WHO urges the public to avoid routine dental work amid the coronavirus pandemic

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By Angela Betsaida B. Laguipo, BSN

Aug 14 2020

With the cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) skyrocketing globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) is now warning the public to avoid routine dental procedures to reduce the risk of infection.

In a new interim guidance released by the World Health Organization (WHO), the health agency advises that routine non-essential oral health care, which includes dental check-ups, oral prophylaxis, and preventive care, should be delayed until there has been sufficient reduction in SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates from community transmission to cluster cases.

Considerations for the provision of essential oral health services in the context of COVID-19. Image Credit: Willyam Bradberry / Shutterstock

The WHO recommends that patients who do not need urgent dental care to avoid going to the dentist for the meantime, since the global number of SARS-CoV-2 cases has increased to more than 20.77 million, with at least 754,000 lives lost.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, effective prevention of oral problems and self-care remains a high priority. Patients should be advised through remote consultation or social media channels on maintaining good oral hygiene,” the WHO said.

Further, WHO said that the guidance also applies to other dental procedures, including those for aesthetic purposes. Online consultations are also encouraged to prevent the risk of community transmission, especially that the pandemic is far from over. However, urgent or emergency oral health care interventions can preserve a person’s oral functioning, to secure one’s quality of life, and to manage severe pain.
Virus spread in oral healthcare settings

Today, health experts have identified high-risk areas where the virus can spread from one person to another. Some locations, where there is a heightened risk of spread, including oral healthcare settings like dental clinics, hospitals, public transportation, and buildings with poor ventilation.

The way SARS-CoV-2 spreads happens through direct, indirect, or close contact with those diagnosed with COVID-19. A person who is infected can spread the virus through respiratory droplets or secretions such as saliva.

In dental clinics, the novel coronavirus can be transmitted by three ways – direct transmission through inhalation of droplets produced by talking, coughing, or sneezing, direct transmission through the exposure of mucous membranes like those found in the eyes, nasal area, or oral mucosa, and through the indirect transmission via contaminated surfaces.

Further, oral health care teams work close to the patients’ faces for prolonged periods. Further, the procedures usually performed involve exposure to many body fluids that may harbor SARS-CoV-2, such as saliva and blood.

Dental practice also involves aerosol-generating procedures (AGPs), which are defined as any medical, dental, and patient care procedure that causes the production of airborne particles, which may contain virus particles.
How to contain SARS-CoV-2 in dental care settings?

To contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in dental settings, the WHO urges that dentists only perform emergency or urgent oral procedures. Routine dental care, such as dental cleanings, consultations, and preventive care, should be postponed until the pandemic is over or until there is low COVID-19 transmission.

“Urgent or emergency oral health care may include interventions that address acute oral infections; swelling; systemic infection; significant or prolonged bleeding; severe pain not controllable with analgesia; oral health care interventions that are medically required as a pre-intervention to other urgent procedures; and dental/orofacial trauma,” the WHO said.

The WHO also reiterated that dentists should refer patients if they are in doubt to specialized treatment facilities, since addressing the emergency or urgent care appropriately will prevent the need for them to seek treatment at emergency departments of hospitals, reducing the risk of exposure and freeing up space for those who are seeking COVID-19-related care.

The WHO also provided a rundown of how dentists can go about with the pandemic, without risking their health and the health of others. Dentists should screen patients before the appointment through virtual technology or telephone. Also, they should perform triaging when the patient has arrived in the clinic. Make sure that patients seeking urgent care are catered first, and they do not exhibit the symptoms of COVID-19.

Dentists should also develop a remote assessment of their patients to distinguish those seeking urgent or emergency care. The WHO also underlined the importance of disinfection of the clinic, proper infection control practices, improving the clinic’s ventilation, and the wearing of personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers.
Source:

World Health Organization (WHO). (2020). Considerations for the provision of essential oral health services in the context of COVID-19. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-2019-nCoV-oral-health-2020.1



Written by
Angela Betsaida B. Laguipo
Angela is a nurse by profession and a writer by heart. She graduated with honors (Cum Laude) for her Bachelor of Nursing degree at the University of Baguio, Philippines. She is currently completing her Master's Degree where she specialized in Maternal and Child Nursing and worked as a clinical instructor and educator in the School of Nursing at the University of Baguio.

Using medieval medicine to find new treatments for modern-day infections

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Interview conducted by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Aug 11 2020

News-Medical spoke to researchers from the University of Warwick about their research investigating natural antimicrobials and their potential as antibiotics.Thought LeadersJess Furner-Pardoe
Dr. Freya Harrison
Dr. Blessing Anonye

Why did you choose to research infections and their treatment?

Every day we are inching towards a world where we do not have antibiotics that work due to bacterial antibiotic resistance.

It threatens so many parts of modern healthcare, from treating everyday infections to conducting successful surgery and cancer therapies.

We choose to research antibiotic discovery to try and stop this happening.


Image Credit: Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock.com

Why is increasing antibiotic resistance a challenge to scientists?

Bacteria are alive. They respond to the environment and evolve to survive, and their survival is based on beating our drugs. It is like a never-ending battle between our drugs and the bacteria.
How does bacteria’s biofilm make treating infections with antibiotics harder?

There are a few reasons. Firstly, a biofilm acts as a physical barrier that our drugs need to get through.

Secondly, inside the biofilm, the bacteria can share nutrients and resources. Finally, some of the bacteria exhibit a persistence phenotype, which effectively means they ‘go to sleep’. And as a lot of our drugs only work when the bacteria is ‘awake’, these bacteria survive.

Then once the antibiotic is no longer there the bacteria ‘wake up’ and establish the infection again.
What are biofilm-associated infections?

Biofilms are sticky aggregates of bacteria – the individual bacteria cover themselves in a protective matrix of polysaccharides, proteins, and DNA. Although the term ‘biofilm’ is not very well known, everyone is likely to have come into contact with one, as they are really common. It is thought that 75% of human infections have a biofilm established in them.

For example, if you have ever had a cut and it becomes all gooey and yellow – that is a cut where a biofilm of bacteria has made a home. They pose a serious issue in chronic wounds common in diabetic ulcers, or catheter-associated infections.



Image Credit: wirakorn deelert/Shutterstock.com
What are natural antimicrobials and what were they used for?

Natural antimicrobials are things that come from nature and can kill bacteria, fungus, parasites, and viruses. Throughout history, they have been used for a variety of different infections, including infected eyes, cuts and wounds, and malaria.

Although it takes a long time to make sure any drug is safe and effective to use, there are a few examples of natural antimicrobials being used today in modern medicine.

Honey, for example, is used by the UK National Health Service to treat burn wound infections. Another one is the antimalarial drug artemisinin, which comes from the plant wormwood (Artemisia annua).
Can you describe how medieval methods using natural antimicrobials could help fill the antibiotic discovery gap?

We do not have enough potential new antimicrobial drugs in the pipeline and looking into natural products could be a really good source.

Interestingly, many medieval remedies used mixtures of several ingredients, and we think this could be very informative for researchers: perhaps mixtures of different natural products, instead of single molecules, are the key to making more effective preparations.
You reconstructed a medieval remedy known as Bald’s eyesalve to investigate its antibacterial activity. What did you discover?

We have looked at bacteria in two forms, as individual cells (planktonic) and as sticky biofilm communities. Looking at planktonic bacteria is quicker and easier but it is not the most realistic, as when we have an infection the bacteria tend to form biofilms. These biofilms protect the bacteria and make them much harder to kill.

We have shown that Bald’s eyesalve can kill both planktonic cultures and biofilms of different bacteria including S. epidermidis (common in catheter infections), A. baumannii (common in war wounds), S. maltophilia (respiratory infections) and S. aureus (including the superbug MRSA).

The key thing we have shown is that while garlic alone can kill the planktonic bacteria easily, it does nothing against biofilms.

In fact, if you take away any one of Bald’s eyesalve’s ingredients you lose some of the activity against biofilms. This shows that every ingredient is doing something to contribute to the activity against these tricky biofilms.


The Balds Eyesalve mixture in the lab.

Do you believe that by using natural remedies, we could help to tackle the problem of antibiotic resistance?

Most of our current drugs ultimately come from natural sources – mainly plants and fungi. And some of these natural sources have been used in medicine throughout history and in so many different cultures.

While a lot of historical and traditional remedies are likely to be placebos, or possibly even harmful, the fact that some have already led to drug discovery makes it hard to believe that none of the unexplored ones will have any scientific value.

We fully expect some of the remedies to just be folklore or placebo but hope that some of them may be an untapped source of novel antimicrobial mixtures.
Why is it important to look at combining these natural products, as opposed to looking at single compounds?

We are proposing that the mixture is more powerful than one single component. Often natural remedies are divided up into individual parts and tested on planktonic cultures (free-floating bacteria that are susceptible to the environment).

Hundreds of antimicrobial compounds have been identified this way but few of them show good activity against biofilms, and most of the time, compounds that look promising in the lab fail to make their way to the clinic.

Our work has shown that the mixture as a whole is more potent. If we had focused on separating up the mixture, we would have focused on garlic, which when we tested it later on biofilms would not have been active anymore.



Image Credit: Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock.com
What are the next steps in your research into natural antimicrobials?

The two next steps for Bald’s eyesalve are first, to understand exactly what compounds make it antibacterial, and second, to continue our work on checking that this mixture is safe for human use.

We are also working on other natural remedies, and we hope to test these in a similar way to how we have investigated Bald’s eyesalve.
Where can readers find more information?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-69273-8
https://warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/medieval_medicine_remedy
https://mbio.asm.org/content/6/4/e01129-15.short
https://freyaharrison.weebly.com/

About Jess Furner-Pardoe

I am in the 2nd year of my PhD focusing on understanding the chemistry of complex historical remedies.

About Dr. Freya Harrison
I am an Associate Professor of Microbiology at the University of Warwick. My team focusses on understanding the biology of bacterial biofilms in chronic infections and finding new ways to disrupt them.

We are especially interested in making more accurate lab models of biofilms in lung and wound infections, without using live animals, and in using these to explore possible new antibiofilm treatments. I also helped to found the Ancientbiotics consortium, which seeks to study, reconstruct, and test historical infection remedies.

About Dr. Blessing Anonye
I am a Lecturer in Medical Microbiology in the School of Medicine, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, and also a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Warwick.
I am generally interested in the study of pathogens, antimicrobial resistance, and understanding the gut microbiota in health and disease.

I am particularly fascinated by research on how products from nature could potentially be used as alternatives to traditional antimicrobials.

Europeans could have been infected with syphilis before Columbus set sails to America

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Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Aug 13 2020

Columbus brought syphilis to Europe – or did he? A recent study conducted at the University of Zurich now indicates that Europeans could already have been infected with this sexually transmitted disease before the 15th century. In addition, researchers have discovered a hitherto unknown pathogen causing a related disease. The predecessor of syphilis and its related diseases could be over 2,500 years old.

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease - and while commonly dismissed due to the availability of modern treatments, it is in fact spreading at an alarming rate: Over the last decades, more than 10 million people around the world have been infected with the syphilis subspecies pallidum of the Treponema pallidum bacteria. Other treponematoses, such as yaws and bejel, are caused by other subspecies of Treponema pallidum. The origins of syphilis, which wreaked havoc in Europe from the late 15th to the 18th century, are still unclear. The most popular hypothesis so far holds Christopher Columbus and his sailors liable for bringing the disease to Europe from the New World.

Yaws already widespread in Europe

The new study indicates a fair possibility that Treponema pallidum already existed in Europe before Columbus ever set sails to America. The researchers found treponematoses in archaeological human remains from Finland, Estonia and the Netherlands. Both molecular dating of the ancient bacterial genomes and traditional radiocarbon dating of the samples were used to estimate the age of the pathogens causing these diseases. The results indicate that the genomes dated back to between the early 15th and 18th century.

In addition to the syphilis cases, the researchers found yaws in one of the individuals. Like syphilis, yaws is transmitted via skin contact, although rarely through sexual intercourse. Today, the disease is only found in tropical and subtropical regions.

Our data indicates that yaws was spread through all of Europe. It was not limited to the tropics, as it is today."

Verena Schünemann, last author, professor of paleogenetics at the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine of the University of Zurich

Genome of a previously unknown pathogen

 discovered

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The research team also discovered something else: The skeleton found in the Netherlands contained a pathogen belonging to a new, unknown and basal treponemal lineage. This lineage evolved in parallel to syphilis and yaws but is no longer present as a modern-day disease. "This unforeseen discovery is particularly exciting for us, because this lineage is genetically similar to all present treponemal subspecies, but also has unique qualities that differ from them," says first author Kerttu Majander from UZH.

Because several closely related subspecies of Treponema pallidum existed throughout Europe, it is possible that the diseases persisted in overlapping regions, and sometimes infected the same patient. The spatial distribution in the northern periphery of Europe also suggests that endemic treponematoses had already spread widely in Europe in the early modern period.

Not just Columbus

"Using our ancient genomes, it is now possible for the first time to apply a more reliable dating to the treponema family tree," says Schünemann. The genetic analyses conducted in this study suggest that the predecessor of all modern Treponema pallidum subspecies likely evolved at least 2,500 years ago. For venereal syphilis in particular, the latest common ancestor existed between the 12th and 16th century.

According to the newly discovered diversity of treponematoses in early modern Europe, syphilis may have either originated or perhaps further developed in the Old World. "It seems that the first known syphilis breakout cannot be solely attributed to Columbus' voyages to America," concludes Schünemann. "The strains of treponematoses may have co-evolved and interchanged genetic material before and during the intercontinental contacts. We may yet have to revise our theories about the origins of syphilis and other treponemal diseases".

Source:

University of Zurich

Journal reference:

Majander, K., et al. (2020) Ancient Bacterial Genomes Reveal a High Diversity of Treponema pallidum Strains in Early Modern Europe. Current Biology. doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.07.058.

New catalyst efficiently turns carbon dioxide into useful fuels and chemicals

by Kevin Stacey, Brown University 
AUGUST 13, 2020

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

As levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide continue to climb, scientists are looking for new ways of breaking down CO2 molecules to make useful carbon-based fuels, chemicals and other products. Now, a team of Brown University researchers has found a way to fine-tune a copper catalyst to produce complex hydrocarbons—known as C2-plus products—from CO2 with remarkable efficiency.


In a study published in Nature Communications, the researchers report a catalyst that can produce C2-plus compounds with up to 72% faradaic efficiency (a measure of how efficiently electrical energy is used to convert carbon dioxide into chemical reaction products). That's far better than the reported efficiencies of other catalysts for C2-plus reactions, the researchers say. And the preparation process can be scaled up to an industrial level fairly easily, which gives the new catalyst potential for use in large-scale CO2 recycling efforts.

"There had been reports in the literature of all kinds of different treatments for copper that could produce these C2-plus with a range of different efficiencies," said Tayhas Palmore, the a professor of engineering at Brown who co-authored the paper with Ph.D. student Taehee Kim. "What Taehee did was a set of experiments to unravel what each of these treatment steps was actually doing to the catalyst in terms of reactivity, which pointed the way to optimizing a catalyst for these multi-carbon compounds."

There have been great strides in recent years in developing copper catalysts that could make single-carbon molecules, Palmore says. For example, Palmore and her team at Brown recently developed a copper foam catalyst that can produce formic acid efficiently, an important single-carbon commodity chemical. But interest is increasing in reactions that can produce C2-plus products.

"Ultimately, everyone seeks to increase the number of carbons in the product to the point of producing higher carbon fuels and chemicals," Palmore said.

There had been evidence from prior research that halogenation of copper—a reaction that coats a copper surface with atoms of chlorine, bromine or iodine in the presence of an electrical potential—could increase a catalyst's selectivity of C2-plus products. Kim experimented with a variety of different halogenation methods, zeroing in on which halogen elements and which electrical potentials yielded catalysts with the best performance in CO2-to-C2-plus reactions. He found that the optimal preparations could yield faradaic efficiencies of between 70.7% and 72.6%, far higher than any other copper catalyst.

The research helps to reveal the attributes that make a copper catalyst good for C2-plus products. The preparations with the highest efficiencies had a large number of surface defects—tiny cracks and crevices in the halogenated surface—that are critical for carbon-carbon coupling reactions. These defect sites appear to be key to the catalysts' high selectivity toward ethylene, a C2-plus product that can be polymerized and used to make plastics.

Ultimately, such a catalyst will aid in large-scale recycling of CO2. The idea is to capture CO2 produced by industrial facilities like power plants, cement manufacturing or directly from air, and convert it into other useful carbon compounds. That requires an efficient catalyst that is easy to produce and regenerate, and inexpensive enough to operate on an industrial scale. This new catalyst is a promising candidate, the researchers say.

"We were working with lab-scale catalysts for our experiments, but you could produce a catalyst of virtually any size using the method developed," Palmore said.


Explore further  Researchers make green chemistry advance with new catalyst for reduction of carbon dioxide

More information: Taehee Kim et al, A scalable method for preparing Cu electrocatalysts that convert CO2 into C2+ products, Nature Communications (2020). 

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16998-9

Journal information: Nature Communications

COVID-19 IS NOT JUST A COLD OR THE FLU

Fit and healthy Australians who survived COVID-19 reveal the severe symptoms they still suffer FIVE MONTHS after beating the virus

Young Australians who survived COVID-19 still suffer debilitating symptoms

Amy McKenzieis, 30, still has breathing problems and numbness in her hands

She said she couldn't take a few steps to her front door without blacking out

Anna Liptak, 46, has developed severe fatigue since recovering five months ago

In Australia, people between 20-29 are most likely to contract coronavirus

By ALANA MAZZONI FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA

PUBLISHED: 13 August 2020

VIDEOS AT THE END

Young Australians who survived COVID-19 are still suffering debilitating symptoms five months after the virus left their bodies.

Amy McKenzieis, 30, said she still suffers daily pain, numbness in her hands and feet, as well as breathing difficulties despite getting over the deadly virus in hospital.

'There hasn't been a day since I had COVID where I have felt normal and myself, and that's been the issue,' she told A Current Affair.

The mother-of-three has been left struggling to breathe and even blacked out.

Amy McKenzieis, 30, (pictured) said she still suffers daily pain, numbness in her hands and feet, as well as breathing difficulties despite getting over the deadly virus in hospital
COVID-19 survivors reveal severe symptoms they suffer MONTHS later

'Now it's a different battle… I've got numbness and tingling in my hands and feet, I've got quite a long of join point. I feel lethargic and have a lot of headaches too,' she said.

Ms McKenzieis said she couldn't take a few steps to her front door without blacking in and out.

'In my age bracket or younger I think a lot of people potentially more invincible because we hear so much about the elderly and the nursing homes - and that's just not the case,' she said.

The young mother said her initial diagnosis was 'extremely scary' and came as a shock.

'When you can't breathe, particularly as a 30-year-old who's normally fit and healthy, that's a terrifying situation,' she said.

'This is a very serious disease. It starts off and very few people to get away with very mild symptoms.

'You're not bulletproofed by being a younger person.'

Marathon-runner Anna Liptak, 46, from Adelaide, still has symptoms five months after contracting the virus at a work conference in Melbourne.

The normally fit and healthy personal trainer said she has spent months confined to her bed with severe fatigue. 

Anna Liptak, 46, (pictured) from Adelaide, still has symptoms five months after contracting the virus at a work conference in Melbourne

'We really don't know what's happening. That's the scary thing. I don't know what's going to happen in the long term,' Ms Liptak said.

'My ears really hurt and often I've got really bad ringing in them to the point that sometimes I feel like I'm going deaf.

'My experience proved that this affects young, old, fit and healthy, and… the long-term side effects are unknown.'

In Australia, people between 20-29 are most likely to contract COVID-19, with almost 5,000 cases and counting.

More than 900 Australian children under the age of nine have been diagnosed with the virus, while 1,774 kids between the age of 10 to 19 have tested positive.

Trump and first lady request mail-in ballots despite attacks


By Kevin Liptak, Abby Phillip and Devan Cole, CNN Thu August 13, 2020


Trump claims funding USPS will lead to ballot fraud 


Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump requested mail-in ballots for Florida's primary election on Tuesday, according to Palm Beach County records, despite the President's frequent attacks on voting by mail.

The records from the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections website show the ballots were mailed Wednesday to Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club, which he made his permanent residence last year.

Despite Trump's rhetoric about voting by mail, the President has recently claimed that Florida's voting system is secure, tweeting earlier this month: "Whether you call it Vote by Mail or Absentee Voting, in Florida the election system is Safe and Secure, Tried and True. Florida's Voting system has been cleaned up (we defeated Democrats attempts at change), so in Florida I encourage all to request a Ballot & Vote by Mail!"

White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere told CNN that "the President supports absentee voting, not universal mail-in voting, which contain several safeguards that prevent fraud and abuse."

Election experts have told CNN there is no real difference between absentee voting and no-excuse mail voting and the two are "essentially the same thing."

USA Today was first to report the ballot request.

Mail-in voting has been front-and-center in recent weeks as fears of the coronavirus have caused states to make the process easier so residents can avoid going to polling centers where infection can potentially spread. Trump and other Republicans have railed against the option, baselessly asserting that it will lead to voter fraud, with the President saying Thursday that he opposes much-needed funding for the United States Postal Service because he doesn't want to see it used for mail-in voting this November.

There is not widespread voter fraud in US elections, and nonpartisan experts say neither party automatically benefits when states expand access to mail-in voting.

But even as Trump publicly opposes mail-in voting, his support of it in Florida and his own decision to use it for the 2020 election could provide Democrats and some Republicans who support the option with yet another argument as to why his opposition to it is purely political.
When the President was asked earlier this month about his support for mail-in voting in Florida, he seemed to imply that Republican-run states with existing mail-in voting programs were up to par, but Democratic states establishing or expanding mail-in voting during the pandemic were not.

"So Florida's got a great Republican governor and it had a great Republican governor (before that) ... and over a long period of time they've been able to get the absentee ballots done extremely professionally. Florida's different from other states," Trump said, before criticizing vote-by-mail efforts in Nevada and New York, states led by Democratic governors.
This story has been updated with a statement from the White House.

CNN's Ellie Kaufman, Marshall Cohen, Jason Hoffman, Nicky Robertson and Betsy Klein contributed to this report.

America's Armed, Antisemitic Far Right Is Prepping to Defend Trump in November
Alexander Reid Ross / Opinion

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Checks In Romania After Beirut Explosion: Ammonium Nitrate Quantity Ten Times Higher Stored In Constanta Port

By Romania Journal Last updated Aug 13, 2020

Almost 26,000 tons of ammonium nitrate are stored in Constanta Port, southeastern Romania, the national Sea Port Administration has announced on Thursday, warning that all operators of dangerous substances must have a security plan approved by the Inspectorate for Emergency Situations.

26,000 tons means a quantity tens time higher than the one stored in the port in Beirut, of around 2,750 ammonium nitrate, which exploded on August 5 and claimed hundreds of lives and leaving thousands injured and homeless.

The Constanta Sea Port Administration has announced that there are currently 25,952 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in the Port of Constanta and that “this type of merchandise is stored in special warehouses certified by the Inspectorate for Emergency Situations.”

According to the above-mentioned sources, 4,908 tons of ammonium nitrate are stored in a certified warehouse at Schenker (Constanța Sud), and they are about to leave for Hungary in the upcoming two weeks. Other 17,521 tones of ammonium nitrate are stored in certified warehouses at Chimpex (northern Constanta Port), while other 3,523 tons are stored at Midia International (the Midia area of the Constanta Port).

The Sea Port Administration also reports that 5 operators are currently carrying out temporary load-download operations for this type of merchandise in Constanta. The administration mentions that all operators handling ammonium nitrate products there are meeting all safety conditions required by ISU, adding that the last ship carrying ammonium nitrate in Constanta Port has been operated on July 17 this year.

A New HBO Documentary Tells the Story of a Young Black Man Killed in Brooklyn 31 Years Ago. Activists Lament How Little Has Changed Since Then

BY ANDREW R. CHOW AND MAHITA GAJANAN
AUGUST 13, 2020

The tragic events depicted in the documentary Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn call to mind headlines from 2020: a black man is shot to death by a white mob, precipitating months of civic unrest and protest marches marked by anguish and determination.

But Yusuf Hawkins was shot 31 years ago, in 1989, in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn—and his death tipped a city already plagued by racial turmoil over the edge into violence once more. In his documentary, filmmaker Muta’Ali Muhammad includes scenes from that summer that resonate strongly in today’s climate: a mother’s grief; a politician’s deflection; a communal outpouring; counter-protesters’ racism, both veiled and blatant; clashes with police.

To some activists who were involved in these protests in 1989, the current protests show how far we have come as a nation; to others, the scene looks disappointingly similar. TIME talked to some of these activists for their take on the similarities and differences between movements three decades apart.
New York in the 1980s

Yusuf Hawkins, Amir Hawkins and Freddy Hawkins
Courtesy of Hawkins Family/HBO

The killing of Yusuf Hawkins in 1989 occurred during a tense moment in New York City history. The deaths of Willie Turks, in 1982, and Michael Griffith, in 1986, two Black men who were killed by white mobs, had shocked New Yorkers who might have thought their city was a liberal bastion of integration. That summer, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing had called attention to senseless violence enacted against Black communities, especially in Brooklyn.

In August 1989, the Black 16-year-old Yusuf Hawkins traveled from his home in East New York to Bensonhurst, then a largely Italian-American neighborhood, with three friends to look into buying a used car on sale. At the time the group traveled to the area, a large mob of white men had gathered in Bensonhurst with plans to attack a group of African Americans, one of whom was rumored to be dating a white girl they knew. Hawkins and his friends walked into the mob without knowing they were waiting for a Black person to attack. Hawkins’ friends who were with him at the time of the attack recall in the movie that several white men surrounded them, with some carrying baseball bats. Amid the chaos, Hawkins was fatally shot by someone in the group, and the perpetrators dispersed quietly into their neighborhood.


Hawkins’ family, along with the Rev. Al Sharpton, decided to organize protests in Bensonhurst, which were buoyed by groups like the New York City Civil Rights Coalition, and garnered hundreds of supporters. But they were also met with racist vitriol that might have appeared out of step with a progressive image of New York. “We got all these nasty remarks, people holding watermelons, throwing soda,” Amir Hawkins, Yusuf’s younger brother who marched with Sharpton, tells TIME. “I was 14 at the time. We were walking into a danger zone. We were not just locking arms because of unity but just to keep close in case something went wrong.”

Norman Siegel, a white civil rights lawyer who joined protesters marching to demand justice for Hawkins, says that the counter protesters were more dangerous than those he had encountered in the South. “People calling me an N-word lover, throwing objects at us, including eggs,” he says. “Marches in the South, we didn’t have that heckling.” Rev. Sharpton was even stabbed by an angry onlooker and spent several weeks in the hospital recuperating.

Deeply rooted prejudices

Mural dedicated to Yusuf Hawkins in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn
Courtesy of Hawkins Family/HBO

When Siegel decided to talk to students in the Bensonhurst community following the killing to interrogate their responses to the protests, he found that their prejudices were deeply rooted. He, along with the Black lawyer Galen Kirkland, began holding classes in the New Utrecht High School—which Joseph Fama, the gunman convicted of killing Hawkins, attended—and found that directly addressing stereotypes allowed students to see how racial tensions form. In particular, Siegel says, they established an open and honest dialogue with students designated as “At Risk”—largely working-class teens who planned to drop out of high school at age 16—by giving them a space to speak about race, connecting racism to broader issues like sexism, homophobia and classism, and dismantling stereotypes. Kirkland’s role surprised the students, Siegel says.

“Galen would always wear a suit; the white students would come to me and say, ‘Mr. Siegel, I never saw a Black guy like Mr. Kirkland,” he says.

Kirkland and Siegel held classes at New Utrecht for 11 years, discussing civil rights history, the origins of stereotyping and peaceful protest strategies with the students. “When you’re establishing a level of trust, it’s gotta be a sustained dynamic,” Kirkland says. “You can’t show up a couple times then disappear. And eventually, it was really inspiring: it affirmed the idea that there were lots of decent people in our city who wanted to make positive change.”
‘We should have learned from the past’

Yusuf Hawkins with his mother Diane Hawkins
Courtesy of HBO

But the great time and effort Kirkland put into reducing prejudice makes him feel even more pained to see the continued violence and discrimination against Black people that has thrust the nation into a new era of protest. “Having worked so hard for so many years, to see where we are today is heartbreaking,” he says. “It’s clear that the change in rhetoric, policies and postures from the very top has exacerbated divisions and made many people feel that what they were doing in terms of attacking other people or asserting hateful positions was being condoned.”


Meanwhile, Siegel points to the widespread segregation that still exists in New York City, both in neighborhood lines and its public school system, which is one the most segregated in the country. “It’s 31 years later and could what happened to Yusuf Hawkins happen tonight in Bensonhurst? Yes,” Siegel says. “Even though we should have learned from the past, the dynamics are very similar. People don’t want you in their neighborhood because you’re different.”

Amir Hawkins hopes the film provides an important history lesson for those who might not be aware of the racist violence his family dealt with in Bensonhurst, particularly younger people watching and taking part in the current wave of protests.

“When they see the film, it’s going to allow them to see that we were dealing with this 31 years ago,” he says. “This is not just something that’s new. Stuff like this has been around.”

Alberta eyes cleaner future as hydrogen superpower

By Kevin Orland Bloomberg
Thu., Aug. 13, 2020

The idea of producing cleaner-burning hydrogen to rid the world of fossil fuels is gaining traction in the unlikeliest of places: Alberta, home of the infamously dirty oil sands.

Better known for energy companies that have been blacklisted by the Church of England for their emissions-intensive crude, the oil-rich Canadian province has attracted a growing group of researchers and entrepreneurs betting that the region’s vast resources can turn it into one of the world’s largest hydrogen suppliers. And they’re about to get some backing from federal and local governments.

As nations seek to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, hydrogen is emerging as a potential solution for hard-to-decarbonize sectors like industrial processes and freight. Oil-service heavyweights Schlumberger Ltd. and Baker Hughes Co. are already making forays into the space. Europe plans to increase its capacity to produce renewable hydrogen sixfold by 2024. Japan, China, Korea and Australia are looking to expand the fuel’s use.

Canada has the potential to become a top hydrogen exporter and shake off a reputation of global warming offender. That this vision is beginning to gain traction in the heart of the country’s oil patch goes to show how the world’s energy transition is taking centre stage with growing pressure from consumers and investors — even if it’s still unclear how long it will take until cleaner sources will have enough scale to displace crude and other fossil fuels.

“If we turn our natural gas into hydrogen, then it is now part of the long-term future for energy,” said Jackie Forrest, executive director of Calgary-based ARC Energy Research Institute. “There is no need to decline our production because we found a new product that has growing demand.”

For oil-sands producers, it’s more about long-term survival than saving the planet. If they use hydrogen to cut emissions, it could ensure they continue to have a market for their crude and funding from environmentally minded investors. Canadian Natural Resources Inc., Cenovus Energy Inc. and MEG Energy Inc. all have vowed to achieve net zero emissions from their operations. For Alberta, a hydrogen industry would buttress the province against wild crude price swings like the current pandemic-driven market crash, as well as the prospect of declining petroleum consumption.

“Hydrogen could represent a lifeline to Alberta’s oil and gas industry,” said Simon Dyer, deputy executive director of the Pembina Institute, an environmental think tank. “Alberta has a lot of the building blocks in place to be able to compete in this space and develop a thriving hydrogen economy.”

Alberta’s advantage may lie in its abundant reserves of the very fuels that hydrogen is meant to replace. The province has a head start and already is producing about 5,000 tons of hydrogen a day to supply its oil-refining complex. The province also has 31 trillion cubic feet of conventional natural gas reserves that can be converted into hydrogen, as well as large underground geological formations for storing emissions from that process.

One Calgary-based startup says it has found a way to avoid emissions altogether and produce the gas at a fraction of current costs. Proton Technologies has patented a method of igniting an oil well and using a palladium alloy filter in the well bore that traps the carbon emissions in place while allowing pure hydrogen to flow to the surface.

That would solve one of the problems with hydrogen: While the fuel burns cleanly, current production generates sizable pollution. To supply about 70 million metric tons in a year, the world’s hydrogen producers send 830 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, roughly the annual emissions of the U.K. and Indonesia combined, according to a 2019 report from the International Energy Agency.

Proton is testing its zero-emissions technology on a well in Saskatchewan that could reach output of as much as 20 tons of hydrogen a day this fall, chief executive officer Grant Strem said in an interview. A facility the company aims to build in the next two years could produce 500 tons per day at a cost of about 10 cents a kilogram, compared with $1 to $3 per kilogram for the currently cheapest method, he said.

“As far as I know, it’s the only path that can lead to hydrogen production on a gigajoule basis that’s less expensive than natural gas,” Strem said.Proton has been in discussions with some oil producers who are interested in licensing the technology so they can use hydrogen, instead of natural gas, to create the steam they inject underground to get thick oil-sands crude flowing to the surface. Potential financial partners have approached Proton about funding purchases of old oil wells to convert them to hydrogen production, Strem said.

Canada already can produce the cheapest hydrogen in the world after Russia, according to a 2018 study from the Asia-Pacific Energy Research Centre that points to the two countries as potential major exporters.

Alberta also has an extensive pipeline system that can be used to transport the fuel. Current gas conduits can flow with as much 20 per cent of their streams consisting of hydrogen, and many home furnaces could handle increased hydrogen amounts, providing a ready market for the fuel and a quick way to reduce carbon emissions.

The Canadian Energy Systems Analysis Research Initiative, a program linked to the University of Calgary, is developing two hydrogen-powered trucks that will haul cargo between Canada’s oil capital and Edmonton starting late next year. The vehicles will use Ballard Power Systems Inc. fuel-cell engines and Nordresa Motors Inc. hybrid electric drives, with Praxair Inc. providing refuelling services.


The goal is to prove the feasibility of hydrogen as a truck fuel and help give producers another market.

“We see heavy hauling of freight as kind of like an anchor tenant in the hydrogen shopping mall,” said David Layzell, the professor who’s running the program.

To be sure, Canada’s nascent hydrogen industry will need a big push before it can become more relevant, and the federal government has said it’s developing a national hydrogen strategy that will be announced in the coming months. Alberta, which is also working on a hydrogen development plan, so far has committed a meagre $10.8 million in funding for projects, including blending the element in a segment of Atco Gas & Pipelines Ltd.’s distribution system and a new method to convert natural gas to hydrogen developed by Vancouver-based Ekona Power Inc.

But even if the plans to be announced by Ottawa and the province elevate the investments to a much higher level, using hydrogen to help power a low-carbon economy would require an entire global infrastructure to store and move it, the costs of producing it need to fall dramatically and the amount of CO2 its production emits needs to be cut significantly, if not eliminated altogether. Time will tell if Proton and other startups are on the cusp of that shift.