The people who want to be Alberta premier: A list of UCP leadership candidates

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EDMONTON — The United Conservative Party on Tuesday announced rules for a leadership contest to be held on Oct. 6 to choose a new leader and the province's next premier. The race became necessary when Premier Jason Kenney announced last month that he was stepping down after he received 51.4 per cent support in a leadership review. Here is a list of the candidates who have so far declared they want his job:

Leela Aheer: UCP backbench member of the legislature for Chestermere-Strathmore. Was member of Kenney's original cabinet as minister for culture, multiculturalism and the status of women. Removed from cabinet in 2021 after criticizing Kenney’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Promises to restore trust in the party and to work to help the underprivileged.

Brian Jean: UCP backbench member for Fort McMurray-Lac La Biche. Former Wildrose party leader and co-founder of the UCP when his party merged with Kenney’s Progressive Conservatives in 2017. Lost to Kenney in first UCP leadership race. Promises to unite the party on shared grassroots ideals and principles.

Todd Loewen: Backbench member for Central Peace-Notley constituency. Sits as an Independent after being voted out of UCP caucus in 2021 for urging Kenney to resign. Promises to restore trust in party, push for greater Alberta autonomy in dealings with Ottawa.

Bill Rock: Mayor of the village of Amisk in east-central Alberta. Ran unsuccessfully for Wildrose party in 2015. Running on platform to advocate for rural Albertans on issues including crime and health care.


Rajan Sawhney: UCP legislature member representing Calgary-North East. Was member of Kenney's cabinet, first as minister for community and social services, then in transportation. Promises to hold public inquiry into Alberta’s COVID-19 response.

Rebecca Schulz: UCP member for Calgary-Shaw. Was in cabinet as minister of children’s services. Promises to continue fight for better deal with federal government, to improve economy and to rebuild trust with Albertans and party faithful.

Danielle Smith: Former Wildrose party leader who led floor-crossing to Progressive Conservatives in 2014. Has since worked in business and as a radio talk-show host. Promises grassroots participation in party and to pursue increased Alberta independence within Confederation.

Travis Toews: UCP member representing Grande-Prairie Wapiti. Accountant and rancher. Had been finance minister since the start of the UCP government. Promises to heal rifts in party and restore trust with Albertans, while maintaining fiscal honesty.

Note: Sawhney, Schulz and Toews stepped down from cabinet to avoid potential conflict of interest during the leadership run.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 14, 2022.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press

UCP HEALTH CARE

'Disastrous overcrowding': Alberta emergency doctors say ERs facing brunt of health-care pressure

Emergency doctors say mounting pressure on Alberta’s health-care system has created unprecedented emergency room wait times.

Alberta Health Services EMS ambulances are seen near the

 University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton, on Tuesday, March 22, 2022.

Lisa Johnson - Yesterday- Edmonton Journal

Dr. Paul Parks, president of the section of emergency medicine in the Alberta Medical Association, said in an interview with Postmedia a high volume of patients and depleted staff has contributed to “disastrous overcrowding” in emergency rooms.

Parks said specialized hospital in-patient units are often full, so some patients admitted to an emergency department space with a significant illness can’t be transferred, in turn increasing wait times for new arrivals, something he called “access block.”

“Our wait times and our access block and our overcrowding is worse than it’s ever been,” he said, adding the strain has been significant for months but has only grown worse.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Alberta Health Services (AHS) was reporting estimated wait times of more than three hours at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, the Misericordia Community Hospital, and the Grey Nuns Community Hospital, and more than six hours at both the University of Alberta Hospital and the Northeast Community Health Centre.

Parks said the situation is not unique to Edmonton hospitals.

“All of the big emergency departments across the province are really struggling, and we’re just the canary in the coal mine — we’re the warning system of when things aren’t working in the entire system,” he said.

Parks said Albertans who need emergency medical care shouldn’t be discouraged from going to ERs, but called on the government to be more transparent and respond with help and a plan.

“A medical disaster is when the demand outstrips what we can supply … and that’s what’s been happening in our emergency departments regularly,” he said.

Kerry Williamson, a spokesman for AHS, acknowledged in a statement ERs are facing “significant” pressure because of high volumes of seriously ill patients and the impact of COVID-19. That impact includes more people needing hospitalization, while infection control measures limit admissions and more staff are absent.

He said more people are seeking care after deferring it over the past two years, and ERs are also seeing more patients with influenza-like symptoms.

Steve Buick, press secretary to Health Minister Jason Copping, said in a statement emergency departments and other services are under strain across Canada for the same reasons.

He said the government is spending $1.6 billion more on health care than the previous government did in 2018-19, but the strain on the workforce over the past two years means staff are struggling to keep up with patient volumes.

“The pressure on the hospitals will ease as the current Omicron BA.2 wave passes and the number of COVID-positive admissions drops, as well as the number of staff away due to COVID,” Buick said.


Dr. Shazma Mithani poses for a photo in Edmonton on Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022.

Dr. Shazma Mithani, an emergency room physician in Edmonton, said in an interview the “care deficit” of the past two years is a big part of the problem, along with short-staffing in in-patient units, but the trickle-down effect on emergency rooms could have been much better mitigated.

“The wait times that we’re seeing now are completely unprecedented,” said Mithani, adding that while published AHS estimates might be a snapshot in time, they’re consistently high, day after day.

Mithani said if every Albertan had access to a family doctor or pediatrician, their health-care conditions would have been better managed and many ER visits would have been preventable.

“We would not be in the situation we are in right now,” she said.

Williamson noted AHS has 270 more staff working in emergency rooms now than a year ago, and over the past two years, the province has filled more than 2,000 vacancies for registered nurses.

AHS has also tried to help fill staffing gaps by hiring 1,188 new nursing school grads, but Mithani said in critical care, that can create challenges without more experienced nursing staff.

lijohnson@postmedia.com

REDNECK ALBERTA

Emergency protection order applications in response to family violence continue to rise in Alberta

The number of requests for emergency protection orders (EPO) for those facing family violence have spiked 17 per cent since 2018, says Legal Aid Alberta.

Edmonton Journal

Kellen Taniguchi - Yesterday -


Christina Riddoch, staff lawyer with Legal Aid Alberta’s Edmonton office, said the province consistently has some of the highest family-violence numbers in Canada, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only pushed up the number EPO applications.

“Quite frankly, we think that the numbers are just going to continue to increase,” she said of EPO requests, now that COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted.

“We hear concerns about recession looming, job security, income, the cost of living — financial strain is a significant cause of difficulties in relationships and that only exacerbates the potential of family violence occurring in relationships.”

Riddoch said when she first started doing EPO reviews in 2007, she was seeing about four or five at a time — now she is dealing with at least triple that amount. She has 13 EPOs to review on Thursday alone. There have been as many as 17 reviews some days.

Legal Aid Alberta staff lawyers working within the Emergency Protection Order Program have reported a total of 2,267 opened files in 2021-22.

Riddoch said the primary applicants for EPOs are women.


“Women in either established relationships, or they could be short-term relationships but they have a child together with their alleged abuser, but generally it’s women and usually it’s women with children,” she said.

As the number of EPO applications continue to rise, Riddoch said elderly Albertans are submitting applications at a significantly increasing rate.

“Elder abuse is becoming more of an issue. We’re seeing an increase in situations where an adult child or stepchild is abusing their elderly parent — something that could be the result of the cost of living becoming harder to manage,” said Riddoch.

“We’ve been working in tandem with support services for elder abuse victims to try and help get these vulnerable people out of these situations.”

When it comes to family violence, Riddoch said it is important to create more community awareness for the issue. She added it happens behind closed doors and victims don’t always know where to go or who to reach out to for help.

“There are service providers in the community, there’s our office to contact and reach us but that’s not always possible, so if the community would be more vigilant would be my plea,” said Riddoch.

She said everyone in the community, everyone in Alberta and everyone in Edmonton should be vigilant in spotting the signs of family violence.

Riddoch encourages those who hear or see a family violence situation occurring to report it to authorities.

“That may be the difference between someone reaching out for help and someone not being a statistic, a death statistic. It can mean all the difference,” she said.

ktaniguchi@postmedia.com

twitter.com/kellentaniguchi

Largest wind facility in Saskatchewan officially open in Assiniboia

Taz Dhaliwal - Yesterday 
© Global News/Derek Putz

In the heart of the golden south of Saskatchewan, the province's largest wind facility to date had its grand opening on Tuesday.

In an era of climate catastrophes, renewable energy facilities like the new one that just opened up near Assiniboia are offering optimism for a greener, cleaner and more sustainable future

Providing up to 200 megawatts (MW) of emission-free power to the province's power grid, the Golden South Wind Facility includes 50 turbines, which can power up to 100,000 homes.

Potencia Renewables is the company that owns the amenity and is responsible for its construction, maintenance and operations. It has been working closely with SaskPower on this project and the Saskatchewan Crown corporation will be purchasing the energy from Potencia to feed into their grid.

"The completion of Golden South brings us to a total of 10 wind generation facilities here in Saskatchewan. We have four additional renewable projects underway right now, including three solar facilities and another facility," said Troy King, SaskPower interim CEO.

Read more:

Two sustainable energy initiatives launched in Saskatchewan

SaskPower's power grid now includes 680 MW of wind and solar energy. If you include hydro power, 30 per cent of Saskatchewan's energy now comes from cost-effective renewables.

SaskPower Minister Don Morgan said the facility is a big leap forward for the province's climate action plan.

"The province is set to decrease its greenhouse emissions by more than 50 per cent from 2005 levels by the year 2030, and is looking forward to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050," Morgan said.

Delayed by supply chain issues and pandemic restrictions, it took more than two years to construct the facility.

However, the $350 million project is now operational and ready to serve the province for at least the next 25 years. After that quarter century mark, Saskpower can choose to either renew their contract with Potencia, or deconstruct the facility.

Additionally, the wind project has more than just environmental benefits to offer.

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"Our general contractors Borea directly contracted $3.5 million of material and services with local businesses, their subcontractors did many more," said Ben Greenhouse, Potencia Growth vice-president.

"Borea alone generated more than 30,000 hours of labour by 35 Indigenous employees on their payroll and countless others for their other Saskatchewan team members," he added.

The surrounding rural municipalities and town of Assiniaboia expressed gratitude for the facility being constructed in their region.

"In a time when businesses were closing, small towns becoming smaller, this community was thriving," stated Sharon Schauenberg, Assiniboia mayor.

"I can say that this is exactly what we needed as 2020 and 2021 have been some of the toughest economical times we've seen in a long time," Schauenberg said.

In terms of next steps, SaskPower has launched a competition to find a vendor to build the province’s largest solar facility in the Estevan region.

Estevan was chosen because of its abundance of sunny days, proximity to suitable transmission infrastructure and the relatively flat landscape.

According to SaskPower, at 100 MW, the upcoming facility will be ten times the capacity of Saskatchewan’s current largest solar plant and will provide clean power for up to 25,000 homes.

Cambodian court jails American lawyer, dozens of others for treason



Story by Reuters - Yesterday 

A Cambodian court handed down jail sentences on Tuesday to about 60 opposition figures including prominent lawyer Theary Seng for conspiring to commit treason, in a mass trial condemned by the United States and rights groups as politically motivated.

Theary Seng, a Cambodian-American lawyer and human rights activist, was among more than 100 people affiliated with the dissolved Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) charged with treason and incitement.

The court in Phnom Penh sentenced Theary Seng to six years in jail and ordered her arrest, her lawyer told reporters.

“This is not acceptable and I will meet her in prison to discuss appealing,” the lawyer Chuong Choungy said outside the court, noting she was among about 60 co-defendants who had been sentenced to between five to eight years in prison.

Theary Seng had arrived at court dressed as the Statue of Liberty with a symbolic chain around her, and saying she expected to be found guilty.

After the verdict, she was bundled into a police pickup truck after the verdict, sparking scuffles between officers and her supporters.Theary Seng stands outside the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Tuesday. - Heng Sinith/AP

The verdicts are likely to renew international concern about Cambodia’s veteran prime minister, Hun Sen, and what his critics say has been elimination, over many years, of opposition to his rule. Hun Sen denies persecuting his opponents.

US embassy spokesperson Chad Roedemeier said the United States was “deeply troubled by today’s unjust verdicts”.

“The United States has consistently called on Cambodian authorities to stop politically motivated trials, including against US citizen Seng Theary and other human rights defenders, members of the political opposition, journalists, and labour and environmental activists,” Roedemeier told Reuters.


Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen gestures during a news conference at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh on September 17, 2021. - Tang Chhin Sothy/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

The court sentenced veteran opposition leader Sam Rainsy, a former finance minister and leader of the CNRP who lives in exile in France, in absentia to eight years in prison.
‘Autocratic’

Before her arrest, Theary Seng spoke of the verdict she expected, saying it would apply to all Cambodians who “love justice, who love freedom, who are genuine democrats”.

“It follows the logic of this autocratic regime to find me guilty,” she told reporters.

Hun Sen has ruled Cambodia for 37 years. He rose to prominence in the 1980s, after the defeat of the Khmer Rouge “killing fields” regime, and cemented his hold on power in the 1990s.

The CNRP was banned and its leader Kem Sokha arrested before a 2018 general election, allowing Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party to win every parliamentary seat, and prompting international outrage.

The charges against Kem Sokha stem from accusations he conspired with the US to overthrow Hun Sen. Kem Sokha and the US reject the accusations.

Human Rights Watch urged foreign governments, the United Nations, and aid donors to press Cambodia to quash the convictions and end a broad attack on the country’s remaining civic and democratic space.

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Canada, U.S. face democratic ‘rough patches’ amid populism: American envoy

Amanda Connolly - GLOBAL NEWS - Sunday, June 12, 2022

Canada and the United States are facing "rough patches" in their democracies as populist, authoritarian movements continue to find traction among Western countries, says the American ambassador.

But in an interview with The West Block's Mercedes Stephenson, David Cohen said he is ultimately optimistic that the democracies will find a way through the political turmoil of recent years.

"I am always a glass-half-full kind of a guy," Cohen said. "I irrevocably believe that democracy will prevail.

"We may have to work through some issues. There may be some rough patches."

"But at the end of the day, you combat these rough patches with the strength of democracy, with dialogue, with working together with other democracies."

His comments come as the U.S. House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, deadly attack on the Capitol presents its findings to the American public in televised hearings.

Read more:

Key takeaways from Jan. 6 committee’s first hearing on the Capitol riot

Cohen added that the challenges to democracy are not just happening in North America but in countries around the world where extremists are trying to use populism to subvert democratic processes and voices to further the goals of authoritarianism.

China and Russia are among the actors involved in those attempts to subvert democracy, he said, but also domestic forces including elements in the trucker convoys that blockaded the Canadian capital and border crossings for three weeks earlier this year.

"I don't know whether it's Donald Trump lines that have seeped into Canadian politics or whether it is this global movement that, quite frankly, predated Donald Trump," Cohen said.

"I think the best way to combat some of the hateful rhetoric of these extremist movements is with positive speech, is with democracies getting together and talking about the benefits of democracy and the things that we can do together as democratic countries and democratic societies," he added.

"And that's a lot of the discussion that took place at the Summit for the Americas last week."

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The Summit brought together not only Canada and the U.S. but countries from the hemisphere, including many from Latin America where analysts have suggested American influence has waned in the years since the U.S. withdrew from leadership on the global stage under the Trump administration.

That waning influence presents an opportunity for Canada to exercise a bigger role in hemispheric diplomacy and strategy.

“Given the U.S. position on all of this, it only makes Canada’s potential role in the hemisphere, not just materially but symbolically, really critical,” said Kenneth Frankel, chief executive of the Toronto-based Council of the Americas, in an interview last week with Global News.

“Latin Americans who are struggling for democracy and human rights — they want to know that there’s a big country in the neighbourhood that’s on their side.”

Read more:
L.A. Summit offers Canada a chance to boost its global influence

An ongoing source of criticism for Canada, though, is matching rhetoric with action -- and dollars.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has continued to face questions about why he is not committing Canada to spending the NATO target of two per cent of GDP on defence amid what his defence minister, Anita Anand, has acknowledged is a "darker" and "more chaotic" world.

Read more:
Canada’s defence minister says the world is ‘growing darker’ and ‘more chaotic’

While the government has increased defence spending by roughly $8 billion in the most recent budget, it still falls roughly $75-billion short of hitting the NATO target, according to an analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

Cohen had appeared critical of that budget increase earlier this year, when he described it as "a little disappointing as matched against the rhetoric that we heard leading into the release of the budget.”

He clarified those comments to Global News.

"I think there was an impression created that there would be a larger increase in defence spending than there ended up being," he said.

At the same time, Cohen said the U.S. acknowledges there are spending commitments such as NORAD modernization and a defence policy review that could end up seeing additional defence spending beyond what is outlined in the budget.

"I don't think, as the United States ambassador to Canada, it's appropriate for me to say one way or another what's enough and what isn't enough," he said. "I think Canada has a firm sense of the importance of defence, particularly in light of what's happening in Russia -- Ukraine, particularly --and what you talked about earlier with China's increasing aggressiveness."

"Canada needs to make a judgment of what is enough to spend by way of defence and how quickly they need to move to be able to get there."

Scientists find oldest belly button in the world on a dinosaur fossil


An “exquisitely” preserved dinosaur fossil has revealed the soft underbelly of a horned dinosaur from China. Specifically, paleontologists using high-tech laser imaging technology found evidence of a dinosaur that lived 125 million years ago and sported a belly button.


Laser image of the bipedal Psittacosaurus showing the umbilical scar and scales.

Swikar Oli -  National Post

The long umbilical scar on the Psittacosaurus specimen is similar to those found on some lizards and crocodiles. Unlike mammals, this reptilian form of belly button is a slit-like opening connecting the embryo to the egg’s yolk sac and other membranes. The yolk sac is absorbed by the dinosaur either immediately before or soon after hatching, leaving behind an opening in the abdominal wall that seals up and appears as a long scar.

While scientists have hypothesized that egg-laying dinosaurs would develop such scars, this is the first time it has been spotted in a non-avian dinosaur.

“We call this kind of scar a belly button, and it is smaller in humans. This specimen is the first dinosaur fossil to preserve a belly button, which is due to its exceptional state of preservation,” said Michael Pittman, one of the study’s authors and a palaeontologists from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The size, smoothness and location of the umbilical scar rule out trauma or infection as the cause, the study says. The abdominal scale’s pattern was uninterrupted, whereas a healed injury would have a “smooth, scale-free connective tissue over the open wound,” the authors note.

Psittacosaurus (a name that means ‘parrot lizard’) was a two-metre long beaked herbivore that lived in the early Cretaceous. The fossil used in this study was made public in 2002 and has led to big discoveries because of its exceptionally preserved state, complete with scales, horn and “long plumes of tail bristles,” the researchers write.

“This Psittacosaurus specimen is probably the most important fossil we have for studying dinosaur skin. But it continues to yield surprises that we can bring to life with new technology like laser imaging,” the study’s lead author Phil R. Bell from the University of New England in Armidale in Australia told Phys.org .

The palaeontologists compared the length of the specimen’s femur to other Psittacosaurus to estimate its age as just shy of sexual maturity, about 6 or 7 years old. It’s unclear whether the umbilical scar in dinosaurs lasts until adulthood.

The prized specimen is on view at at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt, Germany.

UK cancels first flight to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda


LONDON (AP) — Britain canceled a flight that was scheduled to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda late Tuesday after the European Court of Human Rights intervened, saying the plan carried “a real risk of irreversible harm."

The decision to scrap the flight capped three days of frantic court challenges from immigrant rights lawyers who launched a flurry of case-by-case appeals seeking to block the deportation of everyone on the government’s list.

British government officials had said earlier in the day that the plane would take off no matter how many people were on board. But after the appeals, no one remained. British media reported that the number of potential deportees had been more than 30 on Friday.

After the flight was canceled, Home Secretary Priti Patel said she was disappointed but would not be “deterred from doing the right thing.” She added: “Our legal team are reviewing every decision made on this flight and preparation for the next flight begins now.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson had emphatically defended Britain’s plan, arguing that it is a legitimate way to protect lives and thwart the criminal gangs that smuggle migrants across the English Channel in small boats. Britain in recent years has seen an illegal influx of migrants from such places as Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Iraq and Yemen.

Johnson announced an agreement with Rwanda in April in which people who enter Britain illegally will be deported to the East African country. In exchange for accepting them, Rwanda will receive millions of pounds (dollars) in development aid. The deportees will be allowed to apply for asylum in Rwanda, not Britain.

Opponents have argued that it is illegal and inhumane to send people thousands of miles to a country they don’t want to live in. The leaders of the Church of England joined the opposition, calling the government’s policy “immoral.” Prince Charles was among those opposed, according to British news reports.

Activists have denounced the policy as an attack on the rights of refugees that most countries have recognized since the end of World War II.

Refugee Council chief executive Enver Solomon said the British government's deportation threat would not serve as a deterrent to those seeking safety in the U.K.

“The government must immediately rethink by having a grown-up conversation with France and the (European Union) about sharing responsibility and look to operating an orderly, humane, and fair asylum system,” Solomon said.

The U.N. refugee agency condemned the plan out of concern that other countries will follow suit as war, repression and natural disasters force a growing number of people from their homes.

Politicians in Denmark and Austria are considering similar proposals. Australia has operated an asylum-processing center in the Pacific island nation of Nauru since 2012.

“At a global level, this unapologetically punitive deal further condones the evisceration of the right to seek asylum in wealthy countries,” said Maurizio Albahari, a migration expert at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana as he described the UK policy.

Many millions of people around the globe have been displaced over the past two decades, putting the international consensus on refugees under strain. The world had more than 26 million refugees in the middle of last year, more that double the number two decades ago, according to the U.N. refugee agency. Millions more have left their homes voluntarily, seeking economic opportunities in developed nations.

In Britain, those pressures have led to a surge in the number of people crossing the English Channel in leaky inflatable boats, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Last November, 27 people died when their boat sank in the waters between France and England.

Johnson, fighting for his political life amid concerns about his leadership and ethics, responded by promising to stop such risky journeys.

While Rwanda was the site of a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands of people in 1994, the country has built a reputation for stability and economic progress since then, the British government argues. Critics say that stability comes at the cost of political repression.

Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, attacked the policy as “all wrong.”

If the British government is truly interested in protecting lives, it should work with other countries to target the smugglers and provide safe routes for asylum-seekers, not simply shunt migrants to other countries, Grandi said.

“The precedent that this creates is catastrophic for a concept that needs to be shared, like asylum,” Grandi said Monday.

The Archbishop of Canterbury and 24 other bishops from the Church of England joined the chorus of voices asking the government to reconsider an “immoral policy that shames Britain.”

“Our Christian heritage should inspire us to treat asylum-seekers with compassion, fairness and justice, as we have for centuries,” the bishops wrote in a letter to the Times of London.

Britain’s Supreme Court refused to hear one last-ditch appeal Tuesday, a day after two lower courts refused to block the deportations. Legal challenges continued, however, as lawyers filed case-by-case appeals on behalf of individual migrants.

Many migrants favor Britain as a destination for reasons of language or family ties, or because it is seen as an open economy with more opportunities than other European nations.

When Britain was a member of the European Union, it was part of a system that required refugees to seek asylum in the first safe country they entered. Those who reached Britain could be sent back to the EU countries they traveled from. Britain lost that option when it withdrew from the EU two years ago.

Since then, the British and French governments have worked to stop the journeys, with a great deal of bickering and not much success. More than 28,000 migrants entered Britain in small boats last year, up from 8,500 in 2020.

Nando Sigona, a migration expert at the University of Birmingham, said large principles are at stake if the Rwanda policy stands.

“How can we establish any kind of moral high ground where we intervene in other countries if we are not signatory to providing protection to those fleeing war and persecution?’’ Sigona asked.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of migration issues at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

Danica Kirka, The Associated Press

POLITICAL PRISONER
World Vision defendant Halabi's verdict set for Wednesday


ZIONIST NEWS SOURCE
By YONAH JEREMY BOB - 

Yesterday 
The Jerusalem Post

The Beersheba District Court will decide the fate of World Vision defendant Mohammad El Halabi on Wednesday, six years after his arrest and under pressure from the High Court of Justice to stop dragging its feet.

The state prosecution accused El Halabi of assisting Hamas in addition to his humanitarian work, but he claims the charges were made to delegitimize Palestinian civil society.

El Halabi’s case has received global coverage because he was connected to World Vision, and is being watched closely to determine the fairness and professionalism of the Israeli justice system.

As the El Halabi verdict comes in, the International Criminal Court is about 15 months into a criminal investigation of alleged Israeli and Hamas war crimes during the 2014 Gaza War and the 2018 Gaza border conflict, and has yet to give any signs about how it views Israel’s prosecution and courts in terms of probes and verdicts that have resulted from the events in dispute.

There are also questions on whether the time frame and evidentiary stringencies of the trial can be justified, given that El Halabi was not charged with violent crimes himself.

These questions might only be strengthened if he is found innocent or exonerated on some of the charges.

Sources say that a mixed verdict of partial conviction and partial acquittal could be presented to the world as a sign that the court was objective, and did not “buy” everything pitched to it by the prosecution and Israeli intelligence.

The setting of the verdict date itself came under a direct order from the High Court on May 9, after the court had been set to hear a debate on whether to extend El Halabi’s detention for another 90 days.

The verdict was expected to be delivered before May, and the justices seemed to have lost patience with the Beersheba District Court, which has tried the case.

The High Court extended his detention in February for 90 days, but on the basis that it had indications from the Beersheba District Court that this could be a final extension before the verdict.

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The case

EL HALABI’S CASE had come before the High Court dozens of times since his August 2016 indictment, but each time the justices extended his detention pending a verdict in the trial.

The extremely delayed and time-consuming trial ended with closing arguments in July and October, and it is unclear what further delayed the verdict.

El Halabi has vehemently denied the charges and accused the prosecution and the Shin Bet of manufacturing charges, coercing a confession in order to undermine humanitarian organizations in Gaza and dragging out the case.

Mohammad was indicted in August 2016 for smuggling $7.2 million a year to Hamas for buying weapons and building attack tunnels. This was instead of World Vision using it for food, humanitarian assistance, and aid programs for disabled children.

Neither World Vision nor an Australian government audit found the wrongdoing allegedly uncovered by Israel’s Shin Bet.

Since March 2021, more allegations have come out from El Halabi’s side, including that he was fooled by an undercover informant in detention into confirming details that the informant kept pressuring El Hablabi to confirm.

According to the defense, El Halabi told law enforcement that the confession was coerced from the first moment they raised it with him, and the original document recording the confession was lost by police.

The defense says that the case should have been dropped in light of the circumstances in which the confession was given, and that the police record of what was said is an inauthentic photocopy, raising questions of a police cover-up.

In addition, the defense has claimed that World Vision did not transfer any material to Gaza at some of the crossing points where the prosecution says El Halabi made illegal transfers to Hamas.

The Jerusalem Post has learned that although these allegations were new to the public in March 2021, the prosecution had been aware of them and responded to them behind closed doors throughout the trial.

While the prosecution’s responses are classified at this stage, it appears that the prosecution would acknowledge using an undercover informant, but would say that this is a standard approved tactic and that no illegal pressure was applied.

Moreover, the prosecution would point out that the court already rejected any allegations of a coerced confession earlier in the case, and that the only question left to the court is how much weight to give the confession.

In terms of the lost document allegation, it appears the prosecution would likely express regret, but reject any conspiracy theories. It would point out that this is not the first case in which such an error occurred, and that the defense has not flagged any specific issues to invalidate the authenticity of the copy of the confession.

Regarding the border crossing issue, the prosecution would respond that El Halabi was a clever operator and sometimes used different organizations or names to move material while using World Vision as his main laundering tool.

Both sides accuse the other of unconscionable delays relating to fighting over how the trial would take place, what evidence the defense would get to see, and the possibility in the earlier years of reaching a plea deal.

ATERMATH

Tonga volcano ‘afterglow’ creates dazzling sunsets across New Zealand and Australia

Eva Corlett

 in Wellington 

 The Guardian

Unusually fiery and vibrant sunrises and sunsets across New Zealand and Australia in recent weeks could be due to aerosols that were hurled up into the stratosphere following Tonga’s volcanic eruption in January.

New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospherics (Niwa) has been inundated with messages from people asking what is causing the “strange but beautiful phenomenon”.

The team contacted colleagues in Otago and Paris to confirm if their suspicions were true – that the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption was responsible for the displays.


Sunset at Seddon Park in Hamilton, New Zealand, in March. 

Photograph: Marty Melville/AFP/Getty Images

The Lauder Atmospheric Research Station in Central Otago said their instruments had detected unusual spikes in aerosols in the stratosphere, at around 20-25 kilometres above New Zealand. Researchers at the Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace in Paris said satellite data also showed that concentrations of stratospheric aerosols from the eruption had tripled between 35°S and 45°S – the latitude where New Zealand lies on the globe – since April.

The aerosols from the plume of gas and ash have been dispersing around the globe, Niwa said, and indeed, it is thought that they are causing the stunning skies. Sunsets and sunrises would have been similarly striking around Tonga in the aftermath of the eruption, but now the aerosols were heading south.

“Usually when you see a sunrise or sunset, it is the clouds that morph into the most vibrant colours,” said Nava Fedaeff, a Niwa forecaster.

“However, when stratospheric aerosols are present after a volcanic eruption, they scatter and bend the light as the sun dips or rises past the horizon, creating a glow in the sky with hues of blue, purple, and violet.”


A hot air balloon flies over Melbourne in late January.

 Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

Volcanic twilights are known as “afterglows”, with the colour and intensity of the afterglow dependent on the amount of haze and cloudiness along the path of light reaching the stratosphere, Fedaeff said. “These bewitching scenes are made even more striking by crepuscular rays caused by shadowing from distant clouds or mountain barriers.”

New Zealand has experienced this phenomenon before. Sunset afterglows persisted for months after the eruption of Philippine volcano Mount Pinatubo in 1991, meaning New Zealanders could be treated to these lovely morning and evening colours for a while longer, Fedaeff said.

The sun sets at Hagley Park Oval in Christchurch, New Zealand, in April. 

Photograph: Sanka Vidanagama/AFP/Getty Images