Researchers uncover “genetic goldmine” underlying plant resilience in extreme desert environment

Evolutionary genomics approach identifies genes that enable plants to live in the Atacama Desert, offering clues for engineering more resilient crops to face climate change

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THE CHILEAN RESEARCH TEAM ESTABLISHED AN UNPARALLELED “NATURAL LABORATORY” IN THE ATACAMA DESERT IN NORTHERN CHILE, ONE OF THE DRIEST AND HARSHEST ENVIRONMENTS ON EARTH. view more 

CREDIT: MELISSA AGUILAR

An international team of researchers has identified genes associated with plant survival in one of the harshest environments on Earth: the Atacama Desert in Chile. Their findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), may help scientists breed resilient crops that can thrive in increasingly drier climates.

 

“In an era of accelerated climate change, it is critical to uncover the genetic basis to improve crop production and resilience under dry and nutrient-poor conditions,” said Gloria Coruzzi, Carroll & Milton Petrie Professor in the New York University (NYU) Department of Biology and Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, who co-led the study with Rodrigo Gutiérrez.  

 

The study was an international collaboration among botanists, microbiologists, ecologists, evolutionary and genomic scientists. This unique combination of expertise enabled the team to identify the plants, associated microbes, and genes that enable the Atacama plants to adapt to and flourish in extreme desert conditions, which could ultimately help to enhance crop growth and reduce food insecurity.

 

“Our study of plants in the Atacama Desert is directly relevant to regions around the world that are becoming increasingly arid, with factors such as drought, extreme temperatures, and salt in water and soil posing a significant threat to global food production,” said Gutiérrez, professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

 

Establishing a “natural laboratory” in one of Earth’s driest places

 

The Atacama Desert in northern Chile, sandwiched between the Pacific Ocean and Andes Mountains, is the driest place on the planet (excluding the poles). Yet dozens of plants grow there, including grasses, annuals, and perennial shrubs. In addition to limited water, plants in the Atacama must cope with high altitude, low availability of nutrients in the soil, and extremely high radiation from sunlight.

 

The Chilean research team established an unparalleled “natural laboratory” in the Atacama Desert over a 10-year period, in which they collected and characterized the climate, soil, and plants at 22 sites in different vegetational areas and elevations (every 100 meters of altitude) along the Talabre-Lejía Transect. Measuring a variety of factors, they recorded temperatures that fluctuated more than 50 degrees from day to night, very high radiation levels, soil that was largely sand and lacked nutrients, and minimal rain, with most annual rain falling over a few days.

 

Using genomics to explore the evolution of resilient plants

 

The Chilean researchers brought the plant and soil samples—preserved in liquid nitrogen—1,000 miles back to the lab to sequence the genes expressed in the 32 dominant plant species in the Atacama and assess the plant-associated soil microbes based on DNA sequences. They found that some plant species developed growth-promoting bacteria near their roots, an adaptive strategy to optimize the intake of nitrogen—a nutrient critical for plant growth—in the nitrogen-poor soils of the Atacama.

 

To identify the genes whose protein sequences were adapted in the Atacama species, the researchers at NYU next conducted an analysis using an approach called phylogenomics, which aims to reconstruct evolutionary history using genomic data. In consultation with colleagues at the New York Botanical Garden, they compared the genomes of the 32 Atacama plants with 32 non-adapted but genetically similar “sister” species, as well as several model species.

 

“The goal was to use this evolutionary tree based on genome sequences to identify the changes in amino acid sequences encoded in the genes that support the evolution of the Atacama plant adaptation to desert conditions,” said Coruzzi.

 

“This computationally intense genomic analysis involved comparing 1,686,950 protein sequences across more than 70 species. We used the resulting super-matrix of 8,599,764 amino acids for phylogenomic reconstruction of the evolutionary history of the Atacama species,” said Gil Eshel, who conducted this analysis using the High Performance Computing Cluster at NYU.

 

The study identified 265 candidate genes whose protein sequence changes were selected by evolutionary forces across multiple Atacama species. These adaptive mutations occurred in genes that could underlie plant adaptation to the desert conditions, including genes involved in response to light and photosynthesis, which may enable plants to adapt to the extreme high-light radiation in the Atacama. Similarly, the researchers uncovered genes involved in the regulation of stress response, salt, detoxification, and metal ions, which could be related to the adaptation of these Atacama plants to their stressful, nutrient-poor environment.

CAPTION

Gabriela Carrasco, an undergraduate researcher at the time, is identifying, labeling, collecting, and freezing plant samples in the Atacama Desert. These samples then traveled 1,000 miles, kept under dry ice to be processed for RNA extractions in Rodrigo Gutiérrez’s lab in Santiago de Chile. The species Carrasco is collecting here are Jarava frigida and Lupinus oreophilus.

CREDIT

Melissa Aguilar

What we can learn from this “genetic goldmine”

 

The majority of scientific knowledge of plant stress responses and tolerance has been generated through traditional lab-based studies using a few model species. While beneficial, such molecular studies likely miss the ecological context in which plants have evolved.

 

“By studying an ecosystem in its natural environment, we were able to identify adaptive genes and molecular processes among species facing a common harsh environment,” said Viviana Araus of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Gutierrez’ lab and a former postdoctoral associate at NYU’s Center for Genomics and Systems Biology.

 

“Most of the plant species we characterized in this research have not been studied before. As some Atacama plants are closely related to staple crops, including grains, legumes, and potatoes, the candidate genes we identified represent a genetic goldmine to engineer more resilient crops, a necessity given the increased desertification of our planet,” said Gutiérrez.

 

In addition to Gutiérrez and Araus, their collaborators in Chile included Claudio Latorre of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Mauricio González of the Universidad de Chile. Coruzzi and Eshel at NYU worked on the phylogenomic pipeline and analysis with collaborators in the U.S., including Kranthi Varala of Purdue University, Dennis Stevenson of the New York Botanical Garden, Rob DeSalle of the American Museum of Natural History, as well as members of their research teams.

 

This work was supported by Fondo de Desarrollo de Areas Prioritarias (FONDAP) Center for Genome Regulation (15090007) in Chile, and in the U.S. by the Zegar Family Foundation (A160051), and by a Department of Energy Biological and Environmental Research grant (DE-SC0014377).

 

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2101177118 

ARTICLE TITLE

Plant ecological genomics at the limits of life in the Atacama Desert

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Nov-2021

Uncovering the secrets behind Earth’s first major mass extinction

A team of researchers publish a new study exploring the cause of the Late Ordovician mass extinction.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: DETAIL IMAGES OF FOSSILS FROM THE ORDOVICIAN PERIOD OUTCROP ON ANTICOSTI ISLAND, QUEBEC, CANADA. view more 

CREDIT: PHOTO CREDIT: ANDRÉ DESROCHERS, UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA

We all know that the dinosaurs died in a mass extinction. But did you know that there were other mass extinctions? There are five most significant mass extinctions, known as the “big five,” where at least three-quarters of all species in existence across the entire Earth faced extinction during a particular geological period of time. With current trends of global warming and climate change, many researchers now believe we may be in a sixth.

Discovering the root cause of Earth’s mass extinctions has long been a hot topic for scientists, as understanding the environmental conditions that led to the elimination of the majority of species in the past could potentially help prevent a similar event from occurring in the future.

A team of scientists from Syracuse University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Riverside, Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté, the University of New Mexico, the University of Ottawa, the University of Science and Technology of China and Stanford University recently co-authored a paper exploring the Late Ordovician mass extinction (LOME), which is the first, or oldest of the “big five (~445 million years ago).” Around 85% of marine species, most of which lived in shallow oceans near continents, disappeared during that time.

Lead author Alexandre Pohl, from UC Riverside (now a postdoctoral research fellow at Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté in Dijon, France) and his co-authors investigated the ocean environment before, during, and after the extinction in order to determine how the event was brewed and triggered. The results from their study will be published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Nov. 1.

To paint a picture of the oceanic ecosystem during the Ordovician Period, mass extinction expert Seth Finnegan, associate professor at UC Berkeley, says that seas were full of biodiversity. Oceans contained some of the first reefs made by animals, but lacked an abundance of vertebrates.

“If you had gone snorkeling in an Ordovician sea you would have seen some familiar groups like clams and snails and sponges, but also many other groups that are now very reduced in diversity or entirely extinct like trilobites, brachiopods and crinoids” says Finnegan.

Unlike with rapid mass extinctions, like the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event where dinosaurs and other species died off suddenly some 65.5 million years ago, Finnegan says LOME played out over a substantial period of time, with estimates between less than half a million to almost two million years.

One of the major debates surrounding LOME is whether lack of oxygen in seawater caused that period’s mass extinction. To investigate this question, the team integrated geochemical testing with numerical simulations and computer modeling.

Zunli Lu, professor of Earth and environmental sciences at Syracuse University, and his students took measurements of iodine concentration in carbonate rocks from that period, contributing important findings about oxygen levels at various ocean depths. The concentration of the element iodine in carbonate rocks serves as an indicator for changes in oceanic oxygen level in Earth's history.

Their data, combined with computer modeling simulations, suggested that there was no evidence of anoxia ­­– or lack of oxygen ­– strengthening during the extinction event in the shallow ocean animal habitat where most organisms lived, meaning that climate cooling that occurred during the Late Ordovician period combined with additional factors likely was responsible for LOME.

On the other hand, there is evidence that anoxia in deep oceans expanded during that same time, a mystery that cannot be explained by the classic model of ocean oxygen, climate modeling expert Alexandre Pohl says.

“Upper-ocean oxygenation in response to cooling was anticipated, because atmospheric oxygen preferentially dissolves in cold waters,” Pohl says. “However, we were surprised to see expanded anoxia in the lower ocean since anoxia in Earth’s history is generally associated with volcanism-induced global warming.”

CAPTION

Detail images of fossils from the Ordovician Period outcrop on Anticosti Island, Quebec, Canada. (Photo credit: André Desrochers, University of Ottawa)

CREDIT

Photo credit: André Desrochers, University of Ottawa

They attribute the deep-sea anoxia to the circulation of seawater through global oceans. Pohl says that a key point to keep in mind is that ocean circulation is a very important component of the climatic system.

He was part of a team led by senior modeler Andy Ridgwell, professor at UC Riverside, whose computer modeling results show that climate cooling likely altered ocean circulation pattern, halting the flow of oxygen-rich water in shallow seas to the deeper ocean.

According to Lu, recognizing that climate cooling can also lead to lower oxygen levels in some parts of the ocean is a key takeaway from their study.

“For decades, the prevailing school of thoughts in our field is that global warming causes the oceans to lose oxygen and thus impact marine habitability, potentially destabilizing the entire ecosystem,” Lu says. “In recent years, mounting evidence point to several episodes in Earth’s history when oxygen levels also dropped in cooling climates.”

While the causes of Late Ordovician extinction have not been fully agreed upon, nor will they for some time, the team’s study rules out changes in oxygenation as a single explanation for this extinction and adds new data favoring temperature change being the killing mechanism for LOME.

Pohl is hopeful that as better climate data and more sophisticated numerical models become available, they will be able to offer a more robust representation of the factors that may have led to the Late Ordovician mass extinction.

CAPTION

Detail images of fossils from the Ordovician Period outcrop on Anticosti Island, Quebec, Canada.

CREDIT

Photo credit: André Desrochers, University of Ottawa

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JOURNAL

Nature Geoscience

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

The silent build-up to a super-eruption

Geologists from the UNIGE and Peking University have developed a technique that makes it possible to estimate the maximum size of a future super-eruption of Toba volcano in Sumatra.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITÉ DE GENÈVE

 

IMAGE: PHOTO OF LAKE TOBA IN SUMATRA AND ITS ISLAND CREATED BY THE ACCUMULATION OF MAGMA IN THE VOLCANO’S MAGMA RESERVOIR. view more 

CREDIT: © UNIGE

It is estimated that about 5-10 volcanoes worldwide are capable of producing a super-eruption that could catastrophically affect global climate. One of these volcanoes hides below the waters of Lake Toba in Sumatra and has caused two super-eruptions in the last one million year. But when will the next one be? Will there be any warning signs? To answer these questions, an international team of geologists led from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, and Peking University, China, developed an analysis of the levels of uranium and lead in zircons – a mineral typically found in explosive volcanic eruptions – to determine how long it took the volcano to prepare for its super-eruptions. Unfortunately, these results, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), refute the notion that unusual geological signs would herald an imminent super-eruption. Instead, the magma silently accumulated in the magma reservoir until these massive explosions occur.

The Toba volcano in Sumatra caused two of the largest eruptions known on the Earth: the first 840,000 years ago, the second 75,000 years ago, each measuring about 2’800 km3, enough to blanket the whole of Switzerland with 7 cm thick of ash, and representing 70,000 times the amount of magma erupted to this moment by the ongoing La Palma eruption. Two other smaller eruptions took place, one 1.4 million years ago and the other 500,000 years ago.

Geologists from UNIGE and Peking University are interested in the Toba volcano because there is no historical record of human response to a super-eruption of the size that it produced in the past. Such an event would affect the global climate and pose numerous problems, particularly in terms of food supply, not to mention the migration of populations. “Toba volcano forms a caldera, meaning that previous eruptions have created a large depression that is occupied today by meteoric water”, explains Luca Caricchi, professor at the Department of Earth Sciences at the UNIGE Faculty of Science and co-author of the study. At the centre of the lake is an island that raised from the water because of the push of the magma injected in the subvolcanic reservoir. “We can see that this island is gradually increasing in height, indicating that the volcano is active and that magma is accumulating underneath”, says Ping-Ping Liu, a professor at the Faculty of Earth and Space Sciences of Peking University and leading author of the article. But are we close to the next super-eruption?

Measuring uranium and lead in zircon

Zircon is a mineral that is found in the products of explosive volcanic eruptions. “One of its characteristics is that it takes uranium within its structure”, explains Ping-Ping Liu. Over time, the uranium decays into lead. “So by measuring the amount of uranium and lead in zircon with a mass spectrometer, we can determine its age”, says the geologist. The scientists determined the age of a large number of zircons extracted from the products of different eruptions: the youngest zircon provides information on the date of the eruption and the older zircons reveal the history of magma accumulation preceding the super-eruptions. 

“The first super-eruption occurred around 840,000 years ago after 1.4 million years of magma input, whereas magma fed the second super-eruption at 75,000 years accumulated only in 600,000 years”, notes Luca Caricchi. Why was the time of magma accumulation halved even if the two super-eruptions were of the same size? “This is linked to the progressive increase of the temperature of the continental crust in which Toba’s magma reservoir is assembled”, explains Ping-Ping Liu. The input of magma has gradually heated the surrounding continental crust, which makes the magma cool slower. “This is a ‘vicious circle’ of eruptions: the more the magma heats the crust, the slower the magma cools and the faster the rate of magma accumulation becomes”, she says. The result is that super-eruptions can become more frequent in time.

Estimating the rate of magma accumulation to anticipate the size of the next super-eruption

This technique, based on zircon geochronology, can also be used to estimate the rate of magma input in a magma reservoir. “Today, we estimate that about 320 km3 of magma could be ready to erupt within the reservoir of Toba volcano”, says Luca Caricchi. If such an eruption would occur now, this would be a very catastrophic event that strongly affect not only the highly populated island of Sumatra but also the global environment. Geologists have estimated that currently about 4 km3 of eruptible magma is accumulating within Toba’s magma reservoir every thousand years and that this rate was rather stable throughout its eruptive history. “The next super-eruption of the size of the last two would therefore take place in about 600,000 years”, he continues. This does not rule out that smaller eruptions could occur in the meantime.

This innovative method can be applied to any other volcano globally and could serve to identify which volcano is closest to a super-eruption. “This is a great advance, because with few super-eruptions in the last 2 million years, it is not possible for us to obtain statistically significant values for the frequency of these catastrophic events at a global scale”, explains Ping-Ping Liu. “Our study also shows that no extreme events occur before a super-eruption. This suggests that signs of an impending super-eruption such as a significant increase in earthquakes or rapid ground uplift, might not be as obvious as pictured in disaster movies by the film industry. At Toba volcano, everything is happening silently underground, and the analysis of the zircons now gives us an idea of what is to come”, concludes Luca Caricchi.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2101695118 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

News article

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Growth and thermal maturation of the Toba magma reservoir

JAPAN
End of the line for Gundam Cafe as entire chain announces permanent closure

Casey Baseelyesterday



After an 11-year-run of anime-themed food and giant robot merch, it’s last call at the Gundam Cafes.


It was literally just a few days ago that we were all excited about the announcement of some new menu items at Japan’s Gundam Cafes which recreate food and drinks seen within the hit mecha franchise. And while we’re still looking forward to trying them, no matter what seasonings the chefs use we’re pretty sure their flavor is going to be bittersweet, because they might be the last meals we ever have at the anime eateries.

Right now, there are four Gundam Cafes in Japan. Two of those are in Tokyo (one in otaku mecca Akihabara and the other in Odaiba, right next to the full-scale Unicorn Gundam statue), the second is in Osaka, and the fourth is in Fukuoka. On November 1, though, came the sudden announcement that all four of them will be closing permanently in less than three months.

▼ In addition to food and drink the Gundam Cafes also offer a wide arrange of awesome merch.



No reason for the closure has been given, but it’s likely that the severe travel downturn caused by the pandemic played a large part in the decision. All of the cafes are located in neighborhoods that, under normal public health conditions, receive large numbers of visitors not only from other parts of Japan, but from overseas as well, with even non-otaku tourists often wanting to take a peek at the fan culture of Akihabara or gaze up at the Odaiba Gundam’s transforming (but not Transformer) face.

The shutdown brings to a close more than a decade of Gundam Cafe history, and the chain took a moment to thank its fans while breaking the news:


“We opened our first cafe in Akihabara in April of 2010, and our customers have supported us at every step along the way. On behalf of our entire staff, we are more grateful to you than words can express.

We don’t have much time left, but we will continue doing our utmost so that everyone who visits can have wonderful memories to take home, and we hope you’ll enjoy yourselves at our cafes right up until the very end.”

▼ The closing of the Akihabara branch will also be the end of the attached Zeon’s Diner Tokyo and Fortunelatte Caffe takeout counter.



There is a sliver of hope in that the announcement ends with “Please look forward to our next project,” so maybe we’ll see the restaurant chain make a comeback like Sega recently did after closing one of its most famous Tokyo landmark arcades.

The last day for Gundam Cafe Osaka will be January 10, with Gundam Café Tokyo Brand Core (Akihabara), Gundam Cafe Odaiba, and Gundam Cafe Fukuoka shuttering on January 30. The cafe at the Gundam Factory Yokohama facility will remain in operation, but only until the end of March 2022, when the entire center will shut down, at which point we’ll have no choice but to subside on those canned Zeon rations.

Source: Gundam Cafe via Hachima Kiko
Images: Gundam Cafe

WILL THEY WON'T THEY

US Paid family leave to be included in $1.75 trillion spending bill


House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., announced Wednesday that paid family leave will be included in the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 3 (UPI) -- House Democrats announced Wednesday that paid family leave has been reinserted into the Build Back Better Act.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., announced that a version of the provisions had been added back to the $1.75 trillion deal that has long been stalled in Congress after previously having been cut.

"For far too long, American workers have had to make the impossible choice between providing for their families and caring for them," Neal said. "Now, because of the leadership and tireless advocacy of the people's House, meaningful paid family and medical leave will be included as part of the Build Back Better Act."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said paid leave "is essential for getting children learning and parents earning."

"#PaidLeaveForAll builds on the transformational provisions of [President Joe Biden's] Build Back Better Act which will benefit millions of parents and families across America with child care and universal pre-K, the Child Tax Credit, home health care and more!" Pelosi wrote on Twitter.

The plan seeks to allow workers to take paid time off when needed following the birth or adoption of a child, or when caring for a sick loved one or their own health.

President Joe Biden originally proposed ensuring 12 weeks of paid leave but it was reduced and then scrapped from the bill last week over concerns about cost as it would be funded through the federal government.

Democrats hope to pass the bill in the Senate through the filibuster-avoiding process of budget reconciliation, however, moderates Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have withheld their key votes.

Lawmakers have since worked to renegotiate the bill, which originally carried a price tag of $3.5 trillion.

On Tuesday, Democrats announced that a provision to lower prescription drug costs, especially for seniors, would be included in the new version of the safety net bill.

Tuenti’s Founder Tortured to Reveal His Bitcoin Private Keys (Report)

Author: Jordan Lyanchev Last Updated Nov 3, 2021

Five bad actors have reportedly beat up the founder of Tuenti and have stolen millions of euros worth of bitcoin he held on his private computer.

Zaryn Dentzel, the founder of the popular mobile virtual network operator Tuenti, has had his bitcoins stolen, according to a recent report. The crime transpired in his house after a group of five perpetrators broke in and tortured him for his password containing the BTC wealth.

As reported by El Espanol on November 3rd, Dentzel, who has lived in Spain for years, was in his house in Madrid with a friend and a maintenance worker when the doorbell rang.

Once he opened the door, several people entered with hoodies and masks hiding their identities, covered the in-house security cameras, tied Dentzel up, and sprayed him in his eyes.

The actual assault began shortly after when the perpetrators repeatedly beat Dentzel for hours. After being cut and electroshocked, the victim finally gave in and confessed the password of his bitcoin account.

In it, Dentzel told the local authorities that he had “millions of euros” worth of the primary cryptocurrency.

The perpetrators also swiped laptops, phones, and tablets before they eventually fled the scene.

According to the attackers’ accents, early police estimations suggest that they could have been from Eastern Europe.

Such incidents highlight the importance of investors taking extra steps to protect their digital wealth, as the narrative “not your keys, not your bitcoins” is not enough here.
Multi-signature devices could be a solution as investors can add two or more private keys to sign and send a transaction. This could enhance security, especially if the private keys are stored in different geographical locations.

For additional securities tips on how to keep your bitcoins safe, check out our detailed guide on the matter.

Human rights activists accuse new Haiti police chief of past repression and abuse

2021/11/1 
© Miami Herald

RICHARD PIERRIN/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Shortly after being named the head of Haiti’s national police late last month amid a surge in gang violence, rampant kidnappings and a life-threatening fuel shortage, Frantz Elbé promised to tackle the Caribbean nation’s crime problems while motivating cops inside his department’s beleaguered force.

But Elbé, who was appointed by interim Prime Minister Ariel Henry to replace embattled interim Police Director General Léon Charles, who resigned over a week ago after less than a year in the job, could find his past overshadowing those efforts.

Several human rights advocates in Haiti are accusing Elbé, the former inspector general of the Haiti National Police, of being involved in police repression and human rights abuses dating back to the early 2000s. He’s also accused of having links with a once-powerful gang leader and kidnapper in the Croix-des-Bouquets area, Jean Elie “Ti Elie” Muller, and being godfather to his son. Muller died in 2008 in a Port-au-Prince hospital after being shot in the thigh during his arrest by Haitian police for his alleged involvement in several kidnappings., including that of a 20-year-old student who was brutally murdered.

Elbé, contacted by the Miami Herald soon after his naming about the allegations surrounding his policing career, did not respond to several requests for comment.

“We at the National Human Rights Defense Network have our concerns over the appointment of Frantz Elbé,” said human rights advocate Rosy Auguste Ducena, describing the contents of a March 29, 2004, legal complaint accusing Elbé of being involved in the disappearance of three anti-government activists. “He was a police commissioner, and occupied various posts. At another moment he was a departmental director. All of this shows that, even though he was implicated in human rights allegations, he managed to make a career inside the police institution.”

Ducena said given the multitude of problems facing Haiti, the country needs someone in the top cop job who is above reproach, and not one whose nomination implies he’s part of a political deal.

“There cannot be a political nomination at the head of the police because today the problems within the police are many, the issue with insecurity is grave, and it’s not a political nomination that we need,” she said.

As director of the national police, often called PNH, its French acronym, Elbé is tasked with not just tackling the country’s rising tide of violent gangs and kidnappings, but also building up a battered force plagued with bad cops who have ties to gangs, issues of discontent within its ranks over poor pay and working conditions, and low morale. The force is also tasked with providing help in the ongoing investigation into the July 7 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, which is now in the hands of an investigative judge.

According to the United Nation’s latest report, as of Sept. 3 the Haiti National Police roster stood at 14,881 officers — or 1.25 officers per 1,000 inhabitants, which is significantly below the international standards for the country of 11.5 million citizens.

William O’Neill, an international human-rights lawyer who worked for the United Nations while it worked with the U.S. to build a new civil police force in the mid-’90s, said putting a police officer in the top job while there are questions about his own human rights records and relations is “extremely troubling and unhelpful.”

“Somebody like this is just too enmeshed in the past and too identified with bad things, whether he is criminally culpable under laws. It’s the perception that matters too,” O’Neill said. “You just need somebody who is above any kind of criticism or suspicion because PNH is in dire straits and it’s going to need someone who can reassure the population.”

Haitians, O’Neill said, already lack confidence in the police, which is a huge obstacle in trying to tackle kidnappings and other crimes by armed gangs.

“We worked really hard in ‘95 to start with a new name, new uniforms and new everything; rigid recruiting requirements and vetting,” he said of the building of the new force to replace the disbanded Haitian Army. “For a while people had confidence in the police, and then it all unraveled. This doesn’t help in creating a bond of trust with the population and the police.”

Between 2010 and last year, the U.S. has provided $312 million to strengthen law enforcement and the capacity of the Haitian police, the State Department has said. In recent weeks, the Biden administration has allocated an additional $15 million to partnering with the police on top of existing efforts, including $12 million specifically to strengthen its capacity to respond to gangs.

Multiple sources tell the Herald that no advance notice was given to the U.S. about Elbé before his appointment. They also note that Elbé had previously been vetted by Washington and passed.

That process is now being called into question, given the allegations dogging Elbé, which come at a time when Haitians and foreign diplomats are demanding increased vetting of members of the Haitian police force to root out bad cops.

A State Department spokesperson did not address the allegations specifically, only that “the Department of State’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs routinely vets recipients of U.S. security assistance, including Mr. Elbé.”

“Strengthening respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms remains a cornerstone of our foreign policy throughout the world,” the spokesperson said in reference to whether the administration is aware of the allegations. “We will continue to raise these issues with Haitian counterparts.”

The Port-au-Prince human rights group Fondasyon Je Klere, or Open Eyes Foundation, recently issued a report accusing Elbé of being a human rights abuser. The foundation’s president, lawyer Samuel Madistin, remembers the March 2004 complaint and was involved as a lawyer.

Elbé “has a past rapport with gangs, armed groups in various places where he served,” Madistin said. “It’s very disturbing that it’s someone like this who they selected to put at the head of the police.”

Among the allegations, the 2004 report mentions an alleged relationship between Elbé and Muller, the gang leader known as Ti Elie.

“The gang leader Ti Elie with whom Superintendent Frantz Elbé appeared in broad daylight in a baptismal ceremony is a man of unparalleled cruelty,” the foundation said.

Muller’s gang was behind the first recorded cases of kidnappings in the Croix-des-Bouquets region, the same area where 17 missionaries, 16 of them Americans, were taken at gunpoint on Oct. 16 by the 400 Mawozo gang. The missionaries remain in the hands of their captors.

At the time of the first registered kidnappings, Elbé had just arrived as head of the police station.

Among the abductions the Ti Elie gang was linked to was that of a 20-year-old student, Farah Natacha Kerby Dessources. In November 2006, she was raped and tortured despite the payment of a ransom, and according to a March 30, 2009, order issued by investigating judge Etzer Aristide, she also had acid poured into her eyes before she was killed and left on a heap of trash, the foundation said in its report.

At the time of his rise, Ti Elie reportedly had 275 soldiers who were armed with automatic rifles as well as grenade and rocket launchers, the report said.

The human rights and police repression allegations against Elbé first surfaced in 2004 during the nationwide protests movement against then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The police force was highly politicized and officers were accused of using armed groups to terrorize the protesting population.

During the period, Haiti was engulfed in protests by both supporters and opponents of Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas political party. The report notes that Elbé, a police commissioner during Aristide’s tenure, took a stance in favor of armed gangs, as he supported Aristide as part of his duties and rigorously fought anti-Lavalas militants.

At the time, Elbé was in charge of the police station in Grand-Goâve, where a group of young people were organizing anti-government demonstrations. To help police the protests, he requested assistance from agents in Port-au-Prince, Miragoane and Petit-Goave.

After police arrived, one person, Stanley Rodney, was dead and another person was injured. Several opposition activists were forced underground. Three of them, Pierre Jabin Bellerice, Jean Bed Bellerice and Luxon Obin, decided to head to Delmas 41 in the capital to escape the repression. They were later arrested on Feb. 21, 2004, the foundation wrote.

Elbé, according to the report and Ducena, left his jurisdiction to come after the young opposition activists. He was joined by the head of the Delmas 33 police station at the time and several armed gang members, including a powerful gang leader named Jean Anthony Rene, who went by the nickname Grenn Sonnen.

Elbé’s vehicles, the report said, were identified at the scene. After being taken to the Delmas 33 police station, the three activists were never seen again. After Aristide fell eight days later amid a bloody coup, the family of the men filed a report with the National Coalition for Haitian Refugees, the predecessor of the National Human Rights Defense Network.

A delegation of human rights activists later went to the Delmas 33 police station to investigate and found that the men’s names were never registered in the police station’s day-to-day arrest registry.

“The risk of using the PNH for political ends is high with Frantz Elbé,” the report said.

The report also points to evidence of unexplained wealth, along with a building that Elbé allegedly built in the Croix-des-Bouquets area while a police commissioner, and ownership in a private security company called Sécurité Plus S.A. 47.

“On the company’s website, you can read the advertisement made by Frantz Elbé in these terms: “To secure your companies, your residence, you can trust SECURITE PLUS S.A.,” the report said.

“A Director General of the PNH cannot, without conflict of interest, be a shareholder or owner of a private security company,” the foundation said.

O’Neill, the human rights lawyer, said not every cop in Haiti is tainted. Some have tried to do right despite the pressure and threats. But if there are well-founded allegations or serious reasons to believe that someone has committed a human rights violation, he said, he should not be appointed director.

“We are not talking about sending someone to prison. That would correctly require a much higher burden of proof and solid evidence,” he said. “There is not a right to be a police officer, or the head of the police. It’s a privilege. ... If there are any suspicions, it should be ‘No. We will find other people.’ ”

Brazil's Bolsonaro meets Italy far-right leader

Agence France-Presse
November 02, 2021

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro (L) and Italian Lega leader Matteo Salvini during a commemoration for Brazilian soldiers fallen during WWII in Pistoia, Italy 

Handout MATTEO SALVINI PRESS OFFICE/AFP

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro met Italian far-right leader Matteo Salvini Tuesday in a ceremony for Brazilians killed in World War II, on a visit to Italy marred by controversy.

The Brazilian far-right leader chose to skip UN climate talks in Glasgow after the G20 summit in Rome to instead spend two days in northern and central Italy.

He was met by flag-waving supporters but also protesters on Monday when he collected an honorary citizenship from the northern town of Anguillara Veneta. Tuesday's program was no less controversial.

The local bishop boycotted a ceremony attended by Bolsonaro and Salvini in the cemetery of the Tuscan town of Pistoia, where a monument remembers 500 Brazilians who died fighting the Nazis.

The diocese condemned the politicization of the event, while neither the mayor of Pistoia nor the head of the Tuscan region turned out to welcome the Brazilian.

Salvini apologized for the protests, saying: "Honoring the fallen should be outside of political controversy."

Bolsonaro is under intense pressure back home over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, and has been widely criticized for his hardline stance on climate change.

Following Bolsonaro's visit Monday to Anguillara Veneta, home of his ancestors, he travelled to the Sant'Antonio basilica in Padua, where police used water cannon against hundreds of demonstrators.

The mayor of Anguillara Veneta, Alessandra Buoso, a member of Salvini's anti-immigrant League party, said the town honored Bolsonaro to "reward the welcome that migrants from Anguillara Veneta have received in Brazil".

About a thousand inhabitants of the Italian town of 4,000 fled poverty to emigrate to Brazil at the end of the 19th century, among them Bolsonaro's ancestors.

"I am moved to be here. It's from here that my grandparents left" for Brazil, Bolsonaro said Monday.

After his visit to Pistoia, Bolsonaro visited Pisa, taking in a brief visit of the famous leaning tower before he was due to fly home to Brazil.

© 2021 AFP

Are Trump and his associates guilty of mass murder? 

YES!

Thom Hartmann, Independent Media Institute
November 02, 2021

All across America this past year-and-a-half 700,000 people have died an agonizing, terrifying, drowning-in-their-own-fluids death, their relatives helpless, saying goodbye using Zoom or FaceTime. Families broken and shattered; husbands, wives, children and grandchildren left bereft; doctors, nurses, and physicians assistants dying along with them or holding their hands as they draw their final, tortured breath. Many of those deaths were absolutely unnecessary.

They happened because of decisions made by a small group of people led by Donald Trump.

If you or I made any decision, grounded in the desire to gain a political or other type of benefit, that caused even one single person to die we'd be on our way to prison. Look at people who simply decide to text while driving…and then kill a pedestrian. Prison.

Trump not only caused over 130,000 Americans to die unnecessarily (according to Dr. Deborah Birx's sworn testimony before Congress last week), but there's a pile of evidence — which I'll lay out below — that he did it because he believed the virus was hitting Blue states and Black people the hardest.


If this is true (and I'm building a case here that it is), it's called second-degree murder, which, to use the definitions of the State of Florida where Trump lives (there is no federal homicide law) constitutes:

"The unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual, is murder in the second degree and constitutes a felony of the first degree, punishable by imprisonment for a term of years not exceeding life…"

From the first case in the US on January 20, 2020 until the week of April 7th of last year, for four months Trump and his team were actually trying to do something about the Covid pandemic.

Trump put medical doctors on TV daily, the media was freaking out about refrigerated trucks carrying bodies away from New York hospitals, and doctors and nurses were our new national heroes.

By March 7th, US deaths had risen from 4 to only 22, but that was enough to spur federal action. Trump's official emergency declaration came on March 11th, and most of the country shut down or at least went partway toward that outcome that week.

The Dow collapsed and millions of Americans were laid off, but saving lives was, after all, the number one consideration. Jared Kushner put together an all-volunteer taskforce of mostly preppie 30-something white men to coordinate getting PPE to hospitals.

They even had a plan for the Post Office to distribute 650 million masks — 5 to every American household — to stop the pandemic.

But then came April 7th, when the New York Times ran a front-page story with the headline: Black Americans Face Alarming Rates of Coronavirus Infection in Some States.

Other media ran similar headlines across the American media landscape that day, and it was heavily reported on cable news and the network news that night. Most of the non-elderly people dying from Covid, the report found, were Black or Hispanic, not white people.

White conservatives responded with a collective, "What the hell?!?"

Limbaugh declared that afternoon that "with the coronavirus, I have been waiting for the racial component." And here it was. "The coronavirus now hits African Americans harder — harder than illegal aliens, harder than women. It hits African Americans harder than anybody, disproportionate representation."

It didn't take a medical savant, of course, to figure out why, and it had nothing to do with the biology of race: it was purely systemic racism. African Americans die disproportionately from everything, from heart disease to strokes to cancer to childbirth.

It's a symptom of a racially rigged economy and a healthcare system that only responds to money, which America has conspired to keep from African Americans for over 400 years. Of course they're going to die more frequently from coronavirus.

But the New York Times and the Washington Post simultaneously publishing front-page articles about that disparity with regard to COVID19, all on April 7th, echoed across the rightwing media landscape like a Fourth of July fireworks display.

Tucker Carlson, the only prime-time Fox "News" host who'd previously expressed serious concerns about the dangers of the virus, changed his tune the same day, as documented by Media Matters for America.

Now, Tucker said, "we can begin to consider how to improve the lives of the rest, the countless Americans who have been grievously hurt by this, by our response to this. How do we get 17 million of our most vulnerable citizens back to work? That's our task."

White people were out of work, and Black people were most of the casualties, outside of the extremely elderly. And those white people need their jobs back if we're going to get Trump's economy back on track in time for the upcoming election!

Brit Hume joined Tucker's show and, using his gravitas as a "real news guy," intoned, "The disease turned out not to be quite as dangerous as we thought."

Left unsaid was the issue of for whom it was "not quite as dangerous," but Limbaugh listeners and Fox viewers are anything but unsophisticated when it comes to hearing dog-whistles on behalf of white supremacy.

Only 12,677 Americans were dead by that day, but now that Trump and his rightwing media knew most of the non-elderly were Black, things were suddenly very, very different. Now it was time to quit talking about people dying and start talking about getting people back to work!

It took less than a week for Trump to get the memo, presumably through Fox and Stephen Miller.

On April 12th, he retweeted a call to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci and declared, in another tweet, that he had the sole authority to open the US back up, and that he'd be announcing a specific plan to do just that "shortly."

On April 13th, the ultra-rightwing, nearly-entirely-white-managed US Chamber of Commerce published a policy paper titled Implementing A National Return to Work Plan.

The next day, Freedomworks, the billionaire-founded and -funded group that animated the Tea Party against Obamacare a decade earlier, published an op-ed on their website calling for an "economic recovery" program including an end to the capital gains tax and a new law to "shield" businesses from lawsuits.

Three days after that, Freedomworks and the House Freedom Caucus issued a joint statement declaring that "[I]t's time to re-open the economy."

Freedomworks published their "#ReopenAmerica Rally Planning Guide" encouraging conservatives to show up "in person" at their state capitols and governor's mansions, and, for signage, to "Keep it short: 'I'm essential,' 'Let me work,' 'Let Me Feed My Family'" and to "Keep [the signs looking] homemade."

One of the first #OpenTheCountry rallies to get widespread national attention was April 19th in New Hampshire. Over the next several weeks, rallies filled with white people had metastasized across the nation, from Oregon to Arizona, Delaware, North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois and elsewhere.

One that drew particularly high levels of media attention, complete with swastikas, confederate flags and assault rifles, was directed against the governor of Michigan, rising Democratic star Gretchen Whitmer.

NBC News, when they'd gotten hold of April emails from within the White House, ran the headline: "Trump Administration Scrapped Plan to Send Every American a Mask in April, Email Shows."

When Rachel Maddow reported on meat packing plants that were epicenters of mass infection, the conservative Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court pointed out that the virus flare wasn't coming from the "regular folks" of the surrounding white community; they were mostly Hispanic and Black.

The conservative meme was now well established.

Then came news that the biggest outbreaks were happening in prisons along with the meat packing plants, places with few white people (and the few whites in them were largely poor and thus disposable).

Trump's response to this was to issue an executive order using the Defense Production Act (which he had refused to use to order production of testing or PPE equipment) to order the largely Hispanic and Black workforce back into the slaughterhouses and meat processing plants.

African Americans were dying in our cities, Hispanics were dying in meat packing plants, the elderly were dying in nursing homes.

But the death toll among working age white people, particularly affluent white people (who were less likely to be obese, have hypertension or struggle with diabetes), was relatively low.

And those who came through the infection were presumed to be immune to subsequent bouts, so we could issue them "COVID Passports" and give them hiring priority.

As an "expert" member of Jared Kushner's team of young, unqualified volunteers supervising the administration's PPE response to the virus noted to Vanity Fair's Katherine Eban, "The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy."

It was, after all, it was exclusively Blue States that were then hit hard by the virus: Washington, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's grandson Max Kennedy Jr, 26, was one of the volunteers, and blew the whistle to Congress on Kushner and Trump. As Jane Mayer wrote for The New Yorker, "Kennedy was disgusted to see that the political appointees who supervised him were hailing Trump as 'a marketing genius,' because, Kennedy said they'd told him, 'he personally came up with the strategy of blaming the states.'"

At year's end, the United States was ranked 5th worst in the world in our response (behind Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Iran); we have about 20% of the world's Covid deaths, but only 4.5% of the world's population.

Why? Apparently because Trump and his Republican enablers and co-conspirators were just fine with Black people dying, particularly when they could blame it on Democratic Blue-state governors.

And once they put that strategy into place in April, it became politically impossible to back away from it, even as more and more Red State white people became infected.

Everything since then, right down to Trump's December 26th tweet ("The lockdowns in Democrat run states are absolutely ruining the lives of so many people — Far more than the damage that would be caused by the China Virus."), has been a double-down on death and destruction.

How could anybody think this was anything other than negligent homicide at best and intentional murder at worst?

Even Sweden has put together a commission to look into their government's response to the pandemic, and it's already reporting its result.

In Brazil, their Senate has compiled a 1000+ page report, detailing the mistakes and malicious actions President Bolsinaro took — very much like Trump did — that caused hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, and they're recommending he be prosecuted under Brazilian and international law.

It's astonishing that there's no major, national commission or special prosecutor looking into what happened here in the US, particularly when so much of the evidence of the Trump administration committing murder is publicly available.

If a half-million people had died — unnecessarily — under Obama as president, you know how the GOP would react.

After all, they spent millions to hold 4+ years of multiple hearings across several congressional committees over 4 American deaths in Bengazi, taking thousands of hours of testimony, including an 11-hour day from Hillary Clinton.

During the Clinton presidency Republicans gave Ken Starr and his assistant Brett Kavanaugh four years and $70 million to uncover the democracy-ending crime of Bill Clinton getting a BJ from a consenting adult. (Seriously: Newt said it endangered "the survival of the American system of justice.")

In this case, there are actual dead bodies, and a hell of a lot more than four of them.

Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer must appoint select committees in the House and Senate to investigate this crime, and Attorney General Merrick Garland must appoint a special prosecutor with a grand jury.

Americans deserve to know why their friends and relatives died such a terrible death when every other country in the world (except Brazil) took strong and effective action to limit infections and fatalities.

And if it can be proven that Trump and his buddies like Scott Atlas let all these Americans die because they thought it would help them politically, people need to go to prison.

Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of The Hidden History of American Healthcare and more than 30+ other books in print. He is a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute and his writings are archived at hartmannreport.com.

This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Here's what Republicans really mean when they say they're fighting for 'parents' rights'

John Stoehr
November 03, 2021

"Parents Against Critical Theory" activist Scott Mineo appears on Fox News (screenshot) earlier in 2021

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The top issue in yesterday's Virginia election was reportedly "parents' rights." I had some thoughts about that but first wanted to see arguments in favor laid out in full. My friend Bill Scher watched the governor's race for Washington Monthly. I asked if he knew of an article capturing the position. He said, "An honest one?" I guess enough said about that.

Juan Williams got ahead of me. He's a news analyst for Fox. He's also a Black conservative, which is not a white conservative who happens to be Black. In his latest for The Hill, Williams said "parents' rights" in Virginia is code for white power. "It is a campaign to stop classroom discussion of Black Lives Matter protests or slavery because it could upset some children, especially white children who might feel guilt."

He added:
"Unlike their earlier defense of Confederate monuments, the "Parents' Rights" campaign message at first glance looks to have zero to do with race. That puts Democrats on the defensive. They are in the uncomfortable position of calling the attention of suburban white moms to divisive racial politics being used by Republican Glenn Youngkin's campaign."

Put these together — it's a dishonest argument and it's designed to put Democrats on their heels. But that's where I think I might be able to help. Those "suburban white moms"? They're the respectable white people I spend so much time talking about. They care for their kids. They fear for their kids. No one should blame them. But they need to know there's something scarier: men talking about parents' rights. Williams is right. It's code for anti-Black. But as a conservative, a Black one, he seems rather blind to the other awful truth. It's anti-woman.

First, remember what I said Monday. There's always someone willing to make the goals of the authoritarian collective, which is what the GOP has become, seem respectable. In Virginia, that's gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin. He's very good at respectability politics. Right now, he's riding an anti-Black backlash, but he's casting himself as a kind of warrior for "suburban white moms" and their kids.

He's not. What he's doing is rationalizing the thing "suburban white moms" need to fear, which is this: a long effort to restore America to its original, Godly and "constitutional" order by which white Christian men stand atop, ruling over everyone else, including their women. Indeed, the first goal of authoritarians is putting women back in their place in the natural orders of power, which means making them, once again, dependent on a man for their health, safety and good fortune.


What does this have to do with "suburban white moms"? Parents hold a special place in the natural order of things. There's God over Mankind, men over women and — right before you get to white people being over everyone else — there's parents over children. The "over" here is important to bear in mind, because whoever's "over" is the one in charge. Whoever's "under" is expected to obey. Otherwise, it's a perversion of the natural order of things, which must be punished.

In the world of the authoritarian collective, which is what the GOP has become, there's no democracy between and among the natural orders of power, because there is no such thing as political equality. None.

Efforts to reform the natural order of things, which is to say, for instance, efforts to enshrine greater rights and privileges for women on account of being created equally, are met with fierce opposition. Efforts can't be, according to the authoritarians, driven by morality, because morality isn't about doing unto others what you would have done unto you. Morality is about authority. It's about obedience. A woman asking for equality is a woman asking for punishment.

What does this have to do with public education? Public education is the greatest tool invented for flattening the natural order of things, creating space for demands for political equality, where there was no space before when morality was about obedience instead of morality. An educated girl is one who might question the authority of her father before questioning the authority of her husband. (Forget about LGBTQ rights, because in the authoritarian world, LGBTQ people do not exist.) Public education doesn't punish girls for asking for political equality, as it should. Instead, it validates, supports and drives their hunger for it.

So when Youngkin says the first thing he's going to do is use the power of the state to censor information and police thought ("I will ban critical race theory"), what he's saying is he's going to use the power of the state to restore the natural order of things — to bring Virginia back to its original, Godly and "constitutional" order by which white Christian men stood atop the hierarchy, ruling over everyone else, including their women. When he says he's gonna fight for parents' rights, the parent doesn't include moms. Just men, and their women.

This is what "suburban white moms" need to know. Whether they believe it or not is another question. No one appears to be saying what needs saying, which is that "parents' rights" isn't only code for white power. "Parents' rights" is about protecting the "rights" of men.


John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet. Follow him @johnastoehr.