Mexico hunts for missing children of 'Dirty War'

Issued on: 24/10/2021 - 

Roberto Martinez shows a picture of his sister Lourdes, who disappeared aged 23 in 1974 in Culiacan in northwest Mexico

 RASHIDE FRIAS AFP


Mexico City (AFP)

The creation of a government commission to search for at least 14 children thought to have been born to alleged victims of forced disappearance has given relatives newfound optimism.

The alleged perpetrators were now-defunct police and military groups accused of serious human rights violations.

Martinez's sister Lourdes was detained at the age of 23 in Culiacan in northwest Mexico in 1974, during a dark chapter in Mexican history.

She was a member of the September 23 Communist League, a guerrilla group that fought the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled the country as a one-party state for seven decades.

"I hope my nephew or niece was born and is out there," Martinez told AFP by telephone from Culiacan.

"Two people from our family disappeared," the 65-year-old retired teacher said, fighting back tears.

It is the first time that the Mexican government has searched for people thought to have been given up for adoption after the forced disappearance of their mothers.

A specialized search unit was formed in mid-2019, but its work is just beginning.

Around 500 political dissidents and students were subjected to forced disappearance from the 1960s to the 1980s, according to the National Human Rights Commission.

Martinez hopes to finally meet the child he believes his sister gave birth to while held captive during Mexico's 'Dirty War' 

RASHIDE FRIAS AFP

"I hope with all my soul that the authorities help me to find my nephew or niece and their mother," Martinez said.

"I'd like to tell everyone who was possibly born in the same circumstances how much their mothers gave for this country," he added.
'One of cruelest things'

The commission will review official files and testimonies of survivors in an attempt to locate the missing.

Forcing women to undergo "clandestine births, possibly to take away the children, must be one of the cruelest things that one human can do to another," said the search unit's head, Javier Yankelevich.

He urged anyone with doubts about their origins to "explore the possibility that the story they were told is not theirs and approach the institutions to go through the process to discover their identity."

According to Camilo Vicente, who wrote a book on forced disappearances, there are indications that irregular adoptions did happen in Mexico, though not as many as in some other countries like Argentina and Chile.

"Even if there are one or two cases, it's the state's obligation to look for them," Vicente said.

The authorities must reveal "how many children have died in military operations or suffered torture, another of the hidden stories of that long-denied counterinsurgency in Mexico," he said.
'Losing my mind'

Roberto Antonio Gallangos and his wife Carmen Vargas, also members of the Communist League, were detained in separate operations in 1975 and then disappeared.

Their four-year-old son Lucio Antonio and two-year-old daughter Aleida were separated and looked after by friends of the couple.

The boy was abducted by agents during another operation in which he was injured.

Aleida was given to a family by the man who was taking care of her and who died without revealing her history.

Lucio Antonio was sent to an orphanage. He was later adopted and baptized Juan Carlos Hernandez.

With support from her adoptive father, Aleida discovered her true identity in 2001.

A few years later, after overcoming obstacles thrown up by authorities who refused to open official files, she managed to locate her brother in Washington, where they both now live.

"People said that I seemed to be losing my mind," Aleida said.

The siblings hope that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights will compel Mexico to locate their parents, incorporate the Dirty War into the official history books and compensate them.

"I'm a victim twice over. I'm a relative of a disappeared person and a disappeared person myself," Hernandez said.

© 2021 AFP

New migrant caravan breaks through police blockade in Mexico, heads north

Issued on: 23/10/2021 - 

A caravan of migrants, most from Central America, break through a Mexican police barricade in Tapachula, Mexico, on October 23, 2021. 

© Edgar H. Clemente / AP
Text by: NEWS WIRES

Several thousand migrants from Haiti, South America and Central America set off from southern Mexico headed north on Saturday, clashing with law enforcement trying to hold the caravan back.

Some people among the latest mass movement of migrants trying to pass north through Mexico said they hoped to eventually reach the US border, where the number of migrants trying to gain entry was already hitting new records.

Some 3,000 people, including families with young children, began trekking on foot on Saturday from the city of Tapachula near the Guatemala border toward Mexico's capital.

One of the caravan's organizers, Irineo Mujica, said he was leading the group to Mexico City in protest of the lack of government assistance in the south, where officials have attempted to contain thousands of migrants, and to demand legal documents that would let migrants move freely in the country.

A highway checkpoint in Tapachula with some 400 law enforcement officers aimed to block their path, but many migrants managed to break past. A Reuters video showed people carrying backpacks and with children on their shoulders pushing through a cluster of officers in anti-riot gear who attempted to contain the crowd.

One family, including a woman and small children, were knocked to the ground in the crush of people, their belongings scattering.

Some migrants who attempted to leave Tapachula in September to head north were subject to brutal treatment by Mexican officials, and the government's National Migration Institute condemned incidents of violence captured on video.

US authorities arrested more than 1.7 million migrants at the US-Mexico border this fiscal year, the most ever recorded.

(REUTERS)

Polish mothers protest migrant pushbacks at Belarus border

Issued on: 23/10/2021 

Protesters called on the Polish government to scrap the border ban so that the migrants could receive help 

Wojtek RADWANSKI AFP

Michałowo (Poland) (AFP)

"We can't stand idly by when children are spending weeks in cold, wet, dark forests on Polish territory -- without food, drink and access to shelter," the event organisers said on Facebook.

Thousands of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, have tried to cross the border since August -- an unprecedented influx that the EU suspects Belarus is masterminding as retaliation against EU sanctions.

Poland has sent thousands of troops to the border, built a razor-wire fence and implemented a three-month state of emergency in the immediate border area that bans journalists and charity workers.

The protesters carrying signs with slogans such as "Border of Death" and "Fear God Not Refugees" called on the Polish government to scrap the border ban so that the migrants could receive help.

They also accused the border guards of forcing migrants back across the border in so-called "pushbacks" and demanded the government put an end to the practice.

"We feel for the people in the forest," said Sylwia Chorazy, one of a couple of hundred protesters at the border guard facility in Michalowo, eastern Poland.

"My sons asked me this morning, 'Mum, what if we too had to spend the night in the woods?'. It's sad, incredibly sad," she told AFP.

The protest took place in Michalowo, which made headlines earlier this month when border guards there sent a group of mostly migrant children and women back into the forest despite pleas for asylum.

© 2021 AFP

Cuban street protester sentenced to 10 years in prison: family and NGO

This file photo from July 11, 2021 shows an anti-goverment 

rally in Havana, one of many that rocked Cuba that day 

YAMIL LAGE AFP

Issued on: 23/10/2021

Havana (AFP)

The sentence against Roberto Perez Fonseca, age 38, was handed down by a court in San Jose de las Lajas, a town 35 kilometers (20 miles) from Havana.

On July 11 and 12 thousands of Cubans screaming "freedom" and "we are hungry" took to the streets in some 50 cities and towns to protest harsh living conditions and government repression.

The rallies, which had no precedent since the Cuban revolution of 1959, left at least one person dead and dozens injured as security forces cracked down.

Around 1,130 people were arrested, and more than half of them remain in jail, says the Miami-based human rights group Cubalex.

The court said Perez Fonseca was guilty of contempt, public disorder and instigation to commit a crime.

The sentence, dated October 6, was seen by AFP after Perez Fonseca's family was notified this week.

Three judges at the court heard from a sole witness, Jorge Luis Garcia Montero, a local policeman in San Jose de las Lajas. Two people who wanted to testify for the defense -- a relative and a friend of Perez Fonseca -- were barred as being partial.

On the day of the protests Perez Fonseca incited other people to throw rocks and bottles, the police officer said. He said the defendant threw a rock that hit him in the wrist and another that struck a police car, the sentencing document reads.

Perez Fonseca, a father of two, was arrested at his mother's home on July 16.

The sentence "is excessive and violates all guarantees of due process," said Laritza Diversent, head of Cubalex.

She said the jail term -- the longest handed out against anyone for taking part in the July protests -- seemed intended to scare people into refraining from future demonstrations.

Another protest rally has been called for November 15. The government has banned it and warned people of criminal consequences if they take part.

Cuba's government says the July protests were part of a US-backed strategy to topple the Havana regime.

Perez Fonseca's mother, Liset Fonseca, said she thinks the real reason for her son's long prison term is that at the protest he tore up a picture of communist icon Fidel Castro and challenged the police officer Garcia Montero as he arrested another man.

"They had to do something to make an example of him," she said.

John Deere union employees will continue to receive health insurance and bonuses after strike

Tyler Jett, Des Moines Register
Sat, October 23, 2021

Deere & Co. will continue to provide health insurance and pay performance bonuses to striking employees.

The ag and construction machine maker based in Moline, Illinois, announced in a statement Friday that the 10,100 United Auto Workers members on strike will continue to receive their benefits. They will also receive the performance bonuses they earned for exceeding target production goals before the union went on strike Oct. 14.

"John Deere’s healthcare and (performance) incentives are critical aspects of John Deere’s industry-leading wages and benefits," company spokesperson Jennifer Hartmann said in a statement. "We are taking these steps to demonstrate our commitment to doing what’s right by our employees and focusing on all that we can achieve together."

► John Deere strike: Farmers and John Deere suppliers worry about strike's impact

UAW picketers march across the street outside of Deere & Co., makers of John Deere products, in support of employees on strike, on Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021, in Ankeny.

The company and union agreed to a performance bonus system in their 2015 contract, which expired last week. Deere gives different teams performance targets, and those that exceed targets receive bonuses every 13 weeks.

The company pays those bonuses out at different times for each team. But some employees posted online this week that they did not receive the payments they thought were due to them this week, based off work they did before going on strike.

If Deere did not continue to provide health insurance for the striking employees, UAW International would have covered payments to keep workers on their current plans. However, the union would not have provided dental or vision insurance.

It would have covered insurance expenses with its strike fund, which it is using to pay the striking workers $275 a week. Members are required to show up for their designated "picket shifts" every week to receive payment.

► John Deere strike: United Auto Workers on strike at John Deere for first time in 35 years after rejecting proposed contract

Some community groups have provided food donations to employees. A group of UAW members in other parts of the country started a GoFundMe for strikers that, as of Friday afternoon, had raised about $102,000.

On Oct. 10, about 90% of UAW members in Illinois, Iowa and Kansas rejected the initial contract that the union and Deere negotiated. The proposal would have raised wages by 5% or 6% and given workers more money when they retired. But the contract also would have ended the company's pension plan for new hires.

After going on strike Oct. 14, the UAW's bargaining team returned to Moline, Illinois, on Monday to resume negotiating a new contract. Neither side has offered any update on how the negotiations are going.

As of last year, the UAW represented about 6,700 Deere workers in Ankeny, Davenport, Dubuque, Ottumwa and Waterloo. The Waterloo plant is the company's largest.

Tyler Jett covers jobs and the economy for the Des Moines Register. Reach him at tjett@registermedia.com, 515-284-8215, or on Twitter at @LetsJett.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: John Deere will continue to give employees health insurance, bonuses

STATE CAPITALI$M IS STILL CAPITALI$M
China to pilot property tax scheme in some regions -Xinhua


A man rides a scooter past apartment highrises that are under construction near the new stadium in Zhengzhou


Sat, October 23, 2021

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -The top decision-making body of the Chinese parliament said on Saturday it will roll out a pilot real estate tax in some regions, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

The State Council, or Cabinet, will determine which regions will be involved and other details, Xinhua added.

The long-mooted and long-resisted property tax has gained new momentum since President Xi Jinping threw his support behind what experts describe as one of the most profound changes to China's real estate policies in a generation.

A tax could help red-hot home prices that have soared more than more than 2,000% since the privatisation of the housing market in the 1990s and created an affordability crisis in recent years.

But talk of the plan is coming at a sensitive time, as the property market is showing significant signs of stress and home prices have started falling in tens of cities.

The tax will apply to residential and non-residential property as well as land and property owners, but does not apply to legally owned rural land or where residences are built on it, Xinhua said.

The pilot schemes will last five years from the issue of the details from the State Council.

The idea of a levy on home owners first surfaced in 2003 but has failed to take off due to concerns that it would damage property demand, home prices, household wealth and future real estate projects.

It has faced resistance from stakeholders including local governments, who fear it would erode property values or trigger a market sell-off.

Over 90% of households own at least one home, the central bank said last year.

But analysts say the tax will bring in much needed revenue.

"Land sales are not a sustainable source of government revenue any more," Capital Economics said in a note on Friday. "Gradual implementation should also mitigate fears that a tax could cause prices to crash."

In pilot programmes rolled out in 2011, the megacities of Shanghai and Chongqing taxed homeowners, albeit just those possessing higher-end housing and second homes, at rates from 0.4% to 1.2%.

But until now the pilot programmes have not been widened to more cities.

Analysts expect a wider pilot to first include wealthier and economically more diversified regions in eastern and southern China such as the provinces of Zhejiang and Guangdong.

"It is expected that Zhejiang is likely to be included in the reform, especially Hangzhou," said Yan Yuejin, director of Shanghai-based E-house China Research and Development Institution.

Hangzhou, the base of e-commerce giant Alibaba, is China's eighth-richest city, with economic output reaching 1.61 trillion yuan ($252 billion) last year, about 70% of Hong Kong's gross domestic product.

($1 = 6.3839 Chinese yuan renminbi)

<^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Mainland China's Reliance on Land Sales (by province) https://tmsnrt.rs/3lyvluJ

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>

(Reporting by Steven Bian and Engen Tham in Shanghai; Additional reporting by Ryan Woo and Liangping Gao in Beijing; editing by Kim Coghill and Jason Neely)

Under Israel's blockade, Gaza's fishermen struggle for a catch

For Gaza, fenced in from three sides by Israel since Hamas Islamists took power in 2007, the open sea seems to offer the promise of freedom -- but it is deceptive

 MAHMUD HAMS AFP

Issued on: 24/10/2021 -

Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP)

Forced to stay close to shore due to Israeli restrictions on powerful engines, the men complain they must seek a catch from overfished shallow waters with declining stocks.

"If we catch 200 kilos (450 pounds) of sardines, that would be great," Nahal says. "But we can also come back empty-handed."

High prices of fuel in the enclave means that fishing operating costs are crippling, making them stay closer inshore.

"The further we go, the more we pay for fuel without guarantees about the catch," Nahal says, leading a line of five boats, the air heavy with the stench of diesel and sardines.

For Gaza, fenced in from three sides by Israel since Hamas Islamists took power in 2007, the open sea seems to offer the promise of freedom -- but it is deceptive.

Israel's navy fully controls the waters off Gaza's 40-kilometre (25-mile) long coastline, and regularly restricts or expands the size of the fishing zone in response to security conditions.

Israel's navy fully controls the waters off Gaza's coastline, and regularly restricts or expands the size of the fishing zone in response to security conditions

 MAHMUD HAMS AFP

After months of relative calm following an 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in May, the permitted fishing zone was expanded last month to 15 nautical miles, its maximum under the blockade, including deep water with richer fish stocks.
A 'Volvo' at sea

But Nahal's crew does not venture that far. Six miles is their outer limit, good for sardines, but too close to shore for the bigger value fish such as tuna.

"We fishermen do not have appropriate engines to reach a distance of 15 miles," Nahal says. "Currently, we are not allowed to enter Gaza with these modern engines."

Some Palestinian fishermen are fearful of heading out too far to sea. In the past, Israeli gunboats have opened fire and damaged nets to enforce access restrictions 

MAHMUD HAMS AFP

Some Palestinian fishermen are also fearful of heading out too far to sea. In the past, Israeli gunboats have opened fire and damaged nets to enforce access restrictions.

Making a living requires resourcefulness, and Nahal has repurposed a Volvo car engine to power the boat and run the powerful lights -- which the fishermen shine into the night waters to attract the sardines.

Due to the blockade's import restrictions, Israel also limits access to other key kit such as sonar devices to find fish shoals.

Israel restricts such items citing their "duel use", saying they could either aid Hamas weapons production, or the powerful engines could be used by smugglers.

It says the blockade is necessary to protect Israeli civilians who have been targeted with thousands of rockets fired by militants in the enclave since the Hamas takeover.

But Yussef, 22, keeping watch on Nahal's boat, complains that with all Gaza's fishermen forced into the same small area, they struggle to catch enough to turn a profit.

High prices of fuel in the Palestinian enclave means that fishing operating costs are crippling, making fishermen stay closer inshore 

MAHMUD HAMS AFP

"There's not enough fish," he says. "I've lived off of fishing since I was 14. Every day, when the water is open, I go out. It's the only thing I know how to do in life."
'Overexploited'

For Gaza, home to some two million Palestinians -- roughly half of whom are unemployed -- fish from the sea offer a critical source of protein.

But as well as overfishing, the industry faces multiple challenges.

For Gaza, home to some two million Palestinians -- roughly half of whom are unemployed -- fish from the sea offer a critical source of protein 

MAHMUD HAMS AFP

They include poorly treated sewage pumped into the sea from the tightly packed city, "affecting the entire marine environment and public health", according to a 2020 World Bank report.

"Many of the fish that people depend on are already overexploited," the World Bank adds.

This time, for Nahal, there is moderate success.

After hours shining bright lights into the waters, the boats encircle the area and cast their nets.

"Here are the fish, catch them, for it is my fish that I love," the men sing as the catch is hauled up.

Exhausted and back in port, the fishermen sell the catch in the busy port, where auctioneers shout prices to waiting wholesalers.

The fishing industry in Gaza faces multiple challenges, including overfishing and pollution 

MAHMUD HAMS AFP

For Nahal, the half-tonne sells within 90 seconds for 3,000 Israeli shekels ($935).

It is more than he had hoped for, but is barely a profitable night once his costs and crew's wages are deducted.

© 2021 AFP

UKRAINE BABYN YAR MASSACRE

A Massacre in a Park, a Miracle Survivor, and a Stash of Hidden Letters

Noga Tarnopolsky
Sat, October 23, 2021

NurPhoto

KYIV—Barely anyone made it out of Babyn Yar alive. Out of the estimated 33, 771 local Jews taken to this park to be shot and discarded, maybe a handful survived. One of those was Nadia Elgart, and her survival was considered so remarkable that it was recorded on her gravestone in 1978: “Nadia Elgart, the woman who escaped from Babyn Yar on September 29, 1941 with her 6-year-old son.”

Babyn Yar is the Russian name imposed during Soviet times on the local park which the Nazis, who invaded Ukraine in June, 1941, turned into the site of an urban massacre.

It is estimated that some 15,000 additional Jews were captured and killed in other places around Ukraine’s capital city during those fateful September days. But by the end of the war, the Nazis had murdered about 100,000 people in Babyn Yar alone. Father Patrick Desbois, an expert on the genocide that occurred outside of concentration camps, called the massacre “Holocaust by bullets,” the opening volley of the German plan to exterminate Jews.

Nazi Salutes and Fascist Chic Put Ukraine’s Jews on Edge

Today, as until the spring and early summer of 1941, grandparents amble about pushing strollers. Teenagers make out on cement benches. Youngsters slurp ice-cream cones. Some adventurers like to climb up and down the jagged, unkempt gullies which give the park an air of wilderness. Stately residential high-rises surround the green space.

Nadia lost 26 members of her immediate family in that park, including her parents, her sisters and her nieces and nephews. After their escape, her son Ilyusha was sent to an orphanage, and Nadia joined the Ukrainian partisans and fought the Nazis. She reunited with her son when he was 10, the family returned to Kyiv, and no one spoke of the war.

In 2017, Marina Vorobeichik, Nadia’s 48-year-old granddaughter, stumbled upon a stash of letters written by her grandmother, who passed away when Marina was only five years old. The Daily Beast is publishing excerpts from the letters for the first time in English here.

After the liberation of Kyiv, Nadia wrote to local authorities to denounce a maintenance man who had betrayed the surviving members of her family. She wrote that she had seen him walking around the neighborhood, wearing a suit that belonged to her husband, Lazar, who was serving in the Red Army. In the letter, written in February of 1945, Nadia described returning to her sister’s house to get some clothes after the massacre and how, in a desperate attempt to save what was left of her family, she bribed the maintenance worker “with all my property” only to see him walk over to a German officer two days later, and hand over a disabled relative who lived in the same home.


SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

“My neighbor Zelensky, who lives in this building even today, had warned me to leave because they were looking for me,” she wrote. “Zelensky's wife told me that my 12-year-old nephew, who she'd seen me walking around with, was alive in Kyiv, in Stalinka. During daylight I was afraid to go out, but in the evening I went out and found others alive who told me he'd crawled out of the dead and fled…”

Nadia had decided to go looking for her nephew—and leave Kyiv. “On our way, I gathered my courage and went to the maintenance man and said we had no clothes, and, knowing he had a lot of belongings, I said, uncle Pablo, give [my nephew] something to wear, a 12-year-old boy who was born and raised in this building… I said, uncle Pablo, please preserve the pictures of my mother and sister.”

Instead of helping her, Nadia wrote that Pablo had turned her into the building’s coop board, whose chair tried, and failed, to hand her over to the Germans before she could escape. Her nephew’s fate remains unknown till today, and whether Pablo was ever prosecuted was lost to history.

In another of the secret letters, written in 1944 by a truck driver named Ivan Nikolaevich Kazakov, he describes three years of agonizing self-recrimination because he’d transported Nadia back to Kyiv from the city of Lvov before either knew that the Germans had already taken the city. Only after dropping her off did he learn the fate of Kyiv’s Jews. He wrote to ask whether Nadia and her mother had survived.

In 1946, a woman named Sofia Markovna Litvinova wrote to Nadia that she had lost her entire family at Babyn Yar, and had been injured, but “miraculously” survived. She asked to meet Nadia and exchange notes. “I have no idea if the encounter took place,” Vorobeichick says.

How Nadia Elgart managed to extricate herself from Babyn Yar’s canyon of death was never made clear. The experience was so harrowing that she herself never understood how she made it out alive.

One reason Babyn Yar was never spoken about was that the Soviets, who invaded Ukraine after the defeat of the Nazis, prohibited it. Any mention of the mass murder of Jews was considered an affront to the notion of the non-ethnic Soviet man. “We didn’t talk about Babyn Yar when I was a child,” Vorobeichik, head nurse at Rambam Hospital’s oncological ward in Haifa, says. “But we all knew about it. For example, when there were important family events... I have a picture of my older sister Sophie’s wedding day—we went there and took family pictures of her in her dress. It symbolized the family’s victory over the Nazis.”

In Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman’s comprehensive history of the inferno, The Black Book of Soviet Jewry, Nadia, whose real name was Nadezhda, but was nicknamed Nessia by her family, is described “walking to the ravine, clutching her trembling son Ilyusha to her naked body.” Jews were forced to strip naked and abandon their possessions as they lined up to be shot.

“With her son in her arms, she came up to the very edge of the ravine. Half out of her mind, she heard the shots and the cries of the dying, and she fell,” Grossman and Ehrenburg wrote. “The bullets missed her. Warm bodies covered in blood were lying on top of her.”

SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images

“It is now difficult for me to comprehend how I got out of that pit of death,” she told the two, “but obviously I crawled out driven by an instinct for self- preservation… I truly cannot understand by what miracle my son was also saved. It was as though he had become part of me, and he did not leave me for a single second.” She said a Russian woman took them in for the night.

Nadia’s son, Vorobeichik’s father, refused to ever leave the city. Vorobeichik remembers him saying that he’d never abandon Kyiv, “even if I am the last Jew alive here,” Ilyusha died in Kyiv, of a stroke, in 1984, only six years after his mother’s death. Three years later, his surviving family left Ukraine for Israel.

Vyacheslav Braginsa, 59, a retired clown, grew up near the site of the massacre in Kyiv. He remembers that when he was a child, “everything was abandoned here, just sand, nothing at all.” But he also remembers, as a kid, digging around the place with friends and finding human bones and pistols. Officially, no one said a word about Babyn Yar, but Braginsa said his father spoke to him about “a tragedy.”

“No one talked about it, but everybody knew something had happened,” he said at the park one day before the inauguration of a memorial to the murdered Jews by conceptual artist Marina Abramovic, which was erected to mark the 80th anniversary of the massacre.

Ukraine’s Anti-Russia Azov Battalion: ‘Minutemen’ or Neo-Nazi Terrorists?

Earlier this month, Ruslan Kavatsiuk, deputy chairman of the newly conformed Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, dodged kids playing ball and skateboarding teens to point out sites of mass shootings, before finally standing still for photos by the famous ravine in which tens of thousands of Jews were shot, layer by layer, and left to fester.

Given under an hour for the grim tour, Kavatsiuk, an intense former top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, says “you ain’t seen nothing.”

For Vorobeichik, official recognition of the mass murder feels like “closure of some sort, closing a circle.” She accompanied an official delegation including Israeli president Isaac Herzog to the ceremony.

Accompanying her to Kyiv was her cousin, Ilana Shtotland, a journalist for the Israeli newspaper Maariv, who asked her how she felt upon finding the few shards of documentation preserved in her mother’s stash. “I felt a very strong pain as I read the letters,” she said, “sadness, a sort of helplessness. I wish I could have been able to exchange a few words with grandma.”

Buzzards that vomit when threatened and leave piles of acidic dropping have invaded a small town and nobody knows why

Alia Shoaib

Sat, October 23, 2021, 

Roosting black vultures. Getty Images

• Residents of Bunn, North Carolina, are puzzled why buzzards have been invading their town.

• Dozens of birds have congregated in the town, and attempts to scare them off using cannons and horns have failed.

• Buzzards, which are black or turkey vultures, have a bad reputation but are generally harmless to humans.

Buzzards have descended on a town in North Carolina, and attempts to scare them off with loud cannons and fake effigies have failed, reports say.

Over the past year, the birds of prey have converged in Bunn, North Carolina, The News & Observer of Raleigh said.

Local resident Ally Leggett told the paper that at the height of the invasion, she counted 58 buzzards perched around her house.

"This weekend, they were up there swarming," she told the paper, gesturing to the roof. "It makes my dogs insane."

She said the unwelcome visitors would perch on her chimney leaving a trail of destruction due to their habit of pecking at the bricks, pulling them down.

On Wednesday, 28 buzzards sat on a cellular tower along Main Street, and another 21 gatheed at Bunn High School across the street, the paper said.

Bunn residents are puzzled over why the birds' attraction to their town, and have tried to scare them away with various tactics.

In December, the town began firing a propane cannon off the roof of the local high school at regular intervals, day or night, hoping the shotgun-like sound would scare off the birds.

"That worked for a while," police chief Steve Massey told the local newspaper. "It seems they're back."

Massey added that he often goes by the birds to blow his horn at them.

The town also tried hanging "effigies" around the rooftop of the high school to keep the birds away, but the 2-foot tall black birds remained undeterred.

Although called buzzards, the birds are either black or turkey vultures, both of which are protected species. Federal and state law outlaws killing, hurting, or harassing the birds.

The turkey vulture has a five-foot wingspan and the black vultures are six-foot, according to NC Wildlife Resources Commission.

Vultures are often disliked because they feed primarily on carrion, and are often depicted as harbingers of doom and death in popular culture.

The birds' habit of vomiting when threatened adds to the revulsion people feel towards them. Their droppings are acidic and can eat through the paint on a car, according to the News & Record of Greensboro.

Despite their reputation, they are mostly harmless to humans.

#CRYPTID   #CRYPTOZOOLOGY

Elusive Owl Caught On Camera After Flying Under Radar For 150 Years

Shelley's eagle owl had never been clearly photographed in the wild — until now.

By Hilary Hanson
10/23/2021 

WHOOOOOO is that beautiful bird?

An elusive owl has been definitively photographed in the wild for the first time in a rainforest of Ghana.

British ecologist Dr. Robert Williams snapped the monumental photo of Shelley’s eagle owl while in Ghana’s Atewa Range Forest Reserve with Dr. Joseph Tobias, a biologist with Imperial College London, according to a release from the university published Thursday.

Shelley's eagle owl, folks.
DR ROBERT WILLIAMS


Not a lot is known about Shelley’s eagle owls, which at around 2 feet in length, are the largest owls in the rainforests of the African continent. They’ve been seen in forests in Central and Western Africa, and, prior to this sighting in the hilly Atewa forest, have been known to inhabit lowland areas.

“This is a sensational discovery,” Dr. Nathaniel Annorbah of Ghana’s University of Environment and Sustainable Development said in the statement. “This is a sensational discovery. We’ve been searching for this mysterious bird for years in the western lowlands, so to find it here in ridgetop forests of Eastern Region is a huge surprise.”

Western scientists first learned about the bird in 1872. Since then, there have been scattered sightings of the bird, but no photographs besides one of a captive owl at a Belgian zoo in 1975, and one image ― described by Thursday’s release as a “pixelated blob” ― from 2005 that was too blurry for anyone to confirm it’s the right species.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the birds as “vulnerable,” with threats including logging, habitat destruction, and hunting that reduces available prey for the owls.

The Atewa Range Forest Reserve, where the owl was just photographed, faces multiple threats, including commercial mining for bauxite (a substance is used to produce aluminum) and illegal logging, according to conservation organization A Rocha Ghana.

The group, which wants to make the Atewa forest a national park, cited the owl on Twitter as yet “another reason” to protect the forest.