'It's no more': Philippine surfing paradise wiped out by typhoon




The strongest storm to hit the archipelago this year cut a swathe through Siargao, a tropical paradise known for its sandy beaches, big waves and relaxed vibe (AFP/Ferdinandh CABRERA)

Ferdinandh Cabrera
Tue, December 21, 2021, 7:53 PM·3 min read

Resort and bar owners on a Philippine island popular with surfers and tourists were expecting a bumper Christmas holiday after Covid-19 restrictions finally eased. Then Super Typhoon Rai wiped them out.

The strongest storm to hit the archipelago this year cut a swathe through Siargao, a tropical paradise known for its sandy beaches, big waves and relaxed vibe.

Packing wind speeds of 195 kilometres (120 miles) per hour as it made landfall on the island last Thursday, Rai uprooted palm trees, shredded thatched roofs, smashed wooden buildings, and toppled power poles.

The widespread destruction left the island -- voted the best in Asia by Conde Nast Traveler readers this year -- unrecognisable.

"The day after the storm, we went outside and we were like 'wow, this is Siargao now, it's no more'," Claudine Mendoza, 27, a sous chef at a beachfront resort, told AFP.

"Even Cloud Nine is no more, it was really devastated," Mendoza said, referring to the island's surf break where a wooden boardwalk -- a favoured selfie spot for tourists -- was swept away by the typhoon.

The storm is a bitter blow for tourism operators, hitting them a week before the Christmas holidays when many Filipino families typically head to the country's famed beaches and dive spots.

Pandemic travel restrictions decimated visitor numbers to the island in the past two years, leaving many resorts, cafes, souvenir shops and tour guides struggling to survive.

But domestic tourism began to pick up in recent months as the government relaxed rules to boost economic activity -- though it kept a ban on foreign travellers entering the country.

"Everyone was so happy, the island was lively again," Mendoza said. "Then suddenly the storm came."

Now, business owners face expensive repairs or having to start from scratch, and their employees an uncertain future.

Some are wondering if it is even worth trying to begin again.

"This typhoon is much worse for us than the pandemic -- the pandemic didn't cause any (structural) damage," said resort owner Anton Alvarez.

"We think we have the capacity to rebuild but there's no point in rebuilding if it's just us -- we need the whole of Siargao to rebuild."

It could take months for power to be fully restored to the island, making it difficult for business owners to talk to their partners and investors about the future (AFP/Roel CATOTO)

- 'What will happen now?' -

With electricity across the island knocked out, there is no signal or internet, which has hampered efforts of disaster agencies to assess the full extent of the death and destruction caused by the storm.

A least 375 people were killed on the islands hit by Rai, national police have reported -- including 167 in the region that includes Siargao.

Farmers and fisherfolk have also seen their livelihoods destroyed, and thousands of families left homeless.

Elka Requinta, a marketing coordinator on Siargao, said the strength of the typhoon caught everyone by surprise.

"We didn't expect it to be this bad," said Requinta, 36.

"You have locals who were hit because I don't think there was a call for any evacuation from the government."

It could take months for power to be fully restored to the island, making it difficult for business owners to talk to their partners and investors about the future.

Alvarez said he would like to reopen his resort within 12 months, but admitted that was "pretty optimistic".

"What will happen now?" asked Mendoza.

"We don't know."

str-cgm-amj/jah

Philippine supertyphoon Rai 'exceeded all predictions' - forecaster


Typhoon Rai aftermath in Surigao city

Tue, December 21, 2021
By Kanupriya Kapoor

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The rapid intensification that turned this week's Typhoon Rai into the strongest storm to hit the Philippines this year surpassed all predictions, forecasters said, leaving nearly 400 people dead and almost a million displaced.

While it's unclear exactly how global warming is affecting the intensification of such storms, the UN's climate change agency has found it is "likely that the frequency of rapid intensification events have increased over the past four decades" as temperatures rise.

Before Rai underwent a process of rapid intensification, forecasters at first warned of a storm that could bring "considerable damage", with winds of up to 165 kilometres (103 miles) per hour.

"But the situation evolved very fast," said Nikos Peñaranda, a forecaster who studies thunderstorms at the Philippines' national weather bureau, speaking on Tuesday. "Our models weren't able to predict the way the storm intensified, and it exceeded all our predictions."

In rapid intensification of storms, warm ocean water and differing wind speeds near the eye of the storm act as fuel to whip it up into a more severe event. In the case of Rai, the storm turned into a category 5 supertyphoon, with speeds similar to when a passenger airplane starts to lift off the ground.

When it made landfall, winds of up to 210 km/hr were uprooting coconut trees, ripping down electricity poles, and hurling slabs of corrugated tin and wood through the air.

A lack of real-time data and case studies of similar storms in the region made it difficult for forecasters to predict just how much Rai, or Odette as the storm is known locally, would intensify, said Peñaranda.

"The challenge in forecasting rapidly intensifying events is just that the speed with which this occurs, often in a matter of hours, leaves less time for disaster risk reduction mobilisation and evacuations," said Clare Nullis, media officer specializing in climate change at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

Hurricane Ida, a category 4 storm, experienced a similar intensification in the Gulf of Mexico hours before it slammed into the U.S. state of Louisiana in August.

Ocean temperatures near the surface and at depths of up to 200 metres are rising around three times faster in this region than the global average, according to the WMO, making it fertile ground for more intense, less predictable storms.

In the past three decades, the Philippines has recorded at least 205 tropical cyclones, the highest of any Asian country, according to EM-DAT, a publicly available database on disasters run by the University of Louvain. Nearly each one of has taken lives and caused millions of dollars worth of damage.

By comparison, China, the second-most affected country, has seen 139, and Bangladesh, also prone to storms, has seen 42.

($1 = 49.9300 Philippine pesos)

(Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales in Manila; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

Loggers threaten Papua New Guinea's unique forest creatures




In Papua New Guinea's isolated Star Mountains, Indigenous people say the tree kangaroo is king and the bird of paradise is queen. But both have a price on their heads

 (AFP/Chris McCALL)

Chris McCall
Tue, December 21, 2021

In Papua New Guinea's isolated Star Mountains, Indigenous people say the tree kangaroo is king and the bird of paradise is queen. But both have a price on their heads.

These extraordinary species have long been prized by traditional hunters, but conservationists now fear the forests they live in, one of Earth's last great wilderness areas, could soon fall to axe and bulldozer.

"Old people say tree kangaroo is the king," said Lloyd Leo, a young resident of Golgubip, a mountain community where most people are still subsistence farmers -- their ancestors lived a neolithic lifestyle until only decades ago.


"He lives high in the forest. Certain fruits he doesn't eat. He only takes the fresh ones," he explained.

The marsupial, which looks like a mix of a kangaroo and a lemur, was once a form of currency, used to pay bride prices. Its tail is still worn as an emblem.

Already the creature is listed among the planet's most threatened species, deemed critically endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List.

Two species of birds of paradise also live in the area, and one, called 'karom' in the local Faiwol language, they call the queen of birds.

People hunt them on a small scale, despite it being illegal. The feathers and stuffed birds are prized, kept in homes and brought out for festivals.

- 'People will become desperate' -

But the trees around Golgubip are also valuable, as are others like them across Papua New Guinea -- and the dual threat of deforestation and hunting may seal the fate of the nation's unique creatures.

"In the villages, there is a general expectation of economic development which is by and large not happening," said Vojtech Novotny, a biologist working with the New Guinea Binatang Research Centre.

"People will become desperate and go for development at any cost."

The country's population has roughly tripled since independence in 1975, and now stands at more than nine million.

With fewer forests left in Southeast Asia, and much of the land there converted to palm oil plantations, some logging firms are now turning attention to Papua New Guinea, said Novotny, who has worked in the country for 25 years.

In the past, authorities mainly allowed "selective" logging, which enables forests to quickly recover. But that may be changing, he said.

"There is now pressure for large agriculture projects. The big issue here is oil palm. Once you have the first cut, you come for the second and third. Very soon you destroy the forest structure. That happened basically in Borneo," Novotny said.

According to the monitoring website Global Forest Watch, Papua New Guinea's forests covered 93 percent of its land surface in 2010.

But the country has seen a 3.7 percent decrease in tree cover since 2000, according to the website.

At this year's global UN climate summit, COP 26, Papua New Guinea was among around 100 countries to pledge to end deforestation by 2030.

But illegal logging has become such a problem that NGOs and some local politicians have demanded authorities take urgent action now.

- Tribal conflicts -

The Raggiana bird of paradise is featured on the country's flag and although officially only one related species, the blue bird of paradise, is listed as "vulnerable" by the IUCN, biologists say no one really knows their status for sure.

There are also concerns about another bird, Pesquet's parrot, which has distinctive red and black feathers that are worn in traditional dress for Indigenous ceremonies.

"These bright red feathers are very highly prized for headdresses," said Brett Smith, curator of the Port Moresby Nature Park, adding that it appeared there were more Pesquet's parrot feathers now in tribal dress than on living birds.

Biologists say they want to involve more Papua New Guineans in conservation.

But it has proved hard, in the face of poverty, a lack of education and low awareness of the impact humans can have on the environment.

But there have been success stories.

As headhunting declined in the pig-nosed turtles' habitat, more people moved in and the rare creature became part of the local diet, according to Yolarnie Amepou, director of the Piku Biodiversity Network.

But by involving local children in the preservation of key species, they created a generation -- now adults -- invested in the pig-nosed turtles' survival. Hunting has now eased off.

She said: "This environment is what they depend on every day. If we want to save the turtle we have to fix the people."

str/djw/arb

Tongans warned of acid rain after volcanic eruption


White gaseous clouds rise from the Hunga Ha'apai eruption, 

seen from near Tonga's capital Nuku'alofa (AFP/Mary Lyn FONUA)

Tue, December 21, 2021

A toxic cloud spewing from an erupting volcano in Tonga could dump acid rainfall across the Pacific kingdom, potentially poisoning drinking water and damaging people's skin and eyes, emergency services have warned.

The remote Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted Monday, sending plumes 18 kilometres (11 miles) into the air, Tonga Geological Services (TGS) said.

Police reported no injuries from the eruption but TGS said late Tuesday that the dust and gas could result in acidic rainfall if mixed with water in the atmosphere.

It advised residents to remove guttering systems from their rainwater storage systems until the all-clear was given.

"Symptoms of exposure to acid rain are itchiness and skin irritation, blurry and discolouration of vision if exposed to the eye," it said.

"If eyes or skin are exposed to acidic rain, please see a medical doctor or physician for appropriate treatment."

The volcano sits on an uninhabited island about 65 kilometres (41 miles) north of the Tongan capital Nuku'alofa.

The volcano last came to life in 2015, creating a new island structure on its caldera.

An aviation code red was issued after the eruption, advising airlines to avoid the area, resulting in Air New Zealand cancelling a flight from Auckland to Nuku'alofa on Tuesday.

ns/arb/jah

ONTARIO VS SIX NATIONS
Appeal court rules with Land Back Lane activist, saying he was denied a chance to be heard

Dan Taekema 

Ontario's highest court has ruled a judge denied Land Back Lane spokesperson Skyler Williams fairness and an opportunity to be heard, and has set aside injunctions around a housing development in Caledonia. Ont.

The Ontario Court of Appeal decision released Tuesday allows Williams's appeal, and says Ontario Superior Court Justice R.J. Harper conflated contempt and abuse of process when he dismissed Williams's arguments for staying on the disputed territory.

Appeal Court Justice Lorne Sossin, writing for the panel of three judges who heard the case, said more than $100,000 in costs imposed against Williams must be set aside.

The ruling also states that the developers involved in the project must pay Williams $20,000, a figure the parties involved in the case agreed would be paid to whichever of them was successful.

Barry Yellin, a partner with Hamilton-based Ross & McBride LLP, argued in October that the legal process that led to permanent injunctions around the development was "procedurally unfair" and a new hearing should be ordered.

Yellin said Harper's decision last year to dismiss arguments Williams had for staying on the disputed territory meant questions around the history of the land and Indigenous rights were silenced.

Doing so "left no room for reconciliation," according to the lawyer.

The land in question is a housing project in Caledonia, Ont. Foxgate Developments — a joint venture between Losani Homes and Ballantry Homes — planned to build more than 200 homes on the site it called McKenzie Meadows.

© CBC A rally was held outside the court of appeal in late October. Demonstrators showed a map of the Haldimand Tract, which was granted to Six Nations of the Grand River in 1784. The land ran roughly 10 km on each side of the Grand River. Six Nations now has less than five per cent of its original land base.

Williams and other Six Nations land defenders began occupying the site in July 2020. The demonstrators say it is unceded Haudenosaunee territory and have dubbed it 1492 Land Back Lane.

Paul DeMelo, a lawyer with Kagan Shastri LLP, represented the developers at the court of appeal and said Harper's decision should stand.

He argued Williams continuing to visit the site in defiance of the judge's order lessened the status of the court in the eyes of the public.

"Simply because one disagrees with a court order doesn't give one the right to disobey that court order," said DeMelo.

He said at the time that if someone wants to argue before the court, then they should follow its process.

"If one does not accept the decision of the court … your remedy is to appeal," DeMelo said.
Development on disputed land

The development sits on the Haldimand Tract, which was land granted to Six Nations of the Grand River in 1784 for allying with the British during the American Revolution. It covers roughly 384,451 hectares along Ontario's Grand River, and includes parts of municipalities such as Waterloo, Brantford and Caledonia.

The months that followed saw blockades go up across area roads, OPP raids and dozens of arrests.

In October, Harper ruled two injunctions, one to stop blocking roads and the other requiring the demonstrators to leave the development, would be made permanent.

But the demonstrators did not leave, and in July, roughly a year after the occupation began, the developers announced the project had been cancelled.

The Court of Appeal found Williams was denied fairness in the following ways:

Harper did not take appropriate steps to notify Williams about the exact nature of the proceeding against him — whether it was contempt, abuse of process or both.

Harper did not provide particulars of the exact conduct that was an issue.

Harper did not set out the potential consequences Williams could face, including costs.

Harper did not give Williams an opportunity to consult or arrange for a lawyer before the order was made.

Harper did not give Williams an opportunity to respond to the specific allegations against him before making the order.

One dead, at least 70 missing after landslide at Myanmar jade mine: rescue team

A landslide at a jade mine in northern Myanmar Wednesday killed at least one person and left dozens missing, a member of the rescue team told AFP.

© Ye Aung THU

 Hpakant is at the heart of Myanmar's jade trade in northern Kachin state and frequently sees deadly accidents

Scores die each year working in the country's lucrative but poorly regulated jade trade, which uses low-paid migrant workers to scrape out a gem highly coveted in neighbouring China.

The disaster struck at the Hpakant mine close to the Chinese border in Kachin state, where billions of dollars of jade is believed to be scoured each year from bare hillsides.

"About 70-100 people are missing" following the landslide that struck around 4:00 am (2130 GMT Tuesday), said rescue team member Ko Nyi.

"We've sent 25 injured people to hospital while we've found one dead."

Around 200 rescuers were searching to recover bodies, with some using boats to search for the dead in a nearby lake, he added.

A photo posted on social media by a local journalist who said he was at the scene showed dozens of people standing on the edge of the lake, with some launching boats into the water.

Local outlet Kachin News Group said 20 miners had been killed in the landslide.

Myanmar's fire services said its personnel from Hpakant and nearby town of Lone Khin were involved in the rescue effort but gave no figures of dead or missing.

- Deadly industry -

Civilians are frequently trapped in the middle of the fight for control of Myanmar's mines and their lucrative revenues, with a rampant drug and arms trade further curdling the conflict.

Last year heavy rainfall triggered a massive landslide in Hpakant that entombed nearly 300 miners.

A February military coup also effectively extinguished any chance of reforms to the dangerous and unregulated industry initiated by ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi's government, watchdog Global Witness said in a report this year.

The coup has also sparked fighting in Kachin state between the Kachin Independence Army, which has waged a decades-long insurgency, and the Myanmar military, Global Witness added.

In May, the military launched air strikes against the group, which later told AFP it had downed a helicopter gunship during fierce clashes in the country's far north.

bur-rma/oho

AHS SETS UP NDP CRITIC
Alberta NDP politician steps aside while RCMP investigate computer privacy breach

EDMONTON — A member of the Alberta Opposition has left the NDP caucus after reporting he is involved in a criminal investigation.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Thomas Dang, the member of the legislature for Edmonton-South, said he was notified Tuesday by a family member that the RCMP had executed a search warrant on his home.

He said he believes the search warrant is connected to his efforts to check vulnerabilities with COVID-19 vaccination records on an Alberta government website.

"In September, a concern was raised to me as a member of the legislative assembly about the security of the vaccination system, " he said late Tuesday on Twitter.

"I tested these concerns and found that a security flaw did exist."

Dang said he immediately notified Alberta Health with the information so the vulnerability could be corrected. He said the problem was resolved shortly after.

"I have offered my resignation from the NDP Opposition caucus to our leader while the investigation is ongoing and she has accepted it."

Earlier Tuesday, NDP Leader Rachel Notley said Dang had stepped down as per caucus policy.

“Our caucus has a long-standing policy that members under active police investigation will not sit in the caucus, and Thomas understands this,” she said.

Notley said she believed the investigation is related to anecdotal reports that surfaced in September about Albertans being able to get access to the private health information of others through glitches on the province’s COVID-19 website.

She said Dang visited the government’s website at the time and called Alberta Health about his concerns.

RCMP said in a release that its cybercrime team executed a warrant at an Edmonton home on Tuesday but did not name Dang, noting that no arrests or charges have been laid.

The release said a criminal investigation started in November after it received information about suspicious activity related to the access of private information of vaccination records.

It described the investigation as a priority and involved a significant volume of digital evidence that will take time to complete.

Notley said she wasn't sure of the specifics of the investigation.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 21, 2021.

The Canadian Press

Fish show quick improvement when mercury releases into lakes cut off: study

Mercury contamination in freshwater fish populations falls quickly once new sources of the toxic chemical are cut off, says new research.

Paul Blanchfield, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature, said the finding that lakes can rebound quickly from mercury pollution is good news.

"I think it's a very good news story," said Blanchfield, an aquatic ecologist for the federal government. "Response to reductions was very quick in the fish populations."

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin often emitted into the atmosphere by burning coal. Once it enters a lake and changes to a form that organisms can absorb, it accumulates in the tissues of fish and other animals.

The Portable Heater That Has Taken The World By StormSEE MORESponsored by ALPHA HEATER

As less coal gets burned, Blanchfield and his colleagues wanted to find out if that would affect fish. Would existing amounts of mercury in the ecosystem work to keep levels in fish high, or would the lack of fresh input reduce the population's contaminant load?

It sounds like a simple question. But it took 15 years to answer it.

"Human activities have increased the amount of mercury coming into lakes for years, so there's a large amount that's stored in the lakes," Blanchfield said. "It comes down to the question of whether new mercury or old mercury is important."

The researchers used one of the watersheds in the Experimental Lakes Area, a unique series of Ontario lakes that have been used for decades in real-world, whole-ecosystem studies.

For seven years, from 2000 to 2007, they added carefully calibrated doses of mercury to the lake and the surrounding wetlands and uplands. Each type of environment got a different isotope of mercury, so the scientists were able to track where they all wound up.

Eventually, mercury levels in the lake were up 60 per cent, almost entirely from mercury added directly to the lake. Levels of the mercury added to the lake in insects and small fish increased between 45 and 57 per cent and in large fish such as northern pike by 40 per cent.

Then the team stopped adding mercury.

Not only did levels in the lake fall, fish stopped accumulating mercury in their tissues. Within eight years, lake mercury concentrations declined by 76 per cent in the northern pike population and by 38 per cent in the lake whitefish population.

Older fish still had high levels of mercury, but levels in younger fish were getting lower and lower, bringing overall concentrations down.

"There was the potential that that mercury that we'd added to the food web for seven years could also have continued to contribute for quite a while," Blanchfield said. "But we saw it reduced very quickly — especially in the lower food web."

Where did the mercury go? Blanchfield suspects it wound up in lake sediments, transformed into forms that aren't absorbed by plants or animals, and gradually getting buried.

"It's still all there. It's just getting less and less bioavailable all the time."

Blanchfield said the study shows that environmental regulations can work to reduce contaminant loads — even for pollutants that have been widespread for many years.

"The positive message in there is that policies that lower the amount of mercury coming into lakes will indeed be effective," he said.

"That's a pretty clear demonstration from our study — these policies will work and they are effective."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 21, 2021.

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

FOX NEWSMAKERS

Jesse Watters: Fauci calls for Fox News host to be fired 'on the spot' for 'kill shot' comments

By Oliver Darcy, CNN Business

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday said that Fox News host Jesse Watters should be fired for using violent language at a conservative conference to encourage attendees to conduct an ambush interview with him in hopes of creating a viral moment

.

© Provided by CNN

"I mean, that's crazy," Fauci added. "The guy should be fired on the spot."

Fox News defended Watters. A spokesperson said in a statement, "Based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, it's more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr. Fauci about gain-of-function research and his words have been twisted completely out of context."

Watters made his remarks Monday at the right-wing Turning Points USA conference where he gave students a playbook on how to record a viral moment that Fox News would air and that other right wing outlets would amplify.

"Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn't see it coming," Watters said.

Fauci reacted with shock to the "awful" comments on Tuesday, but also acknowledged that it's "very likely" Watters would go "unaccountable" at Fox News.

"The only thing that I have ever done throughout these two years is to encourage people to practice good public health practices: to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask," Fauci said on "New Day."

"And for that," Fauci continued, "you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a kill shot to ambush me? I mean, what kind of craziness is there in society these days?"

Watters' comments come just weeks after Lara Logan, another Fox News personality who hosts a show on the channel's streaming network, compared Fauci to a Nazi doctor infamous for experimenting on prisoners at the Auschwitz death camp.

At the time, Fauci called out Fox News for staying silent and not commenting on Logan's comments.

"What I find striking, Chris, is how she gets no discipline whatsoever from the Fox network," Fauci said at the time to MSNBC host Chris Hayes. "How they can let her say that with no comment and no disciplinary action. I'm astounded by that."

Fauci says Fox News 

and RFK Jr. attacks 

'accelerated' death threats

Dylan Stableford and Kate Murphy

Tue, December 21, 2021

Dr. Anthony Fauci says he and his family continue to receive death threats amid inflammatory statements made by critics including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaxxer whose new book is filled with wild claims attacking the nation’s top infectious disease expert.

“It’s very unfortunate because I don’t think he is inherently malicious,” Fauci said of Kennedy in a wide-ranging interview with Yahoo News on Tuesday. “I just think he’s a very disturbed individual.”

The former environmental lawyer’s book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” was published last month.

“It’s a shame because he comes from such an extraordinarily distinguished family, many members of whom I know personally,” Fauci continued. “I was very close to Sen. Ted Kennedy, who was such an extraordinary person and a real warrior for public health and to have RFK Jr. just spouting things that make absolutely no sense ... I’m so sorry that he’s doing that.” 

Fauci added: “Not just because he’s attacking me — that seems to be the rage among some people — but because ultimately it is going to hurt people.”

His comments came a day after Fox News host Jesse Watters encouraged attendees at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference to “ambush” Fauci with questions about the National Institutes of Health’s alleged funding of “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

“Now you go in for the kill shot,” Watters said. “The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn’t see it coming.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci at a press briefing at the White House earlier this month. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Fauci told Yahoo News that such statements are often followed by death threats.

“It even gets accelerated when you have the inflammatory statements that are made, [by] people like RFK Jr. and some of the Fox media personalities,” Fauci said, adding that he finds it “strange that they go unchecked with no consequences for people to say that.”

“And when they do that publicly, that’s when I get more death threats and people harass me, my wife and my children,” he added.

“The only thing I’ve ever said or done is to encourage people to get vaccinated, to wear a mask and to do things that would be good for their health, the health of their family and the health of the community,” he said. “So to get villainized because of that is a sad testimony on our society.”

Fauci was also asked whether he believes former President Donald Trump has the power to change minds among his supporters who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

“I would think so, because of so many followers that he has — people who hang on his every word,” Fauci said.

In a live interview with Bill O’Reilly on Sunday, Trump revealed that he received a COVID-19 booster shot after previously saying he was not going to get the additional dose — and was booed by a smattering of those in attendance.

“One of the things that surprised me is that when he publicly made that statement, he was actually booed by his followers,” Fauci said. “Which tells me that the depth of the divisiveness in society, where people are so intent on not doing something almost for ideological reasons, without dropping back and taking a look at the big picture — that it’s for one’s own good to protect one’s self, to protect one’s family, but also for your communal responsibility to not allow this virus to run rampant through society.

“So I was pleased that the former president said publicly that he was vaccinated and boosted,” Fauci added. “I was dismayed that even his own followers booed him. It was rather disturbing to see that.”

Germany Is Closing Half of Its Reactors at Worst Possible Time

KNEE JERK REACTION TO FUKUSHIMA

Rachel Morison
Mon, December 20, 2021
(Bloomberg) -- Germany is set to close almost half of its nuclear power capacity before the end of the year, putting further strain on European grids already coping with one of the worst energy crunches in the region’s history.

The shutdowns of Grohnde, Gundremmingen C and Brokdorf -- part of the country’s nuclear phaseout -- will leave just three atomic plants, which will be taken offline by the end of 2022. Beyond the squeeze on supply, the closures remove a key source of low-carbon power in a nation where emissions are on the rise.

After the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Germany vowed to ditch all of its reactors. At the time, the country was a leader in renewables, but the phaseout has left it more reliant on coal and lignite for electricity generation. The nation fell behind in the net-zero race after making major concessions to the coal lobby, to protesters against wind farms and to manufacturers, particularly carmakers.

“From a pure emissions perspective, it was always a questionable idea to shut down German nuclear before the plants have reached the end of their lifetime,” said Hanns Koenig, head of commissioned projects at Aurora Energy Research. “It was always clear that the nuclear phaseout would need coal and gas plants to run more and therefore cause substantial extra emissions.”

Atomic plants are designed to generate power around the clock, providing valuable backup when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. While the shutdowns have been known about for years and are unlikely to cause a spike in prices, the removal of 4 gigawatts of baseload output highlights a dwindling reserve of buffer capacity in Germany. It’s one reason why prices are higher next year: electricity for delivery in 2022 has jumped more than fivefold this year.

The timing could hardly be worse. Power prices are near record levels across Europe, and Germany will need to rely on generation from costly gas and coal for another 20 years or so -- before they too are phased out. Keeping the nuclear stations open any longer isn’t an option since that would require hundreds of millions of euros of investment, Koenig said.

Increased reliance on fossil fuels will boost emissions further, and Germany is not alone. A number of countries in Europe have ramped up coal-fired power production in recent months as gas supplies failed to meet rebounding demand and wind generation fell short.

Germany intends to take all coal-fired generation offline by 2038, with the lignite power-plant fleet reduced almost 16% by 2024. By that year, high carbon prices and an expansion of renewable power will have cut Germany’s coal production “strongly,” according to the International Energy Agency.

And that trend is set to be replicated, with much of Europe deciding to “get out of coal,” leading to a likely increase in renewable-power assets in the long term, said Sabrina Kernbichler, an analyst at S&P Global Platts.

Yet in the short term, coal is helping to bridge the supply gap. One German utility, Uniper SE, has postponed the planned decommissioning of its Scholven-B coal plant beyond the end of 2022 following delays in building a replacement gas unit at the site.

That’ll provide some relief as market tightness persists. But it won’t help Germany meet net-zero goals.

FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE U$A
'Get that money!' Dermatologist says patient care suffered after private equity-backed firm bought practice


Gretchen Morgenson
Mon, December 20, 2021, 5:59 AM·9 min read

The email to the health care workers was like something out of “The Wolf of Wall Street.” “We are in the last few days of the month and are only 217 appointments away from meeting our budget,” the August 2020 memo stated. “Don’t forget the August bonus incentive for all patients scheduled in August! That’s the easiest money you can make. Get that money!!”

The “Get that money!!” entreaty wasn’t addressed to a bunch of hard-charging, coke-snorting stockbrokers. It went to Michigan-based employees of Pinnacle Dermatology, a private equity-owned group of 90 dermatology practices across America.

The memo was shared with NBC News by a former Pinnacle employee, Dr. Allison Brown, a board-certified dermatologist and dermatopathologist. Brown says Pinnacle terminated her shortly after she advised management of questionable practices that she contends were hurting patients.

Among the practices Brown alleges: overlooked diagnoses, lost patient biopsies, questionable quality control in the company-owned lab and overbooking of patients without sufficient support staff.

Physicians have a duty to put their patients’ interests first. But when aggressive financiers take over medical operations, the push for profits can take precedence, doctors in an array of specialties have told NBC News. Paying bonuses for increased patient visits may result in unnecessary appointments and costs, for example.

Among the most aggressive health care financiers in the market today are private equity firms. The new titans of finance, these firms have taken over broad swaths of U.S. industry in recent years. Using large amounts of debt to finance their acquisitions, private equity firms acquire companies, aim to increase their profits and then try to resell them a few years later for more than they paid.

Outside investors, such as public pension funds and endowments, commit big money to the deals in hope of generating high returns.

Private equity is reshaping the health care industry, practitioners, economists and academic researchers contend. Private equity funds dedicated solely to health care operations have been especially busy, raising $350 billion from investors over the past decade, according to Preqin, a private equity data source. Last year, almost $50 billion was raised from investors for health care buyouts, up from $8 billion in 2010.

A focal point in such takeovers has been physician-owned dermatology practices, a highly fragmented sector of small operations that private equity firms have considered ripe for consolidation over the past decade. Just before the pandemic, researchers counted more than 30 private equity-backed dermatology groups in the country and said about 15 percent of dermatology practices were private equity-owned. The number has probably grown, the researchers say.

Private equity firms contend that they create jobs, support businesses and help provide comfortable retirements for pensioners invested in the strategy. But many outside the industry are especially critical of the industry’s involvement in health care. One private equity-owned hospital staffing company, for example, was behind many of the surprise emergency department bills that outraged hospital patients and resulted in a new law to curb the practices. It takes effect next month.

“The private equity business model is fundamentally incompatible with sound health care that serves patients,” concluded a paper in May co-authored by Richard M. Scheffler, professor of health economics and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley; Laura M. Alexander, the vice president of policy at the American Antitrust Institute, a nonprofit organization; and James R. Godwin, a Ph.D. candidate at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

The researchers found that private equity’s focus on short-term profits “leads to pressure to prioritize revenue over quality of care, to overburden health-care companies with debt, strip their assets, and put them at risk of long-term failure, and to engage in anticompetitive and unethical billing practices.”

In addition, economists and practitioners who have studied private equity-backed health care entities say they often try to increase revenue by providing services typically outsourced to third parties. For example, many dermatology practices backed by private equity acquire their own labs to analyze specimens. They can be a source of additional revenue, research shows, and may provide incentives for the practices to run extra tests, presenting possible conflicts of interest.

Pinnacle Dermatology, which is based in Brentwood, Tennessee, and operates in 11 states, has been buying small physician-owned practices and outpatient services.

Dr. Jose Rios, Pinnacle’s president and chief medical officer, provided the following statement: “Our top priorities are always patient safety and clinical quality. Pinnacle Dermatology’s compliance and quality assurance programs lead the industry. We are proud of our track record, our high levels of patient satisfaction and the equally high patient loyalty that results and will continue to provide valuable dermatological care at the highest possible levels.”

Backing Pinnacle is Chicago Pacific Capital, a private equity firm founded in 2014. The firm “invests in companies that it believes are positioned to lead innovations in health-care delivery and in caring for aging populations,” a regulatory filing says. Chicago Pacific had $1.8 billion under management, including borrowings, as of December 2020.

Chicago Pacific didn’t respond to a phone call and a detailed email seeking comment about Pinnacle.

Brown, the former Pinnacle physician, who has also taught dermatology at two medical schools, said she decided to share her experience at the company out of concern for patient safety. “I worked in an office that was physician-owned until the physician passed away and we were bought out,” Brown said. “I experienced from the inside what happened to the practice” after private equity arrived.

Among the changes Brown said she saw after Pinnacle took over were an increase in patient biopsies that got lost and a drop in the quality and number of instruments purchased for the practice. She said the office booked her for 40 patient appointments a day without adequate support staff. Brown also described cases of patients were seen multiple times for problems that could have been resolved in single visits, raising the patients’ costs.

Brown says that when private equity firms take over health care practices, it hurts the quality of health care and is bad for patients. (Sarah Rice for NBC News)

Even worse, Brown said, patient diagnoses fell through the cracks; for months, the office didn’t follow through on treating a patient’s melanoma, for example. “If you miss a melanoma and you’re not being treated, there could be significant morbidity and mortality with that,” she said.

A letter Brown’s lawyer sent to Pinnacle in the fall of 2020 and reviewed by NBC News detailed her criticisms. Shortly after the letter went out, Brown was let go.

The company contended that she had behaved unethically, Brown said, but she said she and her lawyer obtained her personnel file and found nothing in it to support the claim. “They started targeting me,” Brown said. “They weren’t happy with me sending emails up the chain about stuff going wrong.”

Pinnacle declined to answer detailed questions about Brown’s criticisms and termination.

Brown said she got along well with her associates in the practice, some of whom called her Dr. Awesome and gave her a drinking glass with that title embossed on it.

The company’s laboratory in Lombard, Illinois, where Pinnacle offices sent specimens for analysis, was also problematic, Brown said. The operation was very disorganized; slides and specimens sent for second opinions and quality control got lost more than once, she said. She filed a complaint with the Illinois Public Health Department.

Rios, of Pinnacle, said Brown’s criticisms of Pinnacle’s lab “are baseless allegations brought by a disgruntled former employee.” He added that Pinnacle’s lab is accredited by the College of American Pathologists and certified under federal regulations associated with the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments.

Dr. Sailesh Konda is a Mohs surgeon — someone who performs a type of surgery used to treat skin cancer — and an associate clinical professor of dermatology at the University of Florida. He has also conducted extensive research into private equity’s impact on the dermatology field.

Konda said Brown’s experience isn’t unusual. “Dermatologists from all over the country have shared with me their experiences with private equity-backed groups promoting profits over patient care,” he said. “Many are shackled with non-disparagement agreements and are afraid to publicly share their experiences. These stories need to be told.”

Independent academic research also indicates that negative outcomes have resulted from private equity firms’ involvement in dermatology. A main source of problems is the tendency among private equity-owned practices to hire more “physician extenders” to see dermatology patients, including physician assistants and nurse practitioners who cost less to employ. An academic study from last year in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology concluded that private equity-backed dermatology practices employ greater numbers of physician assistants and a higher rate of such professionals to physicians. Rios declined to discuss the company’s reliance on physician extenders.

Physician extenders’ lack of experience can pose problems for patients by not identifying skin cancers, a 2018 investigation published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found. The study, which examined more than 33,000 skin cancer screenings among 20,000 patients, found that physician extenders failed to identify cancers significantly more often than doctors did.

The extenders also ordered more biopsies than doctors, generating increased fees for their patients. Physician extenders are supposed to be monitored by doctors, but private equity-backed companies often assign remote supervising physicians, in far-off locations, who have never met the people they are supervising. That diminishes effective oversight.

Research in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology in 2018 found physician extenders working at a private equity-backed group performing “dermatologic procedures of questionable medical necessity” on nursing home patients in Michigan. In the study, 75 percent of the treated patients had diagnoses of Alzheimer’s disease.

Another study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Dermatology found that private equity-backed practices were more likely to offer appointments with physician extenders than with doctors. If physician extenders fail to make appropriate diagnoses, it can be a problem.

Rios declined to comment on the research showing negative outcomes among dermatology practices backed by private equity firms.

Five other former Pinnacle workers shared concerns about the company’s practices but asked not to be identified for fear of retribution or because they had signed non-disparagement agreements. They corroborated Brown’s experience of the push for more appointments, not ordering enough or high-quality supplies and problems with the lab.

Such agreements are common among medical practices bought by private equity firms. That’s why it’s so rare, practitioners say, for a physician like Brown to speak out about her experiences. Brown never signed such an agreement with Pinnacle, she said.

Brown and her lawyer continue to fight for three months of back pay she says she is owed, as well as reimbursement for insurance coverage that she paid out of her own pocket. The company’s most recent offer, Brown said, was $5,000 plus her signature on a non-disparagement agreement. She rejected the deal.

“Dermatology is often not a life-and-death situation,” Brown said. “But it’s still a specialty, it still requires expertise, and patients deserve to see the best-trained professionals at all times.”