GO TO EXPLANATION
FBI: LAX 'jetpack man' sightings may have been balloons

Nov. 3 (UPI) -- The FBI said sightings of a "jetpack man" flying near Los Angeles International Airport may have been sparked by balloons.

Pilots flying in and out of LAX in late 2020 reported multiple sightings of a man piloting a jetpack near the airport, and at least two pilots reported seeing a similar scene in late July of this year.

"A Boeing 747 pilot reported seeing an object that might have resembled a jet pack 15 miles east of LAX at 5,000 feet altitude," an FAA representative said after the most recent sightings. "Out of an abundance of caution, air traffic controllers alerted other pilots in the vicinity."

The FBI released a statement Tuesday offering one possible explanation for the sightings.

"The FBI has worked closely with the FAA to investigate reported jetpack sightings in the Los Angeles area, none of which have been verified," the FBI said in a statement released to KABC-TV. "One working theory is that pilots might have seen balloons."

A photo captured by a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter in November 2020 and released this week shows a balloon in the shape of Jack Skellington, a character from 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas, flying over the Hollywood Hills area.

HPV vaccination lowers cervical cancer risk up to 87%, British study finds

Cervical cancer rates have dropped by as much as 87% in England since women started to receive the HPV vaccine there in 2008, new research shows.

 File Photo by Adam Gregor/Shutterstock

Nov. 3 (UPI) -- Becoming vaccinated against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, reduces a woman's risk for cervical cancer up to 87%, a study published Wednesday by the Lancet found.

By June 2019, about 450 fewer cases of cervical cancer and 17,200 fewer cases of cervical carcinomas, or pre-cancers, than expected occurred among women vaccinated between 12 and 13 years old in England from 2008 on, the data showed.

Cervical cancer rates were 62% lower in women vaccinated between ages 14 and 16 and 34% lower in those inoculated at ages 16 to 18 when the vaccine first was available, the researchers said.

"Although previous studies have shown the usefulness of HPV vaccination in preventing HPV infection in England, direct evidence on cervical cancer prevention was limited," study co-author Peter Sasieni said in a press release.

"The observed impact is even greater than ... models predicted," said Sasieni, professor of cancer prevention at King's College London.

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States, with about 43 million current cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It has been linked with health complications ranging from genital warts to cervical cancer.

Though vaccines against HPV have been available in the United States since 2008, fewer than half of eligible adolescents have received the shots, the agency estimates.

RELATED Study: Rising number of parents refuse HPV vaccine for adolescent children

The findings of this study are based using the HPV vaccine Cervarix, manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline.

The vaccine, administered in three doses, was approved in 2008 in England, where this study was conducted. It was used until 2012, and then replaced with Gardasil, made by Merck.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Cervarix for use in the United States in 2009.

A similar analysis published earlier this year found that cervical cancer rates in the United States have declined by up to 5% annually among women ages 20 to 64 over the past 17 years -- since HPV vaccines have been available.

For this study, the researchers analyzed data on cervical cancer cases in England diagnosed between January 2006 and June 2019 among women ages 20 to 64.

Roughly half of the women included in the analysis were vaccinated with Cervarix between ages 12 and 18, the researchers said.

During the study period, nearly 28,000 women in the study population were diagnosed with cervical cancer and more than 318,000 were diagnosed with cervical carcinomas.

Among women vaccinated against HPV, there were roughly 450 fewer cases of cervical cancer than would be expected for the population, based on historical prevalence data, the researchers said.

In addition, 17,200 fewer cases of cervical carcinomas occurred than would be expected.

Cervical cancer rates fell by 87% among women vaccinated at ages 12 or 13, with 89% having received at least one dose of the HPV vaccine and 85% fully vaccinated, the data showed.

The rates dropped by 62% in women vaccinated at ages of 14 to 16 and by 34% among those inoculated at ages 16 to 18, 60% of whom received at least one dose and 45% of whom were fully vaccinated.

Rates of cervical carcinomas fell by 97% in women vaccinated at ages 12 and 13, by 75% in those vaccinated at ages 14 to 16 and by 39% in those vaccinated at ages 16 to 18 , according to the researchers.

"This represents an important step forwards in cervical cancer prevention," study co-author Dr. Kate Soldan said in a press release.

"We hope that these new results encourage uptake as the success of the vaccination program relies not only on the efficacy of the vaccine but also the proportion of the population vaccinated," said Soldan, who heads Public Health England's HPV surveillance program.

New model identifies areas of California prone to wildfires, researchers say

A new statistical model may help researchers identify fire-prone, which includes parts of California, where the Dixie Fire, pictured, this year became the second-largest wildfire in the state's history. 

File Photo by Peter DaSilva/UPI | License Photo


Nov. 3 (UPI) -- Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara said Wednesday that they have developed model designed to help identify wildfire-prone areas across the Golden State.

The new modeling approach outperformed currently used statistical models developed for certain regions of the state, accurately predicting new locations for wildfires, and the years in which they will occur, with more than 75% accuracy in some cases, the researchers said.

Based on a statistical approach known as generalized additive modeling, they were able to map annual wildfire probabilities throughout California from 1970 to 2016 by incorporating data on local climate variation, human activity and the time since the last fire event, they said.

Both local climate and human activity, such as the dryness of fuel available to burn and housing density, play key roles in determining wildfire probabilities throughout the state, the data showed.

For example, portions of the Southern California mountains such as the Angeles and Los Padres National Forests were at high risk for wildfires.

Both regions have sufficient vegetation and therefore fuel availability as well as being close to and at risk from ignitions starting in high-density housing in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, according to the researchers.

In addition, in certain environments, the amount of time since the last fire has an important influence on the potential wildfires, as do short-term climate variations involving extreme conditions, particularly in fire-prone shrublands and forests in southern California.

"This study presents a powerful tool for mapping the probability of wildfire across the state of California under a variety of historical climate regimes," the researchers wrote in an article published Wednesday by the journal PLOS ONE.

"By leveraging machine learning methods, it demonstrates the distinct ways in which local climate, human development and prior fire history each contribute to the yearly risk of wildfire over space and time," they said.

Like much of the western United States, California has been plagued by wildfires in recent years, with many communities suffering significant damage.

Many residents have lost homes, and smoke from wildfires has been linked with serious health complications, such as lung disease.

However, the factors and conditions that interact to contribute to the probability of wildfire, such as the interplay between local vegetation, precipitation and land use, are complex and vary by location and over time, according to the researchers.

With further refinements, the new modeling method could prove valuable for a variety of research and practical applications in such areas as wildfire emissions and hazard mapping for implementation of fire-resistant building codes, the researchers said.

"This study demonstrates that local climate -- through limitations posed by fuel dryness and fuel availability -- plays an important and predictable role in determining the annual probabilities of fire throughout California," the researchers wrote.

"Further, our findings emphasize the importance of incorporating human activity -- through influences on ignitions and suppression of fires -- into predictions of fire probability over space and time," they said.

'NATURAL AND ORGANIC'
Walmart recalls aromatherapy spray linked to rare, fatal bacterial disease



Walmart has recalled nearly 4,000 bottles of Better Homes and Gardens-branded aromatherapy room spray with gemstones linked to two fatal cases of a rare bacterial disease. 

Photo courtesy Consumer Product Safety Commission

Nov. 3 (UPI) -- Federal agencies on Wednesday expanded recalls and warnings regarding aromatherapy sprays linked to fatalities from a rare bacteria.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Consumer Product Safety Commission said that Walmart had recalled about 3,900 bottles of Better Homes and Gardens-branded aromatherapy room spray with gemstones in six different scents due to the presence of a bacteria linked to two deaths.

"The CDC tested a version of the product and determined that it contained the dangerous bacteria Burkholderia pseudomallei, which causes melioidosis," the commission said.

The CDC has been investigating a cluster of cases of melioidosis, which is usually associated with travel, in Kansas, Minnesota, Texas and Georgia that resulted in two deaths, including the death of a child.

Samples taken from a bottle of the aromatherapy spray, manufactured in India, in the home of the Georgia victim found the presence of the bacteria and further testing showed the genetic fingerprint of the bacteria in that bottle matched those identified in the other four patients.

The products were sold at approximately 55 Walmart stores nationwide and online at walmart.com from February 2021 through October 2021 for about $4.

The CDC recommends that consumers who have purchased the aromatherapy sprays stop using them immediately and double bag the bottle in a clean, clear zip-top resealable bag, place the bag in a small cardboard box and return it to a Walmart store.

Consumers should also wash sheets or linen the product may have been sprayed on using normal laundry detergent and dry completely in a hot dryer in addition to wiping down counters and surfaces that may have been exposed to the spray with an undiluted disinfectant cleaner.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

British man charged in Twitter hack indicted for cryptocurrency scheme


British national Joseph O'Connor has been charged with stealing cryptocurrency, including bitcoin, from a Manhattan-based cryptocurrency company.

 File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Federal prosecutors have announced a British man previously charged for a Twitter hack targeting high-profile users, including President Joe Biden, has been indicted on allegations of stealing $784,000 in cryptocurrency from a Manhattan-based company.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced the unsealing of a four-count indictment charging Joseph James O'Conner, 22, with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, wire fraud and money laundering as well as aggravated identity theft for the elaborate scheme.

In the charging documents, federal prosecutors described the hack as a SIM swap attack in which threat actors gain control over a victim's mobile phone number in order to obtain unauthorized access to the accounts registered to it.

The prosecutors allege that O'Connor, who went by the alias PlugwalkJoe, with others unnamed conducted the scheme from March to May 2019 to target the anonymous cryptocurrency company that provided digital wallet infrastructure and related software to worldwide cryptocurrency exchanges.

The indictment states they targeted at least three of the company's executives with SIM swap attacks to gain unauthorized access to multiple computer systems in the company in order to divert various forms of cryptocurrency including bitcoin and Ethereum from wallets the company managed for two clients.

O'Connor was arrested by Spanish authorities in July at the request of the United States for compromising more than 130 Twitter accounts last year.

That hack involved sending messages from the high-profile accounts to convince their followers to send them $1,000 in cryptocurrency. In return, the compromised accounts falsely promised to return double that amount if they did.

The scheme netted more than $100,000 in bitcoin from some 400 accounts in a day, prosecutors said.

Florida resident Graham Ivan Clark was sentenced to three years in prison and three years probation for his involvement.

Top HK court: Dissidents can't be charged if not physically present at riots, protests

Riot police arrest a protester during an anti-government rally in Hong Kong on September 29, 2019. 

File Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Hong Kong's top appellate court delivered a landmark ruling on Thursday that rejected government efforts to prosecute dissident activists who weren't physically present at an unlawful event or assembly.

The Court of Final Appeal struck down a lower court ruling that said Hong Kong authorities can punish activists as primary offenders, even if they didn't physically attend protests, assemblies or riots that violate the island's national security law.

The lower court had said the prosecutions were legal under the common law doctrine of "joint enterprise,' which says secondary offenders can be convicted on the same charge as primary offenders.

The decision Thursday by the five-judge appellate court, which was unanimous, concluded that the doctrine cannot be applied to rioting and cases of unlawful assembly. Physically participating in the unlawful events, the court said, is a "centrally important element" of the law.

The court said in its ruling that persons not present at illegal events can only be charged with conspiracy or ancillary offenses, such as aiding and abetting, incitement and assisting an offender.

The question wound through the courts after mass demonstrations in Hong Kong in 2019 and 2020 that opposed various issues such as police brutality, a controversial extradition law and the national security law itself, which has been used to punish dissidents critical of the Chinese government and those seeking independence from Beijing.

Thursday's ruling stemmed from appeals filed by pro-democracy activists Lo Kin-man and Henry Tong, who were charged for unrest that accompanied protests in 2016 and 2019.

Buffalo’s Establishment Pulled Out All the Stops to Defeat India Walton

To beat India Walton, the establishment smeared her, changed the rules, and threw piles of cash. In the end, she flipped Byron Brown’s base while he drove up turnout in the city’s wealthiest areas

India Walton walks to a polling place with supporters in Buffalo, New York on Thursday, October 28, 2021. (Matt Burkhartt for the Washington Post via Getty Images)

BYBRANKO MARCETIC
JACOBIN
11.03.2021

When thinking about India Walton’s loss in the Buffalo mayor’s race last night, it’s hard not to first think about the never-ending injustice of being poor.

Consider: incumbent Byron Brown — Walton’s opponent and improbable write-in candidate, after he lost a Democratic primary in a city where its winner is virtually elected mayor by default — has one of the country’s more shocking records. Brown has recklessly run the city’s finances into the ground. He utterly failed to tackle the city’s pervasive poverty, exacerbating it instead. He did little to nothing about its growing lead problem, and has presided over such pervasive corruption, including several scandals linked directly to him, that the FBI was investigating his entourage even as the race was going on, including a raid on one of his offices. In fact, the only reason Brown was even able to stay on the ballot was that a judge with a glaring conflict of interest ruled he could.

Yet as soon as Brown lost the primary, all of the misdeeds he’d committed while actually in power over the past fifteen years took a backseat. Brown successfully turned the election debate to the petty personal mistakes of Walton, a woman who became a working mother as a teen, before becoming a nurse: she was charged with $295 worth of food stamp fraud in 2003; she owed $749 in back taxes in 2004; she was stopped for driving with a suspended license; she visited her cousin before he went to jail; she failed to show up for a court summons sent to the wrong address; she wrote a rude Facebook post; and her car was towed just last month over unpaid parking tickets.

It worked: a week before election day, more than half of voters said their opinion of Walton had gotten worse since the primary.

Most politicians don’t have these particular blots on their records; they either come from backgrounds where money is never an issue, or sociopathically design their entire adult lives, down to its minutiae, so as to have a spotless record when they eventually make their run. Brown exploited the fact that Walton was something exceedingly rare in today’s politics: an actual working-class person who hadn’t graduated from the Ivy League, or spent a decade or more obsessively planning her political career. Having lost her nonprofit job after running for office, Walton was delivering food for DoorDash and living on loans from her mother as she campaigned these last few months.

Brown had other advantages. His improbable comeback was helped every step of the way by a business sector terrified that, after fifteen years getting tax cuts, subsidies, and taxpayer-funded grants, the gravy train was about to end. Brown raised $851,000 in just four months from the city’s moneyed interests.

He was also helped by a bipartisan political establishment united against Walton. New York Republicans put up a united front with Brown, with right-wing party members, most of them outside Buffalo, making up a third of the signatures they helped collect to try to put him on the ballot. Together, they fearmongered about Walton using a playbook indistinguishable from the red-baiting tactics Republicans have used the last few years to rile their voters up against Democrats.

On the Democratic side, despite getting a late endorsement from Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Democrats in the state largely avoided endorsing Walton, with the state party chair comparing her to white supremacist David Duke. At one point, shortly after her primary win, the Democrat-controlled city council voted to “explore” simply eliminating the mayor’s office.

For all the parties’ talk of fiscal responsibility, clean government, and social justice, they went for a corrupt, incompetent fiscal manager who has presided over virtually unchanged conditions for the city’s poor, largely black population. Why? Because Brown suited their class interests: he’s slashed taxes, gone easy on landlords, doled out lucrative favors for the right price, and sent real estate values soaring thanks to the city’s uneven development.
Reversal of Fortune

So how did Brown win?

Walton had caught Brown napping in June’s primary, where a mere 20 percent of Democrats showed up to vote, or about 13.8 percent of Buffalo’s registered voters. The question was how things would shake out in the higher-turnout context of a general election. At more than fifty-eight thousand votes, or 37.4 percent of registered voters, Tuesday’s was the highest turnout for a mayoral election in Buffalo since 2005, when a majority of more than seventy-three thousand voters first made Brown mayor.

As of the time of writing, Walton has more than doubled the 11,132 votes she had gotten in the primary, a testament to her campaign’s grassroots operation. But Walton wasn’t the only one to turn people out. If we treat the write-in votes as a proxy for Brown votes, Brown nearly quardrupled his 9,625 primary votes to 34,273 in the general, nearly eight thousand more votes than his best ever performance in 2009, and nearly double his average vote total in the last four races.

Walton and Brown both turned out a relatively large number of voters — Brown just turned out a lot more. If nothing else, it’s a sharp reversal from the dwindling political engagement that has worsened under Brown.

The incumbent mayor owes much of this to a sharp spike in turnout in the city’s wealthiest, whitest districts, the two highest-turnout districts in 2017. Brown’s advantage in the South District alone — 87 percent white, with a relatively even income split but one of the city’s lowest poverty rates — was responsible for nearly two-thirds of his overall advantage over Walton.

There, Brown’s vote total was more than six times the number he got in the primary, and the gap between him and Walton went up thirteen-fold. This, after losing the district eighty to nineteen four years ago to a hometown opponent who made many of the same critiques of Brown’s record as Walton has this year.

In terms of vote totals, Brown’s second biggest gap, and his second largest gain from the primary, came in the Delaware district, the city’s wealthiest, and typically its friendliest to Republicans. Walton had bested Brown there in the primary, but Brown’s vote total in the district jumped four-fold last night, letting him take the district with an advantage of more than eighteen hundred votes.

By contrast, Walton’s strongest showings were in districts that are less white and wealthy. Walton again narrowly won the Ellicott district, two-thirds black and where more than half earn below the city’s median wage of $35,000 a year; and her home district of Niagara, where one in five residents are black and nearly a third earn less than $20,000 a year. The University district, a majority black district traditionally part of Brown’s base on the East Side, and which he’d won with 64 percent of the vote in 2017, swung significantly to Walton this year, who lost by less than three hundred votes there.

Maybe most notably, where Brown had won his home district of Masten in the primary — long a loyal stronghold of his in mayoral races — Walton flipped it last night. A district Brown had won by as much as 97 percent in 2009’s primary and 68 percent just four years ago went 53 percent for his opponent this year. More than four-fifths of the district’s residents are African American, and nearly two-thirds earn below the median wage. In a significant reversal from 2017, Brown lost a large chunk of his traditional base to Walton this election, and was propelled by some of the districts most hostile to him in previous years.

But this doesn’t tell the whole story, because Brown was able to repeatedly defy this simple pattern. He held onto Fillmore, the city’s poorest district whose population is roughly equally white and black, and he bettered his primary vote share by nineteen points in Lovejoy, a majority-white district where nonetheless nearly 40 percent of residents are African American and more than half earn below the median wage (Brown had lost it four years ago, managing thirty points less than he got in this election).

Likewise, Brown flipped the North district, comparably poor and nearly 50 percent white, but which has benefited from development projects Brown has presided over. He quintupled his primary votes there, adding seventeen points to his vote share. He similarly cut Walton’s lead in her home district by seventeen points and ever so slightly shaved down her margin in Ellicott.

These figures suggest Brown’s built a similar coalition to the one that made Joe Biden the Democratic nominee last year: African-American voters loyal to a long-serving familiar face, accompanied by a surge of more conservative, well-off white voters desperate to stop a left-wing insurgent.

Simple Twists of Fate

As more information comes out, the Walton campaign will no doubt be looking to make sense of what, strategically, they could’ve done differently. Is the local political and media perception correct, that Walton needlessly antagonized Democratic officials after the primary by telling them they were “on notice” and that “we are coming”? Was she fatally dogged by the “defund the police” slogan, which Walton never used but which was associated with her, and which spurred the city workers that populate the South district to organize against her? And to what extent was it ever possible for Walton’s insurgent campaign to combat the widespread voter perception that she lacked the experience necessary to run a major city?

There is a broader lesson here for the Left, too. After Walton’s primary win, many presumed the general election was a done deal. That Brown, with the backing of a corrupt establishment determined to protect its power and standing, could engineer an improbable, history-making comeback — even rewrite the law to do so — seemed beyond the realm of possibility, until it wasn’t. Walton’s campaign worked hard to turn out voters until the day of the election. But engineering the defeat of a united establishment — even just within a single city — may require vastly more resources and manpower than we think.

There is also a lesson from, of all places, Byron Brown’s own career. Brown and his allies didn’t come to dominate Buffalo politics by winning one mayoral election out of the blue. The Grassroots Inc. political organization Brown came out of was founded nearly two decades before his win, by African-American community activists who decided they needed political power to improve their neighborhoods, and set about the long, patient process of gradually unseating the do-nothing establishment hacks in council seats, the state assembly, and anywhere else they could manage a win.

Brown made his way up the political ranks under its auspices, until eventually securing enough of a foothold and support to run for mayor. The tragedy is that both Brown and Grassroots simply replaced the previous corrupt machine with their own.

Besides this, every insurgent challenge is a long shot by definition, and absent the perfect campaign or the perfect set of conditions — and sometimes even with one or the other — a dose of good fortune is pivotal. Walton’s story, of a working-class activist winning an improbable challenge against a complacent, business-focused incumbent, has more than a few parallels with the story of Bernie Sanders in Burlington forty years ago.

Sanders’s shock win then launched the greatest left-wing electoral success story in modern political history. But even with all his political skill, it all rested on a series of fortunate twists of fate: a lazy and out-of-touch opponent; the latter’s alienation of several key voting blocs; the entrance of two extra challengers who split his vote, allowing Sanders to squeak through by only twelve votes.

Maybe most crucially, with Sanders having delivered his upset in a general election and not a primary, the incumbent never had the chance to get his act together and go for round two, though he certainly did what he could. It also meant the press never had the chance to go negative against him — the fact that he was a socialist wasn’t even widely known or brought up until after the election was over.

In a political system where money wins out over people the majority of the time, left-wing politics has always meant losing and losing, until you start to win. The Walton campaign fell short this time, and it will have to evaluate why exactly that was. Those lessons will inform insurgent campaigns of the future — which may look back on this as one more crack in the dam before the walls really started to burst.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Branko Marcetic is a Jacobin staff writer and the author of Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Landru: France's chilling killer who inspired Chaplin

Issued on: 04/11/2021 

Bluebeard: Henri-Desire Landru killed at least 11 people from 1915 to 1919 

eba AFP/File

Paris (AFP) – While French soldiers were dying by their thousands at the front during World War I, the country's first modern serial killer was murdering the lonely women left at home and burning their bodies in his kitchen stove.

In a cautionary tale for the Tinder generation, Henri-Desire Landru -- nicknamed "Bluebeard" for bringing to life the folk story about a killer who prayed on lovelorn women -- lured his victims with personal ads promising romance.

His trial, which opened exactly a century ago, both captivated and horrified France, with the little bald charmer with his long black manicured beard mesmerising the packed courtroom.

In one of his many dramatic flourishes during the three-week trial, Landru denied all the charges and demanded: "Show me the bodies!" knowing that all that remained of his 11 victims was ash.

The prosecution wheeled in Landru's stove in an effort to upstage him and it later made its way to a Paris wax museum before being bought by one of France's most famous television hosts.

Landru's piercing gaze and strange charisma not only hypnotised the press, it inspired books and films, including a Charlie Chaplin movie, "Monsieur Verdoux".

Hunting in the classifieds

An odd jobs man who called himself an engineer and inventor, Landru patented a motorcycle but never put it on the market -- the first of his many scams.

Born in Paris in 1869, the altar boy turned bad had spent three stints in prison before being sent to the notorious Devil's Island penal colony in French Guiana as the Great War broke out.

He managed to escape in the chaos of mobilisation, adopting more than 90 false identities and moving a dozen times to stay one step ahead of the police.

With men away fighting and many women left alone, Landru began to hone his deadly ruse.

Fatal attraction

He published a small ad in the classified columns of newspapers proposing marriage and pretending to be a rich widower seeking a soulmate.#photo1

Some 283 women replied, but only the lonely singletons or rich widows interested him. Neat and nimble, he spoke well and put his victims at ease with jokes.

From 1915 to 1919 Landru repeated the same modus operandi.

He lured the chosen fiancee to an isolated rented home in Gambais, west of Paris, had them nominate him as their proxy to pocket their savings and then killed them.

It is believed he then part-burned the bodies in his kitchen stove. Neighbours reported foul smells.

Another particularly chilling detail was revealed at the trial: Landru always bought himself a return train ticket to Gambais but got only a one-way for the women.

In all he killed 10 women and one of their sons. No trace of their bodies was ever found. And there is strong suspicion had he killed a 12th person.

Capture

On April 12, 1919, the most wanted man in France was arrested in Paris after the sister of a victim had recognised him on the street and alerted the police.

His capture and conviction owed much to the persistence of Inspector Jules Belin, who in the absence of hard evidence and a confession gathered clues that convinced the jury.

The profile that emerged of Landru in court was that of a meticulous, obsessive man.

He recorded everything in his notebook -- the physical details of the women, his purchase of dozens of hacksaws, and, next to the names of his victims, a time, presumably the exact moment he killed them.

Courtroom drama

The legend of Landru was firmly forged when his trial opened two and a half years after his arrest.

For three weeks ordinary people and high society types flocked to the trial in Versailles by train on the "Landru express", at once horrified and fascinated by the man standing in the dock and his diabolical methods.

The novelist Colette covered the trial for the "Le Matin" newspaper, describing the spectacle and the mesmerising effect Landru, who was quite the actor, had on his audience.

On November 30 Landru was sentenced to death and executed early on February 25, 1922.

Just before the guillotine came down, Landru's lawyer asked if he wanted to ease his conscience.

"That, sir, is my little suitcase," he said, taking his secrets with him to his grave.

Enduring fascination

Horrifying as his crimes were, Landru inspired a devoted following in France.

While he awaited trial in prison, several thousand people voted for him as an undeclared candidate in an election.

Behind bars he received some 4,000 letters from admirers, including 800 proposals of marriage.

Even after he lost his head some claimed he was still alive.

Rumours persisted that he was secretly released, with sightings all over the world.

Landru became a popular culture bogeyman, the punchline of dark, often sexist jokes.

There have been numerous books, comic strips and films made about him, including Chaplin's "Monsieur Verdoux" and Claude Chabrol's "Landru", as well as classic songs by Charles Trenet and Serge Gainsbourg.

© 2021 AFP

A Year After the Election, Trump’s Effect on Evangelical Churches Lingers

Political tensions in the pews have calmed, and another survey shows leaders’ Trump support yielded more positives than negatives for evangelicals.

DAVID ROACH|NOVEMBER 1, 2021 06:00 AM

Image: Eva Marie Uzcategui / Getty Images

Political polarization has subsided in most American churches a year after the 2020 presidential elections. But there are notable exceptions to that trajectory, and new research has found lingering effects of evangelical support for former president Donald Trump.

In the youthful, mobile, and tech-savvy church, members who “leaned more toward the far left and the far right tended to have the most difficult time in this last season,” Sinnett said, “and they also were the ones that gravitated away from the church.”The remnants of tension are evident at congregations such as Seattle’s Downtown Cornerstone Church, where pastor Adam Sinnett has been surprised “at how challenging it is to really cultivate unity amidst [our] political differences.”

The Seattle congregation’s experience aligns with data released this week by Heart and Mind Strategies, a research and consulting organization. A survey of 1,000 US adults conducted in August found some remaining sources of political strife for evangelicals.

Around half of Americans believe evangelical leaders’ support of Trump hurt the church’s credibility. One in four say evangelical support for Trump reduced their desire to participate in religion. And among evangelicals, 33 percent say their leaders’ support of Trump made personal witness to friends and family more difficult.

EXPAND GRAPH

The political strife the church has endured in recent years “shows the world that Jesus doesn’t really unite people like we say he does,” Sinnett said.

At Downtown Cornerstone, the political differences show up “in three primary spheres: personal relationships, small groups, and most pointedly around decisions of leadership” over whether to address social issues and whether to submit to the government on COVID-19 restrictions, among other issues.

“It’s somewhat of an indictment of the church that we are far more comfortable in our ideological circles than we are with people that have totally different political perspectives but worship the same Jesus,” Sinnett said.

Divides in many churches hit a breaking point in 2020, with heightened political polarization during Trump’s reelection campaign and pastors struggling to maintain unity over pandemic responses. In the aftermath of the contested election and the riot at the US Capitol, pastors even found themselves in conversations around conspiracy theories, fear, and truth.

Amid the tensions, some congregations clashed with their leaders, some pastors left their churches, some members went searching for a new church home, and some have taken a break from church life altogether.

But as the election recedes and pandemic outlooks improve, things feel a lot better in most churches than they did in 2020. The effects still linger, but the intensity of the debates have died down.

The question for analysts is whether the apparent calming of political tension among evangelicals stems from increased spiritual maturity or just the changing news cycle. Author and theologian Jonathan Leeman thinks it’s a combination of both.

“There are risks of dividing over things that are in the news,” said Leeman, coauthor of How Can I Love Church Members with Different Politics? “Now we’re not talking about a presidential election,” and the division is subsiding. “Everybody is talking about vaccines and mask mandates, so that’s where you’re going to feel the fissures.”

Still, Christians seem to be learning in 2021 to separate “whole church issues,” on which Christians must agree to be part of a congregation together, from “Christian freedom issues,” which are not as clear in Scripture, he said.

“At least a few more people are beginning to grab onto the idea of Christian freedom as a crucial doctrine that allows the temperatures of conversations to drop at least slightly,” said Leeman, editorial director at 9Marks in Washington, DC.

It can be hard to disagree over politics in church when so many believers see their vote and their political engagement as stemming from their Christian convictions and beliefs in right and wrong. Two-thirds of self-identified evangelicals, according to the Heart and Mind survey, say their faith influences their political beliefs, twice as many as Americans on average.

The majority of evangelicals (57%) believe their support of Trump in 2020 “showed moral courage to try and achieve policies and actions consistent with evangelical Christian values,” and more than a third of Americans overall agreed.

Most who identify as evangelicals or hold evangelical beliefs said evangelical stances on President Trump didn’t affect their church involvement either way. But for a sizable minority, it led them to become more engaged with their church and their faith.

Among self-identified evangelicals, 30 percent say they are more likely to attend Sunday services as a result of how their pastors addressed Trump in the last election, 27 percent say they’re more likely to make donations to their church, and 33 percent are more likely to witness to friends.

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Approximately 80 percent of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016 and again in 2020, according to polling data. Trump’s evangelical allies, convened by friend and televangelist Paula White, included leaders like First Baptist Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, Gateway Church pastor Robert Morris, and Samaritan’s Purse president Franklin Graham.

Some evangelicals who objected to Trump during the 2016 election—such as Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler—ended up backing him in 2020 based on his track record on religious liberty, abortion, and other issues. In the Heart and Mind survey, evangelicals who were white, over 55, and weekly church attenders were most likely to agree with such stances, believing Trump kept his promises to champion matters important to faithful Christians.

The evangelical critics of the former president, though, said Trump’s brash approach, as well as his remarks on women and immigrants, revealed a character at odds with Christian values. Pastors like Andy Stanley at Atlanta’s North Point Community Church worried evangelical association with Trump would hurt the church’s reputation and outreach. In the survey, a minority of evangelicals believed the same, concerned about the impact on evangelical credibility and Christian witness.

But surveys so far haven’t reported a significant impact on evangelical affiliation. The new findings from Heart and Mind align with data released last month by the Pew Research Center showing there was no mass exodus from evangelicalism during the four years of Trump’s presidency despite pockets of turmoil. In fact, affiliation grew thanks to Trump’s political supporters adopting the label.

While evangelicalism at large looks to have survived the Trump era without major fissures, division remains for some Black Christians.

The Heart and Mind Strategies poll found 64 percent of Black evangelicals identified with the sentiment that “evangelical leaders’ obsessive support of Trump coupled with his personal failings does more harm than good, tarnishing numerous causes.” An identical percentage of white evangelicals (64%) agreed that they supported Trump because “while not a perfect person, he championed matters important to faithful Christians.”

Those racial differences manifested themselves in the departures of several African American pastors from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) last year. Now Marshal Ausberry, immediate past SBC first vice president and immediate past president of the SBC’s National African American Fellowship, says the suburban DC congregation he pastors may leave the SBC this year.

Members of Antioch Baptist Church in Fairfax Station, Virginia, are “deeply, deeply concerned” over appearances the convention is “in bed with a particular [political] party,” he said.

The Trump administration “reopened” past wounds of racial trauma for African Americans and brought grown men to tears, Ausberry said. Over the past year, the situation “has not improved because anytime you experience pain or racialized trauma resurfacing, it takes time to heal.”

The Hispanic community seems to mirror the larger trend of political calming, according to Javier Chavez, a Georgia pastor and global studies professor at Truett McConnell University. The 2020 election cycle was “difficult” for Latinos due to the “political noise.”

In different parts of the country and among Latinos with different backgrounds, views clashed over the president. Some churches split over the election, and some Hispanic believers changed churches over politics, Chavez said.

This year, however, “is a different story.” Currently, “the discussion of political ideology is not really what is transpiring in my community,” said Chavez, pastor of Amistad Cristiana International, a Spanish-speaking, predominantly Mexican and Central American church in Gainesville, Georgia. “At this moment, the concern is economics: inflation, constant noise of an approaching economic crisis, housing prices.”

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Amid the slowdown of election conflict, half (52%) of evangelicals agree they are “proud that some in the evangelical community are seeking to separate the gospel message from Trump and toxic politics,” according to the Heart and Mind Strategies survey.

Evangelicals under 35, people of color including Asians and Hispanics, and those living in the Mountain and Midwest areas were most likely to agree.

Many of them likely have their own leaders in mind. Self-identified evangelicals gave their pastors higher marks in their handling of the 2020 election than evangelical leaders in general.

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Respondents were more likely to say evangelical leaders did a fair or poor job speaking about the presidential election (43%). When asked about their own pastor or church leader, though, just over half (51%) gave them positive marks.

David Roach is a freelance reporter for CT and the pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Saraland, Alabama.

World's highest ski resort a Bolivian memory
Agence France-Presse
November 04, 2021

Rising 5,300-meters above sea level, Chacaltaya was a popular family weekend retreat for inhabitants of La Paz, just 30 kilometers away

 AIZAR RALDES AFP

Bernardo Guarachi's eyes light up as he reminisces about the glory days of Chacaltaya -- once the highest ski resort in the world but now a crumbling relic to climate change in the Bolivian Andes

"Today, it's a cemetery," said Guarachi, pointing to the rusted poles and cables from the old chair lifts.

His eyes scan the 400-meter slope he once shot down at speed on a blanket of snow, now covered only in rocks.

"It used to be full of skiers on Saturdays and Sundays," said the mountaineer.

Rising 5,300-meters above sea level, Chacaltaya was a popular family weekend retreat for inhabitants of La Paz, just 30 kilometers away.

By 1998, the Chacaltaya glacier had been reduced to just seven percent of its size in 1940, while it disappeared entirely in 2009.

Bolivia has lost around half of its glaciers in the last 50 years and experts say things will get worse as global warming continues.

According to the Andean Glaciers and Waters Atlas, published in 2018 by UNESCO and the Norwegian foundation GRID-Arendal, "the expected warming will provoke the loss of 95 percent of the permafrost in Bolivia by 2050," including the loss of almost all its glaciers.
Disappearing glaciers

It is a familiar theme for Edson Ramirez, a glaciologist at the Mayor de San Andres University who conducted a comprehensive study on the impact of climate change on the Bolivian Andes.

He was also the first person to conduct an inventory of Bolivia's glaciers, including documenting their disappearance.

"All the similar glaciers to Chacaltaya ... are suffering the same process of melting, of death," said Ramirez.

At the end of the 1990s Ramirez and other scientists measured the thickest part of the glacier: 15 meters.

"We knew it could disappear in the next 15 years," he said.

It took only 11 years.

The glaciers are fed by an accumulation of snow but "the planet's temperature has risen to a point where we already cannot have snow in these places any more," said Ramirez.

According to some predictions, the temperature in the Andes could rise by two to five degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century.

"We need to take urgent action between all countries to lower the planet's temperature," said Ramirez, whose challenge is to preserve what remains of Bolivia's glaciers.
Money over nature

Guarachi, 67, looks off into the distance towards El Alto, the large satellite town overlooking La Paz, and the cloud of smog hanging over both.

"Man has changed a lot for one aim, which is to earn money, lots of money, and he has forgotten about nature (and) the mountains," said Guarachi.

Bolivia is 80th out of 181 countries in terms of CO2 emissions.

Earlier this year, the South American country of 11 million submitted a proposal to the United Nations that would see the worst offenders increase by "five to 10 times" their financing for the worst affected countries, as well as greater efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

But Ramirez says that his country cannot be excused of blame, pointing to the forest fires that every year devastate thousands of hectares of the Amazon basin to clear the land for agriculture.

"The effects of the fires also influence the state of the glaciers," said Ramirez, explaining that the carbon produced is deposited on the ice and accelerates the melting process by reducing the ability of snow and ice to reflect sunlight.

Water threat

The disappearance of the glaciers could impact the water supply for millions of Bolivians.

During periods of drought, the ice melt would provide up to 85 percent of La Paz's water needs. Several times in the last five years its residents have been forced to ration water.


Farmers on the Altiplano, above La Paz, have also felt the effects.

Offerings and prayers to Mother Earth -- a traditional deity -- have surged.

Unaffected by the altitude, Guarachi strolls around the ruins of the Chacaltaya resort that was built in the 1930s.

"We have to change our mentality ... because I'd rather have water than a lot of money. You could have a lot of money but you won't be able to buy water if the glaciers disappear," he said.

For biologist Karina Apaza, the environment used to be seen as "an impediment to economic growth, but if you impact it, who are you impacting? Yourself."

© 2021 AFP