Novel coronavirus likely was circulating in October 2019, U.S. researchers say

NOT FAKE NEWS BUT....RED BAITING PROPAGANDA AGAINST CHINA...

OK FAKE NEWS PROBABLY PLANTED BY THE ILLUMINA(TEE)

University of California-San Diego, the University of Arizona and Illumina Inc.  

said in a report  

Cases of the novel coronavirus first reported in Wuhan, China, 

in December 2019 may have emerged in nearby areas earlier

 in the year, according to new U.S. research. 

File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

March 19 (UPI) -- The novel coronavirus first reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan may have infected people as early as mid-October 2019, according to research from a team of U.S. scientists.

Researchers at the University of California-San Diego, the University of Arizona and Illumina Inc. said in a report published Thursday in journal Science that the virus possibly was circulating for at least two months in China before Chinese authorities alerted the World Health Organization on Dec. 31, 2019.

While the WHO has yet to release its official report on the origins of SARS-CoV-2, researchers say molecular clock evolutionary analyses can trace the virus' first appearance.

The senior author of the study was Joel Wertheim, an associate professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at University of California-San Diego School of Medicine.

"We employed a coalescent framework to combine retrospective molecular clock inference with forward epidemiological simulations to determine how long SARS-CoV-2 could have circulated prior to the time of the most recent common ancestor," the report said.

"Our results define the period between mid-October and mid-November 2019 as the plausible interval when the first case of SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Hubei province," it added.

A molecular clock is a method that determines the mutation rate of genes to deduce when two or more life forms diverge, according to UC San Diego. In the case of the coronavirus, the common ancestor of all SARS-CoV-2 variants had appeared by November, the report said.

But Michael Worobey at the University of Arizona said the first cases of the disease most likely emerged even before the appearance of a common ancestor.

"The index case can conceivably predate the common ancestor -- the actual first case of this outbreak may have occurred days, weeks or even many months before the estimated common ancestor," said Worobey, a co-author and a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

Scientists also used epidemic simulations to understand the early phase of the pandemic.

RELATED Expert: COVID-19 vaccine concerns mostly unfounded

Experiments showed only 29.7% of simulated epidemics went on to become "self-sustaining epidemics."

"The remaining 70.3% of epidemics went extinct," scientists said.

Illumina, Inc.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illumina,_Inc.

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Illumina, Inc.

Type	Public
Traded as	Nasdaq: ILMN NASDAQ-100 Component S&P 500 Component
Industry	Biotechnology
Founded	1998
Founder	David Walt Larry Bock John Stuelpnagel Anthony Czarnik Mark Chee
Headquarters	San Diego, California ,  U.S.
Key people	Francis deSouza (President & CEO) Jay Flatley (Executive Chairman) Sam Samad (CFO)
Products	NovaSeq 6000, HiSeq X, HiSeq 4000, MiSeq, MiSeqDx, MiniSeq, iSeq 100, NextSeq 550, NextSeq 550Dx, iScan
Revenue	US$3.33 billion (2018)
Operating income	US$883 million (2018)
Net income	US$826 million (2018)
Number of employees	~7,300
Website	www.illumina.com
Footnotes / references [1]

Illumina, Inc. is an American company. Incorporated in April 1998, Illumina develops, manufactures, and markets integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological function. The company provides a line of products and services that serves the sequencing, genotyping and gene expression, and proteomics markets. Its headquarters are located in San Diego, California.

Illumina's technology had purportedly by 2014 reduced the cost of sequencing a human genome to US$1,000, down from a price of $1 million in 2007.^[2] Customers include genomic research centers, pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions, clinical research organizations, and biotechnology companies.

 Tony Perkins to Newsmax TV: 

Dems Want to Force Americans to Fund Abortion

QUOTED IN SUSAN PAGE'S BIO OF BARBARA BUSH

LAST TIME I CHECKED SHE WAS A REPUBLICAN

MARX ON TRADES UNIONS

 

Medium offers entire editorial staff buyouts

WHEN A UNION DRIVE FAILS

BY THOMAS MOORE - 03/24/21 THE HILL
© iStock

Editorial staff at the self-publishing platform Medium are being offered buyouts and its vice president of editorial content is leaving the company as it once again retools its approach to creating its own journalistic content, CEO Ev Williams announced Tuesday.

“I also want to give an option to those who would rather get off this crazy ride,” Williams wrote in a blog post, after detailing some of the changes. “To that end, we’re offering to everyone in editorial a voluntary separation program (VSP).”

Staff members that decide to leave, Williams said, will get a lump sum payment equal to five months' salary and six months of health benefits. The staff has until April 2 to make a decision.

Williams also announced that Medium’s VP of editorial, Siobhan O’Connor, “has decided this time of transition is her time to move on.” The company is working out when her last day will be.

Jermaine Hall and Scott Lamb are now in charge of content, Williams said, and they both report to Karene Tropen, who has been given the new role of SVP of marketing and content.

The buyouts come less than a month after an attempt to unionize Medium’s editorial workers failed to win enough support. Neither O’Connor nor the representatives from the Medium Workers Union immediately commented on William’s post.

The buyouts are just the most recent of several shifts the self-publishing platform has made in its approach to producing its own content, Williams acknowledged.

“Though Medium has been an open platform since day one, we’ve had an editorial team almost as long. The original thesis was that we wanted to establish that Medium was both open and high quality,” he wrote.

“We wanted to set the bar high. We were successful in doing that, and, since then, the editorial part of our company has gone through many iterations as we’ve strived to find the right way to integrate it. In 2014–16, we published great original content but we didn’t have the right business model to support it,” he added.

However, he added, the most recent iteration wasn’t financially successful.

“We have published many stellar stories that found a wide audience and more than paid for themselves. But our hit rate has been low, and we’re not near where we need to be to make it work economically,” he wrote.

While the overall customer base for Medium grew, he added, the audience for the company’s publications did not, reflecting a trend that media brands matter less now than individual voices.

Williams did not say how the platform will approach publishing its own content from now on, only that it will have to “experiment more efficiently than we have been to date.”

“I can see more focused, high-affinity publications working well as part of the Medium bundle,” he added. “And I can also see the editorial team being great at conceiving and executing those types of publications.”

A California tree nursery's Supreme Court fight has far-reaching implications for property owners

BY ILYA SOMIN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 03/24/21 

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

© Getty Images

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Cedar Point Nursery v. Hassid, an important property rights case. Cedar Point could set a major precedent determining whether the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires the government to compensate property owners when it forces them to give outside private parties extensive access to their land. If the state prevails, government would have broad power to force property owners to allow outsiders onto their property. That power can be abused easily in many ways. Fortunately, if the oral argument is any indication, the justices seem likely to rule in favor of property rights.

In Cedar Point, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a California law requiring agricultural growers to give union organizers access to their property for three hours per day, 120 days per year, did not automatically create a taking requiring “just compensation” under the Takings Clause. The state mandated union-organizer access so that the organizers could try to persuade the growers’ farmworkers to join their unions. The Ninth Circuit ruled there was no taking because state regulations did not require owners to give union organizers the right to “unpredictably traverse their property 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.” Thus, there is no “permanent physical occupation” of property, of the sort required by Supreme Court precedent for this to be considered a “per se” (automatic) taking, as opposed to one subject to a complex balancing test established in the 1978 Penn Central case. That test is notoriously vague and manipulable, and usually comes out in favor of the government.

The issue comes down to whether a “permanent physical occupation” occurs only when it is literally continuous, or when the right to occupy continues indefinitely but does not apply to all hours of the day, all the time. The right to exclude unwanted entrants is a central element of property rights in the Anglo-American legal tradition. It is hard to argue that a major restriction on it is not a taking of property rights.

During the Founding era and the 19th century, the power to exclude was recognized as an important aspect of property rights. Government violations of that right generally were understood to be takings, except in some cases where the violation was necessary to prevent the owner from engaging in activities that threatened public health and safety. Scholars such as University of San Diego’s Michael Rappaport and George Mason University’s Eric Claeys have shown that there is a strong originalist justification for classifying even many regulatory restrictions that do not involve physical occupation of property rights as takings, especially when we focus on the original meaning of the Takings Clause as of the time that the Fourteenth Amendment “incorporated” it and the rest of the Bill of Rights against state and local governments in 1868 (a methodology favored by a wide range of originalists). The case is even stronger when the government actually requires owners to accept physical trespass on their land.

Cedar Point has implications that go far beyond the union organizing context. If California prevails, it could allow the government to impose a wide range of access requirements on owners without paying compensation. During the oral argument, several justices pointed out that, under California’s reasoning, any access requirement that lasts fewer than 365 days per year or does not cover all daylight hours would not be a per se taking. Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that it would enable states to require a homeowner to allow demonstrations on her land, so long as the protestors are allowed to come only “120 days a year and three hours at a time.” Even liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor — the justice usually least sympathetic to takings claims — emphasized that “we need something that gives clear guidance” and was reluctant to relegate the case to the Penn Central test, because that test “fails to capture the significant interests in the right to exclude at stake in physical invasion cases.”

FALACIOUS ARGUMENT IF THE RED STATES COULD USE THIS THEY WOULD HAVE

The union-organizer context makes it easy to view this in crude left v. right or labor v. management terms. But if the Supreme Court rules against the property owners, conservative “red state” governments can easily use the same power for their own ends. For example, they could use it to compel abortion clinics to grant access to pro-life activists who seek to persuade patients and medical personnel that abortion is murder. Similarly, they could force businesses and other organizations that ban guns on their premises to give regular access to gun rights activists, as long as it is “only” for a few hours per day, 120 days per year.

THE BOSSES ARE ALWAYS WORRIED ABOUT THE UNION IMPACT ON WORKERS

IT IS SUCH A BURDEN ON THEM

Allowing states to mandate outsider access to workplaces often will harm workers’ interests more than it benefits them. If union organizers are able to enter on a regular basis, disrupting work and potentially worsening employer-employee relations, that would predictably increase the cost of hiring these types of agricultural workers. Employers are likely to react by hiring fewer such workers, offering lower pay and benefits, or some combination of both. Similar harms to workers may arise if state governments are generally allowed to give outsiders the right to access workplaces without employers’ consent, and without paying compensation. Such disruption can easily harm workers in a wide range of enterprises.

During oral argument, some justices worried that, if Cedar Point wins, recurring government health and safety inspections of businesses might qualify as takings. Joshua Thompson, counsel for the property owners, addressed this issue by noting that, under the common law, property owners have no right to exclude “reasonable” government inspections and searches. A better answer is that inspections meant to protect health and safety fall within the police power — the government’s authority to protect health and safety. Such uses of the police power are not generally considered takings under either the original meaning of the Takings Clause or subsequent precedent. By contrast, a general right of union organizers to enter property does not come within the police power exception. And the same goes for other types of recurring government-mandated intrusions that are not health and safety measures.

One of the main purposes of constitutional property rights is to protect owners against state-mandated trespasses of all kinds, regardless of ideology. Labor unionists, pro-lifers and others have every right to try to persuade people to join them. But if the government forces private property owners to give them access, it thereby takes private property and must pay compensation. That rule protects property owners of all types and makes it easier for people of different views to coexist in a diverse society.

Ilya Somin is a professor of law at George Mason University and author of “Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom” and “The Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent Domain.” His wife, Alison Somin, is an employee of the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represents the property owners in the Cedar Point case. She is not personally involved in the case. Follow him on Twitter @IlyaSomin.

Moniz: Texas blackouts show need to protect infrastructure against climate change

BY ZACK BUDRYK - 03/22/21 

© Getty

Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on Monday told lawmakers that recent extreme weather events in Texas underscored the need to better incorporate climate change risks into energy infrastructure.

“Climate change means that the weather patterns of the past are not adequate to inform those of the future,” Moniz said at a hearing hosted by the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

“As we increase electrification of key sectors, we must thoughtfully approach these requirements for, and risks to, a modernized electric grid,” he added. “In addition, increased electrification of other parts of the economy necessitates a substantial buildout of the grid system, from transmission lines to substations and transformers, to distribution systems and [electric vehicle] charging stations, all the way to heat pumps for homes.”

Moniz, who served during the Obama administration, noted that both the failure of the Texas grid and rolling blackouts in parts of California were indicative of the need to protect energy infrastructure from extreme climate events.

“Research, development, and demonstration of grid resilience technologies will be critically important to preserving reliability, an essential role of the federal government,” he added.

Moniz’s comments came during a hearing on the Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow's America Act, a wide-ranging infrastructure bill introduced last week by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Later in the hearing, Moniz added that “one of the major lessons” from the Texas blackouts had been that “as we do grid modernization, we have to look at the intersections with other infrastructures … in particular the failure to integrate response on the gas side and the electricity side was a huge problem.”

Congressional Republicans and Democrats have clashed on the extent to which hearings should be held on the failure of Texas’s self-contained grid. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) has said he intends to investigate “to what extent Texas should be part of the national grid.”

Unlike other states, Texas operates a standalone grid, allowing it to sidestep most federal regulations.

Some Republicans, however, have said Congress does not need to get involved in a state issue.

Interview
Raymond Antrobus: 'Deafness is an experience, not a trauma'

Sian Cain

‘It’s ridiculous to me that there weren’t more kids’ books with deaf protagonists’ 

... Raymond Antrobus. Photograph: David Levene/the Guardian

The award-winning poet has written his first picture book, Can Bears Ski?, after being unable to find any children’s titles with a deaf protagonist

@siancain
Tue 23 Mar 2021

There’s a story that Raymond Antrobus often tells, from the time before his deafness was diagnosed when he was six: when his father read him a picture book, Antrobus would nestle into his father’s chest, and feel the story he could not hear through the vibrations of his body. The book was often his favourite, Happy Birthday Moon; both the memory and the book would, decades later, give him the name of a poem in his prize-winning debut The Perseverance. “I’d like to be the Moon, the bear, even the rain. / Dad makes the Moon say something new every night / and we hear each other, really hear each other. / As Dad reads aloud, I follow his finger across the page.”

Now the memory has also inspired his first picture book, Can Bears Ski? Antrobus finally became the bear: the book follows his cuddly little protagonist, who hears the book’s title when adults ask, “Can you hear me?”, until his deafness is finally recognised.

Antrobus, 34, originally declined to write a children’s book when he caught the eye of publishers while reading Happy Birthday Moon at a literary festival. “I told this story all the time but I never thought of it as a kids’ book. The thing is, I still very much see myself as a poet,” he says. “Poetry is the thing I live for. But I’ve realised that a lot of my worry has been ego. A lot of poets I love also write for children. I think it’s just snobbery. In the poetry world, if I am honest, there’s just so much mean-spirited snobbery. And maybe I’ve just been in it for too long and that’s why I didn’t want to write a kids’ book. But I feel fine about this book now. I am so, so proud of it.”

Can Bears Ski? by Raymond Antrobus, illustrations by Polly Dunbar.

 Photograph: Polly Dunbar

A while after the festival, standing in the library at Blanche Nevile, the deaf school in London that Antrobus once attended and where he now teaches, he checked the shelves. “There were no books for young children that had a deaf central character. There was nothing. So I decided I would give it a go.”

Antrobus then met children’s author Joyce Dunbar, who is profoundly deaf, at a literature festival. “Joyce was so supportive. I was worried that I would be stepping into a lane that’s not my own. Getting approval from a veteran was a blessing for me – if you think this is OK, no one can really tell me anything now.” By chance, the illustrator assigned to Can Bears Ski? was Polly Dunbar, Joyce’s daughter. When Antrobus saw her illustrations, he cried: “I just had to step outside the office, I couldn’t quite believe how well she nailed it.”

Antrobus has been getting messages from all over the world about Can Bears Ski?: from grandparents who use the book to explain their deafness to their grandchildren; a boy who wrote that he would ask his friend about his hearing aids for the first time; a whole school in Canada that was so inspired, they organised a skiing trip. “And none of them have been, ‘Oh, the poor deaf bear!’” he says. “Deafness is an experience, not a trauma. A diagnosis is not a tragic story, but managing it is a very real concern. I have hearing parents and they didn’t know whaonists. It is a symptom of a mainstream culture that is failing everyone. So my book t to do. It’s ridiculous to me that there weren’t more kids’ books with deaf protagis having a life beyond what I could have dreamed of, and that is really exciting.”

Antrobus is in an Oklahoma hotel room when we speak, waiting out a huge snowstorm that has taken out the heating in his home. His wife is American and Antrobus is currently living in the US with her, as they have both been caught up in immigration delays amid the pandemic. To further complicate matters, they are now expecting their first child: “We’ve been seeing midwives and looking at how much a birth costs in the US compared to the UK where it is free,” he huffs. “I am just being hit with constant new things.”

One positive new thing snuck in just weeks before the pandemic: after giving a talk to a roomful of audiologists, Antrobus was swamped by offers to improve his hearing aids. I’ve met Antrobus before and seen his previous hearing aids from the NHS; the devices in his ears now are entirely invisible on Zoom. He says they have changed his life, that he can hear sound through walls for the first time.

Can Bears Ski? by Raymond Antrobus, illustrations by Polly Dunbar. 

Photograph: Polly Dunbar

“They are like the most powerful hearing aids that exist and they have been a godsend. I have been living in a whole new world of sound in the pandemic. I have been on NHS hearing aids my whole life – these are worth thousands and I wouldn’t have access to these otherwise. The kids I work with, they don’t have access to this. But my god, has it made a difference.”

Like everyone in lockdown, he has watched a lot of TV, but for a very different reason: armed with his flash tech, he is now watching all the films he remembers seeing without captions as a child. “All my ideas of my favourite childhood films are wrong!” he says. “This whole thing has opened up to me, I’ve had different stories for all of them.” In lockdown, he’s also made a BBC Radio 4 show, Inventions in Sound – a programme about captioning.

While Can Bears Ski? began with a memory of his father, the role the bear’s father plays in the book – finding lost hearing aids, juggling appointments – was all his mother. “I could never really talk to my dad about my experiences, that world was completely alien to him,” Antrobus says. “He didn’t participate. I don’t want to make excuses for him. But I did want this book to challenge gender roles. Before it came out, I had to tell mum, ‘I am not giving dad the credit here, I am just providing a model.’ He just wasn’t present. He didn’t have any language, he never even called me deaf, he’d just call me ‘limited’. That was always his word and the way he used it, it did affect me. We would call that ableist language now. So in a way, the book models the childhood I wish I had with my dad. But I hope it also honours what my mum did.” He’s promised that his next poetry collection, out in September, is “all about her”. “And she’s come around now,” he laughs.


Can Bears Ski? is published by Walker Books. Inventions in Sound is next broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 31 March.

UNIONIZE!

Goldman Sachs' junior bankers rebel over '18-hour shifts and low pay'

Younger staff in London follow revolt in US offices over remote-working conditions

Junior Goldman Sachs staff in london have joined a revolt over working hours and pay during the pandemic. Photograph: Igor Golovniov/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock







Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent
@kalyeena
Wed 24 Mar 2021

The reputation of Goldman Sachs as the most desirable employer for aspiring investment bankers is at stake. Legendary for its pulling power with the best graduates, the bank is now facing a rebellion in its lower ranks.

Junior staff who used to tolerate long working hours thanks to office camaraderie have been forced to manage burnout at home, alone, throughout the pandemic. Some have started demanding change, while others are plotting their exit. What began as a little local trouble at a US office in February has now spread to the UK.

“It used to be either you get paid a lot, and your life is hell, or your life is better and you’re not paid that well,” one London-based banker, hired by Goldman last year, said. “At the moment we have neither.”

The banker, who spoke to the Guardian on the basis of anonymity, said staff were worried about speaking out on issues including 18-hour shifts that left juniors earning less than the living wage, or the number of colleagues on sick leave due to burnout. The employee – who is one of 100 recruits hired to work at Goldman each year – did not want their gender disclosed due to fear of repercussion.

“I knew what I was signing up for at Goldman. But then things changed really quickly with remote working during Covid,” they said.

With the Fleet Street head office closed, some colleagues moved home, while the banker, in their early 20s, was left to work out of a three-bed flat shared with two other roommates in London.

Goldman chief executive David Solomon has acknowledged the vast pandemic workload. While an investment banking boom helped push profits up 135% to $4.5bn (£3.8bn) in the fourth quarter of 2020, it has taken a toll on staff.

“There are three to six people on sick leave for burnout per team in London at all times. It’s actually pretty rough,” the London banker said. Some juniors are regularly working until 4-5am, and occasionally through to morning. “I’ve spoken to some analysts that have lost nearly 1 or 2 stone in one year just because they don’t have time to cook.”

Solomon was forced to address similar complaints laid out in a leaked presentation by 13 aggrieved first-year Goldman bankers this week, who complained that long hours, and abuse from co-workers had created “inhumane” working conditions.

The complaints, which date from February, indicate that Goldman is still grappling with the high-pressure culture that was exposed when 22-year-old Goldman analyst Sarvshreshth Gupta took his own life in 2015. Gupta was found dead after complaining of toiling 100 hours a week and throughout the night.

Inquiries suggest Goldman is not just overworking a small group of US hires, but that the problem is widespread and affecting junior bankers overseas.

In a company-wide message on Monday, Solomon pledged the bank would ramp up efforts to hire more junior bankers, transfer staff to stretched teams and strengthen enforcement of a no-work-on-Saturday rule. “We are not asking for crazy stuff, just for the existing rules to be enforced,” the London banker said.

Banks such as Goldman Sachs are able to demand long hours by adding a clause to contracts that opt staff out of 48-hour working week rules.

“Some days you don’t shower,” the London banker said. “Same with eating … You just don’t have time to say ‘Oh hey I need to go shopping for groceries and then cook’,” they said.

“We are supposed to work “whatever the business requires” but these requirements have kept increasing and we have no control on our hours. Senior employees can choose to pass on a deal if they don’t have the bandwidth, but we are just obeying orders,” the banker said.

To its credit, Goldman Sachs has tried to offer some remote perks, such as yoga or mental health webinars. “But you don’t even have time to sleep. So how would you have time to login for one hour on Zoom?” the banker said.

First-year bankers are weighing up the costs. Starting on a base salary of roughly £50,000, analysts who regularly work 18-hour shifts, six days a week, will earn roughly £8.90 an hour before tax – less than the £10.85 living wage for London – unless they last until bonus season.

“If you don’t get your bonus, you’ll get paid less by the hour than a McDonald’s employee. And everyone knows about that, but it also increases the pressure, in the sense that people are scared of voicing concerns, myself included,” they said.

The banker said a number of analysts had quit halfway through their second-year – refusing to wait for their bonus. “They said, ‘It’s not worth it. I’d rather have time off and then start to work where I’ll be paid more, than suffer like hell.’”

Meanwhile, Goldman has left bankers footing the bill for their own home-working equipment – including computers, screens, phone, chairs and desks – during the pandemic.

Staff have also been stripped of meal perks that allowed them to expense up to £20 a day when working overtime – and £60 on Sundays – since they left the office. “Juniors tried pushing for evening meals to be covered as used to be in the office but the firm didn’t reply. This has a huge impact as it amounts to 20% of net salary,” they said.

The banker claimed Goldman was aware it could pay workers less, and replace them quickly, thanks to the power of its own brand and prestige. “That’s the really perverse thing about it. Goldman keeps saying the real force of Goldman is its people. And if that was the case, they’d treat the people better,” they said.

The bank did not deny that staff had been overworked, but said in a statement: “We are actively engaging with our managers to ensure that everyone in their teams, including junior staff members, has the support they need given the high-levels of client activity and ongoing challenges of working from home.”

Goldman Sachs boss responds to leaked report into 'inhumane' working hours

David Solomon says he takes survey in which junior analysts claimed damage to physical and mental health very seriously

BRUCE WILLIS EVIL TWIN

David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, told staff on Sunday in a recorded message that he was taking further action to limit excessive working hours. Photograph: Kena Betancur/Afp/AFP via Getty Images

Kalyeena Makortoff Banking correspondent
@kalyeena
Mon 22 Mar 2021

Goldman Sachs’s chief executive, David Solomon, has broken his silence over a report by some of its junior bankers that claimed staff were facing “inhumane” working conditions, saying he took the complaints “very seriously”.

In a recorded message sent to the bank’s 34,000 staff across the world on Sunday night, Solomon said the Wall Street firm was taking further action to address issues raised in the leaked presentation last week.

The slides, which were created by a small group of newly hired investment banking analysts in the US, said they were working 100-hour weeks and facing abuse from colleagues that was severely affecting their mental and physical health

“I can imagine that many of you saw the presentation that a group of analysts shared with their management recently about their lack of work-life balance,” the chief executive said, according to a transcript seen by the Guardian. “This is something that our leadership team and I take very seriously.”

The complaints suggested bankers at Goldman are still struggling with the long hours and high-pressure culture that was exposed when 22-year-old Goldman analyst Sarvshreshth Gupta took his own life in 2015. Gupta was found dead after complaining of working 100 hours a week and working all night.

Solomon said junior staff were facing “a new set of challenges” due to remote working, acknowledging that some staff felt they had to be connected 24/7. “This is not easy, and we’re working hard to make it better.”

The banking boss is famously opposed to home working, having called it an aberration that must be corrected as soon as possible.

Solomon, who was previously head of Goldman’s investment banking division, said the lender was responding to complaints by strengthening enforcement of a no work on Saturday rule, ramping up efforts to hire new junior bankers and transferring staff internally to help teams that were stretched. “We’re also being more selective about business opportunities that we pursue, and we’re working to automate certain tasks in our business,” he added.

Despite fears that the 13 junior bankers may have faced repercussions for raising their concerns – which were first brought to managers before they started circulating on Twitter last week – Solomon said he encouraged staff to speak up.

“In this case, it’s great that this group of analysts went to their management. We want a workplace where people can share concerns freely. So we want to encourage all of you to take the opportunity to speak with your management. If there are any issues, do not hesitate to reach out to ask for help,” the message said.

However, he cheered the fact that Goldman was attracting enough business to keep its investment bankers so busy. “In the months ahead, there are times when we’re going to feel more stretched than others, but just remember: If we all go an extra mile for our client, even when we feel that we’re reaching our limit, it can really make a difference in our performance.”

THE JACK MA PHILOSOPHY 996

Stray review – exquisite dog's eye view of Istanbul

Elizabeth Lo’s film about the street dogs of the Turkish metropolis is the perfect companion piece to Kedi, a 2016 work about its cats

Queen of the road … Zeytin in Stray. Photograph: Dogwoof films

Leslie Felperin
Tue 23 Mar 2021 

At last, just what world cinema really needs right now: an exquisitely made film about street dogs in Istanbul, satiating that universal desire to see distant lands, coo over beautiful, noble animals, and satisfy the audience’s need to feel guilty about the misfortune of poorer, unluckier people. Director Elizabeth Lo’s first feature-length documentary ticks every box, while also providing a companion piece to Kedi, Ceyda Torun’s equally wonderful ode to Istanbul and Turkey’s feral felines. Together, the two films would make the perfect night in of viewing for quarantined animal lovers with frustrated wanderlust, especially anyone who loves the magnificently grotty Bosphorus metropolis.

Filmed seemingly with a low-slung camera held for great chunks of the running time at dog-head height, the film follows a gaggle of orphans both canine and human whose paths intersect and converge. A trio of Turkish-speaking refugees from Syria live in squatted building sites and doorways, and the camera stands back and watches while they huff glue from bags and space out. The actual protagonist is a yellow mutt named Zeytin, a Labra-something cross probably, with the most soulful eyes you’ll see in any movie this year. Dragging a slightly crook leg and sometimes palling up with dog friend Nazar – a dark, stockier lady of a certain age – Zeytin hangs with the Syrian boys and then saunters off to look for food when the fancy takes her, queen of the road, blithely unconcerned about cars.

The spliced-in grandiloquent quotes about dogs and philosophy and whatnot from Diogenes that pepper the film aren’t really necessary; the action speaks for itself. Perhaps because the star species here is more biddable and less camera-shy than the average cat, Lo’s film stays closer to its non-human heroine than Kedi did, creating a more lyrical, less anthropological study. That poetic vibe is richly enhanced by composer Ali Helnwein’s keening, cello-centric score that’s nimbly synched up to the editing. That said, nothing tops the vocal performance from Zeytin herself at the end, howling hauntingly along with a muezzin’s call to prayer.

Stray is released on 26 March on digital platforms.

'What appointments did these dogs have to keep?': long lunches and brief liaisons in a radical new dogumentary

‘One indomitable bitch’ … Zeytin in Stray. Photograph: Magnolia Pictures

To mark National Puppy Day, Elizabeth Lo’s acclaimed film Stray gives humans rare insight into the canine gaze, courtesy of homeless mutts in Istanbul

Richard Godwin
Tue 23 Mar 2021 

From the moment Zeytin makes her first appearance in Elizabeth Lo’s feature Stray, there is no doubt you are in the presence of a unique spirit. As she surveys an Istanbul side street at dawn, her features are alert, her gaze is uncompromising and her deep, dark eyes sparkle with intelligence. There’s something of Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen about her, or maybe Brad Pitt in one of his less kempt moments. But non-dog comparisons don’t do her justice. This is one indomitable bitch.

Lo first encountered Zeytin and her friend Nazar on a 2017 casting trip to Turkey, and knew immediately that she had found the star she was looking for – which is to say, a dog who could carry a human film. “We were wandering through a busy underground tunnel filled with people when suddenly these two giant stray dogs streaked past us,” she says. “They were running with such a sense of purpose and it was so intriguing. What appointments did these dogs have to keep?”

Lo and her small crew of Turkish co-producers ended up tailing Zeytin, Nazar and another dog, Kartal, to all of their appointments around Istanbul for a period of over two years, trying to answer that question. Her documentary, filmed entirely at dog-height and given an immersive soundtrack by the sound artist Ernst Karel, reveals a rich social calendar, as the dogs trot to meetings with fishers on the Galata Bridge, lunches with refuse collectors on the Istiklal Caddesi, brisk liaisons with male dogs and long nights sleeping on construction sites with Jamil, Halil and Aliof, three refugees from Aleppo.

Stray, Lo’s debut feature-length documentary, is already a cult hit on the (virtual) festival circuit, enthusiastically received by human and dog audiences alike. However, it defies the sentimentality of pet movies such as Marley & Me or even non-human-centred stories like Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar. Instead, it is a meditation on non-human intelligence that seems to open the way towards a new interspecies cinema. Zeytin, stubborn and independent, was the one dog throughout the whole casting process who didn’t try to follow the human crew around. “It allowed us to follow her, for her to take us places and for audiences to be enveloped in a non-human will and agency,” says Lo.

It’s no surprise to find that Lo is a dog-lover. She grew up in Hong Kong with a sheepdog named Mikey and when Mikey died, she vowed to make a film that honoured a dog’s life on its own terms rather than through the prism of ownership. “It was about recentring a narrative, visually and sonically, around a non-human gaze, breaking away from an anthropocentric way of viewing the world,” she says.

Her initial thought was to make a documentary comparing the treatment of stray dogs in different cities around the world, but the unusual legal status of stray dogs in Istanbul ended up consuming her attention. For most of the last century, Turkish authorities have battled against stray (and often rabid) dogs, ultimately resorting to inhumane methods such as mass poisonings – which only made the dogs more hostile and dangerous. Eventually, public outcry forced a change in the law. Since 2004, it has been illegal to euthanise or capture any stray dog in Turkey. The result, in Istanbul, is that dogs now eat, sleep, defecate and mate wherever they choose. The authorities merely vaccinate, sterilise, tag and provide medical attention to the strays. What Lo saw as she followed Zeytin, Nazar and Kartal around was a city of 15 million people taking communal care of the city’s estimated 130,000 dogs, who lead far more fulfilling lives as a result.

‘It was about recentring a narrative, visually and sonically, around a non-human gaze, breaking away from an anthropocentric way of viewing the world’ … Stray. Photograph: Magnolia Pictures

"The hours-long adventures that these dogs would take themselves on!” she marvels. “Walks upon walks upon walks upon walks. Most pets don’t ever get to experience that. It made me realise the potential that dogs have, the desires that are not often fulfilled, even under the care of people as pets. I hope the film acts as a decolonising tool, to challenge Eurocentric views on what a humane and just city looks like.”

What she witnessed in Istanbul was that dogs could successfully integrate into a city without becoming nuisances or harming themselves – and the dogs were, not coincidentally, far better socialised than the vast majority of pets in LA, where Lo has lived for most of the last decade. There are no interviews or commentary in the film – only a bit of overheard gossip – though there are some choice maxims from Diogenes of Sinope in 360BC: “Human beings live artificially and hypocritically and would do well to study the dog.” While Lo says she wouldn’t presume to speak for animals, this is a polemical film, strongly influenced by Donna Haraway’s writings about interspecies relations and John Berger’s essay, Why Look at Animals? And Lo’s camera can’t help but make implicit comparisons, notably between the status of the dogs and the Syrian refugees who befriend them. It was to these “stray” men that Zeytin and Nazar were running to when Lo first encountered them in the tunnel and their bond is at the heart of the film. Again, the relatively hospitable treatment given to the refugees also took her by surprise. In the film, we do see them being moved on, but the security guards who are doing so are generally apologetic as they do so. “I felt a lot of compassion there. When I asked people how they felt about refugees, oftentimes, people would say: ‘They are our brothers, they are in need and Turkey is a haven for those in need.’ Even government officials would sometimes say that.”

I watched the film conditioned by stories such as Black Beauty or White Fang to expect that at some point Zeytin would be subjected to cruelty and violence. But the moment doesn’t arrive; she doesn’t fall into our usual categories of victim or hero, wild or tame. There’s a funny moment when she wanders into the middle of a feminist rally where she is fondled by of the protesters – only to be mounted by a male dog as the protesters yell loudly about consent. “I’m not sure what the scene is saying exactly, but I loved the surrealism of it,” Lo laughs.

Zeytin had charisma, but she made Lo work hard. She was unusual in that she was completely unfazed by Lo’s camera – which allowed all those lingering closeups – but she also proved unbribable with even the choicest cuts of meat, since she was so adept at finding whatever she wanted on the street. “A lot of times, we would just be waiting and waiting and waiting for Zeytin to wake up – and sometimes she wouldn’t wake up until 5pm. Her rhythms were her own. We just had to surrender our desires for whatever we might expect of a film’s story and hand it over to her. Sometimes she would chase after sounds that we couldn’t hear or smells that we couldn’t smell. It was just a process of letting go and trying to immerse.”

After a night of filming, Lo would strap on small GPS devices so that she could find her again the next day. Still more challenging was the gap of almost a year in the middle of filming. Everyone outside of Istanbul thought that she wouldn’t survive long on the streets – but Lo found her within a couple of days of returning to the city. Even now, a couple of years after she finished production, her friends in Istanbul are still sending her pictures of Zeytin and Nazar whenever they see them.

‘A lot of times, we would just be waiting and waiting and waiting for Zeytin to wake up – and sometimes she wouldn’t wake up until 5pm’ … Stray. Photograph: Magnolia Pictures

She hopes that the film will make people reflect on our double standards when it comes to dogs in the west. She is disturbed by the internet – and the lockdown-driven vogue for pure-bred dogs : “Have these pet owners stopped to consider where the mother of their beloved is, how much she has suffered in breeding facilities?” However, she thinks that pet ownership can be a gateway to empathy with other species, noting that in California, pet owners vote in far greater numbers for animal-welfare measures. And she hopes that the film will make us question our assumptions.

“We think that we treat dogs better in the west. But really the fact that New York, London, LA don’t have dogs on the street is indicative of how intolerant we actually are. Unless a dog is property, it has no rights at all. Which is insane if you think about it. We’ve somehow reframed the insanity of killing millions of dogs every year or letting them languish in cells as the moral thing to do when in fact it’s the opposite.”

In Istanbul, she says, she was able to have fulfilling relationships with animals that weren’t based on ownership – and has missed it ever since. “John Berger writes: maybe the impulse to go to the zoo is to fulfil this desire that is so lacking in our modern existence. It’s in our blood to be with other species and to communicate with them. The experience in Turkey showed me what I’d been missing in the cultures I’d grown up in, where the streets are devoid of other species. That’s such an impoverished way to go through the world.”

Stray is available to preview on www.stray-film.co.uk to celebrate National Puppy Day on March 23, ahead of its digital release on March 26

UK startup raises €8m of funding to convert CO2 into animal feed

SOY THE MANNA OF VEGITARIANS

Deep Branch aims to create protein that will replace the use of soy, which has been linked to deforestation

A soybean plantation in Rondônia, Brazil. Farmers are seeking a more sustainable food source for their animals. Photograph: Marizilda Cruppe/WWF-UK/PA

A UK company that turns carbon dioxide into protein to be used for animal feed has raised €8m (£6.8m) in funding as it seeks to displace the use of deforestation-linked soy by farmers.

Carbon and hydrogen are fed to a microorganism in a fermentation process similar to what you would see in a brewery. But rather than alcohol, the output is a high-value protein that can be dried and converted into pellets to feed animals.

The need for natural sources of protein such as soy and fishmeal has long been an environmental headache for farmers with animals to feed. Soy is linked to deforestation in regions such as the Amazon, and fishmeal requires large quantities of wild-caught fish to produce.

In contrast, the protein created by startup Deep Branch will rely on recycling carbon from industrial emitters. The waste gas will need to go through a chemical purification process to separate the carbon dioxide from other gases before it can be used to produce protein.

“There are big sustainability drawbacks from the proteins we currently use to produce animal products like salmon fillets and chicken drumsticks,” said Deep Branch’s co-founder, Peter Rowe, “but we can produce a high-quality protein without requiring any arable land or fish.”

Rowe said animal producers faced increased competition for feedstocks such as soy and fishmeal and that Deep Branch’s protein, which is being produced in Europe, offered a more secure food source less affected by geopolitics, seasonality or climate.

Insects have also been touted as a sustainable protein-rich alternative to soy and fishmeal, but Rowe said his firm’s protein would be easier to scale up and produce at lower cost, if it can locate next to industrial plants capturing carbon. The company will start commercial trials of its feed on chickens and salmon by the summer.

“It won’t all be plain sailing from here, though,” said Mike Allen, a professor in environmental sciences at the University of Exeter and Plymouth Marine Laboratory. “I imagine they will face significant challenges with scaling up their process, and they’ll still need to blend their product with other types of biomass to provide the full nutrient profile required for healthy animal growth.”

The startup has already attracted support from leading animal feed companies in Europe, BioMar and AB Agri, and is close to agreeing to build its first commercial production facility in Norway, where it hopes to supply the country’s aquaculture sector. Norway is the world’s leading salmon exporter and has a number of carbon capture and storage projects in development.

However, Allen said the company should not be seen as a climate-saving project. “Any process that utilises industrial CO2 emissions is great in theory, but they’ll have to be honest and realistic about how much CO2 they are actually remediating, and what their overall carbon footprint is.

“Most of the CO2 run through their bioreactors will pass straight through, I imagine. And the hydrogen will come with a carbon footprint too. This isn’t a carbon capture technology, despite how it may be branded – it’s a protein production platform,” he said.

While global demand for meat remained high, Rowe said, Deep Branch’s protein feed was a more sustainable alternative to soy or fishmeal.

“Yes, reducing meat consumption also reduces our impact on the environment, but not everyone sees it that way, so if we can reduce the impact of animal protein production, then that’s only a good thing,” he said.

WWF said it welcomed attempts to reduce dependence on soy. “These bacterial processes using excess materials like carbon dioxide and agricultural byproducts are a good thing, as they don’t, like soy, cause deforestation, biodiversity loss and don’t need freshwater or fertiliser,” said the charity’s aquaculture lead, Piers Hart.

“We shouldn’t be using precious land and fresh water to grow crops for feed when it could be used to grow crops for food, so we shouldn’t be using soy and maize to feed animals.

“Whether they [alternative proteins] will completely displace soy will come down to cost in the end. We hope that increasing demand and scaling production will bring the price down and also that people will say that, yes, it may be slightly more expensive, but it’s that much better for the planet that we will use it,” said Hart.