YOU KNOW THEY HAVE TOO MUCH MONEY....
US Navy intends to decommission some of its newest warships
COULD USE THEM IN BLACK SEA

By DAVID SHARP

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FILE - The USS Detroit, a Freedom-class of littoral combat ship, arrives Friday, Oct. 14, 2016, in Detroit. The Navy that once wanted smaller, speedy warships to chase down pirates has made a speedy pivot to Russia and China and many of those ships, like the USS Detroit, could be retired. 

The Navy wants to decommission nine ships in the Freedom-class, warships that cost about $4.5 billion to build. 

(AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)


PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The Navy that once wanted smaller, speedy warships to chase down pirates has made a speedy pivot to Russia and China — and many of those recently built ships could be retired.

The U.S. Navy wants to decommission nine ships in the Freedom-class of littoral combat ships — warships that cost about $4.5 billion to build.

The Navy contends in its budget proposal that the move would free up $50 million per ship annually for other priorities. But it would also reduce the size of the fleet that’s already surpassed by China in sheer numbers, something that could cause members of Congress to balk.

Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations, defended the proposal that emphasizes long-range weapons and modern warships, while shedding other ships ill equipped to face current threats.

“We need a ready, capable, lethal force more than we need a bigger force that’s less ready, less lethal, and less capable,” he said Monday at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space symposium in Maryland.

All told, the Navy wants to scrap 24 ships, including five cruisers and a pair of Los Angeles-class submarines, as part of its cost-cutting needed to maintain the existing fleet and build modern warships. Those cuts surpass the proposed nine ships to be built.

Most of them are older vessels. However, the littoral combat ships that are targeted are young. The oldest of them is 10 years old.

The littoral combat ship program was announced after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The ships topped 50 mph (80 kph) — fast enough to chase down pirates — and were highly maneuverable, even in shallow water, thanks to steerable waterjets instead of propellers.

The ships were supposed to be made versatile through plug-and-play mission modules for surface combat, mine-sweeping operations or anti-submarine warfare. But those mission modules were beset by problems, and the anti-submarine capability was canceled in the new budget.

And what about that speed? The fastest ship can’t outrun missiles, and firing up those marine turbines for an extra burst of speed turned the ships into gas guzzlers, analysts said. Early versions also were criticized as too lightly armed and armored to survive combat.

The speedy Freedom-class ships proposed for decommissioning feature a traditional steel hull. That entire class of ships suffers from a propulsion defect that will be costly repair. The Navy proposes keeping a second variant, the aluminum Independence class.

U.S. Senate Armed Services Chair Jim Inhofe said the program was plagued by troubles from the start, and that “moving forward the Navy must avoid similar acquisition disasters.”

U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Virginia, was more blunt, tweeting that it “sucks” to be decommissioning so many ships, especially newer ones.

“The Navy owes a public apology to American taxpayers for wasting tens of billions of dollars on ships they now say serve no purpose,” she said.

Some detractors proclaimed littoral combat ships to be the Navy’s “Little Crappy Ship,” but that’s not fair, said defense analyst Loren Thompson.

“It’s not a little crappy ship. It does what it was supposed to do. What it was supposed to do isn’t enough for the kind of threats that we face today,” said Thompson, from the Lexington Institute.

In the Navy’s defense, threats shifted swiftly from the Cold War to the war on terror to the current Great Power Competition in which Russia and China are asserting themselves, he said.

In the end, the Navy may be content with smaller numbers of Freedom-class ships for maritime security and small surface combatant operations, said Bryan Clark, defense analyst at the Hudson Institute.

Congress must sign off on the Navy’s proposal to decommission ships ahead of their projected service life.

The House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday grilled Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Army Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the proposal.

U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Virginia, suggested the ship cuts were “grossly irresponsible” when the U.S. Navy has dipped from 318 ships to 297, while the Chinese fleet has grown from 210 to 360 ships over the past two decades.

Milley said it’s important to focus on the Navy’s capabilities rather than the size of its fleet.

“I would bias towards capability rather than just sheer numbers,” he said.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY 

Haunting Canada boarding school shot wins World Press Photo

By MIKE CORDER

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This image provided by World Press Photo which won the World Press Photo Of The Year award by Amber Bracken for The New York Times, titled Kamloops Residential School, shows Red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside commemorate children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, an institution created to assimilate Indigenous children, following the detection of as many as 215 unmarked graves, Kamloops, British Columbia, 19 June 2021. (Amber Bracken for The New York Times/World Press Photo via AP)


THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A haunting image of red dresses hung on crosses along a roadside, with a rainbow in the background, commemorating children who died at a residential school created to assimilate Indigenous children in Canada won the prestigious World Press Photo award Thursday.

The image was one of a series of the Kamloops Residential School shot by Canadian photographer Amber Bracken for The New York Times.

“It is a kind of image that sears itself into your memory. It inspires a kind of sensory reaction,” Global jury chair Rena Effendi said in a statement. “I could almost hear the quietness in this photograph, a quiet moment of global reckoning for the history of colonization, not only in Canada but around the world.”

It was not the first recognition for Bracken’s work in the Amsterdam-based competition. She won first prize in the contest’s Contemporary Issues category in 2017 for images of protesters at the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.

Her latest win came less than a week after Pope Francis made a historic apology to Indigenous peoples for the “deplorable” abuses they suffered in Canada’s Catholic-run residential schools and begged for forgiveness.

Last May, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced the discovery of 215 gravesites near Kamloops, British Columbia. It was Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school and the discovery of the graves was the first of numerous, similar grim sites across the country.

“So we started to have, I suppose, a personification of some of the children that went to these schools that didn’t come home,” Bracken said in comments released by contest organizers. “There’s also these little crosses by the highway. And I knew right away that I wanted to photograph the line of these these crosses with these little children’s clothes hanging on them to commemorate and to honor those kids and to make them visible in a way that they hadn’t been for a long time.”

Indigenous peoples elsewhere in the world featured in two other of the annual competition’s top prizes. The winners were chosen out of 64,823 photographs and open format entries by 4,066 photographers from 130 countries.

“Together the global winners pay tribute to the past, while inhabiting the present and looking towards the future,” Effendi said.

Australian photographer Matthew Abbott won the Photo Story of the Year prize for a series of images for National Geographic/Panos Pictures that document how the Nawarddeken people of West Arnhem Land in northern Australia fight fire with fire by deliberately burning off undergrowth to remove fuel that could spark far larger wildfires.

The Long-Term Project award went to Lalo de Almeida of Brazil for a series of photos for Folha de São Paulo/Panos Pictures called “Amazonian Dystopia” that charts the effects of the exploitation of the Amazon region, particularly on Indigenous communities forced to deal with environmental degradation.

In regional awards announced previously, Bram Janssen of The Associated Press won the Stories category in Asia with a series of photos from a Kabul cinema and AP photographer Dar Yasin earned an honorable mention for photos from Kashmir titled “Endless War.”

Yasin, together with Mukhtar Khan and Channi Anand, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in feature photography for their coverage of the war in Kashmir.

Pakistan’s top court blocks PM’s move to stay in power

By KATHY GANNON and MUNIR AHMED

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Lawyers and supporters of Pakistani opposition parties celebrate after Supreme Court decision, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday, April 7, 2022. Pakistan's Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against Prime Minister Imran Khan, saying his move to dissolve Parliament and call early elections was illegal and ordering that the house be restored. (AP Photo/Anjum Naveed)


ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Thursday blocked Prime Minister Imran Khan’s bid to stay in power, ruling that his move to dissolve Parliament and call early elections was illegal. That set the stage for a no-confidence vote by opposition lawmakers, who say they have enough support to oust him.

The decision followed four days of hearings by the top court on the political crisis. Khan had tried to sidestep the no-confidence vote by accusing his political opponents of colluding with the United States to unseat him.

Lawmakers will probably convene Saturday for the vote, and the opposition says it has the 172 votes in the 342-seat house needed to oust Khan after several members of his own party and a key coalition partner defected.

“It’s an unfortunate decision,” Khan’s ally and Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry told The Associated Press following the unanimous ruling by the five-member Supreme Court. He warned that “instability will increase and I see no end to the crisis.”

Dozens of heavily armed police backed by paramilitary Rangers surrounded Pakistan’s stately white marble Supreme Court building. Roads leading to the court were blocked and a heavily armed contingent of police also encircled the nearby Parliamentary Lodges where opposition and government lawmakers stay when Parliament is in session.

Opposition leader Shahbaz Sharif, who heads the Pakistan Muslim League and is the likely candidate for prime minister if the no-confidence vote succeeds, welcomed the ruling as a victory for “justice and the supremacy of law.”

The political crisis began Sunday when an embattled Khan dissolved Parliament and set the stage for early elections. Chaudhry had stood in Parliament and accused the opposition of “disloyalty to the state” by working with a foreign power to bring about a “regime change.”

The deputy parliamentary speaker Qasim Suri cited Chaudhry’s allegation to toss out the no-confidence resolution, but the Supreme Court ruled that Suri had no grounds to do so.

Chaudhry did not say what Khan’s next step might be. Khan previously had called for nationwide demonstrations to protest what he called Washington’s interference in Pakistan’s affairs.

During the week, the Supreme Court heard arguments from Khan’s lawyers, the opposition and the country’s president before handing down the decision Thursday night, after iftar, the meal that breaks the daylong fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“This is the unfortunate fact about Pakistani politics — the political issues, which should be settled in the parliament are instead brought to the Supreme Court to settle,” said analyst Zahid Hussain, who has authored several books on militancy in the region and Islamabad’s complicated relationship with Washington.

“It is just a weakness of the system,” Hussain added.

Khan said the U.S. wants him gone because of what he describes as his independent foreign policy, which often favors China and Russia. He also has been a strident critic of Washington’s war on terrorism and was criticized for a visit to Moscow on Feb. 24, hours after Russia invaded Ukraine.

The U.S. State Department has denied any involvement in Pakistan’s internal politics.

“Khan tapped into a potent vein of anti-American sentiment in Pakistan that is unlikely to dissipate any time soon,” said Elizabeth Threlkeld, Pakistan expert at the U.S.-based The Stimson Center. “Young people make up the majority in the country and grew up during the two-decades-long war on terror, which is deeply controversial in Pakistan.”

She warned the anti-U.S. rhetoric could further complicate Pakistan’s relationship with Washington

Pakistan’s top court or its powerful military have consistently stepped in whenever turmoil engulfs a democratically elected government. The army has seized power and ruled for more than half of Pakistan’s 75-year history.

The military has remained quiet in the latest crisis, although army chief Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa told a security summit in Islamabad last weekend that Pakistan wants good relations with China, a major investor, and also with the U.S., the country’s largest export market.

“The ongoing constitutional crisis is a major test for Pakistan’s institutions, which stems from both tensions between the prime minister and the military and economic pressures that created an opening for the opposition,” Threlkeld said.

“While a serious challenge, this is also an opportunity for Pakistan’s institutions to demonstrate their resilience should they manage to restore a legitimate constitutional process,” she said.

The latest political chaos has spilled over into the country’s largest province of Punjab, where 60% of Pakistan’s 220 million people live and where Khan’s ally for chief provincial minister was denied the post on Wednesday, after his political opponents elected their own candidate.

——

Follow Kathy Gannon on Twitter at www:twitter.com/Kathygannon

Despite risk of death, Thailand sends Myanmar refugees back

THAI JUNTA ALLIED WITH BURMA JUNTA

By VICTORIA MILKO and KRISTEN GELINEAU

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Displaced people from Myanmar carry donated lunch boxes to their tents along the Thai side of the Moei River in Mae Sot, Thailand on Feb. 5, 2022. Thailand has sent thousands of people fleeing escalating violence by Myanmar’s military back home despite the risk to their lives, and despite international refugee laws that forbid the return of people to countries where their lives may be in danger. They are now living in limbo, forced to ricochet between both sides of the river dividing the two countries as the fighting in their home villages rages and briefly recedes. (AP Photo)


JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The young woman from Myanmar and her family now live amid the tall grasses of a riverbank on the Thai border, trapped in limbo between a country that does not want them and a country whose military could kill them.

Like thousands of others fleeing mounting violence after a military takeover in Myanmar last February, Hay left her village for neighboring Thailand in search of a safe haven that does not exist. Returning to Myanmar would place her and her family at risk of death. And yet that is precisely what Thai authorities — wary of jeopardizing their relationship with Myanmar’s ruling military — tell them to do at least once a week, she says.

“When they told us to go back, we cried and explained why we can’t go back home,” says Hay, who lives in a flimsy tent on the Moei River, which divides the two countries. The Associated Press is withholding Hay’s full name, along with the full names of other refugees in this story, to protect them from retaliation by authorities. “Sometimes we cross back to the Myanmar side of the river. But I have not returned to the village at all.”

Though international refugee laws forbid the return of people to countries where their lives may be in danger, Thailand has nonetheless sent thousands of people who fled escalating violence by Myanmar’s military back home, according to interviews with refugees, aid groups and Thai authorities themselves. That has forced Hay and other Myanmar refugees to ricochet between both sides of the river as the fighting in their home villages rages and briefly recedes.

“It is this game of ping-pong,” says Sally Thompson, executive director of The Border Consortium, which has long been the main provider of food, shelter and other support to Myanmar refugees in Thailand. “You can’t keep going back and forth across the border. You’ve got to be somewhere where it’s stable.....And there is absolutely no stability in Myanmar at the moment.”

Since its takeover last year, Myanmar’s military has killed more than 1,700 people, arrested more than 13,000 and systematically tortured children, women and men.

Thailand, which is not a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention, insists Myanmar’s refugees return to their embattled homeland voluntarily. Thailand also insists it has complied with all international non-refoulement laws, which dictate that people must not be returned to a country where they would face torture, punishment or harm.

“As the situation on the Myanmar side of the border improved, the Thai authorities facilitated their voluntary return to the Myanmar side,” says Thailand Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Tanee Sangrat. “Thailand remains committed and will continue to uphold its long-held humanitarian tradition, including the principle of non-refoulement, in assisting those in need.”

Somchai Kitcharoenrungroj, governor of Thailand’s Tak province, where thousands of people from Myanmar have sought refuge, said many crossed illegally when there was no fighting.

“We had to send them back as the laws said,” Somchai says. “When they faced the threats and crossed here, we never refused to help them. We provided them all basic needs according to the international human rights principle.”

“For example,” he added, “last week we also found some crossing here illegally and we sent them back.”

More than half a million people have been displaced inside Myanmar and 48,000 have fled to neighboring countries since the military’s takeover, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The UNHCR says Thai government sources estimate around 17,000 Myanmar refugees have sought safety in Thailand since the takeover. But only around 2,000 are currently living on the Thai side of the border, according to the Thai-Myanmar Border Command Center.

“UNHCR continues to strongly advocate that refugees fleeing conflict, generalized violence and persecution in Myanmar should not be forcibly returned to a place where their lives and freedoms could be in danger,” the agency said.

Most of those fleeing clashes between the military and ethnic minority armed groups along the border must wade across the rivers dividing the two countries, belongings and babies balanced atop their shoulders. Those who reach Thailand are not allowed to settle in the decades-old refugee camps that dot the region and house 90,000 people who left Myanmar years before the takeover.

Instead, they have been relegated to crowded cattle sheds or rickety tents made of tarpaulin and bamboo. The moment there is a pause in fighting, refugees and aid groups say, Thai authorities send them back, despite Myanmar’s military taking over villages, burning homes and setting land mines.

“I have seen some of them being forced to get in a car, get off at the river, and cross over to the other side,” says Phoe Thingyan, secretary of Thai aid group the Overseas Irrawaddy Association.

In Myanmar’s border regions, ethnic minority armed groups have been fighting the central government for decades in a bid for greater autonomy, with more clashes after the military takeover. Despite some pauses, witnesses along the Thai border say the fighting there is now the worst it’s been in decades. At times, the gunfire, bombing and fighter jets have been audible from Thailand, and even houses on the Thai side of the river shake with the blasts.

Life along the river is grim and frightening.

“It is not far from the war zone,” says Naw Htoo Htoo, of the ethnic Karen Human Rights Group. “The elderly and children are not comfortable in the makeshift tents….There are illnesses not only caused by the weather, but also by COVID-19.”

In December, 48-year-old Myint fled the Karen small town of Lay Kay Kaw, near the Thai border, with her husband and three children. Officials in Thailand sent them back. With few options, Myint and her family joined around 600 others living near the river on the Myanmar side.

In February, heavy rains flooded their camp, and Myint fears the looming monsoon season will make their already miserable situation even worse.

“I think the refugee camps will be in a lot of trouble,” she says. “We can do nothing but make our temporary tents a little stronger.”

On the Thai side of the river, Hay’s tent offers virtually no protection from the sweltering sun, mosquitoes and drenching rains.

The family yearns for their home and their corn fields near Lay Kay Kaw. On Dec. 16, Hay and her husband grabbed their 3-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son and ran amid a cacophony of gunfire. When they reached the river, the fighting was still so close they knew they could not safely stay on the Myanmar side. And so they trudged through the water to Thailand.

“We want to go back but we have no house,” she says.

There are no toilets, and no way to make money. Food and other supplies are scarce, yet the Thai authorities have refused to allow international NGOs and the UNHCR access to the refugees.

“The Thai authorities have said that they have resources to respond, and the INGOs and the UN will not get access,” says Thompson of The Border Consortium. “The Thai authorities are very much keeping this a low visibility, very basic response.”

Most of the aid has come from local Thai community groups. Phoe Thingyan, of the Overseas Irrawaddy Association, says his group sends 1,000 boxes of rice each morning and evening to the refugees, but that he has had to ask the Thai military for permission to accept donations.

The Thai military doesn’t even want to acknowledge the existence of Myanmar refugees in Thailand because that alone could upset Myanmar’s military leaders, says Patrick Phongsathorn, human rights specialist with the Asia-based group Fortify Rights.

“The Thai military is intent on controlling the situation, controlling the narrative, because obviously they have political skin in the game, in what’s happening in Myanmar,” he says. “They are very close with the Myanmar junta authorities.”

Somchai, the Thai governor, seemed to hint at this: “When the fighting stopped, they had to go back,” he said of the refugees Thailand returned. “Otherwise, it could be a sensitive issue for the relationship between both countries.”

The Thai military declined to comment.

Those who remain in Thailand end up in not just physical but legal limbo, vulnerable to exploitation. One Myanmar refugee in Thailand who spoke to the AP said “police cards” – unofficial documents that allow displaced people to avoid arrest or deportation -- are purchased monthly through middlemen for an average cost of 350 Thai baht ($10). Cards are marked with a photo or symbol showing that the holders have paid the latest monthly bribe.

Without the cards, refugees risk further harassment or possible arrest by Thai authorities.

“They will take you to the police station and they will check your documents, test your urine for drug use,” says the refugee, whose name is being withheld by the AP for security reasons. “Police intimidate the people, and the cards are the easiest way to avoid that.”

Tanee, the Foreign Affairs spokesperson, said the government “categorically denied” the existence of any extortion or bribery.

Though 23-year-old Win and his family initially pitched their tent on the Thai side of the river, Thai authorities soon sent them back. The chemistry student now regularly crosses the river through chest-deep water to retrieve food, clothes and other donated items from the Thai side. Then he turns around and wades back to his campsite in Myanmar, where he lives alongside around 300 other refugees, including children and the elderly.

They are surviving, but only just. What he wants more than anything, he says, is the one thing he cannot have.

“I just want to go home,” he says. “I do not want anything else.”

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Gelineau reported from Sydney.

Experts say US suspension of COVID aid will prolong pandemic

AMERIKAN CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY

By MARIA CHENG and CHRIS MEGERIAN

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Ugandans queue to receive Pfizer coronavirus vaccinations at the Kiswa Health Centre III in the Bugolobi neighborhood of Kampala, Uganda Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022. In the latest Senate package targeted at stopping the coronavirus, U.S. lawmakers dropped nearly all funding for curbing the virus beyond its borders, in a move many health experts describe as dangerously short-sighted. They warn the suspension of COVID aid for poorer countries could ultimately spur the kind of unchecked transmission needed for the next worrisome variant to emerge. (AP Photo/Hajarah Nalwadda, File)

LONDON (AP) — In the latest Senate package targeted at stopping the coronavirus, U.S. lawmakers dropped nearly all funding for curbing the virus beyond American borders, a move many health experts slammed as dangerously short-sighted.

They warn the suspension of COVID-19 aid for poorer countries could ultimately allow the kind of unchecked transmission needed for the next worrisome variant to emerge and unravel much of the progress achieved so far.

The U.S. has been the biggest contributor to the global pandemic response, delivering more than 500 million vaccines, and the lack of funding will be a major setback. The money has paid for numerous interventions, including a mass vaccination campaign in the Cameroonian capital that saw hundreds of thousands of people get their first dose, as well as the construction of a COVID-19 care facility in South Africa and the donation of 1,000 ventilators to that country.

Other U.S.-funded vaccination campaigns in dozens of countries, including Uganda, Zambia, Ivory Coast and Mali, could also come to a grinding halt

“Any stoppage of funds will affect us,” said Misaki Wayengera, a Ugandan official who heads a technical committee advising the government on the pandemic response. He said Uganda has leaned heavily on donor help — it received more than 11 million vaccines from the U.S. — and that any cuts “would make it very difficult for us to make ends meet.”

“This is a bit of a kick in the teeth to poor countries that were promised billions of vaccines and resources last year in grand pledges made by the G7 and the G20,” said Michael Head, a global health research fellow at Britain’s Southampton University.

“Given how badly we’ve failed on vaccine equity, it’s clear all of those promises have now been broken,” he said, adding that without concerted effort and money to fight COVID-19 in the coming months, the pandemic could persist for years.

While about 66% of the American population has been fully immunized against the coronavirus, fewer than 15% of people in poorer countries have received a single dose. Health officials working on COVID-19 vaccination in developing countries supported by the U.S. say they expect to see a reversal of progress once the funds disappear.

“Vaccination will stop or not even get started in some countries,” said Rachel Hall, executive director of U.S. government advocacy at the charity CARE. She cited estimates from USAID that the suspended funding would mean scrapping testing, treatment and health services for about 100 million people.

Although vaccines are more plentiful this year, many poorer countries have struggled to get shots into arms and hundreds of millions of donated vaccines have either expired, been returned or sat unused. To address those logistical hurdles, U.S. aid has financed critical services in countries across Africa, including the safe delivery of vaccines, training health workers and fighting vaccine misinformation.

For example, in November the U.S. Embassy in the Cameroonian capital set up a tent for mass vaccination: Within the first five days, more than 300,000 people received a dose. Those kinds of events will now be harder to conduct without American funds.

Hall also noted there would be consequences far beyond COVID-19, saying countries struggling with multiple disease outbreaks, like Congo and Mali, would face difficult choices.

“They will have to choose between fighting Ebola, malaria, polio, COVID and more,” she said.

Jeff Zients, the outgoing leader of the White House COVID-19 task force, expressed regret the legislation doesn’t include resources for the international pandemic fight, noting that would also compromise efforts to track the virus’ genetic evolution.

“It is a real disappointment that there’s no global funding in this bill,” he said. “This virus knows no borders, and it’s in our national interest to vaccinate the world and protect against possible new variants.”

Still, Zients announced the U.S. would be the first to donate “tens of millions” of doses for children to poorer countries and said more than 20 nations had already requested the shots.

J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, lamented that lawmakers were erring on the side of optimism about the pandemic precisely when another surge might be arriving.

“We’ve made that mistake several times in this pandemic. And we may be making that mistake again,” he said. In recent weeks, COVID-19 cases caused by the hugely infectious omicron subvariant BA.2 have surged across Europe, and American officials say they expect a U.S. spike soon.

Other experts worried the suspension of U.S. global support for COVID-19 might prompt officials to drop current vaccination goals. The World Health Organization had set a target of immunizing at least 70% of people in all countries by the middle of this year, but with nearly 50 countries vaccinating fewer than 20% of their populations, hitting that target is highly unlikely.

Instead, some organizations like the Rockefeller Foundation and Duke University have pushed for officials to “refocus vaccination goals away from vaccinating 70% of all adults by summer to vaccinating 90% of those most at-risk in each country,” in what some critics say is an implicit acknowledgment of the world’s repeated failures to share vaccines fairly.

In Nigeria, which has so far received at least $143 million in COVID-19 aid from the U.S, authorities dismissed suggestions their coronavirus programs would suffer as a result of lost funding. The Nigerian president’s office said help from the U.S. was mostly “in kind” via capacity building, research support and donations of laboratory equipment and vaccines. “We are confident that this will not cause any disruption of our current programs,” it said.

However, others warned the U.S. decision set an unfortunate precedent for global cooperation to end the pandemic at a time when fresh concerns like the Ukraine war are drawing more attention.

U.S. President Joe Biden originally planned to convene a virtual summit in the first quarter of this year to keep international efforts on track, but no event has been scheduled.

“In light of the ongoing war in Ukraine, we don’t yet have a final date for the summit, but we are working closely with countries and international partners to advance commitments,” said a senior Biden administration official who was not authorized to comment publicly.

As of this month, WHO said it had gotten only $1.8 billion of the $16.8 billion needed from donors to speed access to coronavirus vaccines, medicines and diagnostics.

“Nobody else is stepping up to fill the void at the moment and the U.S. decision to suspend funding may lead other donor countries to act similarly,” said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, director of Duke University’s Global Health Innovation Center.

Keri Althoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, described the U.S. suspension of funding as “devastating.”

“How could this possibly be what we’re debating right now?” she asked. “It’s a moral obligation to the rest of the world to continue to contribute to this global pandemic response, not only to protect ourselves but to protect people from around the world.”

____

Megerian reported from Washington. AP writers Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda; Mogomotsi Magome and Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg, and Chinedu Asadu in Lagos, Nigeria, contributed to this report.

THIRD WORLD USA

Social programs weak in many states with tough abortion laws

LONG READ
By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, CAMILLE FASSETT and JASEN LO

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FILE - Leslie Rosas, 15, leaves the mobile health clinic with her one-month-old daughter Cielo Angela Carrizalez after their checkup at the mobile health clinic in Garland, Texas, on April 11, 2006. The clinic is just one way of helping teen mothers in Texas. States with some of the nation's strictest abortion laws are also some of the hardest places to have and raise a healthy child, especially for the poor, according to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

States with some of the nation’s strictest abortion laws are also some of the hardest places to have and raise a healthy child, especially for the poor, according to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.

The findings raise questions about the strength of the social safety net as those states are poised to further restrict or even ban abortion access following an expected U.S. Supreme Court decision later this year. The burden is likely to fall heaviest on those with low incomes, who also are the least able to seek an abortion in another state where the procedure remains widely available.

Bill Lambert, right, Phil Walk, center, and Brenda Serrato demonstrate outside of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Jan. 7, 2015, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman, File)

Mississippi has the nation’s largest share of children living in poverty and babies with low birth weights, according to 2019 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control, the latest available. Texas has the highest rate of women receiving no prenatal care during their first trimester and ranks second worst for the proportion of children in poverty who are uninsured, the data show.

Laws from both states are at the center of the nationwide fight over access to abortion. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority signaled willingness in a Mississippi case to severely erode or even strike down Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion legal nationwide until a baby can survive outside the womb. Numerous states with Republican majorities are poised to follow the strictest interpretation of the ruling.

If Roe is overturned, 26 states are certain or likely to quickly ban abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that supports abortion rights. Many of those states ranked poorly in measurements that nonpartisan advocacy groups consider key to ensuring children get a healthy start. Among them is Louisiana, which has the second-highest rate of babies with low birth weight and where 27% of children live in poverty.

A patient speaks with receptionist and office assistant Mattie Nichols, right, at Sisters in Birth, a Jackson, Miss., clinic that serves pregnant women on Dec. 17, 2021. 

(AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

Anti-abortion lawmakers there say they will further promote adoption and foster-care programs if abortion is banned.

“We win the biggest battle if Roe v. Wade is overturned. But then there’s still some battles that we must fight. And I’m going to love a child in the womb, at 5 years old, at 10, at 15,” said Louisiana state Sen. Katrina Jackson, a Democrat who opposes abortion and also wants to address health care and education needs.

While some women could travel out of state for abortions, “there will be people who will be forced to carry their pregnancies to term simply because they will not be able to get to that care,” said Destiny Lopez with the abortion-access group All(asterisk) Above All.

Data analyzed by the AP illustrates the hurdles pregnant women and their children face in states with the most stringent abortion restrictions and how access to resources can lag behind that of states that have more permissive abortion laws.

The AP analyzed figures from several federal government agencies in seven categories — metrics identified by several nonprofits and experts as essential to determining whether children get a healthy start. They were: the percentage of children in poverty; participation in the Women, Infants, Children federal assistance program; the rate of child abuse or neglect; women experiencing intimate partner violence during pregnancy; low birth weight; women receiving no prenatal care in their first trimester; and uninsured children in poverty.

Generally, states with preemptive abortion bans or laws that greatly restrict abortion access showed the worst rankings. Alabama and Louisiana joined Mississippi as the top three states with the highest percentage of babies born with low birth weights. Texas, Indiana and Mississippi had the highest percentage of women receiving no prenatal care during their first trimester. Wyoming, Texas and Utah had the highest percentage of poor children 18 and younger who had no health insurance.

Texas inserted itself into the nationwide debate over abortion last year with an unusual law that leaves enforcement of an abortion ban after six weeks of pregnancy to civilians rather than state or local authorities — a law the Supreme Court largely left in place.

A weaker safety net pattern isn’t consistent for all measurements. Some Democratically controlled states with more permissive abortion laws also measured poorly in some categories.

This June 21, 2013 image shows a map at Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque, N.M., that depicts food distribution points across New Mexico.

 (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File)

New Mexico, where Democrats last year overturned a pre-Roe abortion ban, ranks third highest for the share of its children living in poverty and for the percentage of pregnant women who experience violence from an intimate partner. It’s also among states with the highest rates of abuse and neglect for children under 5, also called maltreatment. Delaware ranks fifth highest for the percentage of women who receive no early prenatal care and is among the states with the highest percentage of low birth weight babies. California is among the top five states — between Oklahoma and Arkansas — for the share of women and children on food stamps.

Those states are generally outliers. Overwhelmingly, the data show far more challenges for children and their parents in states that have passed abortion restrictions.

In response to AP’s findings, several conservative state lawmakers said women can give their newborns up for adoption and said they would support funding increases for foster-care programs. In Oklahoma, Senate President Pro Tem Greg Treat, a Republican and longtime abortion opponent, said he would work to increase salaries for child-welfare workers and boost state money for foster parents who adopt, as well as send more public money to groups that offer alternatives to abortion.

“I have a 10-year history of trying to improve our rankings there,” he said. “So, yes, there’s going to be a commitment there, but it won’t be a new commitment. It will be a continuing effort on our part.”

Others in Oklahoma say the teen birthrate, fourth highest in the nation, would likely increase if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade and a state “trigger law” banning most abortions takes effect. More than 10% of the 4,424 abortions in Oklahoma in 2019 were for women younger than 20, according to the most recent state health statistics.

Kathy Harms, who had her first child at age 16, worked jobs in retail and fast food to support her family and said she sometimes had to choose between paying the electric or the gas bills.

“We have to juggle which one we can risk getting turned off,” said Harms, executive director of Teen emPower, a teen-pregnancy-reduction group in Oklahoma. “It’s an endless cycle of stress and wondering if it is ever going to get better ... every aspect of life is more difficult for single mothers.”

Some lawmakers and anti-abortion activists have said they believe that outlawing or severely restricting abortion would lead people to change their sexual behavior.

“We think that a decision from the court could very well affect the way that people regard being a mother or a father ... that certain things might be done differently than they are now,” said Tony Lauinger, chair of Oklahomans for Life.

Others say that view isn’t realistic and doesn’t align with the reasons most women seek an abortion.

Maleeha Aziz, an organizer for the Texas Equal Access Fund, had an abortion when she was 20 after birth control failed. She was a recent immigrant from Pakistan and a college student sharing a one-bedroom apartment who knew she couldn’t afford to raise a child financially.

Maleeha Aziz, an organizer for the Texas Equal Access Fund, listens to her team video meeting at her home office in Allen, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Her broader experience also reflected the health risks inherent in many pregnancies. She had a condition called hyperemesis gravidarum, which causes persistent, extreme nausea and vomiting.

“I was a vegetable. I could not move,” said Aziz, who later had a daughter. “Pregnancy is not a joke. It is the hardest thing that a person’s body will ever go through.”

She’s now seeing panic and anxiety among people seeking abortions in Texas.

“I can’t believe this is our reality,” she said.

Maleeha Aziz, an organizer for the Texas Equal Access Fund, works from her desk as her pet cat wanders in Allen, Texas. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Jazmin Arroyo, a 25-year-old old single mom in Kokomo, Indiana, had to stop working as a receptionist after her first child was born because she couldn’t afford day care on top of rent, a car payment and other expenses.

Indiana has the second-highest rate of women — 18% — who don’t receive prenatal care during their first trimester and has among the highest percentages of children in poverty without insurance, more than 9%.

Arroyo found a job as a restaurant host, but it didn’t offer insurance and she was already starting to drown in bills when she had her second child, who has a heart defect that required special care. She now has thousands in unpaid medical bills.

“I never could have imagined how hard it would end up being,” she said.

The reasons why people seek abortions are complex, but financial concerns are often a top factor, according to research from Diana Greene Foster, a professor of reproductive science at the University of California, San Francisco.

Children born to women who were denied an abortion and carried the pregnancy to term are more likely to live in a household where there isn’t enough money for basic living expenses, her work has found. When women can get abortions, the children they do have fare better.

“So there is a clear effect on poverty, but there is also an effect on child development,” Greene Foster said.

In states with strict abortion laws, performance on measurements such as access to health insurance for low-income people is linked in part to political realities: Leaders who have supported abortion restrictions for decades generally also have espoused small-government principles and opposed measures such as Medicaid expansion, said legal historian Mary Ziegler at Florida State University’s law school.

“The pro-life movement has made its political bones by relying on the GOP,” she said. “The GOP has not been in favor of expanding the social safety net for young children and pregnant people, and the pro-life movement, which may have otherwise wanted to do that, is not willing to expend political capital on that because its priority is abortion, basically, and nothing beyond it.”

In Texas, state Sen. Nathan Johnson, a Democrat who has unsuccessfully pushed to expand Medicaid to more low-income residents in the state, said he is heartened that lawmakers recently extended that coverage for new mothers and added guardrails to prevent eligible kids from losing health care. But he said much more needs to be done.

“I get tired of very important but relatively small measures like these two that are very specific acting as a substitute for an overall responsible state policy towards health care,” Johnson said.

Texas in 2005 created a program called Alternatives to Abortion. As with similar groups in other states, the program funds pregnancy counseling, adoption services and classes about life skills, budgeting and parenting.

“This social service network is really critical in our mind to right now supporting pregnant women and expecting families,” said John Seago, the legislative director for Texas Right to Life. “But also as we look forward to potentially a post-Roe Texas, these are the types of social services that are going to be even more in demand.”

Most such groups, known generally as crisis pregnancy centers, are not licensed to provide medical care.

While adoption can be an alternative, its expensive for adoptive families and has a fraught history in the U.S. marred at times by racism, said Dr. Joia Crear-Perry, an obstetrician-gynecologist who founded and serves as president of the National Birth Equity Collaborative. Children can end up lingering for years in the foster-care system, which is troubled in Texas.

Carrying babies to term also presents health risks. In Texas, 20% of women don’t get prenatal care in their first trimester, according to pregnancy-risk assessment data collected by the CDC in 2016, the most recent year for which data was available for the state.

A lack of prenatal care increases the risk of the mother dying or delivering a baby with low birth weight. Black women bear the heaviest risk: They are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women, said Oriaku Njoku, executive director of the group Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, which provides abortion and reproductive counseling in seven Southern states. Some lack insurance, others live in counties without OB-GYNs.

“Our folks deserve better,” she said.

___

Lo is a former Associated Press data journalist. Also contributing were AP writers Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City; Casey Smith in Indianapolis; and Jamie Stengle in Dallas; and data journalist Linda Gorman in Boston. Former AP writers Iris Samuels in Helena, Montana, and Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge. Louisiana, also contributed.

___

Fassett is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Roussel: Women's domestic labour is exploited by men

France's communist presidential candidate Fabien Roussel talked about his policy on gender equality and said that “the family is a place where women's labour is exploited by men”

ANF
PARIS
Wednesday, 6 Apr 2022,

Fabien Roussel, the Communist Party’s candidate for the presidential elections to be held on 10 April in France, talked about his program on gender equality in education in an interview with the "Aufeminin" media outlet.

Roussel spoke about sexual education, which is compulsory but not widely instructed in secondary and high schools. “I will implement the laws that the National Education does not implement due to a lack of public resources and political will, and I will meet the obligations to systematize education based on consent, equality, respect for bodies,” Roussel said.

A SOCIETY FREE OF GENDER BIAS

Roussel emphasized that he wanted to "build a society free from gender bias" in every field, including kindergarten, higher education and vocational education, in order to overcome the stereotypes in society. “No more pink tax system that forces women to pay more for the same product,” Roussel added.

“Once these stereotypes are eliminated, equality can be achieved in the public sphere and daily life,” Roussel noted.

FAMILY IS TO WOMEN WHAT FACTORY IS TO WORKER

“It's good to share tasks, it's better to think about doing them yourself. Domestic work is what we call a task, which, according to INSEE, amounts to 1,000 billion Euros. This is 50 percent of GDP which is mainly produced by women and is not included in the state budget.

Family is a place where women's labour is exploited by men. The family is to women what the factory is to the proletarians. The health crisis has revealed the essential role of women at home, which is one of the most important sectors for society.”

Roussel added: “There is a need to struggle against gender stereotypes from kindergarten to high education. Therefore, we must better teach the contribution of women to social and scientific progress and to our political and institutional life.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for WAGES FOR HOUSEWORK 

TURKEY

Members of public union SES appear in court

Co-Chair of the Trade Union of Public Employees in Health and Social Services (SES), Selma Atabey, said that they faced a conspiracy in the case against them and added, “We stand behind what we do and our cause.”


ANF
ANKARA
Wednesday, 6 Apr 2022

The first hearing of the case against 8 trade unionists including the Co-Chair of the SES and its administrators is being held at the Ankara 22nd High Criminal Court. Numerous unions and non-governmental organizations are monitoring the hearing. Representatives of the Public Services International (PSI), the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) and UNISON are monitoring the hearing in an act of international solidarity.

Speaking to the Mesopotamia Agency (MA) before the hearing, SES Co-Chair Atabey said that they were detained on May 25, 2021, and were informed about the charges against them after 8 days of detention.

“We received the indictment two weeks ago. They accused union directors like us who have worked in unions for years, of terrible allegations. They put forward incredibly funny things and statements we made about the problems experienced by health workers following the outbreak of COVID-19 as evidence. Moreover, a solidarity project introduced by us is cited as a crime,” Atabey said.

'CONSPIRACY CASE'

Atabey noted that former Co-Chair of the SES, Gönül Erden, has been under detention for about 8 months and stressed that the case is nothing but a conspiracy against them.

“We know that we will be acquitted. We stand behind what we do and our cause,” she said.

‘This is a crazy, unjust attack’: Pink Floyd re-form to support Ukraine

David Gilmour and Nick Mason, flanked by Nitin Sawhney and Guy Pratt, who have contributed to the new Pink Floyd recording. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

Exclusive: Disgusted by the Russian invasion, David Gilmour speaks about band’s first brand new song in 28 years, which samples a Ukrainian musician now on the front line – and expresses ‘disappointment’ in Roger Waters

Alexis PetridisThu 7 Apr 2022 16.36 BST

A couple of weeks ago, Pink Floyd’s guitarist and singer David Gilmour was asked if he’d seen the Instagram feed of Andriy Khlyvnyuk, frontman of Ukrainian rock band BoomBox. Gilmour had performed live with BoomBox in 2015, at a London benefit gig for the Belarus Free Theatre – they played a brief, endearingly raw set of Pink Floyd songs and Gilmour solo tracks – but events had moved on dramatically since then: at the end of Feburary, Khlyvnyuk had abandoned BoomBox’s US tour in order to fight against the Russian invasion.

On his Instagram, Gilmour found a video of the singer in military fatigues, a rifle slung over his shoulder, standing outside Kyiv’s St Sofia Cathedral, belting out an unaccompanied version of Oh, the Red Viburnum in the Meadow, a 1914 protest song written in honour of the Sich Riflemen who fought both in the first world war and the Ukrainian war of independence. “I thought: that is pretty magical and maybe I can do something with this,” says Gilmour. “I’ve got a big platform that [Pink Floyd] have worked on for all these years. It’s a really difficult and frustrating thing to see this extraordinarily crazy, unjust attack by a major power on an independent, peaceful, democratic nation. The frustration of seeing that and thinking ‘what the fuck can I do?’ is sort of unbearable.”

The result is Hey Hey, Rise Up!, a new single by Pink Floyd that samples Khlyvnyuk’s performance, to be released at midnight on Friday with proceeds going to Ukrainian humanitarian relief.

Most observers assumed Pink Floyd were long defunct. They last released original new music 28 years ago, although in 2014 Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason reconvened to turn outtakes from their 1994 album The Division Bell into the largely instrumental The Endless River, as a tribute to the band’s late keyboard player Rick Wright. At the time, Gilmour was insistent that was the finale for a band that began in 1965 and sold more than 250m albums. Pink Floyd couldn’t tour without Wright, who died of cancer in 2008, and there was to be no more music: “It’s a shame,” he told the BBC, “but this is the end.”

David Gilmour recording the new Pink Floyd song. 

Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

The invasion of Ukraine changed Gilmour’s mind. “I hate it when people say things like ‘As a parent, I …’, but the practicalities of having an extended Ukrainian family is part of this. My grandchildren are half-Ukrainian, my daughter-in-law Janina is Ukrainian – her grandmother was in Kharkiv until three weeks ago. She’s very old, disabled, in a wheelchair and has a carer, and Janina and her family managed to get her all the way across Ukraine to the Polish border and now they’ve managed to get her to Sweden, literally last week.”

After “finding the chords for what Andriy was singing and writing another section that I could be” – Gilmour rolls his eyes – “the rock god guitar player on”, he hastily convened a recording session last week with Mason, Pink Floyd’s longstanding bassist Guy Pratt, and musician, producer and composer Nitin Sawhney on keyboards, layering their music with Khlyvnyuk’s sampled voice; Rick Wright’s daughter Gala also attended. They also shot a video for the song, with Mason playing a set of drums decorated with a painting by Ukrainian artist Maria Primachenko (the fate of her paintings remains unknown following the bombing of a museum in Ivankiv).

“I rang Nick up and said: ‘listen, I want to do this thing for Ukraine. I’d be really happy if you played on it and I’d also be really happy if you’d agree to us putting it out as Pink Floyd.’ And he was absolutely on for that.

“It’s Pink Floyd if it’s me and Nick, and that is the biggest promotional vehicle; that is, as I said, the platform that I’ve been working on for my whole adult life, since I was 21. I wouldn’t do this with many more things, but it’s so vitally, vitally important that people understand what’s going on there and do everything within their power to change that situation. And the thought, also, that mine and Pink Floyd’s support of the Ukrainians could help boost morale in those areas: they need to know the whole world supports them.

Andriy Khlyvnyuk is greeted by a fan in Kyiv on 2 March. 

Photograph: Marcus Yam/LOS ANGELES TIMES/REX/Shutterstock

“When I spoke to Andriy, he was telling me about the things he’d seen, and I said to him, ‘you know this has been on the BBC here in England, and on television around the world? Everyone is seeing these terrible things that are happening.’ And he said, ‘Oh really? I didn’t know.’ I don’t think that most people there have got such great communication and they don’t really understand that actually, the things they are going through are being shown to the world.”

Gilmour says it took some time for him to track Khlyvnyuk down, trawling Instagram and trying phone numbers. Eventually he found an email address. “He wanted to speak on FaceTime – I think he wanted to be sure it was me. The next time I saw him, he was in hospital, having been injured by a mortar. He showed me this tiny quarter-inch piece of shrapnel that had embedded itself in his cheek. He’d kept it in a plastic bag. But you can imagine, if those kind of things are going off, it could just as easily have been a piece over an inch across, which would have taken his head off.”

Nick Mason during the recording session. 

Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

Prior to the band’s unexpected reconvening, Pink Floyd’s post-1987 output – and the solo work of their late founder, Syd Barrett – was removed from streaming services in Russia and Belarus as part of a cultural boycott. Their most famous work, from the 1960s and 70s, was not removed, leading to rumours that moves to do so had been blocked by former Pink Floyd member Roger Waters, whose relations with his former bandmates are legendarily strained. A week before Russia invaded Ukraine, Waters told an interviewer on Russia Today that talk of a Russian invasion was “bullshit ... anybody with an IQ above room temperature knows [an invasion] is nonsense”; he has subsequently condemned the invasion calling it “the act of a gangster”, while also condemning “propaganda to demonise Russia”. It’s a subject on which Gilmour won’t be drawn. “Let’s just say I was disappointed and let’s move on. Read into that what you will.”

Gilmour last spoke to Khlyvnyuk on Tuesday. “He said he had the most hellish day you could imagine, going out and picking up bodies of Ukrainians, Ukrainian children, helping with the clearing up. You know, our little problems become so pathetic and tiny in the context of what you see him doing.”

Nevertheless, Gilmour sent him the song and was “pleased and relieved that he liked it. I can tell you what he said,” he nods, fumbling for his mobile phone and reading out Khlyvnyuk’s message. “Thank you, it’s fabulous. One day we’ll play it together and have a good stout afterwards, on me.” He smiles. “I said, ‘yes, let’s do that’.”

Scientists find fossil of dinosaur ‘killed on day of asteroid strike’


Remains of thescelosaurus in North Dakota believed to date back to extinction of species 66m years ago

A Thescelosaurus neglectus. The dig has been filmed for a BBC documentary. 

Photograph: Jocelyn Augustino/The Guardian

Kevin Rawlinson

Thu 7 Apr 2022 11.28 BST

Scientists believe they have been given an extraordinary view of the last day of the dinosaurs after they discovered the fossil of an animal they believe died that day.

The perfectly preserved leg, which even includes remnants of the animal’s skin, can be accurately dated to the time the asteroid that brought about the dinosaurs’ extinction struck Earth 66m years ago, experts say, because of the presence of debris from the impact, which rained down only in its immediate aftermath.


“It’s absolutely bonkers,” said Phillip Manning, a professor of natural history at the University of Manchester. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the thescelosaurus leg discovered at the Tanis dig site in North Dakota was the “ultimate dinosaur drumstick”.


Mystery owner of Stan the T rex finally revealed following $31.8m auction

He said: “The time resolution we can achieve at this site is beyond our wildest dreams … This really should not exist and it’s absolutely gobsmackingly beautiful. I never dreamt in all my career that I would get to look at something a) so time-constrained; and b) so beautiful, and also tells such a wonderful story.”

The dig has been filmed for a BBC documentary Dinosaurs: The Final Day with Sir David Attenborough; during which the broadcaster will review the fossil finds. “When Sir David looked at ‘[the leg], he smiled and said ‘that is an impossible fossil’. And I agreed,” Manning said.

He said the team had also discovered the remains of fish that had breathed in impact debris from the asteroid strike, which occurred 1,864 miles (3,000km) away in the Gulf of Mexico.

That and the presence of other debris that rained down for a specific period immediately after the asteroid strike allowed them to date the site much more accurately than standard carbon dating techniques.

Robert DePalma, the University of Manchester graduate student who is leading the Tanis dig, said: “We’ve got so many details with this site that tell us what happened moment by moment, it’s almost like watching it play out in the movies. You look at the rock column, you look at the fossils there, and it brings you back to that day.”

The BBC reported that the team had also found the fossilised remains of a turtle that was skewered by a wooden stake and small mammals and their burrows, as well as skin from a triceratops, a pterosaur embryo inside its egg and what scientists think could be a fragment from the asteroid impactor itself.