Lululemon launches workout hijabs, netting 5-star reviews from early purchasers
Kathryn Mannie - 

© LululemonLululemon's "Lightweight Performance Hijab," in poolside blue.

Lululemon has taken a big step towards inclusion in its athletic wear by introducing a new line of performance hijabs designed for working out and playing sports. Two workout hijabs have already been released and a third model is on the way later this year.

The collection was launched on June 7, according to Women's Health Magazine, which also notes that options for workout hijabs are extremely limited.

The headscarves are designed to be light-weight and breathable to maximize comfort during workouts. The hijabs don't need to be used only for sport — they can also be a cool option to beat the summer heat.

Lululemon said that it consulted "hijab wearers across the brand’s global collective" in designing its debut athletic headscarves and that the products offer "adjustable fits and distraction-free features to support guests during their activities of choice and as they move throughout their day."

Both workout hijabs that have been released so far promise to be sweat-wicking, quick-drying, and able to stretch in four ways, according to the Canadian athletic apparel company.

The "Lightweight Performance Hijab" is a sporty, pull-over headscarf that uses Lululemon's Lightweight Luxtreme fabric, which is used in a wide range of Lululemon products from sports bras to leggings. The fabric is billed as "buttery-soft and weightless."

The $42 hijab is available in black and poolside blue and can be purchased in S/M and M/L sizes.

In the product description, Lululemon boasts that this headscarf ensures "comfort and coverage for all the ways you move," and "stays put when you're working out." The company added that it can easily be tucked into a shirt.

The product is designed without a pin so it can be pulled on over the head. The back of the hijab features "soft gathers" that provide extra room to accommodate ponytails and buns. A plastic toggle at the back allows wearers to adjust the hijab's size and fit.

The second Lululemon headscarf to launch is the "scarf-style Hijab" that buyers can nab for $38. This hijab comes in one size only and is 170.18 centimetres by 68.5 centimetres. While the previous product is designed for running and training, this model is best suited for low-intensity workouts.

Lululemon is only offering one colour for this product (heathered black) but it was created with adaptability in mind.

"Tied, twisted, or tucked—the choice of how to wear it is yours. This scarf hijab has enough length to transform into whateve
A third product titled the "OTM Pull-on Hijab," is set to launch later this year and will also feature an over-the-head style.

According to design outlet TAXI, these workout hijabs have been in the making for three years.

What people are saying

Early purchasers of Lululemon's performance hijabs have so far sung its praises.

The "Lightweight Performance Hijab" has netted four reviews from buyers and all have rated it five stars.

One reviewer wrote, "My non-Muslim friend bought me this as a gift and gave (it to) me as a surprise. I was so shocked that this type of thing was even designed! It fits like a glove and feels super comfortable. This is unlike any hijab I've worn during my workouts and I'm so so SO glad that was designed. It's just perfect!!"

"I have no need for one but my heart swells seeing even more availability and inclusivity for everyone," another reviewer wrote. "This just makes me so HAPPY!! Well done Lululemon!"

The "Scarf-style Hijab" has 3.5 stars out of five from two reviews. A five star review praised it for being light-weight but a two-star review said the colour was too dark and the fabric was too heavy for them.

Many of the reviews across the two products called for Lululemon to offer more colour options but according to some social media screenshots, the company may have actually removed a mahogany red option from the "Scarf-style Hijab."

Users denounced the colour choice for being called "mulled wine," since alcohol is considered haraam in Islam and its consumption is forbidden.

Many others were excited by Lululemon's push for inclusion. The Canadian company joins the ranks of Nike, Adidas and Under Armour, which also offer workout hijabs.

When you buy diamonds, think of Bucha, Ukraine envoy says

Reuters | June 24, 2022 | 

Bucha main street after Russian invasion of Ukraine. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Consumers should think twice when buying diamonds that could be funding Russia’s war, a Ukrainian diplomat said on Friday as a fraught international conflict diamond forum in Botswana came to an inconclusive end.


The Kimberley Process (KP), a coalition of governments, the diamond industry and civil society representatives responsible for certifying diamonds as conflict-free, is split over a push to expand its definition of conflict diamonds to include those funding aggression by states.

Russia – which invaded Ukraine four months ago – holds a 33% stake in Alrosa, which accounted for about 30% of the world’s diamond output last year.

“When you see Bucha, Irpin, Gostomel, all those atrocities … I think they should think twice when they are buying diamonds that can be of origin of Russia, because they are basically sponsoring the killings,” Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa, Botswana and Mozambique Liubov Abravitova told Reuters.

Ukraine has accused the Russian military of executing residents of Bucha, a town outside the capital Kyiv that Russian troops had occupied for several weeks before withdrawing, where images of corpses scattered in the streets drew widespread condemnation from the West.

Russia has denied targeting civilians during what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, and has rejected allegations that its forces have committed war crimes.

An Alrosa spokesperson said: “At the KP Intercessional meeting in Kasane that was held this week Russia’s delegation provided a detailed and comprehensive response to all groundless allegations.”

Russia’s KP envoy did not respond to a request for comment.

Calls for reform

Russia’s deputy finance minister Alexey Moiseev said in a May 20 letter that the situation in Ukraine has no implications for the Kimberley Process and is “absolutely beyond the scope” of its certification scheme.

Australia, Britain, Canada, the European Union, Japan, Switzerland, the United States and civil society groups supported Ukraine’s push to discuss Russia at the KP meeting in Botswana, but were met with opposition.

Belarus, China, Central African Republic, Kyrgyzstan, and Mali explicitly backed Russia within the KP, while Angola signaled its support by leading applause after Russian delegates spoke, two sources at the meeting said.

Because it makes decisions by consensus, the rift over Russia risks rendering the KP ineffective. Civil society and some state participants are calling for the decision-making process to be reformed, and the leading diamond industry group on Friday acknowledged the push for change.

“There seems to be strong support for further reforms, including that of the conflict diamond definition,” World Diamond Council president Edward Asscher said during the closing ceremony of the KP meeting in Kasane, northeastern Botswana.

Consumers’ growing demand for clarity on the origin of diamonds will likely put pressure on the KP to make reforms, Abravitova said.

A three-yearly review of the KP certification scheme is due next year, and reforms will be discussed at the KP’s plenary meeting set for November, Jacob Thamage of Botswana, the KP’s current chair, said.

(By Helen Reid; Editing by Tim Cocks, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and David Evans)

Who’s still buying fossil fuels from Russia?
Visual Capitalist | June 22, 2022 | 

The largest importers of Russian fossil fuels since the war

Despite looming sanctions and import bans, Russia exported $97.7 billion worth of fossil fuels in the first 100 days since its invasion of Ukraine, at an average of $977 million per day.


So, which fossil fuels are being exported by Russia, and who is importing these fuels?

The above infographic tracks the biggest importers of Russia’s fossil fuel exports during the first 100 days of the war based on data from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

In demand: Russia’s black gold

The global energy market has seen several cyclical shocks over the last few years.

The gradual decline in upstream oil and gas investment followed by pandemic-induced production cuts led to a drop in supply, while people consumed more energy as economies reopened and winters got colder. Consequently, fossil fuel demand was rising even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which exacerbated the market shock.

Russia is the third-largest producer and second-largest exporter of crude oil. In the 100 days since the invasion, oil was by far Russia’s most valuable fossil fuel export, accounting for $48 billion or roughly half of the total export revenue.

While Russian crude oil is shipped on tankers, a network of pipelines transports Russian gas to Europe. In fact, Russia accounts for 41% of all-natural gas imports to the EU, and some countries are almost exclusively dependent on Russian gas. Of the $25 billion exported in pipeline gas, 85% went to the EU.
The top importers of Russian fossil fuels

The EU bloc accounted for 61% of Russia’s fossil fuel export revenue during the 100-day period.

Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands—members of both the EU and NATO—were among the largest importers, with only China surpassing them.

China overtook Germany as the largest importer, importing nearly 2 million barrels of discounted Russian oil per day in May—up 55% relative to a year ago. Similarly, Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia as China’s largest oil supplier.

The biggest increase in imports came from India, buying 18% of all Russian oil exports during the 100-day period. A significant amount of the oil that goes to India is re-exported as refined products to the U.S. and Europe, which are trying to become independent of Russian imports.
Reducing reliance on Russia

In response to the invasion of Ukraine, several countries have taken strict action against Russia through sanctions on exports, including fossil fuels.

The U.S. and Sweden have banned Russian fossil fuel imports entirely, with monthly import volumes down 100% and 99% in May relative to when the invasion began, respectively

.
On a global scale, monthly fossil fuel import volumes from Russia were down 15% in May, an indication of the negative political sentiment surrounding the country.

It’s also worth noting that several European countries, including some of the largest importers over the 100-day period, have cut back on Russian fossil fuels. Besides the EU’s collective decision to reduce dependence on Russia, some countries have also refused the country’s ruble payment scheme, leading to a drop in imports.

The import curtailment is likely to continue. The EU recently adopted a sixth sanction package against Russia, placing a complete ban on all Russian seaborne crude oil products. The ban, which covers 90% of the EU’s oil imports from Russia, will likely realize its full impact after a six-to-eight month period that permits the execution of existing contracts.

While the EU is phasing out Russian oil, several European countries are heavily reliant on Russian gas. A full-fledged boycott of Russia’s fossil fuels would also hurt the European economy—therefore, the phase-out will likely be gradual, and subject to the changing geopolitical environment.

(This article first appeared in the Visual Capitalist Elements)

Indigenous Ecuadorans fight back as metal mining eats into Amazon

Reuters | June 24, 2022

Ecuadorian Amazon rain forest, looking toward the Andes. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The brightly colored chiva bus rocked back and forth, branches scraping across its sides, as it traveled down the narrow dirt road traversing mountain ranges of the Cordillera del Condor, in Ecuador’s southern Amazon.


The region, which stretches about 150 km (93 miles) along the border with Peru, is famous for its rare species and for its large deposits of gold and copper, which Ecuador and its neighbor fought over for half a century until a 1998 border deal.

Today the area is wracked by a different kind of conflict, as the indigenous Shuar people fight to protect their land, forests and rivers from the creeping spread of Ecuador’s mining industry.

Since 2019, the Maikiuants, a community of about 50 Shuar families, have been trying to stave off attempts by Canadian mining company Solaris Resources to set up a copper mine just 7 km away in Warints, another Shuar community.

The firm has already built a base camp and started exploration activities.

“These industries are the very same ones that are destroying the world with their activities,” said Josefina Tunki, who has become a prominent voice against mining extraction as president of the Shuar Arutam People (PSHA).

Her organization represents about 10,000 indigenous Shuar in the region, including the community of Maikiuants.

While many in Warints support the mining project for the jobs it will create, the Maikiuants and other Shuar communities are adamantly against it.

“Here we have waterfalls, rivers, medicine. Here we have meat. For us (mining) isn’t development. For us, the forest is life, it is the market,” Tunki told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Industry experts say there’s a growing need for sustainable mining to feed surging demand for minerals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and copper that are used to make electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbine systems and batteries as the world tries to move to renewable energy to slow global warming.

“The energy transition is not possible if we don’t (also) talk about how we are going to significantly increase the level of mining activity to produce the metal required for that transition,” said Nathan Monash, head of Ecuador’s Chamber of Mining.

But as global hunger for minerals eats into the Amazon, mining projects are swallowing the land of indigenous communities that climate groups say are the best custodians of the world’s largest rainforest, whose protection is considered essential to slowing climate change.

More than 60% of ancestral Shuar territory, spread over 230,000 hectares (568,000 acres), is covered by mining concessions, said Carlos Mazabanda, country coordinator with the international human rights organization Hivos.

In most cases, the communities were not consulted before their territory was sold for extraction purposes, something that companies and the government are required to do under both Ecuador’s constitution and international law, he said.

Tunki said Solaris did get the approval of the Warints community before starting its project, but neither the company nor the Ecuadorian government consulted the other local communities or the PSHA.

Solaris states on its website that it “always places the highest importance in creating and maintaining open, respectful, proactive and productive relations” with all the communities where it operates.

After initially agreeing to an interview, the company did not respond to several followup emails.

‘Brutal’ deforestation

Ecuador’s government is eager to build up the country’s mining sector and reduce its financial dependency on crude oil exports. It has estimated mining could generate $40 billion in export earnings over the next decade.

In August 2021, Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso passed a decree outlining a new mining policy. It promises to crack down on illegal mining and make buying concessions easier for foreign investors, all while emphasizing that mining activities in the country need to be sustainable and responsible.

But his plans have sparked a backlash from environmental activists and indigenous communities who say the industry is already doing irreversible social and environmental damage.

According to Global Forest Watch, the two Amazonian provinces of Morona Santiago and Zamora Chinchipe that encompass the Cordillera del Condor have together lost more than 44,000 hectares (108,000 acres) of forest over the past 20 years.

Jorge Brito, a biologist with Ecuador’s National Institute of Biodiversity, said the vast majority of that tree loss has been due to legal and illegal mining, as well as illegal logging.

“The first thing (mining companies) do is open roads to have better access. That’s when the impacts start,” he said, calling the results “brutal”.

Proponents of Lasso’s plans to grow Ecuador’s mining industry say the potential benefits – jobs and a stronger economy – outweigh the environmental and social costs.

Monash at the Chamber of Mining pointed to the country’s first two large-scale mines in Zamora Chinchipe, saying they have already cut poverty levels and doubled average incomes in some parts of the province – assertions the Thomson Reuters Foundation could not confirm.

But some local people say those mines stand as examples of the devastation the industry can cause.

Since development began in the mid-2000s on the sprawling Mirador copper, gold and silver mine, owned by the Ecuadorian-Chinese company Ecuacorriente, human rights groups have denounced the project for forcibly evicting more than 30 Shuar families from the community of San Marcos.

Carlos Cajamarca, a Shuar farmer who lives in YanuaKim, about a kilometer upriver from the mine, said his four adult children were evicted from San Marcos by the military in 2014.

The mine has also contaminated the area’s water supply, he said.

People who bathe in the local river emerge with rashes and lesions on their skin, he said, and his small crops of yucca, plantain and other fruits don’t produce as much as they did before the mine opened.

“The contamination is everywhere, in plants, people and animals,” he said.

Neither Ecuacorriente nor Ecuador’s Ministry of Energy and Mines responded to several interview requests.

Protests and road blocks

Indigenous communities around Ecuador have been pushing back against the spread of mining, with protests, lawsuits and efforts to develop economic alternatives such as stepped-up tourism.

They have managed to halt several large mining projects over the past five years, and in January the Constitutional Court ruled that mining operations need to seek consent from all indigenous communities affected by their projects, not just a select few.

Last year, the Maikiuants bolstered their guard force, an unarmed self-defense group, to stop mining personnel using the road through their community – the only way to get to the facilities in Warints.

Now helicopters fly over the area several times a day, bringing people and supplies from the city of Macas to the mining camp by air.

Maikiuants resident Victoria Tseremp said the fight is vital to save her community and the nature around it from Ecuador’s land-hungry mining growth.

For her, the promise of jobs and money is not enough to justify the destruction of nature that comes when a mine moves in.

“We have everything we need to eat,” Tseremp said from her kitchen, as she peeled plantains picked from a chakra, or community plot. “I don’t need money to eat here.”

(By Kimberley Brown; Editing by Jumana Farouky and Laurie Goering)

New Colombian president pledges to protect rainforest

by FABIANO MAISONNAVE

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FILE - Local residents navigate the Amazon River near Leticia, Colombia, Sept. 7, 2019. Gustavo Petro, Colombia's first elected leftist president, will take office in August with ambitious proposals to halt the record-high rates of deforestation in the Amazon. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara, File)


RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first elected leftist president, will take office in August with ambitious proposals to halt the record-high rates of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Petro has promised to limit agribusiness expansion into the forest, and create reserves where Indigenous communities and others are allowed to harvest rubber, acai and other non-timber forest products. He has also pledged income from carbon credits to finance replanting.

“From Colombia, we will give humanity a reward, a remedy, a solution: not to burn the Amazon rainforest anymore, to recover it to its natural frontier, to give humanity the possibility of life on this planet,” Petro, wearing an Indigenous headdress, said to a crowd in the Amazon city of Leticia during his campaign.

But to do that he first needs to establish reign over large, lawless areas.

The task of stopping deforestation seems more challenging than ever. In 2021, the Colombian Amazon lost 98000 hectares (more than 240,000 acres) of pristine forest to deforestation and another 9,000 hectares (22,000 acres) to fire. Both were down from what they had been in 2020, but 2021 was still the fourth worst year on record according to Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP), an initiative of the nonprofit Amazon Conservation Association.

More than 40% of Colombia is in the Amazon, an area roughly the size of Spain. The country has the world’s largest bird biodiversity, mainly because it includes transition zones between the Andes mountains and the Amazon lowlands. Fifteen percent of the Colombian Amazon has already been deforested, according to Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development, or FCDS.

Destruction of the forest has been on the rise since 2016, the year Colombia signed a peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, that ended decades of a bloody armed conflict.

“The peace process allowed people to return to formerly conflict-ridden rural areas. As the returning population increasingly used the natural resources, it contributed to deforestation and increases in forest fires, especially in the Amazon and the Andes-Amazon transition regions,” according to a new paper in the journal “Environmental Science and Policy.”

The presence of the State is barely felt in Colombia’s Amazon. “Once the armed groups were demobilized, they left the forest free for cattle ranching, illegal mining and drug trafficking,” said Ruth Consuelo Chaparro, director of the Roads to Identity Foundation, in a telephone interview. “The State has not filled the gaps.”

The main driver of deforestation has been the expansion of cattle ranching. Since 2016, the number of cattle in the Amazon has doubled to 2.2 million. In the same period, about 500,000 hectares (1.2 million acres) of forest were lost, according to FCDS, based on official data.

This cattle expansion goes hand in hand with illegally-seized land, said FCDS director Rodrigo Botero. “The big business deal is the land. The cows are just a way to get hold of these territories,” he told the AP in a phone interview.

Experts affirm that illegally-seized lands are often resold to ranchers, who then run their cattle free of land use restrictions, such as the propriety’s size.

Most of the destruction occurs in an “arc of deforestation” in the northwestern Colombian Amazon, where even protected areas have not been spared. Chiribiquete, the world’s largest national park protecting a tropical rainforest, has lost around 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) since 2018, according to MAAP.

During the campaign, Botero took Petro and other presidential candidates on separate one-day trips to the Amazon. They flew over cattle ranching areas, national parks and Indigenous territories.

“A very interesting thing Petro and other candidates said was that they never imagined the magnitude of the destruction.” The feeling of ungovernability made a deep impression on each of them, Botero said.

Almost 60% of Colombia’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, deforestation and other land use, according to the World Resources Institute. In 2020, under the Paris Agreement, Colombian President Ivan Duque’s government committed to a 51% reduction in emissions by 2030. To do that, it pledged to reach net-zero deforestation by 2030.

The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest and an enormous carbon sink. There is widespread concern that its destruction will not only release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, further complicating hopes of arresting climate change, but also push it past a tipping point after which much of the forest will begin an irreversible process of degradation into tropical savannah.

Although it holds almost half of the nation’s territory, the Amazon is the least populated part of Colombia, so historically it is neglected during presidential campaigns.

This year’s campaign was not a complete departure from that. But this year, for the first time, there was a TV presidential debate dedicated solely to environmental issues before the first round in the election. Petro, who was leading the polls then, refused to participate.

In his government program, Petro further promises to prioritize collective land titles, such as Indigenous reservations and zones for landless farmers. He also promises to control migration into the Amazon, fight illegal activities, such as land seizures, drug trafficking and money laundering via land purchases.

Petro’s press manager did not respond to requests for comment.

“Petro has studied and understands deforestation,” said Consuelo Chaparro, whose organization works with Indigenous tribes in the Amazon. But the president alone can do nothing, she said. Her hope is that he will listen and move things forward. ”We don’t expect him to be a Messiah.”

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

How Serious Is Monkeypox?

This viral illness is not like Covid, but there is cause for concern. Here’s how experts are thinking about it now.

By Knvul Sheikh
June 24, 2022

Health officials have confirmed more than 3,500 cases of monkeypox in 44 countries, including many where the disease does not typically occur, like the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Canada, France and the United States.

As of June 23, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have confirmed 173 cases of monkeypox in 24 U.S. states and Washington, D.C.

On May 22, President Biden addressed the highly unusual cases, stating that “it is a concern in the sense that if it were to spread it would be consequential.” After more than two years of living through a pandemic, it is understandable that the news of a new virus spreading across the globe could cause alarm, but health experts say that monkeypox is unlikely to create a scenario similar to that of the coronavirus, even if more cases are found. “As surveillance expands, we do expect that more cases will be seen. But we need to put this into context because it’s not Covid,” Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization’s technical lead on Covid-19, said in a live online Q. and A. on May 23.

Monkeypox is not a new virus, and it is not spread in the same way as the coronavirus, so we asked experts for a better understanding of the pathogen — and how the disease it causes is different from Covid-19.

How contagious is monkeypox?

People typically catch monkeypox by coming into close contact with infected animals. That can be through an animal bite, scratch, bodily fluids, feces or by consuming meat that isn’t cooked enough, said Ellen Carlin, a researcher at Georgetown University who studies zoonotic diseases that are transmitted from animals to humans.

Although it was first discovered in laboratory monkeys in 1958, which gives the virus its name, scientists think rodents are the main carriers of monkeypox in the wild. It is primarily found in Central and West Africa, particularly in areas close to tropical rainforests — and rope squirrels, tree squirrels, Gambian pouched rats and dormice have all been identified as potential carriers.

“The virus has probably been circulating in these animals for a very, very long time,” Dr. Carlin said. “And for the most part, it has stayed in animal populations.”

The first human case of monkeypox was detected in 1970 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since then, the virus has periodically caused small outbreaks, though most have been limited to a few hundred cases in 11 African countries.

A handful of cases have made it to other continents, brought by travelers or the import of exotic animals that passed the virus to house pets and then to their owners.

But human-to-human transmission of monkeypox virus is pretty rare, Dr. Van Kerkhove said. “Transmission is really happening from close physical contact, skin-to-skin contact. So it’s quite different from Covid in that sense.”

The virus can also spread by touching or sharing infected items like clothing and bedding, or by the respiratory droplets produced by sneezing or coughing, according to the W.H.O.

That may sound eerily familiar because in the early days of the pandemic many experts said that the coronavirus also had little human-to-human transmission beyond respiratory droplets and contaminated surfaces. Later research showed that the coronavirus can spread through much smaller particles called aerosols with the ability to travel distances greater than six feet. But that doesn’t mean the same will turn out to be true for the monkeypox virus, said Luis Sigal, an expert in poxviruses at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. The coronavirus is a tiny, single-stranded RNA virus, which may have aided its ability to become airborne. The monkeypox virus, however, is made of double-stranded DNA, which means that the virus itself is much larger and heavier and unable to travel as far, Dr. Sigal said.

Other routes of monkeypox transmission include from mother to fetus via the placenta or during close contact during and after birth.

The majority of cases this year have been in young men, many of whom self-identified as men who have sex with men, though experts are cautious about suggesting that monkeypox transmission may occur through semen or other bodily fluids exchanged during sex. Instead, contact with infected lesions during sex may be a more plausible route. “This is not a gay disease, as some people in social media have attempted to label it,” Dr. Andy Seale, an adviser with the W.H.O.’s H.I.V., Hepatitis and S.T.I.s Program, said during the May 23 Q. and A. “Anybody can contract monkeypox through close contact.”

What are the symptoms and how bad can a monkeypox infection get?

Monkeypox is part of the same family of viruses as smallpox, but it is typically a much more mild condition, according to the C.D.C. On average, symptoms appear within six to 13 days of exposure, but can take up to three weeks. People who get sick commonly experience a fever, headache, back and muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes and general exhaustion.

About one to three days after getting a fever, most people also develop a painful rash that is characteristic of poxviruses. It starts with flat red marks that become raised and filled with pus over the course of the next five to seven days. The rash can start on a patient’s face, hands, feet, the inside of their mouth or on their genitals, and progress to the rest of the body. (While chickenpox causes a similar-looking rash, it is not a true poxvirus, but is caused by the unrelated varicella-zoster virus.)

Once an individual’s pustules scab over, in two to four weeks, they are no longer infectious, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

Children and people with underlying immune deficiencies may have more severe cases, but monkeypox is rarely fatal. While one strain found in Central Africa can kill up to 10 percent of infected individuals, estimates suggest that the version of the virus currently circulating has a fatality rate of less than 1 percent.

And the easily identifiable rash of monkeypox, as well as its earlier symptoms, could be considered beneficial. “One of the most challenging things about Covid has been that it can be spread asymptomatically or pre-symptomatically, by people who have no idea that they’re infected,” Dr. Rasmussen said. “But with monkeypox it doesn’t appear that there is any pre-symptomatic transmission.”

Still, as the recent outbreak of cases has shown, there are plenty of opportunities to transmit monkeypox in the first few days of an infection, when symptoms are nonspecific, Dr. Rasmussen said.

What to Know About the Monkeypox Virus

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What is monkeypox? Monkeypox is a virus endemic in parts of Central and West Africa. It is similar to smallpox, but less severe. It was discovered in 1958, after outbreaks occurred in monkeys kept for research, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

               Card 2 of 5

What are the symptoms? Monkeypox creates a rash that starts with flat red marks that become raised and filled with pus. Infected people may also have a fever and body aches. Symptoms typically appear in six to 13 days but can take as long as three weeks after exposure to show, and can last for two to four weeks. Health officials say smallpox vaccines and other treatments can be used to control an outbreak.

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How infectious is it? The virus spreads mainly through body fluids, skin contact and respiratory droplets, though some experts suggest that it could occasionally be airborne. Typically it does not lead to major outbreaks, though it has spread in unusual ways this year, and among populations that have not been vulnerable in the past.

Card 4  of 5

Should I be worried? The likelihood of the virus being spread during sexual contact is high, but the risk of transmission in other ways is low. Most people have mild symptoms and recover within weeks, but the virus can be fatal in a small percentage of cases. Studies also suggest that older adults may have some protection from decades-old smallpox vaccinations.

Card 5 of 5

Is monkeypox similar to Covid? Health experts say that monkeypox is unlikely to create a pandemic scenario similar to that of the coronavirus. While Covid-19 is a tiny RNA virus that can spread through aerosols, monkeypox is a larger DNA virus that is transmitted mostly through close physical contact and has a much smaller mutation rate than RNA viruses.

Do I need to worry about a rising threat?

The good news is that there is no evidence yet to suggest that the monkeypox virus has evolved or become more infectious. DNA viruses like monkeypox are generally very stable and evolve extremely slowly compared to RNA viruses, Dr. Sigal said. Scientists are sequencing the viruses from recent cases to check for potential mutations, and will know soon if the infectiousness, severity or other characteristics have changed, he said. “But my expectation is that they will not be any different.”

Nevertheless, experts have some explanations for the recent increase in monkeypox cases. Research has shown that incidences of humans contracting viruses from contact with animals — also known as zoonotic spillovers — have become more common in recent decades. Increasing urbanization and deforestation means that humans and wild animals are coming into contact more often. Some animals that carry zoonotic viruses, like bats and rodents, have actually become more abundant, while others have expanded or adapted their habitats because of urban development and climate change.


“There’s more opportunities for relatively rare pathogens to get into new communities, find new hosts and travel to new places,” Dr. Rasmussen said.

Despite a brief pandemic lull, people are also traveling more frequently and to more parts of the world than they did just a decade ago. And while many of the new monkeypox cases are puzzling because patients did not have a history of direct travel to endemic countries in Africa, epidemiologists may uncover an indirect travel connection as they race to complete contact tracing in the coming weeks.

“The main risk for people these days with regards to viruses remains Covid,” Dr. Rasmussen said. “The good news there is that a lot of the same measures that will reduce your risk of Covid — social distancing, wearing masks in public spaces, practicing good hand hygiene and surface disinfection — will also reduce your risk of getting monkeypox.”

What is the treatment for monkeypox?

If you get sick, the treatment for monkeypox generally involves symptom management. Two antiviral drugs — cidofovir and tecovirimat — and an intravenous antibody treatment originally developed for smallpox could be used to manage monkeypox as well, though they have only been studied in the lab and animal models.

There is also a vaccine that the Food and Drug Administration approved in 2019, for people 18 and older, that protects against smallpox and monkeypox. But health officials stopped routinely vaccinating Americans against smallpox in 1972, when the disease was eradicated in the United States, and smallpox vaccines and treatments are now stockpiled mainly for national security purposes.

“The sporadic monkeypox outbreaks that have occurred in the past haven’t been enough to warrant restarting the smallpox vaccination program,” Dr. Rasmussen said. Health officials in the United States and other countries have begun using some of the stockpiled vaccines and treatments to prevent the spread of monkeypox from patients to their health care providers and close contacts, according to the C.D.C.

If you have a new rash or are concerned about monkeypox, the C.D.C. urges people to contact their health care provider. The agency has asked doctors to be on the alert for signs of the telltale rash, and says potential monkeypox cases should be isolated and flagged to them. Doctors also should not limit their concerns to men who identify as gay or bisexual, or patients who have recently traveled to Central or West African countries.

“It’s really hard to put a timeline on when this will be contained, or how easy it will be,” Dr. Rasmussen said. “But we have the pharmacological tools, in combination with the classic isolation and quarantine procedures that have helped contain monkeypox outbreaks in the past. We can contain it again. The key is going to be identifying all the cases.”

Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.

Dani Blum contributed reporting.

What to Know About Monkeypox

‘Everybody Should Be Concerned’ About Monkeypox, Biden Warns
May 22, 2022


A version of this article appears in print on May 26, 2022, Section A, Page 9 of the New York edition with the headline: A Primer on Monkeypox, and How This Virus Differs From Covid-19. 

Canada confirms UFO actions after MP says that they are 'real'

James Rushton
Jun 17, 2022

Canada will become the latest country to either contribute to, or to step up research into unidentified flying objects following actions taken by the United States, Russia and China earlier this week.

The United States were the first to 'act', with NASA announcing the formation of a small team to "to move the scientific understanding of unidentified aerial phenomena forward."

In China, it was said earlier this week that its huge Sky Eye telescope may well picked up signs of alien activity, in a now-deleted report published by state media. While in Russia, research has been ramped up after potential UFO sightings.

Now, Canada are throwing their hat into the ring.

Brazil confirms action on UFOs with expert set to address government

Back on June 6, Canadian officials confirmed their intention to contribute to the USA's UFO research in newly published letters.

Writing to Larry Maguire M.P, and Kathleen Heppell-Masys, the Directorate of Security and Safeguards for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission; John Hannaford, the Deputy Minister for Natural Resources Canada, confirmed his intention to contribute to the US study.

"I am writing in follow-up to my May 18, 2022, appearance before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Natural Resources, where you raised security-related questions regarding the Government of Canada’s position on drones and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) near North American nuclear facilities. Given the shared priority for nuclear safety and security of nuclear facilities, and the growing interest in UAPs in both Canada and the United States, the CNSC is committed to raising the issue with its United States counterpart and sharing any related information going forward."

The letter in full can be read here.

Maguire previously confirmed the reality of UAPs, and that Canada should 'take them seriously' in an earlier newsletter.

This news comes almost a year to the day since the U.S Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report stating that the federal government couldn’t explain all but one of the 144 UAPs identified by military aviators. They did offer number of possibilities, including birds or balloons; classified U.S. programs; or advanced Russian or Chinese technology.

UN agency makes million dollars’ worth of investment in Cuban agriculture

The International Fund for Agricultural Development has assigned 170 million dollars to projects that focus on increasing the areas of cultivation and under irrigation and the implementation of good agricultural practices.

by  OnCuba Staff
June 23, 2022
in Cuba

Photo: Agencia Cubana de Noticias/Archive


The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is investing 170 million dollars in Cuba for the modernization of agricultural production and the development of sustainable agri-food systems, according to official media on the island.

After ten years of cooperation with the implementation of three important projects in the country, the increase in cultivated and irrigated areas and the implementation of good agricultural practices are the main results of the technological and financial support with loans and non-reimbursable funds from that agency of the United Nations (UN), according to a report by the Prensa Latina (PL) news agency.

This collaboration, through the Prodecor, Prodegan and Prodecafé programs, has an impact on 49 municipalities in the provinces of Camagüey, Granma, Las Tunas, Holguín, Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo, and benefits 562 agricultural cooperatives and 42 families, explained the head of the agricultural development office of IFAD, Juan Diego Ruiz, in a press conference covered by the media.

Diego Ruiz stressed that Cuba is considered a priority within IFAD’s development programs in Latin America and the Caribbean, in this case, focused on the development of cooperatives for agricultural production and credit and services so that they achieve sustainable production and effective business management, the publication added.

According to PL, Diego Ruiz pointed out that among the objectives of these projects is the increase in the production and productivity of strategic crops such as corn and beans, two components of the Cuban population’s diet, as well as coffee and cocoa, and to support the growth of livestock to guarantee the production and sale of milk and meat

The IFAD representative mentioned that with Prodecor (Cooperative Rural Development Project), completed in January of this year, the hectares of land under irrigation increased to 6,000, the cultivation areas increased by 42% and more than 300 jobs were created with the assembly of four grain drying and processing plants, the source added.

He also highlighted that the Prodecafé (Agroforestry Cooperative Development Project) is about strategic chains for the Cuban economy, so the collaboration will allow their modernization in order to adapt them to the market and thus increase the volumes of production and sales, especially for exports, according to the report.

Referring to the results of these ten years of work in Cuba, the director of the UN agency stated that despite the difficult conditions the country is going through, the results are positive and very encouraging because they are projects with a productive and social impact by improving the living conditions of rural communities and encouraging the participation of young people.

PL recalls that, together with IFAD, the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation, the French Development Agency, the Cuba-France Countervalue Fund, the European Union Investment Facility in Latin America, the World Food Program and the IFAD-China South-South Cooperation Mechanism are working in these initiatives.

 OnCuba Staff

Are Democrats Taking Working-Class Immigrants for Granted?


OPINION
JAY CASPIAN KANG
June 23, 2022

Credit...Alberto Miranda

Last week, Mayra Flores, a Republican candidate for Congress who was born in Mexico and immigrated to the United States at the age of 6, flipped a congressional seat in a region of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas that had voted Democrat for 150 years. Flores’s victory came with the usual bluster from the G.O.P. and all the head-scratching from the national media that accompanies rightward voting swings in any nonwhite population. “G.O.P. wins big in Rio Grande Valley district. Does it portend shift of Hispanic voters?” The Fort Worth Star-Telegram asked in a headline. The conservative National Review called Flores’s victory “An Earthquake in South Texas” and said that her win “portends a major shift in the major American political landscape.”

Before I get into my own portending, let me offer up a bundle of caveats. This was an extremely low-turnout special election for a vacated congressional seat that will once again be up for grabs this November. The lines of the district will be significantly different in a few months — Flores won over an electorate that Joe Biden won by four points back in 2020. In November, Flores will be in the odd position of being a near-five-month incumbent running in a newly drawn district that, had it existed in 2020, Biden would have won by 15.5 points. This is presumably why Monica Robinson, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (D.C.C.C.), dismissed Flores’s victory as a “rental” seat.

So we can and should throw some cold water on the grand claims about what this electoral result means for the future of the Republican Party. Flores’s campaign outraised that of her Democratic opponent Dan Sanchez by a 16-to-1 margin. It also spent more than $1 million on television ads. The imbalance in spending and resources was so extreme that after the results had come in, Sanchez’s campaign manager said in a statement, “The D.C.C.C., D.N.C. and other associated national committees have failed at their single purpose of existence: winning elections.”

I think it’s perfectly fair to take Robinson and the D.C.C.C. at their word when they say that they did not think it was worth expending too much effort on a seat that will almost certainly swing back to Democrats at the start of 2023. What seems far more interesting to me is why the G.O.P. put so much effort into securing Flores’s victory. Why did they care?

The simple answer is that since the 2020 general election showed surprising gains for the G.O.P. among Latino voters, especially in Florida and the Rio Grande Valley, Republicans have spent a considerable amount of time and money to turn what ultimately might have been an electoral blip into a national reality. They wanted Mayra Flores to win because it’s good for Republicans to show that they can win seats in districts like this one, with an 85 percent Latino population.

Chuck Rocha, a political consultant and a former senior adviser for Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, told me that even if Flores ultimately only serves for five months, her campaign is “a brilliant marketing strategy by the Republicans.” He believes Flores’s victory will result in a “fund-raising boom” that will allow G.O.P. operatives to go out and solicit funds for other races in places with significant Latino populations. Flores’s victory, then, will allow the G.O.P. to raise money and mobilize public opinion around the narrative that the Latino vote is swinging fast. Any close race with a large Latino population will now seem up for grabs.

But a lot of the excitement around Flores has to do with Flores herself. She is a 36-year-old immigrant and a respiratory-care therapist who works with elders. She is married to a Border Patrol agent. In her own words, she is “Pro-Life, Pro-Second Amendment, and Pro-Law Enforcement.” It’s hard to imagine a more perfect face for the future of the G.O.P. — a working Mexican American woman telling the public that everything the Democrats think and say about the people of South Texas is out of touch and wrong. In one television ad put out by the Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, which opens with a photo of Joe Biden smiling at a podium, an unidentified voice speaking in a mild Hispanic accent says, “From up there, he’ll never get us down here. Forty years in office and not one visit to the border. He’s left us behind. That is why Mayra Flores is running for Congress. She’s one of us.”

“One of us” is the purest expression of identity politics, and while Republicans have long used this tactic to convince white voters to vote for white candidates, it’s rarely, if ever, been used by the party to endorse a Latina and underscore her connection to her working-class community. (The Flores campaign did not respond to a request for an interview.)

Much has been made over the past five years about how the Democratic Party can reach the working class. These conversations, which invoke coal miners and factory workers, are almost invariably concerned with the white working class. What’s almost never discussed is whether the Democrats are losing the nonwhite working class as well.

“The Democratic Party has walked away from blue-collar messaging, which is really aligned with the new immigrant community, mainly Latinos, and actually in some states A.A.P.I., because they’re working those jobs,” Rocha said.

This has opened the door for politicians like Flores to reimagine what the politics of her community should be. This has a special power within immigrant groups — even those who have been in America for a few generations — because their political allegiances aren’t calcified. According to a January Gallup poll, 52 percent of Latinos identify as independent, which is 10 percent higher than the proportion of independents among the American population as a whole. While this is a crude way to measure voter flexibility, it’s also true that over the past 40 years, both major immigrant groups in America — Latinos and Asian Americans — have swung between the two parties at a rate that far outpaced Black and white Americans.

So who does Flores imagine is “us”? Her messaging mostly centered around economic hardship, family and opportunity. In a flier titled “Mayra Flores Will Restore the American Dream,” Flores promises to “stop out-of-control spending to end inflation,” “secure the border” and “expand, not limit, access to health care.” In another, she promises to “get the economy back on track” and “stop inflation in its tracks, and keep more money in your pocket.” And in her acceptance speech last week, Flores said, “The policies that are being placed right now are hurting us. We cannot accept the increase of gas, of food, of medication, we cannot accept that. And we have to state the fact that under President Trump, we did not have this mess in this country.” Her messaging is clear: “Us” refers to the struggling, working-class families who grew up with socially conservative values. “Them” is everyone else.

Flores, then, can act almost as a proof of concept for future Republican candidates. Her invocation of Trump might have caught the attention of headline writers, but her campaign only occasionally mentioned the former president and stayed on message about economic factors, family and what she said were the real values of the people of South Texas: border security, religion, affordable health care, well-funded police and the Second Amendment.

It’s time for Democrats to ask a very simple question: What, exactly, does their party offer working-class immigrants? Note that here I am not talking about the broad, humanitarian ideal of immigration, wherein a government puts aside its nativist tendencies and welcomes people from around the world. I am talking about the millions of first- and second-generation immigrants who still identify strongly with their country of origin but who have mostly come to the United States seeking economic opportunity. They are largely apolitical or independent voters. They get their news from non-English sources far from the reach of things like this newsletter. Like everyone else in America, they tend to vote based on which party better reflects their self-interest.

This is a question I’ve been turning over in my head for the past five or so years, since I noticed that many of the communities I was reporting on — mostly Asian American — did not seem all that concerned with the threat of Donald Trump. This wasn’t a surprise to me. I was not born in this country, grew up in an immigrant household and have spent much of my career reporting on immigrant communities. For many first- and second-generation immigrant families, racism and white supremacy are secondary political concerns. (A Pew poll in 2020 showed that “racial and ethnic inequality” was fourth on the list of Hispanic voter priorities. The economy and health care were at the top of the list. Immigration, for what it’s worth, was eighth, below Supreme Court appointments and climate change.)

Most immigrant families, mine included, assume that racism will be a part of their lives. But because they still believe in American economic opportunity, economic and health care issues will always be more of a political priority than the squishier and sometimes more abstract competition between which party they think will be more racist than the other. This is especially true of working-class immigrants, many of whom come from the socially conservative, religious backgrounds that Flores defines as “us.”

If Flores’s low-turnout, likely temporary victory “portends” anything, it’s that immigrant identity politics rooted in economic talk can work for the right just as well as it has worked in the past for the left. What many in these communities want is a voice that will talk about economic hardships while also invoking a type of identity politics that will allow them to feel like they are part of a community.

For the past two years I have been writing about how the Democratic Party has taken immigrant votes for granted with the warning that if this continues, a new politics rooted in “us” will arise, paired with the grievance that liberals do not actually care about “our” issues. This is precisely what Flores did. In one of her many interviews after her victory, she said Democrats had taken South Texas “for granted” and that “they feel entitled to our vote.”

“I’m their worst nightmare,” Flores said of the Democrats in an interview with Newsmax. “They claim to be for immigrants. I’m an immigrant. They claim to be for women. I’m a woman. They claim to be for people of color. I’m someone of color. Yet I don’t feel the love.”

Jay Caspian Kang (@jaycaspiankang), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.”

OPINION DEBATE

Will the Democrats face a midterm wipeout?

ELIZABETH WARREN explains her priorities and writes, “if we fail to use the months remaining before the elections to deliver on more of our agenda, Democrats are headed toward big losses.”

MARK PENN writes that “without a U-turn by the Biden administration,” voters increasingly motivated by fear over a variety of issues “will generate a wave election like those in 1994 and 2010.”

THOMAS B. EDSALL asks, as the midterms approach, “to what degree are Democratic difficulties inevitable,” and which challenges stem from the party’s strategic choices?

EZRA KLEIN speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging.

40 years after Vincent Chin's death, Asian Americans continue fighting against hate in Detroit and beyond

Niraj Warikoo
Detroit Free Press

DETROIT – Helen Zia remembers how stunned she felt 40 years ago when she read the two men who beat Vincent Chin to death in Highland Park, an enclave of Detroit, were only given probation in his death.

"I was just livid," Zia, 70, an author and Asian American activist, recalled this week. "I couldn't believe my eyes. Is this how this story ends, that his killers get off with probation? And what did that mean for people who might be targeted? Like, go ahead, kill an Asian American and you won't go to jail."

Chin, a Chinese American man, was beaten with a baseball bat in 1982 by white autoworkers, one of whom complained about Asian Americans taking away their jobs. Chin died days later.

The outrage mobilized Zia and other Asian Americans in metro Detroit who went on to make the Chin case a national cause, igniting a movement that continues today amid growing concern about anti-Asian racism.

As anti-Asian hate incidents have risen in recent years, the story of Chin still resonates as metro Detroit on Thursday marked 40 years since his death. Back then, Japanese people were perceived as the enemy during an economic downturn, leading to attacks in Michigan and other places against not just Japanese Americans, but Asian Americans in general.

"It was a time of economic and social crisis for the city, and people of Asian descent were blamed for it and were scapegoated," Zia said.

The 40th commemoration of Chin's death comes amid a pandemic where Asians were wrongfully blamed for the proliferation of the COVID-19 virus, fueling hate incidents around the country. It also comes amid similar economic problems such as inflation, leading at times to ostracism of Asian Americans.

"If you look Asian, you're a target," said Sylvan Lake attorney James Shimoura, a grandson of Japanese immigrants who was one of the key activists 40 years ago working on the Chin case. "That was true in 1982. It's true today in 2022."


ANTI-ASIAN HATE CRIMES ON THE RISE:Here's what activists, lawmakers and police are doing to stop the violence

This month, there were four days of events remembering Chin and the struggles of Asian Americans, ending with an interfaith ceremony on Sunday at Chin's burial site at Forest Lawn Memorial Park cemetery in Detroit.

Building coalitions for justice within the Asian community and beyond

As the Asian American population grows in southeast Michigan, communities are once again mobilizing to gain more political influence and preserve their rights.

One of the lessons learned four decades ago was coalition building, both within diverse Asian American communities sometimes divided by nationality and with other groups such as African Americans

.
'FETISHIZATION ISN'T APPRECIATION':

The dangers of dating as an Asian American woman

Black civil rights and labor leaders such as the late Rev. Horace Sheffield Jr., whose granddaughter is Detroit City Council President Mary Sheffield, gave "incredible support" to Asian Americans after Chin was killed, helping them publicize the case, Zia said. The Rev. Jesse Jackson and leaders with the NAACP and National Urban League also spoke out.

"We really are trying to lift that up, the multiracial, multicultural, interfaith movement that was created in Detroit," Zia said. "We've done it before. ... The drumbeat today is, we're so divided. ... We can show that we have come together and we accomplished a lot together."

As an idealistic child of the 1960s, Zia moved from Boston to Detroit in the 1970s to be part of the labor movement in a place known nationally known for its strong unions.

She became an autoworker, working as a large press operator at a Chrysler plant. But she later got laid off from Chrysler as the oil crisis of the 1970s led to rising unemployment in Michigan. A child of immigrants from China, Zia and others felt the rising anti-Asian prejudice.

Back "then, every day on the TV, radio, news, the halls of Congress, the C suites of auto companies was: 'We're at war; Japan is the enemy,'" Zia said of the climate in the early 1980s.

CHINATOWNS REACT:

Chinatowns become more vibrant close-knit hub amid pandemic, anti-Asian violence

In Detroit, cars made in Japan were sometimes shot at on the freeways, Zia recalled. Just a few months before Chin's death, in March 1982, then-U.S. Rep. John Dingell, a Democrat, referred to Japanese people using a racist slur, the New York Times reported. Dingell later apologized. The month before Chin's death, a Chrysler board member said on a local radio station the U.S. should drop another atomic bomb on Hiroshima to deal with Japanese competition, the Free Press reported.

"There are really terrible parallels to what's going on today," Zia said.

ATTACKS ON ASIANS:

Asian women continue to face 'terrifying' attacks in the US. What advocates say needs to change.

A report released in March by Asian American advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate said there were 10,905 hate incidents against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders from March 19, 2020, through the end of last year. About 120 of those were in Michigan. The group started collecting data near the start of the pandemic when Asian Americans started to face bias incidents as some sought to link the virus to China.

More than 16% of the hate incidents involved physical assaults. Chinese Americans were the most common victims.

The killings last year of eight people in Atlanta, six of them Asian women, shook many, leading to protests, including some in metro Detroit.

ATLANTA SHOOTING:Atlanta spa shootings, one year later: Families share their 'pain,' denial,' and 'collective grief'
Vincent Chin's death: A fight, a baseball bat and a racial slur

On June 19, 1982, Chin and his friends were celebrating his upcoming marriage at a club in Highland Park, according to court testimony. Autoworkers Ronald Ebens, 43, and his stepson Michael Nitz, 22, got into an argument.

Witnesses said a racial slur against Japanese people was hurled at Chin, as well as comments about Japanese people stealing their jobs. The attackers denied making racial remarks and accused Chin of starting the fight.

A scuffle broke out and Chin left the club. Later, Ebens and Nitz searched for Chin, finding him outside a McDonald's. As Nitz held him, Ebens pounded him several times with a baseball bat. His last words, according to a witness, were: "It's not fair."

Chin died a few days later, on June 23.

ASIAN VIOLENCE:

Anti-Asian American violence is still raging. AAPI teachers are trying to stop it.

Zia and others followed the case in local newspapers, but it was the probation sentence the following year that ignited the movement.

They had a difficult time getting heard by politicians, prosecutors and progressive activists. Zia said Asian Americans were rarely covered by the news media.

"We were so invisible," Zia said.

THIS IS AMERICA:

Let's celebrate the full diversity of our community this AAPI Heritage Month


As the case drew national attention due to the work of local activists and Zia, who was a freelance journalist at the time, the Department of Justice intervened, bringing federal civil rights charges.

Ebens was found guilty in the federal trial, but his conviction was later overturned by an appeals court. A civil lawsuit was then filed and a settlement was reached, with Ebens ordered to pay $1.5 million. Today, that amount is estimated to be up to $10 million, which he still owes, Zia said. Ebens lives in Nevada and couldn't be reached for comment.

Asian Americans were disappointed in what they say was an indifferent attitude among prosecutors. And the judge who sentenced the men, Charles Kaufman, praised them during the sentencing, saying: "These weren't the kind of men you send to jail."

White suspects being perceived automatically as people of good character in contrast to minority defendants is an issue that still exists today in the criminal justice system, advocates say.

WILL PASSING LAWS HELP?:

Congress urged to address hate crimes, but 'hate is a hell of a motivator'

Advocates say the Chin case showed Asian Americans the need to get more involved in politics and government.

In Michigan, there are now about 405,000 residents of Asian descent, making up about 4% of the state's population according to 2020 census data.

The growth of the Asian population can be seen in places like western Wayne County, Oakland and Macomb counties, and Ann Arbor. But while there are now four state legislators of Asian descent representing parts of metro Detroit, they are often absent at the local level in government.

Asian American activism in a pre-internet era

Before the internet, it was challenging for activists to publicize cases, Shimoura recalls.

In their early days of the case, they would gather at a Chinese restaurant in Ferndale where Chin used to work. Today, there's a memorial on Woodward Avenue and 9 Mile Road in the median remembering Chin.

"A lot of it was spread word-of-mouth," Shimoura said. "We put out a lot of press releases. We traveled a lot giving speeches, doing rallies across the country."

Chin's mother, Lily Chin, didn't speak English well, but gave speeches and appeared on "The Phil Donahue Show."

One advantage is that back then, the news cycles tended to be longer, and so the case had a staying power in contrast to today, when stories fade more quickly, Shimoura said.
Asians a key part of Detroit's history

On Wednesday, activists gathered in Detroit in what used be the city's Chinatown to unveil a new mural and memorial remembering Chin, hoping it will remind future generations of the case and the history of Asian Americans in the city.

Many Asians in metro Detroit have been here for several generations, such as Shimoura.

Shimoura's grandfather, James, or Tadae in Japanese, emigrated from Japan in the early 20th century and became a chemist working at Ford Motor Co.

After Japanese Americans were released from internment camps during World War II, a number of them moved to Detroit. Now, the two biggest groups among Asian Americans in Michigan are Indian Americans and Chinese Americans.

Shimoura led an Asian American group during his college years at Michigan State University. After Chin was killed, he reached out to people he knew for support. Together, they made thousands of phone calls and wrote letters and telegrams to spread the story.

Shimoura said that 40 years ago, the Asian community was fractured, but it came together for Chin's case.

Zia said that unity is important to hold onto amid a rise in anti-Asian hate incidents nationwide.

"Vincent Chin matters today because what happened to him 40 years ago is very similar to what's going on today," she said. "It's very important to remember that back then people came together to stand up and say, no more, that hate does not belong in America."

"We're at a very urgent time," she added. "We have come together before and we are standing up together."

Contact Niraj Warikoo:nwarikoo@freepress.com or Twitter @nwarikoo