AP Staffers Demanded To Know Why Emily Wilder Was Fired After A Conservative "Smear Campaign" Over Her Pro-Palestinian Activism

"Wilder was a young journalist, unnecessarily harmed by the AP’s handling and announcement of its firing of her."

Tasneem Nashrulla BuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on May 24, 2021

Angel Mendoza Emily Wilder

More than 100 Associated Press employees have criticized the way the news organization fired a young journalist last week after a conservative "smear campaign" over her pro-Palestinian activism in college.

In the open letter published Monday, AP staffers from across the world demanded more clarity from the company about why Emily Wilder, 22, was fired as a news associate in Phoenix only three weeks into her job.

"Wilder was a young journalist, unnecessarily harmed by the AP’s handling and announcement of its firing of her," the staffers said in the letter. "We need to know that the AP would stand behind and provide resources to journalists who are the subject of smear campaigns and online harassment."
Twitter: @kat__stafford

In a viral Twitter thread last week, the Stanford College Republicans branded Wilder, who is Jewish, as an "anti-Israel agitator" by highlighting her old social media posts critical of Israel and her participation in pro-Palestinian groups and rallies during her time at Stanford.

Their tweets were amplified by several conservative news outlets as well as Republican lawmakers like Sen. Tom Cotton, who raised questions about AP's objectivity in covering Israel and Palestinian territories.

The AP fired Wilder on Wednesday despite an editor initially assuring her that she would not face any recrimination for her old social media posts, she said.

According to Wilder's termination letter, which she shared with BuzzFeed News, her old posts prompted the company to review her social media activity. In a statement to BuzzFeed News, the AP said that she was fired for violating the company's social media policy "during her time at AP," but they did not specify the offending posts either to her or to the staff.

The staffers said AP's lack of communication after Wilder's firing "gives us no confidence that any one of us couldn’t be next, sacrificed without explanation."

The employees noted that interest groups involved in targeting Wilder were "celebrating their victory and turning their sights on more AP journalists."

"Once we decide to play this game on the terms of those acting in bad faith, we can’t win," the letter said.

Responding to the letter Monday, AP spokesperson Lauren Easton said, "The Associated Press looks forward to continuing the conversation with staff about AP’s social media policy."

Easton appeared to refute some aspects of the letter, saying that the company's news leadership sent a note about Wilder's termination to its global news staff on Saturday and that AP "did not choose to name Emily Wilder publicly, as the letter states."

Easton also noted that AP's social media policy is negotiated with the News Media Guild which represents its US news staffers.

"Our News Values and Principles, including our social media guidelines, exist to ensure that the comments of one person cannot jeopardize our journalism or the journalists who are covering the story," Easton said.

Wilder did not respond to a request for comment about the letter.

In their letter, AP staffers said the episode also prompted the public to question the credibility of AP's reporting on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and did a disservice to their "courageous journalists in Gaza — who have already greatly suffered this month — and in Israel."


The Israeli military bombed the Gaza building housing AP's bureau and other international media organizations, without providing evidence that Hamas — the Palestinian militant group — operated there. Israeli officials gave the journalists just minutes to evacuate before destroying the building.

After her firing, Wilder and several journalists noted the disproportionate backlash against peers who publicly hold pro-Palestinian views and questioned the decision to fire employees based on newsrooms' vague social media policies governing objectivity.

"The lack of clarity on the violations of the social media policy has made AP journalists afraid to engage on social media — often critical to our jobs — in any capacity," AP staffers wrote in the letter.

They asked the AP to offer clarity about the disciplinary process used for Wilder and to specify which of her social media posts led to her termination.

Employees also demanded a commitment from AP to support any staffers "targeted by harassment campaigns" and a forum where AP journalists could discuss the best social media practices for its journalists.

"It’s important that the AP and its employees can articulate where the lines are drawn," the letter said.

In College, She Was A Pro-Palestinian Activist. The AP Just Fired Her After A Conservative "Witch Hunt."

Emily Wilder spoke with BuzzFeed News after she was fired by the Associated Press when conservatives shared her old social media posts and noted her pro-Palestinian college activism.

Tasneem NashrullaBuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on May 22, 2021

A 22-year-old Stanford graduate was fired by the Associated Press on Wednesday, after what she described as a "witch hunt" by conservatives who resurfaced her old social media posts critical of Israel, as well as her pro-Palestinian activism in college.

"It really felt like I got hung out to dry," said Emily Wilder, who was fired only three weeks after joining the AP as a news associate in Phoenix. The role was not a reporting position and did not involve covering international news.

A spokesperson for AP told BuzzFeed News that Wilder was dismissed for violating the company's social media policy "during her time at AP."

"We have this policy so the comments of one person cannot create dangerous conditions for our journalists covering the story," the spokesperson said.

However, Wilder told BuzzFeed News that her editors at AP refused to tell her which of her tweets or posts had violated the news agency's policies. The AP spokesperson also did not specify the offending posts.

Several journalists on Friday criticized the AP's decision to fire Wilder, noting the disproportionate backlash against peers who publicly hold pro-Palestinian views. Others were critical of firing journalists for their old college or high school tweets.



Twitter: @GlennKesslerWP


Wilder, who is Jewish, said AP's decision to fire her felt like a "convenient cover story for sacrificing me as collateral" after conservative outlets and lawmakers branded her as anti-Israel and slammed the news organization for hiring her.

Wilder, who first spoke with SF Gate on Thursday, said the "harassment campaign" against her began when the Stanford College Republicans on Monday wrote a Twitter thread branding her as an "anti-Israel agitator" and highlighting her pro-Palestinian posts and activism during her time at Stanford.

In one post shared by the group, Wilder called Sheldon Adelson, the late billionaire GOP mega-donor and close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a "naked mole rat." She also referred to conservative commentator Ben Shapiro as "a little turd" in a 2019 op-ed for the Stanford Daily.

The Twitter thread brought up her affiliations with Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as her participation in a 2017 "Return the Birthright” rally in New York.

Wilder said the Stanford College Republicans had "antagonized" her and her friends in the past over her activism in college, including a time she hosted a 2019 speech by Jewish cartoonist Eli Valley, an outspoken critic of Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

"They were holding on those screenshots for three years, I guess," Wilder said. "They're known for these kind of cheap tactics and for their sole politics really being to disrupt other people's lives."

After the tweets went viral, Wilder said she was shaken and concerned, especially after receiving a barrage of online harassment.

"Any woman in journalism understands how violent and vile those messages can become very quickly," she said.

However, she said an AP editor assured her in a phone call on Tuesday night that the organization was most concerned about the harassment she was facing and was going to take steps to address that.

Wilder said the editor told her that she would not face repercussions for her old posts and activism she was involved with in college before becoming a journalist.

During that call, she said, the editor also suggested that she should remove "Black Lives Matter" from her Twitter bio, which she did at the time.

The next day, however, things "really escalated" after her old posts were amplified by several conservative news outlets, including Fox News, and by Republican lawmakers like Sen. Tom Cotton.

In one article, the Washington Free Beacon wrote that Wilder's hire "could fuel concerns about the AP's objectivity amid revelations that the news outlet shared an office building with Hamas military intelligence in Gaza."

The AP has said Israel's army had not provided any evidence so far to support its decision to bomb the building that housed the AP's Gaza bureau and other international media organizations.

Wilder said that on Wednesday afternoon the same AP editor who had assured her that she would not face consequences for her old posts and activism called to tell her she was being terminated immediately.

According to Wilder, the editor told her that since their last conversation "new things came to light," prompting a review of her social media.

Wilder's termination letter, which she shared with BuzzFeed News, reads, "As discussed, over the last few days some of your social media posts made prior to joining AP surfaced. Those posts prompted a review of your social media activity since you began with the AP, May 3, 2021. In that review, it was found that some tweets violated AP’s News Values and Principles."

The letter recalled that during her first week at the AP, an editor had a meeting with her and "specifically spoke to you about the social media expectations of AP journalists."

"It’s paramount that journalists working for The Associated Press cover the news impartially, do not have any conflicts that could be perceived as leading to bias in reporting and on social media refrain from sharing opinions or engaging in any activity that could compromise AP’s reputation for objectivity," the letter said.

Wilder said that when she asked what posts violated the AP's policies, she did not get an answer from either her editor or the letter.

She said she did not believe any of her social media posts were egregious enough for her to be singled out and fired and that the AP should have given her a warning instead of firing her immediately.

Amid the recent surge of violence in the region, leading to more than 200 Palestinians being killed in Israeli airstrikes, Wilder said she retweeted articles about the AP building being bombed by the Israeli military and about the death toll in Gaza.

She also wrote a tweet questioning the language media outlets used while writing about Israel and Palestinian territories and how one side always gets "policed and censored."

Twitter: @vv1lder

Wilder said social media policies surrounding objectivity were "so imprecise, vague, and nebulous" that they were "haphazardly and selectively enforced and almost universally and disproportionally used against journalists of color and journalists who expressed dissent towards the state of Israel."

Wilder said that while she was heartened by the support she was getting from others, she hoped that people would recognize Palestinian journalists and journalists of color have long experienced this kind of blowback for expressing their views even when "it's totally irrelevant to your beat or your job."
Twitter: @vv1lder

In a statement posted on Twitter Saturday, Wilder said her firing is "heartbreaking as a young journalist so hungry to learn from the fearless investigative reporting of AP journalists."

"It's terrifying as a young woman who was hung out to dry when I needed support from my institution most. And it's enraging as a Jewish person — who grew up in a Jewish community, attended Orthodox schooling and devoted my college years to studying Palestine and Israel — that I could be defamed as antisemitic and thrown under the bus in the process," she wrote.

"While the last few days have been overwhelming, I will not be intimidated into silence," Wilder added. "I will be back soon.

“THE GRAVE YARD DOESN’T  LIE”

The Texas Winter Storm And Power Outages Killed Hundreds More People Than The State Says

A BuzzFeed News analysis shows the catastrophic failure of Texas’s power grid in February killed hundreds of medically vulnerable people.

Peter AldhousBuzzFeed News Reporter

Stephanie M. LeeBuzzFeed News Reporter

Zahra HirjiBuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on May 26, 2021, 

The true number of people killed by the disastrous winter storm and power outages that devastated Texas in February is likely four or five times what the state has acknowledged so far. A BuzzFeed News data analysis reveals the hidden scale of a catastrophe that trapped millions of people in freezing darkness, cut off access to running water, and overwhelmed emergency services for days.

The state’s tally currently stands at 151 deaths. But by looking at how many more people died during and immediately after the storm than would have been expected — an established method that has been used to count the full toll of other disasters — we estimate that 700 people were killed by the storm during the week with the worst power outages. This astonishing toll exposes the full consequence of officials’ neglect in preventing the power grid’s collapse despite repeated warnings of its vulnerability to cold weather, as well as the state’s failure to reckon with the magnitude of the crisis that followed.

Many of the uncounted victims of the storm and power outages were already medically vulnerable — with chronic conditions including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and kidney problems. But without the intense cold and stress they experienced during the crisis, many of these people could still be alive today.

This was the case for 80-year-old Julius Gonzales, his family believes. As dawn broke on February 15, he made his way to one of his regular dialysis appointments, only to find that the clinic had lost power and was closed. So the retired maintenance worker turned his Dodge Ram around and headed back to the mobile home he’d shared with his wife, Mary, in the small town of Arcola, Texas, for nearly 20 years.

So began the last 24 hours of his life

In its count of deaths caused by the winter storm, the Texas Department of State Health Services is relying heavily on records submitted from officials in individual counties. Most are confirmed deaths from hypothermia. But the official count also includes accidents on the ice and carbon monoxide poisoning. So far, relatively few of these deaths are people with existing medical problems that were exacerbated by the storm and power outages.

Although government agencies have traditionally accounted for the impact of disasters using narrow counts like the one being run by Texas officials, there is a growing recognition that this method may vastly underestimate the true toll.

The problem came into stark relief in the weeks after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, when news organizations, including BuzzFeed News, provided evidence that many more people had died as the island struggled with the collapse of its power grid than the official count of 64 killed by the storm.

Eventually, Puerto Rico’s governor commissioned a comprehensive analysis from researchers at George Washington University in Washington, DC, which estimated that 2,975 more people than expected died between September 2017 and February 2018, as large parts of the island went without power for months. This is now accepted by the authorities in Puerto Rico as the official toll from Hurricane Maria and the subsequent power outages.

The Texas Department of State Health Services did not respond to requests for comment on our findings on the death toll from the winter storm or whether they would investigate further.

According to the experts consulted by BuzzFeed News, “excess deaths” analyses like the GWU report on Hurricane Maria and our accounting for the Texas winter storm provide the best way to measure the full impact of major disasters.

Ariel Karlinsky, an economist and statistician at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who is compiling the World Mortality Dataset to aid similar studies of the deaths caused by disasters and diseases, put it this way: “The graveyard doesn’t lie.”


Thomas Shea / AFP via Getty Image
Power lines in Texas City, Texas, Feb. 19

In the winter storm’s aftermath, the governor, elected politicians, and the public demanded answers about how Texas’s grid could fail so spectacularly and who was to blame.

The Texas legislature grilled leaders at ERCOT, a nonprofit overseeing the state’s grid, and the Public Utility Commission of Texas, which regulates ERCOT, about why more wasn’t done to prepare for power supply problems and warn the public about what could happen. Since then, ERCOT fired its CEO and at least seven of its board members have resigned. Additionally, the state’s three commissioners at the PUC all resigned.

Now all eyes are on the state legislature, which is debating a sprawling bill that would empower state regulators to require power providers, including some natural gas operators, to protect their equipment against cold weather or face financial penalties. The bill passed the Senate, and an updated version just passed the House. The chambers have a week to resolve their differences and send the proposal to the governor’s office to get signed into law.

But for many families who lost loved ones during the storm, none of these steps are enough. So far, the relatives of more than 60 people who died during the disaster have filed wrongful death lawsuits against ERCOT, the state’s primary grid operator, as well as specific power providers, according to the lawyers representing these cases. Dozens more families may follow suit.

The Dallas-based law firm Fears Nachawati, for example, is representing the families of about 80 people who died during the storm. “Some people just froze to death in their chair,” said lawyer Majed Nachawati.

“It’s astounding and it is disturbing, and our job is to make sure we hold the [power] generators, who we believe primarily responsible, accountable for the untimely deaths of these 80 deceased victims,” Nachawati said. “Those people being mothers, fathers, children, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters.”

In response, ERCOT has argued in court filings that “it is entitled to sovereign immunity due to its organization and function as an arm of State government.” But whether or not this is true is still an open question.

When an unrelated case challenging ERCOT’s assertion that it is shielded from liability went before the Texas Supreme Court in March, the justices punted on making a decision.

For some families, the failure to account for the full toll of the storm and power outages could have serious financial consequences. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is offering assistance with funeral expenses for families who lacked insurance or other help with the costs. But the deadline to apply was May 20, and to qualify, applicants needed to confirm that the death had been directly or indirectly attributed to the disaster by state, local, or tribal medical officials.

As of May 17, FEMA had paid out in just two cases.

In response to questions from BuzzFeed News about what happens if any deaths are linked to the storm after the May 20 deadline, the agency responded by email: “In order for FEMA to process late registrations, applicants must submit a letter to FEMA that explains the extenuating circumstances that prevented them from applying for assistance in a timely manner.”

Producing a more accurate count of the deaths linked to the storm may help bring closure to some grieving Texan families. It is also vital so that the authorities responsible for the state’s infrastructure, emergency services, and disaster responses can learn what needs to be done to prevent a future tragedy of a similar magnitude.

“We need to know who’s most at risk,” said Casey, the environmental epidemiologist at Columbia University. “Right now we’re missing big chunks of data and a lot of people are getting missed out of this accounting.”


Michael Starghill Jr. for BuzzFeed News
Mary Gonzales at her home in Arcola, Texas, on May 22

In Arcola, Julius Gonzales’s sudden death has left his family with a host of financial problems. The trailer that he and his wife lived in was in his name, and Mary Gonzales wanted it transferred to hers. But for that to happen, she said, the bank told her that she’d have to pay off the mortgage in full right away. She decided that she couldn’t afford that, so she is surrendering the home. While she grieves, she is deciding which of a half-century’s worth of their possessions to keep when she moves into her son’s house next door.

Another source of stress was the medical examiner’s delay in issuing an official cause of death. Having worked in maintenance for the nearby city of Stafford for more than two decades, Julius had accrued a pension that was supporting them both after he retired. But without a final death certificate to show the city, his wife said she was not able to access that money.

Three months after Julius died — after his funeral was held, after he was cremated — his family finally received the certificate on May 18.

While having it solves some problems, it still doesn’t answer Mary’s biggest question: Could her husband’s death have been prevented?

“When you’re middle-class and — not poor, but you don’t know a lot — you just stay in the dark,” Mary said. “Nobody hears about you.” ●

EXERPT THE ARTICLE IS VERY LONG AND THOROUGH

READ IT HERE Texas’s Winter Storm Killed Hundreds More Than Reported (buzzfeednews.com)

The World Has Changed, But The Hospitality Industry Hasn’t. That’s Bad For Workers.

Tenuous employment. Dangerous working conditions. The pandemic has exposed fundamental flaws with how the hospitality industry operates.

Clarissa-Jan Lim BuzzFeed News Reporter

Posted on May 28, 2021,

Ting Shen for BuzzFeed News

Keisha Banks

For two decades, Keisha Banks had worked on and off in the hospitality industry — until last year, when she was unceremoniously let go from her job as an event server at the Chateau Marmont via a mass email sent in March 2020 to employees of the iconic Hollywood hotel.

Banks, 41, had an inkling that things were going downhill in the industry as soon as hotel guests started “dropping off like flies” in early March, canceling their reservations for events and rooms. She told BuzzFeed News she was taken aback because the notice was “vague and impersonal.”

“When you work at Chateau, one of the things they say is, ‘We're all like family here,’” Banks said. “And then to get this really blunt, ‘You’re cut off’ email was bad.”

It was the first in a streak of unfortunate events that has upended her life and the lives of many others like her.

As tourism collapsed and businesses closed down in the early weeks of the pandemic, millions of people became unemployed, facing down a world of uncertainty. No industry dodged the effects of the pandemic, but almost none was clobbered as hard as leisure and hospitality, which saw its unemployment rate peak in April 2020 at a staggering 39%.

Now, as the US emerges from the pandemic, with 50% of adults fully vaccinated as of the end of May, workers are returning to industries decimated by COVID-19. Many businesses are reopening and travel numbers are rebounding, and there were notable hospitality job gains in April 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But employment in the industry is still down by 2.8 million, or 16.8%, since February last year. Some businesses, especially those in hospitality, have reportedly struggled to find workers as they reopen. As a result, some business owners have concluded that unemployment benefits are too robust, rather than that their businesses are not paying people enough. In recent weeks, some two dozen Republican governors have ended the extra $300 per week in federal unemployment benefits in their states so as to force people back to work.

But for many workers, the pandemic has exposed fundamental flaws with how the hospitality industry operates. In many cases, they are being asked to go back to jobs with weak employment and safety protections, and for pay that still does not reflect the value of their work or the economic destruction that the pandemic wrought on their lives. After 15 months of tumult, not everyone is ready or willing to return to a job that underpays, offers no paid sick leave, and treats them as expendable.

For Banks, who has long looked to hospitality work to bolster her income, she’s hesitant to return to an industry that has not done right by her. And she no longer feels like she can rely on this line of work the way she used to.

“It would mean going back to a broken system,” she said. “Why should rich people get to choose their careers and the rest of us be forced to get just the less fulfilling jobs that are left over?”


Nolwen Cifuentes for BuzzFeed News

The rear area of the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles.

Banks was one of the hundreds of employees whom the Chateau Marmont fired in March last year as hotels’ occupancy rates plummeted. Kurt Petersen, copresident of Unite Here Local 11, a labor union that represents hospitality workers in Southern California, said the Chateau neither offered its employees severance nor extended their health benefits beyond a few weeks.

In the months after Banks was laid off, Los Angeles slowly but surely grew into a COVID hot spot. Some of the city’s highest case rates were recorded in neighborhoods where residents are more likely to live in cramped spaces and hold low-paying “essential” jobs with little to no workplace protections.

Meanwhile, as thousands of essential workers got sick and those in hospitality were forced to choose between unemployment and risking their health, the lifestyles of the rich and fabulous sauntered on. Despite stay-at-home orders and a statewide mask mandate, celebrities and influencers threw ragers, brazenly flouted safety guidelines, and challenged public criticism by lamenting, as Kris Jenner did, that “all we can do is live our lives the best way we know how.” California lawmakers, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, attended birthday dinners and traveled with lobbyists to Hawaii, disregarding the very restrictions they had ordered.

As Banks watched politicians and celebrities gallivant around town, it struck her that the only people who were out were the ones who could afford to get sick. “They can’t possibly put themselves into the shoes of other people,” Banks said.

Banks took safety precautions as seriously as she could, limiting trips to the grocery store, passing up invites to socialize, and staying home. She was furloughed twice from her second job as a recruiter and then laid off in July. She waited for cases to go down and for her job at the Chateau to materialize again, all while watching the rich and powerful in her city, her state, and her country behave as if COVID-19 weren’t killing 4,000 people in the US a day at its peak.

“They can’t possibly put themselves into the shoes of other people.”

But the longer she waited, the worse it got. Restaurants were closing, many unlikely to return. Hotels were not operating at full capacity. No one was hiring. Her credit card debt piled up.

“You're just kind of waiting around for nothing,” she said. “I was sinking money into rent. At some point, I thought, If I don't make a decision now, then I'll have no money to live off of.”

Banks stayed in LA for a few more months until she could no longer justify pouring what little savings she had into rent and bills. In December, she moved back into her parents’ home in Stafford, Virginia, with $2,500 to her name. By the end of that month, after being served with a lawsuit from Wells Fargo for falling behind on her payments, she filed for bankruptcy.

Banks, who lived paycheck to paycheck before the pandemic, has not worked since August. After moving back in with her parents, she decided it was not worth contracting the virus and potentially exposing them for a job that paid $10 an hour. Even though she will be fully inoculated against COVID-19 by mid-June, she isn’t eager to jump back into the workforce.

“It hasn't even been a full year that I've taken off work, but I personally feel like a failure, I guess,” Banks said. “Society makes you feel like you have to be working all the time, you have to be producing all the time, you have to be doing all these things. But in my mind, I'm thinking, Well, this is my year off to relax. Then for the rest of my life, I'm going to be working.”

Elyse Butler for BuzzFeed News

May Chang

The pandemic placed hospitality workers in a losing position. Those who were able to keep working were forced into a situation that endangered their health and safety, or that of their family.

May Chang, 52, had to weigh this risk last summer, when her former employer, Ala Moana Hotel in Honolulu, asked if she would be ready to go back to work soon. It was six months after she was laid off from her job as a housekeeper at the luxury resort. Although she desperately needed work, Chang, who lived with her husband, two daughters, and a baby grandson, had to consider her family’s safety.

She and her husband sat down and discussed if they could afford to scrape by for a few more months without her income. There were bills to pay. Her brother in the Philippines relied on money she sent to get medical treatment for his epilepsy. Chang’s unemployment claims had not yet been approved. Her husband, a bank teller, was still going to work, but with reduced hours and pay. At 65, he had planned to retire soon but instead clung to his job because both he and Chang needed health insurance.

Her unemployment benefits finally started coming in after months of delay, but it was far less than what she had earned from her job. Going back to work would alleviate some of the pressure, but COVID cases were hitting record highs in Oahu that month when her employer contacted her. Chang was also anxious about protecting her husband, whose health issues would put him at a higher risk if he contracted the virus, and her grandson, who was only a few months old.

“I was so afraid to expose myself out there, especially [in a] hotel, you have all kinds of people there from other countries,” she said. So she told her employer that she wanted to go back to work and hoped that they would keep her in mind, but was not yet comfortable doing so.

The tourism industry represents nearly a quarter of Hawaii’s economy, researcher and economics professor Sumner LaCroix told Hawaii Public Radio; data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that more than 50% of the state’s hospitality workforce was cut in the early months of the pandemic.

The state has inched toward reopening since the vaccines arrived. State travel data show that Hawaii saw nearly twice the number of visitors in each of the last three months than it did in January or February. The state initially mandated that all visitors during the pandemic commit to a self-quarantine period. In mid-October last year, however, travelers could forgo the quarantine period if they could prove they tested negative for COVID prior to boarding. Though the pretravel testing program was touted as a step toward reopening tourism in the state, the policy received pushback from locals who were angered by tourists flouting COVID guidelines. In May, Hawaii rolled out a vaccination passport program, which allowed residents to travel freely within the state without testing or quarantining, but it doesn’t apply to out-of-state travelers yet.

Chang had been hoping for months that hotels’ occupancy rates would increase so she could go back to work. She and her coworkers were in discussions with hotel management and their local union on how to prioritize their safety when they return. After being fully vaccinated in April, Chang waited daily for Ala Moana to ask her to return to work; every morning, she got ready and prepared her uniform, just in case.

On May 25, she finally got the call and went back to work for the first time in more than a year. “I've been waiting for so long,” she said. “I'm so excited.”

Todd Williamson / Getty Images for Amazon

The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. Ana Cortez worked at the hotel as a housekeeper until April 2020.

Like Chang, Ana Cortez sent money to El Salvador to help her 87-year-old mom get by. But it became even harder to do so after Cortez lost her job in April 2020 as a housekeeper at the Beverly Hilton, a luxury hotel in Beverly Hills known for hosting the Golden Globe Awards and other star-studded events.

After losing her job, Cortez, 63, got by on unemployment benefits; it was the first time in her four decades in the US that she had to apply for unemployment, she said. She has scrimped and saved where she could and relied on food banks for sustenance so that she had money for her mom, who has epilepsy.

“I'm going to do whatever I need to help take care of my mom,” Cortez told BuzzFeed News in Spanish.

When the Beverly Hilton called her back for a six-day stretch of employment in October, she went into work under a cloud of grief. Her brother, who went back to El Salvador to care for their mom, had contracted COVID and died. He was one of four of Cortez’s family members who had died of COVID following the deaths of her grandmother and two uncles in El Salvador.

In Los Angeles County, COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted the Latino population. The virus has killed Latino residents at three times the rate of white residents, according to county data, and a recent University of Southern California study found that Latino immigrants between the ages of 20 and 54 are more than 11 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than non-Hispanic US-born residents.

Amid one of the worst outbreaks of the pandemic, LA County saw a 1,000% increase in the COVID death rate among Latinos from November 2020 to February 2021.

For all the financial difficulties and the personal grief of this past year, Cortez, who is currently back in El Salvador, said she’s thankful that she and her children, whom she lives with, did not contract COVID.

“Thank god, no,” she said. “Me and my sons”

Nolwen Cifuentes for BuzzFeed News

Carlos Barrera

Carlos Barrera didn’t have much of a retirement plan beyond working until 70 and returning to Guatemala, his home country. He had been focused on paying bills and the rent, and making sure his and his wife’s medical needs were covered. Saving for retirement had to come after everything else.

Barrera, 62, also worked at the Chateau Marmont as a parking valet. He enjoyed the job, greeting guests, making small talk, and parking their extravagant luxury cars. He intended to do it the rest of his working life. But in March 2020, Barrera received a text message from his manager informing him that he was being laid off from the Chateau because of the pandemic.

He was stunned. After 40 years of being a reliable employee, he could not believe the hotel would treat him with such disrespect.

“I felt very bad,” Barrera said in Spanish. “I felt disappointed, sad that they never valued me there.”

Even with his job at the Chateau Marmont, Barrera was priced out of Los Angeles seven years ago. He and his wife had moved to Santa Clarita to live with their adult sons. He lived day to day, he said, and tried his best to provide for his family. Although his employer offered a 401(k) plan, Barrera never contributed to it; he was already struggling to get by on his weekly income.

When the hotel fired him, Barrera had little time to process what had happened before panic set in. March 30, 2020, was the last day that he had employer-provided healthcare; though he had applied for Medi-Cal, it would not kick in for months. He and his wife, who has diabetes, needed medication for their health issues.

Barrera was in a state of constant anxiety during that time, terrified of contracting COVID and passing it to his family. He was stressed about the cost of clinic appointments, medications, bills, car payments, and his share of rent.

Before the pandemic, Barrera said he had about $6,000 in savings, part of which he had hoped would go toward retirement. But his savings have been completely depleted in the past year, he said.


Nolwen Cifuentes for BuzzFeed News
The valet zone at Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles where Barrera worked as a parking valet. Barrera was fired by the hotel in March last year as a response to dropping hotel occupancy rates.


In December, after months of searching for work, Barrera landed a job as a pizza delivery driver, working 25 hours a week. He said his financial situation has remained “terrible.” His last paycheck, after taxes, netted him $500 for two weeks of work. Every dollar he earns goes toward his portion of the rent, which costs him $1,000 a month.

The last time Barrera checked in with a manager at the Chateau Marmont in May, he was told no positions were available. He hopes every day that the hotel will hire him again, especially once California reopens on June 15. He and his former coworkers have been publicly fighting to return to work under safe and dignified conditions.
Barrera was in a state of constant anxiety during that time, terrified of contracting COVID and passing it to his family. He was stressed about the cost of clinic appointments, medications, bills, car payments, and his share of rent.

Before the pandemic, Barrera said he had about $6,000 in savings, part of which he had hoped would go toward retirement. But his savings have been completely depleted in the past year, he said.

In December, after months of searching for work, Barrera landed a job as a pizza delivery driver, working 25 hours a week. He said his financial situation has remained “terrible.” His last paycheck, after taxes, netted him $500 for two weeks of work. Every dollar he earns goes toward his portion of the rent, which costs him $1,000 a month.

The last time Barrera checked in with a manager at the Chateau Marmont in May, he was told no positions were available. He hopes every day that the hotel will hire him again, especially once California reopens on June 15. He and his former coworkers have been publicly fighting to return to work under safe and dignified conditions.

Since the mass layoffs in March 2020, former Chateau workers have filed lawsuits alleging employment and racial discrimination, as well as sexual harassment. Banks, the event server, told BuzzFeed News that the work culture at the Chateau “favors white men specifically” and that men were more likely than women to be asked to do specific work that enabled them to earn overtime pay.

With help from Local 11, former workers including Barrera have asked the hotel’s clientele to avoid staying at the Chateau until it has “demonstrated a commitment to respecting its workers’ years of service by rehiring them in accordance with their legal rights and to ensuring that all workers — regardless of their race, sex, or background — feel treated with dignity and respect.” A number of high-profile Hollywood figures have supported the boycott, according to the union, including Jane Fonda and Alfonso Cuarón.

“They couldn’t see fit to pay the people that are feeding them a decent wage.”

The Chateau Marmont did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding the accusations in the lawsuit, Banks’s allegations about its work culture, and the campaign organized by former employees.

Banks has wondered if she would take another hospitality job when she returns to Los Angeles, and what she would do if the Chateau offered her her job back. She has worked in hospitality since she was 18, either in between other jobs or for extra money when a salaried position didn’t pay enough.

But Banks has had a front-row seat to the ever-widening chasm between the wealthy and the low-income residents over the past year. She has seen rich people vacation, buy houses, and behave badly — often at the expense of service employees — while workers like her have lost everything. She recalled the sounds of people socializing in their multimillion-dollar mansions in the Hollywood Hills last year in the middle of the pandemic.

“We would go out for a walk at night sometimes and hear the clanking of dishes and people talking,” she said, “and you're like, Are they having a dinner party at their house?”

Most of the people who spoke with BuzzFeed News said they hoped that the hospitality industry will bounce back soon and that they will have their jobs again. But Banks said that after seeing how people have behaved over the past year, she’s not optimistic. Just because the country is headed out of the pandemic and into a new normal doesn’t mean Banks or the millions of others like her will be able to find a job that pays a living wage again — or any job at all.

Banks watched with disgust in February as Congress shot down a $15 federal minimum wage, calling it “super discouraging.”

“If after all of this ... they couldn't see fit to pay the people that are feeding them a decent wage,” Banks said. “They're just trying to make people desperate and force them back into work.” ●

Hong Kong's 'Grandma Wong' arrested for solo Tiananmen protest

Issued on: 31/05/2021 -

Activist Alexandra Wong, known as 'Grandma Wong', was a regular fixture at the huge democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019 ISAAC LAWRENCE AFP/File

Hong Kong (AFP)

Hong Kong police have arrested an elderly democracy activist as she made a solo demonstration over China's deadly Tiananmen crackdown in a vivid illustration of the zero protest tolerance now wielded by authorities in the financial hub.

Alexandra Wong, 65, was detained on Sunday on suspicion of taking part in an unlawful assembly as walked towards Beijing's Liaison Office in Hong Kong.

Wong -- known locally as "Grandma Wong" -- was a regular fixture of the huge democracy protests that swept Hong Kong in 2019.

She could often be seen waving a Union Jack flag, a symbol of her dissatisfaction with Beijing's rule since the city was handed to China by former colonial power Britain in 1997.



Protest is now all but outlawed in Hong Kong.

Authorities have used both the threat of the coronavirus and security concerns to ban demonstrations.

A vigil planned for this Friday -- the 32nd anniversary of Beijing's 1989 crackdown on democracy protests in Tiananmen Square -- has been denied permission for the second year in a row.

Authorities have cited the coronavirus, although Hong Kong is currently celebrating no local transmission cases of unknown origin for the last month.

Activists had also sought permission for a small Tiananmen-themed march on Sunday to the Liaison Office, which represents the central government in the city, but it was also denied permission.

Wong turned up anyway that afternoon holding as sign that read "32, June 4, Tiananmen's lament" and a yellow umbrella -- the latter a symbol of Hong Kong's democracy movement.

The South China Morning Post said the pensioner started chanting slogans in a park before heading towards the Liaison Office by herself, while being followed and filmed by police.

She was stopped twice.

"I'm only by myself, just an old lady here. Why stop me?" the Post quoted Wong as telling officers.

Soon afterwards she was arrested.

Police confirmed a 65-year-old woman surnamed Wong had been arrested for "knowingly participating in an unauthorised assembly and attempting to incite others to join an unauthorised assembly."

Hong Kong's democracy movement has been crushed by a broad crackdown on dissent over the last year, including the imposition of a sweeping security law that criminalises much dissent.

In the middle of the 2019 protests Wong disappeared for more than a year.

She resurfaced saying she had been detained by mainland authorities during a trip to Shenzhen, a neighbouring city where she lived at the time.

© 2021 AFP

Hong Kong prosecutors seek up to life in prison for 'subversive' activists

THE STRUGGLE FOR BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY IS A REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE

Issued on: 31/05/2021 - 

Kalvin Ho, one of the 47 pro-democracy activists charged under the National Security Law for participating in an unofficial primary election last year, was denied bail in March Peter PARKS AFP


Hong Kong (AFP)

Dozens of leading Hong Kong democracy activists could face up to life in prison for organising an unofficial primary election, prosecutors confirmed Monday, in the most sweeping use yet of Beijing's strict new security law.

Police charged the 47 activists with "subversion" after they organised a non-binding vote last year to choose candidates for an ultimately postponed local election.

The defendants say they were simply taking part in opposition politics.

But authorities accused them of a "vicious plot" to subvert the government by seeking a majority in the city's partially-elected legislature.

On Monday the defendants appeared en masse for the first time in nearly three months at a hearing in which a judge granted a request by prosecutors to have the case upgraded to the city's High Court.

Offences heard in that court start at seven years imprisonment for those who are convicted. The maximum penalty under the new security law is life in prison.

 

Beijing has moved to quash dissent in the semi-autonomous city after huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019.

The security law criminalises anything authorities deem to be subversion, secession, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces.

Police and prosecutors have since applied the law broadly with the vast majority of those charged for political speech.

Under the new law -- which Beijing imposed directly on the city last June -- defendants may only be granted bail if they can persuade a court they no longer pose any kind of national security risk.

That clause has removed Hong Kong's common law tradition that maintains a presumption of bail for non-violent crimes.

Monday's proceedings were the first time the public was able to see most of the defendants since early March when the vast majority -- 36 -- were denied bail at a mammoth hearing.

That hearing dragged on for so many days that some of those in the dock collapsed from exhaustion.

Bail decisions published since that hearing have revealed that judges are deciding whether some of those in custody still pose a potential security risk.#photo1

Claudia Mo, a former lawmaker, was denied bail partly because of WhatsApp messages with foreign journalists in which she commented on news and political events.

Another former lawmaker Jeremy Tam saw his application turned down in part because the United States consulate invited him by email for a "catch up" -- even though the email went unanswered.

In both instances judges argued the fact that the two defendants remained influential meant denial of bail was needed.

China says the national security law is needed to restore stability.

Critics say it has eviscerated the freedoms Hong Kong was promised ahead of its handover and has rapidly begun to change city's vaunted, business reliable common law traditions.

Thousands of Rohingya protest against conditions on Bangladesh island



Issued on: 31/05/2021 

Bangladesh has moved thousands of Rohingya refugees to the low-lying silt island of Bhashan Char in the Bay of Bengal despite concerns about the conditions - AFP/File

Dhaka (AFP)

Several thousand Rohingya staged "unruly" protests Monday against living conditions on a cyclone-prone island off Bangladesh where they were moved from vast camps on the mainland, police said.

Since December, Bangladesh has shifted 18,000 out of a planned 100,000 refugees to the low-lying silt island of Bhashan Char from the Cox's Bazar region, where some 850,000 people live in squalid and cramped conditions.

Most of them had fled a brutal military offensive in neighbouring Myanmar in 2017 that UN investigators concluded was executed with "genocidal intent".

Monday's protest involved up to 4,000 people, police said, and coincided with an inspection visit by officials from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).

"The Rohingya who are there became unruly the moment the UNHCR representatives landed (on the island) by helicopter today," local police chief Alamgir Hossain told AFP.

"They broke the glass on warehouses by throwing rocks. They came at the police... Their demand is they don't want to live here."

One Rohingya man confirmed to AFP that bricks were thrown and that police prevented them from entering a building where the UNHCR officials were present.

After the first transfer on December 4 to the flood-prone island in the Bay of Bengal, several Rohingya told AFP that they were beaten and intimidated into agreeing to be relocated.

The claims have been echoed by rights groups.

The Bangladesh government has rejected the allegations, saying the island was safe and its facilities far better than those in the Cox's Bazar camps.

The UN said it has not been involved in the process.

© 2021 AFP

Racial discrimination has cost American economy trillions. Tulsa, massacres just a start.

Marcus Anthony Hunter
Sun, May 30, 2021

Houses on fire after the Tulsa massacre

Racism is costly.

In fact, a recent Citigroup report estimated that racial discrimination has cost the American economy $16 trillion. Most notably, the report identifies a substantial $13 trillion loss in potential business revenue because of racial discrimination in lending to Black entrepreneurs and Black businesses. Although these figures are estimates for the last two decades, they point to a repeated pattern of costly preventable violence – financial and physical – against non-white people in America.

When a Black community in America is destroyed, America's progress is destroyed.


More in Reparations: Nearly two dozen Black massacres in American history. Reparations? Rarely.

For Black America, the economic losses are very direct. The wage gap, for example, puts the highest average earnings for Black men at more than $20,000 less than it is for white men.

But economic struggles in the Black community trickle down in ways that are less obvious, but certainly not less meaningful, to non-Black members of society. A close in the wealth gap over the past 20 years would have meant $2.7 trillion more spent on cars, clothes and other goods, services and investments that would have supported jobs for everyone.

Indeed, 100 years later, the story of the Tulsa massacre remains relevant for identifying racism’s true and lasting costs. The lessons and events of this horrific episode provide powerful insights into how acknowledging the effects, costs and destruction of systemic racism is key to healing and repairing the nation today.

Born of the ingenuity of Black migrants, Tulsa's Greenwood community was a bustling and dynamic Black financial district in the heartland of the American Southwest. Before the massacre, that approximately 35-block Black Wall Street community was worth $1 million (the equivalent of $15 million today).

Rather than bask in the glory of the success of Black Wall Street, white leaders, businessmen and residents guided by fear, hatred and a readily believed racist trope that turned out to be, by most accounts, untrue – that a Black male, in this case a 19-year-old, had attacked a white 17-year-old female – saw to it that a mosaic of terror befell the neighborhood by spring 1921.

White mobs looted hundreds of homes and burned down others. Some Black families escaped, but an estimated 300 members of the community were killed. Fires burned from the night of May 31 well into the next day. Little to no property, bank accounts, keepsakes or family heirlooms survived, generating a pattern of loss, death and trauma that endures today.

An African American photographer looking at the ruins of the Midway Hotel in Tulsa.

So how do we get beyond these traumatic losses?

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., are among those calling for a national Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Commission that will, at the least, force things that have been previously hidden into the light. The Tulsa massacre was ignored by the local government for decades. In a perfect world, the commission will set the nation on the road to racial and financial recovery. We must seize this historic opportunity to achieve a future in which the false notion of a racial hierarchy is finally obliterated.

The commission seeks to properly memorialize, archive, mitigate and prevent harms and violence like the massacres in America that didn't begin or end with Tulsa. That's complementary to existing calls for reparations for African Americans long heralded by late Rep. John Conyers and now advanced by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, in H.R. 40, a bill that would establish a commission to study the history of discrimination and avenues for repair.

Perhaps we can look to South Africa for an example (even if an imperfect one) of how commissions can acknowledge hurt, make victims financially whole and help a nation collectively move forward.

The process included gruesome testimony that took seven years and included stories of violence, rape and murder from 2,000 people of the apartheid era – some of whom committed acts of violence, others who were victims. The commission surely helped the nation avoid genocide and massive brutality in apartheid's aftermath. The solution included payments to each victim's family that totaled $85 million. Not everyone was happy with the final outcome, but it was a step in the right direction, and it started with the acknowledgment that horrible human atrocities happened.

Testimony from the victims and descendants of the Tulsa massacre, and every other recorded massacre in our nation's history, is vital. It has the potential to not only right the ship but also move the nation forward with a newfound awareness of how and why racism's influence hinders our collective prosperity and solidarity.

Black activists and leaders on the ground have worked tirelessly to restore, repair and replenish the Greenwood district. This work has not been easy, but it's necessary.

The loss of a financial district anywhere in America is a financial threat and loss for all Americans.

Understanding that is the key to racial healing, racial equity and a more prosperous inclusive future. All of our lives – regardless of ethnic background – and economy depend on it.

Marcus Anthony Hunter, a sociology and African American studies professor at UCLA, is the author of several books, including "Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Racial discrimination has cost USA trillions. Tulsa is just a start.

As US marks 100th anniversary of Tulsa race massacre, African Americans still feel outcast

Issued on: 31/05/2021 - 

Text by: FRANCE 24Follow|

Video by: Solange MOUGIN

AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE 

At the foot of modern buildings on an anonymous street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a few discreet metal plaques catch the eye. "Grier shoemaker," "Earl real estate" -- riveted to the ground, they bear the names of Black-owned businesses that once stood there before being destroyed during one of the worst racial massacres in the United States, in 1921.

A rare vestige of a neighbourhood so prosperous it was called Black Wall Street, the plaques prove that the history of Greenwood -- a historically Black neighborhood of Tulsa -- is understood not by the monuments that currently stand, but the ones that are no longer there.

On the eve of a visit from President Joe Biden, popular with African-American voters, who will attend Tuesday's commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the massacre, and after a year marked by the Black Lives Matter movement, the killings resonate with current events more than ever.

Destroyed neighbourhood

"They came over and destroyed Greenwood and burned everything down," Bobby Eaton, 86, a neighborhood resident and former civil rights activist, told AFP.

A century ago, in the southern US town, the arrest of a young Black man accused of assaulting a white woman sparked one of the worst outpourings of racial violence ever seen in the country.

On May 31, 1921, after the arrest of Dick Rowland, hundreds of furious white people gathered outside the Tulsa courthouse, signalling to Black residents that a lynching -- a common practice at the time and until as recently as the 1960s -- was imminent.

A group of African-American World War I veterans, some of them armed, mobilized in an attempt to protect Rowland.

Tensions spiked and shots were fired. Fewer in number, the African-American residents retreated to Greenwood, known at the time for its economic prosperity and many businesses.

The next day, at dawn, white men looted and burned the buildings, chasing down and beating Black people living there. All day long, they ransacked Black Wall Street -- police not only did not intervene but joined in the destruction -- until nothing was left but ruins and ashes, killing up to 300 people in the process. The destruction left some 10,000 people homeless.

With a blue cap on his head and a T-shirt commemorating the massacre's centennial pulled over his shirt, Eaton feels marked by this event that he never saw but heard so much about as a child in his father's barber shop.

"I learned a lot about the riots as a very young person, that has never left my memory," he said.

'Don't own the land'

In his opinion, as with many others in the neighbourhood, it was the African-American prosperity that sparked the destruction. "That caused a great amount of jealousy, and it's still doing so.

"That mentality that destroyed Greenwood to begin with, to a great extent still exists right here in Tulsa," Eaton said.

>> Inside the Americas: 1921 Tulsa massacre - Remembering a dark chapter in American history

Even 100 years after the massacre, racial tensions remain high.

In the Black Wall Street Liquid Lounge – a coffee shop named, like many businesses in Greenwood, in homage to the neighbourhood's golden age – Kode Ransom, a 32-year-old African-American man, sports long dreadlocks and a big smile as he greets customers.

A happy co-manager of the business, he has one regret: not owning the walls around him.

"People hear 'Black Wall Street', they think that it's completely controlled by Black people. It's actually not," he said.

Ransom estimates that about 20 African-American-owned businesses exist in Greenwood, and they all pay rent.

"We don't own the land," he said.

An urban planning policy, called urban renewal, carried out by the Tulsa city council since the 1960s, has had the effect of driving out African-American owners whose houses or businesses, deemed dilapidated, were demolished to make way for new buildings.

The construction of a seven-lane highway through the middle of the main street finished disfiguring the neighbourhood.

"At the time when Greenwood was Greenwood, you had 40 blocks, and now it's all being condensed down to half of a street... and even on that half of a street it's still not really just Black Wall Street," said Ransom, sighing.

Evicted

A few meters from the cafe, in the Greenwood Art Gallery, manager Queen Alexander, 31, arranges the exhibited paintings, which celebrate African-American culture.

She also pays rent – and it's about to go up by 30 percent. The opening of a large museum dedicated to the neighbourhood's history, the Greenwood Rising History Center, which will officially open Wednesday, has caused rent for the surrounding businesses to increase.

One of her acquaintances, who had run a beauty salon in Greenwood for more than 40 years, was evicted. "She couldn't afford the rent," said Alexander.

Outside the bay windows of her gallery, Alexander observes the gentrification at work.

"You do see now white people walking their dogs, and riding their bikes, in neighbourhoods that you would never have seen them before," she said, noting the opening of a baseball field, a Starbucks and "a college that I probably couldn't afford."

For her, Greenwood without its African-American owners and historic buildings is no longer really Black Wall Street but "Greenwood district with some Black business leases."

And "if we all get evicted tomorrow, this is white Wall Street."

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

TALK TALK SHOP
Climate talks resume online as pressure to act grows

Issued on: 31/05/2021 - 

With increasingly dire warnings that the pace of global warming is outstripping humanity's best plan to cut emissions, the pressure for progress is high PATRIK STOLLARZ AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

For the first time since 2019 and following a flurry of net-zero pledges from the world's largest emitters, UN climate negotiations resume Monday in a virtual format just six months before the crunch COP26 summit.

The talks, nominally hosted by the United Nations climate change programme in the German city of Bonn, will all be informal, meaning that no decisions will be taken during the three-week dialogue.

But with increasingly dire warnings from scientists that the pace of global warming is already outstripping humanity's best plan to cut emissions, the pressure for progress to be made on a number of thorny issues is high.

In 2018, countries agreed to many elements of the Paris agreement "rulebook", governing how each nation implements its goals.

But several issues remain unresolved, including rules about transparency, carbon markets, and a unified timeframe for all countries to ratchet up their emissions cuts.

At the last UN climate summit in December 2019, countries also failed to agree upon a universal system of reporting climate finance.

Nathan Cogswell, a research associate at the World Resources Institute, said a deal on greater transparency was "a central component of the effective implementation of the Paris agreement".

"The upcoming session will hopefully help parties get closer to that."

One of the thorniest debates during recent UN climate talks has been Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which deals with the trade of emissions cuts.

A major sticking point remains over rules to avoid double counting emissions reductions within both bi-lateral and international carbon markets.

Some wealthy nations without the natural resources -- forests, for instance -- to mitigate their contribution to climate change have spent huge amounts on projects to preserve those habitats in other countries.

Currently both the buying and selling nations may count the project towards their domestic climate action, opening the door for the same cut to be counted twice.

Cogswell said that a failure to agree on a protection against double counting emissions reductions by the end of the COP26 in Glasgow in November would "weaken the ambition of global efforts" to fight climate change.

- 'Not ideal' -

Covid-19 forced Britain and the UN to shelve talks originally scheduled for last year until the end of 2021.

As the pandemic continues to rage, particularly among developing nations most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, negotiators will need to achieve tangible progress during the three-week Bonn talks.

"The absence of a COP left a tremendous amount of work to be done... if we want to deliver at Glasgow," said Marianne Karlsen, chair of a major technical forum at the UN-led negotiations.

The two-week sessions -- expanded this year to three -- normally involve thousands of representatives from more than 180 countries, and often rely on behind-closed-doors bargaining between delegates to get deals done.

Karlsen said the virtual configuration of talks was "not ideal at all".

"We really wanted to be able to have all the interactions of when we meet in person but there was no other option," she said.

Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, chair of the UN's SBSTA technical working group, said delegates needed to use the virtual negotiations to "prioritise a way to capture progress, so we can capture that progress when we meet in person, and make decisions" in Glasgow.

"It's important that we send a clear message to the world: We are very much engaged in resolving the Paris rulebook and to tackling this climate change conundrum."

© 2021 AFP