Tackling a war and a pandemic ever since the six-week ceasefire due to coronavirus outbreak expired, Yemen has been thrown into a disarrayed health system. Yemen, as Arab worlds poorest country, is lacking food and medicine supplies since even the United Nations is struggling for funds as its humanitarian appeal for the country fell $1 billion short of what aid agencies needed this month. Also Read - Coronavirus in Maharashtra: State Records 3,874 Fresh Cases; Mumbai's Highest 136 Deaths

With coronavirus surging throughout the country and the conflict between the Iran-aligned Houthi movement and Saudi Arabia, which is backed by the US, UK and France, has pushed the impoverished country to the verge of famine. It has undoubtedly gutted Yemens infrastructure while displacing several families and also resulted in widespread malnourishment while shattering the healthcare system. Also Read - Leander Paes Ready With His 'New Version' But Concerned About Tokyo Olympics Future

Pained at the sufferings of the innocents, Twitter poured out its grief on the micro-blogging site as heart-wrenching videos and pictures from Yemen flood the Internet. While one user wrote, The ongoing conflict in Yemen has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. The malnutrition crisis gets worse with every day that the war continues. Half the total population, around 14 million at risk of famine -says #UN. Please save #Yemen (sic), another tweeted, #Yemen The enormous damage caused by the American Saudi aggression against Yemens right to self determination will remain for generations to come. In Saada, Yemen a Yemeni child is kissing the photos of his siblings taken from him in this unjustifiable and immoral war (sic). Also Read - COVID-19 Weekly Wrap | Over 2 Lakh Cases Recorded in 20 Days; Total Tally Nears 4 Lakh-Mark, Death Toll Soars to 12,948

Check out Twitters reaction on the news here:

We pray that Yemen makes it through this political conflict and pandemic without any further loss!

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Heartbreaking! Twitter Sheds Tears Over 'World's Worst Humanitarian Crisis' as War Tears Yemen - India.com

COVENTRY, England Speech is one of the most uniquely human characteristics. Its origins, however, remain one of the great mysteries of human development. New research now shows that chimpanzees exhibit a characteristic that might reveal some of the first steps in the evolution of human speech.

Several years ago, researchers noticed that monkeys signaled each other by smacking their lips and using strange open-close mouth patterns. What they found most interesting about this behavior is that the rate at which the monkeys made these mouth movements was very similar to the rate humans move their mouths when speaking: about 5 Hertz, or 5 open-close cycles per second.

At the time researchers thought this mouth-moving behavior might be related to human speech. They only observed this behavior, however, in primate species like orangutans and gibbons, which arent as closely related to humans as other African ape species.

In this new study, the research team,led by scientists at the University of Warwick, looked for these mouth signaling patterns in chimpanzees specifically. Of course, chimps are humans closest relatives in the animal kingdom. They looked at four different chimpanzee populations: captive chimpanzees in Edinburgh Zoo and Leipzig Zoo, and wild chimpanzees from the Kanyawara and the Waibira sanctuaries in Uganda.

Using video recordings taken of the chimps while they groomed each other, researchers say the monkeys made lip-smacks at an average rate of 4.15 Hertz very close to the 5 Hertz rate of human speech. This indicates that evolution relied on primate lip-smacking behavior when forming the vocal system of human speech thats still around today.

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Our results prove that spoken language was pulled together within our ancestral lineage using ingredients that were already available and in use by other primates and hominids, says senior author Dr Adriano Lameira, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick, in a press release.This dispels much of the scientific enigma that language evolution has represented so far.

He adds that the different chimpanzee populations studied exhibit different lip-smacking behavior. Its almost as if each community has its own mouth-moving language. We found pronounced differences in rhythm between chimpanzee populations, suggesting that these are not the automatic and stereotypical signals so often attributed to our ape cousins, he says. Instead, just like in humans, we should start seriously considering that individual differences, social conventions and environmental factors may play a role in how chimpanzees engage in conversation with one another.

Lameira points out the need to protect chimpanzee populations so they can continue to be studied. If we continue searching, new clues will certainly unveil themselves, he concludes. Now its a matter of mastering the political and societal power to preserve these precious populations in the wild and continue enabling scientists to look further.

The study is published in Biology Letters.

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Chimpanzees help shed light on origins of human speech, study reveals - Study Finds

The first time Lyell CEO Rick Klausner looked at what PACT Pharma was trying to accomplish with neoantigens, non-viral T cell engineering and cancer, he felt they couldnt get it done. But in the 3 years since theyve launched, Klausner has become a believer.

Now, hes a believer and a partner.

Early Thursday morning, Klausner and PACT CEO Alex Franzusoff announced a plan to jointly pursue one of the Holy Grails of oncology R&D. Blending their technologies and bringing a wide network of leading experts to the table, the two companies are working on a personalized T cell therapy for solid tumors. And an IND is in the offing.

The collaboration joins the Lyell team, which has been concentrating on overcoming the exhaustion that afflicts the first generation of cell therapies, with a PACT group that has developed tech to identify a patients unique signature of cancer mutations and use a non-viral method to engineer their T cells into cancer therapies.

I spent some time on Wednesday talking with Klausner and Franzusoff about the deal, which comes with an undisclosed set of financials as Lyell invests in the alliance.

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Chinese vaccine developers have begun to shed some secrecy around Covid-19 candidates. What do we know? - Endpoints News

In this op-ed, Ignacia Fulcher explains how this Juneteenth, Black people are working to shed intergenerational trauma by protesting for justice.

Ill never forget my first run-in with the police. It was the summer after I graduated high school. My friends and I went to a popular beach town in New York. Sure, it was after hours, but there were tons of other teenagers hanging out, most of them white. My friends and I were not. After an hour or so of hanging out in the sand and finally talking to my crush (swoon) with our toes in the water, a cop came up to our group telling us to disperse. And so we started to walk towards our cars thinking that the warning would be the end of our encounter. It wasnt.

The officer asked where we were from, and not believing us, asked for our IDs. The panic started to set in. My friend Kirsten messed up on one of those rules our parents taught us always keep your ID on you. Kirstens ID was in her car and that got this particular officer annoyed. He asked her where she lived and when she answered, he didnt believe her, or the fact that her name was decidedly Irish when she, according to the officer, was obviously not.

While this was happening, the boy I liked had clammed up and clenched his fists while standing next to me. In that moment I felt the anger and fear he was feeling. As we were reprimanded, the white teens on the beach stayed unbothered. Usually you feel invincible when youre that young like you can do anything and nothing can touch you. That isnt the reality for Black youth. Standing on the beach I went to thousands of times before, I realized being Black was a liability.

Instances like these are ingrained in the bodies of Black people. For so long, people in positions of power most often white people have directed violence toward us, causing the trauma we experience to be passed down from generation to generation. So, when I first got news of police killing of George Floyd, everything paused in this familiar way. I thought to myself, here we go again. Having to witness video after video of Black people being killed already takes a toll, and in the midst of a pandemic in which Black people are disproportionately dying its a recipe for sheer exhaustion. But this Juneteenth, as people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against police brutality, to say Black Trans Lives Matter, to call for justice, I can see the hope that we not only inherited trauma from our ancestors, but joy and resilience too.

I saw the names of the individuals killed as a result of White supremacyGeorge Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arberyand thought, not a damn thing has changed. Im going through what my parents went through, what my grandparents went through, and their parents all the way down the line, over and over again. History repeats itself and the wounds it makes dont heal in one lifetime if at all. And, how could we heal when we keep being killed?

Intergenerational trauma was originally researched in Holocaust survivors and their family members. Since then, researchers found that other survivors of mass trauma passed down an array of behaviors such as authoritarian parenting styles, lack of community trust, anxiety, and shame. In an article on intergenerational trauma for the American Psychological Association's Monitor on Psychology, Tori DeAngelis wrote that researchers found transgenerational effects, are not only psychological, but familial, social, cultural, neurobiological, and possibly even genetic. Dr. Joy DeGruy coined the term Post Traumatic Slave Disorder, which is a theory that describes the phenomenon of certain survival and stress traits being triggered in the descendants of African slaves passed down generation to generation, resulting in adaptive behaviors for the better or for the worse. Intergenerational trauma is funny like that.

Read more:
On Juneteenth, Black People Are Using Protest to Shed Intergenerational Trauma - Teen Vogue

A new study published in Nature Human Behaviour analyzed web-traffic data collected during the 2016 US presidential campaign. The study found that Trump supporters were most likely to consume news from untrustworthy sources but that, in general, untrustworthy news took up only around 6% of the total news consumed by Americans.

Researchers Andrew M. Guess and his team wanted to investigate how the consumption of news from unreliable sources might influence political behavior. Fake news remains one of the most widely debated aspects of the 2016 US presidential election, the researchers say. Some journalists and researchers have even suggested that fake news may be responsible for Trumps victory.

To investigate these ideas, the study authors analyzed pre-election survey data collected between October 21-31, 2016 from a sample of 2,525 Americans. This survey data was then compared to the web-traffic histories of respondents, which was recorded from October 7 to November 14, 2016. The researchers used Grinberg et al.s (2015) classification of fake news to identify websites that were either flagged by fact-checkers for publishing false content or flagged by human review for a flawed editorial process.

Researchers tracked respondents visits to hard-news sites websites with a focus on national news, politics, or world affairs. They then separately calculated visits to websites classified as untrustworthy. Finally, the researchers calculated what proportion of the total news consumed by respondents came from these unreliable sites.

Results suggested that exposure to so-called fake news may be less prevalent than many have speculated. First, less than half of the sample (44%) had visited an untrustworthy news site during the time of the study. Next, news articles from untrustworthy sites made up only about 6% of all the hard-news articles read by Americans during this time.

Still, interesting trends emerged suggesting that certain groups were more likely to read fake news. Results showed that as much as 62% of traffic to untrustworthy websites came from the consumers who ranked in the top 20% for most conservative information diet. The authors explain, people who indicated in the survey that they supported Trump were far more likely to visit untrustworthy websitesespecially those who are conservative and are therefore probably pro-Trumpcompared with those who indicated that they were Clinton supporters.

It also appeared that subjects were more likely to consume news from unreliable sources when its content corresponded to their political beliefs. When it came to articles from untrustworthy conservative websites, 57% of Donald Trump supporters had read at least one of these articles, while only 28% of Hillary Clinton supporters had. When it came to articles from unreliable liberal websites, 23% of Clinton supporters had read at least one of these, while only 11% of Trump supporters had.

Next, the researchers analysis suggested that social media, and in particular, Facebook, might serve as a gateway to untrustworthy news. Evidence suggested that the traffic to untrustworthy sites often stemmed from the social media platform. Facebook was among the three previous websites visited by respondents in the previous 30 s for 15.1% of the articles from untrustworthy news websites that we observed in our web data, the authors say.

When it came to predicting political behavior, equivalency tests ruled out large effects for the consumption of untrustworthy news on voter choice or turnout. Still, the authors express that their results were too imprecise to say with certainty whether or not untrustworthy news may have aided Trumps win.

The authors express that although exposure to fake news appears to be limited to a specific subset of Americans, these small groups can help to propel dubious claims to widespread visibility online, potentially intensifying polarization and negative affect. The researchers express that it would be interesting for future research to further explore these effects by including news accessed through social media platforms directly, such as hyper-partisan Facebook groups and Twitter feeds.

The study, Exposure to untrustworthy websites in the 2016 US election, was authored by Andrew M. Guess, Brendan Nyhan, and Jason Reifler.

More here:
Study sheds light on exposure to fake news prior to the 2016 election of Donald Trump - PsyPost

WASHINGTON The bones of a woman of Central Asian descent found at the bottom of a deep well after a violent death in an ancient city in Turkey are helping scientists understand population movements during a crucial juncture in human history.

Researchers have dubbed her the lady in the well and her bones were among 110 skeletal remains of people who lived in a region of blossoming civilization running from Turkey through Iran between 7,500 and 3,000 years ago.

The study provided the most comprehensive look to date of genetics revealing the movement and interactions of human populations in this area after the advent of agriculture and into the rise of city-states, two landmarks in human history.

The remains of the lady in the well, found in the ruins of the ancient city of Alalakh in southern Turkey, illustrated how people and ideas circulated through the region.

Her DNA showed she hailed from somewhere in Central Asia perhaps 2,000 miles or more away. She died at about 40 to 45 years old, the researchers said, probably between 1625 BC and 1511 BC. Her body bore signs of multiple injuries.

How and why a woman from Central Asia or both of her parents came to Alalakh is unclear, said Ludwig Maximilian University Munich archaeologist Philipp Stockhammer, co-director of the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean and co-author of the study published in the journal Cell.

Trader? Slaves? Marriage? What we can say is that genetically this woman is absolutely foreign, so that she is not the result of an intercultural marriage, Stockhammer added. Therefore, a single woman or a small family came this long distance. The woman is killed. Why? Rape? Hate against foreigners? Robbery? And then her body was disposed in the well.

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'Lady in the well' sheds light on ancient human population movements - New York Post

RICHMOND In the weeks since Virginias hospitals have reopened for non-emergency procedures, many have implemented wider COVID-19 testing protocols to protect patients and staff from the virus.

In some cases, the results have been illuminating. In a Thursday call with the Virginia Nurses Association, Melody Dickerson, senior vice president and chief nursing officer for the Virginia Hospital System in Arlington, said her facility had been testing all admitted patients for the last three to four weeks.

I would tell everyone on the call that if youre not doing that, its certainly something you should consider, she added. Within the hospitals labor and delivery department, 1.6% of mothers tested positive for COVID-19 with no symptoms. The number jumped to 1.8% for patients coming in for surgery, she said.

To see 2% of those patients who are asymptomatic yet positive for this virus, it really speaks to the risk to all of us in the community, Dickerson continued. But also the risk that we present to our patients and likewise.

In the absence of widespread prevalence testing, both in Virginia and nationwide, the data helps shed light on the extent of asymptomatic COVID-19 one of the most difficult factors in controlling the spread of disease. In a May 28 editorial for the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers with the University of California-San Francisco, called asymptomatic transmission the Achilles heel of pandemic control, pointing to evidence that the virus can shed at high levels even among patients with no signs of illness.

Dr. Thomas Yackel, president of MCV Physicians at Virginia Commonwealth University, said it was precisely for that reason that VCU decided to implement its own universal testing protocols for hospital patients once the resources became available. The health system has been seeing roughly the same numbers as at the Virginia Hospital Center, with roughly 1% to 2% of patients testing positive for the disease without any indicators.

There are people who are positive who dont have some of the symptoms, or they dont recognize what the symptoms are, he said. Recently, one of his patients called him after losing her sense of smell a frequently reported but often underrecognized sign of the virus. Yackel called her in and she tested positive for COVID-19, even though she didnt display any other symptoms.

Sometimes these are people who are thinking theyre healthy enough to come in for a surgery, an elective procedure, or to deliver a child, Yackel said. But they could be in one of those categories either they will develop symptoms in the next couple of days or theyre asymptomatic but still carrying the virus.

While Virginias testing numbers have been gradually increasing, the states resources are generally directed to high-risk populations, including nursing home residents and symptomatic health care workers. Among the total 42,533 coronavirus cases, as of Friday, 5% were reported as asymptomatic, with 57% symptomatic and 38% unknown or unreported, according to the Virginia Department of Health.

But without random testing of the general population the only real way to determine the extent of asymptomatic cases both Yackel and Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said hospital data could be cautiously extrapolated to the rest of Virginia.

Right now, its an imperfect system. Not all hospitals are universally testing patients. Some health systems, including Sentara and Carilion Clinic, are opting to test only those coming in for operations and procedures. Others, such as Riverside, are only testing those with symptoms.

Some of the states biggest health systems, including Sentara, Bon Secours and HCA Virginia, declined to release the percentage of asymptomatic patients who tested positive for COVID-19. Geography also could make a difference. Carilion Clinic based in Roanoke, an area with fewer than 300 reported cases reported that just seven of its 1,967 surgical patients have been asymptomatic.

Still, Schaffner said it was noteworthy that some hospital systems were reporting asymptomatic positivity rates close to 2%. Those people have caught it from somebody, and theyre probably going to give it to one or more people, he said.

I think its as close to a population prevalence study that we have right now, especially in Virginia, Yackel said. Understanding the number of asymptomatic positives is also important as the state moves toward gradually reopening.

Updated modeling from the University of Virginia shows that the states peak in COVID-19 cases could arrive in late July or early August. The severity is largely dependent on how closely social interaction returns to pre-pandemic levels, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Schaffner said hes seen much higher asymptomatic positivity rates in other states, including one inner-city hospital where 14% of patients in labor and delivery tested positive without any symptoms. But both he and Yackel said the rate at Virginia hospitals still underscored the importance of social distancing measures, such as avoiding large gatherings and wearing masks in public.

If youre just going about your daily activities, I would think of it this way: every hundredth person that you interact with could be in the asymptomatic phase of spreading the virus, Yackel said. Thats why social distancing works. Its not the distance. Its reducing the number of close encounters with many, many people.

Read the rest here:
Hospital testing sheds some light on extent of asymptomatic COVID-19 in Virginia - The Daily Progress

Strikers at Allan Brothers. (Photo by Xolotl Edgar Franx)

By David BaconLabornotes, 6/2/20https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2020/06/apple-shed-strikes-win-recognition-and.htmlhttps://labornotes.org/2020/06/apple-shed-strikes-win-recognition-fight-goes

Thirty four workers at the apple packing shed that sparked a wave of strikes in central Washington went back to work on Monday with a written agreement recognizing their workers committee, Trabajadores Unidos por la Justicia (Workers United for Justice). Of the 115 workers at Allan Brothers who walked out May 7, the 34 stayed out for the full 22 days, during which hundreds of other workers struck at six additional sheds in the area.

According to Agustin Lopez, a leader of the movement whos worked in the valley since the mid-1980s, The most important thing to us is that the company is recognizing our committee as the representative of all the workers. Under the agreement we will continue negotiating for salary increases, better working conditions, and health protections. The agreement means that our rights as workers are respected.

The shed strike wave was touched off by the impact of the coronavirus on the hundreds of people who labor sorting fruit in Yakima Valleys huge packinghouses. While their numbers are smaller than the huge workforce of thousands who pick the fruit in the summer and fall, the shed workforce occupies a strategic place in this system of agricultural production. The virus has spread more widely here than in any other county on the Pacific Coast, with an infection rate of about 500 per 100,000. As of June 1 Yakima County had 3,891 COVID-19 cases and 90 deaths. Twenty-four percent of people tested have been infected, and the local hospital system is at capacity with few beds available.

The most important demand for us is that we have a healthy workplace and protection from the virus, Lopez explained at the start of the conflict. Fourteen people have left work over the last month because they have the COVID-19.

During harvest time, trucks from the orchards haul loads of apples and cherries picked by thousands of farmworkers, laboring for the big growers of the Yakima Valley. After the fruit is cooled and stored, orders from the grocery chains are filled by workers, mostly women, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of fast-moving conveyor belts. As apples and cherries sweep past, they sort it and send it on to other workers who wash and pack it, and eventually load it onto trucks. By the time it appears on the shelves of supermarkets around the country, the fruit has passed through many working hands.

Packinghouse laborers are almost entirely immigrants from Mexico, and most of the sorting jobs on the lines are done by women. Their families make up the working-class backbone of the small towns of Yakima Valley. Most have lived here for years. Jobs in the sheds pay minimum wage, but theyre are a step up from the fields because they offer year-round work at 40 hours per week.

While their numbers are smaller than the huge workforce of thousands who pick the fruit in the summer and fall, the shed workforce occupies a strategic place in this system of agricultural production.

REACHED OUT TO UNIONS

When the workers stopped work at Allan Brothers, demanding better safety precautions and $2/hour in hazard pay, they reached out to Dulce Gutierrez, who represents the Washington Labor Council in the Yakima Valley. Gutierrez in turn contacted Washington States new union for farmworkers, Familias Unidas por la Justicia (Families United for Justice), at its office in Burlington on the coast. Ramon Torres, FUJ president, and Edgar Franks, political director, went to Yakima, where theyve spent the last month supporting the strikers.

The first company to settle was the Roche Fruit Company, after a lunchtime walkout, bolstered by the presence of FUJ organizers, got the owners to increase a hazard pay offer of $200 per month to $100 per week. Strikes then followed at Jack Frost Co., Matson Fruit Co., Monson Fruit Co., Hanson Fruit Co., and Columbia Reach Pack.

To protect workers organizing rights, Columbia Legal Services and FUJs lawyer, Kathy Barnard from the labor law firm of Barnard Iglitzin & Lavitt, filed unfair labor practice charges against Allan Brothers. The workers committee charged that managers interrogated workers about their strike activity, threatened them with discipline if they joined the strike, increased wages for non-strikers in an effort to buy their loyalty, and disciplined an employee who brought water to the picketers. (The recognition agreement did not include an agreement by the workers to drop the charges.)

The company barred strikers vehicles from its parking lot, but the COVID-distanced picket line at Allan Brothers held up even under threats. Sheriff deputies arrested one man who told strikers that he planned to return with a gun and shoot them. In response, two workers, Maribel Medina and Cesar Traverso, began a hunger strike on May 19, after reading Cesar Chavezs Farmworkers Prayer.

DELIVERY TO THE CAPITOL

When growers proved recalcitrant despite the pressure, workers increased it by going to the state capitol in Olympia on May 26. There they delivered 200 complaints against Allan Brothers to the Department of Labor and Industries, and held a noisy rally outside the home of Democratic Governor Jay Inslee. The companies thought they could contain this, Franks explained, but it put a lot of pressure on them and made the strike a statewide issue.

One worker, Julietta Pulido Montejano, from Columbia Reach Pack, told state officials, We are on strike demanding protections from COVID 19. We want the company to respect social distancing, and to provide us with daily masks. We want to be able to take care of ourselves so we can go back to our families and not get them sick. Thirty-one workers at Columbia Reach Pack have tested positive for the virus.

COMPANIES START TO CAVE

On May 22 the companies began to seek agreement, when the owner of Monson Fruit signed a written recognition of the workers committee, providing better health protections against the virus and $1/hour in hazard pay. Workers there then returned to work. Workers also went back at Jack Frost Co. with a promise of an increase they have yet to receive, but without a written agreement.

At Matson Fruit the workers committee was presented with a written agreement. But when they saw it set up a company union, Franks said, they rejected it, and theyre still on strike and talking. At Columbia Reach Pack the company seems unwilling to negotiate, workers charge, and over 50 remain on strike.

At Allan Brothers, while the agreement was signed and workers went back to work, committee members acknowledge that the conflict has not really ended. Our fight continues, said one committee member, Romina Medina. But this agreement shows that we can still make important achievements after 22 days without working, without money and enduring intimidation, because we did not give up.

At Allan Brothers the Trabajadores Unidos por la Justicia committee accepted the $1/hour wage increase offered by the company, and that had been accepted at Monson Fruit. That$1/hour raise expires at the end of July, when the company has agreed to negotiate over wages. Agustin Lopez said, We are sure that we will achieve all our demands, because we will return with strength to the negotiating table then.

Torres believes that workers learned enough about collective action that they will be prepared to fight when the day comes. It had a big impact on them, he says, since it was the first time theyd done anything like this. They are building a base, and learning how to organize collective action to fight inside the workplace.

Gutierrez says that winning health protections inside the sheds is a critical victory, given the dangers of the coronavirus: Theres been progress made at all the warehouses with sanitation and safety. That is already a victory for every huelga [strike].

TAKING OVER CITY COUNCIL

The strikes are partly a product of political changes sweeping central Washington. Gutierrrez herself ran on a slate of progressive candidates who gained a majority on the Yakima City Council in 2015. She won 84 percent of the vote and became the first Latina elected to the body. That election, in turn, was the result of a voting rights suit that overturned Yakimas old citywide election system and ended decades of grower control of it.

Nevertheless, apple shed workers still confront an entrenched anti-union industry. Its biggest players, Stemilt Fruit Co. and Zirkle Fruit Co., bring thousands of H-2A guest workers into Washington every year for the apple harvest in late summer and the fall. They have a long history of fighting unions and dominate the agricultural labor policies of the state government, even in Democratic administrations.

Longtime farmworker organizer Rosalinda Guillen, executive director of the organization Community to Community, cautions, This country gets its food supply on the backs of people who these companies treat as expendable. That hasnt changed at all.

Read the original:
APPLE SHED STRIKES WIN RECOGNITION, AND THE FIGHT GOES ON - Random Lengths

This article was updated to include information about COVID-19 statistics in Yakima County. -Editors

Workers at the apple packing shed that sparked a wave of strikes in central Washington went back to work on Monday with a written agreement recognizing their workers' committee, Trabajadores Unidos por la Justicia (Workers United for Justice). Of the 115 workers at Allan Brothers who walked out May 7, 34 stayed out for the full 22 days, during which hundreds of other workers struck at six additional sheds in the area.

According to Agustin Lopez, a leader of the movement who's worked in the valley since the mid-1980s, "The most important thing to us is that the company is recognizing our committee as the representative of all the workers. Under the agreement we will continue negotiating for salary increases, better working conditions, and health protections. The agreement means that our rights as workers are respected.

The shed strike wave was touched off by the impact of the coronavirus on the hundreds of people who labor sorting fruit in Yakima Valley's huge packinghouses. The virus has spread more widely here than in any other county on the Pacific Coast, with an infection rate of about 500 per 100,000. As of June 1, Yakima County had 3,891 COVID-19 cases and 90 deaths. Twenty-four percent of people tested have been infected, and the local hospital system is at capacity with few beds available.

The most important demand for us is that we have a healthy workplace and protection from the virus, Lopez explained at the start of the conflict. Fourteen people have left work over the last month because they have the COVID-19."

During harvest time, trucks from the orchards haul loads of apples and cherries picked by thousands of farmworkers who labor for the big growers of the Yakima Valley. After the fruit is cooled and stored, orders from the grocery chains are filled by packing shed workers, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in front of fast-moving conveyor belts. As apples and cherries sweep past, they sort it and send it on to other workers who wash and pack it, and eventually loading it onto trucks. By the time it appears on the shelves of supermarkets around the country, the fruit has passed through many working hands.

Packinghouse laborers are almost entirely immigrants from Mexico, and most of the sorting jobs on the lines are done by women. Their families make up the working-class backbone of the small towns of Yakima Valley. Most have lived here for years. Jobs in the sheds pay minimum wage, but they're a step up from the fields because they offer year-round work at 40 hours per week.

While their numbers are smaller than the huge workforce of thousands who pick the fruit in the summer and fall, the shed workforce occupies a strategic place in this system of agricultural production.

When the workers stopped work at Allan Brothers, demanding better safety precautions and $2 an hour in hazard pay, they reached out to Dulce Gutierrez, who represents the Washington State Labor Council in the Yakima Valley. Gutierrez in turn contacted Washington State's new union for farmworkers, Familias Unidas por la Justicia (Families United for Justice), at its office in Burlington on the coast. Ramon Torres, FUJ president, and Edgar Franks, political director, went to Yakima, where they've spent the last month supporting the strikers.

The first company to settle was Roche Fruit, after a lunchtime walkout, bolstered by the presence of FUJ organizers, got the owners to increase a hazard pay offer of $200 per month to $100 per week. Strikes then followed at Jack Frost, Matson Fruit, Monson Fruit, Hanson Fruit, and Columbia Reach Pack.

To protect workers' organizing rights, Columbia Legal Services and FUJ's lawyer filed unfair labor practice charges against Allan Brothers. The workers' committee charged that managers interrogated workers about their strike activity, threatened them with discipline if they joined the strike, increased wages for non-strikers in an effort to buy their loyalty, and disciplined an employee who brought water to the picketers. (The recognition agreement did not include an agreement by the workers to drop the charges.)

The company barred strikers' vehicles from its parking lot, but the COVID-distanced picket line at Allan Brothers held up even under threats. Sheriffs deputies arrested one man who told strikers that he planned to return with a gun and shoot them. In response, two workers, Maribel Medina and Cesar Traverso, began a hunger strike on May 19, after reading Cesar Chavez's "Farmworkers' Prayer."

For news and guidance on organizing in your workplace during the coronavirus crisis, click here.

When growers proved recalcitrant despite the pressure, workers increased it by going to the state capitol in Olympia on May 26. There they delivered 200 complaints against Allan Brothers to the Department of Labor and Industries, and held a noisy rally outside the home of Democratic Governor Jay Inslee. "The companies thought they could contain this," Franks explained, "but it put a lot of pressure on them and made the strike a statewide issue."

One worker, Julietta Pulido Montejano from Columbia Reach Pack, told state officials, We are on strike demanding protections from COVID-19. We want the company to respect social distancing, and to provide us with daily masks. We want to be able to take care of ourselves so we can go back to our families and not get them sick. Thirty-one workers at Columbia Reach Pack have tested positive for the virus.

On May 22 the companies began to seek agreement, when the owner of Monson Fruit signed a written recognition of the workers' committee, providing better health protections against the virus and $1 an hour in hazard pay. Workers there then returned to work. Workers also went back at Jack Frost with a promise of an increase, but without a written agreement.

At Matson Fruit the workers' committee was presented with a written agreement. "But when they saw it set up a company union," Franks said, "they rejected it, and they're still on strike and talking." At Columbia Reach Pack the company seems unwilling to negotiate, workers charge, and over 50 remain on strike.

At Allan Brothers, while the agreement was signed and workers went back to work, committee members acknowledge that the conflict has not really ended. "Our fight continues," said committee member Romina Medina. "But this agreement shows that we can still make important achievements after 22 days without working, without money and enduring intimidation, because we did not give up."

At Allan Brothers the Trabajadores Unidos por la Justicia committee accepted the $1 an hour wage increase offered by the company, and that had been accepted at Monson Fruit. That $1 an hour raise expires at the end of July, when the company has agreed to negotiate over wages. "We are sure that we will achieve all our demands, because we will return with strength to the negotiating table then," said Agustin Lopez.

Torres believes that workers learned enough about collective action that they will be prepared to fight when the day comes. "It had a big impact on them," he says, "since it was the first time they'd done anything like this. They are building a base, and learning how to organize collective action to fight inside the workplace."

Gutierrez says that winning health protections inside the sheds is a critical victory, given the dangers of the coronavirus: Theres been progress made at all the warehouses with sanitation and safety. That is already a victory for every huelga [strike].

The strikes are partly a product of political changes sweeping central Washington. Gutierrrez herself ran on a slate of progressive candidates who gained a majority on the Yakima City Council in 2015. She won 84 percent of the vote and became the first Latina elected to the body. That election, in turn, was the result of a voting rights suit that overturned Yakima's old citywide election system and ended decades of grower control of it.

Nevertheless, apple shed workers still confront an entrenched anti-union industry. Its biggest players, Stemilt and Zirkle Fruit, bring thousands of H-2A guest workers into Washington every year for the apple harvest in late summer and the fall. They have a long history of fighting unions and dominate the agricultural labor policies of the state government, even in Democratic administrations.

Longtime farmworker organizer Rosalinda Guillen, executive director of the organization Community to Community, cautions, This country gets its food supply on the backs of people who these companies treat as expendable. That hasn't changed at all."

David Bacon is a California writer, documentary photographer, and former union organizer.

Link:
Apple Shed Strikes Win Recognition, But the Fight Goes On - Labor Notes

For quite a long time, the marker that defined whether or not a video on YouTube was truly successful was how many views it had gotten. This might seem like an overly simplified way to go about things these days but back then it was considered pretty valid and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that YouTube was still a new service that people were getting used to, and users as well as the people that worked at YouTube were not all too familiar with the various tricks that would be employed in order to boost view counts and make a certain video appear to be far more popular than it actually was.

After view counts started to become suspect in terms of determining how successful a video was, view times also started to be taken into account. This is because of the fact that the amount of time that people watch videos matters quite a bit. If you only watch the first 30 seconds of a view before navigating away, this means that you probably didnt enjoy the video very much. Hence, if a video has lots of views but most of those views involve people navigating away before they watch a significant portion of it, this would affect how successful YouTube would deem the video.The reason behind why this matters is because of the fact that it impacts the YouTube algorithm. YouTube initially recommended widely watched videos, then started taking into account view times. However, even now there is a long way to go before the videos that you are recommended would actually be high in quality every single time, and this is basically why YouTube has started to look into Satisfaction, a term they are using to refer to a metric that gauges how much a video is genuinely enjoyed.

There are a number of factors that impact this metric. There is of course the amount of time that a viewer watched a video as well as whether or not they actually finished it. More importantly whether or not a user gave a video a Like is also taken into account because of the fact that watching a video all the way through does not mean that you necessarily enjoyed it, a like or a share is going to indicate that you genuinely thought that it did what you were hoping it would do.

Apart from this, according to Creator Insider, YouTube is also conducting surveys in order to directly ask users what their experience was like. This is important because of the fact that it can help YouTube genuinely ascertain the kind of enjoyment people are receiving from videos rather than relying on metrics that might be the result of other factors that are not directly tied to enjoyment in general.

All of these new metrics are going to contribute to the YouTube algorithm becoming a lot better in the long run. This is important because of the fact that it plays quite an important role in the kind of videos that you would end up seeing while you are checking out what YouTube has to offer.

Read next: YouTube Is Testing To Integrate Google Search Results With Video Search In Its Mobile App

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YouTube Sheds Light on New Satisfaction Metric With Videos - Digital Information World