UN climate agency publishes draft of final Glasgow deal
Updated / Wednesday, 10 Nov 2021 

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries will work from the draft

The United Nations climate agency has published a first draft of the political decision countries will issue at the end of the COP26 summit.

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries will work from the draft to strike a final deal before the summit ends on Friday.

The "COP cover decision" is being closely watched for what it might commit countries to do to bridge the gap between their current climate targets and the more ambitious action scientists say is needed to avert disastrous levels of warming.

Negotiators are also trying to hammer out agreement on technical parts of the global climate treaty, the Paris Agreement, including common timeframes for national commitments on emissions reductions and agreed ways for countries to report on their progress, to help turn pledges into action.

There are also negotiations on providing finance for developing countries to cope with climate change and address the issue of loss and damage to people, livelihoods, land and infrastructure caused by global warming in poorer nations.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged countries to "pull out all the stops" in the final days of COP26.

He is returning to the Glasgow summit today and will be joined by the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in meeting with heads of delegations and other groups.

Countries are positioning themselves for the final days of negotiations, with Nick Mabey from climate think tank E3G suggesting "a high ambition outcome is still on the table" and momentum is with those countries pushing for ambition.

A "High Ambition Coalition" of vulnerable countries and others including the US and Europe countries is calling for nations to submit action plans in line with limiting temperatures to 1.5C in the next year and long term plans to meet the target by 2023, though there is pushback from other countries.

Finance for developing countries is also key to the talks.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney is also due to travel to Glasgow.

He is expected to speak at an event in support of small island developing states, one of the groups of countries already dealing with the consequences of global warming.

Climate talks draft agreement expresses ‘alarm and concern’

By SETH BORENSTEIN and FRANK JORDANS

1 of 7

Extinction Rebellion climate campaigners take part in a 24-hour vigil protest outside offices of the JP Morgan bank as the COP26 U.N. Climate Summit takes place in Glasgow, Scotland, Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. The U.N. climate summit in Glasgow has entered its second week as leaders from around the world, are gathering in Scotland's biggest city, to lay out their vision for addressing the common challenge of global warming. (AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

GLASGOW, Scotland (AP) — Negotiators at the United Nations climate talks are considering a draft decision that highlights “alarm and concern” about global warming the planet already is experiencing and continues to call on the world to cut about half of its emissions of heat-trapping gases by 2030.

The early version of the cover decision released Wednesday at the climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, doesn’t provide specific agreements on the three major goals that the U.N. set going into the negotiations.

The draft mentions the need to cut emissions by 45% by 2030 from 2010 levels and achieve “net-zero” by mid-century. Doing so requires countries to pump only as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as can be absorbed again through natural or artificial means.

It urges countries to “accelerate the phasing out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels,” but makes no explicit reference to ending the use of oil and gas.

The draft also acknowledges “with regret” that rich nations have failed to live up to their pledge of providing $100 billion a year in financial help by 2020 to help poor nations dead with global warming.

The draft reaffirms the goals set in Paris in 2015 of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, with a more stringent target of trying to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) preferred.

Highlighting the challenge of meeting those goals, the document “expresses alarm and concern that human activities have caused around 1.1 C (2 F) of global warming to date and that impacts are already being felt in every region.”

Separate draft proposals were also released on other issues being debated at the talks, including rules for international carbon markets and the frequency by which countries have to report on their efforts.

The draft calls on nations that don’t have national goals that would fit with the 1.5 or 2 degree temperature rise limits to come back with stronger targets next year. Depending on the language is interpreted, the provision could apply to most countries. Analysts at the World Resources Institute counted this element of the draft as a win for vulnerable countries.

“This is crucial language,” WRI International Climate Initiative Director David Waskow said Wednesday. “Countries really are expected and are on the hook to do something in that timeframe to adjust.’’

In a nod to one of the big issues for poorer countries, the draft vaguely “urges” developed nations to compensate developing countries for “loss and damage,” a phrase that some rich nations don’t like.

Whatever comes out of the meeting in Glasgow has to be unanimously approved by nearly 200 nations attending the negotiations.

A lot of negotiating and decision-making is to come in the next three or possibly four days. The deadline for the talks is Friday, but climate talks often go past planned end dates. The cover decisions provide more than anything the parameters for the issues that need to be resolved in the last few days of the annual U.N. conference, Waskow said.

___

Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate

TAX THE CHURCH
French Catholic Church to sell assets to compensate abuse victims
Updated / Monday, 8 Nov 2021 

Church officials have been under growing pressure to compensate victims

French Catholic bishops have agreed to sell part of the Church's extensive real estate holdings to compensate the thousands of victims of child sex abuse at the hands of clergy.

Church officials have been under growing pressure to indemnify victims after a landmark inquiry confirmed extensive sexual abuse of minors by priests dating from the 1950s to 2020.

An independent commission will be set up to evaluate the claims, "and we are going to provide the means to accomplish this mission... of individual indemnities for the victims", said Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, head of the Bishops' Conference of France (CEF).

His comments came at the close of days of meetings by the conference's 120 members on how to respond to the devastating inquiry into the "massive phenomenon" of child sexual assault that was often covered by a "veil of secrecy".

The inquiry had urged the Church to pay victims with its own assets, instead of asking parishioners to donate funds to compensate for crimes committed by the clergy.

The Church had already promised to set up a fund to start making payouts next year, and it will now be bolstered "by selling real estate assets owned by the Bishops' Conference of France and by dioceses", Moulins-Beaufort said after the meeting at the Catholic shrine of Lourdes.

He also said that a loan would be sought from banks if needed, and that the Vatican would be asked to send an observer to help examine the French Church's response.

'Institutional responsibility'

The 2,500-page report released last month detailed abuse of 216,000 minors by clergy over the period, a number that climbs to 330,000 when claims against lay members of the Church are included, such as teachers at Catholic schools.

The commission's president denounced the "systemic character" of efforts to shield clergy from prosecution and issued 45 recommendations of corrective measures.

In particular, the Church was urged to pay reparations even though most cases are well beyond the statutes of limitations.

On Friday, France's bishops for the first time formally recognised that the Church bore an "institutional responsibility" for the abuse, and senior members of the clergy knelt in prayer Saturday in a show of penance.

But victims' associations have said words are far from enough, and are demanding compensation that would cost the Church tens of millions of euros (dollars).

Evaluate all claims

Hugues de Woillemont, a CEF spokesman, said all claims of compensation would be examined by the new commission, including those dating back decades that are usually beyond statutes of limitation for prosecution.

It will be presided by Marie Derain de Vaucresson, a senior civil servant and legal expert specialising in child welfare.

French bishops also plan new measures to prevent sexual assault and ensure that offending priests are prosecuted, though some could require Vatican approval.

Pope Francis expressed his "shame" after learning of the abuse, which has become one of his biggest worldwide challenges since his election in 2013.

But compensation could be put in place relatively quickly, and the CEF has already promised that the first payments will be made in 2022.

Questions of doctrine still appeared to be a problem last month, when the government summoned the Archbishop of Reims, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort.

He had provoked anger by saying that priests were not obliged to report sexual abuse if they heard about it during an act of confession.

He was later forced to walk back his comments.

Protecting children from sexual abuse is an "absolute priority" for the Catholic Church, said the archbishop after meeting Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin - at the request of President Emmanuel Macron.

Mother who fought for Srebrenica massacre victims dies


Catic lost 20 male relatives in the massacre 

(AFP/Elvis BARUKCIC)

Tue, November 9, 2021,

Hajra Catic, a leading figure in the drive to find the remains of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and bring their attackers to justice, died on Tuesday.

Catic, 78, failed to find the remains of her son, who perished in Europe's worst atrocity since World War II that was deemed a genocide by two international courts.

She lost 20 male relatives including her husband and son Nino Catic, the Srebrenica correspondent for several Bosnian newspapers and other media during the 1992-1995 war, who was 26 years old when he died.

"Hajra Catic died today without being able to attend the funeral of her son Nihad Nino Catic," the Srebrenica memorial centre said in a statement.

For 26 years "she kept the memory of the courage of this war reporter from Srebrenica, encouraging others that the fight for the truth and justice cannot and should not cease," it said.

Nino Catic's last despatch was sent a day before the town was captured by Bosnian Serb forces on July 11, 1995.

The Serbs killed more than 8,000 men and boys in the following days and buried them in mass graves in the region.

- 'Something to bury' -

"If only I could find a finger of my son I would have something to bury," Catic told AFP in 2010.

Local media reported that she died after a long illness in Sarajevo.

Catic headed the Women of Srebrenica association in the northeastern town of Tuzla, where she fled after the massacre.

She organised a protest on the 11th day of every month to seek the arrest of those responsible.

Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic were later sentenced to life by a UN war crimes court, notably for the genocide in Srebrenica.

But Serb leaders in both Bosnia and Serbia as well as many ordinary Serbs usually fall short of labelling it genocide and opt for the term "great crime".

Meanwhile, in Serbian capital Belgrade police briefly detained two human rights activists who threw eggs at a mural of Mladic, N1 regional television reported.

Activists had been planning to paint over the mural in downtown Belgrade but police banned the gathering citing security concerns, aiming to prevent possible clashes with nationalists who see Mladic as a national hero.

Late Tuesday, several hundred people marched towards the mural in support of the detained activists but the police blocked access to it, N1 reported.

A small group of right-wingers remained close to the mural, chanting support for the war criminal and insults to the protesters.

rus/ljv/dl

Poland accuses Putin of orchestrating Belarus border crisis to destabilise EU

Hundreds of desperate migrants are trapped in freezing weather on the Belarusian-Polish border, where the presence of troops has raised fears of a confrontation. 

© Leonid Shcheglov, Belta/AFP

Issued on: 10/11/2021 - 

Text by: NEWS WIRES

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of orchestrating a wave of migrants trying to illegally enter Poland from Belarus, saying the “attack” threatens to destabilise the European Union.

The accusation came as thousands of desperate migrants were trapped in freezing weather on the Belarus-Poland border, where the presence of troops from both sides has raised fears of a confrontation.

Western critics have for months said Belarus’s strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko is luring migrants from the Middle East to his country and then sending them across the border in retaliation for EU sanctions.

Morawiecki visited guards, troops and police at the border on Tuesday before turning his sights on Russia, Belarus’s main international backer.

“This attack which Lukashenko is conducting has its mastermind in Moscow, the mastermind is President Putin,” Morawiecki told the Polish parliament.

He said migrants were being used as “human shields to destabilise the situation in Poland and the EU”.

Germany, which accused Lukashenko of “unscrupulously” exploiting migrants by sending them to the Polish border, called Wednesday for new EU sanctions against Belarus.

“Lukashenko must realise that his calculations are not working,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said. “The European Union cannot be blackmailed.”

EU diplomats told AFP the bloc was working to expand the existing sanctions. The EU said it was also pushing more than a dozen countries, mainly in the Middle East and Africa, to prevent their nationals from leaving for Belarus.

‘I am not a madman’

The EU accuses Lukashenko of trying to destabilise the EU by encouraging migrants to its borders—especially Poland and Lithuania—in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Belarus over his regime’s dismal human rights record.

“This is part of the inhuman and really gangster-style approach of the Lukashenko regime,” European Commission spokesman Peter Stano told journalists Tuesday.

Belarus denies the claims and accuses Poland of violating human rights by refusing to allow the migrants in.

“We are not seeking a fight,” Lukashenko told the state news agency Belta.

“I am not a madman, I understand perfectly well where it can lead,” he added.

“But we will not kneel.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed Western military “adventures” in the Middle East for prompting migrants to flee the region.

“Why, when it comes to refugees heading to the European Union from Turkey, did the EU provide funding to keep them on Turkish territory?” he told reporters.

“Why can’t the Belarusians be helped in the same way?”



Border crisis

The crisis came to a head on Monday when hundreds of migrants attempted to cross the border but were blocked by rows of Polish police, soldiers and border guards behind barbed wire.

Both Poland and Belarus said Tuesday that between 3,000 and 4,000 migrants were now in an improvised camp at the border, near the Polish village of Kuznica.

Journalists have been blocked from the area, but videos released by Belarusian and Polish authorities showed the migrants massed along the razor-wire, huddling by fires and in tents as temperatures hovered around freezing.

The Belarusian border guard service said the migrants in the camp were mostly Kurds, that their physical and mental condition was “extremely poor”, and they lacked water, food and the means to wash themselves.

“The situation is aggravated by the large number of pregnant women and infants among the refugees, who must spend the night on the ground in negative temperatures,” it said.


Thousands of migrants have crossed or attempted to cross from Belarus into the eastern EU member states of Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in recent months.

Lithuanian lawmakers voted Tuesday to impose a state of emergency along the Belarus border, effective from midnight.

Some migrants who made it into Poland told AFP last month that they had been trapped in the woods for a week, with Belarus refusing to allow them to return to Minsk and fly home, while Poland would not let them cross to make asylum claims.

Warsaw has drawn sharp criticism for its hardline approach to the crisis that has seen guards routinely push back migrants and refugees on the border.

(AFP)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M SINKS SHIPS
US Navy boosts monitoring of subs after falsified steel tests


The Virginia-class attack submarine USS New Mexico undergoing sea trials in 2009 (AFP/Handout)

Tue, November 9, 2021,

The US Navy has stepped up monitoring of its submarines after a former metallurgist for a company that supplied steel for the vessels was found to have falsified test results.

Elaine Thomas, 67, of Auburn, Washington, pleaded guilty on Monday to falsifying test results that measured the strength and toughness of steel used in navy subs, the Justice Department said.

Thomas, former director of metallurgy at Bradken Inc., a steel foundry in Washington state, admitted to carrying out the fraud for more than 30 years, assigning passing grades to steel that had failed tests.

Bradken is the leading supplier of cast high-yield steel used by prime contractors such as General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries to build submarine hulls.

The steel castings must meet "rigorous" navy specifications for strength and toughness and the Justice Department said about half of the Bradken castings had failed laboratory tests.

"(Thomas) falsified test results to hide the fact that the steel had failed the tests," the department said in a statement.

"Thomas falsified results for over 240 productions of steel, which represent a substantial percentage of the castings Bradken produced for the Navy," it said.

The fraud was discovered in May 2017 by a lab employee who found that test cards had been altered by Thomas and alerted Bradken management.

Thomas worked at the Tacoma foundry from 1977 to May 2017 and was named director of metallurgy in 2009. She pleaded guilty to falsifying tests from about 1985 until her retirement in 2017.

"Thomas's false statements and misrepresentations caused the prime contractor to install substandard components on naval submarines, and caused the Navy to accept those submarines and place them into service, thereby potentially placing naval personnel and naval operations at risk," the government complaint against Thomas said.

The US Navy had no immediate comment on Thomas's conviction but the Justice Department said the navy "has taken extensive steps to ensure the safe operation of the affected submarines."

"Those measures will result in increased costs and maintenance as the substandard parts are monitored," it said.

The Pentagon took delivery of dozens of submarines between 1985 and 2017, about 40 of which are still in service.

According to the complaint, Thomas told investigators that she had used her "engineering judgment" while changing the results of certain tests.

Thomas criticized a particular test that was conducted at -100 degrees Fahrenheit (-73 degrees Celsius) on the grounds that it was a "stupid requirement" and a "stupid number" to test because nothing operated at -100F in the water.

Thomas will be sentenced on February 14, 2022 by US District Court Judge Benjamin Settle. She faces up to 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

sl/cl/jh

Climate change and fires: Bolivia's forests in peril

Martín SILVA
Tue, 9 November 2021


The hyacinth macaw is listed as "vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only about 4,300 specimens left (AFP/AIZAR RALDES)

Forest fires release vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the air -- the equivalent of 192 million metric tons for Bolivia in 2020, according to Global Forest Watch 

(AFP/AIZAR RALDES)



In Bolivia, one of the world's most biodiverse countries, climate change and fires are threatening the survival of many species 

(AFP/AIZAR RALDES)


Authorities said wildfires, mostly originating from land-clearing activities, had scorched almost 600,000 hectares of land in eastern Bolivia between January and August 2021 (AFP/AIZAR RALDES)

The road through San Matias, Bolivia, is a no man's land. Hundreds of thousands of hectares of once lush forest are now a wasteland of twisted, carbonized tree stumps.

It is a protected area, but San Matias -- which also hosts subsistence farmers, cattle ranches and quartz mines -- burns every year as land is cleared for the next planting season.

The practice is legal during May and June, after the rainy season, with each farmer allowed to burn 20 hectares -- also in the reserve located in Bolivia's eastern Santa Cruz department, near the border with Brazil.

The limit is often deliberately exceeded, and the fines negligible. And increasingly, the fires just take on a life of their own, fueled by ever drier, hotter conditions.

"It came from that bush... over there!" said Antonio Tacuchava, 76, pointing to the spot where the most recent blaze came within a kilometer (0.6 miles) of his straw house in September.

A former farmer who now keeps a few chickens and other small animals for domestic consumption, Tacuchava is one of 130 families in Comunidad Candelaria, a hamlet at the gates of the San Matias park.

Locals raise cattle and grow corn, cassava, bananas and sugar cane on small plots.

- 'Like a match' -

Like the handful of large, commercial ranches in the park, the subsistence farmers take part in the annual burning at the start of the dry season -- before it gets too hot, dry and risky.

"A spark here, near these houses, is like a match," said Tacuchava, with his neat white moustache and sun-tanned face.

Yet despite their precautions, multiple out-of-control fires raged around the settlement from July to September this year.

Authorities said wildfires, mostly originating from land-clearing activities, had scorched 2.6 million hectares of land in Santa Cruz in the first ten months of the year.

The Friends of Nature Foundation, a Bolivian NGO, estimates that forest fires destroyed more than 2.3 million hectares of forests and grassland in the country in 2020, and 6.4 million hectares in 2019.

According to the NGO Global Forest Watch, Bolivia in 2020 became the country with the third-largest loss of virgin forest after Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- passing Indonesia for the first time.

It is a vicious cycle of climate change fueling forest fires, and vice versa.

- Fauna, flora at risk -

Forest fires release vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the air.

According to green group WWF: "To have any chance of restricting the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with the Paris Agreement (on curbing climate change), more needs to be done to cut carbon emissions from forest fires."

As temperatures rise in step with greenhouse gas emissions, dwindling green vegetation and water resources make fires more likely.

Already, the WWF said, fires in many parts of the world are bigger, more intense and longer-lasting than they used to be.

In 2009, Bolivia's environment ministry estimated that at loss rates then, all the country's forests would be gone by 2100.

Environmentalists blame laws enacted under former leftist president Evo Morales, who for years encouraged burning of forest and pasture land to expand agricultural production.

Santa Cruz is the Bolivian department most affected by fires.

In San Matias park, which at 30,000 square kilometers (11,600 square miles) is the size of Belgium, the dirt roads are cracked and dry and lined with thousands of half-burnt trees that creak as they are slowly consumed from inside.

"Recovering from fires can take decades," Bolivian biologist Juan Carlos Catari told AFP.

"There are places that have lost more than half their wealth of flora."

- 'No water' -

At Santo Corazon, another settlement in San Matias some 200 kilometers (124 miles) south of Comunidad Candelaria, residents say longer, more frequent droughts are making life difficult.

Dalcy Cabrera, a housewife of 36, opens a tap in her house, but nothing comes out.

"In times of drought, there is no water," she told AFP.

According to village chief Jorge Suarez, 54, "this year, we had no spring." The rains that usually mark the arrival of spring only came months later.

"It is worse for the animals that live in the forest," he said. "This worries me a lot."

According to Catari, "most large animals can escape the fires because they move quickly, but reptiles like lizards and snakes get caught in the fire and become intoxicated with smoke because they don't move fast."

In Bolivia, one of the world's most biodiverse countries, climate change and fires are threatening the survival of many species.

One of them is the hyacinth macaw, listed as "vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with only about 4,300 individuals left.

There are some 300 in San Matias, trying to hatch eggs this year despite fires raging all around them.

Fire ash accumulates in bodies of water, asphyxiating fish and crustaceans that serve as food for other species including the park's many lizards, which are at risk of "a mass die-off," according to veterinarian Felix Rivas.

msr/yow/lbc/mlr/to

Escaped fox raised as a dog caught in Peru

Issued on: 09/11/2021 -

An Andean fox is seen walking on a road in Argentina in June 2020 

FRANCISCO RAMOS MEJIA AFP/File

Lima (AFP) – An escaped fox, whose owners thought it was a dog, has been caught and sent to a zoo after terrorizing a Lima neighborhood, Peruvian authorities said Tuesday.

The medium-sized, eight-month old Andean fox named Run Run wreaked havoc on small farms in the Comas neighborhood, eating ducks, chickens and guinea pigs much to the chagrin of its owners' neighbors.

"Following a patient pursuit, the Forest and Wildlife Service (Serfor) managed to catch the Andean fox, called Run Run, while it wandered close to the Comas district," said the Ministry of Agrarian Development and Irrigation in a statement.

Serfor officials used a tranquilizer dart to catch the fox after throwing it food on Monday night, the ministry said.

Run Run is in good health and has been taken to a Lima zoo, where the fox has quickly become the star attraction.

A local newspaper said Run Run devoured 15 guinea pigs and six chickens over the weekend alone.

Another newspaper spoke to a neighbor who said she had befriended the fox and had been feeding it grilled chicken.

The fox's former owners paid 50 soles (close to $15) to buy what they thought was a Siberian Husky for their daughter at a back street animal market where they were conned by animal traffickers.

"They said it's a wolf-dog, but we didn't know it was a fox. It ate normally, like any dog, but as it was growing it was clear that it wasn't a dog," Maribel Sotelo, who bought the animal for her daughter, told America Television.

The government says the Andean fox is a victim of wild animal trafficking, a crime that is punishable by three to five years in jail.

© 2021 AFP

Australian man, 60, uses pocket knife to fight off crocodile

Issued on: 10/11/2021

Saltwater crocodile numbers have exploded since they were declared a protected species in 1971, with recent attacks reigniting debate about controlling them 

WILLIAM WEST AFP/File

Brisbane (Australia) (AFP) – A 60-year-old Australian man escaped the jaws of a large crocodile by stabbing it repeatedly in the head with his pocket knife as it dragged him into a river, local authorities said Wednesday.

After surviving the terrifying attack at a remote riverbank in Australia's far northern Cape York Peninsula, the injured man drove himself to hospital, the Queensland state environment department said.

The man had gone fishing on his property last week near Hope Vale, about five hours' drive from Cairns, and shooed away a bull from the riverbank so he could take over the spot.

Then, the crocodile struck.

"He described seeing the crocodile seconds before it lunged at him, knocking him over as he was about to cast his fishing rod," the department said in a statement

He grabbed onto the branch of a mangrove tree in a desperate attempt to stay out of the river as the crocodile's jaws wrapped around his boots. But he quickly lost the tug-of-war and was pulled in.

"The man said that as he entered the water, he managed to retrieve his knife from his belt and stabbed the crocodile in its head until it let him go."

The man then scrambled up the bank and drove to Cooktown Hospital for treatment. He was later flown to Cairns Hospital, where he is still recovering a week later.

Wildlife officers who interviewed him Tuesday confirmed that his injuries were consistent with a crocodile attack.

They would not attempt to capture the reptile -- which was believed to be attracted to the area by the presence of the bull -- because it is too remote.

Saltwater crocodile numbers have exploded since they were declared a protected species in 1971, with recent attacks reigniting debate about controlling them.

The "salties", which can grow up to seven metres long and weigh more than a tonne, are a common feature of the vast continent's tropical north.

Known as "croc country", the area sees attacks relatively frequently but they are rarely fatal, with locals and visitors warned to keep their distance from waterways.

© 2021 AFP

STATEHOOD OR INDEPENDENCE

'Science and solidarity': Why Puerto Rico leads US in Covid vaccinations

Issued on: 10/11/2021 


San Juan (AFP) – Puerto Rico has an underfunded health care system, high levels of poverty and its infrastructure remains devastated by a major hurricane that swept through the island in 2017.

So how is the US territory leading the rest of the country in Covid vaccinations?

Experts credit the surprising success to two major factors: a sense of solidarity forged from past brushes with disasters, and a public health response untainted by political polarization seen on the mainland.

No fewer than 74 percent of the island's 3.2 million people are now fully vaccinated -- well above the US total of 58 percent -- but also ahead of wealthy and liberal northeastern states such as Massachusetts and Vermont.

"Everyone should get vaccinated," Jose de Jesus, a retired government employee, told AFP.

"You have to take care of yourself, you have to live life until you can," added the 74-year-old, who happily got a Moderna booster shot last week.

As a result of the high uptake, Puerto Rico is crushing its coronavirus curve, with daily cases currently running at three per 100,000 people compared to 22 for the country as a whole, and deaths at 0.1 per 100,000.

The situation is the complete opposite of what was expected at the start of the pandemic, when the odds seemed stacked against the Caribbean archipelago.

Puerto Rico's poverty rate is 43 percent, more than double that of Mississippi, the poorest US state.

Its government is facing an ongoing financial crisis that skyrocketed debt in 2017, and forced the imposition of a drastic austerity policy.

A hammer blow came in September 2017, when Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, leaving nearly 3,000 dead. Many of the victims perished from a lack of resources and poor post-disaster response. The storm struck the island less than a month after Hurricane Irma passed by, causing vast power outages.

After that, protests in 2019 led to the resignation of a governor, Ricardo Rossello, and an earthquake destroyed nearly 8,000 homes in January 2020.

Lessons learned

"I couldn't sleep, I kept thinking the pandemic would be handled as badly as the responses to Hurricane Irma and Maria," Monica Feliu Mojer, spokesperson for the nonprofit Ciencia Puerto Rico organization that advocates for science in Puerto Rico, told AFP.

Instead, though, the memory of these disasters has made "people do their part," creating a critical wave of unity to respond to the challenge.

The Puerto Rican government began vaccinating in December 2020, like the rest of the United States.

And in just a few weeks, professional groups, hospitals, universities, private corporations and non-profit organizations joined the effort, collaborations key to the later Covid vaccination campaign.

Paradoxically, the trauma of Hurricane Maria prepared Puerto Ricans to face the coronavirus.

The work of the NGO VOCES, which has administered more than 378,000 doses since January, is an example of this.

According to its founder, Lilliam Rodriguez, the organization began in 2013 to promote vaccinations against various diseases.

After the hurricane destroyed vaccine dose stockpiles, the NGO's mission changed. Instead of just advocating for immunization, it began receiving funding and vaccines, and its workers "went to the fields, to the neighborhoods, to administer them," Rodriguez recalls.

"That prepared us to develop skills of first responders in the area of public health and vaccination. What we're doing now is not very different to what we did after Maria," she adds.
Sticking to the science

Feliu Mojer points to another key to the success of the vaccination push.

Unlike what happened in the rest of the United States, Puerto Rico "has not politicized" the response to the pandemic.

"In the United States there is a relationship between people, their political party and their willingness to get vaccinated," says the expert, something that does not exist in Puerto Rico.

On the island, "the main parties are not organized around conservative or progressive ideologies, but status preferences" over the future of the island's political relationship with the United States, she explains.

That unity allowed the government to take tougher preventative measures over the summer, at the height of the global wave driven by the Delta variant.

The government reimposed restrictions like masking and ordered vaccination or weekly negative PCR test for public employees, as well as for workers and customers of certain businesses like restaurants and gyms. Public response was largely favorable.

The success "has been a combination of science and solidarity," sums up Feliu Mojer.

© 2021 AFP

Europe's battle to curb Big Tech

The so-called GAFAM are still targeted by the EU and US for a number of allegedly unfair practices 

JUSTIN TALLIS AFP/File

Issued on: 10/11/2021

Paris (AFP) – US tech giants Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft -- collectively dubbed GAFAM -- have been accused of not paying enough taxes, stifling competition, stealing media content and threatening democracy by spreading fake news.

As a European Union court rules Wednesday on a 2.4-billion euro ($2.8-billion) anti-trust fine on Google, we look at how the bloc has tried to regulate Big Tech.
Nobbling competition

The digital giants are regularly criticised for dominating the market by elbowing out rivals.

The EU has slapped a total 8.25 billion euros in fines on Google for abusing its dominant market position across several of its products.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg will rule Wednesday on Google's challenge to a 2.4-billion-euro fine imposed by the EU Commission in 2017 for abusing its power over its rivals in online shopping.

Microsoft was fined 561 million euros by the EU in 2013 for imposing its search engine Internet Explorer on users of Windows 7.

Amazon, Apple and Facebook are also the targets of EU probes for possible violations of competition rules.

The EU has also unveiled plans for mammoth fines of up to 10 percent of their sales on tech firms that break competition rules, that could even lead to them being broken up.

- Taxation -

Germany, France, Italy and Spain won a major victory in June when the Group of Seven (G7) agreed to a minimum global corporate tax rate of at least 15 percent mainly aimed at the tech giants.

For years they have paid little or no tax through complex tax avoidance schemes.

In one of the most notorious cases, the European Commission in 2016 found that Ireland granted "illegal tax benefits to Apple" and ordered the company to pay 13 billion euros plus interest to the Irish taxpayer.

After a EU court later ruled in favour of Apple, the Commission turned to the European Court of Justice to appeal.

The following year, Amazon was told to pay back 250 million euros to Luxembourg over similar abuses there.
Personal data

Tech giants are regularly criticised over how they gather and use personal data.

The EU has led the charge to rein them in with its 2018 General Data Protection Regulation, which has since become an international reference.

They must ask for consent when they collect personal information and may no longer use data collected from several sources to profile users against their will.

Amazon was fined 746 million euros in July by Luxembourg authorities for flouting the EU's data protection rules.

After having fined Twitter nearly half a million euros, the Irish regular opened a probe into Facebook in April after the personal data of 530 million users was pirated.

France has also fined Google and Amazon a total of 135 million euros for breaking rules on computer cookies.
Fake news and hate speech

Social networks are often accused of failing to rein in misinformation and hate speech.

The European Parliament and member states agreed to force platforms to remove terrorist content, and to do so within one hour.

EU rules now also forbid using algorithms to spread false information and hate speech, which some major platforms are suspected of doing to increase ad revenue.

- Paying for content –

GAFAM are accused by media outlets of making money from journalistic content without sharing the revenue.

To tackle this an EU law in 2019 created a form of copyright called "neighbouring rights" that would allow outlets to demand compensation for use of their content.

After initial resistance, Google signed agreements to pay for content with several French newspapers last year, a world first.

However, it did not stop the company being fined half-a-billion euros by France's competition authority in July for failing to negotiate "in good faith" with news organisations. Google has appealed.

© 2021 AFP