Rogers Chair Ousted by Board After Making Play for Control

Derek Decloet and Scott Deveau
Thu, October 21, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- The board of Rogers Communications Inc. has removed Edward Rogers as chairman in an epic power struggle within the family that controls Canada’s largest cable and wireless company.

The board voted to remove him Thursday afternoon as he was working on a plan to replace five current directors on the 14-member board with his own nominees, according to people familiar with the situation.

Former AT&T executive and Rogers director John MacDonald will become the new chairman. MacDonald was one of the five people Edward Rogers was trying to eject from the board.

The dramatic turn of events comes after weeks of tension inside one of Canada’s biggest public companies, which is in the midst of a $16 billion takeover bid for rival Shaw Communications Inc.

The hostilities among the Rogers clan reached a new level in September when Edward Rogers tried to oust Chief Executive Officer Joe Natale. His plan had been to install Chief Financial Officer Tony Staffieri in the top job and replace much of the executive team.

But the effort was defeated by a majority of the board -- including his sisters and his mother, Loretta Rogers -- and Staffieri was shown the door on Sept. 29.

Power Struggle

Since then, the board has sought to impose constraints on Edward Rogers’s authority, creating a committee to set the rules by which he can interact with Natale and other senior executives. That committee included three people -- MacDonald, director John Clappison and Melinda Rogers-Hixon, Edward’s sister.

To regain his grip on the company, he recruited five new candidates for the board, including Toronto real estate executive Michael Cooper, financier Jack Cockwell, former Rogers executive Jan Innes, broadcast executive Ivan Fecan and Jake Kerr, according to people familiar with the matter.

The battle came to a head in the past 48 hours. On Wednesday, Rogers director Bonnie Brooks sent a letter by email to John Tory, a Rogers family adviser who’s also the mayor of Toronto, according to a person familiar with the events.

‘Scheming’

The letter, sent on behalf of the company’s independent directors, warned that Edward Rogers’s “scheming” against management was putting the company “at great risk.” The directors said upheaval in the boardroom could affect the company’s credit rating at a time when it’s preparing to borrow billions of dollars to pay for the Shaw deal, which still needs regulatory approval.

“The chair wants to run the company, believes he does run the company, and no CEO or management team can operate effectively under these conditions,” the letter said.

One still-unanswered question is what Edward Rogers will do in response. He remains the chair of the Rogers Control Trust -- the family entity that holds the majority of the voting shares at Rogers Communications.

That position gives him broad authority to vote the family’s shares in the public company. He could requisition a shareholder meeting and still attempt to elect his own directors.

However, the provisions of the trust also allow a 10-member advisory committee to change the chair if at least seven members vote in favor, according to the securities filings of Rogers Communications.

The Control Trust committee includes at least three family members who are known to have opposed his plan to dump Natale: sisters Melinda Rogers-Hixon and Martha Rogers and his mother, Loretta Rogers. It also includes Tory and Phil Lind, a longtime adviser to late founder Ted Rogers.

“This has been a challenging time for the corporation and I want to reaffirm on behalf of the majority of the Board our support for and total confidence in the management team and CEO of Rogers Communications,” MacDonald said in a statement Thursday.

Although Rogers has said the Shaw deal is on track to close next year, Shaw shares have dropped for eight straight days on the growing turmoil at Rogers and are nearly 12% below the takeover price.

(Updates with new details throughout)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

The Canada Recovery Benefit is ending, with a new one taking its place

Jessy Bains
Thu, October 21, 2021, 9:30 AM·1 min read


Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during his election campaign tour in Candiac, Quebec Canada, September 12, 2021. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio

The Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) will come to an end on October 23rd and will be replaced with a new program called the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit, which can come into effect in the event of local temporary lockdowns.

"As the CRB has done up until now, this new benefit, the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit would provide $300 a week to workers who are subject to a lockdown including those who are ineligible for employment insurance.” said deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland during a news conference.

The Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) paid $450 per week and was available for people not eligible for Employment Insurance (EI). Those not employed or self-employed for reasons related to COVID-19, or those who had their income reduced by at least 50 per cent due to COVID-19 also qualified.

“These support measures were always designed to be temporary to get us through the crisis," said Freeland. “We’re now in a new phase, one that is very different from the darkest days in the fight against covid”

The Canada Recovery Sickness Benefit (CRSB) and the Canada Recovery Caregiving Benefit (CRCB) will be extended until May 7th, 2022.

"The total cost of these measures through May 7th of next year will be $7.4 billion, that compares to the $289 billion we have spent on income and business supports since the start of the pandemic."

Jessy Bains is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jessysbains.

Amid a Labor Shortage, Companies Are Eliminating Drug Tests. It’s a Trend That Could Create More Equitable Workplaces


Megan McCluskey
Wed, October 20, 2021, 

Urine testing stock photo

Urine testing stock photo Credit - Peter Dazeley—Getty Images

A growing number of companies are eliminating workplace drug testing to attract and retain workers amid a global labor shortage, a new development that experts say has potential to help create greater racial equity in the workplace.

The trend could help to level the employment playing field for Black and brown workers by removing a job requirement that’s a poor indicator of work performance.


“Mandatory drug testing isn’t based on suspicion or unprofessional behavior,” says Aamra Ahmad, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “But a positive test can still cost the person their job, even if the use was legal, or for a medical purpose, or took place days or weeks earlier and doesn’t actually impact job performance.”

Amazon, the second largest employer in the U.S. behind Walmart, announced in June that it would no longer test for marijuana in its pre-employment drug screening program for jobs not regulated by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The company also said it was reinstating employment eligibility for former employees and applicants who were previously terminated or deferred as a result of random or pre-employment marijuana screenings.

Vice reported last month that 9% of more than 45,000 employers worldwide are eliminating job screenings or drug tests as an incentive to “attract and retain in-demand talent,” according to a recent study conducted by staffing firm ManpowerGroup. That equates to around 4,050 employers, in 43 countries, that are no longer disciplining or dismissing employees for recreational drug use.

Administering a drug test for the purpose of evaluating someone’s ability to do their work is hypocritical, says Carl Hart, who is chair of Columbia University’s psychology department and a neuroscientist who specializes in the human response to psychoactive drugs.

“Why drug test when it doesn’t tell you anything?” Hart tells TIME. “If we want to make sure people aren’t intoxicated in a workplace environment, that means looking at their performance. Urine drug tests certainly don’t tell you anything about levels of intoxication or a person’s ability to perform. They’re useless for that purpose.”

One of the reasons Amazon says it made these changes was to help foster a more equitable workplace, Beth Galetti, senior vice president of human resources at Amazon, said in a September blog post. “Pre-employment marijuana testing has disproportionately affected communities of color by stalling job placement, and by extension, economic growth, and we believe this inequitable treatment is unacceptable,” Galetti wrote.

With studies showing that drug testing disproportionately affects people of color and is more prevalent in workplaces where racial and ethnic minorities are employed, Ahmad calls the practice a “problematic” hindrance to workplace equity.

“It’s important to understand how workplace drug-testing connects to the War on Drugs and race. When President Nixon declared his War on Drugs, the goal was to disrupt Black communities, and by that measure the policies succeeded. But the war has failed to curb drug use or improve public safety,” she says. “A problem with random drug testing, in particular, is that we know implicit bias exists. An employer may set out to conduct random drug testing, but the result can have a disparate impact on people of color, whether that’s intentional or not.”

In 2018, a survey of over 1,500 Americans conducted by Detox.net, a subsidiary of American Addiction Centers, found that Black people were more than twice as likely to face repercussions for failing a drug test than white people. While 9.2% of Black respondents reported being reprimanded or fired for testing positive, only 4.4% of white respondents reported the same.

These findings of racial disparities in drug testing also square with a 2013 study by Yale School of Medicine that, in analyzing nearly 70,000 responses in a federal government survey from individuals who reported whether drug testing took place in their workplace, found that drug testing occurs more often in workplaces where racial and ethnic minorities are employed.

“Being of Black race was significantly associated with employment in a workplace that performs drug testing among executive, administrative, managerial, and financial workers, as well as technicians and other support occupations,” a Yale report on the study read, noting that findings indicated that 63% of Black workers were employed in a workplace that performs drug testing while only 46% of white workers were. “Hispanic ethnicity was associated with increased employment in a workplace that performs drug testing among technical and other support occupations.”

Ultimately, Hart says the preoccupation with the morality of drug use allows inequitable War on Drugs policies, like workplace drug testing, to persist.

“It’s about moralism, which really took off in the late 1980s. And nobody’s actually questioned why we do what we do. We just kind of go along with it,” he says. “Think about it. There are people going to work who are running a little late and they speed. Do we care? Of course not. We care about whether they get there on time or not. But they exceeded the speed limit, which means they broke the law. Nobody says anything about that. So why are we selectively focusing on drugs?”

By viewing drug testing as an unfair and discriminatory practice for all, Hart says that companies can continue to take steps in the right direction.

“If you own a company and need people to perform and you’re judging your employees based on their performance, that’s great. But if you start judging them on anything other than that, it’s a problem,” he says. “If we think about drug testing as an equity issue across the board, then everybody can see how they’re all potentially negatively affected.”

A worker in Florida applied to 60 entry-level jobs in September and got one interview

Dominick Reuter

Tue, October 19, 2021, 

• Businesses across the US say they are struggling to find employees, especially for hourly work.

• Joey Holz decided to test their claims, submitting two applications a day in September.

• Holz got one interview, and his summary of the experiment went viral on multiple platforms.

The labor shortage is hitting fast-food restaurants. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Joey Holz recalled first hearing complaints about a labor shortage last year when he called to donate convalescent plasma at a clinic near Fort Myers, Florida.

"The guy went on this rant about how he can't find help and he can't keep anybody in his medical facility because they all quit over the stimulus checks," Holz told Insider. "And I'm like, 'Your medical professionals quit over $1,200 checks? That's weird.'"

Over the next several months, he watched as a growing chorus of businesses said they couldn't find anyone to hire because of government stimulus money. It was so ubiquitous that he joined a "No one wants to work" Facebook group, where users made memes deriding frustrated employers.

Yours Truly puts out a sign for hiring on June 3 in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. AP/Tony Dejak

He said he found it hard to believe that government money was keeping people out of the labor force, especially when the end of expanded federal unemployment benefits did not seem to trigger a surge in employment. The expanded benefits ended in September, but 26 states ended them early in June and July.

"If this extra money that everyone's supposedly living off of stopped in June and it's now September, obviously, that's not what's stopping them," he said. Workers have said companies struggling to hire aren't offering competitive pay and benefits.

So Holz, a former food-service worker and charter-boat crewman, decided to run an experiment.

On September 1, he sent job applications to a pair of restaurants that had been particularly public about their staffing challenges.

Then, he widened the test and spent the remainder of the month applying to jobs - mostly at employers vocal about a lack of workers - and tracking his journey in a spreadsheet.

Two weeks and 28 applications later, he had just nine email responses, one follow-up phone call, and one interview with a construction company that advertised a full-time job focused on site cleanup paying $10 an hour.

But Holz said the construction company instead tried to offer Florida's minimum wage of $8.65 to start, even though the wage was scheduled to increase to $10 an hour on September 30. He added that it wanted full-time availability, while scheduling only part time until Holz gained seniority.

Holz said he wasn't applying for any roles he didn't qualify for.

Some jobs "wanted a high-school diploma," he said. "Some wanted retail experience," he added. "Most of them either said 'willing to train' or 'minimum experience,' and none of them were over $12 an hour."

He said: "I didn't apply for anything that required a degree. I didn't apply for anything that said 'must have six months experience in this thing.'"

Holz isn't alone. Others have also spoken out about their troubles finding work, despite the seemingly tight labor market.

In a Facebook post on September 29, which went viral on Twitter and Reddit as well, Holz said, "58 applications says y'all aren't desperate for workers, you just miss your slaves."

"My opinion is that this is a familiar story to many," he added.

By the end of September, Holz had sent out 60 applications, received 16 email responses, four follow-up phone calls, and the solitary interview. He shared a pie chart showing his results.

Joey Holz

Holz acknowledged that his results may not be representative of the larger labor challenges in the country, since his search was local and targeted the most vocal critics of stimulus spending.

He added that despite the claims of some businesses struggling to hire, his boss had no staffing issues during the pandemic.

"Nobody leaves those positions because he takes care of his people," Holz said, referring to his boss.

Iran awards scientific prize to 2 US-based physicists

Iran

Iranian-American physicist Cumrun Vafa, right, a Harvard University physics professor, and quantum professor at Princeton University, Bangladesh-born Zahid Hasan, hold their awards during award giving ceremony of the biennial $500,000 Mustafa Prize, at Vahdat Hall in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021. Iran on Thursday awarded a prestigious prize in the study of science and technology to two physicists based in the United States. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Thu, October 21, 2021, 

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran on Thursday awarded a prestigious prize in the study of science and technology to two physicists based in the United States.

Harvard University physics professor Cumrun Vafa received The Mustafa Prize in the field of “All Areas of Science and Technology.” Vafa is an Iranian-American.

The award, he said, reminds him "that there is no border for science and technology and they belong to all human beings.”

He donated his award to an Iranian science foundation.

A quantum professor at Princeton University, Bangladesh-born M. Zahid Hasan, received the prize, too.

Three other scientists, Lebanon's Mohamed H. Sayegh, Pakistan's Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary and Morocco's Yahya Tayalati also won awards.

Each of the five won $500,000. They were selected from more than 500 entrants.

It was the fourth award ceremony for the biennial prize since 2015. Iran launched the prize as part of its goal to become a regional scientific powerhouse.

The award comes against the backdrop of U.S. sanctions on Tehran and Iran’s unraveling nuclear deal with world powers.

Ukraine hits all-time death record amid vaccine hesitancy


1 of 7

People wait for their turn in a vaccination center in a city mall in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021. Coronavirus infections and deaths in Ukraine have surged to all-time highs amid a laggard pace of vaccination, which is one of the lowest in Europe. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)


KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Coronavirus infections and deaths in Ukraine surged to all-time highs Thursday amid a laggard pace of vaccination, with overall inoculations among the lowest in Europe.

Ukrainian authorities reported 22,415 new confirmed infections and 546 deaths in the past 24 hours, the highest numbers since the start of the pandemic.

Authorities have blamed a spike in infections on a slow pace of vaccination in the nation of 41 million. Ukrainians can choose between Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Sinovac vaccines, but only about 15% of the population is fully vaccinated, Europe’s lowest level after Armenia.

Overall, the country has registered over 2.7 million infections and 62,389 deaths.

Ukraine has faced a steady rise in contagion in the past few weeks, which forced the government to introduce restrictions on access to public places and the use of public transport. Starting Thursday, proof of vaccination or a negative test is required to board planes, trains and long-distance buses.

The restrictive measures have made a black market for counterfeit vaccination certificates blossom, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy chaired a meeting earlier this week on ways to combat the practice. Police said they suspect workers at 15 hospitals across the country of involvement in issuing false vaccination certificates.

Despite the rising contagion, the government has been reluctant to introduce another lockdown. It’s keen to avoid further damage to an economy weakened by the conflict with neighboring Russia — which annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in the country’s eastern industrial heartland.

“There are just two ways — vaccination or lockdown,” Zelenskyy said. “I’m against the lockdown for the sake of (the) economy.”

To encourage vaccination, the authorities have started offering shots in shopping malls. As infections soared, skeptical attitudes began to change and a record number of more than 251,000 people received vaccines over the past 24 hours.

“I’m frightened by a spike in infections, my friend is at a hospital in grave condition,” 38-year-old businessman Denys Onuchko said after receiving the first vaccine dose at a Kyiv shopping mall.

Onuchko noted that many Ukrainians have been disinformed by conspiracy theories about vaccines, but now take a more rational approach as the situation exacerbates. “People have been scared by stories ... but the real threat must make them sober up,” he said.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said city hospitals are facing an influx of patients, an increasing share of them in grave condition.

Yulia Furman, 47, who also received the first vaccine shot, said many people in her entourage believed in conspiracy theories about vaccines.

“Many of my friends believed those stories about a global plot and now they are gravely ill, it’s now time to protect oneself,” she said.

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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

Regret and defiance in Europe's vaccine-shy east as COVID-19 rages





Bulgarian hospitals struggle with COVID patients while many shun vaccines

Janis Laizans and Tsvetelia Tsolova
Thu, October 21, 2021,

RIGA/SOFIA (Reuters) - As Latvia goes into lockdown and hospitals in Bulgaria and Romania buckle under a COVID-19 surge while Poland sells surplus vaccine doses, many central and eastern Europeans are torn between defiance and regret over not getting inoculated.

The region has the European Union's lowest vaccination rates, an unwelcome distinction in which both political and economic factors play a role, and deadlier variants of the virus are spreading there fast.

Recovering from bronchial pneumonia caused by a coronavirus infection, Bulgarian Vesela Tafradzhiyska, 47, said she had held back from getting inoculated because media reports about vaccine safety and efficacy had been contradictory and confusing.

After eight days in hospital, reluctantly, she is changing her mind. "I am willing to get vaccinated, although I see that it is not a 100% guarantee, because people with vaccines are also getting infected."

In Bulgaria - the EU's poorest state and, according to Our World in Data, currently suffering the world's third highest COVID-19 death rate - just one adult in four is fully vaccinated. That compares with over 90% in Ireland, Portugal and Malta.

Hundreds have protested in Sofia and other cities against mandatory certificates that came into force on Thursday, limiting access to many indoor public spaces to those who have been vaccinated.

Meanwhile, coronavirus hospitalisations have risen 30% over the last month and hospitals in the capital have suspended non-essential surgeries.

In Latvia, which on Thursday become the first European state to go into lockdown rules since curbs were eased during summer, Biruta Adomane, a pensioner who has got vaccinated, expressed anger at the almost 50% of her adult compatriots who haven't.

"I'd like to go to shops and cafes, I'd like to enjoy my life more, instead of lockdown," she told Reuters. "People are strange ... I don't understand their motivation".

FEAR AND DISTRUST

Vaccine hesitancy is a global phenomenon.

France and the United States are struggling with it and it is on the rise in some Asian countries including Japan.

Experts say central Europeans may be particularly sceptical, however, after decades of Communist rule that eroded public trust in state institutions and left underdeveloped healthcare systems that now struggle with poor funding.

COVID-19 vaccination rates in the European Union
To view the graphic, click here: https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/EASTEUROPE/mypmngqmbvr/chart.png

A European Commission poll, the Eurobarometer, has shown that at least one person in three in most countries in the EU's east doesn't trust the healthcare system, compared to an EU average of 18%.

"Vaccines show that the shadow of the Soviet Union ... still dominates people's consciousness. Some still live in fear and distrust," said Tomasz Sobierajski, a Warsaw University sociologist.

Media freedom and civil liberties were curbed and industry was largely controlled by the state during Communist rule, a legacy now compounded by the mounting influence of populist politicians who "teach people to be distrustful," Sobierajski said.

'I WILL NOT'

In Slovakia, vaccine scepticism has been fed by opposition politicians, including former Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has said he would not get vaccinated.

In Poland, where daily cases have reached the highest since May, vaccine uptake is particularly low in the conservative heartland that tends to vote for the ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party. That has left the government with a surplus of shots that it has donated or sold abroad.

In Romania, ranked second on the COVID-19 death rate list and where new daily cases have soared towards 19,000 this week, about about one adult in three has been vaccinated, the second-lowest EU rate. The country also has the bloc's highest rate of distrust in public health care at 40%.

"It is unimaginable, here we have roughly 60 patients, 90% of them are intensive care cases who need ventilation," said Amalia Hangiu the head of an emergency unit at a Bucharest hospital.

"Had we respected the rules and got vaccinated when we were supposed to, then we would not be participating in such a catastrophe."

Some, including Bulgarian pensioner Raina Yordanova remain unconvinced.

"I did not get a vaccine and I will not," she said. "Nobody knows what will happen years (after it has been administered) and I have not decided to die now.”

(Additional reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk in Warsaw, Jason Hovet in Prague and Luiza Ilie in Bucharest; editing by John Stonestreet)

Activist dad of school shooting victim joins anti-gun group


Fred Guttenberg, the father of slain student Jaime Guttenberg leaves the courtroom at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021, after Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty to murder in the 2018 massacre that left 17 dead at a Parkland, Fla., high school. Guttenberg is joining the top ranks of a progressive anti-gun group to promote like-minded political candidates around the country ahead of next year’s midterm elections. He will be a senior adviser to Brady PAC. (Mike Stocker/South Florida Sun Sentinel via AP, Pool


WASHINGTON (AP) — The father of a 14-year-old girl killed in the 2018 Florida high school shooting massacre announced Thursday that he’s joining the top ranks of an anti-gun violence group to promote like-minded political candidates around the country ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Fred Guttenberg will be a senior adviser to Brady PAC. His daughter Jaime, an aspiring dancer and gymnast, died with 16 others during the Valentine’s Day 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty Wednesday to 17 counts of first-degree murder for that shooting and could face the death penalty during sentencing in January. Guttenberg, who has become a nationally known activist in the years since the shooting, said he visited his daughter’s grave this week and “asked her for guidance. ’Cause Jaime is my strength.”

“Jaime may only have been 14, but she was the toughest, wisest person I ever knew,” Guttenberg said in an interview. “If you want to know my motivation for why I’m doing this with Brady PAC right now, that’s the reason.”

Brady PAC, formed leading up to 2018′s midterm elections, supports candidates who promote gun violence prevention and spent $5 million during the 2020 election cycle. It has promised to pump millions more into next year’s races.

Guttenberg, a 55-year-old former small business owner, said, “I believe we are one election cycle away from either getting this done, or one election cycle away from losing the chance.”

“We do it now,” he added, “or we never do it.”

Guttenberg noted that Democrats, most of whom agree with him and Brady PAC on top gun issues, control Congress and could hold both chambers after 2022 — even though the party that wins the White House, as Democrats did through Joe Biden in 2020, historically loses seats in the next election.

“I think people need to stop acting like everyone knows what’s going to happen in 2022 and get back to working for what you want to happen,” Guttenberg said. “I want more gun safety candidates elected to the House and the Senate. Period. Full stop. And I think that voters agree with me.”

Cruz killed 14 students and three staff members during a seven-minute rampage through Stoneman Douglas, using an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to shoot victims in hallways and classrooms. Cruz had been expelled from the school a year earlier after a history of threatening, frightening, unusual and sometimes violent behavior that dated to preschool.

The shootings caused some Stoneman Douglas students to launch the March for Our Lives movement, which pushes for stronger gun restrictions nationally. Besides Guttenberg, several other parents of students killed have also become activists.

Last February, Guttenberg attended President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address and began yelling after the Republican president said, “I will always protect your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.” Guttenberg was escorted out and later apologized via Twitter.

Guttenberg also drew attention in Congress in September 2018 when he attempted to shake hands with Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during a break at the latter’s Senate confirmation hearing. Kavanaugh looked at him, turned and walked away. Kavanaugh later said that he had assumed Guttenberg was a protester and that he would have expressed his sympathy and shaken Guttenberg’s hand had he recognized him before being whisked away by his security detail. Kavanaugh was confirmed to the court.

Brady PAC is the political arm of a nonprofit named in honor of former White House press secretary James Brady, who suffered a bullet wound to his head in the assassination attempt against President Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton Hotel in 1981.

Together with his wife, Brady became a leading gun control activist before his death in 2014. A federal law requiring a background check on handgun buyers bears Brady’s name, as does the White House press briefing room.

—- This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Jaime Guttenberg’s first name throughout.

BUILD BACK BETTER TORPEDOED BY MANCHIN
Billions in environmental justice funds hang in the balance


1 In this Wednesday, April 18, 2018 file photo, Flint resident Jabaree Broach, 24, works as part of a crew digging out and replacing lead service lines on Flint, Mich.'s east side. Tens of billions of dollars for U.S. environmental justice initiatives originally proposed in a $3.5 trillion domestic spending package now hang in the balance as Democrats decide how to trim the bill down to $2 trillion in October 2021. 

(Jake May/The Flint Journal-MLive.com via AP, File)

Tens of billions of dollars for U.S. environmental justice initiatives originally proposed in a $3.5 trillion domestic spending package now hang in the balance as Democrats decide how to trim the bill down to $2 trillion.

Investments in a wide range of these projects were proposed in the Build Back Better plan, but Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona demanded that the bill be reduced, with Manchin asking for it to be cut by as much as half.

Now, Democratic leaders are trying to bridge divergent views of progressive and moderate lawmakers over the size and scope of the bill. With Republicans in lockstep against President Joe Biden’s proposal, Democrats must hold together slim House and Senate majorities to pass it. Leaders have set an Oct. 31 voting deadline, but that may slip as they struggle for consensus.

Several congressional aides who spoke on background to discuss ongoing negotiations said no one can venture an estimate of how much environmental justice spending will be cut from the reconciliation bill, but the overall amount for such initiatives certainly will be less than the roughly $80 billion originally proposed.

The biggest spending proposals were $20 billion for replacing America’s lead water pipes, nearly $15.5 billion for a greenhouse gas reduction fund and $10 billion for expanding access to public transit near affordable housing. Among the other initiatives were $5 billion in block grants to environmental and climate justice projects, $2.5 billion for providing access to solar in low-income communities and $2.5 billion for abandoned mine cleanup.

The high-stakes wrangling is taking place about two months after the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change called the warming planet a “code red for humanity” and just weeks before world leaders, including Biden, convene to determine global climate and environment policy at the U.N. climate change summit known as COP26.

As domestic spending talks take place in Washington, environmental justice advocates around the country are watching closely and lobbying lawmakers to preserve as many initiatives and as much money for them as possible.

“When we hear that the $3.5 trillion will be watered down ... it’s honestly unacceptable,” said Ellen Sciales, communications director for Sunrise Movement, a national, youth-led environmental group. “The urgency of now really cannot be (overstated).”

Local and regional environmental activists have held protests across the nation for several weeks, calling on Senate Democrats to pass the entire $3.5 trillion package. With a reduction in the package looming, activists worry environmental justice projects that could improve the health of their communities will be sacrificed.

“If Congress does not pass a full deal, ... it would be devastating,” said Juan Jhong-Chung, policy associate with the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition. “It would represent another broken promise by our elected officials.”

Environmental advocates have been banking on Biden’s promise just days before the presidential election to pass “the most ambitious environmental justice agenda ever.” He was speaking at a news conference in Flint, Michigan, where residents have been dealing with a lead contamination crisis in its water systems since 2014.

“Our people are already struggling,” Jhong-Chung said. “And now with the climate crisis, things are getting worse here in Michigan. We just experienced this summer of record-breaking flooding.”

Water sanitation and scarcity issues top of the list of pressing needs for many in disadvantaged communities as rural areas countrywide lack modern sewage and sanitation systems, and the West deals with a megadrought.

Catherine Flowers, who serves on Biden’s White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council and long has advocated for clean water and sanitation systems in rural areas, is concerned for places like predominately Black Lowndes County, Alabama, where many residents have to release their wastewater directly into the environment.

“When people talk about environmental justice, they never talk about sanitation,” she said. “The assumption was that rural communities have always had it, and that’s not true.”

In Arizona, with its drought, some of Sen. Sinema’s constituents have aggressively pushed her to pass the Build Back Better plan in its entirety, going so far as to confront her on the campus of Arizona State University, where she’s a professor.

Hannah Hurley, a spokesperson for Sinema, said she would not reveal the nature of negotiations on Capitol Hill to news media. The other key senator in negotiations on the plan, Manchin, has publicly opposed incentivizing clean energy over fossil fuels, such as coal produced in his state. His office did not respond to requests for comment on this story.

Some western senators publicly support environmental justice spending proposed in the plan.

“Environmental justice is not an issue adjacent to climate action, it is at the heart of climate action,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). “We can no longer ignore the inequities that leave communities of color behind and bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.”

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This story corrects the spelling of Kyrsten Sinema’s first name.

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Associated Press reporter Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.

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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Greenpeace chief warns of ‘greenwashing’ at UN climate talks


Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director of the environment organization Greenpeace International poses for a photo during an interview with the Associated Press in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021. The head of environmental group Greenpeace warned against efforts by countries and corporations to “greenwash” their ongoing pollution of the planet at the upcoming U.N. climate talks. Morgan said leaked documents show how countries such as Australia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia recently tried to water down a U.N. science panel report on global warming. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)


BERLIN (AP) — The head of environmental group Greenpeace on Thursday warned against efforts by countries and corporations at the forthcoming U.N. climate talks in Glasgow to “greenwash” their ongoing pollution of the planet.

The summit hosted by Britain has been described as “ the world’s last best chance ” to prevent global warming from reaching dangerous levels, and is expected to see a flurry of new commitments from governments and businesses to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.

But climate campaigners say behind-the-scenes lobbying before the summit could hamper efforts to achieve an ambitious deal that would ensure the world stands a chance of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) as agreed in Paris in 2015.

“This Glasgow meeting really is a vital moment where governments need to be courageous,” said Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace International.

“They need to show they’ve understood the science, listen to their people and go much further than they’ve been stating thus far,” she told The Associated Press in an interview.

By doing so, governments would “give that kind of hope and confidence to their people that they got this and that they’re willing to do things that their corporate interests don’t want them to do,” she added.

Morgan pointed to leaked documents showing how countries such as Australia, Brazil and Saudi Arabia are apparently trying to water down an upcoming U.N. science panel report on global warming as evidence of the way in which some governments’ public support for climate action is undermined by their efforts behind closed doors.

Documents obtained by Greenpeace indicate how those countries wanted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to remove references to the need to shut down coal-fired power stations, reduce meat consumption and focus on actual emissions cuts rather than ways to capture carbon already released into the atmosphere.

A spokesman for the IPCC’s secretariat in Geneva downplayed the impact such lobbying efforts have on the panel’s final reports.

“Review by governments and experts is a fundamental part of the IPCC process for preparing reports,” said the spokesman, Jonathan Lynn. “The IPCC principles are designed to ensure that this review contributes to a comprehensive, balanced and objective assessment in an open and transparent way.”

Greenpeace’s Morgan said much of the lobbying is driven by corporations, some of which will also be at the so-called COP26 talks — including as part of government delegations.

“They’ll try and use this COP to show that they care, that they are really doing a lot,” said Morgan. “There’ll be a big greenwashing effort in Glasgow that needs to be called out and recognized.”

Governments, too, are likely to use the U.N. talks to announce new climate measures, even as they lobby against others, she said.

“If you look at what they’re doing to try and hold back the world from moving forward, it’s stunning,” she said. “It’s immoral, it’s unacceptable.”

Greenpeace and other environmental campaign groups have been critical of a wave of announcements by countries and industry groups, ranging from airlines to shipping firms, to aim for ‘net zero’ emissions. Rather than cut greenhouse gas emissions to nil, those aiming for net zero pledge to release only as much carbon dioxide or other pollutants into the atmosphere by a certain date as can be captured again.

The math around net zero is murky and activists say if it’s not scientifically rigorous that target risks detracting from the effort to cut emissions as quickly as possible.

“(Some companies) want to continue what they’re doing, but they want to pay just to plant trees somewhere else,” said Morgan. “That is not the solution to the nature and biodiversity crisis.”

She cited a recent report by the International Energy Agency which concluded that there can be no more new coal mines or oil and gas wells if the Paris goal is to be achieved. Yet last week, a separate U.N.-backed study found that even current fossil fuel production plans for the coming decade would result in over twice the emissions allowed for the world to maintain a chance of meeting the Paris goals.

Morgan said the spotlight being put on the talks in Glasgow and some parties’ efforts to bloc agreements on sensitive issues could embolden those countries that want an ambitious deal.

“They have to be ready to move, go beyond their comfort zones and come together because you can see the level of opposition that’s coming in at them,” she said.

A group of nine nations, including Costa Rica, Sweden and the Marshall Islands, on Thursday called for countries that haven’t yet done so to update their climate targets ahead of the Oct. 31-Nov. 12 talks in Glasgow. They also backed a long-standing demand from poor nations for rich countries to make good on their pledge of providing $100 billion in aid each year to tackle climate change.

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Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s climate coverage at http://apnews.com/hub/climate

Leaks show attempts to water down UN climate report, Greenpeace says

Some countries tried to remove findings threatening their economic interests from an IPCC report, documents seen by Greenpeace have revealed. The report comes before a critical round of UN climate talks.


A number of nations want to continue using fossil fuels despite their detrimental effects on the climate

Australia, Saudi Arabia and Japan were among countries that have tried to make changes to an upcoming UN climate report outlining ways to curb global warming, environmental organization Greenpeace reported on Thursday, citing a major leak of documents.

The documents seen by Greenpeace's Unearthed team consist of comments made by governments and other interested bodies on the draft report of an internationally composed working group of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report is due to be released next year.

Although most of the comments submitted to the IPCC by national governments were intended to improve the report, several major coal, oil, beef and animal feed-producing nations pressed for changes to suit their economic interests, Unearthed reported.

The attempts at lobbying were brought to light just days before the COP26 climate negotiations open in Glasgow, Scotland. The conference is seen by many as crucial in determining whether human-made global warming will cause irreparable damage to the planet.

Drought in many countries is being made worse by the effects of global warming

What did some countries say?

In one comment seen by Unearthed, a senior official from Australia questioned the report's finding, considered as incontrovertible by scientists, that phasing out coal-fired power stations was a significant step toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming. Australia derives a large part of its national income from coal exports.

Major beef and animal feed producers Brazil and Argentina lobbied the IPCC team to remove mention of plant-based diets and reduction of meat and dairy consumption as being beneficial to the climate, Unearthed said.

The leaked comments showed Saudi Arabia, Iran, Australia, Japan and OPEC, a group of petroleum exporting countries, all arguing that carbon capture and storage could be used to prevent greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sites rather than stopping CO2 production at the source. This goes against research saying that previously employed methods of keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere have been largely unsuccessful.

OPEC is particularly against phasing out fossil fuels and, according to the leaks, told the report authors to cut the sentence: "More efforts are required to actively phase out all fossil fuels in the energy sector, rather than relying on fuel switching alone."

Flooding likely exacerbated by global warming recently devastated parts of Germany

What do climate scientists say?

The vast majority of climate scientists are of the opinion that a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels is necessary if the world is not to suffer from the catastrophic effects of global warming, many of which have become apparent in the past years.

In its draft Summary for Policymakers, which was itself leaked earlier this year, the IPCC said limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and 1.5 degrees Celsius will "involve substantial reductions in fossil fuel use, major investments in low-carbon energy forms, switching to low-carbon energy carriers and energy efficiency and conservation efforts."

Why no tusks? Poaching tips scales of elephant evolution

By CHRISTINA LARSON

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This undated photo provided by ElephantVoices in October 2021 shows tuskless elephant matriarch with her two calves in the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. A hefty set of tusks is usually an advantage for elephants, allowing them to dig for water, strip bark for food and joust with other elephants. But during episodes of intense ivory poaching, those big incisors become a liability. (ElephantVoices via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A hefty set of tusks is usually an advantage for elephants, allowing them to dig for water, strip bark for food and joust with other elephants. But during episodes of intense ivory poaching, those big incisors become a liability.

Now researchers have pinpointed how years of civil war and poaching in Mozambique have led to a greater proportion of elephants that will never develop tusks.

During the conflict from 1977 to 1992, fighters on both sides slaughtered elephants for ivory to finance war efforts. In the region that’s now Gorongosa National Park, around 90% of the elephants were killed.

The survivors were likely to share a key characteristic: half the females were naturally tuskless — they simply never developed tusks — while before the war, less than a fifth lacked tusks.

Like eye color in humans, genes are responsible for whether elephants inherit tusks from their parents. Although tusklessness was once rare in African savannah elephants, it’s become more common — like a rare eye color becoming widespread.

After the war, those tuskless surviving females passed on their genes with expected, as well as surprising, results. About half their daughters were tuskless. More perplexing, two-thirds of their offspring were female.

The years of unrest “changed the trajectory of evolution in that population,” said evolutionary biologist Shane Campbell-Staton, based at Princeton University.

With colleagues, he set out to understand how the pressure of the ivory trade had tipped the scale of natural selection. Their findings were published Thursday in the journal Science.

Researchers in Mozambique, including biologists Dominique Goncalves and Joyce Poole, observed the national park ’s roughly 800 elephants over several years to create a catalogue of mothers and offspring.

“Female calves stay by their mothers, and so do males up to a certain age,” said Poole, who is scientific director and co-founder of the nonprofit ElephantVoices.

Poole had previously seen other cases of elephant populations with a disproportionately large number of tuskless females after intense poaching, including in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. “I’ve been puzzling over why it’s the females who are tuskless for a very long time,” said Poole, who is a co-author of the study.

In Gorongosa, the team collected blood samples from seven tusked and 11 tuskless female elephants, then analyzed their DNA for differences.

The elephant survey data gave them an idea where to look: Because the tuskless elephants were female, they focused on the X chromosome. (Females have two X chromosomes; males have one X and one Y chromosome.)

They also suspected that the relevant gene was dominant – meaning that a female needs only one altered gene to become tuskless — and that when passed to male embryos, it may short-circuit their development.

“When mothers pass it on, we think the sons likely die early in development, a miscarriage,” said Brian Arnold, a co-author and evolutionary biologist at Princeton.

Their genetic analysis revealed two key parts of the elephants’ DNA that they think play a role in passing on the trait of tusklessness. The same genes are associated with the development of teeth in other mammals.

“They’ve produced the smoking-gun evidence for genetic changes,” said Chris Darimont, a conservation scientist at the University of Victoria in Canada, who was not involved in the research. The work “helps scientists and the public understand how our society can have a major influence on the evolution of other life forms.”

Most people think of evolution as something that proceeds slowly, but humans can hit the accelerator.

“When we think about natural selection, we think about it happening over hundreds, or thousands, of years,” said Samuel Wasser, a conservation biologist at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the research. “The fact that this dramatic selection for tusklessness happened over 15 years is one of the most astonishing findings.”

Now the scientists are studying what more tuskless elephants means for the species and its savannah environment. Their preliminary analysis of fecal samples suggests the Gorongosa elephants are shifting their diet, without long incisors to peel bark from trees.

“The tuskless females ate mostly grass, whereas the tusked animals ate more legumes and tough woody plants,” said Robert Pringle, a co-author and biologist at Princeton University. “These changes will last for at least multiple elephant generations.”

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Follow Christina Larson on Twitter: @larsonchristina

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.