CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Regulators want to fine Qantas 'hundreds of millions of dollars' for selling tickets for thousands of already-cancelled flights

Pete Syme
Fri, September 1, 2023 

A Qantas 787 Dreamliner.Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty 

• The Australian airline Qantas is under fire from the country's competition regulator.

• It's accusing Qantas of continuing to sell tickets for 8,000 flights that had been cancelled.

• And it's seeking a record-breaking fine in the hundreds of millions of dollars, per Reuters.

Qantas could be fined hundreds of millions of dollars for selling tickets for thousands of flights that had already been cancelled if regulators get their way, Reuters reported.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission announced Thursday that it was taking the airline to court, accusing it of engaging in false, misleading, or deceptive conduct.

The ACCC alleges that the Australian flag-carrier kept selling tickets for more than 8,000 flights between May and July 2022, for an average of more than two weeks after they were cancelled.

It also said that, for over 10,000 flights across the same period, Qantas didn't tell ticket holders their flights had been canceled for an average of 18 days. And in some cases, people weren't told about the cancellations until 48 days afterwards, according to the ACCC.

That amounts to 70% of cancelled Qantas flights where tickets were still sold or ticket holders weren't told for at least two days after the cancelation, the regulator said.

Gina Cass-Gottlieb, the ACCC chair, said this likely affected the travel plans of tens of thousands of people, and "left customers with less time to make alternative arrangements and may have led to them paying higher prices."

According to Reuters, Cass-Gottlieb said the ACCC would seek a fine that was "signficantly more" than the record $81 million Volkswagen was fined in 2019 — in relation to its emissions scandal where it cheated tests that identified harmful exhaust fumes.

"We think the penalty should be in hundreds of millions, not tens of millions", she added, per Reuters. "We would want to get more than twice that figure."

Qantas did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, sent outside Australian working hours. It told Reuters that it would review the allegations made by the ACCC and respond to them in court.

ACCC accuses Qantas of advertising tickets for cancelled flights | 9 News Australia

 

 Aug 31, 2023 

 The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is alleging Qantas advertised online tickets for more than 8000 flights scheduled to leave between May and July last year, even after it had cancelled them. To discuss this news, ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb speaks to Today's Sarah Abo, and Karl Stefanovic is joined by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.

Aug 29, 2023

Sky News host Sharri Markson says Qantas admitted the true figure of money owed to Australians for cancelled flights was about $100 million higher than previously stated estimates.

The prime minister wants Qantas to pay back money it received during the pandemic

7NEWS Australia

 Sep 2, 2023  

The prime minister wants Qantas to pay back some of the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars it received during the pandemic.

He says it was designed to keep companies afloat, not profit, after revelations the airline spent millions on executive bonuses.

4 systems are swirling in the Atlantic, and new ones may form. What the forecast says

David Goodhue
Fri, September 1, 2023

National Hurricane Center

Four named tropical storm systems in the Atlantic are moving well off the United States coast and pose no threat to Florida.

But forecasters are keeping their eye on a system of low pressure northwest of the Cabo Verde Islands they say will form into a tropical depression or tropical storm in the next two days.

The system is moving west at 10 to 15 mph into the eastern tropical Atlantic Ocean, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The hurricane center is also tracking a tropical wave that is expected to move off the west coast of Africa over the weekend. It has a 50% chance for tropical storm development over the next week, forecasters say.

“Environmental conditions are conducive for some gradual development of this system during the early and middle parts of next week, and a tropical depression could form while it moves westward to west-northwestward over the eastern and central portions of the tropical Atlantic,” the National Hurricane Center said in a Friday advisory.

Meanwhile, what was Hurricane Idalia, which hit the Big Bend region of Florida earlier this week, is now Tropical Cyclone Idalia — and could bring tropical storm conditions to Bermuda on Saturday, federal forecasters said.

The other systems in the Atlantic — Hurricane Franklin, Tropical Storm Jose and Tropical Depression Gert — are all heading east out to sea, according to the hurricane center.

Aditya-L1: India successfully launches its first mission to the Sun

Geeta Pandey - BBC News, Delhi
Sat, September 2, 2023 at 2:09 AM MDT

The mission will help improve our scientific understanding of the Sun - the 4.5 billion-year-old star

India has launched its first observation mission to the Sun, just days after the country made history by becoming the first to land near the Moon's south pole.

Aditya-L1 lifted off from the launch pad at Sriharikota on Saturday at 11:50 India time (06:20 GMT).

It will travel 1.5 million km (932,000 miles) from the Earth - 1% of the Earth-Sun distance.

India's space agency says it will take four months to travel that far.

India's first space-based mission to study the solar system's biggest object is named after Surya - the Hindu god of Sun who is also known as Aditya.

And L1 stands for Lagrange point 1 - the exact place between Sun and Earth where the Indian spacecraft is heading.

According to the European Space Agency, a Lagrange point is a spot where the gravitational forces of two large objects - such as the Sun and the Earth - cancel each other out, allowing a spacecraft to "hover".

Once Aditya-L1 reaches this "parking spot", it would be able to orbit the Sun at the same rate as the Earth. This also means the satellite will require very little fuel to operate.

On Saturday morning, a few thousand people gathered in the viewing gallery set up by the Indian Space Research Agency (Isro) near the launch site to watch the blast off.

It was also broadcast live on national TV where commentators described it as a "magnificent" launch. Isro scientists said the launch had been successful and its "performance is normal".

After an hour and four minutes of flight-time, Isro declared it "mission successful".

"Now it will continue on its journey - it's a very long journey of 135 days, let's wish it [the] best of luck," Isro chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath said.

Project director Nigar Shaji said once Aditya-L1 reaches its destination, it will benefit not only India, but the global scientific community.

Aditya-L1 will now travel several times around the Earth before being launched towards L1.

From this vantage position, it will be able to watch the Sun constantly - even when it is hidden during an eclipse - and carry out scientific studies.

Isro has not said how much the mission would cost, but reports in the Indian press put it at 3.78bn rupees ($46m; £36m).

Aditya-L1's trajectory

Isro says the orbiter carries seven scientific instruments that will observe and study the solar corona (the outermost layer); the photosphere (the Sun's surface or the part we see from the Earth) and the chromosphere (a thin layer of plasma that lies between the photosphere and the corona).

The studies will help scientists understand solar activity, such as solar wind and solar flares, and their effect on Earth and near-space weather in real time.

Former Isro scientist Mylswamy Annadurai says the Sun constantly influences the Earth weather through radiation, heat and flow of particles and magnetic fields. At the same time, he says, it also impacts the space weather.

"Space weather plays a role in how effectively the satellites function. Solar winds or storms can affect the electronics on satellites, even knock down power grids. But there are gaps in our knowledge of space weather," Mr Annadurai told the BBC.

India has more than 50 satellites in space and they provide many crucial services to the country, including communication links, data on weather, and help predict pest infestations, droughts and impending disasters. According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), approximately 10,290 satellites remain in the Earth's orbit, with nearly 7,800 of them currently operational.

Aditya will help us better understand, and even give us a forewarning, about the star on which our lives depend, Mr Annadurai says.

"Knowing the activities of the Sun such as solar wind or a solar eruption a couple of days ahead will help us move our satellites out of harm's way. This will help increase the longevity of our satellites in space."

The mission, he adds, will above all help improve our scientific understanding of the Sun - the 4.5 billion-year-old star that holds our solar system together.

India's solar mission comes just days after the country successfully landed the world's first-ever probe near the lunar south pole.

With that, India also became only the fourth country in the world to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.

Solar Orbiter: Sun mission blasts off

Probe makes historic pass through Sun's atmosphere

If Aditya-L1 is successful, India will join the select group of countries that are already studying the Sun.

Japan was the first to launch a mission in 1981 to study solar flares and the US space agency Nasa and European Space Agency (ESA) have been watching the Sun since the 1990s.

In February 2020, Nasa and ESA jointly launched a Solar Orbiter that is studying the Sun from close quarters and gathering data that, scientists say, will help understand what drives its dynamic behaviour.

And in 2021, Nasa's newest spacecraft Parker Solar Probe made history by becoming the first to fly through corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun.

SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts say goodbye from ISS and prepare for return to Earth

Elizabeth Howell
Fri, September 1, 2023 

The SpaceX Crew-6 astronauts on the International Space Station. Clockwise from bottom are NASA astronaut Stephen Bowen; UAE (United Arab Emirates) astronaut Sultan Alneyadi; NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg; and Russian space agency (Roscosmos) cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

Four astronauts bade farewell from space a few days before flying home.

The members of SpaceX's Crew-6 mission, which has spent more than six months aboard the International Space Station (ISS), delivered their farewell remarks from orbit Thursday (Aug. 31), thanking everybody for supporting them ahead of their expected departure on Saturday (Sept. 2).

"When we showed up here six months ago, it was a new experience for all of us," NASA astronaut and Crew-6 commander Stephen Bowen said during the livestreamed remarks on NASA Television. "I'd been to space, but never been on a long-duration mission, and this has been an absolutely incredible experience."

Related: SpaceX's Crew-6 astronauts readying to wrap up their record-breaking flight

The Crew-6 mission included cargo spacecraft visits, three spacewalks and the arrival of the Ax-2 private astronaut crew, on a mission organized by Houston company Axiom Space, NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg recalled. "Hopefully we're leaving the space station just a little bit better than we found it," he said.

You can watch the Crew-6 undocking and splashdown live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA Television. Coverage of the hatch closing and undocking begins at 7 a.m. EDT (1100 GMT) on Saturday, Sept. 2, while splashdown coverage begins later that evening at 11:45 p.m. EDT (0345 GMT Sunday, Sept. 3). Splashdown is expected off the coast of Florida on Sunday at 12:58 a.m. EDT (0458 GMT).

NASA officials said in a blog post that they are monitoring the possible impacts of Hurricane Idelia on these activities, but no changes have been made to the schedule as of yet. The hurricane made a destructive landfall in Florida on Wednesday (Aug. 30).

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Crew-6 launched to space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 2 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Their Crew Dragon spacecraft docked with the ISS on March 3. The full crew includes NASA's Bowen and Hoburg, along with cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) astronaut Sultan Al Neyadi, the first person from the UAE to do a long-duration mission and a spacewalk.

"I felt that I'm responsible, obligated, to show what's happening with the station," Al Neyadi said of his outreach focused especially on the UAE, which included hundreds of posts on social media with pictures and videos the documented his daily activities. "I think it's a small boost towards spreading the enthusiasm in our region. I can't be happier. With the time I was here, (I was) doing everything possible."

Lebanon approves 'Barbie' film for release after bid to ban it

Reuters
Fri, September 1, 2023 

FILE PHOTO: Barbie toys are on display for sale at a toy store in Beirut


BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon on Friday approved the "Barbie" film to be screened in cinemas following an initial attempt to ban it by its culture minister over claims it contradicts conservative values.

Lebanon's General Security agency, which is responsible for reviewing any films, plays or books to be released in Lebanon, issued a decision on Friday allowing the film's screening, according to a copy of the decision seen by Reuters.

The only condition listed was that viewers be restricted to those aged 13 and above.

Last month, Culture Minister Mohammad Mortada asked the interior ministry to ban the film, saying it had been found to "promote homosexuality and sexual transformation" and "contradicts values of faith and morality" by diminishing the importance of the family unit.

Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi in turn asked General Security's censorship committee to review the film and give its recommendation.

Kuwait has banned "Barbie" and supernatural horror film "Talk to Me" to protect "public ethics and social traditions", the state news agency said last month.

Starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, the movie sends Mattel Inc's Barbie doll on an adventure into the real world. The film has topped $1 billion in box office ticket sales worldwide since its July 21 debut.

Lebanon has traditionally served as a beacon of free expression in the region but cases of censorship have been ramping up.

Last week, Lebanese comedian Nour Hajjar was questioned for hours over a joke about the Lebanese army and was briefly detained days later over another joke involving a Muslim sheikh.

(Reporting by Maya Gebeily; Editing by Nick Macfie)

 Adani blasts ‘Soros-funded interests’ after media raise new questions about business empire

Mark Thompson, CNN
Fri, September 1, 2023 

Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s conglomerate has slammed what it described as “Soros-funded interests” after media outlets claimed the Adani Group had used complex and secretive offshore operations to boost its market value, citing documents obtained by a network of investigative journalists.

The documents were unearthed by the non-profit Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), which counts billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations among its financial backers, and its research was shared with media including The Guardian and the Financial Times. CNN has not reviewed the documents.

OCCRP says the Soros foundations account for 4% of its funding. It is also backed by the US State Department, the UK Foreign Office and the Ford Foundation.

Reporting on the OCCRP investigation, the Financial Times said it shone a spotlight on relations between Adani and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and exposed “bespoke investment structures” at a firm in Bermuda used exclusively by Adani associates to trade the group’s stocks.

The Financial Times said people familiar with the structures had claimed “parallel sets of books and a Russian doll of companies and funds” at the investment firm were used to mask the trades.

The Guardian reported that associates of the Adani family may have spent years discreetly acquiring stock in Adani Group companies via an undisclosed and complex operation in Mauritius during its rise to become one of the most powerful businesses in India.

The reports come seven months after Hindenburg Research — a company that makes money by betting against stocks it believes are overinflated or fraudulent — released a report accusing Adani of pulling off “the largest con in corporate history” and “brazen stock manipulation” that had massively boosted the value of the ports-to-energy conglomerate.

The Adani Group described the Hindenburg report as “nothing but a lie” and “a calculated attack on India.” But its value collapsed in the days following publication, wiping out about half of its founder’s wealth within weeks.

The company hit out equally forcefully at this week’s new reporting.

“We categorically reject these recycled allegations,” it said in a statement sent to CNN Thursday. “These news reports appear to be yet another concerted bid by Soros-funded interests supported by a section of the foreign media to revive the meritless Hindenburg report.”

In a statement sent to CNN, the Open Society Foundations said they “are proud to be amongst a number of organizations providing general support to the OCCRP which acts entirely independently regarding the issues it chooses to investigate. What we are seeing now in India is a bogus attempt to discredit OCCRP’s work without engaging with its findings.”

The OCCRP has more than 40 donors, all of which have signed agreements giving total editorial control to the network, co-founder Drew Sullivan said this week in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

When Hindenburg published its report in late January, it pitched 88 questions to Adani that cast doubt on his conglomerate’s financial health. Those ranged from requests for details on the group’s offshore entities to why it has “such a convoluted, interlinked corporate structure.”

A 400-page rebuttal by the conglomerate failed to reassure investors, and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) — India’s market regulator — launched an investigation into “the allegations made in the Hindenburg report as well as the market activity immediately preceding and post the publication of the report.”

Reuters reported Monday that SEBI had told India’s Supreme Court last Friday that its investigation was nearly complete.

Adani referenced the SEBI investigation in its statement Thursday, saying it was “vital to respect the ongoing regulatory process.”

“We have complete faith in the due process of the law and remain confident of the quality of our disclosures and corporate governance standards,” it added. “In light of these facts, the timing of these news reports is suspicious, mischievous and malicious — and we reject these reports in their entirety.”

Adani hails from the same state — Gujurat — as Modi, and has long been viewed as one of the prime minister’s closest allies in business. Modi used Adani’s private aircraft while he was campaigning to become prime minister in 2014. Over the years, both the ruling party and the industrialist have denied any suggestion of favoritism.

The Guardian — citing a document provided by the OCCRP — said government regulators, including SEBI, were aware of stock market activity using Adani offshore funds as far back as 2014.

Speaking to reporters in Mumbai on Thursday, Rahul Gandhi, a prominent lawmaker from India’s main opposition Congress party, urged Modi to investigate the allegations put forward by the Financial Times and The Guardian and criticized his silence on the matter.

“These are newspapers that affect the perception of our country in the world,” Gandhi said. “We are trying to show the world that we are a transparent economy… that India has a level playing field.”

“Why is this one gentleman who is close to the prime minister of India allowed to move a billion dollars to pump up his share price; to use that money to capture Indian assets [such as] airports [and] ports?… I don’t understand why the prime minister is not forcing an investigation. Why is he quiet?”

— Michelle Toh and Rhea Mogul contributed to this article.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM IS FASCISM 

Harvard professor Avi Loeb says he found interstellar objects in the deep sea. Others are skeptical

Elizabeth Hlavinka
Fri, September 1, 2023

Avi Loeb Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize Foundation


In 2014, a meteorite dubbed IM1 broke apart over the Pacific Ocean, casting at least 700 remnants into the ocean near Papua New Guinea, according to Avi Loeb, Ph.D., a theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard. In new research, Loeb says his team found evidence in 57 of these shiny spherules that suggests they came from outside our solar system, making them the "first recognized interstellar object bigger than half a meter in size."

"This is the first time that scientists analyzed materials from such an object, so that's a historic discovery already," Loeb told Salon in a video call.

The claims, dispersed in a press release and paper that has not been peer-reviewed or accepted in a journal, are extraordinary, to say the least. Loeb barely has time in the day this week to field reporters questioning him about his findings. And for good reason: If corroborated, a discovery like this could change how we think about life in this solar system by providing clues into how it operates in others.

Loeb is the longest-running chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University and has published more than 800 scientific papers. But he has become a source of controversy in the scientific community for making what The New York Times called "outlandish declarations that are too strong and too hasty." Some of his peers are hesitant to accept these new findings and are critical of his approach to the scientific method, which involves widely disseminating his work to the media before following the typical peer-review process.

"The closest analogy to his approach to the scientific method is the way that a bull approaches a china shop," said Ethan R. Siegel, Ph.D., a theoretical astrophysicist and science communicator. "What Loeb has been doing with not only this one particular interstellar claim but in a troubling pattern of claims that has been going on for several years, is failing to be his own harshest critic. Instead, [he] behaves like a religious zealot about his alleged discoveries."

Loeb counters that scientists should be transparent with the public throughout every step of their process. During and after his Galileo Mission, in which he used a deep-sea, magnetic rake to scoop up these mysterious spherules, he wrote more than 40 publicly available blog entries about his findings. He argues that greater transparency in science can help build trust in a community that has begun to lose the public's confidence in recent years.

"Those people who make these comments don't do much; they sit on their chairs and display negativity," Loeb said. "If they have a better method of doing science, they should let me know, but the way I was educated is that you need to collect the evidence, analyze it and publish it in a scientific paper. What I do differently is I also communicate with the public."

Donald Brownlee, Ph.D., an astronomer at the University of Washington who has spent his career studying cosmic remnants like meteorites and stardust, pointed to Carl Sagan's quote, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence," when asked about Loeb's research.

"What they found is interesting — they didn't come back empty-handed," Brownlee told Salon in a phone interview. "They came back with real extraterrestrial material and clearly in that are some particles that are quite mysterious for the reasons they describe."

Loeb says traces of three rare elements — beryllium, lanthanum and uranium — suggest the spheres come from outside of our solar system. He hypothesizes they could have originated from a magma ocean on a planet with an iron core or a region near an exploding star that was enriched with these elements. Or, he says, it could be technological in origin, meaning it was manufactured by aliens.

Brownlee said the prevalence of these elements is not sufficient proof to determine if they are from outside our solar system or even outside our planet. The answer to whether they are indeed interstellar in origin instead lies in the sphere's isotopes, or various forms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons, rather than the abundance of certain elements, Brownlee said.

"The ratio of isotopes of uranium 238 to 225 on our planet is different than anywhere else in the universe because the two isotopes decay at different timescales," Brownlee said. "So uranium from outside the solar system would have been totally different isotopically than ours."

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter Lab Notes.

Steven Desch, Ph.D., an astrophysics professor at Arizona State University who researches small grains and meteorites, said the data Loeb presents regarding the isotopic makeup of the spherules suggests they are instead something from within our solar system that was manipulated when it passed through the atmosphere.

"I don't know exactly what this composition is telling us except I do see that, broadly, it's pretty similar to other types of micrometeorites that have ended up on the bottom of the ocean," Desch told Salon in a phone interview, citing a 2016 study that found similar spheres made up of rare elements that were also collected from the ocean floor. "Right away that tells us they're maybe just asteroids in our own solar system."

Loeb says additional evidence comes from the trajectory of IM1 as it passed through the atmosphere and broke apart before entering the ocean as spherules. The idea is embedded in the fact that the spherules maintained their composition without being completely demolished en route, which shows they are "tougher than all space rock cataloged by NASA over the past decade, including iron meteorites," he said.

But Desch says the speed at which an interstellar meteorite of this composition entered the atmosphere would burn everything up and there wouldn't be any spherules like these left. On the other hand, if it came from within our solar system, it could have gone slow enough to break apart and fall into the ocean, scattering spherules like these.

"This is aside from the parts that they actually do not know where it crashed or exploded, and they actually do not seem to realize how much it's spread out by ocean currents and things like that," Desch said.

In 2017, Loeb famously said another interstellar object known as Oumuamua — meaning "scout" or "messenger" in Hawaiian — could have been a form of alien technology visiting us from a distant star. He even published a book about his findings in January 2021. But just a couple of months later, Desch published a contradictory paper that found Oumuamua was actually an icy piece of rock from a Pluto-like planet.

This back-and-forth is a lot to keep up with, and Desch says Loeb going to the media without having his work peer-reviewed risks losing even more of the public's trust in the scientific community.

"It's distasteful," he said. "It really confuses the public and erodes faith in the scientific method."

Some scientists contacted for this story declined to comment on Loeb's contradictory findings. Karl Gebhardt, Ph.D., an astrophysics professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies black holes and the formation of galaxies, said a "toxic" culture has developed around Loeb's research. Though Gebhardt said he was excited by his research and applauded his efforts, he said Loeb is quick to dismiss feedback from his peers and sometimes aggressively cuts off collaboration within the scientific community.

"I am glad to hear he has submitted something to some journal," Gebhardt told Salon in an email. "That does not necessarily imply the community will engage with him, since he has burned so many bridges already."

Brownlee said Loeb is "quite a self-promoter," although he noted that could be necessary for an expedition like this, which cost $1.5 million and was funded by donations from a cryptocurrency entrepreneur. Loeb dispersed the press release on the same day he released another book about the Galileo Mission, in which he waxes philosophical about the likelihood that we are not alone in the universe.

During the expedition, Loeb was followed by a film crew interested in making a documentary about the retrieval of the spherules. On his daily morning jog one day on the deck of the ship, the director asked him whether he was running away or towards something.

He replied, "Both. I am running away from some of my colleagues and towards a higher intelligence in interstellar space."

Read more

about interstellar life

Scientist says interstellar travel might be possible without spaceships


Tracing water's path through a young star system could provide clues as to how alien life might form


Why aliens wouldn't spy on humans with balloons

Film and TV Business Sheds 17,000 Jobs in August as Strike Impact Hits Hollywood Labor Force

Alex Weprin
Fri, September 1, 2023 

The ongoing Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes are beginning to hit Hollywood’s labor pool.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in figures released Friday, the film, TV and music industries shed 17,000 jobs last month. “Information employment changed little in August (-15,000),” the BLS wrote of the larger sector in which the entertainment industry resides.

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“Within the industry, employment in motion picture and sound recording industries decreased by 17,000, reflecting strike activity. Job losses continued in telecommunications (-4,000),” the BLS added.

The disclosure was released as part of the BLS’ August employment report. The (mostly positive) report saw the U.S. unemployment rate rise from 3.5 percent to 3.8 percent, but saw job growth come in much better than expected, with a net gain of 187,000 jobs, led by the health care, leisure and hospitality, and construction sectors. The rise in the overall unemployment rate was due to about 700,000 people entering the labor force.

The BLS report is one of the first independent, credible sources of information to attach a number to the larger job impact of the strikes. The WGA went on strike in May, but some film and TV production continued in the weeks that followed. The SAG-AFTRA strike, which began in mid-July, appears to have taken a larger toll on the industry.

Beyond the striking workers, the impact of the strikes has led to layoffs at other businesses in Hollywood, including at production companies, talent agencies, and businesses that have traditionally relied on the Hollywood studio system for their income.

The striking writers and actors, of course, are seeking an employment agreement that they believe will benefit their union members, ultimately providing them with more reliable income and a stronger safety net.

As union leaders have noted, however, they did not make the strike call lightly, with everyone in the business acutely aware of the larger economic impact.

On Thursday, California State Treasurer Fiona Ma sent a letter to the studios asking them to return to the negotiating table. “The impact of these two strikes paralyzes Hollywood and reverberates across the state, affecting countless businesses, thousands of pension fund beneficiaries and millions of Californians,” Ma wrote.

The BLS report put an early number to those concerns.

The Hollywood Reporter

Scientist makes incredible discovery while exploring Texas’ Big Bend National Park: ‘Highlight of [my] career’

Jeremiah Budin
Fri, September 1, 2023 

The Quercus tardifolia is a little-known type of oak tree that is native to, and exclusively found in, the Chisos Mountains located in Texas’ Big Bend National Park.

It was declared extinct about a decade ago, thought to be a victim of rising temperatures that made it impossible for the species to survive.

But conversation botanist Michael Eason recently got the surprise of a lifetime when he found a pair of Quercus tardifolia in Big Bend.

5⃣ Botanical researcher Michael Eason discovered a Texas Oak tree in @bigbendnps when its species, Quercus tardifolia, was believed to be extinct. Read on for a fascinating scientific story. @sabotgarden @mortonarb

https://t.co/eqi8BPuEMzpic.twitter.com/xKNa8MAORW

— Amendo (@ThisIsAmendo) July 14, 2023

Eason, the associate director of conservation and collections at the San Antonio Botanical Garden’s rare plants and conservation program, is one of the few people who could have identified the presumed-extinct oak tree for what it was, but even he was not initially sure.

“The oaks out here in West Texas and Northern Mexico are, in a word, ‘confusing,’” he told KUT, Austin’s public radio station, explaining that oak trees cross-pollinate, creating subspecies constantly.

To navigate that confusion, Eason and his colleagues sent leaf clippings to Morton Arboretum in Illinois, where botanists were able to analyze them and confirm that they really were tardifolia.

“Oh, yeah. It’s definitely a highlight of the career, finding something that was presumed extinct,” Eason told KUT. “There’s definitely elation when we found it that first day; I was pretty emotional. I don’t think anyone thought that we would find two, and I don’t think anyone ever thought that we would be looking at other populations on private land.”

Because they “can’t fight nature,” Eason and his fellow conservationists do not plan to try to reintroduce more tardifolia to Big Bend. Instead, their plan is to grow them at botanic gardens and arboretums throughout the United States, ensuring the continued existence of the species.

Eason has already cut off shoots and grafted them onto oak rootstock at the San Antonio Botanical Garden and reported that they are thriving.

Text Pages (mortonarb.org)

Texas oak tree thought to be extinct discovered in Big Bend National Park

Texas Public Radio | By Jack Morgan
Published July 24, 2023 

Courtesy Photo
/
Adam BlackElizabeth Thomas looks into Boot Canyon where there's a microclimate that encourages deciduous tree growth.


A decade ago, the Quercus Tardifolia oak tree was declared extinct. But last year, Michael Eason, a scientist with the San Antonio Botanical Garden’s Rare Plants and Conservation program, found a pair of them in the West Texas mountains.

“It was presumed extinct for just over a decade, and we don't really know what happened with the known one plant that was located up in Big Bend National Park and in the Chisos Mountains there in Boot Canyon. Somehow, sometime around 2011, it just disappeared,” he explained.

The Chisos are the tallest mountains in Big Bend. Emory Peak stands at 7,825 feet. Boot Canyon is a narrow north-facing canyon that gets less sun, and rain drains from the peaks down through the Canyon, making it more inviting for trees.

Quercus is the species — oak — and Eason said Tardifolia highlights something specific about the tree. “The Tardifolia — that basically means it leafs out late, whereas most other ones are much earlier in the season,” he said.

Jack MorganMichael Eason holds Quercus Tardifolia that he's growing in a greenhouse



If you’re late, you’re tardy, and that’s why it earned that name. There’s another thing about this tree that’s peculiar: It’s not just late to come out in the spring.

“It changes its leaves over much, much later than other species,” Eason said.

Like Live Oaks, the Tardifolia keeps its leaves all winter, and it doesn’t lose them until the next spring.

Photo By UC Davis Arboretum And Public GardenQuercus Tardifolia found in Boot Canyon



“This species is one of those sort of relic species of millennia ago, whenever the climate here was much wetter and cooler. And so the only places it can really survive out here in West Texas is higher elevations, where it is wetter and cooler.”

Over thousands of years as Texas heated up, it became tougher for these trees to survive and thrive. Also, the trees complicate matters for scientists.

“The oaks out here in West Texas and northern Mexico are, in a word, 'confusing,' ” he said.

Photo By Bartlett Tree Research Laboratories And ArboretumBoot Canyon with its namesake boot



Oak trees tend to cross-pollinate, creating sub-species constantly. So classifying them as one species or another becomes a lot more tricky.

“The Tardifolia, the one that nobody could ever find, was sort of a — I wouldn't say a missing link — but we were trying to figure out 'where does this sit?' ” Eason said.

There’s only so much they can do in the field. Scientists sent leaves to Morton Arboretum in Illinois to put them under the microscope to be sure what they’d found was really Tardifolia. It was.

Then, they went back to Boot Canyon in January, when most trees had dropped their leaves, but they discovered the Tardifolia hadn’t.

Michael EasonEason with a branch he's removed from a Tardifolia, that was then grafted onto oak rootstock



“We had eight people stretched across the sides of mountains or within canyons and we just walked,” he said. “So that way you have a pair of eyes being able to look and cover much, much more ground. And that's how we came across this one large oak out in West Texas.”

He was thrilled to find something thought to be permanently gone.

“Oh, yeah. It's definitely a highlight of the career finding something that was presumed extinct,” he said. "There's definitely elation when we found it that first day, I was pretty emotional. I don't think anyone thought that we would find two, and I don't think anyone ever thought that we would be looking at other populations on private land.”

Jack MorganThe back side of Tardifolia leaf, with tiny hairs that keep moisture from evaporating off the leaf



Subsequent surveys have discovered a few more trees on ranchland outside Big Bend, and also in moist canyons. Eason and his team cut off shoots, brought them back to San Antonio, and they’ve been grafted onto other oak rootstock, and are thriving.

Their plan is to take another survey in January when most other trees have lost their leaves, making Tardifolia stand out. But there is no plan to re-introduce them to Big Bend because they can't fight nature.

“So we have to grow these out and keep them in a safe place and safe places or places like Botanic Gardens or arboreta,” Eason said.

Jack MorganThe Chisos Mountains arise out of the desert of Big Bend National Park

They will plant a few at the San Antonio Botanical Garden, and they will ship others to botanical gardens from coast-to-coast to be planted on their grounds, all but ensuring this species doesn’t just disappear from the face of the earth, even if they eventually do from the Chisos.

“It's one of those rare success stories in conservation and being part of that, especially here in Texas, being part of that, it's pretty remarkable,” he said.

In a few years, visitors to the San Antonio Botanical Garden may get to rest in their shade.



Copyright 2023 Texas Public Radio. To see more, visit Texas Public Radio.

3,000-year-old tomb of shaman who may have mediated 'between spiritual and earthly worlds' found in Peru

Owen Jarus
Fri, September 1, 2023 

Archaeologists excavate the remain of a priest or shaman who lived about 3,000 years ago in Peru.

Archaeologists in Peru have discovered a 3,000-year-old tomb containing the remains of a "priest" buried with a depiction of a jaguar near the city of Cajamarca.

The burial was found at the Pacopampa Archaeological Complex, which contains multiple ancient burials that archaeologists from Peru and Japan have been excavating since 2005, Peru's Ministry of Culture said in a translated statement.

The priest's burial contains three ceramic stamps that have images engraved on them, including a jaguar, according to the statement. These stamps may have been used for body painting. The archaeologists also found decorated ceramics in the tomb.

Related: People 'finger painted' the skulls of their ancestors red in the Andes a millennium ago

The priest's face was covered with red cinnabar, a naturally occuring substance that would have been hard to obtain, as it has to be transported from the mountains. "Cinnabar is believed to have originated in the central Andean highlands, and we believe that only the elite could have obtained or used it by large distance trade," Yuji Seki, an archaeologist with Japan's National Museum of Ethnology and co-director of the archaeological team, told Live Science in an email.

The team called the individual a "priest" in the statement, but this person may have been "more of a shaman-like figure who manipulated the powers of jaguars, snakes, and birds of prey like a shaman," Seki said. People may have turned to the shaman for answers or for help healing, and the shaman may have used his believed connection to the spiritual world to assist them.

"In other words, he must have had the ability to mediate between the spiritual and earthly worlds," Seki said. The stamps found in his tomb may have been symbols of authority, he added.

The team has not yet done any radiocarbon dating, but the style of the artifacts matches the design of other artifacts found in the region that have been dated to about 3,000 years ago, Seki said.

Archaeologists not involved in the finding called it an interesting discovery but cautioned that it's too early to call this individual a priest.

A team of Peruvian and Japanese archaeologists unearthed decorated ceramics in the individual's tomb.

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"The materials found with the individual include seals for body painting and complete ceramic vessels suggesting that this person was an early elite," said Jason Nesbitt, an associate professor of archaeology at Tulane University who has conducted extensive archaeological research in Peru. "I am looking forward to more detailed information about the actual skeleton, including data about age and sex, as the project analysis moves forward," Nesbitt told Live Science in an email.

Justin Jennings, a senior curator of archaeology of the Americas at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, said that we need to be cautious about jumping to conclusions when identifying this individual. "To call the buried individual a 'priest' or 'elite' seems premature, as roles [are] unlikely to have been established" at the time the man was buried, Jennings told Live Science in an email.