A climate-orchestrated early human love story

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INSTITUTE FOR BASIC SCIENCE

 

IMAGE: PHOTO OF THE REMAINING DENISOVA 11 (DENNY) BONE FRAGMENT FROM DENISOVA CAVE IN RUSSIA, THAT COMES FROM A DAUGHTER TO A NEANDERTHAL MOTHER AND A DENISOVAN FATHER. (PHOTO CREDIT: KATERINA DOUKA, TOM HIGHAM). view more 

CREDIT: INSTITUTE FOR BASIC SCIENCE

A new study published in the journal Science by an international team finds that past changes in atmospheric CO2 and corresponding shifts in climate and vegetation played a key role in determining when and where early human species interbred.

Modern-day people carry in their cells a small quantity of DNA deriving from other human species, namely the Neanderthals and the elusive Denisovans. Back in 2018, scientists announced to the world the discovery of an individual [Figure 1], later nicknamed Denny, who lived 90,000 years ago and who was identified as a daughter to a Denisovan father and a Neanderthal mother [Slon et al. 2018]. Denny, along with fellow mixed-ancestry individuals found at Denisova cave, testifies that interbreeding was probably common among hominins, and not limited to our own species Homo sapiens.

To unravel when and where human hybridization took place, scientists usually rely on paleo-genomic analysis of extremely rare fossil specimens and their even scarcer ancient DNA content. In the new Science paper, the team of climate experts and paleo-biologists from South Korea and Italy pursued a different approach. Using existing paleo-anthropological evidence, genetic data and supercomputer simulations of past climate, the team found that Neanderthals and Denisovans had different environmental preferences. More specifically, Denisovans were much more adapted to cold environments, characterized by boreal forests and even tundra, compared to their Neanderthal cousins who preferred temperate forests and grassland. “This means that their habitats of choice were separated geographically, with Neanderthals typically preferring southwestern Eurasia and Denisovans the northeast”, says Dr. Jiaoyang Ruan, postdoctoral researcher at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP), South Korea and lead author of the study.

However, according to their realistic computer simulations the scientists found that in warm interglacial periods, when Earth’s orbit around the Sun was more elliptic and northern hemisphere summer occurred closer to the Sun, the hominin habitats began to overlap geographically. “When Neanderthals and Denisovans shared a common habitat, there were more encounters and interactions among the groups, which would have increased the chance of interbreeding”, adds Prof. Axel Timmermann, corresponding author of the study and director of the ICCP and professor at Pusan National University.

The simulation of past habitat overlaps does not only put the first generation Neanderthal/Denisovan hybrid Denny into a climatic context, but it also agrees with other known episodes of interbreeding ~78, 120 thousand years ago. Future paleo-genetic reconstructions can be used to test the robustness of the new supercomputer model-based predictions of potential interbreeding intervals around 210 and 320 thousand years ago.

To further determine the climate drivers of the east-west interbreeding seesaw, the scientists looked more closely at how vegetation patterns changed over Eurasia during the past 400 thousand years. They discovered that elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations and mild interglacial conditions caused an eastward expansion of temperate forest into central Eurasia which created dispersal corridors for Neanderthals into Denisovan lands. “It is as if glacial-interglacial shifts in climate created the stage for a unique and long-lasting human love story, whose genetic traces are still visible today”, comments Dr. Ruan.

One of the key challenges the researchers faced in their study was to estimate the preferred climatic conditions for Denisovans. “To deal with the very sparse Denisovan dataset, we had to devise new statistical tools, which could also account for known ancestral relationships amongst human species”, says Prof. Pasquale Raia from University of Naples, Federico II in Italy, co-author of the study. “This allowed us for the first time to estimate where Denisovans could have lived. To our surprise, we found that, apart from areas in Russia and China, also northern Europe would have been a suitable environment for them”, he adds [Figure 2].

Whether Denisovans ever lived west of the Altai mountains is unknown; but it can be tested using large-sample genetic analyses of Denisovan ancestry in European populations. Such analysis is expected to shed new light on the relationship between early dispersal, habitat encroachment and human genetic diversification.

Illustration of Neanderthal (redscale) /Denisovan (greenscale) preferred habitats. Potential interbreeding areas in Central Asia and northern Europe are indicated by overlapping colors and baby-shapes.

CREDIT

Institute for Basic Science

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.add4459 

ARTICLE TITLE

Climate shifts orchestrated hominin interbreeding events across Eurasia

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Aug-2023

 

Extreme cooling ended the first human occupation of Europe

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

 

VIDEO: VIDEO HIGHLIGHTING HOW PALEOCLIMATE EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT AROUND 1.1 MILLION YEARS AGO, THE SOUTHERN EUROPEAN CLIMATE COOLED SIGNIFICANTLY AND LIKELY CAUSED AN EXTINCTION OF EARLY HUMANS ON THE CONTINENT, ACCORDING TO A NEW STUDY LED BY UCL RESEARCHERS. view more 

CREDIT: UCL

Paleoclimate evidence shows that around 1.1 million years ago, the southern European climate cooled significantly and likely caused an extinction of early humans on the continent, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.

Published in the journal Science, the team of researchers discovered the occurrence of previously unknown extreme glacial conditions around 1.1 million years ago. The glacial cooling pushed the European climate to levels beyond what archaic humans could tolerate, emptying the continent of human populations.

The oldest known human remains in Europe have previously been recovered from Iberia and suggest that early humans had arrived from southwest Αsia by about 1.4 million years ago. The climate around that time would have generally been warm and wet, punctuated by mild cold periods. Up to now, the prevailing theory has been that once humans arrived, they were able to survive through multiple climate cycles and adapt to increasingly harsh conditions after 900,000 years ago.

Senior author Professor Chronis Tzedakis (UCL Geography) said: “Our discovery of an extreme glacial cooling event around 1.1 million years ago challenges the idea of continuous early human occupation of Europe.”

Paleoclimate scientists from UCL, University of Cambridge and CSIC Barcelona analysed the chemical composition of marine micro-organisms and examined the pollen content in a deep-sea sediment core recovered from off the coast of Portugal. This revealed the presence of abrupt climate changes that culminated in an extreme glacial cooling, with ocean surface temperatures off Lisbon dropping below 6°C and semi-deserts expanding on the adjacent land.

Lead author Dr Vasiliki Margari (UCL Geography) said: “To our surprise, we found that this cooling at 1.1 million years ago was comparable to some of the most severe events of recent ice ages.”

Co-author Professor Nick Ashton of the British Museum said: “A cooling of this magnitude would have placed small hunter-gatherer bands under considerable stress, especially since early humans may have lacked adaptations such as sufficient fat insulation and also the means to make fire, effective clothing or shelters.”

To assess the climate impact on early human populations, co-corresponding author Professor Axel Timmermann and his team from the IBS Center for Climate Physics at Pusan National University ran a climate simulation on their supercomputer Aleph to capture the extreme conditions during this time. Combining the output of the simulation with fossil and archaeological evidence of human occupation in southwest Eurasia, the team then developed a human habitat model, which predicts how suitable the environment was for early human occupation.

Professor Axel Timmermann said: “The results showed that 1.1 million years ago climate around the Mediterranean became too hostile for archaic humans.”

Together, the paleoclimate data and human habitat model results indicate that Iberia, and more generally southern Europe, was depopulated during the Early Pleistocene. An apparent lack of stone tools and human remains over the next 200,000 years further raises the possibility of a long-lasting hiatus in European occupation.

Co-author Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London said: “According to this scenario, Europe may have been recolonized around 900,000 years ago by more resilient humans with evolutionary or behavioural changes that allowed survival in the increasing intensity of glacial conditions.”

The research was led by scientists at UCL Geography and the IBS Center for Climate Physics, Pusan National University, South Korea in partnership with researchers from the Cambridge University, CSIC Barcelona, the Natural History Museum, London, the British Museum and the UCL Institute of Archaeology.

 

Notes to Editors

For more information or to speak to the researchers involved or to get a copy of the paper, please contact Michael Lucibella, UCL Media Relations. T: +44 (0)753 941 0389, E: m.lucibella@ucl.ac.uk

Margari, V., Hodell, D.A., Parfitt, S.A., Ashton, N.M., Grimalt, J.O., Kim, H., Yun, K.-S., Gibbard, P.L., Stringer, C.B., Timmermann, A. & Tzedakis, P.C. (2023) ‘Extreme glacial cooling likely led to hominin depopulation of Europe in the Early Pleistocene’ will be published in Science on Thursday 10 August 2023, at 19:00 (7:00 pm) British Summer Time / 14:00 (2:00 pm) U.S. Eastern Time and is under a strict embargo until this time.

The DOI for this paper will be: 10.1126/science.adf4445

 

Additional material

Video: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/by3uu2i4rb5hd05grtw2k/UCL-Vas-v9.mp4?rlkey=kpchx03auqvkmpde4p7iyqqpn&dl=0

More information, including a copy of the paper, can be found online at the Science press package at https://www.eurekalert.org/press/scipak/

 

About UCL – London’s Global University

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We have a progressive and integrated approach to our teaching and research – championing innovation, creativity and cross-disciplinary working. We teach our students how to think, not what to think, and see them as partners, collaborators and contributors.  

For almost 200 years, we are proud to have opened higher education to students from a wide range of backgrounds and to change the way we create and share knowledge.

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Find out how UCL is helping lead the global fight against COVID-19 www.ucl.ac.uk/covid-19-research

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adf4445 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Extreme glacial cooling likely led to hominin depopulation of Europe in the Early Pleistocene

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Aug-2023

Soil microbiome, Earth’s ‘living skin’ under threat from climate change

Novel approach to measuring microbe activity in wetted soil leads to better understanding of vulnerability, researchers report

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PENN STATE

 

IMAGE: PENN STATE GRADUATE STUDENT RYAN TREXLER COLLECTS CORES OF BIOCRUST FROM THE FIELD BEFORE BRINGING THEM BACK TO THE LAB TO STUDY. view more 

CREDIT: PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Using a novel method to detect microbial activity in biological soil crusts, or biocrusts, after they are wetted, a Penn State-led research team in a new study uncovered clues that will lead to a better understanding of the role microbes play in forming a living skin over many semi-arid ecosystems around the world. The tiny organisms — and the microbiomes they create — are threatened by climate change.  

The researchers published their findings in Frontiers of Microbiology.

“Biocrusts currently cover approximately 12% of Earth’s terrestrial surface, and we expect them to decrease by about 25% to 40% within 65 years due to climate change and land-use intensification,” said team leader Estelle Couradeau, Penn State assistant professor of soils and environmental microbiology. “We hope this work can pave the way to understanding the microbial functions supporting biocrust resilience to the rapidly changing climate patterns and more frequent droughts.”

Biological soil crusts are assemblages of organisms that form a perennial, well-organized surface layer in soils. They are widespread, occurring on all of the continents wherever a shortage of water limits the growth of common plants, allowing light to reach bare soil. But there is still sufficient water to support the growth of microorganisms that perform valuable ecosystem services such as taking carbon and nitrogen from the air and fixing them in the soil, recycling nutrients and holding soil particles together, which helps prevent dust.

That soil-stabilizing function — which reduces erosion by providing the means for soil to clump and not break down into dust — is extremely important, according to Couradeau. Her research group, now in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, has been intensively studying biocrusts for a decade.

“Most dust is generated in drylands, and studies suggest that the presence of biocrusts in drylands greatly reduce the amount of dust that would otherwise make its way into the atmosphere,” she said. “We think losing biocrusts would cause a 5% to 15% increase in global dust emission and deposition — which would affect the climate, environment and human health.”

In the semi-arid regions where biocrusts exist, the organisms — tiny mosses, lichens, green algae, cyanobacteria, other bacteria and fungi — may experience just a few rain or snow events a year, explained Ryan Trexler, a doctoral degree candidate in the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program in ecology and in biogeochemistry, who spearheaded the research.

“When the soil is dry, for the most part, the microbes in the soil are dormant, not doing much,” he said. “But as soon as they sense water, they're resuscitated very quickly, within seconds to minutes. And they are actively making chlorophyll and fixing carbon and nitrogen until the soil is dry again — and then the microbes go dormant again. They go through cycles of activity every time it rains.”

To study biocrusts, the researchers took samples from three plots of undisturbed, cyanobacteria-dominated biocrusts located on the Colorado Plateau near Moab, Utah. Biocrust samples were taken in fall following rain that wetted the soil sufficiently to activate the microbes. The samples were subsequently dried and stored in the dark and then rewetted much later in the research.

“We sampled what we call ‘a cold desert,’ because it’s very arid, but in the winter, it sometimes snows,” Trexler said. “So, it's not as hot as many other arid places, but still plants cannot thrive there because there's not enough water. And so, the only community that we find in soils at the site are microbial.”

To determine which microorganisms are active within soil communities, the researchers coupled bioorthogonal non-canonical amino acid tagging — known as BONCAT — with fluorescence-activated cell sorting. BONCAT is a powerful tool for tracking protein synthesis on the level of single cells within communities and whole organisms, while fluorescence-activated cell sorting sorts cells based on whether they are producing new proteins.

The researchers combined these processes with shotgun metagenomic sequencing, which allowed them to comprehensively sample all genes in all organisms present in biocrust samples. They applied this method to profile the diversity and potential functional capabilities of both active and inactive microorganisms in a biocrust community after being resuscitated by a simulated rain event. The researchers found that their novel approach can discern active and inactive microorganisms in wetted biocrusts.

The active and inactive components of the biocrust community differed in species richness and composition at both four hours and 21 hours after the wetting event, the researchers reported.

Contributing to the research were Marc Van Goethem, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Danielle Goudeau, Nandita Nath, Trent Northen and Rex Malmstrom, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute.

The U.S. Department of Energy supported this research.

 

A cross-section of biocrust taken by confocal scanning laser microscopy. Soil particles are visible as various shades of gray, while the bundles of cyanobacterial filaments (fluorescent red) are situated between them.

A view of the Colorado Plateau near Moab, Utah, where biocrust samples were taken in fall following rain that wetted the soil sufficiently to activate the microbes.

CREDIT

Penn State

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Microbiology

DOI

10.3389/fmicb.2023.1176751 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

BONCAT-FACS-Seq reveals the active fraction of a biocrust community undergoing a wet-up event

Interdisciplinary team studies decomposition effects on soil

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE INSTITUTE OF AGRICULTURE

 

IMAGE: POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER STACY TAYLOR CONDUCTS RESEARCH ON SOIL SAMPLES COLLECTED FROM THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH FACILITY. view more 

CREDIT: UT, KNOXVILLE

Forensic researchers at the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s famous Anthropological Research Facility, popularly known as the “Body Farm,” have made headlines for decades in their discoveries of what happens to human bodies after death. Now, a multidisciplinary team—engineers, soil scientists, and biologists—digs in with them for a deeper look at what happens to the soil underneath a decomposing body. Their study, “Soil Elemental Changes During Human Decomposition,” published in June 2023 by PLOS One, could benefit investigators searching for human remains in remote or hard-to access-vegetated areas.

“This study was part of a larger project where we were investing environmental changes in the vicinity of a decomposing body,” said Jennifer DeBruyn, co-author and professor in the Herbert College of Agriculture Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science (BESS). “Our bodies are concentrated in nutrients and other elements compared to the surrounding environment. As they break down, these nutrients are released into the environment, resulting in changes to soil and vegetation nearby.”

A greater understanding of how and when soil and vegetation changes in the presence of decomposing human remains may offer clues to both locating bodies and estimating how long they have been there.

To test their ideas, this study asks: What elements are released from the human body during decomposition and how does it influence the local soil environment?

“We have previously looked at the major elements of the body, namely carbon and nitrogen,” said DeBruyn, “But we know there are lots more in our bodies.”

The next most abundant elements in the body are sulfur, phosphorus, sodium, and potassium. As the soft tissues in test bodies decomposed, the team observed an expected pulse of these elements in the soils as they were released into the environment.

“What we were surprised to see was that we also had higher concentrations of calcium and magnesium than what we would expect from the input of the body alone,” said Stacy Taylor, lead author on the study and a postdoctoral researcher in DeBruyn’s lab. “While we do have calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) in our bodies, much of it is tied up in our bones, which would take years or decades break down. Soils have capacity to bind cations like Ca2+ and Mg2+, so our hypothesis is that the changing conditions resulted in the release of these elements from the soil itself.”

They were also surprised to see an increase in some trace metals a few months into the soil testing, after soft tissues were largely decomposed.

“Again, the concentrations in soil were higher than what we would expect based on just what would be coming from the body,” said Taylor. “Decomposition fluids result in a gradual acidification of the soil over time, so our hypothesis is that as the pH was dropping, these trace metals were slowly being solubilized from mineral complexes in the soil.”

The big-picture take-away from their study could lead to new approaches in finding missing persons or in determining how long remains have been in a location.

“This study was an important documentation of the types of elements released during human decomposition and how they changed over time,” said DeBruyn. “It contributes to our broader understanding of local environmental changes during human decomposition, which may ultimately help us understand the timing of decomposition in cases where human remains are found outdoors.”

DeBruyn and her students and postdocs have been conducting research at the Anthropological Research Facility for over a decade, investigating the microbiological and environmental changes during human decomposition.

Their team for the study included DeBruyn, Taylor, and Michael Essington from BESS; Scott Lenaghan and Neal Stewart from the Center for Agricultural Synthetic Biology within the UT Institute of Agriculture; Amy Mundorff and Dawnie Steadman of the Forensic Anthropology Center, and Adrian Gonzalez, manager of the Water Quality Core Facility (WQCF) in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

The WQCF analyzed hundreds of soil samples that originated from underneath deceased human donors—those whose decision to volunteer their remains offers ongoing contribution to the furthering of this investigative science.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

Puerto Rico’s Bankrupt Utility Strikes Tentative Deal With Bondholders

Michelle Kaske
Fri, August 11, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- Puerto Rico’s bankrupt power utility reached a tentative agreement with a “substantial number” of its bondholders, according to a federal oversight board, and received another week to finalize a potential deal to reduce nearly $9 billion of debt.

US District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain on Thursday granted a request by the federally appointed board to postpone to Aug. 18 a deadline to file an amended debt-cutting plan. The board, which manages the bankruptcy, and some bondholders are working on the specific terms of a restructuring support agreement, according to the board’s motion seeking an extension.

A potential debt deal between Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority, called Prepa, and its creditors would be a long-awaited and positive development in the utility’s six-year bankruptcy, which has been prolonged by hurricanes, the commonwealth’s own debt restructuring and the pandemic.

“The oversight board is pleased to report it has reached an agreement in principle with a substantial number of holders of Prepa bonds to settle their respective claims against Prepa,” lawyers for the board wrote in Thursday’s court filing.

Not all investors are on board yet. GoldenTree Asset Management says it hasn’t been invited to or participated in any settlement discussions, according to a statement it filed Thursday to the court following Swain’s approval of the Aug. 18 deadline. GoldenTree held $1 billion of Prepa debt as of Feb. 16, according to its most recent disclosure filing to the court.

“We believe that the efforts of the oversight board to cause the debtor to try to walk away from $8.4 billion of revenue bonds on a nonconsensual basis, and to buy plan support from some, but not all bondholders, through improper classification and disparate treatment, is wasteful and will not result in the timely or efficient conclusion of this process that all purport to desire,” lawyers for GoldenTree wrote in its filing Thursday.

GoldenTree has been part of an ad hoc group of Prepa bondholders, but it recently hired White & Case to represent it, an indication that the firm’s strategy may differ from the other investors in the group.

Negotiations between the oversight board and bondholders increased after Swain in June limited to $2.38 billion the amount of utility net revenue that bondholders have a claim to. That amount is a sliver of Prepa’s outstanding bonds.

Swain originally asked the board to submit its amended debt plan by July 14. She has postponed that deadline as the board has claimed that it continues to find agreement with creditors.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

QUEBEC INC.

Desmarais Family’s Sagard Pushes for Growth With Private Retail Funds

Derek Decloet
Fri, August 11, 2023 


(Bloomberg) -- Sagard Holdings, the alternative asset manager controlled by Canada’s billionaire Desmarais family, is working to boost sales of its private-asset funds to retail investors.

Sagard struck a deal last month to bring on Bank of Montreal and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ as minority investors in the firm. When complete, the transaction will dilute Power Corp. of Canada’s ownership of Sagard to just over 50%, the company disclosed Friday. But it will mean new avenues of growth, Power Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Orr said.

“The BMO partnership might help” with retail distribution, Orr told analysts on Friday. “I think a lot of the growth over the next decade is going to come not just from institutions, but it’s going to come from high net worth, ultra-high net worth and retail channels.”

Sagard and its sister company, Power Sustainable, offer a variety of investment strategies, including private equity, private credit, green energy and real estate funds. Sagard also has a venture capital arm that’s focused on financial-technology startups.

The two alternative managers remain a small part of Montreal-based Power, which derives the bulk of its profits from control of one of Canada’s largest insurance companies, Great-West Lifeco Inc., and from mutual fund and wealth-management firm IGM Financial Inc.

Read More: Billionaire Desmarais Family Quietly Reshapes a Financial Empire

Sagard and Power Sustainable had about C$22 billion ($16.4 billion) of assets under management, including unfunded commitments, as of June 30. It’s not large enough yet to be profitable; the firms posted a combined C$18 million operating loss in the second quarter.

But that will change as they draw in more outside investors, Orr said in response to analysts’ questions.

“We have said we are all about creating value — and, ultimately, profitability — in our investing platforms, but we were looking to do that through third-party capital,” he said.

Power shares rose as high as C$38.98 on Friday in Toronto, the highest price since April 2022.

Sagard is led by Paul Desmarais III, the grandson of the late Paul Desmarais, who took over Power more than 50 years ago and used it to gain control of Great-West, IGM and a large portfolio of financial, media and industrial assets. Power has a stock market value of about C$26 billion.

 Businessweek

Trucking Company Yellow Is Having an Odd Bankruptcy With New Loan Offers Pouring In

Jonathan Randles
Fri, August 11, 2023


(Bloomberg) -- As far as liquidations go, trucking company Yellow appears to be having a particularly good one.

After meme traders piled into the stock just as the firm was cratering, investment funds and a rival trucker are sparring for the opportunity to finance its wind-down.

While the nearly 100-year-old firm’s core shipping business has collapsed, it still boasts lucrative assets worth an estimated $2.1 billion — helping Yellow get the kind of financing bids that it struggled to raise before a recent Chapter 11 filing.

Yellow is scheduled to update the bankruptcy court on its efforts to secure alternative financing at a Friday hearing.

Its loan from existing lenders led by Apollo Global Management carries a beefy 17% interest rate. Yellow could also be on the hook for $32 million in fees if the sale drags on for months. The loan has another provision to further protect about $501 million in outstanding debt owed to Apollo and other lenders.

The good news for the trucker: Hedge fund MFN Partners LP, its largest shareholder, has offered to loan the same amount of money at the same interest rate but lower fees, according to Yellow lawyer Patrick J. Nash. Rival trucking firm Estes Express Lines has floated a proposal on more favorable terms, offering up-to $230 million at 2% lower-interest and lower fees, Nash said.

Nash said he was “cautiously optimistic” that Yellow could be close to finalizing an alternative financing by Friday.

“The prospect of multiple bids is a good thing, in my view, despite the irony that they’re funding a business that’s completely shutting down,” said David Skeel, a professor at University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.

Lucrative Assets

The trucker is in demand thanks to its substantial real estate portfolio with about 300 service centers, 42,000 trailers and 12,700 tractors — assets Yellow told a bankruptcy judge should fetch more than enough to fully repay its lenders. It famously has a $700 million loan from the US government during the pandemic rescue.


Nash said the company’s service centers are located throughout the country, many in fully-developed urban areas, where such terminals are no-longer being built. Industry experts have described the bankruptcy as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to secure such a large volume of these types of assets, Nash said.

Prospects are so promising that Yellow should also be able to repay additional debt to fund the Chapter 11 case, he said.

Still, existing lenders expressed doubt Wednesday over whether alternative financing will come to fruition. An Apollo lawyer said the firm hadn’t reviewed Estes’ proposal and expressed concern that Yellow might draw out the liquidation and negatively impact the value of its collateral.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Meloni Muscles In on KKR’s Telecom Italia Deal, Taking Stake

Daniele Lepido and Alessandra Migliaccio
Fri, August 11, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- The Italian government agreed with US private equity firm KKR & Co. to take a stake of up to 20% in Telecom Italia SpA’s network business as Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni asserts greater state oversight of strategic assets.

The U.S. private equity firm signed a preliminary deal to include the government in its €23 billion ($25.3 billion) bid for the former phone monopoly’s network, the finance ministry said a statement late Thursday. A decree will complete the process.

The announcement — Meloni’s second surprise intervention in a week after she imposed a windfall tax on banks — was seen as a positive news by Telecom Italia’s largest shareholder, Vivendi SE, who had earlier opposed the sale.

The opening of a serious dialog with Vivendi is necessary to reach a feasible solution, according to people close to the French media-conglomerate. For Vivendi, a discussion is now essential to find the best possible outcome, the people added. The French media conglomerate has valued the network at about €30 billion.

The government’s “direct and active” intervention makes explicit “the strong and broad political support for the transaction,” Alberto Gegra, an analyst at Equita, wrote in a note to clients.

Telecom Italia shares rose as much as 5.6% in Milan trading to their highest since April, boosting the company’s market value to €6.2 billion.

Meloni has signaled that she considers Telecom Italia’s network a strategic asset that must retain a degree of public oversight. The government has the right to veto deals involving such assets, and Rome’s desire to safeguard the company’s 40,000 employees means that any offer without state backing would face significant hurdles.

The deal with KKR will provide “a decisive role for the government in defining strategic choices,” the economy ministry said in its statement.

KKR is also adding infrastructure fund F2i SGR SpA to its bidding group, boosting the numbers of Italian investors in the consortium.


Telecom Italia put its network business up for sale earlier this year in an effort to reduce its gross debt of more than €30 billion. The business has been grappling with a complex mix of high labor costs and the need for ever-growing investments to modernize its network infrastructure.

--With assistance from Antonio Vanuzzo and Chiara Remondini.

 Bloomberg Businessweek

Opinion: Wall Street predators destroyed Toys 'R' Us. Now they're coming for Simon & Schuster

Aliya Sabharwal
Fri, August 11, 2023 

When new owners drove Toys 'R' Us into bankruptcy for a quick profit, they cost 33,000 workers their jobs.

The venerable publishing house Simon & Schuster will soon be owned by one of the nation’s biggest private equity firms, KKR. For a glimpse of their future — and tips on how to fight back — Simon & Schuster authors and employees might want to chat with the former workers of Toys ‘R’ Us. There are 33,000 of them, and their company was driven into bankruptcy five years ago by a clutch of Wall Street firms led by KKR.

That’s a common script. Private equity is a 40-year-old Wall Street creation that thrives on cost-cutting, wealth extraction, short time horizons, and financial engineering. It bought, sold, and liquidated its way through the American retail sector years ago, and is now jumping into traditional book publishing, a business that demands patience, an appetite for risky new authors and deft marketing. Can Simon & Schuster survive, as KKR is infamously known, the “barbarians at the gate”?

Read more: Op-Ed: How to stop hedge funds from wrecking local news

The private equity model is to loot and flip, not to invest or run companies well — an ominous history for any acquisition, but especially for a business requiring long-term commitments, like book publishing. That said, there are policy options for change, from Washington to Sacramento, and models for workers to fight back.

Private equity firms raise money from pension funds, endowments and wealthy individuals and use a slice of that money plus a lot of leverage to buy companies that are then saddled with the debt. The Simon & Schuster transaction will leave the publisher $1 billion in hock, ratcheting up pressure to repay the debt — and turn a profit.

Those former Toys ‘R’ Us employees can attest to how that goes. When a group led by KKR bought Toys ‘R’ Us for $6.6 billion in 2005, it used $5 billion in debt. Then it kept squeezing. The new owners eliminated positions and offloaded responsibilities onto other employees, while pressuring workers to sign up customers for high-margin sweeteners like credit cards and “payment protection plans.”

Read more: Opinion: Why do I hoard more books than I could possibly read? An investigation

KKR and its partners sold off Toys ‘R’ Us real estate, pocketed the money and forced the retailer to lease back its buildings. Along the way, KKR and the other firms paid themselves $250 million in “management fees” and big bonuses to hand-picked executives — right before Toys ‘R’ Us entered bankruptcy.

KKR’s story tracks the march of private equity through the American economy. Retail proved lucrative for KKR and other private equity firms, but 52,000 workers paid the price in California alone.

Healthcare has also proved a juicy target; KKR bankrupted Envision Healthcare, a staffing service for emergency rooms, with a heavy debt load. KKR, Blackstone and others have contributed to the housing crisis through their ownership of single-family homes, further excluding, especially, Black Americans from homeownership. An investigation of KKR ownership of care facilities for disabled people revealed appalling conditions, including at its California locations, part of a broader problem of private equity in the care economy.

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Wall Street is no stranger to the creative industries. Blackstone, a private equity rival to KKR, has wrangled with recording artists over its ownership of companies that pay royalties. If KKR seeks a bigger slice of the income pie at Simon & Schuster — as opposed to growing the pie with new authors and titles — pressure on authors could go the same way.

Because debt both lubricates the private equity machine and raises pressure to slash costs and curb investment, any solution must realign incentives so that executives who load up a company with debt end up responsible for it. The Stop Wall Street Looting Act, introduced in 2018, would pierce the liability shield between private equity firms and the companies they purchase, giving creditors recourse to recover debt from Wall Street dealmakers.

Other measures could curb the worst abuses. Proposals in Congress would eliminate tax deductions for big corporate landlords to reduce incentives to bid up the cost of housing. Measures by health industry regulators could limit reimbursements to private equity-owned providers to deter harmful ownership forms. More states could also pass mandatory severance laws — New Jersey has led the way — to cushion the impact of mass layoffs. Minnesota’s state attorney general, Keith Ellison, is suing a private equity-owned home rental company for failing to maintain its properties.

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And workers can fight back. Former employees of Toys ‘R’ Us won a $20-million severance fund after its bankruptcy through an astute mix of people power and political pressure. Tenants are organizing in San Diego to combat abuses by Blackstone, which has tried to outflank rent stabilization laws by driving existing tenants out through eviction or neglect.

Don’t worry about the folks at KKR. Its founders, Henry Kravis and George Roberts, are each worth about $11 billion after long careers on Wall Street. But based on their track record, the outlook for Simon & Schuster, publisher of important authors like Ernest Hemingway, Siddhartha Mukherjee and Doris Lessing, darkened considerably this week.

Aliya Sabharwal is a campaigns manager for private equity at Americans for Financial Reform and a former organizer of laid-off Toys ‘R’ Us employees.

If it’s in the news right now, the L.A. Times’ Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Paramount to sell Simon & Schuster to KKR for $1.62 billion


Toy figures of people are seen in front of the displayed Paramount + logo, in this illustration

Mon, August 7, 2023 
By Samrhitha A and Dawn Chmielewski

(Reuters) -Paramount Global said it would sell Simon & Schuster to private-equity firm KKR & Co for $1.62 billion in cash, ending a year-long attempt to sell the marquee book publisher.

Shares of the media company rose 4% in extended trading after Paramount also beat estimates for second-quarter earnings, riding on strong growth in its streaming business.

Paramount has been trying to offload Simon & Schuster, the publisher of authors such as Stephen King and Hillary Clinton, since a federal judge blocked its $2.2 billion sale to Penguin Random House last year.

"Simon Schuster is a fantastic asset, but ... it's not core," CEO Bob Bakish said on a post-earnings call.

Bakish did not provide an update on the sale of other company assets. The company is exploring the sale of a majority stake in BET Media Group, which includes the BET cable network.

Paramount will receive gross proceeds of $2.2 billion from the sale of Simon & Schuster, including a $200 million termination fee paid by Penguin Random House and the cash flow it received during the process. It expects to use the proceeds to pay down debt.

The move comes at a time when the company is striving to bolster its streaming service, Paramount+, in a fiercely competitive industry dominated by Netflix and Disney+.

Revenue in the direct-to-consumer unit, home to Paramount+ and PlutoTV, grew 39% in the second quarter, helping offset a 29% decline in the filmed entertainment business

Total revenue was $7.62 billion, above estimates of $7.43 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Adjusted profit of 10 cents per share was also better than expectations for the company to break even.

Finance chief Naveen Chopra promised "significant earnings improvement" in the streaming business next year and projected a 20% rise in average revenue per user on Paramount+ in 2024.

The company implemented the first price increase for Paramount+ and launched the integrated Paramount+-Showtime service during the quarter. Its streaming unit's operating loss narrowed to $424 million from $445 million a year ago.

Still, the company faces risks from the ongoing strikes by Hollywood writers and actors, which have disrupted the production of scripted series for the fall TV season and halted work on films.

As production of most scripted series has stopped, Bakish said CBS would fill its fall lineup with hits such as "Yellowstone" and streaming shows such as "SEAL Team."


It also licensed the rights to the U.K. version of "Ghosts," to pair with the U.S. version of the show.

"Strikes do present some marketing challenges, though the film slate for the rest of the year is stacked," Bakish said, adding that it was too soon to predict its impact on 2024 films.

Upcoming film releases include "Killers of the Flower Moon," which will be released in theaters in October before coming to Apple TV+, as well as "Mean Girls" the musical.

(Reporting by Samrhitha Arunasalam in Bengaluru and Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Anil D'Silva)

Belgium is celebrating flowers and surrealism. And nothing is what it seems



Fri, August 11, 2023

BRUSSELS (AP) — If elephants are really known for their sense of direction, what are nine of them doing in the heart of Brussels, seemingly lost between the gothic and baroque houses lining the UNESCO-protected Grand Place?

As of Friday, nothing is quite what it seems as the Belgian capital celebrates the nation's love of surrealism.

The nine life-sized wooden elephants were brought in from the Verbeke art center about an hour's drive north of Brussels to be the prime attraction of Flowertime, a biennial festival highlighting the nation's fling with flowers.


Only this time, surrealism adds a twist. And no symbol more potent than Rene Magritte's pipe, subtitled, “This is not a pipe.” It is a painting of a pipe, after all — and it has come to define Belgian surrealism ever since.

Now a similar non-pipe — a sculpture of a pipe — graces the interior yard of City Hall, which for the occasion has been renamed, “This is not a city hall.” On the pipe sculpture, flowers hang over the edges of the pipe's bowl, like smoke billowing out.

Back on the adjacent Grand Place, the elephants are to draw the visitors in. Their imaginary footprints on the cobblestones are made of white flowers.

“You don’t expect to find elephants here in the city center of Brussels on the Grand Place, it’s unbelievable. So that’s a bit surrealistic of course,” said artist Dennis Van Der Meer, who was busy giving the wooden animals a floral skin.

Flowers also run riot inside City Hall too. Leila Floral, her professional name, is taking care of the stairs and uses the surroundings as much as she can to produce a cascade. “My flowers will fall down like a waterfall,” she said.

Close by, under a sign reading, “This is not death,” florists have littered the floor of a marble corridor with coffins, and added flowered casks for good measure.

Even the mayor's personal office had a floral makeover. Stacks of unpaid bills and invoices are held together by an equally chaotic flower arrangement. The bills suggest that perhaps some realism did seep into the show.

One thing is sure about the show: Because flowers wilt, it will be over on Tuesday.

Raf Casert And Mark Carlson, The Associated Press

St. Louis activists praise Biden's support for compensation over Manhattan Project contamination


Fri, August 11, 2023 

ST. LOUIS (AP) — St. Louis-area activists have been fighting for years to get government compensation for people with cancer and other serious illnesses potentially connected to Manhattan Project nuclear contamination. This week marked a major victory, with support coming from the president.

Uranium was processed in St. Louis starting at the onset of World War II as America raced to develop nuclear bombs. In July, reporting as part of an ongoing collaboration between The Missouri Independent, the nonprofit newsroom MuckRock and The Associated Press cited thousands of pages of documents indicating decades of nonchalance and indifference for the risks posed by uranium contamination. The government documents were obtained by outside researchers through the Freedom of Information Act and shared with the news organizations.

Since the news reports, bipartisan support has emerged to compensate those in St. Louis and elsewhere whose illnesses may be tied to nuclear fallout and contamination. On Wednesday, that support extended to President Joe Biden.

“I’m prepared to help in terms of making sure that those folks are taken care of,” Biden said during a visit to New Mexico.

Dawn Chapman and Karen Nickel, who lead the activist group Just Moms STL, said they’re optimistic but not letting up.

“It’s a great day,” Chapman said. “We feel incredible. But we don’t take the time to celebrate it. For us, it’s like we have a strong wind at our back. Now who do we push? We don’t let up for a moment.”

The push for compensation has united politicians with virtually nothing else in common. Republican U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, of Missouri, is an ardent supporter. So is U.S. Rep. Cori Bush, a St. Louis Democrat.

Hawley introduced legislation last month to expand an existing compensation program for exposure victims. The Senate endorsed the amendment, but the proposed changes to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act are not yet included in a House-approved defense bill amid negotiations toward final legislation.

St. Louis is far from alone in suffering the effects of the geographically scattered national nuclear program. Advocates have been trying for years to bring awareness to the lingering effects of radiation exposure on the Navajo Nation, where millions of tons of uranium ore were extracted over decades to support U.S. nuclear activities.

Months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Mallinckrodt Chemical Co. in St. Louis began processing uranium into a concentrated form that could be further refined elsewhere into the material that made it into weapons.

By the late-1940s, the government was trucking nuclear waste from the Mallinckrodt plant to a site near Lambert Airport. It was there that the waste was dumped into Coldwater Creek, contaminating a waterway that was a popular place for kids to play. Just last year, Jana Elementary School, which sits near the creek, was shut down over possible contamination, even though studies conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers found none.

In 1966, the Atomic Energy Commission demolished and buried buildings near the airport and moved the waste to another site, contaminating it, too. Documents cited by AP and the other news organizations showed that storage was haphazard and waste was spilled on roads but that mistakes were often ignored.

Uranium waste also was illegally dumped in West Lake Landfill, near the airport, in 1973. It's still there.

Cleanup in St. Louis County has topped $1 billion, and it's far from over.

Meanwhile, uranium was processed in neighboring St. Charles County starting in the 1950s, creating more contamination. The government built a 75-footmound, covered in rock, to serve as a permanent disposal cell, and the area is considered remediated.

Some experts are skeptical about the connection between diseases and the contamination. Tim Jorgensen, a professor of radiation medicine at Georgetown University, told the AP in July that the biggest risk factor for cancer is age and that local radiation’s contribution would be so low as to be hard to detect.

Still, in 2019, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry issued a report that found people who regularly played in Coldwater Creek as children from the 1960s to the 1990s may have a slight increased risk of bone cancer, lung cancer and leukemia. The agency determined that those exposed daily to the creek starting in the 2000s, when cleanup began, could have a small increased risk of lung cancer.

Many of those with direct connections to illnesses are far more convinced. Kyle Hedgpeth's young daughter and niece both were diagnosed with cancer in 2020, within a month of each other. Both have since recovered.

Hedgpeth's wife and her brother grew up near a creek that flows from the St. Charles County site. He believes they picked up something from exposure to the creek and passed it down to their girls.

“It seems all too coincidental,” Hedgpeth said. “I just think there's too many red flags literally putting it in their backyard to ignore it.”

Jim Salter, The Associated Press