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Three White Men Who Murdered Black Man, Ahmaud Arbery Sentenced to Life in Prison
Saturday, 08 January 2022 14:09 Written by toriHollywood icon, Betty White dies at 99
Sunday, 02 January 2022 11:39 Written by OASESNEWSBetty White, Hollywood icon and trailblazing television star is dead.
The 99-year-old Emmy-award winning actress died of natural causes at her California home.
Her agent and close friend, Jeff Witjas later confirmed her death to People magazine.
Witjas in a statement wrote: “Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever.
“I’ll miss her terribly and so will the animal world that she loved so much. I don’t think Betty ever feared passing because she always wanted to be with her most beloved husband, Allen Ludden. She believed she would be with him again.”
Betty White’s more than eight-decade career had her in unforgettable roles on “The Golden Girls” ‘Boston Legal and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”.
She died less than three weeks before her 100th birthday.
Ohio father fatally shoots his daughter after mistaking her for intruder
Saturday, 01 January 2022 15:33 Written by OASESNEWS A 16-year-old high school junior has been fatally shot by her father after being mistaken for an intruder, authorities in Ohio said. The incident happened in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Dec. 29, in Canal Winchester, about 15 miles from Columbus. Police say a 911 caller reported around 4:30am that someone had been shot in their home after the security system went off. The caller has been identified as the teen’s mother, who can be heard on the call telling authorities her daughter was shot in the garage by her father, who believed she was someone breaking in. Audio of the call captures the shock and distress of both parents as they plead with 16-year-old Janae Hairston to wake up. She was rushed to Mount Carmel East Hospital but succumbed to her injuries about an hour later. Police are investigating the case and are expected to forward it to the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office, but it was not immediately clear if charges would be filed.
New study reveals intensified housing inequality in Canada from 1981 to 2016
Thursday, 30 December 2021 02:21 Written by theconversationYushu Zhu, Simon Fraser University
Driven by the neoliberal belief in the superiority of the free market, the housing policy in Canada has shifted from a welfare-oriented policy to a market-oriented one over the past four decades, encouraging home ownership, deregulation and private consumption.
Housing financialization, the transformation of housing from a human right to an investment opportunity, has been driven by the federal government primarily through financial market deregulation and a financial practice called mortgage securitization.
Much of the debate about the housing crisis has focused on the market imbalance between supply and demand, citing factors such as foreign investment and lack of market supply. However, many housing problems today need to be viewed in the historical context of the housing system restructuring, which keeps housing and wealth inequality alive and well.
Using the historical census data of five metropolitan areas — Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton and Calgary — from 1981 to 2016, our study reveals deeply entrenched housing inequality in accessing affordable housing in the post-1990s neoliberal era. Both neoliberal housing policies and housing financialization are important contributors to this intensified housing inequality.
Canada’s housing system: from welfare to neoliberal regime
Until the mid-1980s, Canada had a welfare housing regime with strong state intervention in social housing supply — first in the form of public housing financed and managed by the government, then in community housing developed by a mix of community groups with government funding and finance.
This welfare-oriented regime was transformed into a neoliberal regime in the 1990s, when the federal government moved away from social housing and started relying primarily on the private sector for housing supply.
Federal expenditure on housing programs dropped from nearly 1.5 per cent in 1981 to slightly over 0.6 per cent of the total federal expenditure in 2016. Since then, the social housing sector has become more “core-needs” targeted, supporting people with special needs and leaving those in need of independent social housing to the private market.
The 2000s marked the start of housing financialization in Canada. In 1999, responding to the demands of consumers and the financial sector, the federal government introduced Bill C-66 that aimed to turn the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) from home-builder to mortgage-insurer. With easier access to credits and lower interest rates, household savings were channelled into increasingly expensive housing markets, boosting housing demand and attracting financial capital into the profitable housing market.
More Canadian households face affordability problems over time
The neoliberalization of housing policy came with increased housing inequality. One outcome of housing financialization is the increase in residential mortgage debt to finance housing. The residential mortgage debt to GDP ratio rose from 26 per cent, to a whopping 68 per cent between 1981 and 2016.
Our study uses the shelter-costs-to-income ratio (CIR) to assess housing affordability. Overall, the average CIRs across these five census metropolitan areas fluctuated modestly between 25 per cent and 33 per cent throughout the census years. Yet, more Canadian households have experienced housing unaffordability problems over time. The share of renter households that spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing increased from 35 per cent to 42 per cent between 1986 and 2016. These numbers for owners increased from 14 per cent to 22 per cent during the same period.
Greater inequality in accessing affordable housing in the neoliberal era
The more commodified a housing sector, the more access to housing one would expect to have, contingent on an individual’s economic status rather than citizenship. Indeed, the gap in affordable housing access between income groups has enlarged in Canada.
After taking factors such as household type and size and socio-demographic characteristics into consideration, we estimated that the average CIR for high-income households dropped from 46 per cent for low to middle-income income households, to 40 per cent post-2001. This suggests a greater gap in accessing affordable housing determined by income, and a more commodified housing sector in the neoliberal era.
The reduced federal expenditure on social housing and increasing residential-debt-to-GDP ratio, induced by housing financialization, shows significant effects on the rising housing unaffordability, among other macroeconomic factors such as GDP growth and unemployment rates.
While the withdrawal of the federal funding increased housing costs for both income groups, housing financialization exacerbated housing unaffordability only for low to middle-income households, while benefiting high-income households by improving housing affordability for them. This reflects the private market’s incluination to respond to the housing demand of those with stronger purchasing power, leading to reduced housing supply for those at the bottom of the income ladder and reinforcing housing inequality between the two income groups.
The vulnerability of low-income renters and young homeowners
Housing commodification and financialization in the neoliberal era have had uneven impacts on Canadian households. Low to middle-income renters at all ages appear to encounter housing affordability stress, although their CIR remains relatively stable over time.
In contrast, the CIR for low to middle-income homeowners increased substantially over time. Young homeowners are the worst off due to easier access to mortgage loans and slow income improvement, representing a new form of housing vulnerability. While high-income homeowners have also experienced rising CIR over time, their CIR remain well below 30 per cent. High-income renters have seen improved affordability over the years.
Housing gaps widest among women and immigrants
There are significant housing affordability gaps between different gender and immigrant groups. These disparities do exist regardless of housing tenure, but they were only present among low to middle-income households. While established immigrants tend to catch up with native-born Canadians, the gender gap persists among low-income households, regardless of immigrant status. This implies the existence of systemic barriers in low-income female-led households, such as male bias in the design and planning of the residential spaces in social housing.
Overall, Canada’s housing section is highly commodified, with income playing a major role in accessing affordable housing. To date, housing policies have mainly focused on market solutions, such as discouraging foreign investment or encouraging the market supply of affordable housing. However, the intensified market mechanism resulting from neoliberal housing policies has widened the housing disparity gap between the haves and the have-nots.
State institutions have been utilized and transformed to facilitate, rather than limit, the commodification and financialization of housing. It is vital for public policies to recognize the state as part of the housing problem and shift the policy narratives around housing unaffordability from simply a market disequilibrium problem, to a failure of state institutions.
Yushu Zhu, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Urban Studies and Public Policy, Simon Fraser University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Popular News
Former U.S. ambassador admits trial of Saddam Hussein flawed
Wednesday, 29 December 2021 14:36 Written by PM NEWSRobert Ford, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq on Wednesday said the trial of Saddam Hussein and his co-defendants had many violations and was “not perfect.”
Ford made the assertion in an interview with Sputnik ahead of the 15th anniversary of Hussein’s 2006 execution.
He said “the trial itself certainly had problems, no question. Some of the defence lawyers were assassinated, which was terrible.
“During the trial itself, sometimes the prosecution introduced evidence without allowing the defence to see it first so that the defence was surprised by the new evidence.’’
According to the former ambassador, the prosecution did find many documents signed by Saddam Hussein and other defendants, which directly implicated them in the charges of the Dujail massacres and killings.
“So, there was really no question that Saddam and the co-defendants were guilty of the crimes, but the process itself was certainly not perfect,” Ford said.
The former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, was executed on Dec. 30, 2006, on the night before the start of one of the most important Muslim holidays, Eid al-Adha.
Hussein managed to avoid capture for six months after the U.S. invaded Iraq under the pretext of searching for weapons of mass destruction in 2003.
He was finally arrested near his hometown of Tikrit, and the first hearing of the special tribunal took place in July 2004.
The court found Hussein guilty on the charges and sentenced him to death by hanging on Nov. 5, 2006.
US confirms Invictus Obi release date from prison
Tuesday, 28 December 2021 01:44 Written by OASESNEWSConvicted fraudster Obinwanne Okeke popularly aka Invictus Obi will be released in September 2028, a statement on the website of the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons has revealed.
Mr Okeke was jailed in February for 10 years in the United States for a computer-based intrusion fraud scheme that caused approximately $11 million in known losses to his victims.
He is being held at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI), Oakdale.
FCI, Oakdale located in Allen, Western Louisiana is a low security federal correctional institution with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp.
It has a population of 1,083 male inmates. It is an all-male inmates facility, with 997 inmates in the FCI and 86 at the camp.
According to court documents, Okeke, 33, operated a group of companies known as the Invictus Group based in Nigeria and elsewhere.
From approximately 2015 to 2019, Okeke and others engaged in a conspiracy to conduct various computer-based frauds.
One of his victims include Unatrac Holding Limited, a subsidiary of American heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar.
Okeke, who was arrested in August 2019, was listed by Forbes as one of the world’s influential young entrepreneurs.
He pleaded guilty to the second charge of wire fraud, earning him a deal with the US government.
As part of the deal, he would enjoy immunity from prosecution on the same matter in the US eastern district of Virginia.
Winter road salting has year-round consequences
Friday, 24 December 2021 06:25 Written by theconversationLauren Lawson, University of Toronto
Every fall, Canadians patiently wait for the turning of the trees and the crunch of leaves. In winter, we hear a different sort of crunch — the crunch of road salts.
Road salts are used to remove ice from surfaces like roads, sidewalks and parking lots. When people talk about road salts, they are often concerned with what salt may be doing to their vehicles, dog’s paws or winter boots.
There are also some environmental concerns, as road salt ultimately makes its way into our soils, local lakes and rivers. Salty water flows into our soils and local water bodies through surface runoff and stormwater pipes, and eventually makes its way into groundwater. This furthers the long-term storage of salt in the environment and further impacts freshwater aquatic life, government infrastructure and drinking water.
These concerns are usually voiced during the winter, when we actively see salt trucks and piles of salt on our drives or walks to work and school. While some of our worries disappear as the warm spring weather comes, my research shows the effects of extensive road salting on the environment last year round.
No longer a winter-only issue
My research with Donald Jackson at the University of Toronto showed elevated chloride concentrations — which are highly correlated with road salt — can now be found throughout the year in freshwater systems in the Greater Toronto Area. The impacts of road salt are not commonly studied in the summertime. However, understanding how it may be impacting the environment in the salt “low season” is important for understanding the gravity of the situation.
Our study found that during the summertime, which is also the low season for chloride, chloride concentrations exceeded established Canadian federal guidelines for protection of aquatic life.
At some of the sites monitored, we found that over 50 per cent of the aquatic biological communities can be considered to be stressed by chloride based on these guidelines, which were based on toxicity tests to aquatic organisms.
This means that summertime is now a time of likely chloride stress, higher water temperatures and early life stages of aquatic organisms (like eggs and larvae) which may be more sensitive to stress. These factors combined put aquatic species at elevated risk.
Why should we be concerned?
Road salt poses a risk for freshwater aquatic species, which rely on low salt levels. Freshwater species have specific biological adaptations to low salt levels, unlike their ocean counterparts which have different types of adaptations.
Studies show that increased chloride concentrations, associated with salt, can lead to disruptions in food webs, as sensitive species are stressed at high concentrations. For an aquatic organism, salt stress can lead to the diversion of energy to maintain basic functioning, which means less energy is directed to growth and reproduction.
High salt concentrations have been found to lead to decreases in egg mass for aquatic organisms, and decreases in growth rate. This essentially means sensitive species may eventually be “filtered out” of food webs, leading to declines in biodiversity.
Road salting leads to high concentrations of chloride and sodium in local waters. Increased chloride in drinking water supplies can lead to more rapid corrosion of drinking water infrastructure, such as private and municipal wells and pipes. This decreases the safety of drinking water. Increasing sodium concentrations is also concerning for those with hypertension.
To top it off, salting can lead to faster rates of corrosion of bridges and roads, putting road infrastructure at risk as well.
Lacking: efforts to reduce road salting
De-icing salts were first used in the 1940s in North America, and as its use exponentially increased with urbanization and road expansion, sodium chloride became the most popular. With increased understanding of risks to the environment and human health over time, efforts to reduce road salt use include using alternatives such as beet juice.
However, these alternatives can be expensive and can come with their own pitfalls, like introduction of more nutrients into aquatic systems. Understanding how much salt needs to be applied, and when, is a crucial part of salt and ice management. Additionally, shifts in perspective of ice safety can be made. In some regions for example, snow tires are required for vehicles while people use chains, boot spikes and other personal traction devices.
At a recent salt summit, held by the Lake George Association in New York, a speaker adequately described our current relationship with salt as “oversalting comes from a place of love, concern and want of safety,” because icy conditions are considered unsafe.
However, short-term prospects of ice safety blind us to the love, concern and want of long-term safety of our drinking water supplies and environmental integrity.
Mitigating our winter road salt addiction
We need to first recognize the year-round impacts our winter choices can have, and then take action to reduce the impacts. We can share the impacts of road salt and the individual actions we can take, such as understanding how much salt needs to be put down on our private properties, adjusting our expectations of winter roads and using snow tires and boot spikes to provide an added layer of safety.
At a larger scale, mandatory certifications for salt application can provide training for snow removal companies, and have substantial incentives if designed properly. For example, the New Hampshire Green SnowPro Certification provides limited liability relief for snow removal contractors if they are certified.
This ensures snow management companies are protected and their training programs are recognized as safe. Other organizations, like the Smart About Salt Council, provide the opportunity for certifications, training and general knowledge on salting.
Unifying the snow removal industry and scientific researchers is necessary to understand the full impact of salts, as understanding where salt is applied and how much is used is an important component of environmental modelling. This unification can be casual, such as through interviews.
It can also be more formal such as through joint research or educational initiatives, like the Partners in Project Green resource development for industry to understand road salt impacts and resources for more information.
Road salt pollution is an issue which can be acted on immediately, rather than relying on technological advancements, as action can be taken at the individual, the federal and all levels in between. This action should be taken swiftly to ensure a less salty future for our freshwater streams, lakes and drinking water.
So this winter season, when you hear the crunch of your boots on road salt, know that, although the salts we use now may not be visible after winter, the effect they have on the environment and our drinking water is year round.
Lauren Lawson, PhD Student, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.