SLAP ON THE WRIST

Austria's former far-right vice chancellor convicted of corruption
Issued on: 27/08/2021 -

The former Austrian vice chancellor was given a 15-month suspended jail sentence. 

© Lisa Leutner, AP

Text by: NEWS WIRES
3 min

A Vienna court convicted the former leader of Austria's far-right Heinz-Christian Strache of a corruption charge on Friday in a case stemming from a 2019 scandal known as "Ibizagate".

Strache, one of Europe's most high-profile former far-right leaders, was given a 15-month suspended jail sentence.

The Ibizagate scandal led to Strache resigning as vice-chancellor and head of the far-right Freedom Party (FPOe).

The affair brought down the coalition between the FPOe and the centre-right People's Party (OeVP) of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and triggered fresh elections in the Alpine EU member.

The scandal broke when video footage emerged of Strache promising public contracts to a woman posing as a Russian oligarch's niece in exchange for support for the FPOe's 2017 election campaign.

The video, which was secretly filmed on the Spanish resort island of Ibiza, led to a sprawling investigation by anti-corruption prosecutors who turned up several other allegations of wrongdoing against Strache and other prominent politicians.

Acquitted on second charge

In the current trial the 52-year-old Strache was found guilty of helping change a law to help an FPOe donor friend of his to secure public funding for his private hospital.

Strache's co-accused Walter Grubmueller, a long-standing friend and owner of a private health clinic, was also found guilty and given a 12-month suspended sentence.

Judge Claudia Moravec-Loidolt said Strache had been acquitted of a second charge of receiving favours in the form of a trip to the Greek island of Corfu at Grubmueller's invitation.

Strache had protested his innocence throughout the trial.

Prosecutor Bernhard Weratschnig said in his closing argument that holders of public office should remain above even the perception of corruption and that the "advantages" Strache received were "indisputable".

"Every euro is one euro too many," he said.

According to an SMS exchange uncovered by prosecutors, Strache had asked Grubmueller which amendments to legislation would be needed in order for Grubmueller's clinic "to finally be treated in a fair manner".

During Strache's time in government, the law was amended to enable clinics like that of Grubmueller to receive money from the public health insurance fund.

Strache has also been accused of embezzling party funds to pay for his luxurious lifestyle during the 14 years he headed the FPOe, though he has not been charged over this.

Kurz returned to the chancellorship after the scandal, this time at the head of a coalition between his OeVP and the Greens, and has thus far managed to avoid any serious political damage from "Ibizagate".

The OeVP was even able to gain many disaffected FPOe voters in 2019 polls.

But in May, prosecutors announced they were investigating the 35-year-old on suspicion of giving false testimony to a committee of lawmakers probing "Ibizagate" and other graft allegations.

Kurz has denied the allegation and has insisted he will not bow to pressure to resign, even if formally charged.

Party infighting

The FPOe's vote share crashed from 26 percent in 2017 to just 16 percent in 2019.

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The party has spent much of the time since the scandal consumed by infighting.

In June, Strache's successor as leader, Norbert Hofer, resigned after weeks of tension with party colleague and former interior minister Herbert Kickl.

Kickl, seen as a party ideologue and mastermind of some of its anti-Islam and anti-migrant campaigns, took over as leader.

Meanwhile, Strache attempted a political comeback last year with a bid to be Vienna's mayor, but his list won just three percent of the vote in municipal elections.

(AFP)

Austria finds former vice chancellor guilty of corruption

Heinz-Christian Strache is also the former chair of the far-right Freedom Party. The court found that a €10,000 donation to his party helped swing the law in favor of a private clinic.



Strache was caught up in the so-called Ibiza affair, a 2019 scandal that brought down the governing coalition that included his far-right party

Austria's former vice chancellor and far-right politician Heinz-Christian Strache was found guilty of corruption and received a suspended 15-month jail sentence on Friday over a donation to his populist Freedom Party (FPÖ).

The trial is the first criminal case against Strache in the "Ibiza affair," where he was secretly filmed offering to help a woman posing as a wealthy Russian donor in return for political favors.

What was the court's ruling?

Strache was found guilty of corruption and given a 15-month suspended sentence.

He faced trial alongside Walter Grubmüller, the owner of a private clinic, who made an illegal €10,000 donation to the party.

Prosecutors argued that the donation was an attempt to buy a change in the law in order to allow the clinic's operator to charge medical treatment costs directly to the Austrian public health insurance fund.

The clinic got access to the funds in 2018.

Strache had testified that he believed the clinic was being treated unfairly by the state and that the party donations had nothing to do with the matter.

The judge ruled that the donation influenced a change in the law, alongside private perks in favor of the clinic.

Grubmüller was also found guilty and received a year's suspended jail sentence.

Both sentences can be appealed.

Also examined were alleged trips made by Strache to the Greek island of Corfu at the invitation of Grubmüller, who is a longtime friend.

Strache has denied traveling to the island after he became vice-chancellor.

The trial was an outgrowth of the sprawling investigation into the FPÖ's financing that was prompted by the Ibiza affair.

Who is Heinz-Christian Strache?

Heinz-Christian Strache is a far-right politician and former head of the populist Freedom Party.

He was also Austrian vice chancellor from December 2017 until May 2019, under a coalition with the conservatives.

The coalition collapsed due to a secret video scandal known as the "Ibiza Affair."
What was the Ibiza affair?

The scandal broke when video footage emerged of Strache promising public contracts to a woman posing as a Russian oligarch's niece in exchange for support for the FPÖ's 2017 election campaign.

The video, which was secretly filmed on the Spanish resort island of Ibiza, brought down the coalition between the FPÖ and the center-right People's Party of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and triggered fresh elections.

It also led to an investigation by anti-corruption prosecutors who turned up several other allegations of wrongdoing against Strache and other prominent politicians.

mm/rt (dpa, Reuters)

POSTMODERN STALINISM REAL CANCEL CULTURE

Actress hit with $46 mn tax fine as China targets celebrity culture

Issued on: 27/08/2021 -

Zheng Shuang became a household name in China after starring in the hit 2009 remake of Taiwanese drama 'Meteor Shower', and a string of successful series and movies AARON TAM AFP/File

Beijing (AFP)

Top Chinese actress Zheng Shuang was hit with a $46 million tax evasion fine Friday while references to film star Zhao Wei were wiped from video streaming sites as Beijing steps up its campaign against celebrity culture.

Beijing is on a mission to rein in what it calls "chaotic fan culture" and celebrity excess, after a spate of scandals in recent months that have taken down China's biggest entertainers including singer Kris Wu, who was arrested on suspicion of rape earlier this month.

Shanghai tax authorities on Friday fined Zheng 299 million yuan ($46.1 million) for tax evasion and undeclared income between 2019 and 2020 while filming a TV series, according to an online statement.

Zheng, 30, became a household name in China after starring in the hit 2009 remake of Taiwanese drama "Meteor Shower", and a string of successful series and movies afterwards.

China's state broadcasting regulator also pulled Zheng's offending TV drama and ordered producers not to hire her for future shows.

The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television added it had "zero tolerance" for tax evasion, "sky-high pay" and "yin-yang contracts", referring to the shady contracts commonly used in Chinese showbiz to obscure actors' real pay.

State media has gone into overdrive urging changes to China's entertainment culture.

"For some time now, artists' moral failures and legal violations, the cultivation of younger idols, and 'chaotic' fandoms have attracted widespread attention in society," state broadcaster CCTV said Tuesday.

References to popular film star Zhao Wei (pictured at her French vineyard) have been censored from major Chinese video streaming sites

 Nicolas TUCAT AFP/File

"We must restore a clean and upright literary and artistic environment to the public."

On Thursday evening, search results for Zhao, an enormously popular actress also known as Vicky Zhao, were censored from major Chinese video streaming sites.

Her name was suddenly removed from the credits of major TV series, while a forum dedicated to the actress on social media platform Weibo was also mysteriously shut down, as the hashtag "Zhao Wei super-topic closed" gained 850 million views.

No official reason was given.

But Zhao and her husband were banned from trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange earlier this year, owing to a failed 2016 takeover bid that authorities ruled had "disrupted market order".

China's cyber regulator released new regulations Friday that ban celebrity ranking lists and tighten control over "chaotic" celebrity fan clubs and management agencies.

Video streaming site iQiyi said it halted all idol talent programmes Thursday, while a Chinese boy band made up of primary school children disbanded earlier this week after performers' ages sparked a public backlash.

© 2021 AFP

Decrepit Ankara theme park tells tale of Turkey's turmoil

Issued on: 27/08/2021 - 

The abandoned Wonderland Eurasia park is a symbol of waste by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party 

Adem LTAN AFP

Ankara (AFP)

The decaying dinosaur toys outside the abandoned theme park tell the tale of grand ambition, waste and troubles facing the long-ruling party of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The problems started early for "Wonderland Eurasia", meant to be Europe's largest amusement venue and billed by Erdogan as "a symbol of pride" at its opening in Ankara in March 2019.

Two days after the inauguration, a rollercoaster broke down, forcing people to scramble down to safety.

Public restrooms were a mess, some rides stood unfinished, and areas remained off-limits despite a reported $801 million spent on building Turkey's version of Disneyland.

The park closed less than a year after it opened when the operator struggled to pay staff wages and electricity bills since there were not enough customers.

For Erdogan's critics, the park is one of the biggest symbols of waste by mayors from his ruling AK Party, in power for two decades and facing a general election no later than 2023.

Such was the level of anger, some of Turkey's biggest cities -- including Ankara and Istanbul -- voted for mayors from opposition parties in 2019.

The theme park closed less than a year after it opened 

Adem ALTAN AFP

"Ankara's urgent need was not a Disneyland. It was transport," said Tezcan Karakus Candan, who heads the Chamber of Architects' Ankara branch, pointing out that the capital already has a large amusement park.

"This was a project of extravagance."

- 'Adolescent whim'-

The city is now suing the operator in an attempt to win back control and try to do something constructive with the land.

An Ankara court will rule on the request on September 13.

The park itself stands eerily quiet, its broken toys and ride parts collecting dust and rotting at a waste site a few kilometres (miles) away.

Yet its problems appear never-ending, with the city reporting at least 21 attempts to steal its cables in the last three months alone.

Erdogan hailed the Wonderland Eurasia theme park as "a symbol of pride" at its opening in March 2019 

Adem ALTAN AFP

Ankara's popular current mayor, Mansur Yavas, seen as a possible presidential challenger to Erdogan, claims the park cost $801 million.

The former mayor, Melih Gokcek, puts the price tag at $500 million.

But Gokcek is also blamed for many other hated Ankara projects he oversaw between 1994 and 2017, when he was ousted by Erdogan.

The park was a bizarre idea even before construction started, planned for a city not known for tourism. Gokcek claimed it would bring in 10 million people a year.

Ankara welcomed 4.9 million domestic and international visitors in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

In stark contrast, Istanbul, famous for its Ottoman mosques, Byzantine-era buildings and sunsets on the Bosphorus, hosted nearly 15 million tourists in 2019.

Guven Arif Sargin, a professor in the architecture department at Ankara's Middle East Technical University, called the idea of trying to make the city attractive to tourists an "adolescent whim".

- Ataturk's legacy -

The deep dislike of Gokcek and his tenure as mayor, despite five electoral victories, led to the opposition easily winning his office in March 2019.

"Melih Gokcek is a symbol of how AKP local administrations betray cities, how they ran a process of plunder and a network of relations," said Candan.

"We shouldn't look at Gokcek alone."

The Chamber of Architects tried to use the courts to stop construction, arguing it unlawfully transformed a natural protected area into a place of business.

The ex-mayor countered with a legal complaint against Candan and four other heads of professional chambers in which he accused them of slander, she told AFP.

The legal wrangles continue to this day.

But for many, Gokcek's gravest crime was not the waste of a failed vanity project, but his destruction of the land it stood on -- the Ataturk Forest Farm.

For many, the gravest crime was the destruction of the land the theme park stood on -- the Ataturk Forest Farm

 Adem ALTAN AFP

Gokcek's fiercest critics view his amusement park as an attempt by Erdogan's Islamic-rooted party to erase the secular legacy of modern Turkey's revered founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Ataturk envisioned the farming area in 1925 as the place where the capital's residents would meet their future agricultural needs.

The area where "Wonderland Eurasia" stands once had a zoo open to the public. Erdogan also built a 1,150-room presidential palace worth more than $600 million on part of the land.

Sargin said the "priority" was to turn the park and its equipment into "public property again".

But Candan wants the area to fulfil Ataturk's legacy, calling for "radical" action.

"Give the (park's) toys away to regions that may need them, seek compensation from Melih Gokcek for the money spent, use that money to reforest the area," Candan said.

Ankara is trying to win back control and try to do something constructive with the land Adem ALTAN AFP

"With such decisions, it can return to its original state."

Lebanon cancer patients face 'humiliating' drug shortages


Issued on: 27/08/2021 - 

Cancer drugs are the latest medication to become scarce in Lebanon, with even painkillers disappearing from many pharmacy shelves 

ANWAR AMRO AFP

Kfar Nabrakh (Lebanon) (AFP)

As if her cancer treatment was not already agonising enough, Rita is now wracked with worry about the medication she needs as Lebanon's crippling economic crisis sparks drug shortages.

"The treatment is like fire shooting through your body," the 53-year-old patient told AFP, asking that her real name not be given. "But now on top of that, we have to go hunting for the drugs."

Lebanon is in the throes of one of the world's worst economic crises since the mid-19th century, which has sparked a flurry of shortages from medicines to fuel as foreign currency reserves run low.

The health ministry has previously provided cancer medication at very low cost to patients without health insurance, but the patients say there are now almost no drugs to be found.

The shortages are threatening the treatment of tens of thousands of people, many of whom have taken to social media in a desperate plea to source the drugs they require.

Since Rita was diagnosed with uterine cancer three years ago, the disease has also spread to her lungs.

"My brother couldn't find the drugs from the ministry," said the single mother of three, her face etched with worry at his home in Kfar Nabakh in the Chouf mountains.

Patricia Nassif, a 29-year-old Lebanese cancer patient, shows a photograph of herself at the hospital

 ANWAR AMRO AFP

For now, she has borrowed money to buy the medicine at a much higher price on the black market. But she says she will not be able to afford to do this for long.

"What am I supposed to do? Sit around waiting for my turn?" she asked. "If you can't find the drugs, you die."

- 'No drugs left' -

The World Health Organization says 28,764 people have been diagnosed with cancer in Lebanon over the past five years, out of a total population of six million.

Rita, a 53-year-old Lebanese woman with cancer, displays her limited supplies of the lifesaving medicine she needs 

ANWAR AMRO AFP

But doctors say the number of patients undergoing treatment is likely to be much higher.

The head of the Lebanese Society of Haematology and Blood Transfusion, Ahmad Ibrahim, said that around 2,500 new cases of leukaemia and lymphoma are recorded each year in the Mediterranean country.

"Very little medication is left for their treatment," he said. "Yet if they don't follow regular treatment, some will die."

Cancer drugs are just the latest medication to become scarce, with even painkillers disappearing from pharmacy shelves in recent months.

"Some have neared the end of their treatment and are about to get better, but now suddenly there are no more drugs left," Ibrahim added.

This summer many Lebanese expats who return home have flown in with suitcases packed to the brim with boxes of medication for their loved ones.

Some drugs are available at a higher price on the black market, but in a country where three quarters of the population live in poverty, many cannot afford them.

Last month, importers said supplies of hundreds of kinds of drugs had run out, as the central bank owed millions of dollars to their suppliers abroad.

The authorities in turn accused importers of hoarding medicines with the aim of selling them later at a higher price, and blamed smuggling abroad for part of the problem.

- 'They don't care' -

Many Lebanese see the lack of medicine as merely the latest outcome of decades of mismanagement of the country by a political class they say is selfish and corrupt.

Protesters campaign against a drug shortage threatening tens of thousands of cancer patients in Lebanon 

ANWAR AMRO AFP

The Barbara Nassar Association for Cancer Patient Support on Thursday staged a protest to demand better access to cancer medication.

"Can you believe it? In Lebanon, cancer patients -- with all their worries -- are forced to go down into the street and protest to demand medicine," said its president, Hani Nassar.

"How is it the patient's fault if the state is incapable of containing the crisis?"

In the Hazmieh suburb of Beirut, Patricia Nassif, 29, said she was afraid she would not be able to finish her breast cancer treatment.

She had been married for only eight months when she discovered in April that she had breast cancer, upending her dream to start a family when all of her friends were becoming pregnant.

"I often lose hope," she said, wearing a black wig with a purple streak to match her outfit of black T-shirt and jeans.

She has finished a round of chemotherapy, but now fears she will have to spend thousands of dollars buying medication abroad for the next stage of her treatment.

"It's humiliating," she said, and accused the ruling class of doing little to help.

"It's as if they were telling us: 'Die slowly'. They don't care about us."

© 2021 AFP

Has Delta killed the herd immunity dream?

Issued on: 27/08/2021 

Herd immunity is achieved when a certain threshold of the global population has either been inoculated against a pathogen or has recovered from infection 

Robyn Beck AFP/File


Paris (AFP)

As the Delta variant continues its global surge, experts are questioning whether the long-held goal of achieving herd immunity from Covid-19 through vaccination is still viable.

Herd immunity is achieved when a certain threshold of the global population has either been inoculated against a pathogen or has recovered from infection.

But whether or not it is achievable with Covid-19, with the regular emergence of more infectious strains, is up for debate.

"If the question is 'will vaccination alone allow us to dampen and control the pandemic?' the answer is: no," epidemiologist Mircea Sofonea told AFP.

He said herd immunity hinged on two basic factors.

"That's the intrinsic infectiousness of the virus and the efficacy of vaccines to protect against infection. And at the moment, that efficacy isn't there."

Delta has shown to be roughly 60 percent more transmissible than the Alpha variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and up to twice as infectious as the original strain that emerged in late 2019.

The more effective the virus becomes at infecting people, the higher the herd immunity threshold becomes.

"Theoretically, it's a very simple calculation to make," said epidemiologist Antoine Flahault.

For the original virus, which had a reproduction rate between zero and three -- meaning each infected person infects up to three others -- herd immunity could have been achieved with around 66 percent of people immunised, Flahault told AFP.

"But if the reproduction rate is eight, as with Delta, that puts us closer to 90 percent," he said.

Were vaccines 100 percent effective at stopping Delta infections, that 90 percent could conceivably be possible. Unfortunately, they aren't.

- Waning immunity? -

According to data published this week by US authorities, the efficacy of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines at preventing infection has fallen from 91 percent to 66 percent since Delta became the dominant variant.

And studies have shown that the vaccine efficacy against infection with Delta falls over time -- one of the reasons why several countries are now readying for an autumn third shot, or "booster", vaccination campaign.

With all this taken into account, absent other health measures such as mask-wearing or social distancing, Sofonea said it would take more than 100 percent of people to be vaccinated in order to guarantee transmissions end -- an obvious impossibility.

"The Delta variant will still infect people who have been vaccinated and that does mean that anyone who's still unvaccinated, at some point, will meet the virus," Andrew Pollard, director of Britain's Oxford Vaccine Group, told lawmakers this month.

- 'Mythical' -

But even if, as Pollard termed it, the "mythical" aim of herd immunity is no longer in play, experts stressed that getting vaccinated remained paramount.

As with vaccines against other, now-endemic diseases such as measles and influenza, the Covid vaccines offer excellent protection against severe illness.

"What scientists are recommending is to get the maximum number of people protected" through vaccination, said Flahault.

Eventually, of course, all pandemics end.

Sofonea said it would still be possible that Covid would become another endemic disease over time, "just not with vaccines alone".

He envisioned a near future where "masks and social distancing continue in certain regions" in order to limit transmission and, ultimately, severe illness.

"During the AIDS pandemic, when scientists said we needed to wear condoms, lots of people said: 'OK, we'll do it for a while'," said Flahault.

"And in the end they kept on using them. It could well be that we will continue using masks in enclosed spaces and on transport for quite some time."

© 2021 AFP

Germany's workforce in desperate need of skilled immigrants, warns labor agency

Europe's largest economy has an aging population and low birth rates, and the federal labor agency says Germany must attract at least 400,000 skilled immigrants annually to keep up with demand.


Demographic changes will force Germany to attract more skilled immigrants if it wants to remain the EU's top economy

Germany faces massive labor shortages unless it begins recruiting skilled immigrants to replace those retiring from the country's aging workforce, Federal Labor Agency Chairman Detlef Scheele told the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) newspaper Tuesday.

Scheele said demographic changes mean Germany will have roughly 150,000 fewer working age residents this year alone, and warned, "It will be much more dramatic over the coming years."

"The fact is: Germany is running out of workers," he said.

"We need 400,000 immigrants per year, significantly more than in recent years," said Scheele. "From nursing care and climate technicians to logisticians and academics, there will be a shortage of skilled workers everywhere."

Cognizant of immigration issues in light of Germany's upcoming federal elections in late September, Social Democrat Scheele told the SZ: "This is not about asylum but targeted immigration to fill gaps in the labor market."

Watch video 06:51 The pandemic and migrant labor

How can Germany fix the problem of labor shortages?

Last year, the number of foreign nationals living in Germany — a country of 83 million — rose by 204,000, the smallest increase in a decade. The problem has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, which drastically reduced the number of immigrants entering the labor force.

Scheele said that beyond training low-skilled workers, retraining those whose professions have disappeared, or forcing people to work longer, the only way to master the situation will be to significantly increase immigration.

According to Germany's Federal Statistical Office, applications for recognition of foreign professional qualifications fell 3% last year, to 42,000.

Although the federal government reformed that process in March 2020, Johannes Vogel, labor policy spokesman for the neoliberal FDP's parliamentary caucus, criticized the current governing coalition of center-right CDU/CSU and social democratic SPD, saying their "paltry Skilled Immigration Act" has not come close to doing what it promised.

"We must finally become better in the global competition to attract talent — and to do so, we need a modern, points-based immigration system like Canada and New Zealand have long had."

Watch video 03:37 A labor dispute in Germany's meat industry

Anti-immigrant attitudes won't work

The Federation of German Trade Unions (DGB) has also called on lawmakers to create faster and more reliable nationwide standards that will allow those immigrants with the legal status of "Dulding," or tolerated, as well as those in the country on humanitarian grounds, to enter the workforce and attain longterm employment perspectives.

The anti-immigrant, far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) labeled the Labor Agency chairman's calls an "incomprehensible demand," accusing him of serving what it said were the interests of companies using immigration to drive down wages for German laborers.

Asked about political resistance to the idea of increasing the number of immigrants in Germany, Scheele told the SZ, "You can stand up and say, 'We don't want foreigners,' but that doesn't work."

Watch video 05:02 Germany’s exploited eastern European workforce

js/wmr (AP, dpa)

 

Climate change is accelerating, according to comprehensive study

by University of Hawaii at Manoa

Ocean temperature (blue=cold, red=warm) simulated at ultra-high resolution. 

Credit: IBS/ICCP‘s Aleph

Climate change is happening and accelerating. Earth will continue to warm. And these changes are unequivocally caused by human activities. Those are among the conclusions of the report published by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), with University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Assistant Professor of oceanography Malte Stuecker as a contributing author.

"The latest IPCC report shows clearly that if we do not drastically curb our emissions, we will head towards temperatures that Earth has not seen in millions of years," Stuecker summarizes. "Moreover, we can now say with certainty that all of the global warming that occurred since the mid-19th century is due to human activity. While these are sobering facts, we should certainly not despair. In fact, if societies choose a pathway of large reductions in greenhouse gas emissions now, the report also shows that we will avoid the worst possible future outcomes and Earth will experience only moderate additional warming over this century that we can likely adapt to."

In addition to global warming, regional climate in many parts of the world is impacted by the cycling between warm El Niño and cold La Niña conditions in the eastern Pacific Ocean—commonly referred to as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). ENSO—has persisted without major interruptions for thousands to millions of years. This may also change in a future warmer world, though the recent IPCC report highlights uncertainties in potential changes in ENSO.

Two additional studies

Continuing the long tradition of contributing to developing theories and advancing climate models around ENSO, researchers from the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) recently published two additional studies addressing the complexity of this most important climate phenomenon.

SOEST atmospheric scientists, Associate Professor Christina Karamperidou and Professor Fei-Fei Jin, and Stuecker co-authored a review paper published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment wherein they synthesized recent advancements in research on ENSO.

There is an emerging consensus among simulations of future climate under strong greenhouse gas emissions with the most recent generation of climate models that the variability of future ENSO sea surface temperature may increase as the climate warms.

"There is however still much uncertainty on the degree to which ENSO may change and the time at which these potential changes will emerge from ENSO's natural variability," said Karamperidou. "This is partly due to incomplete understanding of the phenomenon, partly due to known limitations of models in representing and resolving relevant processes, and partly due to the inherent limitations on our understanding imposed by the short length of the instrumental record."

Additionally, led by researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics in Korea, Stuecker co-authored another study published in Nature Climate Change that produced a series of global climate model simulations with unprecedented spatial resolution. Boosted by the power of one of South Korea's fastest supercomputers (Aleph), the new ultra-high-resolution simulations realistically represented processes that are usually missing from other models, though they play fundamental roles in the generation and termination of El Niño and La Niña events.

"From this highest resolution future climate model simulation that has been done to date, we conclude that it's possible that ENSO variability could collapse under strong greenhouse warming in the future," said Stuecker.

Further investigation is needed

This apparent contradiction in findings raises many interesting questions and highlights the need for further investigation.

"Regardless of the details of how El Niño changes in the future, rainfall and drought will become more extreme in the future due to the fact that we will be living in a warmer world with a hydrological cycle on steroids," said Stuecker.

"Despite the spread of model projections on how ENSO may change under strong anthropogenic forcing, both the IPCC report and the Nature Reviews article demonstrate that its impacts on rainfall are very likely to be enhanced which has significant implications across the globe and the Pacific, including Hawaiʻi," said Karamperidou.Fewer El Niño and La Niña events in a warmer world

More information: Wenju Cai et al, Changing El Niño–Southern Oscillation in a warming climate, Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s43017-021-00199-z

Wengel, C et al. Future high-resolution El Niño/Southern Oscillation dynamics. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2021). doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01132-4

Journal information: Nature Climate Change 

Provided by University of Hawaii at Manoa 

New study shows rundown neighborhoods not slated to go into a steep decline

Revisiting the ‘broken windows’ theory in Detroit

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - DAVIS HEALTH

 

IMAGE: DETROIT WAS ONCE ONE OF AMERICA’S MOST PROSPEROUS CITIES, BUT OVER DECADES HAS FALLEN INTO A SEVERE DECLINE. view more 

CREDIT: ALAINA DE BIASI

Scholars and criminologists have examined the relationship between urban decay and violent crime for decades. A new study of Detroit from the University of California Firearm Violence Research Center at UC Davis Health shows that the transition from dilapidated buildings and unkempt lots to violent crime is not as inevitable as the landmark “broken windows” theory would suggest.

“My research suggests there are more opportunities to address neighborhood decline than what is suggested by the broken windows theory,” said Alaina De Biasi, a postdoctoral fellow and author of the study. The research was published in The British Journal of Criminology.

The broken windows theory proposes that unattended disorder — such as broken windows that are not replaced — lowers the benchmark for acceptable behaviors in a neighborhood and leads to more disorder and inevitably more serious crimes. The theory was introduced by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in a 1982 article in The Atlantic.

Without early mitigation, the theory goes, these neighborhoods reach a tipping point, beyond which efforts to reduce violent crime are likely to fail without extensive resources. Wilson and Kelling felt the key was to dedicate resources to neighborhoods that were at the tipping point “where the public order is deteriorating but not unreclaimable.”

Wilson and Kelling’s landmark theory went on to have a tremendous impact on policing practices, including how and where crime prevention resources are allocated.

Broken windows in the Motor City

Detroit was once one of America’s most prosperous cities, but over decades has fallen into a severe decline, with large swaths of neighborhoods simply abandoned. In 1950 the city had a population of 1.8 million. By 2016, that number had plummeted to 680,000. Detroit is also ranked as America’s most dangerous city.

Wilson and Kelling’s theory stuck out to De Biasi, who grew up in the metropolitan Detroit area and studied at the nearby University of Michigan, Dearborn. “I saw these visible signs of deterioration and how it played into neighborhood decline and neighborhood violence. That’s how I became interested in doing the study.”

De Biasi focused on physical disorder using open source data from the Motor City Mapping Project to analyze the impact of Detroit’s deterioration and abandonment on violent crime. The project surveys every parcel in Detroit and collects information on the physical condition of that parcel.

“The data look at things like, is it abandoned property? Does the property have fire damage? Is the property a dumping ground for trash?” De Biasi said.

For her analysis, she used a statistical method that allowed her to compare physical disorder in neighborhoods with levels of violent crime.

According to Wilson and Kelling’s theory of a tipping point, De Biasi would expect to see a threshold effect between disorder and crime. Essentially, disorder and crime increasing at a certain rate and then reaching a tipping point, at which violent crime dramatically increases.

“But my study doesn’t find a huge jump — a tipping point. I found a slower increase than what’s expected based on Wilson and Kelling’s tipping point. I’m calling this an attenuated threshold effect,” De Biasi said.

She notes that in terms of reducing overall crime levels, a focus on crime hot spots is likely the superior policing approach for any given neighborhood. However, neighborhoods in which disorder and violence are growing issues shouldn’t be ignored.

“The significance for cities like Detroit experiencing urban decay is that there are likely more places beyond that midrange level of disorder in which traditional broken-windows strategies could be applied. For residents, what it means is that even if your neighborhood is challenged, it’s not slated to go into a steep decline,” De Biasi said.

De Biasi notes that the amount of devastation is pretty extreme in certain parts of Detroit, and that policing is an integral part of decreasing violence. But she adds that policing is part of a larger community effort.

“If communities know that there’s not an irrevocable ‘tipping point,’ into violence, it could lead to better outcomes for these areas and more opportunities for residents to work toward reducing disorder, fear and violent crime,” De Biasi said.

It also means that community-driven efforts to rebuild and remake rundown neighborhoods may be effective. She notes that things like community gardens often act as an anchor point in reestablishing neighborhoods and help to build informal social control and collective efficacy.

“Detroit is in the process of rebuilding. I think things have come a long, long way and ultimately, I think Detroit’s future is bright. It is undergoing a reinvention. We are trying to think of creative ways to solve some of these really complicated problems,” De Biasi said.

While her study focuses on Detroit, its findings may apply to other cities experiencing urban decay, including those in California. She is interested in conducting follow-up studies across a variety of neighborhood contexts to determine whether her Detroit findings hold up.

 

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JOURNAL

The British Journal of Criminology

DOI

10.1093/bjc/azab057 

ARTICLE TITLE

Ignored but not Forgotten: The Broken Windows Tipping Point and the Question of Functional Form

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

14-Jul-2021

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAl

 Why the Dreaming Phase of Sleep Matters

August 26 2021 

| Original story from University of Tsukuba

Scientists have long wondered why almost all animals sleep, despite the disadvantages to survival of being unconscious. Now, researchers led by a team from the University of Tsukuba have found new evidence of brain refreshing that takes place during a specific phase of sleep: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is when you tend to dream a lot.

Previous studies have measured differences in blood flow in the brain between REM sleep, non-REM sleep, and wakefulness using various methods, with conflicting results. In their latest work, the Tsukuba-led team used a technique to directly visualize the movement of red blood cells in the brain capillaries (where nutrients and waste products are exchanged between brain cells and blood) of mice during awake and asleep states.

“We used a dye to make the brain blood vessels visible under fluorescent light, using a technique known as two-photon microscopy,” says senior author of the study Professor Yu Hayashi. “In this way, we could directly observe the red blood cells in capillaries of the neocortex in non-anesthetized mice.”

The researchers also measured electrical activity in the brain to identify REM sleep, non-REM sleep, and wakefulness, and looked for differences in blood flow between these phases.

“We were surprised by the results,” explains Professor Hayashi. “There was a massive flow of red blood cells through the brain capillaries during REM sleep, but no difference between non-REM sleep and the awake state, showing that REM sleep is a unique state”

The research team then disrupted the mice’s sleep, resulting in “rebound” REM sleep—a stronger form of REM sleep to compensate for the earlier disruption. Blood flow in the brain was further increased during rebound REM sleep, suggesting an association between blood flow and REM sleep strength. However, when the researchers repeated the same experiments in mice without adenosine A2a receptors (the receptors whose blockade makes you feel more awake after drinking coffee), there was less of an increase in blood flow during REM sleep, even during rebound REM sleep.

“These results suggest that adenosine A2a receptors may be responsible for at least some of the changes in blood flow in the brain during REM sleep,” says Professor Hayashi.

Given that reduced blood flow in the brain and decreased REM sleep are correlated with the development of Alzheimer’s disease, which involves the buildup of waste products in the brain, it may be interesting to address whether increased blood flow in the brain capillaries during REM sleep is important for waste removal from the brain. This study lays preliminary groundwork for future investigations into the role of adenosine A2a receptors in this process, which could ultimately lead to the development of new treatments for conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. 

Reference: Tsai C-J, Nagata T, Liu C-Y, et al. Cerebral capillary blood flow upsurge during REM sleep is mediated by A2a receptors. Cell Rep. 2021;36(7):109558. doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2021.109558

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

 

Seabed recovers more quickly following extreme storms than from the impacts of bottom-towed fishing

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH

 

IMAGE: BY 2013 - FIVE YEARS AFTER THE DESIGNATION OF THE MARINE PROTECTED AREA - THE SEABED HAD SEEN THE RETURN OF PINK SEA FANS AND ROSS CORAL, WHILE FISH AND SHELLFISH STOCKS HAD SIGNIFICANTLY RECOVERED view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF PLYMOUTH

Extreme storms can result in major damage to the seabed similar to that caused by prolonged periods of bottom-towed fishing, according to new research.

However, important seabed habitats and species recover more quickly following extreme storms than in the wake of such fishing activity.

That is one of the key findings of a first-of-its-kind study which examined the impact of the 2013/14 winter storms on the Lyme Bay Marine Protected Area (MPA), off the coast of southern England.

Academics from the University of Plymouth have been monitoring the area using underwater cameras and other techniques since 2008, when a ban on bottom towed fishing was introduced as part of a range of conservation measures.

They have previously demonstrated that several species have returned to the area since the MPA was introduced, resulting in the significant recovery of seabed life and fish and shellfish stocks.

However, there have been no previous studies looking at how extreme storms impact seabed habitats or the potential for MPAs to increase ecosystem resilience from storms.

To address that, researchers analysed the impacts of the 2013/14 series of storms, which separate studies by the University found to be the most energetic to hit western Europe since 1948.

Through annual surveys of seabed life in the MPA, they were able to see the immediate impact of the storms but also how the seabed was able to recover in subsequent years.

Writing in Frontiers in Marine Science, the researchers say that with extreme events likely to become more frequent and severe as a result of climate change, up to 29% of coastal reef MPAs around the UK may be similarly impacted by extreme storms.

Dr Emma Sheehan, Associate Professor of Marine Ecology at the University of Plymouth, is the study’s lead author. She said: “In our assessments in 2014, it appeared the previous winter’s storms had devastated the MPA. Loose sediments and other debris were prolific where life and biogenic reef habitat had been observed the year before. However, by 2016, large numbers of adult pink sea fans and other species were being observed once again with more juvenile pink sea fans than ever before. It showed the MPA’s recovery had begun almost immediately whereas, by contrast, it took more than three years for such patterns to be seen following its initial designation.”

The University’s work in Lyme Bay has been carried out in conjunction with local fishers and other community groups along the Dorset and Devon coastline.

In addition to assessing the effects of a ban on bottom-towed fishing, it has shown that limits on crab and lobster pot fishing could offer long-term benefits to fishermen and the environment.

Recommendations from this ongoing work have been included within the Government’s 25-year Environment Plan, and a major UK government report into Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs), led by former Defra Fisheries Minister Richard Benyon.

Martin Attrill, Professor of Marine Ecology at the University and the current study’s senior author, added: “Given the sheer power of extreme storms, there is very little that can be done to prevent widespread damage being caused when they occur. However, as such storms are likely to become more frequent as a result of climate change, a large proportion of the UK’s coastline could experience extreme wave conditions similar to or greater than those seen in Lyme Bay in 2013/14. What we therefore need to do is expand protection measures which improve the general health of the seabed and enhance its powers of resilience and recovery.”

Seabed of Lyme Bay (UK) in 2014 (VIDEO)

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Marine Science

DOI

10.3389/fmars.2021.671427 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Rewilding of Protected Areas Enhances Resilience of Marine Ecosystems to Extreme Climatic Events

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Aug-2021

COI STATEMENT

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.