Urban crime fell by over a third around the world during COVID-19 shutdowns, study suggests

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Research News

 

A team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge and University of Utrecht examined trends in daily crime counts before and after COVID-19 restrictions were implemented in major metropolitan areas such as Barcelona, Chicago, Sao Paulo, Tel Aviv, Brisbane and London.

While both stringency of lockdowns and the resulting crime reductions varied considerably from city to city, the researchers found that most types of crime - with the key exception of homicide - fell significantly in the study sites.

Across all 27 cities, daily assaults fell by an average of 35%, and robberies (theft using violence or intimidation, such as muggings) almost halved: falling an average of 46%. Other types of theft, from pick-pocketing to shop-lifting, fell an average of 47%.

"City living has been dramatically curtailed by COVID-19, and crime is a big part of city life," said Prof Manuel Eisner, Director of the Violence Research Centre at the University of Cambridge and senior author of the study published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

"No drinkers spilling into the streets after nights out at bars and pubs. No days spent in shops and cafés or at the racetrack or football match. Some cities even introduced curfews. It choked the opportunism that fuels so much urban crime."

"We found the largest reductions in crimes where motivated offenders and suitable victims converge in a public space. There would be far fewer potential targets in the usual crime hotspots such as streets with lots of nightclubs," said Eisner.

Falls in crime resulting from COVID-19 stay-at-home orders tended to be sharp but short-lived, with a maximum drop occurring around two to five weeks after implementation, followed by a gradual return to previous levels.

Overall, the team found that stricter lockdowns led to greater declines in crime - although even cities with voluntary "recommendations" instead of restrictions, such as Malmo and Stockholm in Sweden, saw drops in daily rates of theft.

Theft of vehicles fell an average of 39% over the study sites. Researchers found that tougher restrictions on use of buses and trains during lockdowns was linked to greater falls in vehicle theft - suggesting that negotiating cities via public transport is often a prerequisite for stealing a set of wheels.

Burglary also fell an average of 28% across all cities. However, lockdowns affected burglary numbers in markedly different ways from city to city. While Lima in Peru saw rates plunge by 84%, San Francisco actually saw a 38% increase in break-ins as a result of COVID restrictions.

Data from many cities didn't distinguish between commercial and residential. Where it did, burglaries of private premises - rather than shops or warehouses - was more likely to decline, with more people stuck in-doors around the clock.

Reduction was lowest for crimes of homicide: down just 14% on average across all cities in the study. Dr Amy Nivette from the University of Utrecht, the study's first author, said: "In many societies, a significant proportion of murders are committed in the home. The restrictions on urban mobility may have little effect on domestic murders.

"In addition, organised crime - such as drug trafficking gangs - is responsible for a varying percentage of murders. The behaviour of these gangs is likely to be less sensitive to the changes enforced by a lockdown," said Nivette.

However, three cities where gang crime drives violence, all in South America, did see major falls in daily homicide as a result of COVID-19 policies. In Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, homicide dropped 24%. In Cali, Columbia, the drop was 29%, and in Lima, Peru, it plummeted 76%.

Rates of reported assaults also saw striking falls in Rio de Janeiro (56% drop) and Lima (75% drop). "It may be that criminal groups used the crisis to strengthen their power by imposing curfews and restricting movement in territories they control, resulting in a respite to the violence that plagues these cities," said Eisner.

Researchers found Barcelona to be something of an "outlier", with massive falls in assault (84% drop) and robbery (80% drop). Police-recorded thefts in the Spanish city declined from an average of 385 per day to just 38 per day under lockdown.

London saw less pronounced but still significant falls in some crime, with daily robberies dropping by 60%, theft by 44% and burglaries by 29%. The two US cities in the study, Chicago and San Francisco, had their best results in the category of assault, falling by 34% and 36% respectively.

The research team found no overall relationship between measures such as school closures or economic support and crime rates during lockdowns.

Added Eisner: "The measures taken by governments across the world to control COVID-19 provided a series of natural experiments, with major changes in routines, daily encounters and use of public space over entire populations.

"The pandemic has been devastating, but there are also opportunities to better understand social processes, including those involved in causing city-wide crime levels."

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How harm reduction advocates and the tobacco industry capitalized on pandemic to promote nicotine

Scientific papers suggesting that smokers are less likely to fall ill with COVID-19 are being discredited as links to the tobacco industry, reveals an investigation by The BMJ today

BMJ

Research News

 

Scientific papers suggesting that smokers are less likely to fall ill with covid-19 are being discredited as links to the tobacco industry, reveals an investigation by The BMJ today.

Journalists Stéphane Horel and Ties Keyzer report on undisclosed financial links between certain scientific authors and the tobacco and e-cigarette industry in a number of covid research papers.

In April 2020, two French studies (shared as preprints before formal peer review) suggested that nicotine might have a protective effect against covid-19 - dubbed the "nicotine hypothesis."

The stories made headlines worldwide and led to concern that decades of tobacco control could be undermined.

It has since been roundly disproved that smoking protects against covid-19, and several studies show that smoking, when adjusted for age and sex, is associated with an increased chance of covid-19 related death.

Horel and Keyzer point out that one of the study authors, Professor Jean-Pierre Changeux, has a history of receiving funding from the Council for Tobacco Research, whose purpose was to fund research that would cast doubt on the dangers of smoking and focus on the positive effects of nicotine.

From 1995 to 1998, tobacco industry documents show that Changeux's laboratory received $220,000 (£155,000; €180,000) from the Council for Tobacco Research.

Changeux assured The BMJ that he has not received any funding linked "directly or indirectly with the tobacco industry" since the 1990s.

In late April 2020, Greek researcher, Konstantinos Farsalinos, was the first to publish the "nicotine hypothesis" formally in a journal, in an editorial in Toxicology Reports.

The journal's editor in chief, Aristidis Tsatsakis featured as a co-author, as did A Wallace Hayes, a member of Philip Morris International's scientific advisory board in 2013, who has served as a paid consultant to the tobacco company.

Another co-author is Konstantinos Poulas, head of the Molecular Biology and Immunology Laboratory at the University of Patras, where Farsalinos is affiliated.

The laboratory has received funding from Nobacco, the market leader in Greek e-cigarettes and the exclusive distributor of British American Tobacco's nicotine delivery systems since 2018.

Neither Farsalinos nor Poulas has ever declared this Nobacco funding in their published scientific articles.

Yet Horel and Keyzer show that two grants were attributed in 2018 by the Foundation for a Smoke Free World - a non-profit established by Philip Morris International in 2017 - to "Patras Science Park."

The grants, whose amounts are not disclosed on the foundation's website, but tax documents show came close to €83,000, went to NOSMOKE, a university start-up incubator headed by Poulas, which markets an "organic" vaping product.

Last month, the European Respiratory Journal retracted a paper co-written by Poulas and Farsalinos, among others, after two authors failed to disclose conflicts of interest.

The retracted article had found that "current smoking was not associated with adverse outcome" in patients admitted to hospital with covid, and it claimed that smokers had a significantly lower risk of acquiring the virus.

The foundation has invested heavily in the covid-19/nicotine hypothesis, say Horel and Keyzer.

In June 2020 it set aside €900,000 for research "to better understand the associations between smoking and/or nicotine use, and covid-19 infection and outcome."

Its request stated that the pandemic offered "both an opportunity and a challenge for individuals to quit smoking or transition to reduced risk nicotine products."

They conclude: "In 2021, amid a global lung disease pandemic, tobacco industry figures are increasingly pushing the narrative of nicotine as the solution to an addiction that they themselves created, with the aim of persuading policy makers to give them ample room to market their "smoke-free" products. This makes studies on the hypothetical virtues of nicotine most welcome indeed."

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Externally peer reviewed? Yes
Evidence type: Investigation
Subject: Research integrity

 

Declining fish biodiversity poses risks for human nutrition

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

ITHACA, N.Y. - All fish are not created equal, at least when it comes to nutritional benefits.

This truth has important implications for how declining fish biodiversity can affect human nutrition, according to a computer modeling study led by Cornell and Columbia University researchers.

The study, "Declining Diversity of Wild-Caught Species Puts Dietary Nutrient Supplies at Risk," published May 28 in Science Advances, focused on the Loreto region of the Peruvian Amazon, where inland fisheries provide a critical source of nutrition for the 800,000 inhabitants.

At the same time, the findings apply to fish biodiversity worldwide, as more than 2 billion people depend on fish as their primary source of animal-derived nutrients.

"Investing in safeguarding biodiversity can deliver both on maintaining ecosystem function and health, and on food security and fisheries sustainability," said the study's first author Sebastian Heilpern, a presidential postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell University.

Practical steps could include establishing and enforcing "no-take zones" - areas set aside by the government where natural resources can't be extracted - in critical habitat; making sure that fishers adhere to fish size limits; and an increased investment in gathering species data to inform fisheries management policies, especially for inland fisheries.

In Loreto, people eat about 50 kilograms of fish annually per capita, rivaling the highest fish consumption rates in the world, and about half the amount of meat an average American consumes each year. Loreto residents eat a wide variety of fish, approximately 60 species, according to catch data. Species include large predatory catfish that migrate more than 5,000 kilometers, but whose numbers are dwindling due to overfishing and hydropower dams that block their paths. At the same time, the amount of fish caught has remained relatively consistent over time. This could be due to people spending more time fishing and smaller, more sedentary species or other predators filling voids left by dwindling larger predator populations.

"You have this pattern of biodiversity change but a constancy of biomass," Heilpern said. "We wanted to know: How does that affect nutrients that people get from the system?"

In the computer model, the researchers took all these factors into account and ran extinction scenarios, looking at which species are more likely to go extinct, and then which species are likely to replace those to compensate for a void in the ecosystem.

The model tracked seven essential animal-derived nutrients, including protein, iron, zinc, calcium and three omega-3 fatty acids, and simulated how changing fish stocks might affect nutrient levels across the population. While protein content across species is relatively equal, smaller, more sedentary fish have higher omega-3 content. Levels of micronutrients such as zinc and iron can also vary between species.

Simulations revealed risks in the system. For example, when small, sedentary species compensated for declines in large migratory species, fatty acid supplies increased, while zinc and iron supplies decreased. The region already suffers from high anemia rates, caused by iron deficiency, that such outcomes could further exacerbate.

"As you lose biodiversity, you have these tradeoffs that play out in terms of the aggregate quantity of nutrients," Heilpern said. "As you lose species, the system also becomes more and more risky to further shocks."

A related paper published March 19 in Nature Food considered whether other animal-based food sources, such as chicken and aquaculture, could compensate for the loss of biodiversity and dietary nutrients in the same region. The researchers found that those options were inadequate and could not replace the nutrients lost when fish biodiversity declines.

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The study was funded by a Columbia University Dean's Diversity Fellowship, a New York Community Trust Edward Prince Goldman Scholarship in Science, and a grant from the Conservation, Food and Health Foundation.

UMaine researchers: Culture drives human evolution more than genetics

UNIVERSITY OF MAINE

Research News

 

In a new study, University of Maine researchers found that culture helps humans adapt to their environment and overcome challenges better and faster than genetics.

After conducting an extensive review of the literature and evidence of long-term human evolution, scientists Tim Waring and Zach Wood concluded that humans are experiencing a "special evolutionary transition" in which the importance of culture, such as learned knowledge, practices and skills, is surpassing the value of genes as the primary driver of human evolution.

Culture is an under-appreciated factor in human evolution, Waring says. Like genes, culture helps people adjust to their environment and meet the challenges of survival and reproduction. Culture, however, does so more effectively than genes because the transfer of knowledge is faster and more flexible than the inheritance of genes, according to Waring and Wood.

Culture is a stronger mechanism of adaptation for a couple of reasons, Waring says. It's faster: gene transfer occurs only once a generation, while cultural practices can be rapidly learned and frequently updated. Culture is also more flexible than genes: gene transfer is rigid and limited to the genetic information of two parents, while cultural transmission is based on flexible human learning and effectively unlimited with the ability to make use of information from peers and experts far beyond parents. As a result, cultural evolution is a stronger type of adaptation than old genetics.

Waring, an associate professor of social-ecological systems modeling, and Wood, a postdoctoral research associate with the School of Biology and Ecology, have just published their findings in a literature review in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the flagship biological research journal of The Royal Society in London.

"This research explains why humans are such a unique species. We evolve both genetically and culturally over time, but we are slowly becoming ever more cultural and ever less genetic," Waring says.

Culture has influenced how humans survive and evolve for millenia. According to Waring and Wood, the combination of both culture and genes has fueled several key adaptations in humans such as reduced aggression, cooperative inclinations, collaborative abilities and the capacity for social learning. Increasingly, the researchers suggest, human adaptations are steered by culture, and require genes to accommodate.

Waring and Wood say culture is also special in one important way: it is strongly group-oriented. Factors like conformity, social identity and shared norms and institutions -- factors that have no genetic equivalent -- make cultural evolution very group-oriented, according to researchers. Therefore, competition between culturally organized groups propels adaptations such as new cooperative norms and social systems that help groups survive better together.

According to researchers, "culturally organized groups appear to solve adaptive problems more readily than individuals, through the compounding value of social learning and cultural transmission in groups." Cultural adaptations may also occur faster in larger groups than in small ones.

With groups primarily driving culture and culture now fueling human evolution more than genetics, Waring and Wood found that evolution itself has become more group-oriented.

"In the very long term, we suggest that humans are evolving from individual genetic organisms to cultural groups which function as superorganisms, similar to ant colonies and beehives," Waring says. "The 'society as organism' metaphor is not so metaphorical after all. This insight can help society better understand how individuals can fit into a well-organized and mutually beneficial system. Take the coronavirus pandemic, for example. An effective national epidemic response program is truly a national immune system, and we can therefore learn directly from how immune systems work to improve our COVID response."

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Waring is a member of the Cultural Evolution Society, an international research network that studies the evolution of culture in all species. He applies cultural evolution to the study of sustainability in social-ecological systems and cooperation in organizational evolution.

Wood works in the UMaine Evolutionary Applications Laboratory managed by Michael Kinnison, a professor of evolutionary applications. His research focuses on eco-evolutionary dynamics, particularly rapid evolution during trophic cascades.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by con

The feasibility of transformation pathways for achieving the Paris Climate Agreement

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED SYSTEMS ANALYSIS

Research News

 

What drives the feasibility of climate scenarios commonly reviewed by organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? And can they actually be achieved in practice? A new systematic framework can help understand what to improve in the next generation of scenarios and explore how to make ambitious emission reductions possible by strengthening enabling conditions.

While the IPCC is in the midst of the drafting cycle of the Sixth Assessment Report, whose publication will start in the second half of 2021, there is an ongoing debate on how to assess the feasibility of ambitious climate mitigation scenarios developed through integrated assessment models and to what extent they are actually achievable in the real world. In their new study published in Environmental Research Letters, researchers from IIASA and the RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment (EIEE) developed a systematic framework that allows identifying the type, timing, and location of feasibility concerns raised by climate mitigation scenarios.

"Feasibility - in other words, how plausible it is that a scenario materializes in the real world - is a complex concept that is currently getting significant academic attention. In our research, we built on past advancements in theoretical discussions and propose to operationalize feasibility in terms of the timing, disruptiveness, and scale of transformation across geophysical, technological, economic, institutional, and sociocultural feasibility dimensions," explains the paper's first author, Elina Brutschin, researcher in the IIASA Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions Research Group.

"Another major insight concerns the necessity to improve the assessment of socio-cultural feasibility concerns by including more indicators and incorporating insights on attitudes and behavioral changes from the social sciences," says Silvia Pianta, a postdoctoral researcher at EIEE and PhD fellow at Bocconi University.

"We found that the current generation of scenarios does not explore demand-side mitigation to its full potential and that more research is necessary in this area," adds coauthor Bas van Ruijven, IIASA Sustainable Service Systems Research Group leader.

To address these issues, the researchers developed a feasibility evaluation of indicators in each decade, with a flexible aggregation procedure that allows assessing feasibility concerns across dimensions and time. This flexible approach enabled them to look at the "big picture" to, for instance, assess which dimension raises major feasibility concerns, but also to analyze more detailed questions such as trade-offs over time, both within and across different dimensions. The resulting systematic framework is extremely useful, not only to understand what to improve in the next generation of scenarios, but also to analyze more systematically what type of enabling factors might bring us closer to more ambitious mitigation paths in the future.

The authors specifically applied the framework to the publicly available scenario set from the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C and found that many scenarios currently assume a relatively fast overall decarbonization rate in regions that have a relatively low mitigation capacity. According to Brutschin, this suggests that many feasibility concerns are related to institutional constraints such as government effectiveness. While improving the quality of governance in many regions might be complicated, targeted capacity building and investments can significantly contribute to overcoming this challenge.

The authors highlight that the framework allows tracing important trade-offs over time, noting that while past studies focused on mitigation costs, the new research clearly shows that delayed climate action might generally be much more risky than an early disruptive transformation as delayed action requires an overall larger system to be transformed much faster and by relying on new technologies. In this regard, a better understanding of inter-temporal and inter-dimensional trade-offs incorporating insights from experts and policymakers is essential to take the overall understanding of the feasibility concepts to the next level.

"The new versatile framework that emerged from this collaborative project can be applied to any set of scenarios and can be constantly improved by incorporating new insights from the empirical literature on what is feasible in the real world. Although it was originally developed to evaluate global scenarios, it can be adjusted to have a more systematic evaluation of regional or national feasibility concerns in the future," notes IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program Director, Keywan Riahi, who is also a coordinating lead author in Working Group III of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.

In addition to the new framework, the researchers also developed an interactive visual tool with key contributions by Giacomo Marangoni, a researcher at EIEE and Assistant Professor at Politecnico di Milano.

"A new data visualization method is extremely valuable when looking at multidimensional concepts such as feasibility. The tool we developed allows us to visualize our feasibility evaluations for different scenarios and to assess the sensitivity of our results to the definition of different feasibility concern thresholds," he says.

The data visualization tool can be accessed here: https://data.ece.iiasa.ac.at/climate-action-feasibility-dashboard/

Reference Brutschin, E., Pianta, S., Tavoni, M., Riahi, K., Bosetti, V., Marangoni, G., & van Ruijven, B. (2021) A multidimensional feasibility evaluation of low-carbon scenarios. Environmental Research Letters DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abf0ce

Contacts: Researcher contact Elina Brutschin Research Scholar Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions Research Group Energy, Climate, and Environment Program Tel: +43 2236 807 350 brutschin@iiasa.ac.at

Press Officer Ansa Heyl IIASA Press Office Tel: +43 2236 807 574 Mob: +43 676 83 807 574 heyl@iiasa.ac.at

About IIASA: The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is an international scientific institute that conducts research into the critical issues of global environmental, economic, technological, and social change that we face in the twenty-first century. Our findings provide valuable options to policymakers to shape the future of our changing world. IIASA is independent and funded by prestigious research funding agencies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe.

About: RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment (EIEE) RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment leverages two leading international centers for economic and environmental research: RFF - Resources for the Future and CMCC - Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change. EIEE's research aims to improve environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement to facilitate the transition to a sustainable, inclusive society. The focus is on issues surrounding but not limited to climate change, including a wide range of environmental, energy, natural resource, and societal issues.

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Current global environmental law and policy are failing, experts say

In a landmark special issue of Environmental Policy and Law, noted scholars lay out their vision for a complete overhaul of regulatory processes, approaches, and instruments for the protection of the global environment

IOS PRESS

Research News

 

 

IMAGE: ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND LAW SPECIAL ISSUE - OUR EARTH MATTERS: PATHWAYS TO A BETTER COMMON ENVIRONMENTAL FUTURE. "WE NEED TO ACCEPT WITH ALL HUMILITY OUR SACRED DUTY FOR THE CARE,... view more 

CREDIT: IOS PRESS

Amsterdam, June 2, 2021 - On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Stockholm conference that created the United Nations Environmental Programme, it is clear that the global environmental situation has only deteriorated. In "Our Earth Matters: Pathways to a Better Common Environmental Future," an extended special issue of Environmental Policy and Law (EPL), leading scholars from more than five continents call for an honest introspection of what has been attained over the last 50 years relating to regulatory processes and laws and explore future trajectories with new ideas and frameworks for environmental governance in the 21st century.

"Our objective is to fire the imaginations of scholars and decision-makers to re-examine current approaches and to explore the future, with new tools, ideas, ecological frameworks, and new international environmental institutions," explains Guest Editor Bharat H. Desai, PhD, LLM, Professor of International Law and Jawaharlal Nehru Chair in International Environmental Law, Centre for International Legal Studies, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.

Contributors to the first section of the special issue review some of the structural problems of environmental law in the Anthropocene era, an era of significant human impact on the environment, and predict what frameworks and solutions will be necessary in the future. "Nations are not acting as if they are governing in the Anthropocene epoch, not yet," warns Nicholas A. Robinson, JD, Pace University School of Law, New York; Executive Governor, International Council of Environmental Law. "More than just air pollution and the loss of natural resources, future policies must cope with threats from cyber wars, nuclear war, genetic mutations, and artificial intelligence. International law will have to be more ambitious, taking advantage of cutting-edge science."

The next section explores international law-making processes, outlining current shortcomings and proposing possible frameworks for the future. Observing that current approaches seek to minimize economic impact at the expense of environmental protection, Jorge E. Viñuales, PhD, LLM, University of Cambridge, notes that, "The scale and urgency of the unfolding environmental crisis has made the critique of this hierarchy (economy over environmental protection) more powerful."

Since the 1960s, the United Nations General Assembly has been the central enterprise for the protection of the global environment. The special issue suggests that it is high time the UN system recalibrates itself for the vagaries of scientific assessments and the political realities of the future. A new environmental charter is proposed to rejuvenate the founding values of the international system and restore faith in international environmental governance.

The third section, focusing on problematic situations, highlights how State sovereignty is a major stumbling block for effective environmental conservation and sustainable development. The modern international law movement makes States responsible for adapting regulations and securing compliance. Existing multilateral treaties may serve as an organizational principle for planetary management of natural resources. Writing about the direct and indirect impacts of armed conflicts on the natural environment, Peter Maurer, PhD, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Geneva, writes that States can integrate legal protections for the environment into their armed forces' doctrines, and humanitarians must commit resources and expertise to help those coping with the environmental consequences of conflict.

"We all have our part to play as we face this existential threat," Dr. Maurer states. "Perhaps the biggest challenge ahead is the shift in in mindset and mechanics needed from States, humanitarian organizations, and those engaged in hostilities."

Other contributions address sector-specific environmental problems including climate skepticism; transnational environmental crimes; soil protection and global food security; the impending global water crisis; ocean biodiversity, and a call for new approaches.

In a concluding section, contributors look to the future at international environmental governance structures and reforms that will be necessary to meet current and future challenges. It has become clear that the changes in attitudes and social structures called for at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment have not taken place and that now time is even more limited to make necessary, far-reaching changes.

Contributor Anna Sundström, MA, Secretary General, Olof Palme International Centre, Stockholm, comments, "Together, we face humanity's greatest challenge. Together we must fix it. The need for international action remains even more acute."

International governance is proposed to deal with the practical challenges of repairing environmental conflict. Contributions suggest reviving the United Nations Trusteeship Council, dormant since 1994, with a mandate for the environment and the global commons and turning the United Nations Environment Programme into a specialized agency to elevate its status and equip it with the necessary competence and financial stability. International and national courts and tribunals could become the new "environmental sentinels," and a specialized International Environmental Court could serve as a global watchdog.

"The 50th Anniversary of the 1972 Stockholm Conference next year calls for honest introspection on what we have attained during the past 50 years," says Dr. Desai. "This special issue is a modest effort to challenge the connoisseurs of international law and diplomacy to look ahead at this time of perplexity in the 21st century."

On World Environment Day, June 5, 2021, an exclusive free online event featuring a panel of high-profile experts will explore the issues raised in "Our Earth Matters," discussing pertinent questions about how we might move ahead to forge pathways to a better environmental future.

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Marking the 40th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic: A paper in the New England Journal of Medicine

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY'S MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Research News

 

June 5, 2021 marks the 40th anniversary of the first report of AIDS cases and the onset of the American AIDS epidemic. In a new, thought-provoking paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, Professor Ronald Bayer and co-author Gerald Oppenheiner capture the experiences of the physicians who were central to the AIDS epidemic. In the words of the doctors, they relay what it meant to look back after 40 years and how they "aged together."

The doctors called their experiences extraordinary and the conditions demanding, under which they performed their duties and treated their patients. They speak of their work as "in the trenches," giving their careers immediate meaning and value that they never expected. As several physicians expressed, "The epidemic changed me in about every considerable way possible." And for some, their lives in medicine were bookended by another extraordinary moment in global health - the COVID-19 epidemic.

Dr. Ronald Bayer, professor of Sociomedical Sciences and co-director of the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, focuses his research on issues of social justice and ethical matters related to AIDS, tuberculosis, illicit drugs, and tobacco. An elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, he has served on its committees dealing with the social impact of these issues in addition to vaccine safety and the Ryan White Care Act. Dr. Bayer has been a consultant to the World Health Organization on ethical issues related to public health surveillance, HIV and tuberculosis.

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The Commentary is titled "Marking the 40th Anniversary of the AIDS Epidemic: American Physicians Look Back." A co-author is Valentina Parisi.

Oil and gas stocks carry $126 billion cost for Norway's sovereign fund - research
By Tom Arnold and Gwladys Fouche 

 Reuters/Gwladys Fouche FILE PHOTO: A general view of the Norwegian central bank, where Norway's sovereign wealth fund is situated, in Oslo

LONDON/OSLO (Reuters) - Norway's sovereign wealth fund missed out on $125.8 billion in potential returns over a three year period by investing in oil and gas rather than green stocks, according to research from Global SWF, an industry data specialist.

The results showed oil and gas equities held by the $1.3 trillion sovereign fund, the world's largest, lost 11% over the three-years to Dec. 31, 2020, while its green stock holdings earned a return of 316%.

That equates to an opportunity cost of $125.8 billion, according to the analysis by Global SWF and non-governmental organisation Framtiden of the 198 so-called black stocks and 91 green stocks the fund held as of Dec. 31, 2020.

Norges Bank Investment Management's (NBIM) balance sheet would be 10% larger today if the fund had fully divested from oil and gas stocks and reinvested the money into renewables in Nov. 2017, the research found.

"Financial profitability has stopped and must stop being an excuse for not investing in green energy," Global SWF wrote in a report released this week.

"There is no reason for NBIM not to divest from its (still very significant) portfolio of fossil fuels stocks and use the proceeds to invest more in companies engaged in renewable energy, both listed and private."

NBIM, which invests Norway's revenues from oil and gas production for future generations, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The fund in 2017 proposed dropping oil and gas companies from its benchmark index, an announcement that sent energy stocks worldwide lower at the time.

Although it cited a reduction in the exposure of the country's wealth to the risk of a permanent drop in oil prices, environmental campaigners seized on it as example of an investor turning away from the oil industry. The proposal would have affected some 6% of the fund's equity holdings for a then-value of $37 billion.

It was rejected by the Norwegian finance ministry which instead put forward a different plan, limited to removing only dedicated oil and gas explorers and producers from the fund's benchmark index.

Parliament voted in 2019 in favour of that plan, which affected 1.2% of the fund's overall equity holdings.

Many lawmakers were concerned that Norway would be perceived at not having faith in the future of its biggest industry, including Equinor, the oil firm that is majority-owned by the Norwegian state.

(Editing by Kirsten Donovan)

Mining rig maker Canaan argues against wholesale crackdown on bitcoin mining in China

SHANGHAI/HONG KONG (Reuters) - A major Chinese maker of bitcoin mining machines argued against an indiscriminate crackdown on cryptocurrency mining in China, saying the business helps make better use of electricity and contributes to employment and the local economy

© Reuters/Dado Ruvic FILE PHOTO: Picture illustration of small toy figurines and representations of the Bitcoin virtual currency displayed in front of an image of China's flag

Zhang Nangeng, CEO of Nasdaq-listed Canaan Inc, told an earnings conference call that although cryptomining activities using fossil-fuel power hampers Beijing's green efforts, those powered by clean energy should be spared from the crackdown.


"For-profit miners prefer regions with low electricity prices that indicate oversupply, and likely energy waste," Zhang said.

In addition, "bitcoin miners also help create jobs in impoverished regions and contribute to fiscal coffers."

Zhang's comments come after China's State Council, last month, ordered a crackdown on energy intensive bitcoin mining and trading, and Inner Mongolia, a major mining centre, proposed measures to root out the practice.

Energy regulators in southwest Sichuan - a province rich in hydropower - met local power generators on Wednesday to probe cryptomining in China's second-biggest bitcoin production hub.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are created or "mined" by high-powered computers competing to solve complex mathematical puzzles in an energy-intensive process that often relies on fossil fuels, particularly coal.

Canaan makes machines, or rigs, to mine bitcoins.

Zhang said policy uncertainty is prodding domestic miners to move overseas, and causing some clients to hold off placing new orders for mining equipment.

Beijing's crackdown is also prompting some miners to "undersell" mining equipment, helping knock-down prices, Zhang said.

Spot prices of bitcoin mining machines are down 20%-30% from roughly a month ago, hurt by falling bitcoin prices.

To reduce business uncertainty, Canaan is accelerating overseas expansion, securing long-term contracts, and setting up its own offshore bitcoin mining business.

Canaan, which on Tuesday reported a nearly 500% surge in first-quarter sales to 402.8 million yuan ($63.12 million), said overseas markets now contributes to 78.4% of its total revenues. That compares with just 4.9% in the first quarter of 2020.

Orders from overseas clients, including Canada's Hive Blockchain Technologies, and U.S. crypto player Core Scientific, also account for more than 70% of total orders.

Canaan is also expanding into bitcoin mining itself, having set up an office in Singapore, and is preparing to launch a cryptomining business in Kazakhstan, in central Asia.

"Just as it took a long time for bitcoin to be recognized by the market, there will also be a (long) process for bitcoin, and cryptomining, to be recognized by regulators" in China, Zhang said.

($1 = 6.3820 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Samuel Shen and Alun John; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

Bitcoin is copper, not gold, Goldman Sachs claims
CryptocurrencyJun 02, 2021




© Reuters. Bitcoin is copper, not gold, Goldman Sachs c

The global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), Jeff Currie, has dismissed claims that Bitcoin could replace gold as a store of value.

During a recent appearance of CNBC international, Currie explained that neither Bitcoin nor any other cryptocurrency stands a chance at beating gold, a narrative that is becoming quite popular in crypto cycles. He said:

The digital currencies…they are not substitutes to gold. If anything, they would be a substitute to copper…They are pro-risk, risk-on assets.The Goldman exec also argues that Bitcoin is a risk-on asset based on his firm’s trading history. Meanwhile, he considers gold to be a risk-off asset that hedges bad inflation.

If anything, you would argue that Bitcoin substitutes against risk-on inflation hedges, not risk-off inflation hedges.While Currie’s claims are definitely up for debate, gold outperformed Bitcoin in May. Following Tesla’s announcement that it was no longer going to accept Bitcoin as a payment option for its cars in May, the leading digital asset began to drop. This was further exacerbated by reports that China was planning to crack down on Bitcoin mining and trading. Consequently, Bitcoin saw its third-biggest monthly drop in May. Gold, on the other hand, is up by seven percent within the same period.

Continue reading on BTC Peers

JBS Foods ransomware gang: White House 'engaging directly' with Russia about attack on massive meat producer

Aussie cops start probe and FBI and USDA lend a hand

Matthew Hughes

Wed 2 Jun 2021 

Australian police are investigating a ransomware attack at the facilities of JBS Foods — one of the largest producers of meat in the world – as the White House fingers Russia-based cybercriminals.

The attack has forced the Brazilian-owned business, which operates 47 facilities across Australia, with others located in Brazil, the US, and Canada, to stop production in some units. It’s not currently known how many factories in total have been forced to halt operations.

JBS said on 31 May that it had been the "target of an organized cybersecurity attack, affecting some of the servers supporting its North American and Australian IT systems." This was "determined" on the 30 May, it added.

The food processing company had "suspen[ded] all affected systems, notifying authorities and activating the company's global network of IT professionals and third-party experts to resolve the situation. The company’s backup servers were not affected, and it is actively working with an incident response firm to restore its systems as soon as possible."

Facilities in Michigan and Iowa were temporarily shuttered, according to the Wall Street Journal.

JBS Foods was also running at a drastically reduced capacity in Australia, with some facilities entirely suspended, and others operating at a limited level. Operations in the UK and Mexico were not affected.

The company said yesterday that its "systems are coming back online" and the "vast majority" of its beef, pork, poultry and prepared food plants" would be operational from today.

"The company is not aware of any evidence at this time that any customer, supplier or employee data has been compromised," it added.

It is not yet known what the attackers have demanded, nor their origin.

The White House revealed in a statement:

JBS notified the administration that the ransom demand came from a criminal organization likely based in Russia.

The White House is engaging directly with the Russian government on this matter and delivering the message that responsible states do not harbor ransomware criminals.

Australian law enforcement has sought assistance from other international partner agencies, according to David Littleproud MP, who serves as the federal minister for agriculture, drought, and emergency management.

According to White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre, both the FBI and Department of Agriculture are assisting their counterparts in Australia.

The incident comes weeks after Colonial Pipeline fell victim to a devastating ransomware attack, which disrupted the supply of fuel to the US's East Coast, resulting in higher prices and widespread shortages.

Colonial supplies 2.5 million barrels of fuel each day, including diesel, petrol, and jet fuel. The company ultimately reportedly resolved the situation by paying the attackers a $4.4m ransom.

Some analysts have expressed fears the attack on JBS Foods may result in shortages of meat in some markets. In a research note, the Steiner Consulting Group told investors that a single day of disruption will “significant impact the beef market and wholesale beef prices.”

Littleproud is less bearish, telling CNN Business he didn’t believe Australia would experience a meat shortage.

Arthur Dell, head of Technology for Emerging Regions at Veritas Technologies, suggested the recent trend for ransomware attacks appear to be designed to “damage the symbols of Western success” — namely the food and energy sectors.

“This raises questions about the true motivation for some of these more recent ransomware attacks: are they for profit or for pride? The danger for businesses is, if it’s not about the money, then paying up isn’t necessarily going to get their data back,” he said.

"Fortunately, for JBS, the company has stated that their backups were unaffected and we trust their systems will be up and running again soon. In the meantime, the global focus will shift to national governments to monitor their responses. When it comes to keeping citizens warm and fed, whose job is it to protect that infrastructure and, more importantly, how?" ®

SCHADENFREUDE TOO
Donald Trump’s new blog lasted less than a month

Blogging is hard.

By Sara Morrison Jun 2, 2021, VOX

Trump has waved good-bye to blogging after less than a month. James Devaney/GC Images

Donald Trump’s “communications platform” — also known as a web log or “blog” — will join the Trump Steaks, Trump Airlines, Trump Magazine, Trump Vodka, and Trump 2020 on the list of Trump-branded flops.

“From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” a section of Trump’s website, launched last month and featured tweet-style posts from the former president — which he could no longer place on the actual social media sites he used to dominate because he was banned from them. But now, just like his social media accounts, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” is no more.

The short-lived site was a letdown from the start. For months, Trump’s team said that Trump would launch his own social media platform after being kicked off Twitter and Facebook. But when “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump” went live on May 4, it was not the Twitter competitor some expected, but rather a section of his website that basically functioned as a blog.

Trump posted his thoughts about current events, and fans could then share them on their own social media accounts. There was also a “heart” option with limited functionality. Initially, it didn’t work at all, and then it didn’t allow people who hearted a post to un-heart it — but there was no way for the viewer to see how many others had also hearted the post.

And now, there will be no hearts at all, for the blog has been shuttered and wiped from the internet. The blog page now redirects to a page urging visitors to sign-up for “EXCLUSIVE updates” from Trump via email and phone (it’s mandatory to provide both — these are contact information harvesting operations, after all).

Trump adviser Jason Miller confirmed to CNBC that the blog section of the site is indeed gone and won’t be back, then hinted on Twitter that Trump will be joining another social media platform — without specifying which one.

As for why Trump’s virtual desk disappeared, the Washington Post noted that it never really caught on — it certainly didn’t get nearly the kind of attention Trump’s social media posts did — and that Trump was upset about its low readership and high number of people mocking it. As many bloggers well know and Trump apparently just discovered, blogging is hard and it can take time to find an audience.

As noted above, the Trump team is still insisting that he will either create his own social media platform or join another one (so far, he has resisted using Gab or Parler, either of which would be happy to have him). If that’s true, we’ll see if that foray lasts longer than his month of blog posts did.

Trump closes his ‘beacon of freedom’ website a month after launching it

Jason Miller, senior aide to former president, confirms closing of the ‘From the Desk of Donald J Trump’ online communication tool
 

Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, on 28 February 2021. Photograph: Octavio Jones/Reuters

Richard Luscombe
@richlusc

THE GUARDIAN
Wed 2 Jun 2021 20.18 BST

Donald Trump has discontinued the blog-type website he launched in a fanfare less than a month ago as “a beacon of freedom” and “a place to speak freely and safely”.

Jason Miller, a senior aide to the former US president, confirmed the closing of the “From the Desk of Donald J Trump” online communication tool in a statement to CNBC on Wednesday, just weeks after billing the venture as “a great resource” for his boss’s musings.

Miller offered no explanation for the closure, and it remains unclear if it was a voluntary move or was imposed by a third party of some kind, like Trump’s removal from social media platforms including Twitter and Facebook for inciting the deadly 6 January Capitol insurrection.

But in a tweeted reply to a Republican activist questioning if the move was “a precursor to him joining another social media platform”, Miller said: “Yes, actually, it is. Watch this space.”

In the statement to CNBC, Miller attempted to paint the short-lived project as “auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on”.

The Trump blog, a mouthpiece for his false claims about a rigged 2020 presidential election, failed to gain traction and on 21 May the Washington Post reported it had attracted a “staggeringly small audience”.

Last weekend, the website mysteriously crashed after Trump posted more falsehoods about the bizarre election “audit” in Arizona that the former president says provides proof that Joe Biden’s victory was “stolen”, despite the failure of many dozens of lawsuits challenging the result, and local, state and national officials declaring that 2020’s was the most secure election in US history.

Meanwhile, without evidence, Trump insisted that there were “broken seals on boxes, ballots missing, and worse” in Arizona. Shortly after the entry was posted, the website reported a URL processing error, and the blog page went dark completely.

Visitors to the donaldjtrump.com website on Wednesday found only an archive of Trump’s media statements dating back to January and a link to an online shop for Trump merchandise.

Trump and his acolytes have long railed against social media platforms for their perceived bias against him, and despite the apparent one-time popularity of his posts. When Trump’s account was permanently suspended from Twitter he had almost 90 million followers.

Facebook’s oversight committee, meanwhile, ruled last month that his ban should not be lifted, but left the door open for “a final decision” within six months.

The closure of his blog comes as Trump, who is mulling a second presidential run in 2024, prepares to return to campaign-style rallies for the first time since he incited a mob of supporters to overrun the US Capitol building on 6 January in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory.

On Saturday he will speak at the North Carolina Republicans’ state convention in Greenville, and is planning a series of public events over the summer in other battleground states, including Florida and Ohio.

INDIAN REFINER SEEKING HELP WITH SANCTIONS TAPS FORMER BIDEN AIDE:

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO
POLITICO
06/02/2021

 Reliance Industries, an Indian conglomerate and oil refiner, has retained a former Senate aide to President Joe Biden, Ankit Desai of ABI Associates. Desai will work as a subcontractor to Eversheds Sutherland, which Reliance has retained since 2019, and will lobby the administration to relax restrictions on companies receiving Venezeulan crude oil in exchange for diesel fuel, according to a disclosure filing.

— Bloomberg News reported in January that officials from Reliance and oil giant Chevron were set to meet with State Department officials not long after Biden was sworn in, in an attempt to get the new administration to let up on restrictions on Venezuelan oil put in place during the Trump administration, though apparently those discussions weren’t fruitful.

— “Reliance is basing its request to resume oil swaps on the argument that the operations do not provide cash to the Venezuelan government but rather help lessen the humanitarian crisis there,” Bloomberg’s Lucia Kassai wrote at the time. “Diesel is used in power generation, public transportation, agriculture and to deliver food and medicine.”

— Desai worked for Biden in the Senate in 2005, before working as a fundraiser for now-Sen. Mark Warner’s (D-Va.) PAC and then heading to the private sector. He’s the first new lobbyist for Reliance since it hired Eversheds Sutherland’s Virginia Faulk and Jacob Dweck after not actively lobbying in Washington for the better part of a decade, according to lobbying disclosures.

— The timing coincided with new sanctions on the state-run Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., handed down by the Trump administration as part of a renewed push to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office by choking off oil revenues. According to Bloomberg, “while some companies were still allowed to engage in limited dealings with the South American country,” crude-for-diesel swaps “were nixed last October.”

READ MORE HERE 

Indian refiner hires Biden aide to lobby for relaxed Venezuelan sanctions - POLITICO

Muslim Lives Matter
It is incumbent on Muslims to learn from the Black Lives Matter movement

Shahjhan Malik June 02, 2021

A Palestinian woman argues with an Israeli border policeman in the West Bank. PHOTO: REUTERS

May 25, 2021 was the first death anniversary of George Floyd. His murder at the hands of the Minneapolis police department has been memorialised in the United States and around the world. His death began a movement which posed direct and difficult questions regarding the structure of white supremacy in America and elsewhere. “Black Lives Matter” is a rallying cry that has echoed across every corner of the globe: it not only encompasses the plight of African Americans, it also applies to minorities in Europe and Australia.

While it’s important to note that “Racism” should be scrawled on George Floyd’s death certificate as the cause of his untimely demise, there is another form of discrimination which is proving deadly too. It’s time to say just as loudly, Muslim Lives Matter.

It’s been difficult to escape the recent images coming from Gaza. What is at the root of the conflict between Hamas and Israel? While land is certainly a major part of it, why were the Palestinians moved off that land? It was because their presence, as Arabs and mainly Muslim, precluded the possibility of the Jewish state that Israel’s founders wished to build. The walls that Israel builds around Palestinian territories is further evidence of this exclusionary policy: yes, there are Israeli Arabs and they have political parties. However, their participation in Israeli political life is the exception rather than the rule. For the most part, Palestinians lead different lives on the same land. The figures around coronavirus vaccination make this particularly clear: according to Reuters, only 5.1% of the population of the Palestinian territories have been vaccinated. Israel, in contrast, has vaccinated 58.3% according to the same source.

Israel is one example, however, it’s worth looking at recent trends. Remember, one of the first actions of the Trump Administration was to ban travellers to the United States from predominantly Muslim countries. On March 17, 2021 the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) cited a report from the UN Human Rights Council which stated that Islamophobia had risen to “epidemic” proportions. We have seen France turn on Muslim communities’ practices and beliefs in the name of secularism. We bear witness to on-going prejudices deeply embedded in Western societies. There is a patronising assumption among many in the West that because Muslim women wear scarves as a symbol of our faith, that we are somehow downtrodden and need to be liberated to be just like Westerners. We would choose this, the assumption goes, if only we had the ability to make that selection.

The bafflement and misunderstanding of some politicians leads directly into dehumanisation: witness Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s remarks that women who don the veil look like letterboxes. It’s not altogether clear that he has repented these remarks: he recently was visited by Hungary’s Prime Minister, Victor Orban, whose government has decidedly Islamophobic views.

So long as there is incomprehension and arrogance, there will be bigotry, stretching all the way from Israel to across the Atlantic, to the furthest corners of the globe. Bigotry leads to “othering”, the process by which the views and lives of an entire group are discounted. This discounting is the route to maltreatment, or worse.

The Muslim community in Great Britain and elsewhere does do outreach programmes: I am aware of open-door events, whereby people from other communities are invited into the mosque or to share Iftar during Ramadan. I appreciate the non-Muslims who go to these events: they may be catalysts for a better society. I just don’t believe there are enough of them. Boris Johnson can say what he likes, and yet not suffer terrible consequences in the polls: this makes Islamophobia appear to be the last acceptable form of overt bigotry.

I believe it is incumbent on Muslims to learn from the Black Lives Matter movement. We should record the toll that Islamophobia has taken, memorialise its victims, talk about our lives and the discrimination we face. We should stand up for our values too. For example, I wear a headscarf not because I feel oppressed, but because when it comes to the Western game of chasing their standards of beauty, I have opted out. I have decided to follow the dictates of my God. I want to be valued for my intellectual contributions, not judged on how my hair looks on any particular day. I am free: I choose modesty. So long as that is my choice, that should inspire neither pity nor condescension. Nor should any of the choices that Muslims make, whether that is refraining from alcohol or pork, be seen through any other lens. None of this means Islam is not compatible with modernity: I myself have advanced degrees and a career. Thus, there should be no “othering”, rather, there should be tolerance, understanding, and the equality of consideration that flows from both.

Too often, however, I see Muslims apologising: whenever there are extremists in our midst, we feel compelled to denounce them to be good citizens. It is right that we do so. However, have the religious right in America denounced those who stormed the Capitol on January 6th? If we are to denounce extremism, surely there must be equality in this too. Surely, we should say so.

I believe that God created the world for all of us, regardless of faith, race, or creed. I believe He made us to serve Him and each other. We do not serve anything except the darker corners of our nature if we exclude and denigrate. That, in my opinion, is not in His plan. Most faiths and ethical frameworks hold the equality of mankind to be sacrosanct: these state Muslim Lives Matter. We should say so too, via the way we live our lives, live proudly in our faith, and continue to push at the barriers which exclude us from any corner of mainstream society. Until we do, bigotry will persist, as it is a convenient crutch for those who want to blame others for those who want to explain away difficulty in their lives. We should not let it.


WRITTEN BY:
Shahjhan Malik
The writer is a practicing solicitor in England. She is a Dual Qualified Lawyer, independent business woman, Human Rights and Women’s Rights Activist from Lahore, Pakistan. She presently resides and works in the United Kingdom. She tweets @SHAHJHAN_MALIKK.