What is a Resource-Based Economy? | The Venus Project

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To transcend these limitations, The Venus Project proposes we work toward a worldwide, resource-based economy, a holistic social and economic system in which the planetary resources are held as the common heritage of all the earths inhabitants. The current practice of rationing resources through monetary methods is irrelevant, counter-productive, and falls far short of meeting humanitys needs.

Simply stated, within a Resource Based Economy we will utilize existing resources rather than money to provide an equitable method of distribution in the most humane and efficient manner. It is a system in which all goods and services are available to everyone without the use of money, credits, barter, or any other form of debt or servitude.

To better understand a resource-based economy, consider this. If all the money in the world disappeared overnight, as long as topsoil, factories, personnel and other resources were left intact, we could build anything we needed to fulfill most human needs. It is not money that people require, but rather free access to most of their needs without worrying about financial security or having to appeal to a government bureaucracy. In a resource-based economy of abundance, money will become irrelevant.

We have arrived at a time when new innovations in science and technology can easily provide abundance to all of the worlds people. It is no longer necessary to perpetuate the conscious withdrawal of efficiency by planned obsolescence, perpetuated by our old and outworn profit system. If we are genuinely concerned about the environment and our fellow human beings, if we really want to end territorial disputes, war, crime, poverty and hunger, we must consciously reconsider the social processes that led us to a world where these factors are common. Like it or not, it is our social processes political practices, belief systems, profit-based economy, our culture-driven behavioral norms that lead to and support hunger, war, disease and environmental damage.

The aim of this new social design is to encourage an incentive system no longer directed toward the shallow and self-centered goals of wealth, property, and power. These new incentives would encourage people toward self-fulfillment and creativity, both materially and spiritually.

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What is a Resource-Based Economy? | The Venus Project

Facts adjusts print schedule to adapt to changing economy – Brazosport Facts

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The Facts will change its business model in response to the historical effect COVID-19 is having on the local, state and national economies and the newspaper industry, company officials announced today.

On May 1, The Facts will begin a five-day-a-week publishing schedule with an expanded weekend edition and a new focus on digital news coverage and features, company leaders said.

Print editions of The Facts will be distributed to subscribers and single-copy readers Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. The larger weekend print edition will appear Saturdays.

The Facts will continue to publish local news seven days a week through its digital edition, thefacts.com.

This change is a direct result of COVID-19 dramatically disrupting our lives and economy, Editor and Publisher Yvonne Mintz said. Our mission is vital, bringing news to our communities in the best and most trying of times. Still, we are much like any other small business. When the local economy suffers, we suffer.

The Facts generates 75 percent of its revenue from advertising, primarily from local businesses. The balance comes from subscriptions and other products.

When the economy came to a grinding halt in mid-March, most all of the businesses who depend on the paper to reach their customers suddenly found themselves in turmoil, either with their supply chain disrupted, their doors ordered closed or both.

Many of them have pulled their advertising, through no fault of their own, of course, drastically reducing our papers revenue and leaving us searching for ways to cut costs to survive this dangerously thin window, Mintz said. Our advertisers will be back, and our economy will rebound, but none of us can be sure what that will look like or how long it will take.

Meanwhile, the demand for local news intensified, with more readers than ever seeking our news out online.

The Facts is a vital community resource, Mintz said. We have to do whatever we can to preserve it.

The decision to change print frequency did not come easily for the newspaper. However, doing nothing was not an option in this challenging economic time, Mintz said.

We take very seriously our commitment to serving our community, especially in times of crisis, Mintz said. I have to be mindful of the financial realities of running this business, though. This change positions The Facts to continue our legacy of quality community journalism for the long haul.

The announcement comes at a time when the U.S. newspaper industry, which already was facing headwinds, is being especially hard hit by the economic downturn caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and response to that.

Publishers and newspaper companies across the nation are taking similar steps to cut costs and increase efficiency as they work to develop new sources of revenue and continue to serve their readers in a time of global crisis, Mintz said.

The new production schedule will allow The Facts to cut newsprint expenses in order to help the paper preserve employees, she said.

Generating quality local news is not free or inexpensive, Mintz said. Our employees get paid and enjoy good benefits. They live and shop and volunteer locally and are vital members of our communities.

We want to take whatever steps we reasonably can to keep them on the job and serving our readers.

The Facts was founded in 1913. The newspaper is locally managed and independently owned and operated by Texas-based Southern Newspapers.

This is a big change, especially for our print-only readers, Mintz said. We realize it will be hard to adjust your habits. We are committed, though, to providing you all the news and features you have come to rely on, just on a slightly different print schedule.

Sunday comics and crosswords will be delivered in the expanded weekend edition on Saturdays, for you to enjoy at your leisure throughout the weekend, she said. We are also adding features to that weekend package, to make it an even better read.

The first weekend edition, to be delivered Saturday, May 2, will include another installment of the puzzle book the paper debuted last month. And starting May 9, the weekend paper will include Parade Magazine.

Online readers will notice expanded offerings.

This is not a change we wanted to make, Mintz said. But we will adapt and do our absolute best to serve readers well through this hard time and beyond. We will get through this trying time together and remain committed to supporting local businesses and the community we love.

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Facts adjusts print schedule to adapt to changing economy - Brazosport Facts

Letter: The Earth can’t breathe – Opinion – Columbia Daily Tribune

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I appreciate Mike Szydlowskis insightful article, Clearing the Air, in the April 15 issue of the Tribune. It was helpful to read his data revealing the relationship between the COVID-19 death rate and air pollution.

I was reminded of Adam Russell Taylors article in the May issue of Sojourners magazine, entitled We hear the planet crying, I Cant Breathe. He says: America constitutes 5% of the worlds population but burns 25% of the worlds fossil fuels. These and other trends of conspicuous corruption and abuse are driving us toward global catastrophe. He continues, Through floods such as Katrina and Harvey, we hear the planet gasping, I cant breathe. Amid out-of-control wildfires in California and Australia our planet is hollering, I cant breathe.

Each in their own way confirms what I have been thinking and saying for decades the earth cannot afford our lifestyle. Through the years I have thought of this mostly in terms of our USA consumption of fossil fuels and our extravagant, wasteful way of life. However, in recent weeks influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become very clear to me that our global human family is all in this together. Scientists are predicting that our global human family will number about nine billion by 2050. The earth is crying out against our terrible pollution and abuse of our planet home. I remember the floods of 93. Supposedly that was a once in 500 years event. How many more such record-breaking climate events have happened since then? We have experienced massive hurricanes and tornadoes, unheard of flooding, horrendous wildfires, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and now a worldwide pandemic.

As we begin thinking about reopening our economy and moving into the future, I am reminded of Lester Browns book, Plan B 3.0, written in 2008. Brown was a 1956 graduate of Rutgers University Agriculture College and then lived six months with farm families in India as a delegate of the 4-H sponsored exchange program, International Farm Youth Exchange. It changed his life. Instead of returning to the family tomato farm in New Jersey, he began working with USDA in Washington, D.C. Then, in 1974, he left USDA and founded Worldwatch Institute, and in 1997, Earth Policy Institute. He devoted his life to research and writing about world hunger and caring for the earth.

On page 266 of Plan B 3.0 he summarizes three key elements: We know from our analysis of global warming, from the accelerating deterioration of the economys ecological supports, and from our projections of future resource use in China that the western economic model the fossil-fuel based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy will not last much longer. We need to build a new economy, one that will be powered by renewable sources of energy, one that will have a diversified transport system, and that will reuse and recycle everything.

Now that COVID-19 has our attention, perhaps we can hear our beloved planet home crying out, I cant breathe. Perhaps we can turn away from denial of global warming and climate change and develop an earth-friendly, earth-saving economy for the sake of our children and grandchildren and all the other creatures who call earth their home.

Please God. Let it be so.

Cleo Kottwitz, Columbia

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Letter: The Earth can't breathe - Opinion - Columbia Daily Tribune

Reopening the U.S. economy is like walking a tightrope and Trumps guidelines may be too lax – MarketWatch

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How and when states reopen their economies will look different from one state to the next state depending, in part, on where that state is in the trajectory of its coronavirus illnesses. In this Q&A from The Conversation, Hilary Godwin, dean of the University of Washington School of Public Health, explains why, and why it makes sense for groups of states, such as Washington, Oregon and California, to coordinate their plans.

Governors are walking a tightrope as they try to figure out how to safely ease off social distancing restrictions and restart their economies without triggering a new surge in coronavirus cases.

Do they start allowing businesses like restaurants, theaters and hair salons to reopen, as Georgia plans to do by Monday despite more than 20,000 COVID-19 cases there so far and opposition from several mayors? Is it OK to reopen beaches and stores, like South Carolina did this week? Or do they take a more cautious approach, as Massachusetts is doing by keeping schools closed through the end of the school year?

These decisions arent simple.

At this point, we expect to see some rise in cases when economic and social activities restart. We dont want to wait until there is no chance that would happen people would literally go stir-crazy in their homes and it would decimate the economy.

What we want is to be confident that we have the capacity to identify coronavirus cases quickly and control the spread through contact tracing and isolation when we see them start to emerge again.

Under our countrys federalist system, protection of public health and safety is reserved to the state, so it is up to each governor to choose a path forward.

The White Houses plan provides a helpful starting point by offering a least restrictive path, but it suggests removing restrictions much more quickly than many public health people feel comfortable with.

For example, one trigger for the first phase of lifting restrictions is a downward trajectory, with 14 days of decreasing numbers of new COVID-19 cases. At that point, the White House plan says there can be large gatherings including at sports events and movie theaters, provided social distancing is followed.

Washington state has probably met that two-week threshold, but dont expect Washington to allow large gatherings soon. Statistically, the chance of someone asymptomatic and infectious being at one of those gatherings and exposing a large number of people is pretty high. Thats a risk many states arent going to take.

A number of different models, including by researchers at Harvard Chan School of Public Health and Kathryn Peebles at the University of Washington, have suggested that you need to wait longer than just seeing 14 days of a downward trajectory to be confident you wouldnt get a large resurgence of cases. That could mean three or four weeks Im not saying months and months and months. But 14 days seems really short based on what Ive seen of the coronavirus case curves and where most places are on that trajectory.

Going into the first phase of lifting restrictions, states need to have enough testing and contact tracing capacity to be confident they can manage the cases that will still turn up. Even if a state isnt seeing cases spreading within communities, travelers are still coming in from places where the pandemic is active.

Right now, we dont have that capacity, even in Washington, and we have better capacity that most of the country.

Thats one reason partnering with other states makes sense.

When Washington partners with California and Oregon, we can pool our resources for developing testing capacity and contact tracing capacity. That bumps up the timeline for getting enough resources in place that we can be confident we can start lifting restrictions. It should take us much less time if were working together, and thats huge.

Another big advantage is consistent messaging across a region where people cross state lines all the time.

Read herefor coronavirus updates

For states to coordinate, its helpful if theyre at similar stages in the epidemic. Thats part of why it makes sense for a few states to coordinate on the same plan rather than having one plan for the entire country.

New York is having such a different experience right now that it would be difficult for that state to coordinate reopening plans with Washington or California. In Washington, when the cases numbers plateaued, we were able to send extra ventilators to other regions that needed them. New York needs to be taking different steps at different times and has different resource challenges.

In Washington, Oregon and California, we also have similarities in how people and the governors weigh public health risk versus economic risk in a situation like this. Part of the reason Washington has done well after the early outbreak was that our local health departments were good about jumping on contact tracing and preparations, so by the time we did have community-level transmission, they had been preparing for weeks. We also have elected officials who have worked hand in hand with their public health officials.

It is possible that we wont see a second peak. There are things that could keep that from happening.

Having a vaccine widely available or a treatment people could take to prevent transmitting the disease could help the country avoid another surge in cases. Its also possible, as we saw with MERS and SARS, that once we are able to contain everything and get it to a low enough level, the coronavirus could die out on its own.

But we dont want to count on that and not prepare for the possibility it comes back, particularly since so many people havent been infected. We still have a lot of people who are really vulnerable, so if were not careful enough about how we bring economic and social activities back online, we could have a resurgence.

Now read:The future of successful coronavirus response: Mass testing at work and in church and self-administered tests

Hilary Godwin is the dean of the University of Washingtons School of Public Health. This was first published on The Conversation Why there isnt a one-size-fits-all plan for states to reopen their economies.

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Free interactive tool launched to help businesses through COVID-19 – GlobeNewswire

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Sacramento, CA, April 24, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Greater Sacramento Economic Council (GSEC) launched a free interactive tool to help businesses large and small through this economic downturn. The resource called SizeUp,provides custom market research and data to empower companies to make strategic and data-driven decisions on their next move. This will assist businesses that are struggling or those that have closed, have access to hyperlocal information to help them get back to work.

This is an amazing tool for our business. It helps gauge where my business is compared to my competitors. I think anyone starting a business should use this resource, said Rico Rivera, CEO of Silicon East Real Estate based in Sacramento.

SizeUp is a web-based tool that incorporates large numbers of timely data sets that help businesses analyze the market and business costs. GSEC is providing it at no cost to the Greater Sacramento region to give organizations the support they need during this critical time.

The service found at SelectSacramento.com/SizeUp provides companies with:

Successful businesses make data-driven decisions. This technology allows small businesses the same advantage as large corporations with business intelligence at the fingertips of local companies.

Entrepreneurs and managers of companies dont always have access to data that can set them on the path for strategic growth. This is an incredible tool that will push businesses in Rancho Cordova and the Greater Sacramento region forward or help them to pivot during this pandemic. Its helping to level the playing field, said Amanda Norton, Economic Development manager of Rancho Cordova.

This is when our leadership is the most critical. GSEC is at the heart of revitalizing and rebuilding the Greater Sacramento economy. Few businesses actually know how their performance compares to their industry competitors because big data analysis is too expensive. We want to provide the best data and resources for the region to be the first to get back into the swing of things, said Barry Broome, President & CEO of GSEC.

The Greater Sacramento Economic Council has created a short online tutorial to explain the benefits of this tool and walk new users through a demonstration of its uses. This tutorial can also be found at SelectSacramento.com/sizeup. In addition, this tool is available to local Chambers of Commerce and economic development professionals across the region as a way to connect with and offer support to their local small businesses. GSEC has also launched a resource page during this crisis, to provide startups and established companies with links to local, state and federal aid.

We are in a moment of time where its make or break. The steps taken now are going to be vital for the future health of our economy. We want to provide every possible advantage to businesses big and small so that we come out of this on top, said Broome.

As we all remain at home during the COVID-19 crisis, events held by the Greater Sacramento Economic Council to advance the regional economy will be moving to a virtual/online platform. Visit the GSEC website at SelectSacramento.com for information on upcoming events or programs, and register for the GSEC COVID-19 weekly email updates sent every Friday - when visiting thesite.

We are here for the long haul. As long as we continue to support and invest in our business community, we will get through this, said Broome.

About the Greater Sacramento Economic Council

The Greater Sacramento Economic Council is the catalyst for innovative growth strategies in the Capital Region of California. The organization spearheads community-led direction to retain, attract, grow and scale tradable sectors, develop advanced industries and create jobs and investment throughout a six-county region. Greater Sacramento represents a collaboration between local and state governments, market leaders, influencers and stakeholders, with the sole mission of driving inclusive economic growth. The Greater Sacramento region was founded on discovery, built on leadership and fueled by innovation.

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We need a better head start for the next pandemic | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal – voxeu.org

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The lack of capacity in health care today is obvious from the hard time hospitals around the world are having handling large waves of COVID patients requiring medical attention at the same time as providing their regular services to non-COVID patients. Although health systems remain a highly labour-intensive sector, capital has been increasingly important as a factor of production of health services over recent decades, and especially under pandemic situations when a large number of patients require emergency attendance.

On average, health capital expenditure which includes health infrastructure (buildings, machinery, IT) and stocks of vaccines for emergency or outbreaks only accounts for 0.2% of countries national production, equivalent to less than $0.5 trillion globally. Even OECD countries expenditure on health care does not reach 0.5% of their GDP. Investigating these figures further across time, we learn that they have not changed much in the past two decades, especially health capital (see Figure 1). This is alarming given that the total annual expenditure on health infrastructure ($0.5 trillion) is much lower than the loss endured by the public in case of a pandemic. UNCTAD (2020), for example, predicts a $2 trillion loss in global income due to COVID.

Figure 1 Health expenditure over time

Data source: WHO.

The failure to invest in public health and access to health care means much of the world remains ill-equipped to detect viral threats, protect frontline health care workers, and treat those who fall ill. Because of such factors, the kill rate of a virus depends in significant part on the quality of health care in a country, while its contagiousness is enhanced when government response is slow and insufficient. Figure 2 demonstrates the relationship between health expenditure per capita and number of hospital beds with the case fatality rate (CFR) the ratio of fatalities to infections, which appears to be negative for both. This means countries that invest more in their health capital are likely to face a lower CFR, however, the weak relationship is a clear indicator that a strong health system alone cannot be sufficient.

Figure 2 Health capacity and CFRs

Data source: WHO and World Bank.Note: There are two fundamental issues with any COVID-19 data: (i) the figures might be intentionally or unintentionally miss-reported; (ii) the number of cases recorded is in part a function of how much testing is carried out and fatality data might be misattributed. Therefore, using CFR is preferred as it could be more universal.

Outbreaks are inevitable. Whether they become pandemics the uncontrolled spread of contagious diseases across countries and continents depends on our response. To control a disease outbreak, two forces should work simultaneously: (i) controlling the spread of the disease (lowering R_0), and (ii) treating the infected people (lowering the CFR). The former is directly managed by the government through guidance and/or enforcing containment policies and can influence both infection and fatality rates. The latter only influences fatality rates and is dependent on the capacity of the health system, which is proxied by budgets and capital expenditure (for example, the number of hospital beds, especially critical/intensive care beds). It is therefore surprising to learn that number of available beds is falling in many countries. Most EU member states, for example, have reported a decrease in the availability of hospital beds over the past few years (Eurostat 2019).

Scholars at the University of Oxford have recently introduced the Stringency Index, a measure of government responses across the globe constructed using publicly available data on a number of indicators including school closings, travel restrictions, bans on public gatherings, and other interventions to create social distancing or to augment public health provision. Augmenting this measure with rate of COVID infections and fatalities, as well as the number of hospital beds, allows us to compare the current state of affairs in some of the most affected countries.

We already know that rapid and rigorous containment policies are advised to control the spread of an outbreak. However, each country must solve a different optimisation problem given their underlying constraints, namely, their health capacity and the economic cost of enforcing containment measures. In other words, the most cost-effective intervention for two countries with similar infection rates but dissimilar health capacities is different. For example, Figure 3 shows that Germany started responding to the growing rates of the virus much faster than the US. This includes screening/testing and taking social distancing measures. The lack of screening in the US in the first month of the outbreak is clearly seen in the bump in the CFR figure, as this means there were much more infected people as expected at that point. This late response was also amplified by a lower health capacity and resulted in a very sharp growth in both infected and death cases. Comparing the remaining two cases in Figure 3, we can see that not only does South Korea benefit from a significantly greater health capacity, it also started mass testing across the nation relatively early on compared to the UK and the US. A mix of rapid containment policies and high health capacity created a proper head start and made South Koreas intervention exemplary. When comparing Ireland to the UK two comparable nations with similar health capacities yet very different government responses we can see that although the outbreak in Ireland happened some weeks after the UK, it is expected that its rates will stay much lower. Even though Irelands population is lower than that of the UK, its CFR is still substantially lower. This is mainly due to a rapid response by the Irish government (e.g. school and college shutdowns only two weeks in, where this took the UK more than a month).

Figure 3 COVID-19 pandemic case studies

Data source: OECDand Hale et al. (2020)Note: Total hospital beds include acute care beds, rehabilitative care beds, long-term care beds. The number of ICU/CCU beds are much less than what is reported above. However, under shortfall situations a standard bed augmented with a ventilator could be used as an alternative. Overall, the bar above is drawn on the assumption that 10% of total number of hospital beds could be counted as available and adequate.

Going through other most affected cases, it appears most governments were somewhat slow in responding given their health capacity constraints, even though they were aware of the outbreak and there was no doubt the virus was highly contagious based on Chinas experience. This is partly justified on the grounds that such measures do not come cheap, but the true explanation is that politicians tended to wilfully ignore the deteriorating situation and to wait until the last critical moment to break the bad news. Also, unpreparedness and a lack of established evidence-based interventions which assure cost-effectiveness are noticeable.

In terms of the economic cost, the IMF predicts a 3% drop in affected countries annual GDP for every month that nonessential services stay closed, as they account for about one-third of output (IMF 2020). And thats before other disruptions and spillovers to the rest of the economy are taken into account. A recent study predicts a 11% year-on-year contraction in the US economy in the fourth quarter of 2020, more than half of which is due to COVID-induced uncertainty (Baker et al. 2020). Therefore, containment measures should be put in place rapidly and must be accompanied by market-stimulating policies, so that they can be at least partially lifted as soon as the situation has stabilised. This would help get the labour force back to work as quickly as possible (Baldwin 2020a).

In the immediate term, increasing government expenditure is a strategy that is endorsed by most financial authorities and economists (IMF 2020, UNCTAD 2020, Baldwin, 2020b). While this prevents the economy from a total meltdown, mass supplies of masks and testing would allow the labour force to gradually return to work while keeping the risk of another spread low (Greenhalgh 2020, Baldwin 2020c).

Given the substantial costs that pandemics impose on the global economy, it is essential to explore further mitigation strategies to minimise their likelihood and consequence, otherwise we will keep moving from one epidemic to another still unprepared. Evidence suggests that the likelihood and frequency of pandemics have increased over the past century because of increased global travel and integration, urbanisation, increased interactions between animals and humans, weak health systems and greater exploitation of the natural environment. Malaria, for instance, took millennia to jump from primates to humans. Yet in the last 50 years, more than 300 pathogens have appeared or reappeared across the globe (Jones 2008). Therefore, we should start planning to prepare for the next pandemic from this very moment, as even if containment limits the spread of disease, other outbreaks will keep happening as long as diseases keep jumping from animals to humans. Public health experts say that it is not a matter of if another pandemic will happen, but when.

It is also quite clear that flattening the curve becomes much easier the higher the health capacity bar is set. Unlike the government response, which can be put into practice almost immediately, increasing health capacity in incremental and time-taking, arithmetic in opposed to the exponential growth of the disease, and it takes much more time in advance. Further capital investment is therefore advised to give health systems a head-start to reduce the response shortfall a standard phase in pandemics where there is not enough capacity to admit everyone in need.

Lastly, there is a dire need for evidence-based approaches to what can and will work in different settings with different types of constraints and challenges. Without understanding the impact and cost of mitigation strategies, it is difficult to find the most cost-effective and sustainable response tailored to each countrys context and available resources. There are, however, not many economic studies on health interventions that target epidemics and disease outbreaks. For example, Chalkidou et al. (2020) finds only one study about COVID mentioning the term cost-effectiveness.

Baldwin, R (2020a), Remobilising the workforce for World War COVID: A two-imperatives approach, VoxEU.org, 13 April 2020.

Baldwin, R (2020b), Keeping the lights on: Economic medicine for a medical shock, VoxEU.org, 13 March 2020.

Baldwin, R (2020c), COVID-19 testing for testing times: Fostering economic recovery and preparing for the second wave, VoxEU.org, 26 March 2020.

Baker, S, N Bloom, S Davis and S and Terry (2020), COVID-induced economic uncertainty and its consequences, VoxEU.org, 13 April 2020.

Chalkidou, K, A Gheorghe and C Krubiner (2020), Strategic Investments for COVID-19 and Future Epidemic Threats, Centre for Global Development, 20 March.

Eurostat (2019), Healthcare resource statistics beds.

Greenhalgh, T, M B Schmid, T Czypionka, D Bassler and L Gruer (2020), Face masks for the public during the covid-19 crisis, British Medical Journal 369.

Hale, T, A Petherick, T Phillips and S Webster (2020), Variation in government responses to Covid-19, Blavatnik School Working Paper, BSG-WP-2020/031.

Jones, K E, N G Patel, M A Levy, A Storeygard, D Balk, J L Gittleman and P Daszak (2008), Global trends in emerging infectious diseases, Nature 451(7181): 990-993.

IMF (2020), Europes COVID-19 Crisis and the Funds Response, The IMF and Covid-19 blogs, 30 March 2020.

UNCTAD (2020), The coronavirus shock: a story of another global crisis untold and what policymakers should be doing about it, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

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We need a better head start for the next pandemic | VOX, CEPR Policy Portal - voxeu.org

The South’s Handling Of Coronavirus Could Be ‘A Macabre Game Of Whack-A-Mole’ – OPB News

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Some southern states, including Georgia and South Carolina, are among the first in the country to ease restrictions to try get back to business despite factors that make the South particularly vulnerable to the coronaviruspandemic.

And pressure is mounting on other southern governors to get their economies back up and running. Outside the Alabama Capitol this week, a few dozen protesters drove by honking their horns, chanting freedom and demanding to get back towork

Republican Gov. Kay Ivey has issued a stay-at-home order through April 30. Paralegal Melissa Kirby from Athens, Ala., says shes hadenough.

If she was worried about safety she could let the people who are actually in danger self-quarantine, wash their hands more, Kirby says. But to force businesses to shut down, thats not hercall.

From inside the capitol, Ivey says no one wants to open the economy more than she does, but the state must first increase its testingcapacity.

Remember all of our decisions that Im going to make are based on data, not desired date, Iveysays.

She is taking a more cautious approach than neighboring states Georgia, Tennessee, Florida and Mississippi, where Republican governors have all moved to reopen at least parts of theireconomies.

I think that we could be heading for a macabre game of whack-a-mole, says Thomas LaVeist, dean of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans. He worries that Louisiana an early hot spot for COVID-19 could see a resurgence in cases as surrounding states eastrestrictions.

Unless the states in the South can coordinate the way the states in the North, East, the West, and the upper Midwest are striving to do, were going to have problems, hesays.

LaVeist says longstanding policy decisions, and population characteristics in the South already put the region at risk in a health pandemic. He points to high poverty rates, large numbers of uninsured residents, lower minimum wages, and general health and well-beingmeasures.

The south is the epicenter for health inequities in this country, LaVeist says. We call the South the stroke belt higher rates of all kind of chronicconditions.

Conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and kidney disease have all been identified as factors in COVID-19deaths.

LaVeist says rural communities in the South are not really resourced to manage an outbreak given the number of rural hospitals that have closed or downsized in recentyears.

You add all of that together and youve got sort of this toxic mix of political decisions, policy decisions, resource limitations that just create an opportunity for a pandemic to really just rage in the south, LaVeistsays.

Another disturbing trend is the high proportion of coronavirus cases and deaths amongAfrican-Americans.

The early evidence of that is from Louisiana, where the death toll has now surpassed that of Hurricane Katrina. African-Americans are 56% of reported COVID deaths, but just about one-third of the states population. Other southern states show similar disproportionate impacts on African-Americanresidents.

In New Orleans, there are clusters of cases in predominantly black neighborhoods where people mostly work in the tourismindustry.

This virus has exposed the social and economic fragility of working families, says New Orleans Mayor LaToyaCantrell.

She points to a tyranny of policies that leaves families without a living wage or access to healthcare.

All of this is embedded in really what were seeing across the board in the city of New Orleans, Cantrell says. And really the state of Louisiana is on the front line as it relates to thesematters

Southern states are also subject to natural disasters. This month, there have been deadly tornadoes and flash floods; hurricane season starts June first; and theres spring flooding on the MississippiRiver.

In the river town of Greenville, Miss., Mayor Erick Simmons says theyre still reeling from record floods last year with some residents still displaced, and nowthis.

In a city that has a 38.6% poverty rate, this COVID-19 is exacerbating all of the issues that were having, Simmons says. The acute nature of the pandemics economic downturn is felt more here than many otherplaces.

Simmons says demand at food pantries and soup kitchens has nearly tripled in the MississippiDelta.

Regionwide, eight of the 10 states with the biggest jumps in unemployment claims are in theSouth.

The pandemic is also renewing calls for expanding Medicaid coverage. Nine of the 14 states that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act are in the South. Of them, Texas has the highest number of uninsuredresidents.

Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, fears those numbers are on the rise based on calls to his office from constituents who have lost their jobs and their healthinsurance.

So now, more than ever, we need to push to expand Medicaid, he says. To provide a backstop to our health care coverage for many working people who desperately needit.

Allred, whose congressional district includes Dallas, is pushing legislation that would offer more federal money to states that expand Medicaid, in an effort to sway mostly Republican legislatures and governors to reconsider their repeated rejection of a key part ofObamacare.

Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., is behind the bill. He says expanding Medicaid would help protect everyone in these uncertaintimes.

The thing that this pandemic has really brought home to people is that our health is dependent on our neighbors health more than we like to have thought about in the past, Jonessays.

A test of that dependency is coming with some southern states now on the brink of reopening.

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Why COVID-19 confinement is hitting people with intellectual disabilities hard – World Economic Forum

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The loneliness reported by many people with intellectual disabilities has been exacerbated by quarantine.

The lockdown means sudden deprivation of specialized services and work opportunities.

Issues over rationing of care further increase the current worry and fear.

My brother was supposed to move into his first independent home in mid-March. In his late 20s, and a person with an intellectual disability, he had finally gathered up the courage and the will to move out of our family home and live in a group home. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, my brothers move is now delayed indefinitely, and his world remains mostly his bedroom. He cant go to his part-time job, the library, or to church.

My brother and many others with intellectual disabilities face the additional burden of increased loneliness during COVID-19. While many people are experiencing isolation, anxiety and loneliness during this challenging time, we know that prior to COVID-19, 45% of people with intellectual disabilities reported feeling lonely (thats compared to only 10.5% of the general population). The increased pressures living in quarantine can result in challenges to mental health, sleep disruptions and mood swings.

We know that loneliness is correlated with serious health risks such as heart disease, weakened immune systems and stroke. For people with intellectual disabilities who had already long experienced loneliness and social ostracization, what significant impacts might this have on their mental and physical health? Many COVID-19 patients die alone. For people with intellectual disabilities already experiencing severe loneliness, this fact seems particularly cruel.

People with intellectual disabilities often utilize resources such as home health aides, day programmes, drop-in centres, family respite services and group homes. For health and safety reasons, many of these services are now unavailable or closed, increasing the responsibility of family members, affecting the routine of people with intellectual disabilities and significantly impacting their independence. My brother is not able to go to his state-funded part-time job, removing his interaction with others outside of our immediate family and taking away the sense of purpose he felt by doing work.

These COVID-19-related service changes also reveal the complex interdependencies with families, caregivers and staff that most people with intellectual disabilities depend on in their day-to-day lives. In China, a family made headlines when a teenager with cerebral palsy died in Wuhan after his father and brother, diagnosed with coronavirus, were quarantined in a treatment facility and unable to care for him.

Some people with intellectual disabilities are not able to quarantine alone or stay with their families due to their enhanced medical or behavioural needs. Remaining in group homes or similar long-term care facilities can allow people with intellectual disabilities access to the care they need, but may put them at a much greater risk of infection. For people with intellectual disabilities who live independently or semi-independently but rely on home health aides, they and their families weigh the risk of exposing themselves to infection or not receiving the daily life supports they need.

In addition to all of the health and safety guidelines we all must decipher and follow, people with intellectual disabilities face increased challenges when it comes to staying safe during COVID-19. My brother and many like him have had their daily routine disrupted completely, a challenge for many people with intellectual disabilities. Understanding the rapidly changing information about COVID-19 or updates to public health guidance can be puzzling, and people with intellectual disabilities may struggle to communicate without non-verbal cues.

In Saskatoon, Canada, some people with intellectual disabilities were so confused about the public health guidance to social distance that they went without groceries or other necessities. It is unlikely that my brother really understands the importance of washing his hands or remembers how to do so correctly, even after seeing a video or reading a detailed pamphlet.

The power of business and leadership

The World Economic Forum Platform for Shaping the Future of the New Economy and Society aims to close the disability inclusion gap by driving business action, capturing and disseminating learnings, and leveraging leadership for scale. It serves as an accelerator for the Valuable 500, a global initiative putting disability on the business leadership agenda.

The value of 1.3 billion people

1.3 billion people across the world live with some form of disability representing 17% of the global population, this is the largest minority group worldwide. 80% of disabilities are acquired between the ages of 18 to 64 i.e. during working age. People with disabilities are often deprived access to employment and the current global employment rate for disabled people is half that of non-disabled people. People with disabilities who are in employment often experience unequal hiring and promotion standards, unequal pay for equal work and occupational segregation. Only 4% of businesses are focused on making offerings inclusive of disability.

Beyond the moral imperative, there is a strong business case for disability inclusion. The cost of exclusion of people with disabilities represents up to 7% of GDP in some countries. With 28% higher revenue, double net income, 30% higher profit margins, and strong next generation talent acquisition and retention, a disability-inclusive business strategy promises a significant return on investment.

A new standard for workplace equality

The Valuable 500 aims to engage 500 national and multinational private sector corporations to be the tipping point for change and to unlock the business, social and economic value of the 1.3 billion people living with disabilities across the world. Leveraging the collective force of committed businesses, the Valuable 500 work together to:

The initiative was launched at the World Economic Forums Annual Meeting in Davos in 2019 and has more than 200 companies committed to date.

Organizations that support and advocate on behalf of people with intellectual disabilities are working hard to continue to provide services and resources, even amid reduced revenue and logistical challenges. Inclusion Europe has produced an easy-to-read instructional guide about coronavirus, designed for people with intellectual disabilities, available in several languages. The UN has produced resources about how to include marginalized and vulnerable people, including those with intellectual disabilities, in risk communication and community engagement. The International Disability Alliance has issued specific recommendations for a disability-inclusive COVID-19 response.

People with intellectual disabilities face the prospect of navigating a healthcare system that is rationing care. During a time of resource scarcity, like the one many countries are experiencing during COVID-19, there simply arent enough resources for every patient that needs them. When this occurs, medical professionals need to decide which patients receive these resources, thus rationing out the care that is available.

In Italy, there are many stories of hospitals too overwhelmed with patients to ventilate every person who needs it medical professionals are forced to make heartbreaking choices about who receives care.

In the United States, the disability community, including the American Association of People With Disabilities, has advocated strongly against guidance in disaster preparedness plans such as those released by states like Washington, Kansas, Tennessee and Alabama that recommend end-of-life decisions that could disadvantage people with disabilities, including some that do not recommend providing ventilators to those with severe mental retardation. Disability advocates assert that these policies directly impact civil rights. In response, the director of the federal health departments civil rights office has begun investigations, and some of these states, including Washington and Kansas, are in the process of updating their guidelines to ensure they do not implicitly or explicitly condone discrimination.

Still, the fear and uncertainty associated with rationing of care is deeply disturbing to people with intellectual disabilities, who are worried that medical professionals, forced to make quick decisions and without a full understanding of their capacity and medical history, might prevent them from receiving medical resources.

People with disabilities and their advocates rightly point out that doctors may make assumptions about people with disabilities based on bias. These fears are supported by research that ableism in medicine does exist. People with intellectual disabilities and their family members remember unethical medical research done on people with intellectual disabilities in the name of science, like those experiments done on unwilling participants at Willowbrook State School in New York. People with intellectual disabilities are still subject to forced sterilization around the world.

A new strain of Coronavirus, COVID 19, is spreading around the world, causing deaths and major disruption to the global economy.

Responding to this crisis requires global cooperation among governments, international organizations and the business community, which is at the centre of the World Economic Forums mission as the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.

The Forum has created the COVID Action Platform, a global platform to convene the business community for collective action, protect peoples livelihoods and facilitate business continuity, and mobilize support for the COVID-19 response. The platform is created with the support of the World Health Organization and is open to all businesses and industry groups, as well as other stakeholders, aiming to integrate and inform joint action.

As an organization, the Forum has a track record of supporting efforts to contain epidemics. In 2017, at our Annual Meeting, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) was launched bringing together experts from government, business, health, academia and civil society to accelerate the development of vaccines. CEPI is currently supporting the race to develop a vaccine against this strand of the coronavirus.

For now, I am grateful that my brother doesnt seem to understand all the fuss around COVID-19 and Im relieved that hes stuck at home. I hope that he doesnt feel too lonely. When I think of the inevitable time when we are allowed to return to our community, I wonder if my brother will follow hygiene guidelines. Will he stay away from people who are coughing? Will he tell us if he has a fever? For now, if he has to go to the hospital, I have to hope that his life is considered as valuable as someone without a disability.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with our Terms of Use.

Written by

Kara Eusebio, Global Shaper, Ottawa Hub, Invest Ottawa

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Why COVID-19 confinement is hitting people with intellectual disabilities hard - World Economic Forum

Harmful tweets from high places: Why Is Twitter acting now? – Salon

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Last month, Twitter did something striking and almost unprecedented: It deleted two tweets from a world leader.

The social media platform removed the posts both from Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro because they violated a new company policy on disinformation involving the global Covid-19 health crisis. One showed him defying the rules of isolation advocated by his own health minister and the World Health Organization; in the other, he defended the controversial use of an unproven drug to treat Covid-19.

Under Twitter's new policy, anyone caught denying established facts about the disease, propagating false or misleading information, denying scientifically established facts, or posting alleged cures for Covid-19, will have their tweets deleted.

Bolsonaro, a far-right politician, had long sought to deny or minimize the dangers of Covid-19 and encouraged businesses to remain open to save the economy. In early March, for instance, the president called the pandemic a "fantasy" and "hysteria." On March 20 and again on March 24, he described Covid-19 as a "little flu."

Bolsonaro isn't alone. In recent weeks, Twitter has also deleted misleading statements on Covid-19 from Venezuelan president Nicols Maduro and Rudy Giuliani, one of U.S. President Donald Trump's lawyers. Noticeably absent from the list: President Trump himself. On April 17, Trump posted a series of Tweets in support of public protests in Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia. All three tweets appear to violate Twitter's new Covid-19 rules, which don't allow posts "actively encouraging people to not socially distance themselves in areas known to be impacted by Covid-19 where such measures have been recommended by the relevant authorities." The protestors, many of whom did not wear face masks or practice social distancing, were gathered to push back on guidelines by their state governments to limit social interaction. All three states have active Covid-19 cases.

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The global pandemic is also far from the first time that dangerous disinformation campaigns have flourished on social media platforms, including those promoted by world leaders. So why, experts are asking, is Twitter acting now? Will it make a difference? And why not censure Tweets from other leaders, including Trump?

Anna Brisola, a Ph.D. candidate in information sciences at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, points to a growth in pressure from society and even from some politicians to find a solution to the problem of fake news. In the past, she wrote in an email to Undark, companies like Twitter would "hesitate in the repression of fake news" because it can "generate a lot of likes, a lot of sharing, a lot of debate, a lot of data. And that means money."

But "with the pandemic frightening the world, threatening the economy and, especially, lives, fake news and rumors have become also a public health problem, standing between life and death," she adds. Media companies likely don't want to be held responsible for not acting or the potential economic fallout. Already, there are more than 2.6 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 worldwide and the disease has killed more than 180,000 people, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. In such a crisis, Brisola says, the platforms don't want "to be labeled as the one that has no credibility."

A different economic calculation may be at play when it comes to Trump, however. Twitter is based in the U.S., and the Trump administration has more potential power over the company compared to Bolsonaro and other world leaders, Brisola says. It's unclear, she adds, whether Twitter will ever take down a post from Trump: "Are they willing to touch this hornet's nest?"

Still, Twitter's new policy may not be enough to contain disinformation related to Covid-19, particularly if the company only targets certain leaders. It also many not help even in cases like Bolsonaro's. After all, in Brazil, Bolsonaro's false claims still appear on other media, including on television. And they could still be shared on WhatsApp, one of the country's main social media platforms for spreading disinformation. To address this, the Facebook-owned messaging app has taken steps to reduce the spread of disinformation by limiting the number of times people can share frequently forwarded messages from five to only once. It has also limited the forwarding of messages to a single chat at a time.

* * *

Under its new policy so far, Twitter says it has removed more than 1,100 tweets containing misleading and potentially harmful Covid-19 content and required more than 1.5 million suspicious accounts to verify contact information or complete a reCAPTCHA test.

On March 25, Venezuelan president Nicols Maduro became the first state leader to have a tweet deleted under the policy. In response, Maduro denounced Twitter, saying the platform "censored" one of his posts in which the leader claimed to have received some articles from a Venezuelan scientist that included a supposed cure for Covid-19: a mixture containing, among other ingredients, honey, lemon, and pepper. (A previous instance of Twitter pulling a world leader's Tweet happened in February 2019, but it wasn't for disinformation: The company removed a message from an account that reportedly belongs to Iranian leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei reinforcing a 1989 call for the murder of writer Salman Rushdie.)

Also in March, Twitter deleted a post from Giuliani, who advocated the use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria remedy with uncertain effectiveness in treating Covid-19 the same unproven drug being promoted by Bolsonaro. In Brazil, the platform deleted tweets from Brazilian Sen. Flvio Bolsonaro (one of the sons of President Bolsonaro) and Environment Minister Ricardo Salles for spreading disinformation related to Covid-19.

According to Iria Puyosa, a political communication scholar from the Central University of Venezuela, the global pandemic has given "social media platforms an opportunity to establish more ironclad controls on the information disseminated by public figures, particularly political leaders."

Twitter's approach follows similar attempts by other social media platforms. In 2019, for instance, YouTube which is owed by Google changed its recommendation algorithms after a scandal in which the algorithms were manipulated by pedophile networks. According to Yasodara Crdova, a World Bank agile/civic tech fellow and former senior fellow of Harvard's Kennedy School, Twitter has other projects underway, including a "new 'tag' for manipulated content," defined as media that is altered in order to mislead or deceive and that could result in serious harm "which seems to be having some effect."

But even without the new Covid-19 policies, President Bolsonaro appears to be losing ground. Some supporters are starting to criticize how the president has handled the crisis. According to Raquel Recuero, a professor of communication at the Federal University of Pelotas, who has conducted a study on the engagement of the pro-Bolsonaro online network on Twitter, "the pro-Bolsonaro online nucleus has greatly emptied," although she adds that the president's smaller following which still includes many bots it is still active.

* * *

Social media platforms have long been a resource for spreading dis- and misinformation for example during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, where there was Russian interference, the 2018 Brazilian presidential election, which was challenged by fake news, the 2019 U.K. electoral campaign, and the 2019 Indian electoral campaign. Some world leaders have continued to post false or misleading statements on such topics Trump, for instance, has posted such messages about the Russian election interference on Twitter, as reported by the Washington Post. And critics have also long called for Twitter to delete posts or accounts containing dangerous or false claims including those from world leaders.

Social media companies haven't indicated why they've changed tack in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. One reason could be the sheer size of the problem: While other disinformation cases may have been dangerous for specific countries or regions, Covid-19 is affecting the entire world. "Unfortunately," wrote Crdova, "we need a global disaster to remember the importance of rationality in public discourse."

"For issues that are considered local," Crdova wrote, platforms like Twitter or Facebook, "have less power [to enforce measures], not least because they often involve issues considered cultural." Crdova gives the example of racist speech. In Brazil, such speech is a heinous crime; in the U.S., where Twitter and Facebook are based, it is protected under freedom of speech laws. "For these companies to effectively think about implementing localized legislation, we need to regulate first," Crdova adds. "And this is not going to happen where governments take advantage of rumors."

And while disinformation may have gone unchecked during the 2016 U.S. election, social media companies have since responded if a little late. After the election and subsequent congressional investigations in 2018, says Puyosa, "social media companies decided to take measures to monitor and somehow try to control the spread of propaganda and misinformation on their platforms, in particular political propaganda and electoral processes."

The companies are motivated to put their own rules in place, she says, because it gives them more control than if they were to wait until governments impose what could be even stricter regulations. "They are to self-regulate and take the initiative before regulations are imposed on them," she says, also noting that the measures were too timid.

The Covid-19 crisis is also, in part, regaining public confidence in professional journalism, wrote Crdova. Social media companies, she adds, are contributing to this by taking a more active role in curbing falsehoods. But the companies could do more by "calibrating algorithms to give space to the traditional press, opening space for rational moderation on issues that emerge from sites specialized in conspiracy theories," she says. But the platforms stop short of cutting off tweets from Trump, she adds, because "Trump goes up to a limit, but he never goes beyond the interpretation of the American constitution."

Even in the face of a global pandemic, some critics worry that curbing dis- and misinformation on social media could have unintended consequences. According to Joo Brant, a communication rights activist, by censoring speech from a public authority, the platforms limit the access of information for Brazilians "who should have the right to know the position of their highest authority on the crisis, which also implies a problem of sovereignty."

Brant believes that platforms should perform content moderation "under criteria defined in a public way, aligned with international standards and supervised by independent agencies."

Carlos Affonso, director of the Institute of Technology and Society of Rio de Janeiro, noted in an interview to newspaper Folha de So Paulo that greater transparency is needed. Companies need not only clear and transparent rules, but also consistency in implementation and they have no such history of transparency and consistency, he pointed out.

* * *

Even if Twitter's new policy works, it won't curb all dis- and misinformtion. Public figures and world leaders will still get airtime on other media. After one of Bolsonaro's Covid-19 speeches was broadcast live on television, for instance, many Brazilians decided to get out of isolation, putting their lives and others' at risk. Policies like Twitter's also won't matter much unless more social media platforms follow suit. In Brazil, as in Venezuela and several other countries, WhatsApp is a "fundamental communication tool," especially in low-income communities, explains Crdova. Because it is so widespread, it is "therefore more likely to be instrumentalized by pre-existing networks of exploitation," she adds.

In fact, observes Puyosa, WhatsApp appears as the main tool for spreading dis- and misinformation, followed by Twitter and Facebook and, increasingly, Instagram. In Brazil, for instance, rumors of Covid-19 miracle cures proliferate on WhatsApp and put people's lives at risk.

Reports have revealed the reach of the disinformation networks in support of Bolsonaro, either on Twitter, with its thousands of bots, or on WhatsApp, with illegal mass messaging financed by allied entrepreneurs. On March 29, a joint study from the Federal University of Minas Gerais and the University of So Paulo suggested that among the 20 audio clips with the greatest circulation on WhatsApp, five deny the severity of Covid-19. And of those five, four are among the 10 most shared on the platform.

Crdova writes that it is extremely difficult to monitor and control what circulates in WhatsApp without violating users' privacy. Pablo Ortellado, a professor of public policy management at the University of So Paulo, points to solutions that would help minimize the problem, such as "removing mass forwarding capabilities, transmission lists, and limiting large groups." Crdova also suggests the platform should "take out of circulation the invitation link function, which opens a loophole for people to join groups massively, changing the speed of news sharing in chat apps, and hide the phone number of group participants."

Both experts also point out that WhatsApp mainly delivers private messages between users' phones. Other social media platforms keep users' posts more or less public, such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, giving these companies more control over managing their networks.

While most of these platforms have put at least some policies in place to curb dis- and misinformation, Facebook announced recently that it would increase collaboration with health authorities and improve anti-spam filtering on WhatsApp.

Even if policies like Twitter's can help reduce the reach of fake Covid-19 news, experts point out it is not coming soon enough. "If the companies had actively collaborated" with academics in the past, wrote Crdova, "we might have been able to do much more."

Media consumers also have a role to play, she says, which will require more education on how the digital world works. Puyosa agrees: "It would be much more useful and healthier for public debate to educate citizens on information consumption." There needs to be "an effort to regain citizen confidence on the media and journalists," she says.

* * *

Disclosure: The author of this story is a member of Global Voices, a nonprofit organization that describes itself as "an international and multilingual community of bloggers, journalists, translators, academics, and human rights activists." Iria Puyosa, who was quoted in this piece, is also a member.

Raphael Tsavkko Garcia is a Brazilian journalist who specializes in Brazilian and Spanish politics, technology, and their intersection with human rights.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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Harmful tweets from high places: Why Is Twitter acting now? - Salon

The Observer view on the domestic abuse bill failing women trapped in lockdown – The Guardian

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Social distancing is saving lives every day. But the physical and psychological toll of the lockdown is not spread evenly among us. Care home residents, prisoners and children in the care of the state are just some of those whose health and wellbeing have been disproportionately endangered for the common good. And the enforced social isolation of a lockdown is a particularly terrifying prospect for victims of domestic abuse and their offspring.

Abusers so often rely on isolating their victims from friends, family and colleagues in order to prolong and worsen the impact of their abuse. The lockdown has aided and abetted them in their mission to terrorise. Around 6% of adults report having experienced domestic abuse in the last year, the overwhelming majority of them women; two women a week are killed by a current or former partner. Since social distancing restrictions came into force last month, there are alarming signs that domestic abuse has surged; the National Domestic Abuse helpline has seen a 25% increase in calls, and the Metropolitan police have reported a 24% increase in charges and cautions for domestic abuse. The pandemic also makes it more difficult for women to access help: not just because they may be constantly monitored at home, but because three quarters of domestic abuse services have reported having to reduce their services, because of staff self-isolating and social distancing requirements.

This week, the long-delayed domestic abuse bill will return to parliament for its second reading. It comprises some welcome measures, including the creation of a statutory definition of domestic abuse, which includes emotional, coercive and economic abuse as well as physical violence, and the legal establishment of a domestic abuse commissioner. But it goes nowhere near far enough in tackling the hurt that is going on behind closed doors.

The nature of domestic abuse means that properly addressing and preventing it is relatively resource intensive: it is not simply a matter of removing a woman and her children from an unsafe situation. Domestic abuse survivors need ongoing support first, to be able to leave their abuser, and then to process the trauma that years of damage can inflict. Evidence-based perpetrator programmes are required to reduce the risk of them reoffending, either with their former partner or a new one. None of that comes cheap.

Yet the bill provides nowhere near the level of resourcing that is needed to keep women safe. Like all locally funded services, those for domestic abuse have faced significant funding cuts over the last decade. The extra funding announced by government in February for refuge services will not fill the gap the number of refuge spaces in the UK is almost a third lower than that recommended by the Council of Europe and there has been no extra funding allocated for community services, which are accessed by most domestic abuse survivors. While the legislation would give the police greater powers to enforce domestic abuse protection orders, the government is planning no resources or training for already stretched law forces.

The bill also does nothing to recognise that the government is complicit in the abuse of migrant women through its hostile environment policies. Many have no recourse to public funds and so are unable to access statutory support, leaving them trapped in life-threatening situations. Abused women whose migrant status is insecure are put off from seeking help from the police because it can result in their deportation and separation from their children; too often abusers know this and use it as yet another weapon of intimidation. All victims of domestic abuse and their children should be entitled to support, regardless of their immigration status.

The cost of properly resourcing domestic abuse services pales in comparison to its huge societal cost, which the government estimates at 66bn a year. It is small change compared with the vast sums that have been rightly found to protect the economy through the pandemic. For abuse victims and their children, the lockdown has only tightened the security of the domestic prisons in which they are trapped. Yet they continue to fall through the cracks of the governments Covid-19 response.

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The Observer view on the domestic abuse bill failing women trapped in lockdown - The Guardian

Cannabis cultivation could be a key economic driver for reconstruction after Covid-19 – Daily Maverick

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Covid-19 is having a disastrous effect on the South African economy that had already entered into recession, the Reserve Bank expects GDP to shrink by 6% adding pressure to the already high 2019 unemployment rate of 29.1% with an estimated loss of an additional one million jobs, taking the country to 7.7 million unemployed.

The lockdown will lead to a significant reduction in tax revenue at a time government has had to prioritise unplanned spending towards healthcare and economic support measures for disaster relief efforts, pushing the already high debt to GDP ratio of 62% to unsustainable levels.

SAs growth prospects are grim with the country facing a very real human catastrophe. Governments short-term policies are all focused on Covid-19 mitigation and disaster relief within the very limited means of state finances.

What will urgently be required post-Covid-19 is a clear and coherent economic policy where government can, through targeted interventions, achieve rapid socioeconomic development that has been elusive to date. Its clear that new regenerative thinking is required that seeks to provide long-term sustainability, is resistant to external shocks such as global economic markets and climate change and is based on maximising our abundant human and natural resources.

SA will need policy along the lines of Roosevelts New Deal that helped lift the US out of the Great Depression by putting people to work building social infrastructure and the Marshall Plan designed to rebuild Europe after World War II. What would this sort of policy look like for SA? Would it be an extension of business as usual? Or is it an opportunity to innovate out of the ashes of the old and chart a course for the much-vaunted African Renaissance?

In his acceptance speech to the African Union in Feb 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa said we have trained our sights on supporting green growth on the continent, and on ensuring that the continent takes advantage of the opportunities presented by the green transition. This includes new industries in energy, materials engineering, the circular economy, sustainable agriculture and clean production.

The time to implement this vision of advancing inclusive green economic growth and sustainable development has come. We boldly need to step into this green future and design systems that allow us to live within our economic and ecological limits. We can achieve this by setting our sights on genuinely transformative economic growth and the potential of a plant that has been naturalised and traded in Africa for a thousand years.

President Ramaphosa talked about this in his 2020 State of the Nation Address, acknowledging that cannabis farming happens throughout the country, pledging to open up and regulate the commercial use of hemp products, providing opportunities for small-scale farmers. Cannabis offers an opportunity unprecedented in South Africas history since the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 as South Africas much-maligned and excluded green gold, with massive potential to birth a new sunrise industry to lift us out of economic recession, poverty and unemployment.

Globally, cannabis has a long history as one of the mainstays and drivers of early industrialisation, providing fibre for ropes and canvas for sails that powered maritime trade to help build the global market that exists today, as well as textiles for clothing and an important role in medicinal apothecaries.

It was South Africas colonial government that nominated Indian hemp to be listed as a dangerous drug by the League of Nations in the mid 1920s followed by the banning of industrial hemp as the result of a corporate agenda of nefarious interests in the US in the mid 1930s. It has been illegal for the past 80 years in most parts of the world for its narcotic properties while the industrial capacity continued to contribute to the economies of China, India and parts of Europe.

Currently, more than 30 countries have legal cannabis for medical use and a growing number of states in the US and other countries are legalising or tolerating cannabis for recreational use, including South Africa where the Constitutional Court ruled in September 2018 that it was legal to cultivate and use cannabis in the privacy of your own home and gave Parliament two years to amend legislation.

Today, the global medical and recreational cannabis market is growing from an estimated $9.6-billion in 2017 to a projected market value of $57-billion-plus by 2027. These estimates exclude existing and potential new markets for industrial cannabis for which little information is available.

The potential for cannabis in South Africa is enormous. The country has drought-resistant acclimatised genetic strains that have naturalised over hundreds of years, combined with tens of thousands of existing farmers who are familiar with the crop and how to grow it. The potential value chain is being explored by the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Agriculture, which have been tasked with finalising an agro-processing masterplan by the end of June.

What is not clear is whether SA will base its future cannabis industry regulations on the existing resource base and farmers or follow the western model of narcotic levels in the plant for which our country would have to import genetics, and is considerably behind the curve by global standards.

The cannabis value chain is based on the components of the plant that have economic potential: the seed offers food and oil that is high in essential fatty acids that will noticeably improve the diet of SAs poor, resulting in improved cognitive performance and boosted immune systems. In addition, the plant can be used to produce both ethanol and biofuel that could potentially feed directly into the energy and plastic sectors. The stalk offers two main agro-processing streams, the outer layer that can be stripped providing one of the longest fibres known to humanity to be used for an extensive range of consumer and industrial textiles. The inner part of the stalk is known as hurd and is used in the paper, automotive and building industries. The flower and most controversial part of the plant is where the medicinal and recreational benefits lie.

There is very little economic data available for an integrated cannabis model as the plant and its benefits have been suppressed for such a long time. Early estimates for a co-operative farming and agro-processing model based on empowering small farmers as a strategy to regenerate rural economies indicate considerable economic potential.

An agricultural co-operative hub model of 20,000 hectares supported by an estimated 10,000 small farmers, each farming two hectares and employing an additional agricultural labourer per hectare would create 30,000 jobs. The processing hub would house a series of decortication technologies required to process up to 50,000 tons of fibre and 120,000 tons of hurd employing 150 plant and support workers.

The potential income per farmer per hectare is dependent on bio-region, climatic conditions and seed strains. Conservative estimates indicate that per hectare, stalk biomass is worth R50,000, fibre R18,000, seed R155,000 and cannabinoids R100,000. Average income per hectare is about R175,000, generating revenue of R350,000 for a small farmer on two hectares and revenue of R3.5-billion per co-operative hub farming 20,000 hectares. Ten hubs farming 200,000 hectares could potentially generate R35-billion in revenue. Additional added value from developing finished products still needs to be determined.

There are also noteworthy climate crisis mitigation benefits to cannabis farming and the possibility to access climate funding to roll out an industrial cannabis strategy. Cannabis sequesters up to 10,000 tons of carbon per hectare, where one co-operative hub could sequester up to 200 million tons of carbon.

The objective is to develop a multi-billion-rand industrialised cannabis value chain that enables the empowerment of small-scale farmers and the development of agro-processing co-operative hubs that focus on developing the following value chains:

Seed

The seed can be processed into food with a focus on preventative healthcare to boost the diet of the poor in the form of hemp hearts, the inside of the seed, or protein powder made from crushing the seed shell. Both are extremely high in proteins and omega essential fatty acids. The seed can also be cold pressed into an oil for human consumption.

Bio-fuel and plastic

The seed can be cold pressed into oil, the whole plant can be processed for fuel through a pyrolysis process or converted into ethanol by a fermentation process. There is also huge potential for an eco-friendly bio-plastics industry that will start to reverse land and sea plastic pollution.

Building

The inner part of the stalk, the hurd, can be processed into hempcrete for building houses that are stronger, fire- and moisture-proof and more durable. Communities can grow and build their own homes transforming the governments housing programme from handouts to skills development and empowerment. The hurd can also be processed into eco-friendly insulation and pressed fibre-board similar to existing wood-based options.

Textiles

The outer part of the stalk, the bast fibres, can be used to make textiles that are extremely versatile and used for a wide variety of applications from accessories, shoes and furniture, to home furnishings.

Paper

Paper is made from either the hurd or bast fibre. Industrial cannabis/hemp paper is a valuable alternative to conventional paper made from trees, and could provide a more renewable source for much of the worlds paper needs one acre of hemp can produce as much paper as four to 10 acres of trees over a 20-year cycle. Hemp stalks grow in four months, whereas trees take at least 20 years.

Medicine

Cannabis medicines were once the most commonly used medicines in the world until the 1920s and were listed in the US Pharmacopoeia until the mid-1930s. Today medical cannabis is playing an increasingly significant role and offers potentially cheap healthcare solutions for a variety of ailments that can directly contribute to primary and preventative health care on a community level and pharmaceutical medicines for specific conditions.

There are also substantial opportunities to develop new technologies for modern processing and to adapt or use existing technologies lying dormant in the country such as the R100-million DTI-funded fibre processing plant near Winterton.

In order to rapidly develop the economic potential of cannabis in SA, innovative world-leading legislative changes will be required to create the enabling conditions to rapidly unlock cannabis markets where:

The existing Constitutional Court ruling for Responsible Adult Use needs to be expanded as it excludes all people without access to private land from cultivating cannabis and therefore access to cannabis so as to include the ability to cultivate, extract, process, manufacture and sell cannabis-based products for recreational use, along the same lines that alcohol and tobacco are currently regulated so as to be inclusive.

Covid-19 provides South Africa with the economic and social necessity to draw on all its available resources to ensure a resilient recovery and to make policy decisions that work towards rapidly regenerating our society and economy. The countrys long history of illicit cannabis production and export puts us in a strong position to develop a local cannabis market that unlocks the entire value chain, stimulates economic growth and generates substantial tax revenue for the fiscus.

The rapid introduction of far-reaching, proactive and empowering legislation is required to create the conditions to allow cannabis the possibility to restore the dignity of ordinary people, creating jobs for meaningful work, to grow and manufacture their own food, fuel, fibre, shelter and medicine in a green sustainable way. DM

Nicholas Heinamann is an African cannabis activist, policy strategist, and consultant. He is the co-ordinator of the SA Cannabis Lobby group, a partnership of the Cannabis Industry Development Council, WC, and Afristar Foundation. Afristar is a South African PBO that develops projects and strategies promoting Regenerative Futures focused on a nature-based economy. He has been lobbying cannabis as the Peoples Plant since 1996 and the role it can play to alleviate poverty and deal with the environmental, energy, food, water and climate crisis the world is facing.

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Tom Gordon: Holyrood’s finances are out of step with the Covid crisis – HeraldScotland

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THE gruesome economic impact of the coronavirus lockdown got several mentions in Nicola Sturgeons decision-making framework this week.

But while she set out the many factors which will determine the lifting of restrictions, there was little about how to lift the economy off its knees once they had passed.

Indeed, the document contained only a single pound sign, in a reference to the 2.3billion of Scottish Government support for business during the immediate crisis.

First things first, of course.

As we know, the priorities are suppressing the virus, saving lives and protecting the NHS. But the money to support public services and keep the country going through the long aftermath matters too. There was one brief passage about this at the end of the framework.

The austerity driven response to the 2008 financial crash did not work and worsened the inequality that was part of its cause; we must not repeat those mistakes, it said.

It was a reminder the big political debate of this crisis is yet to come.

Forget the marginal variations between Scotland and England over lockdown, the real differences will be in the policies Westminster and Holyrood try to recover from it.

Ms Sturgeons document was a signal that, once the health emergency is addressed on a broadly four-nation basis, she is far more willing to go her own way on the economic one.

But that will take money. And as a report out this week from the Scottish Fiscal Commission warned, that might be difficult for host of reasons, one of which looks particularly out-of-date.

Since it acquired more tax and welfare powers in 2016, Holyroods finances have been governed by a complex Fiscal Framework.

Unlike the UK, which can borrow as much as it can bear and plans to raise 225bn in bonds to help cope with Covid-19, the framework puts a tight cap on Holyroods borrowing.

Capital borrowing for roads and buildings is capped at 450m in any year up to a total of 3bn, a facility that is already half used up. While resource borrowing is capped at 600m in a year, up to 1.75bn in total, of which 200m has been used.

Moreover, this resource borrowing comes with strings.

Only 500m a year can be borrowed for in-year cash management, to help smooth out the 40bn budget if tax income and spending peaks are out of sync.

While only 300m can be borrowed to help fix forecasting errors. These arise because the budget is based on tax and spending estimates which are invariably off-beam, and so there is a reconciliation after three years to ensure we didnt get more or less than our due.

The dodgier the estimates, the bigger the reconciliation later. For instance, the 2017/18 budget saw Holyrood get around 200m more from the Treasury than it should have because of estimates, and this is being clawed back in 2020/21.

Only if there is a Scotland-specific economic shock, or a forecast of one, is this resource borrowing doubled from 300m to 600m to cope with an extreme forecasting error, such as Scottish income tax slumping.

Even then, this Scotland-specific shock has a very specific meaning.

Onshore Scottish GDP growth must be less than 1% in absolute terms (a given in the coming recession) and 1 percentage point below UK GDP growth (not a given).

There is also a Scottish Reserve fund of up to 700m Holyroods own money from which it can draw up to 250m a year for day-to-say spending.

But our Government, as the Fiscal Commission notes, cannot borrow to fund any additional Covid-19 related spending. The Fiscal Framework, which didnt foresee a pandemic, doesnt allow it.

The Framework should, however, keep the budget fairly stable this year as extra UK spending will mean extra cash under the Barnett formula.

But three years after Scottish income tax revenues nosedive in 2020/21, there could be one hell of a reconciliation falling due in 2023/24.

As the Commission put it: The Scottish Government is required to broadly balance its budget and has limited scope for borrowing and using its reserves. Given the uncertainties about the level of funding and the spending required to respond to the crisis this may present challenges.

The report prompted SNP Finance Secretary Kate Forbes to say the crisis showed the need for Holyrood to have more borrowing powers. She would, of course, have said Holyrood needs more borrowing powers pre-crisis.

But in light of Scotlands looming economic plight - the Commission calls this moment a structural break, a shock so bad that past shocks are no reliable guide - Ms Forbess point surely rings true.

The Fiscal Framework is a relic.

It was due to be reviewed next year anyway, but that exercise should now be expedited and expanded.

Holyroods finances are too rigid for the times, too stiff for the hills the country now has to climb.

If the Treasury tries to keep Holyrood on a short rein, MSPs of all parties, not just the SNP, will bridle at being denied the means to calibrate Scotlands recovery.

The electorate will notice too.

After Covid-19, the last thing Holyrood needs is a straitjacket.

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They will pay you to take oil off their hands – and panic is deepening COMMENT – Express

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Attention moved to the June WTI contract, the new front month, where more gasoline was poured onto the fire, as worries continued about the Cushing Oklahoma oil hub running out of storage in the next few weeks. The June contract plunged by 43 percent at one stage, falling from $20.00 a barrel to $11.60 a barrel in frantic trading.I will deal with oil in more detail later, but needless to say, the ravages in energy spilled over into the broader financial markets. Equities finally had to confront reality - a seemingly rare event these days - with broader indices falling in Europe and the US. Price declines in oil driving home the extent of the economic slowdown on the global economy from COVID-19, as opposed to artfully constructed rallies on the back of flawed v-shaped optimism and Federal Reserve quantitative easings.

US Treasury yields also fell as safe-haven buyers returned to government bonds. Those flows and the general flight to safety also boosted the US Dollar generally, making its rally more broad-based having been previously confined to Petro-currencies. The market's sentiment is flip-flopping daily though on currency and bond markets, suggesting that the street is in headless chicken mode, chasing intra-day momentum while desperately awaiting clarity on the bigger picture. From an investors point of view in these types of markets, it is much better to be the chicken on a perch watching the world go by, than a headless one, running around in random directions covered in blood.

In more positive news, the US Senate appears to have passed the latest $500 billion stimulus package, which now moves to the House of Representatives. That has been balanced out though by President Trump issuing an executive order overnight, blocking all immigration to the US for 90 days, to protect American jobs ostensibly. That is an easy win for an election year President though; no one is immigrating anywhere in the world right now, unless it is on a repatriation flight. Nor is anyone likely to be migrating anywhere for the foreseeable future either. The net result has been market neutral, with both headlines cancelling each other out in effect.

Speculation out of North Korea that Kim Jong Un was on death's door yesterday caused a flurry of volatility in North Asian markets. Apart from the merits of some well-known tier-1 news channels placing a first Tweet above fact checking, no evidence has emerged one way or the other to confirm it. South Korea's Government denied there was any evidence that this was even the case, although President Trump wished him a speedy recovery this morning. Where there is smoke, there is fire perhaps. Until Mr Kim reappears in public, an uncertainty discount will be built into South Korean stocks and the Won, but not markedly so. Because of his relative youth, a succession battle to Mr Kim would likely be a messy one and would increase the uncertainty discount.

On the data front, Australia's March preliminary Retail Sales jumped by a seasonally adjusted 8.20percentM/M, an impressive result. The huge rise was led by food retailing, as Australian's rushed to supermarkets to stockpile toilet paper, pasta and canned food. That has mollified losses on their stock markets today and allowed the AUD to make back half of its risk-aversion losses from overnight.

Given that oil is the front and centre of the financial market's attention at the moment, the Official US Government, and American Petroleum Institute's respective crude inventory figures. will be tonight's data highlight. The EIA data is due at 2230 SGT with inventories forecast to fall from 19.25 million barrels to 16.15 million barrels. The API data is released at 0500 SGT tomorrow morning, with markets looking for a drop from last weeks climb of 13.15 million barrels. Given how tenuous oils recovery has been in Asia today, above forecast prints on either or both numbers could see another wave of sellers crash into oil markets.

Oil prices crashed again overnight, and they seem to have assumed a proxy role for the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic slowdown. Wall Street fell for the 2nd day in a row in a reality bites retreat. The S&P 500 fell 3.1percent, the NASDAQ declined 3.50percent, and the Dow Jones fell 2.70percentas the US earning season continued with its series of underwhelming results.

Asia's response has been somewhat less negative, although stock markets are mostly in the red. Mainland China has performed the best with the Shanghai Composite and CSI 300 both flat on the day. The Nikkei 225 and Korean Kospi are down by 1.0percent, with some Kim Jong Un nerves persisting.

Australia's ASX 200 is down only 0.35percentafter impressive preliminary retail sales data saved the day. News that Australia is preparing to buy, now very cheap oil from the US SPR has also had a boosting effect. The Hang Seng meanwhile, has eased in sympathy with the rest of the region, dropping 0.80percenttoday.

The Straits Times has eased 1.50percentas scandals shake the oil trading market there and the official lock-down was extended until the 1st June. The one-month extension is sure to hit Singapore REITS and mall retailers hard even as the Government announced another S$2.70 billion package. Singapore shares are likely to underperform the region in the near term.

Although Asia may well be viewing the travails of the US oil market as a US-centric problem, the falls of the last two days highlight the extent of the demand slowdown in the world. Hence, price action cannot be entirely ignored. Equity markets seem to be reluctantly facing up to this reality, with the US $500 billion stimulus package hardly causing a ripple on Wall Street. When good news stops lifting equity markets, momentum has likely waned for now. The downside of the equity markets globally most definitely is the soft side for now.

Asian markets remain reluctant this week to continue overnight moves, and given the flip-flop nature of daily sentiment, it is hard to blame them. Such was the case overnight, where another bout of volatility in oil markets saw the US Dollar strengthen on safe-haven demand. US Treasury yields also fell as investors piled into government bonds and out of commodities and equities.

Resource-based currencies such as the AUD and NZD were under pressure, with both falling around 1.0percentyesterday. The same could also be said for Petro-currencies, with the selloffs continuing on the Russian Ruble, Norwegian Krone, Canadian Dollar and Mexican Peso. The later not helped by a 50-basis point cut by the Central Bank. With oil focusing on the world's mind on the extent of the global contraction, the resource/oil grouping are likely to remain unloved this week.

Asian currencies have proved surprisingly resilient this week. Resource proxies the IDR and MYR easing only slightly against the Dollar. That same story is repeated elsewhere with USD/JPY unchanged for the week, and the KRW and CNY only modestly weaker. The fall in oil prices, while a burden for producing countries, is a boon for importing countries. Asia is the worlds largest importer, and the falls in oil are acting as a natural support for regional currencies. In Indonesia's case, although it exports crude, it refines very little and imports most of its refined petroleum products. Pertamina is chartering ships to go bargain hunting globally now, and thus the fall in crude prices has not been the burden on Indonesia, one would logically think it would be.

WTI's June futures, the new front month, fell the chill of the US oversupply situation yesterday, plunging 33percentto $12.80 a barrel, having tested $11.50 a barrel earlier in the session. Knowing what the price of US oil futures and the US over the counter grades is becoming a challenging business. I see a considerable divergence in my WTI feeds across different providers. Some physical delivery grades, such as Alaskan crude, are still trading at negative prices. That is, they will pay you to take them off their hands.

On a spot basis, WTI finished around $12.80 a barrel yesterday. After an initial profit taking rally, sellers have quickly swamped WTI, and it is now trading just above $12.00 a barrel. Sentiment has not been helped by the Texas Railway Commission -the state quango with the powers to enact production cuts- deciding to put off its decision on production cuts until early May. The urgency with which oil longs positioned in the June contracts, want to roll into a still illiquid July contract suggests that selling interest remains unabated. June WTI will move below $10 a barrel sooner, rather than later.

Brent Crude is seeing further panic selling in Asia today. Having fallen by a gigantic 24percentto $19.60 yesterday, Brent has collapsed again in Asia after an early dead cat bounce. Brent has fallen 16.0percentto $16.50 a barrel this morning, the November 2001 lows. The sell-off today has a capitulation look about it, after OPEC+ tried to convene communications last night, but with no signs of progress.

Brent should find technical support at this level initially, however, a move through $16.00 a barrel will re-open calls for a test of the late 1998 lows around $10.00 a barrel, which is the only meaningful technical support can see from here.

The panic buttons will be being pushed across OPEC+ this morning and rightly so. State budgets will be devastated if prices remain at these levels, exacerbating the COVID-19 slowdown to many countries who can least afford to sustain it. I suspect the IMF's phone will be ringing hot this morning. The only plausible action from here would be another round of follow-up cuts from OPEC+ and enacted immediately.

The correlation to equities for gold reappeared with force overnight, investors selling gold to raise case as stock markets dived sharply lower. Gold slumped by $36 at one stage to $1661.50 an ounce. It salvaged some pride later in the session and rose to close at $1687.00 an ounce. Gold has eased with equities again in Asia, falling five dollars to $1682.00 an ounce in muted trading.

With the return of the linear equity/gold correlation, the positive outlook for gold fundamentally becomes far more muddied. Equity markets face a potentially tricky couple of weeks ahead. If the correlation holds true, gold will now struggle to sustain gains above $1700.00 an ounce, let alone mount a challenge to $1800.00 an ounce. The latter now looks technically insurmountable in the current environment.

If anything, further losses in equity markets make a retest of the $1640.00 support region more likely for gold. Stop-losses from frustrated longs will inevitably appear if that support breaks. Gold probably trades in a wide, but real, range of $1640.00 to $1710.00 an ounce for the remainder of the week.

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They will pay you to take oil off their hands - and panic is deepening COMMENT - Express

Navigating Through the Disruption An Oceania Perspective – Global Trade Magazine

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Logistics has always been the backbone that silently keeps the world moving but, in this time of uncertainty, its importance has been magnified. COVID-19 has caused disruption globally to all business, in one way or another, and navigating this unprecedented time has highlighted many challenges.

With the evolving landscape, forward planning has become essential to ensure business continuityplans are effective. The need for a recommencement plan for businesses who have temporarily closed and a diversified supply chain for those who operate as essential services is paramount to ensuring business survival for now and success in the future.

The level-4 lockdown of New Zealand has shed some light on the potential challenges that may arise should Australia follow suit.

The Port of Tauranga has announced it is prioritizing the unpacking of essential goods so that the cargo can be handled and transported first. Container loads are able to be delivered to customers sites, if the site is accepting deliveries, however, they cannot be unpacked until the level-4 lockdown period has finished. By doing this, the Port and Government are ensuring the movement of essential goods remains efficient and that essential services can continue operations as usual.

Where a customer site is closed, we see the Port of Wellington waive storage fees for shipments that cannot be transported out of the Port.

We are working with our clients to identify if their goods would be considered essential in the event of a complete lockdown. Wed advise that all companies start considering what sort of goods they have incoming and work with their strategic partner to qualify if their goods would be restricted to such delays if a lockdown were in place in Australia.

Be realistic and confirm whether your goods are considered an essential service and put suitable business measures in place.

If you find that your business cannot be considered essential or it is not viable for you to remain open, youll need to prepare to get back to production quickly once the lockdown is lifted. We recommend that non-essential businesses put a plan in place for the commencement of reopening. It is important to consider whether the recommencement of operations would be staggered, what goods or orders are required to meet the operation recommencement timeline, and are these urgent.

Sometimes the best solution for a businesss supply chain issue is to consider diversifying your shipment options.

For example, it may be beneficial to combine different transport types by flying goods to Singapore before shipping them to Australia rather than just shipping from their location of origin. Combining the two transport types is a faster and cheaper option than purely using air freight in a volatile market.

Businesses may consider using Less than Container Loads (LCL) if they require certain goods for essential service production because it is more cost-effective than their standard full product shipment in a Full Container Load (FCL).

An alternative to air freight, road, and rail in Australia is the Domestic Coastal Shipping Service. After ships have unloaded goods in Eastern Australia, on their return journey to their location of origin, they are able to pick up and deliver domestic goods as they travel West along the coast. We have seen more than a 20% increase for the quarter year-on-year due to the additional pressure on the Australian road and rail market. Rail is at capacity with customers experiencing damage to goods, severe space, and equipment issues as a result whilst the state border closures are posing potential delays for trucking. Many major clients, especially in the food and beverage sector, are switching large volumes to our coastal service as a solution to ensure continuity of business supply.

This domestic shipping service provides a saving of up to 60% over rail and road services. Businesses would need to take into consideration the increased travel time required over other domestic modes of transport and plan this into their supply chain model.

When new challenges arise, it is best for businesses to discuss their options with their strategic partner, who will help navigate this uncertain time.

As businesses struggle to meet the demands of this new normal, C.H. Robinsons trusted advisors around the globe are continually looking for the best solutions to keep your supply chain moving.

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Navigating Through the Disruption An Oceania Perspective - Global Trade Magazine

Tales of love and loss: people from Oceania share their ‘extinction stories’ – The Guardian

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The first time poet Craig Santos Perez encountered a bird native to his homeland of Guam it was in a cage at San Diego zoo.

Growing up on Guam in the 1980s and 90s, Perez, a native Chamorro, had learned about the islands lost birds at school. Children studied pictures and listened to audio recordings of their calls but by then, the islands forests were silent.

Of Guams original 12 species of forest birds, ten had been eaten to extinction by the invasive brown tree snake. Just two narrowly escaped its jaws: the Guam rail and an endemic subspecies of the Micronesian kingfisher, which the Chamorro call sihek.

In the late 1980s, the last siheks were taken off the island to be reared in captive breeding programmes at zoos on the American mainland. Though there are now plans to release some on Guam, they are still considered extinct in the wild.

That day at the zoo, Perez finally came face to face with a real-life sihek, its gold-and-turquoise feathers shining behind the bars. It was very profound, very touching I talked to it, and started crying, he says.

To Perez, the birds fate echoed that of his people: San Diego is home to the largest diaspora of Chamorros outside of Guam. For many years, Perez was one of them. We migrate to survive and to have better opportunities, but at the same time, were far from home, were in a new situation, and it can be very traumatic for the sihek as well as the people.

A poem Perez wrote about the sihek is among those featured on the Living Archive, a new multimedia web platform that provides a space for people from Oceania to tell their extinction stories.

When a species goes extinct, so much is lost, says Perez, who is now an associate professor of English at the University of Hawaii. Not only from the environment and the ecosystem, but culturally as well. We lose our cultural connection to these important species, and we lose the deep meaning that they added to our lives.

The site is the brainchild of Thom van Dooren, an Australian environmental philosopher at the University of Sydney. He hopes it will be a way of creating space for others especially the Pacifics indigenous peoples, but anyone is welcome to contribute to share their tales of love and loss. A storytelling competition will be held later in the year.

As the sixth great extinction gathers pace, stories are more important than ever, van Dooren says. Focusing on stories is about moving away from the simple listing of endangered species.

Multiplying voices and diverse perspectives from around the world helps us to see the significance of extinction as it actually touches down in particular lives and places.

In Indonesias West Papua province, it is the disappearance of the sago palm that is causing heartbreak for the indigenous Marind people. To the Marind, the plant is of central significance for both subsistence and cosmology, but Papua is the new oil palm frontier, and as plantations spread across the landscape, groves of sago are being destroyed.

Even though the communities I work with are facing all kinds of adverse social impacts from this deforestation, whenever I asked them what the worst impact was, they would invariably tell me that oil palm kills the sago, says Sophie Chao, an anthropologist from the University of Sydney who has spent a decade living alongside the Marind.

They would almost place the fate of this tree before their own lives it was the threat to the sago, this nourishing, life-giving plant, that they considered to be the most dramatic rupture caused by deforestation and oil-palm expansion.

Together with members of the Marind community, Chao co-wrote an extinction story about sago for the Living Archive. It includes a translation of a song sung to the plant by a Marind elder: From eating sago, we grew bone; from eating sago, we knew home.

Marind call themselves sago people, and the palm entwines with every aspect of their life, Chao says. Children are said to grow best in the company of sago, and particular palms are named after children that came into the world at the same time. Those babies are often carried in bags made from the fronds of their namesake palm so that, as one young mother told Chao, sago and Marind can follow each others lives.

People also talk about being good food for sago, Chao says. Palm starch nourishes the Marind through their life; but when a person dies, they must be buried in a sago grove so that their body becomes food for the microorganisms that in turn feed the forests roots.

Now, conventional palm oil companies clear-cut the groves, and even sustainable projects can exclude local people from conservation zones, severing the Marinds lifelong connection to their kindred sago.

This plant is culturally meaningful, and it is politically meaningful too, says Chao.

When people are talking about this kind of localised extinction they are also speaking about what they see as their own possible extinction as West Papuan people: the cultural dilution, forced sterilisation, systemic incarceration, and all sorts of other processes that are very much part of the collective identity of West Papuans.

And yet, the whole point of the Living Archive is to avoid the politics of despair, Chao says. As she tells in her extinction story, the Marind themselves have found some hope and resilience in the possibility of reaching a kind of understanding with oil palm: So we cannot deny ourselves hope when they are finding glimmers amid the rubble!

There is power in good stories, Chao says. They might not be able to change the status quo or the structural processes and violence that are causing extinctions, but caring matters. Fleshy stories make us care more.

And theyre more important now than ever, van Dooren says. Covid19 is seen by many as a product of a dysfunctional relationship between humans and animals, and the broader environment too.

Extinction is only part of that puzzle but its a significant part - its a symptom of a broader set of problematic relationships that were being reminded of, not just by Covid 19, but by climate change.

Storytelling is a big part of how we manage those relationships and how we imagine other possibilities.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

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Tales of love and loss: people from Oceania share their 'extinction stories' - The Guardian

COVID-19 Impact on EV and EV Infrastructure Market – Exclusive Report by MarketsandMarkets – Yahoo Finance

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CHICAGO, April 24, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Post COVID-19, the "COVID-19 Impact on EV and EV Infrastructure Marketby Vehicle (Passenger Cars and Commercial Vehicles), Propulsion (BEV, PHEV and FCEV), Charging Station (Normal and Super) and Region - Global Forecast to 2021", size is projected to reach 4.18 million units by 2021 from an estimated 3.42 million units in 2020, at a CAGR of 22.1%. The projection for 2021 is expected to be down by 34% as compared to the pre-COVID estimation Increasing vehicle range per charge for electric vehicles and the growing sensitivity of various governments toward a cleaner environment are the key factors driving the growth of the global electric vehicles and its infrastructure market. Technological advancements in EV charging and substantial investments from automakers in EVs are some of the major factors driving the growth of electric vehicles. Thus, the electric vehicle market is expected to grow significantly in the near future.

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"Asia Oceania is expected to lead the market during the forecast period"

Asia Oceania is expected to be the largest electric vehicle market by 2021 due to the rising demand for greener transportation along with several initiatives by private organizations as well as governments. The COVID-19 crisis has caused a slowdown in China's economic growth. Still, the country is in the leading position in terms of the largest EV market, followed by Europe and the US, thus making Asia Oceania the market leader during the forecast period.

The governments of developing economies have recognized the growth potential of the electric vehicle market, and hence, have undertaken different initiatives to attract OEMs to manufacture electric vehicles in domestic markets. For instance, in March 2019, the Indian government announced the second phase of FAME II, which includes setting up 2,700 charging stations in metro cities. Also, the Indian government plans to make it mandatory for cab-hailing companies Ola and Uber to have 40% of their fleet as electric vehicles.

China is also investing heavily in the production of commercial electric vehicles with plans for export. OEMs such as BYD plan to open plants in other parts of the world to manufacture electric buses and electric trucks to meet regional demand. Despite COVID-19 impact, the EV charging infrastructure in Japan is already at an advanced stage; thus, EV sales and electric vehicle charging stations market are expected to grow significantly in the near future. All these factors will drive the electric vehicle market in the Asia Oceania region.

"Charging station market for electric vehicles to grow at the highest CAGR between 2020 and 2021."

The COVID-19 outbreak and the draconian measures deployed in China resulted in extensive disruptions to economic activities, which delivered a hard blow to the economy. Thus, most governments from affected regions have resorted to infrastructure rehabilitation as an economic stimulus method. The electric vehicle charging infrastructure sector has had a minimal impact from COVID-19. For instance, the Chinese government announced stimulation packages toward boosting the development of a network of electric vehicle charging stations. Increased focus on EV charging infrastructure means the sector could see exponential growth in what is already a hot market.

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"The supercharging segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR"

Tesla pioneered the installation of supercharging stations across the world. These super-fast charging stations can charge an EV battery in approximately 30 minutes. However, superchargers are exclusive only to Tesla EVs and do not function on other manufacturer's models. As of January 2019, Tesla had over 1,400 supercharging stations across the world. With the mounting planned production of Tesla EVs that are set to be launched over the next few years, the supercharging segment is expected to grow in tandem.

Some of the major players in the Electric Vehicle And Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Market are Tesla (US), BYD (China), BMW (Germany), Volkswagen (Germany), and Nissan (Japan), LG Chem (S. Korea), Panasonic (S. Korea), and Bosch (Germany) among others.

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Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Marketby Charging Level (Level 1, Level 2 & Level 3), Application (Public & Private), Charging Infrastructure, Electric Bus Charging, Installation (Portable Charger & Fixed Charger), Charging Station type & Region - Global Forecast to 2027

Wireless Charging for Electric Vehicle Marketby Power Supply (3<11, 1150, & >50 KW), Application (Home & Commercial), Distribution channel (Aftermarket & OE), Component, Charging System, Propulsion, Vehicle type, & Region - Global Forecast to 2027

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Mrs. Leba Qarase and family thankful for the Fijian Government’s decision to lift the ban on inter-island travel – Fijivillage

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Mrs. Leba Qarase and family thankful for the Fijian Governments decision to lift the ban on inter-island travel

Mrs. Leba Qarase and the family of the late former Prime Minister, Laisenia Qarase have stated they would like to place on the record the appreciation to the Fijian Governments decision to lift the ban on inter-island travel.

The Fijian Government has also offered to meet the cost of the plane to carry the late Qarase and the ship to take the family members to Lau.

Laisenia Qarase and Mahendra Chaudhry outside parliament complex during Qarase's term as PM.

The family's spokesperson, Mesake Koroi says now the vanua ko Qalitu can join the family of Tui Kobuca, Laisenia Qarase in according him a funeral that befits a leader that he really was.

Koroi says a government boat would depart for Vanuabalavu on Monday, carrying family members of the former Prime Minister.

The casket of the late former Prime Minister will be flown in a chartered aircraft to the island on Wednesday for burial.

Commercial operator, Goundar Shipping is also putting up a special trip to Vanuabalavu on Monday for mourners who would want to travel to the island. The company is offering a concession return fare of $100.

The family of the late Qarase has confirmed that the former Prime Minister will be laid to rest in his village of Mavana on the island of Vanuabalavu in Lau Province.

Koroi said in a statement that one of Qarases final wishes could now be fulfilled following the governments decision to relax inter-island travel from tomorrow.

Qarase was the countrys sixth Prime Minister from 2000 to 2006, and was also the chief of his village of Mavana, holding the title of Tui Kobuca.

He passed away at the Oceania Private Hospital in Suva on Tuesday after a short illness. He was 79.

He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Leba Qarase, seven children, 27 grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

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Mrs. Leba Qarase and family thankful for the Fijian Government's decision to lift the ban on inter-island travel - Fijivillage

City parks and state beaches re-open for exercise only – KHON2

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Most Honolulu city parks re-opened on Saturday after being shut down by Mayor Kirk Caldwell back on March 21.

At 5 a.m. caution tape and no parking signs were lifted and parking lots re-opened to the public.

However, what you can do at a park and beach park remains limited.

*At 2:30 p.m., on Saturday, April 25, Governor David Ige announced he had re-opened state beaches for exercise use only.

Governor Ige closed all state beaches last week due to the fact people continued to congregate and not follow proper social distancing guidelines. Others continued to sit on the beach, which has not been allowed for over one month.

No one is allowed to sunbathe, read a book, set up a towel, chair, or congregate with others on any beach in the state.

State and county officials emphasized that people must be moving (walking, running, jogging) on the beach or they can be cited by police.

As long as theyre not gathering or standing around, lying on the beach, or sitting on the beach, explained Michele Nekota, Director of Parks and Recreation for City and County of Honolulu. They have to be walking, running or jogging or biking of course on the proper path.

The same rules apply for parks in Honolulu. No one can sit down on a bench or have a picnic. People may only walk through the park to go to the bathroom or get to the ocean.

Honolulu police provides enforcement for the parks and I wouldnt be able to answer exactly what they would be doing, but theyre going to be around and monitoring and enforcing the parks, said Nekota.

KHON2 spoke to Melanie Vanepps, a 12-year-old Honolulu resident, who said she was happy to finally be outside again.

She told KHON2 that she hopes others follow the rules so parks dont have to shut down again.

You have to stay six feet away from people, and you cant stand still on the beach, she said.

If they keep not following it then more cases are going to go up, and we are not going to be allowed to walk in the parks anymore. And Ill be stuck in the house all day again, she said.

With beach parks open once again, Honolulu Ocean Safety are also back in their towers. Theyll be working their normal hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Playgrounds, off-leash dog parks, campgrounds, sporting activities (soccer, basketball, volleyball, tennis etc.), gyms, pools, skateparks and recreation buildings remain closed.

Hanauma Bay and Koko Head shooting complex are also closed.

State parks that have re-opened (for exercise purposes only) include but are not limited to, Polihale State Park on Kauai, Makena State Park on Maui, Malaekahana and Kaena State Park on Oahu.

Ocean activities like surfing, swimming and stand-up paddle boarding are allowed.

Everyone is to continue social distancing while on the beach and in parks.

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City parks and state beaches re-open for exercise only - KHON2

San Clemente beaches to reopen for residents this weekend – Los Angeles Times

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As a heat wave bears down on Southern California, San Clemente plans to reopen city-owned beaches this weekend.

The beaches, along with coastal waters and trails, had been closed since April 8 in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Orange County public health officials had reported 43 COVID-19 patients in San Clemente as of Thursday.

San Clementes City Council voted Tuesday night to begin the process of reopening the citys beaches, which will be available for active use only, such as walking, running, swimming and surfing, officials said. Sunbathers are not welcome.

You cant bring your beach chair or your umbrella, set up for the day and spend the afternoon there, said Erik Sund, assistant city manager.

Representatives of the city and the Orange County Sheriffs Department will be posted at the beaches to ensure that people follow the rules and maintain social distancing, he said.

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Zuma Beach Closed: Lifeguard towers sit on an empty Zuma Beach in Malibu. (Brian van der Brug/Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

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Broad Beach Closed: Beachgoers walk on Broad Beach in Malibu. To fend off coronavirus contagion, Los Angeles County has kept beaches closed. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

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Zuma Beach Closed: Nets were removed to foil beach volleyball players at Zuma Beach in Malibu. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

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Corral Beach Closed: Los Angeles County lifeguards ask a couple to leave Corral Beach in Malibu. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

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Venice Beach Closed: Beachgoers enjoy the sun and sand along the boardwalk in Venice Beach. Southern California beaches are expected to draw crowds this weekend as an early heat wave hits its peak on Saturday and Sunday, even though much of the shoreline remains closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

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Venice Beach Closed: The setting sun casts a dark golden hue over everything. Southern California beaches are expected to draw crowds this weekend as an early heat wave hits its peak on Saturday and Sunday, even though much of the shoreline remains closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

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Venice Beach Closed: Beachgoers never run out of ways to have fun. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

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Manhattan Beach Closed: A lone figure walks onto a closed Manhattan Beach Pier in Manhattan Beach. (Genaro Molina/Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

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Manhattan Beach Closed: Waves are minus surfers next to a closed bike path in Manhattan Beach. Even with the warm weather, the majority of beachgoers and surfers stayed away from beaches that have been closed to stop crowds from gathering to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

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Hermosa Beach Closed: The only one surfing was a statue of surfer Dewey Weber as a visitor walks near The Strand which has been closed to stop people from gathering to reduce the spread of the coronavirus in Hermosa Beach. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

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Huntington Beach Open: Beachgoers enjoying warm summer-like weather appear to be keeping their distance in Huntington Beach. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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Huntington Beach Open: A man sprints across an empty stretch of sand in Huntington Beach. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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Huntington Beach Open: Cailin Healy, right, of Calabasas and a friend take a selfie together in Huntington Beach. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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Huntington Beach Open: Unable to go to the gym, Jeff Spirk, 31, of Huntington Beach does pull-ups on a lifeguard tower. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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San Clemente Open: Aerial view of the previously closed San Clemente pier and beach on April 8. The city is reopening the beach. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

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San Clemente Open: A couple takes in a sunset together near the San Clemente pier. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

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Malibu Closed: A jogger and her dog run on a closed Westward Beach Road at Westward Beach in Malibu. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

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Hermosa Beach Closed: Daryl Presley and his son, Indy, 3, of Torrance play in the sand of Noble Park in Hermosa Beach. (Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)

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Hermosa Beach Closed: Holly Martin, right, who works at Snapchat, brought her laptop to Noble Park in Hermosa Beach to get some work done in the sun. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

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Hueneme Beach Open: Sisters Emily, 7, and Hazel Enholm, 4, spent the day at Hueneme Beach, which had a soft opening with restrictions as Ventura County modified its stay-at-home order. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Hueneme Beach Open: Brian Ledis of Westlake Village gives surfing lessons to his 8-year-old son Rowan at Hueneme Beach. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Hueneme Beach Open: People enjoy the surf and sand at Hueneme Beach. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

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Point Mugu Closed: Visitors dont seem to be observing social distancing restrictions on April 11 at Point Mugu. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Point Mugu Closed: California State Parks Ranger David Gunn warns visitors at Point Mugu that parking is not allowed due to coronavirus and social distancing restrictions. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

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Point Mugu Closed: A surfer flies off his board to end a ride at Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Point Mugu Closed: Miriam Burciga enjoys a socially distant perch overlooking Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Officials remain concerned that the reopening could lead to an influx of out-of-town visitors, which contributed to the citys decision to close its beaches in the first place.

After San Diego County elected to shut down its shores, every stretch of sand south of San Clemente to the border of Mexico became off-limits to the public. The nearby cities of Laguna Beach and Seal Beach had also chosen to close their beaches, as did Los Angeles County to the north.

That made San Clementes beaches a magnet for travelers, prompting residents to complain about crowds, Sund said.

Beach closures in neighboring cities and adjacent counties remain in place, although other stretches of Orange Countys shoreline are open.

But San Clemente along with all of Orange County is trying to discourage out-of-town visitors by keeping public parking lots closed, and the City Council also voted to put in place additional parking and beach-access restrictions.

If someone from another city is wanting to come to our beach, it is going to be very difficult for them to find parking, Sund said. And if they come here and think they can spend the day here, theyre quickly going to learn that is not something we are going to allow on the beach currently.

The city could not say exactly when beaches would reopen this weekend because it is still working through the logistics of parking and other restrictions.

Everyones looking at trying to ease back into whatever the new normal will be, as opposed to diving back in, Sund said. Were trying to do it right and not rush.

He said that the city also has been in contact with state officials about possibly reopening San Clemente State Park and San Onofre State Beach and expects a determination to be made on those areas soon.

Obviously, it poses some logistic challenges for [the state] if we open up, he said. One of our boundaries is San Onofre State Beach, and you cant just draw a line in the sand no pun intended.

He said that city officials will monitor the effects of the beach reopening and make adjustments if needed.

At the end of the day, the council is very much wanting to see the curve go down related to COVID-19, he said. But its also recognizing that residents who live in a coastal community choose to live here for the recreational opportunities a coastal community offers and trying to find that balance.

Earlier this week, Orange County officials debated but ultimately decided against closing all of the countys beaches for two weeks over concerns about the possibility of crowds in the wake of a heat wave thats forecast to peak Friday and Saturday.

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San Clemente beaches to reopen for residents this weekend - Los Angeles Times

Beaches are closed, but beach reads are still on the way – The Spokesman-Review

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NEW YORK Mary Parker is a nurse from St. Louis so caught up in the beach novels of Elin Hilderbrand that she makes an annual trip to Nantucket, the Massachusetts island community where Hilderbrand sets her stories.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Parker isnt sure shell make it to Nantucket this year or even find herself close to a beach. But she will continue to make the journey in her mind through books by Hilderbrand and others.

We dont have anything that compares to a place like Nantucket where Im from, Parker says. So writers like Elin Hilderbrand are all we have now if those are the kinds of places you dream of being. You just need that escape.

The coronavirus has already shut down most of the countrys bookstores, led to the cancellation of the industrys annual national convention, BookExpo, and driven publishers to postpone many releases to the fall or next year. It now challenges another publishing and cultural tradition beach reads. While beach reads can include any kind of light fiction, many of these romances, thrillers and family dramas are actually set on beaches and summer resorts from Nantucket to the South Carolina coast to Florida.

Government officials in New York and California already have warned that beaches are likely to be closed this summer and travel restricted. Such summer literary institutions as the book festival in Nantucket will be online instead. And promotional tours for books will likely remain limited to virtual discussions.

Authors and booksellers contend, and hope, that you dont need a beach to read a beach book. Hilderbrand remembers a painful summer growing up when her father had died and the familys traditional summer outing was called off. Instead, she worked at a factory making Halloween costumes.

What I could have used that summer was a book to replace my summer beach vacation, something that would have let me escape, says Hildebrand, whose bestsellers include The Summer of 69 and The Perfect Couple.

Fellow author Mary Alice Monroe says readers tell her something similar about this summer.

Theyre hoping I can take them to a place they cant get to themselves, says Monroe, whose books include The Summer Guests and Beach House for Rent.

Beach reads are as carefully timed as Christmas books, so new novels by Hilderbrand, Monroe, Nancy Thayer and others remain scheduled for May and June. Hildebrands 28 Summers, inspired in part by the film Same Time, Next Year, traces a long-term affair that began in Nantucket in 1993. Monroes On Ocean Boulevard continues her Beach House series set in South Carolina.

In Barbara Delinskys A Week at the Shore, a New Yorker confronts family issues during a visit to the Rhode Island beach house where she spent summers as a child. Thayers Girls of Summer, like Hilderbrands new book, is set in Nantucket, while Mary Kay Andrews Hello, Summer finds a journalist returning to her home in Silver Bay, Florida, where her family runs local newspapers.

This year, maybe the beach read will be on somebodys back porch or hammock or in the corner of an apartment of wherever theyre sheltering at home, Andrews says. What I hope to do is take them to the beach in their imagination.

Authors already are looking to summer 2021 and considering whether their next books will mention the pandemic. Monroe says she is working on a story that will have her characters living through this virus saga and will bring back the Rutledge family of her Beach House series in the hope that readers will connect with them. Hilderbrand worked in a reference to the virus shortly before completing 28 Summers, and says that while it wont be a major plot point in her upcoming work, she might find it unavoidable to mention.

Other writers expect to avoid it, at least in the short term. Delinsky says she might refer to it in a book in a few years when theres a better sense of perspective. Brooke Lea Foster has no need to include it. Her upcoming novel, Summer Darlings, takes place on Marthas Vineyard, Massachusetts, in the 1960s. Shes currently writing a story set in the Hamptons in the 1950s.

Im sure the books that come out of this moment will be incredible, but I like to go back and escape in time, Foster said.

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Beaches are closed, but beach reads are still on the way - The Spokesman-Review