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 spiralling prices while the currency has plunged to a new low to the dollar on the black market.

Lula's return opens door to Bolsonaro showdown in polarised Brazil

Issued on: 09/03/2021 

Pollsters say Lula, as Brazil's former president is known, is likely to top the incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in next year's presidential election. © Sergio Lima, AFP

Text by:FRANCE 24

The ruling that overturned former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's corruption convictions has upended Brazilian politics and set up a potential election showdown with President Jair Bolsonaro – a challenge the far-right incumbent may himself relish.

Monday's decision by Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin overturned all convictions against the former president, stemming from a probe into a massive corruption scheme centered on Brazilian state oil company Petrobras.

The ruling was procedural, but it reinstates Lula's right to run for office while the cases against him play out in a different court.

The news dropped like a bomb just as Brazil gears up for presidential elections in October next year, when the country – deeply divided over Bolsonaro's combative, in-your-face reign – will decide whether to keep the man dubbed the "Tropical Trump" for another four years.

Now, the incumbent faces the prospect of a heavyweight adversary on the left, rewriting a race that had looked to be shaping up as a battle between Bolsonaro and a raft of candidates vying for the centre.

"This rocks the Brazilian political scene – we now have a scenario that is totally different from 24 hours ago," said FRANCE 24's correspondent Tim Vickery. Instead of a technocratic campaign on the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, "we're now looking at something that is likely to be a lot more ideological," he added.

'Lula's back'

Lula, who at 75 remains as charismatic as he is controversial, has always claimed he was innocent.

The former steelworker says the charges against him were fabricated to sideline him from the 2018 presidential race, in which he was the frontrunner.

In April that year, he was jailed for taking a bribe from a construction company in return for juicy Petrobras contracts.

After more than a year and a half behind bars, a Supreme Court ruling freed him pending appeal.


Hailing the judge's ruling on Monday, Lula said it was "recognition that we have always been correct throughout our legal battle".

"Lula still faces legal charges, but in order for him to lose his political rights again he would have to be convicted and then lose again on appeal, and there may not be time for that to happen before the next presidential campaign in October of next year," said FRANCE 24's Vickery.

He added: "So move the pieces on the chessboard, Lula's back."

A vulnerable incumbent

Lula's jailing in 2018 helped Bolsonaro surge to the presidency later that year, riding the outrage with the giant corruption scandal engulfing Lula, his Workers' Party (PT), and much of Brazil's political and business establishment.

But just over two years into his term, the far-right president looks vulnerable.

His defiance of expert advice on fighting the coronavirus pandemic has proved a risky bet as Covid-19 has devastated Brazil, claiming more than 266,000 lives – the second-highest death toll worldwide, after the United States.

The coalition of forces that brought the former army captain to power has meanwhile frayed.

Bolsonaro has clashed with both the anti-corruption faction – falling out with popular ex-justice minister Sergio Moro, the former judge who jailed Lula – and the business sector, alarmed by his increasing turn to big-spending economic populism.

Bolsonaro, 65, dismissed Lula's return, saying he was unconcerned.

"The [Lula] government's robbery is plain for all to see," he said. "I don't think the Brazilian people even want a [PT] candidate in 2022, much less him."

Opinion polls, however, suggest otherwise. The latest, released on Sunday by polling firm Ipec, gave Lula the most potential votes in the 2022 election, with 50 percent, making him the only politician to outperform Bolsonaro, on 38 percent.

Bolsonaro 'needs clear enemies'

But there are also whispers in Brasilia that Bolsonaro is happy to have his old enemy back, and with him, a return to a familiar script.

"It is no secret the presidential palace has been rooting for Lula's eligibility," consulting firm Eurasia Group said in a note. "It creates a foil for the president and increases his odds of a second-round victory in 2022 if he faces a candidate on the left rather than the political center."

Lula's return means Bolsonaro will be able to run the kind of polarised campaign he normally thrives on, said Vickery.

"His movement needs clear enemies to maintain its momentum," said FRANCE 24's correspondent. "He is likely to regain support from centres of the financial market who seemed to have tired of him."

Lula would meanwhile face the challenge of uniting a left wing that has badly unravelled since he went to jail.

The Workers' Party is now a shadow of its former self, with upstart rivals challenging its dominance on the left.

If Lula is a candidate, "don't count me in to take part in this circus," tweeted prominent centre-left politician Ciro Gomes, who finished third in the 2018 presidential race, behind Bolsonaro and Lula's stand-in, Fernando Haddad.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

‘Brazil has no government’: Lula tears into Bolsonaro in comeback speech

Issued on: 10/03/2021 - 

Text by FRANCE 24

Brazil's former leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva came out swinging against President Jair Bolsonaro's "imbecile" handling of the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday as he made his return to the political stage, two days after a judge reinstated his right to run for office.

Lula, who led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, has emerged as a leading contender to face the far-right incumbent next year after a Supreme Court justice annulled his convictions on Monday and reinstated his political rights.

In his first comments since the ruling, Lula, 75, gave a scathing take-down of Bolsonaro’s management of the economy and signature policies.

He was especially biting on Bolsonaro’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 266,000 people in Brazil – the second-highest death toll worldwide, after the United States.

“This country has no government,” Lula told a news conference. “This country doesn’t take care of the economy, of job creation, wages, health care, the environment, education, young people.

Later Wednesday, the country registered a new record for daily Covid-19 fatalities, with 2,286 people dead from the virus in the last 24 hours, according to the Health Ministry.

Bolsonaro has repeatedly downplayed the virus, flouted expert advice on containing it and fuelled vaccine scepticism.

“Don’t follow any imbecile decisions by the president of the republic or the health minister: get vaccinated,” Lula said.

The former president “managed to sound both serene and angry, both radical and conciliatory,” said FRANCE 24’s correspondent Tim Vickery. “This is an experienced politician showing that he is still at the top of his game.”

Lula, a former metal worker and union leader, led Brazil through an economic boom and is remembered for social programmes that helped lift tens of millions of people from poverty.

Recent opinion polls suggest he is the best-placed politician to unseat Bolsonaro in the October 2022 elections.

The former president’s speech prompted an immediate reaction from Bolsonaro, who defended his handling of the pandemic.

“(Lula’s criticism) is unjustified. He is now beginning his campaign, but has nothing good to show. Their campaign is merely to criticise, lie and promote disinformation,” Bolsonaro told CNN Brasil.

Bolsonaro added that the corruption convictions against Lula have not yet been annulled by the full bench of the Supreme Court, meaning a 2022 election run may not be guaranteed.

However, there were signs that Lula’s messaging on the pandemic had rattled Bolsonaro. Within hours of Lula’s criticism, Bolsonaro and his aides appeared masked at an official event in Brasilia – a rare sighting for the president.

“We were tireless from the first moment in fighting the pandemic,” he said, saying that Brazil would have 400 million vaccine doses by the end of this year.

Campaign launch in all but name

Lula remains a highly controversial figure after being sentenced to a total of 26 years in jail on corruption charges stemming from a sweeping investigation into a scheme in which top politicians and business executives systematically siphoned billions of dollars from state oil company Petrobras.

He spent more than 18 months in prison, before being released in 2019 pending appeal.

Lula called himself the victim of “the biggest judicial lie in 500 years,” repeating his claim that the graft charges against him were fabricated to sideline him from the 2018 presidential race, paving the way for Bolsonaro’s victory.

He said he planned to “fight tirelessly” for Brazil and that he wanted to resume touring the country once he is vaccinated against Covid-19 next week.

But he declined to say whether he would run in the elections, saying, “My head doesn’t have time to think about a 2022 candidacy now.”

Still, “his speech was a campaign launch” in all but name, according to political analyst Creomar da Souza, of the consulting firm Dharma.

“He presented his project for the country, which involves a lot of references to his legacy as president,” da Souza told AFP.

Lula is still seen as a hero on the left, which argues he was the victim of a conspiracy.

Supporters point to the fact that the lead judge in the anti-corruption probe that ensnared him, Sergio Moro, went on to accept the post of justice minister under Bolsonaro, and that hacked phone messages suggest Moro conspired with prosecutors to ensure Lula was sidelined.

Lula still faces a series of corruption and influence-peddling charges, including the ones he was jailed for, which will now be transferred to a federal court in Brasilia.

But it may already be too late for other courts to rule him out of the 2022 race, said FRANCE 24’s Vickery: “In order for him to lose his political rights again he would have to be convicted and then lose again on appeal, and there may not be time for that to happen before the next presidential campaign in October of next year.”

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and REUTERS)

Arms deal and sanctions trap British-Iranian mother in Tehran’s ‘hostage diplomacy’

Issued on: 10/03/2021 -

Richard Ratcliffe, husband of British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and their daughter Gabriella protest outside the Iranian Embassy in London, March 8, 2021. © Reuters

Text by: FRANCE 24

The fate of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British-Iranian woman detained in Tehran, is linked to an arms deal dating from the reign of deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and is another example of Iran's policy of “hostage diplomacy”. The UK has agreed to pay Iran its dues, but US sanctions present another challen

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s life changed on April 3, 2016. A British-Iranian dual national, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested with her daughter, Gabriella, then not yet 2 years old, at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport.

An aid worker, Zaghari-Ratcliffe had travelled to Iran to visit her family for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year. She was on her way back to the UK when she was arrested and accused of "plotting to overthrow the Islamic regime" – a charge she vehemently denies. Zaghari-Ratcliffe was then separated from her daughter, whose British passport was confiscated, and sent to prison.

It was the start of a long ordeal for the young mother, marked by harsh stays in solitary confinement in windowless cells, blindfolded interrogations and hunger strikes to demand medical care. In November 2016, Amnesty International raised an alert that Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s severe detention conditions were driving her to contemplate suicide.

After nearly five years in prison, Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 42, who worked as a project manager at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, now faces charges of "spreading propaganda against the regime". The Iranian justice system has summoned her to appear on Sunday, March 14, to answer the new charges against her. Her passport has not been returned and she cannot leave to join her husband and now 6-year-old daughter, who returned to London in 2019 to start school in the UK.

On March 7, Zaghari-Ratcliffe ended her initial sentence and was allowed to remove her electronic bracelet while under house arrest. But she’s far from finished with the Iranian judicial system. According to regional experts, her fate is linked to a larger diplomatic game.

A £400 million bilateral debt

For her husband, Richard Ratcliffe – who has been tirelessly campaigning for her freedom since her arrest – his wife is a "hostage" of a sinister political game involving a debt of £400 million (€464 million) owed by the UK to Iran within the framework of an arms contract signed before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iranian officials told his wife that her detention would end when London settled the infamous £400 million debt, Ratcliffe has told the British press.

"At that time, the Shah of Iran bought more than a thousand tanks [1,750 Chieftain tanks] from Britain and paid an advance because there was a lot of money in the coffers of the Iranian state," recalled François Nicoullaud, a French diplomat who served as France’s ambassador to Iran between 2001 and 2005. But after the 1979 revolution, the UK refused to honour the order.

In 2017, after years of negotiations and legal battles, Britain said it was ready to settle its bill to Tehran while denying the move had any connection with Zaghari-Ratcliffe's detention.

But that was before Donald Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and reimposed tough sanctions under his administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy.

"The British do not deny that they have a debt. The problem is the US sanctions that prevent Britain from paying the money to Iran," Nicoullaud explained. "Poor Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe finds herself the victim of an inextricable struggle between two states."

All eyes are now on Washington, DC, where the arrival of Joe Biden as president could eventually lead to the lifting of sanctions banning bank transactions with Iran. But more than a month into his presidency, Biden has not yet launched a major initiative to return the US to the 2015 deal, a campaign promise that some fear has been put on a backbench.

Aware of the stakes, her husband has kept up the pressure on his government. “It is, in my view, clearly a game of chess. She’s the pawn,” explained Ratcliffe in an interview with the New York Times last week.

‘Hostage-taking’ as a foreign policy

Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case is not unique. Around a dozen other foreign and dual nationals are currently trapped in the same situation. These include two French nationals, researcher Fariba Adelkhah – who was placed under house arrest in October 2020 after serving 16 months in prison – and a French tourist detained since May 2020. The latter was arrested under murky circumstances in a desert area near the Iran-Turkmenistan border while he was touring the country in a van.

While some call this phenomenon "hostage diplomacy", Nicoullaud prefers the term "hostage-taking". "It's nothing less than that. It is hostage-taking. It's a very bad Iranian habit to use quid pro quo. It started with the beginnings of the Islamic Republic in 1979, when 53 hostages from the US embassy in Tehran were held for nearly a year and a half. Since then it has been repeated, and Iran has seen that this extraordinary means of pressure has worked over the years."

One of the last hostages released, French researcher Roland Marchal, was released in March 2020 after nine months in detention. Marchal was released as part of an exchange with an Iranian engineer detained in France. The Iranian engineer, Jalal Ruhollahnejad, was detained in France and wanted by the US on charges of violating sanctions on the import of sensitive electronic systems to Iran.

This article is a translation of the original in French.

GREEN CAPITALI$M
France pushes 'green finance' rules in talks with Biden's climate envoy Kerry

Issued on: 10/03/2021 

Text by: FRANCE 24


Europe and the United States should agree on common rules to determine how "green" a financial investment is, France's finance minister said on Wednesday after talks with US President Joe Biden's climate envoy.

John Kerry, the US special envoy for climate, is in Europe this week to relaunch trans-Atlantic cooperation in the wake of Biden's decision to rejoin the landmark Paris climate accord.

He visited the French capital on Wednesday, a day after telling EU officials in Brussels that the US has "no better partners" than Europe in the fight against global warming.

During talks in Paris, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire pushed for a common taxonomy for green investments. He said it was important to launch discussions with Washington on carbon border tax adjustments.

"I proposed to [Special Envoy] John Kerry that Europe and the United States have an identical taxonomy," Le Maire told a news conference. "It would be a shame if at the end of the day we had two sets of rules in Europe and the United States."

Le Maire added: "That would be a source of considerable confusion between our two continents."

Asked to respond to the separate suggestion of a carbon border adjustment tax, Kerry said Washington was aware that a number of countries were investigating such a tool.

Such a tax essentially consists of import fees levied by carbon-taxing countries on goods manufactured in non-carbon-taxing countries.

"There are a number of different proposals to assign a price on carbon and the methane and the greenhouse gases creating this damage," Kerry told reporters. "Whether or not we think that's the right tool or not, we have not yet been able to sit down and evaluate that."

He added: "Our friends from France are planning to do a deep dive on it, that could be very constructive and we look forward to hearing from them."

>> In appointing John Kerry to top role, Biden shows he’s serious about climate

The former US secretary of state said signatories of the Paris climate agreement were not doing enough to respect their commitments to limit global warming. He said trillions of dollars were needed to finance the transition to a sustainable future, adding it was possible to find that money with the help of the private sector.

The 2015 Paris climate change accord commits countries to put forward plans for reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which is released from burning fossil fuels. EU leaders reached a hard-fought deal in December to cut the bloc’s net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.

Like the EU, Biden has said that fighting global warming is among his highest priorities. His administration is yet to announce a new national 2030 target for cutting US fossil fuel emissions.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

One dead in Myanmar anti-coup protest as ousted MPs urge unity against junta

Hundreds of thousands have continued to protest near-daily across Myanmar, despite crackdowns by the police 


Issued on: 14/03/2021 -

Yangon (AFP)

At least one anti-coup protester was killed Sunday as demonstrators across Myanmar continued to defy military rule, a day after a group of ousted MPs in hiding urged them to overcome the nation's "darkest moment".

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi from power in a February 1 putsch, triggering a mass uprising that has seen hundreds of thousands protest daily for a return to democracy.

The junta has repeatedly justified its power grab by alleging widespread electoral fraud in November's elections, which Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won by a landslide.

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In response, a group of elected MPs, many of whom are in hiding, have formed a shadow "parliament" called the Committee for Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) -- the Burmese word for the country's governing bloc -- to denounce the military regime.

The junta's security forces are staging near-daily crackdowns against demonstrators calling for a return to democracy, deploying tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds to quell anti-coup protests.

More than 80 have been killed in the unrest, according to a local monitoring group.

On Sunday, fresh violence during a protest in the northern jade-producing city of Hpakant saw one man shot dead before noon, according to a doctor and a local news outlet.

"Kyaw Lin Hteik died when he arrived at the hospital... he had a gunshot on the right side of his chest and he lost too much blood," said a local doctor who declined to be named.

He added that another three people were hit by rubber bullets and had to be transferred to state capital Myitkyina, where hospitals are better equipped.

Despite the growing death toll, protesters continued to take to the streets Sunday -- from civil servants hoisting Suu Kyi's poster defiantly at a march through the central city of Monywa to a sit-in in commercial hub Yangon.

"May the fallen heroes who have given their lives in this spring revolution rest in peace!" chanted protesters wearing hard hats in Yangon's Thaketa township.

Two men had been killed in the early hours of Saturday in Thaketa, after protesters had gathered at the police station to demand the release of arrested residents.

State-run media New Light of Myanmar said security forces had fired "warning shots" to disperse the crowd, and "an investigation is underway regarding the cause of death" of the two men.

The city has been utterly transformed since the coup, with key protest townships barricaded with sandbags, wooden fences and stacked tables -- an attempt by demonstrators to stop security forces from entering.

Gunshots were heard Sunday in at least two hotspots of unrest -- garment-producing hub Hlaing Tharyar and the once-bustling shopping junction Hledan.

- 'The darkest moment of the nation' -

The gatherings come a day after the acting vice president of the CRPH called for the people to continue protesting against the military's "unjust dictatorship".

"This is the darkest moment of the nation and the light before the dawn is close," said Mahn Win Khaing Than in a recorded video posted on the CRPH's Facebook page Saturday night.

"This is also a moment testing our citizens to see how far we can resist these darkest times," said the politician, a high-ranking NLD politician who served as speaker of the house during Suu Kyi's previous administration.

"We will try to work through CRPH... to draft necessary laws for people to be able to defend themselves."

Along with other top Suu Kyi allies, he was placed under house arrest during the February 1 power grab, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners monitoring group.

His Saturday address was his first appearance in his capacity as CRPH's acting vice president, and he echoed the anti-coup movement's calls for a "federal democracy" -- which would allow ethnic minority groups to have a role in Myanmar's governance.

"This uprising is also the chance for all of us to struggle together hand-in-hand to establish a federal democracy union," he said.

"We must win the uprising."

The committee has issued several statements since its formation, but the protest movement on the ground appears largely leaderless -- with daily rallies organised by local activists.

The junta -- self-anointed as the State Administration Council -- has said the CRPH's formation is akin to "high treason", which carries a maximum sentence of 22 years in jail.

RIP

Black space engineer, housing advocate Ken Kelly dies at 92



Obit-Kenneth-C-KellyThis Nov. 2020 photo provided by Ron Kelly shows Kenneth C. Kelly in Sherman Oaks, Calif. Kenneth C. Kelly, a Black electronics engineer whose antenna designs contributed to the race to the moon, made satellite TV and radio possible and helped NASA communicate with Mars rovers and search for extraterrestrials, has died. The 92-year-old also worked to erase race barriers in the Navy, in California housing and on the newspaper comics pages. Kelly had Parkinson's disease before his death on Feb. 27, 2021 his son Ron Kelly said. (Ron Kelly via AP)


MICHAEL WARREN
Fri, March 12, 2021

Kenneth C. Kelly, a Black electronics engineer whose antenna designs contributed to the race to the moon, made satellite TV and radio possible and helped NASA communicate with Mars rovers and search for extraterrestrials, has died. The 92-year-old also worked to erase race barriers in the Navy, in California housing and on the newspaper comics pages.

Kelly had Parkinson's disease before his death on Feb. 27, his son Ron Kelly said.

Kelly was awarded more than a dozen patents for innovations in radar and antenna technology, work that appears in peer-reviewed journals from 1955-1999. His early work at Hughes Aircraft helped create guided missile systems and the ground satellites that tracked the Apollo space missions, he said in an oral history recorded by his family.

His two-way antenna designs at Rantec Microwave Systems enabled consumers to have DirecTV and Sirius XM connections, and are featured in the massive Mojave Desert radiotelescopes that search for signs of life in space, his son and JPL colleagues said.

After many years working on deep space missions through NASA subcontractors, Kelly worked directly for JPL from 1999 until retiring in 2002, helping to design robotic antennas for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, according to Joseph Vacchione, who manages the JPL's antenna test range.

Kelly appeared in an Associated Press article in 1962 after he moved his family into Gardena, a middle-class suburb that had excluded Black people. To overcome a racist covenant and the repeated refusals of real estate agents, he had to ask a white colleague at Hughes to make the purchase on his behalf.

“We have pretty much the same hopes, fears, ambitions, strengths and frailties that have typified all of human existence,” Kelly wrote in a letter his white neighbors, urging them to set aside “stereotyped notions,” according to the AP story.

Kelly and his wife Loretta later moved near California State University-Northridge, to be closer to his job and have their children attend better schools. According to the 2017 oral history, the agent wouldn’t sell him the lot, so he had to repeat the demeaning experience of having white friends buy it for him before signing over the mortgage.

Kelly became president of the San Fernando Valley Fair Housing Council, testing listings to prove discrimination, lobbying authorities and going to court to prevent whites-only advertising. To do more from the inside, he became a leading Realtor, helping many Black families move into new suburbs in the 1970s.

Kelly had another role in promoting racial harmony after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. A white ally of the Kellys on the Fair Housing Council, schoolteacher Harriet Glickman, had been corresponding with cartoonist Charles Schulz, urging him to add a Black character to his comic strip. At the time, Black people were all but invisible in mass media.

Letters published by the Charles M. Schulz Museum show the cartoonist was reluctant, fearing the move would seem patronizing to Black people in the wake of King's death. Glickman recruited Kelly to persuade Schulz otherwise.

Kelly urged the cartoonist to treat the Black character as a “supernumerary” — just another member of the Peanuts gang. Franklin soon appeared on a beach, helping Charlie Brown build a sand castle.

Born in 1928 in New York City and raised by a single mother who worked as a live-in maid, Kelly began living at 13 in the Harlem YMCA, where he was mentored by older black men including photographer Gordon Parks. He tested into Brooklyn Tech high school, then enlisted in the Navy to be trained as an electronics technician. Told he could only be a steward to white officers, he wrote to the chief recruiter and was allowed to take the engineering exam just when President Harry Truman was moving to desegregate the military.

“I think I’m a crazy optimist,” Kelly said in his oral history. “I’m definitely the half-full glass person. I meet lots of people who are so pessimistic. I always thought I could.”

Kelly's Navy training helped him excel at Brooklyn Polytechnic College and get a job at Hughes Aircraft in 1953. He later learned that his white colleagues had been polled to see if they'd work with a Black man; the few who said they’d quit were told to do so.

Kelly and Loretta were members of the Ethical Cultural Society for decades. He also formed a society of Black scientists and engineers who launched science fairs and outreach programs to minority students in Los Angeles, which was booming with Black people fleeing the South in the post-war period.

“I think the more contact between the ones who have been successful in what they’re doing and the ones who are several steps down the line, the better,” he said.

Kelly felt racism's sting repeatedly in life, but was determined to overcome it.

“We have a terrible real history of defeat, horrible conditions, death, rapes, just a hell of a history of Blacks in this country, but I don’t think knowing it is that valuable unless it encourages you do more to beat it somehow, and I think we can,” Kelly said in his oral history.

Kelly was predeceased by his first wife, Gloria White, and his son David. He is survived by his ex-wife Loretta Kelly, his third wife Anne Kelly, his son Ron Kelly, his stepson Steve Kelly, their wives and two grandchildren.

 

How this market turns 10 tons of food waste into energy every day

Daniel T. Allen , Katie Nixdorf , and Amelia Kosciulek 

Mar 12, 2021

Volume 90%

 

• 
  
• The Bowenpally market in India turns 10 tons of food waste into biogas every day.
• That's enough energy to power over 150 streetlights and a canteen kitchen that feeds 800 people.
• Turning food waste into biogas cuts down on greenhouse gas emissions from landfills, which are the third largest source of human-caused emissions.

Sea slugs lose heads to rid bodies of parasites, Japan researchers show


An Elysia marginata, a species of sea slug, after shedding its body and its self-decapitated head is seen in this handout photo

Rikako Murayama
Thu, March 11, 2021

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese researchers have shown that a type of sea slug are able to self-decapitate and regrow their bodies, a discovery that could have ramifications for regenerative medicine.

The mechanism is believed to be an extreme method for the organism to rid itself of parasites, researchers Sayaka Mitoh and Yoichi Yusa wrote in a study published in Current Biology this week. The green slugs have algae cells in their skin, so they can feed off light like a plant until they develop a new body, which takes about 20 days.

Mitoh, a doctoral researcher at Nara Women's University, noticed one day that a sea slug, known as a sacoglossan, had spontaneously detached its head from its body.

"I was surprised and thought it was going to die, but it continued to move around and eat quite energetically," Mitoh said. "I kept an eye on it for a while, and it regenerated its heart and body."

That prompted a study showing that five of 15 lab-bred slugs and one from the wild split its body off from a particular point on the neck during their lives. One did so twice. Each time, the animal's heart was left behind in the body, which continued to live for some time, but didn't regrow a head.

"One of the amazing things about stem cells is that they can be used to regenerate a heart and body from the edge of the animal's head," Mitoh said. "With further study, we may be able to apply these findings to regenerative medicine, but that's still a distant hope at this stage."

Other animals have been known to intentionally detach and regrow body parts, a mechanism known as autotomy, but this extreme form was previously unknown, the researchers said.

They initially thought it might be a method to escape predators, but they now think it's done to get rid of parasites that inhibit reproduction.

(Reporting by Rikako Murayama and Rocky Swift in Tokyo; Editing by Karishma Singh)

Study: Lack of diversity in Hollywood costs industry $10B



Film-Diversity Study

FILE - The Hollywood sign appears near the top of Beachwood Canyon adjacent to Griffith Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles on Jan. 29,2010. : For years, researchers have said a lack of diversity in Hollywood films doesn’t just poorly reflect demographics, it’s bad business. A new study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates just how much Hollywood is leaving on the table: $10 billion. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)

JAKE COYLE
Thu, March 11, 2021, 

NEW YORK (AP) — For years, researchers have said a lack of diversity in Hollywood films doesn’t just poorly reflect demographics, it’s bad business. A new study by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates just how much Hollywood is leaving on the table: $10 billion.

The McKinsey report, released Thursday, analyzes how inequality shapes the industry and how much it ultimately costs its bottom line. The consulting firm deduced that the $148 billion film and TV industry loses $10 billion, or 7%, every year by undervaluing Black films, filmmakers and executives.

“Fewer Black-led stories get told, and when they are, these projects have been consistently underfunded and undervalued, despite often earning higher relative returns than other properties,” wrote the study’s authors: Jonathan Dunn, Sheldon Lyn, Nony Onyeador and Ammanuel Zegeye.


The study, spanning the years 2015-2019, was conducted over the last six months and drew on earlier research by the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Southern California and Nielsen. The BlackLight Collective, a coalition of Black executives and talent in the industry, collaborate with McKinsey researchers. The company also interviewed more than 50 executives, producers, agents, actors, directors and writers anonymously.

McKinsey attributed at least some of Hollywood's slow progress to its complex and multi-layered business — an ecosystem of production companies, networks, distributors, talent agencies and other separate but intertwined realms.

But the lack of Black representation in top positions of power plays a prominent role. The study found that 92% of film executives are white and 87% are in television. Agents and executives at the top three talent agencies are approximately 90% white — and a striking 97% among partners.

Researchers found that films with a Black lead or co-lead are budgeted 24% less than movies that don't — a disparity that nearly doubles when there are two or more Black people working as director, producer or writer.

Among other measures, McKinsey recommends that a “well-funded, third-party organization" be created for a more comprehensive approach to racial equality. The film business, it said, is less diverse than industries such as energy, finance and transport.

Following the Black Lives Matter protests last year, McKinsey said it would dedicate $200 million to pro-bono work to advance racial equality.