Sri Lanka bans contaminated Chinese fertiliser

Issued on: 24/10/2021 

Sri Lanka Ports Authority has said it was told by the agriculture ministry to prevent the unloading of tainted fertiliser from China at any port 

ISHARA S. KODIKARA AFP/File

Colombo (AFP)

The action comes as Sri Lanka battles food shortages caused by a currency crisis while farmers have said a government ban on chemical fertiliser could ruin their crops this year.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's office said the National Plant Quarantine Services had tested a sample from the unnamed Chinese vessel and "confirmed the presence of organisms, including certain types of harmful bacteria".

A Commercial High Court has banned any payment to Qingdao Seawin Biotech Group Co., Ltd for the 96,000 tonnes of fertiliser, an official statement added.

Authorities halted the $42 million deal last month, but reports said the cargo had still been shipped and was due in Colombo. The location of the ship has not been revealed.

Sri Lanka Ports Authority said the agricultural ministry ordered them on Saturday to prevent the unloading of the fertiliser in any port and to turn away the Chinese vessel.

Sri Lanka originally ordered the organic fertiliser from China as part of its efforts to become the world's first 100 percent organic farming nation.

The organic plant nutrients from China were meant to replace the phased-out chemicals during the main rice cultivation season that started October 15.

Following widespread farmer protests that the abandoning of agrochemicals would critically hit yields, the government last week lifted the ban on chemical fertiliser imposed in May.

It has since imported 30,000 tonnes of potassium chloride as fertiliser and some three million litres of nitrogen-based plant nutrients from India.

Farmers of tea -- the main export commodity along with rice -- have warned crop yields could be halved without chemicals.

© 2021 AFP

Wheat Hits New Highs as World Appetite Grows and Supply Shrinks



Kim Chipman and Megan Durisin
Fri, October 22, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- Spring wheat surged to $10 a bushel for the first time since 2012 as hot and dry crop conditions from North America’s prairies to Russia’s Urals leaves the world short on grain used to make everything from croissants to pizza crusts.

Prices climbed for the sixth straight week, the longest run of gains in more than two years, as a global appetite grows for wheat of all types. The U.S. expects overall grain stockpiles to end the season at a five-year low. The scarcity is boosting demand for hard red winter wheat, which was more abundant this year than other varieties. Those futures soared to a seven-year high.

Attention is now turning to 2022 and the early outlook is triggering concern. A three-month forecast from the U.S. predicts more drought in some of the country’s key wheat regions. That could cause growers already facing soaring costs for basic farm products to hold back on big crop investments.

“With the dryness, combined with fertilizer prices up double year on year and availability concerns, many wheat farmers will be ‘spoon feeding’ their crop,” Justin Gilpin, chief executive officer of the Kansas Wheat Commission, said in an interview. It “makes 2022 production harder to estimate at this time.”

The prospect of further supply problems next year raises the chance that wheat prices will continue to surge upward and worsen worldwide food inflation. The latest United Nations figures show food prices at a decade high amid harvest setbacks and supply chain disruptions.

Higher wheat prices also could boost the cost of livestock feed when China has been looking for alternatives to corn and soybeans to feed help feed its hog herds.

U.S. Drought Forecast Signals Latest Threat to World Wheat

Most-active spring wheat futures in the U.S. climbed 2.8% to $10.13 a bushel on Friday, the highest since July 2012. The futures in Minneapolis have soared 69% this year.

Hard red winter wheat, which is widely used for all-purpose flour and also is a potential substitute for spring wheat, settled the day up 3.5% at $7.74 a bushel in Chicago. That’s the priciest since May 2014.

Benchmark soft winter wheat, an ingredient in cakes, cookies and crackers, rose 2% to $7.56 a bushel in Chicago.

In other crops, December corn rose and January soybeans fell.

Poll: 6 in 10 percent of parents rate local schools highly despite GOP efforts to fan outrage over race and masks

Andrew Romano

·West Coast Correspondent

Sat, October 23, 2021, 

As Republican politicians from Virginia to Wisconsin stoke conservative outrage toward local school leaders over hot-button social issues and COVID-19 restrictions, a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll suggests that most Americans actually like their local schools and trust their local school boards, not parents, to decide what happens in the classroom.

The survey of 1,704 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Oct. 19 to 21, comes as national Republicans have seized upon the “parents matter” messaging of Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin — who has sought to transform schools into a cultural war zone by railing against racial and gender equity initiatives and public-health measures — as a possible template for the rest of the party heading into the 2022 midterms.

Youngkin opposes school mask mandates and has promised to ban what he calls “critical race theory” on his first day in office. Local school boards in states such as Florida have also been the target of vocal opposition and even harassment from conservative parents and activists who are upset by the same policies.

Yet according to the poll, a full 60 percent of parents with kids under 18 rate their local schools as either good or excellent; just 34 percent rate them either poor or fair. Republicans feel much the same way: 55 percent say their schools are good or excellent while just 33 percent say they’re poor or fair.

And far from disagreeing with Youngkin’s Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe — who has said he does not believe that “parents should be telling schools what they should teach” — Americans think it’s “mostly the Board of Education” (47 percent) that ought to determine the curriculum, as opposed to “mostly parents” (29 percent).

Likewise, 38 percent of Americans say parents should have “more” influence over instruction “than they have now” — while a larger share say either “the same as they have now” (30 percent) or less (14 percent).

A wide majority of Americans (56 percent) also agree that students and staff should be required to mask up in school when Delta is surging, versus 29 percent who say they shouldn’t and 15 percent who aren’t sure.

Third grade students in Mrs. Jordan's class prepare to exit their classroom in orderly fashion as they participate in the Great Shakeout at Pacific Elementary School in Manhattan Beach on Thursday, October 21, 2021. (Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images)

But while the crossover appeal of a “parents matter” strategy might be limited, there are signs it could help Republicans mobilize their base. For instance, nearly three-quarters of 2020 Donald Trump voters (72 percent) say parents should have more influence over curriculum than they have now. A full 60 percent of Trump voters think it’s “mostly parents” who should determine what’s taught in classrooms. And even more (62 percent) say students and staff shouldn’t have to cover their faces in school during a Delta surge.

At the same time, recognition of the phrase Critical Race Theory — the name of a graduate-level approach to race studies that conservatives have used to mislabel any attempt to discuss systemic racism in K-12 classrooms — is slightly higher now (57 percent) than it was in June (52 percent), while the number of Americans who say the U.S. has a problem with systemic racism has fallen from 58 percent to 55 percent over the same period.

Yet Republicans also risk a backlash by pushing too hard. If Americans agree on anything about U.S. schools as a whole, it’s that they have become “too politicized” (69 percent) by "national debates over race, gender and COVID-19.”

To be sure, more Republicans than anyone else (84 percent) are currently convinced that schools have become too politicized, and nearly all of them (88 percent) say “liberals” deserve the most blame. But it’s worth noting that two-thirds of Democrats (66 percent) also think schools have become too politicized, and nearly all of them (76 percent) say “conservatives” deserve the most blame. Most independents say conservatives (58 percent) and liberals (69 percent) both deserve at least some blame for politicizing schools.

Those are big numbers across the board. It’s true that Republicans may rile up Trump voters this fall and next by disparaging school officials. But right now, just 39 percent of Americans say schools in their own area have become too politicized — 30 points less than the share who say they’ve become too politicized on a national level. The more Republicans attack specific schools in specific communities, the more resistance they might arouse.

G20 SHOULD END BOOSTER SHOTS

'We're definitely not doing enough' to help global vaccinations: Former US Commerce Sec.

Anjalee Khemlani
·Senior Reporter
Fri, October 22, 2021,


The U.S. is drawing criticism at home and abroad for providing booster shots and potentially expanding COVID-19 vaccines for children while some countries have yet to be able to immunize frontline health-care workers.

"We're definitely not doing enough," Gary Locke, former U.S. Commerce Secretary during the Obama administration, told Yahoo Finance Live.

"Yes, all of our manufacturers are going 24/7... but we really need to expand the existing production facilities and really focus on the human infrastructure, the delivery mechanisms of getting the shots in arms of people," Locke said.

"We should be treating this as any other natural disaster; it's a human disaster. And we should be offering our personnel, whether it's relief workers or military personnel, and not just Americans, but from all around the world including U.N. forces," Locke said.

Advocacy groups like Public Citizen and Doctors Without Borders have joined the World Health Organization's call for solidarity in the need for equitable distribution of vaccines globally in order to end the pandemic.

To do so would require sharing intellectual property to ramp up production. With companies reluctant to do so, others are hoping to recreate the formulas for existing vaccines. Some companies are viable candidates to produce mRNA vaccines, including Biological E, working with Baylor College of Medicine, and the Serum Institute of India, which was supposed to bear the greatest burden of global vaccine production before the Delta wave hit and the company pivoted to domestic distribution.

These efforts don't replace the push for using the World Trade Organization's TRIPS agreement, to protect members' copyrights, or waiving it. The U.S. supported the idea to waive intellectual property rights in the case of COVID-19 vaccines, while European countries are among those stalling the negotiation process.

Vaccine manufacturers have maintained it is not rational to pursue an intellectual property waiver, with reasons that range from supply chain constrains to lack of skilled labor and other resources.

Pfizer (PFE) CEO Albert Bourla announced a partnership with South Africa's Biovac Institute, which will be operational by early 2022. He previously told Yahoo Finance that this process of including partners, and keeping a tight control on vaccine operations, is how the company has avoided some of the delays and issues that its competitors have seen.

Moderna (MRNA) CEO Stéphane Bancel announced waiving patent enforcement in October, but previously told Yahoo Finance that the company did not have the resources needed to help with transferring technology. Moderna announced it would create a manufacturing hub in Africa, but did not disclose where.

Both the mRNA companies (particularly Moderna for the steep investment of public dollars that helped produce its vaccine) have seen advocacy groups protest at their office doorsteps, at the CEO's homes, and even abroad, calling for greater attention to poorer countries.

The pushback from the companies gives critics the sense that U.S. support of the waiver is largely symbolic.

Locke said the concern over intellectual property is a fair one and that it would take too long for some places to build out the skills and capacity needed.

"Allowing some company to get the secret sauce ... will not enable them to ramp up a production facility overnight. It's not like you're building a factory to make shoes or shirts or toys," Locke said, citing the issues that Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) partner Emergent BioSolutions faced after 60 million doses of the J&J shot had to be discarded for contamination.

Follow Anjalee on Twitter @AnjKhem

African effort to replicate mRNA vaccine targets disparities

By LORI HINNANT, MARIA CHENG and ANDREW MELDRUM

1 of 12

Scientists re-enact the calibration procedure of equipment at an Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines facility in Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday Oct. 19, 2021. In a pair of warehouses converted into a maze of airlocked sterile rooms, young scientists are assembling and calibrating the equipment needed to reverse engineer a coronavirus vaccine that has yet to reach South Africa and most of the world's poor. 

(AP Photo/Jerome Delay)


CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — In a pair of Cape Town warehouses converted into a maze of airlocked sterile rooms, young scientists are assembling and calibrating the equipment needed to reverse engineer a coronavirus vaccine that has yet to reach South Africa and most of the world’s poorest people.

The energy in the gleaming labs matches the urgency of their mission to narrow vaccine disparities. By working to replicate Moderna’s COVID-19 shot, the scientists are effectively making an end run around an industry that has vastly prioritized rich countries over poor in both sales and manufacturing.

And they are doing it with unusual backing from the World Health Organization, which is coordinating a vaccine research, training and production hub in South Africa along with a related supply chain for critical raw materials. It’s a last resort effort to make doses for people going without, and the intellectual property implications are still murky.

“We are doing this for Africa at this moment, and that drives us,” said Emile Hendricks, a 22-year-old biotechnologist for Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, the company trying to reproduce the Moderna jab. “We can no longer rely on these big superpowers to come in and save us.”

Some experts see reverse engineering — recreating vaccines from fragments of publicly available information — as one of the few remaining ways to redress the power imbalances of the pandemic. Only 0.7% of vaccines have gone to low-income countries so far, while nearly half have gone to wealthy countries, according to an analysis by the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

That WHO, which relies upon the goodwill of wealthy countries and the pharmaceutical industry for its continued existence, is leading the attempt to reproduce a proprietary vaccine demonstrates the depths of the supply disparities.

The U.N.-backed effort to even out global vaccine distribution, known as COVAX, has failed to alleviate dire shortages in poor countries. Donated doses are coming in at a fraction of what is needed to fill the gap. Meanwhile, pressure for drug companies to share, including Biden administration demands on Moderna, has led nowhere.

Until now, WHO has never directly taken part in replicating a novel vaccine for current global use over the objections of the original developers. The Cape Town hub is intended to expand access to the novel messenger RNA technology that Moderna, as well as Pfizer and German partner BioNTech, used in their vaccines.

“This is the first time we’re doing it to this level, because of the urgency and also because of the novelty of this technology,” said Martin Friede, a WHO vaccine research coordinator who is helping direct the hub.

Dr. Tom Frieden, the former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has described the world as “being held hostage” by Moderna and Pfizer, whose vaccines are considered the most effective against COVID-19. The novel mRNA process uses the genetic code for the spike protein of the coronavirus and is thought to trigger a better immune response than traditional vaccines.

Arguing that American taxpayers largely funded Moderna’s vaccine development, the Biden administration has insisted the company must expand production to help supply developing nations. The global shortfall through 2022 is estimated at 500 million and 4 billion doses, depending on how many other vaccines come on the market.

“The United States government has played a very substantial role in making Moderna the company it is,” said David Kessler, the head of Operation Warp Speed, the U.S. program to accelerate COVID-19 vaccine development.

Kessler would not say how far the administration would go in pressing the company. “They understand what we expect to happen,” he said.

Moderna has pledged to build a vaccine factory in Africa at some point in the future. But after pleading with drugmakers to share their recipes, raw materials and technological know-how, some poorer countries are done waiting.

Afrigen Managing Director Petro Terblanche said the Cape Town company is aiming to have a version of the Moderna vaccine ready for testing in people within a year and scaled up for commercial production not long after.

“We have a lot of competition coming from Big Pharma. They don’t want to see us succeed,” Terblanche said. “They are already starting to say that we don’t have the capability to do this. We are going to show them.”

If the team in South Africa succeeds in making a version of Moderna’s vaccine, the information will be publicly released for use by others, Terblanche said. Such sharing is closer to an approach U.S. President Joe Biden championed in the spring and the pharmaceutical industry strongly opposes.

Commercial production is the point at which intellectual property could become an issue. Moderna has said it would not pursue legal action against a company for infringing on its vaccine rights, but neither has it offered to help companies that have volunteered to make its mRNA shot.

Chairman Noubar Afeyan said Moderna determined it would be better to expand production itself than to share technology and plans to deliver billions of additional doses next year.

“Within the next six to nine months, the most reliable way to make high-quality vaccines and in an efficient way is going to be if we make them,” Afeyan said.

Zoltan Kis, an expert in messenger RNA vaccines at Britain’s University of Sheffield, said reproducing Moderna’s vaccine is “doable” but the task would be far easier if the company shared its expertise. Kis estimated the process involves fewer than a dozen major steps. But certain procedures are tricky, such as sealing the fragile messenger RNA in lipid nanoparticles, he said.

“It’s like a very complicated cooking recipe,” he said. “Having the recipe would be very, very helpful, and it would also help if someone could show you how to do it.”

A U.N.-backed public health organization still hopes to persuade Moderna that its approach to providing vaccines for poorer countries misses the mark. Formed in 2010, the Medicines Patent Pool initially focused on convincing pharmaceutical companies to share patents for AIDS drugs.

“It’s not about outsiders helping Africa,” Executive Director Charles Gore said of the South Africa vaccine hub. “Africa wants to be empowered, and that’s what this is about.”

It will eventually fall to Gore to try to resolve the intellectual property question. Work to recreate Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine is protected as research, so a potential dispute would surround steps to sell a replicated version commercially, he said.

“It’s about persuading Moderna to work with us rather than using other methods,” Gore said.

He said the Medicines Patent Pool repeatedly tried but failed to convince Pfizer and BioNTech - the first companies out with an effective vaccine - to even discuss sharing their formulas.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who is among the members of Congress backing a bill that calls on the United States to invest more in making and distributing COVID-19 vaccines in low-and middle-income countries, said reverse engineering isn’t going to happen fast enough to keep the virus from mutating and spreading further.

“We need to show some hustle. We have to show a sense of urgency, and I’m not seeing that urgency,” he said. “Either we end this pandemic or we muddle our way through.”

Campaigners argue the meager amount of vaccines available to poorer countries through donations, COVAX and purchases suggests the Western-dominated pharmaceutical industry is broken.

“The enemy to these corporations is losing their potential profit down the line,” Joia Mukherjee, chief medical officer of the global health nonprofit Partners in Health, said. “The enemy isn’t the virus, the enemy isn’t suffering.”

Back in Cape Town, the promise of using mRNA technology against other diseases motivates the young scientists.

“The excitement is around learning how we harness mRNA technology to develop a COVID-19 vaccine,” Caryn Fenner, Afrigen’s technical director, said. But more important, Fenner said, “is not only using the mRNA platform for COVID, but for beyond COVID.”

___

Cheng reported from London; Hinnant reported from Paris.

Health-care labor shortages are compounding worker burnout nationally: Study

Anjalee Khemlani

·Senior Reporter

Thu, October 21, 2021

A confluence of issues have put strains on health care systems amid the ongoing pandemic, and they could lead to increased costs in 2022, according to Moody's.

In a new report, the firm highlighted how ongoing pressures in the health care labor market — which began well before the pandemic but have been exacerbated by it — are creating a costly shift for employers.

"After a short reprieve, the use of expensive contract labor for nursing has increased as COVID-19 cases have risen with the Delta variant. Many hospitals report that hourly wages for contract labor are up again, and in some cases, to a higher level than during the surge seen in mid-2020," the report noted.

It's why Moody's associate managing director Lisa Goldstein said the country is facing a "very pronounced national labor shortage."

Registered nurse Kelsey Simons pauses while putting on her personal protective equipment (PPE) gear before treating a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) positive patient inside their isolation room in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Florida, U.S., September 21, 2021. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

But one thing different from the pre-COVID-19 shortage is the addition of experienced nurses burning out and retiring as a result of the intense workplace demand amid the pandemic, according to Goldstein.

In addition, other health care workers — non-clinical workers, in particular —are also in short supply. That includes those in the environmental, housekeeping and cybersecurity sectors.

"So the labor shortage is much broader and much deeper now than in the past," Goldstein said.

There are several factors compounding the shortage — including worker pay. It's far more financially rewarding for clinical workers to work as contractors rather than for hospitals, which is one reason hospitals are seeing increased costs, Goldstein said.

Another key factor in staffing shortages is the highly demanding and difficult work caused by COVID-19 and its surges. Vaccine mandates are another factor in the worker shortage. 

"It is a real problem, financially, that will lead to lower margins over the near-term," Goldstein said.

"It will undoubtedly lead to higher costs for everyone seeking health care. So we may see a rise in premiums, in our hospital health care bills," she added.

The one silver lining is that the pandemic spurred interest in the health sector, as evidenced by the increase in enrollment in nursing schools in 2020. But that doesn't help with today's staffing shortages.

"Hospitals ... will have to throw a lot of resources to not only recruit and be competitive in their salaries," but also to retain employees, which will lead to wage inflation, Goldstein said.

The needs of the aging U.S. population will keep pressure on labor needs, and, as a result Goldstein said, hospital margins.

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.