The massive gray clouds of air pollution have become a terrifying concern for people…

On Sunday, January 3, 2021, for the fifth consecutive day, the air quality in Tehran was reported to be very unhealthy. The regime’s meteorological organization also announced severe air pollution in seven major cities, including Tehran, Tabriz, Mashhad, Isfahan, Arak, Qom, and Karaj, until next Thursday.

The air pollution index in some parts of Tehran on Saturday, January 2exceeded 200, which means very unhealthy, in other areas it reached more than 186, and the Tehran Health Emergency Department is on high alert all days of next week.

 Alireza Raessi, Deputy Minister of Health said, “33,000 people die annually in the country due to air pollution.” In the span of the past 10 months, since spring 2020, only 15 days of clean air have been recorded in Tehran.  This is even though  the coronavirus epidemic has caused a significant reduction in traffic in Tehran, with the closure of schools and universities.

Alireza Zali, head of the Coronavirus task force in Tehran said, ” Air pollution damages parts of the respiratory system and this condition makes a person weaker against coronavirus.”

What is the cause of air pollution?

On December 31, 2020, Abbas Shahsavani, head of the Air Health and Climate Change Division of the Ministry of Health said, ” The use of Mazut in power plants have caused excessive pollution in the weather conditions of Tehran and other metropolises.”.

Massoud Tajrishi, deputy director of the Environmental Protection Agency, on Saturday, January 2 said, “There is no will to eliminate air pollution in Tehran. “In addition to power plants, in recent days some foundry units in Tehran have also used Mazut.”

The Mazut produced by Iranian refineries is very polluting because it has a high sulfur content.

The Environmental Protection Agency also stated that the use of Mazut in power plants is the main cause of air pollution in Tehran.

The massive gray clouds of air pollution have become a terrifying concern for people. Now the question is:

Why has Mazut replaced natural gas?

The government has ordered the use of Mazut by Iran’s power plants and industries and has cut off natural gas in order to generate revenue from the sale of natural gas.

To address the government’s budget deficit, Rouhani has ordered gas exports to the neighboring countries, including Iraq and Pakistan, as an important source of funding for Iran. He has no regard for the health of Iranians and he exports natural gas to Iraq and finances his government from Iranians’ pockets. The government has ordered the use of Mazut and diesel fuel instead of natural gas for power plants as well as foundry plants and has closed the natural gas valves on them.

The Iranian National Gas Company announced that 80% of Iran’s power plants now use Mazut and diesel fuel instead of natural gas. This has greatly increased air pollution in cities

A spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity on Tuesday, December 29, 2020 said that Iran has agreed to resume normal gas exports to Iraq on Wednesday in exchange for receiving a portion($ 700,000) of its $ 6 billion funds from the Iraqi government.

The mullahs’ regime needs to use this Mazut because of reaching its refinery capacity. Power plants are the priority for consumption of Mazut and its use has greatly increased the cities’ pollution.

Alireza Zali, head of the coronavirus task force in Tehran on January 2 said,  “In temperature Inversion and Air Pollution Conditions, the coronavirus is more persistent in the air, and air pollution damages part of the respiratory system, making it more vulnerable to coronavirus. People with asthma will have a worse condition if they contract coronavirus.”.

With a government that does not care for the health of its citizens, it is only natural that underground gas resources are used just to finance the state’s corruption. Such an approach is reflected in the words of citizens who write on social media: “We are all dying silently in this smoky and suffocating city. We have been suffocating for years under this gray umbrella of the sky.”

Hassan Mahmoudi is a Europe-based social analyst, researcher, independent observer, and commentator of Middle Eastern and Iranian Politics. He tweets under @hassan_mahmou1. 

According to a survey titled “Dealing with Debt: How India plans to pay EMIs”, which was carried out on approximately 8,500 consumers belonging to the age group of 24-57, from around 35 cities, mentioned that over 63% Hyderabadi residents who partook in the survey stated that their income is badly hit due to COVID-19. While 20% of them lost their income completely.

Moreover, around 80% self-employed section and 58% salaried section from the city suffered a full income loss.

CEO of Paisabazaar.com Naveen Kukreja said that, “While there was widespread impact on consumers in the first two-three months of the pandemic, we believe there has been a steady recovery since July. Incomes of customer segments employed in Travel, Aviation, Hospitality etc. should start getting restored gradually. However, supply of loans to self-employed and low-income segments would take longer to recover”.

The survey also revealed that over 86% self-employed customers all over India reported a loss in income due to lockdowns and COVID-led restrictions.

Witnesses said Erekat, 65, was on a stretcher when he was placed inside an Israeli ambulance outside his home in Jericho, in the occupied West Bank. Erekat, who is also secretary-general of the PLO, disclosed on Oct. 8 that he had contracted coronavirus.

He was rushed to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center. A hospital spokeswoman said Erekat was in a serious but stable condition. He needed high-flow oxygen support and was being treated in an intensive care ward for coronavirus patients.

There is heightened concern over Erekat’s vulnerability to the illness because he underwent a lung transplant in the United States in 2017.

“Following his contraction of COVID-19, and due to the chronic health problems he faces in the respiratory system, Dr. Erekat’s condition now requires medical attention in a hospital,” the PLO’s Negotiations Affairs Department said in a statement.

A member of Fatah, the most powerful faction within the PLO, Erekat has been one of the most high-profile faces of the Palestinian leadership for decades, especially to international audiences.

Erekat is one of the most senior advisers to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and also served in top positions under Abbas’ predecessor, Yasser Arafat.

His negotiating days date back to the earliest public negotiations with Israel in 1991 at the Madrid Conference during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, when Erekat was part of the PLO team.

A proponent of a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Erekat has been a leading Palestinian voice in opposing Israel’s settlement policy in territory it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Studies show that almost 98 per cent of people say they have experienced uncivil behaviour in the workplace, a phenomenon that has gotten worse during Covid-19.

“With the caps lock key and the stroke of an exclamation point, your co-worker has just done the equivalent of shouting at you across the office,” University of Illinois academics Zhenyu Yuan and YoungAh Park, write in Scientific American.

Their research, published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, says it’s time to start taking “email incivility” seriously. Not all rudeness is deliberate, but it can still grind you down – even affecting your sleep.

While good communication is always a challenge, the shift to homeworking and the over-reliance on written communication can make misunderstandings more likely. With emails and digital communications increasingly vital, organizations which can balance these demands with protecting employees’ work-life balance are more likely to thrive in the next normal.

What’s the problem?

Email rudeness comes in two flavours, the researchers say – ‘active’ and ‘passive’. Active email rudeness is perhaps the easiest to define. It could be an angry email from a disgruntled client where the recipient (often not the person who has caused the perceived problem) gets both barrels – sometimes in CAPS LOCK.

Passive rudeness is harder to define. It could be not replying to an email for days on end, or not acknowledging a part of an email. Which then leaves the other person wondering – is that person really ignoring me, or just really busy?

Whether or not it’s deliberate, email rudeness can still hurt. According to the two studies that informed the paper, active incivility is more likely to heighten emotions, particularly while at work. But passive emails can cause damage, too.

This latter type of incivility is “positively associated with insomnia, which then leads to heightened negative affect at the beginning of the workday,” the researchers say. It may not be coincidental that there has been a reported rise in disturbed sleep in recent months.

On the rise

But even before the digital deluge that has come with the global surge in remote working, a number of studies had found evidence that the workplace was getting ruder.

In 1998, one-fourth of employees polled said they were treated rudely at least once a week. By 2016 that figure had risen to 62%. Indeed, 98% have reported uncivil behaviour of some sort.

A number of factors are to blame, says Christine Porath, a leading academic in the field of workplace incivility. These include an increasing sense of isolation, as well as poor communications.

“In the digital age messages are prone to communication gaps and misunderstanding,” she writes in a McKinsey article, “and unfortunately putdowns are easier when not delivered face to face.”

And the consequences of rudeness can be severe. According to the Harvard Business Review, those who suffer it may have lower engagement with work, more mental and physical health problems, a greater likelihood of burning out and even quitting their jobs.

Fixing Incivility

The good news is, as far as email incivility is concerned, there are ways to deal with the problem. And the secret is learning – and being enabled – to switch off.

“People may have a tendency to revisit a disturbing email or constantly check for a response that they requested, which may only aggravate the distress of email rudeness,” Zhenyu Yuan from the University of Illinois at Chicago told Phys.org. Instead, he says, the solution requires willpower. Employees need to “psychologically detach” after a day of electronic incivility. But this is not a battle workers should be fighting alone.

Managers also need to take a lead in countering email incivility – especially in a time when staff are already stressed. Flexibility and clarity around expectations is key. Avoid the temptation to send a message at 4:45pm just to test workers are still online, advises Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley. And if a manager emails on a Sunday, they should make it clear that the reply can come on Monday.

Picking the right form of communication can also help, found a McKinsey study on remote working in China during the pandemic. Chats or video conferencing could help lessen the email deluge, for instance.

Because if companies, and economies, are to recover from the current crisis, they need to ensure communication is flowing – and employees can focus on big team goals, not big team rifts.

This article first published in the World Economic Forum.

According to the report, most company managers have told workers if they get infected with COVID-19 and are quarantined for 14 days, there is no need for them to return to work because they will be replaced. For fear of losing their job and being unable to support their families, workers who have tested COVID-19 positive and have symptoms, conceal their test results and insist on getting health certificates from doctors to return to work.

A worker who had tested positive and went to work with symptoms said that even though he had tested positive, he had to “show up at work with a fever”.

“My boss stressed that if anyone is infected and goes on leave to get better, he will be replaced, and I will lose my job. I had to come work with symptoms and fatigue. My colleagues were afraid of getting the virus from me,” he told ISNA.

A doctor in one of Isfahan’s Health Services Centers confirmed that many workers who had COVID-19 symptoms insisted on getting a health certificate to return to work. He said that there were many such cases and that workers feared that they would lose their jobs and their only source of income.

“In some ways, they are under pressure from their managers,” the doctor said.

According to a member of the Board of Supreme Center for Islamic Labor Councils, the cases of worker expulsions were mostly reported in small workshops.

Ali Aslani, a board member at Iran’s Islamic Labor Councils said workers were deprived of basic hygiene equipment, including gloves, masks, and disinfectants in most workshops. “This is one of the reasons the virus has spread in the nation especially among workers,” he added. Workers’ wages only cover only a third of their household expenses, according to ILNA state-run news agency.

ILNA said that more than 70% of Iranian workers were only able to provide 33% of their expenses. In the first six months of the Persian year (late March), there has been a 30% increase in the price of food.

“We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!” the president said in a tweet early on Friday morning.

Trump’s positive test means that others at the highest levels of the U.S. government may have been exposed and have to quarantine, too.

A White House official said contact tracing was under way.

Trump’s physician, Sean Conley, said he expected the president to carry out his duties “without disruption” while he recovers.

“The President and First Lady are both well at this time, and they plan to remain at home within the White House during their convalescence,” Conley wrote in a memo that was distributed to the press.

On Thursday night, shortly after the president said the pandemic’s end was in sight, news broke that Hope Hicks, a top adviser and trusted aide, had tested positive for the virus. Hicks traveled with the president on Air Force One on Tuesday and Wednesday.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson kept working in isolation for a little over a week after testing positive in late March, but then fell gravely ill and was rushed into intensive care. He spent several weeks recovering before returning to work.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went into quarantine in March after his wife was diagnosed with the coronavirus. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro was infected in July.