Opinion: Europe's monetary policy shift comes (too) late

Policymakers at the European Central Bank (ECB) have finally acknowledged that high inflation is a danger. They've announced measures to tighten monetary policy, but DW's Henrik Böhme thinks they are late to the game.



Unlike the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank seems way behind the curve in fighting inflation

In the end, the pressure on the European Central Bank (ECB) became too great for its policymakers; they could no longer ignore skyrocketing inflation rates in the euro area and dismiss them as "a temporary phenomenon," as ECB President Christine Lagarde said as recently as in December.

Lagarde's mantra of keeping cool in the face of an unprecedentedly swift onslaught of rising prices, notably for food and energy, was swept away by a market reality that is becoming a threat to the financial health of corporations, countries and consumers alike.

Governments across Europe are trying to stem the tide of rising prices with massive aid packages, mostly for low-income earners and families. Germany, for example, is sending €300 ($319) energy checks to households these days, as well as subsidizing car fuels and introducing a monthly €9 ticket for using public transport that will be valid until September.

Nevertheless, ECB policymakers — the group of people who have the most effective tools for fighting inflation at their disposal — have been sitting on their hands for more than half a year now. Conventional economic wisdom should have told them months ago that there's no way around hiking interest rates in the eurozone.

Turkey's current course, where low rates and runaway inflation are leading to a nightmare scenario, should have taught the policymakers a lesson. (Strangely enough, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan still believes that raising rates would fuel consumer price inflation even more.)

But ECB policymakers seem to have finally come to their senses, albeit grudgingly, and have agreed on a modest tightening of monetary conditions. After an unbelievably long 11 years, benchmark interest rates in the euro area are slated to be raised by 0.25% in July, and the ECB's massive asset purchases are to stop.

Christine Lagarde repeatedly said over the past few months that the long-overdue move was on the horizon. And yet the ECB chief is wasting a crucial moment in the fight against eurozone inflation by making the hike late in July and not immediately. That is too little, too late!

DW Business editor Henrik Böhme

Why so?

Inflation expectations are a dangerous development. With every week of rising prices, consumers get used to the idea that everything gets more expensive. Or, as the late German Bundesbank President Otmar Emminger used to quip in the high-inflation 1970s: "Whoever flirts with inflation marries it." That's because once expectations of ever-higher prices become rooted, labor unions unfailingly demand higher wages for their members, thus setting a wage-price spiral in motion that leads to even higher inflation.

Such a development is painfully hard to contain, which is why the ECB rate increase is the right thing to do, but it should have been enacted much earlier and possibly even been made bigger.

It goes without saying that European financial markets reacted to Thursday's ECB rate announcement with slumping prices. A logical development, given that it hurts when you take away the drugs from the bond market addicts who've been feasting on cheap central bank money for more than a decade.

Under the ECB's whatever-it-takes monetary policy to save the euro, an estimated €4.4 trillion ($4.6 trillion) has been pumped into stabilizing the bond yields of heavily indebted countries in the eurozone's southern periphery. This figure was recently published by the ZEW think tank in Mannheim, Germany. The lion's share of the ECB's asset purchases since the eurozone 2010 sovereign debt crisis were bonds from Spain, Portugal and Italy, the organization found.

ECB in a bind

But what once helped the eurozone from drowning in debt is now coming home to roost as rising inflation — and presenting the ECB with a massive dilemma. Higher interest rates may curb inflation, but at the same time, they threaten the nascent upswings in many eurozone economies that are just getting started after the coronavirus-caused downturn.

In addition, higher rates will weigh heavily on still-indebted eurozone members, like Greece and Italy, by making their debt refinancing costlier. In times of zero or even negative interest rates, life was paradise; investors were even paying them for their debt. The same applies for highly indebted businesses, the so-called zombie firms, that are now looking unlikely to survive tighter financial conditions.

What seems the order of the day is a plan for both the ECB and the eurozone as a whole to return to sound state finances and EU debt rules that have been broken more often than not and are still frozen under pandemic emergency laws.

More EU stimulus packages aren't needed because the last one thrashed out during the pandemic's high point hasn't even been fully exhausted yet. And if there's one thing safe to say these days: More public money will have only one effect — even higher inflation.

In South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa's 'stolen' millions cast political shadow

The South African president faces accusations of having stolen and concealed millions of dollars at one of his game farms. The scandal could derail his plans for reelection.

South Arfican President Cyril Ramaphosa faces corruption allegations

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will appear before the Integrity Commission of his party, the African National Congress (ANC), to respond to allegations that he stole millions of dollars.

The latest graft scandal surrounding Ramaphosa started last week, when a former intelligence director, Arthur Fraser, opened a complaint against the president.

In his leaked affidavit to the police, Fraser alleges that on February 9, 2020, robbers targeted Ramaphosa's game farm in the northern Limpopo province, where they found $4 million (€3.7 million) in foreign currency hidden inside furniture.

The criminals were apprehended and the money recovered from them, the affidavit says, but the men were then paid to buy their silence.

Fraser accuses Ramaphosa of money laundering, kidnapping and corruption.

But the president has come out saying his hands are clean and that those funds were private, not public money.

President Cyril Ramaphosa says he has never stole from the taxpayer

"I am in the cattle business and game business. … I buy and sell animals," Ramaphosa said on Sunday, adding that the animal sales are sometimes through cash or transfers. "So this was a clear business transaction of selling animals."

More questions than answers

Ramaphosa's reaction raises more questions than answers, political scientist Lukhona Mnguni said, adding that the critical question the president needs to clear up is the legality of the money.

"There was trading, and there was an income that accrued to him. Did he declare this income so that he can be taxed appropriately?" Mnguni posed. "The second issue is whether there was a cover-up?"

To curb corruption and money laundering, South Africa's Financial Intelligence Act demands that people report all cash payments or receipts exceeding €1,520 to the Financial Intelligence Centre.


In South Africa, the divide between rich and poor is the biggest in the world

Battle for reelection

The scandal surrounding the stolen money may affect Ramaphosa's chances of being reelected as ANC chairperson in December.

"The allegations made against President Ramaphosa are embarrassing for the president," said Daniel Silke, a political analyst based in Cape Town.

For the moment though, Ramaphosa still seems to have his party's support.

During an ANC executive committee meeting that took place after the allegations came to light, Tony Yengeni, a member of the executive and a strong opponent of Ramaphosa, tried but failed to persuade the committee to force Ramaphosa to take a leave of absence.

Opposition parties are also calling for Ramaphosa to step aside.

Democratic Alliance party leader John Steenhuisen called on the police to conduct a full-scale investigation.

"Why was such a large amount of foreign currency there?" Steenhuisen queried. "Why was it in furniture, not at the bank? Why was this not reported to the … police service to pursue the alleged perpetrators, and why the allegations of hush money being paid if everything was above board?"

Timing of accusation

However, political analyst Silke downplayed the impact of the scandal on Ramaphosa's candidacy.

"We know the steep fragmentation within the ANC is causing great turmoil within the organization," he said. "Personalities and various groupings are at each other's throats very often, and internal divisions play themselves out very often in public spats."

Factional fighting within the ANC imperils Ramaphosa's election as party chairman

"Overall, this matter is not going to substantively deal the president any negative blow when it comes to defending his position at the ANC's elective conference at the end of the year," he said.

On the contrary, he said the president's position has strengthened over the last few months as the various ANC branches and regions have been holding conferences and electing new senior office bearers, many of whom are largely supportive of the president.
ANC's multiple corruption scandals

Democracy expert Steven Friedman, a professor at the University of Johannesburg, believes the timing of the allegations is a calculated move by a powerful faction within the ANC to disqualify Ramaphosa from reelection.

But Friedman warned that the scandal may "prove more politically damaging to the ANC than it could to Ramaphosa."

During Ramaphosa's presidency, the ANC, which has governed South Africa since the end of white rule in 2004, has seen its popularity slide. The party recorded its worst poll result ever in local elections held in November 2021, when it won less than 50% of the ballots cast.

The state capture corruption triggered massive protests in South Africa

As well as the Ramaphosa allegations, the ANC is also grappling with two other high-level corruption cases.

In the so-called Gupta state capture, Atul and Rajesh Gupta are accused of wielding influence over ministerial appointments after paying bribes to win contracts. The two tycoons were recently arrested in Dubai, and South Africa is seeking extradition.

The Gupta scandal badly dented the administration of previous President Jacob Zuma and led to Zuma's downfall in 2018.

Zuma is currently facing trial in another case involving a $2 billion arms deal in the 1990s. He has pleaded not guilty to fraud, money laundering, and racketeering charges.

Edited by: Kate Hairsine

Chili shortage to cause summer Sriracha sauce scarcity

California-based Huy Fong Foods confirmed Thursday a shortage of chili peppers will lead to a scarcity of its popular sriracha sauce this summer. Photo by Steven Depolo/WikiMedia Commons

June 9 (UPI) -- Fans of the popular Sriracha hot sauce are facing a shortage of the condiment, its producer confirmed Thursday.

California-based Huy Fong Foods confirmed a shortage of chili peppers will lead to a scarcity on store shelves this summer.

"Unfortunately, we can confirm that there is an unprecedented shortage of our products," the company said in a statement.

"We are still endeavoring to resolve this issue that has been caused by several spiraling events, including unexpected crop failure from the spring chili harvest."

The shortage also extends to the company's other Chili Garlic and Sambal Oelek sauces, which both contain chili peppers.

The company said any orders placed after mid-April will not be filled until early September. It will not accept any new orders until after Labor Day.

"We hope for a fruitful fall season and thank our customers for their patience and continued support during this difficult time," Huy Fong said in a statement to CNN.

Scientists pinpoint brain's 'sickness center' in study with animals
By HealthDay News
June 9,2022

Researchers say that, in a study with animals, they've identified the part of the brain responsible for the symptoms of sickness. Photo by Mitrey/Pixabay

A small area of your brain triggers the familiar symptoms of fever, chills, fatigue and loss of appetite when you have a viral or bacterial infection, new animal research suggests.

The findings could eventually lead to ways to reverse this process when symptoms pose a risk to patients, such as when a fever gets too high or people don't eat or drink enough, according to the Harvard University scientists.

It was already known that in response to information from the immune system, the brain causes symptoms of illness when people get sick. But how and where this happens in the brain had remained a mystery.

In the new study with mice, the researchers pinpointed about 1,000 previously unidentified neurons near the base of the brain that induce symptoms of sickness in response to infection. However, animal research doesn't always pan out in humans.

The neurons are in an area of the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that controls key functions that keep the body in a balanced, healthy state.

Located right next to a permeable section of the brain called the blood-brain barrier, which helps circulates blood to the brain. These neurons have receptors that detect molecular signals from the immune system, an ability most neurons don't have.

"It was important for us to establish this general principle that the brain can even sense these immune states," because this "was poorly understood before," said study author Jessica Osterhout.

She is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Catherine Dulac, a professor of molecular and cellular biology and of arts and sciences at Harvard University.

"If we know how it works, perhaps we can help patients who have difficulty with these kinds of symptoms, like chemo patients or cancer patients, for example, who have a very low appetite but there's really nothing we can do for them," Osterhout noted in a Harvard news release.

The original goal of the study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, was to examine what's known as the fever effect in people with autism. It refers to a reduction in autism symptoms when a patient has infection symptoms such as a fever.

The researchers wanted to find the neurons that generate fever and link them to neurons involved with social behavior. Instead, they found neurons that are activated when a mouse is sick.

The team plans further investigation into other effects of the neurons they identified in this study and to revisit the fever effect in people with autism.

More information

There's more on fever at the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Nearly half of Americans share their bed with a pet

By HealthDay News
JUNE 9,2022

Among Gen Z respondents, 53% said they almost always or sometimes sleep with a pet, compared with 36% of baby boomers. Photo by Adrian Grover/Pixabay

If you sleep with Fido or Fluffy, you're in good company, a new survey shows.

Nearly half of respondents to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) poll said they share their bed with a pet, and 46% of those people said they sleep better with their pet in the same bed. Only 19% said they sleep worse when their pet sleeps with them.

Younger Americans are more likely to sleep with a pet. For example, 53% of Gen Z respondents said they almost always or sometimes sleep with a pet, compared with 36% of baby boomers, according to the survey released during Pet Appreciation Week, June 5 to 11.

"Healthy sleep looks different from person to person. Many pet owners take comfort in having pets nearby and sleep better with their companion by their sides," said Dr. Andrea Matsumura. She is a sleep specialist in Portland, Ore., and a member of the AASM's Public Awareness Advisory Committee.

"For most adults, whether you sleep with a pet or not, it is important that you get seven or more hours of restful sleep each night for optimal health," Matsumura added in an AASM news release

If sleeping with your pet interferes with your sleep because they hog the bed, sprawl on your pillow or cause other problems, the AASM offers some tips to improve your sleep:Set up a separate, comfortable sleeping space nearby for your pet as an alternative.

Keep a consistent sleep schedule. Get up at the same time every day, even on weekends or during vacations. Consider your pet's routines as well, including their walking and eating schedule.

Make your bedroom quiet and relaxing, and keep it at a comfortable, cool temperature.
Limit exposure to bright light in the evenings and turn off electronic devices at least 30 minutes before bedtime.

Don't eat a large meal before bedtime. If you are hungry in the evening, eat a light, healthy snack.

Get regular exercise and follow a healthy diet.

More information

The American Sleep Association has advice about sleeping with your pet.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.



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A harrowing American moment, repackaged for prime time

By TED ANTHONY

1 of 4

An image of former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is shown as committee members from left to right, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., look on, as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol holds its first public hearing to reveal the findings of a year-long investigation, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, June 9, 2022. 

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)


NEW YORK (AP) — Promised: New footage. New testimony. New and damning revelations designed to eliminate all doubt. Hired to package it all for the airwaves: A former network news president. The time slot: 8 p.m. on the East Coast, once a plum spot for the most significant television programming in the land.

Presented in prime time and carefully calibrated for a TV-viewing audience (itself increasingly an anachronism), the debut of the Jan. 6 hearings was, in essence, a summer rerun. Designed as a riveting legislative docudrama about an event that most of the country saw live 18 months ago, it tried mightily to break new narrative ground in a nation of short attention spans and endless distractions.

But did it? Can it? Even with gripping, violent video and the integrity of American democracy potentially at stake, can a shiny, weeks-long production that prosecutes with yesterday’s news — news that has been watched, processed and argued over ad nauseam — punch through the static and make a difference today?

“The idea of a televised investigative proceeding maybe feels a little obsolete when so many people already had so much access to what happened,” said Rebecca Adelman, professor and chair of media and communication studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “This is a population that by all evidence is fatigued by a lot of things. I’m not sure how much sustained attention anyone has left at this point.”

That’s why the hearings needed one key thing most legislative committees lack: a professional TV executive — someone who could arrange and curate violent amateur and surveillance video, 3D motion graphics, eyewitness testimony and depositions into a storyline built to echo.

Enter James Goldston, the former president of ABC News. The language Axios used in reporting his involvement was instructive. Goldston, it said, would approach Thursday night’s hearing “as if it were a blockbuster investigative special” with “the makings of a national event.”

Those are not often words you hear about a committee hearing. They’re the words of showmanship — something politics has always had, actual governance less so.

During the media-savvy (for its era) Kennedy administration, the historian Daniel J. Boorstin famously coined the term “pseudo-event” — an event conducted expressly for the purpose of being noticed. While that isn’t the case with the Jan. 6 hearings — actual governance is taking place — the buildup and presentation makes it easy to conclude otherwise.

Could it be that this is the only way to grab the public’s attention? After all, since Jan. 6, 2021, much of America has moved on to fresh worries.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, seized on some of those in a series of tweets attacking the committee. “When’s the prime-time hearing,” he asked in six tweets, followed by “on $5 per gallon gas,” “on baby formula shortages,” “on record crime in Democrat-run cities,” “on the left’s 2020 riots,” “on record high grocery prices,” “on Democrats attacking parental rights at school board meetings” and “on threats against Supreme Court Justices and their families.”

By many appearances, the country is operating as it was before the insurrection. Joe Biden was inaugurated as scheduled 14 days after the insurrection. No evidence of election fraud surfaced. The pandemic ebbed. People are talking about guns and gas prices and Russia — not its interference in U.S. elections, but its invasion of Ukraine.

All of this, of course, belies the fact that the Capitol riot undermined the sanctity and security of the democratic process. After more than 200 years in which the peaceful transfer of power was taken for granted in America, it suddenly and very violently wasn’t.

And yet, in this meme-soaked era when loud events fade from the consciousness and are replaced by other loud events within days, it apparently takes what is essentially a Very Special Episode of Congress, packaged up like a documentary brimming with video clips and text-message screengrabs, to get the public’s attention.

And that public is ... who, exactly?

The masses of Donald Trump supporters and opponents who have dug in their heels on both sides — those who think this is ridiculous political posturing and those who insist that day represented an existential threat to democracy — may not be the target audience. More likely, it is Americans who retain an open mind and have kind of moved on; who could use a reminder in the most American way possible: by being presented with an on-screen drama to consume. (Unless you watch Fox, which vociferously refused to air it.)

High-profile public legislative hearings about the workings of government — from the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954 to the Watergate hearings in 1973 to the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987 — have a history of drawing the nation’s attention and being their era’s version of must-see government TV.

But all those came in the days when a “phone” was something that made calls and was plugged into the wall — well before the era of media fragmentation produced by the internet and, a decade later, the rise of social media and content creation in your pocket.

The raw material presented Thursday night was at times banal and procedural (depositions, speeches). But at times (the violent and profane video montage, the eyewitness testimony of Capitol police officer Caroline Edwards), it felt compelling, terrifying and immediate.

“We’ve lost the line! We’ve lost the line!” viewers heard one Capitol police officer shout as he was being attacked by rioters. Yelled another, terror in his voice: “Officer down!” And this chilling shout, from the background of one scene of chaos: “We’re coming!

Then the production values took center stage — a perfectly timed voiceover of Trump saying, “They were peaceful people” and ”the love in the air, I’ve never seen anything like it” before the sequence fades out.

These are surely the moments that will be cannibalized on social in coming hours and days. So much of political discourse happens online these days, and what was once must-see TV is now on your phone, on demand. Content producers on TikTok and Twitter and Instagram are driving the moments to remember. And if this was a produced TV show, those will be its tiny offspring.

“People will be making their own spinoffs, a few seconds at a time,” said Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University. “Now ... we’re in the age of developing stories as an interactive video game, where you take the coverage of that day and you turn it into a meme and get 30 million viewers. I think that’s how a lot of people are going to experience these hearings.”

So check out your social media feeds, 2022-style, for the next phase of this drama — political and entertaining and unsettling all at once, and aggressively, messily American.

“We watched the preseason. We watched the season. And now this is behind the scenes in `American Politics: The Sport,’” said John Baick, a historian at Western New England University. “I don’t think anyone’s going to remember where they were when they watched the Capitol investigations.”

___

Ted Anthony, director of new storytelling and newsroom innovation at The Associated Press, has written about American culture since 1990. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted

FTC Chair Khan plans key work on kids’ data privacy online

By MARCY GORDON

yesterday

Lina Khan, nominee for Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), speaks during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation confirmation hearing, April 21, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington. Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission says she’ll continue to lead a robust agenda of actions and policies to help safeguard the data privacy of children online. The work will include toughened enforcement of protections under a long-standing law governing kids’ online privacy and paying attention to the algorithms used by social media platforms that target young people. (Saul Loeb/Pool via AP, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Federal Trade Commission says the agency is pushing a robust agenda of actions and policies to help safeguard children’s privacy online.

The ongoing work will include toughened enforcement of a long-standing law governing kids’ online privacy and eyeing the algorithms used by social media platforms targeting young people.

“Children’s privacy is enormously important and we want to make sure we’re doing everything we can ... to vigorously protect children’s privacy and protect them from data abuses,” said Lina Khan, who has led the consumer-protection agency for a year. She spoke in an interview over Zoom with The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Around the country, parents’ concern has deepened over the impact of social media on kids. Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist, stunned Congress and the public last fall when she brought to light internal company research showing apparent serious harm to some teens from Facebook’s Instagram platform.

Those revelations were followed by senators grilling executives from YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat about what they’re doing to ensure young users’ safety in the wake of suicides and other harms to teens attributed by their parents to their usage of the platforms.

The recent tide of mass shootings has also highlighted the power of social media and its influence on young people.

The FTC recently warned that it will crack down on education-technology companies if they illegally surveil children when they go online to learn. The agency noted that it is against the law for companies to force parents “to surrender their childrens’ privacy rights in order to do schoolwork online or attend class remotely.”

Khan said Wednesday the FTC had heard complaints from parents who, when the pandemic struck in 2020, had to suddenly make that choice.

The so-called edtech companies have apps and websites that are used by hundreds of thousands of students in school districts around the country. The children’s online privacy law prohibits companies from requiring that children provide more information than is needed, and restricts using students’ personal data for marketing purposes.

Among a host of other enforcement actions, the FTC in March required WW International, formerly known as Weight Watchers, in a settlement to delete information illegally collected from children under 13 as well as algorithms developed by the company’s weight-loss app for children as young as eight. The company also paid a $1.5 million penalty.

President Joe Biden stunned official Washington about a year ago when he installed Khan, an energetic critic of Big Tech then teaching law, as head of the FTC. That signaled a tough government stance toward giants Facebook (its parent now is called Meta Platforms), Google, Amazon and Apple, which already have been under pressure from Congress, state attorneys general and European regulators.

At 33, Khan is the youngest chair in the 107-year history of the FTC, an independent agency with five commissioners and around 1,200 employees. The agency’s mandate is broad — it polices competition and consumer protection as well as digital privacy — and under Khan it has been active on every front. Khan was an unorthodox choice for Biden, with no administrative experience or knowledge of the agency other than a stint for part of 2018 as legal adviser to one of the five commissioners.

She carried intellectual heft, though, that translated into political traction. Khan burst onto the antitrust scene in 2017 with her massive scholarly work as a Yale law student, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” She helped lay the foundation for a new way of looking at antitrust law beyond the impact of big-company market dominance on consumer prices. That school of thought appears to have had a heavy influence on Biden.

During Khan’s tenure, the FTC has sharpened its antitrust attack against Facebook in federal court, accusing the social network giant of abusing its market dominance to quash competition, and is widely believed to be pursuing a competition investigation into e-commerce giant Amazon. Possible areas of focus, according to experts, are Amazon’s cloud-computing business and its recent $8.4 billion acquisition of movie studio MGM. Last year Amazon asked Khan to step aside from antitrust investigations into the company because of her past public criticism of its market power. The probe is reportedly being led by the agency’s deputy director of competition, John Newman.

In the interview, Khan addressed the importance of Big Tech antitrust cases in general since she is neither confirming nor denying an investigation into Amazon.

“These are products and services that Americans use and rely on in their day-to-day lives, and we want to be sure that incumbents are not stifling and crowding out competitors,” she said.

When the companies grow by buying up competitors and abuse their market position, she said, “They can in some ways become too big to care — and start imposing all kinds of terms and contractual conditions on consumers.”

___

Follow Marcy Gordon at https://twitter.com/mgordonap

Vermont botanists find threatened orchid not seen in state since 1902


It was believed that the small whorled pogonia went extinct in Vermont a 120 years ago. Photo courtesy of Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department/Website

June 9 (UPI) -- Botanists in Vermont have found a federally protected orchid believed to have gone extinct in the state in 1902, officials said.

The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department announced in a statement Wednesday that its botanists have confirmed a population of small whorled pogonia, which is protected as threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act and has not been seen in Vermont in 120 years.

The plant was discovered on conservation land within Chittenden County's Winooski Valley Park District, it said.

"Discovering a viable population of a federally threatened species unknown in our state for over a century is astounding," said Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department Botanists Bob Popp.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the species is listed as threatened wherever it is found within the United States, and has a historical range that includes 20 eastern states and the Distric of Colombia.

However, the federal department states the plant is only known to occur or believed to occur in 17 of them, not including Vermont.

The discovery was first made by John Gange and Tom Doubleday, two community scientists, who contacted the state agency, which confirmed the presence of small whorled pogonia within the conservation area this past spring, its typical blooming season.

"These kinds of discoveries are only possible because of the vibrant communities of enthusiasts and professional botanists who work together to understand and document Vermont's plant diversity," said Aaron Marcus, an assistant botanist with the department.

According to the department, previous searches for the plant proved unsuccessful. Habitat requirements for the orchid are little known, it said, adding that populations in Maine and New Hampshire are found in areas of partial sun, such as the edge of forests.

The state will now work with Winooski Valley to search for further clusters of the plant in its conservation region and monitor the population to aid its growth, it said.

"We're incredibly fortunate that this small whorled pogonia population is on land protected by Winooski Valley Park District," Popp said. "It speaks to the importance of habitat conservation."

There are currently 942 plant species protected as either threatened or endangered by the federal government, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Researchers name new alga species after inaugural poet Amanda Gorman

Researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute named a newly discovered species of green alga Gormaniella terricola after Amanda Gorman, the poet for President Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021. File Pool Photo by Patrick Semansky/UPI | License Photo

June 9 (UPI) -- A group of researchers named a new species of alga after Amanda Gorman, the poet for President Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021.

The researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute discovered the green alga -- Gormaniella terricola -- from central New York in 2020 and were experiencing a "dark time" amid a year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol as they sought to come up with the name, researcher Fay-Wei Li said in a press release.

Li, an adjunct assistant professor at the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University, said the group then found inspiration when Gorman, delivered her poem, "The Hill We Climb" during Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20, ultimately deciding to name the genus after her.

"At a point when it was sometimes difficult to find meaning in our research, Amanda Gorman gifted us with this incredibly uplifting poem that gave us a renewed sense of hope in the lab," he said.

Gorman became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history at age 22 when she delivered the poem that carried on the theme of unity at the center of the inauguration.

"And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We've closed the divide because we know to put our future first we must first put our differences aside," she read.

Li said Tanner Robinson, a graduate student working in the lab, was responsible for deciding to name the alga after Gorman.

"It wasn't a political thing, it was just a really great poem," Robinson said. "It was about rising above challenges, and we had had a very challenging year."

The researchers said they discovered Gormaniella terricola by accident, with Jessica Nelson, a former researcher at Li's lab, saying the green alga turned up in her petri dishes while collecting hornwort plants in Potato Hill State Forest.

"We discovered a new species by accident, basically by just paying attention to what we were looking at," Robinson said. "I think we could learn a lot more things by just paying more attention."

Gormaniella terricola was discovered by accident, with Jessica Nelson, a former researcher at Li's lab, saying the green alga turned up in her petri dishes while collecting hornwort plants in Potato Hill State Forest. 

Photo by Louise Lewis/University of Connecticut

Styrofoam-munching superworms could hold key to plastic upcycling

by Issam Ahmed

Scientists at Australia's University of Queensland have now discovered Zophobas morio

 darkling beetles -- whose larvae are known as 'superworms' -- are eager to dine on

 stryofoam, and their gut enzymes could hold the key to higher recycling rates.

Packing material, disposable cutlery, CD cases: Polystyrene is among the most common forms of plastic, but recycling it isn't easy and the vast majority ends up in landfills or finds its way to the oceans where it threatens marine life.

Scientists at Australia's University of Queensland have now discovered that superworms—the larvae of Zophobas morio darkling beetles—are eager to dine on the substance, and their gut enzymes could hold the key to higher recycling rates.

Chris Rinke, who led a study that was published in the journal Microbial Genomics on Thursday, told AFP previous reports had shown that tiny waxworms and mealworms (which are also beetle larvae) had a good track record when it came to eating plastic, "so we hypothesized that the much larger superworms can eat even more."

Superworms grow up to two inches (five centimeters) and are bred as a food source for reptiles and birds, or even for humans in countries such as Thailand and Mexico.

Rinke and his team fed superworms different diets over a three week period, with some given polystyrene foam, commonly known as styrofoam, some bran, and others not fed at all.

"We confirmed that superworms can survive on a sole polystyrene diet, and even gain a small amount of weight—compared to a starvation control group—which suggests that the worms can gain energy from eating polystyrene," he said.

Although the polystyrene-reared superworms completed their life cycle, becoming pupae and then fully developed adult beetles, tests revealed a loss of microbial diversity in their guts and potential pathogens.

These findings suggested that while the bugs can survive on polystyrene, it is not a nutritious diet and impacts their health.

Next, the team used a technique called metagenomics to analyze the microbial gut community and find which gene-encoded enzymes were involved in degrading the plastic.

This handout from from the University of Queensland received on June 9, 2022 shows a

 Zophobas morio 'superworm'

Bio-upcycling

One way to put the findings to use would be to provide superworms with food waste or agricultural bioproducts to consume alongside polystyrene.

"This could be a way to improve the health of the worms and to deal with the large amount of food waste in Western countries," said Rinke.

But while breeding more worms for this purpose is possible, he envisages another route: creating recycling plants that mimic what the larvae do, which is to first shred the plastic in their mouths then digest it through bacterial enzymes.

"Ultimately, we want to take the superworms out of the equation," he said, and he now plans more research aimed at finding the most efficient enzymes, then enhancing them further through enzyme engineering.

The breakdown products from that reaction could then be fed to other microbes to create high-value compounds, such as bioplastics, in what he hopes would become an economically viable "upcycling" approach.Superworms digest plastic, with help from their bacterial sidekicks

More information: Jiarui Sun et al, Insights into plastic biodegradation: community composition and functional capabilities of the superworm (Zophobas morio) microbiome in styrofoam feeding trials, Microbial Genomics (2022). DOI: 10.1099/mgen.0.000842

© 2022 AFP