Virus is taking big toll on farm county in Washington state

The Canadian Press June 22, 2020



YAKIMA, Wash. — Fruit warehouse worker Armida Rivera says her days in Yakima County, Washington, are filled with the fear of getting the coronavirus.

Sean Gilbert worries about the threat to his family's century-old orchard business in the county.

And Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is struggling to help the county at the heart of the state's agricultural belt that he once called home.

The coronavirus pandemic is hitting Yakima County hard, with cases surging far faster in this region about 140 miles (225 kilometres ) southeast of Seattle than the rest of the state. The virus has caused turmoil in the farm and food processing industry, where some fearful workers staged wildcat strikes recently to demand employers provide safer working conditions.

Hospitals in the county are filled to capacity and have started sending patients to neighbouring counties, officials said.

Efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 among the county's 250,000 residents have so far failed, and Yakima County is one of only three in Washington that has remained in Phase One lockdown while most of the state is starting to reopen.

Inslee said a big reason is that many people in Yakima County are declining to wear masks.

Visits to fast-food restaurants and other essential businesses found lots of employees and customers not wearing masks. In Selah, youth league baseball games were being played with spectators — few wearing masks — in the stands.

Inslee on Saturday announced he was preparing a proclamation to require Yakima County residents to wear masks when outside their homes. Stores and other businesses will be banned from selling to customers without masks, he said.

“That essentially means: ‘’No mask, no service, and no mask, no goods,'' Inslee said.

The Washington Department of Health in mid-June ranked the industries in the state most struck by COVID-19. The agency found that manufacturing, including food processing plants, ranked second in cases, behind health care. Agriculture ranked fifth, behind retail trade and the hospitality industry.

Nationally, meat and poultry processing plants have been hard-hit by coronavirus, with at least 20 of those plants across the country shut down for a week or more.

Meanwhile, the 2.7 million farm workers employed in the U.S., often working and living in close quarters, are just heading into the busy harvest season.

As of Sunday, Yakima County had at least 6,283 cases of coronavirus, second-highest among counties in the state, and 138 deaths. King County, which includes Seattle and has nearly 10 times more people, had recorded at least 9,211 cases and 600 deaths.

Inslee noted the infection rate in Yakima County was 28 times higher than the rate in King County. He predicted it would jump dramatically this summer if people don't take steps to limit exposure.

“It is terrifying,'' Inslee said of the region, home to tens of thousands of workers on farms and in food processing plants who make up the bulk of the economy.

Just over 50% of the county's virus cases involve Hispanic residents, who make up the bulk of the agricultural workforce. In addition, 26% per cent of virus tests in the county come back positive, compared to a state average of about 6%.

Rivera, 36, works in a fruit warehouse. A native of Mexico who has lived 20 years in the United States, she was a leader of a two-week wildcat strike at the warehouse when management refused to provide workers with masks, hand sanitizer and other safety equipment.

“We were scared. '' she said, stressing that people were working shoulder-to-shoulder.

The valley's bounty of apples, cherries, pears and other crops are sorted, cleaned and packaged at the warehouse.

The workers who went on strikes at several plants mostly earn the minimum wage of $13.50 an hour. They were heartened by support from the medical community, as doctors and nurses came by to drop off masks and other supplies.

The wildcat strikes, which involved half a dozen fruit warehouses, have all been settled, but fears remain.

Rosalinda Gonzalez, 41, is a native of Mexico who has lived in the United States since 1995. Married with three children, she also went on strike for protective equipment and a safer work environment.

“We are always afraid,'' Gonzalez said, adding that many workers at her warehouse have tested positive for the virus.



Some farmers have taken extraordinary steps, some prescribed by the governor's office, to protect their work force.

Gilbert is the owner of Gilbert Orchards,where he grows 4,000 acres of apples, cherries, wine grapes and other crops in the shadow of the Cascade Range.

He provided face marks for his workforce, spending $22,000 in April to buy 16,000 masks from China. His employees practice social distancing and migrant workers are housed in dormitories that no longer include bunk beds, as required by the governor's proclamations. Vans now carry seven people at a time to distant fields instead of 15.

But that doesn't mean he will stay in business.

Costs for farmers are rising dramatically, even as the markets for produce are dropping because of trade restrictions overseas and people's inability to pay for the products in the United States because of job losses, Gilbert said.

He recently took 300 acres of apples out of production.

“At our cost structure, it didn't make sense to keep growing,'' he said.

Inslee said the county also has lots of cases in nursing homes, and a large percentage of the region's employees are rated as essential and thus continued to go to work.

“”This is the place where our food comes from,'' Inslee noted.

As a result, local politicians pushed him hard to start allowing the reopening of businesses in Yakima County.

Rivera said safeguarding health should be the most important consideration.

“It’s super necessary to protect our families.? she said.

Nicholas K. Geranios, The Associated Press

A national US power grid would make electricity cheaper and cleaner

The top 5 reasons to stitch together America’s balkanized grids.

IT IS A NORTH AMERICAN GRID NOT JUST AN AMERICAN ONE 
A POINT MADE BY TECHNOCRACY INC.

WHEN PLANNING FOR A NORTH AMERICAN POWER GRID UNDER ITS TECHNATE

By David Roberts@drvoxdavid@vox.com Jun 20, 2020

 

Electrical transmission towers near Lancaster, California. Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group/Getty Images
Electricity is the fuel of the future. And as more and more of American life is electrified — transportation and buildings are already on their way — the electricity grid will face greater demands and will need to evolve to meet them.

One branch of that evolution is smaller. “Microgrids” are small grids that connect a college campus, a business, or even a house, allowing it to act as a semi-independent island within the larger grid. Microgrids help support the growth of distributed energy, with power generation, storage, and management taking place on the customer side of the power meter.

But the other branch, and equally important, is bigger. The US does not actually have a national grid. Our grid is instead split into three regions — the western interconnection, the eastern interconnection, and, uh, Texas — that largely operate independently and exchange very little power

.NERC

POWER IS SOLD TO THE WESTERN US GRID FROM ALBERTA AND BC SINCE DEREGULATION, TRANSALTA BEING THE SOLE MONOPOLY ON POWER TRANSFER,
IT'S HOW ALBERTA GOT ENTANGLED IN ENRON.  MANITOBA, ONTARIO, QUEBEC AND THE ATLANTIC SELL POWER IN THE CENTRAL EASTERN USA 

Power nerds have known for years that this is a barrier preventing all sorts of efficiencies. Earlier this week, an effort launched to finally address that: the Macro Grid Initiative, which “seeks to expand and upgrade the nation’s transmission network.” It is a collaborative project by the American Council on Renewable Energy, Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, the Advanced Power Alliance, and the Clean Grid Alliance.

The initiative is a welcome development; this idea of a national grid is overdue for some well-funded support.

Rather than get into the policies and regulatory changes necessary to accomplish this goal — which are many, complex, and lamentably boring — I’m going to briefly cover the top five reasons why it’s a good idea. Here’s why the US should, at long last, build a national grid.
1. It will unlock renewable energy potential

The areas of the US with the most renewable energy potential are not necessarily the ones that need the most energy. A report from the Wind Energy Association found that the 15 states between the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River — Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana — account for 87 percent of the nation’s total wind energy potential and 56 percent of its utility-scale solar potential, but are only projected to account for 30 percent of the nation’s energy demand in 2050.

This map, from a report by energy consultancy ScottMadden, shows the estimated 2030 balance of power supply and demand for each region of the country. Some regions (notably the Upper Midwest and Texas) will be producing substantially more than they consume, while others (notably in the West and Northeast) will consume much more than they produce.

The way to balance this out — to make sure that every region is producing as much renewable energy as possible and that the energy is put to good use — is to connect these regions with high-voltage transmission lines. The more each region can import and export electricity, the more it can balance its own fluctuations in supply and demand with its neighbors’ and maximize the use of renewable energy.

One example: The proposed 780-mile Grain Belt Express would carry solar and wind power from Kansas to Missouri and Illinois. It is expected to carry around 4 gigawatts of low-cost renewable energy (enough to power 1.6 million homes a year), unlock $7 billion worth of new renewable energy projects, and relieve congestion on both ends of the line.

The route of the proposed Grain Belt Express high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission line. Grain Belt Express
2. It will reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Solar and wind energy are variable; they come and go with the weather. A grid with lots of wind and solar power needs ways to smooth out the fluctuations and fill the gaps. Energy storage, including batteries, can provide some of that flexibility, but not enough.

Transmission is a different story. In 2016, Chris Clack, Alexander MacDonald, and colleagues modeled the US energy system out to 2030 at a high degree of resolution. The results, published in Nature Climate Change, show that, using only existing technologies and without any additional energy storage, US power sector emissions can be reduced by up to 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2030. And this can be accomplished “without an increase in the levelized cost of electricity.”


How is this possible? “This reduction in carbon emissions is achieved by moving away from a regionally divided electricity sector to a national system enabled by high-voltage direct-current transmission.”
3. It will save consumers money

Clack and his co-authors also found that weaving the regionally divided power system into a single national system would save consumers around $47.2 billion a year through increased efficiency and cheaper renewable energy.

In 2018, a team assembled by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) published the Interconnections Seam Study, a close analysis of the costs and benefits of stitching together America’s fragmented grid. It found that for every $1 invested, ratepayers would see more than $2.50 in benefits. (If you’re curious, I wrote a longer post on the Seam Study.)  

  

Renewable resources, power plants, and population centers. NREL
4. It will make the grid more reliable

There’s a lot of discussion about “resilience” in the power sector these days. As the ScottMadden report shows, various regions of the country can, during severe weather events, face fuel shortages, transmission congestion, and even rolling blackouts. If nothing else is done, the coming retirement of many coal, oil, and natural gas plants will exacerbate these vulnerabilities.

The best way to build resiliency against these events, which are increasing in frequency due to climate change, is to connect the regions of the country into a single national grid, so that regions facing difficulty can draw power from neighbors who aren’t.

A cost-optimized single electrical power system for the contiguous US. Nature Climate Change

This already works on a smaller scale. During the prolonged cold temperatures of 2017’s “bomb cyclone,” the ability of eastern regions to exchange energy prevented blackouts and kept prices under control.
5. It would create jobs

A Green New Deal-style investment into a national grid would create thousands of construction and maintenance jobs. Given that every region’s needs and challenges are idiosyncratic, and the process of building lines is complex and egregiously slow (averaging around 10 years), it’s impossible to estimate how many. But transmission development jobs are high-quality union jobs, available in every part of the country.

So there you have it: if you want cleaner, more efficient, more reliable, cheaper electricity, join me in three cheers for a US national grid!

Trump’s EPA balks at a chance to save black lives

Soot sickens and kills people of color disproportionately. 

The EPA has decided to not tighten standards that would protect them and others.

ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTING AGENCY UNDER TRUMP

POVERTY POISONS 

By David Roberts@drvoxdavid@vox.com Jun 16, 2020

PacifiCorp’s Hunter coal fired power plant outside of Castle Dale, Utah on November 14, 2019. Coal power generation is one main source of particulate pollution in the US. AFP via Getty Images


Decades of research paint a clear picture: The No. 1 environmental health risk in the US is soot. Also known as particulate pollution, it is made up of extremely small particles spewed into the air by power generation, industrial processes, and cars and trucks.

There are “coarse particles,” between 2.5 and 10 micrometers in diameter, and “fine particles,” at 2.5 micrometers and smaller. By way of comparison, the average human hair has a diameter of about 70 micrometers.

Research has consistently found that inhaling these particles is incredibly harmful to human physiology, at high concentrations over short periods or low concentrations over extended periods. Particulate pollution is linked to increased asthma, especially among children, along with lung irritation and inflammation, blood clots, heart attacks, weakened immune systems, and, according to a wave of recent research, long-term cognitive impacts (reduced productivity, inability to concentrate, and dementia).

Research is equally consistent on another point: the harms of particulate pollution are not equitably distributed. They fall most heavily on vulnerable populations like children, the elderly, people with preexisting health conditions, low-income people, and, above all, people of color.

A groundbreaking 2019 study from researchers at the Universities of Minnesota and Washington attempted to quantify both sides of particulate pollution, who produces it and who suffers from it. They found that the consumption producing the pollution was concentrated in majority white communities, while exposure to the pollution was concentrated in minority communities.

“On average, non-Hispanic whites experience a ‘pollution advantage’: They experience ∼17% less air pollution exposure than is caused by their consumption,” the study concluded. “Blacks and Hispanics on average bear a ‘pollution burden’ of 56% and 63% excess exposure, respectively, relative to the exposure caused by their consumption.”

To put it more bluntly: People of color are choking on white people’s pollution.


The current regulatory limits on particulate pollution under the Clean Air Act were set in 2012, based on scientific review concluded in 2010. As subsequent science has revealed, they are inadequate to protect public health. That was the strong and unanimous conclusion of the panel of 19 scientists assembled in 2015 to assess the evidence.

Nonetheless, EPA claims the science is not settled and is refusing to tighten the standards, which will mean, on an ongoing basis, well over 10,000 unnecessary deaths in the US every year.

The purported rationale, of this and all the administration’s deregulatory efforts, is to reduce costs to industry. But the costs of pollution don’t disappear when they are removed from industry’s books. They are simply shifted onto the public ledger, in the form of health care costs and lost work days. Lax pollution standards represent an ongoing transfer of costs from industry to the public.

In the case of particulate pollution, the costs are disproportionately borne by black people — who, in part because of the air pollution in their communities, also suffer disproportionately from Covid-19.

Lax particulate pollution standards are, in short, yet another way of devaluing black bodies and black lives, yet another expression of the structural racism that Trump has so effectively flushed to the surface.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler testifies before the Senate on May 20, 2020 in Washington, DC. Wheeler disbanded the 19-member Particulate Matter Review Panel and left the review of particulate pollution standards to a committee made up of Trump appointees. Getty Images

How EPA stacked the deck to ignore the science

Particulate pollution is regulated under the Clean Air Act’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) program. The Act mandates that scientists periodically review the latest evidence on air pollution and recommend updates to NAAQS standards as necessary, so that the program stays abreast of the latest science.

The EPA’s seven-member Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) reviews the standards, but because it does not have depth of expertise in all the various subject matters, it typically consults with a panel of outside scientists.


When the latest review of particulate standards began in 2015, such a panel was assembled: the 19-member Particulate Matter Review Panel, made up of experts in epidemiology, physiology, and other relevant disciplines. The review was delayed in getting underway, and Trump’s EPA initially talked about moving the deadline for completion to 2022. But in early 2018, then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt abruptly announced that the agency would rush to be done by December 2020, the tail end of Trump’s first term.

Later in 2018, to “streamline” the review process, newly appointed EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler unceremoniously disbanded the PM Review Panel and left the review in the hands of CASAC — which had, over the previous year, been entirely reconstituted with Trump appointees. It was chaired by an industry consultant; just one of the seven members was a scientist.

The disbanded scientific panel later reconvened and rebranded as the Independent Particulate Matter Review Panel. It went on to issue the same assessments and recommendations it would have offered CASAC.

For fine particles (PM2.5), it recommended reducing the annual average concentration limit from 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air to between 10 and 8, though it noted that “even at the lower end of the range, risk is not reduced to zero.” It recommended reducing the daily exposure limit from 35 to between 30 and 25.

Now, the Independent PM Review Panel has penned an extraordinary piece in The New England Journal of Medicine, excoriating the EPA.

“We unequivocally and unanimously concluded that the current PM2.5 standards do not adequately protect public health,” they write. Ignoring that clear conclusion required serial abuses of the review process, as outlined in this somewhat mind-boggling paragraph:

The dismissal of our review panel is just one of numerous recent ad hoc changes to scientific review of the NAAQS since 2017 that undermine the quality, credibility, and integrity of the review process and its outcome. Other changes include imposing nonscientific criteria for appointing the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee members related to geographic diversity and affiliation with governments, replacing the entire membership of the chartered committee over a period of 1 year, banning nongovernmental recipients of EPA scientific research grants from committee membership while allowing membership for persons affiliated with regulated industries, ignoring statutory requirements for the need for a thorough and accurate scientific review of the NAAQS in setting a review schedule, disregarding key elements of the committee-approved Integrated Review Plan, reducing the number of drafts of a document for committee review irrespective of whether substantial revision of scientific content is needed, commingling science and policy issues, and creating an ad hoc “pool” of consultants that fails to address the deficiencies caused by dismissing the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee PM Review Panel.

That is ... a lot. “It’s not surprising [CASAC] would retain the standards,” Gretchen Goldman, research director for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the Washington Post, “because they broke the process.”

The chair of CASAC, Tony Cox — who has worked as a consultant for energy and chemical industry trade groups — contends that the particulate science doesn’t hold up. In the end, CASAC ignored the panel’s work and recommended that the standards be kept where they are.


The 60-day comment period on the new rule ends on June 29; there is no sign that the vast number of critical comments and submissions to EPA will change Wheeler’s mind.

Once the rule is put into effect, it will immediately face lawsuits. Given how shoddy the process has been and how clearly the results fly in the face of consensus science, it is unlikely to hold up in court. Like many of the Trump administration’s hastily executed regulatory rollbacks, it will likely end up quietly rejected — in the end, less an enduring victory than a flashy nationalist pageant that merely delays inevitable changes.

If it is rejected, it will go back to EPA for another rulemaking process that will take years. In the meantime, tens of thousands of people, disproportionately people of color, will needlessly get sick and die.

Covid-19 patients arrive at the Wakefield Campus of the Montefiore Medical Center on April 6 in the Bronx borough of New York City after being transferred from the center’s Einstein Campus. The Bronx has 21 times more asthma hospitalizations than other New York boroughs, and over five times the national average. John Moore/Getty Images

Black people are most likely to suffer the effects of soot

It is well known that the harms of pollution are inequitably distributed. Like so many social harms, they fall hardest on the most vulnerable.

That means people with weak or compromised immune systems, like children, the elderly, or people with preexisting respiratory or circulatory problems. And it also means people who happen to live close to the industrial facilities and highways that produce the pollution, typically low-income communities and communities of color. Black people fall disproportionately into both those categories, with high rates of preexisting conditions and high likelihood of living proximate to pollution sources.


RELATED
The deadly mix of Covid-19, air pollution, and inequality, explained

A 2018 study by EPA scientists, published in the American Journal of Public Health, attempted to quantify the disparities in pollution exposure down to the county level. It found that, for PM2.5 pollution, “those in poverty had 1.35 times higher burden than did the overall population, and non-Whites had 1.28 times higher burden. Blacks, specifically, had 1.54 times higher burden than did the overall population.” These results held steady across the country.

This illustrates that the impact of pollution on the black population can not be reduced to geography or economic status. It “should be considered in conjunction with existing health disparities,” the study says. “Access to health care has well-documented disparities by race/ethnicity, and the prevalence of certain diseases is notably higher in non-White populations.” In other words, the pollution burden should be considered in the context of systemic racism.


Another recent study, focused on Texas, found that “the percentage of Black population and median household income are positively associated with excess emissions; percentage of college graduate, population density, median housing value, and percentage of owner-occupied housing unit are negatively associated with excess emissions.”

These studies are consonant with a long history of research — see here, here, here, and here — showing that air pollution reflects and reproduces wider income and racial disparities. The poor suffer; minorities suffer; black people suffer most of all.
Trump’s environmental policies reinforce structural racism

Inequitable distribution of pollution is as old as industrial society. The Clean Air Act was meant, in part, to address that injustice, to secure healthy air for every American. And despite its flaws and failings, it has been, among other things, one of the most effective environmental justice policies in US history. Just as pollution hurts people of color most, reducing it helps them most.

Emission of the six big pollutants — particles, ozone, lead, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide — declined an average of 73 percent between 1970 and 2017. Fine particle concentrations fell by 43 percent between 2000 and 2019.EPA

The Clean Air Act has accomplished this much because it is not a static law but a living, evolving set of policy tools. It has scientific reviews built in every few years, so that the level of public protection keeps up with the latest evidence. Scholars call this “green drift,” as the landmark environmental laws of the 1970s continue updating, even in the face of some hostile administrations.

Trump’s is the most hostile yet, working overtime to gum up the Clean Air Act and blunt its effectiveness. It goes beyond weakened standards for particulates, mercury, methane, and fuel economy.

There’s the “Transparency in Regulatory Science” (or “secret science”) rule, which would prohibit EPA from considering a broad swathe of the epidemiological research that supports particulate rules. There’s the effort to alter EPA cost-benefit analysis to exclude consideration of “cobenefits.” Many rules reducing other pollutants — mercury and CO2, for example — are justified in part by the fact that they also reduce particulates, which substantially adds to their health benefits. Excluding cobenefits is a way to justify weakening a whole range of other air-quality standards.

EPA is doing as much as it can to dismantle, weaken, or delay Clean Air Act protections before the end of Trump’s first term. The typical framing of these moves is that Trump is doing them on behalf of industry and that they are hurting “the environment,” or, worse, “the planet” (ugh).

There’s another way to frame them: They are expressions of structural racism, America’s long history of exploiting people of color for their labor while rewarding them with deprivation, marginalization, and ill health. Just as black people are often denied police protection while subjected to police violence, they are often denied the wealth and consumption that produce pollution while subjected to the health ravages of inhaling it.

Science-based air quality standards are one way to ease the burdens imposed on black bodies. The Trump administration’s staunch opposition to those standards, its attempts to undermine the bureaucratic machinery that produces them, is just one more expression of its disregard for black lives.

The Covid-19 pandemic is threatening vital rainforests

The coronavirus is undermining efforts to control rainforest fires in Indonesia and Brazil. And those fires could worsen the pandemic.

By Umair Irfan Jun 22, 2020, VOX

Rainforests like this one in Indonesia burned last year. Experts warn rainforests in Brazil and Indonesia could burn again this year and hurt the fight against Covid-19.

 Jefta Images/Barcroft Media via Getty Images

One of the most alarming environmental problems stemming from the coronavirus pandemic is the unchecked destruction of tropical rainforests happening in Brazil and Indonesia.

Human-caused fires are posing a major threat to the ecology of these regions. In addition, the fires’ smoke is adding to the problems of the pandemic by placing more stress on people’s lungs.

With governments distracted with the pandemic — both Indonesia and Brazil have seen major increases in infections — both countries may face another spike in forest fires as enforcement of environmental laws lapses and pressure mounts to exploit their riches. This year, blazes have already been detected in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest, months ahead of the typical fire season.

It will take coordinated action to fight the pandemic and forest fires at the same time. Tropical forest fires are caused by humans and must be stopped by humans. Otherwise, an ecological disaster and a health crisis could converge in the tropics, sending shockwaves around the world.
How the Covid-19 pandemic is threatening rainforests

The world watched with alarm in 2019 as record fires burned in Brazil and Indonesia. These counties are home to the two largest tropical rainforests in the world and are the nations with the highest rates of deforestation. The fires caused international outrage as activists argued these blazes were ignited with tacit or overt approval from governments. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro campaigned for office on lifting environmental regulations around the rainforest and said that international alarm about the Amazon threatens Brazil’s sovereignty. In Indonesia, slash-and-burn tactics are common for clearing forests to grow crops, particularly palm oil plantations.

Though tropical rainforests have a dry season, these areas have so much moisture that they almost never burn without human intervention.


However, fires are just the most visible signal of a wider pattern of destruction, spurred by the huge economic pressure to exploit the rainforest. The blazes in 2019 were ignited by people in degraded parts of the forest to clear land for mining and agriculture, and in some cases to drive out indigenous people who live in the area.

Now that pressure is only growing amid the Covid-19 pandemic, with many people forced out of work. And governments are having a harder time enforcing rules against illegal deforestation and burning as they cope with the virus.
Tropical forest fires can make the damage from the pandemic worse

The consequences of these fires may be even more severe this year. Beyond the ecological destruction, the blazes stand to exacerbate illnesses.

“In this year, it’s especially concerning because the small particulate matter — the smoke, the soot — that is emanating from these fires, exacerbates respiratory infection,” said Harvey Fineberg, dean of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, during a press briefing from Columbia’s Earth Institute on June 17. “That respiratory susceptibility means that Covid infections are more likely to be more serious among the populations who are directly affected by the fires. In many tropical areas, those who are especially vulnerable are the indigenous peoples on whose lands these fires may be set.”

Smoke from rainforest fires like in this 2019 photo from Indonesia can worsen respiratory infections like Covid-19. Sijori Images/Barcroft Media via Getty Images

The smoke from these fires can harm people even if they don’t have an infection, adding to the strain on the health system. In the tropics, there is also the risk that Covid-19 can infect people alongside other endemic diseases like malaria and dengue, with unknown effects. And indigenous people have been struck especially hard by the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It’s also important to keep in mind that what happens in the Amazon does not stay in the Amazon,” said Marcia Castro, chair of the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, during the press conference.

In both Indonesia and Brazil, rainforest fires in past years have sent smoke hundreds of miles away, worsening air quality over major cities. And as people flee the fires, they can spread infection to other regions.


“We have an environmental crisis on top of a sanitary crisis,” said Ane Alencar, director of science at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), during the press conference.
Tropical forests benefit the whole world, and humans can protect them

It’s hard to overstate the value of tropical rainforests to the planet. They are home to the largest concentrations of biodiversity on the planet. Their trees channel water into the sky and create vital rainfall for farms and cities. This evaporation is also a vital mechanism for keeping temperatures cool in the surrounding regions.

Rainforests also play a critical role in the global climate system and can influence rainfall patterns in far-off countries that are critical for farming and other economic activities. They also soak up and store a gargantuan volume of carbon, cushioning the blows of climate change.

Losing tropical rainforests puts all of these mechanisms in jeopardy. And for rainforests, there is likely a tipping point where if enough of the forest is lost, it won’t be able to circulate enough moisture to sustain itself, leading to an irreversible cycle of collapse. For the Amazon rainforest, researchers estimate that this will occur at 25 percent deforestation. To date, about 17 percent of the rainforest has been lost.

Yet despite these global stakes, the bulk of tropical rainforests are situated in a handful of countries, some of which are less inclined to protect them. That’s created a thorny political challenge.

A big step toward protecting rainforests is to enforce rules against destroying and burning them. “We need to have the government really onboard to fight illegal activities and to give the signal that it is going to fight illegal activities,” Alencar said.

There also needs to be diplomatic pressure to encourage countries to protect forests as well as financing mechanisms to create incentives to preserve valuable ecosystems.

However, with new infections rising in Brazil and Indonesia, stopping fires may become a lower priority.

A Siberian town near the Arctic Circle just recorded a 100-degree temperature

One of the coldest towns on Earth clocks a potentially record-breaking — and worrying — temperature.

the average heat across Russia between January and May actually matches what current models project to be normal for the region in 2100, if carbon emissions continue.

By Zeeshan Aleem@ZeeshanAleem Jun 21, 2020,

A past summer thaw in Verkhoyansk, a Siberian town in Russia. The town normally has an average high of 68 degrees in June but recorded a temp of 100.4 degrees on Saturday. Dean Conger/Corbis/Getty Images

A small town in Siberia reached a temperature of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit on Saturday, which, if verified, would mark the hottest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic Circle.

Temperatures have jumped in recent months to levels rarely seen in the Russian region, and it’s a sign of a broader trend of human-caused climate change that’s transforming weather patterns in the Arctic Circle.

The town of Verkhoyansk is one of the coldest towns on Earth — temperatures dropped to nearly 60 degrees below zero there this past November — and the average June high temperature is 68 degrees.

The 100.4 reading in Verkhoyansk, which sits farther north than Fairbanks, Alaska, would be the northernmost 100-degree reading ever observed.

The Washington Post reports that while there are questions about the accuracy of the record temperature, a Saturday weather balloon launch that found unusually high temperatures in the lower atmosphere supports the reading. And on Sunday, the town reached 95.3 degrees, according to the Post.

CBS News meteorologist and climate specialist Jeff Berardelli wrote on Saturday that 100-degree temperatures in or near the Arctic are “almost unheard of.”

Before Saturday, Siberia was already experiencing an extraordinary heat wave. Surface temperatures in Siberia were 18 degrees higher than average in May, making it the hottest May in the region since record-keeping began in 1979, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Another Eastern Siberian town, Yakutsk, during a January cold snap. Winter temperatures in the region near the Arctic can reach far below zero. Yevgeny Sofroneyev/TASS/Getty Images
“It is undoubtedly an alarming sign, but not only May was unusually warm in this region,” said Freja Vamborg, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Climate Change Service, in a statement about the finding. “The whole of winter and spring had repeated periods of higher-than-average surface air temperatures.”

Climate scientist Martin Stendel said on Twitter that the temperatures recorded in northwestern Siberia last month would be a 1-in-100,000-year event — if not for climate change.


Berardelli said the average heat across Russia between January and May actually matches what current models project to be normal for the region in 2100, if carbon emissions continue.“Due to heat trapping greenhouse gases that result from the burning of fossil fuels and feedback loops, the Arctic is warming at more than two times the average rate of the globe,” he explained in his analysis of the Verkhoyansk reading. “This phenomenon is known as Arctic Amplification, which is leading to the decline of sea ice, and in some cases snow cover, due to rapidly warming temperatures.”

He noted that if the climate continues to heat up, extreme heat waves will become more of the norm.

Yale Astronomers Questioned Systemic Racism Because They Hired One Black Employee 35 Years Ago, 

AS OFFICE STAFF Emails Show

“Deeply entrenched systemic racism exists in every sector of our society, including at Yale and in this department,” a group of undergraduates wrote in response.

Stephanie M. LeeBuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on June 16, 2020

Checkmate24 / Wikimedia
Steinbach Hall on Yale's campus, which is home to the astronomy department.

Last Wednesday, as thousands of researchers across the world stopped work to protest racism in science, Yale astronomy professors expressed doubts that “deeply entrenched systemic racism” existed in their department — by pointing to their hiring of a single Black employee in 1985.

“We haven’t seen many Ella Greenes,” wrote Richard Larson, a professor emeritus, in an email to the astronomy department on the day of the strike, referring to the administrative employee whom he said was its first, and so far only, Black office staffer. “But Ella was an ambitious and self-made person, and she didn’t receive and didn’t need any special help for black people.”

In the email exchange, which was obtained by BuzzFeed News, Larson also questioned a colleague’s assertion that systemic racism existed in the department. “Whatever you want to say about ‘deeply entrenched systemic racism,’” he wrote, “Ella was not defeated by it.”

Students and researchers condemned these remarks in response, saying that the hiring of one Black person does not cancel out the department’s historic lack of racial diversity, and that the racist emails were indicative of how Black people are systematically excluded from science.

“If people of color do not feel comfortable in the department (and the current state of representation indicates they do not), it is due to our lack of trying,” a group of undergraduates wrote to the email chain.

Another professor emeritus, William van Altena, argued that the department’s lack of Black students and faculty members was due to the fact that those scholars had less interest in the physical sciences compared to the social sciences — “not due to inherent racism in our Department.”

In 2014, Jedidah Isler became the first Black woman to receive a PhD from Yale’s astronomy department. Now an assistant professor of astrophysics at Dartmouth, Isler told BuzzFeed News that the emails from the Yale professors were “infuriating but not at all surprising,” because “structural and interpersonal racism runs rampant at Yale.”

Xama Señal UNSJ / Via youtube.com
William van Altena

“The fact that senior members of the department feel comfortable making such intellectually dishonest and violent comments about Black people given the historical practices — at Yale — is itself a demonstration of structural oppression,” Isler said by email.

The chair of the Yale astronomy department, Sarbani Basu, declined to comment on any of the emails cited in this story and did not address the concerns raised by Isler.

“The listening session you mentioned in your inquiry was a private event organized by students and faculty. It served as one of multiple forums in which students, postdoctoral associates, faculty and staff are expressing their viewpoints on this important issue,” Basu said through a spokesperson. “We take these conversations seriously and will use their feedback to help inform and enlighten our ongoing work to increase diversity in the sciences.”

The heated discussion has roiled the prestigious department at a time when academia, along with virtually every other institution in American life, is scrutinizing its role in perpetuating discrimination against and exclusion of Black people.

The recent police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans have galvanized weeks of protests against police brutality and racism in all 50 states, triggered a flood of funding and support for the Black Lives Matter movement, resulted in teardowns of Confederacy leader statues, and prompted the resignations of corporate executives with histories of racist behavior.

During last Wednesday’s “Strike for Black Lives,” thousands of scientists stopped research to protest anti-Black racism, come up with ways to address inequalities within their departments, and fill social media with hashtags like #ShutDownSTEM and #ShutDownAcademia. And hundreds of Black scientists used the hashtag #BlackInTheIvory to describe the racism they have faced in their careers. That afternoon, members of Yale’s astronomy department planned to take part by holding a Zoom town hall meeting to discuss racial equality.

Astronomy as a field is overwhelmingly dominated by white men, and research shows that women, especially women of color, face greater risks of gendered and racial harassment on the job. A 2018 survey of the American Astronomical Society — which includes undergraduates, graduate students, faculty members, and retired astronomers — found that 82% of members identified as white and only 2% as Black or African American. The same year, an AAS task force deemed the field’s lack of diversity “unacceptable” and “unsustainable.”

Basu, the Yale astronomy department chair, did not answer questions about how many Black graduate students have graduated from the department, or how many Black faculty and staff it has employed. Across the university, 7.7% of the student body identifies as Black or African American.

Before Yale’s town hall, Larson, the professor emeritus, took a few minutes to share a bit of history on the department mailing list. (His emails, and the others mentioned in this story, were sent to BuzzFeed News with names redacted. BuzzFeed News has confirmed several of the senders’ identities and other details.)


Larson recounted that when he was department chair in 1985, he hired a woman named Ella Greene, “the first, and so far only, black business manager (or office staffer of any kind) in the Yale Astronomy Department.”
A Yale spokesperson did not answer questions about Greene’s employment. BuzzFeed News was not able to reach Greene or a relative for comment.

“From all the information we gathered, it seemed clear to me that the most qualified candidate was Ella Greene, the only black candidate, who was then the assistant business manager of one of the bigger departments in the medical school,” Larson, who retired in 2011, continued. While he wrote that Greene’s predecessor worried “about how it would work out if there was only one black person in the department,” she “proved very capable, just as we had been told, and it all worked out fine.”

He went on: “Are there any lessons from this little story? We haven’t seen many Ella Greenes. But Ella was an ambitious and self-made person, and she didn’t receive and didn’t need any special help for black people.”
“White people need to be careful not to be patronizing toward black people,” he concluded. “Encouragement will bring far greater returns.”


Obtained by BuzzFeed News
An email from Richard Larson


Later that morning, van Altena, another professor emeritus, who retired in 2007 after 34 years in the astronomy department, chimed in to call Greene “one of our very best business managers.”

“I was never aware of any discrimination or negative feelings towards her within the Astronomy Department,” van Altena wrote. “My one regret is that despite repeated invitations for many years she never came to our Christmas parties so she must have felt some aspect of non non-acceptance [sic] but it was not due [to] our lack of trying.”

Throughout the rest of Wednesday, others in the department echoed that sentiment. An administrative employee called Greene a mentor and said she had only attended one party, perhaps due to a medical condition. And professor emeritus Pierre Demarque, who retired in 2001 and said he was on staff when Greene was hired, thanked Larson for his comments, particularly “about the lessons to draw.”

To a postdoctoral fellow, however, Larson’s portrayal was indicative of the racism in the department.

“[T]he statement that ‘we haven’t seen many Ella Greenes’ is evidence of the deeply entrenched systemic racism present in our society,” the postdoc wrote back. “It would be more productive to acknowledge that our department (and astronomy in general) remains highly non-representative of the overall population and instead focus the conversation on how those of us in positions of privilege and power can educate ourselves and do better in the future.”

Larson took offense at this suggestion.

“Whatever you want to say about ‘deeply entrenched systemic racism’, Ella was not defeated by it,” he wrote. “And I saw no evidence that it was a problem in our department or elsewhere at Yale. Yes, of course there are inequalities in our society and we all want to see them reduced. But I think you will do more good by helping and encouraging future Ella Greenes than by railing against racism and condemning people as racists.”


A graduate student then threw their support behind the postdoctoral researcher. “Systemic racism is universal in our country,” they wrote. “Although it may be true that it affects certain places more than others (but even this is debatable), it is unfortunately pervasive everywhere, even at Yale.”

That afternoon, in a cosigned letter to the department at large, a group of undergraduate students condemned the professors’ remarks as examples of “white saviorism” and “tokenism.”

“[B]oth of these phenomena can lead white people in positions of power to feel as if they have adequately addressed racism in their place of work, while the deeper foundational issues remain intact,” they wrote, stressing the importance of being anti-racist “instead of simply ‘not racist.’”

“To say that Ella ‘didn’t receive and didn’t need any special help for black people’ completely ignores the larger systemic issues that have for centuries barred non-white people from accessing the same opportunities as their white counterparts, in academia and beyond,” they continued. “We will not spend additional time proving the existence of systemic racism in America here, as we believe it should be evident to all that we still face a crisis in our country and our field and that deeply entrenched systemic racism exists in every sector of our society, including at Yale and in this department. Just because you do not personally see the effects of such inequity does not mean that it does not exist for others. To say otherwise is insulting and we encourage those who hold this opinion to spend some time reflecting on their privilege.”

“[T]he statement that ‘we haven’t seen many Ella Greenes’ is evidence of the deeply entrenched systemic racism present in our society.”


In return, Larson rejected the labels of “white saviorism” and “tokenism.”


“When I said that I didn’t see any evidence of ‘entrenched and systemic racism’ in our department, what I meant was that I did not see any behavior or hear any remarks in our department that could be called racist,” he explained.

He went on to argue that everyone is racist. “The real problem in dealing with racism is not that some particularly wicked people are racist, it’s that EVERYONE is racist, because racism is a part of human nature that is shared by every member of the species homo sapiens, regardless of skin color,” Larson wrote. And he doubled down on what he saw as the moral of his story: “Ella would have fiercely resisted any implication that she was special in any way because of membership in any group.”

That evening, after the town hall, van Altena told the email thread that he was “offended and insulted” by the undergraduates’ words. He wrote that he was “not aware of a single case of discrimination, overt or concealed, in the hiring, promotion or education of students in our department.”

Rather, van Altena said, the lack of Black people in the department “is a consequence of the lack of those individuals in the community of scholars whose interests are in the physical sciences” and “not due to inherent racism in our Department.” He went on to say that Black scholars instead gravitate “towards the Social Sciences which by their nature deal with the social context in which they find themselves.”

The undergraduate students who sent the letter, he said, should “step down from their self-appointed soap box and assumptions of superior knowledge.”

In the exchange, the undergraduates and young researchers weren’t alone in pushing back against the retired professors. At least three current faculty joined them.

“Your remarks are hurtful to our community and do not comport with a vast body of data,” one professor wrote. “In our town hall today, I learned and listened to ways in which our department has systematically failed our students of color. It is not for lack of student interest that our department has not graduated more than a single Black PhD. I am ashamed of this fact and will work to do better.”

“Yale has a sorry history when it comes to these issues,” wrote another, “and we have to begin by acknowledging that if there is to be any progress.”


Obtained by BuzzFeed News
An email from William van Altena.


The following week, Larson and van Altena issued apologies that were shared with members of the department on Monday evening. “We recognize that the tone and some of what we had written in our emails prior to the Town-Hall have caused offense and hurt,” van Altena wrote. “That was not our intention, and we offer a sincere apology for this.”

But the problem runs deeper than the emails from last week, according to people who have worked with or studied in the department.

Isler, the alumnus who is now a Dartmouth astrophysicist, said the professors’ “arguments were neither good, accurate or even creative; they reflect the banality of white supremacy embedded in the blatant lie of meritocracy.”

“The claims that Larson and van Altena make about Ms. Ella Greene and by extension about the ‘quality’ of Black people who ‘deserve’ to be at Yale Astronomy are false on biological, sociological, organizational, developmental, historical and ethical bases, to name only a few disciplines that are themselves studied on the same campus,” she said by email.

One undergraduate student of color at Yale, who is majoring in astronomy and requested anonymity, told BuzzFeed News that the email chain was “unacceptable.”

“Academia is headed by professors who are much older than the rest of the country, and that’s meant really slow demographic and cultural shifts,” the student said. “I think that if you shine a light into most astro departments, you’d see a strong history of shutting us out.”


Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire and equality activist, said that she was asked to lead a discussion about diversity during a scientific visit to Yale’s astronomy department in 2016. Later during the visit, she was told it couldn’t afford to hire any Black junior faculty members.

“While brazenly racist emails are messed up,” she said, “that department’s biggest problems around racism are not a couple of bad emails but rather are structural.” A Yale spokesperson did not answer questions about these allegations.



Obtained by BuzzFeed News
An email from Richard Larson.

Larson told BuzzFeed News that in retrospect, his comments questioning systemic racism sounded “dismissive” and that he should have “been more careful in [his] wording.”

“[C]learly for most of the students it is not enough to be not racist, you have to be vehemently anti-racist,” he said by email. “That is not my style.”

He noted that “because of recent events, the atmosphere around this subject has become so super-heated that it’s impossible to say anything without being attacked.” That climate, he said, reminds him of the year 1970. “Things have changed for the better in 50 years, but not as much as the activists of 50 years ago would have liked, and of course we still have big problems,” he wrote. “I think that the current activism is healthy and I wish it success. If you don’t see me out there marching, it doesn’t mean that I don’t support the cause.”


“Ella Greene herself would probably be mortified by all this,” Larson added. Asked whether his emails were racist, he said, “I will let people make their own judgement about whether anything is ‘racist.’”

Van Altena and Demarque declined to comment.

The department’s “climate and diversity” mission statement reads: “We embrace open communication and constructive discourse to cultivate a welcoming and collaborative community in which all voices are heard and respected. While we are working toward these goals, we are mindful of our conduct, representing our department in a thoughtful and appropriate manner within all professional settings.” A Yale spokesperson did not comment on whether the professors’ emails last week violated this mission statement.

While the undergraduate astronomy major said Larson’s and van Altena’s apologies “took far too long,” they expressed cautious optimism about the future.

They’re professors emeriti "that won’t be involved in future planning for our department, and the other faculty seem invigorated to shift the culture here,” the student said. “We have a lot of work to do this next year and beyond, but right now I’m hesitantly hopeful for what's to come.”

Azeen Ghorayshi contributed reporting to this story.

June 16, 2020

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Stephanie M. Lee is a science reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

What U.S. police are using to corral, subdue and disperse demonstrators

Graphics by Ally J. Levine, Minami Funakoshi and Travis Hartman

PUBLISHED JUNE 5, 2020

Law enforcement officers across the United States are using a variety of weapons on protesters during demonstrations against systemic racism and police brutality. George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes. The fatal encounter has triggered a wave of protests across the country and around the world. Many of the events have been peaceful but some have turned violent, with scenes of arson, looting and clashes with police.

Authorities have imposed curfews on dozens of cities across the country, the most since the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.
Anti-protest weapons

Anti-protest weapons

Chemical irritants

Kinetic impact projectiles

Disorientation device

Pepper spray, tear gas canister, pepper canister and balls

Wooden and rubber bullets, sponge round and sting-ball grenade

Flashbang grenade

Chemical irritants


Kinetic impact projectiles


Disorientation device


Pepper spray, tear gas canister, pepper canister and balls


Wooden and rubber bullets, sponge round and sting-ball grenade


Flashbang grenade

Often described as non-lethal, these weapons can seriously injure, disable and even kill. Police have used them against peaceful protesters as well as members of the press during the demonstrations.
Chemical irritants

Chemical irritants include tear gas and pepper spray, which cause sensations of burning, pain and inflammation of the airways.

Public health and infectious diseases experts have opposed the use of chemical irritants such as tear gas, saying in an online petition that they could increase risk for COVID-19 by “making the respiratory tract more susceptible to infection.”

Because chemical irritants can spread widely, bystanders and individuals other than the intended targets can be exposed to the chemicals.
Tear gas

Tear gas has been widely and frequently used by police to disperse protesters. CS or CN gas are chemical compound powders that spray from canisters. They produce a burning sensation in the eyes and mouth that incapacitates.




Launcher


Canisters


Filled with tear gas, rubber rounds or plastic rounds


Tear gas canister


Minneapolis | May 29


Atlanta | June 1
Pepper spray and balls

Police have shot protesters with pepper spray both from handheld devices and projectiles. While pepper spray is chemically distinct from tear gas, it produces similar effects: burning and watering of the eyes and skin.

Police have also fired pepper balls ⁠— small projectiles containing chemical irritants. Such projectiles can contain PAVA spray, an irritant similar to pepper spray, as well as CS gas. The balls can be shot from launchers or modified paintball guns.




Pepper ball gun


Hand-held

pepper spray


Minneapolis | May 27


Louisville, Kentucky | May 29
Protester defenses

Protesters have defended themselves against chemical irritants such as tear gas in multiple ways. Sometimes they have thrown canisters back with gloved hands, used traffic cones to trap the canister and therefore the gas from spreading, and pushed the gas away from themselves with leaf blowers.

Cincinnati | June 1

Seattle | June 3

Athens, Georgia | May 27

Protesters have used umbrellas as shields and doused themselves with milk to help diffuse the burning sensations of pepper spray.

Seattle | June 3

Memphis, Tennessee | May 31

What police are shooting

Kinetic impact projectiles include rubber, plastic, wooden, and “sponger” bullets, which are shot from launchers and guns. They can be fired as single shots or in groups of multiple projectiles, and can severely bruise or penetrate the skin.

A 2017 survey published by the British Medical Journal found that injuries from such kinetic impact projectiles caused death in 2.7% of cases.
Rubber and plastic bullets

Protesters have been hit by a variety of rubber, plastic and “sponger” bullets. Reuters journalists in Minneapolis were shot by police with 40mm hard plastic projectiles during a protest in May.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the city’s police department will minimize the use of rubber projectiles during peaceful protests going forward.


Projectile launcher


Atlanta | June 1  

Wooden bullets

Protesters in Columbus, Ohio reported having been shot with wooden bullets by police forces. Images online showed wooden dowel-shaped rods sliced into small, bullet-sized projectiles. The Columbus Police Department confirmed they used those devices against protesters on May 30 and said they are known as “knee knockers.”
Sting-ball grenades

Protesters have reported police using sting-ball grenades, which upon explosion spray the surrounding area with rubber pellets. In addition to the rubber balls, the grenades can contain chemical agents or explode with bright light and sound.
Protester defenses

Protesters have also protected themselves from projectiles by wearing helmets. Some have used picnic tables as improvised shields.

New York City | June 3

Louisville, Kentucky | May 29

Disorientation devices

Disorientation devices, commonly known as flashbangs or stun grenades, explode with bright light and sound in order to stun and disorient demonstrators. They can cause severe burns when fired at close range.

Constructed like a conventional grenade, they are thrown into crowds. The bright flash and the loud bang can cause temporary blindness, temporary loss of hearing and loss of balance. Parts of the device can burst and fly as shrapnel.
From outrage to reform

Many protesters and organizers have voiced the need to transform outrage over Floyd’s death into a renewed civil rights movement and to seek reforms to America’s criminal justice system.

Terrence Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, joined an outdoor memorial in Brooklyn where many in the crowd knelt in a symbol of protest and chanted, “No justice, no peace.”

He urged the crowd to continue to seek justice but to avoid violence, saying, “My brother wasn’t about that.”  

SourcesReuters; American Civil Liberties Union


Law enforcement officers take position during a protest against the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Photo by Reuters/Lucas Jackson

Protestors march against the death of George Floyd in New York City on June 4, 2020. Photo by Reuters/Andrew Kelly

Photo credits
Tear gas launcher photo by Reuters/Lucas Jackson; Kicking tear gas canister photo by Reuters/Dustin Chambers; Throwing tear gas canister photo by The Enquirer / Meg Vogel via USA Today Network; Traffic cone photo by Reuters/Lindsey Wasson; Leaf blower photo by Athens Banner-Herald/Joshua L. Jones via USA Today Network; Police using pepper spray photo by Reuters/Eric Miller; Police shooting pepperball gun photo by Reuters/Bryan Woolston; Umbrella photo by Reuters/Lindsey Wasson; Milk photo by The Leaf-Chronicle/Henry Taylor via USA Today Network; Projectile launcher photo by Reuters/Dustin Chambers; Helmet photo by Reuters/Eduardo Munoz; Table photo by Courier Journal/Alton Strupp via USA Today Network
Reporting by

Mimi Dwyer
Illustrations by

Wen Foo and Ally J. Levine
Editing by

Christine Chan and Lisa Shumaker

China to Canada PM: Stop 'irresponsible remarks' on spy case

The Canadian Press June 22, 2020





BEIJING — China told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday to “stop making irresponsible remarks” after he said Beijing's decision to charge two Canadians with spying was linked to his country's arrest of a Chinese tech executive.

The spying charges are “completely different” from the case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, a foreign ministry spokesman said. Meng was arrested on U.S. charges connected to possible violations of trade sanctions on Iran.

Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor were detained in what was widely seen as an attempt to Canada after Meng's December 2018 arrest in Vancouver. Charges against them were announced Friday after a Canadian judge ruled Meng's extradition case can proceed to its next stage, moving her closer to being handed over to American authorities.

Trudeau, speaking to reporters in Ottawa, said Chinese authorities “directly linked” the cases of Kovrig and Spavor with Meng. He called on Beijing to end their “arbitrary detention.”

“There is no such thing as arbitrary detention,” said the ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian.

“China urges the relevant Canadian leader to earnestly respect the spirit of the rule of law, respect China’s judicial sovereignty and stop making irresponsible remarks," Zhao said.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday called the charges against Kovrig and Spavor “politically motivated and completely groundless."

“The United States stands with Canada in calling on Beijing for the immediate release of the two men and rejects the use of these unjustified detentions to coerce Canada,” Pompeo said in a statement.

rudeau thanked the U.S. and other allies for speaking out against China.

“It has been obvious from the beginning that this was a political decision made by the Chinese government and we deplore it,” Trudeau said Monday. "This using of arbitrary detentions as a means to advance political gains is totally unacceptable in a world based on rules.”

Meng, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Ltd. and the daughter of its founder, is accused of lying to banks in Hong Kong about Huawei’s dealings with Iran in possible violation of U.S. sanctions.

Meng’s case is a “seriously political incident” and part of U.S. efforts to “suppress Chinese high-tech enterprises and Huawei,” Zhao said. He said Canada “played the role of an accomplice.”

“We strongly urge Canada to correct its mistakes as soon as possible, immediately release Meng Wanzhou and ensure her safe return to home,” said Zhao.

Meng is living in a mansion she owns in Vancouver, where she reportedly is working on a graduate degree. Kovrig and Spavor are being held at an undisclosed location and have been denied access to lawyers or family members

China has also sentenced two other Canadians to death and suspended imports of Canadian canola.

Zhao said visits by foreign diplomats to prisoners were suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Associated Press












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