Monday, January 20, 2020

Hundreds injured in weekend of Lebanon clashes


Sanaa al-Sheikh, a Lebanese anti-government protester, covers her nose from
 tear gas fired by riot police from behind a barricaded road that leads to parliament
 in central Beirut on January 19, 2020. Photo: AFP

Hundreds injured in weekend of Lebanon clashes

Anti-riot police fire rubber bullets and water cannons at stone-throwing demonstrators in the capital Beirut
Lebanese anti-riot police fired rubber bullets and water cannons at stone-throwing demonstrators in the Lebanese capital Sunday, as hundreds were injured in a weekend of rare violence.
Medics said 90 people were injured in the latest clashes, taking the casualty toll to more than 460 injured in two days.
Unprecedented protests have rocked the Mediterranean country since October 17, with citizens from all religious backgrounds demanding the ouster of a political class viewed as inept, corrupt and responsible for an ever deepening economic crisis.
On Sunday evening, hundreds of protesters gathered in the rain in central Beirut by a barricaded road that leads to parliament manned by heavily deployed security forces.
For a second night in a row, dozens started lobbing stones in the direction of police behind a metal barricade, crying “revolution, revolution
Anti-riot forces responded with water cannons, as well as rubber bullets and a round of tear gas.
The Red Cross said 90 people were injured, including 38 who needed treatment in hospital.
The state-run National News Agency (NNA) said two journalists were hit by rubber bullets, one a cameraman from local television channel Al-Jadeed.
President Michel Aoun called for a “security meeting” on Monday with the interior and defence ministers to discuss the crisis, NNA reported.
But a 34-year-old protester called Mazen said he and others had lost hope in politicians.
“After three months of revolution, they have proven to us that they don’t change, don’t listen, and have nothing to give,” he said.

‘Excessive violence’

On Saturday, at least 377 people were wounded – both protesters and members of the security forces – according to a toll compiled by AFP from figures provided by the Red Cross and Civil Defence.
An AFP photographer said security forces fired rubber bullets at stone-throwing protesters as thick clouds of tear gas covered central Beirut.
Lawyers said more than 40 protesters were arrested on Saturday before being released.
Most were subjected to “excessive violence,” while some were wounded “especially to the head and face, and genitals,” the Committee of Lawyers for the Defence of Protesters said on Facebook.
The lawyers also visited hospitals, from where they reported serious injuries including by rubber bullets.
On Sunday, local television aired the testimonies of relatives of two young men they said were hit in the eyes by rubber bullets.
Security forces said they had opened a probe after a video shared online showed police beating up people believed to be protesters as they were brought to a Beirut police station.
Human Rights Watch condemned what it called “the brutal use of force unleashed by Lebanon’s riot police against largely peaceful demonstrators.”
It accused the riot police on Saturday of “launching tear gas canisters at protesters’ heads, firing rubber bullets in their eyes and attacking people at hospitals and a mosque.”

 ‘Stop wasting time’

Saturday’s clashes began after dozens of protesters threw stones and plant pots at security forces, and tried to charge police lines near parliament with traffic signs.
The security forces responded with water cannons and thick tear gas.
Protesters had called for a week of “anger” over the political leadership’s failure to form a new government even as the country sinks deeper into a financial crisis.
“Another day without a government, another night of violence and clashes,” UN envoy to Lebanon Jan Kubis said on Twitter.
Outgoing prime minister Saad Hariri, who stepped down on October 29, urged political parties to “stop wasting time.”
“Form a government and pave the way towards political and economic solutions,” he said.
Political factions agreed on December 19 to appoint former education minister Hassan Diab as the new premier but have since squabbled over proposed ministers.
Protesters have demanded a new government be comprised solely of independent experts, and exclude all established political parties.
The World Bank has warned the poverty rate in Lebanon could rise from a third to half of the population if the political crisis is not resolved soon.
– AFP
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Counting the cost of Australia’s raging inferno

Bushfire damage could be as high as $9 billion and trim .5% off GDP with worst of blazes still to come
Australia’s economy will take years to recover from the bushfires that have devastated four states since September, with the damage bill already estimated at A$5 billion (US$3.4 billion) and the worst of the blazes still to come.
There could also be a significant political cost, as Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s indecisive response and adamant refusal to acknowledge a climate change link to the fires have seen his popularity and support nosedive.
Twenty-eight people have been killed and at least 2,300 homes destroyed as the fires burned through 8.4 billion hectares (50,000 square kilometers) of mostly rural land in New South Wales (NSW), Victoria, South Australia and Queensland — a geographical area bigger than the entire territory of Denmark.
Losses will continue to rise, as the peak period of bushfire activity does not start until February, the hottest month in southeastern Australia. It is expected to drag on well into March unless there is rainfall; some areas have had heavy falls in recent days, but not enough to end the fiery crisis.
With insurance claims of A$1 billion ($690 million) already submitted for damage to private property, Westpac bank’s economics unit has calculated that the fires will trim between 0.2-0.5% off growth in 2020 alone.
A burnt-out car is seen on property razed by bushfires in Bargo, southwest of Sydney, on December 21, 2019. Photo: AFP/Peter Parks
“That would put the cost in terms of insured and uninsured losses at around $5 billion,” the bank said in a report, noting that the total bill from disasters is generally about double the losses from insured claims.
AMP Capital earlier forecast economic losses amounting to 0.25-1% of gross domestic product (GDP), or a range of A$3-13 billion ($2-9 billion), which could give Australia zero or even negative growth this quarter.
To date the most damaging bushfires were a 2009 inferno that ripped through southeastern Victoria, costing the state A$4.4 billion ($3 billion).
Westpac noted that affected areas this time, mostly on the south coast of NSW and the same region of Victoria burned out a decade ago, account for only 1% of the economy. However, they are major producers of fruit and vegetables, beef, seafood, timber and wine. They are also big tourism areas.
The tourist industry lost at least A$1 billion ($675 million) during the crucial Christmas holiday period due to cancellations— 100% in many destinations — and there is no doubt more to come.
About 60% of bookings in areas unaffected by the bushfires were also scrapped due to adverse media coverage worldwide.
A kangaroo trying to move away from nearby bushfires at a residential property near the town of Nowra in the Australian state of New South Wales. Photo: AFP/Saeed Khan
“People have basically stopped travel,” Simon Westaway, executive director of the Australian Tourism Industry Council, told Reuters news agency. “And that’s absolutely understandable: human nature kicks in.”
Damage to telecommunications, power supplies, roads, bridges and other infrastructure is still being evaluated but will also account for millions of dollars, as will the loss of inventories and profits for thousands of small businesses.
Moody’s Analytics economist Katrina Ell said air pollution, which has affected 30% of the population, would result in reduced worker productivity, increased health spending, and lower crop yields. Moody’s, a ratings agency, has said the fires have been more destructive than the 2009 blazes.
Morrison’s conservative government, which staunchly backs fossil fuel use for power generation and rejects claims that climate change has aggravated the fires, was slow initially to respond to the disaster, though it has now offered more than A$2 billion ($1.3 billion) in emergency and reconstruction aid.
The prime minister left for a holiday to Hawaii as NSW was burning, returning only after a media outcry. He was then heckled by victims of the fires on the NSW south coast and criticized by state legislators in his own party.
A Newspoll survey, the first conducted since the worst fires began, found that 59% of respondents were dissatisfied with Morrison’s performance and only 37% satisfied. He now trails Labor’s Anthony Albanese by four percentage points, the survey showed.
Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison visits a wildflower farm in an area devastated by bushfires in Sarsfield, Victoria state on January 3, 2020. Photo: AFP/James Ross/Pool
Labor, the main opposition party, leads the governing coalition 51% to 49% in two-party preferred terms two years out from the next election. That spread could widen depending on Morrison’s perceived performance in handling the fires’ aftermath.
Morrison contends that it is not his government’s job to fight fires, but conceded that he “could have handled on the ground much better.” Now he has agreed to call a royal commission — the highest level of official inquiry — into the government’s response, providing more fuel to his critics.
Even as the summer fires are quenched, Morrison will continue to feel the political heat. Indeed, there are already rumblings that he may face a leadership challenge among his own ranks in the months ahead
Fires, then floods: How much can a koala bear?
A veterinary surgeon offers gum leaves to a mother and joey koala rescued from bushfires. Other koalas have had to be rescued from floods. Photo: AFP/Paul Crock

Fires, then floods: How much can a koala bear?

Koalas which were under threat from bushfires last week have now had to be rescued from a flood
One week ago, koalas at an Australian wildlife park were in the path of raging bushfires. On Friday, they were soaking wet and being carried to safety from flash floods.
Months of drought that have contributed to Australia’s catastrophic bushfire season have this week given way to huge downpours in some of the blaze-ravaged areas.
At the Australian Reptile Park on the nation’s east coast near Sydney, heavy rains on Friday morning sent torrents of water through its bushland setting.
Images released by the park showed soaking wet koalas clinging to gum trees, and a zookeeper carrying two of the marsupials to safety through rushing waters.
Water levels in the lagoon for the park’s alligators also rose up close to the top of the fence.
A zookeeper is seen leaning over the fence and trying to push an alligator back down with a broom as it stretches up in an apparent bid to escape.
“This is incredible, just last week, we were having daily meetings to discuss the imminent threat of bushfires,” park director Tim Faulkner said.
“Today, we’ve had the whole team out there, drenched, acting fast to secure the safety of our animals and defend the park from the onslaught of water.
“We haven’t seen flooding like this at the park for over 15 years.”
The bushfires, which began in September, have claimed 28 lives and are estimated to have killed more than a billion animals across eastern and southern Australia.
The wet weather this week has given exhausted firefighters a huge boost, helping to reduce or contain some blazes.
But dozens of fires remain out of control, and authorities have warned the crisis could worsen again with Australia only halfway through its summer.
“The contrast between the current bushfire crisis and this sudden flooding is striking,” Faulkner said.
“But we are well aware that a huge part of Australia is still burning, and millions of animals are still under threat.”
– AFP

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NASA shows off next step in search for Martian life

Members of the public were invited to walk the clean-room floor at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, on December 27 to glimpse the Mars 2020 rover and speak with experts working on the mission. It was the public’s only opportunity to see the rover from inside the clean room prior to its shipment to Cape Canaveral, Florida, in February.
The Mars 2020 rover is one step closer to having its own name as the competition to name it has entered the home stretch, with NASA culling the field from 28,000 student entries to 155 semifinalists. The public will be able to vote for their favorite of the nine finalist names starting late this month. This public vote will be one factor considered in the selection of the final name, which will be announced in early March. You can find all semifinalists on the Mars 2020 rover naming-contest website.
The Mars 2020 rover mission is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. The mission addresses high-priority science goals for Mars exploration, including key questions about the potential for life on that planet. It takes the next step by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself.
The mission is timed for a launch opportunity in July this year when Earth and Mars are in good positions relative to each other for landing on Mars. That is, it takes less power to travel to Mars compared with other times when the two planets are in different positions in their orbits.
To keep mission costs and risks as low as possible, the rover design is based on NASA’s successful Mars Science Laboratory mission architecture, including its Curiosity rover and proven landing system.

This artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Mars 2020 rover on the surface of the Red Planet. Photo: NASA via Wikipedia

The rover is car-sized, about 3 meters long, 2.7 meters wide, and 2.2 meters tall. But at 1,050 kilograms, it weighs less than a compact car. In some sense, the rover parts are similar to what any living creature would need to keep it alive and able to explore.
To maximize its chance of unearthing traces of ancient life, Mars 2020 will land in a long-dried-up delta called Jezero. The site, selected after years of scientific debate, is a crater that was once a 500-meter-deep lake. It was formerly connected to a network of rivers that flowed some 3.5 billion to 3.9 billion years ago. The crater measures just under 48 kilometers across, and experts hope it may have preserved ancient organic molecules.
The Mars 2020 rover, which NASA plans to launch on July 17 and for touchdown on Mars on February 18 next year, will not only search for traces of ancient life, will but pave the way for future human missions. The trip will take about seven months. If all goes according to plan, the rover will come to life in February 2021 in the ancient river delta in the Jezero Crater. Its mission is expected to last two years.
The Mars 2020 rover will feature a drill that can collect core samples of the most promising rocks and soils and set them aside in a “cache” on the surface of Mars. Throughout the mission, it will collect soil and rock samples and leave them on the surface for collection by a future Earth-return mission. That would help scientists study the samples in laboratories with special room-sized equipment that would be too large to take to Mars.
Where the vehicle at the heart of the US$2.5 billion exploration will really stand apart, however, is in its ability to analyze and process samples, then drop them into tubes for pickup by another Mars mission expected to launch in 2026. Samples will be carried inside the rover until they are deposited in individual tubes or in a bunch on the planet’s surface. Only when the samples are returned to Earth will scientists be able to determine whether definitive signs of ancient life are present.
The mission also provides opportunities to gather knowledge and demonstrate technologies that address the challenges of future human expeditions to Mars. The Mars 2020 rover will help prepare for future human exploration of Mars with a technology for extracting oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, which is 96% carbon dioxide. This demonstration of new technology will help mission planners test ways of using Mars’ natural resources to support human explorers and improve designs for life support, transportation, and other important systems for living and working on Mars.
Though the rover is nearly complete and will be ready to be shipped to Florida in about a month, installing the sample tubes will be one of the final steps as another protection from contamination. It is part of a larger program that includes missions to the moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.
Charged with returning astronauts to the moon by 2024, NASA will establish a sustained human presence on and around the moon by 2028 through the agency’s Artemis lunar exploration plans.
The ambitions come as a new space race heats up, with Beijing increasingly vying to threaten US dominance. China on December 27 launched a Long March 5 heavy lift rocket in a major step forward for its own planned mission to Mars in July or August this year.
Kent Wang

KENT WANG
Kent Wang is a research fellow at the Institute for Taiwan-America Studies (ITAS), a conservative Washington-based think tank focusing on those aspects of the United States-Taiwan relations, and is broadly interested in the United States-Taiwan-China trilateral equation, as well as in East Asian security architecture. His writings have appeared in The Asia Times, The Diplomat, The Hill, The Roll Call, The National Interest, and numerous other venues. Wang has also worked for more than three decades in aeronautics science and has published widely in academic journals in the key technologies of guidance, navigation and control system design for spacecraft and space exploration.

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