Amazon invests $1.2 billion to pay for 750,000 employees' education


A graduate walks among his peers. Amazon announced that it will fully cover the cost of tuition for its employees' educations. 

Photo by Charles Deloye/UNSPLASH

Sept. 9 (UPI) -- Amazon announced on Thursday that it will pay full tuition -- including the cost of books and fees -- for its more than 750,000 front-line employees.

The retail giant will fund the 2022 initiative by investing $1.2 billion to expand its education and skills training benefits program by 2025.

Rather than offering reimbursement after coursework completion, Amazon will pay the fees in advance. The offer stands for those who have been working at the company for 90 days, including 400,000 employees who joined the company since the start of the pandemic.

"Through its popular Career Choice program, the company will fund full college tuition, as well as high school diplomas, GEDs and English as a Second Language proficiency certifications for its front-line employees -- including those who have been at the company for just three months," Amazon said in a press release.

Amazon is also launching three upskilling programs: Amazon Web Services Grow Our Own Talent, which will train employees to become data technicians; Surge2IT, which will help entry-level IT employees pursue higher-paying roles in the company; and the User Experience Design and Research Apprenticeship, which will help employees combine education and training to work on research and design teams.

In 2019, Amazon announced a $700 million commitment to train 100,000 employees by 2025 to help them transition to higher-paying jobs. It began offering nine programs. The three new programs will affect 300,000 employees, representing 30% of Amazon's workforce
To handle a surge in demand during the pandemic of applicants interested in the programs, Amazon switched its training to virtual sessions. These include the Amazon Technical Academy, the Amazon Technical Apprenticeship, the AWS Training and Certifications, and Machine Learning University.

The move comes after other retail giants announced similar plans. Last month, Walmart said that it would cover the cost of college tuition for 1.5 million employees and Target announced that it would fund advanced degrees in 40 different institutions.

Remote work curbs communication, collaboration, study finds


Economist Gray Kimbrough works at home in April 2020 alongside his daughter Violet, who was participating in distance learning from her school. New research suggests that entirely home-based workforces can limit communication and collaboration that comes from being together in an office. 

File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo


Sept. 9 (UPI) -- When employees work remotely, lines of communication between colleagues, teams and departments get severed, according to new research.

The study of 61,000 Microsoft employees -- published Thursday in the journal Nature Human Behavior -- found remote work led to more siloed lines of communication and fewer real-time conversations.

While working remotely full-time, employees were also less likely to spend time in meetings, limiting the opportunity for collaboration and information-sharing.

"Measuring the causal effects of remote work has historically been difficult, because only certain types of workers were allowed to work away from the office," study co-author David Holtz said in a press release.

"That changed during the pandemic, when almost everyone who could work from home was required to do so," said Holtz, an assistant professor at the University of California's Berkeley Haas School of Business.

With entire workforces relegated to the home office, researchers were able to able to measure changes in behavior.

For the study, Holtz and his research partners analyzed anonymized data from thousands of emails, instant messages, calls, meetings and working hours logged by Microsoft employees. All of the content and identifying information were scraped from the messages before being analyzed.

In addition to communication data, researchers had access to data on employees' roles, managerial status, business group and length of tenure at the company.

Researchers analyzed the volume and trajectory of messages -- calls, texts and emails -- across different groups of employees. The research team also tracked the time employees spent in scheduled and unscheduled meetings.

The data showed communication networks shrunk when the workforce began operating remotely, with fewer calls, emails, texts and meetings between different teams and departments. Researchers determined cross-group collaboration declined by 25%.

However, researchers found communication within groups happened more frequently. Predictably, higher volumes of texts and emails were responsible for increases in in-group communication, as colleagues spent less time on the phone or in video conferences while working form home.

Because roughly 15% of the Microsoft's workforce was remote prior to the pandemic, researchers were able to isolate the the effects of working from home and working with remote colleagues.

"The fact that your colleagues' remote work status affects your own work habits has major implications for companies that are considering hybrid or mixed-mode work policies," Holtz said.

Having one's teammates and collaborators in the office at the same time, for example, can improve communication and information flow for people who are in the office, as well as those working remote, he said.

"It's important to be thoughtful about how these policies are implemented," Holtz said.

Increasing affordable housing may decrease heart disease rates, study says

By HealthDay News


Increasing availability of affordable housing could reduce incidence of heart disease in many communities in the United States, according to a new study. Photo by Ribastank/Pixabay

One of the keys to good health could be in the hands of those who decide zoning policies for their communities.

Inclusionary zoning policies that provide for affordable housing were associated with lower rates of heart disease for those who benefited from these dwellings, according to a new U.S. study.

"Many cities around the country are facing a severe shortage of affordable housing," said lead study author Antwan Jones, an associate professor of sociology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

"Our study suggests that inclusionary zoning programs can help not just boost the supply of safe, affordable housing, but may also reduce the risk of heart disease," Jones said in a university news release.

RELATED Study: Heart attacks are less common in greener neighborhoods

Researchers found that places that had inclusionary zoning also had fewer residents with high blood pressure and higher cholesterol compared to communities without these programs.

The residents were less likely to be taking medicine for high blood pressure. They also were less likely to have already developed coronary heart disease.

These policies were associated with better cardiovascular health even when the study controlled for other factors linked to heart disease, such as poverty, health insurance and smoking

However, the study only showed an association, not a direct cause-and-effect relationship.

The researchers used data from the 500 Cities Project, along with zoning and demographic information.

They noted that more than 880 cities and counties in 25 states have adopted inclusionary zoning policies or incentive programs for developers who set aside a portion of their building projects for low- and moderate-income families

These incentives can include tax breaks and exemptions from some regulations.

Mandatory inclusionary zoning had the biggest impact on markers of heart health, the authors said in the report, published Wednesday in Circulation.

More than 365,000 people die from coronary heart disease annually in the United States. The authors called for more research on the links between zoning and heart health, while adding that this study suggests inclusionary zoning can address some of the complex health challenges faced by struggling families.

"Stable, affordable housing in healthy communities can reduce stress and increase access to fresh produce, parks, jobs, safe streets and other amenities that help people stay healthy," said co-author Gregory Squires, a professor of sociology and public policy at the university.More information

The American Heart Association has more information on heart health.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

USA

Study: Nearly 69K COVID-19 cases, 17K deaths at nursing homes went uncounted


Nursing homes across the country, including the California home pictured last year as a patient was moved out of the facility, were known epicenters for COVID-19 outbreaks last year -- but researchers say that cases and deaths from senior homes were widely under-reported. Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 9 (UPI) -- Nearly 69,000 additional COVID-19 cases and 17,000 more deaths occured at nursing homes in the United States in 2020 than were reported, an analysis published Thursday by JAMA Network Open found.

This means that at least 40% of COVID-19 cases and deaths went unreported -- at least initially -- at these facilities across the country, the data showed.

These figures equate to about 12% of total reported cases and 14% of total reported deaths in nursing homes nationally, the researchers said.

They said the differences are attributable, at least in part, to the federal government not asking nursing homes to report COVID-19 cases and deaths until the end of May, or about three months after the first infections were reported.

"It's pretty inexcusable that the federal government didn't start counting cases and deaths in these facilities until the end of May," study co-author Karen Shen told UPI in a phone interview.

"For their families and loved ones, we wanted these people to be counted," said Shen, a doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

In addition to the JAMA Network Open article, Shen and her colleagues have made their findings on nursing home infections and deaths publicly available.


RELATED CDC: More than 40% of staff at long-term care facilities not fully vaccinated

Since the start of the pandemic, nearly 676,000 COVID-19 cases occurred among nursing home residents, with more than 134,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

However, these figures are based on facility reports to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Healthcare Safety Network, which has been tracking the impact of the pandemic on nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

Nursing homes have been epicenters for COVID-19 outbreaks from the early days of the pandemic, but delays in reporting numbers -- homes were not required to report cases and deaths until May 2020 -- continue to cloud the real toll the coronavirus had on these facilities, the Harvard researchers said.

Still, the Life Care Center in Kirkland, Wash., the site of the first known nursing home outbreak in the United States, reported zero cases, despite a March 2020 CDC investigation identifying 81 infections and 23 deaths among residents.

In addition, state officials in New York are alleged to have intentionally under-reported COVID-19 cases and deaths in nursing homes in 2020.

For this study, the researchers analyzed COVID-19 case and death data from more than 15,000 nursing homes across the country through the end of last year.

They compared figures from 20 states that required reporting from the start of the pandemic to the CDC's National Healthcare Safety Network data for these states.

Based on the differences in these numbers, researchers then estimated the true number of nursing home cases and deaths for the 30 states that did not require reporting before late May of last year.

After crunching the numbers, Shen and her colleagues estimated that, nationally, nursing homes under-reported infections by about 44%, on average, and deaths by about 40%, on average.

However, the true scope of the pandemic may be even greater, given that there is evidence that cases and deaths may have been under-reported even in states that began collecting data in March 2020, including New York, according to Shen.

"We felt it was important to get these numbers from early in the pandemic out there, before we forget about them," Shen said.

"Right now, individual states are collecting data in different ways, and we may not be getting an accurate picture -- and that needs to change," she said.

Monday’s tornado in southern 

Ontario was one of the rarest

 in Canada

Digital Writers

Wed., September 8, 2021

It’s not every day you see a tornado in Canada, but it’s extraordinary to see a tornado in Canada before the day has even started.

The tornado that swept into Port Albert, Ontario, from the eastern waters of Lake Huron early Monday morning was one of those rare tornadoes that touched down before sunrise.

Port Albert Ontario Tornado Sept 6 2021

A survey conducted by the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) found that an EF-0 tornado hit Port Albert at 4:05 a.m. on Monday, September 6, as a supercell thunderstorm rolled ashore from Lake Huron.

NTP’s analysis found that the tornado stayed on the ground for 2.3 km and reached a maximum width of 175 m. The tornado produced “notable tree damage,” according to their survey, that was consistent with maximum winds of about 115 km/h.

4:05 a.m. is an exceedingly rare time of the day to witness a tornado in Canada. Most tornadoes across the country develop during the afternoon and evening hours as severe thunderstorms thrive with the heat of the day.

Nighttime tornadoes are exceptionally dangerous because people in harm’s way are often sleeping or otherwise tuned out from the threat for severe weather. The inability to see the tornado coming adds to the danger of these nocturnal twisters.

PHOTOS: Wild tornado-warned storms take a toll in southern Ontario

We’ve seen more than 50 tornadoes across Canada so far in 2021, and about half of this year’s twisters touched down in Ontario. This count will likely rise as crews finish up their damage surveys from Tuesday’s severe storms in southern Ontario.

WATCH NOW: MONDAY MORNING'S HAILSTORM DAMAGED CROPS NEAR PORT ALBERT, ONTARIO

Click here to view the video

FREER THAN A TEXAN

"Feeling free": women criminalized by Mexico's abortion bans celebrate ruling

Laura Gottesdiener
Thu., September 9, 2021,

A woman takes part in a protest to celebrate the decision of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) that declared the criminalization of abortion as unconstitutional, in Saltillo


By Laura Gottesdiener

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - When a nurse arrived at Martha Mendez's bedside in a Mexican hospital carrying a fetus and told the teenager to ask it for forgiveness, Mendez resigned herself to the prison sentence she assumed would inevitably follow.

It was March 2015, and hours earlier Mendez had arrived at the public hospital in the southern state of Veracruz suffering from pain and stomach cramps.

She said she was unaware she was pregnant and that the medication she'd been prescribed months earlier, after being misdiagnosed with gastritis, could harm her pregnancy.

After she suffered a miscarriage in the hospital, first the medical staff and then local prosecutors accused her of committing the crime of inducing her own abortion - sparking a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

While Mexico's highest court declined to rule on Mendez's situation and her case was eventually shelved, she watched in shock on Tuesday as the body declared that abortion was not a crime. 

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexico-supreme-court-rules-criminalizing-abortion-is-unconstitutional-2021-09-07

"I felt overjoyed," she told Reuters by telephone. "It was part of feeling free after everything I went through."

According to the Mexican reproductive rights group GIRE, 172 people in Mexico were imprisoned for the crime of an illegal abortion from January 2010 to January 2020.

Over 3,500 more - including Mendez - were accused of the crime, according to GIRE's data, which was obtained through freedom of information requests and was shared exclusively with Reuters ahead of its publication.

All but four Mexican states - Oaxaca, Veracruz, Hidalgo and Mexico City - prohibit abortion under most circumstances, although it is legal in all states in cases of rape.

Veracruz legalized abortion earlier this year; it was restricted when Mendez was accused of the crime.

While Tuesday's unanimous Supreme Court ruling did not overturn those bans, it set a binding precedent that judges cannot sentence people to jail for either having, or assisting in, illegal abortions.

Advocates say eliminating the threat of prison time for those seeking an abortion is the most significant part of the ruling.

"Now all women know that if they decide to have an abortion they won't be criminalized, they won't be persecuted," said Veronica Cruz, co-founder of the Guanajuato-based advocacy group Las Libres.

NO MORE JAIL

Reuters could not determine exactly how many people in Mexico are currently jailed for illegal abortions. It was not immediately possible to contact any.

Supreme Court President Arturo Zaldivar said in a news conference on Wednesday he did not know the number of those imprisoned, but that the criminalization of abortion has primarily affected poorer women.

 https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/mexican-president-says-court-ruling-abortion-should-be-respected-2021-09-08

"Rich girls have always had abortions and never gone to prison," he said.

The government does not publish data about how many people have been jailed for having or assisting in illegal abortions, although publicly available crime figures show it has opened 432 investigations nationwide so far this year.

For years, reproductive rights advocates in Mexico have sought to track such cases and provide legal support to the accused, some of whom - like Mendez - say they were criminalized after miscarriages.

Tuesday's ruling marked a striking contrast with new abortion restrictions

 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-declines-block-texas-abortion-ban-2021-09-02 in Texas, just across the border

"In the same week, we have these regressive changes in Texas, and this advance in Mexico," said Isabel Fulda, deputy director of GIRE.

PROTECTION FOR ACTIVISTS

The Mexican court decision came in response to a legal challenge to a 2017 law in the northern border state of Coahuila, which set a maximum prison sentence of three years for either having, or assisting with, an illegal abortion.

The ruling immediately invalidated the Coahuila law, and paved a path for advocates to challenge abortion restrictions nationwide.

The ruling also offers increased security to members of the dozens of feminist collectives that for years have helped women induce abortions, using widely available medications such as misoprostol.

Cruz's group, Las Libres, was among the first in Mexico to begin offering this so-called "accompaniment" to women, offering them both emotional support and practical information based on World Health Organization's recommendations.

Since the early 2000s, Las Libres has helped thousands of women access a self-induced abortion, Cruz says.

Among those who have since joined this effort is Mendez, who now lives in Guanajuato with her first child, a 9-month-old son, and helps women through the process of taking the pills at home.

"Now I feel like it's safer for me to help other women," she said.

(Reporting by Laura Gottesdiener in Monterrey, additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)

OFF GRID

Solar and electric living offer independence, says Willisville cottager


Thu., September 9, 2021

Living off grid is freedom and it could be easier to achieve than you think. So says Ian Graham, an audio engineer from Kitchener with a camp on Charlton Lake in Willisville. His home is powered by the sun, as is his cabin and his customized pontoon boat, which also has an electric motor. He pulls the boat and trailer with his Tesla 3. A stop at the charging station at the Georgian Bay Travel Centre costs him $18. That can't be easily dismissed, with the average price per litre for gasoline in Canada up 30 cents since the beginning of 2021.

He can trace his interest in renewable energy back to the 1990s, when his parents purchased the cabin beside a waterfall on Charlton Lake. At the time, it would have cost $75,000 to have hydro installed so they used propane for the stove, fridge and lights. Mr. Graham’s father researched alternatives. “He came across a company that sold a propeller that, when hooked on the back of a sailboat, would charge 12V batteries,” he said. Mr. Graham Sr. purchased a propeller and set it up to power four 12V lead acid batteries, generating hydro power from the waterfall. “He had a satellite TV, a satellite phone and lights (they didn’t have LED back then). They got along fine. It was my first real realization that you could do this.”

His current lifestyle has come through a series of incremental changes. After his father passed away, Mr. Graham started to look into solar power for the cabin. He put up a couple small panels to supplement the waterfall hydro. Last summer he installed four 390 watt bifacial solar panels on a new deck extension. “There’s more power than I know what to do with on those four panels,” he said. The system uses four six-volt lead acid batteries wired as 24 volts that is shut down over the winter. Other cabins located around the lake are outfitted with solar as well. “One guy has a 60-inch television.”

Solar is a good option for year-round power, even in winter, Mr. Graham said. “February is one of the best times for solar. You get the reflection, especially with bifacial panels, and it’s colder. Panels like cold. They’re not as efficient in this heat; you don’t get as much daylight time during winter months but the system is more efficient overall. It’s amazing how much power comes out of that.”

He pointed to the February 2021 winter storm in Texas when power outages essentially shut down the state. “There were people on Facebook who had solar panels connected to a Tesla Powerwall. They didn’t have to worry. The grid went down and they didn’t care. Last time I was here there was a big thunderstorm. It took out the hydro for Willisville but didn’t affect me at all.”

At home in Kitchener he has two 10 kilowatt systems, installed 10 years ago. It cost $80,000 to install and he gets paid to feed back into the grid but “now you can do net metering and a 10-kilowatt system installed is around $20,000, so that’s how much the cost has dropped.” All energy has a consequence, said Mr. Graham, but “while it will take a year to a year and a half of energy to produce a solar panel, that panel will last 25 years.”

An August 2021 study, Impacts of Behind-the-Meter Solar in Ontario, conducted by Power Advisory LLC for the Canadian Renewable Energy Association (CanREA), concluded that installation of more rooftop solar panels would help Ontario to meet future electricity demand. “Doubling Ontario’s solar generation capacity would help reduce costs for the whole energy system by up to $250 million per year by 2030,” reported CanREA. The cost of solar electricity has fallen by about 90 percent since 2010, making residential rooftop solar panels more affordable, but “regulatory red tape” continues to limit solar expansion in the province, the organization said.

Mr. Graham has chosen to use renewables in all areas of his life. He drove a van on waste vegetable oil for eight years. More recently, he drove an electric Chevrolet Volt for three years before purchasing the Tesla 3 three years ago (when there was still an Ontario rebate program for electric vehicles) and “absolutely loves it.” He is a member of the Waterloo Electric Vehicle Association. “We have about 500 members and not one of them would go back to gas.”

When you add up the savings in gas, oil changes and other maintenance with an electric vehicle (EV), it more than pays for itself, he said. “I can get 500 kilometres on a full charge. Charging at home, it will cost seven or eight dollars for 500 kilometres. I’ll stop at Parry Sound to charge and have some lunch and it’s about $18 for 500 kilometres.”

“There are so many myths about EVs, like they don’t work in the winter,” he said. “That’s baloney. I just read an article about a lady in Thunder Bay with a Model 3.”

He acknowledged there is a carbon footprint with EVs but pointed out the bigger one from gas. “I tell people that their gas first has to be mined. It has to be refined, which takes a lot of electricity and water. The cobalt used in EVs is also needed for desulphuring gas. Gas has to be transported, using energy, before you put it in your engine which is only 15 to 20 percent efficient, and then it only burns once.”

A new study by the International Council on Clean Transportation supports this. The study looked at the entire life cycle of vehicles from sourcing the battery materials to production, then compiled driving data in different markets to get an average life cycle emission from the use of vehicles. Results showed “that battery electric vehicles have by far the lowest life cycle greenhouse gas emissions,” with “emissions over the lifetime of average medium size battery electric vehicles registered today already lower than comparable gasoline cars by 60 to 68 percent in the United States.”

That’s not even considering the health costs of gas transportation, Mr. Graham noted. “Emissions from gasoline engines lead to higher rates of asthma, emphysema, circulatory disease and cancer. In my mom’s case, she passed away about a year and a half ago from dementia, which is now being linked to air pollution.” When fuel doesn’t burn efficiently, very fine metal particulates get into the atmosphere. We breathe those in and our nasal passages provide access to the brain, he said.

“We keep giving oil and gas billions of dollars a year and what do they contribute to our health care? They’re the ones polluting us. What are they contributing to the environment? They need to be held accountable.”

Mr. Graham’s latest project is a pontoon boat he has converted to solar/electric. He bought the boat second-hand in January and started building the battery boxes in April with help from a friend. They custom built the canopy using aluminum rails purchased after they were found in someone’s back yard. A friend custom designed the connector plates and corner brackets in a CAD program. A shop in St. Mary’s did the fabrication. The brackets for the solar panels were 3D printed and it all came together.

The solar canopy consists of 1400W of bifacial solar panels. They get power from the top and the reflection from both the water and the boat’s white seats. There are four Tesla batteries in two custom built boxes, made plug-and-play using Anderson connectors. There is a solar charge controller and a battery management system that dictates how the batteries are (properly) charged. The battery system sits within a mounted deck box and takes up less space than the original motor compartment. The gasoline motor was swapped for a 20 HP Elco electric motor to complete the 48V system. “This is a simple system,” Mr. Graham said. “It only goes 10 kilometres an hour but for a floating couch, it’s good.”

The batteries are always charging. “When I wake up in the morning, I’ve got power here. When I go out on the water, I’ve still got power. I can go fishing or drift and after spending an hour or two out here, I’ve got 15 or 20 percent of my power back.”

“The only propane I use is for the stove and barbecue and hot water for the shower,” he said. “I have a solar air heater for my recording studio. The only thing I’m owned by is having to pay property taxes. With solar, you’re independent of a lot of hydro bills and gas and prices going up. All those things add up and make a big difference.”

"The big thing I try to get across to people is that this is independence," Mr. Graham said.

Lori Thompson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Manitoulin Expositor

How Indigenous voters want political leaders to hold residential school staff to account

Thu., September 9, 2021

Danielle Morrison, a second-year law associate in Manitoba who has residential school survivors in her family, says the federal government should hold the Catholic Church accountable for its actions. (Sam Samson/CBC - image credit)

When Jolene Mayer thinks of the future for reconciliation, she sees a clock.

"We're running out of time," said Mayer, who is Métis and lives in The Pas, Man.

Mayer's great-grandmother went to a residential school in Saskatchewan. She says the people who abused her kin, along with thousands of other children, have yet to be brought to justice.

"These people now, if they're still alive — the nuns, the priests, the ministers — they're in their 80s, 90s and we're gonna lose them. They don't deserve a free walk into heaven."

Submitted by Jolene Mayer

Mayer said she sees the effects of intergenerational trauma in northern Manitoba take shape in addictions and mental health crises.

That's why she wants to know how the next federal government will hold residential school operators and staff to account and bring some possible closure to her community.

"We need to act now," she said.

CBC News reached out to the major federal political parties campaigning in Manitoba for the Sept. 20 election. Each was asked how it would bring to justice those responsible for residential schools within 21 days of coming to power. Here are their answers, in alphabetical order of party name.

Conservative Party of Canada

The Conservative Party referred to its platform, called Canada's Recovery Plan. In it, the party lays out different points, including developing a plan to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's "calls to action," specifically numbers 71 to 76. They directly address residential school burial sites, including calling for governments to release records, fund the work to uncover graves and ensure all work is led by Indigenous communities.

Green Party of Canada

The Green Party said it would provide funding for healing centres and for the work to identify missing children and unmarked graves. The party said it would call on Pope Francis to apologize on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church for its role in operating the schools and look for ways the federal government could hold different religious institutions accountable. The Green Party said it would also formally recognize the high rates of Indigenous youth in foster and custody systems, and would support providing access to Jordan's Principle to non-status First Nations children who live off reserve.

Liberal Party of Canada

The Liberal Party reaffirmed its promise to appoint a special interlocutor who would partner with Indigenous communities to uncover unmarked graves, stating it would "quickly establish" the position if re-elected. The party said it would also provide support for communities doing the work, fund the TRC with dedicated support for unmarked graves and endeavour to build a monument in Ottawa to honour residential school survivors and the children who never came home. The Liberals also mentioned the work they've done since 2016, including urging the Pope to apologize.

New Democratic Party

The NDP said it would commit to fully funding the search for gravesites at former residential schools. It would also fund the maintenance and protection of the graves in whatever manner the communities would like. The NDP also said it would appoint a special prosecutor to "pursue those who inflicted great harm on Indigenous children" in residential schools. The party would also require churches and governments to hand over records that would identify any remains or those who are responsible for the harm done.

People's Party of Canada

The PPC sent a link to its platform portion regarding First Nations, Métis and Inuit people. There is no mention of reconciliation or residential schools — the platform briefly describes how it might collaborate with different communities on living conditions, natural resources and the economy.

'Hold the Catholic Church accountable'

Justice can look different for different people, said Danielle Morrison, a second-year law associate at the Headingley, Man., office of Winnipeg-based law firm Cochrane Saxberg LLP.

Morrison, who is from Anishinaabeg of Naongashiing in Treaty 3, in northwestern Ontario, works in child protection, Indigenous and corporate law.

"A great starting point is to hold the Catholic Church accountable," she said.

She noted the Pope's lack of apology for the Catholic Church's role in residential schools, records that have yet to be released from local churches and the millions of dollars that were supposed to go to residential school survivors but were instead spent on legal fees.

Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Morrison said the federal government should compel churches to release records. Another idea she's heard from different community members is to petition Ottawa to remove the church's charitable status.

"To be frank, the best way to hit them is hitting where it hurts, and that's their bank," she said.

"If they can't take charitable donations, then they're not able to spend that money in the ways that they have been. Maybe it'll help them think twice about where they should have been spending money in the first place — fulfilling those promises that they made in the residential settlement agreement."

Morrison's father was a residential school survivor. He died around the time she started working with other survivors to file compensation claims — an experience she said was integral to her becoming a lawyer. She said she hopes the next federal government will put action behind its words of support for First Nations who are uncovering unmarked graves.

"These are our lives. It has been my life since I was born, and I find it really frustrating that while we're still trying to pick up the pieces, political leaders are now making it into a campaign," Morrison said.

"I hope that the leaders, when they're commenting and answering these questions about how they're going to hold the Catholic Church and hold the government accountable — all these atrocities of the past that still have lingering impacts today — I hope that they think. I hope that they come up with some very meaningful answers."

Hope for healing through supports, not jail time

For others, justice doesn't involve Canada's justice system at all.

"I don't think we're a punitive people," said Wayne Mason, executive director of Wa-Say Healing Centre in Winnipeg.

"If they believe that they did something wrong, then they should try and make amends. It doesn't mean throwing them in jail or anything like that. We will be just as bad as them if we did that.... They can make amends by helping us to do things in a good way."

Trevor Brine/CBC

Mason is from Fisher River Cree Nation in Manitoba and a member of the turtle clan. He's been given the spirit names Running Buffalo, Brown Buffalo Warrior and Standing Strong Earth Man.

Wa-Say helps residential school survivors reconnect with their Indigenous identities before helping them heal from their experiences as children.

"We have ceremonies here, right in this room. Pipe ceremonies, naming ceremonies. We get their clans, their colours," Mason said. "It helps them to feel good about themselves. Once they feel good and want to know about their history, we help them understand what happened over the years."

In part, making amends means continuing funding for programs like Wa-Say, Mason said. It also means supporting the work of Indigenous-led programs by letting them be Indigenous-led, with no government influence.

"We know who we are. We know what we need to do. We just need to have people on the other side to understand that and agree to that," he said.

"I'm hoping that with the new government — whether it's Liberal, Conservative, NDP or whoever — I hope that those agreements and plans to work together continue."

Still, Mason said reconciliation is multi-faceted and that acknowledgement from the Catholic Church and an apology from the Pope could help some people move forward.

"Hopefully someday he will," Mason said. "That will help that healing."

Tree planting efforts aren’t replacing burned U.S. forests — not even close

Adria Malcolm, Andrew Hay and Andrea Januta
Thu., September 9, 2021

As fires devastate U.S. forests, researchers work to grow super-resilient saplings

DEER LAKE MESA, N.M. (Reuters) - Experimental pine seedlings poke from the rocky New Mexico earth, the only living evergreens on a hillside torched by one of the U.S. West’s drought-driven wildfires.

These climate-smart sprouts about 30 miles (48 km) east of Taos are part of a push to increase the dramatically lagging replanting of U.S. forests after fires.

To condition trees for life in the Southwest, now suffering its worst drought in 500 years, biologist Owen Burney takes the scraggly seedlings to the point of death and back several times by starving them of water in the nursery.

Burney wishes he had funding to mass produce the seedlings and expand his tree nursery, the largest in the U.S. Southwest. With wildfires growing to monstrous 

 proportions the nursery's output of 300,000 seedlings a year does not come close to replacing torched trees.

“People get excited about reforestation, and they talk about it, but talk is cheap without action,” says Burney, who heads New Mexico State University’s forestry research center in Mora. “That’s what we’re trying to create, the action of an effective reforestation pipeline.”

Reforestation supporters say planting trees helps fight climate change, protects watersheds and creates jobs -- arguments that help generate both global enthusiasm and U.S. bipartisan support 

  https://www.fs.usda.gov/features/trillion-trees. 

Lawmakers are seeking extra federal funding for such efforts. Some public-private partnerships committed to growing trees have been launched.

Still, evidence suggests replanting campaigns cannot keep up with blazes.

Even with efforts in New Mexico, California  and Oregon

https://www.americanforests.org/our-work/restoring-californias-forests

https://www.orparksforever.org/homepage-box/wildfire-tree-replanting

 there is not enough seed collection or nursery capacity

https://usfs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=88825ecd8e4a40f9aefdb24147b821e9

 

according to nearly two dozen land managers, biologists and conservationists Reuters spoke to since June.

Federal replanting remains underfunded and poorly coordinated with the private sector. State, tribal and private landholders struggle to find sufficient seedlings, they said.

Wildfire is a natural part of a forest’s lifecycle, but climate-fueled fires are so ferocious they incinerate entire stands together with seeds that start regrowth.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wildfires-climatechange-idUKKCN26C30W 

That destruction also poses problems for the 180 million Americans who rely on national forests to filter drinking water 

and the 2.5 million employed in forest industry jobs.

 https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-west-faces-little-known-effect-raging-wildfires-contaminated-water-2021-07-01 

SYSTEM OVERWHELMED

Most U.S. wildfires burn on U.S. Forest Service land. The agency replants around 6% of its land that needs replanting after wildfires.

“Our systems just haven’t kept up,” said David Lytle, the service’s director of forest and rangeland management and vegetation ecology. “The change to these larger, more severe wildfires has dramatically ramped up our reforestation needs.”

Tree-planting fervor peaked in 2020 when the World Economic Forum launched its One Trillion Trees initiative, or 1t.org, to grow, restore and conserve 1 trillion trees globally. Former President Donald Trump backed the plan. U.S. corporations and foundations pledged 50 billion trees.

Yet visit any Western national forest outside the Pacific Northwest, which still has timber harvests that require trees to be replanted, and there are no major planting efforts, says Collin Haffey of The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

“It seems to be an afterthought of forest management,” said Haffey, the group’s conservation coordinator in New Mexico.

According to Lytle, the problem is not tactics or expertise, but funding. The U.S. Forest Service spends over half its budget fighting and preventing fires. Last year, Congress granted it $7.4 billion in discretionary appropriations. Meanwhile, the amount available for post-fire replanting has not grown since the 1980s. The agency says it does not have enough money or resources to fully reforest burn areas.

To boost replanting, lawmakers have included legislation -- called the Repairing Existing Public Land by Adding Necessary Trees (REPLANT) Act -- within the infrastructure bill Congress is considering. It would help the service plant 1.2 billion trees on 4.1 million acres of national forests hit by fire, pests and disease over the next 10 years by removing a $30 million annual funding cap to roughly quadruple spending.

With limited public money, Wes Swaffar of 1t.org tries to channel private funds into replanting. That can mean teaming companies seeking zero net carbon emissions with projects that sequester carbon.

“I’m so frustrated by the fact that I have to do this job in the first place,” Swaffar said. “I have to play this interconnector role between the public and private sectors, because neither one is able to do it by themselves.”

A small success story is growing 85 miles (137 km) southwest of Burney’s test site. With some money from the public-private Rio Grande Water Fund, around 4,000 acres of burned-out forest near Los Alamos are being replanted to mimic “tree islands” left after moderate fires. Developed by the TNC, the project has 400 moisture-rich sites, some at higher, cooler elevations to help seedlings survive future, higher temperatures.

“If we’re trying to do anything related to climate change, carbon sequestration, then trees need to be in the ground,” said Burney, who is seeking $40 million to create a New Mexico reforestation center and help lift state annual seedling output to 5 million.

(Reporting by Adria Malcolm at Deer Lake Mesa, New Mexico, Andrea Januta in New York and Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Katy Daigle and Lisa Shumaker)

California may require menstrual products in public schools

Thu., September 9, 2021, 5:31 p.m.·2 min read

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California public schools and colleges would have to stock their restrooms with free menstrual products under legislation sent Thursday to Gov. Gavin Newsom as women’s rights advocates push nationwide for affordable access to pads, tampons and other items.

The bill by Democratic Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia builds on her 2017 law requiring low-income schools in disadvantaged areas to provide students with free menstrual products.

Several other states were considering or have required free menstrual products in public schools, according to advocacy group Women’s Voices for the Earth. Purdue University in Indiana decided last year to offer free feminine hygiene products in campus bathrooms.

Garcia also had prompted California to follow the lead of at least 10 states by exempting menstrual products from sales taxes, which she said cost women a collective $20 million a year as other health items like erectile dysfunction medication were exempt.

The advocacy group says more than half the states still tax menstrual products as a “luxury” item. Worldwide, many countries have eliminated such taxes, including Britain, Australia, Canada and India.

The new California legislation expands the 2017 law to grades 6 to 12, community colleges and the California State University and University of California systems, starting in the 2022-23 school year. It encourages private schools and colleges to follow suit.

There were no registered opponents and few opposition votes.

“Often periods arrive at inconvenient times. They can surprise us during an important midterm, while playing with our children at a park, sitting in a lobby waiting to interview for a job, shopping at the grocery store, or even standing on the Assembly floor presenting an important piece of legislation," Garcia said in a statement.

Convenient access, she said, "would alleviate the anxiety of trying to find a product when out in public.”

She said her measure was inspired by Scotland, which last year declared access to menstrual products to be a human right and required public places to provide them free of charge.

Ideally, Garcia said, menstrual products would be as common in restrooms as toilet paper and paper towels.

Don Thompson, The Associated Press