Dozens detained at Kazakh opposition rallies

ALMATY (Reuters) - Police in Kazakhstan detained dozens of opposition supporters on Sunday who took to the streets of major cities denouncing what they called political repression in the oil-rich Central Asian nation

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© Reuters/MUKHTAR KHOLDORBEKOV FILE PHOTO:

Former Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev attends

 President Tokayev's inauguration ceremony

The ruling Nur Otan party has dominated the political scene in the former Soviet republic for almost three decades while opposition movements, sidelined and with no seats in parliament, mostly make themselves heard through public protests.

Supporters of two separate opposition groups rallied in different locations in Kazakhstan's biggest city, Almaty, and a few other big cities on Sunday to demand political reforms and the release of people they described as political prisoners.

A Reuters reporter saw police detain at least 50 people near a park in central Almaty. Dozens of people who rallied in another location could be seen completely surrounded by police in black balaclavas and riot gear.

"Nazarbayev, go away," chanted some protesters, referring to Kazakhstan's influential ex-President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has retained sweeping powers after resigning almost two years ago and helped to ensure the election of a hand-picked successor.

The authorities have issued a pre-emptive warning that Sunday's protests would be illegal, saying that the organisers failed to observe required legal procedures.

(Reporting by Pavel Mikheyev; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by David Goodman)

Thousands protest over Argentina 'VIP vaccinations' scandal

Thousands of people demonstrated in cities across Argentina on Saturday to protest the "VIP vaccinations" scandal that forced the health minister to resign

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© ALEJANDRO PAGNI Demonstrators hung mock body bags in front of the Casa Rosada presidential office in Buenos Aires to protest against a scandal over vaccine line-jumping

Gines Gonzalez Garcia quit a week ago at the president's request after it emerged that his friends had been able to skip the line for coronavirus inoculation.

Protesters carrying signs reading "Give me my vaccine" and "Stop wasting our money" gathered outside the government headquarters in Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires.

"They started by vaccinating friends of the government. It is not appropriate. They are stealing someone else's life," protester Irene Marcet told AFP.

Since Argentina began vaccinating its people, only healthcare workers had received the jab until Wednesday, when over-70s in Buenos Aires province were also invited to be immunized.

© ALEJANDRO PAGNI The health minister was forced to quit after it emerged that his friends had been able to skip the line for coronavirus inoculation

On Monday, the government released a list of 70 people who received the vaccine outside of the official campaign, which included the 38-year-old economy minister and former president Eduardo Duhalde, his wife and their children.

© ALEJANDRO PAGNI With a population of 44 million, Argentina has registered more than two million infections and about 52,000 deaths from coronavirus

On the railings in front of the Casa Rosada, the seat of the government and the president's office, protesters hung mock black body bags with the names of pro-government leaders vaccinated.


President Alberto Fernandez condemned their actions.

"The way to demonstrate in a democracy cannot be to display mortuary bags with names of political leaders in front of the Casa Rosada," he tweeted.

"This regrettable action only shows how many opponents see the Republic. Let us not be silent before such an act of barbarism."

The demonstrations took place without incident apart from some friction between protesters and union activists in front of the president's official residence.

Protesters also rallied in other cities including Cordoba, Rosario and and Mar del Plata.

With a population of 44 million, Argentina has registered more than two million infections and about 52,000 deaths from coronavirus.

One million people have already been inoculated, according to the government.

Argentina has received 1.22 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine, around 580,000 doses from Covishield, from India's Serum Institute, and 904,000 shots from China's Sinopharm.

mc-ls/ml/mtp/leg

Britain must reset its compass, from housing to wages, says archbishop of York

Harriet Sherwood THE GUARDIAN

Britain needs to reset its compass in a political climate in which “we’ve learned to accommodate things that we know are wrong”, the archbishop of York has said.

© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

 Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell says his new book is ‘for people 

who care about the world we live in’.

Stephen Cottrell, who was enthroned in October, told the Observer: “Our compass has slipped; we’ve allowed ourselves to believe that things can’t change, that this is just the way the world is. Politics has, I think, shrunk. There’s a loss of vision about what the world could be like.”

As the number two in the Church of England, he said that he wanted the church to have a louder political voice. “I simply don’t accept a separation between the church and politics, faith and politics or, for that matter, anything and politics. It’s about how we inhabit the world – and everybody and every organisation and every community has a voice and a stake.”

The archbishop said he couldn’t be part of a church which didn’t have a political voice because “it’s so much at the heart of what I believe to be the calling of the church. Loving your neighbour is a profoundly political statement.”

Cottrell, 62, was speaking to mark the publication this week of his new book, Dear England: Finding Hope, Taking Heart and Changing the World. It was written partly in response to a question from a barista at Paddington station about why he became a priest, and partly as a letter to a divided and uncertain country that no longer sees the relevance of Christianity.

The book was “not written for Christians but for people who care about the world we live in”. However, he acknowledged that “some of the more conservative Christians will be critical of some of the things in it”.

He said: “We constantly need to reset our compass, which isn’t quite the same thing as losing it.” For example: “Is there anybody who doesn’t think that it’s a scandal that there are so many homeless people on our streets? But we’ve learned to live with it. We’ve learned to accommodate things that we know are wrong, which it would be possible to do something about.

“In cheering the NHS, we were actually cheering a set of ideas that mattered to us… If we think it’s right that everyone should have health as a matter of right, regardless of ability to pay, shouldn’t it be the same for housing and possibly for a basic wage?”

The C of E last week published a major report on Britain’s housing crisis; other commissions on social issues would follow, Cottrell said. “The church is working with other interested parties to begin to develop a narrative of hope – to say we could inhabit the world in a better way.”

Cottrell grew up in a family that did not attend church, “in a world that vaguely thought science had disproved all that, that the human race had come of age, we’ve left all that behind. And then I found myself taking a direction I didn’t expect.”

Becoming part of the establishment – archbishop, member of the House of Lords, privy councillor – had not been “terribly easy, because we’re all shaped by our upbringing”. Cottrell attended a secondary modern school in Essex, and took his degree at a polytechnic, before training for the priesthood.

“It would be unfair to say all the leadership of the church are public school and Oxbridge educated. Nevertheless, there is a disproportionate number of people from those backgrounds in positions of influence and power, and that would also be true of the church.

“So, to begin with, as a bishop, I did suffer from what is commonly known as imposter syndrome. But it keeps you humble, keeps you on your toes – so it’s quite healthy to remember where I’m from and what my roots are.

“But there is something far more ugly than imposter syndrome, and I’ve given it a name: entitlement syndrome. You find it in all sorts of places. It’s something I hope I never suffer from.”

Within the C of E, there was also a culture of deference. “The overuse of titles can create distance and unapproachability, and dehumanise the person in the role.” He prefers to be known as Stephen by his colleagues, rather than by the customary honorific “Your Grace”, he said. “I want to inhabit the role [of archbishop] a bit differently.”

Related: Church of England land should be used to help tackle housing crisis, says report

Cottrell is leading a review of “vision and strategy” for the C of E for the 2020s, which he said had been complicated by the “financial hit of Covid”. He would like to see a simpler church, with less duplication, and “every penny that possibly can going to frontline ministry”.

Along with “simpler”, his other key words are “humbler” and “bolder”. “We have in the past appeared a bit aloof, a bit pompous. To be a church which recognises we’ve made mistakes would be a good thing.”

He said: “It’s so obvious, but the vision is of a church that is much more centred on following Jesus Christ, loving your neighbour and breathing fresh life into that tradition… Perhaps in the past we’ve been a bit reticent about actually sharing what we’re really about.”

Stephen Cottrell will be in conversation with Adrian Chiles on Wednesday 3 March at 7pm. To access this free online event: https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/features/dear-england

LONG READ

A former slave became the 1st Black 

LT. Governor only to die mysteriously 

4 years later

Video by Ken Borland, Frank Fenimore, and Suzanne Malveaux. 

Written by Channon Hodge, CNN 

On April 11, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln delivered what would be his last speech from a window at the White House to the crowd below. They had gathered there expecting a celebratory speech on Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant just two days earlier. 

© From Library of Congress Born in Illinois, H.C. Warmoth became a lawyer and traveled south as a member of the Union Army. He became governor at 26 years old.

But that evening, Lincoln's speech was about Reconstruction, readmitting Louisiana into the Union and a proposal for "giving the benefit of public schools equally to Black and White, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man."

© Corbis/Getty Images Dunn tested segregation rules by sending his own children to all-White schools, believing you could break down prejudice if you start as children. White parents removed their children and Dunn's plan failed.

Plantation-owning elites, Southern Democrats and White supremacists, however, would not easily concede political power to those who had so recently been their slaves. That evening among the crowd of listeners was an enraged John Wilkes Booth, who would go on to assassinate the President just three days later at Ford's Theatre.

 

© Library of Congress/Jon Cherry, Getty Images

For decades after Lincoln's death, White supremacists would wage a war of intimidation, murder and massacre on anyone, Black or White, who dared covet a share of their power. Yet, Black people persisted.

And between 1865 and 1880, over 1,500 Black men took political office; most not for long, as their efforts were cut down by mobs of violent White men.

Oscar James Dunn was one of those determined men. He became the country's first Black lieutenant governor in Louisiana in 1868 but died mysteriously in office only four years later.

For some experts, the 2021 Capitol riots are a present-day example and a legacy of the same kind of violent push back against the rise of Black men that Dunn and others experienced after the Civil War.

For the second story in our series, History Refocused, we spoke with historian Brian K. Mitchell, who spent years unearthing Dunn's life -- a passion ignited as a child after learning that he and Dunn were uniquely linked.

"Oscar Dunn's story cannot explain the entire notion of Reconstruction," Mitchell said. But "It does give students a very tangible person that they can wrap their minds around."


One historian's personal mission

As a history professor at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, Brian K. Mitchell dives deep into stories such as Dunn's.

Mitchell remembers vividly the moment his elementary school teacher refused to acknowledge that a Black man had ever achieved real power in Louisiana

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© CNN

One day in class, Mitchell's hand shot up when the teacher asked if anyone had famous family members. He remembered his great-grandmother had once laid out newspaper clippings to tell him the story of his relative, Oscar James Dunn. His teacher was having none of it.

As a historian, Mitchell later saw her lapse of historical knowledge was common -- the result of a successful campaign to rewrite everything that happened during the Civil War and after.

© Harper's Weekly, Library of Congress

"I was taught that Reconstruction was a failed attempt, that it was awful and that the Black leadership that came in was totally inept," said Mitchell. "That is totally untrue."

Dunn was born a slave and set free in 1832 by his future stepfather. He grew up to be bright and educated, trying his hand at teaching music and masonry. He became a leader among the Freemasons and saw an opportunity to use his skills during the Civil War.

Dunn knew businessmen and plantation owners still needed workers. So he started an employment agency, connecting the newly freed men and women with jobs and keeping them from getting cheated. He was wildly successful.

© CNN

"Oscar James Dunn is the personification of African American hope and African American values in the United States," said Mitchell. "Throughout his whole life, he's always learning."

© Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture Lieutenant Governor Oscar J. Dunn, American, 1826 - 1871 https://www.si.edu/object/carte-de-visite-lt-governor-oscar-j-dunn:nmaahc_2018.62

In the mid-1860s, Dunn joined a group of elite Black, colored and Afro-Creoles in Louisiana, then a hard-line racist state, who had economic status but yearned for more political power. In 1865, he and others formed a group called the "Friends of Universal Suffrage," sending delegates to lobby Lincoln and his Republican party to show them just how much support they would get if they allowed Black men in the South to vote.

© Corbis/Getty Images After the American Civil War Oscar J. Dunn served as the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Lincoln supported the vote for these educated Black men and for former soldiers, but neither he nor his Republican Party advocated for universal suffrage. After Lincoln's death, historian Kate Masur said support grew, but only to a point

.

© The Historic New Orleans Collection Central Business District in New Orleans between 1857 and 1860. Dunn advocated that Black people build their own businesses and districts believing Whites would never allow true equality.

"Some of these White Republicans would have thought African Americans deserve to be free," said Masur. "But voting? That seems like a bridge too far."

It would take years of unrest before crushing violence changed their minds.


When White supremacy turns into a movement

In late 1865, President Andrew Johnson declared national unity and quickly folded Southern states back into the Union. Johnson often clashed with his Republican Congress, for it believed only a strong hand could deal with the emboldened former Confederates still running things at the local level.

© From Library of Congress 1868 Louisiana - African Americans participated in Constitutional Conventions like this across the South where delegates argued over Union demands, drew up new laws and elected new leadership.

While Freedman's Bureau workers empowered former slaves through education and resettlement, Southern states passed "Black codes" restricting their rights. Black people were entrapped into work contracts, arrested for carrying guns and forced to watch their children taken away and "apprenticed" to Whites

.

© The Historic New Orleans Collection, Gift of Harold Schilke and Boyd Cruise Dunn, depicted far left, was one of a large number of free African American, Afro-Creole and Haitian men living in French-cultured New Orleans.

White Supremacist groups formerly organize; the Ku Klux Klan held its first meeting that December in Pulaski, Tennessee, and the Knights of the White Camelia form two years later.

© Hulton Archive/Getty Images The Colfax Massacre of 1873, LA - The White League paramilitary group and the Ku Klux Klan killed over 100 Black militiamen who had gathered to protect their civil and voting rights. Violence continued for decades until poll taxes and other tactics effectively suppressed Radical Republican and Black voters.

In July of 1866, 25 Louisiana Radical Republicans held a meeting in support of voting rights for freedmen at the Mechanics Institute in New Orleans. Tensions in the South were rising -- one month earlier, dozens of Black people had been killed by White rioters in Memphis with little repercussion -- and Dunn was warned not to go.

In New Orleans, hundreds of Black supporters paraded toward the Institute. They were soon surrounded and attacked by an angry White mob -- many of them police officers -- and dozens were killed. But Dunn had stayed away and was safe. He later testified in front of a Congressional Committee sent from Washington, who concluded that ex-Confederates in the local government were to blame for inciting the attack.

The violence was enough to push Congress to act. They overrode a veto from President Johnson and passed the first of several Reconstruction Acts in 1867. The Act broke the South into districts and put federal military generals in charge, weakening the hold of Confederate sympathizers.

Gen. Philip Henry Sheridan, who was in command in Louisiana, appointed Dunn to the City Council and Dunn became the new "assistant recorder," or what Mitchell calls a sort of "mini-mayor." His job included overseeing cases in the same courtrooms where, a few years earlier, Black people had no right to defend themselves. Dunn was fair, trusted by Black and White, and positioned himself perfectly for when Black people were finally allowed to take part in new elections.

© The Historic New Orleans Collection The shifting political tactics and infighting complicating Dunn's ambitions are richly detailed in Mitchell's graphic novel published by The Historic New Orleans Collection.

"The Black vote today would not even come close to the proportion of eligible voters who are going to the polls in the late 1860s and early '70s," said Mitchell of the swell of Black freedmen showing up across the South to cast ballots.


Dunn's moment comes

On July 11, 1868, Dunn became lieutenant governor of Louisiana, serving under Henry Clay Warmoth on the Republican ticket. Dunn's first legislative address showed hope and restraint:

"As to myself and my people, we are not seeking social equality. That is a thing no law can govern," said Dunn. "We simply ask to be allowed an equal chance in the race of life."

Not two months later, hundreds of Black men, women and children would be massacred by more White mobs in St. Landry Parish, New Orleans. The anger of White Southern Democrats seethed and boiled up over the new elections.

Before the War, society in the South had been defined by social class, and sitting comfortably at the top were White plantation owners, who did not work. Relegating labor to lesser people defined who you were as a successful White Southerner. When that free labor was taken away, so too was the very question of what defined Whiteness -- if you're laboring like Blacks, what separates you from them?

White Democrat leaders had thought they could cobble together racist laws and cling to webs of social codes to keep Blacks subjugated, but they came to believe all would be lost if Blacks and Republicans used the power of the vote to dismantle their rules.

"The heart of Louisiana was big slave plantations and most Whites in Louisiana were deeply committed to White supremacy," said Eric Foner, an expert in Lincoln and Louisiana history.

Those who weren't deeply committed to White Supremacy would soon find themselves under pressure. Many lower-class Whites had grown used to working beside Blacks, but middle and upper-class Whites perpetuated the idea of Whiteness as "anti-Blackness."

Whites were often outnumbered by Blacks in many Southern areas, and feared unfounded and irrational threats dreamed up by powerful, partisan local newspapers. The idea of using violence to keep Whites safely in power became a social craze that soaked through communities and, as historians argue, never truly dried out.

Foner made a comparison to the January 6 mob attack.

© From Library of Congress The massacre at New Orleans: A cartoon by Thomas Nast shows President Andrew Johnson "as a king, crowned and in velvet and ermine." Nast and others blamed Johnson's support of former Confederates and his soft policies against the South for causing the July 1866 riot.

"You know, we recently saw a mob of White supremacists assaulting the Capitol building in order to overturn an election, and people on TV always said this is unprecedented," said Foner. "Unfortunately, it's not unprecedented. It's what's happened to Louisiana a number of times in Reconstruction."

Howard University historian Edna Greene Medford echoed that statement, but also pointed to what happened in Georgia that same day -- Black organizers driving voters to elect a Jewish senator and a Black senator. Sen. Raphael G. Warnock is only the country's 11th Black US senator to serve.

"If Black people didn't vote, you wouldn't see this violence," said Medford. "It's people wielding political power and others feeling that they're losing the vote they always had."

"What does this permanent shift mean to a class of people who always held political power and have always held economic power?" said Mitchell. "What does this mean for White America if it has to share this notion of who has the right to rule?"

The 15th Amendment, which aimed to protect the vote, was ratified in 1870, just as White Northerners grew tired of the costly military occupation of the South. The generals, armies and the Freedman's Bureau slowly withdrew, leaving men like Dunn exposed.

Dunn's star burns bright then fades

In 1869, Dunn embarked on an ambitious train trip from New Orleans to Boston hoping to meet with abolitionists, senators and state leaders. He's welcomed by some but shunned by others. He's refused service at White hotels and moved to segregated train cars, and realized none of the Civil Rights laws passed by Congress could begin to fight the racism so deeply rooted throughout the country -- South to North.

But when he visited Washington for President Ulysses S. Grant's inauguration, he was invited by the President to the White House -- the first-ever invitation for an elected African American official.

Dunn was above reproach, he didn't drink or smoke and he shunned bribes. His work addressed the plights of Blacks, but also that of poor White families, long-suffering under a society controlled by planter elites.

"Both Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and radicals, saw in Dunn a pragmatism and fairness that he always tried to do the right thing by everyone," Mitchell said. "And many times this will come back to bite him."

In 1871, Louisiana Gov. Warmoth injured himself so badly in a boat accident that Dunn took over his gubernatorial duties, against his wishes. He's believed to be the first Black man to do so.

Warmoth had been losing popularity, was accused of corruption and began distancing himself from the freedmen he had promised to support. Warmoth and Dunn were at odds -- he didn't like to see Dunn so easily acting as his substitute.

Mitchell describes Dunn's final days as suspicious; one night after a dinner, Dunn fell violently ill. His friends believed he'd been poisoned. He died quickly afterward at the age of 45, just shy of completing his full four-year-term. Mitchell says it's later revealed that he'd been on Grant's list of possible vice presidential picks.

Tens of thousands attended his funeral. Warmoth was later removed from office, eventually making way for P.B.S. Pinchback, who would briefly become Louisiana's first Black governor.

A monument was planned in 1873 in Dunn's honor but was never built. The "Lost Cause" narrative took over and the accomplishments of Black leaders during Reconstruction were whitewashed, erased from Southern textbooks and vilified by movies, such as "Birth of a Nation," which made Black congressional leaders look unintelligent and incompetent.

"If we're going to say that the reason that Reconstruction was a failure was the ineptitude of Black politicians, Dunn was the model politician," said Mitchell. "He was generous. He was kind. He was honest. And that is not the value set in history that they want to record."

But history has new storytellers.

As Confederate statues come down, Mitchell hopes men like Dunn can replace them, putting them back in the spotlight. The National Park Service is reworking its entire messaging on Reconstruction with help from historians like Kate Masur, and a new National Reconstruction monument is being proposed in Beaufort, South Carolina.

But it is Mitchell's work on Dunn that revives his ancestor most vividly. He's turned Dunn into a superhero for a graphic novel he co-wrote called, Monumental, putting a Black person as one of the real stars of the country's evolving legacy.

"I want children to know that they can be anyone that they choose to be and historically they have played a part in every facet of American history," said Mitchell. "They are just as important to the American narrative as anyone else."

COLONIALIST CHRISTIAN QUACKERY
Tanzania leader says prayer will cure Covid, as hospitals overflow

Jason Burke Africa correspondent 

Grieving relatives of Covid-19 victims, health experts and opposition politicians in Tanzania have accused President John Magufuli of causing thousands of deaths in the east African country and undermining the fight against the pandemic across the continent

Magufuli has denied the local spread of Covid-19 in Tanzania, discouraged the mention of the disease by health workers, rejected most conventional measures in favour of prayer and said vaccines are dangerous, without offering any evidence.

Despite repeated requests by the World Health Organization, Tanzania has not published any statistics for Covid-19 cases since May, when it logged 509, and has no testing programme.

Experts fear that Magufuli’s policies will allow Tanzania to act as a source of infections and new variants, which could spread across Africa and beyond.

The WHO last week called on Tanzania to protect not only its own 58 million citizens but also neighbouring countries.

“This situation remains very concerning. Covid-19 is a serious disease that can cause severe illness and even death. National authorities everywhere must do all they can to protect people and save lives,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general.

PENTACOSTAL COLONIAL CHRISTIANITY 

© Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Worshippers attend mass at a church in Dar es Salaam this month without wearing masks or practising social distancing.

Burial workers in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s biggest city, and on the semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar told the Observer they face unprecedented demand. Churches said priests are conducting more funeral services than “in living memory”.

Doctors said hospitals are overwhelmed, with an acute shortage of beds and oxygen.

“We have elderly patients coming in, showing every symptom that we’ve seen around the world but we cannot test … we are not allowed to even mention Covid-19. We have to call it pneumonia,” said one doctor, who requested anonymity for fear of punishment by employers and authorities.

Farida Saidi’s 82-year-old father died this month in a hospital in Dar es Salaam. His relatives were unable to find a bed in an intensive care unit because all were full.

“They said we could only keep him where he was and hope for the best. They called it pneumonia but said, ‘your father has the same condition that everybody is facing everywhere’,” Saidi said.

“Since January we have lost six family members. On my WhatsApp there are just messages and messages about people dying. They are all showing the same symptoms: struggling to breathe, fever, loss of sense of taste. It is desperate.”

Saidi said Magufuli’s policies had cost lives.

“I wouldn’t want anyone to watch their father die the way I did. It’s so wrong.”

Zitto Kabwe, leader of the opposition ACT-Wazalendo party, said that his party had called on its members to document and report all deaths due to suspected Covid-19 so that it could hold the government to account.

 President John Magufuli. Photograph: Khalfan Said/AP

“We don’t have data. There is no testing, so it’s very difficult to cut transmission. Local media have been afraid even to mention Covid-19. We just see hospitals being full,” he said.

A second wave, fuelled by a more transmissible variant of the virus originating in South Africa, has pushed infections across the continent to 3.8 million, with more than 100,000 deaths. The total is thought to be a significant underestimate.

The extent of any outbreak in Tanzania is unclear, but South Africa, which has roughly the same population, has suffered almost 50,000 deaths from Covid-19, according to official statistics, and many more according to excess mortality figures.

Last month, Tanzania’s chief government spokesman, Hassan Abbasi, told Reuters that, while the country was not entirely coronavirus-free, it had “controlled” the disease.

“There are people intermingling with the global world. But we don’t have local transmissions. That is why you are seeing everything is open, universities, sports, arts, markets, and you have not heard someone has fallen down publicly,” Abbasi said.

A doctor at the coronavirus testing centre in Zanzibar said that more than 80 cases had been recorded on the island from mid-December to early January. “But we are not allowed to release the data,” said the doctor. “We keep it for future use.”

The rise in cases has led to mixed messaging from the government.

The Zanzibar health ministry last week issued a public announcement asking people to avoid gatherings and “rush to a nearby hospital for testing if you feel you have difficulties in breathing”.

But officials denied this was because of Covid-19, saying they wanted to encourage people to take precautions because the number of people suffering breathing difficulties is increasing.

A health ministry official, Mabula Mchembe, visited hospitals in Dar es Salaam and stressed that there were no coronavirus patients, just “rumours which may cause unnecessary panic”.

Vaccination programmes are now under way or planned in most African countries, but not Tanzania.

In late January, Magufuli, who won a second term in October in an election marred by violence and allegations of fraud, said prayers, steam inhalation or herbal remedies were better than “dangerous” foreign vaccines.

Related: African nations fear more Covid deaths before vaccination begins

Faced with international pressure and after the deaths of a series of senior officials, there has been a change over the past two weeks.

Magufuli recently attributed the death of the head of the civil service to the “respiratory disease”, and official media have begun calling on Tanzanians to wear face masks and wash their hands.

“I can’t say there is any hope,” said Kabwe, the opposition leader. “It’s too late now, the spread at the community level is so widespread. “How many people need to die before the government accepts the obvious?”

GOOD THING IT DID NOT GET OUT

Lab-grown black hole behaves just like Stephen Hawking said it would

In 1974, Stephen Hawking theorized that the universe's darkest gravitational behemoths, black holes, were not the pitch-black star swallowers astronomers imagined, but they spontaneously emitted light — a phenomenon now dubbed Hawking radiation. 

© Provided by Live Science Artist's concept of a black hole in space.

The problem is, no astronomer has ever observed Hawking's mysterious radiation, and because it is predicted to be very dim, they may never will. Which is why scientists today are creating their own black holes.

Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology did just that. They created a black hole analog out of a few thousand atoms. They were trying to confirm two of Hawking's most important predictions, that Hawking radiation arises from nothing and that it does not change in intensity over time, meaning it's stationary.

"A black hole is supposed to radiate like a black body, which is essentially a warm object that emits a constant infrared radiation," study co-author Jeff Steinhauer, an associate professor of physics at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, said in a statement. "Hawking suggested that black holes are just like regular stars, which radiate a certain type of radiation all the time, constantly. That's what we wanted to confirm in our study, and we did."

The event horizon

The gravity of a black hole is so powerful that not even light can escape its grasp, once a photon, or light particle, crosses beyond its point-of-no-return, called the event horizon. To escape this boundary, a particle would have to break the laws of physics and travel faster than the speed of light.

Hawking showed that although nothing that crosses the event horizon can escape, black holes can still spontaneously emit light from the boundary, thanks to quantum mechanics and something called "virtual particles."

As explained by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, even the complete vacuum of space is teeming with pairs of 'virtual' particles that pop in and out of existence. These fleeting particles with opposite energies usually annihilate each other almost immediately. But due to the extreme gravitational pull at an event horizon, Hawking suggested pairs of photons could be separated, with one particle getting absorbed by the black hole and the other escaping into space. The absorbed photon has negative energy and subtracts energy in the form of mass from the black hole, while the escaped photon becomes Hawking radiation. From this alone, given enough time (much longer than the age of the universe), a black hole could completely evaporate away.

"Hawking's theory was revolutionary because he combined the physics of quantum field theory with general relativity," Einstein's theory that describes how matter warps space-time,Steinhauer told Live Science. "It's still helping people to look for new laws of physics by studying the combination of these two theories in a physical example. People would like to verify this quantum radiation, but it's very difficult with a real black hole because Hawking radiation is so weak compared to the background radiation of space."

This problem inspired Steinhauer and his colleagues to create their own black hole — a safer and much smaller one than the real deal.

DIY black hole

The researchers' lab-grown black hole was made of a flowing gas of approximately 8,000 rubidium atoms cooled to nearly absolute zero and held in place by a laser beam. They created a mysterious state of matter, known as a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC), which allows thousands of atoms to act together in unison as though they were a single atom.

Using a second laser beam, the team created a cliff of potential energy, which caused the gas to flow like water rushing down a waterfall, thereby creating an event horizon where one half of the gas was flowing faster than the speed of sound, the other half slower. In this experiment, the team was looking for pairs of phonons, or quantum sounds waves, instead of pairs of photons,spontaneously forming in the gas.

A phonon on the slower half could travel against the flow of gas, away from the cliff, while the phonon on the faster half became trapped by the speed of the supersonic flowing gas, Steinhauer explained. "It's like trying to swim against a current that's faster than you can swim. [That's] just like being in a black hole, once you're inside, it's impossible to reach the horizon."

Once they found these phonon pairs, the researchers had to confirm whether they were correlated and if the Hawking radiation remained constant over time (if it was stationary). That process was tricky because every time they took a picture of their black hole, it was destroyed by the heat created in the process. So the team repeated their experiment 97,000 times, taking more than 124 days of continuous measurements in order to find the correlations. In the end, their patience paid off.

"We showed that the Hawking radiation was stationary, meaning it didn't change with time, which is exactly what Hawking predicted," Steinhauer said.

The researchers detailed their findings Jan. 4 in the journal Nature Physics.

Originally published on Live Science.

NATURE: 'Peculiar' image captured by NASA satellite remains an unresolved case
Cheryl Santa Maria 

Embedded content: https://players.brightcove.net/1942203455001/B1CSR9sVf_default/index.html?videoId=6235811627001

A NASA satellite has picked up peculiar images featuring mysterious ripples on hills in northern Russia in the Central Siberian Plateau.

On steep hills, the pattern loops tightly, spiraling from top to bottom, fading at lower elevations, and can be seen in several images captured by acquired by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 between 2016 and 2020.

© Provided by The Weather NetworkCourtesy: NASA Earth Observatory.

While there are a few possible causes, the case remains unresolved.

Most of the area is covered with different intensities of permafrost, but thawing and freezing cycles have been known to create similar patterns, NASA says. The problem is that these types of patterns normally occur at a smaller scale and face downslope.

Another theory is that persistent freezing and thawing through the seasons are causing layers of soil to mix up and align vertically. Different layers of soil may host different forms of vegetation, allowing for the patterns to be visible from space.

There's also a geological theory. Thomas Crafford of the U.S. Geological Survey called the stripes “layer cake geology,” featuring sedimentary rock layers that have been exposed by erosion. Snowmelt and rain further the erosion and could be contributing to the patterns.

The reason the stripes fade near the bottom, Crafford suggests, is because sediment gathers more uniformly at the river, following millions of years of erosion.

Live Science says the case will remain a mystery until scientists have the opportunity to study the area up close, which could be some time from now.

Spanish government says all cattle on pariah ship should be killed

MADRID (Reuters) - More than 850 cows that have spent months on a ship in the Mediterranean are no longer fit for transport and should be killed, Spain's Agriculure Ministry said on Saturday, confirming an earlier Reuters report

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Reuters/JUAN MEDINA Livestock ship "Karim Allah" carrying Spanish cattle stranded on ship with suspected bluetongue in Cartagena

The cows were kept in what an animal rights activist called "hellish" conditions on the Karim Allah, which docked in the southeastern Spanish port of Cartagena on Thursday after struggling to find a buyer for the cattle during the past two months.

The animals were rejected by several countries over fears they had bovine bluetongue virus. The insect-borne virus causes lameness and haemorrhaging among cattle. Bluetongue does not affect humans.

A confidential veterinarians' report seen by Reuters on Friday concluded that the animals had suffered from the lengthy journey and euthanasia would be the best solution for their health and welfare (nL1N2KW3EG).

The report did not say if the cattle had bluetongue disease.

In a statement on Saturday the Agriculture Ministry confirmed the report's findings and said the ship's owners should kill the cattle.

"They should proceed to isolate and slaughter the animals in accordance with the applicable regulations and, in the case of not doing so, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will do it in a subsidiary way."

Miquel Masramon, a lawyer representing the ship owner Talia Shipping Line, called for samples taken from the animals and impounded by authorities on Thursday to be returned so they could be tested for bluetongue.

"It (the report) does not mention any serious diseases that explain why these animals must be destroyed," he said.

The vessel originally left Cartagena to deliver the cattle to Turkey. But authorities there blocked the shipment and suspended live animal imports from Spain, fearing bluetongue infection.

That rejection turned the ship, registered in Lebanon, into an international pariah, as several more countries refused it entry.

(Reporting by Jessica Jones; Editing by Christina Fincher)

Bill Gates on the opportunity for the oilpatch in the energy transition
Kyle Bakx 

© CERAWeek by IHS As countries look to decarbonize, Bill Gates sees the oilpatch playing a role in that energy transition.

The achievements of tech billionaire Bill Gates are well known, whether it's helping to build a tech giant in Microsoft or his efforts to improve global health through his foundation.

Still, the challenge of climate change can seem daunting, even to him.

Gates has spent the last several years examining just how tough the battle will be and admits, "this is going to be harder than any other domain that I've ever worked in."

Gates was the keynote speaker to kick off the CERAWeek by IHS conference, one of the world's largest annual events focused on energy.

The conference attracts leading figures from around the world in politics, business and energy, including several from Canada's oilpatch.

This year's event is focused on the energy transition as many countries and companies try to lower their emissions and meet their climate goals.

Achieving net zero emissions by 2050 will be difficult, but possible, says Gates.

"Things have never changed as fast as we're asking them to change," he said during the event.

"I mean, it is so radical. Only an entire generation committed to making this a political priority and at least all the rich countries for all of those 30 years, gives us a chance."

For instance, the electricity grid will need to be three times as large, he said, and remain stable even with intermittent sources of power like wind and solar.

Even though reducing emissions means using fewer fossil fuels, Gates sees an opportunity for the oilpatch.

"Green hydrogen may need to play a very gigantic role and a lot of the skill sets involved there are from the oil and gas industry," he said, pointing to how natural gas pipelines can be retrofitted to transport hydrogen around the continent.

Gates pointed to the need for carbon capture and sequestration projects, including companies like B.C.-based Carbon Engineering.

The drilling technology of the oilpatch may also be needed to store nuclear waste deep below the surface and refineries could help produce large quantities of biofuels.

Overall, the expertise of the sector will be required to develop the technologies that don't exist today, Gates said, but will be needed in the future.

"We need that ability to do complex engineering."

One of the energy companies to speak at the conference on Monday was BP, the U.K.-based oil firm with more than a 100-year history.

The company is trying to re-invent itself to eventually reach its net-zero goal. In the last year, it cut 10,000 positions and slashed the amount of executives by 50 per cent.

Rewiring the global energy system will cost a trillion dollars, according to BP chief executive Bernard Looney, but he too sees an opportunity for the oilpatch. For instance, BP is investing in growing its portfolio of renewable energy and providing electricity to the market.

"We love complexity, it sort of plays to our strengths, we actually enjoy that," he said.

Blast damages Dutch virus test centre; experts probe cause


THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A blast smashed five windows at a coronavirus testing centre in a small Dutch town early Wednesday and explosive experts were called in to investigate, police said. Nobody was hurt.

Police in the province of North Holland tweeted that “an explosive went off” near the testing centre in Bovenkarspel just before 7 a.m. Police cordoned off the area, which is 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of Amsterdam, and were investigating the cause of the blast.

Police spokesman Menno Hartenberg said it was unclear whether the testing centre was deliberately targeted or when the facility would be able to reopen.

He said it was clear that the explosive didn't "get there by accident. But we have no idea at the moment who exactly left it there and what the intention was.”

Police said a metal cylinder that had exploded was found outside the building.

The northern regions of North Holland province have been identified as a virus hotspot in recent weeks, with infection numbers higher than the national average.

In January, rioters torched a coronavirus test facility in the fishing village of Urk on the first night of a 9 p.m.-to-4:30 a.m. nationwide curfew imposed as part of the government’s latest coronavirus lockdown.

Attacks health workers and facilities around the world have increased amid the COVID-19 pandemic. A new report by the Geneva-based Insecurity Insight and the University of California, Berkeley’s Human Rights Center identified more than 1,100 threats or acts of violence against health care workers and facilities last year.

Some Dutch lockdown restrictions were relaxed Wednesday with hairdressers, masseurs and other “contact professions” allowed to reopen if they adhere to strict social distancing and hygiene measures.

Nonessential shops also were allowed to reopen in the Netherlands for the first time since mid-December, though only to very limited numbers of customers who make an appointment in advance.

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