More Than Half of the Working Day Is Spent Kinda, Sorta Working

Matthew Boyle, Bloomberg News

BC-More-Than-Half-of-the-Working-Day-Is-Spent-Kinda-Sorta-Working , Matthew Boyle

(Bloomberg) -- The pandemic has forever altered many aspects of work, but there’s one thing it hasn’t changed -- how much time we spend just shuffling paper around.

White-collar workers devote more than half their day to “work coordination,” which includes following up on things, searching for information and communicating about work, according to a survey by business software maker Asana Inc. While there are regional differences -- Germans devote a bit less of their day to such mundane tasks than Americans -- the results are broadly similar across the globe: Only about a third of the workday is spent doing what we were actually hired to do, and that hasn’t changed much since 2019.

“The workday has become complex enough that we have to spend more time just managing work and a host of competing priorities rather than actually doing work,” said Melissa Swift, U.S. transformation solutions leader at workforce consultant Mercer. “Many, many meetings are wholly performative.” 

The global survey of more than 10,600 so-called knowledge workers -- data analysts, graphic designers and the like -- also found that the amount of time spent on strategy, or planning ahead, declined to 9% last year from 13% in 2019. That’s due in part to the difficulties of getting disparate, often asynchronous teams together at the same time, Asana said.

But it could also be because many companies found long-term forecasting difficult amid a global pandemic and its impact on office life.

“The decline in strategic work was striking,” Anne Raimondi, Asana’s chief operating officer, said in an interview. “Leaders have been much more in reaction mode lately.”

While more than half of the working day is soaked up by nonessential tasks, variations do exist around the globe. Germans devote more of their day to doing their actual job than other nationalities, but they also spend the least amount of time on strategic planning. Workers in Japan and Singapore, meanwhile, led the pack with 10% of their time going to strategy, but those two nations also spent the most time coordinating work.  

Swift, the Mercer consultant, said companies have tried to reduce the amount of time spent on coordination, without much success. The number of meetings, for example, increased by 70% during the pandemic, according to Reclaim.ai Inc., which makes an app that syncs calendar programs. Neither Mercer nor Reclaim.ai was involved in the Asana survey.

“It’s tricky,” Swift said. “Folks are genuinely loath to admit they’re doing performative work with literally zero value.”

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

EU Push For Global Minimum Tax Falters Again As Poland Blocks

William Horobin, Bloomberg News

European Union (EU) flags fly outside the Berlaymont building in Brussels, Belgium, on Friday, Dec. 18, 2020. Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, warned progress in the talks has been “blocked and time is running out” as leaders from both sides played down expectations a deal will be reached. Photographer: Olivier Matthys/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- The European Union stumbled again in its attempt to quickly implement a global deal for a minimum corporate tax at 15% as Poland continued to block progress. 

The Polish government is increasingly isolated in its opposition to an EU directive on the matter. That’s after Sweden and Estonia dropped their opposition at a meeting in Luxembourg on Tuesday after winning some concessions on implementation and flexibility. 

Speaking at the meeting, Poland’s secretary of state and head of the revenue administration Magdalena Rzeczkowska said there still isn’t a legally binding mechanism to tie the implementation of the minimum tax to the other part of the global deal, which is related to the treatment of multinational technology firms. 

“We must sustain our goal of fully introducing the global two-pillar solution,“ Rzeczkowska said. “We do not support separation of the two pillars in the EU.”

Poland has in the past threatened to wield its veto powers. It did so most notably over the EU’s plan to radically cut greenhouse gas emissions, after Brussels refused to approve its share of post-pandemic stimulus package due to a separate dispute around the country’s alleged democratic backsliding.

The inertia on implementing minimum tax is particularly vexing for France, which has set an objective of getting a deal by the end of its EU presidency in June. French officials have introduced concessions to Poland to make a stronger link in Europe between the two parts of the global deal which around 140 countries including all EU states backed last year. 

“Poland’s criticisms have been taken into account and all member states have made an effort to get to this consensus to make major progress for international tax,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said. “I regret that Poland doesn’t understand this and puts forward arguments that are not convincing.” 

 

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Soldiers police Lima curfew after fuel price protests


Carlos MANDUJANO
Tue, 5 April 2022,

Some protesters set fire to toll booths on highways, looted shops, and clashed with police (AFP/Gian MASKO)


Protesters blocked the Pan-American highway, the country's most important transport and traffic artery snaking north to south 

(AFP/Ernesto BENAVIDES)


President Pedro Castillo called for 'calm and serenity' after the sometimes violent protests

 (AFP/Gian MASKO)

Protesters also burnt tires to block key routes 

(AFP/Gian MASKO)

Soldiers patrolled the largely empty streets of Peru's capital Lima Tuesday, monitoring a curfew imposed after widespread protests against rising fuel and toll prices amid growing economic hardship.

Shops and schools were closed and bus services mostly suspended after President Pedro Castillo announced a curfew shortly before midnight Monday for Lima and the neighboring port city of Callao.

But many workers, at hotels or hospitals for example, ignored the shut-down which was widely criticized on social media.

The measure took many in Lima by surprise, given that most of the protests in recent days -- some of which turned violent -- took place far from the capital.

Many had no choice but to take a taxi or walk to their place of work.

"It was a very late and improvised" announcement, complained Cinthya Rojas, a nutritionist who waited patiently for one of the handful of buses still running to get to work at a hospital east of Lima.

A hotel employee told AFP she had to pay the equivalent of $8, a small fortune on her salary, for a taxi to work.

- Soaring food prices -

Castillo announced the curfew would last until midnight Tuesday "to reestablish peace" after countrywide protests against fuel and toll price increases on top of biting food inflation.

Like much of the rest of the world, Peru's economy is reeling from the damages wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.

The country's Consumer Price Index in March saw its highest monthly increase in 26 years, driven by soaring food, transport and education prices, according to the national statistics institute.

In an attempt to appease protesters, the government over the weekend eliminated the fuel tax and decreed a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage from May 1.

But the General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP) -- the country’s main trade union federation -- considered the measures insufficient and took to the streets again Monday in Lima and several regions in Peru's the north.

Some protesters set fire to toll booths on highways, looted shops, and clashed with police.

Some also burnt tires and blocked the north-south Pan-American highway, the country's most important artery for people and goods.

The disruptions halted public transport and closed schools on Monday.

"I call for calm and serenity," the leftist president said during his brief late-night TV appearance.

"Social protest is a constitutional right, but it must be done within the law," he said.

- 'Authoritarian measure' -

The protests were the first against the government since Castillo, a 52-year-old former rural school teacher, took office eight months ago.

Two-thirds of Peruvians disapprove of his rule, according to an Ipsos opinion poll in March.

Castillo's announcement of a curfew came just a week after he escaped impeachment by Congress, where opponents accuse his administration of a "lack of direction" and of allowing corruption in his entourage.

It also coincided with the 30th anniversary of a coup staged by ex-president Alberto Fujimori, jailed over his regime's bloody campaign against insurgents.

"The measure dictated by President Pedro Castillo is openly unconstitutional, disproportionate and violates people's right to individual freedom," tweeted lawyer Carlos Rivera, a representative of Fujimori's victims.

Political analyst Luis Benavente added the curfew was "an authoritarian measure" that revealed "ineptitude, incapacity to govern."

"It is like putting an end to traffic accidents by taking vehicles off the roads," he told AFP.

A large proportion of Lima's 10 million residents work in the informal sector, as street sellers and other traders, meaning the curfew left them without income for the day.

A football match of the Copa Libertadores between Peruvian Club Sporting Cristal and Brazil's Flamengo, scheduled for Tuesday night in Lima, was also thrown into doubt.

cm/fj/rsr/mlr/bgs

Amazon’s first US union overcomes hurdles, faces new ones

By HALELUYA HADERO and ANNE D'INNOCENZIO

1 of 3

 Staten Island-based Amazon.com Inc distribution center union organizer Chris Smalls, center, wearing baseball cap, celebrates with union members after getting the voting results to unionize workers at the Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, in New York, Friday, April 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — When a scrappy group of former and current warehouse workers on Staten Island, New York went head-to-head with Amazon in a union election, many compared it to a David and Goliath battle.

David won. And the stunning upset on Friday brought sudden exposure to the organizers and worker advocates who realized victory for the nascent Amazon Labor Union when so many other more established labor groups had failed before them, including most recently in Bessemer, Alabama.

Initial results in that election show the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union down by 118 votes, with the majority of Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer rejecting a bid to form a union. The final outcome is still up in the air with 416 outstanding challenged ballots hanging in the balance. A hearing to review the ballots is expected to begin in the coming weeks.

Chris Smalls, a fired Amazon worker who heads the ALU, has been critical of the RWDSU’s campaign, saying it didn’t have enough local support. Instead, he chose an independent path, believing workers organizing themselves would be more effective and undercut Amazon’s narrative that “third party” groups were driving union efforts.

“They were not perceived as outsiders, so that’s important,” said Ruth Milkman, a sociologist of labor and labor movements at the City University of New York.

While the odds were stacked against both union drives, with organizers facing off against a deep-pocketed retailer with an uninterrupted track record of keeping unions out of its U.S. operations, ALU was decidedly underfunded and understaffed compared with the RWDSU. Smalls said as of early March, ALU had raised and spent about $100,000 and was operating on a week-to-week budget. The group doesn’t have its own office space, and was relying on community groups and two unions to lend a hand. Legal help came from a lawyer offering pro-bono assistance.

Meanwhile, Amazon exercised all its might to fend off the organizing efforts, routinely holding mandatory meetings with workers to argue why unions are a bad idea. In a filing released last week, the company disclosed it spent about $4.2 million last year on labor consultants, who organizers say Amazon hired to persuade workers not to unionize.

Outmatched financially, Smalls and others relied on their ability to reach workers more personally by making TikTok videos, giving out free marijuana and holding barbecues and cookouts. A few weeks before the election, Smalls’ aunt cooked up soul food for a union potluck, including macaroni and cheese, collard greens, ham and baked chicken. Another pro-union worker got her neighbor to prepare Jollof rice, a West African dish organizers believed would help them make inroads with immigrant employees at the warehouse.

Kate Andrias, professor of law at Columbia University and an expert in labor law, noted a successful union — whether it is local or national — always has to be built by the workers themselves.

“This was a clearer illustration of this,” Andrias said. “The workers did this on their own.”

Amazon’s own missteps may have also contributed to the election outcome on Staten Island. Bert Flickinger III, a managing director at the consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, said derogatory comments by a company executive leaked from an internal meeting calling Smalls “not smart or articulate” and wanting to make him “the face of the entire union/organizing movement” backfired.

“It came out as condescending and it helped to galvanize workers,” said Flickinger, who consults with big labor unions.

In another example, Smalls and two organizers were arrested in February after authorities got a complaint about him trespassing at the Staten Island warehouse. The ALU used the arrests to its advantage days before the union election, teaming up with an art collective to project “THEY ARRESTED YOUR CO-WORKERS” in white letters on top of the warehouse. “THEY FIRED SOMEONE YOU KNOW,” another projection said.

“A lot of workers that were on the fence, or even against the union, flipped because of that situation,” Smalls said.

Experts note it’s difficult to know how much of ALU’s grassroots nature contributed to its victory when compared with the RWDSU. Unlike New York, Alabama is a right-to-work state that prohibits a company and a union from signing a contract that requires workers to pay dues to the union that represents them.

There was also a grassroots element to the union drive in Bessemer, which began when a group of Amazon workers there approached the RWDSU about organizing.

At a virtual press conference Thursday held by the RWDSU following the preliminary results in Alabama, president Stuart Appelbaum said he believed the election in New York benefited because it was held in a union-friendly state and Amazon workers on Staten Island voted in person, not by mail as was done in Alabama.

Despite some friction between the two labor groups in the leadup to the elections, both have adopted a friendlier public relationship in the past few days. Appelbaum praised Smalls during Thursday’s press conference, calling him a “charismatic, smart, dedicated leader.” Likewise, Smalls offered the RWDSU words of encouragement after their initial election loss.

For now, ALU is focusing on its win. Organizers say Amazon workers from more than 20 states have reached out to them to ask about organizing their warehouses. But they have their hands full with their own warehouse, and a neighboring facility slated to have a separate union election later this month.

Organizers are also preparing for a challenging negotiation process for a labor contract. The group has demanded Amazon officials to come to the table in early May. But experts say the retail giant, which has signaled plans to challenge the election results, will likely drag its feet.

“The number one thing is going to be fighting for the contract,” Smalls said. “We have to start that process right away because we know the longer drawn out the contract is, workers will lose hope and interest.”

Meanwhile, some workers are waiting to see what happens.

Tinea Greenway, a warehouse worker from Brooklyn, said before the election, she felt pressured by the messages she kept hearing both from Amazon and ALU organizers, and just wanted to make the decision herself. When the time came, she voted against the union because of a bad experience she’s had in the past with another union who she says didn’t fight for her.

“They won,” she said of the ALU. “So let’s see if they live up to the agreement of what they said they were going to do.”

____

Follow Haleluya Hadero: http://twitter.com/masayett

Follow Anne D’Innocenzio: http://twitter.com/ADInnocenzio

Rockefeller’s $105M plan to produce climate-friendly food

By KRISTEN GRIFFITH of The Chronicle of Philanthropy

In this photo provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, Jason Grauer, the Seed and Crop Director at Stone Barns, poses for a photo at Stone Barns’s greenhouse on April 7, 2021, in Tarrytown, N.Y. Rockefeller grantee Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture is working on innovative, community-based ways to increase access to food and use sustainable environmental practices. (William Rouse/Media RED via AP)

The pandemic sent global hunger soaring, but now the war in Ukraine is making the problem far worse. Since Russia and Ukraine together supply 30% of global wheat exports, a big chunk of the world is losing access to food.

Now one of the nation’s biggest foundations is trying to deal with some of these challenges with a $105 million plan to improve food access, make nutritious and healthy food more widely available, and advance production of food in ways that does not harm the planet.

Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, said the commitment is the biggest nutrition effort in Rockefeller’s history. Over the next three years, the Good Food Strategy aims to ensure that 40 million people around the world have better access to healthy and sustainable food.

“Because of climate change, food prices were already the highest in a decade, even before Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine further decimated global food supplies. Now the world is on the precipice of a global humanitarian crisis,” Shah said in a statement.

The foundation and other experts say the way the world produces and consumes food is failing people and the planet. So it came up with a new strategy it hopes will shift the focus from increasing the quantity of food to improving its quality.

Rockefeller aims not just to increase access to affordable and healthy food but also to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in the food system and expand opportunities for small food-production businesses to thrive.

The foundation has some innovative approaches to accomplishing those goals. For instance, it plans to:

— Encourage doctors to prescribe fruits and vegetables instead of drugs when appropriate since they can be both healthier and cheaper. Ten health insurance companies are working with Rockefeller to test the idea.

— Pay for healthy foods at schools, hospitals, prisons, and other state government facilities.

— Help farmers switch their production practices to approaches that reduce carbon from being released into the air after they plow the ground.

— Fund more small and medium-size food businesses to diversify the distributors and prevent supply-chain issues.

The announcement builds on one of philanthropy’s most successful efforts, the Green Revolution of the 1960s.

Rockefeller financed the technology that helped fuel production of food in a way that averted starvation in the world’s poorest countries. However, it lacked sustainability and equity. That’s what today’s effort is designed to tackle, foundation officials say.

Barron Segar, president of the World Food Program USA, agrees that something needs to be done now. Rockefeller gave the program $3.3 million in 2021 to supply nutritious food for school food programs in Africa.

“We’re facing the biggest crisis we’ve ever faced around food insecurity,” Segar said. “There are 811 million people today who don’t have access to quality food, and they don’t know where their next meal is coming from. We’re at a very pivotal moment in history where we have 45 million people that are marching toward starvation.”

Last year, Rockefeller published a report to evaluate all the ways food systems in the United States affect health, the environment, biodiversity, and livelihoods. It found that Americans paid an estimated $1.1 trillion of the cost of producing, processing, retailing, and wholesaling of food in 2019. But if other costs, like the food system’s impact on climate change were included, the cost would be $3.2 trillion a year.

One of Rockefeller’s grantees has been carrying out some of the ideas that are part of the Good Food Strategy.

FoodCorps, which received at least $500,000 from the foundation last year for its work to provide healthy food to kids in school, has already had some success in influencing food policy.

In California, FoodCorps advocated for passage of Free School Meals for All Act last year. And in Connecticut, the nonprofit helped the state achieve its first farm-to-school grant program, which will put more local foods in school meals, give educators more resources to teach students about nutrition, and sustain relationships with local farmers and producers.

Rockefeller is also working with Kaiser Permanente, a healthcare company, on its Food as Medicine program. A combined investment of more than $2 million will go toward three research studies that will evaluate healthy food-prescription programs for participants who suffer from or are at risk for diet-related diseases. Both groups are also building evidence to prove prescriptions of produce are healthier and cheaper in some cases than traditional drugs.

“Everyone needs and deserves access to healthy food they can afford,” said Pamela Schwartz, an executive director at Kaiser.

Another element of the Rockefeller plan is to focus on changing the mix of who produces food.

Roy Steiner, senior vice president of Rockefeller’s food grants work, said the pandemic has revealed how fragile supply chains are. And it doesn’t help that only a few large food distributors monopolize the industry, he says. Diversifying power and wealth in the food industry is healthier for the economy, he said, which is why part of the Good Food Strategy is to prioritize small and medium-size food businesses.

“It needs to be a diversity of crops that can be grown by a diversity of farmers,” Steiner said. “Therefore, when things break down, you have multiple players and multiple sources of supply.”

The pandemic isn’t the only crisis that has worsened hunger. Climate change and the conflicts in Ethiopia, Yemen, and Ukraine have also contributed, says Steiner.

“We would not be in such a crisis if we had more regenerative and distributed systems,” he said.

Segar, who visited the Ukraine-Poland border last weekend, said the World Food Program is pushing to feed 3.1 million people in Ukraine. Food and drinking water shortages are reported in Kyiv and in Kharkiv, two cities bearing the brunt of the war. However, the World Food Program’s resources are starting to dwindle.

Segar said the Rockefeller Foundation takes an original approach to improving food production, and it’s one that his organization is working to adopt. The foundation not only gives money, he said, but educates the public about food and uses data and research to make decisions. He referenced Rockefeller’s “True Cost of Food” report, which analyzes the impact food has on people and the planet. Segar also cites Rockefeller’s Periodic Table of Food, an effort to create a database that breaks down food composition.

Segar said his organization was able to use what it learned from Rockefeller and teach communities in Central America about healthy meals.

Segar said the World Food Program and Rockefeller both want to create a food system that everyone can afford and have access to.

“The right nutrition at the right time can save lives,” Segar said.

____

This article was provided to The Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Kristen Griffith is a staff writer at the Chronicle. Email: kristen.griffith@philanthropy.com. The AP and the Chronicle receive support from the Lilly Endowment for coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The AP and the Chronicle are solely responsible for all content.

UK

BEHIND THE SCENES
Who might buy Channel 4?
Broadcaster to go up for sale as senior conservatives criticise decision

THE WEEK STAFF
5 APR 2022

Channel 4’s headquarters in Horseferry Road, London
Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Channel 4 is to be sold by the government before the next general election after ministers decided privatisation was the best way to “sustain” the country’s public service broadcasting sector.

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries said the privatisation of Channel 4 will give the broadcaster “the tools and freedom to flourish and thrive as a public service broadcaster long into the future”.

“Channel 4 rightly holds a cherished place in British life and I want that to remain the case,” she added. “I have come to the conclusion that government ownership is holding Channel 4 back from competing against streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon.”

The broadcaster described the funding shake-up as “disappointing”, having warned last year of a “real risk” to its programming when the government began a privatisation consultation. A spokesperson yesterday said that “significant public interest concerns” had not been formally recognised before the decision was made.
‘Very unconservative’

Channel 4 has been considered for privatisation by the governments of Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair. And in 2016, it was reported that the future of the channel was again being looked into by the government.

As it stands, Channel 4 has been commercially funded since its creation in 1982, so unlike the BBC it gets no financial support from taxpayers. The privatisation of the network will result in ownership being transferred from the government to a private company or individuals.

Over 90% of the network’s income currently comes from “selling TV advertising in the shows it broadcasts”, The Guardian said. “The remaining 9% of income comes from operations including 4Studios, which creates digital content for advertisers, and new non-advertising partnership deals.”

It is not profitable, but its “remit has never been to make a profit”, the paper added. The money it makes is instead “reinvested in commissioning and buying programmes from mostly British TV production companies, helping to support a key national industry”.

The government said last year that the channel was “vulnerable to unstable advertising markets”, Reuters reported, arguing that “a move into private ownership with a changed remit could help safeguard its future”.

However, a raft of cultural figures have savaged the plans, with Armando Iannucci, the writer of the Alan Partridge character and the political sitcom The Thick of It, tweeting: “Our TV industry is a British success story. Channel 4 profits go back into the industry: selling it off will give them to American shareholders.”

The government is now “facing a backlash” from senior Conservatives over the “contentious decision”, said The Independent. Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Tugendhat told Times Radio: “I remain to be convinced that this is going to achieve the aim the government has set out”.

Former cabinet minister Damian Green also said the decision was “very unconservative” and the result of “politicians and civil servants thinking they know more about how to run a business than the people who run it”.

 
Runners and riders

When the consultation process began, Culture Minister John Whittingdale told Times Radio that he did not “by any means rule out” the station being bought by a company such as Netflix or Amazon. “We think that it is sensible to look at alternative ownership models, to make sure that Channel 4 is still able to invest in programme content, to compete with these other services,” he said.

Whittingdale also told the radio station that a consultation would set ground rules for potential buyers.

“There would be competition issues if a very strongly established broadcaster wanted to merge, and that’s something which automatically is a matter of competition, but I don’t by any means rule out existing streaming services or indeed anybody else,” he said.

Discover is “the industry player most likely to buy Channel 4, with the least regulatory hurdles”, said The Guardian. The company “expressed interest” in the broadcaster in 2016 and “continues to be highly active in the UK market”.

But ITV has been “lobbying Whitehall about the possibility of a ‘national champion’ takeover, designed to take the political fallout of yet another buyout of a UK ‘crown jewel’ by a foreign owner”, the paper continued. The move would “help to safeguard” ITV’s own future “by giving it a much bigger scale,” said The Telegraph.

The paper also listed Sky and Amazon as potential bidders who already have commercial deals in place with the broadcaster. Paramount has also been “held up as an example by ministers as the kind of ‘deep pocketed’ backer that could take control”.

There will be “significant interest” from private equity buyers too, The Guardian added.
A done deal?

Channel 4’s chief executive Alex Mahon responded to the news of the sale by stating that there will be a “long process ahead”.

The broadcaster’s privatisation is “not yet” a done deal, said The Times. Ministers will need to pass legislation before a sale can happen, “setting the state for a showdown in the Commons”.

And “until the sale is made, it is unclear exactly what a privatised Channel 4 could look like”, said Metro. The broadcaster’s said yesterday that it remains “legally committed to its unique public-service remit”.

“The focus for the organisation will be on how we can ensure we deliver the remit to both our viewers and the British creative economy across the whole of the UK,” the added.

Neanderthals Went Extinct in Iberia, and Were Replaced – by Other Neanderthals

Armed with advanced tools, Neanderthals may have been able to reconquer territory they had abandoned 1,500 years earlier – but not for long


Excavating the open-air late Neanderthal site, Aranbaltza II

.Credit: Joseba Rios


Ruth Schuster
Apr. 5, 2022 

When did the Neanderthals die out once and for all? Some argue they never did because our ancestors mixed with that subspecies, so bits of their genome live on. The fact remains that you can’t meet a Neanderthal because they are gone, forever more. But one question is the manner of their passing. Now, a new paper posits that the different stone tool technologies at a site in northern Spain indicate migration by Neanderthals, and population replacement of Neanderthals – by other Neanderthals.

For whatever reason – and we shall get to that – by about 45,000 years ago Neanderthals using Middle Paleolithic stone technology seem to have disappeared from Cantabria, including from the open-air Northern Iberian Peninsula site called Aranbaltza II, write Joseba Rios-Garaizar of the Archaeology Museum of Bilbao and colleagues in PLOS One.

There is a “sterile” period, a gap, in the archaeological record there. And then, 1,500 to 1,000 years later, more Neanderthals arrived and replaced them.

These new Neanderthals were armed with more advanced, finer tools known as the Châtelperronian technology, the team posits. Châtelperronian flint tools have a distinctive single cutting edge and a curved back.

A map showing Neanderthals in Iberia.Credit: PLOS ONE

The archaeological layers – Middle Paleolithic; nothing; Châtelperronian – are distinct, the archaeologists write. Moreover, this is far from the only hominin site in the region where Middle Paleolithic and Châtelperronian layers are distinct, showing no continuity.

Neanderthals at work

The Neanderthals-replacing-Neanderthals theory is based on stone tool discoveries at Aranbaltza II, an open-air site (an area clearly used by hominins that is not in a cave or rock shelter). A huge number of tools was found there: in fact, the archaeologists suspect that Aranbaltza II was a Neanderthal stone-working factory, partly because it’s close to a flint outcrop.

In short, this isn’t where the Neanderthals lived, they suggest: it was their industrial zone. Separately, archaeologists have reported on Neanderthal-era hunting camps and cave dwellings in the region.

Unfortunately, no bones have been found at Aranbaltza II that could have shed a more categorical light on the human species involved, because the soil of Cantabria is too acid for preservation, Rios-Garaizar explains.

Much of this remains controversial, including the contention that Neanderthals were the inventors, the authors, the manufacturers of Châtelperronian-type tools, which so far have been found in France and northern Spain dating to a range of about 44,000 to 40,000 years ago. Not everybody even agrees that there is such as thing as a distinct Châtelperronian industry. And among those who accept its uniqueness, some suspect sapiens involvement, influence, or actual authorship of these tools.


Studying tools from Aranbaltza II in the lab.Credit: Joseba Rios

(The name “Châtelperronian” derives from the site where it was first identified as a distinct industry: Châtelperron in central France, where it was preceded by the Mousterian industry.)

We are pretty sure that anatomically modern humans, we Homo sapiens lot, had reached Bulgaria by 45,000 years ago – the remains uncovered at Bacho Kiro leave little room for doubt. So if sapiens had reached Spain too by that time, could they plausibly be responsible for the Châtelperronian tools found at Aranbaltza?

We do not know but, Rios-Garaizar says, the thinking is they got to western Europe “a little bit” later, definitely by 42,000 years ago. So he remains confident that the Châtelperronian assembly found in northern Spain is of Neanderthal origin.

To shore up that argument, previous work – including paleo-protein analysis – at the site of Arcy-sur-Cure in north-central France indicates Neanderthal authorship of the Châtelperronian techniques, Rios-Garaizar points out.

So for the purposes of this article, let us assume that the occupants of Aranbaltza were Neanderthals, whether post-hybridization with sapiens or not; and that Neanderthals were indeed the party responsible for bringing Châtelperronian technology to the world.


A Chatelperronian flake from Aranbaltza.Credit: Joseba Rios

If so, what happened at this open-air site in Spain tens of thousands of years ago?

Howling storms

If we assume that all the personalities involved in this story of prehistoric Aranbaltza are Neanderthals, then the presence of Mousterian stone technology, replaced a millennium later by Châtelperronian, suggests that the first group of Neanderthals went extinct. Other Neanderthals, late Neanderthals, arrived 1,500 to 1,000 years later, likely migrating from Aquitaine, southwestern France, the team suggests.

Does the cultural change – in stone technology – necessarily translate into Neanderthal migration? Not in the mind of Israeli anthropologist Prof. Israel Hershkovitz, an expert on that era: it’s an interesting speculation but there’s no evidence for it at this point, he argues.

That said, there is no argument that hominin species had wanderlust; various types were leaving Africa as much as 2 million years ago and quite speedily reached the farthest edges of continental Asia. Also, in 2020, separate work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows Neanderthal migration from Bavaria to southern Siberia. That thesis is based on similarity in tools at specific sites in the two regions, and on DNA analyses of Neanderthal bones and sediments from the Siberian cave Chagyrskaya – which show the Neanderthals there were significantly different from other Neanderthals in Siberia living in Denisova Cave.


Sample of the many tools found at Aranbaltza.Credit: PLOS ONE

Apropos of which, Denisovans – the cousins of Neanderthals – are also believed, based on genetic evidence, to have dispersed widely in central and eastern Asia, even if proven bone evidence for them is extremely scanty: only in Siberia and Tibet. The extraordinarily high component of Denisovan DNA in indigenous Filipinos today is otherwise hard to explain.

So it seems Neanderthals would and did get about, and if Rios-Garaizar and his colleagues are right about the cascade of events at Aranbaltza, localized extinctions and replacements may have played a role in the ultimate total extinction of their species, which would be pretty soon after Châtelperronian technology appeared.

There is no consensus for the timing of the Neanderthals’ extinction, but most agree they “barely” crossed the 40,000-year boundary, possibly surviving until about 37,000 years ago in some places, Rios-Garaizar says. Châtelperronian was one of the last technological and cultural expressions of Neanderthals.

No, their work cannot indicate which of the postulated causes – endogenous, climate change, we nice folk moving into the neighborhood – were responsible. But if Neanderthals went extinct in Cantabria for a thousand-plus years and then came back, we can suspect the howling vagaries of climate at the time were involved.

In any case, by this time in their story, the Neanderthals were in decline, their small groups under stress – various reports show evidence of pathologies suggesting they were procreating through incest in the absence of more appealing options; that at least some were stricken by kuru after eating the brains of their own dead; that sapiens appeared with its mega-kicky brain – not as big as a Neanderthal’s, but somehow qualitatively improved in a way that led us to create figurative art while they did not; or simply that we sneezed on them and infected them with germs to which they had no natural immunity.


A Chatelperronian flake from Aranbaltza.Credit: Joseba Rios

And while everybody is speculating, Rios-Garaizar suggests a wonderful theory.

By 45,000 years ago, Neanderthals were clearly under stress. They vanished from Cantabria, possibly because of resource stress. This was a time of intense climatic variability, with very rapid, dramatic changes and, likely, howling storms. There may have been drastic environmental changes in northern Spain, leading to change in the fauna and, therefore, in those who hunt the fauna. Perhaps they needed to go farther to obtain the food they needed and, whether they died out or just left, Cantabria would remain free of Neanderthals until the next set came along armed with Châtelperronian technology.

Possibly these Neanderthals armed with Châtelperronian blades were so successful that they could be fruitful and multiply (hopefully beyond the nuclear family), and occupy new territories, Rios-Garaizar suggests. But not for long. They too disappeared, and fast.

Why? We do not know. Theories continue to compete but plausibly, at some point in Africa we the sapiens sapiens species crossed some sort of barrier, threshold, in brain evolution that rendered us intellectually superior to the Neanderthals. We gained abilities they may not have had, and after thousands upon thousands of years of “trying” (not that there was a declared aspiration), we made it past the Neanderthals and left Africa and spread madly throughout the world.

They, meanwhile, had been suffering from vagaries of climate and armed with Châtelperronian technology or not, we outcompeted them, and perhaps dealt better somehow with the environmental stressors, possibly due to better sociability. They grew more and more stressed; we may have coexisted cheek by jowl in some areas, especially in the Middle East, for thousands of years – but the upshot is that here we are today, while they are not.

And we may never know just how culturally advanced they were. We may never know whether they really could swim like fish. We may never be sure they really did have digging sticks, whether they had religion or just wanted to emulate big birds; whether they could cook soup, or whether it really was a custom, as has been postulated in one case of late Neanderthals in Iraq, that they buried their dead with flowers. The only thing for sure is that they're extinct.

 

Ex-Hasidic trans activist photographed by Annie Leibovitz

Abby Stein, an activist for LGBTQ+ inclusion in Jewish communities and beyond, is one of dozens of subjects in a new library to showcase the diversity of people.

By JTAApril 5, 2022, 

• 
  

Abby Chava Stein, an American transgender author, activist, blogger, model, speaker and rabbi, relaxes on the 

Resort Deck of Celebrity Apex. (Annie Leibovitz for Celebrity Cruises' All Inclusive Photo Project)

Abby Stein remembers two things well about her first-ever editorial photo shoot after coming out as an ex-Orthodox trans woman.

The first was that the shoot, in her bedroom for Vogue magazine in 2018, was the first time Stein had posed in a bra, and she wasn’t totally comfortable with the experience.

The second was that someone asked her who her dream photographer would be.

The name that popped into her mind was “one that I knew was never going to happen,” she recalled last week — Annie Leibovitz.

“She’s definitely done a lot of work to elevate LGBTQ voices and portraits,” Stein told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency last week about why she was drawn to Leibovitz, the award-winning portraitist. “And she is obviously Jewish.”

Four years later, that dream has come true: Leibovitz has photographed Stein in a setting that couldn’t be more different from her New York City apartment — on the deck of a cruise liner.

Stein, an activist for LGBTQ+ inclusion in Jewish communities and beyond, is one of dozens of subjects of photographs in a new library created by Celebrity Cruises to showcase the diversity of people who love to travel. The images — which also include #MeToo movement founder Tarana Burke, disability activist and model Jillian Mercado, and the Jewish director with alopecia Rachel Fleit, among others — will be made available for anyone to use, in an effort to change the public face of the cruise industry.

“What Annie, indeed all of the artists involved in this project have captured so beautifully, is that for vacations to really live up to the marketing moniker ‘all-inclusive,’ then they should start by using images that are inclusive of all, not just a few,” Celebrity Cruises President and CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo said in a statement.

“I am keenly aware of the privilege to be asked to participate,” Stein wrote on Twitter. “I don’t think this is about me — this is about representation in the LGBTQ, and especially trans, community. It’s about bodies that are different than the mainstream ‘cis-straight-normative’ expectations.”

Stein was careful to note that though she did post about her experience on social media, promoting the company was not part of her contract for the photoshoot. But she said knowing that the CEO of Celebrity was the first woman to lead a Royal Caribbean Group cruise line brand and that the company was the first to have a woman captain a “mega” cruise ship gave her confidence that the company’s inclusion efforts were genuine.

Behind the scenes of the Annie Leibovitz shoot, Abby Stein, center right, poses with her cousin. (Courtesy of Abby Stein)

“While I don’t understand corporate intentions, the people I worked with from Celebrity were all really, really amazing and they really mean it,” she said. “I think they’ve done a lot of amazing stuff towards being more inclusive and I’m a big fan of inclusivity. Specifically, actual actions.”

Working with Leibovitz gave Stein “a lot of courage,” Stein said. She added, “It was legitimately such a diverse crowd. People with different abilities, people with different looks, different ages, different body types and everything. So it was a very, I would say empowering moment.”

For the shoot, Stein got to pick from a few 1950s-style options, ultimately choosing a white one-piece with black polka dots and posing on a chaise on the deck of a Celebrity Cruise liner where she and other models spent a full week.

Stein’s Jewish identity became a recurring theme through her seven nights on the cruise. Leibovitz — who vaulted to her first staff job, at Rolling Stone, on the strength of photographs she took in Israel in the 1970s — revered Stein’s background as a rabbi, Stein recalled.

And when word circulated that Stein celebrates Shabbat every week, Celebrity CMO Michael Scheiner, who is also Jewish, asked if she would like to lead Friday night services on the boat.

“That wasn’t part of any contract or any deal,” Stein said. “I wasn’t paid for that or anything. But literally within a day they added it to the cruise schedule.”

Dozens of cruise guests attended. Stein led the service and gave a short sermon. Manischewitz grape juice and fresh-baked challah were served.

“It was really nice and sweet,” she said.

Calgary researchers say there may be a link between fracking and premature births

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Preterm infants at higher risk of developing

neurodevelopmental difficulties, physical disabilities

Bill Graveland · The Canadian Press · Posted: Apr 05, 2022 

In this 2013 file photo, workers tend to a well head during a hydraulic fracturing operation outside Rifle, in western Colorado. (Brennan Linsley/Associated Press)

A University of Calgary study says there may be a link between the density of certain oil and gas operations and increased health risks for nearby pregnant women and their babies.

"There is very little research about fracking as it relates to the health of pregnant people and children living near these sites," said Amy Metcalfe, a co-principal investigator and associate professor in obstetrics and gynecology at the university's Cumming School of Medicine.

"Our study found the rate of spontaneous preterm deliveries — birth before 37 weeks — increased significantly relative to the number of fracturing sites within 10 kilometres of their home."

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves directional drilling and injecting large amounts of fluid into wells to extract oil and natural gas.

Dr. Amy Metcalfe is shown in a handout photo. (Supplied by the University of Calgary)

Over a five-year period, researchers reviewed health data of pregnant women, specifically those living in rural areas whose homes were near fracking sites.

Metcalfe said the women living near between one to 24 well sites had a 7.4 per cent risk of early delivery and the risk increased to 11.4 per cent for those near 100 or more fracking operations. She said premature births present a health risk.

"Preterm infants are at higher risk of developing neurodevelopmental difficulties, physical disabilities and behaviour problems, including autism, cerebral palsy and epilepsy," Metcalfe said.

Results from the report are published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) Pediatrics.

Metcalfe said they received the grant in 2017 and used health data from 2013 to 2018.

2nd study into child development coming 

Metcalfe said despite the data, she can't definitively say that fracking is causing premature births.

"We can't say from this work that fracking causes adverse birth effects. We can say they are more likely to occur in proximity to that, but there's really more research that needs to be done to look at causal mechanisms why this would happen," she said.

"It would be a weird coincidence if it wasn't that, but it's not something we're able to assess from this particular study."

The research will continue. Carly McMorris, the other co-principal investigator and associate professor at the university's Werklund School of Education, is recruiting participants for a study to determine if hydraulic fracturing affects child development.

She said it will assess thinking skills, academic abilities and social-emotional functioning in children in grades one through three living in communities both close to and far from fracking operations.

The communities selected are Grande Prairie, which has the most fracking activity in Alberta, and Lethbridge, which has virtually none. The children will also wear a device that will test air pollution around them for one week.

• 'Nation-building' investments in electricity grid needed to reach net-zero: experts

• Fracking to blame for earthquakes, seismic 'clusters' in central Alberta

McMorris said the results from the studies will provide evidence that could help inform decisions and practices related to fracking.

Metcalfe realizes there might be some blowback from the public about the results of the research.

"Fracking is politically controversial, right? There's groups on both sides that have very strong opinions and, inevitably by doing work in this area, someone's going to be (ticked) off."

‘Green steel’ heating up in Sweden’s frozen north

By JAMES BROOKS

Susanne Rostmark, research leader, LKAB, holds a piece of hot briquetted iron ore made using the HYBRIT process nearby the venture’s pilot plant in Lulea, Sweden on Feb. 17, 2022. The steel-making industry is coming under increasing pressure to curb its environmental impact and contribute to the Paris climate accord, which aims to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (James Brooks via AP)


LULEA, Sweden (AP) — For hundreds of years, raging blast furnaces — fed with coking coal — have forged steel used in cars, railways, bridges and skyscrapers.

But the puffs of coal-fired smoke are a big source of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas that’s driving climate change.

According to the World Steel Association, every metric ton of steel produced in 2020 emitted almost twice that much carbon dioxide (1.8 tons) into the atmosphere. Total direct emissions from making steel were about 2.6 billion tons in 2020, representing around 7% of global CO2 emissions.

In Sweden, a single company, steel giant SSAB, accounts for about 10% of the country’s emissions due to the furnaces it operates at mills like the one in the northern town of Lulea.

But not far away, a high-tech pilot plant is seeking to significantly reduce the carbon emissions involved in steel production by switching some of that process away from burning coking coal to burning hydrogen that itself was produced with renewable energy.




HYBRIT — or Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology — is a joint venture between SSAB, mining company LKAB and Swedish state-owned power firm Vattenfall launched in 2016.

“The cost of renewable energy, fossil-free energy, had come down dramatically and at the same time, you had a rising awareness and the Paris Agreement” in 2015 to reduce global emissions, said Mikael Nordlander, Vattenfall’s head of industry decarbonization.

“We realized that we might have a chance now to outcompete the direct use of fossil fuels in industry with this electricity coming from fossil-free sources,” he added.

Last year, the plant made its first commercial delivery. European carmakers that have committed to dramatically reducing their emissions need cleaner steel. Chinese-owned Volvo Group became the first carmaker to partner with HYBRIT. Head of procurement Kerstin Enochsson said steel is a “major contributor” to their cars’ carbon footprint, between 20 and 35%.

“Tackling only the tailpipe emissions by being an electric company is not enough. We need to focus on the car itself, as well,” she said.

Demand from other companies, including Volkswagen, is also sending a signal that there is demand for green steel. Steelmakers in Europe have announced plans to scale up production of steel made without coal.

The HYBRIT process aims to replace the coking coal that’s traditionally used for ore-based steel making with hydrogen and renewable electricity.

It begins with brown-tinged iron ore pellets that react with the hydrogen gas and are reduced to ball-shaped “sponge iron,” which takes it name due to pores left behind following the removal of oxygen. This is then melted in an electric furnace.

If the hydrogen is made using renewable energy, too, the process produces no CO2.

“We get iron, and then we get water vapor instead,” said SSAB’s chief technology officer Martin Pei. “Water vapor can be condensed, recirculated, reused in the process.

“We really solve the root cause of carbon dioxide emissions from steel making,” he said.

Steel is a recyclable material, but demand for the alloy is expected to grow in the coming years, amid a push to transform society and build wind turbines, solar plants, power transmission lines and new electric vehicles.

“Steel is a superb construction material. It is also possible to recycle steel again and again,” said Pei. “You can reuse steel as many times as possible.

“The only problem today is the current way of making steel from iron ore emits too much CO2,” he said.

By the end of this decade, the European Union is attempting to cut overall CO2 emissions in the 27-nation bloc by 55% compared to 1990 levels. Part of that effort includes making companies pay for their C02 emissions and encourage the switch to low-carbon alternatives.

Sweden’s steel industry has set out plans to achieve “fossil-free” operations by 2045. SSAB in January brought forward its own plans to largely eliminate carbon dioxide emissions in its steel-making processes by the end of the decade.

“The companies are well aware of their possibilities and limitations in the current processes and that they have to do something about it,” said Helen Axelsson, director of energy and environment at Jernkontoret, the Swedish steel producers’ association.

But according to the World Steel Association, over 70% of global steel production takes place in Asia, where steel producers don’t have access to the same quantities of old scrap steel as countries that have been industrialized for a longer time. That’s another reason why average emissions per ton of steel are higher in the global south.

Filip Johnsson, a professor in energy technology at Gothenburg’s Chalmers University, said the vast amounts of renewable electricity necessary to make hydrogen and cleaner steel could make rolling out the HYBRIT process difficult in other parts of the world.

“I would say that the major challenge is to get loads of electricity and also to provide it sort of constantly,” he said.

The small Lulea pilot plant is still a research facility, and has so far produced just a couple of hundred tons. There are plans to construct a larger demonstration plant and begin commercial deliveries by 2026.

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