Funding needed for climate disasters has risen ‘more than 800%’ in 20 years

Only about half the funds required are being provided by rich countries, according to a report by Oxfam

Women drink water at a distribution point at Muuri, one of 500 camps for the half a million-plus people who have abandoned their homes in Somalia’s worst drought for 40 years.

 Photograph: Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP/Getty Images

Arthur Neslen

THE GUARDIAN

Tue 7 Jun 2022 

The funding needed by UN climate disaster appeals has soared by more than 800% in 20 years as global heating takes hold. But only about half of it is being met by rich countries, according to a new report by Oxfam.

Last year was the third costliest on record for extreme weather events such as droughts, floods and wildfires with total economic costs estimated at $329bn, nearly double the total aid given by donor nations.

While poor countries appealed for $63-75bn in emergency humanitarian aid over the last five years, they only received $35-42bn, leaving a shortfall that Oxfam condemned as “piecemeal and painfully inadequate”.

As diplomats sit down in Bonn on Tuesday for the first session of climate talks on “loss and damage” – costs related to all climate destruction – Danny Sriskandarajah, Oxfam GB’s chief executive, described the finance gap as “unacceptable”.

He said: “Rich countries are not only failing to provide sufficient humanitarian aid when weather-related disasters hit. They are also failing to keep their promise to provide $100bn a year to help developing countries adapt to the changing climate, and blocking calls for finance to help them recover from impacts such as land that’s become unfarmable and infrastructure that’s been damaged.

“Wealthy countries like the UK need to take full responsibility for the harm their emissions are causing and provide new funding for loss and damage caused by climate change in the poorest countries.”

Campaigners point out that the UK actually cut aid to climate disaster-struck countries before last autumn’s Cop26 conference in Glasgow. Rich nations blocked attempts at the Cop to set up a financial mechanism to cover claims for loss and damage, an issue that will resurface in the Bonn talks.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change chief, Patricia Espinosa, said on Monday that the time had come to address loss and damage issue “in an open, constructive and respectful manner”.

The Cop president, Alok Sharma, declined to comment but a British government spokesperson said: “Cop26 marked a significant advance in action on loss and damage, we look forward to this momentum being maintained.”

In a sign that the issue has risen up the global agenda, a G7 foreign ministers’ statement last month nodded to loss and damage for the first time, while Germany’s new climate envoy, Jennifer Morgan, suggested a new “global shield” for climate as a possible solution.

The percentage of official development assistance (ODA) moneys used for climate spending barely changed last decade, even as the sums required by catastrophe-hit countries were rocketing.



In 2017, extreme weather was cited as a “major” factor in the majority of UN humanitarian appeals for the first time, the Oxfam report said. By 2021, it was a “major” or “contributing” factor in 78% of all such appeals, up from 35.7% in 2000. The UN expects a further 40% increase in climate disasters by 2030 but the human and financial cost from extreme weather is already mounting.

More than half a million people have abandoned their homes in Somalia’s worst drought for 40 years, Save the Children said on Monday. A quarter of a million people died during the country’s last famine in 2011 – half of them children under five years old. Severe climate-related droughts are also continuing to spread in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, while South Sudan suffers a fifth year of extreme flooding.

The four countries are collectively responsible for just 0.1% of current global emissions, compared with the 37% emitted by rich and industrialised countries, Oxfam said.

“The report’s findings are stark,” said Madeleine Diouf Sarr, the chair of the Least Developed Countries bloc at the UN climate talks. “We emit almost nothing, but in our group of countries there are islands sinking, landslides burying homes, hospitals being washed away by catastrophic weather events. Rich countries have historic[al] responsibility for this crisis, why shouldn’t they contribute to cleaning up the mess?”

Asad Rehman, the director of War on Want, added that the report showed “the brutal reality of a climate apartheid that is unfolding before our eyes”.

“Rich countries are committing arson on a planetary scale and refusing to stop pouring more oil and gas on the fire they started. But when faced with the bill for the damage they have caused they claim to have empty pockets,” he said. “It’s a deadly response shaped by a colonial mentality that for 500 years inflicted injustice and inequity, with the lives of those with black or brown skins in poorer countries deemed less valuable to those of western citizens.”

Comedian John Oliver offers to buy Melbourne’s ‘demonic’ banana statue

Artwork by Adam Stone provoked a public backlash, culminating in its attempted decapitation and removal from a Fitzroy street

Melbourne’s $22,000 traffic-calming and public-enraging banana sculpture before its attempted decapitation and subsequent removal, and the man who wants to buy it from Yarra city council, US comedian John Oliver. Composite: The Guardian


Calla Wahlquist
THE GUARDIAN

Tue 7 Jun 2022 

Comedian John Oliver has offered to buy a controversial banana statue that was pulled off the streets of Melbourne after being attacked by vandals

The $22,000, 1.8m tall anthropomorphic fibreglass banana was commissioned from artist Adam Stone by the City of Yarra. Stone said it was a representation of hubris and climate change.

It was erected on Rose Street, Fitzroy, and intended to slow traffic, but within weeks it had been put into indefinite storage after a strong public backlash that culminated in someone trying to decapitate it with a saw.

The artwork was paid for out of a $100,000 grant from the Transport Accident Commission.

The council has refused to say whether it would ever release the statue from storage.

The mayor, Sophie Wade, said it was not prepared to part with the statue, but offered Oliver a private viewing.

“We are so excited to hear John Oliver loves our banana sculpture as much as we do, but I am sad to say the City of Yarra is not ready to part with it just yet,” she said.

A giant yellow flower pot has replaced the $22,000 vandalised fibreglass banana statue on Rose St in Fitzroy, Melbourne. Photograph: Sam Strutt/The Guardian

On Sunday, Oliver offered to buy the statue for $10 and exchange it for a similarly sized statue of an alligator with a raised middle finger, which his production company developed as part of a proposal to replace all confederacy statues in Florida with statues of the belligerent reptile.

In addition to the alligator, which is named Herman, Oliver offered to sweeten the deal by donating $10,000 to Foodbank in Melbourne and $5,000 to Australia Zoo.

The Australia Zoo donation would be directed toward the John Oliver Koala Chlamydia Ward, which was established by actor Russell Crowe, who donated almost $80,000 that Oliver spent on various film memorabilia at Crowe’s divorce auction.

“Since the citizens of Melbourne seem to think that their money has been wasted, I might have a solution for you,” Oliver said in his show Last Week Tonight on Sunday. “I would gladly take that banana off your hands.”

Oliver said that Herman the alligator could fulfil the banana’s traffic-slowing duties.

“If you take us up on our deal, we will make those donations and, as a sweetener, send you this magnificent creature on a ship,” he said.


John Oliver: ‘Your basic rights could become crimes tomorrow’

“And frankly, I think it would fit right in there. What could be more Australian than a dangerous animal telling anyone who comes near it to go fuck themselves. So if you take us up on our offer, this guy is yours Melbourne. You have exactly one week to get back to us. Send us your banana.”

Oliver said the “demonic fucking banana” was “simply amazing”.

“It’s basically the Cate Blanchett of banana sculptures, in that it is a hauntingly pale Australian creature with a very striking bone structure.”

Wade said the council recognised the artwork’s value.

“I would like to officially extend an invitation to John Oliver to come down under and visit Yarra,” she said. “I would be happy to take him on a tour of our wonderful city and organise a private viewing of the banana so they can get acquainted.”

“We would also like to thank everyone who has expressed concern over the banana’s wellbeing. I am pleased to advise the banana is currently recuperating after the traumatic experience late last year and we will keep the community updated on how the banana is travelling.”

‘Every second counts’: wife of British journalist missing in Amazon urges action

Alessandra Sampaio, wife of Dom Phillips, tells Brazilian authorities: ‘Please answer the urgency of the moment with urgent actions’


Dom Phillips' sister makes emotional plea to help find journalist missing in Amazon – video


Tom Phillips in Rio de JaneiroTue 7 Jun 2022

The wife of a British journalist who has gone missing in a remote corner of the Brazilian Amazon notorious for illegal mining and drug trafficking has urged authorities to intensify their search efforts.

Dom Phillips, a longtime Guardian contributor, vanished on Sunday morning while journeying by boat through the Javari region of Amazonas state where he was reporting for a book he is writing about conservation.


Brazilian Alessandra Sampaio, who lives with her husband in the north-eastern city of Salvador, said in statement: “Brazilian authorities, our families are in despair. Please answer the urgency of the moment with urgent actions.


Fears for safety of British journalist missing in Brazilian Amazon

“As I make this appeal they have been missing for more than 30 hours … [and] in the forest every second counts, every second could be the difference between life and death,” Sampaio added.

“All I can do is pray that Dom and Bruno [Araújo Pereira] are well, somewhere, and unable to continue with their journey because of some mechanical problem, and that all this will end up being just another story in these full lives of theirs.”

Phillips, 57, was travelling with Bruno Araújo Pereira, a celebrated Indigenous expert who has spent years working to protect the more than two dozen tribes who call the rainforests their home.

As a second day of searches came to an end without any sign of the two men, the journalist’s sister, Sian Phillips, said in a video statement on Monday night: “We knew it was a dangerous place but Dom really believed it’s possible to safeguard the nature and the livelihood of the Indigenous people.

“We are really worried about him and urge the authorities in Brazil to do all they can to search the routes he was following. If anyone can help scale up resources for the search that would be great because time is crucial.

“We love our brother and want him and his Brazilian guide found ... every minute counts,” she added.

Security forces and members of the Indigenous agency Funai reportedly spent most of Monday searching for the men on a stretch of river near the town of Atalaia do Norte – the main entry point to the Javari region.

A navy search team was expected to arrive later, amid a growing public outcry.

The two missing men had been due to reach Atalaia do Norte on Sunday morning, having entered the reserve by river the previous week, but never made it to their destination.

Phillips and Pereira had travelled to the region around a Funai monitoring base, and reached Jaburu lake Friday evening, the Union of Indigenous Organizations of the Javari Valley and the Observatory for the Human Rights of Isolated and Recently Contacted Indigenous Peoples said.

The pair started the return trip early Sunday, stopping in the community of Sao Rafael, where Pereira had scheduled a meeting with a local leader to discuss Indigenous patrols to fight the “intense invasions” that have been taking place on their lands, the groups said.

When the community leader did not arrive, the men decided to continue to Atalaia do Norte, about a two-hour trip, they said.

They were last sighted shortly after near the community of Sao Gabriel, just downstream from Sao Rafael.

The pair were travelling in a new boat with 70 litres of gasoline – “sufficient for the trip” – and were using satellite communications equipment, the groups said.

According to the newspaper O Globo, two fishermen in the area were arrested by the police on Monday night. It remains unclear why they were arrested and they have since been released.

Beto Marubo, a prominent Indigenous leader from the region who knows both of the missing men, said: “We need an urgent search mission. We need the police, we need the army, we need firefighters, we need civil defence forces. We have no time to lose.”

Phillips, a freelance journalist who has reported on Brazil for more than 15 years, had travelled to the Javari, which is thought to be home to the greatest concentration of uncontacted people on Earth, with Pereira before. In 2018, the British reporter joined the Indigenous protection official on a rare and gruelling expedition through the Austria-sized Indigenous reserve, which he reported on for the Guardian.

“I want you to know that Dom Phillips, my husband, loves Brazil and he loves the Amazon. He could have chosen to live anywhere in the world but he chose here,” his wife said on Monday.

Marubo voiced admiration for the journalist, who has reported extensively on the growing crisis facing Brazil’s environment and Indigenous communities in recent years, as deforestation has soared.

“I feel huge affection for Dom … he has written several extraordinarily important articles about the Javari valley that have helped draw attention to our problems,” the Indigenous leader said, adding that the region had become increasingly dangerous in recent years as gangs of illegal hunters and miners had swarmed into its forests.

“These are systematically organised gangs that are plundering the Javari region,” he said. “They are veritable gangs and they are very violent.”

With Agence France-Presse

PHILLIPE NOT TONY

Starck unveils new Dior chair, predicts end of design

Brigitte HAGEMANN
Tue, June 7, 2022, 


Philippe Starck made his name making everyday objects extraordinary, but the French designer and architect believes the "dematerialisation" of modern life will soon make such talents redundant.

"What is the future of design? Well, there isn't one, because you must understand that everything has a birth, a life and a death and for design it is the same," he told AFP on the sidelines of the Milan Furniture Fair.

He is here to present a new chair created for fashion house Dior, an update on Christian Dior's iconic 1947 version of the Louis XVI medallion chair.

Starck, 73, is one of the most prolific inventors of his generation, designing everything from top hotels, luxury yachts and best-selling furniture to juicers and toothbrushes.

He believes, however, that the advance of technology means talents such as his may one day become redundant.

"We make everything disappear," he said, adding: "Look at your iPhone -- the number of products it replaces, it's extraordinary.

"Before, the size of a computer -- it was a building, a suburban house, now it is embedded under the skin."

The process will reach its end, he says with a smile, when "man is naked on the beach, ultra-powerful, ultra-calculating, ultra-communicative".

- 'Say no' -

The new Miss Dior chair is made entirely in aluminium, available in black chrome, pink copper or gold, while one of the three models rather whimsically has just one armrest.

It comes two decades after Starck launched his best-selling ultra-modern plastic Louis Ghost model, also inspired by the 18th-century Louis XVI medallion chair with its distinctive oval back.

Unlike the plastic chair, however, which retailed around 350 euros (around $370), the Miss Dior costs between 1,700 and 5,000 euros.

"Chairs are an interesting exercise because they are very difficult, despite appearances... slightly easier than going to the moon but not far off," Starck quipped.

He wanted to ensure his new creation would last, so chose an "extremely solid, extremely technical material, a very ecological and totally recyclable aluminium".

Starck is a keen advocate of ecological design, dreaming up electric bikes, intelligent thermostats and personal wind turbines among his many creations.

"Ecology, above all, is saying: I want to buy this, but do I need it? If you are honest with yourself, 80 percent of the time you would say no," he said.

- 'Every 16 seconds' -

It also means buying something "for always -- it must last".

Starck traces his pursuit of industrial minimalism to his father, who designed airplanes.

"To make a plane fly, it must be light, you have to remove everything that serves no use," he said.

He added: "All my life I've tried to find the centre of things, the sense of things, the soul of things."

He says concern for the environment can be met "by not producing" -- but he is not giving up yet.

"I have an idea every 16 seconds," he says.

He justifies making something by asking "if the object is right, if it deserves to exist, if it was made with the minimum of material and energy, if it is accessible to the maximum number of people, if it brings... happiness, laughter".

If it also allows someone to "sit down, wash, eat -- then in that case it is useful and I am proud of it," he said.

bh/ar/jm

Arrival of Israeli gas installation reignites Lebanon maritime border dispute

Marc DAOU 

An Israeli floating gas production unit arrived in the maritime zone disputed between Israel and Lebanon on Sunday – prompting the anger of the Lebanese government, especially as negotiations between the two countries on this dispute are at a standstill.

© Suez Canal Authority, AFP

In abeyance for more than a decade, the dispute between Israel and Lebanon over the two countries’ maritime borders resurfaced on June 5. The Lebanese presidency warned the Israeli government against any “aggressive actions” in the disputed maritime area.

After a floating production, storage and offloading unit belonging to the company Energean (listed in both Tel Aviv and London) arrived on Sunday, the problem was obvious: Israel and Lebanon have never drawn their borders. The Karish gas field where Israel is exploring is located in a disputed area of 860 km2 in the middle of the eastern Mediterranean where huge gas reserves have been found in recent years.

The Lebanese government even invited the US envoy Amos Hochstein – charged by President Joe Biden with mediating between the two countries – asking him to help restart talks with Israel over the issue.

Any exploration, drilling or extraction work Israel carries out in the disputed areas would constitute a “provocation and act of aggression”, said a joint statement by Lebanese President Michel Aoun and outgoing Prime Minister Najib Mikati.

However, the Israeli government sees the Karish gas field as part of its exclusive economic zone and therefore believes that it’s not relevant to its maritime dispute.

‘Everything will go very quickly for the Israelis’

Custom-built for the Karish field, the platform is expected to deliver gas to Israel later this year, according to Energean.

“With the arrival of this platform, everything will go very quickly for the Israelis – the production and sale of gas will be able to start in three or four months, since contracts have already been signed with Israeli companies,” said Laury Haytayan, a Lebanese expert in the geopolitics of hydrocarbons and director of the Middle East programme of the Natural Resource Governance Institute in New York.

The timing of this gas project could make it especially lucrative for Israel, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine has left Europe scrambling for non-Russian sources of gas.

While Lebanon has been aware that the gas project was on the horizon since last year, Haytayan pointed out – but its problem has been that its fractious ruling class lacks a unified position on the maritime border issue, meaning talks have been unable to proceed.

Resolving this dispute is crucial for Lebanon – mired in an intractable economic crisis since 2019 – to be able to carry out its own exploration for hydrocarbons in the disputed area, where Block 9 of the Lebanese Exclusive Economic Zone is located. Found just off the shore of southern Lebanon, this area is considered one of the most promising in terms of natural gas resources.

Israeli-Lebanese talks aimed at resolving the maritime dispute started in October 2020, under the aegis of the UN and the US.

US diplomat and mediator Frederic Hof, Washington’s point man on the issue from 2010 to 2012, divided the area into two parts. The “Hof line” attributed 55 percent of the area to Lebanon and 45 percent to Israel. The Lebanese side has not accepted this demarcation.

‘Thinking about their own survival’

Dialogue restarted at the headquarters of the UN Interim Force in southern Lebanon in October 2020 after the two countries agreed on a framework for talks. But two months later they reached an impasse again because the Lebanese delegation claimed an extra 860 km2 in the south.

Beirut has nevertheless not made this claim official at the UN, because while President Michel Aoun initially supported his country’s bid for the additional maritime territory, he feared it could “end” negotiations with Israel – whose government said in October 2021 it was ready to resolve its dispute with Lebanon while refusing to let Beirut dictate the terms of the talks.

When the US’s Hochstein visited the region earlier this year, Tel Aviv and Beirut both expressed their willingness to resume direct talks. But to no avail.

At the end of a two-day visit to Beirut in February, Hochstein called on the Lebanese government to adopt a united position on the maritime dispute with Israel to allow it to move forward. He also dismissed Lebanon’s maximalist Line 29 proposal – thus implicitly giving Israel the green light to exploit the Karish gas field.

In February 2022, Aoun ended up saying that the more limited Line 23 was indeed the Lebanese maritime border, Haytayan noted, backtracking from his original position as a proponent of the maximalist Line 29. “This presidential reversal was a gesture of goodwill the American negotiator expected as a means of allowing the negotiations to restart,” Haytayan said.

But negotiations remain stalled. “The Lebanese political class isn’t thinking about the interests of the people or the country’s financial well-being; they’re thinking about their own survival,” Haytayan said.

‘Time to decide!’

That explains why they didn’t think it was important to settle the maritime border issue – even though Israel has been keen to do so.

“It remains to be seen whether the American envoy will be interested in negotiating with them,” Haytayan said. “Do the Lebanese leaders want to negotiate from Line 23, the official position adopted in 2011, or do they want to go as far as line 29, a position they claimed in 2020 but never formalised with the UN?”

“It’s time to decide!” Haytayan said. “If Lebanon wants to negotiate from Line 23, then the Karish field falls outside of the disputed area [putting it in the Israeli zone].”

Making a decision about what Lebanon wants is the “only way to ensure that the people in the region can bolster their development” through natural resource extraction, Haytayan continued.

“Lebanon has no more time to lose; it needs to resume negotiations and conclude them by getting a favourable result,” Haytayan added.

Both parties have a further incentive to resolve the maritime border conflict: It risks interacting dangerously with the ongoing tensions between the Jewish state and Hezbollah – the Shia military pollical movement that has proclaimed itself the defender of Lebanese hydrocarbon resources, with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah repeatedly threatening Israel with bombing its installations in the event of unilateral exploration in disputed maritime areas.

ICYMI
Israel Mainly To Blame For Conflict: UN Report


By Nina LARSON
06/07/22

Israel's occupation and discrimination against Palestinians are the main causes of the endless cycles of violence, UN investigators said Tuesday, prompting angry Israeli protests.

A high-level team of investigators, appointed last year by the United Nations Human Rights Council to probe "all underlying root causes" in the decades-long conflict, pointed the finger squarely at Israel.

"Ending the occupation of lands by Israel... remains essential in ending the persistent cycles of violence," they said in a report, decrying ample evidence that Israel has "no intention" of doing so.

The 18-page report mainly focuses on evaluating a long line of past UN investigations, reports and rulings on the situation, and how and if those findings were implemented.

Recommendations in past reports were "overwhelmingly directed towards Israel," lead investigator Navi Pillay, a former UN rights chief from South Africa, said in a statement.

This, she said, was "an indicator of the asymmetrical nature of the conflict and the reality of one state occupying the other".

The investigators also determined that those recommendations "have overwhelmingly not been implemented", she said, pointing to calls to ensure accountability for Israel's violations of international law but also "indiscriminate firing of rockets" by Palestinian armed groups into Israel.

"It is this lack of implementation coupled with a sense of impunity, clear evidence that Israel has no intention of ending the occupation, and the persistent discrimination against Palestinians that lies at the heart of the systematic recurrence of violations in both the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel."

Dozens of Israeli reserve soldiers and students -- some of them dressed like Palestinian Hamas militants -- protested outside the UN headquarters in Geneva 

Photo: AFP / Fabrice COFFRINI

Israel has refused to cooperate with the Commission of Inquiry (COI) created last year following the 11-day Hamas-Israel war in May 2021, which killed 260 Palestinians and 13 people on the Israeli side.

Israel has in the past loudly criticised Pillay for "championing an anti-Israel agenda", and on Tuesday the foreign ministry slammed the entire investigation as "a witch hunt".

The report, it said, was "one-sided" and "tainted with hatred for the State of Israel and based on a long series of previous one-sided and biased reports."

It had been published, it said, as "the result of the Human Rights Council's extreme anti-Israel bias."

The United States, a staunch ally of Israel -- which rejoined the Council under President Joe Biden, after Donald Trump withdrew from the body -- reiterated that it "firmly" opposes the "open-ended and vaguely defined nature" of the COI.

"The existence of this COI in its current form is a continuation of a long-standing pattern of unfairly singling out Israel," State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

In Geneva, dozens of Israeli reserve soldiers and students -- some of them dressed like Palestinian Hamas militants -- marched Tuesday outside the UN headquarters in protest.

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, who heads the Israeli NGO Shurat Hadin that organised the protest, slammed the rights council as "the most anti-Semitic body in the world."

Israel and its allies have long accused the top UN rights body of anti-Israel bias, pointing among other things to the fact that Israel is the only country that is systematically discussed at every regular council session, with a dedicated special agenda item.

The COI, which is the highest-level investigation that can be ordered by the council, is the ninth probe it has ordered into rights violations in Palestinian territories.

It is the first, however, tasked with looking at systematic abuses committed within Israel, the first open-ended probe, and the first to examine "root causes" in the drawn-out conflict.

British pensioner jailed for 15 years in Iraq antiquities case


By AFP - Jun 06,2022 

People walk outside Baghdad’s Karkh Appeal Court on Monday, during the trial of a British and a German detainee, accused of smuggling antiquities out of Iraq (AFP photo)

BAGHDAD — An Iraqi court on Monday jailed a British retiree for 15 years for trying to smuggle antiquities he found on holiday, a judgement his family called “tantamount to a death sentence”.

His German co-defendant was acquitted.

The maximum penalty for the offence is death by hanging but the court decided on a lesser sentence for James Fitton, 66, “because of the advanced age of the accused”, the judge said.

Fitton’s lawyer said that he would appeal.

The court found “insufficient evidence” to convict co-accused Volker Waldmann, 60, who was visiting Iraq with Fitton on an organised tour when they were arrested in March at Baghdad airport.

War-ravaged Iraq’s tourism infrastructure is almost non-existent but the country is timidly opening to visitors.

Iraq has also been trying to recover antiquities that were looted over a period of decades from the country whose civilisation dates back thousands of years.

When the judge asked the men whether they were guilty or not guilty “of trafficking antiquities”, each replied: “Not guilty”.

‘Absolutely shattered’ 

They appeared in court dressed in yellow prisoners’ clothing, but not handcuffed, an AFP journalist at the hearing said.

They were charged under a 2002 law against “intentionally taking or trying to take out of Iraq an antiquity”.

Fitton’s son-in-law Sam Tasker, 27, told Britain’s PA news agency that his family was devastated at the sentence, and was launching an appeal.

“We are absolutely shattered by this news,” Tasker said. “For a man of Jim’s age, 15 years in an Iraqi prison is tantamount to a death sentence.”

Tasker also lambasted the British government for what he said was their “total lack of action in this case” to date.

“We are completely heartbroken that our own best efforts, a strong legal defence and constant campaigning, have led to this outcome,” he added.

Fitton’s MP, Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat MP for Bath, said it was “a devastating outcome”, and that the government had “failed to take action”.

“There is now no other option but for the foreign secretary to intervene at a ministerial level,” Hobhouse said, according to PA.

‘Extreme’ 

According to statements from customs officers and witnesses, Fitton’s baggage contained about a dozen stone fragments, pieces of pottery or ceramics.

Waldmann, a Berlin psychologist, allegedly had two pieces but at the trial’s opening on May 15 denied they were his.

When the judge asked Fitton why he tried to take the artefacts out of Iraq, he cited his “hobby” and said he did not mean to do anything illegal.

“I didn’t realise that taking them was against the law,” Fitton said, adding that some of the ancient sites were open and unguarded.

In his verdict the judge found that Fitton was “aware” that the location from where he collected the fragments was “an archaeological site” and that it was illegal to take them.

The judge concluded there was criminal intent.

Defence lawyer Thaer Saoud denied this, and called the judgement “extreme”.

In Waldmann’s case, the judge accepted the defence argument that the German did not know the pieces from Fitton were antiquities.

The two men were not acquainted before their trip to Iraq.

They heard the verdict two weeks after court had adjourned to allow time for further investigations at the request of Waldmann’s lawyer, Furat Kuba.

“We don’t have any more details: What site do these pieces come from? What era, what civilisation do they date back to?” Kuba said at the time.

Marathon dhow race seeks to preserve ancient Gulf heritage


By AFP - Jun 07,2022 - 


Sailors participate in the annual long-distance dhow sailing race, known as Al Gaffal, near Sir Abu Nuair Island towards the Gulf emirate of Dubai, on Saturday (AFP photo)

SIR BU NAIR, United Arab Emirates — Under a blazing sun, far from the skyscrapers and SUVs of modern Dubai, hundreds of enthusiasts took to Gulf waters in traditional wooden vessels, keen to preserve an ancient heritage.

Around Sir Bu Nair, a teardrop-shaped island roughly 100 kilometres from both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, two of seven emirates that make up the UAE, 118 teams raced dhows, the sailboats that have plied the Arabian Peninsula’s waters for centuries.

“I started about 10 years ago, when I was 23, with my father and my brothers,” one of the sailors, Abdullah Al Mheiri, told AFP under the setting sun.

He had just ventured out across choppy waters with 11 crew mates to take part in the Al Gaffal dhow race, a gruelling annual tournament that stretches from early morning to early afternoon.

On one dhow, the crew, clad in white robes, toiled to unfurl a white sail, pulling at arm’s length on ropes and then scrambling for balance as the giant fabric caught the wind.

For Mheiri, taking part is his way of paying tribute to his heritage — Al Gaffal refers to the return of fishermen to Dubai’s coasts after journeying out to sea.

‘Duty’ to preserve environment 

Like much of the Gulf prior to the discovery of oil, the settlements that now make up the United Arab Emirates, including Dubai, were formed largely around maritime activities, notably pearl-diving using the once-ubiquitous dhows.

But with the establishment of the federation in 1971 and the advent of oil driven development, the UAE’s economic activity would swiftly balloon to become the Arab world’s second largest after Saudi Arabia.

Despite sitting on relatively low oil wealth compared to its neighbours, the emirate of Dubai saw a spectacular rise, capitalising on its strategic location to transform itself into a finance, air travel and tourism hub.

But away from the flitting of social media influencers and luxury high-rises, Mheiri prefers the quiet respite that he finds on the open sea.

The race’s starting point, Sir Bu Nair, is ideal, he believes, as it is also home to a nature reserve.

“We have lived with the sea for hundreds of years,” he said. “Preserving the environment is a duty.”

According to the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO, the island “is one of the most important hawksbill nesting sites within the entire Arabian Gulf and certainly by far the most important location in the UAE”.

Preserving heritage is vital for the organisers of Al Gaffal and they have sought to set an example with the competing sailboats, which are not fitted with engines.

“One of the most important messages we send is the transmission of this heritage from one generation to the next,” tournament Director Mohammed Al Falahi told AFP.

“But the fact is that it also doesn’t pose a risk for nature,” he added. “We haven’t forgotten that Sir Bu Nair is a nature reserve that shelters many species of turtles” in the Gulf.

The teams of sailing enthusiasts set off at dawn on Saturday, at times battling the searing heat as much as the waters.

Their sails hoisted, the vessels caught the wind, like white clouds floating across the expanse of blue, towards the Dubai shoreline, where the nearby Burj Al Arab hotel towers in the shape of a sail.

THE MOST HOMOEROTIC SPORT OF ALL

UFC Fighter Jeff Molina Smacks Down Homophobic Fans


Rachel Shatto

THE ADVOCATE
Mon, June 6, 2022

Jeff Molina

UFC fighter Jeff Molina got fiery in his defense of the LGBTQ+ community and his decision to wear Pride-themed shorts during his fight on Saturday after it drew hateful comments from the sport’s fans.

The backlash began June 1 when the flyweight fighter posted a video of the new shots on Twitter saying, “Pretty sick the @ufc is letting us rep for pride month!! Get your pride gear @ufcstore,” with a fist bump and Pride flag emoji. The UFC also released a Pride Month tee with proceeds supporting The Center, an LGBTQ+ center in Southern Nevada.

While some fans were vocally upset about Molina’s allyship, others were excited by the fighter’s support of the LGBTQ+ community — and took the opportunity to shoot their shot with him, while he let them down gently.

“To all the dudes sliding in my DM’s I’m a straight guy but pshhh I’m flattered! For all the homophobic dudes upset by me repping pride month on my fight kit y’all some fruit cups,” he tweeted.

Undeterred by the backlash, Molina wore his rainbow shorts during his bout against Zhalgas Zhumagulov in Las Vegas on Saturday, which he won.

The subject of the shorts and fan reaction came up during the post-fight press briefing. Molina didn’t hold back on his thoughts about the hate and hypocrisy of those who oppose his support of the LGBTQ+ community.


“You’re gonna get me riled up. Dude, it’s f***ing ridiculous,” Molina began. “Man, who’d have thunk it, in 2022 … Who the f**k cares, bro? It’s not even about being an ally — I’m not saying I’m not — but it’s just like, just be a decent f***ing person. Just be a decent human being. Judging someone, and then trying to justify it with religion, and saying all sorts of spiteful, hateful shit is crazy to me. It’s mind-boggling.”

“Who cares who someone wants to be with, their sexual preference, and then the irony of trying to justify it with religion of something that’s supposed to be so accepting. You’re going to get me going on a tangent, man. I was honestly shocked,” he added.

Molina went on to explain how the decision to wear the shorts came about. “I picked the colors because I thought it looked cool, and then also it supports a good cause. I’ll support anything of a community that’s been oppressed and ostracized for some time for something they can’t help. I’ll get behind any of that,” the fighter explained.

“It wasn’t that long ago that there was school segregation, and that was like less than a person ago, man, that wasn’t that long ago. And the same thing with something like Stonewall, that was like 50 years ago. That’s not even a whole person ago, man – this is like recent s**t,” Molina continued. “I just thought in 2022 people would be a little more open-minded and not pieces of s**t, but I guess I was wrong. It’s just crazy to me.”

“People were saying some crazy shit and like, dude, what would you do if your kid’s gay? And people trying to justify it like god is going to send you to [hell],” he added in frustration. “Dude, mind your own business, it doesn’t concern you. Get f**ked.”

'Very ignorant rumour': Misinformation abounds about monkeypox


Julie CHARPENTRAT
Tue, June 7, 2022


The recent emergence of hundreds of cases of monkeypox worldwide has already triggered a flood of misinformation online, much of it modelled on conspiracy theories that have been circulating since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

AFP Fact Check examined three claims that have arisen in the month since monkeypox cases began being recorded outside of areas in western and central Africa where it is endemic.

- Not a vaccine side effect -

Social media posts shared across the world have incorrectly claimed that the recent monkeypox cases are a "side effect" of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine.

The claim is linked to the fact that AstraZeneca's jab uses a chimpanzee adenovirus vector.

But health experts told AFP that this idea "has no basis in fact", in part because the viruses belong in different families -- poxvirus for monkeypox, and adenovirus for the Covid vaccine.

The vaccine "cannot generate new viruses inside humans and cause something like monkeypox," said Professor Eom Jung-shik, an infectious disease expert at the Gachon University Gil Medical Center.

The adenovirus is the vaccine vector, which means it is only a vehicle to transport genetic instructions to the body to trigger the production of a spike protein similar to that of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This then prompts an immune response so the body can fight a real infection.

As in other viral vector vaccines, the chimpanzee adenovirus has been altered so it does not infect humans or replicate.

Professor Yoo Jin-hong, an epidemiologist at the Catholic University of Korea, said the AstraZeneca claim "appears to stem from the idea that chimpanzees are broadly referred to as monkeys, but this is a very ignorant rumour with no basis in fact".

Monkeypox was given its name because it was first discovered in a group of macaques in 1958 that were being studied for research purposes, but they are not the only animals that catch the disease.

Rodents are the most likely natural reservoir of monkeypox, according to the World Health Organization.

- Pfizer does not have a monkeypox vaccine -

Social media posts have also claimed that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved a new monkeypox vaccine from pharma giant Pfizer, which developed the first available Covid vaccine.

This is false; the only vaccine for the prevention of monkeypox in the United States was approved by the FDA in 2019, and Pfizer does not manufacture it.

Abby Capobianco, a press officer at the FDA, told AFP that the vaccine, called Jynneos, was "licensed by FDA for the prevention of smallpox and monkeypox disease in adults 18 years of age and older determined to be at high risk for smallpox or monkeypox disease."

Jynneos is not a new vaccine -- the FDA approved it in September 2019.

Pharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic, which produces Jynneos, announced on May 18, 2022 that the US government had placed a $119 million order for freeze-dried doses.

Jynneos is the only FDA-approved vaccine for monkeypox, however data has shown that a smallpox vaccine is 85 percent effective in preventing the disease, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Pfizer told AFP that the company does not have a monkeypox vaccine.

- False Canada shingles claim -

Social media posts shared an image of a purported article from Canada's CTV News claiming that 95 percent of the monkeypox cases investigated by Canadian officials turned out to be shingles.

However Rob Duffy, CTV News manager of communications at its parent company Bell Media, told AFP that the network "never published such a story and that the screenshot does not show an authentic article from CTV News".

While some symptoms might be similar in cases of shingles and monkeypox, they are not caused by the same virus, according to Isaac Bogoch, professor at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

"There may be some overlap in their clinical presentation," but "monkeypox and shingles are two completely different infections," he told AFP.

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