Lebanon's Lokman Slim's widow: 'His work lives on in all of us'

German filmmaker Monika Borgmann, widow of slain Lebanese activist Lokman Slim, is continuing the work they began together in Lebanon.




Lokman Slim und Monika Borgmann met in 2001

Dozens of files and 8mm films are piled up on a big wooden table at an archive in Beirut, the only one documenting Lebanon's recent past that is accessible to the public. The walls are covered with photos of the city devastated in the civil war. The atmosphere is busy.

Monika Borgmann is seated on a leather sofa. She drinks coffee and smokes as she discusses the ongoing economic crisis and the protests against Lebanon's corrupt and incompetent politicians: "We're angry and the work here is our driving force," she explains.

Those in power, meanwhile, seem incapable of creating new opportunities in a country that is getting poorer and poorer at an alarming rate and yet was known as the "Switzerland of the Middle East" not all that long ago.

Many people have lost hope in the future. Borgmann is a German filmmaker who found first her vocation and then her husband in Lebanon. She was widowed in February when Lokman Slim, a famous Lebanese intellectual and courageous critic of the powerful Shia militant group Hezbollah, was killed.

Though she is composed, tears well up when she talks about her late husband. "He was executed," she says. "It was a political murder. They shot my husband with six bullets."

Borgmann first came to Lebanon in the mid-1980s. She was spending a year in Syria as a student of Islamic Studies and had flown from Damascus to Beirut for New Year's Eve. Lebanon was 10 years into the civil war and the land route was too dangerous. "Something about the country had always fascinated me," she recalls.

Exploring the past

She started working as a freelance journalist from Beirut and later from Cairo, Egypt. Her first radio feature was about daily life in wartime Beirut. She was intrigued by questions such as: "How does one become a perpetrator, a killer?" - questions that had obsessed her during her youth in Germany, when she and her generation started wondering about the responsibility and complicity of their parents during the Nazi era.

After the Lebanese civil war ended in 1990, Borgmann started interviewing snipers and later mass murderers. In 2001 she was conducting research for a documentary about the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Beirut when a friend introduced her to Lokman Slim because they were both interested in "morbid" themes, he had joked.

They started living and working together. Their first joint project was the documentary about the massacre. It featured six of the Christian Phalange militia who were involved in the killing of thousands of civilians over a period of three days. In it, they talked openly about how they had tortured and murdered people.

The 2005 documentary 'Massaker' was about the perpetrators of the massacres at Sabra and Shatila

"Lokman and I complemented each other," explains Borgmann. They had a common mission to explore and process the past, even if neither of them was able to find a satisfactory answer to the question of why somebody becomes a murderer.

They often faced obstacles in their research. There was no national archive containing detailed eyewitness accounts and historical documents pertaining to the civil war which lasted 15 years. Education was also limited. Even though people knew what had happened during the war, accounts of what had happened varied widely among the population. And in schools, history lessons tended to stop in 1943 with Lebanon's independence.

'We never feared for our lives'

So Borgmann and Slim decided to set up their own archive and education center, in the middle of Dahiye, a southern suburb of Beirut, which is now a stronghold of Hezbollah. They wanted their Umam research center to link the past to the present.

Since 2005, the center has worked to close the gaps in collective memory. It is supported by Germany's ifa organization for international cultural relations, as well as the German Foreign Ministry and the Swiss Embassy. Workshops, exhibitions and debates with activists, civilians, diplomats and people of different religions and confessions as well as others interested in history and cultural memory are organized here, allowing for unique opportunities for exchange.

But the couple's work also made them enemies. Borgmann says that the threats against her and her husband increased when the Syrian army retreated from Lebanon in 2005. "Each time something important happened in the country, the pressure on us grew," she said. "But we never feared for our lives."

Despite their activism, Borgmann says she and her late husband had never feared for their lives

When Lokman Slim was found dead in his car on February 4, 2021, many wondered: "Why now?"

Borgmann can only guess: "Maybe it was his research into the explosion in the port of Beirut in August 2020." He had told journalists just after the blast that he thought only a small fraction of the ammonium nitrate stash had exploded and speculated that the rest had gone to Iraq or Syria. This theory might well have been seen as an accusation by certain members of Lebanon's divided society.

Crossing a red line

Borgmann says that his murder overstepped a red line. Though nobody ever took responsibility, an eloquent critic of Hezbollah and its allies had been silenced.

The son of a Shiite lawyer and Christian mother, Lokman had grown up in southern Beirut and continued to live there with Borgmann despite the influence of the Hezbollah, whom he never shied away from criticizing. Describing himself as a Shiite atheist, he thought that Hezbollah, which emerged in opposition to Israeli occupation in the 1980s, is manipulated from afar by Iran.

Watch video 11:15 Hezbollah: The world's most powerful militant group?

Borgmann says that today, Hezbollah — a combination of militia, political party, social organization and military entity — needs conflict with Israel to justify its existence. But this justification could vanish in a country that is facing its worst economic crisis since the outbreak of the civil war in 1975. Hyperinflation is causing the Lebanese lira to fall by the hour. Most of the population has lost faith in politicians, whether they belong to pro-Western factions or Hezbollah.

There have been protests across Lebanon as inflation soars

In October 2019, mass protests erupted on the streets. Activists and intellectuals, including Borgmann and Slim, met to discuss the situation and possible solutions. In December, a discussion flared up when the couple talked about the idea of neutrality in foreign policy and about finding regional solutions by involving neighbors, including Israel, with which Lebanon is still officially at war. Many Hezbollah supporters felt provoked and accused them of Zionism. They left the premises under police protection.

Borgmann takes another cigarette from her pack, lights it, continues to talk. She talks passionately about her politics, art and husband. "We worked and lived together for 20 years. They may have murdered Lokman, but his work lives on in all of us here."

• Date 11.04.2021
• Author Lea Bartels

This article was translated from German.

COVID: Which countries still have no vaccines?

The coronavirus vaccine campaign in Gibraltar is already over and yet it hasn't even started in many other countries. What’s the reason for that — and could the situation be about to change?



Kenya has received some delivieries of vaccine, but Africa is largely undersupplied


More than 600 million vaccinations have taken place worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). But while close to 100% of Gibraltar's population, for instance, have already been vaccinated, countries like Nicaragua are still waiting to receive their first doses of vaccine. WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus referred to the situation on Tuesday as a "farce." He called for global production to be cranked up and vaccines to be fairly distributed to tackle the acute phase of the pandemic.

On the global vaccination map, there is still a whole swath of African countries awaiting supplies — from Libya to Madagascar. Those countries do not even feature in the WHO's vaccination statistics. The picture is similar in Central Asia, as well as in individual countries such as North Korea, Cuba, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. That does not, however, necessarily mean that the respective countries have received absolutely no shots up to now. Bosnia is due to receive its first big, direct delivery at the end of May, but it has already received some vaccines donated by neighboring Serbia.
Zero vaccine doses for 10 African countries

"With regard to Africa, we have the good news that 44 countries have already received vaccine supplies. But, conversely, this also means, of course, that 10 countries have received no vaccines up to now," says Clemens Schwanhold, political officer at the nongovernmental organization ONE.

Madagascar, Burundi and Eritrea are among those countries whose governments believed that the virus could be fought by other means. Tanzania, in the meantime, has undergone a change of heart after the sudden death of coronavirus skeptic President John Magufuli following unconfirmed rumors of a COVID infection. Schwanhold believes the government led by Magufuli's successor, President Samia Suluhu Hassan, is likely to order vaccine supplies in the next few weeks. "Then it would still take a few months, ideally a few weeks, until anything arrives. In the second half of the year, something could be possible."

COVAX — A good idea that packs little punch?

In the interests of global health, we need to create herd immunity against the new coronavirus, including among people living in the remotest corners of the Earth. As long as the virus keeps on encountering lots of new hosts it can continue mutating and, at some point, it is possible that variants will develop that can evade all existing vaccines. "None of us is safe until we all are safe" is a common refrain about COVID-19 — and it is the idea behind the COVAX program to provide global access to vaccination. The member states of the WHO have been divided into two groups. One is made up of 98 more affluent countries, which are funding subsidized or free vaccine supplies for the 92 poorer ones. Germany is one of the COVAX program's biggest benefactors, providing almost €1 billion ($1.19 billion) in funding.

"The problem is that there are not many more vaccine doses available because the EU and the United States have already secured the large majority of them," says Sonja Weinreich, who is in charge of health issues at Brot für die Welt (Bread for the World), a relief agency run by the Protestant churches in Germany. "So this mechanism hasnt been able to properly take hold because this solidarity just doesn't exist."
Would waiving vaccine patents help?

A large coalition of aid organizations and other groups have called for the waiving of COVID vaccine patents to help tackle this problem. "It would allow the poorer countries — or all the companies across the world — that are able to produce vaccines to do just that. That would simply have to go hand in hand with the relevant technology transfer," Weinreich tells DW.

Brot für die Welt is one of the organizations behind this demand. One argument is, she says, that the vaccines were partially developed and produced with public funds: "It is not acceptable for something to be publicly funded and then the profits from it privatized."

Ghana did not receive any vaccines until late February

The pharmaceutical industry, on the other hand, argues that the patents are not the sticking point. Nathalie Moll, director general of the industry lobby group the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), told DW at the end of March: "If one company contacts another to expand vaccine production, a lot of technical know-how has to be transferred, so that the vaccines can be produced safely and efficiently in the required amounts. This is about much more than intellectual property." She said that 250 licenses had already been distributed worldwide to expand production capacity.

In the opinion of Clemens Schwanhold from ONE, such licenses are a positive step forward. Batches of AstraZeneca destined for African states are, for example, largely being produced by the Serum Institute of India, the world's biggest vaccine factory. It is questionable, he says, whether major production capacities remain that could be swiftly integrated into the global vaccine rollout: "If they first had to be built and then approved, it would take months, maybe even years," Schwanhold tells DW.

COVAX has been delivering to the Palestinian territories

Is COVAX‘s pledge realistic?

Yet it is India of all places — which is so vital for world vaccine supplies — that has recently restricted the export of vaccines. The government wants to keep the supplies in India, which is currently seeing record levels of infection. The United States also has exported practically no vaccines at all, while the European Union has allowed supplies to be sent to poorer countries up to now.

Nevertheless, both Sonja Weinreich and Clemens Schwanhold are optimistic that the COVAX program's main goal can be achieved. Its aim is to vaccinate at least 20% of the population of all 92 beneficiary countries by the end of 2021, including high-risk groups and medical personnel. "I think that is feasible," says Weinreich. "In Europe, the vaccination rollout is beginning to pick up speed and a lot more vaccines should be available," she adds.

The EU has ordered more than four vaccine shots per capita from a number of manufacturers, even though only two at the most are required. Canada has ordered more than eight. Clemens Schwanhold explains that liability issues still need to be resolved before such excess vaccine supplies can be passed on to countries in need. Manufacturers have passed their liability on to most of the states purchasing their products because of the extremely short development turnaround time. "And it is understandable that the EU does not want to be liable for any potential claims if it passes on vaccine doses."

He says that the success of the COVAX pledge depends on "all participants pulling together when it comes to funding and to the provision of raw materials." The good thing, says Schwanhold, is that: "COVAX does not have to do all this alone." The African Union has also ordered significantly more than 500 million vaccine doses, he says: "I am relatively confident that we will have vaccinated far more than 20% by the end of this year."

• Date 11.04.2021
• Author David Ehl

This article has been translated from German.

Bill Gates buys big on a farmland shopping spree

The third-richest man on the planet, Bill Gates, is also one of the largest private owners of farmland in the US. 

He is known for supporting environmental innovation, but his farming plans have been secretive until now.


Melinda Gates and Bill Gates speak during 'One World: Together At Home' in April 2020

In January, US magazine The Land Report — which tracks land transactions and produces an annual list of the 100 biggest US landowners — revealed that Bill and Melinda Gates have one of the largest portfolios of private farmland in the US, with assets totaling more than $690 million (€590 million).

The Land Report gives top spot to Liberty Media Chair John Malone, who owns 2.2 million acres (8,094 square kilometers) of ranches and forests. CNN founder Ted Turner ranked third with 2 million acres of ranch land, while Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is in 25th spot with ownership of 420,000 acres, mainly in west Texas. Gates is in 49th spot but rising.

The magazine editor, Eric O’Keefe, was researching a purchase of 14,500 acres of prime Washington State farmland and found that the buyer was a small company in Louisiana, acting on behalf of Cascade Investments, the investment firm that manages most of the huge fortune belonging to Gates.

Gates’ holdings, it turns out, include large tracts in Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, California and a dozen other states. With the Washington State acreage and other recent additions to his portfolio, O’Keefe calculated that Gates owns at least 242,000 acres of American farmland, the largest holdings in Louisiana (69,071 acres), Arkansas (47,927 acres), and Arizona (25,750 acres).

Life on US farms has often been hard

Follow the money

Most things Gates gets involved with have been appropriated by one conspiracy theory or another, and this is no different. Some argue that Gates is buying up land to indulge in futuristic experiments in urban dwelling or the creation of new food.

But the reason for the move may in fact be more prosaic: It’s a good investment, with low volatility, not closely tied to the stock market and can be deployed as an inflationary hedge.

Gates has spent years diversifying his $129 billion fortune through Cascade Investments. Michael Larson runs the Washington-based asset manager, as well as supervising the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s $50 billion endowment. "The arrangement is simple," The Wall Street Journal wrote in a 2014 profile. "Mr. Larson makes money, and Mr. Gates gives it away."

"Land has been an attractive investment for many years, producing dependable returns for investors and owners over a long cycle, with a primary focus on delivering food, fiber and fuel to a resource-hungry world," Emily Norton, director of Rural Research at real estate firm Savills, told DW.

"Investors are now showing appetite for the next paradigm of economic thinking, where land is managed in a way to give back as much (if not more) than we take from it," she adds.

Climate mitigation is another key motivation, with investors plowing money into an asset class where long-term gains from productivity increases are expected as population growth pushes up demand for more and higher quality food.

The farmland sector has been heating up in the wake of the news. The farmland real estate investment trust (REIT) Farmland Partners, which owns 156,500 acres in 16 US states, has seen its traded value more than double since November and is trading near an all-time high since its 2014 IPO. Gladstone Land, another farmland REIT that owns 127 farms comprised of 94,000 acres, trades at an all-time high.

Farmland in the area of Washington State where Gates made his latest purchase is valuable, with prices between $10,000 and $15,000 per acre, above the state average of about $2,000. Globally, the Savills Global Farmland Index indicates an 11% compound annual growth rate from 2002 to 2019. Farmland funds raised $5.7 billion in 2019 before inflows fell to $2 billion in 2020, according to Preqin data.

"Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, has an alter ego," O’Keefe wrote: "Farmer Bill, the guy who owns more farmland than anyone else in America." Gates — who stepped down from day-to-day involvement Microsoft in 2008 — has long been looking for ways to help the world’s poorest and to address the planet’s environmental challenges.
Not related to climate change

When asked during a discussion on Reddit why he’s buying up so much farmland, Gates said it wasn't connected to climate change, adding that seed science and biofuel development were the major drivers of the acquisitions.

"The agriculture sector is important. With more productive seeds we can avoid deforestation and help Africa deal with the climate difficulty they already face. It is unclear how cheap biofuels can be, but if they are cheap it can solve the aviation and truck emissions," he wrote.

But the decision, he said, came from his investment group. Cascade Investment is also is a shareholder in the plant-based protein companies Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods as well as farming equipment manufacturer John Deere.

Good for the goose, good for the gander?

In January, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced it was creating a nonprofit entity called Gates Ag One that it said would "speed up efforts to provide smallholder farmers in developing countries, many of whom are women, with access to the affordable tools and innovations they need to sustainably improve crop productivity and adapt to the effects of climate change."

But the process of consolidation of land ownership in the US appears to be moving in the opposite direction. Many farmers lease at least some of the land they cultivate. Very large farms, which number almost 200,000, produce 63% of agricultural products in the US, but there are 1.9 million small family farms.

According to Bruce Sherrick, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, about 60% of row-crop farmland in the Midwest is leased. The landowners include investors like Gates. Although the global farmland market is still highly fragmented, investment by financial institutions and wealthy individuals has risen since the financial crisis.

Others suggest Gates’ move is also motivated by the need to buy carbon neutrality across his portfolio.

Investment firms argue the farmlands will meet carbon-neutral targets for sustainable investment portfolios while also increasing agricultural productivity and revenue.

Analysts expect measures of carbon emissions and biodiversity to become more formalized, with the possible introduction of new carbon taxes.

"Farmland offers an excellent means to diversify a tech-heavy portfolio," O’Keefe told Crosscut. "It’s a sound counterbalance with proven rates of return. In addition, given the scale of Bill Gates’ investments, he has ample opportunity to build a team of superior agricultural managers, which is precisely what one sees at Gates’ farmland firm, Cottonwood Ag Management."

On the right is a plant-based burger containing wheat protein, coconut oil and potato protein

On the brighter side

American agriculture is being transformed as farmers employ new technologies and Big Data to help them manage their crops.

That can mean better yields with decreased use of fertilizers and pesticides. With proper techniques, the carbon from decaying plant matter can be kept safely in the soil rather than entering the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide.

 UK

MP says Earth is ‘overpopulated’ and calls for rich people to be ‘abolished’

 Jordan King Wednesday 14 Apr 2021 METRO UK

\Claudia Webbe said the ‘rich should be abolished’ despite being in the top 1% herself (Pictures: Getty, Twitter/ClaudiaWebbe, PA SHE IS NOT, SHE EARNS $100,000

A Labour MP has said the world should ‘abolish the rich’ to tackle overpopulation and climate change.

  The Cambridge Sustainability Commission on Scaling Behaviour Change recently published a new report revealing that the UK’s richest 1% produce double the combined carbon emissions of the world’s poorest 50%.  

The study concluded that people, particularly society’s richest, need to change their lifestyles. 

 Claudia Webbe, who currently represents Leicester East and previously served as a cabinet member for energy, environment and transport, responded to the report on Twitter. 

She tweeted: ‘Earth is overpopulated; there are too many rich people. To solve the climate crisis; the rich must be abolished.’ 

 In a series of tweets she referenced some statistics from the 73-page document, including that the richest 10% of the world produces 52% of all consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions.  Meanwhile, the poorest 50% are responsible for just 7% of all consumption-based greenhouse gas emissions. 

Read more https://metro.co.uk/2021/04/14/mp-says-earth-is-overpopulated-and-rich-should-be-abolished-14411440/?ito=newsnow-feed?ito=cbshare

Forbes: A new billionaire every 17 hours

The coronavirus pandemic didn't hurt the market of the superrich. Indeed, a new record was reached in April 2021, with 493 new billionaires worldwide. At least 40 of them made it because of COVID-19-related products. 


Kim Kardashian West has made money with beauty and shapewear products

Though the pandemic hit the world economy hard in many places, this did not apply to the richest of the rich: Jeff Bezos is again the richest man on Earth, after a back-and-forth race last year with Elon Musk, who is in second place. With nearly 500 new billionaires in 2021, there is now a total of 2,755 people worldwide with a net worth of at least $1 billion (€840 million), according to Forbes. 

Jeff Bezos has a net worth of $177 billion

 

Most of the newly minted billionaires — 205 to be exact — come from China, the country with the most new billionaires and second-most billionaires overall.  

Five of China's new billionaires came to their riches through vaping products: Chen Zhiping and Xiong Shaoming, the co-founders of Smoore International, both joined the billionaire list over the past 12 months, as did the co-founders of RLX Technology, David Jiang, Wen Yilong and Kate Wang, the CEO of the company. At 37, Wang is one of the youngest self-made billionaire women.  

According to Forbes, all of China's vaping billionaires have a higher individual net worth than Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, who became a billionaire last year, with a net worth of $1.3 billion. Joining him from the US is Kim Kardashian West, as well as 96 other new American billionaires. While China surpassed the US in terms of new billionaires in 2021, the United States is still home to the most billionaires overall.  

Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, is one of 724 billionaires in the United States
Germany: No. 4 in the world 

In Germany, a total of 136 people are worth more than $1 billion; 29 joined the ranks during the past year. This makes Germany No. 4 worldwide when it comes to the number of billionaires. 

Most notably, Germany has one of the new billionaires who made the 10-digit cut with products related to COVID-19. As of April 2021, Ugur Sahin is worth $4 billion. Sahin is the co-founder and CEO of BioNTech — the company that developed the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine to fight the coronavirus. As a scientist, Sahin was vital in creating the vaccine. 

Ugur Sahin, together with his wife Özlem Türeci, co-founded BioNTech in 2008

The world's youngest billionaire, Kevin David Lehman, also lives in Germany. At only 18, Lehman is worth $3.3 billion — after inheriting his father's shares of the German drugstore company dm-drogerie markt. His father invested in the company in 1974, transferring his 50% stake to his son in 2017.  

The Wesjohann brothers also made it onto the list of new billionaires: Erich Wesjohann is the chairman of the EW Group, the largest poultry breeding company in the world. His brother, Paul-Heinz, also joined the list of billionaires this year. He is chairman of PHW Group, which owns Germany's largest poultry processor. Both companies used to make up the family chicken company that was split up in 1999.  

COVID-19 riches 

Though the pandemic led to high unemployment rates across the world, it also helped increase the number of billionaires. According to Forbes, at least 40 people became billionaires because they worked with some product related to COVID-19.

Besides Germany's Sahin, the list of those billionaires includes the Italian Sergio Stevanto, who is chairman emeritus of the Stevanto Group, which is to supply 100 million glass vials for COVID-19 vaccines. Stephane Bancel, the CEO of Moderna, which also produced a COVID-19 vaccine, is part of the class of 2021 Forbes billionaires.



ELON MUSK SURPASSES JEFF BEZOS TO BECOME WORLD'S RICHEST PERSON

Cyclone damages Australian towns and cuts power to 31,500

Such powerful cyclones are rare in subtropical Australia.


4/12/2021
PERTH, Australia — A destructive cyclone has damaged several towns on Australia's western coast, shattering windows, snapping trees and knocking out power. There have been no reports of serious injuries.

 Provided by The Canadian Press

Tropical Cyclone Seroja crossed the Western Australia state coast south of the tourist town of Kalbarri with winds gusting up to 170 kph (106 mph) shortly after dark Sunday, officials said Monday.

Around 70% of buildings in Kalbarri, a town of 1,400 people 580 kilometres (360 miles) north of the state capital Perth, had been damaged, Department of Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner Darren Klemm said.

About 30% of that damage was “significant,” Klemm said.

Other coastal towns sustained less damage. Government utility Western Power reported 31,500 customers had lost power.

Such powerful cyclones are rare in subtropical Australia.

Wind gusts recorded in Kalbarri and nearby areas were likely to have been the “strongest in more than 50 years,” Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology said in a statement.

The last comparable cyclone in the region struck in 1956. It brought 140 kph (87 mph) gusts to the port town of Geraldton, 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Kalbarri, where there was no weather station at the time.

Cyclone Seroja caused flooding and landslides that killed at least 174 people and left 48 missing in Indonesia and East Timor last week.

The damage was worse in some parts of Kalbarri than others, but the whole town had been impacted, local State Emergency Service manager Steve Cable said.

Powerlines and trees were toppled, homes lost roofs and streets were strewn with debris.

“Some of the older buildings didn’t stand up very well. But even some of the modern buildings, they just couldn’t hold it,” Cable said.

“Large trees with quite substantial limbs just snapped off like carrots,” he added.

Debbie Major weathered the storm in a room of a Kalbarri tourist trailer park that she manages, clutching a door to prevent it blowing open as broken tree limbs shattered windows.

“I’ve never experienced anything in my life that we experienced last night,” Major said. ”It was terrifying.”

Cyclone Seroja lost power and was downgraded to a tropical low before blowing out to sea near Esperance on Monday.

The Associated Press

N.B. man worries for family riding out volcanic eruption on Caribbean island
Aidan Cox

CBC 4/14/2021

The University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre The eruption of St. Vincent's La Soufrière has Murray Hillocks worried for friends and family of his living on the island. He's originally from the Caribbean island and moved to New Brunswick in 2008.

The eruption of a volcano on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent has a New Brunswick man worried for the safety of family members who live in the country.

After weeks of seismic activity, La Soufrière, a volcano on the northern end of St. Vincent, erupted last Friday for the first time since 1979, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people away from the immediate area of the volcano, and blanketing much of the island in a thick layer of ash.

Murray Hillocks, who moved from the island to New Brunswick in 2008, said it's been an emotional time for him knowing the volcano is erupting while he's in Fredericton and unable to be close to his family.

"Just imagine, like, the day turn to night instantly just because of [the volcano] blowing off, and, like, dark clouds basically turning the skies to night," Hillocks said.

"I was amazed and shocked, and I never thought I would live to see the volcano erupt … because we've been living with it forever, and we never really think anything of it. We never think that our generation will be going through this."

His family, who live in the eastern town of Colonarie, are in what the country's National Emergency Management Organization has designated as part of the yellow zone of risk from the volcano's eruption.

While they're out of immediate danger of lava and pyroclastic flows, Hillocks said, their region has been blanketed in thick ash, making it difficult to breathe. The ash and falling rocks have also caved in the roofs of homes in the area, he said.

"Like now, I'm more concerned about food and fresh water and stuff, but on the whole over the volcano, like, I'm worried that, like, if it actually blows ... and it gets to the point where there's toxic gas flowing, then that could be, like, very dangerous."
More eruptions expected over coming days

The eruption has turned into an ongoing event, with the University of the West Indies Seismic Research Centre reporting three separate explosive eruptions from the volcano on Friday, followed by another explosive eruption Tuesday morning. There have also been reports of "pyroclastic density currents," which result in extremely hot flows of ash and debris down the sides of the volcano.

"Explosions and accompanying ash fall, of similar or larger magnitude, are likely to continue to occur over the next few days impacting St. Vincent and neighbouring islands," the centre said in a social media update Tuesday.

Hillocks said he's been getting frequent updates from his family, and they have been safe and unharmed by the falling ash.

Access to water and food is becoming uncertain, however, and he's trying to help them purchase supplies.

"So as of now, all I can do is hope and pray that this doesn't get worse, but overall, yes, I'm worried about their safety."

Sask. emissions remain Canada's highest per capita: new data

Arthur White-Crummey 

POSTMEDIA 4/14/2021

Saskatchewan’s greenhouse gas emissions fell by a single megatonne in 2019, as the province remained an outsized contributor to Canada’s stubbornly high totals.

© Provided by Leader Post Emissions from the refinery rise into the sky at dusk on a winter evening.

The province’s carbon dioxide equivalent emissions fell from 76 megatonnes in 2018 to 75 megatonnes in 2019, according to Canada’s updated emissions inventory released this month. That’s 10.3 per cent of Canada’s total of 730 megatonnes, despite the fact that Saskatchewan makes up just three per cent of the national population. Saskatchewan has the highest per capita emissions of any province, slightly outdoing Alberta.

A megatonne is a million tonnes. Emissions are reported in relation to carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas, making allowance for the higher emissions intensity of other greenhouse gases.

As part of the 2015 Paris Agreement, Canada has committed to reduce its emissions by 30 per cent compared to 2005 levels by 2030. But the 2019 data showed that the national total is down a mere one per cent over 14 years.

Most regions have headed in the right direction, with some already meeting the target. But steady or rising emissions elsewhere — especially in Saskatchewan and Alberta — have undone those positive trends. As of 2019, Saskatchewan’s emissions were 10 per cent above 2005 levels.

During a brief conversation in the hallways of the Saskatchewan Legislative Building, Premier Scott Moe remarked that comparing Saskatchewan’s emissions to its population is a poor gauge of progress. Economic output is a more significant metric. He noted that Saskatchewan’s emissions declined by a megatonne even amid strong exports.

However, exports fell by three per cent in 2019 in the face of barriers in China, though they increased the following year. The economy shrank slightly in 2019, by 0.8 per cent, according to Statistics Canada data using basic prices .

NDP Leader Ryan Meili accused the Saskatchewan Party government of taking “zero action on climate change.” In his view, explaining away high emissions by appeal to economic growth misses the point.

“The fact of the matter is the planet doesn’t care,” said Meili.

“We need to make the change,” he added. “This is a world crisis. Just saying, ‘It’s OK because we got richer’ isn’t a particularly good argument when you’re talking to the countries around the world that are underwater.”

But Environment Minister Warren Kaeding said the province’s climate plan, Prairie Resilience, is working despite flatlining emissions since it was released in 2017. He said several key sectors, including oil and gas, have improved their emissions performance in light of methane regulations in the plan.

“Just now, we’re starting to really gain momentum and really start working on our progress,” he said, laying special emphasis on SaskPower’s renewable energy targets that seek to reduce electricity emissions by 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

The province has also devoted significant attention to non-emitting small-modular nuclear reactors, and Moe is expected to join other premiers to release a feasibility study on the technology Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Moe appeared virtually before a U.S. congressional committee on Tuesday to argue for the Keystone XL pipeline project, which President Joe Biden cancelled upon assuming office. Moe called it a “shortsighted decision.”

He noted that Saskatchewan is aiming to increase its oil exports to 600,000 barrels per year. He said cancelling Keystone XL will “have negative consequences for our environment.” The premier argued that Saskatchewan’s oil industry has a strong environmental record, especially compared to alternatives like Russia.

“We’re told that the pipeline should not proceed for environmental reasons and this is to support the fight against climate change. But ladies and gentlemen, oil can and most certainly will get to market somehow,” he said. “It will just go by a different route.”

Saskatchewan’s economy remains centred on resource industries like the oil and gas sector, which was responsible for about 26 per cent of Canada’s total emissions in 2019. Agriculture, another provincial mainstay, contributes another 10 per cent of the national total.

Transportation is the second most emissions-intensive sector in Canada at 25 per cent.

Kaeding acknowledged last week that the provincial government has no specific policies targeting transportation emissions in its climate plan .

Electricity generation accounts for a bit more than eight per cent of emissions in Canada. Compared to other provinces, Saskatchewan is still heavily reliant on coal, which emits more carbon dioxide per unit of energy than any other fuel commonly in use.

Climate scientists are virtually unanimous in concluding that emissions from human activities are causing a gradual but eventually catastrophic warming of the planet. Carbon dioxide levels have risen higher than at any time in the past 800,000 years.

The warming is expected to continue as more gas is emitted, leading to rising sea levels, more extreme weather, worsened agricultural production and extinctions.

awhite-crummey@postmedia.com

COVID: A game changer for illegal home care work in Germany?

It's estimated that more than 600,000 care workers are illegally employed in Germany. Almost all are from Eastern Europe; almost all are women. 

A proposed reform could massively improve their working conditions

Live-in care workers are often on call 24 hours a day

No German contract, no German health insurance. Cash in hand, though not much of it. Nearly three-quarters of a million women — mostly from Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria — provide care for elderly Germans, in whose homes they live. Without these women, there would be a care crisis. Still, officially, they don't exist.

It's estimated that 90% of live-in care work is undertaken illegally in Germany. The country's growing elderly population increasingly prefers to stay at home: Three-quarters of the approximately 4.1 million people requiring daily care do so. As such, there has been a boom in demand for domestic care that successive governments have — up to now — failed to regulate. Black-market agencies continue to undercut legal ones by avoiding social security contributions and ignoring the minimum wage.

Loopholes in German law mean that the employment model of working for someone in whose house you also live has long gone unrecognized, creating a "gray area." Yet employing someone without a contract and without contributing to social security "is a crime," emphasized lawyer Frederic Seebohm, who is head of a German professional association for live-in care workers.

Watch video 02:46 Migrant carer sues German employer for back pay

The estimated 300,000 families — there are no official figures — who employ care workers within this "gray area" overwhelmingly understand that they are breaking the law, he said.

Changing the rules of the game

Care reform recently announced by German Health Minister Jens Spahn, however, "could be a game changer," said Seebohm. Spahn laid out the broad guidelines for the reform in October 2020, saying that "care is the biggest social challenge of the decade."

While the plan has yet to be presented in parliament, proposals in the working draft would equate to a recognition that live-in care is a widespread reality. And they would be a step toward regulating the sector, even if the legal basis for the work needs further fleshing out.

Though many German seniors live in care facilities, an increasing number are preferring to stay in their own home

Austria is far ahead of Germany in terms of regulating the domestic care sector. The country allows live-in care workers to declare themselves as self-employed. Such is the case for Anna Tadrzak, a 50-year-old care worker from Poland, who finds work through the Vienna-based agency Caritas rundum betreut. She works shifts of two to four weeks, and then takes a break for the same amount of time.
Austria's 'good system'

It's a good system, she said, because care work in practice involves being on call 24 hours a day. "When the client calls for you five times a night, then you attend to them five times a night. Every day is different," said Tadrzak. The nature and scope of the work also vary with families' needs and expectations. "Clients don't just want carers; they want cooks, cleaners and shoppers. Sometimes you give an inch and they take a yard — and you can end up without any privacy."

The inherent difficulty in setting boundaries in terms of time and tasks means that, without regulation, care workers are left exposed to exploitation in Germany. The business model of black-market agencies is dependent on the proximity of countries with much lower average incomes, yet whose citizens benefit from freedom of movement within the EU. Agencies based in Germany form partnerships with organizations in Eastern Europe that do the recruiting for them, and then place care workers with German families without registering them with the local municipality, arranging for health insurance or checking their qualifications.
From invisible to critical workers

The COVID crisis exposed an urgent need to bring care work out of the shadows, said Frederic Seebohm. The abrupt closure of national borders during the lockdown in spring 2020 made it difficult for "non-essential workers" — including those without German citizenship or residency — to return to the country. This meant that carers had to be quickly recognized as critical workers — somewhat paradoxically, given that the state has long ignored the informally engaged majority altogether.

It also became imperative for care workers to have access to the German health system. Not only might they require medical treatment if they themselves were to fall ill with COVID-19 — without adequate testing and access to vaccination, they would risk infecting the particularly vulnerable people for whom they care.

Watch video02:45 Germany faces a care crisis

The urgency of addressing the care sector in the coronavirus crisis is barely the tip of the iceberg, however. Demand for care workers in both Germany and Austria is vastly outstripping supply. "In Austria, there will be a shortage of between 80,000 and 100,000 care workers by 2030," said Stefanie Zollner-Rieder, a specialist at Caritas, the agency with which Anne Tadrzak works. "The Austrian model works well as far as it goes — but coronavirus has shown us that it needs to be made resistant."
Short-term crisis, long-term trends

Germany has one of the highest over-65 population proportions in the EU. The country's relatively low fertility rate (1.4 children per woman) and longer life expectancy (now around 79 for males and 83 for females born today) will only fuel this demographic trend over coming decades, leaving Germany with the looming question of how to fund the ever-increasing need for care.

The proposed reform, which is expected to create a basis for boosting financial support for those needing care, is particularly politically relevant in Germany given that the runup to the national elections in September is already underway. Even though it may already be too late for the current electoral term, Frederic Seebohm remains optimistic about the likelihood of reforming the sector, considering that a majority of parties agree on the need for change.

Watch video 01:54 Robots take care of elderly in Japan

The challenge of funding more care is intertwined with that of ensuring that this growing demand for it does not translate into more work being shifted into the "gray zone" and worsening conditions for carers, particularly those for whom the law does not yet provide.

A labor of love

As well as highlighting the precariousness of the care sector, the COVID crisis has shone a spotlight upon the importance of care work and the crucial role of the Eastern European women who overwhelmingly undertake it. Reform in Germany may also lead to change in how people perceive the value of caring for the elderly.

"I put my heart and soul into my work. It's not just about the money — and there's not all that much of that anyway," explained Anna Tadrzak over the phone from Vienna. "It requires a lot of effort and patience, but I am happy with how my job works in Austria, I'm happy with Caritas and with my profession." She is surprised to have received a call from a journalist. "In 15 years, no one has ever taken an interest in my work," she said.


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UAE names 'first female Arab astronaut'

The United Arab Emirates said it selected two new astronauts, including a woman, from 4,000 candidates after the country reached for the moon in February.


Newly named Emirati astronauts Mohammed Al-Mulla (L) and Noura Al-Matroushi (R)

The United Arab Emirates on Saturday announced the next two astronauts to participate in its ambitious space program, including its first female astronaut.

The move comes as the country's gender equality reputation suffers amid allegations against Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum's treatment of his daughter Latifa.

Al-Maktoum, who also serves as the UAE vice president, identified the female astronaut as Noura Al-Matrooshi and her male counterpart as Mohammed Al-Mulla.

Al-Maktoum said on Twitter they were "selected from over 4,000 candidates to be trained with NASA for future space exploration missions."



Al-Matroushi, 28, works as an engineer at the Abu Dhabi-based National Petroleum Construction Co., according to the announcement.

Al-Mulla, 33, serves as a pilot with Dubai police and heads their training division, the government said.

The two are set to head to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, for training.
What are the UAE's space plans?

The UAE had unveiled an ambitious space program that included building a human settlement on Mars by the year 2117.

In 2019, Hazzaa Al-Mansoori became the UAE's first astronaut. He spent a week on the International Space Station.

In February, the UAE became the first Arab country to launch a successful interplanetary mission with the "Hope" space probe entering Mars' orbit. The mission launched from Japan in July.


Watch video 01:42 UAE spacecraft enters orbit around Mars

The mission is expected to spend two years orbiting Mars, studying the planet's atmosphere and changing seasons and capturing images. The data will be shared with the international scientific community.

The success of the mission makes the UAE the 5th country in the world to reach Mars.

Women make up 80% of the science team behind the Mars mission, according to the Emirati Ministry of State for Advanced Sciences.

fb/sms (AP, dpa)