Carnivorous dinosaur similar to T-Rex discovered in Egypt's Western Desert

Six-metre theropod believed to have lived more than 98 million years ago

A reconstruction of the newly discovered yet unnamed abelisaurid. 

Photo: Andrew McAfee, Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Nada El Sawy
Cairo
Jun 08, 2022

An Egyptian research team has discovered the fossil of a large, carnivorous dinosaur believed to have lived more than 98 million years ago in the Bahariya Oasis of Egypt’s Western Desert.

The team was led by Hesham Sallam, professor of vertebrate palaeontology at The American University in Cairo and founder of the Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Centre (MUVP).

A research paper describing the discovery was published in the scientific journal Royal Society Open Science on Wednesday.

The well-preserved vertebra, or backbone, from the base of the neck of a theropod was recovered on a 2016 MUVP expedition. Theropods, the same subgroup to which the Tyrannosaurus rex belongs, are characterised by hollow bones and three-toed limbs.
Trailblazing Egyptian team

“We are the only vertebrate palaeontologists working in Egypt documenting prehistoric life,” Prof Sallam told The National.

“I’m really enjoying my dream of seeing my students leading a scientific paper on a discipline that didn’t exist in Egypt before my time.”

Several exciting prehistoric findings have been made by Egyptian teams in recent years. Last August, a team of palaeontologists from Mansoura University announced the discovery of a species of semi-aquatic whale that lived 43 million years ago. And in February, a collaborative study from Cairo and New Valley universities found dinosaur footprints dating back 70 million years.
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Prof Sallam decided to take the lead in bringing the science of vertebrate palaeontology to Egypt shortly after receiving his master’s degree from Mansoura in 2002.

“I was lucky to get a scholarship from the Egyptian government to study rare disciplines that are needed,” he said. He went on to study at the University of Oxford in 2006 and returned with a doctorate in 2010.

The Bahariya Oasis is known for its rich fossils and the discovery of several famous dinosaurs during the early 20th century, such as Spinosaurus, the largest known carnivorous dinosaur. Two other giant theropods, the Carcharodontosaurus and Bahariasaurus, were also found in the oasis.

But the Bahariya dinosaur fossils were shipped to Munich’s palaeontological museum, where they were destroyed during an allied bombing of the city in 1944.

Hesham Sallam said his research team comprises 'the only vertebrate palaeontologists working in Egypt documenting prehistoric life'. Photo supplied

The large predatory dinosaurs that roamed what is now the Egyptian Sahara during the middle of the Cretaceous period, which began 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago, are among the abelisaurid family. They existed in Europe and the Southern Hemisphere during the later stages of the Mesozoic Era, or Age of Dinosaurs.

The latest unnamed abelisaurid is estimated to have been six metres in body length with a bulldog-shaped face and short limbs.

Collaborators on the study, which was led by Ohio University graduate student Belal Salem of MUVP, included a team of Egyptian and international researchers from Ohio University, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the University of Michigan, Benha University and the Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency.

“Identifying definitive abelisaurid from Bahariya is very exciting for Egypt and MUVP, as this group of predatory dinosaurs continues to tell us a lot about vertebrate communities during the Cretaceous Period,” said Ohio University professor of biomedical sciences Patrick O’Connor.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover has a pet ROCK! 

Stone that found its way into the vehicle's wheel in February has been hitching a ride ever since

The Martian rock attached itself to Perseverance's wheel in February, NASA said

It has since been transported more than 5.3 miles across Mars aboard the rover

NASA's car-sized rover touched down on Mars' Jezero crater in February last year

By JONATHAN CHADWICK FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED:  8 June 2022

A small rock has been hitching a ride on NASA's Perseverance rover on the surface of Mars for four months without falling off.

The rock attached itself on the Perseverance's wheel in February and has since been transported more than 5.3 miles (8.5 km) aboard the rover, NASA has said.

Photos show the Martian fragment tucked into the front left wheel of the Perseverance rover, which landed on the surface of Mars in February last year.

The photos of the rock were taken by the rover's front cameras used to navigate hazards, called 'Hazcams'.

NASA said the 'unexpected traveling companion' isn't doing any damage to the wheel, although it could drop off at any time.

Perseverance can only go up to 0.07 miles per hour (0.12 km per hour), which may just be slow enough to stop it from falling off.

Prior to being caught on Perseverance's wheels, the rock could have been in the same spot for millions of years.



The Mars rock can be seen on the front left wheel of Perseverance on May 26, 2022 (sol 449) beside track marks in the Martian surface

Image taken using the front left Haz Avoidance Camera (Hazcam), acquired on April 19, 2022 (sol 413)

PERSEVERANCE ROVER COMES WITH 23 CAMERAS


There are 23 cameras mounted to the Perseverance rover including:

Nine engineering cameras, seven science cameras and seven for entry, descent and landing.

The engineering cameras give detailed information in colour about the terrain the rover has to cross.

They measure the ground for safe driving, check out the status of hardware and support sample gathering.

There are Hazcams for hazard detection and Navcams for navigation.

Science cameras record in more detail and can even capture 3D images.

The Mastcam-Z on a 2 metre arm has a zoom feature for focusing on distant objects and can film video.

The Supercam fires a laser at mineral targets beyond the reach of the rovers arm to analysed the chemical composition of the rock.

Perseverance touched down on Mars' Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021 after a nearly seven-month journey through space.

The car-sized Mars rover is tasked with seeking traces of fossilised microbial life from Mars' ancient past and to gather rock specimens for return to Earth.

Last month, it reached a key phase of its mission – climbing up an ancient delta known as 'Three Forks'.

NASA said the 'pet rock' attached itself to the wheel on the 341th 'sol' or Martian day – over 100 sols ago, in early February 2022.

One sol lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds – slightly longer than an Earth day. As of Wednesday (June 8), Perseverance has been on Mars for 462 sols.

On sol 341, Perseverance was still working on its first science campaign focused on picking up samples from the Jezero crater floor.

'We examined rocks that are part of the Máaz formation, which we believe is made up of lava flows,' NASA said in a statement.

Martian rocks are so variable on the red planet's surface that if this pet rock were to fall off the wheel so far from its original location, it could stick out if a 'Martian geologist from the future' were to encounter it.

'It's possible that the rock may fall out at some point along our future ascent of the crater rim,' NASA said.

'If it does so, it will land amongst rocks that we expect to be very different from itself.'

The public can track the route taken throughout Perseverance's 462-sol journey using an online interactive map on NASA's website, which uses dots to denote where the rover stopped.

'Engineers created this experience with software used by the mission team who decide where Perseverance will explore, and how to get there,' NASA said.

'Each dot represents the end point of a drive and is labelled with the day, or sol, on Mars, that the rover stopped.'



The same rock is seen in an image acquired on February 6, 2022 (sol 343). Photos were taken by the rover's front cameras used to navigate hazards, called 'Hazcams'

This is not the first time a rock has hitched a ride on a Mars rover mission; 18 years ago, a 'potato-sized' rock found its way into the Spirit rover’s rear right wheel, and had to be dislodged.

Five years ago, the front right wheel of the the Curiosity rover also periodically picked up its own rocky traveling companion.

'While it's unclear exactly how long these rocks stuck around, they tended to hop off after a few weeks,' NASA said.

'Perseverance's current companion is therefore on its way to setting Mars hitch-hiking records.'

It's Perseverance's job to collect rocks, but the hitchhiking rock was not meant to be one of them. Perseverance captured its first rock sample last September.

The rover has turret-mounted scientific instruments that are able to determine chemical and mineral composition and look for organic matter, as well as better characterise the planet's geological processes.

It uses a drill and a hollow coring bit at the end of its 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm to extract samples slightly thicker than a pencil, which it stores under its belly.

However, Perseverance is not bringing the samples back to Earth – the rover is stashing in certain locations on Mars them to be collected by a future retrieval mission, which is currently being developed.


It was in February last year that Perseverance touched down on Mars' Jezero crater, which scientists believe was once home to an ancient river delta

Mars NASA Privacy Policy

One option involves NASA and ESA launching two more spacecraft that would leave Earth in 2026 and reach Mars in 2028.

The first will deploy a small rover, which will make its way to Perseverance, pick up the filled sampling tubes and transfer them to a 'Mars ascent vehicle' – a small rocket.

This rocket will blast off – in the process becoming the first object launched from the surface of Mars – and place the container into Martian orbit, meaning it will essentially be floating in space.

At this point, the third and final spacecraft involved in the tricky operation will manoeuvre itself next to the sample container, pick it up and fly it back to Earth.

A multi-billion dollar project to bring back a piece of Mars to Earth will involve three separate launches and would only be successful as soon as 2031

Providing its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere is successful, it will plummet to the ground at a military training ground in Utah in 2031, meaning the Martian samples likely won't be studied for about another decade.

Perseverance also made the journey to Mars equipped with a detachable 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) robotic helicopter called Ingenuity.

The copter has performed a series of nearly 30 flights of increasing complexity on the red planet, the most recent in April this year.

Ingenuity, which is just 18-inches tall, made its first flight on April 19, 2021, making history as the first powered controlled flight on another planet.

 

INGENUITY FLIGHTS SO FAR

Flight one: April 19, 2021 with a vertical takeoff up to 9.8ft, stationary hover and a landing 

Flight two: April 22, 2021 with a vertical takeoff up to 16ft, hover, then shift westward for 14ft before returning and landing 

Flight three: April 25, 2021 with a vertical takeoff up to 16ft, hover, shift northwards for 328ft at an airspeed of 2 m/s before returning to land

Flight four: April 30, 2021 with a vertical takeoff up to 16ft, hover, shift southwards 873ft at 3.5m/s before returning to land 

Flight five: May 7, 2021 with a vertical takeoff up to 33ft, hover, shift southwards 423ft at 3.5 m/s before landing at that new location

Flight six: May 22, 2021 with a vertical takeoff of 33ft, hover, shift southwest 492ft at 9mph, travel 49ft south, travel 164ft before returning to land 

Flight seven: June 8, 2021 with a vertical takeoff of 33ft, hover, shift 348ft at 9mph, land at Airfield D

Flight eight: June 21, 2021 with a vertical takeoff, hover, shift southwest 520ft, land at Airfield E 438ft away from Perseverance

Flight nine: July 5, 2021 with a record length of 2,050ft southwest over a prospective research location at 16ft per second.

Flight ten: July 24, 2021 with a record height of 40 feet (12 metres) over Raised Ridges to Airfield G. Flight duration 165.4 seconds.   

Flight eleven: August 5, 2021 by flying 1,250ft for 130 seconds in preparation for a series of reconnaissance missions for the Perseverance rover.

Flight twelve: August 16, 2021 by flying 1,476ft for 169 seconds, climbing 32.8ft in the air, over the 'South Seitah' region of Mars. 

Flight thirteen: September 5, 2021 by flying 690ft for 160.5 seconds, climbing 26ft over one particular ridgeline over the 'South Seitah' region of Mars. 

Flight fourteen: October 25, 2021 by flying a 'short hop' of 6.5ft (2m) to test out higher rpm settings. It flew for 23 seconds at 1mph at an altitude of 16ft (5m).

Flight fifteen: November 6, 2021 by flying back towards its original landing site. It flew for a total of 128 seconds at an estimated 11mph.

Flight sixteen: November 20, 2021 by travelling 381ft (116m) for a total of 108 seconds at an estimated 3mph.

Flight seventeen: December 5, 2021 by flying back toward the Wright Brothers Field at the Octavia E. Butler landing site. It flew 614ft (187m) for a total of 117 seconds at an estimated 6mph. 

Flight eighteen: December 15, 2021 by travelling 755ft (230m) for a total of 124.3 seconds at an estimated 5mph.

Flight nineteen: February 7, 2022 by travelling 207ft (63m) for a total of 99.8 seconds at an estimated 2mph.

Flight twenty: February 25, 2022 by travelling 1,283ft (391m) for a total of 130.3 seconds at an estimated 10mph.

Flight twenty one: March 11, 2022 by travelling 1,214ft (370m) for a total of 129.2 seconds at an estimated 8mph.

Flight twenty two:  March 19, 2022 by travelling 223ft (68m) for a total of 101.4 seconds at an estimated 2.2mph.

Flight twenty three: March 23, 2022 by travelling 1,175ft (358m) for a total of 129.1 seconds at an estimated 8.9mph.

Flight twenty four: April 3, 2022 by travelling 154ft (47m) for a total of 69.5 seconds at an estimated 3.2mph.

Flight twenty five: April 8, 2022 by travelling 2,310ft (704m) for a total of 161.3 seconds at an estimated 12.3mph.

Flight twenty six: April 19, 2022 by travelling 1,181ft (360m) for a total of 159 seconds at an estimated 8.5mph.

Flight twenty seven: April 23, 2022 by travelling 1,007ft (307m) for a total of 152.9 seconds at an estimated 6.7mph. 

Flight twenty eight: April 29, 2022 by travelling 1,371ft (418m) for a total of 152.4 seconds at an estimated 8.1mph.

James Webb Space Telescope was hit by a tiny space rock – but it’s OK

Leah Crane - New Scientist


The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been struck by a small space rock. A micrometeoroid hit one of the telescope’s main mirrors between 23 and 25 May, but the NASA team that operates it doesn’t expect the impact to significantly affect the observatory’s data.

JWST launched at the end of 2021 and reached its permanent orbit in January. Since then, the engineering team has been preparing the telescope’s instruments for science observations. The most delicate and finicky part of the observatory is its primary mirror, which is made up of 18 smaller, hexagonal mirrors coated in gold.

The solar system is full of micrometeoroids, most about the size of a grain of dust, so one hitting JWST is not unexpected. The mirrors were designed to withstand small impacts, and were tested before the spacecraft launched.

However, the one that hit the telescope in May was larger than anything the NASA team tested or simulated on the ground, and because it was not part of a meteor shower, nobody predicted it. Had they done so, the telescope’s operators would have been able to turn it to avoid a direct impact.

“Since launch, we have had four smaller measurable micrometeoroid strikes that were consistent with expectations, and this one more recently that is larger than our degradation predictions assumed,” said JWST team member Lee Feinberg at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in an official blog post published on 8 June. “We will use this flight data to update our analysis of performance over time and also develop operational approaches to assure we maximise the imaging performance of Webb to the best extent possible for many years to come.”

While the effect of this impact on the data is significant enough to be detectable, the observatory team found that the telescope's future images won’t be degraded too badly. For now, JWST is still performing well above the level that is required for its planned science observations, including those of the early universe and the very first galaxies.

 YouGov ‘BANNED 2017 Election poll as it was “too positive” for Corbyn’s Labour after THREAT by Tory MP co-founder’

By Tom D. Rogers
8th June 2022

ALL TWEETS AT THE END

YouGov intentionally surpressed a poll showing Jeremy Corbyn’s incredible 2017 General Election popularity surge after pressure from their co-founder – a current Tory Minister – because it was “too positive for Labour“, a former senior employee at the pollster has sensationally claimed.

Writing on Twitter, Chris Curtis – who was YouGov’s Political Research Manager during the 2017 General Election campaign – said that Tory Minister Nadhim Zahawi, who co-founded YouGov in 2000, personally phoned the CEO of YouGov threatening them with the sack for publishing data showing Jeremy Corbyn’s hugely increasing popularity.

In a viral Twitter thread, Curtis said that YouGov bosses “banned” him from releasing the poll conducted following the 2017 Leader’s Debate, which showed Corbyn had won “by a country mile“, following the intervention by the Tory Minister and co-founder.

Writing on Twitter, Curtis began his recollection of events by outlining how the public mood was clearly shifting in favour of Corbyn’s Labour throughout the 2017 General Election campaign, stating:

“Firstly, it is worth noting just how dramatically the opinion polls changed during the course of the campaign. This isn’t how things are supposed to happen.

“There are loads of reasons for the shift (Tory hubris/volatile electorate/manifestos/Corbyn/The Tories screwing up their attack lines) but it was certainly very difficult for us pollsters to deal with. When something this dramatic happens, you struggle to believe it.”

Curtis then went on to detail how all the data clearly pointed to an undeniable Labour surge, writing:

“The first thing I would do every morning is download the overnight data, and each day the gap just kept getting smaller and smaller. On the morning of the Manchester bombing, we actually had Labour pulling level, although the poll got spiked because the campaign rightly paused.

“We looked at everything to try and work out why this was happening. One theory was that Corbyn supporters had mass joined the panel (despite the checks we have on such things happening) and were playing the system to get the Labour numbers up.

“But we looked at excluding people who had joined the panel more recently, and it made no difference to the final numbers. At one point, and I feel stupid saying this now, I seriously wondered if we had been hacked by nefarious actors.”

The former YouGov employee then detailed how the mood changed with the release of YouGov’s sensational MRP poll – which accurately predicted a hung parliament – but caused anger and hysteria within the Conservative Party at the time:

“And then we released the MRP. This was probably the worst possible idea. The MRP was actually showing exactly the same thing as our standard polls would have, but it was the first time anybody had said “hung parliament”.”

Curtis then stunningly claimed:

“Nadhim Zahawi called up the CEO and said he would call for his resignation if he was wrong. It became pretty clear we would all be out of a job if we were wrong now.”

Zahawi’s intervention clearly spooked YouGov bosses, with Curtis claiming that after his threat their “polling and coverage was a lot worse for the rest of the campaign” – before sensationally claiming that YouGov bosses actually “banned” him from releasing one poll because it was “too positive about Labour“:

“We did a fantastic debate poll in the hours following the debate that Corbyn took part in. The results were stark – Corbyn won by a country mile, and one in four Tory voters thought he was best.

“But despite having written the story and designed the charts, we were banned from releasing the story because it was too positive about Labour.”

In addition, Curtis also claimed that YouGov bosses forced them to change their methodology – which artificially increased the Tories’ supposed popularity – because of “pressure from high-ups“:

Unsurprisingly, many on Twitter responded with fury to the allegations:

Following Curtis’ thread, YouGov have since released a statement claiming that the poll was only surpressed because “the sample of people who watched the debate significantly over-represented Labour voters from the previous election“.

However, YouGov’s statement includes no denial about Zahawi’s intervention, or anything regarding their apparent change in methodology as a result of it – and many on Twitter were having none of it:

In response to the allegations, Nadhim Zahawi – who sits as the current Tory Education Secretary – confirmed his phone call to YouGov, but claimed that his threat to have YouGov staff sacked was actually a “joke“:

What is undeniable, however, is that YouGov’s reputation has been irrevocably damaged.

UK
More rail workers to strike in growing dispute over jobs, pay and pensions

ALAN JONES, PA INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT

8 June 2022

More railway workers are to go on strike in growing disputes over pay, jobs and pensions, threatening massive travel chaos later this month.

Members of Unite at Transport for London (TfL) and London Underground will join a walkout on June 21 which will cripple Tube services.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union has already announced a Tube strike on that day, while its members at Network Rail and 13 train operators will walk out on June 21, 23 and 25.

The strikes will be the biggest outbreak of industrial action in the industry in a generation.

Commuters at Southfields station in south-west London (Joe Sene/PA)

The disputes are over pay, jobs and pensions, with the unions complaining that railway staff who worked through the pandemic are facing job cuts, a pay freeze and attacks on employment conditions.

Unite said 1,000 of its members in London will take action over pay and warnings of plans to cut pensions.

TfL insists no decisions or proposals have been made.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “It is not acceptable that the dedicated workers at TfL and London Underground are being told to pay the price of the pandemic with their pensions, pay cuts and threats to their jobs.”

Talks between Network Rail (NR) and the union are expected to be held in the next few days, sources told the PA news agency.

NR is also drawing up contingency plans, with the strikes expected to cause disruption to services for six days, from the first walkout on Tuesday June 21 to the day after the third strike.

Fewer than one in five trains are likely to run, and only between 7am and 7pm, probably only on main lines.

No direct talks are planned between the union and train operators, although the RMT said it is open to “meaningful negotiations” to try to resolve the dispute and the Rail Delivery Group said it was willing to take part in negotiations.

The strikes threaten widespread travel disruption during a number of major events, including concerts, Test match cricket and the Glastonbury festival.

Glastonbury starts on June 22, while that week will also see England play New Zealand in a Test match in Leeds, the British Athletics Championships in Manchester, and gigs in London’s Hyde Park by Sir Elton John (June 24) and The Rolling Stones (June 25).

There will also be a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in London on June 24 and 25 and it is Armed Forces Day on June 25.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: “Railway workers have been treated appallingly and, despite our best efforts in negotiations, the rail industry, with the support of the Government, has failed to take their concerns seriously.

“We have a cost-of-living crisis, and it is unacceptable for railway workers to either lose their jobs or face another year of a pay freeze when inflation is at 11.1% and rising.

“Our union will now embark on a sustained campaign of industrial action which will shut down the railway system.”

Network Rail chief executive Andrew Haines said the organisation is “doing everything we can” to avoid the strike action.

“There are two weeks until the first strike is planned. We will use this time to keep talking to our unions and, through compromise and common sense on both sides, we hope to find a solution and avoid the damage that strike action would cause all involved,” he said.

Rail Delivery Group chairman Steve Montgomery said the strikes are “needless and damaging”.

A spokesman for London mayor Sadiq Khan said: “At the heart of this industrial action is the Government’s appalling approach to public transport across the country, not least its continued resistance to delivering the sustainable funding Transport for London desperately needs.

“These planned strikes are extremely frustrating and disappointing and will have a serious impact on London’s businesses and commuters right at the time when we’re working to get more passengers back on to the network, encourage tourists back to London, and support the capital’s economic recovery.

“In London, TfL has made clear that nobody has or will lose their jobs, and there are no proposed changes to pensions. That’s why the mayor urges the RMT to call off this action and to work with TfL to find a resolution.”

Andy Lord, TfL’s chief operating officer, said: “It is particularly disappointing that the RMT is threatening such disruption given that nobody has lost or will lose their jobs as part of the proposals that we have laid out, which amounts to a recruitment freeze rather than job losses, and that there have been no proposals to change pensions or conditions.

“We have been in regular talks with the RMT to try and resolve this dispute and would welcome further talks rather than strike action.”

A Department for Transport spokesman said: “After all our collaborative work over the past few weeks on the Elizabeth line, it is disappointing and unfair of the mayor to put the blame for these strikes on the Government rather than take responsibility and fulfil his promise of making TfL financially stable – especially as it was his own advisory panel who recommended pension reform.

“We’ve provided TfL with close to £5 billion during the pandemic and committed to exploring a long-term settlement to further support London’s transport network all while the mayor buries his head in the sand and continues to push for more bailouts.”

‘It’s a war on the people’: El Salvador’s mass arrests send thousands into despair

At least 38,000 people have been arrested under Nayib Bukele’s draconic state of exemption

Salvadoran gang members of the Mara Salvatrucha are seen during a search by security teams in the prisons of Quezaltepeque, in the department of La Libertad, in El Salvador on 28 March. 

Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

by Tom Phillips in Salcoatitán
THE GUARDIAN
Wed 8 Jun 2022

Only a few weeks ago, Sandra García was looking forward to the brighter future Nayib Bukele promised El Salvador’s opportunity-starved youth when he swept to power three years ago.

“I gave him my vote believing we’d have a better life,” said the 23-year-old, one of hundreds of thousands of young Salvadorans who chose the authoritarian-minded millennial as their president.

Those dreams imploded when the man she planned to marry, Juan José Ibáñez García, was seized during of one of the most ferocious security crackdowns in recent Latin American history.

Two days later Ibáñez – who friends and family say worked in a local pizzeria and had no links to crime – was moved to a maximum-security penitentiary housing many of the 38,000-plus people the government claims to have imprisoned since the offensive began in late March. A fortnight later the 21-year-old was dead – one of at least 35 prisoners who have reportedly died in mysterious circumstances since Bukele declared a draconian state of exception supposedly designed to annihilate his country’s gangs.

An undertaker appeared at García’s door in Salcoatitán, a bucolic tourist town in El Salvador’s coffee-growing heartlands, early one morning to break the news. “My world came crashing down,” she said later, as she stood by a coffin containing her lover’s remains.

Juan José Ibáñez García’s friends and family mourn his death at his funeral. 

Photograph: Ivan Manzano

Bukele declared his “war on gangs” on Sunday 27 March after an explosion of bloodshed shocking even for a country that until recently was considered the most violent on Earth. El Salvador’s murder rate has plummeted since the populist took power in 2019 – allegedly thanks to a secret pact with leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha gang. But on the eve of the crackdown – in a wave of attacks seemingly calculated to puncture one of Bukele’s key claims to success – 62 people were murdered in a single day.

“That Saturday was just horrifying … I told my kids not to go out because things were really messy,” said Jorge Beltrán, a crime reporter who has covered the gangs for more than two decades. “Once, on the most terrible day, there were something like 50 [murders]. But 60-something? This had never happened before.”


El Salvador accused of ‘massive’ human rights violations with 2% of adults in prison

One body was dumped at the entrance to Bukele’s pet project: a resort town nicknamed Surf City with which the former advertising executive hopes to boost the economy and rebrand El Salvador as a tropical paradise for sunseekers and cryptocurrency fans.

“It was a huge blow to the president’s public image – and image is so important to him, that he needed to come up with something that had never been done before,” said Tiziano Breda, a Central America analyst from Crisis Group.

Bukele’s “something” was a state of exception that was immediately approved by the parliament his party overwhelmingly controls.

The results have been jaw-dropping, with more people arrested during the last two months than in the whole of last year – most of them young and underprivileged men and women whose names and photographs are splashed across state media each day. “It is really, really stunning,” said Breda. “This is an all-out, nationwide operation to capture anyone who may have or has had any relationship to gangs.”

The spectre of Bukele’s security offensive is hard to escape in Central America’s smallest country.

Billboards urge citizens to denounce on potential “terrorists” on a telephone hotline. Radio stations churn out government propaganda in which authorities vow to fight to the end: “We will not stop until we have wiped out the gangs.”

Juan José Ibáñez García, 21, died soon after he was arrested

A poster outside one major prison, La Esperanza, shows a security agent towering over semi-naked suspects with a truncheon. “Want to be next? You decide!” it reads.

Many of El Salvador’s 6 million citizens are delighted at the assault on US-born gangs, which have wreaked havoc since taking root here after the 12-year civil war ended in 1992. “He’s been rounding up all these scoundrels … we feel so much safer,” said Sandra López, 61, a supporter who attended a recent pro-Bukele demo in downtown San Salvador. Polls show Bukele has become even more popular since the state of exception started, with approval ratings of more than 90%.

But the crackdown has been a nightmare for the hundreds of women who have been sleeping rough outside La Esperanza, desperately seeking information about loved ones arrested on vague charges.

Many of those women voted Bukele in 2019, but after weeks camping on filthy pavements are having second thoughts.

“This isn’t a war on gangs, it’s a war on the people,” seethed one woman from the city of Santa Ana who was looking for her brother and asked not to be named.

Further up the street sat a woman in even greater distress. Mari Hernández said her partner, Saul Gómez, had worked at a sugar-grinding plant until police arrested him at their home in late April.
The reality is that in El Salvador it is now a crime to be young. You’re not safe anywhereMari Hernández

“They said it was an order from the president that people should be brought in whether or not they were criminals … and that if they didn’t detain him they’d be arrested themselves for not following the law,” claimed the pregnant 24-year-old.

The officers told Hernández her 25-year-old partner would soon be free – but five weeks later he remained behind bars while she was two weeks away from giving birth.

To make matters worse, doctors had detected a murmur on the baby’s heart during a prenatal checkup. Before the arrest, Hernández had been undergoing treatment, but without Gómez’s income she could no longer afford to pay for it

“The reality is that in El Salvador it is now a crime to be young. You’re not safe anywhere,” said Hernández.

Beltrán, the crime reporter, said it was obvious that many prisoners genuinely had no gang ties and were apprehended “simply because the police didn’t like the look of them” or perhaps had a brush with the law years earlier.

A former soldier, Beltrán said he supported a surgical offensive against the murderous criminal groups. “But they haven’t done this. They’re just taking people indiscriminately,” he added. “And like in every war, it’s always the poor who suffer.”

The funeral of Juan José Ibáñez García, who was seized during a government security crackdown. Photograph: Ivan Manzano

The Bukele administration and its cheerleaders defend what they call a long-needed assault on dangerous “terrorists”, although the president and his security minister declined to be interviewed.

“This is a war between upstanding Salvadorans and the criminals who for years have condemned us to a life of anxiety, mourning and misery,” Bukele said last week in an address marking his three years in office. “We have God and the people of El Salvador on our side.”


Nayib Bukele calls himself the ‘world’s coolest dictator’ – but is he joking?

The tourism minister, Morena Valdez, celebrated the crackdown during a visit to Surf City, where an international surfing competition was taking place. “For the tourist sector it has been a boom,” Valdez said.

Yet critics see the state of exception as the latest phase in El Salvador’s march towards tyranny under a messianic leader who has already amassed huge power and sarcastically calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator”.

“I see this as one more step towards the construction of an authoritarian state in which power is concentrated around one person and one family – it’s very similar to what’s happening in Nicaragua,” said Jimmy Alvarado, an investigative journalist from El Faro, the combative news outlet that revealed the government’s secret pact with the gangs.

Johnny Wright Sol, one of the few opposition politicians in parliament, said: “History tells us that many of these populist governments end as authoritarian experiments and [what’s striking] is the speed at which [this is happening]. It took [Daniel] Ortega many more years in Nicaragua than it has taken Bukele.”

The funeral procession for Juan José Ibáñez García in the town of Juayúa. 

Photograph: Ivan Manzano

Wright feared the gang crackdown could trigger a human catastrophe, bringing further violence and disease to overcrowded jails and plunging poor families further into penury. “This could rapidly spiral into a very severe humanitarian crisis,” he said.

For Sandra García, the crisis has already arrived.

So many Salvadorans put our trust in [Bukele] – and we were cheated

Sandra García

She suffered a miscarriage, and told the police officer who took her partner who replied: “We don’t care – we have a quota of arrests we need to reach.”

Two weeks later, Ibáñez was taken from prison to a hospital for reasons that remain unclear. He died there in the early hours of 25 May. “Nobody has told me anything, nobody has explained to me why,” García said.

Hours after identifying his body, García stood beside his coffin in Juayúa, the town where Ibáñez was born, and pondered her loss. “We had so many dreams … to be parents; to build a business together; to study together … and it’s all gone. It all ended with his death,” she said. “So many Salvadorans put our trust in [Bukele] – and we were cheated.”

Juan José Ibáñez García’s partner and family are broken by his death.

 Photograph: Ivan Manzano

The next day mourners processed through the town centre to a red and white church where a priest read from the Book of John, urging shellshocked mourners to transform their sadness into joy. “You shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice.”

There was resignation and bitterness at the tranquil forested cemetery, where García passed out as the casket with Ibáñez’s remains was lowered into the earth.

Stunned mothers – several with sons languishing in jail – muttered words of indignation at what they called Bukele’s war on El Salvador’s youth.

“It is evil,” smoldered one woman, lamenting how so many ordinary Salvadorans still supported their populist leader because of the $300 (£27.35) benefit he gave them during the coronavirus pandemic.

The woman balked at the idea that Ibáñez had died of natural causes yet saw no chance of ever discovering the truth. “God will see that there is justice,” she said as mourners began to disperse, heading back to startled communities where the young now fear to leave their homes.

EVITA OF UKRAINE
Interview
Yulia Tymoshenko on war in Ukraine: ‘It’s a chance for the free world to kill this evil’

Exclusive: Former PM discusses ‘cold, cruel’ Vladimir Putin and the west’s response to the Russian invasion

Yulia Tymoshenko in Kyiv in early March, two weeks after the Russian invasion. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Luke Harding and Dan Sabbagh in Kyiv

THE GUARDIAN

Wed 8 Jun 2022 

Ukraine’s former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko has described Vladimir Putin as “absolutely rational, cold, cruel, black evil” and claimed he is determined to go down in Russian history alongside Stalin and Peter the Great.

In an exclusive interview, Tymoshenko dismissed the suggestion that the Russian president was “crazy”. “He acts according to his own dark logic,” she said. “He’s driven by this idea of historic mission and wants to create an empire. That’s his hyper-goal. It comes from a deep inner desire and belief.”


Tymoshenko, a leader of the 2004 Orange revolution and twice prime minister, had several one-on-one meetings with Putin. They held negotiations in 2009 after Putin, then prime minister, turned off the gas supply to Ukraine. Tymoshenko stood for president in 2010, 2014 and 2019, finishing second twice and then third.

Close up, Putin was “always cautious” in what he said and always suspicious that he might be being taped, she said. “He is from a KGB school,” she said. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February, he made no secret of his belief that there was “no such nation as Ukraine, and no such people as Ukrainians”, she said.

His ambitions went beyond seizing Ukrainian territory and toppling its pro-western, pro-Nato government, Tymoshenko suggested. His geopolitical aim was to take over Belarus, Georgia and Moldova as well, and to control central and eastern Europe including the Baltic states, just as Moscow did in Soviet times, she said.

Yulia Tymoshenko and Vladimir Putin in Yalta, Ukraine, in November 2009. 

Photograph: Aleksandr Prokopenko/EPA

Tymoshenko was in Kyiv on 24 February when Russia launched a multi-pronged attack in the early hours. She said peacetime political rivalries and grudges immediately vanished. That morning she went to the presidential administration together with other senior opposition figures and met Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whom she ran against in 2019.

“We hugged each other and shook hands. Everyone was shocked, pale and afraid. None of us planned to leave Kyiv,” she said. “Everyone knew we should stand until the last. We agreed to support our president and our army and to work for victory.” Zelenskiy’s decision to remain in the capital and to “overcome his fear” was important, she said.

As Russian bombs fell, Tymoshenko took refuge in the basement of the modern office building belonging to her Batkivshchyna political party in Kyiv’s Podil district, which was hit several times by missiles. Asked if she was ready to shoot Russian soldiers, she said: “Yes. I have legal weapons. The Kremlin put me on a kill list, according to sources. We were prepared.”

The Russian government had always considered her an enemy, Tymoshenko said. She pointed to her support for Ukraine’s membership of the EU and Nato. In the 2010 presidential election she stood against Viktor Yanukovych, who was backed by Moscow. She blamed her defeat on the outgoing president at the time, Viktor Yushchenko, a one-time Orange revolution ally.

The following year Yanukovych had Tymoshenko jailed in a case widely seen as politically motivated. “Putin and Yanukovych imprisoned me. Yanukovych was never an independent player. He was always Putin’s puppet,” she said. She got out of prison in 2014 when Yanukovych fled to Moscow after the Maidan anti-corruption protests. Weeks later Putin annexed Crimea and instigated a separatist uprising in the east of Ukraine.

Protesters in Maidan Square, Kyiv, in February 2014.

 Photograph: Emeric Fohlen/NurPhoto/REX

Tymoshenko spoke in her downtown office decorated with the Ukrainian flag and photos showing her with western leaders including Margaret Thatcher. She praised the “unbelievable unity” of the “anti-Putin coalition” and singled out the UK and Boris Johnson for special mention, as well as the US, Canada and Poland. “We see Britain as a part of the broader Ukrainian family,” she said.

Last weekend France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, said it was important not to “humiliate” Putin – a phrase interpreted as meaning Ukraine should sacrifice some of its territory in exchange for a realpolitik deal with Moscow. Tymoshenko said France and Germany – criticised for slow-pedalling on arms deliveries – should not be ostracised as Europe grappled with its worst security crisis in decades.

But she said Ukraine’s international partners had to understand that the only way to end the war was to crush Russian forces on the battlefield. Without naming anybody, she said they should not become “co-conspirators with evil”. She added: “There is no such thing as a peace agreement with Putin because it doesn’t lead to peace. It would lead to a new war several years later.”

The stakes for her country were existential, she said. The Kremlin’s objective was to “depersonify” Ukraine, stripping it of its language and culture, and leaving it weak and “atomised”. The civilised world had a unique opportunity to stop Russia and to prevent it from spreading “war, corruption, blackmail, disinformation and unfreedom,” she said.
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Russia had largely given up on the pretence that it was only targeting Ukrainian military infrastructure, Tymoshenko said. The murder of civilians – in cities in the Kyiv region such as Bucha and Irpin, as well as in other areas – was cruel and deliberate, she said, with Russian soldiers following Moscow’s instructions.

“It’s an inseparable part of their genocide against the Ukrainian nation,” she said. “What happened in Mariupol was even worse than in Bucha, Irpin and Hostomel. I’m convinced we will be able to take back Mariupol and to uncover the scale of the horrible killings there. It was a tragedy, a human catastrophe of an unthinkable scale.”

Considering her words, the veteran politician concluded: “This is a great battle for our territory and our freedom. It’s a historic chance for the free world to kill this evil.”