SPACE RACE 2.0

The UAE is becoming a major space power

Mark R. Whittington, opinion contributor


An old saying among foreign policy circles stated that while the kingdom of heaven runs on righteousness the kingdoms of the Earth run on oil. However, because of concerns about climate change, the fracking boom in the United States and the discovery of oil and gas deposits offshore of the State of Israel - the old reality no longer applies.

© Getty Images The UAE is becoming a major space power

The new reality is that the kingdoms of the Earth run on high technology. Few countries have moved so quickly to adapt as the United Arab Emirates. The UAE, as part of a shift toward high tech, has started its own space program. In a few short years, the Arab gulf state has become a major space power.

The UAE is pursuing a strategy that includes developing its own space capabilities and seeking both international and commercial partners for its various space missions. The UAE is also nurturing its own indigenous commercial space sector. The strategy has met with considerable success.

The Hope Mars probe was developed in house, assembled by the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder and was launched on board a Japanese rocket. The Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre recently released a treasure trove of data from the probe for anyone to evaluate and use. The data show, among other things, how Martian atmospheric gasses interact with each other and with solar radiation.

The Rashid lunar rover will be launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and will be taken to the lunar surface on a Japanese lander. The Rashid will land on the Lacus Somniorum region of the moon's near side in late 2022.

The UAE intends to mount a mission to the main asteroid belt in 2028. The probe, which has not been named yet, will conduct gravity-assist maneuvers at Venus and Earth, arriving at the main belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter in 2030. It will fly by seven asteroids before landing on another one in 2033. The University of Colorado Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics will be a key scientific partner.

Finally, the UAE and Israel have signed an agreement pledging cooperation, among other projects, in the Beresheet 2 moon mission. The agreement further cements relations between the two countries, which have become commercial and defense allies, in the wake of the Abraham Accords.

The UAE has its own astronaut corps, including astronauts are Hazzaa Al Mansoori, Sultan Al Neyadi, Nora Matrooshi and Mohammed Al Mulla. Al Mansoori has already flown a week-long mission to the International Space Station, riding to the orbiting laboratory on a Russian Soyuz. Al Matrooshi is the first Arab woman astronaut. She has expressed interest in being included in a future Artemis mission to the moon.

Besides a growth of technology, the UAE-based National News reports that the UAE's space program has sparked a "space culture" in the Arab gulf state. The Emirate's space culture has been manifested in a growth of astrophotography and other visual art.

The UAE's space program, and its power to positively affect that country's economy and culture could serve as a model for other countries. NASA and the new space commercial sector have certainly proven to be a positive influence in the United States, a country much in need of something to feel good about.

Too often, developments in the Islamic world have proven to be tragic. The recent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban is a case in point, with the resulting collapse of that country's economy and the chronic human rights violations, especially against women.

The UAE's turn toward technology development and education harkens back to the early history of the Islamic world, when that region was a center of science, mathematics and medicine. The fact that STEM in the Arab gulf state has been of benefit to women should not go unnoticed. Besides Nora Matrooshi, Sara Al Amiri was recently elevated to become the UAE's first Minister of Advanced Science and the chairperson of that country's space agency.

The UAE was an early signatory of the Artemis Accords, an alliance of states pledging cooperation in the movement of humankind to the moon, Mars and beyond. Thus, the Arab gulf state will be a major force in the exploration of space.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of space exploration studies "Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?" as well as "The Moon, Mars and Beyond," and "Why is America Going Back to the Moon?" He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.

LU researcher tackles ‘the next frontier’ of Sudbury’s regreening program

A researcher at Laurentian University’s Living with Lakes Centre is planting the seeds for a more sustainable and environmentally friendly land reclamation process.

Jonathan Lavigne has partnered with Collège Boréal to explore the potential for pulp and paper mill waste and municipal biosolids as an alternative to the lime and fertilizer method of treating soils damaged by years of acid rain deposition.

He is tracking more than 3,000 seedlings at the college’s state-of-the-art greenhouse facility to determine how they respond to nine different soil treatments as part of the first phase of his project.

His goal is to find the safest and most effective way to reintroduce organic matter to the region’s most damaged landscapes, including aggregate pits and Sudbury’s upland environments.

“Part of my master’s research project was to see how well Sudbury was doing in its regreening efforts,” said Lavigne, a former hockey player who went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Laurentian University.

“They were trying to reintroduce a bunch of species other than Red Pine and Jack Pine to Sudbury’s most damaged hills. My job was to see what works and what doesn’t – we tracked 1,800 seedlings over two summers, and in the end, I produced a report that I gave to the city.”

The results of the project were not surprising.

“As we suspected, only the most drought-tolerant species (essentially conifers) had a chance of reaching maturity. The rest succumbed to drought,” he said.

This is because Sudbury’s upland soils lack a key component retained by undamaged landscapes – soil organic matter.

“Undamaged landscapes have a thin, but critical layer of organic soil that helps retain moisture and critical nutrients while reducing soil temperature,” said Lavigne.

“Years of acid rain deposition caused millions of tonnes of upland soil to erode into surrounding lowlands.”

Sudbury’s upland environments are so damaged they can be compared to aggregate pits.

“If you look at Sudbury’s landscape, you can see that the areas with the highest elevation are the areas with the most rock concentration,” said Lavigne.

“We’ve regreened the lowlands – and they are doing very well because everything flows to the lowlands, and they are full of moisture. The uplands are really the next frontier of Sudbury’s regreening project.”

Lavigne’s PhD project will focus on improving soil for land reclamation in aggregate pits using different kinds of waste. The project will happen in multiple phases.

The goal of the first phase is to narrow down the safest and most effective soil treatments during the greenhouse trial.

“We wanted to see if we could replace the lime and fertilizer method of treating soil because the current method can be environmentally destructive and it’s really expensive to bring lime all the way over here from the prairies,” said Lavigne.

“Using different types of waste, we’re trying to see if we can replace this old method with a new method and find a solution that’s a bit more local.”

Lavigne has partnered with different businesses and organizations to get his hands on a number of different waste materials that would otherwise get landfilled or burned.

Using these materials, he developed the nine different soil treatments currently under trial.

These include Sudbury’s traditional method of treating damaged soils with dolomitic limestone and fertilizer in addition to treated municipal sewage, boiler ash, and pulp and paper mill waste.

“Our control is just regular gravel material that you would find in an aggregate pit. If we were to plant or lay seed down without doing anything, it would go onto this material,” he said.

“The second treatment is stockpile soil.”

When building an aggregate pit, Lavigne explained, companies remove about 10 to 20 cm of the top layer of soil.

“Then, they stockpile it and pile it back on after the project is finished, but sometimes after 20 years, the material isn’t good anymore,” he said.

“What they will often do is cycle the soil – they will take material from aggregate pit two and use it to regreen aggregate pit one. They are always borrowing from another place to cover somewhere else. It’s a bit destructive, and it’s not very environmentally friendly.”

Lavigne is also using a material called biomass boiler ash.

“That’s the fancy name for it. In a pulp and paper mill, they burn up a lot of material, and biomass boiler ash is literally just the kind of ash from the tree bark that they get rid of,” he said.

“They use this material all the time in the Ottawa Valley region because it’s really high in calcium, and it’s good for calcium depleted regions. We’re using that ash plus some agricultural fertilizer because the ash isn’t very high in macronutrients.”

He is also using pulp and paper mill waste mixed with healthy forest soil from another location, and municipal sewage powder mixed with lime and fertilizer.

Many of these materials have been used for decades in agricultural fields and mine tailings where all the effluent is accounted for. They have not been considered safe for use on public lands.

“The material back then was bad for business. You did not want that near any type of public waterway or anything like that,” said Lavigne.

“I would say probably in the last 10 to 15 years, there’s been a lot of advancements in pulp chemical engineering and processing. Now, there’s been enough technological advancement in terms of treating this stuff that it could be considered safe.”

The greenhouse trial will test all these treatments for efficacy.

When Lavigne has narrowed his selection down to two or three treatments, he will then use those treatments to try and regreen an abandoned aggregate pit in the region.

“During the greenhouse trial, what we’re doing is using this controlled environment where we can see if any ugly, nasty chemistry is coming out of the water, and we will see at the end of the trial what is most effective,” he said.

“Because even if one pulp does really well, there’s no point in doing a larger trial if it’s just going to damage the waterways because they’ve been through hell and back already.”

Lavigne added that there’s a huge difference between taking a bit of material and putting it in a lab and actually applying that material in a field environment.

“The lab and field are two different realities – a lab is a controlled environment where you know all the variables and the field is a chaotic system. You put the material down and you don’t know what will happen after that,” he said.

The second phase of the trial will involve applying the chosen treatments to an aggregate pit that was abandoned in the 1980s and planting trees and a variety of other plants to see how well they take.

“We’re going to let that grow for two to three years and then we’re going to see at the end what material did well and what we can find being leached out of that site,” he said.

“The idea is that if we can regreen a gravel pit using this material and we can say it’s safe, then we can apply this protocol to similar environments like the 70,000 hectares of land in Sudbury that still need to be treated.”

Lavigne and his team completed a pre-application site assessment for the next step of the project in September.

“The goal is to lay down the material sometime this fall, and then to plant in the spring. We will track them from spring 2022 to around fall 2024,” he said.

This research will have important implications as the world enters the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration in 2021, Lavigne added.

“When you’re trying to reclaim a landscape anywhere in the world, one of the biggest issues is being able to improve the conditions of the soil,” he said.

“The soil needs to be able to support a seedling for at least the first few years of its life where it’s at its most vulnerable. If it isn’t able to do that, you’re going to plant 300 trees and six of them are going to survive.”

The results of this experiment, he added, will be “another tool” in a restoration ecologist’s pocket.

“Sudbury really is the poster child for how a community can come together to successfully claim an environment,” he said.

“With over 200,000 brownfield/industrially contaminated sites in Canada alone, the world needs the forward-thinking, innovative science coming out of Laurentian's natural science departments to lead the effort in tackling climate change and restoring damaged landscapes.”

The Local Journalism Initiative is made possible through funding from the federal government.

sud.editorial@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @SudburyStar

Colleen Romaniuk, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Sudbury Star

COP26: 4 ways rich nations can keep promises to curb emissions and fund climate adaptation

The time has come for Canada and other rich nations to pony-up and pay for the devastation they have caused countries in the Global South. That means, for a start, providing far greater climate adaptation financing to low-income countries and plugging the holes that siphon their limited fiscal resources to tax havens.

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© (Jeremy Selwyn/Pool via AP) The United Kingdom will host the upcoming COP26 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

Bruce Campbell, Adjunct professor, faculty of environmental and urban change, 

York University, Canada 

Two Canadians have prominent roles at the COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow, Scotland. United Nations Ambassador Bob Rae, is co-chair of the COP26 finance panel, and Mark Carney is the UN special envoy for COP26, responsible for getting financial institutions to join the new Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero. They are experienced and highly respected individuals with solid reputations as mediators.

However, despite Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent climate plan, Canada’s record on greenhouse gas emissions reduction has been abysmal. Furthermore, its failure to meet its climate finance commitments to developing countries will not be viewed favourably as Ambassador Rae attempts to negotiate a meaningful international climate agreement.

The UN says more than 160 financial firms are signed onto the alliance but very few are Canadian. There are no Canadian banks among the 43 banking members, and only a handful of asset owners and managers, including the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. Moreover, many financial institutions have joined the alliance with sustainability plans that have been criticized as public relations exercises or greenwashing by environmental groups
Canada, one of the worst carbon emitters

Canada is, historically, the 10th largest carbon emitter and the worst contributor to carbon emissions on a per capita basis. The federal government has committed to reducing carbon emissions to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. However, it has not committed to end fossil fuel company subsidies or provide an end-date for fossil fuel production, despite the urging of the UN secretary general to hold the line.

Low-income countries are tiny emitters of greenhouse gases, least responsible for climate change, yet bearing its worst consequences. In the past 15 years, 90 per cent of deaths from heat wave-related disasters have occurred in low- and middle-income countries. The UN refugee agency estimates that 21.5 million people are displaced by climate change-related disasters every year. For these countries, adaptation, not mitigation, is the overriding priority.
Create zero-interest loans

Twenty years ago, at the Copenhagen summit, rich countries promised to provide developing countries US$100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020. They have yet to meet this target.

Canada has contributed less than 20 per cent of its fair share. Even with the Trudeau government’s promise to double climate financing to US$4.2 billion over five years, US$840 million per year, this is still only 24 per cent of its fair share. The Group of 78, of which I am a member of the executive, has called for a quadrupling of Canada’s financing commitment as a bare minimum.

Moreover 80 per cent of rich country financing is in the form of loans, increasing the stress on countries already struggling to manage their debt burdens.

International Monetary Fund-created money, or special drawing rights, which is allocated to countries based on their economic size, is largely unused by rich countries. Although discussions are ongoing, there has been no commitment to recycle these funds into zero-interest loans to low-income countries.
Tax havens harm climate action

Tax havens have disproportionately siphoned off wealth from low-income countries, a post-Second World War legacy of former colonies gaining independence that prompted the exit of colonial wealth via the proliferation of tax havens. Their losses have been accentuated during the pandemic.

According to a report by the tax justice network these countries are losing the equivalent to more than half of their yearly public health budgets due to the shifting of multinational corporations profits to tax havens. The loss is equivalent to eight per cent of rich countries’ health budgets.

More than 130 countries, including Canada, have reached an agreement, co-ordinated by the OECD, that would establish a minimum of 15 per cent corporate tax to restrict tax avoidance and evasion. However, it has been sharply criticized as being rife with loopholes and carveouts. Oxfam accused it of pandering to corporations, having “practically no teeth” and offering no revenue for the world’s poorest countries.

Read more: Paid millions to hide trillions: Pandora Papers expose financial crime enablers, too

Tax havens are enabled by an infrastructure of lawyers, accountants and bankers, including some from Canada. Rich countries’ efforts to restrict and bring greater transparency to international tax rules have largely fallen short.

Even by that standard Canada has been a laggard. The Liberal government recently increased the investigative resources of the Canada Revenue Agency and promised in its most recent budget to address cross-border tax avoidance and evasion schemes. How effective these will be in reining in these actions by wealthy individuals and corporations; past inaction does not bode well going forward. Carney will have his work cut out for him if, or when, he addresses these issues at COP26.
No more blah, blah, blah

To its credit, Canada, along with several other developed countries, is a member of the High Ambition Coalition, a group at the UN talks comprising many of the poorest and most vulnerable developing countries. But good intentions and empty promises will not pass muster. We don’t need more “blah blah blah,” to quote Greta Thunberg.

The UN Human Rights Council recently recognized access to a clean and healthy environment as a fundamental right and established a special rapporteur on the human rights impacts of climate change. These developments have the potential to make major emitting companies, including Canada’s, legally liable for human rights violations arising from climate change.

Hopefully, this will put additional pressure on rich countries to get serious about climate financing, debt restructuring and development funding for poor nations. Inaction is a luxury we can no longer afford.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bruce Campbell is affiliated with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, the Group of 78, the Rideau Institute for International affairs, The Polaris Institute

STATEHOOD OR INDEPENDENCE
How Puerto Rico became the most vaccinated place COLONY in America

A member of a scientific coalition advising Puerto Rico's government on the coronavirus pandemic recently joked about the island's high Covid-19 vaccination rate, attributing it to the proliferation of drug store chains on the island.

© Ricardo Arduengo/AFP/Getty Images People attend first mass vaccination event at the Puerto Rico Convention Center in San Juan on March 31, 2021.

"There is a Walgreens on like every corner," said Rafael Irizzary, a professor of biostatistics at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "Everywhere you go, they have everything you need. Rum. Coffee. You get your fireworks and then you go get a vaccine."

Irizzary was only half joking about vaccination rates and Puerto Rico's more than 100 Walgreens outlets.

The Caribbean island -- in recent years pummeled by deadly hurricanes, rocked by earthquakes, beset by political unrest and saddled by debt -- has quietly managed to outpace even New England states with the highest vaccination rates in the country.

"All those emergencies and collective trauma primed Puerto Rico and the leadership, the scientific community, the healthcare community," said Daniel Colón Ramos, a Yale medical school professor who presides over the coronavirus coalition advising the government. "There was a sense of urgency. A lot of people that I have worked with, their attitude was like: Not on my watch. Not again."

Senior citizens receive Covid-19 vaccines at a National Guard vaccination center in San Juan on February 8, 2021.

Puerto Rico has fully vaccinated just over 73% of its 3.3 million residents, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's more than 2.3 million people.

The island has the highest rate of total vaccine doses administered, with 154,563 per 100,000 people. It had administered 4.9 million doses as of Friday, according to the CDC.

On the mainland, Vermont leads with 70.8% of the population fully vaccinated, followed by Connecticut at 70.2% and Maine at 70%, according to the CDC, which added that just over 57% of the total US population was fully vaccinated as of Friday.

Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, wrote on Twitter that Puerto Rico's "fabulous" vaccination efforts have "gotten way too little attention."

"Best I can tell, they've done this largely by not tying vaccines to politics," Jha wrote last weekend. "They pay less attention to mainland politics. All their political parties actively support vaccinations. And generally, political [identity] & vaccinations are not intermixed."

Not only is Puerto Rico poor compared to much of the mainland, Jha noted, but it also has a larger population than 21 states. It's about "5 times bigger" than Vermont, he wrote. The poverty rate on the island was about 43% in 2018, compared to 13% at the national level and more than double Mississippi's 19.7%, according to the US Census Bureau.

'A lot of saved lives'

"It represents a lot of saved lives," Colón Ramos said of the island's vaccination success. "It's really about the fact there are hundreds of people -- if not thousands -- right now walking around somewhere in Puerto Rico and they wouldn't be there if it wasn't for these efforts."

Dr. Iris Cardona, chief medical officer of the island's health department, attributed the success to teamwork by the scientific community, the private sector, government agencies, medical associations and schools, the National Guard and religious and municipal leadership.

"It's a collaborative exercise," said Cardona, who is overseeing the vaccination program. "Given the difficulties that the whole world knows Puerto Rico has endured in the last five years -- hurricanes, earthquakes, political and fiscal crises -- the Puerto Rican people at all levels have cooperated."

That cooperation has included both vaccine education programs and vaccination events.

Throughout the pandemic, the island's government has implemented lockdowns and other restrictions, issued mask and vaccination mandates and put in place stringent indoor dining and social distancing rules, according to members of the Covid-19 coalition.

"In the cultural context of Puerto Rico, the social distancing is not something that comes easy to us as Puerto Ricans -- we want to be close," Colón Ramos said. "But people have managed to navigate that very well.

'Coherent message ... based on scientific evidence'

While some states have fiercely resisted Covid-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates, the US territory has not.

"Right now the legislature is controlled by one party, the governorship is controlled by another party, but in spite of those differences... wanting to save lives during the pandemic was never politicized in Puerto Rico," Colón Ramos said.

"Difficult decisions were made and criticized," he said. "But, for example, mask mandates were never really politicized. The importance of vaccination was never made into a political issue. It helped to send a coherent message that was based on scientific evidence."

Puerto Rico has had at least 151,245 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 3,219 reported deaths during the pandemic, according to the island's health department. Connecticut, which is about the same size as Puerto Rico, has had more than 400,000 Covid-19 cases and 8,721 deaths.

Dr. Víctor Ramos, a pediatrician and president of the island's Association of Physicians and Surgeons, said mass vaccination centers were set up by the National Guard in shopping malls throughout the island.

There were door-to-door vaccination events in remote rural towns, where shots were administered in homes, particularly to the elderly and bedridden.

"We will go wherever we need to go to vaccinate people," Ramos said. "After (Hurricane) Maria many people were holed up in remote towns and we had to get out there to help them. We're doing the same now with the vaccine."

The housing crisis and the labor shortage are linked: People can't take jobs if there aren't affordable homes nearby

bwinck@businessinsider.com (Ben Winck,Madison Hoff) 

© Steve Pfost/Newsday RM/Getty Images A "Help Wanted" sign hangs in the window of Gino's Pizza on Main Street in Patchogue, New York on August 24, 2021. Steve Pfost/Newsday RM/Getty Images

The housing crisis and the labor shortage are linked. Fighting the former could help solve the latter.

Numerous studies show that affordable housing improves job growth, while expensive housing can damage local economies.

Investing in underserved neighborhoods and creating affordable housing in cities can boost hiring across the US.

San Francisco could learn something from Columbus, Ohio.

It's a fairly simple concept: Though the Bay Area boasts abundant jobs, housing for the people to fill those jobs isn't affordable. In Columbus, however, affordable housing can be found within a reasonable distance from the city's largest job hubs.

San Francisco's problem reveals the link between the housing crisis and the labor shortage. Columbus's planning hints at a solution for both.

Across the US, businesses are struggling to fill job openings. The trend, now known as the "labor shortage," has changed the game for employers and employees. Americans are flexing unprecedented bargaining power and demanding higher pay to return to work. Those with jobs are quitting at record pace for new opportunities, hoping to capitalize on the overwhelming demand for workers.

It's working. Average wages have risen at the fastest pace in decades as firms scramble to rehire. Yet the shortage shows no signs of calming. More than 10 million job openings remained unfilled at the end of August, signaling the return to full employment will take some time.

At the same time, the US housing market is still white-hot. A shortage of available homes has led to frenetic bidding wars and the fastest price growth in 45 years. More houses are on the market than during pandemic lows, but it's still well below what experts estimate is needed to meet demand.

The shortages are two sides of the same coin. Cities with the most job openings don't have the affordable housing needed by many workers. And areas with cheaper housing don't have the promising labor markets to make them attractive.

Fixing the housing market could be the best bet for fighting the labor shortage.
Housing and employment are fundamental to the American Dream

The gap between affordable housing and job access already has a name: spatial mismatch. The trend has been studied for years, but the pandemic's effects on the labor market brought the term back into the limelight.

It also describes where San Francisco can learn from Columbus. A 2019 study by the Urban Institute found that, while the San Francisco Bay Area had an overabundance of job openings, there weren't enough job seekers within a reasonable distance to fill them. It wasn't until one looked far into the Bay Area's surrounding neighborhoods that openings matched available workers. But that had more to do with fewer postings than more applicants.

The landscape is different in Columbus. While the city had more open job than people seeking work, those jobless people tended to at least live within a reasonable distance to work hubs. By creating affordable housing and placing it near transit, Columbus was able to connect low-income residents with employment opportunities.

Similar effects can help close spacial mismatches throughout the US, Christina Stacy, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, told Insider.

"People need safe, stable, affordable housing in high-opportunity neighborhoods in order to have any upward economic mobility. Certainly having affordable housing near jobs will help us get there," she said.

The equation works the other way around, too. Unaffordable housing poses "significant negative effects" on local employment growth, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston said in a 2010 paper.

For example, California cities suffer a two percentage-point drop in employment growth for every one-unit increase in the Fed's housing affordability ratio (higher ratios mean worse affordability). Metropolitan areas and counties faced 10-point drops in job growth for every one-unit increase. Despite varied housing markets across the country, the results "turn out to be remarkably consistent," the team said.

Even housing uncertainty can harm local job markets. A survey of nearly 700 Milwaukee workers showed that experiencing a forced move increased the likelihood of losing work by up to 22 percentage points, according to a 2016 study by Harvard University researchers.

Improving housing affordability doesn't just lift job growth; It keeps workers from losing the jobs they have.
Moving people to jobs and bringing jobs to the people

Cities have long offered the best job prospects, while poorer and less densely populated areas have been left by the wayside. The effect snowballed through much of the post-war period as home prices rose, low-income Americans were forced out, and wealthier workers brought fresh investment to gentrified neighborhoods.

The pandemic widened the gap even further. Home prices have skyrocketed through 2021 as a broad housing shortage fueled bidding wars across the US. The price surge was most intense in the most populous areas, making job hubs even less accessible to low-income workers.

Only eight states - including California, New York, and Hawaii - had more unemployed workers than job openings at the end of August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. The remaining states had far more job openings than workers to fill them, the defining characteristic behind the country's labor shortage.

The solution must be two-pronged, the Urban Institute's Stacy said. City governments can leverage pandemic-era aid to create and preserve affordable housing. Transportation options like buses and train stops can connect affordable neighborhoods to job opportunities. And renter protections can stave off gentrification and ensure neighborhoods remain accessible.

"As we do invest in under-invested neighborhoods, we need to get in there and preserve affordable housing," Stacy said. "Otherwise you're just shifting people around and it's not really helping with equity or reducing poverty."

On the other end of the spectrum, governments can draw jobs to areas where homes are affordable. Policies like the New Markets Tax Credit and Opportunity Zone tax incentives can attract private businesses to affordable areas, she said. Governments can also stimulate employment directly through workforce training programs and public-sector jobs.

"The answer to all of this is that we have attack everything by every angle," Stacy said. "This is a great opportunity point to be rethinking this and responding to all these demographic shifts."

Mayan artifacts discovered along train construction route in Mexico

Archaeologists say they have discovered hundreds of Mayan artifacts, including ceramic vessels and burial sites, along the route of a train construction project in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has insisted construction of the Mayan Train project, which will run through five states, will be conducted in way that is safe for the environment and will benefit tourism.

By Radina Gigova, CNN 

Researchers have so far discovered nearly 2,500 pre-Hispanic structures, 80 burial sites and thousands of vessels and fragments along the route of the "Maya Train," Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced in a statement Thursday.

The artifacts were discovered with the help of GPS georeferencing, satellite topographic images and LIDAR sensors in the periphery of just one of the sections of the project, which runs from the cities of Palenque, in Chiapas to Escárcega, in Campeche.

Discoveries ranged from mounds to bases with complex architecture, INAH archaeologists Ileana Echauri Pérez and Iliana Ancona Aragón said. The pair also worked with INAH investigator Silvianne Boucher Le Landais.

"Both the immovable archaeological artifacts and the movable ones expand the knowledge about daily life, and trade and cultural exchange relations that existed centuries ago in the Mayan area," the researchers said.

Some objects "of special interest" for researchers include "an offering composed of a bowl and a spout vessel, both with four mammiform supports -- representing the breasts of a woman," which date from the transition from Pre-Classic to Classic periods, known as Protoclassic, INAH said.

Archaeologists believe the vessels were used by the ruling elite during "important political or religious moments," and the pouring vessel was likely to have been used for precious liquids such as chocolate and perfumes.

Preliminary analysis indicated the Mayan occupation had inhabited the area for a long time, from the Middle Preclassic Period -- which began in 700 BC -- to as late as 850 AD, the end of the Late Classic Period.

Another area of interest for researchers is the Boca del Cerro area, located on the banks of the Usumacinta River, which was part of a large residential area associated with a key commercial hub that connected regions the along the Usumacinta and other parts of Mesoamerica.

"The construction of the Mayan Train constitutes an important research opportunity, through archaeological recovery, with a view to expanding the knowledge about the archaeological sites of the regions that the train will travel through," researchers said.

However, critics of the train project, which is intended to connect beach resorts and the peninsula's interior, say it will damage the environment and potentially harm other archeological sites.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has insisted that construction of the project, which will run through five states, will be conducted in way that is safe for the environment and will benefit tourism.

Mammoths and other Ice Age giants survived longer than scientists thought

By Katie Hunt, CNN 

Mammoths and other giant creatures of the Ice Age such as woolly rhinos survived longer than scientists thought, coexisting with humans for tens of thousands years before they vanished for good. That's according to the results of an ambitious 10-year research project that analyzed DNA from hundreds of soil samples across the Arctic.  

© Guogang Zhang/Hubei University Mammoth Steppe was a unique ecosystem that hosted a number of large grazing animals.

The scientists involved in the project collected 535 samples of permafrost and sediment from frozen lakes, often in extremely cold locations from across Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia, in 73 locations where the remains of mammoths have been found.

Analysis of DNA contained in the soil showed that mammoths were living in mainland Siberia 3,900 years ago -- after the Great Pyramid of Giza was built in Egypt and the megaliths of Stonehenge were erected.

Most woolly mammoths were previously thought to have died off about 10,000 years ago, except for a very tiny population that survived on remote islands off Siberia.

Woolly rhinos, the researchers said, were still roaming around the Arctic 9,800 years ago. Earlier studies said they went extinct about 14,000 years ago.

Instead, extinction came when the last areas of Mammoth Steppe -- a unique ecosystem in the Arctic that doesn't exist today -- gave way to peatland as the climate became warmer and wetter.

"The authors present several dates for mammoth, woolly rhino, horse and steppe bison that are also substantially younger than the fossil record indicates, which builds a stronger case for late survival across the Arctic than has been made previously," said Tori Herridge, an evolutionary biologist and mammoth specialist at the Natural History Museum in London.

"I am very excited to see how this work develops, and what new data might arise to support or refute this. I am sure it will come under intense scrutiny," she said via email. Herridge was not involved in the research.

Most ancient DNA is typically taken from bones or teeth (the oldest DNA ever sequenced was from a mammoth tooth and was more than 1 million years old), but new techniques mean that genetic material preserved in soil can now be analyzed, dated and sequenced.

All animals, including humans, constantly shed genetic material when they pee, poop and bleed, lose hair and slough off dead skin cells. This genetic material leaches into the soil, where it can remain for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years when the conditions are right -- such as in frozen ground.

"An individual animal continuously spreads DNA throughout its lifetime in its dung, urine, epidermal cells, and hair, containing millions of DNA segments as it wandered across its full geographic range, but only left one skeleton upon its death, which is far less likely to have been preserved, recovered and dated," said one of the study's authors, Yucheng Wang, a research associate in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge.

"By sequencing only a few of these DNA molecules preserved in the environment, we can identify its existence and range. It is therefore not surprising that sedimentary DNA could produce a later and more accurate extinction estimate."

   

© Inger Greve Alsos The Arctic environment today.

Known as environmental or eDNA, the technique has been used by archaeologists to shed light on ancient humans, and the same method has also been used during the pandemic to test the sewage of human populations to detect and track Covid-19.

Megafauna mystery

The study, which published in the journal Nature, also detailed the Arctic ecosystem for the past 50,000 years. The environment in which mammoths lived, known as the Mammoth Steppe, was cold, dry and regionally complex, with a distinct community of vegetation composed of grasses, sedges (a grass-like plant), flowering plants and shrubs. As part of the research, the team sequenced the DNA of 1,500 Arctic plants for the very first time.

Why large, grazing animals such as the mammoth went extinct has been debated for more than a 100 years, Wang said. There are two main theories: Mammoths were hunted to death within centuries of their first contact with humans, or they weren't able to adapt quickly enough to a rapidly changing climate at the end of the Ice Age.

Wang said their research supported the theory that climate change at the end of the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago played the major role.

The longer overlap between humans and mammoths in the Arctic region, together with a detailed understanding of the Mammoth Steppe ecosystem and how quickly it changed, strengthened the case against the idea that humans were the main driver of mammoth's extinction, Wang explained.

"When the climate got wetter and the ice began to melt, it led to the formation of lakes, rivers, and marshes. The ecosystem changed and the biomass of the vegetation reduced and would not have been able to sustain the herds of mammoths," Wang said in a news release.

"We have shown that climate change, specifically precipitation, directly drives the change in the vegetation -- humans had no impact on them at all based on our models."

True dynamics?

Herridge at the Natural History Museum said more work needs to be done on the human presence in the Mammoth Steppe if any human role in the disappearance of mammoths is to be ruled out.

In the models used in this paper, she said, researchers used the scarce presence of human remains in the archaeological record and the existence of a climate suitable for humankind as a proxy, not DNA. Much finer data is needed to understand whether and when humans and mammoths actually overlapped in these regions.

"Environmental DNA studies like this have a lot of potential for directly testing for the presence through time of humans across the Arctic, in much the same way as they have done here for mammoths -- this is the sort of high resolution data we need to tease apart the true dynamics of the extinction of the woolly mammoth," she said.

"Overlap data alone won't cut it, as it isn't the last mammoth that matters, it's working out what drove mammoth numbers down so low that they were reduced to just few isolated and vulnerable populations."

© Yucheng Wang Scientists collected 535 samples of permafrost and sediment from across Siberia, Alaska, Canada and Scandinavia.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

(Yonhap Interview) Partnering with S. Korea, India seeks to export K9 howitzers to third countries: Indian secretary

India's Secretary for Defense Production Raj Kumar poses for a photo during an interview with Yonhap News Agency at a hotel in Seoul on Oct. 21, 2021. (Yonhap)

Interviews October 21, 2021
By Song Sang-ho and Kang Yoon-seung

SEOUL, Oct. 21 (Yonhap) -- India is seeking to export the K9 self-propelled howitzer to third countries in cooperation with South Korea, India's secretary for defense production said Thursday, stressing his country is pushing for a "win-win" partnership between the two sides.

Raj Kumar made the remarks during an exclusive interview with Yonhap News Agency, expressing satisfaction over India's recent deployment of the K9s, which were manufactured by the Indian company, L&T, in technical collaboration with the South Korean company Hanwha Defense.

"The Indian armed forces are very satisfied with the performance of the K9 Vajra platform, where the K9 Thunder has been very effectively adapted and indigenously built for Indian conditions and requirements," the secretary said.

"The variant of the platform also has good potential in third countries, and our governments (of India and South Korea) and industries are cooperating to take these opportunities forward," he added.

Raj Kumar was in Seoul to visit the biennial Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition (ADEX), which began its five-day run Tuesday to showcase high-tech weapons systems, including stealth fighters and hydrogen-powered drones.

India's military has recently rolled out 100 K9 howitzers to multiple areas, including those bordering China, as it has been pushing for military modernization. Kumar cast the domestic production of the K9s as a "success story" and "unique milestone" in cooperation between the two countries.

Asked if India's military has a plan to purchase more K9s, the secretary refused to give a direct answer.

"It's a dynamic process, and our armed forces do continuous assessment of their requirements and their capabilities," he said. "Depending upon future needs, you know, they (will) look at it."

The collaborative project between South Korea and India to produce the K9s is in tune with New Delhi's "Make In India" initiative aimed at turning the country into a global manufacturing hub.

"What we are looking at is making India make for the world, and we should have joint working collaboration and co-production," he said.

"They should ultimately result in self reliance for our country, but in the process, it should be a win-win for the industries of both India and Korea," he added.

South Korean defense companies have been stepping up efforts to advance into or strengthen their footholds in India's market, as India has been pushing for its wide-ranging defense modernization with an increased focus on homeland security.

From 2014-2019, the Indian government concluded contracts worth US$25.8 billion with Indian firms, many of which have partnered with international defense firms, according to the official.

"(Republic of Korea) defense industries can take advantage of these openings and huge opportunities now that a relationship of trust and confidence has been developed between the Indian and Korean defense establishments," Raj Kumar said.

sshluck@yna.co.kr
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S. Korean defense firms clinch deals worth US$128 mln at ADEX: organizers

 October 24, 2021

SEOUL, Oct. 24 (Yonhap) -- South Korean defense companies have signed business contracts worth US$128 million in total during a biennial arms exhibition held south of Seoul last week, its organizers said Sunday.

More than 250 local companies joined the five-day Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition (ADEX), which ended Saturday. The event marked a rare opportunity for the companies to explore new opportunities in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In addition to the finalized contracts, local companies had consultations with their foreign clients over potential contracts, which could amount to a combined $22.5 billion if signed, organizers said.

During the exhibition, organizers arranged more than 700 meetings between local firms and foreign governments at the ADEX venue, Seoul Air Base, they said.

The 2021 exhibition involved 440 companies from 28 countries. It marks the largest number of participating firms since the exhibition was launched in 1996.


The South Korean Air Force's acrobatic flight team, the Black Eagles, performs to mark the opening of the Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition (ADEX) 2021 at Seoul Air Base, south of Seoul, on Oct. 18, 2021. (Yonhap)

colin@yna.co.kr
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(Yonhap Feature) S. Korean farmers struggle from labor shortage as pandemic disrupts migrant work system

Feature October 17, 2021
By Chang Dong-woo

ANSEONG, South Korea, Oct. 17 (Yonhap) -- Koh Jin-taek is proud of having built a small but stable farming business in Anseong, 77 kilometers south of Seoul, over the past two decades producing primarily lettuce, chicory and other types of leafy vegetables.

He currently owns 44 vinyl greenhouses and had supplied nearly 10,000 kilograms of produce monthly to food companies, with annual sales climbing as high as 800 million won (US$680,000).

Things looked fairly bright for 53-year-old until COVID-19 landed in South Korea last year.

Koh now has become increasingly doubtful of whether he can maintain his business going forward.

"We have to supply at least 9,000 kg of vegetables each month to break even and save some money. Last month, we were only able to sell 4,800 kg," Koh said.





Koh Jin-taek, a farmer in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province, walks along his vinyl greenhouses used for producing vegetables on Oct. 15, 2021. (Yonhap)

One of the main reasons for such difficulties is the shortage of affordable labor.

The pandemic led to a sharp drop in the number of migrant workers in South Korea, driving up their wages. Koh's once nine-person workforce was recently slashed down to five as four abruptly left for higher paying jobs.

South Korea runs three types of migration labor schemes under which workers from 16 Asian countries are allowed to work in fields of low-skilled manual work, such as fishing, farming and manufacturing under E-8, E-9 and C-4 visas.

The programs are intended to provide local farmers with cheap labor while offering comparatively high wages for overseas workers who would have earned much less for the same job back in their home countries.

In 2019, nearly 9,000 workers from Asian countries, including Cambodia, Pakistan, China and Bangladesh, were hired here through the program. But due to strengthened border control against the pandemic, the number plunged 82 percent to 1,590 from January to August of this year.

This continued shortage of migrant workers is creating a supply-demand imbalance of farm labor, leading to a surge in hiring costs.

This phenomenon came as the local farming sector is dependent on foreign work more than ever. Young South Koreans are increasingly shunning manual labor, such as farming and fishing, and choosing to live in cities with higher-paying jobs.

Koh says he finds himself constantly checking his savings to see whether he is able to shoulder the sharp increase in labor costs due to the shortage of migrant workers since the pandemic.

The fast aging of the farming population isn't helping either. Last year, people over the age of 65 accounted for 41.7 percent of all farm households, up 3.9 percentage points from 2015.

A large number of anecdotes suggest that workers who arrive in South Korea are reportedly offered as high as double the daily wages as those before the pandemic.

Koh said his town's agency that matches farmers with migrant workers recently increased the daily wage up to 120,000 won from 80,000 won.

Koh said he had to destroy 30 vinyl greenhouses worth of goods this year. He simply was not able to harvest the perfectly tradable vegetables due to the labor shortage.

Rep. Ahn Ho-young of the ruling Democratic Party, a member of the parliament's labor committee, pointed out in a recent government audit session that the steep hikes in costs are driving local farmers to resort to employing undocumented workers.

On the consumer side of things, the labor shortage has ended up weakening the overall output of farm produce. This has led to hikes in food prices and has added inflationary pressure to the economy.

In the second quarter, South Korea ranked third among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in the growth rate of food prices.

Despite seeing higher wages, migrant workers themselves too aren't necessarily welcoming of the situation.

"Work is more difficult and time consuming as we are constantly understaffed," said Sreychom Mao, a 30-year-old worker from Cambodia.

Some farming communities are demanding that farmers be included in the government program that compensates small and midsized businesses for damage caused by adhering to social distancing rules.

To help out, most counties across the nation offer support, such as discounts for renting farm equipment, while some also send their employees in groups to local farms to help out with the manual labor.

But such peripheral actions are nowhere near the amount of help and attention farmers are requesting.

Koh hopes that the central and local government can offer subsidies so that farmers are able to hire South Korean workers, even if higher wages have to be offered.

"If the government provides support, local workers might make the effort to come here," Koh said.

Farmers will be left with nothing if the financial burden of employing local workers is put solely on farmers themselves, he said.

odissy@yna.co.kr
(END)

 

N. Korea confirms test-launch of new SLBM

This combined photo, released Oct. 20, 2021, by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency, shows a new type of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) being test-fired from waters the previous day. The South Korean military said on Oct. 19 that North Korea fired what appears to be an SLBM toward the East Sea from waters east of Sinpo, a city on the North's east coast. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
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