Colombia sees calmer protests, industry groups warn of fuel shortages

By Julia Symmes Cobb and Oliver Griffin 

Reuters/LUISA GONZALEZ Demonstrators take part in a protest, in Bogota

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Protests in Colombia marked their ninth day on Thursday with smaller groups of demonstrators in cities including Bogota and Medellin, while industry groups warned of gasoline shortages across the country following road blocks.

Protests began last week in opposition to a now-canceled tax reform plan, but demonstrators have since broadened their demands to include government action to tackle poverty, police violence and inequality in the health and education systems.

© Reuters/LUISA GONZALEZ Demonstrators take part in a protest, in Bogota

Marches around the country have been marred by violence and 24 people have died, mostly demonstrators. International organizations have warned against excessive use of force by police.

Three people were shot in the small city of Pereira on Wednesday night, with a reward of up to 50 million pesos (around $13,000) offered for information leading to the arrest of those responsible

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© Reuters/LUISA GONZALEZ Demonstrators take part in a protest, in Bogota

In Bogotá a group of hundreds of demonstrators, mostly young people, intermittently blocked a major road in the city's north, encouraging stopped vehicles to honk in support.

"I'm protesting for our rights - food and utilities (costs)are always rising and what you earn isn't enough," said student Alejandra Cortes, 17.

Gallery: Photos: Deadly Protests Across Colombia (The Atlantic)


Police violence during demonstrations also brought protesters out.

"I'm upset about the killings, there are no guarantees when you're exercising your right peacefully," said law student Andres Villalba, 19. He expressed sympathy for anti-riot police ESMAD, adding that they are "also afraid" but have to follow orders.

© Reuters/LUISA GONZALEZ Demonstrators take part in a protest, in Bogota

The human rights ombudsman lists the national police or ESMAD as presumed responsible for 11 of the two dozen officially confirmed deaths.

Local advocacy group Temblores has reported 37 deaths in connection with demonstrations while Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it has so far confirmed 11 were connected to protests, out of 31 reported to it.

After a violent night in Bogota earlier this week, things calmed overnight, Mayor Claudia Lopez said on Thursday.

"We had a much calmer day," Lopez said in a statement, adding a further 23 civilians and six police had been hurt but injuries initially appear minor.

Small groups of protesters also marched in Colombia's second-city Medellin, but dissipated amid heavy rain, a spokesperson for the mayor´s office told Reuters on Thursday.  

© Reuters/STRINGER Protest against poverty and police violence in Bogota

Despite a decline in tension, the longevity of the protests has disrupted supplies of gasoline across the country, the National Federation of Fuel and Energy Distributors (Fendipetroleo) said in a statement.

"We have seen fuel shortages as a consequence of the national strike," Fendipetroleo said, listing cities including Cali, Ibague, and Pereira, as well as in other municipalities and provinces.

(Reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb and Oliver Griffin; Editing by David Gregorio)

Flock of giant California condors trashes woman's home

TEHACHAPI, Calif. — Giant California condors are rare — but not at Cinda Mickols’ home

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

About 15 to 20 of the giant endangered birds have recently taken a liking to the house in the city of Tehachapi and made quite a mess.

Mickols’ daughter, Seana Quintero of San Francisco, began posting photos of the rowdy guests on Twitter.

She told the San Francisco Chronicle the birds showed up at her mother’s home sometime last weekend.

The birds have trashed the deck — ruining a spa cover, decorative flags and lawn ornaments. Plants have been knocked over, railings scratched and there’s poop everywhere.

“She’s definitely frustrated but also is in awe of this and knows what an unusual experience this is,” Quintero said of her mother.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which runs a program to save the species from extinction, responded on Twitter. The agency noted that the house is in historic condor habitat, and suggested that Mickols try harmless hazing like shouting and clapping or spraying water.  OR THEY COULD MOVE

California condors almost vanished in the 1980s before the few remaining birds were captured and placed in zoos for captive breeding. A few hundred birds are now in the wild.

The Associated Press

IT SHOULD GO GLOBAL

Anti-Olympic petition gains tens of thousands of signatures

The headline in English over the petition reads: 

“Cancel the Tokyo Olympics to protect our lives."

TOKYO — An online petition calling for the Tokyo Olympics to be cancelled has gained tens of thousands of signatures since being launched in Japan only days ago.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The rollout of the petition comes with Tokyo, Osaka and several other areas under a state of emergency with coronavirus infections rising — particularly new variants. The state of emergency is to expire on May 11, but some reports in Japan say it is likely to be extended.

The postponed Olympics are to open in just under three months on July 23.

The petition is addressed to International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach, who has tentative plans to visit Japan later this month. He is expected to meet the Olympic torch relay on May 17 in Hiroshima, and perhaps also travel to Tokyo where small anti-Olympic are protests being planned.

Although 70-80% of Japanese citizens in polls say they want the Olympics cancelled or postponed, there is no indication this will happen. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Tokyo organizing committee president Seiko Hashimoto, and Bach have repeatedly said the games will go on as scheduled.

Organizers and the IOC unveiled so-called Playbooks last week, explaining rules for athletes and others to show how the Olympics can be held in the middle of a pandemic. Several test events have been conducted in the last few days, and organizers have reported few problems.

The Olympic torch relay has been crisscrossing Japan for a month. Organizers say that eight people working on the relay have tested positive for the virus.

The Tokyo Olympics have become a face-saving exercise for Japan, which has officially spent $15.4 billion to prepare them. For the IOC, the Tokyo Olympics are critical since 73% of its income comes from selling television rights.

Organizers say the Olympics will be “safe and secure," though his has been challenged by local medial specialists, and in an editorial last month in the British Medical Journal. It said mass events like the Olympics are “neither safe nor secure.”

Video: Concerns grow over Japan’s COVID-19 situation ahead of Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games (Global News)

Organizers say they will need 10,000 health workers to support the Olympics. They have also requested 500 additional nurses — a nurses' federation balked at the request — and 200 sports medicine specialists.

The petition was organized by Kenji Utsunomiya, a lawyer who has run several times for Tokyo governor. It registered about 50,000 signatures in the first 24 hours after being launched.

“Government policies are being set with the Olympics in mind, and measures to curb the coronavirus pandemic are being neglected,” Utsunomiya told The Associated Press. “Hospital are stretched thin, and some people are dying at home.”

The headline in English over the petition reads: “Cancel the Tokyo Olympics to protect our lives."

The petition suggests the Olympics cannot be held safely and says the games have drained finances away for other needs such as the rollout of a COVID-19 vaccine. Only 2% of the Japanese public have been vaccinated. Japan has attributed 10,500 deaths to the virus, good by global standards but not as good as many Asian neighbours.

“In order to host the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in July, we must devote a large number of medical professionals, valuable resources such as medical facilities and medical equipment, and various other resources,” the petition says.

In a survey conducted by the nationally circulated Mainichi newspaper, nine prefectural governors said they wanted the games cancelled or postponed again. Most of the 47 governors declined to answer, saying they had no decision-making power.

___

More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/olympic-games and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

Yuri Kageyama And Stephen Wade, The Associated Press

AMERICAN VICTORY

Rights report: State of Afghan women's health care grim

KABUL — After nearly 20 years since the ouster of the Taliban and billions of dollars spent on infrastructure and aid, many Afghan women still have desperately poor access to health facilities and adequate health care, a leading rights group said Thursday

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

Human Rights Watch offered a bleak assessment of women’s health care in Afghanistan in its latest report, saying that even basic information on health and family planning is not available to most Afghan women. And even when women can get the care they need, the quality is often poor, the New York-based group said.

New health facilities that have opened over the years are often insufficiently staffed and inadequately equipped, HRW said. The group's researchers visited several health facilities in the capital of Kabul, where many of the country’s better clinics and hospitals are located.

The report says there are 4.6 medical professionals to 10,000 people in Afghanistan; the World Health Organization considers 23 medical professionals to 10,000 people a critical shortage.

“What emerged is a picture of a system that is increasingly unaffordable to the estimated 61% to 72% per cent of Afghan women, who live in poverty, and one in which women often have more children than they want because of lack of access to modern contraception; face risky pregnancies because of lack of care; and undergo procedures that could be done more safely with access to and capacity to use more modern techniques,” the report said.

Most women cannot afford the increasingly costly medicines they need or even the cost of a taxi ride to a clinic, often at least a half hour away. Most Afghans live on less than $1.90 a day.

Patricia Gossman, associate director of HRW's Asia division, said the money that came to Afghanistan after 2001 was squandered due to widespread corruption. Before that, the Taliban regime, which was also heavily sanctioned, had mostly ignored women's health issues.

Washington alone committed $1.5 billion to rebuild Afghanistan's health care sector, according to a 2017 report by the U.S. watchdog overseeing the billions of dollars America invested in Afghanistan's reconstruction.

“The question everyone should be asking is why after 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars the state of women’s health care is so grim,” said Gossman in an email. “Where did the money go ... a horrendous amount has been lost to corruption, and nothing — nothing — has really ever been done about it."

Gossman said some organizations have done better than others delivering aid, particularly in rural areas and even in Taliban-controlled parts of the country.

International aid to Afghanistan has also been dwindling in recent years, in part because of the deteriorating security amid relentless violence, but also because of increasing demands on funds exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

As U.S. and NATO troops continue their final withdrawal from Afghanistan, expected to be completed by Sept. 11 at the latest, assistance is likely to further decrease.

“This is a critical moment in Afghanistan,” said Humans Rights Watch, citing fears of a growing Taliban influence and escalating violence as U.S. and other NATO troops pull out.

“The need for international assistance is greater than ever,” it said.

Kathy Gannon, The Associated Press

‘I still can’t believe that this is the Alberta I grew up in’: Muslim Canadian shocked by racist attacks

Kendra Slugoski 

6/5/2021

Muslims across Canada are marking the second 

Ramadan during the pandemic.

© Supplied Dany Assaf and his family. Assaf grew up in Alberta and is shocked to hear of racist attacks in the province.

Read more: Ramadan during COVID-19: How Canadian Muslims are practising amid pandemic

The month is considered a time to practice kindness and patience. Muslims are asking the same of every other Canadian. The past year has been a frightening one for many victims of racist remarks and violent attacks.

Since December 2020, there have been a number of physical attacks against Muslim women in Edmonton and Calgary.

Read more: Why are Alberta’s Black, Muslim women being attacked?

Last month, an Edmonton, Alta., family was the target of road rage. Edmonton police said a male driver made profane gestures to a woman wearing a hijab who was in the front passenger seat of a different vehicle.

“The accused male then began speeding up and slowing down erratically next to the complainant’s van, before eventually causing a minor collision between the two vehicles,” police said in a news release.

Police said it was alleged religious slurs were uttered to the family.

Read more: Edmonton police consult Hate Crime unit on northwest road rage altercation

“I still can’t believe that is the Alberta I grew up in," said Dany Assaf, a Toronto lawyer and author who was raised in Edmonton, "because the Alberta I grew up in was one where if you worked hard and gave back, you were an Albertan. Period.


“It profoundly disturbs me because of how un-Canadian it is."

Assaf, 51, said like many other Canadian kids, he grew up playing hockey and learned to "say please and thank you and stand in line"-- the title of Assaf's newly published book.

The biography unfolds four generations of a Muslim family in Canada and "one man's story of what makes Canada special and how to keep it that way."

Assaf's great-grandparents immigrated to Alberta in the 1920s from Lebanon. They helped establish the first mosque in Canada, the Al Rashid Mosque in Edmonton.


“How can people who have been here for over 100 years be the other? It’s illogical, it doesn’t make sense!

"People think the west is like redneck land. I said, 'No it isn't. It is the place of opportunity.'"

It's not just Alberta. Other parts of the country have recounted disturbing stories of racism.

Last month, in Surrey, BC, a family said their daughter was called a terrorist while in a grocery store.

Read more: Family speaks out after 9-year-old daughter allegedly called ‘terrorist’ at B.C. grocery store

In January, a group of Muslim students in Saskatoon, SK, were victims of a racist attack during an online ceremony to remember the 2017 Quebec mosque shootings.

Read more: Racist attack in Saskatoon marred anniversary of Quebec mosque shooting

Irfan Chaudhry, a hate crimes researcher and director of the Office of Human Rights, Diversity and Equity at MacEwan University, said it's difficult to say if the pandemic has spurred more hate. He does think the incubation of ideas online and personal "filter bubbles" during COVID has had an impact.

Chaudhry pointed to the heightened awareness surrounding racial discrimination after George Floyd was killed, but said Canada historically swept "racism and racial bias and racial discrimination under the rug and always saying, 'Well it's happening in the States, it's not that bad here.'"

Chaudhry said it's critical for Canadians to come to terms with bigotry and racism in our own communities, and to learn how to react.

"When no one intervenes, that silence almost gets perceived as approval."

Personal safety should always be considered before you step in, but Chaudhry said an immediate reaction isn't the only option.

Nor is calling the police.

"If the crime is there, absolutely," said Chaudhry, "but if it's not crime-related we can't just download it on to police because that's where you get that disconnect in terms of police doing everything and the community is feeling like the police did nothing. I think that's a little bit unfair in that context because, what can those outside of a policing context do to address hate and bigotry and discrimination in our communities?"

Chaudhry implored the public to learn how and where to report racism.

For example, if you're on transit, tell the bus driver. If you're in a store, send an email to head office and question how the company is committed to training staff to deal with certain situations.

Video: Hidden Hate: Anti-Asian Racism | Global News special

For families, Chaudhry recommended age-appropriate conversations.

"You may not have all the answers at that time but I think at least acknowledging it is the first step in addressing it in a meaningful way," Chaudhry said.

"So you as the parent, that's your teaching moment."

Assaf, who also founded the annual Fast in the 6 event in Toronto, ON, with his wife, Lisa, to share in the tradition of an Iftar dinner during Ramadan, urged all Canadians to resist extremist voices filled with hate, whether in person or hiding behind social media.

“It gives everybody a megaphone, but is every voice really defining Canada?

“Just because it’s loud doesn’t mean it’s meaningful."

Solar power project saving people hundreds in hydro costs

A Taykwa Tagamou Nation's project aims to help community members save money on electricity bills over the next three decades.

The $2.04 million Community Solar Microgrid project is currently in Phase 2.

Over 30 years, the project is expected to produce 16.5 GWh of clean energy and save about $4 million in electricity bills, according to the community's newsletter.

Coun. Derek Archibald said Phase 1 of the project has been completed.

It included the installation of solar panels on band-owned buildings with battery storage to create a microgrid. The project sites included the public works garage, the Healthy Babies building, the community complex, the water treatment plant and the lands and resources building.

Currently, the Healthy Babies and the public works buildings are producing solar energy. The remaining sites need to undergo testing and inspections by Hydro One, said Archibald.

With the pandemic restrictions, the project, which uses the local labour force and out-of-region contractors, has slowed down, he said.

For Phase 2, the plans are to power 33 residential homes by installing solar panels on the roof or on the ground. The first 20 homes will be connected as of June 2021, with the remaining houses powered by early September, according to Archibald.

The community received $1.56 million in grant funding for the project, $1.36 million of which was secured through the Small Communities Fund (SCF) and $200,000 through Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) Indigenous Energy Projects Program.

The whole idea started in 2015 when the community was facing issues with hydro bills. That was before the First Nation's Delivery Credit was introduced by the province two years later.

“People were getting $1,200 hydro bills each month. It was either pay for groceries or pay for the hydro bill. We had a lot of community members reaching out to the band for support with their bills,” Archibald said. “And we noticed it and we met with Jazz Solar and we told them our issues, so we came up with the idea.”

In the past, the community paid more in delivery charges than in consumption, said Archibald.

“Now, each home averages about $200 to $300 a month,” he said. “It’s typically higher than off-reserve houses.”

With the funding from the IESO, the community also held training and conducted a feasibility study to inspect the roofs and determine whether to install the panels on the roof or on the ground.

Besides some minor setbacks with collecting information and the pandemic-related delays, the whole process went smoothly, Archibald said.

“I think everybody is excited to see the project complete and to see the benefit,” he said.

Dariya Baiguzhiyeva, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, TimminsToday.com

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Massachusetts sues Publicis over ties to Purdue Pharma, opioids
By Jonathan Stempel 6/5/2021

© Reuters/Charles Platiau FILE PHOTO: Logo of Publicis is seen at VivaTech fair in Paris

(Reuters) -Massachusetts sued a unit of French advertising company Publicis Groupe SA on Thursday, accusing it of fueling the U.S. opioid crisis by using unfair and deceptive marketing to help drugmaker Purdue Pharma sell more OxyContin.


The state attorney general Maura Healey said Publicis Health created a public nuisance from 2010 to 2019 through its work for drugmakers on campaigns to persuade doctors to prescribe more opioids, including to patients who did not need them.

Purdue alone paid Publicis more than $50 million for its work, which continued even after Publicis proposed in 2016 that Purdue shut down its sales force to "fully embrace a deeper-held responsibility" the drugmaker owed the public, Healey said.

"They knew what they were doing was wrong, they made the opioid crisis worse, and they kept cashing Purdue's checks," Healey told reporters in a Zoom meeting. "What they did was wrong. It hurt people. It killed people."

A Publicis Health spokesman said there was no legal basis for the lawsuit, and that the statute of limitations had run out. He also said the company's work was "completely lawful," and limited to implementing Purdue's advertising plan and buying ad space.

The advertising agencies Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi are among Publicis' other businesses.

Healey's lawsuit filed in a state court in Boston seeks civil penalties and restitution to victims.

It followed agreements this year by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co to pay $641 million to resolve lawsuits by all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and five U.S. territories over its role in the opioid epidemic.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said nearly 500,000 people died from opioid overdoses from 1999 to 2019.

Purdue is operating in bankruptcy. In March, it proposed a restructuring plan that would steer profits to opioid victims, and require members of the Sackler family who own the company to contribute nearly $4.3 billion.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler and Bill Berkrot)

Our lives are changing, again, and so must our rituals that give it meaning

By Ian Kerner, CNN

6/5/2021

Birthdays. Weddings. Graduations. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit last year, we watched as old milestones — and the rituals we depended on to mark them — seemed to vanish into the ether.

Peyton Buss waves with his parents Jill and Daniel Buss as fellow team members from his 2019 Conejo Valley Little League All Star Baseball Team drive by his home in Thousand Oaks to celebrate his 8th birthday amid the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic. Peytons parents, Jill and Daniel Buss with the help of friends organized a drive-by birthday party with family and his best friends to respect social distancing. Over 25 vehicles filled with cheering parents and children drove around the cul de sac in front of the Buss home several times bestowing Peyton with balloons, gifts, cards and placards. This is the best birthday party Ive ever had ! exclaimed Peyton. People need social interaction, said his Mother Jill, This is a new norm so we have to make due. He will remember this birthday the rest of his life! Thousand Oaks on Thursday, April 16, 2020 in Thousand Oaks, CA. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

If you're like many people, the early days of the pandemic, and the grief contained in them, likely left you feeling adrift. When I say "grief," I don't only mean the devastating loss of life. It's natural to mourn lost opportunities and celebrations, too.

Almost as soon as we watched some beloved rituals disappear, humans began to do what we do best. We improvised. We got creative. We grew. And soon, whole new rituals were born, from those that rely on technology — Zoom cocktail hour, anyone? — to others, like peaceful walks in the woods, that depend on nature.

"Rituals paint indelible pictures in our minds and in our hearts," wrote family therapist Evan Imber-Black in her fantastic recent paper on the subject. "And when these rituals go missing, there is something resourceful and insistent in the human spirit requiring us to create rituals anew."

Now as we emerge into a world that hopefully starts to feel a little more "normal," I'm left wondering: Will we return to our old rituals as if nothing has changed? Or are there new ways in which we'll experience community, connection, structure and cohesion?

"Rituals help us mark time and organize meaning around change," says psychoanalyst Juliane Maxwald. "The process of change involves both grieving loss and embracing growth, keeping an eye on the past while looking forward to the future."

That's especially true these days, as some of us prepare to re-enter society with an amalgam of thrill and trepidation. Case in point: One of my patients has been loving cooking dinner at home with his fiancé and training him as a sous chef, and worries about returning to dinners out.

The key to working through these concerns is communication with your partner or family. Be honest with yourself and them about what pandemic habits you want to keep or drop.

"You might be grateful for the slowing down of life during the pandemic, while your partner might be excited to resume activities that have been restricted," Maxwald explained. "Approaching these differences with curiosity, not criticism, will help us stay connected with each other as we redesign what our daily routines and weekly rituals look like."

Here are some ways to take what we've learned during the past year so that we're honoring that time while embracing what's to come.



New ways to celebrate

The pandemic's effect on rituals was perhaps most apparent when it came to holidays, birthdays and other celebrations. When we lost the opportunity to gather together, we began marking such milestones through video calls or with socially distanced "drive-by" parties.

Imber-Black describes one couple who were determined to keep their wedding date — and did so, with a small but joyful ceremony on their Brooklyn stoop. "Previously, a place to dance, talk, or just think alone and together, this stoop was filled with significant memories from before COVID-19," she wrote.

While we generally prefer virtual celebrations over in-person parties, there's something to be gained by infusing some of technology into life as we go forward. We now know that even our least tech-savvy friends and relatives can figure out how to video chat. Perhaps future Thanksgivings and other holidays will include a hybrid of in-person and virtual attendees.

Virtual celebrations can offer another perk for those of us with social anxiety or uncomfortable family situations. "I think Covid gave people permission to think about what works, and what doesn't, about traditional rituals," said marriage and family therapist Jean Pappalardo. "For those who may need to remove themselves from a toxic family environment, technology provides a safe barrier."




Creativity and comfort

During the pandemic, many rituals provided us with a sense of comfort by creating structure out of chaos, said couples therapist Deborah Fox.

Some parents instituted family dinners or game nights, while couples planned regular at-home date nights -- some complete with formal attire. This sense of creativity stems in part from the fact that we had few other options: Going ballroom dancing wasn't an option, but swaying to the music with your partner in your living room — even clad in a gown or tuxedo — was possible.

While some of us can't wait to get back to the dance floor (or the club, the bar, the office, the amusement park) as soon as possible, others hope to keep their new rituals alive.

"I hear many people placing great value on what they discovered and want to keep, such as the nightly family dinner with both parents home or breaking out the dusty board games," said Fox.

"Some parents are contemplating a hybrid workweek so they can remain intricately involved in aspects of their children's lives that they have come to know."

Embracing spontaneity

While some rituals can offer predictability, others can be quirky and spontaneous. When their country shut down early in the pandemic, Italians threw open their windows and sang, played musical instruments, clapped, and even banged on pots and pans as way to support frontline workers.

Near my own home in New York, stuffed teddy bears began appearing in windows as the world shut down — a whimsical way of replacing fear with joy for kids and adults alike.

"Rituals make us vulnerable, because they can lead us into the unknown," said family and couples therapist Rebecca Sokoll, who takes daily walks that are anything but predictable. "They happen spontaneously, at different times of the day, and take me somewhere new every time."




Room for growth

Whatever you decide to take from the pandemic or leave behind, some rituals never go out of style. Practicing deep breathing, burning a candle, writing in a journal and enjoying nature were grounding rituals before and during Covid-19, and I expect they will continue well beyond this time.

It's OK to spend time thinking about choosing what worked for you and what didn't. Even though most of us would like to relegate Covid-19 to the dustbin of history, there are valuable lessons worth hanging on to as well.

"It's okay if it doesn't look exactly the same as during Covid-19 — there is room for growth and newness, too," said sex therapist Tara Galeano. "What's more important is to adhere to the values we've gained."

"Rituals bent but did not break during COVID-19," wrote Imber-Black.

"When the shutdown finally becomes a memory and some of the newly invented rituals slip away, I predict that many will maintain as discoveries of our creativities, our capacities, and our requirement for the human connections rituals provide."

GRAPHICS ARE RANTER AND LEVELLER LEAFLETS FROM 1640'S

All that we know grows from the words of our ancestors

All that we know and all of our relationships grows from the words of our ancestors — that is the guiding principle at First People’s Cultural Council’s (FPCC) Indigenous language programs.

Sofia Terbasket-Funmaker is one of the many language learners dedicated to breathing life into her language, and passing it on to future generations.

Funmaker is a N̓syilxčn̓ language learner and teacher whose roots are Sylix, Anishinaabe, and Ho-chunk. She’s dedicating her time to language immersion and expanding curriculum resources. She uses standardized curriculum for classes at the Sylix Language House, and is designing her own project-based methodologies on the side.

She spent last summer working as a language nest assistant working with a small group of children aged two to five.

“Every day we would go somewhere new, usually to a park outside and we’d do different curricula, different activities outside, all in the language,” says Funmaker.

Funmaker recently completed a full year of immersion with the Sylix Language House. After three months, she had learned enough to start working as a language teacher, while continuing as a language student, she says.

This month, Funmaker was approved for a grant called YES (Youth Empowered Speakers) through the FPCC, enabling her to work with a fluent elder 10 hours a week for the next year.

The project at the Sylix Language House is one of many funded by FPCC this year. The provincial organization funded 600 language-related projects from April 2020 until March 2021.

The seeds planted through FPCC funding and Indigenous language programs are blossoming into a variety of programs, with cross-pollinating to create strong community connections.

Aliana Parker, FPCC language program manager, spoke of the long-term vision of the organization, which has been funding cultural programs for more than 30 years.

“The vision is that all First Nations languages in B.C. have stable populations of speakers who are passing their languages on to the next generations,” Parker says.

According to the most recent FPCC Status of languages report, there are 34 Indigenous languages, and more than 90 dialects in B.C. — all considered endangered. In 2018 there were a reported 4,132 speakers total, or 3.0 per cent of Indigenous people in B.C. Data is gathered every four years so the next report will be in 2022.

With 60 per cent of Indigenous languages in Canada in the area known as B.C, this is one of the most linguistically diverse regions of the world.

“Every First Nations language in B.C. faces extinction within the next ten years unless more is done to support them,” says First People’s Language Map of B.C.

The report also states that the number of language learners is increasing 10.2 per cent of Indigenous people in B.C were learning languages as reported in 2018.

While the pandemic has impacted all the funded Indigenous language programs, involving mentorship partnerships, non-profits, nations and more, Parker says projects have been able to shift and adapt to continue their work.

“People who work in language revitalization are really creative innovators and it was exciting to see that communities were able to shift plans and carry on with projects in a safe way using online tools,” she says. “In fact, many who had never used technology before learned how, and I think today most enjoy using new technologies to connect and carry out their work.”

One recipient is Pacific Association of First Nations Women (PAFNW), inclusively serving Indigenous communities, including urban and off-reserve. PAFNW envisions a matriarchal community where all Indigenous women in B.C. are safe and respected with a sense of belonging and connection to cultural traditions, as stated in their mandate.

FPCC has funded the hiring and support of fluent Nehiyawewin (Cree) and Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) language teachers. People learning the language are Indigenous people living in Vancouver away from their home territories, says language program manager Eden Fine Day.

Fine Day is a Plains Cree artist from the Sweetgrass First Nation in Saskatchewan, raised mostly in B.C.

The pandemic shifted Indigenous language programs that have existed since 2018 online, allowing for a wider outreach, she says, and registration has skyrocketed.

Fine Day says the language lessons have wellness benefits for the teachers as well as learners.

“It’s a way for them to see how valuable they are to us,” says Fine Day. “I treasure their knowledge and I treasure their experiences. And I’m so grateful.”

Elder Dorothy Sinclair Eastman is an Ojibway language teacher for PAFNW. She is from Little Saskatchewan Reserve, Manitoba.

“I was very close to my oldest brother James to whom I owe my deepest gratitude for teaching me every word I know of the (Saulteaux) dialect of the Ojibway language,” she says.

Eastman is pleased to see a growing movement of reclamation of culture, and preserving knowledge. Learning from Elders is important, she says, and this can’t fully happen without the language.

People are attracted to learning their languages, because it helps them heal some of those missing parts, says Eastman. She has seen the change when people start to learn.

“They said, ‘Oh, this is like coming home’. It was really touching,” says Eastman.

“The most important thing is keeping it going, and the language and the culture, not only our people, but beyond. So the mainstream society will understand us more. That’s the most important part.”

Eastman says the language classes strive to create community and connections. One young student in the class, Cicada, uses language as a way to stay connected to her grandmother. She phones her grandmother every week, to listen to stories, and chat about life.

Intergenerational connection and wellness go hand in hand, says her father Danilo Caron, of Sagamok First Nation.

Language teacher Evelyn Voyageur agrees.

She teaches Kwak̓wala at North Island College (NIC), and is from the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw Nations.

She says language cultivates deeper connections between generations.

“I believe it’s because the kids can sit and talk to the elders and they understand what the elders are saying. And that’s how they’re connected,” she says.

From that connection, comes guidance and healthy paths, says Voyageur. She’s seen the benefits from watching her own grandchildren and great grandchildren maintain strong connections to culture and language.

“Language relates to wellness because they now have role and positive role models. The younger generation sees how the older generation are doing things- and they understand what the older people are doing and saying,” she says.

Her granddaughter Carla Maxmuwidzumga Voyageur also teaches Kwak̓wala at NIC. Carla is also from the Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw Nations, with Nisga’a roots.

She received funding from FPCC to digitize and translate a collection of language cards. Her great grandfather, Billy Sunday Willie had the foresight to document the language cards. Carla says linguist David Mcclintock Grubb recorded him speaking the language in the 1970s.

“I think people don’t understand how much work goes into language revitalization,” she says. “A few words can be a couple of hours worth of work, cleaning up audio and transcribing and trying to understand where the root of the word came from.”

Carla speaks of the tools and values that are embedded in words — how the words are connected to places and people.

“There’s always surprising moments with language where you get little goldmines of information or it leads your speaker to remember something or just offer information about something else, you know, that’s kind of distantly related or completely related,” she says.

“Learning your Indigenous language is really both coming back to yourself and to your people and learning how to live in this complicated, modern world that we live in.”

Scanning, transcribing, and working with her grandmother on translating words was a year of work that will continue, as she says her personal commitment to the project extends far beyond the funding period.

Funmaker can relate and says teaching the language herself has allowed her to try different approaches and allow students to focus on what interests them.

She has now created conversation groups for practicing, on a volunteer basis. She wanted to try her own project-based language classes to explore different ways of teaching. For example, in her curriculum, a student did a family tree project in which Funmaker added a third term for non-binary or Two-Spirit individuals.

“Which is really important as well in the language to make space for that,” says Funmaker.

“We need to start centering women and Indigenous or Indigiqueer folks in everything that we do. Also my sibling is non-binary. So it’s important for me to make space for non-binary indigenous folks, everywhere, especially in the language,” Funmaker says.

There are special moments in reclamation and identity through learning the language, says Funmaker.

“Just today, I learned my late grandfather was a fluent N̓syilxčn̓ speaker. Elder Wilfred “Grouse” Barnes came in to speak with our advanced class. He knew my mom’s dad, they played baseball together and spoke the language.”

“It’s this really deep, profound journey to myself, learning the language. This is a journey of many emotions,” says Funmaker.

“It’s a connection back to my identity and it’s a connection to my grandpa, to my ancestors — I really feel them holding me up as I’m speaking.”

Odette Auger, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Discourse

The Problem With Patriotism

Sasha Banks 6/5/2021

© A photograph found in Cecil County, Maryland, shows a Union soldier 

and his family sitting for a portrait

In 2008, during a campaign rally in Madison, Wisconsin, to elect her husband as the first Black president, Michelle Obama said it was then, for the first time in her adult life, that she felt proud of her country. I was 19 years old; this would be my first election. I had never felt proud of my country. I had never heard anyone say that out loud before.

I was 12 when the Twin Towers crumbled on the TV monitor in my science teacher’s classroom. September 11 energized something latent and eager in everyone around me that I couldn’t find in myself. There were people, borders, and a country to protect, some connective ownership, as plumes of American flags sprouted up on every front door and porch in our neighborhood except ours.

When I was an undergrad, a professor used the word we to tell stories of war and colonization and I balked, though I didn’t understand my own indignation. Obama’s admission threw a stark light on it: I’d never felt a part of this country, because history’s glare would not allow me to be that negligent.

History is always behind me and before me. I am a Black woman born and living in America since 1988. While memorizing the presidents, I interrupted my fourth-grade class to tell my teacher, “Thomas Jefferson has descendants who are Black.” “That’s not true,” she said. “How would that be possible?” “It is true! He had babies with one of his slaves. They said it on BET News.”

“Then that’s not real news. Do you know what BET stands for?” she asked. I sat up straighter.

“Black Entertainment Television,” I said. She argued that entertainment meant the story couldn’t be true and that it was unpatriotic to so freely believe such disparaging stories about my country.

My country. The one I was encouraged to fear and revere from an early age. I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, in a Christian school that maintained a robust production of allegiances. My teachers explained that one must treat the American flag much the same way one treated a Bible, with the utmost care. Every morning began with a chorus of “Onward, Christian soldiers”—Onward, Christian soldiers! Marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before—followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, recited with the body angled sharp toward the American flag. Well-behaved students were chosen weekly for the privilege of carrying the American, Christian, and Alaskan flags into morning assembly, and warned against letting the American flag touch the ground. In my childish naïveté, I supposed that anyone who made the mistake of letting the flag skirt the floor would be cursed with a lifetime of bad luck.

A sense of national dread loomed over my early life. The books I read, the news I watched, the conversations that happened around me deepened that wariness into distrust, forming a permanent disconnect between me and America. I was 23 when Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman. I was 24 when George Zimmerman was acquitted. I was 25 when Michael Brown was killed by Officer Darren Wilson, and I turned 26 days before the state decided that he would not be indicted. As the deaths of Martin and Brown followed me into young adulthood, my new rage broke apart any notion of a cohesive national identity.

The patriot identity limits our ability as citizens to collectively revolutionize the American infrastructure. It is a national identity that observes the flaws of the system and, instead of considering abolition to address the root of the problems, aims simply to reshape or reform.

The distance between me and the country made it difficult to figure out how to ground myself. I would clearly never be a patriot. It took years for me to understand that Blackness is a thing that self-defines. I would need to learn to define myself.

For two years, I indicted the United States on the page and in weekly critiques during my M.F.A. program at Pratt Institute. In one critique, my professor suggested that for all my rage and desire for institutional destruction, she suspected that I cared about this country quite a lot. I was incredulous. Caring would make me a patriot, and no word felt emptier or more distant. If I didn’t care, what was this feeling, this desire to find an answer for what I was in this country?

Months later I made a map, partnered with a cinematographer, and drove the question around to Black communities in Mississippi, Georgia, and North Carolina to film a documentary about Blackness’s relationship to patriotism. I feared coming off as a bitter Black woman whose motivation for interrogating her placement in and relationship to this country was to prove how unspectacular it is. Spending any amount of time identifying the country’s innumerable wrongs, failures, and contradictions, I worried, would be perceived as immature.

Still, I had to know who else had circled this question, and what name it had led them to. “Have you named yourself a patriot?” I would ask. “What has it cost you? What has it won you?” And while the responses varied, what mattered was the option of naming. My Blackness within the arbitrarily drawn lines of a stolen country liberated me to name and resist being named.

[Read: Black America’s neglected origin stories]

I sat down in Powder Springs, Georgia, with my aunt Alberta, a program manager for an education nonprofit. She spoke about the fact that because white people need to protect the system that protects them, they believe maintaining the status quo is what makes them patriots. This belief allows white people to co-opt the term. I sat with Black people that had long rejected the concept of a “national” identity altogether. Doing so allowed them to commit their allegiance to their local communities; effecting change in front of their own eyes, protecting one another, prioritizing care for their people without the slightest regard for any national noise clanging above their heads. A communal identity could be considered in opposition to a national identity, the loyalty shifting away from the conservation of the American structure and toward the protection of the people most harmed by it.

Blackness consistently self-defines on the grounds of America’s unsustainable landscape. That rift was all the space I needed to craft an identity for myself: an American confessor. Confessor because I had no stake in preserving the fantasy of the American experiment. Confessor because naming the failures of a country validates our experiences as citizens. What I wanted, what my writing asked of me, was to confess the truth of this country in order to trouble its easy notions. And while that identity felt true to me, finally in the most connective way, it was too big. Conspiratorial, I worried.

But weeks after my conversation with Aunt Alberta, in 2017, I sat in a bus terminal in Boston, and noticed the American painter Kara Walker on the cover of New York magazine’s Art and Design issue. As I read, I was struck by a kind of joy: Walker, too, had been named a confessor, defined as someone “exposing the terrors of sentimentalist history.” I smiled to myself at what seemed an impossible coincidence or uncanny affirmation to tell the truth, point at it, stand next to it unflinching. My distrust was born that day in fourth grade, when it was implied that I was gullible and anti-American to believe something believable—and true—about a place brimming with ghastly truths. I tried to prove my sense wrong when the country kept proving me right and right and right. And maybe it is anti-American to tell those truths: to name everything until there is nothing left.

[Next: Read William Sturkey on the new tools revolutionizing Black history]

Critical Race Theory Pioneer Says Republicans Creating 'Phantom Threat' to Gag Teachers

Jack Dutton
NEWSWEEK
6/5/2021

One of the pioneers of critical race theory has accused Republicans of creating a "phantom threat" to justify "jaw-dropping" attacks on racial justice, freedom of speech and a society's understanding of its history.

© Amanda Edwards/Getty Civil Rights Advocate Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw speaks onstage at 2018 Women's March Los Angeles at Pershing Square on January 20, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. Crenshaw, who helped found Critical race theory, has accused Republicans of creating a “phantom threat” to justify “jaw dropping” attacks on racial justice, freedom of speech, and a society’s understanding of its history, after GOP lawmakers moved last month to ban the controversial theory from being taught in Idaho schools.

Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw made the comments to Newsweek after GOP lawmakers in Idaho moved to ban the theory from being taught in the state's schools and universities.

The academic theory "maps the nature and workings of 'institutional racism'" in America, according to Kendall Thomas, co-editor along with Crenshaw of Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement.

The theory dates back to the mid-1970s, but has become a politically charged topic in recent months. In April, President Joe Biden's Department of Education issued proposals to update the teaching of American history and civics in schools, incorporating anti-racist works such as The 1619 Project and books by the historian Ibram X. Kendi.

Opponents of the proposals, including the GOP in Idaho, are concerned that federal authorities could force belief systems on students and cause more division.

The Idaho legislation, House Bill 377, prohibits educational institutions from teaching that "any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior"—an idea that the bill claims is often found in critical race theory.

HB 377, signed into law at the end of April, also bans teachings arguing that "individuals, by virtue of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin, are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members of the same sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin." It says no distinction or classification of students shall be made on account of race.

Asked about the Idaho legislation and attempts by other states to remove critical race theory from the curriculum, Crenshaw said: "The attacks on critical race theory in Idaho and across the country are evidence of a frightening truth: Republican legislators are using a phantom threat to justify jaw-dropping attacks on racial justice, freedom of speech and a society's understanding of its history."

She continued: "Democracy itself rests on the idea that our laws and social practices are engaged with real issues. However, in much the same way that attacks on voting rights are justified by non-existent voter fraud, attacks on critical race theory are grounded in reactionary concern about racial progress and the leveling of the playing field.

"And even though the hollowness of their partisan rhetoric can be easily marked as nostalgia for a racist and sexist social order, the effects of government intervention in discussions of this country's history are horrifyingly real."

State Senator Carl Crabtree, one of the lawmakers behind HB 377, said he believed Idaho's students "should be taught how to think, not what to think."

He went on: "There are concerns that, in isolated instances, students have felt intimidated or coerced into certain ideologies. Every student deserves a learning environment where they can think freely and learn without prejudice.

"We want our students to learn about race in America without being led to predetermined conclusions. HB 377 does not prohibit the teaching or learning of any subject, it protects a student's right to formulate their own opinions and ideas."

Julianne Young, a Republican member of the Idaho House of Representatives, denied that the legislation banned any specific content.

She said: "Rather, it prohibits requiring a student to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to specific discriminatory beliefs, including the belief that a person is inherently inferior or superior because of their race."

However, the Idaho School Boards Association said the bill set "a concerning precedent."

Quinn Perry, policy and government affairs director of the association, said: "It has come on the tails of a wild misinformation campaign, where a radical lobbying group made broad claims that our members, administrators and teachers are 'indoctrinating' students—a claim we vehemently reject.

"Instead, the move delayed our public schools' ability to enter into professional negotiations, issue contracts, set budgets and prepare for learning loss programs for the upcoming school year. This also came at a time when teacher burnout and turn-over remain at an all-time high.

"When the [lobbying] group realized that bashing teachers, locally elected school boards and school administrators wasn't a well-received message, it appears they switched their rhetoric and started blaming our state agencies," Perry added.

Fred Cornforth, chairman of the Idaho Democrats, said in an emailed statement to Newsweek that 2021 was arguably the worst legislative session in the state's history.

"Instead of supporting families, teachers, students and hard-working Idahoans, radical legislators hope to inflame their base with conspiracy-backed legislation," he said.

"Within days of the initial claim of critical race theory being taught in Idaho schools [the] Republican-appointed State Board of Education has found zero evidence of these claims.

"Radical legislators continue their attack on public education—something they have underfunded for decades—to where our state is dead last in support per student, nationwide. Their claims are baseless and their actions, unconstitutional. A day of reckoning is coming at the ballot box."

Related Articles

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The Republican Push to Ban Critical Race Theory Reveals an Ugly Truth | Opinion

Critical Race Theory Does Not Present The U.S. As 'Evil', 1619 Project Creator Denies GOP View

Elizabeth Warren bashed cryptocurrencies' environmental impact, said big tech firms should be broken up, and called for a wealth tax in a new interview. Here are the 8 best quotes.

wdaniel@businessinsider.com (Will Daniel) 4 hrs ago

© AP Photo/John Minchillo Elizabeth Warren AP Photo/John Minchillo

Elizabeth Warren sat down for an interview with Yahoo Finance on Thursday.

The Democratic Senator from Mass. said that big tech companies are a "threat to our democracy" and should be broken up.

Warren also bashed bitcoin's environmental impact and reiterated her calls for a wealth tax. Detailed below are her eight best quotes.

Elizabeth Warren sat down for an interview with Yahoo Finance's editor-in-chief Andrew Serwer on Thursday and laid into big tech companies, cryptocurrencies, and the ultra-wealthy.

Warren said that she was happy that Trump has been removed from Facebook, but questioned the power of big tech companies to be able to make that choice.

The Democratic Senator from Massachusetts also touched on inflation, arguing concerns are overblown and only being mentioned because of democratic spending programs.

Warren then discussed some of her concerns around Robinhood and retail investing, and called for a wealth tax on top US earners.

Here are Warren's 8 best quotes from the interview, lightly edited and condensed for clarity:

"I also think with bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies, I think there's a real issue about the environmental impact as well. This whole notion of how much energy is consumed just to keep the currency tracking going, you know, you don't consume that kind of energy in order to have money on deposit at a bank or a mutual fund. In that sense, bitcoin is very different and in the 21st century we're becoming a lot more sensitive to the worldwide impacts of the choices we make."

"Well, first, I'm glad that Donald Trump's not going to be on Facebook, suits me. But part two is that this is a further demonstration that these giant tech companies are way, way, way to powerful. And listen to the arrogance of it. The name of the group that made this decision is called 'the Supreme Court.'"

"We need to break up these big tech companies and we need to do it for two reasons. One is a pretty straightforward economic reason…Amazon's the easiest one...You want to buy or sell goods on that platform you have to go to Amazon. Amazon makes money doing that, but they also rake off all the information…so Amazon goes let's see what else is happening here. Andy is running a pet food business…it's turning out really good so we'll just turn this into NBO's pet food business and move Andy back to page seven and just scoop up all the business. Anticompetitive. So they need to be broken up in order to keep commerce flourishing. You can either run the platform or compete in the businesses, but you don't get to do both at the same time."

"The second reason we need to break these guys up is how much political power they have. The idea that they get to decide whose voice gets heard and who doesn't and they do that on their own with something they call a 'supreme court.' No, no, they have too much influence and they pose a threat to our democracy."

"No, look every time democrats talk about making investments into the economy a bunch of Republicans, and Larry Summers, stand up and say 'oh inflation.' Notice they don't talk about it during tax cuts…if inflation moves we have a lot of tools to deal with it."

"My principle issue with Robinhood is how much they actually disclose to their customer about how their customers' data and trades are being used. I worry a lot about these companies that get out and appear one kind of good guy model and it actually turns out they are not this little scrappy upstart they are actually fronting for giant companies that are making money, not only in the trades, but making money harvesting the information ahead of everyone else in terms of what those trades are doing."

"What I want to see here is I want to see the SEC take a close look. I think it's time for the SEC to update its regulations on disclosure but also on what business models ought to be permissible in a market."

"We need a wealth tax in America…the difference between the top and the bottom in income is big, but the difference between the top and the bottom in wealth is orders of magnitude bigger….I have proposed a wealth tax, a two percent tax on fortunes above $50 million, a little bit more if you have a billion or more in assets. That would produce $3 trillion in revenue over ten years."

THE GLOBAL MANUFACTURING CAPITAL

China's greenhouse gas emissions exceed those of U.S. and developed countries combined, report says

Emma Newburger CNBC 6/5/2021

China's greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 exceeded those of the U.S. and other developed nations combined, according to research published Thursday by Rhodium Group.

China is now responsible for more than 27% of total global emissions. The U.S., the world's second-highest emitter, accounts for 11% of the global total.

The findings come after a climate summit President Joe Biden hosted last month, during which Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated a pledge to make sure the nation's emissions peak by 2030.

© Provided by CNBC A person walks past a coal fired power plant in Jiayuguan, Gansu province, China, on Thursday, April 1, 2021.

China's greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 exceeded those of the U.S. and the developed world combined, according to a report published Thursday by research and consulting firm Rhodium Group.

The country's emissions more than tripled during the past three decades, the report added.

China is now responsible for more than 27% of total global emissions. The U.S., which is the world's second-highest emitter, accounts for 11% of the global total. India is responsible for 6.6% of global emissions, edging out the 27 nations in the EU, which account for 6.4%, the report said.

The findings come after a climate summit President Joe Biden hosted last month, during which Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated his pledge to make sure the nation's emissions peak by 2030. He also repeated China's commitment to reach net-zero emissions by midcentury and urged countries to work together to combat the climate crisis.

"We must be committed to multilateralism," Xi said during brief remarks at the summit. "China looks forward to working with the international community, including the United States, to jointly advance global environmental governance."

Xi said China would control coal-fired generation projects and limit increases in coal consumption over the next five years, with reductions taking place in the five years following that.

However, Chinese officials have also emphasized that economic growth, which is still largely dependent on coal power, remains a priority. And the nation is still increasing construction of coal-fired power plants.

For instance, the China Development Bank and the Export-Import Bank of China together funded $474 million worth of coal projects outside China in 2020 alone. And coal accounted for more than half of China's domestic energy generation last year, according to Li Gao, director general of the Department of Climate Change at China's Ecology Ministry.

China, which is home to more than 1.4 billion people, saw its emissions surpass 14 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2019, more than triple 1990 levels and a 25% increase over the past decade, the Rhodium report found. China's per capita emissions in 2019 also reached 10.1 tons, nearly tripling over the past two decades.

China's net emissions last year also increased by roughly 1.7% even while emissions from almost all other countries declined during the coronavirus pandemic, according to Rhodium estimates.

The Rhodium Group is a U.S. think tank that provides global emissions estimates and forecasts through the ClimateDeck, a partnership with Breakthrough Energy, an initiative founded by Bill Gates.

Slashing carbon emissions is one of the few areas on which the U.S. and China have agreed to cooperate.

Days before the summit, U.S. special envoy for climate John Kerry traveled to Shanghai to meet with officials on climate change, after which the two countries released a joint statement vowing to tackle the climate crisis together with "seriousness and urgency."

Biden has vowed to to reduce U.S. emissions by 50% to 52% by 2030, more than doubling the country's prior commitment under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

A goal of the accord is to keep the global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with preindustrial levels. So far, the world is set to warm up by 1.5 C, or 2.7 F, over the next two decades alone.

— CNBC's Evelyn Cheng contributed reporting

 

Review: Most human origins stories are not compatible with known fossils

Fossil apes can inform us about essential aspects of ape and human evolution, including the nature of our last common ancestor

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE LAST COMMON ANCESTOR OF CHIMPANZEES AND HUMANS REPRESENTS THE STARTING POINT OF HUMAN AND CHIMPANZEE EVOLUTION. FOSSIL APES PLAY AN ESSENTIAL ROLE WHEN IT COMES TO RECONSTRUCTING THE NATURE... view more 

CREDIT: PRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM © CHRISTOPHER M. SMITH

In the 150 years since Charles Darwin speculated that humans originated in Africa, the number of species in the human family tree has exploded, but so has the level of dispute concerning early human evolution. Fossil apes are often at the center of the debate, with some scientists dismissing their importance to the origins of the human lineage (the "hominins"), and others conferring them starring evolutionary roles. A new review out on May 7 in the journal Science looks at the major discoveries in hominin origins since Darwin's works and argues that fossil apes can inform us about essential aspects of ape and human evolution, including the nature of our last common ancestor.

Humans diverged from apes--specifically, the chimpanzee lineage--at some point between about 9.3 million and 6.5 million years ago, towards the end of the Miocene epoch. To understand hominin origins, paleoanthropologists aim to reconstruct the physical characteristics, behavior, and environment of the last common ancestor of humans and chimps.

"When you look at the narrative for hominin origins, it's just a big mess--there's no consensus whatsoever," said Sergio Almécija, a senior research scientist in the American Museum of Natural History's Division of Anthropology and the lead author of the review. "People are working under completely different paradigms, and that's something that I don't see happening in other fields of science."

There are two major approaches to resolving the human origins problem: "Top-down," which relies on analysis of living apes, especially chimpanzees; and "bottom-up," which puts importance on the larger tree of mostly extinct apes. For example, some scientists assume that hominins originated from a chimp-like knuckle-walking ancestor. Others argue that the human lineage originated from an ancestor more closely resembling, in some features, some of the strange Miocene apes.

In reviewing the studies surrounding these diverging approaches, Almécija and colleagues with expertise ranging from paleontology to functional morphology and phylogenetics discuss the limitations of relying exclusively on one of these opposing approaches to the hominin origins problem. "Top-down" studies sometimes ignore the reality that living apes (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and hylobatids) are just the survivors of a much larger, and now mostly extinct, group. On the other hand, studies based on the "bottom-up"approach are prone to giving individual fossil apes an important evolutionary role that fits a preexisting narrative.

"In The Descent of Man in 1871, Darwin speculated that humans originated in Africa from an ancestor different from any living species. However, he remained cautious given the scarcity of fossils at the time," Almécija said. "One hundred fifty years later, possible hominins--approaching the time of the human-chimpanzee divergence--have been found in eastern and central Africa, and some claim even in Europe. In addition, more than 50 fossil ape genera are now documented across Africa and Eurasia. However, many of these fossils show mosaic combinations of features that do not match expectations for ancient representatives of the modern ape and human lineages. As a consequence, there is no scientific consensus on the evolutionary role played by these fossil apes."

Overall, the researchers found that most stories of human origins are not compatible with the fossils that we have today.

"Living ape species are specialized species, relicts of a much larger group of now extinct apes. When we consider all evidence--that is, both living and fossil apes and hominins--it is clear that a human evolutionary story based on the few ape species currently alive is missing much of the bigger picture," said study co-author Ashley Hammond, an assistant curator in the Museum's Division of Anthropology.

Kelsey Pugh, a Museum postdoctoral fellow and study co-author adds, "The unique and sometimes unexpected features and combinations of features observed among fossil apes, which often differ from those of living apes, are necessary to untangle which features hominins inherited from our ape ancestors and which are unique to our lineage."

Living apes alone, the authors conclude, offer insufficient evidence. "Current disparate theories regarding ape and human evolution would be much more informed if, together with early hominins and living apes, Miocene apes were also included in the equation," says Almécija. "In other words, fossil apes are essential to reconstruct the 'starting point' from which humans and chimpanzees evolved."

###

This study was part of a collaborative effort with colleagues from the New York Institute of Technology (Nathan Thompson) and the Catalan Institute of Paleontology Miquel Crusafont (David Alba and Salvador Moyà-Solà).

Study DOI: https://science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.abb4363

ABOUT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY (AMNH)

The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869 and currently celebrating its 150th anniversary, is one of the world's preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. The Museum encompasses more than 40 permanent exhibition halls, including those in the Rose Center for Earth and Space, as well as galleries for temporary exhibitions. The Museum's approximately 175 scientists draw on a world-class research collection of more than 34 million artifacts and specimens, some of which are billions of years old, and on one of the largest natural history libraries in the world. Through its Richard Gilder Graduate School, the Museum grants the Ph.D. degree in Comparative Biology and the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree, the only such free-standing, degree-granting programs at any museum in the United States. The Museum's website, digital videos, and apps for mobile devices bring its collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to millions around the world. Visit amnh.org for more information.