TURKEY INVASION OF KURDISTAN
Military escalation | Turkish forces shell Tel Refaat and positions in Kurdish areas in Aleppo

On Jul 11, 2022

Aleppo province: SOHR activists have reported that Turkish bases stationed in “Euphrates Shield” and “Olive Branch” areas shell positions in Tel Refaat countryside in areas held by Kurdish and regime forces in Aleppo countryside. However, no casualties have been reported yet.

Earlier today, SOHR activists reported that several rockets and artillery shells fired by Turkish forces deployed in Euphrates Shield and olive branch areas on the villages of Granada and Hasajak in the northern countryside of Aleppo, where Kurdish and regime forces are deployed.

Yesterday, SOHR sources reported seeing a new Turkish military column crossing into Syria, via Al-Ra’i border crossing with Turkey.

The convoy, which comprised tanks, armoured vehicles and trucks carrying logistical supplies, headed to Turkish positions on the frontlines in Manbij area in eastern Aleppo.

OPINION PAPER | How The War In Ukraine Is Impacting The EU In Countering The Ongoing Global Food Crisis?




Daniel Marco

July 11,2022

The war on Ukraine “the breadbasket of the world” has put food security firmly back on the international agenda in a big way.[1] The reason for this is that Ukraine and Russia are two of the biggest agricultural powerhouses in the world. After Russia invaded Ukraine, grains exports were blocked and today several vulnerable countries are facing terrific suffering with aggravated food insecurity. According to the United Nations (UN), the war in Ukraine has put 45 African and poorest countries at risk of a “hurricane of hunger”.[2]

As solidarity is at the heart of EU values and food security is a concept that is carved into European Treaties, the EU and its member states have been fully engaged to cooperate with its worldwide partners to tackle negative impacts on food security. The EU has responded with a wide range of strategic decisions at the same time when Russia is using food as a weapon of war in Ukraine and blaming the EU and its allies for food insecurity.
Russia’s War On Global Food Security

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is escalating the world food crisis as part of a premeditated campaign to foment famine. It also put pressure on the Western coalition backing Ukraine’s government a campaign that the EU has denounced as a war crime. This scenario could remind what Russia has already done with European countries with its natural gas exports.[3]

Since February 2022, Russia has been blocking all of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, via which all of its huge exports were being transported. It was estimated that 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain were prevented from reaching other parts of the world.[4] And yet, there is currently no sign of an opening at the ports. World Food Program (WFP) executive director David Beasley recently issued a warning: “When a country like Ukraine that grows enough food for 400 million people is out of the market, it creates market volatility, which we are now seeing”.[5] This food crisis has been also made worse by Russia’s bombing and burning of grain storage facilities in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, as well as the theft of hundreds of thousands of tons of grain and exportation of that grain, largely to its partner Syria, with its ships.

It’s crucial to underline that 30% of the wheat and maize consumed worldwide is produced in Russia and Ukraine and more than 70% of its sunflower oil are significant grain suppliers. [6] Consequently, since Russian forces’ criminal activities on Ukraine took place, global food prices have soared while exports have fallen. Above all, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN projects that, in 2023, there will be an increase of nearly 19 million people who are undernourished as a result of the anticipated shortfall in food exports from Ukraine and Russia, assuming that other countries do not increase food exports as a result.[7] Indeed, to counter the rise of prices domestically and avoid political tensions, food export restrictions have already been put in place by big grain producers like Russia, and with the global grain deficit that is going to get worse other nations are likely to follow.[8]

Moscow has started a grain war, creating a worldwide food crisis and it’s doing so at a time when millions of people, mainly in the Middle East and Africa, are already in danger of going hungry.

Before the conflict in Ukraine, most Middle Eastern and African nations were already dealing with skyrocketing food prices brought on by harsh weather conditions, instability brought on by terrorism, and the Covid-19 outbreak, which slowed down production and affected international supply networks. Global food costs have reached unprecedented highs since Russia’s invasion.

Given that they are also the main importers of Ukrainian and Russian wheat and have serious problems with food security. In 2020, 90% of Russia’s $4 billion in exports to Africa was constituted of wheat. Ukraine came in second with $3 billion in exports, with wheat accounting for 48% and maize for 31% of that total.[9] Some countries are expected to be more severely affected than others in the short term. For instance, in Lebanon, 80% of the 630 000 tons of wheat that were imported in 2020 came from Ukraine. In a nation where supplies of wheat are said to be limited to just a few weeks’ worth, the interruption to this supply and the anticipated price hike is alarming. Especially, after the explosion of the port of Beirut where 85% of the country’s grain reserves.[10]

In this context of global food insecurity, the European Commission approved increasing food security assistance that it claims is required due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. In late June, the Commission suggested allocating €600 million taken from the European Development Fund reserves for aid to the most vulnerable nations in the Pacific, the Caribbean, and Africa. A support that will cover several sectors including humanitarian assistance, food production, and resilience of food systems along with Macro-economic support.[11]

This new fund will supplement the global humanitarian aid that has already been mobilized as part of the EU’s Global Food Security Response to help address the food crisis in the regions affected by the ongoing war. Additionally, the declaration coincides with European Development Days, during which the EU also committed to providing 100 million Africans with renewable energy by 2030. Strong European commitments aim to prove to the world that the only reason for the global food insecurity is Russia and not the West as the Kremlin’s propaganda declares.
Kremlin’s Blame Game Against The West

Russia and western countries have been playing the finger-pointing game about who is to blame for shortages and rising costs of food as the impacts of the war are felt on the global markets.[12]

In May 2022, US Secretary of State Antony Bliken blamed Russia for using food as a weapon of war. Later on, at UN Security Council the EU joined the US statements in pushing the blame on Russia for the world’s food shortage, prompting the Russian UN ambassador to leave the room. During this session EU Council chief Charles Michel mentioned that the Kremlin is using food insecurity as a “stealth missile”.[13] Undoubtedly, food insecurity has been intensified because of Russia’s war of choice. Indeed, it has not risen as the Russian government has been claiming, by sanctions that the EU and its allies have charged regarding Moscow’s aggression on Ukraine. Food security was already fragilized before the war, and Russia’s war, blockade, and stealing of grain have all worsened this situation globally.

Nevertheless, Moscow keeps denying its responsibility for global food insecurity. It is “absolutely false,” according to Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, that his nation is to blame for the world’s long-term food shortage.[14] In addition, the country holds attributing the impeding food crisis to the West, citing the sanctions it has been subjected to as a result of the conflict.

Moscow claims that because of Western sanctions against its insurance, banking, and shipping sectors. Russia is unable to export food and fertilizer since foreign shipping companies are scared off from doing so. To send grain to global markets, Russian officials say that sanctions must be repealed. “If our partners want to reach a solution, then problems associated with lifting those sanctions placed on Russian exports must also be solved” stated Andrei Rudenko, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister. [15]

These Russian beliefs have been backed by a disinformation campaign aiming to conceal the origin of the food crisis from the world. By blaming the West and Ukraine, Russian government representatives, state-funded media along with Moscow-aligned proxy “fake-news” actors are trying to divert attention away from Russia’s involvement in the deepening of global food instability. Consequently, their misinformation campaign is mainly targeting the Middle East and Africa, regions which have been hardest hit by the food crisis.[16]

To empower its position, Russia has amplified statements made by African leaders as part of its global disinformation strategy. In late May 2022, Macky Sall, the head of the African Union, claimed that sanctions had made the food crisis worse and cautioned authorities at a meeting of the European Union that stopping large Russian banks from using the SWIFT system would make it harder for African nations to buy Russian grains and fertilizers.[17] “When the SWIFT system is disrupted, it means that even if products exist, the payment becomes complicated, if not impossible”.[18] Recall that a common statement on cooperation towards 2030 was the outcome of the sixth EU-African Union summit held in Brussels one week before Russia’s war on Ukraine.

In this regard, to refute the Russian narrative, European governments are engaging with leaders on the African continent more and stepping up their information operations. In May, European leaders urged African nations not to fall for a Kremlin-led misinformation campaign that blames Western sanctions against Russia for an approaching global food catastrophe. In addition,

EU officials have urged a more active strategy to counter Russian disinformation and propaganda, however, the bloc has so far lacked the resources to do so since the EU’s diplomatic service’s East StratCom Task Force, is underfunded and not enough supported. Therefore, the EU’s new Strategic Compass is expected to call for several actions, including strengthening EU Delegations abroad and enhancing member states’ abilities to identify and analyze malicious misinformation.[19]
The Challenges Ahead For The EU And Its Allies

Russia’s “hunger plan” is intended to function on three levels. The first aim of its plan is to destroy Ukraine by shutting off exports, then by bringing in refugees from North Africa and the Middle East, regions typically supplied by Ukraine, it is an effort to sow instability in the EU. And lastly, a backdrop of global hunger is required for a Russian propaganda operation against Ukraine. When the food riots spread and malnutrition grows, Russian media will be able to accuse Ukraine and demand the recognition of Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine as well as the lifting of all EU and western sanctions.

Moreover, the debate over whether specific sanctions relief should be considered if it will prevent famine was launched at the EU level, especially in times when the crisis in Ukraine continues and food shortages get worse. This is why the EU and its allies have ensured during the last G7 meeting that their sanctions on Russia do not and will not affect foodstuffs.[20]An engagement was taken at the time when the Kremlin is attempting to create controversy to get the sanctions withdrawn and is determined to use the prospect of world starvation as a negotiating tool in any future peace negotiations.

Nearly 193 million people in 53 nations and territories have severe food insecurity and need immediate assistance even before Russia invaded Ukraine. The issue is being drastically made worse by Russia’s attack.[21] The conflict, and the consequences of climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic combined “threatens to tip tens of millions of people over the edge into food insecurity followed by malnutrition, mass hunger, and famine” said Antonio Guterres Secretary-General of the UN. [22] Hence, it’s essential to emphasize that the key for the EU and its allies is to keep taking preventative measures, as what is currently an accessibility problem could turn into an availability concern in the long term.

_______________________________

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2022/05/12/war-in-ukraine-threatens-the-world-s-breadbasket_5983258_19.html

[2] https://theconversation.com/too-many-people-not-enough-food-isnt-the-cause-of-hunger-and-food-insecurity-179168

[3] https://www.ft.com/content/c1e64553-7451-4462-a9c4-8ec03f1d5536

[4] https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/how-the-eu-is-helping-address-the-global-food-crisis/

[5] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/russias-war-on-global-food-security/

[6] https://www.euronews.com/2022/06/19/global-food-crisis-looms-as-ukraine-struggles-to-export-its-grain-after-russian-invasion

[7] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-15/how-does-the-war-in-ukraine-impact-food-supply/101151574

[8] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/issue-brief/russias-war-on-global-food-security/

[9] https://newint.org/features/2022/06/07/ukraine-war-has-hit-africa-food-security

[10] https://www.sipri.org/commentary/blog/2022/war-breadbasket-impacts-war-ukraine-food-security-and-stability-lebanon

[11] https://reliefweb.int/report/world/food-security-eu-step-its-support-african-caribbean-and-pacific-countries-response-russias-invasion-ukraine

[12] https://politicstoday.org/global-food-crisis-russia-ukraine-and-the-west/

[13] https://www.brusselstimes.com/world-all-news/235911/ukraine-grain-crisis-the-west-blames-russia-for-food-insecurity

[14] https://www.dw.com/en/russia-weaponizes-food-security-us-tells-un-meeting/a-61865923

[15] Ibid.

[16] https://www.state.gov/disarming-disinformation/russias-disinformation-cannot-hide-its-responsibility-for-the-global-food-crisis/

[17] https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-warns-africa-against-russias-food-crisis-propaganda/

[18] https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20220602-african-union-head-senegal-s-macky-sall-to-speak-to-putin-in-russia-on-friday.

[19] https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/eu-steps-up-efforts-to-debunk-putins-food-security-propaganda/

[20] https://www.g7germany.de/resource/blob/974430/2057824/b4c9113bec507f0bd4b0389f6ac15ea7/2022-06-28-statement-on-global-food-security-data.pdf?download=1

[21] https://reliefweb.int/report/world/food-security-eu-step-its-support-african-caribbean-and-pacific-countries-response-russias-invasion-ukraine

[22] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61503049

Daniel Marco holds a first year of a Master’s Degree in International and European Studies specialized in the Management of European affairs at the University of Lille (France) and he is a recent graduate of a Master's Degree in International Relations and Geopolitics at Lille Catholic University. EU foreign policy, history and the geopolitics of the Middle East as well as EU’s relations with the Middle Eastern countries are among his research interests. Daniel speaks Arabic (classical and Egyptian), French, English, Spanish and has a basic knowledge of Greek.

Fox News host complains that learning about slavery makes (WHITE) people 'feel guilty'


Ariana Baio

July 11,2022

On Sunday's episode of Fox & Friends, co-hosts complained that Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello, was becoming "woke" due to changes in the way Jefferson is perceived.

Jefferson, who owned 600 slaves throughout his life, had nearly 400 people enslaved on his plantation Monticello located in Virginia. In recent years, Monticello has re-framed the narrative surrounding Jefferson to include the history of enslaved people at the plantation.

Much of the information from Monticello's website focuses on Jefferson's hypocrisy as a slave-owner who also wrote "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence.

The Fox and Friends hosts criticized this citing a recent New York Post article that included negative feedback from visitors who felt Jefferson's reputation was painted negatively.

Throughout the tour, visitors are educated about slavery and racism and much of the gift shop is filled with educational books about the topic.

Co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy said the museum's efforts to educate visitors about racism and slavery "makes you feel guilty and not so great about America."

Fox News host says 'diabolical' museum that made her feel 'ashamed' about slavery

www.youtube.com

Monticello published an op-ed on their website on July 4th encouraging people to have a conversation reflecting on how a "better understanding of our past will aid us in building a better future".

In response to The Post article criticizing Monticello's shift in focus, a spokesperson for Monticello said, "Our goal is to present an honest, inclusive history of Monticello in all its aspects as well as Jefferson’s contributions to the founding of the country,” said Jenn Lyon, a Monticello spokesperson.

Later on, Jeffery Tucker joined Brian Kilmeade to speak to his own experience at Monticello, calling it 'demoralizing' and 'heartbreaking'



"I just thought that maybe Monticello would be protected from this disease of wokeism," Tucker said.

Tucker said some older paintings have been replaced by "woke piece of art" and many of Jefferson's accomplishments are "diminished".

Projects like the New York Times' 1619 Project are focused on reframe the narrative of American history to place "the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative."

Essay: America has decided it’s over the virus
May 29, 2020 

THIS MAGICAL THINKING CONTINUES 

EVEN NOW JULY 2022

By
Dan Zak
The Washington Post

We’re over it. The masks, the kids, the Lysol. Over it. The tragic hair, the diminished hygiene, the endless construction next door, the Zoom meetings from hell, the mind games with the unemployment office, the celibacy, the short tempers and long evenings, the looking forward to the mail, the feeling guilty about the mail carrier working double time, the corporate compassion pushing products we didn’t need even before the world went funky and febrile. The now-more-than-everness, the president-said-whatness. Over it. Does 99.1 count as a fever? Over it. Some of us have reached the outskirts of Netflix, and we’re over it. Some of us can’t make rent; over it. And so we are deciding to have a summer after all, it seems. A summer of playing freely, of living dangerously. One hundred thousand dead, 40.8 million jobless claims. Not past it, but over it.

“We can’t keep fighting the virus from our living room,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, R, clearly over it, said Wednesday.

“There is a pent-up demand” to resume normal life, said President Donald Trump, also over it, in the Rose Garden on Tuesday. “And you’re going to see it more and more.”

“I think everybody is kind of over it, you know what I mean?” says a Realtor named Toni Mock, on the phone from Jacksonville, Fla.

Her 2019 was better than any of her 25 years in the business. She wants that roaring Trump economy back. One thing that helped her get over it was the “boaters for Trump” flotilla May 16. She hopped in a friend’s 40-foot sportfishing boat with some chicken wings and Corona beers (lol) and joined a fleet of vessels in the Intracoastal Waterway. The sun, the breeze, the “Trump 2020” and “Stop the Bulls—” flags, the kayaks and jet skis, the boats dubbed with carefree puns like “Knot to Worry” — it was “almost biblical,” according to Mock.

“It’s all a part of getting out there and letting everybody know we’re not going to die from this.”

And what if the coronavirus surges back, because we’re all over it and having a summer, and we do die from this?

“I have God in my heart, so God could take me out any day,” Mock says. “He can take me out in any way he wants to. And if it’s my time to go, it’s my time to go. I don’t think anyone I know is personally concerned. None of us are afraid, because we have God in our souls and God in our hearts. And we don’t watch CNN.”

Boaters around Jacksonville are hoping to do another flotilla June 14, in honor of President Trump’s 74th birthday, and why not? Duval County is populous but has only 44 confirmed COVID-19 deaths; that’s 0.005 percent of the population.

If you render a pandemic in hyperlocal statistics, it can look like nothing. It can look like it’s time to get over it.

If you meet a pandemic head-on in a hospital, it can look like everything. It can look like we won’t be over it for a while. A few weeks ago, at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Mass., a nurse named Marlena Pellegrino donned her protective gear to check on a 100-year-old COVID-19 patient, who had been alone in a room for too long because of a staffing shortage.

“I’m blue,” the old woman, who had dementia, told Pellegrino.

At first, Pellegrino thought she was being literal. Blue? Her lips? Skin? A lack of oxygen? Just cold? The woman clarified that she was lonely.

“That was like a knife in my heart,” Pellegrino says. Even in her fog and confusion, the woman was communicating the hard truth of the pandemic: that many people are suffering, and dying, alone. And just because we can’t see them doesn’t mean we should be over it.

“People out in these states without masks on … — to nurses, that’s like, ‘What do these people not understand?’ ” — Marlena Pellegrino, nurse

“People out in these states at water parks and beaches and boardwalks without masks on, gathering 200 people in a pool — to nurses, that’s like, ‘What do these people not understand?’ ” says Pellegrino, walking in a park Thursday in Worcester, Mass., before her 3-to-midnight shift at St. Vincent. “This is about protecting community, protecting society. People are just discarding what is still a major health-care crisis. A pandemic means we need to be safeguarding one another. We’re going to be needing to protect ourselves for months — if not years — to come.”

The District is over it — the lockdown, anyway. The citywide stay-at-home order lifts today. Over your scraggly bangs? You can get your hair cut by appointment, but you can’t get it waxed or zapped off. Over eating every meal at home? You can order food and drink outside at a restaurant, but your party cannot exceed six people. Gyms, though, remain closed. This makes sense — for now — to Melody Feldman, owner of D.C.’s CrossFit MPH, whose 135 members are working out together virtually, on Zoom. But she very much hopes to be open by July.

“I was literally on Zoom calls for seven hours yesterday,” Feldman says. “I felt like I had so much anxiety and irritation at the end that, no, I can’t do that forever. That’s not healthy or natural. And I think that a lot of people are feeling a similar way. We’re willing to stay here for a while for the greater good, but it’s definitely taking a toll on everyone emotionally, socially. It’s not a place we can live forever.”


It’s definitely taking a toll on everyone … It’s not a place we can live forever.” — Melody Feldman, gym owner

Protesters in state capitols have been over it for a while. Last weekend a woman in Sacramento was so over it that she held a sign conveying her yearning for movie-theater popcorn. A man in Lansing was so over it that he held a sign May 14 that said, “I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees.” Now the rest of the country is beginning to grant their wishes. Disney World is hoping to begin a phased reopening July 11. In Las Vegas, the Bellagio and MGM Grand will reopen Thursday.

Debra Jeffries, a cocktail server at a Las Vegas casino, has a routine these days at her home in Henderson, Nev.: morning coffee, then two hours trying — and failing — to get ahold of someone at the unemployment office, then doing work for her union to advocate for safety standards. She’ll be over this whole thing when she’s satisfied that casinos are reopening responsibly.

“To tell you the truth, I’m scared,” says Jeffries, 65. “I wait on people from all over the world. And the smoking bothers me in a casino. That’s an aerosol, when they’re blowing out smoke, and that’s penetrating a mask.” She has been a cocktail server for 40 years, and suspects that the remainder of her career will not be the same.

Rising college senior Eric Mendoza knows his career won’t be the same, even though his career hasn’t even begun. He was elected student-body president at Texas A&M University three weeks before the pandemic locked down the country. This summer he was supposed to work in Dallas for a consulting firm, but instead he’s home in Houston with his parents and sister. Three months in, he’s over it, but he also realizes that “it” is actually a step forward.

“Because everything has changed, everything will change,” Mendoza says. “I have friends that planned out their life for the next few years, and now they have to do a whole new thing. I think a lot of students, myself included, are trying to release ourselves from expectations of what might have been, and grapple with reality.”

Reality means grappling with the idea that the coronavirus might stalk us for years, even if scientists come up with a vaccine. Reality means wondering how much more we can take. Who wouldn’t want to be over it? Beats being under it.

The percentage of American adults experiencing depressed moods has doubled during the pandemic, according to an emergency weekly survey conducted in April by the Census Bureau. Nearly half of adults in Mississippi reported symptoms of anxiety or depression; no state had a higher percentage.

This makes sense to Michael W. Preston, a marriage and family therapist in Jackson, Miss.: The lower your socioeconomic class, the higher your anxiety and susceptibility to mental illness. Preston, whose sessions are exclusively online for now, finds that his patients are frustrated either because others are not taking the pandemic seriously enough, or because they’re taking it too seriously. Over the past three months he has seen the balm of togetherness replaced by the irritant of politics, made worse by the fact that there’s nothing to do but sit in it.

“There’s been a spike not necessarily in anxiety related to COVID, but related to being stuck,” Preston says. “People are just at the end of their wits. ‘Michael, I cannot stay home for another day.’ They will and they do, but I think most people are talking about being stuck.”


“People are just at the end of their wits.” — Michael W. Preston, marriage and family therapist

Preston advocates grace. Show yourself grace. Show your spouse or your family grace. Permit and excuse each other’s shortened fuses and little conniptions. We may not be able to control time, but we can control space. And we should give each other that.

“Sometime on Monday, around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, I thought, “If I hear one more whining tone, I’m going to go bananas,” says Preston, a father of three children under 7. “And it’s not that my kids were being especially whiny; it’s just that I haven’t gotten a break from it, like I normally would, in weeks.”

So he excused himself, shut the door to his bedroom, and sat for a few minutes until he was over it.

This story was originally published at washingtonpost.com. Read it here.

As the BA.5 variant spreads, the risk of coronavirus reinfection grows

Joel Achenbach -

© An Rong Xu/For The Washington PostAs the BA.5 variant spreads, the risk of coronavirus reinfection grows

America has decided the pandemic is over. The coronavirus has other ideas.

The latest omicron offshoot, BA.5, has quickly become dominant in the United States, and thanks to its elusiveness when encountering the human immune system, is driving a wave of cases across the country.

The size of that wave is unclear because most people are testing at home or not testing at all. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the past week has reported a little more than 100,000 new cases a day on average. But infectious-disease experts know that wildly underestimates the true number, which may be as many as a million, said Eric Topol, a professor at Scripps Research who closely tracks pandemic trends.

Antibodies from vaccines and previous coronavirus infections offer limited protection against BA.5, leading Topol to call it “the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.”

Other experts point out that, despite being hit by multiple rounds of ever-more-contagious omicron subvariants, the country has not yet seen a dramatic spike in hospitalizations. About 38,000 people were hospitalized nationally with covid as of Friday, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. That figure has been steadily rising since early March, but remains far below the record 162,000 patients hospitalized with covid in mid-January. The average daily death toll on Friday stood at 329 and has not changed significantly over the past two months.Has coronavirus disrupted your vacation or other travel plans? Share your experience with The Post.

There is widespread agreement among infectious-disease experts that this remains a dangerous virus that causes illnesses of unpredictable severity — and they say the country is not doing enough to limit transmission.

Restrictions and mandates are long gone. Air travel is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels. Political leaders aren’t talking about the virus — it’s virtually a nonissue on the campaign trail. Most people are done with masking, social distancing and the pandemic generally. They’re taking their chances with the virus.

“It’s the Wild West out there,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, an epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis. “There are no public health measures at all. We’re in a very peculiar spot, where the risk is vivid and it’s out there, but we’ve let our guard down and we’ve chosen, deliberately, to expose ourselves and make ourselves more vulnerable.”

Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, would like to see more money for testing and vaccine development, as well as stronger messaging from the Biden administration and top health officials. She was dismayed recently on a trip to Southern California, where she saw few people wearing masks in the airport. “This is what happens when you don’t have politicians and leaders taking a strong stand on this,” she said.

The CDC said it has urged people to monitor community transmission, “stay up to date on vaccines, and take appropriate precautions to protect themselves and others.”Covid deaths no longer overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated as toll on elderly grows

Nearly one-third of the U.S. population lives in counties rated as having “high” transmission levels by the CDC. Cases are rising especially in the South and West.

Many people now see the pandemic as part of the fabric of modern life rather than an urgent health emergency. Some of that is simply a widespread recalibration of risk. This is not the spring of 2020 anymore. Few people remain immunologically naive to the virus. They may still get infected, but the immune system — primed by vaccines or previous bouts with the virus — generally has deeper layers of defense that prevent severe disease.

But the death rate from covid-19 is still much higher than the mortality from influenza or other contagious diseases. Officials have warned of a possible fall or winter wave — perhaps as many as 100 million infections in the United States — that could flood hospitals with covid patients. Beyond the direct suffering of such a massive outbreak, there could be economic disruptions as tens of millions of people become too sick to work.


© David Zalubowski/APTravelers wade through long lines at security checkpoints in Denver International Airport on July 5, 2022.

“It feels as though everyone has given up,” said Mercedes Carnethon, an epidemiologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Carnethon said she also isn’t as cautious as she used to be. She wears a high-quality mask on airplanes but doesn’t wear a mask at the gym. She is worried that she’ll contract the coronavirus again — she caught it during the omicron wave last winter. But she doesn’t think a “zero covid” strategy is plausible.

“I feel there is a very limited amount that I can do individually, short of stopping my life,” Carnethon said. “It’s risky. I’ll be catching covid at an inconvenient time. I can hope it is milder than the first time I caught it.”

Many experts concerned about ongoing transmission have also pushed back against online fearmongering and apocalyptic warnings about the virus; people are not routinely getting infected every two or three weeks, Rasmussen said.

Population-level immunity is one reason the virus remains in mutational overdrive. The risk of reinfections has increased because newly emergent subvariants are better able to evade the front-line defense of the immune system, and there is essentially no effort at the community level to limit transmission.They got covid. Then, they got it again.

Al-Aly, who is also chief of research and development at Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System, has scoured VA’s vast database to see what happened to the nearly 39,000 patients infected with the coronavirus for a second or third time. What he found was sobering. In a paper posted online last month, but not yet peer-reviewed or published in a journal, Al-Aly and his co-authors reported that people with multiple infections have a higher cumulative risk of a severe illness or death.

It’s not that the later illnesses are worse than, or even as bad as, earlier cases. But any coronavirus infection carries risk, and the risk of a really bad outcome — a heart attack, for example — builds cumulatively, like a plaque, as infections multiply.

“Reinfection adds risk,” he said. “You’re rolling the dice again. You’re playing Russian roulette.”

Vaccination remains an important, if still underused, weapon against the virus — even if it’s not that effective at stopping new infections.

Omicron blew through the largely vaccinated population last winter with stunning ease, and since then the subvariants have arrived in rapid succession, starting with BA.2 and BA.2.12.1 in the spring, and now BA.5 and its nearly identical relative BA.4.

Vaccines are based on the original strain of the virus that emerged in Wuhan, China in late 2019. The Food and Drug Administration has asked vaccine makers to come up with new formulas that target BA.5 and BA.4. Those boosters could be ready this fall.

But there is no guarantee that these latest subvariants will still be dominant four or five months from now. The virus is not only evolving; it’s also doing so with remarkable speed. The virus may continually outrace the vaccines.

“I worry that by the time we have a vaccine for BA.5 we’ll have a BA.6 or a BA.7. This virus keeps outsmarting us,” Al-Aly said.The lucky few to never get coronavirus could teach us more about it

“We are in a very difficult position with regard to the choice of vaccine for the fall because we’re dealing with a notoriously moving target,” Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s top adviser for the pandemic, told The Post in June, a few days before he, too, announced that he was sick with the virus.

Already there’s another omicron subvariant that has caught the attention of virologists: BA.2.75. First seen last month in India, it has been identified in a smattering of other countries, including the United States. But it’s too soon to know whether it will overtake BA.5 as the dominant variant.

There is no evidence that the new forms of the virus result in different symptoms or severity of disease. Omicron and its many offshoots — including BA.5 — typically replicate higher in the respiratory tract than earlier forms of the virus. That is one theory for why omicron has seemed less likely to cause severe illness.

It’s also unclear if these new variants will alter the risk of a person contracting the long-duration symptoms generally known as “long covid.” The percentage of people with severely debilitating symptoms is probably between 1 and 5 percent — amounting to millions of people in this country, according to Harlan Krumholz, a Yale University professor of medicine.

His colleague, Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunology and expert on long covid, said in an email that she believes the world is not sufficiently vigilant about the disease anymore. She is often the only person masking in a crowd, she said.

“I understand the pandemic fatigue, but the virus is not done with us,” she said. “I fear that the current human behavior is leading to more people getting infected and acquiring long covid. I fear that this situation can lead to a large number of people with disability and chronic health problems in the future.”Tracking U.S. covid-19 cases, deaths and other metrics by state

The precocious nature of the virus has made infectious-disease experts wary of predicting the next phase of the pandemic. Topol warns that a new batch of variants could come out of the blue, the same way omicron emerged unexpectedly in November with a stunning collection of mutations already packaged together. Omicron’s precise origin is unknown, but a leading theory is that it evolved in an immunocompromised patient with a persistent infection.

“Inevitably we could see a new Greek letter family like omicron,” Topol said. “There’s still room for this virus to evolve. It has evolved in an accelerated way for months now. So we should count on it.”

 THEY OVER LOOKED CANADA

What does gun control look like in wealthy nations?

The assassination of ex-Japanese Prime Minister Abe is the latest gun violence incident to make international headlines

Deutsche Welle

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Deutsche Welle   |   Published 09.07.22, 01:51 PM

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The assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is the latest incident of gun violence to make international headlines. As shootings continue, DW looks at policies covering firearms in select countries.Friday's shooting of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Japan — a country known for its strict firearm regulations and low rates of gun violence — has sent shock waves across the world. Other countries with strict firearms laws have also experienced recent high-profile incidents of gun-related violence. DW looks at the laws in a handful of countries where gun violence is rare, but real.

Japan

"No one shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords" is the wording of Japan's weapons law. The country has some of the world's most stringent regulations on private gun ownership. Other than the police and the military, no one is allowed to possess a handgun. Only shotguns and air rifles are available to civilians.

Even buying those weapons in Japan is a long and challenging process. A prospective gun owner must attend mandatory all-day classes and pass a written test and shooting-range test with an accuracy of at least 95%.

Applicants must also undergo a mental health evaluation followed by a police background check — including the backgrounds of their relatives — to make sure that neither the applicant nor the people in their immediate circle have criminal records.

The license is valid for three years. After obtaining a gun, the owner must retake the class and the exam every three years to renew their license. The weapon must be registered and inspected by the police once a year.

Japan last saw the shooting of a politician in 2007, when Iccho Itoh, the mayor of Nagasaki, was shot and killed by a yakuza member. After the assassination, the country tightened the restrictions even further and raised punishments for illegally possessing firearms.

Gun violence is extremely rare in Japan. According to the National Police, there were only 10 shootings in 2021. In the United States, by comparison, 321 people are shot daily, and 111 of them die, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Denmark

After six people were killed in Highland Park, Illinois, on July 4, US conservatives seized on a shooting in Denmark on July 3 to argue that strict gun laws fail to prevent such tragedies. Opponents of this argument point out that Denmark has only had three mass shootings since 1994, whereas the US has already seen more than 300 mass shooting incidents in 2022.

GunPolicy.org, an international database run by the University of Sydney, categorizes the regulation of guns in the Scandinavian country as "restrictive." Firearms in Denmark are regulated by the Justice Ministry.

Civilians cannot own fully automatic firearms; semiautomatic weapons and handguns (pistols and revolvers) are only allowed with special authorization. People who want to purchase firearms must provide a reason such as collecting, hunting or target shooting. Police conduct background checks to determine whether it is safe to grant an applicant a permit. A record of each privately held firearm's acquisition, possession and transfer is retained in an official register.

According to GunPolicy.org, Denmark's estimated rate of private gun ownership was 9.9 weapons per 100 people in 2017.

New Zealand

A white supremacist gunman killed 51 people and wounded at least 40 others in 2019 in Christchurch. The government took action within a month, introducing a nationwide ban on semiautomatic weapons and assault rifles. Parliament voted almost unanimously in favor of the change, with a single dissenting vote.

This rapid reaction to the mass shooting was a unique one. In May, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Stephen Colbert on "The Late Show" that the change was a "pragmatic" response, in which "we saw something that wasn't right, and we acted on it."

Germany

In the wake of the terror attacks in Paris in 2015, the European Commission drafted a reform that was incorporated into Germany's weapon laws in 2020. Since then, authorities have had to check with domestic intelligence agencies to see if the applicant is known to be an extremist before issuing a gun permit.

Authorities must also check every five years whether a registered gun owner has a "legitimate need" to own a weapon. This usually means that the police check whether a gun owner is a shooting club member or has a hunting license.

Whether this measure would be sufficient to prevent extremist attacks has been a matter of debate. Tobias R., the Hanau perpetrator, who killed 9 people in 2020, and neo-Nazi Stephan E., who murdered a local governor Walter Lübcke in 2019, were both members of shooting clubs.

Germany's Interior Ministry revealed that as of December, 1,561 right-wing extremists still legally possessed weapons in Germany. This shows a significant increase of almost 30% compared to the previous year, when authorities recorded 1,203 right-wing extremists with legally-owned guns. At the end of 2020, 550 Reichsbürger (a conspiracy movement that rejects the legitimacy of the German state), still held weapons permits.

The Interior Ministry is drafting a new bill to expand the scope of the background checks authorities must make before granting or renewing a gun license.

Switzerland

Switzerland has one of the most heavily armed populations in the world, with more than 2.3 million privately owned guns in a population of 8.5 million.

Gun culture in Switzerland is essentially linked to its army. Military service is mandatory for all male citizens, who after finishing their service can keep the gun assigned to them at home.

The high number of weapons doesn't come without regulations. To own a gun, you must get a license from local authorities, which means undergoing several background checks.

Switzerland is not a member of the European Union, but is in the Schengen Area and has a close relationship with the EU, governed through a series of bilateral agreements. Consequently, a referendum was held in 2019 to tighten the country's gun laws to conform with new EU regulations. Almost 64% of voters agreed to tougher restrictions on semi-automatic and automatic weapons.

Although the strong gun culture and rates of firearm ownership in Switzerland bear similarities to those of the United States, the number of mass shootings is incomparable. The last mass shooting in Switzerland took place in 2001, whereas Gun Violence Archive recorded 692 mass shootings in the US in 2021 alone. This is the highest figure since the nonprofit research group started tracking shootings in 2014.

UK and Norway

The UK has come a long way in restricting gun ownership, now having some of the strictest firearms laws in the world. Shortly after the devastating Hungerford massacre in 1987, which left 16 people dead, the government took a big step in banning ownership of semi-automatic rifles and introducing new restrictions on the use of shotguns.

The 1996 Dunblane massacre, in which 16 children and one teacher were killed at a primary school, led to further reforms on gun laws in the United Kingdom. The Firearms (Amendment) Act of 1997 prohibited civilians from possessing all but the smallest-caliber handguns, which were then also banned under Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour government the following year.

According to GunPolicy.org, the United Kingdom has one of the lowest rates of gun ownership (five guns for every 100 residents). The majority of the UK police also do not carry guns.

The situation looks slightly different in Norway, where 77 people were killed in a terrorist attack in 2011. In 2021, a decade after the attack, semiautomatic weapons, which had been used in the attack, were banned. Norway still has a high firearms ownership rate compared to other European countries (28.8 guns per 100 people, according to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey), but gun-related violence is very low.

Italy relocates hundreds of refugees from its Lampedusa centre

Around 600 refugees will be distributed to different regions in southern Italy to disburden the refugee centre, says Interior Ministry.

Migrants are rescued off the coast of Lampedusa on Tuesday Jan. 25, 2022. (AP)

The Italian navy has begun relocating the first 600 asylum seekers from the Sicilian island of Lampedusa after its refugee identification center became overwhelmed with new arrivals and photos circulated of filthy conditions.

July has seen a sustained uptick in daily refugee arrivals in Italy compared to recent years, according to Interior Ministry statistics.

Overall, arrivals are up sharply this year, with 30,000 would-be refugees making landfall so far compared to 22,700 in the same period in 2021 and 7,500 in 2020.

Lampedusa, which is closer to North Africa than mainland Italy, is often the destination of choice for Libyan-based refugee smugglers, who charge desperate people hundreds of dollars apiece to cross the Mediterranean Sea on packed, dangerous dinghies and boats.

The Italian navy’s San Marco ship was taking an initial 600 refugees from Lampedusa to another center in Sicily and from there they will be distributed elsewhere in Italy, the ministry said on Saturday and the transfers would continue on Sunday.

READ MORE: Mali refugees 'drown', 'dehydrate' to death off Libya coast



'No, it is Italy'

Lampedusa’s former mayor, Giusi Nicolini, posted what she said were photos and videos taken in the center in recent days, showing new arrivals sleeping on the floor on pieces of foam and bathrooms piled high with plastic bottles and garbage.

“There are 2,100 people packed in the Lampedusa welcome center,” which has beds for 200, she wrote on Facebook. “These could be photos from Libya, but no, it’s Italy. And these are the ones who survived.”

Right-wing lawmakers were quick to seize on the overcrowding, blaming the left-wing parties in Italy's government for being too soft on migration.

“And this would be the left's famous humanitarian model?” Georgia Meloni of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, tweeted along with the images. “Saying no to mass illegal immigration also means saying no to this.”

READ MORE: Several migrants drown as boat capsizes off Italy's Lampedusa

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‘Data Is the New Strategic Commodity of the 21st Century’: Arthur Herman on China’s Chip Race

CHINA IN FOCUS

Tiffany Meier

Jul 9, 2022

In this special episode, we sat down with Arthur Herman, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and director of the Quantum Alliance Initiative. While microchips have been making the rounds in news headlines, there’s a recent report by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University titled “Managing the Chinese Military’s Access to AI chips.” But what are AI chips, and what happens if China’s military gets a hold of these?

Herman said: “China is not only way ahead of us in terms of developing AI as an important tool for government and for understanding its antagonist—its main antagonist, namely the United States—they’re also thinking about AI as an important technology in a strategic way. And we need to spend more time thinking about that as well, and to understand that AI can be a very powerful, positive tool for America and for American life.”

As for how China gets these chips, Herman noted that “export control laws are complicated because it isn’t just the Chinese who buy these chips. And you don’t want to be in a situation in which you sort of say, ‘Okay, we’re not going to sell these chips anymore to China and we … want to make sure that no one else sends them to China either, or resells them, or repackage them in any kind of way to the Chinese military or Chinese intelligence services or even Chinese universities’—because whatever it is they get, the government says, ‘That’s ours,’ and they’ll help themselves to it. So you don’t want to be in a situation where you’re denying friendly countries, or even neutral countries, chips that are part of their perfectly legitimate AI applications, the way in which they work, in the commercial area or the government.AI is an ever-present technology.”

He added that “data has become the new strategic commodity in the 21st century. It will be as important and as decisive in who is it that prevails in the geopolitical contest between the United States and China, between the free world and what I call the new axis—China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. It’ll be as decisive as coal and steel was in the wars in the 19th century, and as fossil fuels were decisive in the wars in the 20th century, and in our own era. It’s the future strategic commodity. We need to think about that, plan for it. Otherwise, we are going to find ourselves in a very serious situation where a technology we originated—machine learning and artificial intelligence comes out of American labs and American companies—is used decisively against us by our worst enemies. That’s not a situation we want to be caught up in. And we need to think about that in a very serious way, starting now.”

And we also sat down with David Goldman, deputy editor for Asia Times.

Goldman said, “For the most part, the military does not use the most advanced state-of-the-art chips. What you have in your, if you have a recent model, iPhone or Android, that has much more sophisticated chips in it then go into a jet fighter, for example. The military tends to use older ships, as there are a great many out there and many ways of getting them. So for the vast majority of military applications, stopping China from buying the top of the line chips is not going to make a great difference.”

He added: “Now, what the United States has tried to do recently is to hold back China’s development of its own chip-making capacity. The United States has a great deal of intellectual property in chip manufacturing equipment. And to make a chip, there are a dozen types of different machines, each of which may have 100 different technologies in it. It’s the most incredibly complex and difficult thing that human beings have ever done by the way of manufacturing. China has been scrambling to try to develop its own chip-making industry, but it’s still very much dependent on imported equipment, particularly from the Netherlands. And the United States last week asked the Netherlands to place yet additional restrictions on exports to China.”

Former Gov. Bill Richardson to travel to Moscow for talks on freeing Brittney Griner: Source

Richardson played a role in achieving the release of former Marine Trevor Reed.

ByPatrick Reevell
July 09, 2022, 

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is planning to travel to Russia in the near future for talks aimed at finding a deal to free the detained WNBA star Brittney Griner, a source with knowledge of the proposed trip told ABC News.

Richardson, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary in the Clinton administration, played a role in achieving a prisoner exchange in April that saw Russia release former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed after nearly two and a half years in captivity.

He is expected to go to Moscow in the next couple of weeks, according to the source, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Russia has repeatedly suggested it's interested in trading Griner for Russians held in U.S. prisons. The new trip appears aimed at seeing if a similar deal to the one that freed Reed could be produced for Griner.

Richardson’s office did not confirm the potential visit, telling ABC News “we are unable to comment on this at the moment.”

“What I can say (and is publicly known) is both the Whelan and Griner families have asked us to help with the release of their loved ones,” Mickey Bergman, executive director at the Richardson Center for Global Engagement, told ABC News in an email.

Richardson is currently representing the Griner family as well as the family of Paul Whelan, the other former Marine held by Russia for three and a half years.

Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in basketball, has been in detention in Russia since mid-February after she was stopped at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and accused by Russian authorities of having vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage.

MORE: Biden, Harris speak to Cherelle Griner, wife of detained WNBA star Brittney Griner

This week, Griner told a Moscow court she would like to plead guilty to the charges, saying she had brought the vape cartridges into Russia unintentionally, explaining she had not meant to leave them in her bag.

The Biden administration has classified Griner as “wrongfully detained” and American officials believe Russia seized her, like Whelan and Reed, to use as bargaining chips with the U.S.

Richardson’s possible trip comes amid speculation whether the U.S. would be willing to make another prisoner swap to free Griner. The Biden administration has said it is committed to negotiating with Russia for Griner’s release but it has refused to comment on whether it is considering any trade.

In this Nov. 16, 2021, file photo, former U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York.
Craig Ruttle/AP, FILE

Asked to comment on Richardson's potential visit, the White House National Security Council told ABC it was in contact with Richardson and valued his efforts, but declined to say more.

“NSC leadership are in touch with Bill Richardson. We appreciate his commitment to getting Americans home and are pursuing the release of Brittney and Paul through government channels,” NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.

Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, said she had requested Richardson's team's help and would support a trip if it took place.

“We asked the Richardson Center to help and I’m encouraged that he might be going,” Cherelle Griner said in a statement to ABC through Griner’s agent Lindsay Colas.

Richardson has a long history of working to free Americans wrongfully detained overseas. Through his nonprofit, the Richardson Center, he has helped return U.S. citizens imprisoned in Iran and North Korea among others.

His team represented Trevor Reed’s family and spent months engaged in shuttle diplomacy trying to outline a possible deal to free him.

Richardson even flew to Moscow on the eve of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in a last ditch effort to persuade Russia to make a trade.

Richardson does not represent the White House. In Reed’s case, he approached Russia’s government and the Biden administration separately to try to feel out what both sides might accept as any possible deal. He then relayed what he had heard back to both sides.

In the end, the prisoner trade the White House made for Reed was the same one Richardson had been advocating for: releasing Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a U.S. prison sentence for drug smuggling.

Richardson has since encouraged the Biden administration to consider making similar deals for Griner and Paul Whelan.

U.S. basketball player Brittney Griner, who was detained in March at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and later charged with illegal possession of cannabis, is escorted before a court hearing in Khimki, outside Moscow, Russia July 7, 2022.
Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters

Following Griner’s court appearance on Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said it was "going to do everything that we can to bring home Brittney Griner safely, and to also make sure that we bring Paul Whelan back home as well." Jean-Pierre said Griner's guilty plea would have "no impact" on the efforts to negotiate her release.

MORE: Paul Whelan’s brother speaks on his Russian detention, US government response

Russian state media and officials have repeatedly floated trading Griner or Whelan for Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer, dubbed “the Merchant of Death” in the media and who is currently serving a 25 year sentence on narco-terrorism charges.

Trevor Reed and his family have called on the Biden administration to exchange Bout if it would free Whelan and Griner.

Speaking to ABC News this week, Reed urged President Joe Biden to do more.

"I hope that President Biden and his administration will do everything possible to get both, you know, Brittney and Paul out of Russia, and that they will do that immediately," he told ABC News. "Because every day that, you know, they sit here and wait to make a decision is one more day that, you know, Paul and Brittney are suffering."

Argentine anti-government protests build as president calls for unity

Protest against Argentina's President Alberto Fernandez's administration, on Independence Day, in Buenos Aires









Sat, July 9, 2022 
By Lucila Sigal

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentine President Alberto Fernandez called for unity on Saturday as protesters marched in the capital to the gates of the presidential palace, lambasting his government over soaring inflation and a crushing national debt.

The center-left president is facing a rising challenge from a militant left-wing of the ruling coalition that wants more state spending to ease high poverty levels and inflation. Two key moderate allies have left his Cabinet in the last month.

The South American country, a major producer of soy and corn, is grappling with inflation running at over 60%, huge pressure on the peso currency and spiking gas import costs that are draining already weak foreign currency reserves.

In a speech to mark the anniversary of Argentina's declaration of independence, Fernandez called for "unity" and asked different factions to work towards it.

"History teaches us that it's a value we must preserve in the toughest moments," he said, adding the country needed economic responsibility with low foreign currency reserves and soaring global inflation "seriously damaging" the local economy.

"We must walk the path towards fiscal balance and stabilize the currency."

Argentina, which has cycled through economic crises for decades, struck a $44 billion debt deal with the International Monetary Fund earlier this year to replace a failed 2018 program. Many blame the IMF for tighter economic policies.

In the streets of Buenos Aires thousands of protesters marched on Saturday afternoon with banners saying "breakaway from the IMF" and "Out, Fund, out". Marchers criticized the government and called for debt payments not to be made.

Parts of the government, including powerful Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, have called for more spending to alleviate the impact of COVID-19 and of the war in Ukraine, which have lit protests in countries globally such as Sri Lanka.

"There is a monumental crisis within our country," said Juan Carlos Giordano, a socialist lawmaker who joined the march.

"Argentina is a capitalist semi-colony in the chains of the IMF. Today we are here to say we need a second independence. Argentina must break its ties with the IMF which is the Spanish Empire of the 21st century."

Fernandez's government was thrown into turmoil a week ago with the abrupt resignation of moderate Economy Minister Martin Guzman, a close ally to the president who had spearheaded talks with the IMF. He was replaced by economist Silvina Batakis.

Batakis, seen as closer to the left-wing of the ruling coalition than Guzman, spoke with the IMF on Friday and has pledged economic stability despite concerns over a populist policy shift that have dragged down bonds and rattled the peso.

"The resignation of the economy minister showed there is an economic and financial collapse that is affecting the lives of workers, of the whole the population," said Workers' Party member Marcelo Ramal.

"We must consider that this year we'll have around 80%-90% inflation with wages that aren't rising as fast."

(Reporting by Lucila Sigal; Additional reporting by Claudia Martini, Horacio Soria and Miguel Lo Bianco; Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Sandra Maler)