COMMENTARY:

 Not even SARS could prepare the hospitality industry for COVID-19
A virulent virus, worried travellers and a tourism sector on the brink. Sounds like 2020? In fact, this was the experience in a few global cities in 2002 and 2003.

© Provided by Global News 

Passengers wearing face masks arrive at Adolfo Suarez-Barajas international airport, outskirts Madrid, Spain, Sunday, June 21, 2020. Spain opened its borders to European tourists on Sunday in a bid to kickstart its vital tourism economy, but Brazil and South Africa reported record new levels of coronavirus infections. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Toronto was one of them. The city’s battle against a deadly virus — and the struggle for the rehabilitation of its damaged tourism sector — offers lessons for cities wondering how they will navigate a post-COVID world. And even plan for the next crisis, whenever it arrives.


Hotels, as places of refuge, pleasure, business and also contagion, are important places to explore how the tourism sector pilots its way through pandemics. The experience with SARS offers sobering lessons for Toronto and urban tourist destinations globally.

Read more: Canadian tourism sector needs help through ‘very, very dire’ straits, industry heads say (Aug. 10, 2020)

Similar impacts of SARS and COVID-19

How are the tourism crises of 2002-03 and today similar, and how do they differ? Both public health crisis resulted in sudden, dramatic declines in hotel occupancy. However, while all travel came to a sudden stop globally in 2020, the 2002-03 events centred on a few cities, with Toronto, Singapore and Hong Kong under the microscope.

Hotel occupancy rates in these cities recorded steep declines, as travellers headed elsewhere, businesses suspended events and worried airlines and public health authorities explored protocols such as the now-ubiquitous face masks.

The collapse in travel in winter 2020 occurred at a point when the overall economy and the travel sector were in robust shape and recording record profits. In 2002-03, circumstances were very different. Global travel had slowed due to the Iraq War. Increasing documentation requirements and lingering concerns over security after 9/11 reduced cross-border traffic between Canada and the United States.

Toronto hotels and SARS

The arrival of SARS dealt a body blow to Canada’s largest city.

Both SARS and COVID-19 have had a severe impact on tourism and travel. Hotels are barometers of Toronto’s economic condition, and reveal the unequal impacts pandemics have on employment. Marginally employed people — immigrants and low-income workers — are over-represented among hotel workers. They lose their jobs quickly in the face of reduced demand.

Seasonal employment prospects also dim in the face of disruption. As in summer 2020, student summer employment was impacted in 2003, especially as Toronto entered the crucial summer months back, briefly, on the World Health Organization’s SARS travel advisory. The blow dealt to the tourism sector locally was hard but, as it turned out, by no means fatal.

© Provided by Global News

 A woman in a black suit with a blue suitcase uses an Air Canada check-in kiosk at the airport. A sign with the text SARS is in the foreground.A passenger checks in as a warning sign gives information about SARS at Pearson International Airport on May 30, 2003. 

CP PHOTO/Kevin Frayer

Toronto’s experience with SARS suggests that once a place appears safe, reassured travellers return — with some coaxing and a lot of co-ordinated planning. In late spring 2003, Toronto businesses developed a co-ordinated response to recovery. Travel packages that included accommodation, restaurant reservations, sporting events and theatre tickets began to lure tourists back. This promotion was accompanied by an aggressive and co-ordinated roll-back of gasoline prices.

After SARS, a celebration

The SARS crisis also led to the creation of a body for the tourism and hospitality sector, chaired by Tourism Toronto, which aimed to restore the city’s reputation. Local and provincial governments committed funds for advertising to reassure prospective tourists that Toronto was safe. The federal government also announced additional funds to promote Canada as a destination in international markets.

The most famous part of the reputation rehabilitation strategy was the hosting of the July 30, 2003, SARS benefit concert. Several hundred thousand fans cheered a lineup of world-famous musicians, headlined by the Rolling Stones. The results of that mega-event are hard to measure in terms of impact, despite the large and enthusiastic crowds that it drew. Such an event is unimaginable today, with the timeline for the COVID-19’s defeat far off, and the certainty that doubts will linger about the wisdom of such boisterous, large-scale assemblies for a long time to come.

In 2003, good news for the tourism sector arrived quickly. In fact, by late 2004, hotels were recording pre-SARS occupancy levels. It seemed as if the sector had dodged a bullet. But it had also dodged a critical opportunity to reflect on how new technologies and standards might reduce the impact of a future pandemic. And this is perhaps where the comparison proves most illuminating.

Read more: Looking back — Toronto’s 2003 SARS outbreak (Jan. 25, 2020)

After COVID-19?

The hotel sector faces dramatically different conditions today. It is in the midst of a global pandemic affecting all sectors of the economy. SARS resulted in far fewer deaths, over a shorter period of time, in a small number of major cities.

While the story of hotels’ recovery is inspiring, the pace was so fast that few paused to ask is larger lessons would be learned: What vulnerabilities might have been disguised in the rush to restore Toronto’s dynamic tourism sector? How could new technologies, systematic contingency planning and early detection systems might have become integrated into hotel management post-2003?

The greatest lesson of SARS may be how, amid the excited focus on recovery and a return to normalcy, so little thought was given to structurally prepare for the prospect of future crises. We need to keep these lessons in mind as we plan our emergence from COVID-19, and the resumption of travel.

Kevin James, Professor, History, University of Guelph; Jose Gabriel Alonzo, Masters student, History, University of Guelph, and Mark Holmes, Assistant Professor, Business and Economics, University of Guelph

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

AND WE SIGNED NAFTA 2 WHY?

Canada to challenge U.S. softwood lumber export duties through World Trade Organization
Emerald Bensadoun

Canada said it will be considering "all of its legal options" to challenge Canadian softwood lumber export duties unveiled by the United States last month, the international minister of trade said Friday

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© Global News A softwood lumber mill in New Brunswick

“These duties have caused unjustified harm for Canadian workers and businesses, and are hampering economic recovery on both sides of the border — especially when our people are being affected by the health and economic impacts of COVID-19," Minister Mary Ng said in a statement.

Trudeau says he continues to talk to Trump about ‘challenges’ around softwood lumber

“Canada will consider all of its legal options with respect to U.S. duties on softwood lumber, including the possibility of bringing this challenge to the World Trade Organization for review under its dispute settlement mechanism.”

Read more: Canada to keep fighting in softwood tariff dispute with U.S., Trudeau says

Ng's comments come in response to a new 7.42 per cent countervailing duty rate for most Canadian producers of softwood lumber that was established by the U.S. Department of Commerce on Nov. 24.

This, and an additional 1.57 per cent anti-dumping rate combine to 8.99 per cent, although the Canadian government said "certain companies also received company-specific rates."

Previously, Canadians exporting certain softwood lumber products to the U.S. were subject to a combined rate of 20.23 per cent. Last month, the federal government said it welcomed the reduction as a "step in the right direction," but reaffirmed its position that "unfair" fees on Canada's lumber industry must come to an end.

Video: Trudeau promises to fight for Canadian lumber industry with U.S.

In August, the World Trade Organization ruled against the U.S. over duties imposed in 2017 on the grounds that the American government had failed to prove 16 claims related to Canada's lumber industry, resulting in unfair subsidy for Canadian producers.

Ng said "any duties" imposed on Canadian exports of softwood lumber to the U.S. were "unwarranted and unfair."

“Our government will continue to vigorously defend its forestry sector and the thousands of hard-working Canadians it employs," she said.

Read more: Canadian lumber in legal limbo as U.S. appeals WTO ruling

The international trade minister's comments are the latest development in a series of disputes between Canada and the U.S. over tariffs that have worsened over recent months.

Canadian officials have argued that U.S. duties drove up construction costs in both countries, inflicting further damage on a lumber industry already ravaged by the effects of climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. Lumber Coalition has countered that even reducing the duty rate "understates true levels of subsidies and dumping," by the Canadian lumber industry.

“The U.S. lumber industry will continue to push for the trade laws to be enforced to the fullest extent possible in the second administrative review to allow U.S. manufacturers and workers the chance to prosper,” coalition co-chair Jason Brochu said in a previous statement to Global News.

Scientists focus on bats for clues to prevent next pandemic

RIO DE JANEIRO — Night began to fall in Rio de Janeiro’s Pedra Branca state park as four Brazilian scientists switched on their flashlights to traipse along a narrow trail of mud through dense rainforest. The researchers were on a mission: capture bats and help prevent the next global pandemic

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© Provided by The Canadian Press BATS IN BAGS

A few meters ahead, nearly invisible in the darkness, a bat made high-pitched squeaks as it strained its wings against the thin nylon net that had ensnared it. One of the researchers removed the bat, which used its pointed teeth to bite her gloved fingers.

The November nighttime outing was part of a project at Brazil’s state-run Fiocruz Institute to collect and study viruses present in wild animals — including bats, which many scientists believe were linked to the outbreak of COVID-19.

The goal now is to identify other viruses that may be highly contagious and lethal in humans, and to use that information to devise plans to stop them from ever infecting people — to forestall the next potential global disease outbreak before it gets started.

In a highly connected world, an outbreak in one place endangers the entire globe, just as the coronavirus did. And the Brazilian team is just one among many worldwide racing to minimize the risk of a second pandemic this century.

To some, it might seem too soon to contemplate the next global outbreak, with the world still grappling with the devastating fallout of the ongoing one. But scientists say it's highly like that, without savvy intervention, another novel virus will jump from animal to human host and find the conditions to spread like wildfire.

As this pandemic has shown, modern transport can disperse the pathogen to all corners of the globe in a matter of hours and spread easily in densely populated cities.

It’s not a question of if, but of when, according to Dr. Gagandeep Kang, an infectious diseases expert at Christian Medical College at Vellore in southern India.

She pointed to previous research that found India was among the most likely places in the world for such a “spillover” event to occur, due to population density and increasing human and livestock incursion into its dense tropical forests teeming with wildlife.

It's no coincidence that many scientists are focusing attention on the world’s only flying mammals — bats.

Bats are thought to be the original or intermediary hosts for multiple viruses that have spawned recent epidemics, including COVID-19, SARS, MERS, Ebola, Nipah virus, Hendra virus and Marburg virus. A 2019 study found that of viruses originating from the five most common mammalian sources — primates, rodents, carnivores, ungulates and bats — those from bats are the most virulent in humans.

Bats are a diverse group, with more than 1,400 species flitting across every continent except Antarctica. But what many have in common are adaptations that allow them to carry viruses that are deadly in humans and livestock while exhibiting minimal symptoms themselves — meaning they are able travel and shed those viruses, instead of being quickly hobbled.

“The secret is that bats have unusual immune systems, and that’s related to their ability to fly,” said Raina Plowright, an epidemiologist who studies bats at Montana State University.

To get off the ground and sustain flight requires an incredible amount of energy, with bats’ metabolic rate increasing sixteen-fold, Plowright said. “You’d expect them to get cell damage from all that metabolic exertion,” she said.

But that doesn’t happen. Instead, bats are remarkably resilient, with many species living more than 30 years — highly unusual for such small mammals.

Plowright and other bat scientists believe evolutionary tweaks that help bats recover from the stress of flying also give them extra protection against pathogens.

“Bats seem to have evolved a collateral benefit of flight — resistance to deal with some of the nastiest viruses known to science,” said Arinjay Banerjee, a virologist at McMaster University in Canada.

While scientists are still untangling the mystery, two leading theories are that bats may have evolved what Banerjee called “an efficient DNA repair mechanism" or that their bodies may tightly regulate inflammation triggers and not overreact to viral infections.

Probing the secrets of bat immune systems may help scientists understand more about when bats do shed viruses, as well as providing hints for possible future medical treatment strategies, he said.

Bats and other animals that carry pathogens don’t innately pose a risk to humans — unless conditions are right for a spillover event. “The virus has to come out of the host for us to get infected,” said Cara Brook, a disease ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley.

The bad news: Increasing destruction and fragmentation of habitats worldwide — especially biodiverse areas like tropical forests — means “we are seeing higher rates of contact between wildlife and humans, creating more opportunities for spillover,” she said.

That’s why the Brazilian researchers chose Pedra Branca park. As one of the world’s largest forests within an urban area, it offers a constant interaction of wild animals with the thousands of humans and domestic animals in surrounding communities. The scientists are studying not just bats, but also small primates, wild cats and domestic cats in homes with confirmed COVID-19 cases.

Video: Scientists study bats to prevent next pandemic (The Canadian Press)

Scientists and governments would stand a better chance at containing future outbreaks if they had faster notice of when and where they begin, said Ian Mackay, a virologist at Australia’s University of Queensland.

“Ongoing, constant, nonstop surveillance,” along the lines of the flu labs set up by the World Health Organization across the globe, could help researchers be better prepared, he said. He also suggested that labs for virus discovery could regularly sample waste water or materials from hospitals.

In India, a National Mission on Biodiversity and Human Well-Being has been pending since 2018 and will likely be launched next year. Abi Tamim Vanak, a conservation scientist at Ashok Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment in Bengaluru, said that a core part of the plan is to set up 25 sentinel surveillance sites across the country in both rural and urban areas.

“They will be the first line of defence,” he said.

A varied patchwork of virus surveillance programs exists in several countries, but funding tends to wax and wane with the political climate and sense of urgency.

Among the most ambitious endeavours is the Global Virome Project, which aims to discover 500,000 new viruses over 10 years.

The U.S. Agency for International Development recently announced the launch of the $100 million STOP Spillover project, an effort led by scientists at Tufts University and including global partners to study zoonotic diseases in Africa and Asia.

One approach that won’t help, scientists say, is treating bats as the enemy – vilifying them, throwing stones or trying to burn them out of caves.

This spring, villagers in the Indian state of Rajasthan identified bat colonies in abandoned forts and palaces and killed hundreds with bats and sticks. They also sealed some crevices where the bats lived, effectively trapping them. In the Indian state of Karnataka, villagers cut down old trees where bats tend to roost.

Scientists say those those tactics are likely to backfire.

An investigation by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Ugandan health authorities found that, after a mining operation attempted to exterminate bats from a cave in Uganda, the remaining bats exhibited higher infection levels of Marburg virus. This led to Uganda’s most severe outbreak of Marburg hemorrhagic fever, caused by the virus, in 2012.

“Stress is a huge factor in upsetting the natural balance that bats have with their viruses — the more you stress bats, the more they shed viruses,” said Vikram Misra, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

Although orders issued by Indian forest officials reiterating the complete ban on killing of wildlife and information campaigns to dispel myths were largely successful, convincing people not to attack bats means dispelling long-running cultural assumptions.

“People have a lot of misconceptions about bats. They’re nocturnal and look a little weird flying, and there’s a lot of literature and culture built around bats being scary,” said Hannah Kim Frank, a biologist at Tulane University. “But bats aren’t aggressive — and attacking bats doesn’t help control diseases.”

Bats also play vital roles in ecosystems: They consume insects like mosquitos, pollinate plants like agave, and disperse seeds.

“We actually need bats in the wild to consume insects that otherwise destroy cotton, corn and pecan harvests,” said Kristen Lear, an ecologist at Bat Conservational International.

A better approach to minimize disease risk, Frank said, is simply to minimize contact between wild bats and people and livestock.

She suggested that research on when bats migrate, and when new pups are born, could inform decisions about when people should avoid certain areas or keep their livestock penned up.

In North America, some scientists advocate restricting public access to caves where bats roost.

“Cave gating — bat-friendly gates, built with iron crossbars — can keep humans out and allow bats to move freely,” said Kate Langwig, an infectious disease ecologist at Virginia Tech. “If we leave the bats alone, and don’t try to hurt or exterminate them, they are going to be healthier."

Perhaps the most significant factor bringing bats into more frequent contact with people and domestic animals is the destruction of habitat, which forces bats to seek out new foraging and roosting grounds.

In Australia, widespread destruction of winter flowering eucalyptus trees that provide nectar for fruit bats — known locally as “flying foxes” — prompted the bats to move into areas closer to human settlements looking for alternate meals, including to a suburb of Brisbane called Hendra.

There, the bats transmitted a virus to horses, which in turn infected people. First identified in 1994 and named Hendra virus, it is highly lethal, killing 60% of people and 75% of horses infected.

A similar chain of events took place in Bangladesh, when habitat destruction drove fruit bats into cities, where they spread Nipah virus, which causes severe encephalitis in humans, by licking date palm sap from collection barrels.

To potentially reverse the movement of bats, Montana State University’s Plowright and colleagues based in Australia are studying restoring the bats’ original habitat.

“Every city in Australia is full of fruit bats that lost their winter habitats,” she said. “The idea is to plant new forests and make sure they are away from places with domestic animals and people.”

Whether the goal is to curb the spread of known zoonotic diseases or to reduce the risk of new ones emerging as pandemics, the strategy is the same: Reduce contact between humans and wild animals.

“In the history of COVID-19, bats have been more victim than victimizer,” said Ricardo Moratelli, co-ordinator of the Fiocruz project in Brazil. “Bats host a large number of parasites, and they deal with these parasites well. The problem is when human beings enter into contact with them.”

—-

Larson reported from Washington. Silva de Sousa reported from Rio de Janeiro. Ghosal reported from New Delhi.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Christina Larson, Aniruddha Ghosal And Marcelo Silva De Sousa, The Associated Press

PRE-FORDIST ROBBER BARON
Tesla is reportedly shutting down Model S and X production for 18 days, forcing staff to take unplanned, unpaid time off - or they can 'volunteer' in other parts of the business

insider@insider.com (Grace Dean) 

© Provided by Business Insider 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

EBENEZEER MUSK
Tesla is suspending production of two of its Model S and X electric vehicles for 18 days from December 24, according to a Friday staff email seen by CNBC.

Affected staff have to take five unpaid days off work, but Tesla said they could seek limited paid opportunities, or even "volunteer" elsewhere in the business.

OLD FASHIONED SPEED UP ON THE LINE
That same day, CEO Elon Musk emailed staff urging them to ramp up production of the vehicles because of high demand.

Tesla is suspending production of its Model S and Model X vehicles for 18 days from late December, according to an email to factory staff seen by CNBC.

This has left staff forced to take unpaid and unplanned time off work - and Tesla has said they can "volunteer" in other areas of the business, CNBC reported.

Production at Tesla's Fremont, California, factory will cease on December 24 and resume on January 11, according to an email seen by CNBC.

The staff affected will be given a full week of pay for the compulsory time off, per the email sent on Friday, alongside some paid holiday days.

But this leaves five days that staff will have to take off work unpaid and unplanned.

In the email, Tesla management said there would be "limited paid opportunities" for staff to work in other parts of the company during this time. Otherwise, staff can "volunteer" in the deliveries, or sales, side of the business, it said, per CNBC.

"The SX lines will be shut down for the holidays starting Dec. 24th and returning Jan. 11th," Tesla said in the email, transcribed in full by CNBC.

"We would like you to take the opportunity to refresh or spend time with your family, so Tesla will be giving you a full week pay for the week of Jan. 4th," it continued.

"There will also be limited paid opportunities for you to support other shops or volunteer for deliveries during some of this time."

Business Insider has contacted Tesla for comment.

Read more: Elon Musk's move to Texas is a publicity stunt that reveals how Tesla is maturing as an automaker

In a separate email to staff, also on Friday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that demand is "quite a bit higher than production this quarter" as he urged employees to ramp up production as much as possible for the rest of 2020, per CNBC.

Sales of Tesla's Model S and X vehicles totalled 15,200 in the quarter to late September, compared to 124,100 for its Model 3 and Y vehicles.

News of the temporary shutdown follows a string of problems with both vehicles for the automaker.

In late November, Tesla recalled more than 9,000 Model X cars over a cosmetic adhesive that could fly off. This was after it recalled 15,000 Model X's over power-steering issues and 30,000 S and X cars over suspension problems in October.

Fauci praises African American scientist at ‘forefront’ of creating Covid vaccine

Anthony Fauci has praised the work of Kizzmekia Corbett, an African American scientist who the leading US public health expert said was “at the forefront” of the development of a leading coronavirus vaccine.

© Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters Dr Kizzmekia Corbett, right, a research fellow at the NIH vaccine research center, in Bethesda, Maryland, with Donald Trump in March.



Related: Donald Trump reverses plan to give White House officials Covid vaccine

In a conversation about mistrust of Covid-19 vaccines among Black people in an online forum with the National Urban League, Fauci said Corbett was one of two leaders of the team which created a vaccine found to be 94% effective.

Corbett’s team at the National Institutes of Health worked with pharmaceutical company Moderna to develop the vaccine – one of two found to be more than 90% effective – which is expected to be authorised for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration this month.

Asked to talk about the involvement of African American scientists in the vaccination effort, Fauci said: “That [Moderna] vaccine was actually developed in my institute’s vaccine research centre by a team of scientists led by Dr Barney Graham and his close colleague Dr Kizzmekia Corbett, or Kizzy Corbett. Kizzy is an African American scientist who is right at the forefront of the development of the vaccine.

“So, the first thing you might want to say to my African American brothers and sisters is that the vaccine that you’re going to be taking was developed by an African American woman. And that is just a fact.”

Research by the Covid Collaborative, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and UnidosUS found that just 14% of Black Americans trust that a vaccine will be safe and 18% trust it will be effective.

Video: Coronavirus: Oxford vaccine has good safety record and efficacy, new study finds (The Independent)

The study found that many concerns were based on America’s racist history of medical research, including the Tuskegee syphilis experiment between 1932 and 1972, in which more than 100 Black men are estimated to have died.

Fauci said he fully respected scepticism around the vaccine and said it was important to address the historical reasons behind it. He also emphasised that scientists, not politicians, are in charge of approving coronavirus vaccines.

Corbett, 34, who has a doctorate in microbiology and immunology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, joined the NIH’s Vaccine Research Centre in 2014 as a postdoctoral fellow.

While at school, she was chosen to take part in Project Seed, a programme for gifted minority students that meant she could study chemistry in labs at UNC, reported the Washington Post. She was awarded a scholarship to study at the University of Maryland Baltimore county and did a summer internship at the National Institutes of Health.

When she started on Fauci’s team six years ago, Corbett told ABC News, she had no idea she would work on developing a vaccine. But amid a pandemic which began with reports of a respiratory outbreak in Wuhan, China, in early January, her team managed to create a vaccine in less than a year.

Corbett, who was part of a group of scientists who met Donald Trump in March, said it was important as a Black scientist to be visible.

“I felt that it was important to do that because the level of visibility that it would have to younger scientists and also to people of colour who have often worked behind the scenes and essentially [who have] done the dirty work for these large efforts toward a vaccine,” she said.

Corbett said it will take time to rebuild trust in Black communities, who have also been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, a process she said needed to be done in a “brick-by-brick fashion”.

She told CNN: “What I say to people firstly is that I empathise, and then secondly is that I’m going to do my part in laying those bricks. And I think that if everyone on our side, as physicians and scientists, went about it that way, then the trust would start to be rebuilt.”

As of Monday, the pandemic had infected more than 16.2 million people and killed nearly 300,000 in the US, according to Johns Hopkins University figures.

EU rights watchdog warns of pitfalls in use of AI

By Foo Yun Chee

© Reuters/Daniel Becerril FILE PHOTO: A healthcare worker uses a robot to carry out consultations with patients suffering from the coronavirus disease COVID-19, at NOVA hospital in Monterrey

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union's rights watchdog has warned of the risks of using artificial intelligence in predictive policing, medical diagnoses and targeted advertising as the bloc mulls rules next year to address the challenges posed by the technology.

While AI is widely used by law enforcement agencies, rights groups say it is also abused by authoritarian regimes for mass and discriminatory surveillance. Critics also worry about the violation of people's fundamental rights and data privacy rules.

The Vienna-based EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) urged policymakers in a report issued on Monday to provide more guidance on how existing rules apply to AI and ensure that future AI laws protect fundamental rights.

"AI is not infallible, it is made by people – and humans can make mistakes. That is why people need to be aware when AI is used, how it works and how to challenge automated decisions," FRA Director Michael O'Flaherty said in a statement.

FRA's report comes as the European Commission, the EU executive, considers legislation next year to cover so-called high risk sectors such as healthcare, energy, transport and parts of the public sector.

The agency said AI rules must respect all fundamental rights, with safeguards to ensure this and include a guarantee that people can challenge decisions taken by AI and that companies need to be able to explain how their systems take AI decisions.

It also said there should be more research into the potentially discriminatory effects of AI so Europe can guard against it, and the bloc must further clarify how data protection rules apply to the technology.

FRA's report is based on more than 100 interviews with public and private organisations already using AI, with the analysis based on uses of AI in Estonia, Finland, France, the Netherlands and Spain.

#ENDFURFARMING

Flying fur prices put fox in focus as mink cull sparks shortage

BUT NOT A FLYING FOX

(IT'S A BAT)FUR


By Silvia Aloisi and Nikolaj Skydsgaard\\  

© Reuters/ANDREW KELLY Labeled mink pelts are seen in storage at Kopenhagen Fur in Glostrup

MILAN/COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark's coronavirus-driven mink cull has put the fur business in a spin, with industry officials expecting fashion houses such as Louis Vuitton, Dior and Fendi to snap up fox and chinchilla to fill the gap.

The global fur trade, worth more than $22 billion a year, is reeling from Denmark's decision to kill 17 million farmed mink after COVID-19 outbreaks at hundreds of farms led to the discovery of a new strain of coronavirus in the mammals.

Worries of a sudden shortage of slinky mink pelts, of which Denmark was the top exporter, have lifted prices by as much as 30% in Asia, the International Fur Federation (IFF) says.

Now, all eyes are on Finland, where one million mink and 250,000 fox pelts will soon be up for grabs for buyers in Korea, China, the United States and elsewhere next week. Auction house Saga Furs plans to hold the international sale, the first since the Danish cull, via livestream from Dec. 15.

A sales programme offers mink fur from both Europe and North America, such as "Pearl Velvet" and "Silverblue Velvet" mink, in addition to "Silver Fox", "White Finnraccoon" and Russian sable.

Saga Furs, which last year took over its North American rival NAFA, expects to sell all the pelts, compared with a 55% take-up so far in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus crisis.

"The market will strengthen, an increase in prices will help our business in general," Saga Furs CEO Magnus Ljung said of the industry, which has seen years of falling prices.


"We've already had more requests about foxes, if people see that there is a lack of mink, they could consider using something else," Ljung told Reuters.

LVMH's head of sustainability Helene Valade said this week that the French luxury group obtains fur from Finland. The owner of Louis Vuitton, Dior and Fendi, which relies on brokers to bid, says it is using only 100% certified mink, fox and finnraccoon.

Fur demand has been falling since the 1950s, except for a rise between 2000 and 2013 when it was popular on fashion runways and Chinese appetite for luxury pelts boomed, Lise Skov, an academic who researched the Danish fur industry, said.

A typical mink pelt sold for more than $90 at auction in 2013, while last year skins fetched around $30. This was despite a fall in global production to just under 60 million pelts last year, from more than 80 million in 2014.

Euromonitor predicts the value of fur and fur products, both real and faux, will fall by 2.6% this year.

IS FUR FINISHED?

A Danish breeder-owned cooperative that sold 25 million mink hides last year, or 40% of the global total, is considering selling its brand and other assets after announcing that it would gradually shut down operations over the next 2-3 years.

Kopenhagen Fur CEO Jesper Lauge Christensen told Reuters he had received expressions of interest from Chinese customers to take over the auction house's brand, which he said could be valued at up to 1 billion Danish crowns ($163 million).

It still plans to sell some 25 million pelts over the next two years, from Danish farms not infected by the virus, frozen stocks and foreign animals.

Animal activists hope the Danish debacle, which has had political repercussions in the country, will finish off the fur industry and demand for items such as $1,700 fur trinkets, $16,000 fur vests and $60,000 fur coats will disappear.

Countries and states which have already banned fur farms or fur products includes Britain, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Norway, Israel and California.

PJ Smith, director of fashion policy at Humane Society International, says that brands still using real fur will ditch it soon, following Gucci, Prada, Armani and others.

But for now, Kopenhagen Fur's Christensen said fashion brands in Europe had expressed concern they will not be able to find a similar quality to the Danish mink furs.


"One of the biggest challenges from the brand perspective is that the unique Danish qualities will be disappearing from the collection and you cannot source that product elsewhere."

He said he was looking at selling warehouse facilities and equipment such as automated vision machinery to grade the skins.

China, followed by Russia, is the biggest buyer of Danish fur as its own mink are considered of lower quality than those raised in Europe, where breeding standards are generally higher.

"We wouldn't choose Chinese-made fur due to its poor quality," Zhang Changping, owner of China's Fangtai Fur, told Reuters, adding that it had already bought enough fur at least for the first half of 2021.

Fangtai would shift to auctions in Finland if Denmark failed to supply enough mink in the future, he said.

Niccolò Ricci, chief executive of Italian luxury designer label Stefano Ricci which has many clients in Russia and eastern Europe, said he expected mink prices to increase by up to 50% but that high-end labels like his would continue to seek top quality pelts, mainly from U.S. suppliers.

"The real shortage could come from 2022, but by then we are hoping mink farmers in Canada, Poland, America and Greece will increase production to replace Danish output," said IFF head Mark Oaten. Russia and China are also expected to hike output.

"People will also be looking at other types of fur. Fox has been very popular for trimmings, in parkas for example. Wild fur is also becoming more popular, as is chinchilla," Oaten added.

(Reporting by Nikolaj Skydsgaard in Copenhagen and Silvia Aloisi in Milan; additional reporting by Shanghai newsroom and Sarah White in Paris; Editing by Vanessa O'Connell and Alexander Smith)

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for MINK (plawiuk.blogspot.com)

FORWARD TO THE PAST: THE AUTOMAT
Vending machine pizza and robotic coffee: Pandemic accelerates restaurant automation

When the founders of PizzaForno began rolling out automated, around-the-clock pizza ovens in Canada, they spent months perfecting recipes.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

“We anticipated the No. 1 challenge we were going to have was convincing consumers that they could get a great quality, artisanal pizza out of a machine,” says president and co-founder Les Tomlin.

While it started out slow, he says interest has grown exponentially during the pandemic. The company’s pizza oven in the Ontario tourist town of Tobermory was the most successful pizza machine in the world by sales volume in August, Tomlin says.

As Canadians become accustomed to social-distancing rules, automated food and drink kiosks are gaining appeal.

And with the pandemic accelerating the automation of the restaurant industry, everything from gourmet cappuccino and artisanal pizza to fresh salads and buttercream frosted cake can now be bought from a vending machine.

The vending machine stigma of bad coffee and stale food may linger, but experts say the robotic kiosks and automats of today are challenging the notion that increasing convenience means sacrificing quality.

The new automated restaurants are serving fresh, made-to-order food and beverages that some say rival the quality of conventional food service.

“It’s not just some microwave pizza from a vending machine,” says Dana McCauley, director of new venture creation in the University of Guelph’s Research Innovation Office.

“It’s a freshly prepared pizza.”

Tomlin claims PizzaForno has carved out a whole new segment in the pizza category. “The low-touch economy is here to stay,” he says.

The company now has 22 units in operation and another 85 on order, and is receiving dozens of licensee inquiries a week.

It’s part of a rapid growth in the automation of restaurants and cafes as consumers seek out options that involve little to no human contact.

“Access to food that hasn't been touched by anybody is very appealing in this day and age,” McCauley says. 

The demand is spurring investments in automation and robotics.

“Financially it didn’t make a lot of sense before because the demand just wasn’t there,” says Saibal Ray, a professor in the Bensadoun School of Retail Management at McGill University.

“But the pandemic has changed that. The financial investments in automation are happening much faster than we anticipated.”

For example, the Dark Horse Coffee Automat opened in Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood in August, offering contactless, autonomous espresso drinks. 

“It’s the same quality coffee you’d get from a barista at a cafe,” says Brad Ford, general manager of RC Coffee, the tech firm behind the robotic barista.

“The only thing missing is the human element and doing the latte art on top, which we may eventually be able to do with a robotic arm.”

While the automat is an old concept that traces its origins to late 18th century Berlin, today’s automated restaurant infuses technology into nearly every step with customers often ordering and paying from a smartphone.

“The app brought back the automat,” says restaurateur Mohamad Fakih, the president and CEO of Paramount Fine Foods. The company operates multiple restaurants including Box’d, a fully automated restaurant that opened in June using a digital cubby technology.

“We knew the automat was the answer for the bottleneck in our industry. We just had to digitize it.”

The restaurant’s kitchen — staffed with human chefs — prepares the food and places orders in a sanitized box, which customers pick up on the other side, eliminating the need for a server or cashier.

Automation has raised concerns about robots replacing jobs, as machines take over duties once performed by humans.

But Fakih says the Box’d restaurant is able to process more orders, moving front-of-house staff into the kitchen.

“We need more chefs in the kitchen and more people delivering the food,” he says. “We’ve also created a new position called a concierge to greet people when they arrive and help them take an order if they’re not digitally savvy.”

Industry experts say automation could help some restaurants recover from crippling pandemic shutdowns.

More than 10,000 restaurants have closed since the start of the pandemic, a staggering number that increases every day, says Todd Barclay, president and CEO of Restaurants Canada.

“It’s been catastrophic,” he says. “Those who are still open say they’re barely keeping their nose above water."

Barclay says technology will play a role in the restaurants of the future, with increasing automation continuing after the pandemic, especially in more casual dining settings.

But he says there’s also a massive pent up demand for the human connection and social interaction eateries can offer.

“Many people tell me they can’t wait to sit down with their friends and family and enjoy the hustle and bustle and noise of a typical restaurant because we're social creatures,” Barclay says.

Still, McCauley says automated restaurants will likely thrive in high-volume settings, like food courts, as well as places that don’t justify opening a full cafe or restaurant, like a ferry terminal.

It will also help restaurants with the cost of doing business.

Jarrett Vaughan, professor in the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, says labour is often 30 to 40 per cent of a restaurant’s overhead.

He says automation could help reduce those costs and potentially be more reliable.

“It can be hard to find a labour force in some areas, especially in city centres where it’s more expensive to live,” Vaughan says.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 12, 2020.

Brett Bundale, The Canadian Press

The Rise and Fall of the Automat - ThoughtCo

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-automat-4152992

2019-02-10 · The automat is often considered to be an exclusively American phenomenon, but in fact, the world's first restaurant of this kind opened in Berlin, Germany in 1895.

  

POST FORDISM
Tesla teams to visit Indonesia to check on investment in EV components: government

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Tesla, the U.S. automaker, will send delegations to Indonesia next month to discuss potential investment in a supply chain for its electric vehicles, the government said on Saturday in a statement

.

© Reuters/Aly Song FILE PHOTO: Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk speaks onstage during a delivery event for Tesla China-made Model 3 cars at its factory in Shanghai

President Joko Widodo has touted Indonesia's nickel reserves on a number of occasions, telling Reuters last month that "it’s very important because we have a great plan to make Indonesia the biggest producer of lithium batteries and we have the biggest nickel (reserves)."

The president and Luhut Pandjaitan, the coordinating minister for maritime and investment, were on a call with Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Friday to discuss "investment opportunities from electric vehicles company Tesla in Indonesia," the ministry said.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Luhut told Reuters last month that "there is a really good chance" that companies will want to invest in Indonesian nickel processing to cut costs.

Musk has said he is planning to offer a 'giant contract for a long period of time" so long as the nickel is mined “efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way".

Indonesia is keen to develop a full supply chain for nickel at home, especially for extracting battery chemicals, making batteries and eventually building EVs.

(Reporting by Bernadette Christina Munthe and Stanley Widianto; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Siemens Canada workers will get a special $1,550 bonus for extra work during COVID-19

OAKVILLE, Ont. — Siemens Canada says that it will pay out $3.4 million in one-time bonuses to Canadian workers in appreciation of their extra work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The company says the payments, which will go to all employees apart from senior managers by the end of this year, work out to about $1,550 per eligible employee.

The engineering firm, which makes energy and electrical systems, medical technology, and equipment for railways, construction and manufacturing in Canada, says it has about 2,500 employees and 24 office and plants across the country.

The announcement is part of the firm's 200-million euro (C$309-million) payout globally, and the company says the payments recognize that employees across Canada have faced additional burdens caused by the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on wages, with the average hourly compensation nationwide down 11.6 per cent in the third quarter, according to Statistics Canada.

But Siemens Canada chief executive Faisal Kazi says the company was able to put on a strong performance this year, despite challenges from COVID-19.

“It has been an extremely difficult year for everyone both in industry and personally … we’re deeply proud of our employees and would like to recognize their contributions in Canada as a huge thank you for their efforts," said Kazi in a statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 11, 2020.

The Canadian Pres