Commerce head out to save US jobs, 1 computer chip at a time

By JOSH BOAK

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In this Tuesday, Sept. 28, 2021, photo Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo poses for a photograph with her Bulova watch. Raimondo only wears watches made by Bulova — a company that fired her scientist father, closed its Rhode Island factory and moved production to China in 1983. “It’s been a tribute to my dad," Raimondo said in an interview, “and a reminder to me that we need to do more to get good manufacturing jobs in America.” (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo only wears watches made by Bulova — a company that laid off her scientist father, closed its Rhode Island factory and moved production to China in 1983.

The watches give Raimondo, a former Rhode Island governor, a sense of mission as President Joe Biden’s de facto tech minister, a responsibility that is focused on adding the kinds of cutting-edge factory jobs that are now abroad.

“It’s been a tribute to my dad,” Raimondo said of her watch choices in an interview, “and a reminder to me that we need to do more to get good manufacturing jobs in America.”

Biden has tasked Raimondo with ensuring the United States will be the world leader in computer chips. America’s place atop the world as an economic and military power — as well as his political fortunes — might ride on her performance.

The computer chip has become the essential ingredient for autos, medical devices, phones, toys, washing machines, weapons and even some watches. But a global shortage is dragging on growth and fueling inflation. Without computer chips that serve as the switches for today’s economy, the United States could be eclipsed by China and other nations that support their semiconductor industries.


To end the shortage, Raimondo, 50, must bring back production of chips as well as solar panels and batteries on the premise that these sectors are key to prosperity. This means consulting semiconductor executives almost daily, following data on plant shutdowns in Asia, seeking additional government support for these industries and making her department something more than a generic envoy to business.

“If we do our job right, and I believe that we will, 10 years from now you’ll see a fundamentally more vibrant, larger and revitalized manufacturing industry,” Raimondo said. “It is a national security problem that we don’t make any leading edge semiconductors in America, that we don’t make enough solar panels in America, that we don’t make critical batteries in America. This leaves us vulnerable, not just economically.”

Raimondo’s tenure at Commerce has been high-profile for a department that some presidents have paid little heed.

The prior secretary was advertised as a killer negotiator, but Wilbur Ross was best known for falling asleep at events for President Donald Trump and trying to explain tariffs by holding up a soup can on TV. The Obama administration went a full year with only an acting secretary.

Raimondo bonded with Biden, who often quotes his own parents when pitching his policies. Political allies noted her own ambitions after she was interviewed last year as Biden’s prospective running mate. The Commerce Department could be the stepping stone in a Democratic Party increasingly shaped by college-educated women.

“She is someone, like the president, who knows the pain a job loss has on a family, and has never forgotten where she comes from and the real impact economic and trade policies have on real people,” said White House chief of staff Ron Klain.

Rhode Island contains grand Newport mansions that once belonged to America’s wealthiest families and the factories that drew Italian immigrants such as Raimondo’s grandparents. This mix of size and breadth of social class gives its politics an unusual intimacy.

Joseph Raimondo lost his chemist job at the Bulova plant when his youngest child was in sixth grade. His daughter’s admirers and even some detractors say that formative event made her competitive and as meticulously detail-oriented as a watchmaker.

She has been known to email staff on policy ideas as late as midnight and as early as 6 a.m. Tech CEOs say she works like them: direct, focused, full of questions.

Rhode Island was still a manufacturing state when Raimondo left for college in 1989. More than 20% of the state’s jobs were in manufacturing then; now only 8% are, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Raimondo’s story is a microcosm of the the American economy, which emerged from World War II with its manufacturing might intact. But lower wages overseas siphoned off factory jobs and the economy was reengineered for college graduates and a digital age.

The smartest or luckiest children of former steelworkers and autoworkers got degrees from the best universities, as did Raimondo.

Like so many of her generation who witnessed America’s industrial decline through family experiences, Raimondo labored to be part of the meritocracy. She clerked for a federal judge and became a venture capitalist, while marrying a similarly pedigreed husband, Andy Moffit. Federal ethics disclosures peg her wealth at as much as $10 million.

Raimondo has long been interested in the finer details of what makes people and systems tick. Bob Walsh, executive director of Rhode Island’s leading teachers union and a former banker, recalls getting quizzed by Raimondo over lunch.

“Why do you do what you do?” Raimondo asked him. “You could make much more money doing something else.”

Before winning her first term as governor in 2014, Raimondo took controversial steps as state treasurer to shore up Rhode Island’s strained public pension fund. This meant bucking the teachers union to raise the retirement age and suspend cost of living adjustments. Many unions opposed her in the primary. But Walsh backed her personally in the general election and provided an organizational endorsement for her 2018 reelection.

In overwhelmingly Democratic Rhode Island, Raimondo learned to govern by building coalitions within a diverse caucus. State Sen. Sam Bell, one of Raimondo’s top Democratic opponents, said she was “brilliant and effective” — but in ways that he believes gutted Medicaid and other services for the poor.

Now, Raimondo’s ability to parse numbers to explain policy comes into play on multiple fronts as she pushes Biden’s infrastructure deal, addresses clogged supply lines and promotes the $52 billion CHIPS Act to increase computer chip manufacturing and research.

“She is powerful in presenting data,” Walsh said. “Her ability to make a strong presentation and understand the multiplicity of issues can once again be an advantage.”

For much of her lifetime, the key to economic growth was efficiency — payrolls held in check and inventories kept to just-in-time lest any excess supplies reduce profits.

Then the pandemic disrupted chip production right when demand was increasing as people working from home became more dependent on their electronics. The fragile supply chain also took hits from extreme weather and other factors.

“If ships stop running, then all those efficient supply chains fall apart very, very quickly,” said Revathi Advaithi, who talks frequently to Raimondo as CEO of Flex, one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturer services companies. “The pandemic is just one part of it. Our view is that this has been coming about for a long time.”

The United States now needs a more diverse network of manufacturers closer to home to avoid shutdowns and minimize the damage from disasters. It needs fail-safes that make it easier for factories to restart after being shut. That also means it needs more high-tech manufacturing jobs.

Raimondo anticipates the computer chip shortage will last well into next year — and hurt. The White House noted in a September report that the shortage could lop a full percentage point off economic growth this year.

“We all probably underestimated how disruptive COVID is to our supply chains,” Raimondo said. “We just abruptly shut down our economy. Automakers just stopped ordering semiconductors.”

The United States once accounted for 40% of chip-making worldwide; now it’s 12%. The cost of making a chip in the United States is 30% higher than in Taiwan and South Korea. A chipmaker must spend tens of millions of dollars on a prototype before seeing any revenue, a barrier for start-ups.

For the trappings of a technocrat, Raimondo is making choices on personal terms. When Biden interviewed her for Commerce, he knew about her father. The move to Washington seemed a natural fit, but Raimondo worried about uprooting her teenage children, Cecilia and Thompson.

Her brother’s advice: Take the job. For their father.

Vaccines, masks? Japan puzzling over sudden virus success

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FILE - In this Oct. 1, 2021, file photo, people walk through the famed Kabukicho entertainment district of Tokyo on the first night of the government's lifting of a coronavirus state of emergency. Almost overnight, Japan has become a stunning, and somewhat mysterious, coronavirus success story. Case numbers are way down, but experts worry that without knowing how exactly it cut cases so drastically, the nation may be in store for another devastating wave like during the summer.

 (AP Photo/Hiro Komae, File)

By MARI YAMAGUCHI

TOKYO (AP) — Almost overnight, Japan has become a stunning, and somewhat mysterious, coronavirus success story.

Daily new COVID-19 cases have plummeted from a mid-August peak of nearly 6,000 in Tokyo, with caseloads in the densely populated capital now routinely below 100, an 11-month low.

The bars are packed, the trains are crowded, and the mood is celebratory, despite a general bafflement over what, exactly, is behind the sharp drop.

Japan, unlike other places in Europe and Asia, has never had anything close to a lockdown, just a series of relatively toothless states of emergency.

Some possible factors in Japan’s success include a belated but remarkably rapid vaccination campaign, an emptying out of many nightlife areas as fears spread during the recent surge in cases, a widespread practice, well before the pandemic, of wearing masks and bad weather in late August that kept people home.

But with vaccine efficacy gradually waning and winter approaching, experts worry that without knowing what exactly why cases have dropped so drastically, Japan could face another wave like this summer, when hospitals overflowed with serious cases and deaths soared — though the numbers were lower than pre-vaccination levels.

Many credit the vaccination campaign, especially among younger people, for bringing infections down. Nearly 70 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.

“Rapid and intensive vaccinations in Japan among those younger than 64 might have created a temporary condition similar to herd-immunity,” said Dr. Kazuhiro Tateda, a Toho University professor of virology.

Tateda noted that vaccination rates surged in July to September, just as the more infectious delta variant was spreading fast.

He cautioned, however, that breakthrough infections in the U.S., Britain and other places where inoculations began months earlier than in Japan show that vaccines alone are not perfect and efficacy gradually wears off.

Japan’s vaccinations started in mid-February, with health workers and the elderly first in line. Shortages of imported vaccines kept progress slow until late May, when the supply stabilized and daily inoculation targets were raised to above 1 million doses to maximize protection before the July 23-Aug. 8 Olympics.

The number of daily shots rose to about 1.5 million in July, pushing vaccination rates from 15% in early July to 65% by early October, exceeding the 57% of the United States.

Daily new cases surged just weeks ahead of the Olympics, forcing Japan to hold the Games with daily caseloads of more than 5,000 in Tokyo and around 20,000 nationwide in early August. Tokyo reported 40 cases Sunday, below 100 for the ninth straight day and lowest this year. Nationwide, Japan reported 429 cases Sunday for an accumulated total of about 1.71 million and 18,000 deaths since the pandemic began early last year.

So why the drop?

“It’s a tough question, and we have to consider the effect of the vaccinations progress, which is extremely big,” said Disease Control and Prevention Center Director Norio Ohmagari. “At the same time, people who gather in high-risk environments, such as crowded and less-ventilated places, may have been already infected and acquired natural immunity by now.”

Though some speculated that the drop in cases might be due to less testing, Tokyo metropolitan government data showed the positivity rate fell from 25% in late August to 1% in mid-October, while the number of tests fell by one-third. Masataka Inokuchi, the Tokyo Medical Association deputy chief, said falling positivity rates show infections have slowed.

Japan’s state of emergency measures were not lockdowns but requests that focused mainly on bars and eateries, which were asked to close early and not serve alcohol. Many people continued to commute on crowded trains, and attended sports and cultural events at stadiums with some social distancing controls.

The emergency requests have ended and the government is gradually expanding social and economic activity while allowing athletic events and package tours on a trial basis using vaccination certificates and increased testing.

To speed up inoculations, former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who left office recently, expanded the number of health workers legally eligible to give shots, opened large-scale vaccination centers and promoted workplace vaccinations beginning in late June.

Kyoto University professor Hiroshi Nishiura told a recent government advisory board meeting that he estimates vaccinations helped some 650,000 people avoid infection and saved more than 7,200 lives between March and September.

Many experts initially blamed younger people, seen drinking on the streets and in parks when the bars were closed, for spreading the virus, but said data showed many in their 40s and 50s also frequented nightlife districts. Most serious cases and deaths were among unvaccinated people in their 50s or younger.

Takaji Wakita, director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, told reporters recently he is worried people have already resumed partying in nightlife districts, noting that the slowing of infections may have already hit bottom.

“Looking ahead, it is important to further push down the caseloads in case of a future resurgence of infections,” Wakita said Thursday.

On Friday, new Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said a preparedness plan to be compiled by early November would include tougher limits on activities and require hospitals to provide more beds and staff for COVID-19 treatment in case infections soar in a “worst-case scenario.”

He did not elaborate on details.

Many people are cautious about letting down their guard, regardless of the numbers.

Mask-wearing “has become so normal,” said university student Mizuki Kawano. “I’m still worried about the virus,” she said.

“I don’t want to get close to those who don’t wear masks,” said her friend, Alice Kawaguchi.

Public health experts want a comprehensive investigation into why infections have dropped off.

An analysis of GPS data showed that people’s movements in major downtown entertainment districts fell during the most recent, third state of emergency, which ended Sept. 30.

“I believe the decrease of people visiting entertainment districts, along with the vaccination progress, has contributed to the decline of infections,” said Atsushi Nishida, the director of the Research Center for Social Science & Medicine Sciences at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science.

But people headed back to entertainment districts as soon as the recent emergency ended, he said, and that may “affect the infection situation in coming weeks.”

___

AP journalist Chisato Tanaka contributed to this report.

Follow Mari Yamaguchi on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/mariyamaguchi

Afghanistan's last Jew departs for Israel after granting wife divorce

Zabulon Simantov is expected to arrive in Israel in the coming days after fleeing Afghanistan via the US due to the Taliban takeover of his home country.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
OCTOBER 17, 2021

Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, Chairman of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States (L),

 with Afghanistan's last Jew, Zabulon Simantov (R).

(photo credit: YEHUDA CHITRIK)

The last remaining Jew in Afghanistan, Zabulon Simantov, is on his way to Israel after leaving his home due to the complete takeover of the country by the Taliban, after the group installed its own government in Kabul in late August.

"On the way to Israel: Zebulun Siman Tov, the last Jew in Afghanistan, who fled recently after the Taliban takeover, is expected to arrive in Israel in the coming days," KAN 11's Arab Affairs Correspondent Roi Kias tweeted."

Simantov had said earlier in an interview with Indian news network WION that he wished to stay in Afghanistan in order to maintain his synagogue, but reports noted that his decision may have been connected to his refusal to grant his estranged Israeli wife a get, or Jewish divorce.

Israeli-American businessman Mordechai "Moti" Kahana had offered to charter a flight to transport Simantov to Israel, and Simantov accepted but changed his mind at the last minute.

In September, Simantov left for the United States, citing concerns about the terrorism threat posed by groups such as ISIS-K, which has claimed responsibility for several recent attacks in Afghanistan.
Zabulon Simantov is greeted by Rabbi Mendy Chitrik at the arrivals gate at an airport in Turkey. Credit: Yehuda Chitrik  

Zabulon Simantov (bottom, far right) participates in the get proceedings over Zoom. 

(credit: Rabbi Mendy Chitrik)

The rabbis who helped facilitate Simantov's departure required as a precondition that he grant his wife her divorce, to which he agreed.

Kahana and Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, Chairman of the Alliance of Rabbis in the Islamic States, organized the get proceedings. Signing a harasha, a Jewish legal document similar to a power of attorney, which was translated to Pashto, Simantov authorized the Beit Din (Jewish court) of Sydney, Australia to send the get to another Beit Din in Israel, finalizing the divorce.

Rescuers: Last Jew of Kabul making his way to Israel
By JOSEF FEDERMAN

 In this Aug. 29, 2009 file photo, Zebulon Simentov, the last known Jew living in Afghanistan, sits in his Kabul home. Simentov could soon be heading to Israel, after agreeing to grant his estranged wife a religious divorce in a Zoom call — a precondition for entry to the Holy Land. Simentov, who fled Afghanistan last month after the Taliban takeover, landed Sunday, Oct. 17, 2021 in Turkey on what his rescuers say is a final stop before landing in Israel. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)


JERUSALEM (AP) — The man known as the last Jew of Kabul could soon be heading to Israel, after agreeing to grant his estranged wife a religious divorce in a Zoom call — a precondition for smooth entry to the Holy Land.

Zebulon Simentov, who fled Afghanistan last month after the Taliban takeover, landed Sunday in Turkey on what his rescuers say is a final stop before traveling to Israel, perhaps as soon as this week.

It caps a weekslong odyssey that included an escape from his homeland as well as a videoconference divorce procedure meant to ensure he will not run into trouble with Israeli authorities.

Under Jewish religious law, a husband must agree to grant his wife a divorce, something he had refused to do for many years. Facing the prospect of legal action in Israel, where his ex-wife lives, Simentov, after resisting for years, finally agreed to the divorce last month in a special Zoom call supervised by Australian rabbinical authorities.

The Associated Press viewed part of the proceeding. During the sometimes chaotic discussion, conducted through an interpreter who struggled to explain the procedure, Simentov agrees to sign a divorce document known as a “get” after receiving assurances that he will not face trouble in Israel.

Rabbi Moshe Margaretten, whose nonprofit group Tzedek Association funded the journey, said Simentov had spent the last few weeks living quietly in Pakistan, an Islamic country that does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.

He said his group had looked into bringing Simentov to the U.S. but decided that Israel was a better destination both because of difficulties in arranging a U.S. entry visa and because Simentov has many relatives, including five siblings and two daughters, already in Israel.

“We are relieved we were successful in helping Zebulon Simentov escape from Afghanistan and now into safety in Turkey,” said Margaretten, whose group has helped evacuate several dozen other people from Afghanistan. “Zebulon’s life was in danger in Afghanistan.”

Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, chairman of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, greeted Simentov at the airport in Istanbul on Sunday.

He said he had an appointment to take Simentov to the Israeli consulate on Monday to arrange his entry to Israel. Under Israel’s “Law of Return,” any Jew is entitled to Israeli citizenship.

Chitrik said he had been working with Margaretten and other volunteers for several months to get Simentov out of Afghanistan. “I’m happy this issue is finally coming to rest,” he said.

How long that will take remains unclear. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it was unaware of the request and Simentov could also be delayed by coronavirus protocols restricting entry to Israel.

Simentov, who lived in a dilapidated synagogue in Kabul, kept kosher and prayed in Hebrew, endured decades of war as the country’s centuries-old Jewish community rapidly dwindled. But the Taliban takeover in August seems to have been the last straw.

Moti Kahana, an Israeli-American businessman who runs a private firm that organized the evacuation on behalf of Margaretten, told The Associated Press last month that Simentov was not worried about the Taliban because he had lived under their rule before. He said that threats of the more radical Islamic State group and pressure from neighbors who were rescued with him had helped persuade him to leave.

Hebrew manuscripts found in caves in northern Afghanistan indicate a thriving Jewish community existed there at least 1,000 years ago. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan was home to some 40,000 Jews, many of them Persian Jews who had fled forced conversion in neighboring Iran. The community’s decline began with an exodus to Israel after its creation in 1948.

In an interview with The Associated Press in 2009, Simentov said the last Jewish families left after the 1979 Soviet invasion.

For several years he shared the synagogue building with the country’s only other Jew, Isaak Levi, but they despised each other and feuded during the Taliban’s previous rule from 1996 to 2001.

At one point, Levi accused Simentov of theft and spying and Simentov countered by accusing Levi of renting rooms to prostitutes, an allegation he denied, The New York Times reported in 2002. The Taliban arrested both men and beat them, and they confiscated the synagogue’s ancient Torah scroll, which went missing after the Taliban were driven from power in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

When his 80-year-old housemate died in 2005, Simentov said he was happy to be rid of him.

Reporters who visited Simentov over the years — and paid the exorbitant fees he charged for interviews — found a portly man fond of whiskey, who kept a pet partridge and watched Afghan TV. He observed Jewish dietary restrictions and ran a kebab shop.

Born in the western city of Herat in 1959, he always insisted Afghanistan was home.

The Taliban, like other Islamic militant groups, are hostile to Israel but tolerated the country’s miniscule Jewish community during their previous reign.

How Leonard Cohen mined sacred texts for lyrics to his songs

New book reveals extent of the musician’s fascination with scriptures of Judaism and Christianity

Leonard Cohen in New York in 1968. He was deeply learned about Judaism and Christianity. Photograph: Roz Kelly/Getty

Donna Ferguson

BBC
Sun 17 Oct 2021 

“She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair, and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah...” No one hearing these lyrics from the song Hallelujah could doubt that Leonard Cohen knew how to write and sing about love, sex and desire. But fans of his music could be forgiven for not realising exactly what he was trying to convey about religion and the intricate references he was making to biblical stories, Talmudic legends and the Mishnah, a third-century Jewish text.

Now, an analysis of Cohen’s work sets out to reveal how extensively the revered songwriter used both Christian and Jewish stories and imagery to express ideas in his songs.

The book, Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius, explores the many different spiritual sources and the religious folklore the musician was drawing upon when he wrote masterpieces like Hallelujah, Suzanne and So Long, Marianne.

Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius. Photograph: Bloomsbury

“I think he sees himself a little bit as a prophet,” says Harry Freedman, author of the forthcoming book, which will be published later this month, just before the fifth anniversary of Cohen’s death on 7 November. “He’s trying to elevate people’s thinking. Most rock music is about the world we live in. And I think he’s saying: there is stuff beyond that, think more deeply.”

Cohen, who was brought up in the Jewish faith, was “deeply learned” about both Judaism and Christianity.

“His lyrics are full of references to the Bible, the Talmud and Kabbalah [a Jewish mystical tradition with its roots in the late Middle Ages] but they are easily missed – he wove them so skilfully into his songs before reinterpreting them in completely new erotic, spiritual or mystical ways.”

In Hallelujah, for example, Cohen refers to the biblical story of King David who, according to Talmudic legend, delights angels and sages when he privately plays his harp at night. He is tested by God when – on his roof – he sees Bathsheba bathing. After committing adultery with her, David has her husband killed. “That leads to a series of disasters in David’s kingdom. There are rebellions against him, his son gets killed, his kingdom is broken – terrible things happen, because of the terrible things he did.”

Importantly, it is David who, according to ancient Jewish folklore, composed the Book of Psalms and invented the word “Hallelujah”, meaning “praise God”. “David is somebody who, like everybody, is sometimes good and sometimes bad. He’s trapped in the middle. And although he writes Hallelujah, which is a holy word, he’s also very, very broken.”

Most rock music is about the world we live in. I think he’s saying: there is stuff beyond that, think more deeply

Harry Freedman, author

There is a reference in the song to Samson, who loses his strength when his hair is cut by his lover Delilah, because – like Samson – David’s troubles begin when he can’t control himself around a woman. “I think Cohen is opening himself up in his songs. I think he’s trying to say: love can be wonderful. And love can be terrible. It can go horribly wrong and ruin your life.”

Cohen suffered from depression and, Freedman believes, would have identified strongly with David, a fellow musician. “David messed up. David’s kingdom was destroyed. And yet he sang Hallelujah. Because when you don’t know how to make sense of anything, when you’ve failed, when things go wrong, all you can do is sing Hallelujah. All you are left with is ‘praise God’. It’s a very religious idea.”

For Cohen, there is no conflict between popular culture and profound thinking, and no difference between Judaism and Christianity, says Freedman. “He sees them as all part of the same thing.” Sex and religion are also often closely intertwined in his songs: “In the Kabbalah, sex and procreation are holy acts. They symbolise the union of human and divine.” In one version of Hallelujah Cohen wrote, the narrator recalls: “I moved in you, and the holy dove she was moving too, and every single breath we drew was Hallelujah.”

Leonard Cohen in concert at the O2 Arena in London in 2013. 

Photograph: Brian Rasic/Getty

Cohen, Freedman says, saw the imagery of religion as something he could use in lyrics to express himself and his unique, mystical way of looking at the world. “His vocabulary is one of religious myths and legends. This is what he knows and where he gets his metaphors from.” In Suzanne, for example, Cohen casually refers to an ancient Christian legend about Jesus rowing the apostle Andrew to a city, performing miracles and converting everyone from cannibalism to Christianity. “And that’s just in that one line in Suzanne: Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water.”

So Long, Marianne is one of the earliest songs Cohen wrote which has a mystical, spiritual element, Freedman says, and marks the beginning of the musician’s quest for spiritual meaning. “He sings ‘Come over to the window, my little darling. I’d like to try to read your palm.’ That’s probably the first time he mentions windows, which – later on in his work – are going to be a really important trope for him.” In Cohen’s work, a window is a liminal space, a place between two worlds or two states of being, he says. “He’s using the window to read her palm. He’s expressing something about destiny, about wanting to see what the future holds.”

When he tells Marianne that he forgot to pray for the angels, Freedman thinks he’s confessing that he has neglected his religious duties and spiritual side for her. “His love for Marianne has pushed everything else out. And maybe that’s one of the reasons he says ‘so long, Marianne’. It’s time we moved on. You’ve made me forget too much. And now I’ve got to get back to my spiritual core.”
Hallelujah: the first two verses

Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord


That David played, and it pleased the Lord


But you don’t really care for music, do you?


It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth


The minor falls, the major lifts


The baffled king composing Hallelujah.


Hallelujah, Hallelujah


Hallelujah, Hallelujah


Your faith was strong but you needed proof


You saw her bathing on the roof


Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew her


She tied you to a kitchen chair


She broke your throne, and she cut your hair


And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah


• Used with permission of the estate of Leonard Cohen

SAINT LOUIS TODAY

Editorial: Without changes, kids today face climate disasters unimagined by their elders


An air tanker drops retardant on a wildfire Wednesday in Goleta, Calif. A wildfire raging through Southern California coastal mountains threatened ranches and rural homes and kept a major highway shut down as the fire-scarred state faced a new round of dry winds that raise risk of flames.
(AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)Ringo H.W. Chiu, Associated Press

A sobering recent study in the journal Science predicts today’s children will experience two to seven times as many climate disasters as their grandparents did unless society changes its ways. If that sounds alarmist, consider that scientists have been remarkably prescient about global warming in the past. That’s worth remembering when assessing these dire predictions.

The mechanics of climate change aren’t mysterious: Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide trap the sun’s heat, raising global temperatures. Those gases, produced by human activity like the burning of fossil fuels, have filled the atmosphere at unprecedented levels in the past half-century.

The correlation between rising greenhouse-gas levels and rising average global temperatures is unmistakable today. But scientists predicted it well before it was obvious.

“It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century,” predicted a landmark 1981 study, also from the journal Science. “Potential effects on climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage” in the Arctic.

Forty years later, every single one of those predictions has come to pass.

The same 1981 paper predicted that “political and economic forces” make it “unlikely” that society would change its approach to energy “until convincing observations of the global warming are in hand.” From California’s unprecedented wildfires to more frequent and severe hurricanes to the record global temperatures of the past decade, that moment is here.

In the more recent Science piece, entitled “Intergenerational inequities in exposure to climate extremes,” researchers analyzed the societal effects of climate change today, then extrapolated the changes expected in the near future if human activity doesn’t change. It provides stark comparisons between what past generations experienced and what awaits today’s children.

A child born this year, the study predicts, will experience an average of twice as many wildfires, two to three times as many droughts, three times as many floods and seven times as many heat waves as a current 60-year-old person has experienced in his or her lifetime.

“It used to be … ‘Yeah we have to limit global warming because of grandchildren,’” Wim Thiery, lead author of the study, told The Washington Post. “This study is making clear that climate change has arrived. It’s everywhere.”

Had the U.S. and other societies heeded the science of a few decades ago, the world would not be facing such a heavy lift today. It’s time to stop listening to the science-deniers and all the others who have consistently gotten it wrong, and start listening to those who have consistently gotten it right. The future of today’s children depends upon it.

UK

Ford to make electric car parts at Halewood plant

IMAGE SOURCE,FORD EUROPE


Ford is to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in its Halewood plant on Merseyside, helping safeguard 500 jobs.


The factory will be Ford's first European plant to produce components for electric cars.


The investment will mean the plant will run for many years longer, said Stuart Rowley, president, Ford of Europe.


There had been speculation about the future of the Halewood factory complex as Ford moves towards electrifying its vehicles.

Up to £230m will be invested in the plant, with an undisclosed portion of that coming from the government's Automotive Transformation Fund.

Ford is not the first manufacturer to receive financial help for electric vehicle production through the fund, set up to encourage investment in electric vehicle manufacturing in the UK.

In July, Nissan said it would expand electric vehicle production at its car plant in Sunderland, with support from the government. And Nissan's partner, Envision AESC, will build an electric battery plant.

Ford's Halewood plant will begin manufacturing electric power units - which replace the engine and transmission in petrol cars - in 2024.

Mr Rowley said the plans were "a huge vote of confidence in [the] workforce".

"Ford has been part of the industrial and social fabric of the UK for many decades," he said, adding that the plant would be a "very important" part of Ford's electrification plans in Europe.

Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the Ford decision was "further proof that the UK remains one of the best locations in the world for high-quality automotive manufacturing".


"In this highly competitive, global race to secure electric vehicle manufacturing, our priority is to ensure the UK reaps the benefits," he added.

Image caption,Ford's Halewood plant will manufacture electric power units

Kevin Pearson of the Unite union said the Ford investment "recognises the experience, commitment and competitiveness of our world class workforce and is a great source of pride for all of us working at Halewood Transmission Plant and for the wider community".

The announcement suggested the facility would be an important part of electric vehicle manufacturing in the UK, Prof David Bailey of Birmingham Business School, said.

He said that was "especially great news" because there had been "a lot of speculation about the plant", including that Ford might move parts manufacturing and car assembly abroad.

Had Halewood closed, it would have had a knock-on effect on other parts of the UK car industry and the local economy, he said.

Prof Bailey said that the UK's exit from the EU had been a "huge concern" initially, before the tariff-free trade deal was agreed between the EU and the UK.

However, Ford said that it was not currently facing the kind of supply chain difficulties affecting some other UK businesses. Additional post-Brexit paperwork at ports, which has contributed to bottlenecks for some UK-based firms, has not been much of an obstacle for Ford as it has its own landing facilities at Dagenham, the firm said.

Ford is concerned about any possible fallout from UK and EU negotiations over the Northern Ireland Protocol, a spokesperson said.

The global car giant also recently announced a $1bn (£730m) investment in its vehicle assembly facility in Cologne, Germany, and an expansion of electric vehicle production in Turkey and Romania.

 

Quantum phase transition detected on a global scale deep inside the Earth

by Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science

Cold, subducting oceanic plates are seen as fast velocity regions in (a) and (b), and warm

 rising mantle rock is seen as slow velocity regions in (c). Plates and plumes produce a 

coherent tomographic signal in S-wave models, but the signal partially disappears in 

P-wave models. Credit: Columbia Engineering

The interior of the Earth is a mystery, especially at greater depths (> 660 km). Researchers only have seismic tomographic images of this region and, to interpret them, they need to calculate seismic (acoustic) velocities in minerals at high pressures and temperatures. With those calculations, they can create 3D velocity maps and figure out the mineralogy and temperature of the observed regions. When a phase transition occurs in a mineral, such as a crystal structure change under pressure, scientists observe a velocity change, usually a sharp seismic velocity discontinuity.

In 2003, scientists observed in a lab a novel type of phase change in minerals—a spin change in iron in ferropericlase, the second most abundant component of the Earth's lower mantle. A spin change, or spin crossover, can happen in minerals like ferropericlase under an external stimulus, such as pressure or temperature. Over the next few years, experimental and theoretical groups confirmed this phase change in both ferropericlase and bridgmanite, the most abundant phase of the lower mantle. But no one was quite sure why or where this was happening.

In 2006, Columbia Engineering Professor Renata Wentzcovitch published her first paper on ferropericlase, providing a theory for the spin crossover in this mineral. Her theory suggested it happened across a thousand kilometers in the lower mantle. Since then, Wentzcovitch, who is a professor in the applied physics and applied mathematics department, earth and environmental sciences, and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, has published 13 papers with her group on this topic, investigating velocities in every possible situation of the spin crossover in ferropericlase and bridgmanite, and predicting properties of these minerals throughout this crossover. In 2014, Wenzcovitch, whose research focuses on computational quantum mechanical studies of materials at extreme conditions, in particular planetary materials predicted how this spin change phenomenon could be detected in seismic tomographic images, but seismologists still could not see it.

Working with a multidisciplinary team from Columbia Engineering, the University of Oslo, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Intel Co., Wenzcovitch's latest paper details how they have now identified the ferropericlase spin crossover signal, a quantum phase transition deep within the Earth's lower mantle. This was achieved by looking at specific regions in the Earth's mantle where ferropericlase is expected to be abundant. The study was published October 8, 2021, in Nature Communications.

Illustration to accompany Nature Communications paper, “Seismological expression of the 

iron spin crossover in ferropericlase in the Earth’s lower mantle.”. Credit: Nicoletta Barolini/Columbia Engineering

"This exciting finding, which confirms my earlier predictions, illustrates the importance of materials physicists and geophysicists working together to learn more about what's going on deep within the Earth," said Wentzcovitch.

Spin transition is commonly used in materials like those used for magnetic recording. If you stretch or compress just a few nanometer-thick layers of a magnetic material, you can change the layer's magnetic properties and improve the medium recording properties. Wentzcovitch's new study shows that the same phenomenon happens across thousands of kilometers in the Earth's interior, taking this from the nano- to the macro-scale.

"Moreover, geodynamic simulations have shown that the spin crossover invigorates convection in the Earth's mantle and tectonic plate motion. So we think that this quantum phenomenon also increases the frequency of tectonic events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions," Wentzcovitch notes.

There are still many regions of the mantle researchers do not understand and spin state change is critical to understanding velocities, phase stabilities, etc. Wentzcovitch is continuing to interpret seismic tomographic maps using seismic velocities predicted by ab initio calculations based on density functional theory. She is also developing and applying more accurate materials simulation techniques to predicting seismic velocities and transport properties, particularly in regions rich in iron, molten, or at temperatures close to melting.

"What's especially exciting is that our materials simulation methods are applicable to strongly correlated materials—multiferroic, ferroelectrics, and materials at high temperatures in general," Wentzcovitch says. "We'll be able to improve our analyses of 3D tomographic images of the Earth and learn more about how the crushing pressures of the Earth's interior are indirectly affecting our lives above, on the Earth's surface."Constraining the composition of Earth's interior with mineral elasticity

More information: Grace E. Shephard et al, Seismological expression of the iron spin crossover in ferropericlase in the Earth's lower mantle, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26115-z

Journal information: Nature Communications 

Provided by Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science 

3 reasons China in the 2020s could start slowing dramatically like Japan in the 1990s

Harry Robertson and Andy Kiersz
Oct 16, 2021,

China's bubbly property sector is in trouble. Jade Gao/Getty Images

Japan was the prime threat to the US's economic dominance in the 1980s, but then things went wrong.

Now, economists see worrying similarities between China in the 2020s and Japan in the 1990s.

China faces high levels of debt, an ageing population, a hostile US, and even a possible financial crisis.

Name the Asian country. It has a rapidly expanding economy that has grown wealthy through exports. It has high levels of investment and debt, and a ballooning property market. Its growing economic power threatens to overtake that of the US.

It could be China in the 2020s, but that was exactly how Japan was seen in the 1980s, when the country was hailed as an economic miracle and the principal threat to US primacy. Its growth of 10% per year on average from the 1960s onward helped it become the world's second-biggest economy by the 1980s, when its corporate icons like Toyota and Sony threatened to replace American counterparts like Ford and General Electric.

Then it all went wrong when its massive asset bubble popped. What followed was an end to the miracle and a full-blown financial crisis that rocked Japan in the early 1990s, leading to a "lost decade" where the economy flatlined. "Japanification" has since become a shorthand for the brutal mix of stagnation and deflation that has lasted to the present day.

These days, the similarities between China and Japan are starting to worry economists. Like Japan in the '90s, China is dealing with high levels of debt, an ageing population, a hostile US, and even the potential for a financial crisis. Recently, its own massive real-estate bubble is showing signs of bursting.

"The assumption that China's going to overtake the US as the world's biggest economy, I just don't think that's ever going to happen," Mike Riddell, a global fixed income portfolio manager at Allianz, told Insider.

A slowdown in the Chinese economy is the last thing the world needs in the 2020s, given that the country has accounted for around 30% of global growth in recent years, and could even lead to the "Japanification" of the world economy. Economists are worrying about China's own lost decade for four reasons.

Big debt problems and fears of a bubble bursting

Japan's real-estate bubble got so big in the 1980s that property prices in the country still haven't recovered from its popping. The chart below shows just how much corporate debt in Japan skyrocketed during the 1980s and early 1990s:

Fast forward to today, and China has been gorging on debt for years, powering rapid growth, particularly in the real-estate sector, which accounts for around 30% of the country's GDP.

The problem is that one of the biggest real-estate developers in China, Evergrande, is poised to default on $300 billion of debt. That's the most debt of any company in the world, worth around 2% of China's GDP. And while Evergrande might be the most indebted Chinese real-estate firm, it's not the only one.

Evergrande's looming implosion comes against a backdrop of China's government clamping down on debt and trying to "rebalance" the economy towards consumption-driven growth.

Economists think China will slow as it shifts its economic model. The IMF expects the economy to be expanding at around 5% a year by 2025, compared to 10% a year in 2010. The Atlantic Council thinks growth could be as low as 3% a year by the middle of the decade. That looks like the beginning of a Japan in the '90s-style slowdown, but that's not all.

There are already "tremendous levels of panic and stress" in certain sectors of the Chinese financial system, Kevin Lai, Asia chief economist at Daiwa Capital Markets, told Insider. Bonds in the property sector have crashed, making it more difficult for some of China's biggest companies to borrow.

Wall Street analysts hope Beijing can keep a lid on any contagion, but Lai said the situation is far from predictable: "I think the market is way behind the reality … there will be many surprises."

A graying population

One of the major problems Japan's economy ran into in the 1990s was a rapidly ageing population. Simply put, a graying population means there are fewer workers, making economic growth harder. Rising pension costs and welfare spending also add to the pressure on public spending.

China's working age population peaked in 2015, after its one-child policy held down the national birthrate. Its huge population has allowed the economy to suck workers into the cities, powering its industrial boom. But China was increasingly urbanized at the turn of the 2020s and its supply of workers has slowed sharply.

China's demographic path is likely to resemble Japan's in the coming decades:

According to Allianz's Riddell, China's demographic "bomb has gone off." Riddell says the demographic problems also feed into worries about debts, with high levels of investment looking less appropriate for a slowing and ageing economy.

Tensions with the US

Japan's surge up the economic league tables startled the US establishment in the 1980s. Academics produced books with titles like "Japan As Number One" and "The Emerging Japanese Superstate." The Atlantic wrote about "containing Japan."

The US played tough with Japan then and it's playing even tougher with China now. President Donald Trump launched a full-blown trade war against the country in 2018, slapping tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of Chinese goods. President Joe Biden's administration is sticking to Trump's path.

Economists worry about a "decoupling" between the world's two biggest economies, ending the relationship that has been at the centre of global growth for a decade.

In a warning to the rest of the world, Japan may have just been ahead of the curve. A developing economy like Japan's before the 1980s and China's before the 2020s can only industrialize once, after which they'll have a lot of debt, a graying workforce, and low growth.

Once that happens, we'll need a better term than "Japanification" to describe it.

NORTH VANCOUVER 

$1B contract cancelled

Company set to build wastewater treatment plant decries contract cancellation

The Canadian Press - Oct 17, 2021  | Story: 348884

Photo: Paul McGrath, North Shore News

A company formerly contracted to build a wastewater treatment plant in North Vancouver, B.C., calls the deal's cancellation "regrettable, unnecessary," and against the community's interests.

The Metro Vancouver Regional District announced Friday that it had terminated its contract with Acciona when the plant's price tag rose from $500 million to $1 billion.

But Acciona says it's done about $100 million in contracted work on the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant, for which it says it has yet to be paid.

The company says in a written statement that the project has been "fraught with unforeseen challenges" including "flaws in the design provided by Metro Vancouver as part of the original bid process."

The company says its officials have been meeting with regional authorities over the past six months to negotiate a way forward, and it is "regrettable that Metro Vancouver has chosen to take this unnecessary and counterproductive course of action."

On Friday, the chief administrative officer for the regional district said the project was 36 per cent complete when by Acciona's timeline it should be at 55 per cent.

It was intended to be completed by 2020.

Jerry Dobrovolny said it's unusual to cut ties with a contractor, but the decision was made to shield taxpayers from further costs.

U of T astronomer's research suggests 'magnetic tunnel' surrounds our solar system



Jennifer West, a researcher at U of T's Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, says two magnetic structures seen on opposite sides of the sky form what looks like a tunnel around the solar system (photo courtesy of Jennifer West)

A University of Toronto astronomer’s research suggests the solar system is surrounded by a magnetic tunnel that can be seen in radio waves.

Jennifer West, a research associate at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, is making a scientific case that two bright structures seen on opposite sides of the sky – previously considered to be separate – are actually connected and are made of rope-like filaments. The connection forms what looks like a tunnel around our solar system.

The data results of West’s research have been published in the Astrophysical Journal.

“If we were to look up in the sky,” says West, “we would see this tunnel-like structure in just about every direction we looked – that is, if we had eyes that could see radio light.”

Called “the North Polar Spur” and “the Fan Region,” astronomers have known about these two structures for decades, West says. But most scientific explanations have focused on them individually. West and her colleagues, by contrast, believe they are the first astronomers to connect them as a unit.

Made up of charged particles and a magnetic field, the structures are shaped like long ropes, and are located about 350 light-years away from us – and are about 1,000 light-years long.

“That’s the equivalent distance of travelling between Toronto and Vancouver two trillion times,” West says.


Left: A curving tunnel, with lines formed by the tunnel lights and road lane markers, forms a similar geometry to the proposed model of the North Polar Spur and Fan Region (photo by Pixabay/ illustration by Jennifer West). Right: The sky as it would appear in radio polarized waves (image by Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory/Villa Elisa telescope/ESA/Planck Collaboration/Stellarium/Jennifer West)

West has been thinking about these features on and off for 15 years – ever since she first saw a map of the radio sky. More recently, she built a computer model that calculated what the radio sky would look like from Earth as she varied the shape and location of the long ropes. The model allowed West to “build” the structure around us, and showed her what the sky would look like through our telescopes. It was this new perspective that helped her to match the model to the data.

“A few years ago, one of our co-authors, Tom Landecker, told me about a paper from 1965 – from the early days of radio astronomy,” West says. “Based on the crude data available at this time, the authors [Mathewson and Milne], speculated that these polarized radio signals could arise from our view of the Local Arm of the galaxy, from inside it.

“That paper inspired me to develop this idea and tie my model to the vastly better data that our telescopes give us today.”



Illustrated map of Milky Way Galaxy shown with the position and size of proposed filaments. Inset shows a more detailed view of the Local environments, and the position of Local Bubble and various nearby dust clouds (image by NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt/SSC/Caltech with annotations by Jennifer West)

West uses the Earth’s map as an example. The North pole is on the top and the equator is through the middle – unless you re-draw the map from a different perspective. The same is true for the map of our galaxy. “Most astronomers look at a map with the North pole of the galaxy up and the galactic centre in the middle,” West explains. “An important part that inspired this idea was to remake that map with a different point in the middle.”

“This is extremely clever work,” says Bryan Gaensler, a professor at the Dunlap Institute and an author of the publication. “When Jennifer first pitched this to me, I thought it was too ‘out-there’ to be a possible explanation. But she was ultimately able to convince me. Now, I’m excited to see how the rest of the astronomy community reacts.”

An expert in magnetism in galaxies and the interstellar medium, West looks forward to the more possible discoveries connected to this research.

“Magnetic fields don’t exist in isolation,” she says. “They all must to connect to each other. So, a next step is to better understand how this local magnetic field connects both to the larger-scale galactic magnetic field, and also to the smaller scale magnetic fields of our sun and Earth.”

In the meantime, West agrees that the new “tunnel” model not only brings new insight to the science community, but also a ground-breaking concept for the rest of us.

“I think it’s just awesome to imagine that these structures are everywhere whenever we look up into the night sky.”