SLAP ON WRIST

Eavesdropping probe finds Israeli police exceeded authority

By EMILY ROS

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli government investigation into the use of powerful eavesdropping technology by the police found that they only used it after securing a judicial warrant but that the flood of information exceeded the limits of their authority.

The probe was launched after Calcalist, a local business daily, published an explosive report that the police had used Pegasus, a controversial technology developed by Israel’s NSO Group, to spy on public figures. The Justice Ministry rejected those claims in February, saying there was no evidence police had illegally hacked the mobile phones of those mentioned in the report.

The investigative team, led by Deputy Attorney General Amit Marari, released additional findings on Monday. It said there was “no indication” that police had used sophisticated technology to penetrate personal phones without a judicial order. But it said that when the technology was used, police received excess information not covered by the warrants.

It said that while there was no sign that the excess information was used, its acquisition was a “violation of authority.” The statement did not identify the technology.

The Calcalist report had prompted a public uproar, with then-prime minister Naftali Bennett calling the allegations “very serious.” The Justice Ministry launched its investigation shortly after the report came out in January.

The police welcomed Monday’s findings, saying they proved that “no deliberate activity was carried out in violation of the law.”

“Serious allegations against the conduct of the police turned out to be wrong, but unfortunately they caused great damage to the public’s trust in the police,” a police statement said.

Pegasus is a powerful tool that allows its operator to infiltrate a target’s phone and sweep up its contents, including messages, photos, contacts and location history — without the target being aware or taking any action.

NSO has been linked to snooping on human rights activists, journalists and politicians in several countries. In November, the U.S. blacklisted the company, saying its tools had been used to “conduct transnational repression.”

NSO says it sells the product only to government entities to fight crime and terrorism, with all sales regulated by the Israeli government. The company does not identify its clients and says it has no knowledge of who is targeted. Although it says it has safeguards in place to prevent abuse, it says it ultimately does not control how its clients use the software.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said the latest findings show “major failures” that raise concerns about privacy and the rights of suspects. It called on authorities to bar police from employing such technology until detailed legislation is implemented to govern its use.

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Associated Press writer Joseph Krauss in Ottawa, Ontario, contributed to this report.

High-risk Colombians say GPS devices only add to dangers

By FRANK BAJAK

August 1, 2022

Journalist Claudia Julieta Duque poses for a portrait in Bogota, Colombia, Friday, July 29, 2022. Colombia has for a decade been quietly installing trackers in the armored vehicles of at-risk individuals as well as VIPs, including presidents, government ministers, senators, and Duque herself. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

The bulletproof vehicles that Colombia’s government assigns to hundreds of high-risk individuals are supposed to make them safer. But when an investigative reporter discovered they all had GPS trackers, she only felt more vulnerable — and outraged.

No one had informed Claudia Julieta Duque — or apparently any of the 3,700-plus journalists, rights activists and labor and indigenous leaders who use the vehicles — that the devices were keeping constant tabs on their whereabouts. In Duque’s case, it happened as often as every 30 seconds. The system could also remotely cut off the SUV’s engine.

Colombia is among the world’s most dangerous countries for human rights defenders — with more than 500 killed since 2016. It is also a country where right-wing extremists have a track record of infiltrating national security bodies. For Duque, the GPS revelation was chilling: Movements of people already at risk of political assassination were being tracked with technology that bad actors could weaponize against them.

“It’s something super invasive,” said Duque, who has been a persistent target of rogue security agents. “And the state doesn’t seem to care.”

The government agency responsible has said the trackers were installed to help prevent theft, to track the bodyguards who often drive the vehicles and to help respond to dangerous situations.

For a decade, Colombia had been installing trackers in the armored vehicles of at-risk individuals as well as VIPs, including presidents, government ministers and senators. The agency’s director made that disclosure after Duque learned last year through a public records request that the system was recording her SUV’s location an average of five times an hour.

The director dismissed privacy concerns and called the practice “fundamental” to guaranteeing security.

Considering the tracker a danger to her and her sources, Duque pressed for details on its exact features. But the National Protection Unit, known as UNP in Spanish, offered little. She then demanded the agency remove the device. It refused. So in February, Duque returned the vehicle, left the country and filed a legal challenge.

Now back in Bogotá, she is hoping for satisfaction when Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftist president, takes office Aug. 7.

Petro’s domestic security transition team did not respond to questions from The Associated Press on the matter.

Whatever action the new administration takes will reflect on its avowed commitment to human rights and its ability to reform a national security establishment long run by bitter political foes.

The UNP is a pillar of that establishment. It employs, mostly as bodyguards, dozens of ex-agents of the disgraced DAS domestic security agency, which was dissolved in 2011 after the government of former President Alvaro Uribe abused it to spy on Supreme Court justices, journalists and political opponents.

Prominent among them were Petro himself – and Duque.

She was surveilled, threatened and bullied by DAS operatives after uncovering evidence that the 1999 assassination of beloved humorist and peace activist Jaime Garzon was a crime of the state. Duque’s reporting eventually helped convict a former DAS deputy director in the killing, and three other ex-DAS officials have been convicted of psychological torture for threatening the lives of Duque and her daughter.

Trials against eight others are pending. Through it all, threats forced her into temporary exile nearly a dozen times.

The questions about the GPS devices added to growing concerns about an agency that once ranked among Latin America’s most effective in human rights protection. Adam Isacson, an analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America, said the UNP became less responsive, more politicized and more penetrated by criminality under the outgoing conservative government.

“With social leaders being killed nearly every other day during the past four years, this was the worst time for the unit to fall into disarray,” he said. Right-wing death squad activity spiked following a historic 2016 peace pact with leftist rebels.

Duque says she was tipped to the GPS trackers in early 2020 when she learned of a planned attempt on her life, but when she asked about them, the government stonewalled for a year.

When she finally got documents with the aid of the InterAmerican Human Rights Commission, they showed her location was recorded 25,183 times over 209 days from February to August of last year alone. A software manual described a panoply of other control options, including remotely operating cameras and door locks managed through vehicles’ computers.

Duque asked if any such features were active in the government-leased vehicles but said she got no answer. The general manager of the company that provides the GPS software told the AP that it only tracks location and speed and enables engine cutoff.



Alberto Yepes a leading human rights activist point to a part of his government assigned vehicle where he found hidden cell phone circuitry, in Bogota, Colombia, Friday, July 22, 2022. Yepes said he also found a GPS tracker after a random caller dialed the wrong number, mistakenly causing the SUV's dashboard to ring. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

A 2021 contract with the vehicle-leasing company obtained by Duque stipulates that a UNP official must approve any engine cutoff and that collected data be kept a minimum of two years. Nothing in the contract supports the claim made by the UNP that the system tracks bodyguards and enables quick reactions in dangerous situations.

UNP officials declined to respond to questions from the AP. There is no evidence the GPS tracking led to any harm to any of the people under protection.

Agency officials took offense last year when Duque questioned their intentions.

“We don’t persecute or follow anyone illegally,” Director Alfonso Campo tweeted in October. “The information compiled by GPS is private” and only handed over to a judge or judicial authority when required in a case or for security reasons. The AP asked the chief prosecutor’s office if had made any requests, but it did not respond.

Privacy experts consider the Colombian government’s tracking illegal and disproportionate and say it poses an unnecessary hacking risk.

Under the country’s 2012 privacy law, affected individuals must consent for such data to be retained. But they were never asked, said Emmanuel Vargas, a privacy law expert helping Duque.

There is no indication that GPS helped protect the indigenous leader Miller Correa, who was kidnapped and killed in mid-March while driving alone on a rural highway. The tracker served afterward to retrieve his government-issued car, which was not armor-plated.

A June 2021 letter from the government to the InterAmerican commission said the UNP took “all measures necessary” to ensure data on protected individuals was “not accessible to (agency) functionaries.” But in a December letter to Duque, the agency indicated it does not directly administer the data-protection efforts. A contractor is responsible.

After Duque publicized her findings, several other high-risk Colombians publicly voiced distrust of their government-provided security details.

One was investigative journalist Julian Martinez, whose book about the infiltration of DAS by corrupt narco-paramilitaries won a 2017 national journalism award.

Martinez’s government-assigned bodyguards didn’t just spy on him after he published articles on alleged drug corruption involving the outgoing government. He accuses them of collecting material for a smear campaign organized by their boss – an outside contractor and former DAS official.

In February, Martinez’s armored vehicle was attacked in Bogota by armed men who were reportedly repelled by his bodyguards. He was nearby at the time, and no one was hurt. Martinez doesn’t believe it was a robbery attempt, as investigators have said they suspect.

“The protection scheme has become a scheme of control,” he said from Argentina, where he fled last month after denouncing an alleged plot to strip him of protection by claiming he was abusing it.

Alberto Yepes, a leading rights activist who assists victims of extrajudicial killings by Colombia’s military, is certain the UNP is being used to spy on him. He suspects cellphone circuitry he discovered in September in his government-provided vehicle could be used to eavesdrop on conversations.

Yepes is not sure Petro can succeed in overhauling the protection unit due to the heavy involvement of contractors with military backgrounds.

“It will be difficult for the new government to change,” he said. “They’re going to have to negotiate.”

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Associated Press Writer Astrid Suarez in Bogota contributed to this report.

ICYMI
Chances of climate catastrophe are ignored, scientists say
By SETH BORENSTEIN

August 1, 2022

 Climate activists Elizabeth Wathuti of Kenia, Vanessa Nakate of Uganda and Helena Gualinga of Ecuador attend the climate protest alongside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, May 26, 2022. A group of top climate scientists say the world needs to think about the ultimate climate catastrophe, human extinction, and how possible it is. They are calling on the world's main climate science body to look at the ultimate climate catastrophes, no matter how remotely unlikely they are. 

(AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)


Experts are ignoring the worst possible climate change catastrophic scenarios, including collapse of society or the potential extinction of humans, however unlikely, a group of top scientists claim.

Eleven scientists from around the world are calling on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s authoritative climate science organization, to do a special science report on “catastrophic climate change” to “bring into focus how much is at stake in a worst-case scenario.” In their perspective piece in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences they raise the idea of human extinction and worldwide societal collapse in the third sentence, calling it “a dangerously underexplored topic.”

The scientists said they aren’t saying that worst is going to happen. They say the trouble is no one knows how likely or unlikely a “climate endgame” is and the world needs those calculations to battle global warming.

“I think it’s highly unlikely you are going to see anything close to even extinction over the next century simply because humans are incredibly resilient,” said study lead author Luke Kemp at the Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge in England. “Even if we have a 1% chance of having a global catastrophe, going extinct over the coming century, that 1%, that is way too high.”

Catastrophic climate scenarios “appear likely enough to warrant attention” and can lead to prevention and warning systems, Kemp said.

Good risk analyses consider both what’s most likely and what’s the worst that could happen, study authors said. But because of push back from non-scientists who reject climate change, mainstream climate science has concentrated on looking at what’s most likely and also disproportionately on low-temperature warming scenarios that come close to international goals, said co-author Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter in England.

There is, Lenton said, “not enough emphasis on how things, the risks, the big risks, could go plausibly badly wrong.”

It’s like an airplane, Lenton said. It’s overwhelmingly likely that it will land safely, but it’s only because so much attention was made to calculate the worst case scenario and then figure out how to avoid a crash. It only works if you research what could go badly wrong and that isn’t being done enough with climate change, he said.

“The stakes may be higher than we thought,” said University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck, who wasn’t part of the study. He worries that the world “may stumble” upon climate risks it doesn’t know about.

When global science organizations look at climate change they tend to just look at what happens in the world: extreme weather, higher temperatures, melting ice sheets, rising seas and plant and animal extinctions. But they aren’t factoring enough how these reverberate in human societies and interact with existing problems — like war, hunger and disease — study authors said.

“If we don’t look at the intersecting risks, we’ll be painfully surprised,” said University of Washington public health and climate professor Kristie Ebi, a co-author who like Lenton has been part of United Nations global climate assessments.

It was a mistake health professionals made before COVID-19 when assessing possible pandemics, Ebi said. They talked about disease spread, but not lockdowns, supply chain problems and spiraling economies.

Study authors said they worry about societal collapse — war, famine, economic crises — linked to climate change more than the physical changes to Earth itself.

Outside climate scientists and risk experts were both welcoming and wary of focusing on the worst of the worst, even as many reject climate doom talk.

“I do not believe civilization as we know it will make it out of this century,” University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, a former British Columbia legislator for the Green Party, said in an email. “Resilient humans will survive, but our societies that have urbanized and are supported by rural agriculture will not.”

Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the tech company Stripe and Berkeley Earth has criticized climate scientists in the past for using future scenarios of greatly increasing carbon pollution when the world is no longer on those paths to more rapid warming. Yet, he said it does make sense to look at catastrophic scenarios “as long as we are careful not to conflate the worst case with the most likely outcome.”

Talking about extinction of humans is not “a very effective communications device,” said Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb. “People tend to immediately say, well, that’s just, you know, arm waving or doomsday mongering.”

What’s happening short of extinction is bad enough, she said.

Co-author Tim Lenton said researching worst case scenarios could find nothing to worry about: “Maybe it’s that you can thoroughly rule out a number of these bad scenarios. Well, that’s actually really well worth spending your time doing that. Then we should all cheer up a bit.”

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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

EU court limits national checks for migrant rescue ships
August 1, 2022

The German charity Sea-Watch 3 with 444 people on board in the central Mediterranean on Sunday, July 24, 2022. Ships in the Mediterranean Sea have rescued over 1,100 people struggling to reach Europe in rickety smugglers boats and found five bodies. The Italian Coast Guard says Sunday that Italian vessels recovered the bodies Saturday as it rescued 674 people packed on a fishing boat adrift in the Mediterranean off the Libyan coast. (Nora Boerding/Sea-Watch via AP)


BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s top court ruled Monday that national maritime authorities cannot impound ships involved in search-and-rescue work on suspicion that they might be overloaded due to the number of migrants they plucked from the sea.

The European Court of Justice ruling came in response to an appeal by German migrant aid group Sea-Watch. Two of the German group’s ships were forced to undergo inspections in Sicily in 2020 after disembarking migrants for taking aboard more people than they were authorized to carry.

Italian harbor authorities also considered that the ships were not certified for search-and-rescue missions.

But the court said that rescued people “must not be taken into account when verifying whether the rules on safety at sea have been complied with. The number of persons on board, even if greater than that which is authorized, cannot therefore, in itself, constitute a ground for a control.”

The Luxembourg-based ECJ also said national port authorities have the right to inspect ships to assess whether rules on working conditions, health and safety, and the environment are being respected.

But it added that they do “not have the power to demand proof that those ships hold certificates other than those issued by the flag state,” which in the case of the Sea-Watch vessels was Germany.

Sea-Watch described the court decision as a victory that means that port authorities can’t arbitrarily detain ships and prevent them from doing their work.

“The ruling provides clear legal security for NGOs and is a victory for sea rescue. In the future, ships will thus continue to do what they do best: Rescue people instead of being arbitrarily stuck in port,” the organization said in a tweet.

Neither the EU nor any of its 27 nations are actively searching for people in danger in the Mediterranean Sea, where more than 1,000 people have died or are missing so far this year, many of whom tried to reach Europe from North Africa in unseaworthy smugglers’ boats.

But ships are bound by international law to respond to any distress call near them.

Most Europe-bound migrants hope to reach family or find work, but many of them are denied asylum because they fled poverty and not persecution or war.

Migration is a key issue in Italy’s early parliamentary election on Sept. 25. Right-wing League party leader Matteo Salvini has promised to take a hard line on migration if his party comes to power in a center-right alliance.

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Follow all AP stories on global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration.

Italians ask if immigrant’s slaying could have been stopped
By FRANCES D'EMILIOJuly 31, 2022


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A woman places a bouquet of flowers where the Nigerian street vendor Alika Ogorchukwu has been murdered, in Civitanova Marche, Italy, Saturday, July 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Chiara Gabrielli)


ROME (AP) — Italians debated Sunday whether a Nigerian street vendor could have been saved from a fatal attack by an enraged Italian man that played out in public as bystanders watched. Mourners left flowers and placards denouncing the violence and the indifference of those nearby.

On Friday, as strollers promenaded along a bustling shopping street in Civitanova Marche, an Italian town on the Adriatic Sea, Alika Ogorchukwu, 39, was left for dead after first being struck with his own crutch and then pummeled furiously by the suspect.

“Four-minute long horror,″ headlined Corriere della Sera, noting that other Nigerian immigrants in the town had decried the indifference and racism seen in the killing.

Video footage of the attack has circulated on Italian news websites and social media.

A judge on Monday will rule if the alleged attacker, identified by police as Filippo Claudio Giuseppe Ferlazzo, 32, should remain jailed during the investigation.

Police investigator Matteo Luconi told reporters on Saturday that the assailant went after the vendor following “insistent” requests by Ogorchukwu to the suspect and his female companion for pocket change. The slain man’s lawyer said he was attacked after complimenting the woman’s beauty.

An autopsy will help determine if Ogorchukwu died from the beating or possibly was strangled as he lay on his back, his attacker on top of him and striking him.

Ogorchukwu frequently peddled packets of tissues or cigarette lighters to customers, local shopkeepers said.

During a popular talk show on Italian state radio Sunday, listeners called in to decry the indifference of at least two bystanders who filmed the event and the fear the attack generated..

One listener recalled a young man beaten to death by a gang of Italian youths near Rome in 2020 when he tried to defend a friend and subdue a fight. A court recently convicted four Italians, sentencing two of them to life in prison, for the killing of Willy Monteiro Duarte, a cook whose family originated from Cape Verde.

On Sunday, people paused at the spot where Ogorchukwu died, leaving flowers and tying placards to a tree, including one denouncing “violence, racism, indifference.”

Some radio listeners were indignant that two bystanders used their phones to film the attack and no one apparently tried to pull the suspect off his victim. The police said some did call to report an attack in progress, but by the time help arrived, Ogorchukwu was dead.

One caller asked the host what would he have done if he were there.

“I would have kicked him,” replied Mario Sechi, director of the Italian news agency AGI.

The attack comes as Italian politicians begin campaigning for an early parliamentary election on Sept. 25. The anti-migrant head of the right-wing League party, Matteo Salvini, has made immigration as well as protecting citizens from violent crime his top issues.

On Sunday, Salvini in a tweet contended that his center-left opponents were exploiting the Nigerian’s death to “accuse me, the League and millions of Italians of racism. Squalid.”

Archbishop Rocco Pennacchio, whose diocese includes Civitanova Marche, decided that in place of homilies, several minutes of silence would be held at Sunday’s Masses.

The mayor of the nearby San Severino Marche, where Ogorchukwu lived with his wife, son and a niece, said the town would pay for the funeral. Italian media said local citizens also started fundraising to help his widow.

Africa sees some artifacts returned home but seeks far more
By RODNEY MUHUMUZA, FARAI MUTSAKA and CHINEDU ASADU

July 31, 2022

 A visitor looks at wooden royal statues of the Dahomey kingdom, dated 19th century, at the Quai Branly museum in Paris, France, Nov. 23, 2018. African countries’ efforts at restitution of artifacts from institutions in Europe are now blossoming with the return of pieces that once were thought unattainable. But many objects are still out of reach, and some officials worry they don't even know the true extent of what was taken abroad. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)


KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Apollo John Rwamparo speaks forlornly of the eight-legged stool, a symbol of authority for his ancient kingdom in Uganda, now glimpsed through a glass barrier at a museum thousands of miles away in Britain.

The wooden stool is permanently exhibited at the University of Oxford, one of at least 279 objects there taken from Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom during the colonial era. Oxford has resisted attempts to have the stool repatriated, saying it was donated by a royal from a breakaway kingdom.

“It’s quite frustrating,” said Rwamparo, a deputy prime minister and minister for tourism for the kingdom. “The best is for them to swallow their pride, like the French and the Germans have done, and return the artifacts.”

African countries’ efforts at restitution, after long resistance from authorities in Europe, are now blossoming with the return of treasured pieces that once were thought unattainable.

Most recently, Nigeria and Germany signed a deal for the return of hundreds of artifacts known as the Benin Bronzes. The deal followed French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision last year to sign over 26 pieces known as the Abomey Treasures, priceless artworks of the 19th century Dahomey kingdom in present-day Benin.

African officials seek much more, from the exquisite to the macabre. Some are concerned that the British government in particular has been evasive, offering no commitments on restitution.

In Uganda, which won independence from Britain in 1962, antiquities officials are preparing for a November trip to the U.K., where they will negotiate with the University of Cambridge for an unknown number of artifacts there. Cambridge, which recently gave back to Nigeria an elaborate bronze cockerel, appears forthcoming, said Rose Mwanja Nkaale, Uganda’s commissioner for museums and monuments.

London’s British Museum by comparison “is difficult to penetrate,” said Nkaale. “We can start with those that are willing to cooperate. It is not useful to fight these people.”

The British Museum, which holds an extensive collection from across Africa, is protected by a 1963 law forbidding the trustees from repatriating items except under certain circumstances, including if an object is deemed unfit or useless. Some African officials believe that stand is increasingly weak as other institutions in Europe respond more positively.

Benin bronzes objects are displayed at the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, June 29, 2022 .African countries’ efforts at restitution of artifacts from institutions in Europe are now blossoming with the return of pieces that once were thought unattainable. But many objects are still out of reach, and some officials worry they don't even know the true extent of what was taken abroad. (Bernd Weissbrod/dpa via AP, File)

Nigeria is applying pressure so that laws in the U.K. and elsewhere are amended to allow for the repatriation of disputed collections, said Abba Isa Tijani, director-general of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments. But he expressed concern that while some countries are starting to open up, in Britain such efforts “have not even started.”

Many of the desirable artifacts from Africa can’t even be traced, leading an organization founded by the late Congolese art collector Sindika Dokolo to offer to buy looted African art from collections abroad. By 2020, when Dokolo died in a diving accident in Dubai, his campaign had successfully retrieved 15 items.

Restitution remains a struggle for African governments, and the African Union has put the return of looted cultural property on its agenda. The continental body aims to have a common policy on the issue.

Zimbabwe has pushed for the repatriation of about 3,000 artifacts from Britain. They include spears and swagger sticks as well as the skulls of fighters who resisted colonialism. They were decapitated and their heads shipped abroad as war trophies.

Talks between British and Zimbabwean authorities have produced no breakthrough, but the matter is so important for the southern African nation that President Emmerson Mnangagwa last year suggested an exchange: the remains of colonialist Cecil Rhodes, who’s buried in Zimbabwe, in return for the ancestral remains that mean so much to his people.

Some Zimbabwean activists have started an online campaign called #bringbackourbones, protesting last year outside the British High Commission in neighboring South Africa.

Items of funereal or ritualistic interest have no resonance outside Africa, said Raphael Chikukwa, who runs the National Gallery of Zimbabwe.

“Why should we allow those so-called museums, which in fact are crime scenes and houses of stolen goods, to dictate to us, telling us that we have to prove that the items belong to us?” he told The Associated Press. “As much as we celebrate the return of former Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba’s tooth (from Belgium), let’s not celebrate too much. Let’s remind ourselves that the work has just started.”

Similar efforts are underway in South Africa, where the Ifa Lethu Foundation seeks to repatriate a range of items taken during the apartheid era, often by diplomats or private collectors. The organization has repatriated more than 700 pieces including valuable works by South African artist Gerard Sekoto, who died in Paris in 1993.

In Rwanda, recent cooperation with former colonial master Belgium included the sharing of digital copies of over 4,000 songs and other recordings kept at the Royal Museum for Central Africa outside Brussels.

Items including royal regalia remain at large, and since the digital sound archives weren’t shared in the context of repatriation “you cannot say Belgium has already handed them back,” said Andre Ntagwabira, a specialist in archaeological research at Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy.

“The heritage, both tangible and intangible items, are the footprints of our ancestors and we should own them,” he said.

The whereabouts of the remains of one of Rwanda’s last monarchs, Yuhi Musinga, is a sore issue in the East African country. Many Rwandans believe the body of Musinga, who resisted the Belgians, was deposed in 1931 and died in Congo in 1944, was sent to Belgium.

There must be accountability in that case, said Antoine Nyagahene, a professor of history at Rwanda’s Gitwe University.

“We were robbed of our cultural values and, as you know, a people without roots are a people without a soul,” he said.
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Mutsaka reported from Harare, Zimbabwe, and Asadu from Abuja, Nigeria. Associated Press writers Ignatius Ssuuna in Kigali, Rwanda, and Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg, South Africa, contributed.

As species recover, some threaten others in more dire shape

By JOHN FLESHER, CHRISTINA LARSON and PATRICK WHITTLE

August 1, 2022

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A captured merlin is held near Lake Michigan on June 27, 2022, near Glen Arbor, Mich., where it will be fitted with a leg band and tracking device. The mission will enhance knowledge of a species still recovering from a significant drop-off caused by pesticides and help wildlife managers determine how to prevent merlins from attacking endangered piping plovers at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. 

(AP Photo/John Flesher)

LONG READ

GLEN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — In a forest near Lake Michigan, two scientists attached a backpack tracking device to a merlin they’d lured into a net. The mission: help prevent the predatory species from gobbling up piping plovers — highly endangered shorebirds that nest nearby.

Merlins themselves were going downhill decades ago but are recovering, thanks to bans on pesticides such as DDT. That’s good for them — but not for plovers in the Great Lakes region, where only 65 to 70 pairs remain. The small falcons are “are a big threat to their recovery,” said Nathan Cooper, a research ecologist with Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.

The situation is ironic. A troubled species rebounds thanks to restoration efforts, only to make things worse for others in peril by preying on them or outcompeting them for food and living space. Similar circumstances have turned up elsewhere, challenging wildlife experts who want them all to thrive in balanced, healthy environments.

For instance, the iconic bald eagle’s comeback has pressured rare water birds. Resurgent peregrine falcons menace endangered California least terns and Western snowy plovers that take refuge at naval bases near San Diego. And, off the California coast, attacks from protected white sharks hinder recovery of threatened sea otters.

Gray seals previously on the brink of extirpation in waters of New England now occupy some Massachusetts beaches by the hundreds. The 800-pound mammal’s return has raised worries about vulnerable fish stocks.

Such unintended consequences don’t necessarily reveal flaws in the U.S. Endangered Species Act or conservation programs, experts say. Rather, they illustrate nature’s complexity and the importance of protecting biological communities, not just individual species.

“Clearly there are occasions when we get these conflicts between species that we’re trying to protect,” said Stuart Pimm, a Duke University extinction specialist. “But is it a major worry in conservation? No.”

Species recoveries can produce tradeoffs, since some animals are more adaptable than others to changes in the climate or landscape, said Bruce Stein, chief scientist with the National Wildlife Federation.

(AP video/John Flesher, Mike Householder)

“A lot of ecosystems where these things are occurring are a little out of whack to begin with because we’ve altered them in some way,” Stein said. “With climate change, there are going to be winners and losers. The losers will tend to have specific habitat requirements, narrow ecological niches, and often will be the ones already declining.”

OUTSMARTING A MERLIN

Smithsonian interns Tim Baerwald and Zachary Bordner snared the merlin at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore with help from its natural enemy: a great horned owl. This one was dead but fitted with remote-control devices to make it hoot and flap its wings.

The merlin darted overhead, sounding high-pitched, rapid-fire distress calls. It dove into a net stretched between steel poles. The scientists gently disentangled the brownish-speckled female, then attached the tracker and a leg band.

“As long as it’s fitted correctly, she’ll have a long and happy life,” Baerwald said before Bordner released the merlin, which zipped back to its nesting tree.

Merlin numbers in the region have jumped since the DDT ban in 1972. They’re suspected of killing at least 57 adult piping plovers in the past 10 to 15 years, said Cooper of Smithsonian.

The sandy-backed, ring-necked plovers skitter along beaches nibbling tiny marine animals and eggs. They’re among three remaining North American populations, their decline caused primarily by habitat loss and predation.

While officials have shot some merlins, they’re looking for non-lethal controls. Data from the transmitter backpacks might help determine whether capturing and relocating them is worth trying, said Vince Cavalieri, a biologist with the national lakeshore.

EAGLES THREATEN RARE BIRDS

Recovery of America’s national bird, the bald eagle, is a triumph. But in one area of coastal Maine, the big raptor poses a problem for the only U.S. breeding population of great cormorants.

“When they’re disturbed by eagles, the adult cormorants will flush and leave their nests,” said Don Lyons, a conservation scientist at the National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute.

Then gulls, ravens and crows swoop in to gobble cormorant eggs and chicks. “If this happens repeatedly, an entire colony can fail,” Lyons said.

His team organizes volunteers to camp near cormorant gatherings to scare away eagles.

In Southern California, least terns and snowy plovers are no match for attacking peregrine falcons, which like eagles bounced back after the ban on DDT. Such pesticides are passed up food chains and cause large birds to produce eggs with thin shells, which females crush when trying to incubate them.

The San Diego Zoo and Wildlife Alliance tries to protect the endangered birds by hiring a falconer to capture problem peregrines, keeping them in a holding facility over winter or releasing them in Northern California. Some find a new territory, while others go back, said Nacho Vilchis, a conservation ecologist.

“If there’s a real problem bird that keeps returning, we may ask for permission for lethal removal, but that’s only rarely done,” Vilchis said.

Hunting and bounties devastated New England’s gray seals. Saved by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, the population has rebounded to tens of thousands.

Fishing groups contend the seals could threaten cod stocks that regulators are struggling to rebuild after decades of overfishing.

The Coastal Ecosystem Alliance, based in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, wants to weaken the protection act to allow hunting and slow the seals’ population growth, said board member Peter Krogh.

“Gray seals are certainly this case where recovery has both been cause for celebration and cause for concern,” said Kristina Cammen, a University of Maine marine mammal scientist who says they’re less of a hazard to fish populations than humans are.

SEALS, CORMORANTS BEDEVIL FISHERS

Like the clash over seals and cod, there are other cases where reviving species may be more a nuisance to people than a threat to other wildlife.

Fish farmers in the South and anglers in the Great Lakes region and Pacific Northwest have long complained about the double-crested cormorant, a dark-feathered diving bird that gorges on catfish, perch, salmon and other prized species.

Cormorants have done so well since the DDT ban that agencies have tried limiting them in some locations with egg oiling, nest destruction and even shooting — drawing lawsuits from environmentalists who say the birds are a scapegoat for human actions that harm fish.

“They’re a part of our avian community and our ecosystems, and there needs to be a place for them,” said Dave Fielder, a fisheries research biologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “But when their numbers are so high that they potentially decimate the recreational fishery, that’s a problem.”

Wild turkeys were spread across North America before European settlement but had dwindled to tens of thousands by the 1930s, disappearing from many states. Now they’re hunted in 49 states and are so common in New England that they often cause traffic tie-ups.

Some hunters say hungry turkeys are outcompeting ruffed grouse, which are decreasing in parts of their range, such as the Upper Midwest. But scientists point to habitat loss and climate change.

The National Wild Turkey Federation is helping move turkeys from states with plenty — such as North Carolina, Maine and West Virginia — to Texas and others that could use more, said Mark Hatfield, national director of conservation services.

“If you introduce hunting localized wild turkeys, you reduce the problem with overabundant turkeys right away,” Hatfield said.

NATURE AT WORK

Conflicts between recovering species and ones still in trouble don’t always mean something is wrong, scientists say. It could reflect a return to how things were before humans got in the way.

“When a population gets back to where it’s having the same interactions with other organisms as before it went down, that’s nature at work,” said John Fitzpatrick, emeritus director of Cornell University’s Laboratory of Ornithology.

The bald eagle is “challenging our preconceived notions about what’s normal” for prey such as great cormorants in New England and common murres on the West Coast, which might have been less abundant before eagles declined, said Lyons of the Audubon Society.

The eagle’s recovery “complicates the conservation of certain other species,” Lyons said. ”But their recovery is such a wonderful outcome ... that’s a welcome complication.”

Predator-prey relationships are complex and intervening can be tricky, said Stein of the wildlife federation. It’s often wiser, he said, to focus on protecting habitat and reconnecting fragmented landscapes to promote natural migration than “moving things around willy-nilly.”

But environmental scientist Ian Warkentin, a merlin specialist, said there can be ways to help struggling species without being heavy-handed. Larger falcons — such as peregrines sometimes used to chase birds from airports — might be deployed to shoo merlins from plover nesting areas.

“I fall on the side of the fence that says we should do whatever we can ... to aid the recovery of species for which we’ve caused such grief,” said Warkentin, from Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Grenfell Campus.

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Larson reported from Washington, D.C., and Whittle reported from Portland, Maine.

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On Twitter follow Flesher: @JohnFlesher; Larson @LarsonChristina and Whittle: @pxwhittle

Supreme Court certifies ruling ending Trump border policy
By ELLIOT SPAGAT

August 1, 2022

A Border Patrol agent watches as a group of migrants walk across the Rio Grande on their way to turn themselves in upon crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas, on June 15, 2021. The Supreme Court has certified its month-old ruling allowing the Biden administration to end a cornerstone Trump-era border policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court. It was a pro forma act that has drawn attention amid near-total silence from the White House about when, how and even whether it will dismantle the policy. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)


SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday certified its month-old ruling allowing the Biden administration to end a cornerstone Trump-era border policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court, a pro forma act that has drawn attention amid near-total silence from the White House about when, how and even whether it will dismantle the policy.

The two-word docket entry read “judgment issued” to record that justices voted 5-4 in a ruling issued June 30 that the administration could scrap the “Remain in Mexico” policy, overruling a lower court that forced the policy to be reinstated in December.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said shortly after the Supreme Court victory that justices would need to communicate the decision to a lower court, which, in turn, should lift the order to keep the policy in place in a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas. Beyond that, administration officials have said little, including whether any of the thousands subject to the policy since December will be allowed to enter and remain in the United States while their cases are being considered in immigration court.

The White House and Homeland Security Department had no immediate comment on the Supreme Court certification; the Justice Department declined comment. Officials in Mexico had no immediate comment.

About 70,000 migrants were subject to the policy, known officially as “Migrant Protection Protocols,” or MPP, from when former President Donald Trump introduced it in January 2019 until President Joe Biden suspended it on his first day in office in January 2021, fulfilling a campaign promise. Many were allowed to return to the United States to pursue their cases during the early months of Biden’s presidency.

Nearly 5,800 people have been subject to the policy from December through June, according to figures released Friday, a modest number that would make any reluctance to end it seem less plausible. Nicaraguans account for the largest number, with others from Cuba, Colombia and Venezuela.

A sign posted last week at the entrance to the Salvation Army migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, by the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration appeared to best capture the public understanding of the policy’s status: “Wait for official information! The Remain in Mexico (MPP) program remains in effect. The United States government will inform you of any changes.”

Critics of the policy have been increasingly outspoken about the Biden administration’s reticence on “Remain in Mexico,” and Monday’s certification renewed their calls for an immediate end to the policy.

“It’s a zombie policy,” said Karen Tumlin, founder of Justice Action Center, an immigration litigation organization.

The final move may rest with U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, a Trump appointee whose ruling last year brought “Remain in Mexico” back.

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

US begins court battle against publishing giants’ merger

By MARCY GORDON and HILLEL ITALIE

August 1, 2022

1 of 3

An outside view of the German media giant Bertelsmann in Guetersloh, Germany, is shown March 13, 2003. The government and publishing titan Penguin Random House, owned by Bertelsmann, are set to exchange opening salvos in a federal antitrust trial Monday, Aug. 1, 2022, as the U.S. seeks to block the biggest U.S. book publisher from absorbing rival Simon & Schuster. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government and publishing titan Penguin Random House exchanged opening salvos in a federal antitrust trial Monday as the U.S. seeks to block the biggest U.S. book publisher from absorbing rival Simon & Schuster. The case comes as a key test of the Biden administration’s antitrust policy.

The Justice Department has sued to block the $2.2 billion merger, which would reduce the Big Five U.S. publishers to four.

The government’s star witness, bestselling author Stephen King, is expected to testify at Tuesday’s session of the weekslong trial in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. King’s works are published by Simon & Schuster, but he has expressed unease with the merger.

At Monday’s opening session, attorneys for the two sides presented their cases before U.S. District Judge Florence Pan.

Justice Department attorneys charged that the merger would shrink competition and, inevitably, the vital public discourse that books help spark. Penguin Random House countered that the new company would enhance competition because the combined company could turn out books more efficiently.

The DOJ and the publisher are jousting over a central part of the government’s case: whether the merger will lower advances for the most popular authors, those receiving advances of $250,000 or more. Government attorney John Read said “competition results in authors being paid more” and outlined in depth how joining the two largest publishers would lead to fewer bidders for high-profile books.

But Penguin Random House attorney Daniel Petrocelli, who in 2018 successfully represented Time Warner and AT&T when the government attempted to block their merger, responded that the $250,000 benchmark was an artificial standard that does not reflect how the industry works. The publisher contends that the merger will have at worst a minimal downward effect on advances, for a tiny percentage of book deals.

“The government created an artificial market to create artificial concentration to create artificial harm,” Petrocelli said.

The government contends that it would hurt authors and, ultimately, readers if German media titan Bertelsmann, of which Penguin Random House is a division, is allowed to buy Simon & Schuster, the fourth-largest publisher, from U.S. media and entertainment company Paramount Global. It says the deal would thwart competition and give Penguin Random House gigantic influence over which books are published in the U.S., not just how much authors are paid, but giving consumers fewer books to choose from.

The publishers counter that the merger would strengthen competition among publishers to find and sell the hottest books, by enabling the combined company to offer bigger advance payments and marketing support to authors. It would benefit readers, booksellers and authors, they say.

The merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster would form by far the biggest publisher in U.S. and reduce by one publishing’s so-called Big Five, which includes HarperCollins Publishing, Hachette Book Group and Macmillan.

Hachette CEO Michael Pietsch was called by the government as its first witness. He expressed concern about the consequences of a “super dominant” publisher, one that could control half the overall market, with outcomes including the shutting down of imprints the new company deems redundant and outsize advantages in the terms it could offer booksellers.

At the same time, Pietsch acknowledged that he had hoped his parent company, the French publisher Hachette Livre, had bid for Simon & Schuster and would welcome acquiring it should the deal with Penguin Random House fall through.

“It is my belief that they (Hachette Livre) would” be open to buying Simon & Schuster, he said.

Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster already have two of publishing’s most impressive lists of blockbuster authors. Penguin Random House’s includes Barack and Michelle Obama, whose package deal for their memoirs totaled an estimated $65 million; Bill Clinton, who received $15 million for his memoir; the late Nobel laureate Toni Morrison; John Grisham; and Dan Brown.

Simon & Schuster counts Hillary Clinton, who received $8 million for her memoir, Bob Woodward and Walter Isaacson. And King.

Bruce Springsteen splits the difference: His “Renegades: Born in the USA,” with Barack Obama, was published by Penguin Random House; his memoir, by Simon & Schuster.

The Justice Department contends that as things now stand, No. 1 Penguin Random House and No. 4 Simon & Schuster, by total sales, compete fiercely to acquire the rights to publish the anticipated hottest-selling books. If they are allowed to merge, the combined company would control nearly 50% of the market for those books, it says, hurting competition by reducing advances paid to authors and diminishing output, creativity and diversity.

The Big Five are the dominant presence in U.S. publishing, always on top of agents’ minds when submitting proposed works. They make up 90% of the market for anticipated top-selling books, the government says.

The Biden administration is staking out new ground on business concentration and competition, and the government’s case against the publishers’ merger is an important test.

President Joe Biden has made competition a pillar of his economic policy, denouncing what he calls the outsized market power of an array of industries and stressing the importance of robust competition to the economy, workers, consumers and small businesses. Biden, a Democrat, has called on federal regulators, notably the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, to give greater scrutiny to big business combinations.

Boeing avoids labor strike at 3 plants; union members to vote on contract

The postponed walkout came just days after Boeing reported $16.7 billion in revenues during the second quarter, which is down 2% from the same quarter in 2021. 

File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 1 (UPI) -- One of the largest industrial trade unions in the country postponed a planned labor strike on Monday to allow more time for members to vote on a revised contract offer from Boeing.

The strike was planned to begin on Monday and would have seen a walkout by about 2,500 workers represented by the the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 837.

The employees work at three different Boeing locations in St. Louis, St. Charles, Mo., and Mascoutah, Ill.

Negotiations between union leadership and the aviation company over the weekend led to the decision to postpone the strike.

Next, union members will vote on Boeing's contract offer on Wednesday. The present labor agreement expires Thursday.

"Members will receive information on the modified offer soon," the union said in a statement on its website.

File Photo by Brian Kersey/UPI

The affected workers build weapons and military aircraft at the St. Louis-area plants -- including the F-15 Eagle, F/A-18 Hornet, T-7A trainer and MQ-25.

The postponed walkout came just days after Boeing reported $16.7 billion in revenues during the second quarter, which is down 2% from the same quarter in 2021.

Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun pointed to the company's positive cash flow and deliveries of new airplanes as signs that the company is bouncing back from its troubles associated with the 737 Max and the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Throughout our history, we have seen moments of triumph and moments of challenge," Calhoun said in a statement last week. "Through it all, our people have made the difference, and that could not ring truer today."