Tuesday, February 01, 2022

Job openings in U.S. rise to almost 11M as 4.3M workers quit; both figures near record highs

Construction workers perform maintenance on 44th Street near Times Square in New York City on December 29, 2021. 
Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Employers across the United States had nearly 11 million job openings by the start of January after more than 4 million workers left their positions in December, government figures from the Labor Department showed Tuesday.

The department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, said that employers posted 10.9 million openings for the month of December -- well above prepandemic levels, but lower than the record of 11.1 million last July.

The new figure is a slight increase over November, when the JOLTS showed 10.6 million openings nationwide.

Tuesday's assessment also showed that 4.3 million U.S. workers left their jobs in December -- a slight decrease from the record 4.5 million in November.

According to the report, about 89,000 people quit jobs in healthcare and social assistance; 64,000 in accommodation and food service and 44,000 in construction.

The department said the Northeast, South and Midwest regions all saw increases in workers quitting their jobs.

"Hires and total separations decreased to 6.3 million and 5.9 million, respectively," the report said. "Within separations, the quits rate was little changed at 2.9%. The layoffs and discharges rate was little changed at 0.8%, a series low."

Last month, the department said that the U.S. economy added about 200,000 jobs for the month of December -- substantially fewer than most economists predicted. However, it also showed that the national unemployment rate at 3.9%, which was the sharpest 12-month decline in history.

"It's the first time the unemployment rate as been under 4% in the first year of the presidential term in 50 years. Years faster than experts said we would be able to do it," President Joe Biden said at the time, also noting that almost 6.5 million jobs have been added since he took office early last year.
Deplorable conditions: Texas National Guard troops call border operation a disaster

By Davis Winkie, Military Times & James Barragán, The Texas Tribune

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s deployment of thousands of National Guard members to the Mexico border for an extended period is an unprecedented move. 
Photo by Miguel Gutierrez Jr./The Texas Tribune

LONG READ

Feb. 1 (UPI) -- In October, amid a historic surge of Texas National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, one soldier's leader told him "not to worry" about getting sent there. He could sit this one out.

The part-time senior noncommissioned officer said he still feared an unanticipated call-up -- he owns a small business, and he has a son with a disability.

Usually, long-term Guard deployments come from the federal government, with nearly a year's notice -- the NCO had several months to settle his affairs before two previous deployments. But Operation Lone Star is different.

Faced with a humanitarian crisis along the Rio Grande, pressured by conservative rivals and chided by right-wing cable pundits, Gov. Greg Abbott decided last fall to move thousands of troops to the border as quickly as possible. And the Texas Military Department, which oversees the state's National and State Guard branches, did all it could to comply -- with haste.

RELATED Texas judge opens door for constitutional challenges to border initiative

Never before has Texas -- or any other state -- involuntarily activated so many troops under state active duty authority for such a long-term mission. Nor has it been done so quickly.

A few days after being told he'd likely sit the deployment out, the NCO was ordered to report within 72 hours, he said. If he didn't, his commanders told him, the state would issue an arrest warrant.

"I had to cancel $60,000 worth of business contracts," the NCO, who requested anonymity because he feared retaliation from Guard leaders, said in a text to Army Times and The Texas Tribune. His employees all quit.

After "three weeks of sitting on my ass with zero task or purpose," he was sent home. But it may be too late to save his business. He says he still hasn't found a new project and had to sell his company's van to pay his mortgage, car payments and business loans.

"I didn't want to get out of bed for a week," the soldier said. "I was unemployed ... and [I] felt exactly as if [the Texas Military Department] put me there because of their ... lack of planning and leadership."

His story is just one of many hardships service members say have resulted from Abbott's unprecedented border security push, called Operation Lone Star.

During a two-month period beginning in September, Operation Lone Star ballooned from a lean 1,000-volunteer outfit to a mandatory mobilization of up to 10,000 members of the Texas Military Department. According to a senior Guard leader's leaked comments during a virtual town hall for unit leaders, they're expecting the current wave of troops to be there for a year, and they're preparing for yet another wave of deployments.

The troops there say they faced a deluge of problems when they were mobilized -- some of which have been slowly improving in recent weeks:

As many as 1 in 5 troops in the 6,500-strong "operational force" who have been sent to the border have reported problems with their pay, including being paid late, too little or not at all for months. Service members say they have struggled with shortages of critical equipment, including cold weather gear, medical equipment and plates for their ballistic vests. Many are living in cramped trailers with dozens of troops. Some say they feel underutilized and rarely see migrants while working isolated observation posts that in some cases lacked portable toilets for months.

Interviews with 33 verified current and five former Texas National Guard troops and documents obtained by Army Times and The Texas Tribune show that these problems were predictable -- some of them also happened during the Guard's 2017 response to Hurricane Harvey.

But Abbott's haste in rolling out the deployment made similar problems inevitable. The active and former soldiers say that Abbott's order left Guard officials scrambling to execute a mobilization that would have normally taken several months to adequately plan.

"If we had known from day one that the goal was [10,000 troops], we could've planned," said one soldier directly familiar with the operation's mobilization process. "We pride ourselves on ... the number of [federal] deployments Texas supports. But this? This is not something to be proud of."

A National Guard general from another state added, "There's no conceivable way that could have gone smoothly. There's no way."

The general, like the other currently serving troops who spoke with Army Times and the Tribune, requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media about Operation Lone Star. Most said they feared retaliation.

The former top enlisted soldier in the Texas Army National Guard, retired Command Sgt. Maj. Jason Featherston, blamed the state's top general for the failures and accused the state of "hoping they would go away." Featherston went on retirement leave in mid-August, before the border mission's rapid expansion, and officially retired on Nov. 30.

"Based on the lessons learned from Hurricane Harvey, [Maj. Gen. Tracy] Norris should have known better than to think that standing up thousands of troops on this timeline would go smoothly," said Featherston, who was the noncommissioned officer-in-charge of operations during the Harvey mobilization.

Texas National Guard leadership, meanwhile, rejects that assertion. Army Times and the Tribune sent a summary of this investigation and an exhaustive list of questions to the Texas Military Department on Jan. 20. Col. Rita Holton provided answers and declined to respond to detailed follow-up questions. Holton instead posted a release to the Texas Military Department website on Jan. 21 that gave the department's rebuttal to media reports detailing problems with Operation Lone Star.

"It is clear that reporters have gleaned information from anonymous sources and unverified documents, which have then been skewed to push an agenda," Holton said in the release.

Featherston, the former sergeant major, said Holton's statement reflects the department's misplaced priorities.

"Instead of solving [pay, lack of equipment and family or employer hardships], more energy was spent on hiding or covering up problems rather than fixing them," Featherston argued. "Families [have been] impacted forever."

Hurried deployment


The National Guard is primarily staffed by part-time troops who have civilian jobs, lives and families. Sometimes they're called to full-time duty by the federal government. Those deployments are often yearlong missions, but Guard members are alerted months ahead of time so they can get their affairs in order -- and troops alerted less than 120 days prior to deployment usually can't be forced to go.

The Guard can also be deployed by governors for what's known as state active duty. Typically those are short stints to respond to natural disasters or civil disturbances.

Operation Lone Star is a distortion of what state active duty is designed to do, according to the Guard general from another state, who is in charge of nearly 10,000 people.

"A lot of [Operation Lone Star's problem] is just the nature of the fact that you're doing [it] on state active duty," the general said.

Like a federal call-up, the mission is expected to last at least a year, but many troops received only days' notice, and they face a high bar to get a hardship exemption to avoid deploying. For example, service members said, Border Patrol agents, police and other first responders who serve in the Guard are typically exempt from state missions, but only Border Patrol agents are automatically exempt from Lone Star.

Before Operation Lone Star, the most significant state active-duty mission in Texas history was during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, when Abbott mobilized more than 17,400 Guard troops for less than a month before some went home and others transitioned to a federally funded mission.

The state call-up was plagued with payroll problems that retired 1st Sgt. Lachelle Robinson saw firsthand when she was the top personnel NCO for Joint Task Force Harvey.

In a phone interview, Robinson estimated that around 15% of Texas troops who were activated for Hurricane Harvey -- roughly 2,500 -- didn't receive their state active duty paychecks on time.

She attributed the pay problems to the "immediate emergency" that didn't leave enough time to make sure that troops' addresses and other administrative information were correct.

At the mission's end, Robinson said, she and other officials submitted feedback warning that state missions should incorporate a longer planning process to ensure service members' records are correct to avoid similar pay problems. Army Times and the Tribune obtained a copy of the Harvey review, which included a slide saying the state should "improve" state pay system reports.

Five years after the Harvey experience, at least 1,330 Operation Lone Star troops have received incorrect pay at some point, Holton, the TMD spokesperson, told the San Antonio Express-News. That's a similar rate to the Hurricane Harvey response.

An NCO deployed near Del Rio said some of his soldiers had to take out personal loans due to the missing pay. One soldier missed debt payments, "screwing his credit score," the NCO said. Some troops haven't received supplemental pay they were promised, added another soldier.

"Can we not learn from this?" said a source familiar with the Texas Military Department's state active-duty procedures. "Do we have to keep making the same mistakes over and over again?"

Holton said that 75% of reported pay issues have been resolved. She attributed the problems to a new payroll system implemented after Hurricane Harvey and said adding such a large number of soldiers under Operation Lone Star has revealed "gaps" in the system. All personnel on the mission have received at least some pay, she added.

Abbott downplayed the scope of the pay issues in a Jan. 11 press conference, claiming that "all paycheck issues have been addressed." But service members say that's not true.

One soldier's wife told Army Times and the Tribune last week that her husband has received only three paychecks since October. Soldiers are paid every two weeks.

Multiple sources who spoke to Army Times and the Tribune said the new pay system is prone to error because unit-level operators must manually input pay information for each soldier every day.

Holton said the state deployed "pay strike teams" to the border on Jan. 16 to resolve outstanding pay complaints, but she did not respond to a follow-up question from Army Times and the Tribune asking why the teams didn't deploy months ago. Since then, she sent a tweet asking troops with pay issues to email her.

Political microscope


Border security is mainly a federal responsibility, but the Texas National Guard has long had a state-controlled presence there, especially when Democrats have held the White House.

In 2014, two years before former Gov. Rick Perry ran for president, he sent 1,000 troops there and blasted President Barack Obama for failing to secure the border. When Abbott took office in 2015, hundreds were serving there alongside Border Patrol. He kept them on after an increasing number of unaccompanied children arrived at the border.

After Donald Trump became president, the federal government began funding the Texas state border mission, expanded it and added active-duty troops. That effort continues to this day with less than 3,000 federally funded and controlled Guard troops along the border.

As President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he ended federal reimbursement for state-controlled troops on the border, and the number of migrants illegally crossing the southwest border began to soar. In March, the federal government reported that it apprehended 173,000 migrants at the border -- some 70,000 more than in March 2019.

That month, Abbott announced he would begin a new state-run border mission and again send troops to the border to assist the Texas Department of Public Safety and other agencies with stemming human and drug trafficking.

The effort began with 500 Guard members who volunteered for the deployment. Nan Tolson, an Abbott spokeswoman reached via email for this story, said the mission's size was initially dictated by available funding.

The deployment came at a politically fraught moment for a governor whose popularity was sagging as he took fire over his handling of two crises -- the COVID-19 pandemic and a February 2021 winter storm that caused the state's power grid to collapse, leaving millions without electricity or heat for days.

In May, Abbott faced his first major challenge from his right flank after former state Sen. Don Huffines of Dallas, a millionaire with money to spend, announced his entry in the 2022 gubernatorial primary. Two months later, Huffines was joined by Allen West, the former U.S. representative from Florida and chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. Both blasted Abbott for failing to secure the border.

As the weather and the political rhetoric heated up, Abbott accelerated his border security push and increased his criticism of Biden. "The Biden administration has abandoned its responsibility to apply federal law to secure the border and to enforce the immigration laws, and Texans are suffering as a consequence of that neglect," he said in a June press conference announcing a $250 million "down payment" to build a state-funded border wall.

In August, Abbott activated more troops -- many of them tasked with helping build border barriers -- bringing the total to 1,000 volunteers.

Then, in September, the Texas Military Department began quietly preparing to put even more troops on the border, according to a source familiar with the mobilization and documents obtained by Army Times and the Tribune. On Sept. 7, the headquarters issued a "2021 South Texas Border Surge" warning order -- a formal head's up that an expansion of the border mission was imminent. A Sept. 9 order confirmed that the mission would expand to brigade-size later that month.

Beginning the week of Sept. 12, a humanitarian crisis in Del Rio caught the world's attention when an estimated 12,000 mostly Haitian asylum seekers crossed the Rio Grande and encamped under the city's international bridge, where they awaited processing by Customs and Border Protection officials. Prominent Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson covered the issue, initially focusing on what he characterized as the federal government's lackluster response.

Around Sept. 20, Abbott formally ordered 1,500 more soldiers to the border in a major expansion of Operation Lone Star. Tolson, Abbott's spokeswoman, pointed to the Del Rio incident as a motivating factor for the surge, as well as its haste.

"Multiple reports suggested that additional caravans were headed to the U.S., with the Texas border as the primary target," she said. "As those caravans made their way toward Mexico City, where they typically make the decision to head to Texas or some other state, Texas needed to surge all possible resources. ... Additional Guard was needed at the border before caravans decided which direction to go."

A few days before formally beginning the surge, Abbott had signed another border security bill that provided an additional $1.88 billion to the effort -- including $750 million for the state-funded border wall and $311 million to scale up the Texas Military Department's response.

But those actions didn't halt the political pressure on Abbott.

Carlson, whose widely watched Fox News opinion show influences conservative policy, attacked Abbott on Sept. 22, saying he needed "​​to come on this show to explain to us why he hasn't called the National Guard to seal the Texas border and protect us from this invasion." It's not clear if Carlson was aware of Abbott's Sept. 20 order.

In early October, Abbott ordered the Texas Military Department to activate 2,500 more Guard members and send them to the border. By the end of November, the number sent to the border would reach at least 6,500, with thousands more supporting the mission from elsewhere.

Holton, the state public affairs officer, said this deployment timeline was "inaccurate," but she declined to elaborate. Army Times and the Tribune reconstructed the activation's timeline through more than 40 pages of official documents and spreadsheets obtained from verified sources.

The activation's speed became a preoccupation of Texas Guard officials, the soldier directly familiar with the mobilization process explained.

"The 'whys' were never addressed," the soldier said. "It was just a constantly increasing weekly [mobilization quota] requirement."

West called out the hurried mobilization in a campaign event earlier this month, calling it a "rush to failure." He's called for Norris, the state's top general, to resign.

As the state scrambled to source troops for the surge, it began to involuntarily activate thousands of service members for a mission with no clear end date. The state has also threatened to issue arrest warrants for troops who do not show up. Army Times and the Tribune obtained filled-out warrants and charge sheets for four soldiers, but Holton said no troops had been arrested.

Of the more than 20 involuntarily activated troops who spoke with Army Times and the Tribune, none reported having more than two weeks' notice of their deployment. Some reported having as little as two days to drop their civilian lives as police officers, college students, small-business owners and cyber security professionals; make arrangements for child care; notify their employers; and say goodbye to friends and family.

One junior paratrooper shared his frustration over being set back in college again after having to withdraw from his fall semester classes.

"I'm like a fifth-year junior [now]," he said. "My school took away my financial aid for not making satisfactory academic progress."

Another soldier, who works in civilian law enforcement, said the mobilization is diminishing his small town's police department, which includes four Guard members. Other departments are facing similar issues after the Guard refused to grant blanket hardship waivers to police officers.

"It ... makes it very difficult for the remaining officers to compensate," he said. "Supervisors have to pick up the slack, and the [department] pays more in overtime."

Logistics problems


Once the Guard members arrived at the border, many reported encountering substandard living conditions and shortages of equipment to protect them while they patrol the Rio Grande, sit at observation posts or work on sections of border barrier.

Many of the troops are housed in hastily constructed base camps in remote parts of the border. Several soldiers describe communal trailers crammed with built-in bunk beds stacked three high.

In a town hall that Maj. Gen. Charles Aris, the commander of the 36th Infantry Division, held for his subordinate commanders early this month, one small-unit commander complained that there was no gear storage for his troops in the trailers. Instead, they had to store thousands of dollars' worth of military-issued equipment like helmets and ballistic vests in their personal vehicles.

"You have to go out to your vehicle a lot to change your clothes because you don't have enough room to keep your stuff in there," said one 19-year veteran in an interview. "There's just no room. ... The conditions [here] are crazy."

Some service members said they were moved into unfinished camps. A senior engineer NCO said his unit moved in before the camp had any kitchen facilities, leaving the troops to fend for themselves at local restaurants and stores.

Three Guard troops told Army Times and the Tribune that they purchased food or groceries for subordinates who were unpaid or underpaid, including one who said he purchased peanut butter, jelly and bread to feed a handful of troops in an unfinished base camp that had no kitchen yet.

Brig. Gen. Monie Ulis, commander of Joint Task Force-Lone Star, acknowledged in a letter to the force this month that the scale and speed of the deployment resulted in "austere conditions."

Holton, the Texas Military Department spokeswoman, said commanders in the field "have identified areas of improvement [for housing] and are actively working with vendors to execute those solutions." She did not respond to a question about when the improvements will be complete.

Ulis shared floor plans for planned housing improvements with troops last week, noting that one base camp would receive the improvements beginning in February. The new "dorm-style lodging" will have a 116-person capacity and include wall lockers.

Some Guard members said that when they're on duty along the border, they face a lack of toilet facilities at their work sites and lookout posts.

One Guard member responsible for logistics said female Guard members at those lookout posts "either [have] to go in the bush, which is degrading, or get [a superior] to come pick them up [to drive to a gas station], and then that leaves only one person in the checkpoint until they get back."

Holton said the issue "is not widespread," but she declined to specify how many positions lacked toilet facilities. She attributed the problem to "a miscommunication with the portable toilet vendor and we have rectified this issue." A junior officer confirmed that more toilets were delivered to observation posts between Roma and McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley late last month.

Other troops said they lacked critical equipment, including cold-weather and wet-weather gear for the winter months.

Army Times previously reported that troops in some areas have to swap bulletproof plates for their ballistic vests between shifts because they didn't have enough. One medical NCO who said he had to withdraw from college to go to the border told Army Times and the Tribune that his unit had trouble securing enough medical kits, which include gauze and tourniquets, for soldiers as well.

Holton said the state has shipped more protective equipment to service members on the border.

'Staring into nothing'


Texas officials stated during the mobilization that Guard troops would arrest migrants for trespassing as part of the mission's partnership with private landowners and local law enforcement. Holton said Operation Lone Star troops have apprehended 100,000 migrants or referred them to Border Patrol, DPS or other law enforcement agencies.

Many of the apprehensions are migrants surrendering to the first person in uniform they see in order to begin the asylum request process.

One Guard member, a civilian law enforcement officer by trade, told Army Times and the Tribune that there is a special unit of around 25 troops -- all of them police officers in their civilian lives -- who are arresting migrants for trespassing in Kinney County, the only border county actively coordinating with Operation Lone Star.

Due to equipment shortages, those troops are also using their "own gear or [home] department-issued gear like handcuffs, duty belts and holsters," the service member said.

But several other Guard members said not all units are seeing large numbers of migrants, and fewer are conducting arrests. They said many Guard observation posts simply watch the border through binoculars and call Border Patrol on the radio when they see people crossing the Rio Grande.

In the Brownsville area, some of the state's most elite troops -- its Air National Guard cyber operations forces -- are "sitting at a watch point for hours on end with their thumbs up their ass doing nothing," a member of the cyber unit said.

A junior soldier assigned to a post along Falcon Lake near Zapata said he and his peers spend their days "staring" at the lake.

Does he ever see migrants? "Nope, not even once," he said. "Just people fishing."

"Send [us] to critical areas where there is a major need for assistance," he said. "I will do my job as a soldier and Guardsman, but I just want to be used effectively."

Another soldier said he supports the "intent of the mission," but not "its poor execution and the rush to failure."

"A lot of these issues could have been mitigated had leadership taken a step back and thought of the soldiers for a minute," he said. "They made this huge deal and rushed everybody out here, and all we're doing is staring into nothing."

The operation's leaders insist that there are signs of success. Aris, the division commander, said in his town hall with subordinates that an increase of migrant apprehensions in Arizona's Yuma border sector proves Operation Lone Star's success in Texas. Border Patrol data shows that apprehensions from October through December rose by nearly 2,400% in the Yuma Sector compared with the same period in 2020. But apprehensions still more than doubled along the Texas border compared with 2020.

Experts question that conclusion, too. César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an immigration attorney and law professor at Ohio State University, said more activity in another part of the border doesn't necessarily mean the operation is working.

"I don't think it's that simple to point to what's happening two states away," he said. "But if it is displacing a situation from one place to another, then it does absolutely nothing for the nation as a whole."

Victor M. Manjarrez Jr., who worked for the U.S. Border Patrol for 22 years and retired as the Tucson Sector chief in 2011, said claims that Operation Lone Star is deterring migrants and drug smugglers ignore the reality of how smuggling organizations react to pressure from law enforcement.

"It's not that easy for drug organizations to call up the neighboring cartel and say, 'Hey, you know, we're having a hard time here, can we run our drugs through there?'" said Manjarrez, who is now the associate director of the Center for Law and Human Behavior at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Efforts like Operation Lone Star provide temporary deterrence, he said, but smuggling organizations typically go back to trafficking drugs or people through their usual routes once enforcement begins to dwindle.

Gutting the Texas Guard?


Many Guard members told Army Times and the Tribune that doubts about their mission's effectiveness have compounded their dissatisfaction with its hardships, and some of them are beginning to plan their departure from the service.

Retention is typically a lagging indicator of service member frustrations. Many troops are bound by service obligations that keep them from simply quitting. But that hasn't stopped some from heading to the exit.

For example, many of the cyber airmen deployed near Brownsville -- whose civilian paychecks can more than quadruple their base military pay -- are either quitting after their contracts' end or requesting other assignments away from the Texas Guard, the unit member said.

"[They] signed up for cyber warfare," the unit member said. "If [they] wanted to do border patrol, [they] would've applied with Border Patrol."

They make up one of the Air Guard's cyber protection teams, a recent U.S. Cyber Command and National Guard Bureau initiative meant to protect against cyber threats in their home regions. In Texas, their missions include a 2019 response to a ransomware attack that incapacitated 22 Texas counties.

The departures harm the region's ability to respond to cyber threats, the unit member said.

"If asked to mobilize our unit as a [Cyber Protection Team] today, we couldn't do it," he said. "Too many have left already."

The hard-to-replace cyber troops aren't the only ones leaving.

Another Texas Air National Guard unit on the border, the 432nd Air Expeditionary Group, reported looming retention problems after a recent survey. Out of 73 respondents who reported their contracts would expire before the end of their Operation Lone Star deployment, 45 said they were "not likely" to re-enlist or extend their contracts. That's a sharp contrast with the Air National Guard's national rates: The service retained 92% of airmen with expiring contracts during the year ending on Sept. 31, 2021.

Army Times and the Tribune also obtained retention data for the Texas Army National Guard, TMD's largest branch -- and a branch that usually has higher attrition rates than the Air National Guard.

The Army National Guard received a goal of 505 re-enlistments between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31. It secured only 327 re-enlistments, or roughly 65% of the target set by the National Guard Bureau, a national headquarters that coordinates resources among states but doesn't run operations.

During the same period in 2020, the state persuaded 368 soldiers to re-up against a target of 484 -- a 76% rate. During the first three months of 2021 it did even better, exceeding its target with a 105% rate.

Soldiers' decisions to leave or stay in the Guard are personal and complex, but falling retention numbers amid Operation Lone Star's massive, involuntary troop surge could signal a troubling trend, members said.

A senior full-time NCO assigned to the border said none of his company's troops plan to re-enlist -- and nothing short of a fundamental shift in leadership will persuade them to stay.

"They're soldiers, and they have to soldier right now," he said. "But if they extend, they don't want life to be this way. None of them joined active duty -- they join the Guard [part time], and they understand they can deploy, but goddamn, man, we're deployed all the time.

"They're not staying, because what's gonna happen next?" the NCO added. "They want their life back."

Texas Tribune reporter Uriel J. García contributed to this story.

Disclosure: The University of Texas at El Paso has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune. Read the original here.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Everyday plastics may increase risk for obesity, Norwegian researchers say
By HealthDay News

Everyday plastics, such as those used for water bottles, could increase risk for obesity, according to new research out of Norway. 
File photo by www.BillionPhotos.com/Shutterstock

Is your plastic water bottle widening your waistline?

Could be.

In a new study, Norwegian researchers said that chemicals in common plastic products like water bottles or food packaging may put you at risk of piling on the pounds.

"Our experiments show that ordinary plastic products contain a mix of substances that can be a relevant and underestimated factor behind overweight and obesity," said study co-author Martin Wagner.

He is an associate professor of biology at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, in Trondheim.

Plastic packaging is widely used for food because it's cheap and can increase shelf life. But plastic contains thousands of chemicals, and researchers explained that some can get into your body and affect your metabolism and, therefore, your weight.

Their lab analysis of 34 everyday plastic products -- such as yogurt containers, drink bottles and kitchen sponges -- turned up more than 55,000 chemical components.

Of those, researchers identified 629 of the chemicals, including 11 known to interfere with human metabolism, as "metabolism-disrupting chemicals."

Chemicals from one-third of the plastic products analyzed were found to contribute to fat cell development in lab experiments.

Those chemicals reprogrammed precursor cells to become fat cells that multiplied more and accumulated more fat, the study team explained in a university news release.

Even some plastic products that didn't contain known metabolism-disrupting substances triggered development of fat cells, the study found.

This means that plastics contain still unidentified chemicals that interfere with how our body stores fat, according to the authors of the study published recently in Environmental Science & Technology.

"It's very likely that it is not the usual suspects, such as bisphenol A, causing these metabolic disturbances. This means that other plastic chemicals than the ones we already know could be contributing to overweight and obesity," said study first author Johannes Völker, who is affiliated with the university's biology department.

It was long thought that most chemicals in plastic products would stay in them, but Wagner's team has recently shown that the products release a large number of chemicals that can get into the human body.

Previous research has shown that some plastics contain endocrine-disrupting chemicals that may affect human development and fertility, and this new study shows they also may contribute to weight gain.

More information

The Endocrine Society warns that plastics pose a threat to human health.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

CELIBACY FAILS
New Zealand Catholic church says 14% of clergy have been accused of abuse since 1950

By UPI Staff

Of the nearly 1,700 reports of abuse included in Tuesday's figures, the church said that almost half of them involved children -- and most occurred in education and residential care facilities
. File Photo by Mohammad Kheirkhah/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 1 (UPI) -- New Zealand's Catholic church, in response to a government inquiry, said on Tuesday that close to 15% of its diocesan clergy members have been accused of sexual and other types of abuse over the last seven decades.

The figures were given in response to a royal commission established five years ago by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to determine how frequent reported cases of abuse were in the church.

The assessment says that 378, or 14%, of all diocesan clergy members have been accused of abuse since 1950.

"The scale of reported alleged abuse within the Catholic Church ... has become known for the first time from extensive research undertaken by the Church at the request of the Royal Commission on Abuse in Care," the Catholic Church of New Zealand said in a statement with the figures Tuesday.

"A total of 1,680 reports of abuse were made by 1,122 individuals against Catholic clergy, brothers, nuns, sisters and lay people from 1950 to the present, with 592 alleged abusers named," it added. "Almost half the reported abuse involved sexual harm.

"The 1960s and 1970s were the decades with the most abuse reported, with 75% dated before 1990."


Of the nearly 1,700 reports of abuse, the church said that almost half involved children -- and most occurred in education and residential care facilities.

"The results of this research have been requested by and provided to the royal commission," the church said. "The definition of abuse used is the one used by the commission and includes reports of sexual, physical, emotional, psychological and neglect."

"Church leaders are committed to ensuring transparency," Catherine Fyfe, chairwoman of the group that conducted the research, said in a statement. "Consistent with this principle, we have published this information now, as soon as the work on it has been completed.

"The Information Gathering Project was a major exercise involving dozens of people over two years, including searching paper files dating back 70 years in hundreds of places."

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, said after the release of the report Tuesday that the actual scale of abuse in the Catholic church in New Zealand has likely been higher, according to information from its members -- and could be as high as "twelve-fold."

"The church has simply released what information it has recorded and this should not be seen as a comprehensive listing of all abuse that has occurred," SNAP said, according to The Guardian. "The actual scale of sexual abuse is very difficult to measure."

Cardinal John Dew, the president of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference, called the figures in the report "horrifying."

"I am grateful that so much work has been done in researching the details and making them public," he said, according to The Guardian. "I firmly hope that facts like these will help us to face the sad reality.

"The church will learn from this and affirm its commitment to the work of safeguarding."

COVID-19 medical waste management exposes 'dire need' for improvement, WHO says

Hazardous waste in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is shown. 
File Photo courtesy of Ministry of Health, Lao People's Democratic Republic


Feb. 1 (UPI) -- COVID-19 medical waste has strained waste management systems, exposing a "dire need" for improvement, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

"Tens of thousands of tons of extra medical waste from the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has put tremendous strain on healthcare waste management systems around the world, threatening human and environmental health and exposing a dire need to improve waste management practices," WHO said in a statement on its 71-page report on the matter.

The report said that medical waste produced since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 included masks, gloves, gowns, vaccine vials and needles, COVID-19 tests, and plastic packaging and containers. Approximately 87,000 tons of personal protective equipment was procured during that period and shipped to countries in response to the pandemic, the WHO global analysis shows.

The report also emphasized that 140 million test kits have been shipped, with the potential to generate 2,600 tons of non-infection waste, mainly plastic, and 731,000 liters of chemical waste, equivalent to one-third of an Olympic-size swimming pool.

Also, 8 billion doses of vaccine administered globally have produced 144,000 tons of additional waste from syringes, needles and safety boxes, the report said.

As the United Nations and member states faced the urgent need to secure supplies for healthcare facilities battling the emerging pandemic in March 2020, they paid less attention to safe healthcare waste management practices, the WHO said.

Thirty percent of healthcare facilities, the majority of which are in the least developed countries, were not equipped to handle existing waste loads, let alone the extra COVID-19 load, the statement on the report noted.

The inability to handle the extra COVID-19 waste could potentially expose healthcare workers to "needlestick injuries, burns and exposure to pathogenic micro-organisms," the report said.

It may also expose people living in communities near "poorly managed landfills" to "contaminated air, poor water quality or disease-carrying pests," the report added.

"COVID-19 has forced the world to reckon with the gaps and neglected aspects of the waste stream and how we produce, use and discard of our healthcare resources, from cradle to grave," Dr. Maria Neira, WHO director of Environment, Climate Change and Health, said in the statement. "Significant change at all levels, from the global to the hospital floor, in how we manage the healthcare waste stream is a basic requirement of climate-smart healthcare systems, which many countries committed to at the recent U.N. Climate Change Conference, and, of course, a healthy recovery from COVID-19 and preparedness for other health emergencies in the future."

The report's recommendations included promoting and investing in more sustainable PPE and waste systems, supporting behavior change away from single use and overuse of PPE to appropriate use and reusables when feasible, safe and sustainable waste management training for waste workers, and gradually improving waste treatment technologies.
Young Americans lost 1.5 million years of life to opioid overdoses
By HealthDay News

Between 2015 and 2019, U.S. teens lost nearly 200,000 years of life due to drug overdoses, while young adults lost more than 1.25 million years, researchers found. Photo by LizM/Pixabay

The U.S. drug epidemic continues its death march, with new research showing American teens and young adults have lost nearly 1.5 million years of life due to drug overdose deaths in recent years.

For the study, the researchers examined years of life lost -- the difference between a person's expected lifespan and when they actually die -- among nearly 3,300 adolescents aged 10 to 19 and nearly 21,700 young people aged 10 to 24 who died from unintentional drug overdoses between 2015 and 2019.

During this time, U.S. teens lost nearly 200,000 years of life due to drug overdoses, while young people lost more than 1.25 million years, according to the Ohio State University team.

"Adolescents and young adults dying of overdose are deprived of many years of work, community, and family life. Our study shows overdose mortality among adolescents and young people is unacceptably high," said study co-author Dr. O. Trent Hall, an addiction medicine physician in the university's department of psychiatry and behavioral health.

RELATED Study: Older adults, Medicare, Medicaid beneficiaries at higher risk for opioid overdose

"Public health interventions to protect this vulnerable group are urgently needed," Hall added in a university news release.

Hall said more resources are needed to prevent unintentional drug overdose among teens and young people. "Existing public health interventions aimed at adults may be insufficient," he noted.

Most research on overdose deaths has focused on adults. The study team hopes this new report raises awareness of the increasingly dire consequences of unintentional drug overdose among a younger population.

RELATED Study: Opioid addiction treatment in jail reduces re-arrest risk after release

Study co-author Dr. Julie Teater is a psychiatrist and addiction medicine physician. She said, "Our study provides important context to the overdose crisis by better representing what it means to society when we lose adolescents and young people to unintentional drug overdose."

The report was published online Monday in JAMA Pediatrics.

More information
RELATEDOpioid misuse is rising among Americans aged 55 and older

There's more on drug overdose at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.



Newly discovered asteroid just second of its kind

In brief

You may have heard of the Trojans, two vast swarms of asteroids that lead and trail Jupiter on its orbit around the Sun.

But the king of the planets doesn’t hold a monopoly on Trojan asteroids. The physics that gives rise to the formation of these distinctive collections of ancient rocks is the same for all planets – including Earth.

While the existence of Earth Trojans had been theorised for many years, the first direct observation of one was confirmed just over a decade ago. Since then, no second Earth Trojan had been discovered – until now.

In-depth

In this Q&A, Toni Santana-Ros (TSR) from the University of Alicante and Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona, and Laura Faggioli (LF) from ESA’s Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre (NEOCC) explain the importance and challenges behind the discovery of the second Earth Trojan asteroid.

Santana-Ros is the lead author of the paper presenting the discovery of the second Earth Trojan, published today, 1 February, in Nature Communications. ESA’s NEOCC provided important support to the research.

  • What are Trojan asteroids?

TSR: TheTrojans are asteroids trapped in regions of space where the gravitational pull from the Sun and one of the planets is balanced. These regions are known as Lagrange points.

The Trojans orbit around the Sun on roughly the same path as the planet and gather into groups near the two stable Lagrange points: one ahead of the planet (L4), and one behind it (L5).

The Lagrange points associated with the Sun–Earth system
  • How many Trojan asteroids are there?

TSR: We’ve identified almost 10 000 Jupiter Trojans, and a few dozen at Venus, Mars, Uranus and Neptune combined. But it wasn’t until 2011 that the first, and until now, only, Earth Trojan was discovered: 2010 TK7.

This second discovery, 2020 XL5, takes our total up to two, but there are almost certainly many more Earth Trojans out there just waiting to be discovered.

  • Why are Earth Trojans important?

TSR: Asteroids are time capsules from the earliest days of our Solar System and can teach us lots about the era of planetary formation.

Earth Trojans are particularly interesting, as they could be leftover material from the formation of Earth. Even if they come from far away instead, their relatively stable orbits at Earth’s Lagrange points could still make them ideal destinations for a spacecraft mission.

  • Why have we spotted so few Earth Trojans?

LF: Geometry! The relative location in the sky of the Lagrange points and the Sun are fixed. That means the incredible brightness of our star is always coming from a similar direction as the Trojans and greatly limits our chance of spotting such small, dark objects.

  • So, how did you find this one?

TSR: Fortunately, there are small windows just before sunrise and after sunset where one of the Lagrange points peaks over the horizon while the Sun is hidden below it. These windows are short, don’t allow for long observations, and force astronomers to point their telescopes at angles close to the horizon where viewing conditions are at their worst.

2020 XL5 was a known object, but it hadn’t been thoroughly studied. Our team used telescopes able to carry out observations of the asteroid under these difficult conditions and after studying the data, we confirmed that it is in fact the second known Earth Trojan!

The Lutetia asteroid visited by the ESA Rosetta mission in 2010
  • Has it been there forever? Will it be there forever?

TSR: 2020 XL5 is a “transient” Trojan asteroid; it won’t remain an Earth Trojan forever. We predict that in about 4000 years, it will leave Earth’s Lagrange point – possibly ending up on a highly elliptical orbit around the Sun like many other asteroids.

This relatively short period of stability compared to the incredible age of the Solar System likely means that it did not begin its life here during Earth’s formation but was captured by our stable Lagrange point as it passed nearby many years later.

  • How large is it? Could it pose a threat to Earth?

LF: The new Earth Trojan, 2020 XL5, is roughly 1 km wide. That’s a significant size for an asteroid, but its home at the Lagrange point is roughly as far from Earth as the Sun, and its orbit will keep it that far away for thousands of years.

  • What is ESA’s NEOCC?

LF: The Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre is part of ESA’s Planetary Defence Office. We use our network of telescopes to spot and study near-Earth objects (NEOs) and provide a central access point to an entire network of other data sources on NEOs.

We use this data every day to study the orbits of NEOs and assess any risk they pose to Earth.

  • How did ESA assist this research?

LF: My colleagues Marco Michelli and Luca Conversi carried out observations of 2020 XL5 using telescopes in the NEOCC network, including ESA’s Optical Ground Station telescope in Tenerife.

They used their observations to determine the position of the asteroid at different times, which my colleague Ramona Cennamo and I then used to analyse its orbit. Our results demonstrated that it is a transient Earth Trojan.

The Teide Observatory – ESA’s wandering eye
  • What’s next?

TSR: This discovery strongly encourages us to keep searching for new Earth Trojans. Finding an Earth Trojan made of material leftover from Earth’s formation would be incredibly helpful for unravelling many secrets of the early Solar System.

We currently carry out regular observations of the sky in collaboration with the NEOCC. In particular, we are looking for objects that could represent a hazard for Earth, but these routine observations sometimes reveal big surprises.

In the last few years, for example, we have begun to learn about a new group of very interesting objects: asteroids that orbit the Sun inside Earth’s orbit, or inner-Earth objects (IEOs). These objects will be at the top of our list going forward as, despite their relative closeness to Earth, they are still uncharted territory.

Award-winning Spotify science podcast drops regular show to focus on countering misinformation spread by Joe Rogan and others on Spotify

  • The makers of Spotify's award-winning "Science Vs" podcast say they're dropping their regular show.

  • Instead, they say they'll focus on countering misinformation spread on Spotify by Joe Rogan and others.

  • Science Vs won an award for audio reporting on the coronavirus pandemic.

The makers of an award-winning science podcast on Spotify say they're dropping their regular show amid the Joe Rogan COVID-19 misinformation row.

Wendy Zukerman and Blythe Terrell, respectively producer and editor of "Science Vs," say they'll now only make shows "intended to counteract misinformation being spread on Spotify."

Scientists, health professionals, and musicians including Neil Young and Joni Mitchell criticised Spotify after Rogan hosted a guest on his podcast who broadcast misinformation about COVID-19 measures. Rogan released a video on Sunday apologising to Spotify for the backlash it received as a result of his show.

In a letter sent to Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, published Monday, Terrell and Zukerman say Rogan's show left listeners with a "skewed and inaccurate" view of COVID-19 vaccines, adding: "Spotify has done little to address this."

Terrell and Zukerman say in the letter that throughout the pandemic, Spotify had provided Science Vs with "the resources we needed to produce accurate content about the coronavirus," but Spotify's support of Rogan "has felt like a slap in the face."

In 2020, Science Vs won the American Association for the Advancement of Science's gold award for its reports on the pandemic.

"Until Spotify implements stronger methods to prevent the spread of misinformation on the platform, we will no longer be making new Science Vs episodes, except those intended to counteract misinformation being spread on Spotify," Terrell and Zukerman say in their letter.

They add that rules released by Spotify on Sunday detailing how the platform deals with misinformation don't go far enough.

Spotify acquired Rogan's podcast in May 2020 for a sum reported to be in excess of $100 million. Vice reported in September 2020 that Spotify employees had raised concerns to management about transphobic content on Rogan's show.

Rogan also sparked a public backlash in October 2020 after hosting right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on The Joe Rogan Experience.

Explosive Crop Fertilizer Loses Popularity in U.S. on High Risks


Elizabeth Elkin
Tue, February 1, 2022, 

(Bloomberg) -- The nitrogen fertilizer causing a stir over imminent danger of explosion in North Carolina has been fading from the U.S. market exactly because of this kind of risk.

Ammonium nitrate was the first solid nitrogen fertilizer produced on a large scale, but “its popularity has declined in recent years,” according to crop nutrient company Mosaic Co. Today, the input is only about 3% of total U.S. nitrogen farm consumption, according to Bloomberg’s Green Markets.

Ammonium nitrate has been behind deadly explosions in recent years, including a Texas plant that had about 200 tons of the chemical explode in April 2013, killing 15 people and damaging more than 150 structures across a 35-block area. The blast, and the subsequent lawsuit filed against major nitrogen producer CF Industries Holdings Inc., caused unease in the industry, Green Markets analyst Alexis Maxwell said. Since then, consumption has shrank about 25%, she said.

Also See: Blast Feared as Fire Devours North Carolina Fertilizer Plant

“The U.S. ammonium nitrate market consolidated after the West Texas explosion among an increasingly smaller number of agricultural retailers as buyers were unwilling to accept the increased risk and insurance cost,” Maxwell said by email.

Evacuations ordered over explosion fears after fire at North Carolina fertilizer plant

By Karen Graham
Published February 1, 2022

Drone video of Fertilizer Plant Fire from incident command post. If you are within 1 mile of 4440 North Cherry Street, please evacuate! Source - City of Winston-Salem, NC @CityofWS

About 6,500 people have been told to evacuate their homes in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, due to a fire at a fertilizer plant where 600 tons of potentially explosive ammonium nitrate was stored, city officials said on Tuesday.

The potential for an ammonium nitrate explosion at the Winston Weaver Co. plant remained a top concern, fire officials said, as authorities scrambled to evacuate almost 2,500 homes within a mile of the blaze, according to CNN News.

Winston-Salem Fire Chief William “Trey” Mayo said during a news conference on Tuesday that 500 tons of ammonium nitrate and 5,000 tons of finished fertilizer were at the site when the fire began. Another 100 tons of ammonium nitrate were in a railcar adjacent to the site.

The fire broke out Monday evening, with fire crews responding at 6:45 p.m., according to fire officials. The cause of the fire is still unknown. Ammonium nitrate is a chemical compound used as a source of nitrogen for fertilizer. However, it is also used to create explosives for mining.

Winston-Salem Fire Department Battalion Chief Patrick Grubbs said, “We fought the fire for two hours before the blaze began affecting a rail car.” Once the rail car was involved, he said, “it became an explosive hazard,” with the potential for an explosion of ammonium nitrate, reports NBC News.

“Right now, we are in a waiting game. It’s not worth having firefighters go in and try to put the fire out,” said Matthew Smith, a hazardous material expert with the state of North Carolina. “As the fire burns, it is also losing fuel.”

On Tuesday, a state helicopter will take a hazmat specialist over the facility to access the situation and take photographs.

“Aside from drone surveillance this morning, this will be our first real daytime look at it just to get an indication of how much fire involvement there is in the area where the ammonium nitrate is stored,” Mayo said.

An old, unmanned fire truck, hooked up to a fire hydrant is being used to keep a constant stream of water on the railcar where the ammonium nitrate is stored.

“The area where ammonium nitrate was added is not actively burning at this time. It’s smoldering” Assistant Fire Chief Jerry Hardison said, according to Reuters, noting that the temperature of the fire needs to be kept under 400 degrees Fahrenheit (204°C), the flashpoint of ammonium nitrate.

 


Blaze at fertilizer plant in North Carolina may explode, officials warn



Feb. 1 (UPI) -- A fire at a fertilizer factory in North Carolina forced 6,500 people to evacuate as fears grow that the plant may explore near thousands of homes.

The potentially explosive fire at the Weaver Fertilizer Company in Winston-Salem began Monday evening around 7 p.m. No injuries have been reported but officials worry that chemicals at the plant could cause a devastating explosion

Videos posted by the City of Winston-Salem show towering flames and clouds of smoke. By 9 a.m. on Tuesday, those within a 1-mile radius of the plant were fully evacuated.

An estimated 500 tons of ammonium nitrate are in the building. There are approximately 5,000 tons of finished fertilizer in the plant.

The burning of ammonium nitrate could cause skin irritation, hazardous materials experts said on Tuesday.

People nearby were asked to stay indoors if they saw haze or smoke in the air.

An estimated 150 first responders including firefighters, police officers, and emergency management teams were assisting.

Battalion Chief Patrick Gruffs said that crews continue to fight the flame, and urged residents to stay clear of the area until Wednesday morning.