SYRIA

After cutting off food baskets… homemade bulgur wheat and tomato paste are back in Daraa


The distribution of food aids in Daraa - 2020 the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC)

Enab Baladi
 13/11/2020


Daraa – Halim Muhammad

Umm Mahmoud lit the wood-burning stove under the pot and added wheat grains to prepare the bulgur’s supply. She abandoned this task years ago but returned to it in the summer of the second year after the Syrian regime re-controlled her governorate.

The forty-something-year-old woman coughed as she tried to keep the fire burning to cook the wheat, but the smoke rising from the stove filled her eyes with tears and affected her health as she suffers from a chronic pulmonary allergy.

“It is like we came back in time to decades ago, when my mother used to rely on firewood to prepare and store supplies of bulgur and tomato paste,” Umm Mahmoud told Enab Baladi.
Deficient aids

Umm Mahmoud is “forced” to return to store food supplies to feed her family of seven, not only because of high prices and poor economic conditions but also due to the cut off of aid she used to receive for years during the war.

Before the Syrian regime’s forces regained control of the area, in July 2018, relief organizations that assisted residents were active by delivering aid through the al-Ramtha border crossing with Jordan.

The United Nations (UN) has resorted to the al-Ramtha border crossing to eliminate bureaucracy and not hinder humanitarian efforts by activating the Security Council resolution to deliver cross-border assistance without requiring permission from the Syrian regime government.

Nevertheless, the region’s return to the Syrian regime’s control suspended the UN resolution, and the relief aids returned subject to the governmental decisions.

“I used to receive the aid basket a maximum of every month and a half, and the basket was filled with tomato paste, bulgur, canned food, oil, and sugar, but nowadays the basket is distributed every six months,” Umm Mahmoud said.

According to Umm Mahmoud, the aid provided was “enough” to meet the family’s food needs.

Nowadays, the aid granted does not include canned food or tomato paste, whereas the bulgur is not enough and of bad quality. Therefore, most people, especially in the countryside, resorted to preparing bulgur and tomato paste at home, Umm Mahmoud said.
How to prepare bulgur supply and tomato paste at home?

The preparation of homemade food supplies is an old habit in the Daraa governorate, given the importance of bulgur in preparing the “Hauran Mansaf” and the “Mlehi,” a ceremonial big occasion dish made with bulgur and garnished with meat and nuts.

Umm Mahmoud explained to Enab Baladi the preparation way of bulgur supply at home, which begins with putting the bulgur wheat in water to melt the dust and push the straw to the top of the pot. Then the moist grains are spread outdoors until they are dried by the sun.

Umm Mahmoud removes the dirt, little stones, and barley from the wheat grains and then sends them to the grinder to become ready for storage.

As for tomato paste’s homemaking, it does not require lots of effort, as Haneen, a local woman in her thirties, told Enab Baladi while mashing the red tomatoes.

Haneen covered up her hair and wore medical gloves before starting her work. She first cleaned the tomatoes, then cut them, added salt, and mashed them.

The women of Daraa province have two ways to making tomato paste, the first of which is placing the tomato paste under the sun for several days after mashing the tomatoes, and the second way is done by cooking the tomato juice on fire until it holds together and turns into a paste.

Haneen prefers the cooking way and said that the last step is to store the tomato paste in jars to be consumed later and added to food, such as pasta meals, potato soups, and beans.
What about the markets?

According to Haneen, bulgur and tomato paste are available in shops and markets, but their high prices drive families to prepare them at home.

The price of one kilogram of bulgur in the market is 1200 Syrian pounds (SYP = less than half a dollar), and the price of tomato paste is 1500 SYP per kilo. These prices are considered high, given the weak purchasing power of the residents in this region.

The United Nations had repeatedly expressed its “concern” about the rise in food prices in Syria, as they increased in more than double over 2019, by 133 percent, according to last June’s estimations when the Syrian pound witnessed the largest drop in value against the US dollar.

According to the latest data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in August, 32 relief organizations are active in the governorate of Daraa, including five organizations affiliated to the UN, 13 Syrian non-governmental organizations (NGOs), eight international NGOs, five civil society organizations, and the “Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC).”



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Syria’s bread crisis continues… Syrian women make their own bread


Women baking flatbreads in a tandoor oven in the village of killi in the northern countryside of Idlib - October 2020 ((Enab Baladi / Iyad Abdel Jawad) )

Enab Baladi
 22/11/2020

“ Even though making flatbreads is so exhausting because I make it myself and sometimes with my neighbor’s help. Yet, I think homemade bread is much tastier and better than store-bought bread.”

Inside her home in the province of Rif Dimashq, Halima “aka Umm Ammar” (57 years old) has to knead the dough with her hands to make “Tandoor bread” in a traditional way, because bread is no longer available in government bakeries at all times, Halima told Enab Baladi online.

In fairly thin and large dough discs just like paper, on a tava called “Saj,” which is a flat or convex disc-shaped griddle made from metal, Halima makes flatbreads for the daily consumption of her family.
lower cost

The cost of a bundle of homemade bread is estimated at 1,700 Syrian Pounds (SYP- 0.5 USD); one kilogram of flour is sold for about 1,400 SYP (0.4 USD). On the other hand, the price of a bundle of bread in the market sometimes reaches more than 2,000 SYP, according to Halima.

In late October, the Syrian regime’s Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection raised the price of subsidized bread and flour in its area of control by up to 100 percent.

The ministry’s decision stated, “The sale price of one kilogram of subsidized bread without a bag is modified to become 75 SYP (0.02 USD) when sold to the consumer. The price of a plastic bread bag is set at 100 SYP (0.03 USD) for bread distributors and consumers from the bakery outlet.”

The decision included raising the sale price of a ton of subsidized flour to 40,000 SYP (13.8 USD).

The increase in the price of a bundle of subsidized bread came in conjunction with the crisis of the SYP’s devaluation against foreign currencies. The US dollar is worth around 2,600 SYP during the current November, according to the website of Syrian Pound Today (a Syrian Pound tracking website.)
A shortage of flour in bakeries … “Let’s bake at our homes”

The majority of the city’s residents in Rif Dimashq mainly rely on buying bread from the market. However, just a few weeks ago, long breadlines re-appeared in front of bakeries in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Because of the disruption of bakeries in Rif Dimashq, people have to go to the capital to buy their bread.

Sometimes people go to the bakeries for nearly three days. Still, they cannot even buy one bundle, according to what Halima quoted about people’s suffering while securing a bundle of bread from the bakeries.

Halima said that she heard that the neighbors started to use the flour they have at their homes in making saj bread due to the shortage of flour in state-owned bakeries. She added, “As long as we know bread baking, so why don’t we bake it at our homes?!”

On 15 September, the Director-General of the Syrian Bakeries Foundation, Ziad Hazza, announced that the bread situation was “improving,” denying that there was a shortage of flour and baking ingredients such as yeast, and fuel, despite the bread crisis that appeared in the form of long queues in front of bakeries in Damascus. He said that all bakeries are well provided with bread supplies to meet people’s demands, and “fair distribution is taking place despite economic sanctions,” according to the pro-government newspaper, al-Watan.

“ Making and baking saj bread ” is one of women’s old profession in the Syrian countryside. The smell of freshly baked bread attracts everyone and evokes happy memories. When Halima was 18 years old, she learned under her mother’s supervision to prepare this type of bread at home. Now she is using this skill after many years as a shelter to protect her and her family from the bread crisis that most Syrian cities are experiencing.
Homemade saj bread was a luxury in the past but at present, it is a necessity

The bread crisis has brought the saj bread baking skill to the front of the daily household chores in Syria again. Many Syrian people prefer to bake their own bread instead of standing in long lines outside bakeries to buy bread. They think that homemade bread is less expensive and much healthier than bakery-bought bread. This is how Amal Sallat “Umm Ibrahim” (44 years old) compared homemade bread and market-bought bread in a phonecall with Enab Baladi. She said that baking bread is like going “on a picnic” where all family members were gathering and cooperating with kneading and baking bread before the 2011 year.

Making “saj bread” takes so much time and effort, especially if the number of people for whom the bread is made is large, according to Sallat, who has been practicing this profession for a long time. It also needs special tools such as “a bread cushion;” the sheeted dough discs are then placed onto the oven’s inner walls with the aid of the cushion. Besides, the rolling pin is used to flatten the dough in addition to a gas cylinder.

“Saj bread” had symbolism in the city of Idlib, represented in gathering relatives and friends on various occasions such as wedding ceremonies and funerals. Those gatherings used to create a feeling of heightened security among people during family crises,” Sallat said. Nowadays, saj making bread has become a necessity more than a luxury, due to bread crises and high prices.

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Neanderthals And Humans Were at War For Over 100,000 Years, Evidence Shows

The Saint-Césaire Neanderthal skull suffered a blow that split the skull. (Smithsonian Institution)

NICHOLAS R. LONGRICH, THE CONVERSATION
3 NOVEMBER 2020

Around 600,000 years ago, humanity split in two. One group stayed in Africa, evolving into us. The other struck out overland, into Asia, then Europe, becoming Homo neanderthalensis – the Neanderthals. They weren't our ancestors, but a sister species, evolving in parallel.


Neanderthals fascinate us because of what they tell us about ourselves – who we were, and who we might have become. It's tempting to see them in idyllic terms, living peacefully with nature and each other, like Adam and Eve in the Garden.

If so, maybe humanity's ills – especially our territoriality, violence, wars – aren't innate, but modern inventions.

Biology and palaeontology paint a darker picture. Far from peaceful, Neanderthals were likely skilled fighters and dangerous warriors, rivalled only by modern humans.
Top predators

Predatory land mammals are territorial, especially pack-hunters. Like lions, wolves and Homo sapiens, Neanderthals were cooperative big-game hunters. These predators, sitting atop the food chain, have few predators of their own, so overpopulation drives conflict over hunting grounds. Neanderthals faced the same problem; if other species didn't control their numbers, conflict would have.

This territoriality has deep roots in humans. Territorial conflicts are also intense in our closest relatives, chimpanzees. Male chimps routinely gang up to attack and kill males from rival bands, a behaviour strikingly like human warfare.

This implies that cooperative aggression evolved in the common ancestor of chimps and ourselves, 7 million years ago. If so, Neanderthals will have inherited these same tendencies towards cooperative aggression.

All too human

Warfare is an intrinsic part of being human. War isn't a modern invention, but an ancient, fundamental part of our humanity. Historically, all peoples warred. Our oldest writings are filled with war stories. Archaeology reveals ancient fortresses and battles, and sites of prehistoric massacres going back millennia.

To war is human – and Neanderthals were very like us. We're remarkably similar in our skull and skeletal anatomy, and share 99.7 percent of our DNA.

Behaviourally, Neanderthals were astonishingly like us. They made fire, buried their dead, fashioned jewellery from seashells and animal teeth, made artwork and stone shrines. If Neanderthals shared so many of our creative instincts, they probably shared many of our destructive instincts, too.
Violent lives

The archaeological record confirms Neanderthal lives were anything but peaceful.

Neanderthalensis were skilled big game hunters, using spears to take down deer, ibex, elk, bison, even rhinos and mammoths. It defies belief to think they would have hesitated to use these weapons if their families and lands were threatened. Archaeology suggests such conflicts were commonplace.

Prehistoric warfare leaves telltale signs. A club to the head is an efficient way to kill – clubs are fast, powerful, precise weapons – so prehistoric Homo sapiens frequently show trauma to the skull. So too do Neanderthals.


Another sign of warfare is the parry fracture, a break to the lower arm caused by warding off blows. Neanderthals also show a lot of broken arms. At least one Neanderthal, from Shanidar Cave in Iraq, was impaled by a spear to the chest.

Trauma was especially common in young Neanderthal males, as were deaths. Some injuries could have been sustained in hunting, but the patterns match those predicted for a people engaged in intertribal warfare- small-scale but intense, prolonged conflict, wars dominated by guerrilla-style raids and ambushes, with rarer battles.
The Neanderthal resistance

War leaves a subtler mark in the form of territorial boundaries. The best evidence that Neanderthals not only fought but excelled at war, is that they met us and weren't immediately overrun. Instead, for around 100,000 years, Neanderthals resisted modern human expansion.

The out-of-Africa offensive. (Nicholas R. Longrich)

Why else would we take so long to leave Africa? Not because the environment was hostile but because Neanderthals were already thriving in Europe and Asia.

It's exceedingly unlikely that modern humans met the Neanderthals and decided to just live and let live. If nothing else, population growth inevitably forces humans to acquire more land, to ensure sufficient territory to hunt and forage food for their children.


But an aggressive military strategy is also good evolutionary strategy.

Instead, for thousands of years, we must have tested their fighters, and for thousands of years, we kept losing. In weapons, tactics, strategy, we were fairly evenly matched.

Neanderthals probably had tactical and strategic advantages. They'd occupied the Middle East for millennia, doubtless gaining intimate knowledge of the terrain, the seasons, how to live off the native plants and animals.

In battle, their massive, muscular builds must have made them devastating fighters in close-quarters combat. Their huge eyes likely gave Neanderthals superior low-light vision, letting them manoeuvre in the dark for ambushes and dawn raids.
Sapiens victorious

Finally, the stalemate broke, and the tide shifted. We don't know why. It's possible the invention of superior ranged weapons – bows, spear-throwers, throwing clubs – let lightly-built Homo sapiens harass the stocky Neanderthals from a distance using hit-and-run tactics.

Or perhaps better hunting and gathering techniques let sapiens feed bigger tribes, creating numerical superiority in battle.

Even after primitive Homo sapiens broke out of Africa 200,000 years ago, it took over 150,000 years to conquer Neanderthal lands. In Israel and Greece, archaic Homo sapiens took ground only to fall back against Neanderthal counteroffensives, before a final offensive by modern Homo sapiens, starting 125,000 years ago, eliminated them.

This wasn't a blitzkrieg, as one would expect if Neanderthals were either pacifists or inferior warriors, but a long war of attrition. Ultimately, we won. But this wasn't because they were less inclined to fight. In the end, we likely just became better at war than they were.

Nicholas R. Longrich, 

Senior Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology and Paleontology, University of Bath.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Doubling Down on Space Safety

 November 20, 2020  Doug Messier  News  Leave a comment

by Keith Wright
U.S. Air Force Safety Center

KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, N.M. — Recently, the Air Force Safety Center transferred the Space Safety Division to the United States Space Force as one of the first blended organizations in the Department.  Already charged with supporting both services, this transfer serves to leverage the Center’s expertise doubling down on space safety for both services.

The Safety Center’s Space Safety Division will continue to call Kirtland Air Force Base home, while remaining steadfast in their commitment to promote and enhance space mishap prevention and a risk management culture in the USSF.

Air Force Chief of Safety Maj. Gen. John T. Rauch Jr., who stands charged with the oversight of Air Force mishap prevention programs and command of the Air Force Safety Center, oversees the Space Safety Division’s efforts to develop, execute and evaluate space mishap prevention programs.

“When standing up any new organization, it is important to ensure safety remains an integral part of the culture – who we are and how we do business,” said Rauch. “This reorganization capitalizes on best practices derived from an already proven Safety Management System ensuring mishap prevention efforts are built into the Space Force America needs.”

Rauch added, “Our safety professionals are steadfast in their support to enable the Air and Space Forces mission execution safely and effectively.”

The Space Safety Division’s key tasks include the development, execution, and evaluation of Air and Space Force space mishap prevention programs, along with execution of several Department of Defense responsibilities; Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Board, DoD Executive Agent for Nuclear Space Safety, and co-chair to the quad-agency working group with the FAA, NASA, and NTSB. Additionally, they oversee mishap investigations, program evaluations, and ensure application of corrective actions and mishap inclusion through the Air Force Safety Automated System.

“Space Safety’s alignment under USSF ensures unity of effort,” said Dr. Mark Glissman, Chief of Space Safety Division. “This construct allows us to work directly with applicable major and field commands on all space safety matters.”

The division’s force structure will be made up of a mixture of civilian, military and contractors.

Glissman added, “Additionally, being a part of a blended organization aligns Space Safety closely with all Department of the Air Force safety disciplines to provide unparalleled support to both services reducing duplication of effort.”

Mishaps may occur during any stage of space operations – a satellite could fall over during manufacturing; a rocket possibly veers off course during launch; a chance satellite collision with debris in space; crash during re-entry operations; or unsafe conditions at a ground-based radar site. These are all possible mishap scenarios across the spectrum of space activities Space Safety may work to avoid.

Outside of space operations, Space Professionals may also be susceptible to hazards in the occupational, weapons and aviation disciplines on their installations.

“Mishap prevention is essential to the readiness of every service,” Rauch said “As each echelon of the Space Force stands up, elements of safety will be woven in to safeguard personnel, protect resources and preserve combat capability.”

UK
Sunak: no return to austerity in new spending plan

IF THE UK CAN DO IT SO CAN ALBERTA
Sun, 22 November 2020

Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Sunak during an interview in London

LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister Rishi Sunak said there would be no return to austerity and instead he will announce "quite a significant" increase in funding for public services in a one-year spending plan on Wednesday.

"You will not see austerity next week," Sunak told Sky News television on Sunday. "What you will see is an increase in the government's spending on day-to-day public services, and quite a significant one, coming on the increase that we had last year."

Sunak will announce the heaviest public borrowing since World War Two after Britain suffered the biggest economic crash in over 300 years.

Economists think Britain is on course to borrow about 400 billion pounds ($531.28 billion) this year, approaching 20% of its gross domestic product, or nearly double its borrowing after the global financial crisis.

Sunak told Sky that the forecasts to be published alongside his spending blueprint would show the "enormous strain" that coronavirus has put on the economy and the priority for his plan would be to fight the pandemic.

Britain's finance ministry said on Saturday that Sunak was expected to announce one-year package worth more than 3 billion pounds to support the state-run National Health Service (NHS) as it struggles with coronavirus.

Asked about reports that he would freeze public sector pay as part of an attempt to slow the surge in borrowing caused by the pandemic, Sunak said it was reasonable to look at state salaries in the context of the broader economy.

"When we think about public pay settlements, I think it would be entirely reasonable to think about those in the context of the wider economic climate," he said.

Sunak declined to answer questions on possible tax increases saying he would not be talking now about future budget decisions.

(Reporting by William Schomberg; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Guatemala protesters set congress on fire during budget protests

Public anger targets President Alejandro Giammattei over cuts to education and health

A demonstrator gestures outside the congress building in Guatemala City during clashes between police and protesters on Saturday. 

Photograph: Esteban Biba/EPA

Hundreds of protesters broke into Guatemala’s congress and burned part of the building amid growing demonstrations against President Alejandro Giammattei and the legislature for approving a budget that cut educational and health spending.

The incident on Saturday came as about 10,000 people were protesting in front of the National Palace in Guatemala City against corruption and the budget, which protesters say was negotiated and passed by legislators in secret while the Central American country was distracted by the fallout of back-to-back hurricanes and the Covid-19 pandemic.

About 1,000 protesters were demonstrating outside the Congress building.

Video on social media showed flames coming out of a window in the legislative building. Police fired tea gas at protesters, and about a dozen people were reported injured.

“We are outraged by poverty, injustice, the way they have stolen the public’s money,” said Rosa de Chavarría, a psychology professor.

“I feel like the future is being stolen from us. We don’t see any changes. This cannot continue like this,” added Mauricio Ramírez, a 20-year-old university student.

The amount of damage to the building was unclear, but the fire appears to have affected legislative offices rather than the main hall of congress. Protesters also set bus stations on fire.
  

A demonstrator is arrested during clashes between the police and protesters in Guatemala City on Saturday. Photograph: Esteban Biba/EPA

Giammattei condemned the incidents via Twitter on Saturday, saying: “Anyone who is proven to have participated in the criminal acts will be punished with the full force of the law.”


He said he defended people’s right to protest, “but neither can we allow people to vandalise public or private property”.

The president said he had been meeting with various groups to present changes to the controversial budget.

Discontent had been building on social media over the 2021 budget and clashes erupted during demonstrations on Friday. Guatemalans were angered because lawmakers approved $65,000 to pay for meals for themselves, but cut funding for coronavirus patients and human rights agencies.

Protesters were also upset by recent moves by the supreme court and attorney general they saw as attempts to undermine the fight against corruption.

The vice-president, Guillermo Castillo, has offered to step down, telling Giammattei that both men should resign their positions “for the good of the country”. He also suggested vetoing the approved budget, firing government officials and reaching out more to various sectors around the country.

Giammattei had not responded publicly to that proposal and Castillo did not share the president’s reaction to his proposal. Castillo said he would not resign alone.

The spending plan was negotiated in secret and approved by congress before dawn Wednesday. It also passed while the country was recovering from hurricanes Eta and Iota, which brought torrential rains to much of Central America.

The Roman Catholic Church leadership in Guatemala called on Friday for Giammattei to veto the budget.

“It was a devious blow to the people because Guatemala was between natural disasters, there are signs of government corruption, clientelism in the humanitarian aid,” said Jordan Rodas, the country’s human rights prosecutor.

He said the budget appeared to favour ministries that have historically been hotspots of corruption.

In 2015, mass streets protests against corruption led to the resignation of President Otto Pérez Molina, his vice-president, Roxana Baldetti, and members of his cabinet. The former president and Baldetti are in jail awaiting trials in various corruption cases.

Topics
Guatemala

#EndSARS Protest: 

UK Parliament Deliberates Sanction Request against Nigeria Monday
November 22, 2020 

• Laments rights violations during #EndSARS protest
Gboyega Akinsanmi

The United Kingdom Parliament has said it will deliberate on a petition by some groups and individuals, requesting the parliament to implement sanctions against the Nigerian Government and officials for alleged human rights violations during the #EndSARS protest and Lekki shootings.

The parliament has, also, lamented violence that erupted as the aftermath of the Lekki incidents, noting that it is awaiting the outcome of investigations by the federal and state governments into reports of police brutality.
It made this disclosure in a response to a petition signed by over 220,118 individuals in the United Kingdom, requesting the UK Government to sanction Nigeria for alleged violations of human rights.

The reply, which was signed by Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, was obtained from the official website of the parliament – https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/554150.
In its reply to the petition, the parliament said the UK Government “is deeply concerned by violence during recent protests in Nigeria, which tragically claimed lives. Our thoughts are with the families of all those affected.”

Specifically, the reply read in part: “Parliament will debate this petition. Parliament will debate this petition on November 23 2020. You will be able to watch online on the UK Parliament YouTube channel.
“On July 6, the British Government established the Global Human Rights sanctions regime by laying regulations in Parliament under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018.

“The Foreign Secretary set out in full the scope of the UK’s new Global Human Rights sanctions regime. He announced the first tranche of designations, as well as the Government’s approach to future designations.
“This sanctions regime will give the UK a powerful new tool to hold to account those involved in serious human rights violations or abuses. The sanctions regime is not intended to target individual countries.
“It will allow for sanctions to be imposed on individuals and entities involved in serious human rights violations or abuses around the world.

“We will continue to consider potential designations under the Global Human Rights sanctions regime. It is longstanding practice not to speculate on future sanctions designations as to do so could reduce the impact of the designations. The UK Government will keep all evidence and potential listings under close review,” the parliament said in its reply.
Consequently, it noted that the government should explore using the new sanctions regime that allows individuals and entities that violate human rights around the world to be targeted, to impose sanctions on members of the Nigerian government and police force involved in any human rights abuses.

The reply detailed different interventions that the UK Government had initiated to direct the attention of the federal government to cases of human rights violations during the EndSARS protest

It said the Foreign Secretary issued a statement on October 21 calling for an end to the violence and for the Nigerian Government to urgently investigate reports of brutality by its security forces and hold those responsible to account.

It added that the Minister for Africa tweeted on October 16, noting people’s democratic and peaceful calls for reforms, and again on October 21, encouraging the Nigerian authorities to restore peace and address concerns over brutality towards civilians.

It observed that the minister “reiterated these messages when he spoke to Foreign Minister Onyeama on October 23. The British High Commissioner in Abuja has also raised the protests with representatives of the Nigerian Government and will continue to do so.

“We welcome President Buhari’s decision to disband the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squad (FSARS) and the establishment of judicial panels of inquiry to investigate alleged incidents of brutality by the security services.

“They must investigate all incidents, including in Lagos, fully. The Minister for Africa tweeted on October 29 stressing the importance of the police and military cooperation with the panels. He raised this, and the need for the panels to urgently start investigations, when he spoke to the Governor of Lagos state on November 11.

“The UK Government will continue to work with the Nigerian Government and international and civil society partners to support justice, accountability and a more responsive policing model in Nigeria.

“We will continue to push for the Nigerian security services to uphold human rights and the rule of law, investigate all incidents of brutality, illegal detentions and use of excessive force, and hold those responsible to account,” it said

#EndSARS: We went with live bullets to Lekki Tollgate, Army confesses
By Yetunde Ayobami Ojo 
22 November 2020 | 4:19 am
THE GUARDIAN (NIGERIA)

The Nigerian Army, yesterday, left everyone shell-shocked when it confessed to taking live rounds to the Lekki Tollgate on October 20, 2020 #EndSARS protest. The army made a remarkable volte-face while testifying before the judicial panel set up by the Lagos State government set up to probe the incident. It had earlier, through the Commander of 81 Military Intelligence Brigade, Victoria Island, Lagos, Brig. Gen. Ahmed Taiwo, informed the panel that no live rounds were fired at the scene.

Taiwo, while commenting on the fracas during cross-examined by Olumide Fusika, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), however, claimed that the live rounds were not used on protesters, but were meant for the protection of the army team deployed to restore order in the state.


According to Taiwo: “We had men and materials – vehicles and rifles for shooting. A portion of the force were carrying live bullets in case they are attacked. Another portion will carry magazines charged with blank ammunition,” he said.

While being cross-examined by another counsel to #EndSARS protesters, Mr. Adeshina Ogunlana, Mr Taiwo said the military acted professionally and within the army’s rules of engagement.

“The soldiers will be using both live and blank bullets and in this particular case, we saw that this protest had been infiltrated by hoodlums. We had peaceful protesters no doubt, but there were hoodlums who sought to take advantage of the protest,” he said.

He, however, claimed that the army was not deployed to the Lekki Tollgate, “but were on patrol to clear up the Lekki, Eti-Osa corridor,” once again countering its earlier claim that the army was invited by the state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu. Sanwo-Olu had earlier denied inviting the soldiers

NIGERIA
ASUU strike: How universities can reopen within one week – ASUU Chair

Published
on November 22, 2020
By Seun Opejob


The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has said government should put the same energy it put in getting the Aviation sector to work in Nigeria into the Educational sector.

Dr Edor J. Edor, the ASUU Chairman of the University of Calabar said universities would reopen within one week, if the same energy put in the aviation sector is extended to Nigeria’s educational sector.

Edor disclosed this in an interview with DAILY POST.

According to Edor: “If government would put the same energy they put in the aviation sector into education, then schools would resume in the shortest possible time.

“If government can put the same energy and commitment in the aviation sector that enable them and their children to travel to their schools abroad into Nigerian universities, then within one week, schools in Nigeria would reopen.”

Edor accused the previous and present Nigerian governments of ignoring the country’s educational sector.

He maintained that Nigerian elites are not interested in the education of the common man.

“Not Buhari’s government alone, all successive regimes in Nigeria have ignored the education sector.

“Even when we had a president who was himself a lecturer, things were not better. Successive regimes and the Nigerian elites have no interest in the education of Nigerians and the reason is simple, their children are not here.

“They do not want the common man to be educated because education is power. Immediately the common man begins to know his or her right, these thieves and kleptomaniacs who find themselves in the position of power would become threatened because all Nigeria s would have known their right.


“They are not interested in developing education, they are not,” he added.

We are not in a hurry to call off strike - ASUU

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ASUU reveals why strike may continue for years, makes fresh demand from Buhari govt

Strike: NANS threatens protest, gives FG, ASUU 14-day ultimatum

ASUU strike: Group raises alarm, says students losing what they know

 

America is being subjected to a stress test – and Republicans are failing

Robert Reich

THE GUARDIAN Sat, 21 November 2020, 

Photograph: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Financial regulators subject banks to stress tests to see if they have enough capital to withstand sharp downturns.

Related: Let's count the ways Donald Trump has tried to subvert this election, shall we? | Richard Wolffe

Now America is being subjected to a stress test to see if it has enough strength to withstand Donald Trump’s treacherous campaign to discredit the 2020 presidential election.

Trump will lose because there’s no evidence of fraud. But the integrity of thousands of people responsible for maintaining American democracy is being tested as never before.

Tragically, most elected Republicans are failing the test by refusing to stand up to Trump. Their cowardice is one of the worst betrayals of public trust in the history of our republic.

Trump is also depending on a Star Wars cantina of lackeys, grifters, sycophants and fruitcakes – including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Senator Lindsey Graham, GOP trickster Roger Stone and others – whose reputations weren’t great to begin with but will now and forever be tainted by Trump’s moral squalor.

American democracy wasn’t designed for this degree of political depravity

That squalor extends down to Republican members of a board of canvassers in Wayne county, Michigan (which includes Detroit) who, after Trump phoned them last week, tried to rescind their approval of ballot counts that went overwhelmingly to Joe Biden. On Friday, Trump invited Michigan’s Republican lawmakers to the White House, hoping to persuade them to ignore the popular vote, too.

American democracy wasn’t designed for this degree of political depravity.

Here’s the good news. The vast majority of officials are passing the stress test, many with distinction.

Chris Krebs, who led the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency, last Tuesday refuted Trump’s claims of election fraud – saying the claims “have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent”.

Trump fired Krebs that afternoon. Krebs’s response: “Honored to serve. We did it right.”

Brad Raffensperger – Georgia’s Republican secretary of state who oversaw the election there, and describes himself as “a Republican through and through and never voted for a Democrat” – is defending Georgia’s vote for Biden, rejecting Trump’s accusations of fraud. On Friday he certified that Biden won the state’s presidential vote.

Raffensperger spurned overtures from Trump quisling Graham, who asked if Raffensperger could toss out all mail-in votes from counties with high rates of questionable signatures. And Raffensperger dismissed demands from Georgia’s two incumbent Republican senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue (both facing tougher-than-anticipated runoffs) that he resign.

“This office runs on integrity,” Raffensperger said, “and that’s what voters want to know, that this person’s going to do his job.”

Raffensperger has received death threats from Republican voters inflamed by Trump’s allegations. He’s not the only one. Election officials in Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona are also reporting threats.

On Wednesday, Katie Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state who has until 30 November to certify election results there, called on Republican officials to stop “perpetuating misinformation”, adding that threats and “continued intimidation tactics will not prevent me from performing the duties I swore an oath to do. Our democracy is tested constantly, it continues to prevail, and it will not falter under my watch.”

Honors to her, as well.

While we’re at it, let’s not forget all the other public officials who have been stress-tested during Trump’s repugnant presidency and passed honorably.

I’m referring to public health officials unwilling to lie about Covid-19, military leaders unwilling to back Trump’s attacks on Black Lives Matter protesters, inspectors general unwilling to cover up Trump corruption, US foreign service officers unwilling to lie about Trump’s overtures to Ukraine, intelligence officials unwilling to bend their reports to suit Trump, and justice department attorneys refusing to participate in Trump’s obstructions of justice.

If you think it easy to do what they did, think again. Some of them lost their jobs. Many were demoted. A few have been threatened with violence. They’ve risked all this to do what’s right in an America poisoned by Trump, who has no idea what it means to do what’s right.

Above all, this stress test reveals integrity. Democracy depends on it.

The fact that Trump’s attempted coup won’t succeed doesn’t make it any less damaging. A new poll from Monmouth University now finds 77% of Trump supporters believe Biden’s win was due to fraud – a claim, I should emphasize again, backed by zero evidence.

Which means America’s stress test won’t be over when Joe Biden is sworn in as president 20 January. In the years to come we’ll continue to depend on the integrity of thousands of unsung heroes to do their duty in the face of threats to their livelihoods and perhaps their lives.

Of his many odious acts, Trump’s desperate attempt to cling to power by stress-testing American democracy will be his most reprehensible legacy.

Why the race to find Covid-19 vaccines is far from over

Laura Spinney Sun, 22 November 2020 The Guardian

While everyone celebrated this month’s news that not one but two experimental vaccines against Covid-19 have proved at least 90% effective at preventing disease in late-stage clinical trials, research into understanding how the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, interacts with the human immune system never paused.

There are plenty of questions still to answer about the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines: how well will they protect the elderly, for example, and how long for? Which aspects of the immune response that they elicit are protective and which aren’t? Can even better results be achieved, with vaccines that target different parts of the immune system?

We are likely to need several Covid-19 vaccines to cover everyone and as a contingency, in case the virus mutates and “escapes” the ability of one vaccine to neutralise it, a real possibility in light of the discovery of an altered form of Sars-CoV-2 infecting European mink. But we also need better methods of diagnosing and treating the disease. The recent suspension of two major vaccine trials due to serious adverse events is a salutary reminder that there’s much still to learn and a pandemic, while no one would wish for one, provides scientists with a golden opportunity for learning.

Like most Covid-19 vaccine candidates, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are injected into the muscle, from where they enter the bloodstream and stimulate the production of antibodies to Sars-CoV-2 (specifically to the protein that forms the spikes covering its surface). But antibodies are only one component of the body’s adaptive immune response, which develops over time, in response to invasion by a virus or other pathogen. There is also innate immunity, which we are born with and that is mobilised instantly upon infection, but is not tailored to any specific pathogen. “There are a lot of moving parts to this,” says immunopharmacologist Stephen Holgate, of the University of Southampton in the UK, who wonders why scientists have focused on so few of them.

The UK government’s joint committee on vaccination and immunisation has published a list of groups of people who will be prioritised to receive a vaccine for Covid-19. The list is:

1 All those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers.

2 All those 75 and over.

3 All those 70 and over.

4 All those 65 and over.

5 Adults under 65 at high at risk of serious disease and mortality from Covid-19.

6 Adults under 65 at moderate risk of at risk of serious disease and mortality from Covid-19.

7 All those 60 and over.

8 All those 55 and over.

9 All those 50 and over.

10 Rest of the population.

Holgate is one of the founders of Synairgen, a University of Southampton spin-off company that has been testing inhaled interferon-beta, an important innate defence that works by shutting down viral replication, as a treatment for Covid-19. A major international study backed by the World Health Organization, called Solidarity, showed that interferon-beta was not effective in treating hospitalised patients, but more recently Synairgen has published the results of a small pilot study suggesting that given in patients with milder disease – and inhaled rather than injected under the skin – it enhanced recovery.

“The reason bats are able to harbour these viruses in such large numbers is that they have such a strong interferon response,” Holgate says. “That is why they don’t develop disease.” Synairgen is now testing whether interferon-beta can prevent hospitalisation in patients who inhale it soon after testing positive, at home. If the approach works, he says, the advantage is that it will continue to do so even if the virus mutates, since interferon’s action does not depend on the structure of the virus.

Another immune response that has received a lot of attention in the context of Covid-19 is that of T-cells. Along with B-cells, which generate antibodies, T-cells form part of the adaptive immune system and they perform two main functions: they help B-cells do their job and they kill infected cells. Both B- and T-cells retain a memory of past infections, meaning they are mobilised more quickly when a pathogen appears for a second or subsequent time.

In May, US researchers reported that T-cells extracted from human blood samples taken before 2019, and exposed to Sars-CoV-2, showed a memory for coronavirus infection. This suggested that previous exposure to different coronaviruses, such as those that cause the common cold, might be sufficient to prime T-cells and raised hopes that they could protect against Covid-19. Those hopes were bolstered by a report of people fighting off infection even though they developed only a T-cell response and no antibodies, though the number of patients in that study was small and the evidence therefore hard to interpret. Lockdown sceptics pointed to these studies as evidence that more of the population was protected against Covid-19 than was thought, but some immunologists say they did so prematurely.

As Akiko Iwasaki of Yale University in the US explains: “T-cells cannot prevent infection, they can only respond when there is an infection.” So although they could potentially reduce the severity of the disease, they can’t stop its transmission between people. Also, there is still no proof that the T-cell response is helpful. “It’s likely that both antibodies and T-cells are important in protection, but we have zero evidence so far for protection of any kind,” says immunologist Zania Stamataki of the University of Birmingham in the UK.

Vials of Covid-19 vaccine candidate in storage at a Pfizer facility in Puurs, Belgium. Photograph: Pfizer/Reuters

Obtaining that evidence will involve seeing how people either exposed to the virus naturally or vaccinated against it respond upon reinfection. Vaccine trials could provide such evidence, as could a number of studies of the correlates of protection in natural infection. Iwasaki’s group, for example, is comparing the immune responses of unexposed, sick and recovered individuals, while virologist Florian Krammer of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, and colleagues are tracking those responses longitudinally, in thousands of people exposed naturally over time. Then there are the so-called challenge trials that are due to be launched by Chris Chiu of Imperial College London and colleagues in January.

In the first stage of these trials, about 30 young, healthy individuals will have their immune status measured before and after deliberate exposure to Sars-CoV-2. The trials will generate data on immune responses in the blood, but also, because the virus will be delivered via the nose, on any local immune response that develops there. Both antibodies and T-cells are made at the body’s mucosal membranes, including those lining the airways, as well as in the blood, and this mucosal immunity is causing excitement among some scientists, though vaccine makers have so far paid it scant attention.

“The virus comes in and it lands on your mucosal surfaces,” explains Krammer. “If it’s neutralised right there, it’s game over.” Unable to replicate and penetrate deeper into the body’s tissues, the virus is prevented from causing not only disease but also infection, meaning the person can transmit it no further. It’s not yet clear if the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines block transmission, as well as preventing disease, but a vaccine that did so could bring the pandemic to an end sooner. And it could do it without the need for an injection just by using a nasal spray or inhaler.

Antibodies come in different forms that vary according to their biological properties and the tissues in which they are expressed. Like the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, most Covid-19 vaccines in development elicit IgG antibodies in the blood, but the main antibody secreted in the upper respiratory tract, essentially the nose and throat, is IgA.

Boris Johnson on a visit to vaccine researchers at the Jenner Institute, University of Oxford, in September. Photograph: WPA/Getty Images

In June, in a study that has now been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal, a French group detected IgA antibodies in the blood of Covid-19 patients as early as a day after the onset of their symptoms. IgA levels peaked three weeks later, a week before IgG peaked. Then in August, a Canadian group reported the same finding in saliva. “The IgA response comes up early and dissipates quickly, whereas the IgG response persists,” says immunologist Jennifer Gommerman of the University of Toronto, one of the lead authors on that study.

The short duration of that IgA response might not matter as much as the fact that it peaks early – within a day or two of the innate response. The adaptive immune system kicks in if that innate response fails – it’s the second line of defence – but if you could enhance that early IgA response you could still block infection and prevent the person from feeling ill at all. Researchers have some reason to hope this may be possible.

IgA occurs in different forms at the mucosal membranes and in the blood. In the blood, it circulates singly, while at the membranes lining the airways it is secreted in pairs or even clusters. There is some evidence that doubled up, IgA antibodies’ capacity to neutralise the virus increases significantly, probably because each pair has twice as many binding sites at which to capture the invader. “If you have an antibody on its own, it works pretty well,” says Guy Gorochov of the Sorbonne University in Paris, who led the French study of IgA. “If you have a pair of them, it is far more effective.”

An inhaled vaccine against flu that elicits a local immune response in the airways already exists and there are Covid-19 vaccines in development that do the same, though they are a long way from clinical trials. Researchers are intrigued by the possibility that, besides antibodies, such a vaccine could also stimulate a kind of T-cell that is produced in the lining of the respiratory tract, called tissue-resident memory T-cells, and that these could contribute to shutting down infection rapidly. What’s more, measuring this local response could give an early and accurate indication of a person’s capacity to fight off the disease. “The work we’ve done in the past, with other respiratory viruses, suggests that IgA in the nose is often a much better correlate of protection than circulating antibodies,” says Chiu.

A nurse injects a volunteer with a vaccine candidate developed by the National Institutes of Health and Moderna in July. Photograph: Hans Pennink/AP

There’s a lot more work to be done before the human immune response is fully equipped to fight Covid-19 and what is learned in the context of this disease could be applied to others, especially when it comes to therapies that modify the human immune response rather than the virus. For now, though, most experimental vaccines and therapies target antibodies, which are virus-specific and one type of antibody, IgG, in particular. One piece of good news, where these are concerned, is that several studies, including Gommerman’s and Krammer’s, have now demonstrated that IgG levels remain high for up to eight months after infection. The same durability of antibody response has yet to be demonstrated for any vaccine, but these findings bode well.

The best news of all is that at least two vaccines now exist that seem to protect us against Covid-19 and that the chances are high that some of the most vulnerable people in the world will benefit from them within months. It remains an extraordinary and unprecedented feat to have built such a vaccine, and shown it to be safe and effective, before the disease they protect against is one year old – and before the pandemic is over.