It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, October 15, 2021
Lee Valley warns customers of delays of up to 1 year, higher prices to come
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Supply chain issues show no sign of abating
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Retailers are warning of the massive problems they are seeing in getting products from suppliers and manufacturers to the shelves. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
Canadian retailer Lee Valley Tools has a bleak warning for anyone looking to get their hands on high-end garden shears, brass escutcheons or crokinole boards any time soon: good luck.
The Ottawa-based home and garden chain with 20 stores across Canada told customers in an email this week that it is sending out its Christmas catalogue "uncomfortably early" this year because it is anticipating major delays in getting its goods to market.
"The message for consumers is buy early, because there is no chance to reorder or to replenish [before Christmas]," said CEO Robin Lee in an interview with CBC News. He said that the inventory the company has now are products they ordered a year ago.
Lee Valley is just the latest company to warn of the massive problems it is seeing in getting its products from suppliers and manufacturers to the shelves — a complicated process known as a supply chain.
The COVID-19 pandemic waylaid the usual trends of supply and demand by wiping out both in early 2020 as factories shut down to keep workers safe, and consumers weren't in the mood to buy anything but the essentials anyway.
But now that things are slowly heading back toward some sort of normalcy, suppliers can't ramp up fast enough to keep up with booming demand of everything from cars to appliances to gaming consoles and even iPhones.
Shipping costs are a major factor, with the price to ship containers from Asia to the West Coast of North America more than quadrupling this year, one logistics firm told CBC News in an interview recently.
Container ships wait off the coast of Long Beach, Calif., on Oct. 1. The cost of shipping containers from Asia to the West Coast of North America has more than quadrupled this year, according to logistics firms. (Alan Devall/Reuters)
Labour shortages, fuel costs blamed
Lee Valley's CEO says labour shortages and higher fuel costs are contributing to higher prices.
"There are a lot of [shipping] containers out there, but the cost of moving those around has gone up. In some cases, orders of magnitude. We used to pay about $7,000 to bring a container from Asia, and the cost today is $34,000," Lee said.
Lee Valley says consumers shouldn't expect to receive some items until closer to next Christmas, never mind this one.
Lee pointed to one of the router bits his company carries. Normally, that part would take four months to arrive from a company in Taiwan where he's ordered from for years. He put an order in last week and said the expected delivery date is May 2022.
"A lot can happen between now and then. And if we get just a tiny little bit more demand, we could be out of stock for more than a year on that product."
He estimates problems with the supply chain may continue for another 12 to 18 months — but cautions that it's hard to tell.
"Consumers have to understand that even when COVID is over, it's not over," Lee said. "This ripple effect is going to continue for a very, very long time."
Ikea reports problems, too
Small firms like Lee Valley have been swept up, but even the big fish are having problems. Swedish furniture retailer Ikea says it also can't keep its shelves fully stocked right now.
Company CEO Jon Abrahamsson said the biggest challenge is getting goods out of China, where around a quarter of Ikea products are made. As a result, he expects consumers will face difficulties well into 2022.
Most of the chain's wares in Europe are made there, too, but more of what gets sold in North America comes from Asia, so the supply crunch is being felt most acutely in Canada and the U.S.
"On the retail side we have learned agility like never before because every day you have to work with what you have," Abrahamsson said. "You have to find ways to solve customer needs with limitations that we have never seen before."
With files from Reuters
2005-2007 DEJA VU
With average prices up another 14%, Swiss bank UBS warns of housing bubbles in Canada
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UBS says Toronto has second-biggest housing bubble in the world
House prices in Canada have risen by 14 per cent in the past year, fuelled by record-low mortgages rates and a pandemic-caused desire for more space. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Average house prices rose 14 per cent in the past year, the Canadian Real Estate Association said Friday, adding to concerns that Canada's most expensive real estate markets are dangerously overvalued.
The group that represents realtors across the country says the average price of a Canadian home sold on its MLS system was $686,650, almost 14 per cent higher than it was in the same month a year ago.
Canada's inflation rate hit four per cent in August, the fastest increase in the cost of living in almost 20 years. The new data on house prices Friday means that house prices are going up at more than three times that record pace.
CREA says the average price can be misleading, since it is heavily skewed by sales in the most expensive markets of Toronto and Vancouver. It trumpets another number, known as the MLS House Price Index (HPI), as a more accurate gauge of the overall market, because it strips out some of the volatility.
But the HPI is rising by even more than the average is right now — up 21.5 per cent in the past 12 months. In the Greater Toronto area, the average price of a home that sold was $1,136,280 in September, up 18 per cent in a year, according to the local real estate board. In Vancouver, the average is 1,186,100 — up by more than 13 per cent in the past year.
"There is still a lot of demand chasing an increasingly scarce number of listings, so this market remains very challenging," CREA chair Cliff Stevenson said.
The pandemic has had an unexpected impact on house prices in that instead of causing people to be more conservative because of the economic uncertainty, buyers have been eager to shell out for more space.
Canada's central bank slashed its benchmark rate to help stimulate the economy through the pandemic, and when lenders passed those rates on to consumers in the form of record low mortgage rates that had the effect of pouring gasoline on the fire of housing demand, making it more affordable to borrow more and more money to buy a home.
UBS warns of bubble
The fresh numbers on prices come as a major Swiss bank was already warning that Toronto and Vancouver are home to two of the worst housing bubbles in the entire world.
In an annual ranking, UBS examines the housing markets in 24 major world cities in Europe, North America and Asia to assess them based on how expensive housing is compared to local income levels and other factors.
It then puts all the cities into one of five categories:
Depressed housing market (a score of -1.5 or lower).
Undervalued (-0.5 to -1.5).
Fairly valued (-0.5 to +0.5).
Overvalued (+0.5 to +1.5).
Bubble (1.5 and up).
Six cities were deemed to have housing bubbles. Two of them are in Canada.
Toronto got a score of 2.02. That was higher than every other city except Frankfurt, Germany, which scored a 2.16.
Vancouver scored a 1.66, just behind Hong Kong (1.90), Munich (1.84) and Zurich (1.83).
Realtors say a lack of homes is the problem and are urging the construction of new ones. But one expert says supply and demand imbalances are nowhere near able to explain the current price increases. (Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press)
The bank says house prices in Toronto have effectively doubled in the past decade. Government interventions through things like foreign buyers taxes and rent controls caused the market to take a breather in 2018 and 2019, but things have only accelerated since, the bank said.
"Real prices increased by almost eight per cent from mid-2020 to mid-2021," the bank said.
The bank says price gains are being fuelled by record-low mortgage rates, which are not expected to last much longer once the Bank of Canada inevitably has to raise its rate.
That "could lead to an abrupt end to the current housing frenzy," the bank said.
Isabel Serrano, a prospective homebuyer in Toronto, is well aware of how frothy things have gotten in the city. She and her husband have been renting for the past 15 years, and are finally ready to buy. But despite having more than $200,000 a year in combined income, the pair can't find anything in their price range — and they keep getting outbid when they try.
In an interview with CBC News, she said she has looked at between 40 or 50 houses in the past few months, and placed offers on four. In some cases, the house sold for six figures more than the asking price.
"I never thought it was going to be this hard. I really didn't," she said. "It blows my mind that there are no homes to buy. It blows my mind that we cannot find a house to buy for $800,000."
WATCH | Isabel Serrano says house prices are out of reach for people like
Prospective home buyer Isabel Serrano says even though she and her husband have steady incomes, there's only so high they can go in terms of buying a home to live in. (Credit: Mark Boschler/CBC) 0:53
Things don't look much better in Vancouver. Taxes on vacant homes and foreign buyers in 2016 cooled what was then a red-hot market, as prices rose by more than 20 per cent that year. Those moves seemed to relieve some of the pressure, as prices declined by 10 per cent between 2018 and 2019.
"Since then, however, lower prices, falling mortgage rates and looser stress test rules have enticed households to buy properties again, leading to a fast rebound," UBS said. "From mid-2020 to mid-2021, property prices increased by 11 per cent, offsetting past losses."
High prices aren't just bad for would-be buyers like Serrano, who plan to live in them — they don't augur well for investors hoping to pay them off by renting them out either.
According to UBS, anyone buying an investment property with the intent to rent it out would need to rent it for 31 years in Vancouver to cover the price of buying it. In Toronto, it would take 28 years. In cities like Miami and Dubai, it's half that.
It's a big reason why the bank suspects both Toronto and Vancouver are in bubble territory, which UBS defines as "a substantial and sustained mispricing of an asset, the existence of which cannot be proved unless it bursts."
UBS has no qualms calling what's happening in Canada's two biggest housing markets a bubble, and they aren't the only ones.
Prof. George Fallis, who teaches economics at York University in Toronto, says the city's housing market shows all the signs of being detached from fundamentals.
Supply and demand
"A bubble exists if you can't explain price increases by using the normal variables we look at," he said in an interview. "Whenever you see that kind of thing, that should be a warning light."
Fallis says he worries some people buying today are doing so based solely on the expectation that gains in the future will be the same as those of the past, and it's always dangerous when that happens.
"Economists are not psychologists and the psychology of frothy expectations is poorly understood. But it's clear that it's [caused by] something arising which sort of shocks you," he said. The most likely trigger could be a rapid rise in interest rates, something that experts have already warned is inevitable.
"You only know a bubble exists when it bursts," Fallis said. "It just keeps going and going and going until it doesn't."
Canadian homebuyers pile into variable loans, blunting
impact of rising fixed rates
04:45 What to know about new mortgage rules
Nichola Saminather Published Oct. 14, 2021
TORONTO -
A recent move by major Canadian banks to increase fixed mortgage rates on the back of surging bond yields is unlikely to slow the country's red hot housing market, as more than half of new borrowers take out variable-rate loans that are the cheapest they've ever been.
The market share of new variable-rate mortgages surged to 51% in July, the highest level since the Bank of Canada began tracking the data in 2013, from less than 10% in early 2020, and mortgage brokers say this has continued to increase since then.
The shift is the result of a growing gap between variable rates that move alongside the overnight rate, and fixed rates, which have followed bond yields higher. The spread is set to further expand, thanks to the Bank of Canada's pledge that it won't raise the benchmark rate until the second half of 2022, even as bond yields continue to surge on rising inflation.
This, in turn, means the popularity of variable-rate mortgages will grow further, overturning a trend that has been in place for over a decade, according to experts.
Surging demand for housing during the pandemic has led the country's mortgage insurer and the Bank of Canada to warn of escalating risks, and politicians have vowed to take steps to boost affordability. Yet, the central bank's own low-rate policies have helped fuel soaring demand.
"We are at a point where there's an artificial suppression of the short-term, central bank controlled rate," said mortgage broker Ron Butler. But "a marketplace-based rate like the five-year fixed says 'no no no, I think rates have to go up'."
But "the effect on the marketplace, where the variable rate is so low, is very much blunted," he added. Canada's biggest banks have raised their five-year fixed rates in response to the surge in bond yields - ranging from Royal Bank of Canada's rate of 2.44% to Toronto-Dominion Bank's 2.29%.
That has pushed the average discounted fixed mortgage rate to a 16-month high of 1.94% as of Wednesday, while the discounted variable rate dropped to a record 0.95%, according to rate comparison site RateHub.ca.
"The variable rate is half the fixed rate," said Ratehub.ca co-founder James Laird, adding that demand for variable-rate mortgages usually rises when they are at least 75 basis points cheaper than fixed. "This is the most extreme difference we've seen."
Mortgages powered earnings growth for banks during the pandemic, but as economies open up, banks have more opportunities to lend and their willingness to pass on their higher borrowing costs to home buyers shows that flexibility.
The increase in fixed rates illustrates that some of the banks' eagerness during the pandemic to boost mortgage lending to deploy excess capital has ebbed, said Newhaven Asset Management portfolio manager Ryan Bushell.
The fact that they are driving more borrowers to variable-rate loans shows they "want people to be adjusting up the curve quicker," he said, since any central bank interest rate hike would raise floating rates while fixed rates remain the same.
A pullback in overall mortgage demand will only come if bond yields were to rise by 100 basis points or more, although this would be offset by better margins for lenders, said Rob Colangelo, vice president and senior credit officer at Moody's Investors Service.
"If bond yields continue to rise, they may need to make adjustments here and there, but I don't feel they'd ... be as significant as if the Bank of Canada says they were going to raise rates 50 to 100 basis points, for example," he said.
SYNTHETIC MEANS UNNATURAL
Synthetic biology moves into the realm of the unnatural
An artificial metalloenzyme based on the natural enzyme called P450 (gray structure). UC Berkeley chemists created a heme molecule (magenta) with an embedded iridium atom (red) that, in E. coli, was incorporated into P450 to execute a reaction unknown in the natural world. Credit: UC Berkeley image by Brandon Bloomer
The field of synthetic biology has had great success engineering yeast and bacteria to make chemicals—biofuels, pharmaceuticals, fragrances, even the hoppy flavors of beer—cheaply and more sustainably, with only sugar as the energy source.
Yet, the field has been limited by the fact that microbes, even with genes thrown in from plants or other animals, can only make molecules by using the chemical reactions of nature. Much of chemistry and the chemical industry is focused on making substances that are not found in nature with reactions invented in a laboratory.
A collaboration between synthetic chemists and synthetic biologists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has now overcome that hurdle, engineering bacteria that can make a molecule that, until now, could only be synthesized in a laboratory.
While the biosynthesis in the bacteria E. coli produced a substance of low value—and in small quantities, at that—the fact that the researchers could engineer a microbe to produce something unknown in nature opens the door to production of a broader range of chemicals from yeast and bacterial fermentation, the researchers said.
"It's a completely new way of doing chemical synthesis. The idea of creating an organism that makes such an unnatural product, that combines laboratory synthesis with synthetic biology within a living organism—it is just a futuristic way to make organic molecules from two separate fields of science in a way nobody's done before," said John Hartwig, UC Berkeley professor of chemistry and one of four senior authors of the study.
The findings were published online today (Oct. 14) in the journal Nature Chemistry.
The achievement could greatly expand the applications of synthetic biology, which is a greener, more sustainable way to make chemicals for consumers and industry, said co-author Aindrila Mukhopadhyay, a Berkeley Lab senior scientist and vice president of the Biofuels and Bioproducts Division at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) in Emeryville, California.
"There is just so much need in our lives right now for sustainable materials, materials that won't impact the environment. This technology opens up possibilities for fuels with desirable properties that can be produced renewably, as well as new antibiotics, new nutraceuticals, new compounds that would be exceedingly challenging to make using only biology or only chemistry," she said. "I think that is the real power of this—it expands the range of molecules we can address. We really need disruptive new technologies, and this most definitely is one of them."
Hybridizing metal catalysts with natural enzymes
Hartwig, the Henry Rapoport Chair in Organic Chemistry at UC Berkeley and a senior faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab, embeds metal catalysts in natural enzymes to make so-called artificial metalloenzymes, which can synthesize chemicals that have been hard to make by other means in the laboratory. One reaction of these systems he and his lab have worked on for the past six years is incorporating a cyclopropane—a ring of three carbon atoms—into other molecules. Such cyclopropanated chemicals are becoming increasingly useful in medicines, such as a drug to cure hepatitis C infections.
He and UC Berkeley graduate student Zhennan Liu created one metalloenzyme that is a hybrid of a natural enzyme, P450—widely used in the body, particularly in the liver, to oxidize compounds—and the metal iridium. P450 naturally incorporates a cofactor called heme—also at the core of the hemoglobin molecule that transports oxygen in the blood—that naturally contains a metal atom, iron.
Switching out the iron for iridium, Hartwig's lab generated a metalloenzyme that, in test tubes, successfully adds cyclopropanes—by sticking a third carbon onto a carbon-carbon double bond—to other organic molecules. The iridium-based metalloenzyme does this with stereoselectivity—that is, it generates a cyclopropanated molecule, but not its mirror image, which would behave differently in the body.
They then teamed up with Berkeley Lab postdoctoral fellow Jing Huang, a synthetic biologist in the labs of Mukhopadhyay and Jay Keasling, UC Berkeley professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, senior faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and CEO of JBEI, to see if they could incorporate the iridium-containing heme into P450 enzymes inside living E. coli cells and give the bacteria the ability to make cyclopropanated molecules completely within the cell.
Working with UC Berkeley graduate student Brandon Bloomer, they found a way to transport the heme molecule containing the iridium into E. coli, where a majority of the iridium added to the medium in which the bacteria grow became incorporated into a P450 enzyme.
The synthetic biologists then balanced the metabolism of the bacteria so that they could produce the final product—a cyclopropanated limonene—in a living bacterial culture.
"The product is a relatively simple molecule, but this work demonstrates the potential to combine biosynthesis and chemical synthesis to make molecules that organisms have never made before, and nature's never made before," Hartwig said.
Mukhopadhyay said that incorporating other metalloenzymes into bacteria could be a game changer in terms of microbial production to make pharmaceuticals, as well as sustainable fuels.
"Today, many drugs are laboriously extracted from plants that are challenging to cultivate and negatively impact the environment. To be able to reliably make these compounds in a lab using biotechnology would really address a lot of these problems," she said.
This applies to making "not just medicines, but precursors to polymers, renewable plastics, biofuels, building materials, the whole gamut of things that we use today, from detergents to lubricants to paints to pigments to fabric," she added. "Everything can be made biologically. But the challenge lies in developing sustainable renewable pathways to it. And so here, we've taken a pretty substantial step toward it, where we have been able to demonstrate an artificial chemistry within a cell, a living growing cultured cell, which is inherently then scalable."
Hartwig agrees.
"The bigger view is to be able to create organisms that will make unnatural products that combine nature's chemistry with laboratory chemistry," Hartwig said. "But the laboratory chemistry would now occur inside the cell. If we could do this in a general way, we could engineer organisms to make all sorts of drugs, agrochemicals and even commodity chemicals, like monomers for polymers, that would take advantage of the efficiency and selectivity of fermentation and biocatalysis."Scientists replace iron in muscle protein with non-biological metal
More information:Jing Huang et al, Unnatural biosynthesis by an engineered microorganism with heterologously expressed natural enzymes and an artificial metalloenzyme,Nature Chemistry(2021).DOI: 10.1038/s41557-021-00801-3
Chess: Fabiano Caruana trails at US championship and loses world No 2 spot
One win from his first six games in St Louis has left the American lagging well behind Ding Liren in the world rankings
Fabiano Caruana (right) with Rustam Kasimdzhanov (centre) in London in 2018. The US No 1 recently parted company with his long-standing coach. Photograph: fide.com
After eight of the 11 rounds at the $194,000 (£141,522) US championship in St Louis, which finishes on Monday, Aleksandr Lenderman, Samuel Sevian and the defending champion Wesley So shared the lead on 5/8. This close race will probably only be decided in the final rounds. Games are free to watch live daily from 7pm.
Caruana began St Louis as the world No 2 but his first four rounds brought him just a single win plus three shaky draws, while rounds five and six were disastrous losses to lower rated opponents. In round six he was worse against the rising talent Sevian, 20, who also features in this week’s puzzle, then preferred a risky attack to solid defence and was caught by Sevian’s tactic 28 Re1! when Bxg2? fails to 29 Rxf7!
In round seven, Caruana won after Ray Robson missed a chance to establish a drawing fortress, but the two defeats have caused his rating to nosedive to well behind the new No 2, China’s Ding Liren. Interviewed after defeating Robson, Caruana admitted: “Most of my games in this tournament were bad. At least, today was a very big step-up from previous rounds.”
The 29-year-old St Louis resident cannot yet be counted out, since despite his struggles so far he is still just a single point behind the leaders, while two of his remaining three opponents are in the bottom half of the table.
Even if he finishes an also-ran in the US Championship, Caruana has an immediate chance for redemption in the Fide Grand Swiss which starts in Riga on 25 October. Some Caruana fans believe he is using the US contest as a training ground for the more important task of qualifying for the 2022 Candidates or Grand Prix, for which places are at stake in Riga. Hikaru Nakamura, the five-times US champion with 1.3 million followers on his Twitch streaming channel, has adopted a different approach, missing St Louis to concentrate on the Grand Swiss.
3785: Alexey Shirov v Samuel Sevian, Stockholm 2016. Black to move and win. The then 15-year-old grandmaster outcalculated a legendary tactician here. How did Black score quickly? 3785: 1…Qb4+ 2 Kd5 Be4+! 3 Qxe4 Qc5 mate.
Caruana’s setback follows the announcement a few weeks ago that he had parted company with his longstanding coach and second, Rustam Kasimdzhanov. The Uzbek, 41, whose playing peak was the 2004 Fide knockout world championship where he defeated England’s Michael Adams in the final, had previously aided Vishy Anand during the Indian’s successful world title defences of 2008, 2010 and 2012.
Kasimdzhanov was Caruana’s trainer for six years, including his successful early 2018 campaign when the American won the Candidates, Stavanger and Grenke and got within a few points of Carlsen in the ratings. Winning just a single classical game out of 12 against Carlsen in London would have made Caruana No 1 in the rankings, but it never happened. Kasimdzhanov was disappointed, and it affected their relationship.
After the pandemic arrived Caruana and his coach rarely met due to travel problems, so that when the Candidates started, then stopped at halfway for a year, the tension showed in Caruana’s game. Kasimdzhanov would have continued had his employer qualified for a second match with Carlsen, but as it was he decided to see more of his family and explore other coaching options.
Parting was strange, he told Chessbase. “When you work together intensively for six years, a special relationship develops. It’s like a divorce.” Kasimdzhanov may now switch to helping Uzbekistan’s rising talents Javokhir Sindarov, 15, and Nodirbek Abdusattorov, 16.
Last week’s British championship at the University of Hull felt nostalgic, a final hurrah for some of the GMs and IMs who learnt their skills 30-40 years ago on the competitive weekend circuit during the talent explosion which briefly made England the world’s No 2 chess country. Despite a generous near-£5,000 prize fund, it was a low-key tournament with the smallest entry since 1948 and a third of the players withdrawing before the finish.
Top-seeded Nick Pert took the title and £2,000 first prize with a gritty undefeated 6.5/9. There were five co-leaders with two rounds left, but Pert’s quick round eight win against Joseph McPhillips, who went pawn-hunting with his queen at the cost of development, sealed it when his rival Andrew Ledger seemed to succumb to final-round nerves. Mark Hebden, the oldest at 63, who has been close to the title a few times in his long career, played 268 moves in his last three games but missed a chance to force a play-off with Pert at move 75 in his final round against Keith Arkell, 60.
None of England’s six 2600-plus rated GMs took part, nor did the rising star Ravi Haria, 22, who had just started a new job. Four of the elite plus Haria will comprise the national squad in next month’s European team championship at Catez, Slovenia where England are the fifth seeds behind Russia, Azerbaijan, France and Poland. Chess: British championship dominated by veterans as over-the-board returns
This weekend Hull University hosts the British Women’s Championship. There are only 11 entrants, but it will feature a rare encounter between Harriet Hunt and Keti Arakhamia-Grant, the UK’s best two women players since the legendary Vera Menchik. The championship is a seven-round Swiss where the most likely meeting rounds between the favourites are the third on Friday afternoon (4pm) or the fourth on Saturday morning (10 am).
At their peaks, Hunt was in the world top 20 while Arakhamia-Grant, a Georgian turned Scot, was in the top 10. Hunt could have achieved more, but preferred her academic work as a plant geneticist. In possibly their only previous game, played in 2002, a sharp Najdorf Sicilian ended in a draw by repetition.
The Russian championship at Ufa in the Southern Urals has reached its midpoint, with Nikita Vitiugov half a point ahead of the pack on 3.5/5. Aleksandra Goryachkina, the world No 2-ranked woman, is on 2.5/5 after impressing with an early victory.
EVEN IN CHESS THE WOMEN'S PRIZE IS LESS THAN THE MENS BY 45% EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK IS NEEDED IN CHESS AS WELL AS ALL SPORTS
2021 U.S. Chess Championships
Streamed live
Saint Louis Chess Club
Twelve of the country’s strongest players battle for the national title and $194,000 in a round robin event. Plus, the U.S. Women's title is decided in an identical format with $100,000 at stake. Join GMs Cristian Chirila, Yasser Seirawan, and Maurice Ashley for the move-by-move.
CHESS IS DIVERSE
2021 US Chess Championships: Wesley So preserves share of lead in Round 8
Ohmer Bautista ·Contributor Fri, 15 October 2021 Filipino-American chess grandmaster Wesley So of USA. (Photo by BERIT ROALD/NTB Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)
Defending champion Wesley So continued to share the lead with Alex Lenderman and Sam Sevian after the eight round of the 2021 US Chess Championships ended with a series of draws on Friday (October 15, Manila time) at the Saint Louis Chess Club in Missouri.
Handling the black pieces, the Filipino-American So, who caught up to the tournament leaders in the seventh round, repelled Sam Shankland's attacks in a Berlin endgame as both sides agreed to call a truce.
The 28-year-old pride of Cavite now holds 5.0 points, tied with Lenderman and Sevian, both of whom also settled for draws in round eight where they faced Darius Swiercz and Leinier Dominguez Perez, respectively.
The matches involving Fabiano Caruana-Jeffery Xiong; Ray Robso-Lazaro Bruzon Batist; and John Burke-Daniel Naroditsky all ended in draws.
Here are the standings at the end of the eight round: Dominguez and Robson possess 4.5 points to stand behind leaders So, Sevian and Lenderman; Caruana sits at 4.0 in his lonesome; Shankland, Bruzon, Naroditsky and Swiercz find themselves in a deadlock at 3.5; and Burke continues to accompany Xiong in the cellar with 3.0.
The US Chess Championships will have its last rest day on Saturday (October 16, Manila time) before action resumes for the ninth round on Sunday.
2021 US Chess Championships: Wesley So beats John Burke to take share of lead
Ohmer Bautista ·Contributor Thu, 14 October 2021, Filipino-American Wesley So of USA.
(Photo credit should read JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images)
Philippine-born Wesley So bolstered his title-retention bid with a crucial win over John Burke in the seventh round of the 2021 US Chess Championships on Thursday (October 14, Manila time) at the Saint Louis Chess Club in Missouri.
The defending champion So displayed composure as he picked apart Burke's Anti-Berlin 4.d3, whose risk-taking decision gave the Filipino-American an opening to seize full control in the endgame.
"Last night, I checked his openings. I was looking for a way to play for a win with the black pieces, but he knows his theory really well," shared the 28-year-old pride of Cavite, who came armed with deep preparation.
So then chimed in, "Big shoutout to him for not forcing to draw with the white pieces."
The victory proved all-important for So as it catapulted him towards a share of the lead in the classical event, where he holds 4.5 points, tied with Sam Sevian and Alex Lenderman.
Sevian, who was coming off a rousing victory over world no. 2 Fabiano Caruana, subdued Lazaro Bruzon Batista to earn a piece of the top spot, while Lenderman called a truce with Jeffery Xiong to remain perched among the leaders.
In other matches, Caruana clinched his breakthrough win at the expense of Ray Robson; Daniel Naroditsky held Leinier Dominguez to a draw; and Sam Shankland agreed to a truce with Darius Swiercz.
Here are the tournament standings after the seventh round: Dominguez and Robson stand behind leaders So, Sevian and Lenderman with 4.0 points each; Caruana earns a solo spot with 3.5 points; Bruzon, Shankland, Swiercz and Naroditsky find themselves in a deadlock with 3.0 points apiece; while Burke accompanies Xiong at the bottom with 2.5 each.
The eight round of the US Chess Championships will commence on Friday (October 15, Manila time).
Ohmer Bautista is a sports journalist who has covered local and international sporting events in the Philippines. The views expressed are his own.
Artist David Garneau installing hundreds of art panels on the new Tawatina Bridge in central Edmonton on Oct. 13, 2021 (John Hanson/CTV News Edmonton).
“I couldn’t tell you. I give a round number of 400, but there are many small pieces and some may not make the cut,” David Garneau told CTV News Edmonton during installation Wednesday night.
Garneau painted about half of the panels and a team of about a dozen of his art students contributed the rest.
The artwork honours the Indigenous history of amiskwacîwâskahikan, which translates to “beaver hills house” and is a traditional name for the Edmonton area.
Garneau also included a tribute to Edmonton’s more recent past, by adding some of the things residents carved into the old Cloverdale Footbridge. That bridge was dismantled in 2016 to make way for the new crossing.
As for the meaning of the Indigenous artwork, Garneau said he didn’t write that down, and he won’t.
The 260-metre Tawatinâ Bridge, which is nearly the length of three football fields, is expected to open in November.
Art panels that artist David Garneau is installing on the new Tawatinâ Bridge (Source: City of Edmonton).
Art panels that artist David Garneau is intalling on the new Tawatinâ Bridge (Source: City of Edmonton).
Prairie disaster: In the Globe, Gary Masonangrily points out that Alberta and Saskatchewan have failed to bring the pandemic under control, which is taking a terrible toll.
Mr. Kenney has been under intense criticism for a few months now over his decision-making around the crisis. There have been growing calls for a leadership review within his party. His popularity rating sits at a dismal 22 per cent – the lowest of any provincial leader in the country. The Premier has had to put out a call to the military to help with overburdened hospitals. Patients have been airlifted to hospitals in other provinces. Saskatchewan is in even worse shape. On Thanksgiving Monday, the province’s normal complement of critical care beds were taken up with COVID-19 patients. In the three months since the province reopened, case numbers have shot up 47 per cent. The COVID-19 death rate is 6.62 per 100,000 people – the worst in the country. (Alberta has come in second, at 4.7 per 100,000; Ontario’s rate, by contrast, is 0.67.)
On campus, COP26 is far from some Canadian students’ minds – National Observer October 15, 2021
While some young people are passionate about fighting to save the planet, others see unavoidable doom in the collective inability of leaders and individuals to take drastic climate action within our economic systems.
Less than a month before a major global climate change conference, students around the downtown campus of the University of Toronto were largely unaware of COP26 or the two-week UN meeting’s finer details.
And while a warming planet and related negative effects were of concern to the dozen or so students who spoke with Canada’s National Observer, none expressed optimism that meaningful progress would be made.
“I think we’re doomed,” said Yun Yang, a U of T engineering student. “Countries aren’t going to change the way they’re operating because we’re too focused on short-term stuff.”
Yang said he felt that not enough people care enough and that he didn’t have the right to be angry at others for inaction since he was not actively researching the topic himself.
“Obviously, it’s concerning when you think about what can happen with climate change going in the direction that it is,” he said. “But I think realistically, I don’t think this world can turn around. I’m just being honest.”
For Melissa Bieman, a fifth-year history and philosophy student, it’s about people having more pressing post-pandemic priorities.
“If people don’t have jobs, if people can’t afford to live, they’re not going to care about the climate. I think that’s just reality,” she said. “You’re more concerned with whether you can put food on the table than whether the Earth’s going to be here in 30 or 50 years.”
The COVID-19 pandemic stalled a global climate protest movement that had brought millions of people to the streets in 2019 demanding the systemic change required to slow the warming of the planet and stave off the worst effects of a more extreme climate.
It has also made many people’s economic outlook more uncertain, and countries have marshalled significant resources to battle the virus and ensure economic recovery.
“I don’t think any progress is going to be made, because at the end of the day, I think it’s all about economic prosperity,” said a business student who gave her name as Jacqueline. “I don’t think they really care at the moment about climate change.”
Less than a month before a major global climate change conference, students around the downtown campus of the University of Toronto were largely unaware of #COP26 or the two-week UN meeting’s finer details. #ClimateCrisis
Talk of a just transition away from fossil fuels would have to provide a meaningful advantage before oil and gas workers would be motivated to switch careers, said Bieman.
“The hard part, especially with somewhere that’s so dependent (on an oil and gas economy) like Alberta, for example, is that you’re going to have to show them that the jobs are there first before they’re even inclined to walk away,” she said.
COP26 — also known as COP, short for Conference of the Parties — has brought the world together since 1995 to hammer out agreements to reduce global warming. The talks gather policymakers, scientists, environmental activists, climate experts, and news media from the 197 member countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to set and work towards global climate change goals. This year, COP26 will take place at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12.
Morgan Sharp / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer October 15th 2021
How Canada’s CanSino COVID-19 vaccine deal with China collapsed – Maclean’s
Politics Insider for Oct. 15, 2021: The made-in-Canada vaccine breakdown; cabinet talk; and a CPC suspension
The Fifth Estate released an investigation Thursday that shed new light on the Trudeau government’s failed collaboration with a vaccine manufacturing company in China, CanSino, that led to a two-year delay in creating a made-in-Canada COVID-19 vaccine.
Government documents “show that Canadian officials wasted months waiting for a proposed vaccine to arrive from China for further testing and spent millions upgrading a production facility that never made a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine.”
The reporting shows that Canada’s plan appears to have been stymied by Chinese political interference related to the Meng Wanzhou case.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the deal to Canadians on May 16, 2020. But a federal government memo later that same month reveals the Canadian Embassy in Beijing was still working to get the vaccine cleared by China’s customs. “CanSino vaccines are still with customs in China,” the memo said. “Embassy has a [meeting] tomorrow. Assuming they get through customs [tomorrow], they can be put on a flight on the 27th.” But the vaccine candidate was not put on a plane on May 27. That same day, Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou — a high-profile tech executive in China — lost an appeal to the B.C. Supreme Court arguing against her arrest in Canada. Meng had been detained in Vancouver in 2018 on U.S. bank fraud charges.
Planning continued until August while the Trudeau government kept the difficulties secret. It has never explained what happened and did not help Fifth Estate with its report.
The Prime Minister’s Office did not answer when asked to explain the discrepancy between the promised production numbers and what happened. The prime minister and his ministers also declined interview requests about Canada’s early vaccine production plans, including with the NRC and CanSino. The NRC has said the U.S.-based vaccine developer Novavax will be its new partner for this facility, but Health Canada has not approved its vaccine yet.
The CanSino project was not the only partnership that the NRC was pursuing at the time, Justin Lingreported in Maclean’s earlier this year.
— Stephen Maher
Nothing funny about bad year for Maine’s clownish puffins By PATRICK WHITTLE
FILE - In this July 1, 2013, file photo, a puffin prepares to land with a bill full of fish on Eastern Egg Rock off the Maine coast. This year's warm summer was bad for Maine's beloved puffins. Far fewer chicks fledged than need to to stabilize the population.
(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Maine’s beloved puffins suffered one of their worst years for reproduction in decades this summer due to a lack of the small fish they eat.
Puffins are seabirds with colorful beaks that nest on four small islands off the coast of Maine. There are about 1,500 breeding pairs in the state and they are dependent on fish such as herring and sand lance to be able to feed their young.
Only about a quarter of the birds were able to raise chicks this summer, said Don Lyons, director of conservation science for the National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute in Bremen, Maine. About two-thirds of the birds succeed in a normal year, he said.
The puffin colonies have suffered only one or two less productive years in the four decades since their populations were restored in Maine, Lyons said. The birds had a poor year because of warm ocean temperatures this summer that reduced the availability of the fish the chicks need to survive, he said.
“There were fewer fish for puffins to catch, and the ones they were able to were not ideal for chicks,” Lyons said. “It’s a severe warning this year.”'
In this July 19, 2019, file photo, research assistant Andreinna Alvarez, of Ecuador, holds a puffin chick before weighing and banding the bird on Eastern Egg Rock, a small island off the coast of Maine. This year's warm summer was bad for Maine's beloved puffins. Far fewer chicks fledged than need to to stabilize the population.
(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)
The islands where puffins nest are located in the Gulf of Maine, a body of water that is warming faster than the vast majority of the world’s oceans. Researchers have not seen much mortality of adult puffins, but the population will suffer if the birds continue to have difficulty raising chicks, Lyons said.
The birds had one of their most productive seasons for mating pairs in years in 2019. Scientists including Stephen Kress, who has studied the birds for decades, said at the time that birds seemed to be doing well because the Gulf of Maine had a cool year that led to an abundance of food.
The puffins are Atlantic puffins that also live in Canada and the other side of the ocean. Internationally, they’re listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
