USING STATE POWER FOR GOOD
As mask mandates end, Oregon bucks trend with permanent rule
By SARA CLINE

April 17, 2021

Residents wearing masks sit in downtown Lake Oswego, Ore., on Sunday, April 11, 2021. 

Residents wearing masks walk in downtown Lake Oswego, Ore., on Sunday, April 11, 2021

Tens of thousands of Oregon residents are angry about a proposal to make permanent an emergency rule that requires masks and social distancing in the state's businesses and schools to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Opponents worry about government overreach and fear that state officials won't remove the mask requirements for businesses even after threat of the virus has receded if the emergency rule becomes permanent. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — As states around the country lift COVID-19 restrictions, Oregon is poised to go the opposite direction — and many residents are fuming about it.

A top health official is considering indefinitely extending rules requiring masks and social distancing in all businesses in the state.

The proposal would keep the rules in place until they are “no longer necessary to address the effects of the pandemic in the workplace.”

Michael Wood, administrator of the state’s department of Occupational Safety and Health, said the move is necessary to address a technicality in state law that requires a “permanent” rule to keep current restrictions from expiring.

“We are not out of the woods yet,” he said.

But the idea has prompted a flood of angry responses, with everyone from parents to teachers to business owners and employees crying government overreach.

Wood’s agency received a record number of public comments, mostly critical, and nearly 60,000 residents signed a petition against the proposal.

Opponents also are upset government officials won’t say how low Oregon’s COVID-19 case numbers must go, or how many people would have to be vaccinated, to get the requirements lifted in a state that’s already had some of the nation’s strictest safety measures.

“When will masks be unnecessary? What scientific studies do these mandates rely on, particularly now that the vaccine is days away from being available to everyone?” said state Sen. Kim Thatcher, a Republican from Keizer, near the state’s capital. “Businesses have had to play ‘mask cop’ for the better part of a year now. They deserve some certainty on when they will no longer be threatened with fines.”

Wood said he is reviewing all the feedback to see if changes are needed before he makes a final decision by May 4, when the current rules lapse.

Oregon, a blue state, has been among those with the country’s most stringent COVID-19 restrictions and now stands in contrast with much of the rest of the nation as vaccines become more widely available.

At least six states — Alabama, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota and Texas — have lifted mask mandates, and some never implemented them. In Texas, businesses reopened at 100% capacity last month.

In January, Virginia became the first in the nation to enact permanent COVID-19 workplace safety and health rules.

“While the end of this pandemic is finally in sight, the virus is still spreading — and now is not the time to let up on preventative measures,” Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam said following the announcement.

Besides mask and distancing requirements, Oregon’s proposal includes more arcane workplace rules regarding air flow, ventilation, employee notification in case of an outbreak, and sanitation protocols.

It dovetails with separate actions issued by Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, using a state of emergency declaration, requiring masks in public statewide — and even outside when 6 feet (1.83 meters) of distance can’t be maintained — and providing strict, county-by-county thresholds for business closures or reductions in capacity when case numbers rise above certain levels.

More than a third of Oregon’s counties are currently limited to indoor social gatherings of six people, and the maximum occupancy for indoor dining, indoor entertainment and gyms is 25% capacity or 50 people, whichever is less. And many schools are just now reopening after a year of online learning.

The workplace rule is “driven by the pandemic, and it will be repealed,” Wood said.

“But, it might not need to go away at exactly the same time the State of Emergency is lifted,” he said, referring to Brown’s executive orders.

Amid pandemic frustration and deprivation, the issue has gained a lot of attention. A petition on change.org opposing the rule gained nearly 60,000 signatures and spread on social media, drawing even more interest to the proposal. More than 5,000 public comments were sent to the agency, smashing its previous record of 1,100.

“The majority of comments were simply hostile to the entire notion of COVID-19 restrictions,” Wood said. “The vast majority of comments were in the context of, ‘You never needed to do anything.’”

Justin Spaulding, a doctor at the Cataract & Laser Institute of Southern Oregon, is among those who raised concerns about the proposal in public comments.

“I do not understand these new guidelines for business. If we put these into effect we will only continue to blunt the recent drop in business,” he wrote. “We have a large subset of patients that are unwilling (or) hostile with the current guidelines, and making them permanent will only make it worse.”

For Thatcher, the GOP state lawmaker, the most concerning part is “OSHA’s lack of clarity” on when the rules will be lifted.

Officials said they have every intent to repeal the rule, and that decision will be made based on a complex mix of factors, including case counts, vaccination rates, case severity and advice from the Oregon Health Authority.

“It will be a complicated assessment when we do it, and I would say it is impossibly complicated to do in advance,” Wood said.

—

Cline is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Sale of Husky stations stopped, Asia-Pacific assets being assessed, says Cenovus CEO

CALGARY — The CEO of Cenovus Energy Inc. says the process to sell Husky Energy Inc.'s chain of retail fuel stations was halted at an "advanced" stage as part of the $3.8-billion all-stock takeover that closed early this year.

In a fireside chat at the 2021 Scotiabank CAPP Energy Symposium, Alex Pourbaix said the proposed sale would have taken place at a low point in the fuel retailing business cycle and was stopped in hopes that the market for those assets would improve.

"The retail business, you know, it's a great asset position of legacy Husky. We stopped that sale at the time of the deal; they were pretty advanced," said Pourbaix on a symposium webcast.

"From my perspective, they were trying to sell at, really, what was the very bottom of the market. I just wanted to take the time to go back and reassess, did a sale really make sense and if it makes sense, is there a better time to sell? And we're probably moving into a lot better market."

Pourbaix predicted that vaccine rollouts and an economic recovery in North America suggest the upcoming driving season could be "off the charts," a promising prospect for the retail operations and also for refinery assets it purchased in the Husky deal.

Cenovus spokesman Reg Curren said in a later email that Pourbaix was referring to the ongoing sales process, not a specific pending transaction for the retail assets. He said no other details would be released.

Husky announced its plan to get out of retailing fuel to consumers after 80 years in the business in early 2019, putting on the block more than 500 service stations, travel centres, cardlock operations and bulk distribution facilities from British Columbia to New Brunswick.

It struck a deal to sell its 12,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Prince George, B.C., in late 2019 but couldn't find a buyer for the rest of the assets.

Higher oil prices will allow Cenovus to reach its debt reduction target of $10 billion by year-end, removing the need to sell assets, but Pourbaix said the company is continuing to sort its operations into core and non-core buckets.

Husky's Asian-Pacific assets are also being assessed and are "not necessarily" going to be considered a core asset going forward, he said.

Husky has offshore natural gas projects with Chinese partner CNOOC Ltd. in China and Indonesia.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 6, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:CVE)

Nuclear, coal, oil ARE UNION jobs pay more than those in NONUNION wind, solar: report

(Reuters 2021-04-06 ) - Workers in nuclear energy and fossil fuel industries earn higher wages than those in renewable energy sectors like wind and solar that are the focus of President Joe Biden's plan to stimulate the U.S. economy and combat climate change, according to an analysis published on Tuesday

.

© Reuters/DANE RHYS In U.S. coal country, workers forgive Trump for failed revival

The report comes a week after Biden's administration rolled out a $2 trillion plan that includes billions to boost the market for clean energy technologies and create good-paying jobs while stripping away subsidies for fossil fuels. Its findings underscore the challenges https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-labor-renewables-analysi-idUKKBN27F1KN the United States will face replacing the quality of jobs lost in a move away from coal and oil.

Across the board, energy jobs pay about $25.60 an hour, 34 percent more than the median national hourly wage of $19.14, according to the report, a collaboration between workforce research firm BW Research Partnership, the National Association of State Energy Officials and the Energy Futures Initiative think tank, headed by Ernest Moniz, who was energy secretary in the Obama administration.

But there are wide discrepancies in hourly wages across various energy industries. Workers in nuclear, electric power transmission and distribution, natural gas and coal have the highest median hourly wages of the 10 energy industries analyzed in the report, ranging between $28.69 for coal jobs up to $39.19 for nuclear.



Wind and solar, meanwhile, boast median hourly wages of $25.95 and $24.48, respectively.

Sectors with more jobs in construction and manufacturing generally pay less than those in the utilities sector, the report said.

Utility jobs are more likely to be unionized, and union representation is correlated with higher wages and benefits, the report said. Data on unionization rates is inconsistent across federal agencies, however, and the report urged the government to gather more reliable data.

The report on wages in the energy sector relied on data from the U.S. Energy & Employment report series.

(Reporting by Nichola Groom; Editing by David Gregorio)

THE INSIDEOUSNESS OF WHITE SUPREMACY

Facebook did not hire Black employees because they were not a 'culture fit,' report says

ydzhanova@businessinsider.com (Yelena Dzhanova)

 2021-04-06

© Christoph Dernbach/picture alliance via Getty Images Christoph Dernbach/picture alliance via Getty Images

Three Black people allege Facebook chose not to hire them because they weren't a "culture fit."

"There's no doubt you can do the job," a manager said before using the culture-fit line, a report says.

Critics have criticized the idea of a "culture fit," arguing it sidelines people of color.

After initial reports of Facebook turning down Black applicants for positions because they weren't a "culture fit," more people have filed complaints alleging similar experiences.

A Washington Post article published Tuesday said three Black applicants were rejected from jobs at Facebook despite having met all the qualifications.

The three applicants filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency that investigates workplace discrimination.

"There's no doubt you can do the job, but we're really looking for a culture fit," one hiring manager told one of the three candidates, according to The Post.

A Facebook operations manager, Oscar Veneszee Jr., told the paper he believes several qualified applicants he referred to jobs at the company were rejected because they weren't a "culture fit."

"When I was interviewing at Facebook, the thing I was told constantly was that I needed to be a culture fit, and when I tried to recruit people, I knew I needed [to] find people who were a culture fit," he told The Post. "But unfortunately not many people I knew could pass that challenge because the culture here does not reflect the culture of Black people."

The EEOC began investigating Facebook last summer over bias allegations, The Post added.

Critics have criticized workplaces pursuing the idea of a "culture fit" in their hiring practices because, they argue, it creates an inclination to hire white workers while sidelining people of color.

In a 2018 article published by the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional membership association in Alexandria, Virginia, one HR expert said "culture fit" is subjective and indicates the hiring decision is largely not based "on the candidate's ability to deliver results."

A Facebook spokesperson, when reached for comment, gave the following statement.

"We've added diversity and inclusion goals to senior leaders' performance reviews. We take seriously allegations of discrimination and have robust policies and processes in place for employees to report concerns, including concerns about microaggressions and policy violations," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson also said the company did not take "culture fit" into account when hiring for jobs.

Rhett Lindsey, a former recruiter with Facebook, told The Post, "There is no culture fit check mark on an application form, but at Facebook it is like this invisible cloud that hangs over candidates of color."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Groups petition EPA to remove ethane and methane from list of compounds exempt from emissions limits

Zack Budryk 

 2021-04-06

Hundreds of environmental groups on Tuesday submitted a petition calling on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take action to curtail ethane and methane emissions responsible for smog.

© Getty Images Groups petition EPA to remove ethane and methane from list of compounds exempt from emissions limits

In a statement Tuesday, the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups petitioning, noted that despite ethane and methane's contributions to smog, they are exempt from emissions limits based on a 1977 understanding of their contributions.

The agency's official definition of "volatile organic compounds" exempts some compounds by classifying them as "negligibly reactive."

However, the agency has historically maintained the right to amend its listing decisions, the petition notes. The groups requested that the agency remove both compounds from the exclusion list.

Other groups that signed on to the petition include the Alliance for Climate Education, the Center for Environmental Health, the Clean Air Council, Christians for the Mountains and the Climate Defense Project.

The petition also notes methane and ethane's roles in ozone formation, citing studies that indicate methane is response for about 20 parts per billion of global background tropospheric ozone.

"Further, studies have identified that increasing global methane concentrations from anthropogenic emissions contribute to elevated tropospheric ozone levels," the petition states.

"The rapid expansion of the fracking and petrochemical industries has come at the tragic price of millions of asthma attacks and widespread damage to our national parks," Robert Ukeiley, an environmental health attorney at the Center, said in a statement.

"We're asking the Biden administration to close the EPA loophole that has allowed unchecked methane and ethane pollution to enable this tragedy," he added.

Methane and ethane emissions have drastically increased in recent years, which the petition attributes to an increase in fracking.

"Exempting methane and ethane from the list of volatile organic compounds in the Clean Air Act is a massive loophole that must be closed if we are truly going to fight climate change and protect the health of our people," Alex Cole, a community organizer at the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, said in the statement.

"Fossil fuel companies are currently putting an unfair burden onto the communities in which they operate and closing this loophole will quite literally save and enhance lives."

The petition comes weeks after Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Angus King (I-Maine) drafted legislation that would use the Congressional Review Act to unwind Trump-era rules limiting the EPA's ability to regulate methane.

Canada added fewer renewables in 2020 than G7 peers, international agency says


Canada added fewer megawatts of renewable energy capacity in 2020 than any of its G7 counterparts, according to new figures from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).


However, Canada is still the top country in the Group of Seven major industrialized nations for the share of its electricity capacity that is already represented by renewables — and it boasts the fourth-highest absolute amount of renewable energy in the group.

The world’s scientific consensus is that renewables must make up 70 per cent to 85 per cent of electricity systems around the world by 2050 in order to hold global average temperatures to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels and slow the climate crisis.

Renewable energy sources made up just 37 per cent of the world’s electricity capacity in 2020. But last year, there was over 260,000 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy capacity added, beating estimates and previous records, IRENA said in its report, “Renewable Capacity Statistics 2021,” published April 5.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the economy, 2020 marked “the start of the decade of renewables,” said IRENA director-general Francesco La Camera. “Costs are falling, clean tech markets are growing and never before have the benefits of the energy transition been so clear.”

Canada added 191 MW of renewables in 2020, most of which was wind power, at 164 MW, as well as smaller amounts of solar, bioenergy and hydropower.

All other G7 countries added more renewable capacity last year: the United States added 29,190 MW; Germany added 6,565 MW; Japan added 4,222 MW; France added 1,945 MW; Italy added 926 MW; and the United Kingdom added 876 MW.

Last year’s addition puts Canada fourth in the G7 for total installed renewable capacity, at 101,188 MW. Japan, previously in the fourth spot, leapfrogged over Canada to claim third place, behind Germany and the U.S.

Canada, however, has by far the largest renewable energy share of its electricity capacity, at 68 per cent. Germany, in second place for this category, has 56 per cent, and all other G7 nations have a minority of their electricity capacity as renewables. The U.S. is worst, with 25 per cent.

But the U.S.’s renewables additions represented a growth rate over 80 per cent from 2019. China was the world’s renewable energy giant in 2020, adding 136,000 MW, mostly wind and solar power. Like the U.S., only a minority of China’s electricity capacity is made up of renewables, at 41 per cent.

The federal government’s new climate plan calls for expanding the supply of “clean electricity” in part by investing in renewables and other “clean energy and technology.”

The government proposes to invest $964 million over four years for “smart renewable energy and grid modernization projects,” including new renewables like wind and solar.

It also wants to decarbonize medium- and heavy-duty vehicle transportation in part through electrification, and transition to 100 per cent new electric vehicle sales by 2040.

Carl Meyer / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer

2021-04-06

Chile's government distributed faulty birth control pills. Now more than 150 people are pregnant.

AND THE STATE FAILED TO SUPPLY THEM WITH THE ABORTION BILL

By Kara Fox and Ana Schlimovich, CNN Illustrations and graphics by Gabrielle Smith, 

CNN 2021-04-06

© CNN/ Photo Ilustration/Tabita Rojas/Ana Schlimovich/Gabrielle Smith

Santiago, Chile -- In Chile's arid Atacama desert, Tabita Daza Rojas is trying to scrape together enough money to finish construction on her home before her baby, due anyday, arrives.

Eight hundred kilometers to the south, in La Pintana, a suburb of the capital Santiago, Cynthia González is nursing her 2-month-old boy. But she needs to buy milk to supplement her body's supply, and is worried about how she'll afford it.

Rojas and González come from different backgrounds, have different lives and ambitions. Yet they -- and at least 170 other women at the time of writing -- share a common reality: they all claim to have fallen pregnant while taking Anulette CD, an oral contraceptive pill manufactured by Silesia, a subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical company, Grünenthal.

Without the option to legally terminate their pregnancies, if they wanted to, or any real accountability from the government or the drug companies, the women, represented by the Chilean sexual and reproductive rights group Corporación Miles, are preparing to file a class action lawsuit in the civil courts.

In a region where barriers to women's reproductive rights are the norm, CNN has identified a government health agency quick to shift the blame to these women, as well as a history of poor production quality and previous issues relating to oral contraceptives in Grünenthal's Chilean factory -- its gateway to Latin America.


Tabita Rojas' story

In March 2020, after discovering an ovarian cyst her physician worried could have been caused by her contraceptive implant, Rojas's doctor at her local health clinic advised she take the pill instead, prescribing Anulette CD.

Rojas didn't give the switch much thought; she had taken oral contraceptives before and agreed it made sense for her health.

Plus, after giving up her place on a forensic criminology program at 17 because she'd gotten pregnant, the now 29-year-old was once again excited about her future.

"I had to put all that aside and dedicate myself to my son," said Rojas, who had a second child two years later, and provides for her family by doing seasonal work at a grape packing plant.

By early 2020, however, things were changing. Her children -- boys now aged 11 and 9 years old, both with learning difficulties -- were more independent, and were spending more time with their father. As part of a government urbanization in her hometown Copiapó, Rojas had been given a small piece of land on which to build a house. She had been saving up money and planned to move out of the home she and her children had been sharing with three other family members.

And, she was in love.

Early on in the relationship, Rojas and her boyfriend had decided not to have children together. "It was going to be impossible to provide for someone else," she said.

But in September 2020, just five months after Rojas began taking Anulette, she found out she was pregnant again. She would later learn, after seeing it posted on Facebook, that her tablets were from a batch that had been recalled by Chile's public health authority, the Instituto de Salud Pública de Chile (ISP) the month before.

"I was about to finish the second [box of three prescribed] when I found out about the problem," she said. By then she was already six weeks pregnant.


'I was never happy with this pregnancy'

The details may differ but similar scenarios have been playing out across Chile.

A mother of four, González, who had been on Anulette for eight months, got pregnant for the fifth time in May 2020.

She tells CNN that she took her contraceptive "religiously every morning," before adding: "Because we women set an alarm for those kinds of pills."

The news devastated her. Her personal life was complicated and her finances extremely limited after she lost the market stall where she sold second-hand clothes.

"I was never happy with this pregnancy," González said. "If you only knew all the nights I spent crying thinking that I didn't want to [have the baby]. I had no options."

Alluding to Chile's strict abortion laws that forbid a woman from terminating a pregnancy except for three reasons (if the pregnancy is a result of rape, if the fetus is incompatible with life outside the womb, or if a woman's life is at risk), González spoke about her upset and how she tried to conceal her growing tummy.

"I hid the pregnancy for a long time, so that they wouldn't ask me: 'Hey, another child, and whose is it, because you are no longer with your husband' -- and having to explain that we were separated. It was already a complicated situation for me, let alone to go around telling everyone."

Anulette CD is a 28-day combined oral contraceptive -- one of the most common forms of birth control.

It contains synthetic versions of the hormones estrogen and progesterone, which are produced naturally by the ovaries. The hormones work to prevent ovulation -- meaning no egg is released by the ovaries -- as well as thicken the lining of the cervix to make it harder for sperm to pass through. The pill also makes the lining of the uterus thinner so that if an egg is fertilized it cannot implant and begin to grow.

Pill regimens typically involve taking 21 "active" pills that contain the hormones and seven "non-active" or "placebo" pills, to maintain a daily routine, during which time a person bleeds.

The first batch -- 139,160 packs of Anulette pills, according to its manufacturer -- were recalled on August 24, 2020 after healthcare workers at a rural healthcare clinic complained that they had identified 6 packets of defective pills.

In them -- based on information from the ISP -- the placebo (a blue pill) had been found where the active pills (a yellow pill) should have been, and vice versa.

In its online notice, published on August 29, the ISP said that the makers of Anulette CD, a company called Laboratorios Silesia S.A. (Silesia), had been made aware and were withdrawing the defective lot. The ISP then advised health centers to quarantine any packets they had from the affected batches.

Then, a tweet was sent from the ISP account alerting its followers to the recall. But without a nationwide campaign to more directly inform the public, the recall went largely unnoticed.

A week after the first recall, on September 3, the same error was detected in 6 packets from a different batch at a clinic in Santiago. Here, tablets were also missing, but others were crushed, according to the ISP. By the time the problems were flagged, Silesia said it had already distributed 137,730 packs to health centers.

This time the ISP said it would be suspending Silesia's registration until the laboratory was able to improve its quality and production processes. But it was too little, too late.

In total, according to the manufacturer's own accounts, 276,890 packets of Anulette CD from the two defective lots -- all with a January 2022 expiry date -- had been distributed to family planning centers across Chile.

Surprisingly, on September 8, less than a week after Silesia's suspension, the ISP issued another document reversing its earlier decision. In the memo, which was uploaded to its website, the health authority said Anulette CD could once again be distributed. It claimed that the flaws in the packaging could be easily detected, and passed the responsibility of doing so, and of informing users of the service, onto healthcare workers.

The Ministry of Health told CNN in an emailed statement that they informed the public health service "to inform users of this situation and take pertinent actions," and said that they provided support and counseling for reproductive health workers to support "women who may have been affected by problems in the quality of contraceptives."

But Rojas said she was only informed by her local clinic about the defective pills after she went in for a prenatal checkup. And Rodriguez told CNN no one has contacted her.

ISP director Heriberto Garcia defended the decision to put Anulette back on the market, saying in a video interview with CNN: "Just because it [one pack] belongs to the batch doesn't mean it was bad."

So, it was left to Chilean civil society to raise the alarm. The sexual and reproductive rights group, Miles, ran a social media campaign and used its networks to get the word out.

"It was after [posting on Instagram] when we started receiving emails from people saying that they were already pregnant because they were consuming Anulette," said Miles' legal coordinator Laura Dragnic.

By October 2020, some 40 women had gotten in touch. According to Miles, following multiple media appearances by its staff, another 70 women came forward. The number now stands at 170, but Dragnic expects it to grow as rural women or those without access to the internet or television are still to be reached.

"We expect that there are many more women with this problem," she said, "especially because the State has not claimed any responsibility and has not made any statements or any serious compromises [to the abortion rules] for the affected women."

Seven days after Dragnic spoke to CNN, and six months after the first recall, the health authorities announced that Anulette's manufacturers had been charged a series of fines totalling approximately 66.5m Chilean pesos (approximately USD $92,000).

Miles and their partners are calling for the government to pay financial reparations to the affected women, and to provide access to safe and legal abortions for those who wish to terminate their pregnancy.


Multiple recalls at Grünenthal's Santiago factory

Grünenthal, in whose Santiago factory Anulette CD is manufactured, began operating in Chile in 1979. The privately-owned German pharmaceutical company, which reported a €340 million (US $405 million) profit in the 2019-2020 fiscal year, is best known for its product tramadol, an opiate pain killer, classified as a controlled substance in numerous countries.

In 2017, the company increased its Chilean investments by opening what it called "Latin America's most modern women's health products plant" -- a US $14.5m facility. While only a small part of Grünenthal's portfolio, the investment was enough to place it among "the three biggest pharmaceutical companies in Chile."

But CNN has uncovered that production issues began soon after the factory opened, and have affected a range of oral contraceptives marketed not just by Silesia S.A. but also Grünenthal's other Chilean subsidiary, Andrómaco.

In 2018, Tinelle, a contraceptive pill from Silesia's portfolio, was voluntarily taken off the market after a decision to switch the sequence of the active and placebo tablets (keeping the same numbers of each but placing them in a different order) which -- by the Grunenthal spokesperson, Florian Dieckmann's admission -- "confused [patients] about the new sequence of the pills." Dieckmann said that the pills were put back on the market after Silesia "further clarified the instruction on the aluminium foil on how to follow the right sequence of tablets."

Two further oral contraceptives, Minigest 15 and 20, manufactured by Andrómaco at the Grünenthal Chilean plant, were recalled in October 2020 after the public health authority, the ISP, said that they were found during stability testing to contain an insufficient amount of the active ingredient: the hormones.

Grunenthal's spokesperson said that at the time of packaging, the tablets had "the correct amount of active ingredient" in them, adding that the "tablets are exposed to excessive temperatures and humidity over the products entire shelf life under laboratory conditions" and that it is "unlikely that the tablets are exposed to these conditions for a long time in real world circumstances.

Based on a Freedom of Information request by Miles, which CNN then followed up on, the production of Anulette CD has had the most problems, according to the ISP's own records.

Between August 6 and November 18, 2020, health clinics across Chile reported a wide range of issues with the pills including small holes found in the tablets; pills that had orange and black spots; wet and crushed tablets; and packaging that wouldn't release the entire pill effectively, leaving trace amounts of the pill stuck inside.

In total, the ISP received 26 different complaints about 15 different batches of Anulette pills, yet only 2 batches were recalled.

"It is important to clarify that not all complaints of the products end in market recalls," the ISP explained. "Those that are withdrawn...are those in which critical defects are detected and this was the case of the recalled batches."

Aside from publishing details of the above recalls on its website, the ISP allegedly did little else to notify women, and despite its apparent challenges, Grünenthal remains the Chilean government's leading provider of oral contraceptives.

According to the ISP, 382,871 women are prescribed Anulette CD, and between May 2019 and January 2020, Grünenthal secured at least US $2.2 million in contracts that CNN has seen.

The Ministry of Health did not answer CNN's written questions and declined an invitation to be interviewed.


The blame game

While no one is denying the production problems, Grünenthal, its Chilean subsidiaries and government representatives, all seem intent on shifting some of the blame away from the faulty packets of the pill and onto each other.

Dieckmann explained that the company discovered that the problems stemmed from an issue on the production line issue which caused some pills to move during the packaging process. That led to some packages with "empty cavities, some tablets misplaced or crushed tablets," he said but stressed that the efficacy of the contraceptive had not been compromised.

The spokesperson also pointed out that combined oral contraceptives are not 100% effective. According to the World Health Organization, the combined oral contraceptive pill every year results in less than 1 pregnancy in every 100, "with consistent and correct use."

"So I think it's important background, right?" Dieckmann said, noting that those statistics rise when the pill isn't taken consistently or correctly.

"I'm not trying to say that it's the woman's fault," Dieckmann said, before adding that correct and consistent use was a "factor that I think we have to look at here."

"Women say, 'I was on the pill, I still became pregnant -- why is that?' That's what's happened," he said, referencing the statistics.

The Grünenthal spokesperson told CNN that the company could not speak to their individual cases, as it has not been directly contacted by any of the affected women.

Addressing the controversy on the Chilean public broadcaster in December 2020, Silesia's medical director, Leonardo Lourtau, said in addition to the company being responsible for visually checking the packaging, health officials should have also done so and, "obviously, the people who take the medicine as well."

And Garcia of the ISP suggested it was important to look at how birth control efficacy might change when interacting in the body with other products, such as antibiotics, tobacco or alcohol. "I am not saying that she has drunk a lot of alcohol or that she is a smoker, but I am telling you the background."

Despite Garcia's assertions, most reproductive health experts widely agree that there is no evidence to suggest that smoking diminishes the effectiveness of the pill; that alcohol will only do so if a person throws up soon after taking it; and that only one type of antibiotic, those based on rifampicin, can affect oral contraceptives.


'Systemic failures'

Drug recalls are not unusual, but it is hard for those campaigning on behalf of the women not to perceive an injustice here: Grünenthal continues to see its factory as the key to reaching 168 million women in Latin America, while the women who take its products have to remain vigilant or risk pregnancy. The risk is heightened, reproductive rights groups say, by the fact that these women, already poor and marginalized, can't count on the robust support of the government should the undesired happen.

Paula Avila Guillen, Executive Director at the New York Women's Equality Center, a not-for-profit that advocates for and monitors reproductive rights in Latin America, told CNN that if the recall was about bad meat, the entire country would have known immediately, and the product immediately taken off the market. "But when it comes to women and reproductive health, they just don't care," she lamented.

And so, Miles and its partners, writing to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and to the United Nations, have called the situation "a clear situation of systemic discrimination against women."

Meanwhile, back in Copiapó, at 38 weeks pregnant, Rojas has now accepted her fate. She will once again have to put aside her dreams for the future of her child, another baby boy. They'll name him Fernando.

Read more from the As Equals series

Canada First Nation group opposes De Beers waste dump on traditional land

TORONTO (Reuters) -An isolated First Nation community in Canada's Ontario province on Tuesday said it opposes plans by Anglo American's De Beers Group to build a new mine landfill on its traditional territory, citing threats to millenia-old cultural sites.

SO WHAT IF THEY  ARE ISOLATED EVERYBODY IN THE NORTH IS, AN ATTEMPT TO DISMISS THEIR CONCERNS

IN THE READERS MIND

© Reuters/Chris Wattie FILE PHOTO: A man pulls a sled with a snowmobile on a frozen river in the Attawapiskat First Nation

De Beers is seeking Ontario government approval for a landfill for mine demolition waste in the vulnerable James Bay wetlands area, in a place of critical cultural, spiritual and subsistence importance to the Kattawapiskak Cree people, the Attawapiskat First Nation said.

De Beers has applied to store 97,000 cubic meters of waste from the Victor diamond mine, below the threshold which would trigger a comprehensive environmental assessment under Ontario law, the indigenous group said.

Global miners face mounting investor pressure to improve relations with indigenous communities after the destruction of the Juukan Gorge caves in Australia by Rio Tinto last year.

De Beers did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The unit is 85% owned by Anglo and 15% owned by the government of Botswana.

"We don't want another Juukan Gorge disaster in our traditional territory," said local council member Jack Linklater in a release.

"We don't believe that Anglo American and the Republic of Botswana want to allow De Beers staff to create a giant mine landfill in our traditional territory."

The isolated Victor mine, which is in the closure phase, is about 90 km (55.9 miles) west of the Attawapiskat community of 2,000 in northeastern Ontario and is the province's first and only diamond mine.

De Beers in 2017 shelved plans to study an expansion after failing to get community support and the mine ceased operations altogether in 2019. It produced about 600,000 carats per year.

About 65% of the site infrastructure has been demolished with about 40% of the site rehabilitated, according to De Beers' website.

(Reporting by Jeff LewisEditing by Bernadette Baum)

PUT ON YOUR BEST FACE
Thousands of US government agencies are using Clearview AI without approval

Daniel Cooper

 2021-04-06

Nearly two thousand government bodies, including police departments and public schools, have been using Clearview AI without oversight. Buzzfeed News reports that employees from 1,803 public bodies used the controversial facial-recognition platform without authorization from bosses. Reporters contacted a number of agency heads, many of which said they were unaware their employees were accessing the system.



A database of searches, outlining which agencies were able to access the platform, and how many queries were made, was leaked to Buzzfeed by an anonymous source. It has published a version of the database online, enabling you to examine how many times each department has used the tool. Clearview AI refused to authenticate the validity of the data, and reportedly refused to engage with questions about the leak.

Clearview AI, founded by Hoan Ton-That, markets itself as a searchable facial-recognition database for law enforcement agencies. The New York Times has previously reported on Ton-That’s close association with notorious figures from the far right, and is backed by early Facebook investor Peter Thiel. The company’s USP has been to download every image posted to social media without permission to build its database — something the social media companies in question have tried to stop. The company is currently under investigation in both the UK and Australia for its data-collection practices.

The report — which you should read in its entirety — outlines how Clearview has offered generous free trials to individual employees at public bodies. This approach is meant to encourage these employees to incorporate the system into their working day, and advocate for their agencies to sign up. But there are a number of civil liberties, privacy, legal and accuracyquestions that remain in the air as to how Clearview operates. This has not deterred agencies like ICE, however, from signing up to use the system, although other agencies, like the LAPD, have already banned use of the platform.

Facial recognition tech is supporting mass surveillance. It's time for a ban, say privacy campaigners


A group of 51 digital rights organizations has called on the European Commission to impose a complete ban on the use of facial recognition technologies for mass surveillance – with no exceptions allowed. © Provided by ZDNet The letter urges the Commissioner to support enhanced protection for fundamental human rights. Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto

Comprising activist groups from across the continent, such as Big Brother Watch UK, AlgorithmWatch and the European Digital Society, the call was chaperoned by advocacy network the European Digital Rights (EDRi) in the form of an open letter to the European commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders.

It comes just weeks before the Commission releases much-awaited new rules on the ethical use of artificial intelligence on the continent on 21 April.

© ZDNet

The letter urges the Commissioner to support enhanced protection for fundamental human rights in the upcoming laws, in particular in relation to facial recognition and other biometric technologies, when these tools are used in public spaces to carry out mass surveillance.

SEE: Security Awareness and Training policy (TechRepublic Premium)

According to the coalition, there are no examples where the use of facial recognition for the purpose of mass surveillance can justify the harm that it might cause to individuals' rights, such as the right to privacy, to data protection, to non-discrimination or to free expression.

It is often defended that the technology is a reasonable tool to deploy in some circumstances, such as to keep an eye on the public in the context of law enforcement, but the signatories to the letter argue that a blanket ban should instead be imposed on all potential use cases.

"Wherever a biometric technology entails mass surveillance, we call for a ban on all uses and applications without exception," Ella Jakubowska, policy and campaigns officer at EDRi, tells ZDNet. "We think that any use that is indiscriminately or arbitrarily targeting people in a public space is always, and without question, going to infringe on fundamental rights. It's never going to meet the threshold of necessity and proportionality."

Based on evidence from within and beyond the EU, in effect, EDRi has concluded that the unfettered development of biometric technologies to snoop on citizens has severe consequences for human rights.

It has been reported that in China, for instance, the government is using facial recognition to carry out mass surveillance of the Muslim Uighur population living in Xinjiang, through gate-like scanning systems that record biometric features, as well as smartphone fingerprints to track residents' movements.

But worrying developments of the technology have also occurred much closer to home. Recent research coordinated by EDRi found examples of controversial deployments of biometric technologies for mass surveillance across the vast majority of EU countries.

They range from using facial recognition for queue management in Rome and Brussels airports, to German authorities using the technology to surveil G20 protesters in Hamburg. The European Commission provides a €4.5 million ($5.3 million) grant to deploy a technology dubbed iBorderCtrl at some European border controls, which picked up on travelers' gestures to detect those who might be lying when trying to enter an EU country illegally.

In recent months, however, some top EU leaders have shown support for legislation that would limit the scope of facial recognition technologies. In a white paper published last year, in fact, the bloc stated that it would consider banning the technology altogether.

The EU's vice-president for digital Margrethe Vestager has also said that using facial recognition tools to identify citizens automatically is at odds with the bloc's data protection regime, given that it doesn't meet one of the GDPR's key requirements of obtaining an individual's consent before processing their biometric data.

This won't be enough to stop the technology from interfering with human rights, according to EDRi. The GDPR leaves space for exemptions when "strictly necessary", which, coupled with poor enforcement of the rule of consent, has led to examples of facial recognition being used to the detriment of EU citizens, such as those uncovered by EDRi.

"We have evidence of the existing legal framework being misapplied and having enforcement problems. So, although commissioners seem to agree that in principle, these technologies should be banned by the GDPR, that ban doesn't exist in reality," says Jakubowska. "This is why we want the Commission to publish a more specific and clear prohibition, which builds on the existing prohibitions in general data protection law."

EDRi and the 51 organizations that have signed the open letter join a chorus of activist voices that have demanded similar action in the last few years.

Over 43,500 European citizens have signed a "Reclaim Your Face" petition calling for a ban on biometric mass surveillance practices in the EU; and earlier this year, the Council of Europe also called for some applications of facial recognition to be banned, where they have the potential to lead to discrimination.

SEE: Facial recognition: Don't use it to snoop on how staff are feeling, says watchdog

Pressure is mounting on the European Commission, therefore, ahead of the institution's publication of new rules on AI that are expected to shape the EU's place and relevance in what is often described as a race against China and the US.

For Jakubowska, however, this is an opportunity to seize. "These technologies are not inevitable," she says. "We are at an important tipping point where we could actually prevent a lot of future harms and authoritarian technology practices before they go any further. We don't have to wait for huge and disruptive impacts on people's lives before we stop it. This is an incredible opportunity for civil society to interject, at a point where we can still change things."

As part of the open letter, EDRi has also urged the Commission to carefully review the other potentially dangerous applications of AI, and draw some red lines where necessary.

Among the use cases that might be problematic, the signatories flagged technologies that might impede access to healthcare, social security or justice, as well as systems that make predictions about citizens' behaviors and thoughts; and algorithms capable of manipulating individuals, and presenting a threat to human dignity, agency, and collective democrac

 Amaze Lab

China’s Orbiting Mars Probe Reveals Ghostly Images of Mars

Duration: 00:51 2021-04-06

BONUS  

BEFORE THE CHINESE THERE WAS JOHN CARPENTER