It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, November 01, 2021
Increased temperatures contributed to more than 200,000 cases of kidney disease in 15 years in Brazil alone, world’s largest study finds
World’s largest study of the impact of temperature changes and kidney disease reveals that 7.4 per cent of all hospitalisations for renal disease can be attributed to an increase in temperature
Today the world’s largest study of the impact of temperature changes and kidney disease reveals that 7.4 per cent of all hospitalisations for renal disease can be attributed to an increase in temperature. In Brazil – where the study was focused – this equated to more than 202,000 cases of kidney disease from 2000-2015.
The study, led by Professor Yuming Guo and Dr Shanshan Li, from Planetary Health at Monash University and published in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas journal, for the first time quantifies the risk and attributable burden for hospitalizations of renal diseases related to ambient temperature using daily hospital admission data from 1816 cities in Brazil.
The study comes as the world focuses on the impact of climate change at the COP26 conference in Glasgow from 31 October.
In 2017, a landmark article in The Lancet declared renal diseases a global public health concern, estimating that almost 2.6 million deaths were attributable to impaired kidney function that year. Importantly the incidence of death from kidney disease had risen 26.6 per cent compared to a decade previously, an increase that this study may indicate was, in part, caused by climate change.
The study looked at a total of 2,726,886 hospitalizations for renal diseases recorded during the study period. According to Professor Guo, for every 1°C increase in daily mean temperature, there is an almost 1 per cent increase in renal disease, with those most impacted being women, children under 4 years of age and those 80+ years of age.
The associations between temperature and renal diseases were largest on the day of the exposure to extreme temperatures but remained for 1–2 days post-exposure.
In the paper the authors – who are also from the University of Sao Paulo – argue that the study “provides robust evidence that more policies should be developed to prevent heat-related hospitalisations and mitigate climate change.”
“In the context of global warming, more strategies and policies should be developed to prevent heat-related hospitalizations.”
The authors advise interventions should be urgently incorporated into government policy on climate change, including particularly targeting specific individuals, including females, children, adolescents, and the elderly, as they are more vulnerable to heat with regard to renal diseases.
“Moreover, attention should be paid to low- and middle-income countries like Brazil, where reliable heat warning systems and preventive measures are still in need,” Professor Guo added.
IMAGE: THE INTERNATIONAL METHANE EMISSIONS OBSERVATORY (IMEO) IS RELEASING ITS FIRST ANNUAL REPORT ON SUNDAY 31 OCTOBER 2021. THE RELEASE COINCIDES WITH THE G20 SUMMIT IN ROME AND TAKES PLACE JUST A FEW DAYS AHEAD OF THE BEGINNING OF THE 2021 UN CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE (COP26) IN GLASGOW. THIS REPORT DESCRIBES HOW STATE ACTORS CAN TAKE ACTION TO CURB METHANE EMISSIONS FROM THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY, AND WHAT PROGRESS HAS BEEN MADE AS PART OF THE DECARBONIZATION PROCESS, PARTICULARLY IN THE ENERGY SECTOR. IMEO’S ANNUAL REPORT SEEKS TO PROVIDE DECISION MAKERS WITH A FRAMEWORK OF ACTION TO TRACK AND MONITOR METHANE EMISSIONS TO PLAN TARGETED AND AMBITIOUS ACTION FOR THEIR MITIGATION.view more
CREDIT: UNEP
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), with support from the European Union, today launched a new Observatory to drive action on reducing methane emissions – a powerful greenhouse gas responsible for at least a quarter of the current climate warming.
IMEO will improve the reporting accuracy and public transparency of human-caused methane emissions. IMEO will initially focus on methane emissions from the fossil fuel sector, and then expand to other major emitting sectors like agriculture and waste.
The recently published UNEP-CCAC Global Methane Assessment states that zero or low net-cost reductions could almost halve anthropogenic methane emissions and proven measures could shave 0.28 degrees Celsius from the forecasted rise in the planet’s average temperature by 2050.
IMEO will provide the means to prioritize actions and monitor commitments made by state actors in the Global Methane Pledge – a US- and EU-led effort by over two dozen countries to slash methane emissions by 30 per cent by 2030.
Methane: over 80 times more potent than CO2
To stay on track to reach the Paris Agreement goal of limiting climate change to 1.5°C, the world needs to almost halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes that if the world is to achieve the 1.5°C temperature target, deep methane emissions reductions must be achieved over this time.
“As highlighted by IPCC, if the world is serious about avoiding the worst effects of climate change, we need to cut methane emissions from the fossil fuel industry. But this is not a get-out-of-jail free card: methane reductions must go hand in hand with actions to decarbonize the energy system to limit warming to 1.5°C, as called for in the Paris Agreement,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP.
Methane released directly into the atmosphere is more than 80 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year time horizon. However, as methane’s atmospheric lifespan is relatively short – 10 to 12 years – actions to cut methane emissions can yield the most immediate reduction in the rate of warming, while also delivering air quality benefits.
EU Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson said, “Methane has accounted for roughly 30 per cent of global warming since pre-industrial times, and today its emissions are increasing faster than at any other time since record keeping began in the 1980s. Existing systems do not allow us to determine precisely enough where emissions happen across the global and in what volumes. Once better data is available, countries can take swift and well-targeted action. In the EU, we will already propose pioneering legislation to cut methane emissions this year. This includes mandatory leak detection and repair and limiting venting and flaring.”
The fossil fuel industry is responsible for one-third of anthropogenic emissions and is the sector with the highest potential for reductions. The wasted methane, the main component in natural gas, is a valuable source of energy that could be used to fuel power plants or homes.
IMEO: an independent and trusted entity
The Observatory will produce a global public dataset of empirically verified methane emissions – starting with the fossil fuel sector - at an increasing level of granularity and accuracy by integrating data principally from four streams: reporting from the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0 (OGMP 2.0), direct measurement data from scientific studies, remote sensing data, and national inventories. This will allow IMEO to engage companies and governments around the world to utilize this data to target strategic mitigation actions and support science-based policy options.
Critical to this effort are data collected through OGMP 2.0, launched in November 2020 in the framework of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition. OGMP 2.0 is the only comprehensive, measurement-based reporting framework for the oil and gas sector, and its 74 member companies represent many of the world’s largest operators across the entire value chain, with assets that account for over 30 per cent of all oil and gas production.
IMEO: First Annual Report
In a report released to coincide with the launch, IMEO laid out its Theory of Change, at the heart of which is the need for an independent and trusted entity to integrate these multiple sources of heterogenous data into a coherent and policy-relevant dataset. The report also includes the analysis of the first reports submitted by the company members of the OGMP 2.0. During this first year, most companies put significant effort into reporting and outlined ambitious 2025 reduction targets. Out of the 55 companies that set targets, 30 meet or exceed the recommended targets of 45% reduction or near-zero methane intensity, and 51 have submitted plans that provide confidence the accuracy of their data will improve in the next 3-5 years.
Hosted by UNEP, IMEO is budgeted at EUR 100 million over five years. To maintain its independence and credibility, it will receive no industry funding. Instead, IMEO will be entirely funded by governments and philanthropies, with core resources provided by the European Commission as a founding member.
About the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
UNEP is the leading global voice on the environment. It provides leadership and encourages partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.
About the European Commission
The European Commission is the European Union’s politically independent executive arm. It is alone responsible for drawing up proposals for new European legislation, and it implements the decisions of the European Parliament and the Council of the EU.
For more information on the EU-US Global Methane Pledge
The Climate Change Adaptation Centre is responsible for developing an international information sharing system on climate change and other related issues, as stipulated in the Climate Change Adaptation Act of Japan. We have been operating our website since June 2019 with the aim of disseminating information in the Asia Pacific region, but now we have created and published scientific tools and redesigned the entire website to expand its content.
2. Major website contents
ClimoCast
ClimoCast is an online tool that allows users to check future regional climate projections based on the latest climate data (CMIP6 data). It was developed by the Asia-Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Platform (AP-PLAT) Center for Climate Change Adaptation (CCCA) with a mission to make climate projections accessible to all individuals, including those that lack a similar academic background. Users can compare four major emission scenarios (SSP126–585), compare the results of ten different climate models, and download the corresponding data.
Climate Impact Viewer
The Climate Impact Viewer shows the results of climate change impact assessment in various sectors, including existing climate, water resources, vegetation, agriculture, and health. Users can visually compare global projections across different sectors and time scales.
ClimoKit
ClimoKit is a database of free online resources that can be utilized in climate impact assessments and adaptation planning. Users can rapidly find the most relevant data or tools in their sectors or regions by applying search filters. Some resources are designed for general public use, while others require specific knowledge or skills.
Capacity development
Capacity development content provides self-paced online learning videos and the most updated scientific tools to support various stakeholders in developing effective policies and planning relevant activities. It aims to build capacity for better climate adaptation in the region. Functioning as a regional hub, this platform also promotes knowledge exchange in collaboration with key partners of capacity development in climate change adaptation.
CAPTION
ClimoCast is an online tool that allows users to check future regional climate projections based on the latest climate data (CMIP6 data). It was developed by the Asia-Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Platform (AP-PLAT) Center for Climate Change Adaptation (CCCA) with a mission to make climate projections accessible to all individuals, including those that lack a similar academic background. Users can compare four major emission scenarios (SSP126–585), compare the results of ten different climate models, and download the corresponding data.
CREDIT
CCCA, NIES
Others
The website also provides regular updates on the latest developments in adaptation in countries, cities and international organisations, as well as information on the status of adaptation planning.
3. Future prospects
We will continue to conduct adaptive research, collect and analyse information, develop new tools and enhance each content. We will also consider how we can enhance the content based on feedback from users and stakeholders.
4. Other
The launch of the redesigned website will also be announced at the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which opens on Sunday, 31 October and closes on Friday, 12 November 2021 in Glasgow, UK.
We are looking forward to seeing you back on our renewed website in November!
CAPTION
The Climate Impact Viewer shows the results of climate change impact assessment in various sectors, including the existing climate, water resources, vegetation, agriculture, and health. Users can visually compare global projections across different sectors and time scales.
CREDIT
CCCA, NIES
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Data/statistical analysis
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Not applicable
Pandemic solitude was positive experience for many
Time spent alone during the pandemic led to positive effects on well-being across all ages, new research has found.
The study of more than 2000 teenagers and adults, published in Frontiers in Psychology today, found that most people experienced benefits from solitude during the early days of the global Covid-19 pandemic.
All age groups experienced positive as well as negative effects of being alone. However, the researchers found that descriptions of solitude included more positive effects than negative. On average, well-being scores when participants were alone were 5 out of 7 across all ages, including adolescents aged 13-16.
Some study participants talked about worsening mood or wellbeing, but most described their experiences of solitude in terms of feeling, competent and feeling autonomous. 43% of all respondents mentioned that solitude involved activities and experiences of competence – time spent on skills-building and activities, and that was consistent across all ages. Meanwhile, autonomy – self-connection and reliance on self – was a major feature particularly for adults, who mentioned it twice as often as teenage participants.
Working age adults recorded the most negative experiences with more participants mentioning disrupted well-being (35.6% vs 29.4% in adolescents and 23.7% in older adults) and negative mood (44% vs 27.8% in adolescents and 24.5% in older adults). Experiences of alienation, or the cost of not interacting with friends, were twice as frequent among adolescents (around one in seven, or 14.8%) as when compared to adults (7%) with older adults mentioning it most infrequently (2.3%).
Dr Netta Weinstein, Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Reading and lead author of the paper said:
“Our paper shows that aspects of solitude, a positive way of describing being alone, is recognised across all ages as providing benefits for our well-being.
“The conventional wisdom is that adolescents on the whole found that the pandemic was a negative experience, but we see in our study how components of solitude can be positive. Over those first few months of the pandemic here in the UK, we see that working adults were actually the most likely to mention aspects of worsening well-being and mood, but even those are not as commonly mentioned as more positive experiences of solitude.
“We conducted the research in the summer of 2020 which coincided with the end of the first national lockdown in the UK. We know that many people reconnected with hobbies and interests or increasingly appreciating nature on walks and bike rides during that time, and those elements of what we describe as ‘self-determined motivation’, where we choose to spend time alone for ourselves are seemingly a critical aspect of positive wellbeing.
“Seeing working age adults experience disrupted well-being and negative mood may in fact be related to the pandemic reducing our ability to find peaceful solitude. As we all adjusted to a ‘new normal’, many working adults found that usual moments of being alone, whether on their commute or during a work break where disrupted. Even for the most ardent of extroverts, these small windows of peace shows the important role of time alone for our mental health. “It also suggests that certain experiences of solitude are learned or valued increasingly with age, having an effect to reduce the impact of negative elements of loneliness and generally boosting well-being. Equally, it suggests that casual inferences about loneliness based on age and stage miss the reality of our nuanced lived experiences.”
The results come from a series of in-depth interviews where participants from the UK answered open questions about their experiences of solitude. The team of researchers coded the answers to find shared experiences and measured quantitative data about two aspects of wellbeing associated with solitude, self-determined motivation (the choice to spend time alone) and peaceful mood.
The researchers note that the findings were taken from one phase of the Covid-19 pandemic during the summer of 2020, and recommend that follow up data looks at experiences of solitude during challenging periods such as this one, and also more commonplace periods where daily solitude may look and feel different.
Coral restoration could become easier and quicker with the use of 3D printing. As the technology matures, it could be used to rapidly and reliably create support structures for corals to grow on.
Coral reefs around the world are suffering from warming oceans and increasing pollution. Reef restoration efforts employ concrete blocks or metal frames as substrates for coral growth. The resulting restoration is slow because corals deposit their carbonate skeleton at a rate of just millimeters per year.
Charlotte Hauser and her team are exploring the use of 3D printing to speed up the process. “Coral microfragments grow more quickly on our printed or molded calcium carbonate surfaces that we create for them to grow on because they don’t need to build a limestone structure underneath,” says Hamed Albalawi, one of the lead authors of the study. In essence, the idea is to provide the corals with a head start so the reef can recover faster.
The idea itself is not new. Researchers have tested several approaches to print coral support structures. However, most efforts have used synthetic materials, though work is being done to use hybrid materials. The team developed and tested a new approach called 3D CoraPrint, which uses an ecofriendly and sustainable calcium carbonate photo-initiated (CCP) ink that they also developed. Tests in aquariums have shown that CCP is nontoxic, though the researchers are planning longer-term tests.
Unlike existing approaches, which rely on passive colonization of the printed support structure, 3D CoraPrint involves attaching coral microfragments to the printed skeleton to start the colonization process. It also incorporates two different printing methods, both of which start with a scanned model of a coral skeleton. In the first method, the model is printed, and the print is then used to cast a silicon mold. The final structure is produced by filling the mold with CCP ink. In the second method, the support structure is printed directly using the CCP ink.
The two approaches offer complementary advantages. Creating a mold means the structure can be easily and quickly reproduced, but the curing process limits the size of the mold. Direct printing is slower and lower resolution, but it allows for individual customization and the creation of larger structures.
“With 3D printing and molds, we can get both flexibility and mimicry of what’s already going on in nature,” says Zainab Khan, the study’s other lead author. “The structure and process can be as close as possible to nature. Our goal is to facilitate that.”
Sustainable and Eco-Friendly Coral Restoration through 3D Printing and Fabrication
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
2-Sep-2021
THE SECRET CHEMISTRY THAT MAKES HONEY A SCIENTIFIC WONDER The benefits of the sweet stuff go well beyond simply nourishing the hardworking insects in the hive.
BERLY MCCOY AND KNOWABLE MAGAZINE 10.30.2021
IT SHOULD COME as no surprise that bees know a lot about honey. They aren’t only honey producers — they are also consumers and pretty sophisticated ones at that. Offer a sick bee different varieties of honey, for example, and it will choose the one that best fights off its infection.
People, on the other hand, have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to the nutritional nuances of honey. Just a few decades ago, most lists of “functional foods” — those that offer health benefits beyond basic nutrition — failed to mention it, says entomologist May Berenbaum. “Even beekeepers — and certainly bee scientists — considered it nothing more than sugar water.”
Since that time, a large body of research has revealed that honey is chock-full of plant chemicals that influence honeybee health. Components in honey can help bees live longer, boost their tolerance to harsh conditions such as intense colds, and heighten their ability to fight off infections and heal wounds. The findings hint at ways to help bees, which have been hit hard in recent years by parasites, pesticide exposure, and habitat loss.
“It’s just such a remarkable substance, and I think people maybe still don’t quite appreciate it,” says Berenbaum, of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Brothers91/E+/Getty Images
A DIVE INTO THE HIVE — It’s tasty on toast or stirred into tea, but honey is much more than a sweetener. Certainly, the viscous liquid is mostly sugar, which hive members use for sustenance, but it also harbors enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and organic molecules that give each honey its uniqueness and confer a slew of health benefits to bees.
A variety of insects can produce honey — bumblebees, stingless bees, even honey wasps — but only honeybees (Apis species) produce enough to stock grocery store shelves. This ability didn’t happen overnight; it was millions of years in the making.
Bees made the split from wasps around 120 million years ago, during a surge in the evolution and spread of flowering plants. This floral diversity — along with a shift in bee behavior of feeding pollen, rather than insects, to bee larvae — spurred the evolution of the approximately 20,000 bee species known today.
Becoming an expert honey-maker took a few more behavioral and chemical tricks. Bees started adding a bit of nectar to the pollen, which molded it into more transportable bundles. They also developed wax secretion glands, which provided a way to separately store the liquid nectar and solid pollen.
“The wax allows for a very flexible building material,” says Christina Grozinger, an entomologist at Penn State University, who studies mechanisms underlying bee social behavior and health. When forming a honeycomb, honeybees mold wax into hexagons, which turns out to be the most efficient shape to store something, since hexagons pack tightly together. “It’s an engineering feat,” Grozinger says.
A close up of bees ‘n’ honey. Ramlan Jalil / EyeEm/EyeEm/Getty Images
WHY HONEY IS MEDICINE TO BEES
Nectar is what led Berenbaum to honey, an interest that first blossomed in the mid-1990s. She knew that nectar was infused with a ton of plant chemicals, called phytochemicals: compounds that deter pests and help with plant growth and metabolism. She had a hunch that these phytochemicals were coming along for the ride when bees turned nectar into honey. And if they were, she wanted to know what they might be doing for the bees.
So Berenbaum began probing the diversity of chemicals in honey. In 1998, her team found that different kinds of honey contained different levels of antioxidants depending on the honey’s floral origin.
“That piqued my interest,” she says. Her group later found that honeybees fed sugar water mixed with two honey phytochemicals — p-coumaric acid and the potent antioxidant quercetin — tolerated pesticides better than ones that just got the sugar water. On top of that, the bees that received the water laced with phytochemicals lived longer than the bees that did not, she and her colleagues reported in 2017 in Insects.
Other research has unearthed the effects of additional phytochemicals in honey: Abscisic acid boosts bees’ immune response, improves wound-healing time, and tolerance to cold temperatures, studies show
Other phytochemicals blunt the impact of parasites, one of the major causes of honeybee decline For example, giving fungus-infected honeybees a syrup containing thymol, a phytochemical from thyme plants, cut the number of fungal spores by more than half Phytochemicals have even been shown to inhibit the bacteria that cause European and American foulbrood, the latter of which is so devastating and contagious that burning whole hives is recommended to prevent its spread
Some phytochemicals seem to do their stuff by enhancing the activity of genes related to detoxification and immunity. When bees are fed nectar phytochemicals such as anabasine, for example, a gene in charge of making antimicrobial proteins dialed up production, a team reported in 2017 in the Journal of Economic Entomology.
And phytochemicals might confer health by keeping happy the microbial communities that live in and on honeybees: their microbiomes. Caffeine, gallic acid, p-coumaric acid, and kaempferol all improve the diversity and quantity of honeybee gut microbes, researchers reported last year in the Journal of Applied Microbiology. Healthy gut microbiomes in honeybees have been linked to lower intensities of multiple parasitic infections.
Honeybees even choose a health-improving variety of honey when they’re sick. Entomologist Silvio Erler and his team presented parasite-infected honeybees with four honey types. “We simply gave them a choice,” says Erler, now at the Julius Kühn-Institut in Germany. The sick bees preferred sunflower honey, which was also the best medicine for the infection and had the highest antibiotic activity, the team reported in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.
But bees are able to build up their honey pharmacy only if the right flowers are available — not just in numbers and diversity, but throughout the growing season, says Berenbaum, who coauthored an overview of honey’s impact on bee health in the 2021 Annual Review of Entomology. This biodiversity is lacking in the large crop fields that bees are shipped to each year to pollinate staples like almonds, apples, pumpkins, and pears.
Improving the floral diversity does make for healthier bees, says Arathi Seshadri, an entomologist at the United States Department of Agriculture Honey Bee Health Lab in Davis, California. And the USDA incentivizes landowners to convert sections of cropland into wildlife areas through the Conservation Reserve Program. “Agriculture has to go on,” Seshadri says. “But it also has to sustain pollinators.”
Better bee nutrition won’t solve all the problems bees face. But making sure that honeybees have access to their own medicine may help, Erler says. Beekeepers, he suggests, could leave portions of the honey made from various blooms in the hive so that bees have a well-stocked honey pharmacy all year long.
And Berenbaum, who began her investigations years ago because she didn’t think honey was getting nearly enough research respect, says that the accumulating knowledge is a step in the right direction. “I’m glad,” she says, “to see it’s finally attracting some attention.”
This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Sign up for the newsletter.
Mexico City Comes Alive For Day Of Dead Parade
By Jean Luis Arce 10/31/21
Giant skeletons, colorful costumes, mariachi music and dancers filled downtown Mexico City on Sunday as the Day of the Dead parade returned for the first time since the pandemic began.
Thousands of people, including locals and tourists, lined the route through the capital for a glimpse of the procession, which was canceled last year due to the coronavirus.
Thousands of people lined the route in Mexico City for a glimpse of the Day of the Dead procession Photo: AFP / CLAUDIO CRUZ
Like many, Yadira Altamirano came with her face painted as "Catrina," a skeletal representation of death that has become a symbol of one of Mexico's most important festivals.
"Last year I wanted to come, but it was canceled," said the 38-year-old Mexican, who has lived in the United States since she was a child.
"Now we have our chance," said Altamirano, an enthusiastic practitioner of the Day of the Dead traditions.
People take part in Mexico City's Day of the Dead parade, which returned in 2021 for the first time since the pandemic began Photo: AFP / CLAUDIO CRUZ
"I'm the only one in my family who always puts out an altar, and we always have dinner on November 2 at midnight," she said.
The parade began in the Zocalo, the capital's main square, where city authorities dedicated the event to medical workers on the pandemic frontline, as well as to the victims.
While the Day of the Dead is one of Mexico's most important festivals, the parade itself was inspired by the opening scene of the 2015 James Bond movie "Spectre" Photo: AFP / CLAUDIO CRUZ
The country of 126 million has an official Covid-19 death toll of more than 288,000 -- one of the highest in the world.
But with most adults in the capital now vaccinated against the virus, and daily deaths trending lower, the authorities gave the green light for the parade to go ahead this year.
Mexican authorities dedicated the Day of the Dead event to medical workers and victims of the pandemic Photo: AFP / CLAUDIO CRUZ
"It feels great, although of course with the proper precautions against Covid," said Conchis Garcia, 52, who came with his family from the eastern state of Veracruz.
The dancers and floats paid tribute to Mexican culture and tradition, from street food vendors to authors, icons of cinema and the painter Frida Kahlo.
With its bright colors and cartoonish skeleton costumes, the Day of the Dead has become an internationally recognized symbol of Mexican culture.
From November 1-2, people across the country normally deck their homes, streets and relatives' graves with flowers, candles and colorful skulls.
The festival, which in 2003 was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list, centers around the belief that the living and the dead can commune during the brief period.
The street procession is a relatively recent addition to the celebrations.
First held in 2016, it was inspired by the opening scene of the 2015 James Bond movie "Spectre."
In the movie, the British agent played by Daniel Craig goes after a bad guy through a parade featuring giant skeletons floating among people dancing with their faces painted as skulls.
Authorities decided to recreate the procession to boost tourism.
Last year, it was canceled as the government urged people to stay at home to avoid spreading the coronavirus, and many graveyards were shut to prevent crowds gathering. Copyright AFP. All rights reserved.
THIRD WORLD USA
Denied care, millions of Americans condemned to toothache Denied care, millions of Americans condemned to toothache
A patient receives free dental treatment at Bread for the City, a Washington-based charity
(AFP/Olivier DOULIERY Maria DANILOVA Sun, October 31, 2021, 8:21 PM·4 min read
Swollen gums, rotten teeth, patients in excruciating pain, children afraid to smile.
This is what Roslyn Kellum and her colleagues see when they crisscross the United States in a trailer van to provide much needed oral care to tens of thousands of patients who cannot afford to go to the dentist.
"They choose between getting their teeth treated or paying the bills, or gas in the tank, or food on the table, or paying rent," Kellum, dental director at Mission of Mercy, a Christian charity providing free medical and dental care to low-income Americans in several US states, told AFP.
"So they choose to put gas in the tank or food on the table and neglect their teeth."
Health care advocates had been hoping that President Joe Biden's huge social spending plan would finally reverse a decades-old situation where dental benefits were excluded from the national health insurance plan for millions of American seniors.
But faced with resistance from both Republicans and members of his own Democratic Party, Biden had to significantly pare back his plan and oral care has been left out of the latest $1.75 trillion blueprint.
Historically, dental care has been separate from general health care in the United States, and when Medicare, the national health insurance program for the elderly and the disabled, was established in 1965, dental benefits were left out.
"Keeping teeth in your mouth as you grow old should not be a luxury in this country," Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders fumed recently.
But for many Americans it is.
Maria Hernandez, 53, an in-home care provider in Washington, does not have dental insurance and cannot afford to pay out of pocket.
Earlier this week she went to get her teeth examined and treated at a free clinic run by Bread for the City, a charity that provides food and medical care to underserved communities in the US capital.
But Hernandez told of her friend, also uninsured but unaware of the clinic, who was in so much pain from an aching tooth that she tried to extract it at home herself.
"I think it's really bad. A lot of people southside, they cannot pay, because, you know, dental care is really, really expensive," Hernandez, a heavy-set woman with grey hair, told AFP, referring to an underprivileged area of Washington.
"We are low-income, we can't pay." - 'Heartbreaking' - Twenty-four million American seniors, or nearly half of those enrolled in Medicare, don't have any dental coverage, according to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit focused on health policy.
Private insurance plans can be costly. And paying for dental services out of pocket is infamously expensive in the United States, where a routine check-up can cost several hundred dollars, while more serious work such as fillings or root canal treatment can run in the thousands.
Nearly half of all Medicare recipients did not visit a dentist over the past year, the Kaiser study found.
The rate is even higher for minorities -- 68 percent for African Americans and 61 percent for Hispanics -- another sign of racial inequalities plaguing the US health care system that were highlighted by the Covid pandemic.
Meanwhile, Medicaid, the nation's health insurance program for low-income people, offers spotty dental coverage, with many states not providing dental benefits and only 43 percent of dentists accepting Medicaid.
"Without a doubt, the number one reason why people don't get dental care is cost," said Mary Nordridge, Director of Dental Research at NYU Langone Health.
Besides physical pain, discomfort, and the increased risk of broader health problems stemming from oral disease, having rotting or missing teeth takes a heavy psychological toll on people, with children afraid to speak up in class and adults unable to find jobs, especially in the service industry.
"When people get dentures, the pride they feel when they can smile, it's just -- it's heartbreaking," said Randi Abramson, chief medical officer at Bread for the City.
"People are amazed that they feel more confident, they can smile again. And it makes a huge difference in someone's life."
Biden's proposal to include dental treatment in Medicare was opposed by the powerful American Dental Association, which said benefits should be targeted specifically at the poorest Medicare recipients.
But advocates like Kellum, the dental director at Mission of Mercy, insists that oral care should be guaranteed to all Americans and hopes that some dental benefits will make their way back into the final version of Biden's plan.
"It's horrible, it's terrible. It's not right having patients suffer," Kellum said.
md/ec
Decades later, a new look at Black Panthers and their legacy 1 / 15 Black Panther Legacy
FILE - In this Dec. 11, 1969, file photo, demonstrators protest on the steps of the Los Angeles City Hall, against raids by police at Black Panther headquarters. It once would have been unthinkable for a city to erect a monument to Huey P. Newton, the Black Panther Party co-founder who was feared and hated by many Americans. Members of the party were dismissed as racist, gun-toting militants.
AP Photo/Wally Fong,
AARON MORRISON Sun, October 31, 2021
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — It once would have been unthinkable for a city to erect a monument to Huey P. Newton.
The Black Panther Party co-founder was feared and hated by many Americans, and party members were dismissed as racist, gun-toting militants — Black avengers who believed violence was as American as cherry pie.
But the unthinkable has happened — in Oakland, the city of the party’s founding 55 years ago. In an unrelenting deluge on an October Sunday, Newton’s widow Fredrika and sculptor Dana King unveiled a bronze bust of Newton.
It is true that aside from Oakland, where the Panthers were born and Newton was murdered, there are few places where such a bust would be welcome; there is probably no other place in the world that could place his statue at an intersection of Dr. Huey P. Newton Way and Mandela Parkway, named for the late South African revolutionary Nelson Mandela.
And it would be wrong to suggest that the Panthers are enjoying a resurgence, or even a moment; the party disbanded almost 40 years ago.
But it is also true that in 2021, some activists and historians are taking another look at the legacy of the Panthers through a less-freighted lens. The Panthers, they say, were a harbinger of today’s identity politics, helped shape progressivism, and have served as grandfathers and grandmothers to the Black Lives Matter movement.
“You have the detractors who only see (the Panthers) as a militia, and then you have the folks who are actually happy for that because the times required it,” said Robyn Spencer, an associate professor of history at Lehman College in New York City.
She said the Panthers and many of their contemporaries set out an agenda with a clarity that is rare even today.
“We have to have a critical perspective on what these organizations did,” she said. “It’s not that we have to defend them because they were attacked so viciously by the state. This moment that we’re in now requires us to be clear politically, to try and cut through the weeds, and to not be nostalgic.”
Much of the party’s story has often been overshadowed by its association with violence. The Black Panther Party has been seen as an organization that sought war with police, a group doomed by infighting, infiltration and corruption among its leaders.
Yet over its 15 years of operation, the party and its politics were a training ground and an inspiration for a generation of Black, Latino, Asian, Native American and white people who hold public office or public platforms today. Some of the party’s biggest accomplishments, like its community service programs, helped transform public education and health care.
Fredrika Newton, who co-founded the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation in Oakland, is among those who want to retell the Panthers story for a new generation. She said the bronze bust is just a start of a larger effort to see the Black Power movement take its place in history with other, less confrontational actors of the civil rights movement. Among her goals: recognition of Panther sites by the U.S. National Park Service.
“You’re hearing more about the Black Panther Party, and Huey’s contributions to (Black) liberation as a thought leader, than you’ve ever heard before,” she said. “There’s a hunger for it. We’re just on the precipice.”
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After meeting at a community college in Oakland, Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in October 1966. Newton was the party’s minister for defense and Seale was the party chairman.
Together, they wrote the party’s Ten Point Program, laying out the party’s beliefs. Among their demands: Freedom to determine the destiny of the Black community, economic empowerment through full employment and wealth redistribution, an educational system inclusive of the Black experience, and an end to brutality and fatal encounters between Black people and police.
The party became famous in its early years for its uniform: men and women in matching black berets and black leather jackets, sometimes accessorized by long-barrel shotguns. And there were the Panther formations, marches and patrols, meant as a show of discipline and strength.
A lesser-known fact was that a majority of the party’s membership, as well as its leadership outside of the central organizing committee in Oakland, were Black women. The party struggled with sexism and misogyny, although less so as it grew across the country. Some of its most famous alumni include Elaine Brown, Kathleen Cleaver, Angela Davis and Erika Huggins. Perhaps not coincidentally, women are the most prominent leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement.
In interviews, former Panther members acknowledged that the party’s very name drove perceptions that it only operated by force and intimidation. The party eventually dropped “for Self Defense” from its name. But those words also meant nutrition, health care and political education for the Black community, said Huggins, who was the first woman to lead a chapter of the Panther Party.
“There was a conversation about the posture, that we didn’t have to be paramilitary to let people know we were in defense of our community,” Huggins said. She ran the party-sponsored Oakland Community School for children from 1973 to 1981.
“We stopped wearing what you call the iconic uniform after about three years,” she said. “People said to us, ‘Why are you making yourself separate from us? You’re just like us.’”
Largely due to its “Survival Programs,” the party was embraced in nearly 70 communities across the U.S. and abroad where it had chapters, opened offices, provided free health care clinics to residents and free breakfast programs for schoolchildren, and published Black Panther newspapers. Also among its 65 programs were pioneering sickle cell disease testing research, free food and clothing distribution, transportation service for families visiting incarcerated loved ones, and the escorts for seniors who needed assistance getting to a supermarket or a pharmacy.
Katherine Campbell, who first volunteered with the Panther newspaper and the free breakfast program in San Francisco as a teenager, said the party’s activities didn’t merit its targeting by law enforcement.
“We were supposed to have been a threat to the government,” said Campbell, who eventually became a party member. “Can you imagine that feeding some children is a threat to the government? But it took off. Little did we know, we were going to make history.”
She and others said press and other media organizations played a role in demonizing the party, at times unquestioningly accepting police narratives or the FBI’s opinion that the party presented “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States.”
Panthers were aggressively surveilled by the FBI, and the agency’s infamous and illegal COINTELPRO effort included infiltration and intimidation of Panthers groups across the country. It sowed paranoia, distrust and violence within the party. Whenever the FBI shared intel with police departments, members say, it preceded the assault, torture, arrest, imprisonment and deaths of Panthers across the country.
“Because the Panthers sought to be the antidote to (police) violence, they were often challenged to violence,” said former Black Panther Party attorney Fred Hiestand.
The narrative continues in places like the Officer Down Memorial Page, a website dedicated to honoring law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty.
Among those memorialized is John Frey, an Oakland police officer who died of gunshot wounds in 1967 after pulling Newton over. Newton denied shooting Frey but was convicted of voluntary manslaughter in 1968. The case spurred a “Free Huey” campaign, contributing to a surge of interest in the party globally. Newton’s conviction was overturned two years later.
“The Black Panthers is a racist, radical group that professed the murders of law enforcement officers,” reads the memorial entry for Frey, which also includes claims Panthers were responsible for the deaths of at least 15 officers and the wounding of dozens nationwide.
While Newton was imprisoned, more than two dozen Panthers died in violent encounters with police, including Bobby Hutton, the 16-year-old remembered as the party’s first recruit in Oakland, and Fred Hampton, leader of the party’s Illinois chapter in Chicago.
Seale, who continues to promote the party legacy today, had himself been imprisoned in 1968 over his involvement in protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The party fell into disarray.
After his release, Newton sought to rehabilitate the Panthers’ image by urging members to focus on the survival programs. He still advocated the rights of the Black community to defend itself from police, but no longer argued that party members should openly carry guns as a check on brutality.
The party officially folded in 1982 after years of police surveillance, dwindling national membership, violent infighting, allegations of embezzlement and scandals in which Newton was implicated.
In its wake, the party left a lot of enemies, but admirers as well.
“They were honorable, they were upright,” said Peter Coyote, the American actor and founder of the Diggers, a San Francisco improv troupe that worked with Panthers early on, printing the party’s newspaper and providing food for the breakfast program.
“They were human beings, of course, they messed up here and there,” Coyote said. “But to me, they were heroes.”
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The old Panthers flew in from Chicago, Milwaukee, New Orleans, New York, Seattle, for a dinner in downtown Oakland the night before Newton’s bust was unveiled, and shared stories about the old days.
“I don’t call myself a former Panther,” said Charlotte O’Neal of the Kansas City Panthers. “Once a Panther, always a Panther. It’s in our blood. As we used to say, ‘We’re gonna bop ‘til we drop.’”
In many ways, they say, we now live in the Black Panthers’ world. They tilled the ground and made it fertile for activism against police brutality, mass incarceration, generational poverty and racial wealth gaps. For better or worse, they helped launch the America we see today, broken up into tribes by sex and race and creed.
Sure, the Panthers were radical for their time, but their positions are less so today, when social activism based on race or ethnicity, religious faith, queer and transgender identity and political ideology is common. And while armed self-defense is still considered extreme, that has not stopped some whites on the far-right from embracing the concept.
The Panthers also pushed society to deal with Black people as they are, not as racists see them. It was a clear contrast to the “respectability politics” of the nonviolent civil rights movement. Taking inspiration from Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary” mantra, the Panthers didn’t ask politely for their freedoms.
That has carried over to the Black Lives Matter movement. Protesters adopted tactical confrontation with law enforcement and elected leaders in response to the deaths of Black boys, men and women at the hands of police and vigilantes: Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
Phillip Agnew, a Florida-based activist and early organizer in the Black Lives Matter movement, said the Panthers are “still a model to draw from.” He co-founded Black Men Build, a national group focused on the empowerment and political education of Black men. The group’s platform was written as “our version of the Ten Point Program,” Agnew said.
The ripples of the Panthers are all around us, but there have been few concrete efforts to mark their place in history. Does the Newton bust portend a change?
Ron Sundergill, a senior regional director in the National Parks Conservation Association’s Oakland office, said the larger Black Power movement is not currently represented in any monuments or historic sites included in the National Park System.
The association, which researches and conducts reconnaissance on historic sites, recently worked with the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation to scope out a series of buildings and locations in Oakland that are significant to the Panther Party’s story. Those locations include the former St. Augustine's Episcopal Church, the site of the first free breakfast program, and a storefront that briefly served as the Panther Party’s first office before it outgrew the space.
“It’s way past time,” Sundergill said. “The National Parks Service should be covering this story, in my view. It is a really important history for not only the United States but the world.”
It probably will not be easy. In 2017, the Fraternal Order of Police caught wind of nearly $100,000 in funding for the project on the Black Power group. The police union sent a letter to the Trump administration expressing “outrage and shock” that the park service would pay to honor a group associated with the 1973 killing of a San Francisco park ranger.
A park service spokesperson has said the agency withdrew the funding after “an additional review.”
If a national Panthers monument wins approval of the park service, Sundergill said, it would require a final sign off from President Joe Biden, which could be two years away.
Rep. Barbara Lee, a Democrat congresswoman who is pushing for the national monument, believes the effort will succeed. As a younger woman, she volunteered with the Panthers’ survival programs and its political campaigns in Oakland.
“We’re going to keep at it, through any obstacle, any barrier that comes before us,” Lee said.
“I think for the Black Panther Party, its time has come once again. We all have to run our lap of this race. It’s a marathon.”
