Trump aid delay snarled US unemployment systems: study

Agence France-Presse
February 02, 2021

Donald Trump in the White House. (Vasilis Asvestas / Shutterstock.com)

]The brief expiration of US pandemic unemployment benefits has left jobless workers waiting for billions of dollars and states struggling to reactivate the aid programs, a study said on Tuesday.

The lapse was caused by former president Donald Trump's days-long refusal to sign a $900 billion spending package passed by Congress in December that extended the aid programs first enacted when the pandemic hit.

The study from The Century Foundation progressive think tank finds that some US states still have not reactivated the programs, more than four weeks after they should have been able to resume paying benefits after Trump signed by the bill.

"This is money that these workers and their families needed to pay rent, put food on the table, stay out of poverty and keep America's economy running while they looked for work," the report said

As the Covid-19 pandemic struck, Congress passed the CARES Act that expanded the unemployment safety net by creating programs to help freelance workers and the long-term jobless.

But those were only authorized through the end of 2020, and in December Congress scrambled to pass a follow-up stimulus measure to keep them going as the pandemic wore on.

But Trump's refusal to sign the deal led to a one-day lapse in the programs, which the 53 US states and territories that administer the unemployment systems are still struggling to recover from.

As of January 30, only 40 states were making payments under the program for gig workers, and 12 of these had a delay of more than two weeks in restarting payments.

Thirty eight were making payments under the program for the long-term unemployed, but 15 states took more than two weeks to get the program up and running, The Century Foundation said.

All told, unemployed workers have lost out on $17.6 billion in benefits, though they will eventually receive checks with back payments for the weeks during which they weren't paid.

Nonetheless, the study warns the delay increased the stress for millions of people who have lost their jobs as the pandemic upended business in the United States.

"Put simply, a retroactive check in February can't be used to put food on the table in January," the study said.

Scores arrested in strike against parliament dissolution in Nepal
2021/2/4  ©Deutsche Presse-Agentur mbH

Protest against Parliament dissolution in Nepal - Political Leaders and cadres of the Nepal Communist party take part in a torch rally against Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and the dissolution of the Parliament. - Aryan Dhimal/ZUMA Wire/dpa

A nationwide strike called by a faction of Nepal’s ruling party protesting the dissolution of parliament began Thursday with sporadic clashes between police and protesters in the capital, Kathmandu.

At least 70 protesters including a former minister from the agitating faction of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) have been arrested while trying to enforce the strike, according to Nepal Police spokesperson Basanta Bahadur Kunwar.

"They are currently in our custody," Kunwar told dpa.

The strike has crippled normal life, with a disruption of traffic and a partial shutdown of businesses and services.

In Kathmandu, thousands of protesters rallied in the streets, chanting slogans against President Bidya Devi Bhandari and Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli for dissolving parliament.

One taxi was set on fire although no serious injuries have been reported, police said.

Thursday’s nationwide strike was the latest in a series of protests and counter protests that have rocked Nepal since Bhandari, acting on Oli’s recommendation, dissolved the legislature parliament in December and announced early general elections on April 30 and May 10.

Oli has said that he was forced to dissolve parliament after being blocked from carrying out his agenda by colleagues in the bloc, who had tried to oust him through a vote of no confidence. His opponents have called the dissolution unconstitutional. Several writ petitions have been filed against the dissolution and a constitutional hearing is ongoing in the supreme court.

Following the parliament's dissolution, the NCP has informally split with two factions describing themselves as the legitimate faction and asserting claims over the party’s election symbol and its name.

CNN exposes Trump-loving anti-vaxxers who have gotten rich at the expense of public health

Brad Reed RAW STORY
February 05, 2021



A new CNN expose reveals how some prominent anti-vaccination advocates have raked in cash while peddling what one expert describes as "snake oil" alternatives to vaccines.


In the segment, CNN reporter Drew Griffin showed how purported "alternative medicine" practitioners Ty and Charlene Bollinger organized their own "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington, D.C., on January 6th in which they not only railed against the "stolen" 2020 presidential election, but they also attacked vaccinations.

Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told Griffin that at the heart of the Bollingers' pro-Trump and anti-vaxx initiatives is a single motive: Greed.

"These are snake oil salesman, the oldest kind of liar and seller of deceit, of misinformation," he explained. "Snake oil salesmen need to turn aa profit.

Griffin then goes on to document just how much the Bollingers have profited by noting that they live in a "7,600-square-foot, $1.5 million mansion in rural Tennessee."

The Bollingers make their money by selling informational videos on alternative medicines that cost up to $500 each, air purifiers that sell for $300, and an assortment of "body cleansers and other unproven health products" that come complete with fine-print disclaimers stating that they are not "intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or treat any disease."

Watch the video below.

'There was no trust': Apartheid ghosts stalk S.Africa's vaccine fears

Issued on: 05/02/2021 -

Jabbed: A South African volunteer in a trial last year of the 

Oxford-AstraZenca vaccine

 SIPHIWE SIBEKO POOL/AFP

Johannesburg (AFP)

At the very mention of the word "vaccine", 82-year-old Josefine Hlomuka vehemently shook her head, her face clouding with worry as she gazed at the storm bearing down on her home in the Johannesburg township of Soweto.

"We don't trust," whispered the former peanut seller, haunted by the four decades she spent under apartheid.

White-minority rule was swept away a generation ago but faith in South Africa's government today, its reputation undermined by corruption and incompetence, is poor.

Such deep-rooted distrust, say experts, lies behind vaccine scepticism that has flared since coronavirus hit the country last March.

Vaccine hesitancy is growing, even as leaders prepare a mammoth inoculation campaign set to begin this month.

The country hit hardest in Africa by the coronavirus aims to vaccinate around two-thirds of its 60 million-strong population by the end of 2021.

But fears span generations in Soweto's White City neighbourhood, where iron-domed roofs recall a time when the area hosted military barracks.

"I saw (online that) people are getting injected but they die," said Soweto-raised Tshegofatso Mdluli, 22, flashing two gold front teeth.

"What if most people get a third-grade kind of vaccine?" fretted Mbali Tshabalala, 35, sitting outside the terracotta walls of her home. "It gives me sleepless nights."

- Memories 'linger' -

Scepticism and suspicion have fed into a flurry of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic.

"So-called rumours and myths have a basis in real anxieties," said Helen Schneider, a professor of public health at the University of the Western Cape.

And those anxieties in turn stem from "very concrete experiences," she said.

She pointed to the evidence of a secret apartheid-era chemical warfare programme in the 1980s to develop injections to curb the fertility of black citizens.

The head of that programme, cardiologist Wouter Basson -- dubbed "Dr Death" -- came back to haunt the public psyche last month.

It emerged he was still practising at private clinics, sparking outrage on social media.

Similar suspicions played out during the rollout of HIV treatment in the early 2000s.

"The end of apartheid was not far away, so you can easily imagine the parallels," said Doctors Without Borders veteran Eric Goemaere, recalling efforts to curb AIDS in Cape Town's Khayelitsha township.

"(Many thought) white people... invented something new to dominate (and) control."

- 'Don't believe WhatsApp' -

Public officials were trying to cut through misinformation long before South Africa's first batch of vaccines arrived on Monday.

"False information and fake news can and does put lives at risk," President Cyril Ramaphosa wrote in a weekly letter to the nation last month.

"We all need to work together to build confidence in the vaccine."

In a public webinar on vaccines hosted by the health ministry last week, microbiologist Koleka Mlisana urged listeners not to believe "everything you read in WhatsApp messages."

Tackling widely-disseminated stories one by one, she said "there are no microchips or tracking devices in vaccine bottles" and that "no vaccine will alter the DNA," before using global death figures to debunk a relatively common belief that the jabs are a ploy to "destroy Africans."

One January poll by Ipsos found that only 51 percent of South Africans would agree to get a coronavirus vaccine -- a 17 percent drop since October.

But another survey by the University of Johannesburg (UJ) suggested 67 percent of respondents were willing.

"Most South Africans generally do have positive attitudes to vaccinations," noted Sara Cooper, a senior scientist at the South African Medical Research Council.

Nevertheless, "the problem with vaccine hesitancy is that even small amounts can have big effects."

- 'They lie to us' -

Not all of South Africa's uncertainty hinges on conspiracy theories.

In fact, the UJ survey found that around half the 18 percent of respondents refusing to take the vaccine cited plots as the reason.

"They do play a role," Cooper said. "But there are more complex issues that receive less attention in the media that also play a big part."

Just as when AIDS was first spreading, civil society has pitched in alongside government to try to disseminate accurate information about coronavirus and upcoming vaccines.

Public figures such as anti-apartheid icon Desmond Tutu and opposition leader Julius Malema have also said they will get vaccinated.

But "there is a problem with top-down information," said Mocke Jansen Van Veuren, running a coronavirus workshop one rainy morning at a community hall in Soweto's impoverished Kliptown suburb, where anger towards the government repeatedly surfaced.

"Government is a suspicious source, unfortunately -- they lie to us about a lot of things."

Local distrust has also been compounded by global wariness over the speed at which pharmaceutical companies have developed and marketed their vaccines.

In the meantime, apartheid continues to cast a long, dark shadow.

"Black people and coloured people suffer from PTSD (trauma)," said one workshop participant, standing up to interrupt a presentation on coronavirus prevention.

"That is something the government is not even considering."

© 2021 AFP

$43 bn deal for 'world's biggest' offshore wind farm in South Korea

Issued on: 05/02/2021 -

A $43 billion deal for what the South Korean government says 

will be the world's largest offshore wind farm complex has

 been signed DON EMMERT AFP

Seoul (AFP)

A $43 billion deal was signed Friday to build what the South Korean government said will be the world's biggest offshore wind power complex, as it seeks to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

South Korea has few energy resources of its own and relies on imported coal -- a cheap but dirty fuel -- for around 40 percent of its electricity.

President Moon Jae-in declared the carbon neutrality goal last year but at the same time is looking to phase out nuclear power, leaving the country depending on renewables to square the circle.

Moon oversaw the signing of the 48 trillion won ($43 billion) agreement to build the complex off Sinan in the country's southwest, which he said would be seven times bigger than the world's current largest offshore wind farm.

With a maximum capacity of 8.2 gigawatts, the government is banking on it being the equivalent of six nuclear power stations.

Moon said that the country's position on the Korean peninsula gave it a geographical advantage.

"We have the infinite potential of offshore wind power to the sea on three sides, and we have the world's best technology in related fields," he added.

The agreement involves 33 different entities, among them regional governments, the electricity generator KEPCO, and major private firms including Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction and SK E&S.

Moon warned it could take more than five years to start construction, although the government will try to accelerate the process.

Seoul last year announced a target of becoming one of the world's top five offshore wind energy powerhouses by 2030.

South Korea also plans to cut its existing nuclear power plants -- currently the country's only significant low-carbon energy source -- from 24 to 17 by 2034, reducing the sector's energy output by nearly half.

© 2021 AFP

COVAX vaccine fund ‘always’ intended to help vaccinate Canadians, feds say

The government says its contribution to the COVAX vaccine program has “always been intended” to secure additional coronavirus vaccine access for Canada, on top of supporting vaccination rollouts in lower-income countries.

© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld 

International Development Minister Karina Gould responds to a question during Question Period in the House of Commons Tuesday December 10, 2019 in Ottawa.

Read more: Canada could get 1.1M more vaccine doses by March through COVAX sharing program

“COVAX is not a fund for developing countries only but a mechanism to ensure equitable access to vaccines for all countries that are participating in it, including Canada,” Guillaume Dumas, a spokesperson for International Development Minister Karina Gould, said in a statement emailed to Global News.

Video: Coronavirus: Vaccine nationalism puts world on brink of ‘catastrophic moral failure,’ says WHO chief

The comment comes on the heels of criticism directed at the government over the news that Canada is the only country in the G7 to draw vaccines from the fund, which was established “to guarantee fair and equitable (vaccine) access for every country in the world.”

“The COVAX vaccines were a way the developed countries, like Canada, were helping poorer countries have access to vaccines,” Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole said in a Thursday press conference.

Video: Canada drawing COVID-19 vaccines from COVAX sharing plan shows Trudeau ‘has no plan’ says O’Toole

“The very fact that Canada is the only G7 country asking the COVAX consortium for vaccines is a demonstration that we have no plan, and Canadians need vaccines to get the country working to secure our future.”

Canada is slated to receive a minimum of 1.9 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine as a part of the COVAX fund. Maj-Gen. Dany Fortin, who is leading the logistics of Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout, added on Thursday that this number may increase to as many as three million doses.

Coronavirus: Trudeau says Canada contributing close to $500M towards WHO’s COVAX facility

While Canada is the only G7 national availing itself of these vaccine doses, other countries that are not considered lower income are also receiving doses from the fund. Singapore and New Zealand are both receiving over 200,000 doses each from the fund.

In addition to that, eight G20 nations are getting vaccine doses from COVAX – including Canada, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Korea.

Read more: Low-income nations could be without a coronavirus vaccine until 2024, report says

Still, O’Toole slammed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as having “no plan,” saying that a lack of proper planning is the reason Canada is “taking vaccines from a multi-country fund that was intended to help poorer countries.”

Dumas pushed back on this criticism in his statement.

“We’ve been clear from the start. Canada is strongly determined to vaccinate Canadians while making sure that the rest of the world is not getting left behind. Our participation into COVAX is a concrete example of that,” Dumas said.

“Our contribution to the global mechanism had always been intended to access vaccine doses for Canadians as well as to support lower income countries.”

Video: Coronavirus: WHO calls for speedier, equitable vaccine distribution as COVID-19 world deaths near 2 million

Dumas said Canada made a different investment to ensure that lower-income countries have access to vaccines – and that isn’t where Canada’s vaccines are coming from.

“We made a separate contribution to the mechanism’s Advanced Market Commitment specifically for vaccine access in lower income countries. We are not using a specific fund made for developing countries,” he said.

O’Toole has been a vocal critic of the vaccine rollout since day one, repeatedly accusing the Liberal government of not having a vaccine plan.

However, when pressed multiple times on Thursday as to whether he would have accepted the COVAX fund vaccine doses, he refused to answer the question.

“It's hard for me to divorce the inaction of the government over the last 10 months with what I would do today. We would not be in this position today,” O’Toole said.

Video: Oxfam: 9/10 people living in the developing world will miss out on the COVID-19 vaccine

Experts have warned that until the entire world is able to access a vaccine, Canada will remain stuck in a small “bubble” – even if our population is fully vaccinated.

“It’s the old adage, ‘No one is safe until everyone is safe,'” Raywat Deonandan, an epidemiologist with the University of Ottawa, told Global News in December.

“We cannot get close to the eradication of coronavirus unless vaccines are made available to everyone.”

It’s a message Dumas echoed in his Thursday statement.

“We’re having a comprehensive approach to fighting the pandemic,” he said.

“As we know that the virus won’t be defeated until it is defeated everywhere.”

-- With a file from Global News' Katie Dangerfield

‘Join up to speed up’: WHO urges Europe, pharma to collaborate on vaccines

Issued on: 05/02/2021 - 

Doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against Covid-19 pictured at a vaccination centre in Freising, Germany, on February 2, 2021. © Christof Stache, AFP

Text by:FRANCE 24

Europe and pharma groups must work together to speed up Covid-19 vaccinations and share doses with poorer countries, the head of the European branch of the World Health Organisation said Friday, expressing concern about the spread of virus variants.

"We need to join up to speed up vaccinations," WHO Europe director Hans Kluge told AFP in an interview, as Europe bids to overcome a slow start to its vaccination campaign amid tensions between Brussels and vaccine manufacturers.

Kluge said competing pharmaceutical companies must join efforts to "drastically increase production capacity".

In the European Union, just 2.5% of the population has received a first vaccine dose, though announcements by several laboratories of increased vaccine deliveries have raised hopes of an acceleration

Asked whether the vaccines available since December would be effective against new virus variants, Kluge replied: "That's the big question. I'm concerned."


"We have to be prepared" for new problematic mutations of the virus, he warned, calling on countries to expand their genomic sequencing capacity.

He added: "It's a cruel reminder that the virus still has the upper hand on the human being."

Tunnel 'a little bit longer'

Of the 53 countries in the WHO's European region – which includes several countries in central Asia – 37 have reported cases of the British variant and 17 have registered cases of the South African variant.

While the fight against the pandemic now appears more challenging than in December when the first vaccines became available, Kluge remained optimistic.

"I'll be honest, I think that the tunnel is a little bit longer than what I thought at the end of December, but it's going to be manageable, more preventable this year," he said.

"'The' solution or 'the' strategy doesn't exist. We have to get better at what we do and we are getting better," Kluge added.

He reiterated the WHO's call for rich countries to show solidarity toward poor nations unable to buy vaccines, urging wealthy ones to share their doses after having inoculated a portion of their own population.

Kluge suggested wealthier nations share their vaccines once they have inoculated "elderly people, health care workers and people with comorbidity" – without waiting to cross the 70% threshold required to attain herd immunity.

"If they hit 20% of their population, maybe that's the moment that they can already start to share some vaccines," he said.

No to 'vaccination passports'

The milestone of 100 million vaccine doses administered was passed on Tuesday, with 65 percent of jabs given in high-income countries, according to World Bank criteria.

In a bid to combat "vaccine nationalism", the WHO has set up Covax, a global inoculation-sharing initiative to help poor countries.


"We know that in the EU, Canada, UK, US, they all ordered and made deals for four to nine times more doses than they need. So my point here is, don't wait until you have 70% of the population (vaccinated) to share with the Balkans, to share with central Asia, Africa," Kluge said.

While the WHO is in favour of countries issuing vaccination certificates, Kluge was opposed to the idea of "vaccination passports" required for travel.

"We certainly don't want to have a situation where there are so-called vaccine passports, that's something that we are definitely not subscribing to because it will increase inequities," he explained.

Afghanistan's brightest look for a way out as murders rise


Issued on: 05/02/2021 

A roadside mural in Kabul pays homage to former Afghan Tolo 

TV presenter Yama Siawash, who was killed in a bomb attack

 on November 7, 2020 WAKIL KOHSAR AFP

Kabul (AFP)

Days before he was gunned down on a Kabul street, democracy activist Mohammad Yousuf Rasheed had made up his mind to move his family to Turkey, joining scores of other high-profile Afghans fleeing the country.

Rasheed was killed in December on his way to work, one of at least 180 assassinations carried out by the Taliban since September across the country, according to Afghan officials.

"They first shot him in the heart, and then -- to make sure he was dead -- they shot him again and again in the head," his brother Abdul Baqi Rasheed told AFP at the family home in Kabul.

Journalists, religious scholars, activists and judges have all been targeted in a recent wave of political assassinations that has spread panic across Afghanistan and forced many into hiding -- with some even fleeing the country.

The killings have increased since peace talks were launched last year between the warring Afghan government and the Taliban -- the latest attempt to end decades of conflict.

The assassinations reflect a calculated effort to sow chaos and expose the government's inability to safeguard prominent targets, said veteran political analyst Davood Moradian.

"By weakening the Afghan state, the enemy will get closer to its ultimate objective, which is toppling the current constitutional system," he told AFP.

And he predicted that Afghanistan's "brightest" will be increasingly targeted in the months ahead.

- Women's voices 'gone quiet' -

The assassinations have been acutely felt by women, whose rights were crushed under the Taliban's five-year rule, including being banned from working.

Since the Taliban's fall in 2001, women's participation in the labour force has slowly increased, but they must contend with great risks.

After multiple sources told popular journalist Farahnaz Foroton that her name was on a hit list, she also decided to leave the country.

"I had no choice... every day we see (assassinations) increasing," she told AFP.

Another female reporter -- now in hiding -- said she was under pressure to stop working after the murder of Malalai Maiwand, one of five journalists killed since November.

"I have not seen my children for months, and given these threats and killings, my family wants me to quit," she told AFP.

Two female judges working for the country's Supreme Court and two female doctors have also been killed recently while on their way to work.

Intelligence officials linked the renewed threat against female professionals to demands at the peace talks for their rights to be protected.

"Lots of women activists and professionals then started getting threats -- some were killed. Now that voice has gone quiet," an intelligence official said.

One Afghan journalist who asked not to be named fled his hometown after militants threatened him for investigating how a local madrassa was radicalising children in the area.

After a cleric issued a religious decree -- known as a fatwa -- ordering his murder, some men were seen planting a bomb near his home.

"That's when I realised I had to either flee or risk getting killed," he said.

On Monday, the founder of a leading online Afghan news agency escaped unhurt when a bomb attached to his car blew up in Kabul.

- Sophisticated assassinations -

US officials have blamed the Taliban for the wave of assassinations and attacks, and the new administration under President Joe Biden has called for a review of last year's deal that paved the way for the withdrawal of foreign forces by May.

But the Taliban deny carrying out the assassinations, many of which have been claimed by the rival jihadist Islamic State group.

"The (Taliban) has absolutely no hand in civilian killings," the group said Monday, adding that the charges were "unsubstantiated".

Afghan intelligence officers suspect a violent branch of the Taliban known as the Haqqani network.

"It is the Haqqani network (carrying out the assassinations) for the Taliban. There is a clear understanding between all of them," an intelligence officer said.

Another officer told AFP that dozens of suspects arrested over the killings were Taliban prisoners released recently as part of the peace process.

The assassinations sometimes take months of careful planning -- to catch officials off guard -- and are increasingly more sophisticated than the formerly favoured suicide bomb.

Citing the recent murder of an Afghan air force pilot, a foreign security official said the attackers had "mapped his every moment" using a camera mounted on a drone.

The pilot had been looking for a new home and was lured to his death by assassins posing as property agents, local media reported.

Rasheed, the activist who had hoped to move his family to Turkey, was also closely monitored in the months before his murder, his brother said.

Shaharzad Akbar, the head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said every week someone she knows was leaving Afghanistan.

"There is no future for them here -- not any time soon," she said.

© 2021 AFP

Toxic mine leaves poisoned legacy in French town

Issued on: 05/02/2021 - 

An employee walks in a mining gallery of the Stocamine project

 in Wittelsheim, eastern France. SEBASTIEN BOZON AFP/File


Wittelsheim (France) (AFP)

Jean-Pierre Hecht, a miner in eastern France, remembers how attractive the idea sounded when he first heard about it: a dying pit could be turned into something useful and environmentally friendly.

Back in the 1990s, the local state mining group MDPA approached the community in the town of Wittelsheim in Alsace with an idea for stocking hazardous waste in a nearby potash mine.

"The pitch was all about how we were going to store the waste, hoping to see some research institute one day come up with a way to neutralise it permanently," Hecht told AFP.

But the project, known as Stocamine, ended up poisoning local community relations, led to court cases, convictions and fears that it has resulted in the creation of a toxic timebomb beneath the surface.

It serves as a warning about what can go wrong when countries decide to repurpose mines to bury their most undesirable and hazardous waste for which no recycling or treatment technology exists.

Hecht, now retired, regrets accepting a job supervising work there due to the legacy for future generations.

"It's a question not only of being able to look at yourself in the mirror, but also being able to look at your children in the eyes," he said, grimacing in a cold wind near the perimeter of the site.

He, along with the local mayor and many of the 10,000 residents, were left bitterly disappointed at the end of January when the Paris government decided to seal the contents of Stocamine in the ground.

"They've handed us the title permanently of 'the least glamourous town in the whole of Alsace," lamented mayor Yves Goepfert.

- Misleading claim -

Stocamine has been a fiasco for the people of Wittelsheim, a mining town surrounded by defunct pits and grassed over slag heaps, signs of a industry that once sustained 15,000 jobs at its height.

Potash is the local mineral, which was first found in the early 1900s when it was in demand for fertilizers.

This boom was a distant memory by the time brochures for Stocamine began circulating in the 1990s, promising jobs and a "mine at the service of the environment" which would use the thick layers of salt locally like protective blankets around the waste.

The facility won authorisation in 1997 for 30 years on the condition that it was "reversible" -- which most people took to mean that the 320,000 tonnes of permitted non-radioactive waste might one day be taken out.

"Acceptance of the project by the population was based in a significant way on the commitment by the state to a reversible storage facility," a 2018 parliamentary inquiry report concluded.

Over the three years after its opening in 1999, a total of 44,000 tonnes of waste were brought down in barrels and reinforced bags which were piled up in freshly dug galleries 550 metres (1,800 feet) below the surface.

- 'Safest environment' -

The foul-smelling containers were filled with discharge from incineration plants, byproducts from scientific laboratories, chroming and galvanization plants, as well as waste containing asbestos and mercury.

Yann Flory, spokesman for Destocamine, a local environmental group, believes underground storage facilities are a way for society to hide from the problem of this so-called "final waste".

"We found a quick solution: we put it in holes in the ground," he told AFP.

But, as would later emerge in court, the company in charge of the site -- a joint venture between MDPA and private waste group Seche Environnement -- committed criminal errors.

Waste was not checked or filtered properly and in 2002 a fire broke out underground, which took firefighters two months to extinguish.

The chief executive of Stocamine and the company were convicted in 2007 of endangering lives by deliberately breaking the terms of the project's authorisation.

As the project ground to a halt, local lawmakers and activists lobbied for a complete clean-up, arguing that toxic sludge could make its way into the Alsace aquifer, one of the largest in Europe.

Although the mine is far below the watercourse, they remain worried about infiltration and flooding in the galleries.

"We should get everything out," Flory told AFP.

From 2014, around 2,000 tonnes of mercury-laced waste, considered particularly high-risk, were removed, but environment minister Barbara Pompelii recently dashed hopes of more extraction.

She has dismissed risks of groundwater pollution as "infinitesimal" and on January 18 she ended decades of delay by announcing that the remaining waste would be buried permanently.

The mine will be sealed, a pollution surveillance system put in place, and 50 million euros (60 million dollars) will be spent in the next five years to clean up other sources of water pollution in Alsace.

She has called permanent burial "the safest for the environment and workers".

- 'Different awareness -

Since the fire at Stocamine, France has nowhere to store its "final waste", meaning it is sent over the border to be deposited in German mines, said Marcos Buser, a Swiss geologist and waste expert.

Germany has around a dozen such facilities, mostly disused potash and salt mines, according to Buser, a former member of Switzerland's Nuclear Safety Commission and a dissenting technical expert consulted about Stocamine.

He says several German facilities are a pollution worry, notably a former salt mine filled with radioactive waste in Asse, central Germany, and another in Heilbronn, north of Stuttgart.

Using mines can be safe providing the highest standards are respected, he says, but he believes they pose questions about our responsibilities towards future generations.

"If you go back in the past, in the 1940s-60s, our final waste was simply dumped in the sea. No one thought it would be a problem," he said.

"I think the same thing will happen with dumps in salt mines. Nowadays no one is interested, but wait another 50 years. Or maybe before."

© 2021 AFP

Doctors and nurses join civil disobedience movement in Myanmar post coup

Issued on: 03/02/2021 

FILE PHOTO: Protesters from Myanmar residing in Japan hold a portrait of leader Aung San Suu Kyi at a rally against Myanmar's military after it seized power from a democratically elected civilian government and arrested Suu Kyi, at United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan February 1, 2021. © REUTERS/Issei Kato

Text by:NEWS WIRES|

Video by:FRANCE 24


Calls for a civil disobedience campaign in Myanmar were gathering pace on Wednesday as the United States formally declared the military's takeover a coup and vowed further penalties for the generals behind the putsch.

Myanmar was plunged back into direct military rule when soldiers detained Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian leaders in a series of dawn raids on Monday, ending the country's brief experiment with democracy.

Suu Kyi, who has not been seen in public since the coup, won a huge landslide with her National League for Democracy (NLD) last November but the military – whose favoured parties received a drubbing – declared the polls were fraudulent.

With soldiers back on the streets of major cities, the takeover has not been met by any major protests.

But signs of public anger and plans to resist have begun to surface, especially online.

The clatter of pots and pans – and the honking of car horns – rang out across the country's biggest city Yangon on Tuesday evening after calls for protest went out on social media.

Activists also launched a "Civil Disobedience Movement" Facebook group to declare opposition and share ideas. By Wednesday morning, some 24 hours after its launch, it had nearly 150,000 followers.\]

Army chief Min Aung Hlaing appointed himself head of a new cabinet stacked with former and current generals, justifying his coup on Tuesday as the "inevitable" result of civilian leaders failure to heed the army's fraud warnings.

The military declared a one-year state of emergency and said it would hold new elections once their allegations of voter irregularities were addressed and investigated.

The move stunned Myanmar, a country left impoverished by decades of junta misrule before it began taking steps towards a more democratic and civilian-led government ten years ago.

Military's deadly legacy

Doctors and nurses were among professionals making early declarations of their intent to go on strike.

"We will only follow and obey the orders from our democratically elected government," a statement from medics posted overnight on the Civil Disobedience Movement page read.

But protesting against Myanmar's military is fraught with risk.

>> Junta holds all the cards in Myanmar’s future, but can it end Suu Kyi’s political career?

During junta rule, dissent was quashed with thousands of activists – including Suu Kyi – detained for years on end.

Censorship was pervasive and the military frequently deployed lethal force during periods of political turmoil, most notably during huge protests in 1988 and 2007.

On Wednesday morning the official Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper published a warning from the Ministry of Information against opposing the coup.

"Some of the media organizations and people are posting rumours on social media, releasing statements to occur riot and unstable situation," the English language statement read.

It called on people "not to make such moves and to cooperate with the government in accordance with existing laws".

International censure

The army's actions have been met with a growing chorus of international condemnation although the options are limited for those nations hoping Myanmar's generals might reverse course.

On Tuesday the State Department formally designated the takeover as a coup, meaning the US cannot assist the Myanmar government.

Any impact will be mainly symbolic, as almost all assistance goes to non-government entities and Myanmar's military was already under US sanctions over its brutal campaign against the Rohingya minority.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the European Union and several other nations have also spoken out.

The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting Tuesday but failed to agree on a statement condemning the coup.

To be adopted, it requires the support of China, which wields veto power as a permanent Security Council member and is Myanmar's main supporter at the UN.

"China and Russia have asked for more time", said a diplomat requesting anonymity at the end of the meeting, which lasted just over two hours.

Both countries repeatedly shielded Myanmar from censure at the UN over the military's crackdown on the Rohingya, a campaign that UN investigators said amounted to genocide.

The coup is the first major foreign policy test for President Joe Biden, who has vowed to stand up for wobbly democracies and defend human rights.

In a forceful statement on Monday he said the US would consider imposing fresh sanctions on Myanmar.

But Washington is also wary of pushing Myanmar further into China's orbit.

"China is only too happy to step in with material and political support for the Burmese military as part of its ongoing effort to maximize its influence in Southeast Asia," said Daniel Russel, from the Asia Society Policy Institute.

(AFP)