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Ald. Ed Burke (WTTW News)

The city saved $1 million after an embattled Ald. Ed Burke (14th Ward) was forced to relinquish control of the Chicago City Councils Finance Committee, which he ran with little oversight for decades, according to the citys annual audit.

In 2018, the committee spent approximately $2 million, the most of any of the City Councils nearly two dozen legislative committees, in what was Burkes last year. In 2019, the committee spent $1.1 million, according to the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report.

Burke resigned as chair of the City Councils most powerful committee on Jan. 4, 2019, a day after he was charged with attempted extortion. Burke pleaded not guilty, andcould face a trial in spring 2021 on an expanded indictment that includes 14 counts.

Former Ald. Pat OConnor (40th Ward) replaced Burke as chair, only to lose his seat in April 2019 to Ald. Andre Vasquez.

Burke, who has rarely spoken to the news media after his indictment, did not respond to a request for comment from WTTW News.

Once Mayor Lori Lightfoot took office, one of her first moves was to tap Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward) as Finance Committee chair. The former chair of the Progressive Caucus, Waguespack was long a thorn in Burkes side, and was the first alderman to endorse Lightfoot.

Under Burkes leadership, the committees payroll included 30 staff members. Under Waguespack, the committee has just three full-time staffers.

There probably was significant waste, Waguespack told WTTW News.

In this courtroom sketch, Ald. Ed Burke, left, appears before U.S. Federal Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole with his attorneys on Tuesday, June 4, 2019. (Credit: Tom Gianni)

The longest-serving alderman in Chicago history, Burke used the Finance Committee chairs gavel to wield nearly unquestioned power at City Hall from a suite of offices decorated with Chicago history memorabilia and marked by a cabinet filled with guns.

Burkes first stint as chairman ran from 1983 to 1987, when he was ousted by allies of former Mayor Harold Washington, whom the Southwest Side alderman worked to thwart at every turn. When former Mayor Richard M. Daley was elected in 1989, he returned Burke to his powerful perch, where he remained for 30 years.

The committees budget also paid for a security detail, which shadowed Burke since the 1980s when he said supporters of Washington posed a threat. In 2019, six people were assigned to drive Burke and serve as his bodyguards. Neither OConnor nor Waguespack requested or received a security detail.

The Finance Committees large staff allowed Burke to loan employees to at least five aldermen who were struggling to stretch their $190,000 annual office budget far enough to meet all of the demands of their constituents, as first reported by WTTW News in March 2019.

Inspector General Joseph Ferguson said that power indebted aldermen to Burke and gave him sources across the city and throughout City Hall who could report back to him.

Waguespack said he stopped that practice, and cut the staff while focusing on putting new computer software in place to review contracts and small claims. The Finance Committee ended 2019 under budget, spending $1.1 million when it was budgeted to spend $1.4 million, according to the annual financial report.

Ald. Ed Burke speaks with Chicago Tonight reporter Amanda Vinicky and other reporters outside his home on Thursday, Nov. 29, hours after FBI agents raided his offices. (WTTW News)

In 2016, the City Council narrowly rejected a reform measure that would have given Ferguson oversight of the City Councils committees amid concerted opposition from Burke. In July 2019, a measure giving Ferguson the authority to investigate aldermen and audit council administrative procedures passed 50-0.

While he was Finance Committee chair, Burke also controlled the citys $100 million workers compensation fund. After the embattled alderman relinquished his gavel, former Mayor Rahm Emanuel moved the fund to the Finance Department and put the comptroller in charge.

An audit ordered by Emanuel and released on his last day in office found that, under Burke, the workers compensation fund had significant control deficiencies and weaknesses that could allow fraud, waste and abuse to flourish unchecked.

In January 2019, Lightfoot outsourced the program to a private firm, Gallagher Bassett.

It will take approximately two years for the city to work through the backlog of claims that accumulated under Burkes leadership, and start to realize cost-savings, according to Comptroller Reshma Soni.

The revamped program is working as expected so far, Soni said.

Overall Committee Spending Down

Just before she took office in May 2019, Lightfoot unveiled her slate of committee chairs anointing a dozen aldermen as her most prominent allies, but vowing to end business as usual.

The mayor said City Council chairs would help her achieve our mission of a more transparent and accountable City Council.

In addition to Burke, Lightfoot ousted another longtime committee chair, Ald. Carrie Austin (34th Ward), who led the Budget and Government Operations Committee for 12 years after the Chicago Sun-Times reported in July 2019 that she overspent her committee budget by 65%.

Under Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd Ward), the new chair of the Budget Committee, the committee spent 30% less in 2019 than it did in 2018, according to the 2018 and 2019 annual reports.

After ousting her, Lightfoot made Austin chairman of the Committee on Contracting Oversight and Equity. That committee, which has met just twice, spent $122,881 in 2019, significantly less than its original budget, according to the citys annual report.

Lightfoot also created a Committee on Ethics and Government Oversight and a special committee designed to boost the citys census response rate.

The mayor changed the scope of two committees the Committee on Environmental Protection and Energy as well as the Committee on Health and Human Relations making it impossible to compare their budgets directly between 2018 and 2019.

Most committees spent significantly less after Lightfoot took over. For example, the Committee on Workforce Development spent 20% less once Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza (10th Ward) replaced OConnor, Emanuels floor leader, as chair.

However, four committees spent more in 2019 than in 2018:

Special Events, Cultural Affairs and Recreation Committee: 14.5% more Public Safety Committee: 30% more Aviation Committee: 35% more Economic, Capital and Technology Development Committee: 81% more

Just two committees exceeded their 2019 budgets, according to the annual report. The Public Safety Committee, led by Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th Ward) exceeded its budget by 7.5%, while the Special Events, Cultural Affairs and Recreation Committee, chaired by Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38th Ward), went 3.5% over budget.

Both aldermen blamed a mistake by the citys budget office during the transition from one committee chair to another for the overspending. Neither alderman was aware of the overage before being contacted by WTTW News. Taliaferro was tapped by Lightfoot to replace Ald. Ariel Reboyras (30th Ward) and Sposato replaced Ald. Tom Tunney (44th Ward), who now chairs the Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards.

Former Chairman Reboyras staff continued to be paid from the committee budget during a time in which my staff was on-boarding and being paid from the same budget, Taliaferro said. This was not my fault as chairman or former Chairman Reboyras.

Sposato said the same error occurred with his committees budget.

Contact Heather Cherone:@HeatherCherone| (773) 569-1863 |[emailprotected]

See original here:
After Investigation Forced Ald. Burke to Yield Control of Finance Committee, City Saved $1M: Annual Audit - WTTW News

Mashable's series Algorithms explores the mysterious lines of code that increasingly control our lives and our futures.

The world in 2020 has been given plenty of reasons to be wary of algorithms. Depending on the result of the U.S. presidential election, it may give us one more. Either way, it's high time we questioned the impact of these high-tech data-driven calculations, which increasingly determine who or what we see (and what we don't) online.

The impact of algorithms is starting to scale up to a dizzying degree, and literally billions of people are feeling the ripple effects. This is the year the Social Credit System, an ominous Black Mirror-like "behavior score" run by the Chinese government, is set to officially launch. It may not be quite as bad as you've heard, but it will boost or tighten financial credit and other incentives for the entire population. There's another billion unexamined, unimpeachable algorithms hanging over a billion human lives.

In the UK, few will forget this year's A-level algorithm. A-levels are key exams for 18-year olds; they make or break college offers. COVID-19 canceled them. Teachers were asked what each pupil would have scored. But the government fed these numbers into an algorithm alongside the school's past performance. Result: 40 percent of all teacher estimates were downgraded, which nixed college for high-achieving kids in disadvantaged areas. Boris Johnson backed down, eventually, blaming a "mutant algorithm." Still, even a former colleague of the prime minister thinks the A-level fiasco may torpedo his reelection chances.

In the U.S., we don't tend to think about shadowy government algorithms running or ruining our lives. Well, not unless you're a defendant in one of the states where algorithms predict your likelihood of committing more crime (eat your heart out, Minority Report) and advise judges on sentencing. U.S. criminal justice algorithms, it probably won't surprise you to learn, are operated by for-profit companies and stand accused of perpetuating racism. Such as COMPAS in Florida and Wisconsin, which ProPublica found was twice as likely to label Black defendants "high risk" than white defendants and was wrong about 40 percent of the time.

The flaws in such "mutant algorithms," of course, reflect their all-too-human designers. Math itself isn't racist, or classist, or authoritarian. An algorithm is just a set of instructions. Technically, the recipe book in your kitchen is full of them. As with any recipe, the quality of an algorithm depends on its ingredients and those of us who have to eat the result really don't think enough about what went on in the kitchen.

"All around us, algorithms provide a kind of convenient source of authority, an easy way to delegate responsibility; a short cut that we take without thinking," writes mathematician Hannah Fry in her 2018 book Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms. "Who is really going to click through to the second page of Google every time and think critically about every result?"

Try to live without algorithms entirely, however, and you'll soon notice their absence. Algorithms are often effective because they are able to calculate multiple probabilities faster and more effectively than any human mind. Anyone who's ever spent longer on the road because they thought they could outsmart Google Maps' directions knows the truth of this. This thought experiment imagining a day without algorithms ended in terrible gridlock, since even traffic-light systems use them.

Still, you would be right to be concerned about the influence algorithms have on our internet lives particularly in the area of online content. The more scientists study the matter, the more it seems that popular search, video and social media algorithms are governing our brains. Studies have shown they can alter our mood (Facebook itself proved that one) and yes, even our 2016 votes (which explains why the Trump campaign is investing so much into Facebook ads this time around).

So before we find out the full effect of algorithms in 2020 let's take a look at the algorithms on each of the major content services many of which are surprisingly easy to erase from our lives.

No algorithm on Earth, not even China's Social Credit system, has the power of Mark Zuckerberg's. Every day, nearly 2 billion people visit Facebook. Nearly all of them allow the algorithm to present posts in the order that the company has determined most likely to keep them engaged. That means you see a lot more posts from friends you've engaged with in the past, regardless of how close you actually are to them. It also means content that causes big back-and-forth fights is pushed to the top. And Zuckerberg knows it.

"Our algorithms exploit the human brains attraction to divisiveness," warned a 2018 internal Facebook study, unearthed by the Wall Street Journal. Left unchecked, these mutant algorithms would favor "more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform."

Zuckerberg, reportedly afraid that conservatives would be disproportionately affected if he tweaked the algorithm to surface more harmonious posts, shelved the study. It's been a good four years for conservatives on Facebook, who have been playing the referee ever since they petitioned Zuckerberg to stop using human editors to curate news in 2016. Now look at Facebook's top performing posts in 2020; on a daily basis, the list is dominated by names such as Ben Shapiro, Franklin Graham, and Sean Hannity.

But even conservatives have cause to be disquieted by the Facebook algorithm. Seeing friends' popular posts has been shown to make us more depressed. Facebook addiction is heavily correlated with depressive disorder. So-called "super sharers" drown out less active users, according to the 2018 report; an executive who tried to reduce the super-sharer influence on the algorithm abruptly left the company.

How to fix it

Luckily, you can reduce their influence yourself. Because Facebook still allows you to remove the sorting algorithm from your timeline, and simply view all posts from all your friends and follows in reverse chronological order (that is, most recently posted at the top). On Facebook.com, click the three dots next to "News Feed," then click "most recent." On the app, you'll need to click "settings," then "see more," then "most recent."

The result? Well, you might be surprised to catch up with old friends you'd almost forgotten about. And if you interact with their posts, you're training the content algorithm for when you go back to your regular timeline. In my experience, reverse chronological order isn't the most thrilling way to browse Facebook the algorithm knows what it's doing, locking your brain in with the most exciting posts but it's a nice corrective. If you're one of the two billion on Facebook every day, try this version at least once a week.

The YouTube "watch next" algorithm may be even more damaging to democracy than Facebook's preference for controversial posts. Some 70 percent of YouTube videos we consume were recommended by the service's algorithm, which is optimized to make you watch more YouTube videos and ads no matter what (the average viewing session is now above one hour).

That means YouTube prioritizes controversial content, because whether you love it or hate it, you'll keep watching. And once you've watched one piece of controversial content, the algorithm will assume that's what you're into, steering you to the kind of stuff viewers of that video opted to watch next. Which explains how your grandparents can start by watching one relatively innocuous Fox News video and end up going down a QAnon conspiracy theory rabbit hole.

A former Google programmer, Guillaime Chaslot, found the YouTube algorithm may have been biased enough to swing the outcome of the 2016 election, which was decided by 77,000 votes in three states. "More than 80 percent of recommended videos were favorable to Trump, whether the initial query was 'Trump' or 'Clinton'," he wrote in the immediate aftermath. "A large proportion of these recommendations were divisive and fake news." Similarly, Chaslot found that 90 percent of videos recommended from the search query "is the Earth flat?" said that yes, indeed it is.

This isn't just a problem in the U.S. One of the most important case studies of the YouTube algorithm's political impact was in Brazil, where fringe right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro was elected president after unexpectedly becoming a YouTube star. "YouTubes search and recommendation system appears to have systematically diverted users to far-right and conspiracy channels in Brazil," a 2019 New York Times investigation found. Even Bolsonaro's allies credited YouTube for his win.

How to fix it

Keep the algorithm at bay. Disable 'Up Next.'

Turning off autoplay, an option next to the "Up Next" list, will at least stop you from blindly watching whatever the YouTube algorithm recommends. You can't turn off recommendations altogether, but you can at least warn less tech-savvy relatives that the algorithm is doing its level best to radicalize them in service of views.

Chaslot's nonprofit algotransparency.org will show you what videos are most recommended across the site on any given day. By now, you may not be surprised to see that Fox News content tends to float to the top. Your YouTube recommendation algorithm may look normal to you if it's had years to learn your likes and dislikes. But a brand-new user will see something else entirely.

While parent company Facebook allows you to view your feed in reverse chronological order, Instagram banished that option altogether back in 2016 leading to a variety of conspiracy theories about "shadow banning." It will still show you every photo and story if you keep scrolling for long enough, but certain names float to the top so frequently that you'd be forgiven for feeling like a stalker. (Hello, Instagram crushes!)

How to fix it

As of a February update, Instagram will at least let you see who you've been inadvertently ignoring. Click on your profile icon in the bottom right corner, click on your "following" number, and you'll see two categories: "Least Interacted With" and "Most Shown In Feed." Click on the former, scroll through the list, and give your most ignored follows some love.

You can also sort your feed by the order in which you followed accounts, which is truly infuriating. Why offer that option, and not just give us a straight-up chronological feed? Instagram is also said to be testing a "Latest posts" feature that will catch you up on recent happenings, but this hasn't rolled out to all users yet.

Just like its social media rivals, Twitter is obsessed with figuring out how it can present information in anything other than most recent order the format that Twitter has long been known for. Founder Jack Dorsey has introduced solutions that will allow you to follow topics, not just people, and to show you tweets in your timeline that drove the most engagement first.

How to fix it

Go! See latest tweets! Be free of the algorithm!

All of these non-chronological tweaks fall under the "Home" heading at the top of the page. Click the star icons next to it, and you'll have the opportunity to go back to traditional Twitter-style "Latest Tweets." Of all the social media services, Twitter is the one that makes it easiest to ignore its recommendation algorithm.

It may take a little more scrolling to find the good stuff on Latest Tweets, and of course what you're seeing depends on what time of day you're dipping into the timeline. Still, Latest Tweets is your best bet for a range of opinions and information from your follows unimpeded by any mutant algorithms.

More:
Algorithms control your online life. Here's how to reduce their influence. - Mashable

PORTLAND, Ore. A fatal shooting during a night of political conflict in Portland, Ore., has yet again escalated tensions in the city and further inflamed the issues of crime, protest and race that President Trump is trying to make a focus of presidential politics.

A man affiliated with a right-wing group was shot and killed on Saturday as a large group of supporters of President Trump traveled in a caravan through downtown Portland, Ore., which has seen nightly protests for three consecutive months.

The pro-Trump rally drew hundreds of trucks full of supporters into the city. At times, Trump supporters and counterprotesters clashed on the streets, with people shooting paintball guns from the beds of pickup trucks and protesters throwing objects back at them.

Coming on the heels of the fatal shooting of two protesters and the wounding of a third in Kenosha, Wis., Tuesday night, the incident was an ominous sign amid an escalation of weaponry and of rhetoric as protests of police violence and presidential politics merge.

Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, on Sunday left open the potential to surge federal law enforcement to quell unrest in Portland.

During an interview on ABCs This Week, Mr. Wolf said all options continue to be on the table to deploy more federal agents to Portland despite the strong opposition of local leaders who say such tactical teams have only heightened tension in the protests.

Mayor Ted Wheeler said the shooting left his heart heavy, and he denounced violence. But he pointed to the combative and unyielding rhetoric of President Trump as a generator of the nations escalating polarization and violence. In a news conference, he called on the president to work with him and others to help de-escalate tensions.

We need to reset. The president needs to reset. I need to reset. This community needs to reset. And America needs to reset, the mayor said. Its going to take his leadership in the White House. And its going to take my leadership here in City Hall.

But President Trump appeared to respond live on Twitter to the mayors remarks, mocking Mr. Wheeler and calling him wacky and a dummy.

He would like to blame me and the Federal Government for going in, but he hasnt seen anything yet, Mr. Trump wrote.

A video that purports to be of the Saturday night shooting in Portland, taken from the far side of the street, showed a small group of people in the road outside what appears to be a parking garage. Gunfire erupts, and a man collapses in the street.

The man who was shot and killed was wearing a hat with the insignia of Patriot Prayer, a far-right group based in the Portland area that has clashed with protesters in the past. Joey Gibson, the head of the group, said Sunday he could not share many details but could confirm the man was a good friend and supporter of Patriot Prayer.

The Portland Police Bureau said that officers heard reports of gunfire shortly before 9 p.m. and found a victim with a gunshot wound to the chest. It was determined that the victim had died. They did not release any information about a possible gunman.

This violence is completely unacceptable, and we are working diligently to find and apprehend the individual or individuals responsible, Chief Chuck Lovell said early Sunday.

Mr. Trump reiterated his call that the National Guard should be brought in to Portland, saying people want law and order.

They want Safety & Security, and do NOT want to Defund our Police! Mr. Trump tweeted on Sunday.

At the scene Saturday night, police officers blocked off the road and medics attended to a person who appeared to have a chest wound.

The shooting capped a volatile week in the United States that began when the police in Kenosha, Wis., repeatedly shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, prompting new protests against racism and police brutality that included the cancellation of professional sports games.

During the unrest after the shooting of Mr. Blake, Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old Illinois resident, was charged in connection with the fatal shootings of two protesters.

Portland has seen nightly demonstrations since the killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis in May, some of which have included crowds smashing windows, lighting fires and throwing fireworks at law enforcement. In recent days, right-wing demonstrations have also sprung up in the city, and Mr. Trump has repeatedly highlighted the unrest in Portland as evidence of the need for a tougher law-and-order response to the chaotic protests over police violence and racial injustice that have swept through many American cities.

Two weeks ago, one right-wing demonstrator fired two gunshots from his vehicle, the authorities have said, although it doesnt appear anyone was struck by the bullets. The next weekend, opposing groups openly fought in the streets and video showed one right-wing demonstrator brandishing a gun.

Patriot Prayer, a local group that says it promotes Christianity and smaller government, has repeatedly clashed with activists in Portland. The group has at times operated alongside militia groups, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has reported that some Patriot Prayer events have drawn white supremacists. Last year, Mr. Gibson, the groups leader, was charged along with others with rioting after a brawl in the city.

The Trump supporters gathered earlier Saturday in the suburbs and plotted a route for the several hundred vehicles involved in the event that would have kept them on the highways outside the city center. But some of the ralliers headed directly downtown, where counterprotesters confronted a number of the vehicles. Some of the conflicts led to fistfights. In one encounter, someone drove over a bike, drawing the police to the scene.

While protests in Portland have persisted, their numbers have changed over time. The nightly events began with mass demonstrations after Mr. Floyds death, then shrank to smaller numbers of people who repeatedly clashed with the police. In July, when the federal government sent camouflaged agents into the city, the protest numbers grew drastically once again.

In more recent days, the protest crowd has typically numbered just a few hundred people. On Friday, after a peaceful demonstration in front of Mayor Ted Wheelers residence, a crowd went out to a police association building, where some of the protesters set fire to the front of the building before the police dispersed the crowd.

The police have made dozens of arrests in recent days as they have chased protesters through the streets, at times knocking them to the ground. The police said they made 10 arrests Saturday night, although it was not immediately clear how many were participants in the pro-Trump rally and how many were countering the event.

Chief Lovell said on Sunday that one challenge with the continuing conflict is that there are sometimes not enough officers to keep various groups separated enough to avoid conflict.

We cant be everywhere at once, Chief Lovell said.

Chief Lovell said the citys officers need additional resources and he is working with the Oregon State Police. He said it may get to the point where the city needs support from the National Guard.

Mr. Trump retweeted a video showing his supporters shooting paintballs and using pepper spray on crowds in Portland before the fatal shooting. He seemed to condone it, saying the big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected.

The people of Portland wont put up with no safety any longer, Mr. Trump wrote.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly focused on the unrest in Portland, including during the Republican National Convention last week, challenging the citys leaders to end the chaos. Mr. Trump said in a tweet on Friday that the federal government would go into the city if the mayor was unable to maintain control.

Mr. Wheeler in a letter on Friday asked Mr. Trump to stay away, saying the earlier federal presence had made things worse. Your offer to repeat that disaster is a cynical attempt to stoke fear and distract us from the real work of our city, he wrote.

Read more:
One Person Dead in Portland After Clashes Between Trump Supporters and Protesters - The New York Times

Like many countries around the world, China has a massive problem with food waste. In 2015, the country tossed enough to feed at least 30 to 50 million people -- the populations of Australia and New Zealand combined, or the state of Texas -- for an entire year, according to Chinese state media

Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the campaign to tackle what he called the "shocking and distressing" problem of food waste on August 11, state-run news agency Xinhua said. His message came as the Covid-19 outbreak disrupted global food supply chains.

But his directive lacked specifics, leaving it up to zealous officials and citizens across the nation to engineer sometimes drastic methods to tackle the issue.

More strict measures are to come. China's top legislative body has announced it will look into passing laws against food waste, while major streaming platforms have threatened food bloggers with potential bans for overeating online.

Food is a sensitive topic in China, where a famine that saw 45 million people starve to death during the 1950s and 60s remains within living memory for many. Being able to eat what they want, when they want is seen by many as a sign of China's new wealth, and the world second-largest economy has a culture that has communal eating at its heart.

Experts warned that monitoring meal times could be seen as one intrusion too far into citizens' increasingly surveilled personal lives.

"Three meals a day is something very personal to the ordinary people," said Wu Qiang, a political analyst in Beijing and former political science professor at Tsinghua University. "Even the most politically apathetic person can feel their daily life habits challenged and threatened (by this campaign)."

Food and wealth

When the government withdrew food vouchers in 1993, it was a powerful symbol that the days of food shortages were over, with people free to eat as they chose. As China's economy opened up to the world, the country's new wealth was conveyed on dining tables through luxury items such as shark's fin and bird's nest soup. "Eating and drinking to one's heart's content is the symbol that people are living a good life," said Wu.

Multi-course banquets are routinely used to celebrate birthdays and weddings, as well as holidays such as the Chinese New Year, with dish quantity and elaborate ingredients signifying wealth. Alfred Wu Muluan, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, explained that ordering an abundance of dishes is a often "question of face" -- the more a person orders, he said, the more status and respect they will have.

When China's huge population of 1.4 billion people is considered, that's better than some Western nations. Per capita, China wastes about 72.4 pounds of food a year, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2018 Food Sustainability Index. Australia tosses out 168 pounds of food every year per capita, while the United States is ranked lowest on the index at 209 pounds of food annually.

"How can restaurants restrict customers from ordering more food? Restaurant owners all want to have good business."Mr Wang, Wuhan resident and former restauranteur

"Beijing city generates 18,000 tonnes of domestic garbage per day, in which a huge amount of unconsumed foods including bread, sandwiches, fast food, large pieces of fish and meat, and unopened bags of rice can be easily found," the report said.

But asking restaurants to serve less food in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which closed restaurants for much of the first half of this year, is controversial.

Wang, a Wuhan resident whose restaurant shut down due to the lockdown during the Covid-19 outbreak, said China's food industry was still struggling to recover from the epidemic, and now faced pressure to serve less food.

"How can restaurants restrict customers from ordering more food?" he said. "Restaurant owners all want to have good business," he said. Wang asked to keep his first name private for fear of an official backlash for speaking out.

Growing surveillance

Some Chinese citizens have been frustrated by what they see as yet another political limitation on their everyday lives.

Until the new campaign, eating was "one of the few things people can freely do under China's authoritarian system," said Wu, the political analyst.

Those caught on camera with food waste more than three times will be named and shamed, with footage of their "crimes" to be played on television screens across the canteens.

Some local governments have expanded their surveillance of food waste to entire cities, with Shanghai encouraging citizens to report each other if they saw someone eating too much or wasting food. The punishments for this offense were not specified in the announcement.

"Why should I be reported for things I bought with my own money?" one social media commentator said about the new regulations on food consumption, comparing it to the political supervision during Mao's era.

"Even the most politically apathetic person can feel their daily life habits challenged and threatened (by this campaign)"Wu Qiang, Beijing political analyst

"Lang, I support you. It is your right to upload videos of yourself eating. Personally I don't agree with eating so much at a time ... but it's your right. You didn't break the law and shouldn't be subjected to the crackdown," a fan said in the comment section.

Agricultural crisis

Xi's anti-food waste campaign comes as China's agriculture sector is reeling from a series of natural disasters.

China has mostly contained the virus, but the pandemic continues to disrupt global supply chains, and Beijing's ongoing trade war with Washington has jeopardized imports of soy beans and other food products.

Grain stores in China are "exceeding demand," according to the Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily, which quoted one expert saying the priority is now "destocking" excess supplies.

'People will forget'

While measures to tackle food waste in China are long overdue, some have questioned whether the government's broad call to simply waste less will achieve this.

Ma Jun, director of environmental advocacy group the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs, said the government's policy push could be better targeted, adding it would be more appropriate for Beijing to enforce specific rules on waste restrictions at government agencies and public institutions, for example, than to restrict how much individual consumers can order at restaurants.

"For the general public, it is better to raise their awareness (on food waste) and change social customs through advocacy ... rather than compulsory measures," he said.

Willy Lam, from the Center of China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in addition to the challenges presented by the vagueness of Xi's policy, this was a particularly bad time to implement the campaign, right after the social hardships imposed by the coronavirus lockdowns, when millions of Chinese were unable to leave their homes for months.

All many people want to do now, Lam said, was go to restaurants, eat and enjoy themselves. "So this frugality goal might be difficult to achieve," he said.

"The truth is, the implementation won't be very strict," said Wu, of the National University of Singapore.

Changing how nearly 1.4 billion people eat is a tall order.

CNN's Steven Jiang contributed to this article.

Read more from the original source:
In authoritarian China, eating freely is a cherished activity. Now a food waste campaign wants to control meals, too - CNN

by: Nexstar Media Wire and The Associated Press

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), testifies during a House Subcommittee hearing on the Coronavirus crisis, Friday, July 31, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Kevin Dietsch/Pool via AP)

WASHINGTON The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not backpedal on the number of deaths caused by COVID-19, reducing the figure from nearly 154,000 to just over 9,000, as social media posts claimed.

The term Only 6% trended widely on Twitter over the weekend as supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory promoted tweets that falsely suggested the CDC had updated its records to show that only 6% of U.S. deaths tied to COVID-19 were legitimate. President Donald Trump was among those who tweeted the information, which was later taken down by Twitter for violating platform rules.

The posts, which received hundreds of thousands of shares online, were based on a regularly updated CDC data table showing underlying conditions for those who died of COVID-19. The conditions included high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, as well as problems that are caused by COVID-19 itself, such as respiratory failure and pneumonia.

TheCDC data tableis based on an analysis of death certificates that mention COVID-19 as a cause. For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned, the CDC notes.

The other 94% list COVID-19 and other conditions together. Among those deaths, there were, on average, 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death, the public health agency said.

As of Aug. 26, the CDC said, there were 161,332 deaths where COVID-19 was listed on the death certificate. Social media users over the weekend posted an older screenshot of the data that showed 153,504 deaths. The posts used the 6% figure to claim the U.S. death toll was much lower 9,210.

CDC just backpedaled (quietly) and adjusted the U.S. COVID deaths from 153,504 to 9,210. Admitting that their numbers are so (expletive) that they are off by a whopping 94%, said a post being shared on Facebook Monday.

But such claims misrepresent the data. A death isnt excluded from the COVID-19 tally just because the person was obese or had diabetes or dementia. Someone with heart problems can still be killed by COVID-19, and the death certificate could mention both as contributing.

Experts say its not surprising that so few people who died from COVID-19 had no underlying conditions listed on their death certificates. It is rare for people not to have multiple medical issues at death.

The underlying cause of death is the condition that began the chain of events that ultimately led to the persons death, Dr. Robert Anderson, who oversees the CDCs death statistics work, said in a statement. In 92% of all deaths that mention COVID-19, COVID-19 is listed as the underlying cause of death.

Also, while death certificates are supposed to list any causes or conditions that contributed, past research has shown that the documents arent perfect. Doctors might not know or specify all the reasons behind a particular death.

More important, the CDC figures show what medical professionals have been saying since the outset of the pandemic that the virus tends to have a more severe impact on people with underlying conditions.

For example, people died with diabetes not because of it, said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious-diseases expert at Vanderbilt University.

If it hadnt been for the COVID virus infection, these people would be living today, he said. So yes, although they have contributing underlying chronic health factors, its still the COVID virus that killed them.

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No, the CDC has not reduced the death count related to COVID-19 - WETM - MyTwinTiers.com