World Cup 2022 organisers to cut staff: sources
Issued on: 06/07/2020

World Cup staff are to be layed off in Qatar GIUSEPPE CACACE AFP/File

Doha (AFP)

The organisers of the 2022 World Cup will lay off an undisclosed number of staff as gas-rich Qatar cuts costs amid the coronavirus economic downturn, several sources have told AFP.

The job losses, which have not previously been reported, follow similar redundancies at state-run organisations including Qatar Petroleum and Qatar Airways.

The government body organising the tournament, known as the Supreme Committee, directly employs 550 people -- both Qataris and expats -- but oversees the work of tens of thousands of contractors.
"The Supreme Committee has recently undertaken an internal exercise to assess the current workforce and engaged in a budget management and operational efficiency exercise as part of this transition," the organisation said in a statement to AFP Monday.

The 2022 organisers did not confirm how many posts would be lost or what the projected savings would be.

Qataris have largely been spared from past staff cuts at other state-controlled organisations.

- Expat exodus -

"As a result, we have taken the decision to make a number of positions redundant. All due salary and end of service benefits will be paid to those leaving, in line with Qatari labour laws," the statement added.

A source at one major engineering firm involved in the completion of one of seven new stadiums being built for 2022 told AFP that some staff at the company, an SC contractor, had also been terminated.

Despite the impact of coronavirus on construction work, slowing progress to permit social distancing, officials insist preparations are ahead of schedule and 85 percent of all tournament infrastructure is now complete.

Officials have confirmed more than 1,100 cases of COVID-19 among workers at tournament projects and at least one virus death.

Qatar passed the milestone of 100,000 coronavirus cases on Monday and has one of the world's highest per capita infection rates.

Of its 2.75 million population, 100,345 people or 3.65 percent have tested positive for COVID-19. Almost 94,000 of those have recovered and 133 people have died.

The economy of super-wealthy gas exporter Qatar has been buffeted by the global economic downturn and associated energy price collapse caused by the pandemic.

Qatar-based broadcaster BeIN will shed around 100 jobs and cut some salaries in response to the virus downturn, while Qatar Airways will slash some pilot pay by as much as a quarter.

The wider Gulf is in the midst of an expat exodus as foreign workers, who make up the majority of the populations in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, return home.
The Supreme Committee said it was transitioning its focus from "constructing tournament infrastructure" to "delivering the event operations".

"The organisation's workforce needs to transition as well," the statement said.

burs-gw/dmc

Fossil of giant 70m year-old fish found in Argentina

THE BIG ONE THAT GOT AWAY
Issued on: 06/07/2020 -

The fossilized remains of this Xiphactinus - similar to the one found in Argentina - was discovered in the US state of Kansas and sold at auction in 2010 ROBYN BECK AFP

Buenos Aires (AFP)

A giant 70 million year old fossil of a fish that lived amongst dinosaurs has been discovered in Argentine Patagonia, a team of researchers said on Monday.

Argentine paleontologists "found the remains of a predator fish that was more than six meters long," the researchers said in a statement.

The discovery was published in the scientific journal Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology.


The fish "swam in the Patagonian seas at the end of the Cretaceous Period, when the temperature there was much more temperate than now," the statement said.

"The fossils of this carnivorous animal with sharp teeth and scary appearance were found close to the Colhue Huapial lake" around 1,400 kilometers south of the capital Buenos Aires.

This fossil belonged to the Xiphactinus genus, "amongst the largest predatory fish that existed in the history of Earth."

"Its body was notably slim and ended in a huge head with big jaws and teeth as sharp as needles, several centimeters long."

Examples of this species have been found in other parts of the world, "some of which even have preserved stomach contents," said Julieta de Pasqua, one of the study authors.

Previously, the Xiphactinus had only been found in the northern hemisphere, although one example was recently found in Venezuela.

Patagonia is one of the most important reservoirs of fossils of dinosaurs and prehistoric species.

© 2020 AFP

Trump Administration Has Blocked Anthony Fauci From Giving TV Interview For Three Months, CBS News Anchor Says

WIN MCNAMEE / GETTY IMAGE

Nathan Francis  July 5, 2020

Donald Trump’s administration has been blocking Dr. Anthony Fauci from appearing on television interviews with CBS News for the last three months, a network anchor said on Sunday.

Margaret Brennan, moderator of Face the Nation, said on Sunday that the administration has been preventing Fauci and other experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from appearing on the network’s shows.

The message, which was also shared on the show’s Twitter account, said that the administration has not approved requests for appearances by Fauci in recent months and has approved nothing from the CDC.

.@margbrennan: "We think it's important for our viewers to hear from Dr. Anthony Fauci and the @CDCgov
But we have not been able to get our requests for Dr. Fauci approved by the Trump administration in the last three months. And the CDC not at all. We will continue our efforts" pic.twitter.com/ZLDYHU2anY
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) July 5, 2020


As Newsweek noted, Fauci has given a number of other interviews during that time, along with other top health experts within the Trump administration. But other networks have reported difficulties in securing interviews with top health experts within the Trump administration, especially recently.

On Friday, CNN reported that the administration had not been approving any interview requests for Fauci, whose last television interview was on June 12. Fauci has made some appearances on podcasts and webcasts during that time.

A Trump administration official told CNN that it was dangerous to keep the federal government’s top public health experts away from interviews.

“Now is the time to be sending a strong public health message,” the official said, noting the surge of coronavirus cases, especially in the south and southwest.

Donald Trump has been criticized for making statements that contradict public health experts on the coronavirus, including a recent claim that the outbreak will go away suddenly and that the rise in cases is due to an increase in testing.

Going viral: Why Canadian sparrows have changed their tune

OUR INDIGENOUS SONG BIRD

Issued on: 02/07/2020

The white-throated sparrow of North America, whose singing preferences are the subject of a new study Ken A. OTTER AFP

Washington (AFP)

Members of a Canadian sparrow species famous for their jaunty signature song are changing their tune, a curious example of a "viral phenomenon" in the animal kingdom, a study showed Thursday.

Bird enthusiasts first recorded the white-throated sparrow's original song, with its distinctive triplet hook, in the 1950s.

Canadians even invented lyrics to accompany the ditty: "Oh my sweet, Ca-na-da, Ca-na-da, Ca-na-da."

But starting from the late 20th century, biologists began noticing that members of the species in western Canada were innovating.

Instead of a triplet, the new song ended in a doublet and a new syncopation pattern. The new ending sounded like "Ca-na, Ca-na, Ca-na."

Over the course of the next two decades, this new cadence became a big hit, moving eastward and conquering Alberta, then Ontario. It began entering Quebec last year.

It's now the dominant version across more than 2,000 miles (3,000 kilometers) of territory, in an extremely rare example of the total replacement of historic bird dialect by another.

Scientist Ken Otter at the University of Northern British Columbia, and his colleague Scott Ramsay from Wilfrid Laurier University, described the dizzying pace of this transformation in the journal Current Biology.

"What we're seeing is like somebody moving from Quebec to Paris, and all the people around them saying, 'Wow, that's a cool accent' and start adopting a Quebec accent," Otter told AFP.

Their work was based on 1,785 recordings between 2000 and 2019, the majority made by them but with contributions from citizen-scientists, who posted the files on specialist sites like xeno-canto.org.

In the western province of Alberta, about half of the recorded songs ended with the triplet in 2004; ten years later, all the males had adopted the doublet.

In 2015, half of western Canada had converted to the doublet version, and by last year, the new song had been well established on the western tip of eastern Quebec province.At this rate, the historic triplet version may soon exist only in tape recordings.

- Bird influencers -

The males of the species sing to mark their territory, and their songs all share a common structure. Usually, if a variation appears, it remains regional and doesn't make headway in neighboring territories.

The study represents the first time scientists have been able to show this kind spread at huge geographic scale, said Otter.

So how did it happen?

Probably in the same way that children return from summer camp humming new tunes: songbirds from different parts of Canada winter in the same parts of the United States, then return to their own homes in spring.

The researchers verified this theory by tagging a few of the birds.

So it was that in the plains of Texas and Kansas, the new song's first adopters from western Canada -- avian influencers, if you will -- popularized the trend among their eastern brethren.

Previous work has shown that young birds can pick up a foreign song after listening to a recording.

But to truly understand why the males were willing to abandon the old song that had once served them well, the scientists have to rely on theories.

Otter believes it may be because females were more attracted to the new song, so young males rushed to adopt it.

"There seems to be some advantage to adding novel elements into your song that make the song, not necessarily more attractive, but increases people's attention to it," said Otter.

Going back to the human example, it would be akin to "if all the French women in Paris thought that a Quebec accent sounded much more interesting than a Parisian accent, and so everybody starts adopting a Quebec accent."

The hypothesis remains unverified.

© 2020 AFPTwenty-year study tracks a sparrow song that went "viral" across Canada

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VIDEO: THIS VIDEO SHOWS THE TWO DIFFERENT WHITE-THROATED SPARROW SONGS. view more 

CREDIT: SCOTT M. RAMSAY

Most bird species are slow to change their tune, preferring to stick with tried-and-true songs to defend territories and attract females. Now, with the help of citizen scientists, researchers have tracked how one rare sparrow song went "viral" across Canada, traveling over 3,000 kilometers between 2000 and 2019 and wiping out a historic song ending in the process. The study, publishing July 2 in the journal Current Biology, reports that white-throated sparrows from British Columbia to central Ontario have ditched their traditional three-note-ending song in favor of a unique two-note-ending variant--although researchers still don't know what made the new song so compelling.

"As far as we know, it's unprecedented," says senior author Ken Otter, a biology professor at the University of Northern British Columbia. "We don't know of any other study that has ever seen this sort of spread through cultural evolution of a song type." Although it's well known that some bird species change their songs over time, these cultural evolutions tend to stay in local populations, becoming regional dialects rather than the norm for the species. This is how the two-note ending got its start.

In the 1960s, white-throated sparrows across the country whistled a song that ended in a repeated three-note triplet, but by the time Otter moved to western Canada in the late 1990s and began listening to the local bird songs, the new two-note ending had already invaded local sparrow populations. "When I first moved to Prince George in British Columbia, they were singing something atypical from what was the classic white-throated sparrow song across all of eastern Canada," he says. Over the course of 40 years, songs ending in two notes, or doublet-ending songs, had become universal west of the Rocky Mountains.

Otter and his team used the large network of citizen scientist birders across North America who had uploaded recordings of white-throated sparrow songs to online databases to track the new doublet-ending song. They found that the song was not only more popular west of the Rocky Mountains, but was also spreading rapidly across Canada beyond these western populations. "Originally, we measured the dialect boundaries in 2004 and it stopped about halfway through Alberta," he says. "By 2014, every bird we recorded in Alberta was singing this western dialect, and we started to see it appearing in populations as far away as Ontario, which is 3,000 kilometers from us."

The scientists predicted that the sparrows' overwintering grounds were playing a role in the rapid spread of the two-note ending. "We know that birds sing on the wintering grounds, so juvenile males may be able to pick up new song types if they overwinter with birds from other dialect areas. This would allow males to learn new song types in the winter and take them to new locations when they return to breeding grounds, helping explain how the song type could spread," Otter says.

So the researchers harnessed sparrows with geolocators--what Otter calls "tiny backpacks"--to see if western sparrows who knew the new song might share overwintering grounds with eastern populations that would later adopt it. They found that they did. And not only did it appear that this rare song was spreading across the continent from these overwintering grounds, but it was also completely replacing the historic triple-note ending that had persisted for so many decades--something almost unheard of in male songbirds.

Otter and his team found that the new song didn't give male birds a territorial advantage over male counterparts, but still want to study whether female birds have a preference between the two songs. "In many previous studies, the females tend to prefer whatever the local song type is," says Otter. "But in white-throated sparrows, we might find a situation in which the females actually like songs that aren't typical in their environment. If that's the case, there's a big advantage to any male who can sing a new song type."

Now, another new song has appeared in a western sparrow population whose early spread may mirror that of the doublet-note ending. Otter and his team are excited to continue their work and see how this song shifts in real time with more help from citizen scientists. "By having all these people contribute their private recordings that they just make when they go bird watching, it's giving us a much more complete picture of what's going on throughout the continent," he says. "It's allowing us to do research that was never possible before."

###

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the University of Northern British Columbia, and Wilfrid Laurier University.

Current Biology, Otter et al.: "Continent-wide shifts in song dialects of white-throated sparrows" https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)30771-5

Current Biology (@CurrentBiology), published by Cell Press, is a bimonthly journal that features papers across all areas of biology. Current Biology strives to foster communication across fields of biology, both by publishing important findings of general interest and through highly accessible front matter for non-specialists. Visit: http://www.cell.com/current-biology. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com.

A new birdsong unexpectedly spread across North America

Alison Snyder, author Science Jul 2, 2020 

White-throated sparrow. Photo: Scott M. Ramsay/Wilfrid Laurier UniversityOver 19 years, a once rare song sang by sparrows in western Canada has spread across North America, replacing a traditional song along the way, according to new research.

The big picture: Birdsongs, like human languages, have dialects that can evolve, and birds and humans learn their languages in similar ways and timeframes.
Studying birdsong might help scientists to understand how humans develop dialects, says Angelika Nelson, an ornithologist at the Landesbund für Vogelschutz in Bavaria, Germany, who studied white-throated sparrow song and wasn't involved in the study.

Birdsongs can change over time but those changes are typically limited to a region and its dialect. In the case of the white-throated sparrows of North America, their song changed across the continent.
The traditional three-note-ending song, which dominated the repertoire of sparrows west of the Rockies, was abandoned for one that ends in two notes. (The mnemonic is Oh my sweet, Can-a-da, Can-a-da, Can-a-da! for the three-note tune versus Oh my sweet, Can-a, Can-a, Cana-da!)
The song spread across North America and, as of 2019, only birds in the easternmost regions of the continent continue to sing the triplet-ending song
"This would be like, if you were from Kentucky, and you move to Seattle, and everybody starts thinking, 'hey, this Kentucky accent sounds awesome.' And suddenly 10 years later, everybody in Seattle has a Kentucky accent," says Ken Otter, an ornithologist at the University of Northern British Columbia and an author of the study.
"It's completely at odds with the expected norm for how regional song variants would establish and solidify. Instead this is actually spreading."

What they did: Otter and his colleagues used 1,785 male white-throated sparrow, Zonotrichia albicolis, bird song recordings collected by citizen scientists to show the spread of the new song.

Birds migrate and spend the winter with birds from other regions and the researchers thought perhaps the younger birds were learning the new song from their seasonal friends and taking them back to their breeding grounds.

The team tracked the location of sparrows with backpack geolocators and found those from the west, where the song was first observed, were overwintering in the southern U.S. with birds from farther east, where the song was later observed.

"It took 9 years (2005–2014) for the song variant to go from approximately 1% to 22% of males adopting, but then only 3 years (2014–2017) to go from 22% to nearly 50%, suggesting that the cultural spread may be exponential once a critical number of males have begun adopting the new variant," the authors write in Current Biology.

"To our knowledge, this is an unprecedented rate of song-type transition in any species of birds."

The intrigue: It's unclear why the new song is preferable.

Males sing to defend territory, which allows them to attract a mate. At the same time, females use birdsong to assess a male's prospects as a mate.

The researchers think females may have a preference for novel songs — but not too novel.

What to watch: Evidence for that comes from another song that has emerged — and spread — in the west. (This one is a doublet too but the first note is modulated.
"As of this year, it's completely replaced the traditional doublet. And so there was nothing super special about the doublet," says Otter. "It was just something different."

US Energy Companies Abandon Atlantic Coast Pipeline Citing Legal Challenges, Cost Uncertainty
© AP Photo / Steve Helber 06.07.2020

The construction of an Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), to deliver fracked natural gas 600 miles from West Virginia, through Virginia to a North Carolina port, has faced heavy opposition by environmental activist groups since it's 2014 announcement. Activists also opposed a pipeline tunneling below the famed Appalachian Trail.


Two US companies attempting to carry out the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project, Dominion Energy and Duke Energy, announced on Sunday that they would abandon the pipeline due to “ongoing delays” brought by legal battles and “increasing cost uncertainty” that “threaten the economic viability of the project”.

The two companies cited a recent Montana court ruling that ended the authority of the US Army Corps of Engineers, a formation of the US Army that primarily oversees dams, canals and flood protection, to issue utility line permits across wetlands and bodies of water, as one legal challenge behind the companies’ decision to give up the project.

Despite Dominion and Duke being permitted on 15 June by the US Supreme Court to proceed in the pipeline construction, which was planned to be finished by 2021, the companies said that “recent developments have created an unacceptable layer of uncertainty and anticipated delays for ACP”.

“The potential for a Supreme Court stay of the district court's injunction would not ultimately change the judicial venue for appeal nor decrease the uncertainty associated with an eventual ruling. The Montana district court decision is also likely to prompt similar challenges in other Circuits related to permits issued under the nationwide program including for ACP,” the companies said in a press release.

The corporations added that litigation risk, along with other “continuing execution risks, make the project too uncertain to justify investing more shareholder capital”.

Announced in 2014, the construction of the ACP was estimated at the time to cost $4.5-$5 billion. Costs quickly ballooned to at least $8 billion due to “a series of legal challenges to the project's federal and state permits”.

“We regret that we will be unable to complete the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. For almost six years we have worked diligently and invested billions of dollars to complete the project and deliver the much-needed infrastructure to our customers and communities,” Dominion Energy CEO Thomas F. Farrell II and Duke Energy CEO Lynn J. Good said in a joint statement. “This announcement reflects the increasing legal uncertainty that overhangs large-scale [petrochemical] energy and industrial infrastructure development in the United States. Until these issues are resolved, the ability to satisfy the country's energy needs will be significantly challenged”.

Environmental activist groups opposing the ACP called the cancellation of project a “huge, transformative victory” and noted that it “should have never been approved”.
“There are way too many people to thank for this huge victory, but from the trees to the streets to the courtrooms, you all know who you are. This project should have never been approved in the first place, and your work made it unviable,” tweeted Brennan Gilmore, executive director of Clean Virginia organisation. “THANK YOU!”

There are way too many people to thank for this huge victory, but from the trees to the streets to the courtrooms, you all know who you are. This project should have never been approved in the first place, and your work made it unviable.

THANK YOU! https://t.co/WCaI3LSpsQ— Brennan Gilmore (@brennanmgilmore) July 5, 2020

The environmental movement is a family. And today, I want to give a shout-out, high five and fist pump to our friends at @selc_org. SELC has led a diverse and crowded group of local, regional, and national orgs including @NRDC in defeating #ACP. A huge, transformative victory.— Gillian Giannetti (@GillianEnergy) July 5, 2020

The stakes of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline's demise

Ben Geman, author of Generate  AXIOS


Climate activist groups protest in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as the court heard cases on Dominion Energy's proposed $7.5 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline crossing the Appalachian Trail. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images


Duke Energy and Dominion Energy threw in the towel Sunday on the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a proposed 600-mile natural gas line from West Virginia to North Carolina.

Why it matters: It ends one of the highest profile battles over fossil fuel infrastructure in recent years, and its demise is a win for the environmental groups that spent years fighting it.
It also underscores hurdles facing big pipelines and other projects, despite White House efforts to speed up approvals and scale back environmental reviews.

Catch up fast: Despite a favorable Supreme Court ruling last month, the project faced ongoing legal and permitting battles.
The price tag had reached $8 billion — far above initial estimates — and the project had become "too uncertain to justify investing more shareholder capital," the companies said.
The cancelation came the same day that Dominion announced sale of its gas transmission and storage assets to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in a $10 billion deal.

Between the lines: Here are a few takeaways from the project's demise...
Paperwork matters: Reuters' David Gaffen yesterday re-upped his outlet's October 2019 story, which found that administration efforts to speed up permitting for pipelines had "backfired," because they created new legal vulnerabilities for projects already facing activist litigation.
States matter: A note from the research firm ClearView Energy Partners says that some states including Virginia — which is on the pipeline route — push policies that favor renewables. They called the cancellation a sign of "subnational greening" that makes it harder to build projects already facing opposition from environmentalists.
The 2020 election matters: This project may be dead, but the outcome of November's election will affect the trajectory of others. The Trump administration backed the project in the courts and politically, while Joe Biden would be less favorable to fossil fuel projects (the campaign did not provide comment on this decision).

Natural gas pipeline project canceled after Supreme Court victory

Rashaan Ayesh


Photo: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images


Dominion Energy announced Sunday it has agreed to sell its natural gas transmission and storage network to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway in a deal valued at $10 billion, including the assumption of debt.

Why it matters: The deal comes as Duke Energy Corp. and Dominion Energy announced they are canceling their plans for the $8 billion Atlantic Coast Pipeline following a Supreme Court ruling. The ruling removed major hurdles for the companies, but "recent developments have created an unacceptable layer of uncertainty and anticipated delays" for the project.

Between the lines per Axios' Ben Geman: The Atlantic Coast Pipeline project has been among the high-profile battles over fossil fuel infrastructure that have been intensifying in recent years.
Its demise is a win for environmental groups and shows how energy companies face continued hurdles to building big pipelines and other projects, despite White House efforts to speed up approvals and ease environmental reviews.
Delays of the project pushed costs to increase, CNBC reports.

The state of play: This is Berkshire Hathaway's first major deal since the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S., per CNBC.
Buffett is spending $4 billion to buy Dominion Energy's national gas transmission and storage assets.
Berkshire Hathaway previously carried 8% of all natural gas transmission in the U.S., but will now carry 18%.

Court orders temporary shutdown of Dakota Access Pipeline
Ben Geman, author of Generate JULY 6,2020 AXIOS


Protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline in San Francisco in 2017. Photo: Joel Angel Juarez/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

A federal judge ordered Monday the shutdown of the Dakota Access Pipeline — a project at the heart of battles over oil-and-gas infrastructure — while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducts a new environmental analysis.

Why it matters: The latest twist in the years-long fight over the pipeline is a defeat for the White House agenda of advancing fossil fuel projects and a win for Native Americans and environmentalists who oppose the project
The pipeline, which runs from North Dakota to an oil storage terminal in Illinois, began operating in 2017 with the backing of the Trump administration after several years of regulatory and legal jostling and major protests.

What happened: Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the D.C. Circuit vacated a critical easement while the Army Corps of Engineers prepares a previously ordered study called an environmental impact statement.
The judge wrote that he's "mindful of the disruption such a shutdown will cause."
But he adds that precedent and prior problems with the Corps' review "outweighs the negative effects of halting the oil flow for the thirteen months that the Corps believes the creation of an EIS will take."

The intrigue: It's the second big defeat or setback for a high-profile pipeline in as many days.
Dominion Energy and Duke Energy yesterday canceled the long-proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a major natural gas project also backed by the Trump administration, citing legal and permitting uncertainties.

Read the ruling.

In Egypt a murdered woman means nothing but a policeman means everything

In 2008 Mohsen Al-Sukkari held up a card which identified him as block management and stepped inside the apartment of Lebanese pop sensation Suzanne Tamim. The next morning, she was found sprawled out across the floor of her home with multiple stab wounds to her face and throat.

Just a few months later, an Egyptian court watched the CCTV recordings of Al-Sukkari, an Egyptian policeman, entering and leaving Suzanne’s apartment in Dubai and listened to phone recordings of another man urging him to carry out the killing. The voice belonged to the business tycoon Hisham Talaat Moustafa, one of Egypt’s most high-profile real estate developers.

At the time the story captured hearts and minds across the Arab world, despite the fact that there was a media ban on reporting details of the case. As the story unfolded, it was revealed that Hisham and Suzanne had become lovers after she asked him for help divorcing her husband.

When Hisham later asked Suzanne to become his second wife she refused and pursued a relationship with Iraqi kickboxing world champion Riyad Al-Azzawi instead. Jilted and vengeful, Hisham urged Al-Sukkari to murder Suzanne and offered him $2 million in return.

READ: Female prisoners in Sisi’s jails

When the court’s initial ruling sentenced Hisham and Al-Sukkari to death, spectators let out a collective gasp. Hisham was a friend of then President Hosni Mubarak’s son, Gamal, and a member of the ruling National Democratic Party. Things like this didn’t happen to people like that.

As the retrial approached in 2010, a comment from the former deputy chief of the appeals court Mohammed El-Khodiry seems laughable knowing what we do today about Egypt’s justice system, complete with its mass trials and revolving door pretrial detentions:

“This can be a dangerous ruling. And if people completely lose faith in the judiciary, they lose faith in everything. I mean, our lives will be hell. It will be the law of the jungle.”

The verdict was back: neither man would hang. Hisham would serve 15 years and Al-Sukkari life imprisonment.

Seven years later, with General Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi at the helm, Hisham was released under a presidential pardon. Finally, the story was becoming familiar. That same year Mubarak himself was acquitted of killing protesters. His interior minister Habib Al-Adly and the business tycoon Hussein Salem are among other elites who have been given a free ticket, rather than being forced to serve time.

READ: Human rights organisations: ‘Denying prisoners of conscience pardon reflects coup government’s intention to persecute oppositionists’

An added insult was that Hisham’s pardon was for health reasons, on account of his diabetes, despite the fact that the regime has shown little regard for prisoners’ health, time and time again. Deliberate medical neglect has killed hundreds of political prisoners in Egypt, manifested at the highest levels.

For years former President Mohamed Morsi’s family along with international politicians begged authorities to release him as his diabetes, which was not being treated, made him blind in one eye. Their failure to do so led to his protracted death.

Late former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi can be seen with this hands clasped together – a sign of praying to God – during his trail on 21 March 2016 [Stranger/ApaImages]
Now Al-Sukkari has been released under this year’s Eid presidential pardon. It’s a clear message that abuse against women is ok, made all the more poignant by the fact that it comes at a time when violence against women is reaching new heights due to the lockdown.

It also comes at a time that the Egyptian regime is pursuing a number of women on charges of debauchery and offending public morals, including TikTok influencers Haneen Hassan and Mawada Eladhm and singer and dancer Sama El-Masry.

Yesterday, a young Egyptian woman appeared battered and bruised on TikTok to announce that her friend Mazen Ibrahim had raped her, but instead of listening to her, authorities arrested her.

Egyptian lawmakers are calling for stricter surveillance of women on video sharing apps for “violating public morals and Egypt’s customs and traditions” yet releasing Al-Sukkari puts a clear lie to their claims they are doing so for women’s own protection.

WATCH: In Lebanon, women are being killed in their homes because of the lockdown

The Egyptian regime has no interest whatsoever in safeguarding women. It has systematically failed to tackle harassment in the street and not only overlooked but encouraged sexual violence in prisons as a way to deter politically outspoken women.

Earlier this month a TV advert for a luxury residential complex aired during Ramadan was slated by social media users as propaganda to gloss over deepening class divisions when many Egyptians can’t even afford to eat. In Egypt two thirds of people live below the breadline and this is being exacerbated by COVID-19 and the preventative measures put in place to mitigate the virus.

In the video for Madinaty, located in the east of Cairo, people boast that everything they could possibly want is there. “We don’t even have to leave,” they say. It’s a slice of heaven on earth, populated only by “people like us.”

Madinaty is owned by Hisham, who said he had been surprised by the criticism: “My project has added real value to the country,” he said in a televised interview. “My company has not laid off any employees or workers in light of the current economic crisis resulting from the spread of coronavirus.”

Classic denial and lack of empathy, all from a man who has walked free whilst thousands of political prisoners remain incarcerated. Hisham Talaat Moustafa and Mohsen Al-Sukkari represent everything that is wrong with Egyptian politics.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

UK protesters denounce Yemen war

Protestors in the UK hit the streets

 to oppose the Yemen war

Displaced Yazidis head back to Sinjar as coronavirus lockdown bites

July 6, 2020

An elderly woman and children stand outside a tent internally displaced persons of Iraq's Yazidi minority in Iraqi Kurdistan region on 30 August, 2019 [ZAID AL-OBEIDI/AFP via Getty Images]

July 6, 2020

Hundreds of Yazidi families driven from their hometown of Sinjar in northern Iraq years ago are now returning as the impact of coronavirus lockdown measures makes their lives in exile even harder.

Many have lost their jobs and aid from donors in Sharya, where they have been living since they fled Sinjar in 2014.

Mahma Khalil, the mayor of Sinjar but now in exile in Dohuk in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, said more than 1,200 displaced families have returned from their temporary homes to Sinjar since June. Most had relatives there who serve in the military or police, he said.

Overrun by Islamic State in 2014 and liberated by an array of forces the following year, little has been rebuilt in Sinjar.

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Water is scarce and power intermittent in the city, whose former occupiers killed thousands of Yazidis and forced many women in sexual slavery.

Despite the devastation that makes the city still largely unfit for habitation, members of this ancient minority feel they have no other choice.

“The situation has become really bad,” Yazidi community leader Jameel Elias Hassan al-Hamo said outside his makeshift home in Sharya, just south of Dohuk.

Young men from his community who used to earn up to $17 a day working at restaurants and factories can no longer find work because of the lockdown’s impact on the economy, al-Hamo said.

As he spoke, men carried pieces of furniture, blankets, and bags of food out of his home and piled them onto the back of a pickup truck.

The coronavirus outbreak has worsened Iraq’s economic crisis, pushing oil prices down in a country that depends on crude export for more than 90% of its revenue. Restrictions on travel and curfews have driven many out of work.

Al-Hamo’s daughter-in-law Gole Zeblo Ismaeel said that the monthly aid packages they used to depend on became scarcer as the crisis impacted the work of humanitarian organizations.

Another reason for their return was the restriction on internal travel between semi-autonomous Kurdistan and neighbouring Iraqi regions, imposed since March to curb the spread of the virus.

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Al-Hamo said that most Yazidi families in Sharya have a son enrolled in armed forces stationed in Sinjar, who have been unable to visit for weeks.

“Some haven’t seen their families for over three months now,” he said.

Although their hometown is destroyed, al-Hamo said they have been promised support by local aid organisations upon their return and he believed soon he will be reunited with the rest of his family soon.

“I registered over 400 names and phone numbers of relatives, members of the tribe, and of the community. They said that once we, the sheikhs and tribal leaders, go back, they will follow us,” he added.

Khalil said he has been pleading for funds from the central government to step up reconstruction efforts in Sinjar but he believed it would not happen any time soon.