Ancient gold-producing technique now used in nanotechnology

MINING.COM Staff Writer | August 9, 2021 | 

Pouring mercury from small tube into pan which contains flour gold mixed with the natural dirt. (Reference image from Library of Congress, CC0). 

YOU MUST WEAR NITRILE GLOVES & OTHER PPE WHEN DOING THIS 

Researchers at ETH university in Zürich have produced nanocrystals made of two different metals using an amalgamation process whereby a liquid metal penetrates a solid one.


In a paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group led by Maksym Yarema and Vanessa Wood explained that nanocrystals are nanometre-sized spheres consisting of regularly arranged atoms. When they are semiconductors, they are used in new generation TV screens. On the other hand, intermetallic nanocrystals, in which two different metals combine to form a crystal lattice, have made a name for themselves as they promise improved applications in areas such as catalysis, data storage, and medicine.

But up until now, it has only been possible to make nanocrystals out of a few metal pairings of the thousands of possible combinations.

The new technique, however, allows one to realize nearly all possible combinations of intermetallic nanocrystals.

In conventional procedures for producing nanocrystals made of a single metal, the metal atoms are introduced in molecular form, for instance as salts, into a solution in which the nanocrystals then form.

Intermetallic nanocrystals (electron microscope images) made from different combinations of metals. (Image courtesy of the Chemistry and Materials Design group, ETH).

According to the scientists, theoretically, that can also be done with two different metals, but in practice, it is difficult to combine distinctly dissimilar metals in the reactor. This is why Yarema and the group resorted to amalgamation.

The process, used for centuries in gold mining, consists of adding liquid mercury to dissolve other metals. However, amalgamation also works with any other liquid metals.

Using this approach at the nanoscale means that the reaction starts with the dispersion of nanocrystals containing a single metal, for instance, silver. Then, the atoms of the second metal— which could also be gallium as it melts at 30 degrees Celsius—are added in molecular form as amides, a compound of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, while the mixture is heated to around 300 degrees.

Initially, the high temperature causes the chemical bonds in the gallium-amide to break up, allowing liquid gallium to accumulate on the silver nanocrystals. The actual amalgamation process begins, during which liquid gallium creeps into the solid silver. Over time a new crystal lattice is formed, in which eventually silver and gallium atoms are regularly arranged. Then everything is cooled down again, and after 10 minutes the nanocrystals are ready.

“We are amazed how efficient the amalgamation is at the nanoscale. Having one liquid metal component is the key to fast and uniform alloying within each nanocrystal,” Yarema said in a media statement.

Using the same technique, the researchers have already produced different intermetallic nanocrystals such as gold-gallium, copper-gallium, and palladium-zinc. They say that the amalgamation process itself can be precisely steered.

Through the number of secondary atoms, introduced into the solution as amides, the proportion of the metals in the nanocrystals can be accurately controlled.

“Because the amalgamation synthesis of nanocrystals enables so many new compositions, we cannot wait to see them at work in improved catalysis, plasmonics, or lithium-ion batteries,” Yarema said.

BOOM
ANCIENT AUSTRALIAN VOLCANIC ROCK MAY HOLD THE SECRET TO LIFE ON EARTH

Could volcanoes be responsible for creating the conditions for life on Earth to flourish?

TARA YARLAGADDA
8.9.2021 

THE PILBARA REGION OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA offers stunningly strange vistas of volcanic rock and granite domes that feel reminiscent of an ancient world — and for a good reason.

These arid mineral-rich lands support Australia’s mining and crude oil industries, but they also reveal remarkable geological secrets about ancient Earth long before humans roamed the planet.

According to new research, the Pilbara Craton — one of the few crusts remaining on Earth from the Archaean era 2.7 to 3.6 billion years ago — could help us understand the emergence of Earth’s most essential ingredient for life: oxygen.

Scientists published their findings Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


The Knox Gorge at Karijini National Park in Pilbara, Western Australia.Getty

HOW THEY DID IT — A team of researchers in the U.S and the United Kingdom joined forces to analyze mercury in samples from the upper and lower parts of Mount McRae Shale, which is a 2.5-billion-year-old deposit of iron, mudstone, and other minerals in the Pilbara Craton.


Before humans dwelled on Earth, atmospheric mercury emerged largely as a result of volcanic events. The scientists theorized that analyzing mercury in rock from Mount McRae Shale could help confirm their suspicions about early Earth by linking volcanic activity to the formation of an oxygen “whiff” roughly 2.5 billion years ago.

WHAT’S NEW — Embedded in the ancient rock, scientists found patterns of mercury enrichment that correlate with oxidative weathering. Oxidative weathering occurs when oxygen interacts with rock minerals, changing the composition of the rock.

Based on their findings, researchers believe that oxidative weathering of volcanic ash and rocks generated essential elements like phosphorous, thereby supplying a vital nutrient to Earth’s oceans and generating the “whiff” of oxygen that occurred in Earth’s atmosphere.

The scientists conclude: “We hypothesize that the weathering of these flood basalts may have delivered nutrients such as [phosphorous] to the ocean and promoted primary productivity and thus the whiff of oxygen in its aftermath.”

In other words, intense, ancient volcanic activity may have been responsible for delivering the essential ingredient for life to the Earth.


According to the researchers, “intense volcanism” may have helped generate oxygen — an essential ingredient for life.Getty


WHY IT MATTERS — Most research on oxygen during the ancient Archaean era has focused on the Great Oxygenation Event, which occurred roughly 2.4 billion years ago. This event brought oxygen to early Earth’s oceans and atmosphere, creating the conditions for life to eventually flourish.

But previous research has shown that a brief, so-called “whiff” of oxygen emerged on Earth roughly 2.5 billion years ago, which meant that there was oxygen on Earth for 500 million years before the Great Oxygenation Event.

Scientists have long puzzled over the source of this strange whiff of oxygen, wondering where on Earth it came from. But with this new finding out of western Australia, researchers may have finally cracked the science behind this strange blip of oxygen.

Without oxygen, life on Earth could not flourish. Oxygen is what separates our “pale blue dot,” as Carl Sagan put it, from the countless other planets in the universe that cannot sustain life.

It’s never been entirely clear what exact conditions in Earth’s atmosphere led to the emergence of this life-giving element, but the new research suggests that it may have entered Earth with a volcanic boom.

WHAT’S NEXT — The scientist’s hypothesis is promising, though they’d like to conduct further research to bolster their case. The researchers write that their detection of phosphorous “following volcanism appears likely and warrants further scrutiny.”

Further research may yield more evidence connecting volcanism to the “whiff” of oxygen before the Great Oxygenation Event.

With this study’s findings, we are one step closer to unlocking the secrets of ancient Earth and understanding how its ancient geological mechanisms allowed life to form.
Abstract: Earth’s early atmosphere witnessed multiple transient episodes of oxygenation before the Great Oxidation Event 2.4 billion years ago (Ga) [e.g., A. D. Anbar et al., Science317, 1903–1906 (2007); M. C. Koehler, R. Buick, M. E. Barley, Precambrian Res.320, 281–290(2019)], but the triggers for these short-lived events are so far unknown. Here, we use mercury (Hg) abundance and stable isotope composition to investigate atmospheric evolution and its driving mechanisms across the well-studied“whiff” of O2recorded in the∼2.5-Ga Mt. McRae Shale from the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia[A.D.Anbaretal.,Science317, 1903–1906 (2007)]. Our data from the oxygenated interval show strong Hgenrichment paired with slightlynegativeΔ199Hg and near-zeroΔ200Hg, suggestive of increased oxidative weathering. In contrast, slightly older beds, which were evidently deposited under an anoxic atmosphere in ferruginous waters[C. T. Reinhard, R. Raiswell, C. Scott, A. D. Anbar, T. W. Lyons, Science326, 713–716 (2009)], show Hg enrichment coupled with positiveΔ199Hg and slightly negativeΔ200Hg values. This pattern is consistent with photochemical reactions associated with subaerial volcanism under intense UV radiation. Our results, therefore, suggest that the whiff of O2was preceded by subaerial volcanism. The transient interval ofO2accumulation may thus have been triggered by diminished volcanicO2sinks, followed by enhanced nutrient supply to the ocean from weathering of volcanic rocks causing increased biological productivity

 

Mount Etna taller than ever as activity sparks volcanic growth spurt

National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology says south-eastern crater now measures 3,357 measure

The Italian city of Catania at dawn on Monday with Mount Etna in the background. Photograph: Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images

Agence France-Presse in Rome

Tue 10 Aug 2021 

Mount Etna’s south-eastern crater has grown in height after six months of activity, Italy’s volcano monitoring agency has said, making Europe’s tallest active volcano taller than ever.

Etna’s youngest and most active crater has risen to a record of 3,357 metres (11,000ft) above sea level, said the National Institute for Geophysics and Vulcanology (INGV), based in the Sicilian city of Catania.

“Thanks to the analysis and processing of satellite images, the south-east crater is now much higher than its ‘older brother’, the north-east crater, for 40 years the undisputed peak of Etna,” the INGV wrote in a press release.

About 50 episodes of ash and lava belching from the mouth of the crater since mid-February have led to a “conspicuous transformation of the volcano’s outline”.

The north-eastern crater reached a record height of 3,350 metres in 1981, but a collapse at its edges reduced that to 3,326 metres, recorded in 2018.

The crater has been churning out smoke and ash since February, while posing little danger to surrounding villages.

Sicily’s government estimated in July that 300,000 tonnes of ash had been cleaned up so far.

The ash has been a nuisance in surrounding areas, dirtying streets, slowing traffic and damaging crops.

In Catania, a two-hour drive from the volcano, pensioner Tania Cannizzaro told AFP that Mount Etna was both beautiful and an annoyance, with ash sometimes falling “like rain”.

“Depending on the wind, the rumblings of the volcano reach Catania and make the windows shake,” she said, adding that the ashes turned the streets and balconies black.

“But there is also the spectacle, especially in the evening, when you see this red plume that moves.”

UN asks Grupo Mexico to compensate victims of Buenaventura mine spill
Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | August 8, 2021 | 

Jesús Peña Palacios, adjunct UN-HR representative in Mexico. (Image by Sin Fronteras IAP, YouTube).

The Mexican chapter of the High Commissioner’s Office for Human Rights of the United Nations demanded full compensation from Grupo Mexico to the victims of the Buenaventura mine spill, which occurred on August 6, 2014.


In an official communiqué, the Commissioner’s Office asked the mining company to strengthen the “integral reparation process” for the victims in Coahuila and demanded concrete actions to clean up and repair the ecosystems in and around the Sonora and Bacanuchi rivers.
In the statement, the adjunct UN-HR representative in the Central American country, Jesús Peña Palacios, also said that it is mining companies’ responsibility to respect human rights regardless of whether governments are willing or have the capabilities to enforce the law.

“They [miners] are obliged to follow their due diligence in their processes and repair their wrongdoings,” Peña Palacios said.

He also said that Sonora’s new government has to guarantee that whatever measures are taken are accessible to the affected communities and in line with international standards.

Aerial view of the 2014 spill at the Buenavista del Cobre mine. 

(Image by @Noti_SONORA, Twitter).

Seven years ago, a spill at Buenavista del Cobre’s mine — owned by Grupo Mexico — at Cananea sent 40,000 cubic meters of acidified copper sulfate into the Bacanuchi and Sonora rivers, leaving 22,000 inhabitants of seven municipalities without drinking water.

Agriculture, stock breeding, mining, tourism, and handicrafts were severely affected by the spill and many productive activities ceased.

Last year, the Mexican government admitted that the aquifers that provide water to thousands of people still contain dangerous amounts of toxic metals and set up an October 4, 2021 deadline to have an official environmental diagnosis.

For this diagnosis, the Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection is expected to provide proof of contamination, while the Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat will monitor mining operations and water quality in the region. In addition, the government promised to reestablish the Sonora River Trust and to review existing aquifers and water concessions.

The approximately $106 million fund was created on September 11, 2014, by Grupo México with the goal of remediating the environmental and health damages caused by the spill. However, according to El Informador newspaper, it was closed after less than 1% of the total amount had been spent and most promises had not been fulfilled.

Among the things that were done was the drilling of 18 new wells and the installation of nine water treatment plants, out of 36 that were promised.

Interviewed by El Informador, Francisco Ramón Miranda, founding member of the Sonora River Basin Committee, said that none of the nine treatment plants actually works because even though they were installed, no one taught people in the community how they operate.

The activist also said that most of the indemnification funds that were supposed to go to the victims ended up in the hands of politicians, public servers, and other people that don’t live in the affected communities.

“We were used as a political looting tool,” he said.

 

Canada’s small businesses could be saved by converting them to co-operatives

BY MARCELO VIETA

August 10, 2021

Following Quebec's lead by nurturing co-operative models could save jobs and prevent the looming business succession crunch

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Most of Canada’s 1.2 million small- and medium-sized enterprises have been affected by COVID-19. A substantial number of them remain heavily indebted as pandemic restrictions ease, while workforce shortages and supply-chain disruptions are still a problem.

The pandemic has added to the looming succession crisis for these companies due to the growing number of owners nearing retirement who don’t have a formal plan in place for the continuity of their businesses.

This coming succession crunch, part of what’s known as “the silver tsunami,” was already being discussed by the early 2010s in Canada. Economic experts in the United States and the European Union have also been warning of a similar phenomenon on the horizon for more than a decade.

At stake before the pandemic was $1.5 trillion in business assets and the future of a large swath of Canada’s workforce because so many Canadians are employed by small- and medium-sized companies.

Overall, Canadian business owners aren’t prepared for succession or for the impacts of crises on their companies. Jobs and the socio-economic well-being of Canadian communities are potentially at risk.

The co-operative solution

In Canada, a research team I lead recently published a report on succession at these companies and found that business owners first think of transferring their companies to their children or other family members (43 per cent). Retiring owners or those with businesses at risk also seek to sell to third-party investors (24 per cent).

But, as our research also shows, less than half of retirement-aged owners (48 per cent) are familiar with the intricacies of succession, while only 14 per cent have formal succession plans in place.

Another succession option is the strategy of business conversions to co-operatives — selling or transferring companies to employees or other community stakeholders who then create co-operatives and continue the business’s activities.

These converted businesses can take on different member ownership forms, such as worker, consumer, multi-stakeholder or producer co-ops. More than 200 of them, of all these different types, already exist in Canada.

As my earlier research on Italy’s worker buyouts and Argentina’s worker-recuperated companies has shown, businesses that convert to co-operatives represent a tried-and-true rescue and succession strategy. However, our new study shows that in Canada it’s still a largely overlooked option by most owners of small- and medium-sized enterprises and employees, unions and policy-makers.

An overall lack of understanding of co-ops

The combination of a lack of succession planning and the failure to consider the co-operative-conversion solution is tied to a related finding from our research — only 30 per cent of Canadian small business owners are familiar with co-ops, and many of them have mistaken ideas about them. Those include misconceptions about inefficiency due to the democratic governance of co-ops and assumptions that they lack competitiveness.

Decades of research into the co-operative model’s advantages and strengths shows that these concerns are unfounded. Co-operatives offer stable business models that provide good jobs. They are often better than conventional businesses in terms of responding to and surviving crises because they source capital locally rather than with distant shareholders, meet local community needs, and foster trust and mutual aid.

During economic downturns, for instance, co-op members will often amend wages and revenue distribution rather than lay off employees.

The overall lack of knowledge of the co-op model is not surprising. There is systemic bias against solidarity-based economic activity by mainstream economists and business pundits, and a related lack of co-op content in post-secondary business and economics courses.

At the same time, Canada already has almost 6,000 non-financial co-ops, making up, according to a recent study, 3.4 per cent of its GDP ($61.2 billion). That’s significantly more than the telecommunication sector’s and mining sector’s 1.8 per cent of GDP respectively, and the auto parts and manufacturing sector’s 0.9 per cent of GDP.

There is no doubt that co-ops are competitive and sustainable businesses. It should then be in the interest of business owners, employees, unions, local communities, as well as policy-makers, to know more about the co-op option for succession and business survival purposes.

Pathways for conversion to co-ops

Part of this should include a renewed education campaign about Canada’s already established pathways for businesses to convert to co-ops. Co-operative advocates like the Canadian Worker Co-op Federation and provincial associations like the one in Ontario have long been leading the way. But business schools and mainstream media need to step up, too. How-to resources and conversion diagnostic tools need to be made readily available, and case studies of the co-op model should be promoted.

Examples of Canadian businesses that have successfully converted to co-ops include Ontario’s Aron Theatre Co-operative, Épicerie Co-op Grocery, and Arise Architects; Battle River Railway in Alberta; and Glitter Bean Café in Halifax.

Most of them are in Québec, however, due to favourable social economic policies related to co-op development, the role of unions and labour funds in the conversion process and the unique forms of co-operative businesses found there. These include multi-stakeholder solidarity co-ops, and worker-shareholder co-ops, where the worker co-op co-owns the firm with more traditional investors. Examples of conversions to co-ops in Québec include dozens in the funeral sector, the ambulance sector, the recently formed newspaper co-op CN2i, and even a co-op St-Hubert franchise in Laval.

Canada’s co-ops stepped up to respond to community needs during the COVID-19 crisis more quickly and had immediate local impact compared to government and corporate responses.

The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated that our communities must be self-sustaining rather than reliant on volatile global supply chains. Co-ops bring resiliency and self-determination to local economies.

The co-operative model needs therefore to be seriously considered and nurtured as viable responses to closing firms and lost jobs as a result of the pandemic and the looming business succession crunch.

Marcelo Vieta is an associate professor of Adult Education and Community Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Big Meat pulls from Big Oil’s playbook to delay climate action

U.S.-based agro-giants have spent hundreds of millions obscuring the role meat and dairy play in climate change

BY RICK SPENCE
July 22, 2021
SUMMER 2021 ISSUE
CORPORATE KNIGHTS

Illustration by Benoit Tardif
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Producers of meat and dairy products love to talk about their commitment to health. But whose health are they really promoting?

A new study from New York University says top international food producers are lagging behind industries that are actively trying to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Worse, the researchers say, U.S.-based agro-giants have spent hundreds of millions campaigning against climate action and obscuring the role meat and dairy play in damaging the planet.

It’s enough to make you switch to bean burgers.

The study, The Climate Responsibilities of Industrial Meat and Dairy Producers, in the journal Climatic Change, contends that animal agriculture generates 14.5% of all human-caused GHG emissions. The researchers examined the records of 35 major producers and found that only five, as of last summer, had joined other big emitters in pledging to reach net-zero by 2050.

The researchers also found that even the industry’s ESG leaders – which include Nestlé and Danone – generally fell short, and mainly addressed only their energy consumption. They tended to ignore emissions from their suppliers and glossed over the gritty reality that their industry runs on methane emitted by animal digestion, which is 80 times more potent than carbon in trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Many consumers know about the propaganda campaigns waged by the mining and fossil-fuel industries to dodge responsibility for climate change. The NYU researchers – Oliver Lazarus, Sonali McDermid and Jennifer Jacquet – conducted the first scholarly investigation into how 10 U.S. meat and dairy giants influence regulators and the public. They concluded that between 2000 and 2020, Big Ag (meat and dairy and other sectors) invested US$750 million in supporting political candidates. (That’s only slightly less than the energy industry’s comparable spend: US$1 billion.)

The study found that all 10 companies engaged in research that minimizes the link between animal agriculture and climate change. Three firms – Tyson, Cargill and Smithfield – went even further, supporting “countermovement organizations” or similar groups that play down the link between agriculture and climate change.

The researchers hope their revelations about the politics of bacon and eggs will help the meat and dairy industry, regulators and environmental reformers find common ground to establish new levels of reporting and accountability. In the absence of significant climate action, the World Resources Institute warns that total agricultural emissions could increase 58% by 2050 – a sizzling scenario that will only ensure we’re all done like dinner.

“WE CAN’T REACH HIM”: JOE MANCHIN IS GHOSTING THE WEST VIRGINIA UNION WORKERS WHOSE JOBS HIS DAUGHTER HELPED OUTSOURCE

She got a $30.8 million golden parachute in a corporate merger. Now, they’re being laid off and the medicines they produced are set to be manufactured overseas. Will anyone step up to save their jobs, and protect America’s drug supply?


BY KATHERINE EBAN

JULY 23, 2021
VANITY FAIR

ILLUSTRATION BY QUINTON MCMILLAN. IMAGES FROM GETTY.


On July 31, one of America’s largest pharmaceutical-manufacturing plants is scheduled to shut its doors.

Set on 22 acres in Morgantown, West Virginia, the plant, built in 1965 by the once-storied American generic-drug company Mylan Laboratories, has made 61 drug products, including a substantial portion of the world’s supply of levothyroxine, a critical thyroid medicine. Its 1,431 highly trained workers—analytical chemists, industrial engineers, and senior janitors among them—are represented by the steelworkers union. All are slated to be laid off by month’s end.

The Biden administration has a stated goal of increasing domestic production of pharmaceuticals, and the Morgantown plant is one of a dwindling number of facilities on home soil that produce vital and affordable medicine for the U.S. market. The plant has also lifted hundreds of West Virginia families into the middle class, with the children of its employees going on to become doctors and lawyers.


Under Mylan’s cofounder Mike Puskar, employees received free health care and medicine, turkeys on Thanksgiving, Christmas bonuses, and generous wages. “My father walked the plant once a week,” Puskar’s daughter, Johanna, told Vanity Fair. “He knew everyone’s names. He knew their children’s names. He knew their parents’ names.” Puskar died in 2011, nine years after he placed a businessman named Robert J. Coury at the company’s helm.

The new corporate entity, Viatris Inc., was formed in November 2020 when Mylan merged with the Pfizer subsidiary Upjohn. A month later it announced plans to close the Morgantown plant and told the staff it would move most manufacturing to India, and some to Australia, according to a plant employee.

This would seem to be the perfect fight for West Virginia’s senior U.S. senator, Joe Manchin III, a voluble champion of high-paying union jobs for the Mountain State’s workers. But when officials with the United Steelworkers Local 8-957 managed to get roughly two minutes of his time, over a video call he took from the U.S. Senate floor, there was no fight at all. “Sorry about your luck,” he told them, according to a union official and confirmed by five others who participated in the March 10 call. “It sounds like they’ve reached a corporate decision. There is very little I can do.”

A spokesperson for Senator Manchin vehemently denied this account of the call. In a statement to Vanity Fair, Manchin said, “For months, I have engaged in conversations with Viatris, Monongalia County, the Morgantown Area Partnership, and local and state leaders to find a solution that protects every single job.”

But union officials say they never heard anything from Manchin after their brief call. “We can’t reach him,” Joseph Gouzd, president of the local steelworkers union, told me. “He won’t respond. His aides won’t respond.” Their repeated phone calls and requests for a meeting have gone unanswered.

Union officials believe that Manchin’s silence can be traced to the fact that his daughter Heather Bresch, the former CEO of Mylan, walked away with a $30.8 million golden parachute from the Mylan-Upjohn merger. The resulting entity, which so swiftly targeted the Morgantown plant for closure, is led by Bresch’s former Mylan colleagues, who were also exorbitantly compensated in the merger.

“My father spent his whole life to make that company successful, and it took them less than 10 years to destroy it,” Johanna Puskar said as she contemplated the impending closure. “They came and they robbed it blind till there was nothing left.”

In a lengthy statement to Vanity Fair, in response to detailed questions, Viatris said it was committed to ensuring supply continuity, maintaining the quality of its medicines, and providing generous severance packages for its workers. The decision to close the Morgantown plant “was one we did not take lightly and in no way reflects upon the company’s appreciation for the commitment, work ethic, and valuable contributions of our employees,” it said.

For years Mylan’s flagship plant withstood an industry-wide tsunami of outsourcing.

Even as Western drug companies moved manufacturing capacity offshore, seeking a cheaper labor pool, weaker environmental regulations, and more distance from the Food and Drug Administration’s sharp-eyed inspectors, the Morgantown plant thrived. Because of the plant’s exemplary inspection record, and massive scale of operations, the FDA used it for decades as a training ground for its inspectors.

It also helped that the plant’s workers knew they were making drugs for their neighbors and countrymen. By 2017, 17 billion of the 20 billion doses made annually at the Morgantown plant were dispensed to U.S. consumers. “I use some of the drugs they manufacture within five minutes from my home,” said Danielle Walker, a Democrat in the West Virginia House of Delegates.

But the plant Puskar built was no match for the predatory brand of capitalism embraced by the management troika of Bresch, Coury, and a scientist named Rajiv Malik, who’d spent almost two decades at India’s largest drug company, Ranbaxy, before it collapsed in 2013 amid an immense data-fraud scandal. Together, according to numerous current and former employees, they emphasized global expansion over neighborliness, and speed and cost reductions over quality. They also allegedly escalated hostilities with the union in an effort to freeze wages and increase work shifts, even as their own compensation grew spectacularly.


The Morgantown closure isn’t just a tragedy for its American workforce. It’s also a step backward for U.S. efforts to prepare for the next pandemic. “Did 600,000 people die in vain without us learning we couldn’t get hold of sanitizer and toilet paper?” asked Barbara Evans Fleischauer, a Democratic member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. “Aren’t medical drugs important? Wouldn’t we want them to be manufactured in our country?”

In fact, we do. America’s urgent need to control the making of its own essential medicines is supposedly a top priority for the Biden administration. Last month the White House issued a report on building resilient supply chains, which noted that 63% of all FDA-registered facilities manufacturing finished doses of generic drugs, and 87% of those making their active ingredients, are located outside of the United States. The report described this dependence on foreign nations as a “key vulnerability” for the U.S. drug supply and called for “increased domestic production capacity” for critical drugs.

Given this confluence of Senator Manchin’s jobs agenda and President Biden’s goal for American pharmaceutical self-sufficiency, it seems possible that the Morgantown plant could be deemed critical infrastructure. In February an antibiotics plant in Bristol, Tennessee—the only U.S.-based facility still making amoxicillin—was rescued from imminent closure after being designated as critical infrastructure under the federal Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

At its height, in 2016, the Morgantown manufacturing site employed more than 3,700 full-time employees and made more than 1,400 drug products, a scale that dwarfs most American drug-manufacturing sites, according to FDA records characterized for Vanity Fair.

But instead of trying to save the plant, Biden officials appear to be tiptoeing around Manchin, who has emerged as a political kingmaker and hostage-taker in a U.S. Senate where Democrats hold a whisker-thin majority. Making the most of his power to swing votes, he has blocked critical aspects of President Biden’s agenda by refusing to support filibuster reform and taken campaign contributions from Republican donors happy to reward his spoiler role.

Hence a strange cone of silence has descended over this looming manufacturing wipeout that will harm the national interest. A U.S. Health and Human Services spokesperson declined to make any officials available for an interview, telling Vanity Fair, “We are aware and tracking this closure that was announced last year—but we cannot speak to internal efforts regarding one company at this time.” The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

In 1961, Mike Puskar and a fellow Army veteran named Don Panoz launched the drug-distribution business that would become Mylan Laboratories in an abandoned skating rink in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. As the company grew, its operations were guided by Puskar’s oft-stated motto: “Do it right, or don’t do it at all.”

An episode in 1988 helped cement the company’s reputation for integrity. In an attempt to figure out why the FDA was slow-walking approval of its drug applications, Mylan hired a private detective who helped uncover a major corruption scandal. Competing generic-drug companies were bribing FDA reviewers to accelerate approval of their applications, literally dropping envelopes of cash onto their desks. Amid industry reforms, the Morgantown plant became an exemplar.

As recounted in the company-sponsored book Mylan: 50 Years of Unconventional Success, an FDA investigator would perch on a ladder and draw a white-gloved finger across the top of the plant’s manufacturing equipment. Company executives let out a sigh of relief once the gloved finger came up “white as ever.” The FDA’s regulations require all surfaces to be dust-free. Signs that read “WE DO WHAT’S RIGHT, NOT WHAT’S EASY” adorned the hallways of the Morgantown plant.

Quietly, Puskar earned his employees’ gratitude by helping them with medical needs, going so far as to fly at least one of them to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for an organ transplant. At her childhood home, Johanna Puskar recalled seeing a watercolor painting of a mountaineer holding a blonde-haired girl on his shoulders. She later learned that an employee had sent it to thank Puskar for paying out of pocket to get his daughter lifesaving medical treatment.

Facing his own health issues, Puskar stepped down as board chairman in 2009. Coury, who was then CEO, became chairman of the board, and Bresch, Manchin’s daughter, became president. The hallmarks of community-oriented management, such as the Christmas bonuses and Thanksgiving turkeys, would soon vanish. According to one employee, when union members⁠—who had been engaged in collective bargaining⁠—raised the Christmas bonuses with Bresch at a company-wide meeting in the Morgantown plant’s cafeteria in December 2011, she replied, “What do you prefer, a Christmas bonus or a job?” By 2015, her annual compensation had risen more than 600%, to nearly $19 million. Bresch did not respond to a request for comment.

“He knew at the end he made a mistake” in turning over the company to Coury, Johanna said of her father, who was blocked from even reentering the plant by the new management team. Before he succumbed to liver cancer in 2011, Puskar insisted to his daughter that she extend the viewing of his body to 12 hours—four hours longer than the Mylan work shift. “He was scared to death that a worker would take off [time for] his viewing and get fired,” Johanna recalled.

For 12 hours, a line of grieving employees wrapped around a city block outside the Waterfront Marriott in downtown Morgantown.

By late 2005, Mylan was losing market share to Indian drug companies that made their own active ingredients and operated at rock-bottom costs. Confronting this new ecosystem, Robert Coury apparently decided: If you can’t beat them, join them.

So began a series of overseas acquisitions that brought Rajiv Malik into the company’s senior leadership. A canny process chemist, he had mastered the art of reverse engineering brand-name drugs and figuring out how to remake them more quickly and cheaply in generic form.

By 2013, Malik had become Mylan’s president and executive director of the board. More than half of the company’s 50 plants and 35,000 employees would soon be based in India. As the U.S. drug supply went global, and generic drugs manufactured overseas plunged in price, Mike Puskar’s values had become a relic. Companies no longer competed on quality. They competed on cost, the lower the better.

Under this new system, it was no longer always a winning strategy to comply with FDA regulations and ensure dust-free surfaces. For some companies, shortcuts and concealment became more cost-effective than compliance. That new reality brought about a culture shift within Mylan. “When they went global,” said one former employee, “that’s when the change occurred.” Before long, the company that had once served as a whistleblower, exposing corruption within the generic-drug industry, was sprouting whistleblowers of its own.

Under FDA regulations, plants must maintain their data in scrupulous condition, intact and unaltered as a verifiable record of each manufacturing step. But allegations of data manipulation, document shredding, and perilous cleaning lapses soon reached the FDA from whistleblowers in several Mylan facilities, including the Morgantown plant itself.

Meanwhile, a series of scandals trailed the executive team. In 2008, West Virginia University had to revoke Bresch’s MBA after it was revealed that she’d failed to complete coursework. The university had doctored her transcripts and awarded her the degree when Manchin became governor. There were allegations that Coury misused the company jet to fly his musician son to gigs. (At the time a Mylan spokesperson said that Coury’s contract allowed for personal use of the company jet.) By 2017, Malik had been named as a defendant in a civil complaint filed by 47 state attorneys general that alleged 18 generic-drug companies, including Mylan, had colluded to keep generic-drug prices artificially high. (Both Malik and Mylan have denied wrongdoing in the ongoing probe.)


In 2016, Bresch and her colleagues blundered into a massive public relations crisis after raising the price of Mylan’s lifesaving EpiPen—needed by millions of Americans, including school children, to reverse fatal allergic reactions—by 400%. Bresch was hauled before Congress to testify, flying into Washington, D.C., by private jet. Blaming the price hike on a broken health care system, she declared in a disastrous CNBC interview, “No one’s more frustrated than me.”

That same year Bresch earned $13.8 million and Malik earned $8.7 million in total compensation, while Coury netted $98 million, becoming one of the country’s highest-paid pharmaceutical executives. The head-spinning sums led some of the company’s biggest institutional investors to revolt, campaigning unsuccessfully in 2017 to block their continued corporate leadership.

By January 2018, a whistleblower at the Morgantown plant had contacted the FDA, flagging “fraud or disregard for procedure” driven by management, according to an internal FDA memo obtained by Vanity Fair. The whistleblower claimed that Morgantown, once the FDA’s gold standard for compliance, had developed an “embedded culture” that permitted fraud.

In mid-March, guided by whistleblower information, nine FDA investigators arrived at the Morgantown plant for a surprise inspection. The results were devastating. The inspection yielded a 32-page report detailing regulatory violations and a subsequent warning letter that froze much of the plant’s manufacturing until corrections were made. The Morgantown plant was on life support. “They started to mandate what kind of pens we could use in the labs,” one current employee reflected. “We couldn’t use Post-its under any circumstances. Any paper, even personal notes, could not be shredded or thrown away and had to go through a management review process.” (The FDA lifted Morgantown’s warning letter last spring, clearing the plant for full manufacturing.)

In October 2018, at an invective-laden meeting with union officials at Mylan’s corporate headquarters in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, a furious Malik ordered the union to fall in line, agree to 12-hour shifts, and allow workers to be moved anywhere in the plant that management chose. Otherwise, he threatened, according to three meeting attendees, “I will bury Morgantown. It will all go to India and my people will get the benefits.” (A lawyer for Viatris denied that Mr. Malik said this.)

Union officials now believe that was the plan all along. The union vice president, Bill Hawkins, who attended the meeting, paraphrased Malik’s position this way: I can pay my people over there $400 a year, or I can pay you people $70,000 a year, so you do what I want.

One afternoon last December, Johanna Puskar got a call from her son, who broke the news: “Mom, they’re closing Mylan down in Morgantown.”

“I just lost it,” Johanna recalled. “I was sobbing, ‘There goes dad’s legacy.’” But she also knew that the community of Morgantown itself was at stake. “It’s just not that Mylan pharmaceuticals is closing. Those people go to doctors. Those people get their hair done. It’s going to be a chain reaction.”

America’s pharmaceutical supply also hangs in the balance. It is one thing to shutter Morgantown. But it is quite another to relocate the manufacturing of 20 billion annual doses of medicine to another continent amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.


Bresch’s former colleague Malik, now president of Viatris, netted $20.8 million from the Mylan-Upjohn merger. Coury, Viatris’s new executive chairman, pulled in $29 million last year. Now it’s up to them to determine where all those doses will be produced.

Viatris was apparently banking on moving much of the manufacturing to several Mylan plants in India that are now banned from producing drugs for the U.S. market because of FDA violations. In order to restart, those plants would have to clear in-person inspections, which the FDA has frozen due to the pandemic. Vanity Fair has learned that, in light of this backlog, Malik has written repeatedly to FDA officials, urging the agency to clear the plants without an in-person inspection in what is known as a desktop review. So far the FDA has declined to do so, and it typically won’t clear plants remotely if they have checkered inspection histories. If the Morgantown plant is closed and the Indian plants can’t be approved for new manufacturing, there could be dangerous drug shortages.

With this offshoring meteor hurtling toward the U.S. drug supply, the union has been conducting frantic negotiations over a severance package and puzzling over management’s true intentions. Will they really shut down Morgantown if they cannot successfully transfer the manufacturing? Or are they trying to flush the union out of the plant, with the goal of resuming operations with a non-union workforce at some later date? David Beard, a statehouse reporter for a local paper, The Dominion Post, has been covering the approaching closure. He says Viatris management is “not responding” to requests from him, from local legislators, or even from prospective buyers to tour the plant.

There is still a flicker of hope that the government could save Morgantown using the same playbook that kept the amoxicillin plant open in Bristol, Tennessee. “We did change the course of history for that plant and that town,” said David Argyle, an Australian businessman sent to Tennessee by the facility’s British owners to examine the plant’s viability. He helped orchestrate a rescue by placing the plant into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, securing the CISA designation, and then finding an American buyer. On July 19, Barbara Evans Fleischauer of the West Virginia House of Delegates wrote to CISA’s director, asking the agency to designate the Morgantown plant, its equipment, and its drug applications critical infrastructure. With time running out, it’s a Hail Mary pass.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s health subcommittee, said of the impending Morgantown plant closure, “Congress invested millions of dollars in the COVID-19 relief bills to support the construction or renovation of U.S.-based drug-manufacturing facilities to protect our domestic drug supply chain and the jobs they produce. If we fail to address this dangerous trend, the U.S. will continue to be at the mercy of subpar manufacturing and vulnerable to foreign adversaries.”

Meanwhile, at the steelworkers union headquarters, Joseph Gouzd and his colleagues are fielding calls from panicked plant employees wanting to know how long their health insurance will last, whether they can refill prescriptions, and if they need to cancel upcoming medical procedures. “It’s a shitstorm right now, and it’s just boiling over,” Gouzd said. Why, he wants to know, haven’t Manchin and West Virginia’s other top elected officials “put anything in the newspaper”?

“For this to just be a damn silence,” he says, his voice trailing off. “It’s a killing silence.”

How indigenous knowledge can help prevent environmental crises

 09 Aug 2021

Nemonte Nenquimo has spent years fending off miners, loggers and oil companies intent on developing the Amazon rainforest.

The leader of Ecuador's indigenous Waoroni people, she famously fronted a 2019 lawsuit that banned resource extraction on 500,000 acres of her ancestral lands — a court win that gave hope to indigenous communities around the world.

But Nenquimo, a 2020 United Nations Champion of the Earth, isn't only hoping to save the Waoroni. By protecting the Amazon, an important store of greenhouse gases, she’s hoping to save the planet.

“If we allow the Amazon to be destroyed… that affects us as indigenous peoples, but it will also affect everyone because of climate change,” says Nenquimo. “The struggle we do is for all humanity.”

On the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, experts say governments must learn from the environmental examples set by indigenous communities, some of which have lived in harmony with nature for thousands of years. Otherwise, we risk accelerating the triple planetary crisis the world faces of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.

"Biodiversity loss and climate change, in combination with the unsustainable management of resources, are pushing natural spaces around the world, from forests to rivers to savannahs, to the breaking point,” says Siham Drissi, Biodiversity and Land Management Programme Officer with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). “We absolutely need to protect, preserve and promote the traditional knowledge, customary sustainable use and expertise of indigenous communities if we want to halt the damage we’re doing – and ultimately save ourselves.”


If we allow the Amazon to be destroyed… that affects us as indigenous peoples, but it will also affect everyone because of climate change.
Nenquimo Nenquimo, leader of Ecuador's indigenous Waoroni people.


An ailing Earth

The planet is home to more than 476 million indigenous people living in 90 countries. Together, they own, manage or occupy about one-quarter of the world’s land. It is territory that has fared far better than most of the rest of the Earth.

A landmark 2019 report from the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that the natural world is declining at a pace unprecedented in human history. Some three-quarters of the planet’s dry land has been “significantly altered” by human actions, which has imperiled crucial ecosystems, including forests, savannahs and oceans while pushing 1 million species towards extinction.

While environmental decline is accelerating in many indigenous communities, it has been “less severe” than in other parts of the world, the report found.

Experts say that is due in part to centuries of traditional knowledge and, in many communities, a prevailing view that nature is sacred. This knowledge, “encompasses practical ways to ensure the balance of the environment in which we live, so it may continue to provide essential services such as water, fertile soil, food, shelter and medicines,” says Drissi.

Conservation leaders

In many parts of the world, indigenous communities are at the forefront of conservation, according to a recent report supported in part by UNEP. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Bambuti-Babuluko community is helping to protect one of Central Africa’s last remaining tracts of primary tropical forest. In Iran, the semi-nomadic Chahdegal Balouch oversee 580,000 hectares of fragile scrubland and desert. And in Canada’s far north, Inuit leaders are working to restore caribou herds, whose numbers had been in steep decline.

Including indigenous peoples and local communities in environmental governance and drawing from their knowledge enhances their quality of life. It also improves conservation, restoration, and the sustainable use of nature, which benefits society at large.



STORY
Indigenous peoples and the nature they protect


STORY
States have these 13 duties when it comes to biodiversity and human rights


Indigenous groups are often better placed than scientists to provide information on local biodiversity and environmental change, and are important contributors to the governance of biodiversity at local and global levels, the IPBES report noted.

Despite that, indigenous groups often see their land exploited and dispossessed and struggle to have a say in what happens in their territories.

“Governments need to recognize that cultural heritage and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities significantly contribute to conservation and can enhance national and global action on climate change,” says Drissi.

A key part of that process, she added, is recognizing indigenous land claims and embracing traditional ways of managing land.

Mounting threats

Because their lives are often intimately tied to the land, indigenous communities have been among the first to face the fallout from climate change. From the Kalahari Desert to the Himalaya Mountains to the Amazon Rainforest, droughts, floods and fires have beset communities already struggling with poverty and incursions onto their land. That makes it all the more imperative for the outside world to acknowledge the rights and practices of indigenous communities, said Nenquimo.

“The extractivists, the capitalists, the government – they say indigenous people are ignorant,” she says. “We, the indigenous people, know why climate change is happening… [humanity is] damaging and destroying our planet. As indigenous people, we must unite in a single objective: that we demand that they respect us.”


The International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples is celebrated globally on 9 August. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires that free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples be obtained in matters of fundamental importance for their rights, survival, dignity, and well-being. Marking the start of the UN Decade for Ecosystems Restoration (2021-2030), UNEP is working with the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to publish work on traditional knowledge for ecosystems restoration and resilience. UNEP has also established a policy to promote the protection of environmental defenders, and engages religious leaders and communities to work with the indigenous peoples to advocate for sound forest policies and the protection of the rights of its guardians through the Interfaith Rainforest Initiative.

As International Day of Indigenous Peoples is commemorated, Canada continues to fall short on treaties, social contracts


Mon., August 9, 2021

The International Day of Indigenous Peoples, celebrated on Aug. 9, was established in 1994 by the United Nations General Assembly. This year it has as its theme, “Leaving no one behind: Indigenous peoples and the call for a new social contract.”

As far as Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Reg Niganobe is concerned, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action is a social contract in Canada, and stronger yet are the treaties, he says.

“The contracts themselves already exist in terms of treaties and other obligations the governments are technically supposed to have, but we're not seeing the benefit of that at the current time in my opinion,” said Niganobe.

Six days before the world marked the International Day of Indigenous Peoples, Curve Lake and Hiawatha First Nations, members of the Anishinabek Nation in Ontario, observed Aug. 3 as a Day of Mourning.

That date was the 215th day of the year and honoured the 215 unmarked graves uncovered by Tk'emlúps te Secwe̓pemc Nation on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.

Only weeks after Tk'emlúps te Secwe̓pemc unveiled its numbers, leadership of Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan said ground penetrating radar on the site of the Marieval Indian Residential School indicated 751 probable burials.

Niganobe is hoping that the physical findings of unmarked graves are an awakening for the country.

“I think it's unfortunate that it takes events like this to kind of come forward before a lot of that movement takes place,” he said.

Niganobe points out that the TRC report on the legacy of the residential school system included a volume on lost children and unmarked graves in the report it released in 2015.

“You look at those reports and you do have all those potential avenues to take. It’s a matter of just addressing them,” he said.

“We do have existing agreements which some people call contracts (and) we call them treaties,” said International Chief Wilton Littlechild of Maskwacis in Alberta.

Littlechild says Canada does not need a “new social contract.” He points to existing agreements, which include treaties; the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), with the federal government recently passing a bill for its implementation; the 94 Calls to Action delivered by the TRC in 2015; and the 231 Calls for Justice that came in 2019 from the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).

“You've got four at least in Canada; solutions calling out for implementation. And if that's done, I'm not sure we need a new social contract or social agreement,” said Littlechild.

He was one of three commissioners with the TRC and has been active for decades at the international and national levels working for the rights of Indigenous peoples, including holding key roles for the UN on human rights and Indigenous rights.

“Those are solutions that are there that all need just to be implemented. I shouldn't say ‘just’ because it's not that easy. Had they been implemented already I think we'd be farther ahead than where we are today,” he said.

But nothing short of political will and individual commitments will make these social contracts happen, he says.

And the implementation of Calls to Action 53 through 56, which directs the creation of a National Council for Reconciliation (NCR).

“The purpose of that was … to be an independent oversight body to check on what exactly is going on across Canada. So where there's good practices we can learn from each other. Where there isn't any action, to question why there's no action,” said Littlechild, who was one of three commissioners on the TRC.

He adds that the NCR could also be an independent oversight body for the MMIWG’s Calls for Justice, considering both the TRC and MMIWG national inquiry call for the implementation of UNDRIP.

“Had (the NCR) been in place three to four years ago even, one or two years after our report, we would have been further ahead with respect to reconciliation, with respect to enforcement of treaties, the Calls for Justice, implementation of the declaration. They all seem to merge into one solution and that's implementation… We have the solutions in place. We just need to activate them,” said Littlechild.

As for the delay on the creation of the NCR, Littlechild, who was chair of the interim committee to look at establishing the NCR, knows only that they turned in their report to the government in June 2018.

The Crown-Indigenous Relations’ website reiterates Ottawa’s commitment to establishing the NCR. However, the only details offered are confirmation of the receipt of the report and the 2019 budget announcement of $126.5 million in fiscal year 2020-2021 to establish the NCR.

“My own timeframe is (that it’s) long past,” said Littlechild, but “won’t say the delay has been intentional.”

As for the federal legislation creating the UNDRIP Act, it sets aside two years to create an implementation plan. The legislation obligates the federal government to “take all measures necessary to ensure that the laws of Canada are consistent with the declaration.”

Littlechild says he is concerned about what will happen in moving forward with UNDRIP should the federal government call an election soon, which is strongly anticipated.

“Ever since I was a Member of Parliament myself I've always felt and argued that our issues should be non-partisan,” said Littlechild, who was the first treaty First Nations person to serve as an MP, a position he held for the Progressive Conservatives in the Wetaskiwin-Rimbey riding from 1988 to 1993.

“I think that we have a relationship with the Crown. It's not a political party. So I think it should be non-partisan. Indigenous issues should be a challenge to all parties to work together with us on solutions. When we become a debating point then nothing happens.”

Niganobe agrees, saying all the reports that have been undertaken deal with “non-partisan issues.”

He also says that Indigenous issues need to be “incredibly high” on party platforms, in both the upcoming federal election and the upcoming Ontario election.

“If you can address a lot of these issues, the social contract—the economic benefits for all, the social benefits for all—you can create a lot more certainty within Canada in terms of inclusion and in terms of investment and business, just contributions from Aboriginal people in general. That inclusion could lead to bigger things for Canada,” said Niganobe.

“To me, those contracts already exist. It's just an obligation on their part to start fulfilling them.”

On its website, the UN points to apologies, truth and reconciliation efforts, and legislative and constitutional reforms that have been undertaken over the years by countries to address how Indigenous people have been marginalized and excluded from political and economic activities. Despite these actions, inequalities still exist.

“Therefore, the building and redesigning of a new social contract as an expression of cooperation for social interest and common good for humanity and nature, is needed,” says the UN.

“The new social contract must be based on genuine participation and partnership that fosters equal opportunities and respects the rights, dignity and freedoms of all. Indigenous peoples’ right to participate in decision-making is a key component in achieving reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and States,” reads the UN site.

August 9 marks the day of the first meeting in 1982 of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations of the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.

The annual day was proclaimed in 1993 at the end of the Year of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. Since then, two International Decades of the World’s Indigenous Peoples were declared (1995-2004 and 2005-2014). Next year will begin the Decade of Indigenous Languages.

Windspeaker.com

By Shari Narine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Windspeaker.com, Windspeaker.com