Māori leader Rawiri Waititi removed from New Zealand parliament after performing haka

By Rob Picheta, CNN 

The co-leader of New Zealand's Māori Party has been removed from parliament for the second time this year, after performing a ceremonial dance during a debate about indigenous rights.

© Nick Perry/AP Maori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi poses for a photo outside New Zealand's Parliament in Wellington. The Indigenous New Zealand lawmaker was thrown out of Parliament's debating chamber Wednesday, May 12, 2021, for performing a Maori haka in protest at what he said were racist arguments. Waititi's stance came after ongoing debate among lawmakers about the government's plans to set up a new Maori Health Authority as part of sweeping changes to the health care system.

Rawiri Waititi interjected while Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was taking questions from lawmakers on Wednesday, accusing the country's opposition party of "racist propaganda and rhetoric."


After a tense exchange with the Speaker, which resulted in his microphone being turned off, Waititi began the traditional Māori haka and was asked to leave.

The haka, a ceremonial war dance performed before events including New Zealand rugby matches, is intended as a challenge to opponents and a rallying cry before heading into battle.

The interruption came while Judith Collins, the leader of the right-wing opposition New Zealand National Party, was putting questions to Ardern on indigenous sovereignty.

Collins' party has been critical of Ardern over the issue and has opposed the recently announced Māori Health Authority -- which Ardern's government created to redress inequalities in the nation's healthcare service -- according to CNN affiliate RNZ.

It is the second time in a matter of months that Waititi has been ejected from parliament. In February, he was ordered to leave after refusing to wear a necktie. The politician argued the requirement suppressed indigenous culture, and parliament subsequently dropped the rule.

"Over the past two weeks, there has been racist propaganda and rhetoric towards tangata whenua," Waititi said during his first point of order on Wednesday, using a Māori term that refers to New Zealand's indigenous population. "That not only is insulting, but diminishes the manner of this House."

The Speaker responded that he felt nothing out of order had been said during the weekly Question Time debate, in which Collins was quizzing Ardern. "I'm asking the member to make sure that if he has a point of order, it is a fresh and different one," the Speaker later added, as Waititi refused to take his seat.

"Fresh and different point of order, Mr. Speaker," the Māori Party co-leader replied.

"When it comes to views of indigenous rights and indigenous peoples, those views must be from indigenous people ... they can't be determined by people who are not indigenous," he said, criticizing a "constant barrage of insults" toward the population.

During that exchange, Waititi's microphone was turned off. "The member's mic is off so he will resume his seat," the Speaker said. In response, the politician began the haka before quickly being ordered to leave.

Māori, who make up about 15% of New Zealand's population, were dispossessed of much of their land during Britain's colonization of the country. Thousands of Māori have protested for civil and social rights in recent years, and have criticized governments for failing to address social and economic inequalities.

In February, Ardern's government announced plans for a national syllabus on Māori history. Ardern also appointed the country's first indigenous female foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, in November last year.

© Thomas Coughlan/AP Indigenous New Zealand lawmaker Rawiri Waititi, center, performs a Māori haka in parliament on Wednesday, May 12, 2021.

40 acres and a mule won't cut it anymore. What the fight for reparations looks like in 2021.

P.R. Lockhart 
NBC

After decades of work from activists pushing the issue, presidential candidates, Congress members, local governments and private institutions have debated whether and how the federal government should issue reparations for Black Americans who are descendants of slaves

.

© Provided by NBC News

As the Biden administration promises to confront structural racism and inequality, a growing number of Democratic lawmakers have given their support to H.R. 40, a decades-old bill first introduced by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., in 1989. The bill would create a commission to study slavery and discrimination in the United States and potential reparations proposals for restitution.

In April, H.R. 40 moved out of committee for the first time, potentially setting up a floor vote on the legislation.

© Carlos Barria Image: Protest against racial inequality in the aftermath of the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in Washington (Carlos Barria / Reuters file)

Meanwhile, the ongoing reckoning with racial injustice and the health disparities exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic have called further attention to the ways Black people have faced generations of systemic discrimination.

But with an issue so large and complex, proponents suggest a range of ways the U.S. could engage in reparations while opponents say the time for redress for slavery and the discrimination that followed has passed.
Demands for reparations have endured for more than a century

Calls for reparations for enslaved men and women — and later, their descendants — have been made in various forms since the end of the Civil War. But these demands have never been met by the federal government.

In 1865, Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman ordered that land confiscated from Confederate landowners be divided up into 40-acre portions and distributed to newly emancipated Black families. Following President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, however, the order granting “40 acres and a mule” was swiftly rescinded by new President Andrew Johnson. The majority of the land was returned to white landowners.

© Dorothea Lange Cotton sharecroppers in Greene County, Ga., June 1937. (Dorothea Lange / Library of Congress)

© Dorothea Lange The cotton sharecropper's unit is one mule and the land he can cultivate with a one-horse plow, in Greene County, Ga., July 1937. (Dorothea Lange / Library of Congress)

After the Civil War, formerly enslaved men and women also argued that their unpaid labor while in bondage entitled them to pensions. Their demands received resistance from the federal government, which accused prominent pension supporters of fraud and ignored pension bills brought up in Congress.

But as the federal government denied land and resources to formerly enslaved people, it created new pathways for land ownership for white Americans. For instance, the federal government passed the Homestead Act in 1862, granting 160-acre plots to applicants.

“Black families received no assets from the federal government while large numbers of white families received substantial assets as a starting point for building wealth in the United States” under the act, said William Darity, a professor of public policy at Duke University. Darity recently co-authored a book on reparations with folklorist Kirsten Mullen titled “From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century.”

Darity added that calls for reparations are a “specific claim that is connected to the failure to provide the ancestors of today's living descendants who were deprived of the 40-acre land grants that they were promised.”

After the war and during the Reconstruction era, Black Southerners made political, social and economic progress, but these gains were quickly overturned. Discrimination was further entrenched through laws regulating every facet of Black life, including housing restrictions, legal segregation and racially motivated terrorism and lynchings.

© Jack Delano A bus station in Durham, N.C., May 1940. (Jack Delano / Library of Congress)

In the 1930s and 1940s, Black Americans also continued to be denied opportunities to build wealth under federal programs that benefited white families and communities.

Under the GI Bill, for example, “mortgage and school tuition benefits extended to black soldiers were devalued due to state endorsed and enforced segregation,” law professor Adrienne Davis argued in a pro-reparations human rights brief published in 2000.

"There were far fewer places they could attend school or purchase housing," Davis wrote. "The schools they were able to attend and houses they were able to buy were less valuable because they were black institutions and neighborhoods, respectively, in an economy that valued whiteness."

Excluding domestic and farm workers from Social Security legislation effectively shut out 60 percent of Black people “across the U.S. and 75 percent in southern states who worked in these occupations,” according to policy think tank the Brookings Institution.

Experts argue that such omissions from federal policy have not been fully corrected and have been magnified by widening health, education, employment and housing disparities, as well as a lack of access to capital.

Collectively, these historical and current disadvantages have led reparations proponents to argue that while slavery is where denials of wealth and equal rights began, the cumulative effects of both slavery and systematic federal denials of opportunity that followed continue to impact the descendants of enslaved people in the present.

© Warren K. Leffler A procession of protesters carrying signs for equal rights, integrated schools, decent housing, and an end to bias in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28, 1963. (Warren K. Leffler / Library of Congress)

Experts disagree on what reparations should look like

In recent years, reparations have often been discussed alongside the racial wealth gap, or the difference between wealth held by white Americans compared to that of other races.

Research has found that the gap between white and Black Americans has not narrowed in recent decades. White households hold roughly 10 times more wealth than Black ones, similar to the gap in 1968. While Black Americans account for roughly 13 percent of the American population, they hold about 4 percent of America’s wealth. Experts note the gap is not due to a lack of education or effort but rather is due to a lack of capital and resources that have left Black individuals more vulnerable to economic shocks and made it difficult for Black families to build inheritable wealth over generations.

Darity and Mullen say closing this wealth gap should be a fundamental goal of a reparations program and should guide how such a program is structured. In their book, Darity and Mullen call for a system of reparations that primarily consists of direct financial payments made by the federal government to eligible Black Americans who had at least one ancestor enslaved in the United States.

© Andrew Kelly Image: People take part in events to mark Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in Texas, in New York (Andrew Kelly / Reuters file)

Proposals for reparations programs have also been raised by reparations advocacy groups in recent decades. The National African American Reparations Commission, for example, has a 10-point reparations plan that includes calls for a national apology for slavery and subsequent discrimination; a repatriation program that would allow interested people to receive assistance when exercising their “right to return” to an African nation of their choice; affordable housing and education programs; and the preservation of Black monuments and sacred sites, with the proposals benefiting any person of African descent living in the US.

Other proposals, like one proposed by Andre Perry and Rashawn Ray for the Brookings Institution, would also specifically provide restitution to descendants with at least one ancestor enslaved in the U.S., coupling direct financial payment with plans for free college tuition, student loan forgiveness, grants for down payments and housing revitalization and grants for Black-owned businesses.

“Making the American Dream an equitable reality demands the same U.S. government that denied wealth to Blacks restore that deferred wealth through reparations to their descendants,” they wrote last year.

The variety of proposals show that even among supporters of reparations, there is some disagreement about what a full program should look like and what exactly should be described as “true reparations.”

“I think we would be doing ourselves a huge disservice if we were just talking about financial compensation alone,” said Dreisen Heath, a racial justice researcher with Human Rights Watch.

While Heath said she did support and see the value in direct financial payments, she added that money alone “is not going to fix if you were wrongly convicted in a racist legal system. That’s not going to fix your access to preventative health care. All of these other harms are connected to the racial wealth gap but are not exclusively defined by or can be relieved by financial compensation.”

Some local governments — most notably Evanston, Illinois, and Asheville, North Carolina — are also attempting to issue reparations for historical discrimination Black residents of these areas faced. These attempts have been praised by some proponents, who say the wide-ranging harms of slavery and subsequent discrimination requires a multipronged solution.

© Shorefront Photographic Collection Children sit at a segregated day care center in Evanston, Il., in 1940. (Shorefront Photographic Collection / via Reuters)

© Andrea Clark The East End neighborhood of Asheville, N.C., as it looked before Black homes, businesses and schools were demolished by urban renewal in the 1970s. (Andrea Clark / North Carolina Collection, Pack Memorial Public Library, Asheville, N.C.)

“Reparations efforts at multiple levels are necessary because the harms were on multiple levels — the institutional, at the state level and at the federal level,” Heath said. “Specific harms were committed and need to be remedied in a very specific way. There’s no blanket reparations program for a specific community.”

Still, critics of such programs, like Darity and Mullen, say municipal efforts are not significant enough in scale because of sheer municipal budget restrictions. They also say localized programs simply miss the point.

“We are seeing racial equity initiatives that are being touted as reparations programs,” Mullen said. “For us, a reparations program must center on eliminating the racial wealth gap, and putting people on committees and panels is not going to do that.”
H.R. 40 has also sparked debate among reparations proponents

Discussion of how to best conceptualize reparations has spilled over into debates over H.R. 40, which languished in a House subcommittee for more than three decades before being voted out of committee this year. While supporters of the legislation argue it is the best vehicle for better understanding the need for and possible avenues of providing reparations, Darity and Mullen say in its current form, the measure could ultimately do more harm than good.

“One of the problems with H.R. 40 is that it is not at all clear that it provides us with a direction towards eliminating the racial wealth gap,” Darity said. He added that the bill’s impacts are limited because it creates a commission rather than directly approving a reparations program.

© Timothy H. O'Sullivan Five generations on Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, S.C., 1862. (Timothy H. O'Sullivan / Library of Congress)

Supporters of the bill, including members of pro-reparations advocacy groups like the National African American Reparations Commission and the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America counter that the bill would do more than simply study the evidence supporting reparations and is a crucial step toward providing reparative justice.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, the bill's main sponsor, and other congressional Democratic leaders have said they hope to move forward with a House floor vote on the bill this summer.

Still, reaction to the legislation not only reveals fundamental differences between reparations proponents but also shows there continues to be a vocal contingent of reparations critics who argue that a federal effort to provide redress for the harms of slavery and the decades of discrimination that followed is unnecessary. Critics say slavery happened too long ago and thus the harms are too old to be repaired. Others say the mere idea of reparations frames Black Americans as helpless.

“Reparation is divisive. It speaks to the fact that we are a hapless, hopeless race that never did anything but wait for white people to show up and help us — and it’s a falsehood,” Utah Rep. Burgess Owens, one of two Black Republicans in the House, said during debate on H.R. 40 in April. “It’s demeaning to my parents’ generation.”

© PhotoQuest The East End neighborhood of Asheville, N.C., as it looked before Black homes, businesses and schools were demolished by urban renewal in the 1970s. (Andrea Clark / North Carolina Collection, Pack Memorial Public Library, Asheville, N.C.)

Experts argue the focus shouldn’t be on whether reparations are divisive but if they are necessary, saying Black American descendants of enslaved people have a valid claim for redress and restitution.

“There hasn’t been this amount of stalling for reparations for Japanese Americans, or around the appropriation for restitution for 9/11 victims, or continued support for Holocaust survivors in the U.S.,” Heath said. “Reparation is only seen as a bad word when we’re talking about repair and restitution for Black people.”

Ultimately, supporters argue the need for reparations should not be judged based on how popular the issue is publicly but instead should be looked at as a necessary correction for the moral, political and economic failures that have been created by federal policy at the expense of Black Americans.

Darity argued that even if detailed reparations measures are not politically feasible in Congress now, it is important that “the footprints must be put in place” for future efforts.

“If you think about the generational relationship to enslavement, you find that it doesn’t really feel all that long ago,” Darity said of efforts to frame reparations as solely focused on the past. “But what’s more important is that the effects of the period of enslavement are still felt and still embodied in the kinds of consequences for Black lives today.”

'Lost' microbes found in ancient poop could relieve chronic illness
By Jack Guy, CNN

Scientists working with samples of ancient feces have found previously unknown microbes that could help in the fight against chronic illnesses such as diabetes.

 Joslin Diabetes Center Study first author Marsha C. Wibowo pictured working on the research.

The microbes lived in our ancestors' digestive systems, forming part of the ancient human gut microbiome, which differs significantly to those found in people living in modern industrialized societies, according to a study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.

The microbiome is a combination of fungi, bacteria and viruses that resides in your gut, primarily in the large intestine, helping digest food, fight disease and regulate the immune system.

Previous research has made a connection between preindustrial diets, greater diversity in the gut microbiome and lower rates of chronic illnesses, and the team set out to find reconstruct ancient human gut microbiomes to investigate this link, researcher Aleksandar Kostic of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston told CNN.

Research in the field has been held back by a lack of well-preserved DNA samples, but the team were able to perform a detailed genetic analysis of eight human feces samples found in Mexico and the southwestern United States, which date from 1,000-2,000 years ago.

The feces were "exquisitely preserved" thanks to the extreme aridity of the desert areas where they were found, Kostic told CNN.

Researchers reconstructed a total of 498 microbial genomes and concluded that 181 were from ancient humans. Of those, 61 had not previously been found in other samples.

The team then compared them with present-day gut microbiomes from industrial and nonindustrial populations and found that the ancient ones are closer to today's non-industrial genomes.

A nonindustrial lifestyle is "characterized by consumption of unprocessed and self-produced foods, limited antibiotic use and a more active lifestyle," according to the study, which uses samples from Fiji, Madagascar, Peru, Tanzania and a Mazahua indigenous community in central Mexico.

Both the ancient and modern nonindustrial genomes contain more genes used to metabolize starches. This may be because people in these societies ate more complex carbohydrates compared with present-day industrial populations.

When microbes disappear or become extinct there are knock-on effects on our health, Kostic told CNN.

"When they're gone we're missing a key piece of what makes us us," he said.

While research is at an early stage, Kostic hopes the microbes reconstructed by the team could eventually be used to reduce the rate of chronic conditions such as obesity or autoimmune diseases.

"We could reseed people with these human-associated microbes," he said.

Research in the field is advancing, said Kostic, with some fecal microbic transplants working toward approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.

The plan is to first see if the rediscovered microbes are in fact present in nonindustrial populations alive today, and then introduce gut biomes from nonindustrial people into animals to see how they are affected.

Next is pinpointing certain microbes that can be introduced to the human gut, and then using synthetic biology to reconstruct them, Kostic said.

At the same time, more archeological research is needed to determine if there is "a unified human microbiome that used to exist," he added.

In the meantime, Kostic said there's nothing we as individuals can do to bring back extinct microbes to our gut microbiomes.

However, we can boost the diversity of our gut microbiomes by eating fiber and complex carbohydrates, exercising and coming into contact with soil and animals, he added.

Opinion: Alberta's tired parents need universal child care

Author of the article: Dr. Sabrina Eliason
Publishing date:May 08, 2021 •

Canada's Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland talks to families virtually in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, April 21, 2021. PHOTO BY BLAIR GABLE /REUTERS


The parents of Alberta are tired.

I hear it in the stories parents tell me in my medical practice. I see it when I look in the mirror.

COVID-19: Alberta launching new vaccination campaign to get province back to normal

The parents of Alberta are the ones working frontline jobs in health-care facilities and retail businesses. We’re the daycare educators, the cleaners, the delivery people, and the grocery store workers. We’re the ones working full-time in makeshift home offices while looking after children on isolation or quarantine or online school. Some of us haven’t received the vaccine and some of us have.

Some of us have quit our jobs to stay at home with our children and some of us have lost our jobs. Some of us feel we’ve heard too much about “the virus,” and some of us are unsure about who or what to believe. We are feeling isolated, and alone. We are uncertain about the future for our children, especially in Alberta.

There is solid evidence that investing in affordable, universally accessible child care is good for the long-term economy and good for children. It expands the labour force by improving women’s labour participation, promotes gender equality, and, in the case of non-profit child-care centres, it improves developmental outcomes.

Our province’s lack of support for the recent federal proposal for universal child care, and recent elimination of the $25-a-day child-care program, or Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) Innovation, are examples of short-sighted economic policy. A universal child-care program is an opportunity to enhance early child learning, accessibility for children with disabilities, and inclusion for children of all social and economic backgrounds. Our government is saying “no” to that.

The claims that for-profit child care promotes innovation, entrepreneurship and flexibility are fallible and are outweighed by the costs on child development. For-profit child-care centres aim to maximize profit by paying lower wages, maximizing child-to staff ratios and charging higher fees to parents. This is a setup for higher staff turnover and greater inconsistency in the quality of caregiving. This has a negative effect on children. Our provincial vision for child care puts a price-tag on early child development that many parents can’t afford.

Another burden our government has placed on parents is the cost of early intervention and supports for children with disabilities. In the last two years, there have been significant reductions in the public funding of interventions for children. The most notable cuts have been in reductions to Program Unit Funding (PUF) and in the elimination of Regional Collaborative Service Delivery (RCSD).

PUF supports early intervention in preschool children who have medical, learning or cognitive issues. Fewer children have been able to access these supports with recent changes to this program. RCSD ensured children and youth with disabilities had interventions such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, mental health therapy and physical therapy in their school. It was a collaborative approach that supported the accessibility, and affordability of developmental interventions — and it doesn’t exist anymore. Children with disabilities in Alberta are being left behind.

Most families aren’t able to afford the interventions they were previously provided through PUF or RCSD. These parents are feeling angry, worried and helpless. The teachers and school teams helping these children are still out there too. They’re being expected to do more with less — less support, less funding, less morale.

The parents of Alberta are the working-age demographic who will pull our economy out of this recession. We are raising the next generation of Albertans isolated from aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas and our usual neighbourhood babysitters. We are investing our energy in our children and our work, and yet we’re feeling like it’s not enough to secure the future our children deserve.

The parents of Alberta are tired. We need Albertans to support universal child care, early intervention and supports for children with disabilities. We need the help of the media to tell our stories. We need voters to tell their MLAs to prioritize the health and development of all children, not just the ones who can afford it. The parents of Alberta are vital to the recovery of our province after this pandemic and we need the voices of Albertans, right now, to help us secure the best possible future for our children.

Dr. Sabrina Eliason is a developmental pediatrician at the Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital in Edmonton. She is also a mother of two young children.

Letters to the Editor

U OF A  workers now caught in the crosshairs by Management in collective bargaining

I work at the University of Alberta as a maintenance worker. The university’s initial bargaining proposal has inspired widespread anger because of its insulting implication that non-academic staff are not worth the consideration of any reasonable offer.

© Provided by Edmonton Journal Members of the Non-Academic Staff Association (NASA), Association of Academic Staff of the University of Alberta (AASUA), students and other supporters hold a vehicle caravan protest against post-secondary education cuts on Saturday, March 27, 2021, in Edmonton. The caravan began at the South Campus Saville Sports Complex and ended at the Alberta Legislature.

Non-academic staff have worked without without a cost-of-living raise for the past three years. Since the mid-1980s, the largest increase we’ve seen is 4.75 per cent (once). Most increases have been between zero (five times) and three per cent, with 2.68-per-cent rollbacks from 1994-1997. The average cost of living adjustment since the mid-1980s is 4.4 per cent. The average wage increase over these years is 1.9 per cent. We have gotten poorer.

Now, the university wants to make us poorer yet, rolling back our wages by three per cent. Then they want us to pay back wages over that three-per-cent reduction between March 31 and the date of ratification. In addition to these salary impacts, they want us to co-pay on our benefits. This will devastate household budgets.

The policies of the provincial government have already destroyed thousands of livelihoods across the province. Those of us fortunate to still have jobs are now caught in the crosshairs.

Dave Wall, Edmonton

EDMONTON JOURNAL

ZIONIST WAR OF EXPANSION & OCCUPATION

Israel vows not to stop Gaza attacks until there is ‘complete quiet’  THE QUIET OF THE DEAD

Defence minister rules out ceasefire as Israeli military says it has killed four senior Hamas commanders

Smoke billows over Gaza City on Wednesday as airstrikes and rocket fire continued during the conflict. Photograph: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images


Oliver Holmes in Jerusalem, Harriet Sherwood and agencies
Wed 12 May 2021 15.50 BST

Israel will not stop its military operation in Gaza until “complete quiet” has been achieved, the country’s defence minister has said, as airstrikes and rocket fire continued throughout Wednesday.

The Israeli military said it had killed four senior Hamas commanders and a dozen more Hamas operatives in a series of strikes. It said it had undertaken a “complex and first-of-its-kind operation” jointly with the Shin Bet security service.

The dead included Bassem Issa, the Gaza City Brigade commander, the head of the cyber-command and the head of Hamas’s production network, said a security agency statement.

“We eliminated senior Hamas commanders and this is just the beginning,” said the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. “We will inflict blows on them that they couldn’t even dream of.”

The Israeli military would use “increasing force”, he added.

Hamas’s armed wing later confirmed the death of a senior commander and a number of fighters. “The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades take pride in … the martyrdom of the commander Bassem Issa,” a statement said.

The killings are likely to harden Hamas’s resolve to continue its rocket assaults on Israel. After the Israeli military operation, Hamas fired 50 rockets towards Ashdod, a city close to the Gaza border. Sirens sounded every few minutes on Wednesday afternoon in towns and communities close to the border.


Living in Israel: how have you been affected by the recent violence?


As the death toll from the most serious conflict between Israel and the Palestinians for nine years mounted throughout the day, international leaders called for restraint amid fears of a full-scale war.

But Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, bucked the trend by demanding in a phone call with the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, that the international community “give Israel a strong and deterrent lesson” over its conduct toward the Palestinians.

Amid reports that Egyptian mediators were attempting to broker a deal to end the fighting, Benny Gantz, the Israeli defence minister, said: “Israel is not preparing for a ceasefire. There is currently no end date for the operation. Only when we achieve complete quiet can we talk about calm.”

He added: “We will not listen to moral preaching against our duty to protect the citizens of Israel.”

Jonathan Conricus, a spokesperson for the Israeli army, said he expected the fighting to intensify. Asked about a possible ceasefire, he said: “I don’t think my commanders are aware, or particularly interested.”

Israel’s cabinet was due to meet on Wednesday evening to discuss the worsening situation, and an Egyptian delegation was expected to enter Gaza for ceasefire talks. Egypt has been a key player in brokering ceasefires in previous conflicts between Israel and Gaza.

Since Monday, the Israeli military has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Gaza and Palestinian militant groups have fired multiple rocket barrages at Israeli cities. Two high-rise buildings containing apartments and offices in Gaza City have been targeted.

Israeli airstrike collapses tower block and Hamas rocket hits bus as violence escalates – video

Gaza’s death toll has risen 48, including 14 children, according to the health ministry. More than 300 people have been wounded. Six Israelis, including a child, have been killed by rocket fire and dozens wounded.


Towns in Israel with mixed Jewish and Arab populations have also experienced violent clashes. In Lod, a town south of Tel Aviv, the mayor warned of “civil war” and called for the Israeli military to restore calm. Police units were redeployed from the West Bank to Lod as people threw rocks and set fire to cars and buildings, including synagogues.

Tor Wennesland, the UN’s Middle East envoy, said leaders on all sides must “take the responsibility of de-escalation”.

Ahead of briefing the 15 members of the UN security council on the crisis on Wednesday – its second such meeting in three days – Wennesland warned: “The cost of war in Gaza is devastating and is being paid by ordinary people. Stop the fire immediately. We’re escalating towards a full-scale war.”

The security council session is likely to be a test of the Biden administration’s position on an issue that it has sought to play down. On Tuesday, it blocked a security council statement calling for a ceasefire.

In the UK, Boris Johnson urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to “step back from the brink”. Calling for both sides to show restraint, the prime minister said: “The UK is deeply concerned by the growing violence and civilian casualties and we want to see an urgent de-escalation of tensions.”

In parliament, the Foreign Office minister James Cleverly said Israel had an absolute legitimate right of self-defence but its actions must be proportionate, cautious and dedicated to avoiding civilian casualties.

A torched vehicle in the city of Lod, Israel. Photograph: Nir Alon/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

Urging an end to the cycle of violence and any kind of provocation, he described Hamas attacks on Israel as “acts of terrorism”, adding “they must permanently end their incitement and rocket fire against Israel”.

The UK government was in contact with both Israeli and Palestinian ministers in an attempt to calm the crisis, he said.

The Conservative MP Richard Graham said the Israeli military had “effectively attacked the al-Aqsa mosque, the centre of Islamic worship in Jerusalem for hundreds of years”. Although the Hamas attacks were unacceptable, “a major cause of the increased discontent was the number of illegal convictions from East Jerusalem”, he added.

In recent weeks, anger has grown over Israel’s half-century occupation, its ever-deepening military grip over Palestinian life and a wave of evictions and demolitions. In Jerusalem, hundreds of Palestinians have been wounded in near-nightly protests that escalated over the weekend and spread to other areas of Israel and the occupied West Bank.

Israel and Hamas have fought three wars, which were largely seen as failures for both sides, with Hamas still in power and Israel continuing to maintain a crippling blockade.

AN EGO AS BIG AS ALL OUTDOORS

Jeff Bezos wanted to do a big reveal when Amazon announced its Climate Pledge, and Amazon considered having him unveil it from a polar ice cap

ahartmans@businessinsider.com (Avery Hartmans) 

© Provided by Business Insider Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Jeff Bezos wanted a big reveal when Amazon announced its Climate Pledge in 2019.

One idea included having him announce the pledge from a polar ice cap.

Amazon settled on having Bezos unveil it at the National Press Club instead.

When Amazon unveiled its ambitious Climate Pledge two years ago, CEO Jeff Bezos wanted a big reveal.

In the months leading up to Amazon's announcement in September 2019, Amazon employees worked to figure out the best "grand gesture" - like having Bezos reveal the Climate Pledge in a video he would personally film on a polar ice cap, according to the new book "Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire," by Brad Stone.

According to Stone, employees from Amazon's public relations department and sustainability teams spent a few days trying to figure out how to send Bezos to the Arctic before giving up on the idea. The plan would have been incredibly challenging, not to mention it would have left a notable carbon footprint - not the best look given that the Climate Pledge vows that Amazon will be carbon neutral by 2040.

A spokesperson for Amazon declined to comment.

Amazon eventually settled on having Bezos announce the pledge during a conversation at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, with Christiana Figueres, the former executive secretary for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Read more: Internal memo shows one tactic Amazon uses to force a set number of employees out every year

As part of the Climate Pledge, Amazon has pledged to regularly measure and report its emissions and to eventually eliminate its carbon use, and will meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, the United Nations' climate change treaty, 10 years ahead of schedule. Since 2019, other major corporations like Uber and JetBlue have joined the pledge.

But Amazon's own employees have criticized the company's environmental initiatives, saying Amazon should push to be carbon neutral by 2030 instead.

In June of last year, Amazon announced that a Seattle sports arena that's home to the WNBA's Seattle Storm and Seattle's NHL team would be renamed "Climate Pledge Arena" to serve "as a regular reminder of the urgent need for climate action."

From Jeff Bezos to Elon Musk, Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire beat deserves scrutiny

By Brian Stelter, CNN Business 
A version of this article first appeared in the "Reliable Sources" newsletter. 

WANTED FOR THEFT OF THE COMMONWEALTH

This era of extreme wealth, expanding inequality, and expected oversharing has given rise to a new beat: Covering America's billionaire class.

Consider just the past few days of headlines: Lots of news and noise about Elon Musk's turn hosting "SNL." New revelations about Bill Gates' divorce. No shortage of opinions about how Mark Zuckerberg should handle Donald Trump's suspended Facebook account.

On a more personal note, new complaints about Zuckerberg's land holdings in Hawaii. And at least two eye-popping stories about Jeff Bezos: One about his new superyacht that will come with its own "support yacht," and another about his sale of nearly $2.5 billion in Amazon stock. Bezos is also the subject of a new book, "Amazon Unbound," by Brad Stone, which hits on Tuesday.


This is a different category of coverage than, say, the classic Forbes lists, or the daily Bloomberg Billionaires Index of the world's richest people. Those lists certainly have some value; both Forbes and Bloomberg have dedicated "wealth" teams that do good work. But as the world's richest men and women have an outsized impact on the rest of us, they merit an outsized amount of attention and scrutiny too.

"The other side of inequality"

On Twitter, Recode reporter Teddy Schleifer describes his beat as "billionaires in America," which means subjects like philanthropy, money-in-politics and inequality. "The media does a great job of covering inequality from the lens of the poor," he told me. "But there's actually shockingly little coverage of inequality from the lens of the mega-rich. What motivates these people? Do they feel guilty for, say, getting wealthier during COVID — or is it not their fault? How do they channel their billions into a form of soft power through political donations and philanthropy? I do see the billionaire beat as public-service journalism because it can help us understand the other side of inequality: What it's like to be outrageously rich. It's a challenging beat given all the gatekeepers and fluff, but more newsrooms should be trying to answer these questions."


How to cover the world's richest man

Amazon "is a secretive company and he's a secretive person," Stone said when I asked about his book-length coverage of Bezos and Amazon. So: How to puncture the Bezos bubble? "Fortunately there is a lot of turnover at Amazon," he said, "and there's a vast population of employees who are kind of willing to talk and describe what they saw at the revolution." As for access to Bezos directly, "he's really only done a handful of public appearances, usually with a kind of friendly questioner, and nothing recently," Stone said. Plus, "he's got a lot of channels to go directly to his customers and to his fans." All worthy of scrutiny!


The world's second richest man cracks jokes

On "SNL," Musk "didn't waste any time jumping into jokes about his Twitter account, smoking weed with Joe Rogan, and his son's name," Frank Pallotta wrote in this recap. Musk also shared that he has Asperger's syndrome. "To anyone I've offended, I just want to say, I reinvented electric cars and I'm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship," Musk said. "Did you also think I was going to be a chill normal dude?"

>> Among other firsts, Saturday's "SNL" was the first time the show has ever been live-streamed internationally, via YouTube...


Musk's show -- not very funny?

Brian Lowry writes: "Here's my knee-jerk, 'Old man yells at cloud' reaction to 'SNL:' It was another mostly mediocre episode, in a second half of a season filled with them. The fact that there's a need to make much more out of it because of Musk's appearance/profile frankly says as much about the current traffic-driven media environment as the show itself. And the preliminary ratings -- which show a modest lift, but not a huge one -- are pretty well indicative of how media bubbles can skew one's perceptions..."


There's nothing funny about this

The most-read story on the WSJ website Sunday night was headlined "Melinda Gates Was Meeting With Divorce Lawyers Since 2019."

Emily Glazer and Khadeeja Safdar reported that the Gates divorce was in the works for years. Like this NYT story about the "separate worlds" of the two philanthropists, the Journal story is largely attributed to insiders and other anonymous sources...


"Perhaps the billionaires can't hide any longer"

That's what Stone remarked to me after we got off the air on Sunday. "Social media has put everyone at arms-length," he said. "Everyone in their orbit has a story about them to tell. Elon is an example of someone who has embraced it and bent it to his will, conscripting his following into a fandom. Bezos and Gates are more old-school, and don't do it nearly as gracefully..."


Some intel about the WaPo editor search

On Sunday's "Reliable," Stone said that Washington Post CEO Fred Ryan has been leading the search process for a new exec editor, but Bezos is intimately involved: "Last week I understand that Bezos was in Washington and interviewing some of the finalists for that role..."

LGBT+ campaigners fear more delay to UK conversion therapy ban

Government plan for public to be consulted on measures to tackle practice criticised by gay rights advocates

Jayne Ozanne, a former government adviser on LGBT issues, said a dangerous loophole risked being created if ministers focused purely on coercive practices. Photograph: Sam Atkins


Harriet Sherwood
@harrietsherwood
Tue 11 May 2021 

Campaigners for LGBT+ rights have criticised the prospect of a further delay before ministers fulfil a pledge to ban conversion practices, sometimes known as “gay cure” therapy.

Consultations will be held before measures to ban the “coercive and abhorrent practice” are brought forward, the government said on Tuesday. It first pledged to introduce a ban three years ago.

The government said it wanted to ensure action was “proportionate and effective, and does not have unintended consequences”. Freedom of speech must be defended and religious freedom upheld, it said.

No timeframe has been given for the consultation but the government wants it to be “short and prompt”, the prime minister’s spokesperson said. The government has also commissioned research into the scope of practices and experiences of those subjected to conversion therapy.

Liz Truss, the minister for women and equalities, said: “This government has always been committed to stamping out the practice of conversion therapy. We want to make sure that people in this country are protected, and these proposals mean nobody will be subjected to coercive and abhorrent conversion therapy.”

Jayne Ozanne, who quit as a government adviser on LGBT issues in March, said she was relieved a ban would be introduced but added: “We do not need yet more delay, they have consulted long enough. We need action now before more lives are lost.”

She warned that a “dangerous loophole” risked being created if the government focused purely on coercive practices. Talking therapies and prayer are also used to try to suppress sexuality.

Polling released on Tuesday by YouGov shows that almost two-thirds (64%) of British adults believe conversion therapy should be banned. Support for banning the practice is shared across the political spectrum and all age groups, according to the survey of 1,803 adults in April.

Dr Adrian James, president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said conversion therapy was “unacceptable and harmful” and the college fully supported a ban.

Business leaders in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin urge court to keep Line 5 operating


WASHINGTON — Business leaders in Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin have joined forces with their Canadian counterparts in the legal fight over the Line 5 pipeline.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The U.S. and Canadian chambers of commerce are also included in a new legal brief filed with the U.S. District Court in Michigan.

The filing comes after a similar brief was submitted yesterday by the federal Liberal government urging the court to keep the cross-border pipeline operating.

The chambers spell out in detail a cascade of likely "severe, nationwide and international" consequences if the line running through Michigan is shut down.

They argue that Line 5, which is owned and operated by Calgary-based Enbridge Inc., is a vital source of economic growth and energy throughout the U.S. Midwest.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer gave Enbridge until today to shut down the pipeline, fearing an environmental catastrophe in the Straits of Mackinac, where Line 5 crosses the Great Lakes.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 12, 2021.