Your Head of HR Is Now Basically the School Nurse


Emma Goldberg
Mon, January 10, 2022

Gia Ganesh, the chief of human resources at Florence Healthcare in Atlanta, Jan. 4, 2022. (Audra Melton/The New York Times)..

Gia Ganesh is a people person, so she loved running people operations — what many companies now call human resources — at Florence Healthcare. She led the health care technology company’s recruitment efforts, met with expecting moms planning for maternity leave and helped staff decide whether to spend their wellness benefits on therapy or a massage.

But like many working people, she found that the pandemic broke open her job description and filled it with new responsibilities. And like many human resources professionals, she found that she sometimes had to play a role akin to company nurse.

As COVID first started to spread, Ganesh made sure employees had stipends to set up workspaces at home and planned virtual activities, like a magic show and a cooking competition, to keep people connected. By last fall, she was in the meeting with the CEO writing up her company’s vaccine mandate, which requires that all employees, even those working remotely, be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. She reviews every request for a vaccine rule exemption from people who would rather submit to regular coronavirus testing.

“What happens if employees test positive for COVID? How do we take care of them, and the role, if they’re out for a significant period of time? There’s a lot of new complexity that COVID has brought to the world of HR,” said Ganesh, whose company has about 150 employees globally.

Just as the COVID-19 crisis made amateur public health researchers of people trying to go about their daily lives, it also forced HR professionals, especially those at small and midsize businesses, into a new focus on public health. As companies weighed when to return to the office, whether to require coronavirus vaccines and what sort of exemptions from those rules to allow, it was often HR directors who were asked to lead those efforts. It was no longer sufficient for these professionals to manage the job satisfaction and career development of their colleagues. Suddenly, they were also charged with monitoring their health, safety and views on immunization.

The added dimensions of HR jobs are coming into sharper focus now, as more organizations put vaccine mandates into effect. About 17% of American employers were requiring vaccinations or negative COVID tests for employees returning to the office, according to a Gallagher survey of more than 500 employers conducted between August and October.

Hovering over company conversations about vaccines is the additional consideration of whether to mandate booster shots. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not updated its definition of “fully vaccinated” but said that being “up to date” on vaccination includes a booster. And some state and local leaders like Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York have indicated that they plan to include a booster requirement as well.

Then there’s the tug of war over return to office plans, with the pull of executives eager to see workers in person meeting the push of soaring COVID case counts. On top of that has come the challenge of retaining talent when workers are walking off the job, with 4.5 million leaving their roles voluntarily in November. The sources of stress, for some HR directors, seem to multiply by the month.

For George Boué, who ran HR at Stiles, a commercial real estate company based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the anxieties of his job began to increase this fall. He kept jerking awake at 3 a.m., his mind racing with questions. How was he going to roll out a vaccine mandate to his colleagues who viewed it as an intrusion? More important, how was he going to keep everybody in his office safe?

Boué, who is fully vaccinated, was surrounded by friends in South Florida who were citing misinformation about the vaccine. He estimated that one-third of his 300-person staff is most likely not fully vaccinated. When the Labor Department rolled out its vaccine rule in November, requiring large businesses to get their workers vaccinated or tested weekly, Boué started drafting the terms for his company’s vaccine policy; then he put it on hold because of legal battles over the mandates, especially in Florida. Boué decided that among teammates he wouldn’t refer to the policy as a mandate because he wanted to temper tensions whenever he could.

“There’s those that are feeling the world is coming to an end, and this is horrible, and those on the other side of the spectrum that feel this is all a bunch of baloney,” he said. “The toughest part of my role has been trying to address all sides.”

His responsibilities continued to grow thornier since the start of the pandemic: In the early months, his team had to order gallons of disinfectant and hundreds of masks. Over the summer, HR staffers had to start enforcing mask requirements in the office for unvaccinated employees, though his team did not ask for proof of vaccination for that rule and instead went by “the trust factor.”

Some executives are outsourcing COVID safety work to companies that set up turnkey vaccine and testing systems. DocGo, for example, a health care and technology company, creates testing programs for businesses and monitors the maintenance of employee confidentiality, data privacy and compliance with federal government standards.

Still, Anthony Capone, DocGo’s president, said he hears regularly from HR directors, especially those worried that their unvaccinated workers will struggle to obtain COVID tests, which could mean employers are in violation of government guidelines.

HR professionals said they’re trying, wherever possible, to point toward government rules and to emphasize to employees that they’re simply following advice from public health authorities.

“I try not to be a doctor or a scientist,” said Amy Zimmerman, chief people officer of Relay Payments, a software company based in Atlanta with just over 100 employees. “We’ve got institutions like the World Health Organization and the CDC and really smart people who are making decisions that if you’re reasonable, you trust.”

Still, there are plenty of scientific decisions — especially those on vaccine rule exemptions — that have to be made on a case-by-case basis, and they tend to fall to an HR team that doesn’t have scientific training.

Zimmerman’s company currently allows its staff to work from home, but those coming into the office have to show proof of full vaccination. The requests for exemptions from that rule go straight to HR. One involved concerns about fertility treatments, but the employee could not get a supporting doctor’s note and now cannot come into the office. Another was from an employee who had been previously infected with coronavirus, who Zimmerman’s team determined would have to show proof of antibodies every 90 days.

Relay Payments also had two large in-person gatherings last year, where it required both proof of vaccination and a negative test 72 hours before arrival. Right before its December gathering, an employee who was fully vaccinated tested positive and skipped the event. Zimmerman was relieved that he caught the case before his flight from home, which she viewed as validation of the company’s move to require both vaccines and testing.

Now her team is weighing whether to mandate boosters. She said it might hold off on for now, though it would continue to follow CDC recommendations.

Making these kinds of decisions demands constant consumption of news by business leaders, with many seeking out online expertise about COVID: “The CDC is my main source, but there’s multiple channels and mediums I’m plugged into,” said Ganesh, at Florence Healthcare.

Boué, in South Florida, has finally hit his limit on HR angst. He retired at the end of last year. His wife works at a hospital, and with the anxieties she carries — about freezer trucks and overflowing beds — he feels he can’t take home his own set of work worries.

Boué used to wake up raring to get to the office: “Even though I’m anti-social, I do enjoy working and helping people out,” he said. But the last two years have undercut that sense of enthusiasm: “There wasn’t a particular ‘Aha!’ moment,” he added. “I just realized the stress wasn’t good for me.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

‘Abhorent’: Disability Advocates Slam CDC Director for Comments on ‘Encouraging’ Covid Deaths

Tim Dickinson
Mon, January 10, 2022

Rochelle-Walensky-CDC-2021 - Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images

Advocates for people with disabilities are voicing outrage about comments the director of the CDC, Rochelle Walensky, made on national television insisting it was “really encouraging” that the omicron variant is predominantly killing Americans who have other health problems.

The Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund posted an open letter to Walensky on Twitter on Sunday calling the director’s remarks “abhorent”:

“Your words convey that the deaths of disabled people…are acceptable,” wrote executive director Susan Henderson. “Not only is this message from the head of the CDC abhorrent, it perpetuates widely and wrongly held perceptions that disabled people have a worse quality of life than nondisabled people and our lives are more expendable.” Henderson implored Walensky “reflect” on her words — and the potentially “fatal” consequences of “the bias behind them” — asking the CDC director to “change how you speak about the lives and deaths of disabled people.”

Walensky sparked the controversy in an interview on Good Morning America on Friday — ironically, as part of a push to course-correct from a cascade of communications failures from her agency — when she put her foot in her mouth, again.

The GMA interviewer teed Walensky up for what seemed like a softball question: “I want to ask you about those encouraging headlines that we’re talking about this morning: this new study showing just how well vaccines are working to prevent severe illness. Is it time to start rethinking how we’re living with this virus?”

The CDC director responded: “The overwhelming number of deaths — over 75 percent — occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities, so really these are people who were unwell to begin with — and, yes, really encouraging news in the context of omicron.” Walensky added a plug for getting vaccinated and boosted, before underscoring her earlier comment: “We’re really encouraged by these results.”

Americans who live with disabilities were pained by Walensky’s remarks. A TikTok user named Britt, who describes herself as “a disabled & chronically ill disability justice advocate,” used her platform to call out the CDC director: “Sometimes people really just say the quiet part out loud.”

She elaborated: “As someone with ‘comorbidities’ or ‘preexisting conditions’ or whatever language we’re using to wrap up disability and chronic illness these days, I don’t think that those numbers are encouraging — at all. And I certainly don’t think that they’re acceptable. Being disabled doesn’t mean a person is ‘unwell’ and it certainly doesn’t mean that they’re going to die anytime soon. And whether Dr. Rochelle Walensky chooses to recognize it or not, our deaths have meaning because our lives have meaning. We are not disposable and none of this should be encouraging or acceptable to anyone.”

@myelasticheart
Our lives aren’t disposable! #PutMeFirst #ChronicPain #boostofhope #WhatsGoingOn
♬ original sound – Britt

This latest CDC controversy — which Twitter critics have decried as flirting with eugenics — comes on top of a communications crisis in the agency, which has struggled to explain its shifting guidance on quarantine times and testing for people returning to work after omicron exposure. (Even the American Medical Association blasted the CDC’s guidance as “confusing” and “counterproductive.”)

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone. But Walensky herself appeared to address her misstep in tweet on Sunday. The CDC director did not offer an apology, to be clear, but highlighted her own CV to insist she was committed to “protect our most at risk.”

Walensky may have her hoped her tweet would quiet the outrage, by offering re-assurance of her good intentions. Instead it has enraged them:

“This is it,” tweeted Erin Biba, a noted science writer and contributor to WIRED. “Days and days of people with disabilities and chronic illness pleading for people to place value on their lives after the CDC Director admitted to eugenics policy, and the best she can do in response is nebulous, non-specific ‘taking steps.'”

Biba offered some advice of what the CDC could do concretely: “Send people N95 masks, free tests, support them so they don’t have to put themselves at risk,” she wrote, asking the CDC director to literally, “Do anything.”

Latinos in U.S. often live in 'deserts' where adequate housing, groceries are hard to find


Charisse Jones, USA TODAY
Mon, January 10, 2022

Latinos, who will represent more than one-quarter of all people in the U.S. by 2050, are often concentrated in areas that lack services ranging from adequate housing to health care, according to a recent report.

Those disparities were among the many highlighted in "The Economic State of Latinos in America: The American Dream Deferred,'' a report by McKinsey & Company that detailed the obstacles slowing or hindering the economic advancement of the 60 million Latinos who live in the U.S.

“The challenges the Latino community faces in making upward economic gains are only deepened by living in these deserts,'' says Bernardo Sichel, partner at McKinsey and one of the report's authors. "These deserts have an impact on a range of outcomes, such as health and nutrition, options for services, productivity and budget. All these factors are impacted by the limited choices, necessity to travel for resources, and higher prices on consumer goods.”

Latino families typically spend 71% of their income on groceries and other consumer items and services but often struggle to find or access options.

"Latinos tend to disproportionately live in segregated and poor areas where they are cut off from opportunities and services and consumer items that most Americans take for granted,'' Rogelio Sáenz, a professor in the department of demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said in an email. "Latinos ... disproportionately also do not have easy access to parks, libraries, book stores, high quality schools that are well funded, (and) banks.''

Sáenz was not connected with the McKinsey study.

Here's what the McKinsey report found:

Housing markets

Among Latinos, 42%, or roughly 21.2 million, lived in a census tract that lacked affordable housing in 2019. Nearly 9 in 10 of the Latino residents in such communities lived in five states: California, Florida, New Jersey, New York and Texas.

Latinos were 3.1 times more likely than their non-Latino white counterparts to live in those housing deserts, which the report defined as low-income communities where the amount of affordable and available housing per 100 "extremely low income" households fell below the national level.

Accessing health care services is a challenge for many Latinos in the U.S.: 42%, or 21.4 million, live in neighborhoods that don't have enough medical providers to match the number of residents or lack such services overall.

Latinos were 2.5 times more likely to live in a health care desert than their white peers, and those areas were often urban communities in Arizona, California, Florida, New York and Texas, according to the report.
Food and groceries

Among Latinos in the U.S.,15% live in lower-income areas where supermarkets are hard to find. That's compared with 11% of non-Latino whites who live in lower-income urban neighborhoods where the closest grocery store is more than a mile away, or in rural areas where a large number of residents have to travel at least 10 miles to find a supermarket.

"Latinos tend to live in food deserts where they do not have access to fresh fruits and vegetables,'' says Sáenz, the University of Texas at San Antonio professor. "There are more likely to be convenience stores, liquor stores and other stores. ... Because they are a captured market, the prices of those unhealthy foods are also more expensive than in neighborhoods that are better off economically."

Latinos, as well as Black Americans, are disproportionately represented among the unbanked and underbanked who are often deterred from opening accounts by high fees, and a distrust of financial institutions.

Banking

Roughly 34.5 million Latinos live in areas where a higher-than-average number of residents do not have a bank account. Among households that are underbanked or have no accounts at all, 14% are Latino compared with 3% of white households.

Latinos, as well as Black Americans, are disproportionately represented among the unbanked and underbanked who are often deterred from opening accounts by high fees and a distrust of financial institutions. But not being banked can cost both money and time as consumers rack up check-cashing fees and have to find transportation to get money orders or pay bills in person.
Broadband

Nearly half of Latinos live in communities that have limited access to broadband, which can make it difficult to complete tasks ranging from paying bills to remote learning.

Broadband deserts are defined in the report as census tracts where there is less than 80% coverage for every 1,000 homes.
Consumer goods

Nearly 3 in 4 Latinos in the U.S. live in counties where there is a below-average number of supercenters or membership retail clubs that allow shoppers to buy clothing, appliances and other products.

"Earning a fair wage is one thing,'' the report said. "But what if you're unable to spend it on needed goods and services?"

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Latino economic gains slowed by food, health care deserts: report

Canada resists pressure to drop vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers



 Manitoba trucker gets COVID-19 vaccine in North Dakota

Sun, January 9, 2022
By Steve Scherer

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is pushing ahead with a vaccine mandate for international truckers despite increasing pressure from critics who say it will exacerbate driver shortages and drive up the price of goods imported from the United States.

Canada will require all truckers entering from the United States to show proof of vaccination starting on Saturday as part of its fight against COVID-19.


That could force some 16,000, or 10%, of cross-border drivers off the roads, the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) estimates. The government estimates 5% of drivers will be impacted, according to a government source.

The mandate is the first policy measure taken since the pandemic began that could limit cross-border trucking traffic. Trucks crossed the border freely when the border was closed for 20 months because they were considered essential to keep supply chains flowing.

"We don't anticipate significant disruptions or shortages for Canadians," the source said.

Trudeau has championed a strict inoculation policy for civil servants and federally regulated workers, and the fast-spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus appears to have strengthened his government's resolve to stick with the policy.

Industry groups and opposition parties say it is a bad idea, especially at a time when the Bank of Canada is eyeing its first interest rate increase since October 2018.

Even though the vast majority of Canadian truckers are vaccinated, those who are not "are already starting to quit," said Stephen Laskowski, president and chief executive of the CTA, adding that the industry is already short some 18,000 drivers.

More than two-thirds of the C$650 billion ($511 billion) in goods traded annually between Canada and the United States travels on roads.

"Everyone has been talking about inflation. And this is just going to continue to fuel that," said Steve Bamford, chief executive of Bamford Produce, an importer and exporter of fresh fruit and vegetables based in Ontario.

The cost of bringing a truckload of fruit and vegetables from California and Arizona doubled during the pandemic due to the existing driver shortage, Bamford said. Fresh foods are sensitive to freight problems because they expire rapidly.

Supply chain disruptions drove Canada's headline inflation rate to an 18-year high in November, and the Bank of Canada has signaled that it could hike it as soon as April.

"We're going to see prices skyrocket for groceries, for everything, if we see tens of thousands of truckers unemployed," Conservative Party leader Erin O'Toole said on Thursday, adding there could be "reasonable accommodations" like regular testing.

Interprovincial Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc attacked O'Toole on Friday for a "lack of leadership" on COVID-19 that "would only force more lockdowns and put Canadians at greater risk."

'KEEP ON TRUCKING'

Canada's health ministry did not comment when asked if any accommodations might be made for unvaccinated drivers.

Canada's border agency, in response to a Reuters query, said unvaccinated truck drivers who are not Canadian would be turned back at the border starting on Jan. 15, possibly causing delays at the crossing. Canadian drivers will be allowed back into the country, but will be required to quarantine for 14 days.

Vaccinated drivers will be allowed in and allowed to skip a pre-arrival molecular coronavirus test, the agency said.

The Biden administration wants truck drivers at companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated or submit to weekly testing, a policy that has been challenged to the Supreme Court.

In November, the price of food bought in Canadian stores increased 4.7% from a year earlier, the largest jump in seven years, and fresh vegetable prices rose even more due to higher shipping costs.

"You're going to see some impact on inflation and on the availability of goods on sale," said Jimmy Jean, chief economist at Desjardins Group, adding that the mandate could trigger prices rises that prompt the central bank to raise rates quicker than expected.

Joseph Sbrocchi, general manager of the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers association, said "this is not the time to create that zero-sum game for Canadians," especially in winter months when so much fresh food is imported.

Derek Holt, vice president of capital markets economics at Scotiabank, disagrees.

"Keep on trucking with the vaccine mandates," he said, warning there was a "bigger price for the economy and for the health system if you don't get more people vaccinated now."

(Reporting by Steve Scherer, Additional reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Palestinians summon Dutch envoy over NGO aid cutoff

Mon, January 10, 2022

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Palestinian Authority summoned the Dutch representative on Monday to object to the Netherlands' decision to halt funding to a Palestinian civil society group that Israel controversially outlawed as a terrorist organization.

In a statement, the PA decried the “unjust and biased” decision to cut off funding to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, one of six groups that Israel outlawed in October in what critics said was as an assault on Palestinian civil society.

The Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the occupied West Bank and coordinates security with Israel, said UAWC provides vital aid to Palestinian farmers struggling to remain on their land in the face of Israeli settlement expansion.

The Dutch government based its decision on an independent audit of the UAWC that found no evidence the organization was involved in terrorism. It said the audit did however find a “worrisome” number of UAWC board members were linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a left-wing militant group. Two former UAWC employees were arrested in connection with a bombing that killed an Israeli teenager in the West Bank in 2019.

The UAWC rejected the findings, saying it does not concern itself with the private political activities of its board members or employees. The PFLP has a political party as well as charities and an armed wing. Israel and Western countries consider the PFLP a terrorist organization because of attacks going back decades that have killed civilians.

Israel says the six groups are fronts for the PFLP but has provided little evidence to substantiate the allegations. The terror designation paves the way for the Israeli military to shut down the groups and arrest their members, but it has yet to do so.

The rights groups deny the Israeli allegations, which they say are aimed at stifling civil society and pressuring Western donors to cut off funding.

The six civil society groups are based in the occupied West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 war. The Palestinians want the West Bank to form the main part of their future state. The peace process ground to a halt more than a decade ago.

IOC major sponsors mostly muted in runup to Beijing Olympics



A worker labors to assemble the Olympic Rings onto of a tower on the outskirts of Beijing, China on Jan. 5, 2022. The Beijing Winter Olympics are fraught with potential hazards for major sponsors, who are trying to remain quiet about China's human rights record while protecting at least $1 billion they've paid to the IOC. 

(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)More

STEPHEN WADE
Mon, January 10, 2022, 10:11 PM·7 min read

The Beijing Winter Olympics are fraught with potential hazards for major sponsors, who are trying to remain quiet about China's human rights record while protecting at least $1 billion they've collectively paid to the IOC.

That could reach $2 billion when new figures are expected this year. Sponsors include big household names like Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Visa, Toyota, Airbnb, and Panasonic.

The International Olympic Committee's so-called TOP sponsors are being squeezed by a diplomatic boycott led by the United States, the economic power of 1.4 billion Chinese — and the fear of retaliation by China's authoritarian government.

China, itself, was part of a full-fledged boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

“They (sponsors) are trying to walk a fine line between trying to get the best exposure, but also not trying to be perceived as too close to the actions of the Chinese government,” Mark Conrad, who teaches sports law and ethics at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business, said in an email.

The IOC created the strain by returning to a country whose rights abuses were well documented in the runup to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. They now rival the pandemic for attention with the Winter Games opening on Feb. 4.

The rights violations committed against Muslim Uyghurs and other minorities clash with the lofty principles in the Olympic Charter. The Charter speaks of putting “sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.”

It further adds: “The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Olympic Charter shall be secured without discrimination of any kind, such as race, color, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

The Associated Press contacted most of the major Olympic sponsors, but was met largely with silence about their plans, or told the focus was on the athletes. One sponsor that replied, German financial services company Allianz, said it was “in regular contact with the IOC” and stood behind ideals of the Games.

One person in touch with sponsors, who was not authorized to speak and asked not to be named, said the general mood, especially for those focused outside the China market, was to avoid mentioning Beijing and to work around the edges.

“I would not be surprised that the sponsors would remain silent,” said Dae Hee Kawk, director of the Center for Sports Marketing at the University of Michigan. “You could potentially lose business.”

Retaliation is a concern. The NBA experienced it in 2019 when a Houston Rockets executive sided in a tweet with democracy protests in Hong Kong, Last month, Olympic sponsor Intel had to apologize after publishing a letter on its website that asked suppliers to avoid sourcing from China's Xinjiang region.

Sponsors usually saturate the space around the Olympics. Less so now with lucrative hospitality programs also shelved by the pandemic.

“The sponsors’ silence speaks volumes — more than any news release can,” wrote Conrad, the sports law professor at Fordham.

The pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics stymied sponsors. Fans were banned, officials shuttered an enclosure brimming with sponsor marquees, and Toyota, one of Japan's three major Olympic sponsors, pulled its ads off local TV to avoid being linked to the Olympics. This raised the question of sponsors seeking compensation from the IOC.

The Games were unpopular in Japan when they opened, but polls showed they were seen as successful once they closed.

Asked about its planning for Beijing, Toyota spokeswoman Rina Naruke offered the following to the AP in a brief statement.

"We are unable to provide any specific details at this time. We will update you once we have more information.”

Terrence Burns, who has worked for the IOC in marketing and branding but is better known as an independent consultant who helped land five successful Olympic bids, disputed a suggestion that the Beijing Olympics were very different, or that sponsors were treading lightly.

“The marketing opportunity for Beijing 2022 has always been the ability to promote a Chinese Games in the Chinese market; just as it was for the 2008 Games,” Burns wrote in an email to AP.

“The biggest commercial impact of the Beijing Games for TOP partners will be in the Chinese market. And realistically, that's not too different from any past Games.”

Burns said the IOC's sponsors were in it for the long haul. Coca-Cola has been associated with the Olympics since 1928, and the next few Games look financially promising.

“I see zero commercial evidence of a consumer backlash or concern against any TOP partner. None,” Burns wrote.

Upcoming Olympics are 2024 in Paris, followed by Milan-Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, and Los Angeles. The IOC has also announced Brisbane, Australia, for the 2032 Summer Olympics, and Sapporo, Japan, is a top contender for the 2030 Winter Games.

Host cities are no longer selected in a bid process, which was subject to well-reported corruption by some rank-and-file IOC members. The IOC leadership now picks the venues with rubber-stamp approval from members.

IOC sponsors have come under pressure from human rights advocates and some members of the U.S. Congress, who have called for moving the Olympics or a full-fledged boycott. Last month an unofficial body set up in Britain concluded that the Chinese government committed genocide and crimes against humanity.

China has called this the “lie of the century” and says the interment camps in northwestern Xinjiang are used for job training.

The five U.S.-based sponsors — Coca-Cola, Intel, Airbnb, Procter & Gamble, and Visa — were grilled in a bi-partisan hearing in July by the Congressional Executive Committee on China.

Most dodged pointed questions, said they had to follow Chinese law, had nothing to do with choosing Beijing as the venue, and focused on the athletes no matter the Games.

Intel's Steven Rodgers, an executive vice president and general counsel, was the only one of five to say he believed the conclusions of the U.S. State Department that China was "committing genocide against the Uyghur people.”

Olympic sponsors and NBCUniversal, the broadcast rights holder for the United States, were asked in a letter from Human Rights Watch to be aware of the rights climate in China, and to scrutinize supply chains.

President Joe Biden signed a bill last month that bans goods made in northwestern China's Xinjiang region, unless companies can show forced labor was not involved.

NBC has paid $7.75 billion for the next six Olympics (2022 through 2032) and the network accounts for almost 40% of all IOC income, serving as its main partner. It has begun promoting the Olympics in the United States but minimizes references to Beijing.

IOC President Thomas Bach has repeatedly said the Olympics must be “politically neutral." But they seldom are. Four years ago in the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, Bach aggressively promoted his bid to drive talks between the two Koreas.

Late last year, the United Nations General Assembly approved the Olympic Truce Resolution by a consensus of the 193 member states; 173 co-sponsored the resolution.

However, 20 nations did not sign up as co-sponsors including the United States, Britain, Japan, Canada, Australia, India and North Korea. The United States and Australia are future Olympic hosts, Japan just held the Summer Olympics and is a candidate for 2030, and North Korea is China's staunchest ally.

Bach has declined to condemn the alleged genocide or speak out on human rights in China. He seldom mentions the Uyghurs by name.

“We have our full focus on the athletes,” Bach said. ”We welcome that they can participate, that they are supported by their national governments. The rest is politics.”

—-

Tali Arbel contributed from New York and Yuri Kageyama contributed from Tokyo.

___

More AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Vale Halts Mine Production in Brazilian State Due To Heavy Rain

NOT MOUNTAINS BUT MOUNDS OF IRON ORE SLAG 

Mariana Durao
Tue, January 11, 2022

(Bloomberg) -- Vale SA, the world’s second-largest iron ore producer, halted some mine production because of heavy rainfall in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais.

The mining giant has partially suspended train services on the Estrada de Ferro Vitoria a Minas railway and production in its southeastern and southern systems “to guarantee the safety of its employees and communities,” it said in a statement.

The mines in the regions represented 40% of Vale’s output of the steelmaking ingredient in the nine months ended in September. In the statement Monday, the company reiterated its production guidance of 320 million to 335 million tons of iron ore in 2022.

The halt offers another boost to iron ore prices in the short term. Futures in Singapore advanced as much as 2.8% on Tuesday, bringing the rally to about 50% since November. Shipments from both Brazil and Australia have each declined almost 20% in the latest week, and coupled with mill restocking, that’s supporting prices, said Huatai Futures Co. analyst Wang Haitao.

The northern system, where Vale produces high-grade ore, continues to operate in line with the production plan, which the company says considers the impact of the rainy season on operations. Last week, Vale reported a landslide in copper project Salobo III, in Para State, also because of the rain.

CSN Mineracao SA said extraction and movement operations at the Casa de Pedra mine were temporarily suspended due to heavy rains in Brazil’s southeast region recently, according to a filing.

Rainfall hit Minas Gerais hard during the weekend, blocking highways. A Brazilian mining dike owned by France’s Vallourec SA overflowed Saturday near the city of Belo Horizonte, and operations at Usiminas’s mining subsidiary Musa were temporarily suspended due to rains significantly higher than average.

Minas Gerais is the same region where a dam broke in Brumadinho in 2019, leaving 270 dead and leading to the indictment of Vale for environmental crimes. The state was also affected by the dam collapse of Vale and BHP Group’s venture Samarco in 2015.

Iron ore futures in Singapore were up 2.1% at $127.65 a ton by 3:21 p.m. Prices in China gained 3.4%.

China Is The Only Winner In This Huge Iraqi Oil Field




Editor OilPrice.com
Mon, January 10, 2022

The statement last week from Iraq’s Oil Minister, Ihsan Abdul Jabbar, that the newly resurrected Iraqi National Oil Company (INOC) has been given government approval to acquire ExxonMobil’s 32.7 percent stake in the supergiant West Qurna 1 oil field for up to US$350 million is likely to leave China delighted, the U.S. irritated, and Iraq’s oil industry still unable to achieve any of its key oil output goals. 

The last iteration of the INOC – created in 1966, before it was effectively closed down in 1987, with its remnants incorporated into the Ministry of Oil (MoO) – was founded on a mandate that included elements that seemed geared towards enabling malpractice of one kind and another. 

In particular, Article 12 of the law relating to the establishment of INOC contained, as highlighted by the former senior economist with Iraq’s MoO, and subsequently head of the Oslo-based Development Consultancy & Research, Ahmed Mousa Jiyad: “The most ridiculous, disintegrative, destructive and unconstitutional aspects of this law […providing] the legal cover for formalised corruption and kleptocracy by assigning the three funds [‘Citizens Fund’, ‘Generations Fund’, ‘Reconstruction Fund’] at least 10 per cent of the revenues of the oil exports at the discretion of the INOC’s board of directors.” 

 The power of the INOC board of directors, though, could extend further, he added at the time, as under the 2018 version of the law, revenues generated from the export and sale of oil and gas ‘will be considered as financial revenues for INOC’. “This is a flagrant violation of the Constitution, which states that oil and gas belong to the Iraqi people and not a financial return to one public company,” said Jiyad. The full scope of the powers of this new version of the INOC has not yet been fully laid out, which means that no constraints are in place.

Even without a centralised institution such as the INOC to concentrate and control all of the key elements pertaining to by far Iraq’s most lucrative business sector (oil still accounts for around 90 percent of the government’s total revenues), the independent risk analysis firm, Transparency International in its ‘Corruption Perceptions Index’, in which Iraq is always ranked at or near the bottom, perennially notes that the country demonstrates: “Massive embezzlement, procurement scams, money laundering, oil smuggling and widespread bureaucratic bribery have led the country to the bottom of international corruption rankings…and political interference in anti-corruption bodies and politicisation of corruption issues, weak civil society, insecurity, lack of resources and incomplete legal provisions severely limit the government’s capacity to efficiently curb soaring corruption.”

According to a statement made in 2015 by Iraq’s own Oil Minister – and later Prime Minister of Iraq – Adil Abdul Mahdi, Iraq “lost US$14,448,146,000” (that is over 14 ‘billion’, not ‘million’) from the beginning of 2011 up to the end of 2014 in cash “compensation” payments, supposedly to international oil companies and other related entities but in reality, as fully analysed by OilPrice.com here, basically related to the way in which gross remuneration fees, income tax and the share of the State partner was deducted and accounted for in the compensation paid out relating to reduced oil production levels. 

This ‘accounting factor used in calculations’ solely related to ‘expenses of various kinds’ that have never been disclosed or in any way clarified by the MoO but is key to the merging of public funds with private ones. It saw its true genesis in 2009 when IOCs in many cases were asked to make large upfront payments as part of their bid, which would supposedly be repaid at a later date.

Related: Libya’s Oil Production Bounces Back Following Pipeline Repairs

This is the key reason why so many major Western oil companies have made for the exit in recent months, including ExxonMobil. 

As highlighted exclusively by OilPrice.com back in 2019, ExxonMobil had been desperate to get out of the key project vital to Iraq’s plans to dramatically increase its crude oil output – the Common Seawater Supply Project (CSSP) – for years in order avoid any reputational damage either to it or to the U.S. that its involvement may have led to. 

Once it was clear that Iraq was not going to address the risk/reward matrix by allowing U.S. or E.U. lawyers and accountants to be brought in to look over the legal agreements pertaining to the Project or to be involved in the accounts, then ExxonMobil made it clear to the Iraqis that it did not want to continue its involvement in the CSSP and it also lost its interest in continuing with its stake in West Qurna 1.

 The breadth and depth of Iraq’s endemic culture of corruption is evidenced even on the crucial issue of its own security, as highlighted by local news reports. This resulted in a situation that hundreds of millions of dollars over the years given to Iraq by the West specifically to maintain its F-16 fighter plane fleet instead ended up in the bank accounts of all layers of management involved in the program locally. So much money was stolen that by the middle of 2020 only seven jets out of the fleet – just 20 percent of the total – were still able to fly without serious risk of crashing.

This is precisely the chaotic environment into which China and Russia see opportunity to project their influence, and so it has been with Iraq’s oil sector, which - with an average lifting cost per barrel of crude oil of around US$1-2 (operating cost excluding capital expenditure) - offers the lowest development costs in the world, along with Iran and Saudi Arabia.

 West Qurna 1, located around 65 kilometres from southern Iraq’s principal oil and export hub of Basra, holds a considerable portion of the estimated 43 billion barrels of recoverable reserves held in the entire supergiant West Qurna field. Originally West Qurna 1 was thought to have around 9 billion barrels of these reserves, but earlier last year Iraq’s Oil Ministry said it has plans to boost the field’s crude oil production capacity to more than 700,000 barrels per day (bpd) over the next five years, from the current 450,000-500,000 bpd, on the basis that it has recoverable reserves of more than 20 billion barrels. 

This opportunity led China, in the shape of PetroChina - the listed arm of the China National Petroleum Corporation – to buy a 32.7 percent stake itself in the field at around the same time as ExxonMobil took its stake and to establish itself as the dominant force on the site even before ExxonMobil decided to pull out of the oil field and of the CSSP.  

As analysed in depth in my new book on the global oil markets, the strategy employed to effectively sideline ExxonMobil is one that China has repeatedly used in similar situations across the Middle East, with a key element being the often surreptitious and gradual acquisition of a range of huge ‘contract-only’ awards made to Chinese companies. 

The most notable of these - exclusively reported by OilPrice.com in November 2019 – was the US$121 million engineering contract to upgrade the facilities that are used to extract gas during crude oil production to the China Petroleum Engineering & Construction Corp. Similar ‘contract-only’ deals have been done by China across Iraq, including for its supergiant Majnoon oil field, to another hitherto unheard-of Chinese firm - the Hilong Oil Service & Engineering Company. These deals done with lesser-known Chinese companies, in addition to the official production exploration and development deals done by the big Chinese oil firms, mean that whichever Western company was also involved on a site, it was China that was in charge.

By Simon Watkins for Oilprice.com

ULTRA HIGH EXPLOSIVES NOT NUKES
Analysis-N.Korea looks to risky pre-fuelled missiles to reduce launch time

 A view of what state news agency KCNA reports is the test firing of a hypersonic missile at an undisclosed location

Mon, January 10, 2022, 10:59 PM·3 min read
By Josh Smith

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's recent claims of testing hypersonic weapons overshadowed its pursuit of a potentially risky rocket fuel system that analysts say could allow the nuclear-armed state to deploy and launch its missiles faster during a war.

Most of the country's largest ballistic missiles use liquid fuel, which typically requires them to be loaded with propellant at their launch site before they can be fired - a time-consuming step that makes them easier to spot and destroy.

Pyongyang has also pursued solid-fuel technology, but so far most of those engines have been used on smaller, short-range missiles.

Recent tests suggest North Korean military scientists are pursuing a third option: a "missile fuel ampoule" system to seal the liquid propellant and oxidizer tanks within the missile's airframe, allowing them to be fuelled at the factory and ready to use.

"This would obviate the need for in-field fuelling, which could increase the responsiveness of North Korean liquid propellant missiles," said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "They are still quite a ways off from switching to an all-solid force so this could be a useful interim pursuit."

North Korea said it first used such ampoules in September, when it claimed to have tested its first hypersonic missile, capable of carrying a warhead that can glide at more than five times the speed of sound.

At the time, state media quoted a top official discussing the significance of "turning all missile fuel systems into ampoules."

That suggests North Korea "intends to continue to retain and improve its liquid-propellant ballistic missile force for the long term rather than shift to an all-solid force," said 38 North, a Washington-based organisation that monitors North Korea.

The same type of rocket booster with an ampoule system may have been used last week in a second hypersonic test. North Korea launched another missile on Tuesday, but technical details on the type of rocket involved were not immediately available.

'DRIVING AROUND WITH A BOMB'

The volatility of the fuel-storage system the North Koreans are pursuing casts doubt on its military usefulness, said Markus Schiller, a missile expert based in Europe.

Those rocket engines use nitrogen tetroxide (NTO) as an oxidizer and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) as fuel. Both are highly toxic as well as "hypergolic," which means they react violently when in contact with each other.

That explosion is channelled through a nozzle to power the rocket. But the chemicals can be highly vulnerable to shocks and temperature.

"You are driving around with a bomb," Schiller said. "The moment the missile tanks rupture because you hit a pothole, or because someone shoots at the missile, all will be gone in a thick red cloud."

NTO, meanwhile, freezes at -11°C (12.2°F) and starts boiling at +21°C.

"If you are sitting in the woods on a Korean winter night... waiting for launch command, the NTO will freeze in your pipes, and start freezing in your tanks. Your missile will blow up at launch," Schiller said. "Also, you don't want to risk launching a missile on hot summer days, with the oxidizer boiling in the tank."

North Korea said the Wednesday test verified the "reliability of fuel ampoule system under the winter weather conditions", suggesting it is seeking to ensure the stability of such systems.

Unlike most other countries that have used such a system, North Korea does not appear to be using canisters to protect and insulate the missiles.

"This seems to confirm that 'ampoulization' is not canisterization but akin to the Soviet/Russian practice of preloading submarine-launched ballistic missiles with propellants at the factory and maintaining the fuelled missile as a sealed unit for loading into the launcher," 38 North concluded in a report on Friday.

The report said that developing more stable propellants would allow missiles to remain fuelled on a day-to-day basis.

(Reporting by Josh Smith. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

No landlord: Mobile home community finds stability in self-government



Sarah Matusek
Mon, January 10, 2022

One sunny, cold morning last January, John Egan joined fellow mobile home park residents on a neighbor’s front porch. They needed to organize. But how?

“I had to go to the restroom, and when I came back from the restroom, they said, ‘Hi! You’re president!’” recalls Mr. Egan.

The half-dozen folks had convened to think through how to buy their Durango, Colorado, park from the private landlord – a move Mr. Egan and others deemed a shot in the dark. But now they at least had a president for what would become an interim board. With guidance from a housing nonprofit and majority support from the community, residents succeeded in purchasing the roughly 15-acre property within five months. They celebrated with a picnic, as the new Animas View MHP Co-op joined some thousand other resident-owned communities countrywide.


Their achievement is unusual. The resident-owned market constitutes just 2.4% of manufactured housing communities nationwide. Bolstering the health and longevity of mobile home parks is important as they are a critical source of affordable housing, say industry experts. Recent legislation in Colorado offers some provisions for communities like Animas View that hope to secure their future by governing themselves.

“Everybody sleeps better at night,” says Steve Boardman, here for 20 years, as he takes out his recycling.

“We’re in control.”

Affordable homes with a view

River, mountains, grasses bleached blonde in autumn – the Durango mobile homes have a million-dollar view. Largely immobile and costly to move, these factory-built units have been commonly called “manufactured homes” since 1976. They house an estimated 18 million to 22 million people in the United States.

“This is one of our nation’s largest sources of deeply affordable housing, and it’s deeply affordable without any federal subsidy,” says associate professor of sociology Esther Sullivan at the University of Colorado Denver.

The median annual household income of these homeowners – $35,000 – is half that of site-built homeowners, according to Fannie Mae. Manufactured housing fills 6.3% of U.S. housing stock, with more than double that share in rural areas.

Many residents own their homes but not the underlying land, for which they pay “lot rent.” That model can spur financial precarity: These homeowners are “more likely to see their homes depreciate and have fewer protections if they fall behind on payments,” reports the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Media reports have increasingly shed light on private-sector purchases of these parks that often result in rent increases, which housing advocates deem predatory.

Mobile home park investor Frank Rolfe counters: “When we buy these properties, they’re often in terrible condition, and [we] bring them back to life. … You can’t bring old properties back to life without raising rents.”

Mr. Rolfe estimates that he and a partner are the fifth largest owners of U.S. mobile home parks. “There is this conception I think out there that park owners are in some way hostile to residents buying their own communities, and that is completely off base,” says Mr. Rolfe, co-founder of Colorado-based Mobile Home University, which trains investors to purchase parks. Three parks he co-owned have been sold to residents.
No more landlords

Mr. Egan and his wife, Cate Smock, bought their trailer here in 2012 – an affordable move to Durango so their son could attend a better school. But afterward, they saw their lot rent, which includes utilities, increase annually, if not twice a year.

“You would dread the piece of paper with the black electrical tape on your door,” she says. Animas View residents also complained of the previous owner’s lack of attention to their needs and delayed repairs.

Shortly before Christmas 2020, residents learned that the latest landlord, Strive Communities, intended to sell. Residents began to organize almost immediately. (The Monitor could not reach Strive for comment.)

“We don’t tell people that it’s easy” to become resident-owned, says Mike Bullard, communications and marketing manager for ROC USA, a New Hampshire nonprofit that, along with its affiliates, reports having helped nearly 300 manufactured housing communities become resident-owned. (ROC stands for resident-owned communities.)

With 430 households, the Halifax Mobile Home Estates Association in rural Massachusetts is the largest in the ROC USA network, resident owned since 2017. The budget is tight due to the community’s size, says board president Deborah Winiewicz, but at least members have a say in how those funds are spent by voting at an annual meeting.

“We’ve found, too, that people take more pride in the community because it is theirs,” she adds, noting that their sales office is run by resident volunteers.

In Colorado, the network affiliate Thistle ROC helped the Durango cooperative patch together funding for their purchase. But to afford the financing, the co-op increased lot rent by $80 this fall (rent ranges between $755 and $825). While the uptick may seem counterintuitive, it’s not uncommon, says Mr. Bullard.

“These groups are buying not just the real estate, but the business,” he says, adding that lot rent for new resident-owned communities will typically drop down to market rate or below within five years.

The sale, first reported by The Durango Herald, closed in June for a purchase price of around $15 million, according to Dan Hunt, a former Animas View board member who now serves on the operations and finance committees.

Learning about the community’s grassroots organizing helped convince Kevin Miller to rent land there for his RV. Now board president, Mr. Miller, who moved in last year, says he likes the idea of keeping money within a community.

“I’m proud to tell people where I live now,” he says.

Progress from failure

Among legislation aimed at strengthening protections for mobile home dwellers, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill into law in 2020 that requires landlords to provide residents at least 12 months’ notice of a potential change in use of the land. It also gives residents 90 days after being notified by the landlord of a potential sale of the park to pitch an offer to purchase and organize financing. Landlords must respect this “opportunity to purchase” window before selling to anyone else.

But the resident-owned model is still the exception, not the rule. Animas View is one of three parks to become resident owned in Colorado in 2021, out of a few dozen that changed ownership.

Still, the new legislation “gives [residents] the opportunity to be able to compete with an offer that they previously wouldn’t have known about,” says Andy Kadlec, program director at Thistle ROC.

Advocates say this legislative momentum grew out of the activism and unsuccessful attempt by residents of another Colorado mobile home community, Denver Meadows, to purchase their park ahead of its expected closure as the owner eyed redevelopment. Despite help from advocacy group 9to5 Colorado and Thistle ROC, the Aurora-based community’s purchase offer in 2017 was reportedly rejected. Though some homeowners received relocation assistance, many ended up paying double rent elsewhere, says Cesiah Guadarrama Trejo, 9to5 associate state director.

The Denver Meadows saga was featured in the 2021 mobile home documentary “A Decent Home” by filmmaker Sara Terry, a former Monitor journalist. Her team arranged an event in Colorado this November that connected manufactured housing homeowners from across the country with activists, policy experts, and former Denver Meadows residents.

Reflecting on when she started the film six years or so ago, Ms. Terry notes, “I had to say the ‘underreported’ affordable housing crisis. … [Now] people are paying attention. I think grassroots activism is flourishing, and that makes me hopeful.”

Mr. Hunt, one of a few Animas View residents who attended the gathering, says he went up to a displaced Denver Meadows man and thanked him.
No threat of eviction

Just beyond the limits of the Durango park, a train slices through the mountain view with a harmonic huff. Current and former board members are keen to keep this community intact, and, so far, residents report no one has moved out since the sale.

“One of the first things that we decided when we met as a board was that we would not allow anybody to be forced out of the park because of an inability to pay the rent,” says former board president Mr. Egan in his home, where Christmas stockings hang above an electric fireplace.

To ensure folks can afford to stay, the community is developing a rental assistance fund. In addition to seeking outside funding, some residents plan to donate spare dollars themselves. Lindie Hunt, board treasurer and Mr. Hunt’s wife, recently jump-started the fund with a check for $60 – a sum she’d been given for checking on a neighbor’s home while they were away.

“It wasn’t my money in the first place,” she reasons in her kitchen, preparing to leave for work one morning.

Beyond paying off the five initial loans, the 120-lot community faces infrastructure projects, such as a wholesale water and sewer system replacement. To help keep maintenance costs down, several residents volunteer their time and skills. Mr. Boardman wields a weed wacker sometimes.

Needing to collaborate, residents have also begun to get to know their neighbors better. Surrounded by sawdust and screws, Kirby MacLaurin and Doug Harris are voluntarily tearing up a duplex that the co-op hopes to renovate into a rental.

Though they’ve overlapped at Animas View for a few years, the men just met.

“Ever since we made the co-op, we are meeting each other for the first time. Isn’t that amazing?” says Mr. Harris.

“It’s true,” says Mr. MacLaurin, hammer in hand. “Best buds … what a find.”