Elusive eastern black rail threatened by rising sea levels
By TRAVIS LOLLER October 7, 2020

In this June 2017 photo taken in the ACE Basin region of South Carolina and provided by the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, a male black rail offers an insect to a female as part of their courtship behaviors. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the Eastern black rail a threatened species on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2020, but stopped short of the stronger protections some environmentalists were seeking for the elusive bird now imperiled by habitat destruction, sea level rise, and the increasing frequency and intensity of storms with climate change. (Christy Hand/South Carolina Department of Natural Resources via AP)


The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the Eastern black rail a threatened species on Wednesday, but stopped short of the stronger protections some environmentalists were seeking for the elusive bird, now imperiled by habitat destruction, sea level rise, and the increasing frequency and intensity of storms with climate change.

Nicknamed the “ feathered mouse,” the eastern black rail is about six inches long, with white-flecked dark feathers, a brown nape and brilliant red eyes. Populations have declined by more than 75% over the last 10 to 20 years, according to a wildlife service news release announcing Endangered Species Act protection

“They are one of the front-line species dealing with the impact of sea level rise,” said Bryan Watts, a professor of conservation biology at the College of William and Mary. “That’s really the cause of their catastrophic decline.”

On the Atlantic Coast, the birds inhabit the high marsh area between tidal marsh that is flooded every day and uplands, said Watts, who has been studying the eastern black rail for about 30 years. The birds used to be found as far north as Cape Cod but now are not found above North Carolina, he said.

“They haven’t been seen in Virginia since 2017,” Watts said. “They’re winking out in the northern parts of their range quickly.”

The Center for Biological Diversity first proposed protections for the eastern black rail 10 years ago and sued the government last year over its inaction. Stephanie Kurose, an endangered species policy specialist, said they believe the bird should have been given “endangered” status to provide a higher level of protection.

“By the Fish and Wildlife Service’s own projections, the Great Plains population is likely to be gone in 15 to 25 years,” Kurose said. “The sole remaining coastal populations have a high probability of being completely extinct by 2068.”

Kurose also took issue with the decision not to designate critical habitat for the bird. The wildlife service said that doing so would make it easier for bird lovers to find eastern black rails and potentially trample their habitat. For the same reason, detailed sighting information is not available on the eBird app.

Historically, the eastern black rail is known to exist in 35 states east of the Rocky Mountains as well as Puerto Rico, Canada, Brazil, and several countries in the Caribbean and Central America, according to the FWS. While their geographic range is still relatively widespread, they are few in number.

The agency says there are an estimated 355 to 815 breeding pairs along the Atlantic Coast. Another 1,300 individuals are estimated to live in protected areas along the mid- to upper Texas coast. And there are small populations in Colorado and Kansas.

Population estimates are hard to derive because the birds are “the ultimate in secretive” among notoriously secretive marsh birds. Their elusiveness is part of what makes them a prize sighting for birders.

But the center’s Kurose said serious birders have a code of ethics and are unlikely to pose a danger.

“The threat is not sufficient to justify not protecting its habitat,” she said.

___

Follow Travis Loller on Twitter: @travisloller

Israel approves first West Bank settler homes since Gulf deals



Issued on: 14/10/2020 - 

NGO Peace Now says Israel's resumption of settlement expansion across the occupied West Bank deals a blow to hopes of a wider Israeli-Arab peace after normalisation deals with two Gulf states earlier this year MENAHEM KAHANA AFP


Jerusalem (AFP)

Israel approved 2,166 new homes in settlements across the occupied West Bank on Wednesday, official figures sent to AFP showed, ending an eight-month lull in settlement expansion.

The approvals came less than a month after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed agreements to normalise relations with Israel, which in return pledged to freeze its plans to annex swathes of the West Bank.

NGO Peace Now said the settlement uptick signals Israel's rejection of Palestinian statehood and deals a blow to hopes of a wider Israeli-Arab peace

It said that around 2,000 more homes are expected to be approved on Thursday.

"Netanyahu is moving ahead at full steam toward solidifying the de facto annexation of the West Bank," it said in a statement ahead of Wednesday's decisions.

US President Donald Trump sees the Gulf accords as part of his broader initiative for Middle East peace.

But a controversial plan he unveiled in January gave US blessing to Israeli annexation of large chunks of the West Bank, including the settlements, communities considered illegal under international law.

Israel agreed to delay those plans under its normalisation deal with the UAE, something Emirati officials have cited in response to Arab and Muslim criticism.

The two Gulf countries were only the third and fourth Arab states to normalise relations with Israel, following Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he sees others following.

The Palestinians condemned the accords and quit the rotating presidency of the Arab League in protest at its failure to take a stand against them.

The Gulf agreements broke with years of Arab League policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which made its resolution a precondition for normalising ties with Israel.

The latest settlement plans, for a total of more than 4,000 new homes, were on the agenda Wednesday and Thursday at a session of the top planning committee of Israel's Civil Administration, the defence ministry body which oversees civil affairs in the occupied West Bank.

Details of the approvals were provided to AFP by the Civil Adminstration spokesman.

- Gantz's approval -

Peace Now noted that the plans were approved for submission by Benny Gantz, leader of the centrist Blue and White party who serves as defence minister in a coalition government led by the right-wing Netanyahu.

With Gantz's participation, "Israel will be signalling to the world its bi-partisan support for the end to the concept of a two-state solution and a Palestinian state," it said.

Netanyahu was embarked on a new settlement push "instead of taking advantage of the agreements with the Gulf states and promoting peace with the Palestinians", it added.

Excluding annexed east Jerusalem, more than 450,000 Israelis live in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, alongside some 2.7 million Palestinians.

Among settlements to grow under the latest approvals is Har Gilo, in the southern West Bank between Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

With a current population of about 1,600, Wednesday's decision gave it 560 new homes.

Peace Now said that several wildcat settlement built without government authorisation are being approved retroactively.

Israel sees such approval as conferring legality.

© 2020 AFP

Rwanda to grow medical cannabis, 

strictly for export

Issued on: 14/10/2020

Rwanda is looking for a slice of the multi-billion-dollar medical global cannabis market 

Mladen ANTONOV AFP/File

Kigali (AFP)

Rwanda has approved the production of medical cannabis strictly for export, seeking to target fast-growing markets in the United States and European Union, even though its use remains illegal at home.

Guidelines for the production and export of medical cannabis were approved by the cabinet on Monday, and a government statement said Wednesday that it would not change strict local laws around marijuana consumption.

"Rwanda will begin to receive applications for licenses from interested investors for this high-value therapeutic crop. This investment framework does not affect the legal status of cannabis consumption in Rwanda, which remains prohibited," the statement said.

The Rwanda Development Board said several companies have tendered bids to begin mass production, as the tiny East African nation seeks a slice of the multi-billion-dollar medical cannabis market.

"We have interested investors that we are going to work with for the next few days now that we have guidelines in place to see how Rwanda can contribute to medicinal research in the world. US, Canada and the EU are big markets that we are seeing buying products," the board's CEO Clare Akamanzi told the state-run Rwanda Broadcasting Agency.

Authorities have yet to give details on when the production will begin, or where the cannabis farms will be located in the country, in which agriculture is the main employer.

Akamanzi said that anyone licenced to grow cannabis will be "required to have a very strong security program that has to be approved by our security organs".

"There will be strong measures including CCTV cameras, watchtowers, street lights and human security. This will ensure that the crop does not leave the farm to go to the local market," she said.

"We are absolutely not going to allow any other use for the crop –- even recreational use –- other than medicinal research."

Arrests for cannabis use are made on an almost daily basis in Rwanda, and doctors are forbidden from prescribing it as medicine.

Use of the narcotic can be punished with a jail term of two years, while those selling it can face up to 20 years in prison or even life imprisonment in "severe cases", according to the country's penal code. MARIJUANA IS NOT A NARCOTIC!!!

"I fully support the government's position to produce cannabis for medicinal purposes. But I believe it should be fully legalised," Frank Habineza, leader of the opposition Green Party, told AFP.

© 2020 AFP

Kenya's fight against poaching pays off as elephant population doubles

Kenya, fewer elephants are dying because of poaching.

 

© FRANCE 24 By:Maria GERTH-NICULESCU|Élodie COUSIN|Bastien RENOUIL
7 min

In the past decade, the number of elephants in East Africa has almost halved. But Kenyan authorities say the country's pachyderm population has actually doubled since 1989. Kenya is setting the example in the fight against poaching and now has around 35,000 elephants. Reserves have had to adapt and step up security. But while ivory hunters are no longer such a threat, conservation groups are worried by cohabitation between wild animals and local communities, which can prove difficult. But even here, things are improving. Our correspondents report from Kenya's Laikipia County.

Pandemic caused 'unprecedented' emissions drop: study



Issued on: 14/10/2020 - 

The study found that emissions from the power sector fell 22 percent during the first six months of 2020 INA FASSBENDER AFP/File


Paris (AFP)

Pandemic restrictions saw an unprecedented fall in greenhouse gas emissions in the first half of 2020 -- larger than during the 2008 financial crisis and even World War II -- experts said Wednesday.

As governments ordered lockdowns to try to crush the first wave of Covid-19, CO2 emissions from transport, power and aviation plummeted, the international team of researchers said.

Using data including hourly electricity production, vehicle traffic from more than 400 cities worldwide, daily passenger flights and monthly production and consumption figures, they determined that the emissions drop was the largest in modern history.

They suggested some fundamental steps that could be taken to "stabilise the global climate" as countries look to recover from the economic shock of the pandemic.

They noted however that emissions had rebounded to their usual levels by July 2020, when most nations had eased lockdown measures.

Zhu Liu from the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing said the study was the most accurate yet undertaken on the pandemic's effect on emissions.

"We were able to get a much faster and more accurate overview, including timelines that show how emissions decreases have corresponded to lockdown measures in each country," said Zhu, lead author of the study published in Nature Communications.

The team found that CO2 emissions from transport decreased by 40 percent in the first half of 2020, and power production and industry emissions fell 22 percent and 17 percent respectively.

With more people working from home, the study showed a perhaps surprising three percent fall in residential emissions -- something researchers attributed to an abnormally warm winter leading to lower heating consumption.

- 'Complete overhaul' needed -

An international plan to limit global warming outlined in the 2015 Paris climate deal aims to cap temperature rises well below two degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels.

The accord envisages a safer limit of 1.5 degrees of warming -- something the United Nations says would take an annual 7.7 percent reduction in emissions this decade to achieve.

The authors of Wednesday's study agreed with the writers of similar research released in August claiming that the 2020 emissions dip was unlikely to ease the climate emergency in the long term.

They said nothing less than a "complete overhaul" of the industry and commerce would keep a handle on global warming.

"While the CO2 drop is unprecedented, decreases of human activities cannot be the answer," said Wednesday's co-author Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

"We need structural and transformational changes in our energy production and consumption systems."

© 2020 AFP

Real-time data show COVID-19's massive impact on global emissions

by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

While the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to threaten millions of lives around the world, the first half of 2020 saw an unprecedented decline in CO2 emissions—larger than during the financial crisis of 2008, the oil crisis of 1979, or even World War II. An international team of researchers has found that in the first six months of this year, 8.8 percent less carbon dioxide was emitted than in the same period in 2019—a total decrease of 1551 million tons. The groundbreaking study not only offers a much more precise look at COVID-19's impact on global energy consumption than previous analyses. It also suggests what fundamental steps could be taken to stabilize the global climate in the aftermath of the pandemic.

"What makes our study unique is the analysis of meticulously collected near-real-time data," explains lead author Zhu Liu from the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "By looking at the daily figures compiled by the Carbon Monitor research initiative we were able to get a much faster and more accurate overview, including timelines that show how emissions decreases have corresponded to lockdown measures in each country. In April, at the height of the first wave of Corona infections, when most major countries shut down their public life and parts of their economy, emissions even declined by 16.9 %. Overall, the various outbreaks resulted in emission drops that we normally see only on a short-term basis on holidays such as Christmas or the Chinese Spring Festival."

The study, published in the latest issue of Nature Communications, shows which parts of the global economy were most impacted. "The greatest reduction of emissions was observed in the ground transportation sector," explains Daniel Kammen, professor and Chair of the Energy and Resources Group and also professor in the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. "Largely because of working from home restrictions, transport CO2 emissions decreased by 40 % worldwide. In contrast, the power and industry sectors contributed less to the decline, with -22 % and -17 %, respectively, as did the aviation and shipping sectors. Surprisingly, even the residential sector saw a small emissions drop of 3%: largely because of an abnormally warm winter in the northern hemisphere, heating energy consumption decreased with most people staying at home all day during lockdown periods."

To paint this comprehensive and multidimensional picture, the researchers based their estimates on a wide array of data: precise, hourly datasets of electricity power production in 31 countries, daily vehicle traffic in more than 400 cities worldwide, daily global passenger flights, monthly production data for industry in 62 countries as well as fuel consumption data for building emissions in more than 200 countries.

The researchers also found strong rebound effects. With the exception of a continuing decrease of emissions stemming from the transportation sector, by July 2020, as soon as lockdown measures were lifted, most economies resumed their usual levels of emitting CO2. But even if they remained at their historically low levels, this would have a rather minuscule effect on the long-term CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

Thus, the authors stress that the only valid strategy to stabilize the climate is a complete overhaul of the industry and commerce sector. "While the CO2 drop is unprecedented, decreases of human activities cannot be the answer," says Co-Author Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "Instead we need structural and transformational changes in our energy production and consumption systems. Individual behavior is certainly important, but what we really need to focus on is reducing the carbon intensity of our global economy."

Pandemic caused 'unprecedented' emissions drop: study

---

More information: Zhu Liu et al, Near-real-time monitoring of global CO2 emissions reveals the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nature Communications (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-18922-7

Journal information: Nature Communications 

Provided by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research 

Belarus opposition gives president an ultimatum: 

resign or face nationwide strike

Issued on: 13/10/2020 - 

Opposition protesters attend a rally to reject the presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus on October 12, 2020. © REUTERS

Text by:FRANCE 24Follow


Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said on Tuesday she will announce a country-wide strike unless President Alexander Lukashenko announces his resignation, halts violence and releases political prisoners by Oct. 25.

"If our demands are not met by Oct. 25, the whole country will be out on the streets, peacefully," Tikhanovskaya, who is in exile in Vilnius, said in a statement.

"On Oct. 26, all enterprises will begin a strike, all roads will be blocked, state-owned stores will no longer have any sales," she added.

Tikhanovskaya’s ultimatum came as police in Belarus detained 186 people at protests across the country, according to the Interior Ministry.

Earlier, the Interior Ministry gave police authorisation to use combat weapons in the streets if needed, as security forces again clashed with protesters who want Lukashenko to quit after a contested Aug. 9 election.

Belarus ramps up crackdown on protests, allows police to use lethal weapons


"Fascists," the protesters chanted in a tense standoff with security forces personnel wearing balaclavas who responded with flare guns and an unidentified spray, according to video clips circulating on social media.

The sound of a blast could be heard as plumes of grey smoke filled the air at the scene. There were no immediate reports of injuries or arrests.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry later confirmed that police had used flare guns and tear gas to disperse an unauthorised rally.

"The protests, which have shifted largely to Minsk, have become organised and extremely radical," the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

"In this regard, the Interior Ministry's employees and internal troops will not leave the streets and, if necessary, will use special equipment and military weapons," it said.

Tens of thousands of Belarusians have demonstrated every weekend since the election, in which Lukashenko was declared the winner. His opponents say the vote was rigged, a charge denied by Lukashenko, who has been in power for 26 years and has now turned to Russia for financial and other support to keep power.

Monday's clashes occurred after thousands of people took part in a "march of pensioners" in the capital Minsk. The protesters chanted "Go away" and waved white flags with a red stripe, a symbol of the Belarusian opposition.

On Sunday, when 713 people were detained for taking part in mass protests, security forces used water cannons and batons to break up crowds demanding a new presidential election.

European Union foreign ministers agreed on Monday to sanction Lukashenko and other senior officials over what they said was a rigged election and worsening police violence against protesters.

Lukashenko was not on an earlier EU sanctions list agreed on Oct. 2 that targeted 40 names, but the bloc now says his refusal to consider new elections as a way out of the crisis leaves it with no choice.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

From the streets to the ballot box, America’s youngest voters are ready to be heard


Issued on: 12/10/2020 - 

Demonstrators at the Cleveland presidential debate protest for Black lives and climate justice, on September 29, 2020. © Colin Kinniburgh, France 24

Text by:Colin KINNIBURGH

On a crisp Thursday in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan’s flagship campus is unusually quiet. The university is one of many across the United States that has welcomed students back to campus amid the Covid-19 pandemic; but with many activities and some courses shifting online, the fall semester is off to a somewhat muted start.

One corner of campus, though, is bustling. Tucked in the lobby of the university’s Museum of Art (UMMA) is a voter registration office operated by the Ann Arbor City Clerk. The temporary office has been open since September 24, when early voting began in the state, and staff said interest among students has been overwhelming.

“‘Surge’ is an understatement,” said Candice Price, 34, a poll worker and Ann Arbor native.

“After the debate, it was crazy,” Price told FRANCE 24, referring to the first presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Biden on September 29, in which Trump repeatedly interrupted his opponent, to the dismay of both Biden and the moderator


“It was like zombies on the windows, trying to get in here. It was insane. There were kids waiting in line for like 45 minutes to vote.”

Price said many students who came to the office that day were quick to say why: They wanted to vote Trump out.

“They were very clear why they came in,” Price said. “[Their] words were, ‘I’m tired of this foolishness, this can’t happen anymore ... you need my vote, this is a swing state.’”

Michigan, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, is one of the three states that delivered Trump’s electoral college victory with a razor-thin margin in 2016.

“‘Surge’ is an understatement,” said poll worker Candice Price (center) of students registering to vote. © Colin Kinniburgh

The temporary election office, which will close on Election Day, is one of hundreds of sites where Michigan residents can cast their votes early under sweeping election reforms approved by voters in a 2018 ballot initiative. Michiganders can now register and vote on the same day – up to and including Election Day – as well as obtain an absentee ballot without providing a reason.

Price has seen the results first hand.

“Typically, Ann Arbor City has about 15,000 people that request absentee ballots. We’ve had over 40,000,” she told FRANCE 24. “At the headquarters, people are stuffing envelopes over and over and over … I’ve probably done about 1,000 myself.”

UMMA has given similar numbers, reporting in a tweet that the office “registered more than 1,000 new voters” in its first week and that “more than 800 absentee ballots (were) returned”.

Logan Woods, a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Michigan and secretary of the campus voter registration drive Turn Up Turnout, told FRANCE 24 by email that he has “heard no indication that number is dropping” as voting continues.

Across Michigan, youth voter registration is up since 2016, according to researchers at the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

As of September, the number of 18- to 24-year-olds registered to vote in the state was 12 percent higher than in November 2016, with some six weeks to go before Election Day. That was before National Voter Registration Day (September 24), the debate and the rush of voters seen by the Ann Arbor campus office.

Students voting in the lobby of the University of Michigan Museum of Art. © Colin Kinniburgh

Still, CIRCLE’s findings suggest that the “surge” Price describes may not be reflected nationwide. In six of the 27 states the researchers surveyed, youth registration at last count was actually down from November 2016.

Reports have pointed to several possible factors. In Ohio, where youth registration has dropped the most, voting rights advocates have blamed voter ID laws and other technicalities for making it harder for students to vote.

Then, of course, there’s Covid-19, which has collided with a maze of state laws to turn voting into a logistical, legal and political battle not seen in decades. Many states have made it easier to vote by mail, but that is not an intuitive solution for a generation raised with smartphones.

Even in states like Michigan, which have made it relatively easy to vote, the pandemic has exacerbated longstanding logistical hurdles to getting to the polls. Price said social media has played a role in counterbalancing that.

“First-time voters come in and say, I saw it on Instagram… I saw it on Twitter... that’s a big deal,” she said. If you don’t connect with them online, she added, young people are not going to show up.

Diverse, progressive – and elusive

The biggest obstacle of all, though, may be convincing young voters that the candidates can actually make a difference in their lives.

It’s not that they’re apathetic. On the contrary, members of Generation Z – generally defined as those born after 1996 – have been at the forefront of the defining social movements of the last several years, from the climate strikes to March for Our Lives to Black Lives Matter.

That’s no great surprise: polling from Pew Research has found Gen Z to be the most diverse and progressive generation of Americans yet. Just a slim majority (52 percent) are white. Of the 13- to 23-year-olds surveyed by Pew, 35 percent said they knew someone who used gender-neutral pronouns, compared to just 16 percent of Gen Xers and 12 percent of baby boomers.

On the economic front, about half of those polled this year reported that their household had faced a loss of income due to Covid-19 and a whopping 70 percent said the government should do more to address social problems – nearly double the rate among the oldest Americans.

The open question is how much of Gen Z’s political energy will translate to the ballot box in what, for millions, will be their first-ever presidential election.

The generation’s older members make up some 24 million eligible voters this year, but only 4 percent of likely voters. That’s because, historically, most young Americans do not vote. And while they bucked that trend in 2018, helping Democrats reclaim the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, there is no guarantee the pattern will hold.

“Zoomers” may lean heavily Democratic, but polling shows them to be increasingly distrustful of established institutions. As many as half of those who identify as Democrats are also wary of “party elites”, according to CIRCLE polling from 2018.

“I don’t think [Biden is] a long-term plan,” said Madison Horton, a 20-year-old student in nursing and anthropology at Ann Arbor. She backed Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary, and like many of Sanders's young supporters, lost enthusiasm after he conceded defeat. Still, since Biden clinched the nomination, she “never really doubted” she would vote for him.

Some of Trump’s more extremist positions might also help galvanize young voters. Horton said that when Trump couldn’t do “something as simple as condemning white supremacy” on the debate stage, that sealed her decision.

“I think to continue the support for Bernie, people are deciding to vote for Biden,” said third-year student Madison Horton. © Colin Kinniburgh

Horton, who works in the art museum café adjacent to the city clerk’s office, is confident that many of her peers will vote the same way – even those who still support Sanders.

“I think to continue the support for Bernie, people are deciding to vote for Biden,” she said.

Despite their reservations, nearly two-thirds of likely Gen Z voters polled by Morning Consult in September plan to vote for Biden, compared to just 27 percent for Trump.

‘Someone has to step up’

Horton joins a wide swath of young voters who feel disillusioned with the political options available at the national level but who plan to cast what they see as a necessary vote for Biden. In FRANCE 24’s reporting across the Rust Belt in late September and early October, we encountered versions of this sentiment among a range of young social movement activists in key swing states spanning from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin.

In Cleveland, Ohio, on the night of Trump and Biden’s rancorous debate, several hundred demonstrators gathered a few blocks from the venue for the Cleveland presidential debate protest for Black lives and climate justice. The protest was organized by about a dozen racial justice, environmental and left-wing groups, including the Sunrise Movement, Black Spring CLE and the Democratic Socialists of America.

Jonathan Roy heard about the protest online from Black Lives Matter Cleveland. The 24-year-old, who plays drums for a church full time and moonlights at local breweries, said that growing up biracial in East Cleveland, he had himself experienced police abuse.

“I got pulled over in a suburban area,” he said. Police cursed at him, and “made me do a sobriety test for no reason, in the cold, while it was snowing.”

“I almost got six months in jail and a $1000 fine for nothing,” he said. The charges against him were eventually dropped.

“Personally, I’m not into government. But someone has to step up and do something,” said 24-year-old Jonathan Roy of Cleveland. © Colin Kinniburgh

Roy said he was also jolted by the 2014 killing of Tamir Rice, a Black 12-year-old who was shot by Cleveland police while playing with a toy gun. Rice’s killing was among those that spurred the first wave of the Black Lives Matter movement that year, and it continues to be a driving force for organizers in the city to this day.

When it comes to the election, Roy said he plans to vote for Biden.

“Personally, I’m not into government. But someone has to step up and do something,” he told FRANCE 24.

‘Issues-first voters’

Among those Gen Z voters who support Trump, many are just as mobilized as their left-wing counterparts and have garnered a dedicated following online. On the social media platform TikTok, Trump fans rally around hashtags like #SocialismSucks, bashing progressive icons like Sanders and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

YouTube, the most widely used social media app among teens, has served as a recruiting ground for the far right. And across various channels, well-funded youth groups like Talking Points USA use aggressive new tactics to champion longstanding conservative causes.

In Cleveland, Lexie Hall, the 19-year-old spokesperson for the anti-abortion group Created Equal, carried a placard displaying a graphic image of an aborted foetus. Gathered with about a dozen other activists, she said their group “seeks to make abortion unthinkable in our culture”.

“If a candidate is pro-abortion, I’m not going to be able to vote for them,” said 19-year-old Lexie Hall. © Colin Kinniburgh

Hall said she was planning to vote for Donald Trump, whom she called “the only pro-life candidate”.

When asked whether there was any contradiction between being pro-life and supporting a candidate who has overseen one of the deadliest years in US history, Hall answered: “Really, for me, abortion is the main thing. If a candidate is pro-abortion, I’m not going to be able to vote for them.”

The sentiment reflects one area where Hall finds common ground with her progressive peers: They’re driven at least as much by issues as by party affiliation.

An open letter to Biden from a coalition of eight progressive, youth-led groups in April spelled it out plainly.

“Young people are issues-first voters,” the groups wrote. “Exclusively anti-Trump messaging won’t be enough to lead any candidate to victory. We need you to champion the bold ideas that have galvanized our generation and given us hope in the political process.”

In Pennsylvania, fracking might not be the winning issue US presidential candidates think it is

Issued on: 13/10/2020 

Lois Bower-Bjornson, southwestern Pennsylvania field organiser with Clean Air Council, points out a fracking well site just over the hill from her home in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania. 

© Colin Kinniburgh

Text by:Colin KINNIBURGH


In the battle for the White House, Pennsylvania and fracking have become all but synonymous. Yet in one of the state’s largest gas-producing counties, FRANCE 24 found residents’ relationship with the industry to be far more vexed than the national debate suggests.






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Rose Friend’s family has a long history with natural gas. For decades, the family’s home in rural Washington County, Pennsylvania, got a free supply of the fuel from a local conventional well, as compensation for one of the several active gas lines running across the property.

It was a straightforward, convenient arrangement for the family, and a testament to the region’s longer-running relationship with fossil fuels. Alongside coal, which powered the area’s iconic steel mills, oil and natural gas production in southwestern Pennsylvania dates back to the late 19th century. For Friend, who grew up ploughing the land with horses, and whose nephew worked in the coal mines, the benefits of the area’s abundant energy reserves were obvious.

Then, around the mid-2000s, a new variable entered the equation. In Friend’s case, it was a company called Atlas America, which was looking to capitalise on a lucrative new industry: hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking. The technology allows drillers to extract oil and gas from deep inside underground rock formations by injecting them at high pressure with water and a cocktail of chemicals.

Atlas was an early player in what would soon prove to be a fossil fuel resurgence. In 2007, when Friend first signed a contract with the company, it was one of the many companies seeking to gain a stake in the Marcellus shale, the gas-rich formation on which her home sits.

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Since 2014, fracking has allowed the United States to become the largest oil and gas producer in the world. Pennsylvania alone produced more natural gas in 2019 than any country besides Russia and Iran – some 195 billion cubic metres, according to figures published by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and Enerdata.

The site opposite Friend’s home, however, lay untouched for a decade after Atlas first approached her. By that time, the company had been sold to Chevron and then again to EQT, now the largest gas producer in the country. And that’s when the trouble started.

“They just moved in,” said Friend, who is in her eighties. “It was totally crazy. I looked out my window one day and they were cutting all my hedges down!”

Rose Friend has spent has much the last two years battling with a natural gas company that she says built a road across her property without her agreement. Still, she says fracking is “necessary”, and plans to vote for Donald Trump. © Colin Kinniburgh

Without warning, she says, the company started chopping down decades-old trees along her road, in order to clear access to a well pad on the neighbouring property. That began a more than two-year-long battle between Friend’s family and EQT, as the company sought to build an “impoundment” – a kind of storage pond for fracking wastewater – on her land, as well as the road.

The family says the company’s activity threatened not just their immediate environment, but also a Native American burial ground on the site, which had been registered with the state’s historic preservation commission since the 1980s and prompted multiple archaeological teams to intervene in their dispute with EQT.

Standing on the gravel road that EQT built across their land, overlooking the Hunter well pad, Karen LeBlanc is furious with the company and politicians alike over what she describes as their dishonesty. She plans to vote for Trump, but says, “Truly, it’s not to do with the fracking”. © Colin Kinniburgh

Ultimately, Friend and her daughter Karen LeBlanc were able to prevent the company from building the impoundment, but not the gravel road that now cuts across what they describe as the “best” of their farmland. The access road is essential for EQT, as the fracking process requires hundreds if not thousands of truck trips per well to bring materials in and out.

One day, LeBlanc says, one of those trucks blocked her mother’s car in when she needed to go to chemotherapy for her colon cancer. Another day, she says, a bulldozer ran over the active gas line that supplied free gas to the family’s home. The line cracked, cutting off Friend’s gas and leaking all night.

To this day, the family says, they haven’t reached an agreement with EQT or received any compensation for the damage to their property. LeBlanc’s anger at the company is palpable.

“It was important that they let [my mother] retire here with some kind of dignity, and putting this road here didn’t allow that,” she said.

EQT did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Fracking is necessary’

Still, Friend doesn’t harbor any ill will toward the industry as a whole.

“I think that fracking is necessary,” she said. “But done the correct way and regulated.”

Leblanc agrees.

“If they can find some way to stop contaminating the water, stop contaminating the air… that’s what they need to work for,” she said.

That’s essentially the position of local Democrats, several of whom FRANCE 24 interviewed just a few hours before meeting LeBlanc and Friend.

Yet both mother and daughter support Donald Trump, as a Trump-Pence yard sign outside Friend’s house makes clear. When asked why, she stressed the president’s signature campaign themes.

“I just don't like the way Biden’s headed... with Kamala Harris, and all the socialism,” Friend said.

“They want to take away your guns, and I have lots of guns,” she continued, with a laugh. “They’re very pro-abortion, and that is a big thing with me.”

A Trump-Pence yard sign outside Friend’s home. The house has been in her family for over 100 years. © Colin Kinniburgh

LeBlanc agreed, calling Trump the “lesser of two evils”. She said she’s not a single-party voter, and previously supported Pennsylvania’s Democratic Governor Tom Wolf. But her distrust of the political class pushed her towards Trump.

“Truly, it’s not to do with the fracking,” she said. Her mother agreed.

‘JOBS!’

In the increasingly fevered battle for the White House, Pennsylvania and fracking have become all but synonymous. The state went to Democratic presidential candidates from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, but flipped to Trump by 0.7 points in 2016 – a key step to his Electoral College victory.

The result there could prove just as decisive this year. And if there’s one thing Trump and Biden’s campaigns agree on, it’s that they can’t win the state without standing by natural gas.

“How does Biden lead in Pennsylvania Polls when he is against Fracking (JOBS!), 2nd Amendment and Religion? Fake Polls. I will win Pennsylvania!” he wrote on October 6.



How does Biden lead in Pennsylvania Polls when he is against Fracking (JOBS!), 2nd Amendment and Religion? Fake Polls. I will win Pennsylvania!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 6, 2020

Vice President Mike Pence also pressed the issue at last Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate with Kamala Harris, insisting that Biden would ban fracking if elected. Biden has made it clear he has no such plans – bucking pressure from environmental groups and the progressive wing of his party, who say that continued oil and gas drilling are incompatible with a livable climate. Yet the Republicans have succeeded in putting their opponents on the defensive, forcing Harris to repeat twice that Biden “will not end fracking”.

Bob Sabot, supervisor of North Franklin Township, a suburb of the county seat of Washington, says that fracking has become a “dangerous issue” for Democrats, “because Donald Trump has politicised it so much”.

Biden’s official climate plan does not mention fracking explicitly, but says that if elected, he would ban “new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters”. Sabot stands by this position.

“He wants to make sure it’s clear that in the future we are going to move in a different direction,” he said. “Cause … if we don’t start to deal with climate issues, we are going to continue to see wildfires and hurricanes, and oceans are going to continue to rise.”

Bob Sabot, supervisor of North Franklin Township, a suburb of the county seat of Washington, says that frac.king has become a “dangerous issue” for Democrats © Colin Kinniburgh

“Joe Biden wants to use fracking as a change of type of fuel to the future,” he continued. “Biden does not want to throw people out of work. He does not want to close the fracking industry and the coal mines.”

The actual number of jobs that fracking brings to the Pennsylvania are highly disputed. The Trump campaign says that shutting down the industry would “kill 609,000 jobs” in the state, citing a study from the country’s largest business lobby, the US Chamber of Commerce.

However, the national Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) counted less than 20,000 jobs directly linked to shale industry in Pennsylvania in 2019 – just 0.3 percent of all jobs in the state.

Industry proponents typically argue that such figures do not account for indirect or “induced” jobs supported by the industry, which are notoriously difficult to count. (The Chamber of Commerce provides no sources or methodology for its job estimates.)

What’s clearer from the employment numbers is the boom and bust nature of the industry, which shed some 10,000 direct jobs in just two years when oil and gas prices crashed in 2015-16. They haven’t recovered since.

Larry Maggi, a Democratic Commissioner for Washington County, is confident that the energy sector will bounce back.

“We are just in a down cycle since one or two years,” he said. “No matter who is president, we are going to come out of it.”

As for environmental concerns, Maggi maintains that fracking today is “done safely” in the state.

“We’ve been able to collaborate with the energy sector here without sacrificing our environment,” he said.

‘Lies and lies and lies’

LeBlanc, the Trump supporter, doesn’t share his assessment.

“They don’t need to preach how safe it is when you can see how many other lies I’ve caught them in,” she said of EQT. “We’ve seen video of the emissions coming from there. We’ve seen the water leaking out… It’s lies and lies and lies.”

Lois Bower-Bjornson has seen the videos too – a lot of them. A school classmate of LeBlanc’s, she is a dancer by trade and an anti-fracking activist by “necessity”. She now works as the southwestern Pennsylvania field organiser with Clean Air Council, serves on the board of the Washington County-based Center for Coalfield Justice and gives tours of local fracking sites to anybody who’s willing to listen.

She’s collected testimony from a wide swath of her neighbours who’ve been harmed by fracking, and brought their stories to state and national regulators. Besides Friend and LeBlanc, she’s worked with people like Janice and Kurt Blanock, who lost their son to a rare bone cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma in 2016, when he was just 19; his case and a string of other diagnoses of the same cancer in the area led the state to open an investigation into possible links to fracking.

Bjornson’s own children have experienced a range of symptoms that she attributes to the many gas wells within walking distance of her home in the town of Scenery Hill.

“My third son has the absolute worst health impacts, because he was the youngest and he grew up in it more, she said. “He will have severe nosebleeds, sometimes two a day, to the point that he has clots coming out of his nose and out of his mouth.”

. © Yona Heloua

Studies conducted in both Pennsylvania and Colorado have linked headaches, nosebleeds and respiratory symptoms to local pollution created by shale gas wells.

Bjornson is disgusted with the way the natural gas industry operates in her state, and at the ways that it has influenced politicians of both parties, including Biden himself. But she agrees with pro-gas Democrats on at least one thing: “They’re not banning fracking here. It’s not happening.”

She agrees that calling for a ban would doom Biden’s chances in the state, too. And she cautions liberals from states like New York, which have banned fracking, and want to “shame” Pennsylvania for not doing the same.

“You can sit up there on your little high horse, and say stupid stuff like that, but this is what we have to work with,” she said. “And that’s not our fault.”

Economics could trump politics

The sentiment may sound surprising coming from someone who has been wrangling with the industry for the better part of the past decade. Yet for Bjornson, it makes sense that the fracking fight doesn’t fall along straightforward partisan lines.

“People want to make this political when it’s not a political issue. It’s a human rights issue. It’s a, hey, species issue,” she said, referring to the threat of climate change. “Do you want to live? That’s what it is.”

Statewide, a CBS/YouGov poll conducted in August found that a slim majority (52 percent) “oppose the process of fracking”, with Black, Democratic and young voters most likely to oppose it.


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Bjornson has seen that split even in predominantly rural, white, conservative Washington County, where she says the issue is “straight down the middle, completely divisive”.

Those divisions may only deepen if the industry’s current financial woes continue. Over the years, Bjornson says she’s encountered a few people who have profited handsomely from fracking, whether by finding a high-paying technical job or earning hefty royalties from drilling underneath their land. Others “made a lot of money, and now aren’t making any money because of the price of gas”.

Wall Street is flashing warning signs, too, as author Bethany McLean and others have explained. Oil giants Chevron and Shell are in the process of selling off their assets in the region. EQT disclosed a major writedown of its assets in January.

That was even before Covid-19 hit, contributing to an unprecedented oil price crash in April and casting further uncertainty over the market.

Ultimately, it’s these economic forces, not politicians, that may decide the future of fracking in the state. The question is: if Pennsylvania’s gas industry goes the way of coal and steel, will either party be able to offer a viable alternative?

Policing without consent: Why French police are

 ill-equipped to ‘reconquer’ Paris suburbs

Issued on: 13/10/2020 - 21:36

French police hold paper shooting targets following an attack on the police station in Champigny-sur-Marne, east of Paris, on October 12, 2020. © Lucien Libert, REUTERS

Text by:Sarah LEDUC|Benjamin DODMAN

Brazen attacks on French police have highlighted the divide between law enforcement and youths in France’s most deprived suburbs. Analysts say bridging the chasm requires changing the entrenched culture of a police force that is answerable to the state, not the people.

With its fresh coat of paint, refurbished offices and supplementary cells, the revamped police station in Champigny-sur-Marne, east of Paris, was hailed as a “showcase” of the government’s suburban policing strategy when it reopened earlier this year following a €4.4 million facelift.

Surrounded by the shabby concrete blocks typical of the French capital’s poorer suburbs, Champigny’s commissariat de police lay at the heart of a newly designated “territory of Republican reconquest”, one of 30 run-down districts across the nation to receive extra police and investment in a highly publicised campaign to drive out street gangs and drug dealers.

The extensive renovation included the construction of a bullet-proof sally port at the front of the building – a crucial addition that may have saved two officers from being lynched in the early hours of Sunday when several dozen youths suddenly attacked the precinct with fireworks and metal bars, smashing windows and damaging police cars parked outside.

Hours after the audacious assault, senior officials were on the spot voicing outrage and vowing to crack down harder on the perpetrators, who were yet to be identified. Valérie Pécresse, the right-wing head of the Île-de-France region, which encompasses Paris, spoke of “scenes of war” at the police station in Champigny, urging the government to deploy more reinforcements in “neighbourhoods hit hardest by organised crime”.

“The little bosses impress no one and won’t discourage us in our fight against drugs,” added Gérald Darmanin, France’s new get-tough interior minister, linking the attack, without evidence, to his crackdown on drug trafficking. “The police are the Republic and the Republic is the police,” the minister sentenced – a choice of words that says a lot about France’s intractable policing problem.

‘Great savageness’

The spectacular assault in Champigny, which rattled officers but caused no injuries, was the latest in a string of attacks against police, and sometimes firefighters, that Darmanin says are a sign of the “great savageness” undermining French values. It came just days after two police officers in civilian clothes were pulled from their vehicle in another Paris suburb and shot multiple times with their own guns. One officer remains in serious condition.

On Monday, scores of police officers staged protests outside the station in Champigny, calling for respect, reinforcements and exemplary punishments. Police are the “last bulwark of the Republic” in France’s roughest suburbs, said one union representative; the Champigny attack proves that officers “are at risk of attack even on their doorstep”, raged another. Darmanin, who met with union leaders in Paris on Tuesday, promised new measures to protect officers in talks with President Emmanuel Macron later this week.
'Savage' attack on police station near Paris sparks calls for government action

01:40

French statistics on crime and delinquency are notoriously a subject of dispute, with talk of “rampant insecurity” often overshadowing the hard numbers. This leaves ample scope for tough-talking politicians and union representatives to shape the narrative.

According to the most recent study by the National Observatory of Delinquency (ONDRP), the number of police officers killed or injured in action rose sharply in 2018 after ebbing in previous years – an upsurge analysts attribute in large part to the fierce clashes with Yellow Vest protesters that peaked late that year. Judging by the number of complaints filed by police, assaults on officers continued to rise throughout 2019, a year also marked by civil unrest.

In another indicator of the strain on France’s police force, deaths by suicide among officers have risen steadily in recent years, to the point they now outnumber deaths in the line of duty. A parliamentary inquiry, made public last year, has listed a multitude of reasons, including overwork since a series of terrorist attacks that started in January 2015. Other sources have pointed at the entrenched hostility that has driven a wedge between police and segments of the public, and the government’s inability – or unwillingness – to address a negative spiral of hatred and violence that hurts the police as much as the public.

Warring mentality

Touching on the subject on the eve of his election to the French presidency, back in May 2017, Macron promised to “change the culture, the management and the recruitment of French police” once in office. “When there is manifestly a problem, the police hierarchy must be challenged,” the future president told news website Mediapart. But three years on, the only tangible change is the widened gulf between French police and swathes of the public.

While surveys suggest a broad majority of the French have confidence in the police, months of fierce clashes between riot police and Yellow Vest protesters shed light on the fearsome weaponry and tactics used by law enforcement in France, alienating segments of the public that previously bore no grudge against the police. More recently, the focus has shifted back to the festering issue of police racism and brutality in the immigrant-rich suburbs of France’s largest cities, on the heels of the global protest movement triggered by the George Floyd killing in the US.

>> Racism, sex abuse and impunity: French police’s toxic legacy in the suburbs

At the height of those protests, Jacques Toubon, France's human rights ombudsman, raised the alarm over a "crisis of public confidence in the security forces" in a wide-ranging report that made for grim reading. He urged a reversal of what he described as a "warring mentality" in law enforcement.

That warring mentality is reflected in the language used by both government and police officials when referring to Champigny and other “territories of reconquest”, says Mathieu Zagrodzki, a researcher at the Centre for Sociological Studies on Penal Institutions (CESDIP). Violent incidents like the one in Champigny are “a consequence of decades of hostility and negative stereotyping on both sides”, Zagrodzki told FRANCE 24. “The police see youths in the rougher suburbs as uniformly hostile, while on the other side officers are seen as the enemy. In both cases, the enmity is nurtured early on.”

‘As a kid, I dreamt of being a cop. Who would play the cop now?’

Zouhair Ech-Chetouani, a social worker and spokesperson for the Collectif Banlieues Respect, based in the northern Paris suburb of Asnières, says police have every right to be angry and feel abandoned by a state that “asks them to make up for its own failings”. He argues that both officers and the public are victims of politicians’ misguided view of policing and their preference for repression over crime prevention.

“We must stop considering poor districts as enemies of the Republic, as territories that need to be reconquered,” he said. “The police should serve the public, not political interests. How can they work against the population when they are supposed to protect the population?”

Analysts say the antagonism between French police and youths in deprived areas reflects a structural reluctance to engage with local communities. The establishment of community policing, at the turn of the century, marked a short-lived attempt to bridge the gulf with residents of the banlieues. But the so-called police de proximité (proximity police) jarred with the tough “law and order” rhetoric of conservative firebrand Nicolas Sarkozy, who disbanded the unit after becoming France’s interior minister in 2002.

“You’re not a social worker,” Sarkozy famously told an officer who had helped organise a football tournament for youths in a poor suburb of Toulouse.

Ever since, left-wing politicians have regularly floated the idea of reintroducing some form of police de proximité. But former President François Hollande’s Socialist government made no such attempt. Instead, to the dismay of minority youths singled out by police, Hollande’s administration reneged on a campaign promise to introduce a form of written receipt for all identity checks carried out by officers – a measure long advocated by campaigners against racial profiling.

“When I was younger, the cops and I knew each other, there was a measure of respect,” said Ech-Chetouani. “As a kid, I dreamt of becoming a policeman. That’s unthinkable now. Who would dream of playing the cop here?”

The community worker says the heart of the problem is a lack of police training and the practice of deploying rookie officers from faraway regions in some of the toughest neighbourhoods. “The young officers who get sent here have no knowledge of the banlieues, they often don’t know people from [racial] minorities,” he explained. “They’re sent here like it’s some kind of war zone, with 40 kilos of military hardware. But they simply don’t have the skillset to deal with situations they cannot understand.”

Beholden to the state, not the people

Though police unions generally plead for more hardware, some also point the finger at misguided recruitment policies and a lack of training.

Flavien Bénazet, of the SNUITAM-FSU union, called for “more comprehensive training, which brings in relational skills, psychology and sociology”. He added: “We need more officers, because at present we simply don’t have the time and manpower to build relationships with communities.”

Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin meets police officers outside the police station in Champigny-sur-Marne on Sunday, hours after they they were attacked with fireworks and metal bars. © Thomas Samson, AFP

Like many analysts and community workers, Bénazet also called for the reinstatement of the police de proximité, arguing that Sarkozy’s decision to scrap community policing did great damage to relations between the force and the public. “We need officers out on the street, not in their cars. And we need a permanent contact and presence,” he added. “People say this costs a lot of money, but so do other public services that are useful to society.”

While referring to police as a public service is a no-brainer in much of the West, some analysts say the notion is debatable in France, where there is no equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon principle of “policing by consent”.

In France, “the state designed the police force to surveil and control its citizens. It’s a different concept from the Anglo-Saxon idea of a police that is drawn from civil society,” said Zagrodzki. “This is still reflected in different policing cultures today. In France, we have a focus on repression, whereas in Germany and Britain the police forces are designed to solve conflicts.”

Solving conflicts requires specific skills and training, says Sébastian Roché, a research director at the National Center for Scientific Research who specialises in police systems. In the French case, it would also require a radical change of thinking, he adds, noting that French recruits undergo an eight-month training – enough to practise chokeholds but not to learn mediation – against two to three years of instruction in northern European countries.

“French police are beholden to the state, not the people. They need the trust of the government, not the public,” he said, describing this as the “fundamental flaw” that poisons relations between law enforcement and segments of the public, and impedes meaningful reform. “Over the past four decades we’ve seen many reports identifying the structural problems with French policing,” Roché added. “But finding solutions is necessarily a long and complex process – and politicians have no time for this.”



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Humanitarian crisis feared as Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire broken



Issued on: 14/10/2020 

Bahtiyar Elnur, 5, who was injured during a blast, plays with his sister Sehla, during the fighting over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in the city of Ganja, Azerbaijan October 11, 2020. © Reuters - Umit Bektas
Text by:NEWS WIRES

Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other on Tuesday of violating a ceasefire agreed three days ago to quell fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, drawing warnings from international groups of a humanitarian crisis

The Russia-brokered truce is buckling despite mounting calls from world powers to halt the fighting, with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo among those urging greater commitment to the ceasefire terms.

Turkey and Armenia exchanged recriminations, each blaming the other for exacerbating the crisis around Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but governed and populated by ethnic Armenians.

Earlier on Tuesday, a Reuters cameraman witnessed shelling in the Nagorno-Karabakh town of Martuni. A Reuters television crew in Terter in Azerbaijan also said the city centre was being shelled.

Azerbaijan accused Armenia of "grossly violating the humanitarian truce", which was agreed on Saturday to allow the sides to swap prisoners and bodies of those killed. .

Defence Ministry spokesman Vagif Dargiahly said Armenia was shelling the Azeri territories of Goranboy and Aghdam, as well as Terter. Azeri forces were not violating the truce, he added.

Armenian Defence Ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan denied the accusation. She said Azerbaijan had resumed military operations "supported by active artillery fire in the southern, northern, northeastern and eastern directions".

The fighting, which erupted on Sept. 27, is the worst since a 1991-94 war over Nagorno-Karabakh that killed about 30,000 people. It is being closely watched abroad because of fears Russia and Turkey could get sucked in. Russia has a defence pact with Armenia, while Turkey is allied with Azerbaijan.

'Catastrophic consequences'

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan accused Turkey of muscling its way into the South Caucasus region to further what he called its expansionist ambitions. Turkey denies this.

"The problem is that Armenians in the South Caucasus are the last remaining obstacle on its path to implement that expansionist policy," Pashinyan told Reuters.

The "Minsk Group" - a committee set up by the OSCE security watchdog to help mediate in Nagorno-Karabakh - called on the Armenian and Azeri leaders to implement the ceasefire to prevent "catastrophic consequences for the region".

The 11-member group is led by the United States, Russia and France. Turkey is also a member but not involved in the Nagorno-Karabakh talks, though it has said it wants to join them.

Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, told reporters that while ceasefire demands were "reasonable", the international community should ask Armenia to withdraw from Azeri territory.

"Sadly no such call is being made," he said.

Influential Turkish politician Devlet Bahceli, whose party supports President Tayyip Erdogan's AKP in parliament, took a more belligerent tone, telling Azerbaijan to secure Nagorno-Karabakh by "hitting Armenia over the head over and over again".

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, President Donald Trump's Democratic rival in the Nov. 3 presidential election, expressed deep concern over the "collapse" of the ceasefire and accused the Trump administration of being "largely passive and disengaged."

"Rather than delegating the diplomacy to Moscow, the administration must get more involved, at the highest levels," Biden said in a statement.

Dead and wounded

The death toll continues to rise. Nagorno-Karabakh officials said 532 servicemen had been killed so far, up 7 from Monday.


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Azerbaijan has reported 42 Azeri civilian deaths and 206 wounded since Sept. 27. It has not disclosed military casualties.

Martin Schuepp, Eurasia regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said his organisation was trying to facilitate handovers of detainees or dead bodies, but the security situation hindered the efforts.

With tens of thousands of people potentially needing help in coming months, the ICRC is appealing for another 9.2 million Swiss francs ($10.10 million) to fund humanitarian efforts.

The conflict is also worsening the spread of COVID-19, World Health Organisation spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told a United Nations briefing in Geneva. New cases doubled over the past two weeks in Armenia and rose by 80% in Azerbaijan, he said.

(REUTERS)