ARYAN CHAUVINISM AND CASTISM

Textbook extolling ‘advantages’ of dowry

 system which helps ‘ugly looking girls’

stirs up anger in India

By Shweta Sharma

The Independent

 2 days ago

A sociology textbook has sparked outrage in India for extolling the alleged advantages of the dowry system and promoting the illegal practice.

The book, Textbook for Sociology for Nurses , by TK Indrani is part of the curriculum for second year bachelor of science students.

According to the book, “ugly looking girls can be married off with attractive dowry with well or ugly looking boys” and the practice of dowry “is helpful in establishing new households” as furniture and appliances such as refrigerators and vehicles are given to grooms.

“Because of burden of dowry, many parents have started educating their girls. When the girls are educated or even employed, the demand for dowry will be less. Thus it is an indirect advantage,” the author added.

Dowry , a payment at marriage from parents to daughters, is an ancient tradition thought to date back to at least 200BC.

It is said to have been widely prevalent in many parts of the world, including western Europe. The practice has virtually disappeared in most of the world, but persists in contemporary India and some other Asian countries such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

In India, dowries have been prohibited since 1961 and criminalised since the 1980s. Yet, in some parts of the country, during a wedding, the woman’s family gives the groom’s family dowry in the form of cash, clothes, jewellery, vehicles or household commodities.

The centuries-old tradition leaves women vulnerable to domestic violence and even death. There are about 7,000 recorded dowry deaths every year in India. In 2020 alone, India’s national crime records bureau listed 6,966 cases of dowry deaths – nearly 19 women died every day that year.

A page from Textbook for Sociology for Nurses has been widely shared of social media, prompting censure and calls for the scrapping of such regressive texts.

Member of Parliament Priyanka Chaturvedi on Monday wrote to India’s education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, seeking an immediate stop to the circulation of the book that has listed the “merits and advantages” of the dowry system .

“It is appalling how such derogatory and problematic texts remain in circulation. That a textbook elaborating the merits of dowry can actually exist in our curriculum is a shame for the nation and its Constitution,” she said in the letter.

“It is extremely unfortunate we have such outdated ideas prevailing despite dowry being a criminal act. It is more concerning that students are being exposed to such regressive content and no action has been taken so far,” Ms Chaturved said in her letter.

She later added that the education minister has promised to ensure the book is removed from the curriculum and action is taken against the publishers.

Many others also called out academic bodies for allowing the circulation of such a book.

“Shocking is an understatement!! A sociology textbook 4 [for] nurses hails dowry as boon to society. I wonder if there [is] any official scrutiny, qty [quality] checks or academic committee under the state or central Edu [education] Ministry which whets such material B4 [before] it [is] cleared 4 [for] academic purposes,” Sangita Reddy, the joint managing director of Apollo Hospitals, said.

Following the outrage, the Indian Nursing Council, the national regulatory body for nurses, distanced itself from the book.

“Indian Nursing Council as a policy does not endorse any author or publication nor has allowed any author to use the name of Indian Nursing Council for their publications,” the statement read.

It added that it “strongly condemns any derogatory content which is against the prevailing law of the land.”

The Ukraine war exposes how global food markets can't feed the hungry

Hilal Elver
5 April 2022 

Countries in the Middle East and North Africa region will be particularly impacted by wheat shortages

A Palestinian worker holds wheat grains in southern Gaza on 21 March 2022 (AFP)

A month has passed since Russia invaded Ukraine, and we are only beginning to truly understand what this lawless attack means for the world order.

Alongside the refugee crisis and potential gas shortages, the most dire global spillover consequence is the disruption of global food systems, with devastating impacts in parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, where millions are already facing starvation.

Higher prices will have immediate adverse effects, imposing additional hardships on impoverished populations and fuelling political instability

Even before the war, humanitarian agencies were scrambling to respond to countries on the brink of famine in the Middle East and North Africa region, where localised crises have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on global supply chains.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, world hunger and malnutrition have been on the rise for years. The UN’s “Zero Hunger by 2030” goal is looking unreachable; at this point, it would be viewed as a “victory” if world hunger levels could be restabilised at 2015 levels.

Russia and Ukraine are an important factor in this crisis. Known as the breadbasket of Europe with their fertile, rich soil, they account for around 15 percent of global wheat production and nearly 30 percent of exports, along with 80 percent of global sunflower oil production. Ukraine is also a key exporter of maize, while Russia provides about 15 percent of the world’s fertiliser supply.

The Black Sea region plays an important role in the global wheat market, but the war has disrupted the shipment of food exports. If the war continues until the planting season, production and harvesting will be disrupted, with the effects reverberating across Europe, the MENA region and parts of Asia.

Alternative markets

In the face of such disruptions, most European countries will simply turn to alternative distant markets, at the cost of higher prices.

But in the MENA region, where wheat is a staple food, higher prices will have immediate adverse effects, imposing additional hardships on impoverished populations and fuelling political instability. As wheat prices soar, the UN has warned that the war could cause up to 13.1 million more people to go hungry worldwide.

A food crisis can be a flashpoint. Recall Egypt in 2011, when wheat shortages triggered riots that led to the toppling of former leader Hosni Mubarak. Egypt currently gets 60 percent of its wheat imports from Russia and 40 percent from Ukraine. The government is already calculating how long national food stocks will last if the war grinds on.

Governments across the MENA region, including Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria, regularly subsidise wheat prices, as people traditionally rely on a wheat-based diet. High prices will lead to lower subsidies, meaning people will be unable to afford as much bread. In poor rural areas, the impacts will be particularly dire.


In Yemen, where the ongoing war is often described as the worst humanitarian disaster of our time, more than 20 million people need humanitarian aid, while tens of thousands are at risk of dying from famine. Humanitarian agencies are facing tragic choices, including how best to allocate scarce food supplies between the hungry and the starved.
Broken supply chains

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, broken global supply chains have proved difficult to restore. Food prices have reached their highest levels in more than a decade, while global inflation has had knock-on effects for developing countries that rely on food imports. High food and fuel prices have been devastating for food-insecure countries that survive only through massive infusions of humanitarian aid.

It turns out that market globalisation in food systems has gone too far, coming with a huge price tag during challenging times

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned about a coming “hurricane of hunger”. The potential collapse of already fragile states warrants immediate attention from global leaders. The reliance on commodities such as wheat, and the fact that its production and trade are dominated by a handful of countries and corporations, exposes systemic vulnerabilities in global food systems at times of uncertainty and crisis.

This alarming situation has led to global soul-searching when it comes to agricultural policies, with governments seeking alternative markets and considering how to produce more at home. It turns out that market globalisation in food systems has gone too far, coming with a huge price tag during challenging times.

Amid this backdrop, we should look favourably upon transformations of food systems from global to local; from concentrated power to a more equitable and dispersed model. This is a tall order, and it cannot be realised anytime soon without a strong political will.

It can only be realised if the world community commits itself to just and sustainable food systems that respect, protect and fulfill human rights and food sovereignty for local communities, and eschews the financialisation of food markets that disconnects us from humanity.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Hilal Elver is a law professor and distinguished global fellow at the UCLA School of Law, Resnick Food Law and Policy Center; A member of the High Level Panel of Expert (HLPE) at the UN World Committee on Food Security (CFS); and the UN Former Special Rapporteur on Right to Food (2014-2020).

Hundreds of dogs found dead from starvation in Ukrainian animal shelter

Charity workers make grim discovery as Russian troops withdraw from area near Kyiv

A dog wanders around destroyed homes in Bucha, near Kyiv. Hundreds of other dogs in the town died in a deserted animal shelter. AP

Neil Murphy
Apr 05, 2022

Hundreds of dogs have been found starved to death at an animal shelter after it was taken by Russian troops fighting in Ukraine.

Animal welfare charity Uanimals say more than 300 dogs died after being locked in their cages since the start of the invasion on February 24.

Concerned charity workers were unable to visit the shelter in the town of Borodyanka, about 40 kilometres from the centre of Kyiv, due to heavy fighting in the area.

READ MORE

Traumatised Ukrainian zoo animals struggle to adapt amid conflict

The team was eventually able to visit the shelter on April 1 after the withdrawal of Russian troops, only to discover most of the dogs had perished from hunger.

Uanimals said 485 dogs were being looked after in the shelter before the invasion but only 150 survived, while all suffered from dehydration and severe malnutrition.

More than two dozen of those in the most serious condition were taken to private clinics for treatment, with several of them dying on the way.

Unverified footage purportedly taken in the shelter was shared on social media allegedly showing bodies of dead animals piled up and being dumped in wheelbarrows to be buried.

Uanimals announced on social media it was prepared to pay 50,000 hryvnia ($1,700) to anyone who rescues some of the surviving animals.

The group criticised the director of the Kyiv veterinary hospital, which owns the shelter, for failing to organise the proper care of the animals and an evacuation. Uanimals, which has filed a detailed report with police, said the deaths were preventable.

Residents say Russian President Vladimir Putin’s soldiers deliberately killed civilians as he withdraws his struggling troops from around Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, including from Bucha.

A mass grave and bodies with tied hands that were shot at close range were discovered in Bucha, a tow was recaptured from Russian forces at the weekend. Moscow denies the allegations and says the scenes were staged.

Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy has issued a warning that worse evidence of mass killings of civilians by Russian forces will surface as the Mr Putin repositions his troops to the south-east.

On Tuesday, France's anti-terrorist prosecutor said it had opened three inquiries over possible war crimes in Ukraine, related to acts against French citizens in the country.

The UN Human Rights Council has already condemned reported human rights abuses by Russian forces and launched an investigation into alleged war crimes. The UN’s International Court of Justice in The Hague has ordered Russia to halt the invasion, describing it as "unjustified".

Animal shelter in L'viv, Ukraine - in pictures














Dogs at a home for rescued animals in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. 

Foxes held in Aviary

Cat

People walking dogs at shelter, photos, visiting, etc.

A VAST NUMBER OF UKRAINIAN REFUGEES TOOK THEIR ANIMAL COMPANIONS WITH THEM 

All photos by AFP
Updated: April 05, 2022, 8:58 AM

How a Secret Cold War Project Led to Signs of Ancient Life—and a New Warning About the Future

Researchers found fossils in a forgotten ice core that rewrite Greenland’s icy past.

BY GEMMA TARLACH

MARCH 15, 2021


Northern Greenland's ice sheet is a mile thick in places—but still at risk of melting away entirely, raising sea levels by up to 20 feet, say researchers.

MICHAEL STUDINGER/NASA
In This Story

PLACE
Camp Century (Project Iceworm)

ANDREW CHRIST REMEMBERS THE DAY he became part of “this 60-year, weird, wild Cold War story.” It was 2019, and the University of Vermont researcher was just four days away from defending his dissertation. He was beyond stressed, and had better things to do than help examine an ice core sample drilled decades earlier.

The core was subglacial sediment and rock, taken from below a mile of ice in 1966 at Camp Century, an American research base in Greenland that had served as cover for a secret—and failed—military project. Since being pulled from beneath the ice sheet, the sample had been separated from the rest of the core, had criss-crossed the Atlantic, was lost, and then rediscovered. But it had never been analyzed.

“Miraculously, it had stayed frozen all that time,” says Christ. “The first thing we did was melt it.” Christ and other geology department colleagues were sorting through sediment from the core sample, washing it off before the next stage of analysis, when he noted peculiar black specks floating in the water. He collected a few and put them under the microscope for a better look. “Oh my god, these are plants,” he remembers exclaiming. “I went full-on mad scientist.”

Researcher Andrew Christ (right) went “full-on mad scientist” with excitement when he realized a subglacial sample from Greenland contained freeze-dried plant fragments. COURTESY ANDREW CHRIST

After his initial giddiness, the significance of the specks sank in. Christ, the lead author on a paper published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, had found in the sediment “freeze-dried fossils” and other direct evidence that Greenland was ice-free in the last million years.

The finding is more than an academic curiosity: It has direct implications for our future. “It’s not ‘if’ Greenland is melting, but how fast,” says Joerg Schaefer, a coauthor and climate geochemist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Together with a sample from Central Greenland that Schaefer and colleagues analyzed in 2016, the Camp Century material shows, “There is no question: Greenland is an unstable ice sheet.”

For Schaefer, analyzing the Camp Century subglacial sample after it languished for more than half a century is a thrill, even though his team’s results are bad news. “As a scientist, it’s exciting,” he says. “As a citizen of the planet, it’s horrifying.”

Researchers had long thought that Greenland’s ice sheet, more than two miles thick in places, was essentially permanent, and had blanketed the island for more than two million years. The subglacial sample confirms the massive ice sheet can probably melt far more easily than most models suggest, which would dump enough water into the oceans to raise sea levels by up to 20 feet, all but wiping major cities such as London and Boston off the map.

Northwest Greenland, where Camp Century was built, was completely ice-free at least once in the last million years, and may have resembled this modern East Greenland landscape. JOSHUA BROWN/UVM

“This study is very important; [it shows] the Greenland Ice Sheet can disappear with the kind of climate warming we’re projecting over the next century,” says William Colgan, a climatologist for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland who was not involved in the research.

Earth’s polar regions are warming much faster than the rest of the planet, with most models suggesting a rise of at least 14 degrees Fahrenheit* (more than 8 degrees Celsius) in the next century. Together with the 2016 analysis, the new Camp Century paper shows that such a temperature bump is enough to melt the ice sheet and cause catastrophic sea rise. “The Greenland Ice Sheet can disappear,” says Colgan. “It is remarkably climate-sensitive.”

The Camp Century sample’s role in rethinking the impact of climate change is just the latest twist in its strange history. In 1959, the American army set up Camp Century in northwestern Greenland, ostensibly for scientific research. The site’s true purpose, however, was Project Iceworm: a secret Cold War plan to build hundreds of miles of tunnels about 25 feet into the ice to store nuclear missiles within striking range of the Soviet Union.

Camp Century staff, seen here in 1960, excavated tunnels about 25 feet below the ice sheet’s surface before abandoning the project 

U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS, COLD REGIONS RESEARCH AND ENGINEERING LABORATORY

The secret military plan never happened—engineers quickly learned how rapidly and unpredictably the ice can shift, making the site highly unstable and wholly unsuitable for nuclear weapons. Colgan, the project manager for the Camp Century Climate Monitoring Program, is one of a handful of people who have been to the site of the former Army installation, now buried under more than 100 feet of accumulated snow and ice. “The tunnels are collapsed and compressed,” he says. “The snow has turned to ice with pancakes of debris.”

Camp Century was abandoned in 1967, just a year after its engineers managed a true scientific feat: drilling the first ice cores. Together with more recent cores from Antarctica and elsewhere in Greenland, these slim cylinders of ice provide a crucial record of ancient climate conditions that researchers have since used both to understand our past and model our future. Colgan says Camp Century has been invaluable for science, now more than ever.

“Camp Century was the first ice core program and we’re still learning from it,” Colgan says, adding that the Cold War–era team probably realized the site’s unsuitability as a missile base very early in their work, but persevered in the name of science. The subglacial sample, he says, “only exists because they wouldn’t take no for an answer.... They punched all the way into the bedrock and even then kept going.”

Some of the mile-long Camp Century ice core had been previously studied. After being collected in 1966, however, the subglacial core sample—about 12 feet of frozen mud and bedrock from below the ice—was stored in an Army lab freezer, then at the University of Buffalo. The sample was eventually sent to Denmark, where it languished yet again, at the University of Copenhagen’s ice core archive.

Some of the plant fragments Christ found in the Camp Century sample look as if they were alive yesterday, despite being up to a million years old. ANDREW CHRIST

In 2017, as staff prepared to upgrade the facility, someone noticed unopened boxes of Camp Century core samples. Inside, rather than the slim cylinders typical of ice cores, they found glass jars of subglacial rock and clumps of frozen sediment. Almost immediately, the find became a sensation in the field. Getting a comparable subglacial sample today using modern drilling technology would have been prohibitively expensive.

“We knew how important these samples would be. All of us started shaking and even drooling a bit,” says Schaefer. As word of the samples spread, he flew to Copenhagen with University of Vermont geologist Paul Bierman in hopes of negotiating for some of the material. “We were trying not to let them see how excited we were. We just tried to keep it together.”

Subglacial material, collected from where the drill hit sediment and bedrock below the ice sheet, contains information the ice does not. Exposed rock, like everything else on Earth’s surface, gets bombarded with cosmic rays, producing chemical signatures, called cosmogenic nuclides, that can be used to establish whether, and when, an area was ice-free. “The nuclides are only produced if the rock sees open sky,” Schaefer says. The work of dating the material is “really, really hard,” says Colgan, but the Camp Century sample has been initially dated, with confidence, as less than a million years old, lining up with the previously studied sample from Central Greenland.

Christ, Schaefer, and their colleagues continue to analyze the Camp Century material to narrow its age range and learn more about the plant material it preserved, which is unique, since massive ice deposits usually destroy organic material. The next phase of research, already underway, includes searching for traces of DNA that could be used to determine the species present, and even reconstruct the entire ecosystem. So far it appears similar to modern Arctic tundra.

Unexpected “black specks” in a subglacial sediment sample turned out to frozen fossil plant parts. ANDREW CHRIST

There’s yet more to the Camp Century core to explore. The very bottom layers of the sample include sediment that may be up to three million years old, and include more organic matter that possibly, says Christ, could be “the oldest [material] ever recovered from under the ice.”

Camp Century may never have hosted nuclear weapons, but is proving to be far more significant than even its planners imagined.

*Correction: This post previously stated a temperature rise of at least 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The correct figure is at least 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ice Hunt - James Rollins

https://jamesrollins.com › book › ice-hunt

At an abandoned World War II-era Russian base beneath the Arctic ice, U.S. scientists find a treasure trove of biological and geological discoveries and a ...

How Orangutans Changed Their Behavior After Devastating Fires

Primatologists found the disaster’s effects lingered years after the smoke cleared from Borneo’s forests.

BY BRIDGET ALEX

APRIL 5, 2022


A female orangutan and her three-year-old offspring from Central Kalimantan, Borneo; primatologists found the primates reduced social interaction in the wake of destructive fires. 

ANUP SHAH/GETTY IMAGES

IT’S AROUND 4 A.M. on the island of Borneo, and a few researchers have already left camp. In darkness, they creep along boardwalk trails: lines of single planks of wood that offer solid footing in the swamp forest. Where the planks end, the scientists step gingerly into knee-deep muck and toe along tree roots.

The team hopes to reach a slumbering orangutan before she wakes and urinates. They’ll try to catch the stream in a baggie on a stick, as the animal pees from her leafy nest in the trees. Then, they’ll follow her, logging her activity every two minutes until nightfall. The morning urine sample, and more baggies filled throughout the day, will eventually be analyzed in the lab.

Stalking orangutans in a tropical swamp forest of Southeast Asia isn’t easy. “If you think you’re standing on solid ground at any point, that’s an illusion,” says Wendy Erb, a primatologist who has studied the animals in Borneo for the past decade. One slip from a root and the researchers will be fully soaked. Erb and colleagues refer to especially sodden parts of the forest as “the swamps of sadness.”

Researchers use narrow boardwalks in the forests around Borneo’s Tuanan Orangutan Research Station in both the swampy wet season (left) and the fire-prone dry season (right). 

TUANAN ORANGUTAN RESEARCH PROJECT/COURTESY MARIA VAN NOORDWIJK

During the dry season, roughly March through October, the ground hardens and trekking becomes relatively easy. But then the researchers—and the animals they study—face a more serious risk than mud. The swamps are made of peat, slowly decaying dead stuff that is highly combustible. The slightest spark can set the forest ablaze.

That’s what happened in 2015, an extra-dry year due to El Niño. Hundreds of fires raged across Borneo. Orangutans and other forest-dwellers fled from flames, but could not escape the noxious, bleary smoke that smothered their habitat for months. “It’s like this yellowy orange haze. It’s something like a dream world,” Erb says.

Even after the smoke cleared, it continued to cause problems. The haze had starved trees of fresh air and sunlight, and fruit—the preferred food of orangutans—became scarce. Stuck in a less-bountiful forest, ape relations frayed. Adults avoided each other, scuffled more often, and cast off their own kids. A recent paper in the International Journal of Primatology documents these behavioral changes and shows, says study author and University of Zurich primatologist Maria van Noordwijk, “These fires really have a long-term effect.”

An adult male orangutan, photographed through the wildfire-fueled haze that descended across Borneo in 2015. 

TUANAN ORANGUTAN RESEARCH PROJECT/COURTESY MARIA VAN NOORDWIJK

After chimpanzees and gorillas, orangutans are our next closest kin in the great ape family. In the wild, the critically endangered primates can only be found on the Southeast Asian islands of Borneo and Sumatra, where they spend most of their time resting, munching, or moving between tree branches. Some 2,500 wild orangutans dwell in the Mawas Reserve, about 1,000 square miles of swamp forest in Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo. On a small patch of this forest, in the early 2000s, van Noordwijk and colleagues built a few tin-roofed huts and opened the Tuanan Orangutan Research Station. Since then, thanks to more than 60,000 hours of observation, the team has documented over 70 different orangutans, most of which are habituated to the scientists’ presence.

“There’s nothing more magical in the world than being completely ignored by a wild orangutan, and just having them go about their day, and go about their activities,” says Alison Ashbury, a coauthor based at the University of Konstanz.

Socially, orangutans are “the introverts of the forest,” says Ashbury. At Tuanan, promiscuous males roam widely, mating with various females and then absconding. Females mostly keep to their own territories of about a square mile; offspring stay with their mothers for about eight years.

Despite their solitary proclivities, adult females do meet up for at least one reason: to let their kids romp together. Primatologists suspect these playdates are crucial for development. “Young orangutans learn so much socially, the same way that human kids do. They don’t have the innate instincts of other animals, where they can just figure it out on their own. They learn from their moms and their peers,” Ashbury says. And there’s much to learn: what to eat, how to climb and build nests from leafy branches, the dos and don’ts of orangutan society.

First responders attempt to put out a peat fire near a drainage canal in Indonesia in 2015; the canals lower the water table and make the peatlands more prone to catching fire in the dry season. 

MARTIN WOOSTER, CC BY 2.0/NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY

During the unprecedented 2015 fires, when more than 10,000 square miles of Indonesia burned, smoke particles in the air near the study site exceeded safe levels by up to 12 times. Because the swamps are peat, the fires can burn underground, travel along roots, and then pop up anywhere. About 10 percent of the Tuanan habitat burned, as the rest choked in smoke.

Researchers witnessed the orangutans coughing and physiologically stressed. “During the smoke time, they rest more. They travel less. They feed less… trying to save their energy,” says Sri Suci Utami Atmoko, a primatologist based at Jakarta’s Universitas Nasional. When males tried to make long calls—booming shouts to announce their presence—it sounded like they were choking, she says.

Ashbury, Atmoko, and colleagues analyzed recorded observations for 13 adult females over an eight-year period, from 2010 to 2018, that revealed changes in the apes’ lives before, during, and after the fires. During the fires and a subsequent three-year fruit “depression” with fewer resources, the animals ate lower-quality foods, including bark and leaves. They also rested more and roamed less—what Ashbury calls an “extreme energy saving strategy.” But most interesting to the scientists, the orangutans’ already low-key social lives took a hit.

“At first you had the impression that moms were just cranky,” says van Noordwijk. But the analysis showed more serious changes. Mothers spent less time with unrelated adults, which meant fewer playdates for their kids. The moms also pushed their older offspring away at a younger age than they did before the fires.

A female orangutan and her offspring moving through the thick forest of Central Borneo.

 TUANAN ORANGUTAN RESEARCH PROJECT/COURTESY MARIA VAN NOORDWIJK

Erb, who was not an author on the study, wonders “about the long-term consequences to these baby orangutans in terms of their social development and their ecological competency.”

Beyond orangutans, the new research is “really fascinating,” says University of Denver anthropologist Nicole Herzog, who was not involved in the study but researches primate responses to fires in other habitats. “Ecological change,” she says, “does lead to social reorganization.”

Though the scientists focused on orangutans in the paper, the forest holds many other rare species including leopards, slow lorises, the world’s smallest bears, and its biggest bats. Understanding unexpected long-term impacts on the ecosystem is important as climate change fuels more frequent forest fires—and potentially more changes to animal behavior that may linger long after the smoke clears.

Flying Taxi Pioneer Joby Sees Crowded U.K. as a Prime Market

Charlotte Ryan, Bloomberg News

Signage on a Joby Aviation Inc. Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft outside the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) during the company's initial public offering in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2021. Joby Aviation, which promises to build and operate a commercial fleet of aerial taxis by 2024, began trading Wednesday, testing the imaginations of public investors. The shares surged more than 12% during the first hour of trading. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- California startup Joby Aviation Inc. has its sights set on the U.K. as a future market for its flying-taxi business.

Britain’s investments in sustainability, combined with a dense concentration of large, crowded cities makes it an attractive location for electric vertical takeoff and landing craft, said Joby founder JoeBen Bevirt.

“The U.K. market is really spectacular,” Bevirt said in an interview in London. “When you come here you can really feel the value of what a service like ours could mean for people being able to get around.”

Joby is scouting out potential areas for expansion once the Santa Cruz-based company has launched flights in the U.S. Bevirt, who is also chief executive officer, said he sees the firm’s five-seater eVTOL connecting cities like Bristol and Cambridge with London, as well as providing links between U.K. regions.

Joby is targeting a price point of about $3 per passenger mile by 2026, meaning a trip from Cambridge to the capital would cost $120 or so.

While Joby intends to pursue approvals from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration first, it will then seek bilateral agreements with regulators in markets like the U.K.

Bevirt said last month that Joby is joining British aerospace lobby ADS “to help support the successful launch of fast, clean and convenient air taxi services,” and has been working with the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority to establish a path toward type certification for its aircraft.

Britain’s exit from the European Union means the regulator is taking an approval role for the first time in decades, and pushing to expand its competence to include fledgling technologies such as flying taxis.

U.K. Competitor

Joby’s eVTOL model has a planned range of 150 miles and a top speed of 200 mph, with production of the first aircraft planned for this year and service entry slated for 2024.

In targeting Britain, Joby would face a homegrown competitor in Bristol-based Vertical Aerospace, which is developing a five-seater with the same top speed and a range of 100 miles. It has already taken more than 1,300 orders, opting to sell direct to leasing firms and operators rather than run an Uber-like service as Joby intends.

Bevirt said his attention isn’t on rivals but “relentlessly focused on our own execution.”

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Cost Pressures From Ukraine War Hit African Economies, Data Show

Monique Vanek, Bloomberg News

BC-Cost-Pressures-From-Ukraine-War-Hit-African-Economies-Data-Show , Monique Vanek

(Bloomberg) -- Gauges measuring sentiment in the private sector fell in six of seven sub-Saharan African economies tracked in March, as supply disruptions from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine fan prices.  

The war has exacerbated trade shocks caused by the coronavirus pandemic and extreme weather. Prices of items such as sunflower oil, crude, fertilizer and wheat have soared since it began. 

In Kenya, the latest purchasing managers’ index compiled by S&P Global and Stanbic Bank points to near-unprecedented surges in input costs and output charges that were often a direct result of the conflict.

These price pressures meant many customers chose to reduce spending, leading to a smaller increase in sales across the private sector in the East African country, business output contracting for the second time in three months and confidence in future activity falling to the lowest level in the study’s history, the companies said in a statement.

In Ghana, where inflation is already at a near six-year high, cost pressures led to weak demand and prompted firms to scale back on purchasing activity, S&P Global said. The rate of decline in output, a sub-compenent of the index, was among the steepest in the series history, surpassed only by those seen during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March and April 2020.

South Africa’s PMI was the only one from the economies surveyed that didn’t decline in March, spurred by uptick in private-sector employment. However, the improvement masked a worsening of price and supply risks in Africa’s most industrialized economy, with business confidence in future activity weakening to a seven-month low.

Pricing data in South Africa “pointed to the second-fastest rise in output charges in the survey’s near 11-year history, as firms saw a substantial rise in costs arising from higher fuel and material prices,” S&P economist David Owen said.

Such price risks may place further pressure on central banks to raise interest rates and for governments to introduce measures to mitigate soaring costs. Ghana hiked its benchmark interest rate by 250 basis points in March, South Africa cut its fuel tax for two months and Zambia waived a 15% wheat-import duty.  

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Black-Swan Funds Thrive as Wall Street Doomsayers Have Their Day

Denitsa Tsekova and Libby Cherry, Bloomberg News

BC-Black-Swan-Funds-Thrive-as-Wall-Street-Doomsayers-Have-Their-Day , Denitsa Tsekova and Libby Cherry

(Bloomberg) -- Money manager Sushil Wadhwani could barely get a meeting started last year before clients started grilling him for advice on how to survive the next market crash.

So in February, the chief investment officer of PGIM Wadhwani duly launched a defensive fund that takes short positions in equities and buys haven currencies, among other things. 

“We would schedule a meeting to talk about our flagship strategy and in about five minutes they’d pivot,” said Wadhwani, who sat on the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England before starting a money management firm later acquired by PGIM Quantitative Solutions. “Clients said they’d prefer a highly reliable protective portfolio against equities going down.”

Demand for market hedges is growing on Wall Street as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparks a global security and energy crisis, just as inflation runs amok and the Federal Reserve gears up to hike rates aggressively.

So-called Black Swan funds designed to protect against extreme selloffs have grown to more than $5 billion from $3.8 billion at the end of 2020, according to Eurekahedge Pte Ltd. 

While the market impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was smaller than that of the global pandemic, it was enough to hand investing styles that ride low-probability but high-risk events their best month in February since Covid hit.

“With the latest crisis, people tend to become more fearful and then they suddenly realize the benefits of this kind of particular portfolio,” said Richard “Jerry” Haworth of 36 South Capital Advisors LLP, who manages one such strategy in London.

Amid war, entrenched inflation and fears that the Fed’s tightening campaign will spur an economic slowdown, returns in the first quarter cratered to the worst since 1980 across equity and fixed-income markets, data compiled by Bloomberg show. 

Now Nouriel Roubini, who earned the nickname “Dr. Doom” for his dark prognostications in the global financial crisis, warns the world may be “a standard deviation away from a semi Black Swan event.”

Read more: Roubini Sees Markets a Standard Deviation From Black Swan Event

All that is firing up the industry of doommongers. There are five exchange-traded funds devoted to tail risks in the U.S. -- three of which were launched last year alone. The Cambria Tail Risk ETF (ticker TAIL) remains the biggest of its kind by far, and sat on a record $425 million of assets last month -- more than six times the pre-pandemic level.

“Given what we saw with unpredictable events like Russia, this puts a new focus on tail risk and risk mitigation ETFs. These will do well during big market shocks -- like March 2020 and Russia invasion,” said Athanasios Psarofagis, an ETF analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.

A market Black Swan event is typically deemed as a more than three standard deviation move from the norm, with the odds of materializing just 0.3% in theory. Typically speaking, strategies designed to protect during such a move also try to stay flat during quiet periods by using multi-asset options that maintain their value or even increase over time, rather than decaying. 

The PGIM Wadhwani Tail Risk Strategy -- which initially launched for a big client and is not publicly marketed -- is designed for a windfall during a tail-risk event. But the Cayman Islands-listed strategy also trades commodities and Chinese fixed income in order to generate gains in normal markets.

“You want things in your portfolio which don’t cost you money in good years but which pay off in bad times,” Wadhwani said about the strategy that has so far returned 13% just two months after its launch. “Our strategy is convex in a bad scenario -- if the scenario is bad we tend to make quite a lot of money.”

Critics warn insurance premiums can eat long-term returns. A 2020 study by AQR Capital Management LLC found that a portfolio of out-of-the-money put options on the S&P 500 wins handily in short-term negative events, but the ongoing costs lead to underperformance during bad periods lasting longer than about three years.

Recent history offers fresh evidence that doomsday hedging can be loss-inducing, with the funds down 10% last year, per Eurekahedge.

Yet demand for stock hedges remains elevated with the 20-day average Cboe put-to-call ratio recently near the highest since May 2020. And with the threat of freakish market moves ever-present while Fed-induced recession fears pile up, there could be further gains in store for defensive strategies bracing for the next big one in global markets. 

“Since quantitative easing, volatility has become polarized,” said Alberto Gallo, a portfolio manager at Algebris UK Ltd. “There’s more days of sun, but when there are spikes, things get really ugly.”

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Facebook and Instagram block, then unblock, hashtags on Ukraine massacres

By 

Theo Wayt

April 5, 2022 

Facebook and Instagram blocked hashtags related to apparent atrocities

 committed by Russian troops in Ukraine.NurPhoto via Getty Images

Facebook and Instagram censored hashtags related to apparent Russian massacres of Ukrainian civilians, then unblocked them on Monday. 

The blocked hostages included #RussianWarCrimes, #Bucha and #BuchaMassacre — references to apparent atrocities uncovered in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha in recent days following the withdrawal of Russian troops. 

Horrific images from the town appeared to show civilian mass graves and unarmed people shot in the head with their hands tied behind their backs, prompting US President Joe Biden to call for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be put on trial for war crimes. 

A Ukrainian journalist appears to have first flagged the blocked Facebook and Instagram hashtags on Sunday morning. On Monday afternoon, Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company had unblocked the hashtags after a New York Times reporter drew additional attention to the issue. 

“This happened automatically because of the graphic content people posted using these hashtags,” Stone wrote in response to the reporter. “When we were made aware of the issue yesterday, we acted quickly to unblock the hashtags.” 

It’s unclear exactly how long the hashtags were blocked or how many posts were affected. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for more details. 

Meta has found itself at the center of several controversies related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia blocked both Facebook and Instagram in March in retaliation for the sites restricting Russian state propaganda accounts. 

Meta also loosened its hate speech policy in March to allow users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine war, Reuters reported. 

Meta blocked Facebook’s hashtags, then quickly allowed them back.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

Blocked hashtags included #RussianWarCrimes, #Bucha and #BuchaMassacre.

AP

Ukrainian authorities said they found evidence of war crimes after 

Russian troops withdrew from suburbs around Kyiv.

AP