WAR IS RAPE

ON THE OBSERVERS

Video shows the horror of rape as weapon of war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region



Issued on: 19/04/2021 - 

This screengrab from the video shows the operating room. 

Capture d'écran de la partie supérieure de la vidéo, filmée à la verticale, qui montre une partie de la salle d'opération, et le drap vert recouvrant le haut du corps de la patiente. Derrière, un personnel de l'hôpital contourner la table d'opération. © DR

Text by: Corentin Bainier

A horrifying video showing a doctor operating on a woman who was brutally raped in Ethiopia’s conflict-torn Tigray region has been circulating widely on WhatsApp since early March. The surgery took place in a hospital in Adigrat, in the north of the Tigray. Our team spoke to several sources who told us about what happened to this woman, who is now living in a safe house. Her story highlights the massive and widespread rape of woman in the conflict in the Tigray that began in late 2020.

WARNING: This story contains details of violence that may shock some readers

This video was filmed on February 17 in a hospital in Adigrat, the second largest city in the region. Watching the entire video, which lasts 2’33”, is nearly unbearable. The footage shows a woman with her legs spread apart, lying on an operating table. You can see the doctor’s hands as he operates on her vagina. He uses forceps to extract two long nails, a plastic bag, tissues and a rock.

A woman speaks in English during the video, explaining that she wants this video to show the world the horror of what is happening in the Tigray. At the start of the video, you can hear men speaking in Tigrinya, the language spoken in the Tigray, which allows us to identify the region where the video was filmed.

Raped repeatedly over a period of eleven days

Our team spoke to several sources who had been in direct contact with the woman. They told us that she is 28 years old and has two children. On February 6, she was taking the bus to Tigray’s capital, Mekele, to withdraw money. In the middle of the journey, Eritrean soldiers stopped the bus and separated all the women. They took the woman to their nearby camp. There she was kept for eleven days, during which time she was raped repeatedly by 23 men. She says she doesn’t know when the objects were put inside her.

On February 17, she was finally taken from the camp by Tigrayan prisoners under the escort of Eritrean soldiers, who ordered them to abandon her by the side of the road. She spent an entire night there, partially unconscious. The next morning, some civilians found her and brought her to the hospital in Adigrat, where she underwent surgery. The soldiers had taken a photo of her identity card and threatened to come find her at her home and kill her if she told anyone what had happened.

“There is no lasting physical damage, but psychologically is another matter”

A member of the medical team who was present during the surgery told us more:


When she arrived at the hospital, she was incredibly weak. The gynecologist who carried out the operation successfully removed two nails, several pieces of tissue, a balled up plastic bag and a rock from her vaginal cavity. She was bleeding but, thankfully, there were no perforations [Editor’s note: holes in the wall of her vaginal cavity.] There will be no permanent damage. Her reproductive organs still work. So there is no serious permanent physical damage. But in terms of psychological trauma, that is something else.

All of the personnel at the hospital were horrified by this case. I haven’t seen or heard of this practice in any other case of rape during this conflict. And I haven’t heard of this taking place anywhere else. We see rape cases but not this… how can you reach that degree of inhumanity?

Our team cannot be entirely sure when exactly the video, which was filmed without the woman’s consent, started circulating online. A group of Eritrean soldiers came to the hospital with the intention of killing the victim and she was later moved to a safe location with her two children.

L'hôpital général d'Adigrat en 2019. © Facebook / Adigrat General Hospital

254 women raped, 175 of whom are pregnant

The member of the medical personnel at the Adigrat hospital told our team that they have treated many survivors of rape:

Since late December, we’ve treated 254 women who are survivors of rape. Of those women, 175 had fallen pregnant from their rapes. We were able to terminate all of those pregnancies. One of the women, who was already pregnant when she was raped, was left incontinent from her injuries. The youngest rape victim was four years old, the oldest was 89.

The reason we have seen so many pregnant women is that many of them don’t come to the hospital until they realize they are pregnant. We know there are more cases. Many women don’t dare to come for treatment because they want to hide the fact that they’ve been raped for cultural reasons and because they are ashamed. Some of them can’t come to get treatment because they live in rural areas and they don’t have transport to reach Adigrat.”


The media has reported many stories of women from the Tigray being raped by soldiers— either Eritrean or Ethiopian— or by members of militias, with reports increasing since March. This video documenting the violence carried out on this woman provides a unique and horrifying visual illustration to these reports.

On March 23, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019, finally admitted that the Eritrean Army was participating in the conflict in the Tigray alongside the Ethiopian Army. He also said that rapes had been committed, without specifying by which party. He promised that the perpetrators of these rapes would be brought to justice, without providing any more details. He also said that the Eritrean troops would leave the country. However, several weeks later, in mid-April, there are still Eritrean troops on the ground. Accusations of rape as well as massacres and looting continue to flood in.

Thousands of people have died in the conflict that began November 4, 2020 between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Ethiopian government. Eritrea, which has been historically hostile to the TPLF, sent troops to fight alongside Ethiopian soldiers. According to the United Nations, 4.5 million Tigrayans, out of a population of six million, need humanitarian aid.

'I choose to go there': reggaeton's women redefine feminism on their terms



Issued on: 21/04/2021 - 03:48

Reggaeton singers Natti Natasha, Becky G and Daddy Yankee (L to R) are seen performing at an August 2018 concert in Chicago; a new song by the two women combines sexuality and feminism, they say Timothy Hiatt GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

Miami (AFP)

With a new single out Tuesday, two of reggaeton's most famous women are subverting the wildly popular dance genre's misogynist image, owning the style with an in-your-face ode to their sexuality.

The release of "Ram Pam Pam" sees Natti Natasha and Becky G get physical with tantalizing dance moves set to explicit lyrics, leaving little to the imagination.

For the 24-year-old Mexican-American Becky G, whose hits include "Mayores," the track is a redefinition of feminism that allows women to celebrate their desires.

Feminism, she told AFP, is "different for all of us. We all need in our own way."

"It's my way of saying, I want to be empowered as a woman... me deciding when I go there, it's because I choose to go there. And when I don't want to go there, I don't go there," the artist told AFP.

"There" is the boundary-pushing sweet spot where female artists can explore their sexuality without inhibitions or shame, in the vein of reigning hip hop royalty Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B.

To Natti Natasha, who found international fame with her hit song "Criminal," it's a natural process.

"We express ourselves with complete freedom. We are super comfortable. If Becky or I did not feel comfortable with even a single letter in the song, we would not sing it," said the 34-year-old Dominican, whose career took off after she moved to New York and signed with Don Omar, a singer and producer who's also worked with the superstar Bad Bunny.

Now she and Becky G are releasing "Ram Pam Pam," a tune as catchy as their first collaboration three years ago, "Sin Pijama" (No Pajamas), whose seductive video notched 1.8 billion views on YouTube.

Their new song tells a story set in a school gymnasium, directed at a man who abandoned the singer: "I have a new boyfriend who makes me ram pam pam / Don't look for me; there's nothing of me left here."

"Now I have another who fits me perfectly / Now you be bitter while he be delicious, and smoother," they sing, taunting the former lover.

Then they deliver the final blow: "Now I come when I want to."

Like hip hop before it, reggaeton's brash style has long been criticized as hypersexualized and misogynistic.

But for Natti Natasha, such critiques "come more from the perspective of people who aren't used to this."

In the genre's nascent days in 1990s Puerto Rico, it was simply known as "underground," becoming the target of censorship campaigns and drawing police raids for its "pornographic" character.

But today reggaeton is booming -- especially in the Americas, but internationally as well.

And to Natti Natasha and Becky G, that once-maligned hypersexuality is ripe for reinterpretation with women at the mic.

"It might not align with everyone's idea of what feminism is, but it's always with the intention of paving the way for the ones to come," said Becky G, who gained fame on YouTube as a teen.

- 'Own their sexuality' -

To Petra Rivera-Rideau, an American studies professor at Wellesley University in Massachusetts, what Becky G, Natti Natasha and other female reggaeton stars do -- from the Colombian Karol G to American Mariah Angeliq -- "definitely can be seen as a form of feminism."

In the early 2000s, she said, women in reggaeton "who were dancing were often perceived as being problematic, as being not 'good girls,' being too sexual, being in these kinds of spaces that women, good girls, or respectable women shouldn't be in."

At that time, the Puerto Rican Ivy Queen was the best-known of a handful of women in the genre, which gained a wider following in 2004 with international hit "Gasolina" by Daddy Yankee.

"A lot of the policing of women in reggaeton has been about reinforcing a lot of assumptions -- that women need to be modest in order to be respectable and worthy -- and there's a lot of danger in those narratives," said Rivera-Rideau, author of the 2015 book "Remixing Reggaeton," a history of the genre.

She said there are many people who dislike the stereotype portraying Latinas as overtly sexy, and thus skewer reggaeton as "shameful and terrible."

"But we also need spaces where people can express themselves freely, Rivera-Rideau continued.

"And women deserve to own their sexuality and their own bodies."

Becky G thinks the conversation's tone is evolving -- and she's ready for it.

"Instead of saying, 'Ah? What did she say?'" she says, imitating the expression of a scandalized person, "now they tell you, 'You go, girl! I see you. I maybe wouldn't have done that, but I respect it.'"

And that, she adds, is "very different."

© 2021 AFP

Internet, the thorn in the side of Cuba's 

one party state

Issued on: 21/04/2021 -

Since 2018, young Cubans have been able to connect to the internet through 3G on their phones YAMIL LAGE AFP

Havana (AFP)

Cuba's communist leadership has always viewed the internet with suspicion while trying desperately to control it.

Raul Castro, the former president and leader of the Communist Party, who officially retired on Monday, has blasted the medium for "lies," "manipulation" and "subversion."

But for Cuba's 11.2 million people who have long been amongst the least connected people on the planet, the internet has become a favorite tool of the outlawed opposition.

The arrival of 3G in 2018 was a boon. There are now 4.2 million Cubans using 3G.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel was originally a fan and encouraged the "informatization of society," but he's quickly become disillusioned with the internet, faced with its enthusiastic use to criticize authorities.

On Monday, while 300 delegates met for the Communist Party congress in Havana, an amateur video went viral on social media.

It showed dissident artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara being arrested in a poor neighborhood of the capital.

Dozens of activists, independent journalists and artists have complained on Twitter that police are preventing them from leaving their homes -- a favorite ploy by authorities to prevent mass gatherings that could lead to anti-government protests.

Others complained of their internet and telephone lines being shut down.

- Washington blamed -

"There is a struggle going on in Cuba over the control, direction and impact of digital technologies, and it's not clear how that is going to end," said Ted Henken, American sociologist and author of the upcoming book "Cuba's Digital Revolution."

"After they made digital technology available via 3G cellphones, movements or mobilizations that were both offline and online increased and they happened more frequently," he said.

"And then we saw after November that they had more and more of a real impact and provoked a very strong response from the government."

In November 2020, the San Isidro Movement -- artistic dissident voices led by Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara -- hunkered down in a house together, calling for the release of a rapper while streaming their demands on Facebook, even attracting an international audience.

After the group was removed, some 300 artists protested opposite the Culture Ministry following calls spread on social media to demand freedom of expression -- something unprecedented in Cuba.

For Raul Castro, Washington is to blame.

"Don't forget that the US government has created a working group on the internet in Cuba which aims to convert social media into subversion channels," said Castro.

The US Department of State set up the Cuba Internet Task Force in 2018 to examine the challenges and possibilities of expanding internet use in Cuba.

"However, the truth is something else, the internal counter-revolution, which has no social base, leadership or ability to mobilize, has ever-fewer members and social impact actions, concentrating its activism on social media and the internet," said Castro.

- 'Injudicious' -

Not all artists are in favor of the proliferation of internet activism.

"The enemy should make no mistake ... here the revolution is not on social media, it's in the streets," said veteran poet Miguel Barnet, who was at the party congress.

Even so, the Communist Party adopted a resolution to strengthen "revolutionary activism on social media."

Last week the Council of State approved a new decree to regulate telecommunications aimed at "defending the socialist State's successes," although it didn't give further details.

Still, the Communist Party cannot control outside influences.

Several times over the last month, Twitter has suspended media accounts of official Cuban bodies for infringing on "manipulation" rules.

For ex-diplomat Carlos Alzugaray, the government using the internet as a "propaganda instrument" is unwise.

"Often on the Twitter accounts of ministers, it's just a repetition of what is said on the president's account."

Michael Bustamante, a professor at Florida International University, says the government needs to be wary of ignoring what is said online.

"We do need to think critically about what social media reveals to us, and what it hides," he said.

"Talk to anyone on the ground in Cuba today, and they will tell you frustration and pessimism are widespread."

© 2021 AFP

'Joints for jabs': free marijuana for vaccinated New Yorkers



Issued on: 21/04/2021 

A man smokes a joint and shows his vaccination card as marijuana activists hand out free joints to vaccinated New Yorkers on April 20, 2021 in New York City Angela Weiss AFP



New York (AFP)

New Yorkers who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 were able to get an unlikely freebie Tuesday: a marijuana joint.

Activists celebrating the recent legalization of recreational pot in New York state handed out free doobies in Manhattan to anyone with proof they had received at least one vaccine shot.

"This is the first time we can sit around and legally hand people joints," said Michael O'Malley, one of the organizers of the "Joints for Jabs" giveaway in Union Square.

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"We're supporting the federal effort to roll out vaccinations. And we're also trying to get them to federally legalize weed," he told AFP.

Organizers chose April 20 as the date as a way to mark 4/20, an annual day of celebration amongst cannabis fans.

Marijuana activists also handed out free weed in Washington DC.

Several dozen, relaxed looking people formed an orderly queue as the distribution of joints in New York began at 11:00 am (1600 GMT).

One woman held a sign that read "pro-vaxx, pro-weed." The giveaway was due to last until 4:20 pm.

They only had to wait ten minutes at most in the spring sunshine. They showed their vaccination card, in paper or via phone, gave their email address and a joint was theirs.

There seemed to be little verification required to prevent someone from queuing twice.

"We are not really being very careful," admitted O'Malley.

Sarah Overholt, 38, left with two joints in her pocket after showing vaccination cards belonging to herself and her 70-year-old mother.

For Overholt, marijuana and the vaccine are essential.

"I smoke every day and I am a better person if I smoke, trust me," she said with a smile.

"Everybody should get vaccinated. It should not be weed that is getting them there. But if it works, then it works," added Overholt, who received her first vaccine shot on March 25 and gets her second on Thursday.

Alex Zerbe, a 24-year-old a trader who came from his nearby office, agreed. He has already had both doses and said he smokes a joint once or twice a day.

"I can get a joint anyway, but (the giveaway) is just cool you know," Zerbe told AFP.

By 11:30 am, between 150 and 200 joints had already been distributed, out of some 1,500 rolled in advance by a handful of volunteers.

On March 31, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation allowing adults 21 and over to purchase cannabis and grow plants for personal consumption at home.

Several US brands, particularly in food and drink, have launched various incentives for vaccinated patrons in recent weeks, from donuts to hot dogs and beer, in an attempt to counter vaccine hesitancy.

© 2021 AFP

A whale chorus reveals how climate change may be shifting migration



Issued on: 21/04/2021 - 

Loss of sea ice could be a factor in the unusual bowhead whale behaviour observed by scientists MARIO TAMA GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File

Tokyo (AFP)

Eerie wails, explosive trumpets and ghostly moans. The sounds from the underwater recorders had a story to tell, even without a single intelligible word: the whales had stayed put.

The recordings gathered during the 2018-2019 winter in the freezing cold Arctic waters off Canada proved that a population of bowhead whales had skipped their usual migration south.

Scientists believe this behaviour -- never previously detected -- could be driven by the effects of climate change, and be a potential harbinger of shifting dynamics across the region's ecosystem.

Ordinarily, the approximately 20,000 bowheads that make up the Bering-Chukchi-Beaufort (BCB) population around Canada have a fairly predictable migration pattern spanning 6,000 kilometres (3,700 miles).

They spend the winter in part of the Bering Sea, which lies between Russia and Alaska, and head north then east to the Beaufort Sea and Canada's Amundsen Gulf in the summer, before returning in the autumn.

But in winter 2018-2019, something different happened. Residents in the Canadian region reported seeing bowheads long after they would normally have disappeared south.

A team of scientists decided to comb through hours of audio recorded by underwater devices that are dotted around the region for regular data collection, listening for unusual sounds.

They found them: the distinctive calls of bowhead whales that should have been in their southern winter grounds but had stayed put.

Assisted by a trained computer programme, they even found recordings of bowheads singing, a behaviour believed to be associated with mating, which has never been recorded in the summer grounds before.

The whale noises appeared in between 0.5 to 3.0 percent of recording files collected between October to April at four summer spots.

The finding was highly unusual: recordings from some of the same and separate sites in the summer grounds in previous years picked up no whale sounds after October or December, depending on the location.

"The evidence is clear that BCB bowheads overwintered in their summer foraging region in the eastern Beaufort Sea and Amundsen Gulf during the 2018-2019 winter and as far as we know, this is the first time it has been reported," says the study published Wednesday in the Royal Society Open Science journal.

- 'Ecosystem shift under way' -

Less clear however is why this happened, with the authors positing various theories mostly linked to climate change.

One possible factor could be shifting ice cover, with less ice than usual seen in the summer grounds during the 2018-2019 winter season.

But the record minimum ice concentration actually came in 2015-2016.

That suggests "ice, and particularly timing and locations, is important but not the only factor," said Stephen Insley of the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, who helped lead the study.

Another possible explanation is "predator avoidance," with the bowheads steering clear of orca whales that are more frequently seen in some areas as warming seas lead to decreased ice cover.

Other phenomena linked to climate change could also be at play, like the increasingly erratic and early summer plankton bloom -- whales could be spending winter in their summer grounds to ensure they catch the key food source, the scientists suggest.

Insley suspects water temperature is playing a key role in the unusual behaviour, with bowheads known to avoid water outside a narrow range of around -0.5 to 2 degrees centigrade.

If the bowheads are responding to the effects of climate change, they would be far from alone, Insley told AFP.

"The whole region is undergoing dramatic change and we're just seeing the beginning of it. Many sub-Arctic species are moving north," he said.

"It's a complete ecosystem shift under way and there will be winners and losers."

The team is continuing to record in the region and hopes to correlate its data with information about ocean temperatures to determine any link.

"If the avoidance of warm ocean temperatures were the primary driver of this anomalous behaviour, it may be a significant warning sign for bowhead whales," the study cautions.

© 2021 AFP

China’s Xi to attend US-hosted climate summit, in first meeting with Biden



Issued on: 21/04/2021 - 04:59

Journalists watch a screen showing China's President Xi Jinping delivering a speech during the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference 2021 in Boao, south China's Hainan province on April 20, 2021. © AFP

Text by :NEWS WIRES


China’s President Xi Jinping will attend US President Joe Biden’s virtual climate summit this week, Beijing said Wednesday, as the world’s top polluting nations seek rare common ground despite wider political tensions.

Biden has invited 40 world leaders including Xi and Russia’s Vladimir Putin to the meet starting on Earth Day, meant to mark Washington’s return to the front lines of the fight against climate change after former president Donald Trump disengaged from the process.

The virtual summit will be the first meeting between the two leaders since Biden became president.

Xi will give an “important speech” at the meeting, said the Chinese foreign ministry, days after a trip to Shanghai by US climate envoy John Kerry—the first official from Biden’s administration to visit China.

Kerry and Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua had said they were “committed to cooperating” on tackling the climate crisis, even as sky-high tensions remain on multiple other fronts.

>> Exclusive: 'All countries need to do better,' US climate envoy John Kerry tells FRANCE 24

Washington and Beijing’s pledge to cooperate comes amid acrimony over accusations about China’s policies in Hong Kong and its treatment of Uyghurs in its northwestern Xinjiang region—criticisms Beijing rejects as interference in its domestic affairs.

No global solution on climate change is likely without both the US and China on board, since the world’s top two economies together account for nearly half of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

‘Truant’ returns to class

Biden has made climate a top priority, turning the page from his predecessor Donald Trump, who was closely aligned with the fossil fuel industry.

The US president has rejoined the 2015 Paris accord, which Kerry negotiated as secretary of state and which committed nations to take action to keep temperature rises at no more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

China—the world’s top carbon emitter—has vowed to reach peak emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral thirty years later.

Meanwhile Biden is expected this week to announce new US targets on reducing carbon emissions as part of the summit amid mounting global alarm over record-breaking temperatures and increasingly frequent natural disasters.

Beijing has said the US needs to take more responsibility on climate change, with foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying calling Washington’s return to the Paris accord “a truant getting back to class”.

Xi joined another virtual climate summit with France and Germany last week, where he said developed countries should “set an example” in reducing emissions and support developing nations’ responses to climate change, state news agency Xinhua reported.

(AFP)

THE FAILED STATE
Colombia greenlights private sector to buy and apply Covid-19 vaccines



Issued on: 21/04/2021 - 
An indigenous nurse of the Misak ethnic group inoculates an elderly indigenous man with a Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19 in the Guambia indigenous reservation, rural area of Silvia, department of Cauca, Colombia, on April 14, 2021 Luis ROBAYO AFP
2 min
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Bogota (AFP)

Colombia on Tuesday gave the green light for the private sector to buy and distribute coronavirus vaccines under certain conditions, in a bid to expand the country's slow-moving immunization campaign.

President Ivan Duque said in his daily television address that after several studies, the ministry of health had drafted a resolution "that enables the purchase [of vaccines] and the contribution of the private sector to the national vaccination plan."

Any party buying vaccines must be endorsed by the health ministry and guarantee delivery using their own logistics chains so as not to be a burden on the public sector. They must also abide by guidelines to ensure the most vulnerable sectors of the community are the first to receive the shots.

"This should not be a matter of business, intermediaries, or unknown persons... but rather be carried out through specialized distributors," Duque said.

With 50 million inhabitants, Colombia has vaccinated 3.8 million people with at least one dose in more than two months of its mass immunization campaign.

On Tuesday, the country reached a new record of deaths (429) for the second day in a row, as a third wave of the pandemic threatens to swamp the hospital system.

Health Minister Fernando Ruiz said the private sector will be able to purchase vaccines as of Wednesday, but their distribution will only be allowed when the government advances to the third stage of vaccinations that includes people between 16 and 59 years old who are affected by some co-morbidity.

So far in Colombia, health personnel and adults over 80 have been immunized, and the campaign is currently focusing on people over 70. The current stage is the second, and will eventually cover people aged 60 and over, but it is not clear when it will be completed.

© 2021 AFP

CONTRADICTIONS OF CAPITALISM

Millions of Americans are jobless, yet firms struggle to hire



Issued on: 21/04/2021 - 

As the US economy recovers from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, job openings are prevalent, but applicants are less so Olivier DOULIERY AFP/File

Washington (AFP)

More than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of American remain jobless, but even as the economy reopens some employers are finding hiring an unexpected challenge.

From fears of being infected with the coronavirus to trouble finding childcare to the lure of generous unemployment benefits, some jobless Americans are holding off on re-entering the workforce.

"It's a paradox for the Covid crisis," said Gregory Daco, chief US economist at Oxford Economics. "We have, and risk having over the coming months, an imbalance between job openings and demand."

The US economy has begun to recover as Covid-19 vaccines allow businesses to return to normal, and companies are starting to recruit to meet growing demand.

But not all unemployed workers are ready to return to their jobs, analysts say.

"The main issue is we still have a pandemic, and there is huge concern among job seekers about workplace health and safety," said Julia Pollak, an economist for job search website ZipRecruiter.

A quarter of the US population is fully vaccinated, well ahead of Europe and many other major economies, but three-quarters of the country nonetheless remains at risk of contracting Covid-19.

And childcare is another challenge for working parents, since only a little more than half of the nation's schools are back to full-time classes after the pandemic forced them to close or modify operations, according to FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University.

- Search for 'better conditions' -

The Covid-19 pandemic destroyed 22 million jobs in the world's largest economy, of which more than half, 14 million, have been restored.

However, nearly 17 million people are still receiving government unemployment aid, including self-employed workers, and many are working part-time because they cannot find full-time work.

But Daco said worker shortages are being seen across multiple sectors, including some of those hardest hit by the waves of layoffs, like retail, food service, hospitality and entertainment.

In a survey of US businesses conducted between late February and early April, the Federal Reserve noted "hiring remained a widespread challenge, particularly for low-wage or hourly workers, restraining job growth in some cases."

A hotelier surveyed by the Federal Reserve bank in Richmond, Virginia reported that "they were able to hire some front desk workers but had unfilled cleaning staff positions and little interest from workers in those jobs."

The central bank's Chicago branch reported a number of factors keeping unemployed workers at home, including "financial support from the government," like the extra $300 weekly benefit jobless employees will receive through August.

The Chicago Fed cited other complications in the hiring process including finding childcare, concerns about the virus, difficulty obtaining public transportation and "job search fatigue."

ZipRecruiter's Pollak said some workers also are fearful that if they take a job, they will simply be let go again.

"Many people experienced getting laid off as a really hard blow," she said, comparing the situation to people "who got divorced now being scared to go back into the dating market and get married again."

"They're not in a rush to put themselves back in a vulnerable position, especially since the extended and expanded benefits are giving them a little bit of time," Pollak said.

- Coaxing workers -

Some Americans have taken to working from home, which makes it easier to combine work with family life and not spend time commuting.

"Many people are not prepared to go back old jobs they had," Pollak said, and are instead holding out for remote work opportunities.

This trend has hit the restaurant industry in particular, which is hoping to see a rebound in the spring and summer after the pandemic forced many to close starting in March 2020.

"As the weather improves and more state restrictions are lifted, restaurant traffic will increase and that will create a greater need for employees," Hudson Riehle, who heads research for the National Restaurant Association, told AFP.

"With fewer people in the workforce, the stimulus supports still in place, worker safety concerns and much greater competition with other industries for workers," Riehle predicted some eateries may offer higher pay or additional benefits and opportunities to coax workers.

Amazon, Costco, Target and Walmart -- which run some of the largest distribution firms in the United States -- already announced pay increases.

© 2021 AFP

PROMOTED C

Documentary tells 'unknown' story of Titanic's Chinese survivors


Issued on: 21/04/2021 - 

Eight Chinese were aboard the Titanic when it sank after hitting an iceberg. Six, most of them sailors but not working on the ship, made it out alive PETER MUHLY AFP/File

Shanghai (AFP)

A new documentary film has revealed the "completely unknown" story of six Chinese men who survived the sinking of the Titanic and adds a new chapter to the history of the world's most famous ship.

With Oscar-winning director James Cameron as executive producer, "The Six" has earned glowing reviews in China and at one point trended on the country's Twitter-like Weibo after its release on Friday.

Director Arthur Jones hopes it will have the same impact when it is screened overseas and finally dispel myths that have endured for more than a century.

For the Briton and lead researcher Steven Schwankert, "The Six" gives a voice, life and faces to a small band of Chinese men who were among about 700 people to survive the Titanic's sinking in 1912.

Jones said that a painstaking project stretched over several countries and years began as little more than a joke between the long-time friends, both of whom are based in China.

"Steven came to me and said that we should do the Chinese Titanic story with the Chinese guys who were on the Titanic," Jones, 47, told AFP at his studio in Shanghai.

"I thought he was joking because I thought it was just one of those things that we would laugh about.

"I looked it up, and it was true. But initially my thought was: I don't know if the world needs another Titanic film or another Titanic documentary."

Jones said they knew they were onto something when they mentioned it to Chinese friends.

"They were just amazed that there's this completely unknown story from Titanic, it just seemed an extraordinary thing," he said.

- Last survivor -

"The Six" sees Schwankert and his fellow researchers pore over archives and meet descendants across continents as they try to piece together what happened to the men after surviving the most famous sinking of all time.

"It became fairly epic in terms of the research," said Jones.

Eight Chinese were aboard the fateful vessel, in third class, when it sank after hitting an iceberg. Six, most of them sailors but not working on the Titanic, made it out alive on life rafts.

Cameron, who won best director and best picture at the Oscars for his 1997 smash-hit "Titanic", was fully supportive of the documentary and allowed Jones to show a scene which was not included in the cinema version of the blockbuster.

In the cut scene, an Asian-looking man hanging on for life on a piece of wood is plucked from the freezing water, perhaps becoming the last person to be saved.

When Schwankert and his team tracked down the man's son in real life, it turned out that he knew almost nothing of what his late father had endured because he never really spoke about it.

As they delved further into what became of the six men, word spread of their project, drawing more people to come forward with information. Even now fresh details are coming to light.

- Parallels with today -

A strong element of the film is the prejudice that Chinese immigrant workers like the seamen faced as they sought new lives in the West.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 prohibited Chinese labourers from the United States, slamming the door on their "American Dream". The men arrived in New York with the other survivors but were shipped out of the country less than 24 hours later.

The parallels between anti-Asian sentiment then and now, in particular in the United States, are not lost on Jones and Schwankert.

"People -- whether it's in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom or anywhere else -- didn't suddenly develop these negative feelings in the last two or three months," Schwankert, 50, said by video call from Luoyang, in the central province of Henan.

"These are deep-seated problems."

The film also debunks claims that the Chinese men sneaked onto the lifeboat that saved them by disguising themselves as women or hiding on the raft.

Chinese viewers are happy that their countrymen's true survival story has now been told.

"Above anything else, audiences here are saying thank you for filling in this little bit of unwritten history, or maybe badly written history," Jones said.

© 2021 AFP

Large-scale Huthi offensive roils Yemen's oil-rich Marib


Issued on: 21/04/2021 - 

Heavy fighting has raged near the Yemeni city of Marib as Huthi rebels press their offensive on the government's last northern toehold - AFP

Marib (Yemen) (AFP)

Peering through binoculars, a Yemeni commander scans a forbidding desert moonscape for lurking Huthi rebels, who are ramping up a bloody offensive to seize the strategic oil-rich region of Marib.

The outcome of the scorched-earth battles raging around Marib city, the Saudi-backed Yemeni government's last northern stronghold, could significantly alter the future course of a conflict now in its seventh year.

The loss of Marib, gripped by a worsening humanitarian crisis, would be a heavy blow to the government, giving the Iran-backed rebels more leverage in any future negotiations or even spur them to push further south, observers say.

Hundreds of combatants have been killed since the large-scale offensive began in February, according to local sources.

Loyalist commanders say the rebels are sending wave after wave of fighters towards frontlines around Marib city, the regional capital, from seemingly inexhaustible reserves.

"The Huthi strategy is... aimed at exhausting (us)," a Yemeni commander told AFP at the sand-swept Al-Kanais battlefront in the north of the city, where loyalist soldiers crouched in sandbag-ringed foxholes and heavy machine guns were loaded on the rear of pickup trucks.

In a pattern emerging across multiple frontlines, the commander said the Huthis are pushing zealous waves of young recruits, many of them children, with the goal of wearing out loyalist forces and depleting their ammunition.

Hours-long gun battles are typically followed by a brief lull to collect the dead bodies.

Then a more lethal wave of experienced Huthi fighters moves in under the cover of constant shelling, the commander said of a desperate rebel strategy that is heaping pressure on loyalist forces.

"The Huthis don't care how many of their men die," he added, a point echoed by other Yemeni officials, including Marib's governor Sultan al-Aradah.

"They are sacrificing the people of Yemen... But they will not be able to reach Marib no matter the price we have to pay," added the commander, who requested that his name be withheld.

- 'Sacrifice young men' -

Marib is already paying a huge price since the Huthis, who set their sights on taking the area last year, relaunched their offensive in February on the back of large reinforcements.

The city of Marib and some outlying areas make up the last pockets of government-held territory in the north, the rest of which is under rebel control, including the capital Sanaa.

Non-aligned observers of the conflict are alarmed at the high casualties around Marib, with one international official telling AFP "the Huthis seem to have a lot of fighters to throw into the battle".

"At the end of the day, the Huthis will say, 'We still have fighters... and we can sacrifice people and young men'," this official said.

An AFP journalist travelled to Marib from Saudi Arabia in an Apache helicopter at the invitation of the Riyadh-led military coalition battling the rebels.

The low-flying aircraft hovered above sprawling oil fields, a natural gas bottling plant and a modern dam that supplies freshwater to the parched region, assets that make Marib a prized target.

The city itself is splashed with posters of fallen commanders and brimming with checkpoints that watch against Huthi infiltrators and sleeper cells.

Marib is home to hundreds of thousands of civilians already uprooted by Yemen's ongoing conflict –- and they face the prospect of being displaced again in a country with fewer and fewer safe havens.

"My husband has lost his mind" due to war and constant displacement, said Hala al-Aswad, a 40-year-old mother of four sheltering in Al-Suweida, one of the nearly 140 camps that have sprung up in Marib.

"He keeps beating the children."

The escalation in hostilities has displaced 13,600 people in Marib this year, according to the UN refugee agency, putting a heavy strain on the city in the midst of a second coronavirus wave.

Lacking clean water and electricity, the makeshift settlements are overflowing and camp residents say they have repeatedly come under Huthi shelling.

One woman in Al-Suweida, on the edge of the city, said she suffered a miscarriage due to the strains of war.

Another woman parted her toddler's hair to reveal a shrapnel wound on her scalp. As she spoke, one child held up a piece of twisted metal from what she said was the wreckage of a shell that hit her camp.

- 'Sons of desert' -

"A ceasefire is necessary," pleaded Arafat Asubari, a 31-year-old camp resident, who is a father of six.

If the fighting doesn't stop, he said, "we will all die here".

In March, the Huthis rejected Riyadh's call for a nationwide ceasefire. They have instead escalated missile and drone strikes deep inside Saudi Arabia, which provides air support to Marib's loyalist forces.

Officials in Saudi Arabia criticise US President Joe Biden's decision to rescind a terrorist designation imposed on the Huthis by his predecessor Donald Trump, saying the concession has emboldened the rebels.

Western officials defend Biden's decision, saying the designation, which came late in the Trump presidency, would have worsened Yemen's humanitarian crisis by further impeding access, while doing nothing to blunt the Huthis' military ambitions.

But one Western official said he slammed the Marib offensive as a "big mistake" during direct talks with Huthi negotiators, drawing parallels with stalemated fighting during World War I that only added to widespread suffering.

The plea, the official told AFP, fell on deaf ears.

Meanwhile, Marib's tribes have responded to local calls to send their men to reinforce frontlines alongside the loyalists, with many saying that the terrain offered them an edge over the Huthis, known to be more adept at mountain warfare.

Describing themselves as "sons of the desert", many Marib tribesmen see a military advantage in a largely flat desert landscape dotted with scrubby bushes.

"Let them (Huthis) come," said the frontline commander, quoting a tribal elder from Marib.

"We will kill them all."

© 2021 AFP