Survivors say they were ostracized by communities after sexual assault by soldiers on a shocking scale
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Month: May 2022
Russian UN Envoy Quits in Protest of Ukraine Invasion
A veteran Russian diplomat to the United Nations office in Geneva resigned Monday because he said he was “so ashamed” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine three months ago.
In a rare, but not unprecedented protest within the Russian diplomatic corps, Boris Bondarev, 41, handed in his resignation in a letter addressed to Ambassador Gennady Gatilov and then released a scathing denunciation of the Russian war effort.
“The aggressive war unleashed by Putin against Ukraine, and in fact against the entire Western world, is not only a crime against the Ukrainian people,” Bondarev said, “but also perhaps the most serious crime against the people of Russia, with a bold letter Z (signifying support for the war) crossing out all hopes and prospects for a prosperous free society in our country.”
Bondarev, who has focused on Russian disarmament issues in Geneva, contended “that those who conceived this war want only one thing — to remain in power forever, live in pompous tasteless palaces, sail in yachts comparable in tonnage and costs to the entire Russian navy, enjoying unlimited power and complete impunity.”
“To achieve that, Bondarev said, “they are willing to sacrifice as many lives as it takes. Thousands of Russians and Ukrainians have already died just for this.”
He said that during his 20 years as a Russian diplomat, including postings in Cambodia and Mongolia, “the level of lies and unprofessionalism in the Foreign Ministry has been increasing all the time.”
Bondarev attacked Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as a “good illustration of the degradation of this system,” someone who had fallen from a “professional and educated intellectual” held in “high esteem” by his diplomatic colleagues to “a person who constantly broadcasts conflicting statements and threatens the world (that is, Russia too) with nuclear weapons!”
“Russia no longer has allies,” he concluded, “and there is no one to blame but its reckless and ill-conceived policy. …. I cannot any longer share in this bloody, witless and absolutely needless ignominy.”
Almost as an aside, he added, “Job offers are welcome.”
Bondarev told The Associated Press he had not received any reaction yet from Russian officials, but added, “Am I concerned about the possible reaction from Moscow? I have to be concerned about it.”
Asked if some colleagues felt the same, he added, “Not all Russian diplomats are warmongering. They are reasonable, but they have to keep their mouths shut.”
Russia has cracked down on protests against the Ukraine invasion, arresting street protesters, curbing media criticism and approving up to 15-year prison terms for those spreading “false information” about the invasion, including calling it a war instead of a “special military operation.”
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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Pfizer-BioNTech Says 3 COVID Shots Protect Children Under 5
Pfizer-BioNTech announced Monday that three shots of their COVID-19 vaccine provided strong protection for children under the age of 5.
“We are pleased that our formulation for the youngest children, which we carefully selected to be one-tenth of the dose strength for adults, was well tolerated and produced a strong immune response,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement.
Bourla added that the companies are looking forward to “completing our submissions to regulators globally with the hope of making this vaccine available to younger children as quickly as possible, subject to regulatory authorization.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is set to meet in June to decide whether to authorize the shots for children.
The FDA has already begun evaluating data from Moderna, which says its low dose, two-shot vaccine offers protection for young children.
Meanwhile, World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday at the 75th World Health Assembly that the COVID pandemic is “most certainly not over.”
His warning comes as some countries are rescinding their COVID mandates, just as cases are on the rise again. “Reported cases are increasing in almost 70 countries in all regions,” Tedros said. “This virus has surprised us at every turn — a storm that has torn through communities again and again, and we still can’t predict its path, or its intensity.”
The WHO chief said that while more than 6 million global coronavirus deaths have been reported, the U.N. agency estimates the worldwide tally is much higher at “almost 15 million deaths.”
Tedros called on countries to do all they can to eradicate COVID, including vaccinating 70% of their population, which would include 100% of people over 60 years old; 100% of health workers; and 100% of people with underlying conditions.
The WHO leader warned, “The pandemic will not magically disappear. But we can end it … Science has given us the upper hand.”
The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported Monday more than 525 million global COVID infections and more than 6 million global coronavirus deaths.
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Who is Buying Russia’s Oil?
So far, Russia’s oil exports have not slowed down a bit from the war in Ukraine and international sanctions. In fact, Russia exported more oil in April than it did before the war. And high oil prices mean Moscow is raking in money. That’s one reason Europe is considering a Russian oil ban: Current sanctions are not hurting Moscow enough. Europe gets more of its oil from Russia than anywhere else. It would have to make up for those banned barrels somewhere else, and that won’t be easy. And it’s likely to push oil prices everywhere up even further.
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German Chancellor Scholz Kicks off Africa Trip in Senegal
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said his country is interested in a major gas exploitation project in Senegal as he began a three-nation visit to Africa on Sunday that also is focused on the geopolitical consequences of the war in Ukraine.
Senegal is believed to have significant deposits of natural gas along its border with Mauritania at a time when Germany and other European countries are trying to reduce their dependence on importing Russian gas.
“We have begun exchanges and we will continue our efforts at the level of experts because it is our wish to achieve progress,” Scholz said at a joint news briefing with Senegalese President Macky Sall.
The gas project off the coast of Senegal is being led by BP, and the first barrels are not expected until next year.
This week’s trip marks Scholz’s first to Africa since becoming chancellor nearly six months ago. Two of the countries he is visiting — Senegal and South Africa — have been invited to attend the Group of 7 summit in Germany at the end of June.
Participants there will try to find a common position toward Russia, which was kicked out of the then-Group of Eight following its 2014 seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.
Leaders at the G-7 summit also will be addressing the threat of climate change. Several G-7 countries, including Germany and the United States, signed a ‘just energy transition partnership’ with South Africa last year to help the country wean itself off heavily polluting coal.
A similar agreement is in the works with Senegal, where Germany has supported the construction of a solar farm.
German officials also said Scholz will make a stop in Niger, a country that like its neighbors has long been battling Islamic extremists.
Earlier this month, the German government backed a plan to move hundreds of its soldiers to Niger from neighboring Mali. The development comes amid a deepening political crisis in Mali that prompted former colonial power France to announce it was withdrawing its troops after nine years of helping Mali battle insurgents.
Germany officials say their decision also was motivated by concerns that Malian forces receiving EU training could cooperate with Russian mercenaries now operating in the country.
Germany, though, will increase its participation in a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, providing up to 1,400 soldiers. The Cabinet’s decisions still need to be approved by parliament.
Niger is also a major transit hub for illegal migration to Europe. People from across West Africa connect with smugglers there to make the journey northward to attempt the dangerous trip across the Mediterranean Sea.
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Latest Developments in Ukraine: May 23
For full coverage of the crisis in Ukraine, visit Flashpoint Ukraine.
The latest developments in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. All times EDT:
1:30 a.m.: The U.N.’s refugee agency said conflict, violence, human rights violations and persecution around the world, including the war in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, have driven more than 100 million people from their homes in total.
“100 million refugees and displaced people are a terrible indicator of the state of our world,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi said Monday in a Twitter post.
1:00 a.m.: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said his country is interested in a major gas exploitation project in Senegal as he began a three-nation visit to Africa on Sunday that also is focused on the geopolitical consequences of the war in Ukraine. The Associated Press has the story.
12:30 a.m.: During U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to Japan this week, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told Biden Monday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “undermines the foundation of global order,” The New York Times reported.
“We can in no way allow whatsoever such attempts to change the status quo by force wherever it may be in the world,” Kishida said.
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Cannes Favorite Returns to Show Horror of ‘Human Animals’
One of Eastern Europe’s most acclaimed filmmakers, Romania’s Cristian Mungiu, is back at the Cannes Film Festival with a dark tale about how little it takes for people to turn on their neighbors.
His wrenching Ceausescu-era drama about illegal abortion “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” clinched the top prize at the world’s top cinema showcase in 2007.
Mungiu also won best screenplay for 2012’s “Beyond the Hills” and best director for “Graduation” in 2016.
His new film, “RMN,” again sees him in the race for the Palme d’Or, and the 54-year-old told AFP it explores the collapse of hopes for a new era of peace following the end of the Cold War.
“I try to speak about human nature and about the state of the world today and about this feeling that we have today that things are not going in the right direction,” he said.
“Things are coming to some sort of an end and everybody feels this anxiety,” not least over the war raging in Ukraine, he said.
RMN is the Romanian abbreviation for an MRI, which, when scanning the brain, can reveal fascinating secrets of how human beings are wired, Mungiu said.
The film explores the anxieties of a multiethnic community in Transylvania, a historical crossroads of migration and competing empires that has left Romanian, Hungarian and German speakers living side-by-side to this day.
It is inspired by a story widely covered by Romanian media in 2020, when a village in Transylvania rose up against the local bakery for hiring two Sri Lankans.
In the film, the foreign men are recruited to a bread factory reliant on EU grants and offering minimum-wage jobs that long went unfilled because the salary was too low for locals.
A manager tries to look after the dislocated Sri Lankans, who don’t speak any of the local languages and are struggling to integrate.
A violent attack leads to confrontations with the police, the village priest and finally a town meeting in which hysterical fears about the outsiders are aired.
Mungiu said he aimed to hold up a mirror to the “instincts and cruelty which is deep inside us as human animals and to see that people who are neighbors today are capable of anything tomorrow — raping, killing and torturing somebody else simply because somebody told me this is the enemy.”
The film won warm reviews, with The Guardian saying it was “seriously engaged with the dysfunction and unhappiness in Europe that goes unreported and unacknowledged.”
U.S. movie website IndieWire called it another “moral thriller” from Mungiu that pulls “harder and harder at the tension between complex socioeconomic forces and the simple human emotions they inspire.”
Mungiu is part of Romania’s New Wave of filmmakers tracking the realities of the post-communist transition who have scooped up prizes at international festivals for the past two decades.
He admitted at Cannes that those acclaimed movies have been far less popular at home.
“(Romanians) don’t really like what we do — they don’t really understand why somebody likes it somewhere else,” he said. “But for us, it’s really important that we managed to create some sort of a movement which is now complex enough — there are quite diverse filmmakers expressing themselves.
“At some point I think it will be acknowledged as something good that we did also for the culture of Romania,” he said.
The Palme d’Or will be awarded May 28.
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Scott Dixon Blazes to Indy 500 Pole in Record 234 Mph Run
Scott Dixon used a breathtaking run of more than 234 mph to post the fastest Indianapolis 500 pole run in history. The New Zealander will lead the field to green in “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” for the fifth time in his career.
Considered the best driver of his generation, Dixon turned four laps Sunday at an average of 234.046 mph around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. His average broke Scott Brayton’s pole-winning record set in 1996 of 233.718 mph.
Arie Luyendyk holds the four-lap qualifying record of 236.986 mph, also done in 1996, but not in a run for the pole. That means Dixon’s qualifying run was the second fastest in 106 runnings of the most prestigious race in the world.
Dixon’s first lap was an eye-popping 234.437 mph and drew a roar from the fans. His second lap was 234.162 and wife Emma bent over the pit wall in amazement, her hands covering her mouth. Dixon’s drop-off from there was minuscule: his fourth and final lap was 233.726 as his consistency gave Chip Ganassi Racing its seventh Indy 500 pole.
Dixon also started from the pole in 2008 when he scored his only Indy 500 win, as well as 2015, 2017 and last year.
“That’s what this place is about, the ups and downs that you have just in one day, it’s crazy,” said Dixon. His hands were shaking following his first run earlier Sunday.
Ganassi advanced all five of his drivers into the two-round qualifying shootout to determine the starting order for the first three rows for next week’s race. Seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson needed a massive save in the first turn of his first lap and didn’t advance out of the round of 12.
But Dixon did, along with his other three Honda-powered teammates. That made it Dixon, reigning IndyCar champion Alex Palou, Marcus Ericsson and Tony Kanaan in a head-to-head “Fast Six” shootout against Chevrolet-powered teammates Ed Carpenter and Rinus VeeKay.
“This is what real competitors want, true competitors want this,” Ganassi said before the session. “This is a moment made for champions.”
VeeKay on Saturday had posted the third-fastest qualifying run in track history but didn’t have enough for Dixon’s big, big laps. Palou, who averaged 233.499, qualified second alongside his teammate and VeeKay was third at 233.385.
Carpenter was fourth and followed by Ericsson and Kanaan, who at 232.372 was the slowest of the final six shootout. But even the slowest cars were flying around Indy, which hasn’t seen speeds like these since 1996.
Kanaan’s lap would have been the eighth-fastest qualifying run in the record books written before the drivers rewrote history this weekend.
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Explainer: Why Will Russia’s Ukraine War Affect Wimbledon?
The usual trophies and prize money will be on the line for Novak Djokovic, Iga Swiatek and other top players at Wimbledon, but there is a significant change there this year: No one will earn ranking points, a valuable currency in tennis, when play begins June 27.
The women’s and men’s professional tours announced Friday they will not award those points at the grass-court Grand Slam tournament because of the All England Club’s decision to bar players from Russia and Belarus over the invasion of Ukraine.
Both the WTA and ATP said they were reacting to what they called “discrimination.”
Here is a look at how this unprecedented move came about and what it means:
What is happening in Ukraine?
Russia, with help from Belarus, launched an invasion of neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24. Russia’s bombardment and siege of the southern port city of Mariupol killed over 20,000 civilians, according to Ukraine, including strikes on a maternity hospital and a theater where civilians had taken shelter.
Why did Wimbledon bar Russians and Belarusians?
The All England Club, which runs the oldest Grand Slam tournament (Wimbledon was first held in 1877), announced in April it would not allow players from Russia or Belarus to enter the event in 2022. Chief Executive Sally Bolton defended the club’s move as following a directive from the British government, and she cited a “responsibility to play our part in limiting the possibility of Wimbledon being used to justify the harm being done to others by the Russian regime.”
Have other sports banned Russian athletes?
Yes, including in soccer, where the Russian men’s team was kicked out of qualifying matches for this year’s World Cup. Figure skating and track and field are among the other sports to have taken action against Russian and Belarusian athletes. In tennis, players from those countries have been allowed to compete — including at the French Open, the year’s second Grand Slam tournament, which begins Sunday in Paris — but as “neutral” athletes who are not being identified by their nationalities.
Who can’t play at Wimbledon?
The most prominent Russian tennis player at the moment is Daniil Medvedev, who won the U.S. Open in September and briefly reached No. 1 in the men’s rankings this year. Andrey Rublev, who is ranked No. 7 in the ATP, is another top male player. The WTA’s No. 7, Aryna Sabalenka, who was a semifinalist at Wimbledon a year ago, and former No. 1 Victoria Azarenka, a two-time Australian Open champion, are from Belarus.
Why cancel ranking points?
The WTA and ATP condemned the invasion of Ukraine, but said it was not fair for the All England Club to prevent certain players from playing because of the actions of their countries’ governments.
“Our rules and agreements exist in order to protect the rights of players as a whole,” the ATP said. “Unilateral decisions of this nature, if unaddressed, set a damaging precedent for the rest of the tour.”
The International Tennis Federation also withdrew its ranking points from the junior and wheelchair events at Wimbledon.
Taylor Fritz, the highest-ranked American man and seeded No. 13 at the French Open, said he thinks “most players agree” that athletes from Russia and Belarus should be allowed to play at Wimbledon. The ban, he said, “is a sign to show support for Ukraine, but you’re just kind of punishing people based off of where they were born … and they can’t really change that.”
How do ranking points work? Why do they matter?
The WTA and ATP official rankings date to the early 1970s and currently are based on each player’s best results over the preceding 52 weeks (women count their top 16 tournaments, men their top 19). Swiatek is the 28th woman to sit atop the WTA; Djokovic is one of 27 men to lead the ATP and has spent more weeks in that spot than anyone else. Wimbledon and the three other Grand Slam tournaments award 2,000 points apiece to the women’s and men’s singles champions, more than any other events. In addition to other measures such as trophies or prize money, rankings are a way for fans, sponsors and others — including the players themselves — to understand where athletes stand in the sport’s hierarchy. Technically, any tennis event that does not award ranking points is considered an exhibition.
Has this happened before?
Representatives of the ATP, WTA and ITF said they were unaware of any previous instances of ranking points being withheld from a tournament.
Will any players skip Wimbledon because there aren’t ranking points?
It’s too soon to know, but even without ranking points, Wimbledon still offers plenty of prestige and millions of dollars in payouts. “If you win it, I think you’d still be pretty happy,” said Jessica Pegula, an American seeded 11th at Roland Garros. “But I think it’s just up to each individual person — how they’re feeling, their motivation.”
What will happen at the US Open?
It is not yet known whether players from Russia or Belarus will be able to enter the U.S. Open, the year’s last Grand Slam tournament, which begins in New York Aug. 29. “We continue to monitor events,” U.S. Tennis Association spokesman Chris Widmaier wrote in an email, “and are in active dialogue with the Ukraine and Russian/Belarusian players, the tours, the other Grand Slams, and other relevant parties.”
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Malawi Faces Shortages of Foreign Exchange Currency
Malawi is facing acute shortages of foreign exchange currency, forcing two international airlines to suspend some of their services in the country. The situation has negatively affected the operations of many more local and international cross-border businesses.
The latest monetary policy report by the Reserve Bank of Malawi indicates the county’s official gross foreign exchange reserves in the first quarter of this year stood at $374.48 million, a drop from $429.17 million in the fourth quarter of last year.
The report also says private sector foreign exchange reserves also declined from $425.52 million last year to $391.49 million this year.
The situation has led to an acute shortage of foreign currency on the market, forcing foreign traders to halt or suspend some of their operations in Malawi.
Muhammad Gaffar, the owner of Gaffar Travels, a ticketing agency, and Gaffar Airlines, which operates flights from Johannesburg to Europe, said the shortage has seriously impacted his business.
“We are unable to issue tickets from Malawi to other countries, but we are only issuing tickets from Malawi from our other offices like, we have our head office in the U.K., we have an office in India, Pakistan and Turkey where we are issuing tickets for people traveling from Malawi,” he said. “Until this forex issue is sorted, we are losing a lot of business in Malawi.”
Last week, Ethiopian Airlines and Kenya Airways suspended their ticketing system for local travel agents in Malawi largely because of the shortage of foreign currency.
Ethiopian Airlines said in a statement that the move was because the Reserve Bank of Malawi has been unable to remit money to their accounts due to dwindling forex reserves.
So, passengers traveling from Malawi on these airlines now must buy their tickets from agents in other countries.
Authorities say public hospitals are facing drug shortages because the government cannot procure essential medications.
Victoria Mwafulirwa, the general secretary for the Cross Border Traders Association of Malawi. told a local radio station that the situation has inconvenienced their businesses.
“For example, as you may be aware, Malawi does not manufacture packaging material. It has to be imported,” she said. For it to be imported, it has to be paid up front; for it to be paid up front, the forex must be readily available, which is not the case at the moment. And so, you will see that it hinders the progress and processes in every step of operations of different sectors.”
Betchani Tchereni, a lecturer in economics at Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences, said the problem is largely because of the country’s failure to produce more products for exports.
“This is owing to our low export base, Number 1, and Number 2, the absence of donor assistance,” Tchereni said. “You might recall that development partners, many of them, decided to pull out of the country and when that happened, it reduced the amount that is normally made available to the economy in terms of foreign exchange.”
The foreign currency problem comes at a time when Malawi’s major export, tobacco, provides more than 60% of the foreign exchange earnings.
Tchereni said this year’s tobacco exports give little hope of making up for the shortfall.
“By the way, we are at the very beginning of the tobacco selling season, but the volumes are not that good; not many people went into cultivation of tobacco this year,” Tchereni said. “And also you might recall that the storms that came destroyed a lot of our tobacco and many other farms’ produce. So, that meant that we cannot realize as much.”
Figures released this month from Auction Holdings Limited Group in Malawi show that tobacco sales for the past five weeks have dropped by 78% compared to the same period last year.
Winford Masanjala, the principal secretary for the Department of Economic Planning in Malawi, said the government is making an effort to address the foreign exchange shortages.
“A country needs to produce goods and services that it can sell to other countries,” he said. “At the moment Malawi’s desire and appetite for imports exceeds its capacity to export. That’s why the government is saying in the next year to three years, we need to have some mines restarted in Malawi so that we can have alternative sources of foreign exchange.”
The government says it hopes the foreign exchange reserve will start to increase once the International Monetary Fund resumes providing Malawi with what is called the Extended Credit Facility. The ECF provides financial assistance to countries with protracted payment problems. Negotiations for the ECF are expected to begin this Wednesday.
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Nigerian Churches Hold Remembrance for Student Killed Over Alleged Blasphemy
Nigerian Christians on Sunday held a national remembrance for a student who was killed in northern Sokoto state this month over allegations of blasphemy. The Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, said Sunday’s protest for Deborah Yakubu was a reminder of the many threats to religious freedom in the country. Timothy Obiezu reports from Abuja.
The decision to hold a quiet march and prayer sessions for Deborah Yakubu in various parishes was announced by the Christian Association of Nigeria late Saturday. Officials also explained the planned protest had received pushback from some state authorities who restricted protests.
The association was also worried about safety after it said some Muslim groups threatened to hold a counter protest as well.
Many churches across the country, however, complied with the CAN’s directive. Only a few members of some churches marched on the streets close to their parishes.
“Every local church had that program today in honor of Deborah and they prayed for the nation, prayed for the church in Nigeria,” said Bayo Oladeji, the spokesperson for the Christian Association of Nigeria. “We don’t want to clash with the government. Some Muslim fundamentalists issued a statement saying they too wanted to protest today and we don’t want a situation whereby they’ll be targeting our people and attacking them
Deborah Yakubu was a student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto state. She was beaten, stoned and her body burned May 12 by students who accused her of making blasphemous comments against the Prophet Mohammed in an online classroom group.
Yakubu had allegedly cautioned her Muslim counterparts to stop making religious posts on the WhatsApp group chat.
Nigerian authorities, including President Mohammadu Buhari, a Muslim, condemned the student’s killing.
Oladeji says Nigerian Christians are often targeted and attacked on the basis of religion.
“We believe that the church in Nigeria is under a siege; we believe that the church in Nigeria is being persecuted, those who were purportedly arrested because of Deborah’s gruesome murder, they were merely arraigned for causing public disturbance,” Oladeji said. “It’s not that they’re arraigning them for the murder of this young girl.”
Last week, two suspects arrested in Yakubu’s death were arraigned in court.
Sokoto state authorities Friday lifted a curfew imposed last week after protests broke out in the state, calling for the release of the two suspects.
Blasphemy is punishable under Nigeria’s secular law and well as Islamic law, known as Sharia. Human rights groups have launched a petition demanding authorities expunge blasphemy from the constitution.
Human rights lawyer Martin Obono started the petition.
“We need to get to the point where Nigeria needs to decide whether we’re a secular state or we’re a religious state because you do not now declare under Section 10 of the constitution that people have the rights and freedom of thoughts and religion,” Obono said. “If I express my thoughts about a particular religion, I shouldn’t be criminalized for that.”
Last November, the United States removed Nigeria from its list of countries of particular concern over religious freedom violations.
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Creator of ‘Star Wars’ X-Wing and Death Star Dies at 90
Colin Cantwell, the man who designed the spacecraft in the “Star Wars” films, has died. He was 90.
The Hollywood Reporter reported Sunday that Sierra Dall, Cantwell’s partner, confirmed that he died at his home in Colorado on Saturday.
Cantwell designed the prototypes for the X-wing Starfighter, TIE fighter and Death Star.
He also worked on films including “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “WarGames.”
Cantwell was born in San Francisco in 1932. Before working on Hollywood films, Cantwell attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he got a degree in animation. He also attended Frank Lloyd Wright’s School of Architecture.
In the 1960s, he worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA on educational programs about flights. Cantwell worked with NASA to feed Walter Cronkite updates during the 1969 moon landing.
Cantwell wrote two science fictions novels. He is survived by his partner of 24 years, Dall.
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African Union Chief Announces Visits to Moscow, Kyiv
Senegalese President Macky Sall said Sunday he would travel to Russia and Ukraine soon on behalf of the African Union, whose presidency he currently holds.
The trip had been due to take place on May 18 but didn’t go ahead due to scheduling issues and new dates have been put forward, Sall said at a joint press conference with visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
He had received a mandate from the African Union to undertake the trip, for which Russia had extended an invitation, he added.
“As soon as it’s set, I will go of course to Moscow and also to Kyiv and we have also accepted to get together all the heads of state of the African Union who want to with (Ukrainian) President (Volodymyr) Zelensky, who had expressed the need to communicate with the African heads of state,” he said. “That too will be done in the coming weeks.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has hit African economies hard due to rising cereal prices and fuel shortages, has met with a divided African response.
In early March, Senegal abstained from voting on a United Nations resolution — overwhelmingly adopted — that called on Russia to withdraw from Ukraine.
However, a few weeks later it voted in favor of another resolution demanding Russia halt the war.
Nearly half of African nations abstained or did not vote in the two resolution votes.
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Russia Claims Victory in Capture of Ukraine’s Mariupol
As Russia lays claim on the southeastern Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, Poland’s president makes an unannounced visit to Ukraine’s capital and addresses parliament in a show of support for the embattled nation. U.S. President Joe Biden signs a hefty aid package to Ukraine while Russia continues pressing its offensive in the eastern Donbas region. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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Somalia’s New President Faces Familiar Political, Security Challenges
Somalia’s new president is starting his four-year term facing familiar top issues such as the country’s political divide and rising attacks by al-Qaida-linked insurgent group al-Shabab.
As he settles into office, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud faces a politically divided nation, high public expectations and the specter of al-Shabab, which has remained a potent threat since it emerged in 2007.
Fawzia Yusuf, a former deputy prime minister who ran for president in the just concluded elections, said the new president has the uphill task of constituting a competent government given the many competing interests.
“Since our system is currently based on tribal 4.5, people are expecting him to choose people from different tribes,” she said. “So, one of the challenges is putting together a very strong Cabinet, which are technocrats which are not based on tribal but on meritocracy.”
The distribution of power in Somalia is on a clan-based system locally known as the 4.5 system, where majority clans are allocated majority seats in parliament while the smaller clans, grouped together, get the remainder.
In the coming days, the president is expected to name a new prime minister who will need parliamentary approval before proceeding to name a Cabinet.
Besides tackling the political question, Mohamud must contend with the security threats posed by militant group al-Shabab.
According to Abdurahman Sheikh Azhari, the director of the Mogadishu-based Center for Analysis and Strategic Studies, the new president, like his predecessor, doesn’t have much leeway in dealing with al-Shabab.
“Of course, al-Shabab’s fighting, and attacks will continue as long as they are able or capable of carrying out attacks,” he said. Azhari added he thinks the opportunities for the president are slim because al-Shabab is a terrorist organization, an international organization, and a regional organization, and this means they will not surrender easily.
Azhari argued that despite the lack of incentive from al-Shabab to negotiate due to its successful attacks in recent months, dialogue is still a possible option.
“I think the government, with the help of international and regional partners, can negotiate indirectly with sections of the al-Shabab leadership who may want to surrender or oppose the organization,” he said.
Yusuf, too, shares a similar view that the new president may need to consider taking a different approach by opening lines of communication with the militant group.
“Another challenge, as I said, is the security,” he said. “The security is a major problem. Al-Shabab is a major problem, and their demand is to get rid of the foreign forces, in other words, the ATMIS or troops coming from the contributing countries. So, dealing with them is not an easy matter. Never in the world has a rebellion or terrorist groups won, but they still weaken any administration. So, I think the best thing he can do is to start negotiating with them and deal with the hard-core groups.”
By ATMIS, Yusuf was referring to the U.N.-authorized African Union Transition Mission in Somalia. Its mandate includes reducing the threat posed by al-Shabab and conducting a phased handover of security responsibilities to Somalia. ATMIS is expected to end its mission in 2024.
Having had the backing of most opposition candidates during the May 15 vote, Mohamud now has to avoid a fallout while ensuring he puts in place a competent team to deliver his election promises.
Analysts say the new leader could take advantage of the planned return of U.S. forces to the country to bolster the war against al-Shabab and strengthen the national army. For now, the country is waiting to see who Mohamud will pick as prime minister.
Harun Maruf and Hussein Hassan Dhaqane contributed to this report.
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Ukraine Buries Its Fallen Soldiers
A sea of Ukrainian flags marks the graves of the fallen at Kharkiv’s cemetery N°18.
The cemetery, at Bezliudivka, on the outskirts of Ukraine’s second city, has had a military section for several years.
It has been burying Ukrainian soldiers since the Russian invasion three months ago. And on Saturday, more soldiers were laid to rest beside their comrades.
Two coffins placed on trestles belonged to Sergiy Profotilov, born in 1976, and Igor Malenkov, born in 1985. Both were killed at Vilkhivka, to the east of Kharkiv.
The official date of their deaths marked on their graves was May 11. But that was probably when their bodies were recovered from the village, the scene of fierce fighting before its liberation over a month ago.
“They were found with five other bodies that we couldn’t identify,” said one soldier, who spoke on condition he is not identified.
“We suspect they were executed,” he added. “They were killed by bullets to the back of the head.”
Only half a dozen soldiers and the brother of one of the dead were present for the ceremony, which lasted about an hour.
The military chaplain recited the prayers and sprinkled incense on the coffins under the grey sky, against a background of Russian and Ukrainian artillery fire just a few kilometers away.
The mourners laid red carnations on the graves. Then, after a brief exchange of greetings and embraces, they went their separate ways.
The brother walked alone down a line of dozens of graves, the death certificate in his hand.
Two pickup trucks arrived carrying soldiers from Ukraine’s foreign legion. About a dozen of them have come to pay a final homage to one of their comrades, a Dutch soldier killed by artillery fire.
It was forbidden to film the ceremony or to identify the fallen fighter.
Here, there was no religious ceremony, but a brief speech in English given by an officer. One soldier, with a British flag on his vest, gave a military salute. Another touched the cross before leaving.
At a fifth ceremony, the family of 47-year-old Olexandr Gaponchev was mourning his death at Tsyrkuny, north of Kharkiv. Many of those present in tears.
And a few minutes later, the fifth funeral of the day started.
The mother of the fallen soldier wept inconsolably over her son’s coffin, held up by members of her family, as rain began to fall.
Then as the coffin was lowered into the ground, each mourner threw a fistful of earth into the grave before the cemetery workers filled it in and planted a wooden cross with the name of the dead soldiers.
Behind that grave, a line of Ukrainian flags flapped in the wind, one for each grave.
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With Roe in Doubt, Some Fear Tech Surveillance of Pregnancy
When Chandler Jones realized she was pregnant during her junior year of college, she turned to a trusted source for information and advice.
Her cellphone.
“I couldn’t imagine before the internet, trying to navigate this,” said Jones, 26, who graduated Tuesday from the University of Baltimore School of Law. “I didn’t know if hospitals did abortions. I knew Planned Parenthood did abortions, but there were none near me. So I kind of just Googled.”
But with each search, Jones was being surreptitiously followed — by the phone apps and browsers that track us as we click away, capturing even our most sensitive health data.
Online searches. Period apps. Fitness trackers. Advice helplines. GPS. The often obscure companies collecting our health history and geolocation data may know more about us than we know ourselves.
For now, the information is mostly used to sell us things, like baby products targeted to pregnant women. But in a post-Roe world — if the Supreme Court upends the 1973 decision that legalized abortion, as a draft opinion suggests it may in the coming weeks — the data would become more valuable, and women more vulnerable.
Privacy experts fear that pregnancies could be surveilled and the data shared with police or sold to vigilantes.
“The value of these tools for law enforcement is for how they really get to peek into the soul,” said Cynthia Conti-Cook, a lawyer and technology fellow at the Ford Foundation. “It gives [them] the mental chatter inside our heads.”
HIPAA, hotlines, health histories
The digital trail only becomes clearer when we leave home, as location apps, security cameras, license plate readers and facial recognition software track our movements. The development of these tech tools has raced far ahead of the laws and regulations that might govern them.
And it’s not just women who should be concerned. The same tactics used to surveil pregnancies can be used by life insurance companies to set premiums, banks to approve loans and employers to weigh hiring decisions, experts said.
Or it could — and sometimes does — send women who experience miscarriages cheery ads on their would-be child’s birthday.
It’s all possible because HIPAA, the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, protects medical files at your doctor’s office but not the information that third-party apps and tech companies collect about you. Nor does HIPAA cover the health histories collected by non-medical “crisis pregnancy centers, ” which are run by anti-abortion groups. That means the information can be shared with, or sold to, almost anyone.
Jones contacted one such facility early in her Google search, before figuring out they did not offer abortions.
“The dangers of unfettered access to Americans’ personal data have never been more clear. Researching birth control online, updating a period-tracking app or bringing a phone to the doctor’s office could be used to track and prosecute women across the U.S.,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said last week.
For myriad reasons, both political and philosophical, data privacy laws in the U.S. have lagged far behind those adopted in Europe in 2018.
Until this month, anyone could buy a weekly trove of data on clients at more than 600 Planned Parenthood sites around the country for as little as $160, according to a recent Vice investigation that led one data broker to remove family planning centers from the customer “pattern” data it sells. The files included approximate patient addresses (down to the census block, derived from where their cellphones “sleep” at night), income brackets, time spent at the clinic, and the top places people stopped before and after their visits.
While the data did not identify patients by name, experts say that can often be pieced together, or de-anonymized, with a little sleuthing.
In Arkansas, a new law will require women seeking an abortion to first call a state hotline and hear about abortion alternatives. The hotline, set to debut next year, will cost the state nearly $5 million a year to operate. Critics fear it will be another way to track pregnant women, either by name or through an identifier number. Other states are considering similar legislation.
The widespread surveillance capabilities alarm privacy experts who fear what’s to come if Roe v. Wade is overturned. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its opinion by early July.
“A lot of people, where abortion is criminalized — because they have nowhere to go — are going to go online, and every step that they take (could) … be surveilled,” Conti-Cook said.
Punish women, doctors or friends?
Women of color like Jones, along with poor women and immigrants, could face the most dire consequences if Roe falls since they typically have less power and money to cover their tracks. They also tend to have more abortions, proportionally, perhaps because they have less access to health care, birth control and, in conservative states, schools with good sex education programs.
The leaked draft suggests the Supreme Court could be ready to let states ban or severely restrict abortion through civil or criminal penalties. More than half are poised to do so. Abortion foes have largely promised not to punish women themselves, but instead target their providers or people who help them access services.
“The penalties are for the doctor, not for the woman,” Republican state Rep. Jim Olsen of Oklahoma said last month of a new law that makes performing an abortion a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
But abortion advocates say that remains to be seen.
“When abortion is criminalized, pregnancy outcomes are investigated,” said Tara Murtha, the communications director at the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia, who recently co-authored a report on digital surveillance in the abortion sphere.
She wonders where the scrutiny would end. Prosecutors have already taken aim at women who use drugs during pregnancy, an issue Justice Clarence Thomas raised during the Supreme Court arguments in the case in December.
“Any adverse pregnancy outcome can turn the person who was pregnant into a suspect,” Murtha said.
State limits, tech steps, personal tips
A few states are starting to push back, setting limits on tech tools as the fight over consumer privacy intensifies.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, through a legal settlement, stopped a Boston-based ad company from steering anti-abortion smartphone ads to women inside clinics there that offer abortion services, deeming it harassment. The firm had even proposed using the same “geofencing” tactics to send anti-abortion messages to high school students.
In Michigan, voters amended the state Constitution to prohibit police from searching someone’s data without a warrant. And in California, home to Silicon Valley, voters passed a sweeping digital privacy law that lets people see their data profiles and ask to have them deleted. The law took effect in 2020.
The concerns are mounting, and have forced Apple, Google and other tech giants to begin taking steps to rein in the sale of consumer data. That includes Apple’s launch last year of its App Tracking Transparency feature, which lets iPhone and iPad users block apps from tracking them.
Abortion rights activists, meanwhile, suggest women in conservative states leave their cellphones, smartwatches and other wearable devices at home when they seek reproductive health care, or at least turn off the location services. They should also closely examine the privacy policies of menstrual trackers and other health apps they use.
“There are things that people can do that can help mitigate their risk. Most people will not do them because they don’t know about it or it’s inconvenient,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy director with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “There are very, very few people who have the savvy to do everything.”
Digital privacy was the last thing on Jones’s mind when she found herself pregnant. She was in crisis. She and her partner had ambitious career goals. After several days of searching, she found an appointment for an abortion in nearby Delaware. Fortunately, he had a car.
“When I was going through this, it was just survival mode,” said Jones, who took part in a march Saturday in downtown Baltimore to support abortion rights.
Besides, she said, she’s grown up in the Internet age, a world in which “all of my information is being sold constantly.”
But news of the leaked Supreme Court draft sparked discussions at her law school this month about privacy, including digital privacy in the era of Big Data.
“Literally, because I have my cell phone in my pocket, if I go to a CVS, they know I went to a CVS,” the soon-to-be lawyer said. “I think the privacy right is such a deeper issue in America [and one] that is being violated all the time.”
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Nigerian Court Sentences Danish National to Death by Hanging
A Nigerian high court has sentenced a Danish national, Peter Nielsen, to death by hanging. Nielsen was convicted and sentenced Friday for the murder of his Nigerian wife and their young daughter in 2018. Rights activists, who have protested the murder, praised the court’s ruling.
Justice Bolanle Okikiolu-Ighile of the Lagos high court announced the verdict and the sentence for 54-year-old Peter Nielsen Friday at a hearing that lasted more than five hours.
The justice said evidence from an autopsy revealed that Nielsen’s wife, Zainab, and their three-year-old daughter died of head injuries and suffocation. He said analysis of Zainab’s fingertips showed she had struggled to free herself from her killer’s grip, and that traces of DNA found on her skin were consistent with Nielsen’s.
Nielsen has been standing trial since June 2018 after he was arrested on charges of murdering his Nigerian wife, Zainab and their daughter in their home in Lagos. Nielsen pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The killing triggered criticism from women rights groups and they have been monitoring the progress of the trial since then.
Activist Josephine Okei-Odumakin, president of Women Arise Initiative, attended Friday’s session.
“This will serve as a reference point, it’s also going to protect women the more and as much as possible reduce gender-based violence which is on the rise and I’m sure that with this landmark judgement, a lot of people will have a rethink,” she said.
Okei-Odumakin noted the bodies of Nielsen’s wife and daughter have remained in the mortuary since their death four years ago.
Nigerian courts continue to issue death sentences in cases such as killings, kidnappings, or armed robbery, despite a growing debate on whether or not to abolish the measure.
Earlier this year, some advocates urged Nigerian authorities to annul the death penalty.
Human rights lawyer Martin Obono says strict measures like the death penalty are helpful in deterring crimes.
“In terms of deterrent, I think a lot of people would’ve killed people if they knew that they’d get away with it and just have life imprisonment and maybe one day the governor or president will come and pardon you,” he said.
Fifty-four countries around the world, including Nigeria, allow the death penalty.
Nigerian authorities say there are more than 3,000 prisoners awaiting execution, the highest number in Africa. But the last time an execution was carried out in Nigeria was in 2016.
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UK Demands EU Action on Northern Ireland as US Lawmakers Visit
Britain has insisted it is up to the European Union to unblock political paralysis in Northern Ireland, after assuring a delegation from the U.S. Congress of its “cast-iron” commitment to peace in the province.
The UK government has provoked anger on both sides of the Atlantic with a plan to overhaul the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, a trading arrangement that was agreed as part of its Brexit divorce deal with the EU.
London is bidding to placate pro-UK unionists who are refusing to join a new power-sharing government in Belfast — led for the first time by pro-Irish nationalists — until the protocol is reformed.
Interviewed by the Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis demanded that Brussels adopt a new negotiating mandate to address the fierce objections of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
“I made this point to the EU myself before the (May 5) elections. My view was, it was much easier to get a deal before the elections than afterwards,” Lewis said.
“The idea that it was going to be easier after the elections was a crazy one from the EU.”
The protocol recognized Northern Ireland’s status as a fragile, post-conflict territory that shares the UK’s new land border with the EU.
Keeping the border open with neighboring Ireland, an EU member, was mandated in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, given that the frontier was a frequent flashpoint during three decades of violence.
‘Frank’ discussion
But the protocol’s requirement for checks on goods arriving from England, Scotland and Wales has infuriated the DUP and other unionists, who say it drives a wedge between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.
Lewis stressed that the DUP, as the biggest unionist party, had a democratic mandate to back its position.
“And at the moment, the protocol, which the EU claims is about protecting the Good Friday Agreement, is the very document putting the Good Friday Agreement most at risk,” he said.
But the EU insists the protocol is not up for renegotiation.
And last week Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, warned that the UK could forget about a post-Brexit trade deal if it rewrites the agreement.
On Saturday, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss met in England with a congressional delegation led by Richard Neal, a senior member of Pelosi’s Democratic party in the House.
“We discussed our cast-iron commitment to the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, the importance of free trade and our condemnation of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,” Truss tweeted.
The foreign ministry declined to comment further.
But according to Britain’s Observer newspaper on Sunday, Truss told Neal’s delegation that London could not let the “situation drag on” if the EU did not respond favorably.
Neal, however, stressed Washington’s “unity” with the EU after the members of Congress visited Brussels on Friday.
And after what he called the “frank” meeting with Truss, the Democrat tweeted on Sunday: “I urge good faith negotiations with the EU to find durable solutions for post-Brexit trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”
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In Seoul, Biden Greets Kim Jong Un but Focuses on Other Issues
North Korea was not the only focus during U.S. President Joe Biden’s two-day visit to neighboring South Korea, but the nuclear-armed North did keep coming up in Biden’s discussions in the South Korean capital, as VOA’s Bill Gallo reports from Seoul.
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Sense of Normality Returns to French Open
The first Grand Slam tournament without any COVID-19 restrictions since the pandemic started in early 2020 kicked off under menacing skies at Roland Garros Sunday.
The French Open was the first major to be hit by the pandemic when it was postponed two years ago but all safety measures were lifted for this tournament, giving the fortnight a welcome sense of normality again.
Thousands of mask-free spectators flocked into the stadium before play started at 11:00 local time (0900GMT) as Roland Garros opened its gates for the start of the main tournament.
Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur, one of the favorites to win the women’s singles, opened proceedings on the main Philippe Chatrier court against Pole Magda Linette who levelled the match at one-set all by winning the second set tiebreak.
The highlight of the day will be teenage sensation Carlos Alcaraz starting his campaign against Argentine Juan Ignacio Londero in the last match on Chatrier.
The French Open is the only one of the four majors to start on a Sunday.
World number one and defending champion Novak Djokovic is due to make his return to Grand Slam action on Monday after he was not allowed to take part in the Australian Open because of his refusal to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
The Serbian is bidding to match 13-times French Open champion Rafael Nadal’s men’s record of 21 Grand Slam titles and the two are on a quarter-final collision course.
Iga Swiatek, the hot favorite in the women’s draw, is scheduled to play her first match on Monday or Tuesday.
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With Public Camping Becoming a Felony, Tennessee Homeless Running out of Options
Miranda Atnip lost her home during the coronavirus pandemic after her boyfriend moved out and she fell behind on bills. Living in a car, the 34-year-old worries every day about getting money for food, finding somewhere to shower, and saving up enough money for an apartment where her three children can live with her again.
Now she has a new worry: Tennessee is about to become the first U.S. state to make it a felony to camp on local public property such as parks.
“Honestly, it’s going to be hard,” Atnip said of the law, which takes effect July 1. “I don’t know where else to go.”
Tennessee already made it a felony in 2020 to camp on most state-owned property. In pushing the expansion, Sen. Paul Bailey noted that no one has been convicted under that law and said he doesn’t expect this one to a be enforced much, either. Neither does Luke Eldridge, a man who has worked with homeless people in the city of Cookeville and supports Bailey’s plan — in part because he hopes it will spur people who care about the homeless to work with him on long-term solutions.
The law requires that violators receive at least 24 hours notice before an arrest. The felony charge is punishable by up to six years in prison and the loss of voting rights.
It’s going to be up to prosecutors … if they want to issue a felony,” Bailey said. “But it’s only going to come to that if people really don’t want to move.”
After several years of steady decline, homelessness in the United States began increasing in 2017. A survey in January 2020 found for the first time that the number of unsheltered homeless people exceeded those in shelters. The problem was exacerbated by COVID-19, with shelters limiting capacity.
Public pressure to do something about the increasing number of highly visible homeless encampments has pushed even many traditionally liberal cities to clear them. Although camping has generally been regulated by local vagrancy laws, Texas passed a statewide ban last year. Municipalities that fail to enforce the ban risk losing state funding. Several other states have introduced similar bills, but Tennessee is the only one to make camping a felony.
Bailey’s district includes Cookeville, a city of about 35,000 people between Nashville and Knoxville, where the local newspaper has chronicled growing concern with the increasing number of homeless people. The Herald-Citizen reported last year that complaints about panhandlers nearly doubled between 2019 and 2020, from 157 to 300. In 2021, the city installed signs encouraging residents to give to charities instead of panhandlers. And the City Council twice considered panhandling bans.
The Republican lawmaker acknowledges that complaints from Cookeville got his attention. City council members have told him that Nashville ships its homeless here, Bailey said. It’s a rumor many in Cookeville have heard and Bailey seems to believe. When Nashville fenced off a downtown park for renovation recently, the homeless people who frequented it disappeared. “Where did they go?” Bailey asked.
Atnip laughed at the idea of people shipped in from Nashville. She was living in nearby Monterey when she lost her home and had to send her children to live with her parents. She has received some government help, but not enough to get her back on her feet, she said. At one point she got a housing voucher but couldn’t find a landlord who would accept it. She and her new husband saved enough to finance a used car and were working as delivery drivers until it broke down. Now she’s afraid they will lose the car and have to move to a tent, though she isn’t sure where they will pitch it.
“It seems like once one thing goes wrong, it kind of snowballs,” Atnip said. “We were making money with DoorDash. Our bills were paid. We were saving. Then the car goes kaput and everything goes bad.”
Eldridge, who has worked with Cookeville’s homeless for a decade, is an unexpected advocate of the camping ban. He said he wants to continue helping the homeless, but some people aren’t motivated to improve their situation. Some are addicted to drugs, he said, and some are hiding from law enforcement. Eldridge estimates there are about 60 people living outside more or less permanently in Cookeville, and he knows them all.
“Most of them have been here a few years, and not once have they asked for housing help,” he said.
Eldridge knows his position is unpopular with other advocates.
“The big problem with this law is that it does nothing to solve homelessness. In fact, it will make the problem worse,” said Bobby Watts, CEO of the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council. “Having a felony on your record makes it hard to qualify for some types of housing, harder to get a job, harder to qualify for benefits.”
Not everyone wants to be in a crowded shelter with a curfew, but people will move off the streets given the right opportunities, Watts said. Homelessness among U.S. military veterans, for example, has been cut nearly in half over the past decade through a combination of housing subsidies and social services.
“It’s not magic,” he said. “What works for that population, works for every population.”
Tina Lomax, who runs Seeds of Hope of Tennessee in nearby Sparta, was once homeless with her children. Many people are just one paycheck or one tragedy away from being on the streets, she said. Even in her community of 5,000, affordable housing is very hard to come by.
“If you have a felony on your record — holy smokes!” she said.
Eldridge, like Sen. Bailey, said he doesn’t expect many people to be prosecuted for sleeping on public property. “I can promise, they’re not going to be out here rounding up homeless people,” he said of Cookeville law enforcement. But he doesn’t know what might happen in other parts of the state.
He hopes the new law will spur some of its opponents to work with him on long-term solutions for Cookeville’s homeless. If they all worked together it would mean “a lot of resources and possible funding sources to assist those in need,” he said.
But other advocates don’t think threatening people with a felony is a good way to help them.
“Criminalizing homelessness just makes people criminals,” Watts said.
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Green Options Transforming US Wedding Industry Prone to Waste
The wedding industry remains fraught with waste, but a growing contingent of brides and grooms is pushing for more sustainable changes, from the way they invite guests to the food they serve and the clothes they wear.
The wedding resource The Knot estimates that more than two-thirds of about 15,000 site users did or planned to incorporate eco-conscious touches, including secondhand decor, minimizing food waste and avoiding one-time use products. Nearly 1 in 3 said vendors should be more proactive in leading the way.
After two chaotic years for the wedding industry, searches on Pinterest for thrifted weddings have tripled, and they’ve doubled for reuse wedding dress ideas, according to the site’s 2022 wedding trends report. The online resale giant Poshmark said demand for secondhand wedding dresses is at an all-time high, especially for those costing $500 or more.
Lauren Kay, executive editor of The Knot, said more venues, caterers and other vendors are taking notice.
“A lot of vendors are really educating themselves on ways to be more sustainable in an effort to meet the demand,” she said. “We’re seeing across the board much more interest and recognition around sustainability.”
For example, Something Borrowed Blooms offers silk florals rather than fresh cut flowers, which often travel long distances and are arranged using non-recyclable foam. Nova by Enaura rents bridal veils. VerTerra sells bowls and compostable plates made of fallen palm leaves, while Pollyn, a plant shop in Brooklyn, uses biodegradable nursery pots as more couples turn to plants in place of cut flowers.
If paper goods are a must, Paper Culture makes invitations, save the dates and reception cards using 100% post-consumer recycled paper. The company offsets its manufacturing and transportation carbon footprint through credits that put resources back into the planet, and it plants a tree with every order.
For 28-year-old Anna Masiello, getting it right for her May 28 wedding is an extension of a more climate-friendly lifestyle she embraced several years ago after moving from her native Italy to Portugal to earn a master’s degree in environmental sustainability.
“I really started to learn about climate change and the real impacts of it. We hear so much about it but sometimes it’s so overwhelming that we decide not to learn more or to understand it,” she said. “I just said, OK, it’s time to act.”
She took her journey to social media, using the handle hero_to_0, in reference to zero waste, and has amassed more than 70,000 followers on TikTok and nearly 40,000 on Instagram for her regular updates on her life and wedding planning.
Masiello’s naturally dyed lavender wedding outfit of a long skirt and matching top is made of deadstock linen (material that factories or stores weren’t able to use or sell). The trousers and shirt her fiance will wear are secondhand. The rings they’ll exchange belonged to two of their grandparents.
Her fiance carved her engagement ring out of wood from a tree her parents planted when she was born. Her video about it has been viewed more than 12 million times.
The couple’s 50 guests at the outdoor ceremony in an uncle’s yard will throw confetti punched out of fallen leaves, and the decor will include wood, used glass jars, and plants from the garden. In place of paper goods, they went digital. And no favors will be handed out. To help take the carbon sting out of some guests’ plane travel, the couple plans to plant trees.
Not all of Masiello’s feedback on social media has been positive. Some have mocked her efforts. But she has embraced that conversation.
“When I started sharing and I saw that it was impacting so many people, and also so many people were having a very negative reaction, I was like, OK, this is really stirring people’s emotions. I have to talk more about it, and I’m very glad I’m doing it,” she said.
In Los Angeles, 31-year-old Lena Kazer has thought about it, too, for her May 21 wedding in her backyard with 38 guests.
“Both of us are a little disgusted by the extravagance of the wedding industry,” she said. “We agreed we would use the resources that we have and avoid buying anything that we won’t continue to use.”
They are using compostable or recyclable utensils, cups and plates. They’re batching cocktails to reduce waste, and are using their own furniture for seating. Kazer’s bouquet will be made of real flowers, but she has kept flower purchases to a minimum.
“We’re buying almost all decorations at thrift stores, and I’m wearing my sister’s wedding dress and my mom’s veil,” she said. “We told everyone they could wear whatever they wanted after hearing about people spending thousands of dollars on new outfits for weddings.”
Other ideas for green weddings include using seed paper, which can be planted by recipients, and serving organic, seasonal, farm-to-table food, with leftovers donated.
Kat Warner, whose T. Warner Artists provides entertainment for weddings along the East Coast, offers options ranging from solar-powered lighting to full solar receptions. She also uses carbon offsets, donating to funds that support such things as reforestation and bird conservation.
Warner said couples are asking more questions, including “what various parts of their weddings can be recycled, composted or reused.”
Greater Good Events, which bills itself as “event planners for those who give a damn,” takes a holistic approach in Portland, Oregon, and the Tri-State region of New York. Waste in weddings isn’t always tangible, said Maryam Mudrick, who bought the company with Justine Broughal in September.
“If you’re working with vendors with bad labor practices that are not reinvesting in communities, you’re creating some ancillary waste in that regard as well,” Mudrick said.
One of their catering partners, Pinch Food Design, has a zero waste pledge, which includes designing menus to limit food waste, donating used cooking oil for biodiesel, and supporting sustainable and regenerative farming.
Florist Ingrid Carozzi of Tin Can Studios in Brooklyn cited other issues with floral arrangements beyond the use of non-biodegradable foam, such as bleaching and chemically dyeing flowers to achieve unnatural colors.
“It’s terrible for the environment, and working with these materials isn’t good for you,” she said. “Some florists are working towards sustainable methods, doing everything they can. There’s a real mix now.”
Kate Winick and her fiance had a rule for their May 22 backyard wedding at a home in Northport, New York: If it’s destined to get thrown out or be used only once, skip it or buy secondhand.
“I don’t think living sustainably means you need a crunchy aesthetic,” she said. “It just means using what is already in the world. The most sustainable purchase is something that already exists.”
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Century-Old Canal Project Sparks Opposition in South Sudan
A petition to stop the revival of the 118-year-old Jonglei Canal project in South Sudan, started by one of the country’s top academics, is gaining traction in the country, with the waterway touted as a catastrophic environmental and social disaster for the country’s Sudd wetlands.
It follows a series of calls within South Sudan’s government to restart the project in order to prevent flooding and improve the region’s infrastructure. The country’s vice president has already announced plans to conduct a feasibility study in the hopes of getting the defunct canal operational.
The vice chancellor of the University of Juba, Professor John Akec, launched the “Save the Sudd” social media petition with the intention to submit it to the country’s president once completed. Akec’s petition has already gained tens of thousands of signatures out of the required 100,000.
Previous research has shown that the canal would have serious repercussions on the delicate ecosystem of the Sudd region, including negative effects on the aquatic, wild and domestic plants and animals, as well as interfere with the farming activities of the people in the region, potentially displacing them.
“We will not have enough water and it will dry up and if it dries up, all the livelihoods that connected to that area, including fishing, resettlement and grazing lands will be lost,” Akec told The Associated Press.
“Water is more valuable than oil, diamonds and gold,” said Akec. “Let’s wake up from our sleep and stop the theft of water and destruction of our ecosystems and economic future by Egypt.”
The canal, first proposed by a British engineer in Cairo back in 1904, would divert water away from the Sudd wetlands to deliver 10 billion cubic meters (2.6 trillion gallons) from the Nile to downstream Sudan and Egypt. Plans started to take shape in 1954 but the project was halted 30 years later and is now at a stalemate. About 270 kilometers (168 miles) of a total of 340 km (150 miles) of the canal has already been excavated.
Earlier this year, one of South Sudan’s vice presidents, Taban Deng Gai, called for the resumption of the canal project in order to prevent flood disasters in Jonglei and Unity state.
The floods have led to a widespread collapse of livelihoods, severely hindering the ability of households to maintain their livestock. Traditional coping strategies and sources of income are no longer viable for many communities.
“We never lacked food as farmers, but now the floods have destroyed our farms. There is water everywhere,” said Martha Achol, a farmer and mother of six, who recounted the struggles inflicted by the floods in Jonglei state.
Another local farmer, 60-year-old Mayak Deng, agreed. “We had enough food then but today we don’t have enough,” he said.
Meanwhile, Nile basin countries are experiencing water scarcity due to the impacts of rapid population growth and climate change, creating renewed interest in the canal project.
South Sudan’s minister of water resources and irrigation, Manawa Peter Gatkuoth, said that the project would also create avenues for infrastructural development, agriculture, river transport and tourism. Gatkuoth has requested an approval and a budget from the office of vice president Riek Machar to kickstart the canal.
But environmentalists worry about disrupting the Sudd’s delicate balance and life cycle. Deng Majok Chol, a Ph.D. candidate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, argues that the ongoing increase in flooding events is only a small fluctuation within the longer millennial cycle of the Sudd.
Rainfall caused by the evaporation of water in the Sudd will be largely reduced if the canal project comes to fruition, with green areas at risk of becoming dry and arid. There are concerns that even those living beyond the Sudd region, as well as in downstream Sudan and Egypt, will be negatively impacted.
An environmental and social impact assessment warned that the canal project would “irreversibly or partially destroy downstream ecosystems.”
“The current calls for the resumption of the Jonglei Canal project demonstrate a failure to observe and learn from the global trend of water management challenges compounded by global warming,” said Majok. “It does not take a rocket scientist to see these moves as baits, strategically calculated toward a more than a century goal of exclusive control over how Nile water is utilized.”
Economic and climate concerns have also stirred opposition to the canal.
“The economic value of the Sudd wetlands is estimated at a billion dollars annually and this will be lost if the wetlands are drained, ” Nhial Tiitmamer, director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Program at the Sudd Institute, warned.
Tiitmamer added that the Sudd wetlands are a migratory transition points and corridors for bird species that migrate between Europe and Africa every year and some of these birds are classified both in South Sudan and internationally as endangered species.
He cautioned that the project will lead to an “exacerbation of climate change through reduction of carbon sinks as well as through release of carbon dioxide from the wetlands destruction.”
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