A company that owns 40 Burger Kings had to pay $459,000 to workers after it denied them sick leave, in Chicago's largest-ever labor-law fine

gdean@insider.com (Grace Dean) 

© Provided by Business Insider Tri City Foods failed to grant paid sick leave to 2,473 employees at its Burger King restaurants. 

Faris Hadziq/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The owner of 40 Burger Kings was handed Chicago's largest labor-law violation fine.

Tri City Foods must pay workers $458,931 total after denying them proper sick leave, the mayor said.

It must also pay the city of Chicago $100,000.

A company that owns 40 Burger King restaurants in Chicago has paid the city's largest ever labor-law violation fine.

Tri City Foods is a holding company that says it is Burger King's second-largest franchisee, with restaurants across six Midwest states. It had to pay a $100,000 fine to the city of Chicago, alongside $458,931 in restitution to workers it had denied sick leave to, according to a Thursday press release by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. Block Club Chicago first reported on the news.

Employers at most Chicago businesses must give staff one hour of guaranteed paid sick leave for every 40 hours worked because of a law introduced in July 2017.

But Tri City Foods failed to grant enough paid sick leave to 2,473 employees at its restaurants between July 2017 and November 2020, Chicago's Office of Labor Standards (OLS) found in an investigation, which the OLS said was started by a 311 complaint.

Read more: DoorDash is pushing further into the ghost-kitchen space with a new 'risk-free' model for restaurants

"When you are paid in a minimum wage job, when you worry about your job and living from paycheck to paycheck, it takes a lot to stand up and assert your rights and say something here isn't fair," Lightfoot said in a press conference Thursday.

"And this is a big deal," she continued. "And this person's taking the initiative means not only that person is covered, but the workers are covered to the tune of almost five hundred thousand dollars."

The mayor's office said payments to Tri City Foods staff would be sent over the coming months now that the city and the company had reached a settlement.

Tri City Foods was not immediately contactable for comment.

Mondelez also hit with a massive fine

Chicago-based food and drink company Mondelez also had pay a $95,217 fine after it failed to provide paid sick leave to 465 employees from July 2017 to early 2020, the mayor's office said Thursday in the same press release. It had to pay $476,083 in restitution to these employees.

Mondelez, which owns Cadbury, Oreo, Milka, and other brands, told the OLS it had sought to bargain in good faith with the union representing these employees when the local labor contract expired.

"The City opted to seek a lower than maximum fine in this case due to Mondelez's plausible defense, full cooperation with the investigation, and immediate action to correct the violation," the mayor's office said.

It added that Mondelez had corrected the violations by early 2020, meaning that proper paid sick leave was provided during the pandemic. Payment to covered employees is underway and nearly completed, the mayor's office said.

A Mondelez spokesperson told Insider that its collective bargaining agreements with a local union had expired and that unilaterally implementing local paid leave could have violated the National Labor Relations Act.

"The City and the Company reached a mutual agreement to avoid litigation and resolve the dispute over paid sick leave, and the City has acknowledged the Company's and the Union's obligation under federal labor law to continue bargaining over paid sick leave," the spokesperson said, adding that Mondelez moved "immediately" to make corrections following the settlement.

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Unemployed job seekers just don't like the jobs available, survey says. There are just too many jobs that don't pay enough.
insider@insider.com (Juliana Kaplan)

© Provided by Business Insider Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images

As workers quit en masse and jobs continue to open, job hunters are still struggling to find the right job.
A FlexJobs survey of 1,800 unemployed workers find that nearly half are frustrated with the search.
Many are only finding low-paying positions, showing a labor mismatch still persists.

Millions of Americans are unemployed, millions are quitting their jobs, and employers are struggling to find workers, as the labor market poses a mismatch between open position and what workers want. New data suggests it's worse than a mismatch: the jobs on offer just aren't good enough.

A survey of 1,800 workers by remote and flexible jobs site FlexJobs found that workers are still dissatisfied, even amidst what should be a hot job market as openings skyrocket - alongside workers leaving roles en masse. But of those workers surveyed, 48% said they're "frustrated with their job search" - because they're not finding the right positions.

And 41% said there "aren't enough openings in their preferred professions." It could be due to a proliferation of low-wage jobs, since 46% said they were only findings opening for low-wage roles.
Mismatches are a major driver of the labor shortage







Slide 5 of 11: This debt is way more than what Gen X and boomers had at age 40 — $94,000 and $112,000, respectively, Bloomberg reported.One might first look to student loans as the source of this debt. College tuition has more than doubled since the 1980s, and student-loan debt reached a national high of $1.5 trillion in 2019. Many millennials are shouldering their share of this burden.The typical 40-year-old millennial entered college in 1999, and graduated in 2003 (under a typical four-year plan). According to an analysis by the research team at Education Data, 73% of students graduating that year took out a student loan. That year, the average debt at graduation per student was $16,070, equivalent to $22,170 today.But that's not as much as the typical youngest millennial, who turns 25 this year. They graduated with about $29,500 in student debt.
5/11 SLIDES © Jacquelyn Martin/AP
THEY ALSO HAVE $128,000 IN DEBT. WHILE SOME OF THIS MAY BE FROM STUDENT LOANS, THEY DON'T CARRY THE WEIGHT OF STUDENT DEBT AS MUCH AS YOUNGER MILLENNIALS.


This debt is way more than what Gen X and boomers had at age 40 — $94,000 and $112,000, respectively, Bloomberg reported.

One might first look to student loans as the source of this debt. College tuition has more than doubled since the 1980s, and student-loan debt reached a national high of $1.5 trillion in 2019. Many millennials are shouldering their share of this burden.

The typical 40-year-old millennial entered college in 1999, and graduated in 2003 (under a typical four-year plan). According to an analysis by the research team at Education Data, 73% of students graduating that year took out a student loan. That year, the average debt at graduation per student was $16,070, equivalent to $22,170 today.

But that's not as much as the typical youngest millennial, who turns 25 this year. They graduated with about $29,500 in student debt.

It's another data point that speaks to the prevalence of mismatches in the current economy. The right-leaning Chamber of Commerce has said that labor shortages are being fueled, in part, by a mismatch between open roles and workers' skills. At the same time, job openings have been high in traditionally low-paying industries like leisure and hospitality, where workers have been quitting en masse and demanding higher wages.

The disjointedness between what unemployed workers are looking for and what's available could also potentially put some pressure on wages. While 85% of the workers surveyed by FlexJobs said they'd take a pay cut if it meant getting a job, only 12% of those workers would take a "serious pay cut" - which is defined as over 20%.

Unemployed workers who were set to lose their enhanced benefits early previously told Insider that the low wages of the open positions wouldn't be enough for them to survive on. If those wages rose enough to meet the pay cut professional workers are willing to take, it could potentially help with staffing.

In the meantime, the imminent end of enhanced unemployment benefits in September could only exacerbate the mismatch issues.

"Unfortunately, this may create an even more difficult situation for unemployed professionals," Brie Reynolds, career development manager and coach at FlexJobs and Remote.co, wrote in an email to Insider. "As our survey found, the vast majority of unemployed people are actively and consistently searching for a new job, but they're trying to navigate an unprecedented labor market with a lot of uncertainty."

Gallery: Meet the typical 40-year-old millennial, who has $128,000 in debt, is not nearly as wealthy as their parents were, and is known as 'geriatric' (Business Insider)


The oldest millennials turn 40 this year.

They have less wealth, more debt, and about the same earnings as past generations at their age.

They straddle the digital worlds of old PCs and today's social-media apps


THE TYPICAL 40-YEAR-OLD MILLENNIAL WAS ONE OF THOSE HARDEST HIT BY THE GREAT RECESSION.

When the 2007 financial crisis began, the 40-year-old millennial was 26, an age at which most of the generation hadn't yet accumulated substantial wealth. It's this cohort that bore the true brunt of the financial crisis, which left lingering effects a dozen years later when the coronavirus recession rolled around.

From the very beginning of their careers, they entered a dismal labor market that set them up for a long recovery.

"Millennials have lifelong damage, given the severity of the Great Recession," Mark Muro, a senior fellow and policy director at the Brookings Institution, previously told Insider, adding that "older millennials were squarely hammered."


THEIR EARLY POST-GRADUATE YEARS WERE MARKED BY A TOUGH JOB MARKET THAT LED TO WAGE STAGNATION. THE TYPICAL 40-YEAR-OLD HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD MILLENNIAL EARNS $73,000 A YEAR.

Boomers earned about $72,000 at that age, while Gen X earned around $68,000, according to a Bloomberg analysis of Federal Reserve data (The Fed data is based on households and age of the person responding to the Fed survey). That's all to say, wages have remained stagnant since 1989.

Wages haven't kept up with soaring living costs for everything from healthcare to housing, creating a financial imbalance that's been difficult for the 40-year-old millennial to rectify.


© Robin Utrecht/Getty Images

IT'S MADE BUILDING WEALTH DIFFICULT. WITH A NET WORTH OF $91,000, THE TYPICAL 40-YEAR-OLD HEAD OF HOUSEHOLD MILLENNIAL IS ONLY 80% AS WEALTHY AS THEIR PARENTS WERE AT THEIR AGE.

At age 40, Gen X was worth $94,000. Boomers held $112,000 in wealth at that age, according to Bloomberg.

But the oldest millennials are catching up. A 2018 St. Louis Fed study originally found that those born in the 1980s have median levels 34% below older generations, causing the Fed to deem them at risk of becoming a "lost generation" for wealth accumulation.

"Not only is their wealth shortfall in 2016 very large in percentage terms, but the typical 1980s family actually lost ground in relative terms between 2010 and 2016, a period of rapidly rising asset values that buoyed the wealth of all older cohorts," the 2018 report read.

A follow-up study in 2021 found 1980s millennials gained some ground, narrowing their wealth deficit to 11%. "It turns out that millennials may not be as 'lost' as we once thought," according to the report


IT'S LIKELY A GOOD CHUNK OF THAT DEBT COMES FROM A MORTGAGE. THE TYPICAL 40-YEAR-OLD MILLENNIAL OWNS A HOME.

According to an Insider analysis of 2019 American Community Survey microdata from the University of Minnesota's IPUMS program, 61.9% of 40-year-old millennials (who were 38 when the survey was taken) own a home.

Bug that's still lower than previous generations at that age: 68% of Gen X and 66% for boomers. As housing prices climbed over the years, millennials began renting longer and buying later. While some have finally been able to afford a house amid low interest rates during the pandemic, the demand has exacerbated a historic housing shortage that has pushed homeownership further out of reach for other millennials.

The homeowning life stage means that most 40-year-old millennials have a mortgage. It aligns with previous findings from an Insider and Morning Consult survey, which found that it's not just student-loan debt millennials are swimming in. A mortgage is typically their biggest debt, the survey found.



THEY ALSO HAVE KIDS. ACHIEVING THESE STANDARD LIFE MILESTONES IS A SIGN THAT MANY HAVE CAUGHT UP FROM THE DELAYED EFFECTS OF THE GREAT RECESSION.

"The oldest millennials delayed many of the traditional markers of adulthood, such as marriage, kids, and buying homes, as they went through the eye of the Great Recession and the long and uneven recovery afterward," Jason Dorsey, a consultant and president of the Center for Generational Kinetics, previously told Insider.

As millennials delay marriage and homeownership, they've delayed childbearing until they feel more financially sound. More women are having kids at a later age than ever.

But as of 2019, 66% of 40-year-old millennials (who were 38 at the time), have kids, according Insider's analysis of 2019 American Community Survey microdata from the University of Minnesota's IPUMS program.



BUT THE TYPICAL 40-YEAR-OLD MILLENNIAL DISSOCIATES FROM THEIR GENERATION. CAUGHT BETWEEN GEN X AND MILLENNIALS, THEY ALMOST FEEL GENERATIONLESS.

As Alisha Tillery wrote for Shondaland, being the oldest millennial "is to be an outlier of sorts, to really have no generation to identify with at all, yet be perfectly okay with not fitting into one box or the other."

"We are caught in a tight space that remembers the days of old (before Google, Facebook, and YouTube), but is also intrigued by the future and a new way of doing things," she added.

Jessica Guinn Johnson, an attorney in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, born in 1981, told Tillery, "I never found that I fit in the millennial mold, but identified more with Gen X."

Robert L. Reece, a University of Texas at Austin sociology professor, told Tillery there's validity in classifying oneself as a millennial but not identifying with the typical characteristics of the generation.

© Noam Galai/Getty Images

IT EXPLAINS WHY THE 40-YEAR-OLD MILLENNIAL IS LARGELY SEEN AS BEING PART OF A MICROGENERATION, FOR WHICH THERE HAVE BEEN MANY NAMES.

As Tillery wrote, some millennials feel they better identify with the "cusper" (someone who straddles two generations) term "Xennial." It describes a micro-generation "that serves as a bridge between the disaffection of Gen X and the blithe optimism of millennials," Sarah Stankorb wrote for Good Magazine in 2014.

In a Medium article that went viral in the spring, author and leadership expert Erica Dhawan called the micro-generation that the 40-year-old millennial falls into "geriatric millennials," which she defines as those born between 1980 and 1985. What sets them apart, she recently told Insider, is their experience with technology.



THE TYPICAL 40-YEAR-OLD MILLENNIAL REMEMBERS PCS, THE DAYS OF EARLY DIAL-UP, AND MYSPACE, BUT ALSO FEELS COMFORTABLE ON TIKTOK AND CLUBHOUSE.

Whereas younger millennials don't know a world without digital tools as a primary form of communication, the eldest millennials remember when they were very primitive.

"They were the first generation to grow up with a PC in their homes. They joined the first social media communities on Facebook and MySpace. They remember dial-up connections, collect calls, and punch cards," Dhawan previously told Insider, adding they also remember things like Napster for burning CDs, as well as the regular flip phone.

But while they're fluent in the early days of the internet and digital technology, they've also been able to easily adapt to newer forms of digital media, like TikTok, which may be unfamiliar to older generations like baby boomers and commonplace among younger generations like Gen Z.

"This is a unique cohort that straddles digital natives and digital adapters," Dhawan said.




BUT STRADDLING A DIGITAL DIVIDE MEANS THE TYPICAL 40-YEAR-OLD MILLENNIAL IS AN ASSET IN THE WORKFORCE.

With the skills of both older and younger generations, Dhawan said, they can bridge communication styles in the workplace.

For example, she said, a geriatric millennial would know to send a Slack message to a Gen Z coworker instead of calling them out of the blue, which they might find alarming. But they would also know to be mindful of an older coworker's video background and help walk them through such technology.

"They can help straddle the divide," she said. "They can teach traditional communication skills to some of those younger employees and digital body language to older team members."

Unifor reaches tentative deal with Bombardier but strike continues with De Havilland

TORONTO — Unifor has reached a tentative agreement with Bombardier Aviation at its Downsview plant in north Toronto

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

The union says locals 112 and 673 reached an agreement days after it launched a strike against the business jet manufacturer and De Havilland, which make Dash 8 turboprops at the facility.

The three-year agreement covers about 1,500 Bombardier employees.

Details of the settlement won't be released until the deal is ratified during a vote to be conducted Saturday afternoon.

The union has said pensions, use of contractors and erosion of bargaining unit work were key issues at Bombardier, while the future of the Dash 8 program is the focus of talks with De Havilland.

Bombardier says it expects all will return to normal once the deal is ratified.

"Upon ratification, the mutually beneficial agreements will help secure the future of aerospace manufacturing in Toronto," the company said in an email.

Unifor national president Jerry Dias says the union can now focus all of its efforts on reaching an agreement with De Havilland.

“Our membership gave us a strong mandate, after a difficult set of negotiations we have managed to reach a tentative agreement with Bombardier,” added local president Maryellen McIlmoyle, in a news release.

"We remain at the table determined to continue negotiations with De Havilland."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 30, 2021.

Companies in this story: (TSX:BBD.B)

The Canadian Press

Bombardier reaches agreement with Canadian union members

(Reuters) -Bombardier Inc reached an agreement with Toronto members of Canada's largest private-sector union, the business-jet maker and the union said on Friday.

© Reuters/Denis Balibouse FILE PHOTO: A logo of jet manufacturer Bombardier is pictured on their booth during EBACE in Geneva

The parties have tentatively renewed the collective bargaining agreements, the statement said.

Earlier this week, union Unifor's local members had launched a strike demanding a combined 2,200 workers at the same Toronto manufacturing site for Bombardier's Global large-cabin business jets and De Havilland's Dash 8-400 turboprop aircraft.

Unifor has scheduled a virtual ratification meeting with Bombardier on Saturday.

The union also said negotiations with De Havilland were ongoing. (https://bit.ly/37oJSBv)

(Reporting by Allison Lampert and Shreyasee Raj; editing by Uttaresh.V)

Border workers' union, employers to return to bargaining table after strike threat


OTTAWA — A union representing about 9,000 Canadian Border Service Agency workers says its members' employers have agreed to return to the bargaining table following a strike threat made earlier this week

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Public Service Alliance of Canada and its Customs and Immigration Union says the CBSA and Treasury Board Secretariat committed to resuming negotiations within hours of the strike threat.

PSAC-CIU represents 5,500 border services officers, 2,000 headquarters staff and other workers at Canada Post facilities and in inland enforcement jobs.

The union members have been without a contract for about three years and on Tuesday, agreed to strike as early as Aug. 6 if the two sides can't reach an agreement.

The union and the employers have been unable to agree on better protections for staff that the union argues would bring them in line with other law enforcement personnel across Canada and address a "toxic" workplace culture.

The dispute comes as Canada is preparing to allow fully vaccinated Americans to visit without having to quarantine starting Aug. 9 and will open the country's borders to travellers from other countries with both doses of a COVID-19 shot on Sept. 7.

"The government is clearly concerned about our strike mandate and the possibility of major disruptions at the border,” said Chris Aylward, PSAC national president.

“We're going back to the table with an open mind, but we've been crystal clear that if they want to avoid a strike, they need to bring a new mandate to address major workplace issues."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 29, 2021.

The Canadian Press

The Analytical Angle: Do children really learn in schools in Pakistan?

A narrative that suggests children dropout because they are not learning is not supported by the data.

Natalie Bau | Jishnu Das

Updated 16 Jul, 2021 03:39pm

As we struggle with Covid-19, when it comes to schooling, we are all asking the same questions — will we finally get back to normal? And is normal where we want to be, or is it time to change everything, starting from the ground-up?

But even as we ask these questions, here is a little secret: Despite the attention that schooling and learning have received in Pakistan, and internationally, we really don’t know what ‘normal’ is.

We know some things — for instance, children in many countries cannot read a full sentence or add two-digit numbers after spending 5 years in school. But for anything harder, we are still in the dark. We still don’t know how much children learn during primary school. Neither do we know whether children who are initially behind fall even further behind as they progress through school.

To address these problems, Jishnu Das, Tahir Andrabi and Asim Ijaz Khwaja started the Learning and Educational Achievement in Pakistani Schools (LEAPS) project in rural Punjab in 2003.

The LEAPS data follow more than 12,000 children as they progress from 3rd to 6th grade and are among the first data from a low-income setting to allow us to examine children’s test scores in a consistent manner across four years.

Our paper , jointly written with Andres Yi Chang, uses the LEAPS data to finally benchmark what normal means for a country like Pakistan.

Here is what we learned.

First, not surprisingly, children do learn in school. For instance, 58 per cent of children could correctly multiply “4 x 5” in grade 3, and this fraction increases to 60pc after a year, 73pc after two years, and 79pc after three years.

We see similar patterns across every question and subject and, on average, a child in grade 6 knows more than 77pc of children tested in grade 3. This rate of learning is similar to what we find in Vietnam, Peru, India and Ethiopia and also to the US state of Florida.

In all these school systems, the top 30pc of children in grade 3 score (roughly) the same as the bottom 30pc of children in grade 6. This, however, does not imply that they learn the same amount since the tests and initial learning levels are different across countries; the data to answer that question simply do not exist.

Second, policymakers in Pakistan have been deeply concerned about out-of-school children. To understand the link between learning and dropping out of school, the LEAPS data tracked and tested children who dropped out between grades 5 and 6.

Surprisingly, we found that children who eventually dropped out in the transition to middle school were learning just as much as those who had continued (even though in every year, their test scores were slightly lower).

Further, once children dropped out, their learning stalled, while for those who remained in school, it continued along the same trend (Figure 1). So, a narrative that suggests that children drop out because they are not learning is not supported by the data.

Figure 1: Children who drop out of school between grades 5 and 6 were learning as much as those who remained in school. The blue line shows standardised test scores of children who dropped out of school in 2005, as they transitioned to middle school. The red line shows the test scores of children who continued in 2005.

Third, we examined whether children who were performing worse in grade 3 fall farther behind. Figure 2 shows that this is not the case by grouping children by how much they learnt between grades 3 and 6 (from low to high) and showing their average test score in grade 3.

In fact, children whose test scores were in the bottom 10pc in grade 3 learned significantly more by grade 6 than children ranked in the top 10pc learners. The same happens across the other groups which suggests that schooling reduces inequality in learning.

Figure 2: Children who perform worse in grade 3 learn more through primary school. We have divided children into percentile groups based on their grade 3 test scores. For instance, “Bottom 10th percentile group” are the children who were in the bottom 10pc in grade 3. Then, we have shown their test scores as they progressed through school. Children who were in the bottom 10pc learned significantly more than those in the top 10pc

To understand how these facts can still be consistent with low test scores, we then measure the patterns of gains and losses on a question-by-question basis.

We find that test scores do not increase every year. In fact, 20pc of children see declines in test scores on a yearly basis, and 10pc reported lower test scores in grade 5 compared to grade 3.

We propose a new term for these patterns in the data: ‘fragile learning’.

Children learn in one year but are about as likely to forget as to consolidate their learning. In fact, the proportion of ‘fragile learners’, or those who learn and then forget is worryingly high. The key message is that performance in school has as much to do with forgetting as it does with learning.

Read: How a multilingual education model can help Pakistan increase literacy

One of us grew up in a very similar schooling system where the emphasis was always on rote learning. We always knew that rote systems did not address conceptual weaknesses, but if there was one thing that such a system is meant to do, it was to ensure that children never forgot a question they could answer correctly once.

Perhaps weak conceptual understanding drives this phenomenon of ‘fragile learning’, but the fact of the matter is that despite hours spent in rote learning, children still can’t remember what they learnt in the previous year.

We now know what ’normal’ means. It means that children who go to school learn. It means that children who are dropping out leave school for a host of reasons, but not just because they were learning less. It means that our schools are an equalising force in these children’s lives — those who start off knowing less end up learning more as they progress through school, though they may not fully catch up.

But it also means that our current systems seem to be encouraging a ‘learn and forget’ rather than a 'learn and consolidate' approach, at least for a sizeable minority.

Our plea therefore is to not label all schooling as poor or useless. The fact of the matter is that a very important part of the schooling system — the pedagogical approach that leads to fragile learning — needs reform, now more than ever, as children return after a long absence.

But there are things that are working and we should be careful not to throw the good out with the bad as we start the journey to a system where every child can truly learn.

Natalie Bau is an Assistant Professor at University of California, Los Angeles and Jishnu Das is a Professor at Georgetown University, Washington DC.

Header photo: Children wearing facemasks attend a class at a school in Lahore. — AFP/File

Concert From Bangladesh: the country’s best in culture brought right to your door

This weekend, we celebrate 50 years of Bangladesh’s independence. To mark that moment, artist Shezad Dawood has created a virtual reality stage for a ground-breaking concert spotlighting the country’s art communities.



Words: Jade Wickes

THE FACE
29th July 2021


Whether you’re isolating or free as a bird, get yourself down to Concert From Bangladesh’s online event this weekend. A mixed virtual reality concert that will take audiences on an otherworldly journey through Bangladesh past and present, its cutting-edge tech, experimental audio and blinding visuals will celebrate the South Asian country’s vibrant music and art cultures.

The event will take place in three acts, highlighting local Bangladeshi artists and the power of its diaspora. You can expect performances from rural Kushtia’s mystical Baul singers, thumping electronic music courtesy of producer Enayet and hip hop from the streets of Dhaka, the capital city. Meanwhile, ragas and ​’90s jungle performances shot against a green screen will feature musicians performing virtual sets against a backdrop of some of Bangladesh’s most beautiful natural landscapes.

Created as a cross-frontier collaboration between London’s UBIK Productions and Dhaka’s Samdani Art Foundation (SAF), Concert From Bangladesh’s organisers have commissioned pioneering British-South Asian artist and Central Saint Martins alum Shezad Dawood to bring their ambitious vision to life. Having previously exhibited work as part of Frieze London and at the Guggenheim in New York, Dawood is renowned for creating art that transcends the boundaries of painting, sculpture and digital media.

The base concept for the concert has a rich legacy going back to 1971. A humanitarian aid event, it was organised by Indian composer Ravi Shankar and George Harrison to raise funds for refugees following the Bangladesh Liberation War that same year. The two concerts, on the same day, took place at Madison Square Garden in NYC and had a star-studded bill. By 1985, taking sales into account that cover the film and home releases, the entire project had raised £8.5 million (that’s about £58 million in today’s money). Sales continue to benefit Unicef’s fund to this day.


  

Half a century on, the tech surrounding us has evolved dramatically, but Concert From Bangladesh’s mission to give back remains the same. Not only will a portion of proceeds be donated to climate change and human rights charity Friendship, it will also give the UK an opportunity to discover Bangladeshi talent that they otherwise might never have heard of.

“As Bangladesh celebrates 50 years of independence, we are delighted to be a part of producing work that allows the rest of the world to listen to the wealth of music and culture found in our country,” says SAF founder Nadia Samdani, ​“and to reconsider the role that music and art can play in banding people together to fight for a better and more equal future.”

No matter where you’re based or what you’re into, Concert From Bangladesh has enough going on to pique anyone’s interest. There will be in-person events at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield, Chisenhale Gallery in London, Leeds City Varieties Music Hall and the Srihatta Samdani Art Centre and Sculpture Park in Sylhet, Bangladesh – or you can livestream the whole thing here on Sunday 1st August at 6pm.

Concert From Bangladesh is a project by UBIK Productions and Samdani Art Foundation in collaboration with Shezad Dawood and in partnership with Pioneer Works, Yorkshire Sculpture International, Chisenhale Gallery and Friendship. It is supported by the British Council Digital Collaboration Fund, which supports UK and overseas cultural partnerships to develop digitally innovative ways of collaborating.

Click here to register for free tickets!

“I don’t want chemicals in my body”: why are young people refusing the jab?


You’ve seen the headlines about young people refusing the vaccine, but what is really driving hesitancy in this age group? We speak to some of them to find out more.

Words: Rose Stokes

THE FACE
30th July 2021

Seven months into the UK’s vaccine rollout we’ve all heard the anti-vax conspiracy joke by now from a pal about how their Covid-19 vaccine has made them ​“5g-enabled” or capable of communicating directly with Bill Gates himself. But while 37.6m British adults are double jabbed so far, vaccine hesitancy among young people has been rising at an alarming rate.

NHS England data up to 22nd July shows only 66 per cent – or 5.6m – of 18 to 29-year-olds in England have had their first jab (to be fair, this age group were invited to get their vaccine very recently, in June), compared with 88 per cent of the whole adult population. At the same time, research from the Office for National Statistics found that between 7 and 10 per cent of adults under 30 have expressed hesitancy (very different from being anti-vaccination) about having the jab, compared to 4 per cent for the entire adult population. But what is driving this reluctance?

“I am young, healthy and I don’t need to feel comfortable going out,” says 26-year-old *Louise. ​“I don’t use any hormonal contraception or paracetamol, and I don’t like the thought of putting chemicals in my body.” Amir, 26, agrees. ​“It [Covid-19] doesn’t affect young people as much as others. I don’t want it [the vaccine] in my body.”

“I don’t like that it’s gone from feeling like a choice and something that is offered to everyone to something that feels forced”

*MELIS, 28


*Jane, 25, who responds via a burner email to protect her identity, feels the conversation around the vaccine has become toxic for those who are hesitant. ​“My choice on the subject is frequently misjudged as political and anti-scientific,” she explains. ​“That couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m in the scientific community… but I don’t think it matters where I lie politically because I don’t see this as a political issue. I make medical decisions based on medical information.”

“We are aware that this topic doesn’t get the nuance and scientific debate it deserves. We shy away from the inevitable name-calling and confrontation,” she continues. ​“Just because some loud people are making the decision based on misinformation doesn’t mean everyone who refused the vaccine did so on bad data,” she says, adding that she based her own decision on a risk assessment she did from both her own research and her doctor’s advice against it.

But it’s not knowing what the long-term side effects are that are a cause for concern among many young people. ​“It’s not been around long enough for anyone to know what [these] could be,” Louise adds. ​“I don’t doubt the scientists or medical experts but if something hasn’t been around for years, how can we possibly know what it could do?”

The government’s recent move to make vaccine status a compulsory disclosure to access nightclubs and university lectures has contributed to 28-year-old *Melis’ anxiety. ​“I don’t like that it’s gone from feeling like a choice and something that is offered to everyone to something that feels forced,” she says. ​“I don’t doubt that it’s effective, but seeing some of the real-life (however rare) side effects is making it a difficult decision for me personally.”

A lack of governmental trust is another factor. ​“I don’t trust them,” Louise says. ​“I think the fact that they keep changing the rules for the vaccinated to me seems like they’re just scaremongering. The government isn’t following the rules they’re telling us to follow, so it causes distrust. I don’t take their word for anything.”

“Remember that every medicine we take has a risk attached. It just so happens that the risks associated with Covid-19 are currently hyper publicised”

CLARISSA SIMAS, RESEARCH FELLOW AT LONDON SCHOOL OF HYGIENE AND TROPICAL MEDICINE

Clarissa Simas, a Vaccine Confidence Project research fellow at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, agrees that perception of risk is a big influence in terms of vaccine hesitancy among the young. ​“Younger people are not the most at-risk group as Covid-19 is usually deadlier for older people,” she says. ​“Meanwhile, any risks associated with Covid-19 vaccines have been hyper reported on in the media, making headlines across the globe (even the incredibly rare ones, such as blood clots).”

And it could be driving health anxiety. ​“When thinking of the risks and benefits, younger people might feel the advantages of vaccinating are not worth the risk of side effects,” she continues, ​“yet younger adults are at risk of unintended side effects, and their uptake is important to control overall transmission.” This echoes the findings of a huge Lancet study of more than 1 million people, which found that the likelihood of developing a blood clot from the Covid-19 virus itself is higher than the risk of it happening after having either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca vaccines.

Simas urges those who are concerned about a loved one who may be feeling hesitant to approach with empathy. ​“It is important to not scapegoat or stigmatise young people who have already sacrificed so much to help contain the spread of the virus,” she says. ​“First, listen to concerns with empathy. Don’t be judgemental. Try to understand what is triggering their anxiety about vaccination.”

When we are anxious, we create extreme worst-case scenarios in our head that are not factual. ​“Remember that every medicine we take has a risk attached,” Simas says. ​“It just so happens that the risks associated with Covid-19 are currently hyper publicised and this might be affecting risk perception.” She says it’s also important to remember that we take a vaccine not just for ourselves, but for our family, community and, friends. ​“Vaccines only work if we make a collective pact to help each other. Even if you are part of a group at lower risk of a disease, taking a vaccine means you are directly contributing to protect those who are really vulnerable.”

For anyone who may be feeling hesitant themselves, Simas advises to always use trustworthy official sources such as the NHS, the CDC and the World Health Organization when looking for information about vaccines. ​“Do not take at face value free-floating information (and misinformation) on social media.”

*Names have been changed to protect anonymity

The World Health Organization says you can protect yourself by washing your hands, covering your mouth when sneezing or coughing (ideally with a tissue), avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth and don’t get too close to people who are coughing, sneezing or with a fever.

HUMANS KILLED THE NEANDERTHALS BY HAVING SEX WITH THEM

Scientists found a rare blood disorder in Neanderthal offspring.

By Anagha Srikanth | July 30, 2021


Story at a glance
Archeological evidence suggests that not only did humans and Neanderthals live together, some even slept together.

A rare blood disorder discovered in Neanderthal babies was likely the result of breeding with humans, according to a new study.

This condition would have made it difficult for the Neanderthal newborns to reproduce.

The extinction of Neanderthals and survival of humanity is generally written as a violent history of conflict between the two species. But recent archeological findings suggest it may not have been war, but love — or at least sex — that sealed our fates.

In a new study analyzing Neanderthal and Denisovan blood groups, scientists found a set of genetic variants that would have made Neanderthal children susceptible to a now-rare blood disorder, or "haemolytic disease of the foetus and new-born," or HDFN. This disorder would have made it difficult for the affected generations to reproduce — cutting their bloodline short.

"The fact that these forms of genes were detected in individuals separated by 4,000km and 50,000 years suggest that this genetic peculiarity — and the risk of [an] anaemic foetus — would have been quite common amongst Neanderthals," Stephane Mazieres, a lead author on the paper from Aix-Marseille University, told The Daily Mail.

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It’s certainly possible that HDFN occurred by Neanderthals interbreeding, but experts said the risk would have been higher when breeding with Denisovans, our human ancestors. The research "supports the fact that pathogens have played a major role in the survival and selection of genetic variants in modern and archaic hominins," according to the study.

"These elements could have contributed to weakening the descendants to the point of leading to their demise, especially combined with the competition with Homo sapiens for the same ecological niche," the researchers said.

New study says vaccines can't stop the delta variant alone


Researchers recommended the use of masks and physical distancing until almost everyone is vaccinated.

By Joseph Guzman | July 30, 2021

Story at a glance

“We found that a fast rate of vaccination decreases the probability of emergence of a resistant strain,” researchers wrote.

“Counterintuitively, when a relaxation of non-pharmaceutical interventions happened at a time when most individuals of the population have already been vaccinated, the probability of emergence of a resistant strain was greatly increased,” the study says.

The study backs up an internal report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that says the delta variant is far more transmissible than older strains and may cause more severe disease.


A new study is emphasizing the importance of both vaccinations and mitigation measures, such as masks and physical distancing, to curb the spread of the coronavirus and stop the threat of new variants.

The research published in Nature Scientific Reports warns that vaccines alone will not stop the emergence of new coronavirus strains, and the innoculations could actually accelerate the evolution of new variants that evade their protection if safety measures like masking are stopped prematurely.

According to the study, the virus will not stop changing until almost everyone has been fully vaccinated.

“We found that a fast rate of vaccination decreases the probability of emergence of a resistant strain,” researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria wrote in the study.

“Counterintuitively, when a relaxation of non-pharmaceutical interventions happened at a time when most individuals of the population have already been vaccinated the probability of emergence of a resistant strain was greatly increased,” researchers wrote.

“Our results suggest that policymakers and individuals should consider maintaining non-pharmaceutical interventions and transmission-reducing behaviors throughout the entire vaccination period,” the study says.

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The study backs up an internal report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that says the delta coronavirus variant is far more transmissible than older strains and may cause more severe disease.

The report said there’s evidence fully vaccinated people could pass on the delta variant just as easily as those who have yet to be vaccinated, although vaccines are still effective at protecting people from becoming seriously ill and reduce the chance of hospitalization or death.

The CDC estimates about 35,000 vaccinated people in the U.S. may be getting infected with the virus each week, although most new infections are occurring among the unvaccinated.

The health agency early this week changed its mask guidance, advising fully vaccinated Americans to wear masks inside when in areas with “substantial” and “high” transmission of COVID-19.

 

Disney tells salaried and non-union employees they must be vaccinated by end of September

A performer dressed as Mickey Mouse entertains guests during the reopening of the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California, U.S., on Friday, April 30, 2021.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The Walt Disney Company said Friday it is requiring all salaried and non-union hourly employees in the U.S. to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus by the end of September.

Employees who are still working from home will be required to provide verification of vaccination prior to returning to any Disney sites, including theme parks and offices.

Disney said it has begun conversations with the unions that represent its other employees, particularly those that work at its theme parks.

“Vaccines are the best tool we all have to help control this global pandemic and protect our employees,” the company said in a statement.

The notice comes shortly after Disney said it would begin requiring theme parks guests to wear masks while in indoor locations at its domestic theme parks regardless of vaccine status.

This policy was put in place after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed course and recommended that fully vaccinated people begin wearing masks indoors again in places with high Covid transmission rates. These hot spots include states like California and Florida where Disney’s U.S. parks are located.

The CDC warned Thursday that the delta variant sweeping across the country is as contagious as chickenpox. It also has a longer transmission window than the original Covid-19 strain and may make older people sicker, even if they’ve been fully vaccinated.

Other companies that have instituted new vaccination policies include Google, Facebook and Walmart.

Disney has updated its safety policies in accordance with local health regulations both domestically and internationally since the pandemic began. Most recently, the company began requiring proof of a Covid vaccination or a negative Covid test prior to entry at its Paris-based theme park based on French guidelines.

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