Kurdish Armour: Inventorising YPG Equipment In Northern Syria
Oryx Friday, October 29, 2021 Afrin , BMP-1


By Stijn Mitzer and Joost Oliemans


A number of attacks on Turkish patrols in northern Syria have brought Turkey and YPG forces to the brink of war. In response to the latest attack, which saw the death of one Turkish soldier, President Erdogan vowed to clear northern Syria from the YPG. [1] In order to achieve this, YPG (Yekîneyên Parastina Gel – People's Protection Units, itself the primary faction in the Syrian Democratic Forces alliance) forces would either have to leave the border region voluntarily or take up arms and fight the Free Syrian Army and Turkish military. In the latter case, the YPG's armour is undoubtedly set to play a role as the faction's primary fire-support platforms. This article attempts to catalogue the YPG's fleet of AFVs and other heavy weaponry and explain how its armoured force came to be.

Compared to other major factions involved in the Syrian Civil War, the YPG is the least endowed with armour. To compensate for the resulting gap in capabilities, the YPG became very active in the production of DIY armoured vehicles, usually based on bulldozers or large trucks. [2] For light armoured vehicles and true armour, the YPG has traditionally been reliant on vehicles captured from the Islamic State, AFVs left behind by the Syrian Arab Army (SyAA), equipment turned over by the SyAA in return for a safe passage (for example after retreating from Mennagh airbase in 2014) and armoured vehicles donated by the United States.

While other factions involved in the Syrian Civil War like the Islamic State managed to accumulate an arsenal containing hundreds of tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles captured from the Syrian Arab Army, the YPG, often avoiding combat with government forces, usually had to do with the scraps. In this manner the YPG acquired several vehicle types like the BTR-60 and BRDM-2 that had been left to rot in government bases by their previous owners. With no real alternative, even these derelict vehicles would be patched up for another lease of life with the YPG. Even in cases where the engine couldn't be repaired, the hulls of BTR-60s were placed on the back of trucks and used as makeshift AFVs.

With little armour and other heavy weaponry to speak of, the YPG almost exclusively relied on Coalition airpower for the destruction of Islamic State vehicles and fighting positions. While this meant that Islamic State-operated AFVs were often destroyed before they could inflict serious damage on YPG forces, it also meant that most AFVs were completely obliterated by the heavy ordnance dropped on them by Coalition aircraft, preventing their capture and further use with the YPG.




In an effort to help the SDF in the fight against Islamic State forces in northern Syria, the YPG received large numbers of infantry mobility vehicles (IMVs) and mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (MRAPs) from the United States, which appear to have replaced some of the more ludicrous YPG homemade armour designs. Interestingly, the YPG was allowed to keep these vehicles even after the defeat of IS as a conventional military force. Even then however, there was little doubt that their most likely future use would be against a NATO member (Turkey). In addition to a large fleet of Humvees, IAG Guardians and M1224 Maxxpros, there have also been reports that the U.S. transferred a number of M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) to the YPG. These reports appear to stem from the sighting of M2s with SDF flags and a video of YPG members training alongside M2s, and there currently is no reason to suggest that such a transfer has actually taken place.






Rather than facing possible destruction by Turkish M60Ts and Leopard 2A4 MBTs, arguably the biggest threat to YPG armour would be TAI Anka and Bayraktar TB2 unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) and T129 ATAK attack helicopters hovering overhead, as well as anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) operated by the Free Syrian Army. The latter three weapon systems were responsible for quickly ending all YPG armour operations in Afrin during Operation Olive Branch in 2018. The annihilation of heavy armour belonging to Syrian government forces during Operation Spring Shield in February 2020 proved that large scale armour operations are not a viable strategy in the face of unopposed Turkish drones overhead. [3]


Instead, the YPG can be expected to disperse its armour along the frontline and to position them in buildings when they're not fighting to hide them from the lurking eyes overhead. The YPG is well-accustomed to the use of such tactics to mitigate the threat of drones, and its armour has frequently been spotted hiding in the safety of a garage. Interestingly, in some cases the AFVs were captured in their hiding spot after they failed to leave it again, presumably having either suffered a malfunction or because its operators simply didn't make it to their vehicle in time. [4]


When the AFVs did manage to leave their hiding spots in Afrin, their operational career tended to be an exceptionally short one in the face of several airborne assets sent out to destroy them. In one case, a TB2 drone followed an Iranian-produced Safir jeep with a recoilless rifle on it that was used as makeshift artillery back to its garage hideout, subsequently striking the entire building to also take out other AFVs possibly hiding there as well as their entire ammunition supply. [5]





A well-hidden YPG T-72 in Afrin. However, when this tank and others left their hiding spots they were almost immediately destroyed by drones, attack helicopters and ATGMs.

Undoubtedly the most dangerous threat to the Turkish military is the YPG's arsenal of ATGMs. Despite capturing very few of these missiles from the Syrian Arab Army, the YPG has managed to secure a steady supply of ATGMs acquired on the black market in Syria. These have included types such as the 9M113 Konkurs and 9M115 Metis-M, but also more advanced types such as the 9M133 Kornet and even the U.S. TOW ATGM. Although frequently employing them against against the Free Syrian Army and Turkish military, it can be expected that the YPG maintains a significant stock of missiles held back for future use against Turkish armour and troop concentrations.





A U.S. made TOW ATGM system in the hands of a YPG fighter. Although meant to be used by certain Free Syrian Army units, uncontrolled profileration of these ATGMs meant that some fell in the hands of the YPG and IS.

A detailed list of armoured fighting vehicles and heavy weaponry confirmed to be operated by the YPG can be viewed below. This list only includes vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of AFVs operated by the YPG is likely higher than what is recorded here. As this list attempts to give an overview of the equipment currently in service with the YPG, AFVs that have already been lost are not included in this list. Great care has been taken to avoid double listings and vehicles that have already been destroyed. Mortars and uparmoured front loaders and trucks are not included in this list.

(Click on the numbers to get a picture of each individual vehicle or weapon system)

Tanks (11)
8 T-55A: (1) (2, upgraded with a gunshield and additional stowage boxes) (3, upgraded with a gunshield and additional stowage boxes) (4, upgraded with slat armour) (5, upgraded with slat armour) (6, fitted with a North Korean LRF and upgraded with a gunshield) (7, fitted with a North Korean LRF) (8, fitted with a North Korean LRF)

1 T-62 Obr. 1967: (1, upgraded with side skirts and a gunshield)
2 T-62 Obr. 1972: (1, upgraded with side skirts) (2, captured from the Free Syrian Army in 2016, subsequent fate unknown)

Armoured fighting vehicles (20)
7 MT-LB: (1, upgraded with slat armour and a 12.7mm HMG turret) (2, upgraded with a 12.7mm HMG turret) (3, upgraded with a 12.7mm HMG turret) (4, captured from Islamic State in Iraq and taken to Syria) (5, taken over from an unknown party in Iraq) (6, taken over from an unknown party in Iraq) (7, taken over from an unknown party in Iraq. Armed with a 23mm ZU-23 turret)
5 BRDM-2: (1, upgraded with additional armour and a 23mm gun) (2, upgraded with additional armour) (3, upgraded with additional armour) (4, upgraded with additional armour and a new HMG turret) (5, upgraded with a new body, engine and turret)
3 M1117 ASV: (1, upgraded with an open-topped turret and side armour. Taken over from an unknown party in Iraq) (2, captured from Islamic State in Iraq and taken to Syria) (3, captured from Islamic State in Iraq and taken to Syria)
4 T-55-based fire support vehicle: (1, armed with a 12.7mm HMG turret) (2, armed with a turret for a 12.7mm HMG) (3, armed with a turret with two 14.5mm KPV HMGs) (4, armed with a 73mm BMP-1 turret)
1 GAZ-3308-based guntruck: (1, armed with two 14.5mm KPV HMGs)


Sturmpanzers (10)
11 'Sturmpanzer': (1, fitted with a 73mm BMP-1 turret) (2, fitted with a large turret) (3, fitted with a large turret) (4, fitted with an open-topped turret) (5, fitted with a small turret) (6, fitted with two HMs and four unguided rockets) (7, fitted with a dozer-blade) (8, fitted with HMG turrets) (9, fitted with HMG turrets) (10, fitted with HMG turrets)


Infantry fighting vehicles (11)
10 BMP-1: (1) (2) (3, modified with stowage boxes) (4, upgraded with slat armour and stowage boxes) (5, upgraded with new side skirts) (6, modified with a new superstructure) (7, fitted with a new 12.7mm HMG turret) (8, fitted with a new 12.7mm turret and rear turret) (9, fitted with a new superstructure and turret) (10, fitted with a new superstructure and turret)

1 ACV-AIFV: (1, captured from the Turkish Army in 2018. Subsequent fate unknown)


Armoured personnel carriers (10)
2 BTR-60PB: (1, armed with a 12.7mm HMG) (2)

1 ACV-AAPC: (1, captured from the Free Syrian Army in 2018. Subsequent fate unknown)
3 'BMB' (1, fitted with a HMG turret) (2) (3, fitted with an open-topped turret)

2 'BTR-T60': (1, body of a BTR-60 APC installed on a truck) (2, body of a BTR-60 APC installed on a truck)
1 'BTR-6': (1, fitted with a HMG turret)
1 'BTR-73': (1, fitted with a 73mm BMP-1 turret)


Mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (Limited quantities)
International M1224 MaxxPro (Limited quantities delivered by the United States) (At least one example fitted with a mine roller)

1 Badger MRAP: (1, upgraded with additional armour. Taken over from an unknown party in Iraq)
1 Caiman MRAP: (1, upgraded with additional armour. Taken over from an unknown party in Iraq)

Infantry mobility vehicles (Large quantities)
M-1151 HMMWV (Large quantities delivered by the United States) (One fitted with a four-barreled 107mm MRLs)

IAG Guardian (Large quantities delivered by the United States)
1 BMC Kirpi: (1, captured from the Turkish Army in 2019. Subsequent fate unknown)
IMV design (1) (Produced in limited quanitities) Prototype: (1)

IMV design (2) (Produced in limited quanitities)

Towed artillery (Limited quantities)
1 122mm M-30 howitzer
1 122mm gun A-19 field-gun
1 122mm D-30 howitzer

Multiple rocket launchers (Limited quantities)
107mm Type-63 (Limited quantities available)
1 122mm BM-21 Grad: (1)
1 122mm 'BM-12': (1)
DIY MRLs (Produced in limited quanitities)


(Self-propelled) anti-aircraft guns used for fire-support missions (Large quantities)
14.5mm ZPU-4 (Small quantities mounted on pickup trucks)
14.5mm DIY AA mount (Large quantities mounted on pickup trucks)
23mm ZU-23 (Large quantities mounted on pickup trucks)
37mm M-1939 (61-K) (Small quantities mounted on pickup trucks)
37mm Type-65/74 (Small quantities mounted on pickup trucks)

57mm AZP S-60 (Small quantities mounted on pickup trucks)
1 23mm ZSU-23: (1, modified with four new 23mm guns)


Anti-tank guided missiles (Limited quantities)

9M111 Fagot (Purchased on the Syrian black market)
9M113 Konkurs (Purchased on the Syrian black market)
9M115 Metis-M (Purchased on the Syrian black market)
9M133 Kornet (Purchased on the Syrian black market)
BGM-71 TOW (Purchased on the Syrian black market)
MILAN ATGM (Limited quantities believed to have been taken over from Peshmerga forces in Iraq)

Unmanned aerial vehicles
Commercially-available drones (Used for reconnaissance)
[1] Turkey vows to clear N Syria from YPG terrorists https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-vows-to-clear-n-syria-from-ypg-terrorists-168602

[2] Monsters Of Desperation: The YPG’s Sturmpanzers https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2020/08/belly-of-beast-ypg-monsters.html
[3] The Idlib Turkey Shoot: The Destruction and Capture of Vehicles and Equipment by Turkish and Rebel Forces https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2020/02/the-idlib-turkey-shoot-destruction-and.html
[4] https://twitter.com/worldonalert/status/1183399659085144072
[5] How a Drone Hunted Three Kurdish Fighters in Syria | NYT Investigates https://youtu.be/V9z8FbJ589s


For more on YPG armour be sure to check out Ed Nash's fantastic book Kurdish Armour Against ISIS YPG/SDF tanks, technicals and AFVs in the Syrian Civil War, 2014–19


Special thanks to Calibre Obscura.

Recommended Articles:

These are the Do-It-Yourself APCs of the YPG
Monsters Of Desperation: The YPG’s Sturmpanzers
The Tigray Defence Forces - Documenting Its Heavy Weaponry

Stacey Abrams’ nonprofit donates $1.34 million to wipe out medical debts




By —Jeff Amy, Associated Press

Politics Oct 27, 2021

ATLANTA (AP) — The political organization led by prominent Democrat Stacey Abrams is branching out into paying off medical debts.

The Fair Fight Political Action Committee on Wednesday told The Associated Press it has donated $1.34 million from its political action committee to the nonprofit organization RIP Medical Debt to wipe out debt with a face value of $212 million that is owed by 108,000 people in Georgia, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Lauren Groh-Wargo CEO of allied group Fair Fight Action and senior adviser to the PAC said paying off medical debt is another facet of the group’s advocacy seeking expansion of Medicaid coverage in the 12 states that have refused to expand the health insurance to all poorer adults.

“What is so important about this is the tie between Medicaid expansion and just crushing medical debt,” Groh-Wargo said.

Of the states targeted, Arizona and Louisiana have expanded Medicaid.

Fair Fight said letters will be sent to those whose debts have been absolved to notify them. The purchase will forgive the debt of nearly 69,000 people in Georgia, more than 27,000 people in Arizona, more than 8,000 people in Louisiana, and about 2,000 people apiece in Mississippi and Alabama.

WATCH: Stacey Abrams on ‘reformation and transformation’ in American policing

The group has raised more than $100 million since Abrams founded it after her 2018 loss in the Georgia governor’s race. Fair Fight has been most noted for its advocacy of voting rights, but has also been pushing for broader health care. The group launched ads last week demanding that Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp add Medicaid expansion to the list of topics that Georgia lawmakers will consider in a special session starting next week to redraw electoral districts. Democrats are hoping Abrams will run against Kemp again in 2022. A narrow loss to Kemp in 2018 launched Abrams into political stardom.

“I know firsthand how medical costs and a broken healthcare system put families further and further in debt,” Abrams said in a statement. “Across the sunbelt and in the South, this problem is exacerbated in states like Georgia where failed leaders have callously refused to expand Medicaid, even during a pandemic.”

RIP Medical Debt said Fair Fight is giving the third-largest donation in its history. Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave the group $50 million last year. The group has aided more than 3 million people since it was founded in 2014, typically buying bundles of medical debt at steep discounts from the face value. The bills often are purchased from collection agencies that have been trying to get debtors to pay for years. The group has wiped out debt with a face value of more than $5.3 billion.

Allison Sesso, executive director of RIP Medical Debt, said such liabilities often drive people into bankruptcy, can deter people from seeking needed medical care, and can lead to wages being garnished or liens filed on property.

“I wouldn’t underestimate the mental anguish that people have from medical debt,” Sesso said.

Sesso said her group is not just pursuing debt abolishment “but thinking about how we can improve the system nationwide,” trying to advocate that hospitals should do more to make charity care available. She also said research shows states that expanded Medicaid have lower rates of medical debt.

“We are not the permanent solution,” Sesso said. “There does need to be a larger solution around what we do about medical debt.”

Groh-Wargo said the money was given by donors for political action, but said the money represents “only a small percentage” of what Fair Fight has raised.

“I think of this as politically tithing to help the community we are advocating for and with,” Groh-Wargo said, saying the group has done smaller scale charitable efforts.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/this-nonprofit-is-buying-americans-medical-debt-so-they-dont-have-to-pay-it

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/mississippi-highest-medical-debt

‘A roadmap for a coup’: inside Trump’s plot to steal the presidency

Investigations by the US House and Senate have added granular detail that has astonished even seasoned election-watchers in terms of the scale and complexity of Trump’s attempted coup. Composite: Klawe Rzeczy/Getty Images


A startling memo, a surreal Oval Office encounter – just some of the twists in the unfolding story of Trump’s bid to cling to power, which critics say was no less than an attempted coup


Ed Pilkington in New York
THE GUARDIAN
Sat 30 Oct 2021 

On 4 January, the conservative lawyer John Eastman was summoned to the Oval Office to meet Donald Trump and Vice-President Mike Pence. Within 48 hours, Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election would formally be certified by Congress, sealing Trump’s fate and removing him from the White House.

The atmosphere in the room was tense. The then US president was “fired up” to make what amounted to a last-ditch effort to overturn the election results and snatch a second term in office in the most powerful job on Earth.

Eastman, who had a decades-long reputation as a prominent conservative law professor, had already prepared a two-page memo in which he had outlined an incendiary scenario under which Pence, presiding over the joint session of Congress that was to be convened on 6 January, effectively overrides the votes of millions of Americans in seven states that Biden had won, then “gavels President Trump as re-elected”.

The Eastman memo, first revealed by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in their book Peril, goes on to predict “howls” of protest from Democrats. The theory was that Pence, acting as the “ultimate arbiter” of the process, would then send the matter to the House of Representatives which, following an arcane rule that says that where no candidate has reached the necessary majority each state will have one vote, also decides to turn the world upside down and hand the election to the losing candidate, Donald Trump.

John Eastman speaks at the Trump rally on 6 January. Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters

Eastman’s by now notorious memo, and the surreal encounter in the Oval Office, are among the central twists in the unfolding story of Trump’s audacious bid to hang on to power. They form the basis of what critics argue was nothing less than an attempted electoral coup.

In an interview with the Guardian, Eastman explained that he had been asked to prepare the memo by one of Trump’s “legal shop”. “They said can you focus first on the theory of what happens if there are not enough electoral votes certified. So I focused on that. But I said: ‘This is not my recommendation. I will have a fuller memo to you in a week outlining all of the various scenarios.’”

Inside the Oval Office, with the countdown on to 6 January, Trump urged Pence to listen closely to Eastman. “This guy’s a really respected constitutional lawyer,” the president said, according to the book I Alone Can Fix It.

Eastman, a member of the influential rightwing Federalist Society, told the Guardian that he made clear to both men that the account he had laid out in the short memo was not his preferred option. “The advice I gave the vice-president very explicitly was that I did not think he had the authority simply to declare which electors to count” or to “simply declare Trump re-elected”.
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Eastman continued: “The vice-president turned to me directly and said, ‘Do you think I have such powers?’ I said, ‘I think it’s the weaker argument.’”

Instead, Eastman pointed to one of the scenarios in the longer six-page memo that he had prepared – “war-gaming” alternatives. His favorite was that the vice-president could adjourn the joint session of Congress on 6 January and send the electoral college votes back to states that Trump claimed he had lost unfairly so their legislatures could have another go at rooting out the fraud and illegality the president had been railing about since election day.

“My advice to the vice-president was to allow the states formally to assess the impact of what they had determined were clear illegalities in the conduct of the election,” Eastman said. After a delay of a week or 10 days, if they found sufficient fraud to affect the result, they could then send Trump electors back to Congress in place of the previous Biden ones.

The election would then be overturned.

“Those votes are counted and TRUMP WINS,” Eastman wrote in his longer memo, adding brashly: “BOLD, certainly … but we’re no longer playing by Queensbury rules.”

Eastman insisted to the Guardian that he had only been presenting scenarios to the vice-president, not advice. He said that since news of his memos broke he had become the victim of a “false narrative put out there to make it look as though Pence had been asked to do something egregiously unconstitutional, so he was made to look like a white knight coming in to stop this authoritarian Trump”.

The problem is that for many close observers of American elections, Eastman’s presentation to Pence just two days before the vice-president was set to certify Biden’s victory leaves a very different impression.

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, a leading authority on US election issues, sees Eastman’s set of alternative scenarios as nothing less than a “fairly detailed roadmap for a constitutional coup d’état. That memo was a plan for a series of tricks to steal the presidency for Trump.”

Supporters of Trump climb the west wall of the Capitol on 6 January

 to storm the building. Photograph: José Luis Magaña/AP

The 2020 presidential election was the largest in US history, with a record 156 million votes cast and the highest turnout of eligible voters since 1900. By all official accounts, it was also among the most secure and well-conducted in US history.

“It was something of a civil miracle,” Waldman said. “To have this massive turnout, an election that was extraordinarily well run, in the middle of a pandemic – this was one of America’s finest hours in terms of our democracy.”

And yet, Waldman went on, what happened next? “Trump’s big lie, his campaign to overturn the election, the insurrection.”

Alarm bells began to ring months before America went to the polls on 3 November 2020. As early as July Trump was laying into mail-in voting, which was seeing huge voter take-up as a result of Covid-19, deriding the upcoming poll as the “most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history” and calling for it to be delayed.

At the time, Biden was holding a steady opinion poll lead over Trump in battleground states.

By September, Trump was refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power. He told reporters: “We’re going to have to see what happens.”

When we did see what happened – Biden winning the presidency by a relatively convincing margin – Trump refused to concede. Now, something that had only been posited as a remote and extreme possibility was unfolding before Americans’ eyes.

“The events of 2020 were unprecedented,” said Ned Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University. “A sitting president was trying to get a second term that the voters didn’t want him to have – it was an effort to overturn a free election and deprive the American people of their verdict.”

Since the violent incidents of 6 January when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, resulting in the deaths of five people, information has begun to amass about Trump’s extensive ploy to undo American democracy. Congressional investigations by the US House and Senate have added granular detail that has astonished even seasoned election-watchers in terms of the scale and complexity of the endeavour.

For Foley, a picture has come into focus of a “systematic effort to deny the voters their democratic choice. It was a deliberate, orchestrated campaign, and there’s nothing more fundamentally undemocratic than what was attempted.”

Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine who has written a report on 2020 election subversion, said that as time has passed the scope of Trump’s ambition has become clear. “There was much more behind the scenes than we knew about. We came much closer to a political and constitutional crisis than we realized,” he said.

The rally at the Capitol. ‘Be there, will be wild!’ Trump had exhorte

d his followers. Photograph: John Minchillo/AP

In his Guardian interview, Eastman justified his Oval Office presentation to Pence on scenarios of how to overturn an election by pointing to widespread irregularities in the 2020 voting process. He claimed there were “violations of election law by state or county election officials” and “good, unrebutted evidence of fraud”.

Asked how he would answer the charge that has been levelled at him that he had sketched out an electoral coup, he replied: “That begs the question: was there illegality and fraud? If there was, and it altered the results of the election, then that undermines democracy, as we have someone put in office who has not been elected.”

But why would such widespread fraudulent activity be directed against Trump and not, say, Biden, or before him Barack Obama? Eastman said that it was because Trump was “pushing back against the deep state in American politics”.

The “deep state” had become such an entrenched bureaucracy that it was “unaccountable to the ultimate sovereign authority of the American people”, Eastman said. “Trump’s punching back had all of the forces aligned with that entrenched bureaucracy doing everything to stop him.”

Contrary to Eastman’s claim that widespread fraud occurred during the election, all the main federal and state authorities charged with safeguarding the 2020 election, including law enforcement, have declared it historically secure. In several instances, that conclusion was reached by Trump’s own hand-picked Republican officials.

Trump shakes hands with Chris Krebs, who was put in charge of protecting the integrity of the election. After Krebs vouched that the election was historically secure, he was fired.

 Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
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They included Chris Krebs, who had been appointed by Trump to be director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) in charge of protecting the integrity of the 2020 election. On 12 November, Cisa put out a joint statement from election security officials that found the presidential vote to be “the most secure in American history”.

Five days later Krebs was out of a job. “He fired me by Twitter,” Krebs told the Guardian. “One of Trump’s own nominees saying the election was legitimate was a credibility issue for him. What he did to me shows there were lengths to which the former president would go which were well beyond any previous norms.”

Bill Barr, then US attorney general, was another Trump appointee who challenged the false claims of mass election fraud. Two days after the election, Barr bowed to pressure from the president and allowed federal prosecutors to investigate allegations of voting irregularities, a break with a longstanding justice department norm that prevented prosecutors from interfering in active election counts.

Yet later in November, Barr met Trump at the White House and told him bluntly, according to Peril, that stories of widespread illegality were “just bullshit”. Then, on 1 December, the attorney general told Associated Press that the FBI and prosecutors had found no fraud on a scale sufficient to impact the election result.

Barr stood down as the nation’s top prosecutor two weeks later.

Bill Barr stepped down as attorney general after rejecting Trump’s

 claims that the election was stolen. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Another prominent Republican lawyer who thoroughly rejects Trump’s “big lie” that the election was stolen from him is Ben Ginsberg. For almost four decades, Ginsberg was at the center of major election legal battles as counsel to the Republican National Committee as well as to four of the last six Republican presidential nominees, through his law firm, Trump included.

Ginsberg was also a central figure in the white-hot recount in Florida in 2000 that handed the White House to George W Bush.

“What we’ve seen has been different from anything in my experience, because Donald Trump has made an assertion about our elections being fraudulent and the results rigged,” Ginsberg told the Guardian. “I know from my 38 years of conducting election-day operations that that simply is not true, there is no evidence for it. What Donald Trump is saying is destructive to the democracy at its very foundations.”

Ginsberg likened Trump to an arsonist firefighter. “He is setting a fire deliberately so that he can be the hero to put it out. The problem is that there is no real fire, there is no systemic election fraud. The destruction is unnecessary.”

Trump’s campaign to subvert the election began with a flurry of tweets after election day. The New York Times calculated that in the three weeks from 3 November he attacked the legitimacy of the election to his vast social media following more than 400 times.

In the past few weeks, as congressional investigations have deepened, it has become clear that Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result were much more extensive and multi-layered than his Twitter rages. “This wasn’t just some crazy tweets,” Waldman said. “There was a concerted effort to push at every level to find ways to cling to power, even though he had lost.”

Politico estimated that in the month after the election, the sitting president reached out to at least 31 Republicans at all levels of government, from governors to state lawmakers, members of Congress to local election officials. Such was the obsessive attention to detail, the sitting US president even called the Republican chairwoman of the board of canvassers in Wayne county, Michigan, to encourage her not to certify Biden’s victory in a heavily Democratic area.

At the centre of the operation was a ragtag bunch of lawyers assembled by Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who was acting as Trump’s personal attorney. Few of the team had experience in election law; Barr referred to them, according to Peril, as a “clown car”.

Among the comical conspiracy theories amplified by Giuliani and the Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell was “Italygate”, the idea that an Italian defense company used satellites to flip votes from Trump to Biden.

Such florid fantasies, and the accompanying absence of hard and credible data, did little to endear Trump’s legal team to the courts. By the end of December, 61 lawsuits had been lodged by Trump and his acolytes in courts ranging from local jurisdictions right up to the US supreme court. Of those, only one succeeded, on a minor technicality.

Yet the epic failure to persuade judges to play along with Trump’s efforts at subversion should not disguise the seriousness of the endeavour, nor how far it was allowed to proceed. “What I find most disturbing is how far this plot got with such thin material to work with,” Foley said.

One of the most alarming aspects of the fraud conspiracy theories peddled around Trump was that so many senior Republicans and the Republican party itself endorsed them.

On 19 November, Powell was invited to appear in front of cameras at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee. Four days earlier, the Trump campaign had circulated an internal memo that thoroughly debunked a bizarre claim championed by Powell – that Biden’s victory was the product of a communist plot. Yet Powell went ahead nonetheless, using her RNC platform to double down on the palpably false claim that Dominion voting machines created by Venezuela’s deceased president Hugo Chávez (they weren’t) had been manipulated to redirect Trump votes to Biden (they hadn’t).

Complicity in the lie of the stolen election reached right to the heart of the Republican party. Even on 6 January, while shattered glass lay strewn across the corridors of Congress following the violent insurrection hours earlier, 139 House Republicans – more than half the total in the chamber – and eight Senate Republicans went ahead and voted to block the certification of Biden’s win.

Many other Republicans also acted as passive accomplices in Trump’s subversion plot, by failing publicly to speak out against it. Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the US Senate, waited until 15 December to recognize Biden as president-elect.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, in the chamber hours

 after Trump supporters stormed the Capitol. McConnell waited until 

15 December to recognize Biden. 

Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

For six weeks, McConnell watched and waited. He remained silent, as every day the big lie grew stronger, amplified through the echo chambers of Fox News, the far-right OANN news network and a web of Trump benefactors including the MyPillow founder, Mike Lindell.

Ginsberg told the Guardian that “the greatest disappointment to me personally is seeing people I know to be principled, with only the best intentions for the country, stand aside as Donald Trump wreaks havoc through American democracy. I don’t understand that, and I think it has really negative ramifications.”

Ginsberg added: “Many of them are guilt-ridden about that. It is a very unfortunate, disappointing situation.”

On 7 November, the Associated Press called Pennsylvania, and with it the presidency, for Biden. At that point, Trump’s efforts to subvert the election went into hyper-drive.

“Trump appeared to think he had a viable path to staying in power,” said Hasen. “His outlook morphed into an actual attempt to use the claims of fraud to try and overturn the election.”

Trump turned to what has been dubbed the “independent state legislature doctrine”. This is a convoluted legal theory that has been increasingly embraced by the right wing of the Republican party.

Those who adhere to the doctrine point to the section of the US constitution that gives state legislatures the power to set election rules and to determine the “manner” in which presidential electors are chosen under the electoral college system. If those rules are changed by other legal entities without the approval of the state legislatures, then, the theory goes, election counts can be deemed illegitimate and an alternate slate of electors imposed.

“It’s an extreme legal theory that does not depend on fraud but on claimed irregularities between the way 2020 was conducted and how the states had set up the election,” Hasen said.

Trump and his legal advisers began bearing down on critical swing states which Biden had won, attempting to browbeat state legislators into taking up the doctrine and using it as a means of overturning the result. Lawmakers in Arizona, Pennsylvania and other battleground states were encouraged to call a special session to highlight the disparities in election procedures, with the end goal being to replace Biden’s presidential electors with an alternate slate of Trump electors.

In his Guardian interview, Eastman said he was part of this effort. “I recommended that the legislatures be called into special session to assess the impact of the illegality. If there were cumulative illegal actions greater than the margin of victory, then the legislature needed to take the power back.”
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A month before Eastman gave his presentation to Trump and Pence in the Oval Office, he appeared before the Georgia legislature. By that point Georgia had already held a full hand recount of the almost 5m votes cast and was poised to announce the results of a third count – all of which confirmed Biden had won.

In a half-hour presentation on 3 December, Eastman called on Georgia’s lawmakers to effectively take the law into their own hands. “You could adopt a slate of electors yourselves,” he told them. “I don’t think it’s just your authority to do that, but, quite frankly, I think you have a duty to do that to protect the integrity of the election in Georgia.”

And then Trump took the fight to the next level: into the heart of US law enforcement. An interim report from the Senate judiciary committee published earlier this month chronicles the bombardment to which senior Department of Justice officials were subjected in the days leading up to 6 January.

It is a fundamental DoJ norm that the president and his allies should never interfere in any investigation, let alone to undermine American democracy. Yet the Senate report shows that on the day after Barr’s departure was announced, 15 December, Trump began ratcheting up pressure on his replacement to try to get him to adopt the big lie.

When Jeffrey Rosen, the new acting attorney general, demurred, Trump turned to a relatively lowly justice official, Jeffrey Clark, and propelled him into the thick of a mounting power struggle that had the potential to turn into a full-blown constitutional crisis. Clark, who was recently subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the 6 January insurrection, drew up a draft letter which he intended to have sent out to six critical swing states.

In essence, it called on state legislatures won by Biden to throw out the official will of the people and reverse it for Trump.

When Rosen refused to authorize the letter, Trump prepared to fire him and put Clark in his place. It took a showdown in the Oval Office at which key justice department officials threatened to resign en masse, accompanied even by the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, before Trump stood his threat down.

That volatile three-hour meeting on 3 January was one of the most dramatic incidents in which US democracy was pushed to the brink of collapse. It was not the only one.
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As the clock ticked down towards Trump’s final appointment with fate on 6 January, he grew more and more agitated. On 27 December, he called Rosen to make another attempt at cajoling the justice department to come on board with his subversion plot.

Handwritten notes taken by Rosen’s deputy record an astonishing exchange:

Rosen: “Understand that the DoJ can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election, doesn’t work that way.”

Trump: “Don’t expect you to do that, just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] congressmen.”

Then, on 2 January, Trump made his by now notorious call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s top election official as secretary of state. A recording of the conversation obtained by the Washington Post captured Trump telling Raffensperger, “I just want to find 11,780 votes” – one more vote than Biden’s margin of victory in the official count.

Trump asked Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to

 ‘find 11,780 votes’ to help Trump win the state. 

Photograph: Erik S Lesser/EPA

Raffensperger politely rejected the request. Four days later, Pence turned his back on Eastman’s scenarios, and announced that he would do his constitutional duty and certify Biden as the 46th president of the United States.

Trump had run out of road. He had nothing left, nowhere else to turn. Nothing, that is, except for his adoring, credulous and increasingly angry supporters.
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“Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Trump exhorted his followers in a now excised tweet.

Just how direct was Trump’s involvement in inciting the insurrection is now the stuff of a House select committee inquiry. The committee is aggressively pursuing Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist in the White House, over any role he might have played in the buildup towards the violence.

Bannon, who faces criminal charges for defying congressional subpoenas, was among a gathering at the Willard Hotel in Washington on the eve of 6 January that the House committee has dubbed the “war room”. Also present were Giuliani and Eastman. According to Peril, Trump called into the meeting and spoke with Bannon, expressing his disgust over Pence’s refusal to play along and block the certification just as Eastman had outlined.

When 6 January finally arrived, all eyes were on the Ellipse, the park flanking the White House where Trump was set to headline a massive “Stop the Steal” rally. Before he spoke, Eastman said a few words.

The law professor recounted one of his more lurid conspiracy theories – that voting machines had secret compartments built within them where pristine ballots were held until they were needed to increase Biden’s numbers and put him over the top. “They unload the ballots and match them to the unvoted voter and … voilà!”

Then Trump took the stage. He encouraged his thousands of followers to march to the Capitol. “Fight like hell. If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”

The Guardian asked Eastman whether he had any regrets about what happened, personal or otherwise. A week after the insurrection he was pressured into stepping down from his post at Chapman University in California.

“Regrets, yes, that people are taking action against me for telling the truth,” he said. “Regrets that I told the truth and that I continue to do so? Absolutely not.”

Eastman’s pledge to continue “telling the truth” will not soothe the anxieties of those concerned about American democracy. Already, speculation about another Trump run in 2024 is causing jitters.

Liz Cheney, a member of the House committee inquiry into the insurrection, has issued a stark warning to her Republican colleagues. Unless they start really telling the truth, she has told them, and countering the lies about election fraud, the country is on the path of “national self-destruction”.

Rick Hasen shares her fears. “Donald Trump has been underestimated before,” he said. “He is telling us he’s planning on running. He’s continuing to claim the election was stolen. The situation in the United States right now is desperate.”

Flying Solo: Parthenogenesis Discovered in California Condors
Genetic analyses uncover asexual reproduction by two female California condors despite access to fertile mates.


Christie Wilcox
Oct 29, 2021
ABOVE: A California condor tending to a chick
JOSEPH BRANDT/USFWS

When the population of California condors (Gymnogyps californianus) dropped to fewer than two dozen birds in 1982, some conservationists thought the species was doomed. But the California Condor Recovery Program successfully bred the animals back from the brink. As a part of that program, researchers collected DNA samples from the birds to gain insights into the genetic diversity of the population and to reduce potential inbreeding. Those molecular samples have now revealed something completely unexpected: two of the California condor females produced young without a male partner, a phenomenon called parthenogenesis.

The asexually produced offspring were especially surprising to scientists because both female birds were housed with males that sired other offspring with them before and after the unfertilized yet viable eggs were produced (one in 2001 and one in 2009). “Why it happened? We just don’t know,” Oliver Ryder, study coauthor and director of conservation genetics for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, tells National Geographic. “What we do know is that it happened more than once, and it happened to different females.”

“Will it happen again? I rather believe so,” he says.

According to the report of the discovery, published October 28 in the Journal of Heredity, both of the parthenogenically produced offspring were males. In condors, as with most birds, females possess two different chromosomes (ZW) and males two of the same (ZZ), so the fact that the offspring were males suggests they only received half of their dam’s genes. When researchers looked at 21 microsatellite markers—repetitive sequences with alleles of differing length in a population, which are often used in parentage analyses—each bird had two copies of its expected dam’s markers, and none of its presumed sire’s. Taken together, these data suggest that in both cases, the half of the female’s genome present in an unfertilized egg was duplicated to produce the chick’s genome. “The two chicks identified as parthenotes were the only individuals from among 911 condors in our genotype database that were homozygous at all examined loci,” the authors write.

Whether parthenogenesis contributes meaningfully to the condor population or can be exploited to aid in the animals’ conservation remains to be seen, experts say. Both of the parthenotes were relatively small and died before becoming sexually mature, at 1.9 and 7.9 years old. Condors can live into their 50s.

 
See “Saving the Vulture”

Other known examples of parthenogenesis in birds have almost all died before hatching, University of Tulsa evolutionary biologist Warren Booth tells Wired. That these condors lived as long as they did might suggest viable parthenogenetic offspring are possible in the species or raptors more generally, he says, so he considers the paper “one of the most important studies in the field of parthenogenesis and birds in a long time.”

“These findings now raise questions about whether this might occur undetected in other species,” Ryder tells the Associated Press. “The only reason we were able to identify that this had happened [in the condors] is because of these detailed genetic studies,” he says to National Geographic. “So, the birds in your backyard, are they occasionally producing a parthenogenetic chick? Nobody’s looking in deep enough detail to answer that question.”

Climate experts warn world leaders 1.5C is ‘real science’, not just talking point

Scientists say keeping temperature rises to 1.5C is vital physical threshold for planet that cannot be negotiated

The Greenland ice sheet, the melting of which would raise sea level rises, could be tipped into a state of irreversible decline beyond 1.5C.

Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images


Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
Sat 30 Oct 2021 07.00 B

The 1.5C temperature limit to be discussed by world leaders at critical meetings this weekend is a vital physical threshold for the planet’s climate, and not an arbitrary political construct that can be haggled over, leading climate scientists have warned.

World leaders are meeting in Rome and Glasgow over the next four days to thrash out a common approach aimed at holding global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, the lower of two limits set out in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

But some countries are unwilling to peg their emissions plans to the tougher goal, as it would require more urgent efforts. They prefer to consider long-term goals such as net zero by 2050.

Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the world’s foremost climate scientists, warned that the 1.5C target was not like other political negotiations, which can be haggled over or compromised on.

“A rise of 1.5C is not an arbitrary number, it is not a political number. It is a planetary boundary,” he told the Guardian in an interview. “Every fraction of a degree more is dangerous.”
Allowing temperatures to rise by more than 1.5C would vastly increase the risk of irreversible changes to the climate, he said. For instance, it would raise the risk of the Arctic losing its summer ice, with dire knock-on effects on the rest of the climate as the loss of reflective ice increases the amount of heat the water absorbs, in a feedback loop that could rapidly raise temperatures further.


Who’s who at Cop26: the leaders who hold the world’s future in their hands

The Greenland ice sheet, the melting of which would raise sea level rises, could also be tipped into a state of irreversible decline beyond 1.5C.

A rise of more than 1.5C would also threaten changes to the Gulf Stream, which could also become irreversible. It could result in catastrophe for biodiversity hotspots, damage agriculture across swathes of the globe, and could inundate small islands and low-lying coastal areas.

“This is real science – it is a real number. Now we can say that with a high degree of confidence,” he said, as 1.5C indicated a physical limit to the warming the planet can safely absorb.

Rockström added: “[Staying within] 1.5C is achievable. It is absolutely what we should be going for.”

The leaders of the G20 group of the world’s biggest economies – developed and developing – are meeting on Saturday in Rome. They will fly to Glasgow for Monday morning, where they will be joined by more than 100 leaders from the rest of the world for the UN Cop26 climate summit.

The UK, as host of Cop26, has set the aim of “keeping 1.5C alive”, but some countries – including China, Saudi Arabia and Russia – have been reluctant to agree to focus on the 1.5C limit, preferring to point out that the Paris agreement states the world must hold temperatures “well below” 2C while “pursuing efforts” to stay within 1.5C.


Wealthy nations urged to meet $100bn climate finance goal

However, scientific research since the Paris agreement was signed has added to a compelling body of global science showing that if temperatures are allowed to rise by more than 1.5C, the consequences will be severely damaging and many are likely to be irreversible.

Other leading climate scientists echoed Rockström’s warnings. Mark Maslin, a professor of Earth systems science at University College London, said: “The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in 2018 made the science very clear: there are significant climate impacts all round the world even if we limit warming to 1.5C.

“The report also showed there were significant increases to impacts and damages if we overshoot this target … These results were fully supported by the very latest 2021 IPCC science report [published in August]. This is the science and these agreed climate targets set by the Paris agreement are non-negotiable and have been agreed already by all 197 countries of the UN.”

Joeri Rogelj, the director of research at the Grantham institute, Imperial College London, said: “Science tells us that climate change risks increase rapidly between 1.5C and 2C of warming. Looking at the last years, during which we experienced some of the impacts of a 1.2C warmer world [such as heatwaves, flooding and extreme weather] – one would be hard pressed to call this safe.”

Earth gets hotter, deadlier during decades of climate talks BLAH BLAH BLAH

By SETH BORENSTEIN

24 minutes ago

1 of 14

FILE - In this Aug. 17, 2021, file photo, embers light up hillsides as the Dixie Fire burns near Milford in Lassen County, Calif. World leaders have been trying to do something about climate change for 29 years but in that time Earth has gotten much hotter and more dangerous. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

World leaders have been meeting for 29 years to try to curb global warming, and in that time Earth has become a much hotter and deadlier planet.

Trillions of tons of ice have disappeared over that period, the burning of fossil fuels has spewed billions of tons of heat-trapping gases into the air, and hundreds of thousands of people have died from heat and other weather disasters stoked by climate change, statistics show.

When more than 100 world leaders descended on Rio de Janeiro in 1992 for an Earth Summit to discuss global warming and other environmental issues, there was “a huge feeling of well-being, of being able to do something. There was hope really,” said Oren Lyons, faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, one of the representatives for Native Americans at the summit.

Now, the 91-year-old activist said, that hope has been smothered: “The ice is melting. ... Everything is bad. ... Thirty years of degradation.”

Data analyzed by The Associated Press from government figures and scientific reports shows “how much we did lose Earth,” said former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief William K. Reilly, who headed the American delegation three decades ago.

That Earth Summit set up the process of international climate negotiations that culminated in the 2015 Paris accord and resumes Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland, where leaders will try to ramp up efforts to cut carbon pollution.

Back in 1992, it was clear climate change was a problem “with major implications for lives and livelihoods in the future,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the AP this month. “That future is here and we are out of time.”

World leaders have hammered out two agreements to curb climate change. In Kyoto in 1997, a protocol set carbon pollution cuts for developed countries but not poorer nations. That did not go into effect until 2005 because of ratification requirements. In 2015, the Paris agreement made every nation set its own emission goals.

In both cases, the United States, a top-polluting country, helped negotiate the deals but later pulled out of the process when a Republican president took office. The U.S. has since rejoined the Paris agreement.

The yearly global temperature has increased almost 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) since 1992, based on multi-year averaging, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Earth has warmed more in the last 29 years than in the previous 110. Since 1992, the world has broken the annual global high temperature record eight times.

In Alaska, the average temperature has increased 2.5 degrees (1.4 degrees Celsius) since 1992, according to NOAA. The Arctic had been warming twice as fast as the globe as a whole, but now has jumped to three times faster in some seasons, according to the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program.

That heat is melting Earth’s ice. Since 1992, Earth has lost 36 trillion tons of ice (33 trillion metric tons), according to calculations by climate scientist Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds. That includes sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic that melts now more in the summer than it used to, the shrinking of giant ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, and melting glaciers.

And Michael Zemp, who runs the World Glacier Monitoring Service, said Shepherd’s numbers may be a little low. He calculates that since 1992, the glaciers of the world have lost nearly 9.5 trillion tons of ice (8.6 trillion metric tons), about a trillion tons more than Shepherd’s figures.

With more ice melt in the ocean and water expanding as it warms, the world’s average sea level has risen about 3.7 inches (95 millimeters) since 1992, according to the University of Colorado. That may not sound like much, but it is enough to cover the United States in water to a depth of 11 feet (3.5 meters), University of Colorado sea level researcher Steve Nerem calculated.

Wildfires in the United States have more than doubled in how much they have burned. From 1983 to 1992, wildfires consumed an average of 2.7 million acres a year. From 2011 to 2020, the average was up to 7.5 million acres, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

“The unhealthy choices that are killing our planet are killing our people as well,” said Dr. Maria Neira, director of the World Heath Organization’s environment, climate change and health program.

The United States has had 265 weather disasters that caused at least $1 billion in damage — adjusted to 2021 dollars — since 1992, including 18 so far this year. Those disasters have caused 11,991 deaths and cost $1.8 trillion. From 1980 to 1992, the U.S. averaged three of those billion-dollar weather disasters a year. Since 1993, the country has averaged nine a year.

Worldwide there have been nearly 8,000 climate, water and weather disasters, killing 563,735, according to the EMDAT disaster databas e. Those figures are probably missing a lot of disasters and deaths, said the Debarati Guha-Sapir, who oversees the database for the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the University of Louvain School of Public Health in Brussels.

Medical researchers earlier this year looked at 732 cities worldwide and calculated how many deaths were from climate change-caused extra heat. They found that on average since 1991, there have been 9,702 heat deaths from global warming a year just in those studied cities, which adds up to 281,000 climate-caused heat deaths since 1992.

But that’s a small proportion of what really is happening, said study author Ana Vicedo-Cabrera, an epidemiologist at the Institute of Social and Preventative Medicine at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Using those cities, researchers calculated that during the four hottest months of the year, the added heat from climate change is responsible for 0.58% of the globe’s deaths.

That comes to about 100,000 heat deaths caused by climate change a year for 29 years, she said.

WHO officials said those figures make sense and calculate the annual death toll from climate change will rise to 250,000 a year in the 2030s.

Scientists say this is happening because of heat-trapping gases. Carbon dioxide levels have increased 17% from 353 parts per million in September 1992 to 413 in September 2021, according to NOAA. The agency’s annual greenhouse gas index, which charts six gases and weights them according to how much heat they trap, rose almost 20% since 1992.

From 1993 to 2019, the world put more than 885 billion tons (803 billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide in the air from the burning of fossil fuels and making of cement, according to the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who track emissions.

A pessimistic Lyons, the Native American activist, said, “I would say this meeting in Glasgow is the last shot.”

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Read stories on climate issues by The Associated Press at https://apnews.com/hub/climate.

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

G20: India's Modi to meet Pope Francis for first time

Religious minorities in India have reported increased discrimination and violence since Narendra Modi took office in 2014. The pope wants to make an official trip to the South Asian nation, but has so far been shunned.


Pope Francis (right) is expected to call on Indian PM Narendra Modi to take tougher action to stop religious violence

The first meeting between Pope Francis and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rome this weekend is being tipped as a potential thorny encounter.

Francis will receive Modi at the Vatican on Saturday amid accusations of increasing levels of discrimination against religious minorities in India since the Hindu nationalist politician took office in 2014.

The pope is also expected to prepare the ground for a long-awaited official visit to India, which, according to Catholic media, is being held up by Modi's refusal to set a date.

The last time a pope visited India's nearly 28 million Christians was in 1999.

Modi stokes divisions

India's population of 1.4 billion is made up of various ethnicities and religions. While the country has long been plagued by communal tensions, Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are accused of fueling a rise in discrimination and violence toward people of other religions.

While Muslims, who make up around 14% of the population, have borne the brunt, Christians, who account for just over 2%, have also reported a rise in reported violent attacks.

More than 300 violent incidents have been recorded this year, according to a report by a group of NGOs released this month, under the pretext that Christians are seeking to forcibly convert Hindus.

The report said Christians face persecution from Hindu nationalist groups in 21 of the 28 states, most of them ruled by the BJP.

Christianity is India's third-largest religion after Hinduism and Islam, with approximately 27.8 million followers

The recent violence includes an attack earlier this month on a Christian prayer house in the northern state of Uttarakhand, which the local head of the BJP accused of holding "suspicious gatherings."

In March, a mob of Hindu radicals in the central state of Chhattisgarh attacked around 150 people in a church with axes, stones and wooden clubs. Eight people were seriously injured, according to reports.

In August in the same state, a mob of around 100 people beat up a pastor and vandalized his house. A month later, a crowd forced their way into a police station and assaulted a priest who was being questioned.

Catholic bishops demand end to violence

In recent days, Catholic bishops in India have demanded that the national and state governments take firm action against increasing persecution and violence against Christians.

At least three states run by the BJP have passed legislation aimed at preventing "forced conversion," and dozens of people have been arrested. Others plan to follow suit including the southern state of Karnataka, where priests have come out in protest.

The archbishop emeritus of Guwahati, Thomas Menamparampil, recently described the Hindu nationalist or Hindutva movement as "a vicious form of nationalism."

In the online magazine Indian Currents, he wrote that Hindutva and BJP along with powerful businessmen, "have developed the art of using religious and cultural symbols to mobilize crowds to win elections and promote their own interests."

The national debate now revolves exclusively around "what this club considers important: not development and welfare, but profits and privilege," Menamparampil added.

Modi's government has rejected having a Hindu agenda and insists that people of all religions have equal rights.

After the G20 gathering, Modi is due to leave for Glasgow to attend the COP26 climate summit.

mm/sri (AFP, KNA)

 

Strong solar flare could disrupt navigation, lead to auroras

A major solar flare was seen as a bright flash at the sun's lower center this week, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. This is one of the strongest solar storms in the star's current weather cycle.

    

The solar storm has been classified as an 'X1-class flare,' space agency NASA said

A strong solar flare erupted earlier this week which could affect GPS and communication satellites in the coming days, and also cause auroras in Europe and North America, space agency NASA and weather agency NOAA said.

"Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation," NASA explained in a statement.

"Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however — when intense enough — they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel," it said.

The solar storm has been classified as an "X1-class flare," the space agency added.

"X-class denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength," it said.

This means that X2 would be twice as strong as the one on Thursday. According to NASA, flare classified X10 — 10 times the strength of current flare — or stronger is considered "unusually intense."

Space Weather Prediction Center of NOAA said an "R3 (Strong radio blackout) event took place due to an X1 flare," on Thursday.

The space flight of German astronaut Matthias Maurer, who is set to start his expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) on Sunday, is not believed to be at risk.

The high-energy particles emitted by the flare could also cause certain atoms in the Earth's atmosphere to glow, leading to auroras in Central Europe as well as North America.

However, the phenomenon could only be seen if the weather is clear.

With material from DPA news agency.