‘We all quit’: Burger King’s disgruntled staff quits via giant sign

Josh K. Elliott 

© Rachael Flores/Facebook A sign outside a Burger King in Lincoln, Neb., is shown during a mass resignation in July 2021.

Fed-up Burger King staff walked off the job in Lincoln, Neb., last week, after giving their boss — and everyone else — an approximately 50-foot-high resignation letter.

"We all quit," the sign outside the Nebraska restaurant read Monday. "Sorry for the inconvenience."

It was a crowning moment for the now-former Burger King employees, who pulled the stunt on their last day of work. They recently gave notice that they were quitting due to poor conditions at the restaurant, including a broken air conditioner and understaffing issues.

Store general manager Rachael Flores told KLKN that she quit over sweltering conditions in the kitchen, where temperatures reached the mid-30s C range. She says she was recently hospitalized for dehydration after working a shift in that heat, and that her boss called her a "baby" after the ordeal.

"We quit (be)cause upper management was a joke and had no care for me or my employees," Flores wrote on Facebook. "I put in my 2 weeks and so did MANY other people."

Flores and eight others showed up early for their last day of work and changed the restaurant sign around 6 a.m., in what Flores says was an attempt to get a "big laugh" at her employer's expense.

Her boss called her a few hours later and demanded that she take the sign down.

"I told him I couldn't do that because we were short-staffed and lunch was starting," Flores said.

Her boss ultimately showed up in person to fire her and take her keys. He then had the sign changed to read: "Now hiring. Flexible schedules."

Multiple employees say the store had been dealing with poor maintenance and low staff for several weeks, and that things boiled over with Flores' hospital visit.

"I just stayed to help Rachael out," said Kylee Johnson, one of the employees involved in the mass resignation. "I knew what was going on, staffing-wise.

"We were just waiting for more people to come and then we got nobody."

Burger King's head office acknowledged the incident in a statement to CNN.

"The work experience described at this location is not in line with our brand values," the restaurant chain said. "Our franchisee is looking into this situation to ensure this doesn't happen in the future."

The restaurant remains open.

Tennessee's Fired Vaccine Chief Called The State's New Rule Barring Vaccine Outreach To Teens "Toxic Leadership"

“We have a legislature filled with people who are not scientists and not healthcare providers who have their own crazy ideas about vaccines," Michelle Fiscus, Tennessee's top vaccine official until she was fired on Monday, told BuzzFeed News.

Dan VerganoBuzzFeed News Reporter

Azeen GhorayshiBuzzFeed News Reporter


Posted on July 13, 2021, 

/ AP
Michelle Fiscus speaking to a reporter on Tuesday, July 13, 2021.


Michelle Fiscus, Tennessee's top vaccine official until she was fired on Monday, condemned a new move by the state's health department severely limiting its vaccine outreach to teens.


The change, first reported by the Tennesseean, will stop all of the health department's vaccine events at schools and will halt all of their communication to teens about vaccines, including postcards notifying them about their second COVID-19 shots. The change, and Fiscus's termination, happened amid pressure from Republican state lawmakers, who have called the health department's vaccine outreach to adolescents an overreach that threatens parental authority.

The Tennessee health department "has been rolling over and appeasing these legislators instead of standing up for public health and the people of Tennessee,” Fiscus told BuzzFeed News. She suggested that Gov. Bill Lee and Lisa Piercey, the Tennessee Department of Health commissioner who reportedly authorized the change, capitulated because of their political ambitions. "Politics has conspired to create toxic leadership."

The state health department's change comes amid growing anxiety over a state law called the "Mature Minor Doctrine," which allows adolescents 14 and up to make medical decisions without parental consent. This could include getting COVID-19 vaccines, which have been approved for kids 12 and over. Republican lawmakers in the state accused the health department of "targeting" youth for vaccinations and then threatened to dismantle the agency to stop its outreach efforts.


But the new move by the state's health department affects outreach on all vaccines, not just those protecting children from COVID-19, severely threatening public health in the state. The agency had previously recommended vaccination against flu, measles, mumps, rubella, HPV, and more.

And the change comes as cases are surging in the state amid the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant. Cases in Tennessee have gone up more than 400% in the last two weeks and deaths have increased by 9%. Only 38% of the state has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, making Tennessee one of the least vaccinated states in the US.

Fiscus was fired by the Tennessee Department of Health on Monday, allegedly over information that was distributed to medical providers about providing COVID-19 vaccines to adolescents. She later released a public statement saying she was scapegoated because of political pressure. "I am afraid for my state," her statement read.

“We have a legislature filled with people who are not scientists and not healthcare providers who have their own crazy ideas about vaccines," Fiscus said. "When they saw us trying to do our job of educating people, they saw that as undermining parental authority. They began saber rattling about dissolving the Department of Health, in the middle of a pandemic, which is ludicrous, and the department’s leadership absolutely crumbled.”

The Tennessee Department of Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last week, the CDC recommended that all schools resume in-person learning in the fall and take a leading role in promoting vaccination among eligible students, calling it "one of the most critical strategies to help schools safely resume full operations."

Anthony Fauci And Deborah Birx Warned Top Officials About The “Dangers” Of Scott Atlas Last Summer, Emails Show

“I am more convinced than ever the dangers of Dr. Atlas’ views on the pandemic,” Birx wrote in an August 2020 email to Fauci and others.

Stephanie M. LeeBuzzFeed News Reporter

Dan VerganoBuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on July 12, 2021, at 5:05 p.m. ET

BuzzFeed News; Getty Images

It only took a few days for Scott Atlas to alarm top US health officials after he became a White House COVID-19 adviser in mid-August of last year.

Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx had already been sidelined and were struggling to combat falsehood after falsehood spread by former president Donald Trump. Yet the pair quickly realized that Atlas — a senior fellow at Stanford University’s conservative Hoover Institution who routinely downplayed the pandemic on Fox News — was about to make their fight against the virus even harder, according to emails obtained through a public records request and shared with BuzzFeed News.

“I am more convinced than ever the dangers of Dr. Atlas’ views on the pandemic,” Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator at the time, wrote to Fauci and other top health officials in an Aug. 21, 2020, email — 11 days after Trump had announced that Atlas, a neuroradiologist, would be his newest adviser. She accused Atlas of “providing information not based on data or knowledge of pandemics — nor pandemic responses on the ground but by personal opinion formed by cherry picking data from nonpeer reviewed COVID publications.”


Obtained via FOIA



“This is dangerous and a true threat to a comprehensive and critical response to this pandemic,” she added. “Dr Atlas views appeal to a subsection of American citizens and if allowed to gain traction will reverse months of incredibly hard won gains.”


“I agree and share your concerns,” Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease scientist, responded on a thread that included former FDA head Stephen Hahn and former CDC chief Robert Redfield. He added, “He is a very clever guy and knows the literature (in his own way). It is in the interpretation of the literature that we differ.”


Obtained via FOIA

The emails — obtained by Charles Seife, a New York University journalism professor — show how alarmed Fauci and Birx were about Atlas, who became one of Trump’s most influential advisers and one of the loudest sources of COVID-19 misinformation in the US.

He infamously advocated for a controversial approach to the deadly virus: letting it spread unchecked among non-elderly people in the absence of a vaccine so that the population at large could develop immunity. Infectious disease experts at the time argued that this strategy would be incredibly dangerous, inevitably leading to large numbers of unnecessary hospitalizations and deaths. But the idea held sway with the president: Weeks after Atlas started on the job, Trump proclaimed on TV that the virus would “go away” once people developed “a herd mentality.”

Fauci and Birx, meanwhile, were almost entirely shut out of the Oval Office, according to their correspondence at the time. “I don’t see the President so I don’t have a counter balance opportunity to this Atlas Dogma,” Birx wrote. “Tony and I did not brief the President nor speak to the President between 22 April and the end of July beyond one vaccine briefing in July.”


Obtained via FOIA

Atlas joined the White House team with no background in infectious diseases or public health. He promoted a steady stream of unscientific views about how the virus spread, who it harmed, and how to control it — views that were widely condemned by the scientific community, including by dozens of his faculty peers at Stanford.

In August, the US death toll was climbing past 170,000, and it was unclear when any of the vaccines under development would prove effective. In her emails at the time, Birx expressed frustration over Atlas’s unscientific stances. “He is convince[d] that we have reach[ed] herd immunity in the NE. Midwest and now the Sunbelt,” she wrote.

Atlas has denied that he was pushing a “herd immunity” strategy to the virus, but he consistently championed the approach in public, even if he didn’t always use the exact term. And he repeatedly questioned the effectiveness of masks, social distancing, stay-at-home policies, and other public health measures to help slow the virus’ spread.

Atlas and Fauci did not return requests for comment for this story. Birx declined to comment.

In their correspondence, Fauci and Birx discussed Atlas’s repeated claims that the only people who needed to be isolated were the nation’s 1.3 million elderly nursing home residents. What his claims left out, they said, were that the 81 million people with underlying conditions also needed protection, and that if the virus was spreading at high levels, it would certainly find its way into nursing homes in those communities, too.

Fauci noted that when he raised the risks faced by vulnerable people with underlying health conditions to Atlas, the Stanford physician was dismissive. He “passes over the obvious connection between letting the pandemic play out and the likelihood that we will be killing a lot of people (not just nursing home inhabitants) along the way,” Fauci wrote.


Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post via Getty Images

Scott Atlas speaks with then-president Donald Trump during a COVID-19 briefing at the White House on Aug 12, 2020.

At the time, with a new academic year approaching, there was a lot of uncertainty around how much the coronavirus could spread among children and in schools. Even before he joined the White House, Atlas was resolute in his calls to reopen schools because, he asserted, children “almost never” transmit the virus, despite studies at the time that strongly indicated that kids can carry, spread, and, in rare cases, die from COVID-19.

Fauci and Birx were more cautious, wanting to first see the results of studies about transmission risk within schools before offering policy recommendations.

“We are only now collecting data that children actually do get readily infected. We need to do the phylogenetic studies to show (or not) just where they get infected,” Fauci wrote. “However, we cannot assume right now that school is not a source of super spread. That is a dangerous and irrevocable assumption.”

Fauci stressed that they needed to discuss this and other issues with Atlas in person: “As I mentioned to you over the phone, we need to sit down with him in a (hopefully) non-confrontative discussion [to] go over in detail the basis of his claims.”

Whether that particular meeting ended up happening is unclear. But Atlas’s views of the pandemic would remain unchanged and reportedly continued to spark fierce disagreement among members of the coronavirus task force. Before he stepped down in November, he and Alex Azar, then the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, met with a group of scientists who authored the Great Barrington Declaration, a hotly contested petition that criticized lockdowns and promoted the idea that the virus should spread to increase the number of people who are immune.

Fauci and Birx have since made it publicly known that they took deep issue with Atlas’s views. In a mid-November appearance on the Today show, Fauci said, “I don’t want to say anything against Dr. Atlas as a person, but I totally disagree with the stand he takes. I just do, period.”


In a January interview after leaving the White House, Birx said that while she was providing data about the coronavirus to Trump, the president was receiving “a parallel set of data” from other sources, likely including Atlas.

And in a new book, Andy Slavitt, a former COVID-19 adviser to President Joe Biden, wrote that Birx told him last year: “Fighting the virus and Scott Atlas together is the hardest thing I’ve had to do.” ●

The Olympics has a race problem. Athletes everywhere are calling out the sporting body for a history of banning Black women.

ydzhanova@businessinsider.com (Yelena Dzhanova) 

Gwendolyn Berry her Activist Athlete T-Shirt over her head during the metal ceremony after the finals of the women's hammer throw at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials Saturday, June 26, 2021, in Eugene, Ore. Berry finished third. AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

Eurocentric restrictions make it difficult for Black women to fully participate in the Olympics.

Historians say these rules are the lingering byproducts of racism and sexism within the Olympics.

While the Olympics are getting more inclusive, it's athletes themselves that are driving the push.

Olympians this year made headlines not for their incredible athletic feats or victories but for the obstacles standing in their way.

World Athletics, the international sports governing body, barred two Namibian women from running in various races because of their "natural high testosterone level," the Namibia National Olympic Committee said.

Republican lawmakers chastised hammer thrower Gwen Berry for facing away from the US flag.

The US Anti-Doping Agency announced a 30-day ban for American sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson after she tested positive for marijuana use, despite little evidence that the substance has a measurable impact on performance.

And the aquatic sports governing body banned the use of a swim cap designed to accommodate natural Black hair.

These incidents, sports historians say, underscore the deep racism and sexism rooted in the Olympics.

The policies and restrictions themselves aren't racist or sexist, said Dr. Cat M. Ariail, a history professor at the Middle Tennessee State University. But when enforced, they often have racist and sexist implications that hinder Black women's ability to participate fully in the Olympics.

These policies force Black women to alter or accommodate their biological needs or social experiences in ways white people do not have to.

Attempts to control the experiences of Black women

Sha'Carri Richardson's place at the Olympics is in doubt following reports of a positive cannabis test Patrick Smith/Getty Images

Berry, for example, faced sharp criticism for turning away from the US flag in June as the national anthem belted through the speakers. Big-name Republicans lawmakers like Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Dan Crenshaw amplified that criticism, indirectly accusing her of hating the US or fervently calling for her swift removal from the Games.

The hammer thrower expected the national anthem to play as she and the other athletes were walking out. But instead, it went off as they stood on the podium. That's when Berry turned toward the stands and began waving a T-shirt that said "Activist Athlete" over her head. It was a peaceful protest that the GOP seized on, characterizing it as an abrasion to democracy and the spirit of the Games.

In response to the backlash, Berry said the comments show a commitment to "patriotism over basic morality," arguing that the public places more value on respect to the country than taking a stand against its racist history. The vitriol, Berry and some writers suggested, is attempting to pressure her into choosing between the country and her lived experience as a Black woman in the US.

"US society, with its deeply embedded racism and sexism, makes it harder for a Black woman to become an elite athlete," Ariail told Insider. "When she beats the odds and reaches such heights, the various policies and practices of sport organizations, many of which are not racist/sexist on the surface but have racist/sexist effects, often make it harder for her to fulfill her potential."

Richardson took responsibility for the marijuana use, saying she did it to cope with the sudden notice of her biological mother's death, devastating news delivered to her by a reporter. The decision shocked the nation, with many individuals asking about the legality of the ban.

Marijuana is legal in more than a dozen states nationwide. The use of medical marijuana is legal in even more. Richardson used it in Oregon, one of the states where it is legal. Studies have found that marijuana does not affect performance, but the substance is on the World Anti-Doping Agency's list of prohibited substances.

"It is a drug [whose] use long has been associated with Black people and people of color, which, in turn, has associated it with an 'immorality' believed to be inconsistent with the moral purity that Olympic and international sporting organizations impose on athletes," Ariail said.

The Olympics has always had a problem with Black women

© AP Photo/Julio Cortez AP Photo/Julio Cortez

These incidents are not the first time the Olympics has discouraged Black women from participating. The history of the Olympics, sports historians say, is littered with examples of racism and sexism.

Gymnast Simone Biles last year spoke of the racism she's experienced as an Olympian. "I was on a world scene, and what made the news was, another gymnast saying that if we painted our skin black maybe we would all win because I had beaten her out of beam medal, and she got upset," she said on the TODAY show. "And that [was] really the news, rather than me winning worlds."

The first time Black women participated in the Olympics was in 1932, according to Linda K. Fuller, a scholar who's written multiple books on the intersection of sports and gender.

Since the 1930s, sports commentators have described Black women in racist terms, referring to them as "dancing monkey," for example, Fuller said. In the 1950s and 1960s, renowned Black sprinter Wilma Rudolph was called the "Black Gazelle," Fuller said, adding to the commentary that isolated her femaleness and Blackness.

Despite the enduring racism, Black women Olympians have continued to accomplish incredible athletic feats. And today, they continue to deal with racist and sexist policies meant to uphold a Eurocentric vision of the Olympics, Ariail and Fuller noted.

Just as racist policies are intrinsic to the Olympics, so is a history of activism and protest. In 1968, for example, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists to protest racism in the United States, also while the national anthem played in the background.

Non-American athletes have also protested against injustice during the Olympics season.

Czechslovak gymnast Věra Čáslavská turned away from the Soviet flag in 1968 to protest the Soviet Union's invasion into Czechoslovakia.

That historical context makes Berry's demonstration at the podium seem far less unusual

A push for inclusivity

Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Olympics has slowly been becoming more inclusive, Fuller said.

Still, racism and sexism are alive and well. An NBC sports anchor in 2012 praised gymnast Gabby Douglas' accomplishments on air, only for his remarks to be immediately followed by an ad of a monkey doing gymnastics. The public promptly criticized both the ad and its timing.

The more recent examples of Black women barred from competition stir up anger from both the Olympians and the public because in some ways, the policies represent a continuation of these racist and sexist undertones still present in the Olympics.

But it's the athletes - and specifically the Black women athletes - who are driving inclusivity within the Games.

"The success of Black American women, headlined by Wilma Rudolph in 1960, served as an inspiration for Black women and women of color in other countries, especially in then-recently decolonized African nations," Ariail said.

Through a strong combination of protest and victory, Black women like Wilma Rudolph, Serena Williams, Biles, and the Olympians who've been slighted by seemingly arbitrary policies, Ariail said, encourage the diversification of the Olympics.

FOREVER CHEMICALS ARE FOREVER

'This Is a Scandal': Documents Reveal Obama's EPA Approved Toxic Chemicals for Fracking in 2011

"We still don't know the full extent of toxic chemicals that companies are using in their fracking operations. Why is the EPA allowing them to poison our communities without consequence?"

A new fracking oil rig stands behind a family home on February 

10, 2016 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. (Photo: J Pat Carter via Getty Images

KENNY STANCIL

July 12, 2021

Between 2012 and 2020, fossil fuel corporations injected potentially carcinogenic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), or chemicals that can degrade into PFAS, into the ground while fracking for oil and gas, after former President Barack Obama's Environmental Protection Agency approved their use despite agency scientists' concerns about toxicity.

"The Obama-Biden administration approved the use of toxic PFAS chemicals for fracking a decade ago, and all these years later, Biden's practices haven't seemed to change a bit."
—Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch

The EPA's approval in 2011 of three new compounds for use in oil and gas drilling or fracking that can eventually break down into PFAS, also called "forever chemicals," was not publicized until Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) obtained internal records from the agency through a Freedom of Information Act request, the New York Times reported Monday after reviewing the files.

According to PSR's new report, Fracking with "Forever Chemicals," oil and gas companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and others engaged in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, have since 2012 pumped toxic chemicals that can form PFAS into more than 1,200 wells in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming.

While the Times noted that the newly released documents constitute some of the earliest evidence of the possible presence of PFAS in fracking fluids, PSR's report warns that "the lack of full disclosure of chemicals used in oil and gas operations raises the potential that PFAS could have been used even more extensively than records indicate, both geographically and in other stages of the oil and gas extraction process, such as drilling, that precede the underground injections known as fracking."

"It's very disturbing to see the extent to which critical information about these chemicals is shielded from public view," Barbara Gottlieb, PSR's Environment & Health Program director, said Monday in a press release. "The lack of transparency about fracking chemicals puts human health at risk."

As the Times reported:

In a consent order issued for the three chemicals on Oct. 26, 2011, EPA scientists pointed to preliminary evidence that, under some conditions, the chemicals could "degrade in the environment" into substances akin to PFOA, a kind of PFAS chemical, and could "persist in the environment" and "be toxic to people, wild mammals, and birds." The EPA scientists recommended additional testing. Those tests were not mandatory and there is no indication that they were carried out.

"The EPA identified serious health risks associated with chemicals proposed for use in oil and gas extraction, and yet allowed those chemicals to be used commercially with very lax regulation," Dusty Horwitt, a researcher at PSR, told the newspaper.

In a statement released Monday, Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, called the PSR report "alarming," and said it "confirms what hundreds of scientific studies and thousands of pages of data have already shown over the last decade: fracking is inherently hazardous to the health and safety of people and communities in proximity to it, and it should be banned entirely."

As PSR notes, PFAS—highly potent toxins that accumulate in the body and persist in the environment—pose a threat to human and environmental well-being. Negative health effects linked to PFAS include low infant birth weights, disruptions of the immune and reproductive systems, and cancer.

"The potential that these chemicals are being used in oil and gas operations should prompt regulators to take swift action to investigate the extent of this use, pathways of exposure, and whether people are being harmed," said Linda Birnbaum, board-certified Ph.D. toxicologist and former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Hauter added that "this says nothing of the dreadful impact fossil fuel extraction and burning is having on our runaway climate crisis. Fracking threatens every person on the planet, directly or indirectly."

According to the Times:

In a 2016 report, the EPA identified more than 1,600 chemicals used in drilling and fracking, or found in fracking wastewater, including close to 200 that were deemed carcinogens or toxic to human health. The same EPA report warned that fracking fluid could escape from drill sites into the groundwater and that leaks could spring from underground wells that store millions of gallons of wastewater.

Communities near drilling sites have long complained of contaminated water and health problems that they say are related. The lack of disclosure on what sort of chemicals are present has hindered diagnoses or treatment. Various peer-reviewed studies have found evidence of illnesses and other health effects among people living near oil and gas sites, a disproportionate burden of which fall on people of color and other underserved or marginalized communities.

"The Obama-Biden administration approved the use of toxic PFAS chemicals for fracking a decade ago," said Hauter, "and all these years later, President Joe Biden's practices haven't seemed to change a bit."

"The Biden administration has claimed to be concerned about PFAS contamination throughout the country," Hauter said. "Biden himself pledged during the campaign to halt new fracking on federal lands. Meanwhile, this administration is approving new fracking permits at a pace similar to Trump, with no letup in sight."

"Fracking is inherently hazardous to the health and safety of people and communities in proximity to it, and it should be banned entirely."
—Hauter

Earlier this month, whistleblowers at the EPA accused the Biden administration of continuing the "war on science," with managers at the agency allegedly modifying reports about the risks posed by chemicals and retaliating against employees who report the misconduct.

As Common Dreams reported, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed a formal complaint on behalf of four scientists with the EPA's Office of the Inspector General, demanding an investigation into reports that high-level employees routinely delete crucial information from chemical risk assessments or change the documents' conclusions to give the impression that the chemicals in question are safer.

Calling Monday's revelations about the Obama administration's decision to greenlight the use of PFAS in fracking "a scandal that should lead every nightly news program," Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org and director of Fossil Free Media, noted that "we still don't know the full extent of toxic chemicals that companies are using in their fracking operations."

"Why is the EPA allowing them to poison our communities without conscience?" he asked.

Hauter called on Biden "to immediately make good on his promise to halt new fracking on federal lands," adding that "his administration must take urgent action to contain the use of PFAS chemicals and their deadly spread into our water and our communities."

Qatar’s hotels accused of hospitality workers abuses

UK-based NGO Business and Human Rights Resource Centre finds Qatar’s hotel brands are failing to protect hospitality workers, as the Qatari government encourages workers to report abuses.

A survey has found that hospitality workers in Qatar suffer from 'extortionate recruitment fees, discrimination and being trapped in a job through fear of reprisal and intimidation' [Showkat Shafi/ Al Jazeera]

14 Jul 2021

Luxury hotel brands in Qatar have failed to protect migrant workers, according to the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, a London-based NGO, saying its annual survey uncovered abuse that “points to forced labour”.

Its report titled “Checked Out: Migrant worker abuse in Qatar’s World Cup luxury hotels” (PDF) published on Wednesday found that migrant workers in the hotels suffer from “extortionate recruitment fees, discrimination and being trapped in a job through fear of reprisal and intimidation”.

The Qatari government said in a reaction that the Gulf country “takes a zero-tolerance approach against violating companies, issuing harsh penalties including prison sentences”.

“Qatar has introduced a raft of major reforms to improve labour standards and protect the rights of all workers. This includes a new national minimum wage, the removal of exit permits, the removal of barriers to prevent workers changing jobs, stricter oversight of recruitment, better accommodation, and improved health and safety standards,” the Government Communications Office (GCO) said in the statement.

To host the World Cup in November 2022, Qatar has massively grown its hotel industry, preparing an additional 26,000 hotel rooms to support the influx of players, supporters and the media.

Migrant workers from East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia make up the vast majority of the workforce in the hospitality sector.

After inviting 19 hotel companies, representing more than 100 global brands with more than 80 properties across Qatar to participate in their survey, the rights group found that there is a “widespread lack of action by hotel brands to prevent and exclude forced labour”.

By engaging with partners to interview workers at hotels the Research Centre approached, their testimonies revealed that eight out of 18 workers reported being charged high recruitment fees for jobs.

A kitchen worker from Kenya told the Business and Human Rights Research Centre: “I paid $1,000 commission to secure the job. I have still not paid up in full the loan… No one has asked or offered to reimburse this cost, everyone is just keeping quiet.”

Only IHG Hotels & Resorts, which owns chains such as InterContinental and Crowne Plaza, provided transparent figures for the number of workers it identified had paid such fees. It was the highest ranked company in the survey and the only hotel group to be awarded a three-star rating out of five. All other brands scored below 50 percent.

Ten out of 18 workers interviewed from Africa or Asia said that pay and position were dependent on nationality, according to the findings.

Subcontracted workers reported receiving “substantially less pay for the same work and were subject to the most serious abuses, including passport confiscation and delayed wages with illegal deductions”.

Workers were not able to freely change jobs despite the landmark reform abolishing the No-Objection Certificate (Kafala system), the report said.

Almost all workers reported being scared to request to change jobs when they saw a better opportunity, some fearing the hotels would have them deported.
Qatar labour reforms

In a statement, the Qatari government said it takes seriously all reports of abuse and mistreatment in the country’s labour market.

“Awareness-raising initiatives have been launched to provide workers with information on how to raise complaints against their employer, and new mechanisms have been introduced to facilitate access to justice.”

The Qatari government called on workers to file complaints with the Ministry of Administrative Development, Labour and Social Affairs (ADLSA) through the available channels if they believe a law has been broken, saying most complaints are resolved in a timely manner.

“Addressing the hospitality sector directly, the Ministry of ADLSA has created and distributed a comprehensive employment guide in cooperation with the Institute for Human Rights and Business (IHRB) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) to raise awareness of the new laws and ensure their effective implementation,” the GCO statement said.

However, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre in its report said much of the practices uncovered by its survey pointed to conditions of “forced labour” as defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

“Our findings should make for troubling reading for the national football teams and one million visitors who are planning a joyful month of sport in Qatar in November 2022, but not at the expense of workers’ misery.

“It should also be a red flag for corporate sponsors of the World Cup. Huge profits are set to be made by the multinational and national hotel brands which will host these visitors.”

The report noted that 11 out of 19 hotel companies had responded to their survey, but several high-profile brands including Best Western, Four Seasons and Millenium & Copthorne did not respond, the centre said.

The Research Centre urged hotel brands to ensure protection of migrant workers by putting all workers at the centre of their due diligence monitoring processes, ensuring workers are free to change jobs and addressing recruitment fees.

The GCO added that “Qatar is committed to making further progress to ensure the labour reforms are effectively enforced. Significant progress has been made, but there is also a responsibility on companies to adjust their practices in line with the new legal requirements.

“With new laws and stricter enforcement measures in place, the government is clamping down on labour abuses, including those in the hospitality sector. Shifting the behaviour of all companies will take time, but Qatar is winning the battle against those who think they can bypass the rules,” the GCO said.

KEEP READING

Labour law changes: Are Qatar’s migrant workers better off?

Qatar says reforms to labour laws have ‘transformed’ the market

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Scientists develop pain-free blood sugar test for diabetics

Australian researchers hope low-cost saliva test will replace current needle-based test for diabetes sufferers.

Professor of Physics Paul Dastoor holds up a non-invasive, printable saliva test strip for diabetics at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia [Courtesy of University of Newcastle via Reuters]

13 Jul 2021

Australian scientists say they have developed pain-free blood sugar testing for diabetics, a non-invasive strip that checks glucose levels via saliva.

For diabetics, managing their blood sugar levels typically means pricking their fingers multiple times a day with a lancet and then placing a drop of blood on a testing strip. Understandably, some diabetes sufferers avoid the painful process by minimising their tests.

However, this latest test works by embedding an enzyme that detects glucose into a transistor that can then transmit the presence of glucose, according to Paul Dastoor, professor of physics at the University of Newcastle in Australia, who led the team that created it.

He said the tests create the prospect of pain-free, low-cost glucose testing which should lead to much better outcomes for diabetes sufferers.

“Your saliva has glucose in it and that glucose concentration follows your blood glucose. But it is a concentration about 100 times lower which means that we had to develop a test that is low cost, easy to manufacture, but that has sensitivity about 100 times higher than standard glucose blood test,” Dastoor told Al Jazeera.

A non-invasive, printable saliva test strip for diabetics is seen at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia [Courtesy of University of Newcastle via Reuters]Since the electronic materials in the transistor are inks, the test can be made through low-cost printing.

“The materials that we work with are remarkable, they are electronic inks that can act as electronic material, but the difference is that we can print them at massive scale using a reel-to-reel printer, the same that you use to make newspapers,” Dastoor said.

The project secured A$6.3 million ($4.7m) in funding from the Australian government to establish a facility to produce the test kits should clinical trials be passed.

Dastoor says the technology could also be transferred to COVID-19 testing and allergen, hormone and cancer testing.

The university is already working with Harvard University on a test for COVID-19 using the same technology.

 

From: The Stream

What will a US probe into Indigenous boarding schools uncover?

               SIOUX BOYS ASSIMILATED 

On Tuesday, July 13 at 19:30 GMT:
Beginning in the 19th century, the US government funded a system of boarding schools where hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families, taught to shun their cultural heritage and assimilate to white Christian customs. Also known as “Indian residential schools”, the system included at least 367 institutions run by various US church groups from 1819 until the end of the 1960s. According to former attendees, children were poorly cared for and many endured physical abuse, sexual abuse and forced labour.

Now the US Department of the Interior wants an investigation with a focus on finding records of children who died while they attended the schools and locating unmarked graves. The investigation’s announcement followed recent discoveries of nearly 1,000 secret graves at three former schools for Indigenous children in Canada.

A modern and comprehensive study of boarding schools and their forced assimilation policies has never been done by the US government, and much of its history – including the official number of schools and its attendees – is still not known. Advocates of boarding school survivors say the institutions have been a major source of intergenerational trauma felt in Native American communities to this day.

In this episode of The Stream, we’ll discuss the legacy of Native American boarding schools and what a federal investigation of its abuses will mean to Native communities.

On this episode of The Stream, we speak with:
Christine Diindiisi McCleave, @C_McCleave
CEO, National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition

Patty Talahongva, @WiteSpider
Executive Producer, Indian Country Today

Maka Black Elk, @makablackelk
Executive Director of Truth and Healing, Red Cloud Indian School

#BUSHMEAT

COVID or not, ‘the desire to eat wildlife’ continues in Asia

Countries in the region moved to ban the sale and consumption of wildlife after COVID-19 emerged, but coronavirus remains rampant and so does the trade.
A trader torches a bat at a live animal market in Langowan in the Indonesian province of Sulawesi in June [Courtesy of Four Paws]

By Ian Lloyd Neubauer
13 Jul 2021


Continuing attempts to curb the sale of wild animals and their meat have failed to engender change at wet markets in the Asia Pacific, even as the region struggles to contain the largest and deadliest wave of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly three-quarters of emerging infectious diseases that spread to humans originate in animals.

The SARS virus, for example, which killed 800 people between 2002 and 2004, is thought to have started in bats before spreading to civets at a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Foshan.

In April, after its investigative team in China concluded a seafood market in Wuhan was the most likely route by which COVID-19 first jumped to humans, WHO took the unprecedented move of urging countries to pause the sale of captured wild mammals at wet markets as an emergency measure.

Animal welfare groups in Asia have been making the same demands for years, saying the unsanitary and cruel conditions in which wild and domestic animals are kept at wet markets are the perfect breeding ground for zoonotic diseases.

Several Asian countries have passed new laws to curb the sale of ‘bush meat’ and limit activity at wet markets during the pandemic.


But nearly all attempts to stamp out the trade have been hamstrung by the continuing popularity of bush meat among some people in Asia, the sector’s vast economic value and a lack of enforcement.

Stopping the trade “will be a challenging exercise,” said Li Shuo, global policy adviser for Greenpeace in China.

A live animal or ‘wet’ market in Beriman in the Indonesian province of Sulawesi. Despite efforts to crack down on the trade following the coronavirus pandemic, NGO investigators say wildlife continues to be sold and eaten in many parts of Asia

 [Courtesy of Four Paws]

On-again, off-again

Last July, a presidential decree was issued in Vietnam suspending all wildlife imports and introducing much stiffer penalties for violators, including up to 15 years in prison.

But a survey last month by PanNature, an NGO, found no positive changes in the trade of wildlife products had occurred at the local level in Vietnam. Wet markets in the Mekong Delta and other parts of the country were found to still be selling turtles, birds and endangered wildlife species.

In Indonesia, the site of Asia’s worst COVID-19 outbreak with more than 2.5 million cases and at least 67,000 deaths, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry has been trying to convince local officials to close wildlife markets around the country since the start of the pandemic.

Officials in the city of Solo in Central Java were among those who took note, ordering the culling of hundreds of bats at Depok, one of the country’s largest bird, dog and wildlife markets. But the victory proved short lived.

“They brutally exterminated hundreds of bats when COVID-19 first hit and stopped selling them,” said Lola Webber, coalition coordinator at the Dog Meat-Free Indonesia Coalition. “But from what I’ve heard from my sources, it’s now business as usual.”

Marison Guciano, founder of Flight, an NGO protecting Indonesian birdlife, confirms Webber’s claim. “I was there one week ago and they are still openly selling bats as well as snakes, rabbits, turtles, ferrets, beavers, cats, dogs, hamsters, hedgehogs, parrots, owls, crows and eagles.”

Rats for sale in a market in Langowan in the Indonesian province of Sulawesi in June [Courtesy of Four Paws]The same scenario is playing out at wet markets across Indonesia.


To mark World Zoonoses Day last week, animal welfare group Four Paws released photos taken in June showing hundreds of bats, rats, dogs, snakes, birds and other animals for sale at three different markets in Northern Sulawesi Province 2,000km (1,243 miles) northeast of Solo.

History repeats itself

In April and May of last year, a few months after the pandemic began, global animal rights group PETA began visiting wet markets known to sell wildlife in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, Indonesia and China.

“We expected new rules and regulations to have been put in place but we saw it was business as usual, with all different species in filthy cages, some alive, some dead, sometimes in the same cages,” says PETA’s Asia spokesperson Nirali Shah. “These environments are extremely frightening and stressful for the animals, which weakens their immune system and makes them more vulnerable to diseases that can jump across species and then to humans.

“At some markets, we saw animals taken from cages, killed on countertops streaked with blood from other species and workers not wearing gloves, no hygiene at all. This combination of risky factors is like a ticking time bomb waiting for a new pandemic to begin,” she says.

In China, where a total ban on the trade and consumption of wildlife was issued in February last year as the coronavirus surged in Wuhan, the situation has improved but only marginally, according to Shah.

“You can no longer see exotic wildlife for sale openly at wet markets in China. But they still sell all kinds of birds in unsanitary conditions. And in a lot of those markets we found that if you want a certain animal, no matter what it is, vendors can get it for you despite the ban.”

China banned the trade and consumption of wild animals after the coronavirus – thought to have originated possibly in a bat – emerged in Wuhan. NGOs say it is still possible to get banned animals if you know who to ask [Alex Plavevski/EPA]

This is not the first time China has attempted to end the bushmeat trade.


In 2002, wildlife markets were closed because of SARS but reopened later because of economic pressure. In 2016, the Chinese Academy of Engineers valued the country’s wildlife industry at $76bn, with bush meat accounting for $19bn of business activity each year and employing 6.3 million people in China.

Right direction

In Malaysia, captured wildlife and bushmeat was sometimes sold at wet markets before the pandemic. But it was more commonly available through direct sales and restaurants.

In August of last year, now-retired Inspector General of Police Abdul Hamid Bador gave district police chiefs one month to ensure their areas were free of illegal restaurants selling bushmeat. The wildlife department was instructed to assist police.

“Don’t tell me with 300 to 500 personnel in an area, the existence of restaurants and illegal premises selling exotic animals can’t be detected?” Abdul Hamid said at the time.

A series of high-profile wild meat seizures followed at markets, restaurants and private homes.

Elizabeth John, the Kuala Lumpur-based spokesperson for TRAFFIC, an NGO fighting the illegal trade in wildlife, says raids are a signal of both success and failure.


“In forming this joint task force between police and the wildlife officials, it’s definitely a move in the right direction,” she said. “But the fact that we have seen seizures continue even during the pandemic shows that warnings have not changed attitudes among consumers. Despite the risks it poses, the desire to eat wildlife is still out there.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BUSHMEAT 

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Death toll in Iraq COVID hospital fire rises

Prime minister promises accountability after blaze kills hospitalised COVID patients for a second time in less than three months.

Mourners react during a funeral in Najaf, Iraq, next to the coffins of victims who were killed in the fire [Alaa Al-Marjani /Reuters]
13 Jul 2021

The death toll from a fire that tore through a coronavirus ward at a hospital in southern Iraq has risen to 92, health officials have said, as grieving relatives slammed the government over the second such disaster within three months.

Officials said more than 100 people were injured in the blaze at al-Hussein Teaching Hospital on Monday night in Nasiriya, highlighting the crippled healthcare system in the country amid decades of war and sanctions.

An investigation showed the fire began when sparks from faulty wiring spread to an oxygen tank that then exploded, police and civil defence authorities said.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi convened an emergency meeting and ordered the suspension and arrest of the health director in Dhi Qar province, the hospital director and the city’s civil defence chief. The government also launched a time-bound investigation.

Al-Kadhimi called the tragedy “a deep wound in the consciousness of all Iraqis”. A statement from his office called for national mourning.

In a tweet on Tuesday, President Barham Salih blamed the “catastrophe” at the hospital on “persistent corruption and mismanagement that undervalues the lives of Iraqis”.


A Nasiriya court said it had ordered the arrest of 13 local officials in connection with the fire.

Mismanagement and neglect

Anguished relatives were still looking for traces of their loved ones on Tuesday morning, searching through the debris of charred blankets and belongings inside the torched remains of the ward. A blackened skull of a deceased female patient from the ward was found.

The blaze trapped many patients inside the coronavirus ward who rescue teams struggled to reach, a health worker told Reuters on Monday before entering the burning building.

Rescue teams were using a heavy crane to remove the charred and melted remains of the part of the hospital where COVID-19 patients were being treated, as relatives gathered nearby.

Many cried openly, their tears tinged with anger, blaming both the provincial government of Dhi Qar, where Nasiriya is located, and the federal government in Baghdad for years of mismanagement and neglect.

“The whole state system has collapsed, and who paid the price? The people inside here. These people have paid the price,” said Haidar al-Askari, who was at the scene of the blaze.

Mohammed Fadhil, waiting to receive his bother’s body, said it was a disaster. “No quick response to the fire, not enough firefighters. Sick people burned to death. It’s a disaster,” he said.


DNA tests to identify bodies

While some bodies were collected for burial, with mourners weeping and praying over the coffins, the remains of more than 20 badly charred corpses required DNA tests to identify them.

Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed, reporting from Nasiriya, said that forensic teams have identified around 39 bodies, while dozens others are still under a “recognition process”.

“We met victims’ families here who cannot find their loved ones. Dozens of body parts cannot be easily identified,” Abdelwahed said.

“Another man we met lost five of his family members – three [were] COVID-19 patients and the others were either visitors or those who rushed to try to save their relatives.”

In April, a similar explosion at a Baghdad COVID-19 hospital killed at least 82 and injured 110.

Iraq has registered more than 1.4 million cases of the coronavirus and upwards of 17,000 deaths as daily infections spike.

The head of Iraq’s semi-official Human Rights Commission said Monday’s blast showed how ineffective safety measures still were in the health system.

“To have such a tragic incident repeated few months later means that still no [sufficient] measures have been taken to prevent them,” Ali al-Bayati said.

The fact that the hospital had been built with lightweight panels separating the wards had made the fire spread faster, local civil defence authority head Salah Jabbar said.

A medic at the hospital, who declined to give his name and whose shift ended a few hours before the fire broke out, said the absence of basic safety measures meant it was an accident in the making.

“The hospital lacks a fire sprinkler system or even a simple fire alarm,” he told Reuters.

“We complained many times over the past three months that a tragedy could happen any moment from a cigarette stub, but every time we get the same answer from health officials: ‘We don’t have enough money’.”

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SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES