COVID-19 cases surge again in U.S., could get worse in coming months

CGTN

North America , 21-May-2022

A COVID-19 testing site in New York, U.S., May 17, 2022. /CFP

New COVID-19 cases are surging again in the U.S., with experts warning they could signal another growing wave of infections.

The country on Wednesday reported over 200,000 new cases, the highest since February, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Federal health officials warned the situation could get even worse over the coming months.

In the last two weeks, new cases increased by 57 percent across the country, according to The New York Times' tracker. New cases rose in almost every state, with Maine being the only state to report a slight decline in the past two weeks.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), noted a steady increase in COVID-19 cases in the past five weeks at a White House briefing with reporters on Wednesday.

Hospitalizations also are rising, up 19 percent in the past week, though they remain much lower than during the Omicron wave, she said.

The pandemic is now two and half years old, and the U.S. has seen five waves of COVID-19, with the later surges driven by mutated versions of the coronavirus.

A fifth wave occurred mainly in December and January, caused by the much more contagious Omicron variant.

Experts are worried the country now is seeing signs of a sixth wave, driven by Omicron subvariants.

A third of U.S. should be considering masks

Despite the recent rising numbers of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in the U.S., local officials have been reluctant to reintroduce mask mandates or any other form of restrictions, with one in three Americans now saying the pandemic is over, U.S. media reported.

Walensky called for masking and other infection precautions.

She said more than 32 percent of the country currently live in an area with medium or high COVID-19 community levels, including more than 9 percent in the highest level, where CDC recommends that masks and other mitigation efforts be used.

For an increasing number of areas, "we urge local leaders to encourage use of prevention strategies like masks in public indoor settings and increasing access to testing and treatment," she said.

Health officials said they are concerned that waning immunity and relaxed mitigation measures across the country may contribute to a continued rise in infections and illnesses across the country. They encouraged people, particularly older adults, to get boosters.

Some health experts say the government should be taking clearer and bolder steps.

The CDC community level guidelines are confusing to the public, and don't give a clear picture of how much virus transmission is occurring in a community, said Dr. Lakshmi Ganapathi, an infectious disease specialist at Harvard University.

When the government officials make recommendations but do not set rules, "it ultimately rests on every single individual picking and choosing the public health that works for them. But that's not what is effective. If you're talking about stemming hospitalizations and even deaths, all of these interventions work better when people do it collectively," she said.

White House's warning on COVID-19 funding

Last week, White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha warned the U.S. will be increasingly vulnerable to the coronavirus this fall and winter if Congress doesn't swiftly approve new funding for more vaccines and treatments.

Jha warned that without additional funding, the virus would cause "unnecessary loss of life" in the fall and winter, when the U.S. runs out of treatments.

He added the U.S. was already falling behind other nations in securing supplies of the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines and the domestic manufacturing base of at-home tests is already drying up as demand drops off.

Jha said domestic test manufacturers have started shuttering lines and laying off workers, and in the coming weeks will begin to sell off equipment and prepare to exit the business of producing tests entirely unless the U.S. government has money to purchase more tests, like the hundreds of millions it has sent out for free to requesting households this year.

That would leave the U.S. reliant on other countries for testing supplies, risking shortages during a surge, Jha warned. About 8.5 million households placed orders for the latest tranche of eight free tests since ordering opened on Monday, Jha added.

(With input from AP)

South Korea's women fear an 'Nth Room' repeat now Yoon Suk-yeol's in charge

MAY 20, 2022

By DAVID D. LEE

SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol pledged during campaigning to abolish the country's gender equality ministry and accused its officials of treating men like 'potential sex criminals'.
Reuters file

Cho Ju-bin made history for all the wrong reasons. In 2020, he became the first suspect ever in South Korea to have his identity revealed before conviction, after 2.7 million people signed a presidential petition demanding to see his face.

The 24-year-old was later jailed for 42 years. His crime? Blackmailing underage girls to perform degrading sexual acts on video that he then uploaded to chat rooms on private-messaging app Telegram, in what became known as the "Nth Room" case.More from AsiaOneRead the condensed version of this story, and other top stories with NewsLite.

Cho's conviction marked a turning point for South Korean activists who have long called for judicial reforms that would prioritise digital sex crimes and ensure the needs of victims were better served. But with the election in March of conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol, some worry about recent progress stalling or being reversed.

Cho Ju-bin is paraded in front of the cameras before his conviction in the infamous 'Nth Room' case. Photo: Reuters

South Korea has faced something of a reckoning over digital sex crimes in recent years. In 2018, as many as 50,000 women took to the streets to demand government action against so-called spycam porn, or molka, after a rash of cases involving intimate photos and videos shot with hidden cameras being circulated online.

The year before, only 119 of the 5,437 people arrested for such crimes were jailed, according to police statistics - a conviction rate of just 2 per cent. This is partly a result of prosecutors dropping cases before they get to trial, with a recent Human Rights Watch report finding that 43.5 per cent of digital sex crimes cases were abandoned in 2019, compared to 27.7 per cent of homicides and 19 per cent of robberies.

"One of the biggest issues with digital sex crimes today is proving a third party is guilty of consuming and distributing illegal content," said Chang Da-hye, a research fellow at the Korean Institute of Criminology and Justice. "Perpetrators know how to tread the fine line very well, and they can make the excuse that they didn't know about the nature of the video when they encountered it online."

Chang wants to see "a wider allowance for what prosecutors can use as digital evidence in these cases" and a crackdown on online abuse that she said "leads to women questioning whether it's reasonable to report such comments or if they are overreacting".

Read Also South Korea sentences leader of sexual blackmail ring to 40 years in prison

The administration of previous President Moon Jae-in did make progress combating the problem. In 2017, it passed the Comprehensive Measures for the Prevention of Digital Sexual Crimes to assist with removing sexually exploitative content from the internet. A year later, every regional police agency in the country had established specialised teams to investigate digital sex crimes.

In the aftermath of the Nth Room case, South Korea's National Assembly passed a law that holds online platforms criminally responsible for failing to prevent illegal content from circulating. Many internet companies have since introduced systems designed by the Korea Communications Standards Commission to filter out such content - though Chang said this had been resisted by "people who say this is excessive monitoring and that this leads to a breach of freedom of expression".

A digital sex-crime task force established by the justice ministry, meanwhile, highlighted the need for an integrated victim support system, emergency measures to immediately remove illegal online content, greater protections for victims of sexual crimes during court proceedings and guidance for the media in reporting on such cases.

But activists say more needs to be done to crack down on offenders.

"Although what exactly constitutes a digital sex crime has been broadened by the courts, we believe that perpetrators of such crimes should receive heftier punishments," said Kim Yeo-jin, director of the Korea Cyber Sexual Violence Response Centre, which was set up in 2017 to help victims of digital sex crimes remove content featuring them from the internet and "fill the void in countermeasures against such crimes".

Kim sees the Nth Room case as something of an outlier. Cho only received such a lengthy prison sentence "because he was the ringleader of a criminal gang", she said. Others, such as Son Jung-woo - who made 400 million won (US$316,000) between 2015 and 2018 by selling and distributing sexually exploitative videos of children to some 1.28 million users in 38 countries through a site on the dark web called Welcome To Video - were shown much more leniency by the courts.

"Son Jung-woo of Welcome to Video only received a year-and-a-half in prison after being convicted under the law protecting children and adolescents from sexual exploitation," Kim said. "We need specific laws for perpetrators who organise systems for sexual exploitation online."

But the likelihood of such laws being passed diminished considerably when Yoon and his right-wing People Power Party took power. The former prosecutor general has dismissed the idea that gender discrimination is systemic in South Korea, blamed the country's low birth rate on feminism and pledged to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family - accusing its officials of treating men like "potential sex criminals".

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, meanwhile, ranks South Korea near the bottom for gender equality among developed countries, with the highest gender pay gap - at 31.5 per cent - of any of its members. South Korea also ranks 123rd out of 156 countries globally for women's economic participation and opportunity, according to rights group Amnesty International.

"We see the next five years as a big obstacle," said the Korea Cyber Sexual Violence Response Centre's Kim. "There's the question of how seriously the administration will take gender discrimination and the more concrete question of what will happen to victim support programmes and initiatives if the gender ministry is in fact abolished.

"Victims of sexual violence that are failed by the legal system will become helpless."

ALSO READ: Watchdog says 'pervasive' digital sex crime affecting life for South Korean women, girls

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.

EXPECT MORE OF THESE

Train carrying potash derails east of Fort Macleod in southern Alberta

A train carrying potash derailed in southern Alberta Sunday morning.


© Global News

A train carrying potash derailed east of Fort Macleod, Alta., Sunday, May 22, 2022.

Fort Macleod RCMP said police and fire crews were called to the derailment east of Fort Macleod at 8:15 a.m. Police said it happened along Highway 3 between Range Road 251 and Range Road 252.

RCMP said the train was heading west when about 43 cars carrying potash derailed.

There are no injuries or concerns to public safety, the RCMP said. CP Rail has also responded to the incident.

"CP personnel have responded to the scene and recovery operations are under way. The cause of the derailment is under investigation," read a statement from CP Rail.

The RCMP said traffic along Highway 3 is being rerouted to allow crews to work. The detour is expected to last several hours, police said just before 11:30 a.m.

Westbound traffic is being diverted onto the shoulder of Highway 3. The public is asked to avoid the area.

Fort Macleod is located about 45 kilometres west of Lethbridge.

Updated highway reports can be found on 511 Alberta.

Long Read

How Vladimir Putin weaponised the environment in Ukraine

The Russian army has burned forests and poisoned water supplies, flouting international law. As the UN draws up new guidelines, is it possible to wage an “eco” war?

By Philippa Nuttall

21 May 2022

Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images

The purple shoots of spring meadow saffron are usually a welcome sign of spring in Ukraine. This year the rare flowers lie crushed, destroyed by Russian tanks.

It might seem absurd to talk about flowers when men, women and children are being murdered and raped. But Russia is also waging an environmental war, and this casual destruction of a protected species is only one symptom. By their very nature, wars will always be environmentally damaging. However, there is a clear distinction between inadvertently harming an ecology, and its deliberate destruction or intentional weaponisation for strategic gain. Observers report that Russia has targeted the environment as part of its campaign of violence in Ukraine. For example, during recent fighting at Chernobyl – the site of one of the world’s worst nuclear disasters, now a protected biosphere – around 15,000 hectares of forest were deliberately burned. Several hundred units of military equipment were destroyed and abandoned, poisoning ecosystems with waste.

Environmental degradation has been ongoing since Moscow invaded the Donbas in 2014. In this heavily industrialised region pollution was already a problem, but one that has been accelerated by war. For instance, when a coal mine ceases to operate, water must be pumped out to prevent flooding and water contamination. Electricity supply cuts caused by the conflict have prevented this in the Donbas, prompting fears that heavy metals are contaminating water supplies and the soil.

Since the more recent Russian invasion that began on 24 February 2022, government officials and NGOs have recorded further actions that endanger Ukraine’s environment and long-term human health: explosions in thermal power plants; the mining of water reservoirs; the occupation of hydro and nuclear power stations; the destruction of gas pipelines and explosions in oil depots.

The argument that protecting the environment during a war is a “luxury”, is misguided, says Carl Bruch of the US Environmental Law Institute. “If there is no access to clean water, lives are cut short. Toxic substances in the water or the soil can cause long-term destabilisation. The destruction may not be as dramatic as the killing of people, but a healthy environment is critically important to long-term peace.” Bruch points to the growing trend of countries waging environmental war by targeting water infrastructure – in Yemen, Pakistan and Ukraine – as particularly disturbing. “Because nobody is being held accountable, this is being perceived as an acceptable tactic.”

Marie Jacobsson, an international law adviser at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, concurs. “Protecting civilians comes first, but if the environment is seriously or irreparably damaged, society can never be rebuilt in a proper way. How can you grow crops in contaminated areas?”

In addition to these attacks on infrastructure, at least 44 per cent of Ukraine’s national parks and nature reserves have suffered damage. The total may be higher, says Oleksiy Vasyliuk of the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group, but measuring the full extent of the devastation is impossible. “Nobody is disseminating information in detail now – it is forbidden because it can help the invaders. Russians are deliberately hunting down national park staff, claiming they are Nazis.” Vasyliuk was forced to flee Vasylkiv, a city 20 miles outside Kyiv, and is now in Lviv in western Ukraine. National park workers attempting to flee occupied territories “risk being abducted or shot as officials or activists,” he says.


One of the most important national parks is Meotyda, which surrounds the besieged city of Mariupol. This corner of the Donbas is a nesting place for many species of birds whose habitats are under threat, including the Dalmatian pelican with its impressive three-metre wingspan and 45cm long bill; and the Pallas, or great black-headed gull, the third biggest gull in the world. As well as damage caused by heavy machinery and tanks, national parks such as Meotyda have seen the construction of trenches and fortifications, explosions and the planting of mines.

Some of Ukraine’s most endangered animals live in the Emerald Network — a pan-European set of protected sites, where the breeding season is now underway. The glorious marbled polecat, with its black and white striped face, and yellow-and-brown spotted back is a rare sight in Europe, and should be safe here; now all of its Ukrainian habitat is a warzone.

The Emerald Network is also home to Ukraine’s wetlands. Protected under the international Ramsar Convention, these habitats are the world’s most threatened ecosystem, disappearing three times faster than forests; they are increasingly threatened by agricultural practices and climate change. Now, they are the scene of active battles. One site – Dzharylhach, a 56 kilometre-square sand bank in the Black Sea near Crimea – is home to deer, wild boar, hares and foxes, as well as endangered grasses. Today, says Vasyliuk, the island “is mined all over with anti-personnel and anti-tank devices”.

The environmental cost of the war can’t be counted until it is over and Ukraine’s battlefields de-mined. Meanwhile NGOs are gathering what information they can, with a view to building a case for future reparations. “I want Russia to pay for all the crimes it has committed since 2014 in Ukraine,” says Yevheniia Zasiadko, the head of climate at the Centre for Environmental Initiatives Ecoaction. She advocates “full reparations for destroyed lives, infrastructure and the environment. The price should be so high that they can no longer attack anybody in the future.”

Holding Russia to account matters when the damage is intentional rather than collateral, argues Vasyliuk. He cites the burning of forests around Chernobyl as one example, and the detonation of an ammonia storage facility, after the Russians failed to capture the city of Sumy in north-eastern Ukraine, as another. This was “comparable to the use of chemical weapons,” Vasyliuk says. “More than 60 oil depots and fuel storage facilities have been blown up near big cities” with the intention to stop Ukranians having access to fuel and to ensure unprecedented levels of air pollution, he states.

Is it possible to wage an “eco war”? The UN believes so, and is currently finalising 28 principles based on existing international law, following ten years of consultation with more than 40 experts. The guidelines are intended to inhibit the ecological destructiveness of war and should be signed off at the UN General Assembly this autumn. They set out how countries should behave before, during and after conflict to reduce their impact on the environment. “Protecting the environment is a core obligation of the modern state,” says Marja Lehto, the rapporteur on the dossier since 2016 and an international law adviser at Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

The draft principles under consideration by the UN International Law Commission insist that a state harming the environment during armed conflict is obliged to pay full reparations. The wording is important as it “recognises pure environmental damage as compensable, without requiring [it] to be caused to persons or the economy,” states Lehto. The principles are also clear that an occupying power, such as Russia in several areas of Ukraine, has an obligation of vigilance, and is responsible for acts that violate international rules, including environmental law, even when committed by individuals or companies that are not part of the occupying forces.

The call to protect nature when fighting wars is as old as the Bible. Deuteronomy 20:19 states that: “When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an axe to them because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees people, that you should besiege them?”

The first steps towards legislation that would protect the environment in times of conflict came in the 1970s. The publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, which publicised the devastating effects of synthetic chemicals on nature, ignited the modern environment movement, leading to a wave of environmental laws in the US, and readied the scene for change. At the same time, the US was fighting a war in Vietnam. For ten years, from 1961 to 1971, its military liberally sprayed forests and crops with the herbicide Agent Orange, at up to 20 times the concentration recommended by manufacturers. The aim was to defoliate trees and shrubs, and to cut off food supplies for opposition forces. But Agent Orange contained dioxin – a highly toxic substance that does not degrade easily. An estimated three million Vietnamese people have had their health affected by Agent Oange; at least 150,000 children were born with serious birth defects.

In response, the UN developed two multilateral treaties, including adding a protocol to the 1949 Geneva Convention. These treaties seek to use international humanitarian law to balance the waging of war with the protection of people and the environment. Further guidelines were drawn up in 1990, after the systematic destruction of Kuwaiti oil wells by retreating Iraqi troops prompted an environmental catastrophe. The first Iraq war was also the one of the first heavily televised conflict, and showed the world the impact of weaponising the environment, with fires burning in the desert for months.

While Russia continues to flout international law, those close to the current UN negotiations insist their guidelines are a sign of progress, bringing environmental protection during war under one umbrella. “Before a war, the military is under an obligation to educate soldiers,” says Sweden’s Marie Jacobsson, who was the rapporteur on the UN guidelines from 2013 to 2016. “This includes [teaching them] how to protect civilian infrastructure, ensure that dams, dykes and nuclear electrical generating stations are not attacked, and that care is taken to protect the natural environment.”

But at the insistence of some countries, including the UK, the UN’s guidelines will remain non-binding. “There are persistent objections from countries such as the US, the UK and France, who don’t recognise some of the environmental provisions of international humanitarian law because they want the freedom to use nuclear weapons,” says Doug Weir of the Conflict and Environment Observatory, a UK-based NGO. “It is difficult to unleash nuclear weapons without causing significant amounts of environmental damage.”

In general though, the issue is being taken more seriously by many countries, he adds. “Wars will always be environmentally damaging, and we are far from reaching the point where states take the actions necessary to minimise harm. But there is growing interest in the environmental dimensions of conflicts, especially in the risks related to climate change.”

Increasing numbers of armies are trying to limit their environmental footprint by, for example, reducing their energy use and the waste produced during conflict. A 2019 report found that the US Department of Defense is the largest consumer of energy in the country, the world’s largest institutional consumer of petroleum, and the world’s largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. The US army took a small step forward in February this year, publishing its first climate strategy: this aims to halve emissions by 2030, electrify non-combat vehicles by 2035, and power missions by renewable energy.

However, while the war in Ukraine could prompt the transition to a global clean energy economy as European countries attempt to wean themselves off Russian fossil fuels, Moscow’s invasion per se is not good news for climate action. Its heightening of geopolitical tensions will inhibit transnational cooperation on issues such as climate change and is being used to justify large boosts to defence expenditure, in Europe and the US, which is bad news for the environment. Military operations, army bases and exercises, and the production of arms are all huge emitters of greenhouse gases. The US special presidential envoy for climate, John Kerry, has warned that a long war would undermine efforts to limit global warming and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Meanwhile Carl Bruch points to conflicts where humans have committed terrible atrocities against one another, while honouring a tacit agreement not to weaponise nature. “In the 1994 genocide during the Rwandan civil war, there was widespread protection of the mountain gorillas,” he says. “One gorilla was killed by a soldier who saw something in the woods, panicked and shot. But apart from that, all sides saw the gorillas as part of the country’s patrimony that should be left in peace.”

The Farc, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, adopted a similar approach, Bruch explains. “It carried out many atrocities, but enforced the protection of the forest with guns. No-one was allowed to cut trees without approval.” While their primary motivation was almost certainly not ecological – protecting forests made it easier for the guerrillas to hide – some Farc commanders also prohibited animal trafficking, overfishing and even placing cocaine labs too close to rivers.

Can Russia be held accountable for the environmental damage it has wrought on Ukraine? Within two months of the end of the Iraq war, the UN Compensation Commission was created to help neighbouring states recover from the losses inflicted, and to repair environmental damage. About 2.7 million claims worth $352.5bn for loss of property, deaths, loss of natural resources, damage to public health and the environment were filed with the Commission. In 2005, $52.4bn worth of compensation was awarded and in February 2022, the UN Security Council announced that Iraq has fulfilled its international obligations to compensate the approximately 1.5 million successful claimants. But while Russia remains a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it is difficult to see how it can be held responsible in the same way: Moscow would simply veto any compensation committee.

But Bruch insists there are options. He points to the work of the International Criminal Court, and to the national criminal prosecutors who investigate war crimes. When it comes to Russia, there is plenty of money that could be released, he adds. “Frozen Russian assets, worth $100bn in the US alone, and those of Russian oligarchs, could provide compensation for environmental and other damages arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

It could even be possible to bring a case against Russia on the grounds of “ecocide,” suggests Heather Allansdottir, a visiting fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambridge. While the term, generally taken to mean widespread or long-term harm to nature, is not – yet – enshrined in international law, instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights assert the right to a clean environment. (Russia, interestingly, has enshrined “ecocide” in its own national law.)

Allansdottir draws a parallel with so-called “urbicide”. Despite the extensive destruction of cities during the Second World War, the concept wasn’t awarded its own convention under international law at the time. But since the Nuremberg trials, cultural and urban destruction — for example after the war in former Yugoslavia — has been prosecuted as part of genocide, or as a crime against humanity. “Ecocide could be evoked if there is ever an international criminal trial of Putin and of others responsible for the acts committed in Ukraine,” says Allansdottir.

She argues that environmental destruction in Ukraine could be the trigger for wider legal change. “Just as the 1948 Convention of Genocide was born out of the Holocaust, a convention on ecocide could potentially be born out of the international legal reckoning of what has taken place in Ukraine. It could be the Nuremberg for Putin – whatever form that will take – that hastens momentum towards enshrining ecocide in international law.”

Amid the continuing devastation, there is the occasional glimmer of hope. The breaching of the Irpin dam at the end of February by Ukranian forces stopped the advance of Russian soldiers and tanks, and flooded 13,000 hectares of land that was previously drained by the Soviets in the 1960s. The area had been earmarked for construction; now there is a chance these wetlands will be restored – though it will be an uphill battle, with polluting tanks and military equipment now lying underwater. Such wounds are not easily healed. As Iryna Stavchuk, Ukraine’s deputy environment minister said last month, “Nature…is also being raped and tortured by the Russian invasion.”

Wonking Out: Is Stagflation Making a Comeback?

Paul Krugman
Saturday, 21 May, 2022 

When I talk to business groups these days, the most commonly asked question is, “Are we headed for stagflation?” I’m pretty sure they find my response unsatisfying, because I tell them it depends on their definition of the term.

If they understand it to mean a period of rising unemployment combined with inflation that’s still too high, the answer is that there’s a very good chance that we’ll suffer from that malady for at least a few months. But if they’re referring to something like the extreme pain we suffered to close out the 1970s, it looks unlikely.

To explain the difference, consider two historical episodes.

First, look at 1979 to ’80, which illustrates what I suspect most people have in mind when they talk about stagflation. At the beginning of 1979 the United States already had 9 percent annual inflation; the surge in oil prices after the Iranian revolution sent inflation well into double digits. The Federal Reserve, under Paul Volcker, responded with drastically tighter monetary policy, leading to a recession and a sharp rise in unemployment.

The recession brought inflation down but not enough, so the Fed tightened the screws further, sending the economy into a double dip (not shown on the chart). This finally did bring inflation down to around 4 percent, considered acceptable at the time, but at immense cost: Unemployment peaked at 10.8 percent in 1982 and didn’t get back down to 1979 levels until 1987.

Now look at the period from 2007 to the fall of 2008, just before the demise of Lehman Brothers. On the surface it looks somewhat similar, with uncomfortably high inflation, brought on by rising oil and other commodity prices, and surging unemployment.

And a fair number of influential people worried about runaway prices more than the recession. According to the transcript of the August 2008 meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy, there were 322 mentions of inflation and only 28 of unemployment.

Yet inflation subsided quickly. And while there was a severe recession — still generally known as the Great Recession — it had nothing to do with squeezing inflation out of the economy and everything to do with the fallout from a severe financial crisis.

What was the difference between these episodes? At the beginning of the 1980s, inflation was deeply entrenched in the economy, in the sense that everyone expected high inflation not just in the near term but also for the foreseeable future; companies were setting prices and negotiating wage deals on the assumption of continued high inflation, creating a self-fulfilling inflationary spiral. It took a huge, sustained uptick in unemployment to break that spiral.

In 2008, by contrast, while people expected high inflation in the near future — probably because they were extrapolating from higher gasoline prices — their medium-to-long-term expectations about inflation remained fairly low.

So there wasn’t any inflationary spiral to break.

Where are we now? As that last chart shows, consumer inflation expectations now look a lot like those of 2008 and nothing at all like those of 1979 to ’80: The public now expects high inflation for the near term but a return to normal inflation after that. Financial markets, where you can extract implied inflation expectations from the spread between yields on bonds that are and aren’t indexed to consumer prices, are telling the same story: inflation today but not so much tomorrow.

In short, inflation doesn’t seem to be entrenched; 2022 isn’t 1980.

Nonetheless, I do expect to see some rise in unemployment. While we don’t seem to be in an inflationary spiral, many indicators suggest that the economy is currently running too hot to be consistent with price stability. Higher wages are good, but they seem to be rising at an unsustainable pace; unlike in 2008, inflation isn’t confined to a few areas, so that even measures that exclude the extremes are running high.

So the Fed has to do what it’s doing, raising interest rates to cool things down, and it’s hard to see how that cooling happens without at least some increase in the unemployment rate. Will the slowdown be sharp enough to be considered a recession? I don’t know, and the truth is nobody does. But it doesn’t really matter. We’re probably headed for a period of weakening labor markets while inflation is still elevated, and many commentators will surely proclaim that we’re experiencing stagflation.

But such proclamations, while technically true, will be misleading. When people hear “stagflation,” most think of the late 1970s and early ’80s — but there’s no evidence that we’re facing anything comparable now.

The New York Times

HRW Says More Arrests in Iran amid Economic Protests

Saturday, 21 May, 2022 - 

Iranians walk in a market as the prices increase in Tehran, Iran May 16, 2022. Picture taken May 16, 2022. (West Asia News Agency via Reuters)

Asharq Al-Awsat

Iranian authorities have arrested several prominent activists on baseless accusations amid labor union strikes and ongoing protests against rising prices, since May 6, 2022, in dozens of small towns, Human Rights Watch said on Friday. Those arrested include a prominent sociologist and four labor rights defenders.

News outlets close to the intelligence apparatus have accused the detained activists of having contact with suspicious foreign actors, without providing any evidence of an alleged wrongdoing. On May 11, the Intelligence Ministry issued a statement saying that it had arrested two European citizens who it said met with teachers’ unions activists and “intended to abuse the demands of unions and other groups in society.”

“The arrests of prominent members of civil society in Iran on baseless accusations of malicious foreign interference is another desperate attempt to silence support for growing popular social movements in the country,” said Tara Sepehri Far, senior Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of looking to civil society for help in understanding and responding to social problems, Iran’s government treats them as an inherent threat.”

According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), an independent human rights monitoring agency, since May 6, in at least 19 cities and towns, people have gathered to protest the news of rising prices for essential goods in the coming months. Parliament members have been reported saying two people were killed during the protests. Unconfirmed sources report higher numbers. Human Rights Watch has not been able to confirm these reports.

On May 9, the authorities arrested labor activists Anisha Assadollahi and Keyvan Mohtadi after raiding their home, HRANA reported. On May 12, the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Bus Company (SWTSBC) reported that intelligence agents had arrested Reza Shahabi, a member of its governing board. HRANA reported that Reyhani Ansari, another labor rights activist, was also arrested on the same day.

Telegram channels close to intelligence services claimed that Shahabi and Assadollahi were arrested on “accusation of cooperating with a foreign team intending to overthrow” the government, without providing evidence for this accusation.

On May 16, Mehr News agency reported that the authorities had arrested an outspoken sociologist, Saeed Madani, who previously spent five years in prison for his peaceful activism, on the accusation of “meeting suspicious foreign actors and conveying their operating guidelines to entities inside the country.” On January 4, the authorities at Imam Khomeini airport in Tehran had prevented Madani from leaving the country to start his fellowship program at Yale University. The authorities have since prevented him from leaving Iran and interrogated him several times.

On May 17, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting Television channel aired a video identifying the two Europeans arrested as Cecile Kohler, 37, and Chuck Paris, 69. Kohler is reportedly an official in a French teachers union.

During the last week of April, the authorities arrested dozens of teachers union activists after the Coordinating Council of the Iranian Teachers Associations called for nationwide protests to demand reforms of the pay scale system on May 1, a day before National Teachers’ Day. Several of those arrested remain in detention, including Mohammad Habibi, the Iranian Teachers Trade Association’s (ITTA) spokesperson, Rasoul Bodaghi, Jafar Ebrahimi, and other prominent members of ITTA.

Over the past four years, there have been widespread protests to make economic demands, and protests and strikes organized by the country’s major unions have been on the rise in Iran in response to declining living standards across the country.

Security forces have responded to these protests with excessive force, including lethal force, and arrested thousands of protesters, using prosecution and imprisonment based on illegitimate charges as the main tool to silence prominent dissidents and human rights defenders. The authorities have shown no willingness to investigate serious human rights violations committed under their control, said HRW.

Since the start of protests on May 6, the authorities have heavily disrupted internet access in multiple provinces, it continued. A number of videos circulated on social media show the presence of security officials and appear to show the use of teargas. Unofficial sources published the names of five people they said were killed during the protests in the Khuzistan, Chaharmahal, and Bakhtiari provinces. Human Rights Watch has not been able to confirm the deaths.

“Iranian authorities have long sought to criminalize solidarity among members of civil society groups inside and outside the country,” Sepehri Far said. “The intention is to prevent accountability and scrutiny of state actions that civil society provides.”

Sri Lanka’s protesters stay in the streets

By Mujib Mashal
May 21, 2022 — 

Colombo: With no end in sight to the national economic crisis that led them to take to the streets, protesters in Sri Lanka are digging in against a president they blame for crashing the economy.

On Thursday, as hundreds of student protesters continued their call for the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, they were met with police tear gas and water cannons. They endured this, and a monsoon downpour that followed, adding loudspeakers to amplify their chants and speeches expressing anger at the government.

University students march on fortified government areas of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

CREDIT:NEW YORK TIMES

“There is no solution but for the president to go,” said Naveendra Liyaanarachachi, 27, one of the demonstrators.

Sri Lanka, an island nation of 22 million people, is facing a dire economic crisis, with depleted foreign exchange reserves driving up the price of basic items.

On Thursday, Sri Lanka’s central bank confirmed that the country, which had been borrowing tens of billions of dollars over the years to feed the needs of a bloated system, had officially defaulted on its foreign debt.

The anger has been growing across the country as families have endured long lines for fuel, extended power cuts, and shortages of food and medicine.

A demonstrator at the “Gota Go” protest village in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

CREDIT:NEW YORK TIMES

For weeks, the agitation had remained largely peaceful, with protesters creating a tent city outside the administrative offices of the president in the capital, Colombo.

They called their protest site the “Gota Go” village — a play on the president’s nickname, Gota, and their main demand of him.

But tensions flared after supporters of the governing Rajapaksa family marched on the camps of the protesters this month, dismantling and burning their tents, which unleashed a wave of anger and violence across the country.

Rajapaksa has promised an investigation into the attack on the protesters, which was instigated by supporters of his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa, who was then the prime minister.

University students demonstrating against the government in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

CREDIT:NEW YORK TIMES

Police have begun arresting and questioning those suspected of instigating the attack, including members of Parliament belonging to the governing party, and those suspected of taking part in the widespread violence and arson that followed.

Protest leaders contend that police have also used the investigation as an excuse to clamp down on those associated with the demonstrators, arresting more than 300 of their supporters.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa has appointed a new prime minister, who is trying to raise funds from friendly countries and ease the economic hardship. But the protesters say that they will stay until their main demand — the president’s resignation — is met.

The protesters at the tent city quickly rebuilt their structures after the attack by the Rajapaksa supporters, putting up new tents in the place of ones burned down.

On any given day, particularly when the temperatures drop in the evenings, families arrive in large numbers to listen to speeches or to join in the chants and music.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Crypto assets are ‘worth nothing,’ says ECB’s Christine Lagarde

ECB president also signals preference for interest-rate hike of 25 basis points in July.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde | 

Pool photo by Ronald Wittek/EPA-EFE

BY JOHANNA TREECK
May 21, 2022 

FRANKFURT — European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde is making no bones about her feelings toward the value of crypto assets — namely, there isn't any.

"I have said all along the crypto assets are highly speculative, very risky assets," Lagarde told Dutch television show College Tour in an interview to be aired on Sunday. "My very humble assessment is that it is worth nothing. It is based on nothing, there is no underlying assets to act as an anchor of safety."

The comments come as the crypto market, more broadly, is taking a beating. Earlier this month, Bitcoin lost 20 percent of its value in a single week.

Lagarde revealed she had never invested in crypto assets, but her son had — with little luck.

A digital euro, however, would be an entirely different ball game, Lagarde explained.

"The day when we have the central bank digital currency, any digital euro, I will guarantee it," she said. "So the central bank will be behind it. I think that is vastly different from any of those things."




Lagarde also addressed monetary policy, signaling again that the ECB is ready to hike interest rates in July to fight raging inflation in the eurozone. However, she appeared to downplay the chance of a 50 basis-point move — a more radical option that Dutch central bank chief Klaas Knot had recently floated. Current market expectations see a 25 basis-point increase.

"We are going to follow the path of stopping net [bond] purchases and then sometime after that — which could be a few weeks — hike interest rates," Lagarde said. ECB bond buys are currently expected to be phased out early in the third quarter, opening the door for a rate hike in July.

A 50 basis-point hike "is not something that I can tell you at this point here today," she added.

Instead, she signaled that she may favor a slower tightening path, cautioning that the ECB doesn't want to put the brakes on a "car that is moving." Its goal is to "lift the accelerator ... to slow inflation."

'Torturous' heat is breaking records and livelihoods in India. It's only going to get worse.

Millions in India and Pakistan have had to toil through the hottest spring on record, in conditions that scientists fear will soon regularly afflict billions across the globe.

A worker drinks water during a break from loading sacks of wheat on a freight train in Khanna, India on Thursday.

Sajjad Hussain / AFP via Getty Images

Link copiedMay 21, 2022, 
By Anisha Kukreja, Patrick Galey and Kaswar Klasra

NEW DELHI, India — Street vendor Rohan Mishra wakes before dawn to buy fresh vegetables from the bazaar and steels himself for another day hauling his cart under the punishing New Delhi sun.

Unable to afford time off during India’s record-shattering heat wave, he endures headaches, dizzy spells and nosebleeds as he desperately tries to hawk his produce before it withers in the basket.


“Money has been difficult recently,” Mishra said. “This [weather] is torturous. I frequently have to throw away vegetables because they become mushy and spoil in the heat. We already buy at a steep price because the hot weather has been affecting the harvest.”

Mishra is one of millions of laborers in India and Pakistan who have had to toil through the hottest spring on record, in conditions that scientists fear will soon regularly afflict billions across the globe and contribute to a looming food crisis.

A man sells watermelons from a canal on a hot summer afternoon in Jammu, India, on Thursday. 

Channi Anand / AP

The U.N.’s climate science panel said in February that more than 430 million people globally were exposed to extreme heat in 2020.

Depending on how quickly the global economy reins in carbon emissions, it warned that between half and two-thirds of humanity would be “exposed to periods of life-threatening climatic conditions arising from coupled impacts of extreme heat and humidity” this century.

It said the burden will be disproportionately felt by the urban poor in regions of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Shouro Dasgupta, an environmental economist at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change in Italy, said heat waves are especially difficult for people who work outdoors in industries such as agriculture and construction.

“India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have a huge number of people working in these sectors, so the underlying inequality in impacts is significant already,” he said.

India — the world’s second-largest wheat producer after China — banned most exports last week after its hottest March on record hit harvests across the north of the country. This caused the price of wheat, already up some 60 percent this year because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to shoot up once again.

In Pakistan, temperatures have been 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) hotter than average for several months, leading to livestock loss and putting the population under even greater water stress.

The city of Jacobabad in Sindh province hit almost 124 degrees Fahrenheit last weekend, with average daily highs of 113 degrees throughout May.

People cool off in a canal during hot weather in Karachi, Pakistan earlier this week.

Sabir Mazhar / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

“Pakistan is among the 10 most affected countries from climate change and the third-most vulnerable to water stress,” said Federal Minister for Climate Change Sherry Rehman.

“The current heat wave has just worsened the situation when it comes to availability of water.”

March was Pakistan’s driest month on record, while April was the hottest since weather data began, according to Sardar Sarfraz, chief meteorological officer in Sindh.

A study published this week by Britain’s national meteorological service said that climate change had made record-breaking heat waves in northwest India and Pakistan more than 100 times more likely, meaning that instead of occurring once every three centuries under natural conditions, they are now likely to take place every three years. The study also found that based on current climate change projections, by the end of the century the region could be experiencing extreme heat waves every year.

Dasgupta said such heat waves have “cascading impacts” around the world, starting with smaller food harvests.

“Climate shocks affect yields, which reduces supply in the global market, and countries, instead of cooperating, begin to keep stores for themselves,” he said.

“This puts upward pressure on prices, which further reduces the purchasing power of people and results in increased food insecurity.”

As recently as last month, India said it hoped to make up for some of the shortfall in global wheat supplies from Russia and Ukraine, two of the world’s biggest producers, before lower yields prompted it to announce the export ban.

But Dasgupta said that even before the war in Ukraine and the pandemic, “new climate stressors have been exerting huge pressure on the global food chain.”

“Whether it’s in Madagascar or India, or multiple African countries, we’ve seen this for a while — it’s a dual shock of heat waves and droughts,” he said.

A Pakistani volunteer sprays water on people to keep them cool during hot weather in Karachi earlier this week.

Sabir Mazhar / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The health and economic impacts of heat waves stretch far beyond food supply. Soaring temperatures in India have been accompanied by a surge in demand for electricity, leading to acute power outages and raising questions about the country’s dependence on coal.

Nidhi Singh, a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine in Germany who has studied the health impacts of heat waves in India, said a mixture of poverty and inadequate infrastructure made for the perfect storm when temperatures soared.

Most lower-income families lack access to refrigeration, cold water or air-conditioning — a potentially deadly situation, especially when extreme heat combines with high humidity to create “wet bulb” temperature spikes. High wet-bulb temperatures can hamper the human body’s ability to cool itself through perspiration, meaning just a few hours’ exposure can kill even healthy individuals.

Singh said that even during low-humidity hot spells, older people with underlying health conditions such as lung or heart issues are particularly vulnerable. There is also greater risk of contracting illnesses such as diarrhea, which kills more than half a million children under 5 each year.

“When you don’t have refrigeration, you eat spoiled foods and you can get sick,” Singh said.

Dasgupta said that farmers in the region were increasingly contracting kidney disease as they are unable to find enough water to drink throughout the day when temperatures soar. Female workers are disproportionately affected, since many farms don’t provide toilet facilities.

“And we will continue to see these impacts as we see more and more heat wave events such as those in India and Pakistan right now,” he said.

Anisha Kukreja reported from New Delhi, Patrick Galey reported from Paris and Kaswar Klasra reported from Islamabad.

bneGREEN: More proof that climate change threatens lives and causes economic damage

Global annual mean temperature difference from pre-industrial conditions (1850-1900) for six global temperature data sets (1850-2021). / Met Office, United Kingdom of Great Britain, WMO

By Richard Lockhart in Edinburgh 

May 20, 2022

Human activity has caused irrevocable damage to the climate, causing hundreds of billions of dollars of economic damage and threatening water and food supplies to millions of people.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned this week that four key climate change indicators – greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification – all set new records in 2021.

The WMO said this was yet another clear sign that human activities were causing planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean and in the atmosphere. This has harmful and long-lasting ramifications for sustainable development and ecosystems.

The most obvious sign of these changes is extreme weather, and the WMO’s State of the Global Climate in 2021 report, published together with the World Economic Forum, showed that the past seven years have been the warmest seven years on record. The average global temperature in 2021 was about 1.11 (± 0.13) °C above the pre-industrial level.

“It is just a matter of time before we see another warmest year on record,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“Our climate is changing before our eyes. The heat trapped by human-induced greenhouse gases will warm the planet for many generations to come. Sea level rise, ocean heat and acidification will continue for hundreds of years unless means to remove carbon from the atmosphere are invented. Some glaciers have reached the point of no return and this will have long-term repercussions in a world in which more than 2bn people already experience water stress.”

“Extreme weather has the most immediate impact on our daily lives. Years of investment in disaster preparedness means that we are better at saving lives, though economic losses are soaring. But much more needs to be done, as we are seeing with the drought emergency unfolding in the Horn of Africa, the recent deadly flooding in South Africa and the extreme heat in India and Pakistan,” he said.

Key changes

The report matters because it will be used at COP27 in Egypt in November to help set future climate policy.

It found that greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations reached a new global high in 2020, when the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) reached 413.2 parts per million (ppm) globally, or 149% of the pre-industrial level. Data from specific locations indicate that they continued to increase in 2021 and early 2022, with monthly average CO2 at Mona Loa in Hawaii reaching 416.45 ppm in April 2020, 419.05 ppm in April 2021 and 420.23 ppm in April 2022.

The global annual mean temperature in 2021 was around 1.11 ±0.13 °C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, less warm than some recent years owing to cooling La Niña conditions at the start and end of the year. The most recent seven years, 2015 to 2021, are the seven warmest years on record.

At sea, the upper 2,000m depth of the ocean continued to warm in 2021 and it is expected that it will carry on doing so in the future – a change which is irreversible on centennial to millennial time scales.

“Dismal litany”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said the report demonstrated “the dismal litany of humanity’s failure to tackle climate disruption.”

He called for urgent action to grab the “low-hanging fruit” of transforming energy systems away from the “dead end” of fossil fuels.

He called for actions to jump-start the renewable energy transition. They include: greater access to renewable energy technology and supplies; a tripling of private and public investments in renewables; and an end to subsidies on fossil fuels, which amount to roughly $11mn per minute.

“Renewables are the only path to real energy security, stable power prices and sustainable employment opportunities. If we act together, the renewable energy transformation can be the peace project of the 21st century,” said Guterres.

The world must act in this decade to prevent ever worsening climate impacts and to keep the overall temperature increase to below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, he said.

Oceans

Meanwhile, the oceans also saw higher levels of acidification. The ocean absorbs around 23% of the annual emissions of anthropogenic CO2 to the atmosphere. This reacts with seawater and leads to ocean acidification, which threatens organisms and ecosystem services, and hence food security, tourism and coastal protection. As the pH of the ocean decreases, its capacity to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere also declines. The IPCC concluded that “there is very high confidence that open ocean surface pH is now the lowest it has been for at least 26,000 years and current rates of pH change are unprecedented since at least that time.”

Global mean sea level also reached a new record high in 2021, after increasing at an average 4.5 mm per year over the period 2013-2021. This is more than double the rate of between 1993 and 2002 and is mainly due to the accelerated loss of ice mass from the ice sheets. This has major implications for hundreds of millions of coastal dwellers and increases vulnerability to tropical cyclones.

The world’s glaciers are also melting. Although the glaciological year 2020-2021 saw less melting than in recent years, there is a clear trend towards an acceleration of mass loss on multi-decadal timescales. On average, the world’s reference glaciers have thinned by 33.5 metres (ice-equivalent) since 1950, with 76% of this thinning since 1980. 2021 was a particularly punishing year for glaciers in Canada and the US Northwest, with record ice mass loss as a result of heatwaves and fires in June and July.

Greenland experienced an exceptional mid-August melt event and the first-ever recorded rainfall at Summit Station, the highest point on the ice sheet at an altitude of 3,216 m. 

Temperatures

Exceptional heatwaves broke records across western North America and the Mediterranean. Death Valley, California reached 54.4 °C on 9 July, equalling a similar 2020 value as the highest recorded in the world since at least the 1930s, and Syracuse in Sicily reached 48.8 °C.

Drought affected many parts of the world, including the Horn of Africa, Canada, the western United States, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkey. In sub-tropical South America, drought caused big agricultural losses and disrupted energy production and river transport.

The drought in the Horn of Africa has intensified so far in 2022. Eastern Africa is facing the very real prospect that the rains will fail for a fourth consecutive season, causing Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia to suffer a drought of a length not experienced in the last 40 years. Humanitarian agencies are warning of devastating impacts on people and livelihoods in the region.

Food security and population displacement

The compounded effects of conflict, extreme weather events and economic shocks, further exacerbated by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, undermined decades of progress towards improving food security globally. 

Worsening humanitarian crises in 2021 have also led to a growing number of countries at risk of famine. Of the total number of undernourished people in 2020, more than half live in Asia (418mn) and a third in Africa (282mn).

Forced migration, or internal displacement, of people is also a threat, caused by what the report called hydrometeorological hazards.

The countries with the highest numbers of displacements recorded as of October 2021 were China (more than 1.4mn), the Philippines (more than,386 000) and Vietnam (more than 664,000). 

Finally, ecosystems, including terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems – and the services they provide – are affected by the changing climate and some are more vulnerable than others.

Some ecosystems are degrading at an unprecedented rate. For example, mountain ecosystems – the water towers of the world – are profoundly affected. Rising temperatures heighten the risk of irreversible loss of marine and coastal ecosystems, including seagrass meadows and kelp forest.

Coral reefs are especially vulnerable to climate change. They are projected to lose between 70% and 90% of their former coverage area at 1.5 °C of warming and over 99% at 2 °C. Between 20% and 90% of current coastal wetlands are at risk of being lost by the end of this century, depending on how fast sea levels rise. This will further compromise food provision, tourism and coastal protection, among other ecosystem services.

“The State of the Global Climate report emphasises the need for speed, scale and systemic action to mitigate the environmental risks presented in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks report," said World Economic Forum Managing Board Member Gim Huay Neo.

"As shown by the recent IPCC report, we already have the means and the know-how to cut emissions and limit global warming. We need to focus our efforts on bold policies and solutions that can quickly transform the way we produce and consume resources. People and partnerships have to be at the heart of our approach, whether it is to create new jobs, provide more access and affordability for everyone and to build a cleaner and greener living environment.”