What to know about the Morocco earthquake and the efforts to help


A man on a scooter drives past rubble and a damaged road sign pointing to Marrakech in Talat N’yakoub, Morocco, Monday Sept. 11, 2023. More than 2,000 people were killed, and the toll was expected to rise as rescuers struggled to reach hard-hit remote areas after a powerful earthquake struck Morocco. 

A victim is carried away by rescue workers in Talat N’yakoub, Morocco, Monday Sept. 11, 2023. More than 2,000 people were killed, and the toll was expected to rise as rescuers struggled to reach hard-hit remote areas after a powerful earthquake struck Morocco. 

A victim covered in a sheet is carried to a grave that has just been dug in Talat N’yakoub, Morocco, Monday Sept. 11, 2023. More than 2,000 people were killed, and the toll was expected to rise as rescuers struggled to reach hard-hit remote areas after a powerful earthquake struck Morocco

Mannequins are strewn across the rubble in Talat N’yakoub, Morocco, Monday Sept. 11, 2023. More than 2,000 people were killed, and the toll was expected to rise as rescuers struggled to reach hard-hit remote areas after a powerful earthquake struck Morocco. 

(Fernando Sanchez/Europa Press via AP)

BY SAM METZ
September 13, 2023

AMIZMIZ, Morocco (AP) — An earthquake has sown destruction and devastation in Morocco, where death and injury counts continue to rise after rescue crews dug out people both alive and dead in villages that were reduced to rubble.

Law enforcement and aid workers — both Moroccan and international — have arrived in the region south of the city of Marrakech that was hardest hit by the magnitude 6.8 tremor Friday night, along with several aftershocks.

Residents in most places have been provided food and water, and most of the giant boulders blocking steep mountain roads have been cleared. But worries remain about shelter and long-term recovery efforts in impoverished mountain regions hardest hit.

Here’s what you need to know:

WHAT ARE THE AREAS MOST AFFECTED?


Powerful quake in Morocco kills more than 2,000 people and damages historic buildings in Marrakech

Moroccan villagers mourn after earthquake brings destruction to their rural mountain home

The epicenter was high in the Atlas Mountains, about 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of Marrakech in Al Haouz province.

The region is largely rural — made up of red-rock mountains, picturesque gorges and glistening streams and lakes.

The earthquake shook most of Morocco and caused injury and death in other provinces, including Marrakech, Taroudant and Chichaoua.

WHO WAS AFFECTED?

Of the 2,946 deaths reported as of Wednesday, 1,684 were in Al Haouz, a region with a population of around 570,000, according to Morocco’s 2014 census.

In certain villages such as Tafeghaghte, residents say more than half the population died. The United Nations has estimated that 300,000 people were affected by Friday night’s temblor.

People speak a combination of Arabic and Tachelhit, Morocco’s most common Indigenous language. Villages of clay and mud brick built into mountainsides have been destroyed.

People recover a washing machine from their home that was damaged by the earthquake, in the town of Amizmiz, near Marrakech, Morocco, Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023. An aftershock rattled Moroccans on Sunday as they prayed for victims of the nation’s strongest earthquake in more than a century and toiled to rescue survivors while soldiers and workers brought water and supplies to desperate mountain villages in ruins. 

(AP Photo/Mosa’ab Elshamy)

Most of the dead have already been buried. The government reports 2,501 injuries.

WHO IS PROVIDING AID?

Morocco has deployed ambulances, rescue crews and soldiers to the region to help assist with emergency response efforts.

Aid groups said the government hasn’t made a broad appeal for help and accepted only limited foreign assistance.

The Interior Ministry said that it was accepting search and rescue-focused international aid from nongovernmental organizations as well as Spain, Qatar, the U.K. and the United Arab Emirates, bypassing offers from French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. President Joe Biden.

The Moroccan government said that poorly coordinated aid “would be counterproductive,” to the frustration of rescue teams.

HOW CAN PEOPLE HELP?

Experts say the most direct way to provide aid to those affected in the city of Marrakech and the rural areas in the Atlas Mountains is to donate to organizations that have operations already on the ground.

That includes the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which quickly released $1.1 million from its Disaster Response Emergency Fund to support Moroccan Red Crescent relief efforts in the country.

It also includes World Central Kitchen, Doctors Without Borders, and GlobalGiving, which created a Morocco Earthquake Relief Fund and had raised more than $500,000 as of Tuesday morning.

WHY ARE MARRAKECH AND THE REGION HISTORIC?

The earthquake cracked and crumbled parts of the walls that surround Marrakech’s old city, a UNESCO World Heritage site built in the 12th century.

Videos showed dust emanating from parts of the Koutoubia Mosque, one of the city’s best-known historic sites. The city is Morocco’s most widely visited destination, known for its palaces, spice markets, madrasas and Jemaa El Fna — its noisy square full of food vendors and musicians.

The earthquake also wreaked havoc on significant historical sites in the High Atlas. They include a 12th-century mosque in Tinmel built by the Almohad Dynasty under Ibn Toumert, a 19th-century kasbah built near Talat N’Yakoub and a significant mosque and pilgrimage site in Moulay Brahim.

“While most tourists may know about famous monuments in large cities, smaller villages contain their own monuments that have suffered from marginalization for decades,” said Brahim El Guabli, an Amazigh studies scholar and associate professor of Arabic studies at Williams College. “The entire Moroccan High Atlas is strewn with important historical monuments.”

A cracked wall showing Morocco’s flag and a writing in Arabic that reads:" God, the Nation, the King,” in the town of Amizmiz, near Marrakech, Morocco, Sunday, Sept. 10, 2023. Towns and villages throughout Morocco’s Atlas Mountains are mourning the dead and seeking aid after a record earthquake wreaked destruction throughout the region last week.

 (AP Photo/Mosa’ab Elshamy)


HOW DOES THIS COMPARE TO OTHER QUAKES?

Friday’s earthquake was Morocco’s strongest in more than a century.

Although such powerful tremors are rare, it isn’t the country’s deadliest: Just over 60 years ago, Morocco was rocked by a magnitude-5.8 quake that killed over 12,000 people on its western coast, crumbling the city of Agadir, southwest of Marrakech.

That quake prompted changes in construction rules in Morocco, but many buildings — especially rural homes — aren’t built to withstand such force.

There hadn’t been any earthquakes stronger than magnitude 6.0 within 310 miles (500 kilometers) of Friday’s tremor in at least a century, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Northern Morocco experiences earthquakes more often, including tremors of magnitude 6.4 in 2004 and magnitude 6.3 in 2016.

Elsewhere this year, a magnitude 7.8 temblor that shook Syria and Turkey killed more than 50,000 people. Most of the most devastating earthquakes in recent history have been above magnitude 7.0, including a 2015 tremor in Nepal that killed more than 8,800 people and a 2008 quake that killed 87,500 in China.

WHAT ARE THE NEXT STEPS?

Emergency response efforts are likely to continue as teams traverse mountain roads to reach villages hit hardest by the earthquake.

Many communities lack food, water, electricity and shelter. But once aid crews and soldiers leave, the challenges facing hundreds of thousands who call the area home will probably remain.

Members of Morocco’s Parliament convened Monday to create a government fund for earthquake response at the request of King Mohammed VI.

Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch said afterward that the government was committed to compensating victims and helping them rebuild. Enaam Mayara, the president of Morocco’s House of Councilors, said that it would likely take five or six years to rebuild some affected areas.

Moroccan soldiers and personnel evacuate a survivor in Talat N’yakoub, Morocco, Monday Sept. 11, 2023. More than 2,000 people were killed, and the toll was expected to rise as rescuers struggled to reach hard-hit remote areas after a powerful earthquake struck Morocco. (Fernando Sanchez/Europa Press via AP)

A victim covered in a sheet is carried to a grave that has just been dug in Talat N’yakoub, Morocco, Monday Sept. 11, 2023. More than 2,000 people were killed, and the toll was expected to rise as rescuers struggled to reach hard-hit remote areas after a powerful earthquake struck Morocco. (Fernando Sanchez/Europa Press via AP)

A donkey stands inside a building damaged by the earthquake in the village of Tafeghaghte, near Marrakech, Morocco, Monday, Sept. 11, 2023. Rescue crews expanded their efforts on Monday as the earthquake’s death toll continued to climb to more than 2,400 and displaced people worried about where to find shelter.

A man walks past rubble caused by the earthquake in the village of Tafeghaghte, near Marrakech, Morocco, Monday, Sept. 11, 2023. 

People and dogs dig through the rubble of a home that was damaged by an earthquake, in the village of Tafeghaghte, near Marrakech, Morocco, Monday, Sept. 11, 2023.

A camp set up by the Spanish Military Emergency Unit to assist with the rescue mission for victims of the earthquake, in the town of Amizmiz, near Marrakech, Morocco, Monday, Sept. 11, 2023. Rescue crews expanded their efforts on Monday as the earthquake’s death toll continued to climb to more than 2,400 and displaced people worried about where to find shelter.

 (AP Photo/Mosa’ab Elshamy)

___

Jesse Bedayn in Denver, Angela Charlton in Paris, Glenn Gamboa in New York, and Will Weissert in Washington, contributed to this report.

The uninvited? How international rescue gets into Morocco

Cathrin Schaer
DW

Was it politics that stopped Morocco from accepting offers of international help after a deadly earthquake? Guidelines on international disaster response mean there's much more to it than that.

Over 2,800 people have died after the Moroccan earthquake and thousands more are injured and homeless

Nacho Doce/REUTERS


The videos on social media are hard to watch. "There is nobody here to help us," an older man in a village near the Tizi N'Test pass in Morocco's Atlas Mountains angrily cries. All around him, red dirt and rubble where houses used to stand, all destroyed by the earthquake that hit the area last Friday night.

He, his son and five others were trying to rescue neighbors from under collapsed buildings, he tells the cameraman, who will eventually publish the video on YouTube.

"Many victims just lay under the ruins until they died," the man said.

"There's nobody here," a woman yells in another video posted on Instagram. "No tents, no other accommodation … we are just living on donations. Where are the officials?"



These cries for help have led Moroccans to question their own government. They are asking why it has so far only accepted help from four countries — the United Arab Emirates, Spain, Qatar and the UK — following the earthquake that killed over 2,800 people. Offers from around 60 other countries have not been accepted.

That has led to international headlines and even caused the French and German governments to publicly deny that Morocco's rejection of their offers to help was political. Moroccan officials have themselves expressed irritation over the controversy and said the French are treating them as though they are backward, the French newspaper, Le Monde, reported this week.

As a sovereign country, Morocco is "the master of its choices, which must be respected," French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said during an interview amid speculation that the unhappy state of diplomatic relations between the two nations was causing Morocco to reject aid from France. This is "a completely inappropriate quarrel," Colonna said.

Spain is one of four countries sending rescuers into Morocco — the two nations have a good relationship

Experts in the field of disaster response agree: While it is true that international rescue efforts are always political in some way, they are also complicated, involving dozens of different actors, and also highly dependent on other circumstances as well.

Ideally, international rescue efforts are meant to be informed by a set of guidelines developed by the Red Cross and Red Crescent between 2001 and 2007. These deal with some of the issues that have hampered international rescue operations in the past. They also state that any disaster response should always begin with domestic efforts and that international rescuers should only enter the country when invited.
How to get an invitation to help?

Firstly, there is a difference between private organizations, non-governmental organizations and charities, and state-funded ones, like the rescue team from Germany's Federal Agency for Technical Relief.

After the February earthquake, German NGOs, like Deathcare, made their way into Turkey earlier this year

Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images

It depends on the situation, but private groups may get started without an invitation. For example, because Europeans can get a visa on arrival for Morocco and the airport was safe and open, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, was able to send some people to Morocco on Saturday.

They travel as private citizens, explained Christian Katzer, director of MSF Germany, "and they are mainly there to quickly assess the situation to see if there is a need for our help."

MSF focuses on medical services and staff gauge how Moroccan health services are coping.

"If we identify a gap, then we switch to official channels," Katzer told DW. "We would liaise with a government body to get permission to come in and begin work officially."

It's a different case for state-funded organizations and bodies like the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). These adhere to international rules about state sovereignty and cannot enter without an invitation. But bodies like OCHA — which plays a major role in international emergency response — often already have employees in the country.

Earthquake in Morocco: Desperate search for the missing

Following the devastating earthquake in Morocco, the feverish search for the missing continues. But the chances of uncovering survivors fade by the hour.

Image: PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP

Searching for survivors
Amid the dust and rubble, these emergency workers in Amizmiz, Morocco, look for survivors. Four days after the most powerful earthquake in decades, authorities have reported over 2,800 dead and thousands of people are still missing. The earthquake could also be felt in nearby countries, including Portugal and Algeria.

Image: Nacho Doce/REUTERS

2/10

In a background briefing, an OCHA staff member explained to DW that when disaster strikes, members of OCHA's emergency response team are notified on their mobile phones. They then log into an online platform to coordinate any efforts.

Elsewhere, UN representatives inside the impacted country are already establishing contact with the government to offer help. This usually happens very quickly. There's no single hotline to call to ask the UN for help, but there are usually locals working in disaster management who know where to enquire with OCHA.

At the same time, what is known as the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group, or INSARAG, is kicking into action. The group has 90 member countries and coordinates 57 specialized urban search and rescue teams. Morocco has had an INSARAG-accredited rescue team since 2014 and local rescue workers had to take an exam lasting around 70 hours before being allowed to participate.

The international teams are directed by OCHA and will typically be standing by at an airport within hours, waiting to see if their offer of help has been accepted. Everyone involved keeps in touch via OCHA's online coordination platform so they can deploy as quickly as possible.

Morocco's military have been leading rescue efforts

Jean-Baptiste Quentin/dpa/MAXPPP/picture alliance

What aid offers are accepted? It depends.

Which offers of help are accepted comes down to a variety of factors.

It can depend on the disaster itself. For example, how widespread is the damage? Have hospitals been impacted or are health care and rescue workers among the dead? Is there an option for domestic emergency services to take control?

In the case of the February earthquake in Turkey and Syria that killed around 50,000 people, the Turkish government activated INSARAG's multilateral system within hours. In the end, 49 of 57 teams entered the country, fielding around 3,500 people plus rescue dogs.

After Friday's earthquake, Morocco dispatched its own military to help victims and explained that it didn't want too many international rescue teams because it might lead to a "counterproductive" lack of coordination. In 2004, after a smaller Moroccan earthquake, aid flights reportedly jammed local airports and rescue teams damaged roads. This week, it is already proving difficult for rescuers to traverse small, unpaved and now-damaged roads into the worst-affected mountain villages.

Political considerations also influence aid decisions

Invitations are certainly also political. For example, countries may have bilateral agreements to aid one another in an emergency. There are also regional agreements. For instance, Europe has the EU Civil Protection Mechanism and ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, has a similar agreement.

Of course, there can also be more problematic politics at play. In February, the fact that the UN delayed earthquake aid efforts in Syria because it was waiting for an invitation from the country's brutal dictator, Bashar Assad, may well have cost more lives.

After the 2011 earthquake in Japan, the Asian nation only accepted help from 24 states and regions even though 163 offered help, one researcher noted in 2014. Internal politics played a part, critics said, and Japan was already well known for bureaucratic delays when it came to allowing foreign teams in. Two days after the 2011 earthquake, Swiss rescuers, who were among the first to arrive, were still waiting for permission to import their search and rescue dogs.

Japan in 2011: The country already had a long history of bureaucracy slowing foreign rescue effort

Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty Images

However, despite headlines about whether Morocco should be accepting more international aid, most experts with contacts in the field right now are reluctant to criticize Rabat and would only speak off the record about this.

"There are extreme examples," one expert on disaster response explained, "where a government would rather not collaborate with aid organizations and would rather leave their people in misery. In some cases there is also a reticence to request assistance because there is a belief that would make the state look weak."

But this is more the case in extremely authoritarian states, experts noted. In fact, they expect more aid organizations to be able to enter Morocco in the near future after the initial emergency response ends.

Right now though, it is still impossible to say how well Morocco has dealt with the earthquake, said Kirsten Bookmiller, an American professor of government, policy and law and an expert in emergency management at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. "We've had somewhat of an information shortfall here, so it's hard to determine as an external observer," she told DW.

Additionally in situations like this, nobody comes out looking good, the experts all agreed.

"A rescue response will never be fast enough for those devastated by the disaster and seeking to keep their loved ones alive," Bookmiller concluded. For them, "any lost moment is one moment too long."

With additional reporting by Tarek Anegay.

Edited by: Sean Sinico

‘Everything comes back’: Morocco quake leaves mental scars

By AFP
September 12, 2023

In remote villages like Asni, many survivors of the devastating quake are already grappling with post-traumatic stress

 - Copyright AFP/File Rodrigo BUENDIA

Anne-Sophie LABADIE

When Khadija Temera, a survivor of Morocco’s devastating earthquake, was sent to a psychiatrist on Tuesday, she was just one of a hundred newly traumatised patients who would be seen within 24 hours.

The powerful quake last Friday killed more than 2,900 people, most of them in remote villages of the High Atlas Mountains.

Beyond the physical devastation, soldiers and aid workers say it is becoming increasing clear that many of the survivors are facing severe mental suffering.

“The most important thing is that we are alive,” Temera says, her henna-stained fingers fiddling with a piece of paper, her eyes swollen with tears.

But now she wants to “heal her heart”, and on Tuesday she had her first consultation with a psychiatrist, seeking balm for the trauma inflicted by the quake.

She had first gone to see a regular doctor for hypertension.

But Moroccan troops in the area quickly referred her to the psychiatrist, who said he had seen around a hundred patients since the previous day out of the 500 who came to the field hospital in Asni, around 90 kilometres (55 miles) south of the tourist hub of Marrakesh.

Flashbacks from the fateful day continue to haunt Temera: of stairs collapsing and trapping her and the nine members of her family before they could be rescued.

“I’ve been awake ever since, I can’t fall asleep — as soon as I lie down everything comes back,” said the 68-year-old from the village of Lareb.

– ‘Acute stress’ –

Next to her on a bench, a mute woman was also waiting for a consultation, her hands clasped across her chest and breathing heavily.

She has lost both her children.

After her comes the turn of a man in his thirties, his eyes red from crying.

Of the thousands injured in the powerful earthquake, “some were not only wounded and bruised in their flesh, they were also often ‘bereaved’, having lost their homes”, said Adil Akanour, the only psychiatrist at the makeshift hospital, which was opened to the press on Tuesday.

Meanwhile villagers in more isolated hamlets, which have remained inaccessible, told AFP of their isolation and the absence of aid.

Survivors find themselves in a “state of acute stress with symptoms, often physical at first”, Akanour said, adding that dizziness, palpitations, headaches and abdominal pain can be symptoms that “hide” a psychological problem.

According to the World Health Organization, nearly everyone who experiences such an emergency will suffer some psychological problems which, in most cases, will fade with time.

– ‘There’s nothing left’ –

The separation of families, insecurity, loss of livelihoods and disruption of social contacts are all potential psychological problems, according to the UN organisation, which recommends urgent care to prevent the development of post-traumatic stress disorders.

The 6.8-magnitude quake that struck on September 8 was the most powerful ever recorded in the kingdom, with the provisional toll of 2,900 people dead likely to rise.

Entire villages were swallowed up, and with them the lives of hundreds of modest families.

Thousands of people were left homeless, the majority now living alone in makeshift tents or, for a few such as Mouhamed El Makhconi, sheltering in genuine windproof tents provided by the interior ministry.

“I was the only one providing for my family,” the 60-year old said with a resigned, toothless smile.

He did so by selling jewellery to tourists heading to the summits of the High Atlas mountain range that dominates the landscape.

But now “there’s nothing left” of his ground-floor apartment, leaving him and his eight-member family destitute.

“I haven’t even got a dirham on me,” he sighs, sitting outside the tent. He had to be provided with everything from blankets to glasses.

Adding to his desperation are the sounds of the earthquake that remain resonant in his memory.

He too cannot sleep, saying he can still feel the tremors and the waves of fear that went through his body.

But El Makhconi has not consulted a psychiatrist, largely because he needs to sort out his diabetes first.

His grandchildren have not been examined either. They are still terrified at times and miss their toys, including the bendir, a much-loved percussion instrument.

Aid slow to arrive to quake-hit Moroccan villages

13/09/2023 - 

05:14

France 24's Luke Shrago reports from Marrakesh, Morocco, where he says some quake-hit villages have been forced to rely on aid from ordinary Moroccans as government disaster relief efforts fail to arrive.

EU REGS

What is USB-C, the charging socket that replaced Apple’s Lightning cable?


- A USB-C cable is pictured in San Jose, Calif. Tuesday, March 10, 2015. Apple is ditching its in-house iPhone charging plug and falling in line with the rest of the tech industry by adopting USB-C, a more widely used connection standard.

 (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

 A customer holds a Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter cable at the Apple Store on Michigan Avenue, Friday, Sept. 16, 2016, in Chicago. Apple is ditching its in-house iPhone charging plug and falling in line with the rest of the tech industry by adopting USB-C, a more widely used connection standard. 

(AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)

BY KELVIN CHAN
Updated 7:45 AM MDT, September 13, 2023Share


LONDON (AP) — Bye, Lightning cable. Hello, USB-C.

Apple is ditching its in-house iPhone charging plug and falling in line with the rest of the tech industry by adopting a more widely used connection standard. A big part of the reason is a European Union common charging rule that’s coming soon for the 27-nation bloc.

Here’s a look at the USB-C plug and what it means for consumers:


WHAT IS USB-C AND HOW CAN I TELL IT APART FROM OTHER PLUGS?


The first part of the acronym stands for Universal Serial Bus, and it replaces earlier versions of the USB cables used on everything from printers and hard drives to computer mice and Kindle readers.

The USB-C plug comes in a different shape than its predecessors — an elongated oval. It’s also symmetrical and reversible, which eliminates one of the common gripes about previous versions like the rectangular USB-A connectors because there’s no wrong way to plug it in.

WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT USB-C?


USB-C cables can carry more power so laptops can be charged faster, and they enable faster data transfer speeds, allowing a big trove of files to be copied from a computer to an external hard drive. At the same time, they can pump out a video signal to a monitor and supply power to connected accessories.

The USB-C connector also is designed to be future-proof. Its shape won’t change but newer versions — and the devices they connect to — will come with upgraded capabilities. That means users will have to beware because older devices might not be able to support the latest specs.

It’s also slimmer than boxy USB-A plugs, making them a better fit for newer devices that keep getting smaller.

WHY IS APPLE USING IT?

Apple has long championed its proprietary Lightning connector for iPhones even though pretty much no one else used it. It resisted the EU’s common charging push, citing worries that it would limit innovation and end up hurting consumers.

Apple held out even as others started adding USB-C connectors into their devices. But after the EU proposal won a key approval last year, the U.S. tech giant gave in and didn’t look back.

A company executive unveiling the latest iPhone on Tuesday didn’t even mention the Lightning cable as she introduced its replacement.

“USB-C has become a universally accepted standard so we’re bringing USB-C to iPhone 15,” said Kaiann Drance, vice president of iPhone product marketing.

She said USB-C has “been built into Apple products for years” and can now be used on MacBooks, iPads, iPhones and AirPods.

WHAT ROLE DID EUROPE PLAY?


Apple’s shift is an example of how European Union regulations often end up rippling around the world — what’s known as the “Brussels effect” — as companies decide it’s easier to comply than make different products for different regions.

The EU spent more than a decade cajoling the tech industry into adopting a common charging standard. The push to impose rules for a uniform cable are part of the bloc’s wider effort to make products sold in the EU more sustainable and cut down on electronic waste.

The EU’s common charging rule won’t actually take effect until fall 2024. It covers phones, tablets, e-readers, earbuds, digital cameras, headphones and headsets, handheld video game consoles, keyboards and mice, portable speakers and navigation devices.

It also standardizes fast-charging technology and gives consumers the right to choose whether to buy new devices with or without a charger.

Humanity deep in the danger zone of planetary boundaries: study

Paris (AFP) – Human activity and appetites have weakened Earth's resilience, pushing it far beyond the "safe operating space" that keeps the world liveable for most species, including our own, a landmark study said Wednesday.

Water falling from a melting iceberg drifting along the Scoresby Sound Fjord, in Eastern Greenland 

© Olivier MORIN / AFP/File
\
Six of nine planetary boundaries -- climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss, synthetic chemicals including plastics, freshwater depletion, and nitrogen use -- are already deep in the red zone, an international team of 29 scientists reported.

Two of the remaining three -- ocean acidification along with the concentration of particle pollution and dust in the atmosphere -- are borderline, with only ozone depletion comfortably within safe bounds.

The planetary boundaries identify "the important processes that keep the Earth within the kind of the living conditions that prevailed over the last 10,000 years, the period when humanity and modern civilisation developed", said lead author Katherine Richardson, a professor at the University of Copenhagen's Globe Institute.

The study is the second major update of the concept, first unveiled in 2009 when only global warming, extinction rates, and nitrogen had transgressed their limits.

"We are still moving in the wrong direction," said co-author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and a co-creator of the schema.

"And there's no indications that any of the boundaries" -- except the ozone layer, slowly on the mend since the chemicals destroying it were banned -- "have started to bend in the right direction", he told journalists in a briefing.

"This means we are losing resilience, that we are putting the stability of the Earth system at risk."

The study quantifies boundaries for all nine interlocking facets of the Earth system.
Headed for disaster

For biodiversity, for example, if the rate at which species disappear is less than 10 times the average extinction rate over the last 10 million years, that is deemed acceptable.

In reality, however, extinctions are occurring at least 100 times faster than this so-called background rate, and 10 times faster than the planetary boundary limit.

For climate change, that threshold is keyed to the concentration of atmospheric CO2, which remained very close to 280 parts per million (ppm) for at least 10,000 years prior to the industrial revolution.

That concentration is today 417 ppm, far above the safe boundary of 350 ppm.

Humans breaching planet's ecological boundaries 

© Valentina BRESCHI / AFP

"On climate, we're still following a pathway that takes us unequivocally to disaster," said Rockstrom. "We're headed for 2.5C, 2.6C or 2.7C -- a place we haven't seen for the past four million years."

"There's no evidence whatsoever that humans can survive in that environment," he added.

Thousands upon thousands of chemical compounds created by humans -- from micro-plastics and pesticides to nuclear waste and drugs that have leached into the environment -- were quantified for the first time in the new research, and found to exceed safe limits.

Likewise for the depletion of "green" and "blue" water, freshwater coming from soil and plants on the one hand, and from rivers and lakes on the other.
Setting limits

An important finding of the new update is that different boundaries feed off and amplify each other.

The study examines in particular the interaction between increasing CO2 concentration and damage to the biosphere, especially forest loss, and projects temperature increases when one or both increase.

It shows that even if humanity rapidly draws down greenhouse gas emissions, unless destruction of carbon-absorbing forests is halted at the same time rising global temperatures could tip the planet onto a trajectory of additional warming that would be hard to stop.

"Next to climate change, integrity of the biosphere is the second pillar for our planet," said co-author Wolfgang Lucht, head of Earth System Analysis at PIK.

Five scenarios of the evolution of the Earth's surface temperature

 © Sabrina BLANCHARD / AFP

"We are currently destabilising this pillar by taking out too much biomass, destroying too much habitat, deforesting too much land."

All the boundaries can be brought back into the safe operating space, the study concluded.

"It's just a question of setting limits for the amount of waste we put into the open environment and the amount of living and non-living raw materials we take out," said Richardson.

Hotly debated at first, the planetary boundaries framework quickly became a pillar of Earth system science, with its influence extending today into the realm of policy and even business.

© 2023 AFP

Earth is outside its ‘safe operating space for humanity’ on most key measurements, study says


 A woman is silhouetted against the setting sun as triple-digit heat indexes continue in the Midwest, Aug. 20, 2023, in Kansas City, Mo. Earth is exceeding its “safe operating space for humanity” in six of nine key measurements of its health, and two of the remaining three are headed in the wrong direction, a new study said. 

(AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

BY SETH BORENSTEIN
 September 13, 2023

Earth is exceeding its “safe operating space for humanity” in six of nine key measurements of its health, and two of the remaining three are headed in the wrong direction, a new study said.

Earth’s climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nutrient pollution and “novel” chemicals (human-made compounds like microplastics and nuclear waste) are all out of whack, a group of international scientists said in Wednesday’s journal Science Advances. Only the acidity of the oceans, the health of the air and the ozone layer are within the boundaries considered safe, and both ocean and air pollution are heading in the wrong direction, the study said.

“We are in very bad shape,” said study co-author Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “We show in this analysis that the planet is losing resilience and the patient is sick.”


Haze  SMOG blankets the main business district in Jakarta, Indonesia, Aug. 11, 2023.

 (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara)

In 2009, Rockstrom and other researchers created nine different broad boundary areas and used scientific measurements to judge Earth’s health as a whole. Wednesday’s paper was an update from 2015 and it added a sixth factor to the unsafe category. Water went from barely safe to the out-of-bounds category because of worsening river run-off and better measurements and understanding of the problem, Rockstrom said.

These boundaries “determine the fate of the planet,” said Rockstrom, a climate scientist. The nine factors have been “scientifically well established” by numerous outside studies, he said.

If Earth can manage these nine factors, Earth could be relatively safe. But it’s not, he said.

In most of the cases, the team uses other peer-reviewed science to create measurable thresholds for a safety boundary. For example, they use 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the air, instead of the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5 degrees (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times. This year carbon in the air peaked at 424 parts per million.

The nine factors are intermingled. When the team used computer simulations, they found that making one factor worse, like the climate or biodiversity, made other Earth environmental issues degrade, while fixing one helped others. Rockstrom said this was like a simulated stress test for the planet.

The simulations showed “that one of the most powerful means that humanity has at its disposal to combat climate change” is cleaning up its land and saving forests, the study said. Returning forests to late 20th century levels would provide substantial natural sinks to store carbon dioxide instead of the air, where it traps heat, the study said.

Biodiversity – the amount and different types of species of life – is in some of the most troubling shape and it doesn’t get as much attention as other issues, like climate change, Rockstrom said.

“Biodiversity is fundamental to keeping the carbon cycle and the water cycle intact,” Rockstrom said. “The biggest headache we have today is the climate crisis and biodiversity crisis.”

Surfers float in the water while waiting for a wave in Malibu, Calif., Aug. 31, 2023. 

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)


University of Michigan environmental studies dean Jonathan Overpeck, who wasn’t part of the study, called the study “deeply troubling in its implications for the planet and people should be worried.”

“The analysis is balanced in that it clearly sounds a flashing red alarm, but it is not overly alarmist,” Overpeck said. “Importantly, there is hope.”

The fact that ozone layer is the sole improving factor shows that when the world and its leaders decide to recognize and act on a problem, it can be fixed and “for the most part there are things that we know how to do” to improve the remaining problems, said Carnegie Mellon chemistry and environment professor Neil Donahue.

Some biodiversity scientists, such as Duke’s Stuart Pimm, have long disputed Rockstrom’s methods and measurements, saying it makes the results not worth much.

But Carnegie Mellon environmental engineering professor Granger Morgan, who wasn’t part of the study, said, “Experts don’t agree on exactly where the limits are, or how much the planet’s different systems may interact, but we are getting dangerously close.”


“I’ve often said if we don’t quickly cut back on how we are stressing the Earth, we’re toast,” Morgan said in an email. “This paper says it’s more likely that we’re burnt toast.”

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M
Justice Department pushes ahead with antitrust case against Google, questions ex-employee on deals


The Google sign is shown over an entrance to the company’s new building in New York on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023. The U.S. government is taking aim at what has been an indomitable empire: Google’s ubiquitous search engine and the lucrative digital services hatched by its unwavering status as the internet’s main gateway. 

(AP Photo/Peter Morgan)

BY PAUL WISEMAN
September 13, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department pressed ahead with its antitrust case against Google Wednesday, questioning a former employee of the search engine giant about deals he helped negotiate with phone companies in the 2000s.

Chris Barton, who worked for Google from 2004 to 2011, testified that he made it a priority to negotiate for Google to be the default search engine on mobile devices. In exchange, phone service providers or manufacturers were offered a share of revenue generated when users clicked on ads.

In the biggest antitrust case in a quarter century, the government is arguing that Google has rigged the market in its favor by locking in its search engine as the one users see first on their devices, shutting out competition and smothering innovation.

Google counters that it dominates the internet search market because its product is better than the competition. Even when it holds the default spot on smartphones and other devices, it argues, users can switch to rival search engines with a couple of clicks.

And Barton testified that Google wasn’t the only search engine seeking default status with phone companies.

In a 2011 email exchange, Google executives noted that AT&T chose Yahoo and Verizon went with Microsoft’s Bing as its search engine.

“I faced a challenge because mobile carriers became fixed on revenue share percentage,’' Barton said Wednesday. To counter the competition, he tried to persuade potential partners that Google’s high-quality searches would generate more clicks — and therefore more advertising revenue — even if the carriers were paid a nominally lower percentage.

Google has emerged as the dominant player in internet searches, accounting for about 90% of the market. The Justice Department filed its antitrust lawsuit against the company nearly three years ago during the Trump administration, alleging Google has used its internet search dominance to gain an unfair advantage against competitors.

The trial, which began Tuesday, is expected to last 10 weeks.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta likely won’t issue a ruling until early next year. If he decides Google broke the law, another trial will decide what steps should be taken to rein in the Mountain View, California-based company.

Top executives at Google and its corporate parent Alphabet Inc., as well as those from other powerful technology companies are expected to testify. Among them is likely to be Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who succeeded Google co-founder Larry Page four years ago. Court documents also suggest that Eddy Cue, a high ranking Apple executive, might be called to the stand.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department also questioned Google chief economist Hal Varian for a second day about the way the company uses the massive amounts of data generated by user clicks to improve future searches and entrench its advantage over rivals.

Biden plan would overhaul 151-year-old mining law, make companies pay royalties for copper and gold

The U.S. stands out among other countries, such as Australia, Canada and Chile, that collect royalties on minerals. 

Terraces cut into the hillside at the huge Santa Rita copper mine in Grant County, N.M., are shown in this March 1999 file photo. The Biden administration is recommending changes to a 151-year-old law that governs mining for copper, gold and other hardrock minerals on U.S.-owned lands, including making companies pay royalties on what they extract.

(Richard Pipes/The Albuquerque Journal via AP, File)

BY MATTHEW DALY
 September 12, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is recommending changes to a 151-year-old law that governs mining for copper, gold and other hardrock minerals on U.S.-owned lands, including making companies for the first time pay royalties on what they extract.

A plan led by the Interior Department also calls for the creation of a mine leasing system and coordination of permitting efforts among a range of federal agencies. This comes as The White House has been pushing to boost domestic mining for minerals needed for electric vehicles, solar panels and other clean energy.

Under terms of an 1872 law, the U.S. does not collect royalties on minerals extracted from federal lands, a fact Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups have long lamented. The White House plan would impose a variable 4% to 8% net royalty on hardrock minerals produced on federal lands. The proposal needs approval by Congress — unlikely when the House is controlled by Republicans who have long opposed such fees.

Undeterred by such political reality, an interagency working group — led by Interior — touted the benefits of imposing royalties on about 750 hardrock mines on federal lands, mostly in the West. The figure does not include about 70 coal mines whose owners must pay federal royalties.

“A royalty would ensure that American taxpayers receive fair compensation for minerals extracted from federal lands,″ the working group said in a report Tuesday. The fee also could pay for programs to boost mining permits, clean up abandoned mine lands and help states and tribal governments that provide infrastructure and services to mining-dependent communities, the report said.

The U.S. stands out among other countries, such as Australia, Canada and Chile, that collect royalties on minerals. At least a dozen Western states also collect royalties on hardrock mining.

“Although thoughtful concerns were raised by the mining industry regarding the existing hardrock leasing system that is used on certain federal lands,’' the working group “did not receive any arguments as to why a properly designed leasing system could not be equally successful in the United States,’' the report said.

Deputy Interior Secretary Tommy Beaudreau, who chaired the working group, called the plan released Tuesday “a modernized approach” that would “meet the needs of the clean energy economy while respecting our obligations to tribal nations, taxpayers, the environment and future generations.’'

“Securing a safe, sustainable supply of critical minerals will support a resilient manufacturing base for technologies at the heart of the president’s investing-in-America agenda, including batteries, electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels,” said Joelle Gamble, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council.

Tribes and environmental groups welcomed the report but urged President Joe Biden to go further to protect communities, sacred places and water resources. The White House formed the working group last year as Biden pledged to boost production of lithium, nickel and other minerals used to power electric vehicles and other clean energy.

“These modest reforms are a good first step, but they’re not enough to safeguard our water and communities,” said Allison Henderson, southern Rockies director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an Arizona-based nonprofit. “The Biden administration should use its full authority to update these antiquated mining laws, prevent more mining industry devastation and preserve a livable planet for future generations.”

Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association, said the report did little to advance Biden’s stated goal to secure domestic mineral supplies while supporting responsible mining.

Creation of a leasing system, imposition of a punitive “dirt tax” and proposed royalties as high as 8% “will throw additional obstacles in the way of responsible domestic projects, forcing the U.S. to double-down on our already outsized import reliance from countries with questionable labor, safety and environmental practices,” Nolan said in a statement.

Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources panel, said Biden was “taking a sledgehammer to affordable, reliable energy.’'

If enacted, the proposed mining reforms “will force us to buy more critical minerals” from China and other countries that use forced or child labor “instead of harnessing our abundant resources here at home,” Barrasso said.

NFLPA renews call for natural grass to help prevent injuries after Rodgers gets hurt

 New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) is helped off the field after getting injured during the first quarter of an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Monday, Sept. 11, 2023, in East Rutherford, N.J. Rodgers has a torn left Achilles tendon and the 39-year-old New York Jets quarterback will miss the rest of the season, coach Robert Saleh announced Tuesday. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger, File)

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers (8) is sacked by Buffalo Bills defensive end Leonard Floyd (56) during the first quarter of an NFL football game, Monday, Sept. 11, 2023, in East Rutherford, N.J. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

 The NFL logo is shown on the artificial turf at So Fi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. Dec. 5, 2021. The NFL Players Association wants the league to switch all its fields to natural grass, calling it the easiest decision the NFL can make to protect players. 

(AP Photo/John McCoy, File)

BY TERESA M. WALKER
September 13, 2023

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The NFL Players Association wants the league to switch all its fields to natural grass, calling it “the easiest decision the NFL can make.”

Executive director Lloyd Howell issued a statement Wednesday morning saying NFL players “overwhelmingly prefer it and the data is clear that grass is simply safer than artificial turf.” Howell said the issue “has been near the top of the players’ list during my team visits and one I have raised with the NFL.”

The players’ union called for the change less than 48 hours after a season-ending injury to four-time NFL MVP quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers tore his left Achilles tendon in his debut with the New York Jets on Monday night.

Howell said in his statement they know there is an investment to making such a change. But he said there’s a bigger cost to the NFL if the league keeps losing its best players to “unnecessary injuries.” He noted the NFL flips surfaces to grass for World Cup or soccer exhibitions.

“But artificial surfaces are acceptable for our own players,” Howell said. “This is worth the investment and it simply needs to change now.”

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday on ESPN’s “First Take” that the playing surface is a “complex issue,” and part of the collective bargaining agreement covered the use of science to measure injuries. The league and the union use the same data to gauge injuries.

Goodell noted Rodgers had one of two Achilles tendon injuries in the NFL’s first week, with the other on grass.

“That is where we make decisions, on the basis of science, not because I see an injury that I don’t like,” Goodell said.

“Ultimately, I want our experts to come back and give it to us and that is why we have engaged with this process and actually accelerated the process with the NFLPA to be able to get that kind of data so we can make those kinds of decisions.”

The union has asked for all grass fields for years.

The NFLPA in April pointed to studies from 2012-22 that it says show a significant increase in non-contact injuries on artificial surfaces vs. grass fields. The NFL has defended the use of artificial turf, pointing to 2021 when the numbers for injuries on both surfaces were close.

Rodgers argued for grass all over the league last November while with the Green Bay Packers. He said some artificial surfaces are softer, creating more wobble when the foot hits the ground.

“It’s that wobble that can cause some of these non-contact knee injuries that we’ve seen,” Rodgers said at the time. “I’m not sure if that’s the standard that’s set for that type of surface or it’s the installation of that surface, but a lot of that could be just done away with if we had grass in every stadium.”

Agent Drew Rosenhaus echoed the NFLPA’s demand on social media Wednesday, sharing the union’s post.

“It’s a no brainer,” Rosenhaus wrote. “If the Owners care about their players & want to win, then they will make the switch! I encourage the leaders at the NFL to push for this change. It’s for the good of the players & the game itself.”

A new artificial surface was installed this year at MetLife Stadium. Jets coach Robert Saleh said Tuesday that he didn’t see the surface as being an issue in Rodgers’ injury.

The 39-year-old quarterback got hurt when he was taken down by Bills defender Leonard Floyd.

“If it was a non-contact injury, then I think that would be something to discuss, obviously,” Saleh said. “But that was kind of forceable, I think that was trauma induced. I do know the players prefer grass and there is a lot invested in those young men.”

Bills pass rusher Von Miller blames turf for the ACL injury that has him on the physically unable to perform list to start this season. He joined a campaign to get grass in all NFL stadiums.

Two-time NFL MVP Patrick Mahomes plays on grass in Kansas City and said it’s pretty simple.

“The numbers say that grass is healthier for the players, and I want to play on the surface that keeps me healthy,” Mahomes said.

The Tennessee Titans will debut the NFL’s newest artificial surface Sunday in their home opener against the Los Angeles Chargers after trying, and struggling, to grow grass in Nashville for 24 seasons. The Titans regularly replaced sod in the middle of the field, especially late in seasons.

Their fake turf features coconut husks and cork instead of rubber pellets. The Titans cited NFL data that put Nissan Stadium among the league leaders for games with players having lower-body injuries.

Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill and two-time All-Pro safety Kevin Byard both made clear they prefer grass. The Titans played one preseason game on the new surface, and Tennessee beat Virginia on Sept. 2 playing on the new turf.

Mike Vrabel, the Titans’ coach who played 14 NFL seasons in stadiums that featured original artificial turf, said the new field was definitely different. He said Wednesday the technology has really improved and he likes what Tennessee is using.

“I understand that we need to do everything that we can to keep our players safe and understand that sometimes injuries are unavoidable based on, whatever you’re doing and playing professional sports,” Vrabel said.

In the college game at Nissan Stadium, Virginia nose tackle Olasunkonmi Agunloye was carted off at the end of the first quarter after slipping as he celebrated on his way to the sideline.

Volunteers wide receiver Bru McCoy said the surface at Nissan Stadium was bouncy and required some adjustment. But he said he felt fast.

“At times, it felt like it had give,” McCoy said. “At times, it felt like you could really put your foot in the ground. No issues with it.”
___

AP Pro Football Writers Rob Maaddi and Dennis Waszak and AP Sports Writers Steve Megargee, Dave Skretta, Steve Reed, Brett Martel, John Wawrow and Joe Reedy contributed.
___

https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

US Senator subpoenas Saudis for documents on LIV-PGA Tour golf deal

Committee chairman Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Ct., speaks during a homeland security and governmental affairs subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2023, regarding the proposed PGA Tour-LIV Golf partnership. (AP Photo/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades)

BY ELLEN KNICKMEYER
September 13, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of a Senate investigations subcommittee issued a subpoena Wednesday for documents on Saudi Arabia’s new golf partnership with the PGA Tour, saying the kingdom had to be more transparent about what he said was its $35 billion in investments in the United States.

The move is the latest to challenge Saudi Arabia’s assertion that as a foreign government that enjoys sovereign immunity from many U.S. laws, it is not obliged to provide information on the golf deal.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s subpoena comes after the Connecticut Democrat’s unsuccessful requests to the head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Yassir al Rumayyan, to testify before Blumenthal’s Senate permanent select investigations subcommittee about the Saudi-PGA golf deal.

The surprise deal, which would join the venerable PGA Tour and a rival Saudi-funded golf start-up, LIV, was announced in June. It overnight gave the Saudi government a major role in one of the main institutions of U.S. sport. Terms of the agreement are still being worked out.

The Saudi sovereign wealth fund, called the Public Investment Fund, or PIF, is controlled by the Saudi government.

“The Saudi’s Public Investment Fund cannot have it both ways: If it wants to engage with the United States commercially, it must be subject to United States law and oversight,” Blumenthal said at a hearing by his subcommittee on Wednesday.

The Saudi Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the subpoena, which names the Public Investment Fund’s New York-based U.S. subsidiary, USSA International.

This summer’s announcement of the PGA-Saudi golf deal ended a legal battle between the two rivals. As part of that court fight, a federal judge in San Francisco had ruled that Saudi officials would have to sit for depositions and produce documents. Exemptions for commercial activity meant the Saudi claim of sovereign immunity did not apply, the judge said in the ruling, which the Saudis had been fighting at the time the deal was reached.

Blumenthal left open the possibility of subpoenas for Saudi officials.

“We began with this subpoena,” he said. “And we’ll see how much information it produces.”

Blumenthal’s probe of the Saudi investment in U.S. golf and in the United States in general has appeared to split the subcommittee, with many Republicans speaking up for the deal.

Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is working to diversify the kingdom’s oil-dependent economy with investments abroad.

However, critics accuse the kingdom of investing in major sports institutions in the West with the aim of “sportswashing” its record of human-rights abuses and of building its political influence abroad.

Blumenthal said available public records indicate the Saudi sovereign wealth fund has expanded its investments in the United States from $2 billion in 2018 to $35 billion now.

UAW ready to conduct rolling strike at all Detroit automakers, union boss says


Shawn Fain, the president of the powerful United Auto Workers union, indicated Wednesday that the group is ready to conduct a rolling strike at all automakers in Detroit. Photo courtesy of UAW/Facebook

Sept. 13 (UPI) -- Shawn Fain, the president of the powerful United Auto Workers union, indicated Wednesday that the group is ready to conduct a rolling strike at all automakers in Detroit.

Fain, speaking on Facebook Live, confirmed rumors that the union would target specific plants instead of all facilities. Other plants could be added to the strike depending on how it fares.

The deadline to negotiate a labor contract with the Detroit Three -- Ford Motor Co., General Motors and Stellantis -- expires just before midnight on Thursday and Fain's comments are the clearest signal yet that the union intends to strike.

"When we say our union is back in the fight, we mean it," he said on Facebook Live.

The union is calling the looming strike "Stand Up" in a nod to the union's legendary "Sit-Down" strike in the 1930s.

Fain dismissed corporate arguments that a rise in hourly wages would lead to a rise in car prices, as well as damage the economy. He added that the union is "making progress" at the negotiating tables but is still "very far apart" from its key priorities.

The union is seeking wage increases by as much as 46% and a 32-hour work week paid as 40 hours, as well as cost-of-living adjustments, pensions and retiree healthcare for all workers.

"In bargaining, we've repeatedly told the companies from Day 1, 'Sept. 14 is a deadline, not a reference point,'" Fain said, adding that the carmakers "nickel and dime" their workers.

"The Big Three can afford to give us our fair share. If they choose not to, they're choosing to strike themselves. We are not afraid to take action."

Some union members, however, express concern at the effectiveness of not striking at all plants at once, comments to the UAW's account on Facebook show.

"Not happy!!! Would rather accept offer that's on table than this pathetic partial strike while others work under expired contract!" commenter Aaron Spiers said on Facebook.

"There's no solidarity in watching some go hungry while others work and risk their job with no protection."

Others encouraged the union to "stand strong" and fight for job security as carmakers seek to outsource labor while some criticized both sides for waiting to "real serious" until the contracts are set to expire.

AP Sources: UAW may strike at small number of factories if it can’t reach deals with automakers

BY TOM KRISHER
September 13, 2023

DETROIT (AP) — Leaders of the United Auto Workers union are considering targeted strikes at a small number of factories run by each of Detroit’s three automakers if they can’t reach contract agreements by a Thursday night deadline.

The union’s leadership discussed smaller-scale strikes at a meeting on Friday, and local union leaders were told about the strategy on Tuesday afternoon, two people with knowledge of the strategy said.

The people didn’t want to be identified because they weren’t authorized to disclose details until President Shawn Fain updates workers Wednesday afternoon in a Facebook Live appearance.

At the Tuesday meeting, Fain didn’t say whether the union would target vehicle assembly plants or component factories, one of the people said. Strikes at parts plants could force production halts at multiple assembly factories. He also didn’t say how many workers would walk off their jobs.

The UAW wouldn’t comment.

Strikes at individual plants would be far less costly to the union, which would have to pay $500 per week to each of its 146,000 members if it strikes against General Motors, Stellantis and Ford at the same time. In that case, the union’s $825 million strike fund would run dry in just under three months, not including payments by the union for health insurance.

The strategy comes as the pace of talks with all three automakers picked up with less than two days left before contracts with the union expire at 11:59 p.m. on Thursday.

Both sides are exchanging offers and negotiating long hours. But they still appear to be far apart on wages and benefits.

The union and companies have said they are willing to talk in an effort to work out deals before the deadline. Still, Fain last week said he threw counter-offers from the companies into the trash, and he accused the companies of being slow to make wage and benefit offers.

Yet there was optimism on both sides that they still could reach deals before the deadline.

Ford CEO Jim Farley said Tuesday night that the company submitted a new offer to the union “that’s our most generous offer in 80 years of the UAW and Ford.”

The offer gives pay increases, eliminates different tiers of wages, has protection against inflation and makes bigger contributions to retirement plans. “It’s a significant, significant enhancement,” he said. “I’m still optimistic that we’ll get a deal, but there is a limit.”

Farley ruled out a union demand for a 32-hour work week for 40 hours of pay, but said it’s still possible to avoid a strike.

GM President Mark Reuss said Tuesday that a lot of progress had been made in the past few days. “The give-and-take is really happening, so we’re on a path, that’s part of the process,” he said at a Detroit industry gathering hosted by the trade publication Automotive News.

Reuss said GM’s goal is to reward employees while also investing in the future.

Fain, when asked on Labor Day about targeted strikes, said everything is on the table. “We’ve mapped out a lot of different strategies. But it’s really just going to depend on where we are on Sept. 14. That will dictate how we react.”

If the union strikes against all three automakers at the same time, it would be a first in the union’s more than 80-year history, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a history professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, who has researched the issue.

The union likely will strike at plants that make components for pickup trucks and big SUVs, which are the companies’ main profit centers, said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.

“They’re trying to impose some hardship on the companies and apply an accelerating level of pressure to encourage them to make an offer which will be acceptable to the rank and file and goes further toward meeting the demands that they have on the table,” he said.

It would make sense for the union to target the companies’ most popular and lucrative products, he said. “You would go after the components that would shut down as many of those product facilities as possible.”

The tactic would force the companies to lay off workers at assembly plants, and they would get unemployment benefits rather than money from the union strike fund, Masters said.

Last known offers from GM and Ford were 10% raises over four years with lump sum annual payments in the years that raises are not awarded. The last known offer from Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, was raises of 14.5% over four years with no lump sums for wages. All three companies offered lump sums in other areas to cover inflation and a bonus for ratifying a contract.

In addition to general wage increases, the union is seeking an end to varying tiers of wages for factory jobs; a 32-hour week with 40 hours of pay; the restoration of traditional defined-benefit pensions for new hires who now receive only 401(k)-style retirement plans; and a return of cost-of-living pay raises, among other benefits.

Perhaps most important to the union is that it be allowed to represent workers at 10 electric vehicle battery factories, most of which are being built by joint ventures between automakers and South Korean battery makers. The union wants those plants to receive top UAW wages. In part, that is because workers who now make components for internal combustion engines will need a place to work as the auto industry makes the transition to electric vehicles.

The auto companies say they face tremendous capital expenses as they develop electric vehicles and prepare factories to make them, all while still manufacturing cars, trucks and SUVs with internal combustion engines.

The union, however, says the companies are wildly profitable and can afford to give big raises because labor is only a small percentage of the price of a car. The companies collectively posted net income of $164 billion over the past decade, $20 billion of it this year.

Autoworkers strike would test Biden’s claim that he’s the most pro-union president in US history


BY WILL WEISSERT AND JOEY CAPPELLETTI
September 13, 2023

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The prospect of an autoworkers strike could test Joe Biden’s treasured assertion that he’s the most pro-union president in U.S. history.

The United Auto Workers is threatening to strike against General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, if tentative contact agreements aren’t reached by 11:59 p.m. on Thursday. That could reshape the political landscape in the battleground state of Michigan and potentially unleash economic shockwaves nationwide.

The auto industry accounts for about 3% of the nation’s gross domestic product and though union leaders say they are mulling strikes at a small number of factories run by those automakers, as many as 146,000 workers could eventually walk off their jobs. The effects would be most immediate in Michigan and other auto job-heavy states such as Ohio and Indiana. But a prolonged strike could trigger car shortages and layoffs in auto-supply industries and other sectors.

“Anything that goes beyond a week, you’re going to start feeling the pain,” said Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. “And anything beyond two weeks, that’s when the effects start to compound.”


Why the United Auto Workers union is poised to strike major US car makers this week

Auto workers leader slams companies for slow bargaining, files labor complaint with government

Biden says auto workers need ‘good jobs that can support a family’ in union talks with carmakers

Doc Killian, who has worked in a Ford assembly plant in Wayne, Michigan, for 26 years, says he can no longer afford the cars he helps build, crystallizing how the nation’s middle class has been squeezed.

“I think the American public as a whole realizes the impact that the American autoworkers have on the economy,” Killian said. “If we suffer, the American economy suffers.”

Biden has built his political career around just such an argument, repeating the mantra that the “middle class built America, and that unions built the middle class.” His administration also has championed organized labor and promoted worker organization unabashedly, with Biden frequently proclaiming himself “the most pro-union president in American history.”

Still, Shawn Fain, who was elected president of the United Auto Workers in March after promising a more confrontational stance in negotiating with automakers, countered Biden’s claim on CNN this week, saying, “I think there’s a lot of work to be done in that category.”

Fain has sought to broaden his argument beyond just autoworkers, telling a recent livestream that his union’s demands are about “raising the standard for workers everywhere.”

“I truly believe that all of America will stand with us in this fight,” Fain said.

Biden also must contend with criticism from former President Donald Trump, the early leader in next year’s Republican presidential primary, who is now pushing for the UAW to endorse him. Trump also has decried rules pushed by the Biden administration that require two-thirds of new passenger cars sold in the United States to be all-electric by 2032.

“Stand strong against Biden’s vicious attack on American labor and American auto workers,” Trump said in a statement Wednesday. “And if you want more jobs, higher wages and soaring pensions, vote for President Trump and have your leaders endorse me. If they don’t, drop out of the Union and start a new one that’s going to protect your interests right.”

But some union leaders and members have scoffed at suggestions that the U.S. not embrace efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because manufacturers in China and elsewhere could rush in to produce electric vehicles if the U.S. does not. Fain, who has previously applauded the “transition to a clean auto industry” as long as autoworkers “have a place in the new economy,” said Trump was “not someone who stands for a good standard of living.”

Dave Green, a UAW regional director in Ohio and Indiana, said the former president “carries no credibility in my book” since “he did nothing to support organized labor except lip service.”

Green said he still considers Biden the most pro-union president of his lifetime. But he hopes the White House won’t stay neutral if there’s a strike.

“We don’t forget,” Green said. “When you’re in distress, the people who are there supporting you — that goes a long way.”

Biden faced some criticism from labor groups last year when he urged Congress to approve legislation preventing rail workers from going on strike, fearing an upending of supply chains heading into the holidays. But, unlike with rail and airline workers, the president doesn’t have the authority to order autoworkers to stay on the job.

Nowhere will the political fallout of an auto workers strike be felt more than Michigan, which Biden won by nearly 3 percentage points in 2020. The state shifted further during last year’s midterms, leaving the governor’s office and Legislature Democratic-controlled for the first time in 40 years.

“The UAW is a major player in Michigan politics and if there is a strike, of whatever duration, it’ll have a political impact,” said Mark Brewer, former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party. A strike, Brewer said, would leave Biden having “to speak and act consistent with his previous advocacy for working people.”

That might mean alienating other allies, though, since Biden has in the past received support from top U.S. automakers on the administration’s rules over future sales. And Ray Curry, the former UAW president who was unseated by Fain, had worked with Biden in the past, even attending White House ceremonies.

Biden was nonetheless anxious to meet Fain given the pair’s shared working-class backgrounds, and they sat down together one-on-one in the Oval Office in July. The White House says it has been in regular touch with the UAW since then, and that overall communication is much better now.

“We are engaged regularly with the parties, and of course seek to support negotiations in any way that is helpful,” said Michigan native and longtime Democratic and Biden adviser Gene Sperling, who the president tapped as the administration’s point person on the autoworker negotiations. “But there is no substitute for the parties staying at the table 24/7 to come to what the president wants to be a win-win agreement.”

At Wednesday’s White House briefing, the chair of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers did not answer questions about whether the president would support striking workers or whether he might step in to try and head off a strike. Jared Bernstein cited Biden’s record of backing unions and collective bargaining.

“The president’s been very much engaged,” Bernstein said of the auto negotiations.

Union support was instrumental in helping Biden overcome a slow start to clinch the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, and it helped him win not just Michigan but Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as he defeated Trump in that year’s general election.

Underscoring his commitment to organized labor, Biden’s lone campaign rally since launching his reelection bid in April came in June in Philadelphia, when more than a dozen of the country’s largest and most powerful unions endorsed Biden for a second term.

So many unions banding together for an unprecedented joint endorsement so early in the election cycle was meant as a show of strength for the president. Conspicuously absent from the event, though, was the UAW. Fain has since said that if Biden wants the UAW’s 2024 endorsement, he’ll have to earn it.

Other union leaders acknowledge what’s at stake for Biden.

“Are strikes uncomfortable for an administration?” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, which endorsed Biden’s reelection this summer. “Of course they are.”

But, she said, “The administration believes in workers and believes that workers have the power to have a better life through collective organization and through collective bargaining.”

“This is not a soundbite to them,” Weingarten said. “This is a belief system.”
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Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

FIFTY YEARS LATER
Popular nasal decongestant doesn’t actually relieve congestion, FDA advisers say


Sudafed and other common nasal decongestants containing pseudoephedrine are on display behind the counter at Hospital Discount Pharmacy in Edmond, Okla., Jan. 11, 2005. On Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2023 advisers to the Food and Drug Administration said that a different ingredient, phenylephrine, is ineffective at relieving nasal congestion. Drugmakers reformulated their products with phenylephrine after a 2006 law required pseudoephedrine-containing medications be sold from the behind pharmacy counter.

BY MATTHEW PERRONE
September 12, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — The leading decongestant used by millions of Americans looking for relief from a stuffy nose is no better than a dummy pill, according to government experts who reviewed the latest research on the long-questioned drug ingredient.

Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on Tuesday against the effectiveness of the key drug found in popular versions of Sudafed, Dayquil and other medications stocked on store shelves.

“Modern studies, when well conducted, are not showing any improvement in congestion with phenylephrine,” said Dr. Mark Dykewicz, an allergy specialist at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

The FDA assembled its outside advisers to take another look at phenylephrine, which became the main drug in over-the-counter decongestants when medicines with an older ingredient — pseudoephedrine — were moved behind pharmacy counters. A 2006 law had forced the move because pseudoephedrine can be illegally processed into methamphetamine.

Those original versions of Sudafed and other medicines remain available without a prescription, but they’re less popular and account for about one-fifth of the $2.2 billion market for oral decongestants. Phenylephrine versions — sometimes labeled “PE” on packaging — make up the rest.

If the FDA follows through on the panel’s recommendations, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer and other drugmakers could be required to pull their oral medications containing phenylephrine from store shelves. That would likely force consumers to switch to the behind-the-counter pseudoephedrine products or to phenylephrine-based nasal sprays and drops.

In that scenario, the FDA would have to work with drugstores, pharmacists and other health providers to educate consumers about the remaining options for treating congestion, panelists said Tuesday.

The group also told the FDA that studying phenylephrine at higher doses was not an option because it can push blood pressure to potentially dangerous levels.

“I think there’s a safety issue there,” said Dr. Paul Pisaric of Archwell Health in Oklahoma. “I think this is a done deal as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t work.”

This week’s two-day meeting was prompted by University of Florida researchers who petitioned the FDA to remove most phenylephrine products based on recent studies showing they failed to outperform placebo pills in patients with cold and allergy congestion. The same researchers also challenged the drug’s effectiveness in 2007, but the FDA allowed the products to remain on the market pending additional research.

That was also the recommendation of FDA’s outside experts at the time, who met for a similar meeting on the drug in 2007.

This time, the 16 members of the FDA panel unanimously agreed that current evidence doesn’t show a benefit for the drug.

“I feel this drug in this oral dose should have been removed from the market a long time ago,” said Jennifer Schwartzott, the patient representative on the panel. “Patients require and deserve medications that treat their symptoms safely and effectively and I don’t believe that this medication does that.”

The advisers essentially backed the conclusions of an FDA scientific review published ahead of this week’s meeting, which found numerous flaws in the 1960s and 1970s studies that supported phenylephrine’s original approval. The studies were “extremely small” and used statistical and research techniques no longer accepted by the agency, regulators said.

“The bottom line is that none of the original studies stand up to modern standards of study design or conduct,” said Dr. Peter Starke, the agency’s lead medical reviewer.

Additionally, three larger, rigorously conducted studies published since 2016 showed no difference between phenylephrine medications and placebos for relieving congestion. Those studies were conducted by Merck and Johnson & Johnson and enrolled hundreds of patients.

A trade group representing nonprescription drugmakers, the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, argued that the new studies had limitations and that consumers should continue to have “easy access” to phenylephrine.

Like many other over-the-counter ingredients, phenylephrine was essentially grandfathered into approval during a sweeping FDA review begun in 1972. It has been sold in various forms for more than 75 years, predating the agency’s own regulations on drug effectiveness.

“Any time a product has been on the market that long, it’s human nature to make assumptions about what we think we know about the product,” said Dr. Theresa Michele, who leads the FDA’s office of nonprescription drugs.

But FDA reviewers said their latest assessment reflects new testing insights into how quickly phenylephrine is metabolized when taken by mouth, leaving only trace levels that reach nasal passages to relieve congestion. The drug appears more effective when applied directly to the nose, in sprays or drops, and those products are not under review.

There’s unlikely to be any immediate impact from Tuesday’s panel vote, which is not binding.

The group’s negative opinion opens the door for the FDA to pull phenylephrine from a federal list of decongestants deemed effective for over-the-counter pills and liquids. The FDA said removing the products would eliminate “unnecessary costs and delay in care of taking a drug that has no benefit.”

The FDA’s nasal decongestants drug list, or monograph, has not been updated since 1995. The process for changing a monograph has traditionally taken years or decades, requiring multiple rounds of review and public comment. But a 2020 law passed by Congress streamlines the process, which should allow the FDA to accelerate the publication of new standards for nonprescription ingredients.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.