ECOCIDE

A Spirit pilot and flight attendant describe flying empty planes around the country and being stranded for days last week amid the airline's meltdown: 'It was like being lost in space'

Hannah Towey
Thu, August 12, 2021

An aerial view shows Spirit Airlines jets parked at McCarran International Airport Ethan Miller/Getty Images


One pilot said Spirit's cancellations came down to the airline's inadequate infrastructure.


Flight attendants were left stranded away from base for multiple days, one Spirit worker said.


Some workers reportedly drove food to airports and let stranded employees stay in their homes.

Spirit Airlines canceled over 2,000 flights last week due to a poorly timed combination of bad weather, system outages, and staffing issues.

The epic meltdown caused some pilots to fly empty planes across the country while flight attendants were left stranded for days, according to two Spirit staffers.

"If you can't track and see in the IT system where your crew members are, then how are you going to schedule to move them anywhere?" one flight attendant, who was stranded in a major Northeastern city for four days, told Insider.

"It was like being lost in space," she said.

One pilot said Spirit's operational issues came down to the airline's lack of investment in infrastructure, which he said is evidenced by staffing shortages, antiquated phone lines, and crashing computer systems.

"They're trying to run an airline of 167 airplanes on an infrastructure that was designed for 50," he said.

Both employees requested anonymity to speak freely about the situation, though their identities and employment were verified by Insider.

According to the pilot, some Spirit crew members flew more than the flight time maximum outlined within their employment contracts. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandates that pilots must have at least 8 hours of rest within a 24-hour period. However, most airlines have stricter policies due to union negotiations.

He said that during Spirit's irregular operations, some pilots had the option to waive those contractual limitations in order to prevent additional flight cancellations and delays.

"Most pilots I've talked to have been waiving as much as they can in order to keep flight from canceling and airplanes moving," he told Insider.

A spokesperson for the pilots' union said they can't substantiate the claim that crew members had flown beyond their contractual time maximums since they don't have access to the airline's scheduling software.

Spirit did not respond to Insider's request for comment for this article.

When crew member's flights did become canceled, many staffers became stranded in airport hotels. This was in part due to a technical crash that impacted Spirit's crew scheduling system.

The flight attendant told Insider that approximately 30 Spirit employees including herself were stranded outside of base for multiple days. One employee drove over an hour to deliver the crew food while local flight attendants opened up their homes for workers to stay the night, she said.

The pilot told Insider that when he was assigned to fly a plane to Boston, two flight attendants were missing, causing the flight to be canceled. A few minutes later, he walked by six flight attendants eating dinner in an airport restaurant who told him they were stranded with nowhere to go. They had been contacting the company all day and received little guidance on what to do next.

Then, the pilot flew the empty plane to Boston.

"From my standpoint as a human being, I walked through that gate area and I saw people there with their kids, they're leaving their beach vacation - they have sunburns and their little kids and their luggage and their strollers and their snacks," the pilot said.

"It's 10 o'clock at night and we're canceling a flight because we're missing two flight attendants. Not because the engine fell off the airplane, not because somebody got sick, but because Spirit mismanaged their staff for that flight."

Last week, Spirit CEO Ted Christie apologized for the cancellations on CNBC and said that he promises to fix the airline's staffing and scheduling issues. On Wednesday, only 1% of Spirit's flights were canceled, down from last week's high of 60%.

"There's definitely some angry people," Christie told CNBC last Thursday. "Right now, all I can say is we're very sorry for what happened."

Read the original article on Business Insider

MORE ILLEGAL SETLEMENTS MORE APARTHEID 

Israel to approve West Bank settlement, Palestinian building

JOSEF FEDERMAN
Wed, August 11, 2021

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's new government is set to grant its first major approval of West Bank settlement construction, but will also include a rare authorization of construction for Palestinian areas as well in the upcoming announcement, according to an Israeli security official.

The mixed messages appear to be aimed at bolstering the Palestinian Authority while also trying to blunt international opposition to Israeli settlement construction on occupied lands.

The official said that Israel next week is expected to formally authorize the construction of some 1,000 homes for Palestinians.


The bulk of those homes will be near Jenin, a city in the northern West Bank, he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity pending formal approval.

The construction is to take place in “Area C,” the parts of the occupied West Bank placed under full Israeli control under past peace accords. Palestinians in those areas have long said it is virtually impossible to get construction permits from Israeli authorities.

At the same time, Israel plans to authorize construction of 2,000 new settlement homes next week, the official said.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want to establish an independent state in the three areas.

The international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlements illegal and obstacles to peace. Israel has also come under heavy international criticism for stifling Palestinian development in Area C.

Israel's new coalition government includes a number of hardline parties that support the settlements, and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett himself is a former leader of the settlement movement.

But Israel has come under American pressure to improve conditions for the Palestinians and to shore up the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, which administers semi-autonomous areas in the West Bank.

The announcement came as CIA Director William Burns was in Israel for talks with top officials. There was no immediate U.S. or Palestinian reaction.

Palestinian dies a week after being shot by Israeli forces

Wed, August 11, 2021, 

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — A Palestinian man succumbed Wednesday to a gunshot wound suffered during clashes with Israeli forces last week in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian health officials said.

Dia al-Din Sabarini, 25, was shot in the stomach Aug. 3 during a raid by Israeli security forces in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported, citing the health ministry.

Sabarini was hospitalized in critical condition and died of his wounds Wednesday. Five other Palestinians were shot by Israeli troops during the incident.


In a statement, the Israeli army said troops operating in Jenin came under attack from gunfire, explosives, firebombs and rocks before soldiers returned fire at the attackers. The military reported that no soldiers were injured, but that their armored vehicles were damaged by gunfire.

Last month, Israeli troops opened fire on a car in the southern West Bank town of Beit Ummar, killing a 12-year-old as he and his family were driving. The killing sparked two days of protests in which another Palestinian was killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers.

Two other Palestinians were shot and killed in recent weeks near the West Bank town of Beita, which has seen repeated clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian protesters over the establishment of a nearby settlement outpost.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war and has established dozens of settlements where nearly 500,000 settlers reside. The Palestinians want the West Bank as part of their future state and view the settlements as a major obstacle to resolving the conflict.

Ethiopia using rape as a strategy in Tigray war - Amnesty

Vivienne Nunis - BBC News, Africa correspondent
Wed, August 11, 2021, 

Very few of the women who have been sexually assaulted have been able to get help

The Ethiopian military and its allies are responsible for widespread sexual violence against women in Tigray, using rape as a strategy of war, Amnesty International says.

The scale of violations during the nine-month conflict in the north of the country amounts to war crimes, the human rights group says.

One woman reported being gang-raped in front of her children.


Ethiopia's government says the report is based on "flawed methodology".

The foreign ministry accused Amnesty of waging "sensationalised attacks and smear campaigns" against Ethiopia, saying the country condemned sexual violence in all circumstances.

Amnesty said it had "overwhelming evidence" to show such violence had been rampant since the start of the conflict.

It began last November when the region's Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) party stormed a military base after falling out with the prime minister over his political reforms.

Warning: Some people may find details in this story upsetting.

The rights group interviewed 63 women and children from Tigray who said they had been raped by Ethiopian troops, their Eritrean allies, or by pro-government fighters from the neighbouring region of Amhara.

The author, Donatella Rovera, told the BBC that the testimonies had been among the worst she had ever heard.

"The level of sadistic and gratuitous brutality in addition to the rape was absolutely shocking," she said.

Thousands of people have been killed in the conflict in Tigray

A 39-year-old woman reported being seized by Eritrean soldiers as she was travelling with her two children. "Five of them raped me in front of my children," she told Amnesty.

"They used an iron rod, which is used to clean the gun, to burn me. They inserted pieces of metal in my womb... Then they left me on the street."

Some women Amnesty interviewed said they had been detained for weeks and repeatedly raped, often by several men.

Almost half of the women accused Eritrean soldiers of carrying out the violations, identified by their Tigrinya accents and uniforms.

The Eritrean authorities did not respond to Amnesty's requests for comment.

Amnesty is calling on the UN to send a team of experts to Tigray to further investigate the allegations that may amount to crimes against humanity.

The widespread nature of the assaults suggests military officials knew what was happening and that it was being tolerated at the highest level of government in Ethiopia and Eritrea, Amnesty said.

"The patterns of sexual violence emerging from survivors' accounts indicate that the violations have been part of a strategy to terrorise, degrade, and humiliate both the victims and their ethnic group," the report said.

Ms Rovera said the victims of the assaults have not had access to the support they need to recover and many are living in poverty in Sudanese refugee camps, or camps in Tigray.

On Tuesday, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed called on civilians to join the army to fight in Tigray, he also accused Tigrayan forces, made of up the TPLF and its allies, of recruiting child soldiers, raping women and blocking aid.

Amnesty says none of the women it had interviewed accused Tigrayan forces of rape, but said that it would be monitoring the situation now the conflict had spread beyond Tigray's borders.

The TPLF, which has been designated a terrorist organisation by the government but says it is the legitimate regional government of Tigray, has accused the federal authorities of blocking aid.

New spider species named after Mitchell's 'Spiderman'


Hunter Dunteman, 

The Daily Republic, Mitchell, S.D.
Tue, August 10, 2021, 
Alireza Zamani
Arachnologist

Aug. 10—Brian Patrick used to believe that the only good spider is a dead spider, but as he grew up, he found value in the role spiders play in the world's ecosystem. Now he has his own species.

A new article in the ZooKeys scientific journal written by Iranian and Russian researchers outlines the identification of a new genus and multiple new species of spiders in Iran.

The researchers, Alireza Zamani, from Iran, and Yuri Marusik, from Russia, wrote in their article that the new discoveries raise the total of known spider species in Iran to 900, and known genera (the plural form of genus) to 322.

Among the discoveries include Mesiotelus patricki, which Zamani and Marusik named after Mitchell arachnologist and Dakota Wesleyan University biology professor Dr. Brian Patrick.

The Mesiotelus patricki was first collected for research in 1975 in the Golestan Province in northeastern Iran. It is a brown spider, approximately 5 millimeters in length. Researchers were able to identify the Mesiotelus patricki as a new species by examining its genitals and other physical features of the spider.

Patrick said it's not unusual for decades to pass between collection and description of a species, as collected samples are preserved and shelved until an expert examines them.

"It is really an honor to name a species after someone. I'm deeply flattered, but I just never thought that would happen," Patrick said. "There are so many more people out there that have put in so much more work that much more prolific scientists or deserve it more."

Patrick has known the researchers for nearly a decade through multiple congresses of the International Society of Arachnology, and has occasionally communicated with them to keep in touch. So, receiving a message from Zamani didn't seem unusual.

Zamani's message to Patrick told him to check out a ZooKeys journal article for a gift. When Patrick read the article, and saw the Mesiotelus patricki, he shed a tear, according to his tweet.

Oh, WOW, I am so deeply moved (I shed a tear!) that my friend and colleague @Persian_spiders named a new spider species after me! Mesiotelus patricki Zamani & Marusik, 2021 in @ZooKeys_Journal, and named to honor me and the @PodcastSpecies work that I have done. Thanks, Alireza! pic.twitter.com/nxYLLEnbOK

— L Brian Patrick (@LBrianPatrick) August 3, 2021

In addition to his love for spiders, Patrick publishes his own podcast called New Species.

The weekly podcast — which is temporarily released bi-weekly — focuses on the discoveries of new species across the globe, including interviews with authors of articles that describe new species. Listeners originate from over 60 different countries across six continents.

Zamani was a guest on Patrick's podcast back in May, discussing many different species that Zamani and Marusik had identified.

I am an avid podcast listener, and I've been waiting for a long time for a podcast on new species discoveries. I was very happy when Brian started his podcast, and I thought that his efforts in popularizing taxonomy should definitely be acknowledged," Zamani said in an email to the Mitchell Republic. "Therefore, we decided to name this species after him."

Marusik said the idea to name the species after Patrick was Zamani's, but he supported it. He added that other new species identified in the same journal article were named after other arachnologists and even actors who have played Spiderman in movies.

While it may seem rare to have a species named after you, Patrick said that dozens of new species are discovered and identified on a daily basis.

"There are parts of our planet that we've barely been able to explore," Patrick said. "There are species that people are finding in caves, species are being found in soil and all sorts of things."

In fact, Patrick has identified new species, himself.

A 2008 article in the Zootaxa journal written by Patrick and two other researchers identified the Myrmedonota aidani, a rove beetle that Patrick named after his son, Aidan. He also has plans to name other species after his daughter, Thea, and his wife, Traci.

Patrick said the rate at which new species are being identified is incredible, and can make one feel small — but, he warns that discoveries are not outpacing extinctions.

"There's a famous example of an airplane flying in the air. Airplanes are being held together by rivets or screws. If you lose one or two rivets, it's probably no problem," Patrick said. "But how many can you lose before the airplane crashes? Take that into the ecosystem. How many organisms can we lose before the ecosystem dies or crashes?"

Patrick continues to play his part in exploring the vast unknowns of the world's ecosystem by conducting research on the species — known and unknown — inhabiting the Fort Pierre National Grassland.

"Nobody looks in South Dakota. They all think our habitat looks the same from Canada to Northern Texas," Patrick said. "In a field where less than 10% of all species are estimated to be known or named, and that means 90% of things in the world are not named."

Patrick believes he may be the only trained arachnologist in the state, but often works with interns hoping to share his passion with others.

The New Species podcast can be found on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Breaker and several other platforms.

See new Tweets

Tweet

L Brian Patrick

@LBrianPatrick

·

Aug 3

Oh, WOW, I am so deeply moved (I shed a tear!) that my friend and colleague

@Persian_spiders

named a new spider species after me! Mesiotelus patricki Zamani & Marusik, 2021 in

@ZooKeys_Journal

, and named to honor me and the

@PodcastSpecies

work that I have done. Thanks, Alireza!

7

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Sanctions on Iran block mosque from claiming religious tiles


Abolfazl Nahidian, of the Manassas Mosque in Manassas, Va., poses after after a press conference, Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021, in which he and other Muslim leaders asked the Biden administration to release a set of religious tiles that have been confiscated because the shipment was considered a violation of sanctions on Iran. (AP PhotoMatt Barakat)

MATTHEW BARAKAT
Tue, August 10, 2021, 

MANASSAS, Va. (AP) — A northern Virginia mosque is asking the Biden administration to release a set of religious tiles that were confiscated at Dulles International Airport after they were deemed to violate sanctions on Iran.

At a news conference Tuesday at the Manassas Mosque, Imam Abolfazl Nahidian said the custom-made tiles were shipped in June from the Iranian city of Qom, to be used in construction of a new mosque a few miles away.

He said the tiles were a gift and he paid no money for them, but a Customs and Border Protection officer at the airport blocked the mosque from claiming the tiles, citing the sanctions.

Nahidian said he has received other tile shipments throughout the years without incident, including one shipment that arrived eight months ago.

A letter from Customs and Border Protection informed the mosque that the tile must be shipped back to Iran or destroyed.

Destroying the tiles, which are adorned with Quranic verses, would be especially disturbing, Nahidian said.

“Destroying the tiles is the same as destroying verses of the Quran, or the whole Quran itself,” he said.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that whatever one's views are of the Iranian sanctions, it makes no sense to enforce the rules on a benign piece of religious art.

“They are not weapons of mass destruction,” Awad said. “We believe the government should have common sense.”

A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection confirmed that the tiles were placed on hold June 21 and that on June 30, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control determined that, under the sanctions imposed on Iran, the tiles could not be imported. The spokesperson said no final determination has been made on the tiles' disposition.

The Treasury Department declined comment Tuesday.

Speakers at Tuesday's news conference suggested that anti-Islam sentiment may be responsible for the confiscation.

“If this were a statue of the Virgin Mary, would we be here discussing this?” asked Rafi Uddin Ahmed, president of the Muslim Association of Virginia.

Nahidian has led the mosque for nearly three decades, and has occasionally drawn scrutiny from critics who say he is anti-Israel and was a supporter of the ayatollahs in the Iranian Revolution. He has blamed the Sept. 11 attack on Israel; in 1979, he and others chained themselves to the railings of the Statue of Liberty after climbing to the top and unfurling banners criticizing the shah of Iran, who was overthrown.

Nahidian said his history is irrelevant to whether the tiles should be imported.

China cranks up carbon-intensive projects as climate crisis grows, research shows

JUST LIKE BIG OIL DOES EVERYWHERE


FILE PHOTO: A coal-burning power plant can be seen behind a factory in the city of Baotou, in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

David Stanway
Fri, August 13, 2021

By David Stanway

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China announced scores of new carbon-intensive coal and steel projects in the first half of 2021, research showed on Friday just days after a key U.N. report urged immediate global action to curb use of fossil fuels and prevent runaway climate change.

The push comes as climate experts exhort governments around the world to take drastic action amid increasingly widespread extreme weather events, like deadly wildfires, drought and even central China's highest rainfall in 1,000 years https://www.reuters.com/world/china/zhengzhou-floods-serve-chinas-urban-planners-deadly-warning-2021-07-23 - events that experts say are directly linked to human impact on the environment via carbon emissions.


"The rest of the world is getting the message https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/what-they-said-about-code-red-un-climate-science-report-2021-08-09 that it's time to move away from coal, but coal interests in China are dragging their feet, and the central government is not reining them in," said Christine Shearer, coal programme director at Global Energy Monitor (GEM), the U.S. think-tank that jointly authored the report on China's first-half carbon projects with the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

During the first half, China, the world's biggest coal consumer and source of climate-warming greenhouse gases, announced plans to build 18 new coal-fired blast furnaces, more than in the whole of last year, according to the CREA-GEM research. Another 43 coal-fired power plant units were also proposed, the research showed.

China has promised to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2060, but faces growing calls to set more ambitious targets and act faster.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in a nearly 4,000-page report this week that climate change had "affected every inhabited region across the globe" and was in danger of spiralling out of control.

U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres described the report as a "code red for humanity" that should "sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels".

However, according to the CREA-GEM study, China started construction on 15 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity in the first half. That's a slower pace than last year, but still amounts to one plant per week, and is enough to power roughly 4.5 million homes - more than in cities the size of London or New York.

"GLACIAL PACE OF CHANGE"

China's greenhouse gas emissions surged after COVID-19 lockdowns ended last year, and growth rates only started to slow in the second quarter this year, the CREA-GEM study said.

Lauri Myllivirta, CREA lead analyst，said though China was currently trying to curb property lending that stokes the construction of new homes, a key factor in recent emissions growth, the continuing investment in coal-based power and steel was "worrying".

"This is where a much faster shift is needed, and current glacial pace of change is not in line with the urgency of peaking global emissions," he said.

China has not yet commented on the IPCC report, and has previously said it would only start cutting coal consumption from 2026.

Xie Zhenhua, China's top climate envoy, said last week that existing targets already required "extremely arduous efforts", with the country's total emissions set to peak in 2030 at a lower per capita rate than the United States, Japan or Europe.

(Reporting by David Stanway; Additional reporting by Muyu Xu in Beijing; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

America just might need another COVID rescue

Ryan Cooper, National correspondent
Fri, August 13, 2021,

A 50 dollar bill. Illustrated | iStock

The coronavirus pandemic is back in the United States, but it is hitting seriously for the first time in many other countries — particularly countries in eastern Asia that are central to the global economy.

It means there is a decent chance that the United States economy is going to stall out or even nosedive in the coming weeks. Democrats should be ready with another rescue package to tide the American people over, in case that does happen.

Let's take stock of the U.S. first. As is now front-page news once again, the pandemic is burning across almost the whole country, and absolutely out of control across the South. In Florida and Louisiana, hospitalizations have surged past their worst point of the winter wave, and are nearly to the same point across much of the South. Mississippi's hospital system is reportedly on the verge of collapse.

All this will almost certainly put a dent in consumer spending. During the low point of the pandemic in June and July, spending on goods and services was returning to something like normal levels. People were flying, going to restaurants and hair salons, and resuming other in-person activities. Meanwhile, previous studies showed that during the pandemic surges last year, most people cut back their spending before state and local governments introduced any control measures — so even if Republican-controlled states do nothing policy-wise to stop the deluge of illness and death, a sizable portion of their populations likely still will.

It's likely then that consumer spending on in-person activities will fall back somewhat over the coming weeks. Though official government data will not be published until next month, there are some initial signs that this has already started — a recent survey conducted by a private analysis firm found that consumers are getting more anxious about entering stores, and Southwest Airlines reported Wednesday that ticket sales are slowing and customers are starting to cancel flights.

This slowdown can only be exacerbated by the tragic situation in eastern Asia. Up until a month or so ago, much of this region had evaded the pandemic almost entirely with careful control policies. Yet even the richer nations in the region have been relatively slow to vaccinate their populations. It's unclear why exactly, though certainly Europe and the United States hoarding so much vaccine did not help (particularly in the case of poorer countries without lots of spare cash), and the international vaccine distribution program is unsurprisingly a chaotic mess.

Now, the tardy vaccination campaigns and extreme contagiousness of the Delta variant seems to be seriously straining the test-trace-isolate systems in many countries with little previous exposure to the virus. Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, China and Australia have been scrambling to clamp down on spread to give themselves time to deliver more inoculations. New pandemic control measures, including a full-scale lockdown in Australia, are being introduced in many places.

It's entirely understandable, particularly in countries that only recently got some vaccines. If Delta gets loose in places like Vietnam and Australia that are badly behind on shots, then there will be unimaginable carnage — but if they can hold tight for just another month or so, then almost everyone will be saved, and the controls can be relaxed without too much fear.

However, that means that new supply chain headaches and bottlenecks are inevitable. Australia supplies all kinds of key raw materials (including lithium and iron ore), Taiwan has the largest semiconductor factory in the world, Vietnam makes all kinds of electronics, and China of course is the workshop of the world. It will be hard to operate factories and ships in the face of severe pandemic controls — and sure enough, snarls are already cropping up on top of the numerous prior headaches that had not yet been sorted out.

Summing up: on the one hand, there will likely be some job loss or at least a slowdown in the momentum of new job creation over the next few months — and the U.S. is still far short of full employment. On the other, the global supply system is going to hit a bumpy patch.

Now, there is a lot more the government could be doing now to curb the pandemic. If I were king of America, I would reintroduce stringent pandemic controls in the regions that are worst-hit by the virus, and set up strict vaccination requirements to put this pandemic to bed once and for all.

But at the least the government can make sure that as many Americans as possible have enough money to get by. America's pandemic response was a dismal failure in terms of controlling the virus, but its economic rescue measures were some of the best policies this country has ever passed. I would recommend the same basic structure as happened earlier in the pandemic: extending super-unemployment for another six months (and this time making it mandatory for all states), another round of survival checks (call it $600), and another dollop of small business grants. Congress might as well fix the rental assistance program while they're at it.

Democrats control all three branches of government now, and they can make this happen. It may not be necessary, but they would be fools to not start preparing now just in case.