Billionaires turn their backs on Biden: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos go to Twitter to get political

Both Bezos and Musks have curiously found their political voices at the same time — just as labor forces take hold

By JON SKOLNIK
PUBLISHED MAY 21, 2022 

SALON

Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden and Elon Musk (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

For years, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, who recently became the richest man in the world, has positioned himself as something of an ideological enigma. Online and in the media, the eccentric and outspoken billionaire has at various points in his life called himself a "socialist," a "registered independent," a "moderate,"and a "fiscal conservative." When it comes to political giving, Musk has donated to both former Presidents Barack Obama, a Democrat, and George Bush, a Republican. And in the 2020 presidential election, the Tesla executive threw his support behind Andrew Yang, an independent, and Kanye West, the pro-Trump turned anti-Trump rapper who received 70,000 votes on Election Day.

But this week, as Musk angles to acquire Twitter, a financial undertaking that has sounded alarms amongst liberals and free speech advocates, the tech billionaire sought to put an end to all the speculation, unveiling himself as, low and behold, a Republican.

"In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party," Musk tweeted. "But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold."
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RELATED: Trump will return: Elon Musk vows major change to Twitter under his ownership

Musk's political unmasking could prove incredibly consequential in the coming election cycle. For one, the billionaire's conservative leanings might portend a significant rollback of Twitter's content moderation policies. This is especially concerning when past elections have shown that conservatives are far more inclined than liberals to use Twitter as a means of spreading misinformation.

But for the most part, Musk has handwaved concerns about fake news, repeatedly stressing the value of "free speech" on Twitter.

"I think it's very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech," Musk said during a TED conference last month. "Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square, so it's just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law."

Back in April, Musk likewise implied that too many people on Twitter "fear free speech," saying, "I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law."

To be clear, Twitter, a privately-held company, has no legal obligation to uphold free speech, a constitutional right that ensures citizens can express themselves without government coercion or censorship. But conservatives like Musk have nevertheless insisted that the company systematically "censors" unpopular viewpoints. That sentiment became especially salient after Donald Trump was officially banned from Twitter back in January of last year, just days after a 2,000-strong horde of Trump supporters violently raided the Capitol building.

At the time, Twitter made clear that it removed Trump to prevent the risk of "further incitement of violence." But Musk has promised to reverse the action, saying it was a "mistake" to ban the former president because it ostracized his base.

"Permanent bans should be extremely rare and really reserved for accounts that are bots, or scam, spam accounts," he said at a conference earlier this month. "I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump," Musk said. "I think that was a mistake, because it alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice."
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RELATED: Elon Musk, Twitter and the future: His long-term vision is even weirder than you think

According to Zignal Labs and CrowdTangle, mentions of Trump plummeted by 34% on Twitter after the ban, and the circulation of misinformation dropped by 73%. But those numbers might increase if the former president's account is restored, potentially improving his odds of being re-elected.

Apart from election and misinformation concerns, Musk's impending ownership of Twitter is also likely to spell adversity for labor advocates, who have in recent years steered unprecedented union efforts across a spectrum of corporate goliaths, including Amazon, Starbucks, Apple and Alphabet (which owns Google).

This week, in his rebuke of the Democrats, Musk said that the party is "overly controlled by the unions and … class-action lawyers," calling unions "another form of a monopoly" that have "captured" President Biden.

https://twitter.com/moreperfectus/status/1526965699805069313

Musk's remarks presumably come in response to the president's apparent solidarity with various union efforts throughout the country. On the campaign trail, President Biden vowed to be "the most pro-union president" in American history. That promise was tested this month, when the president arranged a meeting with Christopher Smalls, the face of union election victory by Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York. Biden said that Smalls was "making good trouble and helping inspire a new movement of labor organizing across the country."

RELATED: The cult of Elon Musk: Why do some of us worship billionaires?

And while Musk is now well-known for sensationalistic ribble-rabble, his anti-union rhetoric is not just bluster. Up until 2021, the tech billionaire had been under a three-year federal investigation by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over possible union-busting at Tesla. The agency ultimately found last year that Musk threatened to strip workers of their pay and benefits, ordering the CEO to rehire an employee who was illegally fired for leading a union effort. The NLRB has also filed a complaint against Musk over the company's alleged surveillance and intimidation of workers attempting to join a union. "Anything union or pro-union is shut down really fast," one Tesla employee told The Guardian back in 2018. "Pro-union people are generally fired for made-up reasons," said another. "We are told Tesla would go bankrupt if we unionize because we are not a profitable company yet.

As of this writing, it remains unclear whether Musk's acquisition of Twitter will come to pass. This week, the executive said that there would be no deal until the site can prove that fewer than 5% of its user base is made up of bots. To make matters more complicated, on Thursday, the billionaire was freshly accused of sexual misconduct by one of his former flight attendants, who alleged that the tech magnate exposed himself to her, rubbed her leg without consent, offered to buy her a horse in exchange for sex acts, and had Tesla arrange a $250,000 settlement to keep her silent over the incident, according to Business Insider.

Musk, who also owns and operates SpaceX, is not the only billionaire to lock horns with the Biden administration as of late.

On Monday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the world's second richest man, got into an online scuffle with Biden over inflation after the president suggested that he would combat the soaring cost of food and fuel with corporate tax hikes.

RELATED: Behind the Joe Biden v. Jeff Bezos beef: What their inflation spat is really about

"You want to bring down inflation?" Biden tweeted. "Let's make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share."

Bezos immediately called the president's tweet "misdirection," suggesting that the Department of Homeland Security's newly-formed Disinformation Governance Board should flag the post.

"Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection," Bezos tweeted.


The exchange set off vigorous debate around the apparent link between inflation and corporate taxes, with many conservative pundits arguing that hikes might exacerbate price increases.

However, Lindsay Owens, Executive Director of the Groundwork Collaborative, told Salon that corporate tax hikes would disincentivize companies from applying excessive markups to their products.

"Since the pandemic, about 54% of the price increases we're seeing are coming from what we call the markup," she said in an interview. "That piece gets a lot less fun and a lot less lucrative," she added, when "it's taxed back and shipped off to the Treasury."
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RELATED: Why Joe Biden is afraid to blame Big Business for inflation

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told CNBC that "it doesn't take a huge leap" to figure out why Bezos would disapprove of higher corporate taxes. Bezos, he said, "opposes an economic agenda for the middle class that cuts some of the biggest costs families face … by asking the richest taxpayers and corporations to pay their fair share."

JON SKOLNIK is a staff writer at Salon. His work has appeared in Current Affairs, The Baffler, and The New York Daily News.

WHO calls emergency meeting as monkeypox cases cross 100 in Europe


21 May 2022 - 

BY JENNIFER RIGBY AND NATALIE GROVER

The first European case was confirmed on May 7 in an individual who returned to England from Nigeria.
Image: CDC/Brian W.J. Mahy/Handout via REUTERS


The World Health Organisation was due to hold an emergency meeting on Friday to discuss the recent outbreak of monkeypox, a viral infection more common to west and central Africa, after more than 100 cases were confirmed or suspected in Europe.

In what Germany described as the largest outbreak in Europe ever, cases have been reported in at least eight European countries – Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom - as well as the United States, Canada and Australia.

First identified in monkeys, the disease typically spreads through close contact and has rarely spread outside Africa, so this series of cases has triggered concern.

However, scientists do not expect the outbreak to evolve into a pandemic like Covid-19, given the virus does not spread as easily as SARS-COV-2.

Monkeypox is usually a mild viral illness, characterised by symptoms of fever as well as a distinctive bumpy rash.

"With several confirmed cases in the United Kingdom, Spain and Portugal, this is the largest and most widespread outbreak of monkeypox ever seen in Europe," said Germany's armed forces' medical service, which detected its first case in the country on Friday.


The World Health Organisation (WHO) committee due to meet is the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Infectious Hazards with Pandemic and Epidemic Potential (STAG-IH), which advises on infection risks that could pose a threat to global health.

It would not be responsible for deciding whether the outbreak should be declared a public health emergency of international concern, WHO's highest form of alert, which is currently applied to the Covid-19 pandemic.

COMMUNITY SPREAD

Fabian Leendertz, from the Robert Koch Institute, described the outbreak as an epidemic.

"However, it is very unlikely that this epidemic will last long. The cases can be well isolated via contact tracing and there are also drugs and effective vaccines that can be used if necessary," he said.

Still, the WHO's European chief said he was concerned that infections could accelerate in the region as people gather for parties and festivals over the summer months.

There isn't a specific vaccine for monkeypox, but data shows that the vaccines used to eradicate smallpox are up to 85% effective against monkeypox, according to the WHO.

British authorities said on Thursday they had offered a smallpox vaccine to some healthcare workers and others who may have been exposed to monkeypox.

Since 1970, monkeypox cases have been reported in 11 African countries. Nigeria has had a large outbreak since 2017 - so far this year there have been 46 suspected cases, of which 15 have since been confirmed, according to the WHO.

The first European case was confirmed on May 7 in an individual who returned to England from Nigeria.

Since then, more than 100 cases have been confirmed outside Africa, according to a tracker by a University of Oxford academic.




Many of the cases are not linked to travel to the continent. As a result, the cause of this outbreak is unclear, although health authorities have said that there is potentially some degree of community spread.

SEXUAL HEALTH CLINICS

The WHO said the early cases were unusual for three reasons: all but one have no relevant travel history to areas where monkeypox is endemic; most are being detected through sexual health services and among men who have sex with men, and the wide geographic spread across Europe and beyond suggests that transmission may have been going on for some time.

In Britain, where 20 cases have been now confirmed, the UK Health Security Agency said the recent cases in the country were predominantly among men who self-identified as gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men.

The 14 cases in Portugal were all detected in sexual health clinics and were men aged between 20 and 40 years old who self-identified as gay, bisexual or men who have sex with men.

Health authorities in Spain said 23 new cases were confirmed on Friday, mainly in the Madrid region where most infections were linked to an outbreak in an adult sauna.

It was too early to say if the illness has morphed into a sexually transmitted disease, said Alessio D'Amato, health commissioner of the Lazio region in Italy. Three cases have been reported so far in the country.

Sexual contact, by definition, is close contact, added Stuart Neil, professor of virology at Kings College London.

"The idea that there's some sort of sexual transmission in this, I think, is a little bit of a stretch," he said.

Scientists are sequencing the virus from different cases to see if they are linked, the WHO has said. The agency is expected to provide an update soon.

Reuters

A living wage doesn’t just benefit workers. It benefits businesses and society, too

One of the single-most-important things any company can do to reduce poverty is to pay its employees a living wage.

BY ANNA BARFORD AND JANE NELSON

05-21-22

It can be difficult to see a way out of the current cost-of-living crisis. Prices continue to rise, and there are fears that if nothing changes, many families will face serious financial hardship.

The effects of this will be devastating. Poverty causes premature death, poor nutrition, disease, and exhaustion. In the face of this bleak outlook, there is an urgent need for effective leadership to bring about change—but not just from governments. Businesses too can play a crucial role.

One of the single-most-important things any company can do to reduce poverty is to pay its employees a living wage. Our new report demonstrates in detail how a living wage not only benefits employees and workers, but also employers and society as a whole.

Receiving a living wage helps to break cycles of poverty by ensuring that pay is sufficient to cover household essentials as well as occasional emergencies or unexpected expenses.

Our expert interviewees reported that being paid a living wage can reduce stress levels and the excessive working hours sometimes needed to make ends meet. This in turn means fewer sick days and overall greater employee well-being.

From a business perspective, this can result in lower staff turnover, reducing recruitment and training costs. Productivity can increase, and there are even early signs that raising entry-level wages may be linked to increased revenue.

We also discovered that as living-wage commitments become more common, the benefits reach further into society. Wage increases stimulate spending in the local economy while reductions in poverty and inequality can lead to greater social cohesion.

In short, our report (produced by Business Fights Poverty, the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and Shift) supports growing evidence that living wages offer multiple benefits—beyond those experienced by only the individual workers.

This should provide businesses with the confidence to see wages not just as a net cost, but as a positive investment, too. After all, a business can only be as resilient as the workers it employs.

The wider impact on society is also clear. We found that living wages have the potential to not only help tackle poverty, but also address many of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. For instance, one of the goals includes “decent work for all,“and fair incomes are a core component of decent work. Tackling poverty can also improve access to housing, food, and better health.

Fortunately, being a living-wage employer is becoming a new marker of business leadership, which is valued by investors and consumers alike.

In the U.K., for example, Ikea, Everton Football Club, and the Nationwide Building Society are just three of over 10,000 employers who have committed to paying what the Living Wage Foundation describes as a “real living wage.” In practice, that means paying workers a minimum of 9.90 pounds, or about $12.33, per hour (11.05 pounds in London). Similar campaigns exist in other countries, including New Zealand and Canada.

RAISING THE BAR

Some companies are going even further, by extending living-wage commitments to include their suppliers. In 2021, Unilever announced plans to work toward a living wage for the people who provide goods and services to the company in areas like logistics and packaging. To achieve this, Unilever is partnering with suppliers to commit to and report on paying their workers at least a living wage.

Our report, which combined extensive analysis of previous research with numerous interviews, suggests that others should join them.

Annabel Beales, who coauthored the report with us, said: “Given the sheer scale of rising poverty, a shift to a living-wages economy is urgent, and we need more businesses to play their part. The decision to pay living wages offers businesses a lot in return for their investment in terms of performance, resilience, and stability.”

To move things forward, investors and CEOs should now feel confident that the payment of living wages is a sensible business decision. Meanwhile, governments can increase statutory minimum wages to reach living-wage levels.

Consumers too can push for progress through the power of their spending decisions and the businesses they support. For businesses, large and small, have an important role to play in combating the drivers of poverty—and can be economically more successful as a result.

Anna Barford is a Prince of Wales Global Sustainability Fellow, University of Cambridge; 

Jane Nelson is director of the Corporate Responsibility Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Discovery of ‘ghost’ fossils reveals plankton resilience to past global warming events





Ghost nannofossils (left) with virtual casts (right). The fossils are approximately 5 µm in length, 15 times narrower than the width of a human hair 

© S.M. Slater, P. Bown et al / Science journal.

PRESS RELEASE

An international team of scientists from the Natural History Museum, UCL (University College London), the University of Florence and the Swedish Museum of Natural History have found a remarkable type of fossilisation that has remained almost entirely overlooked until now.

An international team of scientists have discovered a new type of fossilisation
The ‘ghost’ fossils are imprints of single-celled plankton called coccolithophores
Their discovery is changing our understanding of how plankton in the oceans are affected by climate change

An international team of scientists from the Natural History Museum, UCL (University College London), the University of Florence and the Swedish Museum of Natural History have found a remarkable type of fossilisation that has remained almost entirely overlooked until now. The fossils are microscopic imprints, or ‘ghosts’, of single-celled plankton, called coccolithophores, that lived in the seas millions of years ago, and their discovery is changing our understanding of how plankton in the oceans are affected by climate change.

Coccolithophores are important in today’s oceans, providing much of the oxygen we breathe, supporting marine food webs, and locking carbon away in seafloor sediments. They are a type of nannoplankton that surround their cells with intricate plates made of calcium carbonate, called coccoliths, and these are what normally fossilise in rocks.

Declines in the abundance of normal coccolithophore fossils have been documented during multiple past global warming events, suggesting that these plankton were severely affected by climate change and ocean acidification. However, this new study presents records of abundant ‘ghost’ fossils from these warming intervals, suggesting that coccolithophores were more resilient to past climate change than was previously thought.

The researchers discovered the ‘ghost’ fossils, using powerful microscopes, in rocks from three past warming events that took place during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods.

The international team of researchers included Dr Sam Slater and Professor Vivi Vajda (Swedish Museum of Natural History), Professor Paul Bown (UCL), Professor Silvia Danise (University of Florence) and Professor Richard Twitchett (Natural History Museum, London).

‘The discovery of these beautiful ‘ghost’ fossils was completely unexpected’, says Dr Sam Slater. ‘We initially found them preserved on the surfaces of fossilised pollen, and it quickly became apparent that they were extremely abundant during intervals where normal coccolithophore fossils were rare or absent – this was a total surprise!’

Despite their microscopic size, when coccolithophores multiply rapidly, they can become so abundant that they form blooms in the ocean that be seen from space. After the plankton die, their exoskeletons sink to the seafloor, accumulating in vast numbers, forming rocks such as chalk.

‘The preservation of these ‘ghost’ nannofossils is truly remarkable,’ says Professor Paul Bown. ‘The ‘ghost’ fossils are extremely small ‒ their length is approximately five thousandths of a millimetre, 15 times smaller than the width of a human hair! ‒ but the detail of the original plates is still perfectly visible, even though the plates themselves have dissolved away, so we can easily tell which species were present.’

The ghost fossils formed while the sediments at the seafloor were being buried and turned into rock. As more mud was gradually deposited on top, the resulting pressure squashed the coccolith plates and other organic remains together, and the hard coccoliths were pressed into the surfaces of pollen, spores and other soft organic matter in the sediments. Later, acidic waters inside the pore spaces of the rock dissolved away the actual coccoliths, leaving behind just their impressions – the ‘ghosts’.

‘Normally, palaeontologists only search for the fossil coccoliths themselves, and if they don’t find any then they often assume that these ancient plankton communities collapsed,’ explains Professor Vivi Vajda. ‘These ‘ghost’ fossils show us that sometimes the fossil record plays tricks on us and there are other ways that these calcareous nannoplankton may be preserved, which need to be taken into account when trying to understand responses to past climate change.’

Professor Silvia Danise says, ‘‘Ghost’ nannofossils are likely common in the fossil record, but they have been overlooked due to their tiny size and cryptic mode of preservation. We think that this peculiar type of fossilisation will be useful in the future, particularly when studying geological intervals where the original coccoliths are missing from the fossil record.’

The study focused on the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event (T-OAE), an interval of rapid global warming in the Early Jurassic (~183 million years ago), caused by an increase in CO2-levels in the atmosphere from massive volcanism in the Southern Hemisphere. The researchers found ‘ghost’ nannofossils associated with the T-OAE from the UK, Germany, Japan and New Zealand, but also from two similar global warming events in the Cretaceous: Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a (~120 million years ago) of Sweden, and Oceanic Anoxic Event 2 (~94 million years ago) of Italy.

‘The ‘ghost’ fossils show that nannoplankton were abundant, diverse and thriving during past warming events in the Jurassic and Cretaceous, where previous records have assumed that plankton collapsed due to ocean acidification,’ explains Professor Richard Twitchett. ‘These fossils are rewriting our understanding of how the calcareous nannoplankton respond to warming events’.

The study Global record of ‘ghost’ nannofossils reveals plankton resilience to high-CO2 and warming is published in Science.

Images available to download here.

About the Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum is both a world-leading science research centre and the most-visited indoor attraction in the UK last year. With a vision of a future in which both people and the planet thrive, it is uniquely positioned to be a powerful champion for balancing humanity’s needs with those of the natural world.

It is custodian of one of the world’s most important scientific collections comprising over 80 million specimens accessed by researchers from all over the world both in person and via over 30 billion digital data downloads to date. The Museum’s 350 scientists are finding solutions to the planetary emergency from biodiversity loss through to the sustainable extraction of natural resources.

Records broken for four climate change indicators

Friday, 20 May, 2022


Four key climate change indicators — greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification — set new records in 2021, in another clear sign that human activities are causing planetary-scale changes on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere.

That’s according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)’s State of the Global Climate 2021 report, which also confirmed that the past seven years have been the warmest seven years on record. The report also finds that 2021 was ‘only’ one of the seven warmest because of a La Niña event at the start and end of the year, which had a temporary cooling effect but did not reverse the overall trend of rising temperatures. The average global temperature in 2021 was about 1.11 (± 0.13)°C above the pre-industrial level.

Released shortly after the WMO’s latest Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, the State of the Global Climate report complements the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, which includes data up to 2019. The new WMO report provides information and practical examples for policymakers on how the climate change indicators outlined in the IPCC reports played out during recent years globally and how the associated implications on extremes have been felt at national and regional level in 2021. Dozens of experts contributed to the report.

“It is just a matter of time before we see another warmest year on record,” said WMO Secretary-General Professor Petteri Taalas. “Our climate is changing before our eyes. The heat trapped by human-induced greenhouse gases will warm the planet for many generations to come. Sea level rise, ocean heat and acidification will continue for hundreds of years unless means to remove carbon from the atmosphere are invented. Some glaciers have reached the point of no return and this will have long-term repercussions in a world in which more than 2 billion people already experience water stress.”

Other key messages from the report are as follows:

Greenhouse gas concentrations reached a new global high in 2020, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 413.2 ppm globally, or 149% of the pre-industrial level. Data from specific locations indicate that they continued to increase in 2021 and early 2022, with monthly average CO2 at Mona Loa in Hawaii reaching 416.45 ppm in April 2020, 419.05 ppm in April 2021 and 420.23 ppm in April 2022.

The upper 2000 m depth of the ocean continued to warm in 2021 and it is expected that it will continue to warm in the future — a change that is irreversible on centennial to millennial time scales. All datasets agree that ocean warming rates show a particularly strong increase in the past two decades. The warmth is penetrating to ever deeper levels, and much of the ocean experienced at least one ‘strong’ marine heatwave at some point in 2021.

Ocean acidification owing to CO2 absorption threatens organisms and ecosystem services, and hence food security, tourism and coastal protection. As the pH of the ocean decreases, its capacity to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere also declines. The IPCC concluded that “there is very high confidence that open ocean surface pH is now the lowest it has been for at least 26,000 years and current rates of pH change are unprecedented since at least that time”.

Global mean sea level reached a new record high in 2021, after increasing at an average 4.5 mm per year over the period 2013–2021. This is more than double the rate of between 1993 and 2002 and is mainly due to the accelerated loss of ice mass from the ice sheets. This has major implications for hundreds of millions of coastal dwellers and increases vulnerability to tropical cyclones.

Although the glaciological year 2020–2021 saw less melting than in recent years, there is a clear trend towards an acceleration of mass loss on multi-decadal timescales. 2021 was a particularly punishing year for glaciers in Canada and the US Northwest, with record ice mass loss as a result of heatwaves and fires in June and July. Greenland experienced an exceptional mid-August melt event and the first-ever recorded rainfall at Summit Station, the highest point on the ice sheet at an altitude of 3216 m.

Heatwaves broke records across western North America and the Mediterranean. California’s Death Valley reached 54.4°C on 9 July, equalling a similar 2020 value as the highest recorded in the world since at least the 1930s, and Syracuse in Sicily reached 48.8°C. British Columbia reached 49.6°C on 29 June, and this contributed to more than 500 reported heat-related deaths and fuelled devastating wildfires which, in turn, worsened the impacts of flooding in November.

Flooding induced economic losses of US$17.7 billion in Henan province of China, and Western Europe experienced some of its most severe flooding on record in mid-July associated with economic losses in Germany exceeding US$20 billion. There was also heavy loss of life.

Drought affected many parts of the world, including the Horn of Africa, Canada, the western United States, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. In sub-tropical South America, drought caused big agricultural losses and disrupted energy production and river transport. Eastern Africa is meanwhile facing the prospect that the rains will fail for a fourth consecutive season, placing Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia into a drought of a length not experienced in the last 40 years.

Hurricane Ida was the most significant of the North Atlantic season, making landfall in Louisiana on 29 August, with economic losses in the United States estimated at US$75 billion.

The ozone hole over the Antarctic was unusually large and deep, reaching its maximum area of 24.8 million km2 (the size of Africa) as a result of a strong and stable polar vortex and colder than average conditions in the lower stratosphere.

Hydrometeorological hazards continued to contribute to internal displacement. The countries with the highest numbers of displacements recorded as of October 2021 were China (more than 1.4 million), the Philippines (more than 386,000) and Vietnam (more than 664,000).

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/bilderstoeckchen

Mystery of Hepatitis Cases in Kids Deepens as CDC Probe Continues

Adobe Stock
Dennis Thompson



FRIDAY, May 20, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Evidence continues to mount that a specific strain of adenovirus could be implicated in a wave of American children who've developed acute hepatitis of unknown origin, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said Friday.

"The evidence is accumulating that there's a role for adenovirus, particularly adenovirus 41," Dr. Jay Butler, the CDC's deputy director for infectious diseases, said in a Friday media briefing. "The exact role that it plays, I think, is where we're really wanting to focus the investigation." Adenoviruses are a common form of virus that can cause everything from colds to bronchitis to pinkeye, according to the CDC.

One more U.S. death related to pediatric hepatitis was reported on Thursday, Butler said, raising the national death count to six.

However, researchers are still struggling to determine whether there's been a true increase in cases of pediatric hepatitis in the United States, or if public health officials have simply stumbled across an existing pattern that's been revealed due to improvements in detection.

"Thus far, we have not been able to document an actual increase in the overall number of pediatric hepatitis cases," Butler stressed.

"For example, we're looking at specific emergency department visits for pediatric hepatitis, as well as liver transplant in children nationwide," Butler added. "Currently, these numbers are stable."

Earlier this week, the CDC announced that 180 pediatric hepatitis cases had been identified in 36 states over the past seven months, up from a previous count of 71 cases two weeks earlier.

However, the CDC has stressed that many of the newly counted domestic cases are "retrospective" -- meaning they were cases that are now being counted but which happened as far back as October 2021.

"Of the cases altogether, [only] 7% have been over the past two weeks," Butler noted. "The vast majority going back are much earlier in the course of the investigation. If we look at graphing out the cases by the date of onset, it's relatively flat."

There had also been no reported deaths since February until the one this week, according to the agency. About 9% of the cases were so severe as to require liver transplants.

Many of the pediatric hepatitis cases have been associated with adenovirus type 41, which commonly causes diarrhea, vomiting and fever in children, sometimes accompanied by respiratory symptoms, the CDC said. It's not been previously identified as a cause of hepatitis in otherwise healthy children.

Genetic sequencing has shown that multiple viral strains of adenovirus type 41 have been involved in the hepatitis cases, which appears to rule out an early possibility that a single newly mutated strain of the virus could be responsible, Butler said.

CDC investigators also are keeping open the possibility that COVID infections could be contributing to the hepatitis cases, Butler said.

Researchers are performing antibody tests to determine if some of the afflicted children had a past infection with COVID and whether any had developed a serious condition known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome as a result of their COVID infection, Butler said

One new study, from Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, has found that children previously infected with COVID were, in fact, two to three times more likely to have liver function test results outside the normal range. In fact, the test results were more than twice the upper limit for healthy children, suggesting impaired liver function.

But it's already been known that kids with COVID infections sometimes have elevations in liver function tests, Butler said.

"One of the tricky things to sort out is how much of the elevation in liver function test is specific to SARS coronavirus to infection as opposed to severe illness," Butler said. "It's not uncommon that there would be some elevation in liver function tests and even elevations in bilirubin [a marker of liver function] among children who are severely ill in the intensive care unit."

There are hundreds of other pediatric hepatitis cases that have been reported in countries around the world, according to the World Health Organization.

"It's unusual because this is occurring in normal, healthy kids who don't have an underlying condition," said Dr. Tina Tan, an infectious disease doctor at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. "Nobody knows the true cause, and what makes it more scary is that these kids develop very severe hepatitis."

Tan recommends that parents keep a close eye on children with cold and flu symptoms, and take them to the ER if they become jaundiced.

"If they start to notice that their kids are having severe abdominal pain, or that the whites of their eyes are turning a little bit yellow or their skin color's a little bit yellow, they really need to seek immediate medical attention so that the child can be worked up for hepatitis," Tan said.

Other potential symptoms of hepatitis include vomiting, dark urine and light-colored stools, Butler said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on pediatric hepatitis cases of unknown cause.


SOURCE: Media briefing, May 20, 2022, with Jay Butler, MD, deputy director for infectious diseases, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope finds ‘something weird’ going on in universe

The scientists are now waiting for the new James Webb Space Telescope to start sending data so that they can dive deeper into this mystery.

Written by FE Online
May 21, 2022 

The study of the universe’s expansion began in 1920 with measurements by Hubble and Lemaitre. (NASA)

The universe’s expansion rate has fascinated astronomers for a long time. Since the initial studies by Edwin P. Hubble and Georges Lemaitre in the 1920s to the discovery of ‘dark energy’ in the 1990s, the field has advanced slowly but steadily. The Hubble Space Telescope has provided a huge amount of data to study and is one of the most potent space-based observatories, helping astronomers understand cosmic mysteries.

In 30 years of existence, the telescope has taken over 1.3 billion photographs. It is now focusing on a more challenging mission — finding how quickly the universe is expanding. So far, the findings suggest that something unusual is happening in the universe, NASA said.

Technological advancements means that scientists can now study the universe’s expansion much more precisely. And there seems to be a discrepancy. NASA said there was a difference in the rate of the universe’s expansion and observations after the Big Bang, suggesting “something weird” was going on.

“The cause of this discrepancy remains a mystery. But Hubble data, encompassing a variety of cosmic objects that serve as distance markers, support the idea that something weird is going on, possibly involving brand new physics,” NASA said.

To understand the phenomenon, they are studying data gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope on a set of “milepost markets” in space and time that can be used to track the expansion rate as they move away.

NASA said the telescope had calibrated more than 40 “milepost markers” since its launch in 1990.

“You are getting the most precise measure of the expansion rate for the universe from the gold standard of telescopes and cosmic mile markers,” Nobel laureate Adam Riess of the the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and Space Telescope Science Institute said.

The study of the universe’s expansion began in 1920 with measurements by Hubble and Lemaitre. Hubble said galaxies outside the Milky Way appeared to be moving away from it. He added that the further they were from the Earth’s galaxy, the faster they were moving away. Since then, scientists have been trying to measure this expansion.

When the telescope started gathering data, it discovered that the rate of expansion was quicker than models had predicted — 67.5 km per second per megaparsec against observations of around 73.

This discrepancy made scientists reassess their understanding and start over. The scientists are now waiting for the new James Webb Space Telescope to start sending data so that they can dive deeper into this mystery.

Boeing’s Starliner successfully docks to the International Space Station for the first time

At last, Starliner shows what it can do

By Loren Grush@lorengrush 

 May 20, 2022

Boeing’s Starliner coming in for docking, as seen from the International Space Station Image: NASA TV

This evening, Boeing’s new passenger spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner, successfully docked itself to the International Space Station — demonstrating that the vehicle can potentially bring humans to the ISS in the future. It’s a crucial capability that Starliner has finally validated in space after years of delays and failures.

Starliner is in the midst of a key test flight for NASA called OFT-2, for Orbital Flight Test-2. The capsule, developed by Boeing for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, was made to transport NASA’s astronauts to and from the space station. But before anyone climbs on board, NASA tasked Boeing with conducting an uncrewed flight demonstration of Starliner to show that the capsule can hit all of the major milestones it’ll need to hit when it is carrying passengers.

Boeing has struggled to showcase Starliner’s ability until now. This mission is called OFT-2 since it’s technically a do-over of a mission that Boeing attempted back in 2019, called OFT. During that flight, Starliner launched to space as planned, but a software glitch prevented the capsule from getting in the right orbit it needed to reach to rendezvous with the ISS. Boeing had to bring the vehicle home early, and the company never demonstrated Starliner’s ability to dock with the ISS.

“BOEING STARLINER SPACECRAFT COMPLETES ITS HISTORIC FIRST DOCKING TO THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION.”

Now, roughly two and a half years later, Starliner has finally shown what it was designed to do. Using a series of sensors, the capsule autonomously guided itself onto an open docking port on the space station. “Boeing Starliner spacecraft completes its historic first docking to the International Space Station opening a new avenue of access for crews to the orbiting laboratory,” Steve Siceloff, a communications representative for Boeing, said during the livestream of the docking. Docking occurred a little over an hour behind schedule, due to some issues with Starliner’s graphics and docking ring, which were resolved ahead of the docking.

Starliner docked with the International Space Station 

Image: NASA TV

There was some concern about Starliner’s ability to dock with the space station after Boeing revealed some issues with the capsule’s thrusters yesterday. At 6:54PM ET, Starliner successfully launched to space on top of an Atlas V rocket, built and operated by the United Launch Alliance. Once Starliner separated from the Atlas V, it had to fire its own thrusters to insert itself into the proper orbit for reaching the space station. However, after that maneuver took place, Boeing and NASA revealed that two of the 12 thrusters Starliner uses for the procedure failed and cut off too early. The capsule’s flight control system was able to kick in and rerouted to a working thruster, which helped get Starliner into a stable orbit.

Ultimately, NASA and Boeing claimed that the issue should not impact the rest of Starliner’s mission. “There’s really no need to resolve them,” Steve Stich, NASA’s program manager for the Commercial Crew Program, said in a press conference after the flight. “But I know what the teams will do, and what we always do is we’ll go look at the data, try to understand what happened.” Today, Boeing revealed that a drop in chamber pressure had caused the early cutoff of the thruster, but that system behaved normally during follow-up burns of the thrusters. And with redundancies on the spacecraft, the issue “does not pose a risk to the rest of the flight test,” according to Boeing.

WITH STARLINER DOCKED TO THE SPACE STATION, IT’LL STICK AROUND FOR THE NEXT FOUR TO FIVE DAYS

Boeing also noted today that the Starliner team is investigating some weird behavior of a “thermal cooling loop” but said that temperatures are stable on the spacecraft.

Now, with Starliner docked to the space station, it’ll stick around for the next four to five days. Tomorrow morning, the astronauts already on board the ISS will open the hatch to the vehicle and retrieve some cargo that’s packed inside. Also inside Starliner is a mannequin called Rosie the Rocketeer, simulating what it would be like for a human to ride inside the vehicle.

After its brief stay on the ISS, Starliner will detach from the ISS and distance itself from the station for its return home. The capsule will use its thrusters to take itself out of orbit and put it on course for Earth. The two thrusters that failed are the same kind used for this deorbit maneuver, but NASA and Boeing did not seem concerned. “We’ll just have to see if we can recover the thrusters,” Stich said. He also noted that the working thrusters could be used and that Boeing has the option to use a different set of thrusters to perform the task if needed. “So there’s plenty of redundancy in the spacecraft.”

For now, the Starliner team is celebrating their big milestone. “Today marks a great milestone towards providing additional commercial access to low Earth orbit, sustaining the ISS and enabling NASA’s goal of returning humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars,” NASA astronaut Bob Hines, currently on board the space station, said after the docking. “Great accomplishments in human spaceflight are long remembered by history. Today will be no different.”

Dozens injured as tornado brings winds of 80mph to central Germany

21 May 2022

Dozens of people were hurt as the tornado struck parts of central Germany. Picture: Alamy/Social media

By Asher McShane

@ashermcs

A tornado has swept through the German city of Paderborn, injuring at least 40 people as it blew away roofs, toppled trees and sent debris flying for miles.

Meteorologists had warned that heavy rainfall and hail were expected in western and central Germany on Friday, with storms producing gusts up to 81mph.

Storms on Thursday had already disrupted traffic, uprooted trees that toppled on to railway tracks and roads, and flooded hundreds of basements in western Germany.

"30 to 40 injured, at least 10 of them seriously," Paderborn police said after the tornado.

They urged people to remain in their houses so as not to hamper rescue efforts or endanger themselves.

Heavy storm damage was also reported in the nearby town of Lippstadt. A church steeple in the town was toppled and the German news agency dpa reported that more than 100 people were temporarily trapped in a local open air pool after fallen trees blocked the exit.

The regional fire service said all available rescuers were being deployed to the area.

Police said two French citizens died after their motorised paraglider was caught by a strong gust of wind shortly after taking off on Thursday from an airfield in Ballenstedt, 109 miles south west of Berlin.

Police in Saxony-Anhalt state said the pair, both 59, were urged to land because of a forecast for an abrupt change in the weather.

Shortly after the warning, "they appear to have been hit by a gust of wind that caused the paraglider to collapse, and the air vehicle crashed on to a field from a height of about 40 metres (131 feet)", police said.

Schools in the western city of Cologne closed before midday to give students time to make it home safely before the storms hit.

Further south in Ahrweiler county, all schools were closed on Friday. More than 130 people were killed in the region last summer after it was hit by a flash flood in July.

France’s Power Sector Further Strained By Extended Outages And Repairs

By Julianne Geiger - May 13, 2022

France's nuclear power plants are undergoing repairs and extended outages, leading to a 25% decrease in nuclear power plant output this winter, an analysis from Baringa Partners LLP said, according to Bloomberg.

France, Europe's largest power exporter, could be left scrambling to import power this winter. France typically sends power to the UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain—and could soon find those countries rivals in its quest to purchase power to sustain itself through the demanding winter months.

France generates more than 70% of its total electricity from nuclear power.

The extended outages and repairs will create a strain in the market that is in addition to the strain caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting energy- and financial-related sanctions on the aggressor.

This winter, Bloomberg said, the winter electricity flows to the nations France typically supplies is set to be reversed, as power prices within France are pushed higher amid less supply. The upcoming winter is what Phil Grant, Partner at Baringa Partners, has called "fascinating".

In February, prior to the Russian invasion, French President Emmanuel Macron called for 13 new nuclear reactors in what he called a "renaissance" of the country's nuclear power industry.

At the time, the announcement created turmoil within Europe, with nuclear power's green label creating tension, specifically with Germany.

Germany had openly chastised the European Commission for its decision to classify nuclear investments as climate-friendly. Germany has plans to shutter all of its nuclear plants by 2022, whereas France sees nuclear power as a necessary step that will allow the country to move away from fossil fuels.

France's EDF stopped operations at two nuclear power plants at the end of last year after finding a fault at one during routine maintenance. This brought the total number of nuclear plants out of operation in December to four, which accounted for 13 percent of the current power availability in France.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com