Study: Health systems, govt responses linked to virus tolls

A man wearing a face mask walks past a statue of the Beatles, as new measures across the region are set to come into force in Liverpool, England, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020. New plans unveiled this week show Liverpool is in the highest-risk category, and its pubs, gyms and betting shops have been shut. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

BERLIN (AP) — Scientists say a comparison of 21 developed countries during the start of the coronavirus pandemic shows that those with early lockdowns and well-prepared national health systems avoided large numbers of additional deaths due to the outbreak.

In a study published Wednesday by the journal Nature Medicine, researchers used the number of weekly deaths in 19 European countries, New Zealand and Australia over the past decade to estimate how many people would have died from mid-February to May 2020 had the pandemic not happened.

The authors, led by Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London, then compared the predicted number of deaths to the actual reported figure during that period to determine how many likely occurred due to the pandemic. Such models of ‘excess mortality’ are commonly used by public health officials to better understand disease outbreaks and the effectiveness of counter-measures.

The study found there were about 206,000 excess deaths across the 21 countries during the period, a figure that conforms to independent estimates. In Spain, the number of deaths was 38% higher than would have been expected without the pandemic, while in England and Wales it was 37% higher.

Italy, Scotland and Belgium also had significant excess deaths, while in some countries there was no marked change or even — as in the case of Bulgaria — a decrease.

While the authors note that there are differences in the compositions of populations, such as age and the prevalence of pre-existing conditions that contribute to mortality rates, government efforts to suppress transmission of the virus and the ability of national health systems to cope with the pandemic also played a role.

Amitava Banerjee, a professor of clinical data science at University College London who wasn’t involved in the study, said it was well designed and had used standardized methods.

He noted that the comparison between death rates in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, where the age of the population and the rates of pre-existing conditions such as obesity are similar, supports the argument that other factors contributed to the differing mortality figures.

“Even if vaccines and better treatments for severe (COVID-19) infection are developed, the way to minimise excess deaths is to reduce the infection rate through population level measures,” said Banerjee.

These include lockdowns, protecting high risk groups,and establishing effective “test, trace and isolate” systems, he said.

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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Push to bring coronavirus vaccines to the poor faces trouble
By MARIA CHENG and LORI HINNANT October 1, 2020


FILE - In this July 30, 2020 file photo, Kai Hu, a research associate transfers medium to cells, in the laboratory at Imperial College in London. Imperial College is working on the development of a COVID-19 vaccine. South Africa and India on Friday Oct. 2, 2020, asked the World Trade Organization to waive some provisions in the international agreements that regulate intellectual property rights, to speed up efforts to prevent, treat and contain the COVID-19 pandemic and make sure developing countries are not left behind. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)

LONDON (AP) — An ambitious humanitarian project to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the world’s poorest people is facing potential shortages of money, cargo planes, refrigeration and vaccines themselves — and is running into skepticism even from some of those it’s intended to help most.

In one of the biggest obstacles, rich countries have locked up most of the world’s potential vaccine supply through 2021, and the U.S. and others have refused to join the project, called Covax.

“The supply of vaccines is not going to be there in the near term, and the money also isn’t there,” warned Rohit Malpani, a public health consultant who previously worked for Doctors Without Borders.

Covax was conceived as a way of giving countries access to coronavirus vaccines regardless of their wealth.

It is being led by the World Health Organization, a U.N. agency; Gavi, a public-private alliance, funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, that buys immunizations for 60% of the world’s children; and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, another Gates-supported public-private collaboration.

Covax’s aim is to buy 2 billion doses by the end of 2021, though it isn’t yet clear whether the successful vaccine will require one dose or two for the world’s 7.8 billion people. Countries taking part in the project can either buy vaccines from Covax or get them for free, if needed.

One early problem that has emerged: Some of the world’s wealthiest nations have negotiated their own deals directly with drug companies, meaning they don’t need to participate in the endeavor at all. China, Russia and the U.S. have said they do not intend to join. Other countries, including France and Germany, will technically join Covax but won’t procure vaccines for their citizens via the initiative.

Not only that, but firm agreements with Covax came in too late to prevent more than half of all potential doses being snapped up by countries representing 13% of the world’s population, according to an Oxfam study.

“As a continent of 1.2 billion people, we still have concerns,” Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director John Nkengasong said Thursday.

He praised Covax for the solidarity it represents but said there are serious questions about allocation, saying African nations’ envoys are meeting directly with vaccine manufacturers to ask “if we came to the table with money, how would we get enough vaccines to cover the gap?”

The European Union has contributed 400 million euros ($469 million) to support Covax, but the 27-country bloc won’t use Covax to buy vaccines. Instead, the EU has signed its own deals to buy more than 1 billion doses, after some member states raised concerns about what was described as Gavi’s “dictatorship” approach to running Covax.

Gavi, WHO and CEPI announced in September that countries representing two-thirds of the world’s population had joined Covax, but they acknowledged they still need about $300 million more from governments or other sources. By the end of next year, Gavi estimates the project will need $5 billion more.

Covax did reach a major agreement this week for 200 million doses from the Indian vaccine maker Serum Institute, though the company made clear that a large portion of those will go to people in India.

Covax said negotiations to secure vaccines are moving forward despite the lack of funds.

Gavi’s Aurelia Nguyen, managing director of Covax, said that nothing similar has ever been attempted in public health.

Covax “is a hugely ambitious project,” she said, “but it is the only plan on the table to end the pandemic across the world.”

Full Coverage: Understanding the Outbreak

Still, the project is facing doubts and questions from poor countries and activists over how it will operate and how effective it will be.

Dr. Clemens Auer, who sits on WHO’s executive board and was the EU’s lead negotiator for its vaccine deals, said there is a troubling lack of transparency about how Covax will work.

“We would have no say over the vaccines, the price, the quality, the technical platform or the risks,” Auer said. “This is totally unacceptable.”

He said WHO never consulted countries about its proposed vaccine strategy and called the health agency’s goal of vaccinating the world’s most vulnerable people before anyone else a “noble notion” but politically naive.

As part of Covax, WHO and Gavi have asked countries to first prioritize front-line health workers, then the elderly, with the goal of vaccinating 20% of the world’s population.

One expensive hurdle is that many of the vaccine candidates need to be kept cold from factory to patient, according to internal documents from Gavi. Industry has signaled that “air freight for COVID vaccines will be a major constraint,” and a “significant and urgent ramp-up of cold chain capacity” may be needed.

On Thursday, Gavi announced it will provide $150 million to help some countries with planning, technical assistance and refrigeration equipment.

Another obstacle: Many of the leading vaccine candidates require two doses. That will mean twice as many syringes, twice as much waste disposal, and the complications involved in ensuring patients in remote corners of the world receive the second dose on time and stay free of side effects.

“Because of the fact that we’re looking at trying to get vaccines out as quickly as possible, we’re looking at limited follow-up and efficacy data,” said Gian Gandhi, who runs logistics from UNICEF’s supply division in Copenhagen.

There is also concern that the fear of lawsuits could scuttle deals. According to the internal documents, Gavi told countries that drug companies will probably require assurances that they won’t face product liability claims over deaths or side effects from their vaccines.

Dr. Nakorn Premsi, director of Thailand’s National Vaccine Institute, said officials there are reviewing whether that condition is acceptable. Thailand so far has signed only a nonbinding agreement with Covax.

Some critics say Gavi isn’t ambitious enough. The pandemic won’t end until there is herd immunity well beyond the rich nations that have secured their own doses, said Eric Friedman, a scholar of global health law at Georgetown University who is generally supportive of Covax.

“If we want to achieve herd immunity and get rid of this, 20% is not going to do it,” he said. “What’s the end game?”

Alicia Yamin, an adjunct lecturer on global health at Harvard University, said she fears the “window is closing” for Covax to prove workable. She said it is disappointing that Gavi, WHO and their partners haven’t pushed pharmaceutical companies harder on issues like intellectual property or open licenses, which might make more vaccines available.

With little evidence of such fundamental change in the global health world, Yamin said it’s likely that developing countries will have to rely on donated vaccines rather than any equitable allocation program.

“I would say that poor countries probably will not get vaccinated until 2022 or 2023,” Yamin said.

FILE - In this Wednesday, June 24, 2020 file photo, a volunteer receives an injection at the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, Johannesburg. An ambitious humanitarian project to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the world’s poorest people is facing potential shortages of money, cargo planes, refrigeration and vaccines themselves — and is running into skepticism even from some of those it’s intended to help most. (Siphiwe Sibeko/Pool via AP, File)

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Lori Hinnant reported from Paris. Cara Anna contributed from Johannesburg.

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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

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.

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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?