Four strains of Omicron are circling around the world, WHO warns

Zaina-alibhai2Tuesday 25 Jan 2022 

The emergence of new strains is not unexpected (Picture: PA / Getty Images)

There are now four strains of Omicron circulating the world, the World Health Organisation has warned.

A number of separate lineages of the Covid variant have developed since it first emerged, which is not uncommon for viruses as they mutate.

The first known version of Omicron – or B1.1.529 – was detected in South Africa and has since evolved into two strains, the first being BA.1.

The highly-transmissible strain spread to 171 countries and saw social distancing restrictions and lockdowns reintroduced in many places.

BA.1 has been followed by BA.2 and BA.3, with the latter showing similar mutations to the original Omicron variant.

But BA.2 is displaying 28 unique mutations to BA.1, prompting the WHO continuing to keep a close eye on it.

Its report from January 21 read: ‘While the BA.1 lineage has previously been the most dominant, recent trends from India, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Denmark suggest that BA.2 is increasing in proportion.

‘Drivers of transmission and other properties of BA.2 are under investigation but remain unclear to date.’

A number of separate lineages of the Omicron Covid variant have developed since it first emerged (Picture: PA)

It was stressed the new sub-variants pose no further threat to health or vaccines (Picture: Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The differences are found in the receptor binding domain – the part of the virus that plays a key part in infection leading it to be faster spreading.

Some 426 cases of BA.2 have been found in England since December 6, with 146 of them being recorded in London.

The UK Health Security Agency is also keeping the strain under investigation while it undertakes further analysis.

‘It is the nature of viruses to evolve and mutate, so it’s to be expected that we will continue to see new variants emerge,’ said Dr Meera Chand, incident director at the UKHSA.

Other than the genetic make up of BA.2, there has been some evidence the strain is spreading faste

Tom Peacock, a virologist from the Imperial College of London, tweeted: ‘BA.2 appears to be the major Omicron lineage in [part of] India and the Philippines and there is evidence it is growing compared to BA.1 in Denmark, the UK and Germany.

‘Consistent growth across multiple countries is evidence BA.2 may be some degree more transmissible than BA.1. This is the main reason BA.2 is currently in the news.’

The emergence of new strains is not unexpected and as most are similar to the original variant, they pose no further threat to health or vaccines.

Researchers find explanation for

Omicron variant causing less

severe disease

INFORMATION 25 JANUARY 2022

Milder for most but still highly contagious, Omicron has filled intensive care beds again at a hospital near Barcelona. LEHTIKUVA / AFP

STUDY

The Omicron variant replaced the Delta variant as the dominant COVID-19 variant in the world, starting from late 2021 to early 2022. But, the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant caused less severe disease than Delta, although it was better at escaping immune protection by vaccinations and previous infections.

The reasons for this have so far remained elusive. A new study, published in the journal, 'Cell Research', has shed some light on this topic.

The study, by a research team with scientists from the University of Kent and the Goethe-University Frankfurt showed that Omicron variant viruses are particularly sensitive to inhibition by the so-called interferon response, an unspecific immune response that is present in all body cells. This provided the first explanation of why COVID-19 patients infected with the Omicron variant are less likely to experience severe disease.

The cell culture study also showed that Omicron viruses remained sensitive to eight of the most important antiviral drugs and drug candidates for the treatment of COVID-19. This included EIDD-1931 (active metabolite of molnupiravir), ribavirin, remdesivir, favipravir, PF-07321332 (nirmatrelvir, active ingredient of paxlovid), nafamostat, camostat, and aprotinin.

Prof Martin Michaelis, School of Bioscience, University of Kent, said: "Our study provides for the first time an explanation, why Omicron infections are less likely to cause severe disease. This is due to Omicron, in contrast to Delta, does not effectively inhibit the host cell interferon immune response."

Prof. Jindrich Cinatl, Institute of Medical Virology at the Goethe-University, added: "Although cell culture experiments do not exactly reflect the more complex situation in a patient, our data provide encouraging evidence that the available antiviral COVID-19 drugs are also effective against Omicron."

Source: ANI

UK

London hospitals workers to strike over ‘BAME staff pay’

Three hospitals including Royal London Hospital will go on strike from Jan 31. (iStock Image)

By: Alastair Lockhart

HUNDREDS of workers at three East London hospitals will strike for two weeks over a pay dispute with their employers.

Staff at the Royal London Hospital, St Bartholmew’s Hospital and Whipps Cross Hospital plan to take action from Monday, January 31 as they try to push Barts Health NHS Trust and employers Serco to increase their pay.

Those involved are all members of the Unite union and work for Serco at the hospitals, both run by Barts Health Trust.

No figures are available for how many of the workforce are involved.

Unite claims staff at the three hospitals, which it says are predominantly black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) employees, are paid 15 per cent less than those employed directly by the NHS.

The union accused Serco and Barts Health of “exploiting” the caterers, cleaners, porters and other staff employed by Serco at Royal London, St Bart’s and Whipps Cross.

Contractors Serco said it had recently increased its offer of a pay rise to three per cent for staff to address their concerns.

However, Unite could not reach an agreement with the employer, arguing that far more was needed to match the 7.5 per cent inflation rate.

Sharon Graham, Unite’s general secretary, was highly critical of the hospitals’ and Serco’s pay to their workers.

She said: “These workers face the same risks as NHS-employed staff but they are paid significantly worse and treated disgracefully.

“Barts Health NHS Trust has a golden opportunity to bring these workers, employed by Serco and not the NHS, back into NHS employment.

“It’s time to end the injustice of a two-tier workforce. Unite is 100 per cent behind our members’ battle against low pay and exploitation.”

Serco responded by criticising the strike and calling for further talks.

The company’s contract director for Barts Health, Taddy McAuely, said: “We are extremely disappointed with the notification of strike action from Unite as we recently increased the pay offer for our employees to a total of three per cent, backdated to April 2021.

“This is the same percentage increase as that being received by people directly employed by the NHS.

“Serco also recently announced a £100 ex-gratia payment for all of our 52,000 front line employees around the world including all our colleagues at Barts Health.

“We look forward to further discussions with Unite and hope to work together to find a resolution that avoids the need for this unnecessary strike action.”

Shane DeGaris, deputy group chief executive at Barts Health NHS Trust said: “Over the next 13 months we will be considering future arrangements of the facilities management contract, which could include bringing some services back in house.

“We are hopeful that this matter can be resolved but are working with Serco to put the appropriate measures in place and ensure hospital services are supported if strike action does go ahead.”

(Local Democracy Reporting Service)

NHS pay rise: Health workers back unions’ call for inflation-proof deal and warn they are at ‘breaking point’

‘Staff are burning out … a lot of them are exhibiting what are recognisable symptoms of trauma’

Unions have called on Boris Johnson’s Government to take action on pay (Photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty)

By Joe Duggan

January 24, 2022 

Healthcare workers have backed union calls for an inflation-proof pay rise for NHS staff, warning the health service is at “breaking point”.

Fourteen unions, representing 1.2 million health staff in England, have called on the Government to raise NHS pay and raised fears of a “growing exodus of exhausted staff”.

In a submission to the independent NHS pay review body, the unions urged action on pay to stem an “alarming” loss of medics. Inflation rose to 5.4 per cent last month, the highest for nearly 30 years, and as the cost of living crisis has deepened frontline workers have demanded a boost to pay.

Dr Yaso Browne, a Hampshire-based GP speaking on behalf of the Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK), told i: “People were encouraged to ‘protect the NHS’, but the people of the NHS need protecting from unfair freezes on their pay.

“For years NHS staff have been offered wage increases below or barely meeting the cost of living, in real terms. They have gone and are still going above and beyond to keep the NHS running. Their pay needs to reflect the value the Government proclaimed it held for the NHS throughout the pandemic, and still claims it holds.

“Paying people a fair wage is a much-needed reality if we have any chance of retaining highly trained staff.”

Joan Pons Laplana, a former intensive care nurse who is now a senior manager for Health Education England, which co-ordinates training and education of NHS staff, said the spiralling cost of living and years of below-inflation pay rises had seen workers hit hard.

Mr Laplana, who left his frontline nursing role after developing PTSD during the second Covid-19 wave last February, said the most recent three per cent pay offer had been the “most generous for years” but was still “well below inflation”.

He told i: “This has been going on for the last 10 years. Our pay rise year after year has been zero or, at the most, 1 per cent. From 10 years ago I am earning £4,000 less than I am supposed to earn because of the cost of living.

“It’s around 16 per cent of my salary – that is not sustainable. When I came to this country 25 years ago it was a fantastic salary. Now, not so much.

“I completely agree with the unions. We cannot lose any more nurses. It’s at breaking point, the NHS.”

London has a “massive problem” with the retention of cleaning staff as the cost of living continues to rocket, with workers choosing jobs in supermarkets instead, Mr Laplana said.

Hundreds of hospital staff in the capital including porters, cleaners and catering staff, are to go on strike in a dispute over pay.

Members of Unite employed by outsourcing company Serco at London hospitals St Barts, the Royal London and Whipps Cross, will walk out for two weeks from 31 January. Unite said the staff, mainly from black, Asian and other ethnic minoritties, are paid up to 15 per cent less than directly employed NHS workers.

Serco said it had recently increased its pay offer to a total of 3 per cent, backdated to last April, adding it was the same as that being received by people directly employed by the NHS.

Mr Laplana said: “We are a team, and at the moment they deserve to earn more. If they go on strike I will support them. Porters, cleaners, catering and everything they are very important.

“Without them the rate of infection in the hospitals and the waiting lists would be even longer and higher.”

Dr Rachel Sumner, a psychologist and a researcher on the CV19 Heroes project which tracks frontline worker well-being during the pandemic, said NHS participants in the study believed an inflation-proof pay increase was “long overdue”.

Dr Sumner, based at Cardiff Metropolitan University, told i: “Our participants have mentioned on many occasions in the almost two years since we started doing this project that the pay award is a very serious issue of concern in terms of their being able to stay in their current roles, particularly given he challenges they are having to continue to undertake at the moment.

“The question about the pay – when it was questioned in the summer of 2020 and eventually turned down for nurses – some of our participants referred to it as a kick in the teeth.

“At the moment what we are seeing is, over time, a gradual decrease in the welfare and general well-being of these workers for a variety of reasons.

“The pay factor is one [reason]. The fact they are burning out [is another]. A lot of them are exhibiting what are recognisable symptoms of trauma in the way that they speak and the way they recount things to us in our survey.”

She added: “There is an acknowledgement from our frontline workers that we came into the pandemic – particularly in the NHS – in a poor state and that has only got worse. And if we start seeing people leaving their roles we are going to be in serious trouble, in my opinion.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “NHS staff, from doctors and nurses to paramedics and porters, have rightly received a 3 per cent pay rise this year, which has increased nurses’ pay by £1,000 on average. We will consider the pay review bodies reports carefully when we receive them.”

Canadian academic Hassan Diab goes to trial next year in French terrorism case

France’s case against Ottawa academic Hassan Diab in connection with a bombing outside a Paris synagogue 40 years ago will go to trial in 2023 — more than five years after he was set free due to a lack of evidence.

Last year, France’s court of appeal overturned a lower court decision to release Diab and allow him to return to Canada. France’s top court later rejected Diab’s appeal and ordered him to stand trial. That trial is set to start on April 3, 2023.

French authorities have not yet requested Diab’s extradition to France to stand trial in person. Diab’s lawyers have said he could be tried in absentia.

Diab’s lawyer in France, Amélie Lefebvre, declined to comment on the latest developments. “It is way too soon to discuss them,” she said in an email.

French prosecutors have persisted in their attempts to bring Diab to trial — despite problems with the physical evidence central to their case and the discovery by French investigators that Diab wasn’t even in Paris on the day of the bombing, but was in Lebanon writing university exams.

Diab’s supporters say France’s dismissal of his alibi and the weak case against him amounts to a travesty of justice.

A group of his supporters will hold a news conference tomorrow to demand that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speak out in Diab’s defence. They want Trudeau to publicly declare that Canada will not entertain a second extradition request from France.

During Diab’s most recent appeal hearing, France’s advocate general — a senior officer of the law who offers advice in the French legal system — sided with Diab’s defence team and argued for his release.

But Diab’s release has been opposed by more than 20 civil society groups in France — including groups representing victims of terrorism and pro-Israel organizations.

Diab’s Canadian lawyer Don Bayne said pressure from those groups played a role in the decision to send Diab to trial.

“The travesty of justice continues despite clear evidence of Hassan’s innocence,” he said last year.

“This shows how political pressure trumps justice. We call upon Prime Minister Trudeau to put an end to this miscarriage of justice.”

The Ottawa university lecturer was accused by authorities of involvement in the 1980 Rue Copernic bombing, which killed four people and injured more than 40.

He was arrested by the RCMP in November 2008 and placed under strict bail conditions until he was extradited to France in 2014. He spent more than three years in prison in France before the case against him collapsed.

He was released in January 2018 after two French judges ruled the evidence against him wasn’t strong enough to take to trial. He was never formally charged.

French prosecutors appealed Diab’s release promptly — pursuing it after the last remaining piece of physical evidence linking Diab to the bombing had been discredited by France’s own experts.

The case moved slowly as prosecutors sought to find new evidence against Diab and as court proceedings were delayed by the pandemic.

The key physical evidence Canada relied on in extraditing Diab to France was handwriting analysis linking Diab’s handwriting to that of the suspected bomber. Canadian government lawyers acting on France’s behalf called it a “smoking gun” in the extradition hearing.

But in 2009, Diab’s legal team produced contrary reports from four international handwriting experts. These experts questioned the methods and conclusions of the French experts. They also proved that some of the handwriting samples used by the French analysts belonged not to Diab but to his ex-wife.

French investigative judges dismissed the handwriting evidence as unreliable when they ordered Diab’s release in January 2018.

While considering the appeal of Diab’s release, another French judge ordered an independent review of the contentious handwriting evidence.

Diab’s lawyers said this latest review delivered “a scathing critique and rebuke” of the original handwriting analysis “that mirror[s] the critique by the defence during the extradition hearing 10 years ago.”

The French investigative judges who released Diab also found he had an alibi for the day of the Paris bombing. Using university records and interviews with Diab’s classmates, the investigative judges determined he was “probably in Lebanon” writing exams when the bombing outside the synagogue took place.

“It is likely that Hassan Diab was in Lebanon during September and October 1980 … and it is therefore unlikely that he is the man … who then laid the bomb on Rue Copernic on October 3rd, 1980,” they wrote.

In 2018, CBC News confirmed that France was aware of — and had failed to disclose — fingerprint evidence that ended up playing a critical role in Diab’s release.

Since his release, Diab has been living with his wife and two children in Ottawa. He has resumed work as a part-time lecturer.

SOHR: Syrian-Kurdish forces storm prison where IS militants hold nearly 850 children hostage

On Jan 24, 2022

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have stormed a prison in Hasakeh province in northeast Syria, where Islamic State group militants have taken nearly 850 children hostage, the latest stage of a five-day-long prison break attempt by the extremists.

Rights groups warned that the children, some as young as 12-years-old, were at “serious risk” of harm and called on the SDF to exercise the utmost care in trying to rescue them.

An SDF spokesperson told The New Arab: “Full control of the situation is just around the corner.”

They added that the “terrorists are still taking [minors] as human shields, but our anti-terror forces are trained and capable of dealing with the situation”.

IS fighters attacked the Ghwayran prison late on Thursday in a coordinated assault, with fighters detonating car bombs near prison walls and prisoners attacking guards.

The group has since occupied the north wing of the jail and taken prison staff and children hostage.

In the surrounding city, IS fighters who escaped the prison have reportedly hidden in homes.

SDF and IS engaged in firefights throughout the weekends.

The US-led International Coalition Defeat Daesh also conducted airstrikes on the prison and shot from helicopters in an effort to dislodge the prisoners on Sunday. Authorities imposed a curfew on the local area.

The attack is the most high-profile, high casualty operation carried out by IS in Syria and Iraq since the SDF and International Coalition routed the last remains of the IS “caliphate” in March 2019.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that at least 154 people have been killed in the last five days, though SDF sources allege the death toll is lower. A wave of displacement was also triggered by the fighting, with over 6,000 people fleeing the areas surrounding the prison according to the UN.

The SDF houses thousands of alleged former IS fighters in camps and prisons across the swathes of northeast Syria it controls. Many of the detention centres are makeshift, converted from old warehouses and schools. Prison riots happen sporadically, with prisoners complaining of poor conditions and a lack of clarity over when they will be released, if ever.

The Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political wing of the SDF, accused foreign countries of “abandoning their responsibility” in dealing with the IS fighters held in northeast Syria. It also claimed that Turkey was helping foment IS activity in the area, and that it was “obvious that the operation to target” the prison was planned in Turkish-occupied territories.

Turkey has denied any link to IS and fought a campaign against the group since 2016.

Since 2019, the Kurdish-led force has been housing about 3,000 foreign fighters held in northeast Syria, in addition to about 9,000 Syrian and Iraqi alleged fighters.

With few exceptions, foreign countries have dragged their feet in repatriating their nationals, despite calls by the SDF and aid groups for the international community to assist.

IS has generally carried out low-tempo, guerilla-style attacks in Syria over the last three years. The group mainly focused its efforts on Syrian regime soldiers and infrastructure in the Syrian central desert, where IS weapon stashes are located and the terrain makes hit-and-run style attacks easier.

Thursday’s attack was seen by many analysts as a break from the prevailing tactics, and as a warning sign that IS has grown in strength since its supposed death knell in 2019.

“The past nine days have seen an increase in IS attacks in both [Iraq and Syria]. These attacks and several before in the past few months… are bigger in the number of fighters and they are not carried out anymore in rural desert areas, but in city centres and against army posts,” Suhail Al-Ghazi, a Syrian researcher with the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (ORSAM), told The New Arab.

Bazad Amou, a local media activist living in the Jazira region of northeast Syria, said: “Detention of the most prominent leaders of the organizations in the prisons of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria [AANES] prompted [IS] cells to try to smuggle the organisation’s members and leaders from prisons.”

He added that “the issue of IS” is not just the SDF’s responsibility, but is rather that of the international community.

“The region must not be left to suffer the danger of IS’s return alone,” Amou said.

Turkey accused of masterminding the Islamic State attack on prison in northern Syria

Turkey was accused of masterminding the massive Isis attack on a prison in northern Syria today as Kurdish-led forces regained control after days of intense fighting.

More than 500 prisoners from Ghwayran jail in Hasakah province have surrendered to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

But sporadic fighting continued in the northern part of the complex, which holds more than 3,000 Isis fighters captured on the battlefields of the area known by Kurds as Rojava.

SDF spokesman Ferhat Shami said that progress was slow as “we are more interested in liberating hostages and protecting our people than eliminating mercenaries.”

The region’s autonomous administration said that the attack, which started last Thursday, was “part of a well-organised plan.”

More than 200 Isis fighters were involved in the attempt to liberate fanatics housed in the jail while jihadist cells inside started fires and overpowered prison guards.

Thousands of local residents were forced out of their homes, while the US provided air support for the SDF against what is the biggest attack launched by Isis for a number of years.

British special forces were also involved in combating the Isis attackers, sources on the ground told the Morning Star.

Officials of the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria said today that the assault had “a broader purpose” than merely freeing the jihadists.

“The Turkish state is trying to resurrect Isis in a bid to destroy the security of the region and the gains achieved,” a statement said, claiming to have documentary evidence.

Turkey has long struggled to shake off allegations that it supports Isis, including claims that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan runs a family business that trades oil with the jihadists from both Iraq and Syria.

At one stage, Turkey granted a monopoly to Powertrans to transport oil from Iraqi Kurdistan, much of it allegedly bought from Isis.

The Turkish state and its intelligence services have also been accused of sending weapons to jihadist groups in Syria via shady private security company Sadat, whose founder Adnan Tanriverdi is an adviser to Mr Erdogan.

Inside Turkey, forces from Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party were accused in a European Union intelligence report of commissioning Isis to carry out a 2015 bombing in Ankara that killed which more than 100 people.

On Sunday, the SDF circulated picture of a weapon marked in Turkish as Nato stock, which it claims to have captured from an Isis fighter.

Want to offset diesel consumption by solar power in the N.W.T.? There's a cap for that

Liny Lamberink 

CBC NORTH

© Kate Kyle/CBC A solar array in Colville Lake, N.W.T. There is currently a 20 per cent cap on the amount of electricity solar arrays can contribute to power grids in diesel communities, but a report commissioned by the territorial government recommends…

Communities in the N.W.T. that rely on diesel generators for power could handle up to 45 per cent of their electricity coming from renewable energy sources, according to a new study, and now it's up to the government to decide whether to make the change.

Right now, the cap is at 20 per cent.

Robert Sexton, the territory's director of energy, said the limit was set back in 2014 to make sure power grids remained stable and to keep electricity prices down. It reflected an amount of renewable energy that would allow diesel generators — which many communities rely on for power — to keep running efficiently, he explained.

However, in response to communities' growing interest in creating their own renewable power, Sexton said the territory commissioned a study to re-examine that cap. It became publicly available last month.

CIMA+, the engineering company hired to do the research, studied infrastructure in Fort Liard, Fort Simpson, Tulita, Łútselk'e and Inuvik. It concluded all diesel communities in the territory could handle up to 45 per cent of their power coming from renewable sources — such as solar panels, wind turbines or hydropower — without compromising the reliability and consistency of their power.

"We were surprised it was that high," said Sexton.
Renewable power a 'good thing' in communities

The acting manager of the PolarGrizz Hotel in Sachs Harbour, Sharan Green, said it would be a "good thing" if the territory allowed her community to create more renewable energy.

Even though the hamlet has no daylight in the winter, she said the hotel saves money because of its solar panels. Green knows more people in the community who are interested in panels too — but haven't been able to get them because Sachs Harbour has already hit the 20 per cent cap.

"More is better," she said. "We're saving on the power bill. It helps us. It takes time, but it helps us."

An increase would also be welcome news for a renewable energy project that's underway in Łútselk'e, according to Haroon Bhatti, the innovations manager for Denesoline Corporation.

The corporation is helping build a clean-energy power plant, made up of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries, that aims to wean Łútselk'e off its diesel generator by 2026.

"That ultimately means that we can sell more energy back to the grid, which of course, is a good thing," he explained.

Bhatti said renewable power that can't be sold to the grid will be stored in the batteries, where homes in the community would still be able to access it.

"I appreciate that people are thinking about increasing those sorts of caps so that the renewable energy sector can grow. And ultimately, that's what we would like to do."

Łútselk'e became the first independent power producer in all three territories in 2016, after building a $350,000 solar array. Sexton said if they were able to double the amount of renewable they sell, they could double their revenue.
A balancing act

Increasing the cap, however, is more complicated than it may sound. Sexton said the change would happen gradually, if at all, and the territory would need to find a way to keep electricity prices down for other customers.

"Utilities incur costs to produce the electricity that they sell… [And] they pay for that through the electricity they sell," he said.

Whenever someone installs a solar panel on their home, for example, they buy less electricity. But the cost to the utility — for the energy infrastructure and its maintenance — stays the same. That forces the utility to raise the price of electricity for its remaining customers.

"No decision has been made as to whether or not to do this, because there's a competing issue there where if you allow more self-generation, you also end up increasing electricity rates."

The territory's 2030 energy strategy says turning diesel into electricity in communities that aren't connected to hydroelectric grids creates 72 kilotonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year. That's the equivalent of consuming 596,475 barrels of oil, according to Canada's greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator.

In order to reach its goal of reducing overall emissions by 30 per cent by 2030, the territory has to reduce its emissions by another 283 kilotonnes. In the 2020-21 fiscal year, the territory reduced its emissions by just 3.6 kilotonnes.

Sexton said the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from diesel generators, the need to keep electricity as affordable as possible, and the need to let people offset their bills by generating their own renewable power is a "balancing act."

In an effort to figure out a way forward, Sexton said the territory also commissioned recent studies on electric vehicles and a net-metering program (which compensates people for adding renewable energy to the grid) so the territory can consider its power needs at the same time.

The current energy action plan expires at the end of March, he noted, and the upcoming action plan — to be released in 2023 — "will have some answers as to what we're going to do with all of this."

Canada's nuclear waste body ousted liaison for being 'too much on the side of the community,' lawsuit claims

Colin Butler 

A former employee of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) is suing the Canadian agency for $320,000, claiming he was "publicly humiliated" when he was constructively dismissed for being "too much on the side of the community."

The NWMO is a non-profit agency funded by the nuclear industry. Its goal is to find a willing host community for the country's growing stockpile of nuclear waste.

Currently, the agency is considering the Ontario communities of Ignace and South Bruce for a proposed deep geological repository, a sprawling $23-billion catacomb that would one day act as the tomb for Canada's 3.3 million bundles of spent nuclear fuel that are currently in interim storage.

In South Bruce, the agency has been accused by a citizens' group of using its financial might to groom the declining farm community into becoming a willing host for a nuclear waste storage site. The NWMO has told CBC News it only wants to leave "a positive legacy" in the community to make South Bruce a better place, regardless of its decision.

Now, in a lawsuit filed in a Toronto court in August, Paul Austin alleges he was constructively dismissed by the NWMO for being "too much on the side of the community."

None of the allegations have been tested in court.
Exec says local leaders lacked 'capacity to understand' project

Austin, 62, was a relationship manager for the NWMO in South Bruce from May 2012 until he considered himself to be constructively dismissed in August 2021, according to court filings.

His job, says the statement of claim, was to be the "primary contact' with the NWMO in South Bruce, acting as a "trusted adviser, co-ordinator of resources" and "guide" to local town and band council officials "through the siting process."

Court filings for the plaintiff said senior leaders within the NWMO started to become "overly involved" on a local level in the summer of 2020, undermining Austin's work.

When community leaders in South Bruce complained, one executive told Austin he was "too much on the side of the community," that its leadership "lacked the capacity to understand" the nuclear waste site selection process and "were damaging their chances at being selected as host for the project," according to the lawsuit.

At one point, the statement of claim says, Austin was told by a senior executive that "if community leaders didn't change their ways, he would stop defending South Bruce to the NWMO president and other vice-presidents, and 'let the project go to Ignace.'"
Austin could 'simply quit if he wanted to'

In the fall of 2020, the court documents claim, Austin started to lose many of his key responsibilities, and leadership started ignoring his advice and excluding him from phone calls with community leaders in South Bruce. © Colin Butler/CBC News This bright yellow sign was erected by protesters in Teeswater, Ont., a small farming town in the municipality of South Bruce, one of two sites where the NWMO is considering storing Canada's stockpile of used nuclear fuel.

The NWMO also created a position for a new "site director" who would "basically be the face of the NWMO in the community" and would take over many of the responsibilities of a relationship manager, according to the statement of claim.

The agency further eroded Austin's responsibilities in the spring of 2021, the court documents allege, overriding and rejecting some of his decisions when it came to community engagement.

When Austin complained to his boss and human resources about the change in his role and responsibilities in July 2021, court documents said he was told by the NWMO that it felt no changes had occurred and he could "simply quit if he wanted to."
Austin claims dismissal 'publicly humiliated' him

At the same time, community leaders in South Bruce began asking questions about why Austin had been sidelined from his roles and responsibilities in the community, court documents said.

When Austin reported the community feedback to his bosses, Austin was accused of being "arbitrary, discourteous and inaccurate in his accounting of the facts," the claim says.

In August 2021, Austin advised the NWMO through his lawyer "he considered himself constructively dismissed" effective Aug. 17 that year.

Austin claims the NWMO's actions were "harsh, vindictive, reprehensible and malicious," and the organization's actions have caused him to be "publicly humiliated" and and suffer "mental distress."

Court documents say Austin is asking for wrongful dismissal damages of $270,000, with another $50,000 in punitive and moral damages.

CBC News spoke with Austin's lawyer, Phillip White, on Friday.

"As this matter is currently before the courts, I am unable to comment," White said.

In its court filings, the NWMO denies the allegations, arguing the changes to Austin's role and responsibilities as relationship manager were part of the evolution of the site selection process, and he was told by the agency that his work was valued.

The organization argues that because Austin left his post voluntarily, he is not entitled to severance.

"While we fundamentally disagree with the allegations it would be inappropriate to comment on a matter before the courts," Michelle Dassinger, the NWMO's director of communications wrote in an email to CBC News Friday.

"As an organization we value fairness, honesty, integrity and respect and apply these values to everything we do."

‘Moderate’ Has Become The Most Meaningless Term In Politics

"Moderate" Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ). (TPM Illustration/Getty Images)

By Kate Riga
December 31, 2021 

News outlets trot out the term every time Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) make headlines: “moderates.”

Usually, these lawmakers are rating coverage and earning the moniker for bucking the party, or throwing some kind of obstacle in the path of their leaders’ agenda. Progressive politicians and Democratic constituents alike routinely bristle at the characterization of their party’s most obstinate members.

“Referring to the small handful of conservative Democrats working to block the president’s agenda as ‘moderates’ does grave harm to the English language and unfairly maligns my colleagues who are actually moderate yet by and large understand the stakes of this historic moment,” Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY) said recently.

But it’s not just Democrats. Yes, “moderate” Democrats are simply the Democrats who most annoy their party, regardless of their policy prescriptions. But those Republicans described as “moderate” are simply those who annoy former President Trump, regardless of their political ideology. “Moderate” voters don’t seem to share any common set of characteristics either.

It is a term freighted with connotation, and savvy politicians and voters have each long grasped that rhetorical work it does well enough to describe themselves with it. But in both cases, the word itself has become hopelessly squishy and largely devoid of any substantive meaning. In 2021, it says much more about how our politicians and voters want to be perceived than it does about what they actually believe.

As the two major parties have become increasingly homogenous in terms of their members’ policy positions, “moderate” has become more of a relational term than a policy descriptor.

“It’s used by members who need some distance from their national party,” Francis Lee, professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University, told TPM.

For Manchin certainly, showing West Virginia voters that he’s not a rubber stamp for the Democratic agenda aligns with his political reality. The state voted for former President Donald Trump with a whopping 69 percent of the vote in 2020. Though it has a Democratic senator, it was second only to Wyoming in its near-complete loyalty to the Republican presidential candidate.

Unlike Manchin, Sinema lacks an obvious political rationale to routinely contradict her party. Hailing from a purple state that President Joe Biden won in 2020 — and contrasting sharply with a much more typical battleground state lawmaker in her fellow Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) — Sinema has still, for some reason, staked her political wellbeing on tacking very publicly to the party’s right.

Where the two align is in messaging: They both want to signal to their home-state voters that they are not loyal Democratic foot soldiers. But a clue to the substantive emptiness of the “moderate” descriptor they share is how little they have in common otherwise.

Over the past few months, both have used the veto power every Democratic senator has in the evenly-split chamber ruthlessly, and often — but rarely over the same policy issue. Manchin took an axe to major climate change programs; Sinema supports them. Sinema blocked the party from collecting more taxes from the very wealthy; Manchin is all for upping taxes on the rich.

Further proof of the term’s divorce from any policy meaning comes from the Republican party, which has been jerked sharply to the right under the Trump presidency.

There, the crop of “moderates” usually includes lawmakers like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY). They are people, in short, who are unfriendly to Trump, the leader of their party, and to much of the anti-democracy propaganda he peddles. But ideologically, they often hew closely to the basic beliefs that long comprised the Republican worldview.

“They are labeled as moderates even though a lot of them occupy a more conservative ideological space than Trump himself,” Alex Theodoridis, associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told TPM. “Trump is all over the place ideologically; people like Liz Cheney or Ben Sasse or Mitt Romney are not.”

Part of the reason that the word has come to describe lawmakers’ willingness to buck their parties rather than their ideology or stance on policy is that there is no cohesive moderate voting bloc for these politicians to represent.

Voters who call themselves moderates have as little in common as the politicians that do the same. Often, they only look moderate because they hold a cornucopia of policy positions plucked from both parties. But these policy positions are often quite extreme.

“When we took a survey, the most popular position on immigration was to militarize the border, a very extreme conservative position, and the most popular position on marijuana was to completely legalize it at the national level — a relatively strong liberal position,” Doug Ahler, assistant professor of political science at Florida State University, told TPM.

An example from Ahler’s coauthor David Broockman about how moderate labelling can be misleading. A person with one extreme conservative and extreme liberal view is a “moderate.” A person with two milder conservative views is “very conservative.”

Political science, Ahler said, hasn’t focused much on the extremity of each position voters hold in favor of capturing a comprehensive, and misleading picture. In his research, Ahler and coauthor David Broockman found that 71.3 percent of self-described moderates had at least one extreme policy position. Like moderate politicians, these voters don’t fit neatly into either party box. But that doesn’t mean they have much in common with each other, or a general coherent ideological philosophy a lawmaker could campaign to represent.

So the word “moderate” is not shorthand for policy positions or ideological beliefs or, really, anything at all. It’s simply a signal about how politicians and voters want to be perceived in relation to those around them. And for certain politicians, it does the extra work of painting them as independent from a party some of their base may distrust.

“It sounds kind of responsible,” Georgia State University political science professor Jennifer McCoy said. “If you’re moderate, you’re not extreme. It’s an attractive label that’s fairly meaningless in content.”



Kate Riga (@Kate_Riga24) is a D.C. reporter for TPM and a contributor to the Josh Marshall Podcast.

THIRD WORLD USA

The Sunsetting Of The Child Tax Credit Expansion Could Leave Many Families Without Enough Food On The Table

The payments were widely credited with bringing about huge declines in poverty and malnutrition.

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 14: Children and teachers from the KU Kids Deanwood Childcare Center complete a mural in celebration of the launch of the Child Tax Credit on July 14, 2021 at the KU Kids Deanwood Childcare 

By Paul Shafer and Katherine Gutierrez
January 21, 2022 2:24 p.m.

This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.It first appeared at The Conversation.

The big idea

The discontinuation of the Biden administration’s monthly payments of the child tax credit could leave millions of American families without enough food on the table, according to our new study in JAMA Network Open. The first missed payment on Jan. 15, 2022, left families that had come to rely on them wondering how they would make ends meet, according to many news reports.

The American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed in March 2021, made significant changes to the existing child tax credit. It increased the size of the credit by 50% or more, depending on a child’s age, to either $3,000 or $3,600 per year. It also made more low-income families eligible and paid half of this money out as a monthly “advance” payment.

Biden’s Build Back Better plan calls for a second year of an expanded child tax credit disbursed monthly. But that package of measures stalled in the Senate after passing the House in November 2021. As a result, the monthly advance payments of the child tax credit that American families with children had been receiving since July 2021 were left hanging in the balance.

Nearly 60 million families with children received the first payment, which was sent out in July 2021. The payments were widely credited with bringing about huge declines in poverty and malnutrition. Our study found that the introduction of these advance payments was associated with a 26% drop in the share of American households with children without enough food.

We used nationally representative data from over 585,000 responses to the Census Household Pulse Survey from January through August 2021 to assess how the introduction of the child tax credit advance payments affected food insufficiency in the weeks following the first payment on July 15, 2021. Food insufficiency is a measure of whether a household has enough food to eat. It is a much narrower measure than food insecurity, which is a more comprehensive measure based on 18 questions used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Importantly, we were able to separate the effect of these payments from other types of support, like the use of food pantries, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, unemployment benefits and COVID-19 stimulus payments.
Why it matters

Food insufficiency spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among families with children: It rose from 3% among all households in December 2019 to 18% in December 2020. Even after many, if not most, U.S. families received pandemic stimulus checks and other benefits, food insufficiency still hovered around 14% in June 2021. But following the first advance payment, from July 23 to August 2, 2021, food insufficiency among households with children fell drastically, to 10%.

This support is ending just as the omicron variant of COVID-19 is leaving many families without work, child care and, in many places, child care via in-person instruction at school.

All these factors are leading to lower income and, where school is virtual once again, creating the need for more meals at home. Other analyses of the Census Household Pulse Survey have found that most families were using the child tax credit advance payments for food and other necessities, such as housing and utilities.
What’s next

We are going to look further into how the advance payments affected low-income families through the rest of 2021, analyzing which groups of Americans saw the most benefit and what happened once the advance payments expired in 2022.

The full impact of the expansion of the child tax credit for the 2021 tax year has not yet been seen either. Eligible families will get the rest of that money, equal to all six monthly payments combined, when they file their 2021 tax returns this year.


Paul Shafer is an assistant professor of Health Law, Policy and Management at Boston University.

Katherine Gutierrez is a PhD Candidate in Economics at University of New Mexico

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

How A Serbian Scientist Helped Inspire The Oath Keepers To March On The Capitol

Aleksandar Savic spoke to TPM about his interactions with the Oath Keepers and background.

TPM Illustration/Getty Images

LONG READ

By Josh Kovensky
January 18, 2022 

Days after the November 2020 election, the Oath Keepers were preparing.

The group’s leader Stewart Rhodes had been warning of conflicts around the election — including a potential “civil war” — for months. But by Nov. 7, the day major news networks called the election for Biden, prosecutors allege, Rhodes had a plan.

The target was to be the U.S. Capitol. According to a federal grand jury indictment last week, Rhodes shared his plan to march on the Capitol after coming across a video titled “STEP BY STEP PROCEDURE, HOW WE WON WHEN MILOSEVIC STOLE OUR ELECTIONS.” It was a guide to overturning Joe Biden’s election, citing the model of the popular revolt which ended the rule of Slobodan Milosevic twenty years earlier.

Rhodes sent that video to a group of Oath Keepers, prosecutors say, and claimed to be in contact with the video’s creator who was advising his group with a plan of action.
Newsletters

An archived Nov. 11, 2020 version of the Oath Keepers’ website shows a letter from Rhodes embedded with the same video, thanking its creator, a “patriot from Serbia,” for “show[ing] us the way.”

TPM spoke on Monday with that “patriot from Serbia.” Now a Texas resident, the Serbian-born Aleksandar Savic discussed the video, his interactions with Rhodes, and his background. The news website MintPress first identified Savic as the creator of the video in January 2021.

Savic denied that his words incited violence.

“There are some very angry people citing other books, there are some people committing crimes from listening to rap songs,” Savic told TPM. “So, in lying that the one who is sending the words/message/whatever is solely responsible, is something that is not true.”

‘You Can Lose, Or You Can Fight’

The video, uploaded on Nov. 6, 2020 when Savic was still living in Europe, offers those upset by Trump’s defeat an “example” from Savic’s home country: Milosevic, Serbia’s autocratic leader in the 1990s, left power following the disputed 2000 election.

Irregularities in that election appeared to give Milosevic extra votes that put him over the top, resulting in mass demonstrations.

Workers went on strike, and protestors massed in Belgrade, eventually storming the country’s parliament. The same day, Milosevic resigned.

In the video, Savic likens the 2020 election in the U.S. to the 2000 election in Serbia, telling the audience: “When they declare their fake victory, you need to start massive civil disobedience.”

He also says explicitly that violence might be needed.

“This is what you must put in their hearts: They must feel fear. And while they are counting fake ballots, they must think about, are they going to get out of there alive?” Savic says. “Yes, I’m calling you for violence, if that is the only way. Who cares? Yes, I do. Here: taboo, broken.”

“We were in that situation,” Savic added. “You can lose, or you can fight.”

In the analogy, Milosevic is Biden: a usurper of the people’s will. An international tribunal found Milosevic responsible for genocide committed by Serb militias during the Bosnian War in the 1990s.

For the Oath Keepers, Savic’s video came at a pivotal moment on rollercoaster of emotion that Trump supporters went through that week. With the election held on Nov. 3 and the major news networks not calling the results until Nov. 7, Trump diehards were able to hold onto hope for the first few days.

By Nov. 5, when Savic released an initial, somewhat more vanilla video going over what he regarded as the historical parallels between Serbia 2000 and the U.S. 2020, hope was starting to fade that Trump would win.

It was in that climate of desperation that on Nov. 6 Savic posted a sequel: the “step-by-step” video that prosecutors cite as inspiring Rhodes’ plan of action for Jan. 6.

As that video progresses, video of Serbia in 2000 plays in the background. At one point, the text “TO THE CAPITAL!!!” appears. Towards the end, music — what Savic describes as a “Serbian march from World War I” — plays, while the video’s description notes: “we stormed the parliament.”

For Rhodes, Savic’s video captured what would be necessary to turn the tide against Biden, and a historical precedent in which the good guys won. Prosecutors say in the indictment that Rhodes told Oath Keepers on Nov. 7, one day after the video was published, that the group “must now do what the people of Serbia did when Milosevic stole their election. Refuse to accept it and march en-mass on the nation’s Capitol.”

The videos gained broader traction beyond Rhodes; Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward appeared to cite it at a December 2020 rally in Phoenix — an incident first noted by MintPress. Ward asked a crowd: “How many of you saw the video of the guy from Serbia saying that their elections were stolen? And what did he say? If you lose now, you lose forever.”

Savic agreed to speak on the condition that both TPM and he make audio recordings of the conversation. In his conversation with TPM, Savic denied his video played any role in the actions that the Oath Keepers later took.

“That video of mine is nothing but recapitulation of the things that people already knew,” Savic told TPM. “In that video, I haven’t said anything particularly new. All I said was historical event that everybody can find on Wikipedia, that was factually more or less true.”

“It was said in such a voice that was reflecting my ethnic tradition of speaking orally, we are not very literal people [when] we are speaking our stories,” he continued. “Maybe that was super emotional, maybe that triggered some people, but that video is still on YouTube, so I still haven’t broken community standards of YouTube.”

“So implying that there is something spectacular there is a bit dishonest,” he added.

Equality Of Outcome

When he recorded the video, Savic had never been to the United States. He told TPM that he moved to Texas from Europe soon after — in early 2021.

Savic is a credentialed scientist with a PhD in physical chemistry. He worked as a researcher in academia and in the private sector in Europe before coming to the U.S.

“Before me, Tesla, the brightest mind ever, also chose America,” Savic said. “[Aleksandr] Solzhenitsyn came to America.”

Savic said he was born in Serbia in 1986, and he grew up as a straight-A student. But all around him, he said, were children earning lower grades than him, yet ending up with the same result.

To Savic, that was socialism — a focus on “equality of outcome,” a reason “why for the people who are individualistic like myself, America is the place to be.”

Savic left Serbia, living in France and Slovenia while working as a scientist.

By 2020, Savic had been gearing up to move to Austria: he would have his own lab there, he said — until “this whole madness with COVID started.”

“Seeing what is going to happen in Europe, it was something pretty biblical in my mind, that there is a flood coming,” Savic said. “And it is necessary to build an ark to put all the ideas into that ark to preserve them and go to some other land where the freedom still prevailed.”

‘Step by Step’

When TPM asked Savic why he made the video cited by federal prosecutors, Savic, in turn, cited Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the famed Soviet dissident writer and author of The Gulag Archipelago. He directed TPM to a Harvard lecture that Solzhenitsyn gave, and to his Nobel speech, titled “one word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”

“With $200 budget in equipment, I decided to say something that all those sports stars, movie stars, … politicians, mainstream media, everybody — nobody wanted to say a word,” Savic said. “That year, everybody decided to be silent, and this was something that I was not capable of bearing on my shoulders.”

Savic posted two videos on BitChute, an alternative video sharing website that offers refuge to those who have been banned from YouTube, and which the ADL described in August 2020 as a “hotbed of hate.”

On Nov. 5, 2020, he uploaded his narrative of how Serbia contested its stolen elections.

The following day, he uploaded a “step by step” guide for Americans seeking to contest the election, including an aggressive call to action.

A YouTube user named Mrgunsandgear subsequently uploaded the first Savic video to YouTube on Nov. 6 where it garnered hundreds of thousands of views.

Prosecutors allege that Rhodes was inspired by the second, “step-by-step” video, which is only on BitChute.

Step by Step procedure, how we WON when Milosevic stole our elections (bitchute.com)

The Oath Keepers

Savic told TPM that he reached out to Rhodes to thank him for sharing the video. MintPress also reported last year that Savic reached out to the Oath Keeper first.

He characterized his interaction as brief: In his telling, Rhodes asked, “are you really that guy?”

Savic purportedly replied, “yeah, I’m that guy.”

When TPM asked about the federal indictment, in which Rhodes said that he was “in contact” with Savic and that Savic had sent what he described as “written advice” on what to do, Savic maintained that he “recapitulated” what he had already said, and told TPM in a later email that Rhodes was “bragging” about their interactions.

He declined to share his emails with Rhodes with TPM, saying that it was a privacy issue and suggesting that providing those emails to a reporter might be a violation of the law.

“In every country in the world, there are laws about private, written communication,” Savic said. “It is as old as letters.”

Savic also said that if the government wanted access to his messages, they could have it — but, he said, he had not yet been contacted by the government.
Jan. 6

The Serbia-born scientist told TPM that he had not met Rhodes or any Oath Keepers in person since arriving in Texas, emphasizing that their contact was limited.

On Jan. 6, Savic said, he was “thousands of miles away, watching YouTube.”

When asked whether he thought there was legitimate cause to delay the certification of the election that day, Savic grew less strident.

“I have no idea what happened,” he said. “I don’t have enough information. As a scientist, without information, I cannot say anything. This is what I was trained for.”

Savic maintained that his message was its own, separate narrative, independent of Jan. 6; anyone who committed violent acts was misinterpreting his text, he said.

“It is the interpretive structure of other people, not of me,” he told TPM. “If there is something problematic in, for example, my video, then you can say the same that there is something … problematic in Quran, because there are some very angry people citing Quran.”



Josh Kovensky is an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo, based in New York. He previously worked for the Kyiv Post in Ukraine, covering politics, business, and corruption there.