Daughters of Kobani author on how Kurdish women fighters in Syria became ‘world’s best hope against Isis’

INTERVIEW

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s new book follows the incredible story of a group of women who stopped the advance of the extremists

The Daughters of Kobani follows the Women’s Protection units (YPJ) in their battle against Isis (Photo: Delil Souleiman/AFP via Getty Images)

By Taz Ali

July 12, 2021 7:00 am

An author has documented the extraordinary journey of a group of young Kurdish women who fought to protect their small Syrian town and ended up stopping the advance of Isis.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, a New York Times bestselling writer, followed the women of the northern Syrian town of Kobani which, in 2014, was under siege by Islamic State militants.

The Women’s Protection Units, also known as the YPJ, were part of the Kurdish forces that managed to reclaim the town in early 2015 and the jihadists were driven back further into Syria. Up to 70 per cent of Kobani was destroyed or damaged after months of street battles.

The story of the women is told in Lemmon’s book The Daughters of Kobani.

“They are not just fighting against Isis but also fighting for women’s equality,” Lemmon told i.

A man looks at the rubble of buildings destroyed in the 2015 clashes between Isis and Kurdish armed groups in Kobani, Syria (Photo: Halil Fidan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Kurds do not have a state of their own and the land they live on is spread over a swathe of Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran (Kobani is on Syria’s northern border with Turkey.)

Across the region, the Kurds have long faced prejudice against their ethnic and linguistic identity.

The YPJ is made up of a mix of women who saw what devastation Isis caused to their community, and also those who had long been committed to standing up for Kurdish rights – including the right to celebrate their culture and use their language.

“All these things the Kurdish community have faced huge challenges in exercising,” said Lemmon, speaking from her home in Washington.

“One young person said, ‘We didn’t think this would be our lives, we never thought that this would be what our future would turn out to be.’

“At the beginning, there were young people who took up arms thinking that they would kick the regime [of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad] out. That’s sort of as far as it went, there was no thought of fighting Isis or anything like that. That was the thing that always struck me, this was a conflict that no one could’ve foreseen.”

One of the women Lemmon interviewed for her book was a fighter from Raqqa – a city in eastern Syria which was also captured by Islamic State. She had been forced by her brother to marry an Isis fighter at the age of 18.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (Photo: Amanda Edwards/Getty Images)

“She went through brutality that, even for somebody like me who has the privilege of seeing and hearing these stories, actually made me sick,” Lemmon said. “She was brave enough to try to escape multiple times, every time she gets sent back. She’s not allowed to go back to her mother’s house according to her brother.

“She’s brutalised by her husband and tries to break free of the marriage, she ends up being harmed in ways that are truly unimaginable.

“She manages to get back to home in Raqqa. I said to her, ‘How are you here? What makes you have the courage to keep getting up every morning?’ And she looks at me and was like, ‘Why should anybody have the right to do this to another person? Why do we just stand by?’”

Azeema standing in the Kobani countryside in January 2015 (Photo: Mustafa Alali)

Another memorable moment came when the author spent an evening with YPJ fighter Azeema, who received a call from her sister. The pair squabbled as Azeema was annoyed with the calls and demanded her sister stop ringing. “Everyone can relate to that moment, you don’t not answer to your family,” Lemmon joked.

“Couple of nights later we sat with her sister, who said, ‘She told me to stop calling, I told you we’re in the middle of a fight with Isis, why are you calling me, I’ll call you when this is over, you got to leave me alone right now – but at least I knew she was alive.’

Read More

Shamima Begum: How ‘Isis brides’ have been left marooned in Syria as the civil war drags on

“The humanity of knowing that’s somebody’s sister, that really stayed with me.”

Lemmon described the terrifying experience of visiting the front line during her trips to Syria between 2017 and 2020, and how many women fighters faced the daily threat of violence almost completely unfazed.

“Klara, one of the commanders, takes us to the front line and just the drive was truly chilling because it’s silent except for distant armed fire and mortar rounds. Klara was completely impervious to it, and that’s when it first struck me that for these women this was their daily commute to work.”

Fighters from the Women’s Protection units (YPJ) (Photo: Delil Souleiman/ AFP via Getty Images)

It was the US-led coalition fighting Isis that thrust the YPJ into the spotlight, Lemmon said. What started in 2013 as a protection unit to safeguard their local areas became something global. Fighting alongside their male colleagues in the YPG (Peoples’ Protection Units), the YPJ became the world’s best option to stop the Isis advance.  

“They weren’t just fighting Isis for themselves, it was for the rest of the world,” Lemmon said.

“When men do remarkable, groundbreaking things, we call them leaders, when women do the same we call them exceptions, and we make them superheroes. And they’re not, they’re just people rising to the moment. They’re not unlike so many other women.”

Daughters of Kobani: The Women Who Took on the Islamic State, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, Swift Press, £16.99 (Hardback)

 DAMN SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT BEFORE

Brexit: Eight in 10 businesses believe leaving EU will cause long-term hurt for UK economy

EXCLUSIVE

An exclusive poll for i shows that firms feel the Government had not done enough to support them through Brexit

More than half of businesses said revenue had either declined or strongly declined due to Brexit. (Photo: Frank Augstein / POOL / AFP)

By David Parsley

July 12, 2021 

More than eight in 10 business owners believe Brexit will have a long-term negative impact on trading with almost half reporting a hit from the UK’s exit from the European Union at the turn of this year, a survey conducted for i has found.

Conducted six months after Brexit, the survey of firms by tax and advisory firm Blick Rothenberg also found that 80 per cent of respondents found the Covid-19 pandemic has hit firms harder than Brexit, but that in the longer term the ending of free trade with the EU will have a more detrimental effect.

Alex Altmann, head of the Brexit advisory team at Blick Rothenberg, said: “While 47 per cent of the responders said that the first six months after Brexit had either a negative or very negative impact to their business, close to 80 per cent said the disruptions due to the pandemic had an even more negative impact to their business than Brexit.

“However, over 80 per cent of responders also said that in the longer-term, Brexit will have a negative impact overall and their expectation is that the UK economy will shrink due to the Brexit deal.”

Eight in ten say Brexit will have a negative impact on the UK economy

More than half of businesses said revenue had either declined or strongly declined due to Brexit, and just under 45 per cent said they experienced a loss or a significant loss in the last six months since the UK left the EU.

Mr Altmann added: “The main reasons for this seem to be complying with the complicated new customs rules (65 per cent) and new VAT rules (50 per cent). But operational challenges, like new administrative burdens, additional taxes and duties (51 per cent) and difficulties recruiting staff (40 per cent) were also considered some of the main disrupters.”

More than half of businesses say they have a decline in revenue because of Brexit

The survey also found 81 per cent of firms believe the UK Government should allow more EU citizens to live and work in the UK.

“This reflects the devastating impact the new immigration rules have had to UK employers, who struggle to recruit qualified staff in various sectors of the economy,” said Altmann.

The poll also asked businesses how well the Government had supported them since 1 January, with two thirds saying it had been unsupportive or very unsupportive. More than 80 per cent added they had found it challenging or very hard to find out about specific legislation related to Brexit.

Mr Altmann said: “Given that Brexit is the biggest economic reform in over 50 years, these responses are a bruising reality check for the Brexit information campaign. The business community seems to have lost trust in how the Government is dealing with Brexit and something will have to change over the next months to help businesses recover.”

Rohingya wary as Myanmar's anti-junta resistance reaches out

Issued on: 12/07/2021 

A shadow government led by supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi are welcoming the marginalised Rohingya community into their anti junta coalition STR AFP


Sittwe (Myanmar) (AFP)

A shadow government is breaking taboos in Buddhist-majority Myanmar by welcoming Rohingya into its anti-junta coalition, but many in the long-persecuted Muslim minority are wary after living through decades of discrimination and deadly violence.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the government of Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted in a February coup, sparking huge pro-democracy protests and a bloody military crackdown.

Dissident lawmakers from her party dominate a "National Unity Government" in exile, rallying support for the resistance among foreign governments and on international news broadcasts.

PUBLICITÉ


Last month they invited the Rohingya to "join hands" to end military rule, promising to repatriate those who fled to Bangladesh after a deadly 2017 military assault on their communities in western Rakhine state.

They also pledged to grant citizenship to the minority, which has long been stateless after decades of discriminatory policies.

The use of the word "Rohingya" was new -- wary of sentiment among the mostly Buddhist, ethnic Bamar-majority population, Suu Kyi's government had referred to the community as "Muslims living in Rakhine."#photo1

But suspicion lingers among those Rohingya still in Myanmar, where they are widely seen as interlopers from Bangladesh and have been denied citizenship, rights and access to services.

"Giving a promise and then getting support from abroad –- it's like putting bait for fish," said Wai Mar, who has been living in a displacement camp for almost a decade.

Reached by a bumpy, potholed road from the western city of Sittwe, the wooden huts of Thet Kay Pyin camp shelter Rohingya chased or burnt out of their homes during earlier clashes with ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in 2012.

"We're worried we exist only to be human shields or scapegoats," Wai Mar added.

Mother of four San Yee, who struggles to provide for her children even with the remittances her husband sends from Malaysia, agrees.#photo2

"We can't put all our trust and expectations in them because we've been oppressed for so long."

Despite the overtures, there are no Rohingya representatives among the National Unity Government's current 32-member cabinet.

- Genocide charges -

"We understood that we wouldn't get everything overnight" after Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy swept a military-backed party aside in 2015 polls, another resident of the camp, Ko Tun Hla, told AFP.

"But we even didn't get basic human rights, for example, freedom of movement, becoming a citizen, returning to our original homes –- we didn't get any of those."#photo3

From the camp they heard reports of a horrific crackdown that sent 700,000 of their kinsfolk across the border to Bangladesh, bringing tales of rape, arson and murder.

The Myanmar public was largely unsympathetic to the Rohingya's plight, while activists and journalists reporting on the issues faced vitriolic abuse online.

After the military was accused of genocide, Suu Kyi travelled to The Hague to defend the generals at the UN's top court.

Months later they deposed her in a coup.

- 'Not Rohingya' -

With anti-junta protesters in majority Bamar cities like Yangon and Mandalay shown no quarter by the military, many in Thet Kay Pyin are fearful.

"As they are killing their own people cruelly and brutally without any hesitation, they would do more to us since they don't care about us," said Tun Hla, another resident of the camp.#photo4

A few days after the February coup, soldiers came to Thet Kay Pyin and held a meeting, at first reassuring people and asking them to stay calm, Win Maung said.

"But when we asked for our rights, they spoke in a threatening way."

"They said we are Bengali, not Rohingya, and they threatened to shoot us too."

Bengali is a derogatory term for the Rohingya in Myanmar which falsely implies they are recent immigrants from Bangladesh.

Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing -- who was head of the armed forces during the 2017 crackdown -- has dismissed the word Rohingya as "an imaginary term".

For many in Thet Kay Pyin, after almost a decade of limbo, political allegiance comes second.

"If they will give our rights, we will cooperate with the military, NLD or NUG," said Ko Tun Hla.#photo5

"If our rights will be given, we will cooperate with anyone."

Added San Yee: "I want to go back and live my life as before -- that's my hope.

"But when will our expectation and hope come true?" she sighed. "Only after we die?"

© 2021 AFP

 

Just 25 mega-cities produce 52% of the world's urban greenhouse gas emissions

New research published by the open access publisher Frontiers inventories greenhouse gas emissions of 167 globally distributed cities. The study shows that just 25 mega-cities produce 52% of the greenhouse gas emissions from the studied cities.

FRONTIERS

Research News

 

In 2015, 170 countries worldwide adopted the Paris Agreement, with the goal limiting the average global temperature increase to 1.5°C. Following the agreement, many countries and cities proposed targets for greenhouse gas mitigation. However, the UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2020 shows that, without drastic and strict actions to mitigate the climate crisis, we are still heading for a temperature increase of more than 3°C by the end of the 21st century.

A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities presents the first global balance sheet of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) emitted by major cities around the world. The aim was to research and monitor the effectiveness of historical GHG reduction policies implemented by 167 globally distributed cities that are at different developmental stages.

While only covering 2% of the Earth's surface, cities are big contributors to the climate crisis. But current urban GHG mitigation targets are not sufficient to achieve global climate change targets by the end of this century. "Nowadays, more than 50% of the global population resides in cities. Cities are reported to be responsible for more than 70% of GHG emissions, and they share a big responsibility for the decarbonization of the global economy. Current inventory methods used by cities vary globally, making it hard to assess and compare the progress of emission mitigation over time and space," says co-author Dr Shaoqing Chen, of Sun Yat-sen University, China.

Key findings

1. The top 25 cities accounted for 52% of the total urban GHG emissions.

2. Cities in Europe, Australia, and the US had significantly higher per capita emissions than cities in developing areas.

3. Stationary energy and transportation were the two main sources of emissions.

4. Of the 42 cities that had time-series traceable data, 30 decreased the annual GHG emissions over the study period. Though in several cities, there was an increase in emissions.

5. 113 out of the 167 set varying types of GHG emission reduction targets, while 40 have set carbon neutrality goals.

The biggest polluters

First, the authors conducted sector-level GHG emission inventories of the 167 cities - from metropolitan areas such as Durban, South Africa, to cities such as Milan, Italy. Then, they analyzed and compared the carbon reduction progresses of the cities based on the emission inventories recorded in different years (from 2012 to 2016). Lastly, they assessed the cities' short-, mid-, and long-term carbon mitigation goals. The cities were chosen from 53 countries (in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania) and were selected based on representativeness in urban sizes and regional distribution. The degree of development was distinguished based on whether they belonged to developed and developing countries according to the UN classification criteria.

The results showed that both developed and developing countries have cities with high total GHG emissions, but that megacities in Asia (such as Shanghai in China and Tokyo in Japan) were especially important emitters. The inventory of per capita emissions showed that cities in Europe, the US, and Australia had significantly higher emissions than most cities in developing countries. China, classified here as a developing country, also had several cities where per capita emissions matched those of developed countries. It is important to note that many developed countries outsource high carbon production chains to China, which increases export-related emissions for the latter.

The researchers also identified some of the most important sources of greenhouse gas emissions. "Breaking down the emissions by sector can inform us what actions should be prioritized to reduce emissions from buildings, transportation, industrial processes and other sources," says Chen. Stationary energy - which includes emissions from fuel combustion and electricity use in residential and institutional buildings, commercial buildings, and industrial buildings - contributed between 60 and 80% of total emissions in North American and European cities. In one third of the cities, more than 30% of total GHG emissions were from on-road transportation. Meanwhile, less than 15% of total emissions came from railways, waterways, and aviation.

Lastly, the findings show that the levels of emissions increase and decrease varied between the cities over the study period. For 30 cities, there was a clear emission decrease between 2012 and 2016. The top four cities with the largest per capita reduction were Oslo, Houston, Seattle, and Bogotá. The top four cities with the largest per capita emissions increase were Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Johannesburg, and Venice.

Policy recommendations

Of the 167 cities, 113 have set varying types of GHG emission reduction targets, while 40 have set carbon neutrality goals. But this study joins many other reports and research that show that we are a long way off achieving the goals set by the Paris Agreement.

Chen and colleagues make three key policy recommendations. First: "Key emitting sectors should be identified and targeted for more effective mitigation strategies. For example, the differences in the roles that stationary energy use, transportation, household energy use, and waste treatments play for cities should be assessed."

Second, development of methodologically consistent global GHG emission inventories is also needed, to track the effectiveness of urban GHG reductions policies. Lastly: "Cities should set more ambitious and easily-traceable mitigation goals. At a certain stage, carbon intensity is a useful indicator showing the decarbonization of the economy and provides better flexibility for cities of fast economic growth and increase in emission. But in the long run, switching from intensity mitigation targets to absolute mitigation targets is essential to achieve global carbon neutrality by 2050."

###

Robots to the rescue after nuclear disaster
Lesley Stahl 

 CBS News

More than 10 years have passed since a monster earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan and triggered what became, after Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

© Credit: CBSNews robotsmain.jpg

When three of its six reactors melted down, hot fuel turned to molten lava and burned through steel walls and concrete floors. To this day, no one knows exactly where inside the reactor buildings the fuel is. And it is so deadly, no human can go inside to look for it. So, as we first reported in 2018, the Japanese company that owns the crippled plant has turned to robots

Robots come to the rescue after Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

 Reactors two and three at the Daiichi Power Plant / Credit: CBS News

There are four-legged robots, robots that climb stairs and even robots that can swim into reactors flooded with water. They're equipped with 3D scanners, sensors and cameras that map the terrain, measure radiation levels and look for the missing fuel.


This is part of a massive clean up that's expected to cost nearly $200 billion and take decades.

Lesley Stahl: Has anything like this cleanup, in terms of the scope, ever happened before?

Lake Barrett: No, this is a unique situation here. It's never happened in human history. It's a challenge we've never had before."It was truly Hell on Earth."

Lake Barrett is a nuclear engineer and former Department of Energy official who oversaw the cleanup of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, Three Mile Island. He was hired as a senior adviser by TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company that owns the plant and is in charge of the effort to find the missing fuel.

He's also advising on the development of new robots like this six-legged spider robot that engineers are designing to hang from scaffolding and climb onto equipment. He describes them as...

Lake Barrett: Very advanced working robots that will actually be the ones with long, muscular arms and laser cutters and such that will go in and actually take the molten fuel and put it in an engineered canister and retrieve it.

Lesley Stahl: Should we think of this as a project like sending someone to the moon?

Lake Barrett: It's even a bigger project in my view. But there's a will here to clean this up as there was a will to put a man on the moon. And these engineering tasks can be done successfully.

Lesley Stahl: Why not just bury this place? Why not do what they did at Chernobyl? Just cover it up, bury it, and just leave it here all-- you know, enclosed?

Lake Barrett: Number one this is right next to the sea. We're 100 yards from the ocean. We have typhoons here in Japan. This is also a high earthquake zone. And there's gonna be future earthquakes. So these are unknowns that the Japanese and no one wants to deal with

.

Lake Barrett, who oversaw the cleanup of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, Three Mile Island / Credit: CBS News

The earthquake that caused the meltdown measured 9.0, The most powerful ever recorded in Japan and triggered a series of tsunami waves that swept away cars, houses and entire towns. Killing more than 15,000 people.

At Fukushima Daiichi, the enormous waves washed over the plant, flooding the reactors and knocking out power to the cooling pumps that had kept the reactor cores from overheating. Lake Barrett took us to a hill overlooking the reactors where the radiation levels are still relatively high.

Lesley Stahl: So this is actually right where-- where it all happened? The heart of the disaster, right here?

Lake Barrett: Correct. There's reactor number one, reactor number two, reactor number three. And when the earthquake happened, 100 miles away, these buildings all shook and these towers all shook. But the design was such that they were safe. But 45 minutes later, waves were racing in, tsunami waves, from the earthquake, and there were seven waves that came in at 45 feet high. And put the station in what we call "station blackout." They had no power. And the cores got hotter inside, and hotter, and hotter again until the uranium started to melt.

© Provided by CBS News Fukushima's ghost towns 04:14

Lesley Stahl: How many tons of radioactive waste was developed here?

Lake Barrett: Probably 500 to 1,000 tons in each building.

Lesley Stahl: So how long will it be lethal?

Lake Barrett: It will be lethal for thousands of years.

Lesley Stahl: What we're talking about really is three meltdowns?

Lake Barrett: Yes. It was truly Hell on Earth."No one is gonna send a worker in there because they'd be overexposed in just a matter of seconds."

The meltdowns triggered huge explosions that sent plumes of radioactive debris into the atmosphere, forcing the evacuation of everyone within a 12-mile radius – about 160,000 people in all. Weeks later, TEPCO officials engaged in so-called kowtow diplomacy – allowing townspeople to berate them as they prostrated themselves in apology.

Thousands of workers were sent to the countryside to decontaminate everything touched by radiation including digging up dirt and putting it in bags – lots of bags.

But while much of the evacuation zone has been decontaminated, there are still entire neighborhoods that are like ghost towns, silent and lifeless with radiation levels that remain too high.

At the plant they're capturing contaminated groundwater, about 150 tons a day, and storing it in tanks, as far as the eye can see.

Lake Barrett: Water is always the major challenge here. And it's going to remain a major challenge until the entire cores are removed.

The closer workers get to the reactors, the more protective gear they have to wear, as we discovered.© Provided by CBS News Correspondent Lesley Stahl and Lake Barrett suit up / Credit: CBS News

We were zipped into Tyvek coveralls and made to wear two pairs of socks and 3 pairs of gloves.

Lake Barrett: Okay, we've got tape.

Not an inch of skin was exposed. The layers of protection include a mask...

Lesley Stahl: It's a little loose.

Lake Barrett: We'll tighten it up.

...That often fogged up.

Lake Barrett: How do you feel?

Lesley Stahl: Good.

And a dosimeter to register the amount of radiation we'd be exposed to.

We were ready for battle. We went with a team of TEPCO workers to unit three, one of the reactors that melted down on that March day, 10 years ago, that the Japanese call, simply 3/11.

Lesley Stahl: Lake!

Lake Barrett: There you are, Unit 3.

Lesley Stahl: Watch it. Step.

Lake Barrett: These are shield plates because there's cesium in the ground.

In the years since the accident, much of the damage to the building has been repaired.

© Provided by CBS News

But it's still dangerous to spend a lot of time here. We could stay only 15 minutes.

Lesley Stahl: There's this number I've been seeing, 566.

Lake Barrett: Right. That's telling you the radiation level that we're in. It's fairly high here. That's why we're gonna be here a short time.

Lesley Stahl: How close are you and I, right this minute, to the core?

Lake Barrett: The-- the melted cores are about 70 feet that way.

Lesley Stahl: Seventy from here--

Lake Barrett: From here.

Lesley Stahl: --is the melted core?

Lake Barrett: Correct, that's right over in here. We don't know quite where other than it fell down into the floor.

Lesley Stahl: So if you sent a worker in right now to find it, how long would they survive?

Lake Barrett: No one is gonna send a worker in there because they'd be overexposed in just a matter of seconds

.

 Provided by CBS News

Enter the robots.

Lesley Stahl: This is the robot research center.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Yes. This is for remote control technology development.

In 2016, the Japanese government opened this $100 million research center near the plant where a new generation of robots is being developed by teams of engineers and scientists from the nation's top universities and tech companies.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata is the center's principal researcher.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: This is our newest robot, J-11.

Lesley Stahl: So, number 11. And it's an obstacle course.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Yes. the operators use the camera image in front of the robot. But it's so many hours required to train. Because it looks very easy, but it's quite difficult.

They also train here in this virtual-reality room where 3D data taken inside the reactors by the robots is projected onto this screen. Operators, using special glasses, can go where no humans can.

Lesley Stahl: So we're actually walking through--

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Uh-huh.

Lesley Stahl: --a part of a reactor.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Uh-huh. You feel some immersive experience.

Lesley Stahl: Y-- so as if you're in there.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Yes.

Lesley Stahl: I actually wanna duck. I mean, that's how real it feels to me. Like here we're going under this thing. I have to duck.

Dr. Kuniaki Kawabata: Ah, yes.

© Provided by CBS News

But even with all the high-tech training and know-how, the robots have run into problems. For the early models, it was the intense levels of radiation - that fried their electronics and cameras.

Lake Barrett: Their lifetime was hours. We hoped it would be days, but it was for hours.

Lesley Stahl: Tell us what happened to the robot named Scorpion. This is a highly sophisticated, and I gather everybody thought this was the answer.

Lake Barrett: That was gonna be the first robot we were going to put inside the containment vessel, which is where we need the information the most 'cause that's where the core is.

This is Scorpion, whose mission cost an estimated $100 million. It was designed to flatten out and slither through narrow pipes and passageways on its way to the core. And, like a scorpion, it raises its tail.

Lake Barrett: The tail would come up with a camera on top with lights. Because you have to have its own lights. It's all dark inside. There're no regular lights. So that was the plan. And we had great expectations and hope for that. We all did. Took a year to prepare, and it was hard work.

But when Scorpion went inside, it hit some debris and got stuck after traveling less than 10 feet.

Lesley Stahl: I can't imagine the frustration l-- levels.

Lake Barrett: Well, but you learn more from-- from failure sometimes than you do from success.

They had more success with this robot named Little Sunfish, which was designed to swim inside one of the reactors flooded with water. In preparing for Little Sunfish's mission, engineers spent months doing test runs inside this enormous simulation tank, fine-tuning the propellers, cameras, sensors and 65 yards of electric cable -- all built to withstand intense levels of radiation.

© Provided by CBS News Little Sunfish / Credit: CBS News

They used nuclear reactor number five to help plan the mission. It didn't melt down when the tsunami hit and is nearly identical to the one Little Sunfish would scout. Finally, in 2017, the swimming robot made its foray into the heart of the reactor. To look for the missing fuel. Barrett took us into unit 5 to show us how it maneuvered through the labyrinth of pipes and debris inside the reactor.

Lake Barrett: The Little Sunfish came down on the edge and it swam underwater down through this little entryway here underneath the reactor vessel.

Lesley Stahl: Is this the route Little Sunfish took?

Lake Barrett: Yes this is. The Little Sunfish swam thru this portal, down into this area, it went around the side. It went down through this grating, which was gone. We are standing directly underneath the reactor vessel. Molten fuel came through here and it jetted out under very high pressure. And then it came out slowly like a lava in a volcano, and it fell down and burned its way through this grating down to the floor.

This is what Little Sunfish saw as technicians guided it through the pipes and hatchways of the flooded interior. It beamed back images revealing clumps of debris, fuel rods, half-destroyed equipment and murky glimpses of what looks like solidified lava -- the first signs, TEPCO officials say, of the missing fuel.

Lake Barrett: These robotic steps so far have been significant steps. But it is only a small step on a very, very long journey.

Lesley Stahl: This is gonna take you said decades with an "S." How many decades?

Lake Barrett: We don't know for sure. The goal here is 40-- 30-- 40 years. You know, I personally think it may be even 50-- 60, but it's--

Lesley Stahl: Oh, maybe longer.

Lake Barrett: It, well, it may be longer. But the reality is this is a challenge that's never been dealt with before. But every step is a positive step. You learn from that and go forward to another step.

The next step, announced in April by the Japanese government, is a controversial one: releasing into the Pacific Ocean the more than one million tons of contaminated wastewater stored at the site. The government says the water will be treated to remove all dangerous isotopes and diluted to well below safety standards for drinking water. But the plan – which is set to begin in two years and will take decades to complete – has infuriated local officials and Fukushima's fishing community, as well as Japan's neighbors, South Korea and China.

Produced by Richard Bonin and Ayesha Siddiqi

This pizza chain owner who pays $16 an hour says there's no labor shortage, just a shortage of businesses willing to pay a decent wage

ztayeb@businessinsider.com (Zahra Tayeb) 20 hrs ago
Co-founder of &pizza Steve Salis (left) and CEO Michael Lastoria (right). Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The CEO of restaurant chain &pizza says there's no labor shortage, only a wage shortage.

He's been paying employees $16/hr since before the pandemic and says he's fully staffed.

He said he'd received more than 100 applications for each job this year.

Business owners say they're struggling to find staff. Not so the CEO of &pizza, a restaurant chain in Washington, DC, who claims that he's been bombarded with job applications.

Michael Lastoria told Insider that business was booming at the pizza chain's 51 locations and all were fully staffed. He said that the secret was paying staff a proper wage.

The crippling US labor shortage has been felt in all corners of the economy, including hospitality and ride-hailing. It's caused some businesses to slash opening hours, cut production, and raise prices. Nearly half of US restaurant owners said they struggled to pay their rent in May because staffing shortages hurt their revenues.

But it hasn't knocked &pizza, Lastoria said.

While opening 12 new locations this year, Lastoria said he'd received well over 100 applications for each job. "Our new locations are fully staffed and we plan to open another 15 by the end of the year," he said.

Lastoria said he'd been able to dodge the labor shortage by leveraging an employee-centric business model that involves paying staff $16 an hour on average, among other benefits.

"We are living proof that the claims that business owners are making about the impossibility of paying people enough money to live on are false," Lastoria said. Those claims were designed to protect the old corporate mindset that permits shockingly high executive pay and staff exploitation, he said.

Employees working at &pizza are entitled to benefits such as paid leave for activism and healthcare, Lastoria said. "We built this company around taking care of workers because without them we wouldn't exist," he said.

The fact that the average minimum wage worker has to work 79 hours a week to afford rent for a one-bedroom apartment is the real crisis, Lastoria said. "There isn't a labor shortage, there is a shortage of business owners willing to pay a living wage.

"The idea that wages couldn't possibly rise even once over the past 12 years while prices went up, while inflation went up and while the cost of living went up, has resulted in the 'shortage' [business owners] are experiencing today.

"Higher wages lead to greater consumer spending and greater workforce productivity, things every company benefits from."

A competitive labor market has led to workers "rage-quitting" their jobs to protest poor pay and working conditions. A former employee at Dollar General recently told Insider how she rage-quit her job in the spring of 2021 because of the fraught work environment. Similar incidents have occurred at McDonald's, Chipotle, Hardee's, and Wendy's locations around the US.

Lastoria said: "If you aren't paying your employees enough to cover basic survival costs, what possible incentive could a person have to take that job?"

THIRD WORLD USA

New study finds that it can be hard to

eat healthy when relying on US food

assistance programs

10 July 2021

Nearly nine out of 10 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants face barriers in providing their household with a healthy diet throughout the month, based on a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) study.

The study, Barriers that Constrain the Adequacy of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Allotments, conducted in 2018, finds that 88% of participants report encountering some type of hurdle to a healthy diet.

The most common, reported by 61% of SNAP participants, is the cost of healthy foods. Participants who reported struggling to afford nutritious foods were more than twice as likely to experience food insecurity. Other barriers range from a lack of time to prepare meals from scratch (30%) to the need for transportation to the grocery store (19%) to no storage for fresh or cooked foods (14%).

“No one in America should have to worry about whether they can put healthy food on the table for themselves or their children,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “[This] report makes clear we still have work to do to ensure all Americans not only have food to eat, but access to nutritious foods.”

“SNAP benefits are a nutrition lifeline for millions of Americans,” said Stacy Dean, USDA’s deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition, and consumer services. “So it’s vital that the program helps enable participants to achieve a healthy diet amidst the real world challenges they face. The study findings released today indicate that we’re not yet there.”

USDA is dedicated to enhancing the nation’s food safety net, ensuring SNAP participants not only have enough to eat but also access to nutritious foods. As directed by Congress in the 2018 Farm Bill, the department is currently re-evaluating the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP), which is used to set SNAP benefit amounts.

Since it was first introduced in 1975, the value of the TFP has stayed the same, adjusting only for inflation. In the meantime, our understanding of nutrition has evolved significantly, and there have been major changes to the food supply, consumption patterns, and the circumstances of SNAP participants, resulting in an out-of-date food plan. The ongoing re-evaluation will help ensure the TFP affords families a realistic, healthy diet on a budget.

In good times and tough times, SNAP is the most far-reaching, powerful tool available to ensure that all Americans, regardless of background, can afford healthy food. Nearly 42 million Americans – a large portion of whom are children, people with disabilities, and the elderly – currently rely on SNAP benefits each month. Participating in SNAP has been shown to increase food security and have a positive impact on participants’ health.

The infographic can be downloaded here. 

TheCattleSite News Desk

UK
Govt bill ‘would allow Holocaust deniers and conspiracy theorists to sue universities’

“It is shocking that the Conservatives are introducing a new law to give Holocaust deniers, anti-vaxxers and people harmful to public interest the opportunity to sue their way to a platform at universities," Labour said.

 by Andra Maciuca
11 July 2021 


Photo: PA

Government plans to protect free speech in universities across England and Wales could allow Holocaust deniers and anti-vaxxers to sue the colleges that did not give them a platform.

The warning by Labour comes as the party promised to vote against the ‘hate speech bill’, which they say is very divisive and harmful, according to The Guardian.

Universities UK have also expressed serious concerns about the Tories’ bill and its potential consequences.

Free speech bill

According to the newspaper, the government argues the bill would let the Office for Students implement measures which ensure freedom of speech in higher education settings.

The measures would include “a complaints system and redress for breaches of free speech duties through the introduction of a statutory tort, extending duties on free speech to students’ unions and creating a role of director of freedom of speech and academic freedom at the OfS.”

Under the bill, university staff could also sue if they think they were denied promotions or new jobs because of their opinions.

‘Shocking’

Kate Green, shadow education secretary, said: “It is shocking that the Conservatives are introducing a new law to give Holocaust deniers, anti-vaxxers and people harmful to public interest the opportunity to sue their way to a platform at universities.”

She added the government is wasting time whilst supporting those whose only goal is to spread hate and division.

Universities UK, representing 140 universities, said there is “significant concern over what the unintended consequences of this bill could be.”

“This bill could make it easier for those who promote conspiracy theories or ‘alternative facts’ to speak on university campuses – as well as provide them with the opportunity to take the university or students’ union to court if they feel they have been denied a platform,” the organisation said.

It added the bill could “lead to courts becoming filled with minor disputes, while incurring significant cost, time and reputational damage to universities, and ultimately detracting from their efforts to champion freedom of speech”.

G20 recognizes carbon pricing as climate change tool for first time

Efforts to acknowledge carbon prices as a way to tackle global warming were previously rebuffed by the U.S. Trump administration

By David Lawder

Saturday, 10 July 202

VENICE, Italy, July 10 (Reuters) - G20 finance leaders recognized carbon pricing as a potential tool to address climate change for the first time in an official communique on Saturday, taking a tentative step towards promoting the idea and coordinating carbon reduction policies.

The move marked a massive shift from the previous four years when former U.S. President Donald Trump's administration routinely opposed the mention of climate change as a global risk in such international statements.

The communique, issued on Saturday after a meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors in the Italian city of Venice, which is threatened by rising sea levels, inserted a mention of carbon pricing among a "wide set of tools" on which countries should coordinate to lower greenhouse gas emissions.

Such tools include investing in sustainable infrastructure and new technologies to promote decarbonization and clean energy, "including the rationalisation and phasing-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption and, if appropriate, the use of carbon pricing mechanisms and incentives, while providing targeted support for the poorest and the most vulnerable," said the communique from the financial leaders of the world's 20 major economies.

The statement was issued just days before the European Union was scheduled to unveil a controversial carbon-adjustment border tax on goods from countries with high carbon emissions.

"It is the first time in a G20 communique you could have these two words 'carbon pricing' being introduced as a solution for the fight against climate change," French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told reporters. "We have been pushing very hard to have these two words ... introduced into a G20 communique."

Those efforts met strong U.S. resistance for most of Trump's presidency, during which the United States quickly withdrew from the Paris climate agreement.

At a summit in Saudi Arabia in 2020, then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin agreed to a G20 reference to climate change, but not as a downside risk to global growth. Instead, it was included in a reference to the Financial Stability Board's work examining the implications of climate change for financial stability.

The carbon pricing mention on Saturday marks the influence of the Biden administration, which immediately rejoined the Paris agreement in January and has set out ambitious carbon reduction targets and clean energy and transportation investment plans.

But while supporting emissions reductions, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on Friday for better international coordination on carbon-cutting policies to avoid trade frictions.

The EU's carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) would impose levies on the carbon content of imported goods in an effort to discourage "carbon leakage," the transfer of production to countries with less onerous emission restrictions. Critics of the measure worry that it could become another trade barrier without reducing emissions.

(Reporting by David Lawder Editing by Paul Simao)