China Ordered Amazon to Delete Reviews of Xi Jinping’s Book, Reuters Reports



Vlad Savov
Sun, December 19, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc.’s efforts to curry favor with the Chinese government included quieting criticism of President Xi Jinping’s book on its Chinese outlet, according to a Reuters report.

The Amazon.cn entry for Xi’s “The Governance of China” had its ratings, comments and reviews scrubbed and disabled roughly two years ago in response to an edict from Beijing, the report said. Triggering the request were reviews rating the work at less than the maximum five stars, according to one of the unidentified people familiar with the incident.

The move was part of a broader campaign to ensure that Amazon could carry on with business in the world’s most populous country, where its Kindle and cloud computing operations had room to grow. By 2018, the company was receiving an “increasing number of requests from (Chinese) watchdogs to take down certain content, mostly politically sensitive ones,“ according to an internal briefing document cited by Reuters.

An Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg News that it “complies with all applicable laws and regulations, wherever we operate, and China is no exception.”

The experience recounted in the report mirrors that of Apple Inc., which has grown increasingly compliant with Beijing in recent years. Apple complied with 97% of requests from the Chinese government for user device information in 2019, up significantly from 65% in 2014.

Reviews for Xi’s book of speeches and writings are blocked only on Amazon’s Chinese website. One Amazon.com entry has received 74% five-star reviews.

Other U.S. firms, such as Yahoo! and Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn, have, by contrast, exited the Chinese market this year, citing an increasingly challenging business and legal environment in the country.

Rare eagle, native to Asia, spotted in Massachusetts after sightings in Texas, Canada: 'Most likely lost'


Gabriela Miranda, USA TODAY
Tue, December 21, 2021

A rare bird spotted in Massachusetts has birdwatchers wondering how it arrived on the East Coast since the bird, known as a Stellar's sea eagle, is native to Asia.

While some of these sea eagles have appeared in Alaska, the state closest to the bird's home continent, none have been seen in Massachusetts, much less in Texas and in other states.

This eagle was rumored to be visiting the Taunton River in Massachusetts, and as it roamed the area, more than a hundred photographers and birders turned up.

The Steller's sea eagle is one of the largest raptors in the world, weighing up to 20 pounds with a wingspan of up to 8 feet. It is native to China, Japan, Korea and eastern Russia, according to Smithsonian Magazine. You can identify the bird by its yellow beak and white patterned feathers on its wings.

In November alone, the bird is believed to have traveled to Texas and parts of Canada, including Nova Scotia, Quebec and New Brunswick. Andrew Farnsworth, a senior researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology told The New York Times for the bird to be so far from home is “mind-boggling.”

Phil Taylor, a biologist at Acadia University who studies bird migration, spotted the eagle on Wednesday afternoon in Falmouth, Nova Scotia.

“I knew exactly what it was, immediately,” Taylor told The Times. “I couldn’t believe it. Something like this is just one in a million.”

Bird watchers, Nate Levy (Plymouth), Tonya Tromblee (Salem NH.) and Jane Williamson (wayland) at Mallard Point in Somerset Monday.

As for how it migrated thousands of miles away, the Smithsonian reported it is "most likely lost." Birds sometimes lose their way and wind up far from their species' usual range. It's a phenomenon called "vagrancy." Changes in extreme weather and navigation errors can result in vagrancy.

What's next for the rare eagle?

"It’s like an avian soap opera,” an avian vagrancy expert Alexander Lees told the New York Times.

Lees guessed the sea eagle could migrate along with native bald eagles down the coastline, find its way back to northeastern Asia or die. All humans can do is keep an eye out.

“We’re all rooting for it. Will it make it home? 

Or is it doomed to never see another species of its own in its lifetime?”

Contributed: Chris Helms, Taunton Daily Gazette

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rare eagle from Asia spotted in Massachusetts, Texas, Canada

A dinosaur embryo has been found in a fossilized egg

Caitlin O'Kane
Tue, December 21, 2021

A well-preserved dinosaur embryo has been found inside a fossilized egg. The fossilized dinosaur embryo came from Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province in southern China and was acquired by researchers in 2000.

Researchers at Yingliang Group, a company that mines stones, suspected it contained egg fossils, but put it in storage for 10 years, according to a news release. When construction began on Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum, boxes of unearthed fossils were sorted through.

"Museum staff identified them as dinosaur eggs and saw some bones on the broken cross section of one of the eggs," Lida Xing of China University of Geosciences, Beijing, said in a news release. A embryo was found hidden within, which they named "Baby Yingliang."

The embryo is that of the bird-like oviraptorosaurs, part of the theropod group. Theropod means "beast foot," but theropod feet usually resembled those of birds. Birds are descended from one lineage of small theropods.

Reconstruction of a close-to-hatching oviraptorosaur egg. 

 Credit: Lida Xing/iScience

In studying the embryo, researchers found the dinosaur took on a distinctive tucking posture before hatching, which had been considered unique to birds. The study is published in the iScience journal.

Researchers say this behavior may have evolved through non-avian theropods. "Most known non-avian dinosaur embryos are incomplete with skeletons disarticulated," said Waisum Maof the University of Birmingham, U.K. "We were surprised to see this embryo beautifully preserved inside a dinosaur egg, lying in a bird-like posture. This posture had not been recognized in non-avian dinosaurs before."

The oviraptorosaur embryo

While fossilized dinosaur eggs have been found during the last 100 years, discovering a well-preserved embryo is very rare, the researchers said in the release.

The embryo's posture was not previously seen in non-avian dinosaur, which is "especially notable because it's reminiscent of a late-stage modern bird embryo."

The researchers will continue to study the rare specimen in even more depth. They will attempt to image its internal anatomy. Some of its body parts are still covered in rocks. Their findings can also be used in more studies of fossil embryos.

A perfectly preserved dinosaur egg highlights link to modern birds

Tom Metcalfe
Tue, December 21, 2021

A 66-million-year-old fossil of a complete baby dinosaur in its egg, apparently just a few days before it would hatch, shows the remarkable similarities between theropod dinosaurs and the birds they would evolve into, according to a study published Tuesday.

The fossilized bones of the embryo, named “Baby Yingliang” after the museum in southern China where it was discovered, can be seen curled-up inside its 6-inch elongated eggshell and looking almost exactly like a modern bird at that stage, although it has tiny arms and claws rather than wings.

Fion Waisum Ma, a paleontologist at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, said the head is particularly striking in its similarity to the head of a newly hatched bird — a resemblance heightened by a beak that was a feature of this dinosaur species, called an oviraptorosaur. Ma is one of the lead authors of the fossil study published in the journal iScience. Scientists from China, Canada and elsewhere in the U.K. were also involved.

Oviraptorosaurs, a type of theropod dinosaur with hollow bones and three-toed limbs, were very close to the dinosaur ancestry that evolved into modern birds. As well as beaks, they had feathers on their arms. They could not fly, but there’s evidence they spread the feathers out above their nests to keep the eggs beneath them warm, said John Nudds, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester in the U.K, who was not involved in the study.

Embryonic dinosaur fossils are extremely rare — paleontologists have only found them at about half a dozen sites. And this is the first time any have shown signs of a distinctive posture known as “tucking” — with the head under the right arm — although some other dinosaur embryos have shown distinct “egg teeth” that they may have used to break out of their shells, Nudds said.

Life reconstruction of a close-to-hatching oviraptorosaur dinosaur embryo, based on the new specimen ‘Baby Yingliang’. (Courtesy Lida Xing)

Ma said that until now the tucking posture had been seen only in birds.

“Some embryos are quite well preserved, but they don’t show this posture,” she said. “And some are very fragmentary, so it is difficult to see their posture clearly.”

Baby birds adopt the posture, with their head “tucked” under their right wing, in the egg just a few days before they hatch; and embryos that fail to get it right are seldom able to hatch properly.

Ma said tucking seems to help baby birds make their first cracks in the eggshell by restricting the movement of their head.

“It’s easier to stabilize the beak and to direct it to the same place when they try to break the eggshell,” she said.

The researchers suggest the tucking posture evolved because oviraptorosaurs had a hard shell, like those of birds, instead of a soft shell, like those of turtles — an early form of shell that was still common about 70 million years ago among dinosaurs like the sheep-sized protoceratops.

Scientists think hard egg shells gave better protection from the environment than soft egg shells, and so oviraptorosaurs and related dinosaur species may have evolved the tucking posture to break through their harder eggshells, Ma said.

Baby Yingliang was in a cache of fossils that were delivered in 2000 to the Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum in the Chinese city of Nan’an, possibly after they had been found at a construction site in the nearby city of Ganzhou.

But it wasn’t until 2015 that one of the museum staff examined the fossil egg and noticed that what appeared to be bones could be seen in a fracture.

The fossilized egg has now been scientifically analyzed, and the fossil split so that the complete skeleton of the embryo can be seen curled up in its shell.

The study suggests the fossil is 66 million to 72 million years old. The baby dinosaur would’ve been about 10 inches from beak to tail when it was hatched, and might have grown to more than 6 feet long as an adult.

Image: Baby Yingliang dinosaur embryo (Lida Xing)

Modern chicken eggs take about 21 days to hatch, although they are much smaller than this dinosaur, and scientists don’t know how long Baby Yingliang had been developing in its egg before it was fossilized. It seemed to be about to hatch within a few days, Ma said.

Many dinosaur experts have hailed the fossil as one of the best-preserved embryos they have ever seen. But some are not certain, however, that what the researchers have interpreted as a tucking posture in the embryo is actually that.

“This is an interesting discovery, but I am skeptical about the ‘tucking’ behavior as it is primarily based on a single specimen,” said Shundong Bi of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. “I think more evidence is needed.”

Bi was not involved in the latest research but studied the fossilized remains of a different oviraptorosaur crouching above a clutch of 24 eggs, some of which contained embryos.

The interpretation of the tucking posture depended on the dinosaur egg containing a pocket of air, like the eggs of birds. But that could not be seen in this fossil and had not been seen in other dinosaur eggs, Bi said in an email.

Giant millipedes "as big as a car" once roamed Earth

Li Cohen
Tue, December 21, 2021

Before dinosaurs, it was giant bugs that roamed the Earth, or at least northern England, scientists say. In a new study published on Tuesday, scientists confirmed that a fossil discovered in 2018 is that of a massive millipede "as big as a car," measuring nearly 9 feet long.

A roughly 29.5-inch piece of the giant invertebrate was discovered in a block of sandstone next to a coastal cliff in northern England's Northumberland beach in January 2018. The Arthropleura fossil is only the third such fossil ever discovered, and according to researchers, is the largest and oldest. The creature dates back about 326 million years, more than 100 million years before dinosaurs.

Reconstruction of the Howick Arthropleura. (a) and (b) Reconstruction of the Howick Arthropleura within its habitat of a lower delta plain with open woodland. / Credit: "The largest arthropod in Earth history: insights from newly discovered Arthropleura remains"/Journal of the Geological Society

When it was alive, researchers estimate, the bug measured roughly 8.8 feet long and weighed more than 110 pounds. Their findings were published in the Journal of the Geological Society.

"Finding these giant millipede fossils is rare, because once they died, their bodies tend to disarticulate, so it's likely that the fossil is a moulted carapace that the animal shed as it grew," Neil Davies, lead author of the study and researcher at the University of Cambridge's Department of Earth Sciences, said in a statement. "We have not yet found a fossilized head, so it's difficult to know everything about them."

Scientists believe the millipede only existed in areas near the equator, including Great Britain during the Carboniferous period, and preferred open woodland habitats near the coast. This type of millipede is believed to have existed for roughly 45 million years before going extinct.

Davies said it's unclear exactly how the creatures became so large, but that researchers think their diet may have played a role.

"While we can't know for sure what they ate, there were plenty of nutritious nuts and seeds available in the leaf litter at the time," he said, "and they may have been predators that fed off other invertebrates and even small vertebrates such as amphibians."

The giant millipede fossil will be on display at Cambridge's Sedgwick Museum starting in 2022.

First full asteroid return sample confirms early Solar System origins


Ryugu asteroid samples obtained by the Hayabusa2 probe.


Jon Fingas
·Weekend Editor
Tue, December 21, 2021

Scientists have finally studied their first full samples returned from an asteroid in space, and they confirm what you'd expect — while providing some new insights. ScienceAlert reports researchers have released two papers revealing their first analysis of samples from Ryugu, the space rock the Hayabusa2 probe visited in February 2019. The team knew Ryugu would be a common, carbon-rich C-type asteroid, but that still makes it a good peek at the ingredients of the early Solar System.

The sampling indicates Ryugu has a carbon-dominated composition similar to the Sun's photosphere (outer shell), much like certain meteorites. It's made of the most primitive materials in the Solar System, emerging from the dust disc that formed along with the Sun itself. It's also quite porous, like many asteroids. However, it's not quite a neat and tidy example. Most C-type asteroids have a low albedo (solar radiation reflectivity) of 0.03 to 0.09 due to their carbon, but Ryugu's is 0.02. It's dark even by the standards of its cosmic neighbors.

As it stands, the very existence of these studies represents an achievement. The first attempt to return a sample, from the astroid Itokawa in 2010, only netted a tiny amount of dust. There's still more to come from Ryugu, but even the existing data could help scientists reshape their understanding of the Solar System's birth and development.

Florida manatee deaths: EPA sued over Indian River Lagoon water quality by Earthjustice

Max Chesnes, Treasure Coast Newspapers
Mon, December 20, 2021

Three conservation groups Monday announced their plan to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over degrading water quality in the Indian River Lagoon that's contributed to a record 1,056 manatees deaths so far this year.

The nonprofits want the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reinitiate a review of water-quality standards with the EPA, according to a notice announcing their intent to sue. They warn manatee deaths will continue until human-caused pollution is reduced.

The Center for Biological Diversity joined Maitland-based nonprofit Save the Manatee Club and the Defenders of Wildlife in filing the 60-day notice of their intent to sue the federal agency. The coalition is represented by nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice.

"We feel this needs to happen so they can set new water-quality standards for the Indian River Lagoon," said Pat Rose, an aquatic biologist and executive director of Save the Manatee Club. "It's just not going to be possible, in our opinion, to recover the situation without higher standards."

How's the Water? Real-time bacteria counts, advisories at Florida beaches

Lake Okeechobee discharges: What are they? A primer for newcomers

Manatee feeding: One thing was missing the day trial was supposed to start

Nutrient pollution is the focus

The nonprofits want the federal government to use the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act to strengthen water-quality measures, and they claim there's little enforcement and no accounting for legacy pollution.

"It's going to have to come with stronger enforcement provisions and assurances on compliance," Rose told TCPalm. "They don't mean anything if you have better standards but they're not adhered to."

The groups want the EPA to revisit Florida's water-quality criteria for nitrogen, phosphorus and dissolved oxygen, according to the notice. Pollution from fertilizer runoff, wastewater discharges and leaking septic systems spark algal blooms that choke out seagrass, a key food source for manatees.

Brevard County's stretch of the 156-mile-long lagoon has fared the worst this year. At least 345 manatees have died there since January, according to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission data.

Earlier this month, wildlife officials approved a limited feeding trial at a Cape Canaveral power plant to help starving and malnourished manatees survive the winter months. It's an unprecedented attempt at a temporary solution, Rose said.

“The Indian River Lagoon is an ecological wonder that supports not just manatees, but green sea turtles, snook, tarpon and a stunning diversity of marine life," Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director at the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote in a prepared statement.

"The mass death of these manatees, which was completely preventable, makes it clear just how critical it is that the EPA take swift action to protect the vibrant ecosystem they live in before it’s too late."

A dead manatee was found floating on its back in a canal at the Mariner Cay Marina in Stuart on Monday, March 29, 2021, by resident Julia Sansevere, who reported it to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Its cause of death is unknown.

Max Chesnes is a TCPalm environment reporter focusing on issues facing the Indian River Lagoon, St. Lucie River and Lake Okeechobee. You can keep up with Max on Twitter @MaxChesnes, email him at max.chesnes@tcpalm.com 

Read more of Max's stories.

Conservation groups to sue EPA over manatee deaths


In this Dec. 28, 2010, file photo, a group of manatees are in a canal where discharge from a nearby Florida Power & Light plant warms the water in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Normally giving food to wild animals is considered off limits, but the dire situation in Florida with more than 1,000 manatees dying from starvation due to manmade pollution is leading officials to consider an unprecedented feeding plan. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)


Mon, December 20, 2021

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Three conservation groups filed a formal notice on Monday of their intent to sue the Environmental Protection Agency if it doesn't take steps to protect manatees from water pollution in Florida.

Pollution-fueled algae blooms are cited as the cause of over half of the more than 1,000 manatee deaths in Florida this year, according to a news release from the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and Save the Manatee Club.

The algae blooms killed thousands of acres of seagrass in the Indian River Lagoon, which highlights the inadequacy of Florida's federally approved water quality standards, the groups said in the notice letter.

They are asking the EPA to reinitiate consultation with Fish and Wildlife Service to reassess the standards. Monday's notice gives the agencies 60 days to address violations alleged in the letter before the groups file a lawsuit.

“It’s disgraceful that hundreds of manatees have died as a direct result of regulators’ failure to protect our water quality,” Jaclyn Lopez, Florida director of the Center for Biologial Diversity, said in a news release.

The Indian River Lagoon is an “ecological wonder that supports not just manatees, but green sea turtles, snook, tarpon and a stunning diversity of marine life," Lopez noted.

“The mass death of these manatees, which was completely preventable, makes it clear just how critical it is that the EPA take swift action to protect the vibrant ecosystem they live in before it’s too late," Lopez said.

The Indian River Lagoon includes important warm-water habitat for slow-moving mammals and supports more species of plants and animals than any other estuary in North America, the groups said in the news release.

They claim that despite “extensive evidence of that harmful pollution and Florida’s failure to address it," the EPA approved the state's water-quality criteria for nitrogen, phosphorous and dissolved oxygen.

“Until Florida is forced to rein in its rampant pollution, manatees will continue to die slow, agonizing deaths by starvation every winter,” Lindsay Dubin, staff attorney at Defenders of Wildlife, said in the release. “The EPA must act immediately to improve water-quality standards lest it further jeopardize the future of this iconic species.”

Last week, wildlife officials announced a pilot feeding plan that could save many manatees from starvation. However officials said manatees will still face the long-term threat of manmade water pollution stifling their food supply.

Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest electric utility, is putting up $700,000 for a “temporary field response station” to feed the manatees at its plant in Cape Canaveral on the East Coast. The money is also for rescue and rehabilitation of distressed manatees, the company said in a news release.

The program has not been tried before.

Manatee deaths in Florida this year are more than double the average annual death rate over five years, officials said. The deaths represent 19% of the Atlantic population of Florida manatees, and 12% of all manatees in Florida.

Manatees were downlisted from “endangered” to “threatened” in 2017, but since then they have suffered significant setbacks from habitat degradation, red tide, unusually cold winters and now potential starvation from the seagrass die-off.

Exclusive: Brazil shuts illegal timber schemes, sheds light on Amazon logging





Brazilian Army soldiers are pictured in a forest of wood extraction in the Amazon rainforest

Tue, December 21, 2021
By Jake Spring

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian environmental agents this week shut down schemes involving hundreds of companies the agents said were covering up illegal logging in the Amazon rainforest, according to government documents reviewed by Reuters.

The operation conducted by the main federal environmental enforcement agency Ibama provides a rare glimpse into how illegally cut Amazon wood is inserted into legal timber supply chains, using shell companies and faking shipments.

The enforcement operation is one of the most complete ever conducted by the environmental agency, because it caught so many of the people hiding behind or doing business with the shell companies, one Ibama agent told Reuters.

Ibama identified more than 220 companies and 21 logging concessions involved in various schemes disguising the origin of illegal wood, according to the documents seen by Reuters.

The environmental agency will place embargoes on the companies this week to prevent them from selling wood and will hand out more than 50 million reais ($8.76 million) in fines, the documents said.

Ibama has also passed on the findings to public prosecutors and police for further criminal investigation, the documents said.

Ibama did not respond to a request for comment.

The agency can issue administrative penalties like fines and embargoes but cannot make arrests or issue criminal charges. The companies and people involved can appeal the decisions with Ibama.

Under President Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's Amazon deforestation in 2021 surged to the highest level in 15 years, according to official government statistics.

Bolsonaro has rolled back environmental protections and sought to introduce more mining and farming to the Amazon, saying it is needed to alleviate poverty.

Brazil permits legal logging, handing out a limited number of concessions that allow only a proportion of trees to be cut in a specific area, and sets quotas capping the harvest.

Those quotas are given out as credits that then accompany the wood as it is sold and resold, certifying its legal origins until it is made into a "finished product" like furniture or flooring.

But under the schemes, companies were selling the credits without the wood, the documents said.

Buyers would then attach the woodless credits to illegally sourced wood with origins such as protected nature reserves or tribal lands.

In some cases, the companies involved were shell companies that only existed on paper in order to funnel the credits, which could change hands many times before being used, the documents said.

The scheme involved more than 102,000 cubic meters of illegally cut wood from Para, Rondonia and Mato Grosso states. That amount represents the harvest of about 97 square kilometers of forest, an area larger than Manhattan, which still pales in comparison to more than 13,000 square kilometers of deforestation officially recorded in the 12 months through July.

"That's a drop in the ocean," said Raoni Rajao, a land use expert at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, when asked about the discovery.

The Ibama operation provides an example of the most common way which illegal loggers sell their wood into the legal system, according to Rajao.

"It's certainly very widespread," he said.

Most of the illegally harvested wood was sold into Brazil's domestic market for a variety of uses, said the Ibama agent, on condition of anonymity.

The final manufacturer or consumer generally has no way of knowing the wood is illegal as the timber appears to be legitimate in the government system, the agent said. Therefore, they cannot be held liable, the person said.

Selective logging to extract valuable timber is often the first step in deforestation, with the remaining forest then burned to clear land for agriculture.

($1 = 5.7052 reais)

(Reporting by Jake Spring; Editing by David Gregorio)

EPA reviews Bayer herbicide blamed for widespread U.S. crop damage

Tue, December 21, 2021
By Tom Polansek

CHICAGO, Dec 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is assessing whether the herbicide dicamba can be sprayed on soybean and cotton plants genetically engineered to resist the chemical, without the procedure posing "unreasonable risks" to other crops, an agency official said on Tuesday.

Farmers and scientists have reported problems with dicamba drifting away from where it is sprayed on fields, causing damage to plants whose genes have not been modified to resist the weed killer.

The EPA said it received about 3,500 reports this year indicating that more than one million acres of non-dicamba-tolerant soybean crops were allegedly damaged when the chemical drifted from where it was applied. Trees and crops like rice and grapes also suffered damage, the agency said.

The number, severity and geographic extent of the incidents was similar to 2020, when the EPA tightened restrictions on dicamba use after complaints about dicamba drifting from farmers and scientists, the agency said.

"Right now we don't know whether over-the-top dicamba can be used in a manner that doesn't pose unreasonable risks to non-target crops and other plants," said Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA'S Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.

The EPA is evaluating all its options for addressing future dicamba-related incidents, Freedhoff said.

Further restrictions on use would be a blow to Bayer AG , which sells dicamba and seeds to grow crops engineered to tolerate it. The company has settled lawsuits brought by land owners who say their crops were damaged by neighbors using dicamba.

Some farmers and seed companies have called for regulators to limit spraying to the spring season, before crops are planted.

Regulatory changes will probably not be fully implemented by the 2022 growing season, the EPA said. The agency said it will work with states that want to impose further restrictions.

In June 2020, a U.S. appeals court blocked dicamba sales and ruled the EPA had substantially understated risks related to its use.

In October, 2020, the EPA under former President Donald Trump re-authorized the use of dicamba-based weedkillers, invalidating the court ruling. (Reporting by Tom Polansek; Editing by David Gregorio)

Student protest leader to president-elect: Gabriel Boric caps rise of Chile's left


Chileans vote in presidential elections in Punta Arenas

Sun, December 19, 2021
By Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Ten years after leading student protests demanding better education, Gabriel Boric is set to become Chile's youngest-ever president, capping a remarkable rise for the Andean nation's progressive left.

The former law student who has pledged to bury Chile's "neoliberal" economic model convincingly defeated far-right rival Jose Antonio Kast in the country's presidential runoff on Sunday.

"I am going to be a president of all Chileans, whether you voted for me or not," Boric, 35, said in a call with current President Sebastian Pinera on Sunday night. "I am going to do my best to get on top of this tremendous challenge."

Boric, who will take office in March, has tapped into public anger at Chile's market-oriented economic model, widely considered to have helped drive decades of rapid economic growth but stoking inequality.

That imbalance sparked widespread angry social uprisings in 2019, lighting the fuse for the political rise of the progressive left and the redrafting of the country's dictatorship-era constitution.

"If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave," Boric said when he won the candidacy of his leftist bloc. "Do not be afraid of the youth changing this country."

A native of Punta Arenas, in Chile's far south, Boric as a student led the Federation of Students at the University of Chile in Santiago. He rose to prominence leading protests in 2011 demanding improved and cheaper education.

By 2014, still in his 20s, he had joined the national Congress as a lower-house lawmaker, representing Chile's vast and sparsely populated southernmost region of Magallanes.

With thick black hair and a trimmed beard, he is more groomed now than in his student leader days. Although a known face of the left in Chile, Boric was initially a dark-horse candidate for the presidency.

He just reached the threshold of 35,000 signatures needed to be a candidate. But then he beat out the popular Santiago-region mayor, Daniel Jadue, of the Communist Party, to lead the leftist alliance.

Boric has since looked to distance himself from some of the more extreme views of far-left groups in his alliance, including support from the Communist Party for the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Buoyed by youthful supporters, there has been a deluge of online memes backing him. High-profile supporters include Chilean-American actor Pedro Pascal from "The Mandalorian" and Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal.

Former two-term Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, now the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, backed Boric, saying he would put Chile on a "path of progress for all, of greater freedom, equality and human rights."

Leftists around the region flocked to congratulate Boric.

"I congratulate @gabrielboric for his election as president of Chile," said Brazilian former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist who is looking to make a comeback in elections next year.

"I'm happy for another victory of a democratic and progressive candidate in our Latin America."

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Adam Jourdan, Rosalba O'Brien and Peter Cooney)

Chileans hail new leftist leader, but markets balk




Mariëtte Le Roux
Mon, December 20, 2021

Investors reacted nervously on Monday after leftist millennial Gabriel Boric was elected Chile's youngest-ever president, beating out his far-right rival with promises of creating a "welfare state."

Boric, who at 35 is one of the youngest presidents in world history, made his first official appearance on Monday, meeting center-right President Sebastian Pinera.

Painted by his detractors as a "communist," Boric succeeded in mobilizing record turnout Sunday and garnered nearly 56 percent of votes cast, compared to 44 percent for ultra-conservative, neoliberal Jose Antonio Kast.

The streets of Santiago and other cities erupted in celebrations at the former student activist leaders' victory, which closed a polarizing runoff race.

But the market reception Monday was frosty.

The SP IPSA index closed 6.18 percent down, while the Chilean peso ceded 3.4 percent to the US dollar to reach an historic rate of 876.

Analyst Nikhil Sanghani of Capital Economics said Boric's victory was "another sign that the country is moving towards greater state intervention in the economy."

"The public debt-to-GDP ratio looks set to rise much further under the new government," he added, which will contribute to keeping "local financial markets under pressure."

In November, the IPSA index gained more than nine percent when pro-free market Kast came out on top in the first election round, and the peso rebounded by 3.5 percent to 800 to the dollar.

- 'Viva Chile!' -

On Sunday night, tens of thousands of Chileans took to the streets to celebrate Boric's victory, honking car horns in approval, brandishing pro-Boric placards, waving the rainbow LGBTQ flag and shouting: "Viva Chile!"

Fireworks lit the skies for hours on end.

On Monday, workers with a banner reading: "Hope won over fear. Civil servants welcome you president," met Boric at the La Moneda presidential palace ahead of his sit-down with Pinera.

Boric had campaigned on the promise of increasing taxes and social spending to tackle Chile's yawning gap between rich and poor, to improve the pension and healthcare systems, create jobs and green the economy.

He is riding a wave of public support for a more progressive social system, sparked by an anti-inequality social uprising in 2019 that left dozens dead and rocked the economy and political establishment.

But his alliance with Chile's Communist Party made many uneasy in a country deeply suspicious of far-left economic doctrine since the hardships suffered under Marxist President Salvador Allende, partly due to a US blockade.

Boric vowed in his first official address Sunday to "expand social rights" in Chile, but to do so with "fiscal responsibility."

"We will do it protecting our macro-economy," he said.

On Monday, he announced he would announce a cabinet as soon as possible to "give certainty" to the markets.

"We are aware that it is important for the country to give certainties, which some may like and others not, but it is important to have certainty about what is coming," he said after his meeting with Pinera, who he is due to officially replace next March.

- 'President of all Chileans' -

Chile inherited from its brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet a neo-liberal economic model credited with its relative wealth but blamed for deep-rooted social inequality that Boric has vowed to redress.

Boric's Frente Amplio (Broad Front), which is part of an alliance that includes Chile's Communist Party, has never been in government.

According to Chile's Servel election body, Sunday's turnout was more than 55 percent of Chile's 15 million eligible voters -- a record since voting became voluntary in 2012.

"Boric managed to mobilize the segment that is more difficult to mobilize, which is the segment of young people," Claudia Heiss of the University of Chile told AFP.

"All (Kast's) anti-rights, anti-women, anti-gay speech, I think it helped mobilize that young segment," she said.

The new president faces the difficult task of healing a society reeling from an antagonistic campaign between two polar opposite political outsiders in a country that traditionally votes for the center.

Chile is going through profound change after voting overwhelmingly last year in favor of replacing the Pinochet-era constitution.

The 2020 referendum was in response to the 2019 anti-inequality uprising.

The drafting process, in the hands of a largely left-leaning body elected in May, must yield a constitution for approval next year, on the new president's watch.

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Chile's Boric says will oppose controversial Dominga copper-iron mine

Sun, December 19, 2021, 6:22 PM

SANTIAGO, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Chilean President-elect Gabriel Boric said on Sunday he will oppose mining initiatives that "destroy" the natural environment, including the controversial $2.5 billion Dominga iron, copper and gold mining project.

During a speech after his electoral victory, he said his government will also expand social rights but will do so with fiscal responsibility and taking care of the economy in the world's top copper producing nation.

"Destroying the world is destroying ourselves. We do not want more 'sacrifice zones', we do not want projects that destroy our country, that destroy communities and we exemplify this in a case that has been symbolic: No to Dominga," he said.

A regional Chilean environmental commission in August had approved Andes Iron's Dominga project after years of wrangling in the country's courts and after the body had previously rejected the proposal.

The mining project would be located about 500 km (310 miles) north of the capital Santiago, and near ecological reserves.

Critics say its proximity to environmentally sensitive areas would cause undue damage. Andes Iron, a privately held Chilean company, has long rejected that assertion.

(Reporting by Anthony Esposito and Fabian Cambero)

Chile mining firms call for moderation after Boric election win

Fabian Cambero
Sun, December 19, 2021

By Fabian Cambero

SANTIAGO, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Chile's mining sector congratulated leftist Gabriel Boric on Sunday after he secured victory in the country's presidential election and called for moderation and dialogue to safeguard the industry in the world's largest copper producing nation.

Boric comfortably beat right-wing rival José Antonio Kast, who conceded defeat on Sunday evening after a divisive election race. Both candidates were from outside the mainstream political parties, though mining firms had been more wary of Boric.

The National Mining Society (Sonami) said in a statement that voters have "sent a clear message" about the need to maintain Chile's economic and social development.

"We trust that the spirit of programmatic convergence, moderation and openness to dialogue shown during the last week of the campaign will prevail," it added.

Boric has pledged to overhaul Chile's market-orientated economic model that dates back to the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, credited for driving decades of growth but also fostering inequality.

The country is also rewriting its constitution, which could see environmental regulations tightened, and lawmakers are looking to raise taxation on mining firms, who are currently benefiting from record high global metals prices.

Boric has said that he would look to create a state lithium firm and criticized privatization of the sector, where Albemarle and SQM are currently the main two players.

State-owned Codelco is the world largest copper miner, but there are many large multinationals in Chile's copper sector including BHP, Glencore, Anglo American and Antofagasta. (Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Sam Holmes)