Canada's Northland Power buys Spanish wind farms and solar park
MADRID (Reuters) -Northland Power has made its first foray into Spain's fast-growing renewable energy generation market with a deal to buy a portfolio of wind farms and solar parks, the Canadian company said on Wednesday.
A wave of global targets to cut carbon emissions are stoking investor interest in renewable energy businesses, and Spain's sunny plains, windy hillsides and political enthusiasm for the sector have made it a focus for the market in Europe.
Northland Power said in a statement it will pay 345 million euros ($413.3 million) in cash for the assets, which are located across Spain, and take on 716 million euros in debt.
The seller is an investment fund set up by asset manager Plenium and Bankinter.
Santander advised Northland on the transaction, a spokesman for the bank said.
The solar and wind parks in question were built under a previous regulatory regime, which fixes the returns the owners receive for their output for an average of 13 years across the portfolio. ($1 = 0.8347 euros)
(Reporting by Isla Binnie; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Alistair Bell)
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
Revenge: Spectrum Workers on Strike Build Their Own ISP
Whitney Kimball
4/14/2021`
If, for any number of reasons, you’d like to burn telecoms to the ground and build a new internet service provider on their smoldering remains, good news for you. New York City Spectrum workers, who’ve weathered an anguishing four-year strike, have built their own internet service provider. If the city throws its support behind it, People’s Choice Communications could liberate New Yorkers from cable gangsters once and for all.
4/14/2021`
If, for any number of reasons, you’d like to burn telecoms to the ground and build a new internet service provider on their smoldering remains, good news for you. New York City Spectrum workers, who’ve weathered an anguishing four-year strike, have built their own internet service provider. If the city throws its support behind it, People’s Choice Communications could liberate New Yorkers from cable gangsters once and for all.
© Photo: Drew Angerer (Getty Images)
The city itself is almost constantly fighting Spectrum. With its rise to dominance in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has tried to evict it; attorneys general had to chase it around for allegedly defrauding 2.2 million New York customers; and the company was accused of putting employees in harm’s way just one month into the pandemic. Unionized Spectrum workers just hit the four-year anniversary of their strike, during which time Spectrum’s parent company Charter made its CEO the third-highest-compensated executive in America.
The Spectrum workers behind the co-op, members of IBEW Local 3, have been on strike practically since Charter showed up in 2016 and bought Time Warner. Workers have said that the company showed no interest in good faith bargaining over the contract it inherited, attempting to jettison pensions and health insurance. “Their goal was to try to eliminate the union, and we could see that from the first time they came to the bargaining table,” survey technician, striker, and IBEW Local 3 steward Troy Walcott told Gizmodo. “They presented us with an offer that was impossible for us to accept.”
Walcott told Gizmodo that, while some have been forced to go back to Spectrum, about 1,200 of the 1,800 strikers are still holding the line and making ends meet with odd jobs. Walcott said that people are still losing homes, and the strain has broken up families, while media attention has dissipated. “Everybody kind of looks past it,” he said. “We’re kind of a ghost in the city.”
After attempting to convince the city to establish a municipal network, organizers turned to the idea of a cooperatively owned model, the kind of radical concept recently in the realm of activist dreams. Workers co-own the company; the building residents own the network; the C-Suite doesn’t extract a cent. Residents pay for the installation fee in monthly increments, which organizers believe might range from $300-$400 per apartment. But residents cover the cost similar to a mortgage, in monthly payments of around $10-$20, which also covers service.
By comparison, Spectrum’s lowest-priced offering is $50, with packages going up to $150—which represents over a quarter of a public housing resident’s monthly rent.
People’s Choice operates light, scalable infrastructure. The fixed wireless network is enabled by a “mesh network”: antennas are installed on individual buildings, which receive a wireless signal from the co-op’s central hub. Building residents then connect routers via ethernet cables and operate as normal.
Sascha Meinrath, a mesh network pioneer who helped architect People’s Choice, compared the system to a spider web. In the event of a link break, building antennas can connect and reroute through each other, reducing the likelihood of large-scale outages.
The co-op makes a radical proposal in the business structure itself. Parsing out the network to customers and the ISP company to workers implies that both groups get an equal share of bargaining power. Customers who own the infrastructure will be promised the option to bring in a new service provider; the reverse is true for workers, who can pull their services. “It means people will have to collaborate, and I think that’s really interesting,” Meinrath told Gizmodo. “It means that you’re going to pay fair wages,” he said. “It means that customer service is going to be really important.”
“This is not a charity,” Meinrath added. “This is a sustainable social enterprise.”
It also means that speeds get faster and service gets cheaper as more customers sign-on. “Once you get critical mass of people, you will be able to buy more bandwidth in bulk, which drops the cost per megabit dramatically,” Meinrath said. “By dramatically, I mean, it can drop by multiple orders of magnitude. The difference between one and two gigs is very different than the difference between ten and one hundred gigs. It’s remarkable how cheap bandwidth gets when you buy it in bulk.”
They still haven’t worked out all the costs, but they’ll certainly offer a better return on any co-owners’ investment. We rarely get a hard metric to define how much telecoms are charging through the nose, but a 2015 investigation found that Comcast was pocketing 97 percent profit margins. Co-ownership necessitates transparency. The money left over from anticipated minimal monthly payments is meant to fund community services and payback co-owners in dividends.
“Having ownership of something as big as a cable system is definitely going to be a game-changer in the community that we’re serving,” Troy Walcott said.
While a relatively small number of people are currently using the system, People’s Choice claims that it already has the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of Bronx residents.
“We have a big portion of most of the Bronx covered with our antenna,” Walcott said. “Now we have to go building by building to let people know we’re out there and start turning them on.” (You can reach out and ask for service here.) A few dozen Spectrum strikers have been actively involved in the installations, but Walcott expects that at least one hundred workers are waiting in the wings for the project to scale up.
Walcott says that they’re equipped to hit a minimum speed of 25 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload, the requirement to legally qualify as a broadband connection.
Spectrum’s “low-income internet” offering is 30 megabits per second, though the company qualifies this with the disclaimer that “wireless speeds may vary.” (Spectrum is not known for transparency, and in 2018, it settled for $174.2 million with the state for alleged lies.) Co-op organizers say that speeds for the customers online are now much higher than Spectrum’s minimum average due to the low customer base, but they hope that as they scale up People’s Choice can reach a minimum download speed of 50 megabits per second.
“Up until this past year, this idea of creating mesh networks, or fixed wireless networks, was basically something that only like anarchist nerds did, speaking as an anarchist nerd myself,” Erik Forman told Gizmodo. Forman is the education director for the Platform Cooperation Consortium, a coalition that envisions worker-owned alternatives to major tech platforms (one example of that effort is a worker-owned alternative to Uber). He describes himself as a “co-op developer.” Forman says People’s Choice was mostly built by sweat equity, with grants from partners Metro IAF, a nonprofit affordable housing developer, and BlocPower, a renewable energy startup. Brooklyn Law School’s tech clinic, BLIP, chipped in with administrative support, Forman said.
Forman says he’s been mulling over the idea of worker-owned co-ops since he attempted a unionization effort at Starbucks years ago. “A lot of people I’ve met in the restaurant industry would say their dream was to own their own restaurant someday,” he said. “So I started thinking, well, what if we direct our energies not just to unionize the employers, but to abolishing them and to putting the production under worker ownership?”
The city now has to decide whether to take Spectrum strikers up on that bid. New York City is now soliciting proposals for affordable wireless networks for underserved areas like NYCHA housing. At the time of publishing, Gizmodo was unable to immediately reach a city administrator for comment on whether it plans to consider their proposal.
Even a relatively small initial investment could propel the network into self-sustaining momentum. “With significant funding upfront, we can go after a thousand people from day one,” Meinrath said. The alternative is recruiting batches of 100 customers who have to bear higher up-front expenses for things like individual pieces of equipment that could be bulk ordered at a much lower cost.
In other words, it seems that without some help, the future is uncertain. Good service isn’t fully guaranteed yet (not that it is anywhere, now). They might have some issues with scaling, and it’s unclear if the nascent cooperative will be able to sustain employees full-time. But the fact that you’re paying down the installation with a cheap monthly bill offers little risk to people who want to try it.
And at this point, the city has scant excuse to reject a bold worker-led and coalition-backed alternative. “I know that the city is thinking outside the box on a lot of business models behind this,” Meinrath said. “The open question is whether they are then putting their money where their mouth is.”
Customers who can afford to pay Spectrum’s exorbitant rates have been sort of stuck with the company. As In These Times reported back in February 2020, the city ominously hinted that it would renew Spectrum’s franchise agreement, which is protected by federal law. The state only gets an out in “especially egregious cases.”
Gizmodo has reached out to Spectrum and will update the post if we hear back.
People’s Choice prioritizes the Bronx, a borough specifically left with an utter dearth of Spectrum service. As of November 2020, the New York City comptroller’s office estimated that 100,000 students were still entirely without internet service. Just a few months into the outbreak of the pandemic, the company petitioned the FCC to impose data caps, artificial limits on internet usage in order to charge more. Thousands of published Better Business Bureau complaints in the New York metropolitan area report service outages, surprise bills for unused service, and massive price hikes.
“Big telecoms are more interested in making fifty to a hundred dollars a month serving people on the Upper East Side than they are in the Bronx,” Forman told Gizmodo. “It would be an utter outrage if the city gave a single cent of taxpayer dollars to Spectrum after what’s done in the past four years.”
The city itself is almost constantly fighting Spectrum. With its rise to dominance in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has tried to evict it; attorneys general had to chase it around for allegedly defrauding 2.2 million New York customers; and the company was accused of putting employees in harm’s way just one month into the pandemic. Unionized Spectrum workers just hit the four-year anniversary of their strike, during which time Spectrum’s parent company Charter made its CEO the third-highest-compensated executive in America.
The Spectrum workers behind the co-op, members of IBEW Local 3, have been on strike practically since Charter showed up in 2016 and bought Time Warner. Workers have said that the company showed no interest in good faith bargaining over the contract it inherited, attempting to jettison pensions and health insurance. “Their goal was to try to eliminate the union, and we could see that from the first time they came to the bargaining table,” survey technician, striker, and IBEW Local 3 steward Troy Walcott told Gizmodo. “They presented us with an offer that was impossible for us to accept.”
Walcott told Gizmodo that, while some have been forced to go back to Spectrum, about 1,200 of the 1,800 strikers are still holding the line and making ends meet with odd jobs. Walcott said that people are still losing homes, and the strain has broken up families, while media attention has dissipated. “Everybody kind of looks past it,” he said. “We’re kind of a ghost in the city.”
After attempting to convince the city to establish a municipal network, organizers turned to the idea of a cooperatively owned model, the kind of radical concept recently in the realm of activist dreams. Workers co-own the company; the building residents own the network; the C-Suite doesn’t extract a cent. Residents pay for the installation fee in monthly increments, which organizers believe might range from $300-$400 per apartment. But residents cover the cost similar to a mortgage, in monthly payments of around $10-$20, which also covers service.
By comparison, Spectrum’s lowest-priced offering is $50, with packages going up to $150—which represents over a quarter of a public housing resident’s monthly rent.
People’s Choice operates light, scalable infrastructure. The fixed wireless network is enabled by a “mesh network”: antennas are installed on individual buildings, which receive a wireless signal from the co-op’s central hub. Building residents then connect routers via ethernet cables and operate as normal.
Sascha Meinrath, a mesh network pioneer who helped architect People’s Choice, compared the system to a spider web. In the event of a link break, building antennas can connect and reroute through each other, reducing the likelihood of large-scale outages.
The co-op makes a radical proposal in the business structure itself. Parsing out the network to customers and the ISP company to workers implies that both groups get an equal share of bargaining power. Customers who own the infrastructure will be promised the option to bring in a new service provider; the reverse is true for workers, who can pull their services. “It means people will have to collaborate, and I think that’s really interesting,” Meinrath told Gizmodo. “It means that you’re going to pay fair wages,” he said. “It means that customer service is going to be really important.”
“This is not a charity,” Meinrath added. “This is a sustainable social enterprise.”
It also means that speeds get faster and service gets cheaper as more customers sign-on. “Once you get critical mass of people, you will be able to buy more bandwidth in bulk, which drops the cost per megabit dramatically,” Meinrath said. “By dramatically, I mean, it can drop by multiple orders of magnitude. The difference between one and two gigs is very different than the difference between ten and one hundred gigs. It’s remarkable how cheap bandwidth gets when you buy it in bulk.”
They still haven’t worked out all the costs, but they’ll certainly offer a better return on any co-owners’ investment. We rarely get a hard metric to define how much telecoms are charging through the nose, but a 2015 investigation found that Comcast was pocketing 97 percent profit margins. Co-ownership necessitates transparency. The money left over from anticipated minimal monthly payments is meant to fund community services and payback co-owners in dividends.
“Having ownership of something as big as a cable system is definitely going to be a game-changer in the community that we’re serving,” Troy Walcott said.
While a relatively small number of people are currently using the system, People’s Choice claims that it already has the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of Bronx residents.
“We have a big portion of most of the Bronx covered with our antenna,” Walcott said. “Now we have to go building by building to let people know we’re out there and start turning them on.” (You can reach out and ask for service here.) A few dozen Spectrum strikers have been actively involved in the installations, but Walcott expects that at least one hundred workers are waiting in the wings for the project to scale up.
Walcott says that they’re equipped to hit a minimum speed of 25 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload, the requirement to legally qualify as a broadband connection.
Spectrum’s “low-income internet” offering is 30 megabits per second, though the company qualifies this with the disclaimer that “wireless speeds may vary.” (Spectrum is not known for transparency, and in 2018, it settled for $174.2 million with the state for alleged lies.) Co-op organizers say that speeds for the customers online are now much higher than Spectrum’s minimum average due to the low customer base, but they hope that as they scale up People’s Choice can reach a minimum download speed of 50 megabits per second.
“Up until this past year, this idea of creating mesh networks, or fixed wireless networks, was basically something that only like anarchist nerds did, speaking as an anarchist nerd myself,” Erik Forman told Gizmodo. Forman is the education director for the Platform Cooperation Consortium, a coalition that envisions worker-owned alternatives to major tech platforms (one example of that effort is a worker-owned alternative to Uber). He describes himself as a “co-op developer.” Forman says People’s Choice was mostly built by sweat equity, with grants from partners Metro IAF, a nonprofit affordable housing developer, and BlocPower, a renewable energy startup. Brooklyn Law School’s tech clinic, BLIP, chipped in with administrative support, Forman said.
Forman says he’s been mulling over the idea of worker-owned co-ops since he attempted a unionization effort at Starbucks years ago. “A lot of people I’ve met in the restaurant industry would say their dream was to own their own restaurant someday,” he said. “So I started thinking, well, what if we direct our energies not just to unionize the employers, but to abolishing them and to putting the production under worker ownership?”
The city now has to decide whether to take Spectrum strikers up on that bid. New York City is now soliciting proposals for affordable wireless networks for underserved areas like NYCHA housing. At the time of publishing, Gizmodo was unable to immediately reach a city administrator for comment on whether it plans to consider their proposal.
Even a relatively small initial investment could propel the network into self-sustaining momentum. “With significant funding upfront, we can go after a thousand people from day one,” Meinrath said. The alternative is recruiting batches of 100 customers who have to bear higher up-front expenses for things like individual pieces of equipment that could be bulk ordered at a much lower cost.
In other words, it seems that without some help, the future is uncertain. Good service isn’t fully guaranteed yet (not that it is anywhere, now). They might have some issues with scaling, and it’s unclear if the nascent cooperative will be able to sustain employees full-time. But the fact that you’re paying down the installation with a cheap monthly bill offers little risk to people who want to try it.
And at this point, the city has scant excuse to reject a bold worker-led and coalition-backed alternative. “I know that the city is thinking outside the box on a lot of business models behind this,” Meinrath said. “The open question is whether they are then putting their money where their mouth is.”
Customers who can afford to pay Spectrum’s exorbitant rates have been sort of stuck with the company. As In These Times reported back in February 2020, the city ominously hinted that it would renew Spectrum’s franchise agreement, which is protected by federal law. The state only gets an out in “especially egregious cases.”
Gizmodo has reached out to Spectrum and will update the post if we hear back.
People’s Choice prioritizes the Bronx, a borough specifically left with an utter dearth of Spectrum service. As of November 2020, the New York City comptroller’s office estimated that 100,000 students were still entirely without internet service. Just a few months into the outbreak of the pandemic, the company petitioned the FCC to impose data caps, artificial limits on internet usage in order to charge more. Thousands of published Better Business Bureau complaints in the New York metropolitan area report service outages, surprise bills for unused service, and massive price hikes.
“Big telecoms are more interested in making fifty to a hundred dollars a month serving people on the Upper East Side than they are in the Bronx,” Forman told Gizmodo. “It would be an utter outrage if the city gave a single cent of taxpayer dollars to Spectrum after what’s done in the past four years.”
UPDATE
Interactions between early modern humans and Neanderthals were a lot more common than we thought
By Ashley Strickland, CNN
Interactions between early modern humans and Neanderthals were a lot more common than we thought
By Ashley Strickland, CNN
4/14/2021
The Neanderthal DNA in East Asians today can be traced back to interactions between Neanderthals and early modern humans in Europe 45,000 years ago.
The Neanderthal DNA in East Asians today can be traced back to interactions between Neanderthals and early modern humans in Europe 45,000 years ago.
© Nikolay Zaheriev, MPI-EVA Leipzig This is the entrance to the Bacho Kiro Cave. Excavations have occurred just inside the entrance and to the left.
The oldest known remains of modern humans in Europe have been identified in the Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria, according to new research published last week in the journal Nature.
These remains, which belong to five individuals, were radiocarbon dated between 42,580 and 45,930 years ago. Neanderthals died out about 40,000 years ago.
By analyzing the ancient genomes from the Bacho Kiro remains, researchers were able to determine their relation to humans today, as well as the complexity of populations as humans migrated from Africa to Eurasia thousands of years ago.
Human ancestors
The three oldest of the individuals whose remains were found in the cave are most closely connected to current populations in East and Central Asia as well as the Americas. Their genomes revealed between 3% and 3.8% of Neanderthal DNA. In decoding the genetic material researchers concluded that the individuals had Neanderthal ancestors five to seven generations back across their family histories.
The oldest known remains of modern humans in Europe have been identified in the Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria, according to new research published last week in the journal Nature.
These remains, which belong to five individuals, were radiocarbon dated between 42,580 and 45,930 years ago. Neanderthals died out about 40,000 years ago.
By analyzing the ancient genomes from the Bacho Kiro remains, researchers were able to determine their relation to humans today, as well as the complexity of populations as humans migrated from Africa to Eurasia thousands of years ago.
Human ancestors
The three oldest of the individuals whose remains were found in the cave are most closely connected to current populations in East and Central Asia as well as the Americas. Their genomes revealed between 3% and 3.8% of Neanderthal DNA. In decoding the genetic material researchers concluded that the individuals had Neanderthal ancestors five to seven generations back across their family histories.
© Marek Jantač The skull of a modern human female individual from Zlatý kůň.
"These individuals represent an early expansion of modern humans into Europe that was previously unknown in the genetic record, with implications for the broader out-of-Africa expansion," said Mateja Hajdinjak, study author and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow within the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute in England.
"Crucially, the genomes of Bacho Kiro Cave individuals point out that the early human groups in Europe commonly mixed with Neanderthals."
The researchers believe that mixing between modern humans and Neanderthals was much more common than they had previously thought, especially when the first modern humans arrived on the scene in Europe.
"These individuals represent an early expansion of modern humans into Europe that was previously unknown in the genetic record, with implications for the broader out-of-Africa expansion," said Mateja Hajdinjak, study author and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellow within the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at The Francis Crick Institute in England.
"Crucially, the genomes of Bacho Kiro Cave individuals point out that the early human groups in Europe commonly mixed with Neanderthals."
The researchers believe that mixing between modern humans and Neanderthals was much more common than they had previously thought, especially when the first modern humans arrived on the scene in Europe.
© Tsenka Tsanova, MPI-EVA Leipzig Human bones have been recovered from the cave along with stone tools, animal bones, bone tools and pendants.
"They may even have become absorbed into resident Neandertal populations. Only later on did larger modern human groups arrive and replace the Neandertals," said Svante Pääbo, study coauthor and Director for the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, in a statement.
Remains of four of these individuals were found together with stone tools linked to the Initial Upper Paleolithic Era, or the earliest known stone tool culture that is associated with modern humans in Eurasia. The Upper Paleolithic began about 40,000 years ago.
These stone tools, along with personal ornaments made from animal teeth recovered from the cave, are similar to those found across Eurasia.
A fifth individual found in the cave, dated to about 35,000 years ago, was found to belong to a group that's genetically distinct from the others and belonged to a different population.
"This shifted our previous understanding of early human migrations into Europe in a way that it showed how even the earliest history of modern humans in Europe may have been tumultuous and involved population replacements," Hajdinjak said.
Sign up here for Wonder Theory, our CNN science newsletter
The Bacho Kiro Cave was first excavated by archaeologist Dorothy Garrod in 1938 with later excavations occurring in the 1970s. Researchers revisited and excavated the cave in 2015, investigating a layer that was rich with thousands of animal bones, tools made from stone and bones, pendants, beads, and the fragmented remains from five Homo sapiens.
Hajdinjak said the next steps would be accessing genomic data from other sites that are associated with the Initial Upper Paleolithic across Eurasia.
"The emerging picture of early human groups shortly after out-of-Africa migration is a complex one, and it would be amazing to see if this archaeological culture found across vast geographical area (spanning from East Europe to Mongolia) is made by different human groups, how they relate to each other, and importantly how they relate to resident archaic groups," she said via email.
A different population
More research released last week shed light on another population of early modern humans.
A skull recovered in the Czech Republic belonged to one of the earliest modern human populations in Eurasia that stemmed from migrations out of Africa.
The skull was found at the Zlatý kůň site and belonged to a woman who carried 3% Neanderthal ancestry. Her group in Eurasia did not contribute genetically to later populations in Europe or Asia. This is likely the oldest reconstructed modern human genome to date.
Efforts to secure radiocarbon dating of the skull failed due to collagen contamination from cattle, likely animal glue used to preserve parts of the skull in the past century. However, Neanderthal segments within the genome suggest that the skull may have be older than 45,000 years.
Parts of the skull were first recovered in 1950. Researchers initially thought it was only 15,000 years old.
"We have found out that the Zlatý kůň woman belonged to group of modern humans that were among the first to settle in Europe after modern humans left Africa more than 50,000 years ago," said Kay Prüfer, co-lead author of a study that published last week in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Prüfer is also the group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
The Zlatý kůň woman belonged to a separate lineage of non-Africans that went extinct later on, Prüfer said. She represents a population that formed in the dawn before ancestors of those in modern-day Europe and Asia split apart.
Previous research has suggested that modern humans had already migrated to southeastern Europe between 43,000 and 47,000 years ago, but the fossil record has been lacking support for this.
This finding, together with the Bacho Kiro Cave individuals, suggests an intriguing theory.
"It is possible that Europe was settled by two different groups of modern humans in the time before 45,000 years," Prüfer said. "The Bacho Kiro and Zlatý kůň finds tell us different pieces of the story of how Europe was first settled, but we do not know how the groups represented by these individuals were related. That is a clear next question for us to answer."
"They may even have become absorbed into resident Neandertal populations. Only later on did larger modern human groups arrive and replace the Neandertals," said Svante Pääbo, study coauthor and Director for the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, in a statement.
Remains of four of these individuals were found together with stone tools linked to the Initial Upper Paleolithic Era, or the earliest known stone tool culture that is associated with modern humans in Eurasia. The Upper Paleolithic began about 40,000 years ago.
These stone tools, along with personal ornaments made from animal teeth recovered from the cave, are similar to those found across Eurasia.
A fifth individual found in the cave, dated to about 35,000 years ago, was found to belong to a group that's genetically distinct from the others and belonged to a different population.
"This shifted our previous understanding of early human migrations into Europe in a way that it showed how even the earliest history of modern humans in Europe may have been tumultuous and involved population replacements," Hajdinjak said.
Sign up here for Wonder Theory, our CNN science newsletter
The Bacho Kiro Cave was first excavated by archaeologist Dorothy Garrod in 1938 with later excavations occurring in the 1970s. Researchers revisited and excavated the cave in 2015, investigating a layer that was rich with thousands of animal bones, tools made from stone and bones, pendants, beads, and the fragmented remains from five Homo sapiens.
Hajdinjak said the next steps would be accessing genomic data from other sites that are associated with the Initial Upper Paleolithic across Eurasia.
"The emerging picture of early human groups shortly after out-of-Africa migration is a complex one, and it would be amazing to see if this archaeological culture found across vast geographical area (spanning from East Europe to Mongolia) is made by different human groups, how they relate to each other, and importantly how they relate to resident archaic groups," she said via email.
A different population
More research released last week shed light on another population of early modern humans.
A skull recovered in the Czech Republic belonged to one of the earliest modern human populations in Eurasia that stemmed from migrations out of Africa.
The skull was found at the Zlatý kůň site and belonged to a woman who carried 3% Neanderthal ancestry. Her group in Eurasia did not contribute genetically to later populations in Europe or Asia. This is likely the oldest reconstructed modern human genome to date.
Efforts to secure radiocarbon dating of the skull failed due to collagen contamination from cattle, likely animal glue used to preserve parts of the skull in the past century. However, Neanderthal segments within the genome suggest that the skull may have be older than 45,000 years.
Parts of the skull were first recovered in 1950. Researchers initially thought it was only 15,000 years old.
"We have found out that the Zlatý kůň woman belonged to group of modern humans that were among the first to settle in Europe after modern humans left Africa more than 50,000 years ago," said Kay Prüfer, co-lead author of a study that published last week in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Prüfer is also the group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
The Zlatý kůň woman belonged to a separate lineage of non-Africans that went extinct later on, Prüfer said. She represents a population that formed in the dawn before ancestors of those in modern-day Europe and Asia split apart.
Previous research has suggested that modern humans had already migrated to southeastern Europe between 43,000 and 47,000 years ago, but the fossil record has been lacking support for this.
This finding, together with the Bacho Kiro Cave individuals, suggests an intriguing theory.
"It is possible that Europe was settled by two different groups of modern humans in the time before 45,000 years," Prüfer said. "The Bacho Kiro and Zlatý kůň finds tell us different pieces of the story of how Europe was first settled, but we do not know how the groups represented by these individuals were related. That is a clear next question for us to answer."
How scientists found 'Nemo,' Australia's newest dancing spider
Justin Meneguzzi
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Justin Meneguzzi
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
4/14/2021
© Photograph by Joseph Schubert 'Maratus nemo the Nemo Peacock Spider standing on the surface of a leaf'.
In a wetland near South Australia’s Mount Gambier, Sheryl Holliday crouched in ankle-deep water, camera lens trained on blooming purple orchids a few feet away. Just as Holliday prepared to hit the shutter, she caught a glimpse of something tiny jumping out of the frame.
She didn’t know it on that clear day in November, but she’d just discovered an entirely new species of peacock spider, a group of little-known Australian jumping spiders known for vibrant colors and elaborate mating dances.
“I’ve been chasing peacock spiders for three or four years,” says Holliday, an ecological field officer for Nature Glenelg Trust and citizen scientist, but this one looked different. For one, its abdomen was drab, and the creature had distinctive orange-and-white facial patterns.
Intrigued, Sheryl shared her photos to a Facebook peacock spider appreciation page, which caught the attention of page administrator and arachnologist, Joseph Schubert, who had never seen one like it before.
The pair connected, and Holliday collected and sent live specimens to Melbourne, allowing Schubert and colleagues to formally identify the arachnid as Maratus nemo, after Nemo, Disney’s heroic clownfish. (The Walt Disney Company is majority owner of National Geographic Partners.)
The Nemo peacock spider, described recently in the journal Evolutionary Systematics, is the latest in a flurry of peacock spider discoveries that has brought their known numbers from just 15 in 2011 to 92 today.
Schubert, a biologist at Museums Victoria, credits the boom to the ease of modern photography, in which anyone can quickly take a photo on their smartphone and upload their findings to social media.
Of course, being popular also helps. These rice grain-size arachnids’ charming mating dance has led to countless viral memes that have made the peacock spider an internet sensation.
In a wetland near South Australia’s Mount Gambier, Sheryl Holliday crouched in ankle-deep water, camera lens trained on blooming purple orchids a few feet away. Just as Holliday prepared to hit the shutter, she caught a glimpse of something tiny jumping out of the frame.
She didn’t know it on that clear day in November, but she’d just discovered an entirely new species of peacock spider, a group of little-known Australian jumping spiders known for vibrant colors and elaborate mating dances.
“I’ve been chasing peacock spiders for three or four years,” says Holliday, an ecological field officer for Nature Glenelg Trust and citizen scientist, but this one looked different. For one, its abdomen was drab, and the creature had distinctive orange-and-white facial patterns.
Intrigued, Sheryl shared her photos to a Facebook peacock spider appreciation page, which caught the attention of page administrator and arachnologist, Joseph Schubert, who had never seen one like it before.
The pair connected, and Holliday collected and sent live specimens to Melbourne, allowing Schubert and colleagues to formally identify the arachnid as Maratus nemo, after Nemo, Disney’s heroic clownfish. (The Walt Disney Company is majority owner of National Geographic Partners.)
The Nemo peacock spider, described recently in the journal Evolutionary Systematics, is the latest in a flurry of peacock spider discoveries that has brought their known numbers from just 15 in 2011 to 92 today.
Schubert, a biologist at Museums Victoria, credits the boom to the ease of modern photography, in which anyone can quickly take a photo on their smartphone and upload their findings to social media.
Of course, being popular also helps. These rice grain-size arachnids’ charming mating dance has led to countless viral memes that have made the peacock spider an internet sensation.
Movers and shakers
That doesn’t mean they’re easy to find. Most of the year, peacock spiders are brown; only males gain their striking colors after they molt in the spring. Combine that with their diminutive size, and it’s no surprise studying the non-venomous arachnids can be a challenge.
That’s why, when identifying a new species, Schubert hones in on the male’s colorations as well as their mating dance, which is unique to each species and involves a male flexing and gyrating to show off its fitness. When Schubert encouraged a male Nemo to dance for a female in the lab, he was surprised by what he found.
This one individual didn’t “lift its abdomen completely like other species, and it doesn’t have those opisthosoma flaps”—which give the spider its famous colorful display—"underneath the abdomen. It’s just got a little brown booty,” explains Schubert.
Instead, the male impressed the female by raising its third set of legs and vibrating its abdomen on the ground, generating an audible sound. It’s unknown, he says, whether this is a trademark dance of the Nemo peacock spider.
Schubert noted Nemo’s wetland home is also “really strange,” as the majority of other known peacock spiders prefer dry scrublands.
But peacock spiders are always surprising him. In 2020, scientists found one species, Maratus volpei, living in a salt lake. “We’ve learned that we should be more open to the sorts of habitats where we look for peacock spiders,” Schubert says.
Though peacock spiders play a valuable function as a predator controlling insect populations, there’s still far too little known about their role in the ecosystem and conservation status, he adds.
A tangled web
“Peacock spiders are excellent because they challenge the prevailing view of spiders as being big, hairy, and dangerous,” says Michael Rix, principal curator of arachnology and research fellow at Australia’s Queensland Museum, who was not involved in Schubert’s study.
“This is a really excellent example of just how interesting, diverse, and still understudied the Australian spider fauna is,” Rix says.
Only around 30 percent of Australia’s invertebrates have been formally documented, and there could be as many as 15,000 spider species still to be identified.
Discovering new spiders can also benefit humankind, whether it’s controlling agricultural pests or inspiring new medical treatments, Rix says. Proteins from funnel-web spider venom are already being used to develop pain relief medication, as well as treatments for epilepsy, stroke, and potentially some cancers.
Meanwhile, arachnid and insect populations are plummeting worldwide. In Australia, habitat loss, wildfires, and pesticides may kill off entire spider species before we’ve had a chance to find them, Rix cautions.
“Fundamentally, we can't conserve our biodiversity for future generations,” he says, “if we don't know it even exists.”
That doesn’t mean they’re easy to find. Most of the year, peacock spiders are brown; only males gain their striking colors after they molt in the spring. Combine that with their diminutive size, and it’s no surprise studying the non-venomous arachnids can be a challenge.
That’s why, when identifying a new species, Schubert hones in on the male’s colorations as well as their mating dance, which is unique to each species and involves a male flexing and gyrating to show off its fitness. When Schubert encouraged a male Nemo to dance for a female in the lab, he was surprised by what he found.
This one individual didn’t “lift its abdomen completely like other species, and it doesn’t have those opisthosoma flaps”—which give the spider its famous colorful display—"underneath the abdomen. It’s just got a little brown booty,” explains Schubert.
Instead, the male impressed the female by raising its third set of legs and vibrating its abdomen on the ground, generating an audible sound. It’s unknown, he says, whether this is a trademark dance of the Nemo peacock spider.
Schubert noted Nemo’s wetland home is also “really strange,” as the majority of other known peacock spiders prefer dry scrublands.
But peacock spiders are always surprising him. In 2020, scientists found one species, Maratus volpei, living in a salt lake. “We’ve learned that we should be more open to the sorts of habitats where we look for peacock spiders,” Schubert says.
Though peacock spiders play a valuable function as a predator controlling insect populations, there’s still far too little known about their role in the ecosystem and conservation status, he adds.
A tangled web
“Peacock spiders are excellent because they challenge the prevailing view of spiders as being big, hairy, and dangerous,” says Michael Rix, principal curator of arachnology and research fellow at Australia’s Queensland Museum, who was not involved in Schubert’s study.
“This is a really excellent example of just how interesting, diverse, and still understudied the Australian spider fauna is,” Rix says.
Only around 30 percent of Australia’s invertebrates have been formally documented, and there could be as many as 15,000 spider species still to be identified.
Discovering new spiders can also benefit humankind, whether it’s controlling agricultural pests or inspiring new medical treatments, Rix says. Proteins from funnel-web spider venom are already being used to develop pain relief medication, as well as treatments for epilepsy, stroke, and potentially some cancers.
Meanwhile, arachnid and insect populations are plummeting worldwide. In Australia, habitat loss, wildfires, and pesticides may kill off entire spider species before we’ve had a chance to find them, Rix cautions.
“Fundamentally, we can't conserve our biodiversity for future generations,” he says, “if we don't know it even exists.”
MIT scientists translated spider webs into music. It could help us talk to them
By David Williams, CNN
By David Williams, CNN
4/14/2021
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have turned spider webs into music -- creating an eerie soundtrack that could help them better understand how the arachnids spin their complex creations and even how they communicate.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have turned spider webs into music -- creating an eerie soundtrack that could help them better understand how the arachnids spin their complex creations and even how they communicate.
© From Isabelle Su and Markus Buehler/ACS Cross-sectional images (shown in different colors) of a spider web were combined into this 3D image and translated into music. Credit: Isabelle Su and Markus Buehler
The MIT team worked with Berlin-based artist Tomás Saraceno to take two-dimensional laser scans of a spider web, which were stitched together and converted into a mathematical model that could recreate the web in 3D in virtual reality. They also worked with MIT's music department to create the harplike virtual instrument.
"Even though the web looks really random, there actually are a lot of internal structures and you can visualize them and you can look at them, but it's really hard to grasp for the human imagination or human brain to understand all these structural details," said MIT engineering professor Markus Buehler, who presented the work on Monday at a virtual meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Listening to the music while moving through the VR spider web lets you see and hear these structural changes and gives a better idea of how spiders see the world, he told CNN.
"Spiders have very keen vibrational sensors, they use vibrations as a way to orient themselves, to communicate with other spiders and so the idea of thinking literally like a spider would experience the world was something that was very obvious to us as spider material scientists," Buehler said.
Spiders are able to build their webs without scaffolding or supports, so having a better idea of how they work could lead to the development of advanced new 3D printing techniques, he said.
They scanned the web while the spider was building it and Buehler compared it to a stringed instrument that changes as the structure becomes more complex.
"While you're playing the guitar, suddenly you're going to have new strings appear and emerge and grow," he said.
Buehler said they've recorded the vibrations spiders create during different activities, such as building a web, courtship signals and communicating with other spiders, and are using artificial intelligence to create synthetic versions.
"We're beginning to perhaps be able to speak the language of a spider," he said. "The hope is that we can then play these back to the web structure to enhance the ability to communicate with the spider and perhaps induce the spider to act in a certain way, to respond to the signals in a certain way."
He said that work is still in progress and that they've had to shut down their lab because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Buehler has been interested in the connection between music and materials on the molecular level for years and has used similar techniques to show the subtle differences between the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines and between two different variants of the Covid-19 virus (you'll hear one through your left speaker and the other through the right).
In addition to the scientific value, Buehler said the webs are musically interesting and that you can hear the melodies the spider creates during construction.
"It's unusual and eerie and scary, but ultimately beautiful," he said.
Members of the team have done live musical performances by playing and manipulating the VR web, while musicians jam along on human instruments.
"The reason why I did that is I wanted to be able to transfer information really from the spider perspective, which is very atonal and weird and spooky, if you wish, to something that is more human," Buehler said.
The MIT team worked with Berlin-based artist Tomás Saraceno to take two-dimensional laser scans of a spider web, which were stitched together and converted into a mathematical model that could recreate the web in 3D in virtual reality. They also worked with MIT's music department to create the harplike virtual instrument.
"Even though the web looks really random, there actually are a lot of internal structures and you can visualize them and you can look at them, but it's really hard to grasp for the human imagination or human brain to understand all these structural details," said MIT engineering professor Markus Buehler, who presented the work on Monday at a virtual meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Listening to the music while moving through the VR spider web lets you see and hear these structural changes and gives a better idea of how spiders see the world, he told CNN.
"Spiders have very keen vibrational sensors, they use vibrations as a way to orient themselves, to communicate with other spiders and so the idea of thinking literally like a spider would experience the world was something that was very obvious to us as spider material scientists," Buehler said.
Spiders are able to build their webs without scaffolding or supports, so having a better idea of how they work could lead to the development of advanced new 3D printing techniques, he said.
They scanned the web while the spider was building it and Buehler compared it to a stringed instrument that changes as the structure becomes more complex.
"While you're playing the guitar, suddenly you're going to have new strings appear and emerge and grow," he said.
Buehler said they've recorded the vibrations spiders create during different activities, such as building a web, courtship signals and communicating with other spiders, and are using artificial intelligence to create synthetic versions.
"We're beginning to perhaps be able to speak the language of a spider," he said. "The hope is that we can then play these back to the web structure to enhance the ability to communicate with the spider and perhaps induce the spider to act in a certain way, to respond to the signals in a certain way."
He said that work is still in progress and that they've had to shut down their lab because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Buehler has been interested in the connection between music and materials on the molecular level for years and has used similar techniques to show the subtle differences between the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines and between two different variants of the Covid-19 virus (you'll hear one through your left speaker and the other through the right).
In addition to the scientific value, Buehler said the webs are musically interesting and that you can hear the melodies the spider creates during construction.
"It's unusual and eerie and scary, but ultimately beautiful," he said.
Members of the team have done live musical performances by playing and manipulating the VR web, while musicians jam along on human instruments.
"The reason why I did that is I wanted to be able to transfer information really from the spider perspective, which is very atonal and weird and spooky, if you wish, to something that is more human," Buehler said.
IRS Failed to Collect $2.4 Billion in Taxes From Millionaires: Report
Yuval Rosenberg
March 15, 2021·
The Internal Revenue Service has failed to collect more than $38.5 billion from taxpayers earning more than $200,000 a year — and more than $2.4 billion from taxpayers with incomes over $1.5 million, according to a new report from a Treasury Department watchdog highlighted by Bloomberg News.
Bloomberg’s Laura Davison reports:
“Auditors were only able to recoup about 39% of the more than $4 billion in unpaid taxes owed by a group of rich taxpayers with an average annual income of nearly $1.6 million, the report found. The findings suggest that the IRS should place more emphasis on a taxpayer’s income when determining whether to pursue an audit case, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said in the report released Monday. …
“The findings are the latest in a series of government accountability reports that recommend the IRS do more to pursue high-income taxpayers after audit rates dipped to historic lows in recent years. The dearth of examinations has prompted Democrats in Congress to pursue legislation that would mandate higher audit levels of businesses and wealthy individuals.”
The watchdog report made seven recommendations that it said could help the IRS improve collection from wealthy taxpayers. It suggested, for example, that the agency could use income information to better identify taxpayers who can pay their delinquent taxes. The report found that many high earners owe little relative to their incomes, but said that the IRS does not prioritize income when deciding which cases to pursue, instead placing more significance on factors such as the dollar amount of the balance owed. “It is the IRS’s belief that it is effectively addressing noncompliance by high-income individuals by focusing on the size of the amounts owed,” the report said. “As subsequently shown, this assumption is faulty.”
IRS management agreed with just two of the seven recommendations but said it plans to evaluate its models and consider additional income factors to improve its ability to predict recovery of delinquent taxes.
IRS is probing the dark web to look for cryptocurrency and NFT tax evasion, says IRS commissioner
Robert Frank
CNBC
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said the U.S. fails to collect as much as $1 trillion in taxes owed each year, partially due to the explosion of cryptocurrencies.
The crypto world "is replicating itself constantly," Rettig said, who cited NFTs as an example.
Robert Frank
CNBC
4/14/2021
IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said the U.S. fails to collect as much as $1 trillion in taxes owed each year, partially due to the explosion of cryptocurrencies.
The crypto world "is replicating itself constantly," Rettig said, who cited NFTs as an example.
Many NFT buyers are not aware that they have to pay a capital gains tax when they use appreciated crypto to make a purchase.
© Provided by CNBC
Tax evasion using cryptocurrencies is "replicating" with nonfungible tokens and other new crypto-related products, according to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig.
In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, Rettig said Tuesday the U.S. fails to collect as much as $1 trillion in taxes owed each year in part due to the explosion in cryptocurrencies, which are difficult for the agency to track and tax.
Rettig said the crypto economy — now valued at over $2 trillion globally — continues to expand, specifically mentioning NFTs, as an example.
"So now we have these nonfungible tokens, which are essentially collectibles in the crypto world," Rettig said. "These are not visible items by design. The crypto world is not visible."
"In the criminal context, the IRS criminal investigations, cybercrime unit has been spectacular operating in the dark web, engaging with cryptocurrency-related transactions," Rettig added.
Answering a question from Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio — who said he is working on a bill to require more reporting and disclosure around crypto transactions — Rettig noted that "absolutely, reporting with respect to cryptocurrencies would be important."
Cryptocurrencies are taxed by the IRS as capital assets, not currencies. Thus, holders of the cryptocurrency are required to pay capital gains taxes if they sell their crypto for a profit or use it for a purchase. Tax experts say many crypto holders are either unaware of the requirement or avoiding the tax.
Platforms such as Coinbase — which fought an IRS request for customer data in 2016 — now report some customer information to the IRS. But tax experts say clearer government regulation is needed to require more taxpayer disclosure.
As a sign of how important crypto tax evasion has become to the IRS, the agency added a question to the top of the Form 1040 — the main income and tax reporting form — asking: "At any time during 2020, did you receive, sell, send, exchange or otherwise acquire any financial interest in virtual currency?"
NFTs have also exploded in value and popularity in recent months, raising a whole new set of tax questions.
NFT sales topped $2 billion in the first quarter in the platforms tracked by NonFungible.com. Although NFTs are purchased with crypto — usually ether — many U.S. NFT buyers are not aware they have to pay a capital gains tax when they use appreciated crypto to make a purchase.
Tax evasion using cryptocurrencies is "replicating" with nonfungible tokens and other new crypto-related products, according to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig.
In testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, Rettig said Tuesday the U.S. fails to collect as much as $1 trillion in taxes owed each year in part due to the explosion in cryptocurrencies, which are difficult for the agency to track and tax.
Rettig said the crypto economy — now valued at over $2 trillion globally — continues to expand, specifically mentioning NFTs, as an example.
"So now we have these nonfungible tokens, which are essentially collectibles in the crypto world," Rettig said. "These are not visible items by design. The crypto world is not visible."
"In the criminal context, the IRS criminal investigations, cybercrime unit has been spectacular operating in the dark web, engaging with cryptocurrency-related transactions," Rettig added.
Answering a question from Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio — who said he is working on a bill to require more reporting and disclosure around crypto transactions — Rettig noted that "absolutely, reporting with respect to cryptocurrencies would be important."
Cryptocurrencies are taxed by the IRS as capital assets, not currencies. Thus, holders of the cryptocurrency are required to pay capital gains taxes if they sell their crypto for a profit or use it for a purchase. Tax experts say many crypto holders are either unaware of the requirement or avoiding the tax.
Platforms such as Coinbase — which fought an IRS request for customer data in 2016 — now report some customer information to the IRS. But tax experts say clearer government regulation is needed to require more taxpayer disclosure.
As a sign of how important crypto tax evasion has become to the IRS, the agency added a question to the top of the Form 1040 — the main income and tax reporting form — asking: "At any time during 2020, did you receive, sell, send, exchange or otherwise acquire any financial interest in virtual currency?"
NFTs have also exploded in value and popularity in recent months, raising a whole new set of tax questions.
NFT sales topped $2 billion in the first quarter in the platforms tracked by NonFungible.com. Although NFTs are purchased with crypto — usually ether — many U.S. NFT buyers are not aware they have to pay a capital gains tax when they use appreciated crypto to make a purchase.
Poll: Majority say higher income Americans should pay more in taxes
Gabriela Schulte
THE HILL
4/14/2021
A majority of voters believe higher-earning Americans should pay more in taxes, a new Hill-HarrisX poll finds.
© iStock Poll: Majority say higher income Americans should pay more in taxes
Fifty-four percent of registered voters in an April 9-12 survey said high-income earners should pay more in taxes while 8 percent said they should pay less and 38 percent said they already pay their fair share.
Eight percent of respondents said middle-income earners should pay more, 32 percent said they should pay less and 60 percent said they pay their fair share.
Nine percent of voters said low-income earners said they should pay more, 54 percent said they should pay less while 37 percent said they pay their fair share.
Fifty-four percent of registered voters in an April 9-12 survey said high-income earners should pay more in taxes while 8 percent said they should pay less and 38 percent said they already pay their fair share.
Eight percent of respondents said middle-income earners should pay more, 32 percent said they should pay less and 60 percent said they pay their fair share.
Nine percent of voters said low-income earners said they should pay more, 54 percent said they should pay less while 37 percent said they pay their fair share.
© Provided by The Hill
Seventy percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents said higher-earning Americans should pay more in taxes while 53 percent of Republicans said the wealthy pay their fair share.
An April 9-12 Hill-HarrisX survey found a plurality of voters, 46 percent, said the U.S. does not do enough to redistribute wealth.
According to a recent report, the top 1 percent of households per income do not report 21 percent of their income to the IRS while the bottom half of earners fail to report about 7 percent of their income.
The Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 2,813 registered voters. It has a margin of error of 1.85 percentage points.
-Gabriela Schulte
Seventy percent of Democrats and 52 percent of independents said higher-earning Americans should pay more in taxes while 53 percent of Republicans said the wealthy pay their fair share.
An April 9-12 Hill-HarrisX survey found a plurality of voters, 46 percent, said the U.S. does not do enough to redistribute wealth.
According to a recent report, the top 1 percent of households per income do not report 21 percent of their income to the IRS while the bottom half of earners fail to report about 7 percent of their income.
The Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 2,813 registered voters. It has a margin of error of 1.85 percentage points.
-Gabriela Schulte
A bill on studying reparations is getting a House vote 30 years in the making
Gregory Svirnovskiy
VOX 4/14/2021
The House Judiciary Committee is preparing for a vote on reparations that has been 32 years in the making
The House Judiciary Committee is preparing for a vote on reparations that has been 32 years in the making
.
© Alex Wong/Getty Images Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX),
the sponsor of HR 40, at a Judiciary Committee hearing in March 2021.
Wednesday, the committee will mark up and vote on HR 40 — a bill sponsored by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) that would create a 13-person federal commission to study American slavery, its effects, and what the government might do to mitigate those effects. After completing its study, the commission would be required to issue recommendations on possible “forms of rehabilitation or restitution” — essentially, reparations — to Congress.
Reparations, generally interpreted as financial compensation to descendants of enslaved people, have historically received little support. According to a July 2020 Washington Post/ABC News poll, reparations aren’t overwhelmingly supported by Democrats: 53 percent of Democrats approve of them. And there’s almost no support for reparations — just 6 percent — in the GOP.
Generally, critics (including many GOP lawmakers) have argued reparations are prohibitively expensive, with Duke University economist William Darity Jr. and Artefactual founder Kirsten Mullen estimating they would cost the federal government between $10 trillion and $12 trillion. Other opponents claim they would force Americans with no history of benefiting from enslavement to pay for the moral crimes of others.
Supporters argue the federal government would be capable of making such a large payment, and say this latter view ignores the benefits created by generational wealth and the negative effects of present-day systemic racism that has its roots in slavery. Specifically, advocates for HR 40 are promoting the idea of reparations as an important tool, not only to finally atone for the moral ills of slavery, but also to close current gaps between white and Black Americans in things like wealth and homeownership.
For instance, the average white family is more than 10 times wealthier than an average Black family, and white non-college graduates have more wealth than Black college graduates, according an April 2020 report from the Brookings Institution on the need for reparations. As the Economic Policy Institute has explained, there is a similar gap between the wages of Black and white workers — making it extremely difficult for labor alone to close that wealth gap.
Some policy experts and lawmakers see reparations as an effective way around this problem — and have for some time. The earliest version of HR 40 was first introduced in the House by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) in 1989, before the youngest current member of the House was even born. The Korean War veteran and civil rights icon brought his proposal back up for consideration every year until he retired in 2017.
Now, Lee is leading the charge to push it through Congress. It is expected to face Republican opposition in committee, and — given that not all members of the slim Democratic House majority support the idea of reparations — it’s uncertain whether the bill will make it to a vote. Should a successful floor vote happen, Senate Democrats seem unlikely to find the 10 Republican votes they would need to pass it in the Senate, given the fact that GOP leaders like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have been open about their opposition to reparations in the past.
Still, that HR 40 will receive a committee vote for the first time in its history is a reflection of how attitudes toward reparations, and racial justice more broadly, are changing.
In 1999, just 19 percent of Americans in an ABC News poll approved of compensation for Black Americans. The July 2020 Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 31 percent of respondents now support reparations. As worldwide civil rights protests erupted following the killing of George Floyd, renewed interest was paid to the issue — and it became a topic of debate during the 2020 presidential race, with President Joe Biden’s campaign platform including the creation of a commission to study reparations.
That interest has been sustained. And now, after more than three decades spent languishing in the House, HR 40 will get a committee vote.
Briefly, what’s in HR 40, the House’s bill to study reparations
If passed, HR 40 would establish a “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans,” composed of 13 members, with three to be chosen by the president, three by the speaker of the House, one by the president pro tempore of the Senate, and another six by “major” civil rights groups “that have historically championed the cause of reparatory justice.”
The commission would be charged with determining institutional culpability against former enslaved Africans and their American descendants across the public and private sector. It would also be required to interrogate how practices such as redlining, educational funding discrepancies, and predatory financial practices — alongside enslavement — have exacerbated racial opportunity and wealth gaps.
At the conclusion of their work, the commission would then report “appropriate remedies” to Congress, based on its findings on institutional enslavement and racism.
Lee, the bill’s sponsor, told the New York Times she sees it as a step forward in addressing America’s problematic and racist past.
“We think it will be cleansing for this nation, and we think that it will be a step moving America forward to see us debate this question on the floor of the House,” Lee said.
HR 40 hopes to clarify the debate over whether reparations are a good idea
Ideological notions against reparations are still the norm. As HR 40 came up for a committee hearing in 2019, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he opposed reparations because “none of us currently living are responsible” for slavery. He further said landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s and the election of President Barack Obama were examples of the US dealing with its “original sin of slavery.”
That’s where most Americans seem to be on the issue. Sixty-three percent of Americans oppose reparations, including a whopping 93 percent of Republicans, the Post/ABC poll found. It’s not popular.
But many supporters of reparations, and lawmakers like Lee, have argued that reparations are less about correcting a past wrong, and more about negating the past’s effect on the present. They tie the exclusion of Black people from the GI Bill, and the racist ways the construction of the highway system broke up Black communities, with present-day issues, including the use of cash bail and policing being overwhelmingly concentrated in majority-minority areas. The argument is that by compensating the Black population for a long history of exclusionary government policy, they can gain better housing, educational, and financial footholds to have full access to opportunity.
It’s important to note that HR 40 would not institute reparations — and that even if a commission were to recommend them, the federal government might not act on that recommendation. But its backers see it as a first step in the right direction.
“The centuries-long injustices of slavery and its legacy, fueling the persistence of racial inequality today, remain largely unaccounted for,” said Human Rights Watch advocate Dreisen Heath in a press release. “As states, cities, and other institutions pursue reckonings, Congress should step up to lead the nation in accounting and atoning for the ongoing impact of slavery. The committee vote on H.R. 40 is a crucial step in that direction.”
Some reparations advocates — including Duke University’s William Darity Jr. — have called for HR 40 to be further refined so that it might constitute a larger step toward reparations. Darity told the Washington Post the bill should specify exactly who would be eligible for any possible reparations, and should include the creation of a plan to narrow the racial wealth gap.
“Unless the markup process results in major revision of the bill, it will not propel our nation toward true reparations,” Darity told the Post.
At the moment, Biden has not outlined any further vision for reparations beyond what was in his platform; however, Lee said HR 40 has an ally in the president. After leaders from the Congressional Black Caucus met with Biden Tuesday, Lee told reporters that Biden indicated support for HR 40 and its study on reparations.
“We have heard from not only the president but the White House, and his team, that he is committed to this concept,” Lee said. “We are grateful for that because we are now doing something historically tomorrow that’s never been done.”
Overall, it’s clear that there remains — and will remain — a lot of debate as to whether reparations are a good idea, both in regard to their moral virtue and implementation. HR 40 aims to change that, by arming lawmakers with actionable data and research on the direct causes of historical racial opportunity gaps and the impacts they have on society today.
Wednesday, the committee will mark up and vote on HR 40 — a bill sponsored by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) that would create a 13-person federal commission to study American slavery, its effects, and what the government might do to mitigate those effects. After completing its study, the commission would be required to issue recommendations on possible “forms of rehabilitation or restitution” — essentially, reparations — to Congress.
Reparations, generally interpreted as financial compensation to descendants of enslaved people, have historically received little support. According to a July 2020 Washington Post/ABC News poll, reparations aren’t overwhelmingly supported by Democrats: 53 percent of Democrats approve of them. And there’s almost no support for reparations — just 6 percent — in the GOP.
Generally, critics (including many GOP lawmakers) have argued reparations are prohibitively expensive, with Duke University economist William Darity Jr. and Artefactual founder Kirsten Mullen estimating they would cost the federal government between $10 trillion and $12 trillion. Other opponents claim they would force Americans with no history of benefiting from enslavement to pay for the moral crimes of others.
Supporters argue the federal government would be capable of making such a large payment, and say this latter view ignores the benefits created by generational wealth and the negative effects of present-day systemic racism that has its roots in slavery. Specifically, advocates for HR 40 are promoting the idea of reparations as an important tool, not only to finally atone for the moral ills of slavery, but also to close current gaps between white and Black Americans in things like wealth and homeownership.
For instance, the average white family is more than 10 times wealthier than an average Black family, and white non-college graduates have more wealth than Black college graduates, according an April 2020 report from the Brookings Institution on the need for reparations. As the Economic Policy Institute has explained, there is a similar gap between the wages of Black and white workers — making it extremely difficult for labor alone to close that wealth gap.
Some policy experts and lawmakers see reparations as an effective way around this problem — and have for some time. The earliest version of HR 40 was first introduced in the House by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) in 1989, before the youngest current member of the House was even born. The Korean War veteran and civil rights icon brought his proposal back up for consideration every year until he retired in 2017.
Now, Lee is leading the charge to push it through Congress. It is expected to face Republican opposition in committee, and — given that not all members of the slim Democratic House majority support the idea of reparations — it’s uncertain whether the bill will make it to a vote. Should a successful floor vote happen, Senate Democrats seem unlikely to find the 10 Republican votes they would need to pass it in the Senate, given the fact that GOP leaders like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have been open about their opposition to reparations in the past.
Still, that HR 40 will receive a committee vote for the first time in its history is a reflection of how attitudes toward reparations, and racial justice more broadly, are changing.
In 1999, just 19 percent of Americans in an ABC News poll approved of compensation for Black Americans. The July 2020 Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 31 percent of respondents now support reparations. As worldwide civil rights protests erupted following the killing of George Floyd, renewed interest was paid to the issue — and it became a topic of debate during the 2020 presidential race, with President Joe Biden’s campaign platform including the creation of a commission to study reparations.
That interest has been sustained. And now, after more than three decades spent languishing in the House, HR 40 will get a committee vote.
Briefly, what’s in HR 40, the House’s bill to study reparations
If passed, HR 40 would establish a “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans,” composed of 13 members, with three to be chosen by the president, three by the speaker of the House, one by the president pro tempore of the Senate, and another six by “major” civil rights groups “that have historically championed the cause of reparatory justice.”
The commission would be charged with determining institutional culpability against former enslaved Africans and their American descendants across the public and private sector. It would also be required to interrogate how practices such as redlining, educational funding discrepancies, and predatory financial practices — alongside enslavement — have exacerbated racial opportunity and wealth gaps.
At the conclusion of their work, the commission would then report “appropriate remedies” to Congress, based on its findings on institutional enslavement and racism.
Lee, the bill’s sponsor, told the New York Times she sees it as a step forward in addressing America’s problematic and racist past.
“We think it will be cleansing for this nation, and we think that it will be a step moving America forward to see us debate this question on the floor of the House,” Lee said.
HR 40 hopes to clarify the debate over whether reparations are a good idea
Ideological notions against reparations are still the norm. As HR 40 came up for a committee hearing in 2019, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said he opposed reparations because “none of us currently living are responsible” for slavery. He further said landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s and the election of President Barack Obama were examples of the US dealing with its “original sin of slavery.”
That’s where most Americans seem to be on the issue. Sixty-three percent of Americans oppose reparations, including a whopping 93 percent of Republicans, the Post/ABC poll found. It’s not popular.
But many supporters of reparations, and lawmakers like Lee, have argued that reparations are less about correcting a past wrong, and more about negating the past’s effect on the present. They tie the exclusion of Black people from the GI Bill, and the racist ways the construction of the highway system broke up Black communities, with present-day issues, including the use of cash bail and policing being overwhelmingly concentrated in majority-minority areas. The argument is that by compensating the Black population for a long history of exclusionary government policy, they can gain better housing, educational, and financial footholds to have full access to opportunity.
It’s important to note that HR 40 would not institute reparations — and that even if a commission were to recommend them, the federal government might not act on that recommendation. But its backers see it as a first step in the right direction.
“The centuries-long injustices of slavery and its legacy, fueling the persistence of racial inequality today, remain largely unaccounted for,” said Human Rights Watch advocate Dreisen Heath in a press release. “As states, cities, and other institutions pursue reckonings, Congress should step up to lead the nation in accounting and atoning for the ongoing impact of slavery. The committee vote on H.R. 40 is a crucial step in that direction.”
Some reparations advocates — including Duke University’s William Darity Jr. — have called for HR 40 to be further refined so that it might constitute a larger step toward reparations. Darity told the Washington Post the bill should specify exactly who would be eligible for any possible reparations, and should include the creation of a plan to narrow the racial wealth gap.
“Unless the markup process results in major revision of the bill, it will not propel our nation toward true reparations,” Darity told the Post.
At the moment, Biden has not outlined any further vision for reparations beyond what was in his platform; however, Lee said HR 40 has an ally in the president. After leaders from the Congressional Black Caucus met with Biden Tuesday, Lee told reporters that Biden indicated support for HR 40 and its study on reparations.
“We have heard from not only the president but the White House, and his team, that he is committed to this concept,” Lee said. “We are grateful for that because we are now doing something historically tomorrow that’s never been done.”
Overall, it’s clear that there remains — and will remain — a lot of debate as to whether reparations are a good idea, both in regard to their moral virtue and implementation. HR 40 aims to change that, by arming lawmakers with actionable data and research on the direct causes of historical racial opportunity gaps and the impacts they have on society today.
Liberals' bill on Indigenous rights getting pushback from Conservatives, First Nations critics
Olivia Stefanovich
CBC 4/14/2021
A key element of the Liberal government's reconciliation agenda is facing resistance from Conservatives in the House of Commons — and some First Nations critics on the outside.
Bill C-15, An Act respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), is at the second reading stage and is being discussed this week by members of the standing committee on Indigenous and northern affairs.
The proposed legislation aims to implement the UN declaration by ensuring federal laws respect Indigenous rights.
Some First Nation critics say the bill doesn't go far enough and may end up restricting those rights.
"It doesn't seem like Canada has really learned its lesson from Oka to Wet'suwet'en to the Mi'kmaq fishermen," said Grand Chief Joel Abram of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians.
"Our first choice is to have it go back to the drawing board."
UNDRIP affirms the rights of Indigenous peoples to their language, culture, self-determination and traditional lands.
It was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. Canada's Conservative government voted against it at the time, citing concerns about natural resources and land use — but then endorsed it in 2010.
In 2019, an NDP private member's bill to implement UNDRIP died on the order paper after Conservative senators — warning it could have unintended legal and economic consequences — slowed its progress. Last December, the Liberal government introduced a new form of the legislation.
A key element of the Liberal government's reconciliation agenda is facing resistance from Conservatives in the House of Commons — and some First Nations critics on the outside.
Bill C-15, An Act respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), is at the second reading stage and is being discussed this week by members of the standing committee on Indigenous and northern affairs.
The proposed legislation aims to implement the UN declaration by ensuring federal laws respect Indigenous rights.
Some First Nation critics say the bill doesn't go far enough and may end up restricting those rights.
"It doesn't seem like Canada has really learned its lesson from Oka to Wet'suwet'en to the Mi'kmaq fishermen," said Grand Chief Joel Abram of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians.
"Our first choice is to have it go back to the drawing board."
UNDRIP affirms the rights of Indigenous peoples to their language, culture, self-determination and traditional lands.
It was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. Canada's Conservative government voted against it at the time, citing concerns about natural resources and land use — but then endorsed it in 2010.
In 2019, an NDP private member's bill to implement UNDRIP died on the order paper after Conservative senators — warning it could have unintended legal and economic consequences — slowed its progress. Last December, the Liberal government introduced a new form of the legislation.
Fear of 'veto' persists
Conservatives again are raising concerns — mainly over UNDRIP's requirement that governments seek "free, prior and informed consent" from Indigenous communities before pursuing any project that affects their rights and territory.
"When a First Nation says no to a project, does that mean it's dead?" asked Jamie Schmale, Conservative Crown-Indigenous relations critic, at Tuesday's standing committee hearing on Bill C-15.
"It leaves a lot of unanswered questions and potentially the courts to decide that definition."
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, legal counsel to the Assembly of First Nations, said those fears are misplaced.
"Consent is not a veto over resource development," Turpel-Lafond said.
Conservatives again are raising concerns — mainly over UNDRIP's requirement that governments seek "free, prior and informed consent" from Indigenous communities before pursuing any project that affects their rights and territory.
"When a First Nation says no to a project, does that mean it's dead?" asked Jamie Schmale, Conservative Crown-Indigenous relations critic, at Tuesday's standing committee hearing on Bill C-15.
"It leaves a lot of unanswered questions and potentially the courts to decide that definition."
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, legal counsel to the Assembly of First Nations, said those fears are misplaced.
"Consent is not a veto over resource development," Turpel-Lafond said.
© Derek Spalding/CBC Grand Chief Joel Abram of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians wants the proposed legislation to go back to the drawing board.
"What this is doing is saying we want to end the process of this very colonial approach to taking Indigenous peoples' lands, supporting projects and developments on those lands without their consent, engagement and involvement."
"What this is doing is saying we want to end the process of this very colonial approach to taking Indigenous peoples' lands, supporting projects and developments on those lands without their consent, engagement and involvement."
Human rights at stake, ITK president says
Turpel-Lafond said the language in the bill should be made clearer by, for example, replacing the word "discrimination" with "racism".
She also said the bill has promise and aims to close a gap by reinforcing existing rights that haven't been respected.
"The most important thing it does is it puts an obligation on Canada to conduct its policies and conduct its interactions with Indigenous peoples on the basis of recognizing Indigenous people have rights," Turpel-Lafond said.
"Since as long as there's been a Canada, it's been doing it the opposite way, which is denying that Indigenous peoples have rights and ... a very high-conflict relationship. The bill is meant to shift that."
In a statement to CBC News, Justice Minister David Lametti's office said the government remains open to any proposed improvements to the bill.
"Our government has been clear in recognizing the realities of discrimination and racism that Indigenous peoples face in Canada, and we continue to work in partnership with Indigenous peoples to find and implement concrete solutions to address them," said the statement.
Natan Obed is president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which co-developed the bill with the federal government. He told CBC News the legislation creates a new avenue for Indigenous people to seek justice in the courts.
"This legislation really is a test on whether or not specific political parties or specific jurisdictions accept that Indigenous peoples have human rights," Obed said.
"If governments are still in the place where they're fighting against Indigenous peoples rights, what they're really saying is that human rights apply to some of their constituency, but not all. I hope that political parties can understand that this is actually what is at stake here."
Turpel-Lafond said the language in the bill should be made clearer by, for example, replacing the word "discrimination" with "racism".
She also said the bill has promise and aims to close a gap by reinforcing existing rights that haven't been respected.
"The most important thing it does is it puts an obligation on Canada to conduct its policies and conduct its interactions with Indigenous peoples on the basis of recognizing Indigenous people have rights," Turpel-Lafond said.
"Since as long as there's been a Canada, it's been doing it the opposite way, which is denying that Indigenous peoples have rights and ... a very high-conflict relationship. The bill is meant to shift that."
In a statement to CBC News, Justice Minister David Lametti's office said the government remains open to any proposed improvements to the bill.
"Our government has been clear in recognizing the realities of discrimination and racism that Indigenous peoples face in Canada, and we continue to work in partnership with Indigenous peoples to find and implement concrete solutions to address them," said the statement.
Natan Obed is president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, which co-developed the bill with the federal government. He told CBC News the legislation creates a new avenue for Indigenous people to seek justice in the courts.
"This legislation really is a test on whether or not specific political parties or specific jurisdictions accept that Indigenous peoples have human rights," Obed said.
"If governments are still in the place where they're fighting against Indigenous peoples rights, what they're really saying is that human rights apply to some of their constituency, but not all. I hope that political parties can understand that this is actually what is at stake here."
'You're going to see more conflict'
Russ Diabo, a member of the Mohawks of Kahnawake and a policy analyst, went to Geneva in the 1980s and 1990s to develop the declaration with the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations.
He said Canada's interpretation of UNDRIP doesn't advance the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and allows the government to keep the upper hand under the law.
"Bill C-15 is going to entrench all of that, the colonial status quo," Diabo said.
© CBC Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, legal counsel for the Assembly of First Nations, said claims that the bill might give Indigenous communities a veto over development projects are mistaken.
Diabo said the bill reinforces Canada's existing policies on modern treaties and self-government, which he believes are in breach of the UN declaration's standards.
That, he said, will make it harder for Indigenous communities to block resource projects they don't want.
"(UNDRIP) will be used domestically against land defenders and water protectors to say that they're acting outside of the law when they go and stop projects or activities that they feel are infringing or affecting their aboriginal treaty rights," Diabo said.
"You're going to see more conflict."
The provinces also could play spoiler and undermine the federal bill if they decline to pass their own laws on UNDRIP, since natural resources fall under their jurisdiction, Diabo said.
"It doesn't deal with provincial jurisdiction and that's going to be the big problem."
Half a dozen provinces already have asked the government to delay the bill over worries it could compromise natural resource projects.
NDP Premier John Horgan's government in B.C. is the only one so far that has passed a provincial law implementing the declaration.
Diabo said the bill reinforces Canada's existing policies on modern treaties and self-government, which he believes are in breach of the UN declaration's standards.
That, he said, will make it harder for Indigenous communities to block resource projects they don't want.
"(UNDRIP) will be used domestically against land defenders and water protectors to say that they're acting outside of the law when they go and stop projects or activities that they feel are infringing or affecting their aboriginal treaty rights," Diabo said.
"You're going to see more conflict."
The provinces also could play spoiler and undermine the federal bill if they decline to pass their own laws on UNDRIP, since natural resources fall under their jurisdiction, Diabo said.
"It doesn't deal with provincial jurisdiction and that's going to be the big problem."
Half a dozen provinces already have asked the government to delay the bill over worries it could compromise natural resource projects.
NDP Premier John Horgan's government in B.C. is the only one so far that has passed a provincial law implementing the declaration.
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