The fiery chief of Russia's troubled space programme

He had recently joked that Russia would send a mission to the moon to "verify" whether or not NASA lunar landings ever took place.

Issued on: 09/04/2021 -

Dmitry Rogozin has struggled to return Moscow's space programme to the glory days of 1961 when the Soviet Union launched the first man -- Yuri Gagarin -- into space 

Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV AFP/File


Moscow (AFP)

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's troubled space agency Roscosmos, is hardly your typical bureaucrat.

Brash and brazen, the former diplomat has made his name with provocative tweets and boisterous claims.

But he is equally well-known for leading the once-prized Soviet space programme during years of corruption scandals and technological stagnation.

In 2014, Rogozin, then a deputy prime minister in charge of space, responded to Western sanctions on Russia with a tweet suggesting the United States could send its astronauts to space "using a trampoline".

Russia at the time was the only country capable of delivering crews to the International Space Station (ISS), with a seat on its Soyuz rockets costing tens of millions of dollars.

The tweet didn't age well.

"The trampoline is working," US billionaire Elon Musk laughed at a May 2020 news conference after his company SpaceX successfully launched a crew to the ISS.

The launch was a gamechanger and dealt a major blow to Roscosmos and Russia, which had leaned on its ageing but reliable Soyuz launchers to stay essential in the space industry.

Now "the fig leaf has fallen off," Andrei Ionin of the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics in Moscow told AFP.

Rogozin's problems don't end there. Russia is also losing its market share in satellite launches.

Its new Vostochny Cosmodrome, purpose built for dispatching satellites to space, is underused, and its ongoing construction has been scandalised by corruption.

Appointed in 2018 as the head of Roscosmos after working as a deputy prime minister -- and before that Russia's ambassador to NATO -- Rogozin is not solely responsible for the setbacks, with many problems dating back long before his arrival.

But the 57-year-old has struggled to return the space programme to the glory days of 1961 when the Soviet Union launched the first man into space -- Yuri Gagarin.

The 60th anniversary of Gagarin's flight is on Monday.

- Nationalist roots -

After suffering humiliations at the hands of NASA and Space X, Rogozin has begun boasting of Russia's grand plans to catch up, including a mission to Venus and a rocket capable of 100 round-trip flights to space.

But many observers are sceptical.

"Russia doesn't have any new spacecraft," a former Roscosmos official said on condition of anonymity. "There is only a model."

As for the mission to Venus, "given the complexity of the task, Russian scientists aren't even thinking about it", independent space expert Vitaly Yegorov said.

Experts believe the real goal of Rogozin's grand pronouncements is to convince the Kremlin to inject larger sums of money into the Roscosmos budget.

But space is not a priority for President Vladimir Putin, who is more focused on cementing Russia's military might.

Before taking over Roscosmos, Rogozin was a nationalist politician whose career took off in 2003 when his Motherland party won seats in parliament.

His party's deputies were known to lash out at Jews and the LGBT community, and Rogozin once appeared in a video featuring migrants from the Caucasus calling for a "clean up" of Moscow.

He is deeply loyal to Putin and opponents have speculated that his party was a Kremlin project aimed at channelling the nationalist vote.

His loyalty was rewarded in 2008 when Rogozin, who is fluent in English, French, Spanish and Italian, became Russia's ambassador to NATO -- a post he held until 2011.

He continued to be provocative, hanging a poster of Stalin in his Brussels office and fiercely opposing efforts by Russia's ex-Soviet neighbours Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO.

He was blacklisted and sanctioned by the United States in 2014 over Russia's annexation of Crimea and in 2019, NASA put off a planned visit by Rogozin to the US after protests from lawmakers.

He had recently joked that Russia would send a mission to the moon to "verify" whether or not NASA lunar landings ever took place.

© 2021 AFP

French MPs divided over 'existential' euthanasia bill

Issued on: 08/04/2021 - 

The current law in France allows only deep sedation of patients suffering from incurable illnesses but no help for people to end their life 

SEBASTIEN BOZON AFP

Paris (AFP)

A bill to legalise euthanasia went before a deeply divided French parliament on Thursday, with right-wingers planning to torpedo any vote with thousands of amendments and the government not taking sides.

If the draft law were to pass, France would become the fifth European Union country to decriminalise assisted suicide, after the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Spain.

The bill was brought by Olivier Falorni from a centrist group of MPs called Freedom and Territories who planned to use Thursday's National Assembly time allotted to his party to fight for a proposal that he says raises "existential questions".

He says it would end the national "hypocrisy" of French residents travelling to Belgium or Switzerland for assistance in suicide, while he claims French doctors already secretly perform between 2,000 to 4,000 acts of euthanasia every year.

The current law allows only deep sedation of patients suffering from incurable illnesses but no help for people to end their life.

Most deputies in President Emmanuel Macron's party, the LREM, support euthanasia but the government has not weighed in on the debate.

French public opinion "has been strongly demanding a law on this question for the past 20 or 25 years", said Philippe Bataille, a sociologist, adding that "parliament has remained deaf".

Macron said in 2017: "I myself wish to choose the end of my life."

- 'We want debate' -

Deputies hostile to euthanasia have filed 3,000 amendments ahead of the debate to slow down Thursday's proceedings and make it impossible to vote.

Some 2,300 amendments were brought by deputies from The Republicans (LR), an opposition party.

Falorni told AFP that the filings amounted to "obstruction" while his former party colleague Matthieu Orphelin called the amendments "shameful" as they made sure there could be no vote by midnight on Thursday when the debate must end.

"We want to debate. We want to vote. Parliamentary time is here. Let us respect it," 270 deputies from across the political spectrum said in an article published in the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

Line Renaud, a much-loved singer, actress and activist, published an open letter on Saturday calling on parliament to give "every woman and every man the possibility to choose the end of their life".

As in Spain, whose parliament last month became the latest in the EU to approve euthanasia, the Catholic Church in France is strongly opposed to euthanasia.

"The solution when a person faces suffering is not to kill them, but ease their pain and accompany them," the archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, told France Inter radio.

- 'Murder' -

Jean Leonetti, one of the deputies behind the current law, said euthanasia was "a major transgression" amounting to "murder".

Writer Michel Houellebecq said a euthanasia law would cause France to "lose every right to be respected".

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said it was "indecent" to open the debate while France was "trying to save lives" during the Covid crisis.

While some parliamentarians are opposed to euthanasia on ethical or religious grounds, others have said the subject is too important to be handled in just one day of National Assembly proceedings.

If, as is expected, time runs out before any vote Thursday, another time slot will have to be found in parliament's busy legislative schedule.

- 'Agony to end' -

The issue was given new momentum last year by Alain Cocq, a terminally ill Frenchman who planned to refuse all food and medicine and stream his death on social media.

He abandoned his initial bid after saying the suffering became too intense.

Cocq had written to Macron in September asking to be given a drug that would allow him to die in peace, but the president told him that was not possible under French law.

On Wednesday, Cocq called on the deputies to vote in favour of the bill.

"I want this agony to end," he told AFP, adding that some 10,000 people in France wanted their lives to be ended but were stopped by "these doctors" who he said claimed "the right to decide who lives and who dies".

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Global network to eavesdrop on oceans quieted by Covid


Issued on: 08/04/2021 -

Travel and economic downturns due to Covid-19 has seen falls in maritime traffic, sea floor exploration and other human interference, creating "a unique moment" to gather data on the oceans' sonic landscape 

CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

Scientists will take advantage of an unprecedented fall in shipping activity to listen in to the world's oceans and study how manmade noise affects marine ecosystems, the project organisers said Thursday.

Travel and economic downturns due to Covid-19 have seen falls in maritime traffic, sea floor exploration and other human interference, creating "a unique moment" to gather data on the oceans' sonic landscape, they said.

The scientific community has already identified more than 200 non-military hydrophones -- aquatic listening devices capable of picking up low-frequency signals from hundreds of kilometres away -- worldwide, and aim to link up a total of 500 to capture signals from whales and other marine life.

Sea animals use sound and natural sonar to navigate and communicate across vast swathes of ocean.

While numerous previous studies have identified a link between manmade marine noise and changes in species behaviour, the precise links remain poorly understood.

"Assessing the risks of underwater sound for marine life requires understanding what sound levels cause harmful effects and where in the ocean vulnerable animals may be exposed to sound exceeding these levels," said Peter Tyack, professor of Marine Mammal Biology at the University of St Andrews.

Researchers hope to create a global, open source data repository with information gathered from hydrophones across the planet to measure and document the effects of noise on the behaviour of sea life.

Software under development led by the University of New Hampshire (MANTA) will allow collaborators to compare and visualise ocean audio data.

In addition, the Open Portal to Underwater Sound (OPUS) is being tested by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, to promote the use of the data.

- 'Year of quiet ocean' -

The team said that the pandemic had presented a window of opportunity for maritime study equivalent to the period of above ground nuclear testing between 1945 and 1980.

Those tests created traces of elements that spread widely and provided major insights into ocean biology.

"The oceans are unlikely to be as quiet during April 2020 for many decades to come," said project originator Jesse Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at The Rockefeller University.

"The Covid-19 pandemic provided an unanticipated event that reduced sound levels more than we dreamed possible based on voluntary sound reductions."

Following the launch in 2015 of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE), the number of civilian hydrophones operating in North America and Europe has increased dramatically.

That project also designated 2022 as "the Year of the Quiet Ocean".

While the researchers said the levels and scope of monitoring equipment had ramped up in recent years, they called for more acoustic instrumentation across the Southern Hemisphere.

"The shocking global effect of Covid-19 on human additions of noise to the oceans can spur maturation of regular monitoring of the soundscape of our seas," said Ausubel.

© 2021 AF

Covax backs AstraZeneca as vaccines reach 100 territories



Issued on: 08/04/2021 

The first Covax shipment landed in Ghana on February 24

 Nipah Dennis AFP/File

Geneva (AFP)

Covax backed the AstraZeneca jab on Thursday as the scheme celebrated shipping coronavirus vaccine doses to 100 different territories around the world, despite delays dogging deliveries.

AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine accounts for almost the entire first wave of doses being distributed via the facility, which ensures the 92 poorest participating economies can access jabs for free.

But the programme has been hit by delays after New Delhi put the brake on exports from the Serum Institute of India plant to deal with a rampant second wave of Covid-19 infections.

The SII is one of two sites producing AstraZeneca doses for Covax. The other is in South Korea.

Covax's first wave intended to distribute some 238.2 million doses to 142 participating economies by May 31.

Of those, 237 million are AstraZeneca doses and 1.2 million are Pfizer/BioNTech.

A number of nations have suspended the use of AstraZeneca's vaccine for younger populations after it was earlier banned outright in several countries over blood clot scares.

The EU's medicines regulator said Wednesday that blood clots should be listed as a rare side effect of the AstraZeneca jab, stressing benefits continue to outweigh risks.

And the World Health Organization's immunisation experts said a causal link was "considered plausible but is not confirmed", adding that reported occurrences were "very rare".

The risk-benefit balance remains "very much in favour of the vaccine" the WHO told AFP.

Covax is co-led by the WHO, the Gavi vaccine alliance, and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

Gavi said safety and efficacy was the "top priority for Covax".

The scheme follows WHO guidance on vaccine products, which "remains unchanged" for the AstraZeneca jab, a Gavi spokeswoman told AFP.

"The AstraZeneca vaccine remains an important public health tool against the Covid-19 pandemic and is effective at preventing severe cases, hospitalisation and death."

- St. Lucia 100th country -

The 100th country milestone was reached with a delivery to the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

It came 42 days after the first shipment landed in Ghana on February 24, with Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo publicly taking the first shot.

So far, nearly 38.4 million doses have been delivered to 102 territories, including 61 of the 92 poorest participating economies for which funding is covered by donors.

"Covax expects to deliver doses to all participating economies that have requested vaccines in the first half of the year," Gavi insisted in a statement.

This comes "despite reduced supply availability in March and April" due to manufacturers tweaking production processes, plus "increased demand for Covid-19 vaccines in India", it said.

Some of the biggest countries in the world have received vaccines so far, including India, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Philippines, Egypt, Vietnam, DR Congo and Iran.

The smallest to have taken deliveries are the Pacific islands of Tuvalu, Nauru and Tonga, along with Dominica in the Caribbean, and European microstate Andorra.

Six G20 countries have received doses: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

Deliveries have also reached Yemen, which the United Nations says is in the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and Afghanistan.

- $2bn needed in 2021 -

"We still face a daunting challenge as we seek to end the acute stage of the pandemic," said Gavi chief executive Seth Berkley.

"As we continue with the largest and most rapid global vaccine rollout in history, this is no time for complacency."

The scheme is aiming to distribute enough doses to vaccinate up to 27 percent of the population in the 92 poorest participating economies by the end of the year.

An additional $2 billion is required in 2021 to finance and secure up to a total of 1.8 billion donor-funded vaccine doses for those territories.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned that while the St. Lucia milestone "gives us hope, ... access to vaccines, medicines and tests must not become a geopolitical pawn".

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has regularly blasted rich countries for hogging vaccine batches while poorer countries await their first doses.

Worldwide, more than 710 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been administered in at least 195 territories around the world, according to an AFP count.

But WHO Africa regional director Matshidiso Moeti noted just two percent of those doses had been administered on the African continent.

"More than one billion Africans remain on the margins of this historic march to end this pandemic," she said.

© 2021 AFP

Smog caused by French winemakers' frost-fighting



Issued on: 08/04/2021 

Protecting the vines from sub-zero temperatures 

JEFF PACHOUD AFP

Lyon (AFP)

Thousands of small fires lit by French winemakers to ward off frost in their vineyards have caused a layer of smog in the southeast of the country, local authorities reported Thursday.

The practice of lighting fires or candles near vines or fruit trees to prevent the formation of frost is a long-standing technique used in early spring when the first green shoots are vulnerable to the cold.

Whole hillsides look as if they are ablaze, creating a striking visual effect, with winemakers scrambling this week as temperatures plunged to below freezing, particularly in the fertile Rhone valley in southeast France.

Regional air quality monitoring body Atmo Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes issued a warning about fine-particle pollution in the region which includes the city of Lyon where a layer of smog was visible on Thursday.

"It happens almost every year when there is a frost, but this time it's massive," director Marie-Blanche Personnaz told AFP of the pollution.

She said farmers were "entirely within their rights" to light fires to save their livelihoods, "but we perhaps need to work on the problem and find other solutions when the (frost) phenomenon is significant."

Some winegrowers use wind machines to keep frost from setting in.

Others use water sprinklers, allowing a fine coating of ice to form on vines which keeps them from freezing through because the ice acts like a mini-igloo.

- Lost harvests -

This year's two-night cold snap could be particularly damaging for winemakers and other fruit farmers because the freezing temperatures came after a week of unseasonably warm weather.

Christophe Gratadour, an industry specialist, said that the central Loire area and the Rhone region had been affected.

"All sectors have been hit but it's still too early to measure the effects," he told AFP.

In the wine heartland around Bordeaux, producers' body CIVB warned that it was "certain the spring frost will severely affect the harvesting volumes in 2021."

The Bordeaux region was badly hit by an even later April frost in 2017 which resulted in one in five producers losing more than 70 percent of their harvest.

Winegrowers and farmers told AFP of their desperation as they inspected the damage on Thursday morning after a second night of trying to keep ice at bay.

"We worked on the main hillside and burned straw bales and piles of wood to try to save what we could," winemaker Remy Nodin from Saint-Peray in the Ardeche region of southeast France told AFP.

"The aim was to create a blanket of smoke so that when the sun came up it didn't burn the vines because of the humidity," he added.

"We watered, we heated, nothing worked," said Stephane Leyronas, a kiwi grower, in the nearby Aubenas area.

"I used a flamethrower and lit more than 700 small fires which didn't even last the night," he added.

"It's a catastrophe," he said.

© 2021 AFP

Big beats: Gorilla chest thumps 'signal' body size

Issued on: 08/04/2021 -

This display is mainly by the male silverbacks who pummel their chests with cupped hands OMAR TORRES AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

A mountain gorilla rises up and pounds its chest to signal for a mate or scare off a foe, but the drumming that resonates through the forest might also reveal details of their physique, according to a study published Thursday.

Unlike the croak of a frog or the growl of a lion, the mountain gorilla's chest thumping is unusual because it is not a vocalisation but rather a form of physical communication that can be both seen and heard.

This display -- mainly by the male silverbacks who pummel their chests with cupped hands -- is thought to be a way to attract females and intimidate potential rivals.

But researchers wanted to find out if the drumming sound, which can carry for a kilometre through the rainforest, also conveys information about the chest beater.

They observed and recorded 25 adult male mountain gorillas monitored by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda and found that bigger gorillas produced chest beats with lower peak frequencies than smaller ones.

"In other words, chest beats are an honest signal of body size in mountain gorillas," said Edward Wright, of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, who led the study.

Earlier research had shown that size matters for silverback gorillas -- bigger males are more dominant and have higher reproductive success than smaller ones, he told AFP.

The scientists believe chest beating may allow gorillas to send a signal that lets potential mates or rivals judge their size even without seeing them.

"As a male gorilla, if you want to assess the competitive ability of a rival male, it may be safest to do this at a distance," said Wright.

He added previous research showing that larger dominant males lead groups with more adult females suggests the females, who are known to transfer between bands of gorillas, may be influenced by size.

These transfers are usually done in person when groups meet and males thump their chests to advertise their prowess.

But Wright said further research would be needed to show that males and females are actually judging body size by listening to the chest beats.

- 'Power and strength' -

To study the relationship between the size of the wild gorillas and the resonance of their chest drumming, researchers first had to measure them -- without getting too close.

To do this they used lasers. By projecting two beams a set distance apart at the animal and then taking a picture, researchers could use the lasers as a scale to measure areas of its body.

They also had to be patient to record the gorilla chest beating, which happens in short bursts roughly once every five hours.

"You need to be at the right place at the right time," Wright said.

But when they were, he said, both the sound and the spectacle is impressive.

"As a human, you definitely get the sense of power and strength," he said.

In the end, the researchers were able to use recordings of 36 chest thumps made by six of the males to measure their duration, number of beats and the audio frequencies and compare this to their body size.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, found a correlation between the animal's size and the sound frequency of the drumming sound, but detected no link to the length of time they spent chest beating or the number of beats.

It also found "a significant amount of variation" in the chest beating of the different males, said Wright.

But each gorilla did not greatly vary their style of drumming, he said.

"This hints that chest beats may have individual signatures, but further research is needed to examine this," he said, adding some colleagues in the field say they can guess which silverback is chest beating just from the sound.

© 2021 AFP

Spain blocks sale of possible Caravaggio painting



Issued on: 08/04/2021 

The painting was set to be sold off at a Madrid auction house

 Andrew Harnik POOL/AFP


Madrid (AFP)

Spain blocked the auction of a 17th-century Biblical oil painting in Madrid on Thursday on suspicion it could be a lost masterpiece by the Renaissance artist Caravaggio.

Entitled "Coronation with Thorns", the canvas shows Jesus just before his crucifixion and was set to have been sold off later on Thursday at the Ansorena auction house.

Attributed in the catalogue to "the entourage of (Spanish artist) Jose de Ribera", it was marked with an opening price of 1,500 euros ($1,800).

But just hours before it went under the hammer, Culture Minister Jose Manuel Rodriguez Uribes said the painting had been declared "not for export... on suspicion it may be a Caravaggio".

"We are going to see if it is indeed a Caravaggio," he told reporters, saying the decision to withdraw the canvas from auction was made "within hours".

"The painting is valuable, we hope it's a Caravaggio," he said.

Ansorena confirmed it would not go under the hammer on Thursday, saying the ministry's decision meant it could not be removed from Spain.

"As to who painted it, different experts are studying the work and right now we have no further information," a spokeswoman told AFP.

MEDUSA BY CARAVAGGIO

- 'Not convinced' -

Experts were divided over whether it was a work by the Renaissance master.

"It's him," Maria Cristina Terzaghi, an Italian art history expert at Roma Tre University, told Italy's La Repubblica newspaper.

She said the canvas had a "deep connection" with the works done at the start of Caravaggio's Neapolitan period, and that the cloak worn by Jesus in the painting was the same as the red used in Caravaggio's painting of "Salome with the head of John the Baptist".

The image of Pontius Pilate in the foreground was "reminiscent of the martyred St Peter in 'Madonna of the Rosary'" at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, she added.

But French old masters specialist Eric Turquin disagreed.

"I have not seen the painting. but I was not convinced at all by the photo of it. We can't be sure but I don't think this is by Caravaggio," he told AFP.

"I don't see Caravaggio's hand in this painting. The subject is certainly Caravaggio, and it was probably painted between 1600 and 1620 by a good painter, but not Caravaggio."

Spain's culture ministry was first alerted on Tuesday, a ministry source said, indicating Prado Museum had been in touch to say there was "sufficient documentary and stylistic evidence to consider that the painting... may be an original work by Caravaggio".

Following emergency talks, the painting was withdrawn from sale and declared "not for export".

- In-depth study -

"It is now necessary to carry out an in-depth technical and scientific study of the painting and engage in academic debate as to whether its attribution to Caravaggio is truly plausible and acceptable to the scientific community," the source said.

The ministry was also expecting Madrid's regional authorities to declare it a work of cultural interest to extend further protection under legislation governing Spain's heritage.

"We have asked the Madrid government to declare it an asset of cultural interest and with that double guarantee, we can ensure the painting stays in Spain," the minister told reporters.

It is not the first time a possible Caravaggio has been unearthed.

In 2014, a lost masterpiece by the artist called "Judith and Holofernes" was found under an old mattress in an attic in the French city of Toulouse. The biblical-style canvas depicted a beautiful Jewish widow beheading a sleeping Assyrian general.

Worth up to an estimated $170 million, the painting was due to go under the hammer in June 2019 but was snapped up by an anonymous foreign buyer just two days before auction.

© 2021 AF

Brazil's Bolsonaro under pressure ahead of climate summit



Issued on: 08/04/2021 

Deforestation in Brazil has surged under President Jair Bolsonaro, who has slashed funding for environmental programs since he took office in 2019 and is pushing to open protected lands to mining and agribusiness CARL DE SOUZA AFP/File

Rio de Janeiro (AFP)

A coalition of environmental groups and agribusiness companies urged President Jair Bolsonaro's government Thursday to set "more ambitious" goals to curb Brazil's emissions and protect the Amazon rainforest at this month's US-organized climate summit.

"Brazil is a key country in the global effort to achieve climate balance," said the Brazil Climate, Forests and Agriculture Coalition, a group of more than 280 organizations and firms.

"Its climate goals need to be more ambitious.... The country urgently needs to significantly reduce greenhouse gases, work to eliminate illegal deforestation and fight environmental crimes."

Deforestation in Brazil has surged under Bolsonaro, who has slashed funding for environmental programs since he took office in 2019 and is pushing to open protected lands to mining and agribusiness.

In the 12 months to August 2020, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon increased 9.5 percent, destroying an area larger than Jamaica, according to government data.

But Brazil has in the past played a leading role in the fight against climate change, underlined the coalition, whose members range from environmental groups such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to ag firms such as Cargill.

"From 2004 to 2012, Brazil achieved the largest reduction in greenhouse gas emissions ever recorded for a single country by cutting the deforestation rate by 80 percent," it said.

"Now is the time for Brazilians to reclaim that leadership role."

The virtual climate summit on April 22-23 is sponsored by US President Joe Biden, who has invited 40 world leaders, including Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro clashed with Biden over the environment when the latter was a presidential candidate.

In September 2020, Biden proposed offering Brazil international financing of $20 billion to "stop tearing down the forest," and warned of "significant economic consequences" if it did not.

Bolsonaro fired back that the comments were "disastrous and unnecessary."

Another coalition of Brazilian environmental groups, the 198-member Climate Observatory, urged the United States Tuesday not to reach any climate deal with Bolsonaro's government without including civil society groups, scientists and the private sector.

"It is not sensible to expect any solutions for the Amazon to stem from closed-door meetings with its worst enemy," it said.

© 2021 AFP

Jovan Divjak, defender of Sarajevo, dies aged 84

Issued on: 08/04/2021

Divjak was one of very few ethnic Serbs to fight on the side of the 

Bosnian army ELVIS BARUKCIC AFP

Sarajevo (AFP)

Former Bosnian army general Jovan Divjak, who defended Sarajevo during an infamous 44-month siege, died on Thursday in the Bosnian capital aged 84, his organisation said.

Divjak was one of the very few ethnic Serbs to fight for the Bosnian army during the devastating 1990s inter-communal conflict that ripped the former Yugoslavia apart.

Champion of a multi-ethnic Bosnia, Divjak died after a "long illness", his organisation said.


When the conflict broke out in Sarajevo in April 1992, Divjak, a retired Yugoslav army officer, was a member of Bosnia's territorial defence forces.

He immediately joined the ranks of those defending Sarajevo, which was besieged for nearly four years.

At least 10,000 residents of the city were killed during the war.

"It was natural to be with those who were attacked, who did not have weapons.", Divjak told AFP in 2017, rejecting the "good Serb" label.

"The idea of a multi-ethnic Bosnian army had won me over," he added.

However, disappointed by the grandiose funeral organised after the conflict for a Sarajevo thug suspected of having summarily executed Serbs, he renounced his rank of general in 1999.

After that, Divjak devoted himself entirely to his association, which granted thousands of scholarships to orphans and also to children from poor families.

He was awarded the Legion of Honour by France in 2001 for "his civic sense, his refusal of prejudice and ethnic discrimination".

To his death, Divjak remained fiercely anti-nationalist. His role in the war was badly viewed by most Bosnian Serbs who considered him a "traitor".

Serbia demanded Divjak's extradition over a 1992 attack on a retreating Yugoslav army convoy in Sarajevo.

The ex-general denied the allegations and insisted that he ordered the shooting to stop, a claim that seems to be backed up by television footage from the time.

© 2021 AFP

Mind blown: Modern brains evolved much more recently than thought

Issued on:  08/04/2021 

This photo from the University of Zurich shows skulls of early homo from Dmanisi, Georgia (specimen D4500, L) and Sangiran, Indonesia (specimen S17, R) Handout University of Zurich/AFP

Washington (AFP)

Modern brains are younger than originally thought, possibly developing as recently as 1.5 million years ago, according to a study published Thursday -- after the earliest humans had already begun walking on two feet and had even started fanning out from Africa.

Our first ancestors from the genus Homo emerged on the continent about 2.5 million years ago with primitive ape-like brains about half the size of those seen in today's humans.

Scientists have been trying to solve a mystery for as long as our origin story has been known: Exactly when and where did the brain evolve into something that made us human?

"People had thought that these human-like brains evolved actually at the very beginning of the genus Homo, so about 2.5 million years ago," paleoanthropologist Christoph Zollikofer, a co-author of the study published in the journal Science, told AFP.

Zollikofer and lead study author Marcia Ponce de Leon examined skull fossils from Africa, Georgia and the Indonesian island of Java, however, and discovered the evolution actually took place much later, between 1.7 and 1.5 million years ago.

Since brains themselves do not fossilize, the only way to observe their evolution is to study the marks they leave inside the skull.

The scientists created virtual images -- known as an endocasts -- of what had filled the skulls long ago.

In humans, the Broca area -- part of the frontal lobe linked to speech production -- is much bigger than the corresponding zone in other great apes, said Zollikofer, of the University of Zurich.

The expansion of an area results in the shifting of everything behind it. "This backward shift can be seen on the fossil endocasts, when we track imprints of the brain fissures," Zollikofer said.

- 'Surprise' -

By studying skulls from Africa, the researchers were able to determine that the oldest ones -- dating back more than 1.7 million years -- actually had a frontal lobe characteristic of great apes.

"This first result was a big surprise," said Zollikofer.

It signified that the genus Homo "started with bipedalism," or walking on two legs, and that the evolution of the brain had nothing to do with the fact of already being bipedal.

"Now we know that in our long evolutionary history... the first representatives of our genus Homo were just terrestrial bipeds, with ape-like brains," the paleoanthropologist said.

However, the youngest African fossils, dating back 1.5 million years, showed characteristics of modern human brains.

This signified that the evolution of the brain took place between the two dates, in Africa, according to the study.

The conclusion is backed up by the fact that more complex tools appeared during this same period, called Acheulean tools, which have two symmetrical faces.

"This is not random coincidence," said Zollikofer, "because we know those brain areas that get expanded in this time period are those that are used for complex manipulative tasks like tool-making."

- Two migrations from Africa -

The second surprising result of the study comes from observations of five skull fossils found in present-day Georgia, dating back between 1.8 and 1.7 million years.

The particularly well-preserved specimens proved to be primitive brains.

"People thought you need a big modern brain to disperse out of Africa," said Zollikofer. "We can show these brains are not big, and they are not modern, and still people have been able to leave Africa."

Meanwhile, fossils from Java, the youngest specimens in the study, showed modern brain characteristics. The researchers therefore believe that there was a second migration out of Africa.

"So, you have a spray first of primitive-brained people, then things evolve to a modern brain in Africa, and these people sprayed again," explained Zollikofer.

"It's not a new hypothesis... but there was no clear evidence. And now for the first time, we have real fossil evidence."