Ford to suspend production for two days at Mexico plant on material shortage -union


Ford logo is seen at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan

Sharay Angulo
Thu, October 7, 2021,


MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -U.S. automaker Ford will temporarily suspend production from Oct. 11-12 at its Hermosillo plant in Mexico because of a shortage of material, the plant's labor union said on Thursday.

Workers will be paid 75% of salaries on those days, the union added in a statement.

Ford produces its Bronco Sport SUV at the Hermosillo plant in Sonora. It did not specify which materials were in short supply.

Ford did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other automakers have been struggling with a chips shortage as manufacturers shifted production toward parts needed for laptop computers, cell phones and video games during the pandemic.

Rivals General Motors and Volkswagen have suspended operations several times this year. On Wednesday, the Mexican unit of Nissan said it would temporarily stop production during October at two plants.

Earlier this month, Ford said it would suspend production at its Flat Rock, Michigan, plant and at parts of its Kansas City plant.

(Reporting by Sharay Angulo; Editing by Leslie Adler and Dan Grebler)

Starbucks Korea workers protest for improved conditions

Kim Ji-woo & Kim Tae-gyu, UPI News Korea

A truck carrying a message from Starbucks Korea employees drives past Seoul streets on Thursday. Workers say that the company is carrying out customer events without considering the workload of employees.

 Photo by Kim Ji-woo/UPI News Korea

SEOUL, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Employees of Starbucks Korea staged a protest in Seoul against excessive workloads due to the company's marketing events.

The employees, who mobilized trucks for the Thursday protest, said the company treats them inhumanely. This is the first protest for Starbucks Korea, which does not have a trade union.

The trucks displayed a message that read "Starbucks employees are not expendable. We want a working environment where we can focus on providing one cup of coffee to one customer."

The two trucks drove past various locations in Seoul, including the country's first Starbucks store near Ewha Womans University and its 1,000th branch in southern Seoul.

Employees of Starbucks Korea decided to stage the event last week after the company offered limited-edition reusable cups in a recent marketing event, which attracted crowds.

Customers stood in long lines in many Starbucks stores across the country, as baristas and other workers struggled to serve them.

Starbucks Korea CEO Song Ho-seop apologized via an internal email, but it failed to calm the angry employees.

"Starbucks Korea could expect that its marketing events would increase the workload of its employees. I don't know why the company did not prepare for that," Inha University Professor Lee Eun-hee told UPI NewsKorea. "So many corporations talk about customer satisfaction. To satisfy customers, companies are required to satisfy their employees first. Starbucks Korea appears not to understand this tenet."

A Starbucks Korea representative said in a telephone interview that the company will come up with various measures for its employees after listening to their complaints.

Shinsegae Group set up a joint venture with Starbucks to open the coffee chain's stores in South Korea in 1999. The group's vice chairman, Chung Yong-jin, spearheaded the process.

Starbucks has become the country's dominant coffee chain.

Earlier this year, Starbucks sold all of its stake in Starbucks Korea to Shinsegae.

South Korea is one of Starbucks' biggest markets, with the number of stores reaching roughly 1,500, according to New York-based data platform Knoema.

GRIFTER IN CHIEF
House report: Trump's D.C. hotel hid losses, foreign money when he was president

The Trump International Hotel is seen at 1100 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C., on July 3. 

File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Former President Donald Trump's Washington, D.C., hotel lost tens of millions of dollars during the four years he was in office and tried to hide millions of dollars in payments from foreign governments, according to documents released Friday by Democratic House lawmakers.

The Democratic-controlled House oversight and reform committee said documents released by the General Services Administration also show that Trump wildly overstated the Trump International Hotel's revenue during his tenure in the White House.

The panel said Trump claimed that the hotel made more than $150 million over that period when it actually lost $70 million.

Committee Chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., said in a letter to the GSA that the information raises "troubling" concerns about the hotel, which is housed in a historic building that Trump leases from the federal government.

The 27-page letter details how Trump's business failed to disclose the losses and debts in public filings and lease documents and highlights conflicts of interest while Trump was president.

"The documents provided by GSA raise new and troubling questions about former

President Trump's lease with GSA and the agency's ability to manage the former president's conflicts of interest during his term in office when he was effectively on both sides of the contract, as landlord and tenant," they said in the letter.

Maloney and Connolly said due to the hotel's direct connection to Trump, foreign and domestic interests spent money there as a way to curry favor with the American president.

They said, for example, the documents show that Deutsche Bank allowed Trump in 2018 to delay making principal payments on the hotel for six years.

"Without this deferral, the hotel may have needed to pay tens of millions of additional dollars to Deutsche Bank at a time when it was already facing steep losses," Maloney and Connolly said in their letter.

"Trump did not publicly disclose this significant benefit from a foreign bank while he was president."

The two also said foreign governments paid more than $3.7 million at the hotel between 2017 and 2021.

"Internal Trump Organization documents raise questions about how foreign government payments were accounted for by the Trump Hotel," they added. "Rather than simply transfer the profits ... to the Trump Hotel's parent companies for payment to the U.S. Treasury, the Trump Hotel used the money to offset Trump Organization intra-company loans."

The committee also said the documents show that Trump accepted millions of dollars in undisclosed emoluments, hid hundreds of millions in debts from the GSA when his company bid on the hotel's building, and "made it impossible for GSA to properly enforce the lease's conflict-of-interest restrictions by engaging in opaque transactions with other affiliated entities."

"This new evidence raises many questions that require further investigation and action by the committee," Maloney and Connolly said.

The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to the panel's report Friday.

Trump hotel lost $70M despite millions in foreign business
By BERNARD CONDON

This March 11, 2019 file photo, shows the north entrance of the Trump International in Washington. Former President Donald Trump's company lost more than $70 million operating his Washington D.C. hotel while in office, forcing him at one point get a reprieve from a major bank on payments on a loan, according to documents released Friday, Oct. 8, 2021, by a House committee investigating his business.

 (AP Photo/Mark Tenally, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump’s company lost more than $70 million on his Washington, D.C., hotel during his four years in office despite taking in millions from foreign governments, according to documents released Friday by a congressional committee investigating his business.

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform said the luxury hotel just a few blocks from the White House was struggling so badly that the Trump Organization had to inject $27 million from other parts of its business and got preferential treatment from a major lender to delay payments on a $170 million loan.

The committee said the losses came despite an estimated $3.7 million in revenue from foreign governments, business that ethics experts say Trump should have refused because it posed conflicts of interest with his role as president.

The Trump Organization said in a statement that the findings of the Democrat-led committee were misleading and false, and it did not receive any special treatment from a lender.

“This report is nothing more than continued political harassment in a desperate attempt to mislead the American public and defame Trump in pursuit of their own agenda,” the company said.

The documents from the committee, the first public disclosure of audited financial statements from the hotel, show steep losses despite a brisk business from lobbyists, businesses and Republican groups while Trump was in office.

The alleged loan delay by Deutsche Bank to the president was an “undisclosed preferential treatment” that should have been reported by the president because the bank has substantial business in the U.S., the committee said in a letter to the General Services Administration, the federal agency overseeing the hotel. The hotel is leased by the federal government to the Trump Organization.

“The documents ... raise new and troubling questions about former President Trump’s lease with GSA and the agency’s ability to manage the former president’s conflicts of interest during his term in office when he was effectively on both sides of the contract, as landlord and tenant,” the committee’s Democratic co-chairs, Carolyn Maloney of New York and Gerald Connolly of Virginia, wrote in their letter.

The GSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

For its part, Deutsche Bank said in a statement that the committee made “several inaccurate statements” about the loan agreement but declined to elaborate, citing loan privacy concerns.

The committee’s letter to the GSA said the hotel losses contradict the “exaggerated image of financial success” that the president was portraying in the personal financial disclosure reports he sent to a federal ethics agency each year. But those reports require only revenue to be disclosed, not profits, an apples-to-oranges comparison that one of Trump’s sons seized upon in a tweet blasting the committee.

“Please learn the difference between Gross Revenue and Net Profit before writing us long letters,” Eric Trump wrote, calling the committee “incompetent.”

Trump’s company has been trying to sell the 263-room hotel since the fall of 2019 but has struggled to find buyers during the coronavirus pandemic at a reported initial asking price of more than $500 million.

The head of government ethics watchdog CREW said the losses shed new light on Trump’s refusal to ban foreign governments from patronizing his business.

“The only lifeline was the corrupt business coming from people and organizations and governments seeking to influence him,” said Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “His use of the presidency to get business was absolutely essential to stemming the flow of losses.”

To allay concerns about conflict of interest, Trump promised to send payments to the U.S. Treasury on foreign government earnings from his business annually. The committee said the Washington hotel payments under this deal totaled more than $350,000 in the first three years of his presidency. Critics of the voluntary deal say Trump’s definition of earnings is unclear and gave the president plenty of room to lowball the figure.

Though the Washington hotel was hurt badly by pandemic-related shutdowns last year, the audited financial statements released by the committee show it was suffering every year it was open before that, too. It lost a nearly $50 million in the first three years of his presidency, then $22 million last year.

Biden restores protections stripped by Trump in wild areas

US President Joe Biden signs three proclamations restoring protections stripped by the Trump administration for Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts national monuments 

Issued on: 08/10/2021 - 

Olivier DOULIERY AFP

Washington (AFP)

President Joe Biden on Friday restored environmental protections for two wild Utah expanses linked to America's indigenous history, and also a biodiverse area of the Atlantic, reversing his predecessor Donald Trump's move to open the national monuments to mining and fishing.

Biden signed the proclamations at a ceremony on the North Lawn at the White House, restoring the full size and status at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in Utah, as well as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts area off the east coast.

"After the last administration chipped away their protections, today I'm proud to announce the protection and expansion of three of our most treasured national monuments," he said.

Trump downgraded the three monuments in a move popular with industry groups but outraging environmentalists and indigenous tribes.

Biden also became the first US president to issue a proclamation for Indigenous Peoples' Day, which coincides with the increasingly controversial national holiday celebrating explorer Christopher Columbus.

"For generations, federal policies systematically sought to assimilate and displace native people and eradicate native cultures. Today, we recognize indigenous peoples' resilience and strength, as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made," Biden said in the proclamation.

In a separate proclamation celebrating Columbus, Biden emphasized the immigration from Italy over subsequent centuries after the navigator opened up the Americas to Europeans, while on a voyage searching for a route to Asia.

With increasing focus on the terrible costs paid by peoples already living on the continent as European settlers expanded westward, Columbus is often seen today as a problematic figure.

Biden reflected this, saying, "We also acknowledge the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on tribal nations and indigenous communities."

"It is a measure of our greatness as a nation that we do not seek to bury these shameful episodes of our past -- that we face them honestly, we bring them to the light," Biden said. "For Native Americans, western exploration ushered in a wave of devastation."

© 2021 AFP

Biden restores 3 national monuments in Utah, New England downsized by Trump



President Joe Biden, with Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland (R) and White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy, participate in a signing ceremony to restore and protect three national monuments on Friday. Photo by Shawn Thew/UPI | License Photo

Oct. 8 (UPI) -- President Joe Biden restored lands in three national monuments Friday, calling it "the easiest thing I've ever done so far as president."

He signed three proclamations securing the new protections during a ceremony on the White House's North Lawn, accompanied by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, lawmakers, and dozens of tribal leaders, conservationists and environmental activists.

The orders restore -- and even add -- land to the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in Utah, and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument in New England. Protections for all three locations were rolled back by former President Donald Trump.

"These protections provide a bridge to our past, but they also build a bridge to a safer, more sustainable future," Biden said. "One where we strengthen our economy and pass on a healthy planet to our children and grandchildren."

Hope Tribe Vice Chairman Clark Tenakhongva said the land that comprises Bears Ears National Monument is sacred to his tribe.

"It's on the same level as any kind of church or foundation or facility," he said. "It's very important to the lifeline of all nations and all people."

Haaland, the nation's first Native American interior secretary, praised Biden for listening to Indigenous people concerning the protection of the lands.

"The president's actions today write the new chapter that embraces Indigenous knowledge, ensures tribal leadership has a seat at the table and demonstrates that by working together, we can build a brighter future for us all."

Officials said Biden will slightly enlarge 1.3 million acres in the Bears Ears National Monument that were previously under federal protection, as well as 1.8 million acres in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

The restoration in Northeast Canyons and Seamounts -- the first U.S. marine monuments in the Atlantic Ocean -- will return protections to sea canyons and underwater mountains near the New England coast.

RELATED U.S. national parks boost online messages to reduce risky behavior

Former President Barack Obama created the boundaries for the controversial Bears Ears monument in late 2016, but Trump scaled them back the following year. Trump, in fact, removed more than 2 million acres from the monuments in Utah.

Trump's scaling back federal protections opened up the lands, which are sacred to several Native American tribes, to mineral mining.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, was critical of Biden's move Friday, saying the Utah monuments were being "used as a political football between administrations."

"The president squandered the opportunity to build consensus by working with stakeholders to find a permanent, legislative solution to resolve the longstanding dispute over the monuments' boundaries & management, which would've brought certainty to and benefited all stakeholders," he tweeted.

Environmental advocates applauded Biden's decision.

"Bears Ears Will Be Protected! We applaud expected Biden administration actions to restore protections for Bears Ears and its one-of-a-kind and sacred landscape," the Native American Rights Fund said in a statement.

"Bears Ears protections were established after years of negotiations, input, and advocacy on behalf of tribes, states, non-governmental organizations and the public. Those hard-earned protections were removed in 2017. The area subsequently saw a rash of exploitation and abuse by vandals, commercial interests and misinformed tourists."

Republican politicians in Utah oppose the move to restore protections to the monuments.

"We expected and hoped for closer collaboration between our state and national leaders, especially on matters that directly impact Utah and our citizens," Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, Attorney General Sean Reyes, state Senate President J. Stuart Adams and state House Speaker Brad Wilson said in a joint statement.

"The president's decision to enlarge the monuments again is a tragic missed opportunity. It fails to provide certainty as well as the funding for law enforcement, research, and other protections which the monuments need and which only Congressional action can offer."

Biden restores protections to Utah land where dinosaurs once roamed

Issued on: 09/10/2021 -

In this file photo taken in July 2021 researchers work to excavate dinosaur bones and fossils during an expedition at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah 

Patrick T. FALLON AFP/File

Denver (AFP)

Utah land rich in dinosaur fossils has regained protection stripped away by former President Donald Trump, easing fears that they would be ravaged by mining and other commercial activity.

"Close to 10 percent of all dinosaurs known in the world are from Utah," said Jim Kirkland, a paleontologist who has explored Utah's Grand Staircase monument area for nearly 50 years. "It's pretty remarkable."

Grand Staircase has a worldwide reputation for the quality and range of dinosaur fossils found.

At the end of 2017, Trump's administration pulled back borders of three protected areas, two of them in Utah, opening previously safeguarded land to mining and fishing.

The move was popular with industry groups but angered conservationists, researchers, and indigenous tribes.

"When they cut the boundaries back, some sites that are near and dear to my heart, that I had discovered, were chopped out," Kirkland told AFP.

He was left to hope that the remains of triceratops and other dinosaurs would not be obliterated in the name of corporate profit.

President Joe Biden on Friday restored environmental protections for two wild Utah expanses linked to America's indigenous history, and also a biodiverse area of the Atlantic.

Biden signed the proclamations at a ceremony on the North Lawn at the White House, restoring the full size and status at Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in Utah, as well as the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts area off the east coast.

"After the last administration chipped away their protections, today I'm proud to announce the protection and expansion of three of our most treasured national monuments," he said.

- Bones vs Coal -

For paleontologists, few regions in the world come close to the Rocky Mountains, with the dinosaur treasures buried there.

During the Late Cretaceous period -- 100 to 66 million ago years ago, just before the dinosaurs went extinct -- all kinds of dinosaurs and mammals inhabited the area.

Researchers continue to be amazed by the diversity and abundance of dinosaur bones found here, along with how well they have been preserved.

A few scattered vertebrae are not enough to identify a previously unknown species. To do that, scientists need many parts of a skeleton and, ideally, specimens from several of the creatures.

"So many of our duck-billed dinosaurs, like this one, are still covered with the impressions of their skin; you can see their scales," said Joe Sertich, dinosaurs curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

"The mudstone and sandstone of Grand Staircase preserve some of the best quality dinosaur bones you'll see anywhere in the world."

But the land is also rich in minerals such as coal and it is of interest to the tourism industry and ranchers.

Sertich believes the competing interests could co-exist, but taking away protected status opens the door to theft, vandalism, and destruction.

"When you operate a coal mine... many of these fossils are lost forever," Sertich told AFP during a tour of the museum.

- The last dinosaur -

And while some may think that digging up dinosaur bones is not a priority, scientists say studying how they lived and died provides a better understanding of climate change threatening life today.

"By going back into dinosaur ecosystems, we learn a lot about the world around us right now," Sertich said.

"This is the only way we can learn how evolution works on millions-of-year time scales."

He has been combing the Grand Staircase for fossils for 17 years.

"Being able to find to find new dinosaurs every time you spend one or two weeks out in the field is unlike anything you can do anywhere," the museum curator said.

Sertich pointed to bones from a new species of domed dinosaur that were unearthed just five meters from Trump's shrunken boundary line.

"By preserving a place like this, we have this repository where dinosaurs can always be discovered," Sertich said.

© 2021 AFP

Biden is first president to mark Indigenous Peoples’ Day

By ZEKE MILLER and ELLEN KNICKMEYER

President Joe Biden gestures on the North Lawn of the White House in Washington, Friday, Oct. 8, 2021, with White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy, Brenda Mallory, chair of the council on environmental quality, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland during an event announcing that his administration is restoring protections for two sprawling national monuments in Utah that have been at the center of a long-running public lands dispute, and a separate marine conservation area in New England that recently has been used for commercial fishing. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday issued the first-ever presidential proclamation of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, lending the most significant boost yet to efforts to refocus the federal holiday celebrating Christopher Columbus toward an appreciation of Native peoples.

The day will be observed Oct. 11, along with Columbus Day, which is established by Congress. While Native Americans have campaigned for years for local and national days in recognition of the country’s indigenous peoples, Biden’s announcement appeared to catch many by surprise.

“This was completely unexpected. Even though we’ve been talking about it and wanting it for so long,” said Hillary Kempenich, an artist and member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. In 2019, she and other tribal members successfully campaigned for her town of Grand Forks, N.D., to replace Columbus Day with a day recognizing Native peoples.

“I’m kind of overwhelmed with joy,” said Kempenich. She was waiting Friday afternoon for her eighth-grade daughter, who grew up challenging teachers’ depictions of Columbus, to come home from school so Kempenich could share the news.

“For generations, Federal policies systematically sought to assimilate and displace Native people and eradicate Native cultures,” Biden wrote in the Indigenous Peoples’ Day proclamation. “Today, we recognize Indigenous peoples’ resilience and strength as well as the immeasurable positive impact that they have made on every aspect of American society.”

In a separate proclamation on Columbus Day, Biden praised the role of Italian Americans in U.S. society, but also referenced the violence and harm Columbus and other explorers of the age brought about on the Americas.

Making landfall in what is now the Bahamas on Oct. 12, 1492, Columbus, an Italian, was the first of a wave of European explorers who decimated Native populations in the Americas in quests for gold and other wealth, including people to enslave.

“Today, we also acknowledge the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Tribal Nations and Indigenous communities,” Biden wrote. “It is a measure of our greatness as a Nation that we do not seek to bury these shameful episodes of our past — that we face them honestly, we bring them to the light, and we do all we can to address them.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden “felt strongly” about recognizing Indigenous Peoples Day. Asked if Biden might seek to end marking Columbus Day as a federal holiday, she replied, “I don’t have any predictions at this point.”

John Echohawk, executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, said the president’s decision to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day was an important step.

“Big changes happen from each small step, and we hope this administration intends to continue making positive steps towards shaping a brighter future for all citizens,” Echohawak said.

Biden’s acknowledgment of the suffering of Native Americans also marked a break from President Donald Trump’s ardent defense of “intrepid heroes” like Columbus in his 2020 proclamation of the holiday.

“Sadly, in recent years, radical activists have sought to undermine Christopher Columbus’ legacy,” Trump said at the time. “These extremists seek to replace discussion of his vast contributions with talk of failings, his discoveries with atrocities, and his achievements with transgressions.”

Biden made the announcement on the same day the White House was disclosing its plans to restore territory to two sprawling national monuments in Utah that Trump had stripped of protections. One, Bears Ears, is on land that Native American tribes consider sacred.

Biden’s campaign against Trump saw tribal activists mobilize to get out votes for the Democrat, in activism that tribal members credited with helping Biden win some Western states.

Anti-vaccine chiropractors rising force of misinformation

LONG READ

By MICHELLE R. SMITH, SCOTT BAUER and MIKE CATALINI

1 of 7

People listen to speakers at the Chiropractic Society Health Freedom revival Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021 in Oconomowoc, Wis. At a time when the surgeon general says misinformation has become an urgent threat to public health, an investigation by The Associated Press found a vocal and influential group of chiropractors has been capitalizing on the pandemic by sowing fear and mistrust of vaccines. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps)

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The flashy postcard, covered with images of syringes, beckoned people to attend Vax-Con ’21 to learn “the uncensored truth” about COVID-19 vaccines.

Participants traveled from around the country to a Wisconsin Dells resort for a sold-out convention that was, in fact, a sea of misinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccines and the pandemic. The featured speaker was the anti-vaccine activist who appeared in the 2020 movie “Plandemic,” which pushed false COVID-19 stories into the mainstream. One session after another discussed bogus claims about the health dangers of mask wearing and vaccines.

The convention was organized by members of a profession that has become a major purveyor of vaccine misinformation during the pandemic: chiropractors.

At a time when the surgeon general says misinformation has become an urgent threat to public health, an investigation by The Associated Press found a vocal and influential group of chiropractors has been capitalizing on the pandemic by sowing fear and mistrust of vaccines.

They have touted their supplements as alternatives to vaccines, written doctor’s notes to allow patients to get out of mask and immunization mandates, donated large sums of money to anti-vaccine organizations and sold anti-vaccine ads on Facebook and Instagram, the AP discovered. One chiropractor gave thousands of dollars to a Super PAC that hosted an anti-vaccine, pro-Donald Trump rally near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

They have also been the leading force behind anti-vaccine events like the one in Wisconsin, where hundreds of chiropractors from across the U.S. shelled out $299 or more to attend. The AP found chiropractors were allowed to earn continuing education credits to maintain their licenses in at least 10 states.

Public health advocates are alarmed by the number of chiropractors who have hitched themselves to the anti-vaccine movement and used their public prominence and sheen of medical expertise to undermine the nation’s response to a COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 700,000 Americans.

“People trust them. They trust their authority, but they also feel like they’re a nice alternative to traditional medicine,” said Erica DeWald of Vaccinate Your Family, who tracks figures in the anti-vaccine movement. “Mainstream medicine will refer people out to a chiropractor not knowing that they could be exposed to misinformation. You go because your back hurts, and then suddenly you don’t want to vaccinate your kids.”

The purveyors of vaccine misinformation represent a small but vocal minority of the nation’s 70,000 chiropractors, many of whom advocate for vaccines. In some places, chiropractors have helped organize vaccine clinics or been authorized to give COVID-19 shots.

And chiropractic is not the only health care profession whose members have been associated with COVID-19 misinformation: Some medical doctors have spread dangerous falsehoods about vaccines, a problem so concerning that the national group representing state medical boards warned in July that doctors who push vaccine disinformation could have their licenses revoked.

But the pandemic gave a new platform to a faction of chiropractors who had been stirring up anti-vaccine misinformation long before COVID-19 arrived, driven by interpretations of 19th century chiropractic beliefs that medicine interferes with the body’s natural flow of energy.

Chiropractic was founded in 1895 by D.D. Palmer, a “magnetic healer” who argued that most disease was a result of misaligned vertebrae. Its early leaders rejected the use of surgery and drugs, as well as the idea that germs cause disease. Instead, they believed the body has an innate intelligence, and the power to heal itself if it is functioning properly, and that chiropractic care can help it do that.

This led many to reject vaccines -- even though vaccines are not within their scope of practice. Instead, they treat conditions through spine and musculoskeletal adjustments, as well as exercise and nutritional counseling. A 2015 Gallup survey found an estimated 33.5 million adults had seen a chiropractor in the previous 12 months.

___

Even before the pandemic, many chiropractors became active in the so-called “health freedom” movement, advocating in state legislatures from Massachusetts to South Dakota to allow more people to skip vaccinations.

Since 2019, the AP found, chiropractors and chiropractor-backed groups have worked to influence vaccine-related legislation and policy in at least 24 states. For example, an organization started by a chiropractor and a co-owner of a chiropractic business takes credit for torpedoing a New Jersey bill in early 2020 that would have ended the state’s religious exemption for vaccines.

Then the pandemic hit, creating new avenues for profit.

The first complaint the Federal Trade Commission filed under the COVID-19 Consumer Protection Act was in April against a Missouri chiropractor. It alleges he falsely advertised that “vaccines do not stop the spread of the virus,” but that supplements he sold for $24 per bottle plus $9.95 shipping did. He says he did not advertise his supplements that way and is fighting the allegations in court.

Nebraska chiropractor Ben Tapper landed on the “Disinformation Dozen,” a list compiled by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which says he is among the small group of people responsible for nearly two-thirds of anti-vaccine content online. Tapper went viral with posts downplaying the dangers of COVID-19, criticizing “Big Pharma,” and stoking fears of the vaccine.

Tapper said he has been called a “quack” and lost patients, and that Venmo and PayPal seized his accounts. In his view, the public is being told that they need a vaccine to be healthy, which he doesn’t believe is true. He said vaccines have no place in what he calls the “wellness and prevention paradigm.”

“We’re trying to defend our rights,” Tapper told AP, when asked why so many chiropractors are involved in the anti-vaccine movement. “We’re defending our scope of practice.”

Another chiropractor, who has frequently appeared on the right-wing show operated by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to sell supplements, was also a donor to an organization that was behind the anti-vaccine demonstration on Jan. 6.

It’s unclear how widespread anti-vaccine sentiment is in the ranks of chiropractors, but there are some clues.

Stephen Perle, a professor at the University of Bridgeport School of Chiropractic, recently surveyed thousands of chiropractors across the United States. He said his and other surveys show that less than 20% of chiropractors have “unorthodox” views, such as opposition to vaccines. Perle called that group an “exceedingly vocal, engaged minority.”

AP could find no national numbers of vaccination rates among chiropractors, but Oregon tracks vaccine uptake among all licensed health providers, and the numbers show chiropractors and their assistants are by far the least likely to be vaccinated -- and far less than the general public.

Just 58% of licensed chiropractors and 55% of chiropractic assistants in Oregon were vaccinated as of Sept. 5. That’s compared to 96% of dentists, 92% of MDs, 83% of registered nurses, 68% of naturopathic physicians, and 75% of the general public.
Full Coverage: Misinformation

Vaccines save millions of lives around the world by preventing diseases such as measles and flu, and they have shown to be overwhelmingly effective in reducing hospitalization and death from COVID-19. More than 400 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the U.S. alone -- and hundreds of millions more worldwide -- and serious side effects are exceedingly rare.

But dozens of chiropractors spread doubt on their own websites about vaccines, including those for COVID-19. One chiropractor in North Carolina says people who get flu shots are “poisoning themselves.”

A patient testimonial on the website of a chiropractor in Georgia proclaims, “Dr. Lou has taught me how toxic shots and vaccinations are.” Another, for a chiropractor in Pennsylvania, says that in less than two months of treatments, “the vaccination against contracting diphtheria (that was given to me as a child over 50 years ago) had been expelled from my body!” A chiropractor in Hollywood warns of the “dangers and unfortunately the EVIL associated with the new covid-19 vaccine.”

A Michigan chiropractor, Kyle McKamey, tells patients on a pediatric intake form “If you would like information regarding the dangers of vaccines and how to refuse them, let us know!” The line is punctuated by a smiley face emoji.

McKamey offered to write notes exempting people from vaccine and mask mandates, and said even if they weren’t a patient, they could become one and get a note, according to a Facebook post spotted by the ABC affiliate in South Bend, Indiana. He wrote in the post that “as a licensed Doctor of Chiropractic, I have the same authority” as a medical doctor to write exemption notes. McCamey did not return messages seeking comment.

The AP also found some chiropractors were selling anti-vaccine ads on Facebook and Instagram, including one in California who pushed a link to a disinformation-filled video series about vaccines that AP previously reported has paid out millions to affiliates who helped sell the product.

___

The pandemic has also led to huge fundraising opportunities for chiropractors and anti-vaccine groups.

On the West Coast, a chiropractic seminar and expo called Cal Jam, run by chiropractor Billy DeMoss, said in 2019 it raised a half-million dollars for a group led by one of the world’s most prominent anti-vaccine activists, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Photographs posted online show DeMoss and others presenting Kennedy with a giant check for $500,000. The check’s signature line read “Chiropractic Rebels.”

The amount represents a huge portion of Children’s Health Defense’s 2019 revenues, about one-sixth of the nearly $3 million it raised that year, according to the group’s tax forms. In the weeks and months that followed the chiropractors’ fundraiser, Kennedy traveled around the U.S., including to Connecticut, California and New York, to lobby or sue over vaccine policies.

This summer, DeMoss and Children’s Health Defense raised another $45,000, DeMoss said in an Instagram post, adding that he and Kennedy “have graced many stages together and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars” for Kennedy’s organization.

Children’s Health Defense is a ubiquitous source of false and misleading information about vaccines, and Kennedy has been banned on Instagram and was also labeled a member of the “Disinformation Dozen.”

DeMoss and Cal Jam did not respond to emails seeking more information about the donations. Laura Bono of Children’s Health Defense said the group does not make donor information public.

Another group, Stand for Health Freedom, was co-founded in 2019 by another member of the “Disinformation Dozen,” Sayer Ji, along with chiropractor, Joel Bohemier, and Leah Wilson, who co-owns a chiropractic business in Indiana with her chiropractor husband.

Stand for Health Freedom says it has an estimated reach of 1 million “advocates,” and it takes credit for killing the 2020 New Jersey bill on religious exemption for vaccines.

The group’s website says that in just one week, more than 80,000 emails were sent to New Jersey lawmakers through its portal. In a video presentation earlier this year at the Health Freedom Summit, an online conference populated with anti-vaccine figures, Wilson said another round of advocacy resulted in 30,000 more emails to lawmakers.

“We heard numerous times from these elected officials that they’ve never had such an outpouring of communication coming into their inboxes and coming through their phone lines as they did with this specific issue,” Wilson said.

The group, which has not filed as a lobbying organization in any state, is currently pushing people to send messages opposing vaccine mandates to lawmakers in states including Iowa and South Dakota, and says it has gathered more than 126,000 signatures on a petition to oppose vaccine mandates for air travel. Wilson said during an appearance at an anti-vaccine event on Sept. 19 in Indianapolis that over the past month, “120,000 new advocates had taken action through Stand for Health Freedom.”

The group reported nearly $200,000 in revenue in 2020, an amount Bohemier said in an email came from “advocate donations.”

New Jersey Senate Democratic President Steve Sweeney told AP that he was concerned some chiropractors were running afoul of the state’s truth-in-advertising law because they’re spreading anti-vaccine misinformation.

“Chiropractors are violating the law and giving medical advice, and the ones that are found to violate the law should have their licenses stripped from them,” he said. “They’re not medical doctors, and they’re giving advice as if they’re experts and they’re not.”

___

In Wisconsin, Vax-Con was not just a way to spread anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. It was a way to make money.

Tickets cost $299 for chiropractors who were members of the event’s organizer, The Chiropractic Society of Wisconsin, and $129 for chiropractic technicians. Nonmember chiropractors paid $399.

Georgia-based Life University, which bills itself as the world’s largest single-campus chiropractic university, acted as Vax-Con’s sponsor and vouched for the program as “viable postgraduate materials” in a letter to state regulators. For its role, the school was paid $35 per attendee, according to its president, Robert Scott.

Brian Wussow, a chiropractor and vice president of the Chiropractic Society of Wisconsin, later told a state Senate committee that more than 400 chiropractors and 100 chiropractic technicians from Minnesota, South Dakota, Illinois, Iowa and Kansas attended.

“In fact, the demand for this CE program was so great the numbers do not reflect the actual interest to attend, but the capacity of the room at the hotel,” he said, according to written testimony.

Based on ticket prices, the event would have generated revenue of at least $130,000.

Offering continuing education courses is so lucrative that the Chiropractic Society of Wisconsin has been pushing the Legislature to allow it to sponsor such courses directly, without going through a provider such as Life University.

Wussow contended Vax-Con’s program was not against vaccines.

But that was not supported by a review of some of the course materials found by the AP on the Chiropractic Society of Wisconsin website. The featured speaker, “Plandemic’s” Judy Mikovits, for example, included a number of false and unsupported claims in her 34-page presentation, including that vaccines drive pandemics and that vaccines and masks contribute to the development of chronic disease.

Life University President Scott told AP that 10 states have accepted the Vax-Con program for continuing education credit.

Brian Castrucci, CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, which advocates for public health, was appalled that chiropractors were earning continuing education credit to attend Vax-Con.

“When you are a licensed professional and you are spreading misinformation, should you maintain your license?” Castrucci said. “When chiropractors and physicians and medical professionals and elected leaders and social media start spreading disinformation, where are people to go for information? Where are people to go for facts?”

James Damrow, a third-generation chiropractor in Janesville, Wisconsin, has been practicing for 29 years and served as a member of the Wisconsin Chiropractic Examining Board for three. When Vax-Con sought approval to have its session count as continuing education credit for chiropractors, Damrow allowed it, but with an explicit reminder that it was meant for information only and advice on vaccines falls outside the scope of practice for chiropractors.

“I wasn’t happy with the name of the course, but when I looked into the materials, it was fairly well-referenced, peer-reviewed science, so I felt like it was good information that was something that would be OK for the doctor to know,” Damrow said. “My preference would have been to call it something different, a little less controversial.”

Damrow said he did not investigate the background of the speakers.

He said chiropractors were being unfairly cast as anti-science and “that’s not accurate.”

As recently as October 2020, the International Chiropractors Association carried what it called a “formal policy statement” on its website, saying the group “questions the wisdom of mass vaccination programs” and opposes compulsory vaccine programs which infringe upon “freedom of choice.”

The statement has since been removed but could be found in the Internet Archive.

Beth Clay, executive director of the International Chiropractors Association, said in an email that the group “takes no official position” on vaccines, but when asked whether its formal policy statement had been rescinded, she replied that it “technically” remained official. The group’s policy statements were scheduled to be reviewed in the next 18 months, she said.

Clay has been an anti-vaccine activist for decades, DeWald said. In articles for the website of Kennedy’s group in 2019, she downplayed the danger of measles and pushed a link between vaccines and autism, a claim that is unsupported by science and has been widely debunked.

Meanwhile, the American Chiropractic Association, a larger and more mainstream chiropractic group, adopted a new position statement on vaccines in June that does not take a position for or against them.

The aftershocks of Vax-Con continue in Wisconsin. One of the highest-ranking Democrats in the state pulled support for a bill that would have benefited Vax-Con’s organizers by allowing them to sponsor events that count as continuing education credits. More mainstream chiropractors are worried about what impact the meeting and its anti-vaccine message will have on the profession.

John Murray, executive director of the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association, which had nothing to do with Vax-Con, said he couldn’t understand why the state examining board approved continuing education credits for the event, given that vaccinations aren’t in the scope of practice for chiropractors.

“The way the program was marketed and the lineup of pretty much publicly avowed anti-vaxxers, any pretense of an objective treatment of the topic I think is laughable,” Murray said.

For Murray, whose group took a neutral position on recommending vaccinations, there is a clear danger when chiropractors stray from their service offering spinal adjustments.

Vax-Con, he said, was an example of a small group of chiropractors who are pushing the envelope, and diminishing the credibility of the profession.

The Chiropractic Society of Wisconsin has recently held a series of “Health Freedom Revivals” around the state, with featured speakers including Tapper and DeMoss.

One recent Sunday alongside a lake in a public park, participants paid $20 per ticket to hear speakers talk about “health freedom” and the risks of vaccines. The agenda also included some other decidedly chiropractic touches, including participants joining in group stretching exercises.

___

Bauer reported from Madison, Wisconsin. Catalini reported from Trenton, New Jersey. Associated Press writers Casey Smith and Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.

RIP

Iran's first president Abolhassan Banisadr dies: state media

Issued on: 09/10/2021 -

The Islamic Republic of Iran's first president Abolhassan Banisadr,

 pictured here in 1981, has died in Paris

 Dominique FAGET AFP/File

Tehran (AFP)

Iran's first president after the 1979 Islamic revolution, Abolhassan Banisadr, died in a Paris hospital on Saturday aged 88, the official news agency IRNA said.

"After a long illness, Abolhassan Banisadr died on Saturday at the (Pitie-)Salpetriere hospital" in southeast Paris, IRNA reported, citing a source close to the former president.

Banisadr was elected president in January 1980 hot on the heels of the previous year's Islamic revolution.

But he was dismissed by the Iranian parliament in 1981 after he opposed late supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Since then, he had been living in exile in France.

Born on March 22, 1933 in a village near Hamadan in western Iran, Banisadr was a supporter of liberal Islam.

A practising Muslim, he was an activist from the age of 17 in the ranks of the National Front of Iran, the movement of nationalist leader Mohammad Mossadegh.

After studying theology, economics and sociology, Banisadr became a leading opponent of the Shah's regime.

Wanted by the police, he was force to leave Iran in 1963 and settled in Paris. In 1970, he advocated the union of the Iranian opposition around Khomeini, who was exiled in Iraq.

In October 1978, Khomeini went to France, and Banisadr became one of his close friends and advisers.

On February 1, 1979, Banisadr was on the plane that brought Khomeini back to Iran.

He served as Iran's minister of economics and foreign affairs.

The man at times referred to as "Khomeini's spiritual son" was elected president of the Islamic Republic of Iran on January 26, 1980.

From the start of his mandate, Banisadr faced immense difficulties: the US hostage affair, the Iran-Iraq war, an economic crisis and, above all, the opposition of fundamentalist clerics.

As Iran's armed forces commander from February 1980 to June 1981, he reorganised the country's military and spent much of his time on the front lines of the war with Iraq.

But the proponent of an "Islamic third way" that respected democratic rule, he faced intense pressure from hardliners.

After over a year of disputes with some senior members of the Shiite clergy, the democratisation process came to a halt.

On June 21, 1981, Banisadr was dismissed by parliament for "political incompetence" with Khomeini's approval.

Banisadr then left Iran on July 29, 1981 hidden on board a military aircraft hijacked by one of his supporters. As soon as he arrived in France, he requested and obtained political asylum.

In August 1981, he founded the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) with another exiled leader, Massoud Rajavi, leader of the People's Mujahedin, who had escaped on the hijacked plane, but he left the organisation less than three years later.

He had been living in Versailles since May 1984.

Banisadr: Iran's post-revolution president who fled to exile

Issued on: 09/10/2021 

Former president of Iran Abolhassan Banisadr, pictured in August 1981 -- the month after he fled into exile -- in Auvers-sur-Oise, on the outskirts of the French capital Paris - 

AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

Abolhassan Banisadr was Iran's first president following the 1979 Islamic Revolution but fell out with its leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during a turbulent year or so in power and became a dissident in France.

A student activist and imprisoned under the shah, Banisadr was a Paris-based dissident as he continued his studies, before a tumultuous second exit from Iran saw him return to exile after his impeachment by the Islamic republic whose rulers he vehemently criticised.

Born on March 22, 1933 into a clerical family, he was from his teenage years a supporter of prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who worked to end foreign interference and nationalise the oil industry, but was ousted in a Western-backed coup.

Banisadr became a staunch opponent of the shah, the country's new ruler, and in 1963 fled Iran and settled in Paris, becoming part of Khomeini's inner circle when the ayatollah moved to France.

He was on board the plane that brought Khomeini back to Iran on February 1, 1979 after the shah had fled.

Banisadr won a landslide victory in the January 1980 elections, to become the first president in the country's history, enjoying popular support and crucially that of Khomeini who as supreme leader was the final arbiter in all decision-making.

- At odds with hardliners -

An intellectual and not a cleric, Banisadr was seen as a relative moderate among Iran's first post-revolution leaders. But circumstances rapidly spun out of his control.

The seizure of the US embassy in Tehran by students in November 1979 sparked a 444-day hostage crisis, a rupture of relations with the United States and a growing radicalisation of the regime that sat uncomfortably with Banisadr's milder inclinations.

With his relations with Khomeini deteriorating, he found his political standing undermined by the approval by parliament in August 1980 of the popular hardliner Mohammad Ali Rajai as prime minister.

Rajai, who unlike Banisadr came from a humble background, was a populist and also one of the political heroes of the controversial 2005-2013 president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Meanwhile, the outbreak of war with Iraq in September 1980 plunged Banisadr, much more comfortable giving speeches mixing an idiosyncratic combination of philosophy, religion and socialism, into the role of commander-in-chief to which he was singularly ill-suited.

Already at odds with hardliners and failing to convince with his often long-winded speeches, a series of setbacks on the battlefield put him under further pressure, with his critics accusing him of mismanaging the war.

In June 1981, Khomeini dismissed Banisadr as commander in chief of the armed forces and parliament and then moved to impeach him.

Rajai was victorious in the ensuing presidential elections but was killed less than a month into his term in a bomb attack.

Risking arrest, Banisadr fled Iran for the second time in his life, alongside the leader of the People's Mujahideen (MEK) Massoud Rajavi whose organisation had backed the ousting of the shah but was now blamed for the string of attacks rocking Tehran.

They were secretly flown out of Iran on a plane piloted by Colonel Behzad Moezzi, a former elite officer in the shah's air force. Moezzi himself also remained in France, dying on January 11, 2021.

- 'October surprise' -

In France, Banisadr was granted political asylum and provided with police protection.

Living quietly outside Paris, he allied himself with the MEK and his daughter Firouzeh married Massoud Rajavi.

However they divorced and Banisadr himself fell out with the MEK becoming a more independent critic of the regime.

Still preoccupied with the US embassy hostage crisis, he argued in favour of the so-called "October surprise" conspiracy theory that claimed secret talks had ensured that the release of the staff had been deliberately stalled until after Ronald Reagan took office in exchange for arms.

When the authorities ruthlessly cracked down on 2009 protests against Ahmadinejad's contested re-election victory, Banisadr claimed that the regime had ordered electoral fraud and was on the brink of collapse.

"The regime is edging closer to the abyss and is holding on to power solely by means of violence and terror," he said.

© 2021 AFP

Macron marks 40 years since France's abolition of the death penalty

Issued on: 09/10/2021
P

resident Emmanuel will be accompanied by former justice minister Robert Badinter, the architect of France's abolition of capital punishment. 

© Gonzalo Fuentes, AFP
Text by: FRANCE 24Follow

French President Emmanuel Macron commemorates the 40th anniversary of the abolition of the death penalty in France at the Pantheon on Saturday, in the presence of Robert Badinter, the former justice minister who played a key role in getting the law passed.

To mark the anniversary, Badinter, the architect of the abolition of capital punishment in France, is due to give a speech alongside Macron. The current justice minister, Eric Dupond-Moretti, will also take part in the commemorations.

Legislation abolishing the death penalty was adopted by the National Assembly on September 18, 1981, four months after the election of François Mitterrand to the Élysée. The scrapping of the guillotine was officially enacted on October 9, 1981.

   

Robert Badinter, the lawyer who fought to end the death penalty in France

Issued on: 09/10/2021 -

Robert Badinter, France's former Minister of Justice, announcing the abolition of the death penalty to French parliament in 1981.

 © FRANCE 24 screengrab.

Text by :FRANCE 24Follow|

Video by: Olivia SALAZAR-WINSPEAR

After many decades of legal wrangling, France finally abolished the death penalty in 1981.The legislation was passed under socialist president François Mitterrand, but the flagbearer for the move was an indefatigable lawyer who was to become minister for justice, Robert Badinter.

"I have the honour, on behalf of the Government of the French Republic, to submit to the National Assembly the abolition of capital punishment in France." This statement by France's then justice minister, Robert Badinter, marked the official end of the death penalty in France.

When François Mitterrand became president in May 1981, he appointed lawyer and activist Badinter as his justice minister. Abolition of the death penalty became a priority for the new socialist government, but it was met with strong resistance in some quarters.

Badinter had witnessed firsthand the gruesome finality of the guillotine and was determined to push the law through. He said he who could no longer bear decapitations, including that of his own client, Roger Bontems, who was executed for complicity in a lethal armed robbery.

"When I saw Bontems being executed – executing is cutting a living man in two! – I swore I wouldn't just be opposed to the death penalty, I would become an activist," he later said.

France's National Assembly eventually passed the legislation on September 18, 1981, with 363 votes in favour and 117 against. Weeks later, capital punishment was formally abolished by the Act of October 9, 1981.

Is McDonald’s zero-emissions pledge more than just greenwashing?

McDonald's wants to set more ambitious emission reduction goals.

By Michelle Cheng
Reporter
Published October 4, 2021


McDonald’s wants to achieve net zero emissions globally by 2050.

The plans are vague, but the fast-food giant said it aims to reduce its emissions across restaurants, offices, and supply chains, according to a company press release today (Oct. 4). The details on how it will update targets will be released next year, as it works with Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a nonprofit that works with the private sector on setting emission targets, McDonald’s said in an email to Quartz.

Five of the six biggest fast-food chains announced this year they will set, or have set, science-based targets to reduce their emissions, up from just two companies last year, according to a report this year from investors network Ceres and nonprofit Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return (FAIRR). McDonald’s announcement follows a similar pledge from from Yum Brands, which owns KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, which also aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. Chipotle, Domino’s, Restaurant Brands International (owner of Burger King and Popeyes), and Wendy’s have also made pledges. Restaurant Brands’s global target has not been approved yet by SBTi. Net-zero means the amount of greenhouse gas the companies produce are no more than the amount reduced via increased energy efficiency and actions such as planting trees.

McDonald’s also said it is working on implementing local solutions in renewable energy, regenerative farming, and sustainable packaging, according to the press release. For instance, the company said it plans to open a new burger restaurant in the UK this November to test solutions for reducing energy and water use, which will be a blueprint for new McDonald’s sites in the future. The restaurant will feature furniture made from recycled or certified materials by 2023 as well as packaging made with renewable, recycled, or from certified sources by 2024.

In recent years, the fast-food chain has made efforts to reduce its emissions. In 2018, McDonald’s became the first global restaurant company to set a so-called science-based target—or to formally outline how it will adopt greenhouse global emissions—approved by SBTi, to help keep global temperature from rising above 1.5%. The company also recently announced it plans to cut plastic out of Happy Meals toys and packaging by the end of 2025.
How the food industry is combatting climate change

In the US alone, around 85 million adults, or one-third of the population over 20 years old, consumes fast food daily.

In recent years, activist investors and nonprofit groups have stepped up pressure on fast-food companies to better manage their climate and water scarcity and to set greater reduction targets.

To meet its targets, McDonald’s has a lot of work to do. It’s one of the biggest buyers of food in the world and about 80% of its total emissions come from its supply chain, in particular, its use of beef, chicken, dairy, and other proteins. The company said it has been working with partners to develop more sustainable farming practices. Animal agriculture produces around 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, driven by emissions from livestock and feed; meanwhile, feed for livestock is responsible for a third of annual global water consumption, according to sustainability groups.

Fast food companies still need to address water scarcity and pollution risks in their meat supply chains, according to Ceres and FAIRR. Efforts on how they plan to assess these risks have been limited in scale and scope, the sustainability advocates said. There has also been slow progress on disclosing their analysis of climate risk scenarios, they added.

The costs of climate change on the industry are also becoming more apparent. US livestock producers are facing 30% higher feed costs due to increasing droughts as well as storms damaging their livestock and land, according to the report, which has a direct impact on the farmers and various vendors that are vital to producing McDonald’s meals

WHAT WE LEARN BEFORE EXTINCTION

Corals once thought to be a single species are really two

by Charlotte Hsu, University at Buffalo

A female colony of the coral Plexaura homomalla releases eggs into the water (seen as bright white specks). Male colonies of this species release sperm. In contrast, colonies of the closely related species Plexaura kükenthali release fully formed larvae called planulae, a new study finds.

 Credit: Mary Alice Coffroth

On a night dive off the coast of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2016, two coral reef researchers saw something unexpected: A coral colony with slender, waving branches was releasing larvae into the water.


While this method of reproduction isn't unusual, the behavior in question was surprising because the coral was one called Plexaura kükenthali.

For decades, scientists had debated whether P. kükenthali was its own species, or the same species as another coral called Plexaura homomalla. Because P. homomalla was known to send sperm and eggs into the water—not fully formed larvae—the 2016 sighting added a new dimension to the conversation.

"While I had always wondered if the two forms were really two species, that was the moment we realized they had to be different," says University at Buffalo professor and coral scientist Howard Lasker, who made the 2016 observation with UB Ph.D. student and coral scientist Angela Martinez Quintana.

A more definitive call, however, would require additional evidence.

So are these corals one species, or two?

It seems like an esoteric question: What, exactly, is a species?

"You'll never get to a great answer, and different people will tell you different things," says Jessie Pelosi, a 2019 UB graduate in environmental geosciences and biological sciences. "With P. kükenthali and P. homomalla, there's been this conflict in terms of are they different species, or are they just one and the same in reality? They were described as separate species, then merged together, and then separated again."

A colony of the coral Plexaura kükenthali in the U.S. Virgin Islands. 

Credit: Howard Lasker

Pelosi set out to learn more after hearing about this history from Mary Alice Coffroth, another UB professor and coral scientist, and Lasker. Both encouraged Pelosi to explore the topic further through an undergraduate research project at UB, with the goal of assessing, more comprehensively, whether the two corals were indeed two different species, as people were now saying.

With Coffroth and Lasker as advisers, Pelosi assembled an interdisciplinary team from UB, The University of Rhode Island and Auburn University to take an in-depth look at P. kükenthali and P. homomalla.

The result is a new study published on Sept. 20 in the journal Coral Reefs.

Yes, they are two species, scientists say

"I think all the data suggests that they are two separate species," says Pelosi, the first author, who completed the research at UB and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in biology at the University of Florida. "We looked at a bunch of different factors, including morphological, genomic, reproductive and symbiotic differences."

A colony of the coral Plexaura homomalla in the Florida Keys. Credit: Mary Alice Coffroth, as published in Coral Reefs.

Calcium carbonate structures called clubs and spindles isolated from Plexaura homomalla, as viewed under a microscope. This visual is a composite that combines focus-stacked microscope images of individual sclerites. Areas of light and shadow have been enhanced to better visualize the structures. A new study finds variation in the shape and size of sclerites produced by P. kükenthali and P. homomalla. Credit: Jessie Pelosi, adapted from an image published in Coral Reefs.


Morphologically, the team saw variation in the shape and size of calcium carbonate structures called clubs and spindles that each species produces. In addition, the scientists identified "strong genetic differences across the genome between the two species," and observed differences in the timing and method of reproduction, Pelosi says. Finally, he adds, P. kükenthali and P. homomalla tend to host different types of algae as symbionts.

The research builds on a 1998 paper in the journal Avicennia by Pedro García-Parrado and Pedro M. Alcolado, who characterized P. kükenthali and P. homomalla as separate species after examining some aspects of their morphology, and depth preferences.

Pelosi points out that "there are some interesting intricacies happening," with some overlap between the two species' features. For example, some clubs and spindles on P. kükenthali and P. homomalla are very similar, even if overall trends in shape and size point to a difference in morphology. Also, researchers discovered one coral colony that appears to be a hybrid between P. kükenthali and P. homomalla, suggesting that interbreeding between these closely related species still occurs, although the frequency of this phenomenon is unknown.

Still, taken together, the evidence points to P. kükenthali and P. homomalla being distinctive species, Pelosi and Lasker say.

"It's a really nice study because it cuts across so many different modes," says Lasker, Ph.D., a professor of geology and of environment and sustainability in the UB College of Arts and Sciences, and senior author on the new paper. "It just points in some ways to how little we know about these animals." (Yes, corals are animals.)

Pelosi notes that beyond simple curiosity, understanding the biology of soft corals like P. kükenthali and P. homomalla is important for practical reasons: "We're seeing that in some areas, octocorals, or soft corals, seem to be able to better withstand the effects of climate change than stony corals, or hard corals. So, soft corals are really important players in preserving reef biodiversity and providing habitat for reef fishes and small invertebrates such as snails and shrimps."Soft corals, hard problem: New technique reveals corals vulnerable to bleaching

More information: Jessie A. Pelosi et al, Fine-scale morphological, genomic, reproductive, and symbiont differences delimit the Caribbean octocorals Plexaura homomalla and P. kükenthali, Coral Reefs (2021). DOI: 10.1007/s00338-021-02175-x

Journal information: Coral Reefs

Provided by University at Buffalo