Farmers call on Congress to pass COVID-19 relief


Farm workers hoe the rows in Moss Landing, Calif., on April 28. Most farmers who identify as self-employed were unable to receive loans under the Paycheck Protection Program. File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photo

THEY ARE WEARING MASKS WHILE WORKING SO HOW COME PEOPLE EXERCISING OUTSIDE ARE NOT MADE TO WEAR MASKS

July 21 (UPI) -- U.S. farmers have called on Congress to pass legislation giving more emergency funding to agricultural businesses as the industry faces billions of dollars in losses due to the coronavirus crisis.

The Republican-led Senate is expected to pass a coronavirus relief bill by the end of July, rivaling a $3 trillion package approved by the House in May.

Farmers are hoping the next relief package will include more funds for them after many were shut out of the Paycheck Protection Program.

R.J. Karney, a representative rom the American Farm Bureau Federation, said about 86% of farmers who identify as self-employed weren't eligible for loans under the PPP because they lost money during last year's trade wars with China.

"The way the regulations are currently written, if a sole proprietor has a zero or negative net farm income, they are essentially ineligible to participate in the Paycheck Protection Program, he said, according to KXAN-TV in Austin, Texas.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said making more funds available under the PPP would be one of the Senate's priorities as it debates its forthcoming stimulus package, which the Democrat-led House will also need to approve before it can be signed by President Donald Trump.

"We knew that doing something that big and that fast ... it wasn't going to be perfect, but we knew it was an emergency," Cornyn said of the PPP, which was established in a March stimulus package and later extended.

The National Pork Producers Council is also calling for more funding to help offset the monetary losses from the disruption of the supply chain earlier this year. COVID-19 outbreaks caused some meatpacking plants to close down for close to a month, causing some farmers to euthanize their livestock.

Steve Meyer, an economist with Kerns & Associates, said there's a backup of an estimated 2 million hogs on farms, creating "an unprecedented emergency." Speaking at the NPPC, he said hog farmers are looking at about $5 billion in economic losses for the year.

"This is, by far, the worst financial disaster ever for American hog farmers, who were already in a weakened financial position due to two years of trade retaliation," he said.
NPPC President Howard "AV" Roth called on Congress to provide "a critical lifeline" to farmers to offset the losses.

Meanwhile, the New York Farm Bureau released the results of a member survey Tuesday that found that 65% of the state's farms have been negatively impacted by the coronavirus. Some 43% of farms say they've lost sales, 37% have experienced cash flow problems and 47% said they've reduced their spending.

"What we found with this survey is that no farm was untouched by the pandemic or the economic fallout," said New York Farm Bureau President David Fisher. "All of this underscores the need to continue to invest in our food system while also making health and safety a priority.

"As the state and federal governments look toward potential budget cuts and additional COVID-19 assistance, agriculture must be a part of the discussion."

Poll: More in U.S. have returned to work, 'always' using PPE


A worker is seen wearing a protective mask in Vernon, Calif., on May 21. Tuesday's Gallup poll said nearly 60 percent of U.S. workers say they always use protective equipment at their workplace. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo
July 21 (UPI) -- More American workers have returned to the workplace and more are using protective equipment like masks and gloves, a Gallup survey said Tuesday.

The COVID-19 tracking survey based on interviews with members of Gallup's probability online panel showed 39% of workers said all or nearly all employees have moved back to the workplace -- an 11% increase from April.

Just 10% said none of their coworkers have returned to the office.

Fifty-eight percent said they "always" use personal protective equipment at work, an increase of 15%, and about two-thirds said their employers are providing the equipment.

The survey, however, found a slight decline in workers (51%) who now say their company is enforcing a six-foot distancing rule less. In April, that figure was 55%.

The survey also found that fewer employees (38%) are "always" working from home.

"Many U.S. companies have expressed a commitment to employee and customer safety as they attempt to continue to do business amid the coronavirus pandemic," Gallup wrote. "The positive steps toward coronavirus mitigation may be helping keep worker concerns about being exposed to the virus steady even as infections continue to rise in the U.S."
Gallup polled more than 3,500 members of its panel for the survey, which has a margin of error of 3 points.

Greta Thunberg to donate $114,000 to help fight COVID-19 in the Amazon

Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, shown at Battery Park at the Global Climate Strike March in New York City on Friday on Sept. 20, 2019, announced Monday she is giving away a prize of more than $1 million to other organizations in the climate change fight. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

July 21 (UPI) -- Teenage climate change activist Greta Thunberg said Monday she plans to give away the $1.14 million Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity she won, starting with a donation to help fight COVID-19 in the Brazilian Amazon.

Thunberg, 17, was awarded the prize, given annually to recognize people, groups and organizations who contribute in efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Thunberg said on Twitter she will give the money away through her Fridays for Future Foundation, citing SOS Amazonia as one of the first groups that will receive a donation of 100,000 euros ($114,571).

"The prize money, which is 1 million euros, that is more money than I can even begin to imagine," Thunberg said in a video posted on her Twitter page. "But all the prize money will be donated through my foundation to different organizations and projects who are working to help people on the front lines, affected by the climate crisis and ecological crisis, especially in the Global South."

Thunberg said the Stop Ecocide Foundation will also receive $114,571 to "support their work to make ecocide an international crime."

Brazil is one of the world's coronavirus hot spot countries with more than 2 million cases and more than 80,000 deaths. Included in that total, at least 15,000 indigenous Brazilians have been infected with two-thirds coming in protected areas.

The Stop Ecocide campaign is a Netherlands-based group founded in 2017 by British attorney Polly Higgins and environmental activist Jojo Mehta trying to establish the destruction of the natural environment as an international crime.

Microsoft, Nike, 7 other companies create net-zero initiative

The initiative will focus on several principles, including advancing public policy, innovation and a "sustainable transition" to aid low-income communities affected by climate change. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

July 21 (UPI) -- Nine companies on Tuesday announced a new joint initiative to develop research, guidance and a road map to their goals of achieving net zero emissions.

Leaders of all nine companies agreed to join the program, called "Transform to Net Zero." They are Microsoft, Natura & Co., Unilever, Nike, Starbucks, Mercedes-Benz, Wipro, A.P. Moller - Maersk and Danone.
The initiative seeks a standardized approach to limit global warming to a level that lessens the severity of extreme weather events. Other principles include focuses on advancing public policy, innovation and a "sustainable transition" to aid low-income communities affected by climate change.

The companies said they will collaborate with the Environmental Defense Fund, a U.S.-based non-profit advocacy group.

"The gap between where we are on climate change and where we need to be continues to widen," said Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp. "So does the gap between businesses that just talk about action and those that are actually getting the job done.

"This new initiative holds tremendous potential to close those gaps."

Global non-profit BSR, which works with a network of more then 250 companies, will work with the coalition.

"When it comes to protecting the playing field we share - - our planet - - there isn't a moment to lose," Nike Chief Operating Officer Andy Campion said. "That's why we aren't waiting for solutions to climate change, we're coming together as global leaders to create them."

Oregon lawmakers sue federal law enforcement over response to protests

July 21 (UPI) -- A group including two Oregon lawmakers sued four law enforcement agencies Tuesday over the deployment of militarized federal officers in response to Black Lives Matter protests in Portland.

The lawsuit filed by state Reps. Janelle Bynum and Karin Power, Portland lawyer Sare Eddie, the First Unitarian Church of Portland, and Western States Center, which assists social justice organizations, seeks an order restricting federal officers' actions to the federal courthouse and requiring that they identify themselves and have probable cause for arrests.




The suit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Federal Protective Service and U.S. Marshals Service declares that states and their municipalities have the right to determine how to police their residents and the federal government cannot change those policies.

"While the federal government may protect its property and personnel, the federal government is constrained by the Constitution from policing the City of Portland broadly speaking, and there is no positive delegation of authority in any law that makes the federal government's recent forays into general policing in Portland either legal or constitutional," it states.

It cites instances of federal officers placing protesters into vans, taking them to unknown locations and later releasing them without first obtaining arrest warrants.

"These acts of violence perpetrated by federal law enforcement are designed to pass down a legacy of fear and further the interminable control of the movements of Black and Brown bodies since the days of American slavery," Bynum said in a statement. "I will not let my children, or any of our children, inherit paranoia and mistrust of the people we commission to protect us."

The suit follows similar lawsuits by Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum and the American Civil Liberties Union.

RELATED House Dems call for investigation into Trump's use of force at protests

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has expressed concerns within the Trump administration about federal agents in cities such as Portland dressed in camouflage uniforms similar to those worn by U.S. troops, his spokesman, Jonathan Hoffman, said Tuesday.

"We saw this take place back in June where some law enforcement that wear uniforms that make them appear military in appearance," Hoffman said.

He added that Esper told administration officials that he would prefer a system "where people can tell the difference" and may look to raise the issue with Attorney General William Barr and acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf.

Scientists attempt to model spread of social unrest, riots

People demonstrate against the price rise of Metro tickets, in downtown Santiago, Chile, in October 2019. The protests against the Metro ticket price rise saw the closure of all suburban lines in the city. File Photo by Alberto Pena/EPA-EFE


July 21 (UPI) -- After a series of demonstrations and riots rippled across Chilean society in 2019, a team of researchers in Chile and Britain, including economists, mathematicians and physicists, decided to find out if social unrest follows predictable patterns.

For their study, the results of which were published Tuesday in the journal Chaos, scientists combined epidemic models with analytical tools adapted from the physics of disorder.

Adopting the perspectives of social scientists and economists, researchers used their new model to analyze the trajectory of the 2019 social unrest in Chile.

The findings showed the spread of riots today involve highly dynamic processes. According to the study's authors, traditional epidemic models are less able to predict the spread of upheaval than they were several decades ago.

For more than a century, scientists have been using epidemiological mathematical models to study the spread of diseases.

"In the 1970s, this type of methodology was used to understand the dynamics of riots that occurred in U.S. cities in the 1960s," study co-author Jocelyn Olivari Narea said in a news release.

"More recently, it was used to model French rioting events in 2005," said Narea, an assistant professor at Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile.

One of the most popular mathematical models used to predict the spread of disease is called the SIR epidemiological model. The model separates a population into three groups: susceptible, infectious and recovered individuals.

"Within a rioting context, someone 'susceptible' is a potential rioter, an 'infected individual' is an active rioter, and a 'recovered person' is one that stopped rioting," said study co-author Katia Vogt-Geisse, professor of mathematical biology at Adolfo Ibáñez University. "Rioting spreads when effective contact between an active rioter and a potential rioter occurs."

While studying the inner workings of the SIR epidemiological model, researchers realized the model's mathematics is based on what are called Hamiltonian mechanics. The same mathematical structures define Newton's laws of physics.

"This allowed us to apply well-known tools of the physics of chaos to show that within the presence of an external force, the dynamics become very rich," said co-author Sergio Rica Mery, professor of physics at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez.

"The external force that we included in the model represents the occasional trigger that increases rioting activity," Ibáñez said.

When the models were tweaked to account for rioting triggers, researchers found the trajectory of the subsequent social disruption was highly influenced by the number of potential rioters and active rioters.

Despite the dynamic processes that have dictated the spread of social unrest during the 21st century, the researchers suggest epidemiological models can still be tweaked and updated to predict the spread of riots and upheaval.

"While you might think that the study of disease transmission and problems of a social nature vary greatly, our work shows epidemiological models of the most simple SIR type, enriched by triggers and tools of the physics of chaos, can describe rioting activities well," Vogt-Geisse said.

upi.com/7023357

Can social unrest, riot dynamics be modeled?

Exploring episodes of social unrest and rioting, discovering a way to model its spread

WHEREVER RIOT COPS APPEAR SO DO RIOTS

AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS

 

IMAGE: THE DYNAMICS OF SERIOUS RIOTING EVENTS DURING THE 2019 CHILEAN SOCIAL UNREST. view more 

CREDIT: SERGIO RICA MERY

WASHINGTON, July 21, 2020 -- Episodes of social unrest rippled throughout Chile in 2019 and disrupted the daily routines of many citizens. Researchers specializing in economics, mathematics and physics in Chile and the U.K. banded together to explore the surprising social dynamics people were experiencing.

To do this, they combined well-known epidemic models with tools from the physics of chaos and interpreted their findings through the lens of social science as economics.

In the journal Chaos, from AIP Publishing, the team reports that social media is changing the rules of the game, and previously applied epidemic-like models, on their own, may no longer be enough to explain current rioting dynamics. Using epidemiological mathematical models to understand the spread of infectious diseases dates back more than 100 years.

"In the 1970s, this type of methodology was used to understand the dynamics of riots that occurred in U.S. cities in the 1960s," said Jocelyn Olivari Narea, co-author and an assistant professor at Adolfo Ibáñez University in Chile. "More recently, it was used to model French rioting events in 2005."

From a mathematical point of view, the team's work is based on the SIR epidemiological model, known for modeling infectious disease spread. This technique separates the population into susceptible, infectious and recovered individuals.

"Within a rioting context, someone 'susceptible' is a potential rioter, an 'infected individual' is an active rioter, and a 'recovered person' is one that stopped rioting," explained co-author Katia Vogt-Geisse. "Rioting spreads when effective contact between an active rioter and a potential rioter occurs."

They discovered that the SIR model uses Hamiltonian mechanics for mathematics, just like Newton's laws for physics.

"This allowed us to apply well-known tools of the physics of chaos to show that within the presence of an external force, the dynamics become very rich," said co-author Sergio Rica Mery. "The external force that we included in the model represents the occasional trigger that increases rioting activity."

When including such triggers, the team found the way a sequence of events occurs varies greatly based on the initial number of potential rioters and active rioters.

"Even the sequence of rioting events can be chaotic," Rica Mery said. "Rich dynamics reveal the complexity involved in making predictions of rioting activity."

The team's work comes at a timely moment as social unrest is becoming more common --even within the context of the current pandemic.

"We just saw episodes of rioting in Minnesota due to racial unrest and how it ended up spreading to various locations within the U.S. and even abroad," Olivari Narea said.

The team pointed out it was surprising that the idea of disease spread can be well applied to rioting activity spread to obtain a good fit of rioting activity data.

"While you might think that the study of disease transmission and problems of a social nature vary greatly, our work shows epidemiological models of the most simple SIR type, enriched by triggers and tools of the physics of chaos, can describe rioting activities well," Vogt-Geisse said.

###

The article, "The anatomy of the 2019 Chilean social unrest," is authored by Paulina Caroca, Carlos Cartes, Toby P. Davies, Jocelyn Olivari, Sergio Rica and Katia Vogt-Geisse. It will appear in Chaos, July 21, 2020 (DOI: 10.1063/5.0006307). After that date, it can be accessed at https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0006307.

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

Chaos is devoted to increasing the understanding of nonlinear phenomena in all areas of science and engineering and describing their manifestations in a manner comprehensible to researchers from a broad spectrum of disciplines. See https://aip.scitation.org/journal/cha.

Seoul National University students accuse faculty of money laundering

Students at Seoul National University are demanding school authorities conduct an audit of the finances of the Spanish department for the years 2009 to 2013. File Photo by Yonhap/EPA-EFE

July 21 (UPI) -- Students at Seoul National University are calling for justice following revelations professors at the top-ranked South Korean school seized scholarships intended for graduate students.

A student committee from the school's college of the humanities said Tuesday during a press conference they are calling for the funds to be returned. They also urged the school to take preventative measures against corrupt faculty practices, News 1 reported.

The students are demanding school authorities conduct an audit of the finances of the Spanish department for the years 2009 to 2013, when graduate students may have not received compensation.

On Tuesday, a student who had previously filed a sexual harassment complaint against a professor in the Spanish department urged the university to take action.


Other protesters described the actions of faculty as a case of money laundering. Graduate students have become unwitting enablers of faculty corruption, the students said.

The press conference on the university campus comes a few weeks after six professors, all in the Spanish department, were suspected of taking funds intended for students. The school found five out of the six suspects were found guilty of illegal activity.

The South Korean press report also states a total of eight professors at the university have been laundering money set aside for students for years.

From 2014, the faculty members had siphoned close to $110,000 from students, according to News 1.

In 2019, the university's Spanish department made headlines when a faculty member was accused of sexually harassing a former graduate student.

According to MoneyToday and other local news services, the student's adviser had targeted her with inappropriate touching and rhetoric for years, including during a trip to a conference in Spain.

upi.com/7023310

Women's groups accuse Seoul of coverup in harassment allegations

#METOO

Women's rights activists and the lawyer for the alleged victim of sexual harassment by late Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon accused the city government Wednesday of covering up the complaints. Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI

SEOUL, July 22 (UPI) -- As South Korea continues to grapple with the fallout from sexual harassment charges against late Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, women's rights groups and the accuser on Wednesday said they would not participate with the city government on an internal investigation, claiming the city was complicit in covering up the allegations.

"Victim support groups and the victim's legal representatives believe that an external state agency needs to investigate the incidents caused by the mayor of Seoul, not the city itself," Lee Mi-kyung, director of the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center, said at a press conference in Seoul.

The groups will submit an official complaint to the National Human Rights Commission next week, Lee said.

"We hope that through investigations by independent organizations, the issues raised by the victim will be properly identified and recommendations for improvement made," she said.

The Seoul city government held its own press conference on Wednesday afternoon and expressed "regret" that the women's groups would not participate in its investigation.

The city would no longer conduct its own inquiry, but would "actively cooperate" with the human rights commission, said city spokesman Hwang In-sik.

"We will also work on our own efforts to improve the organizational culture of gender discrimination and sexual harassment," he added.

The Seoul metropolitan government announced last week that it planned to open a joint probe with rights groups into allegations of sexual harassment against Park, who was found dead several hours after his daughter reported him missing on July 9.

The mayor's body was discovered by a rescue dog in a wooded area in northern Seoul in an apparent suicide. Police have not announced an official cause of death but have ruled out foul play.

Park left a note behind saying that he was "sorry to everyone."

RELATED Lawyer in Seoul mayor case alleges 'years' of sexual misconduct

The mayor's accuser, his former secretary, had filed charges with the police against him the day before his disappearance, alleging that he sexually harassed her for four years through actions that included inappropriate physical contact and sending lewd messages.

However, in accordance with Korean law, police closed the criminal investigation upon Park's death.

Advocates for the victim said Wednesday they didn't feel the city government was capable of conducting an unbiased investigation.

Kim Jae-ryun, the lawyer for the accuser, said at Wednesday's press conference that her client remembered telling 17 people in her department about the harassment while still working for the mayor and three more people after she switched departments.

"Among these people, of course, were those with ranks higher than the victim's and a human resources officer who should have communicated to those who were more responsible for the issue," she said.

Song Ran-hee, general secretary of the women's rights group Korea Women's Hotline, said several of the secretary's colleagues "who had been directly or indirectly aware of the incident were involved in concealing, distorting and minimizing it."

"This incident is a coverup," she said, adding that it was part of "organized crime by power that goes beyond the personal problems of former Mayor Park Won-soon."

The former secretary did not attend the press conference but provided a statement that her lawyer read:

"It is a case that took a long time to realize there was a problem, and a longer time to raise the issue. I wanted to be protected as a victim, and I wanted to speak in court during the investigation. I look forward to events being revealed in a lawful and reasonable process, without any prejudice."

Park's death and the harassment charges have touched off an outcry in South Korea, where gender inequality remains high and many say harassment in the workplace remains commonplace.

A petition on the presidential Blue House website opposing an official five-day funeral for Park received more than 570,000 signatures.

Some women have expressed little surprise at the harassment charges being leveled against the mayor, even though he had been a human rights lawyer and had promoted social and gender equality while in office.South Korea has some of the highest levels of gender inequality in the developed world. There is a gender wage gap of 32.5%, highest among countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, while The Economist grades South Korea last on its "glass ceiling index," which measures the best places to be a working woman.

The country saw its own #MeToo movement kick off in 2018 but it has not led to deep institutional reforms, activists say.

Earlier this year, Seo Ji-hyun, the former prosecutor credited with sparking the movement, reflected that #MeToo has greatly raised social awareness of sexual harassment and abuse but hasn't delivered substantial changes in laws or policies to help protect women.

"There have been no changes in fundamental legal structures," she said.

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Knesset votes to support bill banning gay conversion therapy
Demonstrators rally for LGBT rights outside the home of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Israel, on July 22, 2018. File Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI | License Photo

July 22 (UPI) -- Israeli lawmakers passed a bill on its first reading Wednesday that proposes to ban gay conversion therapy, in a victory for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights.

The Knesset approved the bill in its preliminary reading by a vote of 42-36. A number of coalition members from the Blue and White Party and Public Security Minister Amir Ohana supported the proposal, which is opposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's administration

Opponents say the bill could jeopardize psychologists' licenses to practice and result in jail time if they continue the controversial therapy.

Rejected by mainstream medical and mental health organizations, conversion therapy purports to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

"Conversion therapy was born in sin and its place is outside of the law and the public norm," Gantz wrote in a post online. "We will make sure that everyone, from every background and sexual orientation, in Israel, will have free choice and security in their identity."

Israeli housing minister Yaakov Litzman, leader of the United Torah Judaism Party, said passing the bill would threaten the recently formed coalition government.

The bill still must pass three more readings and find approval in a Knesset committee before it would be enacted as law.

Poll: Nearly 60% in U.S. feel 'major' police reforms needed
Activists rally in Compton, Calif., last Saturday to honor Vanessa Guillen, Andres Guardado and other victims of police brutality, and call for changes to policing in the United States. Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

July 22 (UPI) -- A Gallup survey Wednesday shows that most Americans feel U.S. law enforcement needs major changes, but few favor doing completely away with police departments.

According to the poll, 58% said policing needs "major" change, 36% said "minor" changes are needed and 6% said policing is fine the way it is.
Calls for reform have intensified over the last several weeks after the controversial police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. His death spawned protests nationwide and around the world, which were then followed by changes in some municipalities.

About nine in 10 African Americans, 82% of Asian Americans, 63% of Latinos and 51% of Whites agreed that policing needs major changes.

Politically, 89% of Democrats, 60% of independents and 14% of Republicans agreed major change is needed.

Reforms that found broad support included good community relations (97%), changing practices to hold officers accountable (96%) and more reliance on community-based alternatives (82%).

A popular rallying cry among protesters recently has been to defund or abolishing police departments, but Wednesday's survey showed little support for that idea. Just 15% voiced support for abolishing police, including 22% of Black Americans, 20% of Hispanics and 12% of Whites.

Gallup polled more than 36,400 U.S. adults for the survey, which has a margin of error of 1.4 points.