French health workers hailed, but enraged, on Bastille Day unlike any other

Issued on: 15/07/2020 -

A health worker calling for "maille" (money), not medals, at a protest in Paris on July 14, 2020. © Gonzalo Fuentes, Reuters

Text by:Benjamin DODMAN


France’s unconventional Bastille Day festivities served up two tales of a crisis: at one end, a celebration of the workers on the front line of the coronavirus pandemic, and at the other, an excoriation of the policies that left the country’s cherished health care system unprepared for its onslaught

As French President Emmanuel Macron rode into Place de la Concorde on Tuesday, on board an open-top military jeep to the tune of the Marseillaise, a bizarre incident breached the rigid protocol of this year’s pared-down Bastille Day celebrations, dedicated to the workers on the front line of the Covid-19 battle.

Preceding the traditional tricoloured flyover by the Patrouille de France, a large banner carried by a cluster of helium balloons came wafting over the proceedings, eluding the police barriers that cordoned off the area. It read: “Behind the tributes, Macron is suffocating French hospitals.”

"Derrière les hommages, Macron asphyxie l'hôpital"
Une banderole dans le ciel s'incruste dans la cérémonie alors que le président arrive place de la Concorde. #14juillet #soignants pic.twitter.com/yDr7m3zxgm— Pierre Tremblay (@tremblay_p) July 14, 2020

The stunt organised by two members of a health workers’ union, who were briefly detained, illustrates the widely differing narratives of the coronavirus crisis put forward by the government and the doctors, nurses and caregivers who experienced it first-hand. It highlighted deep divisions in a country Macron later described as gripped by fear, negativity and a “crisis of confidence”.

In a televised interview that followed the ceremony, Macron sought to nuance his previous claims of “victory” against the virus. He acknowledged shortcomings in the country’s initial response to the pandemic, though adding: “We were far from being the worst.”


Even as he spoke from his presidential palace, protesters across town marched on place de la Bastille, where the French Revolution was born on July 14, 1789, to decry years of cost cuts that left public hospitals ill-prepared when the virus raced across France.

‘Treating gangrene with a plaster’

The Bastille Day events followed weeks of protests by health workers, angered by policies that have weakened a public health system once touted as the envy of the world. Thousands have rallied in cities across France, determined to turn the broad public sympathy enjoyed during the pandemic into tangible advances for hospital and nursing home employees – those Macron has lauded as "heroes in white coats".

With more than 30,000 fatalities attributed to Covid-19, France has one of the world’s highest confirmed death tolls. Despite government claims that hospitals “coped” with the pandemic, there has been ample evidence of emergency rooms turning away elderly patients due to a desperate shortage of beds.

As in other hard-hit Western countries, the failure to provide France’s Covid-19 heroes with adequate protection has been a recurrent theme at protests. The French public has been shocked to hear of medics having to beg dental surgeries, chemical labs and cosmetics factories to donate blouses, gloves and other equipment, or use bin bags for want of other options. Many were also surprised to discover that the salaries of French health workers rank among the lowest in the Western world – a factor that has been blamed for a hemorrhage of staff heading abroad or into the private sector.


In a move timed to precede the Bastille Day homage, Macron’s government announced on Monday it had reached an agreement with unions to give over €8 billion euros in pay rises for health workers, resulting in an average monthly raise of €183 for nurses and care workers – a gesture France’s newly appointment Prime Minister Jean Castex admitted was overdue in view of the coronavirus pandemic.

"No one can deny that this is a historic moment for our health system," Castex said after a signing ceremony that followed seven weeks of negotiations between government and unions.

However, some unions, including the hardline CGT, refrained from signing the accords, amid widespread dissatisfaction with measures that fell well short of their demands regarding wages, hirings and bed numbers. Speaking to FRANCE 24 ahead of the signing, Thierry Amouroux, a spokesperson for the SNPI union, likened the measures to “treating gangrene with a plaster”.

‘Bullshit’ parade

The mixed response was on full display on Tuesday as medics in white coats replaced uniformed soldiers as stars of the Bastille Day ceremony, while others rallied in protest.

With tears in their eyes or smiles on their faces, nurses and doctors stood silently as lengthy applause in their honour rang out over the place de la Concorde. The usual grandiose military parade was recalibrated to honour medics, along with supermarket cashiers, postal workers and other heroes of the pandemic. Families of medical workers who died also had a place in the stands.

Mirage and Rafale fighter jets painted the sky with blue-white-and-red smoke, and were joined by helicopters that had transported Covid-19 patients in distress.

In eastern Paris, meanwhile, riot police sprayed tear gas and unruly demonstrators hurled smoke bombs as the largely peaceful demonstrators marched onto Bastille.

“We are enormously short of personnel,” said protester Sylvie Pecard, a nurse at the Saint-Louis Hospital in Paris who described colleagues falling ill with the virus as Covid-19 patients filled its wards. “It's because we haven't recruited nurses,” Pecard told the Associated Press. “I came here 20 years ago and there were no empty positions. Now all the services are short of personnel, and it's worse and worse.”

Demonstrators sang in support of medical workers, while the Bastille Opera house displayed a huge message of thanks surrounded by portraits of nurses and doctors by street artist JR. Other protesters chanted slogans against police violence, spoke out against racial injustice, or against Macron policies seen as favouring the wealthy, or his decision to appoint a man accused of rape to oversee French police forces.

“The government did not live up to our demands,” Paule Bensaid, a nurse from the northern city of Lille, told AFP. “Where I work, we were left without masks for weeks. So to have us parade on the Champs-Elysees now, I think that’s bullshit.”

At US Capitol, 164 pairs of shoes represent nurses dead from COVID
Issued on: 22/07/2020 -

A total of 164 white shoes outside the US Capitol on July 21, 2020 honor the nurses who have lost their lives from COVID-19 Olivier DOULIERY AFP

Washington (AFP)

A nurses' union placed 164 sets of white shoes outside the US Capitol on Tuesday in a tribute to their colleagues killed by coronavirus, calling on the Senate to pass a huge aid package meant to help fight the pandemic.

Two months ago "my colleagues and I stood in front of the White House surrounded by 88 pairs of shoes, each representing a nurse who had died from COVID," said Stephanie Simms, a Washington-based registered nurse.

"Today we have 164 pairs of shoes. They clearly show how this administration and this Congress has failed nurses who continue to die," said Simms, from the over 150,000-strong National Nurses United (NNU), which organized the display at the Capitol


The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the $3 trillion Heroes Act in mid-May.

However, the Republican-controlled Senate has blocked the measure, promising a new proposal.

The House bill would provide financial aid to households struggling during the coronavirus pandemic, help rescue the US economy and finance production of protective equipment for frontline workers.

The United States has recorded more than 141,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic amid some 3.86 million cases.

© 2020 AFP

Daughter of DR Congo hero demands Belgium return father's 'relics'



Issued on: 21/07/2020 - 19:34

Downfall: Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba, right, and Joseph Okito, the vice president of the senate, pictured on their arrest in December 1960 in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa - AFP/File

CHE GUEVARA PRAISED PATRICE LUMUMBA FOR LIBERATING THE DR CONGO
Kinshasa (AFP)

The daughter of Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba has called on Belgium to return her father's "relics", in an apparent reference to teeth taken from his body after his assassination in 1961.

"We, Lumumba's children, call for the just return of the relics of Patrice Emery Lumumba to the land of his ancestors," his daughter, Juliana Amato Lumumba, wrote in a letter to Belgium's monarch, Philippe.

The letter, which AFP saw on Tuesday, is dated June 30 -- the 60th anniversary of the independence of Belgium's giant colony in central Africa.

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Philippe, in a landmark gesture, chose the anniversary to express his "deepest regrets" for the "suffering and humiliation" of his country's reign over what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Historians say millions were killed, mutilated or died of disease as they worked on rubber plantations belonging to the rapacious 19th-century king Leopold II.

A charismatic pan-Africanist who played a key part in the fight for independence, Lumumba was appointed, at the age of only 34, as the first prime minister of the newly decolonised country.

In the presence of the then-king Baudouin, he used the moment of independence to lash out at the former colonial masters for racist maltreatment and forcing "humiliating slavery" on the Congolese people.

But Lumumba's stay in power was short.

Within months, the country was plunged into crisis by an army mutiny and the secession of the mineral-rich province of Katanga, a crisis stoked by Belgian involvement.
Lumumba was overthrown, then jailed, tortured and finally killed by a firing squad acting under the orders of secessionists. Forty years later, Belgium acknowledged that it bore "moral responsibility" for his death.

- 'Hero without a grave' -

In 2000, Belgian Police Commissioner Gerard Soete told AFP that he had chopped up Lumumba's body and those of his companions, Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo, and then dissolved the remains in acid.

But in a documentary screened the same year on the German TV channel ARD, Soete showed two teeth that he said had belonged to Lumumba.

In 2016, a Belgian academic, Ludo De Witte, filed a legal complaint against Soete's daughter after she showed a gold tooth, which she said had belonged to Lumumba, during an interview with a newspaper.

In Juliana Lumumba's letter, which she said was written on behalf of her "wider family", she said that her father was a "hero without a grave".

She condemned "vile statements made in Belgium about holding some of his remains" and blasted the authorities' ambiguous response.

"The remains of Patrice Emery Lumumba are being used on the one hand as trophies by some of your fellow citizens, and on the other as funereal possessions sequestered by your kingdom's judiciary," she said.

Kanye West's erratic behavior puts spotlight on bipolar disorder 

ONE DAY HE IS HAPPY HE IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT

THE NEXT DAY HE IS WEARING A BULLET PROOF VEST

AND HIDING IN A BUNKER.

RICH ENOUGH TO AFFORD THERAPY

RICH ENOUGH TO REFUSE TO TAKE IT

West first revealed his diagnosis on his 2018 album "Ye," where he called the illness his "superpower" Angela Weiss AFP/File

IT IS NOT A SUPERPOWER IT CAN LEAD TO SUICIDE

I AM POSTING THIS NOT BECAUSE OF THIS IDIOT BUT BECAUSE IT IS A GOOD DESCRIPTION OF BIPOLARITY 

Washington (AFP)

US rapper and apparent presidential candidate Kanye West has in the past opened up about his struggles with bipolar disorder.

But his recent erratic behavior has again called into question his health and treatment.

He launched his election campaign Sunday with a rambling speech that saw him rant incoherently, reveal he had wanted to abort his daughter, and break down in tears.


What is the mental illness and why do many creative people seem to get it?

- Highs and lows -

Bipolar disorder, formerly known as "manic depression," is characterized by extreme mood swings.

On the one hand, patients experience very high periods known as "mania" when they feel energized, elated and can make reckless decisions. They sometimes also experience delusions.

"They can almost have no inhibitions at all, which means they can spend their life savings in a day," said Andrew Nierenberg, a psychiatry professor at Harvard.

"They can do something that's really bad judgment that they wouldn't ordinarily do, either sexually, or in relationships, or work."

The other "pole" of the illness is depression: ultra-low episodes that can include inability to feel pleasure and suicidal thoughts.

The illness affects up to three percent of the population, which makes it more common than schizophrenia but rarer than depression.

And there can be much variation among patients, said Timothy Sullivan, the chair of psychiatry at Staten Island University Hospital.

Some are more depressive and rarely manic, while others are the other way around.

As a result, diagnoses are typically delayed for years. If a patient has so far only experienced depression, they may be misdiagnosed.

West first revealed his diagnosis on his 2018 album "Ye," where he called it his "superpower." Last year, he revealed it caused him paranoid delusions and described being handcuffed during treatment.

- Risk factors -

Bipolar disorder is known to be "one of the more heritable mental illnesses" said Katherine Burdick, a psychologist at Harvard and the Brigham and Women's Hospital.

If one of your parents had the disorder, your risk is somewhere between 10 to 20 percent.

Scientists are looking for the genes responsible, and trying to understand how these might affect the parts of the brain that deal with emotion.

Another line of research suggests that bipolar disorder could be linked to a flaw in how cells regulate energy, said Nierenberg.

There may also be environmental factors.

For many, but not all patients, "there's a higher rate of childhood trauma, childhood abuse and neglect," said Burdick.

Substance abuse is also a risk factor, and women sometimes develop it later in life compared to men.

- COVID a trigger? -

The bedrock for treatment is mood stabilizing drugs, and the best of these is still lithium, which has been used since the 1940s.

Anti-inflammatory drugs that reduce an abnormal immune response are being investigated as a treatment, but research is preliminary.

Experts have also started to understand the role that the disruption of "social rhythms" play in bipolar disorder, which has shifted more attention toward therapy.

For instance, the death of a pet can trigger a depression-mania cycle, but when scientists studied such events closely, they realized patients were not driven by grief alone.

"Not only did the person suffer psychologically from that loss, but they used to take the dog out for walks,they got exercise, and it also got them up early in the day so that they had social interactions," said Sullivan.

People with bipolar disorder are sensitive to such disruptions, which means events like the coronavirus pandemic and lockdowns can cause particular harm.

"I have actually had one patient who I haven't seen in more than 10 years, who I don't currently treat, who called me up out of the blue and she's clearly manic," said Sullivan.

Support groups like the Depression Bipolar Support Alliance are credited with raising awareness and destigmatizing the illness.

- Creative link? -

There is thought to be an over-representation of artists, writers and musicians among people with bipolar disorder, a subject explored in the book "Touched with Fire."

Figures from history who may have had the illness include Vincent Van Gogh.

"Creative people are distinguished by particularly unique ways of thinking that involve intense emotional experiences" explained Sullivan.

"It may be that that capacity for that sensitivity involves regulatory systems in the brain that also render you vulnerable to mood disorders."

Some patients with bipolar disorder see their condition as an asset, even if it can alienate friends and family.

"Researchers have asked a group of patients with different diagnoses, 'If you had a button that you could press tomorrow and make this go away, would you?' said Burdick.

"And the only group of patients that do not opt, more commonly than not, to press the button, are bipolar patients."

© 2020 AFP

‘We want to breathe’: Campaigns for racial, climate justice find common ground in Paris suburbs

Issued on: 21/07/2020

Climate activists take part in a rally in the Paris suburb of Beaumont-sur-Oise, on July 18, 2020, marking four years since the death in police custody of black youth Adama Traoré. © Bertrand Guay, AFP

Text by:Benjamin DODMAN

Seeking to expand their support base, anti-racism campaigners from the French banlieues are embracing the fight against human activities that poison the air, wreck ecosystems and spawn deadly pandemics – hurting vulnerable communities most

Under a scorching sun, thousands of protesters marched through the Paris suburb of Beaumont-sur-Oise at the weekend, their banners, T-shirts and face masks calling for justice, equality and the freedom to simply breathe.

Both solemn and festive, the gathering marked the fourth anniversary of the death in police custody of black youth Adama Traoré, whose case has mobilised broad anger against police brutality and racial injustice in France. Demonstrators paid tribute to Traoré, who died of asphyxia on his 24th birthday in circumstances that remain unclear.

The march was also about broader grievances, and climate activists co-organised this year’s event. Among them was Élodie Nace, a spokeswoman for environmental advocacy group Alternatiba, which bussed dozens of its members from the French capital to the distant northern suburb.

“Ours is not merely an addition of groups,” she told FRANCE 24. “It’s an alliance around a common message: we want to breathe.”

‘I can’t breathe’

Seldom has such an elementary plea felt quite so urgent as in recent months. From Beaumont-sur-Oise to Minneapolis, a perfect storm of crises has focused attention on the most basic of human needs: the oxygen-filled air that sustains life, keeps coronavirus patients breathing, and which George Floyd was fatally denied.

In France, the chilling video footage of Floyd’s killing on May 25 by a police officer in Minneapolis promptly evoked comparisons with the unresolved case of Traoré, whose last words were also, “I can’t breathe”.

Two autopsies and four separate medical examinations have offered conflicting reasons for Traoré’s death in police custody, with his family maintaining that he suffocated under the weight of the three officers who used a controversial technique to restrain him. None of the officers has been charged, and the seething sense of injustice has fuelled the family’s struggle against racism and police violence in France’s deprived banlieues.

"No man, no person should die like that, at that age," said Traoré’s sister Assa, who has led the family’s long legal fight.

Leftists and Yellow Vests

Saturday’s broad-based march was the result of years of community organising by the Traoré family, backed by veteran anti-racism campaigners who joined their advocacy group, Truth For Adama, commonly referred to as the Comité Adama.

Galvanised by the global protest movement that followed Floyd’s killing in the US, the Comité Adama drew tens of thousands of protesters to the streets of Paris last month in France’s biggest – and most diverse – such rallies in decades. Its protests have dwarved those staged by older anti-racism groups, whose radical edge has been eroded by years of association with mainstream political parties.

>> As George Floyd outrage spreads, France confronts its own demons

The group has “succeeded in carrying countless feelings of injustice that were yet to find an outlet", says Julien Talpin, a sociologist at the National Centre for Scientific Research. “In doing so, it has mobilised well beyond the circle of everyday activists.”

Since her brother’s death, Assa Traoré has roamed the country to meet with bereaved families, address rallies, reach out to other advocacy groups, and challenge political parties to take an interest in the banlieues. Last year, she invited representatives of the Yellow Vests, a largely white anti-government protest movement, to the annual gathering in Beaumont-sur-Oise.

While some groups, including the leftist “antifa” (anti-fascists), have made for natural bedfellows, other tentative allies, like the Yellow Vests, have raised more than a few eyebrows in a country where rural folk and banlieue residents seldom cross paths.

Even as they reach out for partners, members of the Comité Adama have fiercely defended their autonomy, speaking of “alliances” rather than “convergence”. They have been especially wary of involvement with political parties, careful to distinguish themselves from older anti-racism organisations, established in the 1980s and largely controlled by the Socialist and Communist parties that once dominated left-wing activism.

“The Comité Adama is willing to engage with political parties on the left, to challenge and provoke them, but it is careful to keep its distance,” said Talpin, noting that many left-wing parties in the French Republican tradition are reluctant to acknowledge the “systemic, institutionalised racism” denounced by the Comité Adama.

Ecology for all

So far, Alternatiba has proved a good match. Both movements are young, radical, independent and driven by women. In the words of Nace, Alternatiba’s spokeswoman, they also share a “systemic approach, aimed at overcoming a system of racial and gender-based domination that oppresses the most vulnerable".

“There’s a common strategy and a common ideological bedrock,” Talpin agrees.

“On the one hand, they agree to support one another in their respective, autonomous fights,” he explains. “And on the other, they share the assessment that the principal victims of racism, pollution and climate change are the underprivileged.”

Finally, Talpin adds, “they also believe that the mainstream left has abandoned those segments of the population and ignored the discriminations they endure.”

In March 2019, when hundreds of thousands of climate campaigners marched in towns and cities across France to denounce government inaction, in the country’s largest ever climate protests, Assa Traoré chose to march separately, under the Truth For Adama banner. But she accepted Alternatiba’s invitation to address the crowd, and later returned the invitation with Saturday’s gathering in Beaumont-sur-Oise.

For Alternatiba, a key aim of the rally was to dispel the widely-held belief that environmentalism is solely a preoccupation of white middle classes from the city-centres.

“Ecology should not only be for the wealthy, organic-eating urbanites. It is also about solidarity and reclaiming one’s territory,” says Nace, noting that France’s poor suburbs, home to large immigrant and non-white populations living in cramped, neglected housing projects, are the most impacted by climate change, by polluted air and water.

“The Adama Generation and the Climate Generation have come together to denounce a same system that plunders resources and pushes the most vulnerable further down the ladder,” she says. “We want a different type of society based on justice and equality, and none of this will be possible without bringing poor, working-class districts on board.”

Fight to save Senegalese capital's coast gains momentumDAKAR (Reuters) - From the top of a ladder, a Senegalese girl struggles to catch a glimpse of the beach hidden by a swanky hotel’s sprawling ocean frontage - a stunt for a music video that highlights growing grassroots efforts to save Dakar’s coast from hungry developers.

The video shows the threat that unregulated construction poses to the Senegalese capital’s eroding shoreline, which provides a cherished escape for residents of the crowded and often polluted city.

“Where will our children play tomorrow?,” raps activist hiphop artist Malal Talla, also known as ‘Fou Malade’, as drone footage shows the concrete husks of half-built buildings and an industrial site on the West African shore.

The Dakar region’s population is growing at twice the rate of the rest of Senegal and has reached 3 million.

Scientists and residents have sounded the alarm over the destruction of ocean-side plantations of filao - whistling pine trees - whose salt-tolerant, far-reaching roots stabilise the dunes and slow coastal erosion.

Dakar lost nearly 9 metres of coast per year in its worst-affected areas between 2006 and 2015, far above the national average of 1-2 metres, said Amadou Tahirou Diaw, a former geography professor at Dakar’s Cheikh Anta Diop university.

Michel Mendy, who coordinates the activist group behind the video, said he understood the capital needed to grow. “But it doesn’t mean they have to go to the forest nearby, cut it and replace it with concrete,” he said, standing on the beach in Dakar’s Guediawaye district, where a new highway has split its strip of ageing filaos.




The group’s protest adds to a chorus of public anger fueled by a recent construction project on one of Dakar’s most popular open beaches. Dismay mounted in May when a digger started gouging chunks from one of the city’s twin volcanic hills. Thousands signed an online petition urging the government to take action.

The environment ministry did not respond to requests for comment.

It is not the first time Dakar has seen developers restrict coastal access, exploit legal loopholes, or build in protected areas. But Professor Diaw said he was heartened that the fight to protect the coast had gained fresh momentum during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Maybe after COVID-19 something will change!!!” he wrote in emailed comments.

Israelis urge Netanyahu to quit over coronavirus, corruption charges
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - About 2,000 Israelis rallied outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem on Tuesday as protests mounted against him over his handling of a worsening coronavirus crisis and alleged corruption.
Israelis march as they protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government's response to the financial fallout of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis, in Jerusalem July 21, 2020. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Wearing protective masks, the demonstrators marched from Netanyahu’s official residence to Israel’s parliament, holding up signs that read “Crime Minister” and calling on the five-term premier to step down.

Reimposed coronavirus curbs after a rise in new COVID-19 cases have prompted Israelis demanding better state aid to take to the streets in almost daily demonstrations.

Public anger has also been fuelled by corruption alleged against Netanyahu, who went on trial in May for bribery, fraud and breach of trust - charges he denies.


Netanyahu has announced numerous economic aid packages. But frustrated by red tape and a slow pace, many Israelis say the aid is coming too little, too late.

“It’s humiliating and insulting. You pay social security and taxes for thirty years and then have to beg (the authorities) in order to make ends meet. I’m here to protest, so that this evil government quits,” said Doron, 54.

He asked not to give his full name and said he has been on unpaid leave for three months.

As part of the protest, restaurant owners set up a free buffet for the demonstrators, demanding their businesses keep open or else receive compensation.


Israel lifted in May a partial lockdown that had flattened an infection curve. But a second surge of COVID-19 cases and ensuing restrictions has seen Netanyahu’s approval ratings plunge to under 30% and unemployment soar to 21%. [

Police did not provide a figure for the number of demonstrators. A Reuters cameraman estimated that about 2,000 people rallied. Israeli media said the protest drew thousands from across the country. At least six people were arrested, police said.

With a population of 9 million, Israel has reported more than 50,000 coronavirus cases and 422 deaths.

Hong Kong protesters gather on anniversary of mob attack

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Small groups of Hong Kong pro-democracy demonstrators gathered on Tuesday to mark the first anniversary of an attack in a train station by an armed crowd wearing white shirts, and demanded justice for victims of the violence and broader freedoms.
A pro-democracy demonstrator holds a paper with a symbol of "Five demands, not one less" during a protest to mark the first anniversary of an attack in a train station by an armed crowd wearing white shirts, demanding justice for the victims of violence and broader freedoms, at a shopping mall in Hong Kong's Yuen Long, China July 21, 2020. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

The Yuen Long attack, and the police’s apparent failure to prevent it, exacerbated tensions during protests last year, plunging the global financial hub into its deepest crisis since Hong Kong returned from British to Chinese rule in 1997.

Scattered individuals around the Yoho mall and Yuen Long train station chanted slogans including “Hong Kong independence, the only way out”. An elderly lady pasted small “HK Add Oil” stickers on to walls.

Hundreds of riot police cordoned off areas and urged people not to gather because of coronavirus social distancing restrictions.

Groups of youngsters roaming the malls cursed police from a distance and chanted: “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our Times”, a slogan the government has warned might violate new national security laws.

Police fired pepper spray during at least one skirmish.

Tuesday’s protest followed the imposition of the new security laws by Beijing that have provoked international criticism and raised fears for the city’s liberties and autonomy under the so-called “one country, two systems” formula.

Some protesters held blank sheets of paper to oppose the “evil” law they say has criminalised free speech.

“I’ve had lots of feelings of disappointment in these past few weeks,” said Lok, an 18-year-old student dressed in a black shirt and shorts, typical of protesters, conceding the turnout was less than he had hoped. “But Hong Kong people should still keep the revolutionary spirit, and fight for their freedoms.”

The police said in a statement that five people had been arrested in Yuen Long, including a 52-year-old man suspected of breaching the national security law and pro-democracy lawmaker Ted Hui.

PROTESTERS DEMAND JUSTICE

Beijing says the law, which punishes what China broadly defines as secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, was needed to plug national security loopholes left by the city’s failure to pass such legislation on its own. Hong Kong authorities say it will help bring stability.

On July 21 last year, 45 people were injured after more than 100 men in white swarmed the train station.

Police have been criticised for not responding quickly enough to calls for help, and for not immediately arresting any alleged culprits at the scene.

A recent documentary by public broadcaster RTHK showed the police had been aware of the white-shirted crowd gathering hours before the attack. Police later acknowledged plainclothes officers were present, but said investigations are continuing and further arrests were likely to be made.

Protesters are still demanding justice. So far, 37 people have been arrested, with seven charged with participating in riots and conspiracy to injure others with intent.

In May, an Independent Police Complaints Council report into the year-long protests found no evidence of collusion but identified deficiencies in police deployment during the incident.

HONG KONG PROTESTS
Police dispersed crowds at shopping mall as protesters mark anniversary of Yuen Long attack

Riot police entered a shopping centre in Yuen Long, Hong Kong to disperse people on July 21, 2020, after online calls for a demonstration to mark a year since an armed mob beat protesters and commuters at a railway station nearby.

Police conducted stop and searches at the mall and urged people to leave, citing coronavirus social-distancing rules which prohibit public gatherings of more than 4 people. Some demonstrators also held up blank pieces of paper in what was believed to be a protest against the national security law.

Scientists accidentally create 'impossible' hybrid fish

They call it the sturddlefish.

The sturddlefish has a mix of genes from the Russian sturgeon and the American paddlefish.

(Image: © Genes 2020, 11(7), 753; https://doi.org/10.3390/genes11070753, CC BY 4.0)
By Stephanie Pappas - Live Science Contributor a day ago

It shouldn't have been possible, but it was: The birth of long-nosed, spiky-finned hybrids of Russian sturgeons and American paddlefish.

Hungarian scientists announced in May in the journal Genes that they had accidentally created a hybrid of the two endangered species, which they have dubbed the "sturddlefish." There are about 100 of the hybrids in captivity now, but scientists have no plans to create more.

"We never wanted to play around with hybridization. It was absolutely unintentional," Attila Mozsár, a senior research fellow at the Research Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture in Hungary, told The New York Times.

Related: Photos: The freakiest-looking fish

Russian sturgeons (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii) are critically endangered and also economically important: They're the source of much of the world's caviar. These fish can grow to more than 7 feet long (2.1 meters), living on a diet of molluscs and crustaceans. American paddlefish (Polyodon spathula) filter-feed off of zooplankton in the waters of the Mississippi River drainage basin, where water from the Mississippi and its tributaries drain into. They, too, are large, growing up to 8.5 feet (2.5 m) long. Like the sturgeon, the have a slow rate of growth and development puts them at risk of overfishing. They've also lost habitat to dams in the Mississippi drainage, according to the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology. The two species last shared a common ancestor 184 million years ago, according to the Times.


Nevertheless, they were able to breed —— much to the surprise of Mozsár and his colleagues. The researchers were trying to breed Russian sturgeon in captivity through a process called gynogenesis, a type of asexual reproduction. In gynogenesis, a sperm triggers an egg's development but fails to fuse to the egg's nucleus. That means its DNA is not part of the resulting offspring, which develop solely from maternal DNA. The researchers were using American paddlefish sperm for the process, but something unexpected happened. The sperm and egg fused, resulting in offspring with both sturgeon and paddlefish genes.

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—In Photos: 'Faceless' fish rediscovered after more than a century

The resulting sturddlefish hatched by the hundreds, and about 100 survive now, according to the Times. Some are just about 50-50 mixtures of sturgeon and paddlefish genes, and some are far more sturgeon-like. All are carnivores, like the sturgeon, and share the sturgeon's blunter nose, compared with the paddlefish's pointy snout.


Most hybrid species, such as the liger (a mix of a lion and a tiger) and the mule (a mix of a horse and donkey), can't have offspring of their own, and the sturddlefish is probably no exception. Mozsár and his colleagues plan to care for the fish, but they won't create more, since the hybrid could outcompete native sturgeon in the wild and worsen the sturgeon's chances of survival.

However, the fact that fish separated by 184 million years of evolution could cross-breed indicates that they're not so different after all.

"These living fossil fishes have extremely slow evolutionary rates, so what might seem like a long time to us isn't quite as long of a time to them," Solomon David, an aquatic ecologist at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, told the Times.

Originally published on Live Science.

Sperm whales use echolocation to hunt squid in the deep sea

Echolocation gives whales lopsided heads

By Katie Pavid 
SCIENCE NEWS
First published 10 July 2020

Toothed whales developed asymmetric skulls to help with ecolocation, a new study reveals.
In most toothed whales, the internal organs in the skull are squashed into the left side to make way for soft tissues which help them to echolocate.

Echolocation is a technique used by animals that need to navigate and hunt in the dark. They emit high-pitched sounds which bounce off objects and are reflected back at the animal. These reflected noises help the brain to build an image of the animal's surroundings, allowing them to 'see' where objects are and how they are moving.

Only some whales, dolphins, and porpoises (collectively known as cetaceans) can do this. Cetaceans are split into two groups, those with teeth and those with baleen. Baleen whales (mysticetes), including blue whales and humpback whales, filter ocean water for tiny crustaceans and fish and do not need to ecolocate. Cetaceans with teeth (odontocetes) include dolphins, killer whales, belugas, narwhals, and sperm whales, and these animals hunt in a variety of marine environments. Echolocation helps them do it.

A new research paper, published in BMC Biology, has examined the skulls of ancient and modern whales to find out more about when and why they developed this ability and why it gave them such a unique head shape.

Ellen Coombs, a PhD student at the Museum and the lead author of the paper, says, 'Scientists know that toothed whales have wonky skulls, and that's because they echolocate. Their wonky skulls have a whole load of extra soft tissue above them called the melon.

'We were looking at the evolution of this wonkiness - when it first evolved, how wonky the skull is, and whether some are more wonky than others.'

The earliest ancestors of whales were ancient animals called archaeocetes. They had wonky snouts which possibly helped them hear well underwater, but they couldn't echolocate. Researchers don't know a lot about how whale skulls evolved from there to the neocetes - the animals including the most recent common ancestor of living cetaceans

This new paper is the first time researchers have studied asymmetry across such a broad range of whales, dolphins, and porpoises over their whole 50-million-year evolution. Ellen and her colleagues studied 162 skulls (of which 78 were fossil and 84 were from living animals) including 34 from the Museum's world-leading marine mammal collection.

Baleen whales and toothed whales started to evolve differently about 36 million years ago.

Baleen whale faces stayed symmetrical, but Ellen found that for toothed whales, wonkiness became a significant facial feature about 30 million years ago, and they have gotten more and more lopsided as they continue to evolve.


Ganges river dolphins echolocate a whole octave lower that other whales and dolphins and have an unusual crest on their skulls to help focus echolocation. This specimen of a river dolphin is in the Museum's marine mammal research collection.

Ellen explains, 'We found the wonky snout started to disappear but then the toothed whales get a lopsided facial region.

'We also found that whales living in extreme environments such as narwhals, belugas, river dolphins and deep-diving sperm whales rely on echolocation more than other whales, and so have even more strangely shaped heads.

'They live in weird environments, either shallow icy water, murky rivers or the very deep ocean, so we think they are starting to have a really specialised type of ecolocation. That's something that needs to be studied more in the future.'