Features

LOS ANGELES — The Recording Academy’s board of trustees voted on Monday to formally terminate President and CEO Deborah Dugan barely seven months after she took the job, the aftermath of a dramatic meltdown between Dugan and the Grammy Awards organisation that erupted just 10 days ahead of the January 26 Grammy ceremony.

“After weighing all of the evidence from two independent investigations,” the Academy said in a statement, “The board of trustees of the Recording Academy voted to terminate Ms Dugan from her role as president/CEO. We will initiate a search for a new leader who will leverage the Academy’s diverse membership and rich history, and help us transform it to better serve our members today and into the future. As we structure this new search, we will look carefully to see where the last one led us astray and make any necessary changes going forward.”

“The investigation overwhelmingly confirmed the serious complaints that had been lodged against her by a multitude of Academy staff members,” said Recording Academy Vice Chair Tammy Hurt. “The damage she has caused this organisation is truly heartbreaking.”

“It was not one thing that led to this action but rather the large number of incidents that demonstrated poor judgement, both before and after Ms Dugan went on administrative leave,” said Christine Lennon, the Academy’s Chair Emeritus. “There was just no way she could continue to serve this organisation.”

In response, Dugan’s attorneys, Douglas Wigdor and Michael Willemin, said in a statement, “The Academy’s decision to terminate Ms Dugan and immediately leak that information to the press further demonstrates that it will stop at nothing to protect and maintain a culture of misogyny, discrimination, sexual harassment, corruption and conflicts of interest. The decision is despicable and, in due course, the Academy, its leadership and its attorneys will be held accountable under the law.”

On January 16, the Academy’s board placed Dugan on administrative leave, citing an unnamed employee’s complaint about an abusive workplace under Dugan. At that point, board chairman Harvey Mason Jr., who also was new to his role as of last year, took over as interim president and CEO.

The employee who made the complaint against Dugan was Claudine Little, the longtime close associate of Dugan’s predecessor, Neil Portnow, who left the academy after 17 years at the helm on the heels of a controversial remark he made following the 2018 Grammy Awards in which he said women needed to “step up” to achieve parity in the often male-dominated awards ceremony.

Dugan, in turn, alleged sexual harassment in the early going after accepting the post, and further said she had raised questions about voting and financial improprieties including conflicts of interest for some board members she discovered, along with concerns that the organisation was making “exorbitant” payments to two outside law firms that handle most of the academy’s legal services.

Those concerns were detailed in a 44-page complaint Dugan’s lawyers filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is expected to take months for the EEOC to address.

The charges and countercharges played out in the days ahead of the Grammy Awards ceremony, intended as an annual occasion to celebrate creativity, artistic and technical excellence in the music industry during the preceding year.

Although Dugan’s EEOC complaint recounted interactions she said constituted sexual harassment by Academy legal counsel Joel Katz, who also is a past board chairman, and revealed another woman’s earlier allegation of rape against Portnow, who vehemently denied the charge, perhaps the most damaging charge was Dugan’s assertion that the awards process itself is rife with manipulation by the so-called “secret committees” that vet recordings submitted for nominations and awards.

By Randy Lewis

One of the more independently-minded of mainstream car makers, Mazda’s ethos is one that emphasises a human-centric design, the Japanese manufacturer’s latest Mazda 3’s combination of comfort, practicality, style and driving characteristics make it a standout in the compact saloon and hatchback segment.

Developing a more premium-oriented approach for its latest cars, the Mazda 3 has been presented in the Jordanian market under the “7G” tagline, to seemingly allude to its advanced technology and engineering, including Mazda’s SkyActiv internal combustion engines.

A stylistic step up, the latest Mazda 3 is easily among the best looking in its class, and even so in saloon (sedan) guise, as tested. Where many manufacturers falter in translating a hatchback-based model’s design for service as a saloon — as preferred in our region — the Mazda 3, however, seems to have been designed from ground up with a saloon firmly in mind. Designed according to the brand’s “Kodo” design language, the Mazda 3 well captures a sense of urgent momentum and motion even when viewed at standstill.

Stylish and sophisticated

Flowing and elegant yet distinctly sportier in intent than its predecessor, the new Mazda 3 features slim, squinting and dramatically deep-set headlights flanking its hungry, broad and snouty grille. Jutting and urgent in demeanour, the Mazda 3 features sharp creases and fluent lines, with prominent bonnet ridges along the side. Meanwhile, a gently arcing side character line extends from its bonnet edges and along the flanks before dissipating midway, at which point a higher crease starts and trails along the waistline to muscular rear haunches and a short, high-set boot.

Offered globally in four naturally-aspirated petrol engines, the Mazda 3 model line includes a newer generation 2-litre with charge compression ignition, powerful 2.5-litre, and the 1.5-litre four-cylinder version driven. A sophisticated engine with a buttery high-rev engine note and smoothly progressive delivery unlike the sudden gush of torque synonymous with most turbocharged engines, the Mazda 3’s direct injection SkyActiv engine runs on very high compression to allow for improved fuel efficiency, which is enabled by the use of a piston cavity, shortened combustion duration and optimised exhaust gas flow.

Smooth and connected

Driving the front wheels and mated to a slick shifting 6-speed automatic gearbox that seems particularly responsive on downshift, the driven 1.5-litre develops 110BHP at 6,000rpm and 107lb/ft torque at 3,500rpm. Dedicated to further developing the internal combustion engine for ever improving efficiency, Mazda’s 1.5-litre engine proved to be linear, silky and versatile in delivery, for its size. Powering the Mazda 3’s estimated 1.3-tonne mass through 0-100km/h in somewhere around 11-seconds and onto 183km/h, performance was confident and adequate enough to keep a good pace in the city, on incline and on highways. 

Distinctly Japanese in its outlook, the Hiroshima-based manufacturer tenet include the philosophy of “Jinba Ittai”, which translates as a oneness between a rider and horse, or in this case a connectedness between car and driver. Best reflected in Mazda’s lightweight rear-drive MX-5 roadster, this principle, however, translates well even in the compact front-wheel-drive Mazda 3 saloon. As sporty to drive as it looks, the Mazda 3 seems to shrink around the driver, delivers fluent and intuitive driving experience, whether manoeuvring heavy traffic, fast highways or sprawling and snaking countryside switchbacks.

Agility and stability

Driven with 205/60R16 tires well judged for ride comfort, steering feel, grip and cornering precision the Mazda 3 nimble and alert through successive corners, turning in tidy and eager with its light, quick and direct electric-assisted steering. Agile and adjustable through corners, the Mazda 3’3 handling is well balanced, with only faint understeer if pushed too hard, yet still allowing one to easily shift weight to the rear when necessary. At home through narrow winding roads, its handling is similar to a well-sorted hatchback, but also benefits from committed road-holding.

Stable and refined at speed and comfortable in almost all circumstances, the Mazda 3 can feel slightly firm over jagged low speed cracks and bumps, but seems to gain a certain supple fluency as speed picks up on country lanes, where its dispatches textural imperfections easily while retaining a focused handling quality, more buttoned down control on rebound after its body rises slightly after a sudden crest. Manoeuvrable in town with its tight 10.6-turning circle, the driven model featured rear parking censors, but the optional reversing camera would have still been welcome.

Crisp and classy

Elegant from profile, the Mazda 3 has a distinctly more rearwards cabin position than most segment competitors, which creates a sportier and more classically up-market look, as well as allows for more ideal pedal positions to achieve a more relaxed, comfortable and involving driving position. Spacious in front with hunkered down, alert, supportive and comfortable driving position with good front visibility and reach of controls, the Mazda 3 also boasts a classy, fresh and uncluttered cabin with a sportily minimalist steering wheel and high dashboard, while the use of soft textures and padding is abundant.

Noticeably ‘premium’ in cabin design and feel, the Mazda 3 is a smartly equipped car with a crisp, clear sound system and numerous standard convenience and safety features including child seat latches, as well and plenty of more advanced optional driver assistance systems available. Cabin accessibility and boot space are similarly good. Rear seats lacked a central armrest, as drive, but are fairly sized for most, if not the most accommodating for tall and large passengers seated behind similarly proportioned front occupants.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 1.5-litre, transverse 4-cylinders

Bore x stroke: 74.5 x 85.8mm

Compression ratio: 13:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC

Gearbox: 6-speed automatic, front-wheel-drive

Gear ratios: 1st 4.605:1; 2nd 3.529:1; 3rd 2.025:1; 4th 1.348:1; 5th 1.0:1; 6th 0.742:1

Final drive: 2.994:1

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 110 (111.5) [82] @6,000rpm

Specific power: 73.5BHP/litre

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 107.6 (146) @3,500rpm

Specific torque: 97.6Nm/litre

0-100km/h: 11-seconds (estimate)

Top speed: 183km/h

Fuel consumption, combined: 5.7-litres/100km (estimate)

Fuel capacity: 51-litres

Length: 4,660mm

Width: 1,795mm

Height: 1,440mm

Wheelbase: 2,725mm

Tread, F/R: 1,570/1,580mm

Overhang, F/R: 915/1,020mm

Headroom, F/R: 965/947mm

Legroom, F/R: 1,075/891mm

Shoulder room, F/R: 1,414/1,359mm

Ground clearance: 140mm

Luggage volume: 444-litres

Kerb weight: 1,300kg (estimate)

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson struts/torsion beam

Steering: Electric-assisted rack & pinion

Turning circle: 10.6-metres

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs/discs

Tyres: 205/60R16

For many of us, our workplace is our second home. We spend most of the day there. We have the power to create our own happiness by thinking positively about our work and the people around us.

I always love what I do, whatever it is. I tell myself how important it is, I feel gratitude for every day, for everyone I meet at work, for every experience I live. While not everyone deserves that, I do it for myself, not only for others.

I love my partner and family, but I also share and spread beautiful feelings of love to everyone around me. I make a concerted effort to bring peace and positive vibes to my workplace. I never allow the negativity of others to destroy my day or, even worse, my life!

A positive atmosphere leads to happiness in the workplace, satisfaction on the personal level and, consequently, leads to positive outcomes for the company. A company can only prosper when its employees are happy, believe in their company, share and reflect its values. As a business owner, I invest in team building, training, activities and socials that build collective memories.

At the end, this might not turn out to be your dream job, but try to make the best of it and love what you do until you do what you love. It is also helpful if you can give yourself some time to take up a hobby you enjoy and not get buried under the piles of paper on your desk or the open files on your laptop.

Love actions

• Love yourself

• Love your work

• Love your team

• Love your company

• Always spread love, care and respect!

Did you know?

Love is a not a word we often hear uttered in our office and meeting rooms, but did you know that it has a strong influence on workplace outcomes?

Workplace tips

• Respecting all colleagues

• Choosing words wisely and trying to avoid sounding bossy so you can get the best out of your team and thus building strong relationships based on respect and care

• Showing care by asking your team about how they are doing, about their kids or health — anything that shows care

• Building teams that work in harmony, allowing team spirit to evolve. Effective teams have members who care about each other and help each other perform

• Strengthening your relationship with your team

• Enjoying some out-of-the-office time. I never forget retreats and gatherings. Unofficial meetings spread joy, break the monotony of routine and enhance the relationship between employees and management

By Ghadeer Habash

Internationally Certified Career Trainer

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

The Parisian

Isabella Hammad

New York: Grove Press, 2019

Pp. 563 pp

In the last few decades, there has been a wave of hybrid literature, memoirs or novels by or about persons of double culture by virtue of their parentage or migration, or both. Most of these books are contemporary. Isabella Hammad’s “The Parisian”, in contrast, focuses on someone whose life began during Ottoman times. The book’s protagonist, Midhat Kamal, who sailed to France in 1914, is modelled on the author’s great grandfather. Though she never met him, her childhood and youth were infused with stories her Palestinian grandmother told about her Nablus-origin family. Among them, Midhat obviously captured her imagination. By telling his life story in fictionalised form, she also presents a crucial slice of Palestine’s history.

Born in London to a British-Irish mother and Palestinian father, Hammad didn’t visit Palestine until she was in her early twenties. When she did, she stayed long enough to gather more stories, information and memories from which she wove this panoramic historical novel. With roots akin to oral history, it gives an insider’s account of Palestinian life during World War I and its aftermath, most especially the 1936 general strike and peasant revolt. Written in a mature, elegant style reminiscent of classical novels, it is Hammad’s first novel. 

As with most double-culture persons, Midhat is something of an outsider by his own definition and that of others, both in France and Nablus. Arriving in the home of a professor at Montpellier University, where he is to stay while studying medicine, he strives hard to fit in, to improve his French and adopt French customs. One is reminded of Egyptian writer Taha Hussein, who studied at Montpellier University at roughly the same time, but Hussein married the French woman he fell in love with, whereas Midhat’s budding romance with the professor’s daughter, Jeannette, is aborted by an altercation with her and her father, leaving him with a sense of nostalgia which follows him all his life. 

With this altercation, Hammad introduces the theme of colonialism into the novel, for Midhat discovers that he is not really accepted on equal footing but instead is being “studied” by the professor in an insidious, Orientalist way. Later in the novel, a parallel to the French professor appears in the form of a French priest who is “studying” Nablus, while also acting as an informer to the British Mandate authorities. In between, the policies of the French and British repressing the Arabs’ independence struggle speak for themselves.

After the break with his French hosts, Midhat escapes to Paris where he spends four years as a history student, leading a bohemian life and debating with fellow Arab expatriates what is to be done in the face of the colonial division of Greater Syria and the looming Zionist threat to Palestine. During this period, “with all the talk of origins and truth in his university essays and among his Syrian friends, Midhat was learning to dissemble and pass between spheres and to accommodate, morally, that dissemblance through an understanding of his own impermanence…” (p. 166)

For as much as politics and history is prominent in the story, Midhat’s inner life is what holds the plot together. Even before his sojourn in France, he seems fated to stand apart. His mother dies when he is only two, and he is raised by his irrepressible grandmother, his father spending more time in Cairo with his new wife, expanding his clothing business there. Nonetheless, Midhat tries to be positive about returning to Nablus, though he worries about “his place in that constellation of purpose and tradition which had for the last five years in France been suspended, when with a freedom born of strangeness he had bypassed the laws of family and dallied in the alleyways of chance and rapture”. (p. 190)

Midhat does what is expected of him — taking over his father’s textile shop, marrying into a prominent Nabulsi family and having a family of his own. Yet, he often seems to be just going through the motions, trying to please others, his heart elsewhere — and still sporting French-style attire. Though he is generally well-liked, some are wary of him, dubbing him “Al Barisi”. “Respectful affection in Nablus had shaded into malice once the Syrians rose up against the French Mandate… To be a Parisian in Nablus was to be out of step with the times, locked in an old colonial formula…” (p. 507) 

Indeed, Midhat becomes increasingly oblivious to politics, most often retreating into his own world, even as his cousins and best friends join the struggle.

Harnessing telling details, Hammad paints credible scenes of contrasting lifestyles in France and Palestine in the early 20th century. The dialogues and descriptions of social interaction are often so subtle as to require the reader to think for him/herself about their implications. Ambivalence is pervasive, whether in Midhat’s attitude towards life or France, or others’ attitudes towards him, beginning with his father, then Jeannette. The novel is also a tribute to Nablus, long regarded as a bastion of Palestinian nationalism, where people, despite clear class divisions, pull together during the 1936 revolt. 

That Hammad wrote this novel before she turned thirty is extremely impressive. It shows that she mastered not only important historical trends, but also the contours of human emotions, not to mention the writing skills involved in plotting such a complex story.

The holidays are over (barely), so it’s time for a little self-congratulation: You got the gifts, you did the decorating, you entertained the family, you attended the winter concert, you baked cookies with the kids, you flirted with your spouse... give yourself a high-five!

And please, please give yourself a breather.

Your health depends on it — not to mention your family’s well-being.

As stress and its costs to individuals and society come under increasing scrutiny, experts are lining up to point the finger at a burgeoning problem: The stress brought on by today’s intense parenting styles. “We live in an age of intensive parenting,” says Chicago author Rachel Bertsche, author of “The Kids Are in Bed: Finding Time for Yourself in the Chaos of Parenting”. “And people feel, for many different reasons, all this pressure to be with their kids all the time and do the absolute most for them.”

Bertsche’s book, which arrives on shelves Jan. 7, is a practical, well-thought-out argument for a different approach — one in which parental free time is a priority. “What I’m trying to say is that everyone benefits, parents as well as kids, when you take time to step away, refuel and take care of yourself,” she says. Luckily, she has a few key pieces of advice that will help you make that happen.

Think in 20-minute chunks

Bertsche says many people conceptualise free time as an hour or more — but breaking that thought pattern can open your eyes to the free time you do have. “You may have trouble finding an hour to do something for yourself,” she says, “but you probably have smaller chunks of time in your day. If you’re willing to accept that, you can actually get a lot of benefit from a smaller amount of time. Twenty minutes is kind of a magic number for a lot of things: Think about the 20-minute nap, for instance. You can get a lot out of 20 minutes”.

Watch out for mental load

In a survey of parents conducted for Bertsche’s book, “71 per cent of parents said their open time didn’t feel free because of mental load,” she says. “Imagine you’re getting a massage, but you spend the time thinking about all the things that you should be doing or need to get done while you’re getting that massage. That’s mental load, and it’s not relaxing.” When you find a 20-minute chunk of free time, Bertsche says, give yourself the permission to set aside those thoughts. “Too often”, says Bertsche, “people don’t let themselves lean into the free time and actually enjoy it.”

Keep a list handy 

In her research for the book, Bertsche discovered that parents who find themselves with some unexpected free time (like that 20 minutes you spent just waiting outside a ballet class, or a pocket of time when your partner takes the kids to the park) suffer from a common problem — they don’t know what to do with it. “As parents, we’re just so wiped from making decisions for little people every second, that having to make one more choice about what to do with free minutes just seems like too much,” Bertsche says. “The pressure to use the time wisely is the thing that makes us end up doing nothing at all.”

That’s why Bertsche recommends that you keep lists of things you like to do that can be done with little to no prep beforehand. “Here are things I like to do for me: Watch a TV show, read a book, go for a walk,” she says. “You can keep it simple, and when you have 20 minutes, check your list. It takes a little bit of the work out of it and that helps. Anything you can do to remove the mental load.” Bertsche also uses this tactic for couple time, keeping a similar list of date night ideas, to erase the chore of planning time together.

Invest in relationships

Bertsche spends plenty of time on advice for making couple time a priority. But she also points out the relationship many parents think of as “a luxury, rather than a necessity” — friend time. In her research, the 15 per cent of parents who reported a healthy balance of free time versus kid time also reported that they made more time for friends and spent more time away from social media and screens than other parents. “Time spent with friends is a huge benefit to our physical and mental health,” she says. “We should really think of it like exercise, something that we need to prioritise for our health.” And, like exercise, she notes that “you never feel worse afterward” when you commit to spending some friend time.

Remember it is for the kids

If you’re determined to sacrifice yourself and every minute of your time on the altar of parenting, in spite of evidence that free time is as good for you as broccoli, maybe this argument will sway you: You’re really doing it for the kids. “When you ask kids what they want,” says Bertsche, “they say they want parents who are less stressed. Not parents who are there all the time but thinking about 1,000 different things.” In other words, you can’t be at your best for your children if you never invest in your own resilience and calm. Finding free time means building up your reserves to meet parenting’s daily challenges.

If work has you stressed out, there may be a simple solution to reducing it — by staring at a plant.

Researchers in Japan conducted a study of electric company workers and found there were changes in the stress felt pre- and post-plant-staring.

“At present, not so many people fully understand and utilise the benefit of stress recovery brought by plants in the workplace,” lead author Dr Masahiro Toyoda of the University of Hyogoin said a press release. “To ameliorate such situations, we decided it essential to verify and provide scientific evidence for the stress restorative effect by nearby plants in a real office setting.”

The study was conducted in two phases. One was a control period sans plants and the other was an intervention period when the participants were able to view and look after a small plant. Researchers measured psychological stress in participants through the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory, which is a commonly used measure of anxiety arising from adverse situations and personality.

There was a definitive ratio of participants who had a significantly lowered pulse rate after three-minute rest while interacting with their plant. The participants chose from six plants, including foliage plants, cactus and bonsai plants, to keep at their desks next to a PC monitor.

Researchers discovered that people who reported high anxiety levels before looking at a plant slightly lowered their scores after doing so, CNN reported. An additional 27 per cent of employees had a significant drop in their resting heart rates.

The study, published by the American Society for Horticultural Science, confirmed the effect of gazing onto plants for a few moments and actively caring for it when an employee felt tired.

“It’s something we inherently knew, but has suddenly been quantified. And so now, we’re seeing the numbers behind the reasoning,” Dr Charles Hall told CNN. Hall is the Ellison chair of international floriculture at Texas A&M University.

Still, looking at and taking care of plants didn’t reduce anxiety in everyone.

Some saw their pulse rate and anxiety increase while others witnessed no significant change.

“I think the anxiety among those in the study where their anxiety increased, it was because of that particular phenomenon that all of a sudden they’re responsible for taking care of a plant and then all of a sudden the plant’s not doing well and they have some anxieties from that,” Hall said.

By Kiersten Willis

Changing over to daylight saving time — a major annoyance for many people — may be on its way out as lawmakers cite public health as a prime reason to ditch the twice-yearly clock-resetting ritual.

The time change, especially in the spring, has been blamed for increases in heart attacks and traffic accidents as people adjust to a temporary sleep deficit. But as legislatures across the country consider bills to end the clock shift, a big question looms ahead of this year’s change: Which is better, summer hours or standard time?

There are some strong opinions, it turns out. And they are split, with scientists and politicians at odds.

Retailers, chambers of commerce and recreational industries have historically wanted the sunny evenings that allow more time to shop and play.

Researchers on human biological rhythms come down squarely on the side of the standard, wintertime hours referred to as “God’s time” by angry farmers who objected to daylight saving time when it was first widely adopted during World War I.

What’s not in question is that the clock switching is unpopular. Some 71 per cent of people want to stop springing forward and falling back, according to a 2019 Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research poll.

Politicians have reacted accordingly. More than 200 state bills have been filed since 2015 to either keep summer hours or go to permanent standard time, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The measures getting the most traction right now are for permanent daylight saving time, which makes more sun available for after-work activities. In 2018, Florida passed a bill and California voters backed a ballot measure to do so. Maine, Delaware, Tennessee, Oregon and Washington joined in 2019, passing permanent daylight saving bills. President Donald Trump even joined the conversation last March, tweeting: “Making Daylight Saving Time permanent is O.K. with me!”

But none of those efforts can become reality without the blessing of Congress. States have always been able to opt out of summer hours and adopt standard time permanently, as Arizona and Hawaii have done. But making daylight saving time year-round is another story.

Still, Scott Yates, whose #Lock the Clock website has become a resource for lawmakers pushing for change, believes this year will be another big year. Yates is particularly encouraged by the attitude he saw from state legislators in August when he presented on the issue at the legislators’ annual national summit in Nashville, Tennessee.

“I wasn’t the court jester and it wasn’t entertainment,” he said. “It was like, ‘What are the practical ways we can get this thing passed?’”

Yates, 54, a tech startup CEO based in Denver, has been promoting an end to clock switching for six years. He doesn’t pick a side. It’s the switching itself that he wants to end. At first, it was just about the grogginess and annoyance of being off schedule, he said. But then he began to see scientific studies that showed the changes were doing actual harm.

A German study of autopsies from 2006 to 2015, for instance, showed a significant uptick just after the spring switch in deaths caused by cardiac disease, traffic accidents and suicides. Researchers have also noted a significant increased risk for heart attacks and strokes.

Three measures pending in Congress would allow states to make daylight saving time permanent. But, in the meantime, state lawmakers who want the extra evening sunlight are preparing resolutions and bills, some of which would be triggered by congressional approval and the adoption of daylight time in surrounding states.

The Illinois Senate passed such a bill, and Kansas is considering one after a bill to end daylight saving time died there last year. Utah passed a resolution in support of the congressional bill last year, and state Rep. Ray Ward, a Republican family physician from Bountiful, is steering a recently passed state Senate permanent daylight bill through the House.

“The human clock was not built to jump back and forth. That’s why we get jet lag,” said Ward, who was a co-presenter with Yates at the NCSL summit. “It is very easy to show that if you knock people off an hour of sleep there’s a bump temporarily in bad things that will happen.”

Efforts have been particularly strong in California, where 60 per cent of voters passed a ballot issue for permanent daylight time in 2018. A bill is pending in the state assembly.

All of this alarms scientists who study human biological rhythms.

Researchers in the US and the European Union have taken strong positions about permanent summer hours. The Society for Research on Biological Rhythms posts its opposition prominently at the top of its website.

Messing with the body’s relationship to the sun can negatively affect not only sleep but also cardiac function, weight and cancer risk, the society’s members wrote. According to one often-quoted study on different health outcomes within the same time zones, each 20 minutes of later sunrise corresponded to an increase in certain cancers by 4 per cent to 12 per cent.

“Believe it or not, having light in the morning actually not only makes you feel more alert but helps you go to bed at the right time at night,” said Dr Beth Malow, director of the sleep division of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Malow has seen a lot of anecdotal evidence to back that up at the sleep clinic. Parents report their children with autism have a particularly hard time adjusting to the time change, she said.

Jay Pea, a freelance software engineer in San Francisco, was unhappy enough about California’s proposed permanent daylight time that he started the Save Standard Time website to promote the health arguments for keeping it permanent. He said he doesn’t think the scientific community is being heard.

“Essentially it’s like science denial,” he said. “It’s bizarre to me that politicians are not hearing the experts on this.”

Pea, 41 and an amateur astronomer, understands the human need to have the sun directly overhead at noon. “It’s a wonderful connection to natural reality that unfortunately is lost on many people,” he said. Daylight saving time “distances us from the natural world”.

At the very least, lawmakers ought to consider history, he said. Daylight saving time was originally a plan to save energy during the two world wars but wasn’t popular enough to be uniformly embraced after the conflicts were over. In 1974, the federal government decided to make it temporarily year-round as a way to deal with the energy crisis (although energy savings were later found to be underwhelming).

Its popularity fell off a cliff after the first winter, when people discovered the sun didn’t rise until 8am or later, and parents worried for the safety of kids waiting in the dark for school buses.

Pea finds it frustrating that the momentum now is for permanent summer hours — a fact he attributes to the emotional attachment with summer. “It’s a shame that every generation we have to revisit this issue,” he said.

The AP-NORC poll found 40 per cent of its respondents support permanent standard time, with 31 per cent opting for permanent daylight saving time.

Ward said people have gotten comfortable with daylight saving time since its duration has been lengthened to eight months by extensions in 1986 and 2007. (Before 1986, daylight saving time lasted six months.)

“So now really most of the year we are on the summer schedule, and people are used to that and they like it,” he said. “That makes them more aggrieved when we change back to the winter schedule.”

In any case, changing the clocks is a rare issue in that it isn’t partisan, Ward said. “If the government can’t respond to people when they want something and it’s not even a partisan issue, that’s just a sad commentary,” he said. “Can’t we please fix something that doesn’t make sense anymore?”

By Roxie Hammill

PARIS — Nearly 90 per cent of the 200 cities beset by the world’s highest levels of deadly micro-pollution are in China and India, with most of the rest in Pakistan and Indonesia, researchers reported on Tuesday.

Taking population into account, Bangladesh emerged as the country with the worst so-called PM2.5 pollution, followed by Pakistan, Mongolia, Afghanistan and India, according to the 2019 World Air Quality Report, jointly released by IQAir Group and Greenpeace. 

China ranks 11th. 

Particulate matter of 2.5 microns or less in diameter — roughly 1/30 the width of a human hair — is the most dangerous type of airborne pollution. 

Microscopic flecks are small enough to enter the bloodstream via the respiratory system, leading to asthma, lung cancer and heart disease.

Among the world’s megacities of 10 million or more people, the most PM2.5-toxic in 2019 was the Indian capital New Delhi, followed by Lahore in Pakistan, Dhaka in Bangladesh, Kolkata in India, Linyi and Tianjin in China, and Jakarta, Indonesia.

Next on the list were Wuhan — epicentre of the new coronavirus outbreak — along with Chengdu and Beijing.

The IQAir report is based on data from nearly 5,000 cities worldwide.

Most of the seven million premature deaths attributed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to air pollution are caused by PM2.5 particles, which originate in sandstorms, agriculture, industry, wildfires and especially the burning of fossil fuels.

“Air pollution is the world’s leading environmental health threat,” said IQAir CEO Frank Hammes. “Ninety per cent of the global population is breathing unsafe air.”

China’s average urban PM2.5 concentration dropped 20 per cent in 2018 and 2019, but last year it still counted 117 of the 200 most polluted cities in the world. 

All but two per cent of China’s cities exceeded WHO guidelines for PM2.5 levels, while 53 per cent exceeded less stringent national safety limits. 

Less data from Africa

The UN says PM2.5 density should not top 25 microgrammes per cubic metre (25 mcg/m3) of air in any 24-hour period. China has set the bar at 35 mcg/m3.

More than a million premature deaths in China each year are caused by air pollution, according to the WHO. Recent calculations put the toll at up to twice that figure.

Across a large swathe of northern India and north-central China, meeting WHO standards year-round for PM2.5 pollution would increase life expectancy up to six or seven years, according to the Air Quality Life Index, developed by researchers at the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago.

In India, small particle pollution exceeds WHO limits by 500 per cent, even if air pollution in general declined significantly last year, with 98 per cent of cities monitored showing improvements.

Among the club of 36 rich OECD nations, South Korea was the most polluted for PM2.5, counting 105 of the worst 1,000 cities on the index. In Europe, Poland and Italy count 39 and 31 cities, respectively, in this tranche.

Other parts of the world such as Africa and the Middle East lacked data.

“What cannot be measured cannot be managed,” Hammes said. “Africa, a continent of 1.3 billion people, currently has less than 100 monitoring stations that make PM2.5 data available to the public in realtime.”

As of 2018, China alone had more than 1,000 such stations in 200 cities. 

Climate change has begun to amplify the health risk of PM2.5 pollution, especially through more intense forest fires and sandstorms made worse by spreading desertification, the report found. 

Global warming and PM2.5 also have the same primary driver: the burning of coal, oil and gas.

While the link with lung cancer was well established, a recent study showed that most excess deaths from air pollution are caused by heart attacks, strokes and other types of cardiovascular disease.

Small and larger particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and ozone (O3) have likewise been linked to drops in cognitive performance, labour productivity and educational outcomes.

Of cities with more than 1 million people, the least affected by PM2.5 are Adelaide, Helsinki, Stockholm and San Jose in central California, followed by Perth and Melbourne in Australia, and Calgary in Canada, and New York.