CANADA

Trucker protest 'worse than Covid' for small businesses



Trucks lined up at the Blue Water Bridge that connects Port Huron, Michigan and Sarnia, Canada in Port Huron, Michigan on February 10, 2022

 (AFP/JEFF KOWALSKY)


Michel COMTE
Thu, February 10, 2022, 6:37 PM·3 min read

The trucker protest over Covid restrictions has been worse than the pandemic itself for small businesses in Canada's capital, as they were preparing for an easing of health rules when the convoy rolled in, shopkeepers say.

Ontario province, which includes Ottawa, had lifted a lockdown of restaurants and bars and increased capacity limits on retailers when up to 15,000 protesters and hundreds of trucks converged on the downtown area at the end of January.

Local small businesses were really excited for crowds to flood back to Byward Market -- Ottawa's main shopping and cultural district -- and make it lively again, said Inaas Kiryakos, owner of clothing and jewelry store Milk.

But with downtown streets blocked by the big rigs and police checkpoints, and officials warning people not to venture into the area, foot traffic dried up.

Most stores closed temporarily. Others reduced their operating hours. A dozen surveyed by AFP estimated their losses in the thousands of dollars per day while business associations warned the total could top tens of millions.

"This convoy is worse than Covid," Kiryakos said.

She explained that her shop relies on people coming to the neighborhood to dine in its many restaurants and stopping in to make a purchase, as well as spillover shoppers from the nearby Rideau Centre, a big mall.

"We were looking forward to a spike in foot traffic after the restrictions were lifted, which is what happened after past lockdowns ended," she said.

"When the truckers rolled up, it extended the lockdown in a much worse way, because anybody that would normally come down wouldn't want to," she explained.

The store had no customers Thursday.

- Mall closed -

Two blocks away, Ottawa's largest mall has been closed for two weeks after being overwhelmed by angry protesters who harassed staff and refused to follow masking rules when they first arrived in Ottawa.

Thousands of people work at 175 businesses at Rideau Centre.

Its owner, Cadillac Fairview, said in a statement that it opted to close the mall "as a result of ongoing public safety issues related to demonstrations," calling the situation "untenable."

"The continued closure of an important community space, the loss of employment income, and the financial impact on our clients is heart-breaking given all of our shared pain and sacrifice during the pandemic," said the company.

Tom Charleboix at the Paper Papier fine pens and stationery store around the corner from the American embassy, where surrounding streets have been cordoned off by police, echoed the pains of other shopkeepers.

"We've been open the whole time, but nobody has come into the store," he said.

Government workers from nearby offices who might come in during a lunch break or after work haven't during the pandemic because most worked from home over the past two years.

And now they're avoiding the downtown because of the protest. "Officials have told them not to come downtown and so they're not," Charleboix said.

"I thought it was a bit ironic that the first day (all businesses) were allowed to open, they couldn't," he commented.

The cancellation due to Covid of Ottawa's annual Winterlude, which had been scheduled to start February 4, has also meant no tourists coming to town.

- 'Hardly any customers' -

At one of several cannabis stores in the neighborhood, it was much the same.

"We've had hardly any customers in the past weeks. We usually see a lot of foot traffic and it's been dead," said Liv at Dutch Love. AFP is withholding her last name at her request over fears of a backlash.

The store, she said, has closed early most days after staff faced abusive comments from protesters who refused to wear face masks.

In front of Parliament, a lone counter-protester stood up for shopkeepers, recounting the hardships and financial toll the protests are having on them.

"I'm here to advocate for my community and very respectfully ask the convoy to go," Bobby Ramsay told AFP.

amc/dw

GM cancels shifts at Michigan plant, enlists cargo planes over border protest

General Motors canceled two shifts at one of its plants in Michigan on Thursday because of parts shortages caused by the ongoing COVID-19 protests blocking a key U.S.-Canada border crossing. 

File Photo by Jeff Kowalsky/EPA-EFE

Feb. 10 (UPI) -- General Motors said Thursday, parts shortages caused by the ongoing protests blocking a U.S.-Canada border crossing are forcing it to cancel two shifts at its production facility in Lansing Delta Township, Mich.

The company made the announcement a day after Toyota and Ford made similar decisions.

Protesters continue to block traffic at the Ambassador Bridge between Ontario and Port Huron, Mich. The move has put even more pressure on an already-disrupted supply chain.

The Ambassador Bridge is the busiest international crossing in North America by volume, and the protests have also caused massive delays at neighboring border crossings like the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel and Blue Water Bridge.

GM has resorted to chartering cargo planes to keep its factories running. Two planes will fly parts stuck at Canada's border into the United States in order to keep a truck plant operating.

Factories in Ontario have also had to cancel shifts because of shortages caused by the protesters.

Under normal circumstances, approximately $356 million worth of goods cross the bridge each day, according to Politico.

Protesters are calling for an end to COVID-19 restrictions, after initially organizing to call for an end to vaccination mandates.

White House presses Canada to intervene against border blockade as copycat protests spread


Issued on: 11/02/2022 - 03:31

An entrance ramp to the Ambassador Bridge is seen closed in Detroit, Michigan, U.S., due to truckers' protests against Covid-19 vaccine mandates in Canada, February 10, 2022. © Rebecca Cook, Reuters

Text by: NEWS WIRES|

Video by: Yinka OYETADE

The Biden administration urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government Thursday to use its federal powers to end the truck blockade by Canadians protesting the country’s COVID-19 restrictions, as the bumper-to-bumper demonstration forced auto plants on both sides of the border to shut down or scale back production.

For the fourth straight day, scores of truckers taking part in what they dubbed the Freedom Convoy blocked the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, disrupting the flow of auto parts and other products between the two countries.

The White House said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke with their Canadian counterparts and urged them to help resolve the standoff.

Conservative Ontario Premier Doug Ford, meanwhile, moved to cut off funding for the protests by successfully asking a court to freeze millions of dollars in donations to the convoy through crowd-funding site GiveSendGo. Ford has called the protests an occupation.

Canadian officials previously got GoFundMe to cut off funding after protest organizers used the site to raise about 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.8 million.) GoFundMe determined that the fundraising effort violated the site’s terms of service due to unlawful activity.

With political and economic pressure mounting, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens announced the city will seek a court injunction to end the occupation.

“The economic harm is not sustainable and it must come to an end,” he said.

In the U.S., authorities braced for the possibility of similar truck-borne protests inspired by the Canadians, and authorities in Paris and Belgium banned road blockades to head off disruptions there, too.

>> Inspired by Ottawa protests, French motorists join ‘Freedom Convoy’ bound for Paris

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a bulletin to local and state law enforcement agencies that it has received reports that truckers are planning to “potentially block roads in major metropolitan cities” in a protest against vaccine mandates and other issues.

The agency said the convoy could begin in Southern California as early as this weekend, possibly disrupting traffic around the Super Bowl, and reach Washington in March in time for the State of the Union address, according to a copy of Tuesday’s bulletin obtained by The Associated Press.

The White House said the department is “surging additional staff” to the Super Bowl just in case.

The ban on road blockades in Europe and the threat of prison and heavy fines were likewise prompted by online chatter from groups calling on drivers to converge on Paris and Brussels over the next few days.

The Ambassador Bridge is the busiest U.S.-Canadian border crossing, carrying 25% of all trade between the two countries, and the effects of the blockade there were felt rapidly.

Ford said its Windsor engine plant reopened Thursday after being shut down on Wednesday because of a lack of parts. But the factory and the company’s assembly plant in Oakville, Ontario, near Toronto, were operating at reduced capacity, the automaker said.

On the U.S. side, General Motors canceled the second shift on Wednesday and the first and second on Thursday at its SUV factory outside Lansing, Michigan.

Toyota said three of its plants in Ontario closed for the rest of the week because of parts shortages, and production also had to be curtailed in Georgetown, Kentucky.

Workers on the morning shift at a Windsor minivan plant operated by Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, were sent home early.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer urged Canadian authorities to quickly resolve the standoff, saying: “It’s hitting paychecks and production lines. That is unacceptable.”

The Teamsters denounced the blockade, saying in a statement from General President Jim Hoffa that it threatened “the livelihood of working Americans and Canadians in the automotive, agricultural and manufacturing sectors.”

Hundreds of demonstrators in trucks have also paralyzed the streets of downtown Ottawa for almost two weeks now, and have now closed three border crossings: at Windsor; at Coutts, Alberta, opposite Montana; and at Emerson, Manitoba, across from North Dakota.

The protesters are decrying vaccine mandates for truckers and other COVID-19 restrictions and are railing against Trudeau, even though many of Canada’s precautions, such as mask rules and vaccine passports for getting into restaurants, theaters and other places, were enacted by provincial authorities, not the federal government, and are already rapidly being lifted as the omicron surge levels off.

Trudeau continued to stand firm against lifting vaccine mandates, including a requirement that all truck drivers entering the country be fully vaccinated. But because an estimated 90% of the nation’s truckers are already inoculated, some conservatives have called on the prime minister to drop the mandate.

The convoy has been promoted and cheered on by many Fox News personalities and attracted support from the likes of former President Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

The Associated Press identified more than a dozen Facebook groups encompassing roughly a half-million members that are being used to drum up support for the Canadian protests or plan similar ones in the U.S. and Europe.

To get around the blockade and into Canada, truckers in the Detroit area have had to drive 70 miles north to Port Huron, Michigan, and cross the Blue Water Bridge, where there was a two-hour delay leaving the U.S.

The blockade is happening at a bad time for the U.S. auto industry. Supplies of new vehicles already are low across the nation because of the global shortage of computer chips, which has forced automakers to temporarily close factories.

“This is the last thing any automaker needs, any manufacturer needs, because parts are so scarce,” industry analyst David Whiston said.

(AP)

Telework in metaverse precursors already a reality

Friday, 11 Feb 2022

A person wearing an Oculus Quest 2 attends a virtual meeting using Immersed Virtual Reality program at the Immersed offices in Austin, Texas. While still the stuff of science fiction for most people, forerunners of the metaverse vision for the Internet’s future are already de rigueur for handfuls of people beyond the gamer and techno-hipster crowds. — AFP


SAN FRANCISCO: Depending on his mood, Jeff Weiser settles down to work in a Parisian cafe, a mysterious cave or high above the Earth, thanks to the budding metaverse.

Weiser lives in the midwestern US state of Ohio but his workplace is in a faux realm accessed using virtual reality head gear.

While still the stuff of science fiction for most people, forerunners of the metaverse vision for the Internet’s future are already de rigueur for handfuls of people beyond the gamer and techno-hipster crowds.

Weiser, founder of a translation startup, spends 25 to 35 hours each week working with Oculus VR gear on his head in his home in the city of Cincinnati.

A VR application called Immersed lets him synch screens such as his computer and smartphone to his virtual world, shutting out distractions around him at home.

Along with “increased focus”, the ergonomics are “perfect”, Weiser said. Display screens hover where they are easily seen and can be changed to any size.

Weiser taps on his keyboard without seeing it, and appears from the outside to be speaking to himself.

But in his virtual world, he interacts with avatars of colleagues as far away as Argentina and Ireland.

The pandemic boosted use of telework technologies that make it possible for colleagues to collaborate as teams despite being in different locations.

The Holy Grail is to replicate the kind of personal contact possible in offices.

Persistence

Florent Crivello co-founded Teamflow, a startup that tailors software for workers to collaborate virtually from their computers.

“We are building the metaverse for work,” Crivello said, who added VR headsets aren’t quite ready for “prime time”.

“All of our collaboration tools are still on desktop; we want to meet people where they are.”

Teamflow virtual offices look like on-screen game boards with meeting rooms, sofas and more.

Workers are represented by round icons that feature their picture, or live video of their face, and can initiate chats with colleagues by moving their “pawn” close to that of a co-worker.

If the person virtually approached has a microphone hooked up, they can automatically hear each other like they would be able to in real life.

Key to the experience is “persistence”, the fact that the virtual environment exists whether a particular worker is in it or not, said Crivello.

“That’s a defining characteristic,” he noted.

For example, Teamflow users who “write” on a virtual white board in a faux meeting room will find it there when they return the next day.

About 1,000 people use the Teamflow app every workday.

VR app Immersed, for its part, said it has won tens of thousands of users after a difficult period at the end of 2019, when the company almost disappeared.

“The adoption curve was in the disillusioned phase, it was the bottom of the valley and we ran out of money,” said Immersed co-founder Renji Bijoy.

“When I told my team that they could go look for jobs, all seven of them said unanimously, ‘We’re not going anywhere’.”

Too unreal?

The pandemic fuelled a trend to remote work, reviving investor interest in startups innovating in the sector.

At the same time, VR itself gained momentum, thanks to investments by Facebook-parent Meta in its Oculus unit and the metaverse overall.

“We are trying to build a world where anyone could live anywhere and put on a pair of glasses and feel like they're actually teleporting to their virtual office,” Bijoy said.

Missing links, for Bijoy, include lifelike avatars instead of cartoonish animated characters, and body tracking that lets movements or gestures be replicated in virtual worlds.

“It's not that far away,” Bijoy said of such technology, expecting to see it “much sooner than five years”.

Some users fear that working in VR will be misinterpreted or misunderstood and would rather stay anonymous, like one graphic designer from New York, who used to spend six hours a day working from immersed during the pandemic.

He customised his Oculus headset for comfort, and built his own room in Immersed, a virtual reproduction of his favourite library complete with rustling pages and soft footsteps.

The New York resident told of his productivity soaring but his health suffering.

He forgot to take breaks, losing track of place and time.

“I would take the headset off and it was kind of jarring, it was just a bit of like a slap in the face, being back in reality,” this man said.

A blood test showed he was low on Vitamin D, and he suspected part of the cause was spending so much time out of the sun and in virtual reality.

“I just stopped using it,” the designer said. “I don’t think that it’s healthy to replace reality with virtual reality.” – AFP


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Tunisian judges, lawyers protest president’s dissolution of key courts watchdog

Thu, 10 February 2022,


More than 200 judges and lawyers in black robes protested Thursday outside the main court in the Tunisian capital after President Kais Saied vowed to scrap a key judicial watchdog.

Judges have been on strike since Wednesday in the North African country, the birthplace of the 2011 Arab uprisings, in protest at Saied’s weekend move to dissolve the Supreme Judicial Council (CSM) months after a July power grab.

At the rally in central Tunis on Thursday, police looked on as protesters chanted “restore the CSM” and “the people want an independent judiciary”.

Some held signs calling Saied’s move “a violation of rights and freedoms” and saying “there is no democracy without an independent judiciary”.

Saied had long accused the CSM of blocking politically sensitive investigations and being influenced by his nemesis, the Islamist-inspired Ennahdha party.

Announcing he would dissolve it, he said he had no intention of interfering with the judiciary, but rights groups and world powers have called it a step backwards in a country seen as the sole—if dysfunctional—democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring uprisings.

Saied, who late last year gave himself powers to issue legislation, said Thursday that he planned to issue orders in the coming days formally disbanding the CSM.

“Let me be clear: the council will be dissolved and replaced by another one, by decree,” he said.

“Justice is a job, not a branch of government. All judges are answerable to the law.”

In a statement Thursday, the CSM said it “totally rejects the use of decrees to infringe on the constitutional structure of the judiciary” and that any alternative would have no legal basis. Some lawyers who took part in the rally have publicly criticised Saied’s policies in the past.

On Wednesday, a group of 45 civil society groups had issued a statement rejecting “any interference by the executive authority in the judiciary’s work”.

They said the CSM, despite its “shortcomings”, was the only institution guaranteeing the judiciary’s independence.

Saied’s move on July 25 to sack the government and suspend parliament was welcomed by many Tunisians tired of rule by political parties seen as corrupt and self-serving.

But his critics have accused him of pushing Tunisia down a slippery slope back to autocracy.

(AFP)

Biden to propose 4.6 percent pay raise for federal employees, the biggest hike in 20 years

Lisa Rein
Thu, February 10, 2022,

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 19: U.S. President Joe Biden answers questions during a news conference in the East Room of the White House on January 19, 2022 in Washington, DC. With his approval rating hovering around 42-percent, Biden is approaching the end of his first year in the Oval Office with inflation rising, COVID-19 surging and his legislative agenda stalled on Capitol Hill.

 (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON - Federal employees and military service members would receive average raises of 4.6 percent next January under the budget President Joe Biden will propose in March, marking what would be the workforce's largest salary hike in two decades, according to senior officials at two federal agencies.

The pay increase would follow an average 2.7 percent raise that took effect last month for 2.1 million executive branch workers, as Biden proposed early last year. The increase took effect by default under a federal pay law after Congress took no position on the increase by the end of December.


The salary boost Biden will propose for 2023 will be part of a wide-ranging budget the administration is expected to release in early March for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Raises are paid in January.

The Office of Management and Budget declined to comment. The senior officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the budget proposal publicly.

A 4.6 percent raise would be the largest since 2002, when the workforce received the same increase. The raise two years earlier, in 2000, averaged 4.8 percent, the largest since 1981.

The salary proposal, first reported by Federal News Network, received an early endorsement from congressional Democrats and federal employee unions. It represents the second year that Biden has relied on guidance from a federal pay law that calls for tying raises to a Labor Department index of private-sector wage growth called the Employment Cost Index, in this case growth from October 2020 through September 2021.

The formula sometimes has been followed, and sometimes not, in White House budget plans under both parties. President Donald Trump twice proposed freezing salary rates and two other years came in under the recommendation of the pay index, although federal employees ultimately received raises each year during his term, ranging from an across-the-board 1 percent to 3.1 percent.

Biden's approach underscores his administration's close partnership with unions, whose collective bargaining power in the federal government is limited to working conditions, not wages, which are set instead by Congress. Biden established a contrast with the Trump administration early in his presidency with executive orders and rhetoric that shifted course from what was widely viewed as hostility toward civil servants by Trump.

Federal employee unions have enjoyed renewed clout in the current administration, for example, by largely setting the direction at some agencies for when their members will return to the office from remote work during the pandemic, in some cases pushing return dates well into the spring. Permanent telework is also expected to be a fixture of post-pandemic work life for some federal employees.

This week, a White House task force led by Vice President Harris and Labor Secretary Marty Walsh made dozens of recommendations to federal agencies to embrace union organizing and membership, both inside and outside the government.

The report said the government has a crucial role to play as a "model employer" that can improve access to organized labor, with the goal of inspiring better pay and workplace protections for the private sector. Agencies were urged to disclose in job announcements whether the position would have union representation and tell new hires about their organized labor rights.

Democrats already have unveiled legislation in the House and Senate seeking an average 5.1 percent raise for federal employees next year. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii.).

"In Joe Biden, we finally have a president who values the federal workforce and recognizes federal employees as the dedicated public servants they are," Connolly, whose Northern Virginia district has tens of thousands of federal workers, said in a statement. "I look forward to working with his administration to provide a much-deserved pay increase, in line with my FAIR Act, for federal employees who have worked selflessly on the frontlines of this pandemic in service to the American people."

Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents about 150,000 federal employees, said of Biden's forthcoming proposal, "We . . . fully expect it will be a much more generous proposal than those of his immediate predecessor."

"Given the complex problems that the federal workforce is tackling, from lifesaving research to national security, it is time to increase federal salaries so agencies can compete to attract and keep skilled employees to meet those challenges head on," Reardon said.

Federal raises are expressed in terms of averages because they typically are divided into two parts: one paid across the board and the other a "locality" component that differs among some four dozen city areas, with a catchall rate for other locations.

The average 2.7 percent increase paid in January, for example, ranged from 2.42 to 3.21 percent, with employees working in the Washington-Baltimore area receiving 3.02 percent.

A 4.6 percent raise probably would be similarly divided, although details would come later in the year.

The proposed raise technically would apply only to white-collar employees below the senior levels who are paid under the General Schedule pay system. Blue-collar employees, who make up about 9 percent of the federal workforce, fall under a separate system, but for years their raises generally have matched those of white-collar employees. Biden announced in late January that he was increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, a directive affecting about 70,000 blue-collar federal workers and 300,000 contract employees.

Federal employee raises do not affect cost-of-living adjustments for federal retirees. Those increases are linked to an inflation measure that boosted retiree annuities last month by 5.9 or 4.9 percent, depending on which of the two federal retirement systems applied to them.

The 2023 retiree adjustment will be determined in October, based on inflation over the prior 12 months.

Italy's tiny curling community rejoices at Olympic triumph

CANADA'S OTHER FAVORITE WINTER SPORT

Anthony LUCAS
Thu, February 10, 2022


Amos Mosaner (R) and Stefania Constantini took gold at the mixed doubles curling, 

Italy's first ever Olympic medal in the sport 

(AFP/Lillian SUWANRUMPHA)

Italy's curling heroics at the Winter Olympics has unearthed a sudden enthusiasm which the country's tiny curling community hopes will raise its profile enough to complete with more popular winter sports like alpine skiing.

Amos Mosaner and Stefania Constantini claimed the first curling title of the Beijing Games on Tuesday when they beat Norwegian husband-and-wife pairing of Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten 8-5 to take gold in the mixed doubles.

The pair will defend Italy's first ever Olympic medal in the sport -- which is dominated by northern Europeans and North America -- on home soil in four years' time, bringing joy to the just 333 people who officially practise curling in the Mediterranean country.

"I cried with happiness, it's a victory for everyone in Italian curling," Angela Romei, a member of Italy's national team, told AFP.

Romei, 24, didn't manage to qualify for the Beijing Games but is convinced that her teammates' trumph "is a signal that we are on the right path".

Enthusiasts now hope the sport will get a huge boost as Italy prepares to host the 2026 Winter Olympics.

The Italian winter sports federation FISG says that the country's curlers are spread over 28 clubs, with only around 20 top-level players and half a dozen professionals.

Italy first competed in Olympic curling in 2006 as host nation for that year's Games in Turin but only qualified for the first time four years ago, with the men's team taking part in Pyeongchang.

Mosaner and Constantini are the first Italians to compete in the mixed event, which was introduced as an Olympic discipline in 2018.

"Until the last few days I was often asked 'but is it really a sport?', or 'do you really need to train?'... there was very little awareness or respect," says Romei, who discovered the sport herself via an episode of "The Simpsons".

"It's an Olympic sport! It requires physical and mental preparation. The matches are long and you have to know how to keep your head if you make a mistake."

While Italy has become a force in curling, it remains difficult to find a place to play the sport.

- 'Priceless for our sport' -

The three main training centres are all located in the far north of the country: Cortina D'Ampezzo, which is hosting the 2026 Games alongside Milan, Pinerolo at the foot of the Alps, and Trento.

The stated challenge for the FISG now is to increase the number of players and take the sport to the big cities like Milan and Rome.

"What happened is priceless for our sport," former Italian international Adriano Lorenzi told AFP.

Now 61, Lorenzi is a coach at Constantini's club Curling Club Dolomiti in Cortina, the heartland of Italian curling and where the country's first curling sheets appeared around 1930.

"We are trying to keep the tradition alive," says Lorenzi, who is expecting a big party when Constantini returns home at the weekend.

"We have a large pool of young people who we hope will be able to apply for the 2026 Games."

Her and Mosaner's coach Claudio Pescia is hoping for a windfall which will further help curling become a bigger sport in Italy.

"For the athletes, it's very important. Italy is very generous if you win a medal," he said.

"In general, you then have a programme for two years. Some kind of funding for the next two years, then an extra fee for the medal.

"But I really hope that not only athletes but the whole movement gets a little bit more funding to take advantage of this momentum we have."

alu/jr/nzg/td/gj

CANADIAN AUTHOR

Bitter row erupts over Anne Frank betrayal book


Anne Frank died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945 (AFP/Ronny Hartmann) (Ronny Hartmann)

Jan HENNOP
Thu, February 10, 2022

It was meant to put one of World War II's greatest mysteries to rest, but instead a new book about young diarist Anne Frank has stirred up ghosts from the past.

A heated debate has erupted over "The Betrayal of Anne Frank" by Canadian author Rosemary Sullivan after it named a Jewish notary as the prime suspect in giving up Anne and her family.

Dutch historians and Jewish groups have criticised the "sensationalist" book, the result of a six-year cold case investigation, while its local publisher has halted further reprints.

But the former FBI agent who led the probe, Vince Pankoke, angrily hit back this week alleging that the "venomous attack" may have been motivated by the book's controversial conclusion that a Jew was responsible.

The book caused an international storm when it was published on January 18 with its claims about the betrayal of Frank, a Jewish teen whose diary was published after her death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

It identified Amsterdam notary Arnold van den Bergh, a Jew, as "most likely" the man who in 1944 gave up the location of the canalside annexe where Frank penned her diary during two years in hiding, most likely to save his own family from the Nazis.

Researchers said they used modern criminal investigative techniques, complex algorithms and witness statements -- and most tellingly a note given to Anne's father Otto shortly after the war which named Van den Bergh.

- 'Speculative' -

But there was a fierce reaction in the Netherlands, which is still haunted by guilt over the deportation of more than 100,000 Jews during the war.

The results were "extremely speculative and sensationalist", the Amsterdam-based Central Jewish Consultation (CJO) organisation said.

"There is no smoking gun or hard evidence. The findings are... mainly based on one note, written after the war," CJO chairman Ronny Naftaniel told AFP.

Van den Bergh died in 1950 and "cannot defend himself", Naftaniel said, adding that the investigation "would never stand up in a court of law".

Jewish organisations in the Netherlands have asked that the book be removed from local shelves, and the Swiss-based Anne Frank Fonds foundation president John Goldsmith told Swiss daily Blick the findings "bordered on a conspiracy theory".

The book's Dutch publisher Ambo Anthos last week said it was putting all reprints on ice and apologised "for not adopting a more critical stance", local media reported.

The publisher did not respond to a query from AFP.

Dutch holocaust historians also raised doubts.

"Although the research is impressive, the story simply has too many loose ends," Johannes Houwink ten Cate, professor of genocide and holocaust studies at the University of Amsterdam, told AFP.

Documents showed Van den Bergh and his family went underground by the beginning of 1944, months before the Nazis arrested the Franks, said Ten Cate.

"Why would Van den Bergh later risk giving up his own hiding place? It's beyond belief."

- 'Disparaging remarks' -

But those behind the book, published internationally by HarperCollins, struck back this week.

Author Sullivan said in a statement on Monday that the probe was "professional" and "thorough", adding that the book was a "compelling portrait" of a time when people faced impossible choices to save their families.

Pankoke meanwhile insisted that his team's theory remained the most plausible, in a statement on Wednesday.

"I was shocked at the disparaging remarks put forth by critics of our investigation," he said, adding that it was "now time for me to respond and set the record straight.

"At least in our theory, there is a pattern of evidence, backed by witness statements, and a copy of a piece of physical evidence presented... by Otto Frank himself," said Pankoke.

One of the main reasons for the furore was the contention that "Jews were forced to turn against one another", along with a misunderstanding about how criminal investigations are conducted, he said.

But he too stressed that by identifying a suspect, they were not necessarily condemning him.

"Our message from the very beginning of our investigation was, and always will be, had it not been for the Nazi occupiers, none of this would have happened," Pankoke said.

jhe/dk/har/ach

NIMBY

Turbine 'torture' for Greek islanders as wind farms proliferate

With its propensity for high winds, Evia is a natural location for wind farms, says Athanasios Dagoumas, chairman of Greece's power production watchdog

Another 18 turbines are to be installed near Agii Apostoli 

 (AFP/ARIS MESSINIS)

Hélène COLLIOPOULOUT
Fri, February 11, 2022

Until a few years ago, Agii Apostoli was a picturesque seaside village on the eastern coast of Evia, drawing a modest income from tourism and fishing.

Now it is ringed by towering wind turbines whose night lights and whirring sounds are tantamount to daily "torture", locals say.

"Longterm visitors ask us, why did you allow this crime to take place?" laments Stamatoula Karava, a local employee involved in a local cultural association.

With their aviation lights flashing through the night in the surrounding hills, the turbines "have completely ruined the view," she says.

Evia, 80 kilometres (50 miles) east of Athens and Greece's second largest island after Crete, was among the first of the country's regions to host wind farms some two decades ago.

But they have since mushroomed, mainly in the more sparsely populated south of the island, environment groups say.

The municipality of Karystos alone, with an area of 672 square kilometres, has more than 400 turbines, some of them along the area's main road.

The oldest ones have now fallen into disuse, yet there are no plans to remove them and recycle their parts, says Chryssoula Bereti, who chairs the Karystos anti-wind farm front.

"It's a scandal," she fumes.

In line with EU clean energy targets, Greece has reduced its once-overwhelming reliance on lignite for electricity production to around 10 percent currently.

Forty percent of Greek power plants are now gas-fired and 30 percent run on renewable resources, of which 18 percent are wind turbines.

Hydroelectric plants and imports account for the remainder.

According to the Regulatory Authority for Energy (RAE), Greece's power production watchdog, the maximum capacity of wind turbines in the country increased more than sixfold between 2019 and 2021 to 8,205 MW.

With its propensity for high winds, Evia is a natural location for wind farms, notes RAE chairman Athanasios Dagoumas.

But critics say that this expansion has gone too far.

"Wind turbines have been installed on mountain peaks, in forests, near archaeological sites, on islands, in protected habitats... it's as if energy production is the only possible activity in this country", says Dimitris Soufleris, a lawyer and spokesman of the environmental association of the Evia town of Kymi.

"We cannot have so many wind farms in Greece," he told AFP.

- 'We can't sleep' -

In past months, protests against wind farm development have been held in Agrafa, central Greece, as well as the islands of Andros, Skyros and Tinos.

Soufleris notes that another 18 turbines are scheduled to be installed near Agii Apostoli.

Nikos Balaskas, a local engineer whose house in Agii Apostoli is less than 400 metres (450 yards) from the nearest wind turbine, has sued the company.

"As an engineer, I'm not opposed to green energy. But there have to be standards. This is torture, we can no longer sleep for the noise," he said.

There are similar concerns in the nearby coastal town of Styra, where another 14 wind turbines are to be located.

"This is going to cause enormous damage to our region," says local hotel chairwoman Afroditi Lekka, noting that thousands of hikers visit the area annually.

In response to the mounting criticism, the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis last month announced that six mountain ranges in central Greece, the Peloponnese, Crete and the island of Samothrace would be given additional protection status against future energy infrastructure development.

"Planned licences in these areas were withdrawn," says RAE's Dagoumas.

Similar steps have also been taken in the north of Evia, which was devastated by wildfires this summer, he adds.

RAE's Dagoumas notes in the past two years solar parks have overtaken wind farm investments owing mainly to "the implementation of a new automatic system" that facilitates the application for the investors and lower average cost.

"The wind farms cannot been implemented everywhere, it has to be high wind capacity, for the photovoltaics there is much more space for them", he says.

hec/jph/cdw-gd/ach

Elon Musk's Starship could change the space business forever

The SpaceX megarocket has yet to be tested in orbit, but some say Starship is the beginning of the end for space firms that fail to see its potential. An orbital test flight is slotted for March.


SpaceX's Starship rocket is scheduled to make its first orbital test flight in March

On Thursday night at a launch facility in Boca Chica, Texas, billionaire and SpaceX founder Elon Musk will give an update on Starship, a powerful rocket that some say will transform the space industry in ways that many can't yet imagine. And that lack of imagination could pose a problem for other industry players.

SpaceX will display the rocket at Starbase, its test facility, during Musk's speech. Sitting atop its giant booster, called Super Heavy, Starship measures just short of 400 feet (120 meters) tall. This makes it taller than Saturn V, the 363-foot-tall NASA rocket used for the Apollo moon missions in the 1960s and 1970s, currently the tallest operational rocket ever used. Starship is meant to be fully reusable and have the capacity to carry over 100 tons to Mars and the Moon.

"Fully reusable Starship and Super Heavy systems are expected to allow for space-based activities that have not been possible before," SpaceX writes in the Starship user guide.

Starship would be a major step toward SpaceX's goal of making life interplanetary. The rocket's massive payload capacity along with the reusability factor could drastically change the economics of launching people and things into space.

7 THINGS YOU'RE DYING TO KNOW ABOUT SPACE TRAVEL
Can astronauts get drunk in space?
In 1975, astronauts Thomas Stafford and Deke Slayton were given "vodka tubes" during an Apollo/Soyuz linkup. Although labeled with Russian vodka brands, the tubes contained borscht (beet soup). Drinking alcohol is prohibited on the ISS — it's main ingredient, ethanol, is a volatile compound that could damage equipment. Astronauts aren't even allowed mouthwash or aftershave containing alcohol.
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Explosions and crashes

Last year, the project received a major endorsement in the form of a $2.9 billion (€2.5 billion) contract from NASA to put its astronauts on the moon. This came after SpaceX became the first private corporation to shoot astronauts into space when in 2020 it ferried NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on Falcon 9, the world's first orbital-class, reusable rocket.

Thursday's update will be the first major news about Starship in over two years. The rocket had been slated to make its first-ever orbital test flight in January or February of this year, but was delayed by environmental assessment by the US Federal Aviation Administration.

It wasn't the first time that the project has experienced delays.

"This is going to sound totally nuts but I think we want to try to reach orbit in less than six months," Musk had said at the last Starship update, in 2019.

He was half right: The goal was unrealistic. In the two years that have passed, Starship prototypes have fallen victim to fiery crashes and explosions, but orbital flight has remained out of reach. Adding insult to injury, a solar storm over the weekend destroyed dozens of satellites SpaceX had launched just last week, meant to form part of a massive internet communications network called Starlink.

An elevator to space

Musk has earned himself a reputation for setting out overly ambitious timelines, and this could explain why much of the space sector might not yet be expecting the reality of a functional Starship and everything it would bring with it.

"A fully functional Starship would so thoroughly render all legacy launch systems obsolete that it may as well be that they had never even existed," Casey Handmer, physicist and founder of the carbon capture startup Terraform Industries, who blogs regularly about advances in space travel, told DW in an email.

Starship could "enable a conveyor belt logistical capacity to low Earth orbit," Handmer writes in his blog. Those positioned to exploit this major shift in capacity will prosper, while all others will fade rapidly into obscurity, he said.

The finance guys seem to agree. "We think of reusable rockets as an elevator to low Earth orbit," Morgan Stanley Equity Analyst Adam Jonas wrote in a note, reaching for another metaphor. "Just as further innovation in elevator construction was required before today's skyscrapers could dot the skyline, so too will opportunities in space mature because of access and falling launch costs."

Investors shoot for the moon

Morgan Stanley estimates that the global space industry could generate over $1 trillion in revenue by 2040, up from about $350 billion today. In the short and mid term, much of this is likely to come from satellite broadband internet access, part of the so-called space-to-Earth economy.

But consulting group McKinsey reported that investment in "lunar and beyond" projects has been increasing steadily. In a January note, the group said that such ventures were pulling in between 10% and 15% of all private investment in space-related companies, or about $1 billion. This is up from less than 5% a decade ago. A rocket like Starship would play a major role in this economic shift.

And, so far, there isn't much out there like Starship and its SpaceX predecessors. In December, the company was awarded three more NASA flights as aerospace giant Boeing continued struggling to address issues with its own Starliner spacecraft. Both companies have signed contracts with the space agency to transport its astronauts to the International Space Station.

European space company ArianeGroup is trying to play catch-up. The planned Maïa launch system is scheduled to open to the satellite launch market in 2026 and will be designed to be reusable. In size, however, it will be dwarfed by Starship, launching just 1 metric ton in reusable mode to low Earth orbit against Starship’s planned 100. Notably, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called it "our Falcon 9," comparing it to a SpaceX product that will have long become redundant by 2026 if Musk's plans succeed.

"If you're not careful, SpaceX will be the only game in town," Fatih Ozmen, co-founder of Sierra Nevada Corp., a privately held American aerospace company, told the Financial Times in October.

This is big talk about a rocket that has yet to complete an orbital test flight. And if hiccups at Tesla, Musk's electric and self-driving car company, have shown us anything, it's that huge projects can take time. But Musk and his employees aren't eager to wait.

"SpaceX has a team of skilled, motivated, capable engineers and technicians at Boca Chica who work 24 hours a day to create this future," Handmer said. "They are well resourced and they are acting like they intend to prevail."

Edited by: Hardy Graupner

Abuse and poverty driving children to Uganda's streets

Thousands of children survive in the open in the Ugandan capital, Kampala by begging for money. Residents are fed up and city authorities are struggling to keep the youngest among them off the busy streets.



Thousands of Ugandan children roam the streets begging for money and handouts

It is rush hour in Uganda's capital, Kampala. Groups of young children linger on the streets, and as soon as they see a car slowing down, they quickly swarm around and beg for alms. Then, they move from car to car, hoping to get as many handouts from drivers as they can.

Peter Otai, a motorist, is used to these kids, some as young as four, crowding around him. However, he now seems overwhelmed and considers them a nuisance. "You could be walking on the street, and the street kid comes running after you asking for money," Otai says.

"They stick on you, and they are split at a distance of about five meters. Something is not adding up here. It's becoming too much, and the government has to do something," a visibly concerned Otai told DW.

16-year-old Richard Kawadwa, who has roamed the streets of Kampala with other children, told DW that he opted to flee his home out of fear. "I ran away from home because I lost my aunt's money when she sent me to the shop. So I became afraid," he said.

More than 15,000 children, aged between 7 and 14, live in Kampala's streets. According to city authorities, at least 100 children are taken off the roads every month.

President Yoweri Museveni's government plans to rehabilitate the street children and reintegrate them back into their family homes. But, that isn't happening anytime soon

Some children flee their homes due to physical or psychological abuse

Rehabilitating street children

In 2019, Kampala passed a law banning giving money or food to street children. City authorities said the law was aimed at curbing children's commercial and sexual exploitation. Offenders could face up to six months in prison or a fine of $11 (€7).

The high number of children leaving their homes for the streets has forced child support organizations to think of new strategies for interventions.

Jajja, 30, who used to live on the streets, has now been enlisted by one organization to help address the issue. "Organizations send me to talk to the children about how they are ready to take care of them," Jajja told DW.

"If they are willing to go back home or join technical schools to learn carpentry or even mechanical engineering. When we identify children who have struggled to survive, we take them to hope for justice."

Aunt Nabwire, a residential social worker who works at a child care organization based in the Kampala suburb of Kibuli, told DW that once the children are taken off the street, they are rehabilitated. Their addresses and families are traced, and then the young ones are resettled back to their homes.

"These children go through a lot," Nabwire said. "When they are on the streets, it's survival for the fittest. We have to show them love so that they know we are not like those who have been harassing them."

She said they teach them how to work and encourage them to work and not see it as a punishment. "Work is something you are supposed to do the whole of your life to keep your life going," Nabwire added.

Ugandan motorists are calling on their government to urgently address the street children issue

Punishing parents

Mondo Kyateka, Uganda's Commissioner for Youth and Children, said parents and guardians who have failed to fulfill their responsibilities were responsible for the current crisis. She warned that they would be punished for neglect when identified.

"We are doing everything possible to counsel the fathers and mothers of children not to let their children stray on to the streets," Kyateka told DW. "That's why we came up with parenting guidelines to guide anybody who decides to bring a soul into this world to know that before you call in government, it's your responsibility."

But not everyone blames poor parenting alone for the crisis. Child care organizations in Uganda have said the return of children to Kampala's busy streets is also because law enforcement officals often delay routine operations to round them up.

Frank Yiga in Kampala contributed to this article.

Edited by: Chrispin Mwakideu

Macron calls for 'French nuclear renaissance'

The French president announced a plan to build at least six new plants by 2050, despite enormous cost overruns and decade long delays in completing a prototype. He also touted massive investments in renewable energy.



France has been slow to invest in renewables, instead sticking with its ageing nuclear plants to generate 70% of its energy

President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday outlined his vision for France's energy future and announced a major plan for the construction of at least six new nuclear reactors by state-controlled energy giant Electricite de France (EDF) while on a campaign visit to a turbine factory in the eastern industrial city of Belfort, just weeks ahead of a presidential election in April.

The third-generation pressurized water reactors (EPR) facilities are to be completed by 2050. Macron also said he was looking into the possibility of building a further eight. The whole project is being pitched under the motto of reducing France's greenhouse gas emissions.

Beyond nuclear power plans, Macron said 50 offshore wind parks were slated for construction — France currently has none, despite an abundance of coastline — and that onshore solar capacity would double and hydroelectric facilities would also not be forgotten.

Macron's main emphasis, however, was on nuclear energy, a particular point of pride with the French, providing roughly 70% of the nation's energy.

Atom, mon amour

Macron strong-arms EDF into buying back facility he controversially helped sell

Despite concern about the enormous cost and complexity of building new nuclear power reactors, Macron showed his support for nuclear energy as ecologically friendly and economically viable option, saying: "The time has come for a French nuclear renaissance."

Along with announcing new construction, Macron said he wanted EDF to extend the lives of older nuclear plants from 40 years to 50: "I want no reactor that has the capability of producing (electricity) to be closed in the future ... unless obviously for safety reasons."

"We are fortunate in France to be able to count on a strong nuclear industry, rich in know-how and with hundreds of thousands of jobs," Macron said.

Belfort is home to a key manufacturing site that produces turbines to be used in future power plants. It is well-known to Macron, who, while serving as finance minister in 2015, was instrumental in facilitating its sale by French industrial giant Alstom to US rival General Electric (GE).

The deal was widely criticized at the time, with opponents saying it would jeopardize French energy independence and cost thousands of jobs.

On Thursday, under pressure from the French government, EDF announced that it had agreed to buy back GE's nuclear turbine branch for $200 million (€175 million euros).

EDF projects decades behind schedule, billions over budget

EDF, which is heavily indebted, has faced difficulties in trying to build its latest-generation EPR reactors in separate projects in France, Britain and Finland.

The company estimates that it can build six of its reactors for France within 15 years at a cost of €50 billion ($57 billion).

Currently, EDF's flagship French project in the northern city of Flamanville — a prototype for the plants Macron spoke of — is running four times over its €3.3 billion budget and 11 years behind schedule.

Though nuclear endeavors tend to be extremely costly, France is decidedly more relaxed about the prospects of financing such projects after it was recently able to convince the European Commission to classify nuclear power as "green" in its taxonomy guide for investors — meaning that it is considered environmentally friendly, and thus investment-worthy.

Never too old to go offline

Currently, more than a dozen of France's 56 aging nuclear reactors are offline — seven for maintenance and five for serious corrosion damage. Overall output has dropped to around 55% to 60% of capacity. France also lags behind the rest of Europe when it comes to investments into renewable energy sources.

In 2021, France's nuclear authority agreed to extend the operational lifetime of the country's 32 oldest reactors by a decade, to 50 years. Since most of France's reactors were built in the 1980s, they could be shut down in the 2030s.

Paris argues that the new plan will maintain energy supplies amid increasing demand, while at the same time allowing France to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and help reduce dependency on imported fossil fuels.

Nuclear energy produces far lower emissions than coal, oil or gas, but plants are expensive to build and produce radioactive waste that remains deadly for tens of thousands of years.

That is an issue that France has yet to come to grips with — its cooling pond at the La Hague reprocessing plant will be full by 2030 and the country has not established a permanent nuclear waste storage facility to replace it.