Fewer than 30% of U.S. workers have paid sick leave protected by state law, study finds


Fewer than 30% of workers in the United States have paid sick leave protected by state law, according to a new study.

 File photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo


Feb. 10 (UPI) -- Fewer than 30% of workers in the United States have paid sick leave protected by state law, an analysis published Thursday by American Journal of Preventive Medicine found.

Some workers who have that benefit got it because 12 states nationally had passed laws requiring employers to provide it as of 2020, the researchers said.

Others may have it through their employers, though the benefit is not protected by law, according to the study.

In addition, 18 states without paid sick leave laws prohibit local governments from creating their own sick-leave regulations, limiting access to the benefit and exacerbating income inequality, they said.

RELATED California Gov. Newsom, lawmakers announce deal for paid sick leave


"The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the critical need for access to paid sick leave for workers, their families, and employers," study co-author Jennifer Pomeranz said in a press release.

"We need a federal policy solution that gives all workers access to paid sick leave benefits, especially low-wage workers who have no choice but to work when sick," said Pomeranz, an assistant professor of public health policy and management at NYU School of Global Public Health in New York City.

Providing sick employees paid time off allows them flexibility to seek medical care, as needed, and to recover from illness more quickly, according to Pomeranz and her colleagues.

RELATED With federal COVID-19 sick leave gone, workers feel pressure to go to work

In addition, sick leave availability has been linked with a lower risk for death among employees, the researchers said.

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, paid sick leave has also benefited employers, as allowing people to stay home when sick limits the spread of the virus and other infectious diseases in the workplace, according to the researchers.

Workplace outbreaks can lead to widespread absenteeism and lost productivity, they said.

RELATED Survey: U.S. support for government safety nets increased amid COVID-19 pandemic

However, the United States is among the few high-income countries without a national law guaranteeing paid sick leave, funded by either employers or the government, Pomeranz and her colleagues said.

As a result, fewer than 60% of workers in service industries are offered paid sick leave, and fields such as such as food production, hospitality and retail rarely offer the benefit, leaving many employees vulnerable to lost wages and forcing them to work while sick, they said.

To fill this gap, some local and state governments have passed laws that require paid sick leave, the researchers said.

San Francisco was the first city to do so, in 2007, while Connecticut became the first state to enact a paid sick-leave mandate, in 2011, according to FamilyValues@Work.org.

Surveys have found that many workers in the United States felt pressure to remain on the job, even amid safety concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Others indicate that most workers support government safety nets such as paid sick-leave because of the concerns raised during the pandemic.

In this study, the researchers examined state paid sick leave laws and state laws pre-empting paid sick leave across the United States from 2009 to 2020.

At the time of the study, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont had enacted laws that require paid sick leave in some form, according to the researchers.

Colorado, Maine and New Mexico enacted laws in 2021-22, the Society for Human Resource Management reported.

Based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis and the U.S. census, 28% of all jobs nationally are covered by state-required paid sick leave laws as of 2019, the data showed.

However, as of 2020, 18 states without laws requiring employers to provide paid leave passed legislation to pre-empt local governments from passing their own paid sick policies, up from only one state pre-emption law in 2009, the researchers said.

Even in states requiring paid sick leave, the laws vary. with some exempting small or public employers and/or excluding certain occupations, they said.

"Excluding low-wage workers ... from paid sick leave protections only further exacerbates health disparities," study co-author José Pagán said in a press release.

"Many of [them] work in jobs that increase their risk for illnesses like COVID-19 and lack access to employer-based coverage," said Pagán, chair and professor of public health policy and management at NYU School of Global Public Health.

VIRTUAL CRIME

Russian boy sent to prison for plot to blow up spy building on 'Minecraft'

By UPI Staff

The Federal Security Service building is seen in Moscow, Russia. Prosecutors said that a 16-year-old boy who was sent to jail on Thursday plotted terrorist activities with two others -- including blowing up a different FSB office they'd built in the game "Minecraft."

 File Photo by Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA

Feb. 10 (UPI) -- A Russian teenager was sent to prison on Thursday for supposedly "training" for terrorist activities and other charges that included blowing up a virtual government intelligence building on the video game Minecraft.

A military court in Siberia sentenced the boy, 16-year-old Nikita Uvarov, to five years for the charges -- which stemmed from anti-government leaflets he'd handed out and videos on cellphones belonging to Uvarov and at least two others.

Authorities also said they'd uncovered a plot by the teens to blow up a virtual building belonging to the Russian Federal Security Service, or FSB, that they'd built in the block-building game Minecraft.

The FSB is the top intelligence and security service in Russia and the successor to the Soviet-era KGB.

The two other teenagers were given suspended sentences on Thursday because they cooperated with prosecutors in the case against Uvarov.

The case against Uvarov follows a number of other controversial anti-terrorist prosecutions in Russia. In 2020, several young activists were jailed for supposedly planning a coup and other terror-related charges. Some of them claimed that Russian authorities effectively beat confessions out of them -- a claim similar to what Uvarov said in court on Thursday.

"I am not a terrorist, I am not guilty," he said, according to The Moscow Times. "I would just like to finish my studies, get an education and go somewhere far away from here, somewhere I don't irritate anyone from the special services."

Uvarov also told the court that he never planned to blow anything up.

3 Executives indicted over alleged illegal donations to Susan Collins' re-election bid

Rebecca Falconer
Thu, February 10, 2022,

Three former executives of a Hawaii-based U.S. defense contractor were indicted Thursday over allegations of unlawful campaign contributions to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and a political action committee that supported her 2020 re-election bid.

Driving the news: "Martin Kao, 48, Clifford Chen, 48, and Lawrence 'Kahele' Lum Kee, 52, all of Honolulu, were employed by a defense contractor prohibited from making contributions in federal elections," per a Department of Justice statement.

The DOJ did not name Collins, but Axios' Lachlan Markay reported last May that the FBI was investigating allegations of a "scheme to illegally finance" Collins' campaign — though there's no indication that the senator or her team were aware of any of the allegations prior to the investigation.

Collins' campaign representatives said in an emailed statement Thursday that the indictment made clear that "there are no allegations of wrongdoing by the Collins for Senator Campaign."

What to watch: "All three defendants are charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States and to make conduit and government contractor contributions, making conduct contributions, and making government contractor contributions," per the DOJ.

"Kao is also charged with two counts of making false statements for causing the submission of false information to the Federal Election Committee," the DOJ said.

Details: The three indicted men are accused of creating a shell company that they allegedly "to make an illegal contribution to a political action committee supporting the election of a candidate for the U.S. Senate using government contractor funds," according to the Justice Department.

"The defendants also allegedly used family members as conduits to make illegal contributions to the campaign committee of the same candidate, and then reimbursed themselves for those donations using funds obtained from their employer," the DOJ added.

What they're saying: "As stated previously, the campaign had absolutely no knowledge of any of the allegations against Mr. Kao or his associates until a search warrant was reported in the press," Collins' campaign representatives said.

"The Collins campaign required that every contributor sign a statement saying that his or her contribution was made from his or her own personal funds. The campaign had more than 100,000 individual contributors," they added.

Read the indictment, obtained by CourtListener, via DocumentCloud:

Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.

Chukwudi Iwuji: 'My spirit will be with' 'Peacemaker'

By Fred Topel

1/5

Murn (Chukwude Iwuji) loses his patience for Peacemaker. 

Photo courtesy of HBO Max


LOS ANGELES, Feb. 11 (UPI) -- Chukwude Iwuji said he knew when he joined the cast of Peacemaker, he only would appear in seven of the show's eight episodes. Iwuji, 45, confirmed his character, Murn, would not be in the season finale, premiering Thursday on HBO Max.

"I got the script right from the start and knew his trajectory," Iwuji told UPI in a Zoom interview. "I knew it was sayonara in Episode 7, so it was about really enjoying the ride up to then."


[SPOILER ALERT]

In this week's Peacemaker episode, Murn is killed. Iwuji said Peacemaker (John Cena) would have to lead the team without him, but the actor hopes the comic book show can find a way to bring him back.

"My spirit will be with the team," Iwuji said. "If there's more seasons, this is DC. People die and come back."

Murn was not in the movie The Suicide Squad, which launched Cena's iteration of the character. Nor was Murn ever a character in DC Comics.

Writer/director James Gunn created Murn for the Peacemaker series. Murn is an agent of Amanda Waller (Viola Davis in the films) and leads Project Butterfly.

Butterflies are aliens who are taking over human bodies. Episode 5 of Peacemaker revealed Murn is a butterfly, working undercover to save humanity. Although Iwuji knew ahead of time about Murn's secret and his death, the actor tried to avoid giving the audience any hints of what was to come.

"I knew that it would be this incredible reveal," Iwuji said. "One of the things I really believe in as an actor is to play moment to moment and not to play the arc."

Peacemaker has thrown multiple wrenches in Murn's plans. Peacemaker doesn't follow orders, and he makes jokes about butt babies and other childish tangents.

Iwuji said it was easy to portray Murn's frustration with Peacemaker. As funny as Peacemaker could be, he was distracting Murn from an important mission.

"[Murn] cares deeply about humanity, saving humanity," Iwuji said. "So the frustration is very real because it's a time bomb waiting to go off. No one but him truly knows how bad it is."

Before Peacemaker, Iwuji appeared in The Underground Railroad, Designated Survivor and When They See Us. Iwuji's parents are Nigerian, and Iwuji once told an Interviewer he lived in Ethiopia until he was 10, when he then went to boarding school in England.

Iwuji attended Yale University and later performed Shakespeare on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company and The Public Theater. Iwuji's first television role was the 2006 British-Danish-Irish series Proof. He later guest-starred on Doctor Who.

Iwuji said working with Gunn on Peacemaker led to Gunn offering Iwuji a role in Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3. Iwuji said he learned this while they were filming the dance number that opens every episode of Peacemaker.

"He came up and said, 'I don't know what your schedule is, but I'd like you to play in Guardians of the Galaxy 3,'" Iwuji said. "I can't tell you the role. That side is mysterious still and that's how it happened."

The opening titles became a fan favorite moment of every episode. Set to Wig Wam's hair metal homage "Do Ya Wanna Taste It," the entire cast of Peacemaker performs choreography with serious expressions on their faces.

Iwuji said there were many takes in which the cast broke their expressions.

"As you can imagine, there's a blooper reel somewhere of us just cracking up," Iwuji said.

Iwuji said the cast filmed the dance number after two months of shooting the series. Because the actors had episodes to film, Iwuji said, there was little time to rehearse.

"You had to go home and do your homework," Iwuji said. "So a lot of work was done at home, driving my wife crazy with the steps. There was enough time to panic, let me put it that way."

Colombia eyes 200 tonnes of galleon gold


The wreckage of the San Jose galleon, a ship sunk off the coast of Colombia in 1708, can be seen in this handout from Colombia's Culture Ministry after it was discovered in 2015 (AFP/HO) (HO)


Thu, February 10, 2022

Colombia took a step Thursday toward recovering a long-lost Spanish wreck and its fabled riches, but it may be a rough ride as Spain and native Bolivians have also staked claims on the booty.

Long the daydream of treasure hunters worldwide, the wreck of the San Jose galleon was first located off Columbia's coast in 2015, but has been left untouched as the government determines rules for its recovery.

Colombia was a colony of Spain when the San Jose was sunk, and gold from across South America, especially modern-day Peru and Bolivia, was stored in the fort of its coastal city, Cartagena, before being shipped back to Europe.

The Colombian government considers the booty a "national treasure" and wants it to be displayed in a future museum to be built in Cartagena.

According to a presidential decree released Thursday, companies or individuals interested in excavating the ship will have to sign a "contract" with the state and submit a detailed inventory of their finds to the government as well as plans for handling the goods.

The uber-loot, which experts estimate to include at least 200 tonnes of gold, silver and emeralds, will be a point of pride for Colombia, Vice President and top diplomat Marta Lucia Ramirez said in a statement.

Long the daydream of treasure hunters worldwide, the San Jose galleon was sunk by the British Navy on the night of June 7, 1708, off Cartagena de Indias.

The San Jose was at the time carrying gold, silver and precious stones which were to be delivered from the Spanish colonies in Latin America to the court of King Philip V.

Only a few of the San Jose's 600-member crew survived the wreck.

At the end of 2015, then-Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced the discovery of the exact location of the wreck, which was confirmed by the ship's unique bronze cannons with dolphin engravings.

Colombia has said it will cost about $70 million to carry out a full salvage operation on the wreckage, which is at a depth of between 600 and 1000 meters (2000-3200 feet).

Spain says the wreck is its own, as a ship of state; and an indigenous group in Bolivia, the Qhara Qhara, says the treasure belongs to them, since their ancestors were forced to mine it from what was in the 1500s the world's largest silver mine.

jss/mdl/des

Las Llamadas: Uruguayan festival born from African struggle





Today, Las Llamadas is a celebration for all race groups -- in fact many comparsas are majority white (AFP/PABLO PORCIUNCULA)

Mariëtte Le Roux
Thu, February 10, 2022

As a little boy, Cesar Pintos -- now 86 -- played "drums" with his friends in the streets of Montevideo's black-majority neighborhoods, beating tin cans with twigs to ancestral rhythms brought to Uruguay by enslaved Africans.

It was the 1940s, barely 100 years since the abolition of slavery in the South American country and a period of explosive growth for candombe -- a uniquely AfroUruguayan music style.

"Black people brought it here," Pintos told AFP of the music, which UNESCO recognized as a piece of Uruguayan cultural heritage "transmitted within families of African descent."

"They brought it in their heads, because they had nothing" in the line of possessions, said Pintos.

As an adult, he started his own "comparsa" of drummers and dancers from his Cordon neighborhood, one of the birthplaces of candombe. (ANOTHER NAME FOR VOODOO)

The group, named Sarabanda, participates to this day in "Las Llamadas" -- an annual parade hailed as a celebration of African heritage and the highlight of Montevideo's carnival.

Las Llamadas translates as "The Calls," from the ancient practice of beating drums to "call" the community together.

Every year since 1956, dozens of comparsas march in the Montevidean city center with painted faces and elaborate costumes that hark back to a distant past on a foreign continent.

In a two-day carnival competition watched by thousands, they beat out candombe tunes on wood and animal skin drums as the performers dance.

- From 'objects' to musical stars -

Today, Las Llamadas is a celebration for all race groups -- in fact many comparsas are majority white.

But the origins of candombe music are found in black struggle.

Montevideo was an important entry port for enslaved Africans brought by Europeans to South America from the second half of the 18th century.

By the end of the 1700s, over a third of the capital's population were African descendents, according to the municipal website.

For generations of enslaved people and their offspring, drumming and dancing in their free time was a way to hold on to distant ties to the mother continent.

When slavery was abolished in Uruguay in the mid 19th century, AfroUruguayans created mutual aid societies, whose lively meetings gave birth to candombe.

- 'Fundamental' -

"The drum for us is fundamental... It allows us to protest when we need to make ourselves heard, and also to have fun," Alfonso Pintos, the 59-year-old son of Cesar, told AFP.

He pointed to the role of comparsas in drumming up Uruguayan resistance to apartheid in South Africa, and closer to home, the country's own military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s that displaced many black Montevideans.

Today, Las Llamadas is more party than protest, but the fight for equality is not over.

According to the World Bank, Uruguay stands out in Latin America for its low level of inequality, though black people are more likely to be poor.

The last inequality report by the government's INE statistics institute reported in 2014 that more than half of Afrodescencents did not have their basic needs met, compared to less than a third of whites.

Nine in ten AfroUruguayans aged 20 to 24 do not obtain a tertiary education.

- True to its roots? -

Just over 255,000 people out of about 3.2 million Uruguayans identified as Afrodescendents in the last census.

It is a shrinking ratio of the population -- about 8.0 percent compared to more than a third 200 years ago.

"Uruguay really took very seriously the idea of trying to become a white nation," mainly by encouraging European migration, said historian George Reid Andrews, author of the book "Blackness in the White Nation."

For many AfroUruguayans, candombe is a cherished inheritance.

Alfonso Pintos, a woodworker by trade, has taken over Sarabanda from dad Cesar, who still makes guest appearances with the troupe.

Cesar's grandson Pablo, 34, is the drumming coordinator and granddaughter Micaela, 29, the lead dancer.

Seven-year-old Catalina, Cesar's great-granddaughter, is already preparing to become a fourth generation performer.

But some feel candombe is no longer true to its roots.

Tomas Chirimini is president of the Africania civic association and leader of the performing troupe Conjunto Bantu, which does not participate in Las Llamadas or carnival.

"The black (Uruguayan) has lost a place to express his heritage," Chirimini, 84, told AFP, referring to what he perceives as a creeping commercialization and watering-down of AfroUruguayan culture.

Things are indeed changing, said 34-year-old Fred Parreno, a Sarabanda drummer.

But "the fundamental thing is... to be aware of what you are representing when you pick up a drum," he told AFP.

"You are representing many people who came before and who spilled their blood so that today we can walk on the street" drumming, he said.

mlr/bfm

CANADA

Trucker protest 'worse than Covid' for small businesses



Trucks lined up at the Blue Water Bridge that connects Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Canada in Port Huron, Michigan on February 10, 2022

 (AFP/JEFF KOWALSKY)


Michel COMTE
Thu, February 10, 2022, 6:37 PM·3 min read

The trucker protest over Covid restrictions has been worse than the pandemic itself for small businesses in Canada's capital, as they were preparing for an easing of health rules when the convoy rolled in, shopkeepers say.

Ontario province, which includes Ottawa, had lifted a lockdown of restaurants and bars and increased capacity limits on retailers when up to 15,000 protesters and hundreds of trucks converged on the downtown area at the end of January.

Local small businesses were really excited for crowds to flood back to Byward Market -- Ottawa's main shopping and cultural district -- and make it lively again, said Inaas Kiryakos, owner of clothing and jewelry store Milk.

But with downtown streets blocked by the big rigs and police checkpoints, and officials warning people not to venture into the area, foot traffic dried up.

Most stores closed temporarily. Others reduced their operating hours. A dozen surveyed by AFP estimated their losses in the thousands of dollars per day while business associations warned the total could top tens of millions.

"This convoy is worse than Covid," Kiryakos said.

She explained that her shop relies on people coming to the neighborhood to dine in its many restaurants and stopping in to make a purchase, as well as spillover shoppers from the nearby Rideau Centre, a big mall.

"We were looking forward to a spike in foot traffic after the restrictions were lifted, which is what happened after past lockdowns ended," she said.

"When the truckers rolled up, it extended the lockdown in a much worse way, because anybody that would normally come down wouldn't want to," she explained.

The store had no customers Thursday.

- Mall closed -

Two blocks away, Ottawa's largest mall has been closed for two weeks after being overwhelmed by angry protesters who harassed staff and refused to follow masking rules when they first arrived in Ottawa.

Thousands of people work at 175 businesses at Rideau Centre.

Its owner, Cadillac Fairview, said in a statement that it opted to close the mall "as a result of ongoing public safety issues related to demonstrations," calling the situation "untenable."

"The continued closure of an important community space, the loss of employment income, and the financial impact on our clients is heart-breaking given all of our shared pain and sacrifice during the pandemic," said the company.

Tom Charleboix at the Paper Papier fine pens and stationery store around the corner from the American embassy, where surrounding streets have been cordoned off by police, echoed the pains of other shopkeepers.

"We've been open the whole time, but nobody has come into the store," he said.

Government workers from nearby offices who might come in during a lunch break or after work haven't during the pandemic because most worked from home over the past two years.

And now they're avoiding the downtown because of the protest. "Officials have told them not to come downtown and so they're not," Charleboix said.

"I thought it was a bit ironic that the first day (all businesses) were allowed to open, they couldn't," he commented.

The cancellation due to Covid of Ottawa's annual Winterlude, which had been scheduled to start February 4, has also meant no tourists coming to town.

- 'Hardly any customers' -

At one of several cannabis stores in the neighborhood, it was much the same.

"We've had hardly any customers in the past weeks. We usually see a lot of foot traffic and it's been dead," said Liv at Dutch Love. AFP is withholding her last name at her request over fears of a backlash.

The store, she said, has closed early most days after staff faced abusive comments from protesters who refused to wear face masks.

In front of Parliament, a lone counter-protester stood up for shopkeepers, recounting the hardships and financial toll the protests are having on them.

"I'm here to advocate for my community and very respectfully ask the convoy to go," Bobby Ramsay told AFP.

amc/dw

GM cancels shifts at Michigan plant, enlists cargo planes over border protest

General Motors canceled two shifts at one of its plants in Michigan on Thursday because of parts shortages caused by the ongoing COVID-19 protests blocking a key U.S.-Canada border crossing. 

File Photo by Jeff Kowalsky/EPA-EFE

Feb. 10 (UPI) -- General Motors said Thursday, parts shortages caused by the ongoing protests blocking a U.S.-Canada border crossing are forcing it to cancel two shifts at its production facility in Lansing Delta Township, Mich.

The company made the announcement a day after Toyota and Ford made similar decisions.

Protesters continue to block traffic at the Ambassador Bridge between Ontario and Port Huron, Mich. The move has put even more pressure on an already-disrupted supply chain.

The Ambassador Bridge is the busiest international crossing in North America by volume, and the protests have also caused massive delays at neighboring border crossings like the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel and Blue Water Bridge.

GM has resorted to chartering cargo planes to keep its factories running. Two planes will fly parts stuck at Canada's border into the United States in order to keep a truck plant operating.

Factories in Ontario have also had to cancel shifts because of shortages caused by the protesters.

Under normal circumstances, approximately $356 million worth of goods cross the bridge each day, according to Politico.

Protesters are calling for an end to COVID-19 restrictions, after initially organizing to call for an end to vaccination mandates.

White House presses Canada to intervene against border blockade as copycat protests spread


Issued on: 11/02/2022 - 03:31

An entrance ramp to the Ambassador Bridge is seen closed in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., due to truckers' protests against Covid-19 vaccine mandates in Canada, February 10, 2022. © Rebecca Cook, Reuters

Text by: NEWS WIRES|

Video by: Yinka OYETADE

The Biden administration urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government Thursday to use its federal powers to end the truck blockade by Canadians protesting the country’s COVID-19 restrictions, as the bumper-to-bumper demonstration forced auto plants on both sides of the border to shut down or scale back production.

For the fourth straight day, scores of truckers taking part in what they dubbed the Freedom Convoy blocked the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, disrupting the flow of auto parts and other products between the two countries.

The White House said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke with their Canadian counterparts and urged them to help resolve the standoff.

Conservative Ontario Premier Doug Ford, meanwhile, moved to cut off funding for the protests by successfully asking a court to freeze millions of dollars in donations to the convoy through crowd-funding site GiveSendGo. Ford has called the protests an occupation.

Canadian officials previously got GoFundMe to cut off funding after protest organizers used the site to raise about 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.8 million.) GoFundMe determined that the fundraising effort violated the site’s terms of service due to unlawful activity.

With political and economic pressure mounting, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens announced the city will seek a court injunction to end the occupation.

“The economic harm is not sustainable and it must come to an end,” he said.

In the U.S., authorities braced for the possibility of similar truck-borne protests inspired by the Canadians, and authorities in Paris and Belgium banned road blockades to head off disruptions there, too.

>> Inspired by Ottawa protests, French motorists join ‘Freedom Convoy’ bound for Paris

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a bulletin to local and state law enforcement agencies that it has received reports that truckers are planning to “potentially block roads in major metropolitan cities” in a protest against vaccine mandates and other issues.

The agency said the convoy could begin in Southern California as early as this weekend, possibly disrupting traffic around the Super Bowl, and reach Washington in March in time for the State of the Union address, according to a copy of Tuesday’s bulletin obtained by The Associated Press.

The White House said the department is “surging additional staff” to the Super Bowl just in case.

The ban on road blockades in Europe and the threat of prison and heavy fines were likewise prompted by online chatter from groups calling on drivers to converge on Paris and Brussels over the next few days.

The Ambassador Bridge is the busiest U.S.-Canadian border crossing, carrying 25% of all trade between the two countries, and the effects of the blockade there were felt rapidly.

Ford said its Windsor engine plant reopened Thursday after being shut down on Wednesday because of a lack of parts. But the factory and the company’s assembly plant in Oakville, Ontario, near Toronto, were operating at reduced capacity, the automaker said.

On the U.S. side, General Motors canceled the second shift on Wednesday and the first and second on Thursday at its SUV factory outside Lansing, Michigan.

Toyota said three of its plants in Ontario closed for the rest of the week because of parts shortages, and production also had to be curtailed in Georgetown, Kentucky.

Workers on the morning shift at a Windsor minivan plant operated by Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, were sent home early.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer urged Canadian authorities to quickly resolve the standoff, saying: “It’s hitting paychecks and production lines. That is unacceptable.”

The Teamsters denounced the blockade, saying in a statement from General President Jim Hoffa that it threatened “the livelihood of working Americans and Canadians in the automotive, agricultural and manufacturing sectors.”

Hundreds of demonstrators in trucks have also paralyzed the streets of downtown Ottawa for almost two weeks now, and have now closed three border crossings: at Windsor; at Coutts, Alberta, opposite Montana; and at Emerson, Manitoba, across from North Dakota.

The protesters are decrying vaccine mandates for truckers and other COVID-19 restrictions and are railing against Trudeau, even though many of Canada’s precautions, such as mask rules and vaccine passports for getting into restaurants, theaters and other places, were enacted by provincial authorities, not the federal government, and are already rapidly being lifted as the omicron surge levels off.

Trudeau continued to stand firm against lifting vaccine mandates, including a requirement that all truck drivers entering the country be fully vaccinated. But because an estimated 90% of the nation’s truckers are already inoculated, some conservatives have called on the prime minister to drop the mandate.

The convoy has been promoted and cheered on by many Fox News personalities and attracted support from the likes of former President Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

The Associated Press identified more than a dozen Facebook groups encompassing roughly a half-million members that are being used to drum up support for the Canadian protests or plan similar ones in the U.S. and Europe.

To get around the blockade and into Canada, truckers in the Detroit area have had to drive 70 miles north to Port Huron, Michigan, and cross the Blue Water Bridge, where there was a two-hour delay leaving the U.S.

The blockade is happening at a bad time for the U.S. auto industry. Supplies of new vehicles already are low across the nation because of the global shortage of computer chips, which has forced automakers to temporarily close factories.

“This is the last thing any automaker needs, any manufacturer needs, because parts are so scarce,” industry analyst David Whiston said.

(AP)

Telework in metaverse precursors already a reality

Friday, 11 Feb 2022

A person wearing an Oculus Quest 2 attends a virtual meeting using Immersed Virtual Reality program at the Immersed offices in Austin, Texas. While still the stuff of science fiction for most people, forerunners of the metaverse vision for the Internet’s future are already de rigueur for handfuls of people beyond the gamer and techno-hipster crowds. — AFP


SAN FRANCISCO: Depending on his mood, Jeff Weiser settles down to work in a Parisian cafe, a mysterious cave or high above the Earth, thanks to the budding metaverse.

Weiser lives in the midwestern US state of Ohio but his workplace is in a faux realm accessed using virtual reality head gear.

While still the stuff of science fiction for most people, forerunners of the metaverse vision for the Internet’s future are already de rigueur for handfuls of people beyond the gamer and techno-hipster crowds.

Weiser, founder of a translation startup, spends 25 to 35 hours each week working with Oculus VR gear on his head in his home in the city of Cincinnati.

A VR application called Immersed lets him synch screens such as his computer and smartphone to his virtual world, shutting out distractions around him at home.

Along with “increased focus”, the ergonomics are “perfect”, Weiser said. Display screens hover where they are easily seen and can be changed to any size.

Weiser taps on his keyboard without seeing it, and appears from the outside to be speaking to himself.

But in his virtual world, he interacts with avatars of colleagues as far away as Argentina and Ireland.

The pandemic boosted use of telework technologies that make it possible for colleagues to collaborate as teams despite being in different locations.

The Holy Grail is to replicate the kind of personal contact possible in offices.

Persistence

Florent Crivello co-founded Teamflow, a startup that tailors software for workers to collaborate virtually from their computers.

“We are building the metaverse for work,” Crivello said, who added VR headsets aren’t quite ready for “prime time”.

“All of our collaboration tools are still on desktop; we want to meet people where they are.”

Teamflow virtual offices look like on-screen game boards with meeting rooms, sofas and more.

Workers are represented by round icons that feature their picture, or live video of their face, and can initiate chats with colleagues by moving their “pawn” close to that of a co-worker.

If the person virtually approached has a microphone hooked up, they can automatically hear each other like they would be able to in real life.

Key to the experience is “persistence”, the fact that the virtual environment exists whether a particular worker is in it or not, said Crivello.

“That’s a defining characteristic,” he noted.

For example, Teamflow users who “write” on a virtual white board in a faux meeting room will find it there when they return the next day.

About 1,000 people use the Teamflow app every workday.

VR app Immersed, for its part, said it has won tens of thousands of users after a difficult period at the end of 2019, when the company almost disappeared.

“The adoption curve was in the disillusioned phase, it was the bottom of the valley and we ran out of money,” said Immersed co-founder Renji Bijoy.

“When I told my team that they could go look for jobs, all seven of them said unanimously, ‘We’re not going anywhere’.”

Too unreal?

The pandemic fuelled a trend to remote work, reviving investor interest in startups innovating in the sector.

At the same time, VR itself gained momentum, thanks to investments by Facebook-parent Meta in its Oculus unit and the metaverse overall.

“We are trying to build a world where anyone could live anywhere and put on a pair of glasses and feel like they're actually teleporting to their virtual office,” Bijoy said.

Missing links, for Bijoy, include lifelike avatars instead of cartoonish animated characters, and body tracking that lets movements or gestures be replicated in virtual worlds.

“It's not that far away,” Bijoy said of such technology, expecting to see it “much sooner than five years”.

Some users fear that working in VR will be misinterpreted or misunderstood and would rather stay anonymous, like one graphic designer from New York, who used to spend six hours a day working from immersed during the pandemic.

He customised his Oculus headset for comfort, and built his own room in Immersed, a virtual reproduction of his favourite library complete with rustling pages and soft footsteps.

The New York resident told of his productivity soaring but his health suffering.

He forgot to take breaks, losing track of place and time.

“I would take the headset off and it was kind of jarring, it was just a bit of like a slap in the face, being back in reality,” this man said.

A blood test showed he was low on Vitamin D, and he suspected part of the cause was spending so much time out of the sun and in virtual reality.

“I just stopped using it,” the designer said. “I don’t think that it’s healthy to replace reality with virtual reality.” – AFP


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Tunisian judges, lawyers protest president’s dissolution of key courts watchdog

Thu, 10 February 2022,


More than 200 judges and lawyers in black robes protested Thursday outside the main court in the Tunisian capital after President Kais Saied vowed to scrap a key judicial watchdog.

Judges have been on strike since Wednesday in the North African country, the birthplace of the 2011 Arab uprisings, in protest at Saied’s weekend move to dissolve the Supreme Judicial Council (CSM) months after a July power grab.

At the rally in central Tunis on Thursday, police looked on as protesters chanted “restore the CSM” and “the people want an independent judiciary”.

Some held signs calling Saied’s move “a violation of rights and freedoms” and saying “there is no democracy without an independent judiciary”.

Saied had long accused the CSM of blocking politically sensitive investigations and being influenced by his nemesis, the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party.

Announcing he would dissolve it, he said he had no intention of interfering with the judiciary, but rights groups and world powers have called it a step backwards in a country seen as the sole—if dysfunctional—democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings.

Saied, who late last year gave himself powers to issue legislation, said Thursday that he planned to issue orders in the coming days formally disbanding the CSM.

“Let me be clear: the council will be dissolved and replaced by another one, by decree,” he said.

“Justice is a job, not a branch of government. All judges are answerable to the law.”

In a statement Thursday, the CSM said it “totally rejects the use of decrees to infringe on the constitutional structure of the judiciary” and that any alternative would have no legal basis. Some lawyers who took part in the rally have publicly criticised Saied’s policies in the past.

On Wednesday, a group of 45 civil society groups had issued a statement rejecting “any interference by the executive authority in the judiciary’s work”.

They said the CSM, despite its “shortcomings”, was the only institution guaranteeing the judiciary’s independence.

Saied’s move on July 25 to sack the government and suspend parliament was welcomed by many Tunisians tired of rule by political parties seen as corrupt and self-serving.

But his critics have accused him of pushing Tunisia down a slippery slope back to autocracy.

(AFP)

Biden to propose 4.6 percent pay raise for federal employees, the biggest hike in 20 years

Lisa Rein
Thu, February 10, 2022,

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 19: U.S. President Joe Biden answers questions during a news conference in the East Room of the White House on January 19, 2022 in Washington, DC. With his approval rating hovering around 42-percent, Biden is approaching the end of his first year in the Oval Office with inflation rising, COVID-19 surging and his legislative agenda stalled on Capitol Hill.

 (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - Federal employees and military service members would receive average raises of 4.6 percent next January under the budget President Joe Biden will propose in March, marking what would be the workforce's largest salary hike in two decades, according to senior officials at two federal agencies.

The pay increase would follow an average 2.7 percent raise that took effect last month for 2.1 million executive branch workers, as Biden proposed early last year. The increase took effect by default under a federal pay law after Congress took no position on the increase by the end of December.


The salary boost Biden will propose for 2023 will be part of a wide-ranging budget the administration is expected to release in early March for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Raises are paid in January.

The Office of Management and Budget declined to comment. The senior officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the budget proposal publicly.

A 4.6 percent raise would be the largest since 2002, when the workforce received the same increase. The raise two years earlier, in 2000, averaged 4.8 percent, the largest since 1981.

The salary proposal, first reported by Federal News Network, received an early endorsement from congressional Democrats and federal employee unions. It represents the second year that Biden has relied on guidance from a federal pay law that calls for tying raises to a Labor Department index of private-sector wage growth called the Employment Cost Index, in this case growth from October 2020 through September 2021.

The formula sometimes has been followed, and sometimes not, in White House budget plans under both parties. President Donald Trump twice proposed freezing salary rates and two other years came in under the recommendation of the pay index, although federal employees ultimately received raises each year during his term, ranging from an across-the-board 1 percent to 3.1 percent.

Biden's approach underscores his administration's close partnership with unions, whose collective bargaining power in the federal government is limited to working conditions, not wages, which are set instead by Congress. Biden established a contrast with the Trump administration early in his presidency with executive orders and rhetoric that shifted course from what was widely viewed as hostility toward civil servants by Trump.

Federal employee unions have enjoyed renewed clout in the current administration, for example, by largely setting the direction at some agencies for when their members will return to the office from remote work during the pandemic, in some cases pushing return dates well into the spring. Permanent telework is also expected to be a fixture of post-pandemic work life for some federal employees.

This week, a White House task force led by Vice President Harris and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh made dozens of recommendations to federal agencies to embrace union organizing and membership, both inside and outside the government.

The report said the government has a crucial role to play as a "model employer" that can improve access to organized labor, with the goal of inspiring better pay and workplace protections for the private sector. Agencies were urged to disclose in job announcements whether the position would have union representation and tell new hires about their organized labor rights.

Democrats already have unveiled legislation in the House and Senate seeking an average 5.1 percent raise for federal employees next year. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii.).

"In Joe Biden, we finally have a president who values the federal workforce and recognizes federal employees as the dedicated public servants they are," Connolly, whose Northern Virginia district has tens of thousands of federal workers, said in a statement. "I look forward to working with his administration to provide a much-deserved pay increase, in line with my FAIR Act, for federal employees who have worked selflessly on the frontlines of this pandemic in service to the American people."

Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 150,000 federal employees, said of Biden's forthcoming proposal, "We . . . fully expect it will be a much more generous proposal than those of his immediate predecessor."

"Given the complex problems that the federal workforce is tackling, from lifesaving research to national security, it is time to increase federal salaries so agencies can compete to attract and keep skilled employees to meet those challenges head on," Reardon said.

Federal raises are expressed in terms of averages because they typically are divided into two parts: one paid across the board and the other a "locality" component that differs among some four dozen city areas, with a catchall rate for other locations.

The average 2.7 percent increase paid in January, for example, ranged from 2.42 to 3.21 percent, with employees working in the Washington-Baltimore area receiving 3.02 percent.

A 4.6 percent raise probably would be similarly divided, although details would come later in the year.

The proposed raise technically would apply only to white-collar employees below the senior levels who are paid under the General Schedule pay system. Blue-collar employees, who make up about 9 percent of the federal workforce, fall under a separate system, but for years their raises generally have matched those of white-collar employees. Biden announced in late January that he was increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, a directive affecting about 70,000 blue-collar federal workers and 300,000 contract employees.

Federal employee raises do not affect cost-of-living adjustments for federal retirees. Those increases are linked to an inflation measure that boosted retiree annuities last month by 5.9 or 4.9 percent, depending on which of the two federal retirement systems applied to them.

The 2023 retiree adjustment will be determined in October, based on inflation over the prior 12 months.