Bitcoin (BTC) Mining Back in the News with New CO2 Emission Numbers

Bob Mason
Mon, January 31, 2022

At the turn of the year, Bitcoin (BTC) mining has once again faced the scorn of lawmakers. The increased level of interest followed Bitcoin’s surge to a November ATH $68,979. Rising prices draw in greater mining activity, thus having “a greater impact on the environment”.

Bitcoin Mining and Government Action

Last summer, the Chinese government banned Bitcoin mining as the government looks to be carbon neutral by 2060. Other governments have since temporarily or permanently banned crypto mining. These include Kosovo and Georgia, with Russia’s central bank also proposing to ban crypto mining.

Last month, a U.S Congress sub-committee hearing explored crypto mining, focusing on Bitcoin and Proof-of-Work mining. From the hearing, it was evident that lawmakers leaned against Proof-of-Work mining, which could prove to be another challenge for Bitcoin miners. According to Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, the U.S was the largest Bitcoin mining nation, accounting for 35.4% of the global hashrate in August 2021.
Bitcoin Mining Statistics Support Government Concerns

For governments with carbon neutral aspirations, the statistics have continued to place Bitcoin mining in the spotlight. Some key mining stats worth considering include:

According to Columbia Climate School, Bitcoin (BTC) is thought to consume 707KwH per transaction. In addition, there are also mining computers that heat up and need cooling.

The University of Cambridge estimated that Bitcoin (BTC) mining consumes 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) per year. Based on this estimate, if Bitcoin were a country, it would be a top 30 energy consumer.

Estimates show that Bitcoin (BTC) mining yields 22m to 22.9m metric tons of CO2 emissions each year.

In terms of global warming, Bitcoin (BTC) mining could push global warming above 2 degrees centigrade in less than 3-decades.

The following numbers were presented in last month’s crypto mining sub-committee briefing memorandum:

The estimated annual energy usage of the Bitcoin network alone grew from 77.78 Terawatt-hours (TWh) on 2nd January 2021 to more than 198 TWh on 26th November 2021.

Over the same period, the Ethereum (ETH) network’s annual energy usage grew from 14.81 TWh to more than 92 TWh.

A single ETH transaction added more than 90 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere, while a single BTC transaction added more than 1,000 pounds.

The global 2021 CO2 emissions of ETH and BTC mining is equivalent to tailpipe emissions from more than 15.5m gasoline powered cars on the road every year.
U.S Climate Aspirations Point to Action on Bitcoin Mining

President Joe Biden announced a new target for the U.S “to achieve a 50-52% reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution in 2030”. Upon taking office, President Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement, aiming to tackle the climate crisis both domestically and abroad. The U.S has a goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

The EU has also voiced concerns, with European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) vice-chair Erik Thedeen calling for a ban on Proof-of-Work mining. As was evident on Capitol Hill, Thedeen was also in favor of Proof-of-Stake protocols due to the “significantly lower energy profile”.

U.S Mining Activity Rises Amidst Lawmaker Scrutiny

At the start of the week, CoinShares published a paper titled “The Bitcoin Mining Network, Energy and Carbon Impact”. Key statistics from the paper included:

Total known power draw of global mining countries (Dec-2021) had the U.S ranked 1st, with a power draw of 1,380 MW. Kazakhstan ranked 2nd, with a power draw of 787 MW, followed by Canada (529 MW), and Russia (268 MW).

The Bitcoin mining network emitted 36 Mt of CO2 in 2020 and 39 Mt in 2021. This accounts for less than 0.08% of a global total 49,360 Mt CO2 emissions.

To put things into perspective, CoinShare also provided the following facts and figures:

The U.S and China had emitted 5,830 Mt and 11,580 Mt of CO2 emissions in 2016 respectively.

Emissions estimates for minting and printing fiat currency sit at approximately 8 Mt of CO2 emissions per year.

The gold industry is estimated to generate between 100 and 145 Mt of CO2 emissions annually.

For the global banking system, power usage estimates sit at 264 TWh (2019). This translates to 130 Mt of CO2 emissions each year.

While U.S mining activity has been on the rise, the latest facts and figures reflect a very contrasting view to that of the University of Cambridge, Columbia Climate school, and numbers shared by the sub-committee hearing in January. The numbers suggest that lawmakers will need to carry out further study before imposing restrictions or outright bans on Proof-of-Work mining.

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

RUTHLESS CAPITALI$M

More Zillow employees in Colorado hit by iBuying layoffs

In November last year, the Seattle company said it was shutting down its Zillow Offers line of business.

Zillow is exiting the "instant buyer" market after recording significant losses.

By Jensen Werley – Reporter, Denver Business Journal
Jan 31, 2022 Updated Jan 31, 2022, 3:50pm MST

Zillow Group Inc. (Nasdaq: Z) is laying off 36 total employees in the Denver area due to ending its iBuying service.

The company has filed a notice with the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment announcing additional Denver-area layoffs, on top of what was announced in November, following the closure of Zillow Offers.

As previously announced, the Seattle-based tech company said 20 individuals were laid off starting on Jan. 3 from the company’s Centennial office.

According to the letter filed on Jan. 20 as part of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, an additional person was laid off on Jan. 17. Starting on March 21, 15 more people will be impacted. The layoffs will wind down over the course of the year and could involve more Denver area employees.

A Zillow spokesperson told Denver Business Journal that "laying off employees is always our last choice and not something we take lightly.”

"We intend to make the transition as smooth as possible for everyone affected," the spokesperson said. "Employees are receiving a severance package that includes at least 10 weeks of pay, six months of benefit costs covered, the value of the their next stock vesting paid directly to them, and outplacement services."

In November 2021, Zillow announced that it would end its direct buying service model, also known as iBuying. The company brought that service, which it called Zillow Offers, to the Denver market three years prior to the closure. Through iBuying, a homeowner can sell their home through a real estate tech company without having to list it or show it, in exchange for a service fee to the iBuyer.

Zillow first opened its Centennial office, located at 10771 E. Easter Ave., Suite 100, in 2015 after it acquired Trulia Inc. Zillow acquired Trulia for $2.5 billion, according to past DBJ reporting. Zillow had about 500 workers in the Centennial office as of July 2020, but at that time the company moved to a permanent remote-work model. The company told the DBJ on Nov. 3, 2021 that being full-remote makes the exact number of employees in Colorado harder to calculate.

When Zillow announced it was closing Zillow Offers, it said it expected to let go of about 25% of its workforce nationwide.

Shutting down the business is expected to take place over several quarters and will include offloading its current assets. As of Nov. 24, Zillow had canceled nearly 400 transactions of the 8,172 contracts it had with home sellers.

"For a small subset of customers closing later in 2022, we determined we can no longer support their closing and are releasing our earnest money to them," said Zillow spokesperson Matt Kreamer at the time. "Typically, homes close in 30 to 45 days."

The company first notified the state of Colorado it would permanently eliminate certain positions due to the closure on Nov. 4.

Denver is one of the top 20 best cities for buying homes online, according to home inspection calculator website Repair Pricer in an analysis based in part on Zillow data. Denver has a high number of home listings offering an online 3D tour, for example.

Zillow, meanwhile, is continuing with its other services, including putting out its market research.

A new study from Zillow shows that the combined value of Denver-area homes has skyrocketed, growing more than $400 billion since 2012. The metro area’s total housing market value in 2021 was $635 billion — the 17th highest in the nation, and a figure that puts Denver among metros like Portland, Oregon, Sacramento, California and Houston.

Colorado had a housing market worth $1.2 trillion, marking the first time the state’s housing market passed $1 trillion. It is one of 14 states with combined home values that high. It also gained the third-most market share in the country, just behind Florida and Texas.

AOC: Corporate 'price gouging' is fueling inflation

Max Zahn with Andy Serwer

Mon, January 31, 2022

Progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told Yahoo Finance in an exclusive interview that corporate "price gouging" has fueled inflation, placing the blame largely on dominant companies that hike prices and rake in profits without fear of competition. 

She strongly rejected claims that government stimulus in response to COVID-19 has caused the price spike, warning that such a diagnosis of the problem could lead to spending cuts with dire consequences for millions of people dependent on federal support. 

 "A lot of these price increases are potentially due to just straight price gouging by corporations," says Ocasio-Cortez, who focused her attention especially on industries with high corporate concentrations.

The remarks from Ocasio-Cortez, who spoke to Yahoo Finance on Jan. 27, came a day after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell signaled that the central bank will likely raise interest rates at its next policy-setting meeting in mid-March in an effort to rein in inflation.

A Commerce Department report on Friday showed that prices jumped 5.8% last year, the sharpest rise since 1982.

To be sure, Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged other reasons for inflation such as pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and labor shortages. 

But her criticism of corporate behavior echoes comments in recent weeks from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and the White House, all of whom have identified exorbitant profits as a contributing factor behind the rise in prices. 

Ocasio-Cortez, a critic of corporate power since she joined the House in 2019, called for policy action on antitrust enforcement and worker protections as a means to address inflation. 

"If we say there are real antitrust issues here — there's a lot of corporate abuse of power leading to price-gouging," she says. "Then that allows us to pursue lanes such as antitrust and also pursue labor protections, COVID protections, that can help people get back into the workplace and stay safe in the workplace." 

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 08: U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol December 8, 2021 in Washington, DC. House Democrats held the news conference to introduce a resolution to remove Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) from her committee assignments over Islamophobic attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Ocasio-Cortez rose to prominence in June 2018 with a surprise upset of incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley, then the No. 4 Democrat in the House and a potential successor to Speaker Nancy Pelosi. When she took office the following year at the age of 29, she became the youngest woman ever to serve in Congress.   

She has amassed nearly 13 million Twitter followers, giving her one of the largest online platforms of a U.S. elected official.

The analysis of inflation from Ocasio-Cortez starkly contrasts with that of Republicans like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who have blamed federal spending for the rise in prices. 

Economist Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton and director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama, has also pointed to pandemic-related government stimulus as a driver of inflation.

In response to the notion that federal spending has caused inflation, Ocasio-Cortez said: "I couldn't disagree more with that assessment."

"The danger here is that if we say we're helping working people too much and say that the cause of this is, 'Oh, it's because we provided too much assistance during the American Rescue Plan. Stimulus checks were too generous,'" she says.

"What that's going to result in is a pullback in the assistance that some families need the most right now," she adds. 

'Facebook should be broken up': 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Tue, February 1, 2022, 

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sits down with Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer to describe her strategy when grilling chief executives on Capitol Hill.

Video Transcript

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: When you look at a company like Facebook-- you can't kind of put them all in a-- in the same boat. They do different things. But when you look at a company like Facebook and the completely corrosive ways that they have exercised an abuse, I believe, in-- in civil society writ large-- not just our democracies.

But you look at, for example, what we're hearing from other countries when we talk about production of vaccines or perhaps like what we can do to export, help them, they-- they say-- it's not just-- there are some things that the United States provide that are welcome. There's also things that we want the United States to stop exporting. And one of those things is disinformation and disinformation through US-founded companies like Facebook that have absolutely slowed and frankly sabotaged the global effort to fight against the coronavirus.

And we see this both-- this disinformation used both in-- in the public health sphere. We've also seen-- social scientists have truly shown the impact that Facebook has had in contributing to social violence and perhaps even accelerating at large scale very dangerous and some would call genocidal activities in places like South Asia, et cetera, human rights abuses and also hate here at home.

ANDY SERWER: But I'm curious what do you think we should do about them or what we should do to them, I guess.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well, Facebook should be broken up. We should pursue antitrust activity on Facebook, and there are so many different reasons why. They are acting as an advertiser. They are acting as both platform and vendor. They are a communications-- they are a communications platform, which has historically been a well-established domain of antitrust. And so because they are so many businesses and industries in one, the case is-- I believe-- right there in and of itself as to why they should be subject to antitrust activity.

AOC: ‘Not sure’ why Biden hasn’t

forgiven student loan debt

Tue, February 1, 2022,

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins 'Influencers with Andy Serwer' to discuss how student loan debt is weighing on the U.S. economy.

Video Transcript

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: I cannot understate the danger and the risk economically, politically, and just where we are right now as a country of allowing the moratorium on student loan payments to lapse in May. If we just allow a-- a full, just continuation of student loan payments, we are talking about a catastrophic development for millions, the over-- almost 50 million student loan borrowers in this country. There were millions of student loan borrowers that were already defaulting going into the pandemic.

But more than that, we are at such a delicate point in the financial and just general economic recovery post-COVID that to then restart payments that are essentially the size of a mortgage payment, sometimes even larger, on a generation that was already so devastated not just by this but the recession, et cetera, I believe it could very-- it could throw out of balance already what is a very fragile recovery.

And not only that, but this forgiveness is on-- I mean, forgiveness is-- is the just thing to do. It's the right thing to do. Why the president hasn't done it yet, I'm not sure, but I-- I do think that this is an issue of increasing urgency. He has already indicated an openness to it. And he has actually already used his authority to forgive student loan debt in certain small, very narrow cases.

ANDY SERWER: Because there are people who suggest he doesn't have the authority. Is that a legitimate argument or just maybe a smokescreen?

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: I don't think it's a legitimate argument. We've seen-- in fact, we've seen him use-- the same legal authority that-- that the president has used to suspend student loan payments is the same authority that he would use to cancel them. And not only that, but he has used that authority. He has indicated a willingness to use the authority. And I think that it would be extraordinarily important and urgent for him to do so.

ANDY SERWER: And what about the argument that it's a moral hazard? In other words, you're letting people off the hook by forgiving the debt?

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well what I think is the true moral hazard here is the surging costs of education in the United States. What has actually created the moral hazard is this guarantee of saying, we will issue minors hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt at almost any level with almost no limit. And we will allow colleges and universities to dramatically increase the costs of their tuition with the guarantee of that loan value on 17-year-olds.

So what is the actual true moral hazard here in the situation is the controls on the cost of education in the United States. And one very important control in this to that note is tuition-free public colleges and universities. Because then what that does is that it introduces competition into the market to which private universities have to actually meet a lower baseline. But people act as though it's just fancy public schools that are extremely expensive now. But public college tuition has also increased dramatically far beyond the pace of inflation.

GOODS & RAIL INSURED

LA councilman blasts train theft 'chaos,' calls them 'a threat to our economy'

Dani Romero

Brazen freight train thefts have spiked in Los Angeles, with images of looted packages and abandoned containers capturing headlines and captivating social media — and putting pressure on California Governor Gavin Newsom to address conditions even he likened to "a third world country."

The thefts have sparked a war of words between law enforcement and Union Pacific (UNP), which owns the railroad and has called for stronger deterrence. But the growing problem has become a rallying cry for at least one local official, who is calling for stiffer penalties against criminals exploiting a weak link in the nation's supply chain crisis. 

Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino told Yahoo Finance in a recent interview that he's "never seen anything like this. We're seeing more chaos with fewer consequences for those who are committing these acts."

The issue has become more of a problem during the past three months – raising new criticism around L.A. County's no cash bail policy, which has worsened the problem by making it easier for thieves to get released — if they get charged at all.

In a letter to the LA County District Attorney last month, Adrian Guerrero, UP's director of public affairs, noted that rail thefts have skyrocketed by 160% in the county over the past year. On average, 90 containers were compromised every day, the company said.

“As a local elected official representing the port of Los Angeles, whenever there's a threat to divert cargo away from this region, it's a threat to our local economy,” Buscaino said.

'What the hell is going on?'

California Governor Gavin Newsom visits the site where multiple train looting has occurred along the freight train tracks in Los Angeles, California U.S., January 20, 2022 . REUTERS/David Swanson

Amid a surge in smash and grab retail thefts plaguing California, the train crisis caught Newsom's attention, who in late January visited tracks strewn with garbage. The governor promised statewide coordination as law enforcement and prosecutors pursue petty thieves and organized criminals who have been raiding cargo containers.

"The images looked like a Third World country," Newsom told reporters. "What you saw here in the last week is just not acceptable. So, I took off the suit and tie and said I'm coming because I couldn't take it. I can't turn on the news anymore. What the hell is going on?"

The thefts have exposed a rift between UP and local law enforcement. In a letter released last month, L.A. County DA George Gascon shifted blame on the company for doing "little to secure or lock trains," while insisting the number of cases involving the rail company fell last year. Meanwhile, according to LAPD Deputy Chief Al Labrada, “UP has significantly decreased law enforcement staffing.”

Gascon, a progressive former San Francisco top prosecutor who was came into office in 2020, insisted that it was “very telling that other major railroad operations in the area are not facing the same level of theft at their facilities as UP."

Yet the company defended itself, saying it has "brought in dozens of special agents from across our 23-state network into the Los Angeles area, starting last year. But these agents cannot totally supplant the expertise and investigative skills of the LAPD, especially when it comes to organized theft of cargo," a spokesperson from UP told Yahoo Finance in an email.

Gascon's progressive policies, however, have him facing a recall effort that was officially approved by the Los Angeles County Registrar on Thursday. The effort was spurred by some of his orders that included the elimination of sentence enhancement charges, zero-bail policies and not prosecuting juveniles as adults for many crimes.

'This needs to stop'

Meanwhile, the cargo looting has taken on an added dimension of risk. While most of the stolen property are consumer goods, more than 80 newly manufactured guns were among the items stolen recently, local police officials said last week. 

The pilfered firearms included at least 36 pistols and 46 semi-automatic shotguns that were taken from a burglarized container car in August and bound for Tennessee, LAPD said. Only two of those weapons have been recovered thus far, they said.

And last month, Yahoo Finance discovered that one stolen package was addressed to Oregon State Police from BPS Tactical Inc., a custom Law Enforcement gear company. 

Buscaino told Yahoo Finance that the prosecutorial response needed to be more stringent. “It's about holding people accountable and whether it's installing heavy duty locks or when someone is caught by committing the theft, they need to be prosecuted."

Buscaino is seeking more transparency on package thefts from UP, while directing the Chief Legislative Analyst to report on thefts that include arrests made, whether the cases were referred for prosecution by the City Attorney’s Office, District Attorney’s Office or U.S. Attorney’s office.

Measures would also include bolstering police presence in the area, and preventative measures to deter thefts and trespassing.

Buscaino blasted "finger pointing" between the company and law enforcement officials, adding "I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the letters being sent to various departments and entities, let's get everyone at the table." 

While Union Pacific agents have made hundreds of arrests, the company said the partnership with local and state law enforcement, and elected pubic officials is necessary. 

The railroad company has been working with its clients to enhance security, testing drones and other high-tech tools. But "criminals [are] out there who are countering the drone deployment by knocking 'em down or shooting 'em down," Buscaino told Yahoo Finance.

"This needs to stop. This is an embarrassment to our city [and] our county," he added.

Dani Romero is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter: @daniromerotv

California is set to dismantle the largest death row in the US and transform it into a 'positive, healing environment'

Taiyler Simone Mitchell

Mon, January 31, 2022

California Governor Gavin Newsom at a June 2021 press conference.Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

• CA Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday the state will dismantle the death row at San Quentin State Prison.

• Inmates in the country's largest death row will be moved to the general population in other prisons.

• Newsom said "wealth and race" are bigger factors to being on death row than "guilt or innocence."

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced the state will dismantle San Quentin State Prison's death row and turn it into a "positive, healing environment" over the next two years, the Associated Press reported Monday.

The inmates on death row in San Quentin — the country's largest death row — will be transferred to prisons that "typically house people serving life-without-parole sentences," Vicky Waters, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, told Insider.

The vacant space at San Quentin will be transformed into a "positive, healing environment to provide increased rehabilitative, educational, and health care opportunities," according to a proposed budget.

"The prospect of your ending up on death row has more to do with your wealth and race than it does your guilt or innocence," Newsom said Monday. "We talk about justice, we preach justice, but as a nation, we don't practice it on death row."

While Newsom put a moratorium on state executions in 2019, the state hasn't executed any inmates since 2006.

California has the highest number of death row prisoners in the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, with 694 inmates.

Waters told the AP that the transformation will be "innovative and anchored in rehabilitation."

"For the first time in California's history, eligible death-sentenced individuals may be housed in general population areas where they can have more access to job opportunities, enabling them to pay court-ordered restitution to their victims when applicable," Waters told Insider.

"People on death row will not be resentenced, and would be rehoused following thorough reviews by Institutional Classification Committees, which will take several factors into account, including their security level, their behavior, and any safety concerns," she added.

A representative for Newsom did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

THIRD WORLD USA

Exclusive-U.S. diabetes deaths top 100,000 for second straight year, federal panel urges new strategy

 

Insulin supplies are pictured in the Manhattan borough of New York City,

Mon, January 31, 2022
By Chad Terhune and Robin Respaut

(Reuters) - More than 100,000 Americans died from diabetes in 2021, marking the second consecutive year for that grim milestone and spurring a call for a federal mobilization similar to the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The new figures come as an expert panel urges Congress to overhaul diabetes care and prevention, including recommendations to move beyond a reliance on medical interventions alone. A report released earlier this month calls for far broader policy changes to stem the diabetes epidemic, such as promoting consumption of healthier foods, ensuring paid maternal leave from the workplace, levying taxes on sugary drinks and expanding access to affordable housing, among other areas.

In 2019, diabetes was the seventh-leading cause of death in America and claimed more than 87,000 lives, reflecting a long-running failure to address the illness and leaving many more vulnerable when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, creating new hurdles to accessing care.

Since then, the nation’s toll from diabetes has increased sharply, surpassing 100,000 deaths in each of the last two years and representing a new record-high level, according to a Reuters analysis of provisional death data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Diabetes-related deaths surged 17% in 2020 and 15% in 2021 compared to the prepandemic level in 2019. That excluded deaths directly attributed to COVID-19. The CDC concurred with the Reuters analysis and said additional deaths from 2021 are still being tallied.

"The large number of diabetes deaths for a second year in a row is certainly a cause for alarm," said Dr. Paul Hsu, an epidemiologist at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health. "Type 2 diabetes itself is relatively preventable, so it's even more tragic that so many deaths are occurring."

In a new report, the National Clinical Care Commission created by Congress said that the United States must adopt a more comprehensive approach to prevent more people from developing type 2 diabetes, the most common form, and to help people who are already diagnosed avoid life-threatening complications. About 37 million Americans, or 11% of the population, have diabetes, and one in three Americans will develop the chronic disease in their lifetime if current trends persist, according to the commission.

"Diabetes in the U.S. cannot simply be viewed as a medical or health care problem, but also must be addressed as a societal problem that cuts across many sectors, including food, housing, commerce, transportation and the environment," the commission wrote in its Jan. 5 report to Congress and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The federal panel recommended Congress create an Office of National Diabetes Policy that would coordinate efforts across the government and oversee changes outside health policy. It would be separate from HHS and could be similar to the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, according to Dr. William Herman, commission chairman and a professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Michigan.

"We aren’t going to cure the problem of diabetes in the United States with medical interventions," Herman told Reuters. "The idea is to pull something together across federal agencies, so they are systematically talking to one another."

U.S. Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington who chairs the Senate health committee, helped create the commission in 2017 and said she is studying the recommendations closely.

"People with diabetes and other chronic illnesses were already facing challenges well before the pandemic hit, and COVID has only made these problems worse," Murray said in a statement to Reuters. "It is absolutely crucial to research and find solutions to better support diabetes patients and get them the care they need."

MORE CASES, WORSE PROGNOSIS

As Reuters reported last year in a series, diabetes represents a major public health failure in the United States. The number of Americans with the disease has exploded in recent decades, and their prognosis has worsened, even though spending on new treatments has soared.

The pandemic has proven especially deadly for people with diabetes. People with poorly controlled diabetes have at least a two-fold greater risk of death from COVID-19, according to the report. And diabetes and its complications are more common in low-income Americans and people of color, longstanding disparities that were further exposed during the pandemic.

Dr. Shari Bolen, a commission member and an associate professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University and the MetroHealth System in Cleveland, said the staggering number of diabetes deaths is "disheartening but also a call to action."

The federal panel's report marked the first such review on diabetes since 1975. During that time, the prevalence of diabetes among U.S. adults has increased from 5.3% in the late 1970s to 14.3% in 2018, it said. Direct medical costs related to diabetes were $237 billion in 2017, and there was an estimated $90 billion lost to lower productivity in the United States.

High costs for doctor's visits, medications and supplies force many diabetes patients to forgo or delay routine care. Many patients and U.S. lawmakers have expressed outrage at the rising price of insulin, which type 1 diabetes patients must take their entire lives and which is sometimes required to keep type 2 patients’ disease under control. The commission endorsed proposals such as capping insulin price increases to the rate of inflation and government negotiation of drug prices.

Murray and other lawmakers have pushed for a provision in the Biden administration's proposed Build Back Better legislation that would cap the cost of insulin at $35 for many patients.

To further ease financial barriers, the panel recommended that patients’ out-of-pocket costs be waived for other "high-value" treatments, including certain diabetes drugs, continuous glucose monitors, basic supplies and diabetes education.

The commission also highlighted the risks of overtreatment in older adults with type 2 diabetes. Reuters wrote about that risk in November and how a drug industry campaign for an aggressive treatment target led to an epidemic of potentially lethal incidents of low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia. The panel asked federal health officials to track overtreatment among Medicare patients to "reduce the incidence of severe hypoglycemia and improve patient safety."

The commission said the United States should better promote the purchase of fruits and vegetables in food assistance programs and ensure mothers have paid family leave to aid breastfeeding, which can help reduce the risk of diabetes in mothers and is associated with a reduced risk of obesity and diabetes in children. The panel also recommended imposing taxes on sugary drinks that would raise their shelf price by 10% to 20% and using the revenue to expand access to clean drinking water and fund similar programs.

HHS deferred comment to Herman. In a statement, the CDC said the report's recommendations offer a detailed roadmap to "addressing rising health-care costs attributed to diabetes, and reducing racial, ethnic, and income-related disparities in diabetes outcomes."

(Reporting by Chad Terhune and Robin Respaut; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

Close this content



A Uyghur gets death sentence, as China bans once OK'd books







1 / 7
 Copies of the book on the governance of Chinese President Xi Jinping are displayed with booklets promoting Xinjiang during a news conference by Shohrat Zakir, chairman of China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, at the State Council Information Office in Beijing on July 30, 2019. As the Chinese government tightened its grip over its ethnic Uyghur population, it sentenced one man to death and three others to life in prison in 2021 for textbooks drawn in part from historical resistance movements that had once been sanctioned by the ruling Communist Party.

 (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File

HUIZHONG WU
Mon, January 31, 2022, 

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — As the Chinese government tightened its grip over its ethnic Uyghur population, it sentenced one man to death and three others to life in prison last year for textbooks drawn in part from historical resistance movements that had once been sanctioned by the ruling Communist Party.

An AP review of images and stories presented as problematic in a state media documentary, and interviews with people involved in editing the textbooks, found they were rooted in previously accepted narratives — two drawings are based on a 1940s movement praised by Mao Zedong, who founded the communist state in 1949. Now, as the party’s imperatives have changed, it has partially reinterpreted them with devastating consequences for individuals, while also depriving students of ready access to a part of their heritage.

It is a less publicized chapter in a wide-ranging crackdown on Uyghurs and other largely Muslim groups, which has prompted the U.S. and others to stage a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics that open Friday. Foreign experts, governments and media have documented the detention of an estimated 1 million or more people, the demolition of mosques and forced sterilization and abortion. The Chinese government denies human rights violations and says it has taken steps to eliminate separatism and extremism in its western Xinjiang region.

The attack on textbooks and the officials responsible for them shows how far the Communist Party is going to control and reshape the Uyghur community. It comes as President Xi Jinping, in the name of ethnic unity, pushes a more assimilationist policy on Tibetans, Mongolians and other ethnic groups that scales back bilingual education. Scholars and activists fear the disappearance of Uyghur cultural history, handed down in stories of heroes and villains across generations.

“There’s much more intense policing of Uyghur historic narratives now,” said David Brophy, a historian of Uyghur nationalism at the University of Sydney. “The goalposts have shifted, and rather than this being seen as a site of negotiation and tension, now it’s treated as separatist propaganda.”

Sattar Sawut, a Uyghur official who headed the Xinjiang Education Department, was sentenced to death, a court announced last April, saying he led a separatist group to create textbooks filled with ethnic hatred, violence and religious extremism that caused people to carry out violent acts in ethnic clashes in 2009. He may not be executed, as such death sentences are often commuted to life in prison after two years with good behavior.

Details about the textbooks were then presented in a documentary by CGTN, the overseas arm of state broadcaster CCTV, on what it called hidden threats in Xinjiang in a 10-minute segment. It included what amounted to on-camera confessions by Sawut and another former education official, Alimjan Memtimin, who got a life sentence.

The Xinjiang government and CGTN did not respond to written questions about the material.

Drawings from the textbooks are presented as evidence Sawut led others to incite hatred between Uyghurs and China’s majority Han population.

In one, a man points a pistol at another. The image is flashed over an on-camera statement by Memtimin, who says they wanted to “incite ethnic hatred and such thoughts.”

But both men in the drawing are Uyghurs. One, named Gheni Batur, holds up a gun to a traitor who had been sent to assassinate him. Batur was seen as a “people’s hero” in a 1940s uprising against China’s then-ruling Nationalist Party over its repression and discrimination against ethnic groups, said Nabijan Tursun, a Uyghur American historian and a senior editor at Radio Free Asia.

The Communists toppled the Nationalists and took power in 1949. Mao invited then-Uyghur leader Ehmetjan Qasimi to the first meeting of a national advisory body and said, “Your years of struggle are a part of our entire Chinese nation’s democratic revolution movement.” However, Qasimi died in a plane crash en route to the meeting.

Despite Mao’s approval, this period of history has always been debated by Chinese academics, Brophy said, and the attitude has shifted more and more toward hostility.

Another element in the story came to the fore after a series of knifings and bombings in 2013-14 by Uyghur extremists, who were angered by harsh treatment by the authorities.

The Uyghur movement had briefly carved out a nominally independent state, the second East Turkestan Republic, in northern Xinjiang in 1944. It had the backing of the Soviet Union, which had real control.

A recently leaked 2017 document, one of a trove given to an unofficial Uyghur Tribunal in Britain last September, shows that a Communist Party working group dealing with Xinjiang criticized elements of the uprising.

“The Three District Revolution is a part of our people’s democratic revolution, but there were serious mistakes made in the early stages,” the notice said.

Blaming interference by the Soviet Union, it said that ethnic separatists infiltrated the revolutionary ranks and “stole the right to lead, established a splitting regime, ... and committed the grave mistake of ethnic division.”

The document still said that Qasimi should be respected for his role in history.

The CGTN documentary, though, singles out a photo of Qasimi wearing a medal that was the symbol of the second East Turkestan Republic. “It shouldn’t appear in this textbook at all,” Shehide Yusup, an art editor at Xinjiang Education Publishing House, said in the documentary.

Another textbook illustration, drawn from the same period, shows what appears to be Nationalist solider pointing a knife at a Uyghur rebel sprawled on the ground.

Both stories come from novels by Uyghur writers published by government publishing houses. One of the writers, Zordun Sabir, is a member of the state-backed Chinese Writer’s Association. The textbooks themselves were published only after high-level approval, said Kündüz, a former editor at the Xinjiang University newspaper who uses only one name.

When the textbooks were reviewed in 2001, the Uyghur stories hardly got any attention, said Abduweli Ayup, a Uyghur linguist who as a then-graduate student translated some of the stories into Chinese for the review.

Stories that portrayed the Nationalists as the enemy were not considered controversial. Instead, the Uyghur editors worried about foreign stories, said Ayup, an activist who now lives in Norway, such as a line from a Tolstoy story and a Hungarian poem.

Another story cited by CGTN goes back to the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until 1912. Yusup, the art editor tells CGTN: “This is the legend of seven heroic Uyghur girls. It’s all fabricated. Han Chinese soldiers trapped them at a cliff and they jumped to their death to defend their homeland. It’s meant to incite ethnic hatred.”

But the soldiers were not Han, they were ethnic Manchu who founded the Qing Dynasty in 1644. The text of the story visible in the CGTN documentary says so, reading in part, “The Manchu soldiers started to climb Mount Möljer from all sides. Maysikhan (a leader of the Uyghur girls) saw the Manchus clambering up the mountain and told the girls to roll rocks down at them.”

The story is based on a local rebellion against the Qing Dynasty. A shrine dedicated to the seven girls stands in the Xinjiang city of Uchturpan, which partially funded it. Epics, articles and dramas about the story are popular.

“For the Chinese government to praise the uprising and then criminalize the inclusion of the story in textbooks is shocking,” Tursun, the historian said.

From even earlier, officials have been increasing the amount of instruction in Chinese in Xinjiang, especially after ethnic clashes in 2009 in Urumqi, the regional capital, said Minglang Zhou, an expert on China’s bilingual education policies at the University of Maryland.

Xi, as China's leader, has stressed the consolidation of the nation, a move away from the “one unified nation with diversity” promoted by his predecessors, Zhou said. “He sees diversity as a threat to a unified nation.”

Kündüz lamented that her son, growing up in Urumqi, studied more in Chinese than in Uyghur. “They want to assimilate us, they want us to erase us,” she said from Sweden, where she now lives.

To this day, her son speaks Chinese better than Uyghur.

LABOR PARTY

South Carolina candidate for governor says he’s switching parties after $15 wage split


Tracy Glantz/tglantz@thestate.com

Joseph Bustos
Mon, January 31, 2022

Activist Gary Votour, who sought the South Carolina Democratic Party nomination for governor, is switching parties. Votour announced Monday he will run on the Labor Party ticket for governor after saying the state Democratic Party is falling short on pushing for a $15 minimum wage. 

Votour was the first candidate to announce he would be running for governor for the Democratic nomination.

On the way out of the party, Votour criticized former Congressman Joe Cunningham, who is leading the fundraising race in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, specifically citing Cunningham’s vote against a $15 minimum wage while in Congress.

“Although the S.C. Democratic Party has embraced those positions in its party platform, it now falls short of these goals by refusing to require that all candidates office running as Democratic Party candidates do so as well,” Votour posted to social media. “In particular, I am referring to former Congressman Cunningham who refuses to stand for a living wage of at least $15 per hour for all South Carolinians.”

Votour added that by“refusing to adhere to this important party platform issue, Mr. Cunningham has created great division within the Democratic Party.”

Votour said party Chairman Trav Robertson refused to disallow Cunningham from running for governor because of a possible lawsuit.

Robertson told The State Monday he doesn’t know if he has the legal authority to stop Cunningham from running for governor.

“Gary Votour is a wonderful human being, (and) his heart is in the right place. The fact is he simply wants what’s best for people in our state and our country,” Robertson said. “We wish him the best of luck and we have more in agreement with Gary than we do in disagreement.”

In an interview in December, Cunningham said he always supported minimum wage that is in the double digits, but the bill in Congress he voted against would have eliminated tip wages, which would have hurt hospitality workers.

“Congressman Cunningham wishes Mr. Votour all the best as he continues his campaign in another party,” said Trevor Maloney, Cunningham’s campaign manager. “In the meantime, Joe is laser-focused on defeating Henry McMaster in November so we can legalize marijuana, increase teacher pay, and raise the minimum wage to at least $12 an hour.”

With Votour out of the Democratic Party race, Cunningham will face state Sen. Mia McLeod, D-Richland. Florence resident William H. Williams also is seeking the nomination.

Texas Governor Faces Key Test as Winter Weather Threatens Grid


Texas Governor Faces Key Test as Winter Weather Threatens Grid

Shelly Hagan
Mon, January 31, 2022, 2:26 PM·3 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Texas Governor Greg Abbott is facing a test of whether he and Republican lawmakers have done enough to shore up the electric grid, just weeks before his party’s primary vote.

Temperatures are expected to plummet beginning Wednesday with sleet and snow in some parts of the state. The freeze will test the electric grid almost one year after an arctic blast forced power plants offline and left millions in the dark and without heat for days. The storm was blamed for 246 deaths. Forecasters say the weather this week won’t be as extreme, but Texans are on edge after suffering through the February 2021 blackout.

“When the temperature drops, the most nervous person in Texas is Governor Greg Abbott,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

Abbott has promised Texans that the “lights will stay on” this winter, citing legislation he signed over the summer that required the grid operator to increase reserve capacity and made it easier for industrial users to get paid to reduce their consumption. But critics say that politicians allied with the state’s oil and gas interests didn’t do enough to hold the industry accountable and prevent future disasters.

After the storm, Texas lawmakers approved measures that required power plants and parts of the natural gas network that supplies them to harden their systems against freezing weather -- but those rules have yet to be finalized.

Critics contend that the changes fall short of addressing the fundamental issues that led to the catastrophe. Some energy experts said the rule changes should have required more gas facilities to make upgrades and lacked sufficient enforcement mechanisms.

Most Texans see shoring up the electric grid as a bigger priority than improving security at the border with Mexico, according to a Dallas Morning News/University of Texas at Tyler poll released over the weekend. A separate poll in October from the Texas Tribune/University of Texas showed 60% of Texans disapproved of how lawmakers handled electric-grid reliability.

Abbott has also come under criticism from fellow Republicans ahead of the primary vote set for March 1, which he’s heavily favored to win. Don Huffines, a former state senator, says on his website it’s clear that “current leadership is not capable of fixing the problem.” Allen West, the former head of the state GOP, blamed last year’s blackout on Texas’s reliance on renewable energy. Most experts cite the shutoff in natural-gas flows for disabling power output during the storm.

Democrats have also sought to hammer Abbott and his allies on the deadly blackout and what they see as a lack of progress shoring up the system. Beto O’Rourke, who is running against Abbott for the governorship this year, said Monday that he will begin a 2,100-mile roadtrip across Texas to campaign on the issue.

“Texans literally froze to death in the energy capital of the world,” O’Rourke said in a statement. “It’s important that we step up once more to make sure this never happens again.”

Abbott had an 11-point advantage over O’Rourke in the Dallas Morning News poll of likely voters, leading him 47% to 36%.

Abbott and his advisers “recognize a broken promise to keep the grid operating would be a real body blow to his campaign,” Rottinghaus said.