'Champion of Auschwitz': The boxer who brought hope

The story of Polish boxer Tadeusz Pietrzykowski, who was interned at the Nazi German death camp Auschwitz, has inspired a new film

Issued on: 05/09/2021 

 JANEK SKARZYNSKI AFP/File

Warsaw (AFP)

Polish boxer Tadeusz Pietrzykowski was known for his ability to dodge blows. Still, the odds were against him when he fought his first bout at the Nazi German death camp Auschwitz.

Severely emaciated, Prisoner Number 77 was up against a much heavier German inmate -- a "kapo" who oversaw other prisoners.

"From around me I got warnings and gestures that I was crazy: 'He'll kill you, destroy you,'" he said in his official account for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum after the war.


"But there was no time to think... There was bread to be won. I was hungry, my friends were hungry," said Pietrzykowski, the pre-war Champion of Warsaw in the bantamweight class.

His courage paid off.

With a successful left jab to the face, the 23-year-old Pietrzykowski drew blood from the kapo, Walter Duening.

The loser chose not to seek revenge for his loss and instead rewarded the boxer nicknamed Teddy with a loaf and some meat.

Pietrzykowski went on to fight dozens of matches at Auschwitz, winning all but one or two, thereby scoring special privileges that ensured his and others' survival.

Little known even in Poland, Teddy's story has inspired a movie, "The Champion of Auschwitz," which recently had its premiere at home and will hit theatres abroad later this year.

- Sports at Auschwitz -

"It's an incredible story since very few people know there was boxing at Auschwitz, that there were sporting events," said Piotr Witkowski, the actor who plays Duening in the film.

Witkowski told AFP that the boxer was a danger for the Germans "because he became the inmates' hope that it was possible to win against the system, to win against the evil Nazis".

Pietrzykowski, who was Catholic, was sent to Auschwitz in June 1940 as a political prisoner after being caught trying to reach France to join the Polish army that was forming there.

Pietrzykowski would fight dozens of boxing matches at Auschwitz, winning all but one or two, thereby scoring special privileges that ensured his and others' survival

 Wojtek RADWANSKI AFP

He was put on the first mass transport to the death camp.

Nearly a year into his internment, he was offered the chance to fight Duening.

The Germans had grown tired of only sparring each other for fun and were looking for other opponents.

"There was cheering from both Poles and the German prisoners. It was an interesting event, something new at Auschwitz. So this bout set off matches between inmates of different nationalities," said Renata Koszyk, curator of a new exhibition on sports at Auschwitz, which runs until March at the museum on the site of the former camp.

"Generally though, sports weren't a widespread phenomenon at Auschwitz. Most inmates were so exhausted from daily work that they couldn't afford to expend extra effort and sometimes didn't even have the strength to walk over to watch," she told AFP.

Those who did catch the boxing matches included Nazi SS officers, who even placed bets on the winner.

- 'Bravery, benevolence' -

In exchange for providing entertainment, Pietrzykowski received various perks.

Not only was he able to secure an easier work assignment and added calories for himself, he also shared whatever extra food he received, according to testimonials from fellow inmates.

The leeway he enjoyed as a star boxer at the camp enabled him to procure medication for others, pass information and fulfil other assignments for the resistance movement.

"My father lived, fought, and demonstrated this bravery and benevolence for his fellow inmates... and was helped in return too," his daughter Eleonora Szafran told AFP.

Eleonora Szafran, the daughter of Pietrzykowski, has recently published a book featuring his wartime memories 

Wojtek RADWANSKI AFP

When Pietrzykowski was lying sick with typhus at the camp hospital, word spread that the SS officers were planning to select patients to send to the gas chambers.

To save the boxer's life, his friends smuggled him out and hid him.

Szafran's book "Mistrz" ("Champion") has just been published featuring Pietrzykowski's wartime memories -- among them, his assassination attempt against the camp's commandant and horrifying scenes he witnessed of Nazi brutality.

A million Jews died at Auschwitz-Birkenau, along with tens of thousands of others including Catholic Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners of war, between 1940 and 1945.

- 'Do the right thing' -

Pietrzykowski survived -- both Auschwitz and a couple of other concentration camps -- and tried to restart his boxing career after the war but was foiled by illness.

Actor Piotr Glowacki, who plays the boxer in the film 'The Champion of Auschwitz,' said he hoped moviegoers would be inspired to 'have the courage to follow Teddy's example and do the right thing' 

Wojtek RADWANSKI AFP

He went on to become a beloved school gym teacher, pursuing his lifelong passion for painting on the side, and died in 1991 in his seventies.

The actor who portrayed him, Piotr Glowacki, said he hoped moviegoers would be inspired to "have the courage to follow Teddy's example and do the right thing."

"To defend those who are segregated because of their race, nationality, sexual orientation, views... To side with the oppressed," he said.

© 2021 AFP

Living in a sea of trash: Roma fight environmental racism in Romania

Roma communities driven from Romania's booming city of Cluj-Napoca say the authorities treat them like human garbage. Pollution from a nearby landfill is damaging their health, say locals.

Linda Greta Zsiga is fighting for environmental justice for the Roma community in Pata Rat


Beside the airport on the outskirts of Cluj-Napoca, one of Romania's fastest growing cities, lies an enormous landfill site. As you fly in, it's easy to miss the multicolored roofs scattered between rolling green turf and mounds of waste. But at ground level, the area is teeming with life. Horse-drawn carts cross paths with empty garbage trucks returning to the city. Barefoot children run between makeshift wooden houses, and crows circle overhead.

This is Pata Rat, the country's biggest landfill and long one of its most glaring environmental sins. For decades, pollution leached from untreated waste and garbage fires blazed, occasionally killing the occupants of those wooden shacks.

Under pressure from the EU, the city began work on closing the site in 2015. Some 2.5 million metric tons (2.8 million US tons) of waste, accumulated over 70 years and covering an area the size of 27 football pitches were turfed over, and at the end of 2019, the local authorities declared Pata Rat "history."

Yet for the 1,500 Roma people still living here, Pata Rat is very much alive. And so is the environmental hazard on their doorstep. Two "temporary storage" landfills set up beside the old one in 2015 are still growing steadily, and experts say the old waste was never properly dealt with.

"This was not an ecological landfill; it was not built in line with European standards," Ciprian-Valentin Nodis, a researcher from northern Romania and founding member of the "Interethnic Association of Dumitrița."

"All these toxic substances went into the soil, into the groundwater. Everything in the area is polluted."

'Temporary' landfills next to the original Pata Rat dump have been steadily growing for the last five years and more

Driven from the city

The Roma residents of Pata Rat began to arrive in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some were driven by poverty to move to the landfill and work as waste pickers, but most have come in successive waves of evictions since Cluj-Napoca began to see a real estate boom in the 2000s. The last was in 2010, when local authorities evicted 350 inhabitants from Coastei Street near the city center.

Linda Greta Zsiga remembers the cold December morning when she and her family were woken by police, city officials and bulldozers at their door. Just two days before, they and 75 other Roma families living on the street had been given notice of their eviction. Their new home was to be a complex of small, modular units nestled between Pata Rat's existing camps.

Linda Greta Zsiga says the Romanian authorities have treated her community like garbage

Zsiga says the Roma community on Coastei Street was well integrated. They had been there for generations, they paid rent and utilities on their publicly owned homes, and their children attended local schools and kindergartens. Yet suddenly they were being dumped on the city's trash heap. "They considered us garbage, not humans," Zsiga says, "and they thought we deserve to live there."

Europe's largest ethnic minority exposed to environmental hazards

Responding to a survey last year, seven out of 10 Romanians said they don't trust the Roma. Between 20% and 30% said Roma people have too many rights, that the state should be allowed to use violence against Roma, or that discrimination and hate speech against the Roma should not be punished.

Listen to audio 09:35 Living Planet: Vlad Odobescu reports on environmental racism against Roma

Such attitudes are not unique to Romania. Across Europe, racism against the continent's largest ethnic minority results in denial of basic civil rights, exclusion from employment and public services, and — perhaps most strikingly — the marginalization of Roma communities to areas that lack adequate water, sanitation and waste management.

Often, these sites are also in hazardous locations. A study published last year by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) on ""environmental racism against Roma communities in Central and Eastern Europe," found that the Roma were "disproportionately exposed to environmental degradation and pollution stemming from waste dumps and landfills, contaminated sites, or dirty industries."

Cramped, dirty and cut off

Arriving at Pata Rat, Zsiga found her extended family — 12 people altogether — crammed into a 16-square-meter (172-square-foot) room. Space was so cramped, they had to keep most of their belongings outside. They shared a single toilet and cold-water shower with the inhabitants of three other similarly overcrowded rooms.

Zsiga remembers gazing out of her window across a sea of garbage. "There were no doves, no trees," she says. "I love nature."

A 2012 report by the UN Development Programme found that 22% of adults there suffered from chronic disease or some form of disability. Researchers documented a high incidence of skin infections, asthma, bronchitis, high blood pressure and heart and stomach problems, and a report by the European Roma Rights Centre found that over two years following their eviction, reported health problems more than doubled among the Coastei community.

The oldest camp at Pata Rat is called 'Dallas' after the US soap opera. Driven by poverty, Roma began arriving here in the late 1960s as waste-pickers.

The EEB study describes one of the major factors in environmental racism against the Roma as forced eviction from "places with high economic value." The Coastei community wasn't given a reason for their eviction. But Zsiga has no doubt why they were moved. "They wanted to 'clean' Cluj of Roma," she says. "Now very few Roma still live in the city."

The municipality of Cluj-Napoca told DW that they are cleaning up Pata Rat and providing health and other services to the community. They also stated that they are trying to prevent evictions and are partners in a program providing housing for 30 families, although they are not providing funding to the scheme.

Waste-pickers put out of business

There isn't any solid health data from Pata Rat since the landfill was covered over, but an NGO worker in the area said respiratory diseases remain common, including among children. And economically, the closure of the dump has made life in Pata Rat even harder.

Adela Ludvig, a 28-year-old mother of four, has lived beside the landfill for as long as she can remember. Her home is built from plywood with a roof made of an old canvas advertising banner — scrap materials collected from the dump. These days, her "villa," as Ludvig calls it, has a view onto a chemical waste dump covered in blue plastic foil and protected by barbed wire.

Adela Ludvig and her children outside the home she built from scrap materials found on the landfill

Ludvig used to collect plastic bottles and foil, cans and cardboard. She says a local recycling company paid the equivalent of €0.12 ($0.14) for a kilo (2.2 pounds) of plastic, meaning she could make €40 in a day. "I could buy food," she says, "or medicine, when the children needed it."

But the new "temporary" dumps are fenced off. When the landfill closed, waste-pickers like Ludvig were left without work. "People were crying with hunger," she says.

Ludvig and her children — she has a fifth on the way — now live on the €220 she gets in child benefits each month. The nearest source of water is several hundred meters (yards) away and she has to visit it four or five times a day to meet her family's needs. They have access to a power generator but cannot afford to pay for gasoline.

Pata Rat communities fight back

A year after the landfill was declared "history," the major of Cluj-Napoca promised that the Pata Rat camps would "disappear by 2030" — without giving any indication of what is to happen to the 350 families living there. But well before his announcement, residents had been taking matters into their own hands.

In 2012, Zsiga and others from Coastei camp set up an association that's working with other NGOs to campaign for housing solutions for Pata Rat, and suing the authorities over the evictions. They are currently awaiting a decision on their case from the European Court of Human Rights.

The grassy meadows of Pata Rat might look picturesque, but environmental scientists warn that the site is still contaminated by untreated waste

And thanks to an initiative supported by Norway Grants (by which the Norwegian government funds social projects in southern and eastern Europe), 35 families from Coastei were moved to Cluj-Napoca or nearby villages between 2014 and 2017.

Zsiga, her partner and children now live in a three-room apartment in the city. But she hasn't turned her back on Pata Rat. Her siblings and their families still live there, and she's working at the site to support another 30 families who will move in a second stage of the initiative. "I wish that no one is left in Pata Rat," Zsiga says. "No one deserves to live there."

Swiss march for same-sex marriage ahead of referendum

Switzerland is due to hold a vote this month on the legalization of same-sex marriage. Conservative politicians had called for the referendum to "protect traditions."



Thousands marched to support the "yes" vote in the upcoming referendum

Tens of thousands of people turned up at the Zurich Pride March to demand same-sex marriage be legalized in Switzerland ahead of a referendum due on September 26.

Swiss Lawmakers had voted to legalize marriage for LGBTQ+ couples in December. But conservative politicians raised enough signatures to take the matter to a national referendum.

Marching for the 'yes' vote

With the slogan, "You can do it. Marriage for everyone now," the Pride march organizers saw an avalanche of support in the Zurich march.

Public broadcaster SRF said around 20,000 people took part in the rallies, including 70 LGBTQ+ organizations from around the country.

The Pride march was cancelled last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic

Organizers said it was "the most important sociopolitical vote in decades" — in a country used to large-scale referendums, which occur about four times a year.
What is the amendment?

The Swiss parliament backed same-sex marriage by 136 votes to 48 in the lower house, and 24 to 11 in the Council of States, Switzerland's upper house, on December 18, 2020.

The amendment to the Swiss Civil Code replaces the words "bride" and "groom" with either "two people" or "the engaged."

It allows lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex people to marry, instead of just getting civil unions — as has been the case to date.

Opponents say that marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman only, so that children can have a traditional father and mother.

According to a poll by Swiss gay rights group Pink Cross, 82% of the Swiss population supports same-sex marriage.

The law follows the recognition of LGBTQ+ marriage in many European countries like Germany, Austria, France and the Netherlands. The EU has slammed countries going in the opposite direction like Hungary and Poland.

jc/fb (dpa, AP)

Anonymous Myanmar photographer wins major photojournalism award


Issued on: 05/09/2021 -

A worker hangs photos for the exhibition 'Anonymous photographer in Myanmar' ahead of the 'Visa pour l'Image' international photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France RAYMOND ROIG AFP/File

Perpignan (France) (AFP)

A Myanmar photographer won the top award Saturday at photojournalism's biggest annual festival for his coverage of the troubled nation's pro-democracy protests and bloody military crackdown.

The photographer, who remained unnamed for security reasons, scooped the Visa d'Or for News, the most prestigious award handed out at the "Visa Pour L'Image" festival in Perpignan, southwestern France.

Mikko Takkunen, the Asia photo editor for The New York Times, collected the prize on behalf of the photographer.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military seized power in a February 1 coup, with near-daily protests and a huge civil disobedience movement.

"He is probably the strongest photographer in the country. He is extremely happy and honoured to win this prize," Takkunen said.

Takkunen said the photographer dedicated the prize to his peers in his country who are working under extremely difficult conditions.

His photographs portray civilian protesters armed with stones, soldiers firing live bullets and grieving families mourning their dead.

Across Myanmar, more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in the ongoing military crackdown, according to an advocacy group.

The press has been squeezed as the junta tries to tighten control over the flow of information, throttling internet access and revoking the licenses of local media outlets.

The anonymous photographer said in a message that he was "on the streets every day since February 1.

"I encountered many difficulties, working between bullet shots, tear gas and deafening grenades."

"On the ground, we stopped working with helmets marked PRESS as we realised the soldiers were targeting photographers," he said.

Among the others nominated was Greek photographer Angelos Tzortzinis from AFP for his work on the last days that migrants and asylum seekers spent at the Moria refugee camp on the island of Lesbos, which was cleared after devastating fires.

Also nominated was American Erin Schaff from The New York Times for photographs depicting the storming of the US Capitol in Washington.

Indian Danish Siddiqui from Reuters was nominated for his work on the health crisis following the coronavirus pandemic in his country.

Siddiqui was killed in July while covering fighting between the Taliban and Afghan forces.

© 2021 AFP

HOME TO AL JAZEERA

Afghan crisis cements Qatari global influence

Issued on: 05/09/2021 - 

A Qatar Airways aircraft prepares for take off from Afghanistan's capital Kabul, a day before Taliban fighters entered the city

 Wakil KOHSAR AFP/File

Doha (AFP)

Political leaders have flocked to Doha and some countries have moved their Kabul embassies to Qatar, all praising their host for its key role in the airlift out of the Afghan capital.

Tiny Qatar has seized the moment, cementing its outsize global influence and reputation as a neutral mediator after winning the trust of all sides in Afghanistan's forever war.

Qatar invited the Taliban to open a political office in Doha in 2013, with then US president Barack Obama's blessing as conflict in Afghanistan raged.


It went on to host talks between Washington and the Taliban that concluded in 2020 with a troop withdrawal agreement, followed by direct negotiations between the former insurgents and Afghan government.

Doha's long-standing hotline to the Taliban ultimately helped Qatar burst onto the world stage as the lynchpin of efforts to evacuate desperate Afghans and foreigners -- and now the push to reopen Kabul airport.

"The Qataris have earned a reputation as honest brokers who are willing to help multiple warring parties to a find a way to end these conflicts," said Colin Clarke, senior research fellow at the Soufan Center.

"I think what Qatar got out of it was a growing recognition that Doha is the place to make a deal. It has grown into the Geneva of the Middle East, a place where warring parties can meet on neutral territory."

- Indispensable to allies -

In little more than a week, the Arabian desert peninsula will have welcomed the foreign ministers of Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Britain and the US.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, due in Doha on Monday, has already expressed "profound gratitude" for Qatar's evacuation of foreigners and Afghans vulnerable to reprisals from the Islamist hardliners.

Political leaders have flocked to Doha and some countries have moved their Kabul embassies to Qatar KARIM JAAFAR AFP/File

Britain's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab lauded the dramatic airlift, in which Doha has served as a key transit stop, saying "the biggest operation of its kind in our living memory (was) in no small part because of the cooperation of our Qatari friends".

While in Doha, where Britain has relocated its Kabul embassy, Raab described Qatar as "an influential player" and its ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani as a "friend".

The Gulf nation has been working with the Taliban to quickly reopen Kabul's airport, closed since the departure of US troops, and it hopes to see the establishment of humanitarian aid corridors.

At the height of evacuation operations, Qatar's ambassador to Afghanistan personally escorted Americans and vulnerable Afghans to the airport.

His efforts to accompany a number of young Afghan women, for whom access to education under the Taliban is not assured, was seen as a powerful gesture.

Qatar's meteoric rise on the world stage is all the more striking because until January the gas-rich emirate was at loggerheads with its neighbours.

Saudi Arabia, along with the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, cut ties with Doha in 2017, accusing it of backing Islamist groups and Iran, charges which Qatar denied.

- 'Limit to Qatar's influence'? -

Despite its regional rehabilitation at a January summit, Qatar's growing role has not been without challenges.

French website Intelligence Online claimed senior Qatar commanders "would have been convinced of the Pashtun insurgents' willingness to share power" with the now-ousted government.

"Doha has watched with surprise the total disconnect between the promises of the political representatives (of the Taliban) in exile and the realities on the ground."

Several observers have also raised questions about the longevity of Qatari influence following the spectacular Taliban victory.

David Roberts, an associate professor at King's College London, questioned whether the Taliban negotiators in Doha "will be able to retain important places in the Taliban apparatus back home, and whether they will have control".

"That will be the limit of the Qatari endgame," he told AFP.

"I imagine that the phone lines between Washington, D.C. and Doha have been red-hot in the past few days. The apparatus in the State Department and the Pentagon, they know that Qatar has now had years of contacts that can be potentially used and leveraged."

On a sceptical note, however, Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, accused Doha of providing the Taliban with international legitimacy as well as access to international finance.

"There is a limit to Qatar's influence," he said.

"Attention can be addictive, and Qatar is both an addict for attention and a country in search of relevance."

© 2021 AFP

#LEGALIZEDRUGS    #LEGALISEDRUGS

Could the Taliban form an alliance with Mexico's drug cartels?

As the Taliban take control of Afghanistan, they will further tighten their grip on opium poppy cultivation. This in turn will have an impact on the global drugs trade and in particular Mexico's powerful cartels.



A huge proportion of global heroin stems from poppies grown in Afghanistan


Afghanistan and Mexico might appear distant from one another on a world map and are also separated by major historical, sociological and religious differences. But the Taliban and the Mexican cartels are united by the fact that they are both financially dependent on drug trafficking and use extreme violence to expand their political power and control of territory. Ahead of the elections in Mexico in June, numerous candidates were threatened and killed by the cartels, which supported other candidates and bought votes more openly than ever before.


The Mexican drug cartels are notoriously violent

In 2009, renowned experts had already presented evidence to the US Congress of the global perils posed by the Taliban and Mexico's cartels as "transnational drug-trafficking organizations" at a US Congress hearing, pointing out dangerous similarities that have only increased since then.
Afghanistan, Mexico and Myanmar control 95%

Roughly 95% of the world's opium poppies are cultivated in Afghanistan, Mexico and Myanmar, with all the illegal production and trafficking of heroin and other opiates that this entails. In Mexico, drug cartels are responsible for this and have the support of government officials. In Afghanistan, according to US and UN documents, producers are in direct contact with the Taliban. They also were complicit with the government — including the US-backed one. Experts at the US Congress hearing in 2009 estimated that 50% of Afghanistan's GDP that year stemmed from the proceeds of the illegal drugs trade.


Often Afghan farmers cannot afford to cultivate other crops than poppies

The Taliban have always had an ambiguous attitude: Consumption of opiates is banned but not the cultivation and sale of opium poppies. According to a US State Department report released early this year, most opium production in Afghanistan was taking place in regions already under Taliban control or at least their influence. It said that the Taliban derived a considerable income from the trade, pointing out that this fueled conflict, undermined the state of law, encouraged corruption and was also a contributing factor to drug abuse in the country.

A UN report published in April corroborated these findings and drew a direct link between the Taliban and opium poppy cultivation. It said that the total area under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan had increased between 2019 and 2020 from 163,000 to 224,000 hectares (402,780 to 553,500 acres). Moreover, though 21 hectares had been eradicated in 2019, none had been in 2020.
Could rivals work together?

The international narcotics business has spawned a number of cartels in Mexico. The Sinaloa Cartel is currently the fastest-growing one and controls the land where poppy cultivation is most profitable. It is thus a potential rival for the Taliban. But the fact that the cartel and the Islamist group serve different markets means that they could actually complement each other.


Opium poppy production is illegal in Mexico but highly lucrative

According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Sinoloa Cartel almost has a monopoly on the US heroin market. The Pentagon believes it to be present in 60% of the world's countries from EU and West African states to India, China and Russia — all nations where drugs from Afghanistan are also sold. For the moment, the Mexican cartel is mostly responding to demand for South American-made cocaineand synthetic drugs. But it would not be the first time that organizations, which are actually in competition, came together to increase their profits and political influence.

Translated from a German adaptation of a Spanish text written by the Mexican journalist and author Anabel Hernandez, who has been living in Europe ever since receiving threats in her home country. In 2019, she won the DW Freedom of Speech Award.

Taliban push deep into Afghanistan's holdout Panjshir Valley

Issued on: 05/09/2021

The Panjshir Valley is the last major pocket of resistance in Afghanistan against the Taliban 

Ahmad SAHEL ARMAN AFP/File


Kabul (AFP)

Taliban fighters have advanced deep into Afghanistan's holdout Panjshir Valley, with resistance fighters saying they are keeping the Islamists at bay, but analysts warned they are struggling.

Italian aid agency Emergency, which runs a hospital in Panjshir, said Taliban forces had reached the village of Anabah, where they run a surgical centre.

"Many people have fled from local villages in recent days," Emergency said in a statement Saturday, adding it was continuing to provide medical services.

"There has so far been no interference with Emergency's activities," it said.

"We have received a small number of wounded people at the Anabah Surgical Centre."

Anabah lies some 25 kilometres (15 miles) north inside the 115-km-long valley, but unconfirmed reports suggested the Taliban had seized other areas too.

Bill Roggio, managing editor of the US-based Long War Journal, said Sunday that there was still a "fog of war" with unconfirmed reports the Taliban had captured multiple districts -- but that "it looks bad".

Both sides claim to have inflicted heavy losses on each other.

"The Taliban army has been hardened with 20 years of war, and make no mistake, the Taliban trained an army," Roggio tweeted Sunday, adding that "the odds were long" for the Panjshir resistance.

"The Taliban army was injected with a massive amount of weapons and munitions after the US withdrawal and collapse of the ANA" (Afghan National Army), he added.

Fighters in Panjshir held out for a decade against the Soviet military and also the Taliban's first regime from 1996-2001.

Ali Maisam Nazary -- who is not in Panjshir but remains a spokesman for the resistance -- boasted Sunday that the resistance "will never fail".

But former vice-president Amrullah Saleh, who is holed out in Panjshir alongside Ahmad Massoud -- the son of legendary anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Massoud -- warned of a grim situation.

Saleh in a statement spoke of a "large-scale humanitarian crisis", with thousands "displaced by the Taliban onslaught".

Pro-Taliban social media have boasted of capturing swathes of the valley, but Nick Waters from the investigative website Bellingcat said the posts did not include verifiable photographs to back up the claims.

"It will be quite easy to verify a video showing Taliban within the Panjshir valley," Waters said.

The Panjshir Valley, surrounded by jagged snow-capped peaks, offers a natural defensive advantage, with fighters melting away in the face of advancing forces, then launching ambushes firing from the high tops down into the valley.

© 2021 AFP

Afghan resistance group vows to keep fighting Taliban

The head of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan has said his fighters will not give up the battle for the holdout province of Panjshir. Rumors had spread that the region had fallen to the Taliban.



Resistance fighters said Taliban claims of victory in the holdout province of Panjshir are 'propaganda'


The leader of a resistance faction fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan's last holdout province announced Saturday that they would continue fighting.

The statement by the head of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan Ahmad Massoud came in apparent response to unconfirmed reports that Panjshir — north of the capital, Kabul — had fallen to the hard-line Islamists.

The Taliban have also claimed they are on the verge of forming a new government after seizing Kabul on August 15.

What did Ahmad Massoud say?

"We will never give up the fight for God, freedom and justice," Massoud, the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, wrote on Facebook.

"The fight, like Panjshir, who has stood strong until now and ... shows that people have not given up on their demands and fight for the truth," he added.

"Our people will never get tired of trusting God and will move forward to building a prosperous, free and independent Afghanistan."

Massoud is the son of Ahmad Shah Massoud, a major opposition figure against the Taliban's previous regime, who was killed in a suicide bombing just two days before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Has Panjshir fallen to the Taliban?

Sources close to the Taliban claimed Friday that they had seized the Panjshir Valley, but it was not immediately possible to verify the claim.

US public broadcaster NPR cited another National Resistance Front spokesperson, Ali Maisam Nazary, as denying the capture, calling the rumors "propaganda."

The Panjshir Valley "has not been breached," Nazary said from a location in the US. "The Taliban are facing fierce resistance."

Franz Marty, a journalist in Kabul, told DW on Saturday the Taliban had made no official declaration of victory, although there was some celebratory gunfire in Kabul.

"No one has confirmed this officially and resistance leaders have denied it," Marty said. "It's difficult to confirm the situation inside the valley because they have switched off the phone networks, so my contacts are unreachable."

Who is the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan?

The group is an alliance of anti-Taliban fighters loyal to the ousted government run out by the Islamist group nearly three weeks ago.

The faction has de facto control over Panjshir, the only province in Afghanistan that is not under Taliban rule. They are engaged in fierce fighting to retain control of the province.

Afghanistan's TOLO TV cited ousted Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh, who has claimed the role of acting president, as saying the fighting in recent days had been intense and fighters on both sides had died.

Meanwhile, brief talks to try to find a peaceful solution have failed.

The Taliban has offered Massoud a position within their government, but he has rejected it, according to Fahim Dashti, a spokesman for the resistance organization.

The group is demanding the fair political participation of all ethnic groups as well as the protection of women's rights, freedom of speech and elections.

When will the Taliban announce a new government?

The Taliban are due to form a government within days, perhaps as early as this weekend.

The Islamists face the enormous challenge of shifting gears from insurgents to a governing power of a war-ravaged country that is heavily reliant on international aid.

Qatar's ambassador to Afghanistan said Saturday that Kabul airport was able to be reopened for international assistance, according to Doha-based news channel Al-Jazeera.

Both The Associated Press and Reuters news agencies also reported Saturday that General Faiez Hameed, the head of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, had visited Kabul to possibly assist the Taliban in reorganizing the Afghan military.

The Taliban have promised an inclusive government that represents Afghanistan's complex ethnic makeup and under a less extreme form of Islam than when they last ruled the country from 1996 to 2001.

Taliban leaders have repeatedly declared they will not carry out revenge attacks on opponents and that women will have access to education and some employment.

But many Afghans are deeply skeptical and fear a rollback of rights gained over the last two decades.

mm, wd/sms (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)

Taliban fire into air, use tear gas to break up Afghan women’s protest in Kabul


Issued on: 05/09/2021 -

Afghan women demonstrate for women's rights in Kabul on September 4, 2021.

 © France 24 screengrab

Text by: NEWS WIRES

Taliban special forces in camouflage fired their weapons into the air Saturday, bringing an abrupt and frightening end to the latest protest march in the capital by Afghan women demanding equal rights from the new rulers.

Also on Saturday, the chief of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency, which has an outsized influence on the Taliban, made a surprise visit to Kabul.

Taliban fighters quickly captured most of Afghanistan last month and celebrated the departure of the last U.S. forces after 20 years of war. The insurgent group must now govern a war-ravaged country that is heavily reliant on international aid.

The women's march — the second in as many days in Kabul — began peacefully. Demonstrators laid a wreath outside Afghanistan's Defense Ministry to honor Afghan soldiers who died fighting the Taliban before marching on to the presidential palace.

“We are here to gain human rights in Afghanistan,” said 20-year-old protester Maryam Naiby. “I love my country. I will always be here.”

As the protesters' shouts grew louder, several Taliban officials waded into the crowd to ask what they wanted to say.

Flanked by fellow demonstrators, Sudaba Kabiri, a 24-year-old university student, told her Taliban interlocutor that Islam's Prophet gave women rights and they wanted theirs. The Taliban official promised women would be given their rights but the women, all in their early 20s, were skeptical.

As the demonstrators reached the presidential palace, a dozen Taliban special forces ran into the crowd, firing in the air and sending demonstrators fleeing. Kabiri, who spoke to The Associated Press, said they also fired tear gas.

The Taliban have promised an inclusive government and a more moderate form of Islamic rule than when they last ruled the country from 1996 to 2001. But many Afghans, especially women, are deeply skeptical and fear a roll back of rights gained over the last two decades.

>> Afghan women’s groups eye uncertain future under vague ‘Islamic framework’

For much of the past two weeks, Taliban officials have been holding meetings among themselves, amid reports of differences among them emerging. Early on Saturday, neighboring Pakistan's powerful intelligence chief Gen. Faiez Hameed made a surprise visit to Kabul. It wasn’t immediately clear what he had to say to the Taliban leadership but the Pakistani intelligence service has a strong influence on the Taliban.

The Taliban leadership had its headquarters in Pakistan and were often said to be in direct contact with the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Although Pakistan routinely denied providing the Taliban military aid, the accusation was often made by the Afghan government and Washington.

Faiez' visit comes as the world waits to see what kind of government the Taliban will eventually announce, seeking one that is inclusive and ensures protection of women's rights and the country's minorities.

The Taliban have promised a broad-based government and have held talks with former president Hamid Karzai and the former government's negotiation chief Abdullah Abdullah. But the makeup of the new government is uncertain and it was unclear whether hard-line ideologues among the Taliban will win the day — and whether the rollbacks feared by the demonstrating women will occur.

‘It is a woman’s country too’

Taliban members whitewashed murals Saturday that promoted health care, warned of the dangers of HIV and even paid homage to some of Afghanistan’s iconic foreign contributors, like anthropologist Nancy Dupree, who singlehandedly chronicled Afghanistan’s rich cultural legacy. It was a worrying sign of attempts to erase reminders of the past 20 years.

The murals were replaced with slogans congratulating Afghans on their victory.

A Taliban cultural commission spokesman, Ahmadullah Muttaqi, tweeted that the murals were painted over “because they are against our values. They were spoiling the minds of the mujahedeen and instead we wrote slogans that will be useful to everyone.”

Meanwhile, the young women demonstrators said they have had to defy worried families to press ahead with their protests, even sneaking out of their homes to take their demands for equal rights to the new rulers.

Farhat Popalzai, another 24-year-old university student, said she wanted to be the voice of Afghanistan's voiceless women, those too afraid to come out on the street.

“I am the voice of the women who are unable to speak.” she said. “They think this is a man's country but it is not, it is a woman's country too.”

Popalzai and her fellow demonstrators are too young to remember the Taliban rule that ended in 2001 with the U.S.-led invasion. The say their fear is based on the stories they have heard of women not being allowed to go to school and work.

Naiby, the 20-year-old, has already operated a women's organization and is a spokesperson for Afghanistan's Paralympics. She reflected on the tens of thousands of Afghans who rushed to Kabul's Hamid Karzai International Airport to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban overran the capital on Aug. 15.

"They were afraid," but for her she said, the fight is in Afghanistan.

(AP)

 

Wild cockatoos observed making and using tools to eat sea mango pits

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A team of researchers from the University of Vienna working with a colleague at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences has observed wild Goffin's cockatoos making and using tools to crack open and eat sea mangos—the first-ever example of a wild non-primate making and using a set of tools. They've published their observations in the journal Current Biology.

To learn more about wild cockatoos, the researchers captured multiple wild specimens and placed them in a temporary aviary on one of Indonesia's islands. This allowed them to study the birds in the wild without having to venture into the jungle. As part of their observation process, they offered their captured birds sea mangos, a fruit that is toxic to humans. The birds are the only known creatures that eat sea mangos, and notably, also crack open its hard pit and eat the pulpy material inside.

As they observed the birds, several of the older members of the group grabbed a sea mango and flew up into a tree with it. Then, the birds used their tongues and beaks to break off strips of wood from tree branches and then to fashion them into tools. The researchers found that the birds actually made three different types of tools, each with a different purpose.

One strip was sharpened and then used like a knife to cut open the pit covering. Another was formed into a wedge—the bird would drive it into a natural crack in a pit, forcing it to widen. Next, the bird would craft a spoon-shaped tool which it used, quite naturally, to dig out the pulpy material inside and then to drop its contents into its mouth. After watching the birds in action, the researchers collected several of the discarded tools and brought them into their lab for study

First observation of tool use. Credit: Current Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.08.009

The researchers noted also that only the older members of the group created and used the tools—the younger members ate the fruit without cracking open the pit. This, the researchers suggest, indicates that tool-making in wild cockatoos is a behavior learned from other, presumably older, cockatoos. The team also witnessed another cockatoo in a tree near the aviary pushing a twig against a sea mango, apparently attempting to mimic the older birds in the aviary. They also found discarded tools when they scanned the ground beneath wild birds in the jungle.

Manufacture of three tool types and tool use behavior. Credit: Current Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.08.009

Differences in manufacture by splitting and severing. Credit: Current Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.08.009

Goffin's cockatoos can create and manipulate novel tools

\More information: Mark O'Hara et al, Wild Goffin's cockatoos flexibly manufacture and use tool sets, Current Biology (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.08.009\

Journal information: Current Biology 

© 2021 Science X Network

 

Examining the link between body image and income

by Lucie Rutherford, University of Virginia

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

What started as a casual dinner conversation between two very different researchers in 2016—one a data scientist and engineer, the other an expert in economic models—has since turned into a journal article quantifying the effects of the "beauty premium," the notion that those who are more physically attractive tend to have a greater income.

The research team's engineer is Stephen Baek, an associate professor of data science at the University of Virginia, while the econometrician is Suyong Song, an associate professor of economics and finance at the University of Iowa. Five years ago, the two found that their research interests overlapped more than they initially realized, causing an unexpected idea to spark.

Baek began his collaboration with Song as a researcher at Iowa before joining the UVA School of Data Science faculty in August 2021. In his previous work, Baek analyzed and modeled human body shapes for engineering applications such as product design, virtual fashion, garment design and ergonomics. Song, on the other hand, brought expertise studying economic models that suffer from measurement and reporting error.

Compared to previous publications on the beauty premium, Baek and Song's research methods are novel, due to the nature of their data set, sourced from the 2002 Civilian American and European Surface Anthropometry Resource project, or CAESAR. In addition to self-reported height and weight measures—which have been used in previous studies—the project also gathered 3D body-scanned data, extensive information on demographic and family income, as well as tape-measure and caliper body measurements from nearly 2,400 civilians. With this data, the two researchers could provide a richer story of physical appearance and socio-economic variables.

"The issue with previous works was that people were oversimplifying the parameters to describe body shape," Baek said. "The traditional processes for determining physical appearance, such as stature, weight and BMI, are imperfect processes, and therefore not capable of capturing all the dimensions of human body shape."

Using a novel machine-learning algorithm called a "graphical autoencoder" or "deep machine learning," the 3D scans were inputted to encode geometric features of human body shape. After the machine was introduced to thousands of individual scans, the algorithm reduced the data's dimensionality—from a few hundreds of thousands of points down to a few important features –characterizing each human body shape using numerical values. Baek and Song then visualized the features to determine which body parts the algorithm was referencing and estimated their relations with socio-economic variables. Using this scientific approach, the causal effects of physical appearance could be quantified

For male and female subsamples, stature and obesity were both important features, while hip-to-waist ratio was an additional unique feature in the physical appearance of women. The empirical results found that greater stature in males was correlated to higher family income, while greater obesity in women was correlated to lower family income.

In addition to their findings regarding the beauty premium, Song's expertise in economic models added another layer to their findings: the negative role that survey and measurement error play in studies utilizing body measurements. According to his calculations—made possible by the fact that the 2002 data also included self-reported body measurements—Song found that reporting error highly correlated with true weight and height. On average, lighter-weight individuals tended to over-report their weight, whereas heavier individuals tended to under-report. The findings proved that survey errors regarding these measurements are substantial, and that previous studies utilizing self-reported survey data likely suffer because of it. Song explained that when regression models are run in which economic variables suffer from survey or measurement error, the estimation becomes biased, blurring the correct relationship.

"To address the issue of error, many economists assume that these errors are negligible or they are zero on average," Song said. "However, our study showed that they are not negligible and they are not zero on average, but rather showed that they are correlated with true height or weight, which alarms many studies using survey data."

Initially, Song anticipated a target audience of economists and statisticians, but with these findings, has since realized the topic's broader impact on fields like engineering, computer science, biology and social science.

Three years after its initial submission, the research paper, "Body Shape Matters: Evidence from Machine Learning on Body Shape-Income Relationship," was published in the open-access journal, PLOS One.

With heightened publicity, not only do Baek and Song hope to present the extent of error in previous body shape studies that relied on self-reported survey data, but also to bring awareness to the issue of beauty premiums.Breakthrough in 3D scanning leads to 4500% more accurate results

More information: Suyong Song et al, Body shape matters: Evidence from machine learning on body shape-income relationship, PLOS ONE (2021). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0254785

Journal information: PLoS ONE 

Provided by University of Virginia