-March, the number of parking citations drastically fell due to the coronavirus pandemic, and this caused a major reduction of revenue in my department which resulted in me losing my job.

I do not understand why they cannot send out the stimulus checks for the people that do qualify, according to their 2019 taxes. Why didn’t they put the checks on hold until the 2019 taxes were received if the 2018 taxes did not qualify, instead of flat out denying people who truly do qualify?

The Moneyist:I told my unemployed tenant about jobs. He said they don’t pay enough, and sits at home smoking weed. Now he wants a discount. What do I do?

This timing game is preventing people who qualify from receiving the assistance that is desperately needed. I understand there was no time to iron everything out before the checks were dispersed. But why not fix this loophole, and send the checks that truly qualify from their recent 2019 taxes?

I was told by the IRS they cannot go back on their original decision. It is obvious that this decision was rushed, and not thought through. We, the qualifying taxpayers, should not have to suffer due to this loophole.

I am not a high income earner. My 2018 income was inflated due to a 401(k) disbursement that I had to take to save my house due to a scheduled layoff in 2018.

I really wish someone could help. The $1,200 is desperately needed.

A Very Disappointed Unemployed Taxpayer

Dear Disappointed,

I’m very sorry you were laid off.

The pandemic has affected so many parts of the economy. Parking-ticket revenue was one area that did not occur to me. I understand you are frustrated, and it does feel unfair. However, I do hope that the weekly $600 in extra unemployment benefits went some way in making these last few months easier to manage. It’s more for some people than others, I know, but the $2.2 trillion CARES Act has gone some way in easing that burden for millions of Americans in a situation similar to your own.

The Moneyist: I filed a joint tax return with my estranged wife because she is a gambler and her finances are a mess. But I got NO stimulus check — what can I do?

Had the Internal Revenue Service delayed the stimulus-check program for you, and others like you, it would have also delayed it for millions of other Americans. It did not work with the precision of a Swiss watch, but the staff at the IRS were working hard to send as many checks to people as soon as they humanly could — with the challenges of computer networks that were not set up for such a public-health and financial emergency.

The Moneyist: I didn’t get my stimulus check because I owe back child support. It’s not fair. My stepchildren rely on me — what can I do?

The good news: Your $1,200 stimulus check will arrive with your 2020 tax refund. Lawmakers are still wrestling over the details of the next stimulus package. “It’s clear no Phase Four deal will be made until the week of August 3rd, which remains our base case,” said analysts at Beacon Policy Advisors in a note Thursday. “But given the current lack of unity among Republicans, which could slow down the pace of the negotiations with Democrats, a final deal could even slip a few days further into the week of Aug. 10.”

The bad news: It will be based on 2019 tax returns, too.

Quentin Fottrell is MarketWatch's personal-finance editor and The Moneyist columnist for MarketWatch. You can follow him on Twitter @quantanamo.

WHITE PEOPLE DO NOT BELIEVE THEY ARE RACIST!

Most white people don’t believe racial discrimination exists at their workplace, but nearly half of Black employees disagree

A new survey looks into a disconnect among human resource professionals, who are often the first hear reports of discrimination

Published: Aug. 4, 2020 By Andrew Keshner

New survey findings dig into race and the American workplace. 

GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

Human resource professionals might be the first people an employee alerts if they feel they’ve been the victim of on-the-job racial discrimination — but what happens next could depend a lot on the race of the person hearing out the complaint.

White and Black human resource staffers are divided on just how big a problem racial discrimination is within their workplace, according to a new study from the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional organization.

• 49% of Black HR professionals think race or ethnicity-based discrimination exists at their job, while 13% of their white counterparts agree.

• 61% of Black HR professionals think rude comments and slights exist in their workplace, compared to the 44% of white HR professionals who feel the same way.

• More than two-thirds (68%) of Black HR professionals think their company isn’t doing enough to provide Black employees with opportunities and 35% of white HR officials say the same.

The professional organization released the study on Monday, relying on a sample of almost 1,300 human resource staffers.

It also surveyed more than 1,250 workers to gauge their views of race in the workplace. Stark disparities were on display in that poll as well. Black workers consistently outpaced their white colleagues to say company brass and co-workers needed to do more on race matters inside company walls and outside them.

35% of Black workers said there was racial inequity at their job and 7% of white workers felt the same way.

For example, 35% of Black workers said there was racial inequity at their job and 7% of white workers said the same. Meanwhile, 33% of Black workers said they did not feel respected at work. Eighteen percent of white workers felt the same.

But there was one place of agreement: An equal number of Black and white workers (37%) felt uncomfortable talking about race matters on the job.

The Society for Human Resource Management conducted both surveys after George Floyd’s May 25 death while in police custody, caught on a smart phone. A white Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee on the Black man’s neck for 7 minutes and 46 second, prosecutors say.


Chauvin is facing second-degree murder charges and three bystanding officers are charged with aiding and abetting. Floyd’s death sparked protests across the country about police brutality and racial inequity while corporate America issued public proclamations — and multimillion dollar pledges in some cases — about the need for racial equality.

See also:People donated millions of dollars to the wrong Black Lives Matter foundation — read this before you give to any charity

The survey findings about workplaces didn’t surprise Dorianne St. Fleur, a San Jose, Calif.-based diversity, equity and inclusion strategist who works with companies to build anti-racist workplaces.

As a Black woman who once worked in human resources, St. Fleur said Black employees would seek her out even if they weren’t assigned to her because their assigned HR contacts weren’t responsive, or the workers assumed they would not be responsive.

The Black employees who approached her didn’t trust that white HR workers would respond to their complaints, she said. Some workers might be dealing with slights and comments, such as remarks about them “playing the race card,” or being “overly sensitive,” St. Fleur said.

‘We cannot move past this point in time if we don’t talk about it. We need to call a thing a thing.’— Dorianne St. Fleur, diversity, equity and inclusion strategist

Generally, people in human resources are trained to do things like retain talent, not to diffuse racial tensions inside a company, St. Fleur noted. “We cannot move past this point in time if we don’t talk about it. We need to call a thing a thing,” she said.

These divides matter because human resource staffers can play an important role in an office’s culture, Society for Human Resource Management president and CEO Johnny Taylor pointed out.

“We believe at this time of division and gridlock, that organizations have a huge opp

Republican satisfaction with the state of America has plummeted

Overall American satisfaction is the lowest it’s been in almost a decade, Gallup reports

MASS OUTRAGE AT THE AMERICAN STATE

Published: Aug. 4, 2020 By Nicole Lyn Pesce

Most surveyed Republicans don’t think that America is great lately. 

GETTY IMAGES

While overall American satisfaction with the state of the union has dropped since the coronavirus outbreak this spring, Republicans have become especially dissatisfied in recent months.

That’s according to a new Gallup poll of more than 1,000 U.S. adults conducted between July 1-23, which was given as the country faced a summertime spike in coronavirus infections, consumer confidence waned while the economy struggled to rebound from said-pandemic and the nation continued to be rocked by protests against racial injustice.

Coronavirus update: U.S. case tally at 4.72 million and New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut see infections climb again

Just 13% of U.S. adults are satisfied with the way things are in the nation right now, which is down 32 percentage points since hitting a 15-year high just this past February. Gallup notes that American satisfaction has not been this low since November 2011, after the country’s credit rating was downgraded. And that 13% is just six points above the all-time Great Recession low in October 2008, when the global financial crisis saw U.S. stocks tank.

GALLUP

But the steepest drop in satisfaction last month was recorded among Republicans. One in five (20%) said that they are satisfied with the way things are going, which is about half of what it was a month ago (39%) — and down a whopping 60 percentage points since February, when the Senate acquitted President Trump and ended his impeachment trial. In fact, the current figure is the lowest satisfaction rate that Republicans have recorded during Trump’s presidency.


Yet, most Republicans (91%, to be exact) still approve of the job that Trump is doing as president, which implies that they don’t blame him for the state of affairs.


“Their dissatisfaction may have more to do with what is going on in the country — the coronavirus and its effect on economic activity, the focus on matters of race — than the administration’s handling of it,” the report states. “To some degree, it could also reflect Republicans’ awareness of pre-election polls showing Trump trailing Democrat Joe Biden by a significant margin.”

Independents are also significantly less satisfied of late, dropping to 12% from 38% in February. Democrats are the least satisfied overall, with just 7% expressing a more upbeat mood last month, but the report notes that this number is on par with how Dems have felt during the Trump years. Indeed, just 13% of them were satisfied in February, before the pandemic disrupted life in the U.S.

GALLUP

Gallup has observed that historically, American’s lowest satisfaction scores tend to be tied to tough economic times, including: the 1979 energy crisis, the Great Recession of 2008, as well as when the S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating in 2011.

The report warns that the low satisfaction ratings could spell trouble for Trump in November, as the current level of satisfaction is below the low-water mark (33%) at which an incumbent has won reelection in the past. Indeed, satisfaction was at 22% in 1992 when George H.W. Bush lost his reelection bid — nine percentage points higher than it is now.

Real-estate reckoning on ‘master bedrooms’ as a racist term took place after years of discussion — yet many home builders dropped the term years ago

Published: Aug. 5, 2020 By Jacob Passy

A growing number of real-estate professionals have stopped using the phrase ‘master bedroom’ amid a broader societal rethink of the language we use


Your real-estate agent could soon be calling this room the owner’s suite instead of the master bedroom. ISTOCKPHOTO


THE NEW MASTER BEDROOM  


In the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests earlier this summer, there is also a reckoning about product names and even the etymology of the language used in certain industries.

The real-estate industry has come to a slow decision that took years in the making to stop using the word “master.” The decision came as other industries re-evaluated their use of language in a racial context. GitHub, a Microsoft-owned company MSFT, -0.09% that hosts a platform for software development, announced in July that it would no longer use the terms “master” and “slave” to describe versions of projects. In the photography world, Canon CAJFF, +2.59% also said it would eliminate the terms “master” and “slave” to describe modes on cameras and other devices.

But the movement to abandon the “master bedroom” is not a new one. Behind the scenes, some major players in the real-estate industry have been skipping the term for years now. Home builders, in particular, have stopped using the terminology. PulteGroup PHM, 0.86% has been using the phrase “owner’s suite” instead for several years. Lennar Corp. LEN, +1.34% recently chose to standardize “owner’s suite” across its markets.

Internally, the National Association of Home Builders has altered its survey language to use the phrase “primary bedroom,” a spokeswoman told MarketWatch. “We have been hearing that members are making the change to use other descriptions such as primary bedroom or primary suite,” she said.

But it took weeks of nationwide protests sparked by the police killings of Black people in police custody and by the police across the U.S. for the Houston Association of Realtors to announce in late June that it would no longer use the word “master” to describe the largest bedroom and bathroom in a home because some of its members viewed the term as racist.

Instead, the Realtor group is opting to use the word “primary” on the multiple listing service platform that real-estate agents use to search for available properties.


In Chicago, local brokerage @properties also informed its employees that same month that it would stop using the term “master” to describe bedrooms and bathrooms on its website and in marketing materials. The brokerage’s agents, who are independent contractors, aren’t banned from using the word, the company noted.

“This is one small change we can make that seems easy and obvious. What is most important is not the origin of the term ‘master bedroom,’ but rather the fact that it is offensive to some on the basis of race and sex,” the company said.
Many have soured on the ‘master’ bedroom — not always because of race

To many, the phrase “master bedroom” is associated with slavery and evokes imagery of violence against people of color.

“It’s a repetitive reminder of slavery and plantations,” Donnell Williams, president of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, said. “I don’t feel that it’s proper, and I’m glad someone brought it up.”


The origins of the phrase do not appear to come from the era of slavery. In fact, the term was first used in 1925, according to Merriam-Webster. Real-estate brokerage Trelora meanwhile cites the earliest known reference to a master bedroom as appearing in a 1926 Sears SHLDQ, -5.34% advertisement for a pre-fabricated home.

Back in 1995, under the Clinton administration, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development ruled that use of the term “master bedroom” was not considered discriminatory under the Fair Housing Act.

And some people’s objections to the phrase don’t stem from concerns about its racial implications. One definition of the word master is a male head of household, according to Merriam-Webster. “Based on the discussion that took place, more members viewed the terms as sexist than racist, although some did view them as racist,” the Houston Association of Realtors noted in discussion of the name change. “Others didn’t personally view them as sexist or racist but believed we should change the terms for anyone else who might find them objectionable. The consensus was that Primary describes the rooms equally as well as Master while avoiding any possible misperceptions.”
Broad support for a new term has yet to materialize

A survey of 300 real-estate agents conducted by HomeLight found that roughly 26% supported replacing the word master, and only 8% of agents reported having buyers or sellers expressing discomfort with the term.

Multiple factors will make the shift away from the “master” bedroom and bathroom difficult. For starters, most multiple listing services nationwide still use that term. These platforms store data about different properties and are used to generate information about homes listed for sale. There is not one national MLS, though — there are over 800 of them nationwide, according to the National Association of Realtors.

“You have to think about the MLS service in any market, because they have to standardize the terminology,” said Jeff Cohn, president and CEO of Cohn Marketing, a Denver-based marketing agency that works with real-estate brokerages among other clients.


‘This needs to be looked at from a national perspective from an organization like National Association of Realtors.’— Jeff Cohn, president and CEO of Cohn Marketing

Individual brokerages will find it difficult to adopt new terminology if the MLS in their area is still using the old term. Some argue that for broader change to occur it will take the involvement of major national industry leaders.

“This needs to be looked at from a national perspective from an organization like National Association of Realtors,” Cohn said. “If they decide, ‘Yes, that’s where we want to go as an industry,’ that’s where you’ll see real change because it’s going to be it’s not going to be haphazard.”

Cohn also said major influencers, particularly the home improvement and design channel HGTV, will play a role in this cultural reset. “If you start seeing them using the new terminology, I think many others would follow,” he said.

The National Association of Realtors “has no objection to the use of other terminology if consensus evolves that the word has taken on new meaning,” the organization’s president Vince Malta said in an emailed statement.

Jane Latman, president of HGTV DISCA, -3.19% , told MarketWatch in an email that the network continues to have discussions around the language it uses. “Retrofitting hundreds of hours of shows that are already shot and delivered is not always feasible, but we will be more thoughtful moving forward and have brought up this issue to our production partners,” Latman said. “We are committed to future change and want to use words that are more descriptive and inclusive — like primary or main bedroom instead of master bedroom.”
Others argue that the real-estate industry has more pressing issues to consider

As discussion about the phrase “master bedroom” continues, some insist that the real-estate industry has more important changes it could tackle in the name of social justice.

“The truth of the matter is there’s opportunity for improvement far beyond marketing terminology in the industry,” said Drew Uher, CEO of HomeLight. “There are much larger issues that still need to be addressed — from the ramifications of redlining and steering, wealth inequality, access to down payment funds, and diversity in the industry across agents, brokerages, and Realtor boards — that would drive lasting change and move us towards equality.”

The homeownership rate among Black Americans has always lagged that of white Americans, and last year it fell to the lowest level in decades. And in the current context of the coronavirus pandemic, Black and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately struggling to afford their monthly housing payments.

“There needs to be an African American homeownership program,” Williams said, pointing to the Section 184 Indian Home Loan Guarantee Program designed to boost homeownership among Native Americans as a blueprint.

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