Category: General

 

An expedition to find lost shipwrecks on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef begins Friday. The voyage is part of the Great Reef Census, one of the world’s largest marine citizen science projects.

Conservationists estimate there are up to 900 shipwrecks on the Great Barrier Reef, but only 150 have been found. Shallow water in some parts of the reef off northeastern Australia and the region’s susceptibility to storms and cyclones have made seafaring perilous.

Volunteers discovered three shipwrecks last year while surveying the world’s largest coral system. The expedition, which ends Dec. 1, is returning to Five Reefs and the Great Detached Reef, remote regions that are rarely visited, to gather more data and hunt for other wrecks. Onboard the boat are conservationists, scientists and a marine archaeologist.

Andy Ridley, the chief executive of Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef, the organization that runs the survey, said last year’s discovery was an unforgettable experience.

“The first mate on the boat was floating over the top of a reef from one side to the other and noticed there were river stones in the water, and, you know, round stones on the top of a coral reef is unusual,” he said. “We realized it was ballast from an old ship. We discovered one of what we think is three 200-year-old wrecks on that particular reef in the far northern end of the Great Barrier Reef. It was kind of one of the most exciting things I’ve ever done in my entire life. It was like one of those kind of boyhood kind of dreams.”

Scientists, tourists, divers and sailors are contributing to this year’s Great Reef Census.

They are taking thousands of pictures that will help document the health of a reef system that faces various threats, such as climate change, overfishing and pollution.

The images will be analyzed early next year by an international army of online volunteers who, in the past, have included children from Jakarta, Indonesia, a church group in Chicago, and citizen scientists from Colombia.

In 2020, its first year, the survey, which runs from early October to late December, collected 14,000 images.

The Great Barrier Reef is a World Heritage Area. It stretches for 2,300 kilometers down northeastern Australia and is the size of Germany.

It comprises 3,000 individual reefs, is home to 10% of the world’s fish species and is the only living thing visible from space.

 

Source: Voice of America

 

 

The holiday tree is towering over the main square in this central German city, the chestnuts and sugared almonds are roasted, and kids are clambering aboard the merry-go-round just like they did before the pandemic. But a surge in coronavirus infections has left an uneasy feeling hanging over Frankfurt’s Christmas market.

To savor a mug of mulled wine — a pleasurable rite of winter in pre-pandemic times — masked customers must pass through a one-way entrance to a fenced-off wine hut, stopping at the hand sanitizer station. Elsewhere, security officers check vaccination certificates before letting customers head for the steaming sausages and kebabs.

Despite the pandemic inconveniences, stall owners selling ornaments, roasted chestnuts and other holiday-themed items in Frankfurt and other European cities are relieved to be open at all for their first Christmas market in two years, especially with new restrictions taking effect in Germany, Austria and other countries as COVID-19 infections hit record highs. Merchants who have opened are hoping for at least a fraction of the pre-pandemic holiday sales that can make or break their businesses.

Others aren’t so lucky. Many of the famous holiday events have been canceled in Germany and Austria. With the market closures goes the money that tourists would spend in restaurants, hotels and other businesses.

Jens Knauer, who crafts intricate, lighted Christmas-themed silhouettes that people can hang in windows, said his hope was simply that the Frankfurt market “stays open as long as possible.”

While Christmas is 40% of annual revenue for many retailers and restaurateurs, “with me, it’s 100%,” Knauer said. “If I can stay open for three weeks, I can make it through the year.”

Purveyors are on edge after other Christmas markets were abruptly shut down in Germany’s Bavaria region, which includes Nuremberg, home of one of the biggest and best-known markets. Stunned exhibitors in Dresden had to pack up their goods when authorities in the eastern Saxony region suddenly imposed new restrictions amid soaring infections. Austria’s markets closed as a 10-day lockdown began Monday, with many stall owners hoping they can reopen if it’s not extended.

Markets usually attract elbow-to-elbow crowds to row upon row of ornament and food sellers, foot traffic that spills over into revenue for surrounding hotels and restaurants. This year, the crowds at Frankfurt’s market were vastly thinned out, with the stalls spread out over a larger area.

Heiner Roie, who runs a mulled wine hut in the shape of a wine barrel, said he’s assuming he will see half the business he had in 2019. A shutdown would cause “immense financial damage — it could lead to complete ruin since we haven’t made any income in two years, and at some point, the financial reserves are used up.”

But if people have a little discipline and observe the health measures, “I think we’ll manage it,” he said.

Next door, Bettina Roie’s guests are greeted with a sign asking them to show their vaccination certificates at her stand serving Swiss raclette, a popular melted cheese dish.

The market “has a good concept because what we need is space, room, to keep some distance from each other,” she said. “In contrast to a bricks-and-mortar restaurant, they have their building and their walls, but we can adjust ourselves to the circumstances.”

The extended Roie family is a fifth-generation exhibitor business that also operates the merry-go-round on Frankfurt’s central Roemerberg square, where the market opened Monday.

Roie said it was important to reopen “so that we can bring the people even during the pandemic a little joy — that’s what we do, we bring back joy.”

The latest spike in COVID-19 cases has unsettled prospects for Europe’s economic recovery, leading some economists to hedge their expectations for growth in the final months of the year.

Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank in London, has cut his forecast for the last three months of the year in the 19 countries that use the euro from 0.7% to 0.5%. But he noted that the wave of infections is having less impact across the broad economy because vaccinations have reduced serious illnesses and many companies have learned to adjust.

That is cold comfort to Germany’s DEHOGA restaurant and hotel association, which warned of a “hail of cancellations” and said members were reporting every second Christmas party or other special event was being called off.

Other European countries where the pandemic isn’t hitting as hard are returning to old ways. The traditional Christmas market in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor, in the heart of the Spanish capital, is slated to open Friday at the size it was before the pandemic.

It will have 104 stalls of nativity figures, decorations and traditional sweets in a country where 89% of those 12 or older are fully vaccinated. Last year, it had half the number of stalls and restricted the number of people allowed in the square. Masks and social distancing will remain mandatory, organizers said.

In Hungary’s capital of Budapest, Christmas markets have been fenced off and visitors must show proof of vaccination to enter.

Gyorgy Nagy, a producer and seller of handmade glazed crockery, said the restrictions initially stirred worries of fewer shoppers. But business has been good so far.

“I don’t think the fence is bad,” he said. “At the beginning, we were scared of it, really scared, but I think it’s fine. … I don’t think it will be a disadvantage.”

Markets opening reflects a broader spectrum of loose restrictions in Hungary, even as new COVID-19 cases have exceeded peaks seen during a devastating surge last spring. More infections were confirmed last week than in other week since the pandemic started.

A representative for the Advent Bazilika Christmas market said a number of its measures go beyond government requirements, including that all vendors wear masks and those selling food and drinks be vaccinated.

Bea Lakatos, a seller of fragrant soaps and oils at the Budapest market, said that while sales have been a bit weaker than before the pandemic, “I wasn’t expecting so many foreign visitors given the restrictions.”

“I think things aren’t that bad so far,” she said this week. “The weekend started particularly strong.”

In Vienna, markets were packed last weekend as people sought some Christmas cheer before Austria’s lockdown. Merchants say closures last year and the new restrictions have had disastrous consequences.

“The main sales for the whole year are made at the Christmas markets — this pause is a huge financial loss,” said Laura Brechmann who sold illuminated stars at the Spittelberg market before the lockdown began. “We hope things will reopen, but I personally don’t really expect it.”

In Austria’s Salzkammergut region, home to ski resorts and the picturesque town of Hallstatt, the tourism industry hopes the national lockdown won’t be extended past Dec. 13 and it can recover some much-needed revenue.

Last winter’s extended lockdowns cost the tourism board alone 1 million euros ($1.12 million) just in nightly tourist tax fees during that period — not to mention the huge financial losses sustained by hotels, restaurants and ski resorts.

“Overall, I do think that if things open up again before Christmas, we can save the winter season,” said Christian Schirlbauer, head of tourism for the Dachstein-Salzkammergut region. “But it will depend on whether or not the case numbers go down.”

 

 

Source: Voice of America

First-time claims for U.S. unemployment compensation dropped sharply last week to a 52-year low, easily falling below the figure recorded at the start of the coronavirus pandemic that has played havoc with the U.S. economy over the last 20 months, the Labor Department reported Wednesday

A total of 199,000 jobless workers filed for assistance last week, down 71,000 from the revised figure of the week before and the lowest recorded figure since November 1969, the government said. The new weekly figure was also well below the 256,000 total in mid-March of last year when the pandemic first swept into the country and employers started laying off workers by the hundreds of thousands.

The new figure was an indication the U.S. economy, the world’s largest, remains on a recovery path from the worst economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

The advance is occurring even as President Joe Biden and Washington policy makers, along with consumers, voice concerns about the biggest increase in consumer prices in three decades and supply chain issues that have curtailed delivery of some products to retail store shelves.

The declining number of claims for unemployment benefits shows that many employers are hanging on to their workers even as millions have quit jobs to move to other companies offering higher pay and more benefits.

U.S. employers added 531,000 jobs in October, the biggest monthly gain in three months and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.6%. But the U.S. economy is still short more than four million jobs since February 2020.

Even as consumers worry about higher food and fuel prices, President Biden said Tuesday, “We’re experiencing the strongest economic recovery in the world.”

“Even after accounting for inflation, our economy is bigger and our families have more money in their pockets than they did before the pandemic,” Biden said. “And America is the only major economy in the world that can say that.”

About 7.4 million workers remain unemployed in the United States. There are 10.4 million available jobs in the country, but the skills of available workers often do not match what employers want, or the job openings are not where the unemployed live. In addition, many of the available jobs are low-wage service positions that the jobless are shunning.

The annual size of the U.S. economy — nearly $23 trillion — exceeds its pre-pandemic level as it recovers faster than many economists had predicted during the worst of the business closings more than a year ago.

The Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank, is curtailing its year-plus support for the U.S. economy during the worst of the pandemic. It announced earlier this month it would cut its $120-billion-per-month purchase of Treasury investments and mortgage-backed securities by $15 billion by the end of November. In addition, the Fed is reducing purchases to $90 billion per month in December but left its benchmark interest rate unchanged.

How fast U.S. economic growth continues is unclear. The delta variant of the coronavirus continues to pose a threat to the recovery, with more new cases being recorded again after the number had declined in recent weeks.

About 90,000 new cases have been added in recent days, up from about 75,000 daily in recent weeks. The number of deaths each day has been dropping, to about 1,000 a day, from the 2,000 total of a few weeks ago.

About 60 million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated against the coronavirus, a figure Biden says is “unacceptably high.” The president has mandated that 84 million workers at companies with 100 or more employees get vaccinated by January 4 or be tested frequently, but the order is being contested in a raft of lawsuits that have yet to be decided.

 

 

Source: Voice of America

Tawanda Carter is a school librarian in New Orleans, Louisiana. She said preparing for the holidays has presented a unique set of challenges this year, a sentiment shared by millions of Americans.

“Food prices are higher, and a lot of items aren’t even in stock,” she said, as she gets ready to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family in Atlanta, Georgia. “We’ve been keeping an eye out for sales and also thinking about new dishes to make up for the traditional ones we might not be able to eat this year.”

Across the United States, prices on essentials such as groceries and gas are rising at a pace unseen in a generation. Experts say the cause is a mix of worker shortages, supply chain issues and stimulative economic policies enacted to support families and financial markets during the global pandemic. For many, however, the timing of the price increases couldn’t be worse as families prepare for their first holiday gatherings since the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine.

“The price of fresh produce has doubled,” said Maria Gallagher-Venable, co-owner of a pet-sitting business in a New Orleans suburb. “Meat prices are climbing every day, too. We’re trying to do all our Christmas shopping online to avoid shipping delays, but those prices are higher than usual, as well, and the cost of gasoline has already meant finances are tighter.”

“I went to the grocery store to buy a head of iceberg lettuce and it was $3.69!” said local restaurant owner Shane Finkelstein. “It’s usually a dollar. It costs more to cook at home than it used to. It costs more to eat at a restaurant than it used to. And I don’t think this is going to change. Restaurants need to charge more, or they’re going to go out of business. This is just how things are now.” ​

A worker shortage

Gallagher-Venable thinks the worker shortage is largely the result of greedy companies unwilling to share profits with their workers.

“The minimum wage is a joke in this country, and people are tired of working like dogs just to stay in debt,” she said.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that as of last month, approximately 3 million fewer people in the U.S. were looking for work than in February 2020, the month before the pandemic began. While there’s no denying the economy faces a shortage of workers, the underlying cause is still under debate.

Megan Forman co-owns several bakeries in New Orleans. Labor shortages aren’t only being seen in the service industry, she said. A lack of workers throughout the supply chain is causing prices to fluctuate.

“When you don’t have enough employees, you can’t produce as much as you want,” she said. “And that’s not just at our bakery. When farmers can’t hire enough workers, they can’t plant and harvest enough. When trucking companies can’t hire enough drivers, they can’t ship as much.”

Economists have said that after accruing savings throughout the pandemic, Americans are eager to purchase goods and services again. Many businesses, however, have been unable to match the demand.

“Thanksgiving is one of the biggest holidays of the year for bakeries, and we’re returning to pre-pandemic sales,” Forman said. “But the ability for us to get the ingredients and supplies we need — it’s like the Wild West. So unpredictable.”

So, too, are the prices of those ingredients and supplies. Forman said these days one seller will offer eggs at $30 per case, while another has the same eggs priced at $17. The next day, she said, things can swing drastically.

“We need paper cups for our coffee, but they’re so difficult to find, or expensive when we do find them,” she said. “Everything is like that now. There’s high demand and not enough supply, so we’re getting charged more for what we need to run our bakery.”

Getting lean

For a while, Forman said she attempted to absorb the costs rather than passing them on to her customers. That couldn’t last, however.

“It got more expensive to purchase ingredients. It got more expensive to hire staff. And so, eventually, we need to raise the prices of what we sell, or we’re going to go out of business.”

In addition to raising prices, many business owners are reconsidering their business models and seeking ways to become more efficient. Forman, for example, said she’s begun training employees to do both “front of house” work, such as serving customers, as well as “back of house” work, such as food preparation and dishwashing. She’s also finding ways to operate at capacity with fewer staff members by, for example, making breakfast sandwiches ahead instead of offering them made-to-order.

“I think it’s forcing a lot of small companies to become better businesses,” said Grant Estrade, co-owner of a gardening supply shop and farm outside New Orleans. Estrade said that without a regular supply of employees, business leaders must evaluate what is the most profitable thing to pursue with the limited resources they have.

That, he said, can make a company leaner and more efficient. Estrade said he’s dropped parts of his business he can’t do right now and instead sought partnerships with other small businesses to do some of that work.

“If we make great soil but we don’t have the staff to deliver it, I can pay another small business to deliver it for us,” he said. “It’s economical. Maybe that’s what we should have been doing all along.”

A new way

It’s not just businesses that are reconsidering how they operate in a changing economy. Individual Americans are also looking to adapt as the cost of the holidays rises.

Rebecca Urrutia is a mother of four young children in Tolland, Connecticut. As she looks ahead to holiday gift shopping, she’s certain product shortages, shipping delays and increased prices mean the status quo will no longer work for her family.

“Our holiday shopping looks a little different this year,” she said. “We’ve decided to scale back and to shop at local bazaars, thrift shops and community share sites instead of buying brand new items for all of our shopping.”

Urrutia sees it as a silver lining that she hopes other Americans will embrace this season, she said.

“I think, after the pandemic, many of us are choosing to live more simply and to be grateful for what we have.”

Tawanda Carter, the school librarian in New Orleans, said she’s seeing something similar in her friend circle.

“A lot of us are reevaluating what we need versus what we want in life,” Carter said. The rising cost of gasoline, she said, has her thinking more about climate change and her own health. She decided to purchase a bicycle and use it for many of her daily trips. She’s living more like she imagined her great-grandmother and grandmother might have lived, she said.

“They told me their adage was ‘use it up, wear it out or make do,'” Carter said. “And our generation always talks about ‘reduce, reuse and recycle.’ I’m trying to use the current situation as an opportunity to live by a combination of both sayings.”

 

 

Source: Voice of America

A Sydney restaurant is using a Chinese-made, multi-lingual hospitality robot to address chronic staff shortages as Australia’s economy begins to recover from COVID-19 lockdowns and border closures.

The robot waiter is programmed to know the layout of the tables and delivers food from the kitchen. It is also multi-lingual, programmed to communicate in English and Mandarin. The so-called BellaBot is built by the Chinese firm PuduTech.

Each machine costs about $17,000. They can be leased for $34 per day for each device, or the equivalent of two hours’ wages for restaurant staff. The devices are in use in other Australian restaurants and imports into Australia appear to be unaffected by recent trade tensions between the two countries.

Liarne Schai, the co-owner of the Matterhorn Restaurant in Sydney, is delighted with her new mechanical staff member.

“Ah, love the robot. Love the robot, she makes my life a lot easier. It is like a tower that has got four trays. It will carry eight of our dinner plates in one go. She is geo-mapped to the floor (customer names, location of tables, etc.) The robot knows where all our tables are,” Schai said.

Australia’s hospitality workforce has traditionally relied on international students. They have, however, been restricted from entering after Australia closed its borders to most foreign nationals in March 2020 in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Labor shortages are affecting not only hospitality in Australia, but a range of industries from construction to information technology.

Liarne Schai says she has tried for months without success to recruit workers.

“It is the biggest issue we have at the moment. We have been running ads for chefs, for waiters, for kitchen hands for six months and we have had zero applicants. We are offering above award wages, we are offering bonuses, we are offering everything you can think of to attract appropriate staff and I am not even getting inappropriate staff, or untrained staff. I am just getting nobody.”

Labor shortages should ease when Australia reopens its borders to foreign nationals, but analysts expect many vacancies will remain unfilled.

Employer groups have demanded that Australia increase its intake of migrant workers.

Australia’s official unemployment rate stands at 5.2%.

But with more than 700,000 Australians without a job, there are calls for the government to boost domestic training programs and wages.

Source: Voice of America

U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday reappointed Jerome Powell to a second term as chair of the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, saying that Powell has played a pivotal role in helping the United States recover from the worst of the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden’s reappointment of Powell, 68, to one of the most important economic policy positions in the world, ends weeks of speculation in financial markets and in Washington political circles. Some progressive Democrats in Congress had pushed Biden to name Fed Governor Lael Brainard to head the Fed, but the president instead named her as vice chair.

Biden’s decision to tap Powell, a Republican and former private equity executive, to another four-year term is a rare instance in which he renamed a key official first appointed by his Republican predecessor, Donald Trump.

At the White House, Biden said he named a Republican rather than a Democrat because “we need stability and independence at the Fed.” He said Powell has “broad bipartisan support” in a politically divided country.

The president called Powell “the right person to see us through” the recovery from the damage caused by the pandemic and the fastest increase in U.S. consumer prices in 31 years — a 6.2% annualized surge in October.

Investors mostly greeted the Powell reappointment favorably, with two of the three major U.S. stock indexes — the Dow Jones average of 30 key stocks and the broader S&P 500 — up sharply throughout trading on Monday, although the technology-heavy Nasdaq index fell.

In politically fractious Washington, Powell is expected to again win Senate confirmation. Of the 84 lawmakers who voted for him four years ago, 68 of them are still in office, equally split between Democrats and Republicans.

One Powell opponent, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, said she would vote against his reappointment while supporting Brainard’s nomination. Warren cited what she says are Powell’s “failures on regulation, climate and ethics.”

Powell was first named to the Fed’s seven-member policy-making board a decade ago by then-President Barack Obama, another Democrat, before being elevated to Fed chair by Trump. Biden also has three other current or upcoming vacancies to fill on the Fed board, which broadly sets economic policy for the U.S., the world’s largest economy.

Biden said the U.S. has made “remarkable progress over the last 10 months in getting Americans back to work and getting our economy moving again,” and praised the work of Powell and Brainard. Under Powell, the Fed provided stimulus money to boost the recovery.

“As I’ve said before, we can’t just return to where we were before the pandemic, we need to build our economy back better, and I’m confident that Chair Powell and Dr. Brainard’s focus on keeping inflation low, prices stable, and delivering full employment will make our economy stronger than ever before,” Biden said in a statement.

“Together, they also share my deep belief that urgent action is needed to address the economic risks posed by climate change and stay ahead of emerging risks in our financial system,” the president said.

“Fundamentally, if we want to continue to build on the economic success of this year, we need stability and independence at the Federal Reserve – and I have full confidence after their trial by fire over the last 20 months that Chair Powell and Dr. Brainard will provide the strong leadership our country needs,” Biden said.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, herself a former Fed chair, praised Powell’s reappointment, as did several Republican senators.

“The steady leadership of Chair Powell & the Federal Reserve helped ensure our economy was able to recover from a once-in-a-generation health & economic crisis,” Yellen said. “I’m pleased our economy will continue to benefit from his stewardship, & the expertise & experience of Lael Brainard.”

Source: Voice of America