Study: Gas stoves worse for climate than previously thought

By SETH BORENSTEIN

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In this photo provided by climate scientist Rob Jackson, researcher Eric Lebel samples natural gas from a stove in Stanford, Calif., in 2021. According to a study published Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022, in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, gas stoves are worse for the climate than previously thought because of constant tiny methane leaks even while they’re off. (Rob Jackson via AP)

Gas stoves are contributing more to global warming than previously thought because of constant tiny methane leaks while they’re off, a new study found.

The same study that tested emissions around stoves in homes raised new concerns about indoor air quality and health because of levels of nitrogen oxides measured.

Even when they are not running, U.S. gas stoves are putting 2.6 million tons (2.4 million metric tons) of methane — in carbon dioxide equivalent units — into the air each year, a team of California researchers found in a study published in Thursday’s journal Environmental Science & Technology. That’s equivalent to the annual amount of greenhouse gases from 500,000 cars or what the United States puts into the air every three-and-a-half hours.

“They’re constantly bleeding a little bit of methane into the atmosphere all the time,” said the study’s co-author Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist.

That methane is on top of the 6.8 million tons (6.2 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide that gas stoves emit into the air when they are in use and the gas is burned, the study said. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is dozens of times more potent than carbon dioxide but doesn’t stay in the atmosphere nearly as long and isn’t as plentiful in the air.

The researchers examined 53 home kitchens in California — many in bed and breakfasts they rented. They sealed most of the rooms in plastic tarps and then measured emissions when the stoves were working and when they were not. And what was surprising was that three-quarters of the methane released happened while the stoves were off, Jackson said. Those are emissions releases that the government doesn’t account for, he said.

“That’s a big deal because we’re trying to really reduce our carbon footprint and we claim that gas is cleaner than coal, which it is,” said study lead author Eric Lebel, a scientist at PSE Healthy Energy, an Oakland nonprofit. But he said much of the benefit disappears when leaks are taken into account.

Many communities have bans on gas stove use in future new construction that will take effect in future years, including New York City and the Bay Area cities of San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Berkeley, Jackson said.

“People can already choose electric appliances if they want,” said Frank Maisano, a Washington policy and public relations expert who represents gas and appliance interests. “People just like gas appliances because they perform better, especially in colder climates.”

“Natural gas appliances are generally more energy- and cost-effective than their electric counterparts,” Maisano said.

Jackson estimated that when all natural gas use and extraction is taken into account, about 100 million tons (91 million metric tons) of gas leaks into the atmosphere. And the couple million tons from gas stoves “is meaningful. That’s a substantial part and it’s a part that we haven’t included accurately in the past.”

The leakage finding is “a very important takeaway” and fits with other work that found there are often big leaks that account for much of the emissions, said Zachary Merrin, a research engineer with the Illinois Applied Research Institute’s Indoor Climate Research & Training group.

Merrin, who wasn’t part of the study, said the emission of un-combusted methane is “clearly bad. From an emissions standpoint, cooking directly with gas is better than using a fossil fuel powered electric stove but worse than using a solar powered electric stove.”

The methane leak isn’t dangerous to human health or as a possible explosive, Jackson said. But when conducting the tests, researchers found high levels of nitrogen oxides, greater than 100 parts per billion. Jackson said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t have indoor air quality standards for that gas, but the measurements they took exceed its outdoor air quality standards. While methane doesn’t include nitrogen, the nitrogen oxides are byproducts of the combustion in natural gas ovens, he said.

Maisano said people should always use hood ranges and make sure they have proper ventilation. Jackson, who has a gas stove that he plans to replace, said he never used ventilation before this study, but that he now does so every time.

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Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate and follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at https://twitter.com/borenbears.

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

Book sheds light on Israel role in destruction of Jerusalem Mughrabi quarter

AFP - 

© RONALDO SCHEMIDT


After the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel planned the "destruction" of Jerusalem's historic Mughrabi neighbourhood at the base of the Western Wall but tried to hide it, according to a book published Friday.

Its author, French historian Vincent Lemire, expects the book "In the Shadow of the Wall: The life and death of the Mughrabi quarter of Jerusalem" to spark controversy because of the sensitive nature of the Holy City.

Lemire, who published several books on the history of Jerusalem, said he drew material from local archives, as well as Ottoman and French ones, for his work released by Le Seuil in Paris.

Most tourists who visit Jerusalem make a stop at the Western Wall plaza, a large esplanade of polished stone that extends from the ancient wall, which according to Jewish tradition is the surviving structure of the Second Temple and the holiest site where Jews can pray.


© RONALDO SCHEMIDT

The Western Wall plaza extends from the ancient wall, which, according to Jewish tradition, is the holiest site where Jews can pray

But before the Six-Day War, when east Jerusalem -- including the old walled city -- was controlled by Jordan, there was no esplanade at the base of the wall.

Instead, there was a Muslim neighbourhood of about 135 homes initially established in the 12th Century by Emperor Saladin, and where iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat lived for a period during his youth.

Lemire, director of the French Research Center in Jerusalem, traces the area's history in a book due to be translated into English later this year by Stanford University Press.

- 'Definitive proof' -

The commonly told story about the fate of Jerusalem's Mughrabi quarter is that immediately after Israel captured the Old City a group of 15 private Jewish contractors destroyed the neighbourhood to make space for the Western Wall plaza.


© RONALDO SCHEMIDT

Jerusalem's historic Mughrabi neighbourhood stood at the base of the Western Wall

The role played by then Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek in the operation has previously been reported by media outlets.

But Lemire told AFP that his book offers "definitive, written proof on the premeditation, planning and coordination of this operation".

He cites minutes of a meeting between Kollek and the army commander in charge of Jerusalem on June 9, 1967, just 36 hours before the neighbourhood was demolished.

"One of the items on the agenda is the destruction of the Mughrabi quarter," Lemire said.

He said he also consulted an internal foreign ministry note from the same day that prepared talking points to explain the neighbourhood's destruction, "designed to make people believe they were slums and dangerous buildings".

He said he found a note in the Jerusalem municipality's archives that references the need to remove the rubble of the area "on the order of the military command".

- International response -

Following Israel's creation in 1948, France, the colonial power in most of North Africa at the time, had been a financial supporter of the Mughrabi quarter.

Lemire writes that this was part of a larger regional tactic of currying favour among North African Muslims "to counter the rise of the independence movement in Algeria", then a French colony.

But after Algerian independence in 1962, France "abandoned" the Mughrabi quarter and stayed quiet -- as did several other nations -- as Israel destroyed the area.

Jordan, then a bitter Israeli rival that had just lost control over east Jerusalem, also said nothing, Lemire writes.

"My intuition as a historian is that there was an implicit agreement between the Israelis and the Jordanians," he told AFP.

Jordan was allowed to retain control of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which is above the Western Wall and is Islam's third holiest site, a post-war concession that may have bought Amman's silence over the Mughrabi quarter's destruction, Lemire said.

He also said displaced residents of the area received "minimal, but fast" financial compensation after the demolition, "to secure their silence".

Lemire told AFP he expected some "hostile" responses to his book, given sensitivities surrounding Jerusalem's holy sites and the "fact that this story is unpleasant for everyone".

But he said he was compelled to write about a neighbourhood that was lacking a recorded history.

"With this book, there's the beginning of a history. It's a start," he said.

gl/mib/bs/dv/hkb

As world marks Holocaust, some survivors in Israel struggle

By ILAN BEN ZION and ISAAC SCHARF

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Tshuva Kabra, left, director of the national welfare system at the Chasdei Naomi charity, embraces Holocaust survivor Freida Rovenchim, in her family apartment in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022. Several dozen impoverished elderly Israelis, among them Holocaust survivors, received food donations from the Chasdei Naomi charity, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

JERUSALEM (AP) — Several dozen octogenarians, bundled against the cold, chattered in Russian and Hebrew as they picked through heaps of carrots, onions and grapefruit in a Jerusalem courtyard.

Nearly all of them Holocaust survivors, they were picking up donations of food and winter blankets before a snowstorm hit the city on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Israel was established in 1948 as a refuge for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, and it makes great efforts to remember the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide and to honor those who survived as heroes.

Yet among Israel’s estimated 165,000 survivors, roughly one in three lives in poverty, according to a survivors’ advocacy group. Though survivors receive government stipends, many still depend on food donations organized by Israeli charities like Chasdei Naomi.

“The ones who really need to be responsible for taking care of Holocaust survivors is the state of Israel. Unfortunately, that doesn’t exist,” said Tshuva Cabra, the group’s head of donations.

The charity’s staff and volunteers distributed food parcels, flowers and chocolates to impoverished survivors in Jerusalem on Wednesday. “If we will not be there for them, who will? It’s really sad that only NGOs are standing up and acting,” she said.

Thursday’s international remembrance day marked the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis’ Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland. An estimated one-third of world Jewry was annihilated by Nazi Germany and its allies. After the war, hundreds of thousands of survivors made their way to the newly established Israel.

With each passing year, the number of remaining Holocaust survivors continues to dwindle, and with it the country’s living connection to those who endured one of the greatest atrocities in modern history. The Holocaust Survivors’ Rights Authority, a government department, said that more than 15,000 survivors died in 2021.

The Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, an umbrella group representing 50 organizations that assist Holocaust survivors, said that around one-third of Israel’s Holocaust survivors live in poverty.

Many of the most destitute immigrated to Israel in the 1990s from the former Soviet Union after its dissolution. They arrived with little means, had difficulty learning a new language late in life and many struggled to establish social networks.

“During the war, it was very difficult for the Jews. Jews suffered from the Nazis. We fled and we did whatever we could to survive,” said Paulina Perchuk, an 83-year-old immigrant from Ukraine. “I hope it will not happen again in the world.”

Colette Avital, a former Israeli diplomat and Holocaust survivor who heads the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, said that while the government’s attitude has improved, “the blanket is short and that is not enough.” She said there’s broad public support for survivors but the government needs to provide more assistance.

Israel’s Social Equality Ministry said it doled out some $1.2 billion in support to Holocaust survivors in 2021. Just over 50,000 survivors receive monthly stipends of between $800 and $2,000 per month, while around 15,500 receive $3,600 because of more severe disability.

But for many, those sums are not enough to make ends meet as the cost of living in Israel continues to skyrocket. The Chasdei Naomi charity says it provides food to 10,000 survivors, a figure that increased by 4,000 since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. In the past year, requests for assistance in paying electric bills rose 40% alongside inflation and rising cost of living in Israel.

Meirav Cohen, Israel’s social equality minister, said her department oversees the “final watch” over Holocaust survivors’ well-being.

“The average age of Holocaust survivors is 85,” she said in a statement released by her office. “These are the final years we have to serve them, to allow them to grow old with dignity and document as much as possible from their stories, because very soon, there won’t be anyone left to tell them.”

Her office declined an interview request.

Holocaust remembrance remains a cornerstone of Israeli identity. A large percentage of the country is made up of survivors and generations of their descendants. The country marks its own Holocaust Remembrance Day each spring. Foreign dignitaries visiting the country pay homage to the Jews killed in the Holocaust at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, which serves as a memorial and research center.

Earlier in the week, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that the government would budget nearly $10 million in additional funds to Yad Vashem to help “preserve the memory of the Holocaust in Israel and the world.” That marked a nearly 20% jump in the institution’s annual budget in 2020, of which the Israeli government financed over a third.

Avital praised the government for allocating more funds to Yad Vashem but added that “the welfare of Holocaust survivors should come before anything else.”

World remembers Holocaust as antisemitism rises in pandemic

CROCODILE TEARS

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Mickey Levy, Speaker of the Knesset, reacts during the commemoration of the "Day of Remembrance of the Victims of National Socialism" in the German Bundestag, Berlin, Thursday, Jan.27, 2022. (Kay Nietfeld/dpa via AP)

By VANESSA GERA and SAMUEL PETREQUIN

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Survivors recalled their agony to a world they fear is forgetting, Israel’s parliamentary speaker wept in the German parliament and politicians warned of a resurgence of antisemitism on Thursday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The day falls on the anniversary of the liberation by Soviet troops of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the death camps where Nazi Germany carried out its Final Solution seeking to murder the Jewish people of Europe.

At the memorial site in Poland, which was subjected to a brutal German occupation during World War II, a small number of survivors gathered in an auditorium. Attendance at the yearly event was sharply curtailed amid Europe’s coronavirus surge. Others joined online.

Nazi German forces killed 1.1 million people at Auschwitz, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and others.

Halina Birenbaum, a 92-year-old Polish-born poet who lives in Israel, recalled her suffering remotely. She was 10 when the Germans invaded and occupied Poland in September 1939, and was 13 when she was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau after being led out of the gas chamber of the Majdanek camp thanks to a malfunction.

“I saw masses of the powerful but arrogant army of Nazi Germany as they marched cruelly, victoriously, into the devastated and burning streets of Warsaw,” she recalled.

“The countless experiences of infinite suffering on the brink of death are already a distant, unimaginable story for new generations,” she said.

Commemorations everywhere took place amid a rise of antisemitism that gained traction during lockdowns as the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated hatred online.

German parliament speaker Baerbel Bas said the pandemic has acted “like an accelerant” to already burgeoning antisemitism.

“Antisemitism is here — it isn’t just on the extreme fringe, not just among the eternally incorrigible and a few antisemitic trolls on the net,” she said. “It is a problem of our society — all of society.”

In recent days alone, a 12-year-old Jewish boy in Italy was attacked and subjected to antisemitic slurs while two men were punched in London.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the London attack “is a terrible reminder, on Holocaust Memorial Day, that such prejudice is not consigned to history, but remains a very real problem in society.”

Holocaust survivor Inge Auerbacher, 87, told the German parliament she still remembers “the terrible time of horror and hatred.”

“Unfortunately, this cancer has reawakened and hatred of Jews is commonplace again in many countries in the world, including Germany,” she said.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a virtual U.N. Holocaust remembrance ceremony Thursday that he has made tackling the roots of intolerance an urgent priority.

“Antisemitism, virulent anti-Muslim bigotry, persecution of Christians, racism, and anti-refugee hatred are becoming normalized in a coarsening public discourse – often amplified in online echo chambers of hate,” he said.

The U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2005 establishing International Holocaust Remembrance Day as an annual commemoration.

About 6 million European Jews and millions of other people were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators. Some 1.5 million were children.

“Our country bears a special responsibility — the genocide against the European Jews is a German crime,” Bas said in the German parliament, the Bundestag.

Israel’s parliamentary speaker, Mickey Levy, broke down in tears in the Bundestag while reciting the Jewish mourner’s prayer from a prayer book that belonged to a German Jewish boy who celebrated his bar mitzvah on the eve of Kristallnacht, an outburst of anti-Jewish violence in 1938.

Levy said that Israel and Germany experienced “an exceptional journey on the way to reconciliation and establishing relations and brave friendship between us.”

In Rome, Pope Francis met Holocaust survivor Edith Bruck, a Hungarian-born writer and poet who survived Nazi death camps and settled in Italy. Both emphasized the “inestimable value of transmitting the memory of the past to the young, even in its most painful aspects, to not repeat the same tragedies.” the Vatican said.

In Austria, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid paid an emotional visit to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where his grandfather, Bela Lampel, was murdered in 1945.

“Grandpa Bela, a quiet man whose family nickname was ‘Bela the Wise,’ sent me here today to say on his behalf, that the Jews have not surrendered,” Lapid said.

“The Nazis thought they were the future, and that Jews would be something you only find in a museum. Instead, the Jewish state is the future, and Mauthausen is a museum. Rest in peace, grandfather, you won,” he said.

He was joined by Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer. The two men hugged each other during the memorial service.

“I apologize, on behalf of the republic of Austria, for the crimes committed here. I apologize that your grandfather was murdered here,” Nehammer said.

Gathered at the European Parliament, EU lawmakers listened to 100-year-old Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlander’s ordeal. She was arrested in 1944 and brought to Theresienstadt, now part of the Czech Republic. A year before, her mother and brother were deported to Auschwitz and killed.

“We must be vigilant and not look the other way as we did then,” she said. “Hatred, racism and antisemitism must not be the last word in history.”

Charles Michel, the head of the EU Council bringing together leaders of the 27 EU member countries, said that with each passing year, the Holocaust “inches towards becoming a historical event.”

“More and more distant, more and more abstract,” Michel said. “Especially in the eyes of the younger generations of Europeans. This is why, paradoxically, the more the years go by, the more important the commemoration becomes.”

To tackle Holocaust denial, UNESCO and the World Jewish Congress launched a partnership Thursday with the online platform TikTok popular with youngsters. They say it will allow users to be oriented toward verified information when searching for terms related to the Shoah.

According to the U.N., 17% of content related to the Holocaust on TikTok either denied or distorted the Holocaust.

In Italy, members of the Jewish community and lawmakers gathered in Rome’s Ghetto to lay a wreath where more than 1,000 people were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz on Oct. 16, 1943.

In Albania, Foreign Minister Olta Xhacka honored Holocaust victims while expressing pride in his country’s role in sheltering Jews.

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Petrequin reported from Brussels. Geir Moulson in Berlin, Nicole Winfield in Rome, Ilan Ben Zion and Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Sylvia Hui in London and Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, contributed to this report.

Holocaust 'GRAPHIC' novel ‘Maus’ banned in Tennessee school district

TRUMPERS OBJECT TO NUDE FEMALE (MOUSE)

AND SWEAR WORDS

This cover image released by Pantheon shows "Maus" a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman. A Tennessee school district has voted to ban the Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel about the Holocaust due to “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman. (Pantheon via AP)

ATHENS, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee school district has voted to ban a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust due to “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman, according to minutes from a board meeting.

The McMinn County School Board decided Jan. 10 to remove “Maus” from its curriculum, news outlets reported.

Art Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for the work that tells the story of his Jewish parents living in 1940s Poland and depicts him interviewing his father about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor.

In an interview, Spiegelman told CNBC he was “baffled” by the school board’s decision and called the action “Orwellian.”

“It’s leaving me with my jaw open, like, ‘What?’” he said.

The decision comes as conservative officials across the country have increasingly tried to limit the type of books that children are exposed to, including books that address structural racism and LGBTQ issues. The Republican governors in South Carolina and Texas have called on superintendents to perform a systemic review of “inappropriate” materials in their states’ schools

The minutes from the school board meeting indicate objections over some of the language used in “Maus.” At first, Director of Schools Lee Parkison suggested redacting it “to get rid of the eight curse words and the picture of the woman that was objected to.”

The nude woman is drawn as a mouse. In the graphic novel, Jews are drawn as mice and the Nazis are drawn as cats.

“It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy,” School Board Member Tony Allman said about the book, which was part of the district’s eighth-grade English language arts curriculum.

Instructional supervisor Julie Goodin, a former history teacher, said she thought the graphic novel was a good way to depict a horrific event.

“It’s hard for this generation, these kids don’t even know 9/11, they were not even born,” Goodin said. “Are the words objectionable? Yes, there is no one that thinks they aren’t. But by taking away the first part, it’s not changing the meaning of what he is trying to portray.”

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which does not play a role in McMinn County, noted the timing of the news on Twitter. Weingarten, who is Jewish, pointed out that Thursday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“Yes it is uncomfortable to talk about genocide, but it is our history and educating about it helps us not repeat this horror,” Weingarten said.

The U.S. Holocaust Museum tweeted that “Maus has played a vital role in educating about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors.

“Teaching about the Holocaust using books like Maus can inspire students to think critically about the past and their own roles and responsibilities today.”

The Tennessee school board emphasized in the minutes that they did not object to teaching about the Holocaust but some were concerned the work was not age-appropriate.

Although they discussed redacting parts of the book, that led to copyright concerns and board members ultimately decided to look for an alternative book about the subject.

The book isn’t the only one banned recently amid critical race theory controversy.

END DRUG PROHIBITION
Two powerful drugs now adding to US overdose crisis

By MIKE STOBBE

NEW YORK (AP) — Emerging reports show that two little-known drugs are making lethal new contributions to America’s drug overdose crisis.

Para-fluorofentanyl and metonitazene are being seen more often by medical examiners looking into overdose deaths, according to a government report published Thursday. They often are taken with — or mixed with — illicit fentanyl, the drug mainly responsible for the more than 100,000 U.S. overdose deaths in the last year.

Increasingly, one or the other of the two drugs is the sole reason for some overdose deaths, said Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan, one of the report authors.

Often injected or snorted, they are more powerful than fentanyl, she said.

“These (victims) just crumple and collapse. Frequently they don’t even inject the full syringe” before overdosing, said Mileusnic-Polchan, who leads the medical examiner’s office in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The overdose-reversing drug naloxone can still work, but more of it may be needed than when other drugs are involved, she said.

The report, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for U.S. medical and public health professionals, is one of the first of its kind to raise alarms about the drugs. It was written by officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration; a toxicology lab at the University of California, San Francisco; and the Knox County Regional Forensic Center.

The Knoxville area recorded 770 unintentional drug overdose deaths from November 2020 through August 2021, the authors wrote. Test results for 562 of them found fentanyl, and nearly 190 of those also tested positive for methamphetamine. But 48 involved para-fluorofentanyl, and 26 involved metonitazene, according to the report.

And deaths involving those drugs have increased since the summer, Mileusnic-Polchan said.

Para-fluorofentanyl is a synthetic opioid, like fentanyl. It was invented in the 1960s and has been sold illegally in the past, sometimes under the name “China-white.”

In 2020, investigators began seeing an uptick in overdoses involving the drug. Recently, it’s been found in heroin packets and counterfeit pills.

Metonitazene is from a class of painkillers developed in the 1950s but never authorized for medical treatment. That drug began appearing more often in overdose autopsy reports last year.

It’s not clear how widespread the drugs are. Cash-strapped medical examiner’s offices and coroner’s offices are not able to pay for toxicology work that looks for every conceivable drug, Mileusnic-Polchan said. Her office documented the two drugs because it participated in a DEA program that uses the UCSF lab for analysis.

U.S. overdose deaths have been rising for more than two decades, but they accelerated in the past two years — jumping more than 20% in the latest year alone, according to the most recently available CDC data, through June 2021.

Experts have said the top drivers are the growing prevalence of deadly fentanyl and the COVID-19 pandemic, which left many drug users socially isolated and unable to get treatment or other support.

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

JAPANESE CHAUVINISTIC RACISM

Staffers complain of racism, abuse by WHO leader in Asia

By MARIA CHENG

World Health Organization Regional Director for Western Pacific Takeshi Kasai addresses the media at the start of the five-day annual session Monday, Oct. 7, 2019, in Manila, Philippines. Current and former staffers have accused Kasai of racist, unethical and abusive behavior that has undermined the U.N. health agency’s efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic. The allegations were laid out in an internal complaint filed in October 2021 and an email in January 2022 sent by unidentified “concerned WHO staff” to senior leadership and the executive board. Kasai denies the charges. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez, File)

Current and former staffers have accused the top director of the World Health Organization in the Western Pacific of racist, unethical and abusive behavior that has undermined the U.N. health agency’s efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

The allegations were laid out in an internal complaint filed in October and again in an email last week, sent by unidentified “concerned WHO staff” to senior leadership and the executive board and obtained by the Associated Press. Two of the authors said more than 30 staffers were involved in writing it, and that it reflected the experiences of more than 50 people.

The internal complaint and the email describe a “toxic atmosphere” with “a culture of systemic bullying and public ridiculing” at WHO’s Western Pacific headquarters in Manila, led by Dr. Takeshi Kasai, director of a vast region that includes China and his home country of Japan. The AP also has obtained recorded snippets of meetings where Kasai is heard making derogatory remarks about his staff based on nationality. Eleven former or current WHO staffers who worked for Kasai told the AP he frequently used racist language.

Staffers, who did not identify themselves to WHO “for fear of retaliation,” said in the email that Kasai’s authoritarian style has led to the departure of more than 55 key staff in the past year and a half, most of whom have not been replaced. This resulted in a lack of understanding and involvement with member countries that “significantly contributed” to a surge of cases in many countries in the region, they said. However, other WHO staffers pointed out that spikes in COVID cases were due to numerous reasons, including countries’ own resources and the timing of their national efforts.

The complaint and message also accused Kasai of improperly sharing potentially sensitive vaccine information with Japan, one of 37 countries in the region he leads.

In an email to the AP, Kasai denied allegations of racism and unethical behavior. He said that after receiving the email last week, he immediately took steps to communicate with all his staff.

“I ask a lot of myself, and our staff,” he said. “This has particularly been the case during the COVID-19 response. But it should not result in people feeling disrespected.”

Kasai said he was committed to making changes that would ensure “a positive work environment” for all WHO staff in the region. However, an internal WHO message seen by the AP shows that in a meeting last week, Kasai ordered all his senior directors and country representatives to “reject” the accusations made in the email and to “totally support” him.

Among the most damning claims is that Kasai made “racist and derogatory remarks to staff of certain nationalities.” The internal complaint filed to WHO alleges that Kasai once aggressively questioned a Filipino staffer during a coronavirus meeting, saying: “How many people in the Pacific have you killed so far and how many more do you want to kill further?” The complaint said he then asked “if she was incapable of delivering good presentations because she was Filipina.”

Several WHO officials present when the statements were made confirmed to the AP that the regional director has made numerous racist comments in meetings denigrating people from countries including China, the Philippines and Malaysia. They said the harassed staffers were sometimes driven to tears.

The email also said Kasai had blamed the rise in COVID cases in some countries on their “lack of capacity due to their inferior culture, race and socioeconomic level.” Three WHO staffers who were part of the agency’s coronavirus response team in Asia told the AP Kasai said repeatedly in meetings that the COVID response was hampered by “a lack of sufficiently educated people in the Pacific.”

Kasai rejected allegations that he had ever used racist language.

“It is true that I have been hard on staff, but I reject the suggestion that I have targeted staff of any particular nationality,” he said. “Racism goes against all of the principles and values I hold dear as a person….I believe deeply and sincerely in WHO’s mission to serve all countries and people.”

The claims add to a litany of internal protests from WHO personnel about the agency’s management of the pandemic during the last two years, including privately complaining about China’s delayed sharing of information while publicly praising the government. In their complaint, WHO staff admonished Kasai for “not daring to criticize the Chinese authorities” and failing to disclose what happened during a trip to Beijing to meet President Xi Jinping shortly after the coronavirus was identified in Wuhan.

“We request your urgent intervention to address our serious concerns...which is negatively impacting WHO’s performance to support (countries) in the region and WHO’s ability to function as an effective public health organization, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the staffers wrote.

Kasai is a Japanese doctor who began his career in his country’s public health system before moving to WHO, where he has worked for more than 15 years. He is credited with developing the region’s response to emerging outbreaks after the SARS epidemic in 2003.

Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights at Georgetown University, said he was in contact with many people at the office in the Western Pacific, and knew they felt battered during the pandemic.

“Dr. Kasai came into office with a good reputation, as a reasonably strong public health leader with his country’s support,” Gostin said. “But I was not surprised to hear these allegations.”

Gostin said racism in a WHO office at the center of the pandemic would be “unconscionable,” and that the allegations wounded WHO’s credibility and capacity to do what was needed during the pandemic.

“If you ever needed WHO and its key regional offices to be acting with a single voice, with a single purpose and with great energy, it would be now,” he said. “And the fact that the staff are so demoralized, feel so defeated, so humiliated and morale is so low, it hurts the pandemic response in the region.”

In the email, staffers accused Kasai of not respecting WHO’s own guidelines in the pandemic through a forced return to the office and to commutes during strict lockdown in Manila. In an internal email to staff from April 1, 2020, he said that three people on the Manila team had COVID but that “we must remain functional….This has meant keeping our country offices and the Regional office open to some level.” Some staffers were concerned that parts of the advice — including car-pooling with other staff and continuing to share desks — could put them at higher risk of catching COVID-19.

WHO staffers also alleged that Kasai abused his position to aid the Japanese government in COVID-19 vaccination planning by providing confidential data. Many countries expect WHO not to share details on sensitive issues like disease rates or vaccination unless they explicitly consent.

A WHO scientist who worked on COVID-19 vaccination in Asia told the AP that Kasai shared data with Japan so that the government could decide how to donate doses to its regional neighbors for a political advantage. The staffer, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said Kasai also pressured WHO personnel to prioritize vaccine donations from Japan over the U.N.-backed COVAX effort.

In his response to the AP, Kasai disputed that he had ever inappropriately shared information with Japan.

“At no time have I pressured staff to facilitate donations from Japan rather than COVAX,” he said. “The vast majority of Japan’s vaccine donations to other countries in the Western Pacific Region have been through the COVAX (effort.)”

Japan has donated about 2.5 million doses to countries in WHO’s Western Pacific region via COVAX since June, according to data this month from its Ministry of Foreign Affairs. By contrast, Japan has donated more than 11 million doses bilaterally over the same period to countries including Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.

WHO has dealt with internal complaints from staffers alleging systemic racism, sexism and other problems before; its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ordered an internal probe in January 2019 to assess such allegations. Last year, the AP reported that senior WHO management was informed of multiple sexual abuse reports involving its own staffers during the Ebola outbreak in Congo, but failed to act.

The authors of the WHO email in the Western Pacific said most of them had “exhaustively” filed complaints through various WHO mechanisms, including its ombudsman, ethics hotline, staff association and office of internal oversight, but have not been informed of any investigation into their allegations.

Under WHO’s governance structure, regional directors are largely answerable only to the member countries that elect them and to the executive board that confirms their selection. Kasai was elected by member countries in the Western Pacific in 2019 and could run again next year.

WHO’s headquarters in Geneva said in an email that it was “aware of the allegations and is taking all appropriate steps to follow up on the matter.” Kasai said in a statement that he was “ready to cooperate fully with any process to investigate the concerns which have been raised.”

Kasai does not technically report to Tedros, but “all staffers are subject to the authority of the Director-General,” according to the agency’s staff rules. During a press briefing last April, Tedros praised Kasai as “my brother” and thanked him for “everything you continue to do to serve the people of the Western Pacific.”

At a virtual meeting this week, WHO’s executive board is slated to discuss issues including the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Also on the agenda are various “management matters,” including the prevention of abuse and harassment and “increased efforts to address racism.”

Fake poop helps evicted owls settle into new neighborhood

By CHRISTINA LARSON

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This photo provided by the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance shows a burrowing owl in a habitat at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in 2014. (Ken Bohn/San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance via AP)

Settling into a new home can be tough for anyone. So scientists have come up with some tricks to make transplanted burrowing owls feel like they are not alone in their new digs, playing owl sounds and scattering fake poop.

The owls’ grassland homes are often prime real estate, and they’ve been losing ground to development in fast-growing regions like Silicon Valley and Southern California. Biologists have tried moving the owls to protected grasslands but the challenge has been getting the owls to accept their new homes.

Just dropping off the owls in prime habitat wasn’t enough, prior attempts showed. In a pilot program, scientists took pains to create the impression that owls already lived there so they’d stick around. And it worked.

“They like to be in a neighborhood, to live near other owls,” said Colleen Wisinski, a conservation biologist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, which launched the experiment with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The scientists played recordings of owl calls before and after the new arrivals were released at four locations in Southern California. Wisinski used a syringe to squirt around fake owl poop — in reality, white paint.

Their results were published Thursday in the journal Animal Conservation.

Burrowing owls are the rare extroverts of the raptor world. These long-legged owls with slightly cross expressions actually love company. They nest in underground burrows with many owls nearby.

Such colonies provide protection from predators, such as coyotes or hawks, that may try to snack on the robin-sized, yellow-eyed birds. When one owl sounds an alarm, the others fly away.

Federal law prohibits the killing of the birds but their habitat is not protected. Typically, they are flushed from their burrows before properties are built.

“If after eviction there’s nowhere for these guys to go, it’s basically a death sentence,” said Lynne Trulio, an ecologist at San Jose State University who has studied burrowing owls for three decades. She was not part of the study.

The population of western burrowing owls — the subspecies that lives in California — has declined by one-third since 1965. It is considered a “species of special concern” in the state.

For their experiment, the scientists transplanted 47 burrowing owls during 2017-2018. Twenty were outfitted with GPS devices to track their movements, and the scientists also returned to the sites to check on them.

Most successfully settled into their new homes and established breeding colonies. At the primary site, Rancho Jamul Ecological Reserve in southwestern San Diego County, there were about 50 owl chicks in 2020.

The researchers also monitored owls that were left on their own to find new homes. Those owls didn’t fare as well.

“These scientists are leading the pack in advancing our understanding of how to relocate burrowing owls,” said David H. Johnson, director of the Global Owl Project, who was not involved in the paper.

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

Mexican town protects forest from avocado growers, cartels

By MARK STEVENSON

January 27, 2022

CHERAN, Mexico (AP) — Regular citizens have taken the fight against illegal logging into their own hands in the pine-covered mountains of western Mexico, where loggers clear entire hillsides for avocado plantations that drain local water supplies and draw drug cartels hungry for extortion money.

In some places, like the Indigenous township of Cheran in Michoacan state , the fight against illegal logging and planting has been so successful it’s as if a line had been drawn across the mountains: avocados and cleared land on one side, pine forest on the other. But it has required a decade-long political revolt in which Cheran’s townspeople declared themselves autonomous and formed their own government.

Other towns, bullied by growers and drug cartel gunmen, struggle on but are often cowed by violence.

David Ramos Guerrero, a member of the self-governing farmers board, says farmers here have agreed on a total ban on commercial avocado orchards, which he contends only bring “violence, bloodshed.”

“People are allowed to have three, four or five, or at most 10 avocado plants to supply food, but commercial planting isn’t allowed,” he said.

The reason is clear. On a patrol, Ramos Guerrero looks out across an almost deforested valley in a neighboring township. Rows of young avocado trees stand in lines up the denuded slopes that once held pine and fir trees.

“This is an island, all around Cheran there has been an invasion of avocados,” he notes.

Anyone who has walked through the cool mountain forest of pine and fir trees in Michoacan knows that the pine canopy protects against heat and evaporation; the thick mat of fallen pine needles acts like a sponge, soaking up and storing humidity; the roots of the pines prevent water and soil from running off the slopes.

But the first thing avocado growers do is dig retaining ponds to water their orchards, draining streams that once were used by people further down the mountain. And then drug cartels extort money from the avocado growers.

“We have realized the only thing avocados do is soak up all the water that our forests produce,” Ramos Guerrero said.

Cheran, which began its experiment in self-rule in 2011 by blocking roads used by illegal loggers, now digs trenches across logging roads with backhoes. As far as avocados, Ramos Guerrero says: “We start in a friendly way, by talking (to farmers). If we don’t reach an agreement, then we use force, we tear up or cut down the avocado trees.”

If farmers still don’t agree to stop logging or planting avocados, that’s when Cheran’s forestry patrols swing into action.

Riding a pair of pickups through the woods, a community patrol of men armed with AR-15 rifles stop and seize an axe, and then a chainsaw from two men cutting up trees. The men will probably get them back with a caution to seek permission next time. The patrols find already cut pine logs hidden in the brush along the road and seize them, heaving them onto one of the trucks.

Salvador Ávila Magaña, 65, remembers how it was before the Cheran uprising in 2011. He was scared off his land by threats from loggers, who then clear-cut his land.

“The last threat was that if we showed up there (at his land) again, they were going to kidnap us, we were going to be found in bags,” Ávila Magaña said. “Several people were killed and they were found in pieces, burned.”

But even though his 45-acre (18 hectare) plot had been completely logged, Ávila Magaña decided to plant back pine trees, hoping “to leave something for my children or grandchildren,” who he hopes can resume what had once been a sustainable forestry practice of extracting pine resin for turpentine or cosmetics.

“We reached an agreement among the communal farmers that we weren’t going to plant avocados, we were going to only plant trees that produce good oxygen,” he said.

Avocados have been nothing short of a miracle crop for thousands of small farmers in Michoacan. With a few acres of well-tended avocado trees, small landholders can send their kids to college or buy a pickup truck, something no other crop allows them to do.

But because of the immense amount of water they need, the expansion of avocados has come by moving into humid pine forests, rather than disused corn fields.

Neither the growers nor exporters have made any serious effort to ensure their avocados come from sustainable orchards. The Mexican Avocado Growers Association did not respond to requests for an interview.

If the battle has been temporarily won in Cheran, it is still being fought in other towns in Michoacan that haven’t had a citizen takeover of local government.

About 60 miles away in the town of Villa Madero, activist Guillermo Saucedo tried to institute the kind of farmers’ patrols used in Cheran to detect illegal logging and unauthorized avocado orchards. He got as many as 60 or 70 people to participate in the patrols, starting in May 2021.

But by Dec. 6, Saucedo says he had perhaps spoken too forcefully at meetings or angered the powerful allies of the loggers and avocado growers: he ran up against drug cartel gunmen.

“A white SUV with tinted windows cut me off,” Saucedo recalled a month later. “Three people got out with pistols and rifles and they cocked their guns and pointed them at me ... they started hitting me and forced me into the vehicle.”
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Along the ride, they tossed a jacket and a ski mask over his head and kept hitting him in the head with the rifle stocks and the butts of their pistols. Later at a safe house, they repeatedly asked him about a detained cartel boss, but Saucedo thinks that was a cover for their real interest — his community organizing.

“They kept beating me until they got tired,” he said. Hours later, they abandoned him on a dirt path in a distant township, and instructed him to blame a rival cartel for his abduction.

The patrols ceased and Saucedo has been forced to lay low in his home village of Zangarro. His requests to the federal government for protection have so far gone unheeded, in a country where, over the last three years, 96 community, environmental or rights activists have been murdered.

Saucedo and environmentalist Julio Santoyo are unsure what the exact links between the drug cartel and the loggers and avocado growers in Villa Madero are.

Santoyo believes the gangs could be directly investing in avocado plantations. It would not be beyond belief in Michoacan, where in 2010 another cartel, The Knights Templar, actually took over the business of mining iron ore and exporting it to China.

Saucedo thinks the cartels are protecting the loggers and growers.

“They are acting as Godfathers for them, protecting them,” Saucedo said. Certainly, avocado growers in other parts of the state have often complained that drug cartels were demanding payment for each shipment of fruit, and it’s easy to see why the gangs would want more production.

In Villa Madero, which was once surrounded by solid pine forests, Santoyo recently used Google Earth to count about 360 retention ponds that avocado growers have dug to feed their thirsty groves. Saucedo says now that many of the pine forests have been cut down, avocado growers are resorting to deep wells, further depleting the water table.

Santoyo says he has also received indirect threats from a cartel to “tone it down” with his activism. But he says local farm families are already being affected by the avocado plantations.

“People in this area have traditionally been able to get water from the streams for their animals, goats, cows or sheep,” Santoyo said. “They can’t find water anymore, sometimes even for themselves, and now they have to haul it in pickup trucks or on foot or with horses.”

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AP journalist Fernanda Pesce contributed to this report
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Russian roar on Ukraine rings hollow to Latin America allies

By JOSHUA GOODMAN

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FILE - Russian Navy Admiral Gorshkov frigate arrives at the port of Havana, Cuba, June 24, 2019. When the Admiral Gorshkov sailed into Havana in 2019 shortly after entering into service, it was billed as Russia's most advanced battleship, the largest built in two decades, armed with cruise missiles, air defense systems and other weapons. But it was tailed on the goodwill tour by a Russian rescue tugboat — a sign to many that Moscow had little faith in the warship's reliability. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File)


MIAMI (AP) — It was a classic Russian power play with echoes of Cold War gamesmanship.

Shortly after entering into service in 2019, Russia’s most advanced warship made a goodwill tour of the Caribbean, armed with cruise missiles, air defense systems and other weapons.

But when the Admiral Gorshkov sailed into the port of Havana, it was closely tailed by a Russian rescue tugboat — a sign to many that Moscow doubted the vessel’s reliability and the visit was nothing more than a feeble effort to project power.

Russia is once again rattling its saber amid rising tensions over Ukraine, hinting that the U.S. refusal to heed its demands could spur closer military cooperation with allies in Latin America. In recent days, several senior Russian officials have warned Moscow could deploy troops or military assets to Cuba and Venezuela if the U.S. and NATO insist on meddling on Russia’s doorstep.

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan quickly dismissed Russia’s tit-for-tat threats. On the heels of its massive troop buildup on its border with Ukraine, Russia’s ability to mobilize troops in the Western Hemisphere, thousands of miles away, is limited at best, experts contend.

“This is pure misdirection and it’s not fooling anyone,” said Kevin Whitaker, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia who also served as a diplomat in Venezuela, Nicaragua and as head of the Office of Cuban Affairs in Washington. “It’s not real power projection. It’s a showpiece and nothing more.”

But even if talk of troop deployments is mostly bluster, Russia’s strategic buildup in Latin America is real, posing national security threats in what generations of U.S. policy makers have referred to as “Washington’s backyard.”

In the past decade, as the U.S. influence in the region has waned, Moscow — and to a lesser extent other far-flung adversaries like China and Iran — have quietly cemented ties with authoritarian governments in Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela through a mix of weapons sales, financing deals and intense diplomatic engagement.

Moscow helped Venezuela design a cryptocurrency, forgave a $35 million Cuba debt and runs a high-tech anti-narcotics compound in Nicaragua that many believe is a covert beachhead for spying across the region.

Time and again, Russia has shown a willingness to leverage its sizable military whenever it has felt threatened by the U.S.

In 2008, Moscow sent a pair of Tu-160 nuclear-capable bombers to Venezuela amid tensions with the U.S. over Russia’s brief war with Georgia, a deployment followed that year by the arrival of the “Peter the Great” warship.

Russia sent more Tu-160s in 2018 as relations with the West plunged to post-Cold War lows over Ukraine, and the military even hinted it was considering setting up an air base on tiny La Orchilla Island, so small that landing military aircraft there would have been nearly impossible.

Even in countries friendlier to the U.S., like Mexico and Colombia, Russia has been accused of spying or engaging in disinformation campaigns to shape elections. A senior Colombian military official recently traveled to Washington to brief U.S. officials on Russian attempts to penetrate the communications of the country’s top military command, a person familiar with the visit told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.

On social media, the Spanish-language arm of the Russian state-controlled RT television network has more than 18 million followers on Facebook, 10 times as many as the Spanish-language affiliate of Voice of America, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a think tank that tracks the rise of authoritarianism around the world. It also outperforms most other Spanish-language media on the platform, though it’s still dwarfed by CNN en Espanol.

It’s all a far cry from the height of the Cold War, when Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 briefly placed nuclear missiles in Cuba, the Kremlin maintained a listening post less than 100 miles from Florida and the Sandinista government that was fighting a U.S.-backed right-wing insurgency in Nicaragua was building an air base to accommodate Soviet fighter jets.

Nicaragua’s Punta Huete airfield is today semi-abandoned and President Vladimir Putin closed the spy station in Cuba two decades ago. With the collapse of its communist sponsor in the early 1990s, Cuba spiraled into a depression marked by widespread hunger known as the “Special Period.”

But Russia’s more limited support has bought it friends. Recently Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega named a consul in the Crimean peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. It’s also allowed Putin to restore some of Russia’s former glory in a region that has long resented Washington’s far longer history of meddling.

As Putin now looks to repel NATO from what he calls Russia’s “near abroad” in Ukraine, he’s likely to take at least a symbolic poke at the U.S. in its own sphere of influence, said Evan Ellis, a researcher at the U.S. Army War College who specializes in Russian and Chinese influence in Latin America.

“I’m sure Putin will do something to project toughness on the cheap as he always does,” Ellis said. “But he’s not going to do anything that costs him a lot of money or get him into deeper trouble down the line like deploying nukes. He knows there are limits.”

Russia’s closest ally is Venezuela, which has spent billions over the past two decades of socialist rule building up its air defense with Russia’s help — everything from Sukhoi fighter jets and attack helicopters to sophisticated radar and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers.

Such an arsenal gives Nicolás Maduro an ability to inflict serious damage in the event of any conflict with neighboring Colombia, the top U.S. ally in the region, said Gen. Manuel Cristopher Figuera, who was the Venezuelan president’s spy chief until fleeing to the U.S. in 2019 after a failed putsch against his former boss.

“It’s not an ideological relationship. It’s a commercial one, but it provides Maduro with a certain amount of protection,” said Figuera, who received training in Cuba and from Putin ally Belarus.

As the U.S. and its allies have taken steps to isolate the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela — what Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton called the “troika of tyranny”— Putin has tried to fill the void.

In recent days, he’s spoken to Maduro, Ortega and Cuba’s Miguel Díaz Canel to explore ways to deepen strategic cooperation. He’s also sent a planeload of medical supplies to Cuba to help it fight the coronavirus pandemic.

But the leaders, although expressing gratitude for Russia’s continued aid, have so far remained silent on Ukraine — a sign they may be reluctant to be drawn into another geopolitical tussle.

“One of the fundamental legacies for Latin America from the Cold War is that they don’t want to be treated as a pawn in someone else’s game,” said Whitaker, the former ambassador to Colombia. “What Russia is doing shows enormous disrespect for the sovereignty of governments that are supposedly their allies.”

It’s something even Putin loyalists are starting to acknowledge.

“Cuba and Venezuela are the countries that are close to us, they are our partners,” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said in an interview with Russian media.

“But we can’t just deploy things there,” added Medvedev, who served as Russian president in 2008-2012 when Putin had to shift into the premier’s post because of term limits. “There can’t be any talk about setting up a base there as happened during the Soviet times.”

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AP writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow, Andrea Rodriguez in Havana and Frank Bajak in Boston contributed to this report.

Follow Goodman: @APJoshGoodman

Meet Methuselah, the oldest living aquarium fish

By HAVEN DALEY

January 26, 2022

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Senior biologist Allan Jan feeds Methuselah, a 4-foot-long, 40-pound Australian lungfish that was brought to the California Academy of Sciences in 1938 from Australia, in its tank in San Francisco, Monday, Jan. 24, 2022. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Meet Methuselah, the fish that likes to eat fresh figs, get belly rubs and is believed to be the oldest living aquarium fish in the world.

In the Bible, Methuselah was Noah’s grandfather and was said to have lived to be 969 years old. Methuselah the fish is not quite that ancient, but biologists at the California Academy of Sciences believe it is about 90 years old, with no known living peers.

Methuselah is a 4-foot-long (1.2-meter), 40-pound (18.1-kilogram) Australian lungfish that was brought to the San Francisco museum in 1938 from Australia.

A primitive species with lungs and gills, Australian lungfish are believed to be the evolutionary link between fish and amphibians.

No stranger to publicity, Methuselah’s first appearance in the San Francisco Chronicle was in 1947: “These strange creatures — with green scales looking like fresh artichoke leaves — are known to scientists as a possible ‘missing link’ between terrestrial and aquatic animals.”

Until a few years ago, the oldest Australian lungfish was at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. But that fish, named Granddad, died in 2017 at the age of 95.

“By default, Methuselah is the oldest,” said Allan Jan, senior biologist at the California Academy of Sciences and the fish’s keeper. Methuselah’s caretakers believe the fish is female, although it’s difficult to determine the species’ sex without a risky blood draw. The academy plans to send a tiny sample of her fin to researchers in Australia, who will try to confirm the sex and figure out the fish’s exact age.

Jan says Methuselah likes getting rubbed on her back and belly and has a “mellow” personality.

“I tell my volunteers, pretend she’s an underwater puppy, very mellow, gentle, but of course if she gets spooked she will have sudden bouts of energy. But for the most part she’s just calm,” Jan said. Methuselah has developed a taste for seasonal figs.

“She’s a little picky and only likes figs when they are fresh and in season. She won’t eat them when they’re frozen,” said Jeanette Peach, spokeswoman for the California Academy of Sciences.

Organic blackberries, grapes and romaine lettuce are rotated into her daily diet, which also includes a variety of fish, clams, prawns and earthworms, said Charles Delbeek, curator of the museum’s Steinhart Aquarium.

The academy has two other Australian lungfish that are younger. Named for their sizes, “Medium” arrived at the museum in 1952 and “Small” in 1990, both from the Mary River, in Queensland, Australia, said Delbeek. They weigh about 25 pounds (11 kilograms) and 15 pounds (7 kilograms), respectively.

The Australian lungfish is now a threatened species and can no longer be exported from Australian waters, so biologists at the academy say it’s unlikely they’ll get a replacement once Methuselah passes away.

“We just give her the best possible care we can provide, and hopefully she thrives,” Jan said.

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Associated Press writer Jocelyn Gecker contributed to this report.