Plane & Simple
November 9, 2021
The Good News
- Nationwide polio eradication campaign starts in Afghanistan (AP)
- An 87-year-old grandmother from Sri Lanka has become the oldest person to earn a master’s degree at this university in Canada (CNN)
“I spent a lot of years trying to outrun or outsmart vulnerability by making things certain and definite, black and white, good and bad. My inability to lean into the discomfort of vulnerability limited the fullness of those important experiences that are wrought with uncertainty: Love, belonging, trust, joy, and creativity to name a few.” — Brené Brown
Music Festival Takes Tragic Turn
Grammy-nominated Houston native Travis Scott, 30, is known for pushing the boundaries of entrepreneurship and of the artist’s role as a purveyor of fan events and branded products, something at which his pregnant girlfriend, Kylie Jenner, also excels. Scott’s 2018 album “Astroworld” drew debate in the music industry over the rapper’s extensive use of merchandise in “retail bundles” to help drive album sales and boost its position on the Billboard chart.
Scott also has a notorious track record of encouraging wild behavior at his concerts; he refers to his fans as “ragers.” He’s been convicted twice for urging fans to rush his stage and bypass security. Before Scott took the stage at Friday’s Astroworld Festival, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner sat down with him and his head of security. “I expressed my concerns regarding public safety,” Finner said Monday. “I asked Travis Scott and his team to work with HPD for all events over the weekend and to be mindful of his team’s social media messaging on any unscheduled events.” Finner added the meeting was “brief and respectful.”
The pandemic canceled Scott’s annual event in 2020. So when tickets went on sale in May 2021 for November’s two-day event, 100,000 tickets sold out in less than an hour. Despite Houston’s mayor claiming there was more security for this concert than at a world series baseball game, it wasn’t enough. Early on November 5, fans rushed an entrance to RNG Park, bypassing security, crashing through gates, and knocking down barriers. A merchandise stand shut down when a growing number of unruly people tried pushing inside. One man who arrived at the event around 3 p.m. described security as lax and disorganized, and police and medics as “sparse.”
That evening, a sea of over 50,000 festival-goers stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Around 9 p.m., minutes into Scott’s first set, the crowd started surging toward the stage, cramming attendees so tightly few could breathe; others fell and were trampled. Social media posts showed people begging with concert staff to stop the show and to help others who had collapsed, but their cries were largely ignored. Scott continued performing until 10:10 p.m., almost 40 minutes after injuries were reported and a “mass casualty” event was declared. Eight people, all under age 30, died; dozens were hospitalized, and hundreds were injured.
Scott apologized on social media and said all tickets would be refunded; he also offered to pay for the victims’ funerals. But Scott, concert promoter Scoremore, and organizer Live Nation Entertainment face multiple lawsuits over the Astroworld tragedy. It should be noted that Live Nation has been cited a dozen times in the past for numerous safety violations. (NYT, Houston Chronicle, NPR, WaPo, BBC)
A Gas-tly Statistic
- The environmental campaign group Global Witness has analyzed the U.N.’s provisional list of named corporate attendees at the COP26 climate summit and found at least 503 lobbyists connected to over 100 coal, oil, and gas companies are present. The list includes people either directly affiliated with companies like Shell, Gazprom, and BP, and those attending as members of delegations and groups acting on behalf of the fossil fuel industry.
- The lobbyists outnumber any delegation from a single country. They also outnumber the event’s official Indigenous constituency by around two to one, and the number of delegates from the eight countries most affected by climate change over the last two decades: Puerto Rico, Myanmar, Haiti, the Philippines, Mozambique, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
- “The presence of hundreds of those being paid to push the toxic interests of polluting fossil fuel companies, will only increase the skepticism of climate activists who see these talks as more evidence of global leaders’ dithering and delaying,” said a Global Witness spokesman. The conference concludes November 12. (CNN)
Many Romaining Unvaccinated
- Last month, a new wave of the coronavirus pandemic engulfed Eastern Europe, devastating unvaccinated populations. On October 14, Bishop Ambrose of Giurgiu, an Orthodox Church bishop in southern Romania, told his flock not to “be fooled by what you see on TV — don’t be scared of Covid.” He also cautioned the congregation not to rush to get vaccinated.
- Romania now has the world’s highest per capita death rate from Covid, and the bishop is under criminal investigation for spreading dangerous disinformation, even though his anti-vaccine clarion call has been echoed by prominent politicians, influential voices on the internet, and many others. Almost 600 Romanians died Tuesday, the most during the pandemic. The country’s death rate relative to population is nearly seven times as high as in the U.S., and almost 17 times as high as in Germany. Romania has Europe’s second-lowest vaccination rate — about 44% of adults have had at least one dose. Bulgaria is at 29%. (NYT)
Additional World News
- Chennai comes to a standstill as heavy rains flood city (CNN)
- China builds mockups of U.S. Navy ships for missile target practice (NBC)
- Palestinian activists’ mobile phones hacked using NSO spyware, says report (Guardian)
- Burhan says he will not be part of Sudan gov’t after transition (Al Jazeera)
- Tuvalu minister stands in sea to film COP26 speech to show climate change (Reuters)
- UK seems set to invoke emergency measures on Northern Ireland trade – Irish minister (Reuters)
- The coalition of rebel forces taking on Ethiopia’s government, explained (Vox)
Plane & Simple
- On Monday, the U.S. lifted international travel restrictions from a long list of countries (including Mexico, Canada, and most of Europe) put in place by the Trump administration. Fully vaccinated visitors will be accepted at airports and land borders with proof of vaccination and a negative COVID-19 test. Land travel from Mexico and Canada will require proof of vaccination but no test.
- Delighted tourists can make those long-delayed trips, and overjoyed family members can finally reconnect with loved ones after a separation of over eighteen months. The change will have a profound effect on the borders with Mexico and Canada, where traveling back and forth was a way of life until the pandemic hit and the U.S. shut down nonessential travel.
- This month, flights between the U.K. and the U.S. will increase by 21%. All airlines are required to verify vaccine records of their passengers and match them against ID; failure to do so could mean fines up to $35,000 per violation. CDC workers will spot-check travelers for compliance in the U.S. (NPR)
A Common Threat
- Cornell, Columbia, and Brown Universities issued emergency alerts after receiving bomb threats Sunday afternoon. The Ivy League schools evacuated buildings and cautioned students to stay away from campus.
- On Sunday evening, Cornell tweeted that law enforcement had searched the Ithaca, N.Y. campus and concluded it was safe to return to normal activities. Columbia also issued a statement that said: “Today’s bomb threats were deemed not credible by the NYPD and the campus buildings have been cleared for reoccupancy.” Brown University officials in Providence, Rhode Island also texted students that the bomb threats were not legitimate.
- Bomb threats received Saturday by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and Ohio University in Athens were also determined to be false. Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut received a false bomb threat Friday, and another Ohio university, Cleveland State, received one on Thursday. All threats proved to be unsubstantiated. (USA Today)
Additional USA News
- Kaine says Democrats “blew the timing” of infrastructure and spending bills (CBS)
- Biden aide Ron Klain: “Voters sent a message on Tuesday” (Axios)
- Analysis: Ted Cruz has found the real vaccine enemy: Big Bird (CNN)
- ‘Catastrophic implications’: UN health expert condemns US over threat to abortion rights (Guardian)
- CIA Director had rare conversation with Putin while in Moscow last week (CNN)
- Survivor of shooting by U.S. teen Rittenhouse to testify in pivotal moment of trial (Reuters)
- Jill Biden’s child vaccine tour will include push for more children vaccination sites (CNN)
A Chile-ing Effect
- Chile has a couple of dubious claims to fame. It has the world’s driest desert, Atacama Desert, in Alto Hospicio, Iquique. And it’s a repository for fast fashion leftovers made in China or Bangladesh. In fact, Chile’s the hub for cast-off garb that has already passed through Europe, Asia, or the U.S. before arriving at its almost-final destination.
- Every year some 59,000 tons of second-hand and unsold clothes come into the Iquique port in the Alto Hospicio free zone in northern Chile. Clothing merchants from the capital of Santiago, 1,100 miles to the south, buy some, and much is smuggled out to other Latin American countries. But at least 39,000 tons that can’t be sold end up in rubbish dumps in the Atacama Desert, and it’s causing really terrible pollution. No one wants to pay the necessary tariffs to take it all somewhere else.
- “The problem is that the clothing is not biodegradable and has chemical products, so it is not accepted in the municipal landfills,” said Franklin Zepeda. “I wanted to stop being the problem and start being the solution.” He created EcoFibra in 2018, a company that makes insulation panels using discarded clothing. In 2019, Rosario Hevia founded Ecocitex, a company that creates yarn from pieces of discarded textiles and clothing without using water nor chemicals.
- That’s extremely important when you consider it takes 2,000 gallons of water to make a single pair of jeans. A 2019 U.N. report said global clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2014, and the industry is “responsible for 20% of total water waste on a global level.” The same report said clothing and footwear manufacturing contributes 8% of global greenhouse gases, and that “every second, an amount of textiles equivalent to a garbage truck is buried or burned.” (Al Jazeera)
Additional Reads
- Archaeologists at Pompeii unearth ‘slaves’ room’ (CNN)
- 250,000 year old skull of hominid child discovered in South Africa (USA Today)
- The Next Big Thing for RNA? Fixing Moldy Food (Wired)
- First Chinese woman to go on spacewalk does so for 6 hours (LAT, $)
- Earth’s first continents emerged from the ocean 700m years earlier than thought (Guardian)
- Study: Glow-in-the-dark worms may shed light on the secrets of regeneration (Ars Technica)
- Ketchup on Mars: Heinz preps for a future with condiments on the red planet (CNET)