The Lancet: More than half of police killings in USA are unreported and Black Americans are most likely to experience fatal police violence

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE LANCET

Peer-reviewed / Observational/ People

• Researchers compared data from the US National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) to three non-governmental, open-source databases on fatal police violence and found that NVSS under-reported deaths from police violence by 55.5% between 1980-2018.
• Over the 40-year study period (1980-2019), Black Americans were estimated to be 3.5 times more likely to die from police violence than white Americans.
• Open-source databases should be better utilized to improve reporting on fatal police violence and support policy changes to address systemic racism and reduce police violence.
   

More than 55% of deaths from police violence in the USA from 1980-2018 were misclassified or unreported in official vital statistics reports according to a new study in The Lancet. The highest rate of deaths from police violence occurred for Black Americans, who were estimated to be 3.5 times more likely to experience fatal police violence than white Americans.

Researchers estimate that the US National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), the government system that collates all death certificates in the USA, failed to accurately classify and report more than 17,000 deaths as being caused by police violence during the 40-year study period.

“Recent high-profile police killings of Black people have drawn worldwide attention to this urgent public health crisis, but the magnitude of this problem can’t be fully understood without reliable data. Inaccurately reporting or misclassifying these deaths further obscures the larger issue of systemic racism that is embedded in many US institutions, including law enforcement. Currently, the same government responsible for this violence is also responsible for reporting on it. Open-sourced data is a more reliable and comprehensive resource to help inform policies that can prevent police violence and save lives,” says co-lead author Fablina Sharara of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington School of Medicine, USA. [1]

To examine the extent of under-reporting, researchers compared NVSS data to three non-governmental, open-source databases on police violence: Fatal Encounters, Mapping Police Violence, and The Counted [2]. These databases collate information from news reports and public record requests. When compared, the researchers’ new estimates highlight the extent to which deaths from police violence are under-reported in the NVSS and the disproportionate effect of police violence on Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous people in the USA.

Across all races and states in the USA, researchers estimate that NVSS data failed to report 17,100 deaths from police violence out of 30,800 total deaths from 1980-2018 (the most recent years of available NVSS data), accounting for 55.5% of all deaths from police violence during this period. Using a predictive model, researchers also estimated the total number of deaths from police violence in the USA, for all races/ethnicities and all states for 2019, estimating an additional 1,190 deaths, bringing the total number of deaths from police violence from 1980-2019 to 32,000.  

Black Americans experienced fatal police violence at a rate 3.5 times higher than white Americans, according to this analysis, with nearly 60% of these deaths misclassified in the NVSS (5,670 unreported deaths from police violence out of 9,540 estimated deaths). From the 1980s to the 2010s, rates of police violence increased by 38% for all races (with 0.25 deaths from police violence per 100,000 person-years in the 1980s as compared to 0.34 deaths from police violence per 100,000 person-years in the 2010s).

Compared to the deaths recorded in the new analysis, NVSS also missed 56% (8,540 deaths out of 15,200) of deaths of non-Hispanic white people, 33% (281 deaths out of 861) of non-Hispanic people of other races, and 50% (2,580 deaths out of 5,170) of Hispanic people of any race.

Deaths due to police violence were significantly higher for men of any race or ethnicity than women, with 30,600 deaths in men and 1,420 deaths in women from 1980 to 2019.

Previous studies covering shorter time periods have found similar rates of racial disparities, as well as significant under-reporting of police killings in official statistics. This new study is one of the longest study periods to date to address this topic.

The authors call for increased use of open-source data-collection initiatives to allow researchers and policymakers to document and highlight disparities in police violence by race, ethnicity, and gender, allowing for targeted, meaningful changes to policing and public safety that will prevent loss of life.

Additionally, the researchers point out that because many medical examiners or coroners are embedded within police departments, there can be substantial conflicts of interest that could disincentivize certifiers from indicating police violence as a cause of death. Managing these conflicts of interest in addition to improved training and clearer instructions for physicians and medical examiners on how to document police violence in text fields on death certificates could improve reporting and reduce omissions and implicit biases that cause misclassifications.

“Our recommendation to utilize open-source data collection is only a first step. As a community we need to do more. Efforts to prevent police violence and address systemic racism in the USA, including body cameras that record interactions of police with civilians along with de-escalation training and implicit bias training for police officers, for example, have largely been ineffective. As our data show, fatal police violence rates and the large racial disparities in police killings have either remained the same or increased over the years. Policymakers should look to other countries, such Norway and the UK, where police forces have been de-militarized and use evidence-based strategies to find effective solutions that prioritize public safety and community-based interventions to reduce fatal police violence,” says co-lead author Eve Wool of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington School of Medicine, USA. [1]

The authors acknowledge some limitations in the study. This paper does not calculate or address non-fatal injuries attributed to police violence, which is critical to understanding the full burden of police violence in the USA and should be examined in future studies. The data also do not include police officers killed by civilians, police violence in USA territories, or residents who may have been harmed by military police in the USA or abroad. Because the researchers relied on death certificates, which only allow for a binary designation of sex, they were unable to identify non-cisgender people, potentially masking the disproportionately high rates of violence against trans people, particularly Black trans people.  The authors note that the intersectionality of gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other identities and the relationship to fatal police violence should be studied in the future.

A Lancet Editorial adds, “The study is a potential turning point for improving national estimates of fatalities from police violence by incorporating non-governmental open-source data to correct NVSS data…Better data is one aspect of a public health approach; introducing harm-reduction policies is another. Policing in the USA follows models of hostile, racialised interactions between civilians and armed agents of the state. Marginalised groups are more likely to be criminalized through the war on drugs or homelessness. Reducing hostile or violent interactions between police and civilians, particularly those who are most vulnerable overall, is a forceful case for investment in other areas of community-based health and support systems, including housing, food access, substance use treatment, and emergency medical services. Strategies to lower fatalities from police violence must include demilitarisation of police forces, but with the broader call to demilitarize society by, for example, restricting access to firearms…Police forces too must take greater responsibility for police-involved injuries and deaths. Such changes are long overdue.”

NOTES TO EDITORS

This study was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. A full list of authors and institutions is available in the paper.

The labels have been added to this press release as part of a project run by the Academy of Medical Sciences seeking to improve the communication of evidence. For more information, please see: http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/AMS-press-release-labelling-system-GUIDANCE.pdf if you have any questions or feedback, please contact The Lancet press office pressoffice@lancet.com

[1] Quote direct from author and cannot be found in the text of the Article.

[2]Fatal encounters:  https://fatalencounters.org/; Mapping police Violence: mappingpoliceviolence.org;  The Counted:  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings

IF YOU WISH TO PROVIDE A LINK FOR YOUR READERS, PLEASE USE THE FOLLOWING, WHICH WILL GO LIVE AT THE TIME THE EMBARGO LIFTS: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)01609-3/fulltext

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JOURNAL

The Lancet

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01609-3 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Fatal police violence by race and state in the USA, 1980–2019: a network meta-regression

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Sep-2021

COI STATEMENT

M Mahmoudi is the co-founder and director of the Academic Parity Movement, a non-profit organisation dedicated to addressing academic discrimination, violence and incivility. K M Mehta reports leadership or fiduciary role in board, society, committee, or advocacy group, paid or unpaid, with the Youth Community Service as a board member, outside the submitted work. J A Singh reports consulting fees from Crealta/ Horizon, Medisys, Fidia, Two Labs, Adept Field Solutions, Clinical Care options, Clearview Healthcare Partners, Putnam Associates, Focus Forward, Navigant Consulting, Spherix, MedIQ, UBM LLC, Trio Health, Medscape, WebMD, and Practice Point Communications, and the National Institutes of Health and the American College of Rheumatology; payment or honoraria for lectures, presentations, speakers bureaus, manuscript writing, or educational events from Simply Speaking; support for attending meetings or travel from OMERACT, an international organisation that develops measures for clinical trials and receives arm’s length funding from 12 pharmaceutical companies, when traveling bi-annually to OMERACT meetings; leadership or fiduciary role in other board, society, committee or advocacy group, paid or unpaid, with OMERACT as a member of the steering committee, with the US Food and Drug Administration Arthritis Advisory Committee, with the Veterans Affairs Rheumatology Field Advisory Committee as a member, and with the UAB Cochrane Musculoskeletal Group Satellite Center on Network Meta-analysis as a director and editor; stock or stock options in TPT Global Tech, Vaxart Pharmaceuticals, and Charlotte’s Web Holdings; and previously owned stock options in Amarin, Viking, and Moderna, all outside the submitted work.

Disclaimer: AAAS and Eure

Wildfire bees on the brink

Black Summer blazes raise extinction risk forecasts

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: FLINDERS UNIVERSITY RESEARCHER JAMES DOREY view more 

CREDIT: FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

The number of threatened Australian native bee species is expected to increase by nearly  five times after the devastating Black Summer bushfires in 2019-20, new research led by Flinders University has found.

With 24 million hectares of Australia’s land area burnt, researchers say the casualties are clear among bee fauna and other insects and invertebrates after studying 553 species (about one-third of Australia’s known bee species) to assess the long-term environmental damage from the natural disaster.

“Our research is a call for action, from governments and policymakers, to immediately help these and other native populations most in danger,” says lead author Flinders University PhD candidate James Dorey, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Yale University Center for Biodiversity and Global Change.  

Of the bees studied, nine species were assessed as Vulnerable and two more Endangered as a result of the multiple fire fronts in the 2019-20 bushfires that also destroyed approximately 3000 homes and killed or displaced an estimated 3 billion animals.

The new study published in Global Change Biology warns widespread wildfire and forest fire damage is being repeated all around the world, from North America and Europe to the Congo and Asia, causing catastrophic impacts on biodiversity and sudden and marked reduction in population sizes of many species.

“In these circumstances, there is a need for government and land managers to respond more rapidly to implement priority conservation management actions for the most-affected species in order to help prevent extinctions,” says Mr Dorey.

“Conserving insects and other less visible taxa should also be a factor in restoring and preserving some of the hundreds of bees that may not yet have been studied or recorded.”

He says the study forms a foundation for assessment of other taxa in Australia or on other continents where species are understudied and not registered on datasets or by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN Red List).

“Climate change is increasing the frequency of natural disasters like wildfire, which impacts our wildlife,” says fellow author Dr Stefan Caddy-Retalic, from The University of Adelaide and University of Sydney.

 

CAPTION

Graphical summary of the study

CREDIT

Flinders University

“Our study shows that we can assess the likely impact of natural disasters on poorly studied species, even when we can’t physically visit the field to do surveys.”

“Listing severely-impacted species on the IUCN red list and under Australian law represents our best approach to lobby governments to act,” he says, adding native bees are very important providers of ecosystem services including pollination, but most are poorly known.

“Most people aren’t aware of just how vulnerable our native bees are because they are not widely studied,” adds Flinders University researcher Olivia Davies, another of the 13 authors on the major paper. “The fact that no Australian bees are listed by the IUCN shows just how neglected these important species are.”

The study, which recommends 11 Australian bee species (just 2% of those analysed) as priority taxa for listing as IUCN Threatened species, also demonstrates a new model for “using the data we already have to understand how natural disasters are likely to impact key species and their ecosystems”.

CAPTION

A colourful display of some of Australia’s native bees. Photos James Dorey, Flinders University - Yale

CREDIT

Photos James Dorey, Flinders University - Yale

“Being able to collect targeted data will always be the gold standard but we shouldn’t let data gaps stop us from acting to protect species we know are vulnerable,” Dr Dorey concludes.

The collaborative study includes researchers from Flinders University’s Laboratory of Evolutionary Genetics and Sociality, the South Australian Museum, University of Adelaide, Curtin University, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, Murdoch University and Charles Darwin University.

 The article, Continental risk assessment for understudied taxa post catastrophic wildfire indicates severe impacts on the Australian bee fauna (2021) by James B Dorey, Celina M Rebola, Olivia K Davies, Kit S Prendergast, Ben A Parslow, Katja Hogendoorn, Remko Leijs, Lucas R Hearn, Emrys J Leitch, Robert L O’Reilly, Jessica Marsh, John CZ Woinarski and Stefan Caddy-Retalic has been published in Global Change Biology (Wiley-Blackwell) DOI:

CAPTION

The golden-green carpenter bee (Xylocopa (Lestis) aerate Female) Xylocopa sp. F 52p MPE 3x-Edit.jpg Photo courtesy James Dorey, Flinders University - Yale University

CREDIT

Photo James Dorey, Flinders University - Yale University

CAPTION

L gracilipes, one of the species assessed as vulnerable in the new report Photo courtesy Ken Walker (iNaturalist Australia)

CREDIT

Ken Walker (iNaturalist Australia)

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JOURNAL

Global Change Biology

DOI

10.1111/gcb.15879 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Continental risk assessment for understudied taxa post catastrophic wildfire indicates severe impacts on the Australian bee fauna

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Sep-2021

COI STATEMENT

The authors have no conflict of interest

 

Parental beliefs on child development and child outcomes go hand-in-hand—and those beliefs can be shifted

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICAL CENTER

In a paper published October 1 in Nature Communications, University of Chicago Medicine pediatrician Dana Suskind, MD, along with University of Chicago economists John List, PhD, and Julie Pernaudet, PhD investigate one potential source of discrepancy in child skill level: disparity in parents’ beliefs about their influence over their children’s development.

Through experimental studies involving hundreds of families across the Chicagoland area, the researchers show parental knowledge and beliefs differ across socioeconomic status. But these beliefs can, with the right intervention, be changed. Moreover, these changes can have measurable effects on child outcomes. The results may offer policymakers insights into addressing an important contributor to disparities in child skill development.

“Neuroscience clearly shows that building early brain connections in children relies on the nurturing ‘serve and return,’ meaning the interactions between adult and child,” said Suskind, Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics and Co-Director of the TMW Center for Early Learning and Public Health.

For this reason, differences in parental engagement can lead to differences in children’s brain development and their capabilities later on.

“There are many deep, structural drivers of inequality that have enormous impacts on child development. At the same time, we know that parental input plays a major role in early foundational brain development,” said Suskind. “However, little research has been centered on understanding, number one, what parents know and believe in the first place, and, number two, whether or not changing what parents know and believe maps onto changes in child input and child outcomes.”

Suskind and her collaborators decided to investigate what underlies parental beliefs about their role in their child’s development. Then, the team asked whether these beliefs could even be changed, and, if so, what method of doing so might be most effective.

To do this, Suskind and her team conducted two field experiments, from 2016 to 2019, with families living in and around Chicago. The first experiment began in pediatric clinics serving underinsured or uninsured families with newborn children. As parents sat in the waiting room before their children’s first-, second-, fourth- and sixth-month check-ups, some were asked to watch 10-minute videos. A subset of the parents—the control group—watched videos about child safety or no video at all, while the “treatment” group watched videos on the parents’ role in very early child development, brain malleability and practical tips for parents to improve involvement.

The second experiment was more intensive. A group of parents of very young children from a variety of socioeconomic circumstances, this time recruited from a range of locations, such as grocery stores and daycares, as well as medical clinics, received monthly two hour-long home visits for six months. The visits involved watching a video on a development topic and doing an activity demonstrating how to apply the topic with their child, as well as a discussion of feedback and goals. This experiment’s control group received information and home visits on child nutrition.

Throughout both experiments, the researchers documented parents’ knowledge and beliefs about how much influence they had over their children’s development. Additionally, parents’ actual investments and child outcomes were measured.

To do this, they used a tool called SPEAK, developed and validated by Suskind and collaborators, which is the scale of parental expectation and knowledge of child development. With this tool, now used around the world by other researchers, Suskind and her team measured parents’ understanding of their children’s early cognitive and brain development and of their own ability to affect that development. The researchers also measured parents’ actual inputs, employing audio and video recordings of parents as they interacted with their children.

At the start of the experiments, Suskind and collaborators found that the more education or higher socioeconomic status parents had, the more knowledge they had of how their investments could affect their child’s skill levels.

“On average, the more education a parent had, the more their knowledge and beliefs were aligned with what the science shows. The more aligned their beliefs were with the science, the more facilitative behavior there was,” said Suskind.

However, within six months of starting the experiments, the beliefs of the treatment groups had shifted significantly from those of the control groups, although both were made up of parents of similar demographics. Moreover, the more intensive home visiting program saw more than twice the impact.

“With these different tiers of intervention,” said Suskind, “we could shift what parents know and believe and by doing so, shift their behavior in the positive direction.”

As parents began to believe their investments mattered, they began to invest more heavily in their children’s development. Suskind and her team saw statistically significant improvements in parent-child interactions over the span of both experiments.

These results were also correlated with improvements in child outcomes, such as vocabulary, math skills and social-emotional skills. Both experiments saw gains in outcomes, but the more intensive program again had a stronger effect.

“We were able to show robust impacts in what parents knew and believed as well as both a related shift in nurturing behavior— more talking interaction— and changes in child outcomes,” said Suskind.

The researchers then combined their data with a previous companion study of parents of older children from families of low socioeconomic status in the Chicagoland area. By compiling this data with their own, Suskind’s team discovered a consistently positive correlation between parental beliefs and child skill levels, across a relatively large range of child ages and across all skills.

This correlation allowed researchers to use parental knowledge level as a predictor of child skill level, and to provide a quantitative measure of how much a parent’s beliefs must change to produce a significant change in their child’s skills.

The results show not only that parental attitudes and beliefs are correlated with parental investment and child outcomes, but that these beliefs can be altered. The experiments provide examples of effective methods for changing parental beliefs that could be used in place of educational policies that don’t treat the underlying issue of lack of parental investment.

Although Suskind and her team recognize the causes of disparities in child outcomes as they age are multidimensional and complex, this work is a starting point that not only highlights the importance of parent-child interactions, but proposes methods of improving them.

In the future, Suskind envisions the results of this work and others like it influencing more personalized parent-child support. She points out that going beyond the underlying trends that the team uncovered in this study could inform more nuanced interventions.

“In the same way you have personalized medicine,” she said, “I see personalized support of families. If education is a form of equity, then all parents deserve to have this information.”

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JOURNAL

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-021-25964-y 

ARTICLE TITLE

Shifting parental beliefs about child development to foster parental investments and improve school readiness outcomes

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Oct-2021

Brazil protesters aim to summon spirit of 84 for massive anti-Bolsonaro drive

Nearly 40 years have passed since downtown Rio was overrun with what one awestruck reporter declared “the greatest and most fantastical popular demonstration of all time”.

Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro 

THE GUARDIAN

It was 10 April 1984, the twilight of Brazil’s two-decade dictatorship, and more than a million dissenters from across the political spectrum had hit the streets with a deafening and unified call for change.

“There was such euphoria, such unity, such kinship. You felt you could breathe the freedom,” said Caíque Tibiriçá, one of the organizers of that historic rally, which helped catapult South America’s biggest country towards a new democratic era – which some now fear is under threat.

This Saturday, Tibiriçá, now 70, will return to the same streets outside Rio’s Candelária church for what he hopes will be a similarly forceful demonstration of popular resolve – this time targeting his country’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, whose authoritarian idols the septuagenarian communist once helped evict.

© Photograph: Pilar Olivares/Reuters 

A protest against Bolsonaro on Copacabana beach. Objectors have intensified their campaign against Bolsonaro, with plans for rallies in dozens of major cities.

“Brazil cannot take what’s happening any more. It’s one crisis after the next,” said Tibiriçá, who is again helping coordinate the demo and believes Bolsonaro’s assault on democracy and handling of a Covid outbreak that has killed nearly 600,000 Brazilians mean he must be impeached.

As objectors intensified their campaign against Bolsonaro, with plans for rallies in dozens of major cities, Tibiriçá urged them to seek inspiration from the broad political coalition that helped defeat the 1964-85 dictatorship.

On stage at the 1984 rally stood an improbable alliance of political heavyweights, including Rio’s leftist governor Leonel Brizola and the future president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and conservatives such as Tancredo Neves and the 90-year-old Catholic lawyer Sobral Pinto.

“These were people with totally different political projects but one common objective,” said Tibiriçá. “They had different ideas about the economy, social issues and the country’s development but they shared one goal: that we should have [direct presidential] elections.”

Such unity has so far largely eluded those battling Bolsonaro, despite the social, economic and environmental havoc that has played out since the rightwing radical took office in January 2019.

Some on Brazil’s right have disavowed the extremist leader they helped elect but refused to join the left-led street protests that have been taking place since May. When one rightwing group recently called anti-Bolsonaro protests, they were widely shunned by the left.

Thiago Süssekind, a student leader helping organize Saturday’s rally – which will be followed by another on 15 November – said he hoped Bolsonaro’s foes were finally coalescing, as the extent of the danger he posed sunk in.

“Bolsonaro is a threat to democracy, and when democracy is at stake whatever ideological differences we might have pale into insignificance,” said Süssekind, 22, who leads the Rio chapter of the centrist group Acredito.

“When you have a president threatening not to hold elections, threatening the supreme court and threatening a coup, you need to join forces. One group won’t stop this on its own. The only way to effectively respond is by uniting the right, the left and the centre,” Süssekind added, citing the 1984 pro-democracy movement as a model.

Not everyone believes such an alliance is possible – or that large sections of the opposition even want Bolsonaro impeached.

Thomas Traumann, a Rio-based political commentator, said the centre-right Brazilian Social Democracy party (PSDB) appeared more focused on deciding which of its leaders would challenge Bolsonaro in next October’s presidential contest, which polls suggest the embattled incumbent will lose. The leftist Workers’ party (PT) seemed inclined to allow Bolsonaro’s political meltdown to continue for another year until its candidate, Lula, could trounce him in the 2022 vote. “Everyone wants to face a weak Bolsonaro,” said Traumann, who believes Bolsonaro will probably see out his four-year term.

Perhaps the opposition’s only chance of preventing that happening was with a massive show of force this weekend. “They need to get more than a million people into the streets,” Traumann said. “If they don’t do it now, forget it.”

Regina Helena Bastos, a retired teacher who took part in the 1984 march, also doubted whether left and right would manage to unite against Bolsonaro, as they once did in favour of democracy.

“Right now, I don’t see hope or union,” sighed the 72-year-old who said anger, rather than optimism would drive her to join Saturday’s rally.

“Back then [in 1984] it was a feeling of: ‘Wow! How incredible! Here I am. Everyone’s singing.’ It was beautiful,” she reminisced.

Today, Bastos felt despair over the future of the country of her five grandchildren, whose names are tattooed onto her right wrist. “Bolsonaro represents everything that is bad: sewage, rottenness, shame, decay, the abyss,” she said. “I just cannot understand how this man was elected.”

Tibiriçá was more upbeat about the opposition’s prospects as it prepared for two crucial mobilizations. “My sense is that it will be big,” he said of Saturday’s protest, outlining his reasons for wanting Bolsonaro out. “I lived through one dictatorship – I don’t want to live through another.”

Süssekind was 15 years away from being born in 1984, when central Rio witnessed one of the largest demonstrations in Brazilian history. But as he prepared to march this weekend, the student activist said he felt he was now at the vanguard of an equally momentous struggle.

History would remember the “grim page” that was the Bolsonaro era, when democracy came under siege and tens of thousands of lives were needlessly lost because of the president’s anti-scientific denial of Covid. “But it will also remember that there were those who defended democracy and defended life,” Süssekind said.

“This is an important, historic moment and I’m certain I’ll look back on it with pride.”

Hidden chamber found in Vanguard Cave – part of Gorham's Cave Complex in Gibraltar

Vanguard Cave. Credit: Gipmetal77 modded by Victuallers/Wikimedia Commons.

 CC BY-SA 3.0

A team of researchers with the Gibraltar National Museum has found a hidden chamber in one of the caves that make up Gorham's Cave Complex in Gibraltar. They have posted a press statement on their website describing what they have found in the chamber thus far.

Prior research has shown that both modern humans and Neanderthals lived in parts of Gorham's Cave Complex in Gibraltar, though not at the same time. Both groups left behind a treasure trove of artifacts, including tools, butchered remains of animals and fossils. For that reason, the site has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 2012, a team at the Gibraltar National Museum studied the caves. As part of that mission, they sought chambers they believed were hidden in the caves. Such chambers are common in caves formed close to the sea due to environmental factors. Over the course of nearly a decade, the search for hidden chambers came up empty. Then, as one group was searching the back of Vanguard Cave, they found evidence of soft sediment, which they believed could be hiding a chamber. Some digging proved their hunch to be correct; behind the sediment plug, they found a large chamber.

The chamber was located higher up than the cave and was approximately 13 meters long. The amount of sediment in the plug suggested that the chamber had been sealed for tens of thousands of years. On its floor, they found the remains of a Griffon vulture, a hyena and a lynx, animals fully capable of climbing up into the chamber. But they also found the shell of a dog whelk—a type of sea snail, which the researchers note would not have been able to climb up into the chamber. This, they note, suggests something carried it up there. The team also found scratches on the walls of the chamber, though they were unable to discover their source.

Initial estimates suggest Neanderthals likely were living in the area during the time the chamber was open, though the researchers have not yet found any evidence. They plan to begin digging in the chamber floor to see what other evidence might be found.

More information: www.gibmuseum.gi/news/recent-d … at-vanguard-cave-335

© 2021 Science X Network

Griffon vulture - Wikipedia The griffon vulture (Gyps fulvus) is a large Old World vulture in the bird of prey family Accipitridae. It is also known as the Eurasian griffon. It is not to be confused with a different species, Rüppell's griffon vulture (Gyps rueppellii). It is closely related to the white-backed vulture (Gyps africanus).

Dog whelk - Wikipedia

The dog whelk, dogwhelk, or Atlantic dogwinkle (scientific name Nucella lapillus) is a species of predatory sea snail, a carnivorous marine gastropod in the family Muricidae, the rock snails.

Nucella lapillus was originally described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae as Buccinum lapillus (the basionym).

Cave chamber closed for 40,000 years could hold the key to the lives of Neanderthals
By Jeevan Ravindran, CNN 1 day ago

© courtesy Gibraltar National Museum A 13-meter chamber in Gibraltar's Vanguard Cave, uncovered by archaeologists for the first time in 40,000 years.

The discovery of a chamber at least 40,000 years old in a Gibraltar cave previously inhabited by Neanderthals could lead to groundbreaking new finds about their lifestyles, according to researchers.

Archaeologists from the Gibraltar National Museum have been working since 2012 to find potential chambers and passages blocked by sediment in Vanguard Cave -- part of the UNESCO World Heritage site Gorham's Cave Complex.

Last month, they found the 13-meter (42-foot) deep chamber at the back of the cave, along with a number of discoveries including lynx, hyaena and griffon vulture remains, as well as scratch marks on the walls made by an unidentified carnivore.

Clive Finlayson, director and chief scientist at the Gibraltar National Museum, told CNN Tuesday the most impressive find was perhaps a large whelk, or a marine mollusc, because it suggested the newly discovered parts of the cave had been inhabited by Neanderthals.

"The whelk is at the back of that cave... it's probably about 20 meters from the beach," he said. "Somebody took that whelk in there... over 40,000 years ago. So that's already given me a hint that people have been in there, which is not perhaps too surprising. Those people, because of the age, can only be Neanderthals."

Neanderthals, heavily built Stone Age hominins that disappeared about 40,000 years ago, lived in Europe long before Homo sapiens arrived.

Finlayson said the team had also found the milk tooth of a Neanderthal around 4 years old, and hypothesized that they could have been dragged into the cave by a hyaena.

Entering the cave for the first time gave Finlayson "goosebumps," he said, adding it was one of the most exciting discoveries of his career -- unique for the quality of the preservation and the possibilities of new information it presented.

"How many times in your life are you going to find something that nobody's been into for 40,000 years? It only comes once in your lifetime, I think."

Evidence of an earthquake around 4,000 years ago was also visible due to a change in ice formations, with a previously formed ice curtain cut off and stalagmites growing under it.

The discovery is only the first stage of a long excavation, and Finlayson told CNN the chamber was only the roof of the cave, with a great deal of work remaining to uncover the rest of it.

"As we dig, it's only going to get bigger and bigger and bigger," he said. "So the chances are we have an enormous cave there. And as we go down there may even be so passages. So it's extremely exciting."

Finlayson said the remaining work would take decades if not longer, and that he hoped to use technology to take DNA samples from the sediment and uncover more clues of Neanderthal lifestyles, including burial rituals -- and potentially find footprints too.

© courtesy Gibraltar National Museum Scratch marks on the wall of the chamber, made by an unidentified carnivore.

Just a single nation is on track to meet its climate targets, study says

Neil Ever Osborne and M.A. Jacquemain 

The Weather Network

A new rating system has determined that almost every country in the world is failing to meet the emissions targets required to avert the climate crisis. The top global economies, including the G20 nations, are shirking commitments set out in the Paris Agreement, the analysis found.

As climate impacts around the world manifest with more frequency and intensity, analysts continue to cite the 1.5°C rate of warming as a threshold not to be crossed. The latest IPCC report outlined the urgent necessity of addressing the 2030 emissions gap if there is any hope of limiting warming to that 1.5°C benchmark.

The rating system, from Climate Action Tracker (CAT), found that updates from nations on Paris Agreement targets for 2030 show a narrowing of the emissions gap by less than 15 per cent since 2015. The analysis considers this slow rate of narrowing a “code red” level of concern.

© Provided by The Weather Network

Climate Action Tracker (2021). 2030 Emissions Gap. May 2021. 

Available at: https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-emissions-gaps/ 

Copyright © 2021 by Climate Analytics and NewClimate Institute. All rights reserved.

“Momentum on updating 2030 targets has stalled since May, with no major emitters putting forward stronger climate targets,” Claire Stockwell, a Senior Climate Policy Analyst with Climate Analytics, told The Weather Network.

“Our analysis — from May 2021 — showed that if all net zero targets that have been announced or are being considered are achieved, global warming by 2100 could be as low as 2.0°C. Yet, reaching these net zero goals will not be possible without stronger near-term targets and action on the ground to cut emissions,” said Stockwell.

While the assessment is damning to the global effort as a whole, the evaluation of each country’s contributions varies. Of Australia, Brazil, Mexico, and Russia, among others, the report states that they have “failed to lift ambition at all,” submitting “the same or even less ambitious 2030 targets” than in 2015.

Only one developed nation — the UK — has put forward targets rated “1.5°C compatible” by the CAT rating system. But domestic targets are only one prong of the commitments laid out in Paris. When also factoring in “international climate finance” and “policies,” even the UK is failing.

© Provided by The Weather NetworkClimate Action Tracker (2021). Net Zero Targets Assessment. September 2021. 

Available at: https://climateactiontracker.org/press/analysis-despite-code-red-on-climate-target-update-momentum-at-a-standstill   

Copyright © 2021 by Climate Analytics and NewClimate Institute. All rights reserved.

Canada, needing to improve across the board — in targets, policies, and finance — has been rated as “Highly Insufficient.” The analysis has found that Canada has failed to address carbon removal options and to provide “clarity on fairness” of its domestic targets.

“Canada needs to improve on all fronts, especially with respect to policy implementation and the provision of climate finance,” said Stockwell. “The country’s new and stronger 2030 target is not quite Paris compatible. Its revised climate plan and additional measures announced in the 2021 federal budget are insufficient to meet that target. Canada continues to face challenges in implementing policies,” said Stockwell.

Other nations dubbed “Highly Insufficient” by the report include emerging powers like China, India, and Brazil. While global players like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran have been rated “Critically Insufficient.”

© Provided by The Weather Network

Climate Action Tracker (2021). Climate Action Tracker Rating Components. September 2021. 

Available at: https://climateactiontracker.org/press/analysis-despite-code-red-on-climate-target-update-momentum-at-a-standstill

Copyright © 2021 by Climate Analytics and NewClimate Institute. All rights reserved.

In what is perhaps the report’s most glaring indictment, only one country — the developing nation of Gambia — received an overall rating of “1.5°C Paris Agreement compatible.”

There were, however, some points of optimism. Recent “significant” updates to climate targets and policies instituted by the EU and the United States — under the new Biden administration — have been called “positive movements” that must “urgently be followed by all other countries.”

“Many studies point to the economic benefits of acting on climate change: from avoiding the worst impacts, to co-benefits like health and wellbeing,” said Stockwell. “On the technical side, we know that renewable energy is far cheaper to install than fossil fuel power.”

In the lead up to COP26, the critical climate conference in Glasgow, the key word is urgent. The rating system makes clear that global emissions must be cut by 50 per cent before 2030 — it adds that currently “governments are nowhere near this.”

Thumbnail credit: Peter Cade/ Stone/ Getty Images

Families of Canadians trapped in Syria turn to Federal Court to force government help

OTTAWA — The families of Canadians trapped in northern Syria are asking the Federal Court to force Ottawa to help them

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The 11 families say in a court filing that the government's refusal to step in amounts to breaches of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Citizenship Act and the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, among other statutes.


The application was submitted on behalf of several Canadians with relatives, including more than a dozen children, trapped in Syria, and calls on the court to order the government to take "all reasonable steps" to repatriate them.

The trapped Canadians are among the estimated thousands of foreign nationals held in camps in northern Syria by Kurdish forces that won back the war-torn region from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The Kurds suspected many of them of being ISIL sympathizers, but the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and the organization Human Rights Watch say they are innocent victims caught up in Syria's civil war and have denounced the Canadian government for not repatriating them, as some European countries have done with their citizens.

"Despite their repeated pleas for help, the Canadian government has left them to languish indefinitely in degrading and inhumane conditions. It's deeply troubling that these detainees and their families in Canada would have to resort to taking their government to court to end this paralysis," said Farida Deif, head of the Canadian branch of Human Rights Watch.

The applicants in the court filing are not named to protect their security, but one relative is speaking out about her sister, who is on a life-threatening hunger strike and desperately needs medical attention.

The Canadian branch of Human Rights Watch is also drawing attention to the plight of the woman, identified as Kimberly Polman, being held in one of the squalid camps rife with COVID-19 and unsanitary conditions.

"Her life and the lives of more than 40 other Canadians are on the line," said Deif. "Prime Minister Trudeau has the power to bring these Canadians home. He just needs to find the moral courage to do so."

Polman's sister, who spoke to The Canadian Press on condition of anonymity because she fears reprisals against her family, said she wrote to Global Affairs Canada last week to say her sister is suffering from hepatitis and failing kidneys and won't live much longer if she does not receive help.

The woman described her sister as a troubled woman who was suffering from post-traumatic stress and facing other challenges about six years ago, and who surprised her family by turning up in Syria.

According to her sister, Polman apparently met a man online who was an ISIL fighter and married him, though they soon separated. She was later thrown in prison.

"All of this was a shock to our family. I had no idea that she would ever entertain this," Polman's sister said in an interview Thursday. "She was going through a really hard time ... but I had no idea."

John Babcock, a spokesman for Global Affairs Canada, said the government is talking with Syrian and Kurdish authorities for information on the Canadians in the region. The government is "particularly concerned with cases of Canadian children in the region," he added.

"Given the security situation on the ground, the government of Canada's ability to provide consular assistance in Syria is extremely limited."

The government cannot comment on specific cases because of privacy concerns, said Babcock.

Last year, the Canadian government repatriated a five-year-old orphaned girl, but Ottawa has not committed to helping more of the trapped Canadians return.

Polman's sister said her sibling has denounced ISIL publicly, which has made her life much more perilous within the camp. She said her sister was brainwashed by ISIL, which she described as a cult. She suggested her sister's plight should serve as a cautionary tale for helping people who suffer mental illness.

"We need to pay better attention to people who are struggling ... so that they get the help they need."

Nothing her sister has done should deprive her of the right to receive help from her government in her time of need, the woman said.

"None of us have citizenship by merit. All of us have citizenship because we were born into it or we were given it," she said.

"And so, on the basis of her being a Canadian citizen, and a human being, she deserves to be to be granted all the rights and privileges of being a sensitive human being in our world, just like anyone else."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2021.

Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press