RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
December 27, 2020 to January 2, 2021 This is a story of two young girls in different hemispheres bound together by cookies -- and child labor. Olivia Chaffin is a Girl Scout in rural Tennessee who was a top cookie seller in her troop. Ima is a 10-year-old Indonesian who, like tens of thousands of other children, helps her parents harvest the palm tree fruit whose oil is used to make a wide array of Western food and cosmetics brands, including Girl Scout cookies. The Associated Press reports that: Ima is among the estimated tens of thousands of children working alongside their parents in Indonesia and Malaysia, which supply 85% of the world's most consumed vegetable oil. An Associated Press investigation found most earn little or no pay and are routinely exposed to toxic chemicals and other dangerous conditions. Some never go to school or learn to read and write. Others are smuggled across borders and left vulnerable to trafficking or sexual abuse. Many live in limbo with no citizenship and fear being swept up in police raids and thrown into detention. … Child labor has long been a dark stain on the $65 billion global palm oil industry. With little or no access to daycare, some young children follow their parents to the fields, where they come into contact with fertilizers and some pesticides that are banned in other countries. As they grow older, they push wheelbarrows heaped with fruit two or three times their weight. Some weed and prune the trees barefoot, while teen boys may harvest bunches large enough to crush them, slicing the fruit from lofty branches with sickle blades attached to long poles. In some cases, an entire family may earn less in a day than a $5 box of Girl Scout Do-si-dos. Olivia Chaffin, now 14, was outraged when she learned of her connection to child labor. In response she has written letters to the head of Girl Scouts of the USA, demanding answers about how the palm oil is sourced for the organization's cookies. She's started an online petition to get palm oil removed from the recipe and she has refused to sell anymore cookies. This article is part of the AP's broader in-depth look at child labor in the palm oil industry that has exposed patterns of criminal abuse including rape, forced labor, trafficking and slavery. Reporters crisscrossed Malaysia and Indonesia, speaking to more than 130 current and former workers - some two dozen of them child laborers - at nearly 25 companies. Other Noteworthy Articles and Series She Spotted $200M Missing, Then Was Fired
ProPublica/Bay City News Foundation
The board of the California Public Utilities Commission fired its executive director, Alice Stebbins, earlier this year because, it decided, she had misled the public by asserting that as much as $200 million was missing from accounts intended to fund programs. But an investigation by the Bay City News Foundation and ProPublica found that Stebbins was right about the missing money. The article suggests that the board may have been unhappy that Stebbins was approaching her job with too much vigor, conducting audits that found the commission doing a poor job collecting on debts. One audit found $49.9 million in outstanding collections as of the end of 2019. Beijing's Suppression of the Catholic Church in Hong Kong
Reuters
In May, two Chinese nuns who work at the Vatican's mission in Hong Kong were arrested by mainland authorities during a visit home to Hebei province. Meanwhile, Western diplomats say, Chinese security agents have stepped up surveillance of the Hong Kong mission in recent months; the arrests are viewed by top clerics here and in the Vatican as a sign Beijing wants the mission shut. In response, the Church appears to be buckling under Chinese pressure. "The acting head of the local Church, Cardinal John Tong, has been curbing activist voices in the Catholic hierarchy," Reuters reports. "Tong, 81, has also told his priests not to deliver sermons that are too political, cautioning them that they should avoid using language that causes ‘social disorder.' " Tennessee: Second-Guessing Nashville Cops After Bombing
New York Times
Nashville's Christmas day bomber, Anthony Warner, has been on law enforcement since August 2019, when one of his neighbors told the police he was building bombs inside the R.V. parked at his house. The cops followed up, but they had no legal basis to search his home and claimed Warner's lawyer prevented officers from looking inside the vehicle. This article reports that critics are now assailing police officials, contending they could have intervened before Warner exploded a bomb inside that RV. The article also reports that some critics are invoking race: They argued that in other instances, such as in police shootings, the department moved quickly to release criminal histories about the people involved. Critics also raised concerns about race, questioning whether the investigation into Mr. Warner, a white man, was being handled differently. Hawaii: Beaches Are Disappearing
ProPublica/Honolulu Star-Advertiser
Hawaii's beaches are owned by the public, and the government is required to preserve them. So years ago, this article reports, officials adopted a "no tolerance" policy toward new seawalls, which scientists say are the primary cause of coastal erosion. But over the past two decades, oceanfront property owners across the state have used an array of loopholes in state and county laws to get around that policy, armoring their own properties at the expense of the environment and public shoreline access. Over time, waves hitting the barriers pull the sand away from the shore and carry it out to sea. As a result, the government approvals have fueled beach loss and perpetuated the redevelopment of private properties along treasured and environmentally sensitive coastlines — all at a time when scientists have been warning of the dire need to push development inland. Washington's Secret to a Perfect Zoom Bookshelf? Buy It Wholesale
Politico
In a place like Washington - small, interconnected, erudite, gossipy - being well-read can create certain advantages. So, too, can seeming well-read, especially in this era of the Zoom interview, in which books are the de rigueur background for cable news interviews. But what if you don't have many books, or, the right ones? Just contact Wonder Books, which does a volume business selling books by the foot from its 3-acre warehouse in Frederick, Maryland. This article explains: If an order were to come in for, say, 12 feet of books about politics, specifically with a progressive or liberal tilt - as one did in August - Wonder Book's manager, Jessica Bowman, would simply send one of her more politics-savvy staffers to the enormous box labeled "Politically Incorrect" (the name of Books by the Foot's politics package) to select about 120 books by authors like Hillary Clinton, Bill Maher, Al Franken and Bob Woodward. The books would then be "staged," or arranged with the same care a florist might extend to a bouquet of flowers, on a library cart; double-checked by a second staffer; and then shipped off to the residence or commercial space where they would eventually be shelved and displayed (or shelved and taken down to read). Jay Gatsby would be proud. Coronavirus Investigations The Year of Driving Less—but More Dangerously
Wired
COVID-19's deadly effects extend beyond those who have perished directly from the virus. This article reports that while total traffic deaths fell during pandemic lockdowns, fatalities per mile traveled rose a startling 31 percent. Evidence suggests that the pandemic created a road safety perfect storm. Open roads tempted speeders. Police reduced traffic enforcement because of low traffic volumes and reduced arrests for minor offenses to protect officers' health. And many places saw spikes in drug and alcohol use, which are linked to stress, boredom, and the lack of a regular schedule. The numbers highlight how the pandemic has spawned other public health emergencies, as the social effects and officials' failures to grapple with the pandemic bleed into every part of American life. Ina separate article, Bloomberg Businessweek reports on a series of suicides among cruise ship crew members who were largely confined to their cabins for months following the emergence of COVID-19. While many companies went to great lengths to repatriate vacationers, sending passengers home by chartered flights, it reports, crew members did not receive the same treatment. After the guests went home, tens of thousands of workers stayed at sea for months. Some described feeling like prisoners or pieces of cargo with no ETA. Wealthy Hospitals Rake In Disaster Aid for Covid Costs
Reuters
After collecting billions of dollars in U.S. coronavirus aid, many of the nation's wealthiest nonprofit hospitals are now tapping into disaster relief funds that critics say they don't need. This article reports that the funds are going to some large health systems that have billions of dollars in cash reserves and investments. Among the aid applicants are some of the nation's best-known health systems, including the Cleveland Clinic, Providence and Stanford Health Care. Other Coronavirus Investigations Hospital Workers 'Turn Against Each Other' to Get Vaccine New York Times
How COVID-19 Slipped China's Grasp New York Times
China Clamps Down in Hidden Hunt for Coronavirus Origins Associated Press
The Plague Year: Behind America's Virus Calamity New Yorker
Breadlines vs. Bread Makers Bloomberg Businessweek |
