Climate report: Africa’s rare glaciers soon to disappear
By CARA ANNA

 In this Monday, Dec. 17, 2012 file photo, a herd of adult and baby elephants walks in the dawn light as the highest mountain in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, sits topped with snow in the background, seen from Amboseli National Park in southern Kenya. Africa's rare glaciers will disappear in the next two decades because of climate change, a new report warned Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021 amid sweeping forecasts of pain for the continent that contributes least to global warming but will suffer from it most.

 (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Africa’s rare glaciers will disappear in the next two decades because of climate change, a new report warned Tuesday amid sweeping forecasts of pain for the continent that contributes least to global warming but will suffer from it most.

The report from the World Meteorological Organization and other agencies, released ahead of the U.N. climate conference in Scotland that starts Oct. 31, is a grim reminder that Africa’s 1.3 billion people remain “extremely vulnerable” as the continent warms more, and at a faster rate, than the global average. And yet Africa’s 54 countries are responsible for less than 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The new report seizes on the shrinking glaciers of Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya and the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda as symbols of the rapid and widespread changes to come. “Their current retreat rates are higher than the global average. If this continues, it will lead to total deglaciation by the 2040s,” it says.

Massive displacement, hunger and increasing climate shocks such droughts and flooding are in the future, and yet the lack of climate data in parts of Africa “is having a major impact” on disaster warnings for millions of people, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said at Tuesday’s launch.

Estimates of the economic effects of climate change vary across the African continent, but “in sub-Saharan Africa, climate change could further lower gross domestic product by up to 3% by 2050,” Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko with the African Union Commission writes in the report. “Not only are physical conditions getting worse, but also the number of people being affected is increasing.”

By 2030, up to 118 million extremely poor people, or those living on less than $1.90 a day, “will be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat in Africa if adequate response measures are not put in place,” Sacko adds.

Already, the U.N. has warned that the Indian Ocean island nation of Madagascar is one where “famine-like conditions have been driven by climate change.” And it says parts of South Sudan are seeing the worst flooding in almost 60 years.

Despite the threats ahead to the African continent, the voices of Africans have been less represented than richer regions at global climate meetings and among the authors of the crucial Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific assessments. African participation in IPCC reports has been “extremely low,” according to Future Climate for Africa, a multi-country research program.

The costs ahead are huge. “Overall, Africa will need investments of over $3 trillion in mitigation and adaptation by 2030 to implement its (national climate plans), requiring significant, accessible and predictable inflows of conditional finance,” the WMO’s Taalas said.

“The cost of adapting to climate change in Africa will rise to $50 billion per year by 2050, even assuming the international efforts to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.”

Climate change threatens more than 

100 mn people in Africa: UN

Issued on: 19/10/2021

Rising sea levels caused by climate change kill trees. 

This photo was taken in Senegal in 2013

 SEYLLOU AFP/File

Geneva (AFP)

More than 100 million extremely poor people in Africa are threatened by accelerating climate change that could also melt away the continent's few glaciers within two decades, a UN report warned on Tuesday.

In a report ahead of the COP 26 climate summit in Glasgow, the UN highlighted Africa's "disproportionate vulnerability" last year from food insecurity, poverty and population displacement.

"By 2030, it is estimated that up to 118 million extremely poor people will be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat in Africa, if adequate response measures are not put in place," said Josefa Leonel Correia Sacko, commissioner for rural economy and agriculture at the African Union Commission.

The extremely poor are those who live on less than US $1.90 per day, according to the report coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

"In sub-Saharan Africa, climate change could further lower gross domestic product by up to 3% by 2050," Sacko said.

"Not only are physical conditions getting worse, but also the number of people being affected is increasing," she said in the foreword.

WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said that last year Africa saw temperatures continue to increase, "accelerating sea-level rise" as well as extreme weather events like floods, landslides and droughts, all indicators of climate change.

- Disappearing glaciers -

"The rapid shrinking of the last remaining glaciers in eastern Africa, which are expected to melt entirely in the near future, signals the threat of imminent and irreversible change to the Earth system," Taalas said.

Last year Africa's land mass and waters warmed more rapidly than the world average, the report said.

The 30-year warming trend from 1991-2020 was above that of the 1961-1990 period in all of Africa's regions.

The rate in sea level rise along the tropical coasts and the south Atlantic as well as along the Indian Ocean was higher than the world average.

Though too small to serve as significant water reserves, Africa's glaciers have high tourism and scientific value and yet are retreating at a rate higher than the global average.

"If this continues, it will lead to total deglaciation by the 2040s," the report said.

"Mount Kenya is expected to be deglaciated a decade sooner, which will make it one of the first entire mountain ranges to lose glaciers due to human-induced climate change."

The other glaciers in Africa are on the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

To avoid even higher costs of disaster relief, the WMO urged African countries to invest in "hydrometeorological infrastructure and early warning systems to prepare for escalating high-impact hazardous events."

It backed broadening access to early warning systems and to information on food prices and weather, including with simple text or voice messages informing farmers when to plant, irrigate or fertilize.

"Rapid implementation of African adaptation strategies will spur economic development and generate more jobs in support of economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic," the report said.

The report involved the WMO, the African Union Commission, the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) through the Africa Climate Policy Centre (ACPC), international and regional scientific organisations and United Nations agencies.

© 2021 AFP

Sri Lanka reverses organic farming drive as tea suffers

Issued on: 19/10/2021 

Tea crops have suffered in Sri Lanka due to a lack of organic fertiliser

 Ishara S. KODIKARA AFP

Colombo (AFP)

Sri Lanka on Tuesday backed down from ambitious plans to become the world's first completely organic farming nation, reversing a ban on imports of chemical fertiliser.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had imposed a total ban on agrochemicals in May, saying he wanted to make Sri Lankan farming 100 percent organic.

Plantations Minister Ramesh Pathirana said Tuesday that the change of course was to help growers of Ceylon tea, exports of which are worth $1.3 billion annually for the island nation.

"Considering the fact that there has been a quality drop in tea that was produced in factories, the government has taken the decision to import sulphate of ammonia," Pathirana told reporters in Colombo.

He said imports of chemical fertiliser would continue until the island was able to produce enough organic fertiliser for local agricultural needs.

Rajapaksa's policy had sparked anger among tea plantation owners and other farmers who warned that a lack of organic fertiliser and lower yields would lead to shortages.

This risked compounding problems for a government already facing an unprecedented shortage of foreign exchange to import fuel, food and medicines.

Last week, the government breached its own ban by importing from Lithuania 30,000 tonnes of potassium chloride, but called it "organic fertiliser".

"We are not a stubborn government," government spokesman Dullas Alahapperuma told reporters at the same briefing with Pathirana.

"We are sensitive to the needs of the people."

© 2021 AFP

Teamsters Update: Yes on New California Law, A Few New Units, One Decertification Looming


FreightWaves
Mon, October 18, 2021


It has been a mixed few months for the Teamsters, but the scale does appear to be weighing more in the direction of positivity from its perspective.

As the union heads toward an election to replace James Hoffa as its president, and with more attention than ever put on the supply chain that the Teamsters is deeply immersed in, it has had some wins and some losses in the short term.

What would likely be its biggest win remains in limbo: the status of the AB5 independent contractor (IC) legislation in California, with its fate awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court on whether to review appellate court decisions that if allowed to stand would greatly restrict the use of ICs in the state. The Teamsters is an Intervenor-Defendant in the case brought by the California Trucking Association, with the primary defendant being the state's Attorney General's office.


It has been a period in which the Teamsters signed two contracts in July with XPO that for the first time recognized the union at two XPO facilities. While the company boasted that the deals were extremely favorable, the fact remains that XPO had resisted Teamster organizing efforts over the years but in 2021 finally put its signature on two contracts.

In the meantime, the work of the union continues. And besides celebrating a settlement in a driver classification case against XPO (NYSE: XPO), the Teamsters recently claimed victory with the signing of a bill by California Gov. Gavin Newsom that ties enforcement of labor laws to economic incentives designed to spur the purchase of cleaner drayage trucks.

The legislation in California, known as AB794, directs the state to restrict subsidies for clean drayage truck purchases to companies that are in compliance with a bevy of state labor laws, including regulations on the definition of a worker as an IC or an employee.

A purchaser of new drayage and short-haul trucks can participate in the state's incentive program "if it can demonstrate that it does not have any applicable law violation at the time of applying for the incentive," the law says.

In a prepared statement, the Teamsters saw the new law primarily through the prism of its key nonwage issue: driver misclassification. In a statement, the Teamsters quoted Ron Herrera, the union's port division director, as saying that AB 794 "will ensure that taxpayers are no longer forced to subsidize trucking companies that habitually misclassify voters."

The legislation says that vehicles that are not compliant with clean vehicle regulations in California are disproportionately operated by misclassified drivers, citing a study from the University of California. "Many of the misclassified employees do not have the financial resources to comply with clean-vehicle regulations," the legislation says.

On other fronts, here's a look at successes and setbacks at the Teamsters:

Representation/Decertification

Since the rapid back-to-back news, which was stunning at the time, that XPO had signed deals with Teamsters locals in Trenton, New Jersey, and Miami, there have been no further XPO-Teamsters contracts.

But the union is entering a time when tight labor markets and renewed union activism are likely to spur a more active battleground. So far, however, it has not turned into a significant list of new representation for the Teamsters.

Over the last few months, the Teamsters are claiming victory in several representation elections, based on announcements posted on the union's website.

One is for 16 drivers at a West Coast concrete construction company called Conco. The Teamsters' statement on the election said the vote among the drivers, who deliver rebar to construction sites, was unanimous. The rest of Conco already is fully unionized by the Teamsters, according to sources with Teamsters Local 174, which represents Conco workers.

In the last few months, the Teamsters also won an election for a 10-employee unit of drivers at US Foods in Delaware voted to be represented by the union.

There also was a successful representation vote covering 28 staff members at GPS Impact, which the Teamsters described as a public affairs company that does strategic communications and advertising for political candidates and advocacy organizations.

As far as other successful new representation votes, a Teamsters spokesman supplied information about winning an election at a Keurig Dr. Pepper plant in Kentucky — 266 workers, so, not an insignificant unit — and at least two companies in the cannabis business.

What is less clear is where the union has lost elections, which aren't publicized by the union. A Google search of Teamsters lost elections in 2021 turns up nothing; the home page of the dissident Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which thrives on pointing out missteps by the national union, doesn't list any either. (Notably, there is not a post on the TDU page regarding the XPO contracts, which could be considered the most significant victory by the current Teamsters management).

But the Teamsters also have needed to fight off decertification actions. Historically, those often occur at companies where the union is often unable to come to a contract agreement with the employer even after the rank and file votes to be represented by the Teamsters or some other union. Union officials often blame company intransigence on the inability to get those contracts, a delay that leads to frustration and in some cases decertification.

The Teamsters face a decertification election on Thursday at an XPO facility in Los Angeles after a group of workers successfully petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for such a vote. But a similar attempt at an XPO facility in Bakersfield, California, appears to have been withdrawn, according to NLRB documents.

A decertification vote also took the Teamsters out at an Airgas facility in Ventura, California, though that is not logistics-related.

Three decertification votes went against the union earlier this year.

Work Stoppages and New Deals

The giant strike against John Deere, the largest industrial walkout in several years, has raised the prospect that a combination of inflation and greater worker leverage with tight labor markets could start to mean walkouts become more common.

The Teamsters currently are in the middle of its second strike against a company called Keolis, which manages the Regional Transportation Commission of Washoe County, home of Reno, Nevada. A strike that started in August ended after about 10 days. A second strike began in early October and has shut bus service in the county. A spokesman for Keolis said negotiations are to resume Monday.

In the logistics field, the most significant Teamsters near-walkout in the past few months appears to have been averting a strike by drivers in July against the Safeway grocery chain.

The union also signed a new contract at a Sysco food distribution warehouse and related operations in Des Plaines, Illinois, in late August, but not without a strike. The walkout that began Aug. 30 was over in just a few days after a new contract was reached and later approved by the workers. Press reports put the number of workers covered by the contract at approximately 125.

While more than 200 truck drivers were not part of the Sysco contract that was in dispute, a statement from the union said the drivers did honor the picket lines of workers and did not continue to make deliveries.

The Teamsters can also cite new contracts at several facilities that could be shown to prospective new members as a sign the union can get things done. For example, workers at USF Reddway overwhelmingly approved a new five-year-pact in June. USF Reddway is a division of Yellow Corp. (NASDAQ: YELL)

There are also new contracts signed outside the logistics field. On its website, just in the last two to three months, the Teamsters touted new contracts signed at a Foster Farms poultry processing plant, a group of school administrators in Philadelphia, construction workers in Las Vegas (a group that includes some truck drivers) and school bus drivers in Niagara Falls, New York. A four-year deal at Boeing in April narrowly averted a strike.

The XPO-GXO Spinoff and A New Target

In a recent online forum sponsored by Deutsche Bank, several members of the management team of XPO's contract logistics spinoff GXO (NYSE: GXO) talked about automation being a key driver for GXO's long-term success. On that call, Angus Tweedy, the company's senior vice president for strategy, said GXO is a "huge expert in deploying labor-saving technologies like automation."

That isn't sitting well with the Teamsters. It has long fought XPO on numerous battlefields and until the recent contracts in Trenton and Miami had never prevailed in negotiations to get XPO to sign a collective bargaining agreement.

Given that, GXO is clearly becoming a new target. The outside public relations agency of the Teamsters, Berlin Rosen, recently sent a blast email highlighting an article highly critical of GXO and its focus on automation.

The article quoted Matt Draper, a national officer of Unite, which is a U.K. union. "From a worker's point of view, it is deeply concerning when any company seems to openly come out and say they wish to automate," Draper said in the article. He also said that unions should look to reach a deal on technology agreements that "take into account the effects of automation on workforces and their communities and that secure options for retraining workforces rather than just replacing them."

A high school is teaching teens to drive big rigs during the nationwide trucker shortage

Heather Schlitz
Mon, October 18, 2021

One high school is offering a truck-driving elective for students amid a widespread trucker shortage and an aging workforce. Mint Images/Getty Images

A California high school is the first non-vocational school to offer a truck-driving course.

The nationwide truck driver shortage is a leading cause of supply-chain issues.

Pay for truck drivers is soaring as retailers scramble to find drivers to deliver inventory.

During a truck-driver shortage that exacerbates the supply-chain issues nationwide, Patterson High School in California is offering an elective class on truck driving to attract young people to careers in the industry.

The school is the first non-vocational high school in the country to offer a class on truck driving, according to NPR, and will offer hands-on training to the school's seniors.

"A lot of [students] who enroll in the course have never considered trucking as a career," instructor Dave Dein told NPR. "Trucking doesn't have a great reputation and it comes with a lot of misconceptions about what exactly a truck driver is."

Some common misconceptions are that the industry is dangerous and that drivers are paid little, Dein told NPR. The course will teach students how to get a commercial license and how to navigate scenarios that professional truck drivers might face on the road.

The high school's program will put students through 180 hours of classroom instruction and 30 hours of lab instruction, where they'll get hands-on experience in trucks, NPR reported. However, if a student wants to pursue truck driving professionally, they'd still need additional training once they turn 18 and must turn 21 before they're eligible to drive trucks across state lines.

Some students are able to nab a commercial driver's license right before they graduate, according to NPR.

Trucker shortages are contributing to empty store shelves and delayed shipping during the supply chain crisis as e-commerce sales and retail demand soar.

The trucking industry was struggling prior to the pandemic, with a downturn in manufacturing leading hundreds of companies to go out of business and tens of thousands of drivers to leave the industry. Many of the drivers who left aren't returning to trucking, and instead are turning to construction and driving for other companies like UberEats and Instacart. Stress and homesickness are also pushing some drivers out of the industry.

Though truckers are raking in higher paychecks during the pandemic as companies struggle to hire, even higher salaries haven't allowed companies to staff up enough to meet the demand from surging e-commerce sales.

'Striketober': American workers battle for power amid labor crunch

Christopher Wilson

·Senior Writer

Mon, October 18, 2021,

Workers in Hollywood have a tentative agreement to stave off a strike that would effectively shut down the entertainment industry as workers across the United States flex their muscle in what activists are calling “Striketober.” The unrest comes as the nation is beset by labor shortages, potentially giving workers more power than they have had in decades when dealing with corporations.

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) was set to strike Sunday night but came to an agreement with Hollywood production companies over the weekend, although the deal still needs to be approved by members. More than 60,000 workers, including costumers, makeup artists, camera operators and set builders, were threatening a walkout as they negotiated a living wage for the lowest earners, more rest periods and compensation from streaming productions.

An IATSE banner outside the Costume Designers Guild offices in Burbank, Calif. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

“We went toe-to-toe with some of the richest and most powerful entertainment and tech companies in the world,” IATSE International president Matthew Loeb said in a statement. “Our members stood firm.”

However, many of those IATSE members have expressed dissatisfaction with the deal and said they might vote it down. Work will continue until the ratification vote in a few weeks. The vote earlier this month to authorize the strike was nearly unanimous, just one example of widespread labor militancy across the country.

More than 10,000 John Deere workers in Iowa, Illinois and Kansas began striking last week, citing soaring profits for the company and a 160 percent raise for the CEO as they work to renegotiate their contract. Representatives from the farm equipment manufacturing company and the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America returned to negotiations Monday, the fifth day of the strike. Union leadership had reached a tentative contract agreement earlier this month, but it was soundly rejected by workers.

Meanwhile, more than 28,000 health care workers at Kaiser Permanente in California and Oregon voted overwhelmingly this month to go on strike if their contract demands are not met. They would join other, smaller health care strikes already ongoing around the country, including one conducted by more than 2,000 workers in Buffalo, N.Y., who walked out on Oct. 1 seeking better pay, working conditions and staffing.

Employees of managed care company Kaiser Permanente protesting in Baldwin Park, Calif. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

Workers in a wide range of industries — from breakfast cereal manufacturing to whiskey distilling to home health care to coal mining — have walked out in recent months. Earlier this year, workers at Nabisco and Volvo reached new contracts after strikes. According to the Labor Action Tracker project at Cornell, dozens of strikes have been started in October alone.

“The pandemic pushed a lot of buttons for people,” Todd Vachon, a labor expert at Rutgers University, told Yahoo News. “We saw a lot of unrest around workplace safety ... and even nonunion workers walking off the job and organizing in ways we haven’t seen in a long time.”

Over the last several decades, worker compensation has lagged well behind productivity, and CEO pay has risen sharply in comparison to that of the average worker. But labor activists say pandemic-related shutdowns and relief programs such as the expanded unemployment insurance and stimulus payments gave Americans a chance to assess their situations.

Millions have switched industries, and many who left the workforce and took on child care responsibilities have yet to return. In August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that a record 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs, especially within the service, hospitality and retail sectors. All of this comes during a time when public sympathies have shifted toward labor.

Applicants at a U.S. Postal Service job fair in Los Angeles. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

According to a September Gallup poll, support for unions is at its highest point since 1965; 68 percent of Americans now say they approve of unions, up 20 points from a low in 2009. That includes 90 percent approval by Democrats and 66 percent approval by independents.

At the federal level, President Biden has consistently touted himself as pro-union, even encouraging Amazon workers to organize earlier this year. Labor activists have called on Congress to pass the Pro Act, a piece of legislation that would make workplace organizing easier, but it’s unlikely to overcome Republican opposition and the Democratic refusal to remove the Senate filibuster.

“People are choosing not to take the jobs that are being offered, so that builds some power and leverage for unions and bargaining that they haven’t had in decades, really, to be honest,” Vachon said.

“[Employers] can bring in replacement workers, and that makes the strike less effective. But when there’s folks refusing to take the jobs being offered, the strike is a lot more powerful of a weapon because it actually shuts down the production and the facility and brings the employer back to the table more quickly.”

In addition to the organized strikes, there have been waves of workers walking off the job in nonunion positions, such as fast food workers protesting allegedly unsafe working conditions and low wages despite being lauded as essential workers.

Activists in Washington rally in support of raising the minimum wage. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Allynn Umel, director of the Fight for $15 campaign, told Yahoo News that “the hypocrisy between being called ‘essential’ and the need for workers to sacrifice themselves and their families over the course of the pandemic has been fueling a lot of frustrations that workers have been facing.” Low-wage workers, Umel said, “know this is a moment where they want to make it clear that the pre-pandemic status quo of unlivable wages and terrible working conditions are no longer acceptable."

All of these factors have combined to form what former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich called a “national general strike,” as workers potentially gain more power than they have had in decades amid labor shortages and widespread dissatisfaction with income inequality.

Workers, Vachon said, “are withholding their labor because they don’t like what’s being offered, and that’s essentially what a strike is.”

“It’s not organized by any organization, and they’re not all communicating about it across the whole economy. But what’s happening is there is a de facto general strike, and that just increases the economic power of the workers who go on real strikes.”

Bourbon producer signals intent to hire replacement workers SCABS

Kentucky Bourbon Producer Strike

FILE - Bettye Jo Boone, a 30 year employee of Heaven Hill, pickets in front of Heaven Hill Distillery in Bardstown, Ky., Monday, Sept. 13, 2021. Declaring an impasse in contract talks with striking union workers, global spirits producer Heaven Hill said Monday, Oct. 18 it will start hiring permanent replacement workers for bottling and warehouse operations in Kentucky. (Silas Walker/Lexington Herald-Leader via AP, File)More

BRUCE SCHREINER
Mon, October 18, 2021, 6:12 PM·3 min read

Declaring an impasse in contract talks with striking union workers, global spirits producer Heaven Hill said Monday it will start hiring permanent replacement workers for bottling and warehouse operations in Kentucky.

Union leaders responded that they're willing to continue negotiations and accused the company of wanting to replace longtime employees with non-union workers.

About 420 members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 23D have been on strike for more than five weeks They voted overwhelmingly last month to reject a new five-year contract offer and formed picket lines at Heaven Hill’s operations in Bardstown.

Family-owned and operated Heaven Hill produces Evan Williams, one of the world’s top-selling bourbons. Other brands of Kentucky-based Heaven Hill include Elijah Craig, Henry McKenna, Old Fitzgerald, Larceny and Parker’s Heritage Collection.

The dispute has revolved around health care and worker scheduling issues. The schedule dispute was a sign of the bourbon industry’s growing pains as it tries to keep up with increasing global demand.

Heaven Hill said in a statement Monday that it had negotiated in “good faith” with the union but the sides have been unable to reach an agreement. The company now will begin the process of hiring permanent replacement workers, it said.

“We’ve heard from our employees in the community that they are in favor of the proposed contract terms and eager to return to work,” said Heaven Hill President Max L. Shapira. “Given the long-standing and positive working relationship Heaven Hill has with its employees, it is disappointing we were unable to reach an agreement with union leadership.”

Local union President Matt Aubrey condemned the company's latest move.

“It is stunning that Heaven Hill is refusing to continue negotiations and is resorting to hiring non-union workers to try to push out the hardworking Kentucky men and women who have worked at the company for generations and made it the success it is today,” he said in a statement.

He said the union is willing to meet with company negotiators to continue talks.

Aubrey accused the company of refusing to bargain in good faith, and said the union had filed Unfair Labor Practices charges against Heaven Hill with the National Labor Relations Board.

The company said its operations have continued with “limited interruptions” during the strike due to a “successful contingency plan.”

Workers often spend long careers at Kentucky bourbon distilleries, and the jobs often attract multiple generations of families. Disputes flare up occasionally, and other strikes occurred in recent years at Jim Beam and Four Roses — other iconic names in the bourbon sector.

The bourbon industry has been on a long upward trajectory.

Combined U.S. sales for bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and rye whiskey rose 8.2%, or $327 million, to $4.3 billion in 2020, despite plunging sales from bars and restaurants because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States reported early this year.

Kentucky distilleries produce 95% of the world’s bourbon supply, according to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association.

Samples from China mission show Moon 'active' more recently than thought

China's Chang'e spacecraft brought lunar soil and rock samples to Earth last year - 

China National Space Administration (CNSA) via CNS/AFP/File

Beijing (AFP)

The first lunar rocks brought back to Earth in decades show the Moon was volcanically active more recently than previously thought, Chinese scientists said Tuesday.

A Chinese spacecraft carried lunar rocks and soil to Earth last year -- humanity's first mission in four decades to collect samples from the Moon, and a milestone for Beijing's growing space programme.

The samples included basalt -- a form of cooled lava -- from 2.03 billion years ago, scientists found, pushing the last known date of volcanic activity on the moon closer to the present day by as much as 900 million years.

Analysis of the samples "reveals that the Moon's interior was still evolving at around two billion years ago", the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) said in a statement.

Previous moon rocks brought back by US and Soviet missions showed evidence of lunar activity up to 2.8 billion years ago, but left a gap in scientists' knowledge about the more recent history of Earth's natural satellite as they were from older parts of the lunar surface.

The Chang'e-5 mission -- named after a mythical moon goddess -- collected two kilogrammes (4.5 pounds) of samples from a previously unexplored area of the moon called Mons Ruemker in the Oceanus Procellarum or "Ocean of Storms".

The area was selected as it was thought by scientists to be more recently formed, based on the lower density of craters from meteors on its surface.

The Chang'e mission was the first in decades to bring lunar samples to Earth 

WANG Zhao AFP/File

"Altogether those results are extremely exciting, providing amazing science and results on understanding the lunar formation and evolution over time," Audrey Bouvier, a planetology professor at Germany's University of Bayreuth, said in a video message at a Beijing press conference on Tuesday.

The latest findings -- published in three papers in the Nature journal on Tuesday -- open up new questions for scientists trying to decipher the history of the Moon.

"How did the Moon sustain volcanic activity for so long? The Moon is naturally small and should disperse heat quickly, or so the thinking goes," CAS researcher Li Xianhua, one of the authors of the studies, told reporters.

The Chang'e 5 samples marked a major step for the Chinese space programme, which has sent a rover to Mars and landed another craft on the far side of the Moon.

The country, racing to catch up with the United States and Russia, sent three astronauts to its new space station on Saturday, which is expected to become operational by 2022.

© 2021 AFP

Exposed: How big farm lobbies undermine EU's green agriculture plan

Farmers and lobby groups are split on an EU agricultural reform that may increase farmers' incomes and consumers' prices. 

A  DW joint report reveals a rift between farmers and the groups purporting to represent them.


An EU proposal calls for a more sustainable agriculture policy, but who will benefit from it most?

It is a long way from the farms and fields of Sezze in central Italy to the halls of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. But the decisions made at the European assembly this week can directly impact the lives of farmers like Valentina Pallavicino. Her farm in the plains between Rome and the Mediterranean is the kind that is often cited by policymakers and lobbyists when seeking support for changes to Europe's complex, subsidy-heavy agricultural system.

Pallavicino, like most Europeans, does not follow every twist and turn of farming reform debated by politicians in Brussels and Strasbourg, but she does discern two central aspects of the agricultural landscape with clarity: cheap food has been a boon for big, industrial farms and many farmers support sustainable farming.

"What they ask for we already do," she says when presented with some of the key elements of a new "green" strategy for the future of European farming, known as "Farm to Fork," which aims to slash pesticide and antimicrobial use, set a threshold on food waste, and rely on renewable energy to create a sustainable food system. "We don't use antibiotics, preservatives, or chemicals," she added.

Pallavicino says she is also wary of the organized lobby organizations claiming to speak in her name. It seems obvious, she says, that the big players do not like this kind of policy because it will increase costs and "they win if prices are lower."

Although they have never met, Polish dairy farmer Alina Lis has reached the same conclusions at her 30-hectare (74-acre) farm in western Poland, where she rears 40 cows.

"I believe agriculture in Europe should be sustainable for the sake of nature and food security," Lis says.

Lis has seen the margins on her milk fall as she competes with intensive farms that rely on heavy use of chemical fertilizers and antibiotics.
Who represents EU farmers?

The battle over who represents the true voice and interests of farmers like Pallavicino and Lis, and the millions of Europeans they feed, reaches a crescendo this week as the European Parliament prepares for a vote on a radical new direction for farming in the EU. Any changes the legislative body introduces require approval from EU member states before taking effect.

Farmers will receive support from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget, the EU's huge farming subsidy program that has paid out more than €50 billion ($58 billion) every year since 2005. Of the funding, 80% goes to 20% of the biggest farms in the EU.

Proponents of the Farm to Fork strategy, including green groups, say it will reduce farming's share of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions while keeping food affordable. An assessment by the Commission's in-house scientists found the strategy could support farmers and cut agriculture-related emissions by 20% across the EU.

Yet, it has come under fire from the powerful agribusiness lobby that says the proposal is not scientifically viable, will push up prices for consumers and goes against the interests of EU farmers.

Documents reviewed by DW showed these groups want to get rid of specific targets for reducing the use of pesticides and fertilizers, references to health risks associated with intensive farming, requirements to increase transparency by labeling products, and the ability of member states to impose higher taxes on unsustainable products.

But the same interest groups have also been accused of abusing science, skewing media coverage and failing the farmers they claim to represent.
Big lobbies, small farmers

In a months-long joint investigation, investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports, DW, Follow the Money, Mediapart and Domani spoke to nearly 30 farmers, politicians, scientists, lobby groups and experts and scanned confidential communications to reveal lobbying organizations' scope and influence.

What emerges is a portrait of wealthy industrial pressure groups — from petrochemical companies and multinational meat-packing giants to pharmaceutical businesses — that have a stubborn hold over EU policy as well as critical differences with the family farmers whose welfare they are supposed to defend.

A rift has emerged within the farming community, between those who want to continue expanding an industrial farming model, which experts say is damaging the environment, and others who prefer a smaller-scale, more ecologically friendly form of agriculture.

How is EU agricultural money spent?

Most independent farmers say they welcome the price increases, focusing on the environmental costs of agriculture and fair trade practices. Many also say the big lobby groups do not speak for them.

"I do not feel represented by farmer lobby groups... small farms in Poland are collapsing," said Lis.

Marcin Wojcik, who owns a 270-hectare farm in the Low Beskid mountains in Poland, agreed.

"For two years, I was vice-president of Narodowy Fundusz Promocji Mięsa Wołowego, but I resigned because I didn't relate to those people and what they do," he says. "It was more of politics. It was unclear where the money was going."

Farm to Fork a 'win-win for total society'

Farming lobby groups including Copa-Cogeca, Liaison Centre for the Meat Processing Industry in the European Union (Clitravi), European Livestock Voice, European Dairy Association and CropLife Europe have commissioned studies that attack the Farm to Fork strategy.

A study financed by the Grain Club, an alliance of German grain companies, and carried out by the University of Kiel, shows implementing the Farm to Fork plan would cause Europe's agricultural production to decrease, prices to rise and the continent to become more dependent on imports.

Copa-Cogeca has used the study to criticize the Farm to Fork strategy without mentioning that the report also shows the income and welfare of farmers, especially livestock farmers, could be significantly improved.

The study's author, scientist Christian Henning, pointed this out in an interview with DW: "The green deal is potentially a win-win situation for total society as the benefits more than compensate for losses from reduced conventional farm production."

The green deal Henning refers to is a set of proposals adopted by the European Commission on July 14 to ensure the EU's climate, energy, transport and taxation policies reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. Farm to Fork is "at the heart" of the Green Deal, the Commission has said, adding that farming is responsible for 10% of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions.

Farming in Italy is at a crossroads

Another publication commissioned by CropLife, which lobbies on behalf of pesticide manufacturers and other players in the agri-food industry, and used by Copa-Cogeca, comes from the Netherlands' Wageningen University. It concludes that if Farm to Fork is implemented, prices will rise and meat production will fall by 10% to 15% and crop production by 10% to 20%.

Jean-Baptiste Boucher, Copa-Cogeca's communications director, told DW such studies showed "many blind spots" of Farm to Fork and accused NGOs of "a deliberate attempt to trigger a media backlash" for speaking out against the strategy.

However, the research did not address "the positive impact of the Farm to Fork strategy on climate change," the proposal's main objective, admitted Johan Bremmer, an author of the Wageningen report.
Paid for Farm to Fork disinformation?

In the span of two days, the Wageningen report was presented at a conference on the media platform Euractiv, which produced articles critical of the Farm to Fork initiative, and at a special event organized by pro-meat group European Livestock Voice.

CropLife paid for the Euractiv event. A scan of the platform's website showed that of the seven events organized by Euractiv with "Farm to Fork" in the title over the past two years, six were sponsored by the agri-food industry.

Chris Powers, communications director of Euractiv, says that while the organization was paid to host the events, Euractiv values impartial, inclusive and constructive debates.

Small-scale farmers left in the dark

The sustained campaign against Farm to Fork has confused small-scale farmers who were already struggling to stay profitable and are unsure whether to welcome all the proposed measures.

Dutch dairy farmer Peter Gille says low margins and high costs have made it difficult for many farmers like himself to secure their future. He has set up side businesses, including a nursery, a camping site and a restaurant, to supplement his income.

Susan Malhieu, a 29-year-old dairy farmer in Ypres, Belgium, said while some of the strategy's policies will work, environmentally friendly farming will cost money.

"I am a bit concerned this has not been addressed very well in Farm to Fork," she said. "I am fine with having environmental targets ... but to meet the targets, will the monetary help be delivered?"

Italian farmer Emanuele Pullano thinks raising awareness amongst consumers is crucial.

"We need to make people understand that they might be spending those extra two euros but buying a product that is healthy for themselves and for the environment. In this way, the price increase can be digested."

Celine VanKerschaver, 29, international representative for Grone King, the organization for young farmers in Belgium, said Farm to Fork could help the EU achieve more coherence within the food chain and improve the social and environmental aspects of farming. But politicians should listen to farmers, not just lobbies, she says.

"We want more recognition for small and young farmers because they are the next generation," she says. "There is a lot of talking about farmers but not with farmers."

Emotional support animals can endanger the public and make life harder for people like me who rely on service dogs


Deni Elliott,

 Eleanor Poynter Jamison Chair in Media Ethics and Press Policy;

 Co-Chief Project Officer on the National Ethics Project,

 University of South Florida

Sun, October 17, 2021

The U.S. currently has no system to differentiate real service dogs from pets.

Cheryl Paz/Shutterstock.com

In 2017, Marlin Jackson boarded a cross-country flight. When he got to his row, another passenger was already in the middle seat with an emotional support dog in his lap.

According to Mr. Jackson’s attorney, “The approximately 50-pound dog growled at Mr. Jackson soon after he took his seat…and continued as Mr. Jackson attempted to buckle his seatbelt. The growling increased and the dog lunged for Mr. Jackson’s face…who could not escape due to his position against the plane’s window.” Facial wounds requiring 28 stitches were the result.

Untrained emotional support dogs don’t just attack people. They attack highly trained service dogs, as well, sometimes ending their working lives.

I can relate. I am a visually impaired person partnering with my fourth guide dog over a 20-year period. In the past decade, I have increasingly needed to cope with clueless handlers allowing their pets to interfere with my dog’s work.

As a professor of ethics, I teach students to consider first the needs of the most vulnerable. I wish I could teach the same lesson to those who risk public safety with their ill-trained dogs, most of whom are emotional support animals, a category not recognized by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Dogs, dogs, dogs

Over the past decade, purported emotional support animals have increasingly appeared in stores, restaurants and airports. While peacocks, pigs and kangaroos make the headlines, almost all the animals found in no-pet zones are dogs. Dog biting, barking, growling, urinating and defecating are top complaints, with one airline reporting an 84% increase in dog-related incidents from 2016-2018.

The influx of inappropriate dogs has also generated unwarranted suspicion toward the approximately 10,000 Americans who, like me, partner with legitimate, trained guide dogs.

Animal public access in the U.S. is currently governed by a patchwork system of inconsistent laws, creating confusion for people with disabilities, citizens and, particularly, gatekeepers – the store managers, restaurant owners and building supervisors tasked with deciding which dogs should be allowed in their no-pet spaces.

dog straining on leash walking a plane's aisle

In other countries, IDs are issued only to professionally trained service dogs who have demonstrated ability to behave in public. In the U.S., there is no such validation. As a result, pet owners have become increasingly brazen in fraudulently claiming their animals warrant legal public access.

Service dogs versus emotional support animals

The Department of Justice, which enforces the Americans with Disabilities Act, allows people with physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual or mental impairments to have public access with service dogs who have been individually trained to perform tasks that mitigate their owners’ disabilities.

The Department of Transportation and Department of Housing and Urban Development allow service dogs on public transportation and in housing, respectively, but also grant access to people with mental and emotional disorders accompanied by emotional support animals – untrained animals who need only to contribute to their owners’ emotional well being, as any good pet would.

Technically, the individual seeking access with an emotional support animal must have certification of a mental or emotional disorder, which is a much lower standard than the disability requirement of DOJ.

Some mental health professionals have been willing to attest to an individual’s “need” for an emotional support animal without having a professional relationship with them. And none vouches for the appropriateness of specific animals.

ADA service dogs may legally accompany their handlers almost anywhere. Emotional support animals may not. For example, emotional support animals currently allowed in aircraft cabins are not legally permitted in airport shops and restaurants. Emotional support animals allowed to live in college dorms may not go with their owners to class or the cafeteria.

Online purveyors of official-looking letters, vests and patches guaranteed to get dogs access in pet-free zones take advantage of the confusion between service dogs and emotional support animals, liberally mixing the classifications. They also fail to mention that the individual seeking such accommodation must have proof of a mental disorder. This omission, itself, is an ethical problem.

A predicament for gatekeepers

Gatekeepers have to weigh the consequences of confronting an individual accompanied by a dog. Denial of access to a disabled handler with a legitimate service dog can result in a US$10,000 fine by the DOJ. The fine for a handler who falsely portrays a pet as a service dog or emotional support animal ranges from $100 to $1,000 and happens only if the handler supplies identification or waits for the police.

For now, it’s ‘all aboard.’ Robert Nickelsberg/Archive Photos via Getty Images

It is cheaper and easier for gatekeepers to just hope that questionable dogs don’t put patrons at risk. Airline attendants face a unenviable dilemma, as passengers cannot escape aggressive or stressed dogs in the tight confines of an airplane.
Change on the horizon?

There are recent signs that DOT and HUD are moving toward DOJ’s more stringent regulations. On Feb. 5, 2020, DOT opened a 60-day public comment period for a plan that would reclassify emotional support animals as pets and restrict free aircraft cabin access only to service dogs. HUD recently posted new guidelines to help housing providers better determine animal access.

In my view, more federal intervention is needed. Medical documentation of disability should be the entry point for service dog access, just as it is for handicapped parking permits. Offering a nationally recognizable ID for service dog owners who voluntarily provide documentation would eliminate some fraud.

Ideally, a dog’s ability to behave appropriately in public should be proven prior to access and affirmed annually by testers, who use a public access test to verify a dog’s manners and handling of disability-specific tasks, such as that developed by Assistance Dogs International or those performed by all U.S. guide dog schools.

Some argue documentation and testing is burdensome or a violation of disabled people’s civil rights. But physicians, who diagnose ADA-defined disabilities, already provide their patients verification for state and federal benefits. Behavior tests assure handlers their dogs can work in stressful situations. And ensuring public safety protects the civil rights of all people.

Ivermectin has been a lifesaving drug for people with parasitic infections like river blindness and strongyloidiasis. 

But taking it for COVID-19 may result in the opposite effect.

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 

 Jeffrey R. Aeschlimann, Associate Professor of Pharmacy, University of Connecticut

While ivermectin was originally used to treat river blindness, it has also been repurposed to treat other human parasitic infections.

Ivermectin is an over 30-year-old wonder drug that treats life- and sight-threatening parasitic infections. Its lasting influence on global health has been so profound that two of the key researchers in its discovery and development won the Nobel Prize in 2015.

I’ve been an infectious disease pharmacist for over 25 years. I’ve also managed patients who delayed proper treatment for their severe COVID-19 infections because they thought ivermectin could cure them.

Although ivermectin has been a game-changer for people with certain infectious diseases, it isn’t going to save patients from COVID-19 infection. In fact, it could cost them their lives.

Let me tell you a short story about the history of ivermectin.

Developing ivermectin for animal use

Ivermectin was first identified in the 1970s during a veterinary drug screening project at Merck Pharmaceuticals. Researchers focused on discovering chemicals that could potentially treat parasitic infections in animals. Common parasites include nematodes, such as flatworms and roundworms, and arthropods, such as fleas and lice. All of these infectious organisms are quite different from viruses.

Merck partnered with the Kitasato Institute, a medical research facility in Japan. Satoshi Omura and his team isolated a group of chemicals called avermectin from bacteria found in a single soil sample near a Japanese golf course. To my knowledge, avermectin has yet to be found in any other soil sample in the world.

Research on avermectin continued for approximately five years. Soon, Merck and the Kitasato Institute developed a less toxic form they named ivermectin. It was approved in 1981 for commercial use in veterinary medicine for parasitic infections in livestock and domestic pets with the brand name Ivomec.The chemical compounds that make up ivermectin were first discovered in bacteria found in the soil of a Japanese golf course. Pak Sang Lee/flickr, CC BY-NC

Developing ivermectin for human use

Early experiments by William Campbell and his team from Merck discovered that the drug also worked against a human parasite that causes an infection called river blindness.

River blindness, also known as onchocerciasis, is the second leading cause of preventable blindness in the world. It is transmitted to humans from blackflies carrying the parasitic worm Onchocerca volvulus and occurs predominantly in Africa.

Ivermectin underwent trials to treat river blindness in 1982 and was approved in 1987. It has since been distributed free of charge through the Mectizan Donation Program to dozens of countries. Thanks to ivermectin, river blindness has been essentially eliminated in 11 Latin American countries, preventing approximately 600,000 cases of blindness.

These two decades of extensive work to discover, develop and distribute ivermectin helped to significantly reduce human suffering from river blindness. It’s these efforts that were recognized by the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, awarded to both William Campbell and Satoshi Omura for their leadership on this groundbreaking research.Satoshi Omura and William Campbell were awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their research on ivermectin. Bengt Nyman/Wikimedia Commons

Repurposing drugs for other uses

Infectious disease researchers frequently attempt to repurpose antimicrobials and other medications to treat infections. Drug repurposing is attractive because the approval process can happen more quickly and at a lower cost since nearly all of the basic research has already been completed.

In the years since it was approved to treat river blindness, ivermectin was also shown to be highly effective against other parasitic infections. This includes strongyloidiasis, an intestinal roundworm infection that affects an estimated 30 to 100 million people worldwide.

Another example is amphotericin B, originally approved to treat human yeast and mold infections. Researchers discovered it can also be an effective treatment for severe forms of leishmaniasis, a parasitic infection prevalent in tropical and subtropical countries.

Likewise, doxycycline is an antibiotic used for a wide variety of human bacterial infections such as pneumonia and Lyme disease. It was later found to also be highly effective in preventing and treating malaria.Ivermectin has been used to treat strongyloidiasis, an intestinal infection that can be life-threatening for the immunocompromised. jarun011/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Repurposing drugs for COVID-19

Not every attempt at repurposing a drug works as hoped, however.

At the start of the pandemic, scientists and doctors tried to find inexpensive medications to repurpose for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were two of those drugs. They were chosen because of possible antiviral effects documented in laboratory studies and limited anecdotal case reports from the first COVID-19 outbreaks in China. However, large clinical studies of these drugs to treat COVID-19 did not translate to any meaningful benefits. This was partly due to the serious toxic effects patients experienced before the drugs reached a high enough dose to inhibit or kill the virus.

Unfortunately, lessons from these failed attempts have not been applied to ivermectin. The false hope around using ivermectin to treat COVID-19 originated from an April 2020 laboratory study in Australia. Although the results from this study were widely circulated, I immediately had serious doubts. The concentration of ivermectin they tested was 20 to 2,000 times higher than the standard dosages used to treat human parasitic infections. Indeed, many other pharmaceutical experts confirmed my initial concerns within a month of the paper’s publication. Such high concentrations of the drug could be significantly toxic.

Another commonly cited paper on ivermectin’s purported effects against COVID-19 was withdrawn in July 2021 after scientists found serious flaws with the study. These flaws ranged from incorrect statistical analyses to discrepancies between collected data and published results to duplicated patient records and the inclusion of study subjects who died before even entering the study. Even more concerning, at least two other oft-cited studies have raised significant concerns about scientific fraud.


Hand holding a blister packet of ivermectin.

Satoshi Omura and William Campbell.

Microscopic image of strongyloides stercoralis in human stool

At the time of this writing, two large randomized clinical trials both showed no significant benefit from the use of ivermectin for COVID-19. Reputable national and international health care organizations, including the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, unanimously recommend against the use of ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19 unless in the context of a clinical trial.

Consequences of using ivermectin for COVID-19

Unfortunately, many organizations with dubious intentions have continued to promote unsubstantiated use of invermectin for COVID-19. This has led to a dramatic rise in ivermectin prescriptions and a flood of calls to U.S. poison control centers for ivermectin overdoses. Many calls were due to ingestion of large amounts of veterinary products containing ivermectin – two deaths linked to ivermectin overdose were reported in September 2021.

Ivermectin, when used correctly, has prevented millions of potentially fatal and debilitating infectious diseases. It’s meant to be prescribed only to treat infections caused by parasites. It’s not meant to be prescribed by parasites looking to extract money from desperate people during a pandemic. It’s my sincere hope that this unfortunate and tragic chapter in the otherwise incredible story of a lifesaving medication will come to a quick end.

Article updated to indicate that the brand name for veterinary ivermectin is Ivomec

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This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Jeffrey R. Aeschlimann, University of Connecticut.

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Jeffrey R. Aeschlimann has received funding from the NIH for collaborative research projects focusing on bacterial antibiotic resistance.