New study finds cannibalism in predatory dinosaurs
NEWS RELEASE 28-MAY-2020

UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE AT KNOXVILLE

IMAGE: BIG THEROPOD DINOSAURS SUCH AS ALLOSAURUS AND CERATOSAURUS ATE PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING -- INCLUDING EACH OTHER, ACCORDING TO A NEW STUDY. view more 

CREDIT: PLOS ONE

Big theropod dinosaurs such as Allosaurus and Ceratosaurus ate pretty much everything--including each other, according to a new study, "High Frequencies of Theropod Bite Marks Provide Evidence for Feeding, Scavenging, and Possible Cannibalism in a Stressed Late Jurassic Ecosystem," published last month in the journal PLOS ONE.

"Scavenging, and even cannibalism, is pretty common among modern predators," said lead author Stephanie Drumheller, a paleontologist in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. "Big theropods, like Allosaurus, probably weren't particularly picky eaters if it meant they got a free meal."

Researchers surveyed more than 2,000 bones from the Jurassic Mygatt-Moore Quarry, a 152-million-year-old fossil deposit in western Colorado, looking for bite marks. They found more than they were expecting.

There were theropod bites on the large-bodied sauropods whose gigantic bones dominate the assemblage, bites on the heavily armored Mymoorapelta, and lots of bites on theropods, too, especially the common remains of Allosaurus. There were hundreds of them, in frequencies far above the norm for dinosaur-dominated fossil sites.

Some were on meaty bones like ribs, but researchers discovered others on tiny toe bones, far from the choicest cuts. Pulled together, the data paints a picture of an ecosystem where dinosaur remains lay out on the landscape for months at a time--a stinky prospect, but one that gave a whole succession of predators and scavengers a turn at eating.

But why were there so many bites on the Mygatt-Moore bones? That question is a little harder to answer, at least without similar surveys from other dinosaur sites for comparison.

The Mygatt-Moore Quarry itself is a little unusual.

Volunteer members of the public have excavated most of the fossils found at the quarry. Julia McHugh, curator of paleontology with the Museums of Western Colorado and a co-author of the study, decided to continue this tradition of outreach by bringing students into the lab to help with the project. Now two of them, Miriam Kane and Anja Riedel, are co-authors on the new study as well.

"Mygatt-Moore is such a unique place," McHugh said. "Science happens here alongside hands-on STEM education with our dig program and volunteers."

Having so many marks on hand let the researchers really dig into details that are sometimes harder to study in smaller collections. For example, theropod teeth are serrated, and once in a while the tooth shape is reflected in the bite marks they make. Another co-author, Domenic D'Amore of Daemen College, had earlier figured out a way to translate those striated tooth marks into body size estimates.

"We can't always tell exactly what species were marking up the Mygatt-Moore bones, but we can say many of these marks were made by something big," D'Amore said. "A few may have been made by theropods larger than any found at the site before."

For more than 30 years, researches and others have worked the Mygatt-Moore Quarry intensively, but even after all that time, each season brings new discoveries in the field and in the lab. This snapshot of dinosaur behavior is proof that old bones can still hold scientific surprises.

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Read the full study online.

Amanda Womac (865-974-2992, awomac1@utk.edu)

Environmental groups moving beyond conservation

New study examines the role of NGOs in global environmental politics

MCGILL UNIVERSITY

Although non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become powerful voices in world environmental politics, little is known of the global picture of this sector. A new study shows that environmental groups are increasingly focused on advocacy in climate change politics and environmental justice. How they do their work is largely determined by regional disparities in human and financial resources.

To understand what these groups are doing and why, researchers from McGill University, the University of Georgia, and the Leibniz Centre of Tropical Marine Research analyzed data from 679 environmental NGOs worldwide in a study for PLOS ONE.

These organizations are usually thought to focus on environmental protection and conservation. However, in examining the mission statements of these groups, the researchers found that the importance of climate politics (engagement on climate change) and environmental justice (respect for nature and human rights) had been grossly underestimated in previous research. They calculated a power index for the NGOs based on their human and financial resources and found that more than 40% of the most powerful organizations focus on these areas in their mission.

"There are more powerful organizations working on climate issues than on issues of biodiversity loss or land degradation," says co-author Klara Winkler, a postdoctoral researcher from McGill University. "It is important to be aware that some environmental issues garner more attention than others because it means that these other issues risk being neglected or even forgotten."

The study also shows regional disparities in human resources and financial capacity. Environmental NGOs in Africa and Oceania have the lowest median number of employees and African NGOs have the lowest median annual budgets. While organizations in North America and Europe have the highest median financial capacity, Latin America and the Caribbean has the highest median number of employees.

According to the researchers, these differences likely reflect both labor costs and financial flows, where environmental NGOs in the Global South employ more people with less money while groups in the Global North handle more money with fewer employees. This disparity is also indicative of a global division of labor where Northern environmental NGOs act as donors or coordinators for large projects, while Southern organizations are subcontracted for implementation.

"The findings give us an indication of how feasible it is for NGOs to advocate and implement their agendas in practice. Seeing where the disparities and limitations are in different regions can help us better understand observed differences in environmental policies and politics," says co-author Stefan Partelow from the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research in Germany.

###

About the study

"Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations and Global Environmental Discourse" by Stefan Partelow, Klara Winkler, and Gregory Thaler is published in PLOS ONE.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232945

UNH researchers find wildfires can alter arctic watersheds for 50 years

UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

IMAGE: VIEW OF SIBERIAN WATERWAY AFTER A FOREST FIRE -- SMOKE AND SOOT LINGER IN THE AIR FOR SEVERAL DAYS EVEN AFTER RAINFALL. UNH RESEARCHERS FIND AFTEREFFECTS OF A BURN CAN... view more 

CREDIT: BIANCA RODRIGUEZ-CARDONA/UNH

DURHAM, N.H.-- Climate change has contributed to the increase in the number of wildfires across the globe especially in the Arctic where forest fires, along with increased permafrost thaw, can dramatically shift stream chemistry and potentially harm both ecosystems and humans. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have found that some of the aftereffects of a burn, like decreased carbon and increased nitrogen, can last up to five decades and could have major implications on nearby vital waterways like the Yenisei River that drains into the Arctic Ocean, and other similar waterways around the world.

"Forest fires in this region of the Arctic used to happen about every hundred years and now we're seeing them every summer," said Bianca Rodríguez-Cardona '20G, who just received a Ph.D. in UNH's natural resources and Earth system sciences program. "This increase in fires leads to more input of inorganic solutes into local streams which can alter the chemistry and trigger issues like increased algae blooms and bacteria that can be harmful to humans who depend on these waterways for drinking water, fishing and their livelihood."

In the study, recently published in the journal Nature's Scientific Reports, UNH researchers collected stream water samples in the Central Siberian Plateau in Russia during the summer months of June and July from 2016 to 2018. They compared the concentration of nutrients and dissolved organic matter in the streams and found that inorganic nitrogen, or nitrate which is a nutrient important for cell development and growth in aquatic plants, remained elevated for 10 years after a burn. And, levels of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and dissolved organic nitrogen (DON), major sources of energy, were substantially decreased and took 50 years to return to pre-burn levels.

Boreal forests, forests that grow in high latitudes at low temperatures, have been burning with greater frequency due to longer growing seasons, warmer temperatures and changing weather patterns adding additional uncertainty to how these ecosystems will be affected. While other studies have documented the effects of wildfires on stream chemistry, few have evaluated how these changes will impact the processing and export of nutrients from Arctic watersheds.

"Arctic rivers transfer large quantities of nutrients to the Arctic Ocean, and river water chemistry could be dramatically changed in the coming decades as permafrost thaws and wildfires become more frequent," said William McDowell, professor of environmental science and a co-author on the study. The researchers say even though responses of arctic watersheds can vary from region to region, this offers further understanding of what could happen in other areas of the Arctic, like Alaska, Canada, Norway or Sweden.

The University of New Hampshire inspires innovation and transforms lives in our state, nation and world. More than 16,000 students from all 50 states and 71 countries engage with an award-winning faculty in top-ranked programs in business, engineering, law, health and human services, liberal arts and the sciences across more than 200 programs of study. As one of the nation's highest-performing research universities, UNH partners with NASA, NOAA, NSF and NIH, and receives more than $110 million in competitive external funding every year to further explore and define the frontiers of land, sea and space.

PHOTOS FOR DOWNLOAD
Image: https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/sites/default/files/media/watershed_n9.jpg
Caption: One of the smaller streams in the Central Siberian Plateau where the UNH team took samples.
Credit: Bianca Rodriguez-Cardona/UNH

Image: https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/sites/default/files/media/kochechum_river.jpg
Caption: Kochechum River in the Central Siberian Plateau, a typical river view of landscape and sky without any smoke.
Credit: Bianca Rodriguez-Cardona/UNH

Image: https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/sites/default/files/media/firesun.jpg
Caption: View of Siberian waterway after a forest fire - smoke and soot linger in the air for several days even after rainfall. UNH researchers find aftereffects of a burn can last up to five decades and could have major implications on vital waterways.
Credit: Bianca Rodriguez-Cardona/UNH

Image: https://www.unh.edu/unhtoday/sites/default/files/media/boreal_forest_n20.jpg
Caption: A boreal forest near one of the UNH control watersheds that burned over 100 years ago.
Credit: Bianca Rodriguez-Cardona/UNH

World's deepest octopus captured on camera

By Jonathan Amos

BBC Science Correspondent

29 May 2020

ATLANTIC PRODUCTIONS FOR DISCOVERY CHANNEL
The octopus moves in to investigate the bait on the lander

The deepest ever sighting of an octopus has been made by cameras on the Indian Ocean floor.

The animal was spotted 7,000m down in the Java Trench - almost 2km deeper than the previous reliable recording.

Researchers, who report the discovery in the journal Marine Biology, say it's a species of "Dumbo" octopus.

The name is a nod to the prominent ear-like fins just above these animals' eyes that make them look like the 1940s Disney cartoon character.

The scientist behind the identification is Dr Alan Jamieson.

He's pioneered the exploration of the deep using what are called "landers".

These are instrumented frames dropped overboard from research ships.

They settle on the seabed and record what passes by.

FIVEDEEPS.COM
Dr Jamieson has discovered a host of deep-sea organisms using lander technology

New record for deepest fish

'Supergiant' found in deepest sea

Ocean trench: Take a dive 11,000m down

Dr Jamieson's equipment filmed two octopuses - one on a drop to 5,760m and a second to 6,957m. The individual animals were 43cm and 35cm in length.

They've been placed in the Grimpoteuthis family - the group commonly known as Dumbo.


Octopus fragments and eggs have been found at very great depths, but until this discovery, the previous deepest reliable sighting was at 5,145m down.

That was a black and white photo of an animal taken 50 years ago off Barbados.

ATLANTIC PRODUCTIONS FOR DISCOVERY CHANNEL
A Dumbo octopus was seen on two separate dives

The significance of the Indian Ocean observations is that we now know that octopuses can find potentially suitable habitat across at least 99% of the global seafloor. But those animals that do live at depth will clearly need some special adaptations, says Dr Jamieson.

"They'd have to do something clever inside their cells. If you imagine a cell is like a balloon - it's going to want to collapse under pressure. So, it will need some smart biochemistry to make sure it retains that sphere," the scientist explained.

"All the adaptations you need to live at pressure are at the cellular level."

ATLANTIC PRODUCTIONS FOR DISCOVERY CHANNEL
Victor Vescovo became the first person to reach all five major deeps on Earth

Dr Jamieson recorded the new octopus while working as chief scientist on the Five Deeps Expedition. This was the project that saw Texan financier Victor Vescovo take a submersible to the deepest sectors of the five major oceans on Earth.


While Mr Vescovo was setting human dive records, Dr Jamieson was conducting the tandem science investigations.

He hopes his findings can help dispel some of the misunderstandings about the deepest parts of the ocean.

"The laws of marine ecology and marine biology are actually much the same. And we need the Dumbo octopus out there to blur that line between the depths we think we care about and the depths we don't. This idea that only animals in a kind Victorian freak show live at depth isn't right."

Dr Jamieson is currently the CEO of Armatus Oceanic, a deep-sea consultancy. He's also affiliated to Newcastle University.

'Cannabis burned during worship' by ancient Israelites - study

29 May 2020

GETTY IMAGES Cannabis residue was found on an altar at the temple in Arad

Ancient Israelites burned cannabis as part of their religious rituals, an archaeological study has found.

A well-preserved substance found in a 2,700-year-old temple in Tel Arad has been identified as cannabis, including its psychoactive compound THC.

Researchers concluded that cannabis may have been burned in order to induce a high among worshippers.

This is the first evidence of psychotropic drugs being used in early Jewish worship, Israeli media report.

The temple was first discovered in the Negev desert, about 95km (59 miles) south of Tel Aviv, in the 1960s.

In the latest study, published in Tel Aviv University's archaeological journal, archaeologists say two limestone altars had been buried within the shrine.

Thanks in part to the dry climate, and to the burial, the remains of burnt offerings were preserved on top of these altars.GETTY IMAGES

It's believed cannabis was burned to induce a psychoactive effect in worshippers

Frankincense was found on one altar, which was unsurprising because of its prominence in holy texts, the study's authors told Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

However, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN) - all compounds found in cannabis - were found on the second altar.

The study adds that the findings in Tel Arad suggest that cannabis also played a role in worship at the Temple of Jerusalem.


This is because at the time the shrine in Arad was part of a hilltop fortress at the southern frontier of the Kingdom of Judah, and is said to match a scaled-down version of Biblical descriptions of the First Temple in Jerusalem.

The remains of the temple in Jerusalem are now inaccessible to archaeologists, so instead they study Arad and other similar shrines to help them understand worship at the larger temple.

NEWS RELEASE 28-MAY-2020

New research reveals Cannabis and Frankincense at the Judahite Shrine of Biblical Arad

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

   

IMAGE: FRONT VIEW OF THE SHRINE AT ARAD, REBUILT IN THE ISRAEL MUSEUM. THE TOP?DOWN VIEW OF THE ALTARS: ON WHERE YOU CAN SEE THE BLACK RESIDUE OF CANNABIS AND FRANKINCENSE... view more 

CREDIT: (COLLECTION OF THE ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY, PHOTO © THE ISRAEL MUSEUM, BY LAURA LACHMAN.

Analysis of the material on two Iron Age altars discovered at the entrance to the "holy of holies" of a shrine at Tel Arad in the Beer-sheba Valley, Israel, were found to contain Cannabis and Frankincense, according to new article in the journal, Tel Aviv.

Past excavations revealed two superimposed fortresses, dated to the 9th to early 6th centuries BCE, which guarded the southern border of biblical Judah. Highly important Iron Age finds were unearthed, including a well-preserved shrine that was dated to ca. 750-715 BCE.

Two limestone altars (the smaller altar is 40 cm high and about 20 × 20 cm at the top; the larger is about 50 cm high and 30 × 30 cm at the top) were found lying at the entrance to the "holy of holies" of the shrine.

Evidently, they had played an important role in the cult practices of the shrine. An unidentified black solidified organic material was preserved on the altars' surfaces. Past analysis of these materials failed to identify their content and this dark material was recently submitted to organic residue analysis by modern methods.

The study reveals that on the smaller altar cannabis had been mixed with animal dung to facilitate heating, while the larger altar contained traces of frankincense that was mixed with animal fat to promote evaporation.

These unique findings shed new light on cult practices in biblical Judah, suggesting cannabis was used here as a deliberate psychoactive, to stimulate ecstasy as part of cultic ceremonies.

Lead author Eran Arie from The Israel Museum in Jerusalem commented, "This is the first time that cannabis has been identified in the Ancient Near East; Its use in the shrine must have played a central role in the cultic rituals performed there."

Frankincense comes from Arabia. Therefore, the presence of frankincense at Arad indicates the participation of Judah in the south Arabian trade even before the patronage and encouragement of the Assyrian empire. Arad provides the earliest evidence for frankincense in a clear cultic context. Frankincense is mentioned as a component of the incense that was burned in the Temple of Jerusalem for its pleasant aroma.

The "fortress mound" of Tel Arad in the Beer-sheba Valley in southern Israel was excavated over 50 years ago under the direction of the late TAU Professor Yohanan Aharoni.

###

For an interview, please contact:

Eran Arie, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Email: eranar@imj.org.il

Or

Dvory Namdar, Volcani Center of Agricultural Research
Email: dvoran@volcani.agri.gov.il

For a copy of the paper, visit: https://newsroom.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/embargoed-releases/

For any other enquiries, please contact:

Krystina Sihdu, Press & Media Relations Executive
Email: newsroom@taylorandfrancis.com
Follow us on Twitter: @tandfnewsroom

The article will be freely available once the embargo has lifted via the following link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03344355.2020.1732046

About Taylor & Francis Group

Taylor & Francis Group partners with researchers, scholarly societies, universities and libraries worldwide to bring knowledge to life. As one of the world's leading publishers of scholarly journals, books, ebooks and reference works our content spans all areas of Humanities, Social Sciences, Behavioural Sciences, Science, Technology and Medicine.

From our network of offices in Oxford, New York, Philadelphia, Boca Raton, Boston, Melbourne, Singapore, Beijing, Tokyo, Stockholm, New Delhi and Cape Town, Taylor & Francis staff provide local expertise and support to our editors, societies and authors and tailored, efficient customer service to our library colleagues.

In pictures: Protest clashes in Minneapolis

George Floyd death: Minneapolis clashes run into third night 

French nonprofit warns 'COVID waste' could harm the environment

Opération Mer Propre, or Operation Clean Sea, is a nonprofit group that cleans the waters of France’s Mediterranean coast. In addition to the usual waste they find, they’re now picking up masks and gloves.

The World
May 29, 2020
Producer Lucy Martirosyan
Masks and gloves found in the Mediterranean Sea by members of Opération Mer Propre, or Operation Clean Sea, in mid-May, just after France lifted some of its coronavirus lockdown restrictions.
Credit:Courtesy of Operation Clean Sea


As COVID-19 lockdown restrictions start to ease in France, more people are hitting the beaches in the south — and they’re leaving behind litter.

In addition to the usual fast-food wrappers, plastic bottles and cigarette butts littered across the Côte D’Azur, beach-goers may now find the waste of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Last week, a group of marine divers of the French nonprofit group, Opération Mer Propre (Operation Clean Sea), discovered single-use masks and latex gloves in the waters of Antibes, a beach town on the Mediterranean Sea coast.

Related: Shutdowns have led to cleaner air quality. Is it sustainable?

The group, which routinely clears litter from bodies of water in France, was granted access to beaches to restart cleaning as soon as confinement measures started relaxing in France on May 11, said Joko Peltier, one of the cofounders.

The team found five masks and four pairs of gloves last Saturday. The next day, eight masks and six pairs of gloves.

“But the moment lockdown restrictions started easing up [in Antibes], and the waste was thrown on the ground, it all ended up in the sea the next day.”Joko Peltier, cofounder, Operation Clean Sea

“It’s not a lot,” Peltier told The World in French. “But the moment lockdown restrictions started easing up [in Antibes], and the waste was thrown on the ground, it all ended up in the sea the next day.”

In a Facebook video shared nearly 5,000 times, Laurent Lombard, another cofounder of OMP, scuba dives into the bed of the French Mediterranean, picking up tossed gloves and surgical masks. It looks like an eerie caution against this “future pollution of COVID waste,” as Peltier calls it.

Éric Pauget, a member of parliament who represents the region, agrees. He wrote to French President Emmanuel Macron urging the interior minister to issue fines of 300 euros, or about $332, to those who litter their protective equipment in public places. Used, thrown away masks are not only an environmental risk, he wrote, but a health concern during the pandemic.

“The presence of the virus potentially contaminates the surface of these thrown away masks,” Pauget wrote. “This presents a serious health threat to public cleaners and to children who could accidentally touch them. In addition, the friable polypropylene nanoparticles making up these masks that protect humans risk a lasting effect on our ecosystems and their biodiversity.”



Joko Peltier, cofounder of France's Operation Clean Sea, shows a toothbrush he found underwater while clearing litter.
Credit: Courtesy of Operation Clean Sea

On April 1, French Health Minister Olivier Véran said the government ordered over 1 billion single-use masks from China to meet the needs of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Prime Minister Édouard Philippe unveiled plans Thursday to further lift confinement measures across the country. Starting June 2, beaches, parks and lakes will open to all. Parks and gardens will also open, but meetings of groups of more than 10 people will still be prohibited.

“The results are good regarding the health plan … Good, but not sufficiently good for everything to return to normal,” Philippe said, addressing the nation.

Meanwhile, Peltier says that people should keep raising awareness and educating themselves on the impacts of waste — and now, “COVID waste” — on the sea and the environment.

“We have to pay attention,” Peltier said. “This is the health of our children and our future.”

What private companies could mean for NASA space exploration

The World
May 28, 2020
By The World staff
Producer Ariel Oseran





Stormy weather thwarted a landmark moment for private rocket company SpaceX andNASA on Wednesday, forcing launch directors in Florida to postpone what would have been the first flight of US astronauts into orbit from American soil in nine years.

The countdown, made especially suspenseful by shifting weather conditions, was halted just 16 minutes and 54 seconds before the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket had been due to launch astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on a 19-hour ride to the International Space Station.

From 2015: Why the SpaceX rocket landing is great for NASA

Hurley, 53, and Behnken, 49, had been strapped into their seats for a little over two hours before the launch was called off. Technicians in black suits and face masks then escorted the two astronauts back down the 265-foot-tall launch tower for the return trip to their quarantine-holding facility. SpaceX will make a second attempt on Saturday afternoon to launch the astronauts aboard its newly designed Dragon Crew capsule.

The astronauts were to have blasted off from the same launch pad used in 2011 by NASA's final space shuttle flight, which was piloted by Hurley. Since then, NASA astronauts have had to hitch rides into orbit aboard Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.

For Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of SpaceX and electric carmaker Tesla, the first manned SpaceX launch represents another milestone for the reusable rockets his company pioneered to make space flight less costly. SpaceX, founded by Musk in 2002, and formally known as Space Exploration Technologies, has never previously flown humans into orbit, only cargo.

Margaret Weitekamp, head of the space history department at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, spoke with The World's Marco Werman about the future of US space flight.

Marco Werman: What do you make of this shift to privately-owned spacecraft?


Margaret Weitekamp: It is a really exciting new way of ordering the relationship between NASA and private companies. We know that the Apollo missions — those spacecraft were built by private companies. This is a new kind of relationship where NASA is not just asking for a private company to make it but to actually fly it.

From 2011: SpaceX rocket launch marks the beginning of the private era in space

Are there problems with decentralizing it that way?


I think that what they are looking forward to is being able to have different companies approaching the same kind of problem. And so the hope really is that by having SpaceX have its solution and Boeing have its solution, then you have an increased number of ways that you can support the International Space Station, which is still being supported by international partners.

Since 2011, US astronauts have been hitching rides to space with Russia. Most agree it's been a pretty fruitful partnership between the two superpowers. How do you see the shift to private American companies affecting the US-Russian space collaboration?


Being able to add private companies providing not only cargo but crew service to the International Space Station removes, at some level, the overreliance on the vagaries of geopolitics. And it also then — I think NASA is hoping — opens up their options in terms of turning their attention to exploration, going back to the moon, perhaps onto Mars, and also then being able to put the focus on international collaborations in terms of planetary science and astronomy.

From 2015: 'Welcome back, baby.' SpaceX rocket lands safely back on Earth.

So finally, this historic flight — it's slated to happen in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. What special precautions were taken to ensure the safety and health of the astronauts and crews? And do you think they should have delayed for a few months or even a year to lessen the odds that the virus would not end up onboard the International Space Station?


I know that they have stepped up the crew isolation in anticipation of the launch and additional precautions were taken about trying to make sure that there was no transmission of the virus to the International Space Station. I think the biggest loss is how many of us would have certainly made a trip to Florida to make sure that we were able to see this historic launch in person will instead be collectively having the experience of watching it online or on TV.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Reuters contributed reporting.


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Taylor Swift says Trump 'stoking fires of white supremacy'

Issued on: 29/05/2020

Pop icon Taylor Swift told US President Donald Trump:

 "We will vote you out in November" 

ANGELA WEISS AFP/File



New York (AFP)

Pop icon Taylor Swift hit out at Donald Trump on Friday after the US president suggested law enforcement might shoot protesters angry over the killing of a black man by Minneapolis police.

"After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?" Swift wrote on Twitter, where she has 86 million followers.

She cited Trump's controversial tweet in which he said, "When the looting starts, the shooting starts," before threatening: "We will vote you out in November. @realdonaldtrump."


Trump sparked controversy with a late-night tweet on violent anti-police protests in Minneapolis, when he called protesters "THUGS" and warned of military intervention.

Twitter took the unprecedented step of hiding the tweet because it violated the platform's rules against "glorifying violence."

Hundreds of troops were deployed to the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul on Friday after a third night of rioting over police brutality against African Americans.

The demonstrators are outraged over the videotaped death of George Floyd, 46, while handcuffed on the ground and in custody of Minneapolis police on Monday.

He died after an officer kneeled on his neck for more than five minutes.

In the past few years Swift has opened up about politics after initially struggling to control her own voice as an artist who found massive fame at a young age.

She endorsed Democratic candidates in Tennessee in 2018 and has criticized Trump previously.

© 2020 AFP

Nissan to shut factory in Barcelona, thousands of workers affected

Issued on: 28/05/2020

Nissan workers protest the news outside the carmaker’s plant in Barcelona, Spain, May 28, 2020. © Lluís Gené, AFP
Text by:NEWS WIRES

Japanese carmaker Nissan has decided to shut its factory in Barcelona where 3,000 people are employed after four decades of operations, the Spanish government said on Thursday.

The decision came despite government efforts to keep the plant open, Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya told the national radio station.

“We regret this decision by Nissan to leave not just Spain but Europe... to concentrate its business in Asia, despite the enormous efforts by the government to keep the business going,” she said.

Spain is one of the countries worst hit by the coronavirus fallout, a context that particularly stoked anger among workers at the Barcelona plant.

‘Shameful’
“It’s shameful that a multinational company like this one would drop us in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said 54-year old Jordi Carbonell who has been with Nissan for 32 years.

Carbonell said he had felt “cheated” by management in recent years. “No production site is profitable without a sufficient production volume and here they just let it die,” he said.

Spain’s car industry is the European Union’s second-biggest after that of Germany, accounting for 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

With Brexit, the Barcelona site became Nissan’s main one in the European Union. The Japanese company runs a bigger production facility in Sunderland in Britain.

In addition to 3,000 direct jobs, some 22,000 more depend indirectly on the site, according to unions.

The industry ministry confirmed to AFP that Nissan’s chief executive had informed it of plans to stop operations at the Barcelona site, which groups several production facilities.

‘Safeguard employment’

Production there had already ground to a halt at the start of the month when some staff went on strike demanding an investment strategy for the site after plans were announced to cut 20 percent of the workforce.

Foreign Minister Gonzalez Laya said “all kinds of help” had been proposed to Nissan in the run-up to Thursday’s decision and that the government would “not throw in the towel”.

The head of Nissan’s European operations, Gianluca de Ficchy, said “all that support was taken into account in order to have an overall economic equation going forward”.

Nevertheless, “we’ve reached the conclusion that the overall economic equation for the plant was not sustainable going forward,” he added.

But Gonzalez Laya said Spain would “explore all solutions, because our concern is to safeguard employment”.

She did not rule out the possibility of finding a buyer for the plant.

Economy Minister Nadia Calvino meanwhile said the government had invited Nissan to start talks “to see how this process could be managed”, to no avail.

The Madrid government has argued that the cost of closing Nissan’s Barcelona operation, which it put at more than one billion euros ($1.1 billion), was higher than the investment needed to keep it going.

Some workers at the Barcelona site blamed Nissan’s alliance with French carmaker Renault, concluded in 1999, which union representative Pedro Ayllon said had made Nissan “a secondary partner” in Europe.

“Since then we have been given the production of vehicles with low production numbers, the ones that the others didn’t want to make elsewhere,” he said.

Nissan’s Barcelona plant currently makes mostly SUVs and pickup trucks, as well as electric minivans.

‘Broken promises’

Its capacity is around 200,000 units per year, but that had been reduced by a third even before the coronavirus pandemic.


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A decade ago, when the site was already in difficulty following the global financial crisis, it was kept going partly in exchange for wage cuts for staff.

“Workers make sacrifices in return for broken promises,” said Ayllon.

Juan Sanchez, a 45-year-old worker in the paint shop whose partner also works at the plant, said the virus context made it particularly hard for the couple, parents of two daughters, to soon be out of a job.

“With COVID-19 we can’t find another job, not while there are so many job cuts in other companies,” he said.

(AFP)

Doctor, is it serious? French healthcare pushed to the brink by Covid-19

#France is in the grip of a #pandemic, with a #medical sector more and more angry over its status. An average #nurse takes home less than €2,000 a month and French health workers are among the lowest paid in the OECD countries. On Monday, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe promised that they would soon get pay increases as part of an overhaul of France's hospital system. Will it be enough? Mark Owen and his panel of guests examine the problems and the issues facing the doctors, nurses and carers who are on the frontline fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.  Subscribe to France 24 now: http://f24.my/youtubeEN FRANCE 24 live news stream: all the latest news 24/7 http://f24.my/YTliveEN

Covid-19: How the meat industry became a global health liability

Issued on: 24/05/2020

Butchers work in the Hasenheide slaughterhouse in Fuerstenfeldbruck, Germany, January 28, 2019. © Michaela Rehle, Reuters
Text by:Colin KINNIBURGH
From South Dakota to Brazil to Germany, meat processing workers around the world have been among the hardest hit by Covid-19. Will the pandemic force us to rethink our food system?

It started in South Dakota. On March 25, even as some of the biggest US cities were just going into lockdown to prevent the spread of Covid-19, a worker at a pork processing plant in the city of Sioux Falls (pop. 181,000) tested positive for the virus. Some at the plant suspected it wasn’t the first case.

Smithfield, the company operating the facility and largest pork producer in the world, quickly confirmed the March 25 case but said it would continue operations as usual. Three weeks later, the Sioux Falls plant had become the United States’ largest Covid-19 hotspot, with 644 of its 3,700 employees infected. More than half of all the cases in South Dakota could be traced back to the plant.

But it didn’t stop there. From Mississippi to Washington, Texas to Nebraska, one state after another reported outbreaks in beef, pork and poultry plants. Most had lockdown orders in place; a few, like South Dakota, did not, but it made little difference for meatpacking workers, who were considered “essential” and therefore still expected to show up for work.

As of May 22, according to the Food & Environment Reporting Network, more than 17,000 US meatpacking workers at 220 facilities have caught the virus, and 66 have died.

Many of these workers also brought the virus home to their families and communities, fuelling the spread of Covid-19. According to unions and employees themselves, they were given little choice. With wages averaging around $15 an hour at facilities like the Sioux Falls Smithfield plant, many workers live pay check to pay check, and would not be eligible for unemployment benefits if they quit.

Moreover, Smithfield workers say they were given incentives to keep working even if they were sick, including a $500 “responsibility bonus” promised to those who finished all of their shifts in April. (The company says all of its hourly workers were eligible for the bonus, including those “who miss[ed] work due to Covid-19 exposure or diagnosis”.)

Workers also say they were provided with insufficient protective equipment, despite union representatives raising concerns about Covid-19 contamination as early as the beginning of March, according to the BBC.

The risks faced by these workers highlight the profound inequalities cutting across the Covid-19 crisis not just in the United States, but worldwide. From Iowa to India, low-wage, often migrant workers have borne the brunt of both the deadly virus and the economic toll of lockdowns.

Meat processing plants illustrate this trend in particularly stark terms. Over the last month, the kinds of Covid-19 clusters first seen at facilities in the US Midwest and South have cropped up in Brazil, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and France.

At a single Cargill beef processing plant in the Canadian province of Alberta, 949 of about 2,000 employees were infected with the virus and two died. In Canada as in the United States, meatpacking plants are staffed primarily by immigrants and in many cases refugees. Many have fled wars and other threats in countries ranging from Ethiopia to El Salvador to Vietnam, and some speak little English.

In Germany and France, slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants were among the first Covid-19 clusters to emerge as lockdown measures began to ease in early May. Germany’s meat industry, too, is heavily dependent on migrant labour: according to unions, about 80% of employees are temporary workers, mostly from Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and other countries in Eastern and Southern Europe.

Workers ‘as expendable as the things they’re slaughtering’

Why, then, has the meat industry been so hard hit by Covid-19?

“The one-word answer is monopoly,” says Raj Patel, a research professor in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin and expert on the global food system. “Across the world, the meat industry has been tending towards just a few large players.”

Patel points to a 2016 report by the United States Department of Agriculture showing that the four largest meatpacking companies “account for nearly 70 percent of the value of all US livestock purchased for slaughter, compared to just 26 percent in 1980".

In other major meat-producing countries, too, the industry is highly concentrated: for example, a 2011 study by the European Federation of Trade Unions in the Food, Agriculture and Tourism found that in France, Germany and the UK, the top five beef and poultry producers accounted for a large majority of their respective markets.

Patel says the Covid-19 outbreaks seen in so many meat processing plants are an “object lesson” in what happens when industries consolidate, “which is that in order to survive, everyone else has had to follow the kinds of practices that the largest players have adopted”.

“Those practices in the meat industry are around people and machines being very close to one another,” he continues. “So the carcasses fly through the line very quickly.”

The faster animal carcasses move along the production line, the closer together workers need to be, putting them at high risk of infection from airborne virus particles. Some experts have suggested that the cold, humid, enclosed conditions in meat facilities could also be a factor, though this remains unconfirmed.

Patel says that, while worker safety protocols and “line speeds” may vary from country to country, the standards set by the largest companies are increasingly becoming the global norm.

Furthermore, he says, working conditions in the meat industry can be substandard even in countries like France and Germany, where workers in other industries benefit from above-average labour rights.

“Actually, German poultry line speeds are much faster than in the United States,” he says. Moreover, the German meat industry relies heavily on subcontracting, with third-party companies responsible for hiring foreign workers on temporary contracts and in some cases lodging them in cramped dorms. Critics say these practices allowed the heavily immigrant workforce to be exploited, while shielding larger companies from accountability.

In such environments, Patel says, “workers are considered as expendable as the things that they’re slaughtering” — even in countries like Germany, which have otherwise largely kept Covid-19 in check.

“It is in the sites where expendable life is to be found that you see the worst effects of industrial monopoly concentration in the meat industry,” Patel adds.

Calls for a more sustainable food system

As the Covid-19 pandemic has put the meat industry in the international spotlight, some have proposed a simple solution: eat less meat. Patel agrees that a drastic reduction in meat consumption is key to “any sustainable future” for the food system, both for workers and the environment, but says calls to simply go vegetarian or vegan are only a “partial answer” to the problems the pandemic has highlighted.

He emphasises the need to listen to demands from food workers themselves when charting the transition to a more sustainable food system.

In some cases, that might in fact mean boycotting meat. In the US, a coalition led by Latino workers in Iowa — one of the states where the meat industry has been hardest hit by Covid-19 — issued a call for a nationwide “Meatless May” to protest against “unforgivable” conditions in meatpacking facilities.

Another US labour advocacy group, the Food Chain Workers Alliance, has issued a list of five steps that citizens can take to support at-risk workers, including putting pressure on both corporations and elected officials to guarantee sick pay, health care, the right to organize and other protections.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a more modest list of recommendations: screen workers for symptoms; increase space between workers (notably by reducing the “rate of animal processing”); enhance cleaning and disinfection; and provide multilingual education and training.

Under popular pressure following the recent outbreaks, the German government has gone further, announcing reforms to the industry including €30,000 fines for health and safety violations and a ban on subcontracting, effective in January 2021.

In France, the Confédération Paysanne farmers’ union has called for a return to smaller-scale, local meat production. In a statement this week, the group said: “The re-localisation of (meat) processing is one of the necessary steps towards a more resilient system.”

The European Commission has echoed some of these proposals in its Farm to Fork Strategy, also published this week as part of its roadmap for the continent-wide Green Deal announced in January. The Commission says it plans to promote “shorter supply chains” in order “to enhance resilience of regional and local food systems”.


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The Farm to Fork Strategy also calls explicitly for reducing consumption of meat: “Moving to a more plant-based diet with less red and processed meat and with more fruits and vegetables will reduce not only risks of life-threatening diseases, but also the environmental impact of the food system.”

Patel says that these are all important steps, but stresses that there are no easy fixes, and that improving conditions in the food industry will also ultimately mean paying more for food.

“Small-scale farming is part of it, but so is well-paid migrant labour, and so are dignified wages for everyone,” so that food produced under fair conditions is affordable to all, he says. He says workers in the meat industry deserve a “just transition” to a more sustainable system, as has been proposed for those working in fossil fuels.

Patel adds that this is a rare opportunity to begin that transition.

“This is a moment to pivot,” he says. “If ever you wanted a time where sustainable food systems were imaginable, where you had the labour force ready to engage in sustained transformation… now is the moment to do it.”

UBI
Spain's government pushes through basic income guarantee to fight poverty


Issued on: 29/05/2020

Volunteers prepare rations of donated food ahead of a distribution to people in need at the Santa Anna church in Barcelona on May 15, 2020. © Joseph Lago, AFP

Text by:FRANCE 24Follow

The Spanish government approved on Friday the creation of a minimum income worth 462 euros ($514) a month for the poorest, Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias told a news conference, in a scheme that targets some 2.5 million people
Under the decree approved at a cabinet meeting, the Socialist-led government would pay the monthly stipend and top up existing revenue for people earning less so that they get at least that minimum amount every month, Iglesias told reporters.

The minimum income would increase with the number of family members to a total of up to 1,015 euros per month. The new programme aims to reach 850,000 households or 2.5 million people and would cost the government about 3 billion euros a year.

The plan to install a basic income was a pre-electoral promise, but it was accelerated due to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

Spain is one of Europe's hardest hit countries, with more than 27,000 deaths and nearly 238,000 confirmed cases of the virus. It also has one of the highest unemployment rates on the continent.

Close to a million jobs were lost in March alone when the lockdown began and the Bank of Spain has forecast the economy will contract by up to 12% this year.

GOOD NEWS
Canada bans cruise ship visits until October
LATER FOR THE HIGH ARCTIC

Issued on: 29/05/2020

The 'Caribbean Princess' cruise ship in Colon, Panama, on May 28, 2020: such vessels will be banned from Canadian waters until October because of the coronavirus pandemic Ivan PISARENKO AFP

Ottawa (AFP)

The Canadian government on Friday extended by three months a ban on cruise ships entering Canadian waters because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The ban, which began in April and will now run to October, has been tightened to include passenger boats and other vessels with more than 100 passengers and crew, the ministry of transport said in a statement. The original ban was on vessels with a capacity of 500 or more people.

The move will deal a blow to several Canadian cities such as Vancouver, Quebec and Montreal, where the cruise industry makes an important economic contribution.

In 2019, Canada was visited by 140 cruise ships from a dozen countries with some two million tourists on board, according to the ministry.

Small boats for short excursions, such as whale watching, will however be allowed to resume their activities starting on July 1, in line with permission by provincial and local authorities.

Nevertheless, the movement of vessels with a capacity of more than 12 people will be banned from Arctic coastal water until October 31.

These rules do not apply to small craft used by local communities for transport or fishing.

Ferries, deemed essential services, will be allowed to continue operating but will have to implement safety measures to curb the spread of the disease.

Anyone caught violating the ban faces a fine of Can$5,000 ($3,600) per day for individuals and Can$25,000 for businesses.

© 2020 AFP