END WAR ON DRUGS

Youth’s overdose death renews pleas for Narcan in schools

By DAVE COLLINS

Students at Sport and Medical Sciences Academy return to school, Jan. 19, 2022 in Hartford, Conn. The school has been closed since last week after a student died from a fentanyl overdose. The death of the seventh grader has renewed calls for schools to carry the opioid antidote naloxone. The 13-year-old student in Hartford died after falling ill in school two days earlier. The school did not have naloxone, which is known by the brand name Narcan. But now city officials are vowing to put it in all schools. Fatal overdoses among young people in the U.S. have been increasing amid the opioid epidemic but remain relatively uncommon. (Mark Mirko/ The Hartford Courant via AP)


HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The death of a 13-year-old student who apparently overdosed on fentanyl at his Connecticut school has drawn renewed pleas for schools to stock the opioid antidote naloxone, as well as for training of both staffers and children on how to recognize and respond to overdoses.

The seventh grader was hospitalized Jan. 13 after falling ill at a Hartford school that did not have naloxone on hand. City officials vowed Wednesday to put the antidote in all city schools, as part of a wider drug use and overdose prevention strategy.

“Naloxone should be available in all schools, and there should be education on signs and symptoms of overdose and how to use this,” said Dr. Craig Allen, vice president of addiction services for Hartford HealthCare’s Behavioral Health Network. “Unfortunately, a horrible incident like this happens and suddenly everyone’s vision is 20/20.”

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said that because of the student’s young age, an opioid overdose did not immediately come to mind when the school nurse and first responders, who did have naloxone, treated him.

That’s why city officials are also proposing more training and curriculum changes aimed at educating staffers, students and community members in substance use awareness and prevention, he said.

In response to the student’s death, advocacy groups are repeating calls they’ve made for several years for schools to stock naloxone — often delivered as a nasal spray under the brand name Narcan — and train educators, support staff and students to recognize signs of opioid use and overdoses, especially because younger people are falling victim more frequently.

The powerful opioid fentanyl has been showing up in marijuana, illicit pills and other substances accessible to school-age children, experts say. Fatal overdoses in the U.S. are at record levels, fueled by fentanyl, and have been increasing among younger people, national data shows.

The National Association of School Nurses has advocated for naloxone to be in all schools since 2015 and for school nurses to help educate their communities about the signs and symptoms of substance abuse.

“It’s a very unfortunate outcome,” Linda Mendonca, the association’s president, said about the Hartford student’s death. “It brings us back to school preparedness and response plans. Having those in place is really critical.”

The association created a “tool kit” for school nurses that includes information on administering naloxone and educating the community about opioid problems. The kit has been downloaded from its website more than 49,000 times, the group said.

Ethan’s Run Against Addiction is one of many advocacy groups that weighed in on social media about the Hartford student’s death. It is named after Ethan Monson-Dupuis, a 25-year-old Wisconsin man who died of a heroin overdose in 2016

“This tragedy is unbearable. Our nation’s opioid crisis has reached into the lives of children, into places where we want to assume that they are safe,” the group said in a Facebook post Thursday. “ALL public places, including schools, must have Narcan available. We need to educate kids on how to recognize someone who is overdosing and how to use Narcan.”

In addition to a nasal spray, naloxone can also be given as an injection. The National Institute on Drug Abuse says it is a safe medicine and side effects are rare but warns it doesn’t reverse overdoses from other drugs. Training is needed, the agency says, because sometimes more than one dose needs to be given and people who receive the drug can experience immediate withdrawal symptoms.

It’s not clear how often overdoses happen in U.S. schools, but experts and advocates say they are not common.

In late November, two school resource officers and a school nurse were given naloxone after being exposed to the synthetic opioid carfentanil, which was in a piece of paper found in a student’s vape pen at Sequoyah High School in Madisonville, Tennessee, according to local media reports. The officers and nurse became lightheaded but recovered.

In 2019, high schools in the Tucson, Arizona, area began stocking naloxone in response to a student overdosing on opioids while in school. Emergency responders, who were carrying the antidote, revived the student, media reports said.

There also is no national data on how many schools have naloxone or drug use awareness training programs that include recognizing the signs of an overdose.

In a survey of Pennsylvania school nurses conducted in 2018 and published in 2020, more than half the 362 nurses who responded reported having naloxone in their schools, according to the journal Public Health Nursing.

About 5% of the nurses said naloxone had been administered in their school or at a school-sponsored activity. The most common reason for not having naloxone in schools included a lack of support and the belief it was not needed, the survey showed.

Drug use prevention is taught in many schools. And there are an array of overdose awareness and naloxone administration programs offered by local health departments and advocacy groups.

In eastern Tennessee, the Carter County Drug Prevention group has trained hundreds of children, some as young as 6, on how to use naloxone via after-school programs and other extracurricular gatherings, in response to rising overdoses, The New York Times reported.

Twenty states had laws allowing schools to possess and administer naloxone, and seven others required schools to have naloxone-use policies as of August 2020, according to the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association, a nonprofit research and policy advocacy group. Most of the laws require training on administering the antidote.

In response to record drug overdoses, the national Office of National Drug Control Policy in November released a model law for states to consider, aimed at expanding access to naloxone, including in schools.

The Hartford student fell ill at the Sport and Medical Sciences Academy and died at a hospital two days later, on Jan. 15. The teenager’s name was not released. Two other students recovered after apparently being exposed to fentanyl and becoming ill, officials said.

Hartford police said they found about 40 small bags containing fentanyl in the school. Police are still investigating the overdose, and the fentanyl’s source remains unclear.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the 15-to-24 age group saw the largest percentage increase in drug overdose death rates from 2019 to 2020, at 49%, but had the second-lowest overall rates among age groups.

For the first time last year, U.S. overdoses deaths topped an estimated 100,000 in a one-year period, with many of the deaths linked to illicit fentanyl.

New conservative target: Race as factor in COVID treatment
By TODD RICHMOND

 Nurse manager Edgar Ramirez checks on IV fluids while talking to a COVID-19 patient at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Los Angeles, Dec. 13, 2021. Some conservatives are taking aim at policies that allow doctors to consider race as a risk factor when allocating scarce COVID-19 treatments, saying the protocols discriminate against white people. Medical experts say the opposition is misleading. 

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Some conservatives are taking aim at policies that allow doctors to consider race as a risk factor when allocating scarce COVID-19 treatments, saying the protocols discriminate against white people.

The wave of infections brought on by the omicron variant and a shortage of treatments have focused attention on the policies.

Medical experts say the opposition is misleading. Health officials have long said there is a strong case for considering race as one of many risk factors in treatment decisions. And there is no evidence that race alone is being used to decide who gets medicine.

The issue came to the forefront last week after Fox News host Tucker Carlson, former President Donald Trump and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio jumped on the policies. In recent days, conservative law firms have pressured a Missouri-based health care system, Minnesota and Utah to drop their protocols and sued New York state over allocation guidelines or scoring systems that include race as a risk factor.

JP Leider, a senior fellow in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota who helped develop that state’s allocation criteria, noted that prioritization has been going on for some time because there aren’t enough treatments to go around.

“You have to pick who comes first,” Leider said. “The problem is we have extremely conclusive evidence that (minorities) across the United States are having worse COVID outcomes compared to white folks. ... Sometimes it’s acceptable to consider things like race and ethnicity when making decisions about when resources get allocated at a societal level.”

Since the pandemic began, health care systems and states have been grappling with how to best distribute treatments. The problem has only grown worse as the omicron variant has packed hospitals with COVID-19 patients.

Considerable evidence suggests that COVID-19 has hit certain racial and ethnic groups harder than whites. Research shows that people of color are at a higher risk of severe illness, are more likely to be hospitalized and are dying from COVID-19 at younger ages.

Data also show that minorities have been missing out on treatments. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published an analysis of 41 health care systems that found that Black, Asian and Hispanic patients are less likely than whites to receive outpatient antibody treatment.

Omicron has rendered two widely available antibody treatments ineffective, leaving only one, which is in short supply.

The Food and Drug Administration has given health care providers guidance on when that treatment, sotrovimab, should be used, including a list of medical conditions that put patients at high risk of severe outcomes from COVID-19. The FDA’s guidance says other factors such as race or ethnicity might also put patients at higher risk.

The CDC’s list of high-risk underlying conditions notes that age is the strongest risk factor for severe disease and lists more than a dozen medical conditions. It also suggests that doctors and nurses “carefully consider potential additional risks of COVID-19 illness for patients who are members of certain racial and ethnic minority groups.”

State guidelines generally recommend that doctors give priority for the drugs to those at the highest risk, including cancer patients, transplant recipients and people who have lung disease or are pregnant. Some states, including Wisconsin, have implemented policies that bar race as a factor, but others have allowed it.

St. Louis-based SSM Health, which serves patients in Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, required patients to score 20 points on a risk calculator to qualify for COVID-19 antibody treatment. Non-whites automatically got seven points.

State health officials in Utah adopted a similar risk calculator that grants people two points if they’re not white. Minnesota’s health department guidelines automatically assigned two points to minorities. Four points was enough to qualify for treatment.

New York state health officials’ guidelines authorize antiviral treatments if patients meet five criteria. One is having “a medical condition or other factors that increase their risk for severe illness.” One of those factors is being a minority, according to the guidelines.

The protocols have become a talking point for Republicans after The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by political commentators John Judis and Ruy Teixeira this month complaining that New York’s policy is unfair, unjustified and possibly illegal. Carlson jumped on Utah’s and Minnesota’s policies last week, saying “you win if you’re not white.”

Alvin Tillery, a political scientist at Northwestern University, called the issue a winning political strategy for Trump and Republicans looking to motivate their predominantly white base ahead of midterm elections in November. He said conservatives are twisting the narrative, noting that race is only one of a multitude of factors in every allocation policy.

“It does gin up their people, gives them a chance in elections,” Tillery said.

After the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative law firm based in Madison, sent a letter to SSM Health on Friday demanding that it drop race from its risk calculator, SSM responded that it already did so last year as health experts’ understanding of COVID-19 evolved.

“While early versions of risk calculators across the nation appropriately included race and gender criteria based on initial outcomes, SSM Health has continued to evaluate and update our protocols weekly to reflect the most up-to-date clinical evidence available,” the company said in a statement. “As a result, race and gender criteria are no longer utilized.”

America First Legal, a conservative-leaning law firm based in Washington, D.C., filed a federal lawsuit Sunday against New York demanding that the state remove race from its allocation criteria. The same firm warned Minnesota and Utah last week that they should drop race from their preference factors or face lawsuits.

Erin Silk, a spokeswoman for New York state’s health department, declined to comment on the lawsuit. She said the state’s guidance is based on CDC guidelines and that race is one of many factors that doctors should consider when deciding who gets treatment. She stressed that doctors should consider a patient’s total medical history and that no one is refused treatment because of race or any other demographic qualifier.

Minnesota health officials dropped race from the state’s criteria a day or two before receiving America Legal First’s demands, Leider said. They said in a statement that they’re committed to serving all Minnesotans equitably and are constantly reviewing their policies. The statement did not mention the letter from America Legal First. Leider said the state is now picking treatment recipients through a lottery.

Utah dropped race and ethnicity from its risk score calculator on Friday, among other changes, citing new federal guidance and the need to make sure classifications comply with federal law. The state’s health department said that instead of using those as factors in eligibility for treatments, it would “work with communities of color to improve access to treatments” in other ways.

Leider finds the criticism of the race-inclusive policies disingenuous.

“It’s easy to bring in identity politics and set up choices between really wealthy folks of one type and folks of other types,” he said. “It’s hard to take seriously those kinds of comparisons. They don’t seem very fair to reality.”

Why some German church windows depict Hitler

Devil or fool? Several churches in Germany have stained-glass windows portraying Adolf Hitler. Who were the artists and what are the artworks all about?


Hitler, the devil tempting Jesus

Weil der Stadt is a town of about 20,000 people in southwestern Germany, west of Stuttgart. At the Catholic church of St. Peter and Paul, pastor Anton Gruber has been welcoming his congregation as well as many curious visitors for the past 11 years.

Some people stop by the church because it is right on a popular bike path, while others have come to peer at one particular stained-glass window. They often say "the features of Hitler are recognizable," Gruber told DW. "Most people are simply curious, no more and no less," the clergyman says about the pane that dates from 1939/40.
Personified evil

It is part of a larger window of nine panels depicting scenes from the life of Jesus. The pane on the far upper right depicts temptation, with the devil testing Jesus' faith — and the artist JoKarl Huber has clearly given Hitler's facial features to his depiction of the devil. The devil's outfit is yellow, a color that stands for envy and possession.

Getting rid of idols: A stained-glass window in Vasperviller, France

Most visitors have no problem understanding and contextualizing the depiction of the dictator as evil personified, Gruber says, adding that the artist never commented on his work, so one can only assume that he wanted to portray Hitler as a figure of evil. The artwork was created in 1939, at the height of the Nazi regime.

Knowing the artist's story helps understand the imagery, Gruber argues. "In 1936, the Nazis labeled JoKarl Huber's art as 'degenerate,' and he was no longer allowed to work," he says.

St. Peter and Paul's priest at the time, August Uhl, granted the artist asylum, along with a commission for renovation. Uhl's sermons tended to be in opposition to the Nazis, which is why the Gestapo allegedly often showed up at his home, Gruber says.

HOW HITLER AND THE NAZIS DEFAMED ART

Degenerate art

Modern art works whose style, artist or subject did not meet with the approval of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists were labeled "degenerate art." From 1937, the Nazis confiscated such works from German museums. In a traveling exhibition, "degenerate art" was held up for public ridicule. Here we see Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Hitler at the original exhibition in Munich.

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Controversial artworks

There is no doubt "the stained glass window represents an unequivocal and courageous statement against National Socialism and its leaders," German historian Michael Kuderna told DW. His most recent book is about Hitler images in churches.

In the course of his research, he found five images of Hitler that predate 1945 and nine that date to after 1945. With the early images, it can be difficult to prove they really show the dictator, but the later images clearly show Hitler, for instance as an executioner, or a villain burning in hell.

"After the war, depicting Hitler in churches was no longer as problematic as before 1945, when people feared retribution," the historian explains.

As time passed, the imagery changed: "Hitler was increasingly shown in other contexts, treated in a more distanced way, even to the point of caricature," Kuderna adds.

His research started 20 years ago at the church in Vasperviller. Created after 1945, a stained-glass window shows a biblical story from the Old Testament: Rachel, Laban's daughter, steals her father's household idols.

The artist, Gabriele Kütemeyer, gave one of the idols Hitler's face. "The artist's father was a staunch opponent of the Nazis; he was in Gestapo custody in Berlin for a time," Kuderna explains, adding that the artist often heard her father say the Germans followed false idols. "That gave her the idea to look for that connection in the artwork."

The fools of the world: An artwork on an altar in the church of St. Peter and Paul

Among the 14 illustrations Kuderna identified as clearly depicting Hitler, one of them — showing Hitler with Paul von Hindenburg, the German president who played a key role in the Nazi seizure of power — was removed after 1945.

The historian points out that right after war, "people didn't like to talk about these things, they felt embarrassed." As a result, some of the images were hidden away while others were vandalized.
Difficult mission

Kuderna mentions one case of a window in Munich by artist Max Lacher that portrays Hitler as a kind of torturer. Early on, it was splashed with ink but later got protected with a barrier.

The same artist created a much more famous image in the town of Landshut, a stained-glass window in St. Martin church that shows Hitler and fellow Nazi rulers Goebbels and Göring torturing St. Castulus.

After World War II, the Americans demanded its removal, but had a change of heart when told that the artist was a resistance fighter in the last weeks of the war.

Clearly, such images should not be hidden, or removed, Kuderna argues— they can serve as a basis to deal with the past. "Even if it's difficult, because to this day, there is a lot that we haven't processed."

Testimony to contemporary history

Pastor Anton Gruber also favors an open and transparent discussion of such depictions. "The images that were created during the Nazi era are a testimony to history," he says.

Gruber thinks it is important that the church is alive and well, and presents works of art from different eras; it should not just be a museum of the past. "In my church, for example, we have items from 1500, 1750, from 1939/40, but also artworks from 2020."

One of the more recent depictions of Hitler in Gruber's church is a painting by Dieter Gross added in 2018 to the back of the wings of the Epiphany altar. It shows Jesus Christ surrounded by a crowd of people supposed to represent the fools of the world. They include Donald Trump and, further in the back, Adolf Hitler.

"The question is, how can I represent Hitler as a simple fool among many, next to all the others?" the pastor asks. "This is about giving people food for thought: Where would I stand in the crowd of fools in the picture? How much of a fool am I?"

Historian Kuderna says that this last depiction of Hitler is the strangest he has encountered in his research. "It's funny and beautiful, but it makes you think." He is still not sure though whether the image works or whether such a depiction does not ultimately trivialize Hitler.

Anton Gruber, the church's pastor, leaves the interpretation and discussion to his congregation and the visitors.

Why carbon offsets are worse than you think

Jan 21, 2022
DW Planet A

Carbon offsets sound so promising: If you emit some CO2, you can just pay someone else to reduce that amount somewhere else, and you’re good! But is it too good to be true? Reporter: Kiyo Dörrer Camera: Henning Goll Video Editor: David Jacobi Supervising Editor: Joanna Gottschalk We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. 

Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.

UK lawmaker says she was sacked from government over her 'Muslimness'

A former minister in Britain’s Conservative government says she was told her Muslim faith was a reason she was fired, a claim that has deepened the rifts roiling Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s governing party.

© Justin Tallis, AFP file photo

Former transport minister Nusrat Ghani told the Sunday Times that when she was demoted in 2020, a government whip said her “Muslimness” was “making colleagues uncomfortable.”

She said she was told “there were concerns ‘that I wasn’t loyal to the party as I didn’t do enough to defend the party against Islamophobia allegations.’

“It was very clear to me that the whips and No. 10 (Downing St.) were holding me to a higher threshold of loyalty than others because of my background and faith,” Ghani said.

Chief Whip Mark Spencer said he was the person Ghani was talking about, but strongly denied her allegation.

“These accusations are completely false and I consider them to be defamatory,” he wrote on Twitter. “I have never used those words attributed to me.”

Several Conservative lawmakers spoke up to support Ghani. Caroline Nokes, who heads Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee, said Ghani’s treatment had been “appalling” and she was brave to speak out.

Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi tweeted that Ghani’s allegations must be “investigated properly & racism routed out.” His tweet ended with the hashtag “standwithNus.”

When Ghani was made a minister in 2015, her boss, then Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, said it was proof the Conservatives “were a party of opportunity.” But some have accused the party of failing to stamp out anti-Muslim prejudice under Johnson, who in 2018 compared women who wear face-covering veils to “letter boxes.”

Ghani's allegation comes after another Conservative legislator, William Wragg, accused party whips of intimidating and blackmailing members of Parliament to ensure they supported the government. Wragg says he is meeting police this week to discuss his claims.

Internal rifts in the Conservative Party have been blown open by allegations that Johnson and his staff held lockdown-flouting parties while Britain was under coronavirus restrictions.

A handful of Conservative lawmakers have called for Johnson to resign. Others are awaiting a report by Sue Gray, a senior civil servant appointed to investigate claims that government staff held late-night soirees, “bring your own booze” parties and “wine time Fridays” while Britain was under coronavirus restrictions in 2020 and 2021.

Gray’s findings are expected to be published next week. If Gray criticizes Johnson, more Conservative lawmakers may be emboldened to call for a no-confidence vote in Johnson that could result in his ouster.

(AP)

Examining the poor reputation of Africa's armies

African armies are perceived as underfunded, underequipped, and ineffective. There is a long history of coups and human rights violations. Twenty sub-Saharan militaries were involved in armed conflicts in 2020.



Armies in West and Central Africa are notorius for staging coups


According to a study by the Stockholm-based International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), out of a total of 49 sub-Saharan African states, at least 20 were involved in some armed conflict in 2020. This places African armies at the center of events — and under scrutiny.

Many African armies suffer from a bad reputation. They are often poorly trained and ineffective. The reasons are manifold, including underfunding, which is often revealed when armies need to combat insurgents, as seen in Nigeria and Mozambique. In addition, armies are to blame for military coups backed by political actors, as happened in Mali, Guinea, and Sudan.

Some armies are accused of corruption and misuse of resources, Nan Tian, a senior researcher at SIPRI, told DW. "This is, however, a false representation. In general, African militaries are not like this." One example is the Rwandan army, which has won international respect for its discipline and efficiency.

There is also a perception that African armies are outsize and eat up too much of the state budgets. "Both the relative number of personnel per inhabitants and the relative size of the budgets for the military are small in Africa in general," said Matthias Basedau, director of the GIGA Institute for African Affairs in Hamburg.

Fighting corruption in the army

Nigeria, for example, has the second biggest sub-Saharan army after South Africa. But, with more than 150 million inhabitants, it has a comparatively modest number of 200,000 enlisted personnel. Russia, a country of 140 million, has more than 1 million soldiers.

African armies are also associated with a lack of transparency and corruption. "Much of this is a structural problem. The lack of financial resources in the country means that the military and other state actors are all competing for a very small slice of the pie," Tian said.

In Angola, several high-ranking army officers were detained and sued for embezzlement in 2021 in an anti-corruption drive launched by President Joao Lourenco. The president is also trying to dismantle a system of patronage put in place by his long-serving predecessor, Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

Rwandan troops have been praised for helping to quell an Islamic uprising in northern Mozambique

The army as a political actor

Owing to Africa's colonial history, the military in many countries assumed a political role from the start. "Once the genie is released from the bottle, it's hard to put it back in," Basedau said.

In Angola, some top combatants were compensated for the fight for independence from Portugal and their participation in the ensuing decades of civil war. Such an arrangement offered an opportunity to those well placed to get rich quickly. General Manuel Helder Vieira Dias Jr., nicknamed "Kopelipa," for instance, was estimated in 2014 to be worth $3 billion (€2.64 billion). Though Lourenco's government has since removed Dias from powerful positions following the departure of former dos Santos, the general has been able to keep his wealth.

Though Angola is rich in oil and diamonds, most of its 32 million people live in poverty.

As in Angola, the governments of many countries have included the military "in corrupt practices to keep them happy and to keep them in line," Basedau said. It is often a tactic to gain the military's support.

Military coups on the rise again

Since the mid-1950s, Africa has averaged four coups per year. The number of attempted or successful coups declined from 2010 to 2019, according to a recent study called "Global Instances of Coups From 1950 to 2010: A New Dataset" found. But, in 2021, their number suddenly grew to six, a worrying trend for many analysts.

The threat of a military coup is never far, especially in West and Central Africa. "When we encounter weak states that have more unaccountable and weak political institutions, we can also bet that their armies are going to be unaccountable and probably fragmented," Benjamin Petrini, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies who focuses on security, conflict, and development in Africa, told DW:

Petrini said the erosion of democratic norms, including in the US and the European Union, is a major contributing factor "to a feeling that a military coup does not carry the same consequences as it used to."


The German Bundeswehr has been helping train the Malian army for almost 10 years
Crimes against humanity

This has also increased the feeling of impunity among some armies notorious for committing crimes against humanity. Sexual violence against women and girls and other human rights abuses "are not just incidents, but are, in effect, tactics of war," Petrini said.

This seems to be more of an issue for is far from being a specific African problem. "The disregard of human rights in warfare is a universal feature," researcher Basedau maintains.

The coronavirus pandemic, which laid bare many institutional deficits, has increased the threat of coups. "In several countries, the military had to step in," fueling the perception of a failure of the democratic state, Petrini says. He calls for an increase of pressure on coup leaders and lauded the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for slapping strict sanctions on Mali's junta.

Analysts warn that interference in Africa from outside could be a double-edged sword. China and Russia, increasingly at loggerheads with the West, are becoming significant players in the continent. "If you have these international rivalries and they happen to meddle with domestic conflicts in African countries, of course, it's a great risk that these conflicts will become more intense and more protracted," Basedau said.

In Kashmir, India batters press freedom — and journalists

#KASHMIR IS #INDIA'S #GAZA

By AIJAZ HUSSAIN and SHEIKH SAALIQ

1 of 9

Kashmir Press Club building is pictured through a closed gate after it was sealed by authorities in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2022. Last week, a few journalists supportive of the Indian government, with assistance from armed police, took control of the region’s only independent press club. Authorities shut it down a day later, drawing sharp criticism from journalist bodies. Reporters Without Borders called it an “undeclared coup” and said the region is “steadily being transformed into a black hole for news and information.” The government defended its move by citing “potential law and order situation” and “the safety of bona fide journalists.” (AP Photo/Dar Yasin)


SRINAGAR, India (AP) — For five years, Sajad Gul wrote about conflict wracking his homeland, a disputed Himalayan territory where a violent armed rebellion and India’s brutal counterinsurgency have raged for over three decades.

That changed on a snowy Wednesday night in January with a knock at his house. Gul was surrounded by Indian soldiers wielding automatic rifles who bundled him into a vehicle and sped away, plowing through the snow-laden track in Hajin, a quiet village about 20 miles from Srinagar, the region’s main city, said his mother, Gulshana, who only uses one name.

Journalists have long contended with various threats in Indian-controlled Kashmir and found themselves caught between warring sides. But their situation has gotten dramatically worse since India revoked the region’s semi-autonomy in 2019, throwing Kashmir under a severe security and communication lockdown and the media in a black hole. A year later, the government’s new media policy sought to control the press more effectively to censure independent reporting.

Dozens have been arrested, interrogated and investigated under harsh anti-terror laws. Fearing reprisals, local press has largely wilted under pressure.

“Indian authorities appear determined to prevent journalists from doing their jobs,” said Steven Butler, Asia program coordinator of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Gul’s arrest, which the CPJ condemned, underscored the fast-eroding press freedoms and criminalization of journalists in Kashmir.

Police told Gul’s family that he was arrested for provoking people to “resort to violence and disturb public peace.” A police statement later described him as “habitual of spreading disinformation” and “false narratives” on social media.

He was detained days after his single tweet linked a video clip of a protest against Indian rule, following a Kashmiri rebel’s killing. He spent 11 days locked up before a local court granted him bail.

Instead of freeing Gul, authorities charged him in a new case under the Public Safety Act, which allows officials to imprison anyone for up to two years without trial.

“My son is not a criminal,” said Gulshana. “He only used to write.”

Media has always been tightly controlled in India’s part of Muslim-majority Kashmir. Arm twisting and fear have been extensively used to intimidate the press since 1989, when rebels began fighting Indian soldiers in a bid to establish an independent Kashmir or union with Pakistan. Pakistan controls Kashmir’s other part and the two counties fiercely claim the territory in full.

The fighting has left tens of thousands of people dead. Yet, Kashmir’s diverse media flourished despite relentless pressure from Indian authorities and rebel groups.

That changed in 2019, when authorities began filing criminal cases against some journalists. Several of them have been forced to reveal their sources, while others have been physically assaulted.

“Authorities have created a systematic fear and launched a direct assault on free media. There is complete intolerance of even a single critical word,” said Anuradha Bhasin, an editor at Kashmir Times, a prominent English daily that was established in 1954.

Bhasin was among the few who filed a petition with India’s Supreme Court, resulting in partial restoration of communication services after the 2019 blackout, which the government had said was necessary to stall anti-India protests.

But she soon found herself in the crosshairs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Bhasin’s legacy newspaper office in Srinagar, operating from a rented government building, was sealed by authorities without any notice. Its staff was not allowed to take out any equipment.

“They are killing local media except those who are willing to become government stenographers,” said Bhasin.

Under Modi, press freedoms in India have steadily shrunk since he was first elected in 2014. Last year, India was ranked 142nd in the global press freedom index by media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, below Afghanistan and Zimbabwe.

Nowhere has this slide been more glaring than in Kashmir.

Authorities have pressed newspapers by chastising editors and starving them of advertisement funds, their main source of income, to chill aggressive reporting.

For the most part, newspapers appear to have cooperated and self-censored stories, afraid to be branded anti-national by a government that equates criticism with secessionism.

“We have been merely trying to keep afloat and hardly have been able to do proper journalism for various reasons, one being that we are mainly dependent on government ads,” said Sajjad Haider, the top editor of Kashmir Observer.

There have been press crackdowns in the region before, especially during periods of mass public uprisings. But the ongoing crackdown is notably worse.

Last week, a few journalists supportive of the Indian government, with assistance from armed police, took control of the Kashmir Valley’s only independent press club. Authorities shut it down a day later, drawing sharp criticism from journalist bodies.

The Editors Guild of India accused the government of being “brazenly complicit” and dubbed it an “armed takeover.” Reporters Without Borders called it an “undeclared coup” and said the region is “steadily being transformed into a black hole for news and information.”

The press club is the region’s latest civil society group to face the government’s widening crackdown. In the last two years, authorities have stopped the Kashmir High Court Bar Association and the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce from holding internal elections.

The government defended its move by citing “potential law and order situation” and “the safety of bona fide journalists.” It said the club failed to register under a new law and hold elections for a new managing body.

The club said new registration was granted by authorities after “six months of rigorous police verification” in late December, but kept in “abeyance” a day later for unknown reasons.

The government’s move ran in stark contrast with its policy in the region’s Hindu-dominated Jammu city where another press club continues to function without having held an election for nearly half a decade.

Majid Maqbool, a local reporter, said the club extended institutional support to journalists working under difficult conditions. “It was like a second home for us,” he said.

Local Kashmiri reporters were often the only eyes on the ground for global audiences, particularly after New Delhi barred foreign journalists from the region without official approval a few years ago. Most of the coverage has focused on the Kashmir conflict and government crackdowns. Authorities are now seeking to control any narrative seen opposed to the broad consensus in India that the region is an integral part of the country.

In this battle of narratives, journalists have been berated by authorities for not using the term “terrorists” for separatist rebels. Government communiques mostly appear on front pages and statements from pro-India Kashmiri groups critical of Modi’s policies are barely published.

Newspaper editorials reflective of the conflict are largely absent. Rare news reports about rights abuses are often dismissed as politically motivated fabrications, emboldening the region’s heavy-handed military and police to muzzle the press.

Some reporters have been subjected to grueling hours of police interrogation, a tactic condemned by the United Nations last year.

Aakash Hassan, an independent Kashmiri journalist who mainly writes for the international press, said he has been summoned at least seven times by Indian authorities in the last two years.

Hassan said sometimes officers would question his motives to report and “lecture me about how to do journalism the right way.”

“It is a way to dissuade us from reporting,” he said, adding that police also questioned his parents several times and probed their finances.

“Sometimes I wonder if it is worth it to be a journalist in Kashmir,” said Hassan. “But I know, silence doesn’t help.”

Turkey: Journalist jailed on suspicion of insulting Erdogan

Turkish police have detained prominent journalist Sedef Kabas for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on television and Twitter. She could face years in jail.

Kabas has been detained before for a tweet suggesting a cover-up in a government corruption scandal

Turkish journalist Sedef Kabas risks up to four years in jail for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Police detained her in the early hours of Saturday morning, and a court ordered her to remain in jail pending a trial.

Kabas' lawyer Ugur Poyraz said they would appeal the "unlawful" decision on Monday.

"We hope Turkey can return to rule of law soon," Poyra said.

Kabas did not name Erdogan directly. However, the authorities object to a proverb that she used during a show on Tele1 television and later tweeted.

"When the ox comes to the palace, he does not become a king," Kabas said. "But the palace becomes a barn."

Ministers outraged by remarks

Erdogan spokesperson Fahrettin Altun called Kabas "immoral" and "irresponsible."

"The honor of the presidency's office is the honor of our country. ... I condemn the vulgar insults made against our president and his office," he wrote.

Turkey's justice minister, Abdulhamit Gul, wrote on Twitter that Kabas will "get what she deserves" for her "unlawful" remarks.

The country's broadcast regulator, RTUK, meanwhile, started an investigation into Tele1 for "unacceptable statements targeting our president."

Tele1's chief editor, Merdan Yanardag, sharply criticized the arrest.

"Her detention overnight at 2 a.m. because of a proverb is unacceptable," he wrote on Twitter. "This stance is an attempt to intimidate journalists, the media and society."

Turkey has investigated more than 160,000 cases of insulting the president since Erdogan took the office in 2014

Thousand convicted for insulting Erdogan

Insulting the president carries a jail sentence of between one and four years.

Since Erdogan became president in 2014, 35,507 cases of insulting the president were filed and there were 12,881 convictions.

Kabas had previously been charged after she posted criticism of a government-appointed judge who dropped a corruption probe against Erdogan and other politicians. She was later released.

The Turkish journalists union called the arrest a "serious attack on freedom of expression."

Reporters Without Borders places Turkey at 153 out of 180 countries in their press freedom index.

lo/dj (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

Turkish opposition deputy moves to

decriminalise insulting president

Jan 23 2022 

Özgür Özel, deputy parliamentary group chairman for the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), is preparing to submit a proposal to remove the crime of ‘insulting the president’ from Turkish law, Anka News Agency reported on Sunday.

During the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, 160,169 people have been investigated for insulting the president and 12,881 have been convicted of the crime. “This shows a clear abuse of the Turkish Penal Code Article 299,” Özel said.

Only 233 people were convicted of the same crime during the term of Erdoğan’s predecessor Abdullah Gül, and the number was even lower for previous presidents, Özel said. Ahmet Necdet Sezer’s and Süleyman Demirel’s presidencies saw 82 and 71 convictions respectively.

“Official data shows that in Erdoğan’s term, this article has been turned into an apparatus for revenge,” the deputy said.

The article was drafted with different parameters in mind, he added. Before the 2017 referendum to amend the constitution, Turkey’s political system only bestowed limited powers to the president and disallowed any affiliation with political parties.

Currently, Erdoğan is both president of the country and head of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Özel continued:

“After the constitutional amendment that attacked the regime, the president has donned an additional armour of protection via Article 299, which was created for impartial presidents before him. (Erdoğan) goes to court for the smallest criticisms and imposes severe restrictions on our citizens’ freedom of expression.”

Erdoğan also uses the article to target his political rivals, the deputy added.

There are at least 141 instances of Erdoğan pressing charges against CHP deputies, according to Özel. “There is no satisfactory explanation as to why the chairman of a political party needs this armour that other chairpersons do not have.”

“It is clear that the president who is also the chairman of a political party should internalise freedom of thought and expression, vital pillars of democracy in the 21st century, and to learn to tolerate diverse voices and opinions,” Özel said.

http://ahval.co/en-135282

COVID-19: African scientists say 'mild omicron' could end pandemic

The rapid spread of omicron had concerned virologists. Now, African scientists are optimistic that the variant could mark the end of the pandemic and the beginning of an endemic.



Many African countries seem to have 'accepted' that COVID is here to stay

As of Friday, January 21, the coronavirus pandemic had claimed the lives of more than 5.5 million people worldwide. The highly contagious omicron and delta variants are responsible for the exponential infection numbers recorded daily.

Omicron, first detected and documented in South Africa, is becoming the dominant variant in many parts of the world, including across Africa. A South African study has shown that, despite the high number of infections, deaths haven't increased statistically significantly when compared with previous variants.

The fourth wave of infections has been slowing in South Africa, and life is gradually returning to normal for the first time since the pandemic's start in 2020.

"I do wish that I won't even hear the name COVID. That's what we are wishing for," one resident of Cape Town told DW.

Another resident told DW: "It's very nice to see everyone going out and about, relaxing, going outside. We've been locked down in our houses for how long now?! I hope that omicron is actually the final stage of this virus."

South African virologist Wolfgang Preiser told DW that the behavior of the omicron variant gives hope that the pandemic could become endemic. But he added that it could only be achieved when most of the population has a primary immunity from a previous infection or vaccination.

"I still hope we can get around regular booster shots," Preiser said.

"If another variant doesn't come as a nasty surprise, then we can keep our immunity up by natural means via regular reinfections with the coronavirus," Preiser added. 

Omicron is considered the most contagious of all known coronavirus variants
'Good news' for Africa?

The comparatively mild infections caused by the omicron variant have proved to be good news for African countries where infections have been rising — and have also given scientists hope of a possible end to the pandemic.

"This is very good news," the Ghanaian epidemiologist Fred Binka told DW. "Viruses have two major characteristics: They have virulence, and they also have the transmission capabilities."

"They either mutate and gain strength in the transmissibility or their virulence," Binka said. "So, when they become very transmissible, you have the lower virulence."

Binka sounded upbeat, adding: "It is obvious that the pandemic is coming to an end, the virus has now established itself, and it will be endemic and be here forever." He predicted that COVID-19 will become a typical disease "that we can live with and treat."

Africa is the least-vaccinated continent worldwide
WHO urges caution

According to the World Health Organization, the relatively mild infections do not mean that the world is out of the danger zone yet.

This week, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that the pandemic is nowhere near over. "Omicron may be less severe, on average, but the narrative that it is a mild disease is misleading," Tedros said.

"Make no mistake: Omicron is causing hospitalizations and deaths, and even the less-severe cases are inundating health facilities," he added.

Globally, deaths continue to rise. In Africa, there are still concerns about the impact of the pandemic, with vaccinations rates being the lowest in the world. Only 7% of Africa's population has received a COVID jab.

"If you get to a situation where nearly everyone has had it or has been vaccinated, you can relax," Preiser said.

Preiser said African countries, including South Africa, would need to keep pushing for populations to get vaccinated.

Binka also said remaining vigilant was key. "Caution is the order of the day," Binka said, adding that not all details about Omicron "has been documented, so let's wait another six months and see what will happen."

African children at higher risk

The cautious optimism from the African scientists comes after another study published in JAMA Pediatrics and led by a University of Pittsburgh infectious diseases epidemiologist found that children hospitalized with COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa are dying at a faster rate than in the US and Europe.

According to the study, children of all ages with comorbidities — including high blood pressure, chronic lung diseases, hematological disorders and cancer — were more likely to die.


A new study found that vulnerable African children are more likely to die from COVID-19

"Although our study looked at data from earlier in the pandemic, the situation hasn't changed much for the children of Africa," said lead author Jean B. Nachega, an associate professor of infectious diseases and microbiology and epidemiology at Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health.

"If anything, it is expected to be worsening with the global emergence of the highly contagious omicron variant," Nachega said.

The professor called on officials to urgently increase COVID-19 vaccinations and therapeutic interventions for eligible at-risk children and adolescents in Africa.

On Wednesday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa opened a COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing facility. The NantSA plant located in Brackenfell, Western Cape, will be manufacturing second-generation vaccines.

"Africa should no longer be last in line to access vaccines against pandemics," Ramaphosa said at the facility's opening.

Theranos' Third Man

Like film noir villain Harry Lime, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes' crimes aren't just financial: They've harmed medical patients.

Nicolaus Mills

Jan 22,2022

(Photo from IMDb.)

When Theranos, the blood-testing startup she founded, was thought to be on the verge of revolutionizing the medical industry, there was nobody Elizabeth Holmes was compared to more often than Apple founder Steve Jobs. Holmes encouraged the comparison by describing Theranos’s testing system as the ”iPod of health care.” She even dressed like Jobs, wearing the kind of black turtleneck he had made his personal trademark.

With her conviction earlier this month of fraud in a trial that exposed both her and Theranos, Holmes is now the subject of a new set of comparisons. The men she is being compared with are very different from Steve Jobs. 

Two of them went to prison: In 2006 Andrew Fastow, the former chief financial officer of Enron was sentenced to serve six years and required to forfeit $23.8 million for his role in the fraud scheme of Enron, the Houston-based energy company. In 2009 Bernie Madoff was convicted of cheating investors out of an estimated $65 million in a giant Ponzi scheme and sentenced to 150 years.

This month in the New York Times, Holmes was even compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, who for a time tried to pass himself off as a man of inherited wealth despite earning his money as a bootlegger. David Streitfeld, the author of the front-page Times article on Holmes’ trial, observed, “Gatsby was practically Ms. Holmes’s brother.”

All of these comparisons capture part of Holmes’s story, but they also obscure the smallness that characterizes her. The grift she is associated with today is best understood when she is linked to someone with a less-than-commanding presence—the American con man Harry Lime, the central figure in Carol Reed’s classic 1949 film, The Third Man. Lime makes his living selling adulterated penicillin in post-World War II Vienna and hides in the city’s sewers. He takes advantage of desperate times and is brought down when, after seeing some of the victims of his penicillin fraud in the hospital, a close friend leads the police to him. 

Linking Lime (played in The Third Man by Orson Welles) and Holmes is their willingness to take risks with other people’s health. Penicillin had just come into widespread use in the 1940s, and Lime, like Holmes, was aware that any lifesaving medical breakthrough offered a great opportunity for exploitation. The key to Lime’s character comes in a scene in which he sits in a ferris wheel and looks down on the people below him and sees only “dots.”

Theranos grew into a $10 billion company based on its promise of revolutionizing blood testing by being able to run many different tests using only a few drops of blood and a small, portable machine.

In the most thorough book to date on Holmes and Theranos, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, investigative reporter John Carreyrou provides a detailed account of individual patients who were given inaccurate blood-test results from Theranos. Carreyrou goes on to point out that the number of blood tests that Theranos “voided or corrected” in California and Arizona eventually reached 1 million.

This patient side of the Elizabeth Holmes scandal has not gotten the attention it deserves in the media in the wake of her trial. Trial reportage has focused on the fact that the crimes for which she was convicted—three for fraud, one for conspiracy to commit fraud—were all against Theranos investors. Writers such as Christopher Weaver and Heather Somerville in the Wall Street Journal and Bethany McLean on the opinion page of the New York Times have been the rare exceptions, showing interest in the lives of the patients who were affected by Theranos tests.

The bulk of reporting and commentary on the Holmes trial has repeated the well-worn point that Holmes and Theranos epitomize the reckless culture of Silicon Valley with its emphasis on get-rich-quick schemes. Lost has been the opportunity to cut Holmes and her enablers down to size and see them as every bit as sordid as Harry Lime.

What will happen next in Holmes’ life is far from settled. Each of the charges on which she has been found guilty carries with it the possibility of a 20-year maximum sentence. In addition her conviction points to failures in due diligence by a host of figures who should know better—from Theranos investors such as publishing mogul Rupert Murdoch and former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, to members of Theranos’s board of directors, which included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Secretary of Defense William Perry.

Holmes, who is 37 and the mother of a baby born during her trial, seems likely to pay dearly for her misdeeds. Between now and September 26, when she is scheduled to be sentenced, she and her attorneys will have their work cut out for them if she is to have any kind of a life left for herself. The great pity is that those who supported her and basked in her presence during her heyday appear set to go on as before—only with less money in their pockets.

Nicolaus Mills is professor of literature and American studies at Sarah Lawrence College. He is author of Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower.