COLD WAR 2.0

U$ Senate Passes $280 Billion Industrial Policy Bill to Counter China

The lopsided bipartisan vote reflected a rare consensus in the otherwise polarized Congress in favor of investing federal resources into a broad industrial policy to counter China.

A semiconductor production facility in Beijing. The issue of commercial and military competition with China — as well as the promise of thousands of new American jobs — has brought Democrats and Republicans together.

Credit...Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press

By Catie Edmondson
July 27, 2022

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday passed an expansive $280 billion bill aimed at building up America’s manufacturing and technological edge to counter China, embracing in an overwhelming bipartisan vote the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades.

The legislation reflected a remarkable and rare consensus in an otherwise polarized Congress in favor of forging a long-term strategy to address the nation’s intensifying geopolitical rivalry with Beijing, centered around investing federal money into cutting-edge technologies and innovations to bolster the nation’s industrial, technological and military strength.

It passed on a lopsided bipartisan vote of 64 to 33, with 17 Republicans voting in support. The margin illustrated how commercial and military competition with Beijing — as well as the promise of thousands of new American jobs — has dramatically shifted longstanding party orthodoxies, generating agreement among Republicans who once had eschewed government intervention in the markets and Democrats who had resisted showering big companies with federal largess.

“No country’s government — even a strong country like ours — can afford to sit on the sidelines,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader who helped to spearhead the measure, said in an interview. “I think it’s a sea change that will stay.”

The legislation will next be considered by the House, where it is expected to pass with some Republican support. President Biden, who has backed the package for more than a year, could sign it into law as early as this week.

The bill, a convergence of economic and national security policy, would provide $52 billion in subsidies and additional tax credits to companies that manufacture chips in the United States. It also would add $200 billion in scientific research, especially into artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing and a range of other technologies.

Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, left, and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, had been working on the technology bill for years.

Credit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

Its passage was the culmination of a years long effort that, in Mr. Schumer’s telling, began in the Senate gym in 2019, when he approached Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, with the idea. Mr. Young, a fellow China hawk, had previously collaborated with Democrats on foreign policy.

In the end, it was made possible only by an unlikely collision of factors: a pandemic that laid bare the costs of a global semiconductor shortage, heavy lobbying from the chip industry, Mr. Young’s persistence in urging his colleagues to break with party orthodoxy and support the bill, and Mr. Schumer’s ascension to the top job in the Senate.

Many senators, including Republicans, saw the legislation as a critical step to strengthen America’s semiconductor manufacturing abilities at a time when the nation has become perilously reliant on foreign countries — especially an increasingly vulnerable Taiwan — for advanced chips.

Read More on the Relations Between Asia and the U.S.Trade Policy: The new trade deal announced by President Biden during a trip to Asia is based on two big ideas: containing China and moving away from a focus on markets and tariffs.

Taiwan: The Biden administration has grown increasingly anxious that China might try to move against this self-governing island over the next year and a half — perhaps by trying to close off the Taiwan Strait.

China: At a Group of 20 meeting in Indonesia, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken sought to cool tensions with Beijing in an effort to further isolate Russia. He met resistance.

South Pacific: As Beijing seeks a sweeping regional deal with Pacific Island nations, the United States is left playing catch-up in an increasingly vital arena of its global competition with China.

A phalanx of former President Donald J. Trump’s national security advisers, from H.R. McMaster to Mike Pompeo, came out in support for the legislation, helping Republican lawmakers make the argument that voting for the bill would be a sufficiently hawkish move.

Mr. Schumer said it had been not too difficult to rally votes from Democrats, who tend to be less averse to government spending. “But to their credit, 17 Republicans, including McConnell, came in and said, ‘This is one expenditure we should make.’”

The legislation, which was known in Washington by an ever-changing carousel of lofty-sounding names, has defied easy definition. At more than 1,000 pages long, it is at once a research and development bill, a near-term and long-term jobs bill, a manufacturing bill and a semiconductors bill.

Its initial version, written by Mr. Schumer and Mr. Young, was known as the Endless Frontier Act, a reference to the 1945 landmark report commissioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking how the federal government could promote scientific progress and manpower.

“New frontiers of the mind are before us, and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have waged this war,” Mr. Roosevelt wrote at the time, “we can create a fuller and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more fruitful life.”

Enactment of the legislation is considered a critical step to strengthening America’s semiconductor abilities at a time when the share of modern manufacturing capacity in the United States has plummeted to 12 percent. That has left the nation increasingly reliant on foreign countries amid a chip shortage that has sent shock waves through the global supply chain.

The subsidies for chip companies were expected to immediately produce tens of thousands of jobs, with manufacturers pledging to build new factories or expand existing plants in Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Idaho and New York.

The bill also seeks to create research and development and manufacturing jobs in the long run, with provisions aimed at building up pipelines of workers — through work-force development grants and other programs — concentrated in once-booming industrial hubs hollowed out by corporate offshoring.

In an interview, Mr. Young described the legislation as an effort to equip American workers hurt by globalization with jobs in cutting-edge fields that would also help reduce the nation’s dependence on China.

“These technologies are key to our national security,” Mr. Young said. “We’re actually giving rank-and-file Americans an opportunity, as it relates to chip manufacturing, for example, to play a meaningful role, not only in supporting their families, but also harnessing our creativity, talents, and hard work, to win the 21st century.”

The bill is expected to pave the way for the construction of factories across the country and, along with that, an estimated tens of thousands of jobs.

Image

President Biden met virtually with CEOs and labor leaders about the CHIPS Act on Monday. Its subsidies for chip companies were expected to lead to the production of tens of thousands of jobs.

Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Chip manufacturers lobbied heavily, and often shamelessly, for the subsidies, in recent months vocally threatening to plunge their resources into building plants in foreign countries like Germany or Singapore if Congress didn’t quickly agree to shower them with federal money to stay in the United States.

Most senators, especially those representing states eyed by chip companies, saw those efforts as reason to quickly pass the legislation. But they particularly infuriated Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who bluntly and frequently accused the prosperous executives of such companies of shaking down Congress.

“In order to make more profits, these companies took government money and used it to ship good-paying jobs abroad,” Mr. Sanders said. “Now, as a reward for that bad behavior, these same companies are in line to receive a massive taxpayer handout to undo the damage that they did.”

Several times in the bill’s life span, it appeared doomed to either collapse or be drastically slimmed down, with the long-term strategic policy provisions whittled off and only the most commercially and politically urgent measure, the $52 billion in subsidies for chip companies, remaining.

The bill appeared imperiled late last month after Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, announced that he would not let it proceed if Senate Democrats continued to advance their social policy and tax plan, the centerpiece of Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda.

In a private conversation, Mr. Young asked Mr. McConnell to reconsider.

Mr. McConnell “saw the near-term value proposition, and frankly, the criticality of getting the chips legislation funded,” Mr. Young recalled.

Still, with Mr. McConnell’s position uncertain and other Republicans refusing to commit to supporting the measure, Mr. Schumer moved last week to force a quick vote on the semiconductor subsidies, leaving open the possibility that the broader bill would be sidelined.

That sparked a last-minute effort by Mr. Young to secure the support of enough Republicans — at least 15, Mr. Schumer had told him — to restore the critical investments in manufacturing and technology. For days, Mr. Young and his allies worked the phones to try to win over Republicans, emphasizing the national security importance of the bill and the opportunities it could bring to their states.

Ahead of the final passage vote at a private party lunch on Tuesday, Mr. Schumer gave his members a pitch of his own.

“This bill is going to have one of the greatest and most far-reaching effects on America that we’ve ever done,” Mr. Schumer said he told Democratic senators. “A lot of your grandchildren will be in good-paying jobs because of the vote you’re taking.”

GEOLOGY

Strange, never-before-seen diamond crystal structure found inside 'Diablo canyon' meteorite

Scientists found something unexpected inside a meteorite that hit Earth 50,000 years ago.

By JoAnna Wendel 

published 2 days ago

A Diablo Canyon meteorite fell to Earth around 50,000 years ago and was first discovered in 1891. New research suggests it contains never-before-seen diamond crystal structures. (Image credit: Terryfic3D/Getty)

While studying diamonds inside an ancient meteorite, scientists have found a strange, interwoven microscopic structure that has never been seen before.

The structure, an interlocking form of graphite and diamond, has unique properties that could one day be used to develop superfast charging or new types of electronics, researchers say.

The diamond structures were locked inside the Canyon Diablo meteorite, which slammed into Earth 50,000 years ago and was first discovered in Arizona in 1891. The diamonds in this meteorite aren't the kind most people are familiar with. Most known diamonds were formed around 90 miles (150 kilometers) beneath Earth's surface, where temperatures rise to more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,093 degrees Celsius). The carbon atoms within these diamonds are arranged in cubic shapes.

By contrast, the diamonds inside the Canyon Diablo meteorite are known as lonsdaleite — named after British crystallographer Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, University College London's first female professor — and have a hexagonal crystal structure. These diamonds form only under extremely high pressures and temperatures. Although scientists have successfully made lonsdaleite in a lab — using gunpowder and compressed air to propel graphite disks 15,000 mph (24,100 km/h) at a wall — lonsdaleite is otherwise formed only when asteroids strike Earth at enormously high speeds.

Related: Diamond hauled from deep inside Earth holds never-before-seen mineral

While studying lonsdaleite in the meteorite, the researchers found something odd. Instead of the pure hexagonal structures they were expecting, the researchers found growths of another carbon-based material called graphene interlocking with the diamond. These growths are known as diaphites(opens in new tab), and inside the meteorite, they form in a particularly intriguing layered pattern. In between these layers are "stacking faults," which mean the layers don't line up perfectly, the researchers said in a statement(opens in new tab).

Finding diaphites in the meteoritic lonsdaleite suggests that this material can be found in other carbonaceous material, the scientists wrote in the study, which means it could be readily available to use as a resource. The finding also gives the researchers a better sense of the pressures and temperatures needed to create the structure.

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—Never-before-seen crystals found in perfectly preserved meteorite dust

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—These meteorites contain all of the building blocks of DNA

Graphene is made of a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, arranged in hexagons. Although research on this material is still ongoing, the material has many potential applications. Because it is both as light as a feather and as strong as a diamond; both transparent and highly conductive; and 1 million times thinner than a human hair(opens in new tab), it could one day be used for more targeted medicines, tinier electronics with lighting-fast charging speeds, or faster and bendier technology, the researchers said.

And now that researchers have discovered these graphene growths inside meteorites, it's possible to learn more about how they form — and thus how to make them in the lab.

"Through the controlled layer growth of structures, it should be possible to design materials that are both ultra-hard and also ductile, as well as have adjustable electronic properties from a conductor to an insulator," Christoph Salzmann, a chemist at University College London and co-author of a paper describing the research, said in the statement

The strange new structures were described July 22 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Originally published on Live Science.

GEMOLOGY

Australian mining company unearths rare 170-carat pink diamond believed to be largest seen in 300 years

The Lulo rose is among the largest pink diamonds ever found.

(Lucapa Diamond Company Limited / AFP)

Miners in Angola have unearthed a rare pure pink diamond that is believed to be the largest found in 300 years, the Australian site operator has announced.

Key points:

Angola's mines make it one of the world's top 10 producers of diamonds

The pink gemstone is the fifth-largest diamond found at Lulo mine

In 2017 a 59.6-carat pink diamond sold at a Hong Kong auction for more than $102 million

A 170-carat pink diamond — dubbed the Lulo rose — was discovered at the Lulo alluvial diamond mine in the country's diamond-rich north-east, and is among the largest pink diamonds ever found, the Lucapa Diamond Company said in a statement to investors on Wednesday.

The Lulo mine has already produced the two largest diamonds ever found in Angola, including a 404-carat clear diamond.

The pink gemstone is the fifth-largest diamond found at the mine where 27 diamonds of 100 carats or more have been found, according to Lucapa.

Angola's mines make it one of the world's top 10 producers of diamonds.

Similar pink diamonds have sold for record-breaking prices.

(Lucapa Diamond Company Limited / AFP)

The "historic" find of the Type IIa diamond, one of the rarest and purest forms of natural stones, was welcomed by the Angolan government, which is also a partner in the mine.

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"This record and spectacular pink diamond recovered from Lulo continues to showcase Angola as an important player on the world stage," Angola's Mineral Resources Minister Diamantino Azevedo said.

The pink diamond will be sold by international tender by the Angolan state diamond marketing company, Sodiam, likely at a dazzling price.

Although the Lulo rose would have to be cut and polished to realise its true value, in a process that can see a stone lose 50 per cent of its weight, similar pink diamonds have sold for record-breaking prices.

The 59.6-carat Pink Star was sold at a Hong Kong auction in 2017 for US$71.2 million (more than $102 million). It remains the most expensive diamond ever sold.

The pink diamond is an impressive size but many clear diamonds are larger than 1,000 carats.

The Cullinan diamond found in South Africa in 1905 tips the scales at 3,106 carats and is in the British Sovereign's Sceptre.

AFP / AP

How do galaxies evolve? A college student may have provided the missing link

by University of Massachusetts Amherst

Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage-Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans

A University of Massachusetts Amherst undergraduate student has contributed significant work regarding the growth of stars and black holes, providing key insight into how they are linked. This new information will allow the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to more efficiently untangle how, exactly, galaxies work.

Astronomers know that the evolution of galaxies is powered by two processes: the growth of supermassive black holes at each galaxy's center and the formation of new stars. How these processes are related has remained a mystery and is one of the questions that the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be exploring. Work by Meredith Stone, who graduated from UMass Amherst's astronomy program in May 2022, will help scientists better understand how they are linked.

"We know that galaxies grow, collide and change throughout their lives," says Stone, who completed this research under the direction of Alexandra Pope, professor of astronomy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and senior author of a new paper, recently published in The Astrophysical Journal. "And we know that black hole growth and star formation play crucial roles. We think that the two are linked and that they regulate each other, but until now, it's been very hard to see exactly how."

Part of the reason that it has been difficult to study the interaction between black holes and stars is that we can't really see these interactions because they take place behind enormous clouds of galactic dust. "For galaxies that are actively forming stars, more than 90% of the visible light can be absorbed by dust," says Pope, "and this dust absorbs visible light."

However, there's a workaround: When the dust absorbs visible light, it heats up, and though the naked human eye can't see heat, infrared telescopes can. "We used the Spitzer Space Telescope," says Stone, who will begin her graduate studies in astronomy at the University of Arizona this fall, "collected during the Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey (GOALS) campaign, to look at the mid-infrared wavelength range of some of the brightest galaxies that are relatively close to Earth." In particular, Stone and her co-authors were looking for particular tell-tale tracers that are the fingerprints of black holes and stars in the midst of formation.

The difficulty is that these fingerprints are exceedingly faint and nearly impossible to distinguish from the general noise of the infrared spectrum. "What Meredith did," says Pope, "is to calibrate the measurements of these tracers so that they are more distinct."

Once the team had these more distinct observations in hand, they could see that in fact, black hole growth and star formation are happening concurrently in the same galaxies and they do seem to be influencing each other. Stone was even able to calculate the ratio that describes how the two phenomena are linked.

Not only is this an exciting scientific achievement on its own, Stone's work can be taken up by the JWST, with its unprecedented access to the mid-infrared spectrum light, and used to zero in much more closely on the questions that remain. For though Stone and her co-authors, including UMass Amherst astronomy graduate student Jed McKinney, quantified how black holes and stars are linked in the same galaxy, why they're linked remains a mystery.Supermassive black holes inside dying galaxies detected in early universe

---

More information: Meredith Stone et al, Measuring Star Formation and Black Hole Accretion Rates in Tandem Using Mid-infrared Spectra of Local Infrared Luminous Galaxies, The Astrophysical Journal (2022). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac778b

Journal information: Astrophysical Journal

Provided by University of Massachusetts Amherst 

Physics Mystery Solved: Findings Could “Revolutionize” Our Understanding of Distance

By PURDUE UNIVERSITY JULY 26, 2022

The researchers discovered that a new theoretical framework to unify Hermitian and non-Hermitian physics is established by the duality between non-Hermiticity and curved spaces.

A physics puzzle is resolved through a new duality.

According to traditional thinking, distorting a flat space by bending it or stretching it is necessary to create a curved space. A group of scientists at Purdue University has developed a new technique for making curved spaces that also provides the answer to a physics mystery. The team has developed a method using non-Hermiticity, which occurs in all systems coupled to environments, to build a hyperbolic surface and a number of other prototypical curved spaces without causing any physical distortions of physical systems.

“Our work may revolutionize the general public’s understanding of curvatures and distance,” says Qi Zhou, Professor of Physics and Astronomy.

“It has also answered long-standing questions in non-Hermitian quantum mechanics by bridging non-Hermitian physics and curved spaces. These two subjects were assumed to be completely disconnected. The extraordinary behaviors of non-Hermitian systems, which have puzzled physicists for decades, become no longer mysterious if we recognize that the space has been curved. In other words, non-Hermiticity and curved spaces are dual to each other, being the two sides of the same coin.”

A Poincaré half-plane can be viewed in the background which demonstrates a curved surface. The white geodesics of the curved surface are shown as an analog of straight lines on a flat space. White balls moving in the right direction demonstrate the geometric origin of an extraordinary skin effect in non-Hermitian physics. Credit: Chenwei Lv and Ren Zhang.

The team’s results were published in the journal Nature Communications in an article titled “Curving the Space by Non-Hermiticity.” Most of the team’s members are employed at Purdue University’s West Lafayette campus. The Purdue team is made up of Professor Qi Zhou, Zhengzheng Zhai, a postdoctoral researcher, with graduate student Chenwei Lv serving as the primary author. Professor Ren Zhang from Xi’an Jiaotong University, who is a co-first author of the paper, was a visiting scholar at Purdue when the study was originally started.

One must first comprehend the distinction between Hermitian and non-Hermitian systems in physics in order to comprehend how this discovery works. Zhou explains it using the example of a quantum particle that can “hop” between several locations on a lattice.

If the probability for a quantum particle to hop in the right direction is the same as the probability to hop in the left direction, then the Hamiltonian is Hermitian. If these two probabilities are different, the Hamiltonian is non-Hermitian. This is the reason that Chenwei and Ren Zhang have used arrows with different sizes and thicknesses to denote the hopping probabilities in opposite directions in their plot.

“Typical textbooks of quantum mechanics mainly focus on systems governed by Hamiltonians that are Hermitian,” says Lv.

“A quantum particle moving in a lattice needs to have an equal probability to tunnel along the left and right directions. Whereas Hermitian Hamiltonians are well-established frameworks for studying isolated systems, the couplings with the environment inevitably lead to dissipations in open systems, which may give rise to Hamiltonians that are no longer Hermitian. For instance, the tunneling amplitudes in a lattice are no longer equal in opposite directions, a phenomenon called nonreciprocal tunneling. In such non-Hermitian systems, familiar textbook results no longer apply and some may even look completely opposite to that of Hermitian systems. For instance, eigenstates of non-Hermitian systems are no longer orthogonal, in sharp contrast to what we learned in the first class of an undergraduate quantum mechanics course. These extraordinary behaviors of non-Hermitian systems have been intriguing physicists for decades, but many outstanding questions remain open.”

He further explains that their work provides an unprecedented explanation of fundamental non-Hermitian quantum phenomena. They found that a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian has curved the space where a quantum particle resides. For instance, a quantum particle in a lattice with nonreciprocal tunneling is in fact moving on a curved surface. The ratio of the tunneling amplitudes along one direction to that in the opposite direction controls how large the surface is curved.

In such curved spaces, all the strange non-Hermitian phenomena, some of which may even appear unphysical, immediately become natural. It is the finite curvature that requires orthonormal conditions distinct from their counterparts in flat spaces. As such, eigenstates would not appear orthogonal if we used the theoretical formula derived for flat spaces. It is also the finite curvature that gives rise to the extraordinary non-Hermitian skin effect that all eigenstates concentrate near one edge of the system.

“This research is of fundamental importance and its implications are two-fold,” says Zhang. “On the one hand, it establishes non-Hermiticity as a unique tool to simulate intriguing quantum systems in curved spaces,” he explains. “Most quantum systems available in laboratories are flat and it often requires significant efforts to access quantum systems in curved spaces. Our results show that non-Hermiticity offers experimentalists an extra knob to access and manipulate curved spaces.

An example is that a hyperbolic surface could be created and further be threaded by a magnetic field. This could allow experimentalists to explore the responses of quantum Hall states to finite curvatures, an outstanding question in condensed matter physics. On the other hand, the duality allows experimentalists to use curved spaces to explore non-Hermitian physics. For instance, our results provide experimentalists a new approach to access exceptional points using curved spaces and improve the precision of quantum sensors without resorting to dissipations

Now that the team has published their findings, they anticipate it spinning off into multiple directions for further study. Physicists studying curved spaces could implement their apparatuses to address challenging questions in non-Hermitian physics.

Also, physicists working on non-Hermitian systems could tailor dissipations to access non-trivial curved spaces that cannot be easily obtained by conventional means. The Zhou research group will continue to theoretically explore more connections between non-Hermitian physics and curved spaces. They also hope to help bridge the gap between these two physics subjects and bring these two different communities together with future research.

According to the team, Purdue University is uniquely qualified to foster this type of quantum research. Purdue has been growing strong in quantum information science at a fast pace over the past few years. The Purdue Quantum Science and Engineering Institute paired with the Department of Physics and Astronomy, allows the team to collaborate with many colleagues with diverse expertise and foster interdepartmental and collegiate growth on a variety of platforms that exhibit dissipations and nonreciprocal tunneling.

Reference: “Curving the space by non-Hermiticity” by Chenwei Lv, Ren Zhang, Zhengzheng Zhai, and Qi Zhou, 21 April 2022, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29774-8

Falls in Europe’s crop yields due to heatwaves could worsen price rises

From Spain to Hungary, output of staples such as corn forecast to fall by up to 9%, adding to impact of Ukraine war on food security

Mauro Nuvolone of agricultural company Fonio assesses the effects of drought in a maize field in Sozzago, northern Italy on 11 July.

 Photograph: Piero Cruciatti/AFP/Getty


Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent

Wed 27 Jul 2022 

Yields of key crops in Europe will be sharply down this year owing to heatwaves and droughts, exacerbating the impacts of the Ukraine war on food prices.

Maize, sunflower and soya bean yields are forecast by the EU to drop by about 8% to 9% due to hot weather across the continent. Supplies of cooking oil and maize were already under pressure, as Ukraine is a major producer and its exports have been blocked by Russia.

Large parts of Europe have been afflicted by drought and hot weather in recent weeks, including Spain, southern France, central and northern Italy, central Germany, northern Romania and eastern Hungary. Cereal yields are down about 2% overall, compared with the five-year average, though a handful of crops such as sugar beet and potatoes are doing better than average.

According to the latest monthly edition of the Mars Bulletin, published this week by the EU’s Joint Research Centre, drought and heat stress in many regions coincided with the flowering stage for key crops, and water reservoirs in many places are at levels too low to meet the demand for irrigation.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has been refusing to allow shipments of grain and other foodstuffs from Ukraine, though a fragile deal on some shipments has been reached that should enable at least some of Ukraine’s harvests to reach world markets.

Putin’s attack on the grain deal was despicable. It also shows he’s desperate
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon

The war in Ukraine has also raised prices of fuel and fertiliser, both essential inputs for farming, which has raised food prices further. Ukraine itself is also suffering the impacts of hot weather and heat stress, as well as the war, which is preventing the shipment of grain, maize, sunflower and other crops already harvested, and is likely to have a severe impact on coming harvests as farmers are unable to plant their fields properly.

Food prices have been rising across the world as a result of the Ukraine war and the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic – which led to people in many countries exhausting their reserves of food, as well as rising demand and the impacts of the climate crisis.

Latest round of Closing the Gap data shows 'disappointing' progress for Indigenous Australians with four of 17 targets on track

By political reporter Dana Morse

Many Closing the Gap targets are not being met, according to the latest data.(ABC News: Michael Black)

New data from the productivity commission has shown only four of the 17 targets under the national Closing the Gap agreement are on track to be met.

Key points:Four of the 17 targets are on track to be met in the next decade
The gaps in rates of adult imprisonment and out of home care, child development and deaths by suicide are worsening

Linda Burney says the plan only works if there is a coordinated effort nationwide

The national agreement is a plan to improve the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians over the next decade.

Modest improvements have been recorded for life outcomes for children, healthy birth weights, school attendance and lowering youth detention, and there has been some improvement on sea country rights, but the target is still not on track to be met.

The data shows the gap is worsening across adult imprisonment rates, deaths by suicide, out of home care rates, and children being developmentally ready once they reach school age.

'Incredibly disturbing'

Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney says the results are 'disappointing'.

"It's incredibly disturbing to see that a number of Closing the Gap targets are not on track," she said.

"There are some disappointing results in the latest figures – it's clear that more work needs to be done.

Linda Burney says the results are disappointing. (ABC News: Mark Moore)

"The Closing the Gap architecture can only work when all parties are invested and there is a coordinated effort from all jurisdictions in partnership with First Nations peoples.

"I am keen to understand more about how the Priority Reforms are being implemented across the country." she said.

The priority reform areas cover partnerships between government and Indigenous communities, building capacity for community-controlled organisations across health, law and justice, transforming government organisations to be culturally safe and responsive, and increase data collection and sharing.

The government is committed to working alongside state ministers and the Coalition of the Peaks to improve outcomes for Indigenous Australians.

A meeting of the joint council on Closing the Gap will be held in Adelaide at the end of August.
Funding boost to conserve culture

The government has announced a multimillion-dollar funding boost to help safeguard Indigenous culture and languages.

Indigenous languages and cultures being strong and supported is one of the targets under the Closing the Gap agreement, with data showing around 123 Indigenous languages were being spoken in 2018-19.

Over the next three years the government will invest $57 million across more than 80 community activity and language programs, with a view to increase the number of languages being spoken and preserve culture across the country.

Indigenous life expectancy rises in the NT

The life expectancy of Indigenous people is growing more than for their non-Indigenous counterparts in the Northern Territory, new data shows.

Minister Burney says language is a key part of Indigenous identity.

"Speaking languages and embracing artistic expression empowers Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to connect to Country and community which is crucial for our being,"

"You look at a whole heap of Indigenous artists now who are using language through the arts to empower, to keep and hold onto culture and preserve culture." Minister Burney said.

$41 million will be distributed to Indigenous language centres across the country, including First Languages Australia, for cultural programs, language teaching and learning, and community workshops."

The remainder of the funding will be divided across cultural preservation, targeted language teaching and learning and developing digital language databases and community workshops.

NT federal politicians Jacinta Price, Marion Scrymgour highlight Indigenous policy failures in maiden speeches

By Steve Vivian

Jacinta Price and Marion Scrymgour address Aboriginal disadvantage, domestic violence and alcohol laws in their maiden speeches.

The Northern Territory's two incoming federal politicians have delivered powerful maiden speeches, highlighting a "broken" system and conditions faced by Aboriginal people that would not be accepted elsewhere in Australia.

Key points:

Both politicians highlighted alcohol policy in the NT as an area of concern


Jacinta Price said there is far too little national concern over problems facing the NT


Marion Scrymgour said she would focus on challenges facing Aboriginal Territorians


Senator Jacinta Price, a Warlpiri-Celtic woman, said she wanted to work towards positive change in addressing the situation facing Aboriginal populations in the Northern Territory.

"I don't know where else in Australia, a member of federal parliament can provide a tour of the numerous places their direct family members have been violently murdered, or died of alcohol abuse, suicide or alcohol-related accidents," she said.

"It is not good enough that [Aboriginal] children have witnessed or been subjected to normalised alcohol abuse, domestic family and sexual violence throughout their young lives.


"Such neglect in great numbers would not be accepted in the prosperous suburbs of our capital cities."

Jacinta Price's Walpiri grandmother presents her with a nulla nulla in the Senate courtyard. (Supplied: Sky News)

Senator Price outlined one of her goals in federal politics as to "halt the pointless virtue signalling and focus on the solutions that bring real change, that changes the lives of Australia's most vulnerable citizens".

"Solutions that give them real lives," she said.

"Not the enduring nightmare of violence and terror they currently live."

Ms Price had served as the Alice Springs deputy mayor before running for the senate.

Member for Lingiari Marion Scrymgour, an Aboriginal woman whose mother was from the Tiwi Islands and father a member of the Stolen Generations from Central Australia, said commencing her role in federal parliament was "tinged with sadness".

"I am essentially becoming part of the same government which designated both my parents as wards of the State — the 'State' being the Commonwealth of Australia," she said.

Ms Scrymgour's seat of Lingiari has the highest percentage Indigenous population of any electorate in Australia.(ABC News: Xavier Martin)

Ms Scrymgour became the first Indigenous woman ever to be elected to Northern Territory Parliament in 2001 and went on to take the role of deputy chief minister.

Both Senator Price and Ms Scrymgour addressed recent concern over liquor policy in the Northern Territory, following the lapse of alcohol restrictions in many remote communities earlier this month.

The alcohol bans were first introduced during the Northern Territory intervention in 2007.

Ms Scrymgour said the removal of alcohol restrictions, which have seen alcohol flow into some communities for the first time in 15 years, required an urgent rethink.

"When a government puts a protective regime of that kind in place, and leaves it in place for that long, you can't just suddenly pull the pin on it without any protection, sanctuary or plan for the vulnerable women and children whom the original measure was supposed to protect," she said.

"To do that is more than negligent — at the level of impact on actual lives it is tantamount to causing injury by omission.

"I'm not saying that the town camp alcohol measures should have continued, but I am saying that before they were allowed to lapse, harm minimisation should have been properly addressed."

Marion Scrymgour was the Northern Territory's deputy chief minister and Attorney-General.(Mark Graham, file photo: AAP)

Senator Price said the removal of alcohol laws "allowed the scourge of alcoholism and the violence that accompanies that free reign, despite warnings from elders of those communities".

Ms Scyrmgour said she, as the federal member for the electorate with the highest percentage of Indigenous residents in the country, pledged to provide strong leadership for Aboriginal people.

“Whilst anyone elected as the member for Lingiari must of course champion the interests and aspirations of all constituents, the challenges and issues facing Aboriginal people and communities in Lingiari will be front of mind for me at all times,” she said

AUSTRALIA

Climate change, rising insurance costs, food security singled out in CSIRO megatrends report

ABC Science /
By environment reporter Nick Kilvert
Posted Yesterday 

Managed retreat will become necessary for some parts of Australia facing the worst impacts of climate change.(AAP: James Gourley)

Insurance is set to get much less affordable in Australia, with the cost of natural disasters forecast to triple over the next 30 years.

Key points:

COVID and Russia's invasion of Ukraine have heralded a seismic shift in our near-future direction

Climate change is set to triple the cost of natural disasters in Australia without urgent government spending on resilience, according to the report

Food security will be a key challenge, with alternative protein sources necessary to meet growing demand

The CSIRO's decadal megatrends report, published today, warns that extreme weather caused by climate change will cost the country more than $39 billion annually by 2050.

The report is intended to identify the key global forces that will shape our lives in the coming decades, with "the view to guide long-term investment, strategic and policy directions," according to the CSIRO.

Australia's north is already hardest hit by rising insurance premiums, with home and contents insurance costing about 1.8 times more than in the south, as of 2020.

And on average, almost double the number of households above the Tropic of Capricorn — about 20 per cent — are already foregoing insurance, compared to those in southern Australia, the report states, citing data from the ACCC.

The megatrends report also echoes recent warnings from the Insurance Council that at least $30 billion will need to be spent to protect coastal communities from sea level rise, and on relocating some vulnerable communities.

Globally, as many as 150 million people living in coastal areas could be vulnerable to the impacts of sea level rise by 2050, but that figure could be far more if Antarctica becomes less stable, the report says.

What happens to Antarctica will have a big bearing on sea levels.

(Gary Bembridge / Flickr CC BY 2.0)

The report, last released a decade ago, is a synthesis of the CSIRO's own data and independent data, according to Stefan Hajkowicz, principle scientist in CSIRO's strategy and foresight team.

"With climate change, some of the things we were talking about as predictions in 2012 have become a reality for many Australians," Dr Hajkowicz said.

"The floods have been very tough, but the other ones are heatwaves and droughts.

"Heatwaves are actually more deadly [than floods]. We can see what's happening in Europe now, it's pretty shocking."
$2 billion investment needed over 5 years

Insurance Council of Australia chief executive Andrew Hall, who wasn't involved with the CSIRO report, said insurance prices would continue to rise unless there was significant investment to build resilience and adapt our infrastructure to the threat of climate change.

"Insurance [puts a price on] risk and we've been consistently highlighting over the last decade that there have been more and more extreme weather events," Mr Hall said.

"Those events drive larger losses when they happen."

There are both short and longer-term strategies to adapting our housing and infrastructure to climate change, and both need to be undertaken simultaneously, Mr Hall said.

The big picture is we need to change development planning to factor in more extreme weather events, he said.

"That needs to happen urgently. Even if land planning is reformed in the near future and quickly, we've still got more than a century of poor land planning decisions to go back and fix up."

But there are also some quick changes that can be made to existing housing and infrastructure that can significantly lower the risk of damage.

"I think people get very focused on the big ticket items like land buybacks," Mr Hall said.

"But at the household levels and street by street, there are things that can be done to improve resilience now."

There are things that can be done to make houses more cyclone-resilient.

(AAP: Dave Hunt)

These changes could include stronger roofing for houses in cyclone-affected areas, and lifting houses on stumps in low-lying areas, he said.

"We are making homes more resilient for people living in bushfire-prone areas, and we now need to do the same when it comes to cyclone and flood."

The Insurance Council has called for an investment of $2 billion, split between federal and state governments, over the next five years to help future-proof vulnerable towns and cities.

That investment would "reduce financial, health and social costs to the Australian government and Australian households by at least $19 billion by 2050", according to the council's Building a More Resilient Australia plan.
COVID brought seismic shifts

As well as adapting to climate change, the CSIRO has identified six other megatrends that will define our coming decades.

Broadly they are:health;
artificial intelligence and autonomous systems;
geopolitical shifts;
digital and data economies;
resource pressure and biodiversity; and
diversity, equity and transparencyGlobal megatrends shifted rapidly during COVID lockdowns, including a switch to more reliance on digital technology.(Supplied: CSIRO)

Dr Hajkowicz said it would help to understand megatrends as similar to ocean rips: they could carry us along or sweep us away, depending on how we handled them.

"We use the analogy of an ocean rip for a megatrend. The better you're able to comprehend it and understand where it's taking you, the better you're able to respond and survive and thrive," he said.

"Even the climate change megatrend has an upside and a downside, depending on how you respond."

The COVID-19 pandemic, as well as Russia's invasion of Ukraine and climate-driven extreme weather, mean there has been a seismic shift in global influences compared to a decade ago, which makes the timing of this report especially pertinent, according to Dr Hajkowicz.

COVID has hastened an unprecedented switch to digital technology and remote working, which has brought unexpected climate benefits.

On the other hand, mental health has declined during the same period, according to today's report

Russia's invasion of Ukraine also threatens to destabilise global supply chains, and there are "big question marks" over how self-sufficient Australia can be if international supply chains break down, Dr Hajkowicz said.

"The big thing we need to look at with food at the moment is the tragic situation with the Ukraine crisis — high food prices are associated with global conflict and destabilisation.

"The key story in there for Australia is sovereign capability and supply breakdown.

"Can we get all the stuff we need? There are some pretty big question marks above that."
Alternative proteins to meet growing food challenge

Feeding a growing global population under increasingly variable farming conditions is also identified as a challenge and an opportunity, according to the report.

Grazing of livestock is the leading driver of deforestation globally, and limiting red meat consumption has been identified by the IPCC and others as a way to reduce emissions.

Potential emissions savings from different diets, ranging in meat intake.

(Supplied: IPCC)

Although there has been a recent shift toward plant-based and alternative proteins in some developed countries, others are seeing the opposite.

"We're seeing in countries like Australia an increased consumption of plant-based protein," Dr Hajkowicz said.

"[But] through Asia-Pacific we're seeing an increased demand for livestock protein."

As much as 22 per cent of the world's protein needs could be met by alternative sources including plant-based meats and insects by 2035, according to the CSIRO report.

In Australia, where alternative proteins are growing in popularity, it's estimated that plant-based meats could be worth around $3 billion by 2030.

Australia's food supply is expected to be hit from multiple angles, however, with longer droughts a likely scenario in parts of the country, and some seafood stocks are also forecast to take a hit.

"Australian oceans are also warming more rapidly than the rest of the world and over 100 marine species are migrating south to cooler waters," the report states.

"Climate changes are expected to significantly impact Australian fisheries stock over the next two decades."

Dr Hajkowicz said today's report was an invitation to try to understand what challenges are coming.

He said in doing so, we might even be able to thrive in changing circumstances.

"This report is a message to build resilience, to stretch the scenarios beyond where we previously thought we have to.

"We have to get out of our comfort zones and ask: how does our infrastructure and our economy continue to work in this challenging scenario?"

Elizabeth Warren warns that the US will suffer a devastating recession if the Fed doesn't ease rate hikes

Carla Mozée

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

 Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images


The Fed's aggressive rate-hike cycle risks pushing the US economy into a recession, Senator Elizabeth Warren said Wednesday.

 
Before the Fed's latest increase, she told CNBC the fast pace of tightening won't control some of the factors contributing to elevated inflation.

 
The Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday raised rates by another 75 basis points, as expected.

This year's pace of fast and big interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve puts the US economy at risk of a recession and won't tame hot inflation, US Senator Elizabeth Warren told CNBC on Wednesday.

The Democrat representing Massachusetts was interviewed before the Federal Open Market Committee delivered its fourth rate hike of 2022. The increase of 75 basis points was widely expected and puts the fed funds rate at a range of 2.25% to 2.5%.

The Fed has embarked on an aggressive rate-hiking cycle as it races to pull down high consumer price inflation. US CPI soared to 9.1% in June, the highest rate since November 1981.

Supply chain problems, COVID outbreaks worldwide, Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in February, and "near-monopolies that are engaging in price gouging" are some of the causes of high inflation, the lawmaker said.

"And increases in the interest rate won't fix any of this," said Warren, adding that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has "admitted" to that in testimony before Congress.

"And yet he continues to drive forward with what so far have been historically fast, aggressive, high interest rate increases. So if it's not going to help bring down a lot of the prices in our economy, what it can do is actually pitch this economy into a recession," she said. "So I think that that's something the Fed should consider and I think they should moderate this aggressive attack."

During his press briefing Wednesday afternoon, Powell said a slower pace of increases will likely be appropriate as rates gets more restrictive.

Since the Fed began raising rates in March, they have gone up by 25, 50 and 75 basis points. The latest one matched June's hike of 75 basis points, which was the first since 1994 when Alan Greenspan was serving as the head of the US central bank.

Stocks this year have been pushed into a bear market on concerns that the series of rate hikes will pull the world's largest economy into a recession.

US GDP in the first quarter contracted by 1.6%, and a second straight quarter of declines would mark a so-called technical recession. An initial reading of second-quarter GDP is due on Thursday. An Econoday consensus estimate puts growth at 0.5%, with estimates ranging from a contraction of 1.1% to an expansion of 1.5%.

"Recent indicators of spending and production have softened. Nonetheless, job gains have been robust in recent months, and the unemployment rate has remained low," the FOMC said in a statement Wednesday. Members of the committee voted unanimously to kick up borrowing rates.

The Fed said inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher food and energy prices, and broader price pressures.

The central bank in aiming to tackle inflation and depress demand "is trying to sharply raise rates so that businesses will contract so that they will either cut hours for employees or lay employees off. That means a lot of pain imposed on people," said Warren.

"[We] need to have responses that are calibrated to the problem. And we need to be very careful about saying the solution is to put more people out of work," she said.

Richard Wolff: Fed Rate Hikes Are "Body Blow" to Workers Reeling from Pandemic, Growing Inequality

Jul 27, 2022


Democracy Now!
We speak with Marxist economist Richard Wolff about how experts forecast another economic recession in the United States, with inflation at a historic high and a federal minimum wage that hasn't changed for 13 years. The Federal Reserve plan to combat rising inflation by raising interest rates delivers a "body blow to a working class" already suffering from decades of upward wealth redistribution and a pandemic, says Wolff, emeritus professor of economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst and visiting professor at The New School. His latest book is "The Sickness Is the System: When Capitalism Fails to Save Us from Pandemics or Itself." Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. 

Watch our livestream at https://democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET

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