Indian PM Modi repeals controversial farming laws after a year of protests

Fri, 19 November 2021


Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday he would repeal three agriculture laws that farmers have been protesting against for more than a year, a significant climb-down for the combative leader as important elections loom.

The legislation, introduced in September last year, was aimed at deregulating the sector, allowing farmers to sell produce to buyers beyond government-regulated wholesale markets, where growers are assured of a minimum price.

Farmers, fearing the reform would cut the prices they get for their crops, staged nationwide protests that drew in activists and celebrities from India and beyond, including climate activist Greta Thunberg and pop singer Rihanna.

"Today I have come to tell you, the whole country, that we have decided to withdraw all three agricultural laws," Modi said in an address to the nation.

"I urge farmers to return to their homes, their farms and their families, and I also request them to start afresh."

The government would repeal the laws in the new session of parliament, starting this month, he said.

The surprise concession on laws the government had said were essential to tackle chronic wastage and inefficiencies, comes ahead of elections early next year in Uttar Pradesh (UP), India's most populous state, and two other northern states with large rural populations.

Nevertheless, Modi's capitulation leaves unresolved a complex system of farm subsidies and price supports that critics say the government cannot afford.

It could also raise questions for investors about how economic reforms risk being undermined by political pressures.

Protesting farmers, who have been camped out in their thousands by main roads around the capital, New Delhi, celebrated Modi's back-track.

"Despite a lot of difficulties, we have been here for nearly a year and today our sacrifice finally paid off," said Ranjit Kumar, a 36-year-old farmer at Ghazipur, a major protest site in Uttar Pradesh.

Jubilant farmers handed out sweets in celebration and chanted "hail the farmer" and "long live farmers' movement".

Rakesh Tikait, a farmers' group leader, said the protests were not being called off. "We will wait for parliament to repeal the laws," he said on Twitter.

Vulnerable to big business

Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government said last year that there was no question of repealing the laws. It attempted to break the impasse by offering to dilute the legislation but protracted negotiations failed.

The protests took a violent turn on Jan. 26, India's Republic Day, when thousands of farmers overwhelmed police and stormed the historic Red Fort in New Delhi after tearing down barricades and driving tractors through roadblocks.

One protester was killed and scores of farmers and policemen were injured.

Small farmers say the changes make them vulnerable to competition from big business and they could eventually lose price support for staples such as wheat and rice.

The government says reform of the sector, which accounts for about 15% of the $2.7 trillion economy, means new opportunities and better prices for farmers.

Modi announced the scrapping of the laws in a speech marking the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism.

Many of the protesting farmers are Sikh.

Modi acknowledged that the government had failed to win the argument with small farmers.

The farmers are also demanding minimum support prices for all of their crops, not just for rice and wheat.

"We need to know the government's stand on our other key demand," Darshan Pal, another farmers' leader, said of the new demand, which has gained traction among farmers across the country, not just in the northern grain belt.

Rahul Gandhi of the main opposition Congress party, said the "arrogant" government had been forced to concede.

"Whether it was fear of losing UP or finally facing up to conscience BJP govt rolls back farm laws. Just the beginning of many more victories for people’s voices," Mahua Moitra, a lawmaker from the Trinamool Congress Party and one of Modi's staunchest critics, said on Twitter.

But some food experts said Modi's back-track was unfortunate because the reforms would have brought new technology and investment.

"It's a blow to India's agriculture," said Sandip Das, a New Delhi-based researcher and agricultural policy analyst.

"The laws would have helped attract a lot of investment in agricultural and food processing - two sectors that need a lot of money for modernisation."

(REUTERS)

Elections trump economics in Modi's farm reforms U-turn


The rural reforms infuriated many farmers, who feared they would leave them at the mercy of big agribusiness corporations (AFP/Money SHARMA)

Bhuvan BAGGA
Fri, November 19, 2021

Elections trumped the urgency for agricultural reform in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's surprise decision on Friday to repeal new farm laws, economists and political analysts said.

Although far from perfect, the three laws passed in September 2020 which Modi now plans to scrap would have made a start at liberalising India's enormous but hugely inefficient farming sector.

"The government has made an electoral calculation," Professor Harsh V Pant, an Indian author and analyst, told AFP.

Modi "instinctively, intuitively" felt the political costs of his reforms were higher than their economic benefit, he added -- making the subject "untouchable" going forward.

"If even Modi, with his electoral mandate, is struggling, then I don't think anyone in the near future will be able to get the same mandate or tackle these issues," he said.

India's agriculture sector is vast, with two-thirds of the 1.3 billion population relying on farming for their livelihood. But it is a mess.

Several hundred thousand Indian farmers have been driven to suicide in the past three decades by crippling poverty, debt and ever more erratic weather patterns caused by climate change.

Huge volumes of produce rot before they reach consumers and experts say that in many areas farmers are growing unsuitable crops, guzzling up groundwater at unsustainable rates.

In northern India, farmers burn the residue from rice paddy across huge areas, blanketing the capital New Delhi and other towns and cities in a sickly cloud of toxic pollution every year.

The new laws aimed to allow farmers to sell their produce directly to private companies at mutually agreed prices, and anywhere they could find a buyer.

The government said it would open up competition and encourage farmers to not just rely on subsidies, but to become more competitive by adopting more efficient farming methods.

But that meant breaking up the decades-old monopoly of state-controlled agricultural markets that buy at set minimum prices.

And the prospect struck fear into the hearts of many farmers, who saw the reforms as leaving them at the mercy of big agribusiness corporations who would squeeze them for every last rupee.

- Election fight -

Last November tens of thousands of them, egged on by opposition parties, headed for Delhi and -- after ugly clashes with police -- camped out on the outskirts of the capital where they remain today.

In January they gatecrashed Indian Republic Day celebrations, running riot in Delhi on their tractors and raising a flag at the historic Red Fort. Hundreds of police officers were injured.

Suddenly Modi -- voted in on a platform of supporting ordinary people but also as a reformer -- was facing his biggest political challenge since his Hindu nationalist government came to power in 2014.

After taking a beating in May elections in the eastern state of West Bengal, Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) started to worry about votes due in five more states early next year.

They include Punjab, governed by the Congress party of the Gandhi dynasty, and the currently BJP-run bellwether state of Uttar Pradesh. Both are home to enormous numbers of farmers.

And analysts say that Modi's move was unashamedly driven by his party's political interests.

"Obviously, this decision puts electoral politics front and centre," Nistula Hebbar, political editor with The Hindu, told AFP. "The BJP under Modi is willing to be very pragmatic for its electoral success."

"If they lose UP everything will be bad for them going forward –- from the morale of the party supporters, the opposition's morale, the election of next Indian president and Modi's 2024 reelection bid," she added.

It is only the second major U-turn the firebrand Modi has carried out since his election, after he dropped plans to reform rural land titles in 2015, also following huge protests by farmers and other countryside-dwellers.

Satish Nambardar, an official with one of the farmers' unions behind the current demonstrations, said: "He took a one-man decision to introduce the laws and now he's taken a one-man decision to take them back."

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Pakistanis welcome Indian Sikhs for founder Guru Nanak's birthday

Zain Zaman JANJUA
Fri, November 19, 2021

The scent of flowers and perfume hangs in the air as thousands of Sikhs from India were welcomed to Pakistan on Friday for one of the world's biggest birthday celebrations: the 552nd birth anniversary of the Guru Nanak.

The festivities were taking place at the shrine to the founder of the Sikh religion in Nankana Sahib, the Pakistani city where he was born in 1469.

The emotion is heightened this year, as devotees from Pakistan's arch-rival India were unable to cross the border in 2020, due to coronavirus restrictions.

"I have goosebumps, I can't explain how I'm feeling," Darshan Singh, a 70-year-old farmer from India, tells AFP.

"I never thought we would get this sort of love from our Pakistani brothers," he says. "These women are not Sikh, these children know nothing about our faith, but they are standing up to welcome us with open arms and clean hearts."

Many others were similarly swept up in the rare sense of cross-border unity between Pakistanis and Indians, divided when the subcontinent was partitioned at independence in 1947.

Annie Munjal, a 24-year-old from Delhi, says her grandparents often told her stories of growing up in Pakistan's Lahore, near the Indian border, before partition.

"We had heard from them how Pakistan was, but we never got to see," she says. "Now we are here... they are just like us."

The celebration of more than 12,000 people at the shrine, or gurdwara, is infectious.

Curious Muslim residents of the city stand on their rooftops to watch, and shower the Sikh processions with rose petals and chocolates.

At the main gates, young Muslims and Hindus join Sikhs in dancing to the beat of the dhol, a South Asian drum.

Posters welcoming the pilgrims alternate with heavy security on the streets leading to the shrine.

The devotees, many of them barefoot, wave saffron flags as they sing hymns and recite poetry and religious texts -- all before a massive lunch of rice, naan, chickpeas and sweets.

- 'Long wait is over' -

The first of ten gurus who developed the Sikh faith, Guru Nanak's teachings laid the basis for a community that now numbers up to 30 million across the world.

But most of the faithful are now in India, where their families fled the sectarian violence that claimed millions of lives during partition.

It was only in 2019 that Pakistan opened a visa-free corridor allowing Sikhs from India to visit Kartarpur, a town where another shrine built to mark the guru's death lies.

That white-domed gurdwara was so close to the border that for decades devotees in India could see it, but not visit -- a situation akin to Muslims being able to see Medina but never enter.

The Covid-19 pandemic prevented Indians from crossing in 2020. This year authorities agreed to reopen the corridor, and the faithful began streaming across in preparation for the birthday celebrations this week.

Some stayed in Kartarpur, while many made their way 180 kilometres (110 miles) southwest to join those celebrating in Nankana Sahib.

"My years long wait is finally over. I am steps away from my guru's home," Buljit Kaur, a 61-year-old pilgrim from India, tells AFP in Nankana Sahib.

Pervaiz Ahmed, a 41 year old local doctor was coming out of a mosque on the same street as the gurdwara.

"Sikhs find their roots here, this is the place they belong to. We have no objections seeing them coming in such big numbers," he said.

The Indian farmer, Darshan Singh, says he will return with his family.

"This is the first time I came to Gurdwara Nankana Sahib, and it looks like I have wasted 70 years of my life," he says.

"The emotions and feelings cannot be explained."

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Pakistanis welcome Indian Sikhs for founder Guru Nanak's birthdayEmotion is heightened this year, as devotees from Pakistan's arch-rival India were unable to cross the border in 2020, due to coronavirus restrictions (AFP/Aamir QURESHI)More

First Known COVID Case Was Vendor at Wuhan Market, Scientist Claims


Carl Zimmer, Benjamin Mueller and Chris Buckley
Fri, November 19, 2021

People are seen through a glass window standing near the desk of a healthcare worker while waiting for medical attention at a hospital in Wuhan, China, Jan. 28, 2020. 

(Chris Buckley/The New York Times)

A scientist who has pored over public accounts of early COVID-19 cases in China reported Thursday that an influential World Health Organization inquiry had likely gotten the early chronology of the pandemic wrong. The new analysis suggests that the first known patient sickened with the coronavirus was a vendor in a large Wuhan animal market, not an accountant who lived many miles from it.

The report, published Thursday in the prestigious journal Science, will revive, although certainly not settle, the debate over whether the pandemic started with a spillover from wildlife sold at the market, a leak from a Wuhan virology lab or some other way. The search for the origins of the greatest public health catastrophe in a century has fueled geopolitical battles, with few new facts emerging in recent months to resolve the question.

The scientist, Michael Worobey, a leading expert in tracing the evolution of viruses at the University of Arizona, came upon timeline discrepancies by combing through what had already been made public in medical journals, as well as video interviews in a Chinese news outlet with people believed to have the first two documented infections.

Worobey argues that the vendor’s ties to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, as well as a new analysis of the earliest hospitalized patients’ connections to the market, strongly suggest that the pandemic began there.

“In this city of 11 million people, half of the early cases are linked to a place that’s the size of a soccer field,” Worobey said. “It becomes very difficult to explain that pattern if the outbreak didn’t start at the market.”

Several experts, including one of the pandemic investigators chosen by the WHO, said Worobey’s detective work was sound and that the first known case of COVID was most likely a seafood vendor.

But some of them also said the evidence was still insufficient to decisively settle the larger question of how the pandemic began. They suggested that the virus probably infected a “patient zero” sometime before the vendor’s case and then reached critical mass to spread widely at the market. Studies of changes in the virus’s genome — including one done by Worobey himself — have suggested that the first infection happened in roughly mid-November 2019, weeks before the vendor got sick.

“I don’t disagree with the analysis,” said Jesse Bloom, a virus expert at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “But I don’t agree that any of the data are strong enough or complete enough to say anything very confidently, other than that the Huanan Seafood Market was clearly a superspreading event.”

Bloom also noted that this was not the first time the WHO report, done in collaboration with Chinese researchers, was found to contain mistakes, including errors involving early patients’ potential links to the market.

“It’s just kind of mind-boggling that in all of these cases, there keep being inconsistencies about when this happened,” he said.

‘The Mistake Lies There’

Toward the end of December 2019, doctors at several Wuhan hospitals noticed mysterious cases of pneumonia arising in people who worked at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a dank and poorly ventilated space where seafood, poultry, meat and wild animals were sold. On Dec. 30, public health officials told hospitals to report any new cases linked to the market.

Fearing a replay of severe acute respiratory syndrome, which emerged from Chinese animal markets in 2002, Chinese officials ordered the Huanan market closed, and Wuhan police officers shut it down on Jan. 1, 2020. Despite those measures, new cases multiplied through Wuhan.

Wuhan authorities said on Jan. 11, 2020, that cases had begun on Dec. 8. In February, they identified the earliest patient as a Wuhan resident with the surname Chen, who fell sick on Dec. 8 and had no link to the market.

Chinese officials and some outside experts suspected that the initially high percentage of cases linked to the market might have been a statistical fluke known as ascertainment bias. They reasoned that the Dec. 30 call from officials to report market-linked illnesses may have led doctors to overlook other cases with no such ties.

“At the beginning, we presumed that the seafood market may have the novel coronavirus,” Gao Fu, director of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said in May 2020, according to China Global Television Network. “But it now turns out that the market is one of the victims.”

By the spring of 2020, senior members of the Trump administration were promoting another scenario for the origin of the pandemic: that the virus had escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has a campus roughly 8 miles away from the Huanan market, across the Yangtze River.

In January of this year, researchers chosen by the WHO visited China and interviewed an accountant who had reportedly developed symptoms on Dec. 8. Their influential March 2021 report described him as the first known case.

But Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist at EcoHealth Alliance who was part of the WHO team, said that he was convinced by Worobey’s analysis that they had been wrong.

“That December the 8th date was a mistake,” Daszak said.

The WHO team never asked the accountant the date his symptoms began, he said. Instead, they were given the Dec. 8 date by doctors from Hubei Xinhua Hospital, who handled other early cases but did not care for Chen. “So the mistake lies there,” Daszak said.

For the WHO experts, Daszak said, the interview was a dead end: The accountant had no apparent links to an animal market, lab or a mass gathering. He told them he liked spending time on the internet and jogging, and he did not travel much. “He was as vanilla as you could get,” Daszak said.

Had the team identified the seafood vendor as the first known case, Daszak said, it would have more aggressively pursued questions like what stall she worked in and where her products came from.

This year, Daszak has been one of the strongest critics of the lab-leak theory. He and his organization, EcoHealth Alliance, have taken heat for research collaborations with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Last month, the National Institutes of Health said EcoHealth was in breach of the terms and conditions of its grant for research on coronaviruses in bats.

While the doctors at Hubei Xinhua Hospital said the onset of the accountant’s illness had been Dec. 8, a senior doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital, where Chen was treated, had told a Chinese news outlet that he developed symptoms around Dec. 16.

Asked about Chen’s case, China’s National Health Commission said it stood by comments made by Liang Wannian, the leader of the Chinese side of the WHO-China investigation who led the interview with the Hubei Xinhua Hospital doctors. Liang told a news conference in February of this year that the earliest COVID case showed symptoms on Dec. 8 and was “not connected” to the Huanan market.

Errors and Inconsistencies

In their report, the WHO experts concluded that the virus most likely spread to people from an animal spillover, but they could not confirm that the Huanan market was the source. By contrast, they said that a lab leak was “extremely unlikely.”

The report has come under fire for several errors and shortcomings. The Washington Post revealed in July that the report listed the wrong viral samples for several early patients — including the first official case — and mistakenly linked the first family cluster of cases to the Huanan market. The WHO promised to fix the errors, but they remain in the report on the organization’s website. (The organization said that it would ask the report’s authors if and how they would correct the mistakes.)

In May, two months after the report by the WHO and China was published, 18 prominent scientists, including Worobey, responded with a letter in Science complaining that the WHO team had given the lab-leak theory short shrift. Far more research was required, they argued, to determine whether one explanation was more likely than the other.

An expert on the origins of influenza and HIV, Worobey has tried to piece together the early days of the COVID pandemic. Reading a May 2020 study of early cases written by local doctors and health officials in Wuhan, he was puzzled to see a description that seemed like Chen: a 41-year-old man with no contact with the Huanan market. But the study’s authors dated his symptoms to Dec. 16, not Dec. 8.

Then Worobey found what appeared to be a second, independent source for the later date: Chen himself.

“I got a fever on the 16th, during the day,” a man identified as Chen said in a March 2020 video interview with The Paper, a publication based in Shanghai. The video indicates that Chen is a 41-year-old who worked in a company’s finance office and never went to the Huanan market. Official reports said that he lived in the Wuchang district in Wuhan, miles from the market.

The New York Times was not able to independently confirm the identity of the man in the video.

Along with his fever on Dec. 16, Chen said he felt a tightness in his chest and went to the hospital that day. “Even without any strenuous exercise, with just a tiny bit of effort, like the way I’m speaking with you now, I’d feel short of breath,” he said.

Worobey said that the medical records shown in the video might hold clues to how the WHO-China report wound up with the wrong date. One page described surgery Chen needed to have teeth removed. Another was a Dec. 9 prescription for antibiotics referring to a fever from the day before — possibly the day of the dental surgery.

On the video, Chen speculated that he might have gotten COVID “when I went to the hospital” — possibly a reference to his earlier dental surgery.

The Washington Post noted in July that the details provided by the WHO for the Dec. 8 case seemed to fit better with an entry from an online database of viral samples linked to someone who got sick on Dec. 16. In response, the WHO had said it was looking into the discrepancy.

An agency spokesperson told The New York Times it would be “difficult to comment” on the first known case because the WHO team had limited access to health data. He said it was important for investigators to keep looking for patients infected even earlier.

Murky Links

In Worobey’s revised chronology, the earliest case is not Chen but the seafood vendor, a woman named Wei Guixian, who developed symptoms around Dec. 11. (Wei said in the same video published by The Paper that her serious symptoms began Dec. 11, and she told The Wall Street Journal that she began feeling sick on Dec. 10. The WHO-China report listed a Dec. 11 case linked to the market.)

Worobey found that hospitals reported more than a dozen likely cases before Dec. 30, the day Wuhan authorities alerted doctors to be on the lookout for ties to the market.

He determined that Wuhan Central Hospital and Hubei Xinhua Hospital each recognized seven cases of unexplained pneumonia before Dec. 30 that would be confirmed as COVID-19. At each hospital, four out of seven cases were linked to the market.

By focusing on just these cases, Worobey argued, he could rule out the possibility that ascertainment bias skewed the results in favor of the market.

Still, other scientists said it’s far from certain that the pandemic began at the market.

“He has done an excellent job of reconstructing what he can from the available data, and it’s as reasonable a hypothesis as any,” said Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, a virus expert at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. “But I don’t think we’re ever going to know what’s going on, because it’s two years ago and it’s still murky.”

Alina Chan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one of the most vocal proponents of investigating a lab leak, said that only new details about earlier cases — going back to November — would help scientists trace the origin.

“The main issue this points out,” she said, “is that there’s a lack of access to data, and there are errors in the WHO-China report.”

© 2021 The New York Times Company

Catherine the Great smallpox letter echoes Russia's pandemic woes

The Empress was the first person in Russia to be vaccinated against smallpox. EVEN BEFORE PUTIN

In the 18th century letter, Empress Catherine II provided detailed instructions on how to organise an effective inoculation campaign (AFP/Dimitar DILKOFF)More

Ola CICHOWLAS
Fri, November 19, 2021

A rare letter written by Russian Empress Catherine the Great urging for her subjects to be vaccinated against smallpox has been unveiled in Moscow, as Russia's current leadership struggles with its own vaccination drive more than two centuries later.

In the letter, dated April 20, 1787 and addressed to a count, the German-born ruler who expanded Russia's territory provides detailed instructions to authorities in present-day Ukraine on how to organise an effective inoculation campaign.

Auction house MacDougall's, which specialises in Russian art, put the letter and a portrait of Catherine on public display in Moscow on Friday, before the pieces go on sale in London.

The document and portrait are estimated to have a joint worth of up to 1.2 million pounds ($1.6 million).

Held until now in an anonymous private collection, they will be shown at a Moscow gallery until November 30 and will go up for auction in London on December 1.

"One of the most important (tasks) should be the introduction of inoculation against smallpox, which, as we know, causes great harm, especially among ordinary people," Catherine wrote to Count Pyotr Rumyantsev, reportedly on a trip to Crimea.

"Such inoculation should be common everywhere," she wrote in neat Cyrillic, signing "Catherine" in large script.

She goes on to provide details on how to make vaccinations widely available, including by setting up temporary accommodation in monasteries for those who fall ill after being jabbed.

The Empress was the first person in Russia to be vaccinated against smallpox.

"In today's conditions, we should be very proud of Catherine," the auction house's co-director and Russian art expert Yekaterina MacDougall told reporters during a press viewing on Thursday.

While President Vladimir Putin says he was vaccinated with Russia's home-grown Sputnik V vaccine, he took months into the pandemic to do so -- and some have criticised him for not doing so on camera.

- 'Barbarism' not to get jab -

The Empress had organised an "unreal" propaganda campaign to encourage her subjects to be jabbed against smallpox, which was decimating populations across Europe at the time.

But, "as a very intelligent woman", MacDougall said Catherine stopped short of mandating vaccinations. "She knew that the Russian people would rebel against this."

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many Russians have also rebelled against Kremlin instructions, refusing to vaccinate themselves against the virus.

Despite repeated pleas from Putin, only 40 percent of Russians are fully vaccinated.

Catherine's letter is "unique, especially given this situation we are all in," historian Oleg Khromov told reporters via video link, adding that it was a "miracle" that it had survived.

Catherine, scared of dying of smallpox like many around her, had a doctor come from England to give her the smallpox vaccine.

Khromov said doctors used a sample from a child to inject Catherine with the disease. The youngster was later rewarded with a title.

She was then sick for some time and when she recovered, imperial authorities put out a decree saying the Empress was feeling well and urged others to follow her.

But Khromov said that despite her efforts to convince Russians to get vaccinated, "people were scared, it was new and unusual."

When France's Louis XV died of smallpox in 1774, Catherine reportedly said it was "barbarism" to die of the disease in the enlightened 18th century.

"I very much hope that one day, maybe in the near future, we can say: 'What barbarism to die of Covid in the 21st century'," Yekaterina MacDougall said.

Catherine is Russia's longest-ruling female leader, occupying the imperial throne between 1762 and 1796.

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50 migrant workers died in Qatar in 2020: report

Agence France-Presse
Posted at Nov 19 2021 

Fifty migrant workers died in Qatar last year and over 500 were seriously injured, the UN's International Labor Organization said Friday, as the Gulf nation readies for the 2022 World Cup.

The report comes amid criticism of working conditions for hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers -- including those who built the stadiums for the World Cup.

The ILO report, entitled "One is too many", said that the top cause of fatalities were falls -- with most happening at the workplace.

Qatar, which has made a series of labor reforms since being selected to host the football tournament, welcomed the report saying it "highly values" its collaboration with the ILO.

"Severe occupational injuries were most commonly caused by falls, followed by road traffic injuries, falling objects and machinery," the report read.

"Thirty (deaths) occurred pre-hospital and 20 occurred in hospital," it added, which ILO says is the most comprehensive picture ever of work-related deaths in the country.

The ILO said that there were 506 recorded severe injuries -- an average of 42 a month -- with 37,600 people suffering mild to moderate injuries.

Most of those injured came from Bangladesh, India and Nepal, and worked mainly in the construction industry.

The report said it also identified gaps in data collection.

"It's not collected in a systematic way," said Max Tunon, head of the ILO project office in Qatar, with the report calling for a "national integrated platform" to collate injury data.

"Another key recommendation is to better investigate death that hadn't been categorized as work-related -- but could be work-related," Tunon said.

Qatar welcomed the report, saying it reflected its commitment to transparency on labor rights, and was reviewing the recommendations.

"Qatar... will continue working with the ILO to ensure that labor reforms are implemented effectively, and that Qatar is continuously improving labor practices and increasing safety for all workers," a government statement read.

Qatar has issued a string of reforms to its employment regulations since being selected to host the World Cup, including introducing a $275 monthly minimum wage and simplifying the process for changing employers.

More than two million foreigners work in Qatar, many employed directly or indirectly on vast infrastructure projects for the World Cup.

Qatar hiding migrant worker deaths, says labour agency
Reuters
-November 19, 2021

Qatar has faced scrutiny over worker conditions in the run-up to it hosting the 2022 World Cup next year. (AP pic)

DOHA: Qatar is not adequately investigating and reporting worker deaths including unexplained fatalities among seemingly healthy labourers, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said today.

The small but wealthy Gulf state, where foreigners make up the majority of the population, has faced scrutiny over worker conditions in the run-up to it hosting the 2022 World Cup next November.

Data collected at government-run trauma centres and ambulances in 2020 showed 50 workers died and more than 500 were severely injured, the ILO said.

“Most were suffered by migrant workers from Bangladesh, India and Nepal, mainly in the construction industry. Falls from height and road traffic accidents were the top causes of severe injuries, followed by falling objects on worksites,” the report said.

The ILO said numbers could be higher as authorities don’t classify all work-related deaths as such, including unexplained deaths among healthy workers and heat-related fatalities.

That data gap should be addressed, with better injury investigations, Max Tunon, head of the ILO’s Qatar office, told Reuters.

In August, Amnesty International criticised Qatar for failing to investigate thousands of unexplained deaths.

A widely-reported Guardian newspaper analysis in February concluded 6,500 South Asian migrants had died in Qatar since 2010.

However, Tunon cautioned that Qatar worker death data is frequently reported without necessary nuance.

“The (Guardian’s) number includes all deaths in the migrant population … without differentiation between migrant workers and the general migrant population, let alone fatalities that resulted from occupational injuries,” the ILO said.

Qatar has introduced several labour reforms in recent years, including tougher rules designed to protect workers from heat and raising the minimum wage.

“No other country has come so far on labour reform in such a short amount of time, but we acknowledge that there is more work to be done,” the Qatar government press office said, adding it was reviewing the ILO recommendations.

U.S. charges church founder and Duterte associate with sex trafficking


Philippines President Photo courtesy of Philippines Presidential Communications Operations Office/Website

Nov. 19 (UPI) -- Federal prosecutors have charged Apollo Quiboloy, the leader of a Philippines-based megachurch and a purported friend and advisor to the archipelago nation's president, Rodrigo Duterte, of trafficking women and girls as young as 12 for his own sexual pleasure.

The Justice Department announced Thursday that Quiboloy, 71, and two administrators of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, The Name Above Every Name church have been charged with conspiring to traffic young women and girls for sex.

According to the court document, the trio -- which includes administrators Teresita Tolibas Dandan, 59 and Felina Salinas, 50 -- coerced young women and girls between 12 and 25 years of age within the church to work as personal assistants known as "pastorals" to Quiboloy, who's referred to as The Appointed Son of God.

The pastorals would prepare Quiboloy's meals, clean his residences, give him massages and travel with him internationally including to the United States, the document states, adding that they would also have scheduled sex with him in what they referred to as "night duty."

"Defendant Quiboloy and other KOJC administrators coerced pastorals into having 'night duty' -- that is, sex -- with defendant Quiboloy under the threat of physical and verbal abuse and eternal damnation by defendant Quiboloy and other KOJC administrators," it said.

The document adds that the trio told the girls and women that it was God's will and a privilege to perform night duty for Quidboloy "as well as a necessary demonstration of the pastoral's commitment to give her body to defendant Quiboloy as 'The Appointed Son of God.'"

Those who satisfactorily performed their duty would be rewarded gifts, the prosecutors said, including trips to Disneyland, flights on private jets, use of cell phones and yearly payments they called honorariums.

Prosecutors identified Dandan of Davao City, Philippines, as the international administrator of the church and an overseer of its operations in the United States and Salinas of Kapolei, Hawaii, of being responsible for collecting and securing passports and other documents from church workers in the state.

The three were among nine people named in a superseding indictment that was returned Nov. 10 but unsealed Thursday.

The superseding document adds six defendants and expands upon charges from a one-count indictment announced in February of last year charging three top church administrators of conducting a labor trafficking scheme that forced church members to solicit donations for a fraudulent charity called the Children's Joy Foundation USA.

While the bogus charity's workers raised funds purportedly to aid impoverished Filipino children, prosecutors said most of the money went to finance the lavish lives of the church leaders and finance the religion's operations.

The three defendants were arrested on accusations of bringing workers for the charity to the United States through student visas or arranging sham marriages with other U.S. citizen church employees.

The indictment announced Thursday identifies three minors who were victims of the church's sex trafficking operation and states the conspiracy began in 2002 and continued until at least 2018.

Three of the six newly added defendants to the indictment have been arrested, including Salinas. Quiboloy, who is a purported friend of Duterte, is believed to be in the Philippines.

 

Remains of 'very rare' dinosaur species discovered in Brazil

This handout picture released by the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro on January 25, 

2021, shows archaeologists recovering fossils of a previously unknown species of 

dinosaur discovered in southern Brazil.

Remains of a toothless, two-legged dinosaur species that lived some 70 million years ago has been discovered in Brazil, researchers said Thursday, calling it a "very rare" find.

The small dinosaur, which measured about a meter (three feet) long and 80 centimeters (two and a half feet) tall, is a theropod, a group whose members were almost all believed to be carnivores.

But puzzlingly, the new species—dubbed Berthasaura leopoldinae—has a beak-like mouth with no teeth.

"That was a real surprise," the paleontologists who made the find said in a statement released by Brazil's National Museum.

They published their findings in the journal Nature, calling the discovery "one of the most complete dinosaurs found from the Cretaceous period in Brazil."

"The toothless part raises doubts about what kind of diet this animal had," said researcher Geovane Alves Souza, one of the study's authors.

"It doesn't necessarily mean it didn't eat meat, though. Lots of birds, such as falcons and buzzards, eat meat with beaks. Most likely, it was an omnivore living in an inhospitable environment where it had to eat whatever it could."

The fossilized skeleton was found along a rural road in the southern state of Parana between 2011 and 2014.

Analysis revealed it was an entirely new species that lived between 70 million and 80 million years ago.

The species was named for Bertha Lutz, a revered Brazilian scientist and feminist who died in 1976, and for Maria Leopoldina, Brazil's 19th-century empress, who was a patron of the sciences.Desert-dwelling carnivorous dinosaur found in Brazil

More information: Geovane Alves de Souza et al, The first edentulous ceratosaur from South America, Scientific Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-01312-4

Journal information: Nature  , Scientific Reports 

© 2021 AFP

'Squid Game' director Hwang Dong-hyuk: World is facing 'limits of capitalism'

By Thomas Maresca

Hwang Dong-hyuk, director of the hit Netflix show "Squid Game," said at a forum on Thursday that he felt 21st-century capitalism had reached its limits, a concept he explored in his series. Photo courtesy of Netflix

SEOUL, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Hwang Dong-hyuk, director of the chart-topping Netflix series Squid Game, said Thursday he made the show to raise questions about a modern system of capitalism that makes many people "feel like they are standing on a cliff every day."

"In the 21st century, I thought that maybe we were seeing the limits of capitalism," Hwang said at the Seoul Digital Forum, a one-day event held in the South Korean capital. "Everybody is now in this huge competition, and once you fail at the competition, then you cannot ever recover from it. You're pushed more and more to the bottom of society."

Squid Game, which is the most-viewed series ever on the streaming giant, centers around 456 people playing a series of children's games for a $40 million cash prize -- with death as the consequence for losing.

Hwang said the show's protagonist, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), is left asking questions about who is behind the cruel game, and why it is being played.

"I wanted to ask the same question to all of us," the 50-year-old director said. "Not just in Korea, but in other capitalist societies, to everybody living in the 21st century experiencing so much pain and enduring difficulties...Who has created this system of competition, who has pushed us into a system that makes us feel like we are standing on the edge of a cliff every day?"

The nine-episode series, which premiered in September, swept to the top of the Netflix charts in all 83 countries where it was available. Squid Game was viewed for more than 1.65 billion hours over its first 28 days, according to a new tracker launched by the company this week, more than twice as much as its nearest competitor, the steamy period drama Bridgerton.

Named after a real-life Korean children's game, Squid Game focuses on desperate, debt-ridden characters and those living on the margins of society, including a factory worker from Pakistan and a North Korean defector. While many details of the show are specific to South Korea, Hwang said he consciously tried to depict scenarios that would resonate all over the world.

"Immigrant workers, the elderly, the unemployed -- these characters represent the underdogs, not just in Korea," Hwang said. "[They are] representatives of the marginalized groups that other countries can relate to."

The director also revealed some personal details behind the hit series, including which Squid Game competitor he most closely identifies with.

Hwang said he saw parts of himself in the two main characters: Gi-hun, who strives to hold onto his humanity throughout the brutal game, and Cho Sang-woo (Park Hae-soo), a disgraced businessman who is ultimately willing to do anything to survive. It was the more ruthless Sang-woo that Hwang believed most people, including himself, would emulate if forced to play the game.

"Sang-woo is not a bad guy, but a realistic guy, and he is the closest to people of today," Hwang said. "In that sense, I think I'd be closest to Sang-woo once I was in the game."

The director confirmed last week that a second season of Squid Game is on the way. On Thursday, he also teased what social issues are on his mind for his next project.

"For my next work, I want to focus on the aging population and the conflict between generations," Hwang said. "I'm interested in those issues, so I may want to talk about that."

Biden meets Canada's Trudeau, Mexico's AMLO in 1st 'three amigos' summit in 5 years


United States President Joe Biden (C) walks with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (R) and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (L) as they arrive for the North American Leaders' Summit on Thursday. Photo by Chris Kleponis/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 18 (UPI) -- President Joe Biden on Thursday hosted Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador at the White House for the first North American summit in five years.

The leaders were all physically present at the White House as they individually met with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss a range of issues, such as trade and COVID-19.

"As leaders, we share an innate understanding that our diversity is an enormous strength, that we are best able to reach our potential when we unleash the full range of our people's talents," said Biden.

Speaking alongside Trudeau, Biden described the partnership between the United States and Canada as "one of the easiest relationships you can have as an American president and one of the best."

United States Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a balcony of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House on ThursdayKleponis/UPI | License Photo

RELATED Canadian PM Trudeau arrives in U.S., will push Congress on electric vehicle tax rebate

Biden hailed the work the two nations have done together on climate change, COVID-19, infrastructure and economic recovery.

"We see an opportunity not only to enhance the prospects of a better life for people around the world, but we can do it by the Build Back Better world, Build Back Better effort -- that we can provide for the health needs as well," he said.

Trudeau said early this week that the administration's "buy American" strategy stifles economic cooperation with Canada.

"It's an issue that I've already underlined very often with President Biden and it will certainly be part of important conversations that we'll have later this week," Trudeau said, according to The New York Times.

Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau (L) and President Joe Biden meet in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. Pool Photo by Doug Mills/UPI | License Photo

Asked about similar concerns expressed by the prime minister over a tax credit for electric vehicles included in his Build Back Better Act, Biden said the two leaders would discuss the issue, noting the plan has not yet been approved by Congress.

"I don't know what we're going to be dealing with, quite frankly, when it comes out of legislation. So, we'll talk about it then," he said.

Biden was expected to raise border issues with Mexico after thousands of Haitian refugees traveled through Mexico to cross the border in Texas in September.

United States Vice President Kamala Harris (L) meets with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the Vice President's Ceremonial Office of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Photo by Ken Cedeno/UPI | License Photo

Speaking with Obrador, Biden said he viewed the United States and Mexico as equals, while Obrador praised Biden's plan to provide citizenship for more than 11 million undocumented migrants living in the United States.

"President Biden, no President in the history of the United States has expressed, as you have, such a clear and certain commitment to improve the situation of the migrants. And thus, I wish to express my acknowledgment," he said.

Obrador also called on the two nations to accept immigrants in order to ease their labor issues.

"We should no longer reject immigrants because, in order to grow, you need workforce -- the workforce that you do not necessarily have -- nor in the U.S., nor in Canada," he said. "Why not study the workforce demand, the labor demand and open the migrant flow?"

MIGRANTS CAN'T GET TO CANADA BECAUSE THE USA SHUT THE MEXICO BORDER DOWN

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets Wednesday with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Photo by Tasos Katopodis/UPI

Biden on Thursday also said the United States was "considering" a boycott of the 2020 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

The three were also expected to affirm the Trump-era trade agreement that supports labor rights and pledge to share COVID-19 vaccines with poorer Latin America and Caribbean countries.

Thursday's meeting was the first "three amigos" summit since former President Barack Obama held one in 2016. Former President Donald Trump never staged the summit during his time in office.

"North America is a platform that is critical to both our domestic economic success and -- as well as a partnership that can play a really critical role in resolving regional and global challenges," a senior administration official told reporters.

"What you can expect ... is that as we seek to deepen and expand our economic cooperation and security partnership with both countries, the president will also have separate bilateral meetings with each leader."


Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau (L) and President Joe Biden meet in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday, ahead of the two meeting with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Pool Photo by Doug Mills/UPI | License Photo

 A major Canadian city risks turning into a lake
Tristin Hopper 1 day ago


A major Canadian city faces the very real prospect of reverting to its prior status as a lake . Although the heavy rains that lashed B.C. earlier this week have largely ceased, in Abbotsford they’ve caused the overwhelming of a local pumping station that authorities warned Tuesday could prompt a “catastrophic” rush of water that would pose a “significant risk to life .” Much of Abbotsford sits in the footprint of a former lake that was drained in the 1920s and flooding has compromised the usual defences that keep the area drained. One of the more heartbreaking aspects of an evacuation order issued Tuesday night was the requirement for farmers to abandon their livestock ; a directive likely to result in death for tens of thousands of Fraser Valley cattle and horses.

 

B.C. Provincial Archives A 1922 photo of Sumas Lake, a body of water drained in the late 1920s to make way for much of modern Abbotsford.