Can climate change influence earthquake activity?
Mario Picazo
Meteorologist, PhD

Thursday, September 2nd 2021, 10:10 am - Changes in the landscape are putting an increased stress load on the Earth’s crust, which scientists say has been correlated to seismic activity.


For thousands of years humans have tried to connect earthquake activity to a certain weather event, a scenario referred to as earthquake weather.

In the 4th century Aristotle hypothesized that small earthquakes were caused by winds in underground caves swirling around and pushing onto the cavern roofs, and larger quakes were caused by the winds breaking through the Earth’s surface.

While the latest seismic and meteorological technologies have confirmed that weather events are not capable of causing an earthquake, a number of studies have indicated that climate change has acted as a trigger for several quakes.

 Cracked soil due to earthquakes in Palu, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. (Fajrul Islam. Moment. Getty Images)

Paul Lundgren, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, states that precipitation and glacial melt are two of those changes that can lead to seismic activity.

Watch the video to learn more about how these processes are related to earthquakes.

Thumbnail credit: Simon McGill. Moment. Getty Images

It’s exactly like a puzzle’: experts on piecing together Roman fresco find

House in southern France yielded find of outstanding wall paintings dating from 1st century BC

Restoration under way in the laboratory of Arles museum, the town where the House of the Harpist was discovered. 

Photograph: Remi Benali/Remi Benali/INRAP

Kim Willsher in Paris
Fri 3 Sep 2021 

On the right bank of the Rhône in the Provençal town of Arles, the Roman-built House of the Harpist is being hailed as a remarkable record of ancient architecture and interior decoration.

Now, experts have opened their workshop to reveal their painstaking attempts to piece together the vast jigsaw of magnificent and never before seen frescoes discovered in the property thought to date back more than two millennia.

The House of the Harpist frescoes cover more than 220 sq metres. 

Photograph: Remi Benali/Rémi Bénali/INRAP

Since April, specialists have been picking through 800 cases of fragments of wall paintings, some removed from excavated walls of the building, others found in the ruins. The first images are being displayed in a temporary exhibition at an Arles museum, but experts say it will take until at least 2023 to reassemble all the frescoes that cover more than 220 square metres.

The fragments, some barely bigger than a fingernail, have been washed, labelled and placed into the cases to be examined one by one to see where they might fit into a bigger picture. So far, the specialists have spent a total of 1,800 hours picking through the pieces.

“We estimate it takes us one day per case, so around 1,000 days to study all of them,” Julien Boislève, an expert in ancient wall paintings, said. “It’s exactly like a puzzle … except of course we don’t have the original model to work from or all of the pieces, which means it’s fastidious work. It’s a major task but we are lucky to have a large quantity of good quality pieces of the decor, which is rare.”

The House of the Harpist was constructed between 70BC and 50BC by artisans from Italy around a central atrium with a large pool to collect rainwater for the household.

It was believed to have been deliberately destroyed less than 20 years later and a new property built over the ruins, preserving the artworks. Over successive periods, three houses were built over the site. The first excavations took place in 2013.

“By this time the site had been abandoned for about 30 years, but we were curious to know what was under the property and whether there was an older occupation,” said Marie-Pierre Rothé, an archaeologist with the Arles museum.

Camera probes more than a metre under the existing building revealed the House of the Harpist, named after a figure in one of the first frescoes to be reconstructed.

“We saw the walls and the remarkable paintings, which was so exciting. We have a lot of finds from this period except paintings. These were clean and in a remarkable state of conservation with the colours still bright,” Rothé added.

Concentrating on two rooms from the late Pompeii-era building, archaeologists spent four years uncovering the frescoes and collecting the fragments in what she described as “an enormous job”.

The walls of one of the villa rooms appear to have been covered with a gallery of large figures, including the harpist and pedestals, and standing out from a vermilion background.


France: archaeologists uncover 'little Pompeii' south of Lyon

Experts say the decoration and large-scale images of figures, called megalography, have been discovered in Italy but were unknown in France. The diversity and exceptional quality of the decorations give a unique insight into late Roman decorative modes, particularly wall paintings of the late Pompeii period.

Boislève said he hoped the frescoes would be eventually displayed as part of a reconstruction of the Roman rooms as a permanent exhibition at Arles museum.

“Often these things are hung on walls but we hope these exceptional paintings, which are examples of interior decoration, will be shown in their architectural context,” he said.

ECOCIDE

Louisiana Shell refinery left spewing chemicals after Hurricane Ida

Black smoke rises from Shell’s petrochemical plant in Norco, Louisana, after Hurricane Ida knocked out the facility’s power. 

Photograph: Julie Dermansky/The Guardian

Power outages from the storm have left air quality tracking systems out of commission, making public health concern hard to gauge

Sara Sneath in Norco, Louisiana
Sat 4 Sep 2021 11.00 BST

Behind a playground littered with downed tree branches, Shell’s refinery in Norco, Louisiana spewed black smoke from its stacks. The smell of rotten eggs, the signature scent of sulphur emissions, lingered in the air. In an effort to burn off toxic chemicals before and after Hurricane Ida, many industrial facilities sent the gases through smoke stacks topped with flares.

But the hurricane blew out some of those flares like candles, allowing harmful pollution into the air.

Health concerns linked to potential toxic exposure underscore the array of long-term impacts brought by the category 4 storm that struck south-east Louisiana earlier this week. As of Thursday afternoon, nearly a million homes and businesses were without power, leaving hundreds of thousands more without access to clean water. And with hundreds of chemical facilities located within the path of the hurricane, numerous air quality tracking systems were left out of commission. It’s unclear how long it will take to assess the full scope of the damage and its toll on residents.

The degree of the pollution is still unknown in part because phone lines have been down in portions of the state, including the hotline for the Louisiana state police, which has deployed its hazardous materials unit to handle toxic emissions from industrial facilities in the past, according to an Environmental Protection Agency report. So far, the US Coast Guard has received 17 calls about air releases to the National Response Center, including multiple reports of ammonia released into the air because flares were blown out by the storm.

Peter Anderson walks his rescue dogs, Phoebe and Joe, near the Shell Norco manufacturing complex. 

Photograph: Julie Dermansky/The Guardian

About 50% of the US petroleum refining capacity and 51% of the US natural gas processing capacity are based along the Gulf of Mexico, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The industrial facilities have become an added hazard when hurricanes come ashore. In a matter of just a few days after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in 2017, air pollution levels added up to 39% of the total unauthorized emissions of the previous year in the Houston area, said Luke Metzger, the executive director for Environment Texas.

“These emissions absolutely can be big enough to contribute to health problems,” he said.

The degree of the public health concern is harder to gauge in Louisiana, where air monitoring efforts are often slow to capture peak emission levels directly after a storm, when facilities are likely to belch pollution. After Hurricane Laura came ashore near the border of Texas and Louisiana in August last year, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality sent out a mobile air monitoring van to detect air pollution in the state within 15 hours. It was days before Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality did the same.

Four days after Hurricane Ida, there was still no data posted to the state agency’s website from its mobile air monitors. A state mobile air monitoring lab was expected to deploy Thursday to Norco, about 20 miles (32 km) north-west of New Orleans, according to an EPA report. The Shell refinery there has indicated it will continue flaring until electricity is restored to its facility, said Wilma Subra, an environmental scientist with the Louisiana Environmental Action Network organization who was awarded the MacArthur grant for her work helping residents to understand the public health risks of industrial pollution.

But the refinery’s lack of electricity and inability to supply steam and nitrogen to the flares means chemicals are not being burned off properly, causing thick black smoke to pour into the sky above residents who are repairing their damaged roofs and cutting broken branches from trees.

“Community members in Norco have a right to know what chemicals are in the air they are breathing,” Subra said.

A resident inspects the damage to his home next to Shell’s refinery and chemical plant on 31 August. 

Photograph: Julie Dermansky/The Guardian

Shell is still assessing the impact of Hurricane Ida on the Norco refinery and another refinery in Geismar, Louisiana, said Curtis Smith, a company spokesman. Essential personnel are staffing the facilities, but it’s too early to know when they will resume full operations, he added.

“While the site remains safe and secure, we are experiencing elevated flaring. We expect this to continue until power is restored,” Smith said. Smith did not respond to a question about whether neighbors should be concerned that their health could be impacted by the emissions.

A state air monitor in Norco stopped collecting data on the day of the storm. It’s among 17 state air monitoring sites that stopped working due to power outages, according to an EPA report. The Valero refinery in Saint Bernard Parish notified the EPA that it shutdown its community air monitoring station to protect the equipment. The company was required to notify the federal agency because of past violations of the Clean Air Act at the refinery under its previous owner, Murphy Oil. During Hurricane Katrina, the refinery’s tank farm flooded, leaking more than a million gallons of crude oil into 1,800 homes, according to the EPA.

It’s unclear how quickly Valero is required to get the air monitor back in operation. That’s because it’s owned by the company, not the state, said Greg Langley, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. “We get readings submissions, but the monitor is not part of our reporting system,” he said. “LDEQ does not dictate when it is turned on and turned off.” After Hurricane Laura came ashore in the Lake Charles region, air monitors in the area were out from one to four weeks.

Smoke billows out from the Valero Saint Charles refinery in Norco. 

Photograph: Julie Dermansky/The Guardian

In addition to the public health risks posed by hazardous air pollution and oil and gas spills during hurricanes, fossil fuel companies have also damaged Louisiana’s natural storm defense system. Some of the oil and gas processed in industrial facilities were pulled from the state’s marshlands. To develop wells, companies cut thousands of miles of canals through the wetlands. The canals allow saltwater to creep into the root systems of freshwater marsh plants, killing and sinking wetlands.

Louisiana has lost 2,000 sq miles (5,000 sq km) of land since the 1930s. It’s estimated that about a third of that wetland loss is from oil and gas development, said Alex Kolker, a coastal scientist who serves on the science advisory group for the state’s Climate Initiatives Task Force. Without these wetlands, coastal communities are more vulnerable to storm surge and flooding.

Hurricanes themselves also rip up wetlands and storms intensified by climate change are likely to do more damage. This creates a positive feedback loop, where wetlands ripped up by hurricanes make communities more vulnerable to the next hurricane, Kolker said.

Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards created the state’s Climate Initiatives Task Force with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state to net zero by 2050. The majority of carbon emissions in the state – about 49% – are from the industrial sector. But the state’s reduction goals aren’t aimed at toxic emissions, the bigger concern following storms.

“When I think about releases from a storm like this, I’m more concerned about toxic releases than I am about greenhouse gas emissions,” Kolker said.


This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets strengthening coverage of the climate story.

Exxon slammed as climate hypocrites for sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ to Ida victims

Critics pillory big oil companies for cynical expressions of sympathy while continuing to block climate solutions

Oil companies’ expressions of sympathy in the wake of Hurricane Ida have been an object of ridicule.

 Photograph: Mark Felix/AFP via Getty Images

Supported by


Aliya Uteuova
Fri 3 Sep 2021 

Major oil companies are being pilloried on social media for sending “thoughts and prayers” to victims of Hurricane Ida while sidestepping their role in the ongoing climate disaster.

At least two ExxonMobil outposts – from Beaumont and Baytown, Texas – tweeted the message on Monday, using the hashtag #LouisianaStrong. It didn’t take long for Twitter users to call out the company for its tone-deaf response, noting that Exxon’s own internal research program predicted catastrophic climate change decades ago.



Moreover, in the last 80 years, Louisiana has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of its coastal wetlands, according to the US Geological Survey. The major factors contributing to the decline of the natural storm barrier are offshore oil rigs, onshore wells and refineries operating on the shoreline.

The death toll from Hurricane Ida is now nearing 50, after the storm tore a path through the south, mid-Atlantic and north-eastern US.

This is not the first time the fossil fuel industry has been rebuked for sending “thoughts and prayers” in the wake of disasters exacerbated by climate change. For years, as the climate crisis has intensified, oil companies have extended social media messages of sympathy without addressing climate change and the role of fossil fuel emissions as the root of the problem.

Chevron’s Houston account extended its “thoughts” in the midst of a deadly category 4 Hurricane Laura last August. In 2017 during Hurricane Harvey, Exxon encouraged Texas and Louisiana to “stay strong”. Scientists say that both disasters were intensified by the impacts of a changing climate.

Ahead of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released earlier this month, and its dire warning that global heating will probably reach 1.5C within the next two decades, oil companies filled their feeds with renewable energy pledges, claims of green accomplishments and sustainability buzzwords.

The average social media user perusing BP’s tweets on solar energy just days before the report’s release might have been surprised to learn that the “P” in the company’s name once stood for petroleum, and that even in a decade’s time its investments in renewable energy are expected to amount to less than half of its total capital investments today.

Offering “thoughts and prayers” on social media in response to tragedy is now commonly associated with reactions to US gun violence – and is considered by some activists to be a pale substitute for concrete action. Exxon is currently facing lawsuits that allege “deceptive marketing” and “greenwashing” – the practice of marketing a company or a product as environmentally friendly to hide a true record of fossil fuel emissions and polluting.

Fossil fuel facilities are in fact vulnerable to extreme weather. When millions of Texans were left freezing after a severe winter storm and power outage earlier this year, fossil fuel energy-generating stations were knocked offline and oil refineries, chemical manufacturers and other industrial plants in the state emitted about 3.5m pounds of excess pollutants into the air.

Oil and gas regulators nevertheless rushed to defend the industry’s image of “reliability”, according to Texas Tribune, instead blaming wind power, which accounts for less than 24% of the state’s energy, and the progressive left for the power outages.

Was Afghanistan Britain’s worst failure since Suez? It’s a comforting fiction

To invoke this one ignominious event ignores decades of dubious UK foreign policy decisions

British soldiers sit on a gun captured from Egyptian forces 

during the Suez Crisis, 21 November 1956. 

Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

Charlotte Lydia Riley
Sat 4 Sep 2021 

The withdrawal from Afghanistan and the country’s subsequent collapse to the Taliban is Britain’s “biggest foreign policy failure since Suez” according to Tom Tugendhat, chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee that grilled the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, this week. This analogy, which has been used by many others after the Kabul debacle, harks back to events in 1956. And it’s had a lot of use over the decades since. Much in the same way we have seen this week, those who’ve cited it see Suez as a catastrophic national humiliation – yet, simultaneously, they betray a certain lack of awareness about Britain’s role in the world.

There were Suez references in Hansard in the late 1960s over Britain’s involvement in the Biafran war; there were more in 1982, as MPs debated what to do after the Argentinian president, General Galtieri, invaded the Falklands; and then a huge increase after Tony Blair’s decision to back the Iraq invasion in 2003, which doesn’t really seem to have abated.

Since then, Suez has frequently been invoked over Brexit: Jo Johnson, when he resigned as a minister in November 2018, described the lack of a favourable withdrawal deal as a “a failure of British statecraft on a scale unseen since the Suez crisis”.

The Suez crisis occurred when Britain, France and Israel conspired to invade Egypt after its leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalised the Suez canal, which was owned by British and French shareholders. But both the US and the Soviet Union objected strongly to the invasion; so, despite their military victory, the invading countries were internationally condemned and politically defeated.

Suez can be invoked in all sorts of ways: when Boris Johnson was forced to impose a second lockdown last October, one Tory MP fumed that “this could be his Suez”. In this context, the comparison was really about the then prime minister, Anthony Eden, and the fact that the crisis led to his downfall. (Suez is always about Eden, never about the then foreign secretary, whom people often struggle to remember was Selwyn Lloyd: perhaps this bodes well for Dominic Raab.)

The Suez crisis holds such anxiety for the British establishment because it has become a historical shorthand for postwar British decline. There is a popular understanding that Suez was the turning point in British power: the country went from victory over Germany in 1945, an empire of 800 million people, and a seat at the table at Nato and the UN, to (as the US secretary of state Dean Acheson made clear) losing its empire and not really finding a new role.

Suez is seen as a key point in British imperial decline because the canal was such an important piece of imperial infrastructure – allowing transit from Britain to India without navigating the Cape of Good Hope – and partly because British people’s understanding of imperial history is somewhat hazy (Egypt had been independent from the UK since 1922). In reality, anticolonialism had been developing as a movement for as long as the empire had existed; the Indian subcontinent had become independent after the second world war; and Britain still clung, often violently, to its colonies around the world well into the 1960s. Suez was not the turning point that people imagine.

Yet Suez is traumatic as the moment when Britain was forced to accept that it was not as powerful as it once had been. In simple terms, the nation was forced to choose between its empire and its relationship with the US; it tried to choose the former, but was forcibly reminded that the latter held all the cards (the US, led by President Eisenhower, threatened to destroy the British economy by selling the American-held sterling bonds).

But despite the sense that Suez badly damaged the Anglo-American “special” relationship, in reality it bounced back in the 1960s and 1980s. And the British were able to resist American pressure in other contexts, such as the repeated refusal to commit British troops to the Vietnam war; British acquiescence to the Iraq invasion was not historically determined by Suez.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the Suez crisis for the British establishment is a hazier sense of honour lost. Ahead of the invasion, Britain had secretly colluded in the protocol of Sèvres with France and Israel. The men at the top were shown to be charlatans and frauds. Although the Labour leader, Hugh Gaitskell, opposed the military intervention, Eden’s resignation only really became inevitable once it was apparent he had misled parliament about the road to war. It was the underhand nature of the invasion that destroyed his reputation. (Similarly, the American government was furious with the British partly because their actions made it harder to condemn the Soviet invasion of Hungary around the same time.)

Special relationship? Afghanistan has revealed how irrelevant the UK has become
Peter Ricketts

The sense that Britain had once been an honourable nation led by honourable men, and that this was only undermined by Suez, has its appeal; it almost works as an argument if all of Britain’s previous dishonourable behaviour, not least in its own empire, is carefully ignored.

Raab, apparently, disagrees with all of these comparisons. “I struggle with the Suez analogy,” he replied to Tugendhat on Wednesday, before reframing the comparison as an effort to learn lessons from the current disaster. Politicians love to claim they are learning lessons from the past. However, history doesn’t exist merely as a compendium of examples to be applied to the future; and stripping events of their historical context renders them meaningless anyway.

Invoking Suez is not really about learning new lessons. Rather, it is about signalling a particular idea of what it means to be British in the world, and constructing a history of British foreign policy in which the nation has made one, single mistake, which no event since has ever beaten in disaster or ignominy. It’s a comforting fiction.

Charlotte Lydia Riley is a historian of contemporary Britain at the University of Southampton

Love match: British Paralympians put LGBTQ issues in spotlight


Issued on: 04/09/2021 - 

British wheelchair basketball players Robyn Love (left) and Laurie Williams think the Tokyo Paralympics can help change perceptions of LGBTQ people with disabilities Behrouz MEHRI AFP

Tokyo (AFP)

The Paralympics can help change perceptions of LGBTQ people with disabilities, say two wheelchair basketballers who joke they are Britain's answer to US power couple Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird.

Laurie Williams and Robyn Love, who have been in a relationship for more than six years and got engaged last year, helped lead the British team to a seventh-place finish at the Tokyo Games.

Media reports estimate there are over 30 openly LGBTQ athletes competing at the Tokyo Paralympics -- roughly three times the number at the 2016 Rio Games.

Williams thinks the popularity of social media has helped make LGBTQ athletes more visible, and hopes the Paralympics can accelerate that trend.

"We're just trying to show people that there are LGBT athletes, there are LGBT athletes with disabilities, and we are here trying to create a positive representation of that," she said.

"Just to know that sometimes being ourselves can make a little bit of a difference to someone else is a really positive thing."

Williams and Love first met as team-mates and soon began dating, and now live together with their labradoodle dog Whiskey.

They got engaged in February last year when Love proposed under the Eiffel Tower during a trip to Paris, although the pandemic has forced them to shelve their wedding plans.

Love jokes that they are not as high profile as US football star Rapinoe and her basketballer fiancee Bird, but they "like to think one day" they can be.

For now they are happy to make a difference on the court and off, and Love thinks "sport is such a powerful vehicle to make that happen".

"We're no longer getting pushed just one type -- 'if you're a lesbian, you have to look like this'," she said.

"Back in the day, what was on TV was stereotypical. We represent not one but two minorities, in that we're trying to represent the disabled community as well."

Williams has paralysis in her legs as a result of a virus she contracted as a toddler, while Love has a lower leg development impairment.

- 'It's about time' -

Love does not use a wheelchair every day, and she says her relationship with Williams has opened her eyes to the discrimination people with disabilities face.

She says people in shops will automatically talk to her rather than her wheelchair-bound partner, and she hopes the Paralympics can help "empower people with disabilities".

"To me, the disabled movement is further behind the LGBT movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, because it hasn't been able to have an opportunity to find its voice," she said.

"But I feel like it's getting there."

Britain's Laurie Williams and her partner Robyn Love feel the disabilities movement still needs to find its voice 

Behrouz MEHRI AFP/File

Love and Williams say they are disappointed by their team's seventh-place finish in Tokyo, arguing that the lack of warm-up games due to the pandemic did not help.

Wheelchair basketball is the only all-female team representing Britain at the Paralympics, and Williams hopes the increased media coverage in Tokyo can send a powerful message.

"I think it's about time we had that level of exposure, because we're just athletes, at the end of the day. Our disabilities are on the back burner," she said.

Love says the pair's first goal after the Games is to "give our little doggie a kiss and a cuddle" when they return to Britain.

Then they will turn their thoughts towards the European championships in December, before Love represents Scotland in 3x3 basketball in next year's Commonwealth Games.

Love jokes that Williams is "scared" to play for England and face her at the competition, but the pair are serious about the impact sport has had on their lives.

"I think it's great that the Paralympics is about not just sport -- it's about changing the world for the positive," said Love.

© 2021 AFP

Canadian Teen Fernandez stuns Osaka to reach last 16 at US Open

Issued on: 04/09/2021 -

Canada's Leylah Fernandez celebrates after beating defending champion Naomi Osaka in the third round of the US Open Ed JONES AFP

New York (AFP)

Canadian teen Leylah Fernandez never stopped believing she could beat Naomi Osaka, not even when the four-time Grand Slam champion was serving for the match, and her determination was rewarded.

Three days before her 19th birthday, the 73rd-ranked daughter of an Ecuadoran father and Filipino-Canadian mother battled back to deliver a stunning 5-7, 7-6 (7/2), 6-4 upset of the world number three from Japan.

"From a very young age, I knew I was able to beat anyone who is in front of me," Fernandez said. "I've always had that belief. I've always tried to use that in every match.

"I guess today that belief came true."

Fernandez, coached by her dad, solved Osaka's serve in the 12th game of the second set as the defending champion was serving for the match.

Instead, Fernandez broke to force a tie-breaker, the rolled to a 5-0 lead while Osaka was slamming her racquet to the court in frustration.

"I was very happy how I played in the first set. In the break I was telling myself to stay positive, keep fighting. 'I'm there. I'm close,'" Fernandez said.

"In the second set, I guess on the very last game I found the solution to the problem of returning her serve. I'm glad I found it."

Fernandez said it was a matter of finding the proper position to deal with Osaka's first serve, which landed 63% of the time to 80% for Fernandez.

"I was trying to find different looks," Fernandez said. "I started off really far from the line. Then I was just edging closer and closer. Finally I found a pattern to her serve. I just trusted my gut and hit the ball.

"From then on I was just fighting, using the crowd's energy, putting the ball back in as much as I can, just be offensive and go for my shots."

More than even her first WTA title in March at Monterrey, the victory over Osaka has brought Fernandez faith in what she's doing.

"It gives me a lot of confidence," she said. "It shows my game is improving and it's there in the top. I was able to beat a very great, amazing player.

"I don't know why finally my game is clicking. The past few months, even after Monterrey, I've been working hard, training super well. My coach, my dad, is saying be patient, have confidence in your game, it will show in matches. I'm glad it finally did."

Osaka, who said after the loss she was taking a break from tennis, has played an inspirational role for Fernandez.

"Naomi is a great person, a great player. She has done so many good things on tour," Fernandez said.

"Just seeing her and learning from her game has helped me shape who I am right now. She's a great example for anybody that's on tour and all the little girls in the world.

"I'm just glad I had the opportunity to play against her and show everyone that I'm also able to compete against the best players up there."

© 2021 AFP

Tearful Naomi Osaka questions future after US Open loss to Leylah Fernandez

Osaka says she will take a break ‘for a while’ after stunning loss

Fernandez earns career-best 5-7, 6-7 (2), 6-4 win in third round

‘I feel very sad’: Naomi Osaka was emotional after her upset US Open third-round loss to unseeded Canadian Leylah Annie Fernandez.

 Photograph: TPN/Getty Images

Bryan Armen Graham at Flushing Meadows
@bryanagraham
Sat 4 Sep 2021
Naomi Osaka’s defense of her US Open championship is in tatters and her immediate future on the women’s professional tennis tour in doubt after a shocking third-round defeat to the unseeded Leylah Annie Fernandez, a Canadian teenager ranked 74th in the world.

The third-seeded Osaka, a four-time major champion and the best hard-court player in the world by some distance, lost her composure while serving for the match, came apart during the ensuing tiebreaker and couldn’t right the ship in the third during a 5-7, 6-7 (2), 6-4 loss in 2hr 4min on Friday night.

“I feel like for me recently, like, when I win I don’t feel happy,” Osaka said afterward in an emotional session with the media. “I feel more like a relief. And then when I lose, I feel very sad. I don’t think that’s normal. I didn’t really want to cry, but basically I feel like … ”

At that point the moderator intervened to end the press conference before Osaka insisted on finishing her response while attempting to hold back tears.

“Basically I feel like I’m kind of at this point where I’m trying to figure out what I want to do, and I honestly don’t know when I’m going to play my next tennis match,” Osaka continued. “But I think I’m going to take a break from playing for a while.”

Earlier amid a crackling atmosphere inside Arthur Ashe Stadium, the typically ice-cold Osaka had uncharacteristically hurled her racket to the court on two straight points while dropping the first five of a second-set tiebreaker, drawing rare boos for one of the tournament’s best liked players since her breakthrough win over Serena Williams in the 2018 US Open final.

After leaving the court with a white towel draped over her head between sets without informing chair umpire Alison Hughes, Osaka was promptly broken on her serve to open the third, then received a code violation for firing a ball into the stands as Fernandez consolidated the break for 2-0. The rollicking near-capacity crowd in the world’s biggest tennis stadium didn’t so much turn against Osaka as throw itself behind the 18-year-old underdog, who proceeded to breeze through one confident service game after another.

“In the second set I guess on the very last game I found the solution to the problem of returning her serve,” Fernandez said. “I’m glad that I found it. From then on I was just fighting, using the crowd’s energy, putting the ball back in as much as I can, just be offensive and go for my shots.”

Leylah Annie Fernandez celebrates her win. 

Photograph: Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports

Osaka, the reigning US Open and Australian Open champion who entered Friday’s prime-time match on a run of 16 straight wins at the major tournaments after skipping Roland Garros and Wimbledon, struggled to get on top of the rallies in her return games as Fernandez coaxed errors out of her imploding foe and coolly served her way to the finish line and her first ever win at a grand slam against an opponent ranked in the top 20.

The Montreal-born Fernandez, who turns 19 on Monday and is one of only two teenagers remaining in the women’s draw, absorbed Osaka’s pace extremely well in the championship rounds and punctuated each big point with animated fist-pumps to her box and appeals to the Ashe masses for more noise. The unsung teenager, who captured her first and only WTA title earlier this year in Monterrey, advances to a fourth-round match with Angelique Kerber, the two-time major champion who broke her grand slam maiden at Flushing Meadows five years ago.

“I wasn’t really focused on Naomi,” Fernandez said. “I was only focused on myself, my game, what I needed to do. Having the crowd there supporting me and backing me up after every point, it’s amazing. It gave me the energy to keep fighting, to keep working and keep running for those balls that she hit.

“I was just glad that I was able to put on a show for everyone that came to watch.”

Facebook mistakenly labels black men 'primates'



Issued on: 04/09/2021

Facial recognition software has been blasted by civil rights advocates who point out problems with accuracy, particularly it comes to people who are not white 

Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV AFP

San Francisco (AFP)

Facebook on Friday said it disabled its topic recommendation feature after it mistook Black men for "primates" in video at the social network.

A Facebook spokesperson called it a "clearly unacceptable error" and said the recommendation software involve was taken offline.

"We apologize to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations," Facebook said in response to an AFP inquiry.

"We disabled the entire topic recommendation feature as soon as we realized this was happening so we could investigate the cause and prevent this from happening again."

Facial recognition software has been blasted by civil rights advocates who point out problems with accuracy, particularly it comes to people who are not white.

Facebook users in recent days who watched a British tabloid video featuring Black men were show an auto-generated prompt asking if they would like to "keep seeing videos about Primates," according to the New York Times.

The June 2020 video in question, posted by the Daily Mail, is titled "White man calls cops on black men at marina."

While humans are among the many species in the primate family, the video had nothing to do with monkeys, chimpanzees or gorillas.

A screen capture of the recommendation was shared on Twitter by former Facebook content design manager Darci Groves.

"This 'keep seeing' prompt is unacceptable," Groves tweeted, aiming the message at former colleagues at Facebook.

"This is egregious."

Philippine Airlines files for bankruptcy


Issued on: 04/09/2021

Philippine Airlines has said it will file for bankruptcy 

Ted ALJIBE AFP/File

Manila (AFP)

Philippine Airlines said Saturday it was filing for bankruptcy in the United States to slash $2 billion in debt as it tries to survive an industry gutted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The national carrier of the Philippines said the filing will allow it to restructure contracts and cut debt by at least $2 billion while getting $655 million in fresh capital when it emerges from the Chapter 11 process.

PAL will also downsize its fleet by 25 percent and re-negotiate contracts to reduce lease payments.

"Philippine Airlines will continue business-as-usual operations while finalising the restructuring of our network, fleet and organisation," senior vice president and chief financial officer Nilo Thaddeus Rodriguez said in a video message.

As part of agreements reached with suppliers, lenders and lessors, Rodriguez said PAL will secure $505 million to execute the recovery plan. The money will later convert into airline equity and long-term debt.

It will also obtain another $150 million in debt funding after it emerges from the restructuring process "in a few months", Rodriguez said.

Philippine air travel volume collapsed by 75 percent from about 30 million passengers in 2019 to seven million last year due to pandemic restrictions, PAL president Gilbert Santa Maria said in the same video.

The carrier cancelled more than 80,000 flights, wiping out $2 billion in revenue, and let go of 2,300 employees.

Its main shareholder injected more than $130 million in emergency liquidity and a non-strategic asset was sold for more than $70 million.

Santa Maria said PAL now operates 21 percent of pre-pandemic flights to 70 percent of its usual destinations.

© 2021 AFP

EL FASCISTO
El Salvador's Bukele gets greenlight to run for re-election

Issued on: 04/09/2021 - 

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele enjoys broad popularity but has been accused of authoritarian tendencies Oscar Rivera AFP

San Salvador (AFP)

El Salvador's top court Friday said populist President Nayib Bukele would be allowed to run for a second term, despite the country's constitution prohibiting the head of state from serving two consecutive terms in office.

The Supreme Court decision will allow Bukele to run for a second term in 2024 -- potentially making him the Central American nation's first president to serve more than five years in office since the 1950s.

In its ruling, the court said a sitting head of state could seek re-election for a second term as long as they have not "been president during the immediately preceding period".

The decision was handed down by judges appointed to El Salvador's highest court by Bukele in May after the country's parliament removed several justices critical of the government -- a move decried by critics as a "coup d'etat" and one which sparked international condemnation.

The new judges then reversed a previous decision by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court that ruled the president could not serve more than one consecutive mandate. However, that ruling did allow the head of state to run again in a subsequent election.

Elected in 2019, Bukele enjoys broad support in El Salvador over his promises to fight organised crime and improve security in the violence-wracked country.

His allies also hold a large majority in the country's Congress -- a situation not seen since a peace deal in 1992 put an end to 12 years of bloody civil war.

But he has long been accused of authoritarian tendencies.

Last year, Bukele dispatched troops to the country's parliament in a bid to pressure lawmakers.

© 2021 AFP

Top Afghan TV network stays on-air despite fear of Taliban

Issued on: 04/09/2021 - 

Tolo has kept broadcasting, but it now faces a tough and uncertain future 

WAKIL KOHSAR AFP

Kabul (AFP)

As Taliban fighters entered Kabul on the evening of August 15, executives at Afghanistan's biggest independent TV network had a tough decision to make: stay on-air or go dark.

Tolo kept broadcasting, but like the rest of the country's TV and radio stations, it now faces a tough and uncertain future under the Taliban, whose return has sent fear coursing through the media.

The Islamist militant group killed and threatened journalists throughout its 20-year insurgency.


During their 1996-2001 regime, TV and most entertainment were banned, and there was no media to speak of.

The Taliban takeover "put us in a very, very difficult situation... to continue our work or not," Lotfullah Najafizada, the director of Tolo News, told AFP in a phone interview.

"As a 24/7 news operation, we didn't even have one hour to take a break and rethink."

Tolo stayed on because it had a duty to cover the news, he said, and also because it would have been an "almost impossible" task to negotiate a resumption with the Taliban had the network shut down.

The Taliban leadership has asked Afghan media to operate as usual.

One official even sat down for an interview with a woman host on Tolo News, keen to convince people that the Taliban will be softer this time around.

One Taliban official has sat down for an interview with a woman host on Tolo News WAKIL KOHSAR AFP/File

But many Afghans, including in the media, are not convinced.

"We're scared, I'll be honest with you, we are nervous," Saad Mohseni, CEO of Tolo's parent company Moby Group, told the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) from Dubai.

"Everyone is having sleepless nights, but what the viewer is experiencing is not that different."

- 'My family will be threatened' -

The Taliban victory has plunged Afghanistan's independent media into crisis.

Around 100 privately owned outlets have suspended operations, according to watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

The Pajhwok news agency said many shut down because of the financial crunch caused by the Taliban takeover.

It has also forced many women out of the industry.

RSF said only 76 women journalists are still working for outlets in the Afghan capital -- a huge drop from the 700 reported last year.

The Taliban's return has sent fear coursing through the media but Tolo has stayed on to cover the news WAKIL KOHSAR AFP/File

Outside Kabul, it added, "most women journalists have been forced to stop working".

There have also been reports of intimidation, harassment and violence.

In one shocking incident, a group of Taliban fighters stormed the studio of the privately owned Afghanistan TV.

They stood behind the anchor's desk holding assault rifles as their commander read out a statement urging viewers to not be afraid of the group.

Such threats have forced scores of Afghan journalists to flee -- including Beheshta Arghand, who left days after she conducted the ground-breaking Taliban interview on Tolo News.

"Because of me, my family will be threatened by the Taliban," she told diplomats in Qatar on Wednesday.

- Cultural revolution -

The cataclysmic changes follow two decades of explosive growth for independent Afghan media.

After the Taliban were toppled in 2001, dozens of TV channels and more than 160 radio stations were set up with Western assistance and private investment.

And Moby Group's flagship Tolo TV and Tolo News -- the most-watched channels in Afghanistan -- embodied that cultural revolution.

The cataclysmic changes follow two decades of explosive growth for independent Afghan media 

WAKIL KOHSAR AFP/File

They brought programming to Afghans that would have been unthinkable under the Taliban, from an "American Idol"-style singing competition to music videos, soap operas and even Afghanistan's first presidential election debates.

Most dramatically, Tolo and other Afghan networks gave space and opportunities to women, who were shut out from public life, education and workplaces by the Taliban.

Now, there are fears of a rollback.

Tolo's Najafizada told AFP the entertainment arm of the company has already pulled back on some content.

- Brain drain -

The Taliban have yet to issue any formal directives to the media, and outlets have mainly relied on self-censorship to avoid upsetting the Islamists.

Some are also planning for contingencies.

The Moby Group is considering options to operate from overseas if there is a crackdown on Tolo.

CEO Mohseni has said orders such as a ban on women journalists or censorship would be a "red line".

After the Taliban were toppled, Tolo rose to become Afghanistan's biggest independent TV network, and even hosted presidential election debates 

WAKIL KOHSAR AFP/File

Meanwhile, the company is on a hiring spree to try and fill the gap left by the dozens of staff who left after the fall of Kabul.

"The sad thing is to lose this much capacity, to see a generation of people who we've invested in, who could have done so much for the country, being forced to leave," Mohseni told the CPJ.

"This brain drain will take us another two decades to build that sort of capacity, sadly."

© 2021 AFP