Sunday, June 06, 2021

‘The world is watching us’: Pressure mounts for Canada to share surplus COVID-19 vaccines

Hickox and ONE Canada are among several calling for Canada and other rich countries with ample supply to vaccines to start thinking of a way to share doses with populations that don't have nearly enough access to them.

As Canada’s rate of administered COVID-19 vaccine doses continues to climb, several experts and advocates are pointing to a glaring gap of vaccine inequity worldwide — and are urging Canada to consider sharing its supply.

"Among rich countries, Canada has bought more vaccines than anyone else in the world — enough to vaccinate Canadians five times," ONE Canada director Stuart Hickox told Global News on Thursday.


"They've [the federal government] done a good job of securing doses ... but the problem is now that we have a surplus, there will be millions and millions of surplus doses in this country."

Read more: U.S. unveils COVID-19 vaccine sharing plan, Canada is a priority

Hickox and ONE Canada are among several calling for Canada and other rich countries with ample supply to vaccines to start thinking of a way to share doses with populations that don't have nearly enough access to them.

Canada has already ordered more than 400 million vaccines according to Public Services and Procurement, of which over 28.1 million have since been delivered, and nearly 25 million administered.

Though nearly three out of five Canadians have received their first dose and just over 6.3 per cent are now fully vaccinated, several analysts are pointing to an inevitable slump in demand once certain vaccine targets are reached.

Video: U.S. to share 25 million surplus COVID-19 vaccine doses with the world

"Vaccine uptake will inevitably wane within the next couple months," said Dionne M. Aleman, an associate professor of industrial engineering at the University of Toronto in an email Thursday.

While there have been no plans yet from the federal government as to whether Canada will be sharing their vaccines, Aleman said that her guess at when Canada could start sharing its surplus would be by the fall.

Aleman said that Canadians who wanted their two shots will "in all likelihood" have received them by late September, and that the country would probably have enough supply to support any remaining second doses.

The calls for vaccine sharing come on the heels of an announcement from the U.S. on Thursday which designated several countries — including Canada — to be among a priority for sharing their surplus of vaccines.

Read more: Canada and U.S. are running different COVID-19 reopening races — what are the risks?

The U.S. also designated 75 per cent of its surplus vaccines to go towards the WHO and GAVI-run COVAX vaccine program.

Canada has since faced blistering criticism over being the only G7 country to have accessed vaccine doses through COVAX, which many have pointed to as being a vaccine reserve for poorer countries.

Hickox said that while Canada was still entitled to receiving the vaccines from the program, the time has now come for Canada and the international community to start giving doses back to COVAX after having bought up most of the supply around the world.

Video: WHO warns of failure in beating COVID-19 unless rich countries speed up vaccine sharing

Last week, the head of the World Health Organization pinned the enduring prevalence of COVID-19 in hotspots around the world as being perpetuated by a "scandalous inequity" in vaccine distribution.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said then that over 75 per cent of all vaccines had been administered in just 10 countries, pointing to a small group of nations that make and buy the majority of the world's supply.

"The point is, it's not about deciding who gets them first, it's the most vulnerable in every country and every community that needs these doses — the front-line workers, the health workers," said Hickox.

"So it's just not equal right now. We need to level the playing field by deciding how we can share these doses back."

Video: UNICEF Canada joins fight to combat COVID-19 vaccine inequality

Both Hickox and Aleman also pointed to how equitable vaccine access could benefit Canada from a public health perspective.

Focusing on aiding countries with a lot of travellers to Canada could better stem the country's COVID-19 case counts said Aleman, who pointed to loosening travel restrictions.

Hickox, on the other hand, warned of the possibility of new variants having been created in other, under-vaccinated countries and potentially triggering another surge in cases.

UCLA epidemiologist and professor Dr. Anne Rimoin shared the same concerns as well, pointing to the virus' opportunity for "mutation" every time it finds a new host.

Duration 2:30 Canada criticized for taking coronavirus vaccine doses from COVAX

"If we want to be able to preserve the effectiveness of the vaccines that we have currently now, we want to reduce the amount of time that this virus is circulating globally," Rimoin said.

"We need to focus on getting vaccines out to every country that needs it — not just the wealthy countries."

Hickox said that while it was a great signal that the Biden administration announced their plans to share surplus vaccines, he doubled down on the need for Canada to do the same very soon.

"Frankly, the international community is waiting for that kind of signal from Canada," he said, noting how the country has secured more doses per person than any other in the world.

"The world is watching us, you know. Our reputation is at stake."

— With files from Jackson Proskow and Twinkle Ghosh

Study outlines 'natural climate solutions' to help Canada meet emissions target


© Provided by The Canadian Press
Study outlines 'natural climate solutions' to help Canada meet emissions targets

Canada could reach one-third of its greenhouse gas reduction targets by making better use of its vast forests, prairies and wetlands, says a report by more than three dozen scientists.

The researchers from universities, governments and environmental groups say a good portion of those emissions cuts could be made for under $50 a tonne, less than next year's carbon tax.

"Natural climate solutions are relatively cost-effective ways to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions," said Amanda Reed, who co-ordinated the research for Nature United, the Canadian affiliate of The Nature Conservancy.

Grassland soils, peat-rich wetlands and old-growth forests store large amounts of carbon, said Reed. But they could store even more if Canadians farmed, logged and developed differently.

The report says agriculture offers the biggest chance for carbon savings.

At current rates, about 2.5 million hectares of native grassland are expected to be converted to crops by 2030. Cultivation releases carbon from the soil into the air.

Preventing that would keep almost 13 million tonnes of carbon in the ground, the report says. About 13 per cent of those savings could be accomplished for less than $50 a tonne.

Halting the conversion of wetlands, which store vast amounts of carbon in peat and other plant material, could cut emissions by another 15 million tonnes — one-fifth of which could be done for less than $50.

Planting cover crops could sequester another 10 megatonnes without reducing cash crop cultivation, the report suggests.

Video: Questions continue to swirl around Alberta inquiry into funding of environmental groups (Global News)


Forestry would offer another eight megatonnes in annual savings through conservation of old-growth forests, improving regrowth and ensuring wood waste was turned into usable products such as biochar, a high-carbon wood residue that can be used to improve soil.

Those savings could be made while still producing 90 per cent of Canada's current forest cut, says the report, and almost half would come under the $50 threshold.

In all, the report lists 24 nature-based ways for Canada to cut carbon emissions by 78 million tonnes a year by 2030 — more than one-third of the federal government's goal of 219 million tonnes.

"Natural climate solutions are available now," said Reed. "We don't have to wait for new technology to come along."

She emphasized that nature can't do all the work. Other approaches to cutting greenhouse gases, from carbon taxes to clean fuel standards, will still be needed.

"We have a really big crisis. We need to do all of those things. We need to have a broad policy that decreases fossil fuel use."

But using nature to reduce emissions also has other benefits, she said. It can boost biodiversity, reduce flood risk and ensure clean water supplies.

"Natural climate solutions not only mitigate greenhouse gases, but they also advance all of these other things."

The most recent federal budget included $4 billion for nature-based climate measures. The Forest Products Association of Canada has pledged to cut its emissions by 30 million tonnes by 2030.

Reed said interest has grown since a 2017 global report concluded that such measures could help reach about one-third of the carbon cuts the world needs to meet its reduction targets. The current report is modelled on that research, she said.

Researchers from nine universities, the Canadian government and environmental groups including the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in the United States all contributed to the report.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 4, 2021.

— Follow @row1960 on Twitter.

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Protests as Austria grapples with violence against women




VIENNA (AP) — The 35-year-old woman was working at a tobacco shop in Vienna when authorities say her ex-boyfriend doused her in gasoline and set her ablaze in March. In April, another woman of the same age was found shot to death in her home in the Austrian capital, also reportedly by her ex-partner.

They were the sixth and ninth women to be killed in Austria this year, and five more have followed in the weeks since. That has brought this year’s total so far to 14 slain women, making the Alpine nation one of the few European Union countries where the number of women killed is higher than the number of men.

The recent high-profile cases have led to widespread protests, demands for government intervention, and condemnations from Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and President Alexander van der Bellen.

“Too little is being done to protect women from violence,” van der Bellen said recently after meeting with representatives of women’s shelters and violence prevention organizations.

Experts say a variety of factors have caused the long-standing problem. Those include a view of women as subservient by some in Austria’s conservative Catholic — and more recently Muslim — populations. They also blame the normalization of sexist language by the far-right Freedom Party, which is now in opposition but has been part of two national coalition governments in Austria.

“We’ve seen that the language about and toward women has become more radical,” said Maria Roesslhumer, who heads Austria’s biggest network of women’s shelters and has been sounding the alarm for years. “And when this kind of verbal violence is possible in a country, then the path to physical violence isn’t far.”

The financial crisis of 2008 magnified the problem, as financial insecurity stoked domestic violence. Women's advocates say the coronavirus pandemic is having a similar effect, with many people out of work and stay-at-home orders leaving many victims trapped with their abusers.

Roesslhumer hopes leading politicians have finally gotten the message and will commit to more funding for organizations like hers as well as better enforcement of existing laws on domestic violence.

“We have good laws, but they’re not being enforced,” Roesslhumer said. “If you truly want to guarantee the safety of women, or to improve the safety of women, you need to invest in it.”





In the case of the 35-year-old woman killed at home in April in the capital's Brigittenau neighborhood, the main suspect had previously sent threatening, sexually explicit messages to a female politician from the Greens party in 2018. And in the weeks before the killing, he reportedly verbally threatened the victim and her family.

“He took out a pistol and said, ‘You know what this is,’” the victim’s father told Austrian television.

Austria’s homicide rate is low, at fewer than 1 per 100,000 people, but its proportion of women killed versus men is high. Last year, 31 of the country's 43 total murder victims — 72% — were women, according to Roesslhumer's Autonomous Austrian Women’s Shelters, a non-governmental organization that tracks the issue.

There are a handful of countries where the rate of femicides is slightly higher, including tiny Luxembourg, but Europe-wide about 75% of slayings are of men, according to the European Union's Eurostat statistical office.

In Austria, femicides almost doubled from 2014 to 2018, going from 23 cases to 44, according to Eurostat.

The victims in Austria came from all ages and backgrounds, but nearly all were killed by their current or former partners, the vast majority in their own homes.

These recent cases, and the rise in domestic violence since the start of the pandemic, “are no surprise to people working in this field,” Laura Wiesboeck, a Vienna-based sociologist who focuses on the issue, told The Associated Press.

“Many experts ... predicted that there would be a rise in male violence against women, especially in the context of intimate partner relationships,” she said. “But politically this hasn’t been heard or prioritized.”

Activists have organized a series of protests in Vienna in the wake of the recent murders and are exploring other ways to highlight the problem.

“This is a societal issue. It affects all of us,” Vienna-based writer and musician Gerhard Ruiss, who organized writers and artists to call for more decisive action from the government, told the AP.

After a virtual roundtable on the issue in May, the Austrian government pledged an additional 24.6 million euros ($30 million) for violence prevention — a significant increase over existing funding, but a small fraction of the 228 million euros requested by organizations in the field.

Kurz suggested, however, that more funding could be made available if needed for measures to protect women and children from violence.

“It will not fail because of money,” he said.

Roesslhumer and other advocates say an additional 3,000 jobs in violence prevention are necessary, and more training is needed for those who work in law enforcement, justice and education to ensure that violence-prevention laws are better enforced. They're also urging police to keep closer tabs on men under restraining orders.

Roesslhumer said the current discussion could be a turning point for more decisive action.

“We hope that it’s a lasting shift, not just a short flare-up that simply fades away,” Roesslhumer said. “I have the impression that there’s a change underway, and that many people understand we can’t go on like this.”

But, she cautioned, “it’s too early to tell.”

_____

Kirsten Grieshaber contributed to this report from Berlin.

Emily Schultheis, The Associated Press
Researcher describes how Amazon turns its employees into 'automated machinery'

Devika Desai - POSTMEDIA - JUNE 2,2021

© Provided by National Post
Employees are seen on duty at work stations part of mobile robotic fulfilment systems also known as 'Amazon robotics' during the inauguration of a new Amazon warehouse in Bretigny-sur-Orge, some 30kms south of Paris, on October 22, 2019.

In the long-running annual series Oh, The Humanities! National Post reporters survey academic scholarship at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, which has gone entirely virtual this year, hosted at the University of Alberta from May 27 to June 4.

For years, Amazon has come under a harsh spotlight for its treatment of its employees.

Workers at the retail giant’s fulfilment centre warehouses have become especially critical of their work conditions in the past couple of years. In protests in 2018 and 2019, they sent a rallying cry to top management: “We are not robots!”

Yet, that is precisely what Amazon wants them to be, Brendan Smith, a PhD student at the University of Toronto, posits in his research, to be presented this week at the Congress of Humanities and Social Sciences,

Titled, “Thanks Amazon for Ruining My Life’: Worker Breakdown and the Disruption of Care at Amazon,” Smith’s paper suggests that Amazon’s “technoscientific regime of labour management and control” purposefully supports disintegration of the individual to coerce them to function as “automated machinery.”

“Worker breakdown is not just a byproduct of the exploitative labour process,” reads a working draft of Smith’s research, “but is also an embodied experience of Amazon’s attempts and ambitions to transform workers into automatic subjects through the technologically mediated conditions of labour in Amazon warehouses.”

Smith, who has long been interested in the relationship between humans and machines, said it was the employees’ rallying cry that prompted his research.

“What is it from (the workers’) perspective in terms of how they come to understand how they’re being treated?” he said in an interview. “And in this case they see themselves as being treated as a kind of machinery.”

Drawing on YouTube confessionals posted by former and current Amazon warehouse workers, Smith explored workers’ narratives of what it was like to work in the warehouses, their perception of being monitored remotely via low-tech devices and their experiences of mediation if or when they resisted working at Amazon.

“It doesn’t take too much reading on Amazon, I guess to understand there’s been a problem with how workers are expected to meet a certain rate output,” he said, referring to how Amazon measures productivity.

He had already heard of, for example, the “bathroom breaks fiasco,” wherein if workers leave their station to visit the bathroom or get a drink of water, their productivity rate meter, which constantly measures their hourly output, immediately drops.

However “it was interesting to hear how significant the rate metering function was,” he said, as a form of remote surveillance over workers and their daily productivity.

“It’s not that managers even have to see you going to the warehouse bathroom, or going out for a smoke break or taking too long,” he said. “They can tell if you’ve been doing something else for any given period of time when you shouldn’t be.”

The lower a worker’s productivity, the higher the likelihood that he or she will get written up by managers. “Multiple write-ups can and most likely will lead to their termination,” Smith says in his paper.

It becomes a form of “temporal labour,” his research says, in which the workers’ are forced to pit their wellness against their performance, often compromising their bodies just to keep up with their target rate.

By forcing workers to account for their own well being, the meter takes on a disciplinary role, filtering out those who “learn to take on more injury and pain” from others, who ultimately quit.

“The metrics of the rate meter, and the subsequent write-up, both function as signifiers of debt, more specifically of the worker’s time-wastefulness and irresponsibility,” his research reads.

Then comes the scanner, a low-tech device carried by every Amazon warehouse employee.

But the device carries a double-edged sword, several people warn in their videos. “The scanner technology isn’t just a device of work, it’s a device of management,” Smith said.

Through the scanners, employees receive blaring notifications from management. The messages are often connected to their measured productivity. If the rate of productivity is low, then the worker risks being notified of their termination. If it’s high, then they might be shifted to a “more physically straining job … to maximize productivity,” Smith’s research notes.

“The Amazon scanner’s notification system brings workers closer to breakdown, either through imposing heavier workloads on them or through leaving them unemployed and discarded,” Smith says in his research. “It is a system that threatens each worker at every moment with commands, without the necessary presence of any managerial staff.”

Even the strongest and fittest of workers, despite being the most desired by Amazon, are not exempt. “Their work will likely be made more difficult over time as they are made to learn how to work through ever increasing levels of pain and injury,” Smith says in his paper.

By minimizing interactions between employees and managers, the scanner also keeps “workers as invisible as possible,” making it harder for them to say no to overtime and forcing them to operate as the employer needs.

“This cultural and behavioural software at Amazon is one of automaticity; it incorporates the body as something that can be automatically activated and deactivated at the will of the employer, and in accordance with the worker’s performance metrics,” the paper says.

As a result, workers come to identify themselves as “automatic subjects” who react to stimuli, such as their scanners, without much thought.

One ex-packer was quoted describing their colleagues behaving like “zombies.”

“And they’re young people and it’s like, damn, we gotta put ourselves through this?” the ex-packer said, according to Smith.

Those who experience depression as a result of their workdays come closer to being subsumed by the Amazon culture.

“It affords Amazon to transform its workers into automatic subjects by normalizing the conditions of their pain through an interiorization of one’s conception of their ‘wellness’,” Smith says in his research.

Others who attempt to resist, perhaps by suing the retailer for health or physical injuries, are subjected to “more explicitly coercive or even hostile techniques.”

A former employee described how her health insurance claims with Amazon led to her being monitored by private investigators with video cameras. Footage showed her holding her smartphone in her hand and was allegedly used to suggest that she faked her hand injuries.

“That’s one example of me trying to understand how workers’ surveillance and control isn’t just something on the warehouse floor,” Smith said.

Ironically, by attempting to squash worker individuality and emotion, the system’s weakest link is exposed — “it is the worker’s own thoughts and feelings,” Smith wrote in his paper.

And it is this weak link that could expand post-COVID, as Amazon, which repeatedly came under public fire after multiple outbreaks were reported at sites in the U.S. and Canada, becomes susceptible to more workers voicing their discontent with conditions.

“The more discontent we see on the warehouse floor, the more workers are going to want to reach out and collectivize in certain ways, or talk about their experiences with one another,” Smith said. “I think we’re going to see more and more of that.”

Energy regulator orders Trans Mountain to stop tree clearing work on project


© Provided by The Canadian Press
Energy regulator orders Trans Mountain to stop tree clearing work on project

KAMLOOPS, B.C. — An order stopping tree cutting and grass mowing across the entire Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project was issued Thursday by the Canada Energy Regulator, the agency that enforces safety and environmental guidelines for pipeline projects across Canada.

A statement released by the CER said it issued the order to immediately stop all clearing activity "to prevent harm to nesting birds in the pipeline project’s right of way and to ensure Trans Mountain is correcting any issues it has in relation to contractor oversight and management."

The release added that Trans Mountain must comply with the conditions of the Expansion Project certificate and its relevant obligations under the Canadian Energy Regulator Act and associated regulations.

A statement from Trans Mountain said the regulator's order was issued after a subcontractor started tree cutting and mowing activities without completing the necessary environmental compliance work.

It said no birds or bird nests were impacted by the clearing work.


Video: The troubled history of the Trans Mountain pipeline extension (Vancouver Sun)

It also said all other construction activity will continue across the project.

"Trans Mountain takes its regulatory and environmental obligations very seriously,'" says the statement. "We are working with the regulator to ensure and to demonstrate that we have the appropriate communication protocols in place for contractors at all levels."

The statement did not say how many workers are affected by the stop-work order or how long the shutdown will last for the pipeline project, which spans from just north of Edmonton to Burnaby, B.C.

Environment and Climate Change Canada issued a stop-work order in April to halt Trans Mountain construction through a Burnaby, B.C., forest to protect hummingbirds and other migratory birds during nesting season.

That order was expected to be in place until mid-August.

The $12.6-billion expansion project will triple the existing pipeline capacity to about 890,000 barrels per day of oil products, including diluted bitumen, lighter crude and refined fuel.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 3, 2021.

Dirk Meissner, The Canadian Press
Canadian Finance Minister Freeland lauds G7 deal to tax multinationals, says corporations must pay ‘fair share’

By Hannah Jackson Global News
Posted June 5, 2021 



WATCH: G7 finance ministers reach historic corporate tax deal on tech giants.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland on Saturday lauded a deal reached by the finance ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) nations to tax big multinational and back a minimum global corporate taxation rate.


In a tweet earlier on Saturday, Freeland said multinational corporations “need to pay their fair share of taxes,” adding that the G7 has now “outlined a path to make this possible.”

“This is good news for Canadians and Canadian businesses, and will ensure a fair and level playing field for them in the global economy,” she wrote.

Freeland, who also serves as Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, has spent the last two days in London, England, meeting with her G7 counterparts.



On Saturday morning, the finance ministers of the wealthy G7 nations reached a deal to pursue higher global taxation on multinational businesses such as Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google.

The countries agreed to back a minimum global corporate rate of at least 15 per cent and for companies to pay more tax in the markets where they sell goods and services.

READ MORE: Freeland attends two-day G7 finance ministers meeting in London

Freeland told a teleconference Saturday afternoon that the G7 has shown it is possible to end the race to the bottom on taxation.

“We’ve shown today that it is possible to end the global race to the bottom on taxation,” Freeland told reporters. “Multinational companies need to pay their fair share of taxes. Jurisdiction shopping allowed them to avoid doing that.”

However, Freeland said it is too early to say which Canadian companies might be impacted by the minimum global tax

Freeland maintained that Ottawa will still unilaterally impose its own digital services tax starting Jan. 1, 2022. Similar measures are already in place in Britain, France and Italy.

READ MORE: G7 countries reach deal to tax big multinationals during meeting in London

In an interview with Global News, Patrick Gill, senior director of tax and financial policy at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said establishing a global minimum tax is “not a new topic,” adding that it has “been discussed for many years at the international level.”

Gill said while the “devil will be in the details,” the deal “won’t necessarily harm Canada’s competitiveness from a corporate tax rate, which currently stands at a weighted average around 26 per cent.”

But, Gill said the “biggest winner in this” is “certainly” going to be the United States.

“The U.S. is now trying to collect and benefit from new revenues and profits of U.S.-based companies in order to pay for historic new levels of debt and infrastructure spending,” he said.


U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen tweeted after the announcement, saying the G7 ministers made a “significant, unprecedented commitment today” that she said “provides tremendous momentum towards achieving a robust global minimum tax at a rate of at least 15 per cent.”

She echoed Freeland’s remarks, saying the global minimum tax would “end the race-to-the-bottom in corporate taxation,” adding that it would “ensure fairness for the middle class and working people in the U.S. and around the world.”

Germany, France confident in G7 tax agreement aimed at digital giants
Gill said after years of “onshoring and pulling an investment through aggressive tax measures,” the United States is now “trying to have its cake and eat it too, by locking in that investment and making sure it looks more competitive on a global landscape.”

He said the agreement to work towards a minimum 15 per cent global tax rate “will affect other jurisdictions that have a much lower or nonexistent rate and could potentially help Canada play off its other strategic benefits.”

“And so this could be helpful, but the devil will be in the details,” he said.

Gill said Canada has to be “careful as we’re adding a layer of complexity onto existing complexity.”

“Really in my mind, there’s no better time to strike sort of an overall comprehensive review of Canada’s tax regime where Canada’s tax competitiveness lies, vis-a-vis it’s other economic peers,” he said.



In a tweet Saturday, International Lawyer Lawrence L. Herman called the move a “huge deal, not just on the tax side by on trade (relations) as well.”

“It will take pressure off threatened (American) retaliation vs countries applying digital service taxes, including (Canada),” he wrote. “A boost for (international) cooperation.”

But not everyone is in favour of the deal.

In a letter on Friday, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole called on Trudeau to reject the deal.

1:38 G7 meeting a ‘good opportunity’ to engage with India: U.K.’s Raab – May 4, 2021

“I implore you to reject this new tax proposal during your G7 Leaders meeting and unequivocally state to G7 Leaders that Canadians, and Canadians alone, determine our nation’s domestic tax policy and rates,” the letter read.

-With files from Global News’ David Akin, Reuters and The Canadian Press
US officials may have avoided the coronavirus lab-leak theory to avoid associations with controversial gain-of-function research



Guards stand outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology on February 3, 2021. Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty

Scientists haven't ruled out the possibility that the coronavirus leaked from a lab.

US agencies have given grants to a nonprofit that funds laboratories that alter coronaviruses.

So US officials may have dismissed the lab leak theory to avoid association with this research.

Is the best way to protect people from a dangerous virus to create one in a lab? That's the central question in the debate over gain-of-function research, a branch of virology that alters viruses in a controlled environment to make them more transmissible or infectious.

Proponents of this type of research say the work enables them to predict deadly pathogens that might emerge in real life and start work on vaccines or treatments ahead. But opponents think the experiments are simply too risky. A lab without proper safety protocol could accidentally release a more transmissible virus into the human population.


Competing theories about the coronavirus' origin have recently thrust this gain-of-function debate into the spotlight, since a prominent lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was conducting that kind of research on coronaviruses. What's more, the US has funded grants that supported that lab - which might have given State Department officials an incentive not to thoroughly investigate the possibility of a lab leak, according to a recent Vanity Fair investigation.

Vanity Fair reported that at a December 2020 meeting, US State Department officials were "explicitly told by colleagues not to explore the Wuhan Institute of Virology's gain-of-function research, because it would bring unwelcome attention to US government funding of it."

For years, the US government gave grants to a nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance, which in turn funded gain-of-function research - including studies at the Wuhan institute.

In a January internal memo obtained by Vanity Fair, Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department's Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, wrote that his colleagues had warned leaders within his bureau "not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19" because it would "open a can of worms."

Of course, the possibility that US officials may have wanted to distance themselves from any association with gain-of-function work doesn't necessarily make the lab-leak theory more credible. The leading theory is still that the virus spilled over to people from animals. That's because around 75% of all new infectious diseases come to us from animals, and the coronavirus' genetic code is very similar to that of other coronaviruses found in bats.

Still, a growing chorus of political and public-health leaders are calling for more thorough investigations into the coronavirus' origin, including the possibility that it leaked from a lab.
How the lab-leak theory reentered the conversation


© Zhang Chang/China News Service via Getty ImageExperts from the joint WHO-China team that investigated the coronavirus' origin attend a press conference in Wuhan on February 9, 2021. Zhang Chang/China News Service via Getty Image

The lab leak theory gained traction again at the end of March, after World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that "all hypotheses remain on the table" as to the virus' origin - even after a WHO report concluded that a lab leak was unlikely. In a May letter, a group of biologists wrote that the lab-leak theory should be taken seriously "until we have sufficient data."

Proponents of this possibility usually point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), since scientists were studying coronaviruses there before the pandemic.

But at the start of the pandemic, scientists quickly shut down the notion that the WIV could be to blame. A February 2020 statement published by 27 scientists in the journal The Lancet said the scientific community had overwhelmingly concluded that the virus originated in wildlife.

"We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin," the statement read.

However, the organizer of that statement was the president of EcoHealth Alliance, Peter Daszak.


A laboratory on the campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, pictured on May 27, 2020. HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images


In May 2014, EcoHealth received a roughly $3.7 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of which went toward gain-of-function experiments. By 2018, EcoHealth was receiving up to $15 million per year in grant money from federal agencies, according to Vanity Fair.

In one instance, EcoHealth Alliance helped fund research that created a new infectious pathogen using the molecular structure of the SARS virus. The aim of the study, according to the researchers, was to warn of the potential risk of a SARS-related virus re-emerging from bats.

One of the paper's authors was a prominent WIV virologist, Shi Zhengli. NIAID and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are cited as financial supporters of the research.

The Trump administration canceled EcoHealth's $3.7 million grant in April 2020. Then the NIH reinstated the grant in July but temporarily suspended its research activities.

Both NIAID director Anthony Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins have said that US agencies never funded gain-of-function research at the WIV.

"I fully agree that you should investigate where the virus came from," Fauci told Senator Rand Paul at a Senate hearing last month. "But again, we have not funded gain-of-function research on this virus in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. No matter how many times you say it, it didn't happen."

He added, though, that it would have been "irresponsible" if the US hadn't investigated bat viruses that may have caused the SARS outbreak.

"Are you really saying that we are implicated because we gave a multibillion-dollar institution $120,000 a year for bat surveillance?" Fauci told the Financial Times on Friday.

The US has funded gain-of-function research before


Anthony Fauci listens as President Joe Biden speaks at the National Institutes of Health. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

The US currently decides whether to fund gain-of-function experiments on a case-by-case basis. A multidisciplinary board at the Department of Health and Human Services evaluates the research to determine whether the benefits outweigh the risks.

The Trump administration implemented that policy in 2017. Before that, the Obama administration had put a moratorium on new funding for gain-of-function experiments that could make influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses more transmissible - or more likely to cause disease - through respiratory droplets in mammals. But that rule, created in October 2014, still made exceptions for research that was "urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security."

An NIH official told Vanity Fair that the government's approach to gain-of-function is complicated, though.

"If you ban gain-of-function research, you ban all of virology," the official said, adding, "Ever since the moratorium, everyone's gone wink-wink and just done gain-of-function research anyway."


Aylin Woodward contributed reporting.

Environmentalists hope threatened owls will end logging at Fairy Creek

But government says owls were not found in the watershed where old-growth trees are being logged

Author of the article: Lisa Cordasco
VANCOUVER SUN
Publishing date: Jun 04, 2021 • 
A screech owl. 
PHOTO BY JENELLE SCHNEIDER /PNG


VICTORIA — The discovery of two pairs of Western screech owls by provincial biologists at two sites on Vancouver Island have environmental groups calling for a halt to logging at Fairy Creek.

The biologists from the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development confirmed the sightings in an area outside of the Fairy Creek watershed this week. They plan to return next week to search for nests and to examine half a dozen more locations where the birds have been reported.

The species of the Western screech owl found in coastal forests has been listed as threatened by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. The Committee defines “threatened” as “likely to become endangered if limiting factors are not reversed.” The birds are “blue listed” under B.C.’s Wildlife Act, which is the equivalent of a threatened designation.

It’s believed predation by barred owls and a reduction in the habitat needed to sustain the screech owls have reduced their numbers to approximately 2,000 in North America. The owls need just the right sized hole between three and 10 metres off the ground in dead or decaying trees for their nests. Biologists believe they are virtually extinct in Vancouver, Victoria and on the Gulf Islands.

Environmental groups have said this week’s discovery on the west coast of Vancouver Island should force a halt to old-growth logging underway in Fairy Creek by the Teal Jones Group. Mark Worthing, the coastal projects lead for the Sierra Club of B.C. says both federal and provincial law demand it.

“It’s so important to study them, to make sure we know where they are, so that you can actually come to a scientific assessment. Is there enough suitable habitat for a said population? We don’t know,” said Worthing.

But David Muter, the assistant deputy minister of the resource stewardship division, said the discovery will not shut down the logging operations in the Fairy Creek watershed because the biologists’ work is being done some distance away from where the birds have been spotted. And, he said, Teal Jones has no immediate plans to log in the area of its tree farm licence being examined by the biologists.

“We know there is no logging activity there right now, so we’re not worried about any impending harvest,” he said, “But if we do need to do any additional habitat protections in the future, we want to get ready for that.”

Fairy Creek is 120 kilometres west of Victoria on Vancouver Island. It has been the site of logging protests that have led to the arrests of 158 people since the end of March.

Saturday, June 05, 2021

Injured sacred white raven 'perking' up since brought to B.C. rescue centre


Duration: 00:55 
https://globalnews.ca/video/7923629/injured-sacred-white-raven-perking-up-since-brought-to-b-c-rescue-centre

Rescuers at the North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre in Errington, B.C., describe the condition of a rare white raven who was found on the ground, unable to fly last week.


WEST COAST INDIGENOUS PEOPLES HAVE A LEGEND THAT RAVENS WERE WHITE UNTIL THEY PISSED OFF THE GREAT MANITOU WITH THEIR TRICKS THAT THEY WERE TURNED BLACK AS A WARNING TO OTHERS

Extremely rare white raven in intensive care at B.C. wildlife centre

By Amy Judd
June 4, 2021

An extremely rare white raven is currently being cared for at a Vancouver Island wildlife centre after being found last week malnourished and unable to fly.


Derek Downes, an animal care technician at the North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre, said the raven was brought in by a concerned citizen after being found on the ground in the Oceanside area.

 0:56 Injured sacred white raven ‘perking’ up since brought to B.C. rescue centre

The juvenile bird is not able to eat on his own and is currently in an intensive care unit so it has space to recover.

Downes said in the Oceanside area, north of Nanaimo, they have what has been dubbed the ‘Oceanside Sacred White Raven.’

Left behind in modern Peru, rural poor find a voice ahead of election


© Reuters/ALESSANDRO CINQUELuceli Banda Medina, a former student of Peru's presidential candidate Pedro Castillo, arranges blocks of cheese that she and her family made at home, in Puna

By Marcelo Rochabrun

PUNA, Peru (Reuters) - When Luceli Banda Medina, 21, the first woman in her family to read and write, left the poor, isolated northern Peruvian village of Puna to study nursing, she always dreamed what her life would have been like had she been born in a city.


© Reuters/ALESSANDRO CINQUELuceli Banda Medina and her sister look at a tablet provided by the school, at their home in Puna


"Why do the people of the countryside not have the same ability to study as people in the cities, who have practically everything they need?," Banda Medina, her father and mother's family names, told Reuters from her adobe house in Puna.

Three generations of the Medina family - daughter, mother and grandfather - live together in the house without running water, plumbing or a hard floor. Outside low clouds hug the dark-green hills dotted with roaming chickens and horses.

Family elder, grandfather Segundo Medina, has been a subsistence farmer all his life and wears a broad-rimmed chotano hat, just like another local son, socialist presidential candidate Pedro Castillo who is now stirring up the Andean country's politics.


© Reuters/ALESSANDRO CINQUELuceli Banda Medina and her sister look at a tablet provided by their school, at their home, in Puna

Outside the yellow-bricked house hangs a banner for Castillo, who taught at the nearby primary school and tutored Banda Medina to read. He is now neck-and-neck with conservative opponent Keiko Fujimori ahead of Sunday's election run-off, his abrupt and unexpected rise driven by poor, rural voters angry at being left behind.


© Reuters/ALESSANDRO CINQUEMaria Doralisa Medina, the mother of Luceli Banda Medina who is a former student of Peru's presidential candidate Pedro Castillo, poses for a photograph at home, in Puna


Win or lose, Castillo has galvanized the rural vote like never before, raising a challenge to any new government as it tries to unify a nation that has been roiled by political scandals and five presidents in the last five years.

Fujimori has already moved to address concerns of poverty, including pledging to distribute some mining profits straight to local communities and offering payouts for families who have lost members to COVID-19.

The coronavirus pandemic, which has left Peru with the world's highest death toll per capita, forced Banda Medina to move back to Puna last year, where she now struggles to keep up with her classes due to spotty internet service.

Similar concerns about inequality and a rural-urban divide have struck a chord with many Peruvians who are supporting leftist Castillo, who is running on a radical platform to redistribute wealth while keeping traditional family values.

While rural voters have flocked in droves to back Castillo's cry of, "No more poor in a rich country," right-winger Fujimori has garnered support in big cites by pledging to maintain stability, lambasting her rival for fueling "class struggle."

The race is too close to call, but the fault lines are clear. In the metropolitan area of capital Lima, Fujimori has almost twice the level of support as Castillo. This is almost exactly the reverse in rural Peru, an IEP poll shows.

Among the capital's small wealthy elite, three-quarters support Fujimori, another poll from Ipsos shows, fearful of Castillo's plans to redistribute mineral wealth and tear up the country's decades-old constitution.

'EMPTYING OUT'

Fueling support for Castillo is the feeling that there is just no future in Peru's forgotten rural villages like Puna, as youths leave in droves to study in urban centers.

"Puna is emptying out, only the elders stay," said Maria Dorlisa Medina, Banda's mother who is illiterate and works every morning producing cheese in her kitchen that she can sell for about 70 soles (around $18) a week.

Over the past century, Peru has transformed from predominantly rural into a largely urban country amid a population boom. As part of that shift, however, Puna and other countryside communities have suffered population loss.

The result is a highly centralized country, where economic opportunities and social mobility go mainly to residents of its largest cities, even in regions like Cajamarca, where Puna is located, that have significant mineral wealth.

Since 1913, Cajamarca's share of Peru's economy has shrunk by half, while Lima's has more than tripled to over 65% of the country's GDP, according to data compiled by Bruno Seminario, a prominent economic historian who died last month.

That divide is reflected in the polls. In some surveys, Castillo wins every region of the country except for the region of Lima, which alone holds a third of Peru's population.

"Castillo is carrying with him all the social inequality and the frustration of our people," said Alvaro Galvez, 33, a historian in Tacabamba, near Puna, who supports him. "The elites, they tell us we are free, but we have no economic freedom, and we are forced to migrate for professional opportunities."

'NO ESCAPE'

As many as 70% of Puna's residents live in poverty, or on less than $100 in monthly income per household resident, a far higher rate than in Peru overall, according to government estimates.

The village is perched on hillsides a six-hour drive from the nearest big city, Cajamarca. About half the journey is on narrow dirt roads that skirt striking but deadly cliffs. It has no main square, just a collection of scattered adobe homes.

While Peru has been hailed as a model of success for reducing poverty rates from around 50% in the 1990s to 20% before the pandemic, those strides have been unequal, fueling discontent. The pandemic has seen poverty rebound to some 30%.

As of last year, 26% of Peru's urban population is poor, but that number climbs to 46% in rural communities, the government's statistics bureau INEI said in May.

"Poverty reduction has been formidable but what happens is that families could escape poverty but remain very vulnerable," said Oswaldo Molina, who heads an NGO focused on development.

In Puna, residents say they have never felt the improvements in quality of life that the statistics suggest.

"We are illiterate, we are poor, although we are always working," Medina, the mother, said.

"I would get so frustrated," she added of not being able to read and write. She enrolled in a literacy school after her first son was born, but all she learned was how to write her name and remember her Peruvian identify card number.

To be sure, complaints about inequality also translate to urban poverty in the outskirts of Lima and other cities, where the poor live in slums on sandy hills, many of whom are recent arrivals from communities in rural Peru.

Castillo comes from poverty and still keeps his home in Chugur, a similarly impoverished village about 20 minutes from Puna, an identity that resonates with many Peruvians who live very far from wealth.

He has pledged to help level inequalities, though critics say he has no clear plan yet of how to do it and may do more harm than good.

Back in Puna, Medina, Luceli's mother, said she wished had been able to leave her village as a young woman to improve her lot in life.

"If only I had thought earlier to travel far and work, and get educated," she said. "But I had my husband, my kids, and then we had no escape."

(Reporting by Marcelo Rochabrun in Puna, Peru; Additional reporting by Herbert Villarraga and Reuters TV in Lima; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Alistair Bell)