It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Professor Anne Rasa, scientist who revealed the complex social structure in mongoose colonies – obituary
Her studies in Kenya revealed that no other mammalian society has such a high degree of mutual caring and division of labour By Telegraph
She retired to a farm in the Kalahari which she turned into a sanctuary for animals including meerkats
Professor Anne Rasa, who has died aged 80, was an ethologist (expert in animal behaviour) whose studies of the social behaviour of the dwarf mongoose in the Taru Desert, Kenya, were published in numerous papers and books including the popular Mongoose Watch: A Family Observed (1985).
Having studied the animals in captivity in Germany, she went to live in the desert to follow a group in the wild, concluding that no other mammalian society, bar that of humans, has such a high degree of mutual caring and division of labour.
Each mongoose group, she found, is led by a matriarch who chooses her own mate and is the only female allowed to rear young. Her mate leads the group into battle, teaches the young to forage and has the job of preventing illicit sex among other group members, a role made problematic by the fact that during the five days the matriarch is in season, he mounts her more than 2,000 times. Other group members are allocated jobs as guards, babysitters, peacemakers and so on.
“They woo, worry, rage and play; form friendships and sexual liaisons; practice deception and persuasion; and at times behave with striking thoughtfulness for others,” Anne Rasa wrote.
Each mongoose group, she found, is led by a matriarch who chooses her own mate and is the only female allowed to rear young This thoughtfulness manifested itself, for example, in the group’s treatment of a member who became ill with chronic kidney disease and lost the ability to climb. The entire group gave up their preference for sleeping on elevated objects and joined their sick friend on the ground. When foraging, they slowed their search for food so that the afflicted mongoose could keep up.
Olwen Anne Elisabeth Phillips was born on April 28 1940, in the Rhondda Valley, Wales, the daughter of squadron leader Richard Phillips and his wife Olwen. After taking a BSc from Imperial College she won a Nato scholarship to research aggression in tropical fish. She took an MSc from the University of Hawaii, followed, in 1970, by a PhD from London University.
From 1970 to 1974 she worked at the Max-Planck Insitute of Behavioural Psychology under Konrad Lorenz. It was there that she decided to study the dwarf mongoose after she learnt that nothing was known about the species.
From 1975 to 1981 she was a scientific assistant at Marburg University, and then moved to the University of Bayreuth with a scholarship to carry out her field studies on dwarf mongoose in the Taru Desert. Lorenz wrote the forward to Mongoose Watch.
In the late 1980s Anne Rasa moved to Pretoria University in South Africa as an associate professor of ethology.
There she began research on yellow mongooses in the Kalahari Desert; she concluded that diet determines whether they live as solitary animals or in a group. When eating large food items such as birds, snakes and geckos, it was better for them to hunt alone: “But if you specialise in grubs, you need someone to watch your back as birds of prey are mongooses’ main predator.”
In 1991 she returned to Germany as associate professor of ethology at the University of Bonn, where, as well as her continuing work on mongooses, she studied the desert beetle Parastizopus armaticeps, a monogamous species in which parents collaborate to rear their young.
After her retirement in 2000, she returned to South Africa, where she bought a farm at the southern end of the Kalahari Desert. She turned it into a nature reserve and sanctuary for rescuing and rehabilitating desert animals, mainly meerkats, many of them orphaned or confiscated from the illegal pet trade.
Her marriage to Ponciano Cruz Rasa was dissolved and she is survived by two daughters and a son.
Anne Rasa, born April 28 1940, died November 15 2020
Diego Maradona, one of the greatest footballers the game has ever seen – obituary
He won the World Cup and led Napoli to glory in Italy and Europe, but his life and career were tainted by scandals and character flaws
Diego Maradona following Argentina's World cup victory in 1986
CREDIT: AP Photo/Carlo Fumagalli
Diego Maradona, who has died following a cardiac arrest aged 60, was the most talented footballer of the 1980s, and in the estimation of many the most dominant player to have emerged since Pele; in a career never lacking in drama, he also proved himself a liar, a cheat and an egomaniac.
The sense of disappointment that accompanies Maradona’s name is not the familiar one engendered by a failure to fulfil potential in the manner of a Greaves or a Gascoigne. Although Maradona did not win as many trophies as he perhaps should have done, there was no argument among his peers that, at his peak, he proved himself the best footballer in the world. Instead, the disappointment stems from what Pele described as the gulf between Maradona’s greatness as a player and his stature as a person.
That distance was most sharply illustrated, to English eyes at least, during the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, when England played Argentina in the quarter-finals of the competition. Five minutes into the second half, with the score at 0-0, the ball was hooked back by an England player towards the goalkeeper, Peter Shilton.
As he rose to claim it, he was challenged by Maradona, who used his left hand to punch the ball into the net. The infringement was not spotted by the officials and, to English disbelief, the goal was given.
Maradona's infamous 'Hand of God' goal against England in the 1986 World Cup
CREDIT: Bongarts/Getty Images
Four minutes later Maradona scored one of the finest goals ever seen. Receiving the ball just inside his own half, he began to bear down on the English goal, swerving round two defenders and shrugging off two more attempted tackles before sliding the ball past a sprawling Shilton. It was a piece of footballing magic that he was to repeat in the semi-final against Belgium as Argentina moved inexorably towards winning the World Cup.
After the England game Maradona refused to admit that he had scored the first goal by cheating, though he did share the credit: the goal had been scored, he told reporters, “a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God”.
There were many excuses for the manner in which he had scored: the Argentine tradition of viveza (cunning play); the desire to avenge the Falklands War of four years before. But there was none that could disguise the revelation that both goals were equally accurate expressions of a brilliant yet flawed personality. He had divine skill, but many of the basest aspects of humanity
Maradona followed his 'Hand of God' goal a few minutes later with one of the finest individual goals ever seen
CREDIT: AFP/Getty Images
Diego Armando Maradona was born at Avellaneda, across the river from Buenos Aires, on October 30 1960. His mother worked as a domestic, while his father, who was of native Indian descent, had a job crushing cattle bones for meal. The family had few means, and Diegito grew up in Villa Fiorito, one of the Argentine capital’s poorer shanties. At the age of two he was saved from drowning in the communal cesspit by the intervention of an uncle.
From early childhood it was clear that he had remarkable control over a football, and that this would offer not only himself but those who clung to his shirt-tails a way out of poverty. Inspired, he recalled, by George Best, by the age of 10 he was entertaining crowds with his tricks at half-time in First Division matches, and was coming up through the ranks of Argentinos Juniors, a well-established club.
Maradona in training in Argentina in 1980
CREDIT: Allsport UK /Allsport
He had also encountered the first of a series of dubiously qualified doctors and dietitians who would play a significant role in his career; this one put him on a course of injections and pills which accelerated the maturing process of a physique which was then rather slight.
Maradona grew to be only 5ft 5in tall, but his squat 11st frame with its low centre of gravity had both tremendous strength and pace, making him highly difficult to tackle, especially when he was dribbling at speed, his forte. Left-footed (although good with both), he usually played in midfield, directing the game with a highly acute sense of strategy and regularly bursting forward to set up goals and to score himself.
At 15 Maradona made his first-team debut for Argentinos Juniors, becoming the youngest player ever to play in the top flight in Argentina. A year later he was in the national team and already a star, even though the coach, Cesar Menotti, decided not to pick him for the 1978 World Cup (which was held in Argentina and won by them) as he had doubts about Maradona’s ability to cope with defeat. The teenager responded by leading his compatriots to victory in the World Youth Championship the next year and, while on loan to Boca Juniors, steering them to the league title in 1980.
Argentina’s triumph in the World Cup had provided a tremendous boost to the nationalist junta then running the country. While senior figures such as Menotti felt that they had the freedom to question its repressive nature, Maradona, at a sensitive time in his career, appeared broadly to support it when asked; and though he had begun to attract attention from clubs as diverse as Barcelona and Sheffield United, he at first respected the regime’s wish that the country’s best players should not take their talents abroad.
His attitude changed, however, in 1982, during the World Cup held in Spain. There he saw uncensored news reports of the Falklands War, and in common with many Argentines rapidly became disillusioned with the junta, which had told its citizens that it was winning the conflict.
The tournament also represented a personal setback for Maradona. Having suffered at the feet of the Italian defenders, he lost his head when subjected to more of the same treatment by Brazil, and was sent off as Argentina surrendered the trophy they had won four years before. Maradona (rather like David Beckham 16 years later) was vilified at home, and with the junta toppling saw no reason not to accept an offer from Barcelona, who had bid a record £5 million. He was still only 21.
Barcelona’s hope was that Maradona would help the club recapture the success it had enjoyed a few years earlier, when its star player was Johan Cruyff. Maradona, however, found it harder to win over the club’s directors, principally because his private life soon became a byword for indulgence. The transfer had made him (and his extensive entourage) rich, but as no one was willing to rein in the golden goose, he quickly fell into bad company, debt and a cocaine habit.
Maradona with the World Cup in 1986
CREDIT: Colorsport/REX/Shutterstock
Had the team’s fortunes been better on the pitch, his personal failings might have been overlooked; but while he played well on occasion, he often missed matches, failed to see eye to eye with his managers (even when Menotti was brought in), and then suffered a severe injury to his left ankle as the result of a foul by Andoni Goikoetxea, “the Butcher of Bilbao”. Thereafter the joint would become inflamed every time he played, and for the remainder of his career he needed to wear a larger-sized boot on his left foot.
Barcelona won the Copa de Reyes, or King’s Cup (the Spanish equivalent of the FA Cup) in 1983, but not the league or European honours the club thought its birthright; and when, at the end of the 1984 Cup final, Maradona provoked a brawl with the victorious Bilbao players in front of the royal box, the club moved to rid itself of his disruptive influence. With the assent of the new manager, Terry Venables, he was sold to Napoli for another world record sum of £10 million.
His purchase was a statement by the Italian club’s ambitious owners that it wished to challenge the footballing (and so, metaphorically, the economic) dominance of the north of the country. Maradona quickly felt at home in the city’s rumbustious, volatile ambience and in turn was treated by the Neapolitans as one of their own. In exchange, he brought the club its first league title, in 1987, together with the Coppa Italia, the Uefa Cup in 1989, and a second scudetto in 1990. Taken with Argentina’s World Cup victory in 1986, these were his best years in the game.
During the 1990 World Cup, which ended in defeat in the final to West Germany
CREDIT: David Jacobs/Reuters
In 1990, however, his career began to implode. He had become prone to injury and to fluctuations in weight, but these the Italian fans had put up with. They had also come to terms with the birth of an illegitimate son, the result of a brief affair with a young local woman, Cristiana Sinagra. Then, with the World Cup being played in Italy, Maradona made a grave miscalculation.
Argentina reached the semi-final, against Italy, which was due to be played in Naples itself. Maradona appealed to the local tifosi to back his side against their national team as a gesture of southern defiance. The match was played instead in an atmosphere of hostile near-silence, and when Argentina contested the final in Rome against West Germany, his team was met with a hail of abuse. Argentina lost the match and the trophy, and Maradona lost the admiration of many Italians.
More particularly, his behaviour once back in Naples finally lost him the protection of the club, which had largely shielded him from investigation of his use of prostitutes and drugs and his friendships with senior members of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia. In 1991, when he was given a 15-month ban after testing positive for cocaine, they cut their ties with him. Although no one knew it, at 30 Maradona’s best playing days were over.
Maradona in 2018
CREDIT: KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images
He was by no means the first footballer to be caught with drugs, but by now his reputation was such that few clubs wanted to buy him, and those that were interested soon found him to be an over-pampered egoist. For his part, Maradona seemed to have lost the urge to prove himself in the game. After serving his ban, he played in Spain for Sevilla for a few months in 1992-93 before once more returning to Argentina in a huff.
Fifa then made every effort to persuade him to play in the 1994 World Cup, in the United States, such was his stature in the sport – and his importance to the commercial success of the tournament. Having trained separately from the Argentina squad, he arrived looking in magnificent condition, and in the first couple of matches he played superbly. But his mad-eyed rush to camera to celebrate a goal gave some commentators pause for thought, and a few days later came the not entirely unexpected news that he had tested positive for five different forms of the stimulant ephedrine.
Doping had been rife in Argentine football since at least the 1978 World Cup, and it was simply a matter of personal opinion as to whether one believed that Maradona had deliberately cheated or had been, as he was for much of his career, manipulated by someone around him who had a stake in his continued success. That he had always lacked the intellect or willpower to take charge of the business side of his life was perhaps the saddest of Maradona’s flaws.
The scandal and subsequent suspension finished him as a force in world football – but not in Argentina, where his standing was inviolate (even when he wounded four journalists with an air rifle in 1994, for which he later received a suspended jail sentence). He played two more patchy seasons for Boca Juniors before another brush with drugs finally ended his time in football in 1997. He had won 91 international caps and scored 34 goals; he had played 608 games in all, finishing with 314 goals.
For the next few years he promoted himself as a kind of unofficial sports ambassador (even addressing the Oxford Union), although much of the promotion seemed to be only of himself. By 2000 a bloated Maradona had put on 4st in weight; he had become addicted to Valium and was living in Cuba. He suffered from a hereditary cardiac condition and that year had a severe heart attack.
With Pope Francis in Rome in 2014
CREDIT: Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images
From 2004 onwards Maradona’s health became of real concern. He was taken to hospital that year after suffering a heart attack brought on by cocaine use, and in 2005 had to have gastric bypass surgery to address his ballooning weight. Looking slimmer, he returned to public life, first as the host of a chat show in Argentina and then in a coaching role with Boca Juniors. He also began to spend much of his time in Cuba, he and Fidel Castro being mutual admirers.
Whether it was the benign influence of El Jefe, or later of Hugo Chavez of Bolivia, or some other impulse, by 2008 Maradona claimed to have beaten his addictions. That year, having had brief coaching stints in the Middle East and Argentina, he was appointed manager of the national side.
Although this stemmed entirely from his standing with the fans, Maradona proved to have the wherewithal to propel the team through to qualification for the 2010 World Cup when that seemed unlikely. Unwisely, he subsequently vented in public his disregard for his critics in the media, which led to a ban. When Argentina went out of the tournament in the quarter-finals, the national association chose not to renew his contract.
Despite regular health scares and misadventures, he remained iconic within the sport. At the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Fifa reportedly paid him £10,000 for every match he was seen attending, although this backfired when his celebrations on camera at an Argentina victory turned vulgar shortly before his appearing to need medical attention.
Ultimately Maradona remained the boy from the barrios, and indeed – unlike the more emollient Pele – he made much of retaining what he saw as his common touch. It was both his Achilles’ heel and the source of his genius. For all the failings of his character, there was no disputing the joy his accomplishments with the ball had brought to fans of football all over the world.
In 2004, Diego Maradona was divorced from his wife Claudia (née Villafane), his long-suffering childhood sweetheart, whom he married in 1989 and with whom he had two daughters, Dalma and Giannina. The latter married, and then divorced, the Manchester City and Argentina footballer, Sergio Aguero. Maradona’s son by Cristiana Sinagra, Diego Armando Jr, played for Italy’s Under-17 side.
Diego Maradona, born October 30 1960, died November 25 2020
The government ordered the culling of all Danish mink because of the coronavirus CREDIT: Ritzau Scanpix
As if the Danish government's rushed decision to cull and bury more than 10 million minks wasn't a grisly enough story, thousands of the animals' bloated cadavers have begun to re-emerge from their shallow graves.
The phenomenon was reported by Denmark's state broadcaster DR on Tuesday after mink carcasses were spotted popping up to the surface at a mass burial site at a military training field on Sunday.
"It is an extraordinary situation," Thomas Kristensen, a press officer with Denmark's National Police, which is responsible for the mink burials, told state broadcaster DR.
"In connection with the decay, gasses form, which cause the whole thing to expand a little, and then in the worst case they get pushed out of the ground."
The environment ministry, which is regulating the burials said in a statement that the minks' return from the grave was a "temporary problem tied to the animals' decaying process".
Video footage shows mink 'rising from the grave' at the Holstebro military complex in Denmark CREDIT: Anders Davidsen / DR P4 Midt & Vest
The cadavers' eerie re-emergence has triggered a flurry of zombie jokes on Twitter.
"2020, the year of the zombie mutant killer minks," wrote online marketer Stefan Bøgh-Andersen.
"Run... The zombie minks are coming," wrote Nicolai Nelson.
Denmark earlier this month announced plans to cull all of its more than 15 million minks in the hope of wiping out a new vaccine-resistant mutation of Covid-19 which had developed in the country's mink farms.
The rushed cull decision has turned into a national scandal after Prime Minister Frederiksen's government acknowledged that it had no legal right to order a cull of minks not contaminated by the Covid-19 variant.
Denmark's agriculture minister has already admitted that the burial ground where the re-emerging bodies were spotted, outside the town of Holstebro in Western Jutland, was situated too close to a nearby lake.
The decaying mink are buried close to a lake CREDIT: Shutterstock
The dead minks have been dug one metre down into the ground, and then covered with lime and a layer of earth, but according to Kristensen the earth around Holstebro had proven so sandy that more is needed to keep the carcasses down.
"One meter of soil is not just one meter of soil. It depends on what it is made of. So that’s why we’ve seen this happen," he said. According to the country's environment ministry, the minks should also have been covered by at least 150 centimetres of earth.
Karsten Dahl Schmidt, the nearest neighbour to the grave, told DR that he worried that the liquids from the rotting bodies would seep into the nearby Boutrup Lake, which is a popular bathing spot.
"I dream that everything gets put back to how it was before," he said. "You cannot just do nothing here. You have to dig the minks back up and send them for incineration."
UK scientists warn of third wave of Covid after Christmas
Nazia Parveen Wed, 25 November 2020,
Photograph: Yui Mok/PA
Government scientists have warned the relaxation of coronavirus restrictions over Christmas could lead to a third wave of the pandemic, with increased transmission and unnecessary deaths.
Families across the UK will be able to gather in three-household groups of any size over Christmas, the government has announced, prompting warnings from scientists that the plan will almost inevitably result in a rise in the number of coronavirus cases.
The long-planned idea of “Christmas bubbles” – which ministers said would require people to make a “personal judgment” over the risk older relatives and others – was thrashed out in a meeting involving the four UK governments.
However, some scientists have warned strongly against encouraging families to mix indoors in winter. Two advisers to the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) have said the relaxation will lead to the NHS being overwhelmed
“Effectively what this will be doing is throwing fuel on the Covid fire. I think it will definitely lead to increased transmission. It is likely to lead to a third wave of infection, with hospitals being overrun, and more unnecessary deaths,” Prof Andrew Hayward told BBC Two’s Newsnight programme.
“We are still in a country where we have got high levels of infection with Covid, particularly in young people. Bringing them together for hours, let alone days, with elderly relatives, I think, is a recipe for regret for many families. With the vaccine on the way, if we are not very careful over Christmas we are really in danger of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory on this one.”uk cases
Prof Graham Medley, an expert in infectious disease modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the relaxation could lead to further lockdown measures in the new year.
“I think it is inevitable that if a lot of people do take that risk, even if it is a small risk, then we will end up with a lot of people in hospital and potentially having to take measures in January to lock down again,” he said.
Medley advised people to isolate before visiting relatives and to remain “completely faithful” to any social bubble arrangements and weighing the risk of spreading the disease to those who are vulnerable.
Many politicians agreed with the scientists, with the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, also expressing fears about the NHS being overrun in the new year.
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“[The government] is allowing too much. They have given the green light for Christmas but what price will people have to pay. The government has not got the balance right. This is too much,” he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain. “They are worried about the headlines – that is what has driven this decision.”
But the Welsh first minister, Mark Drakeford, denied that the agreement to allow households to meet for Christmas was “headline seeking”.
“Our decision is based on the calculation that this is the safest way – not a completely safe way, not a risk-free way – but the safest way that we can offer,” he said. Drakeford said the decision to agree a relaxing of restrictions was to avoid a “free for all”.
“I think it was very clear to us from the advice we received at the Cobra meeting, but also from what we hear in Wales, that unless we found a formula that allowed people to get together over Christmas, people were very unlikely to be willing to stick to the current level of restrictions that we have here in Wales,” Drakeford told Good Morning Britain.
“So the choice was between a guided form of meeting over Christmas or people simply making their own solutions.”
The Guardian·
Evidence builds that an early mutation made the Covid-19 pandemic harder to stop
The mutation was first spotted in eastern China in January and then spread quickly throughout Europe and New York City.PHOTO: NYTIMES
PUBLISHED NOV 25, 2020
WASHINGTON (NYTIMES) - As the coronavirus swept across the world, it picked up random alterations to its genetic sequence. Like meaningless typos in a script, most of those mutations made no difference in how the virus behaved.
But one mutation near the beginning of the pandemic did make a difference, multiple new findings suggest, helping the virus spread more easily from person to person and making the pandemic harder to stop.
The mutation, known as 614G, was first spotted in eastern China in January and then spread quickly throughout Europe and New York City. Within months, the variant took over much of the world, displacing other variants.
For months, scientists have been fiercely debating why. Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory argued in May that the variant had probably evolved the ability to infect people more efficiently.
Many were sceptical, arguing that the variant may have been simply lucky, appearing more often by chance in large epidemics, like Northern Italy's, that seeded outbreaks elsewhere.
But a host of new research - including close genetic analysis of outbreaks and lab work with hamsters and human lung tissue - has supported the view that the mutated virus did in fact have a distinct advantage, infecting people more easily than the original variant detected in Wuhan, China.
There is no evidence that a coronavirus with the 614G mutation causes more severe symptoms, kills more people or complicates the development of vaccines. Nor do the findings change the reality that places that quickly and aggressively enacted lockdowns and encouraged measures like social distancing and masks have fared far better than the those that did not.
But the subtle change in the virus's genome appears to have had a big ripple effect, said David Engelthaler, a geneticist at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona.
"When all is said and done, it could be that this mutation is what made the pandemic," he said.
The first outbreaks of the virus would have spread around the world even without the mutation, believe most researchers, including Engelthaler. The original variant spotted in Wuhan in late 2019 was already highly contagious, he said. But the mutation appears to have made the pandemic spread farther and faster than it would have without it.
One study found that outbreaks in communities in the United Kingdom grew faster when seeded by the 614G variant than when seeded by its Wuhan ancestor. Another reported that hamsters infected each other more quickly when exposed to the variant. And in a third, the variant infected human bronchial and nasal tissue in a cell-culture dish far more efficiently than its ancestor.
Kristian Andersen, a geneticist at Scripps Research, La Jolla, said the research did show that the variant is more transmissible, but he believes the difference is subtle.
Even so, Andersen said that the variant's higher transmissibility could help explain why some countries that were initially successful in containing the virus became susceptible to it later. The virus may have been "harder to contain than the first time around," he said.
"What you used to do may not be quite enough to control it," Andersen said. "Don't necessarily expect that the enemy of two months ago is the enemy you have the next time."
Around the world, the emergence of 614G has generated both serious scientific debate and largely political blame dodging. Government officials in Vietnam and Thailand, which fared well in containing the ancestral strain despite an influx of Chinese visitors early in the year, have suggested that the later outbreaks may have been partly the result of the 614G virus.
Thailand has kept both variants of the virus under control over the past year through the strict quarantining of returnees, a ban on foreign tourists, masks and other measures, said Thira Woratanarat, an associate professor in the faculty of medicine at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Still, he said, resurgences in the region are concerning.
"We have seen several countries, like Vietnam, South Korea and Japan, that seemed to have it under control," Thira said. "But then there was a second wave."
In Vietnam, he said, the virus with the 614G mutation was first confirmed in the central coastal city of Danang after about 100 days with no reported cases of local transmission. An outbreak quickly spread to 10 cities and provinces. In Singapore, he said, the mutated virus spread in crowded dormitories for migrant workers.
"When the mutated virus lives in big groups, it spreads faster and makes it much more difficult to control," he said.
But other researchers said that a lack of proper containment measures, not the mutation, is largely to blame for resurgent outbreaks.
"The reason this is spreading is people are not having enough measures in place," said Kari Stefansson, founder and chief executive of deCODE Genetics, a leading genome analysis firm based in Iceland.
"It seems like extraordinarily poor politics to blame the inadequacies on the virus. They should be picking on someone their own size, not this tiny virus."
In one of the new studies, a British team of researchers had an advantage shared by no one else: They were able to draw upon the largest national database of coronavirus genome sequences in the world. The researchers collected new evidence that, at least in the United Kingdom, the variant took over because it indeed spreads faster.
"When we look at clusters, the G variant grows more quickly," said Erik M. Volz, a researcher at the Medical Research Council Center for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London and the leader of the study.
The data collected by the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium allowed the team to observe the growth of infected clusters as a kind of horse race. Side by side, did clusters of 614G infections grow faster than infections involving the ancestral variant?
The 614G variant clearly won the race, the analysis found. The precise rate remains uncertain, but the most likely value gives 614G roughly a 20 per cent advantage in its exponential rate of growth.
The virus will continue to change, and while most of those changes will be mere typos, some may be more meaningful, Engelthaler said.
Malaysia's Top Glove defends its record with worker welfare after Covid-19 outbreak
Top Glove Corp said it had not yet seen any cancellation of orders.PHOTO: AFP
KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia’s Top Glove on Wednesday (Nov 25) defended its record with worker welfare, saying it spent RM20 million (S$6.6 million) to improve accommodation for its factory workers in the last two months.
The company is under the spotlight on how it houses the workers following a major Covid-19 outbreak at its Selangor factories and dormitories.
Top Glove executive chairman and founder Lim Wee Chai denied allegations by Human Resource Minister M. Saravanan that housing facilities for its workers are “terrible”.
He said the minister visited the dormitories several months ago and indicated these were fine. “We do not know why he said it differently now."
“We welcome him to visit us again, because since the minister’s visit, our (housing) conditions have continued to improve. So it came as a big surprise when such comments were made,” Tan Sri Lim said
Top Glove has about 21,000 employees globally, with about 11,000 in Malaysia. Some 5,900 of the Malaysia-based workers live in the company’s premises in Meru, in Klang district, Selangor, with the plants operating round the clock.
The world’s biggest maker of rubber gloves runs 47 plants in Malaysia, Thailand, China and Vietnam, with 36 of them producing gloves. The company also makes other personal protective equipment (PPE) including face masks.
The government on Monday said Top Glove must shut 28 of its Malaysian factory buildings in stages to allow for health checks of the workers, with more than 4,000 Covid-19 cases already detected among the workers and their close contacts.
Mr Lim, 62, whose wealth was estimated by Forbes at US$4.2 billion (S$5.6 billion) after the company’s share value multiplied by at least six times this year, said his workers had been moved to better accommodation.
The minimum requirement of space and toilets for workers had been adhered to, he said. The company’s premises also had its own facilities including ATMs, barbers, mini markets, canteens and gymnasiums to reduce the need for workers to go out.
Mr Lim said he encouraged his workers to practice health and hygiene measures such as to shower twice a day, drink at least eight glasses of water a day, exercise and sleep well.
“We ask them to eat well, eat more healthily, and eat more vegetables, a balanced diet, drink more water. We also subsidise vegetarian meals for them. We have been doing this for some time,” he said.
Top Glove said on Wednesday that not all the Covid-19 cases came from its factories.
Following the outbreak, the Human Resources Ministry will enforce minimum housing standards for migrant workers’ dormitories beginning Thursday (Nov 26).
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The plant closures, which is being done in stages, would cause a two-week delay in deliveries, Mr Lim, said, but added that he has other plants outside the country which haven’t been affected.
Mr Lim said he hoped the factories in Klang would reopen in two to three weeks.
He also assured users that there was no risk of Covid-19 contamination from his products, as the production line is fully automated, and there is no direct contact between workers and the gloves, which are also sanitised before being packed.
“The answer is no contamination… (gloves are placed into) the hot ovens at 110 degree Celsius, so the Covid-19 virus cannot survive there,” said Mr Lim in reply to a question.
“Our factory employees wear PPE so there is no direct contact with gloves,” said the tycoon, who started the company 29 years ago.
Malaysia makes just under two-thirds of the world’s medical rubber gloves, but the manufacturers’ association assured that supply will not be disrupted.
“Be assured that new capacity is available to make good the interim shortfall and that there is not going to be any aggravated disruption to whatever is currently being supplied to the world,” the Malaysian Rubber Glove Manufacturers Association said on Wednesday.
Thai protesters target King's wealth in latest Bangkok rally
King Vajiralongkorn's wealth has become a key focus for protesters.
REUTERS
BANGKOK (BLOOMBERG) - Thousands of pro-democracy protesters on Wednesday (Nov 25) in Thailand gathered outside the main office of the nation’s most valuable lender, in which King Maha Vajiralongkorn is the biggest shareholder, as they push for more transparency and accountability from the monarchy.
The demonstration outside Siam Commercial Bank Pcl was organised to “reclaim the assets that should belong to the people and the nation”, Free Youth, one of the protest groups, said on Twitter. The bank closed its headquarters as protesters shifted the venue last-minute following a police ban on gatherings within 150m of the Crown Property Bureau office, the original site of the rally.
King Vajiralongkorn’s wealth has become a key focus for protesters following legal changes after he ascended the throne in 2016 gave him the power to put his name on the assets of the Crown Property Bureau, which included holdings of prime properties in Bangkok and shares in major listed companies, including Siam Commercial Bank. They also consolidated management of the assets and eliminated the finance minister’s role as the agency’s ex-officio chairman.
The protesters have demanded those changes be revoked to make a clear division between the king’s personal assets and other palace property they want under the control of the Finance Ministry. They also want the national budget allocated to the monarchy be reduced in line with growth in Thailand’s tourism-reliant economy, which has been hard hit by the pandemic.
Royal Defamation
The Bureau of the Royal Household declined to comment, and the Crown Property Bureau didn’t answer calls seeking comment on Wednesday. Hundreds of pro-royalist supporters have also gathered on Wednesday in another part of the capital.
Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, who has repeatedly rejected calls to quit, toughened his stance on demonstrators last week. The government and security agencies “will now enforce all laws available to deal with protesters who break the law and ignore other people’s rights and freedom”, he said last week.
At least 12 protest leaders received summonses from police on charges of royal defamation, according to the Thai Lawyers for Human Rights. It’s the first time police are using the lese majeste law, which can lead to lengthy jail sentences, against protesters since the movement began in July.
The youth-led protest movement is calling for a more equal and democratic society with a more accountable monarchy and an end to military coups. They’re also seeking the resignation of Mr Prayut, a former army chief who led a 2014 coup, and a rewriting of the constitution that helped Mr Prayut retain his power after elections.
The protesters earlier chose to hold a rally in front of the Crown Property Bureau because they “want to strike a blow to the financial basis for the king’s power and wealth,” said Prof Tamara Loos who specialises in history and Thai studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
“These young protesters have permanently transformed public culture regarding the monarchy, which will be subject to continued critique,” she said. “Cracking down on protesters now only delays a future conflict between those who want genuine change in Thailand’s political institutions and the military.”
Last week, the king appointed one his close aides, former army chief Apirat Kongsompong, as deputy head of the Crown Property Bureau. During his time as army chief, Mr Apirat was vocal in his attacks on the opposition and pledged to defend the monarchy.
Lawmakers last week voted on a pathway to set up a charter rewriting committee but rejected any amendments to the monarchy-related section of constitution.
Thai king greets supporters while protesters rally at royal-linked bank
Accompanied by Queen Suthida, King Maha Vajiralongkorn mingled with royalists at Lumpini Park.PHOTO: EPA-EFE
BANGKOK- Thailand's beleaguered king greeted adoring crowds in central Bangkok on Wednesday (Nov 25) as protesters massed outside a palace-linked bank demanding monarchy reform.
Accompanied by Queen Suthida, King Maha Vajiralongkorn mingled with royalists at Lumpini Park after paying respects at a monument dedicated to his late granduncle, King Vajiravudh.
Many had waited for hours, waving small Thai flags and bearing pictures of the monarch, whose wealth and spending has come under increasing scrutiny amid the pandemic-induced downturn.
"The monarchy issue can be discussed, but with respect, not hate," royalist leader Warong Dechgitvigrom told The Straits Times at the park. "If you are disappointed with the government, blame the government, not the monarchy."
The royalists see the monarchy as central to Thai identity and have condemned the insolent language used by protesters on the institution they revere.
Some 7km away, protesters rallied outside the headquarters of Siam Commercial Bank, 23 per cent of which is owned directly by King Vajiralongkorn.
Although the protest ended peacefully, local media reports say one protester was shot in the abdomen afterwards. The suspect has reportedly been apprehended.
The monarch became a major landowner and shareholder of several Thai corporate giants in 2018, after he took personal ownership of the estimated US$40 billion (S$53.7 billion) worth of assets managed by the Crown Property Bureau, which controls property that belongs to the institution of the Thai monarchy. This fiscal year, almost 9 billion baht (S$398 million) in the national budget has also been set aside for direct royal expenses.
Thailand is officially a constitutional monarchy. But protesters allege that the monarch - who commands two army units - exercises powers beyond the charter, and want his personal wealth to be separated from that of the Crown.
In June, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha revealed that the king had asked the government not to use the lese majeste law on civilians. The moratorium appears to have been lifted this week, with at least seven protest leaders summoned to acknowledge the charge of insulting or defaming the monarchy, which could result them being jailed for up to 15 years.
In a defiant statement released early Wednesday, Free Youth, one of the key organisations driving the protests, said: "Under this state, having the king above the constitution not only disgraces the people but also buttresses inequality."
The rally was moved to the bank at the last minute after the vicinity of the Crown Property Bureau, the original venue, was tightly barricaded by police.
Lawmakers last week voted to begin the process of amending the Constitution - a core demand of protesters - but rejected any move which would touch on the powers of the monarchy. Protesters meanwhile have rejected Lower House speaker Chuan Leekpai's attempts to convene a "reconciliation committee", arguing it will go nowhere.
Aided by stimulus measures, Thailand's tourism-reliant economy shrank a smaller-than-expected 6.4 per cent in the third quarter compared to a year ago. But the economic uncertainty means that majority of the some 500,000 new graduates next year are likely to be unemployed.
After police turned chemical-laced water cannons and tear gas on protesters outside parliament last week, Mr Prayut vowed to exercise all available laws, saying: "This situation has not shown signs of de-escalating, even though the government has been straightforward and earnest in trying to find a solution."
Amid the unrest, King Vajiralongkorn, who usually spends a major part of the year in Germany, has been touring Thailand and greeting supporters with looser protocols.
As excited royalists crowded close to him to snap photographs with their cellphones on Wednesday night, he penned in a book presented to him: "Love your nation. Love your fellowmen. Act for the collective happiness and benefit."
Rishi Sunak’s comprehensive spending review returns British politics, in theory at least, to its pre-2017 shape: a Conservative Party arguing for more cuts to public spending and Labour arguing for greater levels of investment and job creation.
The politics of that approach was very lucrative at first for the Conservatives, but by 2015 the party had started to run out of cuts that a) would raise sufficient revenue to meet their targets and b) weren’t politically toxic.
There’s a dead-end argument in Labour circles about the role of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and the party’s transition to a much clearer anti-austerity position in 2015: the reality is that Corbyn’s election as Labour leader was itself part of the same set of factors that caused the Conservatives growing difficulties in 2015-17. He was both cause and symptom.
The coronavirus crisis means that government debt is going to be permanently higher for the rest of our lives, and there simply isn’t sufficient capacity left in the British state to tackle that without substantial cuts to spending or tax increases. And it would be impossible to get political consent for the required changes in spending or tax to reduce debt to something resembling pre-coronavirus levels.
Three measures in Sunak’s announcements all, in different ways, demonstrate the political and policy difficulties of a new round of cuts. The spending review continued the unbroken pattern of local government austerity under the Conservatives, who even as they abandoned the language of austerity after 2017 and lavished greater sums on health, education and the police in order to defeat Corbyn’s Labour, continued to oversee painful reductions in local authority spending.
Sunak has given local councils a measure of relief by increasing their capacity to raise council tax. Now, of course, tax rises in a recession are also a form of austerity, and just as George Osborne sought to devolve blame for his cuts onto local councils, Sunak is now seeking to devolve blame for tax rises onto local councils. The problem is that the measure may not work politically and, because of the pressures on incomes, it may fail to raise sufficient revenue to get cash-strapped councils out of their difficulties.
Then there is the public sector pay freeze for workers outside of the NHS. There are two consequences of this: first, any freeze is painful for public sector workers in the bottom half of the income distribution, though these employees are the ones with the least freedom to move on to other work, and they will in any case receive a pay increase of at least £250. This makes the argument that “the public sector should have to absorb a wage freeze because the private sector has it tough” redundant: it’s in the bottom half of the income distribution that the private sector is being outpaced by the public sector, and the bottom half is not having its wages frozen.
It’s in the top half of the income distribution, which is seeing a freeze, where wages in the private sector are now better than the public sector. This is part of the reason why the British state has been facing a retention crisis among doctors, teachers, senior police officers and other highly qualified public sector workers.
There are two risks here for Sunak: the first is that the painful consequences of the freeze deepen the United Kingdom’s economic problems and we don’t recover quickly from the coronavirus recession. The second is if we do recover quickly, or if vaccination reopens the option of a lucrative and life-enhancing move to Australia or New Zealand for teachers or doctors, the British state ends up facing the same pressures it did by 2017, and with the same political difficulties that saw the government lose its majority in the general election that year.
Then there is the prospect of a parliamentary defeat over plans to cut the foreign aid budget from 0.7 per cent of GDP to 0.5 per cent. There are more than enough Conservative MPs who oppose the cut to defeat the government; it is not clear that enough of them are willing to go so far as to rebel. But it is possible that the government ends up having to retreat on the foreign aid cuts and on the public sector pay freeze and provide more direct funds to local government.
The truth though is that even if these measures do all happen, they aren’t sufficient to meet the stated ambition on debt reduction. The £4bn cut in foreign aid will be very heavily felt in some of the poorest parts of the world and may also compromise the government’s climate diplomacy and its global green agenda, but it is small beer in the context of government spending. When you factor in the increase in defence spending, it means that the United Kingdom’s foreign policy commitments are going to be as costly by 2025-26 as they are today.
In terms of beginning to slow, let alone reduce, the UK’s mounting coronavirus debts, fiscally this equates to announcing an ambitious plan to save up for a mortgage by taking away your kids’ weekly Mars Bar: even if you can do it, you’re not going to be completing on a house any time soon.
That needn’t be a problem provided that jobs, wages and the economy continue to grow, and in many ways the effectiveness of the infrastructure spending and projects Sunak announced today will matter a lot more than his cuts or any future tax rises he might have planned, both to the British economy and to the Conservative Party.
What I suspect does matter is that the foreign aid cut – to my eyes by far the most likely of the three measures to survive intact until 2024 – allows the Conservatives to have an argument with Labour about austerity, which remains popular in theory, even though the cut in question is very small in terms of government spending, while avoiding an argument about spending cuts or tax rises in practice.
Despite David Cameron's opposition to the foreign aid cut, it is in many ways a political move straight out of his playbook: a painful cut, but one that happens to someone else’s voters, far from the view of the people that Sunak needs to keep onside if the Conservatives are to be re-elected in 2024.
Stephen Bush is political editor of the New Statesman. His daily briefing, Morning Call, provides a quick and essential guide to domestic and global politics.
