World Polio Day: Pakistan's Polio Problem Persists

October 23, 2022 7:08 PM
Sarah Zaman

Polio teams administer the vaccine. Polio is an incurable and highly infectious viral disease that can infect a person’s spinal cord, causing muscles to stop working. 

(Walid Abbas / Polio Eradication Initiative, Pakistan)

WASHINGTON —

Photos of Zarghoona Wadood sightseeing in Egypt with two other wheelchair-using women went viral last year in Pakistan, becoming a symbol of what women with disabilities can do.

Wadood was just 7 months old when polio paralyzed her legs. Her parents didn’t know to get her vaccinated.

“I can’t even move from my bed unless the wheelchair is near me … the wheelchair is a part of me now,” Wadood, now 38 and employed with the U.N. World Food Program, told VOA.

She is one of thousands of Pakistanis disabled by polio, an incurable and highly infectious viral disease that can infect a person’s spinal cord, causing muscles to stop working.

The invention of polio vaccines in the 1950s and 1960s wiped the disease from the industrialized world, and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative launched in 1988 largely eliminated the disease through mass vaccination campaigns in the developing world as well.

As the global health community marks World Polio Day on Oct. 24, only Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to grapple with the wild polio virus.

Zarghoona Wadood, far right, went sightseeing in Egypt last year with two fellow wheelchair-users. Polio paralyzed her legs when she was 7 months old. (Zarghoona Wadood)

In Pakistan

After 15 months without any reported cases of the wild polio virus, Pakistan has recorded 20 cases since April — 17 in the former tribal region of North Waziristan that borders Afghanistan and three from nearby areas.

Dr. Shahzad Baig, who leads Pakistan’s Polio Eradication Program blames a poor security situation, migration patterns, harassment of polio teams, mistrust of the vaccine, and complicity among members of local communities and polio workers to find ways to circumvent vaccination enforcement.

“They are not confident that [the vaccine] is safe for the children," Baig told VOA. "They think that the government is forcing this vaccine on the children, [so] there is some hidden agenda.”

Despite Pakistan's decades-long Polio Eradication Program, many Pakistanis still believe the vaccine will make their children infertile or that it contains pork-based ingredients forbidden by Islamic scripture. In 2019, a rumor that the vaccine was making children sick caused a spike in refusals. That year ended with Pakistan recording 149 cases, significantly more than the year before.

And the vaccine has become a bargaining chip used to pressure the government to meet a community’s needs.

“So, the roads, the bridges, you know, electricity and anything they want there, when the campaign comes, they will say, ‘You do that and that is when we will accept the vaccination,’” Baig said.

Local customs also leave children vulnerable to the virus. Often male health workers cannot enter homes in the absence of a male member of the household. In more conservative communities that don't allow women to work, the lack of female polio workers further limits access to children.

Baig told VOA that less than 1% of polio team members in former tribal areas are women.

Saira Abid, a polio worker from North Waziristan, told VOA it breaks her heart that most of the polio cases were recorded in her ancestral village.

Displaced by the military operation against terrorists in 2014 and forced by financial hardship to break tradition, Abid has been working as a community health worker in Peshawar since 2015.

“Whenever I go to my village, I see the word 'locked' chalked on the wall because men are not allowed to go inside,” Abid said. During a mass-vaccination campaign, polio workers mark the vaccination status of each household on a wall by the main door.

While Abid feels comfortable working in Peshawar’s urban setting, she says it’s not safe for her to work in her village because of strict local customs and the presence of militants. In June, three members of a polio team were killed and another injured in North Waziristan.

Safety is a long-running issue for polio workers in Pakistan. Many have been killed by either militants who see vaccination as part of a Western agenda or attacked by parents angry at being pressed to vaccinate their children.

Polio teams in action. The virus continues to be a problem in Pakistan and Afghanistan. (Walid Abbas / Polio Eradication Initiative, Pakistan)

In Afghanistan

Polio worker safety is also an issue across the border in Afghanistan, where eight polio workers were killed in separate attacks in February.

Remarkably, Afghanistan has recorded only two cases of wild polio virus so far this year, indicating the lowest level of the virus in the country’s history, according to the World Health Organization.

However, Afghanistan's cases of vaccine-derived polio stand at 43. The vaccine uses a weak form of the polio virus, which can sometime infect a separate, unvaccinated person.

“If we succeed to implement the planned polio campaigns with high coverage of 95%, we can interrupt the circulation of polio virus by the end of 2022,” Kamal Shah Sayed, a UNICEF spokesperson in Afghanistan, told VOA earlier this year.

The Taliban pledged support for polio campaigns after taking control of Afghanistan last August, but for three years before that, they banned vaccination drives in areas under their control.

Since November 2021, at least seven campaigns have been conducted in Afghanistan.

World Polio Day

On World Polio Day, Afghanistan is wrapping up an immunization campaign while Pakistan is launching one.

From 3.6 million children inaccessible in Afghanistan in 2018, a WHO statement in August said the number of children missing vaccination had fallen to 700,000.

In Pakistan, despite frequent anti-polio drives, more than 400,000 children are missed every year, according to the U.S.-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Baig of Pakistan's Polio Eradication Program is concerned that the summer’s massive flooding has increased the risk of polio spreading via unsanitary conditions, and flood victims unhappy with government relief efforts may boycott the campaign to pressure authorities to provide them better facilities.

Zarghoona Wadood, who toured Egypt last year, is also a disability rights activist. She wants parents to learn from her experience and vaccinate their children against polio, just as her parents did for her three younger siblings.

“No matter what I am, I still have a disability, everybody cannot have the same strength that I have," Wadood told VOA. "A lot of people give up and they isolate themselves … so why are you doing this to your children?”

For Struggling Haiti, Return of Cholera is a 'Catastrophe'

October 23, 2022 
Agence France-Presse

A woman brings a child showing symptoms of cholera to a Doctors Without Borders clinic in Cité Soleil, Oct. 07, 2022. Many of the sick, however, have not been able to get health care because gangs have been blocking access to the fuel patients need to travel for care.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI —

When humanitarian officials in Haiti try to describe their concerns over a new, fast-spreading cholera epidemic, they struggle to find words strong enough: "alarming," "chaotic," even "a catastrophe."

A sizable part of the island's population has been isolated — and unable to access health care — either by serious fuel shortages or by the brutal armed gangs that control vast areas.

And without health care, cholera patients, who suffer acute diarrhea, can die of dehydration in just hours.

"It's a catastrophe. We're overwhelmed," Doctor Jean William Pape told AFP. His NGO, called Gheskio, operates two of the country's 15 cholera treatment centers.

In one of them, in the capital of Port-au-Prince, "we have 80 beds, and they're all occupied," he said. "Due to the fuel shortage, people in the slums have told me there have been several deaths in their areas, because it wasn't possible to transport the sick people."

An armed gang has for weeks been blockading a key fuel terminal at Varreux, north of the capital, aggravating the country's paralysis.

Children showing symptoms of cholera receive treatment at a clinic run by Doctors Without Borders in Cité Soleil, Oct. 07, 2022.

The return of cholera

U.N. peacekeepers introduced cholera to Haiti in 2010, ultimately resulting in thousands of deaths.

But, until the latest outbreak, no case of the disease had been reported in Haiti since 2019.

As of Wednesday, 33 cholera deaths and 960 suspect cases have been logged by the health ministry.

And that number could seriously understate the problem, according to Bruno Maes, the UNICEF representative in Haiti.

The situation is all the more frustrating, experts say, given that even serious cholera cases are easily treatable with a few days of rest and rehydration and that there is a cholera vaccine.

That vaccine, however, is only effective for around five years, and the last big targeted vaccination campaign in Haiti was in 2017.

Roughly half of all cases here have involved children younger than 14, who are particularly vulnerable when their immune systems are weakened by poor nutrition due to poverty.

"Many of them are very badly nourished," said Pape, the doctor, adding it was difficult to find their veins to administer solutions intravenously.

The U.N. estimates that 4.7 million Haitians, nearly half the country's population, suffer from acute food insecurity.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) operates four centers with a total of 250 beds and some 20 oral-rehydration clinics, deputy mission chief Moha Zemrag told AFP.

He said a priority is securing access to potable water in gang-controlled areas like the Brooklyn neighborhood in the capital's Cite Soleil commune, which has had no fresh water for three months.

Cholera is caused by the ingestion of water or food contaminated with a bacteria called vibrio cholerae.

The high risk of kidnapping by the gangs has prevented aid groups from entering these areas to disinfect homes and buildings with chlorine.

While MSF has established a system of shuttles to safely bring its personnel to treatment centers, fuel shortages could make this impossible "in a few weeks," Zemrag said.

 Amid a cholera and security crisis in Haiti, people demonstrate in Port-au-Prince against Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the United Nations, Oct. 21, 2022.

Concern is also growing for rural dwellers, who, without access to fuel, may have to walk days for help. Early cases have been detected in the southern region of Nippes and in Artibonite to the north.

Armed groups now blockade highways leading both to the north and south, Maes said.

"Port-au-Prince is literally surrounded, strangled," he said.

UNICEF's offices have been pillaged, and shipments of medication have been blocked at the port.

The return of cholera has revived nightmarish memories of the epidemic introduced by blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers in 2010, after a major earthquake ravaged the country. The disease claimed more than 10,000 lives from then until 2019.

SEE ALSO:
UN: Haiti Facing Humanitarian Catastrophe

But conditions today are different, said Sylvain Aldighieri, deputy director of public health emergencies with the Pan American Health Organization.

"For now, we're not seeing an explosion (in cases) as we observed during the first months" of 2010, he said.

He said the authorities have "10 years' experience with cholera" and the key now is to "reactivate the mechanisms" that worked before.

Doing so, however, presents challenges.

The U.N. on Friday imposed sanctions, including an arms embargo, on several gangs. But it remains divided on whether to send a new international force to the country.

Such a force, said Aldighieri, might be able to establish "humanitarian corridors for difficult zones," and help free supplies now blocked in ports.

At the moment, he added, airplanes carrying additional supplies are expected in the coming days.

Inflation: Why Canada grocers are accused of 'greedflation'

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IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES

Image caption,

More than half of Canadians say they can't keep up with rising cost of living, 

and 78% blame grocers for soaring food prices.

By Nadine Yousif

BBC News, Toronto

Like many around the world, Canadians are struggling with the cost of food. But amid accusations of "greedflation" - taking advantage of inflation to raise prices - the country's largest grocery chains say they aren't to blame.

With food prices mounting, Canadian grocery store giant Loblaw made a promise: the cost of products under its lower-cost in-house brand, No Name, will remain frozen for three months.

The offer, announced in a promotional email by Loblaw CEO Galen Weston on 17 October, wasn't well-received. Some labelled it a PR stunt, while others declared it too little, too late.

The sour reaction isn't without reason. Inflation has slowed in recent months, but the cost of food is still soaring with increases reaching a 41-year high.

At the same time, large corporations - including grocers - are reporting record earnings. Loblaw's first-quarter profit this year was up nearly 40% from that of last year, and its net earnings after adjustments were up 17%.

In Canada, where distrust in grocery magnates runs deep from a recent bread price-fixing scandal, this dilemma has turned political.

Members of parliament have accused grocery chains of taking advantage of inflation to raise prices more than needed - a phenomenon dubbed by some "greedflation".

On the same day Mr Weston's letter was sent, Canada's parliament unanimously passed a motion that accused grocery CEOs of "corporate greed". On Monday, the federal competition watchdog launched an investigation into the sector.

But is there any truth to the idea of greedflation? Economists say it's complicated.

'No safe space … not even the freezer aisle'

For families who frequent grocery stores, the drastic increase in prices is hard to ignore. Canada's food prices in September were up 11.4% compared to 6.9% overall inflation.

"There's no safe space for consumers at the grocery store, not even the freezer aisle," said Sylvain Charlebois, a professor at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia who has been publishing an annual report on Canadian food prices since 2010.

The problem isn't unique to Canada. The UK has seen a drastic rise in food prices as well - bread and cereals were up by an annual 12.4% in July, and oils and fats were up 23.4%.

So has the US, where the cost of food was up 13.5% in September compared to last year.

• Why is inflation in the US so high?
• When will US food prices come down?

In all three countries, the factors driving up the cost of food are similar: a surge in demand for groceries since the start of the pandemic, coupled with Covid-19 outbreaks, has disrupted supply. Add to that the war in Ukraine, which has affected supplies of fertiliser, wheat and other crops, sending global prices soaring.

Bad weather this year has also disrupted the growth of certain crops, and fuel has gotten more expensive.

Grocers say they want to help

As shoppers grow more frustrated, grocery companies around the world have moved to freeze prices in a show of solidarity.

In May, US company Weis Markets announced a multi-million dollar campaign to cut prices on its best-selling frozen products. France's Carrefour froze the price on 100 everyday products in August, and the UK's Asda and Morrisons both cut prices in April.

But when Canada's Loblaw froze prices months later in October, it felt too late.

"Frankly, they have done nothing for a long time," said David MacDonald, an economist with the left-leaning Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives.

He added the prices of goods that the grocer froze had already gone up from earlier this year. No Name chicken wings, for example, were C$11.99 ($8.75; £7.75). Now they are $13.99.

Loblaw CEO Mr Weston has said the price increases at his stores are "maddeningly" out of his company's control. Some, like Canadian member of parliament Alistair MacGregor, disagree.

The announcement, the left-leaning New Democrat said, "demonstrates the fact that the CEO of Loblaw always had it within his power to freeze prices".

He also criticised the company for making the announcement the same day parliament was set to vote on probing the profits of grocery retailers, calling it a "PR attempt to deflect from the negative attention".

With grocers reporting an increase in profits, Mr MacGregor said there's likely "a moral call there for companies to reform their business practices" to curb inflation and help struggling families.

In dollars, grocers have made an average of $1.5bn in the first two quarters of 2022, up from $800m in 2019. Their margins are also higher than pre-pandemic - 3.5% in 2022, up from 2% in 2018, despite the increase in production costs.

Grocers have attributed the higher margins to an increase in sales and efficiency.

Meanwhile, an August poll suggested that more than half of Canadians can't keep up with the current cost of living, and 78% believe grocers are to blame for soaring food prices.

Are grocery stores to blame?

It was only a few years ago, Mr Charlebois recalled, that Loblaws was exposed for its role in a bread price-fixing scandal that saw major retailers conspiring with commercial bakeries to set higher prices over 14 years.

For its role in the scandal, Loblaws offered shoppers $25 gift cards as an olive branch.

"It really bothered a lot of Canadians at the time," Mr Charlebois said.

But after researching recent earnings reports of both American and Canadian grocery giants, Mr Charlebois said he isn't certain the blame for rising costs should entirely lie on retailers.

IMAGE SOURCE,TORONTO STAR VIA GETTY IMAGES

He found that while revenues did go up, gross margins for companies have increased by what he said are modest amounts.

"Yes, they've actually posted record profits in dollars," Mr Charlebois said. "But when you look at margins, they're relatively similar."

He cautioned that this doesn't rule out wrongdoing in other parts of the supply chain - from food processing to transportation.

In Quebec, meat packers in particular are under fire for allegedly conspiring to raise prices on beef sold in the province. One of the companies in question, JBS, already settled a similar lawsuit earlier this year in the US.

Some suppliers, however, have accused grocery retailers of not accepting price increases and imposing additional fines on them - a problem they say should be fixed by implementing an industry-wide code of conduct in Canada.

That is why many welcome the decision by parliament's agriculture committee and the competition bureau to look at the grocery retail market - probes that politicians like Mr MacGregor hope will pave the way for better industry practices in the future.

"It's a good thing for Canadians", who at the very least will get some clarity on how their food is priced, said Mr Charlebois.

 

Research sheds light on Japan’s wartime espionage network inside the United States

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022 

MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN about the wartime intelligence exploits of the Allies against Japan. Such exploits range from the United States’ success in breaking the Japanese JN-25 naval code, to the extensive operations of the Soviet Union’s military intelligence networks in Tokyo. In contrast, very little is known about Japan’s intelligence performance against the Allies in the interwar years, as well as after 1941. Now a new paper by an international team or researchers sheds light on this little-studied aspect of intelligence history.

The researchers, Ron Drabkin, visiting scholar at the University of Notre Dame, K. Kusunoki, of the Japan Maritime Self-Defence Force, and Bradley W. Hart, associate professor at California State University, Fresno, published their work on September 22 in the peer-reviewed journal Intelligence and National Security. Their well-written article is entitled “Agents, Attachés, and Intelligence Failures: The Imperial Japanese Navy’s Efforts to Establish Espionage Networks in the United States Before Pearl Harbor”.

The authors acknowledge that the history of the intelligence efforts of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) has received very little attention by scholars. Consequently, it remains unexplored even in Japan, let alone in the international scholarship on intelligence. There are two main reasons for that. To begin with, the IJN systematically destroyed its intelligence files in the months leading to Japan’s official surrender in 1945. Then, following the war, fearing being implicated in war crimes trials, few of its undercover operatives voluntarily revealed their prior involvement in intelligence work.

Luckily, however, the past decade has seen the declassification of a number of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) counterintelligence files relating to Japanese intelligence operations targeting the United States. Most of these files date from the 1930s and early 1940s. Additionally, a number of related documents have been declassified by the government of Mexico, which is important, given that Mexico was a major base for Japanese intelligence operations targeting the United States.

What do these files show? According to Drabkin, Kusunoki and Hart, the IJN’s spies were able to obtain secrets relating to the military capabilities of the United States during the interwar years. These included “significant amounts of information” on American weapons systems and military tactics. However, such successes were rare. On balance, the authors state that IJN intelligence activities in the United States were “fraught with problems”. These were partly rooted in the deep skepticism about the value of espionage among the leadership of the IJN. The latter generally regarded human intelligence (HUMINT) as ungentlemanly and “nearly heretical”. Put simply, the upper echelons of the IJN “had little interest in intelligence”.

Yet the IJN did launch a number of espionage operations on American soil, though these were usually individual initiatives launched by intelligence-oriented mid-ranking officials, including naval attachés. Most IJN case officers and spies tasked with collecting intelligence on the United States were located in Hawaii, the West Coast and Mexico. They were able to recruit “a small number of American and British agents”, most of whom were used as so-called ‘sleeper agents’, and were thus kept mostly dormant in anticipation of a possible war between Japan and the United States. Few of them, however, were able to become fully operational prior to being arrested by American or Mexican counterintelligence.

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Mexico City was undoubtedly the primary hub of Japanese naval intelligence operations in the Americas. The Japanese embassy there hosted an IJN intelligence radio team, as well as a sizeable group of case officers who had systematically recruited Mexican agents with the purpose of infiltrating the United States. However, Tokyo had completely miscalculated the intentions of the Mexican government. The Japanese saw Mexico as a sworn enemy of the United States. That turned out not to be the case. Instead, the day after the Pearl Harbor attack, Mexico broke off diplomatic relations with Japan, shut down the Japanese embassy and promptly rounded up the IJN spy network.

The IJN spy network inside the United States did not fare much better. Its case officers were severely under-trained in intelligence tradecraft. One of them had apparently “instructed his American agent to simply drop off confidential documents with his apartment doorman instead of using a dead drop or any other method of transmission”. Even the Hawaii-based Takeo Yoshikawa, the IJN intelligence officer who gave Tokyo invaluable information in preparation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, owed most of his HUMINT tradecraft knowledge to the writings of T.E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’), rather than to his IJN instructors.

The agents that the IJN case officers had managed to recruit inside the United States were fueled by substantial cash payments, rather than ideological sympathy for Japan. They apparently included “several alleged alcoholics who were caught bragging about their exploits”. Most of them were arrested by the FBI and the Office of Naval Intelligence in the months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Consequently, the IJN was left with almost no HUMINT presence inside the United States once Washington entered the war.

The failure of the IJN to establish a durable espionage network on American soil was highly consequential, according to the authors. Not only did the absence of such a network leave Tokyo blind after 1941, but it also became one of a number of contributing factors to Japan’s defeat in the war.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 26 September 2022 | Permalink

HRW reports LGBTQ jail beatings before Qatar World Cup

AFP

October 24, 2022

Qatar outlaws sex outside marriage and homosexual sex, which can be punished by up to seven years in prison - Copyright AFP Karim JAAFAR

Police in Qatar have arbitrarily detained and abused members of the LGBTQ community ahead of the World Cup next month, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Monday.

Homosexuality is illegal in the Gulf state which has come under intense scrutiny over its rights record before the tournament that is expected to attract at least one million foreign fans.

HRW said it had “documented six cases of severe and repeated beatings and five cases of sexual harassment in police custody between 2019 and 2022”.

The most recent case was in September, the US-based rights group said.

Four transgender women, one bisexual woman and one gay man all told how members of the interior ministry’s Preventive Security Department detained them in an underground prison in Doha.

There “they verbally harassed and subjected detainees to physical abuse, ranging from slapping to kicking and punching until they bled”, HRW said.

“One woman said she lost consciousness. Security officers also inflicted verbal abuse, extracted forced confessions, and denied detainees access to legal counsel, family, and medical care.”

One Qatari bisexual woman said she was beaten until she “lost consciousness several times”.

The report added that a Qatari transgender woman told how she was held once for two months in an underground cell and once for six weeks.

“They beat me every day and shaved my hair. They also made me take off my shirt and took a picture of my breasts,” she said.

She said she had suffered from depression and was afraid to go out in public since.

In all cases, the detainees were forced to unlock their phones and had contact information on other LGBTQ people taken, HRW said.

Sex outside marriage and homosexual sex are both illegal in the conservative Muslim state, and can be punished by up to seven years in prison.

But none of those detained said they had been charged.

HRW said the six appeared to have been held under a 2002 law that allows for up to six months’ detention without charge if “‘there exist well-founded reasons to believe that the defendant may have committed a crime,’ including ‘violating public morality’.”

A Qatar government official said the allegations were “categorically and unequivocally false”.

“Qatar does not tolerate discrimination against anyone, and our policies and procedures are underpinned by a commitment to human rights for all.”

The official said the government has held talks with HRW and other critical groups, but the latest “claims were not brought to our attention until they were first reported in the media. If Human Rights Watch had contacted us, we would have been able to disprove the allegations.”

The official said the lack of notice given by HRW “compromises their self-proclaimed commitment to reporting the truth.”

The rights group called on the government in Doha to “put an end to security force ill-treatment against LGBT people, including by halting any government-sponsored programs aimed at conversion practices”.

The Qatari official insisted that no “conversion centres” operate in the country, though it does have a rehabilitation clinic that supports individuals suffering from behavioural conditions such as substance dependence, eating disorders and mood disorders.

HRW called on FIFA, football’s world body, to press Qatar to launch reforms that protect LGBT people.

Qatar’s World Cup organisers have stepped up assurances in recent weeks that all fans would be “welcome” at the World Cup.

FIFA has said that LGBTQ rainbow flags would be allowed in and around stadiums.

England’s Harry Kane is one of several captains of European teams who have said they will wear “OneLove” arm bands at World Cup games to highlight rights concerns.

Australian Museum Launches First In-Depth Scientific Expedition On Norfolk Island

Monday, 24 October 2022
Press Release: Australian Museum

Norfolk Island, 1700 km north-east of Sydney, boasts a diverse and abundant array of birds, insects, reptiles and marine life, with many unique to the island. Over the next two years, the Australian Museum (AM) will conduct one of the most comprehensive environmental surveys of Norfolk Island.

Working in collaboration with the local community, Parks Australia and scientists from the Australian Institute of Botanical Science and Auckland War Memorial Museum, the goal of the surveys is to develop a more accurate picture of the state of the endemic flora and fauna, as well as increase understanding of pre-European habitation of Norfolk Island through an archaeological dig.

Director and CEO, Australian Museum, Kim McKay AO, said Norfolk Island has a diverse environment and notable historic sites offering a unique heritage seldom found elsewhere within Australia and around the world.

“For nearly two centuries, the Australian Museum has conducted expeditions to document, collect and examine our land and fauna which has led to great advances in our geographic knowledge,” McKay said.

“With the depth and breadth of our scientific knowledge, backed by our valuable collections, we are uniquely placed to help inform future management of these areas and contribute to our understanding of the origins of Norfolk Island and how its ecosystems function within the greater global environmental picture,” McKay explained.

The first phase of the AM’s Norfolk Island expedition begins today, Monday24 October, with a combined team of more than 20 experts who will be seeking to answer a number of scientific questions including whether there are any undescribed species on the island, and if the elusive Gould’s Wattled Bat, endemic to the Island, continues to call Norfolk Island home. Archaeologists will also be researching the pre-European history of the island, particularly the occupation of the island by Polynesians some 150 years before European settlement.

According to the AM’s Chief Scientist and Director of the Australian Museum Research Institute, Professor Kris Helgen, the Norfolk Island community will be essential to helping the scientists in their expeditions.

“Our scientists are recognised internationally as experts in their fields, but local collaboration and consultation is essential in both the planning and research phases of scientific expeditions. On one previous expedition to the Solomon Islands, our scientists only managed to learn about a rare species of rat because of a tip off by residents. Local voices will be crucial in painting a full picture of Norfolk’s biodiversity,” Professor Helgen said.

"In order to conserve a species, we must know it’s there. Conservation is at the heart of our expeditions and the work we do throughout the Australian Museum Research Institute. The AM’s Lord Howe Island surveys are one such example. The scientists’ findings contributed to improving the breeding program for the phasmid (stick insect) long thought to be extinct and provided important scientific evidence to support the eradication of invasive black rats from the island,” Helgen added.

Chief Scientist at the Australian Institute of Botanical Science (Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust), Professor Brett Summerell, said four scientists based at the Institute’s National Herbarium of New South Wales will conduct botanical surveys to help fill crucial knowledge gaps of Norfolk Island’s unique flora.

“Scientists from the Australian Institute of Botanical Science will be collecting plant material in areas with few collections in herbaria, focussing on weeds and non-threatened flora that has flowers or fruit, to help advance fundamental knowledge of Norfolk Island’s flora and drive effective conservation solutions,” said Professor Summerell.

Head of Natural Sciences at Auckland Museum, Dr Thomas Trnski, said the Auckland Museum is supporting two scientists to complement the terrestrial survey team: a herpetologist and non-vascular botanist.

“There are ancient biological connection between Norfolk Island and mainland Aotearoa New Zealand, which are connected by the submerged continent of Zealandia. Examining in detail the population and genetic connections of species between Norfolk Island and Aotearoa will establish a solid baseline to detect change over time,” Dr Trnski said.

In addition to the scientific surveys, the AM will also be engaging the local community through education activities with the Norfolk Island Central School and a range of programs and events to learn about the expedition.

The AM’s team of scientists depart for phase one of the Norfolk Island expedition on Friday 21 October 2022 and return to Sydney on Monday 31 October 2022. In 2023, a team of marine biologists plan to undertake research of the waters around the island.

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Elon Musk reportedly wants to fire most Twitter employees, but he told investors 5 months ago he wanted to grow the workforce to 11,000. Here's why experts think he changed his mind.

Samantha Delouya

Maja Hitij/Getty Images

Elon Musk's plans for Twitter may have drastically changed since he agreed to the $44 billion purchase in April.

Musk reportedly shared plans to grow Twitter's headcount by 3,600 in May. Now, he reportedly wants to slash it by 75%.

Some analysts predict that the slowing advertising market may be partially to blame for the change.

Elon Musk's plans for running Twitter seem to be drastically different than what he proposed when he initially agreed to purchase the company in April.

In the early days after the agreement, Musk reportedly pitched an ambitious proposal for Twitter to investors that directly contradicts a recent report about his plan for mass firings.

According to a pitch deck viewed by the New York Times in May, Musk planned to grow Twitter's staff from 7,500 to 11,072 by 2025.

Less than 6 months later, Musk wants to slash Twitter's workforce by nearly 75% to a significantly scaled-down staff of 2,000, The Washington Post reports.

Neither Twitter nor Musk immediately responded to Insider's request for comment.

Ali Mogharabi, an analyst who covers Twitter for Morningstar, said he hadn't seen a significant change in Twitter's business to justify such a drastic change in headcount plans by Musk. However, external factors could be to blame.

"A lot has changed outside the business since Musk first spoke with Twitter employees. The uncertainty around the macro environment has certainly increased," Mogharabi said, referring to the slowdown in the overall economy.

He said that Twitter, which makes most of its money from advertising, could see revenue decline as advertisers get spooked by a potential recession.

While Musk's pitch deck from May opened the possibility for layoffs in 2023, there was no indication that he might fire more than 5,000 workers, based on the Times' report.

Mogharabi estimates that Twitter's potential revenue slowdown, combined with the possibility that investors helping to finance Musk's takeover of Twitter might be "demanding for Musk to make this business a cash cow," could account for his reported about-face.

Mark Shmulik, a Twitter analyst at Bernstein, thinks cutting such a large number of workers at Twitter might hurt the company's bottom line, not help it.

"I've always taken this view that you kind of break out these companies into three distinct categories: fat, muscle, and bone. Fat is the stuff like the discretionary projects, muscle is probably revenue generating, but subscale, and the bone is the critical stuff to keep the lights on. If you really are cutting 75% of Twitter's workforce, certainly you're cutting all that fat, but you're cutting deep into some of the muscle too," Shmulik said.

"I guess if the deal closes and if he goes in that direction, we'll certainly see just how lean some of these ad companies can actually run," he added.

Twitter says the company has no plans for layoffs, following claims that Elon Musk planned to cut headcount by 75%

Beatrice Nolan
Oct 21, 2022

Twitter's general counsel emailed staff on Thursday, per a report. 

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Twitter has confirmed the company has no plans in place for company-wide layoffs.

On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk planned to cut Twitter's headcount by nearly 75%.

The reported cuts would have slashed Twitter's 7,500-person workforce to around 2,000, per The Post.

Twitter says the company had no plans in place for company-wide layoffs after The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk planned to cut headcount by nearly 75%.

Reuters first reported the news.

Sean Edgett, Twitter's general counsel, emailed Twitter's staff on Thursday telling them the company did not plan for layoffs, a source who viewed the email told Reuters.

A representative for Twitter confirmed to Insider the company was not planning layoffs.

On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk told prospective investors he would lay off almost 75% of Twitter's workforce. The reported job cuts would have slashed Twitter's 7,500-person workforce down to a staff of around 2,000, per The Post.

The news outlet reported that some job cuts were planned regardless of Musk's takeover. It cited corporate documents and interviews with people familiar with the plans in its report.

After months of litigation, Musk's deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion is expected to close by next Friday.

Some employees have expressed their unease about the deal on social media. Earlier this month, Rumman Chowdhury, the director of Twitter's ML Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability team, tweeted: "Living the plot of succession is fucking exhausting."