Toronto update: Trucker protest held back from main target area but still clogs significant intersection

Three or four thousand people on foot listen to rabble-rousing speeches at Queen’s Park before marching north to the trucks in Yorkville

Author of the article:Tom Blackwell
Publishing date:Feb 05, 2022 • 

A child looks upon rows of farm tractors Friday on University Avenue, just north of Queens Park, as farmers and truckers protest.

 PHOTO BY PETER J. THOMPSON / NATIONAL POST

Several huge dump trucks, tractor trailers and thousands of protesters clogged a major Toronto intersection Saturday as the trucker-led movement against COVID vaccine mandates and lockdowns hit Canada’s biggest city.

But a major police presence and barricaded streets managed to keep the noisy truck convoy away from the area immediately around the Ontario legislature, and further downtown.

Instead, the trucks filled the corner of Bloor Street and Avenue Road in the Yorkville neighbourhood, across from the Royal Ontario Museum.

A string of trucks and other protest vehicles stretched east and west on Bloor and north on Avenue as demonstrators streamed around them. It was unclear how long the trucks planned to stay there.

Despite the disruption in a busy part of Toronto, the event remained relatively peaceful as of mid-afternoon Saturday.

Toronto police said they arrested a 22-year-old man at around 2 p.m. for allegedly igniting a smoke bomb at the demonstration at Queen’s Park.

The man faces one count each of assault with a weapon, administering a noxious substance and public mischief.

Earlier, a few thousand of the protesters descended on the provincial legislature by foot for a more conventional protest.

About three or four thousand people listened to an hour of rabble-rousing speeches before marching north to Yorkville, where the horn-honking trucks had been held back.

Cries of “Freedom” and attacks on the federal government and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rang out repeatedly from the microphone as a peaceful crowd braving minus-10 cold cheered “We need to resist,” said a speaker who identified himself as Danny DeSantis.

“We’re going to crush this establishment and we’re going to get our freedoms back,” shouted another.

Hulking farm tractors and smaller trucks began arriving for the demonstration at on Friday afternoon. Police barricades prevented them from getting near the legislative building, leaving the activists to park alongside the Royal Ontario Museum.

It was part of a law-enforcement effort designed to stave off a long-term occupation of the city’s core and safeguard the five major hospitals that lie just south of Queen’s Park on University Avenue.

The arrival of the farm vehicles was further indication that the movement has expanded beyond just the truck drivers who spearheaded the Ottawa event.

MORE ON THIS TOPIC

Next stop, Toronto? Fringe group says truckers convoy headed to Queen’s Park

Toronto police barricade streets in advance of truckers' protest, aiming for 'minimal disruption'

Civic leaders vowed to stop them from repeating what happened in the nation’s capital, where tractor-trailers and hundreds of protesters have clogged streets around Parliament Hill and filled the core area with honking.

“We all want to do what we can to avoid the situation we’re seeing in Ottawa,” said Mayor John Tory at a news conference Friday. “If anyone is planning to come here for a protest that is not peaceful and is not respectful, I would urge you on behalf of all Toronto residences and businesses, to please stay home.”

By Friday afternoon, police had used parked buses to block off the stretch of University Avenue known as Hospital Row, home to some of Canada’s largest health-care centres. Previous anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protests in Toronto and elsewhere have targeted hospitals , in some cases impeding access to the facilities.

Anyone who tries to disrupt the hospitals or emergency routes will be met with “strict enforcement,” said Police Chief James Ramer.

The police service also filled the downtown area with an influx of officers, who have been instructed to keep their body cameras on for the duration of the protest.

Residents may find the large presence of uniformed officers “unsettling” but the department is doing everything it can to make the city safe, Staff-Superintendent Lauren Pogue told the same news conference.

As well, the force placed additional close-circuit cameras throughout the area, to help with police operations and investigations, she said.

Ramer said police will ensure that no vehicles are parked around Queen’s Park and said his officers will not allow encampments in the area by demonstrators arriving on foot.

Tory, meanwhile, appeared to take an indirect dig at the protesters, citing the fact that over 90 per cent of eligible Toronto residents have received at least one dose of vaccine and 60 per cent are triple vaccinated.

We all want to do what we can to avoid the situation we’re seeing in Ottawa

“What great demonstrations of the unity of the people of this city, of teamwork, of concern for each other,” he said.


BAD SPELLER

It’s unclear exactly who organized the Toronto event. One of the promoters of the demonstration is an anti-lockdown / anti-mask group called The Line Canada, whose leader Lamont Daigle appeared on the radar of an anti-extremist watchdog last year.

In a post on his Facebook page supporting the cause of Palestinians in the occupied territories, Daigle propagated anti-Semitic tropes about a conspiracy of Jews that control world banks and the media, wrote the Canada Anti-Hate Network .

“The Israelis who are oppressing the Palestinians are (Z)-ionist Rawthchildrens who own 75 per cent of Israel, the World banks and the World Health Organization,” the network quoted Daigle as writing in a 1,400-word essay. “The Globalist Elites are the ones responsible for the Palestinian occupation ‘testing ground’ for how they propose to ‘Occupy’ and ‘lockdown’ the rest of the World.”

Dissolving in Toxic Oceans: How an Ancient Extinction Happened

Scientists say rocks on the English coast contain clues of the processes that drove the end-Triassic event that killed as much as a quarter of all life on Earth.

An artist’s reconstruction of a phytosaur — an extinct crocodile cousin — surveying a horizon with rising sulfurous plumes from distant eruptions that prompted the Triassic mass extinction.Credit...Victor O. Leshyk

By Lucas Joel
Feb. 3, 2022

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Some 200 million years ago, the rocks that became the Palisades cliffs just across the Hudson River from Manhattan formed during volcanic activity that helped rip apart the ancient supercontinent Pangea. That volcanism helped lead to the birth of the Atlantic Ocean while it also contributed to killing off as much as a quarter of all life on Earth during the event known as the end-Triassic mass extinction.

Marine animals like ammonites, ichthyosaurs and corals took huge hits during the extinction, and scientists have long suspected that the Atlantic-forming volcanism had something to do with it because of its effects on the climate and oceans. But evidence of what exactly killed life has been scant, making it one of the least understood of the so-called Big Five mass extinctions that punctuate the history of life on Earth.

Research published in January in the journal Geology, though, is starting to fill in the gaps of this prehistoric murder mystery.

By studying rocks in the southwest of England, a team of scientists found evidence of two triggers. One is that as oceans absorbed carbon dioxide emissions from the volcanic activity, they became so acidic that animals with shells dissolved in the water and died. The other is that the oceans lost their oxygen and became toxic to all but the most hardy ocean creatures.

“The main question that we set out to address is: What are the specific kill mechanisms of marine life at the end-Triassic?” said Jessica Whiteside, a geochemist at the University of Southampton in England, and an author of the new research. “The answer to which helps provide context for, and perhaps helps predict the future ecological and biodiversity effects of current CO2.”

Dr. Whiteside described the discovery of clues in rocks of England’s Blue Lias Formation, which emerged in the wake of the volcanism.

“What I noticed early on were these weird ghost fossils,” she said. Ghost fossils are impressions of things like shells that remain in the rock, but without any remnant of the shells that made them — a sign that the shells dissolved in acidic waters.


Blue Lias formation near Lilstock in southwest England.

Credit...Fabienne Fossez/Alamy

Other clues were chemical traces, or “biomarkers,” of a kind of bacteria known to thrive in waters without oxygen, and where there are dangerously high levels of a toxin called hydrogen sulfide.

Bathed in toxic waters with no oxygen to breathe, marine life — on top of being dissolved alive — was all but doomed.

Noah Planavsky, a biogeochemist at Yale University who was not involved in the research, said the discovery of the biomarkers provided strong evidence for toxic, oxygen-deficient waters. He added that “this is something we can expect in the future,” in our contemporary oceans.

These kill mechanisms also reveal how mass extinctions aren’t always instant events like an asteroid hitting the planet, said Stephen Brusatte, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the new work.

“We’re used to thinking of mass extinctions as these single catastrophic events, where there is a lone killer that we can put all of the blame on,” Dr. Brusatte said. “But this study shows that there is often nuance to these episodes of mass death.”

Less clear is what drove the extinctions on land. Until the end-Triassic extinction, relatives of today’s crocodiles dominated land ecosystems, while early dinosaurs were relatively minor players. But after the extinction, the crocodile relatives vanished, and dinosaurs started shifting into the limelight.

“This part of the story is still poorly known compared to what was happening in the oceans, and it’s intriguing to wonder whether there were multiple kill mechanisms on land, too,” Dr. Brusatte said. “If so, this could help explain why the dinosaurs were able to survive, and then disperse across the wasteland world in the aftermath.”

Amazon Warehouse in Alabama Is Set to Begin Second Union Election

Workers overwhelmingly voted down a union last year, but labor regulators threw out the result, citing company misconduct.

An organizer with the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union in front of the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., last March.Credit...Bob Miller for The New York Times

By Noam Scheiber and Karen Weise
Feb. 4, 2022

During the first union election at Amazon’s Bessemer, Ala., warehouse early last year, organizers largely avoided visiting workers at home because Covid was raging and few Americans were vaccinated.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union believed the precaution was prudent even if it made persuading workers harder and may have contributed to the union’s lopsided defeat.

On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board will mail out ballots to workers at the same warehouse in a so-called rerun election, which the agency ordered after finding that Amazon behaved improperly during the last campaign.

But for this election, which runs through March 25, the labor movement is pulling few punches. Several national unions have collectively sent dozens of organizers to Bessemer to help rally workers. And organizers and workers have spent the past several months going door to door to build support for the union.

“It’s a huge difference that was made possible by vaccinations,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the retail workers president. “By the time people start voting on Monday or Tuesday, we will have gone to every single door — all 6,000 workers.”

None of those changes make the odds of a different outcome high, however. Unions have won fewer than half of similar rerun elections since late 2010, versus far more than half of all elections during that time, according to data from the National Labor Relations Board.

“In cases where the margin of victory is pretty significant one way or the other, the outcome often doesn’t change the second time,” said David Pryzbylski, a management-side lawyer at Barnes & Thornburg.

Those odds may be longer still at a company like Amazon, which has the resources to hire consultants and saturate workers with anti-union messages, as it did during the last election.

Turnover at Amazon is high — over 150 percent a year even before a recent surge of quitting nationwide — and could introduce uncertainty because it’s unclear how new workers will respond to arguments on either side.

But in practice, such turnover could further dampen the union’s support, said Rebecca Givan, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University, since frustrated workers may leave rather than wait out a campaign. Many workers who support the union have complained about punishing productivity targets, insufficient break times and low pay, which is just under $16 an hour for a typical, entry-level full-time position.

“We’re proud to create both short-term and long-term jobs with great pay and great benefits,” said Barbara Agrait, an Amazon spokeswoman. She added that employees had access to health benefits as soon as they joined the company and that more than 450 employees had been promoted at the Alabama warehouse since it opened in 2020.

Amazon has previously said its performance targets take into account safety and employees’ experience.

For Amazon, which is facing challenges to its labor model on multiple fronts, there is little incentive to ease its resistance to the union. Last year, California approved a law that would restrict the company’s use of productivity targets, and the roughly 1.4 million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters elected a new president who promised a large investment in unionizing the company.

An organizer speaking with a driver at an Amazon facility on Staten Island last May.

Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Amazon also faces the prospect of at least one more union election this year. In late January, the labor board determined that organizers at JFK8, a massive warehouse on Staten Island, had submitted enough signatures to warrant a vote. The organizers are trying to form a new union, called Amazon Labor Union, rather than working with established groups. The labor board will hold a hearing in mid-February to determine how many workers could be eligible to vote, as well as the timing and terms of the election.

This week, the same union filed a petition for an election at a neighboring Amazon facility on Staten Island.

In many ways, the mechanics of the revote in Alabama will be similar to the mechanics of the initial election. Though both the union and Amazon pressed for in-person voting, albeit at an off-site location in the union’s case, the labor board decided to run another mail-in election because of the pandemic.

Variations on practices that the labor board cited when invalidating the last election also remain in place, prompting the union to urge changes to the way the new election will be conducted. Not least is a so-called collection box that Amazon lobbied the U.S. Postal Service to install last year near the warehouse entrance, where workers were urged to deposit their ballots.

Amazon has said that it sought the collection box to help workers vote safely, and that it did not have access to ballots deposited inside of it. But a regional director of the labor board found that Amazon had “essentially hijacked the process” by procuring the box. “This dangerous and improper message to employees destroys trust in the board’s processes and in the credibility of the election results,” the regional director wrote.

Yet in the run-up to the revote, the regional director allowed the Postal Service merely to move the box to a “neutral location” at the warehouse, rather than remove it entirely. The union argued in a request for an appeal that there is no neutral location on the site, and that the new location is still in view of Amazon’s surveillance cameras. On Friday, the labor board denied the appeal request, but said the union could still object on the same grounds after the election, which could in principle lead to a third election.

Some employees also say that despite reaching a nationwide settlement with the labor board in December to give union supporters more access to colleagues while at work, Amazon is still making it difficult for them to plead their case where they work.

Isaiah Thomas, 20, among stacks of leaflets, T-shirts and buttons in the basement of his union’s headquarters in Birmingham, Ala.Credit...Bob Miller for The New York Times

Isaiah Thomas, a ship dock worker at the warehouse, recently received a letter from management saying he had violated the company policy against solicitation by talking to co-workers about the union during his break, though the company did not officially discipline him over the alleged violation.

“You were interfering with fellow associates during their working time, in their work areas,” the letter said. The union has filed an unfair labor practice charge arguing that the letter violates the company’s settlement with the labor board.

Yet the circumstances of the second election do appear to differ from those of the first election in some key respects. There is, for one thing, the fact of the finding by the labor board that Amazon violated union election rules, which organizers say comes up regularly in conversations with workers.

Mr. Appelbaum, the union president, said the on-the-ground presence of other unions was substantially higher than last year, thanks partly to the urging of Liz Shuler, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., of which the retail workers union is a part.

Even non-A.F.L. unions like the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters have dispatched organizers to Alabama, underscoring the high stakes for labor.

“I think there’s a recognition of the importance and transcendent nature of this fight,” Mr. Appelbaum said. “People throughout the labor movement understand that we cannot let Amazon go unchallenged or else it’s going to set the model for what the future of work is going to look like.”

He said workers felt less intimidated by Amazon this time, with more of them speaking up during mandatory anti-union meetings. Pro-union workers also now wear T-shirts advertising their support for the union twice each week in a show of solidarity.

Mr. Thomas has been going door to door distributing leaflets, T-shirts and buttons to his co-workers, in hopes of persuading them to vote for the union.Credit...Bob Miller for The New York Times

One group of workers recently delivered a petition with over 100 signatures to managers complaining of undignified treatment, low pay, and insufficient breaks and break room equipment. Ms. Agrait, the Amazon spokeswoman, said the company encouraged constant communication between workers and managers.

Mr. Thomas, the ship dock worker, spends two days each week knocking on the doors of colleagues and said in an interview that many workers who voted against the union last year said they were supportive this time because the company hadn’t followed through on promises to act on their feedback.

“A lot of folks said they wanted to try to give Amazon a chance, but they didn’t meet their end of bargain,” he said. “Now they actually want to help form this union.”

The Fight to Unionize Amazon Workers

A timeline is set for a new unionization vote at an Amazon warehouse.
Jan. 11, 2022

Union Vote at Amazon Warehouse in Alabama Is Overturned by Regional Labor Office
Nov. 29, 2021

Amazon Workers Vote Down Union Drive at Alabama Warehouse
April 9, 2021



Noam Scheiber is a Chicago-based reporter who covers workers and the workplace. He spent nearly 15 years at The New Republic magazine, where he covered economic policy and three presidential campaigns. He is the author of “The Escape Artists.” @noamscheiber


Karen Weise is a technology correspondent based in Seattle, covering Amazon and Microsoft. Her work aims to help readers better understand two of the most powerful companies in America and their growing influence on society. @kyweise

A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 5, 2022, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Amazon Warehouse Begins a Second Union Election. Order 

THE WORLD WEEPS

Morocco boy found dead after days-long rescue operation

The body of a 5-year-old boy, who has been trapped in a well since Tuesday, has been recovered. His death was confirmed by a royal palace statement carried on local media.

The five-year-old boy had been trapped in a well for five days

Rescue workers on Saturday extracted the body of a 5-year-old boy who had been trapped in an underground well in northern Morocco.

Many have hoped until the last moment that the child, called Rayan, managed to survive the last five days despite low temperatures. He had fallen down a narrow 32-meter (100-foot) deep well in the village of Ighran in the country's Chefchaouen province on Tuesday.

His death was confirmed by state news channel 2M who also tweeted a statement from King Mohammed VI, along with a tribute to Rayan which read: "In God’s protection... We belong to God and to Him we shall return."

The king expressed his condolences to Rayan's parents in a statement from the palace.

Earlier, rescue workers said it was difficult to ascertain Rayan's condition, and many have hoped that it would be possible to preserve the child's life.

Lead rescuer Abdelhadi Tamrani told state television, "we hope we will rescue him alive."

Thousands took to social media to express their solidarity for the boy and his family, with the Arabic hashtag #SaveRayan trending for hours in Morocco and North Africa.

How have rescuers worked so far?

The well narrows as it descends from a 45 centimeter (18 inches) diameter at the top. Rescuers have not been able to go down themselves to retrieve the child.

A massive trench was cut in the hill next to the well. By Saturday morning, rescuers were digging horizontally toward the well and installing PVC tubes to protect against landslides and get the boy out.

Moroccan media reported on Thursday that rescuers had managed to get water and oxygen delivered to the bottom of the well.

"I keep up hope that my child will get out of the well alive. I thank everyone involved and those supporting us in Morocco and elsewhere," Rayan's father told state broadcaster 2M on Friday evening.

How did Rayan get trapped?

Rayan's mother told the media that he had been playing nearby before disappearing on Tuesday evening. "The whole family went out to look for him then we realized that he'd fallen down the well," she said.

The incident has attracted crowds of supporters to the village, where they are currently camping. Police have been sent to the venue, and authorities have called upon the masses to let the rescuers do their job.

kb,tg/fb (Reuters, AFP)

Morocco’s king says boy, 5, trapped in deep well has died

By MOSA'AB ELSHAMY and TARIK EL-BARAKAH

31 minutes ago

1 of 10

A tractor digs through a mountain during the rescue mission of a boy who fell into a hole in the northern village of Ighran in Morocco's Chefchaouen province, Friday, Feb. 4, 2022. Rescuers inched closer Friday to reaching a 5-year-old boy trapped for three days in a well in Morocco, in an operation hampered by concerns about ground stability that has captivated the North African country.

(AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)


IGHRAN, Morocco (AP) — A 5-year-old boy who was trapped for four days in a deep well in Morocco has died, the royal palace said Saturday.

Moroccan King Mohammed VI expressed his condolences to the boy’s parents in a statement released by the palace.

The boy, Rayan, was pulled out Saturday night by rescuers after a lengthy operation that captivated global attention.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw the boy wrapped in a yellow blanket after he emerged from a tunnel dug specifically for the rescue.

His parents, Khaled Oram and Wassima Khersheesh had been escorted to an ambulance before the boy emerged. His plight had captured worldwide attention.

The place statement said the king had been closely following the frantic rescue efforts by locals authorities, “instructing officials to use all means necessary to dig the boy out of the well and return him alive to his parents”. The king hailed the rescuers for their relentless work and the community for landing support to Rayan’s family.

Hundreds of villagers and others had gathered to watch the rescue operation.

Online messages of support and concern for the boy poured in from around the world as the rescue efforts dragged on for four days.

Rescuers used a rope to send oxygen and water down to the boy as well as a camera to monitor him. By Saturday morning, the head of the rescue committee, Abdelhadi Temrani, said: “It is not possible to determine the child’s condition at all at this time. But we hope to God that the child is alive.”

Rayan fell into a 32-meter (105-feet) well located outside his home in the village of Ighran in Morocco’s mountainous northern Chefchaouen province on Tuesday evening.

For three days, search crews used bulldozers to dig a parallel ditch. Then on Friday, they started excavating a horizontal tunnel to reach the trapped boy. Morocco’s MAP news agency said that experts in topographical engineering were called upon for help.

Temrani, speaking to local television 2M, said Saturday that rescuers had just two meters (yards) left to dig to reach the hole where the boy had been trapped.

“The diggers encountered a hard rock on their way, and were therefore very careful to avoid any landslides or cracks,” he said. “It took about five hours to get rid of the rock because the digging was slow and was done in a careful way to avoid creating cracks in the hole from below, which could threaten the life of the child as well as the rescue workers.”

The work has been especially difficult because of fears that the soil surrounding the well could collapse on the boy.

The village of about 500 people is dotted with deep wells, many used for irrigating the cannabis crop that is the main source of income for many in the poor, remote and arid region of Morocco’s Rif Mountains. Most of the wells have protective covers.

The exact circumstances of how the boy fell in the well are unclear.

Nationwide, Moroccans had taken to social media to offer their hopes for the boy’s survival, using the hashtag #SaveRayan which has brought global attention to the rescue efforts.

___

El-Barakah reported from Rabat, Morocco.

Trial delayed for Beijing Olympics protesters arrested in Greece

Olympic torchbearers arrive to light the cauldron at the Olympic Opening Ceremony in National Stadium at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics on Friday. Photo by Paul Hanna/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 5 (UPI) -- A Greek court has delayed the trial for three protesters who were arrested in October for disrupting an Olympic flame lighting ceremony.

The Pyrgos Crown Court rescheduled the hearing, which was set to begin Thursday, for December 2022 in a bid not to embarrass China, where the Beijing Olympics opened Friday, human rights lawyers for the protesters told The Guardian.

Lawyers for the legal aid group Justice Abroad had traveled to Greece from Britain to defend the protesters -- who are British, American and Tibetan Canadian.

"They pushed it into the long grass so as not to have to deliver a decision before the Beijing Olympics," said Michael Polak, a lawyer for Justice Abroad.

One of the protesters, Jason Leith, 34, told The Guardian that he was disappointed that the trial was postponed and recounted being tackled to the ground by security forces.

"The protest itself must have lasted less than a minute," he said. "Our aim was never to cause damage, and it is absurd to say that we did. All we had was a flag and a banner. We just wanted our voice to be heard in solidarity with all those oppressed by the Chinese Communist Party."

In a video posted to Justice Abroad's Facebook page, Polak said the protesters "asked how Beijing can use the symbols of the Olympics and hold the Olympic Games whilst they commit genocide and crimes against humanity."

China has faced criticism that its treatment of its Uighur population, a Muslim minority group, violates every provision of the United Nations' genocide convention.

The United States has previously accused China of imprisoning more than 1 million Uighurs in concentration camps and subjecting them to forced sterilization, torture and forced labor.

Beijing said that an athlete who helped light the Olympic cauldron for the Winter Olympics on Friday is of Uighur heritage, an apparent message to the country's human rights critics.

China has also faced criticism for human rights violations against Tibetan Buddhists who face "severe societal discrimination."

Local lawyer Antonis Bachouros, who is also defending the protesters, told The Guardian that the case was toward the end of a list of scheduled hearings but that the three-judge panel could have prioritized the case "given its sensitivity and seriousness."

Alexis Anagnostakis, another local lawyer for the protesters, said in the video that it was a "peaceful" protest "against violations of human rights in Tibet and elsewhere."

RELATED Uighur athlete lights cauldron to kick off controversial Beijing 2022 Winter Games

"These activists deserve praise rather than handcuffs and criminal prosecutions," he said.

The lawyers noted that there was no destruction or damage to property during the protest.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN THE USA

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Peru: President Castillo sacks PM accused of domestic violence

President Pedro Castillo has sacked newly appointed Prime Minister Hector Valer Pinto just three days after appointing him. He was reported for domestic violence by his wife and daughter in 2016.

    

This is the fourth shake-up of Castillo's ministers.

Peru's President Pedro Castillo sacked Prime Minister Hector Valer Pinto three days after appointing him, after revelations that he was accused of domestic violence. 

"I have decided to recompose the cabinet," he said in a television address, where he did not mention Pinto by name. 

This is Castillo's third cabinet reshuffle. He said he would reconstitute the cabinet, after leaders in Congress declined to hold a vote of confidence on the Cabinet named Tuesday. The opposition and some other cabinet members were opposed to Pinto's presence in the government. 

Charges of domestic violence

Pinto came under pressure after newspapers said his wife and daughter had reported him twice for domestic violence in 2016. He has denied being an "abuser," and said he was never convicted. 

A judge had issued a protective order for his wife. 

He had said he would stay in his job unless Congress passed a vote of no-confidence. Castillo's new cabinet still needs to be confirmed through a congressional vote. The prime minister position in Peru is the chief adviser to the president and also presides and helps appoint the rest of the cabinet.

Unstable government 

The new cabinet will be Castillo's fourth since taking power in 2021.

"Not only was Castillo unprepared for national political office, he also did not have a political or social base to count on for support, nor was he able to bring in capable advisers and experts in the various sectors any president needs to govern," Cynthia Sanborn, political science professor at Peru's Universidad del Pacifico told AP news agency. 

Castillo was a schoolteacher and an underdog in Peru's last elections. Experts had warned of his political inexperience being detrimental to his position of power.

Many have also criticized Peru's political system, in which no party holds a majority and it is difficult to push through new programs or make changes.

tg/aw (AFP, AP, Reuters)

WHITE COLLAR WORKERS

Germany: Three out of five happy working from home

More than 60% of people who took part in a survey said they liked working from home. Many employees have not been to the office during the coronavirus pandemic.



More than half of the participants found working from home helped them combine family and work lives

Three out of five people who work from home in Germany said they were largely happy with their set-up, a survey carried out by Forsa on behalf of the insurer KKH revealed on Saturday.

According to the survey, 61% of employees who have already done their office job from home or another location have had mostly positive experiences.

However, around one-fifth of the 1,002 people who took part in the survey described their experiences with remote work as mainly negative.

Combining work and family

Around 70% of those who participated said it helped them combine family and work lives, due to not being in the office.

Regarding overall well-being, the survey was less conclusive, with 20% saying that working from home had a positive effect, while just as many reported their health had deteriorated.

The main health issues in the feedback were back pain and muscle tension.

Indeed, according to KKH insurance data from 2021, more people are taking time off due to ill-health than in the past. The health insurance company attributes 24% of all days off to musculoskeletal disorders. In previous years, it was at around 22 to 23%.
Mental health

Often people work remotely without a suitable desk or office chair, according to KKH economic psychologist Antje Judick. Sitting for long periods in an unhealthy position in front of the computer leads to more neck, shoulder and back complaints, while "mental stress can also trigger tension and pain," Judick said.

Some two-thirds of those working from home who reported being affected by mental illness are women, the survey showed.

"Mostly it is always the women who take care of the children and the household in addition to their job," said Judick. "This was especially stressful during the lockdown periods when daycare centers and schools were closed," she added.

Singles suffer from lack of interaction

According to Forsa, working singles also suffer more in the home office than people who live with a partner, citing the lack of social interactions that come with being in the office.

From March 2020, as the coronavirus spread through Europe, an abundance of employers instructed workers to work from home, where many have remained throughout the two years of the pandemic.

Written by: John Silk, Edited by Farah Bahgat

Green construction: Fixing concrete's carbon footprint

The cement and concrete industry is one of the most neglected in the fight against climate change. It's responsible for about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, more than double those from flying or shipping.


Concrete use is expected to rise as countries across the world build more infrastructure

It is the most widely used substance on the planet after water, an essential ingredient in modern cities and — depending on where you live — supports everything from the roof over your head to the dams and bridges that make up essential infrastructure.

But concrete, a wonder material that has revolutionized construction and raised living standards across thaw me world, is one of the most powerful drivers of global warming.

The cement industry is responsible for about 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions, more than double those from flying or shipping. If it were a country its yearly pollution would only be topped by the US and China.

Yet more than 4 billion tons of cement are produced each year to build houses, motorways, flood defenses and more. Its use is expected to keep rising as people in poorer countries move to cities and demand standards of housing and infrastructure that have long been enjoyed in richer parts of the world. China, which makes over half the world's cement, poured more in just the few years from 2011 to 2013 than the US did in the entire 20th century.

"The fundamental challenge is that [concrete] is incredibly carbon intensive, it is a definite problem, yet we probably will continue to use more of it," said Johanna Lehne, a specialist in decarbonizing industrial processes at climate think tank E3G in Brussels.

A concrete-powered construction boom has helped drive China's rapid growth

Why climate-friendly concrete doesn't exist

Concrete has a simple recipe. It is made by mixing cheap rocks known as aggregates — typically fine sand and chunky gravel — with cement and water. When combined, these last two react to form a binder that glues the components tightly together.

Producing the cement is what makes concrete so dirty. Manufacturers burn fossil fuels to heat rotating kilns to temperatures above 1400 degrees Celsius as part of a process that turns limestones and clays into what's known as clinker — the main component in cement. The chemical reaction to break down the limestone is what releases the bulk of the CO2.

But because that process is an inherent part of cement production, there is no obvious technology to eliminate the emissions from concrete. Unlike the power or transport sectors, for instance, cement presents "a fundamental technical challenge," said Lehne. The concrete industry lacks the equivalent of wind turbines or electric cars.

Cement kilns are typically heated by burning coal

How to clean the cement industry

In October 2021 the Global Cement and Concrete Association, a lobby group whose members represent 80% of cement production outside of China and include several Chinese manufacturers, released a roadmap to fully decarbonize the industry by 2050.

About 40% of the planned savings broadly involve changes to produce cement and concrete more efficiently. That includes heating kilns without using fossil fuels — perhaps from burning rubbish in waste incineration plants — or replacing some of the clinker with waste from steel and coal plants.

Almost one-quarter of the emissions cuts come from designing more efficient buildings and extending their lifetimes — processes over which the industry has little control. This could mean architects and engineers retrofitting old buildings instead of knocking them down and designing new ones to last longer.

The final — and most speculative — third of the savings come from capturing carbon dioxide after it has been released.

The Pantheon in Italy was built out of Roman concrete almost 2000 years ago

Can carbon capture technology turn grey concrete green?

Although the technology to capture carbon dioxide exists, it is expensive and untested at scale, and its development in the cement industry is still in the early stages. That means a cornerstone of the industry's plans rests on a technology that isn't yet ready to fix the problem.

"In the next 10 years we have to make that technology mature — and prove the industrial scalability and the commercial scalability of the technology," said Thomas Guillot, CEO of GCCA, which has urged policymakers and investors to coordinate with the industry to develop the necessary infrastructure. "It's not something that would be easy."

By 2030 the GCCA — which has called for help from local governments and other actors in the supply change — wants carbon capture technology applied at industrial scale in 10 cement plants. The first of these is being built by German concrete producer Heidelberg Cement in Norway, where it hopes to suck in half the CO2 emitted at the plant and permanently store it. The GCCA roadmap lists 29 carbon capture projects under various stages of development at cement plants across the world.

While analysts have praised the roadmap for its realistic 2050 targets, they have also criticized its vague short-term commitments to cut emissions. The GCCA members have not yet made detailed commitments explaining how they will cut pollution this decade. That will come later in the year, said Guillot. "What we want to do is to really walk the talk and to transform commitments into actions, global visions into local requirements."


Building waste could be recycled and injected with CO2 for use as an aggregate in concrete

Future solutions

There are smaller-scale solutions that show early signs of promise.

In Sweden, a pilot study by energy company Vattenfall has shown cement can technically be made from electricity without using fossil fuels. Other researchers are exploring how CO2 could be injected into crushed concrete and reused as an aggregate. In France, one company has successfully converted cement bypass dust into lightweight aggregates using CO2 captured on-site.

The cost of capturing carbon is still a large barrier for cement manufacturers, said Maarten van Roon, chief commercial officer at Carbon8 Systems, the company behind the technology. By turning waste into something usable instead of paying for landfill, "we help remove a cost from the supply chain and that, in turn, helps us justify an expense for putting the innovation on site."

Concrete's carbon footprint could also be lowered by using sustainably sourced timber in construction. But replacing concrete with timber at large scale would put enormous pressure on the planet's beleaguered forests.

"Most people think concrete has a huge impact on the environment, and they are right," said Jorge de Brito, a civil engineering professor at the University of Lisbon in Portugal, who has published a study assessing green concrete alternatives. "But concrete has that impact because it's the most used material."

Edited by: Tamsin Walker

Watch video04:21 Switzerland: Building a cement-free future

In the Middle East, culture around recreational drugs is changing

Smoking cannabis on social media and sharing jokes about getting stoned are leading to more openness about recreational drug use in a region where intoxication of any kind is usually frowned upon.

A sign in a Moroccan cafe reads "no drug smoking here"

The grainy video on Facebook shows Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi , Egypt's authoritarian leader, in what appears to be a hall filled with soldiers.

El-Sissi, a military officer who has been running the country since deposing its elected president in 2013, takes the microphone, says a few words, then starts to laugh. He can't stop and begins to snort and gasp. 

"El-Sissi is a stoner," says a mocking caption under the 2017 Facebook post, punctuated with laughing emoticons.

This kind of joke is just one of thousands found on Arabic-language pages on social media that specialize in what is known as "stoner humor." Some have millions of followers.

Livestreaming drug use

"Stoner humor" is just one example of how a more casual attitude toward smoking cannabis is becoming increasingly popular in some parts of the Middle East.

Recently there have also been a number of cases in Gulf States where social media users have filmed themselves smoking cannabis. Some were arrested by local police.

Last summer, Dubai-based influencer and model Omar Borkan al-Gala was expelled from the emirate for allegedly smoking cannabis during a live stream on his Instagram account, where he has 1.3 million followers.

Senior Dubai police officers justified his expulsion, saying that there was a strong correlation between celebrities who promoted the use of illicit drugs and teenagers under pressure to try them.

In 2021, Qatar police blocked 75 online profiles and websites for selling or promoting drugs. In 2019, they only blocked 15.

In the past, Saudi police have said people who share stoner jokes were responsible for the disintegration of decent society. 

Historical precedent

Despite the outrage from law enforcement, locals in the Middle East have always used drugs.

"It is true that people there historically condemned intoxication, in whatever form it took," Maziyar Ghiabi, a lecturer in medical humanities at the University of Exeter who focuses on drug policy, pointed out. "But that doesn't mean that it didn't exist."

Cannabis has been part of Middle Eastern culture for ages. In the 12th century, some orders of Sufis, who practice a more mystical form of Islam, smoked cannabis as part of religious rituals.

However, until recently, few locals have been overt about their recreational use of illegal drugs. 

Egyptian men smoke waterpipes with hashish, in around 1910

"Young people's attitudes towards things like hashish [cannabis resin] are definitely changing," said Mahmoud, a 32-year-old Syrian who lives in Germany and didn't wish to give his full name because of the subject matter.

Back in his native Damascus, Mahmoud said he and his friends smoked hashish, or cannabis resin, and took amphetamine pills — known by the brand name Captagon — for fun. The pills contain a mix of amphetamines and are often referred to as the poor man's cocaine.

But Mahmoud says only his closest friends knew about his recreational drug use. He believes that now younger people from the region, especially those from its urban centers, are more open about such things.

Asked when attitudes began to change, Mahmoud smiled and answered: "Since the Internet."

International influence

A study called "Drugs Behind the Veil of Islam: A View of Saudi Youth," published last October 2021 in the scientific journal Crime, Law and Social Change, came to similar conclusions.

Researchers did in-depth interviews with 18 Saudi university students and concluded that young Saudis are becoming more interested in, and open about, using drugs such as cannabis recreationally, especially online.

"The Hekmat Mohashish account posts so many funny videos and stories about hashish smokers," one of the interviewees said, referring to a popular Facebook page that posted information and jokes about recreational drugs and had more than 1 million followers. "They are so funny that people even don't think smoking hashish is haram [not allowed].”

Morocco is the world's largest producer of cannabis, even though the drug is illegal there

The study also came up with other reasons for a more neutral attitude toward illicit drugs in Saudi Arabia — including more interactions with foreigners and international culture, how religious (or not) people are and the recent loosening of rules on social interaction.

Hidden numbers

"With social media, everything is more open now," Elie Aaraj, director of the Beirut-based Middle East and North Africa Harm Reduction Association, or MENAHRA, told DW. "A younger generation knows more about drugs and how to use them."

It is impossible to know whether these changes in attitude online translate to increased drug use in real life though. Primarily this is because there are few reliable statistics on the topic. 

"Data from the Middle East is scarce, and therefore we cannot say anything about any increasing trend in drug use for the region," a spokesperson from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, or UNODC, told DW. The organization compiles an annual report on illicit drug use around the world.

In its 2021 assessment of the region, MENAHRA confirmed that fact, noting that the various crises around the region make it difficult to come up with exact numbers on drug use or abuse.

While each country has different patterns of drug use depending on what substance is most readily available, the advisory organization believes that cannabis is still the most popular drug overall in the Middle East.

The experts concluded that increasing openness about its use could be seen as positive in some ways.

A more realistic approach to drug use might result in a more "plausible, coherent public policy that minimizes the risks of drug use," Exeter University researcher Ghiabi argued. 

"We need more than just repressive rules [on drug use] because these are not enough to deal with this situation," Aaraj concluded.

Edited by: Jon Shelton

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