France discriminated against hijab-wearing vocational trainee -U.N. document

Juliette Jabkhiro
Wed, August 3, 2022 

A woman wearing a hijab walks at Trocadero square near the Eiffel Tower in Paris
By Juliette Jabkhiro

PARIS (Reuters) - A United Nations committee ruled that France discriminated against a Muslim woman who was prevented from attending vocational training in a public school while wearing her Islamic head scarf, according to a U.N. document.

In 2010, Naima Mezhoud, now aged 45, was due to train as a management assistant at a course held in a state high school, where teenagers are prohibited by law from wearing the hijab. When she arrived, the head teacher of the school in the northern outskirts of Paris barred her from entering, according to the document which was seen by Reuters.

Six years earlier, in 2004, France had banned the wearing of hijabs and other visible religious symbols in state schools by school children. Mezhoud argued that as a higher-education student, she should not have been targetted by the law.

"The committee concludes that the refusal to allow (Mezhoud) to participate in the training while wearing her headscarf constitutes a gender and religious-based act of discrimination," the U.N Human Rights Committee determined, according to the document.

A U.N. source confirmed the authenticity of the document.

The interior ministry and foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The possible ramifications of the U.N.'s ruling were not immediately clear. Freedom law expert Nicolas Hervieu of the Paris Institute of Political Studies said that according to legal precedent, it was unlikely that France would comply with the committee's decision.

France is home to one of Europe’s largest Muslim minorities. For years, the country has implemented laws designed to protect its strict form of secularism, known as “laicité,” which President Emmanuel Macron has said is under threat from Islamism.

Some Muslim associations and human-rights groups allege those laws have targeted Muslims and chipped away at democratic protections and left them vulnerable to abuse.

Mezhoud approached the U.N. Human Rights Committee after she lost a series of appeals in French courts.

The committee said France had breached articles 18 and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on religious freedom.

Mezhoud's lawyer, Sefen Guez Guez, told Reuters the decision showed that international human-rights institutions were critical of France's policies regarding Islam.

"French institutions will have to comply with the U.N. decision," he added.

In theory, following the U.N. committee's ruling, France now has six months to financially compensate Mezhoud and offer the opportunity to take the vocational course if she still wishes. The country also must take steps to ensure similar violations of international law will not happen again.

(Reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro in Paris; Editing by Richard Lough and Matthew Lewis)

50-year international partnership on Great Lakes makes progress, but challenges lie ahead

Wed, August 3, 2022 

Lake Erie's shoreline in Leamington, Ont. is shown in this file photo. According to the State of the Great Lakes 2022 report,

It's been 50 years since Canada and the U.S. signed the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, meant to restore and protect the Great Lakes, and a new report is showing what's changed over that time and what challenges are ahead.

According the the annual report, the Great Lakes overall assessment is "fair" with an "unchanging" trend, which is due to the "tremendous progress to restore and protect the Great Lakes" over the last few decades. The evaluation is based on a set of indicators officials watch.

"If we look back 50 years, there have been some substantial improvements in the health of the Great Lakes. But that doesn't mean we're done in any way," said John Hartig, a visiting scholar at the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research at the University of Windsor.

Hartig says there continues to be challenges.

"We know in western Lake Erie we still have algae blooms, harmful algae blooms, and we have them in Saginaw Bay and Green Bay as well. We still have, particularly on the U.S. side, the legacy of the industrial revolution in contaminated sediments. We still have a loss and degradation of habitats like important ones, like wetlands," he said.

"And of course, we are now facing climate change."

State of the Great Lakes 2022 report

Both countries along with several organizations are behind the annual report, using about 40 indicators to calculate the overall assessment. Each Lake had a "good" (most or all ecosystem components are in acceptable condition) or "fair (some ecosystem components are in acceptable condition) standing. Except Lake Erie, which was described as being in a "poor" standing, meaning "very few or no ecosystem components are in acceptable condition," mainly due to algae blooms and elevated nutrient concentrations.

"I think obviously Lake Erie has a significant population density around it and it has significant agricultural land around it. It has had significant industrial development, it's part of the industrial heartland. So I think if you look back at 50 years ago where this started, people spoke out," explained Hartig.

He says that due to advocates, activists and engaged politicians — through Earth Day, the Canada Water Act, and the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement — people started caring about the quality of the water in Lake Erie which led to change.

But Hartig worries people will get complacent, especially in the face of climate change.

"We still have things to do, and now we have climate change, which is a threat multiplier," he said. "That means it's going to make it harder to solve the algal bloom problems. It's going to be harder to solve some of the contaminates remediation problems and the agricultural non-point source runoff problems that we have."

The good news of addressing these issues now though, said Hartig, is that it will save taxpayers and government money in the long run.

"We need to think about it as an investment that will reap benefits for us, and we need to think about it as a gift to future generations as well," he said.

NOVA SCOTIA
Goldboro Gold project approved with conditions in Guysborough County

Tue, August 2, 2022 

Signal Gold, previously known as Anaconda Mining, has been approved to develop a gold mine in Goldboro, N.S. But it has to follow a number of conditions from the province.

(Zach Goudie/CBC - image credit)

Nova Scotia's minister of Environment and Climate Change has approved the Goldboro Gold project in Guysborough County, but with conditions.

"I am satisfied that any adverse effects or significant environmental effects of the undertaking can be adequately mitigated through compliance with the attached terms and conditions as well as through compliance to the other licences, certificates, permits and approvals that will be required for operation," Tim Halman wrote in his decision to Signal Gold president Kevin Bullock.

Signal Gold wants to develop the mine. The project includes two open pits, a processing facility, a tailings management facility, waste rock storage areas, as well as water management infrastructure such as collection ditches, culverts, settling ponds and water treatment systems.

Among the list of conditions is for Signal Gold to develop a wildlife management plan with Nova Scotia's Department of Nautral Resources and Renewables as well as Environment and Climate Change, developing and implementing a complaint resolution plan for receiving and responding to complaints related to the project, and have a Mi'kmaw communication plan.

The company also plans to bring in trailers to house employees, with 350 beds expected during the construction phase and 175 beds during the operations phase.

The project will create 735 new direct and spinoff jobs a year in the province for 15 years, the company said in June after it submitted for environmental approval. It expects the project to generate $528 million in income and mining taxes at the federal, provincial and municipal level from direct and spinoff economic activity.

The company anticipates construction will begin in late 2023, with the mine being commissioned in 2025 and operations continuing until 2035. The closure process would begin in 2036.

Signal Gold, previously known as Anaconda Mining, had sought environmental approval for a gold mine development at the site in August 2018.

But the environment minister at the time said the company's submission didn't contain enough information.

Race relations foundation urges more help for victims as hate crimes rise further

Tue, August 2, 2022 


OTTAWA — The head of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation is calling for action to combat hate and more federal help for victims, as new statistics show that hate crimes in Canada rose by 27 per cent last year.

Executive director Mohammed Hashim warned that unless action is taken to combat hate-motivated abuse, including online, it will continue to spread.

He said the "slew of hate" online is so prevalent it risks becoming normalized and those affected are changing their behaviour to deal with it, including by not reading social media comments.

"It is a firehose of hate that is growing honestly like a wildfire," he said. "And unmitigated it will grow even further to a point where we will normalize being in a wildfire.

"That is because we have left this environment unchecked."

Statistics Canada reported a further dramatic increase in hate crimes in 2021. The number of hate-motivated crimes recorded by the police has gone up 72 per cent since 2019, according to the agency.

Last year, the number of hate-motivated crimes reported to the police rose to 3,360 incidents from 2,646 in 2020. This followed a 36 per cent rise in 2020.

A report by the foundation, published Tuesday, calls for greater federal help for victims of hate, many of whom do not qualify for financial compensation because their abuse does not count as a crime.

Hashim warned that "not supporting victims and leaving hate to proliferate freely disintegrates Canadian multiculturalism as a whole and a sense of collective belonging to this nation."

Hate-motivated crimes targeting a person's religious affiliation were up 67 per cent last year, according to Statistics Canada. Crimes based on a victim's sexual orientation were up 64 per cent year over year. Another 1,723 recorded incidents targeted a person's race or ethnicity, a six per cent increase, and together these categories made up the majority of the overall rise.

Marvin Rotrand of B'nai Brith Canada said Jews were the No. 1 target of hate crimes aimed at religious minorities.

"All Canadians should be worried about the alarming explosion of hate crimes witnessed in 2021," Rotrand said. "Our community comprises 1.25 per cent of the Canadian population but were the victims of 56 per cent of hate crimes aimed at religious minorities. That is more than all other religious groups combined."

All provinces and territories reported increases in the number of hate crimes in 2021, except for Yukon, where the numbers remained the same.

Hashim, who regularly tours the country speaking to victims of hate as well as community groups and police forces, said more focus must be put on victims. He said young women are facing huge amounts of abuse online, particularly young Black women.

"Right now we talk a lot about hate crime statistics, how police are dealing with it or not dealing with it, being reported or not being reported," he said. "What we are constantly missing is what is the effect on victims."

The Department of Canadian Heritage is working on drafting an online hate bill to set up a framework to combat abuse online.

A previous anti-hate bill, introduced at the tail end of the last Parliament, died when the election was called.

Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez appointed an expert panel to make suggestions for a future bill, including faster takedown obligations on platforms, in particular over child pornography.

During a consultation by the federal government last year, some minority groups raised concerns about directly involving the police to combat hate speech online.

Hashim warned against "digital carding" and a mass trawl of content online. He acknowledged there is concern about whether police should be able to access all takedown materials for investigative purposes.

"I don’t think that is the proper way of doing online safety. There needs to be checks and balances between how much information is accessible to the police. That is why we have warrants," he said.

"Just creating open access for all police, for all takedown data, for all social media platforms is overkill in my opinion."

The report commissioned by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, and written by PricewaterhouseCoopers, said 80 per cent of hate crimes go unreported each year.

The report recommends Canada mirror Germany's model for supporting victims of hate with millions of dollars of funding for community groups, which people who encounter hate "instinctively" reach out to, as well as a further victims fund.

It says the government's current compensation schemes exclude many victims of hate because few hate-motivated acts are designated as criminal.

The report also suggests the government establish an emergency response fund for communities hit by hate attacks on a large scale, as well as a central national support hub for victims.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 2, 2022.

Marie Woolf, The Canadian Press

Crossing the US-Mexico border is deadlier than ever for migrants – here's why


Joseph Nevins, Professor of Geography, Vassar College

THE CONVERSATION
Thu, August 4, 2022 

A makeshift memorial where a tractor-trailer was discovered with 53 dead migrants inside, near San Antonio, Texas, June 29, 2022.

Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

The June 2022 deaths of 53 people, victims of heat stroke, in the back of a tractor-trailer in San Antonio, Texas, show the dangers of crossing the U.S. southern border without authorization.

All of the dead came from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras – the three most common origin countries of migrants encountered by the Border Patrol in 2021 and so far in 2022.

Such fatalities result from two intersecting phenomena. One is the massive growth in the federal government’s policing system in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands since the mid-1990s. The other is the strong and profoundly unequal ties between the United States and the home countries of most unauthorized – or undocumented – migrants.

‘Prevention Through Deterrence’

Since 1994, when I began to research the roots and impacts of U.S. border and immigration enforcement, U.S.-Mexico border policing has radically changed. Beginning during Bill Clinton’s presidency, this transformation has involved infusing massive amounts of resources – in the form of personnel, technology and infrastructure – into a multifaceted system of border control.

The number of Border Patrol agents has grown from roughly 4,200 in 1994 to more than 20,000 today. Typically, 80% to 90% of them are stationed in the U.S. Southwest. Spending has increased as well. In 1994, the Border Patrol’s budget was US$400 million. In 2021, it was $4.9 billion – an approximately 700% increase in inflation-adjusted dollars in less than 30 years.

Complementing the growth is a federal border policing strategy called Prevention Through Deterrence. Introduced in 1994, the strategy concentrates policing personnel, surveillance technology and infrastructure in and around border cities and towns. Its goal is to push unauthorized migrants into remote areas characterized by harsh and dangerous terrain, forcing people to abandon their efforts to reach the United States.

As Doris Meissner, Clinton’s head of Immigration and Naturalization Service, later reflected, “We did believe that geography would be an ally to us.”

U.S. officials anticipated that unauthorized border crossings “would go down to a trickle once people realized what it’s like.” Instead, the deterrence policy has compelled migrants to take ever greater risks, resulting in more deaths.
Rising death toll

Traversing the southern borderlands has long proved deadly for migrants.

In the late 1800s, for example, unauthorized Chinese immigrants died in the deserts of the borderlands as they tried to avoid policing associated with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, a law that barred most immigrants from China. And in the 1980s and 1990s, many people, mostly Mexican nationals – sometimes numbering in the hundreds – died annually trying to enter the United States without authorization.

With Prevention Through Deterrence, however, deaths grew markedly.

According to U.S. Border Patrol statistics, there were an average of 359 fatalities annually from fiscal years 1998 to 2021 in the Southwest borderlands. This represents about one death per day over 24 years. Fiscal year 2021 saw 557 fatalities, the highest death toll on record.

Since these deaths occur among a clandestine population, no one knows what percentage of total migrant trips end in tragedy.

But research on the location of human remains does demonstrate that high-tech surveillance towers have pushed migrants to more remote, and more lethal, travel routes beyond the zones of detection.

Crosses mark where remains were found of migrants who died trying to cross into the U.S. through the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, Jan. 24, 2021. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

Another dangerous method of unauthorized entry, as seen in San Antonio, involves cramming people into poorly ventilated spaces like the back of a truck. The hope is to transport them across the border and into the U.S. interior undetected by authorities.

The official death tolls cited above are likely severe undercounts. They are based on bodies or human remains that are retrieved. But many corpses are never recovered because of the region’s arduous terrain and enormous size: The U.S.-Mexico boundary is about 2,000 miles long. A combination of bodily decomposition and the scattering of remains by animals further exacerbates the undercounting problem.

The Border Patrol has also failed to include thousands of fatalities in its official counts. According to an April 2022 U.S. Government Accountability Office report, Customs and Border Protection “has not collected and recorded, or reported to Congress, complete data on migrant deaths or disclosed limitations with the data it has reported.”

In the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, for example, there were more than twice as many deaths as the agency reported from fiscal year 2015 to 2019, according to the report.
The Mexico-US connection

In 1999, anthropologist Josiah Heyman made a provocative suggestion: “The United States and Mexico are really one unified, if highly unequal, society,” he wrote, “drawn together rather than separated by the border.”

Back then, Mexico was the United States’ second-most important trading partner. It was also the source of 98% of people apprehended by the Border Patrol in the U.S. Southwest. The free movement of people, unlike commercial goods, was not included in NAFTA, the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.

Today, one could easily make an observation similar to Heyman’s about Guatemala and Honduras in relation to the United States. Both maintain deep and broad social, political and economic ties with the United States. But those ties are profoundly unequal. The United States also has a history of intervention in Central America that, research shows, directly contributes to the instability and insecurity that set the stage for today’s migration.

In the aftermath of the deaths in San Antonio, U.S. authorities blamed smugglers for the fatalities. President Biden, for instance, said that the deaths “underscore the need to go after the multibillion-dollar criminal smuggling industry preying on migrants.”

Such responses are typical from Washington following such tragedies. But this framing obscures that migrants’ heavy reliance on smugglers is a direct result of the dramatic growth in the federal government’s Southwest border policing system and the associated deterrence strategy. In its official 1994 document outlining the Prevention Through Deterrence strategy, the Border Patrol even included among its “indicators of success” higher fees charged by smugglers and increasingly sophisticated smuggling methods.

In other words, U.S. authorities anticipated growth in the very industry they now decry. Consequently, deaths remain a way of life in the borderlands.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Joseph Nevins, Vassar College.

Read more:


Which 3-letter agency is enforcing US immigration laws at the border?


A night enforcing immigration laws on the US-Mexico border

Joseph Nevins is a member of the editorial committee of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA).

How a Catholic Kansas doctor suddenly became a fierce, vocal abortion rights advocate

Lisa Gutierrez
Thu, August 4, 2022 

That Friday in June when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade threw Dr. Sabrina Markese into an emotional tailspin.

She was supposed to go to dinner with her mom and stepfather the next day. But the idea of breaking bread with staunch Catholics who oppose abortion was a bridge too far. She canceled and spent the day in bed.

Most physicians never speak publicly about abortion outside of putting their name on a list of supporters — both for and against.

Markese never thought she’d have to make her private, pro-choice stance known because, well, Roe v. Wade was there.

But now it wasn’t.

So after a day of crying in bed, after nearly 30 years as a family physician in Kansas, a career that began in Wyandotte County, Markese decided it was time to speak her mind publicly, to join the effort to reject an amendment to the state constitution that would have removed the right to abortion.

“I’ve never really been so outspoken as I am now,” said Markese, who lives in Olathe.

Markese thought Tuesday’s vote would be very close. But she was very wrong. Kansans resoundingly, many say shockingly, made it loud and clear that a woman should have the right to choose. The overwhelming voter turnout and lopsided, 59% share of the votes was thanks, in part, to newly minted activists like Markese.

For Markese, the election wasn’t about abortion. It was about her passionate belief in human rights. That patients should be able to make decisions about their own health care. That they should be able to do that in private.

“I have to support the woman’s right to her bodily autonomy,” Markese told The Star. “This is not so much about abortion as it is about health care. This is about health care and privacy way more than it is about abortion.”

So, in the language of sports, Markese left it all on the field in this fight.

She schooled herself on the amendment proposal, engaged in Facebook conversations — many heated ones with Catholic family members — placed Vote No signs again and again in high-traffic spots in Johnson County, and, in oppressive heat at the Wyandotte County Fair, handed out signs and stickers.

She tweeted. She marched at rallies in Wichita and Topeka with hundreds of other people, stood with them on the steps of the state Capitol in Topeka in solidarity.

She also publicly revealed a secret that only her mother knew, personal history that bolstered her belief that patients should have the right to decide what happens to their body without intervention from politicians, or a church.

Dr. Sabrina Markese of Olathe walked in “vote no” rallies in Topeka and Wichita, shown here, as she let her pro-choice stance on abortion be known publicly for the first time.

A ‘pro-choice’ Catholic

Markese was born and raised in Kansas City and went to medical school in the Midwest. She grew up in a devout Catholic home. Mass every Sunday. Rosaries. Crucifixes. Believing in the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

As a “poor medical student” in Kansas City she couldn’t afford to tithe, so she volunteered as a lector at Redemptorist Catholic Church, reading Scripture at Masses.

Nationally, 76% of U.S. Catholics say abortion should be legal in certain cases, according to a Pew Research Center survey released in May.

Just 1 in 10 said abortion should be illegal always, no exceptions. About the same number, 13%, said abortion should be legal in all cases, no exceptions.

The Catholic church sank a lot of money and hours into the Kansas amendment campaign — about $3 million came from the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas alone.

Markese can’t quite remember when she became “pro-choice” — the Catholic church condemns abortion — but that internal conflict between faith and science has long been there. This former “cafeteria Catholic” today describes herself as a “very spiritual person.”

That hot day in July at the county fair, where little kids wrestled sheep and Cheap Trick and Steve Miller tribute bands played, there were three Vote Yes booths and one Vote No booth, Markese recalled.

Markese worried about patients who would have to travel out of state to have an abortion if, ultimately, the “Vote Yes” forces won, paving the way for the state Legislature to ban the procedure. She worried about those who might use unsafe methods to terminate their pregnancies.

“Banning abortion? You cannot ever ban abortion. You’re just banning safe abortion,” she said.

She herself had considered leaving the state if, somehow, a total ban should come to pass.

Dr. Sabrina Markese of Olathe, a family physician, took a public stance on the Kansas abortion amendment vote, campaigning actively for the “vote no” side which won resoundingly on Tuesday.

It’s about bodily autonomy

As a family medicine practitioner, Markese does not provide abortion care. But she will support patients who decide to terminate a pregnancy and help them find that care.

“I feel like it’s my job to have an open mind for patients. … It’s not my job to tell a patient what to do,” Markese said.

“I also support that woman who, if she finds out at week 26 that she has a fetus that could be nonviable at birth but she wants to keep it and progress with her pregnancy, that’s her choice. I see that as a choice as well, and bless her for that.

“I don’t want to live in a world where that choice wasn’t offered either. And I can’t understand why people don’t see that that’s a choice.

“I feel like the whole gamut should be it’s about bodily autonomy. We shouldn’t be telling the woman what to do. We should be supporting them in their choice.”

Deciding to terminate a pregnancy, she said, is “emotionally taxing. Women don’t wake up one day and say, ‘Oh, I think I’ll have an abortion today.’ It doesn’t happen that way.”

But it does sometimes happen this way:

“People will come in not knowing they are pregnant. They are having abdominal symptoms and … that’s kind of a slam dunk, you have to check for pregnancy,” she said. “Sometimes people are surprised by the fact that they have these other symptoms and it’s never crossed their mind that pregnancy might be the cause.

“And when you tell them they’re pregnant, they’ve already made up in their mind that’s not something they would want to deal with. So it’s not up to the doctor, it’s not my role to decide for them. My role in that is to tell them, we would start them on prenatal vitamins or would help them to find a place to do termination. And that’s their choice, 100%.”

Dr. Sabrina Markese walked in rallies in Wichita and Topeka in July. She took this photo at the Wichita rally, where she joined hundreds of “vote no” supporters.

‘Thank you, Kansas’

“They kept taking my signs down,” Markese said of the “Vote No” signs she posted on entrance and exit ramps off Kansas 10 highway in Johnson and Douglas counties.

So there she was, a couple of times in the rain, keeping an eye on passing cars and climbing a hill in a dress and sandals to replace the signs. She figured the signs would be harder to steal if they were up high.

A few people driving past honked in support.

One person yelled at her: “Baby killer!”

Things didn’t get that nasty on Facebook, where she got into arguments with cousins and close friends who disagreed with her stance. “It definitely has taken a toll on my family,” she said.

She had posted facts about how many people who have abortions are victims of rape and incest, and some of her cousins “were getting in my face about it,” saying pregnancies caused by rape and incest happen infrequently and aren’t “that big a deal,” she said.

That hit a nerve.

So she wrote on Facebook that she was sexually assaulted as a teenager. The attack did not result in a pregnancy.

“I was never planning on telling people,” she said. “My mom knew. So my mom wasn’t surprised when I came out with it on Facebook, but no one else in my family knew.

“But that’s why I’ve been in tears. That’s why this has meant so much to me. It’s why I stayed in bed on June 25. It’s why I’ve been fighting so hard.

“And I remember how frightened I was. What if? And I don’t know what my decision would have been. I just know it’s not up to anybody else to make that decision for me. Nobody’s business.

“And to take that right, to take autonomy away from someone, to force me to have been attached to that person for the next 18 to 20 years is barbaric.”

Before Election Day, Markese told The Star that regardless of how the vote turned out, “I’ll be able to lay my head on my pillow and know I did everything in my power, climbing hills in the rain and screaming at the top of my lungs. … Every possible thing I could do, I’ve done it.”

On Wednesday morning, Markese said: “I can finally rest. Thank you, Kansas.”

Hong Kong’s iconic Jumbo Floating 

Restaurant is now upside down and

trapped on a reef

Jane Nam

Thu, August 4, 2022 

Hong Kong’s Jumbo Floating Restaurant, which closed its doors in 2020 but made headlines when it began to sink earlier this year, is now allegedly trapped upside down on a reef.

A Hainan Maritime Safety Administration duty officer said on Wednesday that the iconic boat was still near the Paracel Islands, also known as the Xisha Islands in China.

“We are still looking into the incident. The vessel capsized and keeled over, and was trapped on a reef off Sansha [in Hainan]. As far as I know, this is the latest situation,” he reported. “We cannot say for sure how much longer the investigation will take. It is being conducted in accordance with the relevant laws.”

The Jumbo Floating Restaurant first capsized in June due to rough seas while en route to Cambodia after closing its doors in 2020.

More from NextShark: Vietnamese Government Helps Fight Coronavirus by Delivering Free Food, Supplies for Citizens in Quarantine

The vessel’s owner, Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises, shared that the COVID-19 pandemic had devastated tourism in the area, leading to an accumulated loss of $12.75 million which forced the restaurant’s doors to close.

The duty officer also noted, “Presently there is no threat to the safety of navigation in the area,” while declining to discuss the state of the Jumbo.

After opening in 1976, the restaurant had become an iconic landmark in the area, attracting tourists to its doors for nearly 45 years while offering banquet-style fine Cantonese cuisine.

More from NextShark: Worker rights attorney Julie Su confirmed as second-in-command at US Department of Labor

It is unclear whether authorities plan on recovering the vessel.

 

Featured Image via South China Morning Post

Polls Find That Americans Support Democrats’ New Economic Plan


Yuval Rosenberg
Wed, August 3, 2022 

Three new polls find that Americans overwhelmingly support the new Inflation Reduction Act negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).

A Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that 61% of Americans favor the proposals to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices and cap out-of-pocket costs at $2,000 a year. And 53% favor the corporate tax increases and deficit reduction in the legislation.

“At a time of bitter polarization, these are strikingly positive results for any bill explicitly associated with one party and not the other,” Yahoo’s Andrew Romano writes. “Independents support each element of the Manchin-Schumer deal by the same wide margins as Americans overall — and even a plurality of Republicans favor (47%) rather than oppose (27%) its prescription-drug reforms.”

Similarly, a poll by liberal group Data for Progress finds that 73% of likely voters support the legislation when told it will lower costs for families, ramp up clean energy production, lower prescription drug costs and reduce the deficit.

And a Navigator Research poll, conducted by the Democratic firm Global Strategy Group and obtained by HuffPost, found that about two-thirds of voters support the plan while 24% oppose it.

Senate bill would close a loophole that helps multinational giants avoid paying their share of taxes

David Morse - Wednesday

Senate bill would close a loophole that helps multinational giants avoid paying their share of taxes

OUTSIDE THE BOX

After many weeks of objecting to President Joe Biden’s climate agenda, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) surprised Washington by agreeing to an “Inflation Reduction Act” that contains $369 billion worth of climate and energy programs. Manchin’s about-face follows an agreement with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to include $300 billion for deficit reduction as well as numerous tax credits for electric vehicles and solar panels.

While the media has focused on Manchin’s unexpected change-of-heart, a key part of the bill might be an even greater surprise to Washington. That’s because it deals with corporate tax avoidance—and includes language calling for a 15% “corporate alternative minimum tax” (AMT).

Read more: What’s in, and out, of Democrats’ $739 billion inflation-fighting package

4.3% effective tax rate

At present, some of America’s largest corporations are earning record profits while paying little U.S. corporate taxes. Voters are frustrated by this, particularly the example of Amazon —which earned $45 billion in corporate profits over the past three years while paying only 4.3% in federal taxes. That’s far less than the roughly 21% paid by smaller domestic U.S. firms.

What this points to is the ongoing problem of overseas entities avoiding America’s corporate taxes while earning large profits in the U.S. consumer market. The American public knows that global corporations have been getting away with this for years—that they simply pay far less in effective taxes than domestic businesses. What remains to be seen is whether the new corporate alternative minimum tax proposed by Schumer and Manchin can finally solve this problem.

Recently, Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation published an analysis of the Manchin-Schumer proposal. Specifically, they looked at who will pay the AMT tax—which kinds of corporation and which tax brackets. Unfortunately, their study failed to address a key point—America’s current tax system rewards overseas producers at the expense of domestic U.S. firms.

In 2020, the Coalition for a Prosperous America reported that global multinational companies paid an effective tax rate of only 8.7% in 2019. In comparison, domestic companies pay a rate far closer to the nominal 21% corporate tax. Multinationals simply shift profits to tax-haven nations, leaving them with lower effective U.S. tax rates.

Unfair competition

What Manchin and Schumer propose is a 15% minimum tax that would apply to corporations with annual profits in excess of $1 billion. That means large companies like Amazon would now face at least a 15% corporate tax rate, no matter their attempts to bypass U.S. tax obligations.

For too long, Washington has ignored this glaring disparity in effective tax rates between domestic corporations and global enterprises. This has been particularly troubling for smaller U.S. companies, since they employ the bulk of the U.S. workforce while facing a particularly uneven tax environment compared to their overseas competitors.

Can Manchin’s and Schumer’s bill help to partially fix this problem?

Their proposed legislation requires the largest companies to pay a minimum of 15 percent of their income as reported to shareholders. That’s certainly helpful, since it’s far closer to what domestic U.S. corporations are obligated to pay. And the bill only applies to companies that earn annual profits exceeding $1 billion over three years.

This is good news, since it will largely fall on the multinationals that currently skirt U.S. tax obligations. Domestic companies should welcome this development since it would help to change the present tax environment that benefits their foreign competitors.

There may be better options in the future, but right now U.S. domestic corporations urgently need a level playing field. Insisting that their overseas counterparts finally pay their fair share of taxes is long overdue. A corporate alternative minimum tax marks an important step toward restoring tax parity for U.S. producers.

David Morse is tax policy director at the Coalition for a Prosperous America Education Fund. Follow him at @CentristinIdaho

Los Angeles OKs sweeping ban on homeless camps near schools

FAMILY CAMPING FOR SCHOOL

 A homeless encampment is seen on a bridge over the CA-110 freeway, Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2021, in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles City Council has voted to ban homeless encampments within 500 feet of schools and daycare centers. The council voted Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2022, to broaden an existing ban on sleeping or camping near the facilities. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes,File)

Wed, August 3, 2022 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to ban homeless encampments within 500 feet of schools and daycare centers during a meeting that was disrupted by protesters who said it criminalizes homelessness.

The council voted 11-3 to vastly broaden an existing ban on sitting, sleeping or camping that currently only applies to daycare centers and schools specified by the council. The vote, which applies to public and private schools, came after a previous vote last month failed to pass unanimously.

The meeting was recessed for about an hour before the vote after dozens of people became unruly, at one point chanting “shut it down!”

A second and final vote will still be needed next week.

About 750 public school sites are within the city limits, Los Angeles Unified School District officials told the Los Angeles Times, which said nearly 1,000 commercial day-care businesses are registered with the city. The next public school year starts on Aug. 15.

Los Angeles is among many cities struggling to deal with a surge in homelessness and large encampments scattered along sidewalks that have sparked public outcry.

Supporters of the blanket ban said homeless camps are a health and safety threat to schoolchildren, especially because of the disruptive presence of people with drug addictions or mental illness.

The camps “are unsafe and traumatic for students, families and staff as they enter school campuses,” Martha Alvarez, who is in charge of government relations for the school district, told the council.

Opponents, including homeless advocates, said the measure would further criminalize homelessness.

The ban comes as several hotels are set to end their involvement in the government’s Project Roomkey, which paid them to provide hundreds of rooms to unsheltered people.

DEJA VU
After repeating early COVID mistakes, US now has the world’s biggest monkeypox outbreak

Karen Weintraub, USA TODAY
Thu, August 4, 2022 at 8:45 AM·8 min read

The story of monkeypox feels to experts frustratingly like a replay of the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Testing took too long to get launched. Data hasn't revealed the full extent of the outbreak. The spread wasn't stopped quickly enough.

Monkeypox was supposed to be different, because it is much harder to transmit, treatments and vaccines were already available, much was known about a virus first described in 1958, and so many lessons were supposedly learned from COVID-19.

Yet the United States now has the world's biggest outbreak of monkeypox: More than 6,600 Americans have been diagnosed since mid-May. Rarely seen outside Africa before the spring, the virus, a less deadly cousin of smallpox, has now triggered a 26,000-person global emergency, reaching 83 countries, 76 of which had not historically seen the disease.

And that's just the known cases. No one knows the full extent of America's outbreak.

States don't have to tell the federal government when they have a patient. Testing difficulties have left many people undiagnosed, and communication has been so scattered that many people and physicians don't consider the virus a possible cause of symptoms such as fever, swollen glands, body aches and a telltale rash.

"It's deja vu all over again," said Lawrence Gostin, a university professor and global health law expert at Georgetown University in Washington. "We're really flying in the dark."

In recent days and weeks the Biden administration has stepped up its approach to combating monkeypox, he and others said, but it missed key opportunities to stop the spread of a virus that rarely kills but can cause severe pain and scarring.

And the window is closing fast to prevent it from becoming a permanent fixture in the United States alongside COVID-19.

"If we don't react more aggressively within the next couple of months – it'll never be the same as coronavirus, but it could mimic the (spread of the) AIDS epidemic pretty closely," said Jared Auclair, an analytical chemist and associate dean at Northeastern University in Boston.
Why the monkeypox outbreak got so bad

Gostin and other public health officials seem both frustrated and surprised that the outbreak has gotten as bad as it has.

"It has been challenging to watch what has happened over the last 2½ months," said Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency room physician and academic dean of Brown University's School of Public Health in Rhode Island. "I am flummoxed by why we are where we are today."

Ranney pointed to a range of factors that probably contributed to the slow early response, including competing priorities of federal agencies, along with the decentralization of America's public health system with many decisions left to the 50 states, and the sheer exhaustion many public health officials feel after more than two years of battling COVID-19.

Plus, Americans can't expect to have a first-rate public health system if we pay for only a second-rate one, said Dr. Thomas Frieden, a former director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"If you fund something at a small fraction of what it needs to get the job done and then you beat it up for not getting the job done, you're not being logical," said Frieden, now president and CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative aimed at preventing epidemics and cardiovascular disease. "We have really underfunded public health."

Frieden said he remembers traveling to Africa's Democratic Republic of the Congo when he was CDC director in the early 2010s and hearing from officials who were worried that monkeypox and other infectious diseases eventually would spread across the globe. But there were no resources to combat those diseases, he said.

COVID-19 fatigue also is playing a role in the slow response, Auclair said. Public health officials don't want to be the bad guys again, telling people what they shouldn't do.

But still, there's no excuse for such a slow response, he and the others said.

"Who knows why we're not acting more aggressively, because we should be," Auclair said. "Not only should we have learned from the coronavirus pandemic, but it's like a repeat of HIV/AIDS from the late 1980s."

Monkeypox spreads mostly through close physical contact, such as skin-to-skin touch. Nearly all the cases worldwide have been among men who have sex with men, but viruses don't stay put in one geography or community.

If monkeypox does become endemic, meaning it never fully goes away, it probably will follow the same path as HIV/AIDS did, said Gregg Gonsalves, an HIV/AIDS activist and epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health.

Although striking first in the gay community, in the United States HIV spread to the unhoused, sex workers and other marginalized people. "It's not too far of a leap to say it's going to follow the contours of our social geography again, like it did for HIV," he said.

People protest during a rally calling for more government action to combat the spread of monkeypox at Foley Square on July 21, 2022, in New York City. At least 267 New Yorkers have tested positive for monkeypox, a virus similar to smallpox but with milder symptoms.
What went wrong with the monkeypox response?

Testing was the first thing that went wrong early in the spread of COVID-19 and again has been a problem with monkeypox.

Tests for monkeypox initially had to be sent to the CDC for confirmation, drastically limiting the number that could be done. Some people tried for days to be tested, and others with obvious symptoms tested negative, possibly because health care providers aren't used to having to collect samples from skin lesions.

Ranney said clinicians still have to get their state department of health to authorize every monkeypox test, which she described as an unnecessary impediment.

Although many people faulted the Trump administration for responding too slowly to COVID-19, it did launch Operation Warp Speed, which led to the development of vaccines in record time.

A man holds a sign urging increased access to the monkeypox vaccine during a protest in San Francisco on July 18, 2022. The mayor of San Francisco announced a legal state of emergency Thursday, July 28, 2022, over the growing number of monkeypox cases. The declaration allows officials to mobilize personnel and cut through red tape to get ahead of a public health crisis all too reminiscent of the AIDS epidemic that devastated San Francisco in the 1980s.More

"When the federal government puts its mind to something, it can get it done," said Gonsalves, adding he has seen nothing with that level of government support or urgency with the monkeypox outbreak. "That's the kind of focus you need, and it doesn't exist."

Two smallpox vaccines were developed years ago and approved for use against monkeypox. The federal government has a large supply of one, ACAM2000, but that vaccine carries severe side effects and risks, so few doses have been administered.

Instead, officials have relied on Jynneos, a vaccine that seems to work well with few problems, though it has never been tried before during an actual monkeypox outbreak.

The government did not immediately order Jynneos doses released. Gonsalves said with frustration that officials apparently were afraid the doses might be needed someday against smallpox instead of recognizing that they were needed immediately against monkeypox.

The government has since ordered more doses, and more than 1 million have been made available, but demand still seems to outstrip supply in many places and more doses won't be available for months, according to the latest schedule from the Biden administration.

People line up for the monkeypox vaccine at San Francisco General Hospital on July 12. California has declared a state of emergency over the outbreak.

There are technologies and ways to speed up and expand the production process, Auclair said, but he hasn't seen them employed. "I haven't seen much evidence that we're even trying to ramp it up," he said.

Similarly, an antiviral treatment called TPOXX that appears to work well against monkeypox has been tied up in bureaucracy and is difficult for patients to access, although the government has begun removing the red tape.

Public education has also fallen short, Auclair said, with messaging that has been confusing. Gay men, who have shown an eagerness to get vaccinated, also would change their behaviors if the messages were clear about what they could do.

"Let's empower people to understand and make appropriate decisions on how they go about their day to reduce risk," he said. "We're not giving them access to the resources they need to take appropriate actions or precautions."

Public health officials shouldn't be telling men not to have sex, Frieden said, but encouraging fewer partners until more vaccine becomes available.

The tools for fighting monkeypox are there, Gonsalves said. But instead of getting them to the public immediately, "we kept them in the garage," he said. "That's the most depressing thing about all of this."

Demonstrators in New York City demand more government action to combat the spread of monkeypox.

What can be done about monkeypox in the US?

The Biden administration announced this week the establishment of a National Monkeypox Response Team with both logistical and public health experience. The team's new leadership, along with CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky and her boss, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, were expected to hold a news conference Thursday to discuss their latest efforts.

Ranney and Gostin praised the appointments and expressed hope that the team's creation would mark a turning point in the outbreak.

Gonsalves had a more bleak response. "The fire department is getting organized 2½ months after the fire has started," he said.

The administration has not made public health enough of a priority, Gonsalves said, charging that officials have alternated between saying there's no problem and blaming the CDC.

Gonsalves said he's worried what will happen over Labor Day, when Black Gay Pride is celebrated in Atlanta. If action isn't taken quickly to avert a superspreader event, "you might expect to see the virus seed itself across the rural South," he said.

"It's horrible to think of a new endemic virus sinking its roots into the United States."

Contact Karen Weintraub at kweintraub@usatoday.com.

Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Monkeypox outbreak in US now world's biggest after COVID-like mistakes