Earth's Core May Have Trapped Noble Gases From Ancient Solar Wind Blasts


Powerful solar winds escape from coronal holes in the Sun's atmosphere. (NASA/SDO/AIA)


MICHELLE STARR
17 MAY 2021


4.5 billion years ago, when the Solar System was still forming, particles from our Sun's solar wind probably got caught up in the core of Earth as it assembled from space rubble.

That's the conclusion scientists have drawn after analysing an iron meteorite and finding an excess of noble gases with isotope ratios consistent with solar wind. Since iron meteorites are thought to be analogous to planetary core formation, this suggests similar abundances ought to have been included in Earth's core.

The meteorite, named Washington County for the place it was found back in 1927, is a rare one. Of all the space rocks that fall to Earth, roughly only 5 percent of the ones we retrieve are made of iron.

Based on our understanding of planet formation, these iron meteorites are interpreted as the cores of failed planets.

Planets are thought to form when their stars are very young - possibly even at the same time as the star is still forming - and are orbited by a swirling thick cloud of dust and gas. Dust and pebbles in this cloud start to collide and stick together: first electrostatically, then gravitationally as the object grows more massive and can attract more material. These objects are basically planet 'seeds', or planetesimals.


As planetesimals grow, they become hot and a bit molten, allowing material to move around. Core differentiation is the process whereby denser material sinks inwards towards the center of the object while less dense material rises outwards.

Not everything that starts to become a planet actually makes it all the way. Asteroids are thought to be the remnants of planetesimals that were disrupted and fragmented before they could reach full planet growth; and iron meteorites are thought to be fragments of differentiated planetesimal cores.

For this reason, planetary scientists study iron meteorites to better understand the formation of our own planet, which has a dense iron core. And the Washington County iron meteorite has been known for some time to be special.

Scientists first discovered that it seemed to contain unusual isotopes of the noble gases helium and neon back in the 1960s, and researchers have been intrigued by it ever since.

Initially, the gases were thought to be cosmogenic in origin - that is, generated by interactions with galactic cosmic rays to which the iron meteoroid was exposed during billions of years in space.

Then, in the 1980s, astronomers found the ratios to be more consistent with solar wind isotope ratios. Now, a team led by cosmochemist Manfred Vogt of the University of Heidelberg in Germany has confirmed it.

Using noble gas mass spectrometry, they have positively identified that some of the isotope ratios of neon and helium found in the Washington County meteorite are much more consistent with a solar wind rather than a cosmogenic origin.

"The measurements had to be extraordinarily accurate and precise to differentiate the solar signatures from the dominant cosmogenic noble gases and atmospheric contamination," Vogt explained.

Extrapolating the meteorite to planetary cores, the team concluded it was possible that similar solar wind particles had been captured by Earth's forming core, and dissolved into the liquid metal. Interestingly, observational evidence supports this conclusion.

Solar isotopes of helium and neon can also be found in the igneous rock of oceanic islands. At least some of these oceanic basalts are sourced from deep mantle plumes thought to extend as far down as the core-mantle boundary, around 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) deep.

Since the solar isotopes are not found in volcanic rock sourced from shallower materials, this suggests the isotopes are being sourced from deep within Earth, the researchers said.

"We always wondered why such different gas signatures could exist at all in a slowly albeit constantly convecting mantle," explained cosmochemist Mario Trieloff of the University of Heidelberg.

According to the team's calculations, the observed mantle abundances of solar neon and helium isotopes wouldn't require huge amounts of material similar to the Washington County meteorite. If just 1 to 2 percent of the core had a similar composition, this could explain what Trieloff and his team have observed.

Given how turbulent conditions would have been during the Solar System's formation, and how wild the Sun, it's perhaps not surprising that solar particles would get mixed up in everything.

But the fact those particles might be seeping out of the core and into the mantle is surprising, and suggests we may need to factor a leaky core in future research and modeling, the researchers said.

"For our planet, this may offer a new solution for problems associated with keeping different mantle regimes with distinct noble gas signatures, by fluxing individual reservoirs from the underlying core," they wrote in their paper.

"At the same time, this would imply a considerable - previously neglected - active role of Earth's core in mantle geochemistry and volatile geodynamics, which should be integrated into future studies."

The research has been published in Communications Earth and Environment.

An 'Impossible' Quasicrystal Was Forged in The World's First Nuclear Bomb Test

The sample of red trinitite that contained the quasicrystal. (Bindi et al., PNAS, 2021)


MICHELLE STARR
18 MAY 2021


At 5:29 am on the morning of 16 July 1945, in the state of New Mexico, a dreadful slice of history was made.

The dawn calm was torn asunder as the United States Army detonated a plutonium implosion device known as the Gadget - the world's very first test of a nuclear bomb, known as the Trinity test. This moment would change warfare forever.


The energy release, equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT, vaporized the 30-metre test tower (98 ft) and miles of copper wires connecting it to recording equipment. The resulting fireball fused the tower and copper with the asphalt and desert sand below into green glass - a new mineral called trinitite.

Decades later, scientists have discovered a secret hidden in a piece of that trinitite - a rare form of matter known as a quasicrystal, once thought to be impossible.

"Quasicrystals are formed in extreme environments that rarely exist on Earth," explained geophysicist Terry Wallace of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"They require a traumatic event with extreme shock, temperature, and pressure. We don't typically see that, except in something as dramatic as a nuclear explosion."

Most crystals, from the humble table salt to the toughest diamonds, obey the same rule: their atoms are arranged in a lattice structure that repeats in three-dimensional space. Quasicrystals break this rule - the pattern in which their atoms are arranged does not repeat.

When the concept first emerged in the scientific world in 1984, this was thought to be impossible: crystals were either ordered or disordered, with no in-between. Then they were actually found, both created in laboratory settings and in the wild - deep inside meteorites, forged by thermodynamic shock from events like a hypervelocity impact.


Knowing that extreme conditions are required to produce quasicrystals, a team of scientists led by geologist Luca Bindi of the University of Florence in Italy decided to take a closer look at trinitite.

But not the green stuff. Although they're uncommon, we have seen enough quasicrystals to know that they tend to incorporate metals, so the team went looking for a much rarer form of the mineral - red trinitite, given its hue by the vaporized copper wires incorporated therein.

Using techniques such as scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, they analyzed six small samples of red trinitite. Finally, they got a hit in one of the samples - a tiny, 20-sided grain of silicon, copper, calcium and iron, with a five-fold rotational symmetry impossible in conventional crystals - an "unintended consequence" of warmongering.

"This quasicrystal is magnificent in its complexity - but nobody can yet tell us why it was formed in this way," Wallace said.

"But someday, a scientist or engineer is going to figure that out and the scales will be lifted from our eyes and we will have a thermodynamic explanation for its creation. Then, I hope, we can use that knowledge to better understand nuclear explosions and ultimately lead to a more complete picture of what a nuclear test represents."


This discovery represents the oldest known anthropogenic quasicrystal, and it suggests that there may be other natural pathways for the formation of quasicrystals. For example, the fulgurites of molten sand forged by lightning strikes, and material from meteor impact sites, could both be a source of quasicrystals in the wild.

The research could also help us better understand illicit nuclear tests, with the eventual aim of curbing the proliferation of nuclear armaments, the researchers said. Studying the minerals forged at other nuclear testing sites could uncover more quasicrystals, the thermodynamic properties of which could be a tool for nuclear forensics.

"Understanding other countries' nuclear weapons requires that we have a clear understanding of their nuclear testing programs," Wallace said.

"We typically analyze radioactive debris and gases to understand how the weapons were built or what materials they contained, but those signatures decay. A quasicrystal that is formed at the site of a nuclear blast can potentially tell us new types of information - and they'll exist forever."

The research has been published in PNAS.

Forbes staffers announce intention to unionize

 At Forbes, a publication known for its coverage of the rich and powerful, its employees are fighting for something rather less glamorous: fair pay and job security.

© Lilly Lawrence/Getty Images A general view of the atmosphere at FORBES Magazine Celebrates Sophia Amoruso for "Self Made Women" issue at Nasty Gal on June 8, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Lilly Lawrence/Getty Images)

On Tuesday, staffers at the 103-year-old magazine brand announced their plans to form a union.

The union would encompass about 105 employees who work in Forbes' editorial departments, including reporters, editors, designers, photographers, videographers and social media editors. More than 80% of those staffers have signed union cards with the NewsGuild of New York, which also represents the unions of The New York Times, Time magazine, NBC News Digital and others.

In a mission statement shared with CNN Business, Forbes staffers said they are unionizing for better workplace policies and protections including job security, pay equity and clear editorial independence, along with more efforts to improve newsroom diversity.

"Our current top-down structure restricts our ability to be inclusive and allows exploitative labor practices," the union wrote. "We want a better balance of power and, most importantly, we want our passion for journalism to drive us instead of the fear of losing our jobs. The unhealthy work culture takes labor for granted, shows a clear lack of interest in retaining talent—from ambitious, entry-level journalists to more experienced veterans—and perpetuates a lack of diversity in the newsroom."

After this story was published, a Forbes spokesperson told CNN Business that the company sent a letter to employees in March acknowledging their right to organize. The union said it is looking for voluntary recognition, but the spokesperson declined to comment on whether the company will do so.

"Comprehensive salary reviews are an ongoing process at Forbes, and compensation ranges ensure that there are no pay inequities, " the spokesperson said.

Forbes joins the massive wave of unionization that has occurred throughout the media industry. Last year, more than 1,800 journalists unionized with the NewsGuild and the Writers Guild of America, up from about 1,500 the prior year, according to research conducted by Axios. Recent efforts include digital-native newsroom Insider and the tech workers at The New York Times.

Sarah Hansen, a breaking news reporter at Forbes who also serves on the organizing committee, told CNN Business that the conversations among Forbes staffers on the decision to unionize began last summer.

"It's fair to say the [pandemic] played a role," Hansen said. "A lot of the goals that we have were thrown into a clearer light once we were working from home and everybody's work-life balance got destroyed."

Some specific issues Forbes union hopes to address include a lack of overtime pay, abrupt changes in job requirements and more transparent pathways to promotions. The union also hopes to secure just cause — a labor protection that requires an employer to build a case for why an employee should be fired — in its contract. Staffers in The New Yorker's union had advocated for just cause since announcing their intention to unionize in 2018 and reached an agreement with their management last year.

"We're looking to put into practice things that have become standard at other media organizations," Ariel Shapiro, a media and entertainment reporter at Forbes and a member of the union's organizing committee, told CNN Business.

The union wrote in its organizing letter that it plans "to address diversity within our newsroom without fear of retaliation. Forbes needs a measurable action plan to help improve newsroom diversity for all position levels and a committee that holds management accountable."

Forbes made several commitments to diversity initiatives last year such as appointing an assistant managing editor to focus on diversifying the company's recruiting and hiring and creating a fellowship for students from historically Black colleges and universities. But the union claimed in its letter that about a dozen people of color had left the editorial staff since 2017.

Forbes said on Tuesday that it avoided layoffs, furloughs and salary reductions and even added 59 new staffers in 2020, a year during which other media companies cut staff because of the economic headwinds prompted by the pandemic.

Of those 59 new employees, 45% are from underrepresented groups, Forbes said, adding that the company promoted 100 employees last year who were what it considered to be "diverse."

Forbes also touted its "well-above benchmark time-off policies," which includes the standard holidays, a day off to celebrate the birthday of Malcolm Forbes, its former editor in chief, and the newly added Juneteenth.

The union effort comes amid reports that Forbes is being sold. Reuters reported last month that Forbes has received multiple bids, several of which would keep it a privately held company and one that could involve a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. The magazine was primarily owned by the Forbes family until 2014 when Integrated Whale Media Investments, a Hong Kong-based investor group, purchased a majority stake. (Disclosure: This writer interned at Forbes for three months in 2014.)

"If it's not this deal that's being reported in various outlets, it could be any other deal," Shapiro said. "The point is to have an understanding with management that transcends any new acquisition."

"We're prepared to come to the table in good faith and have a lot of productive discussions and we hope that Forbes does too," Hansen said. "There's been a lot of change, and we're joining thousands and thousands of our peers in the same goal to make things more collaborative, more inclusive, more transparent across the board."

Gay activist upset at Ottawa's attempt to block challenge of blood-donation ban

OTTAWA — A man who is challenging Canada's policy that prohibits sexually active gay men from donating blood wants to know why the Trudeau government is trying to block his case, despite a 2015 Liberal pledge to end the ban

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Christopher Karas brought a human-rights complaint against Health Canada in 2016 and three years later the Canadian Human Rights Commission decided to refer the matter to a tribunal for a more substantial probe.

But the federal government has launched a judicial review to stop the complaint from going further, arguing that it is about a policy not set by Health Canada, but rather by the Canadian Blood Services — an arm's-length agency.

Karas says he is confused and upset Ottawa is challenging his case, especially since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised repeatedly since 2015 his government would end the gay blood ban.

The policy of excluding men who have had recent sex with men from donating blood or plasma — originally a lifetime ban — was implemented in 1992 after thousands of Canadians were infected with HIV and hepatitis C through tainted blood products.

Karas' lawyer, Shakir Rahim, argues Health Canada is the regulator for the country's blood system, and therefore has a role in the Canadian Blood Services' policies, including the ban.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 18, 2021.

Teresa Wright, The Canadian Press

"It’s very volatile": How a scientific debate over COVID spread turned into an online war

Tom Blackwell 

POSTMEDIA 

© Provided by National Post Should we all be wearing N95 masks

Dr. John Conly is no slouch as an infectious disease specialist.

He’s an international leader in fighting antibiotic resistance, was inducted into the Order of Canada and now chairs an expert committee that advises the World Health Organization on COVID-19 infection control.

But when the University of Calgary professor downplayed the role of airborne transmission of the virus during a panel discussion last month — then was the subject of an unflattering news story — the response was harsh.

Social media attacks compared Conly and like-thinking colleagues to Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele , called him stupid and a quack, and suggested he was responsible for “millions” of deaths.

Sgt Johanie Maheu / Rideau Hall Dr. John Conly received the Order of Canada during a ceremony at Rideau Hall, on May 8, 2019.

The Calgary scientist’s online skewering, however, was just one recent salvo in a scientific row that has turned surprisingly combative.

The dispute revolves around what once might have seemed like an esoteric question: How exactly does SARS-CoV-2 spread from person to person. The conventional wisdom points to close contact and heavy “droplets” that fall quickly to the ground, but a growing and vocal alternative school of thought asserts that it is largely via tiny aerosol particles that can stay airborne and travel longer distances.

Who’s right has important implications for the ways we combat COVID-19 — at least until vaccination is widespread. The disagreement, in the meantime, is heated.

Two other infectious disease experts contacted for this story declined to be interviewed on the record. One who had a paper on the topic published last year called it a “dicey, dicey” issue that had already brought him much online abuse. Another said he had also been the target of online harassment.

“It’s very volatile, the topic,” the researcher said. “There’s a Twitter mob that attacks any time anybody suggests the transmission might not be 100 per cent aerosol. It’s a very loud voice, unfortunately.”

There’s even been hate for a Canadian-run clinical trial trying to resolve one of the key issues in the debate — whether health-care workers should wear more protective N95 masks or regular surgical ones.

An Australian emergency physician active on Twitter castigated the study as being so unethical it was “full Nazi.” Other health professionals have urged funding agencies to shut the trial down and have the lead investigator “apologize” to subjects.

Ontario’s nurses’ union advised its members against participating.

“I don’t understand why (aerosol vs. droplet) is such a touch point of controversy,” said Dr. Allison McGeer of Toronto’s Mount Sinai hospital, one of the country’s leading experts on respiratory viruses. “You would like us academics to achieve consensus in the middle of chaos, but this is one of those areas where we can’t do that.”

The feverishness of the dispute seems at least partly a symptom of both the verbal knife-fighting that social-media often fosters and a pandemic whose science — and passionate scientific disagreements — are unspooling under unprecedented public scrutiny.

Added to the mix are health-care unions that have forcefully pushed for more widespread use of N95 masks as a defence against what they’re convinced is airborne spread.

© Blair Gable Some health-care workers say they need better access to N95 masks.

The Ontario Nurses Association was even scheduled to be in court Wednesday over the issue, asking a judge to order the province’s chief medical officer of health to declare that the coronavirus is primarily transmitted by aerosol.

Linsey Marr, the Virginia Tech engineering professor who is at the forefront of the airborne-transmission movement, sees another reason for the rancour. The experts most attached to the close-contact/droplet theory of spread tend to be infectious disease doctors long steeped in the droplet theory, she said.

“There is a paradigm shift going on here where, because of cognitive bias in the way people were trained, it’s really hard for them to see the evidence for what it is,” Marr said. “Which is overwhelming now that COVID-19 is being transmitted by aerosols.”

Settled or not, the question in some ways comes down to tiny fractions of millimetres.

The long-held view is that respiratory viruses such as COVID are spread primarily through “droplets” expelled by infected people, globules of moisture often visible with the naked eye. Relatively heavy, they sink to the ground within a metre or so. Someone contracts the bug when a droplet lands on their eyes, nose or mouth, or they touch those facial openings with droplet-contaminated hands.

Until recently, major public health bodies like the WHO, Health Canada and U.S. Centers for Disease Control, have attributed the pandemic’s spread almost entirely to that mode of transmission.

But many scientists — led by engineers and other researchers who study air flow and aerosolization — argue COVID-19 has been spread to a great degree by much smaller, aerosol particles that, like cigarette smoke, can float in the air for hours before someone inhales them.

Looser-fitting surgical and cloth masks provide minimal protection against those particles. As well as advocating for tighter-fitting N95 masks or their equivalent, aerosol proponents call for better building ventilation and stress the added infection risk of indoor activity.

As evidence, they cite outbreaks that seem hard to explain with the droplet theory, like the scores of passengers on the Diamond Princess cruise ship infected while mostly holed up in their cabins, people in quarantine hotels who contracted COVID despite having no direct contact with the infected person next door, and choir practices where multiple, well-separated vocalists were infected by a singing index patient.

They also point to the discovery of virus in hospital duct systems, in the air of patient rooms and even a COVID case’s car. Experiments have managed to infect animals with the virus through airborne transmission.

The proof may not be definitive but it actually surpasses the science backing up the droplet idea and is more than enough reason to take action, asserts Dr. Raymond Tellier, a McGill University medical microbiologist.

“If you smell smoke and the fire alarm goes off, do you wait to see the flames before getting out?”

In fact, after some vocal protests, both the WHO and CDC have revised their online messaging about COVID-19 transmission, acknowledging a significant role for aerosols.

“I think the scientific debate is getting to the end,” said Tellier.

Or maybe not. Other experts argue there is still much uncertainty .

Yes, airborne spread occurs in some circumstances, they concede, but it’s unclear how much of a role it plays and what that means for practical matters like deciding what type of protective equipment is best for health-care workers and others.

Infectious disease specialists say their experience in the clinic is that most patients were infected by close contact.

They also point to a sort of surrogate form of evidence: the effectiveness of different types of mask.

In the pandemic’s first wave, limited testing that disproportionately targeted health-care workers made it difficult to assess their relative risk, said McGeer. But a Public Health Ontario study found that by last September, as testing broadened, those staff were no more likely to catch the virus than the general public. Yet the province’s protocol was for workers to wear surgical masks and face shields, donning N95s only for “aerosol-generating” procedures like inserting breathing tubes, or if deemed necessary by workers’ own personal risk assessment.

Then there is the huge “natural experiment” set in motion by Germany and Austria earlier this year. Both nations mandated that citizens wear the equivalent of N95 in stores, public transit and other enclosed spaces — the kind of practice that airborne-spread proponents urge. The measure failed, however, to prevent a raging third wave of coronavirus that stretched the countries’ hospitals to the limit.

© Bing Guan A North Dakota Army National Guard deputy state surgeon wears a UVEX face shield and N95 protective mask as he watches a drive-thru COVID-19 testing site in October 2020.

A Canadian clinical trial is trying to empirically measure the face coverings’ relative value against SARS-CoV-2, and is facing repeated push-back. The volunteers randomly assigned to the surgical-mask arm of the study are following current protocol and can put on N95s when they feel it necessary; those in the other arm wear N95s all the time. Yet opponents argue the trial puts nurses at undue risk.

“We don’t need a study. In the midst of a pandemic, this is unethical,” said Vicki McKenna, president of the ONA. “On humans, really? It just leaves a bad taste and optically it’s really wrong.”

Conly, meanwhile, said he’s alright with a vigorous exchange of scientific views, as he said happened in the pre-social-media age.

But on the internet during the pandemic, he maintains, lines are constantly being crossed.

In the online seminar, Conly — a respected clinician and scientist, whose role as chair of the WHO’s infection control and prevention research working group is unpaid — suggested additional research is needed on airborne transmission. He responded to a call for more widespread N95 use in part by suggesting the tight-fitting masks had drawbacks, including causing acne. A later CBC story portrayed him as a powerful, out-of-touch force preventing the WHO from seeing the light on aerosols.

Then came the online barrage.

Critics urged the university to retire Conly and others to file disciplinary complaints with Alberta’s medical regulator. One tweet said he “could be responsible for millions of deaths & suffering because of is (sic) arrogance in not looking at the science of airborne trans.”

Another referred to a paper he and others wrote that proposed a pyramid of different levels of evidence for determining how COVID is spread, where the top would be deliberate, experimental infection of subjects. They didn’t actually advocate such research. But the Twitter user referred to it as “Mengele’s pyramid,” after the doctor who conducted cruel experiments on children and other prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The post was re-tweeted by David Fisman, a University of Toronto epidemiologist, who referred to Conly and his co-authors — two of whom are women — as “a group of sulky men on the wrong side of an argument.”

Conly says he has a “strong constitution” but began taking the insults to heart when his children said they had to defend him to friends who’d seen the social media assaults.

“It’s hurtful, there’s no two ways about it,” he said. “I’m seeing too much of this: personal attack, denigrating individuals, not just in academia, but in public health, too…. It just seems to me that we’ve lost our way.”

Trudeau to announce $200 million toward new vaccine plant in Mississauga

In total the new facility will cost $400 million to build

Author of the article:

Ryan Tumilty
Publishing date:May 18, 2021  • 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds a press conference in Ottawa on Friday, May 7, 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic. PHOTO BY SEAN KILPATRICK /The Canadian Press

OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will announce a nearly $200 million investment Tuesday in a facility designed to manufacture mRNA vaccines in Mississauga.

The money from the federal government’s Strategic Innovation Fund will go to Resilience Biotechnologies Inc, a government source confirmed to the National Post. In total the new facility will cost $400 million to build.

mRNA vaccines are a relatively new technology and are the underlying science behind vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, which have shown to be highly effective against COVID-19. Canada had very little domestic vaccine manufacturing at the start of the pandemic and because the technology is novel, mRNA vaccines in particular are made in only a small handful of facilities around the world.

The new facility is expected to have the capacity to make between 112 million and 640 million doses of mRNA vaccines every year. The company is a contract manufacturer, making drugs for other companies, and the facility will be able to make several types of vaccines and therapies.

Bella Hadid Marches for Palestine, Gets Reprimanded by Israel

Olivia Blair

ELLE CANADA 

Bella Hadid stands with Palestine
The half-Palestinian model has joined her sister Gigi in speaking out this week.

Bella Hadid‘s use of social media and attendance at a recent march to raise awareness and campaign for the rights of Palestinian people has been condemned by the state of Israel.

The model, who is half Palestinian along with her sister Gigi and brother Anwar, has redirected her focus on her social media platforms given the recent escalation of violence and tensions amid the ongoing conflict in the Israeli-Palestine region. The siblings’ father Mohamed Hadid was born in Palestine before fleeing with his family during the 1947-1949 Palestine war.

The 24-year-old also took her campaigning offline over the weekend and joined a pro-Palestine and Palestinian rights rally in New York City. Hadid shared pictures of herself attending the rally, holding the Palestine flag and chanting ‘Free Palestine’. She was joined at the protest by Pose actor Indya Moore.


Hadid was later criticized on the state of Israel’s official Twitter account, where it implied that she should be ashamed of herself and accused her of advocating for the ‘elimination of the Jewish state’.

Hadid has not yet directly responded to the tweet from Israel’s account but on Sunday shared an image on her Instagram Stories which read: ‘Don’t trade your authenticity for approval.’

Over the past week, Hadid has become emotional while sharing news reports about Palestinian civilians killed and injured during the fighting in Gaza. She has also sought to ‘educate’ her followers and fans on the ongoing conflict in the region and denied that criticizing the Israeli government and its treatment of Palestinian people in the past and present is equated with anti-Semitism.

The model has not been alone in speaking up for Palestine. She has been joined by her sister Gigi who also shared an image of herself responding to a commenter, saying she ‘condemns anti-Semitism’ and wants ‘equal rights for Palestinians’.

Gigi’s boyfriend and the father of her daughter Khai, former One Direction singer Zayn Malik, has also spoken out, writing on Instagram: ‘I stand with the Palestinian people and support their resistance to colonisation an protection of their human rights… This must end. Free Palestine.’

This story originally appeared on ELLE UK

Britain to host first global conference on LGBTQ+ rights

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

THE COUNTRY WHERE BEING QUEER WAS A HANGING OFFENSE UNTIL THE 20TH CENTURY

Nosheen Iqbal 

THE GUARDIAN

16/5/2021

The first-ever global conference on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights is to be hosted in the UK next year, as the government races to fulfil its pledges to the international 42-country Equal Rights Coalition.

The “Safe To Be Me” event is expected to be the largest of its kind and will invite elected officials, activists and policymakers from across the world to participate in London over two days in June 2022, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the first official London Pride marches.

Nick Herbert, who was the Conservative MP for Arundel and South Downs from 2005 to 2019 before being made a lord last year, has been announced as chair of the event and as the prime minister’s special envoy on LGBTQ+ rights.

The conference will be used to champion equality at home and abroad, and ministers say it will attempt to “make progress on legislative reform, tackling violence and discrimination, and ensuring equal access to public services for LGBT people”.

Herbert said: “It will be the first time that a global event on this scale – including parliamentarians – has been held, and I hope it will help to drive collective action for real change.”

The announcement comes at a crucial juncture, as the 2021 Rainbow Europe Map, a continent-wide benchmarking tool, reveals there has been widespread and almost complete stagnation on human rights for LGBTQ+ people across Europe over the last 12 months.

In an annual survey published in full on Monday, the International Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (Ilga Europe) has ranked 49 countries and found “a disturbing standstill” on legislative and policy progress, with an increase in LGBTQ-phobic hatred and political repression.

Under Boris Johnson’s premiership, the British government has been criticised by LGBTQ+ activists and human rights charities for rolling back the rights of trans people. Last Tuesday, new voter registration laws announced in the Queen’s speech were labelled “divisive and discriminatory” by lawyers at Liberty, who said that plans to force voters to carry photo identification would disproportionately affect minorities including trans and non-gender-conforming people.

Last autumn, when the government scrapped reforms to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) which would have allowed allow trans people to self-identify, Stonewall’s chief executive, Nancy Kelley, described the move as “a shocking failure in leadership” where the government had “missed a key opportunity to progress LGBT equality”.© Provided by The Guardian Liz Truss, the equalities minister, has been criticised by campaigners for her stance on the Gender Recognition Act. Photograph: John Sibley/Reuters

The UK took over as co-chair of the global Equal Rights Coalition alongside Argentina in July 2019, and has been expected to launch a comprehensive five-year strategy to increase international action to defend the rights of LGBTQ+ people around the world. The Safe To Be Me conference has been designed to meet that commitment and is being worked on by the Government Equality Office and the Foreign Office.

Amelia Abraham, the author of Queer Intentions and a forthcoming book on LGBTQ+ rights, We Can Do Better Than This, said she welcomed the announcement of the conference but was wary of the Conservative party’s track record on influencing minority rights across the world.

“The prime minister should deal with some of the huge issues facing LGBTQ+ people here before holding the UK up as a bastion of progress,” she said. “For instance, the UK government should stop asking us to vote on whether gay conversion therapy should be banned, as if that’s a question at all. They should also make it legal to have a third gender option on passports – like dozens of other countries around the world do – in order to legally recognise the thousands of non-binary people living here, who were also ignored on the census.”

Liz Truss, the minister for women and equalities, said: “This conference will take aim at the prejudices LGBT people still face, and look at the collective action we can take to tackle those injustices alongside our international friends and partners. People should be judged on the basis of their individual character and talents alone, and we want to ensure that this message is heard around the world.”

© Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA The London Pride parade in 2018. The Conservative government has come under fire for its record on gender and sexuality.

Abraham said the minister’s comments were “a hypocritical slap in the face given Truss’s failure to support trans rights and adequately reform the GRA as government had promised to”.

On Saturday, Kishwer Falkner, who was appointed by Truss to lead the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said it was “entirely reasonable” to challenge the biological status of trans women. Baroness Falkner was speaking after the commission intervened in the case of a woman who lost her job after colleagues complained that she was bigoted and transphobic.

A judge ruled that the woman’s views were “not worthy of respect in a democratic society” and threw out her claim at an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal. Falkner claimed, however, that it was “a freedom of belief” that the commission was determined to protect.

The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said next year’s conference would be a chance to promote progressive values. He said: “The right to live life without fear and persecution are the bedrock of inclusive and open societies and the UK, as a force for good, will protect and promote these values at home and around the world.”

GREEN CAPITALI$M

Renewables to thrive this year after a record-breaking expansion during pandemic

Duration: 00:47

 

Capital City: New York in Fiscal Crisis, 

1966-1978

Michael Reagan

University of Washington

Abstract

This dissertation is a history of the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis. It explores the cultural and material  causes and consequences of the city’s near bankruptcy and subsequent social and fiscal restructuring. It  argues that the cause of the crisis was a combination of a severe economic depression in the city’s real  economy, and a market failure, the worst in the nation’s history, in the municipal bond market. The combination of these factors meant that the city was forced into deficit spending, and simultaneously frozen out of the credit markets. 

With the federal government taking no action, the city was forced to make severe, historic, cuts on its social programs, a move to austerity that has come to define our own era. This shift requires more than a fiscal explanation, as previous crises, when deficits were twice as large as those of the 1970s, were successfully navigated without the resort to the kinds of austerity seen in 1975.

 Instead, we have to look to a cultural turn on the part of the city’s elites. Where in the 1960s, bankers, state planners, and academics were willing to manage deficits as part of a larger social contract that included a commitment to the city’s poor, by 1975 that commitment was largely undone. 

The rejection was a reaction to the victories of the social movements of 1960s, specifically those for civil rights and black liberation. City elites sought mechanisms to check the costs, and more, the power and the politics, of the movements. This was achieved through fiscal measures, which profoundly reshaped social life in New York.

 The result for working people, women, and people of color was a pervasive sense of hopelessness and despair, evident even decades later, the artistic work of figures like Notorious B.I.G. His 1994 album of lost opportunity and personal “everyday struggle” spoke for the generation born to austerity; Big and his generation were “Ready To Die.”

PhD THESIS PDF Reagan_washington_0250E_17396.pdf