How a volcano saved Iceland's travel industry

A volcanic eruption came at just the right time for Iceland's stricken tourism industry: The country has been COVID-free since May and is now attracting nature tourists on the lookout for something unusual.

    

For 2 kilometers we've seen nothing but fog, so thick that the wooden stakes rammed into the field of scree are barely visible.

Then, on a slope, the silhouettes of a pair of hikers looking downward appear. But even from up here, the eruption on Fagradalsfjall can't be seen yet. Iceland's newest, still nameless volcano, which opened up in March on the Reykjanes Peninsula at the southwest tip of the country.

No guarantee of a clear view of the natural spectacle – patience is needed

Then the fog clears and reveals a lunar landscape, rugged, in gray and black; in some places pale yellow sulfur coagulates; here and there smoke rises. The field is crisscrossed by fiery orange rivulets of lava that flow along, sometimes swift, sometimes slow and viscous. At one point a deep threatening rumbling can be heard in the distance, but on this foggy summer day, the volcano refuses to show itself. 

The volcanic activity is getting tourism going again

The primordial forces released by volcanoes are as fascinating as they are threatening — just think of the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, which brought air traffic in the northern hemisphere to a standstill — and in Iceland the southern coastal road may soon also fall victim to lava flows.

But, for Icelandic tourism, the eruption came at just the right time. After a decade of breathtaking growth, the COVID-19 crisis has reduced it drastically: In 2019 nearly 2 million tourists landed at Keflavik International Airport. In the COVID year of 2020 there were a mere 478,000.

Fire and ice shape the island in the northern Atlantic — Iceland's landscape is constantly changing

Then, in mid-March, Iceland began to open itself gradually to fully vaccinated people. This May, nearly 13 times as many people traveled to Iceland, compared to the admittedly very low numbers in May 2020.

For the coming months, the Icelandic Tourist Board (ITB) is expecting stable growth. Starting in autumn, pre-pandemic levels should be reached: "For this year we expect a total of about 900,000 visitors. That's almost half as many as in 2019," Snorri Valsson from the ITB told DW. "In 2022 there could again be almost two million. So we expect a swift recovery." 

It could, however, be a problem that many workers from abroad who could no longer afford the cost of living here after they lost their jobs in the tourist industry because of COVID-19 have left Iceland. 

A PCR test is no longer required for the vaccinated

The coronavirus itself has largely spared the country, with its population of 360,000: According to the data bank Our World in Data, 6,555 infections and 29 deaths have been registered, and since May no one else has become infected. 

Iceland wants to make sure things remain that way. Citizens of the European Economic Area (EEA) can enter the country if they present a negative PCR test that is no more than 72 hours old. Those who have recovered from the disease or been vaccinated have to present valid proof, for instance that provided by the digital COVID certificate launched by the EU. That sounds reckless in light of the rapidly spreading delta variant — but according to Valsson, like every pandemic decision in Iceland, it is science-based: "Our society is more or less completely protected. Even if in individual cases the delta variant were to be accidentally introduced, it wouldn't trigger a large outbreak in Iceland." 

By the first weekend in July, 77% of the population had received a first vaccination, and a good 65% were already fully vaccinated.  

This is the first volcanic eruption on the peninsula south of Reykjavik in 800 years

In Iceland, the pandemic is 'over'

That leads to the kind of post-pandemic feeling that tourists can probably enjoy in only a few places on earth: Masks must only be worn on very rare occasions, for instance at a performance in the impressive Harpa concert hall on the waterfront of the capital, Reykjavik. In Iceland you can sit at the last free table in an otherwise-full restaurant without feeling uneasy. Only hand-sanitizer dispensers and in a few places the request to enter your contact details in an online form are faint reminders of the coronavirus. 

It takes 3,900 years until a lava field looks like this one on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula in northwest Iceland

Most people who travel to Iceland, however, usually come to enjoy nature. Actually, the tremendous growth in tourism since the country nearly went bankrupt in the financial crisis of 2009 has been threatening the nature and infrastructure of the rural regions. When the country's currency crashed, many people could suddenly afford what would otherwise have been an expensive vacation in Iceland. In many places hiking trails, access roads and parking areas could scarcely stand up to the sudden influx.

That involved environmental damage. Places that were especially hard hit included the three attractions along the Golden Circle, a typical route for a day trip from Reykjavik, on which tourists can see Thingvellir National Park, the Haukadalur geothermal area with its geysers and the spectacular Gullfoss waterfall.      

Gullfoss means 'golden falls': it's also the source of the name of the 'Golden Circle' tourist route

Since then much has improved, says Snorri Valsson, thanks partly to a fund from which about €4-5 million ($4.75-6 million) annually are earmarked for tourism infrastructure. "That and other measures have improved the situation, so that we now no longer have any serious problems anywhere. But of course we have to stay on the ball."

The volcanic eruption could remain an attraction for a long time 

Iceland is bracing itself for a longer volcanic eruption — and for tourists: Geologists have evidence from elsewhere in Iceland that effusive eruptions of shield volcanoes can last for decades.

The lava flows wherever it wants to: Some hiking trails are now impassable

With an eye to the future, €900,000 has been earmarked for infrastructure such as paths, parking areas, toilets and cellphone towers around the new volcano. In Valsson's view, there is no alternative — he says that without marked paths, people could get lost or meet with an accident and injure themselves.

In late June a major search operation had to be conducted for an American tourist who had lost his way. The terrain is changing constantly, and with it the access routes. 

An unforgettable natural spectacle

A week after our hike in the fog, we get another chance to have a look at the eruption on Fagradalsfjall. As we climb up, we can already see from afar the smoke the mountain emits in its eruptive phases. Only now can we see how much lava has flooded the Geldingadalir valley. Then there's a clear view of the fissure, about 500 meters away, that becomes slightly larger with every eruption. 

A natural spectacle you don't want to get too close to: Fagradalsfjall volcano spews lava

It's evening, and around us sit mainly Icelanders. Some have brought along food and drink. After a few minutes, the show begins and lava flows from the crater's edge, first as a thin trickle, then in a broad flood that makes the entire slope glow a fiery red. Then the stream peters out, at least for a few minutes. The process is repeated several times, and we observe it, mesmerized. Deeply impressed, we wend our way back. We have had the privilege of witnessing a natural spectacle that we'll remember for the rest of our lives.  

 KRIMINAL KAPITALI$M

Hanno Berger: Alleged 'cum-ex' fraud architect detained

Swiss police have arrested the German lawyer accused of masterminding a tax evasion scheme that authorities say cost taxpayers billions.

    

The 'cum-ex' scandal is believed to have cost the German state billions

Hanno Berger, a German lawyer suspected of having promoted a major fraud scheme that stopped many billions in tax revenue being collected, has been arrested in Switzerland, German and Swiss authorities said on Friday.

Berger was arrested in the Swiss canton of Grisons on July 7 based on an extradition request from Germany, the Swiss Justice Ministry said.

What was the cum-ex scandal?

The 'cum-ex' scandal was a share-trading scheme that is reported to have cost the German state billions of euros and state treasuries across Europe more than €55 billion ($65 billion). It was Germany's biggest post-war tax fraud.

It involved shifting shares from major companies rapidly around a group of banks, investors and hedge funds around the time dividends were paid out to make it seem as if there were numerous owners, each entitled to a tax rebate.

The scheme ran from 2005 through 2012, when the loophole allowing it to occur was closed.

The scandal is the focus of several investigations across Germany, with the government wanting to retrieve the billions of euros that it says were stolen from state coffers.

Last year, two British bankers were handed suspended jail terms and one a €14 million penalty in the first criminal convictions associated with the scheme.

In June of this year, a former German bank employee became the first to be jailed over the scam.

What happens with Berger now?

Following his arrest, Berger's extradition is now pending a decision by Switzerland's Justice Ministry, although any decision it takes can be further appealed to the Swiss Federal Criminal Court.

Kai Schaffelhuber, a lawyer for Berger, said he did not believe that extradition would succeed and that his client was innocent.

"Switzerland isn't dumb," Schaffelhuber said.

The 70-year-old Berger, who has been living in exile in Switzerland, is a defendant in a case that is being tried in Wiesbaden, near Frankfurt. He has always denied any wrongdoing.

tj/rt (Reuters, dpa)

 

Study: Climate change made Pacific Northwest heat wave 150 times more likely

Climate scientists have used models to confirm that burning fossil fuels made the extreme heat wave in parts of the US and Canada hotter and more likely.

    

The Canadian town of Lytton was all but destroyed in a wildfire in late June

When a heat wave began to scorch Canada and the US in late June — killing elderly people alone in their homes and fueling wildfires that wiped out an entire village — scientists said burning fossil fuels had changed the climate enough to make the temperature extremes worse.

One week later, they know by how much.

Global warming made the hottest day of the North American heat wave 150 times more likely and 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) hotter, according to a rapid attribution study released Thursday by an international team of 27 scientists from the World Weather Attribution initiative (WWA). Temperatures broke records in Oregon and Washington, in the US, and in British Columbia, in Canada. They reached a high of 49.6 C (121 F) that researchers say would have been "virtually impossible" without climate change.

The study, which has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, is the latest example of scientists using models to swiftly assess the role of greenhouse gas emissions in exacerbating extreme weather. Its findings dispel a myth prevalent in rich countries that climate change only hurts people far away from them or in the distant future.

"We are entering uncharted territory," said study co-author Sonia Seneviratne, from the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. "Much higher temperature records will be reached if we don't manage to stop greenhouse gas emissions and halt global warming."

How did climate change affect the Pacific Northwest heat wave?

The temperatures — which authorities estimate have killed hundreds of people — were so much higher than historical records that researchers struggled to work out exactly how often such a heat wave could be expected. Their best guess is that such temperatures would occur once every thousand years in today's climate. And they found two theories for how it got so hot.

One explanation is that a combination of preexisting drought and unusual atmospheric conditions — a heat dome of warm air trapped in place by a bend in the jet stream — combined with climate change to drastically raise temperatures. "The statistical equivalent of really bad luck, albeit aggravated by climate change," the authors summarized.

An alternative, more troubling possibility is that the climate system may have already crossed a threshold where small amounts of warming push up temperatures up faster than previously observed. If true, it would mean such record-breaking heat waves have already become more likely to happen than climate models predict.

Heat waves are particularly dangerous for elderly people

"What we are seeing is unprecedented," said study co-author Friederike Otto, from the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford. "This is such an exceptional event that we can't rule out the possibility that we're experiencing heat extremes today that we only expected to come at higher levels of global warming."

Previous heat records were "pulverized" by such large margins that "something else must be going on," said Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who was not involved in the study. "The study is valid and state of the art."

How does climate change affect heat waves?

Climate change has made heat waves hotter, longer and more common. By burning fossil fuels — which release gases that trap the sun's heat like a greenhouse — humans have warmed the planet by about 1.1 C above preindustrial levels. This raises the chance of record-breaking temperatures.

Lytton, a village in the Canadian province of British Columbia, broke the country's heat record on July 2 when temperatures shot almost 5 C above the previous record of 45 C.

The next day it was destroyed by a wildfire.

"We are a small, rural, Indigenous, low-income community and we are at the spearpoint of climate change," Gordon Murray, a resident who escaped Lytton, said in an interview Friday with public broadcaster CBC News. "But it's coming for everybody. We're the canary in the coal mine."

Wildfires in British Columbia, Canada, destroyed an entire village

How do heat waves affect health?

Heat waves, which have been among the deadliest disasters in the past few years, stress the human body. Hot weather exacerbates existing health conditions like heart, lung and kidney disease, as well as diabetes. It is particularly harmful to elderly people, young children, construction workers and homeless people.

The Pacific Northwest is used to a cool, often rainy climate, and fewer people have air conditioning than in southern states. In Oregon, authorities estimate that 107 people mostly aged 60 or older died from heat-related causes during the temperature spike.

Because temperatures in Oregon stayed high overnight, people couldn't cool down and recover, said Brandon Maughan, an emergency medicine doctor at Oregon Health and Science University in the state's largest city, Portland, which experienced searing heat over three days at the end of June that peaked at 46.7 C. "Many people assumed that they would suffer through it like they have in prior summers. And this is just fundamentally different."

Schools and COVID-19 test centers have closed while large spaces have been turned into cooling stations

In an average year, he said, Oregon hospitals treat many people for heat exhaustion — which they can manage at home while feeling unwell — but few people come in with symptoms of the more serious heat stroke. "We just saw more of it this year."

 A study published in the journal Nature Climate Change in May that found 1 in 3 deaths from heat during warm seasons since 1991 can be attributed to climate change. The North America heat wave shows that "current adaptation systems are not prepared for such very extreme events," said Ana Vicedo, group leader for climate change and health at the University of Bern in Switzerland, and co-author of the study.

In 2003, in Europe, a summer heat wave made twice as likely by global warming killed more than 70,000 people. In Paris alone, climate change increased the risk of dying from heat by 70%, leading to more than 500 deaths.

Doctors recommend checking on vulnerable neighbors and staying in the shade

How to stay cool during a heat wave

People can stay cool by finding public places with shade or air conditioning, drinking water, and keeping an eye on elderly and vulnerable neighbors.

This can be trickier in cities, where concrete buildings and asphalt roads absorb heat and raise temperatures even higher than in the surrounding countryside. Local governments can reduce the burden by designing cities with more trees, parks and waterways.

Though people can adapt to hotter temperatures, scientists stress that climate policy to stop emissions is what will decide the length, strength and frequency of heat waves.

In 2015, world leaders promised to limit global warming to well below 2 C above preindustrial levels. Their current policies will instead heat the planet by about 3 C, according to German-based research group Climate Action Tracker.

The WWA study found that global warming of 2 C would make heat waves like the one in North America so likely they would hit every five to 10 years.

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Alice Munro, master of the short story, at 90

The acclaimed Canadian author of "Dear Life" turns 90 on July 10. Alice Munro was the first to win the Nobel Prize as a pure short story writer.

    

Alice Munro

Dear Life was the title Munro gave to her 2012 collection of short stories — possibly her last. Some of the stories are inspired by the author's own life. If the other stories also explore the destinies of women, it never feels as if feminism were the main issue.

Alice Munro has published 14 original short-story collections and several short-story compilations. With this body of work, she became the first Canadian woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. She was too frail to travel to Stockholm to collect the award herself, but sent a touching speech by video instead.

Building on a simple story

Munro's stories combine linguistic and emotional density. They typically revolve around a series of recurring themes. They're about women in Canada, mothers and daughters, who grow up, fall in love, and experience the beautiful and tragic sides of life.

"What makes Munro's growth as an artist so crisply and breathtakingly visible […] is precisely the familiarity of her materials. Look what she can do with nothing but her own small story; the more she returns to it, the more she finds," wrote the US author Jonathan Franzen about her a decade before she won the Nobel Prize.

His impassionate piece in the New York Times listed reasons why he felt "her excellence so dismayingly exceeds her fame."

A whole life on a single page

"Munro writes about unfulfilled desires that are carried through one's life, and how people deal with them. It's the small details that make her so great," said Hans-Jürgen Balmes, formerly from the publisher S. Fischer, which distributes Munro's books in Germany.

"She masters the art of capturing the entire life of a human being on a single page," literary critic Sigrid Löffler told DW. "She fills her stories, which are often no longer than 20 to 30 pages, with more life than many 700-page works."

Her short stories are packed with emotion, the language highly polished. A Munro story often has an unexpected beginning, and the narrative develops chronologically forwards or backwards.

"Dear Life" might be Munro's last collection of short stories

Her books have long been best-sellers in Canada and the UK, and she became extremely popular in Germany after winning the Nobel Prize.

Adding value to the short story

Munro began writing relatively late. She first concentrated on raising her three children before she devoted herself to her writing by the end of the 1960s, around the age of 40.

The author long wrestled with the notion that short stories are generally considered preparation work for a novel, seen as a minor genre by literary critics. "How I tortured myself trying to write a novel! Until I one day realized that short stories was the most appropriate format for me," she once told Die Zeit in a rare interview.

As a specialist of the short story, even her book Lives of Girls and Women, told through one single character, was rather considered a short story cycle and not a novel.

She obtained the Man Booker International Prize in 2009 for her lifetime body of work, which includes The Love of a Good Woman (1998) and Runaway (2004). She has also been awarded several other prizes and honors as well, topped by the Nobel Prize in 2013.

Retirement plans — or not

On July 10, the Canadian author turns 90. Although she had announced her retirement plans the year she received her Nobel Prize, she admitted afterwards that ideas still keep coming for new stories.

She had also already hinted that she wanted to stop writing in 2006: "I don't think I can write any more. Two or three years from now, I will be too old, I will be too tired," she had told The Guardian.

Six years later came the critically acclaimed collection Dear Life. As a sign she might be serious about retirement this time, though, she added a coda to the last four stories: "I believe they are the first and last — and the closest — things I have to say about my own life."

 

German election officials exclude communists, anarchists from September vote

The country's federal election committee began meeting in Berlin on Thursday. Its job is to decide which smaller parties are allowed to stand in the race for the Bundestag this September.

Germany's federal election committee will decide later on Friday which minor parties can run in this September's national vote.

Officials began meeting in Berlin on Thursday to go through the applications from 87 political groups who want to stand in the race for seats in the country's parliament, the Bundestag.

The committee is made up of one chairman, eight politicians from Germany's main political parties and two top judges.

Those who already have at least five seats in the Bundestag are exempt from this process, which takes place before every major election.

Germans go to the polls on September 26 this year as Chancellor Angela Merkel prepares to step down.

Who is in? Who is out?

On Thursday, the committee ruled that a number of parties would be excluded from this year's vote.

They included the German Communist Party, known by its German acronym the DKP.

It would be the first time since it was founded in 1968 that it was not allowed to compete in the Bundestag election. 

In 2017, the DKP picked up a total of around 11,500 votes nationwide, not enough for a seat. The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLDP) was more successful with almost 30,000 votes, but still fell miles short of the hurdle to enter parliament. German socialist votes tend to go towards the more moderate Left party (die Linke), which secured 9.2% of the 2017 vote.

Parties face several hurdles before they can appear on the ballot paper in September

German election officials said the DKP had failed to file key paperwork on time.

"Deadlines are deadlines," Federal Election Commissioner Georg Thiel, the committee's chair, was quoted as saying by the DPA news agency.

But their decisions can always be subjected to a legal review.

DKP chairman Patrik Köbele said on Thursday that he plans to appeal in court over the decision.

"We are convinced that this attempt to ban us [from the election] will fail," he said.

Anarchists fail to make the cut

Another fringe party that missed out was the the Anarchistic Pogo Party of Germany, or AAPD, which took part in the 1998 election with the promise to pay voters with free beer.

Running with a slogan "work is s***," election officials also rejected their application to stand because it had only been submitted electronically.

Parties also need a minimum number of supporters' signatures before they can run

But the South Schleswig Voters' Association, or SSW, had more luck.

The party represents the Danish-speaking minority in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany, close to the border with Denmark.

Once a party has been approved by the election committee, there is another hurdle to surmount to get on the ballot paper in September.

Parties now need a maximum of 500 supporter signatures for Germany's state electoral lists, and just 50 for district nominations.

jf/msh (AFP, dpa) 

E-scooters under fire: Can cities make them safer?

Facing cluttered sidewalks, reckless drivers and now the first known fatality in Europe, cities are threatening to kill the e-scooter. But fans of the e-mobility option say the criticism is misplaced.

    

E-scooters are most likely here stay despite safety concerns

They have a low body, long neck, two plate-sized wheels and an electric hum that sneaks up on you: Once the newest e-mobility darling, e-scooters have since become the cause of everything from cluttered sidewalks to a fatal incident in Paris. Critics say they're a public menace. But others disagree.

"It makes you feel like a kid again," 28-year-old Santosh Mani said of his experience coasting on the battery-powered scooters around the western German city of Bonn. It's the convenience of e-scooters that had Mani using the controversial mode of transportation eight to 10 times a month before the pandemic. "You can find them pretty much anywhere," he says. 

He's not exaggerating. In the US ー where the e-scooting trend first took off ー you can find e-scooter-sharing services in more than 100 cities. These provided close to 40 million trips in 2018, according to a transportation research study aptly named "To Scoot or Not to Scoot." Even New York City, after many years of resisting the swans with wheels, finally gave in to demand in November.

The transportation trend has since found its way onto every street of every major city in Europe, too.

Europe is catching up

Tier ー a micromobility company and Europe's biggest e-scooter provider ー was founded in 2018 in Berlin. With a valuation of $1 billion (€844 billion), today Tier has over 80,000 electric mobility offerings in 13 countries and 120 cities.

The pandemic hasn't slowed business down, either. On the contrary, momentum is building. "We are still seeing a very positive trend when it comes to investors," said Tier spokesperson Florian Anders. Investors want to help push the concept into bigger markets.

Tier is just one of a handful of e-scooter providers riding the investor wave ー Dott, Wind and Voi are others worth mentioning. But the throng of scooters flooding onto the streets and sidewalks of Paris, Berlin and, most recently, London have many feeling that these companies are moving faster than city regulators can keep up.  

Safety concerns

On June 19, a 31-year-old woman was killed in Paris when a couple riding an e-scooter knocked her to the ground, putting her in a coma. She died two days later. The incident has caused an uproar, and prompted the deputy mayor to summon all e-scooter executives to discuss safety concerns.

The French capital has even threatened to ban the electric rollers if the companies managing them don't implement stricter rules.

"For us, safety is top priority," Anders said in response to the incident in Paris. "We are making the hardware as safe as possible, adding signals. It's also about education, like preventing tandem riding or drunk driving. It is a big issue for us."

Germany's Transport Ministry has also considered whether this new mode of mobility is safe for city streets. So far, the ministry has shown a moderate approach, saying that "the regulation on very small electric vehicles is a balanced solution between the new introduction of new forms of mobility on the one hand and ensuring road safety on the other."

In an attempt to find that balance, Germany has implemented a minimum riding age of 14 and a maximum speed limit of 12 miles per hour (20 kilometers per hour), and requires the vehicles be used in bike lanes.

But gaps in implementation have people concerned.

"It makes you feel like you have not been properly instructed on something," Mani said about his first couple of experiences riding.

Cities are trying to find new ways to regulate the e-scooters clogging their sidewalks

An overreaction?

The car today takes up vast amounts of public space while claiming tens of thousands of lives every year. Some question the animosity toward an electric scooter that goes 12 miles per hour.  

"I do want to caution, as horrifying as it is that this woman was killed, thousands of people die getting hit by cars. And I 100% support people feeling safe on sidewalks, but e-scooters should not be seen as public enemy No. 1," said Rebecca Sanders, owner of Safe Streets Research and Consulting.

With micromobility seemingly here to stay, Sanders expects an evolution in policy. "I think we'll see cities fine e-scooter sharing companies if scooters are not in designated parking areas, or implement geofencing restricting scooters to certain areas," she said.

"It is about creating a transportation system that integrates this new form of mobility," Sanders added.

Selling sustainability

As companies such as Tier continue to wrestle with regulators and address safety concerns, their biggest selling point is sustainability. 

Tier wants to "create a more sustainable environment, teach mobility for good and transform cities with micromobility," Tier's Anders said.

"Is it more sustainable than biking or walking? No. Is it more sustainable than driving? Definitely," he argued.

Hundreds of e-scooters have been fished out of rivers in cities from Austin, Texas, to Hamburg, Germany

Are e-scooters really so sustainable? The fact that the lifespan of many models is only three years — or that many get tossed into the river by vandals long before that — takes some of the edge off the sustainability argument.

"If we do it well, I think that this form of mobility could become a sustainable part of urban transportation infrastructure. If we do it well," Sanders emphasized.  

As for someone like Mani, who hops on a scooter when he misses the bus or is heading to a get-together nearby, the concern isn't so much safety or sustainability — it's convenience.

"I don't like biking to a party because you show up all sweaty," the 28-year-old said. "With e-scooters, you don't have that problem."

Congress passed a $16 billion program to save entertainment venues rocked by the pandemic. It became a mismanaged fiasco, with thousands of businesses still waiting for relief.

whickey@businessinsider.com (Walt Hickey) 

The Paramount Theatre, which is operated by the non-profit Seattle Theatre Group arts organization, displays a sign on March 15, 2021 to mark the one-year anniversary of the date it closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ted S. Warren / AP Images

Congress passed a $16 billion bipartisan relief package for venues months ago.

The rollout has been a slow, bug-ridden disaster, and thousands of venues don't have their money.

"Each day these venues don't get their money they're going out of business," Rep. Roger Williams said.

Walter Kinzie, the owner of Austin-based concert promoter Encore Live, was loading in for a 28-band festival at SXSW in Austin in early March 2020 when the pandemic hit. Kinzie has a Texan unflappability and an aura of capability, the kind of guy who can fly halfway across the world with two employees and orchestrate a multi-night event juggling dozens of contractors.

His company, based out of the rustic Stockyards neighborhood of Ft. Worth, was among the first to shut down. In the months that followed, the live music, theater, and venue industry would have to buckle down, and starve out a pandemic that made the very fundamentals of their business unworkable.

"I lost 92.5% of my business in four days," Kinzie told Insider. "A business I built over a decade was gone in four days. I lost my house, I lost my cars, I lost my office building, I lost all of my investments and my savings account, just to keep my employees working. It cost me everything."

"But it will be worth it."

In December, Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed a bill allocating $16 billion in emergency relief grants to the venues and stages decimated by the pandemic. The bipartisan bill ensured that the money would be allocated by the Small Business Administration to venues that had lost a large amount of their business owing to the pandemic.

Seven months later, after what operators described as a fiasco of an implementation, only a fifth of that money has actually been awarded, and more than 10,000 applicants are still waiting for their money.

Eris in Brooklyn on June 25, 2021. Forced to close by the pandemic, many venues have begun to re-open. Walt Hickey / Insider

While other businesses like restaurants and office workers were able to adjust, by serving customers outside or having staff work from home, the live events industry was gutted nearly completely. The independent and fragmented nature of the live events business - where a single event can require the work of dozens of contractor companies, from ticketing to lighting to performers to catering to security and more - may make the industry a significant employer, but also made less able to seek out the aid it needed, compared to industries where just a few large corporations control a substantial amount of the business.

"I talk to friends who run arts organizations in other countries, and they're just horrified," said Angela Buccinni Butch, who owns The Muse, a venue where performers in acrobatic circus events train and perform.

"Every penny makes a difference in how these venues will emerge from this, because the fact is we cannot rely on our government."

Venues are going for broke

Ben Lillie, who owns Caveat, a New York venue for comedy and music that put on 60 shows a month pre-pandemic, was looking at the best month of business in March 2020. "I was talking to a bankruptcy lawyer six months ago just to see about our options if we did have to shut it down, but luckily we didn't."

At The Muse, Broadway shows would rehearse there before they hit the road, and if you've ever watched a television commercial with an acrobatic element, there's a pretty solid chance The Muse had a hand in it. Prior to the pandemic, the space was bustling.

"You'd always find people flying through the air," Butch said . "Now we're a warehouse that mostly sits empty all the time, because we're waiting on funding to come through."

Jonathan Corbett, who owns performing arts venue Eris in Brooklyn, went so far as to build a kitchen in his nightclub, just to be able to reopen when outdoor dining came back.

"I never expected to find myself as a restaurateur, and there I was," Corbett said.

© Joey Lax-Salinas

The federal government rolled out three programs to help out venues. The first was PPP, the Paycheck Protection Program, which offered forgivable loans that, for venues bound to be closed for over a year, functioned mostly as a helpful stopgap. Next were Economic Impact Disaster Loans, or EIDL. Those were larger, but they weren't forgivable, and for a typical venue were signed over to landlords or creditors pretty quickly.

That's where SVOG, or the Shuttered Venue Operator Grant program, was supposed to come in.

"This was a business that was devastated by COVID," said Rep. Roger Williams, the House GOP architect of the SVOG bill. "It was the first to shut down and the last to open. Thousands and thousands of jobs were affected."

The lack of capital for the venues is stymieing the recovery of the US's entire entertainment sector. Prior to the pandemic, The Muse had between 50 and 100 people on payroll each month.

"We've lost half our staff because we can't put offers on the table," Butch said. "It's prevented us from doing realistic negotiations with the landlords to resolve back rent. It's prevented a lot of things. We are aiming to re-open in September and we are just praying this funding comes through."

"The truth is, we have a bankruptcy meeting next week because if it doesn't come through, that is what we're looking at."

 Jonathan Corbett, outside his Brooklyn performing arts venue, Eris. Walt Hickey / Insider

The difficulties

Following the passage of the bill in December, operators expected a speedy response on par with the PPP program.

"I was hopeful it would follow the PPP and the EIDL timeline, which was probably two months," Corbett said. "I was expecting February, March. They didn't even have the application out until the end of April."

The venue operators, who had been desperate for the money in December, would have to wait months in order to even apply. By February, 1,500 small operators had flocked to a Facebook group Kinzie organized, sensing an issue.

On April 7, an Inspector General report sounded the alarm on the SVOG program: "Currently, the program office has one designated official and its staff are on temporary detail. At this time, SBA has not formalized a plan for staffing this office relative to the volume of applications expected."

"To put it simply, it has just been a complete mishandling of the program by SBA," said a congressional aide familiar with the program. "They were able to roll out PPP on a timeline, but were vastly underprepared for this even though they had the resources."

SVOG was turning into a disaster. "The restaurant revitalization fund was passed later and paid out earlier," Corbett said.

A red tape nightmare

The FAQ document the SBA produced in early January identifying how to apply was eight pages in length. After 10 revisions, by April the document was a sprawling 41 pages.

"They kept on changing these manuals and what they were going to ask for and how to present things," Butch said. "They made it clear if you made any mistakes on your application it would be dismissed right away."

When the portal to apply opened on April 8, the system was taken down within an hour due to fundamental problems in the construction of the application form. According to an aide familiar with the program, SBA didn't conduct appropriate stress tests for the portal.

Operators cited a document upload field as a key bug. When applicants attempted to upload a floor plan or other mandatory document, the system would crash and send the applicant to a Salesforce landing page. Later reports would identify contractor Salesforce as a source of the trouble, and the bug was related to an unregistered license. That, among other issues, delayed the portal launch two weeks, to April 24.

Neither the Small Business Administration nor the Office of Disaster assistance replied to a request for comment. A Salesforce spokesperson referred questions to the SBA.

A perfect storm

A marquee at the Hollywood Bowl concert venue bears a coronavirus-related message in Los Angeles on March 27, 2020. Chris Pizzello / AP Photo

The first thing that operators heard was silence, often for a month. When the SBA did reach out, it was often with problems with the applications.

"It required some IRS forms that had to be filled out in a pretty specific manner, in a manner that was inconsistent with the SBA's instructions," Corbett said. "There were people who were told they were dead. Not just a couple - that was a problem that was pretty broad. There were other people who were told they were on some kind of government do-not-pay list."

The complex nature of the live events business, where 20 different independent contractors can have skin in the game on a single live event, made it all the more difficult for the federal government to actually understand who should qualify.

"The industry had limited resources to begin with, inadequate folks to advise the federal government, and a change in administration, I think it created this perfect storm," Kinzie said.

The boiling point

When the first decisions went out on June 1, just 31 grants out of 13,619 were awarded. A week later, on June 9, that rose to a mere 90 grants out of the then-14,020 submitted, or 0.64% of grants.

"I don't think there was any urgency created with the Biden administration to get this money out, and that was a big problem," said Rep. Williams. "Like I was telling everybody at the SBA - this isn't political, it doesn't matter if I'm a Democrat or a Republican, this is a job creator, it's a law, we need to get it going."

The venue operators then began pushing the SBA publicly. Following scrutiny from the House and Senate architects of SVOG, which included Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the administrator overseeing the program was swapped out, and Katie Frost, who had worked to implement the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, was placed in charge. Venue operators said the pace of decisions increased substantially thereafter.

"This legislation's got Roger Williams and Chuck Schumer on it for crying out loud, we ought to be doing better than this," Williams said. "We're going to keep fighting to get this money, because each day these venues don't get their money they're going out of business. Jobs are being lost. I want to get these people paid rather than infighting with the agency."

Thousands of venues are still waiting for the relief they applied for. Walt Hickey / Insider

The current status

Now, the money is starting to flow.

As of Tuesday, $3.2 billion of the $11.7 billion requested has been awarded. While just 28% of applicants have received their money, another 43% have had their application reach a decision.

But thousands of applicants are still in a state of limbo, unable to plan.

"Does it hamper the recovery? Absolutely," Corbett said. "I would love to put money into a lot of different things."

When Insider spoke to Kinzie, he was in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress, a conference for the digital communications industry that usually attracts more than 100,000 attendees. A few hours earlier, the band Bon Jovi exited the stage following a performance Kinzie had organized. It's his first live in-person event since March of 2020.

"Frick, it feels good," Kinzie said. "I'm kind of emotional thinking about it. It feels good to be working again."

Butch, who had been meeting with a bankruptcy attorney as recently as two weeks ago, got notified that The Muse had their grant application approved last Friday.

"We do not have a sense of when the funding will come through but have been awarded," she said in an email. "We know of many others who have had trouble receiving the money so we are waiting to make sure it hits the account before we cheer too much."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Giant pandas no longer endangered due to sustained conservation efforts, China says

Daniel Johnson 
POSTMEDIA

JUL 9,2021

After decades of conservation work, Chinese officials said that giant pandas are no longer endangered after their population in the wild climbed to 1,800.

© Provided by National Post CP-Web. Da Mao, an adult male panda bear, looks on at the Calgary Zoo during the opening of its giant panda habitat, Panda Passage, in Calgary, Alta., Monday, May 7, 2018.

Giant pandas will now be re-classified as vulnerable, Cui Shuhong, the director of the Department of Natural Ecological Protection of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment said at a press conference on Wednesday, according to CNN .


“China has established a relatively complete nature reserves system,” Cui added. “Large areas of natural ecosystems have been systematically and completely protected, and wildlife habitats have been effectively improved.”

Conservation efforts in China have been ongoing for about five decades to increase the population of the giant pandas, which included creating sprawling reserves around several mountain ranges.

Chinese officials have been working since the 1970s on a high-profile campaign to boost the population of the bears. Officials created special nature reserves in bamboo-rich areas, providing access to food sources to offset habitat loss.

The conservation efforts were successful in spite of breeding challenges, as females are only able to become pregnant between 24-72 hours during the year.

Estimates from the 1980s determined the giant panda population in China to be around 1,114, more recently in 2014 the wild panda population was estimated to be 1,864 according to the WWF .

The species was initially taken off the endangered list by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2016; however Chinese experts disputed this decision, arguing it was misleading and would cause complacency in China the Guardian reported.

Conservation efforts in China are helping the giant panda population bounce back, but Cui said populations of other rare and endangered species are also recovering.

“The number of species such as Siberian tigers, Amur leopards, Asian elephants, and crested ibis has increased significantly,” Cui said.

In China, pandas are thought of as an umbrella species, meaning experts believe protection efforts also benefit other species and the larger ecosystem.

However, a joint China-United States study released last year suggests some of the panda-focused conservation efforts may have had a negative effect on some carnivore species that have seen their numbers drop in recent decades.