Pilot project underway to recover previously unrecyclable agricultural plastics

A pilot project to manage the growing problem of agricultural plastic across Northern Ontario is under way. Almost 520 tonnes of linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) is generated each year in Northern Ontario. LLDPE includes bale and silage wrap and accounts for an estimated 70 percent of plastic waste generated by farms in Northern Ontario. Manitoulin, Algoma, Temiskaming and Rainy River districts generate higher levels of the LLDPE plastic that is the focus of this project.

The pilot will use on-farm compactors to create dense, four feet square bales, thus reducing transportation and storage space while creating a product for recycling (composite lumber products) and resource recovery (energy). Compacted bales are a more manageable and environmentally sound option than current practices of burying, burning or dumping loose plastic in the landfill.

Agriculture in Northern Ontario is a key economic driver, according to a report prepared by Stephanie Vanthof, member services representative with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA). The sector supports over 12,000 jobs and contributes more than $587 million in GDP to the provincial economy. Northern farm cash receipts increased from $182 million in 2006 to $206 million in 2017. However, these activities are estimated to generate over 819 tons of recoverable agricultural plastic waste annually, with an expected increase to 941 tons by 2022.

Agricultural plastics don’t yet fall under producer responsibility legislation, said Ms. Vanthof. She does anticipate some regulation in the future but notes there are currently limited options. Some townships still pick up agricultural plastic curbside. “Farmers roll it up and leave it with their garbage to be picked up but that’s very infrequent. Some landfills still take agricultural plastic, and burning and burying are the other two options. They’re not encouraged but they are a necessity. Some farmers might put their plastic in a pile to deal with at the end of the year; often this plastic ends up blowing into their neighbours’ yards.”

Unfortunately, there aren’t really any viable alternatives. “Some farmers store the hay in a different way instead of making hay bales but for a lot of farmers the plastic is a necessity for keeping their hay at the right moisture level, maintaining the right quality and longevity. There is some research being done but we’re years away from that becoming a viable market solution.”

In the Temiskaming area there are many farmers growing corn and soybeans under plastic. People drive by, see a lot of plastic strips and start asking questions, she said. That plastic does biodegrade but people are also asking more and more questions about wrapped hay bales. “It’s not great optically if we don’t have any solutions. People will start to put pressure on us and we’ll end up in a corner we can’t easily get out of.”

Farmers want to tell a better story, she said, and this project has been years in the making. The idea has been on the radar since 2014. In 2017, they gathered data and in 2018, began to build the pilot. The funding request was approved in early 2020, allowing for a soft launch in April/May 2020. Two farmers had started even earlier, in 2019; currently there are about 20 compactors in use with between 90 and 100 tonnes collected and ready to be shipped.

Farmers that are already proactive and environmentally conscious are excited about the project, she said. Others are waiting to see how it works and will join once they see it moving smoothly. “There will always be a number of farmers that, unless we pick up the bales for them or pay them to participate, they’re not going to do anything different than what they’re doing now.”

One Manitoulin Island farmer has signed up to participate. He hasn’t yet received a compactor but Ms. Vanthof expects that once other farmers see it, “they might jump onboard, or there might be an opportunity to work with the township to do some communal compacting.” A shared compactor would help small farms or farms that only use a small amount of plastic. The Expositor was unable to speak with the Island participant at this time.

One partner recycler makes composite lumber from the plastic. The challenge, according to Ms. Vanthof, is they are more particular in the type of plastic they collect as well as the cleanliness of the plastic. She is hoping to find end users that require farmers to shake and dry the plastic but not to wash it. “We can’t do these things that a lot of recyclers require. Some of the end users that are making other composite products are starting to come up with more flexible technologies, which is great for agricultural plastic. BBL Energy Inc., located in Johnstown in eastern Ontario, is our primary partner and will convert the otherwise unrecyclable plastics into energy.”

Transportation remains a huge challenge. Shipping bales from Northwestern Ontario all the way to eastern Ontario will likely wipe out any environmental gains. “It’s not an ideal solution,” she noted. “It’s just the solution we have right now. We are dealing with great distances, even just the distances between farms. We need to understand this, and the costs.”

That’s where BBL comes in. BBL is not a waste management company, Ms. Vanthof said. “They want to get this technology across North America. They will use this a proof of concept and build business cases from it, so that maybe the City of Sudbury, or other Northern Ontario location, would want to have a modular system that could take all plastic, not just agricultural plastic. That’s what BBL is doing and what we’re doing is finding the numbers around just collecting and shipping the plastic and whether this is a viable model. We might find that this doesn’t work at all. We don’t know.”

Data gathered during the pilot will provide a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t for recovering the plastic. Ms. Vanthof worries that the sector will be required to recover the plastic with little thought given to challenges both on farm but also in Northern Ontario. “We could create a model based on this, keeping the needs of the farmers in mind. Once the pilot is done and we have a true understanding of costs and logistics, we hope to be able to continue to have the farmers recover the plastic. It’ll be great to move the plastic off farm and make something usable from it.”

The three-year pilot project is a collaboration between the northern caucus of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and the Northern Ontario Farm Innovation Alliance. The only direct cost of participation is the purchase of a $900 compactor, which will be delivered to a central location in the region. One compactor holds approximately 500 hay bales worth of plastic. The most important thing is to make a good bale, Ms. Vanthof said. Each compacted bale should contain a single stream of plastic. An annual or semi-annual collection will be organized for the district. Bales are tracked and are traceable back to a specific compactor.

For more information or to participate in the project, contact the OFA’s Stephanie Vanthof at stephanie.vanthof@ofa.on.ca.

Lori Thompson, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Manitoulin Exposito

DR FRANKENSTEIN WAS RIGHT!
Diamonds need an electric zap to crystallize deep inside the Earth
SO WAS SHELLY

Before diamonds can begin growing deep underground in Earth's mantle, they need a little zap from an electric field, a new study finds.

© Provided by Live Science a cascade of diamonds

In lab-based experiments, scientists mimicked conditions in the mantle — the layer just beneath Earth's crust — and found that diamonds grew only when exposed to an electric field, even a weak one of about 1 volt, according to the study, which was published online Jan. 20 in the journal Science Advances.

"Our results clearly show that electric fields should be considered as an important additional factor that influences the crystallization of diamonds," study lead researcher Yuri Palyanov, a diamond specialist at the V.S. Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and at Novosibirsk State University, said in a statement.

Diamonds are made of carbon atoms aligned in a particular crystal structure. They form more than 90 miles (150 kilometers) under Earth's surface, where pressures reach several gigapascals and temperatures can soar upward of 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius). But many factors behind the "birth" of this gem — prized for its polished beauty and extreme hardness — are a mystery; so a team of Russian and German scientists looked at one factor in particular: underground electric fields.

The researchers gathered the starting ingredients needed to make a diamond — carbonate and carbonate-silicate powders that are similar to carbonate-rich melts abundant in the mantle. They put these powders in an artificial mantle in their lab and subjected them to pressures of up to 7.5 gigapascals and temperatures of up to 2,912 F (1,600 C), and electrode-powered electric fields ranging from 0.4 to 1 volt. After varying periods lasting up to 40 hours, diamonds (and their softer carbon-based cousin, graphite) formed, but only when the researchers set up an electric field of about 1 volt — which is weaker than most household batteries.

Moreover, the diamonds and graphite formed only at the cathode, or the negative part of the electric field. This spot provides electrons to jumpstart a chemical process — mainly, so that certain carbon-oxygen compounds in the carbonates can undergo a series of reactions to become carbon dioxide and, eventually, the carbon atoms that can form a diamond.

The synthetic diamonds were small, with diameters no larger than 0.007 inches (200 micrometers, or one-fifth of a millimeter), but they were surprisingly similar to natural diamonds — both have an octahedral shape and tiny amounts of other elements and compounds, including a relatively high nitrogen content and silicate-carbonate inclusions, also known as diamond "birthmarks" or imperfections, the researchers said.

These experiments suggest that local electrical fields play a pivotal role in diamond formation in Earth's mantle, the researchers said. This local voltage is likely created by rock melts and fluids in the mantle that have high electrical conductivity, but it's unclear how strong these electrical fields are, Chemistry World reported.

"Our approach is of interest for the development of new methods for producing diamonds and other carbon materials with special properties," Palyanov said in another statement.

Originally published on Live Science.

Snooping marmosets judge antisocial individuals harshly

Issued on: 03/02/2021 - 

A wild marmoset (Callithrix jacchus) walks on electric wires in 

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil YASUYOSHI CHIBA AFP/File

Washington (AFP)

Like humans, marmosets -- tiny monkeys with Einstein-like ear tufts native to Brazil -- eavesdrop on conversations between others, and prefer to approach individuals they view positively, a study in the journal Science Advances showed Wednesday.

While behavioral research has built up knowledge around the social lives of primates, it has tended to lack reliable ways to determine an individual's "inside perspective," or the inner workings of her or his mind.

Marmosets are an ideal species to study because of their close-knit social structure: they live in highly cooperative groups of around 15 family members, with the entire extended clan responsible for rearing children.

How do they decide who is reliable and who is not?

A team led by Rahel Brugger at the University of Zurich (UZH) presented 21 captive-born adult marmosets with recordings from a hidden speaker of an opposite sex adult making either food-offering calls or aggressive chatter calls in response to begging infants.

As a control, they also played the marmosets calls made by a single individual.

The scientists then pointed infrared cameras at the marmosets' faces to record the nasal temperatures -- looking for drops that indicate the monkeys were alert and engaged.

The tests found the marmosets only responded to combined and not individual calls, indicating they understood when real conversations were occurring.

After playing them the recordings, the team let the marmosets enter a room filled with toys and a mirror.

Marmosets don't recognize their own reflection, and so believed that it represented the monkey who made the recorded call.

The researchers found that overall, the marmosets preferred to approach when the recordings indicated the individual was helpful.

"This study adds to the growing evidence that many animals are not only passive observers of third-party interactions, but that they also interpret them," said the paper's senior author and professor of anthropology at UZH, Judith Burkart.

The team plans to use this temperature-mapping approach for future investigations, such as into the origin of morality.

© 2021 AFP

Open insulin can be stored at up to 37 C: study

Issued on: 03/02/2021 -

Research by Doctors Without Borders and the University of Geneva showed that a vial of insulin could be stored for four weeks after opening at temperatures fluctuating between 25 and 37 degrees Celsius (77 and 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) Niklas HALLE'N AFP/File

Geneva (AFP)

Opened insulin can be stored for four weeks in warm conditions without losing efficacy, a study showed Wednesday, giving hope to diabetics in hot countries without access to refrigerators.

The research by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the University of Geneva showed that a vial of insulin could be stored for four weeks after opening at temperatures fluctuating between 25 and 37 degrees Celsius (77 and 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

The study was published in the PLOS One medical journal.

"The current pharmaceutical protocol requires insulin vials to be stored between 2 C and 8 C until opened, after which most human insulin can be stored at 25 C for four weeks," said Philippa Boulle, a non-communicable diseases advisor at MSF.

"This is obviously an issue in refugee camps in temperatures hotter than this, where families don't have refrigerators."

In some poorer regions of the world with temperatures well above 25 C, diabetics without home refrigerators have to go to hospital for their injections, sometimes several times a day.

For people living with diabetes, access to treatment, including insulin, is critical to their survival.

Diabetes is a chronic, metabolic disease characterised by elevated blood sugar levels, which leads over time to serious damage to the heart, blood vessels, eyes, kidneys and nerves.

The most common is type 2 diabetes, usually in adults, which occurs when the body becomes resistant to insulin or doesn't make enough insulin.

Type 1 diabetes is a chronic condition in which the pancreas produces little or no insulin by itself.

- Potency matches cold storage -

MSF recorded temperatures in the Dagahaley refugee camp in northern Kenya fluctuating between 25 C at night and 37 C during the day.

Those changes were reproduced in a laboratory over four weeks -- the time it usually takes a diabetic to finish one vial of insulin.

The findings showed that "the stability of insulin stored under these conditions is the same as that of cold-stored insulin, with no impact on efficacy", they said in a joint news release.

"This allows people with diabetes to manage their illness without having to visit a hospital multiple times daily."

The research found that the insulin preparations recorded a potency loss of no more than one percent -- the same as in a control batch kept in cold storage.

"These results can serve as a basis for changing diabetes management practices in low-resource settings, since patients won't have to go to hospital every day for their insulin injections," said Boulle.

She said she hoped the findings would be endorsed by the World Health Organization.

The WHO says that about 422 million people worldwide have diabetes, the majority living in low-and middle-income countries, and 1.6 million deaths are directly attributed to diabetes each year.

The prevalence of diabetes has been steadily increasing in recent decades.

© 2021 AFP

Mexico seeks to halt Paris auction

of pre-Hispanic artefacts

Issued on: 03/02/2021 - 

The disputed items include a stone mask said to be from the Teotihuacan culture. © Screen grab / www.christies.com

Text by:FRANCE 24Follow

Mexican officials said Tuesday the country had lodged a protest with the French government over a planned auction in Paris of 

pre-Hispanic sculptures and other artefacts, challenging the authenticity of several items.

Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History said it also filed a criminal complaint, arguing that it is illegal to export or sell such pieces.

Christie's of Paris says it will auction 39 artefacts on February 9, including a 1,500-year-old stone mask from the ancient city of Teotihuacan, estimated at up to 550,000 euros, and an equally ancient statue of the fertility goddess Cihuateotl, purportedly from the Totonaco culture.

The director of the Mexican institute, Diego Prieto Hernández, said about 30 of the pieces appear to be genuine, but he accused the auction house of putting some fakes up for bid as well.

“The dispute is not with France or with the French government, but rather with an act of commercialization that should not happen,” Prieto Hernández said.

His institute has asked Mexico's foreign ministry to recover the objects.

Some of the pieces appear to have been in France or other parts of Europe for many years. It was not clear whether their ownership pre-dates the 1972 Mexican law that forbids export or sale.

Either way, Prieto Hernández said, “the Mexican government does not accept, and will never accept, the looting and illegal sale of national heritage.”

In 2019, Mexico failed in efforts to stop another French auction house’s sale of about 120 pre-Hispanic artefacts. The Millon auction house sold many of those pieces for well above their pre-sale estimated prices.

(FRANCE 24 with AP, AFP)

 

Some 28 trillion tonnes of ice have disappeared from the surface of the Earth since 1994: enough to cover the entire surface of the UK to 100 metres thick. That's the stunning conclusion of a new report by scientists. The consequence could be sea level rises of a metre by the end of the century. To put that into perspective, every centimetre of sea level rise displaces around a million people from low-lying homelands. We speak to Professor Andrew Shepherd, director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at the University of Leeds, who worked on the report.

Paris court finds French state guilty in landmark lawsuit over climate inaction

Issued on: 03/02/2021 - 

In its Wednesday ruling, the Paris court said the French state 

had failed to meet its obligations and ordered it to pay the 

symbolic sum of 1 euro in compensation for "moral prejudice". 

© iStock

Text by:FRANCE 24Follow|

Video by:Mairead DUNDASFollow

A Paris court on Wednesday found the French state guilty of failing to meet its commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions in a landmark ruling hailed by activists as a "historic victory for climate".

A group of NGOs backed by two million citizens had filed a complaint accusing the French state of failing to act to halt climate change, in what has been dubbed the "case of the century".

In its ruling on Wednesday, the Paris administrative court recognised ecological damage linked to climate change and held the French state responsible for failing to fully meet its goals in reducing greenhouse gases.

The court ordered the state to pay the symbolic sum of 1 euro in compensation for "moral prejudice", a common practice in France.

The French case is part of a mounting push from climate campaigners across the world to use courts against governments.

>> French state faces landmark lawsuit over climate inaction

An international accord signed in Paris five years ago aims to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels, and preferably to 1.5 degrees.

But experts say governments are far from meeting their commitments and anger is growing among the younger generation over inaction, symbolised by the campaigns of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg.

France missing its targets

French President Emmanuel Macron has been very vocal about his support for climate change action.

He pushed in December for beefing up the European Union’s 2030 targets to reduce greenhouse gases by at least 55% compared with 1990 levels — up from the previous 40% target.

But Oxfam France, Greenpeace France and two other organisations say Macron’s lobbying for global climate action is not backed up by sufficient domestic measures to curb emissions blamed for global warming.

They note that France is missing its national targets set under the 2015 Paris Agreement, and the country delayed most of its efforts until after 2020.

The four NGOs that brought the case called Wednesday's court ruling "a first historic victory for climate” as well as a “victory for truth," saying that until now France has denied the “insufficiency of its climate policies”.

The Paris court gave itself two months to decide on measures to repair the problem and stop things from getting worse.

It decided that awarding money wasn't appropriate in this case, adding that reparations should centre on fixing the failure to respect goals for lowering greenhouse gases.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP)

Poland's Walesa calls for 'system change' in Russia

Issued on: 03/02/2021 

The former president of Poland and Nobel peace prize laureate said jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was a "hero" who could one day win a Nobel himself 

Wojtek RADWANSKI AFP

Gdansk (Poland) (AFP)

Polish freedom icon Lech Walesa on Wednesday called for international cooperation to bring about "system change" in Russia following the jailing of opposition figure Alexei Navalny.

A former leader of the Solidarity labour movement that brought a peaceful end to communism in Poland in 1989, Walesa called Navalny a "hero" who could one day win a Nobel Peace Prize.

The 77-year-old former Polish president spoke a day after top Kremlin critic Navalny was handed a prison term, leading his supporters to take to the streets of Moscow in protest.

"He doesn't have a Nobel (peace) prize yet, but he'll deserve one if he continues to take a stand like this," said Walesa, who himself won the award in 1983 for his leadership of Solidarity.

"We need heroes like him, but we also require a different kind of international solidarity to bring about a system change in Russia," Walesa told AFP in an interview in the city of Gdansk where his battle against communism began.

On Tuesday, Navalny received a jail term of two years and eight months for violating the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence on embezzlement charges he claims were a pretext to silence him.

Walesa said if he had a chance to speak to the 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner he would tell him to follow his communist-era example and fight the system.

"I felt that it wasn't the people who were to blame, but the system which allows for bad behaviour on the part of leaders. And that's something you can see in Russia," Walesa said.

"We shouldn’t be fighting against (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, specific individuals, or the police. Instead, we should be fighting for a new system that would preclude this kind of behaviour," he said.

- Protesting women -

Working as a shipyard electrician in Gdansk, Walesa stunned the communist bloc and the world when he led a 1980 strike by 17,000 shipyard workers.

The communist regime was forced to grudgingly recognise Solidarity as the Soviet bloc's first and only independent trade union after it gained millions of followers across Poland.

Walesa later became Poland's first post-war democratically elected president in 1990.

The latest struggle in Poland has been over reproductive rights, with thousands protesting a government-backed court ruling that imposed a near-total ban on abortion last week.

The verdict means that all abortions in Poland are now banned except in cases of rape and incest, or when the mother's life or health are considered to be at risk.

Speaking of the protesting women, Walesa said: "I support them with all my heart. They are right.

"But for now I don't see any hope for the women's victory. Because a victory would have to involve overthrowing those in power, and those in power won't let themselves be overthrown," he added.

The outspoken critic of the right-wing ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party said he himself did not plan any return to politics.

"Of course I'm a patriot and whenever the nation calls, I'm available. But... I’m now 77-years-old and no longer have the energy that I did back then."

© 2021 AFP

More than 10,000 have been detained at pro-Navalny rallies in Russia, monitor says
Issued on: 03/02/2021 - 
Text by: FRANCE 24

More than 10,000 people have been detained at recent rallies in Russia in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, a protest monitor said on Wednesday, adding that many of them have also been subject to mistreatment while in police custody.

Navalny called on Russians to take to the streets after he was detained last month on arrival in Moscow from Germany where he had been recovering from a poisoning with a Soviet-designed nerve agent.

Hundreds more filled the streets of the capital Moscow Tuesday evening, after Navalny, 44, was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for violating the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence on embezzlement charges he claims were a pretext to silence him.

At nationwide rallies over the last two weeks, more than 10,000 people were seized by police, the OVD-Info group that monitors opposition protests said in its report released on Wednesday.

Russia’s Union of Journalists, meanwhile, said that more than 100 journalists were either injured or detained at the rallies.

Detainees are held for hours “in horrid and stuffy conditions, without food or the opportunity to use a bathroom,” OVD-Info analyst Grigory Durnovo told Ekho Moskvy radio.

He added that lawyers from the group, which provides free legal aid to detained protesters, were at times not given access to detention centres.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has defended the government’s crackdown on the protesters, saying that “the holding of unauthorised rallies raises concerns and justifies the tough actions of the police”.

Navalny’s prison sentence: ‘Concerns sanctions won’t change Russia’s behaviour’

Later on Wednesday a Russian court sentenced Sergei Smirnov, chief editor of Mediazona, an online news publication often critical of the government, to 25 days in jail over a re-tweet.

Ahead of a January 23 protest in Navalny’s support, Smirnov, 45, re-tweeted a joke that included the time of the protest rally.

An analyst working for OVD-Info, Grigory Durnovo, told AFP that many of the detainees had been subjected to “difficult conditions” in custody and that authorities were purposefully carrying out “harsh detentions”.

Echoing detainee testimonies, Durnovo said Moscow’s detention centres had reached full capacity due to the massive influx of Navalny supporters.

On Tuesday, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, ordered checks of detained men to see if they have avoided military service, which in Russia is compulsory for one year

Navalny’s arrest and the violent police crackdown has been condemned by international rights groups and Western governments, including the United States, Britain and France.

Germany on Wednesday reiterated calls to free Navalny and said that more EU sanctions on Russia “cannot be ruled out”.

The UN Human Rights Office called for the release of protesters detained “for exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly and expression”.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

Israel destroys West Bank Bedouin village again

Issued on: 03/02/2021 - 

Israeli bulldozers knocked down tents and portable toilets owned by the Bedouin families in Homsa al-Baqia, a makeshift village near Tubas in the West Bank that Israeli forces had previously demolished in November, an AFP videographer said JAAFAR ASHTIYEH AFP

Homsa al-Baqia (Territoires palestiniens) (AFP)

Israeli forces on Wednesday demolished the "illegal" homes of some 60 Palestinian Bedouins in the occupied West Bank's Jordan Valley, an AFP journalist and activists said.

Israeli bulldozers knocked down tents and portable toilets owned by Bedouin families in Homsa al-Baqia, a makeshift village near Tubas in the West Bank that Israeli forces had previously demolished in November, an AFP videographer said.

According to Israeli rights group B'Tselem, 61 people, over half of them children, were left homeless following Wednesday's demolitions.

The European Union's mission in the Palestinian Territories announced it would visit the site on Thursday.

COGAT, the Israeli army branch responsible for civilian affairs in the West Bank, said in a statement that the structures had been illegally built in a military training zone and that "the residents had agreed to take down the tents".

However, COGAT said the families changed their minds, and so on Wednesday the "last remaining tents at the site were confiscated".

Moataz Bisharat, a Palestinian activist who works to oppose Israel's occupation of the West Bank, said the action was akin to "carrying out the death sentence on all Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley".

The Jordan Valley falls within the West Bank's "Area C", which is fully controlled by Israel's army.

Under Israeli military law, Palestinians cannot build structures in the area without permits, which are typically refused, and demolitions are common.

Bisharat said the number of Palestinian families in the Homsa al-Baqia area had dropped from more than 186 in 1990 to just 21 today "because of the occupation's (Israel's) measures".

"The goal... is not just to occupy Homsa, but the whole Jordan Valley," he said.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Six Day war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the past has said he intended to annex parts of the West Bank and Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territory, including the Jordan Valley.

Former US president Donald Trump gave that plan the green light in January last year.

But a surprise normalisation accord between Israel and the United Arab Emirates later in the year appeared to put annexation on ice.

© 2021 AFP