Airbus plans to test hydrogen engine on A380 jumbo jet to fly in 2026

Airbus will test hydrogen propulsion on an A380, its largest passenger plane.
The manufacturer is working with engine maker CFM International, a joint venture of GE and France's Safran.

© Provided by CNBCAirbus hydrogen A380 demonstrator

Leslie Josephs - 

Airbus said it plans to test a hydrogen-powered engine on a modified A380 by the middle of the decade, in hopes of bringing lower-emission fuels to commercial air travel.

The European aircraft giant said Tuesday that it's working with engine maker CFM International — a joint venture of General Electric's aviation arm and France's Safran — on the test plane, which will include a modified version of an engine already in use that will have to handle higher temperatures at which hydrogen burns. Test flights could begin 2026, Airbus said.

Aircraft manufacturers and airlines are scrambling to slash their carbon emissions, which account for more than 2% of the world's total. Airbus has aggressively pursued hydrogen and said it is working on a passenger aircraft powered by the fuel that it expects will enter service in 2035.

Rival Boeing has focused on more sustainable aviation fuels, which currently make up less than 1% of the jet fuel supply and are more expensive than conventional jet fuel. CEO Dave Calhoun said at an investor conference last June that he didn't expect a hydrogen-powered plane on "the scale of airplanes that we're referring to" before 2050.

"It will work for some very small packages," he said.

One big challenge in using hydrogen fuel is that storing it would require additional equipment that adds weight to the aircraft, reducing the number of people or amount of cargo that a plane could carry, said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at Aerodynamic Advisory, an aviation consulting firm.

"Hydrogen is what happens when engineers and economists don't talk to each other," he said.

Airbus said it selected its A380, the world's largest passenger plane, because it had room to store the liquid hydrogen tanks and other equipment.

Exclusive-Shale oil producer Ovintiv considers options for Utah land - sources

By Shariq Khan

(Reuters) - Shale producer Ovintiv Inc is looking to hire an investment bank to consider options for its acreage in the Uinta basin of Utah, as it looks to cash in on a boom in energy prices to cut debt, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday.

A full or partial sale would be among the options for Ovintiv, one of the top producers in the Uinta basin, the sources said, adding that a sale of the assets could fetch around $1 billion.

No final decision has been made about the assets and Ovintiv could still decide to retain them, the sources cautioned. They requested anonymity as the discussions are confidential.

An Ovintiv spokesperson said the company does not comment on potential or rumored acquisition or divestiture activity.

A sale, if it happens, would be the second from a major player in the oil-rich basin after privately owned EP Energy sold its position to KKR-backed Crescent Energy last week for $815 million.

EP faced months of antitrust challenges on a previous plan to sell the holdings to EnCap-backed XCL Resources, which already had some assets in the region.

Publicly traded U.S. shale producers have been looking to take advantage of crude oil nearing $100 per barrel by selling off operations no longer key to their development plans and using the cash to clean up balance sheets or reward investors.

Ovintiv, which in the past operated as EnCana and was once Canada's biggest company, moved to the United States in January 2020 in the hopes of attracting more investors after years of challenges in the Canadian energy sector.

However, the onset of the coronavirus pandemic just months after its change in headquarters saw the company's stock plummet along with other U.S. oil and gas producers. A year later, Ovintiv faced more pressure from an activist investor calling for changes in its budget and non-core asset sales.

Ovintiv settled with the activist fund Kimmeridge in March 2021, and with oil prices making a strong recovery, it sold its assets in the Eagle Ford and Duvernay shale plays.

Ovintiv used the money raised from those sales to cut its debt pile and set a target to bring its $4.8 billion net debt to under $3 billion by the end of 2022.

The company, which classifies its holdings in the Uinta basin as non-core, has scaled back spending on them in recent years and diverted budget to more profitable regions in the Anadarko and Permian basins.

Ovintiv's assets spanned around 207,000 net acres in central Utah and had production of around 13,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day as of its 2020 annual report.

Ovintiv is scheduled to post its fourth-quarter results on Thursday.

(Reporting by Shariq Khan in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel)

THE NEW COLD WAR

Chinese government agency that works with Canadians is involved in espionage, Federal Court affirms

Tom Blackwell - National Post

© Provided by National Post

The Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Ottawa. It’s unclear how many Chinese officials stationed at the embassy and consulates in Canada are involved with the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office.

The outfit has worked with a top Canadian scientist, a member of the Ontario legislature and children in the Toronto area.

Its name sounds more bureaucratic than menacing.

But the Chinese government’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO) is involved in espionage that harms Canada’s interests, a Federal Court judge has affirmed in what appears to be a precedent-setting new ruling .

Beijing critics say the judgement — upholding an immigration officer’s decision on the issue as “reasonable” — represents a rare official rebuke of the office, now a bureau of a larger Communist Party department.

Despite its apparently longstanding efforts to influence and monitor Chinese Canadians, the agency has rarely been publicly called-out by authorities here, says Charles Burton, a former diplomat in Beijing and senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

“I’m thrilled about the ruling,” he said. “I hope it sets a terrific precedent.”

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service and RCMP both have advised the government about interference by such Chinese organizations, he said, but politicians tend to suppress the information for fear of undermining trade between the two countries.

The actual targets of the Office are often too frightened — for themselves or for their relatives in China — to speak out, said Burton.

A spokesperson for the United Front Work Department, the Chinese Communist Party division that now controls the OCAO, did not comment directly on the court ruling, but through the Chinese embassy in Ottawa depicted its work as above-board and positive.

“The united front led by the Communist Party of China is to unite people’s hearts and minds, gather strength, actively promote harmony in relations among political parties, ethnic groups, religions, classes and compatriots at home and abroad … to achieve national prosperity, national rejuvenation and people’s happiness,” said a statement from the embassy.

In foreign relations, it said, the party has “always advocated tolerance and mutual appreciation among different civilizations in the world.”

The decision came in the case of a Chinese couple sponsored by their adult daughter — a naturalized Canadian citizen — to become permanent residents here. They were turned down on the grounds that the husband had worked 20 years at the OCAO in China, in later years as a senior administrator.

An Immigration Citizenship and Refugees Canada (IRCC) officer cited legislation that bars members of organizations that engage in espionage and hurt Canada’s interests from immigrating here, and concluded that the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office fit the bill.

The couple asked the Federal Court for a judicial review of the decision. The court does not retry such cases but Justice Vanessa Rochester upheld the IRCC ruling , saying it was reasonable to conclude the OCAO was involved in espionage given the evidence available to the officer.

“I would say it’s about time,” said Cheuk Kwan of the Toronto Association for Democracy in China. “It’s about time we stopped dodging the question and confront the fact that there is Chinese spying and espionage and harassment of dissidents in this country.”

Overseas Chinese is a term Beijing uses for ethnic Chinese people living in other countries, even when their families have resided outside China for generations.

The officer’s decision and that of Rochester relied largely on research by James Jiann Hua To , a senior advisor at the Asia New Zealand Foundation who was cited as an expert by both sides in the case.

While the OCAO claims ostensibly to provide support to members of the Chinese diaspora, To wrote, its goal is really to “legitimize and protect” the party’s hold on power, burnish China’s international image and exert its influence.

To that end it gathers intelligence on and tries to influence people of Chinese descent in foreign countries, says To.

Case law on the immigration legislation defines espionage as intelligence-gathering done covertly.

The lawyer for would-be immigrants Yuxia Gao and Yong Zhang argued that while the office’s work may be unpalatable to Canadians, its aims are well known, especially to any of its potential targets.

But Rochester ruled that the evidence available to the IRCC suggested the office’s methods, including surveillance, subversion and intelligence-gathering, are indeed surreptitious.

It’s unclear how many of the large contingent of Chinese officials stationed at the embassy and consulates in Canada are involved with the office. But the agency’s presence here has surfaced repeatedly.

Vincent Ke, a Conservative member of the Ontario legislature , attended a week-long seminar in China in 2013 organized by the office, where delegates were urged to pursue the “Chinese dream.”

An esteemed engineering professor at Polytéchnique Montreal and a University of Waterloo professor on the institution’s advisory “secretariat” have both served as expert advisors to the OCAO.

The Office heaped praise on the Confederation of Toronto Chinese Canadian Organizations in an online article a few years ago, citing its willingness to promote Chinese interests.

The website of the greater-Toronto-based Council of Newcomers Organizations described “roots-seeking” trips for local children to China run by the OCAO.

The office was subsumed three years ago into the United Front Work Department, a CCP agency that spearheads influence operations in foreign countries. The merger means China is devoting “far more resources” to such efforts, leading Australian researcher Alex Joske has argued.

Q and A: Transitioning to a new world order with U of A professor Andy Knight

Hamdi Issawi - Edmonton Journal

Thinking about the future of global governance, University of Alberta political science professor Andy Knight has his eye on the international stage and the complex, interconnected pieces holding it together. But for how long?


© Provided by Edmonton Journal

Prof. Andy Knight is a political science professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

Currently the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in International and Area Studies at Yale University, Knight is spending the academic year south of the border to research and write a book on the subject, tentatively titled International Organization Today, which posits that the world as we know it is in a transitional state marked by uncertainty, disorder and fragmentation as it shifts to a new world order.

In a telephone interview with Postmedia, Knight said he’s still keeping tabs on current events both foreign and domestic — from the streets of downtown Ottawa to Ukraine’s borders — noting signs of this transitional state, which he plans to explore, among other ideas, in the upcoming book.

Is it a stretch to call the current Russia-Ukraine crisis a sign of this transition to a new world order?

Not really. One of the premises I begin with is that we are living in an interregnum — a period of time when there is a transition from one world order to the next. I’m of the view that we are living in that kind of transition right now, from the 1945 world order, which we’ve come to embrace and understand quite well, to a different kind of a world order that we haven’t yet seen the full outlines of.

This period of interregnum is one that’s filled with flux, uncertainty, disorder and violence. If you go into history, you’ll find that almost every single transitional period is also accompanied by this kind of fragmentation and violence and disequilibrium.

What you see happening between Russia and Ukraine is simply one symptom of that broader pattern, and part of this transitional moment. The reason it’s difficult to resolve is we don’t have a power that’s strong enough to control Russia right now. The United States is very reluctant to have a military confrontation with Russia for obvious reasons. They both hold nuclear weapons and could cause a major problem if those two countries decided to utilize those weapons.

What about closer to home, like the convoy protest in Ottawa?

You have to ask yourself, ‘What else is driving this?’ Over time, the demonstrations have been morphing from anti-vaccine mandate protests to anti-Trudeau or anti-government protests. They’re dissatisfied with the government and the way the government handles these things.

But there’s an element of right-wing political violence that’s been creeping into this movement. We saw the arrests of some of the leaders or architects of this convoy, and you get a sense that there is something else behind it that’s a little bit more sinister.

It could be anti-government, which means that it could be closer to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in Washington, D.C. There could also be anti-immigrant and antisemitic sentiments because you see the swastikas and the different flags of white supremacy.

There are a lot of things happening, but the main thing I see is this tension and a lack of civility. They talk about freedom, but it’s freedom for themselves, not freedom for the other people around them.

This whole thing is an indication of the kind of fragmentation I’m talking about, where all ideas are being questioned, forms of governance are being questioned, the material capabilities of people and businesses are being challenged. This seems to be an indication that the old world order — from 1945 to the present — is beginning to die, and the new one is emerging somehow.

So the question would be, “How best can we shape that new world order?”

When did this period of transition begin?

I think it begins around 1989-1990, at the end of the Cold War when the Soviet Union fell apart and the Berlin Wall came down. These are all signs that something was changing. Involvement in Afghanistan was one of the biggest factors in the fall of the Soviet Union. It overstretched itself, and big powers tend to do that.

We went from a bipolar structure in the world to a unipolar system in the sense that the United States became the global policeman, and the go-to country for countries who wanted to get social and economic development and loans, et cetera.

The new challenge is this competition between the United States and China. There’s a kind of movement towards another bipolar arrangement, whereby the United States is declining in its influence at the same time that China seems to be rising.

What will the next world order look like?

We don’t know what the end picture is going to look like. What I can do, though, is identify the elements that are creating this new world order.

We’ve gotten a lot of agreement around things like sustainable development goals and getting people out of poverty. In 1945 there wasn’t a lot of attention paid to that, but it has now become a big issue, along with the environment and idea of building resilient health-care systems to address pandemics.

The creation of parallel institutions to the United Nations is another one, because not everything gets done within the UN. Sometimes you have to do things outside that system, so we’ve created a number of bodies like the G7 (or G8 dependent on whether Russia is in or not).

This changing environment within which this new world order is emerging, and institutions that have been developed, is a little different. The ideas created to undergird these institutions may be a little different, too. Who knows what the next dominant ideology will be?

That’s why I keep calling for things like justice, equity, fairness, diversity and inclusion — I think these represent, in large part, the best of people. Let’s see if we can focus on the more positive things, and maybe — in our social construction of this new world order — construct a world that’s much better than the one we’re living in right now.

Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.

hissawi@postmedia.com

@hamdiissawi

Concordia University of Edmonton Faculty Association votes no confidence in university's president

Kellen Taniguchi - EDMONTON JOURNAL

A large majority of Concordia University of Edmonton Faculty Association (CUEFA) members have voted they have no confidence in the current president’s leadership.


© Provided by Edmonton Journal

Tim Loreman, president and vice-chancellor of Concordia University of Edmonton, outside the Magrath Mansion on Aug. 18, 2021.

In a Tuesday news release, CUEFA said 91 per cent of its members registered to vote and 90 per cent voted no confidence in president Tim Loreman’s leadership.

Glynis Price, acting CUEFA president, said when the faculty association was on strike in January , members spent a lot of time together and noticed a lot of members had similar views of Concordia University of Edmonton’s (CUE) current leadership and the feelings remained post-strike.

“The workplace was still a very toxic, a very unstable workplace culture which is incredibly difficult when we’re looking at a workplace characterized by disfunction, by fear, threats and reprisal,” Price told Postmedia.

Price said there has been “significant issues” with decisions about research at the university, funding research for its membership, financial health and the lack of long-term fundraising. She noted there has been a surplus in the past, but fundraising is one of a university president’s main jobs.

CUEFA members pointed to four main areas of concern when voting they had no confidence in the school’s leadership — a toxic workplace culture, the president’s failure to effectively manage the core operations of the university, the financial management of the institution and the damage done to relations between CUE and key stakeholders.

“It’s really difficult if we’re trying to be collaborative and work in relationships with all of these different stakeholders if we have broken relationships,” said Price.

Price said CUEFA notified the chair of CUE’s board of governors about the no-confidence vote on Feb. 14 and requested the board give a formal reply by Tuesday. CUEFA said it didn’t receive a reply by its deadline.

Although the strike came to an end last month, Price said it didn’t address the ongoing leadership problems.

“If we don’t work on these issues, if we maintain the current course with the issues that are in place, it’s not going to be sustainable in the long run for the health or advancement of the university,” said Price.

She said CUEFA is not expecting a resignation letter or a firing, but it wants more conversations to happen to take steps forward in addressing the university’s current issues.

ktaniguchi@postmedia.com

twitter.com/kellentaniguchi

U.S. warns Canada, again, that it's not happy about proposed digital services tax


WASHINGTON — The U.S. Trade Representative's office has once again made its feelings clear about Canada's plan to implement a controversial new tax on digital services.

The office issued an abrupt statement today, the final day of public consultation on the proposal, urging the federal government to change course.

It wants Ottawa to focus instead on a multilateral plan for a global tax regime for so-called multinational enterprises — tech giants like Meta, Facebook's parent company, and Alphabet Inc., which owns Google.

Canada's proposal, which includes a three per cent tax worth $3.4 billion in revenue over five years, would only take effect in 2024 if those efforts don't come to pass.

But the USTR says that as a signatory to what's known as the "two-pillar" solution, Canada's unilateral alternative risks undermining the global tax plan by encouraging other countries to follow its lead.

The office says should Canada's plan go ahead, it would be seen by the U.S. — home to many of the impacted companies — as discriminatory and a violation of American trade law.

The global minimum tax agreement is supported by 136 countries, including all members of the G20 as well as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

The first "pillar" of that plan is a moratorium on new digital service taxes while G20 and OECD members hash out the jurisdictional and sharing details of the complex scheme.

"As Canada is fully aware, the United States has serious concerns about measures that single out American firms for taxation while effectively excluding national firms engaged in similar lines of business," the USTR says in its public submission.

It calls the plan a "counterproductive unilateral measure" and urges Canada to "focus efforts on engaging constructively in the multilateral OECD negotiations — ensuring that its unilateral measure proposal is unnecessary and that Canadian interests are protected."

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland promised to delay the implementation of the tax for two more years, provided the OECD plan has not already kicked in. But the USTR notes it would be retroactive until the start of the current year.

Officials in Freeland's office say they are pressing ahead with the plan in the name of defending Canadian interests, but hope it won't be necessary to implement it.

Federal ministers have cited the Liberal government's own election promises, including a commitment to require digital companies to compensate legacy media outlets for linking to their work.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 22, 2022.

The Canadian Press

Energy agency: Methane emissions higher than countries claim


PARIS (AP) — The International Energy Agency said Wednesday that emissions of planet-warming methane from oil, gas and coal production are significantly higher than governments claim.

The Paris-based agency said its analysis shows emissions are 70% higher than the official figure provided by governments worldwide. If all leaks were plugged, the methane captured would be enough to supply all of Europe's power sector, it said.

The findings underline “the urgent need for enhanced monitoring efforts and stronger policy action to drive down emissions of the potent greenhouse gas,” it said.

Experts say methane is responsible for almost a third of the temperature increase that has occurred since the start of the industrial revolution. The gas remains in the atmosphere for a much shorter period of time than carbon dioxide, however.

Bringing down methane emissions is seen as a crucial and quick way to limit further warming over the coming decades.

The IEA said its annual Global Methane Tracker report shows emissions from the energy sector grew by almost 5% last year. It said the volume of methane leaked amounted to about 180 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

“That is equivalent to all the gas used in Europe’s power sector and more than enough to ease today’s market tightness,” the IEA said.

The agency's executive director, Fatih Birol, called for greater transparency on the size and location of methane emissions.

New satellites have helped experts pinpoint the sources of large emissions, though regions along the equator, the far north and offshore are still poorly covered.

The countries with the highest emissions are China, Russia, the United States, Iran and India, the IEA said.

The Associated Press

An Idaho potato farm threatened to fire foreign workers and deport them to Mexico if they didn't accept wages below the legal limit, the DOL says

gdean@insider.com (Grace Dean) - 

Jorgensen Management gave back nearly $160,000 in unpaid wages to workers after a DOL investigation.

 valentinrussanov/Getty Images

An Idaho potato farm intentionally violated H-2A rules and underpaid guest workers, the DOL said.
The farm even threatened to end their contracts if they didn't accept illegal wages, per the DOL.
Jorgensen Management showed a "willful disregard for the law," a DOL director said.

A potato farm in Idaho "intentionally" violated H-2A visa rules and even threatened to fire guest workers if they didn't accept wages below the legal limit, according to the US Department of Labor (DOL).

Jorgensen Management, a potato farm in Bancroft, southeast Idaho, gave workers nearly $160,000 in unpaid wages after a DOL investigation.

The farm showed a "willful disregard for the law," in which it "created a toxic workplace and victimized these vulnerable workers," Carrie Aguilar, district director of the DOL's Wage and Hour Division in Portland, Oregon, said in a press release Tuesday.

Jorgensen Management could not immediately be reached for comment by Insider.

The H-2A program allows employers to bring foreign nationals to the US to temporarily fill agricultural jobs when they can't find enough domestic workers. The employers have to provide workers with transport to the US and housing.

But Jorgensen Management didn't pay guest workers for inbound transportation costs or meet housing safety and health standards, the DOL said.

The farm also gave the workers less than three-quarters of the hours guaranteed on their contracts and didn't provide wage statements to workers or pay them on time, the DOL said.

Labor laws require H-2A workers to be paid at least twice a month.

The DOL said that Jorgensen Management also used intimidation to "exploit" workers by threatening to terminate their contracts and send them back to Mexico if they refused to accept wages at a lower rate than legally required under the H-2A program.

The farm also failed to pay the required rates to 69 domestic workers hired alongside H-2A visa workers, per the DOL.

The department said it had recovered $159,256 in unpaid wages for the workers and had assessed $25,430 in civil money penalties.

Guest workers and immigrant labor are essential to US agriculture. Insider previously reported that US immigration laws mean that some farms are struggling to get enough labor, which limits how much produce they can grow and harvest.

Poverty, fear drive exodus from Syria’s one-time IS capital

By SAMYA KULLAB

1 of 5

Milhem Daher, 35, drinks tea as he sits with his family outside his house in the village of Kasrat Srour, in the southeastern countryside of the Raqqa province, Syria, Monday, Feb. 7, 2022. Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the self-proclaimed IS caliphate and home to about 300,000, is now free, but many of its residents try to leave. Those with capital are selling their property to save up for the journey to Turkey. Those without money struggle to get by. (AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad)


RAQQA, Syria (AP) — In a square that a few years ago was a grim stage for the Islamic State group’s brutal rule in the Syrian city of Raqqa, Mahmoud Dander sat deep in thought.

He wants to leave Syria, but has a problem: The 75-year-old has no money. He recalled the old days before protests and wars led to his country’s collapse and national currency crash: Syria wasn’t thriving back then, but he had work, his children had university degrees and decent futures, and food was always on the table.

That’s all gone now. “We have fallen, just like our currency,” he said.

Raqqa, the former de facto capital of the self-proclaimed IS caliphate and home to about 300,000 people, is now free, but many of its residents try to leave. Those with property are trying to sell it to save up for the journey to Turkey. Those without money struggle to get by.

At least 3,000 people left Raqqa for Turkey in 2021, according to the city’s civil council co-chair Mohammed Nour.

Their reasons span the spectrum of post-war life in Syria, one of the world’s most complex conflict zones. They include economic collapse and widespread unemployment following one of the worst years of drought, as well as fears of an IS comeback and a proliferation of criminal gangs. And there is the looming specter of conflict between rival powers that control various parts of northern Syria, including Turkey, Russia and Syrian government forces.

On the surface, the city’s slow recovery from IS rule is evident. Cafes and restaurant are full of patrons. Kurdish-led forces stand guard at every major intersection.

But poverty is rampant in the majority Arab city administered by U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces. People line up for basics such as bread. Unemployed young men sit around. Water and electricity are limited. Many live among bombed-out ruins. Local officials say at least 30% of the city remains destroyed.

Poverty and unemployment drive young men into the arms of IS. Kurdish investigators say new IS recruits captured last month had been lured by money. At the same time, the Kurdish-led city administration received applications from 27,000 job seekers last year, but had no jobs.

Milhem Daher, a 35-year-old engineer, is in the process of selling his home, businesses and properties to pay a smuggler to take him and his family of eight to Turkey, a key route for Syrian migrants trying to win asylum in Europe.

He plans to leave as soon as he has enough money.

Daher had survived Raqqa’s recent violent history, including the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, and the 2014 takeover by IS militants who turned the city into the capital of their caliphate spanning parts of Syria and Iraq. A U.S.-led coalition dropped thousands of bombs on the once vibrant city to drive out IS, liberating it in 2017. IS lost its last territorial foothold in Syria in 2019.

Daher emerged from the dark chapter ready to invest, but said he faced many obstacles, including a lack of resources and export markets. “If you sell to locals, it won’t generate profit,” he said.

For his first project, Daher bought seeds to cultivate vegetables. When it was time to harvest, traders weren’t interested in paying the asking price.

He purchased trucks to lift rubble amid reconstruction efforts. But the quality of the vehicles quickly degraded as a result of poor fuel in the market and lack of materials for upkeep. A potato chip factory and internet service company also floundered.

Finally, Daher bought livestock, but a devastating drought led to shortages in animal feed. His cattle died.

Now he is selling off what remains of these failed businesses to start a new life. He needs $10,000.

In Raqqa, having money can also be a problem as kidnappings-for-ransom are on the rise.

Real estate developer Imam al-Hasan, 37, was taken from his home and held for days by attackers in military fatigues. To secure his release, he paid $400,000, money belonging to him and traders who trusted him with their life savings. He complained to the local authorities, but he said nothing was done. A month after the ordeal, bruises are still visible on his face and legs.

Al-Hasan, too, is selling his home and belongings. “There is nothing left for me here,” he said.

Two of Al-Hasan’s relatives who left in September and recently arrived in Europe said that apart from economic uncertainty it was the threat of more violence that pushed them to leave.

“At any moment the situation could explode, how can I stay there?” said Ibrahim, 27. He and Mohammed, 41, spoke under the condition that only their first names be used, citing security concerns for their wives and children still living in the city.

Like many others, their journey from northeastern Syria to Europe began via tunnels along the town of Ras al-Ain, which straddles the border with Turkey.

The smuggler had charged $2,000 per person. From there, the path to Europe was riddled with risk.

Ibrahim arrived in Germany last week after an arduous journey that began in Belarus. Mohammed walked for treacherous miles before setting off for Greece by boat. He ended up in The Netherlands in October.

Mohammed is waiting for a chance to bring his family from Raqqa to Europe, he said in a phone interview. For now, he is without work.

Back in Raqqa, Reem al-Ani, 70, prepares tea for two. Her son is the only one of four children who has remained in Syria. The others are spread across the world.

The stairs leading to their apartment are riddled with bullet holes, remnants of battles to dislodge IS. The ceilings are charred from smoke.

She has grown accustomed to a silent house. “I miss them,” she said of her children.

Nearby, in Naim Square, the elderly Dander says he barely makes ends meet, surviving on his rapidly diminishing pension from his previous government job.

His three children have university degrees in engineering and literature, and one was a teacher, he said. But none have been able to find work. He wishes he had the money to help them leave.

“I spend every day thinking about how to get out,” he said.

Rights group: Canada blocking return of citizens from Syria
By ZEINA KARAM

 Kimberly Gwen Polman, a Canadian national, poses for a portrait at camp Roj in Syria, April 3, 2019. Canadian authorities are preventing Polman and a child under age 12, who is not related to Polman, who are detained in a camp in Syria from returning home for life-saving medical treatment, contradicting policies that allow such repatriations, Human Rights Watch, a prominent rights group said Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)


BEIRUT (AP) — Canadian authorities are preventing a Canadian woman and a child detained in a camp in Syria from returning home to get life-saving medical treatment, contradicting policies that allow such repatriations, a prominent rights group said Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch identified the two “gravely ill” Canadians as Kimberly Polman, 49, and a child under age 12. It withheld further details about the child, who is not related to Polman, including the name and medical condition, to protect their privacy.

There are nearly 50 Canadian nationals stuck in camps in northeastern Syria. Some of them have been held since even before the Islamic State group lost the last sliver of land in its self-declared caliphate in March 2019. More than half of the Canadians are children, most under age 7, HRW said.

They are among tens of thousands of women and children from about 60 countries being held by U.S.-backed Kurdish-led fighters in the camps. Many of them are wives, widows and children of IS fighters,

A few countries have agreed to repatriate their citizens but many others, including Canada, have refused to do so.

The Associated Press met with Polman earlier this month at Roj Camp, where she has been for three years. She looked tired and said she was suffering from kidney disease, high blood pressure and other problems. She said there is one doctor for almost 1,000 women and 3,000 children and no facilities to deal with specific illnesses.

“Women walk around here with conditions that would normally be hospitalized,” she said. “You just get used to being sick here all the time and you just kind of keep going with life, because it’s either that or a huge depression.”

“One day you will come into my tent (and) I will be rocking in a corner … and I am trying not to do that,” she said.

HRW said a former American ambassador who has taken several foreigners out of northeast Syria on behalf of their home countries told the rights group that in days of exchanges ending on Feb. 15, Canadian authorities refused his offer to escort Polman and the child to a Canadian consulate in neighboring Iraq.

“How close to death do Canadians have to be for their government to decide they qualify for repatriation?” said Letta Tayler, associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch.

A message seeking comment from Canada’s embassy in Beirut was not immediately returned.

The families of the two Canadians have repeatedly implored government authorities to repatriate the woman and child and have sent them medical records attesting to their need for life-saving care.

“Canada should be helping its citizens unlawfully held in northeast Syria, not obstructing their ability to get life-saving health care,” Tayler said.

Despite the fact that Kurdish-led authorities in northeast Syria have called on countries to repatriate their citizens, Canada considers the repatriation of its nationals from Syria a security threat.

However, the Canadian government has said that if its citizens reach a consulate, it will assist them, including if they request repatriation, HRW said.

On Feb. 10, more than a dozen U.N. independent experts called on Canada to urgently repatriate Polman to treat life-threatening illnesses, including hepatitis, kidney disease, and an autoimmune disorder, HRW said.

Polman told the AP she contracted hepatitis four times while in the camp, as well as pneumonia, adding that her kidney disease was probably a result of dirty water.

___

Associated Press writer Samya Kullab contributed from Hassakeh, Syria.