African migrants face racism, violence in Brazil




Signs lying on the pavement during a protest following the killing of 24-year-old Congolese refugee Moise Kabagambe in Brazil 

(AFP/NELSON ALMEIDA)

People calling for justice during a February protest against the murder of 24-year-old Congolese refugee Moise Kabagambe in Sao Paulo, Brazil (AFP/NELSON ALMEIDA)

Louis GENOT
Tue, February 8, 2022, 10:07 AM·3 min read

The brutal murder of a Congolese man at a Rio de Janeiro beach has cast a harsh spotlight on the ordeals African migrants face in Brazil, the country with the biggest black population outside Africa.

Moise Kabagambe, a 24-year-old migrant who fled to Brazil with his family in 2011 to escape violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was beaten to death with clubs and a baseball bat at the beach-front bar where he worked in Rio's upscale Barra da Tijuca neighborhood.

His family says a group of assailants attacked him after he demanded payment of two days' overdue wages.

The January 24 killing has unleashed a flood of outrage, grief and soul-searching in Brazil, where many African migrants say they face poverty, violence and double discrimination as both foreigners and blacks.

"I'm thinking of leaving Brazil after what happened with Moise. I'm afraid for my children," said Sagrace Lembe Menga, who also fled the conflict-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, arriving in 2015.

The 33-year-old refugee and mother of two says she has regularly faced racism in her adoptive country, especially at the salon where she works as a hair stylist.

"Some people treat you like you're insignificant, like an animal," she told AFP.

"I've had people ask me if I live with giraffes."

A woman holds a bag with mock blood that reads "Black Blood, not one more drop" during an anti-racism protest after Moise Kabagambe's killing 

(AFP/EVARISTO SA)

- Lack of opportunity -

Brazil has 1,050 refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and around 35,000 African immigrants in all -- though experts say the official figure is likely an underestimate.

They often live in poor slums dominated by drug gangs, and are paid far less than other immigrants in Brazil -- an average of 2,698 reais ($510) a month, compared with 4,878 reais a month for all immigrants combined.

"If I had to tell the story of every incident of racism I've faced, I could write a book," said Elisee Mpembele, 23, a Congolese singer who arrived in Brazil in 2013.

"Wary looks, stares, security guards following me around the supermarket. The other day, I asked some police officers for directions, and they ended up searching me."

He said finding work as a musician was tough, so he often had to resort to odd jobs to make ends meet.

Racism and discrimination are nothing new in Brazil, home to the second-biggest black population in the world, after Nigeria.

The country was the last in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888, and blacks still face deep-rooted poverty, exclusion and systemic racism.

As foreigners, African migrants are even worse off.

The racism they face in Brazil "is all the more perverse given that 55 percent of Brazilians are black," said Bas'llele Malomalo, an expert on African-Brazilian migration at Unilab university.

"The integration problems faced by African migrants have the same roots as those encountered by former slaves, who were still seen as objects, as animals, at abolition," he said.

- 'Keep my head down' -

All too often, racism also translates into violence.

Seventy-seven percent of homicide victims in Brazil in 2019 were black.

The danger for black foreigners is even greater, said Malomalo.

"In the minds of the racists, since it's a foreigner, no one's going to defend him," he said.

"Whenever someone hassles me, I just keep my head down to avoid any problems," said Modou Fall, a 34-year-old Senegalese migrant who sells sunglasses on Rio's famed Copacabana beach.

"It's hard working here. I struggle to send money to my family."

Many Africans arrive in Brazil full of "entrepreneurial spirit," said Rui Mucaje, head of the Afro-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce (AfroChamber.)

But most end up doing menial jobs in the informal sector, he said.

"It's not uncommon to see people with university degrees end up working jobs they're way overqualified for," he said.

As examples, he cited an engineer who is working at a supermarket and a surveyor working as a hotel cleaner.

Kabagambe's killing, he said, is "the tragic result of the problems created by racism in Brazil."

lg/jhb/md

Can Farming Kelp and Seaweed Help Ease the Climate Crisis?

Canada’s Coastal First Nations are doing experiments to find out.


NICOLA JONES Bio

FEBRUARY 6, 2022

A commercial seaweed operation in Xiapu, China.

Keren Su/China Span/Alamy

This story was originally published by Hakai Magazine and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Cornelia Rindt steadies herself on a rocking boat while she and colleagues lean over the side to secure a meter-long tube of mud. It is her team’s first sample taken from the seafloor on British Columbia’s coastline. It will take more than a week to get just six more.

“It’s as much of an art as it is a science,” says Rindt, a project developer for BC-based consultancy Ostrom Climate Solutions (formerly NatureBank). The coring device has to be lowered blindly through 100 meters of water—too deep for divers to navigate—and land vertically at the right speed, rather than bouncing off a rock or tipping over in the currents, in order to capture a good slice of the soft sediment below. That will then go to the lab to determine how much carbon is locked inside. It takes maybe five tries to get a good sample, she says; some days they get nothing at all. Once, she remembers, the loose mud they pulled up flooded out of the tube before they could capture it: “That was 30 centimeters of sample that just went whoosh. It was deep green and I could smell the carbon.”

The sampling is part of Ostrom Climate Solutions’s effort to help fill in the giant scientific blanks about kelp, the group of large brown algae that make up the oceanic “forests” of Canada’s west coast. The company is making the effort at the behest of Coastal First Nations (CFN), an alliance of nine First Nations in British Columbia. The big question they seek to answer is just how much kelp sloughs off, like dead skin, and falls to the ocean floor for permanent storage in the sediment. In other words: just how good is kelp at locking up carbon and helping to fight climate change?


Oceans 2050 has collected core seafloor samples from seaweed farms in 13 countries to assess their carbon sequestration potential.

That work is needed to back the global push to make the aquatic resource eligible for carbon credits—a sometimes-controversial scheme whereby people can earn credit for stopping carbon dioxide from reaching the atmosphere, and sell that credit on to companies aiming to counteract their own emissions. Some players are anticipating seaweed, including kelps, could join the carbon-credit market as early as this year.

CFN is keen on the idea: if seaweed qualifies for carbon credits, then they could earn hard cash for restoring or farming kelp. Their communities “are very excited, because it’s a sustainable way of generating some income and giving back [to the ocean],” says Christine Smith-Martin, executive director of CFN who is from the Haida and Tsimshian First Nations.

Ostrom Climate Solutions isn’t alone in doing the science to back that idea. A global effort to understand the carbon potential of seaweed has also been spearheaded by Oceans 2050—an initiative cofounded in 2020 by Alexandra Cousteau (granddaughter of Jacques-Yves Cousteau and a well-regarded environmental activist in her own right) aiming to restore global ocean abundance. Like Ostrom Climate Solutions, they too are in the midst of their initial research into just how much carbon is stored under seaweed—and how much credit someone would deserve for helping seaweed to do that job.

Launched in October 2020, Oceans 2050’s 15-month seaweed research project has cored the seafloor under 21 seaweed farms in 13 countries on five continents. The majority of these are in Asia, but one is very close to where the Coastal First Nations live. Cascadia Seaweed, a three-year-old endeavor that has kelp farms in Barkley Sound, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, is Oceans 2050’s sole representative on the west coast of North America.

For Carlos Duarte, the chief science adviser behind Oceans 2050, seaweed farming looks like a vital contribution to saving the planet from climate change and restoring ocean life. In the future, Duarte envisions a world plastered with four million square kilometers of seaweed farms globally (2,000 times the current area of just 2,000 square kilometers), creating a thriving ecosystem for fish and collectively earning farmers billions of carbon credits a year. That’s a multibillion-dollar industry that hasn’t yet gotten started—but which could transform the oceans and a small slice of the carbon economy over the coming decades. Duarte calls it the “seaweed aquaculture imperative.”
Workers tend to seaweed in Matemwe, Tanzania.

 Image Professionals GmbH/Alamy

Carbon credits have been around since the 1990s. Projects that sequester carbon—like tree planting—can earn one sellable credit for every tonne of CO2 equivalent that is prevented from entering the atmosphere. Though a simple idea, the market has had a bumpy and controversial history. Some credits have, for example, perversely incentivized companies to raze one forest in order to plant another, or to avoid decarbonizing their own business.

Various nonprofit organizations oversee the voluntary market to verify and police carbon credits. The most widely used of these registry services is Washington, DC–based Verra, which runs the Verified Carbon Standard offset program. COP26, the United Nations climate meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, this past November gave a huge boost to the voluntary carbon-credit market by adopting new rules allowing nations to partially meet their emissions targets by buying these offsets. It’s a change that has helped to legitimize the market.

So far, Verra has certified more than 855 million carbon credits, almost entirely for land-based projects including avoided deforestation and reduced emissions from manufacturing—sectors that were better understood scientifically and had larger-scale projects already underway in the market’s early days. Only in recent years has Verra added marine-based or so-called blue carbon to their registry, from projects that conserve, restore, or expand mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses. Seaweed farming, observers say, is next in line. In August 2021, Verra launched a Seascape Carbon Initiative to help advance the blue-carbon market. “Seaweed farming has a lot of potential,” says Anne Thiel, communications manager for Verra.

While the scope for the blue-carbon market is smaller than for its land-based cousin, the price tag is typically higher. That’s because companies are willing to pay more for carbon credits that have side benefits for local populations and ecosystems, and that come with publicity-friendly stories and photos that buyers can paste into their advertisements and annual reports. While land-based-forestry carbon credits can go for less than US $1 per credit, blue-carbon credits have been known to fetch $15 or more.Fast-growing seaweed sucks up to 20 times the carbon of a comparable terrestrial plant—but for how long?

Seaweed is a good candidate for these blue credits, advocates say. Fast-growing seaweed is an efficient carbon soaker-upper, gobbling up to 20 times more carbon than a terrestrial plant of the same volume. Admittedly, quite a lot of the uptake is only temporary: seaweeds don’t have roots to channel carbon underground; they often bloom and decline seasonally and can be wiped out by occasional storms or surges of predators like sea urchins; algae that are eaten by fish or decay release carbon back into the atmosphere; and bits that fall to the seafloor can be kicked up again by trawling. Yet, some seaweed carbon is also preserved in the seafloor for the long haul: some oil deposits have been shown to have come from degraded macroalgae, for example. This is the carbon that makes seaweed exciting as a climate change mitigator.

In 2016, Duarte and colleague Dorte Krause-Jensen pulled together the available evidence and estimated that seaweeds worldwide sequester a nontrivial amount of carbon. According to a report from the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy (Ocean Panel), it’s about 640 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents annually. But the margin of error is huge: it could be a third of that, or half as much again. The total is dwarfed by land-based forests, which, for comparison, soak up more than 10 times more than macroalgae (even when accounting for deforestation); but seaweed is still a significant carbon sink.

The same Ocean Panel report states that the global area covered by seaweed is holding relatively steady at about 3.5 million square kilometers of coast (an area larger than India). While some spots have been ravaged by climate change or pollution, other areas have grown, so the total coverage is thought to have dropped less than one percent over 50 years. This means that the biggest potential for boosting seaweed’s total carbon storage lies not in restoration projects (as is often done with mangroves, for example) but instead with farming. The Ocean Panel estimates that seaweed farming could absorb anything from 50 to 290 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents per year. Duarte’s published estimate is 239 million metric tons by 2050, equivalent to the annual emissions from about 52 million cars.

That’s still just a tiny sliver of less than one percent of global emissions, which are on the order of 50 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalents a year. But advocates in the fight against global warming say every bit helps. “Many people argue that if the number is not in the billion [metric ton] scale then don’t bother,” says Duarte, “but I tell them there are no low-hanging [billions].” We need to start with the millions, he says, and then ramp up to the billions.“In my view, it’s too early for seaweed harvesters to be trying to jump on the carbon bandwagon. It needs to be led by science.”

Plus, Duarte and others note, seaweed has a host of side benefits: it can improve water quality, promote biodiversity, and reduce local ocean acidity for shellfish farms by soaking up CO2. Seaweed farming uses no fertilizers, pesticides, or fresh water, and can empower the women who often do this work in the developing world. While some critics worry about the rapid expansion of the industry spreading pests or changing ecosystems, Duarte says seaweed farming can be done sustainably and without significant impacts. “Seaweed farming is actually a good thing to do, within some bounds,” says Duarte. “The scope for growth is about 2,000-fold.”

So far, however, the profit margins on selling seaweed for sushi, seaweed snacks, and other products are too small to support the scale needed to help save the planet from global warming. To Duarte’s eye, adding carbon credits to the mix could make it a far more appealing enterprise for farmers.

It’s this winning combination of finance plus environmental protection that made the whole idea of carbon credits catch the attention of CFN in the first place. Around 2012, CFN made headlines by starting to sell carbon credits earned by avoiding deforestation and planting in the Great Bear Rainforest in their territory on the northern BC coast. Today, they earn up to a million credits each year, and successfully sell about half of them. At more than CAN $10 each, that currently earns them $4.5-million a year, with room to grow. After that project got up and running, CFN asked Ostrom Climate Solutions (then NatureBank) whether something similar might be done at sea: could they get cash credit for farming kelp?

With the data so spotty and the science base slim, no one yet knew. This is why Rindt was out on the water in the summer of 2021, getting samples from beneath natural kelp areas. “We’re kind of at this early stage of understanding,” says Rindt. Despite the challenges of trying to core the seafloor 100 meters down in often-bad weather during a pandemic, they managed to get seven good samples from five sites around the northern tip of Vancouver Island and the mainland coast farther north. Those samples have been sent to a lab to analyze how much carbon is there and, from the isotopic signatures, how much came from kelp. They await their results, and plan to later sample more spots along the BC coast.

For the Oceans 2050 project, seaweed biologist Jennifer Clark helped to collect a few samples from under Cascadia Seaweed’s farms in 2021. For their shallower waters, divers could do the job. Meanwhile, the other farms worldwide were doing the same, sending all their samples to a lab in Monaco for analysis. As of the end of 2021, Oceans 2050 had full data for five farms. The results, Duarte says, roughly match his calculated estimate of three metric tons of CO2 being stored in sediments per hectare—but with a huge range, depending on everything from the type of seaweed to the local ocean currents and whether the seafloor is rocky or not.

Those initial results are encouraging, says Duarte, especially in the tropics. They anticipate their full results will be presented in March 2022.

When all the data is in, it needs to be converted into a solid methodology for carbon credits—a rule book determining how many credits someone can earn, and the steps they’ll need to take to prove it. Individual farmers could use default values for carbon credits based on models that are fed with data such as seaweed type and water depth, or they could do some of their own coring to prove their particular potential for carbon storage. Duarte guesses a seaweed farmer could be looking at earning on the order of tens of carbon credits per hectare of farm per year. “All we have now is hand-waving,” he says. Verra confirms that Oceans 2050 has submitted a “concept note” for a new methodology for seaweed farming, the first formal step in the carbon-credit approval process. CFN and Ostrom Climate Solutions haven’t yet chosen the verification scheme they’ll go with.

“It’s pretty exciting. You don’t get very many opportunities to build on the abundance that we do have, or we did have at one time.”

Until approved, kelp carbon credits aren’t a reliable cash cow. “In my view, it’s too early for seaweed harvesters to be trying to jump on the carbon bandwagon,” says Bill Collins, marine geologist and founding partner of Cascadia Seaweed. “It needs to be led by science.” For now, Cascadia has 20 hectares of farm, with plans to ramp up to perhaps 1,000 hectares in the future. Extrapolating from Duarte’s rough figures, that means they could eventually earn on the order of 10,000 credits a year, with a value of about $100,000 at prices around $10 per credit. Overall, Collins suspects there’s more profit to be made in kelp products than in carbon credits. But if kelp gets formally recognized—by being added to Verra’s books, for example—“we may get more excited,” he says.

Collins adds there may be even more environmental ways of looking at seaweed rather than focusing on carbon storage in sediment. “My instinct is that there will be better support for the planet by growing it and feeding it to cows,” he says. Livestock are responsible for a surprisingly large chunk of greenhouse gas emissions (14.5 percent of the global total), thanks mainly to methane burps from ruminants. Previous work has shown that sprinkling red seaweed in feed can reduce those emissions by as much as 82 percent. That’s a whole other way that seaweeds might qualify for carbon credits—but, in this case, it would be the cattle farmers, not the seaweed producers, claiming those credits and getting that cash. Similarly, kelp can be turned into all manner of products—textiles, concrete, and more—that would store the carbon away for the long term.

“It’s pretty exciting,” says Smith-Martin about the possibilities of incorporating carbon credits into the CFN’s efforts to holistically protect the land and sea. “I’m pretty sure our ancestors would have seen the value.” Each First Nation in their alliance, she notes, has their own plans for how they might incorporate kelp carbon credits into their coastal management, but all are excited about the opportunities for jobs, for expanding productive coastal ecosystems, and for a possible novel cash stream. “You don’t get very many opportunities to build on the abundance that we do have, or we did have at one time in our oceans,” she says. “It’s an exciting time.”

For now, though, the real excitement is happening in the labs, as Rindt and Duarte comb through the data they need to introduce seaweed into the carbon-credit market. To get to that envisioned future of productive, lucrative kelp farms, first they have to sort through some tubes of mud.

Oceans of opportunity: How seaweed can help fight climate change

© Loïc Venance, AFP


France 24

Cyrielle CABOT - 

It’s a nutritional food source, an alternative to plastic, has medicinal properties and can help to limit global heating: Marine algae might just be the next weapon in the fight against climate change.

From February 9 to 11, the French town of Brest is hosting the One Ocean Summit, the first international summit dedicated to protecting the world’s oceans. NGOs, scientists, business leaders and heads of state will meet in the Breton town to discuss how to protect marine ecosystems and promote sustainability.


Philippe Potin, a marine biologist and researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, and Vincent Doumeizel, a senior advisor and food expert for the United Nations Global Compact, speak to FRANCE 24 about what’s at stake at the summit.

There’s one point on which they are unanimous. “We have to invest in marine algae!” they say.

“Often, when we talk about algae, it conjures up this negative image of piles of green or brown slime washed up on beaches in Brittany or the Caribbean. It’s a real shame,” says Potin. “When seaweed ends up on beaches, it’s because it’s been dragged up from the seabed by pollution or industrial activity. It’s not the problem, it’s a consequence.”

"The reality is that these plants play a vital role for our planet,” Potin continues. Seaweed is to marine environments what forests are to the land. “They’re also the lungs of the planet. Thanks to their photosynthesizing, they absorb CO2 and emit oxygen,” he explains. “Alone, they are responsible for half of all of Earth’s renewal of oxygen. They are hugely helpful for the climate.”

"They are also indispensable to ocean life because they help to create habitats for thousands of different types of fish and shellfish. There’s then a knock-on effect, because it’s in part thanks to algae that we have such a variety of fishing stock on the coasts.”

In total, some 10,000 species of algae visible to the naked eye grow across the planet – from sea lettuce in Brittany to Tasmanian kelp and wakame in Japan.
‘The world’s most under-used resource’

On top of the role seaweed plays for the climate and biodiversity, it can also be useful across a number of other sectors, like food, industry and even medicine.

“It’s one of the world’s most under-used resources,” says Doumeizel. “Our planet is made up of 70 percent water and yet the seas and oceans only account for three percent of our food supply. It’s absurd.”

He goes on, “We know that one of the biggest challenges we face this century is that we have reached our limit on land in terms of the food industry. We’re running out of land and intensive agriculture is particularly damaging for the planet … It’s clearly time to think of new ways of doing things.”

So could seaweed be the magic answer to these problems? It’s already a daily foodstuff in Asia and is recommended by dieticians, who say it’s packed full of fibre, protein and vitamins and is low in fat. According to a study carried out by Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands, devoting just two percent of the world’s oceans to farming algae could produce enough protein to fulfil the needs of everyone on the planet.

It’s not just humans who stand to benefit. “We can also use it to feed animals, particularly cattle. It would help to improve their immune system,” says Doumeizel. In the agricultural sector, a number of French villages – mostly in Brittany – already use seaweed as fertiliser.

Seaweed is already starting to leave its mark in the medical sector, predominantly in antifungal creams or anti-inflammatory products. Fucales, a type of brown algae, are known for being able to ease heartburn. Recently, researchers registered a patent for a cream and a gel to treat acne made from a type of microalgae.

In the industrial sector, Europe already counts several companies using seaweed to manufacture biodegradable packaging as an alternative to plastic. "Other companies are planning on using it to make clothing. In the Netherlands, a start-up is even looking into producing sanitary products made from seaweed,” says Doumeizel.

One place where it’s actually hard to use algae is in the energy sector. Potin tells FRANCE 24, “For a while we thought about using seaweed to make a biofuel, but the sheer quantity needed to do it is just too much.”
Rest of the world trailing behind Asia

"In reality, none of this is anything new. Algae has been consumed for hundreds of years. Prehistoric people ate it, as well as indigenous people all over the world,” explains Doumeizel. “The practice simply disappeared almost everywhere during the Roman and Greek period, apart from in Asia.”

Nowadays, Asia is a pioneer in algaculture – the farming of algae – and is responsible for 99 percent of global production. In 2015, China was the world’s leading producer, with 13 million tonnes collected, followed by Indonesia with 9 million tonnes.

In Europe, France and Norway are the biggest producers in a sector that’s still in its infancy. According to a report by the European Commission on the ‘Blue Economy’, only 32 percent of algae in Europe comes from algae farms. The remaining 68 percent comes from wild farming, or harvesting the plants directly from their natural environment. “We’re still at the hunter-gatherer stage!” says Doumeizel wryly.

The global market is rapidly growing, however. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, production tripled between 2000 and 2018. The report notes that algae accounts for the fastest-growing food sector in the world.
Finding a balance between farming and sustainability

Potin and Doumeizel are calling to accelerate research in algaculture. “Beyond its economic potential, it’s even more important because lots of alga species are disappearing, due to ocean heating and climate change,” explains Potin, drawing on the example of a forest of seaweed off the coast of California that has declined by 80 percent in the last few years. “Developing algaculture would allow us to restore ecosystems.”

“But of course, this has to be done carefully and with a lot of thought,” he adds. “We mustn’t damage our oceans even further by doing anything we can to grow algae.” In Asia, algaculture has already come up against limitations. Just as with intensive agriculture, algaculture is often blamed for taking up too much space. The use of fertiliser for accelerating production is also very common. “And often it’s monocultures that are grown, which effectively wipe out other species,” Potin notes with regret.

There’s an added challenge for algae farming in Europe. “Amongst the thousands of species of algae that exist, we are only able to farm about 10, and mostly Asian species. We have to do more research on European species. We want to avoid importing exotic algae that could disrupt ecosystems here,” emphasises Potin.

Potin and Doumeizel are part of the team behind the Safe Seaweed Coalition, a new organisation managed by the United Nations, the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the Lloyd’s Register Foundation. Its aim is to bring together businesses, scientists and farmers to set up international legislation for the seaweed industry.

At the One Ocean Summit, Doumeizel will be pushing algae’s many virtues in talks with Barbara Pompili, France’s minister of ecological transition. “France has huge potential. Brittany has a seaweed zone that’s unique in the world,” he says. “The government has to take advantage of it.”

This story is a translation of the original in French.

'Unprecedented': Deadly algae swamps Brittany's beaches even in winter

 Vast amounts of green algae have been appearing on the beaches of Brittany in France for years, usually appearing at the start of the warmer summer months. But now, the foul-smelling and potentially deadly green sludge is swamping beaches in wintertime too, with campaigners blaming nitrates in fertilisers used in intensive farming.

PANDEMIC CAPITALI$M 

WINNERS AND LOSERS

Pfizer expects to sell $54 billion worth of COVID-19 shots, treatment pills in 2022

For all of 2021, Pfizer said it made $81.3 billion in revenue -- about twice its figure from 2020. File Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 8 (UPI) -- Pharma company Pfizer said on Tuesday that it expects to generate more than $50 billion in revenues this year from its COVID-19 vaccine and antiviral treatment pill.

The company reported its 2022 forecast in its quarterly earnings report, which showed that Pfizer made almost $24 billion in revenue in the final quarter of 2021. About half of that came from sales of its COVID-19 vaccine and $76 million from sales of its antiviral treatment Paxlovid, which was the first COVID-19 treatment pill authorized in the United States.

Pfizer's fourth-quarter earnings were mixed -- beating expectations for earnings per share but slightly missing projections for revenue.

Pfizer is presently seeking regulatory approval for a smaller dose of its COVID-19 vaccine specifically for children under 5, which is the last group of people in the U.S. that's not yet eligible to be vaccinated. File Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI

For all of 2021, Pfizer said it made $81.3 billion in revenue -- about twice its figure from 2020. Fourth-quarter earnings increased by more than double compared to 2020.

For 2022, Pfizer said it expects to sell $32 billion worth of its COVID-19 vaccine, known as Comirnaty, and $22 billion worth of Paxlovid.

"In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we committed to using all of the resources and expertise we had at our disposal to help protect populations globally against this deadly virus," Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement.

"Now, less than two years since we made that commitment, we are proud to say that we have delivered both the first FDA-authorized vaccine against COVID-19 (with our partner, BioNTech) and the first FDA-authorized oral treatment for COVID-19."


Pfizer announced last month that it had begun a study to test a new COVID-19 vaccine geared specifically to fight the Omicron coronavirus variant. It's also developing a smaller dose of its regular COVID-19 vaccine for children under the age of 5.

Pfizer sees Covid-19 drug sales topping $50 bn in 2022

Pfizer reported annual profits in 2021 more than doubled to $22 billion on strong sales of Covid-19 vaccines

February 9, 2022 - 

Pfizer reported annual profits in 2021 more than doubled to $22 billion on strong sales of Covid-19 vaccines

Pfizer forecast more than $50 billion in 2022 sales for its Covid-19 vaccine and therapeutic on Tuesday as the pharmaceutical giant reported a more than doubling of annual profits on strong sales of its innoculation.

Pfizer, whose vaccinee developed with German company BioNTech was the first approved in the United States to counter the deadly virus, sees slightly lower 2022 revenues for the vaccine compared with the just-finished year, but a big infusion of revenues from Paxlovid, the company's pill for Covid-19.

Still, shares fell Tuesday following the results, which lagged estimates in terms of fourth-quarter revenues.

Analysts have also projected higher 2022 profits compared with the company's forecasts.

Pfizer reported annual profits of $22 billion, more than double the 2020 level. Annual revenues nearly doubled to $81.3 billion, with $36.8 billion from the Covid-19 vaccine.

The results are the latest to show how the coronavirus has transformed Pfizer, which a year ago had projected just $15 billion in Covid-19 vaccines sales in 2021 and ended up selling more than twice that amount after repeatedly lifting the forecast.

Bourla said the company is currently working on a new vaccine candidate based on the Omicron variant of Covid-19, as well as a new "potential next-generation oral Covid-19 treatment."

Pfizer executives described heavy interest in Paxlovid, with ongoing contract talks with about 100 governments around the world. The treatment has so far been approved in about 40 countries.

However, Chief Financial Officer Frank D'Amelio cautioned that there was "less potential upside" to 2022 estimates for Covid-19 vaccine revenues, compared with 2021 "when the vaccine was newly available and few people had received any doses of the vaccine."

"We expect increased near-term utilization of Covid vaccines will reduce the demand for these vaccines and treatments over the long term," Conover said in a note. "We view Pfizer as slightly overvalued, with the market likely extrapolating strong Covid vaccine and treatment sales too far into the future."

"That said, we now have the tools -- in the forms of vaccines and treatments -- that we believe will help enable us to not only better manage the pandemic but also help countries move into the endemic phase," he said.

jmb/st

THE FAILURE OF CAPITALI$T PRODUCTION

Johnson & Johnson temporarily halts Covid-19 vaccine output: report


Johnson & Johnson temporarily halted output of its Covid-19 vaccine at the only plant capable of commercial production, according to a report 

(AFP/JUSTIN TALLIS) (JUSTIN TALLIS)


Tue, February 8, 2022, 

Johnson & Johnson has temporarily suspended production at a key plant manufacturing the Covid-19 vaccine, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The facility in the Dutch city of Leiden halted output late last year, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the decision.

J&J, without confirming or denying the report, said it has continued to fulfill delivery commitments, a company spokesman said.

The factory, which is currently making an experimental vaccine, is expected to resume production of the Covid-19 vaccine again in a "few" months, the Times reported.

J&J currently has "millions of doses of our Covid-19 vaccine in inventory," according to the J&J spokesman.

"We continue to fulfill our contractual obligations in relation to the Covax facility and the African Union," the company spokesman said.

J&J has projected sales of $3 billion to $3.5 billion in 2022 for its Covid-19 vaccine, much less than the $32 billion forecast by Pfizer for the same period.

But the J&J vaccine has been sought after in developing countries because, unlike other options, it does not require transportation at very cold temperatures. Also, the vaccine was originally billed as a single-shot inoculation.

Additional plants are being outfitted to make the vaccine, but production is not expected until late spring, the Times said.

jum-jmb/md

ECOCIDE

NGO files complaint over dead fish deluge off French coast

An estimated 100,000 dead fish were found floating off the French coast.

Environmental organisation Sea Shepherd on Tuesday filed a legal complaint against the owners of a large fishing vessel after tens of thousands of dead fish were spotted off France's Atlantic coast.

The NGO last week published footage of what it said were more than 100,000 dead fish floating in the sea some 300 kilometres (186 miles) off the southwestern port city of La Rochelle in the Bay of Biscay.

The fish, of the cod species blue whiting, had been caught by the Margiris, one of the world's biggest fishing trawlers at 143 metres (470 feet) long.

On Thursday, the Margiris logged a "fishing incident" with the freezer-trawler association PFA, saying its net had ruptured, causing the involuntary release of the fish into the sea.

The PFA said the breakage, "a rare occurrence" had been due to "the unexpectedly large size of the fish caught".

The incident had also been reported to the vessel's flag state, Lithuania, it said.

But Sea Shepherd said it suspected the blue whiting, an abundant species in the northeast Atlantic, might have been discarded deliberately.

"Some vessels, when they catch a great number of fish of low commercial value like blue whiting, discard them to make room for higher-value fish," said Lamya Essemlali, president of Sea Shepherd France.

Blue whiting is very common in this part of the Atlantic.

This practice, she told AFP, "is completely illegal".

Sea Shepherd's case was based on the Margiris's failure to bring the fish it caught to shore in accordance with fishing rules, she said. The organisation had backed up its claim "with various elements of what we found at the site", she added.

France's maritime minister, Annick Girardin, said on Friday there would be an inquiry into the incident, and that the dead fish would be subtracted from the Margiris's fishing quota.

"This was a non-authorised discarding of fish," a spokesperson at her ministry said.

The EU's commissioner for oceans and fisheries Virginijus Sinkevicius—himself a Lithuanian national—said the European Commission would also look into the matter.Action demanded after 1,100 dead dolphins wash up in France

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© 2022 AFP

Nigerian med student aims to end white bias in textbooks | DW News

White patients are the default when it comes to medical training. In fact, one recent US study found that in some medical books, only 4 percent of images have black skin.

But this is what medical texts could look like - if one Nigerian medical student has his way. DW's West Africa correspondent Flourish Chukwurah reports from Lagos.

'Denial and delay': Big Oil rebuked in US Congress


The US Capitol in Washington, DC, on Feb 8, 2022

 (Photo: AFP/Stefani Reynolds)

09 Feb 2022

WASHINGTON: US climate scientists accused four of the world's largest oil companies on Tuesday (Feb 8) of lying about the harms linked to their industry and trying to delay the switch to cleaner fuel.

American multinationals ExxonMobil and Chevron, as well as Britain's BP and Shell, are being investigated by the US Congress for their role in spreading misinformation about climate change.

Michael Mann, an academic, told the House oversight committee the companies had known for more than four decades that their activities caused pollution, but had engaged in a "campaign of denial and delay".

"We are now paying the price for these delays in the form of extreme weather events," said the Pennsylvania State University atmospheric science professor.

He pointed to the so-called heat dome under which millions of Americans and Canadians sweltered in June last year, and the wildfires that regularly devastate swathes of California.

He also dismissed the oil giants' strategy of promising to reduce the carbon intensity of their fossil fuels.

"That's sort of like your doctor telling you that you need to cut fat from your diet," he said.

"And so you switch to 40 per cent reduced fat potato chips, but you eat twice as many of them. That doesn't help".

Executives of the oil companies were invited to appear but did not show up. They did testify in October, telling lawmakers they had accelerated investment in alternative energy in recent years.

Tracey Lewis, the policy counsel for advocacy group Public Citizen, rejected the pledges as "climate disinformation and greenwashing:.

She said she was particularly concerned over misinformation targeting people of colour and the poor, who are disproportionately harmed by the burning of fossil fuels.

Republicans defended the companies, pivoting instead to attack President Joe Biden's climate initiatives, linking them to a recent rise in energy prices.

"Good luck getting on an airplane powered by batteries," said South Carolina congressman Ralph Norman. "Let's see how that works."

Committee chairwoman Carolyn Maloney invited the oil giants to testify again before Congress in March.

CANCEL THE DEBT
Thousands protest Argentina's debt deal with IMF


Members of Argentine leftist groups demonstrated in the capital against the IMF on the eve of a $730 million instalment due in the repayment of Argentina's debt (AFP/ALEJANDRO PAGNI) (ALEJANDRO PAGNI)


Tue, February 8, 2022, 5:23 PM·2 min read

Several thousand protesters marched in Buenos Aires on Tuesday to denounce the agreement reached between the government of centre-left President Alberto Fernandez and the IMF on the repayment of a $44 billion loan.

Activists from about 200 movements and associations gathered in front of the Casa Rosada, the pink governmental palace.

The Fernandez government must "remember Argentine history: all the agreements with the IMF since 1983 have brought chaos, ended in (structural) adjustments, hyperinflation and huge social crises," Myriam Bregman, a deputy from the Left and Workers' Front (FIT), told AFP.

The government "must prove why it would be different" this time, she added.

On January 28, the Argentine president announced a new repayment deal with the International Monetary Fund of a $44 billion loan granted in 2018 to the government of his predecessor, Mauricio Macri.

Under the new deal, Argentina has committed to progressively reducing its fiscal deficit from three percent in 2021 to just 0.9 percent in 2024.

According to the government, the agreement will not affect social spending or economic growth.

The deal "has nothing to do with the needs of the Argentine people, but with an illegitimate and unpayable debt," said Vilma Ripoll, another FIT leader.

The agreement still has to be ratified by Congress, where the ruling coalition has the largest group, but does not have a majority.

The government hopes to define the terms of the new financing program before the March 22 deadline, when $2.85 billion must be repaid by Argentina, which cannot afford it, according to Economy Minister Martin Guzman.

After three years of recession, the last two of which were linked to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Argentine economy saw a strong rebound in 2021, with 10.3 percent growth for the first eleven months of the year.

But inflation remains very high. In 2021 it was around 50.9 percent, while it is forecast to be 33 percent in 2022.

Poverty also remains high, affecting 40 percent of the population.

edm/dm/ag/jb/st/sw

COVID-19 protests threaten border trade between Canada, US

By ROB GILLIES and TRACEY LINDEMAN

1 of 5

A woman crosses the street in front of vehicles parked as part of the trucker protest, Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022 in Ottawa. Canadian lawmakers expressed increasing worry about protests over vaccine mandates other other COVID restrictions after the busiest border crossing between the U.S. and Canada became partially blocked. 

(Adrian Wyld /The Canadian Press via AP)


OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — Canadian lawmakers expressed increasing worry Tuesday about the economic effects of disruptive demonstrations after the busiest border crossing between the U.S. and Canada became partially blocked by truckers protesting vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions.

The blockade at the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, prevented traffic from entering Canada while some U.S.-bound traffic was still moving, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said, calling the bridge “one of the most important border crossings in the world.” It carries 25% of all trade between Canada and the United States.

Canadian Transport Minister Omar Alghabra said such blockades will have serious implications on the economy and supply chains. “I’ve already heard from automakers and food grocers. This is really a serious cause for concern,” he said in Ottawa, the capital.

Added Mendicino: “Most Canadians understand there is a difference between being tired and fatigued with the pandemic and crossing into some other universe.”

Speaking in an emergency debate late Monday in Parliament, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the protesters are “trying to blockade our economy, our democracy.”

Auto parts and other goods were still flowing across the border Tuesday evening, despite the bridge delays. But trucks had to travel almost 70 miles north to the Blue Water Bridge connecting Sarnia, Ontario, to Port Huron, Michigan. Authorities at that bridge reported a nearly three-hour delay for trucks to cross. In total, the trip will take more than five hours longer than normal.

Flavio Volpe, president of the Canadian Auto Parts Manufacturers Association, said the protesters have no right to park vehicles in the middle of roads. He questioned how many of the protesters were truckers because trucker associations and large logistics companies have disavowed the blockades.

“It is really a collection of kind of anti-government provocateurs,” he said.

The protests also threaten supplies of fresh produce, livestock and other food, Volpe said.

Even a five-hour delay can cause production disruptions because factories are running so lean on part supplies with an already fragile supply chain, said Jeff Schuster, president of the LMC Automotive consulting firm in Troy, Michigan.

“Everything is so ‘just-in-time’ these days,” he said. “We’re still dealing with parts shortages in general and supply chain issues. This is just another wrench in the industry that we’re dealing with right now.”

Protesters also closed another important U.S.-Canada border crossing in Coutts, Alberta.

The daily demonstrations staged by the so-called Freedom Truck Convoy are centered in Ottawa, where demonstrators have used hundreds of parked trucks to paralyze parts of the capital for more than 10 days. Protesters have said they will not leave until all vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.

Protest organizers have been calling for weeks for the removal of Trudeau’s government, although most of the restrictive measures were put in place by provincial governments.

On Tuesday, the organizers withdrew an unlawful demand that the nation’s governor general, the representative of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, force federal and provincial governments to lift all COVID-19 restrictions, including vaccine mandates. They now say they support Canada’s constitution and the democratic process.

François Laporte, the president of Teamsters Canada, which represents over 55,000 drivers, including 15,000 long-haul truckers, said the protests do not represent the industry in which 90% of drivers are vaccinated.

The Freedom Convoy “and the despicable display of hate led by the political Right and shamefully encouraged by elected conservative politicians does not reflect the values of Teamsters Canada, nor the vast majority of our members,” Laporte said in a statement.

Canada’s largest trucking company is virtually untouched by the vaccine mandate for truckers crossing the U.S.-Canada border, said Alain Bédard, chairman and CEO of TFI International Inc.

“Vaccination at TFI is not an issue at all,” he said. The company’s few unvaccinated drivers are kept in Canada.

The protests have also infuriated people who live around downtown Ottawa, including neighborhoods near Parliament Hill, the seat of the federal government.

Dave Weatherall, a federal civil servant, lives near the truckers’ prime staging area in a city-owned parking lot outside of the downtown core. “They’re using the lot to terrorize people,” he said.

“It’s the first time since having kids that I’ve seriously wondered about the world we brought them into. I always figured they could handle most things the world will throw at them, but this feels different,” he added.

Ottawa’s city manager said all tow-truck companies on contract with the city have refused to haul away the big rigs.

Joel Lightbound, a lawmaker for Trudeau’s Liberal Party, rebuked his leader Tuesday for dividing Canadians and said his government needs to create a road map for when coronavirus measures should be lifted.

“It is time we stopped dividing people, to stop pitting one part of the population against each other,” Lightbound said.

Trudeau said everyone is tired of COVID-19, and that the restrictions will not last forever. He noted that Canada has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world.

“This government has been focused every step of the way on following the best science, the best public health advice, to keep as many people as safe as possible. Frankly, it’s worked,” Trudeau said Tuesday.

Pandemic restrictions have been far stricter in Canada than in the U.S., but Canadians have largely supported the measures. Canada’s death rate is one third that of its neighbor.

Meanwhile, the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Quebec announced plans to lift some or all COVID-19 restrictions starting next week and extending until mid-March. The premier of Alberta was expected to announce a similar plan soon.

___

Gillies reported from Toronto. Associated Press Writer Tom Krisher in Detroit also contributed to this report.