Protest at Slovenian care homes over government 'neglect'

AFP: 24/04/2020
 

Employees at the care home in Domzale staged their protest to demand better conditions while accusing the government of neglecting the elderly Jure Makovec AFP

Domžale (Slovenia) (AFP)

Hundreds of employees from care homes in Slovenia protested on Friday over what they say is government neglect of the elderly and demanded more support to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

The scene at one care home in the town of Domzale, ten kilometres (six miles) north of the capital Ljubljana, was repeated at dozens of sites across the country as care staff came out for around 15 minutes to articulate their grievances with the government.

One of the employees at the home read out a statement from the Slovenian Care Homes' Association stating: "We will not remain silent while (the authorities), using the coronavirus as a cover, try to transform care homes into cheap nursing hospitals".

The statement added care homes in Slovenia had entered the epidemic unprepared and with all their accommodation at full capacity while being understaffed and left to cope with the coronavirus by themselves.

Shortly after Slovenia declared an epidemic in mid-March, a new centre-right government was appointed which moved to implemente a strict lockdown.

The country has been successful in curbing the spread of the infection overall but a number of care homes have been severely hit.

According to the latest available figures, as of April 19 care home residents represented 58 out of the 80 coronavirus patients who have died in Slovenia.

Friday's protest -- backed by over 70 care homes all over Slovenia -- was called to demand a clearer protocol for dealing with infections, including the hospitalisation of all elderly care home residents who test positive for the novel coronavirus.

The health ministry said the protest was "politically" motivated and added the removal of all care home residents infected with coronavirus would be "debatable from an ethical and moral point of view".

The protest comes a day after the public RTV Slovenija TV station ran a report accusing Economy Minister Zdravko Pocivalsek of wrongdoing and abuse of power in relation to the acquisition of masks and protective equipment for hospitals and care homes.

Pocivalsek has rejected the allegations, insisting that he acted in the best interests of the state and to bridge the initial lack of protective equipment.

© 2020 AFP

Transgender players kick down doors in Argentina football



Issued on: 24/04/2020 - 23:34Modified: 24/04/2020 - 23:32

Mara Gomez trains with her team Villa San Carlos in La Plata, Argentina, on February 14, 2020 JUAN MABROMATA AFP

La Plata (Argentina) (AFP)

Out on the pitch, they finally can feel like themselves.

In addition to the sheer joy that football brings them, Mara Gomez and Marcos Rojo have the extra satisfaction of knowing that after a long and difficult journey, they are blazing a trail for transgender players in Argentina.

Tall, slim and with her hair tied back in a ponytail, Gomez plays for the team of Villa San Carlos in La Plata, 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Buenos Aires.

At 23, she aims to become the first transgender player in the new women's professional league in her native country.

"I suffered a lot from discrimination, exclusion, verbal abuse in the street and in school. Football was like therapy for me," Gomez told AFP.

She started playing at 15, encouraged by neighbors.

In the women's league in La Plata, Gomez distinguished herself as a leading goal scorer in the past two seasons.

That prompted Villa San Carlos, in last place in the women's professional league, to seek to recruit her.

"She's quick and is very good at kicking on target," said trainer Juan Cruz Vitale.

"Unlike what people and the media were thinking, she isn't that strong. I have a number of girls who are stronger and even though she's fast, I have girls who are faster," he noted.

But Vitale added: "She's smart and learns quickly. And she gets goals, which is what we were lacking."

The club is in the process of submitting its application to the Argentine Football Association to sign Gomez up, once the current coronavirus lockdown ends.

"There is a law on gender identity that they can't get around. We are convinced she is going to be a star," the coach said.

Argentina led Latin America by passing a gender identity law in 2012, which allowed Gomez to officially change her gender on her national identity card when she turned 18.

"I am very happy to know that as a society we are doing a little more, we are opening up minds," she said as she contemplated the prospect of becoming a professional player in a country that has produced some of the world's best footballers, including Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi.

- 'Playing with the men' -

Rojo, 20, started playing this year as a center forward with the club Union del Suburbio in Gualeguaychu in the northeast of the country, the first time he has played on a men's team.

Two years ago, he changed his name and gender on his national identity card, and the team had no qualms about signing him.

The league in the province of Entre Rios will issue his membership as soon as footballing activities restart.

In Rojo's living room hangs a picture of him at his 15th birthday party, when he still officially identified as a girl. His family has given him its full support during his transition.

"I wanted to make the change in my official papers because I had always wanted to play with the men. Since I was little, I felt like I was one of them," Rojo said.

"Football was a big step for me because it was the thing I was always looking for, what I wanted," he said. "The support of a team for this change means a lot."

Rojo said men's football is "much more demanding."

"The boys are all good kickers. For me, it will be a huge achievement if I manage to play in the premier division at some point."

- 'Right to play' -

Sebastian Rajoy, Union del Suburbio's president, said that "everyone has the right to play sports."

"Clubs on the margins are the ones offering the opportunity. Someone has to take the first step, and in this case it is us," he said.

In this early stage of incorporating transgender players, Gomez and Rojo are aware they could be asked to submit to a hormone test before they are fully accepted into the leagues.

"The discussion is linked to the dilemma between biology and respect for people's rights," said Ayelen Pujol, a specialist in gender identity in sports.

© 2020 AFP

Anger over the removal of pro-Kurdish mayors in Turkey
THEY BEAT ERDOGAN'S HAND PICKED CHOICES
 25/04/2020 AFP

Anger and disappointment among residents is clear in the southeastern Turkish city of Mardin where the government replaced the popular mayor BULENT KILIC AFP

Mardin (Turkey) (AFP)

The mix of fury and disappointment among residents was palpable inside a cafe in the southeastern Turkish city of Mardin after the government replaced the popular mayor with a trustee.

One year on from local elections, 40 out of 65 municipalities won by the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) are now under the control of government-appointed trustees.

In Mardin, the HDP's Ahmet Turk, won 56.2 percent of the vote in March 2019.

But in August he was one of the first, along with those in nearby Diyarbakir and Van, to be removed and replaced by the government.

Six months after the move, residents in Mardin, where the governor now runs the city of over 800,000 people, were especially critical of a lack of service and development.

"No one bothers, no one wants to do anything, and no one raises their voice. We're speaking to you now, who knows what will happen to us tomorrow?" cafe manager Firat Kayatar told AFP during a visit late February.

"They may as well not hold elections in the southeast because they had two elections and after both, they appointed trustees," Kayatar, who lives in the old city, said.

"No one listens anyway," one of the cafe's customers, Abdulaziz, 57, chipped in. "We can't complain to anyone. (The governor) brings bananas but we need bread."

Another man nearby who did not give his name said young people went to university but were unable to find a job.

"This is the problem Mardin faces too," he says.

The party described the mayors' removals as an "attack" on Kurds but the government has accused the HDP of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Kurds make up around 20 percent of Turkey's overall population.

The HDP accused Ankara last month of making it "even harder for the Kurds to fight the coronavirus" through the "repression of Kurdish democratic institutions, their municipalities in particular."

Such actions are not new. Ankara removed 95 HDP mayors after the party won 102 municipalities in 2014.

"When it comes to the HDP, just slapping trumped-up terror charges is the easiest way to go and it's just a political attempt to destroy their legitimacy," said Turkey director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) Emma Sinclair-Webb.

- 'PKK representatives' -

The chairman in Mardin for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party defended the government's actions, accusing the PKK of using the HDP mayors to obtain control.

"In fact these mayors were Qandil representatives," Faruk Kilic said, referring to where the PKK leadership and rear bases are located in a mountainous region in Iraq.

"None of the mayors made statements of their own independent will," Kilic added, a claim which the HDP strongly denies.

The Turkish government has repeatedly accused the HDP mayors of using the municipalities' money to support the PKK, or hiring relatives of PKK militants.

The interior ministry claimed some mayors attended political rallies, demonstrations and even funerals of PKK militants.

The HDP says 21 of its mayors are behind bars.

The PKK has been waging an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, and the group is blacklisted as a terror organisation by Ankara and its Western allies.

The government's aim was to "collapse any distinction between the HDP, a legal party playing by the rules of the game in parliament and democratically-elected representatives from this party, and an armed organisation," HRW's Sinclair-Webb said.

- Economic motives -

Veteran Kurdish politician Turk was acquitted in February in one case cited against him when he was removed as mayor of Mardin the first time in 2016.

The AKP's Kilic said if mayors were later acquitted on the charges against them, they would return to their posts, but added "there's evidence against many" charged.

Eren Keskin, of the Ankara-based Human Rights Association (IHD), believed there was an "economic" motive to the dismissals.

"The first municipalities they appointed a trustee for -- Diyarbakir, Mardin and Van -- are provinces that are really open to economic development," Keskin said.

Her claim was supported by HDP deputy chairman Saruhan Oluc, who said the government "keeps itself strong through the income and profit from local administrations".

Oluc accused the government of handing out money and favours to their allies as well as companies and foundations close to them through the municipalities' coffers.

© 2020 AFP

Online mystics cash in during Myanmar virus lockdownASTROLOGERS ARE NOT MYSTICS NOR ARE THEY PSYCHICS

Issued on: 25/04/2020 - 

Myanmar has so far recorded 144 confirmed infections and five deaths, but experts say the lack of testing means the real number is likely far higher Ye Aung THU AFP

Yangon (AFP)

Myanmar lawyer Thiri had been excited about her wedding and new job this year -- before the coronavirus threw both into doubt. With the stars very much unaligned, she turned to an astrology app for help.

For a fee of a few dollars, Thiri's online mystic advised the 26-year-old to carry out kind deeds around her home, from donating flowers to feeding animals on the street, to ensure good karma.

"I'm going to follow all her advice," Thiri tells AFP, praising the Min Thein Kha app for its convenience at a time when the doors to her usual real-life astrologer at a downtown Yangon temple are securely shut for the city's lockdown.

The Min Thein Kha platform -- the only one of its kind in Myanmar -- was launched two years ago. Its creators claim to have two million registered customers and 50,000 daily active users.

Users log on, select one of the 23 astrologers profiled on the app and submit a question, paying in advance by bank or mobile phone transfer with the promise of an audio file reply within 48 hours.

Uncertainty caused by the coronavirus outbreak has seen the number of questions rocket by 50 percent, says Bagan Innovation Technology, the company behind the virtual fortune-telling service.

Astrology has long been firmly intertwined with Myanmar's Buddhist beliefs, and few big decisions are made without a soothsayer consultation.

Former military rulers kept the nation largely offline and Min Thein Kha is part of a nascent digital community scrambling to catch up.

The app is named after one of the country's most prestigious fortune tellers, whose family and devoted disciples made sure his legacy lived on after his death in 2008.

"We've scaled up the personalised experience," says co-founder Ricky Thet.

"I wanted to show digitising isn't only for new creations but can also improve existing traditions."

- 'Tech revolution' -

Requests for help with the naming of babies and businesses or choosing auspicious wedding and housewarming dates have been replaced with worries about work and fears for the health of family members as the deadly virus spreads in Myanmar.

The underdeveloped country has so far recorded 144 confirmed infections and five deaths, but experts say the lack of testing means the real number is likely far higher.

Love is another recurring theme on the app.

Returning migrant workers ask after sweethearts left behind in Thailand, while other customers come laden with concerns for husbands or lovers working on oil rigs or as sailors, says Thet.

"We can help lift people out of depression and bring back their self-confidence, their hope and future," says 70-year-old astrologer Win Zaw, a brother of the late Min Thein Kha.

He has been in the fortune-telling business for 30 years and calls the switch to online soothsaying a "technological revolution".

But he admits there are downsides.

In a face-to-face session, a trained eye can pick up valuable clues from a client's posture, where they place their hands or how they wear a hairpin, and so distance predictions are sometimes not as accurate, he explains.

Fellow astrologer Htun Aung Lu, 45, claims he foresaw the 2014 Malaysian air crash and correctly predicted who would become Myanmar's president after the last election.

In these troubled times, he offers grounds for optimism, forecasting the pandemic will stabilise in May before some "good news about a vaccine between 2nd and 12th June".

© 2020 AFP

Saudi Arabia abolishes flogging



Issued on: 25/04/2020 - 10:20Modified: 25/04/2020 - 10:18

The most high-profile instance of flogging in Saudi Arabia in recent years was the case of blogger Raif Badawi who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes in 2014 TOBIAS SCHWARZ AFP

RAIF IS A CANADIAN RESIDENT, MARRIED TO A CANADIAN
#FREERAIF

Riyadh (AFP)

Saudi Arabia has abolished flogging as a punishment, the supreme court announced, hailing the latest in a series of "human rights advances" made by the king and his powerful son.

Court-ordered floggings in Saudi Arabia -- sometimes extending to hundreds of lashes -- have long drawn condemnation from human rights groups.

But they say the headline legal reforms overseen by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman have brought no let-up in the conservative Islamic kingdom's crushing of dissent, including through the use of the death penalty.

The Saudi supreme court said the latest reform was intended to "bring the kingdom into line with international human rights norms against corporal punishment".

Previously the courts could order the flogging of convicts found guilty of offences ranging from extramarital sex and breach of the peace to murder.

In future, judges will have to choose between fines and/or jail sentences, or non-custodial alternatives like community service, the court said in a statement seen by AFP on Saturday.

The most high-profile instance of flogging in recent years was the case of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes in 2014 for "insulting" Islam.

He was awarded the European parliament's Sakharov human rights prize the following year.

The abolition of corporal punishment in Saudi Arabia comes just days after the kingdom's human rights record was again in the spotlight following news of the death from a stroke in custody of leading activist Abullah al-Hamid, 69.

Hamid was a founding member of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) and was sentenced to 11 years in jail in March 2013, campaigners said.

He was convicted on multiple charges, including "breaking allegiance" to the Saudi ruler, "inciting disorder" and seeking to disrupt state security, Amnesty International said.

Criticism of Saudi Arabia's human rights record has grown since King Salman named his son Prince Mohammed crown prince and heir to the throne in June 2017.

The October 2018 murder of vocal critic Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and the increased repression of dissidents at home have overshadowed the prince's pledge to modernise the economy and society.

© 2020 

World leaders launch push for Covid-19 vaccine – but US stays away
Yuan Qiong, senior legal and policy advisor at Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Access Campaign welcomed the pledges but "There shouldn't be any patent monopoly and profiteering out of this pandemic" 


Issued on: 25/04/2020
Text by:NEWS WIRES|
Video by:FRANCE 24

World leaders pledged on Friday to accelerate work on tests, drugs and vaccines against COVID-19 and to share them around the globe, but the United States did not take part in the launch of the World Health Organization (WHO) initiative.

French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa were among those who joined a video conference to launch what the WHO billed as a "landmark collaboration" to fight the pandemic.

The aim is to speed development of safe and effective drugs, tests and vaccines to prevent, diagnose and treat COVID-19, the lung disease caused be the novel coronavirus - and ensure equal access to treatments for rich and poor.

"We are facing a common threat which we can only defeat with a common approach," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom

Ghebreyesus said as he opened the virtual meeting.

"Experience has told us that even when tools are available they have not been equally available to all. We cannot allow that to happen."

During the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009, there was criticism that distribution of vaccines was not equitable as wealthier countries were able to purchase more.

"We must make sure that people who need them get them," said Peter Sands, head of the Global Fund to Fight on AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. "The lessons from AIDS must be learned. Too many millions died before anti-retroviral medicines were made widely accessible."

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that the objective at a global pledging effort on May 4 would be to raise 7.5 billion euros ($8.10 billion) to ramp up work on prevention, diagnostics and treatment.

"This is a first step only, but more will be needed in the future," von der Leyen told the conference.

'Common fight'

Leaders from Asia, the Middle East and the Americas also joined the videoconference, but several big countries did not participate, including China, India and Russia.

A spokesman for the U.S. mission in Geneva had earlier told Reuters that the United States would not be involved.

"Although the United States was not in attendance at the meeting in question, there should be no doubt about our continuing determination to lead on global health matters, including the current COVID crisis," he said by email.

"We remain deeply concerned about the WHO's effectiveness, given that its gross failures helped fuel the current pandemic," he later said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has lambasted the WHO as being slow to react to the outbreak and being "China-centric" and announced a suspension of funding.

Tedros has steadfastly defended the WHO's handling of the pandemic and repeatedly committed to conducting a post-pandemic evaluation, as the agency does with all crises.

Macron, Merkel, Ramaphosa, and Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez were among those voicing strong support to WHO.

Macron urged all G7 and G20 countries to get behind the initiative, adding: "And I hope we'll manage to reconcile around this joint initiative both China and the U.S., because this is about saying 'the fight against COVID-19 is a common human good and there should be no division in order to win this battle'."

Merkel said: "This concerns a global public good, to produce this vaccine and to distribute it in all parts of the world."

Ramaphosa, chairman of the African Union, warned that the continent - with its generally poor standards of healthcare - was "extremely vulnerable to the ravages of this virus and is in need of support".

Vaccine trials

More than 2.7 million people have been infected with COVID-19 and nearly 190,000 have died from it since the new coronavirus emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, according to a Reuters tally.


Daily news briefReceive essential international news every morningSubscribe

"As new diagnostics, treatments and vaccines become available, we have a responsibility to get them out equitably with the understanding that all lives have equal value," said Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Gates Foundation, which was WHO's second largest donor last year.

More than 100 potential COVID-19 vaccines are being developed, including six already in clinical trials, said Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of the GAVI vaccine alliance, a public-private partnership that leads immunisation campaigns in poor countries.

"We need to ensure that there are enough vaccines for everyone, we are going to need global leadership to identify and prioritise vaccine candidates," he told a Geneva news briefing.

Yuan Qiong, senior legal and policy advisor at Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) Access Campaign welcomed the pledges but called for concrete steps. "There shouldn't be any patent monopoly and profiteering out of this pandemic," she told Reuters.

(REUTERS)

CANADA 
The Age of the Airship May Be Dawning Again

Dirigibles ruled the skies once. Can they make a comeback?

BY JUSTIN LING FEBRUARY 29, 2020

FOREIGN POLICY ILLUSTRATION/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/GETTY IMAGES/OCEANSKY

You might think that the tragic end of the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 marked a clear end to the airship era. The famous footage of the German airship plunging in flames became the overwhelming image of a seemingly doomed technology.

You would be wrong.

For decades, the Goodyear fleet of blimps have been the only working airships most people had a chance of seeing in real life. But a handful of companies are looking to bring back the spectacular dirigibles.

The government of Quebec will be pitching 30 million Canadian dollars (23 million in U.S. dollars) to Flying Whales, a French company, to start building its massive zeppelins. The company has only been around since 2012, and it hasn’t gotten any of its airships off the ground—yet. The plan has been derided by opposition parties, not as a flying whale but as a white elephant.

But cargo airships may actually make a tremendous amount of sense. They are relatively cheap, they can carry enormous amounts of material, and they emit significantly less greenhouse gas than other modes of transportation.

The compelling arguments for dirigible travel put these airships in a class of technology, with nuclear power and lunar colonization, that is experiencing an unexpected modern renaissance.

Flying Whales’ LCA60T model, according to the company, will be able to carry up to 60 metric tons of goods, travel up to 62 miles per hour, and serve remote areas with ease. If all goes according to plan, the company hopes to get the first airship off the ground in 2022.

There’s still a healthy dose of skepticism around the company’s lofty promises. Its main backers, prior to Quebec’s financial endorsement, have been the French National Forest Agency and the Chinese government.

Flying Whales’ website is enigmatic, and the section of the site explaining the airships’ structure isn’t particularly helpful—the description of its structure reads “what else… – Hi George :)” while if you’re looking for details on their “safe lifting gas” it reads, somewhat snarkily, “helium obviously.”

It’s that last point that might make the whole idea completely untenable: There might just not be enough helium left.

The R-100 airship, circa 1920. THEODOR HORYDCZAK/U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
A slow, steady return

While the most famous airship may be the Hindenburg, it was hardly the first—nor was it the last.

For a time in the first half of the 20th century, airships were fashionable, practical, and futuristic. But their calamitous track record ultimately soured the public.

Less remembered, perhaps because its downing was never immortalized on an album cover, was the English airship R101. The dirigible was dubbed the “socialist airship,” as it was designed and built by the United Kingdom’s state aviation department. The R101 was constructed as part of a state-sponsored competition, pitting government engineers against private-sector workers. The “capitalist airship,” the R100, was designed and constructed by a scrappy engineering team on a remote airbase in Yorkshire.

The opulent socialist airship was rushed to flight, even amid a variety of problems. It took off, en route to British India, just as its capitalist competitor set off for Canada. The government airship sagged and crashed into the French countryside just a day into its voyage, killing 48 of the 54 onboard—including the aviation minister—while the private airship conducted a celebrated tour of Montreal and Toronto before heading back to London. (“Everybody’s talking about the R100,” goes the chorus of a song from the iconic francophone Canadian folk singer La Bolduc.)

Most airships of the day took off using the highly flammable hydrogen—thanks mostly to an American monopoly on helium, its nonflammable alternative. Washington had banned the export of the gas, in part over fears of the military uses of the airships, which had been used in the world’s first air raids on London during World War I.

The helium-buoyant American ships weren’t always safe, either. The USS Akron carried out several successful flights across the continent, but it was ultimately pushed down by strong winds in 1933 and crashed into the Atlantic, killing 73 people on board and two rescuers.

As U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt remarked after the Akron went down, “ships can be replaced, but the Nation can ill afford to lose such men.” Eventually, governments stopped replacing the ships.

The USS Akron over New York City in the early 1930s. U.S. NAVY/INTERIM ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGESBut it was the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, made famous by the newsreel footage of the zeppelin bursting into a ball of flames as it tried to dock at the Lakehurst air base in New Jersey, that really scuttled the industry. The United States’ decision to lift its helium ban after the crash did little to revive faith in airships. The U.S. Navy used its small fleet for anti-submarine warfare and reconnaissance in World War II, but the airship industry was effectively dead.

It would stage a comeback, in a limited way, some decades later, when Goodyear opted for nonrigid airships—blimps—for its advertising campaigns. Airship Industries came around in the 1980s, promising a return of the dirigible. Its ships, like Goodyear’s ships, had no rigid structure inside, meaning they could carry only limited cargo and no more than 14 passengers. The airships of earlier in the century had immense metal structures inside, allowing them to carry more. These new nonrigid ships were made famous by Bond villains, Pink Floyd, and, later, by Ron Paul supporters.

Fame aside, the blimps had little use for commercial air travel or cargo transport. The niche purpose of the blimps meant Airship Industries was hemorrhaging money, and it shut down by the end of the decade.

As with many other commercially nonviable products, airships later found a home in the U.S. military. There was a hope that the dirigibles, which are capable of taking off and staying aloft for prolonged periods of time, would be ideal for persistent aerial surveillance.

The contractor Northrop Grumman was awarded a $517 million contract to build a surveillance airship in 2010, and it managed to build a successful prototype in 2012. The contract was axed a year later. Raytheon was awarded nearly $3 billion for its model, which tethered the airship to a mooring and allowed for constant surveillance of a wide area for a month at a time.

One of Raytheon’s spy blimps was tested in Maryland, where it hung eerily in the sky above suburban homes. In 2015, it broke loose from its mooring and drifted haplessly through Pennsylvania, trailed by fighter jets, before crashing in a field. Raytheon’s hopes of building more surveillance dirigibles crashed with it.

A similar program in Afghanistan, which became notorious among Kabul residents, saw even worse results. The tethers that kept the Big Brother balloons in place were notorious for snaring helicopter blades—one incident killed five American and British service members.

An aerial visualization of the Ocean Sky airship. KIRT X THOMSEN


A commercial appeal?

The market for military airships and commercial blimps remained limited thanks to past failures, though not dead entirely.

The cruise company OceanSky is forging ahead with plans to send a passenger airship to the Arctic, using a ship originally designed under the U.S. military’s surveillance program, with a planned voyage in 2023.

Many are banking that the real future of airships, however, is in cargo.

In the vast expanses of the Canadian north, there has long been a need for reliable transportation. Many communities are only accessible by road when winter rolls around and the ground and lakes are solid enough to drive on, if they are accessible by road at all. That means basic goods need to be stockpiled when the weather is cold or flown in by cargo plane—never mind supplies to build long-term infrastructure. Many of these remote communities are reliant on gas generators and are facing shortages of reliable housing stock.

The airships also promise to be a boon for economic development, if they work.

In 2016, a junior mining company in Quebec inked an agreement with U.K.-based Straightline Aviation to use a design being developed by Lockheed Martin to haul rare earth minerals from a remote open-pit mine—the road that was initially planned would have cut across a caribou migration path. That plan went belly-up when the minerals company went bankrupt, although Straightline is forging ahead with plans to offer commercial and tourism flights.

The interior of the Ocean Sky airship. HYBRID AIR VEHICLES LTD AND DESIGN Q

Stranded resources and communities are a policy concern in Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Russia, and elsewhere. Flights are expensive and carbon dioxide-intensive, and they require airport infrastructure. Shipping is more viable as Arctic ice melts, but that often requires deep-water ports and can have damaging impacts on marine life. It’s part of why people keep coming back to airships.

That’s the niche Quebec Premier François Legault is hoping Flying Whale can fill in the province’s remote north.

It’s why the French forestry sector is interested in the ships as well. The promise of lifting lumber from far-off places earned the company praise from French President Emmanuel Macron as one of the “industries of the future.”

The opportunity is also caveated with an array of risks and problems. There is no guarantee that the airships will even fly in the frigid north—Le Journal de Quebec reported that the airships will need a significant amount of water, which may be hard to come by amid Arctic temperatures.

Quebec seems unphased.

“If we don’t take risks, we go nowhere,” Legault told reporters earlier in February. Quebec’s investment earned it a 25 percent stake in the project, which in turn brought derision from opposition politicians—one questioned whether the government was inhaling helium when it made the decision.

The money puts Quebec on par with China in the project—Beijing put in $4.9 million for its 24.9 percent stake, through the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China General and the Ministry of Science and Technology. China has plenty of Arctic ambitions itself—and vast distances to cover in its underpopulated west.

The Hindenburg disaster in Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937. FINE ART IMAGES/HERITAGE IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES


A lack of lift

There’s one massive drawback for the airship industry: The world is almost out of helium.

In recent years, helium prices have skyrocketed as supply has dwindled. Far from just being used in party balloons and blimps, the gas is necessary for MRI scanners and rocket engines. Stockpiles of helium often escape, and are wasted, during other extractive projects. While there have been shortages before, helium is a nonrenewable resource and can take an enormously long time to generate—estimates suggest the earth’s supply could be gone this century.

If the world runs out of helium, it’s not clear that there’s a good alternative. The dangers of hydrogen are well established, and the gas behind the Hindenburg disaster is unlikely to make an air travel comeback.

Hypothetically, there could be an airship lifted by a vacuum—that is, by material that can contain nothing at all inside but withstand the atmospheric pressure from the outside. It is, at this point, science fiction, although NASA has posited that some kind of vacuum airship could eventually be used to explore the surface of Mars.

Airship companies seem satisfied with helium for the time being. OceanSky cruises has a reassuring FAQ on its website, telling those looking to join them on an airship trip to the North Pole that 600 of their cruise ships “would account for just 1% of annual helium consumption” and that each ship “stays filled with the same helium as from its inception, less a tiny annual leakage.”

If these airships can take off despite carrying a century of failed projects, a lack of its necessary resource, and economic justifications that still seem more wishful thinking than reality—it might just be the return of the zeppelin.


Justin Ling is a journalist based in Toronto.

FOREIGN POLICY MAGAZINE

Coronavirus: How do biosafety laboratories work?

Biosafety laboratories allows scientists to investigate highly pathogenic viruses, to develop diagnostic procedures and to create vaccines. 

Multilevel safety systems prevent pathogens from escaping into the environment.

AIDS, MERS, SARS, avian flu, swine flu, Hendra, Lujo, Marburg, Lassa, Nipah, Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Ebola — in the past decades, barely a year has passed without a new pathogen being discovered that can cause serious illness in humans.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), hitherto unknown viruses and a string of new infectious diseases that are transmissible from animals to humans (zoonoses) could become a global threat to health.

Special laboratories are needed to identify the respective pathogens as quickly and reliably as possible and to develop methods for diagnostics, therapy and vaccine production. Rapid and reliable diagnostics under high-security conditions are also absolutely essential when a bioterrorist attack is suspected.

Four biosafety levels

The respective pathogens are divided into four biosafety levels (BSL) or pathogen/protection levels.

At the lowest level of biosafety, precautions may consist in regular hand-washing and minimal protective equipment. At higher biosafety levels, stricter requirements are stipulated that the premises, equipment and work procedures must fulfill when handling these pathogens.

Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) is commonly used for research and diagnostic work involving various microbes that can be transmitted by aerosols and/or cause severe disease. Surprising as it might seem, the coronaviruses SARS-COV-1, MERS-CoV and the new SARS-COV-2 are currently classified only as BSL-3.

Ebola research in a high-security laboratory

Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) is the highest level of biosafety precautions. It is appropriate for work with agents that could easily be aerosol-transmitted within the laboratory and cause severe to fatal diseases in humans, and for which there are no available vaccines or treatments.

These include a number of viruses such as the Ebola virus, the Marburg virus, the Lassa virus and the virus that causes Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever. Other pathogens handled at BSL-4 include the Nipah virus, the Hendra virus and some flaviviruses.

Worldwide research in a few laboratories

Because of the complex protective measures involved, there are only around 50 high-security laboratories working at BSL-4 worldwide. Around a dozen of them are in the US, followed by the United Kingdom with almost 10 and Germany with four.

There are two high-security BSL-4 laboratories in the People's Republic of China, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which made the headlines as a possible source of the novel coronavirus SARS CoV-2.

Read more: Did coronavirus really originate in a Chinese laboratory?

How safe is a BSL-4 Laboratory?

BSL-4 laboratories are designed to diagnose and investigate life-threatening pathogens without endangering the staff or the population at large.

For this reason, such high-security laboratories are physically and organizationally separated from surrounding buildings in such a way that unauthorized persons cannot even get near the facilities. There are also strict access controls, video surveillance and other security measures. BSL-4 laboratories are completely independent, airtight units with their own air, power and water supplies, specially secured against technical faults.

Multilevel safety systems prevent pathogens from escaping into the environment. For one thing, the air pressure in the laboratory is negative, so that if a leak were to occur, the air would be unable to escape. In addition, the air flowing in and out is filtered through a multilevel system (HEPA filter) to ensure that it is pure, and all waste products and wastewater are completely inactivated.

Read more: Yuval Noah Harari on COVID-19: 'The biggest danger is not the virus itself'

The entire exhaust air is decontaminated by a complex filter process

All walls, ceilings and floors of a BSL-4 Laboratory are lined with a waterproof, easy-to-clean material, and the surfaces must be resistant to acids, alkalis and solvents as well as disinfectants. Scientists enter and leave the laboratory through a series of airlock security doors. The doors are mutually interlocked so that the air always flows toward the laboratory when the doors are opened and closed.

Even if an aircraft were to crash into such a BSL-4 laboratory or a bomb were to explode near or in one, there would be no danger, according to the Robert Koch-Institute, Germany's federal disease control and prevention agency. This is because the very heat-sensitive viruses would be completely inactivated by the heat generated during such an event. The institute also points out that the pathogens all occur naturally in certain regions of the world and that terrorists could more easily obtain them there.

Who works in the laboratories?

Access to the laboratory is restricted to a small number of selected, specially qualified staff, and is strictly monitored.

They wear inflatable full-body protective suits with their own air supply. To protect the hands, two to three pairs of gloves must be worn on top of each other, with the outer pair being tightly attached to the cuffs of the suit.

Since the work in the full-body protective suit, which weighs around 10 kilograms (22 pounds), is very stressful both physically and psychologically, the daily working time for each scientist is around three hours.


BSL-4 laboratories are completely independent, airtight units with their own air, power and water supplies

Only those pathogens that are actually needed for the research work are stored in the laboratories, and only in very small quantities.

Contaminated blood, tissue or sputum samples are processed in so-called safety workbenches under a glass cover; the laboratory technicians have to place their hands into the fixed gloves of the safety workbench to reach through to the substances.

Four-eyes principle

At the end of the work session, the working materials are put under lock and key. All objects used are decontaminated in an autoclave cleaning system at high heat and pressure. Laboratory waste or waste water is "inactivated," i.e., viruses that may be adhering to it or contained in it are killed.

Before leaving the laboratory, employees must first shower in their protective suits with highly diluted peracetic acid or similar antimicrobial agents to disinfect themselves. Afterward, the employees undress and shower again.

Since there are no measuring instruments for virus contamination, two employees usually work together, checking their suits for damage and helping each other to dress and undress. This process takes between 15 and 30 minutes.


7 OF THE DEADLIEST SUPERBUGS
Klebsiella pneumoniae
Approximately 3-5% of the population carry Klebsiella pneumoniae. But most people can carry it without becoming sick. It's different for those with a weakened immune system or acute infections. They could suffer severe gastrointestinal infections, pneumonia, blood poisoning — it depends on where the bacteria settles. Klebsiella pneumoniae is a critical-priority drug-resistant bug, says the WHO.

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Date 23.04.2020
Author Alexander Freund

Psychedelic mushrooms for depression: 'This is the one that changed things'

Psychedelic drugs like psilocybin are back in human trials to treat people with mental health conditions. It's a second revolution for a class of drugs shunned by 1960s society. But more research is needed. Here's why.



Psilocybin was shunned by mainstream society in the 1960s as "Substance 1" — dangerous and of no medical use. And for decades, evidence suggesting that psilocybin could be therapeutic lay buried in books. But over the past decade, a resurgence in psychedelic research has yielded new insights, with some labs running human trials.

David Nutt calls it the "brave new world of psychedelic psychiatry." Nutt is a neuro-psycho-pharmacologist and professor at Imperial College London. He suggests psychiatry is slowly emerging from a 30-year dark age, during which anti-depressants were the only accepted medicinal treatment for mental health conditions.

Apart from being costly, Nutt says anti-depressants help only a small percentage of the people who take them. Side effects can include a blunting of the emotions.

"I like to think of it as a force field," says Nutt. "They protect you. They cocoon you from the stresses of life, which are many and repeated, and they allow your brain to heal."

But the effects only last as long as you take anti-depressants. When you come off them, you can experience severe withdrawal symptoms. And perhaps more importantly, anti-depressants do not deal with the root cause of depression or anxiety, says Nutt.

Meanwhile, psilocybin appears to offer a different and longer-lasting alternative.

Nutt and his team of researchers have been concluding a second human trial of psilocybin to treat depression.

Read more: Coronavirus and mental health: 'We are not made for social isolation'

Neuropsychopharmacologist David Nutt warns of severe withdrawal symptoms of anti-depressants.

Controlling the trip

Volunteers with moderate to severe depression are given a 25 milligram (0.000881849 ounce) pill of psilocybin. That's a macrodose which causes a powerful, deep "trip" for about four hours.

But it's not like hippies tripping in a field. The tests are done in a controlled environment, with two therapists assigned to each volunteer.

"Depressed people having a trip aren't having fun," says Nutt. "They are often going back to the most horrible experiences of their lives and reliving things which they've often forgotten but which are causing the depression."

The therapists prepare the volunteers for what they might experience. They hold the volunteers' hands during the test to provide a sense of security. And after the trip, the therapists help the volunteers make sense of the experience through psychotherapy.

"This is not something you just go and do outdoors by yourself," says Nutt. "This is serious medicine. This is powerful medicine." A glimpse of the first clinical trial at Imperial College London can be found in this youtube video:

Rapid and lasting effects

In one trial, 20 patients who had not responded to treatment for depression, were given two doses of psilocybin one week apart. Nutt's team found rapid and long-lasting improvements in the patients' health. None of the patients required traditional anti-depressants for the first five weeks after the tests. Six months later, they had follow-up tests that showed many of their symptoms had stayed away.

But there was no control group—no way to compare the results directly. A team under Robin Carhart-Harris at the Centre for Psychedelics Research in London is now running similar tests with such controls in place.

Patient testimonies, available online, report huge improvements in health. One patient, called Andy, says that all standard treatments had failed him. No therapy had helped him find an underlying cause for his depression. But he says psilocybin gave him a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle. It was "the one that changed things."

Read more: Happiness, where are you?


Andy participated in the first ever clinical trial of psilocybin to treat depression

Science and society

It's been difficult for some health professionals and scientists to accept any therapeutic benefits of psilocybin despite the evidence.

For decades, doctors have told people how dangerous these drugs are—and those dangers or risks are real when psychedelics are taken in uncontrolled, so-called "recreational," settings.

In controlled settings, however, psychedelics could offer patients, suffering from depression or addiction, treatments that work better for them than traditional anti-depressants, or plain will power.

"They should at least have the opportunity of treatments which might work for them," says Nutt. "To deny them that on the basis of some kind of moral philosophy against drugs is, I think, unethical."

Stephen Ross, a psychiatrist based in New York, has had to confront that belief himself. In his entire medical training at the University of California, Los Angeles, there was no mention of psychedelics.

Psilocybin is the active ingredient found inside magic mushrooms

Psychedelics buried deep in literature

Then in 2006, Ross heard about a conference, marking the 100th birthday of Albert Hofmann, a Swiss scientist who discovered lysergic acid diethylamide and synthesized psilocybin.

Ross was puzzled. "Why would anybody be celebrating the discovery of LSD? All I had heard about LSD from my training was that it was a bad, dangerous drug."

So, he started looking into the medical history and found a huge body of research hidden in plain sight. The 1950s, 60s and 70s were a rich time for psychedelic research. Among the reports Ross found, there was a strong focus on using LSD to treat alcoholism. As an addiction psychiatrist, Ross' curiosity was piqued.

But with LSD shunned as a Substance 1 drug, it was a struggle to get funding for research.

To increase his chances at success, Ross turned to psilocybin, a psychedelic that like LSD had been branded a Substance 1 drug, but it was one with "less cultural baggage." And he turned to a condition with less social stigma than depression or addiction: cancer.

Read more: Never tried LSD - the drug my father discovered

Stephen Ross is conducting clinical trials of psilocybin on terminal cancer patients.

Psilocybin and cancer
"Cancer is a very scary thing in any culture. Cancer patients start to have this existential distress, where they feel hopeless, that life is meaningless, pointless," says Ross, now associate professor at New York University's School of Medicine. "And there's no treatment for that kind of existential distress."

In 2016, Ross completed the first human trial with psilocybin to reduce depression and anxiety in 29 patients with terminal cancer.

He says that psilocybin helps people reconceptualize cancer as "a part of their life," rather than it being their whole life.

"A lot of patients come out of the experience and say that they connected to this profound sense of love or universal love or God's love, or that the feeling of love was profoundly healing to them," says Ross.

Read more: Differences in personality: What psychiatrists can learn from mice to treat depression

The spheres show connectivity inside a human brain.

Under the influence of a psychedelic drug like psilocybin, more and more neurons interact with each other. These neurons may not have been interacting before because the mind was in a rut or fixed pattern of thinking. Psychedelics add flexibility. A placebo is shown to compare how evident the effect is.

Careful, it's a new revolution
Psychedelics could also be used to treat other conditions, including anorexia, obsessive compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and personality disorders.

But Ross says we still need to be careful with psychedelics. He says there may be a bias among researchers—after years of struggling to get psychedelic studies funded, combined with the excitement of new results—to believe that psilocybin will cure everything.

Their work is finding a new audience and perhaps a new form of acceptance, with popular science books out on the shelves. But researchers say there is a lot more work to be done before psychedelics can be used in medicinal treatment.

"I'm not saying that psychedelics should be used clinically yet at all. We need more research," says Ross. And even then, psychedelic treatments may not be for everyone. Researchers warn against using psychedelic treatments with patients suffering a psychosis, or young people whose brains are still developing.

Link to the documentary: A New Understanding: The Science of Psilocybin

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Date 24.04.2020

Thailand's tourist drought leaves space for shy sea mammal

Human intrusion and marine pollution have made dugong sightings in southern Thailand rare in recent years.

Six dugongs swimming together Wednesday were part of a larger group of dugongs cruising slowly in shallow waters off southern Thailand.Thailand Department of National Parks via AP

April 23, 2020, By Associated Press
BANGKOK — It’s rare to see a threatened species of sea mammal in shallow waters in southern Thailand but thanks to travel restrictions that have stripped popular destinations of crowds of tourists, a large group of dugongs has made their presence known.

Drone video footage released by the Department of National Parks shows a 30-strong herd of dugongs on Wednesday off Libong island in Trang province. They were feeding on sea grass and occasionally surfaced to breathe.

Naturalists report other marine animals are also taking advantage of the tourism slump that is leaving coastal regions tranquil and undisturbed.

Human intrusion and marine pollution have made dugong sightings in southern Thailand rare in recent years.

“It’s quite unusual,” marine scientist Thon Thamrongnawasawat told The Associated Press on Thursday when asked about the dugongs. “This species of mammal is very sensitive to speed boats and people. When they are gone, they feel free to gather in a large group and come close to shore.”

Dugongs – closely related to the manatee or sea cow – are officially classified as vulnerable. They can grow up to 3.4 meters (11 feet) in length. Thailand’s population is put at around 250. Last year a record number of dead dugongs were found in Thai waters.

VIDEO As coronavirus slows travel, pollution is slowing down too APRIL 1, 2020 01:05

Their fate captured attention last June after images circulated of Thai veterinarians cuddling an ailing baby dugong and hand-feeding her with milk and sea grass.

Despite the care, she died two months later. An autopsy found a large amount of plastic waste in her intestines that had caused gastritis and blood infection.

Thon said there were also reports this week of large schools of sharks coming unusually close to shore in several places in southern Thailand, and a sighting of a pod of false killer whales.

Video from park rangers on Phi Phi island shows 70-100 blacktip sharks in the shallow waters of the Maya Bay, made famous in the Leonardo DiCaprio movie “The Beach.” The bay was closed to tourists in June 2018 for ecological recovery, and the island’s entire national park has been shut since March to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Park rangers also counted 10-15 false killer whales, another protected species, near the popular tourist island of Koh Lanta, the first time they have been seen in that area.

Associated Press