NEED TO TEAM UP WITH GREAT LAKES
Florida could be a world leader in fighting blue-green algae, task force members agree

Amy Bennett Williams, Fort Myers News-Press
Wed, December 8, 2021

With an eye to making Florida a leader in cyanobacteria response, the state’s Blue-Green Algae Task Force met Wednesday at Fort Pierce’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute.

The theme of the day was "Data Collection and Predictive Modeling." In plainer language, members focused on understanding algae research in order to forecast future blooms.

Before launching into a wide-ranging discussion, the five-scientist panel heard from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on how it uses satellite imagery to model blooms in freshwater bodies, a program several Western states are already using. Next, the South Florida Water Management District gave a rundown of how it collects data on harmful algae blooms.

In SWFL: Health department warns about cyanobacteria in the Caloosahatchee

Nanobubbles to the rescue? California company installs oxygen generators to fight blue-green algae outbreaks

Created as part of a sweeping water quality executive order issued by Gov. Ron DeSantis shortly after he took office, the task force is headed by the Florida’s Chief Science Officer, Mark Rains, a University of South Florida professor who directs USF's School of Geosciences.

Members represent some of the state’s leading water scientists, including Florida Gulf Coast University Marine Sciences Professor Mike Parsons, who directs the Coastal Watershed Institute and Vester Field Station in Bonita Springs.

FGCU's Mike Parsons gets ready to talk about his algae toxin sampling research.

Harmful algae blooms can devastate natural systems and can cause short- and long-term health problems. Though they've been much in the news in Florida, following several seasons of blooms, they're a global plague.

Western lakes like Lake Tahoe as well as the Great Lakes struggle with them, as do waterbodies in China, Africa and Australia.

Task force members pointed out that though cross-institute collaboration already is happening informally, there needs to be more of it.

Parsons often speaks with other scientific colleagues nationally, including at Kentucky’s Bowling Green State University’s Oceans and Human Health Center. Scientists there research Lake Erie blooms in partnership with government officials and other academics, he said. “So we’re looking for ways to collaborate across projects (and) I think it would be a good idea to have some contact with the Great Lakes group – see what they’ve learned so far, see what are the hurdles, see what tools they find promising.

Given such discussions are already happening, and given Florida's expertise and experience, the state ought to step up, Rains said.

“A lot of these collaborations are kind of already in place, but nothing’s been formalized yet,” he said, “and I do believe Florida … can and should be the leader.”

Members discussed creating a working group or a holding a symposium to catalog what’s already known and what have proven to be effective remedies.

Evelyn Gaiser, executive director of the School of Environment, Arts and Society and professor of biology at Florida International University in Miami, thinks it would be a mistake to move forward without some international input as well.

Graphing the big picture has proven to be a challenge, Rains said. “Who’s in charge?” he asked. “I guess it’s me,” he answered with a laugh.

So before launching, Florida needs to have its own needs sorted out, he said, maybe with “a one- or two-day workshop ... Where is everybody? Where is the science right now? Who’s using what? What research direction is everyone going in, just to get a sense of what Florida is (doing) before we go out nationally or internationally and say we’re going to lead this.

"We have to have a good sense of ourself first.”

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Florida could be a world leader in fighting blue-green algae

Should We Electrocute The Oceans To Curb Climate Change? That’s One Idea.

Chris D'Angelo
Wed, December 8, 2021

Some of the nation’s leading ocean and climate scientists are calling on the U.S. government to invest up to $1.3 billion in research on human interventions that could boost the oceans’ ability to suck up planet-warming carbon dioxide in the coming decades.

The recommendation is part of a new, 300-page National Academy of Sciences report released Wednesday that explores six techniques for accelerating ocean CO2 removal and storage, some more radical than others. Potential areas of study include restoring degraded ecosystems, large-scale seaweed farming, dumping nutrients like iron and phosphorus in the water to promote plankton growth, and even jolting seawater with electricity to make it less acidic.

The report outlines known risks and benefits, as well as costs and scalability, in order to provide policymakers with a framework for deciding next steps. It does not advocate for any individual tool or technology.

“All of these approaches have some combination of tradeoffs and there are substantial knowledge gaps,” Scott Doney, an oceanographer at the University of Virginia and chair of the NAS committee that authored the report, told HuffPost. “It’s really trying to find investments on the research side that could fill those gaps in a way that would better prepare us to make those decisions.”

An oil platform is pictured in the Persian Gulf. (Photo: Dario Argenti via Getty Images)

Burning of fossil fuels and other human activities have driven atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to their highest point in 800,000 years, and there is a growing consensus among the world’s leading scientists that staving off potentially catastrophic climate change will require more than simply cutting greenhouse gas emissions going forward. A 2019 NAS report, for example, found that the world will have to find ways to remove approximately 10 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year by mid-century to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), the goal of the landmark Paris climate agreement.

If it weren’t for the oceans, Earth’s largest carbon sink, the planet would already be significantly warmer. Oceans have absorbed an estimated 93% of the excess heat from human-caused climate change, and climate scientists and advocates have increasingly pushed for countries to use them as a key tool to meet climate goals and achieve the 1.5 degree target.

“The ocean holds great potential for uptake and longer-term sequestration of human-produced CO2,” the NAS report states.

In this photograph taken on Sept. 24, 2021, women work to cultivate fronds of seaweed on bamboo rafts in the waters off the coast of Rameswaram in India's Tamil Nadu state. (Photo: ARUN SANKAR via Getty Images)

Of the six possible techniques, NAS’s initial assessment concluded that nutrient fertilization and introducing electrical currents were among the most likely to prove effective at enhancing CO2 storage. But both come with significant environmental risk.

“We want to do it in a thoughtful way that avoids environmental damages, that avoids negative social or ecological impacts,” Doney said. “But there’s an urgency to start reducing emissions relatively soon.”

“I don’t want to be 5 or 10 years from now and not have done some of this foundational research that we’ve recommended on the social dimensions, governance and carbon accounting,” he added.

The NAS panel recommended an initial $125 million to fund a U.S. program to study the challenges and potential impacts of ocean carbon removal, with additional funding up to $1.2 billion over the next 10 years to conduct in-depth research into each of the six techniques.

Jan Mazurek, senior director of ClimateWorks Foundation, which sponsored the study, called it a “scientific road map for how healthy oceans can cool the climate.”

“The ocean is the heart of our planet, but the world’s fossil fuel addiction has pumped it full of CO2 and turned it more acidic, giving sea life the equivalent of heartburn disease,” she said in a statement. “We cannot live healthily if our oceans are sick.”

Panel: Consider tinkering with oceans to suck up more carbon

By SETH BORENSTEIN

 A man wades into the ocean at sunset, Tuesday, June 22, 2021, in Newport Beach, Calif. In a report released Wednesday, Dec. 8, 2021, the National Academy of Sciences says to fight climate change the world needs to look into the idea of making the oceans suck up more carbon dioxide. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

The United States should research how to tinker with the oceans — even zapping them with electricity — to get them to suck more carbon dioxide out of the air to fight climate change, the National Academy of Sciences recommends.

The panel outlines six ways that could help oceans remove more heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The scientists said the most promising possibilities include making the seas less acidic with minerals or jolts of electricity, adding phosphorous or nitrogen to spur plankton growth and creating massive seaweed farms.

But it’s unknown if they would work, would cost too much or cause more harm than good. So the panel of science advisers to the federal government Wednesday proposed spending more than $1 billion over the next decade to figure out the potential pitfalls and most effective methods of getting the world’s oceans to suck up more carbon.

The issue needs to be examined, the academy said, because something more than reducing carbon emissions likely needs to be done to take heat-trapping gases out of the air if the world is to meet the 2015 Paris climate goals of limiting future warming to a few more tenths of a degree from now.

By mid-century, the world will probably need to take about 10 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the air annually, the report said.

Previous academy reports looked at geoengineering as well as efforts to take in carbon, including planting more trees. This new report, funded by the non-profit ClimateWorks, examines what’s now absorbing most of excess carbon dioxide: the seas.

The report doesn’t advocate geoengineering the oceans, just exploring how it could be done.

“We don’t answer the question, ’Should we’?” said panel chairman Scott Doney, a biogeochemist at the University of Virginia. “The question is, ‘Can we?’ And if we do, what would be the impacts, and one of the things we try to highlight is that all of these approaches will have impacts.”

“What are the consequences to the environment?” Doney said.

The report looked at the following ways for oceans to take more carbon dioxide from the air:

— Electrical jolting the oceans to make them less acidic. Water that’s more alkaline can suck up more carbon. It also helps fight one of climate change’s harms — acidic ocean waters that damage shellfish and reefs. Scientists are confident the approach would work because it is basic chemistry, Doney said. But it bears the highest cost and medium to high risks. The report recommends $350 million in research.

— Using minerals to make the ocean to make it less acidic. This would be somewhat expensive and risky, and the report recommends $125 million to $200 million for research.

— Adding nutrients such as phosphorus or nitrogen to the ocean surface. This would spur photosynthesis by plankton, which would breathe in the carbon dioxide then sink. The panel had medium to high confidence that it would work, with medium environmental risks, and recommended $290 million in research and field experiments.

— Seaweed farming with the plants taking up carbon then sinking into the deep ocean or getting pumped there. There’s medium confidence this would work with medium to high environmental risks. The panel suggests $130 million in research.

— Ecosystem recovery would help marine animals, plants and the coastal environment become healthier and absorb more carbon. It has low environmental risk but also low to medium chances of working. The report estimates $220 million in research.

— Artificial waves creating upwelling and downwelling to stimulate plankton growth. The confidence in this working is low, the risks high, and the report recommends $25 million in research.

Breakthrough Institute climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, who wasn’t part of the study, said the electricity and chemical approaches to change ocean acidity “have the highest potential for long-term carbon removal at a scale large enough to make a meaningful impact.” But he said he’s more skeptical of ocean fertilization to stimulate plankton.

Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who also wasn’t part of the study, said, “Carbon removal and sequestration is required to reach low climate targets. ... The ocean represents huge un-understood and untapped potential.”

But Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said merely by exploring the idea of tinkering with the ocean is harmful because polluters and government officials can use it as an excuse “to delay and downplay the only safe climate solution — dramatically curtailing our burning of fossil fuels.”

It makes sense to just be prepared, said panel chairman Doney. “If we don’t start down this road now of the research, we might have to make decisions with insufficient information.”

It’s up to the president and Congress to fund the research. Earlier this week the Department of Energy asked companies and organizations to demonstrate technologies that could remove carbon dioxide from the air or cut emissions, saying there’s funding for such work in the infrastructure law that passed last month.

___

Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/Climate

___

Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

COLD WAR 2.0

The UK has recovered the F-35 stealth fighter that crashed off an aircraft carrier into the sea

Ryan Pickrell
Wed, December 8, 2021,

An F-35B launches from HMS Queen Elizabeth, June 18, 2021.

Royal Navy/LPhot Unaisi Luke

The F-35 that crashed off a British aircraft carrier last month has been recovered.


A British pilot had to bail out during a takeoff emergency, ditching the plane in the Mediterranean.

The incident was the fifth known F-35 crash.

Cost of F35B aircraft

A single Air Force F-35A costs a whopping $148 million. One Marine Corps F-35B costs an unbelievable $251 million. A lone Navy F-35C costs a mind-boggling $337 million. Average the three models together, and a “generic” F-35 costs $178 million.

The F-35 stealth fighter that a British carrier pilot was forced to ditch in the Mediterranean last month has been recovered, the British Defense Ministry said Wednesday.

"Operations to recover the UK F-35 jet in the Mediterranean Sea have successfully concluded," the ministry said. "We extend our thanks to our NATO allies Italy and the United States of America for their support during the recovery operation."

In mid-November, a pilot with the 617 (Dambusters) Squadron deployed aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth had to bail out of an F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter due to an emergency.

Toward the end of last month, a video surfaced online that appeared to show the the fifth-generation aircraft slipping off the aircraft carrier's ski jump and crashing into the sea during a takeoff mishap.

The above twitter user, a defense commentator, told Insider's Azmi Haroun that the video was sourced from a Royal Navy WhatsApp group, adding that the footage appeared to be from the Queen Elizabeth's visual surveillance system.

The UK Defense Journal, citing an unnamed source, reported Tuesday that a service member aboard the carrier has been arrested for the video leak.

The British newspaper The Sun first reported the successful recovery, reporting that a defense source said it took two weeks to find the wrecked fighter and another few weeks to pull the plane out of the sea.

Officials told the outlet that "there is no danger or compromise to sensitive equipment on the aircraft."

The Sun reported that senior military leaders had expressed concern that the aircraft's sensitive technology could fall into the hands of the Russians if not properly recovered.

Similar concerns were raised when a Japanese Air Self-Defense Force F-35A flying out of Misawa Air Base disappeared from radar in 2019. The remains of the pilot, Maj. Akinori Hosomi, and some debris were recovered, but the bulk of the aircraft was not.

The British F-35 mishap, which was reportedly caused by a rain cover getting sucked into the engine, is only the fifth known F-35 crash.

With the loss of the aircraft, the UK has only 23 F-35Bs. Twenty-one aircraft had been delivered, and three are still in the US for testing and evaluation. Eight British F-35s were deployed aboard the Queen Elizabeth alongside 10 F-35Bs flown by US Marine Corps pilots.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

HALT THE EMBARGO
Global artist coalition demands end to Cuba detentions


An anti-government demonstration in Havana, on July 11, 2021 -- Cuban artists have spearheaded an unprecedented protest movement to demand greater freedoms in the island nation (AFP/YAMIL LAGE)

Wed, December 8, 2021

Hundreds of artists and performers including Meryl Streep and Zadie Smith issued a joint call with international rights organizations Wednesday for the Cuban government to respect freedom of expression and release arbitrarily detained artists.

The Cuban government has staged an escalating crackdown on activists -- many of them artists -- who have led a wave of protests to demand more freedom since November 2020, reaching a crescendo this summer with mass marches across the island nation.

"Art should be free from censorship and repression, in Cuba and everywhere," the coalition wrote in an open letter also counting novelists Orhan Pamuk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Isabel Allende among its signatories.

"The Cuban government should immediately stop its unrelenting abuses against artists, release all arbitrarily detained artists, and drop all charges against them."

The letter, which was supported by Human Rights Watch, PEN International, and PEN America's Artists at Risk Connection highlights how central art and artists have been to the Cuban protest movement.

The song "Patria Y Vida" (Homeland and Life), a twist on the iconic revolutionary slogan "Patria O Muerte" (Homeland or Death) often used by Fidel Castro, has become a centerpiece at rallies and won this year's Latin Grammy for top song.

It was written by a group of Cuban artists including Maykel Osorbo, who has been imprisoned since May 2021.

According to the open letter, dozens more artists have reportedly been arrested, detained, or placed under house arrest. An unknown number remain in detention, with others under house arrest and subject to constant surveillance.

"There is no justification for persecuting artists for peacefully expressing their views," warned the letter.

Through mass detentions and widespread police presence, Cuban authorities have prevented a repeat of the mass gatherings seen over the summer.

Authorities detained Yunior Garcia, a prominent leader of the protest movement, as they moved to block a major demonstration planned for November. The actor and playwright flew to Spain with his wife shortly after, citing pressure from Cuban authorities.

The protest movement arose against the backdrop of a dire economic crisis in Cuba, suffering from the collapse of tourism during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as broad US sanctions imposed under former president Donald Trump.

des/ec

Creative Amanda Vaughn merges science and art


Nicole Cobler
Wed, December 8, 2021

Art and science have converged at Ani’s Day & Night, where Austin artist Amanda Vaughn’s vibrant collection of paintings — featuring women in science and portraits of protein — are on display through January.

Spend a morning at Ani’s, working under the painted gaze of Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, the first woman in space. Tereshkova, an engineer and cosmonaut, orbited the Earth 48 times on a solo mission aboard the Vostok 6 in 1963.

Say hello to Hypatia, an Egyptian astronomer, philosopher and one of the earliest recorded female mathematicians.

Peek in on chemist Alice Ball, who found the most effective treatment for leprosy.

The 35-year-old Vaughn is an artist, DJ and medical science liaison. She received her doctorate in molecular biochemistry from the University of Texas and currently works at Aeglea Biotherapeutics.

Austin artist Amanda Vaughn seated under her work at Ani's Day & Night. Photo courtesy of Amanda Vaughn

Vaughn painted the nine female scientists at Ani’s using eye-popping acrylic reds, blues, yellows and greens.

"I started profiling these different unsung heroes, these women scientists over the years [who] are so seldom referenced," Vaughn told Axios.

She placed the scientists on circular drumheads as a way to display the women "almost like figureheads or coins or like an icon."

You won’t find descriptions beside each portrait at Ani's, and that's intentional, Vaughn added

"It's just really helpful to see these women in the context of what they’re doing. Almost folklorically depicted as these characters that really built up society and our understanding of STEM."

Plus, the portraits of nine proteins, all of which Vaughn studied or interacted with in the lab, adorn one wall of the space. This series began as a way to get familiar with the structure of the chains in her own research.

"There's hundreds and hundreds of them in our bodies, but without looking at them up close, you have no idea," Vaughn said. "It's somewhere between education and also reckoning with nature, looking at nature from a different lens."

The paintings are available for purchase. Contact Vaughn directly.

And don’t miss her upcoming DJ sets:


13th Floor this Friday from 10pm to 2am


Ani’s Day & Night on Dec. 22 from 7-10pm

Russia's cosmos town, an isolated relic of Soviet glory




For many years Baikonur was closed to outsiders. Even today, anyone entering it is required to present a permit at the town's guarded checkpoint (AFP/Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV)

Nikolay KORZHOV
Wed, December 8, 2021, 8:52 AM·4 min read

Malik Mutaliyev walks by an abandoned amusement park in wintry Baikonur, a secretive town in Kazakhstan's inhospitable steppe that appeared alongside the eponymous Baikonur Cosmodrome where the Soviet Union's space programme rose to glory.

"Our town has lived through a lot: Perestroika, the fall of the Soviet Union, electricity shortages. We've been through it all," says the 67-year-old former chief architect of Baikonur.

The settlement located in the desolate north of Kazakhstan in Central Asia has gone by many names: Site No. 10, Leninsk -- in honour of the Soviet revolutionary Vladimir Lenin -- and now Baikonur.

It was here nevertheless and from the cosmodrome some 30 kilometres (18 miles) away that the first satellite launched into space -- Sputnik in 1957 -- and both the first man sent into orbit, Yuri Gagarin, and later the first woman, Valentina Tereshkova, were dispatched from this spot.

Three decades after the Soviet collapse, Baikonur remains a key facility, specifically for manned flights to the International Space Station (ISS). On Wednesday, two Japanese space tourists launched to the ISS from Baikonur.

"All this is the achievement of people, the many generations of people that have put in a lot of work," Mutaliyev says, referring to the town that he helped build.

That work began in 1955, when the Soviets established a settlement on the banks of the Syr Darya river to house workers involved in building the cosmodrome.

The site later expanded to accommodate servicemen and their families working on classified space projects.

"I remember the times when the so-called elites were here. There were a lot of educated people," says Oksana Slivina, a teacher who moved to Baikonur when her father was stationed to the town by the military.

For many years, the town was closed to outsiders. Even today, anyone entering Baikonur is required to present a permit at the town's guarded checkpoint.

Located miles away from large cities, Baikonur was chosen due to its remote location in the desert, ideal for testing rockets.

Temperatures are brutally hot in the summer and plummet well below zero in the winter but the skies are usually clear and ideal for launches.

- 'Many are leaving' -

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Baikonur became part of what is now Kazakhstan. Residents left en masse, abandoning homes in the face of an uncertain future.

Now it is leased by Russia from Kazakhstan under a contract that expires in 2050. Both Russian and Kazakh languages are used interchangeably, as are the two countries' currencies.

"Our goal was not to let the city fall apart and to preserve it for future development. I think we have managed that," says Mutaliyev.

The town lives and breathes space.

Its streets carry the names of Soviet space heroes. Buildings are decorated with space-themed art and streets are peppered with monuments to rockets, engineers and of, course, to Gagarin, a Russian national hero.

The town of around 76,000 people, which appears frozen in time, is a well-preserved relic of Soviet architecture and urban planning.

The younger generation see their future elsewhere.

"Many are leaving. Usually parents stay because the salaries are good and kids leave to Russia or elsewhere," says Georgy Ilin, a secondary school graduate.

The 21-year-old said he was planning to leave, too, to enter university, since "there is nowhere to study here".

Young people, Mutaliyev conceded, "don't see any prospects here".

He says the town has become "dormant" and hopes that Russia's return to the burgeoning space tourism, ushered in with Wednesday's launch, will give it a necessary boost.

Slivina, the teacher, says it would be a "shame" not to use the town's unique status to attract visitors.

"Of course money needs to be invested here -- and big money -- so it doesn't become embarrassing and so there is something to show people besides the launch pads," she says.

But the 57-year-old said she would always remain loyal to her home, that for many years was Earth's gateway to space.

"The town is close to my heart. I've spent half my life here. I will love it no matter what."

acl/jbr/kjm

Charleston slave badge named among the world’s top archaeological discoveries of 2021



Caitlin Byrd
Tue, December 7, 2021

A small yet profound object tied to slavery and unearthed by a team of researchers and students at the College of Charleston this spring has been named one of the top discoveries of the year of the year by Archaeology Magazine.

Found on the site of a 19th-century kitchen, the slave badge, also known as a slave tag, is a diamond-shaped medallion that acted as a work permit in Charleston’s city limits. It allowed enslaved people to be hired out for part-time work in the urban city center by their master to perform specific jobs, like mechanic, porter and fisherman.

The slave badge, which was discovered on what is now the College of Charleston campus, was issued in 1853 to an unknown servant.

The person who wore the small metal badge, most likely around their own neck, lived in a time when their identity — and the identity of other enslaved African Americans — was stamped into a piece of copper and reduced to their occupation and badge number.

Theirs was 731.

The badge itself is a rare fragment of history, and its archaeological discovery is as noteworthy as fossilized footprints found in New Mexico and an ancient Egyptian city discovered beneath the sands after thousands of years, according to the editors of Archaeology Magazine.

The list of top 10 discoveries made in 2021 will appear in the magazine’s January/February 2022 issue, which hits newsstands this week.

“We felt the tag had to be included because it’s a reminder of an individual who may otherwise have been lost to time and to the dehumanizing system of enslavement,” said Marley Brown, associate editor of Archaeology Magazine.

Brown continued, “What’s more, the fact that the College of Charleston team recovered the object from its archaeological context provides a fantastic opportunity to learn more about the person who may once have worn it — a real gift considering many of these tags have no provenance.”

Its discovery was also a bit of a surprise.

The reason there was ever an excavation site at 63½ Coming St. was because there were plans to build a solar pavilion there. Because the school received federal dollars from the U.S. Department of Energy through the S.C. Department of Energy to complete the project, it meant the site required a cultural resource survey before construction could begin.

The digging began in February, and in March, while sifting through the dirt below, the slave badge surfaced.

Other artifacts were found at the site, too, like pottery, animal bones and an old ceramic soda bottle.

But the slave badge was an explicit reminder of slavery, America’s original sin.

“You felt the evil,” said Jim Newhard, a classics professor, landscape architect and director of the college’s Center for Historical Landscapes. “It redoubled in my mind that not only was this artifact an expression of enslavement, so were the other objects we were recovering.”

Grant Gilmore, an associate professor and Addlestone Chair in Historic Preservation, told the magazine that most slave badges, including those held by private collectors, have no origin story beyond what is listed on the badge itself.

That this badge was found in a specific Charleston kitchen could provide new clues to discover more about the person assigned that badge. Gilmore told the publication that an enslaved person living in that house “may have discarded the tag in the hearth or someone on loan from across town may have lost it one day.”

The nearly 4-centimeter square slave badge is also a physical reminder of how urban slavery worked in Charleston, said Bernard Powers, director of the college’s Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston.

“This discovery confirms the idea that Black labor was integrally involved in shaping the contours of the land, erecting the city’s buildings and providing the human connections that made Charleston the vital center of production and exchange it became and remains today,” Powers said in a statement after the badge was found earlier this year.

While other Southern cities had similar hired labor arrangements for enslaved workers, Charleston is the only one that produced such tags or badges, Gillmore told the magazine.

Slave badges were dated and were issued annually and became a source of tax revenue for the city. Costs for tags in 1865 ranged from $10 to $35.

The day the slave badge from 1853 was discovered, Newhard said he temporarily paused the work at the site to help students understand the artifact and better recognize the site as a whole.

He said he wanted them to see the importance and value of the work they were doing.

“We knew we were excavating a space inhabited and used by enslaved people. Intellectually, everything that we were collecting was possessed or used by those people,” Newhard said. “The tag, however, puts an agent to that scene.”

Even though the badge may have allowed an enslaved person to move more freely in the urban landscape and earn a small income for his or her family, Newhard said the badge was still an object worn as a mark of enslavement.

Uncontacted Amazon tribes endangered in Peru, Brazil -indigenous group

 Uncontacted indigenous react to a plane flying over their community in the Amazon basin

Wed, December 8, 2021
By Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Deep in the Amazon rainforest, the world's largest area containing isolated and uncontacted tribes is under increasing threat from illegal logging and gold mining, advancing coca plantations and drug trafficking violence, a new report warns.

An undetermined number of indigenous people that could number several thousand inhabit a vast swathe of forest twice the size of Ireland that overlaps the Brazil-Peru border.


Their longhouses in jungle clearings have been spotted from planes but encounters with outsiders or clashes with invaders are anecdotal.

In the most comprehensive study to date of the so-called Javari-Tapiche corridor, to be published on Thursday in Lima, a Peruvian indigenous organization says the world's largest number of uncontacted people are in danger.

Anthropologists have recorded groups crossing to Brazil looking for food, metal utensils and clothing to the south of the corridor, reportedly moving away from violence in Peru.

The organization of indigenous people of Peru's eastern Amazon, ORPIO, calls for urgent joint action by governments in both countries to protect the region, drop plans for a cross-border road linking the Atlantic to the Pacific, enforce environmental laws and crack down on criminal activity.

This activity is damaging the environment and putting the vulnerable isolated peoples at great risk by destroying their livelihoods and generating situations of potential conflict, said Beatriz Huertas, the study's lead researcher.

Illegal logging and legal wood concessions are the main threat, but the presence of drug traffickers that use the rivers to smuggle drugs into Brazil has increased, said Huertas, an anthropologist and expert on isolated tribes.

Also, coca plantations are growing in the adjacent Ucayali region and bringing violence and death, as well as igniting internal conflicts within neighboring indigenous communities, she said.

Brazil has long protected the Javari Valley indigenous area, but the current government of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro has weakened the indigenous affairs agency Funai that has pulled back experts on uncontacted indigenous people, she said.

Bolsonaro's drive to develop the Amazon region has encouraged illegal logging and gold mining in the world's largest tropical rainforest, spurring deforestation in what experts consider a major bulwark against climate change.

Peru has more recently established indigenous protection of isolated tribes, but it has taken up to 18 years to create some reservation areas, Huertas said.

"The study shows the need to understand the corridor as one space continuously inhabited by people in isolation, where government decisions or pressures can have large-scale effects regardless of which side of the border they inhabit," she said.

An emerging threat is the building of a road from Cruzeiro do Sul in Brazil to Pucallpa in Peru, pushed by the Brazilian government as a route for exporting soybeans to China from Peru's Pacific coast.

The 300-page study, supported by the Rainforest Foundation Norway, urges the governments to drop the planned road.

It also asks for more careful monitoring of religious missionaries to prevent the loss of indigenous culture through their evangelizing work.

Beto Marubo, a representative of the indigenous people of the Javari Valley and a former FUNAI official, said the study reinforces the need to create a buffer to stop the advance of "illegal miners, loggers, hunters and Christian missionaries."

But he is not optimistic.

"Brazil has a government that has not shown any sensitivity toward the environment and much less on indigenous issues. I believe very little will happen," he said from Manaus.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Mark Porter)

RACIST ANTI-ASIAN BIAS
Saule Omarova: Biden bank regulator nominee withdraws after Republicans smear her as a communist

IF SHE WERE UKRAINIAN (WHITE) THEY WOULD EMBRACE HER AS AN ANTISOVIET
Eric Garcia
Tue, December 7, 2021

Saule Omarova, President Biden’s nominee for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (REUTERS)

President Joe Biden’s nominee for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency withdraw her nomination amid constant Republican attacks that she was a communist, despite fleeing the former Soviet Union.

“I deeply value President Biden’s trust in my abilities and remain firmly committed to the Administration’s vision of a prosperous, inclusive, and just future for our country,” she said in her letter withdrawing her name. “At this point in the process, however, it is no longer tenable for me to continue as a Presidential nominee.”

Saule Omarova was born in Kazakhstan and came to the United States after the USSR communist government collapsed to earn a PhD from the University of Wisconsin. Mr Biden hailed her history and background.

“I nominated Saule because of her deep expertise in financial regulation and her long-standing, respected career in the private sector, the public sector, and as a leading academic in the field,” he said. “She has lived the American dream, escaping her birthplace in the former Soviet Union and immigrating to America, where she went on to serve in the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush and now works as a professor at Cornell Law School.”

But she faced heavy criticism from Republican senators. At one point, Sen John Kennedy of Louisiana asked her about her past affiliation with the Komsomol, a state-mandated organisation, during her childhood.

“Senator, I was born and grew up in the Soviet Union … everybody was a member … that was a part of normal progress in school,” she said. Later, Mr Kennedy said “I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade.”

In response, Ms Omarova pushed back.

“Senator, I’m not a communist. I do not subscribe to that ideology. I could not choose where I was born…my family suffered under the communist regime. I grew up without knowing half of my family, my grandmother twice escaped death under the Stalinist regime,” she said at the time.

Mr Biden alluded to those smears in his statement defending her.

“But unfortunately, from the very beginning of her nomination, Saule was subjected to inappropriate personal attacks that were far beyond the pale,” he said.

Wife-turned-critic of Peru ex-president dies


Peru's former first lady Susana Higuchi had been hospitalized for a month before her death from cancer (AFP/FIDEL CARRILLO)


Wed, December 8, 2021

Peru's former first lady Susana Higuchi -- wife-turned-critic of ex-president Alberto Fujimori and mother of opposition leader Keiko Fujimori -- died Wednesday of cancer, her family said on Twitter.

Higuchi, the daughter of Japanese immigrants, was 71 years old and had been hospitalized in Lima for a month.

"After a hard battle with cancer, our mother Susana Higuchi has departed to meet God," tweeted daughter Keiko, who has run, and lost, three presidential races.

An engineer by training, Higuchi had four children with Alberto Fujimori, whose campaign she financed in 1990 when he was an unknown and unable to raise money for his ultimately successful presidential run against the favored candidate, the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.

The pair divorced, and Higuchi accused her ex-husband of domestic violence and corruption, becoming a vocal critic of his regime from the opposition benches.

In 1994, while still first lady, Higuchi told reporters that she had been held hostage and tortured by her husband. They divorced that year, and Keiko Fujimori -- then only 19 -- became Peru's first lady.

Higuchi said she was tortured after denouncing relatives of Alberto Fujimori for allegedly selling Japanese donations meant for poor people.

In 1994, she tried to challenge Fujimori for the presidency, but he passed a law preventing close relatives from succeeding him.

She had a five-year career until 2006 as a popular member of an anti-Fujimori party in congress, causing a deep rift in the family.

Reconciled, she endorsed two of her daughter's three presidential runs, in 2016 and 2021.

"She was surrounded by the love of us, her children, and her grandchildren until the last moment," tweeted Keiko Fujimori, who had in the past dismissed her mother's claims as "myths."

Alberto Fujimori, 83, is in hospital under police protection for a heart condition.

He has been serving a 25-year prison sentence since 2007 for corruption and crimes against humanity during his 10-year term.

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