Pakistani Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai signs Apple TV deal

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai has signed a multi-year deal to produce content for Apple TV+ 

Issued on: 09/03/2021 -

Islamabad (AFP)

Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize as a teenager after surviving a Taliban assassination attempt, has signed a deal with Apple TV+ that will see her produce dramas and documentaries that focus on women and children.

The multi-year partnership would "draw on her ability to inspire people around the world", the company said in a statement, adding that content would also include animation and children's series.

"I'm grateful for the opportunity to support women, young people, writers, and artists in reflecting the world as they see it," the 23-year-old was quoted as saying.


Yousafzai earned the wrath of the Taliban as a 10-year-old in rural northwest Pakistan when she began campaigning for education rights for girls.

At the time, the Pakistani Taliban had gained a significant foothold in the Swat Valley, imposing a fundamentalist version of Islam on areas they controlled -- banning education for girls and employment for women.

Yousafzai drew international attention with a series of blogs and articles she wrote about everyday life and hopes for a better future, but her fame incensed the Taliban, whose leadership ordered her murder.

In October 2012, a Taliban assassin shot the then-15-year-old as she rode home on a bus from school. The bullet struck near her left eye, went through her neck and lodged in her shoulder.

She recovered after months of treatment at home and abroad before co-writing a best-selling memoir titled "I am Malala", which drew even more international attention.

Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as a 17-year-old in 2014, sharing the award with Kailash Satyarthi, a children's rights activist from India.

She graduated from Britain's Oxford University last year and has since created a digital publication for girls and women, and formed her own TV production company.

"I believe in the power of stories to bring families together, forge friendships, build movements, and inspire children to dream," she was quoted as saying in Monday's statement.

The long lines of Milan's 'new Covid poor'


Every day, 3,500 people turn up at the two distribution points run in Milan by the Pane Quotidiano charity, which hands out food 

Issued on: 09/03/2021 - 

Milan (AFP)

Eyes on the ground, they queue in silence for a food parcel outside Milan's Pane Quotidiano charity. Since coronavirus swept across Italy a year ago, the line has grown and grown.

"I'm ashamed to be here. But otherwise I would have nothing to eat," said Giovanni Altieri, 60, who has been coming every day since the nightclub where he worked was shut under virus regulations.

He misses work -- the sense of purpose and camaraderie.

"I like the contact with people, I had a good salary, but I'm at rock bottom here. I have no income and live off my savings," he told AFP.

Every day, 3,500 people turn up at the two distribution points run in Milan by the charity, which hands out surplus food it receives from a range of organisations, as well as through individual donations.

Milan is the centre of Italy's industrial north and one of the richest cities in Europe. But as the pandemic has battered the country, poverty rates have soared, even here.

- Hidden faces -

Some of those standing in line hide their faces with a scarf or even a plastic bag, fearful of being recognised.

Many leave with several packages -- one for each member of their family. Inside, there is milk, yoghurt, cheese, biscuits, sugar, tuna, a kiwi, a tiramisu and some bread.

Such sights were rare on the streets of Milan, but across the wealthy north of Italy, more than 720,000 people have fallen below the poverty line in the last year.

Throughout Italy, the number of people in poverty jumped by one million in 2020 to 5.6 million, a 15-year high, according to national statistics agency Istat.

The percentage of poor is higher in the south, which has always struggled more, but at 11.1 percent, compared to 9.4 percent in the north, the gap is narrowing.

"The queues have increased with Covid, there are more young people and more undeclared workers who have no right to social benefits," said Claudio Falavigna, a 68-year-old volunteer at Pane Quotidiano, which has been running for 123 years.

"And there are also members of the middle classes, from the world of entertainment and events," he said.

He recognises them "as they still dress well, they are elegant -- it's a question of dignity".

Pre-pandemic, the region of Lombardy, which includes Milan, accounted for 22 percent of Italy's GDP. In 2019, the region had a per capita income of 39,700 euros (47,000 dollars) a year -- well above the European average.

But it was also the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak last year that knocked Italy off its feet, and has so far left more than 100,000 people dead.

- Pandemic shock -

So what happened?

"The shock of the pandemic reduced to zero the revenues of many categories of workers, notably the self-employed, who number many in the towns of the north," David Benassi, professor of sociology at the Bicocca University in Milan, told AFP.

And although a new citizenship income for the lowest paid came into effect in 2019 and is widespread in the south of Italy, many in the north often fall through the cracks of state support.

"Many families who fell into poverty in 2020 don't fulfil the income and asset requirements," said Benassi.

The worst hit are women and young people, who often have precarious jobs, noted Mario Calderini, professor of social innovation at Milan Polytechnic.

"Women have paid a heavy price in this crisis, as have families with underage children," he said.

Amina Amale, 52, was a cleaning lady before coronavirus but now stands in line for the food packages.

"With coronavirus, everything is closed, there's no work," she said.

© 2021 AFP

Egyptian Billy Elliot sets new bar for Middle Eastern ballet



Luca Abdel-Nour took three prizes at the international Prix de Lausanne ballet contest last month 

Issued on: 09/03/2021 - 06:18


Paris (AFP)

Surrounded by little girls and mocked at school when he first tried ballet, it took serious determination for Luca Abdel-Nour to become the first Egyptian prizewinner at the prestigious Prix de Lausanne.

The international competition in Switzerland has been one of the leading showcases for young ballet talent since it began in 1973.

Abdel-Nour, 17, took three prizes, including second overall and the audience award, at the latest instalment in February, and hopes his success can inspire more boys from the Middle East to overcome their prejudices about dance.



Born to a French mother but growing up in Cairo, he performed in dance and theatre shows with his school as a young boy.

But he didn't try ballet until he took part in a summer dance school in France aged 12, and an instructor told him to give it a try.

"I was like ummm 'I don't want to do ballet, it's for girls'," he said.

But his mother kept encouraging him and eventually he joined a class in Egypt. He soon realised this was his passion, even if he was the only boy in the group.

"I didn't really care if there were no boys," he said. "People at school knew because I was open about it. I would be called names but I didn't care. I used to tell them: 'You do your thing, I want to do my thing'."

- Starstruck -

Hard work helped him overcome his late start and by 14 he had won a year's scholarship to a dance school in Budapest.

The following year, he won a full-time place at the elite Zurich Dance Academy. This was where things became serious: he had to relearn everything from scratch, and overcome two leg injuries in his first year.

But the work paid off at Lausanne last month.

"When they announced the finalists, I couldn't believe it, I was on my way home from school on the train and I cried," he said.

Suddenly his phone was lighting up with messages from some of the biggest names in the business.

"Dancers who are now directors who I have watched since I was a child were texting me saying 'You did a good job, we're interested in you'. I was starstruck and honoured," he said.

- 'Worth it in the end' -

His success has generated plenty of reaction back home in Egypt, with social media full of praise as well as the inevitable sarcastic and even hostile commentary.

"There are of course lots of negative comments and stuff, but there are a lot of people that have been really supportive of me doing it, saying I've inspired them to do ballet in a society where ballet is not really encouraged," he said.

"You got the positive, you got the negative, and you have to choose what you want to listen to."

Abdel-Nour has accepted a place in a company, but is not yet allowed to reveal which one.

"Every step of the way was hard," he said. "It's hard to leave your family and not see them for long periods of time but it was all worth it at the end."

© 2021 AFP

Syrian heritage suffered 'cultural apocalypse'

Syria's Roman-era ancient city of Palmyra was damaged beyond repair by jihadists from the Islamic State group a few years ago, when they blew up the famed shrine of Baal Shimin, destroyed the Temple of Bel and the Arch of Triumph 


Issued on: 09/03/2021 -

Palmyra (Syria) (AFP)

A decade of war has not only destroyed Syria's present and poisoned its future, it has damaged beyond repair some of its fabled past.

Syria was an archaeologist's paradise, a world heritage home to some of the oldest and best-preserved jewels of ancient civilisations.

The conflict that erupted in 2011 is arguably the worst of the 21st century so far on a humanitarian level, but the wanton destruction of heritage was possibly the worst in generations.




In a few years, archaeological sites were damaged, museums were looted and old city centres were levelled.

Standing in front of a restored artefact in the Palmyra museum he ran for 20 years, Khalil al-Hariri remembers the trauma of having to flee the desert city and its treasures as they fell into the hands of the so-called Islamic State group.

"I have lived many difficult days. We were besieged several times in the museum," he said, recounting how he and his team stayed behind as late as possible to ferry artefacts to safety.

"But the most difficult day of my life was the day I returned to Palmyra and saw the broken antiquities and the museum in shambles," said Hariri, now 60 years old.

"They broke and smashed all the faces of statues that remained in the museum and which we could not save. Some of them can be restored, but others have completely crumbled."

- 'Venice of the Sands' -

Palmyra is a majestic ancient city whose influence peaked towards the end of the Roman empire and was famously ruled by Queen Zenobia in the 3rd century.

Its imposing kilometre-long colonnade is unique and one of Syria's most recognisable landmarks.

When IS jihadists hurtled into Palmyra in May 2015 to expand the "caliphate" they had proclaimed over parts of Syria and Iraq a year earlier, the outcry was global.

The contrast offered by the splendour and prowess of Palmyrene architecture as a backdrop to the barbarity of dishevelled gun-toting jihadists captured the world's imagination.

The site became a stage for public executions and other gruesome crimes, some of which were pictured and distributed in IS propaganda.

The headless body of chief archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad was also displayed there by IS henchmen who had tortured him to get him to reveal where the site's artefacts had been transferred.

Bent on their enterprise of cultural genocide, the nihilistic jihadists rigged Palmyra's famed shrine of Baal Shamin and blew it up.

They also destroyed the Temple of Bel, blew up the Arch of Triumph, looted what they could from the museum and defaced the statues and sarcophagi that were too large to remove.

The sacking of the ancient city dubbed "The Venice of the Sands" drew comparisons with the destruction by Afghanistan's Taliban of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001.

By the time government forces retook control of Palmyra in 2017, it had been irreversibly damaged.

- 'Complete, utter destruction' -

Palmyra was just one of the irretrievable losses inflicted on Syria's heritage during a war that did not spare a single of the country's regions.

"In two words, it's a cultural apocalypse," said Justin Marozzi, an author and historian who has written extensively on the region and its heritage.

The patrimonial destruction unleashed on Syria in the previous decade harks back to another age, when the Mongol empire founded by Gengis Khan wreaked carnage far and wide.

"When it comes to Syria and the Middle East in particular, I can't help thinking immediately of Timur, or Tamerlane, who unleashed hell here in 1400," said Marozzi, author of "Islamic Empires: Fifteen Cities that Define a Civilisation."

The reference to the Mongol conqueror is inevitable when pondering the fate of Aleppo, Syria's economic hub before the war and once home to one of the world's best-preserved old cities.

Tamerlane put the city to the sword six centuries ago, but the devastation wrought on Aleppo in the past decade was not the work of a foreign invader.

Maamoun Abdel Karim was Syria's antiquities chief when the worst of the destruction occurred, from 2012 to 2016.

"Over the past two millennia of Syrian history, nothing worse has happened than what did during the war," he told AFP in Damascus.

"Complete and utter destruction. We're not talking just about an earthquake in some place or a fire in another -- or even war in one city -- but destruction across the whole of Syria," he said.

- Looting -

Before the war, the northern city of Aleppo -- considered to be one of the world's longest continuously inhabited -- boasted markets, mosques, caravanserais, and public baths.

But the brutal siege imposed on rebels left it disfigured.

The government, which from 2015 benefitted from Russia's military might, relied heavily on air power to claw back the territory.

"I can't forget the day the minaret of the Umayyad mosque in Aleppo fell, or the day the fire ripped through the city's ancient markets," Abdel Karim said.

Other buildings which, like the 11th century minaret, had survived Tamerlane to stand for centuries were lost for ever.

"Around 10 percent of Syria's antiquities were damaged, and that's high for a country with so many relics and historical sites," the former antiquities chief said.

A report published last year by the Gerda Henkel Foundation and the Paris-based Syrian Society for the Protection of Antiquities said more than 40,000 artefacts had been looted from museums and archeological sites since the start of the war.

The trafficking of "conflict antiquities" has generated millions of dollars for Islamic State, smaller rebel groups, state forces as well as more loosely-organised smuggling networks and individuals.

IS had a special department regulating excavations of archaeological sites on its territory, suggesting the profit to be made was significant, although it was never accurately quantified.

The chaos that engulfed Syria at the peak of the war allowed the more moveable pieces -- such as coins, statuettes and mosaic fragments -- to be scattered worldwide through the antiquities black market.

While some efforts have been undertaken to stem the illicit trade, and even in some cases to start repatriating stolen artefacts to Syria and Iraq, the damage done is huge.

- 'Wound for all humanity' -

The economic stakes are also huge for Syria's future. The country's heritage wealth was the key attraction of a tourism industry that had remained stunted but has massive potential.

Syria has six sites on the UNESCO elite list of world heritage and all of them sustained some level of damage in the war.

Besides Palmyra and Aleppo, the ancient cities of Damascus and Bosra also suffered. The spectacular Krak des Chevaliers crusader castle was also caught in the fighting, as were a group of old villages near the Turkish border known as "the dead cities".

Other major heritage landmarks sustained severe destruction, such as the site of Apamea, an ancient Roman-era city on the Orontes river known for a colonnade that ran even longer than Palmyra's.

At the height of its glory, Palmyra was a symbol of a pluralistic civilisation, a commercial hub on the Silk Road that was a cultural crossroads.

Its architecture was a blend of influences from ancient Rome and Greece, Persia and Central Asia.

What was destroyed during the war in Palmyra, and by extension in the whole of Syria, is evidence of a multicultural past, a certain ideal of civilisation.

"All of us should care about the destruction of Syria's heritage because, as well as being Syrian and Arab, these ancient sites and cities and monuments form part of our common cultural patrimony," Marozzi said.

"Places like Palmyra have a universal significance and value. They are part of our world civilisation, they are milestones in our history as humans and so anything that damages them is a wound for all humanity."

© 2021 AFP

#IWD

Women's march in Mexico turns violent as protesters clash with police

Issued on: 09/03/2021 - 04:58

People (WOMEN) try to take down the fences placed outside the National Palace during a protest on International Women's Day, in Mexico City, Mexico, March 8, 2021. © Carlos Jasso, Reuters

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Mexico's President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tried to focus attention Monday on the high number of women in his cabinet, and not on a day of protests over the fact he has refused to break with a governorship candidate accused of rape.

Thousands of women marched in Mexico City Monday to mark Women’s Day, focusing the spotlight on López Obrador’s contradictions.

A progressive who cites his long record of social struggle and says “the poor come first,” the president is also a social conservative who leaves abortion largely to state legislation and says the family is the center of society.

“He should start really fighting, but for the women of Mexico,” said marcher Ana De la Toba, a 39-year old Mexico City lawyer.

Those contradictions were on display in Mexico City's vast central plaza, after the government erected tall steel anti-riot barricades in front of the National Palace and activists quickly adorned the structures with flowers and the names of female murder victims.

The president said the barriers were meant to protect buildings and monuments in the colonial-era downtown that have been spray-painted with graffiti in past feminist demonstrations, but marchers weren't accepting that.

“Why do they want clean monuments, in a country awash in blood?” the marchers chanted.

Some marchers broke through barricades and smashed plate-glass windows at a hotel downtown. Later, others damaged centuries-old tile on a landmark building with hammers and some protesters battled police in the main square with rocks, bottles, metal poles, spray paint and streams of flame from lit aerosol cans.

Sixty-two officers and 19 civilians were injured during the incidents, said Marcela Figueroa, an official of the city's police agency.

“Half of the cabinet are women,” López Obrador said at his daily morning news conference. “That was never seen before in Mexico.” Nevertheless, old habits die hard; During the same news conference, the president referred to one female reporter as “corazón,” roughly “sweetheart.”

Last week, the president sought to deflect criticism of his support for party's candidate for the governorship of the southern state of Guerrero, Félix Salgado, who has been accused of rape by two women, though he has not been charged. López Obrador said the issue should be left up to voters in Guerrero, and claims it is being brought up by his foes, “the conservatives.”

“All of a sudden, the conservatives are disguising themselves as feminists, very strange. Why? Because they see it as an opportunity to attack us,” the president said.

Attention focused on the barricades erected in fronts of the colonial-era National Palace where López Obrador lives and works. )The president himself once led protests in the same plaza. The president said the barriers were to prevent attacks with incendiary devices on the historic palace, which occurred at a women’s march last year.

“The barricades were put up because the conservatives are very upset,” López Obrador said. “They infiltrate all the movements to create provocations ... they were planning to vandalise the National Palace.”

The president said two women had been found with gasoline bombs at a workshop in an upscale Mexico City neighbourhood, saying, “I am sure ... they were put up to this.”

Salgado has not been charged because prosecutors say the statute of limitations ran out on one of the accusations while another remains under investigation. His lawyer has denied the accusations.

López Obrador's Morena party has scheduled a rerun of an internal poll to see whether Salgado should remain as the candidate, and a group of female Morena legislators publicly called on him to resign.

Authorities estimated there would be almost 100 women’s marches in cities and towns throughout Mexico. Some local and state authorities designated squads of female officers to provide security at the marches.

(AP)

'Shoot me instead': Myanmar nun pleads with junta forces

Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng said she begged the authorities 'not to shoot and torture the children' Handout Myitkyina News Journal/AFP

Issued on: 09/03/2021 

Yangon (AFP)

Kneeling before them in the dust of a northern Myanmar city, Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng begged a group of heavily armed police officers to spare "the children" and take her life instead.

The image of the Catholic nun in a simple white habit, her hands spread, pleading with the forces of the country's new junta as they prepared to crack down on a protest, has gone viral and won her praise in the majority-Buddhist country.

"I knelt down... begging them not to shoot and torture the children, but to shoot me and kill me instead," she told AFP on Tuesday.

Her act of bravery in the city of Myitkyina on Monday came as Myanmar struggles with the chaotic aftermath of the military's February 1 ouster of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

As protests demanding the return of democracy have rolled on, the junta has steadily escalated its use of force, using tear gas, water cannon, rubber bullets, and live rounds.

Protesters took to the streets of Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state, on Monday wearing hard hats and carrying homemade shields.

As police started massing around them, Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng and two other nuns pleaded with them to leave.

"The police were chasing to arrest them and I was worried for the children," she said.

It was at that point that the 45-year-old nun fell to her knees.

Moments later, as she was begging for restraint, the police started firing into the crowd of protesters behind her.

"The children panicked and ran to the front... I couldn't do anything but I was praying for God to save and help the children," she said.

First she saw a man shot in the head fall dead in front of her -- then she felt the sting of tear gas.

"I felt like the world was crashing," she said.

"I'm very sad it happened as I was begging them."

A local rescue team confirmed to AFP that two men were shot dead on the spot during Monday's clash, though it did not confirm whether live rounds or rubber bullets were used.

On Tuesday, one of the deceased, Zin Min Htet, was laid in a glass casket and transported on a golden hearse covered in white and red flowers.

Mourners raised three fingers in a symbol of resistance, as a musical ensemble of brass instrument players, drummers and a bagpiper in crisp white uniforms led the funeral procession.

- 'All Myanmar is grieving' -

Kachin, Myanmar's northernmost state, is home to the Kachin ethnic group, and the site of a years-long conflict between ethnic armed groups and the military.

Tens of thousands have fled their homes to displacement camps across the state -- and among the organisations aiding them have been Christian groups.

Monday was not Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng's first encounter with the security forces -- on February 28 she made a similar plea for mercy, walking slowly towards police in riot gear, getting on her knees and pleading for them to stop.

"I have thought myself dead already since February 28," she said of the day she made the decision to stand up to the armed police.

On Monday, she was joined by her fellow sisters and the local bishop, who surrounded her as she pleaded for mercy for the protesters.

"We were there to protect our sister and our people because she had her life at risk," Sister Mary John Paul told AFP.

The city has seen frequent crackdowns from authorities since the coup, including a violent dispersal of peaceful teachers last month that sent several into hiding.

So far, more than 60 people have been killed in anti-coup demonstrations around the country, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners monitoring group.

Fear runs deep for Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng, but she said she must be brave and will continue to stand up for "the children".

"I can't stand and watch without doing anything, seeing what's happening in front of my eyes while all Myanmar is grieving," she said.

© 2021 AFP

Lebanon protesters block roads over worsening poverty

 Lebanese protesters set up new road blocks Tuesday to vent anger over political inaction in the face of deepening poverty, but security forces managed to re-open some to traffic. The country has been mired in economic crisis, which has brought surging unemployment and spiraling prices while the currency has plunged to a new low to the dollar on the black market.

France to speed up declassification of secret archives on Algeria War


Issued on: 09/03/2021 -

In this May 15, 1962 file photo, a French soldier guards a street corner in Oran, Algeria. On the wall is a poster of the nationalist Secret Armed Organization, calling for citizens to take up arms against Algerian independence. © Horst Faas, AP Photo/File

Text by:NEWS WIRES


French President Emmanuel Macron announced a decision Tuesday to speed up the declassification of secret documents related to Algeria’s 1954-62 war of independence from France.

The measure comes amid a series of steps taken by Macron to reconcile France with its colonial past and address its brutal history with Algeria, which had been under French rule for 132 years until its independence in 1962.

The French presidency said in a statement that archive services will now be allowed to use a new procedure to declassify documents from 1970 and earlier that were previously being held secret for national security purposes. This includes archives related to Algeria War, the statement said.

Under French laws, almost all archives of the French state, including on defense and security issues, should be made available to the public after 50 years except information that could compromise some people's security. Yet a complex and long request process was preventing researchers and academics from working on these archives.

The new procedure will “significantly reduce the delay,” the French presidency said.

Broadening the opening of archives on the war was part of Macron’s commitments to reckon with France’s colonial-era wrongs in Algeria.

In 2018, Macron formally recognized the responsibility of the French state in the 1957 death of a dissident in Algeria, Maurice Audin, admitting for the first time the French military’s use of systematic torture during the war.

Last week, Macron met with four grandchildren of an Algerian independence fighter to tell them that Ali Boumendjel had been tortured and killed by French soldiers in 1957.

Macron also wants to honor Gisele Halimi, a French feminist who supported Algeria’s independence and denounced the use of torture by the French military during the war. He hopes to have her reburied at the Pantheon monument in Paris, a resting place for some of France’s most distinguished citizens.

Macron also plans to attend three commemoration ceremonies by next year, which will mark the 60th anniversary of the end of Algeria's war for independence.

(AP)

  

THE FIRST TIME SACRALIGE 

THE SECOND TIME TRAGEDY 

France fells oaks to rebuild the 

Notre-Dame spire

In a former royal forest, tree surgeons on Monday began felling centuries-old oak trees which will be used to rebuild the wooden-framed spire of Notre-Dame de Paris after it was destroyed by fire.

WHY GREENPEACE WAS FORMED

French nuclear tests infected 'almost entire Polynesian population': report

The report highlights the health impact of French nuclear tests on local populations - AFP

Issued on: 09/03/2021 -

Paris (AFP)

France concealed the levels of radioactivity that French Polynesia was exposed to during French nuclear tests in the Pacific from 1966-1996, with almost the "entire population" of the overseas territory infected, a report said on Tuesday.

Online investigation site Disclose said it had over two years analysed some 2,000 pages of French military documents declassified in 2013 by the defence ministry concerning nuclear tests on the archipelago.

It worked alongside the British modelling and documentation firm Interprt as well as the Science and global security programme of the University of Princeton in the United States, it said.

For the Centaur test carried out in July 1974, "according to our calculations, based on a scientific reassessment of the doses received, approximately 110,000 people were infected, almost the entire Polynesian population at the time," it said.

Using the modelling of toxic clouds to back up the findings, Disclose said it also showed how "French authorities have concealed the true impact of nuclear testing on the health of Polynesians for more than 50 years."

It said the investigation was able to reassess the thyroid exposure to radioactive doses of the inhabitants of the Gambier Islands, Tureia and Tahiti during the six nuclear tests considered to be the most contaminating in the history of French tests in the Pacific.

"Our estimates are between two and 10 times higher than those made by the French Atomic Energy Commission in 2006," Disclose said.

Disclose said its interpretation of existing data was different to that of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

For example, for an aerial nuclear test called Aldebaran carried out in 1966 on the Mururoa atoll, CEA scientists "considered that the local population only drank riverwater but not rainwater".

However, many inhabitants of this archipelago drank rainwater, according to the investigation.

It added the examination of data also showed that CEA estimates of radioactive soil deposits were under-estimated by more than 40 percent.

This CEA study served as the reference for the Compensation Committee for Victims of Nuclear Tests (CIVEN) for studying the files of victims of nuclear tests.

Up until now only 63 Polynesian civilians, excluding soldiers and contractors, have received compensation, according to the investigative media.

The Crazy Story of the 1946 Bikini Atoll Nuclear Tests

They were the first time that a nuclear weapon had been deployed since the 1945 attacks on Japan. 

The first atomic shock wave caused by Gilda's explosion on July 1, 1946

. (National Archives)

By Kat Eschner

SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
JUNE 30, 2017

Operation Crossroads, which had its first big event–the dropping of a nuclear bomb–on July 1, 1946, was just the beginning of the nuclear testing that Bikini Atoll would be subjected to. When the first bomb of the tests dropped, it was the first time since the 1945 attacks on Japan that a nuclear weapon had been deployed. Here are three things you might not know about the infamous tests:

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The test subjects were ghost ships full of animals

The goal of the tests was to see what happened to naval warships when a nuclear weapon went off, writes the Atomic Heritage Foundation. More than 42,000 people–including a crew of Smithsonian Institution scientists, as well as reporters and United Nations representatives, according to Alex Wellerstein for The New Yorker–were involved in observing the nuclear tests, but the humans were, of course, not the test subjects.

Instead, “some of the ships were loaded with live animals, such as pigs and rats, to study the effects of the nuclear blast and radioactive fallout on animals,” writes the foundation. In total, more than 90 vessels, not all carrying live cargo, were placed in the target area of the bomb, which was named Gilda–after Rita Hayworth’s character in the eponymous film.

The gathered scientists included fish scientist Leonard P. Schultz, who was then the curator of ichthyology for the National Museum of Natural History. Although he was given safety goggles, writes the museum, “he was doubtful whether the goggles would protect him.” So, in true scientific fashion, “he covered one eye and observed the explosion with the other.” His eyes were fine, and the effects that he felt included “a slight warmth” on his face and hearing a boom about two minutes after the flash.

Schultz and his colleagues were there to collect species and document the Atoll before and after the tests. They collected numerous specimens including sea and land creatures, writes the museum, which remain in the museum’s collections today. “The Smithsonian’s collections document the extent to which the diversity of marine life was affected by the atomic blasts,” writes the museum, “providing researchers who continue to ­study the health of the ecosystem with a means to compare species extant today with those collected before the tests.”

Operation Crossroads - Wikipedia

The first bomb missed its target

That reduced the damage done to the ghost ships. “The weapon exploded almost directly above the Navy’s data-gathering equipment, sinking one of its instrument ships, and a signal that was meant to trigger dozens of cameras was sent ten seconds too late,” Wellerstein writes.

It started a tradition of nuclear testing in this vulnerable place

“The nuclear arms race between the US and Soviet Union displaced 167 Marshallese as refugees in their own country,” writes Sarah Emerson for Motherboard. After the first 1946 tests, the U.S. government continued to use the area around Bikini Atoll and the Marshall Islands for nuclear testing, writes Erin Blakemore for Smithsonian.com, conducting 67 nuclear tests in total. 23 of those tests were conducted at Bikini Atoll specifically, including one 1954 test of the largest nuclear device the U.S. ever exploded.

The Marshallese displaced by the testing have not been able to go back to their poisoned homes. Today, it’s hard to know when the Atoll will ever be safe to return to, writes Blakemore, although the Marshall Islands overall are becoming less radioactive.

And it all started in 1946.