MORE PROOF AMLO IS A NEO-LIBERAL

Mexico might allow private firms to buy, distribute vaccines


MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday he is not opposed to private companies buying coronavirus vaccines to distribute to patients who want to pay for the shots.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

But he noted there isn’t much existing supply and warned companies not to try to buy vaccines already promised to the Mexican government.

“We are not opposed to commercializing the vaccine, to companies importing it and selling it to those who can pay,” López Obrador said. “The catch is the supply of vaccines in the world markets, because there still isn't enough production."

“We would be opposed if the ones we have under contract were to be given to a private company, that we would not permit and we would file a complaint,” he said.

Mexico's medical safety commission must grant approval for any vaccine. López Obrador said no company has yet applied to import vaccines privately.

But the issue is already clearly in the public arena, and experts have warned that fakes, frauds and thefts may start popping up amid the public's desperation to get a vaccine.

Wal-Mart de Mexico, the nation's largest retailer, had to issue a statement Monday denying a photo ad circulating online that depicts a coronavirus “vaccine” supposedly available for about $20.

“We are making clear that the information circulating on social media regarding a supposed supply of COVID-19 vaccine in our Mexico stores is false,” said a statement posted on the company's Twitter account.

López Obrador has been criticized by some in Mexico for centralizing vaccine purchases and distribution and for putting the effort — like many programs in his administration — in the hands of the military.

He says the military is best-equipped to manage the security and refrigeration chain some vaccines require.

The president has promised that vaccines will be free and available to everyone in Mexico, but so far the country has only received around 50,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. To vaccinate 1.4 million health-care workers — the first in line to get the shots — Mexico would need 2.8 million doses.

The government is placing hopes on three vaccines now in or entering Phase 3 trials in Mexico. It announced that Novavax Inc. will be conducting part of its testing in Mexico. China's CanSino and Johnson & Johnson's Janssen Pharmaceutical business have also been conducting trials in Mexico.

The Associated Pres

Thousands of Birds Starved to Death This Fall in the U.S. South

This past autumn, people all across the U.S. southwest were finding an astounding number of dead birds littered along roads, on golf courses, and in their own driveways. Some estimated that hundreds of thousands of the creatures perished. Months later, new findings are shedding a little more light on why the spooky phenomenon may have taken place.

© Photo: Ronald Martinez (Getty Images) Flycatchers were among the species affected by the southwests mass bird die-off this fall.

Lab results on bird necropsies from the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Wildlife Health Center, released earlier this month, suggest that starvation was a cause of the mass die-off seen in August and September. 80% of the carcasses the researchers analyzed showed signs of starvation, including emaciation, severely shrunken muscles, blood leakage in intestinal tracts, and kidney failure.

Members of the public reported nearly 10,000 dead birds, including finches, flycatchers, swallows, warblers, and bluebirds, to the USGS in August and September, and they sent some 170 carcasses to the agency. The researchers analyzed 40, of which 32 showed these signs of starvation. The remaining ones weren’t in good enough condition to conduct post-mortem tests.

Migratory Birds Are Failing to Adapt to Climate Change

Malnourishment was the only major commonality the researchers found from their necropsies. The USGS scientists also tested the bird bodies for signs of parasites, bacterial or viral diseases, or pesticide poisoning, but found none of those were among the birds’ causes of deaths. At the time of the die-off, some scholars speculated that smoke from the U.S. West’s record-breaking 2020 wildfire season may have been a factor. But the analysis also found no evidence of smoke poisoning in the birds.

Despite this, Jon Hayes, the executive director of the Audubon Society’s southwest branch, still believes the fires may have played a role. “The birds could have been altering their migration path to avoid smoke plumes, thereby increasing the energy demand of their migration and causing exhaustion,” he told Audubon Magazine. “The evidence they’ve shown regarding poor body condition could still fit that scenario, and so I think there’s still questions like the role of fire in particular.”

Whatever the exact conditions that led to the birds’ starvation, it seems climate-related changes were a major factor. The report does not determine exactly what led to the birds’ starvation, but the researchers say a severe drought in the region over the summer is a probable cause. Amid dry conditions, plants produce fewer seeds, and bugs aren’t able to reproduce as much, all of which spells disaster for avian diets.

After the drought came a massive sweep of cold weather, which the researchers think may have further destabilized the birds’ condition. Around Labor Day in early September, the Southwest saw temperatures fall below freezing, which may have made birds’ preferred food choices even scarcer.

The unexpected cold front and winds may have also disoriented the birds, causing them to fly into objects and buildings. “Some were struck by vehicles and many landed on the ground where cold temperatures, ice, snow and predators killed them,” USGS said in a press statement.

The findings are a warning sign of difficult times ahead for birds. As the climate crisis worsens, studies show the American West and South will see far more frequent and severe dry spells. Seemingly random spurts of cold weather will also become more common.

A 2019 report found that North America has already lost 30% of its birds since 1970, and changes in climate bear a large part of the blame. Another report last year found that 389 bird species—including some impacted by the 2020 southwestern die off, like warblers—are facing potential extinction due to changes in temperatures and precipitation patterns.

The die-off makes it clear that the world must get its act together on the climate crisis by rapidly drawing down our greenhouse gas emissions. If we don’t, all species, including birds, will suffer. Since birds regulate bug populations and pollinate plants, the effects of their decline will be felt throughout entire ecosystems, including by humans. It’s in our best interest to help them out.

Amid pandemic, Pacific islands work to offset food shortages

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JAKARTA, Indonesia — Coronavirus infections have barely touched many of the remote islands of the Pacific, but the pandemic’s fallout has been enormous, disrupting the supply chain that brings crucial food imports and sending prices soaring as tourism wanes

© Provided by The Canadian Press

With a food crisis looming, many governments have begun community initiatives to help alleviate shortages: extending fishing seasons, expanding indigenous food gathering lessons and bolstering seed distribution programs that allow residents greater self-reliance.

“We initially started with 5,000 seeds and thought we would finish them in nine months’ time. But there was a very big response, and we finished distributing the seeds in one week,” said Vinesh Kumar, head of operation for Fiji's Agriculture Ministry.

The project provides residents with vegetable seeds, saplings and basic farming equipment to help them grow their own home gardens.

Fiji resident Elisabeta Waqa said she had contemplated starting a garden before the pandemic, but -- with no job, extra time at home and seeds from the ministry and friends -- finally took action.

Looking to have “zero financial investment,” Waqa collected buckets, crates and other potential planters discarded on the side of the road and in the trash. Soon her yard transformed into containers of green beans, cucumber, cabbage and other produce.

“When I started harvesting about two, three weeks later, that’s when I realized: My gosh, this is a hobby people have had for so long. I thought about just how much money I could save my doing this,” Waqa said.

Geographically isolated with limited arable land and increased urbanization, many of the Pacific island countries and territories have seen their populations shift from traditional agriculture-based work to tourism. The trend has created an increased reliance on imported food such as corned beef, noodles and other highly processed foods instead of the traditional diet of locally grown items like nutrient-rich yams and taro.

Eriko Hibi, director of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Liaison Office in Japan, called the shift a “triple burden” of health issues: undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and obesity.

When the pandemic hit, nearly all the countries in the region closed their borders. Shipping supply chains — including fertilizer for farms and food — were disrupted, causing prices to rise. In Suva, Fiji, the cost of some fresh fruits and vegetables rose by up to 75% during the first weeks.

At same time, tourism — which Hibi said accounts for up to 70% of some countries’ gross domestic product — came to a halt, leaving thousands unemployed with decreased access to food.

“It’s not just about the availability of the prices in the market but also the purchasing power of the consumers, which has gone down,” Hibi said.

In Tuvalu, the government held workshops teaching youth indigenous food production methods such as taro planting and sap collection from coconut trees. In Fiji, the government extended fishing season of coral trout and grouper that could be sold for income or used as food. Numerous governments encouraged residents to move back to rural areas that had stronger independent food resources.

Tevita Ratucadre and his wife moved back to a rural village in Fiji to save on rent and food costs after being laid off from the hotel where they worked because of COVID-19.

In the city, “you have to buy everything with money, even if you have to put food on the table,” Ratucadre said. “In the village you can grow your own things.”

Having watched his parents farm when he was a child, Ratucadre said he was able to remember how to plant and grow cassava stems from a neighbour. He now grows enough food for his family, he said.

“When I used to work, I used to buy whatever I wanted to eat when I’d go to the supermarket,” he said. “Now I have to plant and eat whatever I’ve planted.”

Mervyn Piesse, a research manager at Australian-based research institute Future Directions International, said it was too early to know what the potential health benefits could be but regional diets might shift away from imports to more fresh food, even after the pandemic.

“There is, I think, a movement in parts of the Pacific for people to actually start thinking about, ‘If we can grow food ourselves during a global pandemic, why can’t we do the same thing at normal times?’” Piesse said.

Waqa said she has already made up her mind — though she’s begun working again, she’s taught her older children how to take care of the garden and harvest produce while she’s gone.

“Now I save money on food, know where my food is coming from and just feel more secure about having food,” she said. “I don’t want to go back to the way things were before.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Victoria Milko, The Associated Press

Sen. Bernie Sanders vowed to delay the passage of a defense bill should the Senate decide not to hold a vote on making $2,000 direct payments per person.

© Provided by Washington Examiner

President Trump vetoed the $740 billion defense package on Wednesday, and on Monday, the House voted to override that veto. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell aims to hold a vote to override on the Senate floor, but in order to skip the procedural waiting period, the consent of all senators is required.

Should Sanders choose to filibuster the vote, the Senate will be unable to vote on the matter until New Year's Day.

"Let me be clear," the independent senator from Vermont said in a Monday statement, "if Senator McConnell doesn't agree to an up or down vote to provide the working people of our country a $2,000 direct payment, Congress will not be going home for New Year's Eve. Let's do our job."

Sanders told Politico that he understood McConnell's desire to expedite the vote but added that he would not allow it until one was held on the direct payments, "no matter how long that takes."

Such a delay would likely complicate the campaign schedules of Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who both face Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia. Politico reported a source close to Sanders who said those races were a factor in his decision.

Voting to approve the payments would be an increase from the already agreed $600 in the COVID-19 relief bill signed by the president on Sunday.

Original Author: Haley Victory Smith

WASHINGTON EXAMINER 

Original Location: Bernie Sanders pledges to hold up defense budget unless Senate votes on $2,000 stimulus checks

Trump’s delay in signing the stimulus bill could keep $5.9 billion from unemployed Americans

© Provided by Business Insider Donald Trump. Getty

President Donald Trump finally signed the $900 billion COVID-19 relief bill nearly a week after it was passed by Congress.

The delay means that unemployed Americans have already missed a week of the $300 supplemental unemployment insurance the bill provides.

With nearly 20 million Americans receiving some form of unemployment benefits as of early December, that would add up to almost $6 billion in foregone payments.

On Sunday, President Donald Trump finally signed the $900 billion COVID-19 relief package and $1.4 trillion omnibus package funding the government and avoiding a shutdown.

While many of the new law's provisions will help support individual, businesses, and communities across America, Trump's delay in signing the bill for nearly a week after it was passed by Congress is likely to be very costly for Americans receiving unemployment benefits.

Insider calculated how much, and it's quite a few billion.

Different kinds of funding

First, we need to consider the pipes through which this stimulus actually gets to people.


Video: Trump asks Congress to amend COVID aid bill to increase payouts (FOX News)

One of the provisions in the relief package is a weekly $300 supplement to unemployment insurance, similar to the $600 weekly additional pay for unemployed workers included in the CARES Act in the spring and early summer.

The just-passed bill included an 11-week extension of the $300 supplemental payments, running through March 14, 2021. But because of Trump's delay in signing the bill into law, the first week of those payments has been missed, leaving millions of Americans without that initial $300 payment.

The supplemental payments go out to unemployed Americans receiving benefits from traditional state-run unemployment programs, as well as two federal programs implemented in the CARES Act. The Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) program provides unemployment benefits to workers who have exceeded their normal state unemployment benefits, while the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) program supports workers who would typically not be covered by traditional unemployment, like gig workers and workers directly affected by the pandemic.

As of the week ending December 5, the most recent data available from the Labor Department, about 5.5 million Americans were receiving traditional unemployment, 9.3 million were receiving checks from the PUA program, and 4.8 million were receiving pandemic emergency unemployment compensation.

The cost a week makes

All together, about 19.5 million Americans were receiving benefits from one of those three programs, and thus missed out on last week's $300 supplemental pay that they would have received if Trump had signed the legislation by Saturday. That represents about $5.9 billion in total supplemental unemployment insurance that wasn't paid out, assuming roughly similar numbers of Americans receiving benefits last week.

Although, as noted above, the supplemental $300 benefit was originally intended to run for 11 weeks, the missing week now effectively means that only 10 weeks of the extra money will be paid out, since the benefit is scheduled to end on March 14. Per The New York Times, it remains unclear whether or not states will be able to retroactively pay that money, with Labor Department guidance coming in the near future.

That could be just the start of problems caused by the delay - the PEUC and PUA programs were also slated to expire last week under the CARES Act, and were extended in the new bill. The Washington Post wrote that the delay in signing the bill could lead to further slowdowns in states implementing those extended programs, putting benefits for millions of Americans at risk.

Rasmussen quotes Stalin in tweet on US election

Republican-leaning pollster Rasmussen invoked a quote attributed to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in a Twitter thread Sunday suggesting Vice President Pence could attempt to overturn the results of the presidential election

PENCE DOES HIS BANE IMITATION

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© Getty Images Rasmussen quotes Stalin in tweet on US election

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything. - Stalin," the pollster tweeted, before going on to outline a scenario in which Pence refuses to certify the results in swing states.

Supporters of President Trump have made similar arguments that Pence, as president of the Senate, has the power to reject Electoral College results.

However, the theory is based on a misreading of U.S. code that simply authorizes the vice president to call on states to submit their electoral votes if they do not do so by the fourth Wednesday in December, according to The Washington Post.

"The Vice President is not supposed to control the outcome of the process for counting the electoral votes from the states. That's true from the perspective of the Constitution as well as the Electoral Count Act," Edward Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University, told The Hill in an email.

"The Vice President chairs the joint session, but does not decide what electoral votes to count," he added, noting it "was clearly understood...that the Vice President might be a candidate in the election under consideration, and they did not want this conflict of interest to affect the result."

T. Greg Doucette, an attorney and Trump critic who frequently fields questions about the president's capacity to legally challenge the results of the election, tweeted that "Pence has no power to 'strike' anything. He opens the envelopes, gives the certificates to the tellers, the tellers count."

As for the quote attributed to Stalin, frequently invoked as a warning against totalitarianism, it is disputed whether the Soviet leader actually said it. A variation on it appears in Russian in a 2002 memoir by Stalin's secretary Boris Bazhanov, who attributed it to his former boss discussing a vote by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

The Hill has reached out to Rasmussen for comment.

Analysis: Why Trump's 'enemy of the people' smear will have long-lasting effects
 can sign up fo

A version of this article first appeared in the "Reliable Sources" newsletter. 

© Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images US President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump walk to board Air Force One prior to departure from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, December 23, 2020, as they travel to Mar-a-lago for Christmas and New Year's. 

If someone managed to sleep through the Trump years, and asked me what they'd missed, I'd start with "enemy of the people." Why? Because Trump's demonization of the media explains almost everything. He convinced his fans that the people covering him were lying. He advised them to trust certain Fox shows and ignore practically everything else. He said he was in a "running war with the media" on his very first weekend in office, and never stopped.

Many times, in many influential corners of the mainstream media, there was an impulse to ignore Trump's attacks. To deprive him of oxygen. But here's the counter-argument: Americans are drinking from a poisoned well of information. It's what caused some of the fractures in America and exacerbated so many of the others. And the poison is advertised as an antidote! Whataboutism, cherry-picked controversies, cover-ups of Trump's corruption -- all of it flows 24/7 from a parallel universe of news, a universe that is largely predicated on criticism of legacy news outlets. All of it relates back to Trump's endless campaign against the people who report the news. The people he labeled as the "enemy."

Trump said it more and more every year, between 2017 and 2020, according to Factba.se data. And his base believed it. Disdain for the media glued his base together. That's why, in my view, "enemy of the people" is the No. 1 thing to understand about the past four years. It needs to be factored into every story about governmental action and inaction, every analysis of American politics, even after President-elect Biden is sworn in...

A "cult president"

David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, wrote this about Suffolk and USA Today's newest poll: "What does it mean to be a 'cult president' — one whose supporters will believe and trust him no matter what any other government officials, academics, journalists, politicians, and 'professional' experts say? Donald Trump could at the very least be characterized as one of the few presidents with a cult of personality and a cult-like following."

"A whopping 78 percent of Republicans do NOT believe that Joe Biden was legitimately elected president," Paleologos wrote. In the poll, he wrote, "we ask a question about which television and news sources are trusted the most. Among those who trust Fox News, 16% said that Biden was elected legitimately and 83% said he was not. If you combine the next seven news sources including PBS, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and NBC, 93% said Biden was legitimately elected and 6% said he was not."

Biden was elected legitimately. The widespread belief that he was not -- that a vast conspiracy rigged the election against Trump -- is evidence of radicalization among the Fox-GOP base. Conservative columnist and CNN contributor Matt Lewis tweeted on Monday, "As a lifelong conservative, I am still surprised by how many people I thought were like me have revealed themselves to be right-wing AUTHORITARIANS."
 
Fresh source of false hope

January 6, the date Congress will certify the 2020 election results, is emerging as a fresh source of false hope for Trump dead-enders. There is mounting pressure on VP Mike Pence to do... something... that day.

CNN Business managing editor Alex Koppelman writes: "The new person being set up as the anti-Trump villain is Mike Pence! That's where the poisoned well leads -- every fact is wrong, every person with expertise is a liar, everyone who acts in any way against what you want is a traitor. It's the monster the conservative movement created and found itself unable to fight against when Trump started using it for himself, it's what has been hurting Fox recently -- and, helped out by Trump's efforts, it will stick around after him. Anything that contradicts your worldview is a lie, it's from biased people, it's a conspiracy, any effort to push back on the lies we tell is proof of bias -- that's where Trump's war on truth has brought his base..."

Sunday's special edition of "Reliable..."

...was all about how Trump changed the media and how the media changed him. Trump retweeted a post about Sunday's broadcast on Monday afternoon -- it was a Mark Levin tweet insulting Jake Tapper and me.

Tapper responded on Twitter and I reacted on Instagram if you're interested. Anyway, here's the part that Levin, and then Trump, complained about: Tapper said that some Trump aides are "just so mendacious, I just wouldn't put them on air. Kayleigh McEnany, I never booked her. Jason Miller from the Trump campaign, I would never book him. I mean, these are just people who just -- they just tell lies the way that, you know, most people breathe and there was no value in that."

That comment got picked up across the websites and networks that Tapper ID'ed as the "MAGA media." Personally I thought his comments a couple minutes later were more newsworthy: He said "I think that Donald Trump succeeded with many of our colleagues in, you know, throwing the ball close to the batter so that they were scared. You know, the brush ball. I think he scared people away. And I think a lot of our colleagues failed to rise to the challenge." Click here to watch part one and part two of our conversation...

Here's how to catch up on the show

Jim Acosta, Abby Phillip, Jeremy Diamond, and Kaitlan Collins all joined me to discuss their experiences covering the Trump WH. We talked about the "blood sport" aspect of Trump's anti-media attacks and how his unhealthy TV addiction affected all of us. I also talked with fact-checker Daniel Dale about "calling a lie a lie." Watch the video clips on CNN.com... Catch the entire episode via CNNgo or VOD... Or listen to the podcast via Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your favorite app.

Opinion: What a journalist's jailing for heroic Covid coverage exposes about China

Opinion by Steven Butler

My business -- documenting attacks on journalists in Asia and advocating on their behalf -- requires a thick skin. I can't let every case get to me, or I couldn't function. But sometimes a case pierces through the armor. That happened Monday morning when I awoke to the news that a Chinese court had sentenced journalist Zhang Zhan, 37, to four years in jail for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." This follows the government indictment, which accused her of "publishing large amounts of fake information."

© Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images PASADENA, CA - NOVEMBER 15: A car follows a funeral caravan with poster of Zhang Zhan, a Chinese citizen journalist who criticized the Chinese government's handling of the coronavirus crisis and is being held in a Shanghai prison. The Visual Artists Guild held a horse-drawn hearse caravan funeral procession in memory of the victims of COVID-19 down Colorado Blvd Sunday, Nov. 15, 2020 in Pasadena. Participants will call on the Chinese government to release imprisoned journalists who reported on the virus and to allow international researchers to go to Wuhan to research the virus at its place of origin. 

Zhang's real crime: to report factually on the ground at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, at its then epicenter, Wuhan, in video dispatches that challenged the government's official narrative. And then to stubbornly defy the Chinese government by insisting on her innocence.

Why did this case rise above others? Maybe it's the photos we at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) received of her in jail, just before the trial. Behind bars and a clear barrier that partly reflects light and obscures her image, a face mask is pulled down just enough to show the feeding tubes fastened into her nostrils. Prison guards shaved the front of her head. Her eyes look right into the camera. They scream misery.

Arrested in May, Zhang went on a hunger strike during her detention, according to Amnesty International. In response, prison authorities have restrained her and forced nutrients into her. Her lawyer told the CPJ, where I work, that she had lost a great deal of weight and had aged decades in jail. Zhang said she fears she will die there. She even showed up at her trial in a wheelchair.

Yet, despite Zhang's misery, her eyes also scream defiance. She's not a pathetic figure. Just the opposite. She's a hero. Zhang, a lawyer by training, went to Wuhan on her own accord. Her reports consisted of talking to ordinary people about what they thought and posting the accounts on Twitter and YouTube.

Yes, sure, she also criticized the government response to the pandemic -- harshly, in fact. But in jail, with a lawyer's sensibility, she has repeatedly denied reporting false news and insisted Chinese law gives her the right to report. And she's correct. Article 35 of China's constitution states: "Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration." During her trial, Zhang insisted that people's speech should not be censored.

On December 1, China held 47 journalists in prison, including Zhang, the most of any other nation, according to an annual prison census conducted by the CPJ. Several others are held for reporting on Covid-19. Others have reported on human rights abuses or labor unrest. Some, like Huang Qi, a pioneer of human rights reporting, are repeat offenders, have suffered from medical neglect and seen their lawyers forced to resign or even disbarred. The Chinese government did not respond to CPJ's questions for comment.

Their treatment is harsh, as described to CPJ by the formerly jailed Lu Yuyu, who recently told The Wall Street Journal that the government crackdown meant "(t)here's no point" continuing his past work documenting unrest. The Chinese government did not respond to CPJ's or the Journal's request for comment.

For all these reasons, Zhang's trial and conviction are about much more than one person running afoul of China's ruling Communist Party. It shows that Chinese citizens can still muster the courage to defy the Communist Party. Her case exposes in sharp relief the hypocrisy of the Chinese government and its application of its constitution, and it is a reminder to all of us about the true character of the regime that has put her in jail and cannot tolerate anyone telling the truth about how it governs.

Foreign governments dealing with China cannot ignore this reality, and they must insist that China end its repeated and gross violations of the human rights of its own people, including its journalists.






Steven Butler

© courtesy Committee to Protect Journalists

50 journalists killed in 2020: watchdog

Fifty journalists and media workers were killed in connection with their work in 2020, the majority in countries that are not at war, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Tuesday.

© MIGUEL MEDINA Reporters Without Borders said it was concerned that measures imposed by governments to fight the pandemic had contributed to a "significant peak in violations of press freedom"

The figure shows an increase in the targeting of reporters investigating organized crime, corruption or environmental issues, the watchdog said.

It highlighted murders in Mexico, India and Pakistan.

Eighty-four percent of those killed this year were "deliberately targeted" for their work, RSF said in its annual report, compared to 63 percent in 2019.

"For several years now, Reporters Without Borders has noted that investigative journalists are really in the crosshairs of states, or cartels," said Pauline Ades-Mevel, RSF editor-in-chief.

Mexico was the deadliest country, with eight killed. "Links between drug traffickers and politicians remain, and journalists who dare to cover these or related issues continue to be the targets of barbaric murders," said the report.

None of the Mexico killings had yet been punished, added RSF, which has compiled annual data on violence against journalists around the globe since 1995.

Five journalists were killed in war-torn Afghanistan, it said, noting an increase in targeted attacks on media workers in recent months even as peace talks between the government and Taliban are ongoing.

RSF also highlighted the case of Iranian opposition figure Ruhollah Zam, who ran a popular social media channel that rallied regime opponents, and who was executed in December.

His execution "confirms Iran's record as a country that has officially put the most journalists to death in the past half-century," it said.

- Covid whistleblowers -

Ades-Mevel said RSF had also noted the "developing" trend of violence against media workers covering protests, notably in the United States following the killing of George Floyd, and in France against a controversial new security law.

The total number of journalists killed in 2020 was lower than the 53 reported in 2019, although RSF said fewer journalists worked in the field this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the first part of the report, published this month, RSF said it was concerned that measures imposed by governments to fight the pandemic had contributed to a "significant peak in violations of press freedom".

It listed 387 jailed journalists, which it called "a historically high number".

Fourteen of those had been arrested in connection with their coverage of the coronavirus crisis, it said.

On Monday Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who sent dispatches from Wuhan during the chaotic initial stages of the outbreak, was jailed for four years for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble".

Chinese authorities have punished eight virus whistleblowers so far as they curb criticism of the government's response to the outbreak.

bur-rma/axn

IT'S HERE

BC Nurses’ Union calls COVID-19 variant first identified in U.K. ‘concerning’

The president of the BC Nurses' Union says health-care workers are bracing for a possible surge in COVID-19 cases after the holidays.

© Leah Hennel, Government of Alberta 

The B.C. Nurses union says their concerned about the new variant of COVID-19 here in B.C.

On top of that, B.C.'s health ministry confirmed Sunday that a COVID-19 variant had been detected in a person in the Island Health region, who had recently arrived from the U.K., and started feeling symptoms while in quarantine.

Video: Virus trends in B.C.

BCNU president Christine Sorensen said the variant of the virus is bringing more anxiety to nurses who are already understaffed and overworked.

"Nurses have been challenged through this whole pandemic both physically and mentally, so certainly another new variation of this virus is concerning and adds to that challenge," Sorensen said.

Read more: Visit restrictions amid COVID-19 caused ‘spike in depression’ in long-term care homes

She went on to say nurses are still having problems getting personal protective equipment.

"We don't know enough about this new variant," Sorensen said. "Nurses are asking for unfettered access to PPE and unfortunately still having difficulties accessing N95 masks or other equipment to keep themselves and their patients safe.

VIDEO B.C. nurse frustrated anti-mask rallies continue amid COVID-19 case surge


"That is the reality of this novel coronavirus, we don't have enough information at hand and now we have a new variant."