Erika Hilton, Sao Paulo's first

 Black trans city councillor

Thu, 26 November 2020, 8:35 am GMT-7

"Brazil is a racist, LGBT-phobic country, and I've got it all in my body, in my political platform," says Erika Hilton, recently elected city councillor in Sao Paulo. The 27-year-old Black trans woman was in the 'top 10' most-voted councillors across the whole country in the 15 November municipal elections, and was the most-voted woman.

VIDEO

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/erika-hilton-sao-paulos-first-153535886.html

Trans woman violently beaten, stoned and left to die by the road as violence spirals in Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil

Josh Milton
Thu, 26 November 2020, 

A trans woman was beaten, pummelled with stones and left to die by a highway in Maranhão, Brazil, earlier this month.

Estefane ‘Stephanie’ Borges, 20, was found unconscious by a resort along the BR-222 in the northeastern state.

Passers-by, local authorities said according to local media, found Borges in a wooded nook near the resort of Juçara in Chapadinha, just outside a corner lock room entrance. She was found to be in “agonising pain” activists said.

Loved ones rushed to the scene and sped her to a nearby Unidade de Pronto Atendimento, a healthcare facility, where she is in a serious condition at the time of writing. The Polícia Civil, the country’s investigative state police agency, has opened an investigation.

Trans violence has soared in a Brazil led by Jair Bolasonaro – and it’s getting worse each passing year

She was gunned down after masked men burst into a bar. She was shot seven times as she stood outside her apartment. She was thrown out of a 7th-floor building.

Around 152 trans people have been killed in Brazil in the last year, monitoring groups say, as transphobic violence swells with a ferocity that is deeply alarming activists. The death toll is a startling and sobering figure for a nation now seemingly inured to transphobia, and it has been swelling for years.

But the figures may be even higher, activists say. Many killings of trans Brazilians are mishandled by the authorities – victims misgendered and deadnames used in police records, rippling into media reports – meaning that deaths can do unreported, so such data, in fact, fails to grasp the full severity of the deaths.

Last year, Brazil was found to be the deadliest country for trans people, with some tallies suggesting that a trans person dies almost every day in a nation of 200 million.

Unsurprising, activists say, considering the rise of Jair Bolasonaro, the country’s president who is a self-described “proud homophobe”. He often singles out LGBT+ people for the kind of vitriol once directed by populists towards migrants in the last decade.

 

Brazil police arrest supervisor in deadly beating of Black man in Carrefour supermarket

Tue, 24 November 2020, 

Brazilian police on Tuesday arrested the supervisor of a Carrefour supermarket in Porto Alegre where security guards beat a black man to death, and accused her of collaborating with the killers.

Supervisor Adriana Alves Dutra had the authority to stop the guards from beating 40-year-old Joao Alberto Silveira Freitas on November 19, said homicide investigator Vanessa Pitrez with the Civilian Police.

"She had authority over the two guards," and because of that "the law sees her as a homicide co-conspirator," Pitrez said at a press conference, as cited by the news site UOL.

Pitrez has asked that the woman be temporarily jailed.

Alves Dutra appears in a video that went viral standing by as Silveira Freitas is punched in the face and head in the supermarket parking lot by one security guard as the second guard restrains him.

According to the preliminary investigation Silveira Freitas was beaten for more than five minutes before being immobilised by his attackers and dying of asphyxiation.

Both security guards have been arrested.

'Contradictory statements'

Alves Dutra, who also was seen recording the incident, apparently lied to police in her initial account, saying that she did not hear Silveira Freitas pleading for help.

She also claimed that one of the guards was a store customer, hiding the fact that he was a Carrefour employee.

According to Globo TV, citing the supervisor's initial account to police of the incident, Alves Dutra claimed that she asked the guards several times to release the Black man.

However in parts of the video she instead warns Silveira Freitas to calm down so he can be released, but also tells him that he won't be released until the police arrive.

Police chief Roberta Bertoldo said that Alves Dutra gave "contradictory statements."

It will be up to the investigation to see "if these contradictions were motivated by something that she wanted to cover up or not."

The video of the beating quickly went viral online and triggered of demonstrations on Friday as the country marked Black Consciousness Day. More protests were held across the country over the weekend.

On Monday police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to break up a crowd of protesters that blocked a street and stopped traffic in front of a Carrefour branch in Porto Alegre, located in southern Brazil.

Supermarket chain Carrefour has faced a wave of boycott calls and sometimes violent protests outside its stores across Brazil, drawing comparisons with the killing of George Floyd in the United States in May and the ensuing protests.

On Monday shares in the French group's Brazilian unit were down six percent in afternoon trading on the Sao Paulo stock exchange, and in Paris Carrefour shares closed down 2.2 percent.

The supermarket chain promised to earmark some $5 million to fight against racism.

In Brazil, the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery -- in 1888 -- more than half of the country's 212 million residents identify as Black or mixed-race.

(AFP)

#PUBERTY

Slow and steady or a big spurt? How to grow a ferocious dinosaur

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Large meat-eating dinosaurs attained their great size through very different growth strategies, with some taking a slow and steady path and others experiencing an adolescent growth spurt, according to scientists who analyzed slices of fossilized bones.

FILE PHOTO: Geologist Bill Simpson uses a feather duster  to clean the Tyrannosaurus rex fossil known as "Sue" at the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, United States, June 11, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Young/File Photo

The researchers examined the annual growth rings - akin to those in tree trunks - in bones from 11 species of theropods, a broad group spanning all the big carnivorous dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus rex and even birds. 

The study provides insight into the lives of some of the most fearsome predators ever to walk the Earth.

The team looked at samples from museums in the United States, Canada, China and Argentina and even received clearance to cut into bones from one of the world’s most famous T. rex fossils, known as Sue and housed at the Field Museum in Chicago, using a diamond-tipped saw and drill.

Sue’s leg bones - a huge femur and fibula - helped illustrate that T. rex and its relatives - known as tyrannosaurs - experienced a period of extreme growth during adolescence and reached full adult size by around age 20. Sue, measuring about 42 feet (13 metres), lived around 33 years.

Sue inhabited South Dakota about a million years before dinosaurs and many other species were wiped out by an asteroid impact 66 million years ago.




Other groups of large theropods tended to have more steady rates of growth over a longer period of time. That growth strategy was detected in lineages that arose worldwide earlier in the dinosaur era and later were concentrated in the southern continents.

Examples included Allosaurus and Acrocanthosaurus from North America, Cryolophosaurus from Antarctica and a recently discovered as-yet-unnamed species from Argentina that rivaled T. rex in size. The Argentine dinosaur, from a group called carcharodontosaurs, did not reach its full adult size until its 40s and lived to about age 50.

Big theropods share the same general body design, walking on two legs and boasting large skulls, strong jaws and menacing teeth.

“Prior to our study, it was known that T. rex grew very quickly, but it was not clear if all theropod dinosaurs reached gigantic size in the same way, or if there were multiple ways it was done,” said paleontologist and study lead author Tom Cullen of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University, also affiliated with the Field Museum.

The research was published this week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“Theropod dinosaurs represent the largest bipedal animals to have ever lived and were also the dominant predators in terrestrial ecosystems for over 150 million years - more than twice as long as mammals have been dominant,” added University of Minnesota paleontologist and study co-author Peter Makovicky.


Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Peter Cooney

Analysis: Questions over AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine data risk delaying approval

By Kate Kelland



LONDON (Reuters) - Days after grabbing headlines with its COVID-19 “vaccine for the world”, AstraZeneca is facing tricky questions about its success rate that some experts say could hinder its chances of getting speedy U.S. and EU regulatory approval.




FILE PHOTO: A test tube labeled with the vaccine is seen in front of AstraZeneca logo in this illustration taken, September 9, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo

Several scientists have raised doubts about the robustness of results showing the shot was 90% effective in a sub-group of trial participants who, by error initially, received a half dose followed by a full dose.

“All we have to go on is a limited data release,” said Peter Openshaw, a professor of experimental medicine at Imperial College London. “We have to wait for the full data and to see how the regulators view the results,” he said, adding that U.S. and European regulators “might possibly take a different view” from each other.

British drugmaker AstraZeneca said on Monday that its experimental vaccine, developed with Oxford University, prevented on average 70% of COVID-19 cases in late-stage trials in Britain and Brazil.

While the success rate was 90% in the sub-group of volunteers, the efficacy was 62% if the full dose was given twice, as it was for most participants.

That is well above the 50% efficacy required by U.S. regulators. Europe’s drug regulator has said it will not set a minimum level of efficacy for potential vaccines.


At the heart of concerns, however, is that the trial’s most promising result of 90% comes from a sub-group analysis - a technique many scientists say can produce spurious readings.

“Sub-group analyses in randomised controlled trials are always fraught with difficulties,” said Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at Britain’s University of East Anglia.

He said, in particular, such analyses increase the risk of “type 1 errors” - in other words, where an intervention is considered to be effective when it is not.

This is in part because the number of participants is greatly reduced in a sub-group - making it harder to be confident that a finding is not just down to chance differences or similarities among participants.

“In order to have faith in the results,” Hunter said, any sub-group analysis “should be sufficiently powered” with large numbers of volunteers to take readings from.


RELATED COVERAGE
Top UK scientific adviser says AstraZeneca vaccine works

Only 2,741 volunteers were in the sub-group that gave the 90% efficacy read-out, a fraction of the tens of thousands in trials that resulted in the above 90% efficacy data released earlier this month for Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s vaccines.

‘DEVIL IN THE DETAIL’

AstraZeneca said the administering of the half dose was reviewed and approved by independent data safety monitors and the UK regulator, adding that the regulator publicly confirmed there was “no concern”.

“We are in discussions with regulators around the world to evaluate these findings and we look forward to the publication of the peer-reviewed results, which has now been submitted to the journal,” a spokesperson added.

Oxford University did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

The U.S. regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has not commented on AstraZeneca’s vaccine trial results. The European Medicines Agency said on Thursday it would “assess data on the efficacy and safety of the vaccine in the coming weeks once they have been received from the company”.

The regulatory process has nonetheless been clouded, according to experts, who note crucial gaps in the data AstraZeneca has made public so far.

“The devil is in the detail,” said Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial College London. “We’re trying to assess really quite complex trial designs on the basis of little press releases.”

Beyond headline efficacy rates, AstraZeneca’s data release gave little for scientists to work on. It did not say how many infections occurred in the sub-group, for example, or in the group that got two full doses, or in the placebo group.

“A lot of questions are left unanswered,” said Morgane Bomsel, an expert at the French National Centre of Scientific Research, adding: “We are under the impression they (AstraZeneca) are selectively picking out the data.”

‘A NUMBER OF VARIABLES’

Moncef Slaoui, chief scientific adviser for the U.S. government’s vaccine programme Operation Warp Speed, also highlighted gaps.

He said no-one in the subgroup that got the initial half dose was older than 55 - suggesting the regimen’s efficacy in crucial older age groups is unproven in this interim data.

In the group that received a correct full dose followed by a full dose, he noted, older people were included.

Such concerns, and the possible consequences for the speed of regulatory approval, helped AstraZeneca shares hit their lowest level since April on Thursday, having fallen 7% since the company released the data on Monday.


By contrast, Moderna has rallied 22% since releasing its vaccine trial data on Nov. 16 and Pfizer and BioNTech are up 6% and 14% respectively since announcing their successful data on Nov. 9.

“There are a number of variables that we need to understand, and what has been the role of each one of them in achieving the difference in efficacy,” Slaoui told a briefing on Tuesday.

“It is still possible that the difference (in efficacy) is a random difference,” he added. “It’s unlikely, but it’s still possible.”

Amazon to give $500 million in holiday bonuses to front-line U.S. workers

WAGE INCREASES ARE BETTER THAN BONUSES

By Reuters Staff

(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it would spend more than $500 million on one-time bonuses for its front-line employees in the United States who are working the holiday season amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Full-time operations staff in the United States who are employed by Amazon from Dec. 1 to Dec. 31 will receive a bonus of $300, while those in part-time roles will get $150, the online retailer said here in a blog post.

Several retailers, including Walmart Inc and Home Depot Inc, have spent millions in bonuses to compensate staff for catering to a surge in online shopping during the pandemic.

In an earlier round of one-time bonuses in June, Amazon spent $500 million in one-time payments to front-line employees and partners.

The world’s largest online retailer has been facing intense scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers and unions over whether it is doing enough to protect staff from the coronavirus.

Share of UK workers on furlough at highest since June, as second lockdown hits



By David Milliken

LONDON (Reuters) - The proportion of British workers on furlough has jumped to its highest level since late June following the introduction of a temporary four-week lockdown across England to reverse a second wave of COVID cases, official figures showed on Thursday.

Businesses reported that 15% of staff on average were on furlough between Nov. 2 and Nov. 15, up from 9% in the previous survey which covered the second half of October, the Office for National Statistics said.

Britain’s government placed England under a four-week lockdown which started on Nov. 5 which closed restaurants, pubs, non-essential retailers and most other businesses open to the public.

Finance minister Rishi Sunak had intended to terminate the furlough programme at the end of October, but the second wave of COVID cases forced him to extend it until the end of March.

At its peak in May, the programme supported 8.9 million jobs - almost a third of all employees - and it has been the single most expensive part of Britain’s COVID economic support programme, costing 43 billion pounds ($57 billion) so far.

On Wednesday, the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that take-up in November would rise to 21% of the workforce due to lockdowns in England and other parts of the United Kingdom, before declining to 12% in early 2021 as restrictions eased.

Without the programme, Britain would see a significantly bigger rise in unemployment than the peak of 7.5% pencilled in for next year, the OBR said.


Reporting by David Millikenl, Editing by Paul Sandle

Factbox: Debretsion Gebremichael, head of Ethiopia's Tigrayan forces


By Maggie Fick

(Reuters) - Former guerrilla radio operator Debretsion Gebremichael is leading Tigrayan forces fighting Ethiopia’s military for control of the mountainous northern region.




FILE PHOTO: Debretsion Gebremichael, Tigray Regional President, attends the funeral ceremony of Ethiopia's Army Chief of Staff Seare Mekonnen in Mekele, Tigray Region, Ethiopia June 26, 219. Picture taken June 26, 2019. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri/File Photo/File Photo

The 57-year-old has cast the conflict as resistance to a push by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to centralise power, which the government denies, accusing his movement of revolt.

He is leading the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a former rebel movement that spearheaded the toppling of a Marxist dictatorship in 1991 before going on to dominate a coalition government until Abiy’s appointment in 2018.

Here are some facts on Debretsion and the three-week old conflict:

FOUNDER OF ‘REVOLUTION’ RADIO

Debretsion joined the TPLF as a teenager and was sent to Italy to learn communications and technology.

He led the team behind “Dimtsi Woyane” (“Voice of the Revolution” in the Tigrinya language) radio around 1980, which the bush fighters used to connect with people as they endured aerial bombings, according to a 2018 book.

The radio broadcast propaganda, reports on the Marxist-Leninist rebel movement’s meetings, and programmes ranging from basic medicine to agriculture and literacy.


Debretsion and his colleagues carried portable equipment to avoid detection, moving it on donkeys and camels and hiding it in caves, academic Nicole Stremlau wrote in her book “Media, Conflict, and the State in Africa”.

SURVEILLANCE AND TELECOMS

After the TPLF took power in 1991, Debretsion obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Addis Ababa University. He entered high-level politics in 2005.

He chaired Ethio Telecom, the state telecoms monopoly, after serving as deputy director of the national intelligence agency - underscoring the agency’s grip on communications, Human Rights Watch noted in a 2014 report.

He also led a programme that rolled out government technology services and gave the state access to email accounts and personal information of civil servants, the rights watchdog said.

As communications and information technology minister and later as deputy prime minister, he signed agreements with Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei.

POWER, NILE DAM

During the same period, he also chaired the state-run Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation and tried to modernise the creaking power sector that now serves 115 million people.

He oversaw the construction of hydropower dams, the biggest of which is the $4 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam under construction on the Blue Nile river. Both Egypt and Sudan fear the dam may limit their access to the Nile’s waters.

Debretsion was replaced as chair of the state power utility in late April 2018, shortly after Abiy took office.

ELECTION

Debretsion is known within his party, which elected him as chairman in 2017, as a shy workaholic. He cemented his position as the region’s leader when it decided to hold an election in September in defiance of the federal government, which postponed voting nationwide due to due to COVID-19.

The TPLF won more than 98% of the vote.

Abiy’s government declared the vote illegal and has set up a transitional administration in parts of Tigray taken by federal troops since Nov. 4.

Debretsion is on a list of TPLF leaders whom the government says must surrender or be captured before any negotiations to end the conflict can begin.

“We are people of principle and ready to die in defence of our right to administer our region,” Debretsion said in a text to Reuters this week.

A WARNING

The TPLF accuses Abiy, who is of mixed Oromo-Amharic parentage, of singling out high-level Tigrayan officials in a crackdown on past abuses and corruption. Abiy’s office denies that and says the prime minister has tried to work with the TPLF but was rebuffed.

“Youth of Tigray, be prepared for all eventualities,” local media quoted Debretsion as saying at an event in the Tigray regional capital Mekelle in December 2018, less than a year after Abiy took office.

Asked by Reuters what the comment meant, TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda said Debretsion was not implying that conflict was inevitable but that “if push comes to shove, we don’t have to scramble for crash military training.”


Reporting and writing by Maggie Fick; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Timothy Heritage

Baby chimp gives hope for Guinea's famous ape tribe

Issued on: 26/11/2020 - 

Cogito ergo sum? A chimp at the Bioparco Zoo in Rome during a heatwave in August this year Tiziana FABI AFP



Conakry (AFP)

A dwindling tribe of chimpanzees in Guinea that leapt to prominence for uncanny abilities to use tools has a glimmer of hope after its last fertile female gave birth.

The tiny community of apes lives in a forest around the village of Bossou, in the far southeastern corner of the country.

Scientists have trekked to the remote location for decades to study the chimps' remarkable use of tools.

They include the use of a stone hammer and anvil to crack open nuts -- the most sophisticated act ever observed of humanity's genetically closest relative.

But the number of chimps at Bossou has slumped to single figures.

The tribe is dying off and cannot be replenished by neighbouring chimp communities because forest destruction has left it isolated.

But after years of sad decline, there has been good news, said Aly Gaspard Soumah, director of the Bossou Environmental Research Institute.

Guides last week spotted the group's last fertile female, Fanle, clutching a tiny baby on her belly, Soumah told AFP.

"There's no doubt about it," he said by phone.

"Three days ago we were able to confirm the (baby's) sex using binoculars, because they were in the trees at the time -- it's a female."

The Bossou apes have a unique relationship with the village population.

The animals live in the wild but share the territory and its resources with the locals, who protect the chimps, believing them to be the reincarnation of their ancestors.

Bossou is part of the Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve, a UNESCO-listed site located on the borders with Ivory Coast and Liberia that rises above the surrounding savannah.

The famous apes live in a forest of 320 hectares (790 acres).

But they are cut off from other chimps, on the slopes of Mount Nimba, by deforestation.

Locals practice a traditional slash-and-burn form of agriculture.

Until 2003, the number of Bossou chimps were relatively stable, with around 21 individuals, Soumah said.

But seven died of influenza in 2003, and others passed away in the following years, leaving just three adult males and four adult females before the latest birth.

Of these, three are aged over 60, while the youngest is an eight-year-old male. Fanle, aged in her 30s, is the last fertile female.

The big question now is about what to name her baby.

"We are going to invite prominent figures, the local authorities, partners we work with, to find one for her," Soumah said.

© 2020 AFP

LEFT WING 

Covid protests halt public transport in Athens

Issued on: 26/11/2020 - 

Scores of motorcyclists briefly demonstrated outside the labour ministry. The sign reads "Riot police everywhere, ICUs nowhere" 

 Aris MESSINIS AFP

Athens (AFP)

Athens city buses, metro lines and trams ground to a halt Thursday with public workers pressing for better protection against coronavirus as Greece extended Covid-19 restrictions until December 7.

Shipping also closed for a day in the coastal nation, disrupting maritime trade as well as transport linking its numerous islands.

A second wave is raging through Greece, with daily infections now between 2,500 and 3,000 compared with 667 on October 20. The death toll has just crossed 1,900 and more than 500 people are in intensive care.

Scores of motorcyclists briefly demonstrated outside the labour ministry in Athens shouting slogans such as "Riot police everywhere, intensive care units nowhere".

Medical workers also called for a rally outside the health ministry to demand Christmas bonuses and better health protection, including increased testing for those on the frontline.

Some 200 far-left activists defied pandemic curbs to rally in central Athens before being dispersed by police, deployed in full force in the capital to prevent lockdown breaches.

Greece also extended virus curbs initially set to end this month to December 7.

People must get official permission by SMS to leave their homes and all businesses are closed apart from shops selling essential items as well as pharmacies and supermarkets.

Government spokesman Stelios Petsas said Thursday that the restrictions had to be prolonged in view of the continued high rate of infections.

"There are the first signs of a reduction," he said, adding: "If this continues, the pressure on the health system will decline and we can envisage a return to a certain normalcy."

© 2020 AFP