Amazon to shed over 18,000 jobs as it cuts costs, CEO says

PublishedShar

By Annabelle Liang

Business reporter

Amazon aims to shed more than 18,000 roles as it cuts costs, the technology giant's boss says.

Affected workers will be informed from 18 January, chief executive Andy Jassy said in a note to staff.

The cuts amount to around 6% of the firm's roughly 300,000-strong corporate workforce.

In November Amazon said it was starting a round of layoffs but did not give a figure of how many jobs it would cut.

"We are working to support those who are affected and are providing packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support," Mr Jassy said.

He added: "Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so."

Mr Jassy did not specify where affected employees were located, but he said the firm would communicate with organisations that represent employees "where applicable in Europe".

He also said the "majority of role eliminations" would be in the Amazon Stores operations and its People, Experience, and Technology team.

Two months ago the firm said it would focus on reducing expenses in its annual review of business operations.

Amazon had already introduced a hiring freeze and halted some of its warehouse expansions, warning it had over-hired during the pandemic.

It has also taken steps to shut some parts of its business, cancelling projects such as a personal delivery robot.

Amazon to cut thousands of more jobs than previously planned as warning signs of a tech slump flash red

BYSIGNE SPENCER, MATT DAY AND BLOOMBERG
January 4, 2023 

Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of Amazon.
DAVID RYDER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

Amazon.com Inc. is laying off more than 17,000 employees — a significantly bigger number than previously planned — in the latest sign that a technology slump is deepening, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The cuts, which began last year, were previously expected to affect about 10,000 people. The reduction is concentrated in the firm’s corporate ranks, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter.

Though the prospect of layoffs has loomed over Amazon for months — the company has acknowledged that it hired too many people during the pandemic — the increasing total suggests the company’s outlook has darkened. It joins other tech giants in making major cuts. Earlier Wednesday, Salesforce Inc. announced plans to eliminate about 10% of its workforce and reduce its real estate holdings.

Amazon investors gave a positive reaction to the latest belt-tightening efforts, betting it may bolster profits at the e-commerce company. The shares climbed nearly 2% in late trading after the report.

Eliminating 17,000 workers would be the biggest cut yet for tech companies during the current slowdown, but Amazon also has a far bigger workforce than Silicon Valley peers. It had more than 1.5 million employees as of the end of September, meaning the latest cuts would represent about 1% of the workforce.

At the time the company was planning its cuts in November, a spokesperson said Amazon had roughly 350,000 corporate employees worldwide.

The world’s largest online retailer spent the end of last year adjusting to a sharp slowdown in e-commerce growth as shoppers returned to pre-pandemic habits. Amazon delayed warehouse openings and halted hiring in its retail group. It broadened the freeze to the company’s corporate staff and then began making cuts.

Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy has eliminated or curtailed experimental and unprofitable businesses, including teams working on a telehealth service, a delivery robot and a kids’ video-calling device, among other projects.

The Seattle-based company also is trying to align excess capacity with cooling demand. One effort includes trying to sell excess space on its cargo planes, according to people familiar with the matter.

The first wave of cuts landed heaviest on Amazon’s Devices and Services group, which builds the Alexa digital assistant and Echo smart speaker, among other products. The group’s chief told Bloomberg last month that layoffs in the unit totaled less than 2,000 people, and that Amazon remained committed to the voice assistant.

Some recruiters and employees in the company’s human resources group were offered buyouts. Jassy told employees in November that more cuts would come in 2023 at its retail and HR teams.

Joy Behar compared House Republicans to cannibalistic turtles – and conservatives are furious

Sky Palma
January 04, 2023

Joy Behar (ABC)

On The View this Wednesday, host Joy Behar slammed Congressional Republicans over their inability to unify the vote for House Speaker, calling them "turtles in an aquarium" who eat their own.

"I had a little what they called schadenfreude watching this," Behar said. "I sort of enjoyed that they're in such disarray because they deserve it. It was nice that they took a break from destroying the country and started to turn on each other. I was reading one time about turtles one time, and apparently if you have turtles in an aquarium and then you don't feed them well enough, they will start to eat other, and that's what's going on in Congress right now."

"I'm not just talking about Mitch McConnell when I'm talking about turtles here," she added. "I'm talking about all of them."

Her remarks were highlighted by the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group, and The Daily Caller, a right-leaning news organization.

Unsurprisingly, conservatives on Twitter took umbrage at Behar's comments, with one person even calling her comments "hate speech."

"If leftists really believed hate speech was harmful, The View would be off the air. The View is all about hate," tweeted conservative writer Mike LaChance.

"That would be fun to watch with this show and its studio audience," added conservative Jim Treacher.

The outrage didn't stop there. "Leave it to Joy Behar to consistently be the stupidest person on TV. It’s a tough race but she always finds a way to pull out the win," one Twitter user said.

"Democracy scares communists. Prime example right here," added another.

'Romeo and Juliet' child actors sue over 1968 nude scene

Agence France-Presse
January 04, 2023

Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, seen here in 2018, claim in their suit that the nude scene in 'Romeo and Juliet' was exploitative(AFP)

The actors who played star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 film are suing Paramount Pictures for child abuse over their brief nude scene, their lawyer said Tuesday.

Olivia Hussey was 15 and Leonard Whiting 16 when they starred in the Oscar-winning version of William Shakespeare's tragedy.

The actors, now both in their 70s, claim in a suit filed in Santa Monica last week that a bedroom scene in which buttocks and bare breasts are visible amounts to sexual exploitation by movie studio Paramount, and that the company was guilty of distributing nude pictures of adolescents.

The suit says Zeffirelli -- who died in 2019 -- cajoled them into performing the scene, telling them without it "the picture would fail", having originally insisted there would be no actual nudity, with both actors covered by flesh-colored underwear.

"Defendants were dishonest and secretly filmed the nude or partially nude minor children without their knowledge, in violation of the state and federal laws regulating indecency and exploitation of minors for profit," the suit says.

The complaint, which claims damages of hundreds of millions of dollars, says the two performers have suffered mental anguish and emotional distress in the five-and-a-half decades since the film came out, and that both had only limited professional success in its wake.

Both won Golden Globes for their performances.

Solomon Gresen, representing the actors, told AFP the years that have elapsed since the film was made did not lessen the damage done, especially as it has been re-released since.

"(Paramount) have images that they know are images of underage nudity that should be removed from the film. That would be the beginning for sure," he said.

"Sexually explicit images of children are bad and they shouldn't be tolerated.

"If they were under 16, then they're under 16. It's a sexually explicit image of an underage person, it should be forbidden."

December 31 was the final date for historical child sex abuse lawsuits to be filed in California under a temporary waiver of the statutes of limitation.

A raft of claims were lodged during the waiver, including one last week by a woman who says she was the teenage lover of Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler in the 1970s.


There was no immediate response from Paramount to AFP's request for comment.

Variety reported that during its 2018 interview with Hussey, she had defended the nude scene, which she insisted Zeffirelli had done tastefully.

"It was needed for the film," she told the outlet at the time.


© 2023 AFP

Coral bleaching causing 'unnecessary' fish fights

Agence France-Presse
January 04, 2023

Butterflyfish off the coast of Australia's Christmas Island are getting into more unnecessary fights due to a lack of food 

© Sally A. KEITH / LANCASTER UNIVERSITY/AFP


Fish that have lost food due to mass coral bleaching are getting into more unnecessary fights, causing them to expend precious energy and potentially threatening their survival, new research said Wednesday.

With the future of the world's coral reefs threatened by climate change, a team of researchers studied how a mass bleaching event affected 38 species of butterflyfish.

The colorfully patterned reef fish are the first to feel the effect of bleaching because they eat coral, so their "food source is hugely diminished really quickly", said Sally Keith, a marine ecologist at Britain's Lancaster University.

Keith and her colleagues had no idea a mass bleaching event was coming when they first studied the fish at 17 reefs off Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and Christmas Island.

But when one of history's worst global bleaching events struck in 2016, it offered "the perfect opportunity" to study how it affected the fish's behavior, Keith told AFP.

The researchers returned within a year and were "shocked" to see the devastation of the once beautiful reefs, she said.

Donning their snorkels or scuba gear, the team watched the fish "swimming around looking for food that just isn't there anymore," she added.

"There was a bit of crying in our masks."

Losing battle

The bleaching particularly affected Acropora coral, the main food source for the butterflyfish.

That "changed the playing field of who's eating what," Keith said, putting different species of butterflyfish in increased competition for other types of coral.

When a butterflyfish wants to signal to a competitor that a particular bit of coral is theirs, they point their noses down and raise their spiny dorsal fins.

"It's almost like raising your hackles," Keith said.

If that fails, one fish will chase the other, usually until the other gives up.

"I followed one for about 50 meters (165 feet) once, that was quite tiring, they're very fast," Keith said.

The team observed 3,700 encounters between butterflyfish.

Before the coral bleaching event, different species of butterflyfish were able to resolve disputes using signaling around 28 percent of the time.

But that number fell to just 10 percent after the bleaching, indicating many "unnecessary attacks," according to the new study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

"Making poor decisions about who to fight, and where to invest their really valuable energy, could be that little bit that tips them over the edge towards actual starvation," said Keith, the study's lead author.

It is not clear if the fish will be able to adapt to the changes brought about by coral bleaching quickly enough, the researchers warned.

It could also have knock-on effects between species and up the food chain, she added.

Human-driven climate change has spurred mass coral bleaching as the world's oceans get warmer.

Modeling research last year found that even if the Paris climate goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is reached, 99 percent of the world's coral reefs will not be able to recover. At two degrees of warming, the number rose to 100 percent.

© 2023 AFP

Reef fish must relearn the “rules of engagement” after coral bleaching

Mass coral bleaching events are making it harder for some species of reef fish to identify competitors, new research reveals

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: CHAETODON ADIERGASTOS view more 

CREDIT: DR SALLY KEITH

Mass coral bleaching events are making it harder for some species of reef fish to identify competitors, new research reveals.

 

Scientists studying reefs across five Indo-Pacific regions found that the ability of butterflyfish individuals to identify competitor species and respond appropriately was compromised after widespread loss of coral caused by bleaching. This change means they make poorer decisions that leave them less able to avoid unnecessary fights, using up precious limited energy.

 

The scientists behind the study believe these changes could have implications for species survival as further global warming increases the likelihood of coral loss.

 

Dr Sally Keith, Senior Lecturer in Marine Biology at Lancaster University and lead author of the study, said: “By recognising a competitor, individual fish can make decisions about whether to escalate, or retreat from, a contest – conserving valuable energy and avoiding injuries.

 

“These rules of engagement evolved for a particular playing field, but that field is changing. Repeated disturbances, such as bleaching events, alter the abundance and identity of corals - the food source of butterflyfish. It’s not yet clear whether these fish have the capacity to update their rule book fast enough to recalibrate their decisions.”

 

The researchers took more than 3,700 observations of 38 species of butterflyfish on reefs before and after coral bleaching event, and compared their behaviours.

 

After coral mortality caused by the bleaching event, signalling between fish of different species was less common, with encounters escalating to chases in more than 90% of cases – up from 72% before the event. Researchers also found the distance of these chases increased following bleaching, with fish expending more energy chasing away potential competitors than they would have done previously.

 

The researchers believe the environmental disturbances are affecting fish recognition and responses because the bleaching events, in which many coral die, are forcing fish species to change and diversify their diets and territories. Therefore, these large-scale environmental changes are disrupting long-established and co-evolved relationships that allow multiple fish species to coexist.

 

Dr Keith said: “By looking at how behaviour responds to real-life changes in the environment, and by seeing that those changes are the same regardless of location, we can start to predict how ecological communities might change into the future. These relatively small miscalculations in where to best invest energy could ultimately push them over the edge.”

Chaetodon_trifascialis on Acropora table

DEAD ACROPORA TABLES

Chaetodon_guttatissimus

CREDIT

Dr Sally Keith

The findings are outlined in the paper ‘Rapid resource depletion on coral reefs disrupts competitor recognition processes among butterfly species’, which has been published by the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The paper’s authors are Dr Sally Keith, Dr Lisa Boström-Einarsson, Dr Ian Hartley of Lancaster University, Dr Jean-Paul Hobbs or the University of Queensland, and Prof Nathan Sanders of the University of Michigan.

The study was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Australian Research Council, and the Villum Foundation.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rspb.2022.2158 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Rapid resource depletion on coral reefs disrupts competitor recognition processes among butterfly species

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Jan-2023

Bionic penis: Synthetic tissue restores erections in pigs

Agence France-Presse
January 04, 2023

Pigs in sty leaning on wall (Shutterstock)

Researchers in China have used artificial tissue to restore erectile function in pigs, a promising development for repairing penile damage in humans.

"This is an area that has received little attention, yet the related need is huge," said Xuetao Shi, an author of the study published on Wednesday in the science journal Matter.

An estimated 50 percent of men between the ages of 40 and 70 experience some form of erectile dysfunction, the researchers said, and about five percent suffer from Peyronie's disease.

Peyronie's disease, commonly caused by injury during sex, involves damage to the fibrous sheath of penile tissue known as the tunica albuginea that allows for the maintaining of an erection.

Scar tissue called plaque can cause curved or painful erections or penis shortening and may require surgical treatment.

The Chinese researchers said other tissues from the body have been used to make patches to replace a damaged tunica albuginea but those are sometimes rejected by the immune system.

Instead, the research group created an artificial tunica albuginea (ATA) that mimics the elasticity of the natural tissue with a substance called hydrogel.

Hydrogels can be natural or synthetic and are being used for a growing number of biomedical applications, including contact lenses and tissue engineering.

For the study, the researchers tested the artificial tissue on Bama miniature pigs with injuries to the tunica albuginea.

The ATA patches and a saline injection restored erectile function "similar to that of normal penile tissue," they said.

"The erection of the penis returned to normal after suturing the ATA at the injured part, and the long-term prognosis was satisfactory," they said.

Shi, a researcher at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, said "the results one month after the procedure showed that the ATA group achieved good, though not perfect, repair results."

The researchers said the findings "show promise for repairing penile injuries in humans" and can potentially be "extended to many other load-bearing tissues."


"Our work at this stage focuses on the repair of a single tissue in the penis," Shi said.

"The next stage will be to consider the repair of the overall penile defect or the construction of an artificial penis from a holistic perspective."

The researchers will also explore techniques to repair other tissues, including the heart and bladder, Shi said.


© 2023 AFP

An artificial tissue restores erectile function in pigs

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

 

IMAGE: BIONIC ARTIFICIAL PENILE TUNICA ALBUGINEA view more 

CREDIT: MATTER/CHAI ET AL.

Scientists have developed a synthetic tissue that repairs injuries and restores normal erectile function in a pig model, in a study publishing January 4 in the journal Matter. The findings suggest that the artificial tunica albuginea (ATA), which mimics a fibrous sheath of tissue necessary to maintain erections, shows promise for repairing penile injuries in humans.

“We largely foresaw the problems and results of the ATA construction process, but we were still surprised by the results in the animal experiments, where the penis regained normal erection immediately after the use of ATA,” said Xuetao Shi, a researcher at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou, China, and an author of the study.

“The greatest advantage of the ATA we report is that it achieves tissue-like functions by mimicking the microstructure of natural tissues,” he added. “This design approach is not limited to the biomimetic design of tunica albuginea tissues but can be extended to many other load-bearing tissues.”

Shi said that his team’s research focus has recently turned to producing biomaterials to address issues in male reproductive health, including erectile dysfunction, infertility, and Peyronie’s disease, a connective tissue disorder thought to occur as a result of injury from sex. About half of men between the ages of 40 and 70 reportedly experience some form of erectile dysfunction, while an estimated 5% suffer from Peyronie’s disease, in which scar tissue forms in the tunica albuginea, causing pain and a range of other effects.

“We noticed that this is an area that has received little attention, yet the related need is huge,” said Shi.

While many previous studies have focused on repairing the urethra, Shi said that less research has focused on restoring erectile function. And although clinicians can treat patients with damaged tunica albuginea tissue by making patches from other tissues in the patient’s body combined with extracellular matrix, these patches come with disadvantages. Sometimes the immune system rejects them or complications occur at the donor site, and since their microstructures are different from that of natural tunica albuginea, it is difficult for these patches to replace the natural tissue perfectly.

To address this issue, Shi and colleagues developed ATA based on polyvinyl alcohol, which has a curled fiber structure similar to that of the natural tissue. As a result, the synthetic material has biomechanical properties that mimic those of tunica albuginea. The researchers performed laboratory experiments to investigate the artificial tissue’s toxicity and blood compatibility, since it is designed to remain in the body for a long time, and determined that it should not be harmful to other tissues.

Next, they tested the ATA in Bama miniature pigs with injuries to the tunica albuginea. The researchers found that patches made from the artificial tissue restored erectile function such that it was similar to that of normal penile tissue, suggesting the patch successfully replaced the natural tissues’ function. The researchers analyzed the effect of the ATA patches after one month, finding that while the artificial tissue did not restore the microstructure of surrounding natural tissue, it developed fibrosis comparable to that in normal tissue and achieved a normal erection after the penis was injected with saline.

“The results one month after the procedure showed that the ATA group achieved good, though not perfect, repair results,” said Shi.

Shi noted that in penile injuries the tunica albuginea is usually not the only tissue damaged. Surrounding nerves and the corpus cavernosum, the spongy tissue that runs through the penis’ shaft, are often damaged as well, making repairs even more difficult.

“Our work at this stage focuses on the repair of a single tissue in the penis, and the next stage will be to consider the repair of the overall penile defect or the construction of an artificial penis from a holistic perspective,” said Shi.

He added that the researchers also plan to investigate techniques to repair other tissues, including the heart and bladder.

Artificial tissue demonstrated in pig corpus spongiosum (VIDEO)

Pig corpus spongiosum is injected with normal saline to erect the penis, and the shape of the penis after erection is observed.

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Key Research and Development Program of Guangzhou, Open Funding of Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Engineering, NERC, Science and Technology Program of Guangdong Province, Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation Outstanding Youth Project, Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou, Hong Kong ITC, and Hong Kong Research Grant Council.

Matter, Chai et al.: “Bionic artificial penile Tunica albuginea” https://cell.com/matter/fulltext/S2590-2385(22)00663-4

Matter (@Matter_CP), published by Cell Press, is a new journal for multi-disciplinary, transformative materials sciences research. Papers explore scientific advancements across the spectrum of materials development—from fundamentals to application, from nano to macro. Visit https://www.cell.com/matter. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.

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JOURNAL

Matter

DOI

10.1016/j.matt.2022.11.032 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Bionic Artificial Penile Tunica Albuginea

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Jan-2023

Collapse, contamination: Mexican scientists sound alarm at Mayan Train

Reuters
January 04, 2023

By Cassandra Garrison and Jose Luis Gonzalez

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Parts of Mexico's remote southern jungles have barely changed since the time of the ancient Maya.

In the eyes of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a railway his government is building - known as the Tren Maya - will bring modern connectivity to areas for generations deprived of significant economic benefits.

But the railway and its hasty construction also critically endanger pristine wilderness and ancient cave systems beneath the jungle floor, droves of scientists and environmental activists say.

The railway "is splitting the jungle in half," said Ismael Lara, a guide who takes tourists to a cave that shelters millions of bats near the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. Lara fears the train, due to pass close by, will disrupt wildlife routes and attract too much development to fragile ecosystems.

Over almost a year, Reuters photographed construction at points along the full length of the planned rail track, documenting the evolution of the flagship project which Lopez Obrador has pledged to finish by the end of 2023.

The 1,470 km (910 miles) of rail are set to carry diesel and electric trains through the Yucatan Peninsula and connect Mexico's top tourist destination Cancun to the ancient Mayan temples of Chichen Itza and Palenque.

The railway has deeply divided Mexicans and the controversies surrounding the construction exemplify struggles developing countries across the globe face to balance economic progress with environmental responsibility.

FONATUR, Mexico's tourism agency charged with the project, has said the railway will lift more than a million people out of poverty and could create up to 715,000 new jobs by 2030. Construction costs are seen at up to $20 billion, Lopez Obrador said in July.

But with the project already billions of dollars over budget and behind schedule, scientists and activists say the government cut corners in its environmental risk assessments in a bid to complete it while Lopez Obrador is still in office.

In December, United Nations experts warned the railway's status as a national security project allowed the government to side-step usual environmental safeguards, and called on the government to protect the environment in line with global standards.

FONATUR defended the speed with which the studies were produced. "Years are not required, expertise, knowledge and integration capacity are required," it said in response to questions from Reuters. It declined to comment on the U.N. statement.

CENOTES

The Tren Maya route cuts a swathe up to 14 meters (46 ft) wide through some of the world's most unique ecosystems, bringing the modern world closer to vulnerable species such as jaguars - and bats.

It will pass above a system of thousands of subterranean caves carved out from the region's soft limestone bedrock by water over millions of years.

Crystalline pools known as cenotes punctuate the Yucatan peninsula, where the limestone surface has fallen in to expose the groundwater. The world's longest known underground river passes through the caves, which have also been the site of discoveries such as ancient human fossils and Maya artifacts like a canoe estimated to be more than 1,000 years old.

If built badly, the railway risks breaking through the fragile ground, including into yet-to-be explored caves below, says Emiliano Monroy-Rios, a Mexican geochemist with Northwestern University who has extensively studied the area's caves and cenotes.

Diesel, he adds, could also leak into the network of subterranean pools and rivers, the main source of fresh water on the peninsula.

With less than 20% of the subterranean system believed to have been mapped, according to several scientists interviewed by Reuters, such damage could limit important geological discoveries.

The government's environmental impact study for Section 5, the most controversial stretch, says environmental impacts are "insignificant" and have been adequately mitigated. The study says the risk of collapse was taken into account in the engineering of the tracks, and that the area will be observed through a prevention program.

Dozens of scientists disagree, writing in open letters that the assessments are riddled with problems, including outdated data, the omission of recently discovered caves and a lack of input from local hydrology experts.

"They don't want to recognize the fragility of the land," said Fernanda Lases, a Merida-based scientist with the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), calling the problems identified "highly worrisome."

The names of the 70 experts who participated in the government study were redacted from the publication.

One piece of research used by the government to support its conclusions was taken from a blog by Monroy-Rios, who says he was never contacted by the authors of the report. His research highlights the need for extensive surveillance and monitoring for any infrastructure project in the region. He says this has not happened.

"I guess their conclusions were pre-formatted," Monroy-Rios said. "They want to do it fast and that's part of the problem. There’s no time for the proper exploration.”

An expert who participated in the reports and spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the work had been done quickly.

"There was pressure, especially due to delivery times," the expert said.

The expert expressed concern the government would not properly mitigate risks experts had highlighted in the government's impact studies or dedicate the necessary resources to the train's maintenance.

FONATUR said the project would have resources and follow-up care in the future, including programs established for environmental protection.

"The Mayan Train project is of course safe, monitored and regulated by the environmental authorities as has happened up to now," the agency told Reuters.

Inecol, Mexico’s ecology institute which produced the reports, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A spokesman for Lopez Obrador did not respond to a request for comment.

FORGOTTEN SOUTHEAST

Despite the concerns about the railway, it has the support of many in villages that for decades have felt largely forgotten in national development plans.

In Xkuncheil, a small dusty town of about 140 people on Section 2 of the train that runs through Campeche state, Luz Elba Damas Jimenez, 69, owns a small store selling soda and snacks near the tracks. Many of her neighbors, especially the young men, are working on the project, she said. She also has more customers now.

"The government is working on good things for the country... Sometimes there just isn't work in these small towns, but now they have jobs," she said. "The truth is that we have benefited."

Martha Rosa Rosado, who was offered a government payout to move when an earlier plan for the tracks was set to go through her home in Campeche's Camino Real neighborhood, echoed those sentiments.

"No government ever remembers the southeast. Everything goes to the north, and the southeast is forgotten," she said as she grilled pork outside her home of 40 years.

Some 450 kilometers (280 miles) away, in Playa del Carmen, near the beach resorts bustling with tourists, a group of volunteers - clad in helmets and head lamps - descend into the caves at weekends to monitor their condition.

Roberto Rojo, a biologist in the group, says the train will put the entire ecosystem above and below ground at risk.

"They are doing studies now that needed to be done at least four years ago," Rojo said inside one cave directly below where the train is due to pass.

Behind him, tree roots descend from the ceiling of the cave like coarse rope, stretching down to be quenched by the water pooled at his feet.

"This is our life. We are putting in risk and in danger the stability of this ecosystem," he said.

($1 = 19.2527 Mexican pesos)

(Reporting by Cassandra Garrison and Jose Luis Gonzalez; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)

This is the disturbing truth about how much unearned wealth and power has been accrued by elites

Sonali Kolhatkar, Independent Media Institute
January 04, 2023

Wealthy People (Shutterstock)

There is a common feeling that many of us have experienced in professional or academic environments, especially when we struggle against gender or racial bias. It’s called “imposter syndrome”—the feeling that one doesn’t deserve one’s position and that others will discover this lack of competence at any moment. I felt this way as a female graduate student in a science field in the 1990s. I felt it as a young journalist of color in a white-dominated industry.

The rich and the elite among us appear to feel the opposite—that they are deserving of unearned privilege. A recent series of stories in New York Magazine headlined “The Year of the Nepo Baby” has struck a chord among those who are being outed for having benefited from insider status. Nepo babies are the children of the rich and famous, the ones who are borne of naked nepotism and whose ubiquity exposes the myth of American meritocracy. Nepo babies can be found everywhere there is power.

The New York Magazine stories have predictably generated defensive responses from nepo babies. Jamie Lee Curtis, actor and daughter of famed Hollywood stars Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, wrote a lengthy post on Instagram defending her status. Although she admitted that she benefitted from her parents’ fame—“I have navigated 44 years with the advantages my associated and reflected fame brought me, I don’t pretend there aren’t any”—she also clapped back at critics, saying she was tired of assumptions that a nepo baby like her “would somehow have no talent whatsoever.” Curtis went further in claiming that the current focus on people like her was “designed to try to diminish and denigrate and hurt.”

Curtis is clearly a talented actor, of that there is no doubt. But, in defending her privilege from critique, she reveals just how deserving she considers herself. It is the converse of imposter syndrome—the insider syndrome.





The act of calling out nepotism doesn’t necessarily imply that nepo babies are not talented. (Nepo babies are sometimes talented—and sometimes not.) It means pointing out that some talented people are able to benefit from family connections and fame that other equally talented people are not able to.

The critique is intended to call out elitism, not “diminish,” “denigrate” or “hurt,” as Curtis accuses journalists of doing. Journalism that exposes power and its corruptive influence among elites punches up, not down. Curtis is hardly a disadvantaged person whose well-being will suffer from such coverage. Rather, stories pointing out her parental advantages could potentially help to even the playing field so that it is unacceptable in the future to consider family connections in film and TV auditions.

Recall the college admissions scandal of 2019 when it was revealed—again through good journalism—that wealthy parents like TV star Lori Loughlin used all the power and money at their disposal to bend the rules of elite school admissions for their children. Many of those children may well have deserved to get into the schools they attended. But, in the face of stiff competition, untold numbers of equally deserving youth who did not have powerful and wealthy parents willing to break rules were not admitted. Now, many of those same nepo babies’ parents who were tried and convicted are using their money and connections to win shortened prison sentences.

But Hollywood celebrities, however much they enjoy prestige and privilege, are an easy target. Nepotism is rife in all the halls of power—in the world of art, sports, and even journalism, and especially in corporate and political circles.

Billionaires (especially those in tech) may propagate the myth of the merit-based American dream, but some of the most dramatic success stories began with a parent using their wealth or connections to give their child the upper hand. Take Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, who became one of the world’s wealthiest people in his 30s. Gates’s early success was largely due to the well-documented connections that his parents flexed on his behalf to get his fledgling company off the ground. Other tech nepo babies include Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whose father loaned him $100,000 to start his company, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, whose parents were early investors in his online retail business to the tune of nearly $250,000.

Nepotism is part of the fabric of capitalism. For centuries, unfair advantages were available to those who have historically faced fewer hurdles, through the sheer luck of being born into a family with wealth, connections, or respect within their field. Indeed, in order to beat back the imposter syndrome, many advise channeling the unearned confidence of a mediocre straight white man.

Our economy is rigged to encourage nepotism by ensuring that the already wealthy pass their wealth—and by extension the power that their money buys—to their children. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) pointed out how the tax code is written in order to benefit the moneyed classes. According to a CBPP report, “High-income, and especially high-wealth, filers enjoy a number of generous tax benefits that can dramatically lower their tax bills.”

Nepo babies who defend their status reinforce the notion that wealth, fame, and privilege equal brilliance, talent, and genius. The reality is that the privileged among us simply have the means to cheat. The rest of us are sold the lie that working hard will bring rewards—rather than unearned wealth.

This, in turn, encourages cheating among those who cannot rely on nepotism to gain power. One well-known example of the “fake-it-till-you-make-it” approach is Anna Sorokin, a woman whose fabricated lies about wealth and power landed her in prison and made her the focus of a Netflix show. Sorokin faked being a nepo baby—a German heiress—in order to live a lavish lifestyle. Sorokin learned that to gain the edge that moneyed elites have, one must internalize the insider syndrome.

Republican Congressman George Santos, who was recently exposed as a fraud for lying about his work experience, wealth, and even ethnicity, is another prime example. His political party has made a habit of encouraging (real or fake) nepo babies like Donald Trump, who openly admitted to tax avoidance in a debate and whose company was convicted of criminal tax fraud.

The GOP has for years led the charge to protect the interests of the wealthy while insisting on means testing and drug testing for the rest of us to receive benefits.

In truth, the emperor has no clothes. The meritocracy of American capitalism is a myth built on smoke and mirrors, on lies and false confidence. The current long-overdue conversation around nepo babies may help to further class consciousness among Americans who may see a bit more clearly now just how scantily clad the emperor really is.


Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist. She is the founder, host, and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a weekly television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. Her forthcoming book is Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (City Lights Books, 2023). She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute and the racial justice and civil liberties editor at Yes! Magazine. She serves as the co-director of the nonprofit solidarity organization the Afghan Women’s Mission and is a co-author of Bleeding Afghanistan. She also sits on the board of directors of Justice Action Center, an immigrant rights organization.


This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Reducing nitrogen use key to human and planetary health: study

Agence France-Presse
January 04, 2023

Chemical fertilizer (Photo: iStock) THE OTHER BLUE PILL

Better management of nitrogen-rich fertilizers through alternating crops, optimizing use and other measures can yield huge environmental and health benefits, but must boost food production at the same time, researchers warned Wednesday.

Reducing nitrogen pollution from global croplands is a "grand challenge," the group of international researchers said in a study in Nature outlining a dozen urgently-needed reforms.

The intensive use of chemical fertilizers helped fuel the four-fold expansion of the human population over the last century, and will be crucial for feeding 10 billion people by 2050.

But the bumper crops of what was once called the Green Revolution have come at a terrible cost.

Today, more than half the nitrogen in fertilizers seeps into the air and water, leading to deadly pollution, soil acidification, climate change, ozone depletion and biodiversity loss.

"Given the multiple health, climate and environmental impacts of reactive nitrogen, it has to be reduced in all the mediums such as air and water," lead author Baojing Gu, a professor at Zhejiang University, told AFP.

The benefits of doing so far outstrip the costs, he added.

- Nitrogen cycle -

The world is naturally awash in nitrogen, which is critical for the survival of all life on Earth, especially plants.

Nearly 80 percent of Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen, albeit in a gaseous form (N2) of little direct use to most organisms.

It is made available to plants when microbes that live within plants or soils turn it into ammonia through biological nitrogen fixation.

This process funnels some 200 million tonnes of nitrogen into the soil and oceans every year.

Various forms of the element are eventually transformed and find their way back into the atmosphere with the help of bacteria, especially in wetlands, and after leaching into the oceans or being burned.


But this natural "nitrogen cycle" has been massively imbalanced by the use of some 120 million tonnes of chemical fertilizer each year, according to the study.

Less than half of that input is actually absorbed by plants, with the rest seeping into the environment and causing a constellation of problems.

Researchers led by Gu analyzed over 1,500 field observations from croplands around the world and identified 11 key measures to decrease nitrogen losses while still enhancing crop yields.

One such method is crop rotation where a variety of crops are planted on the same plot of land, optimizing the flow of nutrients in the soil.
Benefits outweigh costs

The benefits of slashing agricultural nitrogen pollution are some 25 times higher than the implementation costs of about $34 billion, they found.

For China and India -– whose extensive and intensive use of fertilizer make them the world's top nitrogen polluters –- that cost would be about $5 and $3 billion, respectively.

Nearly half-a-trillion dollars in avoided costs are spread across reduced premature deaths from air pollution, less damage to ecosystem services and increased crop yields.

But the proposed measure could have a negative impact on the fight against climate change.

"Basically, the impact of nitrogen management on climate change is neutral, or slightly damages the climate due to the reduction of carbon sequestration in ecosystems," Gu told AFP.

Even with outsized benefits, advanced nitrogen management has up-front costs that would be beyond the reach of many smallholder farmers without the backing of strong government policies.

A nitrogen-credit-system, for example, could subsidize farmers who adopt advanced nitrogen management techniques, drawing from the economic benefits of reduced nitrogen pollution and increased food supply.


To initiate this virtuous circle, a financial budget could be secured by taxing food consumers or enterprises that use farming for commercial food production, or by taxing polluting activities and products.

© 2023 AFP

Top military general collected 'boatloads' of evidence before and during Jan. 6 attacks: report

Rodric Hurdle-Bradford
January 04, 2023

MSNBC

While the Republican party continues to downplay the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol, in transcripts from his interview with the Jan. 6 Committee, Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley states that he took the attacks seriously and warned others to do the same.

According to Politico, during his interview with the committee Milley told them he collected "boatloads" of information prior and during the Jan. 6 attacks because he knew they would become valuable evidence in the future. Milley even identified particular documents as classified to ensure only select individuals would be able to review the evidence.

The transcript of the interview is 300 pages, as Milley goes into deep details on how he took the online threats seriously compared to other colleagues. According to his interview, Milley had several discussions about the preparedness for the Jan. 6 "event" with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence's national security adviser, retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg.

A detailed exercise to practice for potential violence on Jan. 6 was held at Milley's request, the exercise included turning a gym into a model of Washington, D.C. to review logistical preparedness. The practice was taped by the Secret Service.

Milley also explained that in his opinion the Jan. 6 attacks were an official attack on the country's Constitution. During the interview he gave the most credit to then-Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist. According to the Milley's interview, Nordquist accurately predicted that the largest threat on Jan. 6 would come from "a direct assault on the Capitol."

Milley described Norquist's prediction as "clairvoyant" in retrospect.

On the contrary, Milley said that then-national security advisor Robert O' Brien thought the biggest threats were from antifa and Black Lives Matter members directly assaulting pro-Trump protesters.

In his interview, Milley also acknowledged a verbal confrontation with Kash Patel, a member of former President Donald Trump's staff who was elevated to chief-of-staff to the acting defense secretary in 2016. Milley reiterated in the interview that Patel and several other members of Trump's staff were clearly not prepared for the events of Jan. 6.