INSURERS FOR Gun maker offers $33M to settle suit by Sandy Hook families


HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — INSURERS FOR The maker of the rifle used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting has offered some of the victims' families nearly $33 million to settle their lawsuit over how the company marketed the firearm to the public.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Lawyers for now-bankrupt Remington filed the offers late Tuesday in Waterbury Superior Court in Connecticut. The nine families suing the company, who are being offered nearly $3.7 million apiece, are considering the proposals, their lawyers said.

A Hartford lawyer representing Remington, James Rotondo, declined to comment Wednesday. The settlement offers were filed a day after a judge denied Remington's request to dismiss the lawsuit.

A Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle made by Remington was used to kill 20 first graders and six educators at the Newtown, Connecticut, school on Dec. 14, 2012. The 20-year-old gunman, Adam Lanza, killed his mother at their Newtown home before the massacre, then killed himself with a handgun as police arrived at the school.

Relatives of nine victims killed in the shooting say in their lawsuit that Remington should have never sold such a dangerous weapon to the public and allege it targeted younger, at-risk males in marketing and product placement in violent video games. They say their focus is on preventing future mass shootings.

Joshua Koskoff, an attorney for the families, said the settlements were offered by two of Remington's insurers.

“Ironshore and James River ... deserve credit for now realizing that promoting the use of AR-15s as weapons of war to civilians is indefensible. Insuring this kind of conduct is an unprofitable and untenable business model,” Koskoff said in a statement.

Remington's lawyers have denied the lawsuit's allegations. In their request to dismiss the lawsuit, they argued there were no facts presented to establish that Remington's marketing had anything to do with the shooting.

Remington, based in Madison, North Carolina, filed for bankruptcy last year for the second time in two years. Its assets were later sold off to several companies.

Dave Collins, The Associated Press

Spanish physician used children as vaccine fridges to transport smallpox vaccine around the world in 1803

National Post Staff 

JULY 28,2021

When Spanish physician Francisco Javier de Balmis decided to set off to Spain’s colonies in 1803 with the hopes of vaccinating people from smallpox in the Spanish colonies, he was faced a conundrum: how can he transport the vaccines across the Atlantic Ocean?

© Provided by National Post Francisco Javier de Balmis became famous for leading an expedition in 1803 to Spain's then-colonies in Latin America and the Philippines to vaccinate against small pox.

At the time, the refrigerator, now a handy vaccine storage method, hadn’t been invented, forcing people to use old time-tested methods to preserve their foods and other items — cellars, boxes stored indoor or outside and a variety of salting, spicing and pickling methods.

There was no in vitro method that could successfully store the smallpox vaccine, derived by injecting people with cowpox, a bovine cousin of smallpox — for more than 12 days.

So Balmis turned to what, at that time, would have been considered the next best option — children.

According to a new exhibition of documents, on show in Seville, detailing Balmis’ voyage to the colonies in Seville, the physician set off on his expedition from A Coruña in north-west Spain, accompanied by 22 orphans. Isabel Zendal, who ran the orphanage the children belonged to, also came on board, serving as nurse and carer, along with her nine-year-old son.

During the trip, he would inject the cowpox virus into a child. Once that child had developed pustules — skin blisters filled with a transparent fluid — as a symptom of the disease, he would withdraw the serum from a pustule and inject that into the next child, thereby ensuring that the vaccine stays fresh until the end of the trip.

None of the children died from the disease, according to the Guardian .

SLAVERY

On arriving in Mexico, Balmis recruited another 26 children to accompany him on the trip from Acapulco to the Philippines. According to the documents, all 26 children were Mexican boys, aged from four to 14 and had been sold to Balmis by their parents. Some of the boys were described as “Spanish” and others as mestizos (mixed blood).

Three of the boys were listed with unknown parentage, and five other only had their mother’s name appear in their documentation.

The original 22 children stayed in Mexico.

The idea to use children as vaccine transport, while barbaric now, was considered commonplace at the time, the Guardian reported. Edward Jenner, who had first discovered the use of cowpox as a smallpox vaccine, had tested his theory by injecting the virus in an eight-year-old boy.

By the end of Balmis’ voyage, about 300,000 people in the Canaries, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, the Philippines and China were vaccinated for free.

“The strategy adopted by Balmis was a cheap, ingenious and pioneering solution to ensure that the vaccine arrived in the Americas in good condition,” Alberto García-Basteiro, an epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of Barcelona, told the Guardian.

“It’s likely that nowadays the strategy of using children to transport the vaccine would be criticised on ethical grounds, but the impact and benefits of the expedition cannot be denied.”

The exhibition can be viewed at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville and will remain on display until 15 Sept.

LAB LEAK NOT IN CHINA

A Second Person in France May Have Caught Deadly Prion Disease From Lab Exposure


Public research labs in France are temporarily halting their work into prions, after at least two employees are believed to have contracted a rare but universally fatal prion brain disease. One woman has since died, almost certainly after having been exposed during a lab accident in 2010, while the second is reportedly still alive, and it is not yet confirmed whether her illness was caused by lab exposure.

© Photo: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP (Getty Images)

Prions are a type of protein commonly found in the brain. They seem to serve some important but still unclear natural function. But prions can also turn into a misfolded form of themselves, one that slowly turns other “normal” prions around them rogue, too. Over time, this cascading effect spreads throughout the brain and destroys it, leaving behind telltale sponge-like holes that can be spotted under a microscope. Prion diseases are very rare, but there are no available treatments, and people usually die within months to a year of the onset of symptoms, which typically include dementia and motor impairment.

The first case, now known to be a woman named Émilie Jaumain, began experiencing symptoms in late 2017. She was suspected to have variant-Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), a form of CJD spread through exposure to prions from other animals. The first cases of vCJD were discovered in the 1990s, after people ate meat from tainted cows and then developed a prion disease, which was given the morbid nickname of mad cow disease. The diagnosis was confirmed in a brain autopsy following Jaumain’s death 19 months later. She was only 33-years-old.

Though there is room for the possibility that Jaumain contracted her vCJD elsewhere, the strongest likelihood by far is that she caught it during a lab accident in May 2010, when she pierced her skin with forceps that were handling frozen, prion-infected brain samples from mice genetically engineered to develop human prions. French researchers reported the tragic case last year.

Jaumain had been working at a lab run by the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), one of France’s public research organizations, when she presumably got exposed. On Tuesday, the INRAE revealed that yet another person working at one of their labs had recently been diagnosed with CJD as well. The discovery of the second case was enough to compel the INRAE and four other public research organizations to impose a three-month moratorium on prion research, while an investigation is ongoing into the circumstances of the second case.

The moratorium “will make it possible to study the possibility of a link between the observed case and the person’s former professional activity,” the INRAE and other organizations said in a joint statement released yesterday.

The woman in the second case, a lab worker, has since retired and is still alive, according to reporting Wednesday from Science Magazine. It’s not known which form of CJD she has, which could be a crucial clue as to the origin of her illness. Most cases of CJD are sporadic, seeming to arise for no specific reason. Some cases are familial, found in people with specific inherited mutations. And vCJD is most often associated with transmission from another animal, typically cows. These forms have noticeably different patterns of presentation, with sporadic cases appearing most often in older people, while vCJD tends to strike younger patients. Theoretically, though, all forms of CJD could be transmitted through close enough exposure to infected brain matter (another prion disease, kuru, infamously spread through cannibalism).

Jaumain’s friends and colleagues have called for far-reaching improvements in lab safety during prion research. They’ve started an advocacy group in the wake of her death called Emilys Association, while her family is currently pursuing criminal and administrative legal action against the INRAE over her death. While the specific lab she worked at was cleared of wrongdoing by several investigations, according to Science, her family’s lawyers contend that there have long been inadequate safety measures taken during this dangerous work in the country’s research facilities. Should this new case turn out to be lab-related, they may have a point.

AFP

‘Disinfo kills’: protesters demand Facebook act to stop vaccine falsehoods

Activists place body bags at company’s Washington HQ

False information on vaccines shared widely on network

Protesters are urging Facebook’s shareholders to ban misinformation ‘superspreaders’. Photograph: Eric Kayne/AP

Kari Paul in San Francisco
Wed 28 Jul 2021 

Activists descended on Facebook’s Washington headquarters on Wednesday to demand the company take stronger action against vaccine falsehoods spreading on its platform, covering the area in front of Facebook’s office with body bags that read “disinfo kills”.


‘A systemic failure’: vaccine misinformation remains rampant on Facebook, experts say

The day of protest, which comes as Covid cases surge in the US, has been organized by a group of scholars, advocates and activists calling themselves the “Real” Oversight Board. The group is urging Facebook’s shareholders to ban so-called misinformation “superspreaders” – the small number of accounts responsible for the majority of false and misleading content about the Covid-19 vaccines.

“People are making decisions based on the disinformation that’s being spread on Facebook,” said Shireen Mitchell, Member of the Real Facebook Oversight Board and founder of Stop Online Violence Against Women. “If Facebook is not going to take that down, or if all they’re going to do is put out disclaimers, then fundamentally Facebook is participating in these deaths as well.”

In coordination with the protest, the Real Oversight Board has released a new report analyzing the spread of anti-vaccine misinformation on Facebook during the company’s most recent financial quarter. The report and protest also come as Facebook prepares to announce its financial earnings for that same quarter.

The report references a March study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) that found a small group of accounts – known as the “dirty dozen” – is responsible for more than 73% of anti-vaccine content across social media platforms, including Facebook. That report recently drew attention from the White House, and Joe Biden has condemned Facebook and other tech companies for failing to take action.

Facebook banned misinformation about vaccines from the platform in February of 2021, but critics say many posts slip through the platform’s filters and reach audiences of millions without being removed.

At Facebook’s Washington DC headquarters, activists lay body bags that read “disinfo kills”. Photograph: Eric Kayne/AP

It also has introduced a number of rules relating to Covid-19 specifically, banning posts that question the severity of the disease, deny its existence, or argue that the vaccine has more risks than the virus. Still, the Real Oversight Board found that often such content has been able to remain on the platform and even make its way into the most-shared posts.

According to the Real Oversight Board’s report, a large share of the misinformation about the Covid vaccines comes from a few prolific accounts, and continues to be among the platform’s best performing and most widely shared content. It analyzed the top 10 posts on each weekday over the last quarter and found the majority of those originated from just five identified “superspreaders” of misinformation.

“When it comes to Covid disinformation, the vast majority of content comes from an extremely small group of highly visible users, making it far easier to combat it than Facebook admits,” the board said, concluding that Facebook is “continuing to profit from hate and deadly disinformation”.

The group has called on Facebook to remove the users from the platform or alter its algorithm to disable engagement with the offending accounts. Facebook did not immediately respond to request for comment, but has stated in the past it has removed more than 18m pieces of Covid misinformation.

Congress has also taken note of the spread of vaccine misinformation on Facebook and other platforms, with the Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar introducing a bill that would target platforms whose algorithms promotes health misinformation related to an “existing public health emergency”.

The bill, called the Health Misinformation Act, would remove protections provided by the internet law Section 230, which prevent platforms from being sued over content posted by their users in such cases.

“For far too long, online platforms have not done enough to protect the health of Americans,” Klobuchar said in a statement on the bill. “These are some of the biggest, richest companies in the world, and they must do more to prevent the spread of deadly vaccine misinformation.”

THE ONLY REPUBLICAN RUN PROVINCE IN CANADA

 It's too early to know the repercussions of the Stampede

Alberta to end isolation rules for COVID-19 cases, close contacts as cases rise

CALGARY — Alberta is ending isolation requirements for people who test positive for COVID-19 and their close contacts as cases climb in the province.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer of health, announced a two-phased approach Wednesday to eliminate the few remaining public health orders in the province.

Starting Thursday, close contacts will no longer be notified of exposure by contact tracers nor will they be legally required to isolate — although it still recommended. The province will also end asymptomatic testing.

"With the vaccine readily available, the need for the types of extraordinary restrictions we used in the past has diminished," Hinshaw said.

"We need to make sure that Alberta's health system is able to support all patients. That is why we are making changes to bring COVID-19 measures in line with how we handle other respiratory viruses."

Further measures will be eliminated Aug. 16. People who test positive for the virus will not be mandated to isolate at that time. Isolation hotels will also close as quarantine supports end.

The changes came as the province recorded 194 cases of COVID-19 — the highest daily case count since early June.

Active cases now total 1,334 across Alberta. Eighty-four people are in hospital, including 18 in intensive care.

Hinshaw said COVID-19 will not disappear but suggested the steps are crucial to manage health-care resources.

The latest reported R-value, or rate of infection, for Alberta was 1.48 for the week of July 19 to July 25. The rate was slightly higher in Calgary at 1.5 — one of the highest R-values seen in Alberta throughout the pandemic.

Dr. Craig Jenne, an infectious disease expert at the University of Calgary, said Albertans shouldn't panic, but recent case numbers are cause for concern.

“We have the fewest protected people and yet also the fewest public health guidelines to help limit that spread if an outbreak begins," he said Tuesday, referring to Alberta's lower vaccination rate compared to other provinces.

"It doesn't guarantee that we're going to see a dramatic rise in cases, but it absolutely creates the potential for rapid and sustained viral spread.”

Jenne said it's positive to see hospitalizations and intensive care unit admissions decline but noted that they are lagging indicators.

If the numbers were to change, he said, the province would need to consider reintroducing some public health restrictions.

The Calgary Zone represents about 60 per cent of Alberta's active cases.

Hinshaw said at least 84 cases in Alberta's rising total were likely acquired at the Calgary Stampede.

Alberta Health spokesman Tom McMillan said Tuesday the 10-day rodeo and festival attended by about 529,000 people isn’t a significant driver, so far, in rising infections in the province. 

Masks were not compulsory for attendees, but the Nashville North music venue required proof of vaccination or a negative rapid-test result to enter.

Dr. Stephanie Smith, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Alberta, said it's too early to know the repercussions of the Stampede.

"We can anticipate there will be secondary infections from the initial 71," Smith said Wednesday, before the cases linked to the event increased to 84. "We need to look over the next two to three weeks to see if we see a jump."

McMillan said the province does not have figures on secondary exposure from positive cases.

Smith said it's hard to link the current rise in infections to the Stampede alone.

Lifting almost all COVID-19 restrictions in Alberta on July 1, just before the festival, along with spread of the highly contagious Delta variant, which was first identified in India, are likely the key drivers, she said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 28, 2021.

Alanna Smith, The Canadian Press

NOVA SCOTIA

Truro's first Black candidate for MLA says she's undeterred by recent vandalism and hate

After her campaign signs were destroyed and burned on Sunday, Tamara Tynes Powell, the Liberal candidate in the riding of Truro-Bible Hill-Millbrook-Salmon River, told the Halifax Examiner it's important to "stand up against any sort of hatred act."

On Monday the Examiner reported the vandalism and burning of Tyne Powell's campaign signs in Truro over the weekend.

Tynes Powell is the first Black candidate in the history of her riding and she is also the sole female candidate.

News spread early on Monday about the vandalism and burning of Tynes Powell’s campaign signs. At least one of the signs was located near the historical Black neighbourhood in Truro, known as The Marsh, where Tynes Powell grew up.

In a Facebook post Sunday night, Lenore Zann, the MP for Cumberland-Colchester, shared photos of the vandalism and wrote, "This is pure old right-wing racist Hate rearing it’s (sic) ugly head once more.”

The Examiner asked Tyne Powell in an interview if she has thoughts, fears, or concerns on whether the story making the news could have a negative impact on her chances of winning by rallying racist voters to the polls to vote against her.

“Absolutely,” she said. “A lot of times the thought is, you know, ‘Am I going to be blamed for this? Am I going to be blamed for using the race card?’ I think its just a natural consequence, unfortunately, of the skin we’re in. But that being said, when you live in this skin, you learn to know all the hate that comes along with it.”

“So for me it's more important that I stand up against any sort of hatred act. And if that was to mean that I wasn’t elected, then that means that there’s a lot more work to do, and it doesn’t necessarily stop the work that I will continue doing.”

When pressed further as to why not then refrain from coming out with the story in the first place in order to, theoretically, better her chances of being elected to do that work same work from the legislature, her response was swift, calling it a “personal decision”.

"For me, if I wasn’t true and authentic to who I am, what I stand for, then I don’t feel that I would be very good representation in the first place."

Tynes Powell also spoke about her background and her family’s history that she feels is rooted in her “passion for politics.”

She explained:

Her father, Raymond Tynes, once also sought the nomination for the PC candidacy in the same riding as Tynes Powell.

As the campaign moves on, Tynes Powell said she’s gaining more confidence each day.

“I mean I was confident before I ran,” she said, “but at the same time, you put on a poker face, because I know I’m new to the game, right.”

When asked if she had any insight on what the polling suggests, she replied:

Tynes Powell is one of nearly a dozen Black candidates running in the upcoming provincial election, which takes place on August 17.

Matthew Byard, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Halifax Examiner

BULLSHIT
New Brunswick health authority says ‘no need’ to increase abortion services

© The Canadian Press/Kevin Bissett Justin Trudeau says the federal government is continuing to push New Brunswick to provide our-of-hospital abortions.

New Brunswick's English language health authority says its current level of abortion service is adequate.

A letter sent by Horizon CEO Karen McGrath to the province's deputy health minister says that demand for surgical abortions at their Moncton clinic are falling and that they aren't receiving requests for abortion services elsewhere, other than in the Fredericton area.

But an offer to a physician for surgical time at the Oromocto Hospital to provide surgical abortions for the region was "not pursued."

"Based on this information and given that we have no received any recent request to establish a surgical abortion service in Fredericton, Saint John or Miramichi, it is our position that there is no need to establish another service," McGrath wrote in the letter obtained by Global News.

"The Moncton clinic sees a stable volume of referrals and has been able to meet the service demand. We will continue to monitor this situation and we will open discussions with our physicians and nurse practitioners to determine if access to abortion services requires modification."

Read more: Feds ‘working extremely hard’ on abortion access in New Brunswick: Trudeau

Health minister Dorothy Shephard had previously said that it is up to Horizon and Vitalite to assess whether greater access to abortions services is needed. Surgical abortions are only available at three hospitals in the province, two in Moncton and another in Bathurst.

“Our position has always been, and we’ve been very public about it, that the (regional health authorities) are responsible to deliver the health-care services in this province, to deem whether or not they are appropriate,” Shephard said in question period on June 2.

“That is their responsibility. They will deliver the services as they see they need.”

Video: N.B. health minister says abortion access is responsibility of health authorities, not province

Clinic 554 in Fredericton had been performing surgical abortions, but is all but closed. The clinic is still performing some abortions, but the family practice is no longer seeing patients and is up for sale.

New Brunswick is the only province in Canada that does not fund surgical abortions performed outside of hospital. Premier Higgs has said that doing so would create a two-tier health-care system.

Read more: Health authorities are responsible for abortion access, not the government: Higgs

The federal government says that the province's unwillingness to fund out-of-hospital surgical abortions is a violation of the Canada Health Act. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has launched a legal challenge based on the offending regulation that prevents out-of-hospital abortions from being covered under Medicare.

Reproductive rights advocates say they are puzzled by Horizon's statements and that abortion access in the province remains limited.

"We know that actually there have been many requests for expansion of service," said Tasia Alexopoulos, a national spokesperson for the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada.

"I'm quite confused by the letter, I'm quite disappointed and I think that it doesn't speak to what's been happening in the province for decades where people have been consistently asking, not only for better abortion access, but the access they are entitled to under the Canada Health Act."

Read more: Judge rules national civil liberties group can challenge New Brunswick abortion law

In her letter to the health department, McGrath writes that the demand for surgical abortions at the Moncton Family Planning Clinic has fallen by 20 per cent over the last five years. The health authority believes this is due to the introduction of the so-called abortion pill Mifegymiso in 2017.

"Since medical abortions can be prescribed by a number of practitioners we are unable to offer an objective measure of the use of Mifegymiso for medical abortions, but we believe this is the primary reason for the reduction in the number of surgical abortions performed in our clinic," McGrath writes.

Video: New Brunswick follows through on promise to universal access to abortion pill

Alexopoulos says it makes sense that the recent introduction of medical abortions in the province would lessen demand for surgical abortions, but says that's no reason to limit access to the surgical option. In fact, it's important to provide patients with options, she says.

"We have to remember that before 2017 you couldn't have medication abortion, it was not offered, it wasn't legal. So it's no surprise that since 2017 people have been using that option when it works for them," Alexopoulos said.

"That doesn't make surgical abortions any less essential and in fact when we limit surgical abortions because medication abortion is available we're doing a disservice to patients because medication abortion is not for every patient -- it's not the best option for every patient."

The ongoing debate around abortion access in New Brunswick has seen renewed focus over the last week. On Friday, deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland toured Clinic 554 with Fredericton MP Jenica Atwin, who has been outspoken in her support for the clinic. While taking questions from media Freeland said that the government would have more to say in the near future of how it intended to force the province to cover out-of-hospital abortions, but declined to give further details.

Read more: Singh reiterates support for Fredericton abortion clinic fighting to stay open

“Every Canadian has the same rights to access essential health services and sexual and reproductive services, including abortions,” she said. “We all have the right to access those services.”

It's not the first time the federal Liberals have made that promise.

At a Fredericton stop during the 2019 election campaign, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he would ensure that the province properly funded Clinic 554.

"We will ensure that the New Brunswick government allows access, paid-for access, to clinics that offer abortion services outside of hospitals," he said.

Trudeau then re-upped that two-year-old promise during a visit to Moncton on Tuesday, saying he would "impress upon" the province the importance of ensuring out-of-hospital abortion access.

He went on to say that the feds have already withheld "millions" in health transfer funds to the province over the dispute. The actual number withheld in this year's budget was $140,216, the amount of costs incurred performing abortions at Clinic 554 in 2017. The feds threatened to withhold that amount in 2020, but quickly refunded the amount in recognition of the COVID-19 pandemic. A spokesperson for the prime minister's office clarified that Trudeau had misspoken during the Moncton event.

Read more: Valedictorian uses grad speech to attack abortion law: ‘We cannot stay silent’

But Alexopoulos says that advocates are used to hearing promises from governments, noting both NDP leader Jagmeet Singh and former Green Party leader Elizabeth May both toured the clinic last election.

"During the election, New Brunswick got a lot of promises from all of the candidates. Everybody visited Clinic 554, everyone said they were going to do something about this, everyone said it was a top priority and when they got those votes and moved on, well we didn't really see anything substantial happen," she said.

"Abortion clinics aren't tourist destinations, we don't need to give tours of abortion clinics to prove that we need abortion services. It's clear, it's the law. We have the right to these services."

RIP
ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill dies aged 72

The band’s bassist for more than 50 years, who had recently suffered a hip injury, died in his sleep at his Texas home

Dusty Hill in 2019. Photograph: Larry Marano/REX/Shutterstock

Benjamin Lee
Wed 28 Jul 2021 20.24 BST

Dusty Hill, bassist for ZZ Top, has died at the age of 72.

Hill, who had recently suffered a hip injury, died in his sleep, as confirmed by a statement on Instagram from bandmates Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard.


ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons: 'I don’t want to get too eclectic'

“We are saddened by the news today that our Compadre, Dusty Hill, has passed away in his sleep at home in Houston, TX,” it read. “We, along with legions of ZZ Top fans around the world, will miss your steadfast presence, your good nature and enduring commitment to providing that monumental bottom to the ‘Top’. We will forever be connected to that ‘Blues Shuffle in C.’ You will be missed greatly, amigo.”

His recent injury had meant that Hill was forced to miss performances as part of the band’s summer tour. There have been no further details on cause of death.

ZZ Top’s first single was released in 1969 after the demise of Moving Sidewalks, the band that Gibbons had previously formed. Their first concert, with Hill included, was in 1970 and the year after their first album was released.

The band would go on to find fame with 15 albums and were best known for hits including 1983’s Gimme All Your Lovin’ and 1984’s Legs. In 1984, Hill also accidentally shot himself, something he remained lighthearted about years later.

“My first reaction was ‘Shit!’ and then ‘Ouch’,” he said in a 2016 interview. “I couldn’t believe I’d done something so stupid. To this day, I don’t know how I could do it.”

Frank Beard, Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill in 2004

 Photograph: Evan Agostini/Getty Images

As well as playing bass guitar, Hill also played keyboard and sang backing and lead vocals for the band. They were all inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.

He made appearances in Back to the Future Part III and Deadwood and also played himself in King of the Hill.

“I don’t believe in regrets at all,” Hill also said in 2016. “What’s the point? There are things I’ve done that, if I had my time all over again, I would do differently – or not at all. But I am the sort of person who, once something’s done, just brushes it away and gets on with life.”

Tributes are coming in from the industry, including from Flea who referred to Hill as “a true rocker” and Go-Gos member Kathy Valentine who tweeted that Hill is “a Texas icon”.

ZZ Top: Bearded bassist Dusty Hill dies in his sleep at 72

© Provided by The Canadian Press

HOUSTON (AP) — ZZ Top’s Dusty Hill, the long-bearded bassist for the million-selling Texas blues rock trio known for such hits as “Legs” and “Gimme All Your Lovin'," has died at age 72.

In a Facebook post Wednesday, guitarist Billy Gibbons and drummer Frank Beard said Hill died in his sleep. They didn’t give a cause of death, but a July 21 post on the band's website said Hill was “on a short detour back to Texas, to address a hip issue.” At that time, the band said that its longtime guitar tech, Elwood Francis, would fill in on bass, slide guitar and harmonica.

Born Joe Michael Hill in Dallas, he, Gibbons and Beard formed ZZ Top in Houston in 1969, naming themselves in part after blues singer Z.Z. Hill and influenced by the British power trio Cream. Their debut release, “ZZ Top’s First Album,” came out in 1970. Three years later, they broke through commercially with “La Grange,” a funky blues song in the style of Slim Harpo’s ”Shake Your Hips" that paid tribute to the Chicken Ranch, a notorious brothel outside of the Texas town of La Grange.

The band went on to have such hits as “Tush” in 1975, and the 1980s songs “Sharp Dressed Man,” ”Legs," “Gimme All Your Lovin’” and “Sleeping Bag.” The band’s 1976 “Worldwide Texas Tour,” with its iconic Texas-shaped stage festooned with cactuses, snakes and longhorn cattle, was one of the decade’s most successful rock tours. Their million-selling albums included ”Eliminator," “Afterburner” and “Antenna.”

ZZ Top was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, introduced by Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.

“These cats are steeped in the blues, so am I," Richards said. “These cats know their blues and they know how to dress it up. When I first saw them, I thought, ‘I hope these guys are not on the run, because that disguise is not going to work.’”

That look, with all three members wearing dark sunglasses and Gibbons and Hill sporting long, wispy beards, became so familiar, in part thanks to their MTV videos in the 1980s, that it was the subject of a New Yorker cartoon and a joke on “The Simpsons.”

____

The Associated Press

New Zealand rated best place to survive global societal collapse

Study citing ‘perilous state’ of industrial civilisation ranks temperate islands top for resilience




WHICH IS WHY BILLIONAIRES HAVE BEEN BUYING UP THE ISLAND AS A HIDE AWAY

Bunker repurposed for a US ‘doomsday’ community. A study proposes that countries able to grow food for their populations, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration and maintain an electrical grid, are best placed to withstand severe shocks. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA


Damian Carrington

Environment editor

THE GUARDIAN
Wed 28 Jul 2021 23.00 BST


New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study.

The researchers said human civilisation was “in a perilous state” due to the highly interconnected and energy-intensive society that had developed and the environmental damage this had caused.

A collapse could arise from shocks, such as a severe financial crisis, the impacts of the climate crisis, destruction of nature, an even worse pandemic than Covid-19 or a combination of these, the scientists said.

To assess which nations would be most resilient to such a collapse, countries were ranked according to their ability to grow food for their population, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration, and maintain an electrical grid and some manufacturing ability. Islands in temperate regions and mostly with low population densities came out on top.

The researchers said their study highlighted the factors that nations must improve to increase resilience. They said that a globalised society that prized economic efficiency damaged resilience, and that spare capacity needed to exist in food and other vital sectors.

Billionaires have been reported to be buying land for bunkers in New Zealand in preparation for an apocalypse. “We weren’t surprised New Zealand was on our list,” said Prof Aled Jones, at the Global Sustainability Institute, at Anglia Ruskin University, in the UK.

Jones added: “We chose that you had to be able to protect borders and places had to be temperate. So with hindsight it’s quite obvious that large islands with complex societies on them already [make up the list].

“We were quite surprised the UK came out strongly. It is densely populated, has traditionally outsourced manufacturing, hasn’t been the quickest to develop renewable technology, and only produces 50% of its own food at the moment. But it has the potential to withstand shocks.”

The study, published in the journal Sustainability, said: “The globe-spanning, energy-intensive industrial civilisation that characterises the modern era represents an anomalous situation when it is considered against the majority of human history.”

The study also said, that due to environmental destruction, limited resources, and population growth: “The [academic] literature paints a picture of human civilisation that is in a perilous state, with large and growing risks developing in multiple spheres of the human endeavour.”

Places that did not suffer “the most egregious effects of societal collapses and are therefore able to maintain significant populations” have been described as “collapse lifeboats”, the study said.

New Zealand was found to have the greatest potential to survive relatively unscathed due to its geothermal and hydroelectric energy, abundant agricultural land and low human population density.

Jones said major global food losses, a financial crisis and a pandemic had all happened in recent years, and “we’ve been lucky that things haven’t all happened at the same time – there’s no real reason why they can’t all happen in the same year”.

He added: “As you start to see these events happening, I get more worried but I also hope we can learn more quickly than we have in the past that resilience is important. With everyone talking about ‘building back better’ from the pandemic, if we don’t lose that momentum I might be more optimistic than I have been in the past.”

He said the coronavirus pandemic had shown that governments could act quickly when needed. “It’s interesting how quickly we can close borders, and how quickly governments can make decisions to change things.”

But he added: “This drive for just-in-time, ever-more efficient, economies isn’t the thing you want to do for resilience. We need to build in some slack in the system, so that if there is a shock then you have the ability to respond because you’ve got spare capacity.

“We need to start thinking about resilience much more in global planning. But obviously, the ideal thing is that a quick collapse doesn’t happen.”

The truth behind corporate climate pledges

Facing a reckoning over their contribution to the climate emergency, companies are coming out with a record number of pledges

A record number of companies are making climate pledges, but experts say action remains far too slow. 

Illustration: The Project Twins/The Guardian

by Jocelyn Timperley
THE GUARDIAN
Mon 26 Jul 2021 08.00 BST

For climate campaigners, 26 May seemed like the start of a long-awaited reckoning for oil and gas companies.

Over a single 24-hour period, a Dutch court ordered Shell to dramatically cut emissions, shareholders voted to force Chevron to reduce emissions from the products it sells, and a tiny activist investment firm secured three positions on ExxonMobil’s 12-member board for candidates committed to climate action.

Green light: a new series on the critical role of companies in the climate crisis


When trying to ascribe responsibility for the climate crisis, it’s hard to overstate the outsized role fossil fuel companies have played. The products of just 100 private and state-owned fossil fuel companies were linked to 71% of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to a groundbreaking 2017 report.

A subsequent Guardian investigation in 2019 found 20 fossil fuel companies, including Chevron and ExxonMobil, were responsible for more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions since 1965 – the point at which experts say fossil fuel companies were aware of the link between their products and climate change.

But it’s not just fossil fuel companies fueling the climate crisis. Even if we immediately phased out oil and gas, emissions from agriculture alone may make it impossible to limit warming to the 1.5C goal in the Paris agreement.

Across a slew of sectors from food and fast fashion to construction and heavy industry, companies have helped drive climate chaos. As climate impacts accelerate – the world is boiling, burning, flooding and melting – there is unprecedented pressure on all companies to start taking their own role in the crisis far more seriously.

This pressure is translating into action. A record number of companies are making climate pledges, but experts warn the pace of action remains glacially slow in the face of a barreling climate crisis.

Even if all current Paris agreement climate pledges are met, the world is still set to see temperature rises of about 2.4C by the end of the century – well above the 1.5C of warming that scientists say will already lead to severe climate impacts.

As countries are under pressure to up their climate ambitions in the run-up to Cop26, the vital UN climate talks in November, the private sector is also being increasingly pushed by investors, employees, activists and consumers to take meaningful action.

In response, corporations have put out a flurry of climate commitments. At least a fifth of the world’s 2,000 largest public companies have now made some kind of “net zero” pledge to cancel out their carbon emissions. They are investing billions in clean energy, moving to electric vehicles, pledging to halt deforestation, and urging the US government to step up climate action.


Tech companies have perhaps some of the most far-reaching goals. Last year, Microsoft pledged to be “carbon negative” by 2030, meaning it would remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits. By 2050, it aims to have compensated for all of its historical emissions through carbon removal projects.

Apple says its products and supply chain will be carbon neutral by 2030 and Google has committed to be powered exclusively by renewable energy by 2030 and claims it has already wiped out its carbon footprint by offsetting emissions.

Most oil companies are moving far more slowly. Shell, BP, Total and Equinor have announced plans to reach “net zero” emissions by 2050, but few have committed to halt fossil-fuel exploration. Some have gone much further and completely transformed their business model: Danish firm Ørsted sold its oil and gas business in 2017 and has now installed more than a quarter of the world’s offshore wind capacity.

The transport industry, responsible for around one-fifth of global CO2 emissions, is gearing up for bolder climate pledges. GM Motors announced in January it would be carbon-neutral by 2040 and sell only zero emissions vehicles by 2035. The aviation sector, which has been slow to make climate pledges, is considering whether to set a goal of becoming net-zero by 2050.

Large numbers of companies, including consumer-facing firms such as Ikea, PepsiCo and Levi’s, are also signing up to the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which helps companies calculate emissions targets aligned with the Paris agreement ambition of 1.5C. More companies have signed up in the first half of 2021 than in the whole of 2020, according to a Bloomberg report.

Rooftop solar on Ikea’s store in Kaarst, Germany. The company plans to spend an extra $4.7bn by 2030 to build wind and solar farms. Photograph: Sascha Steinbach/EPA

“A decade ago, companies were setting these very incremental targets,” said Cynthia Cummis, co-founder of the SBTi and director of private sector climate mitigation at the World Resource Institute. “Now science-based target setting is becoming standard practice.”

And it’s having an impact. An SBTi analysis of 338 large companies with science-based pledges found they had reduced combined emissions by 25% between 2015 and 2019.

Corporations are losing the ability to “fudge the numbers” on climate policies, said Ketan Joshi, an Oslo-based climate analyst who tracks company climate pledges. “Companies are increasingly starting to understand that they’re losing their grip on the public relations hit of announcing a climate ambition and then doing nothing about it.”

There are still big caveats.

Global emissions are rebounding post-pandemic and 2023 is on track to see the highest levels of CO2 emissions in human history, according to the International Energy Agency.

Despite the record number of corporate climate pledges, an analysis of 9,300 listed companies from index provider MSCI published in July found that they are still on course to exceed their “carbon budgets” – the total amount of emissions they can release and still keep in line with 1.5C of warming – within the next six years.

This finding highlights the need for these companies to “dramatically accelerate climate action”, said Remy Briand, head of environmental, social and governance at MSCI. “It is easy to say that becoming net-zero is a high priority, but it is another to take action, especially immediate action.”

While some companies have placed climate change at the top of their agenda, he added, others have made weak pledges or failed to act at all. “For those not matching their commitments or lagging, there should be nowhere left to hide.”

Analyzing what companies are actually doing, however, can be painstakingly difficult when there is no requirement to disclose all key climate information and little consistency in corporate pledges making it all but impossible to benchmark progress.

The changes required are so vast that many companies struggle to even articulate them. In an evaluation of some of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, the investor engagement group Climate Action 100+ found no company has fully disclosed how it plans to reach net-zero.

With many corporate net-zero pledges still several decades out, often with few interim targets, monitoring their effectiveness can be hard. “We cannot wait for 2050 to see whether we fulfil the commitments or not,” said Gonzalo Muñoz, UN high-level champion on climate for Cop25. “It’s what we do today, and in these next five to 10 years, that will determine whether we succeed or not.”

Figuring out how to quickly cut emissions is not an easy task for companies, which must work out not only how to reduce direct emissions and those from the energy that they use (scope 1 and scope 2 emissions), but also those which come from the use of their products (scope 3 emissions).

Some of the boldest pledges rely on carbon removal technologies that don’t even exist yet, or at least not at the scale required. Many more are heavily reliant on carbon offsets, which allow companies to invest in “nature-based” programs like tree planting or forest protection to counteract their own emissions. Offset projects, however, have been plagued by allegations of flawed accounting, greenwash and sometimes even of actively fueling climate change.

These climate pledges are also voluntary. To some, this shows that industry is trying to take responsibility for its own emissions. For others, it looks more like an effort at self-regulation to avoid government intervention.

“I don’t think we have time for voluntary corporate initiatives any more,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International. “We’ve done them for decades and they haven’t worked. I think there’s a real need for governments to be coming in and putting in place some legislative and regulatory frameworks.”

Many companies have publicly called for governments to take stronger climate action; behind the scenes it can be a different story.

Amazon and Microsoft, for example, have been criticized for pitching themselves as climate leaders while also donating tens of thousands of dollars to politicians who oppose climate action. An Amazon spokesperson said it actively advocates for clean energy policies and a spokesperson for Microsoft said that to make progress the company “must engage with candidates and officeholders who hold a range of views”.
If business leaders truly grasped the seriousness of the crisis they would immediately pivot their entire business modelJamie Beck Alexander, Project Drawdown

The lobbying efforts of fossil fuel majors, meanwhile, are well documented. The five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies spent over $1bn on misleading climate-related branding and lobbying in the three years following the Paris agreement in 2015, according to a 2019 report by InfluenceMap.

A host of investigations has revealed big fossil fuel companies knew about the link between their products and climate change for decades but continued to argue that climate science was uncertain and to push against climate action. Just last month an Exxon lobbyist was caught on tape by the investigative outlet Unearthed describing how the company was actively working against key US climate policies through lobbying and membership of trade associations.

These same firms also encouraged a public narrative of individual responsibility for the climate crisis. British Petroleum notoriously helped to popularize the term “carbon footprint” with an online calculator that encouraged people to measure their own emissions.

This focus on personal responsibility is echoed in other sectors, which advertise “more sustainable” products while continuing business-as-usual models of consumption and production.

“The discussion that moves us away from corporate responsibility to personal responsibility is a huge distraction,” said Shannon Lloyd, an assistant professor of management at Concordia University in Canada. “As an individual, your choices have very little impact in terms of reducing the carbon or other environmental footprint of products. It’s more about getting laws put in place or policies in place than individual purchasing decisions.”

Reaching a net-zero world will entail “wholesale transformation” in both infrastructure and how things are done, said Steven Clarke, director for corporate clean energy leadership at non-profit Ceres. “Some people refer to it as on the scale of a second industrial revolution.”

Certain key sectors will face big challenges. There’s a lack of easy answers for some energy-intensive industries with huge carbon footprints, such as steel, cement, aviation and shipping, which are notoriously hard to decarbonize. Sectors which rely on high consumption of products with big climate footprints, such as fast fashion and meat, will also need to adapt significantly for the world to limit temperature rise to 1.5C.

But there is huge potential for innovation and action. Most solar and wind projects are now expected to be cheaper than coal. Investment is flowing into “green hydrogen”, which could provide zero-emissions fuel for ships and airplanes and replace fossil fuels in steel manufacturing.

Meanwhile, pressure on companies is intensifying. More than 1,500 lawsuits have been brought against fossil fuel companies. This number could accelerate thanks to advances in climate science making it easier to link climate damage to corporate activity.

 Employees are another lever for change.

In 2020, hundreds of Amazon workers criticized the company for climate inaction last year. This year the non-profit ClimateVoice launched a campaign mobilizing employees to demand that big tech companies spend more of their lobbying dollars on climate policy.

Companies cannot tackle the climate crisis by themselves, said Jamie Beck Alexander of Project Drawdown, a non-profit focused on climate solutions, “regulation will absolutely be required to transform entire sectors.” But this doesn’t let them off the hook, she added. “If business leaders truly grasped the seriousness of this crisis, they would immediately pivot their entire business models and resources toward scaling climate solutions full stop.”